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#boring answer but they’re all just big saps at the end of the day!!
willowcreekrun · 3 years
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I’m so sorry for your loss! I hope everything gets better. 💜 so you asked for questions? I love soft facts! So let’s say MC is sleepy and cuddly after a long day, and they are acting sweet to the ROs. Uh that’s it. Again, I hope the day gets better.
Awwww they’d all just absolutely melt if Jensen got all clingy and sleepy on them like that 🥺💞
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the-desolated-quill · 3 years
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WandaVision: ‘Subverting’ Good Television - Quill’s Scribbles
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(Spoilers for the first five episodes)
Hey everyone! Well... it’s been a while, hasn’t it? The last time I wrote a proper review or Scribble, people still thought the COVID crisis would be over within a month. The poor saps. But I thought that as a special way to mark this year’s Valentines Day, we could take a closer look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s shittiest power couple in their new Disney+ show WandaVision.
The first of many MCU spin-off shows that nobody asked for, broadcast exclusively on Disney’s totally unnecessary streaming platform, WandaVision is about everybody’s favourite whitewashed Nazi experiment and her red sexbot boyfriend as they try to fit into a suburban sitcom neighbourhood without arousing suspicion.
Yes, you read that correctly. The MCU has a sitcom now. My life is now complete.
Sarcasm aside, I was legitimately curious about WandaVision because of its unusual setting. And considering one of my most common criticisms of the MCU is its total lack of creativity, anything that’s even a little bit subversive is bound to attract my attention. Of course ‘subversive’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good.’ I could hand you a canvas smeared with my own shit and call it subversive. That doesn’t necessarily make it good art. And that’s exactly what WandaVision is. A canvas smeared with shit.
So lets split this critical analysis/review/angry bitter rant into two distinct chapters. The first focusing on the plot and setting, and the second focusing on the characters. Okay? Okay.
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Chapter 1: Bewitched
Critics seem to be utterly enamoured with the whole sitcom gimmick, and it is a gimmick. As far as I can tell from the episodes I’ve seen, the sitcom setting serves no real purpose whatsoever other than to make the show ‘quirky.’ Which I wouldn’t mind, believe it or not, if the show was actually funny. There’s just one problem. It’s not.
Now in some ways describing why a sitcom doesn’t work is often futile because comedy is largely subjective. What I find funny, you won’t necessarily find funny and vice versa. With WandaVision, however, I won’t have that problem. I can demonstrate to you precisely why WandaVision, objectively, isn’t funny. And it all comes down to one simple thing. The stakes. Or rather the complete and total absence of stakes.
The show makes it very clear from the beginning that none of what we’re seeing is real. The cheesy theme song, the era appropriate special effects (mostly. It’s actually very inconsistent), the joke commercials, and, in the case of the first two episodes, which are in black and white, the appearance of red lights and objects in Scarlet Witch’s general vicinity. (Gee, what a mystery this is).
Basically Wanda has brought Vision back from the dead and created this sitcom world for them to inhabit. I’ll explain the stupidity of this in Chapter 2. The point is none of this is real, and that has a negative effect on the comedy because the very nature of comedy is suffering. Take the plot of the first episode. Wanda and Vision have to prepare a dinner to impress Vision’s boss. If they fail, Vision could lose his job and the couple could be exposed as superheroes. If this were a normal sitcom, it would work. The stakes are clear and it would be satisfying to see the two struggle and overcome the odds. But here, we know it’s not real. If it’s not real, it means there’s no stakes. If there’s no stakes, it means there’s no suffering. If there’s no suffering, there’s no comedy.
It would be one thing if the unfunny sitcom stuff lasted for like the first ten minutes or so before making way for the actual plot, but it doesn’t. Oh no. It doesn’t even last for the first episode. Out of the five episodes I’ve watched, four of them are almost entirely about these unfunny, objectively flawed sitcom homages, each set in a different time period. The fifties, the sixties, and so on. And what’s worse is that nothing that happens in them is plot-relevant. That gets relegated to the last five minutes of an episode. So you’re forced to sit through twenty five minutes of boring slapstick and puns in order to catch even a whiff of actual story. Which begs the question... who is this for exactly? It can’t be entertaining to Marvel fans, who have to slog through all this pointless shit so they can figure out what the fuck is going on. Comedy fans may get a kick out of the sitcom pastiche at first, but after four episodes, surely the joke would wear thin. So why is it in here? Clearly someone in the writer’s room absolutely fell in love with the idea of doing a Marvel sitcom, but nobody put in any time or effort to figure out how it would work in context.
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I cannot stress enough how bad the plotting of this series is. As I said, the vast majority of a thirty minute episode is about shitty sitcom plots that aren’t funny and don’t have any impact on the story, only to then tease you with a crumb of actual plot in order to keep you coming back for the next instalment. Admittedly it’s an effective strategy. I was more than ready to quit after Episode 2 until that beekeeper showed up out of the sewer (don’t ask. It’s not important). WandaVision essentially follows the Steven Moffat school of bad writing. String your audience along with the promise that things might get more interesting later on and that all the bullshit that came before will retroactively make sense by the end. Except, as demonstrated with BBC’s Sherlock, that doesn’t work. And even if it did, it wouldn’t justify wasting the audience’s fucking time. And that’s what the majority of WandaVision is. A waste of time.
The only episode that doesn’t follow the sitcom format is the fourth episode. Instead it basically exists to explain all the shit that happened before. The shit that the audience, frankly, are smart enough to figure out for themselves. Wanda created the sitcom world as a way of coping with the loss of Vision, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, we got it. Thanks. It doesn’t advance the plot or anything. It’s just a massive info-dump. But by far the lowest point was when Darcy (by far the most annoying character in the first Thor film and is just as obnoxious here) was sat in front of the TV, watching the sitcom and asking the same questions we were. Not even attempting to look for answers. Just reiterating what the audience is thinking. Like this is an episode of fucking Gogglebox.
In the end it becomes apparent why the series is structured the way that it is. It’s to hoodwink people into subscribing to Disney’s stupid streaming service. If you think about it, there was no reason for WandaVision to be a TV series other than to lure gullible fans in with a piece-meal story buried in a mountain of crap. This isn’t a TV show. It’s what is cynically known in the world of big business executives as ‘content.’ They’re not interested in entertaining the audience. Instead they crave ‘engagement’, which isn’t the same thing. Watching WandaVision is like staring into the void, waiting for something to happen, while Disney charge you for the privilege.
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Chapter 2: I Love Lucy
So the plot sucks balls. What about the characters? Surely if Wanda and Vision are likeable at least, it’ll give us something to cling onto.
Well as I was watching the first episode, it suddenly hit me that I couldn’t remember anything that happened to them in previous films. I knew Vision died, but other than that, I couldn’t tell you significant plot details or their personalities or anything. Not a great start.
See, up until now, Vision and Scarlet Witch have been little more than background characters. So already there’s an uphill struggle to get us invested in their relationship, especially considering we haven’t actually seen that relationship develop. In Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Scarlet Witch is killing people because she’s pissed off about Tony Stark killing people (you work that one out) until all of a sudden she stops and joins the good guys because the script said so. Vision meanwhile is introduced as a convenient deus ex machina to beat Ultron and gets no real personality other than he’s a robot. Captain America: Civil War comes the closest to giving Wanda a story and personality of her own as it’s her actions that cause the Sokovia Accords to come into effect, but she never gets any real growth or payoff as the film is heavily focused on Cap and Iron Man’s penis measuring contest. And as for Vision, all he does in the film is accidentally cripple War Machine. No real character or arc there as such. And then we have Avengers: Infinity War, where Wanda and Vision are now sporadically in love and on the run until that pesky Josh Brolin, looking like a CGI cross between Joss Whedon and a grumpy grape, comes along and rips out Vision’s Infinity Stone to power up his golden glove of doom, and the film treats this like a tragic moment, except... it isn’t. Because we haven’t really had the time to properly get to know these characters and see their romance blossom. So instead it just comes off as hollow and forced.
WandaVision has the exact same problem. Apparently Wanda was so distraught about Vision’s death that she broke into a SWORD base, stole his corpse, brought it back from the dead... somehow, and then enslaved an entire town of people to create an idyllic lifestyle for her and her hubby while broadcasting it as a sitcom to the outside world... for some reason. Putting aside the dubious morality of it all, it’s impossible to really sympathise with Wanda or her supposed grief because we’ve barely spent any time with her. Had the Marvel movies taken the time to properly explore the characters and show us their relationship grow and develop, this might have had more emotional resonance. But no, it just happens. In one film they barely speak to each other and in the next they’re a couple. No effort to explore how they feel about each other or any of the problems that may arise trying to date a robot. It just happens and we’re just supposed to care. Well I’m sorry, but I don’t care. You’re going to have to try a little bit harder than that I’m afraid. What’s worse is that, thanks to the whole fake sitcom thing, it’s impossible to really become invested in Wanda and her plight because the show has to constantly keep us at arms length at all times in order to keep up the pretence that this bullshit is somehow mysterious.
Looking through the WandaVision tag, it amuses me how many people say that she’s acting out of character. And yeah, her actions are a bit of a head scratcher. Why would an Eastern European’s ideal life be an American sitcom? Why a sitcom? Why kidnap an entire town? Why keep changing the decade? None of it makes sense, but you’re wrong for thinking that Wanda is behaving out of character for the simple reason that Wanda has never actually had a character. In fact, ironically, Wanda mind controlling an entire town and forcing them to do her bidding is probably the one consistent thing about her as she did this in Age Of Ultron. In interviews, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany described how they used actors like Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick Van Dyke as influences, which is really funny because they’re straight up admitting they don’t have characters and even now they’re still not playing the characters, instead emulating the work of far better actors.
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As I was watching the show, it became abundantly clear that not only do Marvel not have the faintest idea what they wanted to do with these characters, but they also straight up don’t give a shit about these characters. Wanda in particular has had a rough time under the tyrannical regime of the House of Mouse. First they cast Elizabeth Olsen, a white woman, to play a Romani character, then systematically erasing her Jewish roots, even going so far as to put a cross in her bedroom in Civil War, and now the character is being butchered even more by forcing her into an American sitcom housewife role that she apparently willingly chose for herself, which is laughable. I mean say what you like about Magneto in the X-Men films, at least they actually depicted his Jewish culture. At least they recognised his Jewish background was important (though not important enough to cast a Jewish actor apparently). Wanda’s steady cultural erasure over the years is incredibly insidious and judging by Olsen’s comments in interviews, where she called Wanda’s comic book outfit a quote ‘gypsy thing’ unquote, it seems nobody has an ounce of fucking respect for the character or the culture she’s supposed to be representing. (and to all those kissing her arse saying it was a slip of the tongue, she has been repeatedly called out for using the slur in the past, so at this point I’d describe her behaviour as wilful ignorance)
If you want further proof of how much Marvel doesn’t seem to care about Wanda, look no further than her brother Pietro, aka Quicksilver. At the end of Episode 5, Wanda brings Pietro back from the dead, except it’s not Pietro. It’s Peter Maximoff, the Quicksilver from the X-Men films played by Peter Evans, who coincidentally is not Jewish or Romani either. So Quicksilver has the dubious honour of not only being whitewashed three times, but also twice within the same franchise. But should we really be surprised at this point? It’s Marvel after all. The same company that whitewashed the Ancient One in Doctor Yellowface and claimed it wasn’t racist because Tilda Swinton is ‘Celtic’. But now I’m going off topic. My point is that this isn’t a simple case of recasting an actor like Mark Ruffalo replacing Edward Norton as the Hulk. WandaVision actually acknowledges the recast in-universe, which makes no sense. Why would Wanda bring back her brother, only to make him look like a different person? We the audience may be familiar with this version of Quicksilver, but she isn’t. That would be like me bringing my Grandad back to life and making him look like Ian McKellen. He’d be perfectly charming, I’m sure, but he wouldn’t be my Grandad. 
If Marvel really cared about the characters or narrative consistency, they would have brought Aaron Taylor Johnson back. Instead, now they have absorbed 20th Century Fox into the hellish Disney abyss, they use X-Men’s Quicksilver as a means to keep viewers from switching off and so that people will write stupid articles and think pieces about whether the rest of the X-Men will show up in the MCU. It’s like dangling your keys in front of a toddler’s face to distract them from the rotting corpse of a raccoon lying face down in the corner of the room.
And it’s here where I decided to stop watching the show because fuck Disney.
Epilogue: One Foot In The Grave
You know, I am sick and tired of the so called ‘professional’ critics bending over backwards to praise these god awful films and shows when it’s so clear to anyone with a functioning brain cell how bad they truly are. WandaVision is without a doubt one of the most cynically produced and poorly structured TV shows I’ve ever seen. Its riffs on classic sitcoms are pointless and self-indulgent, the writing is terrible, the characters are unlikable and unsympathetic, and it’s entirely emblematic of what the entire MCU has become of late. And it’s only going to get worse as Disney drowns us with more ‘content’ to keep the plebs ‘engaged’. In short; pathetic.
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ardett · 3 years
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(ruining me) completely
New Karlnap/Karlnapity fic! They’re poly, your honor :)
Description: Sapnap and Karl are dating, Sapnap likes Quackity, and Karl is poly. It could all be so easy except it isn't.
As always, you can read it on Ao3!
Karl was made for this life.
The Feral Boys have been on tour for the better part of the last year and Karl wouldn’t give it up for the world. He flourishes under the stage lights, relishes the feeling of his voice going hoarse from screaming, adores the heat and sweat that comes from the wild crowd. He loves everything about it.
And he loves Sapnap.
God, he loves him.
They got together about half a year ago. They’re the perfect love story: bassist falls for drummer in the most popular band in the world.
Karl had his eyes on Sapnap since the beginning, since they were all starry eyed and unbelievably hopeful. He loved Sapnap’s fireyness, how he’s never afraid to speak his mind and how he always makes things more fun. They were so young then, so much younger then they are now. But somehow, it never went away. Karl falls easily and often but Sapnap is special. Sapnap is someone Karl wants to come home to.
But that love doesn’t come without consequences.
Or no, that’s not exactly fair. Not consequences, just sacrifices.
It’s… tricky. Karl doesn’t like to linger on it, doesn’t like to feel ungrateful for all he has because on the surface, he has everything he could ever want. He gets to be on stage each night with his best friends. He gets to hear the cheers of thousands egging them on. He gets to fall further in love with Sapnap each time he sees him.
But recently, something’s been squirming in his chest every time he sees him. It started a couple weeks ago.
-
For once, they finally get to sleep in a hotel instead of the tour bus.
They each got their own room and Karl had spent valuable alone time decompressing on his phone, savoring the rare silence, but it didn’t take long for boredom to set in. He’s always enjoyed the company of others more than his own.
He wanders over to Sapnap’s room. Maybe they could finally cuddle on a bed bigger than a matchstick. Sapnap always gives off a ridiculous amount of heat and Karl loves to lace their fingers together and snuggle closer to him, soaking in the warmth.
He knocks on the door. “Sap? I know I said I was gonna take a nap but I’m bored.” There’s no answer. “Sapnap? You in there?”
Karl waits a few more seconds and then shrugs. He figures Sapnap must either be asleep or have gone out to grab something. He starts typing out a text to his boyfriend when he notices that Quackity’s door isn’t fully closed.
Karl pushes it open with his foot and steps inside.
“Quackity, are you free? I’m so bore—”
“Karl? What—”
Karl looks up from his phone and pauses at the sight of Quackity and his boyfriend sitting next to each other on the bed, laptop balanced between them on both of their thighs. Karl just catches the split second of Sapnap whipping his hand off Quackity’s knee. Karl giggles as the movement jostles the computer and Quackity snaps, “Hey, watch it!” as he grabs the laptop to stop it from falling.
Quackity looks oddly guilty as his hands fiddle with the computer. He seems to almost lean away from Sapnap.
“Hi Quackity!” Karl smiles, trying to brush past any awkwardness of his arrival. “Sap, I didn’t even know you were in here. I was just looking for you.”
“Karl, um, what are you doing here? I thought you were taking a nap.” Sapnap doesn’t quite meet Karl’s eyes. His hand twists in the bedsheet, bereft from where it was resting on Quackity. He doesn’t sound excited to see him. 
“Oh, sorry, I am interrupting? I can go. I was just bored and couldn’t fall asleep.”
Sapnap hesitates. “I mean, I guess. We were in the middle—”
Quackity suddenly cuts him off. “No, no, you’re not interrupting, Karl! Actually we were just about done with this.”
“What?” Sapnap glances over to Quackity, brow furrowing. “No, we weren’t, we have like an hour left in this—”
“We can finish it later!” Quackity says louder, practically glaring at Sapnap now. Karl watches this all, biting his lip and trying to figure out the best way to interject. “Maybe you should go and spend time with your boyfriend.” Quackity emphasizes the last word. As Sapnap hears it, his expression shutters from confused to frustrated to ashamed.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re… you’re right,” Sapnap mutters. 
He starts to stand but Karl asks, “Well, what are you watching? Maybe I can join you!”
Sapnap shifts on the bed. “Just some action movie.”
“Can I watch with you then? I might fall asleep though.” Karl doesn’t wait for an answer, just jumps onto the bed next to Quackity so the other boy is in between the couple.
Quackity stares at him. “You, uh… you don’t want to sit next to your boyfriend?”
“Nope, this is fine. Plus, I can still do this!” Karl grabs Sapnap’s hand, resting their interlocked fingers on Quackity’s knee again. Sapnap’s eyes soften and he gives Karl’s hand a little squeeze. “Start the movie!”
Quackity doesn’t say another word, just does what Karl asks. Karl doesn’t want to make it too obvious he’s watching Quackity but out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees the boy blushing.
At some point Karl must fall asleep because he wakes up to the credits rolling. His head is resting on Quackity’s shoulder, his hand long ago gone lax and lost its hold on Sapnap’s. Through bleary eyes, he sees Sapnap’s hand still resting in the same spot on Quackity’s knee, tracing small circles on the bone.
Even when they all stumble back to their rooms, Karl holds that warm, complete feeling in his chest. It’s almost freeing.
-
Karl knows how he was supposed to take that interaction.
People aren’t supposed to feel happy or optimistic when they see their boyfriend spending time with someone else, when they find them pressed into someone else’s side with a hand on their knee.
Karl just doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal. Sapnap would never cheat on him. Karl knows that with 100% certainty. Even if Sapnap did have feelings for Quackity, he would never act on them.
And Karl guesses that’s a good thing because he’s also almost certain that Sapnap is developing feelings for Quackity. He can just see it. He knows his boyfriend. He can see it in the way Sapnap sings on stage and looks at Quackity, the way he brings Quackity his coffee on days they have to get up early, the guilt in his eyes whenever Karl catches them together.
But Karl also knows that Sapnap still loves him deeply and truly and that he doesn’t have to worry. He’s not worried. He’s not worried because he knows Sapnap would never try anything with Quackity, not while the two of them are together.
Although…  
Although that’s not what’s assuaging Karl’s worries at all. Karl’s not worried for an entirely different reason, one he still tries not to admit to himself.
(Karl’s not worried because Sapnap and Quackity are cute together. If Sapnap finally told Karl that he had a crush on Quackity, Karl would support him. Karl can see the appeal. And he wants Sapnap to support him too.)
-
The feeling comes back to haunt Karl all the time, in the sweet boys and cute girls he notices on tour, in the conversation he starts and ends too soon. He wants to tell Sapnap because he’s always believed honestly is best but he can’t muster the words.
He’s just so… frustrated. He doesn’t want to have to live like this, in fear of even looking at other people without being accused of cheating. And he knows Sapnap and Quackity could be good for each other. They could all be good for each other.
Quackity’s hilarity fits with both of them. Karl appreciates how considerate Quackity can be, a protector even when he doesn’t mean to be. He could even fill in the sexual gap in Sapnap and Karl’s relationship. Karl doesn’t feel bad about being ace. Sapnap knew about that even before they started dating. Sapnap’s never tried to change that about him but Karl knows that if he was someone else, they would be having sex.
Karl knows it’s unconventional and that he shouldn’t think this but he wouldn’t mind if Quackity and Sap hooked up, not if it satisfied them both and made everyone happier.
But that can’t happen. Karl’s been told this so many times. That’s not what a relationship is and it can’t be like that.
So instead all of them sacrifice things for each other.
Karl watches Quackity’s guilty downcast eyes intensify and sees him push Sapnap away. It’s hard to ignore his constant comments on their relationship, like he’s always trying to remind them and himself that this isn’t allowed. 
Karl gets to nurse Sapnap after each rejection but they never talk about it. Sometimes Karl can coax out a couple words about how Sapnap feels like Quackity doesn’t like him anymore, doesn’t even want to spend time with him. Karl tries his best to push them to hang out again, hoping maybe that will open up the conversation in some way, but Sapnap will just shake his head and start insisting it just means they get to spend more time together and shouldn’t that make them both happier.
