#but only now instead of drawing out my insanity i have to sit and stew or rant to my friends | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

saturnsummer · 3 years

Text

sweet love

They say drunk words are your sober thoughts. Joon Hwi clearly had too many thoughts.

prompted by an anon from this question here! thanks anon!!

notes: hello! back with another fic, this time when joonhwi gets too drunk and spills more than he expects. stay till the end though, i added a little bonus as usual. editing, grammar and other mistakes will be taken responsible by me! thank you all for your love and support as always! i’ll see you for more next time!

original prompt: I love your fic 🥰 this is so far from canon but a drunk joonhwi being clingy towards sol a is one of my dream scenarios 😚 or the squad catching solhwi being clingy with each other because they were hiding their relationship

words: 3414 words

Joon Hwi was beyond excited everyday when he woke up for school. No, he wasn't excited to get the top grade, neither was he excited to get his essays and reports done. Though he loves the law, he’s sane enough to not love it that much.

Of course, he’s just excited about meeting his girlfriend, Kang Sol.

He never knew how they got together. It was a natural thing, after all. After the whole fiasco with Assemblyman Ko, their relationship suddenly felt a lot closer. They were close to begin with, with their daily studying and lunches and dinners. But something was different after the middle of their second year.

It started out as dinners every night, with or without the study group. Then Sol would be in study group sessions wearing his sweater or hoodies. When Yeseul or Yebeom teased, Sol would always argue to say that it was cold in their copy room and Joon Hwi was just being nice. Joon Hwi would just pretend that ‘sharing sweaters were normal’.

Then one day, as Joon Hwi sent Sol back home to take care of Byeol, they sat side by side in silence. Sol was desperately in need of catching up on her sleep, so the forty minute bus ride served as a quick nap for her. She turned her head to lean on Joon Hwi’s shoulder, resting her head there for her nap. To make things more comfortable, he placed his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer.

When they were nearing their stop, Joon Hwi instinctively shook a sleepy Sol up and held her hand as he dragged her out so she wouldn’t miss the stop. Sol doesn’t let go, and neither does Joon Hwi. Only when they reach the start of the alley do they let go of their hands. (Sol insists it’s because she doesn’t want Byeol to know. Joon Hwi thinks it’s because she’s shy.)

When Joon Hwi is at her front door with Sol, they shyly look at each other, the feelings mutual and conveyed with just their eyes. Of course, they are soulmates. They don't need the words to deliver their entire hearts or feelings.

It was always made known from the start to Joon Hwi that Sol was special to him. He has never met someone so persistent, so passionate and so damm beautiful. He had a couple of flings, being the popular smart boy in school, but none of the girls made his heart beat the same way Sol did. None of them made his world stop.

It has been a year since. And things weren’t easy when you tried to hide it. Sol, a student on a scholarship, had better luck being chosen to attend this school than the number of times the couple almost got caught.

In school, they acted normally as classmates and friends. Their study group sensed something different, but they would just deny and pretend. They put on a pretty good act, if they were to say so themselves, having Bokgi convinced that they needed to find Sol a blind date. (Joon Hwi would have spat his water at him like how Professor Yang did at Prosecutor Jin, but he held it in. Five months of hiding couldn’t be wasted now.)

They wanted to tell their friends, they really did. But they wanted to do it after their bar exams. After the weight of the bar has been lifted off will they share their good news. But while hiding a relationship is hard, making time for one was harder. (Arguably, Joon Hwi finds this harder than any exam he took.)

They absolutely found every minute they could to be together. Every hidden staircase was a spot they tried to spend a few minutes to themselves, but even that was difficult. Joon Hwi would remember how Sol would lead him to a hidden staircase far from their hideout, so as to not get walked in by either the professors or their friends. Even in the midst of Joon Hwi pressing Sol against the wall, as they devoured each other’s lips after a whole day of being unable to kiss, they would be interrupted by the sudden doors of the staircase upstairs opening, causing them to fly apart and run out.

The gossip the school carried was insane, and the last thing they wanted was gossip to reach their friends.

They could spend longer moments in the study room in the middle of the nights where they would be alone, as they worked on their cases and work. Occasionally, they shared bunggeoppangs and hotteoks, where they had long kisses tasting of sweet red bean and honey. But too many times Sol found herself shifting from her seat next to Joon Hwi to climbing on top of his lap in a make-out session, as Joon Hwi reached up to remove the highlighter holding her hair. Just as they wanted more, a sudden noise would bring them to attention and frantically, Sol would fall back onto her chair, both of their faces flushed red.

It was just four more months till the graduation ceremony came.

Till the world knows Sol was Joon Hwi’s.

-----

The bar exam went smoothly, as everyone received their results of passing. As a celebration, the boys decided to drink and have a meal apart from their usual delivery. No, it was time for the real deal of barbecues, meat and stews. They decided to even give a call to Seungjae, who graciously accepted their offer despite being so busy with his new son in his life. The study group has met his kid a couple of times, and even babysat a few hours together.

The boys met at a relatively near barbecue place in the heart of Dongdaemun, a location that the boys could easily return back to the dorms and not too far away. They were at an all-you-could-eat place, suitable for their budget so that they didn’t burn a hole in their pockets. Seungjae offered to treat his dongsaengs. After all, passing the bar was no easy feat. But they declined. His presence with them was enough of a gift from him to them.

But what was a dinner without the star, soju?

Joon Hwi prided himself on holding his liquor well. He could easily have a bottle without feeling the buzz. He could have a second without difficulty as well. Surely, he won’t be drunk, right?

Oh, but how wrong he was.

The bottles of soju and beers kept coming, never ending, as BokGi and Yebeom pushed shot after shot to him and themselves. They were surely prepared to get hammered tomorrow and show up to their 10am lecture spinning. Seungjae, having driven, only watched and smiled as he looked at his dongsaengs drink, sipping on his cola.

“Hyung, you sure you don’t have anything on with Sol-A noona? You know, we catch you with her all the time.” Bokgi asks, his face slightly flushed and words a little slurred. Yebeom nods his head, nodding his head in agreement. Joon Hwi only lets himself smile, not saying anything as he shoots back an additional shot of soju.

“Wah, hyung! So you admit it?” Yebeom says, setting down his chopsticks. Jiho stops chewing on his ssam, and looks next to him at Joon Hwi, who just shrugs, a mysterious smile on his face. Seungjae only places more meat on Joon Hwi’s plate.

With a short glance, Yebeom, Jiho and Bokgi’s eyes met. It was long enough for them to get what they were trying to say, but yet short enough for Joon Hwi to not notice the silence.

They weren’t blind to Joon Hwi’s actions. They noticed how Joon Hwi would look at Sol when she’s practicing for a mock trial, and his gentle voice when he would point out things she missed. Jiho, for one, noticed how Joon Hwi would return to the dorm later or look at his phone, smiling like an idiot. When asked, Joon Hwi would either use the excuse that he went out to the city or he was looking at cat videos, which bore Jiho.

But tonight, they were not leaving this place until he spilled his secret.

“Excuse me! Can we get three more portions of samgyeopsal, one more moksal, one dwangjang jjigae, and three more bottles of soju please?” Bokgi politely shouted to the store helper, who readily nodded.

“One more rice, please!” Yebeom added.

And so, with every portion of food, they shot back shot after shot as they feasted on their fresh juicy grilled pork and stew. They were glad that Joon Hwi was slowly slurring his words, because they themselves were barely hanging on.

“Hyung, you can be honest, you know. We won’t say anything about your private life with noona.” Yebeom says, fighting off the buzz and taking a big gulp of water. Joon Hwi, now face flushed bright red, only let out another smile as he laid back on his chair.

“Ah, Sol...” He murmured out loud.

“You know, she’s really touchy when she’s drunk? She likes to cling on to people when she’s drunk. When she’s angry, she pushes people away instead.” The words come tumbling out of his mouth before he can stop himself. No, this wasn’t Joon Hwi. This was drunk Joon Hwi. The other three immediately perked up hearing this.

“A-Ah, really? How do you know that?” Yebeom prompted, determined to draw out more information.

“Remember the time we were late to Dean Oh’s lecture? We drank that night with Yeseul and Bokgi. She couldn’t stop clinging onto my hoodie after both of them went back. And the other time when she pushed me away after her first year results were out.” Joon Hwi says, the stupid smile still on his face.

“How cute.” He quietly says, eyes closed.

There wasn't a need to know further that their hyung, Han Joon Hwi, had feelings for Kang Sol, the feisty noona.

“Hyung, then why not date her?” Bokgi says, the news keeping him at the end of his seat. Jiho merely sits, ears wide open and ready for any information.

“Date?” Joon Hwi says and lets out a light unmistakable giggle. Oh, he really was drunk now.

“We already are.”

The trio exchange knowing eyes, knowing how their objectives for the night have been accomplished. Seungjae, from the end of the table, merely shakes his head with a smile.

“Hyung, did you know?” Jiho asks. Seungjae nodded.

“They told me. After all, I am no longer a student.” This earned groans from the trio, calling it unfair.

“I miss Sol...” Joon Hwi murmurs, as his drunken state reaches for another shot of soju. Instinctively, Jiho reaches it first and shoves a glass of water in his hand instead. If anything, he was sleeping with this man in the same room. And he was not having his drunken state continue further. After all, they completed their mission for the night.

All that mattered was remembering it the next day.

-----

Sol was in the midst of folding her clothes before her phone rang, distracting her from her music that she had on with her ear pieces. Irritated, she picked up her phone, not bothering to look at the caller ID.

“Hello?”

“Sol-A? It’s oppa.”

“Seungjae-oppa? Why are you calling so late? Is anything the matter?” She asks, alerted by the sudden call. It was almost midnight, and it was rare for Seungjae to call.

“Ah, no. Nothing is wrong. I’m just at the lobby of the school at the Lady Justice statue with a very drunk Joon Hwi and the rest of the boys. I can’t bring them up myself, especially since I can’t enter the dorms anymore.” Seungjae explains. In the back, Sol can hear a noisy Bokgi and Jiho telling him to shut up.

“Give me five minutes.” She says and hangs up. The urgency in Sol’s voice drew the attention of Sol B, who was ready to get to bed. Sol B only looks at Sol for a moment and Sol just gives a sympathetic smile.

“Could... Could you come with me?” Sol asks nervously. Sol B looks at Sol for a moment before she throws a hoodie on and throws another hoodie to Sol. The last thing they needed was them to be recognised. Seungjae was where he said he would be, with indeed, four grown men, sprawled on the couches. Bokgi, Yebeom and Jiho were at least conscious enough to greet both Sols, but Joon Hwi just had his eyes shut, murmuring incorrigible things.

“Sorry you had to deal with them, oppa. They really owe you a big apology.” Sol apologises for the sake of her boyfriend, and his friends. Seungjae only shakes his head.

“They should enjoy this before they step into the workforce and can’t experience it anymore.” He gives a smile. “Joon Hwi got a little carried away. He might have spilled your relationship.” Sol B was not standing far as she forced Bokgi and the rest upright, but she could clearly hear it.

“I’ll settle it. You should go home now, don’t keep Juyoung-unnie waiting. I’ll get them to their rooms.” She said before making her quick goodbye to Seungjae.

Together, both Sols pushed Bokgi and Yebeom up to their room, half guiding and half carrying the heavy boys to their door. When they were back downstairs, Sol B instinctively grabbed Jiho by his arm and pulled him up.

“Sol B, about what-” Sol was cut off by her roommate.

“I know. Don’t tell anyone yet. But, you know you suck at hiding and lying, don't you?” She says, her head turned back, before turning back to help Jiho back to his room. Sol does all she can to suppress her smile. Even though her roommate is harsh, she could feel the love. Turning around, she faces her drunk boyfriend.

“Joon. Joon Hwi.” Sol shakes gently. Joon Hwi’s lips curl up slightly, as his arms reach up to wrap them around the familiar body he missed. Sol was clingy when she was drunk, but it was the pot calling the kettle black for Joon Hwi. If possible, he was even clingier.

“You need to go up to your room.” She says as she fights away his loose grip and half supports his drunk body to his room.

“I missed you, Sol...” He murmurs, a face turning into a pout. “You know I kept telling them how good a girlfriend you are? How you always got me coffees and made extra ramyeons.”

“And you also told them we are dating?”

“Of course! I want the whole world to know I love you!” Joon Hwi says a little loudly, and she clamps his mouth shut. Oh, he was definitely more than drunk. Joon Hwi’s arms clung onto her waist as she reached his door.

“Go. You can face the mess you made in the morning.” She says. Joon Hwi clings onto her, giving her a sad pout.

“No more goodnight kisses?” He asked, a voice like a child. His eyes were big and round, his mouth downturned slightly like a pout.

Sol couldn’t deny him one, especially when he looked so adorable. Looking around, she made sure the coast was clear before she reached up to let her lips meet his soft ones. He tasted like lingering alcohol and she could taste it, but she couldn’t help but want more of his intoxicating lips on hers. But not today.

Pulling away, he let out a slight whine. But Sol gave him a quick peck.

“You’ll get more, when you get up.” And Sol pushes him into the room, leaving back to her own dorm, knowing that she’ll be faced with a big headache the next morning.

-----

When Joon Hwi is up the next morning, he’s greeted with a Jiho who rubs his eyes and holds his head in his hand. Joon Hwi isn’t sure if he’s spinning or the room is. Or if it is spinning in the first place. Jiho notices he’s up and grunts a good morning, before getting up to get ready.

The memories of last night come back to Joon Hwi in waves as the pieces start slowly fixing themselves together throughout the morning. By the time he’s at his first lecture, his memories have more or less come back.

He’s certain that Sol would be mad. He makes a mental note to send Seungjae an apology and thank you message. Then, he starts making plans to bribe the trio. He knows about Yebeom’s love for candy, so he starts with that. He just needs to think of what brand of sneakers to get for Bokgi. Heck, would bribes even work against them?

But throughout the morning, the boys do nothing to mention anything about last night. They chat about their hangover, how Seungjae is doing well with his new job and the amount of food they ate. No one mentions anything about Joon Hwi, or his words.

Joon Hwi counts himself safe. They must have forgotten, he thinks. He figures it was the best they did. It definitely would save him an earful from Sol and a large headache. During lunch, as they finished their simple meal at the cafeteria of soup, rice and bulgogi, Bokgi is about to clear his tray before he turns to Joon Hwi.

“Oh, hyung.”

“Hm?”

“We remember everything. From the start, to the end.” He says, a teasing grin on his face as he quickly scurries away, not wanting to die before he graduates. Joon Hwi rolls his eyes back and groans.

Well, shit.

-----

bonus:

“Sol B, did you know our roommates are dating?” Jiho asks, his voice slightly slurred as Sol B drags him up the stairs. She gives a nod. Sol B was no idiot to fall for her roommate’s excuses, when her face gave it all away. It was fascinating how the others haven’t noticed.

“It would be an insult to our careers if we didn't notice the way they looked at their phones.” She sarcastically says. Jiho manages to scoff. Sol B is about to tap Jiho’s key card of their door, but his hand stops hers, as she feels his body right behind his.

“Well, they haven’t found out about us yet.” Jiho says softly to her, his face nuzzled into her neck, lips brushing her neck as he slowly moves his lips up to her jaw. Sol brings a gentle hand to his cheek, before turning around to face Jiho.

“We’re better actors.” She whispers so soft. Jiho can't tell if it’s the alcohol or him, but all he knows is that Sol B looks so damm perfect with her doe-like eyes, soft pink lips and the way she teases him drives him insane. He wants her, and he wants her now.

He crashes his lips on hers, wanting to so desperately taste her. It’s been a long day, and he’s never felt so in need. Sol B tastes the lingering alcohol on his lips, but she couldn’t care. She needs him the same way he wants her. Her hands reach up to grab his hair as Jiho’s hands slip under her hoodie, feeling the smooth skin of her waist against his fingers. They know that they are in the middle of the hallway, but, god, it felt so good.

“God, I missed this.” Jiho mumbled, almost growling, against her lips, earning a slight smirk from the younger girl that he could feel. He sucks on her lower lip, earning a soft gasp from the girl as she only kisses him harder. Biting lovingly on her swollen lips, he shifts his attention to her jaw, leaving butterfly kisses and earning a sigh of pleasure from her.

But it was short lived, as she pulled away. They knew they had to stop, before their secret was revealed, too. Jiho wishes he could bring her into the dorm and continue this session with her. Sol B looks at him lovingly, biting her lip in an attempt to tease.

“We’ll continue this tomorrow.” Sol B says, giving him another loving kiss as she leaves for her room and Jiho returns to his, buzzed from the alcohol and the adrenaline rush from his make out session. He inwardly groans, hating how his girlfriend teases him, but also smirks, knowing how to get back at her the next day.

Let’s hope he remembers this.

202 notes · View notes

katnissmellarkkk · 3 years

Text

Hiiii! Here’s part two of my Katniss and Peeta Taking Of Each Other bookcomb! It’s pretty long so … sorry 😬. There was a lot I didn’t include and a lot I wasn’t sure about including, because so much of Catching Fire and Mockingjay is about them wanting to protect the other but I tried to narrow it down to actual acts that were caring, or times they at least tried to care for the other.

Then, as if I can’t stand it another second, I start running. He catches me and spins me around and then he slips — he still isn’t entirely in command of his artificial leg — and we fall into the snow, me on top of him, and that’s where we have our first kiss in months. It’s full of fur and snowflakes and lipstick, but underneath all that, I can feel the steadiness that Peeta brings to everything. And I know I’m not alone. As badly as I have hurt him, he won’t expose me in front of the cameras. Won’t condemn me with a halfhearted kiss. He’s still looking out for me. Just as he did in the arena. Somehow the thought makes me want to cry. Instead I pull him to his feet, tuck my glove through the crook of his arm, and merrily pull him on our way.

“We’re going!” says Peeta, shoving the Peacekeeper who’s pressing on me. “We get it, all right? Come on, Katniss.” His arm encircles me and guides me back into the Justice Building. The Peacekeepers follow a pace or two behind us.

Effie starts giving me pills to sleep, but they don’t work. Not well enough. I drift off only to be roused by nightmares that have increased in number and intensity. Peeta, who spends much of the night roaming the train, hears me screaming as I struggle to break out of the haze of drugs that merely prolong the horrible dreams. He manages to wake me and calm me down. Then he climbs into bed to hold me until I fall back to sleep. After that, I refuse the pills. But every night I let him into my bed. We manage the darkness as we did in the arena, wrapped in each other’s arms, guarding against dangers that can descend at any moment.

“He was poaching. What business is it of hers, anyway?” says the man.

“He’s her cousin.” Peeta’s got my other arm now, but gently. “And she’s my fiancée. So if you want to get to him, expect to go through both of us.”

When my mother has locked the door behind them, I slump against the table.

“What is it?” says Peeta, holding me steadily.

“Oh, I banged up my left foot. The heel. And my tailbone’s had a bad day, too.” He helps me over to one of the rockers and I lower myself onto the padded cushion.

My mother eases off my boots. “What happened?”

“I slipped and fell,” I say. Four pairs of eyes look at me with disbelief. “On some ice.” But we all know the house must be bugged and it’s not safe to talk openly. Not here, not now.

My mother gives me a cup of chamomile tea with a dose of sleep syrup, and my eyelids begin to droop immediately. She wraps my bad foot, and Peeta volunteers to get me to bed. I start out by leaning on his shoulder, but I’m so wobbly he just scoops me up and carries me upstairs. He tucks me in and says good night but I catch his hand and hold him there.

Peeta sits on the side of the bed, warming my hand in both of his. “Almost thought you’d changed your mind today. When you were late for dinner.”

I’m foggy but I can guess what he means. With the fence going on and me showing up late and the Peacekeepers waiting, he thought I’d made a run for it, maybe with Gale.

“No, I’d have told you,” I say. I pull his hand up and lean my cheek against the back of it, taking in the faint scent of cinnamon and dill from the breads he must have baked today.

Each afternoon he carries me downstairs for a change of scenery and I unnerve everyone by turning on the television.

Effie, shining in a wig of metallic gold, lacks her usual verve. She has to claw around the girls’ reaping ball for quite a while to snag the one piece of paper that everyone already knows has my name on it. Then she catches Haymitch’s name. He barely has time to shoot me an unhappy look before Peeta has volunteered to take his place.

“Why would he paint a picture of me, Effie?” I ask, somehow annoyed.

“To show he’s going to do everything he can to defend you. That’s what everyone in the Capitol’s expecting, anyway. Didn’t he volunteer to go in with you?” Effie says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

I lock my fingers tightly into his and say, “Watch my feet. Just try to step where I step.” It helps. We seem to move a little faster, but never enough to afford a rest, and the mist continues to lap at our heels.

Peeta and Finnick and I position ourselves in a triangle, a few yards apart, our backs to one another. My heart sinks as my fingers draw back my last arrow. Then I remember Peeta has a sheath, too. And he’s not shooting, he’s hacking away with that knife. My own knife is out now, but the monkeys are quicker, can spring in and out so fast you can barely react.

