#I’m blind! How many Twelve year olds do you know are blind
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When Night Comes - thirteen
Summary: Who would win in a staring contest? New York’s resident mob boss and master of the side eye Bucky Barnes or the daycare teacher who really wants to go home and smoke?
pairing: Mob!Vampire!Bucky Barnes x reader
warnings: the feels, cursing, Alix being terrible
word count: 2.9k
twelve | masterlist
tag list: @elizacusi-blog @mal-adaptive-dreams @thebuckybarnesvault @unaxv @hidden-treasures21 @buckybarnessimpp @vonalyn @cakesandtom
disclaimer: credits to original creator/poster of image/gif. found on Google/Pinterest
For a house full of blood-sustaining beings, there is food being made at any given moment. Strange, yes, but with both Wyatt and Y/N, it only made sense to have food available.
When they’d arrived at the estate, a host of people were there to maintain it while Bucky was away. In efforts to keep a low profile, he’d dismissed almost everyone but a handful. The only two that Y/N comes into contact with are the cook, Ana Cristina, and the housekeeper, Luca. There are two other young men who she sees outside but they never venture close enough to the estate’s guests to talk.
Ana Cristina is puttering around the kitchen, wicker basket in hand, and muttering to herself as she checks over the kitchen’s inventory. Y/N catches glimpses of her rich green skirt that is hidden beneath an embroidered black apron as she moves around. Stray steel gray hairs float from under her matching headscarf but the elderly woman doesn’t seem to notice. She mumbled something in Romanian under her breath as she set the basket down to pull on a black sweater. In doing so, Ana Cristina catches Y/N watching her from the kitchen doorway.
“Dragă,” she chuckles as she gestures for Y/N to come in, “Are you hungry?”
Y/N shakes her head and timidly walks into the other woman’s domain. The many instruments of Ana Cristina’s craft line the walls and ceiling even of the stone room. She comes to stand next to the long wooden table that acts as an island and marvels at the array of food before her. Bread of all kinds is alongside freshly picked fruits and vegetables while packaged meats sit, awaiting to be prepared for later.
Busy consumed with the painting before her, Y/N doesn’t notice that Bucky has taken her place in the doorframe. He opts to hang back, leaning on the wood with his arms crossed so the two women can talk without him.
“Ana Cristina,” Y/N begins as she plucks a plum from a basket of fruit, “can I ask you something?”
The cook nods.
“What does dragă mean? Bucky calls me that sometimes and I haven’t been able to figure it out. I’m assuming it’s not anything bad if you call me it too,” she starts to ramble but Ana Cristina interrupts.
“My dear or darling, either one really.”
“Oh.”
Ana Cristina raises an eyebrow at her short answer, “Were you expecting something else? My love perhaps?”
Y/N looks at her startled, “What? No. I… no that’s it.”
“I may be old but I’m not blind. I see how you look at each other, longing eyes and yearning. It was cute at first but now,” she drifts off before setting her sharp gaze on Y/N, “there’s something more. He is as skittish as a fox and in the many years I’ve worked for him, he has never brought anyone outside of his family here, to his home. You being here means more than you could ever know. I tell you this not because I’m trying to scare you but to ask you to be gentle with him. He is strong but when that man loves, it’s deeply and in the most profound ways. I trust that you’ll do right by him.”
She finishes with a small smile and a soft pat on Y/N’s hand which is still holding the plum. Her gaze moves to something behind Y/N and she’s gone, skirts swishing out the back door before Y/N can ask who she’s looking at.
Dread and embarrassment fill her body when she turns and spots Bucky behind her. She quickly turns back around so he can’t see how utterly horrified she is that he heard what Ana Cristina said and suggested.
“I see you got the parent talk from her,” he teases as he walks to the other side of the table, “Although it’s more of a grandma talk coming from her.”
Dressed in a blue sweater and jeans, Bucky is still a vision of desire to Y/N. If the previous conversation hadn’t been enough to embarrass her, she can see that he senses her body’s reaction to him by the way he takes deep, regulating breaths.
“You could say that,” she says, voice cracking ever so slightly.
His ring catches the light from the window above the sink as he drifts his hand over the same fruit bowl she’d picked her plum from earlier. Once again, she’s mesmerized by the sharp angles and smooth planes that encompass the thick central onyx stone. Simple in its design, the intimidation and captive effect it has come from the confidence that Bucky wears it with.
Noticing she’s fixated on it, he offers up a tidbit of information to lure her into a more in-depth conversation, “I was told it’s supposed to help with self-control and protect me against negative energy.”
She makes a confused face, but it falls when she processes that he’s talking about his ring.
“It’s not like a sunlight ring?”
“A what?”
“A sunlight ring. Like a ring that protects you from the sunlight.”
It’s his turn to make a confused face, “Are you suggesting that I will spontaneously combust if I go outside?”
“ It’s a part of every vampire story. You can’t blame me for getting that part wrong.”
“ Well, I’m not a vampire so,” he shrugs off the idea and takes a bite out of a plum much to her surprise.
“It’s the same thing; vampire and Strigoi.”
“ no, it’s really not. Vampires don’t exist.”
“I thought up until three months ago that Strigoi didn’t exist either.”
“ Maybe if you had taken me up on that date, you’d have known sooner,” he suggests, looking her dead in the eye to gauge her reaction. Instead of taking the bait, she rolls her eyes and returns to looking at the kitchen in all its glory.
“ Would you like me to make you something?”
“Do you even know how to cook?”
“I’m starting to worry about where you got your information about me because whoever it was, did a terrible job.”
“Considering no one has really told me anything, I blame you.”
His tongue pokes at his bottom lip, “You haven’t asked and I'm not in the habit of offering up information.”
She looks him up and down, “That much is apparent.”
A beat passes as they stare each other down. Y/N wrinkles her nose at his defiant attitude and busies herself with anything but him.
“I was human at one point and I had to feed myself, so yes I know how to cook.”
“Now he talks,” Y/N teases from over her shoulder as she reads over the various spices on the wall opposite of them, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Bucky gets to work at impressing her with his cooking abilities. He gathers a variety of ingredients he will no doubt be lectured about taking without asking Ana Cristina. As he begins his prep, Y/N finds a well-loved wooden stool and moves it to the table so she can sit and watch him. Content with being given an unadulterated view of him, she watches in amazement as Bucky finds peace in his work. The movements of prep and analyzing the ingredients before him seem to bring him a calm he doesn’t enjoy often. A part of her yearns to know who taught him to cook, to know who instilled this apparent love of food into a foodless creature. The lack of conversation leads her down a different mental path and a voice nags at her to interrogate him about other things.
“How much do you know about me?”
“As much as you would think,” He throws back, unphased by her sudden voice.
Seeing a challenge, she decides to test him even more, “what’s my favorite color?”
“Blue.”
“Wrong, it's yellow.”
He gives her a confused look.
“It compliments my skin better. What am I allergic to?”
“You say Avocado but you just don’t like the texture,” he rattles off as he begins to chop some radishes and carrots.
“What am I really allergic to?”
“Mangos and kiwis.”
“Did you read my medical records, Jesus?” She says with complete shock at his rapid-fire answers. She drops her elbows to rest on the table so she can lean toward him ever so slightly.
“I did.”
“Are you being for real?”
He shrugs, “Death by fruit platter doesn’t sound pleasant.”
“How sweet,” her mind drifts to questions about him, “What’s your name?”
He raises an eyebrow, “Bucky.”
“Full name. It’s only fair.”
“James Buchanan Barnes.”
“How old are you?”
“So full of questions today,” he chuckles, “227.”
“You’re 227 years old but you have a very obviously modern name?”
“Are you asking for my birth name, you creep?”
“Says the man who literally read my medical records,” she retorts, “When someone says full name, they typically mean the name you were given at birth.”
“Ion Sava Bogdi Bucur.”
“That’s a mouthful.”
“You asked,” he says, playfully waving his knife in her direction, “haven’t you learned to not ask questions you don’t want the answer to?”
“Touché,” she lets her gaze drift down his body as he goes back to his chopping. Her eyes wander to where his tattoos are hidden just beneath his tight black shirt. Curiosity grows like an infection and before she can cure it, the words tumble out, “I like your tattoos.”
He pauses his knife and glances up from under his lashes at her with a small smirk, “Thank you.”
More words jump up her throat at the small acknowledgment, “What do they mean?”
“A lot of things.”
“Like?”
He pulls at the collar of his shirt to reveal a series of runes that line both of his collarbones, “Eternal life is the grapevines, the eyes are protection, and the diamonds are fertility.”
“Fertility?”
“I just said that, didn't I?”
She scoffs at his sass, “You are on one today, my god. I was clarifying to make sure l heard right.”
“Maybe,” he starts as he sets his knife down and levels his paralyzing gaze on her, “it’s because you look like THAT and it’s taking every ounce of strength I have right now to stay where I’m at.”
Y/N freezes at his words, eyes going wide and breathing hitching in her chest. Panic isn’t the word for the feeling that is rising quickly within her but she knows that defining it for what it is would prove to be dangerous for her. When hunger grows in him, a NEED develops in her.
“I'm just wearing overalls, I don’t see how tempting they can be.”
His gaze is unwavering as it takes down her form, “it’s not about the overalls.”
“Then what is it?”
“Leave it,” he drops his eyes back at the cutting board and goes back to his task, albeit neither his heart nor head are in it.
Feeling brave now that she’s being pinned down, Y/N stands and keeps her own watchful eye on Bucky as she slowly makes her way to his side. Even though he’s not physically looking at her, she can feel him watching her every move. When she takes a step closer, he slows his knife movements and grips It tighter. When she rounds the end, he puts the knife down entirely to rest his hands on the edge. When she’s within arm’s length, he takes a deep breath but quickly regrets it as her smell overpowers him.
“I want to understand,” she tries to persuade him into talking more, “how are baggy overalls and a tank top that tempting for you?”
He gives her a pained look, silently pleading with her to leave it alone. Y/N doesn’t take heed and sets her hand on top of his.
“Help me understand you.”
The pained look fades into one of disastrous relief when she touches him. He lets her trail her hand up his arm, savoring the domestic touch but stops her when she reaches his bicep.
“I can’t… it’s hard to explain until you’ve felt it.”
“Try at least.”
“There’s a pull to you that I can’t fight. It feels like there’s a string tied to the both of us and it won’t stop pulling on me. I thought getting closer to you would make it stop but it’s made it worse. The…the only time,” he trails off as he struggles to find the words, “the only time it stopped was when you let me drink from you but now it’s even stronger.”
She nods along as he speaks, drawing light patterns into his skin through his shirt with her fingertips to relax him.
“It’s happened before… with Celeste.”
Her patterns stop, “did it go away?”
He hesitates, eyes darting across her face to find any reason to confuse this truth with her but he finds nothing. Curiosity and understanding are all that he finds in her breathtaking features and it kills him to even have thought of lying to her. He takes a moment to gather his thoughts and turns so he can look at her. Resting his hip against the table’s edge, he forces himself to stay open to her even if it feels like a deep violation of everything he knows. Vulnerability is required of him and Y/N deserves to see him try after everything she’s been through.
“After she turned. It didn’t go away, it…it felt like it was satisfied.”
“The pull? Would bond be a better word?”
“Maybe.”
When he’d turned to face her, her hand had fallen away to give him space. Something in her cries out at the loss of contact and she takes a step forward to resume her pattern-making in his skin. Pushing her limits, she continued up his bicep and over his collarbone to trace over the tattoos he’d shown her moments ago. The Y/N mere weeks ago would’ve made fun of an eternal being with a fertility tattoo but the Y/N of today decides against it.
She drops her hand to his chest and rests it there, “the man on your chest, who is he?”
“Sava the Goth, he was the saint I was named after.”
She asks Bucky to tell her the story of the martyr and listens wholeheartedly as he recounts the tale his father always told him. The irony of both his pagan origins and orthodox endings strikes her as he speaks. Sava denounced the pagan and idolatrous ways of his captors only to be martyred for his beliefs hence why he became a saint. Y/N assumes that Bucky would be joyful in his retailing of the account however a sadness came in as it had when he spoke of the runes. It seems as though there is a deeper level to his connection with the runes but he doesn’t offer up more information as is his MO.
“Would I be wrong if I thought your dad is the one who named you?”
“What gave it away?”
“The very obvious religious trauma. No one gets religious tattoos unless they’re a devout follower or suffered at the hands of the church. That and Ana Cristina may have let it slip one time that your mom was a witch.”
He chuckles lightly while he grabs her wrist that’s still resting on his chest and gives it an experimental tug, “Did she say anything else?”
Allowing him to draw her, Y/N wrinkles her nose and smiles, “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“No, no you need to tell me everything she told you,” Bucky says as he slyly maneuvers them so she’s pinned against the table.
“It’ll cost you.”
“Name your price.”
“I want to see Celeste.”
“Isabel for the love of god, shut the actual fuck up,” Juliette snaps at the woman who’s been talking nonstop for the last two hours of their flight.
She gasps in horror and looks to Alix for her to defend her however she’s met with a low chuckle.
“Finally someone said it,” John laughs.
Isabel shrinks into her seat and her face grows red with humiliation. Brock snickers at the ordeal while John and he go over ways to attack. Her sniffles start out unnoticeable until Alix makes a show of checking to see if she’s crying.
“Awe,” she starts, wiping away the fat tears that roll down Isabel’s cheeks, “did Juliette hurt your feelings?”
She nods.
“Juliette, apologize now,” Alix demands without looking up.
The offending woman mutters a quiet and insincere apology. Satisfied that neither of the lower Lycan will be a bother, Alix gives her attention back to the men and their planning.
“Kill everyone on sight. I don’t care if they’re Strigoi or not, I don’t want any survivors except for Y/N.”
John makes an alarmed face, “Isn’t Peggy’s kid there?”
“No survivors,” Alix repeats.
The tension in the small plane grows thick with the weight of her words. John looks to Brock who is mirroring his expression but neither even dares to argue with their pack leader.
“Understood,” John forces himself to say.
Even when their conversation moves forward, the words still hang above them all and they begin to internally question what they got themselves into.
#bucky barnes imagine#bucky barnes#mob au#bucky barnes x reader#mob!bucky barnes imagine#mob!bucky#mob!bucky barnes x reader#mob!bucky barnes and reader#bucky barnes x y/n#bucky barnes x you#vampire bucky barnes#vampire au#vampire!bucky x reader#vampire!bucky#vampire
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HP FESTS: Love Is In The Air Fest
Love Is In The Air Fest 2023:
A Little Something New by GreenInk_RedLetters - T, 14 chapters - "Oh? You taking a pledge for my protection, Malfoy?" She teased. He was smirking and hell but it did something to her. "I believe... They call that a knight in shining armor." He fingered his chin. "Got an opening, Granger?" After a string of bad dates and unexpected work issues, Hermione Granger doesn't have time for her best friend's request to set her up on a blind date. She's done with men wasting her time and bleh having a total lack of ambition. Draco Malfoy doesn't expect much out of life, and he certainly doesn't expect the Golden Girl of all people to come barging into his life again. She hates him, doesn't she? Or is it simply his best friend playing matchmaker again? Dramione story with a myriad of misunderstandings, a matchmaking Theo Nott, alcohol-induced dinner parties, and light-hearted banter.
Right where you left me by Goldenbucky - G, one-shot - Hermione Granger-Malfoy is being stood up. Frankly, she wants to cry. Where is her husband? He said he was going to meet her here. Didn't he?
endings & new beginnings by riddikulus_puff - M, one-shot - Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy were the public’s favourite couple — adored by the entire Wizarding population of the United Kingdom after everything they have had to face together, marked with the label of “star-crossed lovers” by many — after the defeat of Lord Voldemort and the ending of the Second Wizarding War. Yet, the pressure that was surrounding them had become too much for both of them and at the end of 2001, their break up was finally made public with an exclusive interview in the Daily Prophet.
Of Roses, Hummingbirds, and Bees by AutumnWeen - M, one-shot - Hermione Granger is dead, but that is not the story. The tragedy is that she didn't have to be.
Annabel Lee by undercoverdrxco - T, one-shot - Draco shows up to HER blind date, to recite HER favorite poem on the open mic and what on earth is Hermione Granger supposed to do about that? “But we loved with a love that was more than love” - Edgar Allan Poe
Great Divide by TeslaMalfoy - G, one-shot - Letters were how it began. its only fitting that's how it ends.
Valentine's Day In The Room Of Requirement by elcieford - T, one-shot - "Another Valentine’s Day and I find I’m back here in the Room of Hidden Things. Or Requirement. Whatever makes your swotty brain feel better about calling it. Why does this day make me think of you? Why do I feel the need to write to you again? Admittedly, I hate myself for it, especially as I know I’m going to continue on with this letter. Maybe next year I’ll have pulled my stupid head out of my stupid arse." Or - Every Valentine's Day Draco finds himself writing to the one witch everyone thinks he hates... which he does. Doesn't he?
Forgiveness, Can You Imagine? by forestknifefight - M, one-shot - Guilt gnaws at twelve-year-old Draco Malfoy in ways he can't quite accept. He has no outlet except a quill and has no chance at forgiveness until he is seventeen.
This fest is ongoing.
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Too Small To Be Afraid (Chapter 2)
Links:
Cover / Master Post / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter
- - - - - - - - - -
My lungs cry out for more air than I can give them with each step of my quickening pace. I clutch the strap on my overnight bag to keep it from falling off my shoulder.
"3:57," Dad says, glancing at his watch as we run through the undercity railway entrance. "We can make it!"
"What?!" I holler to him, nearly losing my footing as we move up the stairs. "We're not going to make it, are you crazy?!"
We dart across the station, weaving through crowds and passing numerous trains. I lose count of how many times I've had to say 'excuse me' after bumping into so many people along the way.
"Don't tell me you've already given up hope!" Dad's gaze shifts upward. "Now, which platform was it again?"
"It's platform 16B, and I gave up hope when the movers arrived while we were still packing! We're lucky they were willing to wait the extra fifteen minutes for us to finish!"
"There it is, platform 16B! And with one minute to spare! Hah!" Dad laughs triumphantly and glances down at his watch. "Uh-oh."
"No uh-ohs!" I sprint through the crowd to catch up with him and look down at his watch. "4:02?!"
Dad and I turn our gazes to platform 16B and behold its trainless track.
"Well... I guess we can wait for the next one," Dad says, scratching his chin.
"That's three hours away," I say, pressing my fingers to my temple.
"How do you know that?" Dad starts looking around. "Did you see it somewhere?"
"I looked it up earlier in case... well, this happened again."
"Again? What do you mean?"
"Well, for starters," I say, folding my arms. "When we visited Grandma two years ago? We missed the train and made her wait up late for us."
Dad shrugs. "Okay, but that was just one time."
"Alright, then what about the time we went to North Eris to visit Uncle Lewis?"
"That was ages ago! You were only twelve!"
"Okay, what about when we wanted to take a day trip to Ashani last year? Or when we nearly missed the train home from the university this morning?"
Dad raises his hands in defeat. "Okay, okay," he says. "So I'm not that great at catching trains."
A voice overhead interrupts our conversation, "The four o'clock train from Maedri to Chancelor is now approaching platform 16B. We apologize for the delay."
