#and watch a shitty movie i’ll hate and be judged for how many glasses of wine I have | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

laurenairay · 3 years

Text

Make Me a Fool - T. Barrie

Summary: Sofia is tired of going on dates with the wrong guys - when a meet-cute with Tyson turns into only friendship, will she ever have anything more than that?

Word Count: 7.2k

Warnings: meet-cute, fluff, pining, friends to lovers, some bad language

A/N: this is my first OC in a published fic! (I have another in a WIP). Thank you to @danglesnipecelly and @itsbadgerbadgermushroom for their encouragement in trying this 😘 and also tagging @texanstarslove and @broadstbroskis for just genuinely being sweethearts 💚

~~~

The Dating World hadn’t exactly been an easy ride for Sofia. No matter where she met guys – whether it was through dating apps, blind date recommendations from mutual friends, or even that cute guy she met at the coffee shop – every single one had turned out to be no good. They were all wrong for so many reasons, whether that was a playboy with multiple girls on the go, a guy who was only actually after sex, someone that was so self-centered that she barely got a word in edgeways, or there was simply no spark.

And it wasn’t like she didn’t want these dates to work – Sofia loved love. Her parents had met in high school and had been together happily in love ever since. Sure, she knew that was rare, but to her they were absolute couple goals. All she wanted was to love someone and be loved in return, just like her parents loved each other. Was that really so much to ask for?

Sofia certainly didn’t think so.

Another Friday night alone rolled around, and the only thing Sofia wanted was to get a pint of ice-cream and watch some sappy movies. Maybe while giving herself a pedicure and wearing a facemask. Who didn’t love a pamper night? So with her wavy brown hair piled on top of her head, blue eyes scrubbed free of make-up, and wearing her glasses instead of her usual contact lenses, Sofia headed out for her ice-cream. There were a fair few people in the grocery store when she arrived including one guy by the ice-cream freezer. Huh, a very cute guy. Luckily she was still wearing a bra. No, not the time. She was here for ice-cream, and ice-cream only.

As she walked up to him though, Sofia noticed that he seemed to be desperately looking for something – a specific flavour? – but with no luck. Yep, there was the desperate whimper of frustration. Time to step in; this was her territory.

“You okay there bud?” Sofia asked, frowning.

The guy flinched slightly but turned to face her with a frustrated expression. Oh wow he was beautiful – square jaw, gorgeous brown eyes, big broad shoulders, thick arms…and those curls! Wait, no, focus.

“No, I’m not. I just moved here for work and everything is shit and I just wanted my favourite flavour ice-cream but they don’t have it and I just…ugh!”

The guy trailed off, running a shaky hand through his messy curls. Oh wow, she hadn’t been expecting that. Nevertheless…

“Sorry, you didn’t need to know all that. It’s just been a really bad week,” he grimaced, trying to force a smile.

Poor guy. Well, she could definitely relate to comfort eating after a bad week, that was for sure. So Sofia smiled kindly back, shaking her head. “Please don’t apologise! We all have shitty weeks,”

The guy laughed, but it still sounded a little broken. Time to step up her game.

“Maybe I can suggest an alternative? I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a regular at this particular freezer,” she said, wearing a hopeful smile.

This seemed to crack a genuine smile. “Sure, be my guest,” he nodded, “I’m Tyson, by the way,”

Well it was a start. “I’m Sofia. Nice to meet you!”

Tyson smiled shyly at her, seeming a little hesitant.

Sofia dramatically rolled her head from side to side, stretched her arms over her head and bounced a few times on the spot as if warming up, earning an outright giggle from Tyson, making her grin at him. Much better.

“Okay, cherry vanilla sweetheart is okay, banana toffee treat is a weirdly interesting combination, I’m a huge fan of the fudgy chocolate brownie, and the caramel swirl is to die for. But my absolute favourite is the peanut butter chocolate heaven. If you like Reese’s chocolate, then you’ll love this one,” she listed, pointing to the different shelves.

What? Sofia took her ice-cream seriously – there was nothing wrong with that.

Tyson looked a little stunned, but that quickly turned into a brilliant smile, making Sofia’s breath catch in her throat. “The peanut butter chocolate one sounds pretty good actually. Exactly what I need,”

“Happy to help,” Sofia shrugged, trying to play it cool as she passed him a carton of it, as well as grabbing one for herself.

“Hey, um….”

Sofia looked up at Tyson as he trailed off, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. What?

“This is a kinda weird to ask, and I swear I’m not a creep, but I’m new in town and I really don’t know the best places in town to get ice-cream from so-”

“Would you like my number?” Sofia asked, trying not to giggle at his rambling, “for ice-cream related emergencies?”

Tyson’s smile seemed to dim slightly, but he nodded so Sofia figured that was what he wanted to ask her. That was what he wanted, right?

“Yeah, exactly,” he murmured, “I could really use a friend,”

Sofia hoped her smile hadn’t dimmed as well when she passed her phone to him. Friend. Why did that feel weird?

When he passed her phone back with his saved number in it, Sofia sent him a quick message of ‘Hey, it’s Sofia :)’, earning a smile from him as his phone lit up.

“I’ll see you again soon, ice-cream friend?” he asked, voice full of hope.

She couldn’t help but to giggle, nodding her agreement. “Yeah I’d like that Tyson,” she said, smiling at him.

If he wanted friendship, then she could and would give it to him.

The friendship that blossomed between Tyson and Sofia was genuine and sweet. He’d texted her the next morning, just a picture of the empty carton and a thumbs up – and she laughed as she sent back the exact same thing. And from there they were texting pretty much every day, Sofia getting to know exactly how sweet and kind and caring Tyson was. They started hanging out in person too, coffee runs and lunches and late-night dinners, to the point where they had a standing movie night (with ice-cream!) every Friday when Tyson didn’t have a game – and hadn’t that been a surprise, finding out that he played in the NHL. He had admitted that ice-cream wasn’t even remotely in his diet plan at all, but Sofia obviously wasn’t going to tell anyone – and besides, Tyson deserved a cheat treat every now and again, especially with how hard he was working and playing.

Over less than two months, Tyson quickly became one of her best friends. He was just so easy to talk to, and he knew exactly how to make her smile when she was having a bad day – not to mention how amazing his hugs were. And she knew that she was a huge support for him in his new city. She always answered the phone while he was on roadtrips so he could hear a friendly voice, never judging for anything. Sofia knew that she gave him a break from the intensity of his hockey life. She just…liked him, okay? He was such a good person, and really quite her ideal guy – but he only wanted and needed a friend, so that’s what she was determined to be for him. He deserved that much at least.

A few more months passed into their friendship, and it was a week into the New Year where their Fridays lined up perfectly, so Sofia was on her way over to Tyson’s with a couple of bottles of decent white wine. He was supplying the ice-cream this time, but damn it she needed the wine too. Yesterday night she went on her third date with a cute guy she’d been really hopeful about, but, well…

“He said what?” Tyson gasped, his jaw dropping.

“That he wanted to fool around before we went any further, and if I didn’t want to then he couldn’t see a future for us,” Sofia groaned.

“Please tell me you kicked his ass to the curb,” Tyson scowled.

“You’re damn right I did,” Sofia grumbled, taking a big gulp of her wine.

Tyson took a big gulp of wine in solidarity, staring at her with his big brown eyes wide with disbelief. But then Sofia couldn’t help but sigh.

“Why do my dates always end up going so badly? Is there something wrong with me?” Sofia asked, pouting.

Was there? Had she been the problem all along? But Tyson immediately shook his head.

“No, absolutely not,” he said firmly

As much as the conviction in his words made her heart skip a beat, she sighed again.

“Tyson…”

“Nope, I won’t have you talk about yourself like that,” Tyson interrupted, frowning at her, “These guys you try to date are the problem, not you. Ethan…Easton…Evan…whatever his name was, you are worth so much more than that. You’re kind, funny, smart, caring and beautiful, and any guy would be lucky to have you in their life,”

Any guy, huh? Sofia felt tears spring to her blue eyes, so she quickly wiped them away, but not before Tyson saw.

“Hey, c’mere,” he murmured, beckoning her towards him.

Sofia shuffled down the sofa willingly, curling into Tyson’s side and slumping her head against his chest. She immediately relaxed as his arm wound around her waist.

“It’s okay to be a romantic, yeah? It’s not a bad thing that you want to genuinely fall in love. I know I do,” Tyson said softly.

Of course he wanted to fall in love as well. Of course.

“Thanks Tys. I don’t know what I would do without you in my life,” Sofia sighed, squeezing his hand where it rested on her hip.

Tyson just hummed his agreement, pressing a kiss to her wavy hair, making Sofia smile sadly. Of all the guys she couldn’t have, why did Tyson have to be one of them? She couldn’t see Tyson’s sad smile in return though.

“Ice-cream and 10 Things I Hate About You?” Tyson asked.

“Yes please, I need Heath Ledger in my life,” Sofia nodded, sniffing as she sat upright.

Tyson laughed, wiping her cheeks dry of the tears she didn’t know had fallen. “There, still beautiful,”

Why did he have to make things so difficult?

Love was a funny thing. It could be fleeting, passing like a ship in the night, or even all-consuming, like a wildfire with no hope until it burned out on its own. The more time that Sofia spent with Tyson, the harder she fell for him, and the harder it was for her to pretend that she was okay just being friends. No matter how many first dates she went on, how many guys she hoped to move on from him with, nothing worked. The very first moment they’d met when she’d gone out of her way to make him laugh as she recommended him ice-cream, she knew she was done for. But how could she tell him how she felt? He’d literally asked for her phone number to be his new friend in a new city, nothing more. And there was no way she was ruining the incredible friendship that they’d built between them, not a chance. There was no way she could feel anything but empty if he was no longer in her life, and she couldn’t risk losing him. She wouldn’t.

But she didn’t know what to do.

What Sofia didn’t know was that Tyson felt exactly the same. The moment he’d met her, he was gone. She was beautiful – that much was obvious as soon as he saw her – sparkling blue eyes, that amazing wavy brown hair he always wanted to run his fingers through, and the warmest most genuine smile he’d ever seen. But it was her heart that dazzled him on that first night – instead of walking away from his crazy mid-breakdown frantic self, she’d offered to help him and made him laugh. She’d gone above and beyond to make him feel better, and he’d never met anyone like her before. Like an idiot though, he’d completely messed up asking her out on a date, and instead she’d given him her number to be his friend in this new city. Only his friend.

Hell, he knew she wasn’t interested in him romantically – she went on enough dates to show him that he didn’t stand a chance. How could he? He knew he was nowhere near good enough for her as a life partner. Even though he’d told Nate (wonderful oblivious emotionally-useless Nate) how hopeless he felt in their weekly phonecalls, Nate kept telling him to take a chance on Sofia, that Sofia would feel the same as him, Tyson knew Nate was wrong. But there was no way he could give up having her in his life, no matter how much it hurt him to be second to those stupid guys she dated. So he did his best to be the absolute best friend she could possibly need, no matter how hard it was.

Tyson only wished she could see him as more.

“Oh god, why did I drink so much?” Sofia groaned.

Tyson giggled as she slumped against his front door as he closed it, just about able to kick her heels off her feet. “I told you not to do shots with the Swedes, but you didn’t listen,”

Sofia whined, not wanting to admit that he was right. Even though he was right. Tyson smiled fondly at her, shaking his head as he kicked off his own shoes.

“I just wanted your teammates to like me,” she grumbled.

“They already do, sweetheart. They love you as much as I do,”

Tyson froze at the words that spilled from his lips, his heart skipping a beat at the smile that spread across her lips.

“Sweetheart?” Sofia grinned.

Tyson let out a shaky breath. The deep blush that spread across his face made Sofia laugh, a little giddiness rushing through her body along with the alcohol.

“Let’s get you some water,” Tyson grumbled.

Sofia just laughed again, skipping along behind him to the kitchen. It had been a last minute invite to drinks with his team this Friday night (she’d initially hoped to save the Friday night for a second date with a guy from Hinge that she had been hopeful about, but their first date on Tuesday had been so dry and dull), but Sofia had still had a brilliant time. She knew that Tyson knew that she had been disappointed with her date this week, so it had been really sweet of him to invite her out to cheer her up. And he’d even called her sweetheart! A girl could dream, right? Tyson kept his back to her as he reached for a glass in the cupboard and pulled out a jug of filtered water from the fridge, but Sofia just hopped up on the island counter to watch him, happily swinging her legs.

She’d had a great evening with one of her favourite people and now she was still hanging out with him – what more could she want?

“Here, why don’t you drink this while I get you something comfy to wear?” Tyson murmured, breaking her out of her thoughts as he pressed the cold glass of water into her hand.

“Thanks Tys,” she said, smiling, “you’re the best,”

He smiled shyly at her, still blushing slightly, before he left the room to get her some clothes. Sofia sipped on the water as she waited to Tyson to return, still swinging her legs with a smile on her face. She knew she probably shouldn’t have had so many shots tonight, but it had just been such a fun atmosphere. Sofia definitely wasn’t the only one drinking that much (at least, she wasn’t the guy that had to be carried out to an uber) – and she knew that Tyson was watching out for her, so she knew she was able to relax and just have fun. He made her feel safe, that she could just be herself without worrying, and tonight at the bar she’d had an amazing time.

The hangover tomorrow would be worth it.

“Okay, some comfy shorts and a tshirt for you,” Tyson announced, walking back in the room, dressed in sweatpants and an old tshirt now instead of his nice shirt and jeans.

“Ooh gimme,” Sofia grinned, hopping off the counter.

Tyson smiled fondly at her, taking the glass from her hand in exchange for the clothing. Then she frowned at him, earning a frown back. “What’s wrong?”

“The zipper on this dress always sticks and all the vodka will not help – will you unzip me?” Sofia asked, eyes wide and pleading.

Something inside her was telling her that this was a stupid idea, such a stupid thing to ask, but the remaining alcohol coursing through her veins drowned that out. But when Tyson just stood there in silence, his mouth slightly open and his eyes glazed, she felt a niggle of doubt start to creep in. What was she doing, asking him to unzip her? Stupid.

“Forget it, I’ll just stay in this dress,” Sofia mumbled.

“No!”

Sofia flinched at his shout, making him wince.

“I’ll unzip you, it’s fine,” Tyson insisted, “turn around?”

Sofia nodded, biting her lip as soon as her back was facing him, swallowing heavily as she heard him take a shaky breath. She jumped slightly as his fingers brushed the top of her spine, unable to stop her heart beating faster as he slowly unzipped her dress. What had she been thinking, asking him to unzip her? Now she’d never forget the feeling of him standing so close, the touch of his fingers on the small of her back, no matter that she was still a little tipsy.

“There, all done,” Tyson said, voice a little shaky, “I’ll go put a movie on, yeah?”

Sofia just nodded, watching in silence as he walked away. Damn it. She took a deep breath, letting her dress drop to the floor with her eyes briefly closed, before shaking herself out of it and quickly unhooking her bra, dropping that to the floor too. Once she’d pulled on his clothes over her panties (even his laundry detergent smelled amazing), she dumped her discarded clothes onto the kitchen counter and headed into the living room to join him. He’d turned off all but one floor lamp, leaving the room with a low glow, nice and cosy. Tyson looked up at her with a smile, settling her nerves. Whatever, it had just been a weird moment, that was all.

“Pretty Woman?” he suggested.

“Sounds good to me,” she nodded.

He lifted his arm, making her grin and sit down, snuggling into his side, kicking her legs up next to his on the ottoman.

“Comfy?” he murmured, wrapping an arm around her waist.

“Yeah, press play,” she nodded, settling into his hold.

It can’t have been more than 30 minutes before Sofia felt a little heavier in his arms, so Tyson looked down – sure enough, Sofia was fast asleep in his arms. He swallowed heavily as he watched her peaceful face, mind flashing back to the kitchen moment earlier. Unzipping her dress had felt so intimate, especially when his fingers touched the small of her back, and now she was lying in his arms? How was his heart supposed to cope with this? This was everything he wanted…and it wasn’t real. It wasn’t going to last. But…surely it wasn’t a bad thing if he just let her continue sleeping? She looked so sweet, so cosy, and he didn’t want to disturb her. So instead, he just switched the movie off, tossing the remote onto the coffee table before snagging the blanket off the back of the sofa and gently throwing it over the two of them. Their legs were already kicked up on the ottoman after all; he could sleep like this. Luckily she’d already been wearing her glasses tonight rather than her contacts, so at least he didn’t have to worry about waking her up to take them out – he just gently pulled them off her face and tossed them to the other end of the sofa. No point in waking her up. He pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head, relaxing back into the cushions, and closed his eyes.

He could pretend for one night, right?

Sofia blinked her eyes open slowly, groaning as she (blurrily) saw that it was 5am from the clock on the wall. They hadn’t even turned off the floor lamp…but the tv was off and there was a blanket over her. Over them. And Tyson had even taken off her glasses for her. Oh wow. She’d fallen asleep on Tyson, and he hadn’t moved her? She lifted her head from Tyson’s chest, looking at his sleeping face with a soft smile. He was so handsome, wasn’t he? Her heart ached a little at the gentle expression on his face, soft and kind even in sleep. Wow. And it was so nice being held in his arms, the two of them having shifted a little to curl around each other in their sleep, her arm over his waist with both of his around her. She could stay like this for a little longer, right? He was so warm, and it just felt so right…

She could pretend for one night, right?

The next few weeks following the sofa-sleepover weren’t quite as smooth and easy as Sofia had hoped. It’s not that it was particularly awkward, oh no, and there definitely wasn’t a bad vibe between her and Tyson…it was just different. Something felt different between them – she didn’t know if it was because she knew what it felt like to sleep wrapped up in his arms, or the fact that he had demonstrated (even more so than usual) just how kind and caring he truly was, but it was something. And she knew Tyson was the same, because every now and again he would get a strange expression on his face before he shook it off and carried on as usual with a smile.

She couldn’t put her finger on it, and it was frustrating as hell. It was almost like being in limbo, that weird stage that wasn’t quite friendship anymore, but definitely wasn’t anything more. And Sofia was getting so tired of it. She knew she was going to have to tell him sooner rather than later – things were too off for her not to. Because at this rate, she was just going to make herself devastatingly miserable, and she had more respect for herself than that. She wasn’t a fool, and she wasn’t going to start acting like one now.

It was going to have to be all or nothing. But damn if that wasn’t the scariest thing Sofia had ever felt. And she had put it off every time she’d seen him since that night, unable to speak the words that would change everything. It was just so hard, faced with the potential of losing him for good. She hadn’t even been on any dates at all over the past few weeks, unable to even think of anyone that wasn’t him, which was so outside of her usual self that even her colleagues had noticed.

Speaking of…

Tonight she was out at a bar with some of her friends from work. It wasn’t a big weekend booze-up, just a casual couple of drinks after work mid-week – Sofia was only planning on having a couple of glasses of wine as she was heading out to dinner with Tyson afterwards. All she knew was that he had a phone call scheduled for something to do with his work, so they’d decided to meet at the bar first before heading out for food. Sofia was all glammed up though, contact lenses in and blue eyes surrounded by a subtle smoky-eye, with a cute new little black lace dress hugging her curves. She’d gotten ready in the bathrooms at work with a couple of the other ladies she worked with (they were staying out for drinks after she left) so at least she wasn’t the only one. She felt beautiful, the confidence shining through in her smile, and she knew she’d turned heads as she walked into the bar with her colleagues.

Maybe tonight was the night. Hah. Maybe not.

“And another glass of Sauvignon Blanc for you, Sofia!”

Sofia smiled as her friend passed her the new wine glass, nodding her head in thanks. She needed to stay out of her thoughts, wary of being lost in them, especially as she was seeing Tyson tonight. Clear, focused and confident. That’s what she needed to be. Not pining and mopey. No, that wasn’t good at all.

“Oh, hey, isn’t that your boy?”

Your boy. Hah. If only.

She spun around to where her colleague was indicating, unable to stop the smile that spread over her lips as she saw Tyson. Waving to get his attention, Tyson did a dorky wave back before he walked over.

“Hey, sorry I’m a little late. You look amazing,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around her in a hug.

She blushed slightly as she hugged him back, squeezing his waist even with her wine in her hand, before letting go.

“Thank you, you’re too sweet! And it’s really not a problem. I did just get a new glass of wine though,” she said, lifting it in indication.

Tyson laughed, shrugging. “I’ll get myself a beer too then, and we can head out after?”

“Sounds good to me!” she grinned.

Tyson grinned back, walking over to the bar in question. Sofia turned back to her colleagues, several of whom were grinning widely at her, but she just rolled her eyes, shaking her head and earning a few pouts.

“Don’t you dare say anything,” she warned.

A couple of them held up their hands in surrender, making her laugh, but another frowned over at something over Sofia’s shoulder.

“Maybe you should say something,” her friend said, jutting her chin in the direction of the bar.

Sofia turned around again, to see what the hell her friend was talking about, before she froze, her breath catching in her throat. Tyson was at the bar…talking with a pretty blonde woman. That, that didn’t mean anything, right? It wasn’t like they were…oh, there it was, the woman brushed her hand up against Tyson’s arm, giggling at something Tyson said while he smiled down at her. Of course a beautiful woman was flirting with him, and why wouldn’t he flirt back? It wasn’t like he had anything or anyone tying him down. It wasn’t like she had any claim to him herself. It wasn’t like Sofia had ever told him how she felt.

And now she was paying for it. Was she really too late? After all this time? Feeling her smile slip, Sofia turned her back on Tyson, forcing her smile back on her face for her colleagues, who were all just staring at her in pity.

