#cleaning out drafts!! oh my god this has been in here for ages…I’m so bad at posting shit

[unfortunatelyilikebnha]

Ok now that I’m thinking abt it cfv cast social media headcanons if cfv was set a little closer to now than 2011:

Aichi: he has Instagram but mostly to follow Kai (who didn’t actually accept his follow request until like the end of season 1 lmao) and Misaki and all his other friends rather than out of a particular desire to post pictures himself. It’s a private account and he posts when the mood strikes him, with content wildly varying from like pictures with friends to cute animals to cool new vanguard cards to food that was particularly good. Has Snapchat because Kamui bugged him about it and mostly uses it for streaks (but he forgets a lot & kamui’s like BROTHER AICHIIIIIIII :( OUR STREAK :( ).

Kai: Instagram. It’s also a private account, and for a while he just had 2 followers (Ren and Tetsu), then after their fallout he blocked Ren and Tetsu but Miwa bugged him into accepting his request (though he didn’t really post during that time just used it to observe), then after s1 he finally accepted more of his friends’ follow requests. Eventually he starts posting food he made & ofc his favorite kagero units (& maybe his friends. Occasionally. He’s not big on writing captions though). I can also see him having a Twitter where people try to antagonize him & he roasts the shit out of them (Kamui is constantly in his mentions trying to start shit, at first out of genuine dislike - he gets blocked for a while because of this - but then just for fun. Kai still blocks him every so often, and/or occasionally plays along and snipes back with some rude comment, but it’s mostly to annoy him back rather than out of genuine malice. Mostly. He does enjoy being an asshole to Kamui though). Has Snapchat but pretty much only opens it when Aichi sends him something (Ren likes to send him a million snaps chronicling his whole day to annoy him so mostly he ignores the app).

Misaki: she’s a Pinterest girlie for sure. Very organized Pinterest boards with images that are always properly sourced. She also has Instagram (also a private acc) but she didn’t use it much before she met her card capital friends, now she uses it to keep tabs on Aichi and the others. She doesn’t really post pictures except on special occasions but she is an avid close friends story user, especially when she knows Kourin will see her posts (before s4? Or au where she doesn’t disappear I guess? Idk it’s my city & I’m already diverging from canon to say they have social media just roll with it). There’s also an official Card Capital Instagram, and when she becomes the store owner in G she doesn’t really run it but she has to approve the content that gets posted there. I can also see her having tumblr just bc of her “strange” sense of humor, like she’d be very anonymous about it and not put basically anything in her bio (MAYBE her name but maybe not even that, & possibly a fake name), but I can see her being fairly popular here.

Kamui: he’s too young for social media AND YET he has it anyways. Can frequently be found getting into fights on Twitter. He’s also a big Snapchat user and HATES when people leave him on read, or when someone’s about to break a streak. Very big on streaks in general, has insanely long ones with Reiji and Eiji. Also he definitely has tiktok and (he will deny this but) he’s jealous when anyone he knows has more followers than he does. How does Suzugamori Ren have that many followers anyways >:/? In G era he downloads Instagram because he heard that Emi did it.

Miwa: definitely a Reddit user (but like not in the derogatory way, he’s just fascinated by the site). He has a personal Instagram as well as a wildly popular other account dedicated to unflattering candid pictures of his friends (mostly Kai but Misaki Kamui and Morikawa are also frequent features, and, on one memorable occasion, Jun). Semi-popular on TikTok for being a sweet & funny guy and also for casually mentioning insane things that happened and never elaborating (“yeah sorry I was absent I got kidnapped because my dumbass friend wanted to play cards with a gang leader, that guy better be grateful”).

Reiji and Eiji: have the same social media Kamui does, and hype him up on it (/occasionally bemoan how lame he is) but also do their own things.

Morikawa: Tumblr user, fully believes the wizard blogs are real wizards. Gets anons from people like “I want to study you” all the time & he always misses the point and makes it into “the Morikawa vanguard school is always open to new students because I am the greatest teacher ever”. After meeting her, a lot of his posts start focusing on Kourin and his followers have an equivalent experience to when someone you’ve followed suddenly turns into a K-pop blog with absolutely no explanation. Kind of famous just because of how fucking weird he is. He also has Snapchat but is like really bad at taking pictures so everything he sends/posts is blurry or at a bad angle, but unironically. Had no interest in any other social media until he heard Kourin had Instagram and Twitter, at which point he downloaded them both and immediately started posting about her.

Izaki: Twitter user /derogatory (sorry Izaki but I know this in my heart to be true. He’s gotta have some red flags to have stayed friends with Morikawa this long). Also has Snapchat and tries (and fails) to help Morikawa take better pictures. Kamui frequently bullies him about losing their streak, which since they’re not actually that close is probably their main form of communication. Izaki’s not totally convinced that Kamui actually knows his NAME, so he’s confused about why he cares so much (it’s bc Kamui has a Snapchat streak with literally everyone he knows who 1. has Snapchat and 2. does streaks). Also possibly has an Instagram where he occasionally gets influxes of followers when he’s tagged in pictures with his more famous friends, but some of them probably don’t think he’s that interesting and soon unfollow (lmao rip)

Emi: does not have social media in the main series but gets an Instagram by G era (when Kamui finds this out he suddenly downloads Instagram even though he has never expressed an interest in it before, and thus so does Nagisa, somehow sensing what Kamui has done).

Nagisa: has Twitter only so she can follow Kamui (again, she is too young for Twitter). Kamui has her blocked but she can still somehow sense when someone’s arguing with him & she comes into their replies like “leave my man alone!!” I would not be surprised if she doxxed people tbh. She keeps getting banned but somehow every time she appeals it the ban is lifted (Kamui suspects dark magic). Also downloads Instagram in G era after Kamui does (how does she know he got it if he didn’t tell her??? She has her ways).

Kourin: has an official ultrarare Instagram and Twitter where she promotes her idol work, and also a private Instagram and Twitter where she posts pictures of her friends and nerds out about vanguard and thoroughly logically dismantles stupid people. Once she posted a stupid meme making fun of Kai on her official ultrarare Twitter instead of her personal one by accident and fully freaked out trying to take it down before the fans screenshotted it (she wasn’t successful bc idol fans are crazy and ended up saying she was hacked) (Kai will never admit it but he thought it was funny). She probably has Morikawa blocked on every platform.

Rekka: an instagram girlie FOR SURE. She posts often and sticks to a cutesy aesthetic, and is wildly popular. She’s also very into Snapchat, both in terms of doing streaks with people and live-blogging funny bits of her day on her story. Probably also spends a lot of time on Pinterest & has a lot of Pinterest boards for every situation.

Suiko: I’ll be real I have no idea. I feel like she either has no social media at all and just like guest appears on Kourin and Rekka’s, or has like official instagram/twitter accounts with tons of followers that she semi-maintains and weird shitposty anonymous accounts where she just posts whatever comes to her brain. Tbh I can see her stirring the pot so she can observe Kamui into getting into more twitter beef just to see what happens. Redditor??? She is a mystery to me.

Kenji: has Tumblr & like 60% of it is dedicated to Ancient Rome, 30% of it is about vanguard, and the last 10% is just him reblogging like feminist stuff and positive messages. A wife guy without actually having a wife or realizing he’s a wife guy (posts a lot about “his friend” - Yuri - bc he just thinks she’s neat, but his followers seem to think he’s in love with her for some reason???). Cries when people on tumblr celebrate the ides of March. Probably has been cancelled for unironically stanning Caesar. Also has an official Instagram but doesn’t post on there much, when he’s there he’s usually just there to like his friends’ posts and log back off. People are surprised by his lack of social media and have not connected his tumblr (where he stays completely anonymous thank you very much, he is Not a fan of the attention) to him, and are always begging him to post more on his Instagram/get more social media, but when Yuri and Gai bring this up hes like no <3 I will not <3

Yuri: she’s a YouTuber for sure & she has helpful videos on deck building, strategy, how to stay calm under pressure, etc. Occasionally she includes her teammates or people from other teams in her videos (Aichi featured in one once and now her fans regularly ask for him to come back lol). She also has an official Instagram and Twitter, and runs most of the official Team Caesar accounts on various platforms. Yuri and Misaki are tumblr mutuals, and she is aware of Koutei’s tumblr (bc they’re both in the vanguard tag a lot and who else would be THAT obsessed with Julius Caesar. She’s no fool, she recognized it was him instantly) but she thinks it’s funny to not tell him it’s her (+ she’s kind of embarrassed in a fond way/thinks he might be embarrassed about the posts abt her if he knew) so she just scrolls through his nice posts abt her when she’s having a bad day.

