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tickly-trashcan · 3 years

Text

Crush {Gin & Akutagawa}

A/N: Okay wow again this one ended up a lot longer than I expected but y’know what sometimes that’s what happens. I started writing this before prompts were open and ended up finishing it just in time. This is also for Akutagawa’s birthday!! It’s not birthday themed but that’s okay, I still love him and wanted to do something special for him! Also I mentioned a little bit ago that i’d start putting pictures in with my fics, so here we go with that lol. Okay, now that that’s out of the way, I hope you enjoy this one!

Summary: Gin has noticed something off about her brother for a little while now, and she intends to get to the bottom of it.

Word Count: 2.1k (under the cut)

Something was… off.

Gin couldn’t quite place what it was, but something strange was happening with Akutagawa. He would stare into space often at mealtimes, and during those staring sessions his cheeks would occasionally dust a very faint pink, something that Gin had only recently noticed. He was coming home later than usual, and he didn’t talk about work as often with Gin, one of the things they used to talk about openly.

Yes, something was definitely off.

And Gin was going to find out what it was.

Gin was making dinner when Akutagawa finally came home, coughing lightly into his hand as he stood in the doorway, toeing off his shoes.

“Welcome home, big brother,” Gin said, a soft smile on her face as she looked over at him, pausing her cooking for a moment.

Akutagawa grunted a quick “hello” in response and walked out of Gin’s sight. Gin leaned in the kitchen doorway slightly to peek at what he was doing, and saw that he was sitting at the dining room table, staring down at his phone. He stared at it for a moment before typing something, then tucking his phone away in his pocket. He noticed Gin staring, and furrowed his brows in confusion.

“Do you need anything?”

“If you want to help chop the rest of the vegetables that would be nice,” Gin said, gesturing back into the kitchen. Akutagawa nodded, getting up from his seat and walking into the kitchen with Gin, picking up a knife as he started to chop up some potatoes.

“Were you texting someone?” Gin asked sweetly, stirring the pot. Akutagawa cut down onto the cutting board rather hard before answering.

“I was sending a message to Chuuya about a mission tomorrow,” He said calmly after a short pause.

Gin hummed softly in response. She could tell he was lying. She grew up around her brother, she knew all of his habits, and she knew that whenever he lied he would pause and talk in a softer tone than usual, as if it made him nervous.

Gin held back a grin as she continued to stir the pot, turning around to see that Akutagawa had cut the rest of the vegetables she needed. She made another gesture for him to hand them to her, which he promptly did, Gin tossing them into the pot. She stirred it around a few more times before adding in some broth, Akutagawa standing next to her as he watched.

“Are we having curry tonight?” He asked.

Gin nodded, and Akutagawa let out a low hum before walking out of the kitchen.

“Let me know if you need help with anything else, Gin.”

She peeked out of the kitchen once more and saw him walk into his bedroom, most likely to read and just enjoy his own company until dinner. Gin sighed. She could ask him more about it at dinner, but she was determined to get the truth out no matter what.

She finished up the curry just as the rice was done cooking, and she promptly dished up servings for herself and her brother. She set the table and knocked on Akutagawa’s bedroom door, waiting for him to respond.

“Yes?”

“Dinner’s ready.”

Akutagawa came out of his door a few moments later, Gin already sitting in her seat while Akutagawa took the seat across from her. They ate in silence for a few moments before Gin decided to ask another question.

“What’s your mission with Chuuya tomorrow?”

Akutagawa paused for a moment, spoon halfway to his mouth as he processed the question for a moment.

“It’s a simple clear out of an enemy that’s been getting too close, that’s all,” He said softly, taking a bite of his curry. Gin nodded, a sly smile on her lips.

“It just so happens that I know Chuuya’s working with the Black Lizard tomorrow, Ryuunosuke,” Gin lied back, trying to psyche out her brother.

Akutagawa’s eyes narrowed in confusion and he looked up at Gin. She smiled back at him, and Akutagawa coughed lightly into his hand as he forced a poker face.

“I see. There must have been a miscommunication on my part then. I’ll have to ask Mori for my orders tomorrow.”

Gin’s smile only widened as she realized she had her brother in a corner. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat as Gin continued to smile innocently at him, eating her meal.

“You haven’t talked about work that much recently either, Ryuunosuke, is there a reason for that?”

Akutagawa shifted again. Why was Gin firing all of these questions at him?

“I don’t feel the need to talk about it, considering we do the same thing,” He explained quickly, trying to keep his voice level.

Gin nodded, placing her chin on her hand as her elbow rested on the table.

“Is work why you’ve been coming home later too? Or is there a different reason for that?”

Akutagawa set his spoon down and crossed his arms.

“Why are you interrogating me, Gin?”

Gin hummed, smiling sweetly. “I suppose it is an interrogation at this point… Keeping that in mind, I would like an answer to my question.”

Akutagawa clicked his tongue. “We both already know the rule: those in the mafia with loose tongues die first. I don’t have any reason to tell you about my personal affairs with… never mind.”

“With who?” Gin was finally getting somewhere. She could see Akutagawa’s cheeks tint pink again. Gin held back a chuckle. So that’s what it was…

She waited a moment until just before Akutagawa was about to speak when she spoke.

“Do you have a crush, Ryuunosuke?”

Akutagawa’s eyes widened and the color on his cheeks grew. Gin smiled. She had hit the jackpot.

“No! That’s preposterous-”

“So who is it?”

Akutagawa stammered, trying to find the words, but instead he stood up, picking up his dinner plate that he had finished long before the interrogation had started.

Gin chuckled softly and followed in suit, carrying her empty dish to the sink and placing hers in after Akutagawa.

“Is it Higuchi?” She asked, Akutagawa turning away from her and walking towards the living room, sitting on the couch and picking up a book.

“I’m ignoring you,” He stated simply, and Gin merely sat next to him, continuing to list the possible people that she knew of.

“Was it just a regular civilian? Oh, maybe Tachihara? You two have been getting closer lately~”

Akutagawa pulled the book closer to his face, hiding the growing color on his cheeks from Gin as she continued to press on, until she finally got sick of the silent treatment from her brother.

“Ryuunosuke.”

No response.

“Ryuunosuke,” she poked his side to try and get his attention, and he jolted at the touch. Gin blinked before a more devious smile than her previous ones formed on her face. Akutagawa glanced at Gin, noticing the look on her face, and set the book down.

“What, are you gonna suggest I fell in love with Kaji now? You’re just listing off people I know!”

“So you do have a crush on someone?”

Akutagawa froze. Gin scooted closer to Akutagawa, who scooted back until he was at the end of the couch with nowhere to go.

“I’m gonna get it out of you, you know this Ryuunosuke. I know exactly how, too,” She said, raising her hands. Akutagawa’s eyes bulged as he glared at Gin.

“Gin, no. No. I don’t have feelings for anyone, you don’t need to do this-”

Before Akutagawa could further protest, Gin launched herself at him, Akutagawa letting out a loud “no!” Before Gin’s hands descended on his sides, Akutagawa held back his laughter by biting his lip as he grabbed Gin’s wrists, her fingers softly dancing up his sides and waist.

“G-Gin, stohop… stop it right now,” Akutagawa said, his voice shaking as he held back his laughter as best he could, his face broken into a wide grin, desperate not to give in. Gin only smiled, digging her fingers in a tad harder as Akutagawa let out a tiny squeak.

“I’m not stopping until you tell me who it is, Ryuunosuke. You better start talking~” She teased, squeezing Akutagawa’s waist as he took a sharp intake of air. It was getting harder to hold back his laughter, he wasn’t sure how much longer he would hold up.

“Gin, hehe- I’m s-serious,” Akutagawa said, his laughter starting to break through. He snickered softly, squeezing his eyes shut as he put his hand over his mouth to better cover his laughter. Gin sighed. Looks like the gentle approach wasn’t going to work with him.

Gin raised her hands and dug into Akutagawa’s ribs. Akutagawa let out a surprised shriek. The persistent, hard sensations were different from Gin’s gentle ones from before, causing Akutagawa to immediately start laughing.

He uncovered his mouth to grab Gin’s wrists, trying to pry them off of him as he squirmed, Gin unrelenting. Gin laughed along with Akutagawa, drumming her fingers along his ribs as he threw his head back, cackling.

“I haven’t heard you laugh in so long! Maybe I should do this more often!” She said gleefully.

“N-No you shohohohouldn’t!”

It was true, she hadn’t heard her brother laugh very often, if anything she only ever heard him chuckle. When they were younger she would tickle him occasionally to help him cheer up, but as they grew older moments like that were scarce.

“GAha-Gin! Stohohop it!” Akutagawa shrieked, his cheeks turning a light shade of red as he continued to laugh, tugging at Gin’s wrists in an attempt to pull them off, but to no avail.

“You know exactly how to make it stop, Ryuunosuke, just tell me who it is.”

“Nohohohohobody!”

Gin clicked her tongue teasingly, squeezing Akutagawa’s hips as he jumped, letting out a shriek as he dissolved into more laughter. Gin dug her thumb into Akutagawa’s hip bone, Akutagawa squirming away as much as he could as giggles poured from his lips.

She scribbled her fingers over Akutagawa’s tummy, Akutagawa arching his back and gripping her wrists harder, one hand pushing at her shoulder in another attempt to get her off of him. Loud, deep laughter continued to pour from his mouth as he shook his head back and forth.

“I think you’re gonna break soon~” Gin teased, her slender fingers dextrous as they continued to spider around Akutagawa’s abdomen, Akutagawa cackling as he continued to squirm next to Gin, trying to pry her hands off.

“I’m nohohohot! Th-There’s nobody, I swehehehehear! Stop!” Akutagawa laughed, pleading as Gin returned to his ribs.

She moved from his ribs under his arms, Akutagawa immediately retracting his hands to clamp his arms down at his sides on reflex, letting out a screech of ticklish agony as Gin grinned.

“Looks like I found a good spot.”

“Gin! NohohoHOHOHO!!”

Akutagawa threw his head back, his cackles filling the room as he laughed frantically, shaking his head from side to side as he pressed his arms down harder in an attempt to make the ticklish sensations halt, but to no avail.

“Alright! Alrihihihihight, stoHOHOHOP!”

Gin smiled, pulling her hands back as Akutagawa caught his breath, clutching his chest as he wheezed. She waited patiently for him to collect himself, easily deflecting the glare he sent her when he finally recovered. He looked away from Gin, his cheeks pink as he crossed his arms.

Gin raised her hands again, threatening him to talk, making Akutagawa let out a small squeak. He glared daggers at her, and looked away again, letting out a small huff.

“I suppose you were correct in your assumptions…” He said softly, the color on his cheeks growing as Gin lowered her hands, settling them in her lap as she listened intently.

“Who is it then?”

Akutagawa opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He closed it again and slouched into the couch, huffing again. Gin frowned, poking Akutagawa’s side again, making him jump.

“Okay! It’s… Jinko…”

Gin smiled widely. She had finally gotten it out of him, and what an unexpected person as well. This was truly interesting…

“How did that happen?” Gin asked with genuine interest.

“...Joint missions.”

Gin smiled, ruffling Akutagawa’s hair, who quickly swatted her hand away. Gin chuckled, pulling her hand back as she stood up from the couch.

“If you need any help with courting him let me know~”

“I’m not going to court him!” Akutagawa exclaimed, turning around to face Gin as the color on his cheeks grew once again. Gin laughed, waving a hand to Akutagawa, who stood up from the couch and walked back into his room, shutting the door behind him. Gin smiled to herself as she started on the dishes. Maybe this would work out for him…

#bungou stray dogs #gin #akutagawa #tickle fic

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choerrypuffs · 4 years

Text

enchanted.

pairing: prince!jungwoo x witch!reader

genre: fluff, angst

word count: 9.4k

synopsis: the prince has always been a little unconventional, but no one ever expected him to fall in love with a witch.

author’s note: no one asked for this but it came to me in a fever dream and you can really tell bc my writing abilities match that (p.s. i am not knowledgeable on actual witches and witchcraft, and this is not meant to offend anyone! i just winged it and created my own version of a witch for this fic)

It’s way too early for this kind of tomfoolery.

You have your head buried under your pillow, trying to block out the extremely loud and quite irritating rapping on your door. Whoever’s knocking is using so much force that your humble little cottage is trembling with every strike. You groan, squeezing your eyes shut and praying that they’ll go away soon. Or at least come back at a more decent time.

It’s so early that the sun has barely peeked over the horizon, and the birds haven’t even begun chirping yet. You were up all night making potions to sell to the apothecary, so you’ve only gotten about three hours of sleep.

After letting them knock for a couple minutes longer, you realize that they’re not going to leave any time soon. You feel your temper boil over as you throw the covers off your body. Draping your shawl over your shoulders, you tie your unruly hair back and smooth out your nightgown before stomping over to the door and flinging it open.

“What do you want?” you snap loudly, crossing your arms across your chest.

The man in front of you blinks in surprise, fist still raised to knock again. He’s dashingly handsome, even in his state of shock. His hair looks like spun gold, managing to reflect beautifully even with the lack of sunlight. He has a snow white complexion with full, cherry-red lips.

You can tell by his attire that he’s royalty, or rather, a prince. The Prince. He’s wearing a black blazer embellished with golden brass buttons and detailed embroidery. There are two epaulettes on his shoulders, signifying his high status. He’s wearing a white cloak over it all, and you know from a simple glance that it’s made out of the finest linens in the kingdom.

“Are you the Witch of the Forest?” he finally asks, smiling jovially.

“You need not ask. Unless you’re aware of someone else who lives in the forest,” you say, raising an eyebrow.

He isn’t fazed by your sarcastic remark. “My apologies, my lady. I just wanted to make sure.”

“You should know best of all, Your Highness. Your father was the one who banished me here,” you smirk, tilting your head.

One of the guards standing behind him grips the hilt of his sword. “Why, you insolent—”

“Stand down,” The Prince orders, holding out an arm. The guard does as he’s told, albeit reluctantly.

“So, what brings you here at this godforsaken hour, Your Highness?” you ask, unbothered.

“Please, call me Jungwoo.”

“I’d rather not have my tongue cut off by your mutts,” you snort, nodding toward the guards.

“I insist,” Jungwoo says, shaking his head. “And what is your name?”

“You may call me Y/N,” you begin, eyeing the guards and grinning when you see the pure rage in their eyes. “Jungwoo.”

He’s oblivious to the contention, instead beaming happily. You can’t help but smile at his naiveté. Crossing your arms, you lean against the doorframe. “What can I help you with, Jungwoo?”

His expression turns solemn, and he reaches down to grip your hands between his. “Please help me, Y/N. My mother, the Queen, is severely ill.”

You’re taken aback by his casual touch. You’re so used to people treating you like you’re evil incarnate. Doing your best to control your expression, you clear your throat and try to continue looking elusive.

“You have my condolences, but I don’t see what that has to do with me,” you say, shrugging.

“How dare you!” The annoying guard pipes up again. “She is your queen!”

“No, she is your queen. I am not a subject of your kingdom,” you correct. “Therefore, I have no obligation to help you.”

Jungwoo releases your hands and steps back before lowering himself to his knees in front of you. Both you and the guards stare in stunned silence.

“Please. I am begging you,” he whispers with his head bowed, voice cracking. “I understand that you hate my father. I would too. But please, my mother is innocent in all of this.”

“Your Highness! Please get up immediately!” The guards say in a frenzy, all talking over each other.

He ignores the chaos and continues to stare determinedly at you. There’s something about his unrelenting gaze that makes you feel vulnerable. When was the last time someone looked you directly in the eyes like this? It scares you because it’s been so long, and you feel like he can see right through you.

You break eye contact first, turning away sharply. You grab him by the shoulders and pull him to his feet. Jungwoo also looks surprised when you touch him, but he doesn’t seem repulsed like you expect him to be. In fact, he looks a little crestfallen when your hands fall back to your sides.

“Have some dignity,” you chide, “how can a prince kneel before a witch?”

“I am willing to go to any length to save my mother,” he says without hesitation.

You sigh. After all these years and everything you’ve been through, you still can’t seem to harden your heart to situations like these. You can already hear your fellow witches taunting you in your head. They would never let you hear the end of it if they found out you were going to save the life of the wife of the man who exiled you.

Jungwoo picks up on your hesitancy, grasping your hand again. “Please.”

The desperation and panic in his voice shatters the remainder of fight you have left in you.

“Alright,” you finally relent, “I will help you.”

Now it’s his turn to be shocked. “R-Really?”

“You’re lucky I have a soft spot for handsome men,” you say, patting his cheek. “Stop looking so surprised. Aren’t you the one who be—”

You can barely contain your surprised yelp when Jungwoo wraps his arms around your waist and twirls you around in a hug.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” he exclaims as he sets you back down.

You’re so frazzled that all you can do is nod. Your heart feels like it’s going to beat out of your chest. You thought you were going to fluster him by calling him handsome and touching his face, but he somehow managed to fluster you instead.

“We’ll give you some time to get changed and prepare what you need,” Jungwoo continues, completely unaware. “My carriage is right over there, so you will know where to go when you’re done.”

You stupidly nod again, stiffly shutting your door. Your face feels like it’ll set on fire at any moment. Just how deprived of touch are you for your body to react like this over a simple hug?

Pull yourself together, you tell yourself, don’t forget who he is.

The carriage ride is horrendously suffocating. The Annoying Guard, as you’ve lovingly dubbed him, insists on riding with the two of you to ensure Jungwoo’s safety—in case you decide to hex him or something. The guard keeps his hand on the hilt of his sword the entire time, glaring daggers at you. Every time you even slightly shift, he jumps.

You’re starting to think that these palace guards are severely overestimating your powers—actually, they aren’t. They’re severely overestimating your ability to care enough to even go through the trouble of hexing Jungwoo.

Jungwoo keeps shooting you apologetic glances, attempting in vain to try and make conversation. The long stretches of silence are deafening, and all you can do is stare out of the window. Your mind keeps wandering to things you don’t want to think about, so you begin to map out all the chores you have to do when you return to your cottage.

You can feel Jungwoo’s stare on you the entire time. He clearly wants to talk to you, but he can’t because of the hawk-like watch of the Annoying Guard. You suppose you’re grateful for that. You’re not really sure if you want to converse with Jungwoo. He’s far too unpredictable for your comfort. You can’t read him like the others, and that intimidates you. He isn’t afraid of you, and it makes you feel...exposed.

Fortunately, you can see the palace from the window, which means this hell of a ride is finally over.

Unfortunately, when you step out of the carriage, the memories that you’ve spent your entire life trying to bury flood through your mind.

The last time you were at the palace was when the decree of your banishment was announced. You remember the palace guards dragging you and your mother out as she pleaded for mercy. She had asked the king to spare you. Of course, he merely scoffed at her and turned away without a second glance. To him, you two were just some of the many witches that he would go on to banish or simply just execute. He was lucky that the witches were a peaceful kind.

You watched as your mother pretended like everything was alright, like she was alright, as the two of you lived in that tiny cottage she managed to build with what little powers she had left. In return, you pretended that you didn’t hear her weep every night. Eventually, she simply just wilted away—a shell of the beautiful flower she once was.

“Oh, my poor child,” she had said with her final breath.

You dig your nails into your palm, hoping the pain will pull you out of the spiral you’re starting to go down. In an attempt to distract yourself, you try to focus on what’s in front of you. However, it’s not something you want to see.

The palace is, without a doubt, the most beautiful piece of architecture you’ve ever seen. Made out of pure ivory marble and adorned with ornate detailing that’s crafted from the most opulent of gold, it’s stunning in every way.

But it makes you sick to your stomach.

This was a mistake. You can’t even look at the palace. What makes you think that you can go in there and face the King? You’re still a weak little girl, and you always will be. Mother would be so ashamed of what a coward you’ve become.

Your inner voice continues to berate you, and you feel like you’ll vomit at any moment.

“Hey,” Jungwoo says gently. His naturally soft-spoken voice can’t be any louder than a whisper, yet it’s powerful enough to pierce through the myriad of unwanted thoughts going through your head.

He pries your hand open, running his thumb across the red, crescent-shaped indents in your palm. You don’t realize how hard you’ve been pressing your nails into your skin until you feel the stinging. Jungwoo’s hand is warm, and it manages to quell your uneasiness significantly.

“You’re alright,” he tells you, lacing his fingers through yours.

It unnerves you how easily he calms you down. It terrifies you to your very core how much power he seemingly has over your emotions. Jungwoo is an enigma, and you must stay far, far away. Everything about him screams trouble.