“Please don’t,” she begged, taking a deep breath, “clearly I lost my chance,”

“He’s already walking back over, that was just flirting!” one of the girls insisted.

But Sofia just shook her head, taking a big gulp of wine. She was going to need it. That woman was beautiful, blonde and buxom just like every hockey WAG stereotype. And she was definitely not – so maybe this wake-up call was what she needed. No matter how much it hurt.

“Hey, sorry I took so long, service was slow,” Tyson said, apologising as he slipped back in next to her.

Lie. But it was okay, it wasn’t like she wasn’t aware.

“No worries. Cheers!” Sofia said, raising her glass.

Tyson frowned slightly at the fakeness of her smile, but lifted his pint glass to clink with hers anyway. Sofia just took another big gulp of wine.

After that, as hard as she tried, she couldn’t break herself out of that edge of sadness. The evening was tinged with it now, like an ice grip over her heart. Seeing him flirting with that woman was the kick up the ass that she needed – there was a reason that she and Tyson were just friends.

But even though she tried to keep up a happy façade, she knew that Tyson saw through it, even when they’d left and were eating in the restaurant he wanted to try. He would pause every now and again, a little confused expression on his face, which only broke Sofia’s heart a little more. He knew her so well, but he still didn’t know this. And now she didn’t even know if it was worth saying anything – she looked nothing like the woman he’d been flirting with, so what was the point?

Soon enough, their dinner was over (not that Sofia could say what she’d eaten or what they’d talked about, only that neither of them drank anything alcoholic), and Tyson was driving them home.

Oh, he was driving them to his apartment. Not what she’d expected, but she would roll with it. Nothing they hadn’t done several dozen times before. She could hold herself together a little longer.

“So, the food there was really nice. I’ll have to recommend it to some of the guys,” Tyson said, smiling as he unlocked the door.

“Definitely!” she nodded, shutting the door behind them, “although I’m pretty sure none of them will be going for dessert like we did,”

Tyson made a shushing noise, pressing her finger dramatically to his lips, making her laugh as they walked into the kitchen, sitting down on the stools at his kitchen island. Her laugh trailed off slightly as her heart clenched again, realising how comfortable and how right this felt between them. Why couldn’t this be easy? Why couldn’t things just be easy for her for once?

“Hey, what’s going on?”

She looked over to Tyson as his soft question brought her out of her thoughts.

“What do you mean?” she asked, forcing a smile onto her lips.

“There,” he frowned, “That. That fake smile, you’ve been doing it all night,”

Ouch.

“Have not,” she muttered.

“Yes, you have! You were fine when I first met you but as soon as I came back with a drink, something had changed. What’s wrong?”

Why did he have to be so perceptive? He was a hockey player for fuck’s sake. Why did he have to notice this now?

“It’s nothing Tys. I’m fine,” she said firmly.

Tyson rolled his eyes, making her purse her lips together. “I can tell when you’re lying, Sof. You’re clearly not fine. What happened? Was it something I said?”

“No, it wasn’t something you said,” she said sharply.

“Then what’s wrong? Because it’s clearly something!” he asked, his voice raising louder in frustration.

Ugh, for fuck’s sake.

“Why can’t you just drop it?” she snapped.

“Why won’t you just tell me?” he shot back.

Sofia groaned, throwing her head back. “Maybe it’s personal and maybe I don’t want to tell you,”

“What did I do to make you not trust me? We tell each other everything and now there’s something you can’t say? Won’t say? What the hell Sof-”

“I like you!”

Oh god.

Oh no.

As Sofia tried to breathe, there was one thing she noticed more than anything. Tyson was frozen, his mouth open in shock – and he hadn’t said a word. Sofia laughed at his silence, a little wet with imminent tears, a lot broken, and shook her head. What was a little more heartbreak, right? It’s not like she could take it back now.

“No, you know what? I’m pretty sure I love you. But that doesn’t matter, right? Because you haven’t said a damn thing a-and I knew this was going to be the reaction you gave me, which is exactly why I haven’t said anything before. So now you know – I have feelings for you, and…and you clearly don’t have feelings for me. I think I’m just going to go,”

She still hesitated though, as she pulled her phone out to order an uber. 2 minutes away. But Tyson opened and closed his mouth, eyes frantic but voice silent. And that was all she needed to know. Uber booked. Goodbye Tyson. Sofia left his apartment with a heavy heart, slamming the door closed behind her, tears prickling at her eyes as she ran to the elevator, but she pressed her lips together in an attempt to control herself. She’d told him how she felt, and he hadn’t returned her feelings. She’d put herself out there, all for nothing. And that’s all there is to it.

She could wait until she was home to cry.

If nothing else, she was lucky enough that by the time she reached the bottom of his apartment building, her uber had arrived, so she hurried in quietly, resting her head against the window. The driver seemed to realise that she wasn’t in the mood to chat and just put on some soft music, making her heart clench even more as her mind replayed the last 10 minutes.

She’d finally told Tyson how she felt.

Tyson hadn’t said anything.

Nothing at all.

And he definitely hadn’t tried to stop her leaving.

What more of an answer did she need?

Sofia woke up with a heavy heart, feeling like every part of her body was aching. She felt empty, completely drained, just as she feared she would if...no, when she lost Tyson. There was no going back now. There was nothing else she could do. Her friendship with Tyson was over, and fuck that hurt so much. He was such a big part of her life…what was she supposed to do without him?

She barely managed to shuffle from her bed to her kitchen before she started crying, hands shaky as she made her morning coffee. This was her own fault, she knew that. But that didn’t make it hurt any less. So she just let the tears fall, the pain of her heart breaking flooding through her body. It couldn’t have been more than 20 minutes until she finished her coffee, but it felt like hours, her head throbbing and her eyes stinging, her cheeks tacky with tears. She couldn’t carry on like this. She couldn’t waste her day, her life, like this. What was the point in that?

Sofia hated feeling pathetic, feeling weak, especially over a guy (even if that guy was Tyson), so she took a deep breath, wiping her cheeks dry with her fingers. “No more. Suck it up,” she muttered to herself.

Her breath shook as she left her coffee mug in the sink for later, her hands still shaking a little too, but she stood a little taller, trying to convince herself that everything was going to be okay. Because it had to be okay. It had to. There wasn’t any other option.

But as she went to walk towards the bathroom to take a shower, the door buzzer rang. What the hell?

“Who is it?”

“It’s me,”

Holy shit. Oh god. Tyson?!

“What are you doing here?” she asked shakily, her voice cracking.

“Please will you just buzz me up?”

Oh god. Should she? She couldn’t just leave him outside, right? This couldn’t be happening. What the hell was he doing here, after last night?

“Please Sof? We need to talk,”

Well, fuck.

She bit her lip, before pressing the buzzer, allowing the building’s front door to open. She knew she had less than minute before he would climb all the stairs and knock on her front door, so she quickly ran to her bedroom, scrubbing her face with a make-up wipe and running a brush through her hair. That was better than nothing. She whipped off her ratty old pyjamas and quickly pulled on some clean panties, some sweatpants and a baggy sweater, at least making herself look casual rather than like a slob.

Then she heard three knocks on the door. Damn it.

Sofia quickly shoved her glasses on her face, taking one last glance at herself in the mirror before walking as calmly as she could to open the front door. Sure enough, Tyson was standing there, looking the most nervous she’d ever seen him. Well, at least she wasn’t the only one feeling affected.

“Can I come in?” he asked softly.

She just nodded, letting him walk past her before shutting the door behind him. Sofia bit her bottom lip, wringing her hands together, before she took a deep breath. This was her home. She was in control here.

“So, you didn’t answer my question,” she said simply, “what are you doing here?”

Tyson let out a whoosh of breath, running a hand through his messy curls. He looked…well, he looked exhausted, if nothing else. Like he’d barely slept. Much like her. Wow. What was he…

“I came here to apologise, Sofia,” he finally admitted.

“Apologise? For what?” she asked, forcing a smile.

“Stop. Please stop,” Tyson said, his eyes full of sadness as he stared her down, “you know you don’t have to pretend with me,”

Well, fuck.

“What do you want me to say, Tys? I’m trying to patch together a broken heart here,” she said, her smile now wobbly. Damn it. She wasn’t going to cry again. She wasn’t!

“But I don’t want you to patch up a broken heart!” he blurted.

Sofia’s breath caught in her throat, her mouth going dry. What was he saying?

Tyson swallowed heavily, looking down at the ground before looking back at her, his eyes shiny but steady.

“You make me a fool, Sofia,” Tyson murmured, “every time I think I’ve got my head on straight, you spin me around. I always feel like such an idiot around you, always messing up. Just like last night, when I just froze up like a fucking statue instead of telling you how I feel. The thought of you not being in my life, even just overnight, is too much to bear. I can’t be without you,”

What?

He…what?

Tyson saw her hesitation, but didn’t dare stop talking now that he’d started. And Sofia couldn’t find any words to say at all. So Tyson licked his bottom lip nervously, before taking a deep breath. Here goes nothing.

“I should never have let you walk out of my front door last night. I should never have let you go without telling you that I love you too,”

Sofia whimpered, hand flying up to cover her mouth as tears filled her eyes. He loves her too? He…loves her? Tyson bit his bottom lip, stepping forward to rest his hands on her shoulders, desperate for the contact.

“Please tell me you still love me? Even though I acted like a fool? Even though I hurt you?” he said softly.

She immediately nodded, tears finally trickling down her cheeks. “Of course I still love you. These feelings aren’t just going to disappear overnight,”

Tyson smiled, his eyes a little watery too, but he leant down to press a gentle kiss to her forehead, making Sofia whimper again before slumping into his arms. He slid his hands from her shoulders to wrap his arms fully around her, her hands rising up his back to clutch at his t-shirt.

“I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry,” Tyson whispered.

“It’s okay,” Sofia said, her voice muffled into his chest.

“No, it isn’t. You weren’t okay last night and I pushed you and pushed you, and then acted like a complete asshole,” Tyson muttered.

“You weren’t an asshole! I…I was so sad last night, before we left the bar for dinner. It killed me to see you flirting with her, that beautiful blonde woman while you ordered your drink,”

There. There it was.

But Tyson just huffed a laugh.

“That was nothing. She meant nothing. And now you know how I feel every time you went out on a date with one of those stupid guys,” Tyson mused, “you go out on so many dates!”

Sofia blushed slightly, thunking her head down on Tyson’s collarbone, making him laugh.

“I haven’t been out on any dates at all since we fell asleep on the sofa,” she grumbled.

“Yeah,” Tyson said, his voice much more serious now, “I noticed that. And it gave me hope,”

“Hope?” she asked softly, looking up at him.

“Hope that maybe it wasn’t just me that had feelings,” he explained, smiling.

Sofia smiled shyly back at him, before biting her bottom lip. Tyson noticed her hesitation, and unwrapped his arms from her, leaving one hand linked with hers. Sofia blushed slightly at the contact, as silly and simple as it was, making Tyson smile again.

“C’mon,” he urged, tugging her towards him lightly.

She followed Tyson through her own apartment until they reached the sofa in the living room, the two of them sitting down next to each other. Her heart beat a little faster as he turned to face her properly, but she tucked up her legs to face him too, her knees brushing his thighs. This felt different. This felt so different.

“Hey,” he murmured.

“Hey,” she laughed.

Sofia looked down at where there hands were still joined, Tyson just running his thumb over her knuckles in response. Why were they being so weird about this? No, she needed to know what he wanted. It couldn’t be any worse than last night, that was certain. She could do this.

“So what do you want here, Tys?” she asked softly.

Tyson smiled. She was so much braver than him, twice now. “I want to call you mine, Sofia. And I want you to call me yours,”

Sofia’s breath caught in her throat, but her lips spread into a brilliant smile. Yes. That was…that was everything she wanted. And he was just offering it to her on a silver platter? Really? Well, she wasn’t turning this done, no way in hell.

“I think I could get used to calling you my boyfriend,” she said, not hiding an ounce of her happiness.

Boyfriend. Wow.

Tyson’s smile spread into a grin, the giddiness spreading through his face, making her laugh. “I can’t wait to tell Nate that you’re finally my girlfriend,”

Sofia snorted. Of course Nate would come first before his family. “Is there going to be an I-told-you-so in there?” she mused. She wouldn’t put it past Nate to do so.

“Oh yeah he’s never going to let me live this down,” Tyson nodded, “especially with how I treated you last night,”

Hey, no.

“Water under the bridge, Tys. We’re sorted now, right?” she said firmly.

“Yeah, of course we are,” Tyson grinned, giving her hand a squeeze.

He was finally hers. And she was finally his. Fuck that felt so good.

“There is one thing though,” Tyson said, breaking her out of her thoughts.

“Oh yeah?” she said, frowning.

What?

“Can I kiss you?” he asked shyly.

Her frown melted into a smile, earning a smile back. Instead of answering, Sofia leant her head up, Tyson meeting her in the middle to press their lips together in a gentle kiss. Oh wow. Oh wow oh wow oh wow. She pulled away with her lips tingling, Tyson looking just as dazed as her.

“Kiss me again?” Sofia asked breathlessly.

Tyson grinned.

#my writing #tyson barrie #tyson barrie fic #meet cute to just friends to lovers #all the pining you could ever want #tyson barrie x reader #tyson barrie imagine #tyson barrie fanfiction #hockey writing #hockey fic #hockey imagine #nhl fic #nhl writing #nhl imagine

203 notes · View notes

drabbles-mc · 4 years

Text

Rough Week

EZ Reyes x Reader

Warnings: language, mentions of depression

Word Count: 2.3k

A/N: EZ is my emotional support character lmao 😂😂 Whenever I’m going through it, it’s just going to turn into a fluffy EZ fic and I’m totally okay with that. So, enjoy EZ being the sweet, caring guy we all know he is 🥺🥰😍

You knew that if you received one more piece of bad news it was going to send you into a full-on breakdown. Every single day this week something else had popped up and given you more problems to deal with, more bad news. Your heart was heavy and you couldn’t take it anymore. You figured it was Sunday, the end of one week and the start of a new one, and you could start fresh on Monday.

And then your phone dinged. You picked it up excitedly, hoping for some good news after your interview a couple weeks ago. You’d had a really good feeling about it, and the team that you would be working with seemed to love you. You swiped the email open and you got two sentences into it before your heart sank. On top of everything else, you weren’t getting your promotion. Tears stung at the corners of your eyes and you fought the urge to start sobbing. This alone wouldn’t have been enough to break you, but everything else this week had gone wrong and you just wanted to fucking sob.

You exited out of the email and found EZ’s number, hitting the call button without a second thought. It rang a few times before you finally heard his voice on the other end of the line. You tried to keep it together as you asked him, “Hey, can I come over?” your bottom lip trembled, “I really just…don’t want to be alone right now. I need a break.”

“You want me to come to you?” you could hear the worry in his voice.

“No, don’t be ridiculous. You don’t have to drive all the way out here.”

He chuckled, “You only live ten minutes away, Y/N, it’s not a big deal. Sit tight, I’ll come over with some stuff, okay?”

You sighed, knowing you didn’t have it in you to argue with him, “Okay. Thank you, EZ.”

He said you’re welcome before hanging up the phone. You melted back into your couch, not wanting to move. Maybe it was better that he was coming to you, because you had no interest in moving. You had spent all day in a pair of sweatpants and a sports bra and you had no intention of changing just because EZ was coming over. He was your best friend—he’d seen you at your worst. Nothing was going to surprise him at this point.

You were still curled up on the couch as he walked through the door of your apartment. He had a bag dangling from his hands. He saw you lounged on the couch, staring off into space, and his expression fell. It wasn’t often that you called him sounding so sad and defeated.

“I brought ice cream,” he offered up with a small smile, “And wine.”

“Just bring the bottle over,” you sighed, looking at him with tears in your eyes, “I already called off for tomorrow.”

He put the ice cream in the freezer and, despite your request, brought over two glasses for the wine. He had no doubt that you could finish off a whole bottle, but he still wanted you to pace yourself. He sat down close to you, handing you a glass before opening the wine and pouring some in. he held out his arm and gestured for you to come and lean against him, and you did.

As his arm fell protectively around you, the tears in your eyes started to spill over. You weren’t sobbing, but you couldn’t stop the flow of them from running down your cheeks and onto his shirt. He ran his hand up and down your back affectionately, waiting for you to be ready to talk about whatever was going on. He was glad that you felt comfortable enough to come to him when you were feeling this way. As much as he hated seeing you so discouraged, he was glad that you weren’t making yourself go through it alone.

“I just want a fucking break, EZ,” you finally managed to force out, your voice hardly above a whisper.

“What’s going on?”

“What isn’t?” you sat up a little, wiping the tears from your face, “I got injured at work this week,” you gestured to the bandages that were wrapped around your arms, “My car is still in the shop after they’ve had it for a fucking week when I was supposed to have it by Friday, my depression is flaring up like you wouldn’t fucking believe, and on top of it all,” your lip started to quiver again, “I got passed over for that promotion.”

You threw a lot at him in a short span of time, but it felt good to just rant and get it all out. Your chest felt a little lighter. You took a long drink from your glass and leaned back against EZ’s side with a sigh.

He squeezed your shoulder lightly, “Sounds like you’ve had a really shitty week. I’m sorry, Y/N. You deserve a break,” he pulled away from you slightly, “Go crawl in bed and put your favorite show on. I’m gonna get my boots off and I’ll bring the ice cream in and we can just hang out. You can be sad and stuff your face with rocky road while we watch cartoons. Deal?”

A small smile spread across your face, wondering how you got so lucky to have him as your best friend, “Deal,” you scooped up the wine and the glasses and wandered off to your bedroom.

EZ watched you walk away, his heart heavy at the sight of you. He loved being your best friend and the person that you turned to for comfort. He couldn’t pretend, though, that sometimes he didn’t want more. You had never seemed interested so he never pushed it, not wanting to lose you, but sometimes he almost didn’t catch himself before saying something to you about it. He shook his head at himself as he toed off his boots and grabbed two spoons for the pints of ice cream he had brought over. He took a deep breath before following your path to your room.

He stood in the doorway for a moment and his breath got caught in his throat. Obviously he hated that you were feeling so drained, but even when you were contorted across your mattress in a pair of sweatpants, you still looked beautiful.

“Got any room for me on that bed?” he chuckled as he walked over.

You managed a smile as you scooted over to one side so that he could situate himself next to you. He sat upright with his back against the headboard. He laid on top of the blankets on your bed, not wanting to seem like he was being pushy about anything by tucking himself in next to you.

He handed you your pint of ice cream and your spoon, managing to make you smile for a moment. You nestled up against his side as well as you could while still allowing him to use both arms to eat his own ice cream. He chuckled when he saw the show you put on.

“How many times do you think you’ve watched this?”

“It’s my emotional support show,” you chuckled a little despite how rough your mood had been, “Don’t judge it.”

“I just mean, you could probably recite this to me and I wouldn’t even have to watch it. Right?”

“Not everyone has a memory as good as yours, EZ,” you nudged him playfully with your elbow.

He laughed, shaking his head, “Fair. But in my defense, you quote it half the time we watch it anyway.”

“Maybe so,” you laughed before settling back against him again.

The both of you managed to finish off your pints of ice cream. You expected it from EZ, after all he had to eat something to keep his arms as large as they were. But you surprised yourself a little bit when you found your spoon hitting the bottom of the ice cream container. You handed it to EZ who set it on your bedside table. Now that his hands were free, he comfortably wrapped his arm around you, letting you rest against his side and chest again.

“I shoulda brought four,” he chuckled, not taking his eyes off of the television.

“Mm, maybe,” you were started to feel tired and your voice reflected it, “Next time I have a shitty week we’ll have to remember that.”

He heard the softness in your voice and glanced down at you, smiling at the sight of you trying to keep your eyes open. He gently ran his fingers through your hair that was still damp from the shower you had taken before you had gotten the email and called him. Without realizing it a small hum of approval escaped you and you settled against him even more. He felt your head lean more and more onto him as you drifted closer and closer to sleep.

“I can head out if you wanna go to bed,” he said softly, “I know you gotta be exhausted.”

“No,” your eyes were hardly open, “you can stay. I don’t have work tomorrow anyway,” you patted the blanket, “Get comfy.”

He hesitated, knowing that you were just feeling down and wanting the company. But he knew how he felt about you, and it made him feel skeevy. He stayed put the way he was, continuing to run his fingers through your hair. He felt your breathing slow down and he knew that if you weren’t asleep already, you would be soon.

“Your neck is gonna kill in the morning if you stay like that,” you mumbled, half-asleep.

“You sure you want me to stay?” he knows that it wouldn’t be the first time you slept over at each other’s places, but usually it was in separate rooms. Or you passed out on opposite ends of the couch during a movie. This felt so calculated and intimate.

“Please,” you couldn’t force your eyes open because you were so tired.

He wasn’t going to fight you on it, and he wasn’t going to break your heart anymore by leaving you alone when you clearly needed the company. So he carefully slid underneath the blanket next to you and let you slide up next to him. He laid on his back, staring up at the ceiling. You positioned yourself against his side with one arm draped over his chest. You thought you felt his heart beating fast but you couldn’t be sure as you drifted off to sleep. EZ heard your light snoring and looked down at you with a small smile. This was everything he could’ve ever wanted, he just wished you wanted it when you were happy, too.

He didn’t remember falling asleep, but he woke up the next morning to find that at some point during the night, the two of you had shifted into a spooning position. His heart ached at how well your body fit with his. He squeezed you lightly to him, wanting to soak all of it up before you woke up and it all got ripped away from him. He could still smell the shampoo in your hair, and the warmth from both of your bodies was trapped beneath the blanket keeping you both cozy. He sighed, thankful that for all of the things he wished he could forget, this was one memory he’d always have.