Gai: tiktok famous for generally being a chill dude who’s willing to answer your vanguard questions but mostly for posting Team Caesar behind the scenes videos, which range from Yuri being mad at one or both of them to them doing challenges/playing games together, to some of their movie star stuff in G, to one particularly memorable video where he just stared at the camera while Yuri and Koutei were being in love with each other and (at least in Koutei’s part) oblivious to it in the background.

Ren: pre-season 1 he had no social media except an Instagram account and a Snapchat, both of which he used to post an ongoing stream of whatever was in his brain so that Tetsu and Kai would see it. After The Breakup™️ he went private and posted a lot of stuff about revenge, and being stronger, etc (which was no use since Kai had him blocked and he was not popular pre-Asteroid era, so pretty much only tetsu saw his posts). Also he’s DEFINITELY a Reddit user lmao. Post-season 1 Asaka got him into tiktok which he immediately became famous on, he joined Twitter which had a preconception of him due to the way he acted during season 1 and so he gets cancelled every other week for a while (eventually they mostly get used to his new personality and the way he says the weirdest shit), and he rebooted his Instagram to be public and deleted most of the old revenge posts (he probably leaves one up just to cause controversy lmao). Often leaves Kyou on read on Snapchat, but whether that’s on purpose or an accident is anybody’s guess. Actually he probably would have tumblr too & be kinda infamous bc his personality would definitely make him popular here tbh. He runs a “official ren suzugamori” blog but he never acknowledges he’s on tumblr anywhere else and everyone thinks it’s just a fake parody blog.

Asaka: tiktok famous for being hot, on team asteroid, and if she’s feeling generous for answering people’s vanguard questions (with a special focus on the Pale Moon of course). Probably also has a sizable following on Instagram. Lords her amount of followers over Misaki who pretends she doesn’t care but early seasons Misaki was actually a little annoyed by this.

Kyou: had a Twitter. Keeps getting banned from Twitter and making new accounts and the cycle repeats. Doesn’t have a tiktok but is tiktok famous anyways for always appearing in team asteroid videos in the weirdest ways (disguised as a potted plant. Scaled the building and can be seen inaudibly yelling in the background through the window on the third floor of team asteroid headquarters. Parachuting down from an airplane. Etc). When people comment about him on Ren’s videos he’s always like “who?” “I don’t see him?” or “huh, that guy looks vaguely familiar…” and when people comment about him on Asaka’s videos she refuses to name him but always says something about how much she hates that guy. Has Snapchat but about half the cast either leaves him on opened/read or straight up has him blocked (he Does take really interesting pictures though, and it’s cool to see all the places he goes! How does he have the money for all this??? Nobody knows).

Tetsu: runs “official team asteroid” accounts, including a YouTube on which Ren is IMMENSELY popular despite not being the account owner. Known for being intimidating on Twitter, and also for (one-sided tbh) twitter beef with Kamui (who would @ him like HEY ASSHOLE ACKNOWLEDGE ME >:/ & Tetsu would just ignore him) in earlier canon. He doesn’t actually use any of his accounts that much besides the YouTube and to publish official updates about team asteroid, but - though he’ll never admit it - he’s a fan of terrible memes. He asked what Asaka was laughing at once and she showed him a vanguard meme (“I don’t know if you’ll get it though”) and he excused himself and went to another room to laugh (Asaka was like ???).

#cleaning out drafts!! oh my god this has been in here for ages…I’m so bad at posting shit #morikawa and nagisa probably both have at least one account with an embarassing kourin or kamui themed name #if they weren’t fucking insane and utterly disinterested in anyone that’s not the person they’re obsessed with they could bond over that #cfv #do I really want to tag everyone. that’s so many people… #sigh. here we go. #sendou aichi #kai toshiki #tokura misaki #katsuragi kamui #suzugamori ren #shinjou tetsu #miwa taishi #uno reiji #saga eiji #morikawa katsumi #izaki yuta #sendou emi #daimonji nagisa #tatsunagi kourin #tatsunagi rekka #tatsunagi suiko #mitsusada kenji #usui yuri #usui gai #narumi asaka #yahagi kyou #anyways I don’t even know if this is good but it’s been sitting in my drafts for like 83 years so out into the world it goes

[xjoonchildx]

airplane, pt. 2 | jjk x reader chapter four: los angeles

pairing: jungkook/reader

word count: 2.2K rating: 18+

genre: smut | silly smut | nonsensical smut

warnings:  criminal!jungkook, koreanamerican!jungkook, reality has left the chat, plausibility has left the chat

A/N: i’m not a huge blog and don’t have a lot of readers -- but i’m so, so, so grateful to every single one of you who’s reached out to me on AP2. hearing what you think about this story makes my day every time. from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much. hope you enjoy this chapter. the story wraps up in the next one!

Chapter 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06

artwork by the shmexy @ppersonna​ who’s smut is even better than her art

***********************

“You see, as messes go -- there are levels.” 

Seokjin takes a big sip of his draft beer then sets it down to free his hands.

“On the bottom are your run-of-the-mill problems,” he says, putting one hand out flat.  

His other hand comes out to hover over the first.

“Then your regular-level shitshows, then your high-level shitshows and then there’s disasters,” he says, stacking his hands in the air to demonstrate the escalation.  

You smother the urge to roll your eyes.  Like most lawyers, Seokjin loves to hear himself talk.

He’s also an old friend, someone you trust and someone who’s help you desperately need -- so you’re going to have to suck it up and let him have some fun at your expense. 

It’s only fair.

“Then somewhere way up here -- ” he stretches his upper body for effect, “ -- way past disasters is the shit you just told me.  Somewhere way off the charts. Are you with me?”

You nod, taking a sip of your own beer.

“Yup.”

“So what the fuck?” 

You laugh.  You know it’s bad form to call up a buddy you haven’t seen in months, tell him you want to buy him a beer and then dump the world’s most complicated case at his feet.  

It’s just that you haven’t been able to come up with another solution.

You’ve turned this problem over in your mind hundreds of times by this point -- envisioned dozens of ways this could end.  No other scenario makes sense in the long run.  This is the only way to put a stop to this madness without Jungkook behind bars for the rest of his natural life.  

Or worse.

That’s why you’re prepared to pull out all the stops with Seokjin.  You’re not going to let him get away with letting you down easy. 

He hasn’t laughed you out of this bar yet so you’re taking that as a good sign.

“Jin, there isn’t anyone else who could pull this off,” you say, meaning every word.  “I know you can fix this.”

He snorts.

“This guy gave agents the slip in two different countries and ghosted from a federal courthouse,” he takes another sip of his beer.  There’s limits to what even I can do. Not that I don’t appreciate the ego stroke though, you know I do.”

You gnaw at the corner of one fingernail, thinking.

“So who is he?” 

“I already told you, he --”

“Cut the bullshit,” Jin interrupts. “You know what I’m asking.  Who is he to you?”

Well, isn’t that the million-dollar question?

“It’s complicated,” you sigh, and even that is somehow oversimplifying this entire fucked-up situation. “Not sure I know how to explain that.”

“Oh, I’m willing to bet there is quite a story there,” he smirks.  “Some day you’re going to have to fill me in on all the dirty details.”

You glance away for a moment to avoid his knowing look.

“Just promise me you’ll think about it,” you say. “I’ve seen guys way worse than this get deals that kept them out of prison entirely.”

“Well you of all people know how this works, so don’t act brand new,” Jin retorts. “You want the government to play ball with this guy then he’s got to give them something they want.  If they don’t have any use for him, they have no reason to show mercy.”

“I know that,” you admit.  “Still trying to figure that part out.”

“So figure it out,” Jin pushes back. “‘Cause I’m an attorney, not a genie. I’m not in the wish-granting business.  Bring me something I can use and we’ll go from there.”

We’ll go from there. A careful hope stirs in your chest when Seokjin says that.