“Peeta!” I shout. “Your arrows!”

Peeta turns to see my predicament and is sliding off his sheath when it happens. A monkey lunges out of a tree for his chest. I have no arrow, no way to shoot. I can hear the thud of Finnick’s trident finding another mark and know his weapon is occupied. Peeta’s knife arm is disabled as he tries to remove the sheath. I throw my knife at the oncoming mutt but the creature somersaults, evading the blade, and stays on its trajectory.

Weaponless, defenseless, I do the only thing I can think of. I run for Peeta, to knock him to the ground, to protect his body with mine, even though I know I won’t make it in time.

While I help Peeta coat his skin with the ointment, Finnick deftly cleans the meat from the shellfish.

I stretch out, pressing my hot cheek on the grass mat, staring at the thing in aggravation. Peeta rubs a tense spot between my shoulders and I let myself relax a little.

I know it’s stopped when I feel Peeta’s hands on me, feel myself lifted from the ground and out of the jungle. But I stay eyes squeezed shut, hands over my ears, muscles too rigid to release. Peeta holds me on his lap, speaking soothing words, rocking me gently. It takes a long time before I begin to relax the iron grip on my body. And when I do, the trembling begins.

“It’s all right, Katniss,” he whispers.

“Katniss!” I hear his voice though he’s a far distance away. But what is he doing? Peeta must have figured out that everyone is hunting us by now. “Katniss!”

I can’t protect him. I can’t move fast or far and my shooting abilities are questionable at best. I do the one thing I can to draw the attackers away from him and over to me. “Peeta!” I scream out. “Peeta! I’m here! Peeta!” Yes, I will draw them in, any in my vicinity, away from Peeta and over to me and the lightning tree that will soon be a weapon in and of itself. “I’m here! I’m here!” He won’t make it. Not with that leg in the night. He will never make it in time. “Peeta!”

I’m rattled by the turn in the conversation. The implications that I could so readily dispose of Peeta, that I’m in love with Gale, that the whole thing has been an act. My cheeks begin to burn. The very notion that I’m devoting any thought to who I want presented as my lover, given our current circumstances, is demeaning. I let my anger propel me into my greatest demand. “When the war is over, if we’ve won, Peeta will be pardoned.”

At the mention of my name, Peeta’s face contorts in effort. “Katniss . . . how do you think this will end? What will be left? No one is safe. Not in the Capitol. Not in the districts. And you . . . in Thirteen . . .” He inhales sharply, as if fighting for air; his eyes look insane. “Dead by morning!”

Off camera, Snow orders, “End it!” Beetee throws the whole thing into chaos by flashing a still shot of me standing in front of the hospital at three-second intervals. But between the images, we are privy to the real-life action being played out on the set. Peeta’s attempt to continue speaking. The camera knocked down to record the white tiled floor. The scuffle of boots. The impact of the blow that’s inseparable from Peeta’s cry of pain.

And his blood as it splatters the tiles.

I poke around in the pile, about to settle on some cod chowder, when Peeta holds out a can to me. “Here.” I take it, not knowing what to expect. The label reads LAMB STEW.

I press my lips together at the memories of rain dripping through stones, my inept attempts at flirting, and the aroma of my favorite Capitol dish in the chilly air. So some part of it must still be in his head, too. How happy, how hungry, how close we were when that picnic basket arrived outside our cave.

In the fluorescent light, the circles under his eyes look like bruises. “There’s still time. You should sleep.” Unresisting, he lies back down, but just stares at the needle on one of the dials as it twitches from side to side. Slowly, as I would with a wounded animal, my hand stretches out and brushes a wave of hair from his forehead. He freezes at my touch, but doesn’t recoil. So I continue to gently smooth back his hair. It’s the first time I have voluntarily touched him since the last arena.

“You’re still trying to protect me. Real or not real,” he whispers.

“Real,” I answer. It seems to require more explanation. “Because that’s what you and I do. Protect each other.” After a minute or so, he drifts off to sleep.

“Katniss!” He whips his head toward me but doesn’t seem to notice my bow, the waiting arrow. “Katniss! Get out of here!”

I hesitate. His voice is alarmed, but not insane. “Why? What’s making that sound?”

“I don’t know. Only that it has to kill you,” says Peeta. “Run! Get out! Go!”

It’s a long shot, it’s suicide maybe, but I do the only thing I can think of. I lean in and kiss Peeta full on the mouth. His whole body starts shuddering, but I keep my lips pressed to his until I have to come up for air. My hands slide up his wrists to clasp his. “Don’t let him take you from me.”

Peeta’s panting hard as he fights the nightmares raging in his head. “No. I don’t want to . . .”

I clench his hands to the point of pain. “Stay with me.”

His pupils contract to pinpoints, dilate again rapidly, and then return to something resembling normalcy. “Always,” he murmurs.

I help Peeta up and address Pollux.

While Cressida and Pollux make fur nests for each of us, I attend to Peeta’s wrists. Gently rinsing away the blood, putting on an antiseptic, and bandaging them beneath the cuffs.

By the time I make it back to the fence, I’m so sick and dizzy, Thom has to give me a ride home in the dead people’s cart. Help me to the sofa in the living room, where I watch the dust motes spin in the thin shafts of afternoon light.

My head snaps around at the hiss, but it takes awhile to believe he’s real. How could he have gotten here? I take in the claw marks from some wild animal, the back paw he holds slightly above the ground, the prominent bones in his face. He’s come on foot, then, all the way from 13. Maybe they kicked him out or maybe he just couldn’t stand it there without her, so he came looking.

[…]

Out of nowhere, the tears begin to pour down my cheeks. “She’s dead.” I clutch my middle to dull the pain. Sink down on my heels, rocking the pillow, crying. “She’s dead, you stupid cat. She’s dead.” A new sound, part crying, part singing, comes out of my body, giving voice to my despair. Buttercup begins to wail as well. No matter what I do, he won’t go. He circles me, just out of reach, as wave after wave of sobs racks my body, until eventually I fall unconscious. But he must understand. He must know that the unthinkable has happened and to survive will require previously unthinkable acts. Because hours later, when I come to in my bed, he’s there in the moonlight. Crouched beside me, yellow eyes alert, guarding me from the night.

Peeta, bearing a warm loaf of bread, shows up with Greasy Sae. She makes us breakfast and I feed all my bacon to Buttercup.

I wake screaming from nightmares of mutts and lost children. But his arms are there to comfort me. And eventually his lips. On the night I feel that thing again, the hunger that overtook me on the beach, I know this would have happened anyway.

Peeta says it will be okay. We have each other. And the book. We can make them understand in a way that will make them braver.

#everlark #thg #thgagain #bookcomb ♥️🔎#hunger games #katniss everdeen #Peeta mellark #catching fire #mockingjay #long post

71 notes · View notes

koala-otter · 4 years

Note

can i get some soft modern!zukka pls 👉🏻👈🏻

anon honey, you can get whatever you like

I see a lot of fics where Sokka’s comforting and assuring Zuko, and as pointed out in this post by @nothing-more-than-hot-leaf-juice, something really great about their dynamic is the way Zuko actively appreciates and praises Sokka’s abilities when he’s fairly insecure about them

so here’s some soft modern!zukka written with that in mind 2k+ words

The ride back home is quiet except for the rain outside, because Sokka doesn’t say anything. Usually, after a party, he makes jokes about stuffy diplomats and comments extensively on the scant spread of hors d’oeuvres, but now, as Zuko watches him carefully in the back of the cab, Sokka only sits quietly with his arms crossed, his head turned to look out the window streaked with raindrops.

He is still quiet when they make it to their building in Ba Sing Se’s Middle Ring, and then when they walk up the three flights up stairs to their apartment. He doesn’t even turn on the light as he walks through the door and into the living room, pausing only to kick his shoes off on the way in.

Zuko watches after him, flicking the light on once Sokka’s passed by in his stormy wake. He loosens his tie and leans against the open doorway of the living room as he racks his brain for something to say.

“Do you want anything to eat?” he finally asks. “There wasn’t a lot of food at the party. You must be starving.”

“Not hungry,” Sokka replies with a huff. He sinks lower into the sofa.

Zuko widens his eyes. Something is really wrong, then. He ventures further into the living room, ready to work his subtle charms on his unsuspecting boyfriend.

“Is something wrong?” Zuko asks plainly.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Sokka says loudly. He huffs again and crosses his arms.

Zuko rubs the right side of his face before looking at Sokka once more. “You know, it’s pretty obvious when you’re in a bad mood,” he says.

Sokka gives a short, dry laugh. “Right, and you’re the king of subtlety,” he says sarcastically.

They painted the walls robin’s egg blue in the living room when they moved in because it reminded Sokka of home, and it reminded Zuko of everything but his own. The building is old, so, while the hot water never lasts long, their apartment is a vision made up of high ceilings and tall windows with original crown molding. Zuko looks at the living room walls. During the day, the way they stretch up toward the white of the molding evokes memories of blue skies dotted with curly clouds. But at night, like now, when the light fades, and the wind whistles, and the windows are barraged with rain, the walls go dark. Almost as if the room itself were overcast.

Zuko lets a breath out and leaves the room. Sokka can’t keep anything to himself for long, but he still needs time to stew. They might as well have food ready for when he finally lets it out.

Zuko reaches the kitchen and takes his suit jacket off, draping it over the back of a chair. The rice cooker sits on the countertop, a housewarming gift from Katara, ready for use. He takes out the pot and rinses rice in it, quickly, before measuring the water up to the first knuckle of his middle finger and placing it back in the cooker. He turns around from pressing the button to find Sokka shuffling in through the doorway, pulling a chair away from the kitchen table to settle heavily there instead. Zuko refrains from commenting on how he’ll wrinkle the jacket behind him, and instead grabs a packet of Sokka’s favorite seal jerky from the pantry and brings it with him to the table. He reaches over and takes Sokka’s hand.

“Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?” he asks.

Sokka pouts for another moment before he’s ready.

High-pitched, and a little whiny, he erupts, “Everyone at your work thinks I’m stupid!”

Zuko startles away before his eyes narrow and he draws closer to Sokka. “What?” he asks, disbelieving.

Sokka waves his arms helplessly in the air and throws his head back. “All those stupid lawyers and human rights dorks you work with! They think I’m an idiot.”

Zuko almost wants to laugh, but, with a glance at Sokka’s face, thinks better of it. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he instead says earnestly. “You’re the smartest person I know.”

Sokka scoffs and crosses his arms.

“Really, Sokka,” Zuko insists. “I don’t know anyone else getting their PhD in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Ba Sing Se, the best university in the world.”

“I do,” Sokka says, though the corner of his mouth is tugging up into something of a smug smile.

Zuko rolls his eyes. “Right, only everybody in your lab,” he deadpans. He pauses. “There’s all the other stuff, too. Like when you help me with my work. An engineer doesn’t have to be so good at economics, too.”

Zuko works as an associate expert at the United Council of Nations for Economics, Science, and Culture. He has spent many a night dragging briefings home and poring over them at the kitchen table, trying to make sense of some graph or diagram, when Sokka will take a break from his designs and calculations to glance over his shoulder.

“Whoa, Earth Kingdom agriculture’s gonna take a real hit next year,” he once said, pointing to a data point. “That’s way too big of a cabbage surplus.”

Zuko could only gape at him, and then buy Sokka the most expensive gym bag he could find when raising the point in a meeting the next day earned him a raise.

“It’s intuitive,” Sokka says almost humbly, looking down at the kitchen table.

“If it’s intuitive to you, you could replace everyone who was at the party tonight,” Zuko replies.

Sokka's expression turns doubtful, and he bites his lip. Zuko resists the urge to kiss it.

“They were all laughing at me,” Sokka says.

Zuko tilts his head at him. “You’re funny,” he supplies hopefully.

“I wasn’t telling any jokes,” Sokka says sadly.

The sound of his voice wrenches at Zuko’s heart, and he barely registers it when he rises and finds himself tilting Sokka’s face up by his chin, only able to get this angle when Sokka is sitting. He bends down and kisses him. It only lasts a second, and when he pulls back, Sokka looks no less upset. Zuko is about to try to drum up some more words of comfort for him when the rice cooker starts beeping.

Zuko smiles apologetically at Sokka and goes back to the counter, pressing the button and opening the rice cooker. A little puff of steam rises from beneath the lid and disappears on its way to the ceiling.

“I’m sorry,” he finally says, turning around to look at Sokka and leaning his back against the counter.

“Not your fault,” Sokka says with a shrug, though the dejection still reads clearly across his face.

The torrent outside only seems to have gotten stronger. The wet leaves of the maple tree outside their building slap against their windows, the sound so loud and forceful, they can hear it even in the kitchen.

“Jeez,” Sokka says, shifting forward to glance back at the archway that leads to the living room, “that’s loud.”

Zuko spies the jacket behind him, and he immediately brightens.

“Here,” he says, coming over to reach into the breast pocket. Sokka looks up at him in confusion as he pulls out the folded page of a newspaper and a pen. “Take this.”

Sokka takes the paper and unfolds it carefully. His brow immediately furrows in confusion. “What am I supposed to do with a crossword?” he asks. The question almost sounds like a whine. He eyes the paper once more before looking back up at Zuko like he might have gone insane. “And one you already finished?”

Zuko shakes his head. “But I didn’t finish it,” he says excitedly. He points to an area of the grid. “Look, I couldn’t figure these three out. And when I got into work, I asked everyone, and they couldn’t figure them out either.” He smiles. “If anyone can do it, it’s you, Sokka.”

Sokka looks doubtful once more, but he lays the crossword on the table. Zuko moves back to the counter and hears the click of a pen behind him. This is a good idea, he thinks, grabbing a carton of eggs from the fridge and placing a pan on the stove. Now Sokka will be occupied while he makes dinner, and they’ll have food ready just in time for when Sokka feels better, and he has time to fry eggs just the way Sokka likes them, yolks so runny they practically bleed onto the rice, and then they can watch one of his favorite history documentaries, and they’ll curl up on the sofa and fall asleep to the sound of the rain, or if they don’t feel like sleeping—

“Done!” Sokka says.

Zuko whirls around, two eggs in his hand, still uncracked, to find Sokka grinning smugly at him. “How?” he demands, genuinely surprised.

Sokka shrugs, the grin immovable. “Easy,” he says. Zuko puts the eggs down and goes back to the kitchen table, his hand landing on Sokka’s shoulder. Sokka grabs it as he explains, “‘A Northern delicacy’ is obviously roast duck. And then ‘failure to communicate,’ with the duck in mind, is that expression your uncle’s always saying: ‘Like a chicken talking to a duck.’ And then ‘skinny appendages?’” He looks up at Zuko before he cheers, barely able to contain himself, “Chicken legs!”

“Let me see that,” Zuko says, grabbing the paper with his free hand. He stares at it closely. A small scowl reaches his lips. “Are you kidding me? I spent a whole hour on the monorail trying to get these. I almost missed my stop! And it was just ‘roast duck’ the whole time?”

He looks up sharply when he hears Sokka laughing.

“I mean,” Zuko starts, a blush creeping into his cheeks as he smiles awkwardly, “I told you you were smart.”

“Actually, I think you called me the smartest person you know,” Sokka corrects jokingly.

“You are the smartest person I know,” Zuko insists.

He keeps smiling at the scratchy characters of Sokka’s writing on the crossword next to the careful strokes of his own when he feels Sokka pulling him by the hand. Once Zuko is standing in front of him, Sokka throws his arms around his boyfriend’s middle and hugs him tightly, burying his head into Zuko’s ribs.

“Thanks, Zuko,” he says quietly into the fabric of Zuko’s dress shirt.

One of Zuko’s hands lands on the top of Sokka’s head, stroking his hair till he reaches the end of his wolf tail. Then, Zuko wraps his arms around Sokka’s neck and shoulders and hugs him back fiercely, protectively.

“Love you,” he says, and he smiles when he feels Sokka nod against his chest. He rubs Sokka’s shoulders and upper back, trying to ease the tight muscle beneath his hands. “Do you think you might want something to eat now?”

Sokka pulls his face away from Zuko’s shirt to beam up at him. “I thought you’d never ask,” he says enthusiastically.

After their easy dinner of fried eggs and seal jerky on rice, Zuko ends up being right; they go back to the living room and watch a documentary on the construction of the ancient air temples. They lie on the couch with Sokka between Zuko’s legs, his head on Zuko’s chest. The rain has stopped outside, but Zuko hardly notices with Sokka pressed against him. From this angle, he can pull the tie out of Sokka’s hair and comb his fingers through the soft, brown tresses, as well as the fuzz of his undercut, while the narrator debunks a theory that aliens teleported the building materials up the Potola Mountain Range.

“What do you think, Sokka?” Zuko whispers near his ear. “Did aliens build the air temples?”

Sokka’s response is a light snore against his chest.

Zuko suppresses a laugh. There’s no way of getting Sokka to bed without waking him, so Zuko settles in behind him instead. He wraps one of his arms protectively around his boyfriend’s body, while the other stays in place to let his fingers keep playing with Sokka’s hair, enjoying the soft smile it coaxes onto his relaxed mouth. The clouds outside clear to make way for the nearly full moon, whose light spills through the towering windows into the apartment. The dark lifts from the room, the walls glow an otherworldly blue, and Zuko sinks beneath Sokka’s weight into the night’s quiet.

#my writing #ask #anon #atla #atla fanfic #fanfiction #zukka #zuko #sokka

556 notes · View notes

kurowrites · 4 years

Note

I’m sure someone sent this to you already but ‘“You’re the one in class who has tattoos all over their arms and piercings and everybody’s scared of you and one day I catch you watching cat videos and doodling in the middle of a lecture and wow you’re a dork” AU.’ screams WangXian and I’d love to read your take on this! Thanks for all the amazing fics!

You were in fact the first to send this suggestion! And I agree, this is a very Wangxian thing. :3c

---

When Wei Ying joined Lan Zhan’s class for the first time, his appearance was followed by heated gossip and a badly suppressed uproar. Everything about Wei Ying’s appearance was eye-catching, from the long hair tied into a ponytail to the heavy black boots he was wearing. And while his mostly black clothes and the rows of piercings in his ears alone might have been enough to make him stick out like a sore thumb in the environment of an university classroom where most people wore button-down shirts and blouses rather than t-shirts, there were two things in particular that marked Wei Ying as an immediate outsider. The first was the piercing on his left lower lip that was connected to his left ear with a small metal chain. The second were the colourful tattoos sprawling down his slender arms poking out of an oversized t-shirt.

Lan Zhan himself couldn’t help but stare for a moment, his eyes wandering over the motives engraved on Wei Ying’s arms as he catalogued them. Halfway poking out of his shirt sleeve was what must be Guanyin holding a lotus flower. Delicate orchids were trailing along his elbow. Below that, a crane among pines. A dragon among drifting clouds was on his other arm. There were more, but before Lan Zhan could see them properly, Wei Ying moved, turned towards him with a crooked smile and a casual introduction.

The tattoos on his arms turned into a colourful blur as he moved, and Lan Zhan… was struck.

It didn’t take long for people to start spinning tales. The most popular was that Wei Ying got involved with crime at a young age and had been a member of a criminal organisation for the longest time. The stories differed, some saying that his father had been a triad boss, others saying that he got picked up off the streets by ruffians when he became orphaned. Whichever it might be, however, everyone was in agreement that Wei Ying was a dangerous person, and that it was better to stay away from him as far as possible. Many were offended that he was allowed to enrol in the university at all.

A person like that, at their prestigious university? Inconceivable.

But Lan Zhan knew that Wei Ying wasn’t here without reason. He might not be the image of a model student, but he had the academic qualifications to justify his enrolment. Even if it sometimes pained Lan Zhan himself to admit that.

Most students preferred to keep their distance from Wei Ying and only talk about him behind his back, which made Lan Zhan and Wei Ying more similar than he really liked. After all, most students kept their distance from Lan Zhan, too. If for entirely different reasons.

But their mutual unpopularity (if it could be called that) often led to them sitting close to each other during class. No one would sit next to Wei Ying on their own accord. Wei Ying, on the other hand, had no qualms seating himself in the eternally vacant seat next to Lan Zhan.

It was strange, the first time it happened. It wasn’t just the fact that no one ever sat this close to Lan Zhan that wasn’t family. It was also that the presence of Wei Ying next to him was completely different from anyone else. Lan Zhan had been taught how to sit properly from earliest childhood. Sit upright. Sit still. Be attentive. Don’t fidget.

Wei Ying was the complete opposite. It didn’t take five minutes for him to start moving around, slumping in his seat, trying to find a comfortable position for his limbs. Sometimes he went as far as slipping out of his boots, sitting cross-legged on the chair or tucking one foot under his leg. It drove Lan Zhan absolutely insane. How difficult could it be to sit still for one class? And how difficult could it be to not involve Lan Zhan in his disruptive activities?