You started to stir, mumbling nonsense as you subconsciously snuggled back against EZ. You heard him chuckle and that was what actually started to wake you up. As you started to come to your senses, you started to realize all of the sensations around you. He had his arms wrapped around your waist, and you could feel his breath lightly against the back and side of your neck. Your feet were barely touching his. It felt so right and you didn’t know what you thought about that.

You turned so you were facing him, and you had never been so close to his face before. Your noses were practically touching.

There was a soft smile on his face, “Morning.”

A tired laugh slipped out past your lips, “Good morning.”

“You sleep okay?”

You nodded, “Uh, yea, I think so. You?”

“Yea,” he smirked, “Aside from your snoring.”

You laughed, trying to push yourself away from him, “Shut up!”

He wrapped his arms tighter around you to stop you from being able to squirm away. In the process of that, your foreheads ended up being pressed together. Your breath got caught in your throat and you could tell by the look in his eyes that he was thinking the same thing that you were: this is how it’s supposed to be.

“Y/N,” his voice was almost inaudible.

“Yea?” your eyes were locked on his.

“I really wanna kiss you.”

You smiled, still wrapped tightly in his arms, “Do it.”

He leaned in, pressing his lips softly against yours. Your eyes fluttered shut and you completely melted into him. You managed to snake your arms around his neck and keep him pulled up against you. His fingertips pressed lightly into your sides as he continued to keep his lips locked on yours. He nipped lightly at your bottom lip and you giggled, making sure not to break your kiss.

Finally, he pulled back just enough so that your lips were separated and he could look in your eyes. You smiled at him, tracing your fingers delicately down the side of his face, “I’m really glad I took today off.”

He smiled, giving you another quick, soft kiss, “That means we get to do this all day?”

You nodded, not saying anything else as you pulled his lips back to yours.

#mayans mc #mayansmc #mayans fx #mayans mc imagine #ez reyes #ezekiel reyes #ez reyes x you #ez reyes x reader #ezekiel reyes imagine #ezekiel reyes x reader #ezekiel reyes fanfic #ez reyes imagine #ez reyes fanfic #ez reyes fluff #my writing #fanfiction #drabblesmc #ez reyes drabble

310 notes · View notes

dadsbongos · 3 years

Text

School Worker AU fic(?)

Movie/Game/Show: Danganronpa (just in general) Dynamic: idk fuckin everyone is in their senior year though Warnings: all of the danganronpa cast - unless otherwise specified - is in their senior year of hs Summary: Tsumugi makes a documentary. AU: Hope’s Peak is a shitty public school that makes their senior students work around the district in self-made or pre-existing programs in order to earn a crucial credit they need for graduation. A lot of the students want a “raise” in their wages because of the work they do, even though “raise” just means any money at all. ~~~

Maki twirled a long strand of her brown hair around her finger, eyes flickering over it boredly, “Yeah, I want to get paid for this.”

Kaito’s eyes widened, an uneasy smile crossing over his lips and nervously looking between his girlfriend and the camera, “Oh, c’mon, Maki-roll, it’s not about money! It’s about the kids!”

“It’s about the money,” Maki glared at the camera, “Pay me.”

“How do I feel about being paid?” Kaede giggled nervously, looking to her other two bandmates, “Well, it’s not about the money, we like playing for kids and the elderly.”

“Ibuki mostly agrees,” the girl with wildly multi-colored began, “However, Ibuki would also like to be paid for our hard work.”

Sayaka nodded shyly, a small smile on her lips, “I like working for the kids and elderly, but I also would like to have said work rewarded, if I could.”

“Yeah,” Hajime picked up yet another empty plastic water bottle with a gloved hand as he responded to the question, “I would love to get paid but nobody gives a shit about the kids cleaning.”

Chiaki, who wasn’t even holding her trash bag - preferring to have her face stuffed into her handheld, “Not paying us is the school’s way of preparing us for the years of unpaid extraneous labor ahead of us in an adult working environment… I think.”

“I should be gettin’ fuckin’ paid,” Mondo grit his teeth, no longer soaping up his math teacher’s car with Kazuichi and just looking at the camera, “I don’t get stared at by those fuckers,” he jabbed a thumb in the direction of a small gaggle of giggling freshman, “for free. I hate this shit.”

Kazuichi nodded, “I don’t even get to remodel the cars! I just wash them, that’s so lame!”

“Duh - yeah, I wanna get paid!” Junko scoffed, rolling her eyes, “What am I? Twelve? I don’t do this shit for nothing!”

Mukuro sighed quietly, practically elbow deep in the dirt, “You don’t do anything…”

“The hell did you say to me, you fat, ugly, skank?” the blond pressed a stiletto boot into her sister’s back, shoving her face-first into the flower beds Mukuro would now have to redo.

“So,” Tsumugi Shirogane held a mic to her mouth as she stared into the camera, “with so many students demanding a raise in wages, which would mean any wages at all, let’s get to the core issue of why these students feel that their work is so reward-worthy.”

A few feet away, Mikan was watching the hostess of the documentary with nervous eyes, her heart racing as she turned to Rantaro, “Oh my God, is she g-gonna ask us questions? I’m n-not good at speaking. I-I’ll stutter and mum-mumble and she’ll ask me to re-repeat myself, oh God…”

“Hey,” Rantaro gave the girl a small smile, carefully setting his hand on her shoulder, “it’ll be okay. I can do most of the talking, if you want?”

Mikan nodded shakily, fingers intertwining and scrambling apart repeatedly, “Th-that would be p-preferred, tha-thank you…”

As Tsumugi crossed towards the students, she stuck a microphone into Rantaro’s face first, thankfully. Quick to the point, she asked him the question of the segment, “Why, exactly, do you think your work is worth the funding of payment?”

“We do basically the same amount of work that the ordinary school nurse does under regulation and we’re certain our efforts are worthy of payment,” in order to avoid the awkwardness of Tsumugi having to ask Mikan, he gestured to his partner in nursing, “We both are.”

Nodding, Tsumugi moved to place the microphone into Mikan’s face anyway, “And your thoughts?”

“Uhhhh,” Mikan froze up, patting the tips of her fingers into each other, “y-yeah?”

“Yeah, what?”

“Yeah with Rantaro…”

Tsumugi blinked at the girl, standing there for a minute before slowly nodding and turning back to the camera to continue her segment.

Mikan turned to Rantaro with wide eyes, tears already bubbling at her waterline, “Oh my God… I just did that… I just- I - oh my God…”

Rantaro nodded, crossing his arms with a pitying smile, “Yeah, that was pretty bad.”

A loud, resounding thud was the opening sound of the shot, a girl landing flat on her back on a gym mat is the scene. The gymnasium is filled with a multitude of students in fighting stance - a tall girl with red eyes and a short boy with blond hair standing at the front.

Tsumugi narrowly dodges stray hits and flying bodies being tossed over shoulders as she approaches the two senior students. She judges how confrontational they both look and decides to not hastily jam her mic into either of their faces as she asks, “And what is the program you two have picked up for your required credit?”

Peko doesn’t look away from the students as she answers, “Self-defense.”

Fuyuhiko nods, “Any-fuckin’-body can sign up but most of these kids are girls and LGBT+. They’re who mostly comes.”

“Which is a whole different problem on its own,” Peko added, “The fact that they feel the need to learn self-defense rather than trust that nobody will try attacking them for simply walking down the street is rather saddening.”

“Oh, well that’s incredibly noble of you,” Tsumugi breathed out, slightly surprised - she hadn’t expected such mean-looking students to care so much

“Someone has to beat up scumbags,” the taller of the pair shrugged, “My arms were getting tired.”

“Right…” Tsumugi nodded, “uh, you two share this gym with another group, correct?”

“Oh, fuck, yeah,” Fuyuhiko glanced to one of the clocks encaged on the wall, “They should be back in- “

“We’re here for the gym!” a voice boomed out in the space, “Move out!”

“No!” Fuyuhiko shook his head, charging towards the pair and the volleyball team they were coaching that day, he jammed a finger into the girl’s shoulder, “You asshats are always too early! Peko and I got another ten minutes, at least!”

“Well, they need the gym now!” Akane gestured to the team, which was awkwardly standing around and waiting for the approval of Nekomaru and Akane to spread out to the gym, “‘Sides, it’s just five minutes!”

“Eight, now,” the blond crossed his arms, “They continue, you guys wait your turn.”

Seeing no soon-to-come resolution from the pair, Nekomaru moved past Fuyuhiko and Akane as they argued and towards Peko at the front. He rubbed the back of his neck, “We really need the gym right now. You can take our last ten minutes tomorrow if that’d be fair.”

Thinking over the proposal, Peko nodded before picking up the whistle from around her neck and blowing into it before calling to the self-defense class, “Alright, dress out and head home! Remember what you’ve learned and stay safe! Tomorrow, we’ll be meeting out by the baseball field!”

Fuyuhiko sighed, clenching his eyes shut to avoid looking at Akane’s smug grin, “You’re lucky Peko stepped in or I would’ve laid your ass out on the mat.”

“Whatever you say, baby face,” the girl snickered, strolling by to join Nekomaru’s side.

“What did you call me?!”

Tsumugi looked to the new faces, “Do you two fight like that often?”

Akane nodded confidently, “Constantly!”

Sighing, Nekomaru lowered his head, “That’s not a brag.”

“And you two do what around the school?”

“We pick up the school’s teams when the coaches are busy,” Akane pat her outrageously buff partner’s back, “You should see coach Nekomaru out there! He’s like a pro!”

“Well, that’s certainly something!” Tsumugi giggled, “And I can assume you two want to be paid for your efforts?”

“We’re supposed to be paid for this?!”

“Oh my God, leave us alone, you guys are so mean, assholes!”

“Don’t say that, we’re on school grounds! A teacher could walk by at any time!”

“Can you two please be quiet? They’re not even responding to you at this point.”

“We must focus on this column entry!”

“Y-yeah… so s-stop bothering us…”

Tsumugi hesitated, looking at the camera with furrowed brows, “Do we even want to go in?”

The camera shifted with the director’s nodding, the girl sighing loudly before quietly agreeing and pushing the door open to see a classroom with only five people in it. A short boy with untamed purple hair being held back from clawing at the back of a girl with long braids and glasses by another boy with greenish hair… God, what color was that?

Another girl looked up from the desk she was sitting at, “Are you here for the documentary on student payment for their work efforts involving school credit?”

“Yes, I am,” Tsumugi was incredibly tempted to lie, say she got lost, and run out - but she didn’t. Instead, she asked them to introduce themselves.

“Kyoko Kirigiri,” the girl at the desk introduced herself with a solid nod before returning to her work.

The boy holding back his friend finally managed to calm the purple-haired one down before shyly waving, “Shuichi Saihara,” to prevent the other boy from talking, Shuichi clapped a hand over his mouth with an exhausted look, “This is Kokichi Ouma. Us three solve ‘mysteries’ around school, it’s mostly just stolen items. They,” he pointed to the pair on the other side of the room, “write the school newspaper.”

Kokichi managed to release himself from Shuichi’s grasp, immediately rushing towards Tsumugi and grabbing her long skirt between his hands and throttling her, “Help! They’ve kidnapped me! I’m being held against my will!”

“Ah!” Tsumugi screamed, looking up to Shuichi, “What is he talking about?!”

“He’s a liar,” Kyoko piped up, “He’s annoying but he gets the job done quickly so I haven’t kicked him out yet.”

The girl across the room huffed, “C-can you s-shut up over there? And you,” she pointed at Tsumugi, “hurry up and get over here s-so we can get b-back to work…”

“Right,” she nodded slowly before going over to the pair, “You two write the newspaper, that must include some interesting stories.”

“N-not really… I’m T-Toko Fukawa. That's Hi-Hifumi Yamada…” she gave the boy a side-eye, “Don’t say anything w-weird…”

“Never!” he cheered, turning to Tsumugi, “I am Hifumi Yamada- “

“Yeah,” Tsumugi sighed, already rather exhausted with his loudness, “Toko already introduced you.”

“But you may call me by my online dubbing - The Alpha and The Omega!”

“Alright,” Tsumugi dryly replied - he didn’t seem awful, but he definitely wasn’t for her.

“Wait!” Kokichi whined as the girl was leaving, grabbing at the tail of her skirt, “Didn’t you hear me earlier?! These creeps kidnapped me! They’re gonna kill me!”

“Stop talking,” Kyoko mumbled.

Shuichi sighed, running his hands through his hair, “Please, Kokichi, you’re giving me grey hairs and I’m barely eighteen…”

Tsumugi rubbed over her eyes, exhaustion ringing over her, “Me too and I haven’t even known you for ten minutes.”

“No more crazies… no more crazies… no more crazies…” Tsumugi repeatedly murmured to herself as she rubbed her temples. Finally taking notice of the camera pointed at her, she hissed, “You better cut that.”

Once again, there was the motion of a nod from the director before following Tsumugi around to the back of the elementary school neighboring Hope’s Peak to find two more groups. This time, however, the two groups were working together extremely well and weren’t fighting whatsoever. Who knew how refreshing it could be to not hear yelling for five minutes?

It seemed that the third-grade student body had been split in half between a group of two and a group of three. The two were monitoring as kids ran around the large field - the three had kids standing at canvases with just a few bouncing around one with long hair tied in what appeared to be fishtail braids.

“Aw,” Tsumugi smiled at the sweet sight, “Okay, let’s go over there.”

A voice popped up from behind the camera, “I heard about these girls from the headmaster. Those two,” he pointed over to a muscular girl picking up kids on her arms with a shorter girl trailing behind her, “are Sakura Ogami and Aoi Asahina. They go around to closeby elementary schools and set up field days for the kids,” then to the group of three, made up of a white-haired girl in a long yellow overcoat, a redhead with extremely pointy boots, and the fishtail girl throwing obviously fake hits with some kids, “They’re Angie Yonaga, Himiko Yumeno, and Tenko Chabashira. They teach kids about the arts. Except for Tenko who teaches them her made up Neo-Aikido, something about controlling emotions and all that junk.”

“Wow,” Tsumugi breathed out, still approaching the two groups, “that’s so great. They seem like a fun- “

Then, out of nowhere, Tenko suddenly tossed Angie over her shoulder, causing an eruption of cheers to burst from the children.

Tsumugi’s face fell, she turned around and nearly ran out from behind the school and towards the car. Chants of “no, no, no, no” leaving her lips.

“Oh, finally, normal people…”

The two boys in the copy room looked up at Tsumugi’s sigh.

“You must be the documentary girl?” the brunette smiled slightly, unevenly, “Sorry, I don’t know your name,” he lifted up a stack of papers, “Kyoko probably mentioned it but I was grading.”

“Tsumugi Shirogane!” the white-haired boy cheered, setting down the papers in his hands, “You’ve come to get my worthless opinion on whether or not student workers should be paid?! How incredible!”

“Sorry about him,” the shorter of the pair chuckled, “He has an inferiority complex. We’re working on it.”

“Uh-huh,” not as bland as she thought, apparently, “You two are… TAs?”

“Yeah,” the shorter nodded once again, “We work under Miss Yukizome, but lots of students everywhere are TAs, so I don’t think we should really have a say in this…”

“Especially me!” the other one butted in, “I barely help at all… I’m just garbage…”

“Nagito, you’re not garbage, and you do a lot!”

“With all respect, Makoto, the only reason you’re stuck with me is because all the other teachers can’t stand me!”

“Well, the only reason I’m here is because nobody else had a spot open.”

“Do you two just comfort each other about your hang-ups?”

“Yeah,” Makoto nodded, already pulling Nagito into a hug and patting his back, “it’s nice. Like super amateur therapy.”

“Painfully normal in comparison to the others,” Tsumugi turned to the camera, “Almost as plain as me.”

“No,” the voice from behind the camera peeped up again, “You’re still definitely the plainer one.”

“We duel-work animal care and the occult,” Sonia cheered, holding a small puppy in her arms as Gundham fed hamsters in the back of the room, “It’s quite a bit of work but we manage, don’t we?”

Gundham nodded silently.

“Does…” Tsumugi gestured to the boy, “Does he ever speak?”

“You haven’t built enough resistance to the poison that would slip from his lips, unfortunately,” Sonia shakes her head, frowning slightly, “He doesn’t speak to people unless they’re immune.”

“And you are?”

“Surprisingly, yes!” eyes lighting up at the question, Sonia nodded excitedly, “It seems that I have managed to build up an immunity to his poison without even realizing it! Is that not amazing?”

Refraining from rolling her eyes, Tsumugi merely glanced between the beautiful blond and the boy hiding his bright red face in his scarf, “It truly is amazing, yes. How wonderfully random.”

“Wanna go?” the director asked.

“Yeah…”

The camera aimed at a downcast Tsumugi, a frown depressingly obvious over her features. The voice behind the camera popped up, “Wanna try Celestia at the math club again?”

“And get told that only people she hates more than her own clubmates are theatre kids and then get called theatre kids and yelled at to get out again?” the girl grumbled, letting her microphone fall down into her lap as she sat slumped against the wall, “No thanks, Monokuma.”

“I mean, she’s not wrong,” the camera turned to show off the boy going by Monokuma with heterochromatic black-and-red eyes, half-and-half dyed hair between white and black. He snickered, “Yeah, I’m a big theatre kid. It’s unfortunate. You are, too, just let it go.”

“She might be right, but it’s still mean!”

26 notes · View notes

fvckyouimaprophet · 4 years

Note

63. “Oh my god, it’s /you/.” Kurtbastian 😛

90s au ✌️ (tumblr won’t let me put this under a read more; i’m sorry)

When Santana sets him up with someone, Kurt almost says no, but at twenty-eight after seven failed dates in a row, he’s in no position to refuse. "What’s his name?” he asks.

“Sebastian,” she says, and for a moment, he feels a flicker of fear, but he pushes it back—not before Santana spots it, however. “What’s wrong?”

“Knew a guy in high school named Sebastian. He was full of himself and a bit of a dick. It’s just a bad association.” He omits a few careful details, but there’s no need for Santana to know those. And when he shudders, and she laughs.

"Can’t promise this one’s too different, but it’s charming when he isn’t getting on your nerves.” She shrugs, and Kurt wonders why the knot in his stomach feels so tight. Rather than harping, he puts his headphones back on and turns the volume on his CD player all the way up.

He makes it to the bar early, and he’s just on his second Negroni when he hears a familiar voice behind him. “Kurt?” His palms start to sweat, and for a moment, he debates feigning unawareness, pretending that’s not him. But sooner or later, Sebastian will see him, and he’s always been infuriatingly clever.

He turns around and braces himself. "Hello Sebastian.”

Sebastian’s jaw clenches, and he lets out a sharp hiss of air. “Oh my god, it’s you. When I heard the name Kurt, I wondered, but I didn’t actually think—”

“Same.” He nods stiffly and shoves his free hand in his back pocket. They stare at each other for a moment before Kurt relents and adjusts his stance, crossing his legs and balancing his weight more on his right as he speaks. “Jeff said you were planning to move to New York, but I never knew you actually did.”

Kurt’s sure that Sebastian will find some excuse to leave. His eyes dart around past Kurt from the bar to another empty table to the exit. But Sebastian surprises him and steps forward, leaning forward against the bar to get the attention of the bartender.

“Two tequila shots and an old fashioned.” Sebastian fishes out cash and places it on the bar. The music is loud enough to mask the silence, but Kurt’s chest feels tighter by the minute. His breath feels caught halfway down his throat by the time the bartender places the drinks in front of Sebastian. His eyes hover on the two shots, and Sebastian catches him because he scoffs. “Please, don’t flatter yourself. They’re both for me.” He downs both of them, grabs the old fashioned, and points toward an empty table.

“When did you move?” Kurt asks when they’re both settled down. In the corner, the music is a little less overwhelming, but there’s still enough noise that Kurt knows he should probably be leaning in. At this rate, his throat will be raw from yelling soon enough. But if Sebastian isn’t willing to bend forward, neither will he.

“It was a year in July.” Sebastian takes a swig of his drink. “I got tired of Paris.”

“And this was after you were tired of London?” Sebastian’s eyes narrow, but he nods. “Lucky you. Must be nice.”

“Green was never a good color on you, Kurt,” Sebastian bites back.

“Please, as if I’m jealous.” The words don’t sound convincing, even to him, and he finishes his drink in two gulps. “I’m getting something else.” The chair skids loudly on the floor behind him as he stands up and pushes it back.

“Get me something too.” Sebastian finishes his drink and holds out his empty glass. Kurt stares and imagines knocking it out of Sebastian’s hands to shatter on the ground, but he doesn’t want to make a scene. Sebastian pulls out a twenty. “I’ll pay.”

It’s low, and they both know it. Kurt grinds his teeth and snatches it before turning on his heels and making his way to the bar. He has to take a steadying breath not to snap at the bartender when he asks Kurt what he’s having. “I’ll have a shot of Baileys, an amaretto sour, and an Olympia.” A smug sense of satisfaction runs over him at the thought of Sebastian’s face when he places the cheep beer down in front of him.

Sure enough, Sebastian doesn’t disappoint. “You get yourself a shot and a proper drink, and you give me this shit?” Sebastian frowns, but he’s never been one to refuse alcohol, and Kurt can sense that now isn’t any different. After some grumbling, he takes a sip, and despite his immediate wince, Kurt is certain that he won’t let a drop go to waste.

"So, what do you do when you’re not trying to act?”