You promise yourself you’re going to bring him an angle that works.  

Now you’ve just got to find it.

*****************************

“Who is this guy to you?”

Jin’s question echoes in your head the entire way home.

It’s so much easier to focus on the what -- Jungkook on the run and all the problems that come with it -- than it is to focus on the why.  

The why scares you too much to confront head-on. It’s not like you love this man, right? 

He could be a terrible person. He could be as rotten in real life as he is on paper. 

He could be playing you.  It’s certainly not the first time the thought has crossed your mind.

But every time you start to entertain the doubts, something pulls you back. You can’t shake the feeling that Jungkook is none of those things.  You can’t forget the way he looked at you in Puerto Rico.  His face that night is forever burned into your mind.

So he’s either completely real or the world’s most convincing fake.

You pour a glass of water and unlock the burner phone.   The message you’d tried to send back to the number he contacted you from bounced back.  There hasn’t been a single new message since then.  

You take a drink and consider what step to take next.  

There is no way you’re going to push Jin to fight on Jungkook’s behalf until you know without a doubt this is something Jungkook wants for himself.  For all you know, he’s happy with riding this out until the end.  He could be totally at peace with the idea of never being at peace.

You stare at the screen for a moment before making up your mind to dial the number you’d found online.

The voice on the other end answers in Korean.

“Yoongi?” you ask.

The line is completely silent for a few seconds.

“I distinctly remember you promising me I’d never hear from you again,” comes the curt reply. You smile to yourself imagining the scowl he’s probably wearing right now.

“I did,” you admit.  “Thing is --” you pause and choose your next words carefully, “ -- circumstances have changed. So I’m asking for your help one more time.”

Yoongi makes an aggravated noise, something between a growl and a grunt.

“Fine.  What do you want?”

“I might have a way to help him.  Nothing is ironed out and there are no guarantees, but it’s something.  It’s just that -- I haven’t been able to reach him.”

“Yeah well, neither have I.”

Shit.  You hope the situation hasn’t gone completely upside-down in Nicaragua already. Getting him there was supposed to buy you some time.

“Okay, “ you exhale, pacing your kitchen floor.  You tell yourself there could be a million reasons why he hasn't reached out to anyone.  You tell yourself not to panic. You certainly don’t want to panic Yoongi, either.

“I need you to take down this number.  If you reach Jungkook, you need to give it to him.  Tell him if he wants to end this it’s the only way.”

Yoongi blows out a heavy breath.

“Yeah, alright.  Go ahead.”

*****************************

 God, you are really starting to hate this place.

The voice in your head that’s been telling you how deeply unsatisfied you are in this job has slowly gotten louder over these past few months.  Now it’s all you can think about every morning as you swipe your badge and walk into the polished lobby.

This isn’t some labor of love for you.  

It’s something you trained to do, started doing, kept on doing and you’re still doing now.  

On and on and on in an endless string of days.

You’d started this job with the kind of starry-eyed enthusiasm that always annoyed the veterans around here.  Now you can understand why.  It doesn’t take long in this line of work to realize that justice is a concept that’s bought and sold.  He who has the most cash makes the rules.

You grab a cup of coffee and log onto your computer to start in on the mountain of paperwork that awaits.  It’s laborious and annoying and total bullshit but at least it’s a distraction.  At least it keeps you from obsessing over the Jungkook situation non-stop.

So you throw yourself into the work just to make the hours tick by.

Your boss stops by before lunch, asks if you want to join him and some of the others at a local deli.  You cry off, complaining about paperwork and deadlines and he smiles sympathetically as they head out.  It’s a relief when their laughing voices fade away and this part of the office falls silent.

You are half-way through customizing your burrito order online when a shiver of realization walks up your spine.

***********************

“Seokjin Kim.”

He sounds so formal, answering his phone for a number he doesn’t recognize.  

“Hey, it’s me,” you say, tossing your keys onto your kitchen counter.  

“Oh, I didn’t realize -- wait, wait, wait.  Are you calling me from a burner?” Jin asks incredulously.  “Wow, it’s like we’re on The Wire or some shit.”

“Shut up,” you huff, rolling your eyes. “I’m calling because I think I might have come up with the angle.”

Jin whistles.

“Hope it’s a good one.”

“Yeah me too,” you mutter under your breath.  “I just -- I can’t be involved in any way.  I’m not even going to be able to talk to you until this plays out. No texts, no calls to my cell.  I’m already way out on a limb here.”

“Yeah, I get it,” he says.  “But hey, just for the record? A favor is something like, ‘Hey Jin, can you drop me at the airport on Tuesday? Hey Jin, would you mind picking up my dry cleaning?’ You know, for future reference.”

You laugh. Points were made.

*************************

You tell yourself -- this is long overdue.

That with or without Jungkook -- with or without the madness on that flight or the night in San Juan -- this was going to happen anyway.  

And for the first time in weeks, you actually smile at the security guards who check bags at the entrance.  You smile at the barista who talks too much at the Starbucks in the lobby.  You smile at the creep from Cybercrimes on the elevator, even though he’s standing too close. He always stands too close.

You feel lighter than you have in ages and that’s fucking bizarre, because this could all still blow up in your face at any moment.  Despite all you’ve done, Jungkook could be arrested at any time -- hauled away, locked away in prison for life.  Hell, you could be joining him at some point, disgraced and discredited and detained.  

But you woke up this morning and had a moment of clarity that knocked the wind out of you.  Today, you’re going to walk out of this building on your own terms.  

Every decision you’ve made along the way -- good or bad -- has been yours.  

If they show up at your door with a warrant, then you’ll handle it.  If they haul you off, then you’ll handle it.  If Jungkook decides he wants Jin’s help and the agency never sniffs out a thing, then you’ll handle it.  

You’ve done everything you can -- so either this works, or it doesn’t.  But there’s a big fucking difference between being cautious and being scared. 

You’ve decided you’re not going to be scared.

You read over the letter you’d typed, printed and signed before walking into your boss’s office. 

His mouth gapes in surprise when you hand him your resignation.

Effective immediately.

************************

It’s been three weeks without a word from anyone.  

Yes, you did specifically tell Jin not to reach out, you remind yourself.

The last time you two had spoken, you’d explained that you didn’t give a shit about losing the job, but that you were certain were entirely too prissy to make it in prison, and he’d agreed and you’d both shared a laugh about that.  

But now it’s been over three weeks and he still hasn’t reached out.  

You’ve had no word from him, no word from Jungkook and now you have no job.  

The silence is deafening.

If there’s an upside at this point, at least your house is immaculate.  You’ve gotten your daily run up to three miles.

Tonight the air is unnaturally cool for this time of year, more than welcome when you lace up your running shoes.  You set a good pace, make good time, and drown out the outside world with your earbuds.  

But at the end of your run -- just as you’re getting closer to home -- you notice something odd. 

Your porch light is out.  

Which is weird because you definitely remember replacing that bulb not too long ago.  You cut the music and walk quietly up to your door. 

Your entire body is on high alert as you approach slowly, keys in hand on the off chance you’re going to have to wield them like a weapon. 

But when you step up to the porch you find -- nothing. 

No creep waiting to jump out of the shadows to ambush you.  You shake your head at your own overactive imagination, take a deep breath and tell yourself to relax.

You slide your key in the lock.

The sunlight that had waned at the start of your run is entirely gone at this point, and you open the door into darkness.  You flip on the light, toss your keys on the small table you keep in the entryway.

“Don’t freak out, okay?”

You nearly jump out of your skin at the voice that comes from your living room.  From your couch.  

From inside your goddamned home.

Oh my god.

**************************

#jungkook smut #jungkooksmut #jungkook x reader #jungkookxread #bangtanarmynet #xjoonchildx #xjoonchildx fic:AP2 #btssmut #bts fanfic

[pixie88]

Vicky

Chapter 19 - Always the Bridesmaid.

A/N: This chapter has 2 star guest appearances from 2 beauty's @secretaryunpaid and @ridgy--didge 😘😘 Again I’m going to try and start editing and publishing 2 chapters a week as I have 5 drafts in ATB and 3 drafts in Addicted to You (Series 2 of ATB) obviously if you wish to stop reading after series 1 I completely understand just let me know if you like to be untagged. Now offence taken. I hope you like it.

