#but still very easily overwhelmed and unable to stick to schedules

[builder051]

Alphabet Soup— all new q’s!

Send me a letter and I’ll give my opinion on the topic. :)

A is for aloe vera.

B is for beehives.

C is for croutons.

D is for Deadmau5.

E is for elevators.

F is for flunking.

G is for gobbling.

H is for hitmen.

I is for islands.

J is for Joaquin Phoenix.

K is for Kellog’s.

L is for lamentations.

M is for mistakes.

N is for non-participation.

O is for overdose.

P is for penguins.

Q is for quality.

S is for seahorses.

T is for tug boats.

U is for untying.

V is for vaping.

W is for whatever.

X is for x-ray.

Y is for yodeling.

Z is for zebras.

#ask game #ask meme #starbucks sunday #sort of #I’m coming back folks! #but still very easily overwhelmed and unable to stick to schedules #sorry about that #play anyway?

[growup-thatbeautiful]

The Proposal Headcannons

Series Masterlist

Taglist: @timmyslover @fayhar @username23345 @natashalovers @tasteslikeicedcoffee @hoeforwandanat @angie-1746 @steveharringtonisadisasterdotcom @whore4nat @romanoffswrld @marrymemcgrath @pawiie @sapphosclosefriend @fabgronsky @tastingcevans @kawaiitoga @xxsekhmet @natblackwidow2 @silver-lotus @m-zne237 @imnotslouching @xxxtwilightaxelxxx @wildnightadventures @m4ddie3 @natflough04 @losethetimewqr @rebel-author-chick @333hhm @mrscromanoff @imobsessedwithmilfss @unexpected-character

A/n: hi guys! i have been completely unable to write anything more based on The Proposal, but i’ve gotten a few requests. while i’m not really up to writing the epilogue (yet, i promise i’ve been trying very hard to find some direction. it’s just…been hard), i would love to share a few little headcannons about this story that’s meant so much to me.

idk how many of you know this, but the proposal was my first series i wrote period, so it’s got a very special place in my heart. enjoy <33 without further ado,

the proposal headcannons

after the events of the proposal, you and natasha have a lot of catching up to do

needless to say, you don’t regret anything at all, and neither does natasha. technically you’re married, but you hardly know other

your first real date would be breakfast before work because, let’s be honest, you don’t have a lot of time. natasha’s started working less, which is amazing for both her and you, buy the schedule is still fairly rigorous

anyway, you’re first date is at the coffee shop where you usually pick up her coffee. she’s never actually been there despite the fact that she’s had their coffee for years. there’s a small table in the corner up against the window where you can watch people pass by the busy streets

for the first time, she orders coffee and brings it to you, and you drink what you actually like (not a second drink of hers unless you spill it)

across from you, natasha looks just like she always does. hair pulled half up and half down, there’s a golden flower clip holding her hair up. her white short sleeved dress shirt is tucked into a grey pencil skirt. you still haven’t been able to convince her to stop wearing insanely high stiletto heels

that first date is where you make a rule about no work-related talk on dates, which makes the beginning a little awkward, but it’s easily overcome when you spill coffee all over yourself

afterwards, you walk together to work, and it’s actually really nice to just walk along with her presence beside you

your third date is wedding ring shopping. legally, you’re already married, but neither one of you has a ring. you don’t go for anything traditional, because so far none of the rest of it has been traditional either

it’s natasha who suggests in a quiet voice when you’re sitting in the couch together at her apartment that you pick out each others rings

when you first arrive at the jewelry store, you’re a little overwhelmed because there are so many options, but natasha is there by your side, holding your hand

“it’s okay, love. i’m sure whatever you pick out is going to be beautiful. and if jt isn’t, then i’ll wear it proudly anyway. not everyone can say that their wife picked their ring out three dates after they were married, huh?”

she kisses you on the cheek and sets determinedly on her way to find your ring, and you wander around looking for hers

nothing sticks out to you at first, all diamonds and twisted bands that look the same to you, but you’re passing by the back counter something sticks out

it’s a bright red gem placed in the middle of a rose gold and diamond lining, shaped circularly and attached to a similar rose gold band. you immediately know it’s perfect for natasha. it’s her fire, her hair, her passion. it’s perfect.

you pick it out and pay for it then wait by the door for natasha. she doesn’t take much longer, and you two head to her apartment together

over the time you’ve spent with her, you’ve become much more comfortable in her living space. part of that, you’re sure, is that it’s bigger than yours used to be, but it’s also a mix of both of you’re styles, natasha’s modern-comfortable furniture clashes wonderfully with your many blankets and brightly colored pillows.

tonight, you sit together on the floor by the wall of windows that overlook the city, facing each other crossed-legged. she’s got a famaliar looking red dino in her lap and you have a blanket thrown over you shoulders. in between you are the jewelry boxes of both of your rings

you go first. with shaking hands, you give natasha her box. her smoothing smile does little to calm your nerves.

“if you don’t like it we can take it back,” you say quickly, praying that she does like it.

“calm down,” she chides, reaching across the space in between you for your hand. “i trust you.”

you had absolutely no reason to worry. when she sees the ring, she covers her mouth with her hand and her gaze flits excitedly between you and the ring. “love,” she breathes, taking it out of the box carefully, “it’s beautiful. thank you.”

once she has it on her finger, your box is handed to you and you open it slowly. inside, nestled between black velvet is a vintage blue stone, outlined by rose gold and diamonds.

“i picked it because it matches the necklace your grandma gave me,” natasha explains softly. “i love having part of your family around my neck, and i want you to be part of that too.”

(natasha always wears the baby blue necklace around her neck. since she’s gotten it, you haven’t seen her without it, and it’s become a habit of hers to take it between her fingers and play with it)

it’s so completely well thought out and picked with such sentiment that you feel tears spring in your eyes. natasha takes your newly ringed hand and kisses the ring in your finger gently, and you can’t help but get closer to her.

your hands go around her neck and you wrap your legs around her waist. natasha laughs and brings her hands to cup your face.

“i guess we’re really married, huh?” she asks, running her thumb across your cheekbone. the metal of the ring on her finger is cool against your skin and you lean into it.

“i guess so,” you grin. with her hands holding you and her body underneath you, there’s no where else you’d rather be.

p.s. here are the rings that i had in mind for you and natasha :))

#the proposal #natasha romanoff #natalie rushman #nat #natasha romanoff comfort #natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff x you #black widow #natasha romanoff fanfic #natasha romanoff fic #black widow fic #black widow fanfic #black widow x reader #black widow x you

[jewishjon]

His Father’s Son

A/N: I am so excited to finally be able to put the first chapter of this fic for the 2021 Grishaverse Big Bang (@grishaversebigbang) fic out into the world. Thank you so much to my incredible artists whose art you will find linked below and my amazing beta reader. You can find me on tumblr here or twitter @/vespabuddy and I will be updating on ao3 every Tuesday and Saturday until the 25th of September. Enjoy!

Beta Reader: @z-the-zebra

Artists: @hivertoautumn @wellwatersurprise @jsperfhey @lucentcorrigan (I’ll link their art soon, I’m making this post before it’s uploaded)

Summary: At fifteen, Wylan meets Jesper at a formal University event, falls for him, and never sees him again. Four years later, his father orders him to take down a criminal gang called the Dregs.

Ao3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33741277/chapters/83866909

Read the first chapter below the cut!

The morning of the grand opening of Ketterdam University’s Van Eck wing, Wylan’s father threatened his life.

The day began like any other. He woke to the clattering of carriages in the street below, the delicious smell of the servants preparing breakfast, and felt a sinking in his stomach at the thought of the dreaded event scheduled to take place that evening. He got out of bed and was helped into a tailored black suit by his valet. When he reached the dining room, his father was long gone, likely having been in his study since the early hours of the morning, and he was forced to endure the company of his father’s new girlfriend as he ate.

“Are you excited about the party?” asked Alys, a stupid smile plastered on her face as she watched Wylan. She was so young she could easily be Wylan’s sister.

“Really excited.” murmured Wylan dryly into his eggs. He was already stressed from the thought of enduring the rest of the day. He didn’t have the energy to deal with Alys.

Unfortunately, instead of leaving him alone, her upper lip began to wobble. “Do you not like me, Wylan? What did I do wrong? You know, I try so—” Alys gulped, “So hard to be a good mother to you.”

A mother? Wylan had known Alys for three weeks, and already felt he had years of maturity on her, and he was only fifteen himself. 

Still, he felt a wave of guilt. Alys was trying her best, having been raised to believe her only worth in life was to marry a wealthy man, and his father was as wealthy as they came. Wylan may be set for a successful career as a mercher, but he knew well what it was like to be unable to fulfill the simplest task expected of him.

That was the thing about Alys. No matter how idiotic she was, she was always trying her best. So, Wylan caught her eye and mumbled a simple;

“I’m sorry.”

He fought back bile as she reached her hand across the table and squeezed his until he began to feel woozy. She wasn’t squeezing too hard, and Wylan was sure she had no intentions of anything but kindness, but the feel of her too-smooth skin against his was inexplicably as painful as any blow dealt by his father’s hand.

“Don’t worry, Wylan, honey. I love you despite all your imperfections!” Alys smiled sweetly. “All your imperfections.”

Somehow, that didn’t make Wylan feel any better.

As he was heading back to his room, hoping to use his free time to practice his flute or scream into his pillow about the pains of existence, he was stopped by his father’s assistant. Mieke was a middle-aged man with as little personality as he had hair on his balding head.

“Come to your father’s office. He wishes to talk to you immediately.”

“Of course, Sir.”

Fear festered in Wylan’s stomach as he followed the man down the long corridors of the Van Eck mansion. Surely he would have been told already if there were any changes to his role in the party that evening. Furthermore, he had no memory of having done anything wrong since he’d last seen Jan Van Eck, although his father always managed to find something. 

Even the thought of the beating he’d received last time was enough to nearly make him turn and run as fast as his legs would take him.

Mieke opened the gilded wooden door leading to Jan Van Eck’s office, and, ever so slowly, Wylan entered. His father’s study had always been a source of intimidation, and not just because of the man who inhabited it. The walls were decorated with certificates celebrating his father’s many achievements, a massive painting of himself in his youth hanging above the table, stacks of paper in neat piles throughout the room. They all lead to the man sitting at the desk, looking at Wylan with a scowl on his face. There was no beating stick in view, but Wylan had learnt to never underestimate the power of his father’s fists.

His father made a gesture beckoning Wylan to come forward, and he approached the desk until he put up a hand signaling for him to stop. Wylan stayed silent, having been trained long ago to never speak to his father unless spoken to.

“Wylan.” said his father. “I’m glad you came.”

Wylan nodded in acknowledgement. They both knew well that he had no choice in the matter.

“You know, when I woke up this morning, I thought ‘Maybe I should kill Wylan today.’” 

Kill. Kill Wylan. 

Kill Wylan.

It took a few seconds for his father’s words to unscramble in Wylan’s head. The world became unfocused as the simple sentence’s weight hit him.

“‘End his suffering once and for all. It’s not like he has anything to live for.’”

Wylan let out a choked, strangled noise. His father’s next words flew past him without registering. He had to be joking… right? His father couldn’t have wanted to kill him. This was all some cruel new trick to manipulate him. Another one of his father’s endless strategies to bend him to his will. He told himself over and over that it wasn’t true. Even the continuous stream of his Father’s words failed to break his trance. Yet, as he replayed it in his head in the hope of finding any kind of meaning behind the threat, something about the tone of his father’s voice, or the knowledge of how he had treated him for all these years, told Wylan that his words weren't empty.

“Oh, don’t look so shocked. I didn’t do it, of course, or you wouldn’t be standing here right now.” He sighed. “You must have considered that now I have Alys, I soon won’t have need for my insolent, defective son.”

Wylan blinked, and realised tears had been slowly streaming down his cheeks. 

All he’d ever wanted was to be enough for his father. He’d thought that despite all the beatings, all the insults, every time he was locked in his room until he could read a single sentence of a children’s book, his father still loved him. A tiny part of him, the part that had kissed his mother and read to him as a child and tucked him into bed, still cared.

“I’m sorry.” whispered Wylan. His voice shook as he spoke, barely loud enough to be heard above the clatter of his thoughts. “I tried, Father. I tried so hard.”

His father scoffed. “I should have known you’d react this way. You’ve always been too emotional, Wylan. You may as well leave now, make yourself respectable before this evening. Just take this as an incentive. Be better tonight and all nights afterwards, or I will go ahead with that threat.”

When he reached his room, Wylan punched his drawer over and over until his knuckles were cracked and blood stained the wood. He didn’t feel a thing.

***

The ballroom of Ketterdam University had been filled with professors, wealthy students, and the entirety of Ketterdam’s elite to celebrate the opening of the new university wing that Jan Van Eck had so ‘generously’ funded. His painting had been hung prominently in the ballroom, illuminated by the numerous glass chandeliers, and his name engraved on a large plaque outside the new building. Wylan could tell that he was loving every single second of it.

Under normal circumstances, Wylan hated parties. The bright lights, the hordes of people talking over one another and his father’s constant grip on his arm were usually enough to drive him to hiding in a closet by the end of the night. 

After this morning, he just wanted to get it over with.

He knew he should be terrified. If his behaviour at this event didn’t please his father, it could lead to his demise. The constant threat of death hanging over his head would scare anyone else into unquestioning submission. But, inexplicably to even Wylan himself, he felt so numb. Since his meeting with his father, he’d been drifting unthinkingly through the day, the usual fear blocked out by an overwhelming, horrifying lack of feeling. A sadness that stole away every drop of hope he had left, that told him to give up, that whispered that he had never mattered to anyone anyway. He had no choice left but to believe it.

So, Wylan could barely find it in himself to care about his potential upcoming death. He couldn’t find it in himself to care about anything but the hatred in his father’s eyes as he stated his intention to end Wylan’s life. 

Even now, his father looked so remorseless. So cold. As Wylan followed him through the university campus, he couldn’t see a single drop of emotion on his face. He’d always believed it was a result of being a mercher for so long that he’d become a master at faking indifference. He was beginning to suspect that perhaps his father truly didn’t feel anything.

When the Dean noticed Wylan and his father being let in by a guard at the doorway, he rushed over to greet them. Wylan’s father gripped his arm far too tightly in a clear warning.

“Welcome, Mr Van Eck and…?”

Wylan’s father’s expression briefly soured. “His name is Wylan.”

“Welcome to our university, Mr Van Eck and Wylan Van Eck. Everyone here is incredibly grateful for your donation, and we hope this event will show even a small part of our thanks.”

His father smiled, an action that made Wylan’s stomach automatically churn. “Thank you. I’m very glad to be able to help the next generation of merchers that are being taught here.”

The Dean gestured to the guard and he threw open the doors, making the party guests immediately stop talking and turn to stare at the new arrivals. Wylan’s eye was caught by a dark-skinned Zemini boy, deep in conversation with a professor. He looked as if he was Wylan’s age, maybe slightly older - far too young to be attending such a prestigious university. After a few seconds, he gave the drink to the professor, seeming to end his conversation temporarily, and left the room in the direction of the bathroom. 

“Please welcome Mr Van Eck of the Merchant Council, and his son Wylan! Mr Van Eck is the reason we can be here tonight, as his extremely generous donation enabled us to build our new wing. Of course, it was only fitting to name it the Van Eck wing in his honour. We hope you and your son enjoy the party.”

The crowd clapped politely, a few merchers rolling their eyes at the praise directed towards Jan Van Eck. Once people had turned back to their prior conversations, he and Wylan entered the overcrowded ballroom. Wylan tried to head for the food table in hope of a temporary respite from the noise, but his father grabbed his arm again and steered him in the direction of a group of merchers.