“Who’s to say I’m not just acting?” Kurt asks, and Sebastian rolls his eyes.

“I’m not an idiot. It’s not like you’re in Rent or anything, and it’s not exactly a well-paying job unless you’re on a marquee where it counts. You were always so fucking stubborn about it.”

“I made it to the call backs for Bat Boy.”

Sebastian sighs. “Not everything’s a jab at you—believe it or not. I know you have talent. It’s just impossible to break in. It’s why I changed majors in college.” The compliment catches him off-guard, and Kurt’s shoulders drop, though he looks at Sebastian warily.

“It is.”

“Ten fucking years, and you still don’t know how to take a compliment. Unbelievable.”

Once the alcohol kicks in, it’s becomes more bearable. For brief moments, when he gets lost in what Sebastian’s saying, he can almost forget, as if ten years haven’t passed and they aren’t different people. As if it had never happened. In fact, he surprises himself when he catches himself, elbow propped on the table, chin in his hands, leaning towards Sebastian as he speaks, drawn in.

He’s no less captivating than he was when they were young. Despite his many infuriating qualities, when he speaks, he fills the room. Kurt’s always been envious of Sebastian’s gift at storytelling and his unique ability to make every person feel like they’re only one in the room. Even now, the rest of the bar fades away until it’s just a faint buzz as Sebastian shares a story about an absinthe-fueled night in Paris.

“There we were under the Eiffel Tower, and this guy tells us he’s ordained, and he has one night left in Paris, and it’s his dream to marry someone there. And my friends are sure he’s just drunk and full of shit, and they say yes, but then he stands up and straightens his back like—” Sebastian mimes it, placing his shoulders back and pushing out his chest. “And he just goes into it, and we all realize that he’s definitely ordained. He had this mini Bible and everything it turns out.”

“Is it really as beautiful as it looks in the movies?” Kurt asks and feels immediately dumb. But if Sebastian judges the question, his face doesn’t reveal it.

“I mean, it’s kind of this iron monstrosity, and mostly I hate it, but sometimes when you’re alone at night, and it’s there just towering, if you squint just right or if you’re drunk enough that it’s blurry, it almost blends into the sky with the stars, and then it’s breathtaking.”

Kurt feels Sebastian’s hand brush against his, and his face flashes hot and red. He yanks it back and flounders, trying to find something to say, but he’s suddenly aware of how dry his mouth is. “That sounds nice,” he finally settles on, and he cups his glass with both hands as his eyes fall down to it.

“Kurt.” Sebastian’s voice is low, nearly a growl, and despite his better judgment, Kurt looks up. When they meet gazes, his heart hammers against his chest, and his whole body reels, dizzy. Even though it’s been more than a decade, here in this shitty dive bar, he feels sixteen and reckless and alive in a way he hasn’t since the charm of New York first wore off.

"I need to get another drink,” Kurt says, despite the fact that his is clearly half-full, but when he stands up, so does Sebastian.

“Don’t.” And when Sebastian leans down, Kurt doesn’t step back. His eyes close, and he lets out a soft moan as Sebastian’s lip press hard against his, and Sebastian’s arms wrap around his waist. A shiver runs up his back, and his entire body feels on edge as he kisses Sebastian back and closes both hands around Sebastian’s shirt.

When Sebastian pulls back, he nearly falls forward. “Fuck.” The words jar him out of the daze, and he can feel everything crashing down around him. Without another word, Sebastian turns around and walks away.

Kurt watches as the crowd swallows him and collapses back in his chair.

#kurtbastian #my kurtbastian #my fics #missjanjie #ask #what happened between them? you decide #although i have my ideas [gossip girl voice] i'll never tell

17 notes · View notes

thebestworstidea · 4 years

Text

Crash and Burn

(Falling Star)

(Implied Dukeceit, Implied intrulogical, Remus-typical dialogue and imagery.)

Thomas is feeling better, and ready to dive back into making videos. Something is a little off, however...

“What is up everybody?” Thomas said cheerfully into the camera. “I know it’s been a hot minute, but I had to go back down to like, the fourth video and take the time for me I needed, and that can take a while. But I’m feeling better now, energized and raring to go. So it’s time for some good old-fashioned brainstorming, and for that I’ll need my brain” he gestured towards the entryway, and Logan rose up with a resigned expression.

“Good afternoon Thomas. Surely there has to be a more efficient way to do this?”

“This is more fun!” Thomas retorted. “And I’ll also need my-” he gestured towards the television and Logan surged forward a little bit

“Perhaps you shouldn’t-”

There was a laggardly pause, then a strain of music played- distinctly not an airy flourish.

“No wait wait!” Thomas made a pushing down gesture, but it was too late. Remus had arrived with a wine glass full of something white and opaque, and what might have been fingers sticking out of it. He stuck one in his mouth and crunched.

“I brought snacks!” he said cheerfully, toasting with the glass.

“Remus, what are you doing here?”

“You called for your creativity! And here I am.”

“I called for Roman”

“Yep.” he scooped out some of whatever was in the cup with the orange stick, and licked it off. “You got me though.”

“What is that, puss and fingers?”

“Uh, no. It’s Pumpkin-spiced greek yogurt and baby carrots.”

“Somehow worse.” Thomas winced. “Wait, that’s a seasonal flavor, where did you find that?”

“Where do I find anything good to eat? The back of the fridge.”

“It’s May.”

“I grew the carrots.”

“Baby carrots aren’t actually young carrots, they're just tumbled pieces of larger carrots.” Logan protested.

“Tell that to my nursery! They’re so cute in diapers.”

“Remus what did you do to Roman?”

“What did I do to Roman?” he gave a stuttering laugh. “What did you do to Roman.”

“Is he still upset about…”

“Roman has been… less than communicative of late.” Logan put in. “You can still ‘brainstorm’ you said without him-”

“Take me off the bench!” Remus urged. “Or take me over it, both sound fun.”

There was a pause as both Thomas and his Logic stared at Remus, who took a slurping sip of his snack, leaving yogurt in the edge of his mustache.

“Where is he?” Thomas demanded. Remus straightened up a little bit and wiggled.

“Ooh I love it when you get commanding, Tommy. He’s in the Imagination, playing petty tyrant.”

“Is that bad?” Thomas asked Logan.

“Well, yes and no. Bad for you? No, you’re still able to access the things Roman brings to the table. You haven’t had any problems getting ridiculous crushes on semi-celebrities, acting, or thinking of ideas, this was just a formal brainstorming session, probably because you didn’t have a better idea for a video besides watching Roman and I ‘Go At It’.” Remus snorted with amusement. “Bad for Roman? Possibly.”

“Uh, that’s not the way ‘go at it’ is normally used.” Thomas said, looking a little uncomfortable.

“It is not used to indicate conflict?”

“It’s more often used to indicate fucking.” Remus corrected “Like ‘watching two dogs going at it’.”

“I assumed it meant fighting.” Logan pulled out a card and jotted something down on it. Remus took another sip of his yogurt, and stuck a carrot in his mouth like a cigar.

“Say, did you know that rabbits don’t actually like carrots that much? They can get sick if they eat too many.”

“What?”

“Yeah, it was Bugs Bunny making a reference to a popular movie star smoking a cigar.” Remus went a little starry eyed. “Bugs Bunny is a chaos god of an influencer. Instagram wants what he has.”

“Well that’s a piece of my childhood destroyed.” Thomas sighed.

“Much like that poor rabbit’s colon.”

“He’s right, carrots are mainly fructose and fiber, though they do contain several nutrients. They’re far from the healthiest vegetable available.”

“Doesn’t matter, still hate them.” Thomas pushed his hair back from his face. “Can we get back to my missing Roman?”

“Have you been missing him?” Remus asked, eating the last of the carrots and tossing the wine glass over his shoulder, behind the TV. Thomas assumed it was imaginary, but he winced anyway.

“I thought I was giving him space to calm down.” Thomas said in a small voice.

Remus cackled. “He hasn’t come out of the imagination in weeks, he is in no way calmed down.”

“Which does bring me back to the ‘possibly’ I mentioned earlier.” Logan put in. He paused and didn’t say any more.

“Are you trying to be ominous? Because you’re being kind of ominous.”

“That wasn’t my intent, Thomas, I simply wanted to be sure you wanted the information.” he cleared his throat. “You are aware of our ‘rooms’ at this point, where some of our traits are, shall we say, prevalent.”

“You’re soaking in it.” Offered Remus, picking bits of carrot out of his teeth.

“Not inaccurate. This shall we say field of effect can have a negative effect on sides that don’t share the right- there isn’t really a word for it- call it theoretical biology.”

“What does this have to do with Roman?”

“Bear with me please, I’m getting to that. It can have a negative effect on other sides, but a positive effect on the side to whom the ‘room’ belongs. It can increase stability, reinforce tasking, and give a feeling of wholeness.”

“Patton got over excited and effusive in his room though-”

“That’s just Patton. Particularly Patton who is trying to avoid a subject.”

“I keep telling him that talking about his last bowel movement works so much better to get people to change the subject, but apparently that’s a shitty idea.” Remus put in.

“At any rate, Roman’s room-”

“Our Room”

“‘Creativity’s room- Enhances shall we say, flights of fancy, visualization, and to a certain degree, emotional responses.”

“And that’s the Imagination you guys have been talking about?”

“Nope!”

“The imagination is part of you the same way we are part of you, just not anthropomorphized.”

“Make me sound like a furry there, Logan.” Thomas raised an eyebrow.

“Ugh.” Logan pinched the bridge of his nose, and continued. “Other parts of your brain are the subconscious, autonomous functions, and your memory archives, both short term and long term. Most parts of your mind interact. What we call the mindscape is basically the place between these parts. We, that is your Sides, live in that area. While we each have our ‘rooms’ our corners of your mind, we also have a common area, which is more or less where you go when you want to talk to us, it isn’t very deep into the mindscape, a surface level daydream. You don’t even realize you’re not quite in the real world.” He looked at Thomas. “Are you… following any of this?”

“Uhm. I’m going to nod, but I’m also going to admit I’m probably not going to retain much.” Thomas smiled weakly.

“As per the usual.” Logan huffed. “Do you wish me to continue?”

“I need you to get to the point.”

“Roman isn’t spending time in his room or even the mindscape to refocus. He’s spending all his time in the imagination, instead of just most of it. This isn’t interfering with his function, so much as how he interacts with it.”

“He’s throwing a hissy fit. But he doesn’t want to duck out, he just wants attention.” Fingers looped as if he was holding something Remus shook his hand up and down from the wrist. “But because he’s pretty much barricaded himself in the imagination to play at being a villain, no one can get to him.”

“I’ve been trying-”

“Yeek!” Thomas jumped as Patton rose up.

“Sorry sport.” Patton smiled weakly. He looked a little tired and stressed. “Like I said, I keep trying to talk to him, but I get lost, then I end up back outside the imagination again.”

“Which at least mean’s Roman’s family-friendly rules are still mostly intact, despite his prolonged sojourn.” Logan commented. “Regardless of this delusion that he’s developed.”

“What delusion?”

“Roman tends to think of things as pretty black and white.” Patton bit his lip “I have trouble with it too. I’ve been working on it. Gosh, I sure have a lot to work on. Uhm, so when he felt that he wasn’t your hero; if the person he thought of as the villain wasn’t a villain, he had to be.” Patton rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. “He had a little problem after we got Virgil back, but the whole thing was, you know, gradual. Roman could rephrase him as kind of… you know those dark brooding characters in movies that love dogs, and have a heart of gold? Like that.”

“Besides,” Remus pointed out. “He’d decided that he didn’t like Virgie, but that he was his. Him and DJ are alike in that they get super possessive. DJ was never his villain, just the villain. He’s my villain.” he added under his breath smugly.

“What does that mean? I thought you two were like, friends. In cahoots.”

“‘friends’ “ Logan said distantly.

“Look at it this way Thomas; What does Roman inspire you to do? Get out there and put yourself in front of a lot of people to perform. What makes that less likely? The fact those people are going to judge you with no context what-so-ever.”

Thomas had to admit the thought made him shudder.

“What do I inspire you to do?”

“... swear? Masturbate? Eat things I find on the ground?” Thomas thought for a long moment “ … Jump out of a moving car?”

“That’s the one I was thinking of. And staging it for a vine doesn’t count, btw, it’s still on the to-do list.” Remus smoothed his mustache. “And what does DJ do? He comes up with excuses for the swearing. He’s self preservation. He stops you from destructive behavior. Well, except for the chips.”

“Do we have any?” Logan said without thinking, looking over his shoulder. “No, wait, focus. Thomas you’re going to need to have a healthy snack after we’re done here.”

“You should try the carrots and yogurt.” Remus urged, as Thomas and Patton made identical expressions of distaste. “Deodorant then?”

“Roman!” Patton urged. “We need to get him out of the imagination before he forgets that he’s not a figment!” he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I don’t want to stand next to Remus for the rest of our lives.”

“Love you too, Daddy Dearest.”

“I ... love … you I just don’t love the way you smell.” Patton said uncomfortably. “I’ve made up my mind that I was wrong and I can … care about you, even if you’re really scary.”

“If you give yourself a hernia, I will poke it.”

“Can that happen?” Thomas demanded of Logan. “Can Roman just… forget who he is?”

“The short answer is yes. He can. He’s always come back to himself before, but he’s always been much more himself when he forgets before this, so- the data is inconclusive. For now, we can’t seem to reach him.”

“Leaving me to answer the call as your imagination.” Remus leaned forward, as much into Thomas’s space as he could outside of daydream mode. “Use me.”

Thomas leaned away, laughing uncomfortably.

“Can I use you to come up with a way to get Roman back?”

“If you’re going to be dull, yeah.”

“Can we… can we go get him? Like we did with Virgil?” Thomas asked.

“That would be incredibly dangerous. The Imagination is not like our rooms. It’s unpredictable, and easy to get lost in.”

“Patton just said he keeps ending up back outside it.”

“That’s Patton.” Logan gestured at him. “If you were with us, I don’t know what would happen. We could get separated, or hurt, and our natural abilities are tempered by the environment.”

“So what, I just wait around for him to work through whatever he’s doing, or forget us and abandon me?” Thomas looked genuinely upset at the prospect.

“Don't worry,” Remus assured Thomas, with a huge grin. “I’ll always stick with you, until you safeword out.”

“Uh, disturbing; also we haven’t established a safe word.”

“Better start guessing then.” Remus winked.

“He prefers ‘Roman’ And ‘Please’” Logan offered.

Thomas turned slowly and stared at Logan for a long moment. Logan blinked at him, wondering what brought that on.

“Okay, moving on.” Thomas shook himself. “I understand the danger Logan, but I can’t… I can’t just wait around and hope this gets better on it’s own. Roman’s my … my friend, as well as everything else. If I hurt him, I need to try and fix it.”

“I don’t think you do understand the danger, Thomas.” Logan bit his lips together and pressed the side of his knuckles to his mouth.

“As much as I love being the bearer of bad news…” Janus descended the staircase, stopping on the landing. “I’m afraid it’s gotten worse.”

“What do you mean?” Thomas said nervously. “... and where is Virgil? I feel like shit, he should be here, even if he’s still a little on edge from all the big reveals.”

“That’s the bad news.” Janus sighed, looking slightly defeated. “He went after Roman. By himself.”

#Sanders Sides Fic #TS Thomas #TS Logan #TS Remus #TS Patton #TS Janus

7 notes · View notes

hecohansen31 · 5 years

Text

Angel

Jim Mason+Influencer! Reader:

(A/N): Hello lovelies!

I am very happy to have you back in this last episode of this miniseries, which I really hope you’ll like, alongside, again, if you have more ideas and want to send asks about this verses... I AM READY FOR IT, BRING IT ON BITCHES!

Also... I have said that this fic might be a bit self-indulgent and it is because, although I am not an influencer of any kind, I am very active on my social medias (mostly instagram, if you want to follow me or anything, and we are mutuals, just DM me) and this July I ended up hitting a very bad kind of exhaustion from that platform.

I honestly ended up feeling extremely shitty, alongside discovering many fake people who were around me, and for this reason I am happy that I managed to get here on tumblr (although there are some fake people on here, but like I don’t have to interact with them).

So, although the cyberbullying part of the story is only fictional, the exhaustion that took over reader, ended up being a reality for me, a bit ago, and although I am all better (better than before), I just wanted to remind you to take healthy pauses from social medias.

Also please don’t shame people who work on them, alongside use them as an outlet for anxiet and stress (like me).

I really hope you won’t judge me too badly, after this...

Also I’ll just remind you to show some love, if you like this, with hearts, reblogs (possibly saying something) and if you have anything to say about these, my DMs and asks are always open!

Much love!

SUMMARY: Jim Mason takes care of his social media exhausted girlfriend.

WORDS: 1,7 K

WARNINGS: Mention of Cyberbulling And Exhaustion from Social Medias (I WASN’T CYBERBULLIED, although I had my fair share of assholish comment, NOT HERE, but the cyberbullying was only fictional, whereas exhaustion is something I experienced back in July)

Jim knew of his girlfriend’s social media fame.

Although he wasn’t informed about the entire thing and how it worked, being more focused on staying in the moment and living it, he was proud of what she achieved with her photos and captions, even going as far as helping her shot a few.

He still remembered the way she smiled gently meanwhile he tried to take photos of her, meanwhile she pointed out each cheap tip she knew, starting with “shoot from a lower angle than my height, so that I might appear taller” and “make sure to take the right light”.

She might have seemed shallow to others, but whenever Jim cried his heart out in her arm, she only had the sweetest words for him, calming him down enough that they fell asleep calmly, next to each other in her simple pull-out.

She cuddled closer to him, whenever she understood he needed it and made sure to always be there, next to him, her entire attention focused on him.

He had never checked her profile, mostly because she had pleaded with him not to give it a look.

“It’s silly” she had mumbled, meanwhile she had tried to get his phone off his hands “… and embarrassing!”.

And Jim had respected her wishes, offering just his help with photos or ideas, but whenever they were together, the entire social media thought was off the rack between them, preferring a direct conversation, although sometimes she got in overload and at that time social medias were her outlet.

But sometimes they were also her damnation.

Jim had noticed the difference in his girlfriend’s mood, since the start of the week: quieter and definitely less happy, a mumble being her way to speak, if she spoke up, clearly not energetic in the slightest and definitely not focused.

His knowledge of drugs and their effects had made him think that she might have been under those, but slowly the unfocused glaze had moved from rage to sadness: one day she was moping on the beach and another she almost got into a rage-filled fight with whatever was not working.

Jimmy had tried his best to understand her, but she didn’t want to talk about it with him so he tried to stay close to her, but the bad week moved to two bad weeks and there Jim had thought about searching through her social, mostly due to the fact that she focused on them more, even neglecting herself and him a bit.

“I just need to write the last paragraph” she had mumbled, meanwhile she had refused to stop writing to sleep a bit or “I will eat after I edited this photo, I mean… I don’t need food”.

It all got Jim worried, more and more.

And then he had decided that he had only one chance to discover what was going on.

He had opened Instagram, her major social network, and then had moved to her profile, the public one (she had a private one, full of photos that made Jim’s heart jump: candid of them together, not professionally taken but… Jim loved them all the same) and had gone through it.

He had first seen that she hadn’t any stories going on, which was unusual since she did her best to try to at least show a bit of her everyday life each day.

“So, my followers don’t feel left out” she had mumbled and although Jim had thought it was a strange voyeuristic idea, he had just hugged her and called her “angel”.

“Angel” was also part of her username on Instagram, due mostly to her followers, which had started calling her “angel”, because of the intrinsic sweetness of her posts and the personality she showed on the social network.

The stories thing had been already strange, but also her follower count had diminished, nothing too bad, but he had heard his angel protest about that.

“I just can’t believe that these people unfollow me just because I don’t follow them back and you know what is worst… I have talked to them… I felt like… we were friends”.

But he had soon discovered the true reason behind his girlfriend’s sadness: the comments honestly made him angry.

The most recent ones were ruthless: “you are fat”, “kill yourself” “you are annoying”…

And they went on, although some were sweeter, clearly (Y/N)’s true fans.

He had honestly hoped it was a troll, nothing but a joke.

But those comments had been serious, since he hadn’t been able to recognize the familiar path of a troll, instead they were real people, under fake accounts or their real accounts sharing that hate.

He honestly hadn’t been able to stop himself from feeling furious now that he understood what was going on, and meanwhile he had signaled each negative comment, he had seen the stories light up, the first one of the day.

A photo with a writing on it: “guys I just wanted to let you know that I will be taking a pause, due to all the hate I have been getting, I don’t know when I will get back”.

Although the text has been intelligently written and concealed her emotion, he had clearly known she was crying meanwhile writing it.

He knew how much work she put into the social media, although it never was her job, she had started, long before meeting him, using it as a relief method from her own problem, so to be let down this way….

… it obviously hurt her.

After he had signaled enough accounts he had just tried to let the rage burn down, meanwhile he had created a plan to make his angel feel better: his first idea had been to go out, knowing that an expensive dinner and a few dances might get her distracted, but this would just push just the argument further.

So, he had just organized a home-made dinner (which meant him ordering take-out), bribing her to attend it with the promise of a lot of cuddles and a make-out session and most importantly to watch for the umpteenth times her favorite movie.

She clearly felt a bit better, when she finally walked in his house, being swept off her feet by an ecstatic Jim, who gently kissed her forehead, before he had put her down, leading her to the little kitchen of his apartment, the one his father had gotten him once he had gone out of rehab.

It was nice, although pretty small, but Jim loved it all more, and since he had met his angel it had all been better.