It was hard to concentrate when someone next to you was constantly moving around. And whenever Lan Zhan dared to look over, he caught Wei Ying in some kind of activity that certainly didn’t have anything to do with the lesson at hand: sneakily eating snacks, watching cat videos or, perhaps the rudest of it all, just plain dozing. How he managed to follow the lesson, Lan Zhan didn’t know. But it was clear that he followed it, because the teacher had yet to catch Wei Ying off guard.

And then, when he was particularly bored, he would lob little pieces of paper at Lan Zhan. At first, Lan Zhan thought they were simple harassment for the sake of harassment, but after a sustained assault, he became aware that each of the papers contained a message.

The whole incident was caused by Lan Zhan making the unfortunate decision of looking over to Wei Ying’s side during the lesson, and catching Wei Ying watching cat videos on his smartphone. Lan Zhan sent him one of his particularly vicious glares, and turned back to the front to listen to the teacher. He only just caught Wei Ying’s shameless grin in the corner of his eye, an obvious sign that he wasn’t feeling sorry at all before he turned back to the video.

Lan Zhan was incensed. How could such a bad student manage to keep on top of this class? It was frustrating. It was… had no one ever put this young man in his place?

A few minutes into his quietly stewing anger, a paper landed on Lan Zhan’s desk. When Lan Zhan looked over, Wei Ying exaggeratedly mimed unfolding the paper.

Lan Zhan should really know better. And yet, he unfolded the paper.

Lan Zhan, are you more of a cat person or a dog person?

He crumpled the message with prejudice and glared at Wei Ying without bothering with a reply.

A moment later, another piece of paper landed on his desk.

Cat person, then. ;D

Wei Ying grinned shamelessly when Lan Zhan sent him another chastising look.

It didn’t take long, and yet another paper landed on Lan Zhan’s desk. This time, it was a terrible drawing of a cat.

Not good?

And then, seeing that it incensed Lan Zhan, Wei Ying started sending him different drawings of animals in quick succession, trying to guess his favourite. Of course, none of them were even remotely accurate, and all were terrible.

Snake?

Spider???

The spider was more than Lan Zhan could bear. He turned the paper around and finally wrote his first reply, scratching each word into the paper with force, as if he could force common sense into Wei Ying’s head that way.

Spiders have eight legs and four pairs of eyes.

Wei Ying only chuckled and quickly sent another reply.

Ah, so you do like them. :3

No.

Come on, tell me what you like!

Lan Zhan stowed the paper away to throw it out later on. He would never, ever give that kind of ammunition to Wei Ying.

It was not enough to discourage Wei Ying just yet, however.

Oh, I know. :3

A few moments later, a new drawing landed on Lan Zhan’s desk.

Lan Zhan stared blankly at the cute and surprisingly detailed drawing of a rabbit, evidently a very different quality from the earlier sloppy doodles.

Good, no? This is what Lan Zhan looks like, to me.

Lan Zhan couldn’t figure out if it was supposed to be an insult or a compliment. Before he could settle on one or the other, however, another message landed on his desk.

My tattoos were all designed by myself.

That gave Lan Zhan pause. Wei Ying’s tattoos? He had designed all of them himself? Of course Lan Zhan had noticed before that despite the fact that Wei Ying had many different motives on his arms, they seemed to fit together very well, building a cohesive, well-designed unit. But he had been so caught up in the unsuitability of having tattoos at all that he had never thought about whether the tattoos itself held any meaning or not. But if Wei Ying designed them–

His thoughts were interrupted by another folded paper.

I’ve noticed your looks.

Lan Zhan felt his ears burn.

He had always assumed that Wei Ying was either ignorant or completely uncaring of all the strange looks he was getting. But that couldn’t be true, now that he thought about it. It wasn’t like Lan Zhan was unaware of the looks he was getting, no matter how much he liked to pretend that he was above such things.

Before he could react to Wei Ying’s last message, however, the bell rung and announced the end of the class.

And Wei Ying, quick as a rabbit, was out the door before the teacher could even dismiss them.

---

From that moment onwards, something had changed.

Perhaps it was that Lan Zhan didn’t have the luxury of pretending that he didn’t care anymore. Perhaps it was that someone finally had him made take a long, hard look into the mirror. And he didn’t quite like what he saw.

He felt frustratingly out of control, the next time he deliberately sat down on the seat right next to Wei Ying, and the way Wei Ying smiled in return only served to drive it home that Lan Zhan had just made an irrevocable decision.

The course of his destiny, he had no doubt, had been altered.

Wei Ying had forced him to make a decision.

And Wei Ying, judging by the look he sent him, understood what Lan Zhan’s choice had been.

This time, once class was over, Wei Ying didn’t take off with the ring of the bell. Instead, he patiently waited until Lan Zhan had packed his things and was ready to leave (as patiently as Wei Ying ever did anything, that was).

When they left the classroom, together, Wei Ying softly bumped into Lan Zhan’s side and smiled up at him. Lan Zhan couldn’t fully read the expression on Wei Ying’s face, but he thought that Wei Ying looked happy, somehow.

“Do you like them?” Wei Ying asked.

He didn’t need to explain what it was that he meant. Lan Zhan understood.

“Hn,” he replied.

It was all he could say. He felt that both ‘You are very good at drawing’ and ‘I want to know where else you have tattoos’ were somehow inadequate and also inappropriate, so he remained quiet.

It didn’t help that the third thought that crossed his mind was ‘How would it feel if I kissed that piercing on your lip right now?’

Wei Ying, thankfully, took pity on him. He tapped at the delicate orchids at his elbow and said, “This is my latest one. I got it after the birth of my nephew.”

He smiled, clearly lost in a happy memory for one moment. Then, he looked up at Lan Zhan again, and his smile turned impish instead.

“I have a feeling I might be getting another one soon,” he added with a laugh in his voice. “And I think… it’s going to be a rabbit.”

The gods have mercy on me, Lan Zhan thought to himself. Where is he planning to put that?

He wondered if Wei Ying would allow him to know.

#kuro writes #the untamed #wei wuxian #lan wangji #wangxian #mdzs #anonymous

314 notes · View notes

thewildwaffle · 4 years

Text

The Prisoner

Garn had not been overly enthused when he found out he was scheduled for yet another shift. As much as it annoyed him, he had his suspicions that it would not be his last. He sighed as he loaded up in the transport. That’s what he was in for he supposed. After all, when you’re working for the Trinn-Harrup Syndicate, one of the galaxy’s biggest, most notorious criminal organizations, you just have to work until the jobs get done. It paid the bills though. Hopefully he’d be able to afford to get out of this gleng-hole soon.

Pickup was during the night cycle, which was, on their current planet Karbrin, especially dark. Garn, as well as four more guards and a driver, arrived on location and waited for the drop-off. The prisoner they were to escort to the Syndicate’s Headquarters must be a high-profile enemy, or so Garn thought. It wasn’t his position to be in the know. It was his position to make sure prisoners of the Trinn-Harrup Syndicate were intimidated and unable to try anything stupid while they were being transported.

A beam of light lit up the abandoned lot where they were waiting. Garn shielded his eyes with one of his massive forearms.

“Dang Nebbilins, not only are they late, but they apparently feel the need to alert anyone within a quadrant of our whereabouts!” Garn heard the guard to his left murmur. He agreed. Dealing with Nebbilins was never an enjoyable ordeal. Their poor hearing and eyesight (especially at night) made any interactions with them incredibly noisy and conspicuous affairs. Not to mention that their quill-covered, opaque, multi-limbed bodies were hideous to most other creatures in the galaxy. Nevertheless, they were good at what they did, and what they did was catch and incapacitate prey. Especially when that prey had a bounty on its head.

The first two Nebbilins crept out of the ship, checking to make sure the coast was clear. They spotted the Syndicate guards, still somewhat blinded by the many floodlights from the newcomer’s ship. One of the Nebbilin scouts reared back its head and let out a series of loud squawking cries. Soon more Nebbilins trotted out of the ship, one half-carrying, half-dragging a bound figure. Nebbilin slime has a compound that paralyzes many species, which led them to be such good bounty-hunters. Certain quills can inject the slime into their prey’s bloodstream, if the slime that oozes from their skin doesn’t get to them first that is. Though their catch tonight looked like the slime had taken a toll on them, they seemed to still be in control of quite a few of their motor functions.

Impressive, thought Garn, This must be a particularly powerful prisoner. That would explain the high security tonight. The Nebbilins brought the prisoner to the Syndicate guards where Garn recognized the creature. It’s a human! I’ve only heard stories about them!

And what stories they were! Garn struggled to keep his calm. He had to look the part as an intimidating guard, but honestly, he wanted to get closer, get a better look. He wanted to know if any of the amazing stories about humans were true. Could they really survive being struck by lightning? Were their ancestors really hunter-gatherers that could pursue prey for days until it gave in to exhaustion? Could their punches really shatter Kartian bones?

He kept his questions to himself, however, as the other guards (who seemed substantially less curious about their prisoner) exchanged the bounty for the human and gruffly returned to the transport shuttle, prisoner in tow. Garn followed quietly, making sure to keep the human in view from behind the hulking masses of the fellow guards.

The transport ship was a bit cramped with all the guards and the human. Garn figured this was likely because the close quarters would increase the intimidation factor for any creature unfortunate enough to find themselves the enemies of the Syndicate. One guard sat up front with the driver, two in the seat closest the door, and one on either side of the prisoner in the back. There was no chance of anything fighting its way out, in case any notion of doing so were even still possible to any unfortunate enough to be in such a position.

Garn, to his silent delight, had been assigned as one of the guards to sit next to the human. The other guard, Arun sat on the other side of the bench and didn’t speak, as was protocol, but neither did he object when after a few moments, Garn quietly began pestering the human prisoner with questions.

“I’m not supposed to speak to you, but I’ve never met a human before. My name is Garn, what’s yours?”

“Porter. My name’s Porter Stone.”

That was an odd name to Garn, but who was he to judge alien names. “Have you ever been struck by lightning?”

Porterstone looked at him curiously. “Uhh… no.”

“Do you know any other humans who have ever been struck by lightning?”

The human stared at him in the darkness. After a moment, his mouth stretched across his face and he made a short breathy noise that must have been some sort of laugh. “No. Not personally.”

“But there are humans who have been struck by lightning? And they lived?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow, that’s amazing!” Garn straightened back up as one of the guards at the door turned back to check on them. He waited for a while before leaning back over to speak to the human again, “Porterstone, I’ve never met a human before. I have so many questions. I wish we had met in better circumstances so we could ask them.”

“You and me both,” Porterstone chuckled.

Garn straightened up and sat silently for a bit. He reprimanded himself mentally. He meets a human and the first thing he asks is the lightning question? Really? His mind raced as he tried to pick another question, a better question. Who knew when he’d meet another human after all.

“Do you know to… uh… how to snap? I mean, snap your fingers?” Garn did his best to imitate the motion with his own large fingers. He’d heard humans could make an insanely wide range of noises, with their mouths, with their bodies, etc. They were supposedly one of the greatest mimics of the galaxy. Garn could think of so many situations of where that skill would be so useful, or even dangerous.

The human next to him just stared, an amused look of perplexion clear on his face. Finally he smiled and shook his head, his white teeth exposed and catching what little light there was around them.

“You know, of all the criminals or lawmen alike that have questioned me, you’ve definitely got the most unique style.”

“He’s just too curious for his own flargin’ good,” Arun grumbled from the other side of the bench. “It’s gonna get him killed in the end if he keeps it up.” Garn caught the sidelong glance he was shot and took it for the warning that it was.

They were silent again for a while as Garn grumpily stewed in his life to this point. He couldn’t wait to get out of here, away from the Syndicate, start his own life, have his own adventures. Instead, he was stuck doing the grunt and dirty work of the Trinn and Harrup crime lords. It was not pleasant work and often he would wake from night terrors after having to relive something he saw or had been ordered to do. He hated it. He hated all of it, but he had to stay. It was the only way he was ever going to ever be able to afford to leave. He’d get out of here. Very few ever did, but he was going to make it. He had to.

Garn was pulled out of his dreaming when he felt a gentle nudge to his arm. He looked down at Porterstone who had a sideways conspiratory grin on his face. He moved his tied up arms to draw Garn’s attention, the fingers on one hand held together oddly. With a quick move, his fingers made a soft snap sound.

“Oh, dang, hold on, that wasn’t a very good snap at all.” He readjusted his fingers and did it again, this time making a clear loud snapping sound. He chuckled at Garn’s awed reaction and snapped his fingers again in rapid succession.

“You both need to quiet down,” grumbled Arun. “You’re in enough trouble as it is, human. We’ll be arriving soon, and you’ll find there will be nothing to laugh about there.”

That stopped the talking for a while, but Garn felt more and more questions bubbling up inside him again. He had so much he wanted to say to Porter. After a few minutes of silence, he dared to risk whispering again.

“I’ve only heard stories about humans. Most of them seem too amazing to be true, but here you are, still able to move and speak after coming into contact with Nebbilin toxin. Are the rest of the stories true?”

Porterstone smiled broadly in the dim cabin light, but said nothing. Garn straightened up again as another guard checked on them, announcing that they were just about to arrive at the Syndicate headquarters before returning to their seat. The silence seemed heavier than usual to Garn. He had worked for the Trinn-Harrup for over three solar cycles now, and he had never felt such pity for a prisoner. He dreaded the idea of what would happen to this human. He looked sideways at Porterstone. The human’s smile had faded slightly, replaced now with a relaxed, almost smug expression. Garn did a double-take. How was the human so calm? Maybe he didn’t understand the full extent and breadth of what was going to happen once they reached the Syndicate?

“Garn, I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but you remind me of a stuffed toy I had as a kid.” Garn turned his head sharply at Porterstone’s voice. His mind had been wandering off to the future that lay in store for this near-flippant creature at his side. When Garn didn’t respond, Porter went on, “It was one my aunt had won for me at a county fair when I was very young. It was a strange toy, we never really figured out what animal it was supposed to look like, but I loved that thing… named it fluffy, creative name, I know. I carried it wherever I went. I kept that thing for years, it’s probably still sitting somewhere in my parent’s attic for all I know.” Porter paused and sighed quietly with a smile. “Well anyway, I hope you don’t mind me saying, but I guess you just look like a friend to me.”

Garn felt a mix of feelings. It seemed an odd thing to say, especially coming from a bound and tied prisoner he was guarding. He was supposed to be intimidating and scary, after all! No prisoner had ever dared speak to him like this. As a matter of fact, no prisoner had ever dared speak to him at all, beyond maybe scared whimpering. A part of Garn felt indignant at the human’s words, and yet, a small part of him felt thrilled beyond measure. And yet, a larger part of him felt overwhelmingly thrilled and surprised. He’d heard that humans could pack bond with anyone or anything given the right circumstances. Here and now seemed like the complete opposite of “right circumstances,” and yet, he couldn’t shake his feeling of joy at being considered a human’s friend. Which only made the human’s fate seem even more tragic and personal to Garn.

It certainly was a double edged sword in so many ways.

The transport ship lurched to a stop. The doors were opened by waiting Syndicate guards outside. The guards by the door jumped out, weapons at the ready as Arun and Garn escorted Porter out. Almost as soon as Porter’s feet hit the ground, the guards made the mistake of momentarily letting go of his bonds. He swept the legs out from under two of the surrounding guards. Quick to react, the remaining guards reached to grab him again, but Porterstone smack one’s hand away and looped their bound hands around the guards neck and pulled down. As the guard bent down with the human’s strong pull, their face was met with Porterstone’s rapidly rising knee. There was a disturbingly loud crunch sound as something or several somethings broke and the guard went down hard.

The human crouched down and backed up hard into a guard behind him, knocking them back before he swung his elbow hard into the side of their head. Another guard down.

The guards he had first knocked down were back up and grabbed him. After a brief struggle, they too dropped to the ground. Garn, who had still been getting out of the shuttle couldn’t see what had happened, but as he stepped out, he could see Nebbilin injection pins in the necks and arms.

Garn stared, flabbergasted at the human. He hadn’t just been exposed to the toxin, he’d been injected with it? And was still conscious? Had he pulled those out of his own skin? Those were supposed to take a medic to be removed safely! What was he thinking?!

Porterstone whipped around instinctively to square up with Garn. Garn didn’t move. Eventually Porterstone relaxed his defensive stance ever so slightly. Behind him, Garn could see more guards coming from the headquarter’s entrance. They might not have properly seen what was going on because their formation seemed formal and in no real rush just yet. That wouldn’t last long though. If Porterstone was going to get away, he had to go.

“The shuttle’s keycard should still be up front with the driver. You can still get away.”

Porterstone frowned and tensed as if he might still attack. “Why?” The guards coming up from behind must have realized something was up now, as a chorus of yells rose up for someone to call an alarm and several other voices shouting about the prisoner escaping.

The human glanced back and took a few steps toward the driver’s side of the shuttle. “Why are you helping me? You’re one of them.”

“I hate it here. I don’t want them to hurt you.” Garn’s voice seemed so quiet that he wasn’t sure if Porterstone could hear him.

He must have though because as soon as he pulled open the shuttle’s door and threw the driver out and onto the ground, he yelled back, “Get in!”

“What?”

“You’re different. I’m never wrong about my first impressions.” Porterstone struggled with trying to start the shuttle back up. Garn ran around to the door. “If you hate it here now, you’ll really hate it if they think you helped me escape, so get in.” Still the shuttle’s engines remained quiet.

Garn looked back. The guards were almost on them. A realization hit him that the only reason they hadn’t started firing at them was because they thought Garn was still trying to stop the prisoner. As soon as they realized he wasn’t on their side anymore, that would no longer be the case.

Garn turned back to Porterstone, still struggling to even get the shuttle started back up. “Move!” He shoved the human away from the controls and jumped into the seat. “I know how to drive this thing!” The side of the shuttle rocked as the other guards began opening fire. Well, they must have figured it out.

The instant the engine roared to life, Garn shoved it into gear and tore out of there. The shuttle leapt into the air before it leveled out in it’s forward momentum. Garn swerved behind a carved stone to avoid the blaster fire as he aimed the shuttle back toward the headquarters outer field entrance and gunned it.

“Pedal to the metal dude, we make it past that, we’re clear.” Porterstone stared ahead toward the security gate, which was starting to close. Garn growled. He had the shuttle’s throttle open as wide as he could, but it was going to be close. This was really happening. This was really happening! How the frewan did this happen so fast? The gates were almost shut by the time the shuttle reached them. With a loud crash, the shuttle’s motion wrenched the gate open just enough for them to rip their way through, the outer armor screaming in protest as it was gouged and ripped against the door. With a lurch, the shuttle pulled itself free and they shot out into the darkness of the night.

“Woohoo!” Porterstone howled. He slapped his still-bound hands against Garn’s shoulder, “That was amazing flying my man! Amazing! We did it!”

We did it. Garn couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Or what he was seeing. Or what he was doing. He. He was out. Oh flarg. This was happening. He was out. That’s what he’d wanted for so long, but he felt a pit in his stomach. He was out, but he was now a fugitive of the Trinn-Harrup Syndicate. He was as good as dead.

The celebrating human must have caught on to his growing terror of his realization.

“Hey, guy, don’t worry, we’re out. You don’t… you… uh… what’s your name? I need to know what to call you.”

Garn felt so tense that he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to speak, but he finally managed to say his name. Or more like whisper it. “Garn. My name’s Garn. Oh stars I’m going to die. What have I done?”

“Garn. Garn look at me. Wait, no, keep watching where you’re going. Just listen to me. You can’t go back now. You know what will happen even better than I do if you go back.” Garn tightened his hold on the steering wheel. Porterstone continued. “What’s done is done. You’re free, do you hear me? You hated that place and you’re free.”

“They’ll come for me. They’ll come for you. We’re still going to die.”

Garn could see the human in his peripheral as he sat still next to him. He sighed. “Garn?” Garn shot him a quick glance before looking back out the front of the shuttle, dodging trees and obstacles, trying to dodge and weave and stay hidden in case they were being followed. “Garn, if you want, I could use someone like you on my team. Stick with me and you’ll never have to worry about the Syndicate again.”

“They caught you before, they can do it again. You only got away because of me.”

“Exactly, and now I have you. Plus, those bounty-hunters only got me on a fluke. See if I ever enter another “art show” that rat snitch hosts again,” He muttered.

A few moments of quiet and Garn could feel the fear tension ebb out of his muscles slowly. He took a few deep breaths. Once his heart felt like it was beating at an almost normal-ish rate again, he finally spoke. “Where am I going now?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, just a bit further. I’ve got a plan.”

Garn nodded silently. After a moment, he realized something the human had said. “Wait, you said you have me?” He felt a stir of hopefulness at what that could mean.

Porterstone looked over at him again. “Oh, yeah, I mean, if you want to, that is. I could use you on my team. I think you’ll fit in, and well, there’s safety in numbers after all. You can do whatever you want though.”

Garn took another breath and nearly started laughing. Or maybe crying. He wasn’t sure, but he did manage to nod and smile. “Yeah, I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.” He could. He wanted to.