“This is my son, Wylan. One day he will replace me in the Merchant Council… if he plays his cards right.” The merchers laughed as if Wylan’s father had told the funniest joke they’d ever heard. “Go on, Wylan. Say something.”

His chest tightened. In all the time he’d had to prepare for this event, he’d forgotten to decide what to say if his father forced him to make conversation with other merchers.

“I… Uh… Hi. I’m- I’m Wylan.”

Wylan’s cheeks blushed a bright shade of pink at the ensuing chuckles, and he tried to avert his gaze from the clearly amused merchers. His father put his hand on his arm in seeming reassurance and, almost imperceptibly, pinched the skin on the side of his arm until he had to stop himself from crying out in pain. There would be a large purple bruise by tomorrow. 

Stumbling over his words in public was a rookie mistake. He should have known better, but parties always put him on edge. The social cues he’d practiced over and over in the mirror had been completely snatched from him.

At least he felt something again. His head was beginning to spin, his breath coming short, a growing sick feeling in his stomach. The noise of the people scattered around the room became increasingly louder until Wylan winced in pain. When he did so, the previously beautiful chandeliers became blinding pillars of lights, and people began to talk more and more, as if they were laughing in his face.

“Have you decided whether to invest in the new stock coming in from Ravka this month?”

“Can you comment on the instability of the Ravkan economy?”

“How long do you think it will be before you tie the knot with your new girlfriend?”

“What are your thoughts on the growing economic power of that gang from the Barrel - the Dregs?”

Everything was so loud.

Stop. Stop. Please. Stop. There was so much noise. Too many people talking at once. It was so loud. Stop. Stop. Stop. Please could they stop they needed to-

“Stop!” yelled Wylan.

Every mercher in the group turned to stare at him. A look of fury flashed on his father’s face before he forced himself to smile, his eyes still twitching in concealed rage.

“I’m afraid my son has been feeling… not very well recently. I’m sure he just needs some time alone.”

Before his father had time to grab him, Wylan ran. He pushed through the crowds of people, his vision blurring, until he reached the corridor that led to the bathrooms. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his father take a deep breath and turn back to the other merchers. He was far more concerned about maintaining his public image than helping his son. 

Wylan leant against the wall, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Whilst he was glad to be away from the party, the new environment had done nothing to quench the panic threatening to overwhelm him.

The bathroom door opened just as Wylan was about to enter, and it hit him square in the face. His head spun, and he was still trying to process what had happened when a figure came running out of the bathroom and slammed into Wylan. He jumped back as fast as possible, rubbing his injured nose, and gaped. 

“I’m so sorry!” he blurted.

“Why are you sorry? I’m the one who slammed a door in your face! I should be sorry!”

Wylan looked up and began to splutter, unable to bring himself to say anything. The person he’d bumped into was the Zemini student from earlier, the boy who’d looked far too young to attend the university. From closer up, Wylan could see deep calluses on his hands - it came to Wylan suddenly that Novyi Zem’s primary source of income was jurda farming - and piercing grey eyes that were staring at him with concern. He was extremely, impossibly handsome. 

“Are you okay? Because I’d never complain about a pretty boy staring at me, but it’s not usually after I’ve hit him in the face with a door.”

“You… you think I’m pretty?”

The boy raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think that’s the part we should be focusing on, Pretty Boy.”

In-between the embarrassment he felt at the compliment, Wylan realised he may be correct. It definitely wasn’t a good sign that the boy’s figure was swimming in front of him, or that his head was still relentlessly pounding. Whilst he wasn’t sure how much of that could be attributed to the door and how much to his ongoing panic attack, it would probably be best if he at least sat down. 

“I- I’m not usually like this.” Wylan swayed a little. “You should come back and talk to me when I’m not dying… Oh wait…” He giggled. “I’ll be dead tomorrow anyway…”

“Okay, we’re definitely going to sit you down.”

The boy gently put an arm around Wylan’s back and helped him onto the corridor floor. They sat beside each other, slumped against the wall, in silence.

“I’m Jesper. I’m a student here. I didn’t want to go to this party anyway, but my professor made me come. Apparently I’m one of the ‘top students’ and they need me to ‘represent the university’ as their ‘youngest and most promising student’. I think there could be much better uses of my time than attending a party for some rich jerk.”

Usually, Wylan would have defended his father, but today, something in him was enjoying hearing him be insulted. Besides, he had a feeling that Jesper didn’t know his true identity, and if he did, he probably wouldn’t want to sit beside him anymore.

“I’m Wylan.”

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

Jesper shoved three fingers in Wylan’s face, and he pushed them away, rolling his eyes.

“That’s not an answer!”

“You had three fingers up. I’m not concussed, you know.”

Jesper was silent for a while, until he noticed Wylan’s still-wet eyes.

“You do look like you’re about to cry, though. I’d like to think I can help with that too.”

It was nice of Jesper to try, but nothing he could do would prevent the inevitable punishment Wylan would face when he left this corridor. He needed to head back. The sooner he returned, the lesser his father’s wrath would be. He glanced back at the party - the loud voices, the crowds of people, his father engaging calmly in conversation as if nothing had happened - and found himself beginning to hyperventilate again. 

He was going to die. His father hated him and he was going to die and Wylan would be dead and no one would mourn him because everyone hated him anyway and it would all be pointless in the end and—

Wylan felt soft arms wrap around his chest, holding him tightly. Someone was hugging him. Jesper. The pressure was just right, the other boy’s hands resting against his ribcage, and Wylan let himself lean into him. He buried his head in the crook of Jesper’s neck, letting the tears that had been building up for so long fall. Perhaps it was because Wylan hadn’t hugged anyone since his mother died, perhaps it was because he was the first person in months who’d treated Wylan like a fellow human, but Jesper felt like home.

When Wylan’s breathing returned to normal, he let himself pull away, but Jesper didn’t take his hands from their grounding position on his waist. 

“Wylan, do you want to get out of here?”

“What do you mean?”

Jesper smirked. “You’ll see.”

#six of crows #crooked kingdom #ck #soc #the grishaverse #shadow and bone #wylan van eck #jesper fahey #wesper #gvbb21 #gvbbfic21 #kuwei yul bo #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #netflix #jan van eck #fanfic

[emy-loves-you]

Snakey Days

This was written for the Sanders Sides Unpopular Ships Challenge, Day 3: DLAMP!

(yes, I know it’s late, but I’m posting it anyways)

Summary: When Janus gets exhausted, he turns into a tiny snake. Luckily he has 4 wonderful boyfriends to take care of him.

Pairing: DLAMP

Word Count: 1859

Thomas was a very busy man.

This was just a fact of life. He had a lot on his plate, between video production, supporting his friends and family, and so much more. Sometimes it wasn’t even the big things that overwhelmed him. The small things that he did, like sending Nico a “good morning <3” text every day or cleaning up the apartment, would sometimes pile up when he didn’t expect it and quickly overwhelm him. Those were the times when Janus was forced to step in and force Thomas to take a break, to spend some time taking care of himself, mentally and physically. And while those breaks were important, the fact that Thomas tended to wait until he was ready to implode before listening to Janus had a few negative consequences. One of them was that it took all of Janus’ energy, leaving him for a few days in a far simpler, but less functional, form.

Such as today, when one of his boyfriends had found him curled up under the blankets in his snake form.

Janus hadn’t even realized that he was in his serpent form until that moment, too exhausted to realize that the feeling of scales on cool sheets wasn’t just on his face anymore. Janus had practically melted at the feeling of warm fingers on his cold scales, before groaning as he realized what that meant. He would be stuck in this form for at least a day before he could change back, maybe even longer since Thomas was so stressed yesterday. Luckily they weren’t planning any videos soon, so Janus had nothing on his schedule that he couldn’t do in snake form. And if he did, his lovely boyfriends would gladly do the tasks for him.

Speaking of boyfriends, Janus lazily flicked his tongue out, trying to figure out who was currently rubbing the back of his head. He picked up the familiar scent of paper and ink and inwardly smiled, letting out a quiet hiss. Logan chuckled, “I had assumed this would happen. Would you like to eat today?” Since they were in Thomas’ head, they didn’t technically need to eat and sleep, but they still ate meals together and slept in their own rooms. Sometimes Janus would want to eat as a snake and they would summon him a nice juicy rat to have. But Janus didn’t want that awkwardly full feeling today, so he flicked his tongue out twice, his little code for ‘no.’

Logan nodded and loosened his tie before picking Janus up, guiding him up to his now exposed collarbone. Janus wasn’t a very big snake, barely big enough to wrap himself once around his boyfriend’s neck, but he sleepily managed to settle himself on the warm skin. He loved being able to feel his boyfriend’s body heat against his cold scales, and he let out a small hiss as a ‘thank you.’ Logan chuckled, the movement causing Janus to practically melt against his skin. “I hope you won’t get too upset at being moved around today. We’ve all got some personal projects to do today, so you’ll be moving around between the four of us.” Janus just hissed in response, already expecting it. One day he would convince his boyfriends to all take a self-care day together.

Janus stiffened slightly when Logan stood up and started moving, but he relaxed immediately afterward. Logan wouldn’t let him fall, Janus was sure of it. It had taken a long time to trust the Logical Side like that, just like it took a long time to trust the rest of his boyfriends. But Janus was glad that he did. Before he admitted his little problem about being stuck as a snake sometimes, he would spend these times stuck on his bed, freezing cold and unable to get up. Now he was always nice and warm, lazily draped over one of his boyfriends.

Logan stepped into the kitchen, where their other 3 boyfriends were already serving breakfast. Patton was the first one to notice the Logical Side standing in the doorway, and ran over to pull him into a hug. Janus let out a weak hiss before he got too close and Patton stopped, just then noticing the tiny snake hiding under Logan’s shirt. He smiled softly, his voice now dropping to a quiet murmur. “Oh baby… lazy day today?” Janus just flicked his tongue out in response. That was the main issue he had with this form; he couldn’t communicate or show any facial expressions. He could tell them that he was annoyed, or happy, or whatever else he could be feeling. He also was so tired in this form, so even if he could communicate, Janus wasn’t too sure that he would.

Patton giggled softly before reaching up to kiss Logan. He also gave Janus a little boop, making him hiss again. The Moral Side spun back to the kitchen, speaking in a much softer tone than he had before Logan showed up. “Janus is having a snakey day today, so we won’t need another plate.” Roman and Virgil both looked up at Logan, staring at Janus hanging off his neck. Roman gave a soft smile and Virgil nodded, but they didn’t speak as they finished setting the table. Janus tended to get really big headaches when in snake form, so they always made sure to speak softly as they went throughout their day.

Breakfast was quiet, with Janus hanging off of the Logical Side’s neck while everyone else ate. They were quietly planning their schedule for the day, while Janus started to doze off. He didn’t startle when Logan got up, hissing softly as the Logical Side went to the living room to watch a documentary.

Logan didn’t touch Janus much when he was in this form, worried that he would accidentally harm him. But Janus didn’t mind, happy to snuggle up against his boyfriend. He hissed indignantly when they started watching a snake documentary. The Logical Side chuckled, rubbing the back of Janus’ head in a placating manner. He hissed again, relaxing fully. This was one of the few times where he wished he was a different animal. Maybe he could be a cat, so he could purr and stretch himself out on their laps. Oh, to be a cat…

Janus didn’t realize he had fallen asleep until he woke up later, now resting on a heat rock. He poked his head up from where he was laying, watching as Roman and Patton built a currently unidentifiable Lego structure, the tie-wearing side nowhere in sight. Janus let out a weak hissed and felt a flash of irritation when neither of his boyfriends looked up. Maybe he should ask them to put a bell on his tail. Then at least he’d make some noise.

It took several hisses for Roman to look up, smiling brightly. “It looks like our Sassy Serpentine is awake!” Janus hissed in response, trying to convey his irritation at being ignored. The creative side chuckled, apparently picking up on Janus’ mood. “Logan had to go plan this week’s schedule, and we didn’t want you to be jostled around on us.”

Patton held his hand out and Janus slithered onto it, wrapping himself around the father figment’s wrist. Patton chuckled and used his other hand to gesture towards the Legos. “Hey Ro, why don’t you keep building this while Janus and I watch. I’m better for moral support anyways.” Janus hissed and nudged his boyfriend’s wrist with his head, upset that he was talking bad about himself. Patton didn’t seem to understand (or maybe he did but was ignoring the subject. They’ll need to talk about that later) and giggled. “What? That was a good pun!”

Roman rolled his eyes fondly and went back to building the Lego structure, which was soon revealed to be the same Disney Castle Lego set that Thomas had. He was telling little stories every few minutes, fueled by Patton’s giggles and Janus’ hisses. Patton would occasionally move the snake up to eye level and kiss the top of his head or rub his nose against his snout. Janus would respond by tickling the Moral Side’s face with his tongue or nudging him with his head.

Eventually, Roman and Patton had to leave, and Janus was escorted to Virgil’s room. Virgil was about to take a nap before dinner, and Janus was glad to join him. He loved sleepy cuddles in either form, but he couldn’t cuddle with most of the others in this form because they tended to roll around in their sleep. Virgil, however, didn’t, so Janus could cuddle with him whenever he wanted.

Janus didn’t like to pick favorites, but Virgil was definitely up there in terms of cuddling. He was warmer than either of the glasses-wearing sides, and barely cooler than the absolute inferno that was the Creative Side. And his hoodie was so soft, it was amazing to feel the fabric against his scales. He loved to nuzzle his snake-half against Virgil’s shoulder in his human form, and right now he easily fell asleep on Virgil’s chest, underneath his hoodie.

A few hours later, he woke up to people whispering. He stayed still and listened.

“C’mon my dark and stormy night, dinner’s ready.”

“I can’t.”

Roman huffed impatiently. “Why not? And where’s our scaly beloved?”

The fabric around him shifted, and Janus assumed that Virgil was pointing at him. “He’s sleeping on my chest. There’s no way to get up without waking him. I can’t leave.”

Roman chuckled. “Yeah, you’re screwed.” There was a smooching sound, and Janus assumed that Roman had kissed Virgil’s forehead. “I shall tell our beloveds of your unfortunate predicament. You are our noble sacrifice, and I will never forget you.”

Virgil started sputtering and Janus would’ve been chuckling if he could. Instead, he slithered up to the Anxious Side’s neck, nudging his chin. Virgil froze, looking guilty. “Sorry J, did we wake you?” Janus hissed, sticking his tongue out twice. No, he lied. Virgil relaxed, smiling softly.

Roman made grabby-hands and Virgil rolled his eyes, handing Janus over. Roman wrapped the snake side around his neck and Janus let out a long drawn out hiss, the closest thing he could get to a sigh in this form. Roman’s hot skin felt like bliss to the cold-blooded serpent, and Janus was almost asleep again by the time the Creative Side sat down to eat.

Dinner was a short affair and soon they were all sitting on the couch, watching Disney movies. Janus forced himself to stay awake for a few minutes, committing the image to memory as he always did. Eventually, his tiredness and the warmth of Roman’s skin won out and he slipped into a peaceful slumber.

A few hours later, Janus shifted back into his human form, still asleep. He was laying in Roman’s lap with his arms around his neck, murmuring softly. His four boyfriends smiled softly, each one giving him a kiss on the forehead before turning back to the movie. They all ended up falling asleep on the couch, cuddling together around their favorite snake.

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Taglist: @bisexualdisaster106 @self-taught-mess @arodynamic-enby @sanderssides-angst @whatishappeningrightnow @idont-freaking-know @cute-and-angsty-princess @artsy-enby09 @girl-who-reads @drarrymalecsolangelo @count-woe-laf

#tsus challenge #dlamp #janus sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders

[little-dragon-stories]

How could you Part 4: what happened back then

Namjoon abandonned you 5 years ago, not knowing you were pregnant. What happens when he meets you one night, with a little girl calling you oemma.