Dad turns to me with a big grin and finger guns ablazing. "Made it just in time!"
I roll my eyes and smile. I guess he wins this round.
Shortly after boarding the train and sitting in the old, worn leather seats, we begin to move away from the only city I've ever called home. I set down the bag I was holding onto so tightly and rub my legs in an attempt to relieve myself of goosebumps.
"Hey," Dad says, pointing upward. "This train has a series of real skylights along the track. Maybe you can get some good nature pictures."
I look up and see a window. Through the window is the dull, lifeless sea of gray that is the ceiling to the undercity. It stares back at me, almost taunting me as it selfishly conceals the beauty of the world hidden above the surface. I pull out my phone, my heart racing at the opportunity to see the nature scenes the skylights have to offer. I've grown tired of the same old videos that play on the artificial skylights in town and have been longing for something real. I sit and wait in restless anticipation for the skylights to appear.
All at once, the melancholy of the undercity is stripped away as I'm nearly blinded by a bright blue sky. Fallen blossoms adorn the glass above, in beautiful shades of pastel pink and white. Big, wide, sturdy trees reach high up into the heavens with no end in sight. The sight leaves me in such awe that I forget to take any pictures.
And then I see two pertheans tower over the glass.
Everything stops. I let out a gasp, my phone slipping through my fingers and onto the train floor. My insides flip completely upside-down, and my entire being trembles as I turn my widened eyes to the ground.
Something touches my left shoulder, causing me to flinch. I turn and see Dad's hand resting there.
"Breathe," Dad whispers. "It's okay."
I take in a shuddery breath and hold it in for a few seconds before letting it go. Shaking, I lean over and pick up my phone from the train floor. That's enough surface world for one day.
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20 questions for fic writers!
Tagged by @chubsthehamster
1. How many works do you have on ao3?
26!
2. What’s your total ao3 word count?
139,299!
3. What fandoms do you write for?
Bungou Stray Dogs, Haikyuu, and Trigun lately, but if you go back far enough in my fic career you’d find Hetalia, Black Butler, Doctor Who, Soul Eater, and who knows what else I’ve forgotten.
4. What are your top five fics by kudos?
First Scar, Rough Nights, Last Young Renegade, Wish You Were Here, and Time Enough.
However if we ask instead what my favourites are it would have to be:
All My Love (Bungou Stray Dogs, fem soukoku, boarding school au, soulmate au but a bit to the left)
When the Sun Goes Black (Bungou Stray Dogs, soukoku, canon divergence, the one where Corruption leaves Chuuya blind)
this masterpiece will (tear you apart), (BSD, soukoku, canon divergence, the one where Dazai gets kidnapped and traipses through alternate realities)
Wish You Were Here, (BSD, soukoku, the one that splits from canon after Dead Apple and Chuuya wrestles with Arahabaki in his psyche. Yes I’m aware Arahabaki isn’t canonically sentient or sapient but look I wrote this before we knew that for sure and also it’s a fun concept)
and Where is your heart in all this, Nicholas? (Trigun, Vashwood kinda, the one with attempts at a dom/sub thing, attempts at care taking, and absolutely no attempts at real communication on what anyone actually needs or wants.)
5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?
Yes, always! I love the community aspect of sharing things online and I absolutely adore when people talk to me about the things I’m already vibrating over.
6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
Uhhhhhhh probably Home With You since it’s about a twenty year old dying of a degenerative disease but to be fair most of my work is angsty and picking an angstiest is likely up to interpretation and perspective. (In other words let me know which one you would call my saddest if you have an opinion!)
7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
See I don’t really do happy endings in much of a traditional sense, but I’m gonna say Perfect Disaster. They get their shit figured out in that one!
8. Do you get hate on fic?
Not any that I recall!
9. Do you write smut?
Not this year I haven’t but generally yes I do!
10. Do you write crossovers?
Nope, haven’t touched crossovers in any sense really since I was twelve, they just never really were my jam.
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Not that I’m aware of!
12. Have you ever had a fic translated?
Not that I know of!
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?
Technically yes. However it was never posted anywhere and I would massively overhaul it if I ever did try to get it out publicly.
14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?
I feel like I’m obligated to say soukoku lol, who else has taken up seven years of my life?
15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but probably won’t?
Let’s be honest, probably the other two parts of Tell Me Pretty Lies. My sister wants the Kuroo/Akaashi fic but it just was not working when I tried it and it’s been years now since I’ve written haikyuu.
16. What are your writing strengths?
Internal dialogue I think! Thought processes and poetics, I think there’s often nice bits of cadence and rhythm to my work!
17. What are your writing weaknesses?
Plot. I very rarely plot out fully and more often than not write without any plan at all, or only a vague outline of one. So anything requiring heavy lining up is often not there as much as I’d like. I’m a very go with the flow sort of person when it comes to the specifics in fics (which is funny because I can control everything in fic, but the only time I plan and plot consistently is in ttrpgs when I have to guess at what my friends will do)
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?
If you do it well it’s a tool, if you do it badly you seem a fool. I use it on occasion, and I use it often in live play roleplaying, but time and place and reason.
19. First fandom you wrote for?
I think it was Black Butler back on ye old Wattpad but my sister insists it was Inuyasha since my “original fiction” as a kid was heavily ripping off my favourite anime at the time of writing it.
20. Favourite fic you’ve written?
Answered kinda above but honestly I’m really still so fond of When the Sun Goes Black, and All My Love/Nothing Ever Counts. I feel like my prose was just really very good in those!
Tagging: @feralrookie @macavitykitsune @valoniel @doomedblade @blindblossom @nautilusopus and anyone else that wants to
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For the dialogue prompts: 2 and 3 and they're stuck in a stupidly small space (like a closet or a bathroom stall or something. Your choice!)
Also would really like to read something with prompt 10 if you're so inclined
I’m gonna stew on prompt 10 for a bit, but I did manage prompt 2 & 3:
The closet door shuts with a final sounding click, sending us into darkness.
It’s only because of my vampire vision that I can see Simon’s wince. “You do realize we just got locked in here, right?”
“Who made you the authority on locking doors?” I snarl. He’s so close to me I can feel the heat radiating off him, like a fire upon which I want to throw myself.
Simon wiggles the door handle. “That enough authority for you?”
“I suppose.” I’ve pressed my whole body against the other side of our small room but I can still feel the tips of his trainers against my polished boots. I unholster my wand. “Open Sesame.”
Nothing happens.
“Magic-dampening timber,” Simon clears his throat, “to keep the magickal objects stable.”
Fuck. I forgot. “Oh.”
“So spells won’t–”
“I’ve got it.”
In the silence I feel Simon’s pulse like it’s my own.
“Want to play a game?”
We already are, only he doesn’t know it. How long can I remain trapped in a closet with the man I most desire without draining him dry? “I can’t think of anything I would like less.”
Simon grunts and slams his head back against the wall behind him. “Look, Baz. We’re stuck here. There’s no way out; no magic to save us. But Possibelf checks this closet after class like clockwork to make sure no one’s stolen anything. Which means we have less than thirty minutes to burn.
“Either we play a game or we learn how many bottles of beer on the wall I can sing about until you go insane. Choice is yours.”
I sigh. “What exactly did you have in mind?”
We’re five down from twenty questions when it all goes sideways.
“A Paddington doll?” Simon giggles. “You sleep with a Paddington doll?
“I said I slept with a Paddington Bear doll. When I was younger.” Technically, last summer counts as being younger. “Does your limited grasp of the English language fail to encompass past tense?”
Still, Simon’s giggling. “Sorry. Sorry! My twelve-year-old self is just kinda freaking out on the inside right now.”
“Why?” I growl.
“Because it’s so human!” Simon exclaims. “Did you not bring him to Watford? No; you couldn’t have. I’d’ve noticed.”
I cross my arms over my chest; they nearly bump against Simon. “I left him at home.”
“So I wouldn’t find out?”
“So you wouldn’t damage him.”
Simon’s silent for a moment. “I want to say I would never have hurt an innocent creature like that, but I’ve just remembered the polecat.”
“Stinky.”
“What?”
Crowley. Did I just say that out loud?
“What did you say?” Simon repeats.
“I said,” my voice dripping with disdain, “Stinky. Which was his name.”
I can hear Simon wet his lips, the crisp click of him opening his mouth afterward. “You knew his name?”
I hum. “Professor Minos told me.”
“Why?”
There’s a small gap at the bottom of the door where a thin beam of light’s managed to stream through. “Because I wanted to make sure he was okay, after we let him go.”
Simon’s pulse strengthens. Beats faster. Thump-thump-thump. “Do I know you at all, Baz?”
Again, I hum. “Do you really want to?”
It’s only because of my vampire senses that I feel the brief touch of his fingertips on my elbow. “I didn’t think I did, but,” he swallows, “I’ve been wrong before.”
The closet door opens with a loud click, blinding me with its brightness.
From this prompt list
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Short Reflection: Yama no Susume Next Summit
There’s an argument to be made that Yama no Susume is the most underrated anime of all time. Maybe not outright number one, but it’s certainly up there. The fact that it started as a series of three-minute shorts and never climbed above twelve minutes per episode, coupled with the lack of legal streaming options, means so few people have gotten a chance to check out- or even know about- one of the best goddamn cute girls shows on the market. Not only does it do a great job you on mountain climbing as a hobby, in all its intricacies and charms, it uses that extensive hobby knowledge to weave a genuinely wonderful story about personal growth and struggle through the specifics of undergoing such a strenuous, difficult activity. Watching Aoi Yukimura grow out of her shell as she dives deeper and deeper into mountain climbing is, no bullshit, some of the most believable, natural, and human coming-of-age drama I’ve seen in this medium, never mind her absolutely adorable back-and-forth with longtime friend (and future wife) Hinata Kuraue. Like K-On before it and Yuru Camp after it, Yama no Susume is a standard bearer for just how good CGDCT shows can be at communicating the whimsy and magic of ordinary life.
And now, after so many years, we finally have a season 4! And not just any season 4; this time, we’re getting full-length 24-minute episodes! And a simulcast on a readily available streaming service! With the same director and so many of the same staff members returning! At long last, Yama no Susume has been plucked from obscurity! Finally, the whole world will get a chance to experience one of anime’s most underappreciated masterpieces!
So why am I left feeling so unsatisfied?
Look, this review really hurts to write. I’m a Yama no Susume stan through and through, I will take every opportunity I can to sing this show’s praises. I wanted nothing more than to come out of season 4 gushing about how wonderful it was to see this show continue its winning streak. But I have to be honest with me feelings, and my feelings are that Yama no Susume: Next Summit was a letdown. Not a bad show by any means, but an inferior sequel that fails to capture so much of the spark that made those first 3 seasons so special. Just to make sure I wasn’t nostalgia-blinded, I went back and watched a random episode from season 2 to revisit the old show with fresh eyes, and let me tell you, the difference was night and day. There was something magical about this show, something that has not fully carried through into its most recent installment. And while there’s still a pretty good cute girls anime left once you trip that special something away, it’s not until the final episode that it reaches the same heights that past seasons reached on a regular basis.
So what changed? What was that special something that no longer exists, or at least doesn’t exist nearly as much? The obvious Big Problem to point at is the fact that this season wastes its first four episodes recapping the past three seasons, so we only really have eight episodes of new material. And yes, that’s definitely a huge, completely unnecessary issue that threatens to derail everything before it even gets going. Especially since studio 8it wastes so much time and resources re-animating all your favorite moments from YamaSusu’s past that the production is very noticeably stretched thin throughout the remainder of the actual new stuff. It reminds me a lot of RWBY Ice Queendom, where it wastes its best animation just recapping past glories to get newcomers up to speed and then struggles to keep up the momentum for the story it supposedly exists to tell in the first place. And much like in Ice Queendom, the recapped events are so condensed, with so much of their critical connective tissue removed, that it fails to do justice to just how damn excellent the storytelling in the first three seasons were. I can’t imagine anyone watching these first four episodes and crying over Aoi’s failure to climb Mt. Fuji, or Aoi and Hinata’s reconciliation on a mountaintop after a falling-out, or any of the truly wonderful moments that made me fall in love with this show when I first watched it.
So you’re left with a reader’s digest of past events that were done better elsewhere and a new story that lacks the production quality to do justice to its own big moments in the same way. And unfortunately, it doesn’t help that I’m not the biggest fan of the new aesthetic this season is going for. Look, superimposing anime girls onto stylized photo-realistic backdrops works for some cute girls shows- Yuru Camp, Bocchi the Rock just this season- but YamaSusu’s visual strength has always been tied to its gorgeous background art and how well it portrays the lush wonder of the wilderness without being so detailed that the more simplistic character designs get lost in it. There’s a clear sense of identity to how this show used to look, and that identity is just lost when you replace that meticulously crafted background art with random wilderness photos. Maybe if the production hadn’t been so stretched thin, they could’ve made this aesthetic work better, but as is, it never comes together in a way that makes up for losing the old look.
But hey, just having eight full-length episodes doesn’t have to be a dealbreaker. YamaSusu’s first season was literally less than two full episodes long, and season three was the equivalent of six 24-minute episodes. This show’s done plenty of incredible things with less time on its hands. So there’s no reason Next Summit, for all its production woes, couldn’t have still knocked it out of the park. But there’s another problem, a problem far less forgivable than spending one-third of your runtime on recaps that can be easily skipped if you can’t be bothered. And that problem is simple:
Unlike seasons past, Next Summit isn’t a story.
See, Yama no Susume, for all its cute shenanigans, is an actual ongoing narrative at the end of the day, moreso than most shows of its genre. Sure, it meanders here and there, but at heart, it always remains focused on Aoi’s personal journey through the medium of mountain climbing, and how her relationship with herself, her friends, and the world around her changes as a result of her experiences. It infuses every inch of this show, from its episodic divergences to its lengthy, impactful arcs. Even back when the episodes were only twelve minutes long, you’d rarely go for more than a couple episodes back to back without some kind of meaningful moment for Aoi. It’s a slow-paced story to be sure, and it isn’t afraid to go on a few tangents, but it never forgets to return the focus to Aoi and the path she walks before long.
But in Next Summit? It feels like it’s made up of nothing but tangents. Even with the full-length episodes, every episode is still split into two parts, so you’re basically getting two normal-length YamaSusu episodes back to back that never amount to anything beyond their own boundaries. The girls go fishing with Aoi’s dad in one half episode, they meet Hinata’s mom in another, Kokona and Honoka have some heavy yuribaiting that ultimately goes nowhere in another, and Aoi has some bizarre fakeout yuribaiting with her co-worker from the sweets shop in yet another, completely unrelated twelve-minute chunk, and none of it ultimately connects to anything else. It’s all just a bunch of moments, strung together in an arbitrary order because there’s nothing for these moments to build to, no ongoing emotional journey the narrative seeks to take us on. Sure, plenty of these larks are entertaining in and of themselves, but they’re momentary delights in a show that used to excel at long-term investment. What happened to the Yama no Susume that spent like four long-term episode’s worth building up to, paying off, and cooling down from that first harrowing climb up Mt. Fuji? What happened to the show that let characters’ emotional states develop and linger over multiple episodes, even when those episodes didn’t necessarily connect with each other plotwise? It’s not until the very final stretch that this season decides to have an ongoing story again, and it feels like everything before then was just killing time until the show decided to actually be about things again.
Actually, hot take time: I think Next Summit should’ve been a movie, not a TV production. The more I think about it, the more I feel like so many of the issues holding this season back would’ve been fixed by jumping on the bandwagon and making it a movie like every show and its mother has been doing recently. For one thing, it would give the animators a more flexible schedule to really give it the production polish it deserves, rather than try to air it alongside an animation-heavy sports shonen like Blue Lock. For another, it would force them to cut out so much of the faffing about and keep the story focused on what it should’ve always been focused on: Aoi’s personal journey. Cut out the recap episodes, extend the emotional focus of those last couple episodes over 90 minutes, maybe pepper in some of the better one-off half-episodes and tie them in more closely with the main story, and you’d have a tight, focused package full to bursting of everything that made this show so amazing. Wouldn’t that be so much better? Wouldn’t that keep the spirit of Yama no Susume alive like it had never left? Shows like Yuru Camp and Takagi-san have shown how to make movie sequels to slice-of-life stories really fucking work; surely, a team as talented as the YamaSusu folks could’ve done the same if they thought of it. Maybe if they had, I could come out singing its praises as much as I so desperately want to.
Because my god, the actual finale of Next Summit is so good. It’s a payoff to arguably the biggest unresolved plotline in this show, a climax to its most emotionally resonant arc that brought the fireworks in a way nothing else in Next Summit even came close to. For one brief, shining moment, I saw the Yama no Susume I remembered again, the Yama no Susume that showcased the best of what CGDCT shows are capable of. And it made me cry not just from how good that ending itself was, but how sad it made me that it took until the very end to recapture the spirit that once flowed freely through this show like a boundless river. If the only reason this season was made is to deliver that climax, then it’s more than earned its right to exist. But I just know it could’ve been- and should’ve been- so much more.
And if this season was your introduction to Yama no Susume? Then all I can do is beg you to please, please, please track down and watch the first three seasons. Everything Next Summit does well, the rest of this show does ten times better. Every bit of emotion Next Summit makes you feel, the rest of this show will make it seem like child’s play. Season 4 is only the barest taste of the magic that makes Yama no Susume so special, and if you’ve felt any bit of that magic watching it, then you owe it to yourself to experience it in its true form, free and bursting and absolutely astounding on a regular basis. I promise you, this show will sweep you away like few other slice-of-life anime can. Season 4 was a good time, but it just doesn’t do justice to one of the finest works of cute girls fiction you’re liable to ever find. But hey, if it can at least convince more people to check out the rest of Yama no Susume, then maybe it’ll all be worth it in the end. Until then, though, I give Next Summit a score of:
6.5/10
And so begins the Fall 2022 anime wrap-up. Expect more reviews and a seasonal rundown in the coming weeks!
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The Foley Artiste
by Don Hall
HE WENT COMPLETELY BLIND IN BOTH EYES THE SECOND HE LOOKED INTO HERS. No one had an explanation for it. His friend drove him, panicked, to the Emergency Room the night of the reception. The doctor kept him overnight and, after a battery of tests, still had no reasonable diagnoses. No stroke. No physical problem with his eyes. They merely ceased functioning the moment she had looked up and over her drink at him.
It took him a few months to finally accept two things: he would never see again and that the last image in his mind was her face. She was sympathetic. Once a week, she'd swing by his place, pick him up, and take him on walks through the city, describing things he could remember but would never actually see again.
"What's that sound?" he asked as she guided him across the street.
"Busker. Saxophone."
"And that?"
"C'mon. At least try."
"OK. That's... kids playing soccer?"
"Right! Now another!"
"I hear... a pretty girl walking a blind guy around."
"Did you practice that line or just come up with it on the spot? And how would you know I'm pretty?"
"Last thing I saw was your face. You'll always be that beautiful to me."
She took a hard look at him. He wasn't bad looking. He wasn't abusive—she'd asked around about him before deciding to take him on walks around the city—and she had been involved in a string of abusive men. The last lover she had escaped from she found to be amazing in bed but such a drag on her, such an antagonistic self esteemed-deprived representative of so many men she found herself attracted to, that she couldn't trust her judgment anymore. The equation began to form in her mind that posited the more physically enamored she was of a man, the more likely he would be a bit of a monster.