As he drove on, Porterstone would occasionally give an instruction or direction. Garn would follow silently, silently wondering and thinking of more questions he had for his new human friend, as well as marveling at the new life before him. He was free. And he had already made a powerful friend. Whatever else was ahead of him, he was happy to face it.

Part 2

#found an old story and finished it #very little editing #just going to post it #humans are weird #humans are space orcs #space #aliens #writeblr #original writing

319 notes · View notes

vampiric-daydreams · 4 years

Text

Enlightenment

Jasper x Reader

This is Part 3 of the Jasper miniseries. Here is Part 1.

Summary: Your secret investigation picks up speed and you finally talk to Jasper. As the evidence piles up, you wonder if you’ve made a grave mistake. A surge of courage paves a new course for your future.

Word Count: 2,814

A/N: !!!!!!!!

Your finger hovered over the call button as you stared at Jasper’s name with intent. Your hairs stood on end as the chilly night air forced you deeper into the thick blankets enveloping you. The bitter cold clouded your windows as midnight approached, and the soft pitter-patter of rain splashing on the roof served as a comforting lullaby. Heavy eyelids threatened to fall as Jasper’s name blurred. You tapped the screen.

‘Hey,’

The word sat in the text box and waited for you to press send. It was the third time you had tried to contact him that night. First craving to hear his voice, knowing that his words and his time in that moment would be only for you; and then settling for a message you would never send. What if, after he felt he’d resolved everything, that would be it? No more talking? Those ideas were enough to make you shut the screen off and leave the phone on charge.

You wanted this to be a chance for a beginning, not an ending. It was his choice to not want to be with you, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t be near you. As painful as his sheer loyalty and devotion to Alice was, it only caused you to like him more. Long forgiven were his shameless brags about his girlfriend; they made you blush when you imagined him talking about you.

As your head sank into your pillow, thoughts of affection lulled you to sleep; and dreams of soft lips and firm hands carried you through the lonely, frigid night.

At school, life went on. Jason proceeded to pine after Eric Yorkie, just as you pined after Jasper. Alice continued to greet you whenever she saw you, but the other Cullens had faded into the background. As you walked into your English class expecting to see your neighbouring seat empty again, somebody was already sitting there, nibbling on a pencil.

Bella Swan wore her hair in a low, messy ponytail. She tugged at the sleeves of her flannel. “H-Hey,” she said as you approached. “You’re (Y/N), right?” Your heart fluttered; not because she knew your name, but because she likely heard it from a Cullen - and you hoped it was Jasper who had mentioned you. You slid into your seat beside her, tripping over her old orange backpack on the way. She dragged her bag out of the walkway and stammered a quick, “sorry.”

“You’re Bella Swan?” You feigned ignorance. Bella nodded. “You’re dating Edward, right?”

Her shoulders seemed tense. “Y-Yeah, for a while.”

“So how come you switched classes?” Did Jasper make her so he could get away from you?

“Oh, uh, the admin ladies just said another student wanted to switch due to a class conflict, so I said I didn’t mind.” Wanted. Jasper had chosen to distance himself from you, and the reminder made you skip a breath.

“I haven’t seen Edward around today, did he skip school without you or something?” You changed the subject before you could cry, still careful to not pry too hard with Bella. This was a chance to dig deeper into the Cullens and their secret.

“Oh… he isn’t feeling well, so he’s at home.” Bella Swan was a terrible liar. She had so many tells and nervous habits, you couldn't believe her father was the chief of police. Bella stopped tugging at her flannel sleeves and instead rolled them up to her elbows. You would never have seen it if she hadn’t raised her arm to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear—but there it was; clear as crystal. A scar marred the inner side of her wrist; lighter than the rest of her skin and raised. A human bite.

Never had you noticed, despite all your pining for the Hale boy, that none of the Cullens ever ate anything. Emmett and Rosalie’s trays held a few pieces of fruit, whole and untouched, until Alice and Jasper joined them in dumping their food in a nearby trash can. They never eat or go to the bathroom. You had thought more about how safe your thoughts were and deemed that most evidence you had towards mind-reading pointed at Edward. It was Edward who put words into your mouth—and even Alice pointed her finger at him in the phony story she had tried to feed you. You would test that theory today and not hide your thoughts to see what would happen.

Reciting the proof you’d gathered in your head, there was a word on the tip of your tongue. A very strong accusation—one that was mythical and insane, but you couldn’t shake the idea since you saw Bella’s bite mark. The notebook on the table was open to your ‘Cullen’ page, and you were near enough to observe their irises from where you were sitting. You just needed to act nonchalant about it.

You hadn’t updated your notebook for a week as you hadn’t gotten close enough to any of them to have a proper look. But your table was only ten strides away from theirs. You clicked your pen. Monday, Emmett, gold. Jasper, gold. You took a bite out of your sandwich, creating a gap in glances so as not to draw their attention. Rosalie, gold. Your heart was racing. Alice, gold. You glanced back at the previous entry just to be sure, but the black ink told no lies. Rosalie and Alice’s eyes had changed. Your hand moved, and the words formed on the paper in front of you.

Get close, check for contacts.

It was the last logical explanation for any of it; and while Jasper’s eyes never changed, he would be the easiest Cullen to talk to today as he was still waiting to apologise and give you his own phony explanation. After lunch, it didn’t take long for you to find Jasper waiting outside one of his classes. All it took was one look for him to follow you out to a quiet space behind one of the back buildings on campus.

His Southern twang made your heart melt. “You didn’t call. I thought you weren’t ready.”

Why didn’t his biological sister sound Southern?

“I wanted to do this in person.” You took care to seem assertive, despite your teeth threatening to chatter and your palms sweating.

“(Y/N), I’m not even sure where to start…” Jasper began apologising, just as his adopted siblings and girlfriend did before him; repeating the same so-called explanation supposed to make everything go away. You tried to focus on your goal instead of the way his voice broke, or the way the tips of his strawberry blonde hair brushed against his strong jawline. Concentrating on his eyes, you were looking for a very thin line—one that would give away a contact lens. But his eyes were flawless, clear, and natural. A chill crept up your spine.

The more Jasper spoke, the more you heard that his manner of speaking sounded dated at times. It came and left like each beat of a butterfly’s wing, but it was noticeable to somebody already on that train of thought. That word that came to you earlier threatened to slip from your tongue if you weren’t careful; and you restrained it by clenching your teeth.

“I understand,” you replied once Jasper had finished reciting the script they had given him. A swift wind of courage blew through your body as you straightened up. “And I’m sorry for making you stew in guilt for this long. I guess I was just afraid to approach you.” You twisted the knife. “But even Alice said, it’s not like any of you bite, right?”

Jasper’s gaze morphed from sincerity to one that pierced through you. His body turned rigid, and his eyes squinted ever so slightly. “That’s right. We gave you one hell of an impression. But as you can see, that impression was wrong, and we’re just average people like you.” The double-edge in his words threatened to cut you. “So, there’s nothing for you to worry about.”

The suspicion that drove you suddenly came to a halt; replaced by a warm feeling of satisfaction and comfort. It was just like that time you had that confrontation with Jasper and Edward, and you felt soothed; but this time, you were conscious of it. So, you soldiered on through this strange, artificial complacency and tried to hold on to any shred of logic you had left.

“It’s weird how whenever my anger or difference of opinion becomes inconvenient for you, I suddenly feel this strange toggling of my emotions.” The cosy aura strengthened. You remained aware. “It’s almost as if you’re controlling it somehow. Just like how Edward knows what I’m thinking and Alice has no trouble finding me. But there’s nothing to see here, right?”

Jasper stopped whatever it was he was trying to do and gave you an incredulous look. “Come with me.”

He started walking, never turning back to check if you were following, towards an outline of trees in the distance that led to the forest. You walked in the opposite direction, back into the school. Now that your theory was all but confirmed, you wouldn’t follow any of his kind into further seclusion. Entering the nearest building, the gym, you sat on the bleachers and pulled out your notebook. There would be enough witnesses surrounding you to ensure your safety. You dug around in your backpack for a loose pen and clicked it.

The Cullens are vampires.

- Edward, mind reading

- Jasper, emotions, cold skin

- Bella, bite scar on arm

- Alice… extreme knowing???

- Never eat

- Never use bathroom

- All look the same, not biologically related

- Eyes change colour, no contact lenses

You slammed the book shut and stuffed it back in your backpack. Clenching your car keys, you felt eyes on you. On your hands, on your back, on your face. Fear took over your mind as abandoned all logic and raced out of the gym and into your car; darting your eyes left and right for any angry vampires waiting to murder you to conceal their secret.

This was a mistake. A horrible mistake. You should have told someone where you were going, and who you were going with so the Cullens would be accountable. The engine roared to life as you slammed your foot on the accelerator. What if they killed your family over this? You swerved, narrowly missing a police car in an intersection. Red and blue lights flashed behind you as a siren sounded. Shit. You pulled over in a side street and rolled down your window.

The officer pulled in behind you, taking his time to get out of the police car. You tapped your fingers on the dusty dashboard, checking your side mirror to see what was taking so long; only to watch as Chief Swan himself shut his car door and strolled over to your side window.

“Everything all right over here?” He put his hands on his hips. “What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry Officer—I mean Chief Swan—I’m in a hurry to get home, I’m not feeling well.” Your knuckles whitened as you clenched your fists.

“You have a licence with you?” He was holding a clipboard and a pen. The last thing you needed was a fine on top of everything else. You handed him your licence and tried to look as pathetic as possible. “Well, (Y/N),” he read your name, “must be one hell of an illness.”

“I’m really sorry, Chief Swan. I was feeling anxious at school and I needed to get out of there and back home where I’ll feel better.”

Chief Swan sighed. “I can drop you off, and my partner will drive your car home.” He gave you a stern look. “I won’t fine you this time. Just drive more carefully? Maybe let somebody else drive if you’re this stressed out?”

You nodded fast. He motioned for you to get out of the car.

The drive back to your place was silent. You contemplated asking him how he felt about his daughter dating one of the Cullens to see if he’d spill anything; but there was nothing left to dig for. Jasper didn’t have to say the word, and neither did you, for your discovery to become clear on both ends. You tried to steady your breathing as the police car stopped by the curb outside your house. Your own car pulled into the driveway as the other officer locked the door behind him and crossed his arms.

Your legs shook as you exited the police car, the other officer handed you your keys. “Go inside, get some rest,” Chief Swan said as you looked back at him. “We’ll have to contact a parent or guardian, so I’ll stop by later tonight when they’re home. You’ll be all right by yourself?”

“Y-Yeah, thanks.”

Chief Swan and the other officer watched you enter your front door before they drove away.

You scurried to your bedroom, collapsing onto your bed with your backpack still on. Hot tears burned your cheeks as they dripped down to your chin; your snotty nose forcing you to breathe through your mouth. It was dark by the time you had calmed. You slid your backpack from your shoulders and kicked it against your pillows. Wiping your face with shaking hands, you pressed your nose to the glass window and peered out. No vampires waiting to kill me.

Temporary relief washed through you. You were safe now, but what about tomorrow, and the next day? What about after that? You walked to the kitchen and filled a glass with water. The cool liquid soothed your raw throat.

The Cullens couldn’t let you go on knowing what they truly were. It wasn’t as though you would tell anybody—who would even believe you? Even now, with all the evidence you had collected and seen, you struggled to accept it, yourself. A sick laugh shook your core as you imagined storming into Chief Swan’s office at the station with theories about vampires dating his daughter. He, and everyone else in town would call you crazy. Even telling one person what you thought had the potential to ruin your life.

Your teeth ached from how hard you had been clenching your jaw earlier, and your chest felt so tight that it hurt to breathe. You finished your water and washed out the glass. It wasn’t that late yet, but after the events of the day all you wanted to do was curl up under your blankets and try to sleep.

Thump.

The sound came from your bedroom. You crept against the wall, keeping close to the shadows. What if they want to kill me right now?

You exhaled roughly. They couldn’t kill you. Forks was a small town; people would notice if you were missing. It wasn’t something that would slide under the radar… Then you froze solid. All the supposed animal attacks of the past year flashed through your mind, one by one. Wasn’t there a rumour going around about the bodies being drained of blood?

You cracked open your bedroom door, and goosebumps dispersed across your skin. The air in your room was colder than the rest of the house, and you shivered. Your eyes darted around in search for someone, but your bedroom was empty. You sighed in relief as you noticed the sound had come from your backpack falling off your bed. You walked over and picked it back up, rummaging through it for your notebook. A frown forced its way onto your face. You swore you hadn’t taken it out, yet.

Pouring the backpack’s contents onto your bed, you scattered text books and pens to the side. Nothing. You searched beneath your bed, in the space between your dresser and your wall, and across every surface in the room. Drawers were pulled and piles of clothes were frantically scattered as the walls closed in on you. If you’d lost this notebook with everything in it…

A frigid gust of air froze your back before you turned around. Your notebook was missing; and the window you knew for certain had been closed before you left was now wide open.

Tears pricked at your eyes again as you spun around, stifling a scream. Jasper Hale now stood five steps away from you, his impossible eyes burning with intensity.

Tags: @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce @eggmettcullen @xcharlottemikaelsonx @oi-itsemily @cacti-succulents-andlesbians @aw0kenangel @jelly-fishy-babie @kawaiikpoplover268 @awkwardnesshabitat @salsameter @dillybuggg @awesomebooklover17 @badgirlsdeaddreams @raindancer2004 @camillapad @champagnejoker

381 notes · View notes

soundofez · 3 years

Text

@mastar-week 2021, day 3// solace

The Untamed AU. In the end, even Black Star cannot defy his own death. The clans gather to facilitate his fall.

Maka doesn’t let them. It drives her own clan half-mad, but she will not give the world a dying man to execute. She will not give up the man she has left so long abandoned. She will not let Black die unloved.

Warnings: hurt/comfort but mostly hurt, insanity, major character death. this one's a big ouchie my guys ಥvಥ

Ten Years Ago.

After the last surviving branch of the Star clan finally submits itself to the judgment of the Death clan, the wards around the Sunken Hills fail.

The other clans swarm, metaphorical pitchforks readied, eager to tear apart the notorious Last Dragon of Star. Maka arrives too late to stop them from trespassing; she flies past trampled gardens that twist her heart with grief and fury. How dare they disregard the toil of the people who lived there; how dare they claim themselves superior to innocents who wished only to survive.

She arrives in the central cave, the so-called Den of the Last Dragon, to find Black Star holding the rioting clans at bay, untouchable even now, shorn hair tied into powerful charms and dried blood applied with morbid skill to woven talismans. The stink of rotting yin is almost overpowering: lesser cultivators lie strewn about, their natural yang insufficient to counter such high concentrations of that dark energy.

Maka waits until she is noticed, until the assembled cultivators finally back away from Black's final wards. They ask her if she wants the honor, and she nods curtly in return. "Only right," they agree, though their voices betray a rapacious hunger for violence. "Only right for the Jade of Death to avenge her young master."

She does not deign to use words with them. They are not the ones who need to hear what she has to say.

When at last they all stand silent and waiting, like circling crows, she walks past their bedraggled ranks to stand before Black Star.

He nods as she approaches, and she walks directly through the wards that had so powerfully repelled the other cultivators. He keeps his charms and talismans to hand, but he makes no move to use them against her.

The look in his eyes frightens her. He is not defeated, not quite; but he is weary and grieving, and to Maka he appears to be awaiting condemnation.

From your sword, he had once told her, I will face my death and consider it just.

Maka casts her own wards in one smooth flourish. They blaze behind her, brighter than Black's wards are dark. "Leave," she says aloud. She does not look away from Black. She cannot bear to, not now, not when there is so little time left between them.

The cultivators grumble with confusion that morphs into surprise and indignation and shock. "She has been bewitched," one of them cries. "He has corrupted her," shouts another.

Maka turns to face them. "Leave," she repeats.

She has to encourage them with a sweeping blow from her sword before they obey. She grants them no more words, even as they express promises to return. (To free her, the stupider ones declare; to slay her, the smarter ones say.)

They do not understand what she is doing. How could they, when they are so utterly convinced of the guilt of the man she is protecting?

Black Star does not seem to understand, either. "What are you doing?" he asks as their opponents flee.

"I'm doing what I should have done a long time ago," Maka replies.

Black spreads his arms. "Kill me, then."

The accusation stings. Maka permits it. She has done nothing to earn his faith. "I won't," she replies.

Black Star smiles at her, coughs— there is blood in his teeth, dribbling down his chin— his wards fail, and her own are suddenly blindingly bright—

She lunges to catch him before he can hit the ground.

—

In the end, even Black Star cannot resist his fate. His cultivation technique, which draws so heavily on natural quantities of yin, overwhelms his body's supply of yang.

Maka had known it would happen. She hadn't known how little time Black had left.

They spend those last months together, her and Black Star and a surprise child she found around the back of the cave. The girl's eyes as green as Maka's, though her hair is that brilliant blue infamous to the Star Clan. She looks startlingly, heart-achingly similar to how a child might look if Maka ever bore one for Black Star.

Maka salvages what she can of the former gardens, replanting radishes while little Hoshino Ao does her best to plant herself, too. They collect Black's favorite lychee from the trees, hard-won little things that Black had been so proud to show the cuttings of eighteen months ago, when they had stumbled into each other in the little town at the base of the Sunken Hills. Maka washes and peels and pits the tiny fruits, saving their precious flesh in a shallow dish specially reserved for them. Ao loves them as much as Black does; Maka has to teach the little girl restraint, even as she wishes that she could peel all the lychees the two Stars could ever desire. Ao obliges even so, sharing the dish with Black while

Maka inspects the illusory wards alone. They cover a smaller area than Black's old wards had, but there is no longer a clan here who needs the space. Maka doesn't have access to the same techniques Black had used to cover such an enormous area, anyway. She secures the edges of the wards as the clans storm around invisible border, oblivious to her presence; Maka in particular watches her father, who appears more distraught than dissatisfied. He is one of the few cultivators to come daily, and the only one to beg and grovel for her to come home. He has an uncanny knack for knowing when she is present; he always seems to start pleading when she is around to hear him.

Maybe it is not so uncanny. He knows the feel of Death clan wards as well as she does, even if he cannot get through them. Still, Maka cannot safely speak to him, and so she doesn't. Time enough for forgiveness after Black dies.

—

They talk quite a lot in those last months, even as excessive yin rots his body and decays his mind. "Why are you protecting me?" he asks early on, while he still has his sanity. "The honorable Jade of Death shouldn't be helping an evil cultivator such as myself."

"You were never evil," Maka says hotly. "I should have protected you sooner."

Black laughs her off, light-hearted even as he waits for his grave.

At other times, Black is morbid. "You'll have to live here forever," he informs her. "If you leave this place, they'll kill you." He says this with regret. You shouldn't have come for me, Maka hears, even though the words do not leave his mouth.

"They won't kill me," Maka replies.

Still other times, Black flirts with her. "You can have your way with me, you know," he'll say, winking. "Nobody can stop you, least of all me. I'll never tell, either."

He is trying to drive her away. Tough: she's not leaving him until one of them dies. She tells him as much, though instead of acknowledging his failing body, she simply says, "I'm never leaving you again."

His spirit fails. He is tormented by ghosts who do not exist and nightmares that escape the realms of sleep. Still, he seems to recognize her. "I missed you, you know," he tells her, half-delirious. "All these months I spent cooped up in these hills, I missed you."

"I missed you, too," Maka replies, pressing a cup of water or a bowl of radish stew to his lips. He seems to hear her, and he smiles.

He starts to forget that she's there: when she returns from gardening or lychee-picking or checking the wards, he will startle and beam at her. "Maka, you've come to visit!" he will cry, or even, "You! I love you!"

She never knows if these last words are truly meant for her. "I love you, too," she replies anyway, pressing lychee flesh to his lips and letting him lick the sweet nectar from her fingers like a child. The fruit seems to keep the horrors at bay, at least for a little bit, at least while she's with him.

The last time he speaks to her, he is strangely coherent. "You shouldn't have gotten involved, Maka."

She sits beside him. "If I'd gotten involved sooner, you wouldn't be dying," she replies, thinking bitterly of the years she's spent dithering, and for what? She is already twenty-two, fast leaving marriageable age, and the love of her life is dying.

He is only twenty-two, and he is dying.

"You don't know that," he replies. "And that's beside the point. You should have let them kill me. The gods know I deserve it."

She leans over him, takes his face in her hands. "You promised you would be killed only by my hands," she tells him. "I will not kill you. I will not let the world execute an innocent man. I will not leave you because you are dying. I should never—" Her voice cracks on the word. She swallows and continues, staring into his black eyes, wondering if she will ever fall into such blackness again. Never, she thinks. It's impossible. "I should never have abandoned you, Black."

I will not let you die unloved, she wants to tell him later, but by then he is beyond hearing.

—

She buries his body. She does not take down the wards. She steps out from the Den of the Last Dragon and into her weeping father's embrace. She pushes Hoshino Ao into his arms before she submits to the clans' judgment.

She is not executed, as she had predicted. Lord Death is still too fond of her. Still, she is sentenced to daily lashes and seclusion for a year. It takes another year for her to recover.