Note: Hey princess @aspaceformyselffics09, here is the next part of your ask. Girl, I didn’t know it would be that long. I hope you love how it turns. Thanks for being in my life, sticking by my side and being such an amazing person. 

Just like that, because I feel like it: @readbeneaththelines @independentlittlegirl and @hopetookmysoul I love you girls. Thanks for being in my life as well. Heart Heart Heart (no emojis on my computer :) ) You girls are amazing friends.

Warning: none

Words count: 1778

«Remember this phone?»

«Yes, I do»

«When I left our shared apartment back then, I came to live here in the dorms.  I am the one who broke up but I was depressed and didn’t leave bed for days. I was not able to communicate with the world outside. It appeared that the day you texted me saying you were pregnant, it was my now EX manager that saw the pop up on my screen. I am not sure where was my cell phone… I probably left it in the living room somewhere. But I remember that suddenly, he changed our cell phones, telling us he bought new ones.  That we all need to have the same devices for a better coordination of our schedules and stuff. We all had to change phone number. That’s what he did… He took my cell phone and made sure to answer you everytime you were texting me. He even study my handwriting to write you a letter… He confessed everything last night».

«Oh my god! Namjoon are you kidding me? But why?» you asked but Namjoon continued as if you didn’t interrupt him.

«I was with the lawyers of the company when he confessed everything. Jin,Jimin and the president of BigHits were by my side too. You have to believe me, we will sue him».

«WHY? Why would he do such a thing?»

«To protect my career. To make sure I would stay focused on the group instead of a family.».

Now that you are face to face with Namjoon, you can tell, he wouldn’t be able to turn his back on his child. He’s so angry right now, you believe what he’s telling you.

«Namjoon… I am so sorry... I should have known better. But at the same time...» You were shocked.  The bad feelings you’ve kept inside of you, hate, resentment… gone in 2 seconds as you discovered he was the victim of his manager’s ambitions. He was also deprived from his daughter. But the real victim here is June. She is the one who suffered the most from growing up without a father.

«I wanted to be a rapper so much, it could have been true too. Who knows how I could have react 5 years ago».

«That’s what I thought… I am sorry I thought so low of you».

«It’s not your fault, you had no reason to doubt. You were using my number, he copied my handwriting… with time, you just thought I was really not interested at all so, there was no need to investigate more».

«Joon… It’s a big pill to swallow. It taste like bile»

«I am so angry, somebody decided to take 5 years of my daughter’s life away from me. How much more time I could have wasted if I hadn’t bumped into you that night. Believe me, that bastard will pay for that».

«I understand, I agree. He deprived my daughter from her father, I could buried him alive right now». 

Laughing, he stated «you still use that expression when you are mad at somebody, how cute is that». He knows very much that you are not a violent person at all, unable to see a stray cat without feeding it. Generous and caring. He don’t believe you could hurt his ex manager for real. But you know you could.

You were interrupted by Jungkook and Taehyung, pretending that they needed something from their leader, clearly more interested in eying you. 

Namjoon cleared his throat louder than necessary, signifying his members that if they need something they should ask for it or leave. Both of them bowed in front of you. And then, they started talking.

«We are sorry Noona» Tae told you while bowing. «Sorry that we didn’t get to meet our little niece yet. We know what happened and we can assure you that none of us knew what was going on». We are not part of this» Jungkood added. 

«If you let us, we would like to meet her too. And get to know her and you better» Tae added. Intrigued, Jungkook continued without taking a pause as he speaked.

«How is she? She seemed to be so pretty and intelligent. Jimin and Yoongi hyung have sparkles in their eyes when they described her. And Joonie hyung can’t stop the tears from falling since he met her. Apparently she loves us? And she knows our choreography? And according to Jiminah, she looks like a little princess and...»

You stopped listening to him when you heard him say Joon cried when he talked about your daughter. For some reason, even if it means he was sad when he cried, it touches you. 

Your eyes met Nam’s as the maknae continue to talk, overexcited. Namjoon seemed to be overwhelmed by his member’s speech. They want to know his daughter as much as he does. It makes him flustered. He’s glad he has them in his life.  When they finally left you alone with Nam, after you told them that when times comes, you would happily introduce them to June, Namjoon took your hand in his from the seat in front of you.

«y/n… I am sorry about all this. I am really sorry. I was falling out of love. I was not happy anymore. I was lost»

«Namjoon, please. I was not mad that you left me. We were fighting very often. We were in a crisis. To be honest, I saw it coming. And just so you know, I didn’t plan to get pregnant. It was a shock for me too».

«I know… now tell me...»

«No Namjoon. Wait...» you interrupted. «I want you to understand that I was so in love with you, all I ever wanted was your happiness and wellbeing. Even if your happiness was not involving me anymore».

«You were, you are still an angel».

«I am not Namjoon. Now tell me what you wanted to tell me».

«I wanted to ask… when can we talk to June. I want to get to know her. I want to go on vacation with her. I want her to look at me from the side of the stage with big shells on her ears. I want to buy her pretty dresses and I want her to jump on my bed in the morning. I want to help her with her homework. I want to be her father. I love her already».

«Are you also ready for over dramatic reactions when she sees you eat meat? She will lecture you with all her vegetarian beliefs… She will wake you up at night because she has a lot of nightmares… You will have to change her bedding at least 3 times a week, if you are with her of course, because when she has nightmares, she pukes».

«What is she scared about? My poor little love»

«Mostly for her mom to die, since she only has me to raise her. She is kind of really scared to lose me. She is scared to be alone if I die… We have family, we have friends but she is really obsessed with it. Also, fire scares her a lot. She is an anxious little princess».

«Of course I will change her bedding. 5 times a night if I have too».

«Are you up for some real loud music playing and a little girl doing her vocalizes? Cause she wants to be a singer, she started to do vocalizes. And she is never ever singing the good note...» you laughed.

«Hey, let her live! She wants to be a singer, she will be the best singer in the whole world» he stated.

«She also want to be an actress. Or mary a rich man and stay home to have enough time to go on the street and give soup to all the homeless person she meets».

«She is so cute… omg. No need to get married for that, her dad is rich. She can do that as much as she wants».

«Namjoon, please don’t you want to think about it? The second she knows you are her father, there is no turning back».

You realize he still holds your hands in his when you feel his fingers intertwined with yours.

«y/n, I think about it for the last 3 days. It’s the only thing I have in mind. She is mine and not only I will take the responsibility for it but I will be immensely happy to be her father».

«ok then… we will tell her. I am not sure yet how to do it… I think I should tell her alone first so she won’t feel obligated to do something, you know what I mean? She wouldn’t feel pressured to react in a way or another in front of you».

«You are the most beautiful person in the world y/n. I am so glad that you are the one who raised my baby. I couldn’t have expected a better mom for my girl.

«You call her mine already. That’s cute. I am glad that you accepted her so easily».

«Well, she is mine, isn’t she?» 

«Without a doubt but you could have react differently».

He let go of your hands and leaned back on the sofa behind him. As he was scratching his temples, you knew something was bothering him.

«Spit it Joon».

«Me and the boys talked about it a lot… You might need to move in a secured complex for her safety. If it’s known that I have a baby princess, she is in danger».

«Well, aren’t those places expensives? And...» 

«They are but of course you won’t have to pay for it… May I tell you this already? Is it too soon?»

«What? What?» The time it took him to respond stressed you out.

«Well… don’t be mad at me. I have nothing to do with it...»

«Kim Namjoon, talk please».

«Well, the boys, they bought the apartment in front of ours. They said they bought it under my daughter’s name as a birth gift. They would like to get to know her better too. And since the apartment was on sold...»

«Nam, it may be too soon to move out of our apartment. One step at the time ok?».

«Agreed. First, let’s tell my baby princess who I really am».

A few days later, as you told June all the truth about her birth, her father and the reason why he kept away from the both of you, she had the most unexpected reaction ever.

#kim namjoon #namjoon #namjoon scenarios #kpop imagine #bts #bangtan scenario #bts kim namjoon #bts fluff #bts angst #namjoon angst #namjoon fluff #father bts

[thetourguidebarbie]

KC + angst and happy ending preferably canon-y (no babies or sc or anything after season 4 lmao) but if the muse takes you in a different direction that’s okay :)

This has a cliffhanger. Please don’t hate me. I have another prompt I’ll use for a part two if there’s interest :)

———

Caroline shifted in bed, pulling the fluffy comforter more tightly around her body, absently tracing the embroidered floral pattern with her fingertip. The cabin was cold, the rain pelting the windows, and she was trying to figure out whether or not to be worried that Klaus was two days late coming back from his negotiation meeting.

She knew it was silly on its face, since Klaus couldn’t be killed, but she vividly remembered the way he looked when she finally rescued him two centuries before, finding him dessicated and buried in a shallow grave, trapped and unable to escape, his eyes still very much alert. It had haunted her nightmares, and she suspected his too, though he’d never admit it. She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like, to be buried alive while the people on Earth were being slowly evacuated to Mars and then beyond, not knowing whether anyone would find him, whether he’d be buried alive for eternity. She’d kept tabs on him over the years and had been confused when he seemed to fall off the face of the earth, but she knew something was wrong when he didn’t call or make any sort of contact on her birthday. Call her arrogant, but she knew that he wouldn’t just stop contact abruptly, especially when she’d just started being open about warming up to him.

So, knowing the direction the wind was blowing, that they wouldn’t be on Earth much longer, she set off to rescue him before there weren’t any evacuation ships left. It would have been difficult without a constant food source, but Caroline was a natural planner, liked to be prepared for everything–including the eventual end of the world–and she’d known from the first iphone video after she turned that the days until vampires were discovered were numbered. She got a medical degree and two PhDs and recruited-slash-compelled a few of her professors’ contacts to start working on a synthetic blood substitute that would be sustainable. They succeeded just in time, and her idealistic optimism made her hope that humans wouldn’t be nervous because they’d have no reason to feed.

She’d been wrong.

She managed to rescue Klaus and hop on one of the last fleets. She soon learned that no matter how many solar systems the technology allowed them to jump through, he still somehow managed to piss people off anywhere they went, creating a laundry list of enemies. It was infuriating, honestly. She wasn’t exactly the most diplomatic person in the world, but she at least had some tact, and Klaus seemed to be the only person in the three solar systems they’d discovered so far that was worse than her at keeping his mouth shut. It didn’t help that his enemies were organized enough to hate him together.

His hybrid army was now an actual army in every sense of the word, used to defend them from people, both humans and aliens, who wanted to eliminate them as a threat.

Vampires were scattered around the various planets that had been discovered, generally sticking together in areas of the bigger cities, but humans were still wary despite the overwhelming majority of vampires being perfectly willing to live off of a diet mostly comprised of the synthetic blood (which, honestly, was just as good as the real thing, and she didn’t just say that because she’d helped invent it). The strain had come to a head just two decades before, and as the de facto king of the vampire race, Klaus had taken the mantle of general of the vampire army easily. She hadn’t been content to stand by the sidelines while he plotted and fought the small group of humans who were trying to destroy them, and he mostly seemed to understand that she couldn’t be a passive contributor, but he’d managed to convince her that she shouldn’t be on the front lines. 

As the unofficial war had waged on, she’d begun seeing less and less of him. The number of vacations they took and cities they toured per year dwindled over time, and she’d been so excited for this getaway, their first in months. She knew that he probably hadn’t been overpowered by the humans across the negotiation table, but it didn’t stop her from worrying, and he knew that. He knew how annoyed she’d be if he was too distracted by his plotting and planning to remember that she had planned time out of her busy schedule to spend with him, and if he had a single shred of common decency…

She huffed, trying not to go too far down that path. He was being a jerk and she was mad, but in her three hundred years of life (two centuries of which she’d spent in a monogamous committed relationship with the jerk in question), she’d gotten reasonably self-aware, and she knew that she was more hurt than anything else. He loved her, she was very aware of that, and when she brought it up before a few times over the last few decades he’d promised that once the threat had been taken care of he would whisk her away to New Australia (her favorite planet of the ones nearest to New Brazil, their current home) and make it up to her. 

And frankly, she was looking forward to that. She was sick of his assurances that it was almost over, that they were getting closer to victory. Maybe Klaus had been a bad influence, but the past two centuries had jaded her and at this point non-violent negotiations were getting close to being off the table. Not that she was advocating genocide, but she wasn’t exactly happy to call a ceasefire and continue to live in fear. She knew Klaus wasn’t either.

Sighing after another few minutes passed, she threw off the blankets to throw on one of his henleys, a heavy sweater, and some leggings, grabbing her phone off the bedside table to check the time, deciding she’d call him soon if he didn’t turn up. She poured some synthetic blood into a mug and sat down on the couch, absently fiddling with her phone and staring out the window for a bit before feeling a bit pathetic and turning on the hologrammer, settling on a competition reality show where people were dropped on an “abandoned” planet and had to figure out how to find their way back to civilization to win six thousand star coins. 

It didn’t do enough to distract her, though. He almost always called if he was going to be late, and the feeling that something was horribly wrong was nagging at her. Still, she toughed it out, checking her screen every few seconds to see if there was a text or a voicemail or something, but it remained stubbornly blank.

Once the episode was over she decided it was time to call, if only to make sure that he’d at least be home before she went to bed. He picked up on the second ring, and she found herself frustrated by the smile she could hear in his voice. “Hello, sweetheart.”

“Hey,” she said cooly. “Are you going to be home soon?”

“I’m about to board the ship now. I was just about to call,” he said, hesitating for a moment before continuing, clearly interpreting her tone correctly. “Everything all right?”

“I just…I was…”

She trailed off, not wanting to admit that she’d been worried, knowing that it was irrational, but Klaus had clearly picked up on it from the soft hum and the whoosh of air and cutoff of background noise that meant he’d found a more private place to talk. “I’m sorry, love. I should have called. We’d agreed on jamming communication to the outside for the duration of the negotiations and it took much longer than expected to reach an agreement, but I do have good news. We’ve agreed on a truce for now.”

Caroline snorted, momentarily distracted from her anxiety about Klaus’s safety to fall into strategy mode. “Yeah, like they’ll keep to it.”

“Oh, I expect they won’t,” he said, his tone deceptively mild. “But I don’t intend to either. We’ll talk more when I get back. I’d like your input on some possible avenues we can take.”

Caroline felt a slow smile grow on her face, feeling pleased that Klaus clearly wasn’t trying to shut her out. “Okay. When do you think you’ll be back?”

“A few hours.”

“Ugh. I still don’t get why they wanted to meet so far away from both base planets. ‘Neutral ground’ my ass. They’re totally up to something.”

“I had the same thought, but turning them down wouldn’t have been advisable,” Klaus said, sounding just as irritated as she was with the whole thing. “I’ll see you in a few hours, sweetheart.”

“Okay.”

“Stay safe.”

“You too. I love you.”

“And I, you. I’ll call when we get to the landing area.”

“Okay. Sounds good.”

She hung up, running a hand through her hair and glancing out the window. The rain was still pounding against the glass, and she winced when she saw the hybrid guard on duty wearing a large, thick black raincoat that obscured most of his body, clearly trying to keep warm. Figuring that the least she could do was bring him some warm blood (it’s not like he was allowed to leave his post for snacks), she pulled her sweater down where it had bunched up around her waist and slipped out of her and Klaus’s bedroom. The hallway to the kitchen was dimly lit, and she froze when she felt something wet on the hardwood floor under her bare feet. She reached for the light switch on the wall, flipping it on and feeling her breath catch in her throat as she followed the red pool down a few feet to see a hybrid with a slit throat.

The hybrid who was supposed to have been on duty.