They had made so many memories, alongside she had helped perfecting it all.

“Ma’am, please sit down” he helped her to the dinner table, taking her jean jacket and her bag, coming back with an open bottle of wine, which he poured in their inadequate glasses, and with the first course, (Y/N)’s favorite course.

“Oh, you went all out” her smile didn’t reach her eyes, but she was indeed grateful, holding out her hand to grab his, which was kept tangled with his for the entire dinner

She talked about her day, chirping happily meanwhile she avoided carefully the social media argument and Jim didn’t pressure her, just watching her eat, in peaceful silence and only when they moved to wash the dishes he grumbled lowly:

-… sweetie, I checked your page on Instagram- he felt her grow stiff next to him -… I know that it embarrasses you, but I thought that you had been so gloomy these past weeks and I thought that your social media might have been bothering you, extremely… so I had to do something…-.

-Oh Jimmy! – she was avoiding his eyes, clearly ashamed -… I am so sorry you had to see all that… it…-.

-You are getting hate thrown your way for nothing, (Y/N)- he wanted to make sure she knew it wasn’t her fault In the slightest -…I can’t honestly fathom people doing this to you, whereas you have been nothing but an angel with them-.

-I am not sure… I mean…- a sad smile was on her face -… I am pretty sure that many people will call me a bitch with no problem…-.

-… well I am gonna fight them all, babe- he brought her closer and smacked a sound kiss on her head -… you don’t deserve this hate, believe me, I spent two hours trying to ban each asshole-.

-That is incredibly sweet, Jimmy Boy- she giggled, but a few tears shone on his eyes -… but I don’t think that it will stop the hate from spreading; that’s why I decided to take a holiday-.

Jim saw that an honest smile shone on her face and moved the rag onto its hook to hug her better, bearhugging her and gently caressing her back, gently, and shushing her cries.

-Angel of mine, I am so so sorry I was not able to know more about this- he mumbled, feeling a low protest -… I honestly thought it wasn’t that bad-.

-I didn’t even talk about it with you- she justified softly, getting a bit of distance between them to be able to watch him in the eyes -… I wanted to handle on my own, because, at first, I thought it wasn’t anything worrying, and then… I just felt like social media were a thing I needed to solve alone, my thing-.

He knew this came from all the prejudices linked with her passion for social medias: he had heard about some of her friends annoying her saying not only she was asocial, but also self-absorbed.

She hadn’t been very open about her life on them with him, also because of this, thinking that he would be making fun of her, exactly like her “friends”.

-I know that you take pride into your profile, but… you can lean onto me, I am here for you- he promised her looking at her in the eyes with extreme seriousness, before hugging her close, keeping his lips on her forehead, a comforting gesture -… I am still extremely proud of you for recognizing that you were having troubles and deciding to distance yourself from that… you are one smart angel-.

She giggled at the nickname, before freeing herself from his hug, although she still felt extremely bad, a smile shone on her face.

-Now you better get in your comfortable pajama, because this smart angel wants to watch for the umpteenth time (Y/F/F), with a lot of cuddles- and she turned around, getting a slight slap on her ass from Jim.

-… don’t forget the make-out session! -.

---

Hello lovelies!

Thank you for coming this far, in my self-indulgent mumbling and thank you for sticking me all through this series, I really hope you enjoyed it, and in case some of you want to read the previous chapters, you might find them here! (Duncan) (Michael)

@so-langdon @1-800-bitchcraft @emmyrosee @blakewaterxx @rocketgirl2410 @ladynuwanda @w0nder-marie @bitchchatter @eternalnostalgia @chirpdesu @dreamxcollide @head-full-of-thougts @lonely-cloud @im-the-music-whore @orendamill @ayeayecaptaingally @loveofmonstersandroses @kleineshaschen @dramapenguinthe3rd @drama-penguins @vampirefairyestelle @ @hplotrfan @a-exmrie @meandmystrangehabits @lovelylangdonx @britishmoonchild @michael-langdon-appreciation (I keep tagging you and please let me know if it is fine, but I know that you liked the previous chapter!) @mega-combusken @frenchbread4ever @confettucini @what-the-hecku @langdonsplaytoy @saviorinsilk @cherrysoda-com@loveableasshole @sona-blues @xoxocrystal17 @bish-ima-clown @idespac @annielovebug22 @literary-monster @g4ost @rubyeru @breakingsupernaturlbad101 @dyns33 @hadeslittlewhore @ lsutgurxb @kelncurls @lathraios @rosegoldrichie @ohlookheather @ softyash @honeylavender-bombshell @ swinginfestivalhoagieflap @lotsofhunny @ ashleyallen-queen-carter @ uniquepandaeagleparty @ elviradamien23

#jim mason #jim mason x reader #jim mason hc #the tribes of palos verdes #tribes of palos verdes #tribes #tribes of PV #palos verdes #cody fern #jim mason reader #jim mason moodboard #michael langdon #michael langdon x reader #ahs #ahs apocalypse #jim mason fanfic #jim mason fan fic #jim mason one shot

64 notes · View notes

hunnywrites · 5 years

Photo

Arcade Dreams: Chapter Six

Summary: There’s a new girl working at the Palace Arcade and Hawkins’ Family Video. Billy can’t stand her, and the feeling is mutual. No matter what everyone else seems to think.

Pairing: Billy Hargrove/OFC

A/N: I’ve had a few people asking if I’ll be including the supernatural aspects of the show, and I will be! This takes place just after season 2 and will include the events of the third season! I’ll also be including more character cameos. We’ll meet Joyce in this chapter, and she and Hopper will make a few appearances throughout. Steve will also start to get peppered in and become a big part of the story! I’ve also had a few concerns about Teddi’s dad, and I just want y’all to know that while he’s an important part of Teddi’s story (and the future plot) it won’t be a focal point or even a major part of her relationship with Billy. But I want to thank you all for the comments! It means so much and I’m so glad you guys are loving this so far!

Hawkins was a blur. Teddi felt like she was on some sort of alternate dimension. Her head hadn’t stopped hurting since the night before and now everything just seemed...hazy. Slow. Weird. She was also well aware that she was the only person in town wearing sunglasses. She hoped that no one would really notice that the gloomy, cold, winter afternoon just seemed a little too much for her to handle. She’d done her best to cover up the giant bruise on her left eye with makeup, but it was still too noticeable for her liking.

Teddi was embarrassed. She knew she shouldn’t be. Her dad was a jerk and that was all. But still, she felt like if anyone saw her black eye and put the pieces together they would judge her for it. After leaving the coffee shop the day before she had gone home to change for work, and her father had come home early. They had gotten into an argument over how often she was out. He blamed her for leaving her “poor mother” home alone all day and night. Teddi had been dumb enough to try and argue back, and now she had a lovely shiner to remind her of just how bad an idea that was.

At first she had been worried she’d had a concussion. He had hit her twice. A hit across her face with the back of his hand as punishment for talking back that had made her ears ring, and then another hit directly to her eye for good measure. She still remembered how shocked she had been after it happened. It had been a long time since he had ever laid a hand on her. It happened all the time when she was younger. Teddi had always been too little to really understand that the way her father taught her lessons was far from okay. Around the time she entered middle school and she was beginning to realize all of the other kids didn’t have parents that hit them, Teddi’s dad had gotten a big promotion at his construction job. He’d started making really good money then and Teddi stopped existing for the most part. After that the abuse mostly just been verbal. All bark and no bite. But with the added stress of being completely broke and stuck in a shitty job that he hated, Teddi assumed this was just an excuse to let some of his frustration out like it had been when she was a kid.

She didn’t really know if her mom had any idea that it had happened. Teddi had only seen her once that morning and that had been it. Her dad had stormed off after. Teddi assumed he was off to some bar to drink his stress away. But to avoid pissing him off any more than she already had she called Keith and told him she couldn’t come in. He had been understanding of course. It was the first time she’d called out since she’d been hired. And it was probably for the best anyways, considering how she looked.

There had always been that voice in her head telling her that she should tell someone about her home life. But over time she had convinced herself that it would only bring more trouble. What if she told someone and they didn’t believe her? What if they told her father? Eventually she had gotten into her habits of avoiding her parents and it hadn’t been much of an issue all too often. And what was the point now? She was almost out of the house, and this was probably a one off occasion. So she would just stick it out.

Teddi felt really awful about ditching Max and Billy though. She never broke a promise. Ever. Now she would have to come up with some sort of an excuse for when Billy no doubt confronted her about it. She just prayed that his “date” with Cheryl Burns had gone well so he would be in somewhat of a good mood.

Teddi walked into Melvald’s drug store and pushed her glasses further up her nose. There weren’t many people around, but thankfully they were all too busy with whatever they were doing to pay much attention to her. She grabbed a bottle of aspirin and headed to the counter where Joyce Byers was waiting. Teddi had only spoken to Joyce a handful of times when she would come to the arcade to pick Will up, but she was probably one of the sweetest people Teddi had ever met. She was a little overprotective of Will, but from the little Teddi had heard of Will’s disappearance about a year ago she couldn’t really blame Joyce for being that way.

“Hey Teddi,” Joyce greeted her warmly. Joyce looked from Teddi to the large windows and out to the slightly overcast day. She quirked an eyebrow and smiled. “Bright out today?”

Teddi hesitated a moment before letting out a nervous laugh and slowly taking off her glasses. “No. I uh had a little accident getting out of my van yesterday. The driveway was like super icy and I slipped. Looks great, right?” she joked, motioning to her eye.

Joyce made a face. “Oh jeez. Are you okay, hun?”

“Pffft, totally. My ego’s more bruised than the rest of me.” that wasn’t completely a lie either. Joyce gave Teddi a slightly uneasy look.

“Well, alright. You be more careful next time though, huh?”

Teddi nodded. “Oh I definitely will. Um, I’ll see you at the arcade later I guess? I should probably go. My shift starts soon.”

“Oh! Sure, sure,” Joyce handed Teddi her bag. “Yeah, I’m picking up the kids for movie night at our place. I hope you feel better, hun.”

“Thanks, Ms. Byers. Later!” she nearly ran outside and shoved her glasses back on. Teddi was headed straight for her van when she heard the sound of a door slamming.

“Larsson!” the tone in Billy’s voice made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She turned to face him, fidgeting with her glasses awkwardly and offered him a small smile.

“Hey, Billy. Look I’m so-”

“Where the fuck were you last night?” he seethed, stomping over to her. She took a step back from him in shock. She expected him to be angry, but not this angry.

“Something came up…” she offered weakly.

Billy raised his eyebrows, his head tilting to the side. “Oh yeah? Like what? Do you have any idea how much shit I would’ve been in without you? If Max had run off?” so that’s what it was. He might have gotten in trouble, and he was taking it out on her. “I’m waiting, Larsson.” he snapped, taking a step closer to her.

Teddi’s anger outweighed anything else she was feeling. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with one of Billy’s tantrums when she had actual problems to deal with. “Leave me the fuck alone, Billy.” she bit out, turning to walk away.

He grabbed her arm, spinning her back around. “Was this some kind of a joke?” he asked. “Trying to pull one over on me for throwing you in the pool? You want me to say sorry?”

Teddi jerked away from him and took a small step back.“I want you to go away! I want you to stop being so fucking mean for once! Jesus, what is wrong with you? The whole world doesn’t revolve around you, Billy! I have shit going on in my life and I can’t be at your beck and call!” They both stood there on the sidewalk, both still and glaring at each other. But while Billy was nearly standing over her in this menacing stance with his jaw clenched so tightly he felt like his teeth might shatter, Teddi was pulled away from him almost like a frightened child. Her arms were crossed against her chest like she was trying to shield herself from something. From him.

And it wasn’t until that moment that Billy realized she was scared of him. She’d never been scared of him before. She’d always met him head on. That little, nicer part of Billy was screaming. Max was right, he was an asshole. His face softened a little, and he took a step back from her. He shoved his hands awkwardly in his pockets before fumbling to light a cigarette. Teddi let out a deep breath and adjusted her sunglasses. “Why are you wearing those?” he finally asked.

“It’s bright out.” she snapped.

Billy studied her quietly for a moment. It was a hunch. His own paranoia talking maybe. But between that bad feeling he’d had the night before and how absolutely cliche Teddi looked he couldn’t help by wonder. Before he could give Teddi a chance to protest or smack his hands away, he reached forward to snatch her sunglasses off. He felt his stomach drop when he saw the large, nasty bruise on her eye. “Jesus, Ted, ...how’d you get that?”

Teddi wouldn’t meet his eyes. Her bottom lip shook, and Billy watched as big, fat tears pooled in her eyes. He shifted uncomfortably. “I slipped on ice last night in my driveway. That’s why I wasn’t at work. I hit my head and I felt like shit.” He had a feeling it was a lie, but he didn’t push it. He’d made stupid excuses like that before after having to go to school with a busted lip or a black eye. That anxious feeling in his chest was back. Billy didn’t know anything about her parents. He didn’t know their names, or what they looked like. Max had made a comment that Teddi had moved to Hawkins after her dad had gotten laid off, and now he was working construction on some mall that was being built outside of town. Still, he never would have guessed that Teddi’s parents might be hurting her.

But then the dam broke. Teddi broke out into tears, and Billy nearly recoiled from her. He nervously handed her her sunglasses back, holding up his hands in defense. “Christ, Teddi. Don’t do that. People are looking at us.” he begged.

“They’re probably looking at us because you were screaming at me!” she argued, leaning against her van and slipping her glasses back on. “God, this is so embarrassing.” she whimpered, nearly doubling over to hide.

Billy took a drag of his cigarette, unsure of what to do. He hated it when people cried. He looked up to see a few people glancing over in their direction. “What?! You’ve never seen someone cry before? Keep fucking walking!” he snapped.

Teddi only groaned. “Oh my god. You’re making it worse,” she moaned. “Look, I’m sorry okay? I should have left a message with Keith or something. And I’m sorry if you guys got in trouble or something-”

Billy shook his head, waving a hand at her. “Nothing happened...Max was just worried is all. I got sick of listening to her.” he wasn’t sure why he even said that.

“Shit. Is she mad at me too? I’ll be in tonight if you wanna bring her over…”

“No one’s mad, Larsson,” she shot him a look. “Okay, so I was a little mad,” he let out a loud sigh. “You just drive me up the fucking wall sometimes. I mean, I got to do shit to Cheryl Burns last night that you wouldn’t believe and after all of that I was still pissed off that you ditched. Do you have any idea what that’s like? How frustrating that is?”

“I think you might just be a little too full of yourself.” Teddi sniffed.

Billy rolled his eyes. Now she was starting to sound like Max. “Look, are you gonna be alright? Do I need to...like, drive you home or something?”

Teddi looked a little shocked at his offer, but shook his head. “I’m not going home...but thanks, I’ll be fine,” Billy nodded, flicking the rest of his cigarette away. “Uh, can we maybe not tell anyone about this? Ever?”

“Who am I gonna tell? I only hang around you and six year olds, remember?” he asked, turning and walking back to his car.

Teddi sighed loudly, reaching under her glasses to wipe her eyes one last time before getting into her car. ‘You just drive me up the fucking wall sometimes.’ that was rich coming from him. At least she had never screamed at him in front of the whole town. Okay, maybe not the whole town, but still.

She had a pretty good feeling now that Billy knew something was amiss. The way he had looked at her after he pulled her glasses off almost made her wonder if he could read her mind. He looked...sympathetic almost. Which was a really weird feeling. It bothered her more to wonder why he had seemed sympathetic. Billy didn’t care about anything that didn’t directly involve him.

If anything maybe this would lead to something good. Maybe this was a new side to Billy and he would back off a little...unlikely, but she could hope. Maybe she would be able to enjoy that Christmas party that was coming up in a few days without having to worry about him trying to pester her or snap at her or whatever he would do depending on his mood.

Teddi shook her head, deciding to shove all of this to the back of her mind and focus on getting to the arcade. She wouldn’t be able to wear her sunglasses inside. So she would have to count on her lying skills and the bright, neon lighting inside to help disguise the truth. If it even came up. She wasn’t really expecting for a bunch of preteens to be half as observant as Billy (as strange of a thought that that was to have). Especially when video games were involved.

Keith was already there when she arrived. He was stationed at his usual post behind the prize counter looking like he might actually die from boredom. Teddi smiled at him, pushing her sunglasses on top of her head. “Hey Keith, your saving grace is here.” she joked.

“They’re really at it today. An eight year old spit gum in my hair...man, what happened to your face?” he asked, making a face once he spotted her black eye.

Teddi’s smile only faltered a little before she let out what she hoped to be a convincing laugh. “Oh yeah, this is why I couldn’t come in last night. I ate shit on some ice. It’s a great look, right?”

“I didn’t know you were such a klutz.” shockingly Keith’s teasing didn’t quite have the same charm that Billy’s had.

“Me? Pfft. It’s a miracle I’m still alive,” she laughed nervously. “I’m gonna go put my stuff in my locker and I’ll take over. No gum spitting eight year olds next door.” she didn’t give him a chance to answer. She slipped past him and into the door behind him that read ‘employees only’. The break room was incredibly shitty. At least the one at the pool had a vending machine. This was just barely too big to call a closet. There was a single row of lockers crammed in the corner next to two games that Keith had been saying he’d get around to repairing, and a tiny fold out table and chair. Needless to say, Teddi preferred taking her breaks in her van.

She pulled a small zipper pouch out of her bag and picked out a compact. She touched up the makeup around her eye, grimacing at how noticeable the bruise still was. At least Keith had bought her story. Tossing the pouch back into her bag, she grabbed the painkillers she’d bought before her run in with Billy and dry swallowed two before tossing her bag into her locker.

She walked back out just in time to see Max, Lucas and Will walking in. “Hey guys!” she greeted. “Sorry about last night, Max. I had a little accident.” she pointed to her eye.

Max only shrugged. “It’s no big deal. I mean, Billy was super pissy, but I figured you were like...sick or something. Hey, you think you could help us pick out a movie? Everyone’s supposed to be meeting us here. We’re gonna hang out at Will’s later.”

Teddi was officially confused. Billy had told her that Max was worried last night when she didn’t show. She shrugged it off. “Uh, yeah! Yeah, sure. Just come find me when you guys are ready. I have a few machines with sticky buttons that need fixing.”

“Please tell me one of them is Galaga. I haven’t been able to play in two weeks. My high score is in jeopardy, Teddi.” Lucas said, folding his hands together as if he were begging her.

Teddi laughed. “Yeah, I’ll take a look at it, okay? Can’t have high scores in jeopardy. Later, little dudes.” even though Teddi now had some new questions about Billy, the interaction left her feeling relieved. All that worrying about coming in to work was over nothing. Now she could actually enjoy her shift. Even though most of it would be wiping down machines from whatever gunk the kids of Hawkins seemed to always have on their hands.

#billy hargrove #billy hargrove fic #billy hargrove x oc

12 notes · View notes

artificialqueens · 6 years

Text

They Don't Love You Like I Love You 4/? (katlaska) - kamylove

“There is absolutely no factual or metaphorical fucking going on.” Not yet, anyway. Or, Katya and Alaska take the slow train.

It helps Alaska to know she’ll be seeing Katya soon, to know she’ll be able to look into Katya’s eyes with no camera in between, to make sure sure Katya’s as okay as she claims in the days after their phone call. Not that she’s ever known Katya to lie about her mental health; Katya’s more open about it than almost anyone. It’s just that Alaska knows what it’s like to lie to herself.

And Katya hasn’t been dumping her entire psyche on the internet as often lately, so there’s less information to go on.

Alaska turns down the offer of a ride from the airport. Instead, she waits 83 minutes for Katya’s plane to arrive, and buys an iced coffee the way Katya likes it, to take to the gate.

She doesn’t get a chance to hand it over. Katya walks right up to Alaska, pulls her close, and buries her face in Alaska’s neck.

Alaska hugs back, careful not to spill the coffee. “Hey,” she says, and Katya sighs like she’s put down a heavy load.

Are you okay is such an empty question. Alaska says, “Missed you,” instead.

Katya squeezes her tighter and just breathes. Alaska rests her cheek on Katya’s head and they stay that way for a long time, just two gay boys in the sea of travelers that, for these few moments, is passing them by.

<><><>

“I really am okay,” Katya says, as they head to baggage claim. “It’s just nice to have someone who won’t judge me.”

“I judge you for all sorts of things,” Alaska says. “Like that fucking raccoon.”

Katya, waving her drink around in a way that often leads to a big mess, fakes an insulted gasp. Alaska laughs and takes the cup away from her, just in case.

“That fucking raccoon is my best friend!” Katya says. “Don’t insult her, she’ll hear!”

“Is she in your backpack? Is she listening right now?”

“No, but we share a deep, devoted, psychic link.”

“That makes it even more-”

“I lied,” Katya says. She stops without warning in the middle of the concourse, annoying the family behind them.

“What?” Alaska says. Usually she can follow Katya just fine, these days.

Katya looks her in the eye. “I’m a shitty liar. I don’t care who judges me. I just wanted it to be you.”

Alaska feels something warm and unexpected bloom in her chest. Honestly, it hadn’t crossed her mind to question why Katya had called. “I’m glad,” she says. “I’m glad you called and I’m glad I could help.”

Katya smiles at her, and they keep walking.

<><><>

They are, thankfully, not performing that night, so it’s almost the reverse of that first night in Aspen: room service, a couple movies, and Katya falling asleep sooner than either of them expects. Alaska watches her sleep longer than she thinks she should.

In the middle of the night Alaska hears a text notification on her phone, and decides to ignore it. But a few minutes later the phone actually rings and she reaches for it blindly, moving nothing but her arm.