Pulling your hand away, you grip your skirt instead and take a small step back. He looks, dare you say, hurt by the way you recoil. Nonetheless, he doesn’t acknowledge it and simply clears his throat.

“My father is waiting for us,” Jungwoo says warily.

You tense, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by him.

“He isn’t thrilled about your presence, but I swear on my life that he will not harm you,” Jungwoo promises. “I will protect you, no matter what.”

“No,” you interject, “there’s no need. Your father will not lay a finger on me. He has always feared my mother and I, which is why he banished us.”

“You’re trembling, Y/N,” he whispers.

“It doesn’t matter,” you snap, “I have a duty to fulfill, and so I will. My personal feelings will be put aside, just as your father should be doing as well.”

You hate how he looks at you like he understands. Like he knows exactly what you’re feeling. Like he can see into the deepest, most hidden parts of you.

“Very well,” he sighs.

Jungwoo holds out his arm for you to hold. Inhaling deeply, you square your shoulders and straighten your back before taking it. You wore the fanciest dress you owned and made sure your hair was styled to the best of your ability for today. You want to show the King that you are doing just fine, that you still stand strong despite everything he did to you.

The doors to the throne room open, and the two of you are welcomed with a trumpet call that announces the arrival of the Prince. The King is waiting for you, sitting tall on his throne. Despite his commendable posture, his body is weak and feeble. He’s been worn down by age, and his robes hang off of him like they would a skeleton.

“Your Majesty,” Jungwoo greets, bowing.

You don’t follow suit, crossing your arms instead. The King doesn’t even glance at his son, focusing his beady stare at you. You glare back defiantly.

“You’ve gotten old,” is the first thing that comes out of your mouth.

“It seems even vermin like you can survive after all this time,” the King responds gruffly.

“I could say the same for you,” you shoot back.

“You will heal my wife,” he orders, ignoring your insult. “Or else I will make sure you join your mother in Hell.”

The mention of your mother flares up your temper immediately. Clenching your fists, you begin to consider hexing him (maybe Jungwoo’s guards were onto something). You have never really used your powers out of malice, but you’re starting to think it may not be such a bad idea.

“Father,” Jungwoo warns.

“Your words are merely making me want to do the exact opposite, Your Majesty. You should thank every star in the sky that I have already given your son my word,” you say calmly, even though you’re anything but.

“Foolish boy,” the King spits. He says it with so much anger and hatred in his voice that it’s hard to tell that he’s speaking to his own son. “Why do you insist on defying me? Now, you’ve gone and made a deal with a witch.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” you sigh, “there was no deal.”

“You expect me to believe your lies? You could have easily tricked him into signing away his soul,” the King accuses.

You can’t help but laugh at his absurd claims, shaking your head. “Enough of this. We are simply wasting time.”

You turn to Jungwoo so you can tell him to lead you to his mother, but you’re surprised by the look on his face. His expression is stormy—a mix of anger, guilt, and shame. He’s biting down on his lip so hard that you’re sure that he will draw blood. His fists are tightly balled up by his sides as he stares down at his feet.

It’s clear how much Jungwoo is despises his father, but it’s also obvious how terrified he is of his own bloodline. The same blood that courses through the King also runs through Jungwoo’s veins.

Without thinking, you reach forward and slip your hand into his. He looks up at you with wide eyes, but he no longer seems as upset as he did before. You smile at him, giving his hand a small, comforting squeeze.

“Come on,” you say quietly, “let’s go see your mother.”

Jungwoo nods and grips your hand tightly before the two of you leave the throne room, not sparing the King another glance. You can feel his beady stare follow you as you exit, but you pay him no mind. Jungwoo continues to hold your hand as he leads you down the palace halls, and for some strange reason, you don’t feel the need to pull away.

When you arrive at the Queen’s chamber, only then does Jungwoo let go of your hand. He’s by his mother’s side in an instant, taking a knee by her bedside. You trail behind him, gingerly taking a step closer.

The Queen is a beautiful woman, even when she’s asleep. Her arms are folded across her stomach, and her hair is spilled across her silk pillow. She looks like she just came out of a storybook. However, her beauty is marred by the gray pallor of her skin. Beads of sweat dot her hairline, and her face is fixed in a grimace.

You frown. The grayness of her skin is not natural for a human, and you can sense a strange, familiar, energy flowing from within her.

“It seems your mother has been afflicted by a witch,” you say, examining her state carefully.

“What? How is that possible?” Jungwoo whirls around to face you.

“Either someone in her entourage is a witch or they are simply practicing witchcraft,” you explain, placing the back of your hand on the Queen’s forehead. Her skin is cool to the touch, despite sweating, which concerns you ever further.

Jungwoo still looks like he doesn’t really understand, but he doesn’t linger on the topic. “Will she be alright?”

“Yes,” you reassure him, “it’s a simple spell. I just need to make an antidote.”

“What do you need? I’ll have the maids gather them immediately,” he says, hurriedly standing to his feet.

“That will not be necessary. All the ingredients I need are at my cottage,” you say, already halfway out of the Queen’s chambers, “However, I will ask that you lend me a horse so I can go back and fetch them quickly.”

“I’ll go with you,” he offers, following behind you.

“Afraid that I’ll run off, Your Highness?” you ask, stopping in the middle of the hall and raising an eyebrow. He skids to a halt when you turn to look at him, nearly running into you.

“Jungwoo,” he corrects, “and no. I’m afraid you might run into trouble along the way.”

“You have my gratitude for your concern. However, I am certain that I will be able to handle it,” you respond curtly.

Jungwoo sighs, looking down and smiling to himself. You watch him deadpan before glancing back up at you. “Can’t you leave me just a shred of my dignity?”

“Pardon?”

He takes a step closer to you, leaning his head down so he can meet your eyes. You suck in a breath through your nose sharply, only able to match his gaze for a second before having to avert your eyes. His stare is stronger than any magic or spell, and you are no match for it.

“How many times are you going to make me beg?” Jungwoo asks softly, tilting his head.

“I—I don’t understand,” you stammer, focusing your gaze on the tip of his nose.

“I am quite aware you can handle it. I want to go with you because I would like to spend time with you,” he says, the corners of his mouth quirking up.

“O-Oh,” you say, dumbfounded.

From the short amount of time you’ve known him, Jungwoo has always been extremely forward in everything he approaches. But, surely, this is too forward.

“Are you doing this on purpose?” he asks, smirking.

“Doing what?”

“Acting oblivious so I will embarrass myself.”

“No, I—”

“I am only joking, Y/N,” Jungwoo says, laughing.

You blink, staring at him in a daze, before you finally realize that he’s just been teasing you this entire time. Huffing loudly, you whirl around on your heel and begin walking again. Jungwoo easily keeps up with you because of his long strides, no matter how much you quicken your pace.

“Don’t be angry,” he tells you, barely able to hide his grin.

“I have been meaning to say this, but you are much cleverer than you make yourself out to be,” you say in an accusatory tone, glaring at him. “And judging by your behavior now, it seems to be intentional.”

“Is that a bad thing, my lady?”

“Of course it is. It means you’re dangerous,” you snap.

“Then, that would mean you would have to pay more attention to me,” Jungwoo replies smoothly.

You give him a look of disbelief, wondering where the endearing man who had knocked on your door this morning went.

“Come. I’ll show you to the stables,” he says cheerfully.

“I don’t recall saying that I wanted you to go with me,” you remind him.

“Hmm?” he hums, pretending not to hear you.

Shaking your head, you can’t help but laugh a little yourself. It’s difficult not to get swept up in the phenomenon that is Prince Jungwoo. If you were smart, you would put an end to whatever was forming between the two of you. He is simply intrigued by you and wants to joke around, nothing more. Even if it is something romantic, the two of you could never be together. It’s better to draw a line before personal feelings become involved, especially on your end.

It would be so easy to let yourself fall in love with Jungwoo. So easy to let him tear down the walls surrounding your heart. So easy to let yourself need his presence, to crave his touch. So easy to let yourself be happy, even if it’s brief.

But it would be so easy for Jungwoo to destroy you, to trample all over you—and you’re not sure if you could withstand it.

For now, you try not to think about it.

“Have you ridden a horse before?”

You shake your head. “I don’t travel distances in which I will need a horse.”

“And you were planning on going alone, despite having no experience on horseback?” Jungwoo asks, raising an eyebrow.

“How difficult can it be?” you shrug.

He laughs; a bright, clear laugh that sounds like a bell. You’re so mesmerized by it that you almost don’t notice him step closer and place his hands on your waist. You look at him with bewilderment, and he simply smiles at you.

“Excuse me for a moment,” Jungwoo chirps. Without warning, he lifts you up and sets you onto the saddle of his horse as if you’re some sort of child. His hands linger on your waist just for a moment before he pulls them back.

You let out an embarrassing squeak, automatically gripping his shoulders for support. Once you stabilize yourself, you reflexively hit him in the chest before realizing that you just punched the Prince. Luckily, he doesn’t seem that hurt or angry. In fact, it’s the exact opposite.

Jungwoo is grinning so hard that the corners of his eyes have crinkled. He’s looks at you as if you’re the warm breeze during spring, sunshine on a beautiful day, a flower in full bloom—like you’re something wonderful.

“Do not ever do that again,” you warn. You mean to sound authoritative, but your voice teeters between octaves and it comes out as more of a question than a command. You feel like your heart is doing somersaults.

Jungwoo just smiles again and climbs up, situating himself behind you. His arms encase you as he reaches around to grip the reins of the horse. Your back is pressed up against him, and you’re glad you’re turned away from him so he can’t see the bright flush on your cheeks.

“Must we ride together?” you grumble.

“While I admire your confidence, I do not think it would be safe for you to ride on your own,” he explains. He flicks the reins, and the horse begins to trot at an extremely brisk pace.

“You are underestimating me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, my lady.”

“Now you’re being patronizing.”

Jungwoo laughs, and you feel it rustle your hair. Is he really that close to you? What if your hair smells bad? You had washed it with your favorite lavender soap yesterday, but what if—

“I apologize, Y/N. That was not my intention. Once my mother recovers, you are more than welcome to return to the palace, so you can ride a horse by yourself under much safer parameters,” he suggests.

You pause. That sounds like an invitation, and you know that can’t be right. Surely, Jungwoo is not crazy enough to ask you to come back. Right?

You have a sinking feeling that he is genuinely is that crazy, but you won’t allow yourself to even entertain the idea.

Unable to think of a response, you simply keep your mouth shut. The two of you ride in silence for a long stretch of time, but it’s not as awkward as you expect it to be. There’s something about being with Jungwoo that feels natural, comfortable.

“So,” you finally say, “how are you going to find the person who hurt your mother?”

Jungwoo’s face darkens and his expression turns solemn. You suddenly feel guilty. “Truthfully, I haven’t even thought about that yet. I want to make sure that my mother is going to be alright before I worry about anything else.”

“Replace everyone that is close to her, unless you know they are truly trustworthy,” you advise. “Whoever it is has managed to hide their tracks all this time, so you cannot risk it.”

He nods. “Thank you again for helping me once again. I know it was difficult because of my father—”

A loud clap of thunder makes you and Jungwoo jolt, and it’s like a dam in the sky has been opened. Instead of its normal blue, the sky has become a dark, ominous gray in a matter of seconds. The wind howls and the rain comes down with the force of an angry god. Within seconds, the two of you are soaked to the bone. The raindrops feel like you’re being pelted by small, freezing shards of glass.

Jungwoo shifts behind you before you feel the thick material of his cloak drape around your shoulders. He pulls the hood over your head and shields you from the rain with his body.

“Take your cloak back,” you holler over the wind, twisting your body so you can see him. “you’ll get sick!”

You don’t realize how close his face is to your own until he’s right there. Mere inches separate the two of you. You can see the raindrops in his eyelashes and the beads of water on his lips. How could someone look this beautiful in the middle of a thunderstorm?

He smiles softly at you, tugging the hood over your eyes before turning you back around so you can face forward. “I’ll be fine, Y/N.”

Jungwoo only slightly raises his voice, yet his words cut through the chaos. His calm demeanor and the way he’s cradling you against him makes you feel warm and safe. Like you have always belonged in his arms.

“We’re here,” he announces after a few minutes, breathing a sigh of relief. You see your cottage just up a little bit further. “Luckily, we were already close.”

After you arrive, he swings his leg over the horse and climbs down with grace. He holds his arms out to help you, and for once, you let him without any resistance. After finding shelter for his horse, the two of you dash into your cottage. Once you’re inside, you immediately begin to toss wood into your fireplace. With a snap of your fingers, you get a fire started instantly.

You both stand there in silence for a moment, watching the flames crackle as you shiver. However, you’re quickly snapped out of your haze when Jungwoo sneezes. You grab the quilt from your bed and swaddle him in it.

“Sit in front of the fire until you’re warmed up,” you order before going to your bathroom to retrieve some towels.

When you come back, you take a seat beside Jungwoo. Your soaked, ten-pounds-heavier dress, makes a gross squelch as you do. Cringing at the sound, you rise to your knees and begin to dry his hair.

“Don’t worry about me,” he protests, “dry yourself off first.”

“If something happens to you, your father will lop my head off,” you reply. “So, I will most certainly be worrying—”

One his hands reaches up to gently grasp your wrist, and all of your words die inside your throat. His fingertips are cold, yet your entire body feels so hot. He cranes his neck so that he can look up at you. You can see the reflection of the fire in his eyes, literally drawing you in like a moth to a flame.

“Really, Y/N. I’m alright,” he whispers, gaze transfixed on your lips.

You swallow. “I—”

Jungwoo slightly tugs you forward, tilting his head up even further and parting his lips as if he’s going to kiss you. You let out a small gasp, squeezing your eyes shut.

But nothing happens.

You crack open one eye. He releases your wrist and turns away, clearing his throat. His ears are red, and you can see that his cheeks are flushed too. You’re surprised, having never seen him lose his composure like this before.

“Here,” Jungwoo says hoarsely, removing the quilt from around him and handing it to you. “I am plenty warm.”

He takes the towel and begins drying his hair on his own. You stare dumbfoundedly at him with the quilt in your hand. You are certain that he was going to kiss you, so why didn’t he? The confident and headstrong Jungwoo losing his nerve? Impossible.

What’s even worse is that you closed your eyes. You expected it. You wanted it.

The two of you fall quiet, both staring at the fire once again. You can’t tell if the heat on your face is coming from the fire or from within yourself.

“So, you’ve spent almost your entire life in this cottage?” Jungwoo finally asks, turning to look at you.

“Yes,” you simply say as you take another towel and begin drying yourself off. You don’t meet his eye. Frankly speaking, you’re not sure if you can look at him right now without feeling like your heart will burst.

“Do you ever leave? Say, travel for the holidays?”

You laugh. “And where would I go?”

He doesn’t respond.

“I sometimes go to the neighboring town to buy supplies,” you continue. “Though I have to hide my face so the villagers don’t know who I am. Why do you ask?”

“You mentioned before that you don’t go distances in which you’ll need a horse, and that led me to believe that you must not stray far from your cottage,” he answers.

Jungwoo has the same expression on his face that he had when the two of you were in the throne room with the King. There’s a deep crease between his brows, and he’s biting his quivering lip. He looks down at his hands, the towel on his head slipping off and landing on the floor with a pitiful thump. His broad shoulders are drooped, which makes him look smaller.

“Why do you seem so forlorn, Jungwoo?” you ask, carding a hand through his wet hair so you can see him more clearly.

He shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Everything,” he says, voice cracking. “My father was the one who drove your mother to death and ruined your life. You’ve been trapped here for the past decade, and it’s all because of us.”

“Jungwoo—”

“I swear to you that your banishment will be lifted,” he promises, placing his hand over your hand that is still in his hair. “I will ascend the throne in a month, and I won’t let you rot away in this cottage. You should be able to see the world. To be free. I—I will not be like my father.”

His words sound more like he’s trying to convince himself rather than you, and you finally understand.

“Going against your father, seeking my help, bringing me to the palace—all of it. Was it because you wanted to differentiate yourself from the King? To prove to yourself that you aren’t following in your father’s footsteps?” you ask quietly.

Jungwoo looks at you with wide eyes. You can see tears glistening in them, and you know you’re right. Sighing, your other hand comes up to rest on his cheek. You lean in, unabashedly staring him in the eyes for the first time since you’ve met him.

“You are not your father. I, of all people, should know best. There is no need to take such drastic measures to convince yourself of it. Just be yourself, Jungwoo. You will be a kind and benevolent king,” you assure him.

“How are you so sure?” he whispers. His voice trembles. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know that you’re selfless and compassionate, even to someone like me,” you answer immediately. “You chose to throw away personal bias and even your own dignity to beg for my help. You are willing to do whatever it takes to help the people you care about. You have more kindness in the tip of your pinky finger than your father has had in his entire lifetime. Your subjects will revere you when you become king.”

Jungwoo is quiet, but you can tell that you’ve hit a chord with him. There’s no longer fear and pain in his expression, but rather, hope. He is still firmly holding your hand to his hair, as if it’s his lifeline. You gently slip your hand out of his grip so you can cup his face with both your hands, lightly pinching his cheeks.

“However, refrain from knocking on witches’ doors willy-nilly from now on. Not many witches are as generous and willing to help like I am. Like your father said, you could very well be tricked into signing your soul away with some,” you warn.

“Signing my soul away to you doesn’t seem so terrible,” Jungwoo muses.

“You must be feeling better if you’re able to make your ridiculous jokes,” you sigh, beginning to pull your hands away.

He catches one of your hands, placing it on his chest and over his heart. You can feel its steady rhythm, versus your own erratic one. You wonder if he’s aware of how effortlessly he’s able to fluster you.

“I’m glad it was you who answered the door, Y/N,” Jungwoo says sincerely. “Truly.”

There he goes again—smiling at you sweetly, as if honey is dripping from his eyes. He gazes at you like you’re his dream, the only thing he wants. It’s almost as if he’s fallen in love with you.

And then the reality of it all crashes down on you.

You yank your hand away from him, scrambling up to your feet. Jungwoo looks up at you with a mix of surprise and concern on his face.

“You’re smitten with me!” you exclaim, pointing an accusatory finger at him. You may have lived most of your life in isolation, but even you can see it now.

“Are you only just now noticing that? I thought I was being quite obvious.” He raises an eyebrow, standing up as well.

“Stop being smitten with me this instant!” you order vehemently.

“If it were only that simple. Besides, I don’t want to,” he replies breezily.

“No, no, no. This cannot happen,” you mutter, beginning to pace.

“Why not?” he asks as he watches you go back and forth.

“We can’t,” you insist.

“Says who?” he shoots back.

“Everyone! Can’t you see? You are the soon-to-be-King, and I am a witch. The witch your father banished. Think about the debacle that would take place if we became lov—er, involved with each other. Your reputation will be ruined,” you explain, frustrated that he doesn’t understand.

“I don’t care what anyone else thinks, except for you.” Jungwoo states.

“Don’t you wish to have any respect from your subjects and allies?” you hiss.

“None of that matters. What do you feel, Y/N?”

“It—it doesn’t matter what I feel,” you say, turning away. “We can never be together anyway.”

He stares at you, long and hard. “You’re afraid.”

“No, I’m realistic.”

“You’re using the fact that you’re a witch as a shield. You don’t allow yourself to feel anything simply because others see you as lesser, and you believe them. You’ve become comfortable like this, blockading off any sort of emotion and using the fear that others have of you as a buffer so you won’t get hurt. Your heart is trapped, just like you are inside this cottage. You’re afraid that if you leave, you might genuinely feel something,” Jungwoo continues, “—No, you’re afraid because you’re already starting to.”

He’s right, of course. Somehow, he’s always right when it comes to you. It’s so easy for him to unravel the feelings you’ve been suppressing. From the moment he laid eyes on you, Jungwoo has always been looking at you. Not the Witch of the Forest, not the fearsome creature that his father banished, not a tool that solely exists to achieve what he needs, but you. He’s found the real you, no matter how hard you try to hide.

But it doesn’t mean you won’t try.

“You talk as if you know everything about me,” you snap, “In reality, we’re nothing but strangers. The heart is a fickle thing, Jungwoo. You may think you’re in love with me today, but what about three days from now? A month? A year? You will be able throw me away without a second thought, but what will be left of me? I don’t have the luxury to act impulsively on my feelings like you. I only have myself, and I can’t afford to be hurt.”

“Do you truly think so lowly of me, Y/N? I would never hurt you,” he promises.

“You cannot predict the future,” you say quietly.

“Exactly! Are you going to live based off sheer possibilities alone?”

You don’t respond.