The reality of the situation hit her all at once. Whoever was outside wasn’t her guard, Klaus had clearly been lured far away by the humans for a too-long negotiation on purpose, she somehow hadn’t smelled the blood all over her hallway, and she was in very deep trouble.

She felt a sharp pain in her neck.

Her world went dark before she could scream.

#klaroline #klaroline drabbles #klaroline drabble #klaroline fanfiction #mydrabbles #anon #ask #answer

[emeraldwaves]

Title: In Which We Burn Together Angst Week Day 4 Pairing:  Todomomo Rating: M Word Count:  2,518 Read on Ao3 Summary:  

Todoroki Shouto has never believed in soulmates. Why should he? It didn’t work for his parents, so he doesn’t expect it to work for him, especially when he can’t even remember what his now burned off mark looks like.

Full fic under the cut! For @bnha-angst-week !! Day 4 Choice // Wish Thank you to @its-love-u-asshole for betaing! <3

Yaoyorozu cried after they completed their exam against Aizawa-sensei. Shouto wasn't really sure why since they both passed, but he didn't wish to judge her. By now he was aware she could get overwhelmed.

They made their way off the examination field, heading back towards the school. Shouto walked behind her, not wanting to bother her if she was internally processing things. Her plan had been amazing though.

"Mm..." he muttered, wondering why she was passing the credit to him when it had been her plan. "I think it was more thanks to you."

"A-Ah!" she waved her hands up and down quickly. "N-No! I think it was more thanks to you. If you hadn't believed in me-"

"How about we call it a team effort?" he said, cutting her off. That was part of the point of these team exams anyway.

She smiled, her eyes glistening again. "Yes," she said. "You're right. It was a team effort. But still... thank you for having faith in me."

Shouto stared at her, confused why she was thanking him for something that came so easily to him. "I always will," he said bluntly. He loved the way her cheeks grew redder at the compliment.

Shouto found he worked well with Yaoyorozu and more often than not, if they were able to pick their teams during any training, they would end up on the same team together.

During their first year, he often paired up with her for research projects or team battles, simply because he trusted her. Even when she had deep, internal anxieties about her abilities, Shouto knew she would pull through. He would watch Yaoyorozu slip her finger under her bracelet, running her finger against her skin. He never asked her what was underneath it, he never cared, which was something he knew she appreciated. He didn't know what was holding her back in her mind, but he knew she was stronger than it. She was an extremely capable woman, even if she didn't think so herself.

Either way, Shouto chose Yaoyorozu every time.

Their rather excitement filled first year was coming to an end soon, and Shouto silently hoped their second year would be quieter.

As the bell rang, marking the start of their vacation, he glanced towards Yaoyorozu, packing up her things. It would be strange, to not see her beside him everyday, and suddenly he was hit with an empty feeling. He would miss the way her cheeks flushed when he offered her any sort of compliment, even minor ones. He would miss the way she took notes with rigorous concentration and he would definitely miss the way she said good morning to him every day.

They would only be away for a little while, but still the idea of not seeing Yaoyorozu during the entirety of their break was... oddly disheartening.

"Yaoyorozu-san." Her name left his lips faster than he meant it to and she turned to stare, her dark ponytail swinging behind her, her black locks brushing against the back of her neck.

"Yes, Todoroki-san?" she asked. Her eyes were wide, eager, and interested in what it was he could possibly say. It was times like these she left him a little speechless, her cute enthusiastic energy too much for him to handle.

"Todoroki-san?" she repeated and Shouto almost jumped, pulled from his daze.

"Ah..." he muttered, realizing he didn't really know what to ask her even. "Would... you... over the break that is..." Why was it so hard to ask her this? Asking to train together was not a strange thing, not when they had been each other's choice partners for the majority of the school year.

She tilted her head, clutching two of her textbooks to her chest. Oh gosh that only made it worse. His eyes involuntarily glanced at her chest and he immediately snapped them back up to her face. He wasn't a pervert! Nothing like some of the boys in their class, but Yaoyorozu was pretty and intelligent, and amazing and admittedly, beautiful.

"What about the break?" she asked.

Right. He was asking her something. "Would you want to train together?"

Her eyes widened, shocked by the proposal. "Train with... you, Todoroki-san?"

"If you wanted to," he offered.

"Yes! I would love to! I-I mean I want to!" she smiled, looking a little flustered. "I'll text you my schedule for the break and we can find a time that works for us!"

Of course she had her break all planned out on a schedule.

As expected, she texted him almost immediately that night. He was impressed by the strict regimen she was sticking to. Even with school being on break, she set aside time to study, (mostly chemistry, for use of her quirk) and training of course. There was a part of him that wished to join her everyday, but he didn't wish to impose.

Instead, he picked a few times and sent them back, waiting for her to choose. She was quick to respond, setting their times into her schedule.

The next morning, he woke up to a text from her.

[Text from: Yaoyorozu Momo]: Good morning, Todoroki-san! I hope the first day of your break is both relaxing and productive!

A smile was quick to pull across his cheeks. He could hear it in her voice, could see her smile as she took her seat next to him. Yaoyorozu was so genuine and friendly. He'd never encountered someone like her. He didn't feel comfortable around most people, yet he enjoyed being around her. He liked it when she babbled on about something she was excited about, or when she didn't quite understand something and she thought about it extra hard in hopes of comprehending whatever confused her.

It was like his whole life he'd been waiting to meet someone like her... like a soulmate.

For the first time in his life, Shouto wished he knew his soulmark, and he wished, above all else, that Yaoyorozu Momo was his soulmate.

No.

He didn't believe in soulmates... and even if he did, Yaoyorozu was most likely not his. Though they were similar in many ways, they were also different, came from two different lifestyles. They both wanted to be heroes but...

No.

It was useless to think about, and he would never know if she was his soulmate unless they...

His face turned bright red and he turned over in his bed, burying his face in his pillow while willing the thoughts to go away. The last thing he needed was to think about how beautiful her lips looked sometimes, especially when she wore the shimmery gloss and-

No.

He pushed himself out of bed. He couldn't keep thinking about her like this. Eventually she would find her actual soulmate and then all of this wouldn't matter. It would honestly be easier for him if he was alone. He could focus on being a better hero and eventually passing his father.

For now, he was going to go for a run.

Yaoyorozu set the day for the them to train together a few days into the break, and Todoroki was silently dying. Even with their good morning texts, which she sent everyday, he missed seeing her cute smile and her cheerful eyes.

When had he started thinking about Yaoyorozu so much? Maybe after he saw her in the rain after the U.S.J. incident. Or maybe after the festival, when he showed her his burned soulmark... he had trusted her enough to do that... or maybe it was when they worked so well together it felt like he never wanted to partner with anyone else.

Is this what people called a crush? It was such a foreign, unfamiliar feeling.

Shouto hated himself for wondering what was underneath her small bracelet. With his burn and his inability to remember what his soulmark looked like, they wouldn't be able to tell if they were soulmates anyway, so he didn't know where these small tugs of caring came from. He would never ask her about it anyway; he wasn't rude like the rest of society.

When the day finally came to meet her, Shouto arrived at her house a little early. Knowing Yaoyorozu, she would be expecting him to be punctual. Her house was very large, as many of their classmates discussed before when she held study sessions at her place and Shouto had to buzz an intercom to get in.

"Todoroki-san! Good morning!" she said, meeting him at the front gate. "It's good to see you." She bowed politely and he did the same, though they were friends, with her everything was always on the formal side.

"It's good to see you too, Yaoyorozu-san," he said, unable to stop the small smile which pulled across his cheeks.

"Come!" she said. "Let me take you to our training room!" Unsurprising she would have one of those. His house had one too, though the memories in there were anything less than pleasant.

Her fingers wrapped around his hand as she led him to the room. It was a large square room, mostly white and completely empty. "It's proofed for quirk use, so please don't feel like you have to hold back your ice or fire. In fact, I would prefer you don't!" she said.

She slipped off her jacket and Shouto glanced away for a moment. The clothes weren't revealing, but the black tank top dipped far down her back, leaving space for her to produce whatever object she might needed.

"I wouldn't hold back," he said, leaving his bag outside the door as he followed her inside. He would never offend her like that.

"Good," she said and bowed to him again. "Should we begin?"

"Alright," he nodded, and took a stance.

He knew she would mostly likely wait for him to charge for her first, and knowing her she was probably calculating out his various moves in her head. She would assume he would use his ice first, as he often favored that side, but things were different now... he knew he could handle the fire... his fire.

He leaned towards his right side but was quick to ignite his left, sending a row of flames barrelling towards her.

Yaoyorozu was faster than that though. She dodged, pulling a shield from her back and a spear from her arm. She clutched the items tightly, panting from the heat, and he stomped his foot down, sliding across the floor on a path of ice he sent across the room. He shot more fire her way and she continued to dodge.

The problem was, she had a difficult time getting close to him as he moved around the room with ease. Even using a long range weapon, he was able to freeze a variety of objects she tossed his way.

Eventually she fell to her knee, panting heavily... the lipids in her body most likely running low. "Yaoyorozu-san, are you okay?" he asked.

"Mhm..." she nodded, though she looked slightly ashamed.

"You did excellent-"

"Todoroki-san! Can we train more tomorrow?!" she asked and Shouto blinked, surprised by her outburst.

"I'll train whenever you are free, Yaoyorozu-san."

Maybe it was pathetic, but any excuse he had to spend more time with her the better.

So he spent his break training with her. Every morning he got to hear her gentle voice and see her smiling face wish him a good morning. They would train together, until she grew too tired, having used her body too much. However, each day she improved more and more.

The sessions would last longer, tiring Shouto out and towards the end of summer break, they would spend hours going back and forth, her trying to get hits on him. She often did, even when he tried to deflect, she occasionally would make a break and knock Shouto to the floor. Yaoyorozu grew more and more impressive with everyday.

School was close to starting up again soon, and Shouto found as much as he thought he would miss seeing her everyday in school, he knew he would miss training privately with her even more.

He stood across from her on the penultimate day of their break, ready to challenge her. They usually waited to see who would make the first move, but this time, Yaoyorozu was quick to rush him. She pulled a spear from her arm, dashing towards him. Shouto aimed ice at her feet, but she jumped up to avoid it, and she spun the spear down, hitting against his arm as he collapsed to the floor, her spear and hand pinning him to the ground.

"Amazing..." he whispered, staring up at her, not bothering to move. He always knew she was incredible. He expected her to kick his ass one of these days, so it was unsurprising to find himself laying on his back, staring up into her dark eyes.

"A-Ah! Todoroki-san!" she breathed out, looking down. "Are you hurt?!" She held out her hand to him, her small bracelet sliding down her wrist.

"No..." he muttered and took her hand, sitting up, his eyes fixated on her wrist. They both sat on the floor, attempting to catch their breath.

He remembered what she said about her parents not being soulmates... how they lost their actual soulmates and found each other later. He knew it didn't matter to her. He knew she wouldn't care if they were soulmates or not, right? They could choose to be with each other... like her parents.

"Tomorrow," he said softly.

"Ah yes! Tomorrow is our last day to train like this. Though I'd be happy to train at school if you want to-"

"Go out with me."

"Eh?" she squeaked, pausing to look at him. "T-Todoroki-san?"

"Tomorrow... instead of training... I... I want to take you to lunch, or dinner... whatever. I, uh, I don't know..." he stammered, suddenly unsure why he blurted those words out so suddenly.

"L-Like... a date?" she asked. It was rare for someone to ask someone on a date if they didn't know their soulmark. It was practically unheard of. Of course she would be thrown off by the prospect of going with someone like him, destined to never know just from looking.

"...if you're... interested. I know I don't know your soulmark and you know I don't know mine-"

"Yes..." she said, and she slid her fingers to lace between his. "I would love to go on a date with you, Todoroki-san." She turned her face towards the floor, her cheeks flushed the brightest red he'd ever seen.

He squeezed her hand back. "Okay..." he breathed, still not quite sure what to say as they sat there with their hands laced together, but his chest felt warm. She was smiling, and that was enough for him.

Tomorrow, he would go on a date with Yaoyorozu Momo, and it didn't matter if they were soulmates or not.

#todomomo #todoroki shouto #yaoyorozu momo #bnha-angst-week #bnha #boku no hero academia #soulmate AU #this chapter is p. tame angst wise

[idkthisisjustforfanfic]

baseball!Harry blurb

My first job out of college was good--good in the sense that I didn’t have to relocate out of Southern California, and good in the sense that I didn’t end up somewhere like Springfield, Illinois.

No offense to Springfield, Illinois--but my dream to be a broadcast journalist and on air talent was more more likely to take flight in Los Angeles than it was in the middle of nowhere.

I’d gotten to the ballpark early enough to have dinner, get settled, and do a few promotional shots with Mark, the faithful cameraman who’d been giving me pointers and tips since I’d started at NBC Los Angeles. The crowd was already pretty full--which wasn’t shocking for game three of the World Series--and I was constantly trying to calm the butterflies in my stomach.

“Relax,” Mark said, looking up from the camera he held. He’d set it down on a seat nearby--adjusting a few settings as fans filed down the aisles around us. “You’re doing fine, you’re gonna be great.”

I appreciated his words of encouragement, mostly because my boss had made it clear that they were taking a chance by sending me to game three. Ilana Perry--the usual sports girl they sent out to the sidelines--had come down with the flu and was unable to do the gig.

Lucky for me, I was young, bright-eyed, and obnoxiously asking for bigger and better and more assignments since I started with channel 4 in May.

They’d liked me well enough--they liked my highlight reel and my resume was impressive for someone my age. I’d had access to amazing equipment and good stories at UCLA, so getting the job offer from NBC was like hitting the jackpot. I accepted immediately.

“I know, I know,” I said to Mark, holding my microphone and papers close to my chest. In a minutes, we’d head to the locker room to do a few interviews before the start of the game, but Mark needed to fix whatever technical issue was occuring.

“Alright, I think we’re good,” he said, lifting the camera off of the seat and inspecting the side of it once more. Mark, a 55-year-old man who was old enough to be my father, had been working for channel 4 since he was my age. His regular reminders about my on-air charm and my ability to sniff out a good story helped in moments like these--moments where it felt like my career was on the line.

I nodded at him, allowing him to take the lead as we made our way down into the concourse. We strolled passed vendors, past fans in face paint and the long lines at the bars, until we found the unmarked door and security personnel who granted us access into the locker room.

Thankful for the laminated pass around my neck, I stepped in behind Mark, and seemed to take my place behind fifteen other journalists and reporters.

Beyond the other microphones and recorders, I could see his brown hair peeking out beneath his hat. He chewed on a piece of gum, nodding at the person in front of him who scribbled down whatever words he was saying.

Harry Styles, the young and questionable player from England, of all places, was somewhat of an interview favorite. He’d been with the Oklahoma City Dodgers last season, and after another player had surgery, Harry was brought it and immediately made a difference.

No one expected him to be so good, and no one expected him to be so funny, so charismatic, and so friendly.

“If we can talk to him, we should,” Mark muttered under his breath, standing beside me as we stepped forward in the line. A few other players milled about, but it was clear, everyone wanted to get a chance to speak with Harry.

“I know,” I nodded. “I’d love to ask him about that game in June when he hit for the cycle and came into home with a bloody nose.”

Mark let out a laugh--he always liked it when I came up with good questions, or conversations that seemed out of left-field. Everyone tonight would be asking how he felt--only 24 and playing in the World Series. He’d expect it from me--he’d expect the blonde girl with channel 4 to ask him if he was nervous, if he was excited.

But I knew the game better than that--I knew the amazing feat it was to hit for the cycle, and I’d rather talk to him about something unique. If I really wanted to know how nervous he was for tonight’s game, I could easily watch KTLA in the morning, or just about any other news station.