And Karl, Karl has spent the last weeks trying to repress every wrong thought and feeling terrible each time he fails. He loves Sapnap so much. He wishes he was allowed to love Sapnap and be himself, every part of himself. He wishes they were all allowed to search for love and still be loved.
-
Karl snaps out of his thoughts. He has to focus.
Tonight’s concert is a tough one. It’s their third consecutive night performing, city after city after city. They’ve just moved over time zones so they’re all down an hour of sleep after too many nights on a tour bus.
Karl’s fingers move along the familiar strings of his bass but he’s starting to feel like he’s having an out of body experience. 
Dream’s voice echoes in his head but the words are meaningless. His teeth glint in the stage lights. Dream’s always been the heart of the band in every way. He’s the tall blond heartthrob and he’s the only one who’s as close to a bleeding heart as Karl. But over the last two years, he’s only had eyes for George.
Karl’s gaze slides over. He watches George watch Dream, like he always is, like he hasn’t turned Dream down three times now without explanation. Dream says he knows George just isn’t ready yet. Sapnap is a bit more righteously angry on behalf of his best friend, probably because he’s had to console a heartbroken Dream after each rejection.
Karl doesn’t like to get involved in something so personal for the both of them but he doesn’t think George can hold all the love Dream wants to give him. He thinks George knows that. He thinks George has decided this is the best way that neither of them get hurt. Karl isn’t so sure he agrees.
George strums a chord on his guitar in harmony with Quackity on the keys.
There’s something oddly elegant about the way Quackity plays the keys. Every other part of him fits the feral label. He’s just as loud as the rest of them, crude at times, has a wicked scar over his eye from one time he got caught in a mosh pit, but if you just focused on his hands, you would see his joints stretched across an octave, you would see the gentleness of a finger pressing out the final note of a song. He’s sweeter than he lets on. Karl can see what Sapnap likes so much about Quackity. He always knows exactly when to stop so he doesn’t go too far.
It’s probably the reason Sapnap hasn’t made a move yet.
That isn’t the whole reason, of course, Karl knows that. Sapnap’s got some misguided sense of loyalty into his head that says Karl wouldn’t approve. 
Except Karl would approve. He really, really would.
But they haven’t talked about it. Karl’s trying not to think about it. Right.
Because instead of talking about it, they demand sacrifices from each other and Sapnap doesn’t even know what he’s asking of Karl but Karl knows exactly what he asked Sapnap to give up and it would be so easy for them both to be sated but instead they’re—
Karl isn’t thinking about it.
He floats further out of his body instead.
Sapnap howls into his mic and Karl watches him rip into his drum set, wood splintering off his drumsticks and heat radiating from his hi-hat. Karl does love him. Loves the way Sapnap will let him untie his white scrap of a headband while they’re kissing, loves the way Sapnap will give him a piggyback ride back to the tour bus if he asks, loves the way Sapnap brushes a knuckle across his cheek and tells him that he’s changed everything for him.
Karl sees Sapnap throw his sticks into the audience and that’s the only way Karl knows the concert is finally over.
As they head backstage, someone pries Karl’s bass out of his unwilling hands and gives him what’s meant to be a friendly slap on the back. Karl’s chest tightens and he almost snaps but then there’s a too warm hand in his, squeezing gently. Sapnap always runs warm.
“Hey, baby,” Sapnap whispers into his hair. The screams of the crowd almost drown him out. Karl squeezes back but he doesn’t answer.
No thinking, just getting out of here. No thinking, just getting to the tour bus.
It’s quieter past the backstage exit but like always, there’s fans where they aren’t supposed to be. Security is holding them back and that’s fine, or it would have been fine, if someone hadn’t grabbed at Karl’s sleeve and yanked him away from Sapnap.
She’s cute, is the thing. Brunette, eyeliner and blush, roses in her hair that match her shoes. Karl doesn’t know how he notices her shoes when he stumbles but he does.
He doesn’t even quite hear what she asks, her eyes glittering and her phone clearly recording. Something about their band name.
But whatever it is, it’s the thing that finally forces Karl back into his body and makes him explode.
What Karl means to say is you’re cute and I wish I could smile at you and talk to you but I’m not allowed because everyone’s told me so. But that’s not what comes out. What comes out is far worse.
They called themselves the Feral Boys for a reason. Karl doesn’t usually let it show because he doesn’t usually feel like this - this pent up, this frustrated, this hurt - but now he does. 
And now he rounds on the poor girl, eyes deadly, voice snarling, “I��m sick of all this How'd you get your band name? Is that your real first name? Can you text and can you follow back 'cause it's my birthday?” 
The other boys have noticed Karl lagging behind. The girl flinches back but Karl can’t stop himself, not even as silence sweeps across the small crowd gathered. He screams, “No one cares what I want! Just what I’ve got. And if we sit and count it up, it’s really not a lot.”
His voice dies in his throat. He stares at the girl. The shock and terror on her face mirrors his own.
“Oh god, hey, please—” Dream is suddenly in front of the girl, pushing Karl behind him. He begs the girl, “Please, please don’t post that, okay? I’m really sorry. Karl didn’t mean that. Whatever I can do to make it up to you. I can sign anything you want—”
“Come on, Karl, let’s go.” Quackity’s at his arm, tugging him insistently towards the bus. “We gotta go, Karl. Dream’s going to handle it, let’s go.”
Karl doesn’t even register them getting inside but next thing he knows, he’s sitting on one of the tour bus chairs. How long has he been here? Dream’s still not back. All the window curtains are pulled shut.
“Karl, what the fuck?” 
Karl’s gaze snaps to Sapnap as his boyfriend paces in front of him, hands clenched into fists.
“You can’t— You can’t fucking do that. You can’t yell at our fans! I don't know what the hell is up with you but you can’t take it out on other people like that!” Sapnap fumes, teeth practically sharpening in his anger.
“I know, Sap,” Karl mutters, eyes dropping to the ground.
George slips past them, saying, “I’m gonna check on Dream, make sure he’s got everything under control.” Quackity retreats to the back of the bus to give them as much privacy as possible but Karl knows he can hear every word.
“If you’re feeling like that, you take it up with us.” Sapnap’s gaze is fiery. His shoes scuff black marks onto the floor. “You take it up with me. If you need to scream then fine, but not out there. What are we going to do if she posts that video online, huh? You’re supposed to be the best of us—”
That comment makes Karl growl. Why is it that everyone but him gets to decide who he’s supposed to be? 
He stands up, pushing past Sapnap and going to grab a shirt from his bunk. “Well maybe I don’t want to be the fucking best of us anymore. Is that so hard to believe?”
“Yeah, yeah, it is if you’re gonna be cruel about it!” Karl hears Sapnap coming after him but he doesn’t turn around.
“I wasn’t trying to be cruel—”
“But you were! That girl paid to talk to us, hell, just to see us, and you screamed in her face! Karl.” Sapnap grabs Karl’s wrist, forcing him to face him. “What the fuck were you even on about? No one cares what you want? Obviously I care about what you want.”
“Get. Off. Of. Me,” Karl growls instead of answering.
“Um, guys—” Quackity tries to intervene, coming out from his bunk and stepping towards them. They both ignore him.
“I’m your boyfriend,” Sapnap spits. “You have to tell me if you’re feeling like this—”
Karl laughs, something bitter and acrid. “You’re literally the problem!”
“Maybe if you both took a second to relax—”
Karl snaps, “Fuck off, Quackity.”
Sapnap bristles, grip tightening on Karl. “Don’t yell at him.”
“Oh yeah sure, I won’t yell at him. In fact,” Karl rips himself out of Sapnap’s hands. “Why don’t you just go cry to Quackity about it? I’m sure you’d both like that, wouldn’t you?” 
Karl’s words twist as soon as they come out of his mouth. This isn’t what he meant to say at all. This isn’t how he wanted to talk about this. But it’s too late to take anything back now.
Sapnap’s gaze turns steely. Karl can see his defenses rise. “Is that what this is about? Me and Quackity? Because that’s not fair and you know it. We’ve never done any of that shit.”
“But you could! You like him, don’t you?” Sapnap opens his mouth to reply but Karl turns to Quackity instead, demanding, “You know he likes you. You can’t be that blind.”
Quackity’s eyes flick between the two of them, uncertainty and shame written across his face. “I, um—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sapnap interrupts Quackity’s would-be confession. Karl doesn’t miss the way Quackity flinches. “It doesn’t matter because I would never do that to you.”
Karl throws his hands up. His blood boils, not at Sapnap but at himself, at everyone, at all the expectations they have to follow. “Oh my god, that’s the whole problem! I don’t care that you like Quackity or if he likes you back or if you fuck in your fucking bunk beds. What I care about is that you’re too much of a coward to admit it and fucking ask him out!”
Sapnap’s expression turns incredulous. “Karl, we’re literally dating!”
“Yeah, so what? That doesn’t mean you can’t go out with Quackity.”
“It literally does!”
“No, it doesn’t!” And Karl’s not trying to scream back at him but he can’t help it. Why can’t things just be easy? Why does everyone have to make everything so complicated? “Come on, Sap, I know you miss having sex. Don’t even try to tell me you don’t.” Karl tries to level his voice, to actually be honest for once. “And I know you would never push me like that and that you respect me being ace and I love you for that but do you think as your boyfriend that I want you to be miserable?”
“I’m not… I’m not miserable,” Sapnap protests. His voice gets quieter and he seems to realize that they have an audience. His eyes dart over to Quackity before fixing on Karl. “Yeah, whatever, I miss having sex but at least I don’t want to die anymore.”
“Sap…” The word comes out soft as Sapnap clutches at Karl’s sleeves and then rests his head on Karl’s shoulder. He hears Sapnap take a shuddering breath.
“Karl, you make me not want to die. You know all this touring and stardom and just, everything, it’s a lot for me and, and I need you. I’m not going to lose you because I want to fuck someone. That’s not… that’s not even an option.”
“You don’t have to lose me. I’m telling you that you don’t have to lose me,” Karl promises, rubbing a hand down Sapnap’s spine. He feels his ribs expand and shake.
“I’m gonna— I’m gonna go—” Quackity starts saying but Karl latches onto his wrist.
“No, no, you should stay. I shouldn’t have said— You should stay. Stay.”
“O—Okay,” Quackity stutters. His eyes go between them nervously. “I don’t— I didn’t— I mean, Karl, I don’t want to come between you two. I really don’t.”
“Just— okay.” Karl takes a deep breath before taking a step back and looking at them both. “Let me just be clear. Come clean, I guess. Sapnap,” He meets his boyfriend’s gaze, trying to give him a smile and only half managing. “I’m polyamorous. I know I should have told you earlier, I know, but I was nervous. It’s hard to bring up on a first date, you know. And I liked you so much. I like you so much, now. And I thought it would be fine and that I wouldn’t feel this… this suffocated but it’s really not fine. I don’t want you to think this means I love you less. It just means… I have lots of love to give. And I think it’s lovely that you do too, that you have room for me and Quackity, so why do we have to stop that, you know?”
“I, um.” Sapnap gives him a nervous smile. He nods tentatively. “Y—Yeah. Yeah, totally. I agree.”
Karl’s brow furrows at the hesitance. “Do you? Doesn’t seem like you’re okay with it. And if you’re not, we… I… We’re going to have to talk about it. Because I’m telling you things have to change.”
“I don’t want to suffocate you!” Sapnap says quickly and then repeats, “I don’t want to suffocate you. I just, um, I don’t know what that word means?” he admits softly.
“Oh,” Karl lets out a breathy laugh. Relief spikes through him, almost painful with how sharp it is. It’s easy to forget that something so all consuming to him can be completely unknown to most people. “Yeah, yeah, of course. It’s… It’s, um… Okay, first of all, it’s not cheating.”
“I would never cheat on you,” Sapnap interjects. Karl winces at the misinterpretation of his words. He can’t tell if Sapnap’s insistence that he would never cheat is a good or bad sign for this discussion. Sapnap goes on, “I don’t want to cheat on you, Karl! Me and Quackity aren’t— We’re not—”
“Sapnap, just—” Karl holds up his hands and Sapnap’s mouth snaps shut. It’s not like he can turn back now and there’s nowhere to go back to anyway. He can’t keep living like this. “I know, I know. That’s what I’m saying, okay? Having a poly relationship isn’t cheating because there’s consent. It’s not a secret. So like, for me, it means I like flirting with other people and sometimes going out on dates and maybe kissing them. Maybe for you, you just want to have a couple of consistent partners.” Karl gestures to Quackity, watching as both boys flush. Karl shrugs, a nervous smile gracing his face, “I just… There’s so many interesting people out there, you know? And I think it’s kind of dumb that I can’t meet them or talk to them or look at them because we’re together.”
Sapnap crosses his arms, hugging himself. “And we’re… We’re not breaking up, right?”
“Well…” Karl bites his lip, looking away. He feels the atmosphere in the room thicken and darken, beginning to press down on his shoulders. “I don’t want to but…”
Sapnap’s voice is so so small. “Karl?”
Karl sighs. “I don’t want to. I really don’t want to. I just need you to understand that this is non-negotiable for me, okay? And I feel like…” Karl buries his face in his hands, pressing his fingers into the hollows of his eyes. “I feel really stupid asking you this because I know it sounds like I’m just… that I can’t control myself and that I can’t stand not flirting with people. But I want you to understand that it’s more than that. 
“I feel so guilty for thinking people are attractive and fucking— even just making eye contact with people because what if you see me do that and you don’t like it. It makes me feel… owned. In a gross way,” Karl explains desperately. “And, and I thought I could just get over it but clearly I can’t because I saw that fan and I thought she was cute and then I was just… I was just sure I wasn’t allowed to think that. And then I was angry that I wasn’t allowed to even have my own thoughts in my head anymore and I just… exploded.” Karl swallows, ashamed that he lost control of himself like that. But he hopes, god, he hopes that something good will come out of it.
“So what I’m trying to ask you is, is this going to be okay? I know this kind of relationship isn’t for everyone and I… I won’t be mad but if that’s the case… then this has to be it, I think,” Karl finishes, finally looking at Sapnap again.
“I don’t want to break up,” Sapnap says immediately. Karl watches him fiddle with the hem of his shirt as he tries to figure out what he wants to say. “And I… I don’t think I would mind if you flirted or kissed other people, as long as I know you still love me.”
“I do,” Karl affirms, gaze softening. That, at least, is a constant. “I do love you, Sapnap. So much.”
“This… this is all new to me. But I think I understand better because you’re right. I… I do have feelings for Quackity. And I know I don’t love you any less. I can’t promise that I’ll never get jealous but I want to try. I want to try with you.”
“Yeah?” Karl asks, heart light for the first time in weeks and weeks. He searches Sapnap’s face for a lie. There isn’t one.
“Yeah,” Sapnap answers.
Karl leans up to kiss him, letting himself enjoy it like he hasn’t been able to. It’s like the first time again, new and exciting and breathtaking and hopeful. The future seems brighter than it has in a long time.
As they pull apart, Karl winks at Sapnap and then grabs Quackity by the collar and kisses him on the cheek.
“Karl!” Quackity squeaks. Sapnap giggles and Karl looks over to see love in his eyes, love for both of them.
And Karl knows that no matter what, they’re in this together now.
Author’s Note: based off the song: I Miss Having Sex But at Least I Don’t Wanna Die Anymore by Waterparks
I wanted to show a different kind of poly representation, as much as I love the classic Karlnapity <3 Lots of the poly people I know have a relationship with their partners that isn't as straightforward as three people being perfect equals in a relationship (not that that's particularly straightforward either) but a relationship shouldn't have rules as long as you talk about it with your partner/partners
I might return to this one day, although the band AU part is super out of my comfort zone, but who knows! :)
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morepeachyogurt · 3 years
Text
a sky full of stars (and she was looking at her)
Word Count- 2.8k
Pairing- Penemily
Summary- Penemily highschool au where they are paired up on a English assignment! Based on this post.
Part 1 of my, maybe we’re from the same star, series
Read it here on ao3
Tw’s- very small mentions of substances, minor swearing
A/N- this is the first installment of a series based on my yearning posts, and my first time writing romance/3rd pov, I’d love some feedback!
It’s hard to miss Penelope Garcia. With her bright clothes and brighter personally it seems like the sun shines a spotlight on her. Her golden hair is like a halo around her, she looks like an angel, and perhaps one of these days Emily will get the courage to talk to her beyond small talk and group presentations. She’s pulled out of her thoughts when the shrill bell rings, too loudly for her tastes but this whole building seems to scream at her, so perhaps it’s fitting.
Ms. Blake starts to talk about ancient poetry. The greats from the time periods before everything got so complicated. English is not Emily’s favorite class but somehow Blake’s class is more or less interesting, is it because she’s a milf? Maybe, who’s to say. As the class nears its end, she announces, “Alright, as we close out our poetry unit, we have one last assignment that hopefully at least one of you will enjoy, it’s a group project where-” immediately two hands go up ready to ask the question that always gets asked when a group project is announced. “Before you ask, no, you aren’t picking your partners, I am,” a collective groan comes out of about half the class. Emily isn’t too mad about it though, she doesn’t have many friends, especially in honors English. JJ barely passes English as it is. She’s all alone here, so she’s glad she doesn’t have to suffer through the awkwardness of trying to find a partner before everyone else does and ending up with the one kid who she’s pretty sure has been high the entire year and likes to leer at her in the hallway. “For this assignment, you’ll have to analyze one famous poem, from whatever time period you’d like, and write an essay about the poet’s intentions. If you’d like extra credit, which I know for a fact some of you need, you can do a reading of the poem in front of the class or do a drawing that represents it. Any questions?”
The classroom fills with questions of ‘when is this due?’ And ‘this sucks do we have to do this’. Emily however, is distracted by one very colorful girl in the upper left corner of the room, her spot in the back lets her admire the view without being caught, which tends to make it difficult to pay attention, but well, some things are just more fun than others. Her attention is drawn back to Blake when she hears her name followed by Penelope Garcia.
Oh shit.
On the one hand, this is exactly the opportunity she’d been looking for to ‘make her move’ so to speak, on the other, she’s terrified of making a fool of herself. Emily realizes that she’s been sitting for a bit too long when Blake stops talking and the rest of the class has already paired off. She catches Penelope’s eyes and tries to fight the blush of her cheeks. The sound of her docs hitting the linoleum is a bit too intense for this setting, she prefers their ‘clunk’ when it’s a crowded room, and she can walk like she owns the place. Emily sits down at the desk adjacent to Penelope and gets ready to ruin her chances with her.
“Okay! Hi! I’m Penelope! Which you already knew because Ms. Blake announced it, but it’s polite to introduce yourself to people so I thought I would do that now which I’ve done so I’ll stop talking now!”
Emily can’t help but giggle a little at her rambling, she doesn’t want her to stop talking quite yet, her voice melodic to her ears.
“So, I’m not big in poetry, I’m more of a comic book gal if you catch my drift, so I was hoping that you had some thoughts?” She drags the o in hoping and trails off waiting for Emily to fill in the blanks. It takes her a second too long because her brain is short-circuiting but she manages.
“Yeah okay, um, I’ve read some Sappho back when my mother was stationed in Greece? That could work?” she hopes bringing up Sappho wasn’t too obvious of her intentions, but it was all she could think of. Sappho had a point when she said ‘Sweet mother, I cannot weave – slender Aphrodite has overcome me with longing for a girl’
“Yeah okay! Cool! We’ve got like 3 minutes left of class, would you want to go to Bricks and Beans after school to work on it?”
“Uh yeah, yeah, that, um, that sounds great! I’ll meet you in front of the school?”
“Yep!” She pops the ‘p’ and Emily thinks she can’t possibly get cuter.
Emily’s walk to lunch has never been quite this mix of excitement and anxiety as it is now. Hopefully, JJ will be able to make sense of what’s happening because the wires in Emily’s brain are very much twisted.
“Okay, I’m telling you it’s not a date,”
“Yeah I know it’s not technically a date but come on. I personally have never asked my group project partner to a coffee shop before. She obviously likes you.”
Jennifer Jareau has been blessed with the right combination of looks that ensures she never had to wonder if her crushes liked her back. Emily wishes she had that special brand of confidence, but it’s simply not realistic, the number of openly queer girls at school is small, the number of them that would be interested in her? Even smaller.
“Look I’m not going to be the loser that gets my heart broken all right,” she steals a fry off of JJ’s tray before her hand gets smacked.
“Ugh I’m so bored here, promise me you’ll at least try. I need some new drama around here and you two would be so fucking cute.”
“Fine. On the condition that when* it goes south you’re buying me ice cream.”
Emily’s day goes by slowly and all at once. Hours turn into years turn into seconds and before she knows it she’s awkwardly standing outside the building waiting for Penelope to meet her.
When she does, Emily’s pulse quickens ever so slightly in her presence. It’s annoying as hell.
“I was worried you were standing me up,” a futile attempt on Emily’s behalf of trying to seem calm, cool, and collected.