“What will you do then? Force yourself to never feel anything for anyone and stay in this cottage for the rest of your life?” Jungwoo asks.

“And what if I do?” you retort.

“You may have magic, but no enchantment can overpower your heart,” he says, shaking his head. “It is indeed be fickle at times, but you’ll be surprised to see how resolute and painful it can be.”

“It doesn’t matter,” you say again.

Jungwoo takes a minuscule step closer, gently putting his hands on your arms. He touches you as if you’re made of glass, a pained expression his face. “It does matter. Why do you keep dismissing your feelings like this? Why must you insist on hurting yourself?”

“Because it hurts one hundred times less if I do it, rather than someone else,” you whisper.

A tear falls from your left eye, and Jungwoo’s thumb swipes it away. His hands dwarf your face as they come up to cradle it. He holds your face like your eyes are made up of diamonds and your lips rubies. Pulling you close, his arms envelop your shoulders and your face is buried in his chest. Both of your clothes are still wet, yet it feels like you’ve been embraced by a ray of sunshine.

Your hands remain by your side as Jungwoo hugs you tightly. You’re to afraid to move, fearing that you’ll shatter the moment. You squeeze your eyes shut and try to remember this moment in perfect detail. You tell yourself that this, too, is fleeting.

“You are strong, Y/N. Stronger than any person I’ve ever known,” he mutters against the crown of your head, “but it’s okay now. You are no longer alone. Let yourself cry, get angry, be happy. There’s no need to bottle it up any longer.”

You feel yourself let out a sob, a sob that racks through your entire body. Trembling violently, your hands slowly reach up to place themselves on his back, curling your fists tightly into the fabric of his shirt. Hot tears flow freely from your eyes as you press your face farther into his chest.

You hate yourself for succumbing to your emotions, and you hate yourself even more for doing it in front of Jungwoo. However, it also makes you feel liberated. Jungwoo’s arms are a safe haven, and it makes you want to forget everything and run away with him. It makes you want to be reckless and impulsive, just like him.

“—Your Highness!”

The door to your cottage is suddenly kicked down, and a swarm of palace guards barge in, with the Annoying Guard leading the pack. You try to pull away from Jungwoo, but he holds onto you tighter before moving you behind him. His arm is protectively in front of you, as he shields you with his body once again.

“What have you done to him, witch?” the Annoying Guard demands, pointing his sword at you.

“Nothing,” Jungwoo responds, glaring at him. “What on Earth are you doing? Stand down.”

“You’ve cast a dark spell on the Prince!”

“She has not! I will say it one more time, stand down,” Jungwoo orders.

Seeing Jungwoo’s expression, the Annoying Guard slowly sheathes his sword. “Y-Your Highness? Is it really you?”

“Who else would it be?” Jungwoo huffs with annoyance.

“Why are you protecting the witch?”

“Because you’re trespassing and also threatening her. Why did you come anyway?” Jungwoo asks, gritting his teeth.

“His Majesty told us to make sure you were alright, since it’s storming,” the Annoying Guard ducks his head meekly. “We have a carriage for you.”

Jungwoo tells them all to get out before turning to check on you. By this point, you’ve already collected yourself. You’ve wiped away your tears and regained your composure. You look back at him coolly, refusing to let yourself break down like that again.

“Y/N—”

“Wait for me outside. I just need a second to collect all of the ingredients for the antidote, and then I will be out shortly,” you say curtly.

He looks like he wants to argue at first but obediently retreats a moment later. When he’s out of an earshot, you harshly slap your cheeks. The stinging rings through your entire body, like a wake up call from the gods themselves. You had let yourself pretend for a moment when Jungwoo hugged you, but the cold, sobering truth of it all is more apparent than ever.

If Jungwoo were to truly stay with you, his sanity would be questioned by his peers at every moment. Eventually, he too would begin to wonder if his feelings were conjured by your magic. The happiness the two of you would have will only last for a moment, and you can’t allow yourself to have a taste of it.

Because you know you won’t be able to walk away from him.

The carriage ride back is just as awful as the first time, perhaps even more so. The cloak that Jungwoo lent you has been snatched away by the Annoying Guard, so you’re left to shiver in your half-wet dress. Jungwoo is being swathed in towels and even provided a thick jacket, but all you get is a rag that looks like it’s been used to wipe the floor. Jungwoo tries to give you his jacket, but you ignore him and keep your gaze trained on the window.

When you arrive at the palace, the two of you are immediately ushered up to the Queen’s chambers by a frantic maid. Her condition worsened during the storm, and you can feel her life force fading. The King is there too, but he doesn’t say a word. His lips are in a thin line and his face is somber. You can see in his eyes that he’s pleading with you to save his wife.

You manage to whip up the antidote in record time, carefully pouring it into the Queen’s mouth with a spoon. Within minutes, the color returns to her face and her breathing becomes normal. You place a hand on her forehead, breathing a sigh of relief when you feel warmth return to her skin.

The Queen’s eyes begin to flutter, and you quickly withdraw your hand. You turn to Jungwoo. “She should be alright now. Let her recuperate for a couple of days just to make sure.”

“You have my eternal gratitude, Y/N. I—”

“Jungwoo?” The Queen’s feeble voice whispers. She’s slowly coming to, blindly reaching out for her son. The King perks up too, but he doesn’t move towards her.

“Mother,” he responds immediately, “I’m here.”

You watch him kneel by her bedside, taking her hand. They speak to each other in hushed tones, and you realize that Jungwoo must get his soft-spoken voice from his mother. The tenderness between them warms your heart, but it also wrenches it because it’s even more proof that you don’t belong here.

Taking advantage of the fact that Jungwoo is distracted, you easily manage to slip out of the room. It doesn’t occur to you until you walk out of the palace and pass by the stables that you don’t have any means of transportation. There’s no way any palace guard will agree to take you back by carriage, and you can’t just borrow a horse because you will have to return it.

You’re so deep in thought that you don’t notice a maid walking toward you and crash right into her. She’s carrying a bale of hay and it goes flying, straws of hay exploding into the air. You stagger backwards, trying to avoid it. The maid lets out a squeal and falls onto her rear pretty hard.

“I’m so sorry,” you say hurriedly, stretching out your hand to help her up. “I was distracted and did not see you.”

“It’s alright, I did not see you either,” the maid winces, grabbing your hand and letting you pull her to her feet. “I will sweep this up in a moment. I apologize for the mess, my lady.”

Her words are lost to you. Instead, you’re focused on the immense amount of magic you felt flowing through her when she touched your hand. It’s the strongest magic you’ve felt in a very long time.

“So it was you,” you realize, narrowing your eyes. “Hiding in plain sight.”

The maid blinks before her lips curl into an evil smirk. “Well, well, you’ve finally caught me. Honestly, I’m disappointed. I thought you’d find me much sooner. Surely, finding a measly witch like me should have been child’s play for the Witch of the Forest.”

“I’ve been preoccupied,” you answer, gritting your teeth. “What is your name?”

“Joohyun,” she says. Joohyun flicks her wrist, and the hay is suddenly rearranged into the perfect block it was before. “Are you going to tell Prince Jungwoo, my lady?”

“I will not betray one of my kind so easily. However, I want to know why you chose to harm the Queen.”

“That old geezer, the King, really loves her. Even though he doesn’t act like it. I figured the only way to truly make him suffer the way he made us is to target his family,” Joohyun says breezily, shrugging.

“The Queen and Prince Jungwoo are innocent in all of this. Do not drag them into our affairs,” you chastise, though you understand where she is coming from.

Joohyun raises an eyebrow before she smiles knowingly. “I had been curious as to why you agreed to help the Queen, but I see now. You’re fond of Prince Jungwoo.”

Were you that easy to read?

“Don’t be ridiculous,” you snap.

“Whatever you say,” Joohyun replies nonchalantly, a glint in her eye. “Then, I suppose you won’t mind if Prince Jungwoo is my next target?”

You scowl, your eyes flashing dangerously at her. “Are you threatening me?”

“Of course not, my lady,” she backs down. She still has a smirk on her face, but you can tell she’s nervous now. “It was a joke.”

“It would do you well to watch your tongue. I am warning you now to not lay a finger on the King’s family. Incurring my anger will make you wish that I had turned you over to the Prince,” you say calmly.

“I apologize, my lady.” Joohyun bows her head.

“Go,” you order.

She obediently picks up the bale of hay before scurrying off. You watch her disappear behind the palace doors, releasing the breath you had been holding. You know Joohyun will tread more carefully now, which is a solace to you only slightly. A part of you wants to run back inside and immediately tell Jungwoo, but you force yourself to turn on your heel and begin walking away.

The two of us have nothing to do with each other now, you tell yourself.

As if on cue, you hear a distant voice calling out to you.

“Y/N!”

You know who it is, and you know you should keep walking. But your feet drag to an eventual stop, refusing to listen to your brain. Stiffly, you turn.

Jungwoo is running up to you, bridging the gap between you and the palace easily. When he’s in front of you, he reaches down and grabs the sleeve of your dress with two fingers, as if he’s afraid you’ll run away. For now, you allow him to.

“If you’re leaving, I’ll escort you,” he says, slightly breathless.

“No,” you respond, “I will walk.”

“Y/N—”

“This is not up for negotiation, Your Highness,” you cut him off, harshly tugging your sleeve away. “I did what you requested, so our business is finished. Therefore, there is no need to involve ourselves with each other anymore.”

You can tell you’re hurting him. Jungwoo takes a step closer, and you take one back. His outstretched hand falls limply at his sides. His eyes have lost their usual mischievous sparkle, flickering like a dying ember. You feel like there’s a knife being twisted into your side. How did you manage to connect so deeply to him that you can’t stand to see him upset, despite only meeting him today?

“In two weeks time,” he starts quietly, “my coronation ball will be held. Would you accompany me?”

You let out a small laugh. Even though you’re trying your hardest to hurt him, Jungwoo remains persistent like he always is.

“You know that I will not,” you say, shaking your head. “Ask someone else.”

“I want to go with you.”

You sigh, and against your better judgement, you place a hand on his cheek. He leans into your touch, clutching your wrist. “You will forget about me soon enough, Your Highness.”

“I won’t.”

“Once you’re king, I’ll be nothing more than a bad dream,” you continue. “Don’t let a temporary feeling ruin your future.”

“Why do you keep discounting the way I feel?” he asks furiously. “You keep saying that I’ll throw you away, hurt you, forget about you—it’s cruel, Y/N.”

“It’s the truth, Your Highness. You’ll see.”

“Jungwoo,” he finally corrects again, frustrated. “Please, call me Jungwoo.”

“Joohyun,” you suddenly blurt out, ignoring him. You couldn’t help yourself. If you are truly never going to see him again, you had to tell him.

“What?”

“The maid,” you clarify. “She’s the one who cursed your mother.”

“I—thank you,” he says dumbfoundedly, confused at the sudden change in topic.

“Don’t punish her too harshly,” you request.

“Why?”

“Because I can’t say that I wouldn’t have done the same thing if I were in her position,” you answer honestly.

He doesn’t respond, looking at you with a wistful expression. The two of you fall into a brief moment of silence, staring into each other’s eyes. You don’t have as much trouble holding his gaze anymore, but it still makes your mind go blank. Your eyes travel over every inch of his face, committing it to your memory. You wish you could remember the sensation of his skin against your fingertips.

“Stay,” he pleads.

The hand on his face travels to the back of his neck, so you can bring him down to your level. You step on your tip-toes, placing a feather-light kiss on his cheek. When you pull back, you rest your forehead against his.

“Goodbye, Jungwoo.”

And so, the two weeks pass in what seems like a matter of seconds.

You’ve managed to somewhat return to your routine, but all of your efforts are shattered when the night of Jungwoo’s coronation ball arrives. During the day, you had been aimlessly pacing around in your cottage and doing the same chores over and over again. It was like you were in a trance.

Now, you’re laying in bed—wide awake. You kick the covers off, suddenly feeling extremely hot, before tossing and turning in an attempt to tire yourself out. It is useless; your mind always seems to come back to him.

You wonder if he’ll meet a beautiful princess from a neighboring country at the ball and instantly fall in love with her. The two of them would be perfect for each other. They would be the subject of envy throughout the kingdom. Their reign would be a prosperous one, and they would bear such lovely children. Jungwoo would be so happy, and that hurts you so more than you would like to admit. You know you’re being selfish now, but you—

You nearly scream when you hear a frantic knocking on your door. Instantly sitting up, you listen to the knocking for a little longer. Your heart is racing, and you can’t fight the hope building up in your chest. Getting out of your bed, you slowly approach your door and crack it open.

Jungwoo is standing there, in full royal regalia. He’s panting, shoulders heaving up and down with effort. His collar is popped, and you can see a bead of sweat roll down his neck. His hair is mussed and stuck to his forehead. He’s clutching a piece of paper in one hand.

At first, you think he’s a hallucination but then he speaks.

“By my royal decree, your banishment has officially been lifted,” he declares, still out of breath. He smooths out the crumpled piece of paper and shows it to you. It looks like it was written by a child. There are ink splatters everywhere, the writing is barely legible, and the signature looks like chicken scratch. Most people would not believe it was an official document if it were not for the royal seal stamped at the bottom.

“Wha—”

“You were wrong,” Jungwoo interrupts, “I didn’t forget about you. And trust me, I tried. I tried so damn hard because you were so cruel. You’ve only ever diminished my feelings for you, and you were the one that threw me away when I begged for you to stay. You walked all over my heart like it was your personal doormat, yet I missed you. I wanted to see you again, even if it would hurt. So, I wrote a decree on a piece of parchment paper without consulting or informing any of my advisors and then came to find you during the middle of my coronation ball. And here I am again, pouring my heart out in front of you like a fool—”

You throw yourself at him, and he just barely manages to catch you. His arms are tightly wrapped around you as you grab his collar and crush your lips against his. Jungwoo makes a small noise of surprise before he eventually reciprocates. He kisses you like you’ll disappear at any moment, and he holds you like it too. Even when you pull away, he presses you firmly against him.

“I’m sorry for hurting you,” you mumble against his lips. “You are much too good for me, Jungwoo. But I selfishly missed you too. So much.”

“If it means you’ll be by my side, hurt me as much you’d like,” Jungwoo says, his fingers entangling themselves in your hair.

The two of you share another kiss under the glow of the moonlight, whispering promises to each other that you know you shouldn’t keep.

Yet, you aren’t afraid anymore.

#neowritingsnet #cznnet #ncitynetwork #neocaratnet #nct imagines #nct scenarios #jungwoo fluff #jungwoo angst #nct 127 fluff #nct 127 angst #nct 127 imagines #nct u fluff #nct u angst #nct u imagines #jungwoo #nct #choerrypuffs

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alch3mic · 3 years

Text

in between. (drabble series)

chapter four (stitches.)

captain!sans x gender neutral reader. 3k+ word count.

please be advised for themes of anxiety, ideas of loss, depression, and self esteem.

* finally at the fourth chapter with our dear fellswap sans, captain! he also has no official fic yet but has his own tag here on my tumblr if you’d like to know more about him! thank you and i hope you enjoy!

A project.

That's all this was meant to be.

Something to keep him preoccupied in his free time, now that he seemed to have more time on his hands than he knew what to do with.

Somewhere to put his focus, instead of thinking about things.

Instead of stressing about things.

Instead of.. worrying about.. 'things'.

Like this.. 'thing'.. attached to him.

...

"ya can't just keep pacin' around bro."

Sure he could.

He could pace around as much as he wanted. It was his boat dammit, and he'd walk around it as he pleased, from the bow to the stern, topside and back.

"Shouldn't you be resting?"

No.

How could he? There was work to be done.

All his life he had filled himself with his work. It was all he knew.

Work.

Work

Work.

Work

From his time as a child, working to take care of his younger brother to ensure he was brought up properly to his time in the royal guard working hard every day to support them and make sure they both survived that horrid Underground. Even on the surface he worked and worked and worked, to regain his position as a monster worthy of fear and respect after the humans had stripped them of everything and leaving them to rot like strays on the street.

Every minute of every day he worked.

Most days he even dreamed of it.

Which is exactly why it was so difficult to sit still, even at your request.

"You really should just take it easy, Sans. Didn't Undyne say to not stress yourself out?"

She did, but it didn't matter.

He was in a constant state of being stressed.

Stressed was how he operated.

Stressed was all he knew.

His body could never give him the pleasure of just 'taking it easy', constantly buzzing, constantly wanting to be in motion. At times he envied his brother for being able to let things go and just kick back, but... that was exactly why he worked so hard wasn't it?

So that his brother could relax without a worry in that thick skull of his..?

Of course.. he knew Papyrus went through his own troubles.. it's just...

Gah.

This free time was now filling his head with unnecessary thoughts, even as he tried his best to busy himself by patrolling his own boat.

..Which was only adding to his stress...

"Lets try a hobby. What do you normally do for fun?"

Think of you.

Well..

He didn't have to now that you were here with him.

He could just spend time with you instead of daydreaming about it.

And he did.

You humored him by relaxing together topside with him and Papyrus, enjoying the salty breezes of the ocean and the warm summer rays. The two of you would chat in his bed for hours, laughing and telling stories of the past as you laid close. You'd help him, by offering an arm when he wore himself out or when he needed help doing something that required two hands. Everything from opening jars to preparing dinner or even tying his shoes.

It was..

Ah, dammit it was so humiliating.

..And also made him strangely happy?

He was.. happily humiliated?

..Humbled?

..Stars.

He never had anyone taken care of him before, so his pride was taking a major blow every time you offered to help. A part of him was glad you'd always ask first so he'd at least get to attempt at doing it by himself but.. it was also humiliating to give in. He was too stubborn for his own good, never having anyone extend a hand for him neither below ground or on the Surface.

Still you never seemed bothered.

You never batted an eye when he'd turn to you. Sometimes all it took was a look from him and you just knew, without having any words be spoke. Having that kind of connection was..

Incredible.

It had been something the both of you had obviously over the years, but only now it was showing itself in the mundane parts of your lives now that you were with him. Normally it had been when you locked eyes in a fight in the streets of Ebott, and he could see the whole encounter play out in his mind. How you'd swing, how he'd shoot. How you both would nearly hit each other both on purpose and on accident.

Like a dance with death only the two of you could perform.

And how beautifully you danced for him..

Now.. having that connection manifest positively, in quiet agreements and silent conversations that took only seconds to have, really drove home the fact that times have changed.

That he was no longer the skeleton he was before.

He had you now, which was different.

You were his.

And he was yours.

Though.. in truth you always had a part of soul with you even if you never realized it.

And he always had Papyrus by his side.

That could never change.

But now.. he also had..

That.

The 'thing'.

An arm.

That.. didn't belong to him.

It was attached, sure, but..

It was foreign.

Heavy.

A burden.

It was consequences of his actions taken form of something that use to be, but no longer was. Like a cruel symbol of mockery, forever attached to his own broken body. There was nothing but the tickling of a sensation of pain, like a phantom dancing across his bones, from a limb that was no longer there. The magic in his scapula hummed louder than the rest of his body, always catching his attention as it had been enhanced to support the weight of his new arm. It was irritating and constant, like a buzz he couldn't be rid of no matter how loud his thoughts were or tried to be.

Always there.

Always ringing in his skull.

It was driving him crazy, adding to the mounting stress.

"FOR FUN? EASY. TRAP MAKING. ANALYTICS. READING THE STOCKS AND NEWS."

"Well that's depressing."

"STAYING INFORMED IS IMPORTANT, DARLING."

"And so is your mental health, Sans. Ignoring this won't make it go away you know."

The metallic hand closed on a reflex when he felt your gaze upon it.

He didn't like it, despite how incredible Undyne's work was. She had studied him for weeks while he recovered in her intensive care, all so she could make an exact replica of his now missing arm. It looked just like the real thing only casted in asatollite, a type of metal found in the Underground that could conduct magic. No wires. No heavy plating. Just an arm, moved by his own magic.

An impressive feat really, but he felt no pride in this.

..Only shame.

As someone who had lived their life known for cutting it close time and time again, this was now all the proof someone needed that they could actually lay their hands on him. There was a chance that someone could hit and do some serious damage.

For some, that would be enough to push their determination over the edge.

The proof that he couldn't dodge forever.

And here it was, glinting under the soft afternoon sunlight that filtered into his quarters.

This... was his decline wasn't it?

..He could feel it in his bones.

Here marked the end of his reign of terror as Captain, the scarred skeleton who ruled the docks of Ebott City with an iron fist. Now that once unrelenting grip which strangled the life of rats out of the marine failed to even grasp a pen properly.