I watched the man in front of me ask him the same old questions. How’s the weather here compared to London? What’s it like to be in the World Series? You’re so young, are your parents proud?

He answered the questions with a grace, nodding and smiling and making an effort to be approachable--he adjusted his hat and locked eyes with me when the man walked away.

“Hi, Nicole Pearce, channel 4, NBC,” I shook his hand, smiling up at him as Mark moved around me, trying to find a good angle to get the shot.

“Harry Styles, outfielder, Los Angeles Dodgers,” he smirked back, his accent was thicker than I imagined, his eyes were a shade of green that couldn’t even be captured on TV. “How are you?”

“Good,” I nodded at him. “A little overwhelmed, I only started back in May.”

I didn’t know why I was telling him that--the last thing I needed was for him to think I didn’t know what I was doing or what I was talking about. He didn’t actually care, he was just being nice and making conversation while Mark got everything set up.

“I know how that feels,” he laughed. This was his first season in LA, he was young and bright-eyed and ambitious, just like me. “Sometimes when I get nervous, though, I just pretend everyone else is naked--that usually helps.”

I laughed, feeling a flush come to my face when his eyes went wide.

“I mean, not now, like--I’m not nervous now, you’re making me very comfortable,” he said, his words rambling into a run-on sentence to avoid any awkwardness. It might have been too late.

“Alright,” Mark looked up, a smirk tugged at his lips as he looked between us. “Ready?”

Harry only nodded, his cheeks still tinged pink from his accidental innuendo, but then he looked at me to start us off.

I cleared my throat when Mark gave me the count--3, 2, 1.

“Nicole Pearce live from Dodgers Stadium with outfielder Harry Styles,” I spoke into the microphone, focusing on the lens in front of me. “Harry, I’m sure most people are asking you the typical questions tonight--are you nervous, how’s it feel? But I’ve actually got a question for you about that game in June, if that’s alright.”

He immediately knew what I was talking about, fighting a bit of a smile that tugged at his mouth. He nodded, waiting for me to continue.

“You’re the youngest player to hit for the cycle in your first season with the Dodgers, but that Tuesday night game--how’d you get a bloody nose?”

He gave me a full smile now, chuckling a little as he nodded. I hoped he appreciated the humor, I hope he was thankful that I didn’t ask him the same thing that everyone else had asked.

“I’m not sure, really,” he shook his head. “It was totally out of the blue and couldn’t have been worse timing.”

“I’ll take it there was no celebration after that home run, then? No high fives or anything?”

“No, definitely not,” he shook his head, “I went straight to the locker room with a trainer--but it stopped, I was alright.”

“And Los Angeles is thankful for that. Good luck tonight, Harry. From the locker room, I’m Nicole Pearce, channel 4 sports.”

Mark pointed in our direction to let us know we were out--I looked back up at Harry, who’s eyebrows were somewhat raised. He chewed his gum still, but I couldn’t read the expression on his face. For a second I was worried that I’d bothered him--was he embarrassed, was he annoyed that I didn’t focus on tonight’s game?

“That was good,” he nodded down at me. “It’s always nice to get a break from the same old questions.”

“I was hoping it’d be a welcomed break,” I said honestly, pushing a strand of hair behind my ear.

“Will you be here after?” He asked suddenly, Mark watched on as he held the big camera in front of his torso.

“Here? In the locker room?” I suddenly felt aware of the line of people behind me--the other reporters who were waiting to get a piece of him, waiting to ask him a question and get some insight into his mind.

He nodded, crossing his arms as he looked down at me again. His uniform--the white and blue--complimented him well. Despite his newness to the team, he had an air of confidence that I could tell was genuine. He knew he was good, he knew he was making me a bit nervous.

“Yeah--I’m here all night,” I answered.

“Good to know,” he smiled. “I’ll try to find you later.”

**

I knew that being in this line of work meant uncertainty. It meant flexibility and it meant doing a lot of things on the fly. I had no idea, however, when I walked into Dodgers Stadium at 6pm that night, that I would be there until the next morning.

The game went 18 innings--the equivalent to a double header and the longest game in World Series history. While the fact that Mark and I stayed to cover the whole game was good for my career, it was anything but for my sanity.

At the 13th inning I was sure we were going home--the Red Sox had scored and our luck wasn’t great. I’d almost resigned to another loss, until we tied it again.

The longer the game went, the longer I watched Harry play and make catches and celebrate with his teammates, the more intrigued I was about our conversation.

He was friendly, that I had heard from other reporters in the field and other people I knew from work. I’d never met him before, but the way he smiled at me and said he’d find me later--it made me not as mad about sticking around.

Then again, it wasn’t like I had much of a choice--it was my job, after all.

I brushed on more makeup in the media bathroom, hoping to cover the circles under my eyes and make it seem like I wasn’t so exhausted. My schedule at the station had my sleep all over the place--some days they’d want me to do the morning shift and cover for one of our main anchors. That had me up at 2:30am and in the office by 3:30.

Things like this--games, sports, the thing I really wanted to cover--had me reapplying makeup in the middle of the night. I’d already done a sideline interview with the manager. Apparently he recognized Mark as one of the usual suspects nearby and offered a few seconds--that was one of the perks of working with Mark.

I’d watched Harry, out of the corner of my eye, make his way out of the dugout when they’d won--they all stormed the diamond to congratulate their teammate who’d hit a walk-off homerun. I think they were just as happy as I was that it was finally over.

“Excuse me, sorry--NBC, excuse us,” I muttered, hoping to push through some of the people at the back of the locker room. It was smellier than before, all sorts of scents wafted through the warm room. There were plenty of players who’d already been in and out of the shower, but the heat from the bodies and their exertion still clung to the air.

“Want to talk to Styles again? He played pretty well,” Mark asked, taking a second to hoist the camera up to his shoulder.

I scanned the room. I needed to be professional--I couldn’t let the flush on my cheeks or the skipping heart beat take over, even if the Dodgers’ youngest star player had possibly pictured me naked. That wasn’t the point.

“Sure, yeah, we can find whoever,” I shrugged my shoulders, hoping to just forget about the entirety of my conversation before. I needed to take this seriously. Covering this game was huge, I didn’t need to fangirl over someone just because he was a professional athlete.

We made our way to stand in the group of people near Max Muncy, I shoved the microphone through the crowd of recorders and iPhones, hoping to catch whatever he said. He was appreciative, he was excited, I managed to ask him a question about how he feels heading into game four, and then it was over.

The locker room was thinning out most of the players had changed and talked for a few minutes, they were likely heading home for what was hopefully a good night’s sleep.

I was standing with Mark, who was just about to power off the camera and gather his belongings, when I spotted him near his locker. His name was plastered above it, he stood, bent over, as he packed up his things. He smiled and offered a handshake to one of his teammates, the same smile on his face that I’d seen much closer early in the night. I cleared my throat when Mark, with raised brows, caught me staring.

“Relax, I was just seeing what he was doing,” I rolled my eyes, annoyed that Mark was clearly amused by my crush.

“Sure,” he laughed, dropping his Sony HXR into the bag he toted around. “I heard him say he’d find you later. I can give you some space.”

“Oh my god,” I rolled my eyes again, falling into step with him quickly as we headed towards the door. “Please, I’m going home, too. I’m exhausted.”

He opened the door back into the concourse and paused when we were outside. He took out his cellphone, looking at the time. “I’m in lot five, where are you?”

I pointed down the main hall and frowned. “Lot ten,” apparently the senior media got the better lot. “But have a good night, I’m back in on Sunday.”

He clicked his phone shut and put it back in his pocket. “Have a good night, Nic.”

I waved him off, draping my own bag over my shoulder as I began to trudge down the hallway. The walk to my car wasn’t terrible, but it was long--especially in the heels I’d been wearing for the last 18 innings.

I scrolled mindlessly as I walked, watching the array of tweets come in about the game, the score, the insanity of the entire evening. I was about to turn down the hallway that would bring me out to the parking lot when I heard voices approaching behind. The whir of a golf cart quieted, causing me to turn around.

“Hi,” Harry Styles smiled at me--clad in athletic shorts and a sweatshirt. The man driving looked familiar, maybe one of their trainers, maybe a teammate. “Nicole Pearce, NBC 4, right?”

I nodded, feeling a flush rise on my cheeks. His hair was brushed back under a Dodgers hat, which sat backwards on his head. He smirked at me. “Need a ride?”

“Oh--I’m fine, I’m in lot ten,” I said, pointing over my shoulder to motion to where my car was parked.

“You’ve still got a ways to go,” he informed me, the corners of his mouth still pointed upwards. “Come on, get in,” he motioned to the backwards facing seat behind him. I looked up and down the hall, wondering if this was something that I’d get in trouble for.

Since I didn’t know the answer, I figured I was allowed to feign ignorance. “I hope I don’t lose my job because of this,” I said quietly, climbing up and taking a seat--my feet were immediately grateful for the relief.

“If you lose your job because of me, I’ll personally call your boss and give him a very stern talking to,” he nodded solemnly.

I laughed, running a hand through my hair, hoping that my cheeks weren’t so pink that he could tell I was nervous.

“Are you local, Nicole?” He asked as we lurched into motion--the driver took the turn down the hall for lot ten, I nodded in response to his question and cleared my throat.

“I went to UCLA, grew up in Sherman Oaks. Now I’m in Studio City.”

He was twisted around to see me, his arm on the back of my seat. I could see the stubble on his face, the way it grew up his chin and on his jaw line, the way it sprinkled his upper lip. He was tan--all the playing in the sun must have changed his skin tone a bit, but he smiled at me.

“Bit of a drive in rush hour from here, no? How was your drive out?”

I shrugged--the 5 was always a mess, but I’d left from the studio after Mark and I had gotten the equipment we needed, so the route was more direct. “It’ll be better now at almost 1:30am.”

He smiled still, his eyes just scanning over my face as if he had something to say as we exited out the stadium and into the dark parking lot. I kept eye contact for a minute, though self-conscious about the heavy makeup I wore. It looked fine on TV, but in person it always seemed obnoxious.

The gold cart slowed to a stop. “A couple of teammates are headed back to my house just to hang out, have a drink, if you’re not doing anything.”

My eyes must have went wide, he laughed and shrugged. “Or not--if you don’t want to.”

“No, no, I appreciate that,” I said quickly, cursing my overly expressive face and my inability to ever play it cool. “I just, it’s late, I figured you’d all go home and sleep.”

He laughed again, taking the baseball cap off of his head to smooth out his hair before replacing it. “Yeah, we will eventually. Hard to go straight home after a night like that,” he threw a thumb over his shoulder back towards the stadium.

I nodded--it made sense. It’d be hard enough to sleep at all after the events of the night. I stared at him, his eyes scanned my face once more, a smirk tugged at his lips and he shrugged his shoulders, as if asking me why not?

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”

**

When I found myself seated on a plush beige couch in Harry Styles’ living room, directly next to Joc Pederson and Walker Buehler, I knew that I could definitely lose my job for this.

I mean, it wasn’t like any of them cared who I was or even really asked. I’d walked in with Harry, thankful that the ride from the stadium to his house was only 25 minutes. I’d abandoned my car at the stadium, he said that of their trainers could drive it out later for me or I could get it in the morning.

I pushed the fear out of my head--I wasn’t the type of girl to do this, but something in me told me that it’d be a night to remember, a night that only comes once in a lifetime. I think I was right.

There was enough beer to furnish three college frat parties, a few of Harry’s teammates swatted a ping pong ball back and forth at a table near the kitchen, a few of them were watching replays of the night’s biggest plays on the TV in front of us.

Harry, who’d disappeared into the kitchen to get me another drink, returned and handed it down to me. “I can give you a tour, if you want,” he held a hand out, helping me from the couch. I stood, surprised at the height difference between the two of us now that I was without my heels.

He was tall, that was clear. He had broad shoulders, white teeth, curly, messy hair that was still tamed beneath his backwards hat. I followed him out the living room, away from the people and down a main hall.

He flipped on a light switch and stepped aside so I could see in. “Guest room,” he said. “Normally where my mum stays when she comes out.”

I smiled, picturing his family from the U.K. coming out to experience America’s past time. “How often does she come?”

“Eh,” he shrugged. “A few times a season. She’s out now with some of my aunts and cousins, but they’re all in a hotel.”

He flipped the light off, shut the door, and led me down the hall. “Bathroom there,” he pointed into a dark door.

“Yep, I used it already,” I laughed, watching him offer a smirk over his shoulder as he continued to lead me towards the stairs.

The foyer through which I’d entered was impressive enough as it. Beautiful dark wood end tables lined either side of the room, a second floor was visible, wrought iron railings lined the stairs and the overlook above.

“You saw the kitchen and the living room,” he said, climbing the first few steps. I climbed behind him, keeping enough of a safe distance. Sure, my job had allowed me access to a few celebrities here and there. Once I got to go to banquet where Demi Lovato gave a speech, there was even the time in college where I’d gotten to go to a journalism expo where Katie Couric and Don Lemon were, but I’d never experienced this.

I’d never been invited into someone’s home who’d I’d interviewed only a mere hours ago.

Harry led me down a hallway that seemed to have an end in sight. “Bedroom there, office there,” he pointed at two doors on either side of the hall. “There’s a bathroom with that one, it has a really nice tub.”

I laughed, following him down the dark hallway until he stopped at a set of double doors. “This is the master, my room,” he pushed the doors open, revealing a king sized bed clad in gray sheets and a gray duvet. He had a few jerseys framed above his bed--names I didn’t recognize but teams that I did.

One of the Yankees, one of the Astros. “Isn’t is kind of against the rules to have these?” I teased, walking closer to his bed and pointing up at them. I could hear the people downstairs, the cheering at the TV when they saw themselves do something amazing. He flicked the light switch on but kept the lights dim.

I turned around to see him, his lips were tugged into a smirk once more as he shrugged. “I mean, maybe--but they don’t spend a lot of time up here,” he motioned to his teammates downstairs.

“And this,” I looked to the protected bat that was mounted on the wall, signed by David Ortiz. “This is incredible, have you met him?”

“Unfortunately no,” he rolled his eyes, coming closer to examine it beside me. “He retired the year I got drafted.”

“My dad has loved the Dodgers forever, but he loves David Ortiz.” I said mostly to myself, still taking in the shiny bat that hung on the dark red wall.

I looked over to him to find his eyes on me once again--his eyes scanned down my face to my lips, and before I knew it, my body was pressed to his. His lips were unbelievably soft, his hands felt rough from gripping a bat, but soft as the moved down my size. I let my hands reach up to his face, feeling the stubble on his chin against my palms as he kissed me harder.

It was crazy--all of it, really. A typical night at work became a historical game and now it was surely something to remember. I let Harry push me towards the bed, he pulled away slightly when we toppled down, a smile on his face as he looked at me.

“Sorry--I hope that wasn’t too forward,” he paused, a look on his face almost told me he was now embarrassed, as if he felt bad for the way we’d pressed ourselves together.

“It’s fine,” I giggled, he held his weight on his elbow as he stared down at me. “Forward isn’t a bad thing.”

He brought his lips back to me, less feverishly this time, kissing me deeply and letting his hand trace down the hem of my dress. Stupid work dress--it was the least sexy thing I owned. If I had known this would happen, I’d have gone with the black one with the questionable amount of cleavage.

His fingers pushed the fabric of my dress aside, trailing up the skin of my inner thighs. I heard laughter erupt from downstairs, but Harry didn’t budge. His fingers crawled up to the fabric of the thong I wear, which he quickly pushed aside to allow himself access.

I let a moan out against his lips when he middle finger grazed over my clit. He smiled into me, letting himself rub at my center harder as I arched my back into him. Something about the uniform, the accent, the way he’d smiled at me in the locker room--all of it made me want him more than I’d ever wanted anyone.