This last guy was still in her life. She was done with him—when he trashed her bike out of jealousy she decided that the balance between his horse cock and having him continue to fight to control her had tipped. She was looking for someone else to replace him as she had when she hooked up with this asshole.
The one before was a photographer of pornography and the allure of that lifestyle fed her almost addictive need for sexual conquest and feelings of value based almost entirely on her physical beauty. The problem became that she was only an object of sex to him and then he got bored and stopped acquiescing to her feminine power over him. So she found a guy twelve years older than her in a Borders Bookstore, a man so wounded that he was thrilled that a porn model would deem him worth her time, and jumped into a sexual circus with him. Only until she felt comfortable with the new guy did she dump the photographer—covering her bets.
She knew how fucked up her life seemed. Sometimes she even felt an unrelenting stream of nihilism that left her wondering what difference anything she did meant. These men, so used to dominating women in their lives, deserved to be used up and discarded. They were just old, horny assholes, desperate for a sign that they were relevant in a world that treated everyone as anything but essential.
So, she took a long look at her blind friend. He didn't view her as a sexual object but as a person. He couldn't focus on her physical features because, unlike most men, he couldn't see that part of her. Funny that, despite his instantaneous blindness, he didn't seem needy. He had kept his job and figured out how to adapt to his injury so quickly, people in his life almost forgot he was sightless. One friend told her it felt like he had always been blind, that this affliction had hit him long ago, such was his almost remarkable optimism and sense of purpose.
All of these thoughts happened in an instant. In the next instant, she decided. She would go along with her blind paramour's approach. She needed an escape and he was offering her that very thing.
"You're amazing, you know." she responded.
"You think so?"
"I do."
✶
THE FIRST TIME THEY HAD SEX, SHE WEPT LIKE AN ITALIAN WIDOW. He immediately went into the mode of comforting her. He said nothing. He held her and let her cry. He had no idea what had happened. He didn't think he'd been too aggressive as that wasn't his style nor desire. He had dated a woman once who, after a month or so, asked him to choke her during sex. He stopped seeing her because he simply couldn't deliver the kind of kink she desired.
After her sobs wound down he ventured to clear things up.
"Are you alright?"
"Yes."
"Did I do something wrong?"
"No."
He waited, If she wanted him to know what was so troubling, she'd tell him without his prompting.
A few minutes passed and she decided to lie to him.
"It's just that so many of my hook ups have been one night stands. So many of my relationships start this way and they never work out. I don't want that for you and I."
The truth she kept from him was that the sex wasn't right. She didn't feel that spark, that ineffable natural animal gratification. She was struggling with how important that was to her, whether or not she could compromise this lack of electricity with the gentle and kind nature of this man. She'd always settled in the other direction which provided great sex with an unsafe and antagonistic coupling.
This man, lying next to her, would never try to smother her with a pillow or ask her to dress up like 'Hello Kitty' to satisfy some twisted fantasy. This man would not hurt her, demean her, or make her feel less. This man would also never scratch that itch of her overactive libido.
So, she lied.
She was right about this man. Instead of a typical male reaction, a petulant demand for satisfaction, he got up, put a blanket around her, put on his boxer shorts, got her a glass of water, and sat with her. He said nothing. He simply was present and comforting.
After what seemed liked an hour but was probably ten minutes, he asked "What is that sound?"
"That's the music from the bar around the corner. I'm sorry for the way I am."
"Never apologize for who you are. I love you exactly as you are. Wouldn't change a single thing."
She smiled.
✶
THEY WERE MARRIED WITHIN FOUR MONTHS.
She discovered quickly that his blindness, while a disability and an increased amount of caretaking for her, also gave her a certain amount of permission to be exactly who she was without judgment.
He was self sufficient (he navigated blindness better than most sighted people lived and was even then twice as productive) so she had freedom she hadn't experienced in a relationship before. He wasn't jealous or controlling. He was a bit like a dog—always thrilled when she was present, rarely complaining, wagging his tail for any little kindness she provided.
He was, for her, the perfect husband. Loving, supportive, unquestioning. "Do you trust me?" she'd ask once a week.
"Of course I do. Why wouldn't I? Should I not?"
"I don't know. Maybe you shouldn't. I'm not a stable person. I love chaos and I kind of like creating it just to see what happens. I don't know if I'm entirely worthy of trust."
"Stop being so hard on yourself. Trust is given, not earned. I give you my trust without question. Besides, if you decide to lie to me there isn't anything I can do to change or influence that choice. I mean, I'm freaking blind!" And he laughed.
Yet she was still unfulfilled. She wanted to be lusted after, to be prey to the kind of men who fetishized her. She understood that kind of power over men. Her husband was not susceptible to that sort of control and, she imagined he might not be even if his eyes functioned.
"What are your plans for tonight?"
She lied again. "I'm just going to the bar around the corner to grab a drink and read a book."
She did go to the bar, she did order a drink, she did bring a book of erotic poetry but that's not what she was doing. She was there to feel the eyes of the hungry men in the bar. To have them clumsily try to pick her up. To flirt with them, offering the potential for a quick blowjob in their car, only to snatch it away. It gave her an ounce of that power she craved.
She discovered that her wedding band was like bait. Not a deterrent for the drinks bought for her, the hand resting on her knee hoping to creep up, but an accelerant. Turned out that presenting as unavailable to these weekend warriors was almost too tempting to ignore. Unlike her husband, these men liked the challenge of the chase, of the pursuit. To prove themselves. To later boast about the conquest.
She never slept with these men. She would string them along, high on the desire, then go back to the apartment and masturbate to the sensations she'd experienced. It wasn't the same but it managed to quell her need for the kind of aggressive sex she almost desperately wanted and was used to in her past unions.
The couple still had sex but her husband increasingly seemed unhappy about. She was as well.
"It feels like you're just looking to get laid. It doesn't feel like there's any love in it. I don't know what's wrong."
"Sometimes I just want the D! Sometimes I am just looking to get laid. You always want intimacy. Sometimes I just want someone to fuck me!"
To get him to understand, she would become more and more insistent that he treat her like an object. She became more openly sexual and challenged him. "C'mon, Vanilla! Be a man! Get it up and bone me!"
This tactic backfired as he was simply not wired to respond to that sort of admonition. He simply retreated, bought her vibrators and dildos, and avoided the subject. She had become so volatile about sex and so demeaning to him, he wondered what was wrong with him because, so often, she indicated this was his fault.
"Hey. What is that sound?"
"That's the sound of my pussy screaming! That's the sound of your limp dick crawling back into your body! That's the sound of my horniness crying out into the wilderness, hoping for some cock!"
✶
THE STALEMATE LASTED UNTIL THEY DECIDED TO LEAVE THE CITY AND MOVE SOMEPLACE ELSE. Most of the time, her sojourns to local dive bars with her books and teasing was enough. She had, however, exhausted all the dive bars and all the men. The men knew she was a tease and stopped lusting after her. Sometimes, despite being dressed like a fuck doll, she was almost wholly ignored.
She suggested they move after a night he found romantic and she found boring. The marriage of a Bull Durham romantic and a 50 Shades of Gray romantic was starting to wear on her. She was unhappy but lied when asked because it was just too much work to explain it to him. He subsequently believed things in their marriage were fine, even healthy.
As she organized the move, the opportunities of living with a blind husband started to tickle her mind. They could live anywhere. He wouldn't know the difference between living in Atlanta or London. She merely had to figure out how to mollify any potential curiosity on his part to open up her possibilities.
She had seen in a play once a scene where a blind woman was attended to by a foley artist. A foley artist was the person who, in the days of the Golden Age of Radio, provided the sound effects on-air to create the illusions of everything from crowds to street sounds. As she thought about the play, it occurred to her that she might be able to pull it off.
✶
HE SAT IN A CHAIR THAT WAS SO COMFORTABLE, HE RARELY MOVED FROM IT. His braille computer was off to his right. A table for food was on his left. She attended to his every need so all he had to do was work remotely, bring in the cash necessary to pay for everything, and relax.
He heard what he thought might be the sound of a street car.
"Honey? Is that the sound of a street car?"
She was in the corner, shuffling two pieces of metal together in a rhythmic motion. "Yes, dear." She faded the sound. "Would you like me to open the window a bit so you can feel the sun?"
"Yes. Please and thank you!"
She walked over to the sun lamp next to the wall and flipped it on.
"Oh. Yeah. That's nice." He felt the light on his face and hands. It was warm and felt good.
"You alright for now? I was thinking about going out to the park to read."
"No sweat. I'm great." And he was. Since moving to Edinburgh, he spent most of his time indoors but he didn't mind. It was rainy and wet most of the time. Once in a while, he could hear bagpipes coming from outside.
She kissed him on the mouth briefly and walked out of the room. As she started out, she took a quick look at herself in the mirror. She wearing a tight pink mini-dress that barely covered her ass. No bra so her nipples were obvious. Her make-up was on point, hair was looking good if not a bit longer than she liked. She was fucking hot.
She left the apartment and down the stairs. Once outside, she looked out into the Nevada horizon. She was still amazed at the fact that she had convinced him they were living in Scotland. Las Vegas was far more to her tastes and the parade of men, brimming with lust and money, was ever-changing. It's a tourist town, after all, and men came here to gamble, drink, and fuck.
She didn't even know (or care) if Scotland had street cars. She had purchased books on radio sound effects and could manufacture the sounds of almost anything he might want to believe. She even found a few CDs of bagpipes that she'd play on low volume from the other room for him.
It helped that he was blind and trusting. She had found herself filled with a mild disgust of him as of late. He was just so stupidly in love with her that he couldn't see that she had abandoned her previous restraint. Teasing men simply gave her less and less pleasure. Here, in the desert city, she could sleep with many men, most she'd never see again. They were all in town for the weekend and home to Iowa the following Tuesday.
She didn't really know what happiness might be but, for now, things were working. He was happily oblivious and felt taken care of—she'd even give him a handjob once in a while to make sure he felt desired. She was, perhaps not happy because living three lives was a lot of work, lest restless. She was a wife. She was an expert foley artist. And she was a single woman living a sexually liberated life in a city that did not judge her for it.
She had her cake. She was eating it, too, because why have cake if you can't enjoy it?
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Listen, if Toph had went off on her own for a while in Ba Sing Se there is no way she wouldn't vibe with Zuko.
"Welcome to Pao's Family tea shop, I'm Li, waddaya want?"
"Chaos."
"Understandable. Sadly, that's not on the menu. Would you settle for a cup of Jasmine tea?"
"Sure."
#Atla#Toph#Zuko#There is 100% a follow up post to this involving Jet coming#And you should have expected this#As I am a Jet stan#This is my nature#I shall hold back for now though#Toph would vibe with both of them tbh#Then she’d recognize Iroh and be like#Hey you found the angry boy! Good for you!#She’d refer to Zuko as Boy Son and Bucko#When Zuko would remind her that she is in fact younger than him#She would pull out the logic of#I’m blind! How many Twelve year olds do you know are blind?#...none.#And how many old people do you know are blind?#...lots.#Then it’s settled! Now treat your elders with respect Bucko
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Prodigious
I find it odd how the fandom focuses so much on Aang’s childhood being ruined when he learned he was the Avatar at 12, but there’s very little talk about how discovering she was the Avatar as a toddler affected Korra’s life and how she was raised.
But we’ll circle back to that...
Because this is a good starting point to talk about one of the most prevalent themes in the story, which the mainstream discussion of tends to only focus on a few characters -- That is the Child Prodigy.
We’ll start with the two most obvious. The ones we always talk about.
Azula.
The clearest example of your typical child prodigy (if there is anything typical about a prodigy). Azula showed early mastery of very advanced Fire-Bending techniques, and is the only Fire-Bender to use blue flames, which was intended to make her stand out amongst the other villains but is also indicative that her Fire-Bending is more pure and powerful (blue flame is produced when burning pure O2 or fuel without contaminant at a very high temperature).
All this lead to her being praised and favored by Ozai as a child, but as double-edged swords go, this also meant she had a lot of pressure on her shoulders to never fail, and she rarely did. Her ego matched her talent, and let’s be honest she was the baddest bitch the show had ever seen. Conquering Ba Sing Se, defeating the Avatar in combat, and dropping some of the most devastating lines of dialogue in villain history; she was a force nobody wanted to reckon with.
And that become a problem for one asshole in particular...
Being jealous of his own child is just one item on a laundry list of reasons why this guy is the worst father in the history of fathers. Azula had begun to outshine him with her victories, and Ozai’s maniacal ego couldn’t handle that, so he left her behind to babysit the Fire Nation while he went out to burn/conquer the world, which also was her idea.
And while this wasn’t the only thing that aided in her demise, it certainly was the final straw which sent her spiraling down into this...
In the end Azula is a sad example of how certain unfair expectations are placed upon talented children, and the more they succeed, the more these expectations grow and weigh on the them until they either disappoint those looking down on them or surpass and embarrass their elders.
It is a lose-lose situation which inevitably destroys them.
There is a similar example of the child prodigy, but his story goes a little different.
Aang.
Even as a twelve/thirteen year-old boy Aang by far has the most impressive stats among any character in the Avatar universe.
Basically mastering 3 of the 4 Elements in less than a year, after mastering Air by the time he is twelve (not to mention inventing his own Air-bending move, the Air scooter).
Aang is an example of a child prodigy who had too much thrust onto him at too young an age because of the talent he showed; because of this he panicked and ran away, and the world was worse off for it.
Aang/Sokka/Katara’s story is all about how in times of War, responsibilities normally handled by adults are pushed onto kids who then have to grow up very fast in order to deal with it all.
The message is clear. War robs the young of their childhoods.
Now, let’s talk about a different kind of child prodigy.
The Unacknowledged.
Yes, of course I’m talking about Toph, the greatest Earth-Bender to ever live.
Because of her blindness, Toph’s family tried to keep her sheltered and safe by hiding her from the world. Refusing to believe she could ever be more than helpless. Anyone who has seen the show knows that is far from the truth.
But because her potential went unseen, there were some negative effects to her personality. Initially, she resented her parents, and rebelled; which established a certain level of independence, a bad attitude, and a hot-headed streak. Over time spent with the Gaang these behaviors subsided because she finally had friends and they accepted her for who she was. By the end of the series she was fully willing to accept aid from them when she needed it, like holding on to Sokka’s arm in environment where her bending couldn’t help her “see”.
Toph’s story is a foil to Azula’s, both showed immense talent and badassery, but while recognition of Azula lead to ever-mounting pressure for her to succeed; the lack of recognition for Toph created a need for her to be acknowledged and set an undercurrent of frustration which leads to her acting out in the ways she does.
The lesson to take from Toph’s story is not to shelter your kid from the world out of fear for their safety, and to be open to recognizing their talents, not shun them.
Next are two more Unacknowledged.
Katara and Sokka.
Their story, and the reason behind their circumstances, is one of the more complicated and nuanced ones in the series, so here we’ll focus on how it fits into the subject of discussion.
Because of the War, Katara was robbed not only of her mother but also of any Southern Masters to train her, and any role models Sokka could have looked up to left with his father to fight. Because of this Katara’s potential and Sokka’s genius went unacknowledged not due to neglect but rather due to circumstance. (Yes, I think Sokka is a genius, how many 15 yr olds do you know that can plan an invasion, design submarines, and spit poetry off the cuff?).
This is a further example of how War robs kids of necessary childhood experiences, and these two robberies had particular effects on both Katara and Sokka’s character developments.
Sokka had the responsibility of protecting his home put upon him at a young age. The men of his tribe leaving prevented him from completing his rite of manhood until the Gaang ran into Bato of the Water Tribe, and early on Sokka was constantly trying to prove himself as a man and a leader. Sokka is one of the smarter characters of the series, but he rarely got credit for it until the third season. Not to mention that because he wasn’t a bender he often seemed less useful than the others. The circumstances of war made his talent go unnoticed and because of that he often was unsure of himself and overcompensated to prove something.
Speaking of talent going unnoticed.
Katara is definitely one of the more talented benders of the series. After training herself for years with little progress, she essentially mastered Water-Bending in a few weeks under Master Pakku. While her anger towards the Fire-Nation mostly centers around the loss of her mother, it can’t be ignored that the delay in her training was a direct result of the Fire-Nations’ actions. Toph’s anger and frustration vented itself as rebellion. However, the same frustration and anger is within Katara, but because she wasn’t as natural a bender as Toph she sought to learn and be respected, and when that was denied to her is when that anger bubbled to the surface in some terrifying ways.
While Toph’s talent went unnoticed because of her families neglect, Katara and Sokka’s wasn’t acknowledged because there was nobody to acknowledge it. Because of that both brother and sister wanted to prove themselves to the world.
And then there is Zuko.
I know what you’re thinking. Zuko wasn’t a prodigy, his Fire-Bending skill didn’t catch up with Azula’s until the finale and he never mastered Lightning-Bending, but this section is about the Unacknowledged.
Zuko had many other talents besides Fire-Bending, he was a master swordsmen, and was able to successfully break into every secure facility he attempted in the show (which was almost every secure facility the show featured). Unfortunately, these talents were never recognized, because the only thing the royal family cared about was bending ability (It’s possible the reason he learned the sword was because he lacked skill in Fire-Bending).
As per usual with Zuko, this part of his tale is quite sad. Many can relate to being outshined by a sibling, and when it becomes all too clear that one cannot match another’s talent it’s quite understandable to focus on what they do excel at, but even then there is no promise of recognition for their own talent. Zuko was even mocked by his father during the solar eclipse when Ozai tried baiting him into attacking with his swords.
This lack of recognition is one of many sad aspects of Zuko’s early life, but it is a definitive example of one of the hardest unacknowledged prodigy’s cross to bear. The Outshone prodigy, one whose talents are never noticed because a bigger and brighter star stands in the way of such recognition, and arguably the most frustrating type mentioned here. Toph/Sokka/Katara all came from situations were there was no recognition being given to them or anyone, but Zuko had to bear watching massive amounts of praise be piled on to his sister while he and his accomplishments went by the way side.
Ozai summed up the situation best.
“Azula was born lucky, Zuko was lucky to be born”
Alright now where have I been going with all this?
So, far we’ve covered a lot of wrong ways to treat a child, whether they show talent or not, and how the circumstances of war can also take many things from children.
But what happened to Korra?
(Before we get into to this I should state that I like Korra, and the purpose of this is not to bash her as a character or her arc, but rather to give a little of my insight into it.)
It’s well established that Aang was told of his heritage too young, and that was a detriment on his development into an adult, but what would have happened if he realized his powers himself not long after he could walk? We’ll never know, but we do get to see the effects it had on Korra.
When she revealed herself as the Avatar, Korra set her entire life in a new direction, and because Aang tasked the White Lotus with finding and training her that direction was out of her control. There are two key differences between Korras’ and other Avatars’ lives.