“What! I would never, I’ve been looking forward to getting a macchiato and hanging out with you and Sappho all day! Coolest ladies from recent history,” she has to try and stop herself from getting too excited at Penelope’s words, they don’t mean anything, she’s just some loser that she has to work with to get a good final grade in the class. A means to an end, disposable.
“I don’t think Sappho counts as recent history but thank you, ma’am,” ma’am? God, what is she doing, this is going to go south faster than the time she tried to wear ripped jeans to one of her mother’s stupid dinner parties. To her surprise, her stupid comment is met with a giggle on Penelope’s part.
“Why thank you darling,” she replies in a phony southern accent that makes them both crack up, “Lead the way.”
Bricks and Beans is the staple coffee shop where all the high schoolers hang out after school or work during college. The owners are a sweet old couple in their 70’s who seem to be reliving the past with the vintage decorations. The pair settle into a table in the back, a window next to them showing off the highway. Emily is tasked with buying the coffees and Penelope rattles off her order filled with things Emily’s never even heard of.
“Okay, I’m pretty sure the barista is laughing at me now but here is your sugar coffee with whipped cream,” she says as she slides into her seat, placing down the coffees on the minimal free space left.
“My savior,” she says, fake swooning, “Okay so, Sappho? That’s the lesbian right?”
Emily answers with a snort before actually replying, “Yeah that’s the lesbian. I’m sure Blake will love it. I’m like, 90% sure she’s gay.”
“Single English teacher who loves Oscar Wilde? Yeah, I get it. My gaydar is spectacular by the way.”
“Oh yeah?”
She nods.
“Um, yeah, okay how about this poem:
‘and in your song most of all she rejoiced.
But now she is conspicuous among Lydian women
as sometimes at sunset
the rosyfingered moon
surpasses all the stars. And her light
stretches over salt sea
equally and flowerdeep fields.
And the beautiful dew is poured out
and roses bloom and frail
chervil and flowering sweetclover.
But she goes back and forth remembering
gentle Atthis and in longing
she bites her tender mind’”
“That’s gorgeous,” Penelope had a dreamy look in her eyes, like seeing a beautiful sunset for the first time. Except, instead of a sunset she was looking at Emily, seeing her, like for the first time, “I love when artists talk about the stars,” she leans back on her chair and looks up as if she’s looking at a constellation and not an off-white popcorn ceiling. Her collarbones are exposed and Emily feels like a 17th-century peasant pining over exposed ankles, “There’s just something about the stars ya know? They’re so far away, but sometimes it feels like we’re there with them. They twinkle at us and at each other,” she pauses to make eye contact, “maybe the greatest love story is in the sky,” there’s a beat too long, Emily doesn’t know how to respond to that comment, it’s hard to follow art without ruining it.
“Or maybe I’m just a sad sap for romance.”
“No!” She gets a of couple heads turned her way, the exclamation too loud for the environment, “I mean no, I get what you mean, they’re beautiful. Sometimes at night I go on my roof just to stargaze. It’s so peaceful there,” it’s now or never, “you should do it with me someday.”
“I’d love that,” it’s almost bashful, the two of them hoping the underlying meanings of their words are being shown, lest their hopes not be conveyed and come shattering down like a falling star.
The sun slowly sets as they work on interpreting the inter-workings of Sappho’s mind. The drinks run out so Emily buys them both hot chocolate, extra whipped cream and chocolate chips for Penelope. When she takes a sip, the whipped cream sticks to the side of her face.
“You got some whipped cream on your face,” she gestures to the offender in question. The blonde tries and fails, to get it off.
“Did I get it?”
“No, it’s more,” after some failed attempts, and the failure of Emily’s common sense, she decides to just get it off herself. It feels too intimate too quick, they both freeze, Emily’s hand inches away from Penelope’s face. Their eyes lock, scared brown eyes met soft blue ones and just for a second, there is peace in between their beating hearts and hands. Emily quickly brings her hand down and mumbles an apology.
After three hours they call it a night, Emily now the proud owner of Penelope’s phone number. On her drive home, she wonders if she’d done right, and she wonders if she’d done wrong. If she was clear about what stargazing meant to her. A branch into her world, her safe space. To share the dark night sky with something is to share your soul with them. Even JJ didn’t know about her nighttime viewings. Did Penelope feel the same way? The shared smiles and small laughs pointed yes. But Penelope was Penelope and Emily was Emily. How could an angel love a human? Why would it sacrifice its virtue for the danger of love? If Penelope was pink and Emily was dark green, could they mix and make something beautiful or would they both end up a ruined brown?
Dinner is tense as always, she does not share anything with her mother, she does not want to. They tiptoe around each other hoping that they won’t step on each other’s toes and crash. Emily retreats to her room the second dinner is over and opens a window. She loves that it gets dark earlier now. The fresh fall air trumps that tacky of scented candles that fill the house in a futile attempt to make it a home. She opens her laptop to finish the concluding paragraph of their essay. She allows herself to be lost in the words of another in order to avoid her own problems of love and belonging. Her phone rings. It’s her problems. They chat with careful conversation about their project and finally, it is finished. It looks good actually, or at least, to Emily it does. It’s not going to win them a Pulitzer, but they’ll get an A.
And then, “Hey.”
“Hey?” They’ve been on the phone for a half an hour, she’s not sure why she’s being greeted all of a sudden.
“Does your offer to stargaze still stand? It’s nice out tonight and, I don’t know, it sounded nice?”
“Yeah of course! Do you, um, do you need a ride or?”
“Nah I got my license and good old Esther. I do need your address though.”
“Oh yeah, I’ll text it to you. Who’s Esther?”
“My car! She’s a lovely thing thought she needed a name. I’ll be there in say, 15 minutes?”
“Sure. Bye Penelope.”
Holy shit.
Okay, she’s got 15 minutes to both have everything ready, but also seem completely casual about the fact that her crush is coming over to stargaze on her roof. The ambassador is long retreated either in bed or into her office, so she shouldn’t be a problem. Emily grabs a couple of blankets for them to sit on to avoid the chilly breeze and a bag of popcorn. She brushes her hair and touches up her eyeliner, not that it’s really visible in the dark, but it helps her feel confident which she’s desperate for at the moment. Her phone buzzes with a text, *im here!!!* It reads. She takes a deep breath before very slowly opening the door.
“Hi,” she whispers, the wind carrying her voice, but it’s just loud enough for its recipient. She closes the door
“Hi! So! Stargazing? That’s fun, I’m like, really excited it’s been a while since I’ve done something like this,” she somehow makes a whisper seem filled with enough energy to power a flashlight that Emily definitely should have brought. They make their way to the intersection where the hill meets the rooftop, and they only trip once, on a stick, but together they stay upright. Emily throws the blankets on the roof and climbs up on the chair before throwing her body on the roof. With her help, Penelope makes her way up after a couple of tries. By the time they lay the blankets out and are sitting down, they’re both practically crying from laughter, her nerves from earlier disappearing slowly.
The laughter fizzles out, and they’re both left staring at the stars. Penelope apparently is an expert of both astronomy and astrology so Emily’s ears are blessed with the sound of her voice. Like sunshine on a sweet summer day. She thinks that Penelope and her are like the sun and the moon, both beautiful, and complementary. Emily’s gaze shifts from the constellations to Penelope’s side profile. The stars shine almost as bright as her, and she can’t help but watch her instead. She can see the stars in her eyes, perhaps they were always there, but they’re more visible now looking in their reflection.
“God they’re beautiful,” Penelope says in awe. Like she can’t believe she’s blessed with the presence of the stars when really it is the stars who should have the honor.
“Yeah, yeah they are,” at this point she’s openly gazing at Penelope. When Penelope turns to meet her gaze she thinks she’s been caught, that it’s over and this night will be one for the ages in terms of beauty and heartbreak. Slowly, a hand makes its way to her cheek, cold like the air around them, but it somehow manages to set her skin on fire.
“May I?”
Emily nods and then they are lips on hers, it is sweet just like her. She’s being kissed under the starlight by a girl who deserves only beauty. Perhaps her dark green can be the field by the sunset of Penelope’s pink in the painting they make together. They do not have to mix, they can simply be combined to create something stunning. They can simply be. They pull apart slowly, and looking into her eyes, Emily thinks that the stars in comparison are simply dull. There is nothing as bright and beautiful in the world as the eyes of your lover.
Tag list- @royalpenelope @scandinavian-punk @kermitsaysgayrights
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tempesrature · 3 years
Text
50 Wordless Ways to Say “I Love You”
Pairing: Ride or Die | Colt x Ellie Summary: A highlight reel of the most important moments of their life. A/N: Highly suggest reading this in order (all even numbers for Colt). @lovehugsandcandy @dancingboba @choicesarehard
#29 Tucking their hair behind their ear to help them get it out of their face.
“Woah, this is a rare and nostalgic sight.”
Colt’s ears perk up as he wheels himself out from under the orange Zenvo ST1 he’s working on and immediately searches for Ellie.
“El, what are you doing here?” He sits up, blindly looking for a rug to wipe off of his grease-stained hands. “I thought you had brunch with your co-workers.”
“Cancelled,” Ellie shrugs before she hops on the hood of the car next to him, careful not to let her dress snag on anything, before she looks down at him with a smile. “Don’t let me stop you, continue.”
Colt rolls his eyes at her before he lays back down, wheels himself back under the car and goes back to where he left of. “So you’re bored and you’re here to bother me now.”
“Correct,” Ellie confirms, pulling out her phone before she starts to absentmindedly scroll through her Pictagram account. “The shops quiet, where is everyone?”
“On a job,” Colt confirms, grunting a little when he pulls out some wires and throws it to the side.
Ellie looks up from her phone, eyeing his lower torso in disbelief. “What? They’re on a job and you’re here just…fixing up a car? Not pacing and being cranky in the office like usual?”
“I don’t pace and I’m not cranky,” Colt refutes with a small huff as he blindly reaches out for the wrench he left near his thigh. “And Sam’s got it handled, it’s fine.”
“Oooh I see what this is,” Ellie snickers as she nestles her phone between her thighs. “You’re trusting Sam on his first solo planned job and you’re too nervous and worried to pace and be cranky so you’re out here fixing a car instead to distract yourself.”
Colt rolls out from under the car with a small glare, pushing himself up and off of the floor before he stalks towards Ellie with a small smirk. When he reaches in front of her, he cages her in between his arms and leans in with a smile. “Again, I don’t pace,” He captures her lips, nipping the bottom of her lip before he moves down to the side of her neck and leaves purposeful nips and bites. “And I’m not cranky.”
Ellie laughs a little, delving her hands in his hair and smoothing back the strands sticking on his forehead. He continues to line her neck and collarbone with kisses and Ellie flutters her eyes close, feeling a little giddy at the prospect of making out in the shop like they used to do. But when she sees him lift his grease-stained hand in her peripheral view, clearly moving to grip her hips, the feeling immediately vanishes.
“Colt, if you get grease on my one of my very few dresses with pockets. I’ll kill you.”
Colt groans in annoyance and leans back as he throws his hand in the air with a playful smile. “Then I’m going back to work.”
Ellie hums in agreement as she picks up her phone between her thighs and resumes scrolling through her feed. A calming silence settles between them while Ellie continues to scroll through the pictures. Most of it is just her co-workers pictures on weekend trips, old classmates showing off new engagements or vacation trips and…Ellie stops at a picture, her eyes looking up at the name before going back to the picture. An old classmate of hers in high school, holding a baby in her arms as she lays on a hospital bed. Something inside Ellie’s heart squeezes at the sight in a way she’s never felt before. Her eyes latches on to the small pink cap on the baby’s head and the almost scrunched up look on her baby face and Ellie is suddenly aware that Colt and her never really talked about having kids.
Sure, marriage was always in their plans. In fact, a month after Colt proposed, he immediately whisked her off to Las Vegas to finally get married (grumbling that he’s waited enough years to marry her).
But kids? That never really came up.
Ellie tries to direct the question to herself, does she want to have kids? A big part of her says yes but another part of her is…scared, terrified. Other than her hazy memories of her mom and the finer points of her dad’s earlier days of parenting, she never really had a good parental role model she could follow. Heck, for all her brains and intelligence she doesn’t know the first thing about taking care of a baby, let alone raising one.
What if they mess up? What if they fail?
And what about Colt? Does he want one?
Ellie frowns a little, her eyes moving to Colt’s lower torso. She can always ask him right? He’s right there after all and the shop’s empty.
“Hey Colt, I need you to answer a question for me,” Colt replies with a mumbled What? and Ellie tries to think of ways to approach this delicately but realizes that there really is no delicate way to bring it up other than just cannonballing it. “Do you want to have kids?”
A pause.
Colt wheels himself out from under the car and quickly sits up, his confused and worried eyes landing to her face before they flick down to her stomach. “Why? Are you pregnant?”
“No, I’m not pregnant,” Ellie chuckles a little when he sees the subtle relief on his face. “Answer the question, it’s important.”
“Well what do you want El?” Colt asks, standing up and abandoning his tools on the floor when he senses the conversation will need his full attention. “It’s your body, you should get to decide.”
“But you’re my husband,” Ellie refutes with a small pout, leaning back a little on the hood of the car to look at him before she shoves her phone into her dress pocket. “Just…don’t think about me for a sec. Tell me honestly, do you want them?”
Colt crosses his arms in front of him as he leans against the car he was just working on. His face is impassive, his eyes betraying no emotion to the thoughts in his head. But he already has his answer, an answer he’s been dwelling on for as long as he can remember. Perhaps even before he met and fell in love with Ellie Wheeler.
“Yeah, I want them.”
Ellie blinks, her eyes widening a little. “Wow…really?”
“Yeah,” Colt shrugs a little, trying to sound nonchalance. “I’ve always wanted kids and not because of this,” He waves his hand around the shop with a small scoff. “But I want someone to carry on my memory when I’m dead,” Ellie gazes at him warmly, a little sympathetically, knowing that in some ways he’s talking about his own father and his death.
Of the lonely and solitary death of Teppei Kaneko.
A death where Colt couldn’t even properly hold a funeral for his father. Where no one that knew Teppei can find a grave where they can pay their respects to.
His existence—forgotten, almost erased, and only continues to live on in the memories of his son and those who knew him.
Colt awkwardly shifts his weight on his other leg, his eyes flitting to somewhere else in the shop before he continues. “…My old man wasn’t perfect but he did what he could. But I feel like—no. I want to be a better father and if it’s with you El,” He looks at Ellie as his eyes gazes into hers, his voice resolute and honest. “I know that I can be better.”
A smile tugs on her lips, her eyes warm and soft as all the fears she had seemingly vanishes in an instant.
“Do you think we’ll be good parents though? We didn’t exactly grow up with the most stellar of examples.”
Colt scoffs, flicking his wrist dismissively at the thought. “With your brain and my expandable income, the kid’s going to grow up like royalty.”
Ellie stifles her laughter as she looks at him playfully. “You forgot your pleasing personality and endless modesty.”
“Oh yeah,” Colt snaps his fingers with a smirk. “That too.”
Ellie rolls her eyes and pushes herself off of the hood of the car to walk towards him. She easily fits her hands behind his neck, leaning forward, and Colt loosely and carefully wraps his arms around her waist to avoid getting grease stains on her dress.
“I’d like for them to have siblings,” Ellie says with a smile, playing with the ends of his hair behind his neck. 
“Sounds like hell,” Colt replies, trying to sound dismissive but fails when the affection and happiness coats his voice. “How many are you thinking then, two? Six?”
“Six?!” Ellie exclaims, leaning back to look at him in absolute horror. “Do I look like I’m making my own crew here?! You try pushing out a tiny human out of your hoo-haw and let’s see how you’ll feel about six babies!”
Colt throws his head back with a laugh, the sound bouncing off the walls of the shop before he tugs her closer to his chest and buries his face into the crook of her neck with a sigh of bliss. “God, you’re so fucking annoying.”
“Yeah, well you married me so deal with it,” Ellie huffs with a smile, burying her fingers into his hair before she kisses the top of his head. “It’s gonna be tough work Colt. You have to be with me through every step of the way, you can’t half-ass this.”
“I know El,” Colt replies sincerely, placing kiss on her pulse point. “I’m all in, baby. Whatever you need.”
“I’m gonna work you so hard,” Ellie teases with a small chuckle, pushing his hair back with her fingers as she starts to imagine what a little Colt and Ellie baby would look like and she’s surprised that the thought causes tears to prick her eyes. “You’re gonna regret ever asking me for a kid.”
Colt leans back to look at her, his brown eyes boring into hers. “I never regret anything with you Ellie. Not then, not now and not in the future.”
Ellie bites down on her bottom lip, trying not to let her quivering lip make its appearance as she fits her face to the crook of his neck. She tries to think of something sweet and loving to say back but she draws a blank, so she resorts to the one thing that she’s always had with him—loving, teasing, and heartfelt banter.
“You are a sap, Mr. Kaneko.”
Colt chuckles as he turns to place a kiss on her temple, his heart feeling light and free in her hands.
“Only for you, Mrs. Kaneko.”
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make-it-mavis · 3 years
Text
Homesick (Entry #35)
(cw: discussion of addiction) ----------
01/23/88   4:02 PM
Hey.
So. I’d admitted that I was an addict. 
Which was, as I’d realize in the days after, not just a sentence you could say and be over with. It was an admission to so many things, many of which I’d been trying so hard not to believe over the course of my addiction. That it really was that bad. That it wouldn’t just go away with time. That I could not stop of my own free will. That I couldn’t fix myself alone.
That counselling really was my one chance at beating this thing for good. 
Which, in itself, was a scary thought. If it was my last chance, I could not screw it up. And I’ve always loved screwing things up. It’s so, so important that I get this thing right, and it’s been really hard at points to picture myself doing that. Even as early as the second step, I felt doomed to fail.
The second step, of course, is Hope. 
Hope that a higher power could save us from ourselves.
Yeah. It’s not that I don’t believe in the Devs. I do, unfortunately. It’s just that I’ve always believed they’re fickle dickwads who don’t give a crit about any of us. They’ve only ever been a source of pain for me. Honestly, I outright hate the Devs. So being faced with this idea that if I didn’t find faith, I could not complete this extremely important counselling, I was understandably more than a little stressed. I didn’t get why that had to be part of the deal. So many of the steps are built around this faith. It’s integral. I had to beg the question: Do only Devout deserve saving?
Fix-it’s response to my spirited rants was to suggest that it did not necessarily have to be the Devs, just a higher power. Something bigger than him or me, some deeper meaning to life, something I truly believed in. Like he, himself, while he is a practicing Devout, places more importance on ‘duty’ than anything else. ‘Duty’ informs his actions, ‘duty’ colors his lens of the world. I probably don’t need to tell you the jokes I made out of that. He didn’t seem to get it.
That widened things up, I’ll give him that. But it widened them too much. I could either pick the Devs, or pull something out of my ass and make a religion out of it. The latter sounds like something I’d only enjoy doing while high, for cuss’ sake. I’ve never been too big on philosophies in general. Partying hard had always been enough of a philosophy for me, but then I went and partied too damn hard and wound up the mess that I was. A junkie with no rhyme or reason.
Step two was looking even more depressing than expected.
On the night before my third session, Fix-it brought out a surprise that he thought might help me relax or cheer up or what have you. He laid down a tarp, a few blank canvases, and gave me an assortment of tubes of paint and scraggly, used brushes. I was a little taken aback. I so rarely use normal, boring, non-magical paint. I was worried that using it would just make me feel worse about my brush still being on the fritz, but I was drawn to the naked canvases anyway. Fix-it sat at the table and watched as if he had put down food for a feral raccoon and wanted to give it space. Having him watch may have bothered me at one point in time, but he had done a genuinely pretty cool thing for me. I’d deal.
And let’s be real -- I am a feral raccoon.
It didn’t take me long to decide what to paint. The one thing that had been consistently on my mind: Revenge on Worluk. All in various gruesome ways. In one painting, I’d ripped her throat out with my teeth. In another, I crushed her with a giant fly swatter. The last one, which was my favorite, showed her dismembered and built into a chair that I was sitting on.
Fix-it said they were all beautiful, and they’d look so good on the shelf in the broom closet. I argued for a place in the kitchen, but no, he insisted that they’d look better in the closet.
As I worked, as I painted the gnarly details on that bug’s face, I couldn’t help but wonder what she had done for step two. What was her higher power? What could she possibly turn to for peace after what she had done to me? The Devs? Duty? Or are there just some things you can never make peace with? That is, if she even felt remorse for it at all. I couldn’t imagine a remorseful pixel in her body.
And then that led to me thinking, of course… What about me? What could ever really bring me peace? I knew for sure that I felt remorse. I definitely wished I had not gone down the path I did over the course of… well, ever since you left. I’d seen and done some really awful things. There was Tapper, there was that poor sap I threatened for a hit of GC, there was… everyone else I’d come in contact with, really. My actions had taken a darker turn than I’d ever gone down before, even in my past pits of depression. My mind was so haunted by then, I didn’t recognize it anymore. Relentless, nightmarish thoughts plagued me all the time. Trauma, guilt, hopelessness, existential questions without answers. Your death, and the blame I placed on myself. My Dev-given, meaningless lot in life. Hatred from what felt like the entire arcade over a crime I didn’t commit, enough to nearly get me killed. All this weighed down on me. It had trapped me. And the only escape I could ever see was in buffs. The thing that I felt the most fondness for, the thing that I had come to long for above all else, was a mind-numbing high. Buffs could save me from my mind, even if they ended up killing it in the process. 