Of course, she never really recovers. She continues living, and she is dutiful to the clan, and she finds some measure of joy in teaching the new cultivators; but she does not begin to recover until she sees a man in plain grey robes, his hair white but his eyes that impossible black, placing a talisman she’s seen many times before on a corpse who should have been long gone.

#soul eater #mastar #mastar week #mastar week 2021 #maka albarn x black star #fez scribbles #fez writes #mastar week more like mastar yEAR AMIRITE

7 notes · View notes

ericsonclan · 4 years

Text

Chore Time

Summary: Clementine and Violet adjust to life at Ericson with their injuries.

Read on A03:

“Just kill me now,” Violet groaned as she continued scrubbing the dirt off the Jerusalem artichokes in preparation for dinner.

This was the fifth night in a row that she and Clementine had been assigned to food prep, likely because it was the only thing they were capable of given their injuries. It wasn’t like keeping watch or going hunting would be on the table anytime soon. So instead they sat around day in and day out washing clothes, sewing up holes or preparing ingredients for meals. Needless to say, both girls were already sick of the work.

“It could be worse,” Clementine mused, cutting through the skin on a freshly caught rabbit. “We could still have Omar looking over our shoulders every other second,”

Violet sighed. “You got me there. At least we’ve graduated beyond only having dish duty. Wish I could hold the knife though,”

“You’ll get there eventually. Your eyesight’s improving every day,”

Violet scoffed. “Yeah, keep telling me that. Let’s face it: this is as good as it’s going to get,” She did a circular motion around her face before throwing another tuber onto the pile.

“Got another rabbit to peel,” Clementine offered. She held the beheaded carcass up by its legs. Violet leaned forward, grabbing the skin on either side and beginning to pull back. They rocked back and forth slightly as they removed the skin from the flesh, Clementine holding fast to the legs as Violet tugged steadily on the fur. Eventually the skin came off with a final schlorp. “Thanks,” Clem said, laying the carcass back down on the board to butcher.

They could hear A.J. laughing from somewhere else in the yard. Louis was with him right now. Clem smiled. Louis was probably telling another one of his crazy stories about hunting mountain lions or wrestling barracudas to A.J. It was good to see the two of them getting along so well. She was still getting used to having others around that could watch out for A.J., but she had to admit it was sort of nice to have some time without him underfoot.

Violet squinted as she looked over toward the admin building. “Is that Aasim over there?”

Clementine turned to look. “Yup. Writing as always,”

“God, I wonder what he comes up with to write every day. ‘Dear Diary, today we caught three rabbits instead of two. One of the fish traps broke. What an amazing day!’”

Clementine chuckled. “It’s a journal, remember? Not a diary,” Aasim and Louis had gotten into a fight just two nights ago on that very topic.

Violet rolled her eyes. “Oh, of course! My bad. Honestly though, most of his entries are probably just complaints about Louis. Hunting with him every day must be driving Aasim insane,”

“You mean to tell me Louis is not Aasim’s first choice of a hunting partner?” Clementine asked, her brows wiggling playfully.

Violet snorted. “Marlon sure paired them up enough for all Aasim’s complaining,” Her expression grew sad as she looked down at her hands resting in the dirty water. “Sometimes he’d tag along to keep the peace between those two. Mitch and Brody also took a lot of hunting shifts,”

Clementine’s eyes dropped too. To think she’d only known Marlon, Brody, Mitch, and Tenn for a few days and then they were gone… the marks they’d left in her memory felt so much stronger than that. Perhaps because of their importance in the remaining kids’ lives. Even though they were gone, their presence was felt everywhere around the school. In the test beakers still sitting in the greenhouse lab, the lull of the river – the closest Brody ever got to the ocean - the nameplate in the headmaster’s office that Marlon had made for himself, Tenn’s drawing he’d gifted to Clem and A.J. on one of their first nights at Ericson. Clementine missed each of them in their own way, but for Violet the pain must be so much deeper. To lose those she’d survived alongside for eight years… Clementine didn’t have anyone who’d stuck by her side that long, not even A.J. There was no way to address the pain of such loss in any way that could help, so instead she sat with Violet in silence and stillness, dwelling in the grief of all that had come to pass.

“Well, you two sure don’t look happy,” They were shaken from their thoughts by Louis’ voice as he made his way over to them. He grinned at the two girls, standing in front of the table with his hands proudly tugging his lapels. “I see you’re butchering my rabbit there. Impressive, isn’t he? The biggest one we’ve caught all season!”

“Is that why you’re over here, Louis?” Violet glared at him. “To boast about your hunting while we’ve been stuck on our asses all day?”

“Actually, your asses are exactly why I’m over here,” Louis quickly raised a finger. “And before you say anything, yes, I just realized how bad that sounds. What I was thinking was that a brisk walk about the courtyard might be exactly what both of you need to turn those frowns upside down!”

“Ok then,” Clementine said with a casual shrug. “I only have my crutches outside right now…”

“A.J. ran inside to grab your prosthetic. We’ll be off on our stroll momentarily!”

“I’m out,” Violet declared.

“Participation is mandatory,”

Violet grumbled incoherently but stayed put.

---

It certainly took longer than momentarily for the prosthetic to be retrieved, attached, and for both girls to maneuver safely into position, each taking one of Louis’ arms. Eventually they were off though, traveling round the yard at what Louis described as a “leisurely” pace as Clementine struggled with each and every step she took. The prosthetic had been improved with each iteration Willy put forth over these last few months, but she was still figuring out how to balance properly on it without each forward motion throwing off her center of balance. Her friends were patient with her though, neither seeming put off at all by the agonizing crawl that was their speed.

“What a perfect evening,” Louis said with a grin. “The warm breeze wafting through the trees as I take a stroll with my two best girls,”

Violet snorted. “Lou, if you ever refer to me as ‘your girl’ again, I will sneak into your room in the middle of the night and strangle you in your sleep,”

“Noted. So, Clem, anything exciting happen today?”

“Actually, yes. James dropped by,”

“Really? In his full getup and everything?”

“He took the mask off before coming inside. He wanted to let us know that he’s planning on filling up the barn again. He also said he’d drop off the salt lick soon. Apparently A.J. mentioned it to Omar and Omar got the message out to James that he wanted it if James didn’t need it. Omar says it’ll be a game-changer when it comes to food,”

“Well, I certainly have no reason to doubt the words of our all-knowing chef. You excited for a change in food, Vi?”

“It’ll still be stew every night, just like it’s always been. I can’t imagine a salt block will make that much of a difference,”

Louis shrugged. “Time will tell, I suppose. Clem, how you holding up? Need to take a rest?”

“No, I can go a few more minutes,” Clementine tried to mask the hitch in her breathing as Louis eyed her worriedly. “I want to increase my endurance,”

“Alright, but if I see you slipping, I’m carrying you princess style the rest of the night and there’s nothing you can do about it,”

“Fine, it’s a deal,”

They continued their path around the yard, pausing by the greenhouse to greet Ruby as she came through with an armful of fresh herbs. A.J. ran over too, insisting that he should help Clem too. She placed her free hand on his shoulder, leaning on it ever so slightly as they circled back toward the picnic benches. Violet was steady for the most part, the occasional slipup coming from the rough terrain underfoot. But for the most part Louis kept his eye out for potential pitfalls, gently guiding her out of the way, chatting all the while to distract both girls from the toll the stroll took on their bodies.

Finally they made it all the way around the yard. Clementine and Violet sat down with appreciative groans, Louis and A.J. grabbing their bowls to fill up before they got their own food. Clementine looked over at Violet. The peevish frown that had stayed on her face all throughout dinner prep was gone, replaced by a small, contented smile. It always warmed Clem’s heart when she caught Violet smiling. “Good day after all?” she asked good-naturedly.

Violet seemed surprised at the question for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. Good day,”

#twdgs4 #twdg #fanfic #twdg clementine #twdg louis #twdg violet #clouis #recovery

9 notes · View notes

freddieslater · 4 years

Text

Rowing the Rarepair Rowboat: Damon Salvatore x Luke Parker (The Vampire Diaries)

Stretching, Damon blinks his eyes open against the sunlight streaming in through the windows. He pauses for a moment once he can see properly, taking in the briefly unfamiliar room. Then he spots the Whitmore hoodie flung over the back of a chair and he smiles to himself.

He glances at the empty space on his right. Assuming that classes have probably started already, he just settles back down, not having any reason to leave quite just yet. As he goes to close his eyes again, the door to the little dorm room swings open.

Damon's eyebrows shoot up as Luke walks in, barely noticing that he's awake. He's got an alert, almost panicked look all across his face. It's more the suit that's got Damon's attention.

"Okay," he says, and Luke's head snaps around to look at him. Damon sits up properly and waves a hand lazily at him. "I'll bite. Why?"

Luke's already turned to the mirror to finish buttoning up his shirt. "Why what? And--" he throws a confused glance at Damon's reflection, "--I thought you said you had to leave early today."

"Change of plans." Damon shrugs. "And why to the suit? You're a college student in Virginia majoring in English Lit and History, not some law student in Harvard."

"You know, I did consider law," Luke says. "But Liv said I wasn't allowed to abandon her and she refused even the idea of taking the LSAT's, so." He gives him a wry smile. "English Lit and History. A fair compromise."

Damon's not oblivious. Luke's told him this stuff before, they both know he has. And his voice is just evasive enough, his expression the perfect amount of please buy it and leave it alone.

He considers doing just that. It's not as if Luke has any obligation to tell him anything, and he really shouldn't care if he's keeping something to himself. But for some reason that he can't quite place, he does.

"Nope," he says after a beat. "Strike one. Two more tries."

Luke rolls his eyes and scoffs. Probably because he knows that Damon can't do anything if he just clams up and doesn't tell him. Compulsion doesn't work and Damon wouldn't even think about hurting him. He'd just be left to stew in not knowing.

But then Luke glances at him, their eyes catching. He sighs and drops his hands from his shirt. Finally, he turns to him.

"I... have to meet someone," he says, still vague, still evasive.

Damon's eyes track him around the room, narrowing. "What does that mean?" he asks, watching him pick up a tie from the chair.

Luke raises an eyebrow, cracking an elusively entertained grin at him. "It means I'm meeting someone? For breakfast?"

He pauses for the first time, actually slowing down rather than looking like he's roadrunner on fast forward.

"Hold on. Are you jealous?" he asks, his eyes wide with delight.

"Oh" --Damon's the one scoffing now-- "please. Like I have anything to be jealous of. You're not my boyfriend. You can go off and have secret breakfasts in a fancy suit with whichever stereotypical jocks you like. I could even set you up with two. You've met Matt and Tyler, right?"

That glint of delight only grows brighter, and Luke laughs in disbelief now.

"Oh my god." His tie is momentarily forgotten. "You are totally jealous. Wow. And I thought I was the one who couldn't keep things casual."

Damon rolls his eyes, his jaw tightening as he looks away from him for a moment. That knowing, prodding stare must have some compelling ability of its own because he finds it hard to lie while holding it.

It's irritating enough that Luke's right. A little pit of jealousy has opened up in his chest like it's a black hole trying to suck him in. But he doesn't do jealousy. It's an off-limits emotion and it is certainly not allowed in casual situations involving blond haired, blue eyed, Gemini witches who wanted to be a lawyer.

"But I really don't think you need to be jealous of me having breakfast with my father and sister."

Damon's eyes snap back to him sharply. "Your father? The one who tried to kill me?"

"Don't have another father, so, yeah, that'd be the one," Luke says dryly.

He moves back to the mirror to fix his tie, clearly getting nowhere trying to do it blindly.

"Why exactly is your dear old dad in town?" Damon asks. His eyes narrow again. "And why do you need to be so dressed up to have a very early breakfast with him and Liv?"

Luke visibly hesitates, eyes fixed on his own face reflected back at him. Damon watches his lips part, taking in a breath.

"Because it's our birthday," he says, almost sighing as he does, his shoulders deflating.

There's a twist in Damon's chest, stopping him dead. He stares at him, partly hoping he heard him wrong. That part fades quickly when he sees the dismayed, daunted look in Luke's eyes and knows he didn't.

"If today's your birthday, that would mean..." Damon doesn't need to finish. They both know what it means.

But Luke sighs properly and draws himself back up, replacing his dismay with firm determination. "It means Liv and I are twenty-two and officially of merging age."

Damon's eyebrows furrow. "So, what, you're going to dinner with your dad so you can give him exactly what he wants? To merge you?"

"No." Luke turns back to him and his eyes are blazing far more confidentally than Damon's seen in that crystal blue before. "We're going to convince him to let Jo and Kai merge instead."

It's a terrible plan, Damon decides right away. Many things could go wrong, and not many good outcomes spring to mind. Just the words Jo, Kai, and merge send a chill through him. As does the idea of Luke meeting with his dad now that he and Liv can merge.

"And your reason for thinking that you can talk Papa Parker into that is...?" Damon prompts sarcastically, but he's genuinely hoping Luke has some trick up his sleeve.

"Liv and I have to try," he says.

The hope deflates. So much for that.

Damon finally pushes the covers back from Luke's bed, swinging his legs over the side to stand up.

"Okay, not to sound like I'm doubting you or this idea," he says, and Luke's expression tells him he's not a great liar. "But what if he says no? And if he does miraculously say yes for some insane reason, have you thought of a way to stop Kai the murderous siphon witch who would absorb Jo in a heartbeat?"

"Jo can beat him," Luke insists with just as much confidence that it's starting to unnerve Damon. "She's stronger now."

A whole load of arguments for why this is not going to work jump straight into Damon's mind. As he opens his mouth to voice them, though, Luke takes a step forward and places his hands on both of his arms.

"It's gonne be fine," he says, so easily like he really believes that, even with the touch of anxiety in his voice. "But I really need to go before my dad shows up here looking for me."

Damon grimaces. "Can't imagine that scenario going well."

Luke laughs and shakes his head. "No, me neither. So, feel free to let yourself out whenever you wanna leave. Assuming I don't die during this breakfast, I might see you later."

Damon's still thinking of reasons why this isn't going to go well. But Luke's convinced, and this plan might not necessarily fail. Hopefully.

He sighs, his lips pressing together. His eyes dart down and Luke arches an eyebrow.

"You're not gonna convince anyone to do anything with your tie like that," he says.

Reaching down, he undoes the practically perfect knot and redoes it himself. Luke just smiles, his gaze strangely soft as it remains fixed on him the entire time.

"You gonna kiss me for good luck next?" Luke jokes.

Damon's mouth twitches. He finishes and pats Luke's chest, acting like he's going to step back. His fingers curl around the tie again, but he pulls this time and presses his lips to his.

Luke's still smiling as he returns the kiss, his amusement passing over to Damon. Then his hands are between them, on Damon's chest, and he pushes himself back.

"For luck," Damon says, winking, letting go of him completely. He shrugs. "And in case your crazy father decides to kill you. It would be cruel to not get one last kiss to remember you."

Luke scoffs, shaking his head at him, but his smile is still in place as he turns away from him and heads for the door.

Damon's positive he's going to have to think of something fast to deal with whatever the fallout of this is going to be but he has some hope that it'll work. If he ignores the clamping sense of dread that's weighing down on him for some reason. He's sure it's nothing. Nothing at all.

#tvd #damon salvatore #luke parker #damon x luke #the vampire diaries #moodboard #aesthetic #ficlet #drabble #rowing the rarepair rowboat #myedit*#LOOK I LOVE THEM OKAY #ever since bonnie said ''they'd be cute too''#plus it's filled with potential angst if you stick to parts of canon like I'm doing here

9 notes · View notes

dudedrops319 · 4 years

Text

Dooley Noted - A musical journey through the mojo of a Toledo bluesman

(original version can be seen at https://toledocitypaper.com/feature/dooley-noted/)

Dooley Wilson is frustrated.

It’s 9:57 am on a cold Saturday in December and he is supposed to start playing at 10 o’clock. He has only just now stumbled out of the Toledo tundra into the cozy confines of the Glass City Cafe, which has booked him for its popular Bluegrass Breakfast music series.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” he cries out in the direction of restaurant owner Steve Crouse, who assures him everything is fine. Wilson looks pained as a brief flash of flame passes over his smoldering dark brown eyes. No, it’s not fine. He was scheduled to start playing the blues at 10 sharp, and now he’s going to start late. And a professional should always be punctual.

Undaunted, he swallows his disappointment and, within 10 minutes, he has everything set up at the front of the restaurant which serves as the stage. Upending his battered Cunard Queen of Elizabeth canvas bag, he sorts through the contents— Halls menthol cough drops, a bottle of slippery elm supplements (“Just in case my voice goes out”), a bottle of Deja Blue water, a glass vase that serves as a tip jar and a power strip.

He plugs the power strip into his amp, a well-loved 1965 Fender Bandmaster. And then out comes the artisan’s tool— his Jay Turser electric guitar. It doesn’t have a name or anything; it’s a utensil to serve the stew of blues (“It’s a cheapo guitar, but it’s MY cheapo guitar,” he muses). He’s almost ready. He asks, and a cup of hot black coffee is delivered. After the obligatory microphone check, he sits on the edge of a worn tan suitcase and readies his guitar. It’s time to go to work.

Soon the Glass City Cafe fills with the sound of the blues— and Wilson is lost in ecstasy. He’s sitting atop the worn tan suitcase, choking the guitar neck, his angular carved-in-stone features a mask of concentration, fingers and knuckles gnarled from a lifetime of plucking strings. There’s no setlist, no backdrop, no real plan. Just a working man with an instrument sharing the gospel of what he believes is the greatest music that exists. Wilson plays the blues as if his life depends on it.

And maybe it does.

From C.J. to Dooley

Dooley Wilson does not take toast with his mozzarella cheese omelet, favoring potatoes instead. Sitting in the Glass City Cafe months later— this time as a patron— he is a bit more relaxed than he was when he played here. He still doesn’t smile much. Wilson isn’t grumpy, he just carries himself with an intensity that’s disarming. You get the feeling that he doesn’t want to be here. That’s because he lives to do one thing: Play the blues. And when he’s not playing the blues, by gum, he wants to be playing the blues.

But for now, he’ll tell his story. Now 45 years old, he was born C.J. Forgy, in West Lafayette, Indiana to James and Sandy Forgy. His parents split when he was two years old and he went to live with his maternal grandmother in Maumee. An only child, Wilson describes himself as an “artsy kid” who spent hours in his room drawing and writing.

“Everyone thought I was going to be a visual artist,” says Wilson, taking a sip of his coffee. “But along with writing, over the years I’ve let those skills atrophy,” he says, with a regretful sigh. “But I don’t know; I’m thinking about taking up drawing again for its therapeutic value.”

So what sparked his obsessive devotion to the blues? It started as musical hangups often did in the ‘80s— with a cassette. At 15, Wilson, who was teaching himself guitar and whose musical tastes at the time ran towards Led Zeppelin, walked into Camelot Music in the now-long-gone Southwyck Mall and spied a tape from Columbia Records called Legends of the Blues Vol. 1. There was something about that tape that spoke to him.

He picked it up and looked at the back. As-yet unfamiliar names like Bo Carter, Blind Willie Johnson, Charley Patton, and Leroy Carr stared out at him from the tracklisting. Robert Johnson— he knew that name from an interview he’d read with Jimmy Page and he was fascinated by the infamous story about Johnson reputedly getting his blues talent while making a deal with the devil at a crossroads. Maybe it was the ghost of Johnson himself speaking to Wilson that day in Camelot Music. All he knew is that he had to buy it.

When he got home, he popped the tape into his boom box, and something in the universe shifted. At that moment, C.J. Forgy ceased to exist and the bluesman named Dooley Wilson was born.

“That anthology started this mystique and passion I had for this music,” says Wilson, in between forkfuls of omelet. “It just spoke to my angst-ridden soul at the time and I had never heard anything so authentic, so human, so real. Take Son House’s song ‘Death Letter,’ which is on that anthology. It’s taken from his 1965 Columbia session and it’s just this amazing song about how a man gets a letter saying that the woman he loves is dead. It’s just…” Wilson often trails off when he talks about the blues; yet another reason why he’d much rather play you a song than talk about it.

From that fateful moment, the blues wasn’t just a preferred style of music to listen to or to learn to play… it became, at that time, a life choice.

“I decided I’m going to devote my life to being some kind of bluesman like Fred MacDowell or Son House,” says Wilson. “It became much more important to me than making a living. If you weren’t dead and black, I couldn’t be bothered to listen to you.”

Henry & June

By the way, where did that name Dooley Wilson come from? Wilson smiles broadly with a touch of sheepishness. He was setting up one of his earliest gigs, at the famous East-side haunt Frankie’s, and his buddy Lance Hulsey (currently the leader of Toledo rockabilly outfit Kentucky Chrome)— who Wilson played with his first band, a heavy metal project called Harlequin— said that the promoter needed to know what to call him… and C.J. Forgy didn’t exactly sound bluesy. So the young musician, right there, decided on the name Dooley Wilson in homage to the actor and musician of the same name, famous for playing the character Sam in Casablanca. Dooley Wilson is now his legal name. He cashes checks with that moniker.