It stung in such a strange way that he almost didn't know how to describe it.

It was a unsightly fall from grace, paired with happiness and misery.

He was muddled with complicated feelings that really didn't have proper words, and so instead of spending his days thinking about it while lying in bed, he paced around his ship.

"Is there anything you've ever wanted to learn?"

He only learned what was necessary.

Languages to properly communicate with associates, skills like learning to shoot with a gun so that he could avoid having his magic traced back to him, and cooking so he could make sustainable meals when he and Papyrus had nothing..

They weren't things he did for fun, they were necessary.

What else could he learn that was necessary?

"HOW ABOUT TEACHING ME TO CUT A BULLET LIKE YOU DID BACK IN THE 'SISCO EXCHANGE."

"I'm not teaching you that."

"AND WHY'S THAT?"

"I don't need to make you any more dangerous than you already are you bonehead. I meant something fun! Like.. maybe a sport?"

"I THROW DARTS. I ALSO SHOOT."

"I.. Okay I guess that counts," you said, glancing to the wall of his quarters where the board was set up.

It's true it was a dart board hanging on the wall, but it was littered with photos of thugs and politicians, a dart neatly nailed through their head. It honestly looked like more of an omen of things to come rather than a hobby.

"Anything else?"

...

"I PLAYED THE VIOLIN FOR A SHORT WHILE."

"You did?"

"YES. BACK IN THE UNDERGROUND. I FOUND ONE IN THE DUMP AND TAUGHT MYSELF TO PLAY WHEN I DISCOVERED PAPYRUS LIKED THE WAY IT SOUNDED. IT WOULD HELP PUT HIM TO SLEEP ON SOME OF THE ROUGHER NIGHTS."

"Aww. Maybe you could think about picking it back up. I'd love to hear you play!"

He would, eventually.

For right now.. the task seemed so daunting now that he had..

...That.

"..But maybe not yet."

Another silent conversation, passed by only the glint in his eyesocket. Once again he was glad he didn't have to openly admit he might struggle with learning something like that again but.. a small pass of shame also washed over him. He'd love to play for you, to maybe even create his own music to reflect the feelings you gave him in his soul, but to move this metallic.. 'thing'.. to play would be..

He'd become frustrated, just like with everything else.

"AND WHAT DO YOU DO TO RELAX MY DEAR?"

"Me? I usually sew or knit."

Right. Costumes. That’s why you asked to have your own space in that free room on the ship. You had mentioned it once before, how you use to do costuming back in the day for plays and helped your father who worked as a tailor until...

Hm.

"YOU SELL YOUR PIECES DON'T YOU?"

"Just to a few people. I make dresses for Mr. Rose's granddaughter and Rumpelstiltskin still orders some pieces for his wife. I also send some more elaborate stuff the Prince's way every once in awhile and I even still get requests from Mama Bear even after they disappeared off into the forest. I think they might finally have a Baby Bear on the way because they asked about knitting a little blanket a few days ago."

...

He.. tried to not humor the thought of just sailing away from this city with you, like that lucky bastard did with his spouse when he took off into the woods. Of course he couldn't, he knew Papyrus would stay here with Happy and he'd never want to be far from his brother.

Still...

It was a tempting idea.

"I could always teach you. It's a pretty good skill to just learn how to hand stitch to mend clothing and it really isn't too complicated."

He relented ...of course.

Because he always did to you, with that smile on your face and the hum in your tone.

.....

Learning from you had been everything he hoped for, with you sitting close to him as you taught him how to thread a needle. You were patient with him as he struggled, his hand shaking as he did his best to will his magic to move. You were gentle as you taught him to stitch carefully and slowly, following along side as you guided him every step of the way.

...He'll never forget the way you laughed at his first pass though.

He had been so damn.. angry!

Really, you had the nerve to laugh even when he did his best!

You were the worst, which is why exactly he had to pin you down and tickle you until you couldn't breathe. At least he could use that wretched metal arm to press your hands above your head as you desperately tried to wrestle out of his hold until you were flushed and gasping for breath.

His next attempt was alone late at night, when even the stars on the deck above couldn't quell his thoughts. They ran wild in his head, stampeding and thrashing about.

At his failures.

At his mistakes.

At the humming in his shoulder and the arm that ached despite not being there. So he tried to not think about it as he quietly threaded the needle under the dim yellow lights in his quarters. The quiet creak and groan of the boat was his only accompaniment along your soft breathing from the bed as you peacefully slumbered away.

In and out.

He timed his stitches with your breaths, pushing the needle through the felt and then back again as he sewed the two pieces of scrap fabric together. It was strange how difficult this was, willing his fingers to move while simply pushing and pulling a needle. His jaw would tense as his hand shook at times and failed to grasp the needle, and then he'd hear you let out a sigh and he'd relax again.

In and out.

Until the stitch was done.

Until he hushed the wild thoughts in his head and put his stress to bed.

Until he could no longer deny himself your company and he'd fall back to your side, finally delving into the depths of sleep.

He spent many days and nights like this, a fire ignited in his soul to hear your praise the first time.

"Seems like your stitched are getting tighter. Nice work there, Cap."

That was all he needed.

Your words. Your smile. The exigent that reflected in your beautiful eyes. You were proud of him, and it made him work all the harder as he sat with you in the room you had taken for your sewing. This place had been your sanctuary, something he once avoided entering to at least give you a little room for yourself on the ship, but now he found reassurance in it as well.

The whir of your sewing machine had become a comfort, able to drown out the buzz in his head as he worked beside you. Soft colorful fabrics lined the shelves in the wall and a half finished dress would decorate a mannequin or two. The both of you would drink coffee and chit chat as he tried to get lost in the motions of hand stitching pieces of scrap fabric together.

He didn't want to constantly strain himself to move his arm.

He wanted it to be natural.

He wanted to use his hand without a second thought.

He wanted it to be like..

How it use to be.

But it could.. never really be like it use to be.

And he struggled and struggled and struggled.

In the weeks that had dragged by, both you and Papyrus had picked up small gigs to help patch the hole his injury was leaving.

Sans was... or had been.. the bread maker.

He always prided himself on providing by running the docks, able to keep his rather lavish lifestyle alive by delivering cargo from overseas to sellers like the Fell brothers and the other croons of this city, but the two of you had insisted on him resting, so his businesses and trades had all but halted.

You were still far off from ever putting a dent in his savings, but the two of you worked regardless to ease his stress.

..Because somehow, even having the back up funds prepared for events like this, didn't stop Sans from stressing.

The only part that annoyed him about it was that you had less time to teach him. You focused more on your commissions, so Sans would leave you in peace to your quiet room and stitch in his quarters.

He hadn't really decided what he wanted to work towards from stitching. It had simply become a tool to help train his fingers, so now that he could sew what was he suppose to do with the skill?

...

....

.....

It was a quiet afternoon in his quarters, the low hum of a forgotten radio on his desk as a deep voice rattled off the daily news mixed with a garble of static. Being so far out into the marine meant the reception wasn't good, but he could pick up key terms as the voice drawled on. Another murder on the west side, some more fights in the south and some re-election news. Not like it mattered who was in charge these days. The faces changed but at the end of the day these suits always lined their pockets with bloodied dollar bills. This city was rotted to it's core, just like it's people, and it'd stay that way until it was burned to the ground.

Sans' eyelights drifted down to the book in front of him.

'Stuffed Plushies For Beginners!'

The title almost felt condescending, just like the colorful pictures and simple wording that decorated each page. He still couldn't help but twist his frown deeper at the fact that you bought him a children's book of all things, paired with that sharp little grin of yours and that infectious laugher. It had been too much.. Which is why he snatched the damn thing out of your hands when you gave it to him.

"To help decide what you want to do with your new skill! Maybe you can finally make something instead of just stitching scraps together you dork."

He would never turn down a challenge, especially from you, and he was eager to have your approval again.

"AND WHAT EXATLY SHOULD I SEW?"

"Just pick something you're interested in and sew it. They have a lot of animals in there! You do at least like one kind of animal, don't you?"

Dogs, because they were loyal.

Cats, because they could fend for themselves.

Birds, because of their freedom.

But making something based of them didn't quite appeal to Sans.

'Basic Plushie Pattern.'

...

"hey bro, i wanted to ask- oh my stars."

"AH-!" Sans inhaled, squeezing the doll in his grasp and nearly tearing at it with his claws. "YOU-! WOULD YOU KNOCK!?"

"you actually made a plushie of them. wow," his brother hummed, "and here i thought your obsession couldn't get any wo-"

WHOOMPH.

The pillow made direct contact with Papyrus' face, earning a laugh from the taller skeleton. Sans barked out a few more insults as his brother continued to giggle, admiring what he had finished so far.

It.. looked like crap.

Some of the stitches were lopsided and others weren't uniform, but he wanted to see this through before his frustrations got the better of him. So with some encouragement from Papyrus he kept at it, finishing the body and then attaching the head.

"Pahahaha! Captain!"

"WHAT!?"

"You! Ehehe! You-! Of.. of me!"

"LOOK, JUST TELL ME IT'S TERRIBLE SO I CAN BE RID OF THE ACURSED THING ALRIGHT?"

"No! No. Absolutely not! I'm keeping this forever and you can never take it away from me!"

He gritted his teeth and attempted to wrestle the doll from your grasp but to no avail. You hugged it close and refused to relent, calling it precious and a testament to his efforts.

All of his hard work..

To a doll..

That looked like you.

"Are you going to make one of you?" you asked, letting out a few breaths as he finally gave up trying to grab the doll from your grasp.

"AND WHY WOULD I DO THAT?"

"Well I don't want them to be lonely."

...

How could he... ever argue with that.

So begrudgingly he sewed again, this time now more aware than ever of that 'thing' as it worked meticulously to create a replicate of itself. The doll's left arm, sewn together with a deep gray metallic fabric, now shared the same shame he did.

...

Strangely enough, it suited him.

...

"They look cute together."

"ONE ON THE RIGHT HAS SEEN BETTER DAYS."

"I still think he's pretty cute. He's trying his best, after all."

Well.. he certainly couldn't argue with that either.

#look at that!#we made it!#cap's is a lil' more fluffier than the others so i hope you guys enjoy it!#captain!sans #sans #undertale #fellswap #fellswap sans #undertale fic #yandere sans #long post #fic #fanfiction #drabble #anxiety tw #depression tw #alch!writes #inbetween!fic

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arsenicpanda · 3 years

Note

I read your 3 takes posts, and I have some questions? Hope you don’t get mad and you can not reply if you want of course .

“And here, we take Jughead’s “She and I had a terrible break up back when I was in high school, and I never really recovered from it” as just that because, seriously, there’s no indication we should do otherwise from the text itself “

So this is the take you believe more in? That the show had Jughead saying that because he doesn’t have feelings for Betty? Along with this one, because you drop it there in the take too, what do you think about the 5x03 scene? Because that’s one BH and Jabitha fans see way different too.

And, what do you think about Betty regards all of those takes.

For the record, I don’t really get mad unless someone is being an asshole or purposefully disingenuous, and you are none of those and also I’m in Thoughts Mode, so it’s answering time. Anyway, so, that take is specific to the overall jabitha take, the purest, most jabitha-positive take, much like the bughead version had the purest, most bughead-positive take. But here’s my real, full take:

If I had to play the “guess what the Riverdale writers were thinking game,” I’d say that the writers decided to be wishy-washy on this line on purpose. The weirdness of the bunker scene implies, to me, that they wanted to switch to bughead but still leave the door just a little bit open for jabitha, whether it was for later drama, endgame, or iconic bugabitha purposes. So, they couldn’t just say “I’m not over Betty”, and instead they said “I never really recovered from [the break up],” and they clearly thought that those two things mean roughly the same thing, but the problem is that they absolutely do not. Not being over a person means you’re still in love with them and that love has overshadowed your feelings in every other relationship you’ve had, thus interfering with it; within fiction, it’s tragically romantic. Not being over a break up means that, regardless of your feelings for that person, it’s the break up that stuck with you and has interfered with your relationships, and that one is just horribly depressing in any context. So, from the Doylist perspective, I think we’re supposed to assume it’s an “I’m stuck on Betty thing”, but the problem is that, for me, that does not line up with the Watsonian explanation.

You see, Jughead has been nothing but honest with Tabitha all season, just completely straightforward, and there’s no reason for him to change that behavior now; he’s already explaining the problems in the way of them dating, so what functional difference is there between the two in that regard? It’s not like one is going to feel better than the other. I see no indication in the scene for him to be speaking in some code, especially since his hallucination scene is specifically a replay of the conversation about the Archie kiss, aka the conversation (or lack thereof) that set the stage for their break up; this really does imply that his problem isn’t feelings for Betty but feelings about/trauma (for lack of a better word) from the break up. Personally, I lean toward the Watsonian explanation because I am going to listen to the text before I listen to my best guess at the writers’ intentions.

But, honestly, I don’t think that conversation has anything to do with whether or not Jughead has feelings for Betty; it just relates to whether or not he is conscious of having feelings for Betty. And in that regard, honestly, pick whatever you like. I don’t have a specific take here based on the text because I really think it can be read equally along any point in the spectrum between “he has conscious feelings for Betty” through “he has unconscious feelings for Betty” through “he is unaware he has no feelings for Betty” all the way to “he has no feelings for Betty and he knows it.” I’d say canon intends things to be somewhere between “he has conscious feelings for Betty” and “he has unconscious feelings for Betty”, but I think all can be argued if you really feel like it, and the take I use would vary based on the story I wanted to tell, as would my take on the extent of his feelings for Tabitha (from minor, easy-to-overcome crush to a serious crush and case of Feelings that’s only going to get worse/bigger).

As for 5x03, I assume you mean the apology confession/sex scene? I read that as a mistake on both ends. I think Betty is overcome with regret and guilt and also love, and she can’t really articulate her feelings--thus all the generic “I’m sorry”s--so she tries to show Jughead that she chose and still chooses him by using sex. The problem is, this is clearly not what Jughead really wants and it’s definitely not what he needs; we see this in how he doesn’t kiss her back at first. What Jughead wants and needs is a specific apology for the cheating-- the exact words “I’m sorry I kissed Archie” (as seen in his hallucination)--and, I would assume, an explanation, but he’s also afraid to ask for it (if I had to guess why, I’d assume he’s afraid of the answer). Betty does, effectively, pressure him into sex, since we see he’s non-responsive at first, but it’s a very light and unintentional pressure that isn’t traumatic or anything, it just kind of is. The problem isn’t the sex, it’s that they aren’t speaking the same language here. And because it doesn’t work and instead leaves things awkward--Jughead’s afraid to broach the topic and needs Betty to do it, and Betty doesn’t want to push him and needs Jughead to do it--they stop communicating and things go sideways. I fully believe that if they had talked that night instead of having sex, they’d still be together.

As for Betty in regards to these takes, I’m not sure what you mean? Outside of the 5x03 scene, her current state of mind and her feelings are pretty irrelevant to what’s going on with Jughead. Betty is kind of just living her life completely outside Jughead’s because, depending on your interpretation, she either has no feelings for him outside of friendship or she is entirely unaware of the feelings she still has for him or even is conscious of having feelings for Jughead but is also consciously pushing them down. Canon is obviously going for the second or third option (my money’s on the second), but I will say that, in universe, there isn’t really a reason for any of these characters to interpret Betty’s interactions with him as displays of romantic interest; it can be entirely platonic, even if that is not the “““correct””” interpretation. As for me, I can see arguments for all sides, and my interpretation of choice would vary depending on what I want to do with that interpretation. Do I want to write a jabitha fic? She just sees him as a friend. Do I want to write a bugabitha or bughead fic? She has feelings for him but may or may not be conscious of said feelings, again depending on the fic. And the same applies for gif sets, never-to-be-written story ideas, and anything else.

tl;dr The Doylist and Watsonian explanations for the break up line clash, and I lean Watsonian. That scene is entirely unrelated to Jughead’s actual feelings, which could be literally anything. The 5x03 confession/sex scene was a series of mistakes that set the stage for bughead’s break up. Jughead’s feelings could be interpreted any way, the same as Betty’s. I acknowledge the likely canon reads of Jughead and Betty’s feelings, but don’t subscribe to any interpretation in particular myself, instead picking and choosing depending on my purposes.

#asks #anonymous #Riverdale #Riverdale season 5 #bughead #bughead negativity #I guess?#jabitha #kind of?#I really don't have a strong opinion here #although I DO have a lot of thoughts (unsurprisingly)#specificaly ~1.1k words of thoughts #my thoughts on Riverdale let me show you them #Anonymous

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friendlylocalwriter · 4 years

Text

Chapter 2 of The Quiet Stranger

Pairing(s): Geralt of Rivia x fem!reader

Warnings: None

Requested: No

Prompt: You live a quiet life in the forest with your mother after the fall of Cintra, selling grains and produce to keep enough coins for survival. When your mother leaves for a long journey to the market, you're surprised to meet a white-haired stranger in dire need of help, and even more surprised by how you feel about him.

Word Count: 2916

Chapter: 2/?

Previous Chapters : Chapter 1

A/N: Hi guys! I had so much fun writing this chapter, and I’ve already started planning the next one which’ll be much longer and spicier ;) I have a Superman request that I will hopefully be filling next week, and I want to write a Mando fic while we get tortured wait for the s2 trailer to release! As always, reblog + comments are so welcome, and this is posted on my AO3 @/violettaren. Love you guys <33

Geralt slept for the entire day and through the night.

You weren’t surprised, though. You assume that whatever fight he had gotten into, which he seems intent on not telling you about, must’ve been intense if they were able to get that good of a gash on him. So you let him rest. And, you weren’t averse to stealing a few glances of his bare chest rising while he slept on your cot. You spent the first day of his arrival tending to the garden and trying to ignore how your mother would feel about you housing a stranger in your shack. The guilt only increased when you slept on your mother’s cot, tossing and turning in your sleep as you remember all your mother told you about not letting anyone in.

You woke up the next morning before him, and rushed to change out of your nightgown. You chose a linen white skirt that hit just above the knee and a long sleeve off the shoulder black sweater that was a bit too thin for the humid Spring weather, but you’d make do. As you take your hair out of your ponytail and attempt to tame it, you wonder why you’re putting so much effort into your appearance, since he’ll be gone tonight anyway. As you pass by his sleeping body, your eyes focus on the gray pendant around his neck and creep forward to try and get a better view.

A wolf. Interesting.

You jump when he shifts slightly and immediately move away, not looking to be caught in such a compromising position. As you clean through the cot, you try and rack your brain to see if you remember ever seeing that necklace when you were in Cintra. But, like most things, you simply cannot recall much of anything from your childhood.

Maybe it’s in the books.

After you glance over to make sure Geralt is still sound asleep, you tip-toe to the back of your shack where a large, old locked box resides. Your fingers toy with the lock and you make sure to get it just in that right position to…

You sigh in relief when you hear the quiet click of the lock opening. You lift the lid and remove the many tablecloths to find what you were looking for - the mangled brown leather journal with your father’s initials inscribed on the bottom of it. Your father, a sorcerer, compiled an anthology of all the monsters and non-humans that he came across, and it was the only thing of his that you and your mother still had. You trace the indentations with your finger, ignoring the heavy pull in your chest. You lock the box again and make your way to the main table, making sure to sit with your back to Geralt.

It only takes a few moments of you thumbing through the yellowed pages of your father’s anthology to find that same design that’s on Geralt’s pendant, and the words above it scream at you.

WITCHER .

Of course. The secrecy, the wound, the swords, the hair . You read through the paragraphs on the page that describe the process of becoming a Witcher, and the effects of it. You can’t tear your eyes off of the underlined portion at the bottom, describing how Witcher’s no longer feel emotions after they consume the mutagenic compounds and complete their grueling training. It doesn’t take a scientist to understand why your father wrote that. He thought Witcher’s were evil.

“What are you doing?”

You immediately shut the notebook and launch out of your seat to see Geralt standing in front of you, his right eyebrow raised and his arms pressing folded over his chest, his biceps bulging underneath the pressure.

“God, Geralt, you scared me,” you place your hand over your heart as you try and catch the breath that was shocked out of you. “I thought you were still asleep.”

“I wasn’t. What are you doing?” he repeats, unrelenting.

You quickly run through the possible outcomes of what could happen if you tell Geralt that you know he’s a Witcher. Surely, he wouldn’t wear his pendant if he was that intent on hiding his identity, right? But, then again, he could easily kill you if you try and be more invasive than you already have been. I mean, you just read about how Witcher’s are soulless monsters who only exist to take lives.