That was my argument in favor of the addiction.
I had to find something, anything, that would bring a counter-argument strong enough to hold up. My guilt for hurting Tapper, while it was very deep and genuine, would only have so many legs to stand on. I even remembered my weird, buff-induced conversation with the river, wherein I realized I owed my own survival to you… and to myself. That had been a groundbreaking epiphany at the time. But it was not enough. I knew that.  Because I remembered what it felt like to be in the thick of my addiction, and I remembered how no one around me mattered anymore. Nothing I owed to anyone else would make a difference to me if I relapsed and fell back into that state of mind. Neither would anything I owed myself, certainly, not with my self-preservation offline. And in the face of all those facts... I was scared.
I didn’t feel safe. I felt like the floor beneath me could have broken at any moment, and I’d lose control again. I needed something to hold onto that could actually bear my weight, because I had become quite heavily burdened. But I had no idea what that thing could be.
It was so frustrating, nearly enough to bring me to tears as I painted. I kept remembering what Wreck-it told me when we fought, about how I didn’t actually want to get better, how I just wanted to keep using everybody, so there was no use helping me. That in particular stuck with me. I didn’t understand why at first. Maybe that was true when he said it. But it wasn’t anymore. 
I didn’t want to be miserable anymore. I didn’t want to be a plague on everyone around me, not really. I wanted to get better. But the means to do so felt like a cruel puzzle I couldn’t solve. Like a battle I had already lost.
Fix-it went to bed, but I stayed up into the night painting and pondering. Even after I was done, I took one of the paintings and began slowly and idly covering it with lazy patches of color. I did some serious soul-searching that night. I tried to harness whatever it was that drove me as a living being. Whatever it was, it must have been old. Older than my knowledge of the Devs, even. I tried to cast my mind back to my very first days and remember what inspired me then, before the Devs’ gospel tainted my life. But I couldn’t come up with anything substantial. Fun, mischief, laughter, all very important things, but no solid foundations for philosophies. Philosophies that could keep me away from substances, mind you.
It seemed hopeless. But I tried to relax with my painting. I took deep breaths and let the color flow, creating no image in particular. Just beautiful, abstract motions that felt self-soothing in the cleanest way I had attempted in a while. It really did feel great to have access to a full spectrum of color again, even if it was real, physical paint and not magical like mine. I so deeply missed having full functionality of my tools. All that time without it, I’d felt like I was hobbling around with a missing limb. I need my color. It’s just embedded in who I am. Always has been.
My very first coherent thoughts after being plugged in were about the color pulsing inside my code.
I froze.
Was that it?
Could that even work?
The force bigger than me, the deeper meaning to life, the one thing that had been with me since the very first second I remember entering consciousness… well, that was color. I see it and feel it in all things, and always have. It inspires me. It does guide my actions, in a sense. 
But color? It felt too obvious, almost. It was one of the most important things in the world to me. But could I really pull a philosophy out of it?
I felt cold, but not in a bad way -- more like a refreshing breeze on a sweaty day. But that breeze also felt hundreds of miles high, with me suspended on this one new idea that I had to strengthen before it could break. What if there was something even bigger than the Devs? Something that ignored games, roles, class, age, gender? Something that, if I played my cards right, could free me from the life I felt trapped in?
Something strong enough to weaponize against the Devs’ presence in my mind?
Even kill it for good?
I remember bursting into Fix-it’s room and scaring the bits out of him. I leapt onto his bed and stained the blanket with my paint-splattered hands.
“Color,” I said firmly.
Fix-it stammered, reaching to turn on the lamp. “Wha-- Wha-- What’s-- Mavy?”
“Color,” I repeated. “That’s my higher power. I think. The thing I believe in? I think it might be color.”
He was quiet for a second, his hands raised cautiously, his mouth open in hesitation to speak. “Mavy-- Mavy, settle down, now--” he said, not really registering my relatively controlled demeanor after my very aggressive entrance.
“Don’t tell me to settle down,” I told him. For some reason, I was shaking with adrenaline. I was so unsure. I wanted to be right, but I barely felt like I had an idea.
“Oh, it’s-- It’s just that last time you started goin’ on about color, you went and stabbed your hand with a fork, so, I just wanna make sure you’re not gonna--”
“Oh...” I said, the memories blowing up in my brain. “The kaleidoscope. In my dreams-- trips-- whatever-- the kaleidoscope… Me becoming color…”
I held my sticky wet glove to my forehead, my mind connecting more and more wires. Every thought and memory coming into my head was telling me that I was right. I stared past Fix-it, feeling my heart pound. “That can’t be a coincidence. There’s no way. That all has to mean something, right?”
“C-Color?” 
“Yes!” I jabbed him in the shoulder, at which he groaned in pain. “That’s it! My stupid higher power homework. I think I’ve got it!”
I heard him give vague and confused murmurs of encouragement as he sank back down to the pillows. “That’s great, Mavy, that’s wonderful… I’m so… so happy for you...” And he was out like a light, even with the light still on.
Whatever, I thought. Maybe he didn’t understand, but I… sort of did. That was what mattered.
The following night, though, I’d have to put that thought to the test. I went into my third session of counselling with a nervous sweat. I would have to explain my revelation to the group in words, when so much of it was just… how I felt. I’d been running through my speech again and again up until the moment I sat in that circle of chairs, and as I did, I began to doubt myself more and more. I don’t know anything about making solid philosophies, or if what I made could even be considered a philosophy. Maybe my idea was actually garbage, and they wouldn’t accept it. It was so vague. I hadn’t even worked out all the kinks in it yet. I just hoped I would understand it more as I said it out loud.
Stage fright has never been a problem for me. I’m a born performer. But this was not a performance. This was real life. I had trouble opening up like that even to you, and now here I was in a room with sprites I barely knew, including one who tried to kill me. I definitely didn’t like the idea of showing vulnerability in front of her. I didn’t want her to know anything about me.
But I knew the drill. Just deal with it.
When the turns eventually came to me, I introduced myself as an addict, and told everyone that I’d done some work on step two. There were a couple claps and nods.
“Except,” I told them, “I, uh, didn’t pick the Devs as my higher power. That’s not against the rules, is it?”
“No, no, of course not,” Clyde told me. “We have a few others here who also picked their own.”
“Charity,” someone said, waving slightly.
Another piped in, “Honor.”
Then, to my shock, the raspy voice of Worluk chimed in, with just about the most unexpected word I could think of.
“Friendship.”
Yeah. That threw me off. I tried not to raise my eyebrows so obviously at her, but I had to glance at least. I found her still not quite looking my way, but without a hint of shame in her body language. Who the hell was this chick?
I told myself to shake it off. The spotlight was on me, and I had no time to be tripped up by murderous mosquitoes. 
“What about you?” Clyde asked me. “Would you like to share?”
I swallowed. Now or never. “Sure. I picked, uh�� color.”
Clyde’s featureless brows raised a bit, making my stomach clench in embarrassment. “Really? Well, that’s one we haven’t heard of before. What does color mean to you, Mavis?”
I looked out at the expectant faces. Except Worluk, who was still not looking, which I tried not to read into and just carry on. She could not ruin this for me. I had to be strong and confident, like I know I am. All I had to do was say a few words. It seemed like a simple thing to do, but I felt so damn seen, and I didn’t like it. I saw some impatient frowns from sprites who still didn’t want me there, I saw some eyes full of curiosity over what I’d say, but the rest just looked… neutral. Like I was just another part of the process. Like it didn’t matter to them either way if I fumbled or stuck the landing. 
Normally, I’d hate that. But in this context? It seemed to take so much pressure off. It wasn’t about them. It was my step to take, and they were just witnesses to it.
So I took a deep breath, and I just started talking.
“Color is… everything. I mean, it’s what I do, but it’s also who I am. Y’know, inside. Color is the first thing I remember from the moment I was plugged in. I don’t just see it, I feel it. And it’s… I mean, it’s in everything. Almost all of our games have color. That’s all we are at the end of the day, just blotches of color behind screens, and that’s… that’s kind of awesome, when you think about it. It’s something everyone has in common, no matter what game or role you’re programmed into. That makes things a bit simpler, y’know, to think of yourself not as a Good Guy or a Bad Guy or an Easter Egg, you’re just… a living splash of color.”
I wasn’t sure if I was actually making any sense, but to my surprise, I saw quite a few receptive faces even leaning in a bit to listen. They were intrigued, which was encouraging. So I took it a step further.
“As far as philosophies or things to live by, well… It just got me thinkin’ like... I’m an artist. And artists know that every color is useful. Any color can be mixed, or painted over, in any shade, in any shape. And usually…it takes a lot of different colors and shades to make a beautiful painting. So when you’ve been using the same color again and again, just monochrome, or even analogous, like I have… you’re not gonna be happy. There are so many things I’ve believed, so many things that I’ve thought to be absolute truths that have led me to take buffs. Like… I’ve never been into the whole Easter Egg thing. And I thought buffs were the only thing that could save me from that. But… maybe they’re not. Color, to me, feels like…”
I sighed, trying to pull the words out of myself. “...Flexibility. Possibility. An open mind, I guess. A new color is like a new way of thinking. And... there’s always another color. There’s always another way. And… y’know, it’s probably high time I started acting like it.”
There was silence for a moment. 
But then I saw smiles, and I heard claps, even some small words of encouragement. They were congratulating me and thanking me for sharing. Even some sprites that had given me standoffish looks before were giving me grudging nods.
I… did it. I did it right.
I could hardly believe it. I felt like I’d just spilled out some of my ugliest, most confusing guts, but they loved it.
I wanted to run. I wanted to scream. It was too heavy. I was too vulnerable. 
But all I could do was… grin.
“Mavis,” Clyde said, “thank you so much for sharing. That’s just fantastic to hear. You’re gonna do great things here -- and remember that even when you stumble, it’s that faith of yours that’s going to lift you back up again. You’re going to have to hold onto it from here on out. Don’t forget that.”
“Yeah,” I sighed so hard, it made me dizzy. “Yeah, of course.”
There was a bit more discussion, and the meeting carried on as usual, as if I hadn’t just done something incredible (for me, anyway). But I had a feeling I was going to have to get used to that. Bending myself in unnatural ways to reach this lofty goal of sobriety, and then carrying on as if everything was normal.
Because that was going to be the new normal, after all.
And my first night in that new normal, I tried to find ways to embody my colorful philosophy in whatever small way I could. I looked around at everyone in the circle, and I asked myself to examine the colors that each of them made me feel, beyond what I could see. Specifically Worluk, the one who had been giving me so much trouble, making me so much more nervous than I already was.
To me, she felt… like a toxic yellow. Barely touched with green. Just bright, garish, nauseating and impossible to ignore. While everyone else just blended into each other’s vague, muted tones. It became very apparent just how much I had been ignoring the rest of the group and honing in on her.
Surely, there was something I could do about that.
I wasn’t sure how effective it would be, but I dared to challenge myself with this: If I could not mute Worluk’s color in my mind, maybe I could at least let the rest of the group grow brighter.
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lognecro · 3 years
Text
I’m getting job training at Bonehaven learning center
I’m typing this on my phone because I don’t have a computer, but i’m hoping to get one in the next month. Anyways, my name is Logan, and I had no direction in life. I was born on March 22, 2003, so i’ll be 18 in about a month. I have a few interesting things about me that might be important for this blog. I am autistic, I suffer from several mental disorders that cause psychosis, anger issues, and in general destructive behavior. I dropped out of high school midway through junior year, and have been through the process of getting my ged while holding down a job at a grocery store.
I don’t know when but my parents found out about a program called Job Corps, and I filled out an application. I’ll be going to the Bonehaven center in Oregon, where I will be trained in SAPS(Security and protective services). This should be happening in the next few months, but since right now my life is doing pretty poorly social wise, I thought writing a journal might help. I don’t like being trapped in my own bubble though, so i’m doing a blog. Instead of screaming my thoughts onto paper, i’ll be doing it into the void that is the internet.
My hobbies include reading and writing, listening to music, and practicing bass(I’m not very good at it). I’m hoping in the future though to write my own music, or at least perform in a band. My main dream is to become a ghost and monster hunter though, traveling the United States checking out hotspots of folklore and supernatural activity. Sadly I have to focus on reality, and that’s why I am doing SAPS with Job Corps, I’m not an idiot but i’m not the smartest guy either, and despite me having a bit of a weight issue, when i’m working out regularly I have body builder muscles and i’m absolutely swol.
Right now me and my friends are going through a rough patch, I spend too much money and time on my friend Ivy, while I barely spend time with Jenny. It doesn’t help that they hate each other and refuse to be in the same room together. Ivy is super needy and texts me every day to hang out, which makes me irritable most of the time so I usually lie and say I’m working because I need my alone time. Jenny never texts me and I rarely see her cause she lives a couple towns over, and I don’t have my license yet so I always have to ask for a ride.
I’m hoping to get my license soon, but with this pandemic, it’s been nearly impossible to get an appointment set up. I have this old convertible Chrysler that my grandma gave me, it needs a new battery and hood, and before I take it in to get fixed, I have to scrub the inside down with bleach because of all the mold. It’s a really nice car though and I hope to have it running in a couple months. I have a bit of an energy drink addiction and right now I’m in love with these zero calorie, 300 mg caffeine drinks. I get the new red dragon flavor and it’s just a really good and smooth fruit punch flavor.
At my job, I’m the closing parcel, so i’m the guy pushing carts and cleaning the restrooms, though I refuse to clean the womens restroom after I had done my whole *knock knock* “HOUSEKEEPING, ANYBODY INSIDE?!?!?” routine, and nobody answered, so I walked in and in the first stall, a woman was...having some fun I guess, awkward thing was she stared me in the eyes and only did it more furiously, so I just don’t go in there anymore. My bosses are generally very pleasant and easy to work with, except for Big Bitch and Little Bitch, who I will not say their names as to not reference their names.
Big Bitch has no idea how to manage people, and has a thick accent that makes it very hard to understand him. He’s the one that tells me to go vacuum the front lobby when the cart bays are over flowing and people are complaining. Little Bitch has absolutely no empathy or awareness of his surroundings, he generally wanders off to go talk to customers or check his phone, while he lets the assistant manager do all the hard work of managing the front end. The assistant managers are the people I can actually respect, because they’re real people instead of an annoying character that only exists to make my day harder.
In general I don’t have to do much most days, and take long breaks because people often don’t use carts or make massive messes, you’d think they would but it’s only happen a couple times in the year i’ve worked here. At home I live in a repurposed bathroom, where the sink, bathtub, and toilet had all been removed and paved over to turn the room into an exceptionally large storage room, where I have a twin sized bed, a tv, and an xbox that I never play. Often at night, I can hear my parents having sex over my music because the walls are so thin. Getting drunk or high helps, but most days I just turn the tv up high or listen to music via my headphones.
I’m going to be switching to a flip phone, because I want to stop using social media as often, and I just think they’re cool. I love old tech. I’m making the switch after I get a laptop, so that i’ll still have a way to update this blog. Anyways I’ve, recently been getting into the occult, mainly to explain my prophetic dreams that are either random events that i’m going to experience or end of the world scenarios that happen in other universes. My mom had the ability to see and conjure the dead, and my brothers inherited that ability, but I didn’t. While i’m sensitive to the supernatural, I can’t perceive what’s around me, only what’s in my head
I initially thought it was some sort of schizophrenia the voices in my head, but even after taking anti psychotics and getting monthly injections, they never went away. I never told anybody though, because I don’t want to go to a hospital again. I’ve been trying to categorize and place the voices, but they’re not the same every time, and they’re not talking to me. They’re just talking, it’s like eavesdropping on a conversation that doesn’t exist, but yet some how, the information I hear is usually about the people around me, some random stuff, and me. I’m currently in the small break room, with an ear bud in my right ear and two conversations going on to my left.
One is my coworkers talking to each other, and the other one is a man talking to a woman, I don’t really know what it’s about but a few snippets are “Yeah I piss in the milk, they can’t tell though. I’ve managed to open a door, gonna try to do that again soon. I made about 3 kids cry again, honestly if I could I’d make a career out of it”
Just random things like that, in general though the conversation seems to be about somebody named and I don’t know how this is spelt so this is a guess, “Hephitus” I have no idea who that is, but it seems like they’re talking about a person. I hear this name every now and then, but they dropped this name a few times and in general it’s them just verbally shitting on him/her, pretty much what I do when i’m talking about somebody. I typically ignore these convos but right now i’m bored, so I got nothing better to do. I have to go back to work now though, so Imma go. I’m going to try posting daily, so let me know what you think. This has been Logan or LogNecro, and this is my blog
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ryncorrect · 4 years
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university!au: day6 sungjin
i’ve abandoned this au for so long istg my life is a mess yall please forgive but anyway im back with my bullshit and ready to spread my cringe-worthy stuff to the world again
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name: park sungjin
major: practical music and arts
other activities: leader, guitarist, and vocalist of university band, president of music club, member of cooking club
park sungjin is the embodiment of leadership
i mean he’s the band leader, the club president, also the president of his class since year one, like he’s so trustworthy and responsible, literally nothing can go wrong under his sight
and even when things do go wrong (life is a bitch) he’ll still make sure everyone is fine and having the time of their lives pun intended
anyone who meets sungjin for the first time will probs say he has this tough man aura, cold,,, tsundere-ish idk
but as someone who have known each other for so long, you never understand when anyone says sungjin looks cold
you know damn well the moment sungjin opens his mouth he gonna throw dad jokes with his satoori dialect
dad jokes are fucking funny fight me
you once said sungjin should start his own comedy club
......he’s currently considering it
oh right he also talks about food all. the. time.
he joined cooking club for a reason okay
no, he can’t and doesn’t really cook he’s only there to taste food and people let him there because he’s nice and he knows how to appreciate the cooks
uh we love a man with manners
so, who is sungjin for you exactly?
he lives next door, one year older than you, was a leader even when you were little ayeee childhood friend cliche
can you imagine little sungjin leading his friends in game its so pure brb crying
you told him everything you couldn’t tell ur parents because they were busy, you asked for his advises, he made sure you were safe and happy
you still depend on him even after you two have grown up
you enrolled to the same university, took the same major with him, and even joined the clubs he’s a member of
this isn’t because you’re indecisive, it’s just that you spent so much of your childhood with sungjin that you two became similar to each other, up to your hobbies and interests and even palate lmao
that’s why he loves to eat with you because you two never argue about the menu
the only club you can’t join is the band, and that’s because jae rejected your application
reason: extremely close personal relationship with sungjin, therefore sungjin will take your side if we ever had an argument
you denied that; no, sungjin wont take anyone’s side based on feelings bc he’s a logical person and he always listens carefully to every side of the parties before he makes a decision..... but jae wont listen
brat
"you only rejected me because im a better guitarist”
“lalalalala cant hear you over my authority as the important band member”
“fuck you”
“i don’t accept offers”
anywayssss you did fail to join the band, but you’re friends with them, theyre literally so used to your company that sometimes they forgot youre not actually in the band
you and the guys teamed up for sungjin’s surprise birthday party
the surprise failed because dowoon accidentally added sungjin to the group chat
sungjin being nice and playing along anyway because he didnt want to disappoint you
and then its sungjin’s turn to ask the guys for help for your birthday party
failed again because dowoon AGAIN accidentally invited you, in person, to your own birthday party
dowoon what the heck?????
yeah its all cute and sweet but thats all of your relationship with sungjin, you treat him like a dependable brother and he treats you like his own little sister
thats what you tell to your friends too when they ask if you two are dating
they’re glad thats the case
because they have a crush on sungjin LMAOOOOO PLOT TWIST
they’re hoping they can get to sungjin through you yanno like asking you to send him snacks and letters or to tell him they say hi
you dont mind i mean you know sungjin is one admirable person ofc everyone likes him
sungjin never rejects nor accepts it hes just like “yay snacks!”
“god damn it sungjin just date any of them im tired of being a matchmaker”
“then dont?? literally no one asked you to”
little did you know that sungjin had the same problem
some of his classmates are interested in you but whenever they come to him he just says, “dont ask me i dont know anything and if i do i wont tell you”
this one sandeul guy has started asking you out and stuff
“ehhh youre so nice i’ll think about it!!”
you, immediately texting sungjin: ur friend sandeul ask me out what should i do
sungjin: do you like him tho
you: not really idk him yet
sungjin: just tell him your mom said no
you: damn nice
but this guy is so persistent and you gotta admit hes kinda cute and after a few tries you finally said yes to him
so you two went together and it was pretty fun
sungjin isnt too happy when he hears about it from sandeul
he asked you, “why didnt you tell me first?”