With a new name under his bluesman’s belt, the then-recent Maumee High School (Class of 1992) graduate needed a band that would let him explore the blues the way he wanted to. The result was Henry & June, a heavy blues ensemble that Wilson formed with his good friend Jimmy Danger. They got the band name from a recently released biopic of Henry Miller, one of Wilson’s favorite authors.

“I was obsessed with the blues at that time, but I’m still incapable of playing it correctly,” says Wilson, draining his coffee cup. “I was really struggling to learn how to play blues the way it was meant to be played.”

But even as he worked to unravel the mysteries of Deep South blues, Wilson was experiencing something unexpected: Success. Henry & June had released a single called “Going Back to Memphis” on Detroit label Human Fly Records, and the song was attracting a lot of heat. The popular band The Laughing Hyenas— which featured former Necros member Todd Swalla, who would go on to play with Wilson in his later outfit Boogaloosa Prayer— were big fans of the song and were trying to get Henry and June signed to Touch and Go Records. Some cat named Jack White, who had a little band called The White Stripes, also was a big Henry and June fan and began covering “Going Back to Memphis” in concert.

“We were kind of a hot, cult thing on the scene in Detroit,” says Wilson, thanking the Glass City Cafe waitress as she refills his coffee. “Jack White wasn’t the only cool person in Detroit who knew who we were though, of course, he became the most famous one. Judah Bower of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion put out a cover of the single on his side project called 20 Miles. I heard The Von Bondies used to cover ‘Going Back to Memphis.’ It’s a really fun, simple, dumb song.”

And then right when things started to go well for Henry & June, it all went wrong. The blues were supposed to feel like freedom and suddenly Wilson and the rest of the band began to feel decidedly trapped.

“Jimmy in particular felt like things were getting stagnant,” says Wilson. “Things were going good for us but it started to feel like we were just going through the motions. It was creative claustrophobia.” And so the band, at its peak, unceremoniously broke up.

“We were just dumb kids. We had no idea what we were doing with our little garage band. Looking back, that may have been the worst decision of my career. But when you’re young and dumb, you don’t realize that; you just think ‘Well, I’ll just do the next thing that comes along.’”

Today, Henry & June is fondly recalled as an early part of the Detroit music resurgence of the latter 20th Century. While The White Stripes, Kid Rock, The Detroit Cobras, and various Detroit rappers, from Eminem to Insane Clown Posse, put the Motor City musically back on the map, Henry and June remains a small part of that legacy. Copies of “Going Back to Memphis” routinely go for more than $100 on eBay, and the song was recorded live by The White Stripes for their DVD concert film, Under Blackpool Lights.

And no, Wilson hasn’t received any royalties. It all worked out for the members of Henry & June, though. Drummer Ben Swank is now the top A&R guy at Third Man Records, Jack White’s label. The band did a well received reunion back in 2010 in Toledo and everyone is still cool with one another. But in rock-n-roll and the blues, time waits for no one, so Wilson was off to new projects and new adventures.

And those adventures would lead to him nearly lose his mind.

On a wing and a Boogloosa Prayer

Brushing off the ashes of Henry & June, Wilson decided to further buckle down and get more “authentically bluesy.” He quickly formed a new band with Ben Swank and guitarist Todd Albright, that went through various names such as Dime Store Glam and Gin Mill Moaners. They sat in for many nights at the long-gone-but-never forgotten Rusty’s Jazz Cafe.

“I was spending all of my disposable income on that watered down whiskey at Rusty’s,” said Wilson. “Rusty’s was an amazing little place.” After a while though, he got restless and decided he would get as real as the blues could get and move to New Orleans.

“I wanted to see if I could live as a street performer,” said Wilson. “I had this rather naïve idea that I could possibly make a living at it in that town. I suspected it was the place on Earth where you might encounter people doing this kind of music.”

So Wilson moved to New Orleans, virtually homeless, busking on the streets of NOLA. Meanwhile, The White Stripes were starting to get their first big taste of international notoriety and began introducing “Going Back to Memphis” to a whole new audience due to their frequent covering of the song in live gigs.

“There I am trying to get lunch money down in New Orleans, and suddenly The White Stripes and the whole Detroit thing started to blow up and I’m trying to be Mr Authenticity down in effing New Orleans,” says Wilson, shaking his head incredulously. “My career is awful. I always zig when I should have zagged.”

But New Orleans proved to be an artistically fruitful time for Wilson. He met true, dyed-in-the-wool blues players who were playing incredible music from their souls. Nobody had record deals or anything that could get in the way of making direct, honest music. Many of these men and women were homeless or living off the grid; something Wilson describes as “an anti-American dream.” He talks enthusiastically and excitedly about that time in his life.

“These were some of the greatest living blues artists. There was a guy named Augie Junior who was simply incredible. I had never heard anything like him. There was this woman named Lisa Driscoll who played the washboard. People called her Ragtime Annie. And…”

Suddenly Wilson stops in mid-sentence and a hollow expression crosses his face. He stands up, sets his coffee cup down, excuses himself with a hurried “I’m gonna step out for a minute” and before uttering another word, he’s left the Glass City Cafe. A few minutes pass and he returns, wiping his forehead.

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes, sitting back down. “It’s just…it’s hard talking about this. I just got a little overwhelmed talking about some of my departed friends.”

He steadies himself with a sip of coffee that’s starting to go cold, as he’s eager to move on to talk about his other great band, Boogaloosa Prayer. Formed after moving back to Maumee fresh off a year in New Orleans, Boogaloosa Prayer, which Wilson says “was one of the best things I ever did artistically” came after stints in short lived bands like The Young Lords, and The Staving Chain.

Boogaloosa Prayer, an aggressive blues rock outfit featuring in part his old friend Jimmy Danger and Maumee drumming legend Todd Swalla, garnered quite a devoted following, playing in both Toledo and Detroit. The band had momentum behind them that recalled the Henry & June days. Then one hot summer night in 2006 at the now-shuttered Mickey Finn’s Pub, Wilson’s demons got the better of him.

Sporting a shaved head and a sickly frame that was skinny even by his normally lithe, sinewy standards, Wilson cracked onstage during the show. He ranted incoherently, couldn’t perform any songs, and couldn’t remember any lyrics. To everyone who was there, it was a harrowing experience.

Today, Wilson is reluctant to talk about the incident but he acknowledges it happened.

“I can say that I had a horrible psychotic breakdown and it had an impact on my life,” says Wilson, a bit guardedly. “At the time I had several severe emotional stressors in my life. A toxic woman in my life was stalking me. I had a business deal that was crushing me under the pressure. Plus, Boogaloosa Prayer was breaking up at the time because Swalla was moving to California. It all led to that time in my life.”

Following his breakdown, Wilson spent some time in a psychiatric ward, and lived in his aunt’s attic as he attempted to rebuild his fragile psyche. He eschewed traditional psychotherapy and refused meds because he’d seen too many of his friends “get hooked on those damned things.” Through a lot of hard work, meditation, and support from his friends, Wilson says he “totally got well again” and he hasn’t had any mental health issues since— thank goodness.

“Losing your sanity really puts a damper on your life.”

Still walkin’ down that road…

Wilson now lives in what he calls “a shack,” though it’s actually a carriage house out on a property in Maumee. The place smells of incense, a bit cramped but cozy abode, filled with guitars, amps, books on Buddhism, and novels by Charles Bukowski. Exactly how you would expect Wilson to live. This is not the living quarters .of a typical 45 year old, but it is definitely the home of a bluesman— and that’s all Wilson ever wanted to be. He plays gigs around the region and works as a “factotum” (his term) helping out family members and friends with projects. He’s completed an album and is currently trying to figure out how to release it. Love? Not interested.

“I have the kind of personality where I just do better alone,” he says simply. He may be alone but he’s not lonely. He has the best friends in the world in his life, even if most of them are dead. Son House. Sonny Boy Williamson. Bo Carter. All those great blues artists of yesteryear he counts as his personal friends, and by playing their music and his own songs inspired by their influence, Wilson is a happy man.

On that cold December day at the Glass City Cafe, Wilson utters a line that captures his essence: “Oh, I’m Dooley Wilson. Don’t mind me.” But, about that, he’s wrong. Mind him. Pay attention to Dooley Wilson. Pay close attention.

Post navigation

< PREVIOUS POST

1 note · View note

thatsouthernanthem · 5 years

Note

would you be up to write some really smutty reunion sex with kassandra and brasidas? it wasn’t on the prompt list so i wasn’t sure if you down for it

Her heart skips when she can see the dock from the Adrestia’s deck. Her fingers drum a steady beat against the wood, her foot tapping impatiently as the crew sings, as they toss ropes back and forth and prepare to dock. She’s lucky, she knows, that she doesn’t have to go through Gytheion anymore–no, she and Brasidas had built a private dock down the path from the farm, effectively giving them control of the beach (she’s vaguely aware that Archidamos may not have been pleased with that course of action, but while he’s King of the region, he’s not here in this area often, and he mostly lets her do what she wants anyway…she has a wicked suspicion that he’s still kind of scared of her, and that’s fine).

But still, the anticipation of being home after a long and tedious mission to Seriphos, dealing with some upstart pirate that Xenia requested help with, was almost too much to bear. Barnabas chuckles beside her, moving down the stairs to give her a wide berth and even Herodotos has sequestered himself on the opposite side of the ship.

“You know it’s bad,” Alexios drawls from beside her, idly slicing an apple with his knife and leaning against the railing. “When even your biggest fans want to get away from you.”

She whirls to fuss at him and instead gets a mouthful of apple as he shoves the slice he’d just cut into her mouth. As she sputters, he starts laughing at her and, grinning, says: “You go up to the farm. I’ll handle the docking duties.”

Swallowing the apple slice quickly (and choking slightly in the process), she blinks at him. “You’re sure? You hate that tedious kind of work–”

“Yeah, but if you do it, you’re more likely to set fire to the Adrestia just to make it go faster.” He pats the railing fondly and shrugs at her, turning his scowl on. “Just don’t let anyone know I was nice.”

“Done,” she reaches over and squeezes his arm, swooping in close to kiss his cheek, ignoring his groan of disgust before vaulting over the railing. Barnabas laughs and waves her off as she leaps to the dock as soon as it’s safe to do so, moving quickly to start her walk up the hill to the farm.

Kassandra manages to make it up to the homestead pretty quickly; only a handful of workers and villagers in the area managed to stop her to ask about her trip, to tell her about a sale in the agora this week, or in one case: a lecture from Arisbe on leaving Brasidas to fend for himself and how she is worried he’s lived on pomegranates and stew for the last month (and truth be told, Kassandra is also worried about that, but she’s barely one to talk).

She hears him before she sees him. The sun is low, the scream of cicadas dying out to be replaced by crickets and above all of it, the hum of a war song, the steady scrape of a knife over wood and she’s struck with a longing so strong she has to stop and watch him for a moment.

His hair is shaggier–he’s gotten bad about keeping it cut nowadays–his beard scruffier. He sits on a little stool on the patio outside their home, whittling a chunk of wood down into some shape that she can’t discern just yet. It will be immaculate when he’s done, as all the things he builds are. She clears her throat as she starts walking again, not wanting to scare him.

Across the stones, his eyes flash up to lock with hers and he blinks, startled. “You weren’t due for days,” he says, standing quickly, the wooden block falling to the ground. He sighs and ducks to grab it, wincing a little and Kassandra’s at his side in seconds, her hand on his arm, tugging the knife away to set it on the little table. “I’m fine, my love, just surprised.”

“We finished earlier, but my letter had already been sent,” she murmurs, pressing into his space. His hand comes to cradle the back of her head and she shivers at his touch. “I missed you. So much. Alexios made me leave the Adrestia, said I was driving everyone insane.”

His chuckle is like a warm drink, it spreads through her body from head to toe. He grins at her and her heart skips a beat at the love in his light brown eyes. She swipes her thumb across the scar on his cheek just before he crowds her toward the house, leaning in to kiss her. His hands are sure, strong, at her waist, guiding her into the house. He’s aiming for the bedroom, she can tell by the direction of his steps, but she needs something now.

Tugging him closer, she leans against the wall. Her arms wrap around his shoulders, she pulls away from his mouth to press kisses against his jaw, chin, throat. He groans, fingers digging into her hips and he shakes his head, pulling away from her. “I love you, Kassandra,” his voice is a deep, rich rumble from his chest and she shivers again. “But your armor is killing me.”

Laughing, she pushes him away from her, fingers flying to the ties and buckles of her armor, tugging the pieces off as she walks into their bedroom. She tosses the pieces onto the floor, for once not even caring a little bit that they bang across the stone–she needs a new set anyway after that last fight–instead choosing to focus on the way Brasidas’ eyes darken when she perches on the bed to tug her small clothes off under her chiton, the way his arm muscles bulge and move under his skin as he pulls his own tunic off over his head.

He stands before her and she reaches out for him, fingers skating across his stomach, his chest, light touches against the injured shoulder and leg. Standing, still in her old chiton, Kassandra moves them so he is sitting against the bed and she is leaning into him, dragging her tongue and lips down his chest in a slow, tortuous path. Stopping to circle his nipples with her tongue, her nails scratch at his sides, drawing a hiss from his lips.

Kneeling before him, she presses her lips against his hip bone, then the other before dragging her tongue along the deep v of muscle in his lower abdomen. His muscles clench and he is hard under her hand as she palms him through his small clothes–with a sharp intake of breath, he shifts against her, his hand tugging the leather out of her hair, tangling in the long, wavy tresses, tugging her head back just a little.

“Kassandra,” he whispers, his voice hoarse already and it shoots desire straight to her cunt, her teeth sinking into her lower lip as she blinks hazily up at him. “Let me kiss you–”

“Not yet,” she murmurs, tucking her fingers into his perizoma and tugging down, moaning softly at the sight of his cock springing free from its confines. Shoving his small clothes down his legs, she quickly wraps her hand around the velvety steel of him, sinking her mouth onto him. Another moan sounds in the back of her throat at the salty, musky taste of him, her cunt clenching with need as she laps up the droplets of pre-cum leaking from his tip.

Fingers tightening in her hair, he groans above her, his thighs trembling as she sets to bobbing her head up and down, covering his cock with her saliva to make it easier to stroke him. She lifts him, pressing his length against his stomach so she can focus on the vein that runs along his cock, her free hand coming to cup his balls, stroking and tugging, drawing a strangled noise from deep inside of Brasidas’ chest.

Licking her way back to the tip of him, Kassandra takes him back into her mouth, her eyes fluttering closed at the delicious weight of him on her tongue, something she never tires of–something she misses every time she’s gone. She works her way down, taking more and more of him inside of her mouth, straining to suck all of him in.

Growling, Brasidas tugs her away from his cock, and she whines, desperate to feel him again but his grip is strong and he hauls her up against him, whirling as he stands to throw her down onto the mattress. “I want to be inside you when I come, Kassandra.”

The way her name sounds in that raw, hoarse growl sends shivers up her spine and a whine slips from her lips when he drags his hands up her legs. He stops at her knee, lifting her leg up, watching her with dark eyes. She shivers, her core clenching, as he moves his lips around the kneecap, dragging his tongue along her skin, worrying at a little scar there.

The scent of her fills the room, with her legs open, her small clothes somewhere on the floor, and the way his wet trail of kisses makes her headier with want. He slides his tongue up her thigh, crawling along the bed until he is settled between her legs. Setting her foot back to the bed, he reaches for her thin chiton, fingers toying with the frayed edges.

“I’ve missed you,” his voice is still a hoarse whisper, drenched with need; he tightens his grip on the edge of her tunic and pulls, rending the old cloth in two–it splits down the middle, exposing her to him and she shudders at the show of strength, of the passion in his eyes as he slips the ruined cloth from her shoulders. Moaning, she grabs at his shoulders, tugging him down to swipe her tongue over his lips, to sink her teeth into his bottom lip.

His hands come to her lower back, pressing her hips up against him, his cock heavy and hard against the sensitive skin of her thigh. Breath hitching, she wraps her leg around his waist, shifting her hips so that the tip of him slides through her soaking folds and catches across her clit.

Sliding his hands to her shoulders he presses her back down into the bed and she whines as she loses contact–desperate, half-formed thoughts of please, let me feel you, fuck me, tumble from her lips as he tugs at the strophion binding her breasts. His chuckle is darkly pleased, emanating from deep in his chest as she quickly takes over, tugging the fabric’s knot loose and then wrenching the wrappings over her head. Darting forward, he swirls his tongue across one nipple before drawing it into his mouth, teeth sharp against the straining bud, his fingers tight on the other, pinching and tugging. Each pass of his tongue and scrape of his teeth, each pinch of his thumb and forefinger send another electric bolt of want and need down to her cunt, another rush of heat. She writhes under him, moaning gratefully when he shoves his thigh between her legs so she can rut against him.

His mouth is hot, wet torture–he switches–mouth where his fingers were, his fingers slipping and clamping the nipple slick with his spit and it’s not enough, the thigh between her legs is not enough. She needs more. Reaching between them, she takes his cock in her hand, swiping her thumb over the leaking head, tugging on his length and whining again. She’s desperate to feel him, to have him fill her–”Brasidas,” she whispers, arching her hips against his thigh, panting into his ear. “Please, just fuck me, please–”

Groaning at her words, he wrenches himself from her breasts, leaning up to capture her lips with a bruising, hard kiss. He moves his leg away from her, chasing her hand from his cock so he can hold it and position himself against her folds. Kissing along her jaw, he settles his mouth at her shoulder, teeth sharp as he snaps his hips forward, filling her in one motion.

Her breath leaves her in a gasp, and it comes back with a moan, her fingers tight on his neck, his shoulder. Her own shoulder aches at the force of his bite, but the pain has devolved into pleasure. His cock makes her feel impossibly full–he stretches and fills her cunt perfectly, and she holds him like she was made for him, snug and warm. Her walls spasm around him, so high-strung and ready for him that she knows she won’t last long.

Pulling back, Brasidas leaves just the tip of his cock inside of her, sitting on his knees to grip her hips. He’s grinning at her, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and she wonders how she looks in his eyes–spread out before him, chest heaving, gasping for air as he teases her with quick, shallow thrusts that do nothing to sate her desire; her hair splayed out on the pillows below, a tangled mess; bruised lips and glassy eyes. His groan is a strangled growl as he slides back into her with a sharp thrust, his thumb coming to run over her bruised lips.

Each thrust sends another spasm through her muscles, another jolt of electricity to her clit and the fire burning deep in her belly. He takes her legs, presses them together and lifts them to his shoulder before bending forward and she cannot help the cry that leaves her. He hits a spot inside of her that makes stars dance before her eyes in this new position, leaves her feeling fuzzy and her legs like jelly.

“Gods,” she grits out, reaching for his arm with one hand, the other fisting in the blanket underneath her. “Oh gods, Brasidas, yes.”

His answer is the quick flash of his teeth in a smile before biting down on his lip, making the short hairs of his beard stick out like spikes. He presses his forehead against hers, bending her legs to her chest–drawing long, gasping cries from her as he thrusts in and out, harder and faster until she’s near sobbing with need.

Her orgasm takes her suddenly–a never-ending build up that crashes hard and fast over her. Her fingers grip his shoulders, her cunt squeezing him hard, drawing him deeper into her, and his name is a garbled cry against his lips. He doesn’t last much longer; a few more disjointed thrusts and he is spilling into her, her fingers tight at her thighs, his groan a harsh exhale against her collarbone.

Before he collapses, he manages to drag his cock from her and lay her legs back to the mattress. He falls to the bed beside her, a hard whumph of his body hitting the blankets. His hand shakes as he brings it to her face, stroking her cheek.

Kassandra presses a hand against her chest, shakily taking in oxygen before laughing softly and rolling to her side to face him. Brasidas’ head is buried in the pillow, but she pushes at him until he lifts his head to look at her. “Hi,” she whispers, her lips curving into a grin. “I missed you.”

“The only good thing that comes of you leaving,” he growls, his voice hoarser than before, pulling her to him. “Is the reunion.”

She can’t help but agree with that. “Well, when we have regained our strength after a nap, we should reunite once more.”

“Sold,” he yawns, curling into her from behind and stroking her hair. Smiling, Kassandra lets her eyes close, happy to be home once more.

#asks #prompts #anonymous #I LOVED WRITING THIS #hooooo boy #it got hot in here #thank you so much for the prompt #i love all of you guys #writing #kassidas #ac odyssey fic #ac odyssey #brasidas #kassandra #i didn't leave any rambling notes #bc i didn't want to detract from this good smut #i hope you liked it :D #i hope you all liked it :D #my stuff

39 notes · View notes

laughoutloudcats · 6 years

Text

11 years down

Yesterday marked 11 years of Laugh-Out-Loud Cats. Later this month they’ll hit installment number 3000, and then onward to even more, including another book. But more on that later. For now, in case you missed it all those years ago, I’m reposting John Hodgman’s introduction to my book The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats Sell Out (which is still available for as little as 3 cents). Thank you again John, and thank you everyone.