1. She grew up in isolation on a White Lotus compound.
Every Avatar before Korra we know of spent a portion of their early lives traveling the world in order to master the elements; along this journey they not only learned how to bend the other 3 elements, buy also many things about the 3 other nations and the world they are tasked to protect as a whole. By confining Korra in safety and bringing the masters to her the White Lotus deprived Korra of this opportunity to learn and grow and understand the world and the people within in. It also deprived her of learning modern bending styles until she reached Republic City.
While this might have kept Korra safe from the Red Lotus, it grew within her a naiveté about how the world worked, and because of this when she actually did venture out into the world she was terribly unprepared for it.
2. She was trained and mastered 3 of the elements by the time she was 16.
Most Avatars don’t know they have this power until they reach 16 and then they spend several years learning to control it. Korra’s natural talent in the bending lead to her training being expedited not by necessity like Aang’s, but due to her talent and eagerness. Korra excelled at the physical part of being the Avatar and because of this by the time she reached maturity she had become over-confident in her abilities and true to what her Fire-Bending master said in Ep.1 she lacked restraint.
I’m not saying her bending isn’t great, but rather because it is so great it’s her go-to solution to anything, and she enjoys that so she uses it with enthusiastic gusto and not a lot of thinking before striking.
This overconfidence coupled with her naiveté of the world is what lead to many of her rash decisions and actions, most of which had negative consequences, and I believe are the reason behind some fan are dissatisfied with her. Aang had been almost the complete opposite, even by the age of twelve he was an experienced world traveler and an incredibly humble guy.
Some may have been dissatisfied by these character decisions, but they served a purpose, they are only the beginning of her arc. The internal challenge Korra must overcome through 4 seasons is to humble herself before the world, and learn from it. This was finally achieved in the 4th season when the metal poisoning in her body forces her to face others in the world as equals, only then had she completed her journey.
And why did it all go this way?
Because she is a very unique child prodigy, what she demonstrates in the first episode of LOK would be akin to a toddler playing the violin or hitting a three-pointer; she could bend 3 elements close to just after learning to walk. That is the kind of prodigious talent rarely seen because it is mostly impossible. How does a rational person handle a child like that?
It’s a tough question, and something this essay has been circling around the whole time. Each example here is the wrong way to handle talented and different children, but what is the right way?
As always look to Iroh.
Who treated his surrogate son Zuko with both respect and compassion.
Unlike Toph’s parents, Iroh worried over Zuko’s well being, but also allowed him to be independent, make his own decisions, and take his own risks.
Unlike the Nomad Leaders, he didn’t want Zuko weighed down by his position in the world and the responsibility that came with, and always encouraged him relax and take advantage of the moment.
Unlike Ozai, Iroh would always be there to support Zuko in his victories and his failures. Iroh shows him the right path but does not force him down it.
And even after Zuko betrayed and abandoned him.
Iroh was never angry with him, and embraced him upon his return.
He wanted Zuko to grow and be a better man. Even if Zuko wasn’t a prodigy like his sister.
And that is the answer here. The way to raise a prodigy is the same way anyone should raise any child. Love, Support, a Guiding Hand rather than a Forceful Shove, Recognition of What Makes Them Unique, and Forgiveness When They Falter. The problem comes along when you start treating children differently because you see them as different or special. All children are different, all children are special.
Kids are kids, and they all deserve a proper childhood.
#lok#legend of korra#atla#Avatar The Last Airbender#korra#avatar korra#avatar aang#aang#toph#atla toph#katara#sokka#azula#the gaang#zuko#firelord zuko#poor zuko#atlazuko#fire lord ozai#phoenix king ozai#ozai#blue spirit#prodigy#white lotus#red lotus#waterbending#firebending#earthbending#airbending#appa
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Asleep in Your Arms - Techno x Reader
Characters: c!Techno x gn!Reader
Summary: While a blizzard outside rages, you find comfort in Techno’s arms. He tells you a story to help relax you, and you end up asleep in his arms. Not having the heart to wake you so he could go to his Syndicate meeting, he sleeps with you.
Warnings: None!
~Ask~
Could you maybe write a small thing about short reader (like 5’) feeling safe in Techno’s arms and maybe falling asleep on his lap before a syndicate meeting and not having the heart to wake you up so he lets you cuddle him during the meeting??
~Ask~
Note: Aww I’m 5’ 5” and this really speaks to me… When I get stressed, I just feel the need to melt into someone’s arms (preferably Techno’s) and sleep. Also I hate being woken up so i would appreciate him being so careful lmao. I couldn’t figure out a way to make the meeting happen so I hope this will do! Also, the story that he tells isn’t mine, I just heard it a lot when I was a kid, so I decided to write that one instead of straight up copy and pasting something else—
—- Enjoy! —-
To Techno, this was just another bad storm, but to you, it was one of the scariest parts of living with him. The only thing that could make the blizzard go away was his warmth. Even though this was your second storm by now, you still weren't used to the sounds. Snow was supposed to be soft and fluffy, but buzzards were far from that and far from anything you'd experienced before.
“When is this going to be over?”
Techno continued to look out the window at the blinding white storm. “I think it’s going to be a while. I don’t think it’s going to let up anytime soon.”
You sighed and put your hands to your face. You prided yourself on being a well composed person, but when it came to storms, something deep in your animal brain wanted to make you hide forever. Your instincts weren’t well-founded when it came to the blizzards, but Techno comforted you nonetheless.
He closed the curtain and walked over to where you were sitting, kneeling to your level and taking your hands off of your face to look you in the eye.
“Baby, it’s going to be okay,” He cooed, “It’s just a storm, it can’t hurt you in here.”
“I know…” He stood and sat next to you on the plush couch, the cushions sinking in as he did so. He put his arm around your shoulders and invited you to lean into him.
“C’mere,” He said, motioning for you to move closer, “Sit with me.”
You complied, just as the storm picked up once again. You scooted over into his lap, leaning your head on his chest. Compared to the 6’5” giant, you were an infant. He was nearly one and a half feet taller than you, and even though you were used to people being taller than you, it always felt different with him. With some people, it was intimidating, sometimes patronizing. With Techno, you always felt at home, like he was the iron giant looking after you. He wrapped his arms around you and rested his chin on your head.
“Do you want me to tell you a story?” He asked. It was always comforting when he did that.
“Yeah…” You mumbled, shutting your eyes.
“Alright,” He cleared his throat and began:
“There once was a wealthy farmer who had three sons; Henry, Oliver, and Prince were their names. By the time he was seventy, he was on his deathbed, and he had to decide which son to give the farm to. When his sons asked who he wanted to receive it, he replied: ‘Whoever passes my test will be the one to own the farm when I die.’ The boys leaned in closer in anticipation for the challenge, ‘I will give you each twenty-five cents. I want you all to use that money to fill a room in the house completely. Buy whatever you need at the market, but do not go over budget.’
The boys understood the assignment, but were confused as to why he wanted them to do that instead of more conventional means. He could have just chosen one of them at random, one proposed, but the old man smiled and said, ‘I have my reasons, now go.’
And so they did. At the market, Henry bought the cheapest, biggest things he could find. He bought thin boxes, thinking he could fill the room with them, since they were so bulky. With the twenty-some boxes he bought, he could only fill half the room, and so he lost the farm.
Oliver was next, and initially, he thought he would be able to hire people to crowd into the house and maybe bring some friends, but no one was interested in what little money he could offer them. He came up with another plan, his father wouldn’t know if he bought above his budget, and so he bought the boxes off of Henry, and then some more. Henry charged him his full twenty-five cents, knowing Oliver was bound to lose with those boxes. Instead, when Henry went into the room they were supposed to fill, he saw a few extra wheels of cheese which blocked the entrance, meaning the room had been filled. Seeing this, he notified his father. Oliver had cheated, and so he would not get the property.
Lastly, Prince skipped into town. He was the youngest out of all of his siblings, only twelve years old at the time. He saw what his other brothers did and took note. He figured there’d be no way to fill the room with any physical objects, and so he came up with a different idea. He bought a candle and a match, with two cents to spare. When he got home and lit the candle, the room filled with light, and he explained it to his brothers.
They refused to think that their father would consider the room filled, but Prince insisted he’d stayed within the rules, and lo and behold, the father was ecstatic.
‘My dear Prince, the farm is yours! Unlike your brother Henry, you were able to fill the room. I never specified what to fill it with, and Henry just assumed that he would have to fill it with physical objects, which is not the case. You also outsmarted your brother Oliver, who had no sense of the rules and threw his chances away by cheating. You were the only one to stick to the rules and accomplish the task, I’m proud of you.’”
Techno finished the story he’d told you many times, knowing it was your favorite. You’d talked about it before, referring to it as a ‘lateral thinking puzzle’ or something along those lines. Techno had bought a whole book of them for times like these, when you were stressed. He’d go over them with you and he especially had fun poking holes in them, finding other ways to get to the desired end.
He was about to say one of his usual quips about the story when he noticed you let out a light snore. You were asleep in his lap, his arms around you, protecting you from the storm outside. He smiled, I am not gonna make it to the meeting today, am I? He thought to himself. The voices answered half-heartedly, still discussing how long they thought you’d been asleep for. He didn’t have the heart to wake you, and so he sat there with you until eventually he fell asleep, too.
#elias original#c!techno x reader#c!technoblade x reader#technoblade x reader#techno x reader#Eli sleep#dsmp#dreamsmp#dsmp x reader#mcyt x reader#mcyt#Technoblade#i have a new computer so shit might be off lmao sorry
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Unbelievable - Choi San
He was always rude to you, embarrassing you in front of everyone. So why is he mad that someone better made you an offer?
Warning - Profanity, mention of caffeine, San is mean as fuck, Yandere towards the end, He makes a threat.
Word Count - 3,362 idk if they will be a part 2!
BTS , NCT , ATEEZ — request open.
__________________________________________
Good god, your blood was boiling the moment you saw his door crack open. You could feel your fingernails digging into your palms as you tried to remain calm. The last thing you needed to do was lose your temper and give this man another opportunity to ridicule in front of your co-workers. But judging by that horrendous look on his face you already have a gut feeling that all taht hard work to keep your anger in check is going to fly right through the window. Taking the deepest breath you could take and plastering on that fake smile, you gladly greeted the man that makes your life a living hell.
“These numbers are definitely not to my liking and I refused to be the laughing stock at the board meeting tomorrow.” He huffed heavily as he practically threw the binder down onto your desk. The heavy plastic slamming against the steel desk with a loud thud that echoed through the big hallway. The wind from the fall making papers that previously occupied your desk go flying in every single direction. You could feel your anger bubble up in your chest at the mere disrespect that this man was giving you, and it was driving you insane.
“With all do respect sir, it’s already twelve thirty, and I highly doubt I’ll be able to go over all of these documents by seven thirty in the morning.” You resisted their urge to grit your teeth as you wanted to appear somehow considerate of his complications. Truth be told you didn’t want to do another all nighter when you barely pulled through from the other night. “Besides, I looked over the revenue and margin growths three times before I sent them to your office.”
He scoffed loudly as he licked one of his fingers and then continued to rummage through the papers that were bonded together. His long finger skimmed over the lines multiple times and he flipped each page within a minute. Those piercing eyes stayed locked in on every single number that crossed the page. “Ah, right here it states that we made a profit revenue of fifty million last year, but then it states that this year we’ve only grossed sixty five million. And that’s definitely less than the fifty percent revenue growth that we expected.”
“So, sixty five is not as bad as you’re making it out to be, besides multiple people double checked.” You spoke tiredly as you started packing up your briefcase. Different papers getting stacked together and even crumpled because of the rapid pace that you were going. No matter what happens tonight you were leaving before the clock strikes one in the morning. As you were packing up your eyes met his furious ones and it felt like your world was crumbling down. “Mr. Choi, I’m being honest, your accounting department checked all of these numbers multiple times and I looked over them as much as I could.”
“I know for a fact that we had a fifty percent increase in revenue, now look over these damn numbers again. Or you’ll be kissing this cushy office job goodbye in the morning.” He harshly slammed the binder closed and stalked over to his office door. The audacity of that stupid man, how dare he even threaten you with this job. But as much as you wanted to spit in his face and tell him to shove it you really needed this job, this really well paying job.
You poked your cheek with your tongue out of agitation and roughly grabbed your purse. The bottle of caffeine pills made a clicking sound as you unscrewed the cap within a second. Without a drink of water you downed the pill and grabbed the ugly binder. This was going to be a long night, and these numbers were not going to supposedly fix themselves.
Your fingers tapped the keys on the keyboard rapidly as you searched each collaboration revenue. All of these numbers were lining up, no matter what you searched. Out of the six collaborations Choi enterprise only grossed sixty five million, but for some reason he just won’t listen. All you wanted to do at this point was slump forward and go to sleep, but with that anger that Mr.Choi has you’re scared he might kill you in your sleep. But as the long hours went on and on, you could feel yourself slipping. Your eyelids felt like a ton, and your head was suddenly too heavy for your neck to hold. Before you knew you were out like a light.
—
You’d shoot the person who was jabbing their finger into side if you could. Their bony finger feeling a knife stabbing your rib cage with immense pressure. “Please wake up, y/n, if he notices you’re asleep, who knows what he’ll do!” The jabbing didn’t cease one bit, in fact they just jabbed even harder.
“Okay! I’m up!” You groggily scoffed as your vision was trying to focus on the object in front of you. The figure was simply a mush of different colors all moving in different directions. The harsh lights in the office are in no way making the situation any better. You could make out their hand moving from left to right to try and grab your attention. “Hongjoong?”
“What are you, blind? Of course it’s me, but please I’m begging you get up and go freshen up in the bathroom.” He sighed sadly as he helped your wobbly stance straighten up. His soft hands wrapping around your waist and pulling you close. The soft scent of his cologne filling your nose as you clung to him. “Do you still carry extra clothes in your car?”
“Thankfully yes, but what time is it?” You question as you rubbed your eyes, trying to make all the colors of the world blend back together to form one coherent thing. “Oh god, is it past seven thirty, oh shit! He’s gonna kill me!”
“Calm down, it's only six thirty, but he always gets here at seven. So please go wipe that old makeup off and I’ll get your other clothes.” Hongjoong smiled slightly at you before his eyes shifted towards the oh so famous brown binder. “Did that dick make you go over more numbers the whole night?”
“God yes and it was terrible, but I looked over all six collaborations and I kid you not it all equals sixty five.” You could hear a pin drop on the silence that coated the room. It was beginning to feel suffocating and you physically felt your chest growing heavy with dread. “There were only six right, because that’s all the forms I received.”
“Maybe i'm just thinking of something else, because maybe just maybe -“
“Stop wasting time! Is there more than six?” You panicked as you shoved him away and pulled the rolling chair back to your side. Before your fingers could even reach the keys, Hongjoong’s were there in a second. They tapped rapidly and skimmed through all your emails at a neck breaking pace. “Oh my god I never refreshed the email.”
“We don’t have time to sit here and panic, we have three pages of numbers to go through.” Hongjoong tried to make the situation less tense by offering a helping hand, but he knew that if these numbers weren’t corrected all hell would break loose. And no one wanted to see what Choi San was like when he more than ticked off. He’d probably be past the point of furious if ever saw these unfinished numbers.
—
San’s eyes were narrowed as he eyed the unfamiliar man at your desk. Where the hell were you? He didn’t pay a shit ton of money for you to be everywhere and not in that chair looking pretty. But at this moment he couldn’t control himself as the words flew from his mouth. “What the hell is this?”
That look, that gorgeous look of fear that made his blood rush and his heart pound. Was etched across the unknown man's face and he was basking in the glory of it. San cocked his eyebrow slightly as he leaned forwards on his palms. “Did I suddenly grow two heads or some shit, no? Then answer my question, what the hell is this.”
“I’m so sorry Mr.Choi, but I didn’t notice that there were seven collaborations. I only had six in my email. And Mr.Kim was only helping me scrunch the numbers.”
“You mean to tell me that these numbers aren’t finished! And this meeting is in less than an hour?” His demeanor was calm but the sheer venom in his voice was enough to bring you to your knees. He poked his cheek with his tongue and gave a mean smile in your direction. “I mean it, l/n you’re on thin ice. But if those numbers aren’t corrected then you’re fired.”
“Yes sir.” You gulped as you watched him take heavy steps towards his office. You were in deep shit now. San rubbed his chin as he tried to remain calm and not fire you on the spot. Out of all the times you could have missed up, you decided now was the perfect time. Messing up these numbers would make other investors think that this company cannot handle the responsibility of simply matching numbers. This mistake could completely tank the company and put everyone here out of a job.
Fifty five minutes have passed and investors from other companies are already showing up at the doors. And here he was sitting at the head of the table empty handed, and it was all your fault. It was your fault for not refreshing that damn email, for not paying closer attention to the numbers, for simply not giving it your all. And now it’s going to be your fault that the entire company crumbles and falls straight into the depths below.
“So San, when is this meeting going to officially begin?” Questioned one of the many associates as he leaned back against the velvet chair. A smile bright on his face as if he didn’t care to wait a moment or two for it to begin. But, on the other hand, the leader of the meeting was so furious he could start foaming at the mouth. Because guess what crucial piece of information still wasn’t on his desk.
“We will begin momentarily if my secretary would get her head out of her ass and bring them those god damn numbers.” San spoke with a soft smile on his face. The look he gave the men was a completely different tone from the words he just spoke. Those words help fury and degradation but his smile was so bright it could light up a room or cause someone’s heart to flutter out of their chest. But at this moment all of those men knew at this moment San was anything, but happy.
The sound of the doorknob being yanked on caught everyone’s attention. Their heads jolted towards the cause of the noise as they watched you fiddled with the dozens of papers in her hand. Your smile was uneasy as you tried to reorganize them on your way towards the head of the table. They watched your clammy hands shake with fear as San ripped the paper from your hands. Judging by the way you quickly held your pointed and middle finger they could only guess what happened.
“Why the hell are you still standing here? Do I need to draw you a picture and make it clear that you’re done here?” San scolded as he shoved you a bit and forced you to walk to the door. Fumbling over your own two feet and almost hitting the floor head on at one point. But he didn’t care, because all he wanted to do right now was get this meeting over with. With a final shove and a quick slam of the glass door, he swiftly turned back around to be met with very difficult to decipher expressions.
“Well now that all distractions are gone, let’s get down to business.”
—
Your face was flushed and you could feel your hands start to shake. From the mere interaction with the stupid CEO. The vivid picture of his icy eyes and cold stare were burned into your brain, as his words pounded in your skull without mercy. The man practically belittled you, in a room full of successful CEOs who now probably think you’re a joke.
“Hey, don't worry yourself sick. It was an honest mistake.” Hongjoong consoled you as he eyed your shaken form. The tearful eyes and the constant bouncing of your leg was a dead giveaway of the way you felt at this moment. And he wanted nothing more than to just say everything will be okay, that everything is going to be just fine. But he can’t, because who knows what the jerk will do you do considering your almost costed him a deal.
“Do you think he’ll fire me?” The question hung in the air with such heaviness that it was almost hard to breathe. The thought of losing this job was sending you into a whirlwind of erratic emotions. If this job is gone, there goes the ability to afford your car, hell there goes the ability to afford the damn apartment you’re living in at this moment. You’ll lose eveything, if you’re cut off.