Read previous chapters HERE!

Warnings: Fluff, Little Angst, Mention of drug abuse & Violence.

Song: Raye - Love of you life.

Word Count: 2303

Pairings: Laila x Harry

Enjoy!

As soon as she read the words she knew who had done this "The flat is all clear" Harry says as Laila just stares at the words on the wall "It was Vicky" she says without looking away. "Are you sure?" he questions her, Laila nods "She's done something like this before when I've given Zeppy advice to stay away from her while she's using in the past. So, she completely smashed up my car"

18 Years ago.

"Nate, you know everyone says she's a druggy right?" this wasn't the reaction he wanted when he told his family about Vic "Laila, she is done with all that!" he hisses at her "Whatever...it's your life!" she gets up off the sofa and heads back to her bedroom. Nate was only 16 and Vic was 2 years older, Terry and Liz didn't care about the age gap as they were the same age when they got together, but it was more the rumours they had heard about her half the time she's high and the other half she's trying to get money to score.

As much as they didn't like her, Terry and Liz knew if they expressed their concerns, this will just push him away and towards her. All they could do is be there for him, they didn't have to worry. 4 months into the relationship the day before Laila's 14 birthday, Vicky just disappeared for two years when she finally turned up she told him about Zeppy. Hoping that he would stump up maintenance for her, but a trainee mechanic didn't make that much. Nate had learned not to give her money for anything, so if Zeppy needed something he would go out and buy it for her himself.

When she reached 12 years old, Vicky relapsed again, Nate had lost count of how many times she had gone back to the gear. Vicky had ended up in hospital again, Nate was working so he had asked Laila to take her to see Vic. When they arrived Vicky was asleep, although she was only 4 years older than Laila, looked twice her age. Zeppy was in tears "Hey, she'll be OK! She always is!" Laila tried to comfort her.

Hearing Zeppy's voice she stirred but kept her eyes shut "Aunt Laila, sometimes I wish she wasn't! I wish she wasn't OK.....I can't keep going through this!" Zeppy sobbed "I get that...I do! Sometimes, you can only take so much before you start to wonder if you would be better off without them or keep putting yourself through it"

This angered Vicky.

3 Days later.

She discharged herself from hospital and caught the tube to Laila's work. She saw her car parked up, she took off her heeled boots and smashed every window, pulling out her house key she scraped it across the shiny black paint work before smashing in her headlights. With the alarm going off Laila and Daniel rushed outside, but the damaged had been done.

Vicky got 6 months in prison for criminal damage.

Nate felt so much guilt that he decided he would worked on her car until it looked like new but Terry and Grandad Carelli couldn't let him do it alone, so they got involved too.

That was Vicky's first attack on Laila...

Present day.

Harry didn't want her staying at the flat just in case, Vicky came back no matter how much Laila protested "Harry, I'll be fine here! I can handle Vicky" he's packing a bag for her "I don't care...Laila, you aren't staying here" although she wasn't scared of Vic, she found Harry's protective side quite a turn on.

The next day.

Harry is in the shower, while Laila is cooking them breakfast "Alexa play Harry's playlist" she calls out. Raye - Love of Your Life starts playing, Laila starts swaying her hips and sings along.

"Oh, I could make you confused

I could give you something to lose

I'ma wake you up in the morning

In the bathroom singing the blues

No, I won't clean up your plates (Your plates)

Got my hair all in your face (Your face)

And my legs wrapped 'round your waist (Your waist)

No, I could never give you any space but I

I could be the love, be the love

Be the love, be the love of your life

I could be the love, be the love

Be the love, be the love of your life

I could be the light, be the light

Be the light when it's dark in the night

Oh God, I could be the love, be the love

Be the love, be the love of your life"

Harry stops in the doorway admiring the view, she hadn't noticed him and continues singing. He watches her hip roll and booty pop. He's almost convinced she knows he's there, so she's moving like this to get a reaction out of him. Which by how tight his boxers have gone she had gotten one.

"Put your, put your ego down when you need to

Yes, I get stressed out if I can't read you

Bad London girl raised in the south

I run my mouth, I say shit that I really didn't meant to say

Got my hair all in your face (Your face)

And my legs wrapped 'round your waist (Your waist)

No, I could ne......."

She cuts herself off when he startles her by wrapping his arms around her from behind "Why does that song seem like it was made for you?" He asks before placing a soft kiss against her neck "Maybe because my legs are normally wrapped around ya waist?" she laughs, "That or the love of you life bit" he nips her ear.

He kisses her neck again "Harry, I'm trying to cook breakfast," he leans forward moving the pan off the heated ring "I'm hungry for....!"  he spins her round to face him before lifting her and placing her on the kitchen counter. His lips crash to hers, his hands slip under his t-shirt she's wearing, grasping the waistband of her underwear and pulling them down until their a puddle on the floor.

The pads of his fingers parts her folds, the kiss became more intense, she moans against his lips. She's ready for him, she pushes down his boxers springing him free, she lines him up against her apex. With one swift movement, he thrusts into her, he groans as he grips her arse pulling her forward. She grips his shoulders, his thumb brushes over her nipple making her moan.

A few hours later.

"....I found her washing the kittens in the toilet" Mrs. Hoges tells Laila stories of her 6 year old granddaughter in her southern American accent while she's cutting her hair "No!! How old were they?"

"5 maybe 6 weeks...I shouldn't laugh but it was quite funny"

As she finishes up, she hears her phone buzz.

She loves her friends, but they worry too much, Laila believes if Vicky wanted to hurt her she would.

15 Minutes later...

Laila calls in her next client Miss. Ferguson in "Hey! How are you?" she greets her "G'day, I'm great thanks, you?" She says in her rich Australian accent, Laila nods "So what are we doing today?" Laila throws the gown over her "I'm thinking chocolate brown highlights" Laila nods tearing the foil strips.

At the corner of her eye, she notices someone lean against the wall to her right, she glances over and rolls her eyes as she makes her way over "Harry, what are you doing here?"

"Don't worry Daniel said it was fine.... considering" he seems worried "As much I love you worrying over me...I will be fine" she can see he has no plans on leaving her anytime soon "But seems you aren't going anywhere make yourself useful and pass me those foils when I ask" they make their way back over to Miss. Ferguson.

Once her foils are done, Laila gets Harry to take her to the sinks and wash her hair "I..don't know how to wash women's hair," he whispers to Laila, who laughs "Dude! Come on, it's not that difficult! You know how to wash your hair just wash it how you would yours but we give them a head massage when you do the conditioner" she winks leaving him to it.

At the end of her shift, "Did you have fun being my trainee?" he looks over to her, she had made him do 5 washes, made endless amount of teas and coffees and sweep up hair "I have no idea how you do this everyday my hands are pruned" she laughs, "Aww, those delicate hands can't handle a little water?" she jokes as she grabs her stuff to leave. She checks her phone and saw Nate had text her.

Although Laila wasn't scared of Vicky, she was relieved that she had been caught "Vicky's in custody" she turns towards Harry, who let's out a sigh of relief "Thank...fuck!" He wraps her up in his arms "Let hope she's not released anytime soon" she smiles up at him. She sends a quick reply back.

"So, that means I lose my hunky trainee?" She winks at him, he chuckles "Would it be inappropriate to take my boss out to dinner?" She smirks "Well, now your shift has finished you're no longer my trainee! I'm guessing it's acceptable!"

They leave the salon and find a restaurant that can seat them. Once they are shown their table, they're looking through the menu she looks up at Harry then she spots him...Fuck!!!! She thought as she moved the menu to cover her face.

"Laila?" She hears Harry say "Yes?" She asked not lowering her menu, "Who are you hiding from?" She can almost hear him smirking "No one! I have no idea what you're talking about!" He shook his head "You know even if I can't see your face I can tell you are lying"

She pulls down the menu a little "After Josh, Nikki set me up on a blind date...oh my god the guy was awful. He was one of those who are someone in school, but after he's a nobody the whole date he was just reminiscing about his days at school. I was so bored, so I made my excuses to use the toilets which was right next to the exit and left" Harry howls "Laila!! You didn't?!" He wipes his tears from laughing.