“well i dont think its a big deal. it was just a date anyway”
but you always told him everything
sungjin never speaks about it again
you go on another date with sandeul the week after
you tell sungjin later and he doesnt ask how it went
hes just “oh”
idk he’s kinda distant now, he rarely talks nor replies to your texts
he doesn't visit music club nor cooking club either so you don't see him often
have i told you im uncreative and all my aus are lame???
you think its probably because hes focusing for the finals, but even after it’s over sungjin doesnt really hang out with you or the band anymore like he only comes for practices and leaves right after
weirdly no one says anything about sungjin’s absence
but you cant stay quiet any longer and decide to ask dowoon whats wrong with sungjin
you shouldve known dowoon cant help much
“honestly i dont know either, maybe you should ask wonpil he’s sungjin’s roommate”
“but what if wonpil told sungjin”
“told sungjin what?”
“that i asked about him”
“asked him what?”
“...nevermind”
you asked younghyun
younghyun doesnt help either
“i dont know, just ask him yourself. i thought you were the closest to him??” why you so salty man
okay fine lets ask jae
“i’ll tell you for fifty bucks”
“dude im broke”
“then deal with it yourself”
you had no choice but to ask wonpil
“he’s just tired”
you know wonpil lied but this little shit refuses to tell anything
“please dont force me to answer i will cry really loudly and it’ll be embarrassing for the both of us”
why do you befriend them in the first place smh
oh youre right about wonpil telling sungjin that youre worried, and he does tell him to talk to you if he got something in mind
sungjins hesitant but in the end he only says, “no... its just that i didnt realize until recently that my little sister has grown up a lot”
“dear god wtf you sound like her grandma”
skip the boring part so uh a few more days passed awkwardly between you two and after your failed attempt at asking around you decide to confront sungjin in person
youre in the band practice room, the others are present, sungjin’s about to leave early as usual, and you find yourself jumping up your seat, “whats your problem with me?”
you know sungjin hates confrontation but you cant stand it anymore. you tried giving him time but if theres anything you seem to be more of a stranger to him
“i dont know what i did wrong and i wont know if you dont tell me, so let me know. i’ll listen and i’ll apologize if its my fault, but dont give me silent treatment like this. its so unlikely of you"
you can see sungjin clences his jaw as he replies calmly, "people change"
"you don't change, youre being childish. if you're mad you should talk about it. if you don't want me here you should tell me to go. if you don't like ME dating your friend you should tell me not to!!!"
drama much ryn
"youre your own person and you make your own choice, its your life and i cant keep telling you what to do or what not," and the end part kinda slips, "i don't hate you dating my friend or anyone, okay? im just not used yet to be a second person for you and im afraid youll get hurt"
"youre never?? a second person sungjin where does this idea even come from youre the only one for me i dont want anyone else???"
and suddenly there's a train of awkward coughs and you come back to your senses and you realize you're being watched
jae pretends to make a phone call, "mom pick me up im scared"
lame jae lame
dowoon mumbles, "can we,,, make an exit first before you two declare your undying love bc its privacy yanno"
you feel the heat spreading across your face as you open your mouth the same time as sungjin, both want to deny dowoon, but younghyun beats yall to it, "yeah you two are in love with each other we been know"
you and sungjin stares at each other, confused, "we don't???"
"oh honey,,, my dear,,, ive read enough sappy shit in writing club to see where this is going"
the conversation was cut there and neither of you bring it up again,
because the idea of you loving sungjin or sungjin loving you is so weird that you refuse to think about it, and so is for sungjin
but ever since that, sungjin has drastically come back to normal its almost hilarious, he spends a lot of time hanging out in the music club, practicing with the band, visiting the cooking club, making a joke here and there
sungjin is himself again with you, a caring dependable brother whom you come to whenever you need to talk or just hang out with and he always makes sure he has time for you
sap
you know hes always been like that but why does it feel different now??? the way he smiles or pulls your hand so youre walking on the inner side of the road,,, how he neatly places your spoon and chopsticks on a napkin when you two go out to eat together,,,, why
tender love baby chICKEN TENDER
mydayexol follow me
andddd so one day, someone asked you out. again.
wow ur so popular i cant Relate
you, texting sungjin: sandeuls friend jinyoung something invited me to a party next saturday should i come
sungjin, replying to you: hmm
you: ???
sungjin: i think its up to you
for some reason youre disappointed by his reply,,, but he’s right tho its your call if you wanna go then you go its not about what sungjin says
right?
right???
but suddenly you got another text: but if you ask for my opinion i would say don't go
you: actually i dont want to either lol so what should i say
sungjin: tell him you already have a date
you: nice
sungjin: with me
you: ayyeee
you: wait what
sungjin: i mean its just a suggestion
sungjin: which you can accept
sungin: or reject
for some reason you can imagine sungjin’s cheeky smile through his texts and it makes your inside tingles and you wanna giggle
so yea you thought it was a joke but he actually did take you out for a movie and dinner
it was really nice
so yanno the weird thing is that neither of you ask the other to be “official” but you just. are dating.
ur friends are mad like “bUT YOU SAID YOU TWO WERENT A THING”
“lol sry i changed my mind”
“fuck you”
“no thanks sungjin can do that... bUT DONT TELL SUNGJIN I SAID THAT hes gonna kill me”
“is he ur mom”
“basically yeah”
this sucks real bad but who cares
not me obviously
ill be back soon (or not) with dowoon’s one lets hope i can do better than this dnsjfsndfj lnjajnfdjs lmAO I LOVE YALL AND HAPPY NEW YEAR IN ADVANCE
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demaury · 5 years
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boys online. chapter 2. (social media influencers au)
7916. 124. 10. These are the numbers that define Eliott and Lucas’ relationship, either they want it or not. 7916 kilometers between them, from Paris to Vancouver. 124 days since they first said ‘I love you’ last spring. And nearly 10 hours, until… well, until they meet for the first time. (ao3)
MANON CHATON
vu aujourd’hui à 20:34
i'm so in love
fuck what’s happening to me
😂
i get that you found eliott
i was getting a little worried here
it’s been literally five minutes!!!
sure, jan
so that means your flight landed somewhere in poland
because you should have arrived a whiiiiile ago if you were in paris 😏😂
i was taking five minutes to make-out with my bf
i bet you did 👀
is he a good kisser at least?
the best
i'm so whipped
you’re so whipped
but it’s cute
“Missing home already?”
Lucas looks up from his phone and cranes his neck just as Eliott slides in the seat next to him, carefully setting the two Styrofoam cups he just retrieved from the barista on the table. They’re waiting for the cab Lucas ordered after Eliott showed up and Starbucks seemed like the better option they had at the moment — at least once they stopped sharing oxygen and saliva long enough to get behind that idea.
“Not a fucking chance,” he grins as he locks his phone. He leans closer into Eliott’s personal space and the smile his boyfriend gives him back turns the cheekiest comments he can ever come up with into wobbling knees and fluttering stomach. “Thank you,” he says, punctuating it with a peck on Eliott’s lips.
He proceeds to grab his part of their order while Eliott settles more comfortably next to him — and, Lucas notices, even closer. “I received the text from the company, they said our car should be waiting for us at 9,” Eliott says, checking the text as he speaks. “We should probably get ready to take the commute soon I guess.”
“Guess so, yeah.” Lucas stretches his arms high above his head and scrunches up his face. “I’m beat, the flight was so long.”
It’s been two years since he last came to France, and damn has he forgotten how boring spending nearly ten hours in a plane was. After his parents’ divorce he had only come back a handful of times, generally to spend a few days in Nice with his paternal grandmother when his dad was in the mood to bother forcing him to do stuff, so it wasn’t like he was really used to making 8h+ flights abroad. Mostly he knows he should be thankful because there’s been no assholery behavior and no crying baby or tantrum-y kid.
“Can’t wait to see these eyes without the bags underneath,” Eliott teases, pocking to his cheek playfully.
Lucas bats his hand away just for the sake of it, but it’s not harsh and Eliott knows him too well to even question. “Well, sorry for you, but the bags are rooming with me,” he huffs. “I tried to stay awake last night to sleep during the flight. Worked tremendously, as you can see.”
“They are nice bags,” Eliott decides, shrugging slightly. “I could get used to it, they make your eyes pop in the end.”
Lucas tilts his head to the side, cocking an eyebrow. “You didn’t sound so sappy over FaceTime, I feel lied to,” he says, playing with his cup nonchalantly. “Now I wonder what else is different.”
Eliott seems to ponder his answer, and Lucas stares, obvious and unapologetic. It’s not a big reveal that his boyfriend is even more beautiful in person than he already is in pictures, and it still amazes him even after all this time and an entire day spent obsessing over it that one day they met as friends, last April. Eliott had a family member getting married somewhere near Calgary and it was just too good of an opportunity to miss it. Right after the wedding Eliott had hopped in a plane for Vancouver and they had spent the day hanging out and touring around Vancouver. Well, Eliott had toured around Vancouver. Lucas, for his part, had mostly followed and occasionally taken his eyes away from Eliott long enough to gesture at some place.
“You’re right,” Eliott says, sounding awfully serious. “There’s something I need to tell you. Something that might affect our relationship, but I need to get it off my chest so that you can be prepared.”
Lucas isn’t sure where he’s going with it, but Eliott shifts on his chair to face him without looking like he’s waiting for an answer. His grey eyes meet Lucas’, deep and serious, and it takes Lucas most of his willpower to keep his mind on tracks, when all he wants to do is reach out and touch that perfect jawline of Eliott’s.
“I’ll be the sappiest of the saps,” Eliott declares, ignoring when Lucas bursts out laughing. “I have my boyfriend in town for two small weeks, so you better be ready for all the cheesiness in the world because I fully intend to make the most of it,” he concludes.
Lucas shifts too, facing him. “So that’s not our first date?”, he asks, faking surprise.
“In a Starbucks coffee?” Eliott scoffs. “Please, I have standards. I was just desperately trying to give you a caffeine boost to keep you up on your two feet.”
Lucas cocks an eyebrow. “The cheesiest boyfriend in the world wouldn’t mind picking his boyfriend up, just saying.”
“You want me to do that?”, Eliott deadpans, cocking an eyebrow too.
“Jesus, no,” Lucas huffs a laugh, shaking his head, and Eliott joins him.
He doesn’t really know why he freaked out some 24h ago, when everything seems as simple as it should be. They’re easily navigating between banter and cutesy declarations, and it’s something Lucas always dreamed of finding in a boyfriend. Eliott reaches out, his fingers threading through Lucas’ hair.
“We should get going,” he says, pressing a soft kiss on Lucas’ lips. “Last thing I want is so miss our commute and end up dragging my sleepy boyfriend all the way out.”
Lucas snorts, taking a sip from his coffee. “I’m not a child, I’ll let you know. I can stay awake one more hour.”
*
Lucas doesn’t stay awake one more hour.
Which is totally fine, if you ask Eliott. They’ve been in the car for roughly fifteen minutes when Lucas’ head falls on his shoulder, pretty eyes closed and his grip loosening ever so slightly around Eliott’s fingers.
“Jetlag doesn’t forgive,” the taxi driver says, sententious, as he peeks in the rear-view mirror halfway through a story involving electric bikes. “Where are you guys coming from?”
“He lives in Canada,” Eliott replies, and it’s still a nagging feeling at the back of his mind that this reality, them together in the same town, isn’t one that is meant to last. “I live in the 11e though.”
His attention drifts away as the driver manages to find another topic of conversation involving Eliott’s area of Paris, focusing instead on the soft patterns he traces with his fingers on the inside of Lucas’ wrist. At this point, the only thing keeping Eliott from reaching for his phone to snap a selfie of them both is that he doesn’t have the heart to take either of his hands away from a sleepy Lucas. Hear him out, he can tear his eyes away from him, it’s just that he gets to hear Lucas laugh and smile and angrily venting when things don’t go the way he wants them to go, but sleep is something he’s never been able to witness. And, like, Eliott is completely, utterly in love with Lucas but he knows by now that he can be a real pain in the ass when he wants to be — so seeing him soft and cute like that, he’s not ready to pass on it just yet.
The road from the airport isn’t all that long, given the general state of the Parisian traffic, and when they get to rue Dangeau, where Lucas’ hotel is situated, it’s been around forty minutes since they left Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle. The sleeping arrangement got him thinking, when they were planning Lucas’ trip to France, because they had been together for less than three months, and the last thing he wanted was for Lucas to feel pressured about anything. Granted, it had taken him less time to lose his virginity to Lucille when they were younger, but it doesn’t mean it’s a race either. His boyfriend was still 17 back then, and Eliott distinctly remembers worrying a whole night about all the things he could possibly say that could send the wrong message whatsoever. The good side is that ever since he managed to man the fuck up and confess his feelings to Lucas, things have been (mostly) easy to navigate between them and Lucas has (mostly) been on the same page — he said he didn’t want to rush things either, but simply because they deserved to make things ‘the right way’, which is still a fair point, albeit a bit different. In the end they have both agreed to the hotel thing, and the more thoughts Eliott puts into it, the more natural it felt.
He releases Lucas’ hand as the car parks just across the street on a delivery spot, and it gets him to stir and mumble. “Note to self,” he groans as Eliott unbuckles his seatbelt, rubbing his eyes from his hand, “coffee doesn’t hold a candle to a nine-hour jetlag.”
“Will you manage to walk inside or do I have to pick you up?”, Eliott enquires, barely biting back a smirk.
Lucas squints his eyes. “Look at you making fun of me.” He pouts, and he unbuckles his seatbelt before sliding out through the door he chucked open. “I’ll manage, since you’re so nice to ask.”
Eliott snorts and hops off through his own door while Lucas retrieves his luggage from the driver. The man greets them warmly before getting back in and driving away. The hotel Lucas picked isn’t particularly fancy, it’s actually one of those hotels you’d walk by without really noticing. Despite being three floors high, it’s squeezed between a flower shop and a restaurant selling kebabs, in a narrow one-way street, but Eliott is almost surprised by how comfy it feels as soon as they push past the door of the lobby. Lucas goes to retrieve the key to his hotel room, and he allows himself a moment to check his phone in the meantime, but there’s nothing there that requires his undivided attention like his boyfriend does. A couple of notifications and texts from his friends that he puts on hold for the time being, when Lucas makes sign for him to join as he’s climbing upstairs.
“Home sweet home,” Lucas sighs, dropping himself flat on the bed as soon as they get in.
“It’s a nice hotel,” Eliott observes thoughtfully, closing the door behind him. “And at least you aren’t far from my place.”
Lucas props himself back up on his elbows. “It’s still too far,” he complains.
Eliott snorts and shakes his head. “It’s really not. And you’re literally on automatic pilot now, you need to sleep.”
“I know that.” Lucas pauses. “I just- I don’t know, I just want you to stay. Here. With me.”
“But we agreed that we would take it slow,” Eliott says, frowning a little.
“Of course, yes,” Lucas replies quickly, and Eliott isn’t sure but he thinks Lucas might be blushing. “But I want cuddles.” And he goes on, raising his arms and making grabby hands in his direction.
Eliott takes in Lucas’ tired eyes, his pouty lips, his messy hair and his grabby hands, and it’s not even that he feels himself cave in, because he had already stopped fighting himself the moment Lucas first asked, but there’s literally not a single good reason for him to leave this hotel room now. The first thing he does, before answering even, is kicking off his shoes, then he looks back up and Lucas’ grin is worth everything in the world.
“Let’s cuddle then,” Eliott says.
As soon as he plops down next to him, Lucas immediately drags him in a laying position and worms his way between his arms.
*
Having a sleeping boyfriend in bed he’s trying not to wake up is something Lucas isn’t quite used to, in complete honesty. Jake was his first relationship after he came out, and it hadn’t lasted three full months, so it’s not like he really managed to make his marks as a not-single guy. Point is, disentangling himself from Eliott’s arms has been surprisingly stressful, and he hates his bladder for forcing him out of his living safety blanket, but he hates his brain even more for making him stare pointlessly at an invisible spot for about an hour before that.
Jetlag is a fucking bitch, he thinks grumpily as he closes the lid and flushes the toilet, motioning to the sink to wash his hands. There’s a mirror hanging off the wall above the basin, and the glance he spares it isn’t really helpful. He literally has red circles on top of the black ones now, and it makes a weird Halloween-ish look with his blue eyes — which he’s positive isn’t attractive in any part of the world.
He retrieves his phone from the nightstand on his side of the bed, eyes squinting when he unlocks it, after padding as quietly as possible out of the bathroom and trying desperately to remember how the furniture is displayed so that he doesn’t end up splitting his knee open in the frame of the bed on his way.
“Lucas?”
Eliott’s sleepy voice makes Lucas startle stupidly and he smiles sheepishly in the ray of light emanating from his phone. “Yeah, I’m here.”
There’s a pause and Eliott motions some more in the bed, rubbing his eye from the heel of his hand. He’s wearing his tee-shirt from yesterday and his black briefs are peeking out from where the comforter is thrown back. “Is it morning already?”
“Nah, I just went to the bathroom. Sorry for waking you up.”
Eliott frowns and nods. “Oh. Right. Aren’t you coming back?”
“I can’t sleep,” Lucas admits. “I’ll probably just toss and turn.”
Eliott props himself up on an elbow. “It’s fine. Come here,” he says, voice still a bit rough from sleep and hair a little messier than usual. “We can watch a movie or something.”
Lucas huffs a chuckle. “Eliott, it’s 2.30 in the morning, go back to sleep.”
“So what, I don’t get to have cuddles at 2.30?”
Lucas stares, taken aback. “Fuck, of course you do,” he says, practically throwing his phone on the nightstand as he hops in the bed, and just like that the room is pitch-black all over again. “Let’s keep the movie for another time though.”
They don’t quite cuddle, not like they were before Lucas got up, and not like they were when they first fell asleep. They’re merely facing each other, Eliott’s arm snaking its way around his waist, gentle and light as they pull him just a tiny bit closer.
“It’s fine,” he says, tracing circles on Lucas’ side. “We can just talk.”                
Lucas slides an arm under his head, looking in the direction of Eliott’s voice, almost as if he could make out his features in the night, were he trying hard enough. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know,” his boyfriend whispers, and Lucas feels him shrugging slightly. “What’s the first thing you could think about asking me?”
Lucas ponders the question. Objectively there’s still a whole bunch of things he would want to know about Eliott, simply because he wants to know everything there’s to know, but there’s something intimate and unique about being with him like this, his attention undivided. They have nowhere else to be, no one else to bother them, not a single kilometer between them. It’s just them, in this moment, and he feels emboldened enough to ask: “When did you know you had feelings for me?”
There’s a silence, and Eliott’s fingers stop their gentle dance on his side. “It doesn’t really depict me IN a good light,” Eliott admits.
“C’mon on, tell me,” Lucas says, wriggling a tad closer. “I know it was when you were still with Lucille, you told me that already.”
“Alright,” Eliott says. “The exact moment, uh?” Lucas nods, even if Eliott can’t see it. “I was having sex with Lucille.” Another silence. “I thought about you to finish.”
Oh. Well, he can’t say he’s feeling bad, which he’s simultaneously certain is the opposite of the reaction he should be having. Probably because his boyfriend did not mentally cheat on him while they were having sex.
“I told you, it doesn’t really make me the perfect boyfriend after that,” Eliott mumbles.
Lucas shakes his head, mostly for himself, and he reaches out to run his hand up Eliott’s arm. “Actually, I think you’re doing really great so far.”
“So far, uh?” Eliott muses.
“Yes. So far. Your turn.”
Eliott takes a second to think. “Why did you date Jake if you weren’t all that interested in him?”
“It doesn’t really make me a Saint either.”
The fingers are back to grazing his side through the material of his shirt. “I think I’ll handle it. I think I already know, in fact.”
Lucas drops his gaze, uselessly, he knows, but it’s a reflex he can’t help. “I was in love with you,” he admits. “You had gotten back with Lucille. It was, like, the third time it was happening in the short time we had known each other, I just thought there’d never be a place for me in your life.”
It feels strangely liberating to get it off his chest. It’s not the biggest secret of his life, and it’s not his most bitter moment either. But going back to these few months, where Eliott had managed to occupy so much space in his life all the while being still so out of reach, it still makes his heart clench a little on instinct — like the vague memory of a physical pain.
“The tables turned,” Eliott says and Lucas smiles.
“Kind of, yeah.”
Eliott pulls himself closer, and Lucas shifts a little, welcoming his boyfriend’s frame in his arms as Eliott nestles his face in the crook of his neck. “I’m so happy to have you with me,” he whispers.
*
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chaotic-woso · 5 years
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Is It Okay if I Call You Mine - Ch. 2 - CarolxMaria fic
Cross-posted from AO3
First chapter here
Fandom - Captain Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Ships - Carol Danvers/Maria Rambeau
Characters - Carol Danvers, Maria Rambeau, Dr. Wendy Lawson, Monica Rambeau
Rating - T
Summary - Multi-chapter fic exploring the relationship between Carol Danvers and Maria Rambeau as they become the Rambeau-Danvers family. Spans across different moments in the Carol-Maria relationship, from before they get together (because let’s all agree, they are t o g e t h e r in this film even if Marvel won’t come out and say it), to various milestones and slices of life in their relationship after they start actually dating, living together, mutually pining for each other, etc.