BEGIN QUOTED TEXT Good evening. My name is John Hodgman, and I regret to inform you that the book you hold in your hand is not real. Do not be alarmed. I am not suggesting that this book is a figment of your imagination. For that would suggest that these very words of introduction themselves are a product of your diseased mind. But the fact is that you are not insane, and I do not live inside your head (yet.) No. Obviously this book EXISTS. But as a former professional literary agent, I have had some experience in elaborate literary hoaxes (I’m looking at you “Michael Chabon,” All of you.). And as a current famous minor television personality, I am naturally a first class authority on being a fraud. And so, having carefully examined these LAUGH-OUT-LOUD CATS cartoons, I have determined that while they are VERY ENJOYABLE and certainly ABOUT CATS, they were not drawn in 1912, as is claimed. How can I tell? Three things. First, the slang used by the cats “Kitteh” and “Pip” is quite contemporary, and almost surely inspired by the “LOL CATS,” (even the names are similar). If you are not familiar with it, LOL CATS is a popular Internet trend involving taking pictures of actual live cats at the precise moment they are talking. It’s a challenging hobby, requiring considerable skill and patience, and also a computer. It is much much harder than just sitting down and drawing an old-timey picture of cats. Second, Kitteh and Pip, you will notice, are portrayed as lovable hoboes. Throughout the strips, they gently chase their small, typically feline desires (naps, stew, and a good game of cards) along the back alleys and meandering country roads of a cartoon version of the early 20th century. Now, anyone can tell you that there certainly were hobo cats during this time, they were vicious creatures who lived cruel lives, and frequently killed their masters. More telling, however, is the fact that cats did not actually start standing on their hind legs until 1972, after the experiments. And it was not until 1980 that Pip’s arbitrary, overwhelming obsession with falling leaves was first bred in the American Shorthair at the Yale Feline Studies lab. Third, I applied the ACID TEST, which is something of a misnomer, as the test involves no acid at all. Instead, the original, hand-drawn cartoons are simply inserted into a small fire. Based on the burn rate of the paper (Fast! Fast! So merry and fast!), I can attest that those cartoons that survived the process and are now collected here almost certainly were not created before the year 2006. YES: 2007. But, you protest, we all remember Aloysius Gamaliel Koford. He was a major historical figure: a daring walrus-hunter, statesman and spy! Why, if it were not for the many folktales and young adult novels based on his life, the whole public image of the cartoonist as a glamorous, sexually confident, man of adventure would probably not exist! But it is so. For my research leads to one inescapable conclusion: Aloysius Koford is nothing but a myth, an internet rumor, a shadow puppet cast upon the wall all formed by the twisted, stubby fingers of man standing the darkness. A man named ADAM KOFORD. But, you continue to protest: ADAM “APE LAD” KOFORD?!? The supposed great grandson of the now thoroughly debunked Aloysius Koford? But that man is a DISGUSTING NOBODY. How could he possibly be a CARTOONIST? Let me tell you the story as best as I can reconstruct it. I first came to know Koford’s work some three years ago. I had released a book of fake history entitled THE AREAS OF MY EXPERTISE. Like all decent reference books, it contained within it a number of handy hobo nicknames, which number was 700. And soon a friendly website would suggest that cartoonists begin illustrating each of the hoboes alluded to in my book and posting them on the web. I trust you see the sense behind all of this, and no further explanation is required. Now it would seem that this Adam Koford is something of an “internet user.” For from the beginning of what would be known as “the 700 hoboes” project, the “Ape Lad” was among the fastest and most prolific contributors. He drew hoboes in every media: chalk hoboes and watercolor hoboes; hoboes as they might have been drawn by George Herriman and hoboes as they might have been drawn by Disney and Al Hirschfeld and hoboes as they might have been drawn by a young man in Florida with a seemingly bottomless barrel of talent and spare time. He drew all 700 and a hundred more, and then he started all over again. Intrigued, I did a simple Google search for the term “Ape Lad” (for I am the world’s greatest detective), and I found not only Adam Koford, but as well a vertiginous portfolio of non-hobo material, comics and spot illustrations in every historical style, each one singing with the Ape Lad’s intelligence, skill, and good humor. Soon I would see his name everywhere on the Internet, and then in the New Yorker. And then finally, THE LAUGH-OUT-LOUD CATS debuted, his signature achievement. For those of us who had followed his work, it seemed at once a perfect tweaking of the Internet that he makes his home, filtered through his own encyclopedic nostalgia for the comics form and the hobo obsessive disorder/general mania (HOD/GMan) that is his sad affliction. And since he just can’t stop creating, Koford then created a creator: Aloysius Koford. As though discovering a secret pile of cartoons was the only way to explain his incredibly daily output. As though the ruse and the joke would apologize and distract us from the fact that he had created something better than the internet memes that has inspired it. For more than that, so much more, THE LAUGH OUT LOUD CATS a thing of intrinsic smarts and beauty. It is always clever in its wordplay (“Cognito,” announces Pip in a ridiculous false beard, “We are in it”). But glib, it is un-it. Rather, in its sincerity and unfussy, beautiful craftsmanship, it rivals the best of the old-fashioned strips it seeks to emulate. And yes, I am including Krazy Kat in that group, because that has only once cat in it, and this one has two. Since then, I have had the chance to meet Adam Koford. We had dinner and drinks, and I can tell you that he is not a walrus hunter. He is a normal person with a wife and two children. At dinner he eats moderately, and a drinks he did notdrink, but he was still good, sweet company. He is not a mad man or a spy or an eccentric. He is simply a genius. And that, frankly, is far more exciting, and surprising. I hope and trust you will enjoy this work, as fraudulent as it is. Now I must go and set to work proving that GET FUZZY is actually written by Thomas Pynchon. That is all. END QUOTED TEXT

8 notes · View notes

fantastic-fantasy-fanfics · 7 years

Text

STRENGTH, COURAGE, AND PATIENCE

Request by Anonymous: Hello! I saw fanfic where the reader had autism and I just wanted to ask, could t you do a fanfic where you and Bucky have a son with very bad autism and you have to deal with it, like when Bucky is out on missions how you head with it alone and just something really fluffy? I'd really appreciate it thank you! ( by the way I say bitchy-tacos post about you two being a two for one deal and you guys totally are, bitchy-tacos is like that snarky mean friends and your the cute and collected) 😘

A/N: First off: adorable fic idea, that you for the request (and sorry it took forever and a half to write) second: thank you for the good laugh! Third: I tried REALLY hard not to offend anyone! If there is something accidentally offensive in this fic, please let me know so I can fix it!

Dad!Bucky x reader

Word count:

Summary: You and Bucky LOVE your son! Autism and all! But, can you take care of him all by yourself without blowing a fuse while Bucky’s out on a mission?

Warnings: swearing, mention of meltdowns, Autism? Idk if that’s really a warning

(GIF not mine)

Your family was not a typical one. Your husband, Bucky, is a hundred-year-old retired assassin and you’re a highly trained agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Even the circumstances under which you met were weird! Who knew you could meet someone at a bomb-diffusing class and end up marrying them? The most normal one in your family was your and Bucky’s son, Noah.

Noah was not a typical child. Noah had Autism. Now, that didn’t mean he was weird, it just meant he was different. You and Bucky love that little kid to death!

When Noah was diagnosed with Autism, Bucky wanted to make sure he was completely comfortable in your apartment. He got special lights so they weren’t as bright, he got weighted blankets and stuffed animals for Noah, he got some touch-and-feel books for him, noise canceling headphones, and even got special window covers for Noah’s bedroom.

Once Noah turned three, you enrolled him into one of the best special education schools you could possibly find. Eventually, Noah’s seventh birthday rolled around and you got him a therapy/service dog. Noah loved his fuzzy, Labrador friend! Noah affectionately named him ‘Buddy’.

You, Bucky, and Buddy made a great team when it came to taking care of Noah and making sure he was happy and healthy. Buddy was always home to give Noah some consistency, and when you and Bucky weren't unavailable to take care of Noah because of missions or training, Natasha and Wanda would take care of him. Overall, it was a great tag-team system. Noah was always with at least two adults. Well… that was until this morning…

“A month?!” you gasped, trying not to yell and scare Noah, who was playing in the other room, “Oh please tell me either Nat or Wanda is staying here…”. Bucky just looked at you with an apologetic smile. “James...” you groaned, flopping back onto the couch.

“It’s only for a few weeks! B-but Tony and Clint will still be here…”

“James… do you really trust those two to take care of our child?”. Bucky didn’t answer. “I didn’t think so,”.

“But (Y/N), I can’t stay here! Almost the entire team has to go undercover in Europe-”

“Wait, so you’re not even going to be able to contact us?!”

“W-well… I’m not being completely cut off-” you interrupted him.

“James, I love Noah with all my heart and soul, and you know I would do anything for him, but I don’t know if I can do this by myself!” you cried, trying not to sound whiney as you got up and paced around the kitchen. Biting your lip, you turned to him again. “James I’m not a good enough parent to do this by myself, I can’t take care of Noah properly without someone else here! What if something happens?”

“Nothing will happen, you know how to take care of him and you know damn well you’re strong enough to do this yourself,” he retorted.

Taking a deep breath to calm down, Bucky took your hands in his. “(Y/N), you are a good parent, that’s why I know you and Noah will be fine,” he said, kissing your forehead.

“Oh… alright… but after thirty days is up, your sorry ass better be home!”

You were not ready for this in the slightest. And apparently, neither was Noah. Bucky leaving was such a huge, sudden change, Noah lost it. He was crying and calling for his dad to come back and not leave. It got so bad he started shaking and making nonsense noises. You felt so bad for the little guy. Luckily, after a few days, Noah calmed down and wasn’t so melancholy about his dad leaving.

After about a week, you were able to get a good schedule going. At seven AM, you’d get Noah up, dressed and fed. Then you'd walk Buddy with him and get Noah to school by eight. After that, you'd have get to work by eight thirty and get as much done as humanly possible. At three, you'd pick Noah up from school and take him to therapy appointment at three thirty. While he was there, you'd pick up groceries and/or laundry then pick up Noah at five. You'd get home by six, fix dinner, help Noah with homework, put him to bed by nine, then get more work done. And if you were lucky, you'd be in bed around one in the morning. Needless to say, you were tired 24/7.

By the third week of this hectic schedule, you were ready to swallow your pride and hesitation and ask Tony and Clint for help.

You walked Noah down the halls of Stark Tower, letting him go his own pace and look at all the stuff he found interesting. It was pretty funny, actually. His father was the Winter Soldier, his uncle/godfather was Captain America, his godmother was Natasha but he was absolutely obsessed with Iron Man and his "radical", as Noah put it, inventions.

Noah carried around his little-stuffed giraffe as he wore his headphones and watched one of Tony’s machines from behind the plexiglass wall. “What’s that one doing mommy?” he asked, pointing to the assembly line contraption.

“That one is painting the cyborg armor, see the colored paint it’s spraying?” he answered, picking him up and showing him how the metal was being covered in red paint.

“(Y/N)?” Tony called from behind you, making you jump.

“Oh, Tony, it’s you,” you breathed a sigh of relief, setting Noah back on the floor and taking his hand. “Tony I need your help, I can’t keep up with Noah’s schedule alone,” you continued, trying not to cry out of frustration and embarrassment, “I’m tired, I’m frustrated, I feel like my brain is oozing out of my ears… I can’t do this…”.

Tony gave a hum in acknowledgment as he lead you to a little office where you and Noah could sit down. “If you want, I could give you the rest of the week off, just until Buck gets back home,” he offered, handing Noah a sucker from the candy bowl on the desk, “and, if you’d like, I can send over another Agent to help you, one that specializes in child care and rescue,”.

“Would you? That would be so helpful!” you sighed, shaking his hand, “that’s very much appreciated,”. You were so happy! Not only would your schedule be a little looser, but Clint and Tony would not be the ones taking care of your child.

Once work was off your schedule, it was a lot easier to juggle your daily to-do list. It was still hectic, but at least you got more sleep. The agent Tony sent over, Jo, was an amazing guy! Noah was a bit wary of him at first since he was a new person. But Jo was so patient and kind, he was a big help! As a thank you for all his help, you cooked him a nice dinner at the end of the week. Noah even made a drawing for him.

It was Friday night and Jo had just left to go home after post-dinner coffee. Noah was showing signs of tiredness, so you got him and Buddy ready for bed. You kissed him on the forehead, gave Buddy a few pats on the head, and left to go finish up some paperwork in the bedroom.

A few minutes into your work, you felt familiar, strong arms wrap around your shoulders. “Hey doll,” Bucky whispered, kissing your neck softly. With a big smile, you got up and turned around to hug him tightly.

“Hey baby, welcome home,” you greeted, kissing his cheek, “you hungry? I’ve still got some stew on the stove,”

“No, I’m okay, but thank you,” he smiled, setting his duffle bag down by the dresser, “who was that guy I saw leaving the apartment?”

That may have seemed a little suspicious, but you knew Bucky trusted you. “Oh, that was Jo, he’s been helping me take care of Noah these past few days,” you answered, sitting down on the bed and stretching out a bit.

“Oh yeah! He came on one of our missions a couple months ago,” he remembered, taking off his shoes then sitting down with you.

“James… does it make me a bad mother that I had to ask for help to take care of my own son?” you asked abruptly.

Bucky’s eyes went wide as he looked at you. You? A bad mother? Only in some bizarro alternate universe would that make sense. “What? No no no no!” he tutted, wrapping you in his arms, “not at all, sweetheart!”

“Then how come I feel so bad?” you whimpered, shedding a few tears.

Bucky saw how guilty you felt, and he didn’t like the sight of it. “(Y/N), look at me,” he instructed, turning your face so he could look you in the eye, “it takes a lot, and I mean A LOT, of energy to be a parent, especially with a child who has special needs. You tried your best to take care of him on your own, and when you couldn’t, you asked for help. Instead of keeping your ego and putting you and your child at risk, you asked for help so our son would be well taken care of. You were thinking of your son and putting him first, that's what good mothers do,”

You gave a small smile at his words. You hadn’t thought of it that way.

“Both you and Noah have an abundance of strength, courage, and patience, and I couldn’t be more proud of you,”.

A/N: alright, hopefully I didn’t completely screw this up

TAGLIST:

@paranoid-borderline-insane @buckyshattergirl @bitchy-tacos

#bucky #bucky barnes #james buchanan barne #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #dad!bucky #dad!bucky x reader #autism awareness #marvel #marvel fanfic #marvel fanfiction #triple f #Fantastic-fantasy-fanfics