"I did! It's the guy over there with the woman with the yellow dress" Harry is about to turn to look, "Don't look you'll make it obvious!" She hisses "I need to see what this guy looks like especially if you've ditched him!" He turns and he can't believe his eyes "Callum?" He turns back to her "Yeah, how did you know?" She questions him.

"He was the kid in school that used to bully me about my weight...well until Alec told him to back off" Harry starts to laugh again "What's funny?" She asks, "So, he came to my gym years later wanting a PT, I managed to get him into shape....but it felt so good having someone who used to bully me come to me for help and now? My girlfriend went on a date with him and done a runner!" Harry is in fits of laughter.

"Maybe I should go over and say hi" Laila gives him a look as of to say don't you dare, but its to late, he's up and walking over to their table "Callum! I saw you and thought I'd come over and say hi!" Callum looks up at him "Harry, mate how are you?" The pair shake hands "Good, just here with my girlfriend Laila" he points in Laila's direction she awkwardly smiles back.

"I feel like I know her from somewhere" Callum's date turns in Laila's direction, now all 3 are looking over to her. Fuck! Does he recognize me?! She thought. "I think she just has one of those faces" Harry laughs "So, who's your date?" Callum's date looks up at Harry.

Laila caught her checking Harry out, she holds out her hand, which Harry shakes and quickly drops much to Callum's dates disappointment. She watches him smile at him both before making his way back to their table.

"Please tell me..he doesn't remember me?!" She asks as he sits, Harry chuckles "He thinks he knows you from somewhere, but no idea where" Laila sighs with relief "Thank god! But the nerve of his date! Checking you out right in front of him!" Her tone was curt.

A grin appeared on his face "So, I didn't imagine it then!" She rolls her eyes at him "No, I saw it too!" She doesn't look impressed "They were on a first date too! Why do you sound jealous?" He loves this side to her "I'm not.... I just think its rude checking out someone else when you are on a date" he leans over interlinking his fingers through hers "Gorgeous....come on surely you know I literally have tunnel vision, if it's not you I'm not interested! Plus do you know how good it felt telling him that I was with you?! The chubby kid got the super hot girlfriend and at 34 he's still on his first date" His words make her blush.

They're interrupted by the waiter who takes their order.

They are laughing at a silly joke Harry's mum told him when he heads to their table "I figured out where I know you from!" Callum says in an airy tone "We went on a blind date set up by Nikki! You ran out on it"

Fuck he remembered! She thought.

Continue reading this story here - Chapter 20.

@lem-20​ @ridgy--didge​ @irisofpurple​ @secretaryunpaid​ @khoicesbyk​ @txemrn​ @gloriousalmondvoiddreamer​ @tea-me-kah​ @casualpostqueen​ @beautifuluknownvoid​

#atb #always the bridesmaid #harry x laila #pixie88 #Original Work #original character #original writing

[cpcoulter-official]

Stayed in the Drafts

It was just…that laugh was so familiar.

The sunshine was pouring into his bleary eyes and the world wouldn’t focus. And he’d heard it in his ears, clear as day. And he wasn’t one for hallucinations, but it was convincing enough to wake him. And when he tried to see through the beams, he saw a smile, golden eyes full of mirth, and tendrils of wet dark hair dripping down to him.

“Wake up! Oh my god, Carmen’s going to find you in my bed…!”

And then the world shifted.

Sebastian pulled himself up from bed and rubbed his eyes, feeling like they were full of sand and bad decisions from last night. He could still smell whatever wine he had last night on his pillows, he figured this may be a bad way to start a day. But who would tell on him? He was ‘accompanied’ by people of legal age.

He looked to his right, past the overly cheery sunshine, and to the clock on his bedstead that said quite clearly the time and date today. The days seem to crawl, and he blearily realized that considering when he lost consciousness last night, he’d only gotten about five hours of sleep.

A glove without a mate was dangling from the drawer.

Grasping for his phone, he stared into it seeking answers, and only found a lot of angry texts from Reggie (“Where are you?!” “You could at least call me back!” “You better be on time tomorrow, I’m not kidding!”), incoherent replies from friends (“You’re insane!” “How did you even get that bottle, haha!” “Gotta do this again, I’ll bring that model you like!”), and the day’s news.

He shut his eyes and leaned back on the headboard. This wasn’t the worst way to start the day, but he often wondered if there were better ways to do it.

He absently typed,

Are you haunting me?

Pausing, he set the phone down. That wasn’t the right word. It shouldn’t be the right word, and it wasn’t. Haunting was for the dead. And the one he was addressing wasn’t. Thank god.

But no one had seen him.

But he was okay.

Where was he? And why does he hear his laugh again? After trying so hard not to?

Ding!

A bleary glance revealed a text from Alphonse. “Take me to school.”

“Yeah, okay.” Sebastian sighed and got up.

Standing outside his parents’ house, hands in his pockets, and wearing sunglasses that weren’t his, Sebastian huffed and shifted on his heels. He wondered what was the point of him living in the apartment if they were just going to call him back home every other day. He’d wanted to live there on the pretext of learning how to live independently, but given that hardly any upkeep of the apartment was done “independently,” he knew that his parents must have only agreed so that someone was living in the property and that it would ease some of the tension growing at home.

He remembered feeling some amusement that his parents still cared enough to not want their children to see that they were having issues with their marriage. And it didn’t help that he’d become so largely apathetic that he couldn’t even bring himself to care what they planned to do, and it was obvious.

That he knew, that they knew he knew, and they knew that he didn’t care. And it made them a little uncomfortable that he cared so little.

Maybe he was the one doing the haunting.

Sebastian didn’t even know when it started—when he started to not care. Things just…got away from him. Maybe it was the lifestyle or him knowing that they expected nothing from him (unlike Reggie, who they expected everything from, and Al, who they expected to be a sweet boy forever).

But he didn’t often care about much, because it had no repercussions on him.

…or at least, most of the time, they didn’t.

Why do you like wearing old fashioned sunglasses anyway? He put his phone away as soon as he’d typed it. He knew the answer. He could hear the voice answering him plain as day. “It’s a classic, wouldn’t you French boys know about style like that??”

“What are you doing, Bastian?”

He looked up to see Alphonse standing there, in uniform and coat, staring at him with his serious little face that was no longer so sweet, like a little church cherub. He was growing. Sebastian smiled. “Hey.” He nodded to the car as the driver opened the door. “Get in.”

Alphonse stared at him with some suspicion before scuttling along out the gate, climbing into the car. Getting into the car after him and the door slamming shut, he absently nodded to the driver to indicate that they could go.

His little brother was digging into his bag for something, and quipped at Sebastian, “You took your time.”

“Why do you need me to take you to school?” Sebastian asked with a sigh as he stared out the window.

“Because Mama took one car, she’s going to Centre Pompidou, and Papa and Reggie took the other,” Alphonse huffed, pushing Sebastian’s bag away. “You didn’t bring anything for me?”

Sebastian smirked. He drew his hand out of his pocket and held out a bagful of soft caramel squares. Alphonse lit up for an instant before grabbing the bag. “You used to carry more around.”

“The other one who likes it isn’t here,” Sebastian remarked softly as he watched his brother take one square to eat in the car. “Aren’t you getting too old to be this intense about candy?”

“You’re never too old for that,” Alphonse replied between chews, opening a book.

To his right, he heard that laugh again and it made him look up. But outside, there were just people on their way to their lives. There was nothing but the sound of people walking, noise of traffic, doors of shops—

“We need to get more of those, your brother likes them!”

He closed his eyes quickly. It has to be the hangover. He didn’t often do this twice in one morning. He’d been so good at trying to forget.

But after he saw the news…

You really need to stop leaving your influences for me to clean up.

The glove without a mate. The sunglasses. But he couldn’t hit ‘send.’

“Why didn’t they take you to school on the way?” Sebastian asked, and it felt less like a question and more like running away from his thoughts.

“That’s what you’re for,” Alphonse replied simply.

It was strange; just last night he’d seen all these outside scenes before. These places were familiar to him as they always have been, after living in this city long enough. Just last night, he’d been across most of them, with his friends—and were they his friends?—living the luxurious, over-the-top lifestyle he’d been so accustomed.

But now, as he watched a familiar street go by, a nice café with a breakfast that he enjoyed, he thought he could see pictures of himself and someone else, from a time that wasn’t as long ago as it seemed.