He pulled away from me quickly, his lips red from blood flow. “D’ya want to take that off?” He pointed to the dress as he knelt on the mattress. I nodded excitedly, reaching back to tug at the zipper, but he ultimately brushed his hand against mine when he pulled it along my spine.

He pulled it off of me, leaving me in my bra and thong on his mattress. He pulled his own shirt over his head, removing the hat along with it. He brought his lips to mine once more, his left hand moved down to cup my breast, grasping me over the fabric.

I let my hand reach down to his shorts, feeling the bulge that grew beneath them. He let out a whimper when I palmed him over the material, he shoved a hand beneath me to remove the bra from between us.

His lips moved quickly to my nipple, he swirled his tongue in circles as I let me fingers grasp into the hair at the nape of his neck. He was good at this--which I think he knew, but he was surprised when I pushed him off of me.

“Go down on me,” I said suddenly, a smirk crossed his face as heat flew to my cheeks. I wasn’t necessarily one to be bossy--but I knew what I wanted and he seemed willing to do it. He moved his way down the mattress to the edge of the bed, looped his arms under my thighs, and pulled me closer to him.

“Gladly,” he raised his eyebrows as he pulled the black fabric from my hips, bringing it down to my ankles before I flicked it to the ground. He pressed a kiss against me first, just a light sucking and a gentle heat left me wanting more--enough so that I reached a hand down and pressed him into me. He laughed lightly, letting his tongue make contact with my clit, I let out another moan as he worked at me.

I don’t know if it was the fact that there were people downstairs, the fact that this was definitely against something in my contract, or the fact that I’d be sure to see him again, but something about the whole situation made it hotter.

He brought a finger up to slide in and out of me, his mouth still connected to my center as he licked away--my back arched off of the mattress and his name escaped my lips.

He liked that, apparently, because he pulled away from me and smirked. I sat up, reached forward to grab at his shorts, pulling him closer to me and pulling the fabric away from his cock in one swift motion.

His knees jerked a bit when my hand clasped around him, he let out a deep breath when I took him into my mouth. I giggled, smiling up at him as I let my tongue slide up and down his shaft.

“Fuck, Nicole,” he said, his eyes closing for a second as he leaned his head back. The sound of my name on his lips made me work harder--I wanted to hear it again. He was in my control, he was only thinking about me in this moment, and that felt good.

I sucked at the head, my hand cupping his balls for a minute, but soon, he placed a hand on my shoulder and gave me a slight push. “Can I just fuck you?”

I laughed, appreciative of his question as I shifted back on the bed. He crawled forward on top of me, stepping out of his shorts altogether. He grasped a hand around himself, bringing it to my core and letting a shiver rake through my spine as he teased me with his tip.

“Please,” I said, through a cracked voice. He smiled, pressing himself into me and letting out a groan.

He let himself come closer down to me, brushing a piece of hair out of my eyes before letting his lips find mine once again. “Fuck,” he said, a bead of sweat dripped down the side of his forehead.

I couldn’t believe it--his eyes were closed as he thrusted in and out of me, and not only did it feel amazing to have him fill me, but I couldn’t help but marvel at my own luck.

“Harry,” I said lowly, he opened his eyes to make sure I was okay--but when he realized I was as pleased as he was, he kept moving, his cock moving against my clit in the perfect motion.

“I’m close,” I said, arching my back again to let him rub against me more.

“Yeah, baby, come on my cock,” he said, his eyes open to watch my face as he thrusted harder. It didn’t take long, and hearing him call me baby didn’t seem to hurt, either.

“Oh, fuck me,” I whimpered, feeling myself tighten around him.

“Fuck, Nicole,” he said--seemingly as close as I was. I reached my hands up, cupping his face and bringing his lips to mine, in an effort to keep both of us quiet.

He moaned against my lips, I could feel his orgasm only a few seconds after my own subsided.

He pulled his lips away from me, I opened my eyes to catch him smiling, a laugh escaped his lips. He was panting, his breath still short as he pulled himself out, I propped myself up on my elbows as he climbed off of the bed.

“Would you like to take a shower?” He asked.

I sighed, hoping to calm my own heartbeat before standing. “Sure,” I said.

He offered me a hand and pulled me off of the bed, pressing another kiss on my lips once I was stood in front of him. I followed him into the bathroom, where he turned on the shower, and let me step in first.

I let the water wash over me, a smile on my face from the shocking events of the night. The only thing that would make it better is if I could have done a story on it.

#harry styles #harry styles blurb #harry styles concept #harry styles fic #harry styles imagine #harry styles smut #baseball harry #baseball!Harry #harry styles halloween #harry styles dodgers

[froghaus]

On the Redundancy of Management

Tonight was a slow night at the Starbucks where I work so I had time to lean against the counter and think. I recently finished reading Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber (which I highly recommend to anyone especially if they might be classified as a millennial or younger), and so I tried to follow the train of thought involved in the book to try and which parts of my work were useless to everyone involved.

I settled upon training modules, which no one truly pays full attention to and which are only tested by multiple choice tests which cannot possibly be failed. They waste the Baristas time, the manager’s time in scheduling for them, the district manager’s in making sure everyone has taken them, and all the way up to the people who wasted time making modules that no one will pay attention to as they look at them once and then never again. Even the manager responsible for telling these people to create the modules, in effect, has wasted time. This creates an overwhelming loss of time and creativity on a grand scale.

I decided to bounce this idea off of my equally bored coworkers to see what they thought about the matter. There was unanimous agreement that there was a tremendous waste of time occurring here, and that it affected every level, but there was one small disagreement that I had not anticipated. My shift leader told me. “It doesn’t waste Manager’s time. Manager doesn’t make the schedule. I do.”

This caught me off guard, so I questioned further. I had known that the schedule was created by a program which allocates total hours for a store and splits these hours accordingly based on the availability and desired weekly hours of all who work there. From there, minor swaps and changes can be made based on minute details, which is what I assumed my manager spent so much time doing. Why else would Manager nervously ask “is the schedule okay?” every time Manager noticed me looking it over? It turns out, they actually worry and obsesses over the schedule because the Manager is expected to have open availability, but my Manager has decided that they should never work Sundays or Wednesdays. In effect, my manager is, and had been, spending working hours to manually alter the schedule in ways which frequently caused scheduling issues and created inconsistency in hours.

This in itself is an issue, but it pointed to a more pressing issue which I had not considered. Sure, my manager is a joke. That much is common knowledge and a source of nearly all moaning and gossip among the store baristas and shift leaders alike, but now I was faced with the realization that my Manager’s shortcomings were beyond just incompetence.

I realized that I did not know what my manager actually does.

So, following this rabbit hole a little deeper, I decided to check out the official copy for the Starbucks Manager job description. The official copy is a little vague, presumably to allow regional and store-to-store variation, but it essentially boils down the position to that of leadership, money handling, communication, and accountability.

I asked my barista and shift-leader coworkers if they could tell me about what they knew of our managers task list and, more importantly, if they had noticed our manager actually doing these tasks. What I invariably found, and was shown time and time again, was that my manager’s work had been allocated to my shift leaders, and their work in turn allocated to the baristas.

Let us investigate this case study one part at a time.

Leadership

This can be argued to be the most nebulous of the responsibilities of a manager, but ultimately it can be divided into coordinating efforts and providing morale. It is very difficult for me to imagine that my manager does either of these things, as (1), her presence inspires dread in my coworkers as she is associated with being unable to correctly mark cups or stick to one position as denoted in the Starbucks Playbook and, (2), she spends the rest of her time in her office in the basement where she communicates not at all.

The fact that my manager is associated directly with disorganization and active sabotaging of coordination is something which bodes poorly for the argument that my manger is living up to the expectations of their job description. The part of coordinating shift leaders has been delegated to the shift leaders themselves, and in turn, the positioning of the baristas on the floor has been delegated to the baristas to discuss and decide for themselves.

Money Handling

Little can be said about money handling except for that this has never been entirely the manager’s jurisdiction. Money is collected by a contractor and the safe is counted by the store employees. While my manager has fulfilled such a role in the past, her role has never exceeded the same role when played by a shift manager.

Functionally, this part of the job description can and should be filed under the Lending a Hand section of the job description instead. It is a vestigial part of the role of a shift leader which is duplicated in the manager’s work for the sake of redundancy.

Communication

This, if any part, can be considered the actual job of the manager. This is frequently the only metric on which any manager is judged as it is the only part of their job where they are held accountable to a superior member of the Starbucks hierarchy. If corporate or the district manager does not receive a communication, then there can only be one person to blame.

In the case of my store’s manager, even this work has been partially outsourced to my shift leaders. One among them has been chronically overburdened with the overflow of work: expected to work through breaks, stay late off the clock, and complete a variety of tasks which are not her responsibility for fear of backlash from the manager. One of these tasks is drafting progress and performance reports to our district manager who is suspicious of our store manager. The shift leader takes some small pleasure in sending these emails to our store manager with our district manager CC’d in the recipients.

Accountability

And here is where the unofficial job truly takes place. Accountability, in this sense, is essentially a means of owning the success or failure of the shop. This entails taking responsibility for failure to communicate, properly handle money, or fail to manage/hire competent staff.

In a perfect system, this would make a good carrot and stick for the manager, but that is not the case. If anything, it is a pain for the district manager to try and find a new store manager on short notice while also expecting continued accountability from the lame duck store manager, so rather than bite that bullet, the district manager uses accountability as a whip. This is done through many feudal and often sadistic means, such as humiliation or embarrassment among other store managers.

Because the threat of failing is simultaneously high but non-fatal to a managerial career, our store manager delegates this to the shift leaders indirectly by threatening retribution in the form or writeups or reshuffling planned vacation time. In essence, the work which would regularly be held accountable to the store manager, is now pressed onto the shift leaders who will share in the trauma of the store manager should the tasks not be completed. These tasks will often include mailing or correcting mistakes in the shift leader’s time off work. The extended effect of this is that the baristas must work together to self organize while the shift leaders scramble to complete tasks.

So what does this tell us? What information can be extrapolated from such a tangled mess of transferred roles and accountability?

To be frank, I was not sure of this myself when I first wrote it all out initially. So far I had only learned things which I had privately already suspected, and as such my outlook had not changed much. I knew, and still know, that my manager is not going to be replaced so easily considering the sluggishness of corporate’s power and the burden of finding a replacement.

So I sat there and stewed, trying to figure out why this all bothered me, and then I remembered the systems suggested in Bullshit Jobs. That was when I had my second realization: This all bothered me because if the system only worked because of the levels of heirarchy, it should not work without the concerted effort of the store manager. Ostensibly my manager is being paid $60,000 a year to pretend to work and push back at those who try to do what she will not. Yet my store is still working and profiting consistently.

This suggests that is not just my store manager that is useless, but that the position of Store Manager is a useless and redundant job position because it can easily be achieved by the shift managers and baristas hired beneath them.

This opens up another topic entirely. How is it that managerial positions came to be paid so much higher than worker positions? I intend to explore this concept another time, as well as to explore how this position could be more formally shuffled into a better distributed store structure, but that will require more math and more time to research my store and its structure.

In the meantime, I encourage others to look at their stores and ask the following questions:

What does my manager actually do?

What is the economic value of my manager’s work?

Is leadership and accountability inherently worth more than other roles?

Do leadership and accountability require an imbalance of power and/or money?

I hope to hear from others who might have come to similar realizations and, of course, thank you for reading.

#essay #starbucks #bullshit jobs #corporate structure #millenials #gen z #mangers #long post

[lameinserts]

right as rain, soft as snow (part ii)

             hey guys!! just wanted to let you know really quick that the mood of this story is based heavily off these three amazing songs:

mOStly this song: Promise by Ben Howard

Saturn by Sleeping at Last

From the Ground Up by Sleeping At Last

so listen to em while you read. they’re absolutely beautiful. you won’t be disappointed, saturn has a pretty long intro so stick with it. it’s the lyrics that count! ENJOY!

pairing: spider-man x reader/peter parker x reader

warnings: none currently! 

word count: 3,788

summary: in which the reader is an avenger and a whole lot happens before peter finds out about it. drama ensues.      

  ______________________________________________________________                “This is just another mission.” Natasha promised you as the two of you crossed the Queensboro bridge in a new car that was bought under a fake name. “That’s just what you have to think of it as, okay?” She asked softly, taking a hand off the wheel to rub your shoulder very briefly. “Remember the mission we did together in Luxembourg?” The two of you laughed over the memory, and you nodded your head slowly.

                “Yeah, okay. I can try.” You murmured back to her, looking away from the water that separated lower Manhattan from Queens to your gloved hands. The gloves were black, skin tight, ended just below your palms. They looked high tech, because they were high tech. But Tony had tried his best to make last minute alterations to make them just look like regular spandex gloves, but there wasn’t that much that he could hide.

                Natasha noticed you looking at your hands, and continued your briefing. “Your name is now ______ ______. You’re seventeen years old, and since you are seventeen, we didn’t have to change that. You are a senior in high school. You have been homeschooled your whole life, so this whole public school thing is very different for you. You are taking Advanced Chemistry 2, Russian,” Natasha lifted her sunglasses and gave you a wink, “Calculus, and Exploration Art. Only four classes because you have block scheduling.” She paused her words to make a right turn once you had crossed over Queensboro. “You have a skin condition on the back of your hands that is painful and you are extremely insecure about. Teachers can’t make you take them off, and you will never, under any circumstance, have to take your gloves off.”

                You visibly relaxed, sighing softly and closing your eyes. You leaned your head against the window as Natasha made a stop at a red light. “So there’s no risk?” you asked softly, turning your head to look at her, with her surprisingly realistic blonde wig and sunglasses.

                She shrugged softly, smiling sadly. “______, there’s always a risk, you know that. Though now that you get to keep your gloves, it’s much smaller. So don’t be so scared, okay? You won’t hurt anyone. You won’t.”

                You were silent as you fiddled with your fingers, listening to the fabric over them rustle together. You closed your eyes, taking deep breaths; listening to her words and trying your best to believe them. You wouldn’t hurt anyone. You promised yourself and your teammates that you wouldn’t hurt anyone, even if they all knew that it was an accident. That you hadn’t meant to do it. 

                You brought your hands up to your face to hide it, taking deep breaths and telling yourself that it was all okay and that you wouldn’t cry. You were better than that. No crying. You slapped your hands down and rubbed them up and down your thighs to calm yourself. You looked up as a big yellow school bus passed your car, and you swallowed thickly. You were almost there.

                “You’ll be okay, ______.” Natasha whispered, and you looked up at her with doubtful eyes. “You’re no different from all those kids in that school. Except the obvious. Look, ______, I know how difficult your life was before we got you out of Arizona. I know what you went through. I understand. I know that my life was very different from yours in different ways, but I understand. I know that Steve also understands, also being a S.H.I.E.L.D. experiment. I know that’s why the two of you are so close.”

                You stared out the window, not wanting to listen but also wanting to hear what she had to say. You knew that if she went on you would cry, because you always cried when you had to remember about the past.

                “I know not enough people tell you they understand.” Natasha whispered finally as she slowly pulled up to the high school.  You could feel your heart pounding out of your chest as you glanced back to Natasha. “I know it’s hard. But you’re the toughest person I’ve ever met. You can do this. Have a good first day at school.”

                You smiled with watery eyes at the woman in the seat beside you and grabbed your bag, stepping out of the car and staring at the school with an extreme nervousness in your heart. You turned to Natasha one last time. “You can do it, ______.” She whispered, smiling widely at you. “Have a good day at school, honey! See you later!” You nodded and shut the door, and she waved one last time before driving off; most likely so you couldn’t change your mind about school.