You try to think of something, but you remember that you couldn’t lie to save your damn life. With a sigh, you pick up the notebook from the table and thumb through to find the page about Witchers.

“Why didn’t you tell me you are a Witcher, Geralt?” you shove the notebook in front of you, and Geralt takes it from you, scanning the pages. You fumble with your hands, hoping Geralt didn’t notice how fake the confidence in your voice was.

“I assumed you already knew. Is it not quite obvious?”

You scoff, surprised at how easy Geralt’s few words made you feel so naive and stupid. You snatch the notebook from his hand and brush past him, walking back towards the box.

“You could’ve at least told me,” you close the lock with more force than you mean to, eliciting a loud bang as it comes in contact with the aged wood.

“Why are you so upset?” he asks, and the simpleness of his question makes you even more pissed for some reason.

“I’m not,” you retort, standing up and away from the chest. “I just wish you told me.”

“Would you have not treated me? Had you known I was a Witcher?”

You turn around sharply and don’t attempt to hide the confusion on your face. Geralt’s face was tight, the same it always was, but his voice was strained and his eyes were narrowed, the bright amber of his irises much more intimidating than they once were.

“What? No, that’s not - that’s not what I meant. Geralt!” you call him after he walks away from you, grabbing his bag of weapons. He nearly makes it out of the shack completely until you yell his name again and he stops in his tracks. You flinch when he turns around to face you with one of the venomous expressions you’ve ever seen, his golden eyes boring into you.

“What?” he spits, his mouth in a snarl. “You read that book. That’s what you all think of me, right?”

You can’t help the tears that begin to pool in your eyes at the venom in his words. No one has ever yelled at you - even when your mother scolds you, she never raises her voice even slightly. You hated that Geralt was so upset at you for something you didn’t even mean.

“Geralt, I promise you, that isn’t what I meant. I’m sorry,” you drop your head, sniffling. If he was going to leave, you wanted him to know you didn’t think anything lesser of him. You would never do anything like that.

You hear the clink of the bag of metal hitting the floor and an exhale come from the man in front of you.

“Stop crying. Please,” he folds his arms over his chest, and you can’t tell if the statement comes from guilt or annoyance.

“Of course I still would’ve treated you, Geralt,” you whisper, breaking the silence that had fallen. “I- I know what that feels like - to not be liked for something you can’t change. I’d never wish that feeling on my worst enemy.”

Geralt says nothing, his eyes locked on yours.

“If you wish to leave, I won’t stop you,” you empty your chest, trying to convince yourself that you’re okay with that. “But I want you to leave knowing that. I was just scared, I guess. I have not seen anyone in ages, let alone someone like you - but that isn’t a bad thing. Not to me.”

Geralt still doesn’t speak, but he tears his eyes off of you to sit down on your bed.

“Are you upset with me?”

“No,” he murmurs, wincing as he tries to move without tearing the stitches. “I’m not.”

“Good,” you move forward and crouch in front of him, picking up the bottom of his shirt so you can take a look at the stitches. You look up at him to make sure he’s okay with it, and you take his stoic expression as a yes. You see that the stitches are healing quite nicely, but you also notice the dirt and grime that has gathered around it and on the rest of his stomach.

“When was the last time you bathed, Geralt?” you graze your fingers across his abdomen, cringing at the dirt that gathers under them.

“Bathing is a luxury for me. I do it when I can.”

You kiss your teeth and stand up, shaking your head. “A luxury? Nonsense, it is integral. A basic human right.”

“Well, I’m not exactly human am I?” Geralt counters, and you furrow your brows in confusion.

“If you are implying, Geralt of Rivia, that you do not need to bathe simply because you are a Witcher,” you pause to dramatically sniff him and make a sour face, “Then you are terribly, terribly mistaken.”

“Alright, enough.” he waves you off as you snicker proudly at your joke. “There’s no bath in here anyway.

“I know a place.”

••••••

You focus on the crunching of your feet on the leaves as you lead Geralt towards the river that you use to bathe. The moist dirt tickles your bare feet and you move the tall green weeds out of the way as you breathe in the fresh air, letting it fill your chest.

“The air is so clean because of all the trees. I love going back here.”

“Hmm,” is the only response you get from the man behind you. You briefly look back at Geralt with a smile.

“Such a man of few words,” you say after a few moments, your voice low. You’ve begun to not let the lack of detail from Geralt sting, since it seems that he won’t be opening up to you with his life story any time soon. In fact, you found an odd bit of comfort in his presence - somebody who doesn’t feel the need to fill the silence with empty talk. So you accept it and make your way to the river with the quietude heavy between you.

Even though you’ve been to this river so many times, it never fails to take your breath away. The water is a remarkable pale blue color, and it’s so clean that the light reflecting off of it is almost blinding. Old, decaying logs are littered throughout the bank of the river, spotted with green moss. As you get to the end of the worn trail where the rocks leading to the body water begin, you look up at the blush pink early morning sky and bask in the soft hum of various insects.

“It is nice.”

Realizing that Geralt talked to you of his own volition and not just because you spoke to him., you feign surprise and look at Geralt with an exaggerated face of shock. “Wow, he speaks!”

Geralt rolls his eyes but you catch the smile on his face when he drops his head. A grin involuntarily makes its way onto your face, and you gesture towards the beautiful river.

“Well, here it is. I’ll go back to the garden and come get you later, alright?”

“You’re not going to bathe?”

Your cheeks and chest immediately get hot as you think of the idea of being so close to Geralt in such an intimate position with no clothes on, imagining the water droplets trailing down his chest and onto his-

You clear your throat and try to remember how words work.

“I was, um, just going to bathe after you were finished. So, uh, yeah.”

“Wouldn’t it just be quicker to bathe together? Wastes less time,” Geralt shrugs, placing his bag with his sword on the ground and reaching to pull off his shirt. “And I’m not sure of this road. Wouldn’t want to get lost.”

Huh. I guess that makes sense.

“Well, only if you’re okay with it.”

“I proposed it, why wouldn’t I be?”

Not knowing what to say, you nod in agreement and watch him peel off the rest of his clothing. When he looks back at you, you don’t have a chance to explain why you were staring before he asks why you aren’t undressed.

“Uh, close your eyes, please,” you ask, toying with the waistband of your skirt.

Geralt laughs, like really fucking laughs, after you say that, but you can’t seem to find the humor in what you said.

“Geralt. I’m serious.”

“Fine,” he says with a chuckle, making his way towards the river and, after testing the temperature with his foot, glides in with his back facing you. Relieved, you take off your top and skirt, deciding against removing your undergarments, which included your underwear and a light tank top. You’re suddenly very conscious of your body and the way that it looks - no one has ever seen you like this. You force the anxiety out of your head and join Geralt in the river, giving him permission to turn around once you’re submerged up until your shoulders.

“Have you still got a shirt on?” he gestures towards the white strap that is peeking out from the water. “Is that not uncomfortable?”

“No,” you shut down any attempt at continuing that conversation, running your hands over your forearms to scrub off any potential gunk. The two of you naturally fell into another silence, enjoying the cool water as the sun started to rise, glaring down onto the river. The silence permeates for God knows how long until Geralt asks you a question.

“What did you mean earlier?”

“Hm?” you turn at the sound of Geralt’s voice. “What are you talking about?”

“You said you know what it feels like. To be judged.” Geralt moves closer to you, causing ripples in the water.

“Oh,” you sigh, mentally preparing yourself to tell a story you’ve never spoken about with anyone after it was relayed to you.

“My father,” you start after some moments, “He was a sorcerer - he was born with magic inside of him and had no proper training, but he was still incredible at his craft. Instead of working for the royal family, he decided to help the impoverished who lived near our home. He would heal them, mentally and physically, for quite little money. He took a few jobs under Queen Calanthe that granted him the coins to feed us, but that wasn’t where his heart was. He wasn’t interested in pointless politics,” your voice starts to break as you blink rapidly, attempting to keep it together. You notice Geralt’s expression soften, his jaw releasing from the clench it always seems to be in.

“And when Nilfgaard attacked, he didn’t fight. He stayed in burning buildings and ashy rubble, looking for anyone who needed help that wasn’t a priority to Cintra. And when he was found, he was trying to help a young girl whose leg had been caught under steel. He didn’t even flinch when he was struck, he just kept trying. He never stopped, never - it wasn’t in his blood,” your mouth opens to continue but nothing comes out except for a sob that racks your whole body. Your head falls in your hand and you cry and cry, forgetting that Geralt is standing in the water in front of you until you feel two large arms wrap around yours, enveloping you in a tight embrace. You stiffen instinctively at his tight grip, but let yourself melt into his arms and the water, grasping at his biceps.

“He sounds like he was a good man, Y/N. You should be proud,” he reassured you, releasing his tight grip and lazily running his hands up and down your forearms. You nodded, not wanting to remove your face from the crevice in Geralt’s neck

“I understand the - the pain of loss,” Geralt says quietly, and you look up, expecting to hear more. Yet you see Geralt staring out straight in front of him, his expression unreadable, and you know that’s all you can squeeze out of him. You're okay with that, though.

"I feel like I've cried more in the last few days than I have in years, Christ," you laugh, trying to wipe the tears off of your face but realizing the effort is futile as your soaked hands make your face even damper.

Geralt says nothing but he brushes his thumbs across on your arm, and you register that he's still so close to you. You tilt your head up to look at his face and your eyes fall on the red scar on his cheek, the skin around it slightly raised from the inflammation of the cut. You slowly bring your hand up to his face using your index finger to lightly ghost over the cut, tracing the shape. Geralt closes his eyes as you continue running your finger over the left side of his face until the pad of your finger gets to his jawline, and you pull your finger away to point the pad of your finger in Geralt’s face.

“See?” you prompt with a smile, waiting for him to open his eyes. “All clean.”

#the witcher #the witcher netflix #geralt of rivia #geralt of rivia fanfic #geralt x you #the witcher fandom #geralt reader insert #geralt fluff #geralt of rivia smut #henry cavill #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill x reader #fanfiction #fanfic #the witcher fanfic #cute fic

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justpendule · 3 years

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fic tag game!

Thanks for tagging me @pearthery !! It was very nice of you!

Name(s): Pendule, Pen.

Fandoms: Mainly Gintama, but also One Piece, and lately JJK

Where you post: AO3 mainly, but also fanfiction.net & Wattpad

Most popular one-shot (by kudos):

Overall: Snack

This year: Bois d'amourette et livre de cuisine

Most Popular Multi-chap (also by kudos):

Overall: Converging Trajectories

This year: Bois d'amourette and livre de cuisine!

Favorite story you’ve written so far: Converging Trajectories ♥ It was my first Gintama fic ever, and also my first multi-chapter fic in years, I think it really marks a turning point in the type of fic I started to write after publishing it. It's probably a silly thing to say but it's like a milestone to me, because it marked the beginning of my time in the Gintama fandom, and this is my favourite so far when it comes to writing, everyone is just so nice and encouraging, I love it very much!

Fic you were nervous to post: Well, I'm never really nervous when I'm about to post something because I'm always proud of my work, and I know that even if no one reads of likes it, at least I enjoyed writing it! But I wrote my first and only MHA fic, Bad Seed, and somehow I was kinda nervous because it is a character study on Bakugou, and I really relate and identify to him, so posting it was like letting people see me a little more clearly than before, and I wasn't sure what it would feel like. I was also kind apprehensive of people telling me that I didn't understand his character correctly. But all in all, I don't regret it, I love it dearly!

How do you choose your titles: I kinda hate when fics have titles unrelated to their contents because, to me, the title is the reflection of the fic, it's the first thing people are going to read and it's probably what's going to make them click - or not - on your fic, so I always try to make them sound nice. But other than that, I don't have a specific way of choosing them. Some times I just think about it and I find it randomly while writing the fic, or sometimes I need the help of one of my friend to guide me and find something nice!

Do you outline: I used to never do it before Converging Trajectories, I liked to follow the flow, but with a multi-chapters fics it's really hard not to, so it seems I took a liking to it and now I try to force myself to do it more when I know the fic is going to be a bit longer!

Complete: On AO3, 26! But I used to publish on Fanfiction.net in my native language, so I need to add 16 more fics to the count, so 42! (42??? That's so funny to have this number hsjdsdhsk I wasn't expecting that)

In progress: Around 15 I think, I'm not really sure. But I've got a document full of untouched ideas. I used to start writing new fics whenever I felt like it, but now I hold myself back, because then there's too much things to write and I know I'd never write the oldest ones!

Coming soon: I'm writing to write non scripted things, I don't know if it's a way to put it, but I've read a lot of fics lately which are just thoughts and snippets so I'm trying to write little fics like that too!

Not started: Too many to try to count!

Prompts?: I try using them, but it's hard to find interesting ones, because I usually end up writing stories that already kind of exist!

Upcoming work you’re most excited about: I've just been thinking about a Gintama multi-chapters for months which I have yet to get started, but it would require a lot of time and work from me and I just need to get it started. It would be a Gintama fic in a different AU and I'm so excited just by thinking about it I really need to find the time and heart to write it!

I don't really know who to tag tho, so I guess I won't tag anyone, but if you want to do it, feel free to!

#fic tag game #thoughts #fanfictions #fics #fanfics #Gintama #thank you again Pear!!#Gintama fics #One piece fic

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heroineimages · 3 years

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Tagged by @theoutcastrogue. (Her post)

Rules: It’s time to love yourself. Choose your 5 favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you’ve brought into the world. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

Thanks so much, sweet rogue, for tagging me! Firstly, this is exactly the kind of thing my therapist tells me I need to do for myself more often. Secondly, I tend to fixate on reading back over my past writing, so this gives me an excuse to do just that. Under the cut because there’ll be several writing excerpts and it might run long. Tagging @chenria, @9musesandanoldmind, @queer-trans-amazon, @jeanjauthor, and anyone else who wants in!

1. I did a lot of tinkering on Hero Forge after they released the colors and new engine. Firstly, I found it therapeutic and helpful for my anxiety. Secondly, I have a tendency to create stories for the new OCs I come up with. In particular, I like coming up with themed versions of the twelve base D&D classes. My favorite so far is the Desert Elf minis and their story.

2. My second favorite Hero Forge buildup was the Muskets and Snow designs, pitting Frost Elf tribes against musket-armed, multiracial commonwealth soldiers, once again based around the D&D classes. (Check my Hero Forge tag for more mini designs!)

3. I added four chapters to my Legend of Korra gladiator AU last year, and commissioned a movie poster for it from my amazing artist friend, Telenia Albuquerque. I added a few fighting scenes and several explicit lesbian bedroom scenes that I’m kind of proud of, including a fun, racy striptease. In the following scene, Asami breaks up a meeting between Varrick and none other than Marc Antony after Varrick attempts to abduct her and poison her bodyguards, including Korra:

“You said our host tried to abduct you?” [Antony] continued, turning to Asami.

“Of course not!” Varrick interrupted, stepping between Asami and Antony. “We’re pals, right, Antony? You know I’d never abduct anybody!”

“Mm, I seem to recall you abducting Titus Atticus’s wife, as well as the late Clodius Pulcher’s favorite catamite,” Antony replied.

“Allegedly!” Varrick protested, turning away and crossing his arms. “I allegedly abducted Atticus’s wife and Pulcher’s catamite!”

“Everything you do is ‘allegedly,’” Asami glared.

“So you’ve had dealings with this bastard before,” Antony laughed. “Please, come in,” he invited, gesturing to Varrick’s office. “No doubt we can handle this like civilized people, miss…?”

“Asami Sato,” Asami answered, allowing Antony to take and kiss her hand.

“Ah! Master Hiroshi’s daughter,” he identified her. “I’ve heard about you, and I’m delighted to make your acquaintance.”

“I’m sure,” Asami agreed with a hint of smooth annoyance.

“Great, thanks a lot, Zhu Li,” Varrick grumbled as the six of them trooped into his office. “What the heck happened, anyway?”

“It would seem you underestimated Mistress Sato, sir,” Zhu Li informed him, [still tossed over the gladiatrix’s shoulder]. The armored pauldron pressed into her gut was really uncomfortable. “She already had her guards inoculated against our poison.”

“What? How could you possibly know that?” Varrick demanded, turning to Asami.

“I’m more intelligent than you thought, and you’re less clever than you’d like to believe,” Asami answered, taking one of the three chairs in the room. “And, frankly, that old Persian trick of poisoning the dancing girls’ lips isn’t as cunning as you thought. It was all a matter of knowing what poisons you have access to and researching which ones work on contact and can have resistances built up for them.”

“Smart,” Antony agreed, taking the second chair while Acainissa stuffed Varrick in the chair behind his desk. Hebasken and Acainissa took up positions on either side of Varrick’s chair, looming over him.

“Varrick, this other door leads to your bedchambers, doesn’t it?” Asami asked, pointing to the curtained doorway.

“Yeah, why?” Varrick frowned. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Korra, are you up for a bit of… revenge-sex?” Asami asked.

“I’m always up for revenge and sex,” Korra assured her.

“Take Zhu Li into Varrick’s chambers and fuck her stupid, please.” Asami instructed. “She’s a very intelligent woman, so I suspect that will take a lot of fucking to accomplish.”

Korra laughed and turned to pack Zhu Li through the door.

4. I’ve also made some progress on an older story I started a long time ago about my OC Elindra, a Drow paladin of the Red Knight who gets turned to a Drider by fanatics of Lolth. The following scene comes during the big escape from Ched Nasad between her and her dwarf cleric friend, Nell:

I used the glaive to parry the [Drider] warrior’s first assault. The snarly bastard was skilled, blocking and parrying my every attack, despite my Haste spell. And even if I did land a hit, my odds of breaking his Stoneskin were frustratingly small. I gave way instead, using my quickened speed to my advantage. An arrow flashed past us, announcing the return of the annoying ranger from earlier. I grimaced from frustration as another arrow shattered against my Mithral spaulder.

This was taking too damned long. No doubt the alarm had been raised and more guards and spell-casters were on their way.

Dueling with the warrior, I deliberately backed myself toward another aperture in the webs. I parried the warrior’s mace, managing to rap him across the face with the butt of my glaive. As he lunged again, I dropped my glaive and caught his arm. From there I leapt backward, pulling him though the gap with me. He caught the edge of the webs with two clawed legs, flipping us through upside-down. Still clutching his arm, my weight yanked him through the gap behind me.

A slightly larger Drider, I flipped myself onto his back, riding him downward as we plummeted. Gripping him by the hair, I screamed, “Smite Evil!” as we hit, slamming his head into the hardened webbing below.

The impact threw me from the warrior’s back, and I skidded onto my side perhaps twelve feet away. The warrior’s head was obliterated—a black, bloody smear across the calcified web floor.

“You alright?” I asked Nell as I picked myself up.

“Ye’re focking crazy, ye know that, Elindra?” Nell grumbled behind me, [still harnessed to my back]. “Ooh, that’s a pretty mess!” she laughed when I turned to look for a way back up. “Aye, let’s see ye Stoneskin protect ye from that shite, motherfocker!” she taunted the dead Drider.

5. And, lastly I’m happy with a lot of the progress I’ve made on my novel, First Empress. The following excerpt is a cute, racy little flashback scene of Elissa and Queen Viarra’s first time having sex:

“O–oh, gods!” Elissa groaned, catching her breath as she came down from her third climax.

Princess Viarra gripped the blanket on either side of Elissa’s shoulders, grunting as she thrust against Elissa’s leg to ride out her own climax. Broad, muscular arms trembling, her thrusts continued to get slower and more deliberate as she finished herself off. Her highness’s entire body shook one last time, and she gave a panting laugh before collapsing halfway atop Elissa.

They lay laughing and gasping for breath for long moments, their legs tangled together, their right breasts squashed against the other’s sternum. Princess Viarra’s arms splayed off to the sides while Elissa’s trembling arms clutched her love’s shoulders. Their shoulders were about even, but Viarra’s cunny now rested against Elissa’s knee. Their clothes lay discarded to one side with the wine they’d stolen from King Vaso and the erotic poetry they’d stolen from Prince Kallis. Above them, the peach trees of King Vaso’s orchard swayed in the afternoon breeze.

“I’m not squishing you, am I?” Viarra asked, her face still half-pressed against the tangle of brown and copper hair next to Elissa’s right ear.

“No,” Elissa laughed, wishing she had the energy to clutch her beloved princess tighter. “I feel safe beneath you,” she promised. “You make me feel safe and happy.”

“And you make me happy,” her highness assured her, turning her head to kiss and nibble at Elissa’s cheek. Elissa squealed and used one hand to try to push her away.