He wanted to shut his eyes from it, but he saw pictures in the black every time he did so.

And he could still hear that familiar laugh that woke him. In fact—

“Jeez, get it together, will you? Why are you so hung up on this?”

He looked up quickly when the laugh rippled, distorted, along with a familiar voice, from inside the car. And he saw Alphonse watching something on his phone. “What is that?” he demanded.

Alphonse looked up and stared at him like he was crazy. “YouTube.”

On the little screen in his hands, in living color, was a boy he recognized more easily when the lamp lights blazed on him in the evenings at the city of lights. It looked like some kind of interview for a movie he’d done. The smile was brilliant on his face and his laugh shattered in the weak audio of the phone.

Sebastian ripped his eyes away immediately, focusing on the world outside. And the streets. And the sights. And the shops. Anything.

He’d been doing so well, keeping to himself, keeping to the deal. The occasional text where they don’t respond to what the other says. Everything else stayed in the drafts. He was keeping to the deal.

For once.

“How is he doing now?” Alphonse asked.

“How would I know that?” Sebastian replied tightly.

“He’s your friend, isn’t he?”

Sebastian glanced at him and let out his breath, pulling out his phone to browse. “I’m not his… No.”

Alphonse stared with the same suspicion again before resuming what he was watching. Sebastian desperately wished he had headphones.

Are we friends?

But that one stayed too.

He dropped off Alphonse at school. As for himself, he felt no reason to attend. It felt a lot like the void was calling, and all he needed was a high place right now.

Reggie seemed incapable of looking at him without some kind of judgment. Right now, in spite of the fact that they were supposed to be having a meal together, he mostly felt like he was getting appraised.

“How was school?” he prompted.

Sebastian rolled his eyes, knowing full well that he didn’t attend, and knowing very well that Reggie may already have an inkling that he didn’t. “So-so.”

“Haven’t you anything interesting about it to say?”

“No,” Sebastian replied before a sip of coffee, and apparently, that was the full sentence of it.

He wondered if Reggie would press on, or if he, like his parents, may have somehow given up on him. It appeared it would be the latter, as after a glower, Reggie resumed eating. In spite of appearances, Sebastian actually liked the companionable silence that he had when eating with his brothers. The rest of his nightlife was typically loud.

He glanced at his phone, and remarked, “I’m on time…but mama and papa aren’t.”

“More’s the pity,” Reggie snorted. He shifted his food around. “You haven’t been yourself lately.”

“What would you know about that?” Sebastian smirked.

“What I mean is, you’ve been a little more…distracted than usual,” Reggie side-eyed him. “And here I thought that we’d seen the last of your distractions back in December.”

Alright. Sebastian put his fork down, wiping his mouth with as little menace as possible. And Reggie seemed pleased, even when he tried to rise from the table. “Sit down, Sebastian.”

“I’ve places to be, honestly—”

“You’ve nowhere to be, sit down.”

Sebastian remained standing, glaring at him. And he glared even more when Reggie snatched the sunglasses from the table when he meant to reach for them. “Give those back.”

“Sit.”

“Now.”

Reggie leaned back and tucked the sunglasses to his side of the table, gesturing for Sebastian to sit in silence. The stare-down between the two of them would’ve made other patrons of the restaurant uncomfortable, were the two of them not ensconced in a private area.

Clenching the napkin in his fist, Sebastian sat back down and opened his palm to his brother. Reggie did not return the sunglasses.

“If you’re having problems, you’re supposed to tell us,” Reggie told him with maddening calm. “You don’t think we don’t know what’s going on with you?”

“I know that you know, I had the assumption that you really don’t care or you wouldn’t let me.” Sebastian’s smile was far from genuine.

“That was our mistake, apparently. Are you really just going to get drunk and party all night every night until you turn eighteen? Haven’t you any plans for yourself? What you’ll be?”

“Shall I be like you?” Sebastian asked with the same tight cheer. “It seems so much more fun than what I’m doing now.”

“You’re not even in college yet.”

“What makes you think I won’t go to college and do exactly the same thing?”

“Oh? With the way you treat your schoolwork?”

“You have nothing on me.” And he knew they didn’t. He made sure they didn’t. He was excellent when he had to be. And the rest of the time…

Reggie observed him for a moment, then continued as he ate. “How about the arts, Sebastian? You seem to be quite good at that. You write music. You’re good at singing. Have you tried that direction?”

Sebastian raised an eyebrow, not having expected this approach. “…that’s a direction? An option?”

“It’s certainly one better than the road towards alcoholism.” Reggie scooped up the goblet of wine that was freshly poured. “No, he won’t be having any tonight.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Sebastian glared as the waiter departed.

“Do you?” Reggie sipped the wine himself and sighed. “I just think that you’re wasting your potential. Whatever that potential may be.”

“Why do you even care?” Sebastian asked.

“Because though it may surprise you, I do give a damn about what happens to my brothers,” Reggie replied coolly. “Especially ones who are going through something I can’t understand, because he refuses to tell me.”

“I’m not going through anything,” Sebastian replied with gritted teeth.

“That’s not what Alphonse says,” Reggie remarked with a raised eyebrow. “That’s not what your actions say either. And it is not…” and he very carefully placed the sunglasses with a clack in front of Sebastian, “…what I saw in you in your room that night.”

Sebastian stared at the sunglasses. He heard it in his ears, as he did in the nights when he tried to sleep; the news report with the sirens and the reporter. The news that the boy whose laugh he still hears in his ears had been—

He closed his eyes, trying not to see again.

When he opened them, he saw Reggie staring at him.

He grabbed the sunglasses and fled.

…are you okay?

Even as he stared at the words on the phone, he didn’t think it was worth sending. It was a stupid question.

He leaned back on the sill of the apartment and stared out into the lights of the evening. The view wasn’t terrible. But it hurt to see. He loved it all the same, but it still hurt to see for some reason.

He should’ve figured a while ago that there was no getting away from it. He had done his best and everything he could to look away. He had tried to get on with his life. He didn’t even think they were still friends at this point, even though he’d sent a gift once.

And he had to admit, that in spite of his best efforts, it didn’t work. Nothing ever worked.

None of the deals and promises ever worked out.

The key in his palm was warm by now, and he found himself smiling as he looked down at it. It wasn’t the first time that he wondered if he should’ve thrown it into the Seine. Carefully, he set it down on top of his piano keyboard.

There were traces everywhere that he hadn’t put away.

He flopped back into bed, ignoring the prompting texts of his friends, asking where he was. Closing his eyes, he tried to not imagine. That was the worst part: no matter how hard he tried, he kept wondering what would’ve happened. And then the next part of the haunting, which was what he would do…if he’d see him again.

Wasn’t that the most frightening part of a facing your fear? To see exactly what had been lurking there? What he had been trying to turn his eyes away from all this time?

Would the person on the other side even want to look back?

I’m tired of seeing you everywhere.

It was funny. Because he said those same words to him last December, when his posters were everywhere for that movie he was promoting.

But like some of the things that they’d told each other through the course of that time…it was just another thing that he probably didn’t mean.

Ding!

He sighed and checked his phone with the intention of deleting all his friends’ texts. All they ever did was use him for bottle service or get into VIP or catch all the models, and it was likely it was just more whining about not seeing him or asking when he was coming or—

“Bastian, Papa is going to be sent on a diplomatic meeting of some kind to America. Come home tomorrow, they want to talk to us.”

Sebastian stared at that text for a very long time. Then he looked back up at the ceiling, willing it to give him answers.

But it seldom did when there was no alcohol involved.

That laugh echoed in his ears.

Or maybe it was just someone in the streets outside, strolling down the pavement, arm in arm with someone they were smiling at as they vanished into the lights.

Sebastian sat up. Slowly, he typed out a message.

He smiled.

He pressed send.

#daltonfic #side-canon #post-siege #sebastian smythe #pair: this is not a love story

[psicostyles]

The one where I get to know you

This might be a sequel since I don’t have a script or ideas to continue yet, but who knows?? This is a draft I found lost on my phone and tumblr and kinda liked the way I used to think when younger. Let me know what you think anyways

**

It’s not like I hated him.