It’s Roxxxy, who must have just arrived, and who sounds wide awake. “Where are you? I went to your room. Are you in there and being rude?”

“I’m in Katya’s,” Alaska says without thinking.

“Really?” Roxxxy says. “You and Katya? You might be skinny bitches, but that’s just hot.”

Katya stirs and throws an arm over Alaska, but Alaska, not wanting to wake her, slips out of bed and into the bathroom.

“It’s not like that,” Alaska says. “She needed a friend. I fell asleep.” It isn’t true; she’d never intended to leave. But she’s not ready to open it up to questioning.

“Okay,” Roxxxy drawls. “So, how many times have you fallen asleep in Katya’s room?”

“Oh, my God,” Alaska groans. “Leave me alone.”

Roxxxy’s still laughing when Alaska hangs up.

<><><>

It’s a short series of shows on the East Coast, just a couple weeks, with most of the All Stars 2 girls. They know each other so well by now that they can just relax and have fun and make people laugh.

Katya can’t even explain to herself what a relief it is to have Alaska there. She loves all the girls, and she’s happy to have them around, too. They keep her busy and entertained. They’re family.

But it’s so nice, and so easy, to have somebody who can keep up with her no matter what, somebody who won’t ask her to slow down or repeat. Their brains spark off each other, like fireworks. If left to their own devices, which happens more and more lately, they’ll take off down a rabbit hole and look up to find hours have passed.

All the Ru girls are smart. Many of them are brilliant. But there aren’t many who are as quick as Alaska.

They rewatch Katya’s episode of Hey Qween together, and Alaska laughs and laughs at how shell-shocked Jonny looks. “You broke him!” she says.

Katya preens. “ADD is my superpower.”

“You can leap 20 topics in a single bound,” Alaska says.

Katya preens some more, but she can’t keep it up. She laughs instead, flailing a bit for effect.

“It’s disturbing how easy it is for me to follow you now,” Alaska says.

“Agreed,” Katya says. “I worry about you.”

“When did I start liking you so much?” Alaska asks.

“I have no idea,” Katya says, “because I am a heartless, hateful bitch. And I’ve never even eaten you out, which is usually what makes me so popular.”

<><><>

Katya: dinosaur

Alaska: bat

Alaska: You are sitting three feet away from me.

Katya: spoilsport

Alaska: harmony

Katya: turnip

Alaska: cowboy

Katya: Czechoslovakian

Katya: eclair

Alaska: jerky

<><><>

Alaska colors in pages from Katya’s coloring book, making them as garish as her imagination can come up with. She likes to practice keeping a straight face when she hands them to Katya, who always pretends to be offended.

“I really question your taste level,” Katya says.

Alaska just gives her another.

<><><>

“So, Miss Alaska,” Alyssa asks her while they’re in line at Starbucks. “Tell me the truth. What is going on with you and Katya?”

“I hate her guts,” Alaska says. “Everyone knows that.”

“All right, all right, if that’s the way you want to play it. But there’s something there.” She points at Alaska’s eyes, and then her own, with two fingers. “I can see it.”

“Well, then, you need to explain to me what that is,” Alaska says, “because I don’t see it.”

Alyssa makes an Alyssa face, but it quickly shifts to something more more mischievous as she says, “She likes you, too, you know.”

Alaska groans. “Will you stop?”

“Okay, I’ll drop it,” Alyssa says. “I can take a hint.”

“Since when?” Alaska asks.

“You shady bitch,” Alyssa says cheerfully.

“If you want drama, you’re going to have to stir it up yourself,” Alaska says. “Try Phi Phi.”

“Ooh,” Alyssa says. “Seriously shady bitch.”

<><><>

“Tell me the truth,” Ginger says quietly, as she and Katya touch up their faces in the same mirror during a show. “I already know you’re sharing rooms.”

“Friends with room sharing benefits?” Katya says.

“Is that the only benefit?”

“Is having access to her wig wardrobe a benefit?”

“You tell me,” Ginger says.

“Honey,” Katya says. “Look at this tragic thing I am wearing.” It’s intentionally ugly, to go with the rest of her look, and she twirls to show it off. “What do you think?”

“Tell me you don’t have a fetish for those long, blond locks?” Ginger asks suspiciously.

“Is not fetish,” Katya says in her Russian accent. “Is obsession. Why you cannot keep straight?”

“Ain’t nothing straight about that,” Ginger says.

<><><>

Alaska: pogo stick

Katya: You’re sitting three feet away from me.

Katya: cactus

Katya: fossil

Alaska: artichoke

Alaska: talent

Katya: Alaska

Alaska: That’s cheating.

“What the fuck are they doing now?” Detox asks.

Tatianna says, “I don’t even want to know.”

<><><>

After the tour, half of the girls, including Katya, are off to Europe for a month, and the rest, including Alaska, go their separate ways.

Alaska has a week in LA and too many things to squeeze in: meetings, interviews, a recording session, dry cleaning. But Willam talks her into going out by saying, “Support your local queens,” which Alaska can never resist.

Standing there, cranberry juice in hand, sighing the occasional autograph as Willam flirts with everyone in a twenty-foot radius, Alaska has trouble keeping her mind on the show. The drag is good, and she claps and cheers and tips, but she reluctantly admits to herself that it’s not where she wants to be.

She’s home so rarely now that she feels out of touch. But she doesn’t think that’s the real problem.

“What’s with you?” Willam asks eventually. “You’re a real downer tonight.”

Alaska just shrugs.

“It’s not right, working as much as you do. You need to say fuck it sometimes.”

“Fuck it,” Alaska says.

“Weren’t you seeing a guy?” Willam says. “The one with the glasses? He was hot. I would have done him.”

“That was months ago,” Alaska says. “I don’t know. He was nice, but he couldn’t hold my attention, you know?”

“Been there, done that,” Willam says.

(A long time later, Katya will say, “You’ve held my attention for at least .09 seconds, which is impressive considering my average is .03,” and Alaska will say, “I’m three times more interesting than average!” and Katya will look at her like she’s an idiot and say, “Duh. Everybody knows that.”)

<><><>

Alaska stays just long enough after the show to say nice things to all the performers, and to demand that Willam give her phone back. (“Be in the moment,” Willam had said. Alaska had rolled her eyes.) She’s performed here many times; she knows where all the exits are, so she sneaks out while Willam’s not looking.

When she turns the phone back on, on the way to her car, she finds just two texts from Katya, which is a surprise.

“Bored. Lonely. Bored,” says the first, and “Need constant entertainment,” says the second.

Alaska facetimes her, and finds Katya just waking up, her hair sticking out in all directions.

“You need a constant audience,” Alaska says.

“That too!” Katya says, pointing her finger at the screen like Alaska’s said something earth shattering.

“Trade?” Alaska asks.

Katya makes a face. “Not that kind of audience,” she says. “Or that kind of lonely.”

Alaska knows exactly what she means.

#alaska thunderfuck #katya zamolodchikova #katlaska #fluff #slow burn #they don't love you like i love you #rpdr fanfiction #kamylove #tdlylily

11 notes · View notes

italicwatches · 5 years

Text

The Good Place, season 2 - Episode 10

Well I meant to be out today, but that didn’t happen. Instead, I’ll push for tomorrow. But I at least got ready to be able to head right out. So for now, let’s do some television. It’s The Good Place, season 2, episode 10! Here we GO!

-PREVIOUSLY ON The Good Place, the crew was no longer in the fake Good Place.

-PRESENTLY ON The Good Place, the train pulls in through darkness and shadow. Chidi’s kind of not doing super great. Michael goes over the gist of the plan. Basically, there’s a neutral zone between the two Places. The Judge, the Accounting department, and the Janet warehouse are all held there. …Also, an IHOP. Inter dimensional Hole of Pancakes. Which eat you.

-The path to the portal, is in the main office in the Bad Place. The only way to open the doors, is by being of a certain ranking. Good news, Michael just got his badge that shows him as upper management. You four will lay low, while he finagles his way into getting four more. As for Janet, and I quote, “I’m luggage!“ so she’s covered.

-You’ll all get disguises, of course. Also Jay is thinking they just throw a molotov and run for it. …No! Just, just NO!

-Chapter 24!

-So we’re all in agreement that Eleanor in her disguise looks fucking amazing, right? Right. So everyone’s going to need an alias. She picks Diana Tremaine, since that was the name on her old fake ID so she’s used to answering to it. Tahani picks Rhonda Mumps, working in one of the many hot dog departments.

-Jay is now Jake Jortles, and he works in the molotov cocktail department. Of course he does. And Chidi is…

-Not doing great. He’s the only one not doing great at it. Ohhh boy. Also Tahani is trying to put on her commoner act and…I mean…She’s trying? Let’s call it trying.

-Eleanor ends up taking Chidi into the back to talk, and oh precious day she can curse again. But he’s not actually breaking, which is…a problem.

-Also Janet is done up as Bad Janet. And Jay thinks she looks super sexy that way. Which is a problem. Tahani tries to help Janet get into character and she’s really struggling with it too. Oh dear.

-Then they get there. It’s…Fascinating, actually, how they’ve picked such a specific aesthetic for the entire Bad Place. It’s, like, peak Awful Post-Victorian Smog-Filled London with just a hint of extra edge to the actual aesthetic and it is riveting.

-Out of the station, to…The Museum of Human Misery, specifically, the Hall of Low-Grade Crappiness, as the safest and most boring place to stow them while Michael figures out a plan. Also, Eleanor is worried about him but can’t show it very well.

-So what are some of the things that people earned torture for? First person to floss in an open plan office, first person to send a dick pic, first waiter to use sarcasm, first white person to grow dreadlocks and the first person to coin Ultimate Frisbee…And then that’s when a whole fucking party comes in to use the place and ohhhhh fuck.

-Meanwhile, Michael gets into the office and to Shawn’s private office, where they’ve got a new scent of Axe. Transformers. It makes you smell how those movies make you feel. So Michael presents his plan with extradition papers for the four humans. He’s going to take four trusted crew members with him up to the judge, deliver those papers, get it signed off on, grab some pancakes, then it’s back here to take the train straight to Mindy’s and snatch ‘em all up!

-And then Shawn casually dumps the papers immediately into the trash. He has a different plan.

-Back at what is now a party, Chidi is freaking out and them all being together is starting to look conspicuous. Jay, you take Chidi. Eleanor and Tahani are going thataway. Jay ends up with a shitty bagel off the hors d’oeuvre tray, and I just want to be very, very clear when I say that I hate that word now after having written it.

-Aaand then they run into someone who thinks Chidi is his old pal Trent. Chet here just got a new gig working in Toxic Masculinity, and also he calls over a bunch of his crew to meet his old bud and oh jeez this is awkward…Especially when another buddy of his needs help cracking a real dirtbag who isn’t responding much to the torture.

-Meanwhile Tahani is doing wayyyy better, and Good Janet is…I mean, she’s trying, guys. But they put her to the task of figuring out what the hell this party is.

-Back to Michael, who’s learning that Shawn remembered, “I’m a naughty bitch”. He’s sent a black-ops team in to take things into his own hands and skip the whole extradition process. Also it turns out that the museum thing? The false Good Place neighborhood is being immortalized for its wonderful success. Now settle in and watch the team get to work.

-Back to the party. Chidi is freaking out and turns to Eleanor for help. Lie, jackass, lie! Tahani can do it! But, but, but, he’ll literally be contributing to another man’s eternal torture…Sit your ass down, Chidi. Moral particularism, Chidi. Wait…Wait they never covered that. You read on your own?! “You think just because I’m a straight hottie, I can’t read philosophy for fun?”

-I mean with the glasses and the hair thing I’m a lot more inclined to agree with her than usual, won’t lie. Look, the whole idea is no fixed rules, right? That’s the whole point, right? You pick your battles based on the environment. Well…This is a crazy-ass environment. So, you lie. You lie through your god damned teeth. And you do it to survive, because one jackass going down is less of a bad than four people who’re trying to get better going down.

-He, he can’t! He can’t change his moral philosophy just like that… “And I didn’t think I would ever be at a cocktail party in literal hell, lecturing my teacher slash ex-lover about moral particularism, but life throws you curveballs, bro!” Shit, Eleanor’s getting all the good lines today. I think it’s the glasses.

-And then Chet comes to pick up his bro, while Good Janet…Learns about the exhibit. Oh this is not good.

-Meanwhile, back in the office, the team gets into Mindy’s place and Shawn gets to hear them over the walkie-talkie mode meeting Derek. Who IS Derek, you might ask? “Me is Derek. These are my wind chimes! Oh, oh ohhhh! My wind chimes like you.” And by the time Shawn turns back around, having learned of the distinct lack of our core humans in the Medium Place, Michael’s gone with an armful of stolen suit jackets. Shawn sends the others out hunting…

-While at the party, Chidi does his best to lie. And he ends up landing on…Make this jackass sit down, and read. Make him read, and read, and read, and just sit and stew. …Which is when Good Janet comes by to snare them because they have to bail. But it’s far too late, as the curtains drop, and reveal the new exhibit, all about them. No amount of sexy glasses will disguise them for long…

-Indeed, they get found by Michael, then by Shawn, and oh this is bad, this is very bad. Jay says fuck it, turns his pocket square and a bottle of liquor into a molotov, and BOOK IT

-Thus begins a full panicked flight to the portal, where they have mere minutes and Tahani, Chidi and Jay get sent through, with Janet missing and Michael down a pin and oh fuck they’re coming. …Hey, guess what. Michael figured out how you solve the trolley problem. You throw yourself over to gum up the works. He takes his pin, clips it to Eleanor, and then shoves her in as he’s being caught…

-Credits!

MOTHER FUCKER

#where I watch #recap #live action #the good place #season 2 #spoilers

2 notes · View notes

filmfreak1994 · 6 years

Text

Change the Channel

A lot of people have been talking about their experiences with Channel Awesome in the wake of the 60+ page document released by Allison Pregler and several other former content creators for Channel Awesome. I figured I might throw my own experience with the site and its people (mostly Doug) too while the topic is relevant, even considered dusting off the old camera I got for Christmas to film a video but allergy season is upon us and I’m coughing up my lungs so the written word it is.

I was a frequent user of YouTube in the early days of its inception, mostly to look up viral videos and just go on a stream of pointlessness for hours on end with each recommended vid in the sidebar (mostly consisting of parodies to Star Wars, LotR, and entire Simpsons episodes uploaded before the great purge of early 2008). In all that time between 2006 and 2007, reviewers like the Angry Video Game Nerd and The Nostalgia Critic eluded me. I saw plenty of the 5 Second Movie clips and thought they were hysterical but didn’t even make the connection that they were made by a “Nostalgia Critic” until around the end of 2009, when a friend of mine at school told me to look up NC’s review of Sonic the Hedgehog (the weird TV show and the futuristic evil Jim Cummings one). I finally gave in which led me to watching some of his other, recent reviews like the “Star Wars Holiday Special” which was freaking hysterical (and still brings a warm smile to my face just thinking about it). By the time the new year rolled around and I had discovered That Guy With The Glasses I was hooked.

For a while I stuck to watching reviews on YouTube when fans would rip them from the main site, but decided to eventually support the site itself where I mostly stuck to NC videos but also watched content from the other producers when it interested me; Spoony and his Final Fantasy reviews, Linkara and any comic with a subject material I was familiar with, Marzgurl and her Don Bluth retrospective, so on and so forth. Like many other people, I wasn’t keeping up with every producer’s videos weekly like I was with NC, but when I decided to watch something else their content was worth it, being funny and informative all at once, even creating new branches of my interest and giving me new perspectives on media criticism.

I watched Nostalgia Critic religiously every week and, sorry to say, started to take his opinion as gospel, and the opinions of other reviewers as well, treating certain movies and shows as bad just because they said so and didn’t have an opinion for myself for the longest time. It was when I started to pay attention to Doug Walker himself and his philosophy that you should like what you like and every movie is a miracle that I started to chill out and even disagree with his opinions at times (I remember his “Little Nemo” review made me seek out that movie and I actually quite enjoyed it).

TGWTG was a formative site for me in my high school years, developing much of my sense of humor and how I look at movies. I watched all the anniversary specials, started to watch a greater portion of producers that included Lindsay and Kyle’s more analytical reviews and Brad Jones’s and Matthew Buck’s mix of cynicism and snark with genuine analytical praise and criticism. I even started to look at music critics like Paw or Todd even though I can’t judge music for shit (if it has a catchy beat I’ll more or less dig it, I’m not picky). I always imagined when I moved out for college (yeah, how’d that work out for ya, younger me) that I would start my own review series in the vein of these online personalities and even be picked up for the site where I too could join in on the anniversary movies and have a swell time and make friends with the people I looked up to and have a good time filming huge crossover events with them (in hindsight I can only imagine what role Doug would have me play in them, if I was even deemed important to be in them at all). Whenever people criticized the anniversary movies I just shrugged it off and said, “Yeah, they’re dumb, but I like em anyway,” and when rumors starting going around about some upside down crucifixion going on I shrugged them off as just rumors (and to be fair it wasn’t upside down but the real thing isn’t much better).

Anyway, around the time when To Boldly Flee came I enjoyed the movie a lot (I only saw it the once and I was eighteen, eighteen-year-old me and present me don’t get on anymore) and thought it was a bittersweet conclusion to The Nostalgia Critic but was excited to see what new projects Doug and the company would do after its conclusion. Plus the other contributors still had their content to keep TGWTG going strong into the foreseeable future. At least I thought.

I didn’t hate Demo Reel, but I didn’t like it all that much either. I only caught around a few episodes before losing interest, saying I’d get back into it eventually but never going out of my way to see them. By accounts they got better as they went along and I was interested in the episode that paid tribute to Elizabeth Hartman (which I think is the same episode that had Mara Wilson and Arin Hanson? I might be wrong (I didn’t even know who Arin was at the time but hindsight is 20/20)), but I just put off watching them until, oh look, NC’s back. At the time I thought this was interesting, there was plenty he could still do with the character given his new ground rules and the emphasis on skits gave the show a different tune that I felt, at the time, kept it fresh from what it was before. I missed the simplicity of the earlier reviews but I happily stuck with the NC again, as well as the same creators I’d happily watched before and plenty more I started to watch like Phelous (around the time he did that weird Aladdin meets Pagemaster movie, I used to rent that from Hollywood Video all the freaking time).

It was around this tumultuous time that Doug actually kinda started to annoy me. Never to the point where I stopped watching NC, but he sort of seemed to forget his whole “Like what you like,” message and outright attacked fans who disagreed with him. Certain jokes in his reviews rubbed me the wrong way (if Irate Gamer can’t get away with blowing up Ubisoft cuz they wouldn’t let him into a conference, you can’t get away with pretending to blow up Happy Madison just because they make shit movies) and he had a general vindictiveness to those who liked movies like “Man of Steel” or “The Lorax” that just seemed mean spirited and not a funny little video meant to entertain (though I guess the signs were always there like when he added in a dig at “Avatar” in his “Conan” review for no reason). But by and by he seemed to mellow out (no doubt dealing with problems letting go of Demo Reel and how big a success he thought it would be) and I still watched his stuff, including the vlogs he did with Rob regarding “Avatar” (the good one, hey I did it too!), “Korra,” “Adventure Time,” and any recent movie that came out. I started to agree with them less and less but they were still entertaining guys and I liked what they were doing.

Some of the shadier stuff going on at the site more or less flew over my head. The game show they did was pretty much “Demo Reel” part two for me in how much interest I had in it and that faded from public consciousness pretty quickly, and it was around the time the site switched from TGWTG to just Channel Awesome that a real shift began to become more noticeable. People were leaving. People I may not have watched all the time, but they were leaving, often times unannounced and seemingly unprovoked (because quite a few of them were). I read about what happened to Allison, aka Obscurus Lupa, who I had watched on and off again and thought that was pretty shitty, and got a general grasp that the management of CA itself wasn’t very good from what she and Lindsay alluded to (or just straight up said, they really should’ve had some NDAs if they cared so much about how they look) in some posts on Tumblr or Twitter but I still carried on watching NC and the other creators on the site mostly because I just figured what every fan figured at the time, Doug was mostly innocent and it was Michaud and Rob who were the real strings behind big decisions like who stays and goes (I liked Rob fine, but even back then I knew he could be kind of an ass).

More and more people from the classic era of TGWTG were leaving or not producing as much for the site as they did and that was a shame. CA was never what TGWTG felt like to me, even if the purpose was to put more focus on the other producers (supposedly (hell, TGWTG did a way better job of featuring producers in my opinion even if it wasn’t perfect)). But whatever, I carried on every Tuesday watching NC, watching other creators when their stuff interested me, but it still wasn’t quite the same as before, and I had become more aware of the general bad experience most people had filming the anniversary movies even if the full extent of that didn’t come until a few days ago.

It was really when Lewis announced that he had left and I found the Change the Channel hashtag that I started to take notice of these stories, finding plenty of them on my own from the links to Twitter conversations many of the former contributors were having before reading them on the Google doc. I was torn, wondering if I should boycott NC with all that I had read and decided to make it a temporary one until the doc came out and to see if he or CA would provide a statement. Well, the doc came out and the apology not long after. And yeah, I moved it to a permanent ban after that bullshit.

I’ve given up watching people I loved before, JonTron and his racist bullshit was the last straw in supporting anything he did, and even with the Me Too movement I’ve given up any kind of support for people like Kevin Spacey who I used to love as an actor (now it’s pretty easy to see how he was able to play such scumbag villains over and over again). I know Doug isn’t a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer, and to my knowledge he hasn’t used his position to sexually take advantage of anyone (though he has turned a blind eye to others doing the same and the same can’t be said for taking advantage of people in other ways), but I just couldn’t watch stuff directly made by him and for Channel Awesome with all this information. It wouldn’t be right, even with an adblocker.