Unrelenting, Princess Viarra made a nasal, growling sound and pretended to gnaw on Elissa’s neck. “Grar! I just want to eat you up, you’re so sweet!” her highness declared, making exaggerated chewing noises against Elissa’s neck and shoulder.

Gods, her highness had gotten so strong the last few years, Elissa acknowledged as she squealed and giggled, unsuccessfully attempting to fight back. Viarra’s arms were probably bigger around than Elissa’s legs, and her shoulders were almost half-again as broad as Elissa’s. And she was tall. Possibly as tall as her mother as well as thick and big-boned, Princess Viarra was just too big and strong for anyone except maybe a wrestler or a gladiator to overpower.

Clearly Elissa would have to resort to guile instead.

Viarra shrieked out a series of giggles as Elissa reached up to tickle her sides. “Gods, no!” her highness squealed, attempting to push Elissa’s hands away. Unable to quite grab onto them, Viarra pushed herself away, laughing as she rolled onto her back.

Instead of renewing her assault, Elissa rolled over next to her, draping her left arm across Viarra’s chest and left leg across her waist.

“That was amazing,” Elissa admitted, snuggling up against her beloved’s nude form. “Thank you for being my first.”

“Thank you for being my first,” Princess Viarra countered, wrapping an arm around Elissa’s bare back. “I never imagined sex would feel like that.”

“You seemed to know what you were doing,” Elissa observed. “I mean, I could tell you were trying out techniques and all, but where did you learn them?”

“I asked Captain Vola,” her highness admitted looking over at her. “She’s pretty candid about sex advice, and even Captain Kellor admits it’s usually good advice. Part of the reason I brought you out here was because I wanted to try it, and there’s no one I’d rather try it with than you,” she added, reaching over to stroke Elissa’s cheek.

Elissa blushed and smiled, stroking her love’s powerful belly. “I’m glad you did,” she admitted, unable to think of anything else to say.

#theoutcastrogue #we-are-rogue #discussion

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viktorrotkiv · 3 years

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Every Single Flavor of Feeling

Hey @impossiblyizzy , here is my gift to you for the @b99fandomevents Summer 2021 Fic Exchange.

I picked the prompt “A coffee shop AU revolving around the impending closing of the coffee shop - can include a ship if you want but I’m always happy just seeing the squad as friends!” I played around with the prompt slightly, really hope you don’t mind <3

Rating: G

Words: 2.6k

Read on AO3

Jake crossed the street towards the coffee shop, a piece of paper in his hands, looking glum. Gina watched him from behind the counter, polishing mugs in preparation for the shop opening in forty minutes.

Jake was late, as usual. They were both supposed to be there an hour before opening time. But as he pushed the door open, sending the bell dinging, he looked too sad to reprimand. “Hey, G.”

“Hey, Jake.” Gina warily put the mug down. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.” Jake looked around the shop helplessly, his gaze blank. “Um, what do you need me to do?”

Gina decided not to push him. Jake always talked eventually. “You can turn everything on.”

Jake lumbered around the shop, preheating the ovens for the frozen pastries they made each morning, turning on the coffee machines and the milk frother, setting up the AC.

Forty-five minutes later, Gina and Jake shared their mandatory start-of-work cinnamon bun. Stuffing the last sticky bite into his mouth, Jake seemed somewhat cheered up.

“So…” Gina picked at her half of the pastry, savoring it. “Are you going to tell me what that is?” She pointed at the paper Jake had been holding, just visible over the side of his bag.

Jake took a big breath. “Yeah, I guess I should. I, uh…”

The bell dinged again, signaling the first customer’s arrival.

“Later, then. I promise.” Jake put on his cheerful customer face and manned the register.

At the end of every shift they had together, Jake and Gina tossed a coin to decide who would do the good part of cleanup and who got the bad parts. Mopping the floors and wiping the table was of course on the good list, since you could pretend the mop was a microphone and dance around. Cleaning the ovens and coffee machines was bad, since you had to crouch and sometimes your clothes got dirty.

Today, Gina was slightly happy that she got the bad chores. Two minutes sliding around on the wet floors and Jake’s mood would be improved. By the time he got to the tables, he would talk.

“G.” She was right. Jake cleared his throat before continuing. “I have some news. I, uh, I passed the last of the tests. I graduate from the police academy next week.”

Gina straightened up so fast that she banged her head against the oven’s ceiling, but she was so excited she could hardly feel it. “That’s amazing! Jake! Why have you been moping around all day?”

Jake had his back to her, so she couldn’t see his face, but she could hear his voice breaking. “It’s just… It’s the first thing we’re not doing together since… since gym classes were separated into boys and girls in middle school. Remember how devastated we were? And this is so much bigger.” He sniffled. “G, we’ve done everything together. Elementary school, middle school, high school, now this job. I went through the police academy alone, but I still saw you here all the time. What am I supposed to do without you?” He finally turned to look at her, eyes wet.

Gina dropped everything she was holding and ran to hug Jake, banging her ribs against the counter in her urgency. “Jakey, who knew you were so sweet and sentimental?”

“Ew. No. No, Gina, get off of me. You’re covered in oven gunk! Gina!” Jake leaped back and crashed into a table. Rubbing his lower back, he glowered at Gina, but he couldn’t stay mad at her for long.

Gina took a step back and adopted a rare serious expression. “You’ll be fine. You’re one of the smartest, bravest, best people I know.” Her gaze turned mischievous. “And I know a lot of people. Because actually the first thing we didn’t do together was me being popular in high school, and you weren’t. And you got through that.”

“Hey! Not nice.” Jake punched her shoulder half-heartedly, but he was clearly touched. “Thanks, Gina. But it’s still going to be sad leaving you.”

“I got an idea.”

“Why do you have an extra evil spark of joy in your eyes?”

“We are going to pull the best, grandest, most fuck-with-their-minds pranks you have ever seen before you leave.”

Jake’s eyes lit up with a similar passion. “Let’s brainstorm most prank-able coworkers.”

The first prank didn’t go as planned.

Gina kicked Jake behind the counter. “Here he comes,” she hissed.

“Yes, Gina, I can see that. I am also facing the door.” Jake turned back towards the entrance. “Hey, Mike! I just made us some coffee before the customers start coming in. Do you want anything?”

Mike was a little bit confused, but not enough to raise suspicion. Sure, Gina and Jake mostly only spoke to each other, but they were nice enough when they needed to talk to him. “Um, yeah, thanks. I’ll just take a cappuccino.”

“Cool. Cool cool cool. Um, unrelated, can you please go tidy the back room?”

With Mike definitively out of sight, Jake proceeded to pour a shot of every single flavor in the shop into his cup. “Gina, he’s not allergic to anything, right?”

“Who cares?”

“Gina!”

“Fine, yeah, I looked at his personnel file. He’s not allergic to anything. Ooh, but I heard him say he hates blueberries, pump in a bunch of that.”

Jake finished making the coffee and went to find Mike in the back room. “Here, this is yours.”

“Thanks, Jake.” Mike sipped. “Mm. I love having coffee this early in the morning.”

“Notice anything… special?” Jake glanced back at Gina, who shrugged.

“No. Not really. It’s really good.”

“Oh. That’s, uh, great. I was worried because the… uh… milk is almost expired. Glad to hear that it’s not.” Jake backed out of the room slowly and looked at Gina, bewildered.

Gina whispered, “What did you do?”

“Nothing! It had every single possible flavor in the shop! It should taste gross! Way too sweet and completely mismatched.” Jake glanced towards the back room. “We’ve gotta taste that.”

Gina nodded. “Hey, Mike, can you help me with the oven?” She glanced at Jake and waved her hand at him. “Scram!”

Mike emerged from the back room, holding his coffee. “Sure. What do you need?”

“These trays are too heavy for me to put in by myself. Here, take this side.”

“Sure.” Mike placed his coffee on the counter and bent down to help Gina. He didn’t notice Jake sneaking back in from the bathroom and picking up his coffee. Jake sniffed it, shrugged, and took a sip. His look of surprise almost made Gina drop her side of the tray.

“Thanks, Mike.”

“Sure thing, Gina. Oh, Jake, you almost gave me a heart attack. Didn’t see you there.” Mike picked up the coffee and walked away.

Gina motioned for Jake to come closer. “So?”

“It was so disappointing. All the flavors cancel each other out and it just tastes like regular coffee.”

Gina started giggling, which soon turned into full-on stomach-hurting, tear-bringing laughter. “I mean, that wasn’t the plan at all, but you’ve gotta admit that’s kind of hilarious.”

Jake started laughing too, mostly at Gina’s amusement. “I guess. “But, oh, I was so looking forward to seeing his face when he took that first disgusting sip…”

The second prank was much more successful.

A few days later, in the middle of a shift, Gina pulled Jake aside. “I have our next idea. So, you know how Tina is always talking about how she can’t live without caffeine, but every Thursday she makes herself a decaf at the end of her shift.”

“Of course I know! It’s the biggest mystery ever. I’ve been dying to ask her for months, but she’s such a bitch.”

“Well, I figured it out.” Gina smiled very smugly. “Every Thursday, her boyfriend asks her to hang out with his boring friends. And she tells him she’s too tired from work. And since she doesn’t get her outrageous amount of caffeine on Thursdays, she falls asleep on the couch, and he has no choice but to let her stay home.”

“Hold on, how do you know all of this?”

“Yesterday she complained to me about how her boyfriend only does boring things, and then she made me follow her puppy’s Instagram account. Her boyfriend comments on almost every post, and since he’s insanely hot, I started following him. Every Thursday he posts a super embarrassing picture of her drooling on the couch, captioned something sappy like ‘my adorable girlfriend works so hard!’, and an hour later—”

“Aww, that’s actually sweet.”

“It’s disgusting, Jake. Anyway, around an hour later he always starts posting pictures with his friends at the least Tina-like places ever. Sports bars, bowling alleys, restaurants that only serve fried chicken, no wonder she never wants to go out with him.”

Jake’s eyes lit up with understanding. “So tomorrow…”

“We’re going to graciously offer to make her coffee.”

“And not use decaf.”

“And she won’t fall asleep embarrassingly early for a grown woman.”

“And then she won’t have any excuse not to hang out with her super boring boyfriend.”

“You got it, Jake!”

“You’re a genius, Gina.”

“You okay, Tina?” Jake was behind the counter, and his coworker was clearly getting ready to leave.

“Oh, yeah, I’m okay. I was just going to make myself a coffee and, uh... leave.” She wasn’t really sure why Jake was talking to her.

“Oh, I could make it for you. I’m already on coffee duty.”

“Really?” Tina smiled absentmindedly. “Um, yeah, thanks. Decaf.”

“I know.” Jake turned to Gina, who was restocking the pastry display, and gave her a ridiculously exaggerated wink. She shot him a look that clearly meant, ‘Calm the fuck down.’

Tina was thankfully distracted on her phone, and Jake made her coffee with no hitches, sending her on her way with a cheerful “Good day!” and getting a confused and slightly snarky look in return, as if she had somehow tricked him into making her a drink.

“Now we wait.”

“Woah, G, don’t sneak up on me like that. But yes. Now we cross our fingers and wait.”

“Jake!” The next morning, Gina burst into the shop waving her phone excitedly. “Jake, it worked! Look!”

She held her phone uncomfortably close to Jake’s face, but he could clearly make out a picture of a group of guys at a dark and sticky bar, all smiling goofy grins and drinking the most boring beer brands. And, smack dab in the middle of the group, Tina, grimacing.

“It worked!” Jake’s eyes lit up.

“I know! That’s what I said. And guess what! She just called me and said she was going to be late and asked if I could cover for her– because she has a massive hangover. She started telling me how you must be too dumb to find the decaf coffee because she had clearly asked for it. It was hilarious.”

Jake grinned. “Well, I can stand being called stupid by Tina, of all people. Especially since I’ll be gone soon.” He seemed to realize what he had just said and drooped slightly.

“We’re in denial, Jake. Denial. Now go back to work.”

The third and final prank was the most preposterous, and arguably the meanest.

A week before Jake was supposed to leave, he and Gina noticed that one of their coworkers, Brian, only had shifts with either one or both of them for the entire week.

“We’re going to pretend we don’t know him. At all. Be confused when he comes in, be baffled when he goes behind the counter. Eventually concede and let him help out, but don’t acknowledge that he’s always worked here.”

“Gina, that’s insane.” Jake was seriously worried about whatever hellscape Gina was going to put their coworkers through when he left.

“Fine. Then we’ll just convince him everyone else was fired and it’s going to be the three of us from now on.”

Jake considered this. “Okay. But if he threatens to quit or anything I’m going to tell him the truth.”

“Gosh, you’re boring. But fine.”

“Hey, Brian. How are you dealing with everything?”

“Hey, Jake! What everything?”

Jake tried to keep hold of his serious expression and kept on cleaning the counter. “You know. It’s going to be so much busier now.”

Brian put his bag down tentatively on a chair and started putting on his apron. “Why?”

Jake stared at him. “You’re joking, right? It’s just us and Gina now.”

“Oh, you mean today!” Brian chuckled and stepped behind the counter to help Jake.

Jake finally stopped wiping. “No, I mean from now on.” He lowered his voice and leaned in conspiratorially. “Didn’t anyone tell you? They let everyone else go. Everyone.” He added in an even quieter voice: “Budget cuts.”

Brian became red, then white. “Are you serious?”

Jake was starting to feel bad, but he kept going for his best friend. “Yup. So, how many shifts can you take? Because you know I’m leaving soon, and they’ll probably bring someone to replace me, but, you know, it’s not the same with a new guy… Aaand you’re on the floor.”

Brian had fainted.

“So, how did it go?” Gina called Jake at the end of his shift.

“It was fun for a minute, but I had to tell him the truth.”

“Boo. I didn’t even get to see it. How long did it last?”

“Actually, when I said a minute, I wasn’t exaggerating. The second I finished explaining the whole story he fainted. Sorry, G, I know it’s my last week and you wanted to do something big… Maybe—”

“Hold up, hold up. He fainted? After one minute?”

“Um, yep.” Jake pulled the phone away from his ear to make sure he hadn’t hung up by accident. “G? Gina? I can’t hear you.”

“That’s because—” wheeze, “I’m dying—” wheeze, “of laughter.”

“Oh.” Jake’s shoulders lost some tension he hadn’t realized was there, and then he started laughing too. “It was so great. I had to pick him up, and then when I explained everything he almost fainted again…”

Jake crossed the street towards the coffee shop, a piece of paper in his hands, looking excited. Gina watched him from behind the counter, polishing mugs in preparation for the shop opening in forty minutes.

Jake was late, as usual. Wait. No. Jake didn’t work there, as of two days ago. He had gotten a job at a police precinct, he shouldn’t be in the shop before opening time. But as he pushed the door open, sending the bell dinging, his enthusiasm was too contagious to reprimand. “Hey, G.”

“Hey, Jake.” Gina gently put the mug down. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.” Jake looked around the shop casually, taking his time. “Except that I’m the best best friend ever and I got you a job interview, if you want it.” He then turned to look directly at her, smiling his mischievous grin in all its glory.

“What?!” Gina practically jumped over the counter to hold Jake and jump around excitedly. “What job? No, whatever it is, it’s better than this, with the oven gunk and the disgusting customers and Tina.”

Jake’s grin still hadn’t let up. “So, it turns out, the precinct that hired me is looking for a receptionist, and I recommended you, and they said they would let you interview. You just need to sit at a desk, your own desk, and answer some phone calls and emails, know where the officers are, maybe file some reports.”

Gina stopped jumping and wrapped her arms around Jake. “And we would work together again. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.”

#b99 summer 2021 fic exchange #b99fandomevents #b99 #jake peralta #gina linetti #my writing #b99 fic #mineltg

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tiny-smallest · 3 years

Text

so, palezma

@palezma

Hi. You’ve been found out.

So for anyone who’s like ‘what’s happening’ let me explain.

I wrote a Steven Universe fic about Greg Universe and his growing relationship with Rose. I got a comment on that fic. Nasty, rude, ‘this isn’t canon’ and ‘let me tell you why this one small part of a fic that has a way larger theme to it is invalid and wrong.’

I was, of course, upset. So I went to my girlfriends--girlfriends as in, we are dating. I date them both. It is a poly relationship.

One of them, the one currently around at the time, returned with a screenshot.

Uh. What the fuck?

This is her most recent fic. Despite the title, it’s not Steven Universe related; this is A Hat In Time, and specifically, about an abusive relationship that happens within the canon of this story. So this is already way out of line with general decency, because you advertised some random shit on someone’s fic that was not about literally anything you had to say.

Then. Then. She realized something else.

Huh. Something’s wrong.

Max agreed. So we went to the other girlfriend’s latest fic (ALSO A HAT IN TIME, BY THE WAY, AND ABOUT A CHARACTER’S TRAUMATIC DEATH) which I will link here purely so you can see for yourself, given that this screencap doesn’t show the fic title the way the first screenshot does (skip the story if you care about A Hat In Time spoilers):

Gabby gets online later aaaaaaaaand lo and fucking behold, in her tumblr dms:

More people have left kudos on my fic since then. One has written fics; the other has not.

GUESS WHAT I FOUND ON THE LATEST FIC THAT THE ONE AUTHOR HAD WRITTEN? (found here)

I was upset enough already and considering blasting you for leaving that dickish comment AND following my kudos to advertise your own stuff to my girlfriends like a creep AND going so far to message them with your non-sockpuppet to try to further advertise, but I hesitated. I don’t really relish conflict, and though I was really mad that you did this, and dragged my beloveds into this by leaving them asinine shit on fics they’d poured their hearts into... I was still unsure if I really wanted to take this step.

Now that I see that YOU ARE ACTIVELY SURVEILING MY FIC TO SEE WHO ENJOYS IT ENOUGH TO LEAVE KUDOS AND THEN GO LEAVE SOLICITING MESSAGES ON THEIR UNRELATED SHIT BECAUSE I GUESS IT BOTHERS YOU THAT FUCKING MUCH THAT I TOOK GREG FOR A VIRGIN AND MADE UP A RANDOM THING ABOUT ROSE TRUSTING GREG WITH ONE SINGLE SECRET PEARL DIDN’T KNOW...

Now that I see that you plan to continue using me, someone you decided to kick around under the guise of constructive criticism, instead of just hitting the block button like a decent person, to farm viewers for your own content, leaving dumb, asinine comments on the latest fics of literally anyone who happened to enjoy my fic...

I am putting your ass on blast for the bully that you are, because I’m not letting my readers get rude, asinine, soliciting bullshit on their fics for enjoying mine enough to leave kudos.

Leave people alone, you giant rotting mushroom cap, and for those reading this, just block them and move on. Life’s too goddamn short. Stick to the fics you like, for god’s sakes.

#steven universe #greg universe #su greg #steven universe greg universe #greg universe steven universe #fandom drama #i'm not letting you bully me and then PIGGYBACK OFF OF IT #NOT HAPPENING NNNNOPE

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mrswhozeewhatsis · 4 years

Text

To stop the accusation that I’m dragging this out to please the drama llamas, I’ve studied everything I got (and spent a fair amount of time searching for things on blogs), and managed to whittle things down to their bare essentials. I’ve also tried to talk to everyone about everything, which took time. I won’t address everything that everyone has said on both sides, just a few points that are either concrete, or I can’t address them privately for whatever reason.

The timeline as I’ve been able to piece it together is like this:

Vanessa made a post about more popular writers complaining about lack of feedback.

Beka messaged Vanessa wanting to know why Vanessa had a problem with her.

Vanessa responded in a way that upset Beka.

Beka blocked Vanessa.

Vanessa got around the block and sent anonymous asks to Beka.

Beka outed Vanessa by responding to the asks publicly.

Vanessa deactivated her blog.

Friends of both proceeded to attack each other.

Claims about Beka (this is not a complete list):

Only supports her friends on her blogs and in Pond Angel Fish Awards

Although it’s been a couple of months since Beka has reblogged fics from other writers at all, by going back through her #read with me tag, I see reblogs of fics from at least a dozen different writers just in May and June. I’ve only been tracking Angel Fish Awards since February, but since then, Beka has nominated 8 stories by 8 different writers.

Ignored asks for Big Fish advice sent to her blog

If there were a way for me to prove this, then I wouldn’t be listing it here. As it is, it’s impossible to prove. As a Pond admin, I’ve experienced the weirdest stuff with asks. I spent one evening chatting with a member while they repeatedly tried to send in asks, and we didn’t get a single one. I do know that asks sent via the app seem to be more likely to be eaten than asks sent via desktop, but asks sent both ways have disappeared.