                You turned back towards the school, staring out over the expanse of the front “lawn” of the school as to speak, at all of the kids your age, walking into school. Laughing with their friends. Making fools of themselves trying to impress each other. And you were terrified. You took slow steps towards the school, staring down at a pair of light jeans and your black hoodie. You held your backpack tightly to your shoulders, going up the stairs and into the school. This was the first time in a while since you had really been without the Avengers, and you were trying not to let that get to you. You stood towards the edge of the hallway, watching as kids filed through the doors by the masses.

                Surprisingly, you did not mind crowds. They took away a lot of the loneliness you felt. You were hidden in crowds, you weren’t alone. You felt slightly better thinking that way. You took a deep breath, clearing your head as you looked towards a big door in the side of the hallway with a sign above it that said “Main Office.” You headed for that, pushing the door open and stepping inside, sitting down at the nearest seat. You watched the woman at the front desk mess with some papers before looking up to you.

                “How can I help you, hun?” she asked, pushing her glasses higher up her nose.

                You stood, taking a step over and leaning your arms against the counter, flinching slightly as the first bell rang. “Hello, my name is ______ ______?” you asked, fiddling with your fingers. The woman looked quizzically at your gloves before standing to go look in her file very briefly. “I’m new here.. And I need my schedule.” She opened the Manilla folder, nodding her head slowly and glancing back to your hands.

                “You have a skin condition, is that correct?”

                You nodded your head slowly with a small smile. “My medical records should be in there.” You murmured back. Of course, those were all fake.

                “As they are. You have Chemistry, first. Here is your schedule – I’ll call down for someone to take you to your class.” You took the paper gratefully from her, smiling your best smile, no matter how nervous you were. “Hello, Mrs. Warren; can you send someone down from your class to bring a new student over? Thank you.” You heard her say into the weird radio looking thing that she spoke into, and watched her as she turned back to you with a polite smile. “Sit for a while, hun. Someone will be here soon.”

                You nodded and sat, placing your bag beside you and staring down at your hands, closing your eyes and praying to a god that you didn’t believe in that everything would be okay. You looked up as the door opened, staring up at the boy that entered with what you could only assume was a hallway pass in his hand. “Good Morning, Ms. McKinnon!” he said cheerily, and oddly, his voice sounded very familiar. He turned to you sitting in the chair and his eyes widened, his jaw dropped, and for a moment he was silent. Until he snapped out of it. What was his problem?

                “Hi,” he quickly said, watching as you grabbed your bag and slung it over your shoulder. “My name’s Peter. Peter Parker. Nice to meet you. You’re new here?”

                You nodded softly as the two of you began to leave the office, and you gave the small woman at the counter a wave before the door shut behind you. “Yeah. My name’s ______. It’s nice to meet you, too.” You smiled over at him, staring down at your shoes for a few moments as you walked. Silence passed between the two of you, before you decided to keep speaking and try to make a friend. “I’ve been homeschooled most of my life.” You brought up, and you smiled as he looked over to you with interest. “Yeah. I’ve never been to school before. It’s all honestly a little overwhelming.”

                He nodded softly. “I totally understand. I’ve been going to school all my life and I’m still overwhelmed!” You laughed at his joke, finding that his voice gave you a surprising amount of comfort. “Anyway, your schedule here says your locker number. Do you want me to take you to your locker first so you don’t have to carry everything around? And hey! We have Calculus and Art together. How about today, I’ll drop you off at your Russian class and then at the end I’ll come and get you so we can walk to Calculus together. Does that sound okay?”

                You nodded your head, unable to stop your smile. “Sounds perfect.” You answered softly, bringing your hands away from your straps and in front of you as you lightly itched at your inner arm. You noticed Peter’s eyes trail towards them.

                “Why do you wear those gloves?” he asked, the curiosity in his voice sincere. “If you don’t mind me asking, of course.”

                You shrugged softly, feeling your heartbeat kick up when he asked you. “I have this skin thing.” You lied easily, looking from your hands and back up to him. “I wear these gloves because I hate looking at it. And it stops me from picking at it, too.”

                He nodded in understanding, smiling warmly back over to you. “Well, they’re a really cool pair of gloves.” He murmured back, and you felt your heart melt at how kind he was being to you. You had never experienced this sort of kindness from a stranger before. You felt yourself starting to trust him, but you didn’t want to. You know that you couldn’t trust him – you couldn’t trust anyone. It took you almost a year to trust the rest of the Avengers, but for some reason, you wanted to be by this kid’s side at all times. For some reason, you really and truly believed that he was special, and kind, and that you should trust him. Something in your gut told you that he was okay, and that he was really a nice guy. You decided to roll with that feeling rather than push it away.

                After a few turns in the hallway and a few quick chats about the classes the two of you were taking together, he stopped in front of a row of lockers. “Here’s your locker.” He said simply, placing his hand on the dark blue metal. “And here’s your combo.” He handed you the small piece of paper with your combination on it. You quickly opened your locker and looked over at Peter as he started taking steps backwards. You furrowed your eyebrows at him as you grabbed what you were pretty sure you would need from your bag. “And guess where my locker is?” He asked excitedly, placing his hand on a locker at least five down from yours. “Right here! We’re practically locker neighbors.” You smiled and laughed, and you noticed quite visibly how great it made him feel that he could make you laugh. You noticed the way his gaze softened, how his lips turned upwards in a small, crooked and yet completely adorable smile. God dammit.

                “Now, come on. Let’s get to Chemistry, yeah?” He asked, taking a step so he was by your side, holding his elbow out for you to take. He smiled over at you, his eyes beaming. “Shall we, your Majesty?”

                You laughed, unable to stop the widest smile of your life from coming onto your face. You wrapped your hand around his arm, holding a notebook and a pen clipped to the front cover of it in the other arm. “We shall, Sir Peter.” You responded, the laughter bubbling out of you. You were happy. You had made a friend. Even though you knew that you shouldn’t have, you had made a friend.

                Eventually you moved your hand away from his arm so the two of you could walk up the school steps, and you were silent; listening to the echoing of your footfalls in the large stairwell. “I sit in the back in Chemistry. With my last name starting with P and all.” The two of you laughed. “There’s some extra seats. You can sit next to me – if – if you want to, of course.”

                “Sure,” you responded as you made it to the top of the stairs and then made a left, “That would be nice.”

                You went up to the door and Peter grabbed the handle, twisting the knob and opening the big classroom door. Everyone in the classroom turned and stared at you. You felt your heart pounding as you walked into the room, wishing more than anything that you could take off those gloves – that you could remove what made you obviously different from the rest of the students there.

                “Ah, you must be ______!” The teacher greeted, walking over to you and holding out a hand for you to shake. You stared at it for a moment, begging that nothing would happen, and held out a hand and reciprocated the shake. You let out the breath you hadn’t realized you were holding when she pulled away and nothing had gone wrong. She looked down to your gloves as she shook your hand and her smile faltered slightly. She cleared her throat and continued. “I’m Mrs. Warren, I’ll be your Chemistry teacher.” She turned to the class. “Everyone, this is ______. She’s transferred in so I will expect only kind intentions, do we understand?”

                The class monotonously answered their agreements, and Peter motioned for you to follow him to the back of the class, taking the only free seat – the one right behind him. He turned to look over at you and you smiled softly, still noticing a lot of your new classmates looking over to you. You quickly placed your gloved hands in your lap.

                The teacher began to talk about Chemistry and continuing her lesson on the advanced balancing of equations – which you had already learned. With S.H.I.E.L.D. You closed your eyes. You couldn’t allow every word at school to trigger some sort of memory with S.H.I.E.L.D., or you would be a mess by the end of the day. You took a deep breath through your nose, opening your notebook and beginning to write.   -                   Class had ended surprisingly sooner than you thought it would, and you were knocked out of your concentration when the bell rang for the next class to begin. The teacher was offering praise for a good lesson and yelling out homework as kids left through the door. You walked behind Peter as you made your way to the head of the classroom.

                “______, wait!” The teacher called, reaching behind your desk to hand you a Chemistry textbook. “Here you go – you’ll need this.” She muttered, “I hope you have a good first day of school.”

                “Thank you, Mrs. Warren.” You smiled, turning towards the door to see a smiling Peter waiting for you at the door. You took a hand out and shoved him playfully – and for someone that you just met, you were surprised at how much you actually trusted him. You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t trust this stranger. But you had never had a friend before, and you were happy to have one.

                “Your Russian class is downstairs,” Peter said softly, looking at your schedule as the two of you headed down the stairs, “And so is my Physics class. So I’ll come and get you once it’s over, okay?” He asked, and the two of you stopped in front of your next class. “You’ll be okay. I’ll be back to bring you to our Calculus class. See you later, ______!” he called, smiling and waving, turning and walking down the hallway by himself. You wondered if he usually walked by himself every day.

                You turned and walked into your next class before too many students had gotten there, introducing yourself in Russian to your Russian teacher – thanks to Natasha and S.H.I.E.L.D. – and smoothly went and sat down at a desk in the back.

                Peter came and picked you up and the two of you walked up the stairs smiling and talking about different things. Peter was shocked to hear that you had never seen that really old movie, Empire Strikes Back, or something or another. You thought his outrage and surprise was hilarious. Calculus went smoothly as well – there were no problems and you sat in the back with your new friend. You walked to the Art room together, where you pretty much just painted smiley faces on each other’s arms and hands for eighty minutes. The teacher didn’t care; Peter said that he thought Mr. Jaymes, the teacher, was ‘high.’ That was a new word to you, as well.

                Eventually, school was over, and it was time for you to get back home. You waved goodbye to Peter, smiling and saying that you would see each other the next day. Of course, not before getting his number, first. Natasha said she couldn’t pick you up from school – so you walked home over the Queensboro bridge, just as you had the night before. You walked into Stark tower, giddy beyond belief, so excited to tell your teammates at the friend you had just made.

                You asked FRIDAY to take you up to the common rooms, where you were sure everyone would be waiting for you, and stepped out to see the team staring at you with expectant gazes.

                You were smiling and you set your backpack down, rubbing your hands together excitedly. “I made a new friend.” You murmured, happy at your very small accomplishment. Some seemed happy for you, others’ faces fell.

                “You what?!” Tony almost yelled, making your smile falter. “______, this is supposed to be a mission for you. You’re not supposed to trust anyone. Now that you have a friend they’re going to want to go over to your house and hang out with you, and walk home with you and – what were you thinking?!”

                You stared down at the floor, straightening your back and trying your hardest not to be upset. “I’m sorry, Tony.” You whispered, taking another deep breath.

                “She has to live on her own now. In an apartment in Queens.”                 “Tony, don’t you think that’s a little drastic?” Natasha began, looking up at the pacing billionaire from the couch.

                “Of course not. We can’t risk anyone from her school coming near here and seeing her walk into Stark Tower. It will completely ruin her cover – her name will be all over New York with rumors about the Avengers. Then the government will know. Then everyone will know.”

                You were silent, not really liking the idea of living on your own, although you would do what you needed to do. You understood that you were blowing your own cover by trusting someone.

                “Besides, we all know she’s lived on her own, before. When she ran.” Tony murmured, plopping down on the couch, and you couldn’t help but feel hurt at his words.

                “Don’t listen to him.” Wanda sent to your head, and you smiled gratefully at her.

                “Okay, Tony. I can handle it. I’ll live in Queens and I’ll show up to visit occasionally. If someone sees me walking into Stark Tower, I’ll say I work here. I’ll say that I’m a maid part time.”

               Tony thought about it and nodded his head. “I’ll go buy the apartment under the fake name. You pack your bags.”

                So you went up to your room and grabbed the luggage from the closet, packing mostly all of your clothes into the suitcases. You sighed softly, surprised at how quickly you had done it. You looked around your room – you had no decorations to take with you.   You brought it all back down to the common room, where everyone came up to say goodbye to you. “I’ll come over twice a week, okay?” you asked, trying to make light of the situation, and everyone nodded and smiled.

                “I’m sorry, Shockey.” Tony murmured, handing you the address on a slip of paper and referring to you as your team nickname. “Visit more than twice a week, okay? This tower won’t be the same without you.” You nodded, giving them all hugs goodbye. Steve offered to help you bring your stuff down and he did, and as you hailed a cab he brought a hand up to rub your upper back comfortingly.

                “You’ll do great.” Steve murmured. “I know what it’s like. To be in a world that you barely know. We’re the same, in more ways than one.” You smiled up at him, turning and giving him a hug as the cab rolled up. “See you soon, ______. Keep those gloves on.”

                “See you, Steve.” You murmured back, putting your luggage into the cab and getting in, shutting the door and giving the driver the address. Back over the Queensboro you went, taking deep breaths and closing your eyes. You didn’t mind living on your own. Last year, when you ran, you had stolen money from Tony and lived on your own for a few months. You were caught, though. But you would rather not remember it. When you opened your eyes you were in Queens, in front of your new apartment building. The man in the cab was not kind enough to help you with your luggage, but you didn’t mind. You really didn’t have much, anyway.

                You walked through the door and practically threw your luggage down, shutting it behind you and grabbing your key on the table. You searched around for a little while, exploring, but when you found the bedroom, you collapsed onto your new bed. You closed your eyes, taking deep breaths, ready to take it easy, until you felt your phone buzz in your hand.

                From: Peter Parker

                hey locker neighbor!!!

                And your new friendship began.

first part here!

next part here!

#peter parker #peter parker x reader #reader x peter parker #reader x spiderman #reader x spider-man #peter parker imagine #spiderman imagine #imagines #reader insert #marvel #marvel reader insert #reader x marvel #marvel x reader #marvel imagine #avengers imagine #avengers x reader

[x-mentalia]

Thank you for your submission, the mods have accepted your application into the ring. Please have your blog ready by 06/02! Name: Olena Shevchenko

**I just want to say something really quick: Within my app, there are some vague mentions of things like abuse (like child abuse and spousal sexual abuse) but I didn’t put much detail, there’s only mentions in passing as needed. I just wanted to give a heads up before anyone goes in and gets surprised. Thanks!!

Name: Olena Shevchenko

Country: Ukraine

Alias (Optional): Vesna

Pronouns: she/her

Age: 36

Species (Mutant/Human): Mutant

Group: X-men

Appearance (1-2 Paras): Olena stands at a fairly intimidating 5 feet 10 inches, and has a naturally strong body shaped like a barrel, complete with a strong stomach and noticeable biceps and leg muscles. She’s a big girl, that’s for sure, never having been very small. She does carry some extra weight on her hips and thighs, making her look soft, but she’s actually very strong and resembles a weightlifter. Her chest grabs attention most places she goes, boasting a G cup these days after two children; but the rest of her body is proportioned so she doesn’t look too top heavy. She has very short light golden blonde hair and big blue eyes that are sharp like a hawk’s. Even through the things that she’s seen, her face is still fairly youthful, with hardly a hint of crows’ feet, or 11s between her eyebrows, or laugh lines marking the outsides of her natural downturned pout. Really, she has sharp, sculpted beautiful features upon her face that have lent her a few too many objectifying comments that usually included her body too. Her hands are far from feminine, rather with wide knuckles and palms and short nails, too busy with work to deal with pampering.

Face Claim (OCs must answer): It’s not that important but I do use the model Sveta Utkina as a reference. Even though her body type is totally wrong and she’s grown her hair out since I started using her, I’m still in love with her face.

Personality: Overwhelming and overbearing are traits typically associated with Olena. She talks, a lot, and she’s awfully nosy, unable to get her nose out of other people’s business. She almost always has something to say, but it’s typically good-natured. Her somewhat lacking knowledge of English being noticeable with incorrect grammar and searching for unknown words, coupled with the way she feels all emotions so intensely, tends to make her come across as tactless; but rest assured that everything comes from the bottom of her big heart. She was born with a maternal instinct and a passion for caring for others, and she always goes more than out of her way to make it known that she cares. She’ll take care of you even if you protest and tell her you’re fine. And she seems to have this instinct that tells her something is wrong, whether someone isn’t feeling well or something bad is going to happen; it isn’t a power, it’s just a weird instinct that tends to be right.