“He better not, and trust me if he ever does, I would be more than happy to have you on my team.” A new man smiled brightly in your direction as he made his way over to your desk. He wasn’t an unfamiliar face around the office as he and Mr.Choi have done business deals of many kinds in the past. “It would truly be an honor to have someone like you working at Jeon Marketing.”
A small smile took over your face as you eyed the man in front of you. Mr.Jeon was an extremely well known CEO in this business, and he’s not too much older than Mr.Choi. You’re genuinely surprised these men are allies in this type of business, if anything you thought they’d be enemies. “Thank you for such kind words, but trust me your opinion on me may change soon.”
“Nonsense, I’ve seen the way you handle situations at this company, especially time crunched ones. I can tell just by looking at your face you stayed up hours just to make sure his numbers were perfect.” Mr Jeon stated as he leaned forward on the desk and clapped his hand together. “And truth be told I wouldn’t mind having such a beautiful face be the face of my company.”
His compliment left you stumped as you eyed his face. The tone he held was lighthearted because he knew this stressful situation needed a little laughter, but you knew from the look on his face he was being serious. About both of his statements. Before you could form a response, he long fingers were reaching into his jacket pocket. “I promise, if you ever need anything. I’m just a call away.”
“His top rival and best friend just offered you a sweet ass deal, are you gonna take it?”
You truly didn’t know the answer to that. I mean on one hand you have your secretary job here, and it pays well. The boss may be a pain in the ass, but it’s the only thing keeping you afloat. And you know that these two companies are neck and neck right now for the top spot, so it’s hard to decipher just how much he’s willing to pay you. But would there be any harm in simply asking the man?
“I’m not gonna lie and say it doesn’t intrigue me, but at the same time I don’t wanna leave you all alone.” You mumbled as you tapped away at the computer keys. Just trying to find any small amount of information about his company. But only mere surface information popped up in the search box. “Would it be a bad thing if I did leave?”
“Sometimes trying something new is good thing, but it really all depends on how you feel. And I have a friend that works there and she told me she makes over 250k a year.” Hongjoong shrugged his shoulders as he stood up to leave. His soft eyes giving a sense of comfort as he started to walk away. “I promise whatever option you pick, you’ll be fine.”
A heavy huff of air passed through your lips as you tried to think of the right answer. If he was right you’d make just a little bit more working for him and he genuinely seems like a nicer boss in general. So the real question is what’s keeping you tied to this job? The only perk about this job is working with Hongjoong and he’s the main reason why you’ve stuck around this long. The men from before were now exiting San’s offer with bright smiles on their faces, and you could only conclude that those numbers truly were the right ones. But just as your eyes leave their smiles you’re met with someone who has the complete opposite expression.
He briskly walked towards you and hastily cleared his throat. The stone cold expression he was supporting made a shiver go down your spine. Without a second thought he grabbed your hand and hauled you off in the direction of his office, with his nails piercing the skin of your wrist. Within a second he shoved you into his office and slammed the door behind him.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” His stern voice echoed in the office. Bouncing off the walls left and right and continuing to bounce inside your skull. The fingernails that were pressing into your skin felt like sharp needles protruding into you. You could have sworn you saw blood pass through his fingers. “Answer me!”
“I’m sorry! But I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” You panicked as you tried to yank your arm away from his hardened grasp. Those eyes of his start to terrify you the longer you stay in his touch. But he wasn’t letting you get away if anything the more you struggled against him the tighter his hold got.
“I saw that dumb fucker hand you his card, and for some unknown reason you took it. So what that’s it, you’re just gonna fucking leave after everything I’ve done for you?” He spat words at you left and right. Not bothering to back up any of his claims. He speaks as if he’s given you pure gold to walk but in reality all he’s given you is eggshells. You have to be careful around you, you’re never treated well, and he wants to sit up on his throne and act as if he’s treated you like royalty?
“If anything you’ve given me shit! You’re treating me like crap any chance you get, I made one mistake and your response to that is belittling me in front of other people!” You shouted back with just as much venom as he has done to you. With a final yank from your arm, you relaxed yourself from his grip. Tired of his antics you looked him dead in the eyes and spoke. “And so what if I take his offer, he’d be a better boss than you ever were!”
“I mean it, L/n, you take that deal and I’ll make your life a living hell.” He threatened as he got closer and closer. His minty breath fanned your face slightly as he harshly grabbed your chin. “Trust me, this is one bet you’ll regret taking if you leave.”
“I’ll take that damn bet any day.” You tried to push his chest back but he was stronger than you. What surprised you the most was the cackle-like laugh that passed through his lips. A wide smile taking over his face and that somehow made the situation more sinister.
“I warned you, Y/n.”
#Yandere ateez#ateez imagines#ateez Drabble#San x reader#ateez x reader#San imagines#San Drabble#San one shot#ateez one shot#Yandere San#Yandere au#kpop imagine#kpop one shot#kpop x reader#Yandere kpop#Yandere Drabble#ateez scenarios#ateez Yandere au#ateez au#San reaction#ateez reaction#ateez#imagines#ateez x you#ateez reader insert#San x you#San Yandere imagine#ateez Yandere imagines#San Yandere#San Yandere Drabble
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Rating ATLA Characters literally only from what I’ve seen in fandom
or: posts that probably shouldn’t be on my writeblr except I don’t have a sideblog
the context here is it’s half midnight and I have never seen ATLA except I have opinions now apparently so here we go whoop de do-
I��m also not actually rating them like numerically that’s too much work i’m just stating opinions I know I’m a fraud
AANG
- A child?
- A son?
- he is Baby. but also. he has had It Rough
- would make the updog joke
- has unspeakable power or smth and everyone says he’s better than the Korra girl who comes after him but honestly tastes like sexism to me
- doesn’t kill people because he’s like twelve, right? he’s like twelve so he refuses to kill people
- I stan honestly
- less twelve year olds should kill people
- Some people say his name WRONG and they are BAD but i don’t actually know what the right way or the wrong way is so. have fun w that yall
- lived in peace unTIL THE FIRE NATION ATTACKED
KATARA
- She is also like twelve???
- Is everyone here twelve
- Cortana?? Katana?? Catbug??
- She has good hair,
- Her mother is dead??? her mother is dead n she has a brother but she cares about her mother being dead WAY more than him (or apparently the entire fandom??)
- Badass
- She seems soft. good. sweet
- she’s a water breather or whatever??? her brother is NOT but he is a meme
- I love her
SOKKA
- NGL looks like a fuckboy
- The meme brother! does not do the water things, but he has an aXe???
- dates BAMF lady
- ngl until I talked to my ATLA watching friend I thought he canonically dated Zuko
- kinda mad he doesn’t
- I haven’t actually seen anything about him except like. in zuko ship posts and also Suki appreciation posts
- joined the white lotus not-a-cult by accident???
- dark ATLA tumblr show me more Sokka posts
- is his name prounounced the same way as Soccer or isn’t it I need to know
- HIS FIRST GIRLFRIEND TURNED INTO THE MOON
- (AND THAT’S ROUGH, BUDDY)
- He and Suki are a good ship, but also, Sokka Has Two Hands
SUKI
- the BAMF herself
- she says STOP in that photo but also to sexism
- Rlly all I see of her in fanon is abt her teaching Sokka to drink his respect women juice and I appreciate her doing that but also it’s sad she never gets talked about outside of what she did for a man
- I hope she has other badass moments w/o him it would suck if she didn’t
- she is NOT the girlfriend who turned into the moon, she is the one who didn’t
- I don’t know much else about her ATLA Fandom y’all should appreciate her more
ZUKO
- Look at him... my son...
- He has a good redemption arc
- he and his sister are evil lesbian and redeemed gay guy???
- has a straight canon ship but should’ve been with Sokka this boy is gay
- I Want To Protect Him
- That’s literally it
- he has a cool uncle and his dad sucks
- people ship him with Katara and I Do Not Get It that’s his sister in law except not really
- “We don’t trust Zuko’s change of heart” [the next day] “so Zuko is my closest friend now,”
- His dad was like “fuck up the avatar to prove your worth to me” and Aang was like “counter argument you already have worth and we should fuck up your dad” and I think that’s beautiful
- he becomes the fire man and he’s very good at it
- Zuko for President 2020
- in the words of myself, half an hour ago: “ I was like "that kid with the burn on his face seems like a sad but then happy mlm who needs found family" and I was RIGHT”
- took too long to find a happy picture of him :( Zuko rights NOW please
- His mother’s story got compared to an OC of mine and all I can say is oh no and they deserve better based on that alone
- I have had Zuko for five minutes but if anything else happens to him I will kill everyone in this throne room and then myself
TOPH
- She is badass but like also will murder you while laughing maniacally?
- for some reason reminds me of Nott from Critical Role, another show I Have Not Seen
- Is blind but gets more out of making jokes abt being blind than she would from being able to see
- “Sight is just a cheap tactic to make weak benders stronger!!!”
- Literally the opposite of Aang and has killed many people??
- She Can Tell When You’re Lying. But I do not know how and Am simply mildly threatened by this
- Therapist: Toph’s ability to know if you’re lying isn’t real and can’t hurt you. Toph’s ability to know if I’m lying:
- She and Zuko.... buddies???
- if not they should be
- tiny sad boy needs friends like toph
AZULA
- Evil Lesbian Culture
- [BDG Voice] You committed a war crime! Oopsie!
- took be gay do crime too literally
- her and Zuko have accurate sibling writin except instead of “you ever want to murder your sibling for breathing in the same space as you,” being a Joke Azula took it seriously
- okay but with a name like azula she should be the blue bender this ANNOYS me she should NOT be red bender
- AZULa
- AZUL
- IT MEANS BLUE
- She was half of y’alls gay awakenings and it SHOWS
- Should have maybe been redeemed too??? Jury is out no one knows
- Was she gay for Ty Lee or wasn’t she I can’t tell how much of that Audio is a joke
- IS SHE ALSO TWELVE??? IS EVERYONE HERE TWELVE?? IS THIS TWELVE YEAR OLD COMITTING ATROCITIES?
UNCLE IROH
- A Good Man
- Finally, Some Good Fucking [Adult Figures]
- he has the tea. literally and figuratively
- Ozai is like “and I will permanently disfigure my son and throw him out” and Iroh is like “What The Fuck, Ozai,” thus voicing the entire audience’s thoughts
- Literally the only adult in this that I trust
- I? I love him. this is all I have to say. my love for him is unending. Some1 protect this man from all harm
- he’s Zuko’s uncle (and also Azula ig) but he does not seem related to Ozai. is it just a theme in this family that one sibling is chill and one sibling commits horrendous atrocities against your fellow human beings or
- something happened to his son???? :((((( I Don’t Want Him To Have Suffered Like This
OZAI
- A BAD MAN
- Uh Oh (stinky)
- THE WORST OF THE MEN
- I do not like him
- Bastard man. nasty. committed war crimes and then went “but what if - get this - i also abused my son,”
- I would like him to Not Be Like This
- by Like This I mean present and alive
- :/
TY LEE
- She’s NOT the There Is No War In Ba Sing Se lady and I don’t know why i thought she WAS but until I looked up her photo I thought that was her
- She looks like a sweetheart tho
- I hope nothing bad happens to her????
- talks about auras??? or smth??? let her vibe
- She would talk animatedly to me about warrior cats if she was in my year seven class and I was sat alone and I would understand none of it but appreciate her anyway
- if azula bullies her I’ll be :( at Azula and Azula will not care because she has Mommy Issues and therefore is slightly unhinged
- She seems like that one kid with no trauma vibing at the edge of [every other kid having trauma] and not really getting it but trying her best
- Is she also twelve?????? She maybe looks twelve
CABBAGE MAN
- HIS CABBAGES
- fulfills my favourite trope: ordinary person repeatedly has life disrupted by the inconveniences of relying on actual children to save the world
- probably has a campaign post canon for letting trained adults fix the worlds’ problems in the future
- or sets up the Very First Cabbage Insurance Company
- look at him. he loves his cabbages so much. you go you funky lil cabbage man
ALSO THE MOST IMPORTANT ONES
MOMO
- LOOK AT HIM HE’S SO GOOD
- small. fluffy. big ears
- Lord Momo of the Momo Dynasty: his Momoness
- a Good Boy...
APPA
- he looks so soft...
- he can fly but he just does it by??? vibing through the air?? motionless??? iconic
- I saw that one post about mishearing it as Abba and thinking he was Aang’s dad and he looks like he would be a good stand in dad ngl
- he’s so LORGE
- a chonky boy
- love him
that is everyone I have heard of it and if I left someone out it’s a sign that y’all should talk about em more bc I have no clue they exist
put more ATLA On my Dash ig
I’ll do Legend of Korra ig maybe apparently that one has canon wlw and i love me some canon wlw
#ATLA#avatar the last airbender#Avatar#Aang#Zuko#Katara#Sokka#Iroh#Ozai#Azula#Ty Lee#Momo#Appa#Toph#Suki#I hope Suki has an arc outside of Teaches Boy To Be Good Person By Being Badass#if she does yall should talk abt it more#Not Writing#I finished this at 1:30 am can you tell#here u go ali heres the post#abuse ment#war ment
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Maribat March 2021 @maribatmarch-2k21
Day 1: Found Family
“Ah! Bonjour!” A cheery voice called, as a short Eurasian girl bound over to the unfairly intimidating mob of tall people with sharp eyes. Chloe had called in a favor. “My name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Chloe told me that your tour guide cancelled at the last minute, so she blackmail—sorry, begged me to fill in for them. You are the Wayne’s, non?”
The one at the front of the group, clearly Bruce Wayne since Marinette didn’t live under a rock and had seen the man on several American news broadcasts before, nodded and cleared his throat. Man, was he intimidating. Even when he shot her a dazzling smile that was sure to blind Paparazzi with fake cheer. It was a nice smile, Marinette wasn’t about to deny. But it was empty. Distant. And Marinette wasn’t going to buy it for a second.
“Yes, that’s us. Mademoiselle Bourgeois mentioned she had asked a close friend of hers to take care of our tour.”
Marinette nodded again, clasping her hands behind her back. “I guarantee, you won’t miss anything the tour guide would have shown you. In fact, Chloe mentioned that you all were very curious about the now retired Parisian heroes, right? My former best friend ran the Ladyblog back when they were active. I am more than confident that I can answer any questions you have while we go through the city.”
A boy with a white streak in his hair rose his hand, as if he was in a class and needed to wait to be called on. Which, considering the sheer size of their family, Marinette was actually grateful for. But damn, this was another imposing figure. Slightly taller than even the six-foot-three-inches that Bruce Wayne owned, he was solidly built and rocked a brown leather jacket and ripped black jeans. Marinette smiled and nodded for him to speak.
“How old are you? Because I don’t know if twelve year olds are allowed to do guided tours,” there was an obvious tease in his voice, but there was also legitimate concern in his blue-green eyes. Marinette almost missed that concern amid her quickly building annoyance. She even felt her eyes twitch.
“I’m turning eighteen in a few months if you need to know, Monsieur,” she evened out the bite in her voice with an overly sweet smile. “And if you want to get lost and possibly pickpocketed in the busy streets of Paris, then please continue to make comments on my height. If not, we can begin our tour and you might even enjoy it.”
Several Wayne’s snickered at her comeback, one man in particular elbowing the white haired gentleman with a little too much glee. Even the stoic Bruce laughed softly, and a boy with enough bags under his eyes to make the airport jealous nearly fell over himself with his suppressed laughter.
The man himself just snorted, sending her a lopsided smirk that oddly radiated approval. It was almost as if she had passed some sort of test.
“My name’s Jason, Pixie. You already know B. The guy trying to break my ribs,” he pointedly shoved off the one who had elbowed him, “is Dick. He’s Bruce’s first adoptive casualty. The one that looks like a zombie is Tim, we might need to take a break to get him more coffee before he passes out halfway through. The one who hasn’t stopped glaring at you is Damian, the badass redhead is Barbara but we all call her Babs. The annoying blonde is Stephany, the other cool badass over there is Cass. She doesn’t talk much. And the one trying to pretend he doesn’t know us is Duke.”
Each member he introduced gave her a little wave or nod. Even Damian managed a short nod of acknowledgement before resuming his glare. He looked to be a couple years younger than her, so she just brushed it off as teenage drama.
“Alright then! It is very nice to meet you all. Now, Chloe did inform me that you guys are very multilingual, which is another reason she asked me instead of one of our other friends. If you ever need it, I obviously am fluent in both French and English. But added to that, I am fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin, Italian, and I know basic survival Japanese. I also know French Sign Language, though I’m not sure if that’s very useful for you unfortunately. If you ever need to communicate non-verbally, I will do my best to accommodate that. Now, I believe you guys were scheduled to start the tour with a visit to the Louvre, non? Right this way.”
As Marinette led the large group out of the Grand Paris, they didn’t bother taking time to admire the sights before asking questions.
“Have you ever met one of the heroes?” Dick, who might have been shorter than Jason and Bruce but was muscular enough to still inspire caution (and admiration), asked. His blue eyes seemingly stared right through Marinette as he continued; “If you’re almost eighteen, then they must have been active through a lot of your school career.”
Marinette smiled. “They did only retire last year,” she agreed with a nod. “Yes, I have met all of the Parisian heroes at least once,” she snorted at a stray thought. “In fact, I met Chat Noir quite a lot. You see, my old College was basically ground zero for a lot of akuma attacks. And by a lot, I mean a majority of them,” she shook her head before pausing to get everyone to cross a street. “After a while, Chat Noir started calling me ‘princess’ to make fun of how often he had to save me. He’s an annoying ass.”
Despite her words, everyone behind her could easily hear the fondness there. They all traded glances. What if this was a Lois and SuperMan situation? Regardless, they all had a suspicion that Marinette knew more about the heroes than she let on. Or, at least more about Chat Noir.
“When you say that your school was a hotspot for Akuma attacks,” Bruce spoke up cautiously, his Dad Senses going haywire. He didn’t like how nonchalantly she had said it— she was far too casual. Sure enough, he watched as the muscles between her shoulders stiffened slightly at the conversation change. “What do you mean? Surely it couldn’t have been that bad if the school is still around.”
Marinette sucked her teeth, grimacing. “The school is still there, yeah, but only because of Ladybug’s ability. You’ve heard about the Cure, right?” It was Tim who answered her;
“Yeah. It fixed the damage done during a fight, right?” He asked, tilting his head a little. Marinette ignored her brief thought that the gesture made him look like a curious puppy. She sighed.
“Yeah. But when they say damage, they mean everything. Injuries, collateral. Death,” she said the last example darkly, far too much weight behind the word for it to be meaningless. She heard Jason hiss in sympathy. “But there are good things. The Cure also erased anyone’s memories of dying besides the vague knowledge that it did happen, so there isn’t much trauma there to unpack. Not as much as there could have been anyway,” she assured them. “And I’m one of the lucky ones. I never died, and I was never Akumatized.”
“Hmph,” Damian’s voice cut through the brief silence that followed her admission. She looked back at him to see his sharp green eyes staring right into her. “You don’t honestly believe that’s lucky.” It wasn’t a question. Marinette clenched her jaw, turning around and ignoring him.