Ch. 2 - Carol embraces the role of supportive best friend and lots of mutual pining occurs
Maria decides to have the baby and she finally convinces her (begs endlessly) to join Dr. Lawson’s project, knowing Lawson will be far more supportive of Maria's choice than any of the officers at Maria’s current posting. But if she’s being honest with herself, her motivations are totally selfish. She misses working alongside her best friend, misses hearing her voice over the comms while she flies, misses the way everything between them just comes naturally, like they were born in sync with one another.
They don’t talk about the baby’s father and they don’t talk about that morning in the kitchen where Carol knows they were on the precipice of something. She throws herself into the role of supportive best friend and pretends that everything is normal, everything is fine. Her priority is Maria and the baby, not her own emotional turmoil.
After two months of long drives from Maria’s place to Pegasus, multiple doctor’s appointments that she insists on accompanying Maria to, and less and less time spent at her own place, Maria moves and Carol moves with her.
“It’ll be just like in Basic!” she says excitedly when she gives Maria her long spiel on why they should become roommates again.
Maria narrows her eyes at her.
“You mean you pounding on my door every morning before the sun was up so we could go on an extra run before everyone else was up? Or do you mean you snoring so loud I could barely sleep cuz it sounded like someone was running a chainsaw in our bunk? Or --”
“I did not snore.”
“You do snore, Danvers. Let’s not pretend it’s something you’ve grown out of.”
“I’ll be in my own room, down the hall, behind a closed door. You’ll never hear a peep.”
Maria crosses her arms, extremely skeptical.
She straightens her back and gets ready to play her trump card.
“I’ll do the dishes,” she says, waits.
Maria quirks an eyebrow.
“Every night,” she adds, waits again. She puts on her best pout, tries to look as endearing as possible.
Maria makes her suffer for a few more moments and then sighs. It’s the sigh she makes when she knows she’s lost and there’s no sense in arguing any further.
“Okay, fine. You can move in with me.”
“Yes!” she exclaims and pumps her fist in victory. She throws her arms around Maria and hugs her tight. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Maria’s arms are trapped at her sides, her barely-there bump nestled between them.
“Don’t make me regret this already, Danvers,” Maria warns.She releases Maria immediately and steps away, snaps to attention.
“I won’t let you down, ma'am,” she responds and mock salutes.
Maria rolls her eyes but can’t hide the smile on her face.
“You’re a fool, Carol Danvers.”
She smiles back at Maria, can’t stop the feeling of happiness that spreads through her whole body.
“That may be true, but I’m your fool and that’s all that matters.”
Maria shakes her head and holds her hand out to Carol.
“Come on, let’s go find us a house.”
They find a small place not far from base - two bedrooms, a decent kitchen, tiny backyard, enough for now. It’s not the place Maria plans to raise her child, but it will get them through the next year or two.
Time passes and they fall into an easy routine, both at work and at home. It shouldn’t surprise her just how smoothly it comes together; they’ve always made a great team. Maria has always understood her, knows how to handle her on good days and bad days. She lets her be herself, no questions asked. And she tries her damnedest to make sure she does the same for Maria.
At night she sneaks Maria’s copy of ‘What to Expect When You’re Expecting,’ reads about trimesters and prenatal care, the size of the fetus at each weekly milestone, how to handle morning sickness and prevent stretch marks. A lot of the stuff in the book freaks her out, especially the chapter on childbirth, but it also reinforces what she already knows to be true - Maria is a goddamn badass warrior woman.
She keeps the house stocked with saltines and ginger ale, goes on late-night runs for bizarre food and ice cream combinations (the baby apparently likes Rocky Road with Cheetos, something Carol tries once and never again). She rubs Maria’s feet when they get sore after a long day working on Dr. Lawson’s planes, buys her extra pillows so she can sleep more comfortably as the baby grows. She cries when they hear the baby’s heart beat for the first time, even more than Maria does. She keeps an ultrasound photo taped to the control panel of her bird and another copy tucked in the visor of her Mustang.
Maria teases her and calls her a big ol’ sap, and she can’t even argue back because it is so damn true. She is in deep.
She decides to start a college fund for the kid but doesn’t tell Maria. She hates having a secret between them, but she knows Maria would adamantly refuse any kind of monetary help, would see it as a sign of weakness. She starts it off small with a couple hundred dollars and contributes to it every month from her paycheck.
She figures in eighteen years she’ll have come up with a good enough argument as to why she did this, and Maria will be unable to refuse. What she doesn’t know, has no possible way of foreseeing, is that Maria will actually find out about it in just six years’ time when a lawyer goes through Carol’s will and lists a bank account with one Monica Rambeau as the beneficiary, to be made accessible on the day of her eighteenth birthday.
Maria will both loathe and love Carol in that moment, will hate her so strongly for leaving them, for her life being reduced to a series of objects and documents. But she will also love her, will always love her, for thinking of Monica as her own, as someone worth investing in and caring for even before she was born, before they were together, before Monica became Carol’s in every way but biologically.
But Carol has no idea that's what lies ahead. Right now everything is pretty damn near perfect she thinks, and she doesn't see how anything could ruin it.
“Have you thought about names?” Carol asks Maria one evening while they're sitting in their tiny backyard watching the sun go down and sipping iced tea.
“I got a couple in mind,” Maria answers but purposefully doesn't elaborate.
Carol tilts her sunglasses down and looks over at her.
“You gonna share or just keep 'em to yourself?”
Maria gives back her own sassy look over the rims of her aviators.
“You just want to know if 'Carol’ is on the list.”
Carol places a hand to her chest and gasps.
“I'm wounded you think I'm that vain.”
“You are that vain, Danvers. You spend ten minutes every morning checking yourself out in the bathroom mirror - don't think I don't know what you're up to in there when I'm trying to get your ass out the door.”
“Can't help it that I look so damn good I distract myself sometimes,” she smirks back, her cockiest grin in full effect.
Maria rolls her eyes (probably for at least the tenth time that day) and she definitely does not let them fall back to Carol and linger on the exposed curve of her neck that glows golden in the setting sun, and she most certainly does not notice the way Carol's arms flex as she grips the arms of her chair, projecting strength and power even when she's at rest.
Maria gulps her ice tea and turns away, misses the self-satisfied look that crosses Carol's face.
That woman is such a damn tease sometimes. It's gonna get her in real trouble one day.
“Well if you won't share your list, I'll tell you mine,” Carol pipes up.
Maria's head whips back to Carol.
“You have a list?”
“Sure I do,” Carol shrugs. “I kinda got bored the last time we were at the doctor's and I was waiting for them to finish all your tests and stuff. They had one of those baby name books lying around so I flipped through it.”
Maria's eyes narrow suspiciously.
“You mean the baby name book you gave me last month that you said you picked up at a used book shop?”
Carol has the decency to look slightly ashamed and shrinks back in her chair.
“Uhhhh….no?” she replies, very unconvincingly.
All she can do is shake her head. There's never a dull moment with this woman.
“Carol, you have to bring it back next time.”
“But you already marked it up! They'll know.”
“I didn't write in it, I just have sticky notes marking the pages with the names I like.”
Carol sighs.
“Fine, I'll bring it back. But promise you won't make me confess? The receptionist lady doesn't like me very much as it is.”
She rolls her eyes - again, make that eleven times today - and pinches the bridge of her nose. People ask her if she’ll be able to handle a child on her own; she lives with Carol Danvers - she’s got loads of experience, she’ll manage just fine.
“Maybe if you stopped rearranging her magazine display every time we go there and didn’t steal their books, she’d find you a tad more endearing.”
Carol crosses her arms and huffs.
“It’s not my fault she can’t take a joke.”
If her child ends up half as stubborn as its Auntie Carol she’s in for years of trouble.
“Just bring the damn book back, you goof. Now are you gonna tell me your names or what?”
Carol pouts a bit longer and ignores her question. She sips her iced tea and waits, knows Carol will come around in her own good time.
A few more moments of scowling into the distance later, and then Carol mellows back out, sunny disposition restored.
“Well...I think an M name would sound good,” Carol starts. “Then you two could match, ya know? M and M Rambeau.”
“You've really thought about this.”
Carol's cheeks pink in embarrassment. It makes her look cuter than she has any right to be.
“I...I guess, yeah.”
Maria smiles at her encouragingly.
“Well, whatcha got for M names?”
Carol perks up.
“You really want to hear?”
“I asked didn't I? But I still get final say when the big day comes.”
“Of course, of course,” Carol agrees. “It's your kid after all, I'm just the cool aunt.”
Maria wonders if Carol knows she's so much more than that.
Carol launches into her list and Maria listens, nods at some and grimaces at others.
“Well for boys there's Michael, Marcus, Mitchell, Matthew, Mark, Malcolm, Marshall, Martin, Marvin, Max, Maurice, Melvin, Miles, Murphy, and Murray.”
“Marvin?”
“That one was a joke,” Carol admits. “Can you imagine? Baby Marv?”
They both dissolve into laughter at the thought.
“But you're convinced it's a girl, so there's a bunch of those - Melissa, Megan, Michelle, Melanie, Mackenzie, Maya, Madeline, Madison, Maggie, Mandy, Margo, Marisa, Melinda, Melody, Mikaela, Mindy, and Morgan,” Carol rattles off, letting out a breath.
“Oh, and Monica,” she adds.
She doesn't tell Carol that her own list is full of M names, too. And she's definitely not going to give her the satisfaction and unnecessary ego boost of knowing that 'Carol’ has floated across that same list several times as an option for a middle name. She’d be downright insufferable if she knew.
“Those aren’t half bad,” she says. “I thought for sure you were just going to say ‘Maria Junior’ for a girl’s name.”
“I’m not going to say I didn’t consider it.”
Maria laughs and tilts her head to the sky. The first stars have come out and the moon has risen, its crescent shape a sliver of white against the purpling dusk.
“We should head back in,” Carol suggests.
“Probably,” she agrees, but makes no move to get up.
Carol stands slowly and stretches, tucks her sunglasses into her t-shirt and steps toward her. She extends her arm out and Maria looks down at it in mock disdain.
“I can get out of a chair on my own, you know.”
“Eh, I know. Humor me?”
She accepts Carol’s arm and pushes herself up while Carol gently pulls her. She puts a hand to her back and Carol gives her a knowing look.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she insists, waving Carol off. “Those chairs aren’t that comfortable even when I’m not five months pregnant.”
“Uh huh,” Carol replies, smart enough to know not to argue. She follows Maria into the house, locking the back door behind them.In the kitchen she stretches, works the kink out of her back, and yawns. She feels a telltale flutter in her abdomen and grabs for Carol.
Carol whirls around, startled and confused.
“What is it?” she asks, a slight panic in her voice.
Maria presses Carol’s hand to her stomach in the spot where she just felt movement. They stand there for a few seconds and nothing happens. Carol’s palm is warm and wide across the curve of her shirt. Even through the fabric she can feel the heat that emanates from her.
“What are you -”
And then she feels it again and Carol must feel it too because she stops mid-question and her eyes widen.
“Oh,” Carol breathes out. “Wow.”
Carol blinks down at their entwined hands, her whole body still, and waits for the baby to do it again. It happens once more and Carol laughs in amazement.
“Hey there, Trouble,” Carol whispers with a reverence Maria’s never heard in her voice before.
Her best friend looks up at her, keeps her hand tucked beneath Maria’s. Carol’s eyes are shiny and her face is full of awe and wonder and adoration. It overwhelms her, how much she sees reflected in Carol’s expressive brown eyes. She wonders what Carol sees reflected back in her own, if it tilts her world on its axis like it does to Maria.
There's a beat of silence and Carol looks like she's about to say something, but then the baby kicks again, harder this time. Carol pulls her hand back in surprise.
“Dang, kid. Take it easy in there.”
Carol still grins widely and her eyes still sparkle with pure happiness, but whatever else Maria saw revealed briefly in the depths of her eyes has been subdued and pushed back down where it's no longer exposed.
She wants to ask Carol what she was about to say before the baby assertively reminded them of its presence, but she knows she won't get a straight answer. She doesn’t want to risk ruining the night by calling her out on it either.
They'll have this shared moment of joy, and for now that's enough.
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hoe-imaginess · 6 years
Note
big three texting headcanons, when they text their boo too please
I’M SO EXCITED THEY’RE ABOUT TO BE HERE AHHHH
Togata
•Avid texter. Double texter. 6am texter. He’s always texting his boo
•He tells them goodnight and good morning every day, not really expecting a reply. He just wants to tell them. But he really is out here blowing up their phone at 6am and giving them a goodnight text at a crisp 9pm. Because he expects his s/o to get a good 8-9 hours of sleep, like he does. What a routine
•So if they end up texting him in the late hours of the night, he wakes up very upset, and goes on about the unhealthy side effects of a bad sleep schedule
•He’s clearly a busy guy, so he’s at least thoughtful and considerate enough to send his boo a “Hey I’m gonna be busy these next few days” text just to let them know why he won’t be answering. He’s swamped with hero work, but he’s thinking of them always
•He always sends his s/o meaningful, sappy messages before he goes out on a hero mission that he knows is risky. Equally, he appreciates receiving good luck messages from his boo on big mission days 
•He also just texts to texts. It’s so nice. He literally keeps up with everyone in his contacts. He’ll have an actual panic attack because he forgot to send a New Year’s text to that one guy who sat behind him in 2nd grade
•It’s almost nauseating how big of a smile Mirio gets when he sees a text notification from his s/o. He’s such a sap
•Also, clearly the Big Three have a groupchat and Mirio changes the name every month to keep it fresh. This month it’s Partners in Crime (fighting crime I mean)
•Favorite emojis are definitely 👍 and 😬
•He also has a million hearts next to his s/o’s contact name ❤️❤️❤️
•Kind of annoying, but he’ll call his s/o and get no answer then hit them with a “Hey! Tried calling you! But you didn’t answer! Call me back!”. They clearly see your 23 missed calls Mirio, chill out
•Sometimes he types with proper grammar and punctuation, and sometimes his text slang is so wild and undecipherable that you have no idea what he’s saying
Amajiki
•Ugh my poor boy. He’s a horrible texter, especially when it comes to a crush or someone he’s dating. With his friends, he’s decent. (Friends being Hado and Mirio, mainly. And Mirio hits him with those triple texts which kind of leaves no room to not reply)
•Tamaki takes like 20 minutes to think of a reply that sounds right in his head. So his boo is pretty much sitting there watching those three little dots stop and start constantly because Amajiki can’t make up his mind
•His paranoia is out of controlllll when it comes to texting too, obviously. After 5 minutes of his s/o not replying, he’s getting a little anxious. 10 minutes, he’s sweating. 20 minutes, he might as well be dead
•Honestly, he has a specific text tone for his s/o so he knows when to run to his phone and reply
•It was a whole lot worse before his s/o was his actual s/o. When it was just a crush, he had a muchhh much more difficult time trying to figure out how to reply to their texts. He was attached to his phone, anxiously awaiting a text from them. But when he finally got it, he had no idea how to respond, but he was always so relieved and happy that he wanted to cry
•Honestly when he’s talking to his crush through text, Mirio is right next to him coaching him through the whole thing. He’s so cute. We love supportive bffs
•Oh God he and Mirio would be talking about his crush and trying to decide what to text them, and Tamaki unknowingly had the audio record button pressed, so he accidentally sent their entire conversation to his crush, effectively killing him 
•Amajiki uses no emojis or emoticons. The only emotion he ever feels he needs to get across is doubt and it’s easy just to add a hundred ellipsis to do that……..
•He’s horrible at flirting irl and through text, but at least with texting, he can hide behind a screen. So he’s at least confident enough to give his s/o compliments via text when the opportunity is there. It’s so cute. He’s still sweating and blushing as he does it, but still. Cute.
Hado
•Ok she is actually the world’s worst texter. Contrary to her personality, she is not good at keeping up with conversations over text. She just gets bored
•One word replies all the time. ‘K. Haha. Ok. Cool.’ So annoying.
•And if it’s not words, it’s just a series of emojis tbh. You can ask her “How are you doing today?” and she just replies with a 💖. Like wtf does that mean Hado
•Oh she’s always sending selfies as responses too btw 
•And she leaves her read receipts on?? Rude??? She’s horrible at keeping a convo going. She hates getting left on read, yet will leave everyone else on read
•Her crush or s/o might think they’re getting the silent treatment but Hado really just fell asleep watching So You Think You Can Dance or something like that
•Her replies also come at wild ass times. Like, 4am. What is she doing up at 4am?? Who knows??
•She won’t answer her boo for a long time, and then she suddenly sends them, “Thinking about you! We need to catch up. Wanna get lunch?” like she didn’t just ignore the shit out of them for an entire week
•Ok but there are days she is good at keeping up a convo for at least an hour or two. During that time, she’s such a mother. She wants to know all about her boo’s day and wants to make sure they ate and brushed their teeth and got good sleep. It’s pretty much an interrogation via text when Hado is actually sitting down and ready to text
•And if her s/o asks “What did you do today?” when she’s in her texting mood, they should prepare for a novel. She goes on and on and on and doesn’t stop
•Lightning speed texting. How does she do it? She doesn’t even need to look at her phone. She can do it with one hand. Wild. When she’s up for texting, her responses come within like .4 seconds
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advocatewrites-blog · 6 years
Text
Into the Unknown Part 4 Chapter 1
Into the Unknown
Fandom: Undertale, Coraline (book), Over the Garden Wall, Paranorman, Gravity Falls (season 2)
Characters: Frisk, Norman B., Dipper P., Mabel P., Coraline J., Wirt, Greg, the Cat, the Frog; Sans, Toriel, Papyrus, Undyne, Alphys, Asgore,; the Other Mother, the Beast, Agatha P., Bill Cipher, Asriel D., Chara D.,
Pairings: Not the focus. Alphys/Undyne, with mentions of Papyrus/Mettaton, sans/Toriel/Asgore, and Wirt/Sara. Due to the nature of Undertale and the dating segments, there is also interpretable Papyrus/Wirt, Undyne/Mabel, Alphys/Dipper, Napstablook/Norman, Mettaton/Norman, Mettaton/Mabel, Sans/Dipper, Sans/Norman, and Sans/Greg.
Rated a high +K for violence, mild language, horrific elements that may be disturbing to younger readers,  mentions of child abuse and bullying, character death that is sometimes permanent, and mentions of suicide that may be triggering. These elements remain relatively unchanged from their source material, which most all are for children, but discretion is advised nonetheless.
Disclaimer: Undertale was created and owned by Toby Fox. Coraline was created by Neil Gaiman and owned by Bloomsbury and Laika. Over the Garden Wall was created by Patrick McHale and owned by Cartoon Network. Paranorman was created by Sam Fell and Chris Butler and owned by Laika. Gravity Falls was created by Alex Hirsch and owned by Disney. Any other work mentioned or homage are property of their respective owners. This is a fan-made, nonprofit work that only seeks to entertain. Please support the original franchises.
“so I’m a sentry in snowdin forest, right? I sit out there and I watch for humans. it’s kind of boring. fortunately, in the forest, there’s this HUGE locked door. and it’s perfect for practicing knock-knock jokes. so one day, I’m knocking ‘em out, like usual. I knock on the door and say ‘knock knock’. and suddenly, from the other side…I hear a woman’s voice.
“‘who is there?’ so, naturally, I respond. ‘dishes.’ ‘dishes who?’ ‘dishes is a very bad joke.’ Then she just howls with laughter. like it’s the best joke she’s heard in a hundred years. so I keep ‘em coming, and she keeps laughing. she’s the best audience I’ve ever had. then, after a dozen of ‘em, SHE knocks and says ‘Knock knock!’ I say, ‘whos there?’ ‘old lady!’ ‘old lady who?’ ‘Oh! I did not know you could yodel!’
“wow. needless to say, this woman was extremely good. we kept telling each other jokes for hours. eventually, I had to leave. Papyrus gets kind of cranky without his bedtime story. but she told me to come by again, and so I did. then I did again. it’s kind of a thing now.”
The human is still listening, eyes wide and mouth full of burg. Its LV is at 5, meaning it’s still definitely a murderer. But it’s hard to remember that after seeing it pass through the puzzles his bro set up with a smile on its face, watch it engage with them. Watch it Spare.
“one day, though, I notice she wasn’t laughing as much. I asked her what was up. then she told me something strange. ‘if a human ever comes through this door…could you please, please promise me something? watch over them, and protect them, will you not?’ now, I hate making promises. and this woman, I don’t even know her name. but, someone who sincerely loves bad jokes…has an integrity you can’t say no to.”
He doesn’t know what he’s thinking. He can’t shake the boat in a meaningful way; everything is on a schedule, and nothing he does changes. But he has to know.