There are other claims, this is not a complete list, but I will be addressing them with Beka personally (I have already started doing this, actually). I’m only including these two because they can be proved or disproved with facts. Some of the other claims have been leveled against Big Fish in the Pond other than Beka, as well. The Pond will deal with those privately, but we hope you will see an improvement in these areas when the Pond returns from hiatus.

Claims about Vanessa:

I’ve talked to Vanessa about these, without anything constructive coming from it. I tried. I tried to explain to her that she could have gotten further by using less provocative language and offering constructive suggestions. We ended up having the same old arguments about unrelated issues and going around in circles. The only thing Vanessa ceded was that she should not have continued to reach out to Beka after Beka blocked her. She has apologized for this. I don’t need to list the rest here, just know the conversation happened and nothing came of it.

Claims about Beka’s opposition:

Made unsubstantiated claims about Beka sending herself anon hate

I’ll be the first to tell you that I don’t have a single clue how to figure out who has sent an anonymous ask on Tumblr. However, what I do know is that it requires access to the inbox the ask was sent to. In order for someone who is not Beka to say that Beka sent herself an anonymous ask, they would have had to have hacked into her account, somehow. I don’t know much about this, but it sounds illegal. Since there was proof of this offered, it’s a useless claim.

Picked apart posts on her personal blog and said they were intended for her writing audience when they were not

Beka’s personal blog was, she thought, relatively private. It was not meant for her readers to see. (There is an argument to be made about how it’s still a public blog that the world can see, but the charge is that she intended for her readers to see it and respond, and that is not the case.) Yet, someone took it upon themselves to stalk it, and then match posts between the two blogs, making it look like it all came from one blog. They then took their argument to the absurd and claimed she was using her mental health issues to drum up patrons on her Patreon. If that were the case, then it all would have been on her writing blog. But it wasn’t.

Belittled Beka’s cries for help, and then attacked her further

I don’t care if you didn’t believe her when she said she was on the edge, you just don’t do that, folks. That right there is the point where you either walk away or report her to Tumblr as a threat to herself. The last thing you do is double down on your attacks. Take a break, walk away, find a kinder, gentler way to make your point. I don’t care who they are or what they believe or have done, when someone puts the gun to their head, you do not tell them they are an awful human being.

Dissected every post, word by word, including auto tags, using intentionally provocative language

Not every post made was like this, but a lot were. This is high school stuff, guys. To rip apart words used by someone obviously in pain instead of reaching through and looking for the meaning behind it is petty and cruel. Not to mention it takes so much more energy to dig into things like that than to just respond to the meat of things. To take someone’s blog name and twist it into a degrading moniker is sickening. To attack words used in an effort to distract from the topic at hand, or to just add on to the already heaping pile of anger you’re throwing around is unconscionable and pointless. This is not what people who are coming from a place of love or kindness do. This is what you do when you hate someone, and that’s just not cool, guys.

Brought up old issues thought to have been settled a long time ago

My husband calls this “stamp collecting.” There’s a statute of limitations on things, and it depends on the thing, but my personal limit on Tumblr is about two weeks. If nothing has been said about something for two weeks, I assume it’s in the past and I try to move on. I say this because, if it weren’t settled, then we’d all still be working on it, right? If something is bothering me, and I work on it with someone, but I’m not happy, then I’m gonna keep working on it with that person. If they seem to forget (which happens because we’re all human), then I’m gonna send them a quick message. “Hey there! I’m still working on this thing. Can we talk about it again?” I do this with contractors who work on my house. I did this with clients when I worked in an office. To bring up something that happened a long time ago like it’s still an active issue is pointless, and goes against one of the main tenets of effective arguing.

Taking obvious glee in tearing down another person

Do I really have to talk about this? If you had any care for the other person, even enough to just care that they are a person, you would not gloat about how you’re going to tear them apart.

Really, all of this stuff comes down to if you are approaching the world and everything you do from a place of love or from a place of anger and pain. Even if you are angry and in pain, treat other people like you love and respect them, and you will find that everything is just better.

If you feel like I’m coming down on one side or the other of this situation, just know that I’m not. Pretty much, I don’t like things that were done by both sides. These are just the things I feel more comfortable talking about in a public post like this.

Other stuff that’s come up in the course of all of this:

Complaining about notes/followers

So many writers, lately, are frustrated. Tumblr sucks balls on a good day when it comes to notifications and the whole algorithm mess, and that’s still being generous. In an effort to keep the porn blogs at bay, they’ve stifled all creators. Add to that how tags seem to never work when you’re searching for something, and disseminating your work is nearly impossible.

I could tell you all the different ways you can change your focus on the readers you do have, give you lists of things you can do to expand your audience, and offer advice about not comparing yourself to other writers. But you’ve already heard all of that. So, I’m just gonna say it.

If you complain publicly about a lack of notes or followers, you’re gonna look like a dick.

That doesn’t mean you are a dick. You’re just gonna look like one. You’re going to look like you’re ungrateful for the readers that you do have, which is going to turn off those readers, and you’ll end up with even fewer notes and followers. If you manage to disparage other writers while you’re complaining, you’re gonna look like an even bigger dick. So, just don’t do it, unless you don’t mind looking like a dick.

Need to vent about it? Find a close friend and send it to them in a private message. Have a funny thought about it that you want to share? This is exactly what private messages are for. Create a group DM in discord. Heck, I think even Tumblr has a group chat option, now. Just, don’t put it on your blog, unless you want to lose followers.

The number of admins at the Pond

Some folks seem to think that the Pond needs to add more admins in order to react more quickly when something goes down. Honestly, I have talked to Mana and Kale about stepping down as admin because I believe the opposite is true. We have a policy that we all must agree on the big things. However, we are separated by 8 time zones. There is a rare hour every few days (sometimes it’s weeks) when all three of us are awake and not occupied with caring for family members. We have a private group chat thing where we each toss ideas and questions and such into the pot when we’re doing things. When the others get to it, they add their two cents. Usually, there are two of us active at a time, and then we wait for the third to stop by for approval. Often, the third has a question or argument that then needs to be addressed, but the first or second one isn’t available. More admins would only be a good thing if we were all in the same time zone. But we’re not. We are an international group, which I believe is a good thing, but the downside is that it slows us down. Sometimes, being slow is a good thing, too. Generally, at least one of is calm and level-headed at any given time. It shifts on who that one is, but they keep us from doing anything rash.

The whole problem is that no one feels like they can tell you when there’s a problem

I’ve heard this so many times, now, but I haven’t responded to it publicly, so here goes.

Most of you don’t know what I’m like in person, but I’m built like a linebacker. I’m tall, I’m heavy, and I have wide shoulders. I have literally scared small children. Take Jared Padalecki, add another Jared Padalecki on the side, and then take away all the pretty, and you come close to what I’m like when you see me walking down the street.

I don’t want to be a scary person that anyone is afraid to approach. My goal in life is to be kind and fair. I will give you second and third chances, because I know how awful it feels to be written off.

My ask box is always open. My chat windows are always open. My email address is [email protected]. I’m the same on discord and skype. I don’t care if you think your thing is stupid, if it’s something that’s bothering you, and I can help, then I want to help. I can’t always help, but I always want the opportunity to try.

If I have ever done anything that made you feel like I didn’t care, then I give you permission to tell me. I’ll hate hearing it, but I need to hear it.

If I have forgotten to follow up on something for you, PLEASE REMIND ME. Holy, cow, I have a TERRIBLE memory. It’s really bad. I have tricks and stuff that I do to try to make sure I don’t lose track of things, but it still happens. Please, come back to me and remind me that I promised you something. I guarantee that I will not be mad or upset. I will be glad, because you’re helping me to be the person I want to be.

I think that’s about it. The Pond is still on hiatus, indefinitely. We have a lot of things we’re talking about for if/when we come back, and some of them are really exciting to me. I hope we come back. I hope we can make the Pond what we always meant it to be. We’ll need help, and constant feedback from our fishy family, but I still have hope.

#incoherent babbling by mrswhozeewhatsis #michelle rants #mrswhozeewhatsis rants

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gryfon-spanish-werewolf · 3 years

Note

7. What story/headcanons do you feel the proudest of?

15. What is the fanfic you’ve written that you’re most proud of?

16. What fanfic tropes do you avoid writing for?

17. What fanfic tropes do you gravitate to writing for?

20. What feedback makes you the happiest to hear?

21. Is there an idea you’ve always wanted to write, but haven’t yet?

36. What fanfic of yours has the symbolism you’re proudest of?

39. What area of writing do you feel strongest in?

Fanfic Writer Asks

7) In terms of headcanons (which I wouldn’t say I make often) I think I’m most proud of how I unabashedly use magic in a lot of my stories. Elsa’s magic, Troll magic, Other-magic - if I think something is neat then I kind of just roll with it!

Elsa’s ice magic, in canon has a LOT of uses, but I like pushing the boundaries. Ice-GPS? Check. Icepack for that burn? Check (though who hasn’t xD). Troll magic used for time travel? Check. Troll magic used for Dream-traversal?? Check. Physical embodiment of a strong emotion via magic? Check. Physical, evil appearance of an emotion incarnate via ice magic and troll magic and the POWER OF LOVE? Where’s my BINGO sheet? Cuz check that too.

15) OOF wow, that’s a hard one. I hate to say it but it MIGHT be one that’s not published and is currently sitting on my GDrive >_>;; I’m really proud of my Frozen!StarWars crossover

But of the ones that are published? Either A Banisher’s Dilemma or Great Knight Annatorias, The Abysswalker. I got to be super nerdy and meta on the second one^^

16) I avoid writing smut, I’ve never really been game for it. I’m always amazed that other people can write it, but I never really want to. I also tend to avoid angst, especially if it’s for no other reason than JUST angst. It has it’s place, but I don’t like using it just to get a reaction. (Some of you are already pointing fingers at Spirit - I know I KNOW xD It was a one off, I swear!)

17) I immediately gravitate towards anything SOFT. I love slice of life, I love characters bonding with each other, I love when they have CONVERSATIONS, especially about hard things that they can work through together! I also love “Firsts’”! First meeting, first hug, first confession, first kiss, first hand-hold, first date, first anniversary, etc etc. I love confessions and conversations. On the flip side I really love established relationships? Whatever they are: familial, friends, romantic or marital. There’s something really nice about a a pair or a group already being together. I have no idea where that all fits under your standard trope lists, but those are mine!

20) I absolutely scream if anyone ever quotes my stuff back to me saying stuff like “I really liked this line/paragraph/part because...” and then says why. I lose my mind. I also love when people say “This made me feel X” because I’m just ever so curious about how writing affects people!

Edit bc I forgot: I’ve had one (1) person make me fan art once as “feedback” for a story and I was on cloud 9 for like, shit, a month?? I still think about that person. I legit hope they are living their best life.

21) I wouldn’t say I “always” wanted to write this since I’m WAY too impatient to wait on ideas most of the time BUT I have had this au sitting in my WIPs folder for nearly 6 YEARS and it’s about how the King and Queen of Arendelle are secretly part of a vampire hunting guild. They kill a vampire that snuck into the castle one night but not before it infects their daughter and heir to the throne, Elsa (who’s like, 6 or 8). Even though they’re oathbound to kill vampires, they can’t kill their daughter. The castle is closed similar to post-Accident Frozen 1.

Jumping to modern times, Anna is a history student exploring the mountains of Norway with her classmate, Hans, and a guide, Kristoff, and they are heading for the ruins of Arendelle castle for a research project. Rumors say that despite wars, invasions, thrill seekers, and treasure hunters, a lot of people that go into that foggy area of the fjord waters and forest end up lost and never found. The few that make it out tell tales of strange chills and the feeling of eyes at their backs. Locals know that the headstones of the last living Royals (who died at sea) are still tended to, though no one knows by whom. Anna gets separated from the group and encounters a sleeping Elsa in the castle before sundown. Afraid for the stranger’s safety (it’s winter, it’s cold, and it’s going to be night soon), Anna attempts to wake Elsa, to no avail. Realizing she’s sort of stuck herself, Anna builds a fire and awaits morning (and her own rescue), unknowing that in the last rays of sunlight her “companion” is about to wake. For the worse.

Unrelated to fanfic, I HAVE always wanted to write a story about a girl named Rain (as such for her birth during a terrible storm) that misfortune is heaped upon by the bucketful, so much so that everyone believes she’s cursed, except for her tutor. I want her name have a double meaning that she both slumps and shines under, since rain may bring destruction, but also growth and healing.

36) A Banisher’s Dilemma, hands down. I did SO MUCH RESEARCH for that fic AND I was in a Bible New Testament class at the same time, so I just SHOVED a whole bunch of Christian history, themes, imagery, and references in there. It’s not the only symbolism however, as I mixed plenty of other global and cultural references in there as well. Hard not to, since Anna is literally jet-setting to a new location nearly every chapter.

39) Surprising maybe no one: light humor! My writing is often funny, mostly because I like to make myself laugh :D If I’m not having fun, than what’s the point!? Most often it’s shown off in my one shots or short fiction, but even re-reading some of my longer chapter fics still has me laughing at the same jokes I wrote many years ago.

If not humor than portraying strong emotions. I’ve received too many (generous and loving <3) comments about how pinpoint accurate or visceral my portrayal of joy or sorrow, grief or fear, or love and happiness are to deny it. And that’s much less of a boast and more a humble acknowledgement of people who have written very thoughtful responses to my work, and it would be irresponsible to imply that their words over the years were false in any way.

Thanks for the ask! These are a lot of really good questions!

#anon ask #fanfic ask #also did they change the way asks can be sent/formatted?#i swear I've never seen an ask stacked like that xD #great questions tho like I said #A Banisher's Dilemma #Great Knight Annatorias The Abysswalker #Spirit #The Darkness Within #unnamed Vampire!au #Frozen!StarWars crossover #So You Can Always Find Me #as for the humor? MOST of my little short stories have humor and they are all on Ao3 and FF.net

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queenitn · 4 years

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So...I just found something that I'd written one night at like 4am a month into lockdown.

It's pretty much a very unnecessarily angry rant.

I can probably contradict half the stuff I say in it myself. It's just...kinda rude in places and when I'm thinking straight there's some parts I don't really agree with myself. It's not aimed at anybody and I'm definitely a hypocrite but I'm gonna post it anyways so go wild I guess.

So I recently took a stroll through Stucky fanfiction on ao3. For a while there I'd been avoiding it, and I'd nearly convinced myself that my mind was exaggerating the whole bottom!Bucky/top!Steve thing but yeah, I'm not.

Normally, I'd say who tops or bottoms doesn't matter. It's pretty irrelevant. But... since the majority of the fanfictions clearly prefer to write bottom!Bucky, obviously, there is some significance. Wouldn't the proportion be more equal if it truly was irrelevant?

Besides being annoying as fuck, it's also pretty interesting I guess. I have nothing else to do so I'm going to be ranting about a lot of stuff.

So, I mostly try to look for bottom!Steve, right? Because that's what I like. I read a bottom!Steve fic, then I say, "Hmm, this author seems to like bottom!Steve, maybe they've written more?" I go check, and I find...mostly bottom!Bucky, with maybe one or two more bottom!Steve.

It's fine the first few times, but after a while it's honestly weird. Clearly, a lot of very good authors have no problem writing bottom!Steve. They just happen to write more bottom!Bucky. As far as I can tell, that's pretty much the common trend. But why? What exactly does one think while starting a new fic, going all, "Hmm...I think...this time.... we're gonna have bottom!Bucky again." Again and again and again until it's most times.

Why is bottom!Steve so fetishized? I don't mean the fics that actually have a dom/sub element. I mean just pure bottom!Steve itself. Why does it have to be some sort of rarity?

As far as I know, there's...really nothing in canon indicating who would likely top or bottom. (I mean yeah, I do believe that canon Bucky is more likely to want to dom than canon Steve, but that's different.)

So, what is it?

Sure, Steve is taller, has a deeper voice, more muscle, a beard....but those are just physical things. They don't actually have anything to do with taking or giving.

Besides, he used to be small before. Is that what this is about? Previously tiny man likes to be in control? Likes to...what? Prove he's a manlier man? Bullshit. Besides the fact that it's bullshit, it also doesn't seem to fit with canon Steve.

The "Sometimes I think you like getting punched" and the "And you've got nothing to prove" make me think that his proving himself had less to do with showing his dominance and more to do with showing his endurance. I'd say bottoming is exactly what he'd want to do.

Besides, wasn't that exactly what made his relationship with Bucky special? The fact that he didn't have to "prove himself" in any way? Bucky already knew his worth.

Is it because Steve likes to give orders? Some sort of "Oh, this guy was always meant to be the leader"? Well, there's a huge difference between being a leader, giving orders in a battlefield...and giving orders in the bedroom. And I'm pretty sure top/bottom preferences would be completely unrelated to who's the boss at work.

But nevermind that, as far as I can tell, sure Steve gives orders, but he also looks to the people he trusts for guidance. The best example is Nat. The thing that makes their friendship so goddamm precious is partly in the way he always glances at her for confirmation before making a decision. Isn't Bucky sort of like an Ultimate Nat with sex benefits?

Nevermind that too. Steve bossing people around is great, but that's not the point, is it? The point is does he enjoy it? I think, the only movie where he did look like he relished his power was TFA. I'm pretty confident that's because of the novelty of his new strength partially, and partially also because of the rush caused by his back to back successes. Why? Because he never seems to take that kind of enjoyment again. As opposed to...maybe Sam? The guy who gets his literal wings back after (presumably) years and lets out a whoop after being chased by the missile thingies. Sam's joy doesn't wear off. Steve's does.

Is it just me, or has this skew towards bottom!Bucky actually increased over the years? Why? I can say a few things on this.

First, maybe people need to remember a bit more that Sebastian Stan is not Bucky Barnes. Chris Evans is not Steve Rogers. And Steve Rogers is not Captain America.

No matter what you think about the actors, the characters they play are separate. Please.

Second, there is a very interesting theory that exists which says that the reason why Bucky is so popular in the fandom is because his character arc is relatable to women and the queer community in the fact that it's about him regaining his stolen agency. Which is true.

Does this have anything to do with him bottoming though? I mean, I don't know. Fanfictions are important because they allow us to explore ourselves, whether it's our sexuality or our trauma that we're trying to figure out. In that way, it makes sense that maybe we will tend to write Bucky as a bottom more often. Except no.

Partly because, having had bad experiences at a young age myself, and being queer myself, I do not relate to Bucky. And hypothetically speaking, I would totally bottom for Peggy or Bucky, but I would rail the absolute shit out of Steve. I canNOT be the only one.

Partly also because yeah, a lot of fanfiction is projection, which is good for the soul, both yours and mine, but not to the point where we create a fanon version of the character completely different from the canon one. Yeah, you could say that canon doesn't really give us much of a character, but clearly they give us something and we have to build up on that right? It's true for both Bucky and Steve. Bucky barely has lines, but his actions speak enough. There's an absolutely breathtaking character waiting for you in canon if you really want to look. As for Steve, let me just say, sass and the tiniest little hints of PTSD do not make a whole character. Marvel fucked it up, but this goes for the fandom too (this is keeping in mind that Steve technically has three movies dedicated to him and Bucky doesn't)

Stop treating Steve like your personal punching bag, Stucky fandom.

It does happen, if we project our bad experiences on Bucky, Steve often naturally fills the role of the clueless/mildly asshole-ish love interest. Not too much of an asshole though, clearly you love him.

That's fine. Fanfiction is about self expression, but should we lose sight of the canon characters that we loved so much in the first place? And isn't fanfiction just as much about exploring those characters, as objectively as we possibly can?

Another thing related to that...why do we only have to identify with one character? I don't know how to put this, but there's a thing called halo effect and I think that's kind of what happens (I'm not a psychologist).

You see something in Bucky. And then you start to attribute more and more things to him that may or may not actually exist. Like yeah, he's fullfilling the traditional love interest role in Steve's movies, but that doesn't automatically mean he's a bottom. The two things are... actually entirely unrelated. They're only related in your mind. And similar to that, when we see one thing in a character that we identify with, we kind of want to see even more things in them we identify with, but it doesn't have to be like that. That's not how any person works, and it's not how any fully developed character works. You can relate to both the characters in different ways, no need to dump it all in one.

Ok, another thing, that I don't like to think about but it's occured to me and I don't like it. So, Steve is generally coded as a bisexual, right? And Bucky is coded as gay. Look yourself in the eye in the mirror and think about whether you're unconsciously assuming that the bi guy isn't going to want to bottom. I'm a bisexual woman, I will top Steve. I kind of resent this.