We just don’t get along. I met Harry - the guy I don’t hate - a few months ago. 

We were at a pool party of a friend we have in common. They though we would like each other right ahead since we have “similar taste” according to them. Alright.

We started to chat about nothing in the corner of the pool and I felt a little bored, to be honest. He is a nice guy, don’t get me wrong. But not for me. We haven’t spoken since that. And well, I’m still good this way, thank you. 

But let me tell you what happened. The same friend who threw that party is now hosting a baby shower because guess what? She’s pregnant. Well, that was kinda obvious I guess. 

Back to the point. 

I’m here talking to myself in the same spot we chat the last time we saw each other, about a story who I rather forgot because I got nothing better to do…

 "Hey," 

I look up, seeing a tall man holding two drinks.

"Oh, hey" I answered back.

 "I don’t know if you remember me…“ he said reluctantly "I’m Ha…”

 "Harry," I said interrupting him “yes, I remember you" 

 He smiles nodding at me, sitting by my side afterwards.

 "Here, I brought you a beer” I murmur a silent thank you, and drink my beverage.

 He still sits there, moving his leg inside the water with his beer in his hand looking from one side to another. And I stare at him.

I’m about to say something when Kendra - my pregnant friend - walks from God knows where with her husband by her side holding hands with a massive smile on their faces. They are in the middle of the yard with a massive box in front of them.

 "Thank you so much for being here today" she started “it’s a very special day for us, not only because it’s our baby’s shower…but because we are about to found out our baby gender” everyone starts to clap exited.

Even though this gender things it’s super cliche and way too inappropriate, even for a unborn baby, it’s their day! Not mine. So I clap along, because either way I’m also happy. And I don’t need to be a brat about it. I can have a conversation with them in a near future about this whole thing, can’t I?

 "Let’s do this," said Alex, the husband. 

 3,2,1…  

The box was opened and pink balloons were floating in the air. Classic.

Oops, I mean, yay.

Everyone started to clapping and cheering, and so do I.

 I get up and go hug them - trying not to soke them with my wet legs, and congratulate my friend. Then she started to speaking again. 

 "Enjoying the situation, Alex and I wants to request something from my friends over here. Can you come here, Harry?“ 

 Harry got up from the ground - also a little wet, and came to where we were.

 "Well… Y/N, you know, we’ve been friends for awhile now” Said Kendra “and you’ve been with me through my ups and downs, you are really important to me" 

 "And Harry,” she said facing him “Although we know you not so long, you became our best friend, our personal jokester and our precious baker" 

 Harry chuckled. 

 "All this speech is for actually ask you both if…” we four stared at each other.  ”…you want to become our baby girl’s godparents," they said together. 

Harry cheered exited hugging they both screaming yes, yes!!

 I stayed frozen. Too shocked to say anything. 

Meeting my failed date and being invited to become the grandparent to a child in the same day? Might be too much to handle.

Who I’m trying to deny? It’s too damn excited. 

 The three of them - after their hugging section - stared at me waiting for an answer. 

 "What do you say Y/N??“ Said Alex. 

 "Yes” I finally answered “I will be her godmother”

 ***

Like I said, Harry and I don’t get along.

We’ve been seeing each other lately on behalf of our goddaughter Nina - she’s the cutest little thing I must say.

We had a dinner at Kendra’s place the other night, with a delicious meal and a fantastic glass of wine. I might have had two or three glasses.

Nina is eight months now and I have to admit she’s too smart for age, she skipped the ‘crawling processes’ and went straight to walking. The result was me and Harry chasing her the whole night. Not that I mind, it’s nice to spend some time with him, but after five minutes you get tired and want to get rid of him. At some point, Nina got tired of walking and decided to watch Peppa Pig while she’s was peacefully laid down in her crib.

The adults kept chatting about adult stuff, Harry was sat in front of me and every now and then I feel his glare on me and when I stare back he pretends he wasn’t looking. Nina was already asleep when we decided to leave but, I don’t have a car so, add this to a credit card with no credit you will find a woman who can’t order an Uber. So now, Harry is now taking me home. Might be the excess of wine in my veins talking but in this second I wasn’t so bothered to be in this same space as him for the first time.

The traffic got us stuck in the middle of the avenue at 11pm. He had turned the radio on with music I’ve never head, but I was tipsy that I don’t really know what I was listening to. Both of us didn’t say a word since we got in the car. While he was facing the road I could watch him better, even though was dark you could notice how sharped his jaw is. Or how his hair is getting curly, or-

‘‘Are you staring at me?’‘ I face the road again without saying a word. ‘‘So...’‘ Harry says trying to break the silence ‘‘Are you free next Friday?’‘

I chuckle 

‘‘Are you seriously asking me out?’‘ he looks at me confused 

‘’Is that a problem?” he stares the road. I look to him surprised.

‘‘Not at all, it’s just...awkward” I said “We just started to speak again because of Nina you know... If wasn’t for that I bet you wouldn’t even remember me”. 

He is the one who chuckles now. He starts to drive again and decided that silence was the best option after all. Half an hour later he parks the car in front of my house when I’m almost leaving he stops me saying:

“You know, even if it wasn’t for Nina or Kendra or whatever, I would still try to talk to you. And I respect your decision, it’s okay if you don’t want to hang out’‘ we both smile. I got off the car and he calls me again ‘‘But if you change your mind...” I roll my eyes.

‘‘Good night Styles” he smiles turning on the car and leaving.

****

Kenda asked me if I could spend the night with Nina since her and Alex wanted to spend some time together, I said yes, of course. So after work at a Friday night I’m at their place. They left around 7pm or so and since they I’m playing the babysitter with the happiest baby in the world. Nina is a very - very - excited child. She never stops. Never.

Now it’s around 8pm and I’m already tired. The thing is she loves climbing their’s stairs, from the bottom to the top, and once she get’s where she wants to start over again, and again, and again. Remember I said she learned how to walk very fast? Yeah, maybe she should have waited.

I’m in the middle of the stairs with Nina giggling when the doorbell rings. I take her with me with a pouty face, getting surprised when I answer the door

‘‘Harry?” 

‘‘Nina!” he says ignoring me. Nina straightway leave the comfort of my embrace so she could have his “How you doing my love? Are you good?” 

“Harry?” I try again. He looks at me “May I help you?” 

He enters while I close the door. I follow him ‘til the living room where he puts Nina into her crib. He turns around and faces me with his hands inside of his jacket.

‘‘Alex called me told to come over so I could help you out’‘

‘‘Well,” I said “I appreciate but they didn’t warned me of anything”  

“It was sudden” he said “Are we hungry?”

“We already ate, but thanks”

He shrugged and face Nina again.

“Who missed the nestes grandfather in the word hmm?” Nina giggles. Cheater “I heard you wanna play some more, yeah? Let’s go then”

She grabs her again and says she’s taking her upstairs to the playroom. Now I “can take some rest” according to him. Yeah, okay. Suddenly I don’t feel so tired anymore. I clean the mess we made earlier and hear the giggles from upstairs. I climb the stairs carefully and move to Nina’s room. Her door is almost closed so I give a little peek inside the room and caught Nina playing with muppets laughing with everything Harry - well the mullet Harry was playing, a frog I belive.

“Why don’t you come from behind the door and come play with us, Aunt Y/N” said Harry, the frog with a strange but yeah, actually funny voice.

And so I did. At every terrible imitation of animal he did Nina giggle like it was the funniest thing in the world, as she understood everything we said. I was playing a very badly sheep but she didn’t mind at all. A few hours later she felt asleep right when Alex and Kendra got home.

“We don’t know how to thank you guys” they said.

“Tell me he is coming next time” I thought but I kept myself quiet.

So yeah, here we are again like the last time. I did not have a drive so Harry, the saviour offered to take me home so I accepted. The silence it’s not the uncomfortable as before, most of the time we talked about Nina and how special she is. From one second to another we where at my place. Before I could get out of the car he said

“Remember last time? I asked you out and you rejected me like...Well, you rejected me” he said uma playful tone.

I got out of the car and supported myself on the window.

“Oh, well. Maybe if you ask me a second time maybe I can accept”

He smirked.

“Are you free anytime?”

I smiled at him.

“You know what? Who knows maybe at third time you convince me”

We both smiled. He left and I watched him go.