Because, no. It wasn’t luck. It wasn’t lucky that she was the only one that remembered everything— all of the deaths, all of the Akumatizations, everything that others mercifully forgot. Since she lived through all of it, she remembered all of it. And survivor’s guilt is nothing to scoff at.
But she wasn’t about to reveal her trauma, or at the very least the full scope of it, to people she had just met and was leading on a tour.
“If you look to the left, you’ll see a statue that was made depicting Ladybug and Chat Noir back during the first years of their activity,” she suddenly told them, gesturing to the still-standing statue. Nobody missed the obvious topic change, but nobody commented on it either. Turns out the statue was something they had been looking forward to seeing in person, Tim even went up to take a few photos with his camera. Barbara took a few circles around the statue, easily pivoting her wheelchair around it as if she was trying to see every angle and imperfection possible. Marinette couldn’t help but chuckle fondly at the sight.
“Your family are pretty big fans, huh?” She asked Cass and Duke, the only ones that had stayed back with her. Duke snorted, and Cass gave her a small grin.
“They like to keep up to date with all the heroes,” Duke answered with a shrug. “Since we’re so high profile, it isn’t weird for us to be saved by one here or there even when we’re away from Gotham.”
Marinette just gave him an odd look, furrowing her brows. “But the Miraculous team has been disbanded since HawkMoth was defeated,” she reminded them. “There’s no need for them to save anybody anymore.”
“Old habits,” Cass spoke up softly, her voice barely a whisper. Her eyes locked with Marinette’s. “Not easy to break.”
The smaller woman had a feeling that Cass wasn’t talking about her family’s habit of keeping up to date on heroes.
“Alright! We need to head to the next stop or we might not have time to see everything!”
The tour went pretty similarly. The walks between stops were pleasant, and filled with questions about the period of time where HawkMoth was active. Marinette wasn’t even the least bit surprised nor put off; everyone was curious about those years now that the tourism restriction was lifted and people could ask freely about it. Besides the many questions about the Heroes, Marinette found the group to be very pleasant company. They were polite, but also rowdy in a very endearing way. She caught a lot of inside jokes they had with each other, and a lot of good natured teasing and fighting. They even managed to rope her into it somehow, and she found herself snidely teasing Damian or casually threatening Tim with not allowing them a coffee break. She even got to ride on Jason’s shoulders for a bit after he made another comment on her height that she Did Not Appreciate. But the ride she got made it worth it.
But soon the sun was high in the sky, and it was about time for them to take a lunch break. They had all been walking for hours with only a few chances to rest, and honestly Marinette was impressed that none of them seemed too tired out by it.
“Alright,” she put her hands on her hips proudly. “Since some of you won’t stop whining about needing coffee or being hungry— Dick, don’t you dare buy anything from that vendor! I’m gonna lead you all to my parent’s bakery so we can have lunch and caffeinate all of you. And conveniently enough,” she smiled widely. “The bakery is right across the street from my old College! So you’ll be able to get a look at where the majority of Akuma attacks happened, and maybe I can tell you a few specific stories if you want,” she offered. There were a couple cheers (Tim and Dick) from the crowd and everyone seemed pretty pleased with the next step in their tour. Smiling, Marinette turned and began to lead them in the direction of her home.
Sirens blared, a fire truck zooming down the street next to them.
Headed in the same direction.
Marinette frowned, watching it go. “That’s weird. I hope everyone’s okay, whatever happened,” she mused idly. But as they kept going forward, the sirens didn’t get any softer. If anything, they started getting louder again after a while. Marinette was visibly concerned by then, her pace picking up. “This is my neighborhood,” she told the solemn group behind her. “I know everyone on this street—“ they rounded the corner, and Marinette stopped in her tracks. Her world ground to a halt.
There was the fire truck, stopped right in front of her bakery.
Which was completely ablaze.
A string of curses flew out of her mouth, the little Eurasian wasting no more time before sprinting towards the building. She could hear people yelling at her to wait, slow down, stop! But she ignored them. The only thing on her mind was that her home was on fire.
“Marinette! Wait!” Dick reached out to grab her arm, but like a snake Marinette easily slipped out of his grip and continued forward. Steph was next, deciding to just tackle Marinette— to no avail. The Parisian just shouldered the bigger woman off of her with pure adrenaline fueling her muscles, and everyone else knew by then that they could not stop her. The Wayne’s decided all they could do was jog behind Marinette, keeping her in sight as they tried to gauge the damage.
“The top floors don’t look like they have even been touched by the fire yet,” Tim whispered, though his eyes flew between the building and their tour guide. Marinette was speaking rapidly with a firefighter that wasn’t immediately busy, trying to get information. But before anyone could decipher what was said, Marinette tore a large strip off the bottom of her shirt and tied it in a hasty mask around her mouth.
“Wait!” Bruce was the first to realize what was happening, with his years of experience with self sacrificing children and their stupid stunts. But Marinette managed to kick him away before he could grab her, dashing into the inferno without paying any heed to the many protests that followed her.
The group of Gothamites could do nothing but watch the flaming building, then. If they went inside, it would only overcrowd a hazardous area. Minutes passed, and there was movement in the fire. Out of the doorway came Marinette and a firefighter, both having to work together to carry the body of a large man outside. The sight of the man made the Gotham family blink— he was as big as Bane! And that was nothing to scoff at. But despite his unusual size and muscle mass, the man had all the signs of being a normal civilian.
Marinette didn’t stop there. She ran back in. Coming out a lot more quickly this time with a barely conscious Asian woman— everyone saw the resemblance between her and this new woman immediately.
It had to be her mother.
“Shit,” Duke hissed. Nobody else could say a word. It wasn’t looking good, and this wasn’t a situation where random vigilantes showing up out of nowhere could actually help. Not this late into the fire. Bruce’s hands curled into fists.
The woman that everyone guessed was Marinette’s mother was suddenly struck by lucidity; she gasped and grabbed at Marinette’s hand without seeming to see who she was even talking to. A single word that none of the Waynes could hear left her throat, and judging by Marinette’s returning panic it hadn’t been good.
She rushed right back into the building, and came back out with the last firefighter who had been searching inside.
Marinette carried a child. She screamed out in panicked French;
“She’s not breathing! I need first aid now!”
That was their cue. The firefighters started their hoses, focusing on getting rid of the flames now that nobody was left inside the building. Bruce and Damian got to Marinette first, and this time she listened as they instructed her to set the child down. Damian, being smaller and having more hands-on medical knowledge, took charge of the resuscitation. Marinette sat there silently, eyes riveted to the small child— a girl.
But Marinette wasn’t reacting like a normal civilian to tragedy. She was eerily calm, eyes focused and barely concealing a terrible rage. She took over chest compressions when Damian started to lose momentum, not giving up.
But then the EMTs arrived, and it was only five minutes with the child hooked onto oxygen that the news arrived—
Marinette heard the monitors on the ambulance flatline before she even registered what people were trying to tell her. Manon. Manon was—
Marinette didn’t register Nadya Chammack at first. She was just another body in the quickly growing sea of them. That is, until she heard Nadya’s pained shriek. A mother who had just lost her baby girl.
“Perhaps we should head back,” Bruce offered softly, giving Marinette space but keeping a keen eye on her. He saw her begin to tremble, then shake. He was pretty sure he could hear the grinding of her teeth for a second before she went still. Just… all movement stopped, the tears that had been building just falling silently for a second before they ended.
And he recognized that carefully practiced emptiness in her bluebell eyes. The same emptiness he had seen in Damian’s eyes when he had first arrived at the Manor. The same emptiness he saw in Dick’s eyes in the days following his parent’s deaths.
The same emptiness he saw in the mirror, every time he had another nightmare about the day Jason had been taken from him, years ago.
Suddenly he could imagine all too well exactly what kind of strength she had to have, to avoid her negative emotions ever being used against her during Hawkmoth’s reign. Especially if she had constantly been dealing with her friends and family being Akumatized and/or dying on multiple occasions.
She didn’t even seem to have heard him. Bruce sighed.
“I called Chloe,” Barbara informed everyone solemnly, holding up her phone for emphasis. “She’ll be here in five.”
—*—*—*—*—*
Chloe hadn’t come alone. With her had been Adrien Agreste, former model when his father hadn’t been… well, in prison. Nowadays he was just a normal student who occasionally gave lectures on neglect and child abuse, and how to help children in those situations.
And, apparently, he was also Marinette’s closest friend. Even more so than Chloe. As soon as they arrived back at the Grand Paris, Chloe herded everyone up into her suite and she and Adrien surrounded Marinette with pillows and blankets. Adrien curled around Marinette like an affectionate cat, and Damien even swore he heard the guy purr at some point
“We should probably leave,” Bruce whispered to their hostess, who looked inbetween him and her friends for a moment before jerking her head towards the door.
“I wanna talk to you first,” Chloe whispered back. Once they all filed out into the hallway and the door was safely closed, Chloe took a breath. “First, I want to tell you that I got a call from the hospital. Marinette’s father is stable, but in a coma right now.”
“Is that the man who looked like he could bench press a car for fun?” Dick asked, earning a weak grin from the Bourgeois heiress.
“Yeah, that’s him. But…” Chloe’s face fell, and she looked around as if to double check nobody was eavesdropping. She still lowered her voice anyway. “Her mother, Sabine. She…” Chloe swallowed a lump in her throat, images of the extremely kind Chinese woman flashing through her mind without permission. “She didn’t make it.”
Several people took a sharp breath, acknowledging everything that had gone so wrong for Marinette on a day that had started so perfectly.
“The smoke?” Cass asked gently, but Chloe winced and shifted on her feet.
“No. They… there were rope marks on Sabine’s neck,” Chloe clenched her eyes shut at the admission. “Marinette’s dad might be big, but he’s not a fighter. Sabine, though… Sabine was. She was raised in a martial arts family back in China. I’ve seen Sabine take down five men at once, all twice her size,” Chloe kicked her lips, shaking her head in disbelief. “Somebody knew… somebody knew that the little Chinese woman was a threat but the big baker with tons of muscle was harmless.”
Nobody took that well. Not only had Marinette just lost her home and half of her family, but her father was in a coma and it had all been foul play.
“Okay,” Bruce nodded once the news had time to sink in. They could help with this; this was their specialty. They might have only known Marinette for six hours, but she had made a big impression. It wasn’t just anybody that could mesh with his family so seamlessly in that short span of time. “Is there anything else?”
“I want you to get temporary custody of her,” Chloe said it the way only Chloe Bourgeois could. With her back straight, chin high, and the tone of a woman who expected to be listened to or else she’d make life Hell for the person that didn’t take her seriously. Bruce could only blink.
“Can I ask for your reasoning?”
“Marinette has been closing herself off more and more over the years,” Chloe admitted. “Hawkmoth’s reign was hard on her. Only Adrien really knows everything she went through during those years. But even after the disbanding of the team, she hasn’t… she hasn’t allowed herself to get close to anybody new. That’s why I tricked her into doing your tour. She needed to socialize with new people, and if she wouldn’t do it herself then I had to pull some strings.”
A few eyebrows raised at the admission that Chloe had fully planned for Marinette to be their tour guide the whole time. It honestly seemed like the kind of well meaning manipulation that one of them would try to pull off.
“She likes you,” Chloe’s voice went soft again, showing how uncharacteristically serious she was about that fact. “She was comfortable enough to let you guys carry her back here. To let you try to help Manon. That might not seem like a big deal to you, but it says a lot to me and Adrien. And… getting her away from Paris for a while is probably a good idea. She was planning to go to Gotham for university anyway.”
The Waynes traded glances before Bruce crosses his arms and asked some more questions first. Doesn’t Marinette have other family? Answer; only her grandmother, who travels all the time and nobody ever knows where she is until she shows up. Bruce agreed that Gina Dupain didn’t exactly seem like a good candidate for Marinette’s new guardian with that description. But finally, to none of his children's surprise, he did end up agreeing.
“But,” he held up a single finger. “We’ll Wait here in Paris for a week, so that she can try to salvage everything she can from her house and so we can get an idea on how her father is doing. There’s still a chance he’ll come out of his coma fairly quickly. And of course, we will only go through with this if Marinette agrees when we ask her tomorrow.”
Chloe agreed to those terms, looking like a weight had been lifted off of her.
Chloe never cut corners when taking care of her hive. And if that meant making sure that her brave soldier bee could move on to start a new hive, one that was better equipped to take care of her, then Chloe would do everything she could to help that move. And really; Chloe was far more resourceful and observant than people gave her credit for. The butts definitely matched, and Bruce Wayne was her last hope to get Marinette the support she needed. Outside of Adrien, anyway.
Chloe took a breath, watching the Waynes trickle off into their own rooms. Marinette was like the little sister she never wanted, but grew to love more than anything. Though, Chloe knew she really chose Marinette as her sister the same way they both chose Adrien as their brother. She just didn’t want to admit she was sentimental like that. But Chloe knew that someone like Marinette needed a bigger family. More support.
She could only hope that Marinette and the Waynes grew to become family for her like she and Adrien had. Kwami knew that Marinette needed all the help she could get for the foreseeable future.
“You did good, my Queen.”
“I know, Pollen. Now we just have to find out who dared hurt my hive.”
—*—*—*—*—*
Dude this took so long to write, but I’m actually really proud of it. Probably gonna take this Maribat March a little differently than last year, and make a few longer stories by connecting some of the prompts together. Maybe each week will be a full story? Idk I’ll figure it out. I know I’m behind but I’m working on it.
I tried to keep the angst out, but it found it’s way in here anyway. Oh well!
#mlb x dc#ml x dc#maribat#maribat march 2021#Maribat March 2k21#platonic brucinette#found family#day 1#Maribat March#day 1 found family#I was a little late but oh well
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kind of an odd request — do you have fics where erik is grumpy with everyone else but a ray of sunshine with charles?
Hi anon, thank you for the ask. First and foremost, I'm so sorry for how long this took me but I've been searching for all the fics that come to mind that fit your request. Second, this is not an odd request because I love this trope so much. I mean, it's basically canon that he's grumpy with everyone except for his Charles, right? Anyway, I might add to this list later on, but I can't sit on this any longer and hope that you have found some fics that you enjoy!!
Fic Recs Where Erik is grumpy with everyone but a ray of sunshine with Charles
Twice as Blind – Darksknight
Summary: Erik is probably the biggest asshole on the face of the earth, and because of this, he'll probably die alone. Charles is a complete flirt and playboy and, probably, will never commit to anyone ever.
(The lesson here is that when you have two friends who are BOTH secretly seeing someone, well, it's probable that they're seeing each other.)
In the moonlight, on a joy ride – scarlettblush
Summary: Librarian AU. Charles is the young librarian and Erik is the college student who is completely besotted with him.
The Proper Care of Actors – Clear_Liqueur, Clocks, Etherei, afrocurl
Summary: Erik is an A-list action star who is notoriously difficult to work with, until the day he gets cast alongside Charles Xavier, rom-com darling who can charm the pants off movie audiences the world over and apparently even one Erik Lehnsherr. The paparazzi catch them out and about soon enough, and their real-life Hollywood movie romance becomes instant tabloid fodder.
Rumor Mill – ikeracity
Summary: Erik is the grumpiest, most foul tempered worker at Stark industries. His grumpiness is the stuff of legends.
So it's obviously the talk of the office when Erik is being made to go to the company party and he's bringing his husband. There's rumors flying round about how much of a masochist or equally antisocial bastard Erik's husband must be to put up with him. Others think he must be a meek mouse perhaps bullied by Erik.
What they weren't expecting was the confident, charming, adorable and unbelievably nice Charles that turns up on Erik's arm. What they certainly weren't expecting was how much Erik obviously adores his husband and how happy he is to let others see this.
Work/Life Balance – pocky_slash
Summary: Alex is pretty sure his weird, anti-social boss is a robot. Right up until the guy's adorable husband shows up. His adorable husband who happens to be a famous actor. His adorable husband who happens to be the very same famous actor who was the source of many of Alex's teenage fantasies.
Terrifying Domesticity – ishipitsobad
Summary: Erik is the most dangerous and notorious mafia boss around for miles, and yet the strangest things terrify him.
For example: his children, and his very pregnant mate.
Of kittens and teacups and love – Ren
Summary: Modern AU in which Charles and Erik are flatmates. Charles studies psychology and likes tea and chess and keeps bringing home stray kittens, and Erik lets him because he's maybe perhaps a little bit sort of in love with him.
Fools Rush In – LoveSupreme
Summary: Erik owns a cafe on the edge of campus and accidentally starts maybe-stalking a Biology Professor there.
Growing Pains – ikeracity
Summary: Twelve-year-old Erik Lehnsherr is an angry, closed-off foster kid with trust issues and a bad temper. Ten-year-old Charles Xavier is a lonely kid in boarding school who just wants a friend.
Logan pretends he doesn't think they're both fucking adorable.
Series
Home Together (The Finding Our Way Remix) – significantowl
Summary: Erik is not the sort of person other students strike up conversations with. His expression, his posture, every part of his manner say: Don’t talk to me. I don’t want to talk to you. But none of that stops the boy ahead of him in line with the collapsible white cane, and nothing can stop Erik from falling for him, like it or not.
Melted Ice Cream and Macaroni Art – pocky_slash
Summary: Everybody likes Charles. Nobody likes Erik. And that's really the source of Erik's doubts. Also, there's ice cream and a baby. Part of ‘the Daycare’ verse.
Walling in or Walling Out – stlkrchck
Summary: Erik stifles a sigh. Of course this is Mr. C. F. Xavier. Of course.
For the prompt: Charles and Raven are throwing a holiday party. Erik is the grumpy neighbor who is annoyed by how loud they are being. So he goes to complain, and Charles makes it up to him.
(Wise Men Say) Only Fools Rush In – wildelybroken
Summary: After reading a fic where Erik and Charles are super sluts, meet at what is presumably Raven and Emma's engagement party, and end up sleeping together, I made the following comment and just inspired myself.
"They start casually texting each other throughout the day, maybe while they’re bored or frustrated at work, and start out meeting up and sleeping together semi-frequently. And eventually they accidentally start dating without noticing it at first, not until Raven and Emma get them alone and are like “wtf you two super sluts are actually dating??” And at first they deny, but then they’re both like “holy shit, we are!” And they meet back at one of their places and they don’t have to say anything, they just look at each other and come together immediately, kissing passionately and ~making love~. In the middle of it they realise that’s what they’ve been doing for a long time now and they confess their love to each other and they live happily ever after because they deserve all the good in the world."
For Charles – Shigai
Summary: Tired of being told he has to find his 'heart', classical piano graduate Erik Lehnsherr decides to travel to Italy and drink from the famous Italian passion for music. While searching for it, he meets Charles Xavier, a graduate in Fine Arts who is basically travelling around the world perfectioning his technique, and who will turn his world upside down.
Together they will discover that, sometimes, what you thought you didn't need is what you needed the most.
Erik Hates People – Anonymous
Summary: Erik hates people- it's his rule, a way of living.
Sugar – humanitys_cutest
Summary: Erik glances at the clock for what feels like the tenth time in less than half the minutes. It feels like he's been in some meeting or other since the day started almost 10 hours ago, and he's had just about enough of listening to these pompous old men discuss what would be the best design for his building like they know anything about it. He tries as subtly as possible to massage his temples to assuage the building migraine, but he knows it's no use.