“do you get what I’m saying? That promise I made to her…do you know what would have happened if she hadn’t said anything? buddy…
You’d be dead where you stand.”
He didn’t mean to speak so forcefully; slip out of his font and use the tone he uses when he Judges. But the effect is immediate. The human’s eyes widen in fear and it runs still.
In a way, that’s all the answer he needs.
But then it starts crying. The other occupants of Grillby’s start to look at them, and he squirms under the attention. It raises its hands and starts to move them. It’s crude Hands, not helped by how much it’s trembling. He manages to get most of it.
Didn’t mean—accident—thought she would stop—didn’t know—not me—not myself--
How old was this kid anyway? It’s shorter than he is, and that’s saying something. Their hands shake too much and there are bruises on their legs and under their sweater. Old enough to kill? You don’t commit genocide on accident, but if they were half as upset about it then as they were now…
What did they mean by not myself?
I’ll fix, they sign. I’ll go back and save her. I promise.
*RESET
He sees it that time. The world stops. He watches it move backwards, like someone were rewinding a tape.
sans wakes up in his bed, like he always does. Usually, it takes him a long time to gather up the energy to restart the timeline again. He’ll lie in bed until Papyrus wakes him up and demands he go to work, and sometimes after that. This time, however, he jumps out of bed and makes some corrections to his notebook.
don’t trust them
Four are the Stars An Undertale/Gravity Falls crossover By the Poor Sap Advocate
Chapter 1
“How’d you think we ended up down here?” Dipper asked as he looked around.
“We fell, of course,” said Mabel, who was in the middle of making herself a daisy chain out of the more squished golden flowers. She gestured upwards, where just the faintest glint of blue skies and sunlight could be seen.
“Do you remember falling down somewhere?”
“Nope!”
“I don’t remember Gravity Falls having any mountains big enough for…this,” said Dipper.
He tried thinking back to what happened. He remembered Mabel was planning a party for the reopening of the Mystery Shack, they were hanging out in the gift shop…flashes of red and blue…then nothing.
“And how are these flowers growing, anyway? There’s like no sunlight down here!”
Mabel looked back down at her daisy chain in confusion.
“Do you still have your grappling hook?” Dipper asked. “Maybe we can—”
Mabel was in the air before he could even finish that sentence. She loved using the grappling hook, especially when she had a legitimate reason to use it.
Mabel scaled upward towards the highest ridge of the cliff. She grabbed onto the ridge with one hand, then jumped as she tried to grab the ledge above. Her hand stop on the sky. There was a loud booming noise, as though someone has struck a gong. The sky began to ripple like waves in a lake.
Mabel tumbled back down onto the golden flowers.
“MABEL!”
“What was that?” Mabel said as she sat back up, as though nothing had happened. “It feels like I just ran into a wall.”
Dipper’s mind started racing. There was something at the top of the mountain, something not normal. More Gravity Falls weirdness to investigate.
He took another look at Mabel and the distance she fell, and decided he would investigate it once they were looking down at it again.
“There’s a cave this way,” said Dipper. “We can probably hike our way down from here and see if there’s another entrance that’s not blocked by paranormal entities.”
Mabel pulled herself off the ground and dusted herself off.  “You lead the way, bro!”
She had a new sweater on, a blue and violet striped design with a red heart in the middle. And for some reason, it felt very familiar to Dipper.
Frisk found themselves in the woods once again.
It was not the Unknown again, they put together quickly. It felt too…different. In fact, if it weren’t for the heat and the sun above, they could have thought they had made it back to the forests in Snowdin. It felt like magic was in the air.
Another thing different from the Unknown was how quickly they were able to find humans. And how many there were in one place. The sounds of crowds and traffic were audible within seconds, and they wandered towards its source.
It was hard to describe what they found. It was less of a house and more of a hovel.
“Alright, step right this way! The first tour of the new and improved Mystery Shack!”
The Cat wouldn’t be able to find them for a while. They could kill time, at least. Frisk wandered into the group and hid behind legs.
They were actually surprised that they were found so quickly. The Mystery Man leaned close to them, one eye inspecting them closely.
“Don’t think I didn’t see ya sneak in, kid,” he said. “Your parents in this group?”
They shook their head and shrugged.
“You gonna pay your way in yourself?”
They had to dig through their pockets a bit, but they managed to find a gold coin from the Underground and handed it to him. What shock he had that a child was carrying gold wore off on him quickly. He inspected it carefully, even going so far as to biting on it, before deciding he was satisfied and turned back to them.
“I don’t see too many kids with solid gold on them,” said the Mystery Man.
Frisk responded by giving him another gold coin.
“Good answer! Right this way, kid!”
Dipper took a step, and fell through the floor.
This was about the fourth time he had done that, and frankly it stopped being funny after the second. Mabel propped herself up on the pedestal and waited for him to come back.
“Hey, Froggit, you’re looking good today!” She called.
The Froggit in question gave an embarrassed burble, dropped a few gold coins, and hopped on its way.
“Why do they have so many puzzles leading up to their house?” Dipper asked as he emerged from the vent system.
“Maybe it’s a monster thing,” said Mabel. “Did the journal have anything about a kingdom of monsters?”
“Not that I remember,” said Dipper. “I just wish Grunkle Stan had given the journal back before all this happened.”
He took another step, and fell through.
Mabel took a bite out of the spider doughnut.
“Ew…crunchy…”
Dipper tumbled back upstairs.
“No journal’s gonna make you good at puzzles, bro,” said Mabel.
“The answer’s down there,” said Dipper. “I just can’t remember it all the way. Here’s another question: why would monsters have puzzles that are so easy to solve?”
“Maybe they’re just waiting for a stupid enough human to solve them,”
“They wouldn’t be waiting for human down here.”
“Toriel was.”
“And you trust her?”
“What?” Mabel asked. “She’s a delightful goat mother, how suspicious can you be of her?”
“I’m just saying,” said Dipper. “We’re stuck in the land of monsters, you were literally bounced off a shield preventing us from escaping, I almost got killed by a flower, and there’s this nice old goat woman who wants us to be her children.”
“You’re just being over-suspicious. She’s perfectly fine!”
“There is something I must do,” said Toriel. “Please stay here.”
She put her book down and made a beeline for the staircase. Dipper’s blood ran cold.
“…perfectly fine….” Said Mabel.
“We’re going,” said Dipper, already running to catch up with Toriel.
“That was a pretty cool snail fact though!”
It was hard to describe the Mystery Shack. If Frisk had to, they would say it was not worth the 2G. The decorations were fake; some insulting so, and some just insulting. The real mystery of the mystery shack was how readily everyone bought it.
They exited through the gift shop, fitting considering the rest of the tour, bought a map of the area with what gold they had left, and returned to the woods.
They had hiked through the forest long enough that they were decently hidden when it started to get dark. The Mystery Man may have taken their gold, but it was unlikely that anyone else would.
There was still no sign of the Cat.
Once they found a clearing far enough away that they wouldn’t be spotted, they curled in on themselves and fell asleep.
They were only asleep for about an hour when they woke up to the sounds of the Cat’s low growl.
He stood in front of them, ready to pounce. His eyes were focused on the bush in front of him, so much so that Frisk wondered if he could even see them. When they shifted and waved at him, he jumped into the bushes.
A very human-sounding voice screamed out.
It took Frisk a few tries of trying to grab him and pulling his tail to get the Cat to withdraw from the bush. Something was in its mouth. No...someone.  They were humanoid, barely the length of Frisk’s arm. Most of their hair was tucked under a red cone of a hat.
It was some kind of monster, Frisk realized. A gnome, if they had to guess.
Frisk looked to the Cat disapprovingly. The Cat rolled its eyes, but put the gnome down all the same.
The gnome didn’t respond. It ran past before Frisk could ask it any more questions.
The Cat said something, complaining about the gnomes trying to capture him and ride him into battle, but Frisk was only half paying attention. There was magic in these woods.
Author’s Note:
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cosmosogler · 6 years
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hi guys. didn’t sleep much last night. didn’t prepare me well for today.
i did get up and get to my chores... eventually. it took an hour and a half to get up and moving once i got out of bed. i showered and that went so late i just skipped breakfast and made myself lunch. 
harrison decided to wait until 4 hours before mom was set to show up to freak the hell out at me. he figured out i was avoiding him and i told him the truth. he didn’t stop doing things i told him repeatedly to stop doing. i said those comments made me feel bad. he did the whole “oh i’m a failure of a friend” shtick and i didn’t have the energy to turn around and ignore my hurt feelings to comfort his hurt feelings about my hurt feelings.
he made me so angry! i typed out a lot of messages and had to press my fists against the desk and take a deep breath and erase them and try again. 
the reason i got so angry was because as soon as it became clear i wasn’t going to say “oh no it’s ok” or whatever he demanded i send him a list of boundaries i have for him to not cross. like buddy if you don’t know them by now then it’s either not a problem or a very big problem. (he doesn’t listen.) i told him i didn’t know off the top of my head and he basically freaked out over and over in the same exact way no matter how many times i told him i was too tired to give him a list of my life for his own convenience.
i told him that. “i don’t have a check list for your convenience.” his response was “then how am i supposed to learn?” he sent me that literal message word for word after i told him twice that i am not his teacher or his babysitter. i have a full time job and it is not “patiently teach harrison about the magical ways of the world constantly and repeatedly at his pleasure forever and ever.” 
i was so angry. i didn’t have time for that. i didn’t really get to prepare myself for mother before she showed up because i was grinding my teeth and taking deep breaths about harrison for two hours this afternoon. i sent him a link to a long pdf about emotional labor. that’s what he’s sapping out of me. the emotional labor. he won’t read it or understand it. but i told him to talk to literally anyone besides me about it. i know he won’t. he doesn’t listen. he doesn’t really listen to me. it doesn’t matter what i do. he’s just going to put me in these lose-lose situations forever and it’s exhausting and i have OTHER THINGS I NEED TO DO WITH MY DAY!!!
so i stumbled down to the parking lot to greet mother. we went and got her checked in to her hotel and we had dinner. i ended up talking a lot more than i wanted to. when i found out dad’s mom wants to get another dog (she killed her last one) i couldn’t hold back a pretty nasty comment. didn’t have the patience i needed. 
at least when mom started making judgmental comments about other people i had the presence of mind to say “that’s not really my business” and change the subject to something that is my business. like insurance and taxes and boring difficult impossible adult stuff. mother wasn’t very helpful with a pep talk. when dad called she had me answer the phone for her. dad asked how i was doing and i said “i’m ok” and then let the silence kind of hang there. then i relayed mom’s message and hung up. 
i was starving all day (i didn’t have the energy to actually make myself a lunch) and then when i got my food i could barely eat anything at all. it took me like an hour to eat my pasta. i didn’t even finish it. i ate too much to keep the few bites remaining for leftovers but... my body was doing that thing where i felt weak from hunger and yet food was the last thing i wanted anywhere near me. 
every time mom complains about genevieve i tell her the same thing. eve is bored. she’s out of shape. she needs more exercise. mom never listens though and nothing changes. nothing ever changes just because i asked for something.
feels like that at least.
i learned my sister has been taking anxiety medication for several years now. our primary doctor prescribes them, my sister won’t see a therapist or psychiatrist. it’s so frustrating sometimes. she seems so miserable all the time but it’s like she thinks seeing a counselor will make her a crazy person or something. and you can’t be a crazy person! they’re the worst thing you could possibly be.
stigma. 
she might be a little proud, too. but the way my brother’s expression changes if therapy ever comes up, that sort of sharp flinch, i can tell that judgment is there. i don’t see why my sister wouldn’t feel a similar way. 
anyway i came home and i was so tired i did nothing for several hours. i got started on a thing for the comic but i didn’t have the energy to move past a quick sketch. i watched fma for a bit... episode 40 is next. 
i feel like i can’t draw fast enough. i wish it didn’t take so long to tell a story. i have a hundred things backed up that i REALLY want to draw. but no energy to actually draw them. i stare at my to-do list and i look at my sketchbook sitting next to me and i just sag a little. i’m feeling overwhelmed. and i can’t find that... drive, i guess, i keep wondering if anyone’s even reading it (even though i know people are reading it, and they want to know what happens next, because that’s what happens when you follow an ongoing story). 
i want to talk about it with someone besides harrison but when i go to talk about my process or the characters or choices i made i kinda clam up. at least in creative writing club that five-second hesitation of “oh my god, there is a huge flood of information i could  give about how i’m doing with this story, i’ve been making such good progress, what do i talk about?” got me absolutely nothing. i didn’t get to talk about it at all! the president moved on to his dnd campaign. i don’t have super-reflex wit... i needed a minute.
i guess with harrison it’s easier to talk about it because he hasn’t played the game and doesn’t have his own opinions about the characters. he has a different set of spoilers i can avoid. it’s way easier to talk about elements from the middle of the story (the part i wrote) when i’m sitting on the horrible bombshell twist of an ending to the game (the part i didn’t write). harrison knows some of my events and the characters but not where i’m going with all of it.
while with people who HAVE played the game, the middle of the story is going to be much more unknown! how do our protagonists get from where they are to where they end up in the game? (what changes did i decide to make to the game’s story? i’ve revealed a few already, a minor one and a major one.) 
so it’s way harder to talk with them about my story because a different subset of the story is going to be unknown to them. that subset is the part that i put all the work into. if i talk too much about the middle of the story then there ain’t gonna be any big mysteries left.
i dunno. a solution to this problem would be to have more friends i guess. i never know what to say or how to say what i want to say. i’m still very afraid of the judgment. i get it. i’m a big gay nerd. but the minute you say “fanfiction” people get all weird about it. i had to be really careful about who i told about my art. and none of them even looked anyway. nothing even matters.
i feel so trapped.
i gotta run errands with mom tomorrow, probably most of the day. i’ve been putting together a list of things i need to collect or fix. mom likes having things to fix. and if i give her things to fix that are not me, we get along a little better. she gets to feel helpful, i get to have a working desk fan, and i don’t have yet another tense situation under my belt of “memories of mother.” 
anyway. i don’t know what else to talk about. i feel like i have more to say but i’m not sure what it is i want to say, and even if i did i don’t have the energy to say it.
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onceuponamirror · 7 years
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Bughead, 9
9. meeting online au
(also had an anon send me this one so y’all really wanted it!) (also, this one got long, whoops)
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He never set out to be a Reddit guy. The connotations there were just too fraught—maybe five years ago, the description could just bring to mind shitposts and recycled memes, but it’s 2017 and he’s trying his actual, genuine hardest to not be an edgelord. 
Unfortunately, he thinks he has the predisposition for it, so he has to be careful. Especially considering what a snowflake standard he held himself to in high school. But in the same way undergrad taught him he’d never fully be a woke white dude and to fight his instincts to alt-control-delete his emotions, he’s avoided being an Internet Guy. 
There’s a sense of irony with the fact that most of his interests lie in the nostalgic, anyway. He likes Kubrick films. He dresses like he personally raided Kurt Cobain’s closet. He listens to a lot of David Byrne. 
But he still came of age in the aughts, so there’s a level of inevitability about his dependency to technology—particularly during the month he inherits his father’s motorcycle. 
“I’m getting to old for this thing, Jug, and you’ve gotta get around town,” his father had said, tugging a plastic blue tarp off. He supposes what was underneath it could be construed as a motorcycle, but only in that it had two wheels. 
“I think I’m better off with the bus,” Jughead said gloomily, his eyebrows knotted in the general direction of the bike. 
“Come on, son. It just needs a little elbow grease. I’ll help you fix it up,” his father had offered, though Jughead knew better than to rely on that. 
His dad has come a long way with his rehabilitation and was there when he really needed to be, but it was the times that things weren’t a life-or-death necessity that he didn’t always show up. 
Still, while Providence, Rhode Island is technically a city, it’s also got a bus system designed by a four year old with a crayon. 
And he’s far too principled for ride-shares, so it might not be so bad to have an alternate form of transportation. So he says fine, Dad and he takes the bike, and on second thought, takes another helmet too, though he has no idea why. What, is he going to wear one on top of the other? 
Still. The thing looks like it’ll dismantle itself at a slight breeze.
However, a couple hours into the manual he’s checked out from the Brown University Library, he realizes he’s in way over his head. The only part of the book he understands is the chapter that makes him realize they’re not even describing the type of motorcycle he has. Great.
From across the living room, Archie says he should google it, to which he replies, golly, no one’s ever suggested that before, and in response gets a pencil thrown at his head, followed by a request to throw the pencil back so he can finish his work. 
Rolling his eyes and tossing the pencil back—he doesn’t aim for it to land a foot away from Archie, but is pleased when it does—Jughead pulls his computer forward. His fingers hesitate over the keys, realizing he actually has no idea what kind of bike it is. It’s small, that’s all he knows. 
He shoots his dad a text asking him, but a glance at the time tells him his father is halfway through a shift at the construction site, and he’ll be lucky to hear back by nightfall. 
He peruses the internet with a half-hearted attempt to figure it out, but unsurprisingly, google searches titled small motorcycle and small bike with one headlight and what the fuck is this thing do not help. 
He has a few photos on his phone of the motorcycle, so the only things he knows about it is that it’s got a slight build and the brand is Honda.
Eventually, he finds himself on a Reddit thread for mechanics and classic car enthusiasts, and decides that’s a good place to start, because the only other thing he knows about the bike is that it’s old. 
Jughead makes an account and uploads his photos with the caption - uh, i know this sounds pretty stupid, but i inherited this bike and i’m trying to get it up and running but realized i have no idea what it is or where to start. any tips would be greatly appreciated. 
He closes his laptop, deciding he’ll use the interim time to work on this thesis. Between his work as a TA, the overall sufferings of being a grad student, now this stupid motorcycle which was supposed to help more than hinder, and the fact that he’s caught himself spacing out over the pretty blonde in his writing seminar twice—which is just—he isn’t thirteen, he should be beyond this—well, he’s a bit behind. 
After a couple hours, he checks the thread. There’s a response underneath his post, from a one MiniCoop59, informing him that they’re not totally sure, but thinks he owns a Honda GB500 cafe racer. 
He googles it, and that appears to be exactly the one sitting in the garage, so he goes back to the Reddit tab. 
yeah, this is it! thanks! now i just need to find the right manual this time lol, he comments back. 
And he expects that to be the end of it. But when he checks his email fifteen minutes later, there’s a notification from Reddit, and MiniCoop59. 
No problem! They’ve typed back. I wasn’t sure, my area of interest is more old cars. But glad I could help. 
He clicks on their username, curious to see what else they’ve posted, for no real reason other than utter and complete procrastination from his thesis. 
As he expected, Jughead finds a couple posts about engines, advice about fixing up an old Volkswagen van with a wry additional comment asking if they’re planning on following around the Grateful Dead for a while. It makes him snort. There’s also, more surprisingly, a post on a thread about anxiety where they talk about the pressures of deciding if graduate school is worth it or a waste of money. 
He raises his eyebrows, not only because he admires their response to dealing with anxiety and being frank about the way it manifests so that it doesn’t control you—and also because of the part about grad school. That’s definitely a question he’s asked himself, even halfway through his own second degree. 
Jughead returns to the original thread. 
it was, he writes. thanks again. also, hey, i’m bored and procrastinating, so i looked at your profile. ever figure out if grad school was a waste of money? been asking myself that and have no real answer. 
The response doesn’t take long. 
Haha! No, never figured it out. But too late now, I’m already enrolled. 
same. guess that’s how they get us.
Big time. Especially the Ivies, they trick you into thinking it’s so worth it! Like, if you got in *there*, you have to take that opportunity!
same again. Brown should be called Green for all the cash they’ve sapped from me. 
After that, MiniCoop59 stops answering. Jughead considers this reasonable, given that it’s almost dinner time, and if they’re at an Ivy league school like him, they’re somewhere on the east coast and thus in the same time zone.
However, they also don’t reply the next day, or the day after. It doesn’t matter, because his dad has gotten back to him, with a voicemail that confirms MiniCoop59′s answer. (His dad is still terrible at texting.)
Eventually, Jughead forgets all about Reddit, including the bike in the garage, especially the deeper into the semester he gets. He’s too busy, and he’s not going to ride the thing around in the dead of New England winter, anyway, so he stops trying to rush it. 
However, as leaves start to appear on trees and he’s no longer wearing all five of his layers at once to stave off the cold, Jughead thinks about the motorcycle again, and decides it’s finally time to fix up the thing. 
He checks the thread once more for the brand MiniCoop59 has given him, and heads to the campus library, his eyes flicking over the snow drop flowers peeking out of the soil. Spring is almost here. 
He recognizes the woman behind the circulation desk as the pretty blonde from his fall semester writing seminar, and his throat runs a little dry. He’s done his best not to create a fantasy around someone he doesn’t know, but he hasn’t been able to get past the one time they were in a group together and she critiqued his essay so perfectly that he actually almost got turned on. 
He’s pretty sure he remembers her name is Betty, because it’s such an odd name for a millennial he doubts he’d make that up. But the class was so big and they were only in the same group that one time, that he can’t be positive. 