I don’t mean to threaten the livelihood of people on his team like Malcolm or Tamara, I like them a great deal and they’re very talented, heck I even enjoyed the skits on NC a lot more than most because of them (and Rachel, she was great too). But I said to myself until an actual apology is listed and some form of action is taken to truly better the site, I wouldn’t watch them. Others have suggested and I have thought the same, that the best thing to do would be to fire Michaud, though I realize this would create a slew of problems given that he owns the IP for NC and is the founder of CA. Still, some form of acknowledgement from the Walkers would go a long way to bettering the public response to all this. More and more contributors have left in the wake of this document, either out of fear for their own image or to show solidarity with the many complaints levied toward the site (and their reasons are completely valid no matter what, they’re trying to make a living), looking at the site today it’s practically a ghost town. I don’t blame those that have stayed for anything, but the reputation of CA is tarnished and at this point, especially with that piss-poor “apology,” it’s going to take several huge leaps to get it back.

I realize the purpose of Change the Channel was never to create a boycott of NC or any of the Walker’s content, at least by the majority of those who contributed to the docs, and those who choose to boycott do so of their own volition. Well, that’s my volition. No matter how much NC shaped my sense of humor in my younger years and inspired me to look at movies critically myself, I can’t deny the damage that Doug and Rob have been complicit in nor turn a blind eye to the shady practices they, Michaud, and past executives on the site have done.

I really do wish that what was seemingly apparent in front of the camera, that this was a site filled of talented people who were also good friends having a good time, was true behind the scenes as well. People have been hurt, assaulted, taken advantage of, and tossed aside when they were no longer useful to the site. It’s not right, and I’m literally changing the channel until actual change is made.

#Channel Awesome #The Nostalgia Critic #Doug Walker #Rob Walker #Mike Michaud #ChangetheChannel #an explanation of my thoughts on NC as a whole #and why I'm boycotting him until further notice

47 notes · View notes

charis-chan · 7 years

Text

Sisters’ Night

So, I decided to have fun this week at all your expenses. Muahahahaha!

Thanks to @queercapwriting for hosting DanversSistersWeek and to @reinakonanofate for the amazing editing job!

Read on Ao3

“Should I wait for you to start the shower?”

You bite your lip. You should feel much guiltier, but the truth is, you don’t. You don’t feel guilty at all, in fact, you feel giddy as you mount your bike and start towards your destination. “I’m sorry, bug, I won’t make it tonight.”

Her disappointment is easily heard through the in-built Bluetooth on your helmet. “You are working late tonight?”

You smile, changing lanes. “I’m sorry, babe, no. It’s Sister Night.”

“Oh!” The switch on her voice warms your heart. Gone is the disappointment and it’s replaced with excitement. “Right! I forgot. What are you doing today?”

“I don’t know. Kara’s the one planning tonight. I was asked to stay the night, though.”

“She’s still down?”

You nod, even when she can’t see you. “Yeah. She’s still pretty sad.”

Earlier the week you busted an illegal alien fighting ring, again, but this time around all the fighters were there against their will and also, most of the aliens were barely teens. It was so hard for Kara to see that many kids forced and controlled to entertain humans. It was a blow to her faith in humans and her belief that the evilness in the world was shrinking.

You spent the night then too, cuddling your crying sister as she tried to convince herself defending humans is still something good to do.

“Care for your sister, love. And have fun. Text me if you need anything, okay?”

“Yes, bug. Text me when you head to bed? I’ll call to say goodnight.”

“No, Alex. Focus on Kara. We can have brunch tomorrow. The three of us. I’ll bring doughnuts.”

Your smile threatens to split your face in two. “You are perfect, bug. Kara will be so happy, it’s been a while since you dropped by.” You pour out the sultry voice she so loves. “And I’ll reward you once we leave Kara’s place.”

“You can reward me by stopping calling me bug. I hate it.”

“Oh, I know,” you say proudly, finding the perfect parking spot near Kara’s building.

“You are a brat.”

“And even so, you love me.” The bike is turned off and you sit in place. You can tell the call is close to an end and it doesn’t make sense for you to switch to your phone right now.

She sighs. “That I do.” The resignation in her voice makes you chuckle. “I’ll go now. Have fun. Make wise choices. And for the love of God, don’t try to out-eat your sister again.”

You chuckle. “I promise. No more pie eating contests.”

“Night, babe.”

“Love you, bug.”

“I hate you.”

You laugh as she disconnects the call and you finally climb down the bike, taking off the helmet and combing your hair in place. You timed your arrival just right and you smile when another bike comes park behind you.

“Hey, Jessy,” you greet the delivery guy that’s been bringing you pizza since Kara moved into National City.

He too takes off his own helmet and smiles at you. “Hi, Alex. Game night?”

“Nope.” You wait patiently for him to gather the seven pies Kara asked him for. “Sister Night.”

His mouth forms a little ‘o’ at that, eyeing his cargo, and he exchanges the pizzas for the money you hand him. “Rough week?”

“It was shitty. Yes.”

He shakes his head. “Say “hi” to Kara for me, then. And don’t let her eat all those pies in one go.”

You nod as he packs up to leave. You don’t think he knows Kara’s an alien, but he never judges when you order enough food to feed an army for just the two of you and that’s the one thing that puts him in your good books. He’s also polite and he knows by heart exactly what’s your order, so mix-ups and mistakes are a thing of the past.

“Have a nice night,” he says, peeling off and you wave him bye.

So, with pizzas and helmet in hand and your bike locked, you make the short trek up to your sister’s apartment.

“Kara!” you yell to be let inside. You can totally juggle all the stuff in your arms as you fetch your keys from your pocket, but you don’t feel like it. “Kara!”

You hear a muffled thud and a small yelp and your eyebrows raise. You are about to call again her when she opens the door.

She’s already in her sushi pajamas and her hair is in a messy bun. Gone are the glasses and you see she’s already started with the ice-cream if the glob of chocolate in the corner of her mouth is any indication.

“Pizza!” she exclaims happily, taking the boxes from you and leaving you by the door.

“How are you, Alex?” you mock, crossing the threshold. “Long day at work? How’s the missus? Nice jacket! Is it new?”

You entertain yourself taking off your jacket and kicking off your shoes. Putting the helmet by the door and stretching languidly after such a rough day and an even rougher week. Kara, as predicted, doesn’t rise to your teasing.

But, unpredictably, when you turn fully into the apartment, Kara’s is nowhere to be found.

In her place, though, you see a series white sheets arranged into a meticulously built blanket fort. “Kara?”

~Get in, dummy. I want cuddles!~

You snort. Of course.

You’re the one who taught her how to build blanket forts, but damn if the student didn’t surpass the teacher.

The whole thing is amazingly supported and so well built you’d think Kara spent hours on it and not the half an hour it took you to reach her place from the DEO where you last saw her.

Looking closely at it, Kara made it so the TV is within its walls and, yep, there’s a half-eaten gallon of ice-cream resting by the coffee table.

“You little shit! You started without me!”

Kara’s full mouth of pizza grosses you out when she smiles, all teeth, at you.

You sigh. Some things never change.

“Lemme change and I’ll be back. Don’t eat all the pizza. I’m hungry too.”

Instead of answering, she points to the edge of the fort where a large collection of pillows rest. Above them – you can totally recognize several that were no doubt stolen from your own apartment earlier today– are your favorite baggy t-shirt and your roomier basketball shorts.

Oh.

Her use of Kryptonian should have hinted you that tonight is that kind of night.

Your little alien is feeling worse than you thought.

She needs you more than you think she did.

You kicked yourself mentally. You should have known. You should have seen it.

~Kara…~

She’s no longer stuffing her face and it’s now looking down her lap. She doesn’t say a thing, but you know.

You know that she needs you close that she needs to be with you, that, just like when you were kids, she can’t bear to be apart from you now that you are so close.

So, you smile and crawl into the fort. You change without thought and without shame out of your uniform. You’ve changed in front of each other several times and this one is no different.

~Scoot,~ you say, easily adopting her native tongue. ~Your feet are on the way.~

She smiles timidly and waits for you to build yourself a comfy pillow nest to rest half lying and half sitting. The perfect position, to eat and watch TV without moving for hours. Once you’re settled, with your pizza box within reach and the cold beer Kara hands you, your sister waits no time in climbing between your legs, resting her back to your chest.

~What troubles you, little sun?~ you ask the air, well aware that now that you are cuddling, now that she’s eating more slowly that she’s focusing solely on the Law and Order episode so she doesn’t have to focus on anything else, she’ll go non-verbal for a little while.

You watch the episode rerun in silence, eating and drinking at your own leisure, always making sure you don’t mess Kara’s hair and clothes. You eat and drink, letting the show and its familiar plot lull you into a relaxed state.

Pizza eaten, beer drunk and the second episode just about to be resolved, you turn down the volume and push away the remnants of your pig-fest. ~Time to talk, sis.~

Kara whines, turning so she can hide her nose on your neck.

~Kara… you need to let it out.~

Your sister shakes her head. ~No. Don’t want to.~

~Kara…~

~Please, Alex. Please.~

You sigh. You can hear the tears in her voice, but you can also hear the soft denial in it. She won’t talk. Not today. ~Fine, little sun. Fine. We don’t have to talk.~

~… can we watch Lilo & Stich?~

You smile down to her, even when she can’t see you. ~Yes, love. We can do whatever you want.~

~Hold me, Alex. Just hold me.~

You nod, dropping a kiss to her hair and reaching for the controller to look for Kara’s favorite movie.

By the time Lilo is taken by Captain Cantu Kara will be a sobbing mess and maybe, just maybe, she’ll not only cry with the movie but for whatever else is weighing down her heart.

XxXxX

You wake up with a face full of hair.

Dark hair.

You blink once, twice and raise your head just enough to get your bearings and compare them to what you remember of last night.

You fell asleep in the blanket fort. Check.

You fell asleep in the middle of your pillow nest. Check.

Your uniform is rumpled just outside the fort entrance. Check.

The seven empty pizza boxes are in a neat pile next to your clothes. Check.

The two bottles of beer you drank are on top of that pile. Check.

Kara is a drooling mess on your stomach. Check.

A hand is under your shirt, groping your boob. Che-.

Wait. What?

You look to your right. Nope, your sister’s not the one reaching first base. Kara’s hands are on you, yes, but one is clutched tightly on your shorts and the other is resting on your knee.

So, you look to your left, where the hair you woke up eating is.

Dark hair.

Dark, flowery and sweet smelling, hair.

Hair you are so used to that you didn’t think twice about opening your eyes to it.

It’s the first thing you see most mornings now.

“Kara let me in,” her groggy voice and retreating hand let you know she was sleeping until not too long ago. “Brunch is in the kitchen.”

You scrunch up your nose. Your breath stinks and you don’t want to make her suffer through it, so you turn your face away from her. “What time is it?”

“I got here at noon,” she slurs.

“And Kara went back to sleep?”

She looks down to where your sister is still knocked out. The tear tracks from last night make a sad contrast to her still rosy cheeks. “I don’t think she slept that much,” she says around a yawn.

Remembering the tossing alien from the night before, the little whimpers as she slept through the worst of her nightmares, the tear escaping her closed eyes, yes, you don’t think she slept that much either.

“C’mon,” you push her a little, prompting her to roll away only to roll back into your empty spot the moment you move. “Lemme go brush my teeth so I can properly say good morning to you.”

“Good afternoon, you mean,” she mumbles out.

You groan, crawling out the fort. You’re getting too old for this.

Once out, you stretch, feeling your back pop and something snap into place.

Yep, definitely getting too old.

You look back once you don’t feel your girlfriend following behind you.

And an enormous grin makes its way to your lips, regarding the two ladies in your life.

Because nestled together, fast asleep, with their legs intertwined, their arms thrown around each other and their foreheads almost touching, are one Super and one Luthor.

Kara is still drooling and the small whimper-snort you’ve come to associate with Lena is the only sound that can be heard.

You decide to let them sleep a little longer. Kara’s night terrors always do a number to her and you know Lena was probably up with the sun. So, a little more rest is what the doctor ordered.

The doctor, of course, being you.

I couldn’t resist and make this one Alex/Lena... I’m getting obsessed with them :P

#DanversSistersWeek #day 1 #sisters' night #alex danvers #kara danvers #lena luthor

42 notes · View notes

successaesthetics · 7 years

Text

WOW it’s a miracle I have been tagged and have actually remembered to play the game!! Moment of silence to observe this momentous day ;)

Thanks to the sweet @studyingraphics for the tag!!

Game rules: answer these 92 statements and tag 20 people (or however many you feel like lol)

LAST: 1. drink: wine :3 2. phone call: my best friend from college! 3. text message: to a good friend about her new boy <3 4. song you listened to: Despacito by Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee omgggg. Makes me want to dance and also be fluent en español lol 5. time you cried: eh...earlier this week. Stupid breakup stuff.

HAVE YOU: 6. dated someone twice: Nope! 7. kissed someone and regretted it: Nahh. #NoRagerts 8. been cheated on: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Honestly who knows. 9. lost someone special: Sadly, yes. C’est la vie. 10. been depressed: Yes, unfortunately. 11. gotten drunk and thrown up: Again....unfortunately.

LIST THREE FAVORITE COLORS: 12-14. Navy, maroon, and lavender.

IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU: 15. made new friends: Yes! So many awesome friendships. 16. fallen out of love: Yes, sadly. 17. laughed until you cried: Omg yes, those are the best laughs. 18. found out someone was talking about you: Not that I recall. 19. met someone who changed you: Probably. 20. found out who your friends are: For sure. 21. kissed someone on your facebook list: Welp....he’s not on my facebook list anymore....

GENERAL: 22. how many of your facebook friends do you know: Liiike 99% 23. do you have any pets: Used to have a pupper. She was the greatest pup that ever lived and I’ll never love again WAHHH. 24. do you want to change your name: Not really. I mean, aside from never being called my birth name ever, I’m good haha. 25. what did you do for your last birthday: My boyfriend at the time came up to visit and it was a pretty shitty birthday because we were on the verge of breaking up. 26. what time did you wake up: 4:45 AM 27. what were you doing at midnight last night: Falling asleep to a cheesy chick flick on Netflix (seriously check out Picture Perfect bc Jennifer Aniston is perfection as always) 28. name something you can’t wait for: To visit my little sister in Spain!! 29. when was the last time you saw your mom: About an hour ago loll 30. what is one thing you wish you could change in your life: How much my anxiety controls my life every day. It’s often crippling and sometimes I don’t deal with it very well at all. 31. what are you listening to right now: Nothing except for Despacito playing in my head lmao 32. have you ever talked to a person named tom: Yes I work with two Toms haha. 33. something that is getting on your nerves: Ignorance/racism/sexism/homophobia, etc. etc. 34. most visited websites: Is Instagram considered a website if it’s the app? Well. That.

LOST QUESTIONS: 35. mole/s: I don’t think I have any? 36. mark/s: I have this birthmark on my had that’s almost invisible in winter, but is very dark in summer when I get tan (”tan,” lol). My dad realized it was there when I was like 16 and told me to go wash my hands bc he thought it was dirt. 37. childhood dream: I wanted to grow up to be a vet with a big family. 38. hair color: Mousy brown. Kinda hate it, but too lazy and cautious to do anything with it color-wise 39. long or short hair: Short! Used to have hair down to my butt but short for the last year or so. 40. do you have a crush on someone: When do i NOT have a crush on someone, let’s be honest. I crush hard on everyone lol. 41. what do you like about yourself: My eyes/eyebrows, my brains bc I’m brilliant (shh), my ~bubbly~ personality as described by friends and coworkers. 42. piercings: 5 ear piercings. Wish I had courage for a nose piercing haha. 43. blood type: Not a dang clue and I’m deathly afraid of needles so we ain’t finding out! 44. nickname: Ceej 45. relationship status: Single as a Pringle, in the best way (Pringles are delicious, get over it) 46. zodiac: Libra 47. pronouns: She/her 48. favorite tv show: Friends, probably. 49. tattoos: I wishhhhhhh. I want a sleeve so badly. 50. right or left hand: Right 51. surgery: Unfortunately. 52. hair dyed in different color: Never had it. 53. sport: To play? Softball. To watch? Football or wrestling (I know, judge me. It’s good when it’s real lol) 54. where’s 54 (<--lol this threw me off at first but I’m leaving it) 55. vacation: I don’t know what this is asking lol. Next vacation is Europe YAY! 56. pair of trainers: Huh?? Sure, i’ll take a good lookin’ pair of trainers ;)

MORE GENERAL: 57. eating: Pizza rolls (judge me) 58. drinking: Riesling 59. I’m about to: Get ready for work tomorrow and go the heck to sleep! 60. stop skipping numbers, dear author, it’s cheating (,<-- lol again) 61. waiting for: The sun to go down so I can sleep 62. want: To be over this breakup, to have enough money to not be stressed about paying student loans every month, to be able to travel freely 63. get married: One day, yeah. 64. career: Graphic design!

WHICH IS BETTER: 65. hugs or kisses: Hugs cause you can get them from anyone and they’re so cozy :) 66. lips or eyes: Mmmm both. Eyes though, if I had to choose. 67. shorter or taller: LOL everyone is taller than me. 68. older or younger: Oldr? 69. COME ON IT REALLY IS CHEATING. at this moment is what, 89 questions to answer you lying duck 70. nice arms or nice stomach: Arms. 71. sensitive or loud: Sensitive I guess? 72. hook up or relationship: Relationship. Not into hookups. I get attached way too quickly for that shit lol. 73. troublemaker or hesitant: Depends haha.

HAVE YOU EVER: 74. kissed a stranger: Nope 75. drank hard liquor: Yes ma’am 76. lost glasses/contact lenses: Don’t wear them 77. turned someone down: Lol yes 78. sex in the first date: Noooope 79. broken someone’s heart: Yuuuuup 80. had your heart broken: Unfortunately, but again, that’s life. 81. been arrested: Nope 82. cried when someone died: Too much 83. fallen for a friend: Yup and that’s how all my relationships have started lol

DO YOU BELIEVE IN: 84. yourself: Sometimes. I try to. 85. miracles: Yessm. 86. love at first sight: I don’t think so. I think it could be infatuation, but I think love is a lot deeper and how can you love someone if you literally just laid eyes on them? Idk. 87. santa claus: OBVI one of the best Christmas movies ever ijs. 88. kiss on the first date: Eh. Idk. I’ve never dated a guy that wasn’t a good friend first so idk how to date lololol. But probs not. 89. *coughs* 88 questions

OTHER: 90. current best friend name: Danielle! Best friend for 10 years :) 91. eye color: Green mainly, with blue around the edges. 92. favorite movie: Omg way too many favorite movies. Cinderella Man is the first one that comes to mind. Oh, and Hitch.

Now I’ve done way too much typing so if you see this and want to play along, consider yourself tagged!!

For everyone else, I tag @intellectys @obsidianstudy @notebuddy @anikasprocrastinatingagain @genspen @allydsgn @legallychic @alqariyah @seduloustudy @sassypitbull @xxjammyjamiexx and anyone else who wants to play!!

K love y’all bye :)

#tagged #quiz #get to know me

8 notes · View notes

adarkroomandawallflower · 7 years

Photo

(shitty edit courtesy of yours truly)

Title: First Date

Pairing: Peter Maximoff (XMCU) x Reader

Warnings: Peter being a goof, excess fluff, lots of cuteness

For @candycountries, the sweetest little maple leaf. Thank you for believing in my writing, even when I don’t 💚

Based off the song First Date by Blink-182 & the endless Peter discussions I have with @candycountries

It was Date Night & Peter was nervous as Hell. You & Peter had began dating a few weeks ago, but this was your first official date. He wanted to make sure it was perfect, but his nerves were getting the best of him. He was parked outside your living area on campus, waiting anxiously for you. You were both professors at Xavier’s, although you were a new professor. Peter had been teaching Physics at Xavier’s for about 3 years now & you had began teaching earlier this year, just a few months ago.

You were a shy & quiet person, not really socializing with many professors, aside from Charles & Hank. You only really talked to your students & the rest of the time, you just graded & kept to yourself.

Peter, on the other hand, although shy as well, was very sociable & loved talking to others. He was a favorite among the students & the professors & it didn’t take long for the good word about the cute (& single 👀) Physics professor to come your way. Even so, you didn’t dare try talking to him for free of making a bad first impression. Thus, you kept your distance.

This drove Peter absolutely mad because he definitely noticed you & he was eager to chat up the gorgeous new professor. He tried his best to get to know you, but you instinctively shut him out & conversations with him were minimal. This all changed; however, during Xavier’s annual Halloween Bash.

You & Peter had been assigned chaperones to the dance, which means you both had to watch all the kids, dress up for the evening, & talk to each other so you could work as a team & not be bored out of your minds while the students had fun & you supervised them.

You came out of your shell a bit more that night, just because Halloween was your favorite holiday & it always made you feel secure because you could be whoever you wanted to be, even your true self, without fear of being judged.

Peter noticed how more at ease you were & he took full advantage of it. He chatted you up all night, cracking jokes & shamelessly flirting with you. He relished every laugh & blush you gave him in return. By the end of the night, you were much more comfortable around him & you’d developed a stronger friendship than you had previously.

Unfortunately, the night was coming to an end: the younger kids were heading to bed, the older ones were going with Charles & Hank into the woods nearby for a spooky campfire, & you & Peter were left to help clean up the dance room. It was an absolute mess, but with Peter’s speed, it was getting cleaned up in no time. Or, at least, it would have, if Peter hadn’t stopped to impress you with a crude & joking strip tease to Thriller, which had you nearly dying of laughter.