He just wants to go home.
Everyone Likes Charles – Rosawyn
Summary: '“Everyone who's met him likes him.” Cain's grin was even stupider than before. “Once you meet him, you'll see.”
It was almost like a challenge then. And damn. Erik hated saying no to a challenge.'
Still Going Strong – JackyJango
Summary: Speaking of forty-eight, Erik hates it. Hates it even more that others are aware of it. While he’s pragmatic enough to know and accept that aging is inexorable, the increase in number gives the people around him the freedom to pounce at him with questions, opinions and advice he'd fought to keep at bay all year.
Besides, Erik believes that youth is a state of mind, not a phase in one’s life.
You have a child’s mind in a man’s body, Charles constantly tells him.
But despite his age, Erik is healthy. He works out daily. His muscles are steel and he can dead-lift four hundred pounds. He can break bones without breaking a sweat. Most importantly, he can still carry Charles to the bedroom and fuck him senseless. And as long as Erik can do that, he’s perfectly happy.
All I know is pouring rain and everything has changed – hllfire
Summary: Charles meets Erik, the man he had heard about many times from his sister and some friends, on a rainy Sunday morning. The stories about Erik paint him as a distant and intimidating man, but Charles finds out that maybe the stories had been wrong.
How to Successfully Ruin Your Life – humanveil
Summary: Seventeen-year-old Charles Xavier accepts a job at his local café, expecting nothing more than a fun, new pastime. What he gets is a mysterious customer and a schoolboy crush.
Stolen – ishipitsobad
Summary: Erik is a miserable, grumpy, cantankerous bastard, and he has every fucking right to be. He drew the short end of the stick when he got the Underworld as his domain, and there isn't very much fun to be had in judging and governing dead souls who would rather be anywhere else but with Erik in the depths of Hell.
So when he meets Charles, brilliant and lovely Charles who is more popularly known amongst the mortals as Persephone, and feels the promise of something wonderful that could make his eternally doomed existence infinitely more bearable... you can bet all your drachmas Erik's not going to let Charles go any fucking time soon.
Erik Lehnsherr's Guide to Saving the Universe By Meeting Your Soul-Mate and Falling in Love in Less than 72 Hours – magneto, pangea
Summary:Army Pilot Erik Lehnsherr is just trying to enjoy his day off when a mostly naked person crashes through the roof of his car. Even more alarming, the strange falling naked person—who goes by Charles Xavier when he's not speaking an ancient dead language—brings tidings of the apparent potential end of the world, and begs Erik to help him put a stop to it.
Well. His mother has been nagging at him to go out and meet new people.
The Theory of Partnership Dynamics – Pangea
Summary: “Detective Lehnsherr, how wonderful to see you out on the job!” The fed in the front greets him as they draw nearer. He’s shorter than the other two by a full head, and he’s beaming at Lehnsherr as if completely undeterred by Lehnsherr’s paint-peeling scowl.
“What do the feds want?” Lehnsherr asks bluntly.
“You know I can’t tell you that,” the fed answers cheerfully. Then his gaze lands on Alex, and, impossibly, his grin gets even brighter. “Did you get a new partner?"
“No,” Lehnsherr says through his teeth while at the same time Alex says, “Yes.”
#fic recs#cherik fic recs#cherik#asks#earnestly answers#I'm sure there are waaaay more fics out there#might add more later
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Better Man.
~~~~We might still be in love, if you were a better man. ~~~~
Taehyung x OC
Rating 18 +
Angst.
Implied Infidelity in the past.
Chapter 1 ~ Walk out the first time.
"Are you okay?" My mother's soft voice came from behind me and i panicked, hurriedly swiping at the tears that were streaking down my face. Heart pounding, I grabbed a bunch of tissues from the dresser, patting my face down hurriedly , making sure to keep my back to her.
"I'm fine, Mom." I said , voice surprisingly steady as I turned around to smile weakly at her. She stood near the doorway, a petite woman of fifty with greying hair and too many wrinkles.
I thought she looked older than she was and i knew I had a part to play in that. Sighing, I tried not to cry more, moving to gently take my son out of her arms.
He was four years old, fast asleep and smiling sweetly in his slumber. He had downy black hair, feather soft and warm brown eyes. He looked incredibly like his father, the resemblance stunning even though he was so young. I stared at him some more, laying him down on the bed and brushing the hair off his face.
"Are you sure there is no mistake? Taehyung ssi wouldn't hurt us like this..." My mother said, sounding broken and I felt a pang of sympathy. But also annoyance.
Us.
Us....like she had an equal share in the hurt I was feeling.
I was the one getting a divorce but my mother made it sound like it was personal to her as well. Like somehow, the fact that she now had to meet her friends and tell them that her daughter was divorced could compare to the pain I was feeling. To the sheer anguish that was filling me.
To be fair though, my mother had loved Taehyung very much. Her favorite son-in-law . My sister's husband had been a mean drunkard who had brought a lot of misery to our family. Taehyung by contrast had been a loving, filial son in law. He had cared deeply for my parents, paid for my father's funeral ( even though the man itself was nothing more than a drunk , cheating fool who had abandoned us ) and he had been the most kind man .
I swallowed.
Maybe , you should have forgiven him. Maybe , you shouldn't have divorced him . So, he slept with another woman. Fine. It was one night... just one night. you should have gotten over it! Was it worth it to spend all these countless nights alone? To break your mother's heart a thousand times over?
The funny thing was, i had forgiven him. Maybe right after I had found out. He had stood there, looking shell-shocked and horrified and his eyes had begged me for forgiveness and my heart had cracked , the way it always did whenever I saw him in distress. And when he had looked me in the eye and said, " I’m sorry, Jang mi..." I had forgiven him right then and there.
But it was the forgetting that was hard. The fear that it would happen again. The fear that somehow, I was the reason he strayed. And that kind of fear can be debilitating. For the first three weeks, I'd tried to pretend it hadn't happened. I had tried hard to see him the way I had always seen him but it had been impossible. everytime I saw him, my heart had broken anew. It had been hard but I had to accept that things would never be the same. That I would forever look at him and remember what he’d done. That I would forever wonder if he would do it again.
So we had done the wise thing.
At first a break.
A few days apart to get our head on straight. Then I’d found a job and I had to move closer to the office to make the commute easy. And then suddenly, I wasn’t seeing him even during the weekends , to spend time as family for our son’s sake. And just like that , a whole year had passed and we were separated. Only meeting to hand Hoshi over to each other.
"I'm sorry mother." I said softly. I knew that she blamed me, a whole lot for the separation.
People with children didn't leave each other over infidelity in my country. You hit your husband, denied him from your bed maybe but you didn't break up a family over one night of bad decisions. You just didn't .
But for me, it was beyond the act. It was the broken trust, the shock of knowing that some other woman had given him something I couldn't, the fact that he had even wanted it from another woman had been enough for me to crumble on the inside.
But, none of it mattered now.
He wanted a divorce. Officially. Wanted to end it for real.
It was jarring, how badly it shook me. I felt unaccountably lost and confused and disoriented. I couldn't imagine not being Taehyung’s wife , i realized with a stunning sense of self realization.
Call me irrational, but apparently, I couldn't stop thinking of him as my husband , even after two years. Soon he wouldn't be my husband.
He would be my ex -husband.
i hated that word.
It had such a plethora of negative connotations to it. When you hear it , you just brace yourself for unpleasantness.
Because it is unpleasant. A marriage ending, a family breaking, feelings hurt , hearts shattered, angry words tossed...its all a very unpleasant experience for everyone involved.
An ex husband was seldom a harbinger of happiness, more often a reminder of choices gone wrong, regrets and wasted time. and I didn’t want to associate Taehyung with a word like that.
Taehyung who was still the kindest, warmest human being I knew. The best father in the world.
I felt like someone had sucked all the strength out of me.
I didn’t really want to think about the call I’d gotten from Taehyung last night. An appointment with a divorce lawyer. It had been followed by an apology because apparently, someone in the law firm had let the info leak. And now it was all over the sleazy tabloids that fed on people’s misery.
It was impossible to escape it too, Taehyung was famous. An idol. And actor. The country's sweetheart. And he was the epitome of perfection. The beautiful, talented actor with an impeccable record of well behavior.
I knew that literally everyone on the planet thought he was a literal angel.
I remembered how much , by contrast, I had been hated when I'd married him.
I could just imagine how much more it would all be this time around. And i wondered if it bothered Taehyung too. Did he perhaps wish he’d never met me
?
It had been sheer luck that we had met....
In fact, if Jimin's car hadn't broken down right outside our home on that cold December night, I wouldn't have even met Taehyung. A great cosmic shift, somewhere some butterfly flapped its wing a certain way and suddenly, Jimin’s car ran over a thumbtack and his phone was dead so while he tried to fix the damage , Taehyung just had to knock on our home and I had been the one to open it.
Boom. That was it. Love at first sight.
I had been a high school kid and he had been barely nineteen. Fresh faced and cheerful , the struggling idol from a small company. He hadn't been surrounded by fans or chased by saesangs. He hadn't had security tailing him. No daesangs, BBMAs, or acting awards. No blockbuster movies to his credit , no chart-bursting songs either .
And I had fallen in love with that version of him.
The hardworking, talented young man who worked twice as hard as anyone around him.
That's right. You've loved him for fifteen years. So it's understandable that you're upset. Now, maybe you can move on too. Go on a few of those blind dates that Jiyoung is always setting you up on. Go live your life instead of being a zombie. Get a hair cut. Dye your hair red. Do something to get your life in order.
"I still find it hard to believe that he would want a divorce. Jangmi yah... did you tell him you forgave him? Tell him you wanted to try again..." My mother said again and the distress in her voice was equal parts heartbreaking and exasperating.
"Mother, I don't want to try again . We aren't married anymore. It's over, whatever it was between us. "
Whatever it was.
How cruel, to have all that love, all that affection reduced to a phrase like that.
What a pity.
"But what about Hoshi? He needs his father..." My mother cried out and I willed myself not to snap. She means well, I thought miserably.
"He has a father. Taehyung is an excellent father and you know that. Don’t start that again.”
My mother sighed.
"I still feel that this wouldn’t happen if you tried a little bit. He’s a good boy. Such a good boy and you could never do anyone better. Why are you so full of pride, Jangmi... so prideful...you should be a little humble. Think of the kind of man he is...where would you find a man like that ? And moreover .... Taehyung loves you. i know he does." My mother said stubbornly.
I sighed, feeling my fingers shake from the effort not to scream. I wasn’t strong enough to have this conversation with her. Not now. Possibly never. Taehyung did love me. Had never made any effort to hide it. But sometimes, love wasn’t enough. It just wasn’t.
And I wanted to yell at my mother she was at least partially to blame for me walking out on Taehyung.
My father had left us for another woman , when I was twelve. I had seen the toll it had taken on my mother and I just knew that I would never let a man do that to me. My mother had later confided in me that it wasn’t the first time. He had done it before. A lot of times. And my mother had always forgiven him. Let him back into our lives.
And one night, drunk on soju she had confided between hiccups, ‘ I wish I’d walked out the first time.”
And that had stuck with me.
Walk out the first time.
If he cheats on you , walk out the first time. Don’t stick around waiting for him to do it to you again. Walk out the first time.
And so I had.
“ Should I talk to him? Tell him you’ve changed your mind? “ My mother began and I felt my patience snap.
“No!! Could you just, for the love of God, stay out of this, ma? It’s over. Our marriage is over and it has been over for a long time. A piece of paper doesn’t really change that, does it? Its not my fault you can’t get over it but that’s a you problem. And you need to fix it yourself. “ I shouted.
My mother immediately recoiled, eyes shuttering down.
“Of course. You know the best. Who cares how anyone else feels, right, Jang Mi? You always know best.” She said softly, and I exhaled, shaken. There it was. The guilt trip. It was never ending.
Please... I just need to go now.” I moved to grab my bag, :” I need to go get ready for the meeting with the lawyers tomorrow. You can keep Hoshi with you tonight. I’ll come pick him up after I’m done and then I’ll drop him off at his father’s place.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
With Taehyung and I, our break up hadn’t been terrible.
It hadn’t been terrible because our own penchant for being terrible had always been very minimal. We didn’t do swearing or fights or threats and it always annoyed our friends that we got along so well. That it was so easy for us to forgive and move on with each other . That we were the one couple who didn’t hold grudges or bring up past mistakes.
Which is why, when we did break up, none of our friends had tried to change our minds over it. They had accepted it rather calmly, shocked at first because it was so out of the blue but not opposed to the idea itself . They just trusted us to know the right thing to do because we were easily the most mature , the most level headed couple in the entire group. We were usually the sounding boards , the voice of reason in whatever petty conflict our friends were involved in .
So when it was us, needling a little advice, a little guidance, our friends had been woefully ill equipped to help. They had merely hummed and nodded and empathized. Maybe that was another reason I’d left. I hadn’t considered the alternative. No one had asked me to consider the alternative.
Our friends had watched us drift apart watched us break up, but they hadn’t really asked us why.
Because if something had caused Kim Taehyung and Jang Mi to break up, man, that must’ve been a really huge issue.
So the break up had been amicable. Gradual and slow but mostly amicable, eased by our mutual love for our son. We wanted him happy and he was happy when we were happy. So we put on a front, laughed and joked in front of him and let him have some semblance of normalcy in his life.
It wasn’t easy.
From him, it had been nothing but a mess of heated glances, touches laced with intent and eyes begging forgiveness . every gaze of his was a silent scream for a second chance that I was not at all ready to give.
Because for me, the raw hurt and anger and frustration that bubbled up every time I saw him , it had nowhere to go. It stayed churning in my gut, made everything bitter and unpalatable and I wanted to hurt him for hurting me. How could I think of a second chance when the hurt from the first, was still so fresh, an open wound festering.
Self esteem in tatters, I had hated him fiercely.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The meeting was at his company, and I arrived at nine in the morning, with a few more minutes to spare. I knew the place like the back of my hand, was here at least once a week either to pick or drop Hoshi off and I knew that the conference room in the third floor was sound proof and cut off from the rest of the building for extra privacy.
Which was a little too late because I’d found two tabloid newspapers waiting outside my apartment this morning.
I opened the door carefully, surprised to see Taehyung sitting in one of the chairs, bent over a sheaf of paper on the table and next to him a leggy girl in a small skirt hovered, fingers resting lightly on his shoulder, bent at the optimum angle to show him her curves.
I sighed, looking away.
It was way too early for this.
“Mia!” Taehyung’s voice made me look up, and I watched as he stood up, pushing the chair away and moving to me . He was easily the most good looking man in the country. And he looked so good at thirty five that it was impossible to look away from him.
He was dressed in a pale blue shirt and black slacks and it never amazed me, how good clothes fit him.
I took in the broad shoulders, thick arms and the lean waist, the carefully styled hair and the breathtakingly beautiful face and sighed when he kept coming closer, hands held out. .
Of course, the customary hug.
i let him wrap his arms around me, my face buried in the comforting warmth of his body, the scent of his cologne filling my brain . He always smelled so good it made my heart hurt. I tried not to let myself get carried away. Tried to remind myself that this wasn’t anything more than a.....
A facade ? Or was it? Was his affection genuine?
Was I just too cynical?
I shook my head, pulling away and smiling a little at the genuine venom in the leggy girl’s face.
“Are you okay? Where’s Hoshi?” Taehyung brushed the hair off my face, eyes warm and I wondered if he’d forgotten we were here to get a divorce.
Whenever we met, Taehyung acted like we were still together.
No, that wasn’t it.
He just didn’t act like we had broken up. He was affectionate and open and cooperative. It always left me in a sort of limbo, unable to navigate our relationship with clear boundaries. There were no line to stop myself from crossing, because he just didn’t draw them.
“ Ms. Lee says we just have to go over the details like the alimony and the custody and the division of assets and then we can just proceed. Get it all finalized. “ He said casually, when I moved away and sat on the chair opposite him.
“Okay .” I said casually.
He smiled and turned back to the girl next to him.
“I’ll join you after the meeting Lisa.” he gave her a nice wide smile and the girl practically bloomed under the attention before bowing curtly in my direction. I watched her walk away, slightly amused.
“Bit younger than your usual type.” I commented , glancing at him. He gave me a look.
“I’m not dating her.” He shrugged.
“Does she know that?” I retorted.
It was dumb. Uncalled for. I was being a bitch, really but the urge to evoke some kind of reaction from Taehyung was something I’d never really out grown. I liked getting under his skin.
Taehyung sighed and gave me a little smirk.
“Are you jealous, Mia mine?” He teased.
It felt a little like someone had dug a nine inch dagger straight into my heart.
That stupid nickname.
God I couldn’t bear it.
Swallowing i looked away.
“Sorry. “ he said quietly, a few seconds later.
I nodded curtly.
“Don’t do it again.” I said hoarsely.
“Why not?” He whispered gently.
I groaned.
“Taehyung... “
“it’s just a name...why does it bother you so much?” He whispered.
“The same reason you’re asking me for a divorce.” I said softly.
He blinked.
“Mia...”
“Because we both know its time to stop.” I said quietly. “ Stop dancing around each other , stop doing...whatever it is we’ve been doing these past two years and give our relationship a name. “
“I’m not very fond of labels.” He shrugged. I glared at him.
“Well tough luck. Labels are good. Labels are great. They let you draw boundaries. “ I retorted.
“You sound like you’ve had enough of me.”
“Well, haven’t you had enough of me?” I snapped.
“Not even close.” He leaned forward gently, eyes pinning me to the table with a gaze so strong he may as well have used his body. And it didn’t help that two years wasn’t enough time to forget how it would feel if he had used his body. How it would feel to be stretched out on that table, him on top of me, hands working my clothes open, lips kissing their way down my jaw.
I could almost taste him, taste the minty freshness of his breath, feel his tongue in my mouth, the hardness of him inside me. My thighs clenched because I hadn’t gotten laid in two fucking years and even if i did, no one would ever compare to the man in front of me.
“Mr. Kim? Mrs. Kim? “
The lawyer’s voice broke the spell and i straightened, swallowing. Ms. Lee had walked in , and I watched her close the conference door behind her before locking it gently.
She was young, dressed in a business suit , a no nonsense bun and had small round framed glasses. She gave me a nice smile, shook hands with us both and placed her briefcase on the table before glancing between us.
“Shall we begin?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author’s Note : its gonna be a bumpy ride.
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Chaconne (Agatha Harkness x Reader)
Summary: You are an aspiring concert violinist who attends an audition for the Manhattan Symphony Orchestra, under the new direction of famous conductor Agatha Harkness
Word Count: 4.2K
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBNquKkKcF4
A/N: Hello! This is an AU fic heavily inspired by one of my favorite tv shows Mozart In The Jungle. This is going to be at least 3 more chapters, and I already have the second part done so it should be uploaded by the weekend. Also, I added a link to the piece that is heavily mentioned throughout this fic. It’s not necessary to listen to it before reading (or at all haha), I just thought I’d add it in for anyone curious :) Hope y’all enjoy! Please let me know what you think, and my inbox is always open for any questions. Also: I do not own Mozart In The Jungle...Jeff Bezos please do not sue me.