Going off on another tangent, I have also delved into Stony on my quest for bottom!Steve. Pretty sure there's even less of that there. Why??? That's crazy.

Normally, I'm pretty sure Tony would be coded as the top. He's much older, richer. He clearly has control issues. That's one of his defining features. Control. (I don't mean that in a bad way.) So....what exactly do Bucky and Tony have in common besides dark hair and short hight? The only thing I could come up with was thotiness. They're both shown as Thots. Is that it? The Thot Bottoms? Ok.

Is it the whole energy thing? "Bucky has bottom energy"? Does he? Can you argue with me if I say that TFA Steve has bratty bottom energy? That TFA Bucky goes from service top energy to mean top energy? Pretty sure that's subjective. But what exactly are we seeing differently here? I'm honestly asking.

Bucky's character is ridiculously strong, stronger than Steve in some ways (besides probably physically). Specifically, it's because of his ability to not only survive, but heal. Can we acknowledge how crazy that is? He's just fucking buying plums, but that's still more than we've ever seen Steve do. You can say his trauma is greater, but it looks like his coping ability is greater too. So is that what this is? Steve doesn't cope. Instead he focuses on external things like being Cap, Hydra, Bucky. I wouldn't call that a healthy way of living...but it's romantic, right? Neglecting to take care of yourself? No, actually avoiding taking care of yourself by focusing entirely on another person? Is that it? We're romanticizing unhealthy behaviour?

Is it because you feel more for Bucky, wearing his hurt on his sleave, versus Steve who wears it hidden under his skin?

Am I allowed to believe that Steve's ultimate shield isn't the vibranium one, but Captain America himself?

That's just me getting off track and mildly pissy but the point stands. We like seeing Steve in control. He wears it well. He's good at it. But that's just not that relevant. You don't just boss poeple around in the bedroom because you're good at it, you have to want it too. Would he want it? Is a commanding voice really an indicator of a person's desire to command? Can we really say because he's usually the one giving orders (because that's his actual job), that he likes it too? Does he look like he especially likes it? No.

I've been around fandoms long enough to know that all fandoms always have a preference regarding who ultimately tops or bottoms. This isn't the first time it's bugged me, but it feels more this time because I just don't see it. And it makes me angry because it contradicts what I feel, are the best parts of the characters. No, Bucky bottoming isn't the contradiction..but all this that I wrote, the connotations of this kind of coding, the underlying thoughts.... some of it is just not nice, but some of it opposes the little things that humanize these characters. It wouldn't matter, except that it wouldn't have happened at all if it didn't matter.

It's not just what happens to them in canon that matters so much. It's also what they choose to do for themselves when they have the chance. It feels like they made their choices and half the fandom ignored it. "Nah man, you'll look better at the bottom. Look at that hair."

Because ultimately, that's what it feels like to me. A mixture of not thinking too much about it (though I know this post probably counts as overthinking), some wierd internalised heteronormativity, and I don't know what just kind of fucks with all of us. All I know is that I hate it. I hate it.

It's not the bottom!Bucky I hate, it's the underlying, unthinking assumptions. The way it's a foregone conclusion. It's not. I really just want to be able to read the goddamn fanfictions again without wanting to tear my skin off.

( You can help by giving reccs)

#steve rogers #captain america #bucky barnes #stucky

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w-k-smith · 4 years

Photo

Once again, tumblr has hidden the version of this post that has links. (Clearly, weird fan fic where ghosts eat candy bars is just *too radical* for this website.) This story is also available on AO3, under the username w_k_smith.

Chapter Two is here of “Don’t Go to the Netherworld!”

In this chapter, Beetlejuice and Lydia make their way through Saturn, but are waylaid by Zagnuts, a boy band, and all the obstacles the desert otherworld has to offer.

Chapter One: “It’s a Wonderful Afterlife” (6/19/20) Chapter Two: “Worm Welcome” (07/03/20) Chapter Three: “Ghost to Ghost” (upcoming) Chapter Four: “To Beetle or not to Beetle?” (upcoming)

Warning: This story contains depictions of, references to, and discussion of topics like suicide, untimely death, abuse, and body horror - you know, like the musical does (though this probably has more). Know your boundaries, and stay safe.

New chapter under keep reading!

“I don’t understand,” Lydia said, as they crossed from the midnight of the administrative area, toward the hot afternoon of Saturn, through the twilight in between. “What’s Saturn? Are we going to the planet…somehow?”

“Nope. Totally unrelated, and don’t ask me who named it. Saturn is the part of the Netherworld that acts as a trap for ghosts who get out of line, like if you try to leave the house you’re haunting, or jump the line in processing like someone I could mention. Going through processing would only take a couple steps, but Saturn is an anti-shortcut from the feverish nightmares of M.C. Escher. It’s a giant desert, and it’s full of sandworms. Those are snake monsters that eat ghosts. Foreshadowing?” he muttered to himself.

“This is so weird,” Lydia muttered. “I love it.”

She didn’t seem like she was being sarcastic. Maybe hanging around her wasn’t going to be too terrible.

Unfortunately, he saw trouble ahead.

“Keep your head down,” he whispered to Lydia. “Look dead. Deader than that. And don’t sneeze! Dead people never sneeze!”

“What?”

“Hello, Beetlejuice,” said five tenor voices in unison. A cluster of expressionless young white men was drifting through the shadows toward him and Lydia. The boys had died in their late teens and very early twenties, long enough ago that two of them sported frosted tips. They were dressed just differently enough to be distinguishable from one another, in dated pants and t-shirts with no personality.

“Hey, Boy Inferno,” he grunted.

“What are you doing out here?” they asked. They all floated six inches off the ground, in a formation reminiscent of migrating ducks.

He rolled his eyes. “Just running an errand for Juno. Miss Argentina find that living intruder yet?”

“Not that we’ve heard. Who’s your friend?”

“New hire. Juno wants her on border patrol. Her name’s Lydia, and she’s boring. Kids these days, you know, they think eyeliner and TikTok counts as personality. But them’s the rules: if you add to the work, you have to help out.”

“Do you want to hear the introduction song, Lydia?”

Geez, they didn’t back off easy. “Save that for people who’ve committed genocide or worse.”

“We were talking to Lydia.”

At his elbow, Lydia scratched the end of her nose. Boy Inferno caught the gesture, and as one, cocked their heads.

“What did you die of…?” they asked her.

“Um, I don’t want to talk about it,” Lydia said, which was the wrong thing. All newlydeads ever wanted to do was blather on about how they’d bitten it.

“OK, you got me!” He stepped between Lydia and the boys. “This isn’t an approved mission to Saturn. We were actually trying to, ah, hide out from Juno for a while. She is in a mood today, I tell ya. Just impossible. She wants me to take a statement from all the recently deceased who were in line when the alarm went off, and then pinch each of them really, really hard to see if they still have nerve endings. I’d rather swallow my own toenails. Remember that time Juno made me swallow my own toenails? You were there for that, weren’t you? So be a hive-minded pal and help me stay on the DL. This one already threatened to tattle if I didn’t show her my good hiding spot.” He jerked his head at Lydia.

Boy Inferno blinked.

“Alright, then,” they said, and each voice sounded suspicious. But they drifted back toward the administrative area.

Lydia stared as they went. “Who are those guys?”

“Boy Inferno is a dead boy band. They didn’t have enough brains or personality to be individuals when they were a living boy band, and when their tour bus crashed, the situation got worse.”

“Yikes. And speaking of yikes, what were you saying about sandworms? Are they going to eat us?”

He waggled one hand back and forth, and started walking. “Eh. It’s probably OK. You’re alive, so they’ll leave you alone. I’m half-ghost, half-demon, which confuses them more than anything. We’ll be fine if we don’t run into a sandworm that’s pissed off or starving.” They were crossing into Saturn proper. The terrain changed from dark gravel to rolling sand dunes dotted with twisted rock formations. Wooden doors hovered here and there, from three feet off the ground to 20 stories high. There was the light and warmth of a yellow sun, but if you turned in every direction, you would never see a sun or any other stars in the royal blue sky.

“Huh. Now I kind of want to meet a sandworm...” Lydia said, looking around like one was going to pop out from behind a dune.

“Yup. That’s definitely foreshadowing.”

“So…what’s it like? Being half-demon? How does that, um, happen?”

He waved his hands to turn them into sock puppets – one red and bearing a vague resemblance to Juno, the other a grey blob and as good a representation as he’d ever had of his father. “Hello, children!” he said in a screechy voice. “Let’s talk about the occult birds and bees. When a demon woman tolerates a living human male very much…”

She shoved him. “I know that, gross! I’m ace, but not completely ignorant. I just wondered if you were ever alive.”

He put his hands back to normal. “Uh-huh. I was alive. Looooong time ago, though. Long enough that we didn’t pay much attention to what year it was, and only bathed twice a lifetime, and drank beer instead of water. Hm. Or maybe that was all just me. Anyway, Juno only had me to see what would happen if you mixed demon magic with ghost abilities. Turns out, you get yours truly. She hated the result, and I never got any little siblings to chase around. But it’s fine with the just the two of us; my mom has this sweet thing she says to me every day: ‘I wish you had never been born.’ I think it’s a Swedish pet name.”

“How did you die?” Lydia asked.

“I asked a bunch of annoying questions that weren’t any of my business and someone stabbed me.”

“Ha ha,” she deadpanned. “How far is it, anyway?” she asked, shading her eyes. “I don’t see anything…”

“Distance doesn’t really work like that here, and we could move way, way faster if we were both dead. But it’s pretty damn far.”

She sighed.

He had to give Lydia Deetz this: she was a trooper. She was wearing a dress, and boots that were very much not made for walking, but she kept moving, eyes forward, not a single complaint. When her stomach growled like an angry guard dog, she held her head high and acted like she didn’t notice.

“OK, time for a break!” he said.

“No!” she said. “We have to keep going.”

“If you keep going like this, you’re going to collapse, and then you’ll die, and a sandworm will eat you, and that’s my whole day gone. Sit down.”

“I don’t need to.”

She was going to give him grey hairs, she really was. He shook one hand like he was shooing a fly, and she stumbled backwards until she sat on the closest rock.

Lydia’s eyes bugged. “What am I – what are you –?”

“You’ve never been possessed before?”

She stood back up. He waved his hand again, and she sat.

“No, keep it up,” he said. “This is fun.”

He flicked his fingers, and her expression brightened.

“Beetlejuice, you’re my role model!” she said, in a tone much more chipper than any that had ever come out of her mouth, he was sure. He released her.

Lydia’s face soured like old milk mixed with lemon juice, and she made the fingers-down-the-throat gesture. “I’ll sit for five minutes. Don’t do that again.”

“I always knew I’d make a great babysitter!” He settled on the other side of the rock. He folded his hands over his stomach, figuring he’d take a nap if she stayed quiet.

She didn’t. “My mom would love all this,” Lydia said. “Her favorite holiday was Halloween. We’d make our own haunted houses in the garage – but in the summer, when no one in the neighborhood was expecting it. She liked the weird stuff in the world. Or – she likes the weird stuff in the world. She doesn’t just avoid it, like most people do. Like my dad does. I think she’ll like you, even.”

He wanted to make a face at the idea of a well-adjusted person liking him (though it was a nice feeling, deep in his black heart), but Lydia couldn’t see him, so it would be wasted effort.

She was quiet for a while, and he thought he was free to drift off to sleep.

“Um…do you have any food?” she asked.

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a handful of Zagnuts. He tossed the kid two. “Here ya go.”

“Why so many Zagnuts?” Lydia asked. “They’re good, but I didn’t think people ate these anymore.”

“It’s the only candy in the vending machines in the Netherworld.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because everything around here is at a baseline of low-grade crappiness. Haven’t you noticed?”

“Are you really supposed to spend eternity here when you die?” she asked, in a muffled way that told him she’d bitten off half a candy bar at once. “It seems like it should either be a whole lot better or a whole lot worse.”

“You aren’t supposed to spend eternity here; that’s the point,” he said. He popped a Zagnut into his mouth, and swallowed it wrapper and all. “You have to move on, eventually.”

“To what?”

“Do I look like a priest? Or a philosopher? Or a TV psychic?”

“The last one, a little. A bad one. The kind who gets tricked by reporters to help contact their dead kid, but it turns out the kid is really alive and just in the next booth over in the Denny’s.”

“Touché. The point is, nobody around here knows. You hang around the administrative area until you’re ready to go into the miserable nothingness of the Abyss, and then you swirl around in the Abyss until…I dunno, something else happens. Maybe you just stay in the Abyss forever. I don’t plan on finding out anytime soon.”

“Is that where my mom is?”

“Yup. If she didn’t come running when you first came through the door, she’s definitely gone through security. Don’t worry, though. You poke your head into the Abyss and shout her name a few times, and she’ll come right out.”

He lied easily. He always had.

“I’m just surprised she hasn’t tried to contact us,” Lydia said. “I guess she must be confused, because we moved and everything. My dad dragged me out to Connecticut, away from New York and all our friends and family, to work on this stupid gated community project he has in mind. And he took my annoying life coach with us. She’s friendly and positive, and keeps trying to make me fill out a star chart. I don’t know why he thinks she’s helping me. It’s not like there aren’t actual therapists in Connecticut. I don’t get it.”

He chewed another Zagnut for a beat, waiting to see if she was making a joke. Then he broke the news. “Your dad is boinking the life coach.”

“What?!” she said. She whirled around the rock to sit right next to him. “How can you know that?”

“Um, because I’m an adult with a brain.” He grabbed the top of his head and lifted his skull to show his grey matter.

“He isn’t…Dad’s not…” She slumped. “He’s totally sleeping with her.”

“Totally,” he agreed.

“How could he do that? Mom’s only been dead a few months. Well…when he sees Mom – if he just talks to her again – he’ll understand what an ass he’s been.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, non-committedly.

“How much farther do we have?” she asked.

“Long enough to aaaaaaalmost make you give up and collapse in despair.”

She groaned.

For a second, he thought her groan was superhumanly long and loud, and he prepared to be impressed. Then he noticed the ground was shaking.

“Looks like it’s our unlucky day!” he said. “Run!”

They both got to their feet, and made it about five steps before the sand exploded to their left. A sandworm rose from the earth, its black-and-white stripes blurring into grey. At the peak of its jump, its inner head came out of its mouth, eyes glaring, jaw snapping.

It dove back down toward them.

He dodged one way, and Lydia dodged the other. The spray of sand blocked out everything, and when it all cleared, the sandworm had risen from the ground again, undulating in and out of the dunes. Lydia stood in place, looking all around. But it was hard to know where to run when you were being attacked by a sandworm.

The sandworm’s chomping heads came out of the ground an arm’s length from Lydia. She yelled, and punched it in the closest eye.

The heads hissed and thrashed, knocking Lydia down. The sandworm dove down, and the sand around them whirled and roiled, until he felt like he was standing in boiling dirt.

When the sandworm rose again, it accidentally scooped up Lydia. She showed a little more survival instinct than she had before, and clung to the sandworm’s back.

“Knock it off!” he heard her say. She nudged the sandworm with her left boot, and the sandworm turned to the right. But it had had enough of its passenger, and whipped its body to throw Lydia like a beanbag.

She shrieked as she fell through the air. He stretched his legs, about 20 feet, and caught her.

As he dragged her back to the ground, he braced himself for another attack by the sandworm. Maybe if he transformed into something big and scary, showed some lionfish spines or extra limbs, the worm would leave them alone. Getting swallowed would be no good. Not only did he usually try to avoid getting eaten, but sandworms’ digested prey just wound up back in processing…after a wait of at least a decade or so.

The sandworm jumped over their heads, dove into the ground, and kept going. Its writhing body upset every dune it plowed through, but it didn’t double back.

He wasn’t going to look a gift worm in the mouth.

“And don’t come back!” he yelled. “G’on, git! Git!”

Lydia jumped out of his arms. “That was awesome! I thought I was going to die, but it was awesome.”

He was more tired than he’d been in a while. He was tired like Juno had been screaming at him for hours. Also, there was a lot of sand in his shoes. “You did OK But why the hell did you try to punch it in the face?”

She didn’t look ashamed in the slightest. “I thought it would be like avoiding a shark attack. That’s what the Discovery guy said during Shark Week: punch the shark hard in the eye so it leaves you alone.”

“Since when has punching something made it leave you alone?” he asked. “That has never worked when I’ve tried it with people.”

“Because then the shark – or the sandworm – thinks you’re too much of a threat and it ignores you. I made it go away, didn’t I?’

“I seriously doubt you’re what made it leave, Karate Kid. If a sandworm had its multiple hearts set on eating us, it would take more than your mechanical bull riding skills to dissuade it. I don’t know – I’m not so sure it was all that interested in us.”

“If it wasn’t going for us, why did it come over here?”

“I said I don’t know! I’m not a sandworm scientist.”

“Your hair is changing color,” she said, pointing at his head.

“Can you blame me? I’m pretty pissed off right now.”

She brightened. “It changes color with your mood?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I touch it?”

He grunted, and tilted his head. She patted some strands on the right side of his head, which were dark green at the tips, but probably working their way to red. The cocoon the caterpillar had made behind his ear popped open, and a death’s-head hawkmoth shot into the air and planted itself on Lydia’s nose.

“Augh!” she yelped, and fell right on her ass. He doubled over laughing while she tried to get back up with dignity.

“You’ve taken things too far this time, Beetlejuice!”

Once, just once, he’d like to go 48 hours without hearing those words shouted at him.

He turned to see Miss Argentina stomping up a sand dune, clipboard in hand, sash askew, which meant she was really really really upset.

“What have I done this time?” he asked, resigned.

“What have you done this time?” Miss Argentina pointed at Lydia. “Let’s start with child endangerment! And the fact that your disappearance has about given Juno apoplexy.”

“Ah, she loves me.”

“No! She just knows that if she hasn’t heard from you in twelve hours, it means you’re up to something! And that means the rest of us suffer! I’m just glad she gave me clearance to go to Saturn to look for your sorry, sagging ass, so at least I was able shoo a sandworm away from some newlydeads. I have a sneaking suspicion you bear some responsibility for that, too?”

“OK, that is both not fair and completely true,” he said. “And I’ll have you know I’m doing a good deed. I’m guiding this one around the Netherworld.” He jerked his head at Lydia.

“And why, in the name of all that is sacred, would you consider that a good idea?”

“Um…” He faltered. He may have been able to fudge a few details with Lydia, but Miss Argentina had been around long enough to know how the Abyss worked.

“Newlydeads…” Lydia said. “That must have been what attracted the sandworm. It wasn’t coming for us after all.”

“Why did you drag newlydeads with you?” he asked, happy to change the subject. “What, did you need help shouting at me? Anger backup singers?”

“Of course not.” Miss Argentina frowned. “But – that’s a good idea.” She clicked her pen, and scribbled on her clipboard. “I am actually writing that down. If Boy Inferno is free…”

“Excuse me!” came a woman’s voice from the bottom on the dune. “I’m so sorry – could you wait just a minute?”

“It’s very hard to walk on sand!” came a sexy, nasal male voice from the same direction.

“These newlydeads have a problem, you see,” said Miss Argentina, her voice icy. But something was wrong – she wasn’t looking at him. Her gaze was fixed on Lydia. “Apparently, a living person used their Handbook without permission.”

Lydia became interested in the horizon. “Huh. That’s weird.”

Miss Argentina jabbed a finger in Lydia’s face. “Oh, don’t even try that on me, living girl. I am not in the mood today.”

“Whoof! We made it.” The newlydead couple crested the dune…and he was smitten.

The woman was white, a pretty blonde, in a green wrap dress and suburban-mom-at-the-nice-grocery-store boots. Her companion was a beautiful Desi man, with light brown skin and a lock of black hair hanging over his forehead that he immediately wanted to run his fingers through.

“Oooooh…” he said. “Hello, sexy…”

Lydia looked at him with a scientific expression. “Which one?”

“The Trader Joe’s guardian angels over here. Not that Miss A isn’t pretty easy on the eyes herself, but she’s a friend of Ellen, know what I mean? A patron of U-Haul. An adopter of shelter cats. Wrong tree, is what I’m saying. But she loves me platonically.”

“She doesn’t,” Miss Argentina said.

The couple pushed past him and bent over Lydia.

“Oh, thank goodness!” the woman said.

“Lydia!” said the man. “I’m so glad we found you. We were worried sick!”

“Adam, Barbara?” Lydia said. “What…what are you doing here? You weren’t supposed to go to the Netherworld.”

#beetlejuice #beetlejuice fanfiction #beetlejuice the musical #lydia deetz #fan fiction

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