She’s weird—so weird—and doesn’t give a damn if somebody thinks so; her purpose in life, after all, is not to please others with her existence. The way she rambles about obscure subjects, especially medical cases and phenomena that she’s experienced in her nursing career, shows that she’s not very affected by the gory or the macabre, rather finding it all fascinating and worth examining to learn from. You can find her watching disgusting horror movies and she will just be picking apart the inaccuracies of the gore. She’s also extremely blunt with her words, lending from the fact that she’s not well-versed in euphemisms or anything else non-literal in English. She will speak her mind; and although she’s not the most eloquent in English, a fact that sometimes bothers her a little, she will not mince her words and make everything as clear as she can, speaking her mind freely. She isn’t private about herself or her thoughts, only hiding things to protect her family. This can easily be traced to her abusive childhood, and her loveless former marriage, spanning years of being unable to speak her mind or do as she pleases; now, she uses her ‘freedom’ to make up for lost time.

Oh, and it’s terribly obvious that Olena usually sees things in black and white. Good and bad, no in between, because, at heart, she is an incredibly fierce woman. Though many may see a loving mother and friend, she is also a fighter, unafraid of getting her hands dirty. And though she is affectionate, often calling others sweet pet names, she has a bit of a fatalistic, pessimistic streak that pushes her to always be ready. You might never have met someone so protective of their children, but Olena would walk backwards into hell for her daughter and son. People who have wronged her—her parents, her ex husband—are often Olena’s motivation for doing things, to show she can be so much better than she was always assumed to be.

She is wild, passionate, and untamed, having the ferocity of a dedicated warrior. She is thoroughly dedicated to her causes and to her allies and friends. She is a lionness, waiting to pounce.

Strengths: Physically strong; great control and skill with her powers; generous; well meaning; thoughtful; openminded

Weaknesses: Proud; often lets her emotions take control; overbearing; crass; forgetful; nosy

Backstory (2-3 Paras): On August 24, 1981, a pair of twins were born in Kyiv, a boy and a girl. The boy, named Orest, quickly became his parents’ pride and joy; while the girl, Olena, became an afterthought. The couple were never interested in having a girl, which became amplified when they had three more boys over the next several years. All four of the boys were treated with care, even though the family was essentially in poverty; whilst Olena was meant to take care of the home and the younger boys while their parents were working. She had little freedom, not even being able to make her own choices about her appearance, and for her whole childhood she had very long hair and was forced to wear unsightly clothes, as her quickly developing body gave her a bad reputation and was a subject of her parents’ constant torment.

Living somewhere like Ukraine, and having abusive parents, can really throw off a sexuality crisis even more; and the poor girl just thought she was going crazy when she began to have strange thoughts. But it was never at the forefront of her mind, as Olena’s powers first began to show up when she was twelve—a private emotional outburst led to a dead field bursting into bloom with dandelions. She didn’t have much time alone to mess around with these strange abilities, however, until she was a few years older. Despite being very intelligent and making high marks in school, Olena’s parents just wanted her to get married, as they believed taking care of a house and having children was all she was good for. At the time, the legal age for girls in Ukraine to marry was 17; so in 1998, at the age of 17, Olena wed Anton, a man several years her senior

Olena entered the marriage with a lack of affection for Anton, and a plan. She agreed to marry the creep, who had an obsession with her (or rather, her body), and ride it out for a few years so she could obtain a degree. She was actually successful in not consummating their marriage for a couple of years, as she used her nursing program as an excuse as to why she wasn’t home; when she was actually finishing shifts at her job and classes at the medical school, she would stay out even later so she could mess around with her powers in private and become more familiar with them, discovering some fascinating things.

Eventually though…

Kalyna was conceived and born in 2001. Olena still had enormous contempt for her husband, but she felt nothing but love for her daughter. Having completed her nursing degree the year prior, she didn’t have much time to recover after the birth before going back to work in the children’s ward of the hospital she worked at. With Kalyna in the care of the mother of a friend, Olena worked her fingers to the bone to make sure her daughter would have a good life. On days off, she would take her baby to the outskirts of the city, avoiding Anton, and have quiet time whilst practicing with her powers.

It was an uptick in crime in an adjacent neighborhood that first drove Olena to really test out her abilities as a heroine. Enlarging and manipulating some pitiful plants growing between cracks in the sidewalk helped her apprehend a shooter one night, making the plant wrap around his leg and cause him to trip and fall, keeping him in place while help came.

Symon was born when Kalyna was 3 years old, and Olena was still working herself to death at the hospital, though she loved her job dearly, almost as much as she loved her children. She had practically no rest, in between working and caring for her kids and gaining a reputation as a quiet vigilante. Never letting herself be fully seen, the strange occurrences with the plants became linked with a figure that became known under several names, including Jaryla, Kupala, Lada, Vesna (all of which being Slavic pagan deities relating to plants), and even Demeter; but Vesna seemed to stick the most, both in the press and in public opinion. And public opinion was still split in Kyiv, and Ukraine at large, among mutants. There was (and still is) distrust of the government, questioning many of their decisions; though mutants did not technically have legal discrimination, they were still treated poorly by many government officials. But much of the public saw mutants as the children of or even new reincarnations of the old pagan gods.

And some of those mutants sure could protect them even better than the police.

Caring for sick children by day, helping needy citizens by night… Olena embraced the Vesna figure and eventually made herself a costume so she could disguise herself while putting herself out to help more. Though she was based in Kyiv, and her schedule was restricted by her job and her family life, the figure of Vesna gained national attention, which even began to spread to a few other countries. It was the strongest and most empowered Olena had ever felt.

In 2010, Olena filed for divorce. In 2011, she was free, and had custody of her children because of the case. Kalyna and Symon, now 10 and 7, held contempt for their father as well, since he was never a caring figure and always very cold and distant to them. They stayed in Ukraine a couple more years, during which time the childrens’ patronyms were changed to matronyms, and they legally bore their mother’s maiden name. At the height of her notoriety, and when political issues were rising, Vesna vanished for months. This, of course, was when Olena and her children immigrated to the United States, along with many other Ukrainians.

Moving takes time and settling, but their new home within New York state was so much more comfortable than the life they had been leading before. With all intentions of gaining full citizenship in the United States, Olena initially took up a low-key life, not taking on any trouble so she could keep up her eligibility as a candidate for citizenship. She became restless, however; and a few months in, the figure Vesna popped up in America, known by Americans who kept their eye on international oddities and mutants.

Olena was surprised, however, to find out the much more polarized opinions of Americans about mutants. She was helping people with her powers…and they wanted her dead, simply because of her powers? It didn’t make much sense. Even with the thought in mind that some mutants did bad things with their powers, it just wasn’t right to stop all mutants ‘just in case.’ Being incredibly strong willed, the only option for Olena was joining the X-Men to help figure out some solution. Holding a civilian job and caring for her two teenage children while living off-campus and having to go to the headquarters for training proves to be an extremely busy life, and she runs the risk of possibly burning out; but quitting is not an option.

Mutant Questions

Plant Manipulation: The power to control plant-life. Having had her powers since she was a young teenager, being well-practiced, and already being an established heroine, Olena has wide mastery over her powers and can be considered very strong. Olena is capable of creating plants from thin air. She can also make existing ones healthier. The ones she creates are always of the highest quality.

She recently discovered the ability to create hybrids, although this is not fully developed. Olena can drain the life out of a plant, which will give her more physical strength. She’s not exactly Captain America but she’s in better shape than the average person. She can detect the health of an existing plant, and tell whether its conditions are good or if it’s being harmed (and diagnose if it’s getting too much or too little sun or water, or if the soil is bad).

She can bring dead plants back to life, although this is more taxing on her. Olena needs a higher caloric intake to be able to use her powers consistently. She also needs regular doses of sunlight and plenty of water.

Plant enhancement: The power to augment, grow or bring plants back to life and even create them. Olena can increase the amount and health of plants, flowers and other produce, heal and otherwise nourish them and influence environment to reach and stay on the ideal range to help plant-life flourish. She can accelerate their growth and even create them from nothing if needed.

Plant growth: The power to influence the growth of plant life. Olena can influence and accelerate the growth of plants, causing them to mature with supernatural speed, grow to unusual size, and produce in abundance. She can cause plants to grow from seeds to full-grown plants in moments, cause them to flower and produce fruits, seeds, etc. outside season, cause a cut plant to grow roots and other similar feats. This extends to fruits, vegetables, vines, flowers, and branches.

Plant generation: The power to generate plants. Olena can generate plants, including vines, moss, fungi, and parts of the plants, such as leaves, seeds, fruits and flowers, and manifest them anywhere she wants. She does not need to do this in soil, and can even make trees grow on the floor inside. Generating poisonous plants causes a trace amount of the poison to enter her system, and can make her sick, depending on the severity of the poison auses a trace amount of the poison to enter her system, and can make her sick, depending on the severity of the poison and how much was generated. This extends to fruits, vegetables, vines, flowers, and branches.

Vine manipulation: The power to control vines. Olena can create, shape and manipulate vines, tendrils, stems or runners of the plant with a growth habit of trailing or climbing stems or runners, the specialized stems, leafs or petioles with a threadlike shape that is used by climbing plants for support, attachment and cellular invasion by parasitic plants, generally by twining around suitable hosts. The user can cause vines to grow, develop thorns, move/attack, mutate vines by rearranging DNA structure and revive withered or dead vines.

Chlorokinetic combat: The power to utilize plants in combination of physical combat. The main usage of this is chlorokinetic whip generation, in which she creates vine that she can easily use as whips and lassos. 

Drawbacks:

Like an actual plant, Olena needs plenty of sunlight and water to effectively use her powers. Being cooped up inside and working can be extremely draining on her, and she will need some time to recoup. She also requires a high caloric intake, especially if she is creating and/or enhancing high amounts of edible plant matter. Just in general, she burns lots of energy and calories while using her powers. They can also dehydrate her quite a bit.

Creation of plants is limited to her own knowledge of plants. She can’t just make something she’s never heard of, and she can’t do it just by looking at a book or online. I hope that makes sense. Basically her powers are limited to her personal knowledge. She could make a tree shoot up out of a concrete floor; but unless there’s some sort of earth directly beneath it, the tree (or whatever plant) won’t survive.

If she creates any sort of poisonous plants, Olena runs the risk of some of the poison also materializing inside of her body. Although it won’t be as effective as actually ingesting or touching the plants, creating a large amount will up the dosage inside of her. Also the worse the poison, the more toxic the effects in smaller dosages.

The existing plants that Olena may enhance to be healthier and live longer can still be affected by the soil and weather. While they’ll last a little longer than usual, they are still, unfortunately, capable of losing the fight eventually.

Really, using her powers can just drain her energy, especially if she’s creating too many plants. She has built up some resistance but is also prone to over working herself and pushing her limits too far, which has led to burnout before.

Lit Writing Sample:

Someone close to you has just discovered you are a mutant, how does your muse react before the other can reveal their feelings?

“Sestrenku…”

Olena set her jaw firmly when she heard the tone in her twin’s voice. She and Orest had always been more alike than they ever wanted to admit, even in adulthood when they lived a world apart. And she knew he was feeling serious about a suspicion he’d been having. And Olena had a sneaking feeling she knew what he was thinking about. They’d been close their whole lives, even when their parents were in control and Orest had had much more freedom than his sister.

“Orest,” she supplied evenly, transferring the phone from between her ear and shoulder, to now being held in hand. She would at least give him the benefit of focusing all her attention on the conversation, rather than splitting it between him and cutting coupons. He deserved as much. An angel, he was, like their younger brothers.

“Lenku, I know there has always been something amiss. You have always been hiding something from me; which, I will admit, is impressive, but some secrets are too big to be hidden effectively.” His voice was calm, and mostly even, though shaking slightly. His timbre had always been a touch more delicate than Olena’s.

“I came out to you years ago,” she replied loudly, and lamely. That probably wasn’t what he mean; and even her sexuality had been no surprise, as twins always have a special connection.

“I think there’s another coming out that you need to do, though.” She could hear him shift. He was a very large man, nothing about his body delicate, and he’d never been capable of being quiet. “There was always something else you were running off to do whenever you had the chance. And all those times Mariya wasn’t able to watch the kids for longer and you begged and begged for me or someone else to keep them on nights you worked because you needed to stay out longer…”

Olena swallowed thickly.

“And those weird things always happening in your neighborhood, or the one near it.”

She remained very still for several moments, silent, idly studying the metal blades of the kitchen scissor blades, not unlike the pair she had used to cut off her braid twenty years before. Oh, she knew exactly what her brother meant. The clues were really too obvious, and she was fortunate that it had taken this long for it to come up. Orest remained quiet too, ever so patient, just waiting for her to feel comfortable.

Finally, she inhaled softly, and expelled a long breath. “Are you asking if I am one of them? The extraordinary people? The…mutants?” She spoke the last word in English, softly, as if someone was listening in. She only ever spoke in Ukrainian with her brothers, occasional English slang words sneaking in based upon each sibling’s knowledge. And mutant almost felt like a slang word.

“Da.”

Olena licked her lips, pausing, then replied, “Yes. Yes, I am, Orest, and I’ve hidden it from you and Mykola and Havryil and Kyrylo for so long because I didn’t want to potentially put your lives in danger just for being associated with me. People never really knew what to think in Ukraine, but…it’s so much worse here in America, some humans want us dead simply because some mutants use their powers for bad things.” The flood gates were open as Olena poured out her thoughts, spilling from her head and her heart. She rested a palm on her forehead as she confessed, feeling weak and defeated. “All I ever wanted was to save people and keep them safe and now I’ve wrapped myself up in this gigantic thing, trying to solve a problem for the whole world. And the kids know but I don’t ever let them anywhere near my dealings because I want them to be safe too. Orest, if any of you—you, the boys, the kids—were ever harmed because of my associations, I don’t know what I would do, because it would be my fault. And so I only ever hid it because it was for your safety.”

Clearly he was stunned by the outburst, as Orest initially replied with his own silence. Olena panted softly as she caught her breath after her impromptu rant—she was prone to them, as her twin knew, but they sometimes became embarrassing. “It makes sense that you didn’t tell us,” Orest finally replied. “I read about mutants in the news sometimes, and the dangers they’ve faced.”

She licked her lips as she waited for him to continue.

“As long as my sestrenku is a hero, however… I will always be proud. You must be working very hard, having your job and being a mother and also being a hero. You’d best be taking care of yourself!”

Olena felt herself relax when her brother’s response was favorable, and she released a little laugh, though it came out sounded nervous, as she was still coming down from her little emotional outburst. “Bratku, not once in my life have I ever taken care of myself, and you know that just as well as I do.”

“Nonsense, the day you walked out on that dick, what’s his name, is the best thing you’ve ever done and you’re still benefitting from it. So tell me more about this mutant thing, if you can? Unless you’re sworn to secrecy. In which case, tell me and I swear I won’t tell anyone else.”

The woman chewed on her lip, wondering where to begin. She supposed there was a nice place to start. “Vesna. You’ve heard of her? The heroine?” A pause. “That is me, the one with the plants. I am literally the hero Vesna.”

She heard him lean forward, obviously enthralled. “No! Really? That’s awesome! You will have to tell me all about it! What you can actually do! How long have you had them?”

She giggled, now excited about sharing secrets with her brother, something they had never really been capable of as children, as she had always been forced to watch him and their other brothers from behind some sort of electric fence. “I was twelve! Imagine going through puberty with powers!“

#accepted

[cheapshop247]

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