But. Well, he’s always had a thing for nostalgia, so it’s just the kind of name he’d accidentally think was the name of his crush.  
“Hey,” he says, his fingers around the edge of the circulation counter. “Looking for some help finding a book.” 
She glances up from her novel, her big green eyes roving over him. “Sure,” she says, her neck tilted slightly, as if perhaps trying to decide if she remembers him too, or if that’s just his imagination. She closes the book and pushes it aside, rolling slightly in her chair to face the library computer. “Do you know the author?”
“Uh, I’m actually looking for a manual,” he says, scratching behind his ear. “On motorcycles? I have the model and make, if that helps.”
She smiles, though her head is fully angled now, looking at him curiously. “It will. Let’s head over to the section and see if we can find what you’re looking for. I’m Betty, by the way.”
“I know,” he says, and immediately squeezes his eyes shut with a cringe. “I mean, we were in a writing seminar together.”
“Oh!” Betty says, standing from her chair. “I thought that was you! You’re…Jughead, right? Hard to forget that name.”
He snorts, shaking his head. “Yeah. I get that a lot. It’s still better than the alternative, though.”
As she leads him across the library, the look she passes him is a little wry. They pull to a stop in front of a shelf that has been categorized by the label MANUALS and the further sublabel of MOTORCYCLES. 
Jughead pulls out his phone and finds MiniCoop59′s description. “So I was told I have a Honda GB500. Oh, cafe racer,” he says, and when he lowers his phone from his face, Betty is gaping at him.
“Oh my god, wait, are you HotDogHotDogHotDog?” 
His face burns bright red as the gears turn in his head, and he stares at her right back. “I…what? You’re MiniCoop?” 
She giggles, hiding her snickering behind a polite hand. “Don’t give me that look, when your username had the word hot dog in it three times.”
“That was…my dog’s name,” he says lamely, still too shocked and embarrassed to say anything else. He huffs. “Look, okay, I was not planning on using that profile ever again. It was the first thing that came to mind.”
“Obviously,” she replies, still giggling. 
He groans, scrubbing a hand down his face. When he looks at her again, her expression has turned slightly rueful as she nibbles on her lip. “Um—listen, I didn’t reply because when you said you went to Brown too, and you’d read my post about anxiety, I just…I didn’t want you to be someone who knew me. Didn’t want to be judged.”
He’d honestly forgotten she’d stopped replying, and is surprised that she has any guilt over it. But at the wide look in her eye, he’s realizing that just might be her personality; perennially worried she’s upset anyone. 
“It’s really okay,” he says. “I get that. I mean, I didn’t know who you were. But even if I did, I definitely wouldn’t judge you. I actually…admired it. What you talked about.”
It’s true; if anything, this just endears her to him more, her honesty and the self-care she talked about. Her lips press together thoughtfully, but she pivots quickly, her attention moving to scan the bookshelf. “Well. I think this is what you’re looking for,” she says, offering him a weathered manual. 
“Thanks,” he says, after a moment. He swallows, trying to gather his courage, because this is the girl he’s been thinking about since October, and she looks especially beautiful against the light filtered through the stacks. “Uh, listen. “Would you want to…um. Hang out sometime? I mean, like, while I work on the bike?” He rushes to add. “Since I know you have an interest in mechanics, and, well—”
“You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” She interrupts, her lips tipped up in amusement. 
He blows out a breath, not sure if she means about his haphazard attempt to ask her out, or the motorcycle. “No. None.” 
Betty’s grin is nearly shy as she nods. “In that case, I would love to,” she replies, and Jughead decides he’ll have to thank his dad for the motorcycle one more time.
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Text
Solus Drags Everyone the AU
Notes: So, started as an over-caffeinated tangent like three days ago. The entire premise is Solus got hit with a hot mic during what becomes the most extra 15 minutes of her life.
Characters: Solus  Vetra, Erkan Vel, Ementior Vera
Rating: T
Chapter: 1/?
Genre: A kind of dark humor? Maybe some angst?
Summary: Solus has colorful things to say about the Senate. Very colorful things.
Covertly filming a corner booth was difficult but Ementior Vera was crafty. This would be his big break. He could feel in resonating down to the bottom of his self-admittedly shallow soul. A friendly conversation between two random Jedi was nothing. It was like eavesdropping on senate janitorial workers. But, this duo held a Jedi he knew. She was not a household name like Skywalker nor even on par with Kenobi or Windu. Yet, he remembered her enough to recognize this gilded opportunity. When he was finished Vetra would outshine his new bank account. - Roll film. “Three pints of that piss tasting ale says you aren’t fine,” the Kiffar chastised before drawing up his wine glass for a sip. His tanned face wrinkled in displeasure at the taste. “Just lay everything out now. It’ll make it easier on me and your liver. As your friend I know it needs a break.” The recorder lingered on him long enough to get a few good angles for later identification. A strong profile with emphasis on the three black stripes running down his cheek. Luck granted him a full frontal view showing the tattoos were mirrored to the other side. The Unknown also had a slightly crooked nose and noticeably lacked a braid but had a lightsaber. At least a Jedi Knight, going off his apparent youth. A thick mane of black hair cascaded around his broad shoulders and well-muscled, bare biceps beneath his tunic. If it stuck with him a little longer future viewers would be okay. No one complained about quality eye candy. “Well, I say I’m fine,” Vetra snapped back. A silver switchblade rolled effortlessly between her fingers; blade extended. “My liver is doing well. It had the entirety of Sundari to recover.” Ementior shifted his sole focus to her where it would stay. Jedi were supposed to be blank more often than not. The masses had heard about their phobia of emotions and knew they wore humble robes. Yet, she leaned heavily in the opposite direction. Easily read annoyance was painted across her snow face. A common thug’s blade rolled hypnotically between her fingers while she drank ale in a seedy bar. One seedy enough to not frown at a patron openly displaying a weapon. Even the rich navy of her close cut tunic and black leatheris accents failed to scream Jedi, or even Baby Jedi. Only that braid gave her way. The man forced more wine down but looked on determined at his companion. “Then, at least tell me why you have this one,” he gestured to her knife with a nearly empty glass. “It’s not your usual fare. A gift then?” “Because you never know when you’ll have to gut your enemy and let the dire-cats eat ‘em alive.” No part of her voice raised before she smiled at the end. Something razor sharp with prominent fangs. Predatory really. “Not at all.” “Was that a bedtime story for a four year old?” came out in a complete deadpan. “Sure it-” Vetra cut him off, “Three and it doubled as a history lesson.” Something wistful wove across her face in place of the previous emotion. “It was part of a reminder really. That even a terrible threat, who thought himself above all, was nothing but mortal in the end. He died well.” A snort of laughter served as the Kiffar’s answer. For a second the holorecorder slipped out of focus as he straightened up. Ementior felt his balls attempt to retreat into his body at the exchange. The Kiffar was still a no name but she was a new layer dangerous. Beyond the Jedi training and ruckus attached to her martial skills lurked something more. A whole lot of something that had a hand in training her. Spying may end up being a terrible idea after all. No story was worth dying to get. The knife twirling stopped as a waitress passed. “Another ale, please?” she asked sounding courteous with a softer smile. “Just bring me the bottle of wine,” her companion said resigned to his fate. “I might as well finish it. Save some poor sap from having to buy it later.” He got a laugh from the waitress. Several moments of silent footage passed. Already he debated if it should be edited out or left. Vetra did paint a pretty picture sinking into her seat. One long leg kicked out drawing attention from wedge heeled boot trailing into something black and skin tight before disappearing beneath her tunic. The posture even caught a hint of lightsaber clipped to her belt. He would keep it as a reminder of exactly who she was. “We could use that kind of reminder right about now.” Her absentminded twirling of the blade restarted while her attention focused on the ale. “Dealing with the big shots that bad today?” A snort of laughter came from her. "I would've rather read my personal comms to Yoda.” It was her friend’s turn to laugh. "Even the steamy ones with your captain?" "Yes, even the steamy ones with the attached pictures.” A beat passed. “There are no steamy ones with my captain. Who is not my captain despite your insistence. Jabiim was a temporary assignment.” “But you kept in contact?” A smile spread across his face. “Sounds like something to me.” “Anything is something to you.” Things took a shift back to petty, boring gossip. While it was less of a danger to his personal well-being it did nothing for his career. She was sleeping around. The Kiffar looked like he knew a thing or two about sleeping around. It was something they shared with three-quarters of the Senate. But, that failed to him any real credit. What he need was something with more substance about a breech of the chain of command and broken chastity. “What actually happened?” More red wine was poured into his empty glass. It rose higher than a typical pour in anticipation. “The Senate are nothing but hut’uun.” There was a pause followed by a bitter peal of laughter. The word mention something to her. “They really are just a bunch of karking Hutts with more palpable looks when you stop and think about it. The same cowardice and greed runs throughout. Every damn one of ‘em is lying when they say they care more than their pockets. If they cared, they’d really do something. Three sips of wine passed. “Military spending?” “Among other things. The whole bunch is so withdrawn from this war they’re making us fight. Instead of trying to solve the underlying problems it stays on the surface. I’ve seen better self-reflection from Almec and I know that one was a lie.” Half of her ale was downed in one gulp. “Meanwhile, I’m on the front lines watching my troops die at ever turn. They keep telling me to make do with what I have. I’m Force Sensitive and resourceful but not fucking magic. At this rate, we’re gonna end up beating the droids into submission with our bare hands. While someone bitches about us needing more bacta.” This was a line of thought he prayed they would follow. A Jedi, of known name, railing against the Senate could get him something. From the looks of it she was only just winding up too. A deep sighed proceeded, “I don’t want to ask but I do. How out of touch are we talking?” The blade spun faster through her fingers into a silvered blur. “Overall, they don’t know their asses from their elbows. The more specific examples could not be cleansed by fire.” Her countenance went dark. “I overheard a conversation that boiled down to wanting to know why the Kaminoians charged so much for replacement parts. Since whatever they were producing was defective if it died so easily.” Tanned knuckles whitened around wine glass. Everything in his posture shifted into a defensive mode. “I’m sorry.” “Parts,” the rest of her ale was gone in a flash. The glass clattered onto the scarred table top. “Not soldiers, not troops, not even clones. Just parts. Pieces in a machine to be replaced.” A snarl crossed her face, “Meat droids as far as they’re concerned.” Ementior consciously had to stop himself from vibrating in excitement. It would never make into onto film but there was something in the air. A dark tension that clanged like credit pieces in his mind. Whatever rant he anticipated was nothing compared to what he had. Every side would have something to say. “Those are men. Living, breathing men who never got a damned choice to fight in this war.” A note of fury worked into her voice while long ears pinned back. “Even with our brevetted ranks we still got a choice. It was leave the only home you’ve ever known or fight but it was a choice. They did not.” More mauve flooded her face growing nearly red in unbridled anger. “The Grand Army of the Republic is fundamentally built on the backs of slaves and no one gives damn. But, everyone pro-Republic is fine with it because it’s not their people dying. But, I care because it’s mine.” The knife twirling stopped when it was stabbed into the table top. “They’re a slave army of Mandalorian blood and I care. Because we’ve never meant a damn thing to any of these people unless we’re their attack dogs. Order included.” Mandalorian. They were Mandalorian. She was Mandalorian! She called them a slave army with the venom behind every word to mean it. Seven hells she went after the Jedi Order too. This was not gold. No this was an untapped spice mine of career starting potential.
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alwaysanotherooc · 7 years
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uhh hi if you're still doing the angst thing can you do becca x mc??? if you ship them ? Idk (: thanks !💛
YES, I CAN, YOU SWEET SUMMER FLOWER. I love Becca so much, are you kidding me?????? YES. This is gonna be fun! As usual, find it under the cut!Send me a Choices couple and I’ll answer angsty questions about them!
Do they have a lot of arguments? Becca starts a lot of arguments in the beginning of their relationship, or at least she tries to. SHe’s not used to the whole ‘healthy and loving relationship’ thing but she’s really into it, but it’s still scary and new. And MC will just take a deep breath, remind herself that her girlfriend is working on it and doesn’t mean it, and then they move on. Other times, MC snaps right back at Becca and it ends up in a huge painful mess.
Who apologizes first, and in what way? They take turns, depending on who said the most hurtful things. When MC apologizes she brings Becca white peonies (her favorite flowers) and a couple shades of lipstick from Sephora. When Becca apologizes she sits MC down and tells her a secret about her past as a make-up present, because MC lives for hearing about Becca’s past and Becca’s not usually up to it.
Who has more insecurities? Becca, she knows that MC could get anybody she wanted, and she’s worried that MC will leave her. Meanwhile, sometimes MC is worried Becca will get bored of her and leave.
Who gets more riled up? Becca, especially when it comes to someone insulting MC or any their friends. (Because as vehemently as she’ll deny it, she loves those dorks too now and they’re her friends as well.)
How do they hide their pain when they’re upset? Becca hides her pain through forced snobbery and a practiced uncaring demeanor. MC hides her hurt by faking that she’s ok, she’s happy, she’s FINE, really, and won’t talk about it.
Who tries to make up first? Becca will almost immediately come running back to MC after storming out and starts apologizing, MC will take a little longer but not much.
Would they hate-fuck if they were mad at one another? Depends on how serious of an argument they’re having, but my gut feeling is no.
Do they hold grudges? Becca can hold grudges like you wouldn’t freaking believe. She’s the Queen of Petty.
Is there something big that could potentially tear them apart if it was revealed? If MC showed even slight interest in someone else, Becca would try to pack up and leave, not wanting to wait around until MC dumped her. But after the first few times MC explained she’s never leaving Becca for some rando in a bar and that she loves her, Becca’s more willing to trust her
If something already happened to tear them apart, what would make them come back together? Depends on who was in the wrong. If Becca was in the wrong, she’ll agree to talk as openly and honestly with MC as she wants about why she did what she did/said what she said/how she’s feeling. If MC was in the wrong, she agrees to give Becca some space for a bit if that’s what she needs, but reminds her that MC’s still in this, if Becca is, and that reassurance is enough for Becca.
What’s their favorite pastime when they’re upset? MC is a very tactile person, and when she’s upset that DOUBLES, which Becca pretends to hate but actually loves, as Becca is pretty touch starved. When Becca’s upset, the two of them will make one of their friends bring them Starbucks and have a Spa Day together, binge watching Project Runway while Becca scoffs at the outfits.
Who do they confide in when shit hits the fan (besides each other)? MC confides in all of their best friends, she never asks for the opinion of just one person, and Becca is just as tight with Madison as ever.
Is it hard for them to talk about their feelings openly with each other? For Becca, it’s the hardest thing she’s ever had to do, talking openly and honestly with someone. MC is much better at it and is pretty patient.
Who grieves more when the other is away? Becca. She’s consistently worried about MC leaving her, and then all her friends following suit because she’s afraid the only reason any of them put up with her is because of MC.
Who misses the other more, or really thinks about them more? I wanna say Becca, she gets very lonely, but also MC is very attached to Becca, so they miss each other the same: A Lot.
Do either of them have a special item (an article of clothing, a necklace, a book) that they use when they miss the other? Becca gave MC this platinum rose pendant for their one-year anniversary, and it’s become a comfort object for MC. MC gave Becca this charm bracelet after they started dating, and buys her a new charm when ever she feels like it. It helps Becca to feel like MC’s always with her.
Who cries more? MC, Becca hardly ever lets herself cry.
Do either of them have the other’s stuff lying around their house? Becca threw a fit the first time MC left something at her place, but when MC came to get it Becca tackled her onto the bed and MC just ended up leaving more stuff, so MC caught on and lets Becca make this whole big deal about what a horrible burden it is to have to deal with this extra stuff but knows that Becca actually loves it. Becca would leave stuff at MC’s place, but she’s worried about not having something if she needs it. Fashion Emergencies are alive and well and Becca needs all her tools to fight them off.
Do they tease each other while in a fight (whether it be with themselves or just general teasing)? They tried it, it doesn’t end well. Occasionally, Becca will roll her eyes and tease MC for being such a sap about something and MC will just smile back and say, “Yeah, cause my girlfriend is too” and then they end up kissing.
Do either of them have any vices? I thought about this and you know what? I think Becca has a shopping vice in the sense that she uses it to decompress.
What’s the thing they miss most about each other? Becca misses the way MC just acts so free all the time, like she doesn’t care what anyone says or thinks about her. MC misses the way that Becca can shut down anyone who’s being an asshole in .0001 seconds flat, and the way Becca holds her hand with a smile like she can’t quite believe her luck.
What’s their go-to breakup/angst song? For MC it’s ‘Colors’ by Halsey, for Becca it’s ‘Tore Up’ by Kehlani.
Who’s more jealous? Becca can get jealous really quick, but surprisingly it’s not about Chris or Zig or Kaitlyn or James, because Becca knows that all of them have put that behind them, Becca gets jealous of the people in bars who stare at MC, because she doesn’t know them and she’s worried about the fact that they could be better than her.
Who is the first to forgive? MC is so quick to forgive it’s not even funny.
What’s the one deal breaker for either of them (lack of communication, fear of commitment, etc)? Lack of communication 100% on Becca’s side, because she’s worried about MC breaking her trust in her.
Who would take longer to let go? Becca. By FAR. But MC still hasn’t forgotten the first time she and Becca met and Becca spilled her coffee on her. Becca’s so embarrassed by that now...
Which is more afraid of confrontation? MC by a lot. Becca’s never afraid to be confrontational, but MC is terrified of it.
Who’s the first to distance themselves (if either)? Becca. Poor sweet baby sometimes needs space to think and process what she’s feeling.
Who’s more patient? MC is very patient, she’s content to wait for eternity for Becca to be comfortable enough to do whatever it is she’s not comfortable with yet.
Who’s the first to blame themselves? MC, she has a habit of self-blaming.
Who’s more likely to do something out of spite? Becca, she is the Queen of Petty Spite and she will smite the ever loving HECK out of you.
Who would be the first to say they hate the other? Becca might, in the beginning of their relationship, mutter it under her breath after a fight, but after catching sight of how MC looks after she says it she never says it again, because she doesn’t mean it, it was just meant to hurt her, but she didn’t want to hurt her that much.
Who worries more? MC worries about everything, she never stops. Meanwhile, Becca, on the other hand, has actually said, “I could just...pay for the problem to go away.”
What scent reminds them of the other? MC smells like cherries, Becca smells like high-end luxury perfume.
Do they have any regrets (regarding the other, or just in general)? Becca regrets not going after MC sooner, MC regrets how long it took them to get together too.
Who’s quicker to walk away if a situation gets heated? Becca, she storms out a lot.
Who is more prone to anger? Becca is, but she’s working on it.
Who cries more in an argument? MC, she’ll cry when they’re arguing.
Does it take a lot for it to get to the point of yelling? Actually, yeah. Usually, if they’re fighting so badly that they’re yelling it’s because of a LOT of build up towards it.
Who sleeps on the couch after an argument? Technically they both do because MC wants to give Becca her space so she’ll go stay with friends, and Becca can’t sleep in their bed without MC anymore so she’ll sleep on the couch.
Who’s more likely to protect the other? Becca will cut you if you come near MC, and MC will NOT HESITATE if you threaten Becca. Yes, MC is kind of a scaredy cat, but that flies out the window when it comes to Becca.
If one of them gets injured, who worries more? Becca goes completely distraught when MC breaks her leg one year, can’t be consoled. “You’re dying!” “Becca, it’s not even that bad-” “Your bones are fragile because you’re poor! I can’t be a widow before I’m married!”
Who would be more afraid of the other’s death/harm? Becca is worried sick whenever she thinks about MC getting hurt or getting sick in any way, shape or form, because it’s not something you can buy your way out of. MC is confident that if she can make her worst enemy from Freshman year of college fall in love with her, they can get through anything.
Who ends up yelling first? Becca, sometimes she’ll snap and shout something at MC and then realize immediately what an overreaction it was and just sigh. MC thinks it’s a little funny.
Who would be more likely to save who? In a life or death situation, probably MC would be a hair faster at defending Becca.
Who stays up at night brooding? Becca. “It’s not brooding, I’m just busy!” “Bec, you’ve been staring at the wall for two hours. Come to bed, we’re ok.”
Who has more dreams/nightmares about the other? Becca used to not dream a whole lot, and then she started dating MC, and that changed. She has very pleasant dreams now. MC actually discovered her interest in Becca through a dream of an...X-Rated nature.
Who comforts who after a bad dream/event? MC is the Queen of Comforting people. (Seriously, somebody give this girl a crown, she’s the Ultimate Mom Friend)
Do they think about each other a lot? Short answer: Yes. Long answer: If you think that either one of these girls can STOP thinking about each other ever in their lives HO BOY YOU’RE WRONG-
If one of them were to come back after a long time, who would come to who? Becca would come back to MC, most likely after taking a very long break (week or two) to examine her feelings after an intense moment in the relationship. It’d be a happy reunion. XD
This was the BEST I love Becca, she’s amazing. Thank you so much!
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