106 notes · View notes

lisaardynlover-blog · 7 years

Text

ARDYN NSFW

FOLLOW US INTO HELL. ARCHIVE So, I guess this is a pretty popular one for you guys that I literally spent weeks on because of my slow ass. Also, shout out to Anon who sent this one in just for me. I’m glad you trusted it in my hands, lol - Dia Noctis - “Noct! Stoooop! I’m trying to cook here!” Bored at the moment (and rather than helping you), Noct had found his entertainment through teasing you, hugging you from behind and feathering kisses down your neck in an attempt to get you to his bedroom. You were already in the middle of cooking up some dinner, and starving, trying to concentrate on chopping up the bare minimum amount of vegetables Noct would allow you to put in the stew. “If you don’t quit it, I swear to the Astrals I’m putting extra veggies in this.” “Whatever you say…Iggy.” A low chuckle rolls out of Noct right next to you ear, his hips grinding harder into your ass as his embrace tightens. “I’m willing to take my chance on it, though.” Noct’s kisses soon dissolve into love bites, and he traces his fingers underneath the waistband of your pants, tickling the delicate skin that lay beneath it. You hate to admit you were starting to yield to his advances, and the second he clamps his teeth down on your shoulder and he shoves his hand into your panties, you become his. Your hand grips the edge of the counter, knuckles turning white as one hand works your clit, and the other is already behind your shirt and squeezing your breast, rolling your nipple between his fingers. “Noct…please…” you gasp between your heavy panting. “Please what? Fuck you already? I didn’t think you would ask for it so soon.” Noct turns you around and hoists you up on the countertop behind him, peeling your pants off of you and tossing them to the kitchen floor. His pants now removed, the two of you end up fucking each other on top of the kitchen counter, not too terribly worried about the fact you had just cleaned off that counter to cook. The height of the counter must have been perfect for you - the way Noct was railing you had you seeing stars - and you wrap your legs around him to allow him in deeper. The sensation beginning to build in your core was different from other times, it tingled, and you weren’t entirely sure if you were about to cum or if you had to pee. “I’m so close to cumming, AHH, just a little bit harder.” You cry, teetering on the edge. Noct heeds your words, slamming into you at a feverish pace, and forcing you to grasp onto the edge of the counter to anchor yourself against the impact. “That’s it, cum for me y/n.” The tingling you felt finally went away, replaced by an incredible surge of pleasure throughout your body as the cum pumps out of your body…and didn’t stop. Body convulsing, you drench Noct’s cock and stomach, and the rest of the cum dripping down the countertop onto the floor, surprising the hell out of Noct who pulls out to see what transpired. He traces and pushes into your entrance with his thumb, mesmerized by the way your cum continued to drip, but still puzzled as to what just took place. “Did you just…?” “Cum?” Noct’s eyes lower when it fully dawns on him. “…shit, that was really hot.” He meets you in a fiery kiss, pushing his cock back into you and starting back again at his prior pace, drinking up every moan he coaxes from you. Still reeling from the explosive orgasm that you never knew was in you, you thread your fingers through his silky hair, deepening the kiss. You pull back for a moment, trying to find your breath. “Mmmm, but what about all this cum, Noct? Shouldn’t we…?” “I don’t care, Ignis can clean this up later when he gets here.” Prompto - Prompto has two big things going for him when it comes to sex - the fact his agility was crazy, as he could easily jackhammer you for an extended period of time, and the way his cock curved slightly upward and always hit you in the G-spot dead on. It was a lazy afternoon for the two of you, and as per usual, the two of you were spending the time fucking. Ever since the first time you and Prompto had decided to “officially” consummate your relationship (even though he was very nervous about living up to your standards at first), the hunger for sex had been insatiable between you two, always managing to find an opportunity no matter where you were. This time, it was at least in the privacy of his own bedroom, and not having to sneak off in some alleyway or a public bathroom, although the whole factor of possibly getting caught always added a nice thrill to the whole situation. Prompto, head currently residing between your legs and savoring your taste and scent, was in absolute heaven as his mouth and tongue works you body like a pro. You clamp your soft thighs around his head, something he absolutely loved as it made him feel even closer to you, and he moans while he looks up at you with nothing but fondness in his gaze. He looks the innocent and submissive part enough, but this was only part of a game he liked to play with you, making sure to bring you to the edge, only to draw back with a smile and leave you begging for more. And he did just that, carefully monitoring the jerking of your hips and your slickness as he sucks on clit harder and harder, stopping cruelly right before you cum. Prompto sits up on his knees, his lips wet and shining before he licks it away. “Prompto, you are terrible.” He crawls over you, kissing you and diving his tongue between your lips, making absolutely sure you got a good taste of yourself before pulling back, his grin extending from ear to ear. “You know you love it when I tease.” You pout, knowing he was absolutely right, and he leans down to kiss you again, rubbing his rigid cock up and down your slit and getting it ready to enter you. He slides into you with little resistance, releasing a small moan when his hips completely flush with yours, pausing his movements for a moment before thrusting into you again. You run your hand through his soft, sandy hair, bringing him in for an even deeper kiss, using it to heighten your pleasure as his pace becomes more steady. Hoping to distract him for a bit with that, you try and sneak your hand down to your clit, but you’re only able to rub it briefly before Prompto swats it away with a laugh. “Nope, not allowed to yet.” You whine. “Dammit, why can’t you just let me cum already?” “Because…you look like the cutest little chocobo when you really want something.” Prompto unsheathes himself from you, flipping onto his back and grabbing you by the hips so you can move over and straddle his waist. Your position your entrance above his cock, lowering yourself onto him until he is deep inside of you. A shudder rings out through you body, and he responds with a delicious moan, throwing his head back as your move your body in perfect unison with his. You lean back, giving Prompto an unadulterated view of the way you engulf him with every rock of your hips. The boy was in ecstasy, and you finally get him to relent when it came to your orgasm. “Touch yourself.” Prompto demands, his voice low and shaky. You relish over finally getting permission, playing with your clit as you bend forward and let him take over, ramming into you with a sudden unbridled energy. The position was optimal, hitting your body in all the right ways and making your core tighten harder and harder as you reach your climax. You squeeze your thighs around his slim waist, unable to hold back any longer as your orgasm hits, falling over on him and burying your head into his neck as wave after wave of bliss overtake you. You hadn’t taken notice yet, but Prompto definitely did, pushing you back up when he felt the insane amount of hot cum gushing out of you and all over his cock and stomach. Prompto was extremely confused. “…did you just pee on me, Y/N?” “I…” you peer down at the mess you just made, barely able to put together a coherent thought as your body continues to pulse and you try to catch your breath. “I…think I came really hard. I never did that before.” A mischievous glint takes over Prompto’s eyes at your confession. “Really…so I’m the first guy that’s ever made you do that, huh?” “…yeah.” Prompto, rather elated when he heard you admit that, wraps his arms around your neck and pulls you back on top of him, his lips right against your ear, and his voice lowered to a tantalizing whisper. “Well, I guess I need to make sure you do that again for me, don’t I?” Gladio - Gladio was no stranger to the concept of squirting, and being a stubborn man who was intensely proud of his sexual prowess, he swore to himself that he was going to get you to do it - one way or another. Whenever he masturbated, the singular thought of you yelling out his name, eyes widening in shock, and gushing all over him as he was balls deep inside of you often got him straight to the edge, cum shooting out of his cock and all over his stomach, wishing it was yours instead. You had invited Gladio over to your place for the evening, for a simple but tasty dinner (with a cheeky comment of “It’s no Cup Noodle, but I’ll guess it will do.” earning a swift punch to his arm), that had eventually moved to the couch with a few beers and a terrible horror movie you had purposely chosen for the night. Of course, any expectations to actually finish the movie were completely thrown out the window when Gladio decides to put his moves on you during a particularly funny scene, both of you laughing when he suddenly cusps your chin and roughly takes your lips. “You’re not going to allow me to finish this movie, are you Gladdy?” You groan into his mouth, not too fussed over the situation. “You’re damn right I’m not.” Gladio pushes you down on the couch, hand already sneaking its way past your panties and playing with your clit to get you slick and ready for him. You buck your hips into his hand a a few times, and deepen your kiss, only encouraging him to work harder for his prize. He traces one of his thick fingers against your folds, smiling against your lips when he feels just how wet he’s made you. “Let’s move this to the bedroom.” Gladio suggests, giving you no choice as he hoists you up onto his shoulder and marches you into the bedroom. He immediately notices the full-length mirror that was hung next to your dresser, which you had installed just a few days prior. Gladio puts you down on your feet, immediately drawn to it given the numerous raunchy scenarios he now had running through his head. He runs his hand over the wooden frame, tracing along curve and detail. “When did this happen?” “A few days ago. You know, gotta get my vanity on.” You give Gladio a two thumbs up and a goofy grin. “I got a better idea.” Gladio grabs you by the shoulders, swinging you in front of the mirror and positioning your arms on either side of it. Your pants are removed in a single swift motion courtesy of him, and after removing his as well, he pushes his stiff cock against your ass, trailing kisses down the side of your neck. Raising your leg on top of the dresser, he enters you from behind, and you gasp at being filled and stretched out by his massive cock…not to mention the sight of it in the mirror was incredibly hot. Gladio, eyes half-lidded and hand around the front of your neck, was intent on watching every movement from you - from every bounce of your breasts as he slams into you, to every time your pussy swallows up his girth to the hilt. “Look at how fucking gorgeous you are…taking my whole cock like a pro.” “You like stretching me to my limits, big guy?” Your eyes lock with his through the mirror, giving him an enticing smile. “Always tempting me to go harder, you little minx.” Gladio drives into you at a feverish pace, reaching around to your clit to help bring you to your first release, each slap of his hips into you bringing you closer and closer to your peak. The angle he was hitting you at felt incredible, and you could tell the orgasm bubbling underneath was going to be intense, but you didn’t realize just how intense it was until he released it, your essence near gushing out of you as you desperately try to keep yourself steady to ride it out. Gladio lets out a loud growl when he feels the liquid splash down his legs, and nearly loses it completely when he sees the whole scene play out in the mirror, cum dripping on the floor and even a few splashes landing on the mirror. You felt slightly embarrassed, but Gladio reassures you that you did nothing wrong when he throws you onto the edge of the bed and starts ramming into you like an absolute savage from behind, complete with the sounds of deep moans and wet slapping filling the room. It took little effort for Gladio to cum after that, hand pressing into your neck to keep you still as he fills you pussy to the brim with his cum, refusing to pull out until you milk every last drop from him. A couple of lazy thrusts later and he pulls out, immensely proud of the way his cum drips from you and makes his claim on you. “If you keep doing shit like that and I promise that you’ll never be able to walk straight again.” Ignis - Ignis was a man of infinite patience. He proved this time and time again, having to deal with getting Noct back on track with his duties, the way he looked over every detail with absolute scrutiny when he had to come up with a strategy, and his need for perfection and doing whatever was required to get there. But this time wasn’t one of those times. Ignis yanks you in one of the open rooms of the Citadel, locking the door before throwing you against it with a thud. The stress and long hours of that week had finally taken their toll on him, and much to your thrill, he had decided you were going to be the one to relieve him of it. He nearly knocked the breath out of you, his palms flat on the door on either side of you to keep you from escaping, and his hips grinding into yours to keep you from wanting to escape. “Ignis…” his name came out strained from your throat, and he cuts sentence as his mouth clamps down on your neck, rendering you unable to speak between your moans. A gloved hand squeezes your mouth shut, keeping those from the other side from hearing your salacious noises. Ignis soothes your newly formed bruise with a kiss, satisfied with the way your flesh now bore his mark. He sweeps his thumb across your bottom lip, eyes hungry to claim more of you. “Not the most impeccable of situations, but this will have to suffice.” Ignis’ mouth takes over yours, the wet heat of your mouth welcoming him to explore every crevice of it in a messy kiss. He grabs your forearms, the kiss never breaking, and switches you around to back you up on the desk, hoisting your ass on top of it and forcing the once-organized papers to scatter everywhere. Deft fingers quickly move up your skirt, grappling the flimsy panties you wore and removing them in one swift motion onto the floor. “Iggy, I have a meeting in about 10 minutes…SHIT.” Ignis takes his place between your thighs, mouth already over your clit, sucking and massaging it with tongue with varied strokes. You throw your head back, not even bothering to stifle your moans. Ignis gazes up at you, his green eyes boring into you until your eyes lock. “That sweet, filthy mouth of yours, my dear. Please take care of it.” You clamp your hand immediately over your face to muffle your moans, as Ignis grips your thighs tighter and buries his face deeper into your mound. It doesn’t take much from his masterful tongue to get you dripping for him, and soon he has two fingers curled up in you, fucking you and hitting your G-spot at just the right angle to get your hips rocking and legs quivering. His mouth never leaves your clit, putting in the throes of ecstasy as his strokes begin to bring you to your climax - his primal need to see you cum overriding the fact your fingers were now ruining his carefully coiffed hair. “Cum for me, and show me just how much you want my cock.” The pressure inside of you screaming for release was nearly unbearable, and Ignis finally put you over the edge with a few more pumps of his fingers. And you came for him…hard…unable to control the bucking and shaking of your hips as your essence spills out of you and onto his face. Ignis nearly chokes at the amount of cum that gushes out of you, not only getting it all over his face and glasses, but also soaking the papers that were still underneath you. Ignis is stunned for a moment, but hastily regains his composure, standing up and removing his glasses carefully to place them next to you on the desk with a click. “I don’t think the King is going to appreciate your ruining his documents like this…but I’m sure I will manage something.” Ignis chides, picking up one of the wet sheets of paper to lay it off to the side. Your eyes widen when it finally hits you as to whose office you were in. Ignis grabs your by the back of neck, locking your lips with his in a rough kiss, the taste of your own cum filling your mouth as he snakes his tongue into you. You hear the clanking of his belt, and barely gives you a moment to breath before his cock is already deep inside of you, pounding you relentlessly, and making sure there was a second mess to clean up before you supposed to attend that meeting. Ardyn - You couldn’t keep your hands off of Ardyn the whole time during another boring Niflheim military banquet you were forced to attend with him, in a desperate attempt to spice things up a little bit. It was impossible to fluster the man no matter how hard you tried; in fact, when your hand finally grabs the growing bulge in his pants, he only smirks and licks along his bottom of his lip. His hand encloses over yours, and he leans over, brushing his lips against your ear to provoke a shudder from you. “Do you think it as wise to try and toy with me? Keep testing my patience, my dear, and you’ll only dig yourself only that much deeper.” “It’s just so stuffy in here…I only wanted to liven things up a bit.” The look you shot him was one of pure defiance, and while you knew of the possible consequences of your actions, your hands never left him. Later on that night, after most people had filtered out for the evening, Ardyn calls it a night for the two of you and escorts you back to the parking garage, and you notice there were still few other cars sporadically parked throughout the garage. After a brisk walk you reach his car, and before you even had a chance to turn around and even utter a single word to Ardyn, a loud thud echoes through the garage, and you find yourself lying on your back on the hood of his car, squirming against his palms as they bore into your wrists. “Impatient little bird, are we?” Ardyn’s amber eyes burn into your body as his gaze wanders, stopping when they reach the bottom of your dress. In one swift movement he has your dress scrunched up to your hips, and your panties shoved to the side, and he violently shifts his pants just enough to free his cock, still hard and twitching from all the teasing you did to him back at the hall. He pushes your thighs open wider, entering you with a feral grunt and such force that he slams into the back of your wall, and you were sure someone heard your cries of pain. His hands return to your wrists, pushing down on them to the point your fingers began to tingle. You struggle against him, trying to regain feeling in your hands again but his grip only becomes tighter. “Don’t try to deny me now. You put yourself in this little predicament, and now you will see it through till the end.” The pain starts to subside, ecstasy soon replacing it, and you begin to forget about the aching in your wrists. It didn’t take much coaxing to near your apex - the delicious angle of the car and the sheer savagery of his thrusts hitting you in all the right places - but your budding orgasm felt different this time around. When you hit your release, your legs begin to shake, your back arches sharply, and you feel a warm liquid start to spill out of you. Ardyn, taken slightly aback by the sudden gush, slows his pace, observing the mess you made upon him, you, and especially all over the hood of his precious car. You avert your eyes and turn your head away, but Ardyn drags you back by the hair, forcing you to look up at him. “Quite the situation you’ve landed yourself in…dirtying my car in such a lascivious manner.” You open your mouth, beginning to protest, but Ardyn cuts you off. “I should make you clean this up with that willing mouth of yours.” The way he roughly claims your mouth with his nearly steals every breath from you, making it impossible to focus on anything but him. His other hand finds your already sensitive nub, pressing and massaging his thumb into it, your body writhing and starting to buckle from the overstimulation. You try to slap his hand away, but he snatches your wrist, beginning his torturous routine again once you realize you had no choice. “Rather, you’re going to finish me off first, and then you will be cleaning the both of us up.”

1 note · View note

fipindustries · 7 years

Text

THERE IS A CRACK IN THE WORLD: afterthought.

So there we go, my first, full novel, entirely written in English. I did it.

There is a crack in the world originated from three or four very basic seeds, eventually many others were incorporated, so many so granular that I wouldn’t be able to keep track of them all, but the basic ideas and characters have easy to track roots.

The three sisters were the first thing I came up with, way, way back in 2012/2013 and from the sisters the first one I came up with was Telescopica. Yes, that’s right, Telescopica was the first character from this story I invented and she was based on the design of the main character from the tv show Fringe, if you want to know how she would look IRL, she is basically a hardcore version of Anna Torv. Later came Harmonica and she was based on Martha Wayne in the short batman story made for the flashpoint event where Martha was the joker. The common thread between both of them (and what ultimately decided they would be together in the same story) was the fact that they both were female characters I didn’t often see back then and that I thus wanted to tackle. One, the stoic professional hero, the badass, not in the rough and tough Michelle Rodriguez kind of way, but more of the slick professional John Wick kind, I basically wanted to write r63!agent-47. The other was female joker, which is a far different beast than Harley Quinn, I didn’t want the cutesy, quirky, lol I’m so evil that can be redeemed by the right dick, or worse, misconstrued as an anti-hero. I wanted a truly detestable and threatening maniac, I wanted someone off-putting, someone people could truly hate. I’m not entirely sure I succeeded in this last regard.

I had these designs and ideas for characters yet nothing concrete at the time, but then I read one book: the gunslinger, the first book in the dark tower saga, and boom. I had my idea for a premise. One chases the other on a dystopian world, simple, effective powerful. They are batman and the joker, they are Javert and Valjean, they are Tom and Jerry, but more than all of that, they were sisters. I think this vision I had of them (and of the world they inhabited) really solidified itself when I saw for the first time the trailer for Bioshock infinite, the one with the “Beast” song from Nico Vega. The thing about that song is that it came in two versions, an acoustic one and an electric one, and the relation between both versions reflects pretty well the relation between both sisters. One is calm and introspective, the other is chaotic and loud, yet they are both the same degree of fucked up. They are about the beast of America and how we are not going down like this. Give them a listen and pretend they are both sung by their respective characters.

But that was not enough; I had a layout for the basic premise, right? One chases the other in a dystopian world, but what happens during the chase? Why is one chasing the other? How did the chase start, and more importantly, how will it end? I didn’t have answers for this, all I had was a shitty, unfinished comic (that would later be cannibalized and turned into chapter one of this story) that I couldn’t finish because back then I hadn’t figured out yet what kind of paper to use for proper inking. Hell, I didn’t even have names for them! And then, as always, math was the answer.

I was doing Calculus II in college (and failing at it pretty hard) and we were studying numerical series, about their formulas and about how to tell when they diverged and when they converged. And so I came across a few really cool words: the telescopic series, the harmonic series and the geometric series. OBVIOUSLY I had to use them as names. But see, these are three words, and I only had two characters, so the next logical step was to come up with a third one. And this character was going to be even cooler than the other two because this one was going to be the mysterious one, this was going to be the white ranger, as it where, this was going to be Jacob from LOST, this was going to be that one character that was constantly going to be alluded to but always kept in the shadows until the very end, and once revealed the character was going to remain aloof and strange. And her name was going to be Geometrica, the oldest sister.

Originally Geometrica was supposed to be “good”, in as much as she wasn’t going to be a psychopathic manipulator. She was supposed to be the Zen one, not evil like Harmonica, nor as obsessed as Telescopica. She was the middle ground. The calm one, the one who was supposed to be above it all. But then I started watching Hannibal.

Now my big problem with Hannibal is that season two, and SPECIALLY any scene with Gillian Anderson, is a fucking slog, they are slow and dull and boring, so much so that whenever her scenes came I would have to create my own gore since the show wasn’t giving me none at the time and so I drew, because of course. This is a thing I’m not sure if other artist do, that is drawing while watching tv because what is on the screen is just so goddamn boring (I would do this as well with doctor who, daredevil and true detective) but the thing is that while watching Hannibal I would draw, and particularly I drew Geometrica. First she was cutting her own arm, and then using it to beat someone to death. Once I finished this particular drawing I asked myself who could she be beating and the answer came instantly: Harmonica, because obviously the most Zen character in reality turned out to be the most fucked up one! That’s just a no brainer. And then my imagination fired up and chapter 17 was created. And that was when I knew for sure that someday, somehow, I would have to write the whole story.

To this day, chapter 17, and particularly it’s final scene, is my favourite thing I have ever came up with, as a scene, as a concept, as a story beat and a reveal and the only reason I made it this far was because of how desperate I was to make that scene real. I came up with it in 2014 and three years later here we are, the dream came true.

Now this is all fine and good, but none of this is what actually made me sit down and put the actual words on the paper, I had chapter one and chapter seventeen, but what about everything that was supposed to happen in the middle? All of this was simmering in my head but it wasn’t actually boiling. The steam pressure, as it were, was not moving any locomotives as of yet. And I could tell you a thousand more stories about how The Foremost was originally supposed to be a female version of the nazi guy in inglorious bastards, or how his and Karachay’s current design came from the character Shades in Luke Cage, or about how once I came up with the names Chernobyl, Karachay and Tzar I realized they were a perfect reflection of Harmonica, Telescopica and Geometrica and thus they had to exist in the same universe, or how I’m not sure where the character of the emperor came from but I’m convinced Warhammer 40K and Twig had something to do with it. I could tell you all this and more but instead I’m going to tell you about the story that finally made me take stock of my life, of my choices, and decide it was time, that the ideas had been stewing in my head for long enough and it was time for execution. Weirdly enough, the story that did that was The Northern Caves. Even more weird was that it was the second read of the northern caves what did it.

I’ll say it right here, There is a crack in the world was me reacting to the psychological horror that TNC, and indeed many other stories like it such as cordyceps or the hell sections in Unsong, caused in me. A horror intensified by the mental problems I had been dealing with during most of 2016. But the thing was that ever since I moved to a new city and started looking for a job most of that horror had been replaced with much more grounded concerns. Instead of having the shakes because of existential, metaphysical uncertainty, I was getting the shakes due to economic and housing struggles. I realized that normal, everyday problems were the perfect antidote to counteract existentialism, and so those were the problems I decided to plague my story with. Lack of food, poor shelter, contaminated water, rampant crime, earthly, lower class concerns, those are the horrors within There is a crack in the world, as opposed to a children’s book writer making some book that apparently made people go insane. And then I decided not to stop there, another common thread in many of these stories was that there would be this mystery to the world, this unfathomable puzzle, filled with complicated plots, intricate lore and abstruse complexities which were begging for a plucky protagonist to be smart enough to solve it all. So I decided to make the lore in my story absurdly simple and yet completely impossible to solve no matter how clever or intelligent or rational you were: There is a crack in the world. That’s it, nothing can be done about it.

And then came the final touch, the characters. The final thing that I saw in a lot of what for lack of a better word I’m going to call “rational fiction”, an umbrella term under which I liberally group works such as HPMOR, Worm, After the hero, Unsong, The northern caves, etc was that in every instance the protagonist would be some form of bleeding heart. Someone who would be painfully hyperaware of the pain and suffering that happened all around the world and would desperately try to find the way to fix it all, to understand it, to make sense of it all. So my story would have none of that. I made Telescopica and Chernobyl to be as indifferent and callous as I could and as the story advances they slowly start to consider that maybe they can do something to help, that maybe they can try and make the world a better place, and then I prove how incredibly foolish they were for ever thinking that.

Not gonna lie, the story is filled with self indulgent bitterness and misery, and a lot of it is me getting carried away and probably venting some of the negative emotions I had accumulated all throughout 2016. If I want to be uncharitable with myself I would say that some of that bitterness came from me reading those stories I just mentioned and feeling inadequate knowing that I would never be smart enough to write anything like it (I’m a deeply insecure person, in case you haven’t noticed). But also, for whatever reason, halfway through the story I decided “fuck it, I’m just going to write some misery porn”, I started challenging myself to see how horrid I could go, what horrors I could concoct if I well and truly tried. Yet the thing is that I feel I never really went all out on it. I like to think that, as dreadful as the story could get at times, it was never truly absurd, never profane, I could be wrong though. There is an essay talking about this in way better detail than I ever could so just go read it.

I published there is a crack in the world as I wrote it, which means I challenged myself not to go back and edit something in the previous chapter for the sake of convenience or to establish something I might need for later chapters. I forced my self to compromise and work only with what I had previously established in the story. This fostered an interesting practice where I would start to throw foreshadowing and small meaningless data all over the place which could be easily ignored or forgotten but that I could also go back to and expand into something more on the long run if I needed to pull something out of thin air for the plot. That is the way characters like Hector or Maurice or things like commando living on an abandoned military base ended up becoming a thing in the story, grown from just throwaway characters and trivia that I thought nothing of when I first put them in the page. The biggest example would be the kosmonavt, I had no idea what I was going to do with him by the end of the story but I knew an astronaut was a useful thing to have so I put him there in his own chapter, just in case.

Another consequence of this was that, as the story progressed and I got a better grasp of the world, of the actual real consequences of having a crack in the world, of the actual sociopolitical organization the empire would have I realized I fucked up. A lot of the lore doesn’t really add up, there are details which are poorly thought out or scientifically incorrect. And if I decided to start introducing all of that it wouldn’t just interfere with what had been previously established in the chapters that I had already published but it would also interfere with where I wanted the story to go, with what I wanted to do with the characters and with my dear, precious chapter 17. All of this meant I had to foregone a lot of neat realism and worldbuilding that could have made it into the story if I had taken some time to think things through before starting putting chapters online, but the thing is that if I hadn’t put those chapters online then chances are I would have never been motivated to write the rest of the story. Hopefully I’ll allow myself to develop whatever new story I come up with next in more organic ways, not being afraid to kill my darlings in order to let it grow naturally. We’ll see.

Final thoughts: I’m actually really proud of this story, whatever its origins or the emotional fuel was behind it, whatever gross scientific mistakes I made in there, whatever edits I would like to perform to make it a stronger, more coherent whole, I truly believe is the best story I have written thus far and that is achievement enough for me, I know people had been reading it and even enjoying it according to AO3, not sure how many but more than zero is enough, I hope you guys enjoyed it and I hope you have thoughts and comments about it that you might want to share with me.

Whatever the case might be, it’s been three months and a little more that I worked on this and it’s been a great learning experience. See you in my next work.

#there is a crack in the world #and the world is over #writing

4 notes · View notes