You rushed through the bustling streets of Manhattan, silently cursing yourself for not getting a cab. Not that it would’ve made much of a difference; rush hour in the city was horrendous no matter what form of transportation you chose. But at least you would have been sitting in an air conditioned car and not running through the crowded streets. You tightened your grip on your violin case as you hurried across the street, destination clear in your mind.
You had been finishing up your final private lesson of the day when you received a call from one of your old college friends. They informed you to drop everything you were doing, not literally because that would include your very expensive and very fragile violin, and hurry down to symphony hall because one of the first violinists in the Manhattan Symphony had sprained her wrist and they were holding open auditions.
A part of you knew the odds of being selected from hundreds of the best violinists in one of the most affluent cities for music was slim to none, but you also knew you had to take this chance. It’s what you had been working so hard towards during undergrad and grad school, and it would be nice to have a more...stable job. The Manhattan Symphony Orchestra was one of the greatest and well respected orchestras in the world, and you would kill to earn a chair.
You ran faster than you had in months, and made a mental note to add more cardio to your basically nonexistent workout regime because wow, you were out of shape. Rounding the corner, you quickly dodged running into other pedestrians and could see symphony hall a block away. Despite the burning in your lungs begging you to stop running like a mad woman, you picked up the pace and sprinted to the building.
Ever since you started playing the violin you swore to anyone who would listen that you would play in the Manhattan Symphony Orchestra. Your siblings would always ask for concert tickets to see their favorite band, or sporting tickets, but you always begged your parents to take you to the symphony. While your siblings hated it and complained how long and boring it was (and the outrage that they weren’t allowed to bring food inside), you were enraptured by the entire experience.
You fell in love with the sounds of Dvorak, Beethoven, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky. Sitting in the concert hall you waited in anticipation to watch the musicians who had spent their entire lives preparing for that moment; to pour every ounce of their soul into their instruments. Ever since the moment you stepped inside your first concert hall at the young age of five, you knew this is where you wanted to spend the rest of your life.
Shaking those thoughts aside you hurried through the building to where the blind auditions were being held. You silently thanked whatever genius came up with the idea of a blind audition, because you were a mess after running over twelve blocks from your apartment. Following the signs on the walls, you found the warm up room, but was surprised to find everyone packing up.
There were over a dozen people of various ages, and you noticed one of them crying. A woman around your age noticed your disheveled appearance and sighed. “If you’re here for the blind auditions, they were cancelled.”
You felt your heart drop. “What? Did they already find someone?”
“No, because the new conductor is a total psycho,” Someone else said angrily. “She kept yelling about how we’re all wasting her time and she’d rather have her pet rabbit play New World Symphony.” He motioned to the girl who was sobbing. “And she told Megan her tone was so bad that she would personally throw her violin into a wood chipper so no one would have to suffer through her performing again.”
The new conductor he was referring to was one of your favorites. Agatha Harkness. She was beloved throughout the music community and had many fans, but you had heard rumors of her hard work ethic and ability to make people cry in under a minute. You thought back to your undergrad violin lessons where one of your professors told you that your tone while playing Mendelssohn sounded like a dying donkey. Musicians were often times very blunt.
“That’s a bit harsh.”
“A bit?” The guy rolled his eyes. “This job isn’t worth it. I’m going to audition for the second violin chair in Iowa. It might not be as great of an orchestra but at least their conductor isn’t the devil incarnate.”
As the others continued to pack up, you still felt your gut twisting at what could have been. Feeling rejected, you left the room and saw the back entrance to the stage open. From a quick glance around it appeared the hallway was deserted, so you quickly ran through the door, violin case still in hand.
Time came to a stand still as you walked on stage and stared into the seemingly empty concert hall. You dreamt about this moment more times than you cared to admit. There was something so peaceful about being on stage. Taking a deep breath, you closed your eyes and pictured a scene you had spent years dreaming about. Realizing the opportunity to play in this hall wouldn’t likely come again, you made the split decision to open your violin case.
Staring at your violin, you briefly wondered if this was a good idea. But, you silently argued that no one else was around, and besides, you did run half a mile to get here. It would be a waste to not play and appreciate the gorgeous acoustics. Plus you could feel your fingers aching to play something, anything, to let out the feelings of disappointment from missing the auditions.
Gently pulling out your bow, you applied a generous amount of rosin before grabbing your violin. You took a few minutes to tune, and the moment your bow hit the strings you felt a shiver at how the sound bounced off the walls. You went through a condensed version of your normal warm up and played a few different scales before debating on what piece to play.
Although your friend had briefly explained the audition would be sight reading and then playing excerpts from Dvorak’s New World Symphony, the auditions were over and you wanted to play something else. It wasn’t the flashiest piece, or one of the better known violin concertos, but it felt right. Vitali’s Chaconne arranged by Charlier. You had originally learned the gorgeous piece during your junior year of undergrad for a concerto competition and it had quickly become a favorite.
Clearing your mind of everything but the music, you closed your eyes and began to play. Your bow swept across the string, producing the opening g-minor chord. The melodic sound rang through the empty hall and you felt your heart ache at how good this felt. It had been a while since you had the time to play this piece, but it was like it had been no time at all. Your fingers danced across the strings and you felt all the uneasiness leave your body.
While this wasn’t the most complex piece you had ever played, it required your full attention. The chaconne was structured as a simple sixteen bar phrase that was rephrased and dallied up with different techniques and melodies which made it easy enough to memorize, but hard enough that you needed to focus on the pattern your fingers made.
With every movement of your bow, every run you made up and down the fingerboard, you were letting out the pain and sadness you felt radiating through your body. It was hard to put into words how playing the violin made you feel, but the best explanation you had come up with was that it was your salvation. There was no sweeter medicine than performing. No matter how out of control life was, how bad things got, your solution was turning to music. It saved you.
As you neared the end of the piece, you felt your bow arm gently ache and you knew you had to have complete focus if you were going to hit the upcoming octave slides that led to the double stops of doom. Octaves were never a violinist’s favorite technique, and they were your own personal kryptonite. You had rather tiny hands, which made the stretch from your index to your pinky rather difficult on a good day. You changed the position of your hand to make the reach to hit the upper octave, but briefly winced when you realized you had fallen flat on the lower note.
You ended with a flourish of your bow on the final g-minor chord and let out the breath you had been holding in. You stood there for a moment, soaking in the afterglow of your performance and enjoying the quiet that radiated throughout the spacious room. Just as you went to clean off your violin and leave before you got kicked out, you heard the sound of slow clapping from within the hall. The hall was dimmed and you saw a figure sitting far up in the upper rows. The mystery figure continued clapping and they stood up and walked down the steps towards the stage. There in all her glory stood Agatha Harkness, the newest conductor of the Manhattan Symphony Orchestra.
“Not bad, but your octave slides could use some touching up,” Agatha offered as she stood at the bottom of the stage. “You tend to go flat on the lower notes.”
You felt your breath hitch as you saw the famous, and apparently very scary, conductor staring at you. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize anyone was still here.”
“Ah so you aren’t here for the auditions?” Agatha questioned, arching an eyebrow up at you. “What are you doing here then, breaking and entering? I’d hate to have to call security on you.”
“What? No, no I’m not...” You stammered, feeling your cheeks turn red. “I came for the auditions but I was told they were cancelled.”
Agatha laughed, and you noticed how it was more of a cackle. “They were. But believe me dear, I’m sure you would have done the same if you were in my shoes.”
“One of them said you threatened to throw their violin in a wood chipper. Isn’t that a little mean?” You pointed out.
“You did not have to listen to that imbecile butcher the opening of Mendelssohn,” Agatha argued, folding her hands across her chest. “Throwing her violin in a wood chipper would be the least I could do to ensure no one else suffers hearing that disgrace of a sound ever again.”
You stifled a giggle that threatened to escape. “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”
Agatha waved her hand in the air. “Maybe. But you,” she pointed a finger at you, intrigue colored her features. “You were good. Vitali’s Chaconne is a personal favorite of mine. Everyone always chooses to play Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major, or Mendelssohn, or Brahms, or something big and flashy. I’ve always preferred a more subdued piece like Vitali. Violinists don’t take enough time to appreciate the beauty of a chaconne.”
You stared at her in disbelief. Almost no one had even heard of Vitali’s Chaconne, but she did and it was her favorite. “Thank you, Miss Harkness. I-“
“Ah ah ah,” Agatha waved a finger to silence you. “I’m not finished. You were good, but not great. Your octave slides were flat. Your bow hold is giving me a headache, you need to relax more. Your vibrato is too fast, we need to work on slowing it down. Didn’t your teacher ever tell you that? And don’t even get me started on your opening chord.” She eyed the younger woman before continuing. “But despite all that, you have promise.”
You were speechless. She wasn’t yelling at you? “You think I have promise?”
Agatha nodded. “Which is why I’m offering you a job.”
“I got the position?” You smiled. “I can’t believe it.”
Agatha’s eyebrows furrowed. “What? No, don’t be ridiculous. You’re not ready to play with the Manhattan Symphony.”
“But you said you were offering me a job,” you repeated the words of the older woman.
“And I am. As my personal assistant,” Agatha explained as if it was the most obvious answer.
“You want me to be your assistant?” You said in disbelief. “Miss Harkness I’m not so sure if I’m qualified-“
Agatha cut you off again. “If you’re serious about being a violinist, especially being a violinist in my orchestra, we need to work on your technique. Natural talent only gets you so far my dear.” She shrugged. “And I may have just fired my newest assistant for being entirely incompetent.”
“I don’t know what to say,” You admitted. This certainly isn’t how you expected your day to go.
“I’m not going to force you to work for me, dear,” Agatha drawled out. “You can walk right out that door and continue on with your presumably simple and boring life.”
“And if I stay?” You prompted, already knowing what you were going to choose.
Agatha slowly walked up the steps of the stage and approached you. “Well then I’ll have my work cut out for me. As will you, darling. I’ll be working you quite hard.” You blushed at her suggestive tone and she smirked at your reaction. “Blushing already? I’ve barely even started.”
You cleared you throat before nodding. “Alright. I’ll do it.”
“Then let’s get started.” Agatha smirked. “This is going to be fun. Now, let’s take it from the top.”
Working for Agatha was interesting. She was very hard to read, and you could never tell if she was mad at you or if she was just in a mood. You had spent the past few weeks helping her prepare for the first symphony rehearsal of the season. Granted you weren’t doing much to help, all she was asking you to do was make copies of parts and to organize folders for each section.
Today was different. You entered the mostly empty building with a drink holder containing two cups of coffee in one hand and your violin case in the other when the sound of Agatha’s heels came click-clacking down the hallway. From the moment she rounded the corner, you could tell she was in a foul mood.
She was mumbling something incoherent but she stopped when she spotted you. “You’re late.”
You chose to not comment on the fact you were an hour early and instead carefully set down your violin case to hand her one of the cups of coffee. “Bad morning?”
“Hayward is an asshole,” Agatha seethed. “I had the entire season planned out but he thinks I’m not appealing to our investors.”
Well that explained it. Tyler Hayward was CFO of the Manhattan Symphony Orchestra and was a Grade-A asshole. You only had a few interactions with the man but they had all been quite unpleasant. He was less than pleased to discover Agatha had fired the assistant he hired and chose to hire you without consulting him. Luckily Agatha had all but kicked him out of her office and told you to come to her if he gave you a hard time.
“How is Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 not appealing to investors?” You asked in confusion. “Everyone loves The New World Symphony.”
“That’s not the problem. He thinks I’m playing it too safe with the soloists,” Agatha explained and you thought of the soloists selected thus far. You could see how they would be safe options, but who doesn’t love Joshua Bell?
“But it’s too late to get out of those contracts without losing money,” You pointed out. “Does Hayward not know that?”
“Oh believe me, Hayward always gets his way,” Agatha spat out, and you noticed she appeared to be growing angrier. “He’s still mad I was voted in as music director by the board instead of his choice for the position, so he’s punishing me. And now I have to deal with Maximoff.”
You made a mental note to address the first part about Hayward later when Agatha wasn’t as grumpy, but grinned at the mention of the famous pianist. “Maximoff as in the Wanda Maximoff? She’s-“
“A wild card and not the soloist I envisioned having,” Agatha finished for you, glaring at the mere thought of the woman as you both walked towards her office.
“But she’s an amazing pianist,” You argued, remembering the one time you had the opportunity to watch her perform live with the Royal Philharmonic. “The way she plays is beautiful, and magical, and-“
Agatha growled and glared at you, picking up the speed she was walking at. “And she has no control. She doesn’t listen to direction and thinks she’s always right. Her ego is her downfall.”
You arched an eyebrow. “Wow, that sounds absolutely nothing like you.”
Agatha let out a laugh but still sent you another glare. “Don’t push it, darling,” Agatha warned you as she unlocked the door to her office. “I am nothing like Wanda Maximoff.”
You rolled your eyes after she turned around. “Right. So I’ll take the Beethoven parts out to make room for Wanda’s piece?”
Agatha sighed and combed her fingers through her wildly curly hair. “Well I’d rather just tell the little Sokovian princess she’s not allowed anywhere near my orchestra. But since that would be frowned upon, yes put the Beethoven back. Her agent should be emailing us the parts later today.”
You set off to prepare the dreadful task of reorganizing each folder while Agatha studied different scores. She had her baton out and was mindlessly conducting as she went through the fourth movement of the Dvorak. Over the past few weeks you had started to fall in love with watching her conduct. There was something so mesmerizing by the way she could bring different pieces to life with the mere movement of her hands. You watched her right hand lightly grip the baton and noticed the position of her fingers lightly grasping the silver object while her blue eyes scanned the score.
She felt your staring and smirked as she continued conducting. “See something you like, dear?”
Blushing furiously you went back to your task of sorting music, but every once in a while you allowed yourself to take a break to watch Agatha conduct, and although she smirked whenever she noticed, she didn’t make any more comments. Eventually you finished the work and put the folders away while filing the Beethoven in the cabinet.
“Good, you’re done,” Agatha said as she stood up. “Now it’s time for my favorite part of the day.”
You internally groaned and realized what she wanted. “Where you make one of the interns cry and go get lunch?”
“Close, dear. But no.” She motioned to your violin case. “Come.”
This was your least favorite part of the day. Now, you were used to receiving constructive criticism, and even just good old fashioned criticism. Over the years you had less than kind violin teachers, and you shuddered at the memory of Stefan throwing a chair across the room when you only had three pages of Mendelssohn fully memorized two months before your recital preview. He kept yelling in Russian that he would not be the first faculty member to have a student fail a preview. Or the time Jacqueline caused you to have a panic attack right before your sophomore year concerto competition because she didn’t ‘like your stage presence’ and went on some insane rant, and then yelled at you more while you were sobbing. Ah, the fond memories you had of college.
But there was something so intensely nerve wracking about performing in front of Agatha that it made all of those encounters seem like fun and games. You weren’t sure what it was about the woman, but there was just something about her presence that constantly had you on edge. What made it ten times worse was that Agatha seemed to be aware of the effect she had on you, and did whatever she could to make you blush.
You took a few moments to tune your violin and roll your shoulders back while Agatha made herself comfortable in the audience, but you both knew she wouldn’t stay out there for long.
“Now darling,” Agatha called out from her seat. “I want you to remember what we’ve been working on. The first impression you set when your bow hits the string needs to be dominating. I want to feel like you’re pinning me down on the stage. Make me want it.”
You stared at her incredulously and shook your head, trying not to visualize what she just said to you. “Right...pinning...dominating,” You murmured as you straightened your stance and took a deep breath. Setting your bow on the string, you made sure it was positioned at the frog.
“I can see you tensing from all the way out here,” Agatha said in a mocking tone. “Do I need to come up there and help you relax?”
You knew her coming anywhere near you would do the opposite to relax you. “Nope. Just stay where you are!”
“Oh, are you the one giving orders now, my dear?” Agatha teased as she slowly got out of her seat and made her way towards the stage. “I’m just trying to help. You need to relax your shoulders, otherwise you’re going to end up with a hunchback.”
“I like the Hunchback of Notre Dame,” You offered weakly as you watched her stalk her way up the stairs, her heels clicking up each step.
Agatha rolled her eyes. “Of course you do.” She closed the distance between you and put her hands on your shoulders. “You need to relax.” She examined you closer and arched an eyebrow. “And breathe, my dear. Unless you want to fall in my arms.” You had taken to staring at the floor of the stage until you felt her hand gently cup your chin, forcing you to gaze at her. “Am I that hideous to look at that?”
“Ha, you’re so funny,” You managed to get out before taking a deep breath, and once again tried to relax your shoulders.
Despite your best efforts, you still felt tense, and Agatha noticed it as well. Letting out a gentle huff she moved behind you and began to rub your upper back. “Jeez, have you ever had a massage? It seems like you need one.”
“That’s a bit above my current pay check,” You quipped and blushed when you heard her responding chuckle.
“If you’re asking for a raise, you’re going to have to do better than that,” Agatha replied, her breath tickling your ear and sending delightful shivers down your spine. “You need to let go, darling. This much tension in your shoulders will do too much damage to your posture.”
She hit a particularly hard knot and you couldn’t help but moan at the sensation. You thought you heard Agatha mumble something under her breath but you were so lost in the sensation you didn’t ask her what she said. Agatha continued rubbing your shoulders and you slowly felt yourself relax into her touch.
“That’s it,” Agatha murmured. “Good girl.” Your eyes shot open at the praise and you heard her lightly chuckle. “Relax, dear. I could do this all day.”
Your shoulders eventually loosened up and you couldn’t help but groan when Agatha took a step away from you. “Quit your whining and play that chord,” Agatha demanded as she turned away from you, clapping her hands loudly. “I want to be wowed.”
Taking a deep breath, you fixed your stance before setting your bow back on the string. You were hesitating, and Agatha knew it too.
“Any day now. It’s not like I have anything else to do,” Agatha’s words were sharp but you knew she meant it as encouragement.
You let go of any fears you had of what would come next as you positioned your fingers on the string and rolled your bow to produce the g-minor chord. Your left wrist was loose enough to slow down your vibrato and you went through the first section without any interruptions from Agatha. As you began the next phrase you remembered what Agatha had told you about making it bigger and better than before.
“Always leave them wanting more,” Agatha had instructed her. “Make each phrase slightly different. No one wants to suffer through ten minutes of the same few notes.”
You added more vibrato for this phrase and changed the dynamics so you were growing in sound until you heard her calling for you to stop.
“Stop! Stop, that’s enough,” Agatha yelled as she walked back towards you. “That was...better.”
“Dare I say you sound surprised?” You joked causing her to glare at you.
“Fishing for compliments, are we?” She questioned, but eventually relented. “You’re getting better.”
You grinned wildly at her praise. “That was the nicest thing you’ve said to me so far today.”
“Keeping score?” Agatha mused, a smile threatening to tug at her lips at your enthusiasm. “Like I said, you’re getting better, but there’s a lot of work to do. I want to hear those octave slides and not feel like my ears are bleeding from your intonation. Chop chop.”
#agatha harkness x reader#agatha harkness imagine#agatha wandavision#wandavision#agnes x reader#agatha harkness x you#marvel au#wandavision au#orchestra au#Agatha Harkness
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