Later that night, when you & Peter went to supervise the campfire, Peter romanced you under the stars & asked you out officially, to which you agreed to.

Fast forward back to the current day, where Peter was still waiting anxiously in his car for you. He checked his watch for the nth time that afternoon, keeping his eyes glued to your door afterwards.

Finally, after what seemed like ages, you finally emerged. Peter couldn’t help but stare at you because you looked so different, so at ease, so comfortable. You were dressed more casually instead of the usual professional garb you wore when you taught class. He was dressed similarly in his favorite casual wear, instead of the more clean-cut outfits he wears for lecture.

He smiled widely at you as you got into the passenger seat, his cheeks flushing a little as he did so, “Hi.”

You returned his smile as you put on your seatbelt, leaning closer to press a soft kiss to his cheek, “Hi, thank you for taking me out today.”

His cheeks flushed darker & he lost all power of speech, simply from that little kiss.

He was already done for, & the date had barely begun.

Aside from the initial awkwardness & shell shock from your kiss, the rest of the car ride went smoothly. You both made idle conversation & you attempted to press Peter as to where he was taking you, but he was intent on keeping it a secret. In all honesty, he didn’t want to tell you because he was worried you’d laugh at him & find the date idea childish & stupid. So, he figured he’d take you there & if you hated it, he’d pretend he was joking about that being the date location & resort to Plan B, which was a movie.

As he neared the date location, his anxiety steadily increased to the point where when he finally reached the date designation, his heart was practically going to burst from how fast it was beating.

You looked out the window before looking back at him with an amused expression, “You brought me to the arcade for our first date?”

He swallowed nervously, “Um…yes?”

You grinned, “How did you know I can play a mean game of Galaga & DDR?”

“You do? I mean pfft yeah I soooo knew that duh!”

“Then you also know that I’m going to kick your ass & win more tickets, right?”

“Ooooh honey, if you think you can beat me, then you’ve got another thing coming.”

“Bring it on, Maxipad.”

He held a hand to his heart in mock hurt, “Be careful what you dish out, babe, because I’m dishing it right back.”

Peter knew right then & there you were the one because no one had ever outsassed him like that before.

He did; however, prove to be the better gamer & kicked your ass at nearly every game, aside from skee-ball, which he had purposely let you win. You of course, knew this, & challenged him to a rematch, but he just let you win again anyway. By the end of the day, the two of you (mostly him) had acquired enough tickets to win the grand prize, which you were very eager to obtain. It was the latest Atari game system, which you were dying to have, but you weren’t about to spend the thousands of tickets Peter earned on a prize for yourself.

“You should pick something,” you told him as the flustered guy at the ticket counter counted all your tickets, “you won most of these tickets, it’s only fair that you pick the prize.”

He furrowed his eyebrows in confusion & surprise, “What? No, I want you to pick the prize, as my gift to you for giving me a chance & coming on this date with me.”

“Peter,” you sighed, a bit taken aback by the sweet gesture, “that’s really sweet, but they’re your tickets. You should pick the prize.”

He playfully glared at you, “Listen, this is less tickets than I usually win. I can come back any time & win double this in a few hours. Seriously, I insist: pick something.”

You sighed, biting your lip as you continued to feel guilty, “Okay, how about this, we both pick something?” that way it’s fair.“

He pursed his lips, weighing the option before nodding in agreement, "You’ve got a deal.”

You smiled, “Great, you pick first.”

He pretended to weigh his options before he made his decision, “I’ll have that sickass looking gecko,” he pointed to the prize & you glared at him when you realized how much it cost: one ticket.

The ticket counter gave Peter the little toy gecko & he grinned before placing it on the side rim of his glasses, “Alright babe, your pick!”

You sighed & gave in, picking the Atari game system, which cost the remainder of the game tickets. Peter hoped he would never forget that glorious smile that made its way onto your face when the ticket counter gave you your prize.

As you both excitedly made your way back to his car, you were quick to gently set the game system on your seat & grab Peter’s hand before he could race to the other side to open his door. Before he could react, you grabbed his shirt collar & pulled his lips down onto yours in an adoring kiss.

He squeaked in surprise, completely shocked by your sudden display of affection, but was quick to reciprocate. He let his hands rest gently on your waist, squeezing your hips a little as you deepend the kiss. When you pulled away, he had the biggest, dopiest smile on his face & he pushed his glasses up his nose, which were fogged up. You laughed at how cute he was, adjusting the gecko, which was barely clinging onto his glasses, “I really hope you were also included with the Atari system because you are definitely a grand prize,” with that, you gave him another quick & final kiss before you got into the car.

He tried to recompose himself as he closed your door for you, letting out a breath he didn’t know he was holding before mouthing a quiet “Wow” to himself as his cheeks reddened at your unexpected compliment.

The cute Physics Professor at Xavier’s was now the cute, completely taken Physics Professor & he was more than happy to spread the news when you both got back from your successful first date.

Tagging: @v-writings & @dragon-chica (hope you guys don’t mind being tagged! I thought you both would enjoy more Professor!Peter 💚)

187 notes · View notes

peachy-jy · 7 years

Text

ye olde tag game

I was tagged by @got7peaches and I want to know if you came up with the title

(I think this was supposed to be fun and light but it ended up going to a really deep and verbose place so I’m putting it under the cut)

not tagging anyone cuz no one should have to read this lololol fml

how tall are you? 5′6″ and I’m not a fan... short people are cuter what color and style is your hair? red and long and curly what color are your eyes? they’re blue around the edges and green around the pupil and I know that sounds like a description straight out of “my immortal” but no I’m not making this up do you wear glasses or contacts? both but I prefer glasses do you wear braces? never have never will what is your fashion style? I don’t think I really have a “style.” That would require more money than I am willing to spend on clothes. But I love everything Claire wears so... if I could afford Claire’s style and pull it off I would dress like her when were you born? October 22 (burn this date in your mind) how old are you? 24 do you have any siblings? 2 brothers, one older one younger what school/college do you go to? this seems like tmi so I’ll just say I’m in nursing school (as if everyone didn’t know that already I never shut up about it) what kind of student are you? the worst. I’m that asshole who puts in 10% effort and turns in everything late and somehow still does ok what are your favorite subjects? anatomy was super fun (the human body is weird and amazing) but I think my favorite class I’ve ever taken was formal logic (it’s the satisfaction of completing mathematical equations with none of the actual math) what are your favorite shows? 30 rock, parks and rec, the office, community, scrubs... basically good sitcoms with 5+ seasons. I’m also a slut for reality tv (dance moms anyone?) and competition shows (great british bake-off what whaaat) what are your favorite movies? the one I always pick when I have to pick just one is when harry met sally but I am a huge cinephile and I have dozens of favorites so if you’re looking for a movie rec hmu what are your favorite books? my book choices are a lil outdated cuz all I read is fanfic lately lololol but old OLD faves are hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, the giver, ready player one, and the hunger games series what are your favorite past times? my favorite past time is collecting past times, getting decently good at them, and then abandoning them. I’ve taught myself to play the ukulele, painting and drawing, niche board games, pottery, baking, the basics of a few languages, and a few video games here and there. The only hobbies that I’ve done consistently for several years are knitting, watching movies (specifically going to the movie theater because you can’t beat that atmosphere tbh), and writing (mostly fanfiction; I haven’t written anything original since high school). do you have any regrets? I wish I had never gone to the second university I attended... I basically wasted three years of my life in a hick town. I was miserable but I learned a lot about myself and also a lot about people and how to not be a shitty one so I guess it wasn’t a total waste. It sure felt like it though. what is your dream job? I wish I had the self-confidence to be a fiction writer full time. If I really worked hard at developing original concepts, I think I could be pretty good at it. Plus I would never have to leave my apartment and I could wear sweatpants 24/7, which is the real dream, let’s be real would you like to get married? where? I kind of flip flop on this one... sometimes I think I’d like it but then again I’m such a loner that I think I would suck at marriage sooo... my brother says I need to find someone who is as smart as me but total shit at something I’m good at, so I can take care of them and feel needed. I don’t know that marriage necessarily needs to be involved... Plus if I ever did get married I’d prob elop or only invite my immediate family sooooo do you want kids? how many? I don’t think I’d want to create life but I’d be 100% down for adopting... then again when my celeb crushes say they want kids I’m all I VOLUNTEER so who can say do you like shopping? If I magically come into extra income then yes. If I’m on a budget, shopping for something I need is like torture. The exception is always make-up/skincare. I buy myself new make-up when I’m sad. how many countries have you visited? 7, all of them European, but one of them was just for a day so I feel like it doesn’t really count. I really want to visit some Asian countries, though. what was your scariest dream? The scariest one that comes to mind was being locked in an office building with office workers and there was a serial killer-type guy in a jigsaw mask who kept turning the lights off and abducting people one by one and disfiguring their faces. No fuckin clue where that came from tbh. I’ve never even seen Saw. do you have any enemies? I’d like to think I don’t? I try really hard to treat everyone well regardless of how they treat me because I like being liked... but honestly there are a few people who hate my guts and won’t meet me halfway to reconcile sooooo yes, I guess I do. I don’t hold it against them, though. If they ever took a moment to see things from my point of view they would realize that I never meant them any harm and I’m just a flawed person, trying my best. But apologies don’t go very far with people who like to hold grudges and feel like the world is against them, so I can’t do anything about that. do you have a boyfriend or girlfriend? I don’t have the energy for that. Right now, having a S/O sounds kind of terrible actually lmao they’re so much work

THIS GOT HELLA LONG I’M SORRY BLAME CLAIRE

Put your music on shuffle and list the first fifteen songs without skipping:

We Hate You Please Die - Crash and the Boys (Scott Pilgrim anyone? no? ok)

Amsterdam - Imagine Dragons (I downloaded the whole album bc I liked Radioactive but I’ve never actually listened to this song)

Green Onions - Booker T & The MG’s (idk don’t ask)

The Curse of Curves - Cute Is What We Aim For (a one hit wonder but I still know every word to this song)

All Alright - Fun.

Classic Rock Medley - The Cat’s Pajamas (a local acapella group from my high school days)

Bellas Final - the Pitch Perfect Soundtrack (ok this plus the last one is making it seem like I’m obsessed with acapella I’m really not)

East West - Herman’s Hermits (...I actually love this band don’t judge me)

Here It Goes Again - Ok Go (say what you will about the song but that video with the treadmills was iconic)

20 Dollar Nose Bleed - Fall Out Boy

Sims Holidaze - The Sims 2 Bon Voyage (I may or may not have the entire collected Sims soundtrack on my ipod...)

Lesson 4 Pronunciation - Rosetta Stone Italian Level 3 (Remember when I was fluent in Italian? yeah me neither)

Whistle (Acoustic) -Blackpink (I like the original better)

Come So Far (Got So Far To Go) - Hairspray soundtrack (ok but this whole soundtrack is a bop I forgot I used to love this)

Mowgli’s Road - Marina & the Diamonds

What have we learned? That hitting shuffle is not at all indicative of a person’s taste in music, but instead exposes their sordid musical past.

#I just spent two hours doing this oh my god Claire you owe me #tag game #shut up jenna

5 notes · View notes

lalka-laski · 4 years

Text

Let’s start off with some basics. What’s your name? Elizabeth

How old are you? Way too old to be filling out Tumblr surveys but alas.

What’s your hair and eye color? Blonde hair, blue/green/gray eyed.

How tall are you? 5′7″ What’s your relationship status? In a beautiful, happy and HEALTHY relationship with my soulmate. Alright, enough of that. Let’s move on to the random shit.

What’s your favorite song? I could never choose just one but for the sake of the next few questions, let’s go with “Thursday’s Child” by David Bowie. What does that song mean? What is the message behind it? Simply put, it’s about being loved and accepted by someone who sees the light in you. It’s about coming to terms with your flaws and past mistakes to let yourself feel love. Is it your favorite because you relate to it, or do you just like the beat? It’s always been one of my favorites, even before I was in a positive relationship. I’ve always just loved its haunting but strangely hopeful sound. And I guess in many ways I’ve always felt like a “Thursday’s Child” myself. Have any pets? If so, what are they and what’s their names? Not presently Have you ever met your idol? I haven’t met any of them and I think in most cases I’d prefer not to What’s your favorite method of gaming? (PC, Xbox, Playstation, etc) I’m not into them If you’re in college, what’s your major and why did you pick it? I have a degree in English/Creative Writing and I don’t think I really need to bother explaining why, right? I like reading and writing. Pretty straightforward. How’re you doing today? Not bad! I’m really fatigued despite sleeping for about 13 hours last night, but otherwise I’m fine. Just having an ordinary but boring workday (hence the survey). What color are your bedroom walls? White Describe your favorite shirt. Lately it’s an off the shoulder cropped sweater that I’ve been wearing EVERYWHERE What’s your view on smart watches? Cool or a waste of money? Ehh... they’re not for me. I’m not that into gadgets and such, so I’d have no use for one. But I don’t judge others for wearing them/wanting them. What is one poster that you have hanging on your bedroom wall of? I actually have no wall decor in my bedroom right now! And I’ve been living in this apartment for over 6 months, so I can’t use the “just moved in” excuse anymore. I have some really beautiful artwork to hang up, I just haven’t gotten around to it. How many times have you moved in your life? Twice as a child, then twice for college (two separate colleges) and then once as an “adult” If you moved, do you like where you are now better than where you were? I absolutely ADORE my apartment right now. It’s cozy and homey but still has all the amenities of modern digs. It’s in a prime location that grants me all the benefits of city living (walking distance from my job, stores and bars, and a short car ride from anywhere else I frequent) but also all the advantages of suburbia (quiet, safe neighborhood). I really lucked out and I plan to live here for the next few years.

What’s your favorite color and why? Soft pink, because I aspire to be Elle Woods and/or a Disney Princess. Do you have a calendar? If so, what’s the theme? Nope. I tend to always buy them just because I love the look but then I never end up using them.

Have any famous person’s autographs? WELL I went to a Mat Kearney show and meet and greet at a local record shop and got his autograph & a photo. In all my excitement afterwards, I set the autograph down somewhere and lost it. (Typical me) I still have the photos though and that’s really all I care about. Do you draw well? I was actually decent at drawing as a kid/tween and I really enjoyed it. I’m sure I could’ve taken my interest further, but I was intimidated by the art scene at my high school. It was pretty cutthroat and the levels of talent were unreal, and I was just too afraid to even try. What type of cell phone do you have? Iphone 7 Should you be doing anything else right now or are you just bored? I’m at work right now and to be honest, there’s hardly any actual work I need to do. So here I am... Are you a cat or a dog person? Why? I’m a cat person by default because of my extreme aversion to dogs. I don’t like their energy and hyperactivity! Cats are calm and cuddly which is much more my speed. Tell me about the plot of your favorite book. I could never choose a single favorite, but I’ll describe the plot of the last great book I read: a former film star and sex symbol relays her life story in vivid, salacious detail, to a “nobody” journalist. Do you wear glasses or contacts? Reading glasses, on which I’m growing more and more dependent... What do you think about horror movies? I liked them in my youth. But as I grow older and more anxious (and more worn down by life’s shittiness) I can’t handle them as much. If you love them (I do), what’s your favorite? I like the classics like Halloween. Lots of suspense with little gore. Got any cool Christmas presents picked out for family or friends yet? I’m going on a family vacation a couple weeks before Christmas so we’ve all decided our money is best spent on that trip. We’ve agreed to do no gifts this year. Glenn and I are still going to exchange, however, since it’ll be our first Christmas morning together and I mean, we gotta open SOMETHING! Do you do Black Friday shopping or wait for Cyber Monday? Neither appeals to me Have any mental illnesses? Wow, what a question! What’s your favorite word and why? In all seriousness, I hate this question because I can never think of a clever answer. I like lots of words!! Don’t put me on the spot like this!! What is the most expensive thing you own, and what is it? My Smart TV maybe? Did you buy that item yourself? No, it was a graduation gift. Where do you work and what is your position? I work at a fertility clinic and I do administrative work and some marketing. How often do you cuss? A lot more often than I realize What type of car do you drive, if any? I don’t Do you have a lot of social media accounts? Which ones? Tumblr obviously, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. And I have an Instagram but it’s a “finsta” so it’s not associated with my actual identity. What is your favorite genre of music? Most of what I like falls into rock/alternative/new wave categories Does your family have holiday traditions? If so, what are they? We do, although they seem to have gotten all out of sorts these past few years. But the advantage of that is now we can create new ones! If you’re in a relationship, are you happy with it? It’s bliss <3 How long have you been with your significant other? A little over a year officially, although we were “talking” for about a year prior. I know, so millenial. Do you like psychology? Oh for sure, the human mind is fascinating. What is something your state is popularly known for? Everything associated with New York City, although that’s hours away from me. Other than that hmm... Wegmans? Do you like to do craft projects? If so, what’s the coolest thing you made? I do! I actually need to bring my art desk and craft supplies over to my apartment so I can craft more. I love scrapbooking, paper quilling, painting little trinkets and knick knacks... all kinds of projects! Do you watch sports or do you think they’re overrated? They don’t interest me much at all. What’s one occupation you think gets paid too much and doesn’t deserve to? Well while we’re on the topic of sports, professional athletes are disgustingly overpaid. Do you straighten your hair? My hair is naturally pin straight but sometimes I’ll run a straightener through it depending on what style I’m going for. Ever dyed your hair a color that isn’t natural? (blue, pink, etc) Never How’s your relationship with your parents? This is tough. My parents are good people and they certainly worked hard to provide for us financially and materially. And they did spend a lot of quality time with us. My dad was a lovable goofball and my mom was a nurturing, quintessential mama hen. That said, they weren’t perfect and a lot of their shortcomings have created long-term issues for me. I struggled with my mental health a lot as a pre-teen and teen, battled disordered eating and developed a drinking problem (among other things). My parents solution for all of this was to essentially place me on lock-down and send me to a therapist while offering no actual support of their own. They rarely, if ever, checked in to see how I was progressing or to help me get to the root of the problems. I missed out on a LOT of natural milestones that I should’ve experienced because of my perpetual lock-down, and I never combated my binge-drinking; I just learned how to better hide it. So I resent them for this and I often wonder where I’d be in life if I got the support I needed, when I needed it. So while I still love them and we do have a solid relationship (we talk daily), I’ll always feel a little sour about that. Do you still live with them or do you have your own house? I live on my own, which has been a great relief and in many ways, has made our relationship stronger. What’s something you are currently saving money for to buy? I’m just trying to live... lol Do you smoke/vape? If so, what brand do you smoke/what device do you use? I don’t do either. I own a CBD vape pen but I don’t really use it. Ever done drugs? No hard drugs Tell me one of your worst habits. Binge eating and drinking, excessive worrying, obsessing... What’s a weird quirk you have that no one else you know do? I love reading the profiles on writeaprisoner.com, then googling the inmates’ names to find out the crime(s) they committed. If you game, what type of headset do you use? What type of computer do you own, and do you like it? An Acer chromebook. I like it because it has a touchscreen and movable keyboard so I can use it as a tablet or laptop. What’s the thing that annoys you the most? Bigotry of all kinds. What brand of TV do you have? Samsung Are you excited for Christmas? I’m excited to spend my first Christmas Eve/Christmas morning with Glenn and start creating new traditions Tell me about your favorite vacation you’ve taken. All my favorite moments are at my family’s cottage in Canada.

Tell me something cool about yourself. There’s not much about myself that I’d consider “cool...” Haha Did/do you get good grades in school/college? I had exceptional grades and test scores in elementary school and was considered “gifted.” These alleged gifts kind of dwindled in middle school as I let myself get too distracted by personal/emotional/social problems. I got decent grades in high school (all As in subjects I enjoyed, Bs in the subjects I struggled with), but excelled in college and graduated Summa Cum Laude. So that’s my roundabout way of saying yes I did, just not always.

What’s your ringtone on your phone? It is 2019 my dude... What’s your favorite store to shop in? For clothes I like Express, Buckle or most department stores. Although I’ve been doing more online shopping than anything lately. If you won the lottery, what is the first thing you would buy and why? I’d pay off all my debts and then I’d book a trip around the world. How long have you had a Bzoink account? What on God’s green earth is that...?

Ever been to Field of Screams? If so, what’s your favorite attraction? Again, what is that? Do you own a Polaroid camera? Nope Do you have hardwood floor in your room or carpet? Carpet

It’s a Saturday night, what are you typically doing? Either out with friends or snuggled at home reading/watching a movie/drinking some wine. Do you have a lot of friends or do you not have any at all? I have a lot, but only a select few that I hang out with regularly. What’s your all time favorite movie and why? Legally Blonde, because I love the message and of course, the aesthetic.

How many blankets do you sleep with at night? One or two What’s the last TV show you watched? Did you enjoy it? I’m currently watching this ridiculous gift-wrapping competition and I’m laughing my head off at the absurdity of it all. (PS- for anyone reading this survey all the way through, I’m no longer at work. Yes, I’m taking this survey in two parts because I enjoy these questions so much! Do you prefer cable TV or do you use Netflix? Netflix & Hulu What is your dream job and why? A writer/contributor to a magazine or website. I’d love the ability to write about topics that interest me for a living. Do you think you would be a good therapist? No. I think I’m very empathetic, I’m a good listener and I give good advice (for the most part). But I’m a Type 4 which means I’m often too wrapped up in my own head. I wouldn’t have the emotional energy to be a therapist.

What’s your favorite brand of clothing? Didn’t I already answer this? Did you like this survey? One of the best I’ve taken! Hence why I saved this draft to finish it hours after I started haha

#survey

0 notes