He wasn’t so bad after wall.

#harry imagine #harry styles imagine #harry one shot #harry blurb #harry styles blurb #one direction imagine #one direction blurb #harry styles #harry styles series #harry styles writing #harry writing #one drection writing #psicostyles

[self-proclaimed-chaotic-good]

Thank U, Next | Poe Dameron x Reader (1/2)

Prompt: High School AU

Fandom: Star Wars (Sequel Trilogy)

Words: 2791

Warning: Mentions past Armitage Hux x Reader, Ben Solo x Reader, Finn x Reader, and current background Finn x Rey.

A/N: I’m super late with the last three Writer’s Month prompts, but I ended up making this one longer than intended, like many of my fics, lol. Inspiration from the song Thank U, Next by Ariana Grande.

-

How long has it been since you’ve moved away from your hometown? Too long, apparently. There were some stores that closed down with new ones taking their place, buildings renovated and even a new road was added to cut travel time. Everything felt familiar to you, but also distant. You were born and raised here, but this was no longer your home.

When that invite for your high school reunion arrived at your apartment in the city, you debated whether you should go back. You had a lot of bittersweet memories there, but you were curious of what happened to your classmates. You’ve changed a lot since you graduated from high school and you hoped that certain people had changed for the better as well.

You went a week before the reunion, staying in a spare room of your mother’s new house. It was spacious and homely, filled with everything that your mother had always wanted, including a garden and a greenhouse in the backyard. Your parents had divorced a year after you graduated, something that had been a long time coming and they still remain friends. You could sense a heavyweight leaving your mother’s shoulders when the paperwork went through and you had helped her move out.

Throughout the week, you got situated in the spare room, making it your own for the times that you plan on visiting, as well as helping out with the garden. You always wanted one growing up, but your father was against the idea, claiming that it was too much maintenance that he didn’t want to do. It was peaceful in the backyard with fairy lights hanging around the patio. Oftentimes, you and your mother would drink a warm beverage and talk on the patio, catching up with each other and reminiscing. She had heard that some of your classmates stayed, some went to the military, and some even she hadn’t heard about in a while.

-

You were lounging in the backyard, reading an old book that you had in high school when an orange tabby hopped the fence and meowed. You bookmarked your page and sat up, seeing the orange tabby sit a few feet ahead of you, licking their paw.

“Hey, there, little one,” you said, reaching a hand out.

The tabby paused their cleaning, tentatively leaning forward to sniff your hand. When they realized you were good people, they rubbed against your palm and stepped towards you. Once they got closer, you realized the cat was female, her name tag reading Millicent Hux. Huh, you knew a Hux in high school. You had a crush on him for a year, and you remembered the whole school found out and he never spoke to you again because of all the teasing.

“Excuse me!” someone called out.

You turned away from Millicent and saw a tall and pale ginger man waving from the other side of the fence. He paused his waving when it registered just who he was waving to. You stood up with Millicent in your arms and made your way towards the fence.

“Armitage?” you asked in disbelief.

He smiled. “Yeah, that’s me. Lanky Armi,” he said with a shrug, “I didn’t know you were in town. Here for the reunion?”

“Yeah. I assume this is your cat,” you said, raising Millicent up.

“Yeah, I was about to take her out to the vet when she ran out of her carrier. Thank god she ended up here instead of hanging out by the road.” He grabbed Millicent from you, carrying her like a baby. “You look good.”

“You, too.”

He scoffed, shrugging off the compliment. “Still lanky and pale.”

“Are you going, too?”

He nodded. “I’ve seen a few of our classmates that had arrived earlier this week,” he said, hesitating to continue, “I, uh, saw Ben, too.”

“Oh,” you said, surprised.

From the way that Armitage said that, it meant that he knew or at least had an idea of what happened between you and Ben. They were close friends, after all. You never painted Ben as someone that cared for such gatherings. Sentimentality wasn’t his best trait. You weren’t sure how to feel about his presence in town.

Armitage cleared his throat, regretting about saying anything. “Well, I’ll see you around, then. Would love to stay and catch up, but this one needs her shots.”

“Alright, it was nice seeing you again, Armi,” you said, smiling, “And nice to meet you, too, Millicent.”

You walked back to your reading spot and sighed. Given the size of this town, you were surprised you hadn’t ran into anyone from school before now, and it was a pleasant surprise. Armitage was always tall and lanky, but he looked more mature and had a more lean build. He had always been a good kid, he was just easily influenced by others around him and you were disappointed that he had succumbed to it. He seemed to have gotten over that and you were glad that you could talk like friends, possibly making up for lost time. There was a classmate or two that you had ran into as adults that still maintained their immature personalities from school. You wondered how everyone else turned out.

-

Your mother had gone on a cooking spree on the first two days you were there and needed to restock the fridge. You volunteered to go grocery shopping but had to use google maps to find the address that the store had relocated to. Once there, the layout was relatively the same, just in a slightly bigger space.

While looking for a specific cereal brand that your mother insisted on eating, you heard someone clear his throat nearby. You wordless moved to the side, thinking you were in the way of something. You heard a soft chuckle before he spoke.

“(Y/n),” he said.

Your head shot up and you were met with a grinning Finn. “Oh, my god! Hi, how are you?” you asked excitedly.

“I’m good. Real good,” he said, pulling you into a hug. It was then you noticed a young woman around your age standing next to him with a sweet smile that showed off her dimples. “Rey, this is my old friend (Y/n). (Y/n), this is my fiancee, Rey.”

“Nice to meet you,” you said, turning to Rey.

She pulled you into another hug. “It’s nice to meet you, too. Finn told me a lot about his time at high school. He only has good things to say about you.”

“Well, that’s nice of him,” you said, raising an eyebrow at Finn.

He shrugged, wrapping an arm around Rey. “What can I say? I’m a nice guy.”

“I expect to hear all the embarrassing stories of him,” Rey whispered to you.

You smiled and said, “Oh, I have an arsonal full of those. Maybe we can meet up later. I’ve gotta get these groceries back to my mom first.”

Finn looks down at your cart, seeing beef, tomato sauce, vegetables, and other miscellaneous items. His eyes widened in excitement. “Is your mom making her famous beef stew?”

“Hell yeah!”

He groaned, thinking back to those times he used to come over your house for dinner and that first time he tried your mother’s beef stew. Ever since then, he always requested that she make it, or at least pack a container that he could take home and share with his family who loved it as well. His father would joke that two of you should get married once you two graduate, but marriage had never been a priority for you, and Finn knew that. You had different ideas of the future and respected the other’s decision for it, which was why your breakup was amicable and the two of you remained friendly and supportive of each other. 

“I’ll see if my mom can pack some for you and Rey,” you said as you walked towards your cart.

Finn grinned, patting you on the shoulder. “I knew I could count on you. Rey, you gotta try it! It’s so good.”

“Alright, I look forward to it,” Rey said, “It was nice meeting you.”

“You, too,” you said, then asked Finn, “Are you staying over at your parent’s house?”

“Yeah, same house, too. I’ll be showing Rey around for the rest of the week, but you can stop by anytime to see my folks. I’m sure they’ll be happy to see you,” Finn said.

“Alright. I’ll see you when I see you, then,” you said before walking away.

You smiled to yourself as you left, having seen the way that they spoke and looked at each other. Their happiness was infectious and you couldn’t help but be happy for them. Your worries that you had before coming back slowly seeped away after pleasantly running into Armitage and Finn. Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. You’re all adults now, surely it won’t be like that Romi and Michelle movie, though flying away in a helicopter looked pretty cool.

-

The park that you used to frequent seemed to have an upgrade with an added baseball field, more restroom facilities, an area with exercise equipment, and even a water fountain near the clearing away from the fields. You sat near the water fountain where there were painted picnic tables shaded by trees, a new journal and fountain pen sat in front of you as you brushed off the leaves from the table.

With your headphones on, you tried to get back into the writing zone that you’ve been hoping that your trip back to your hometown would help you with. When you left town, you went off to pursue your writing career, entering writing contests and having short stories published. Your new goal was to finish a novel. You would always start a story, but always got stuck on something and never finished it. Writing contests and published short stories could only get you so far and unless you wanted to keep churning out new short stories at a time, hoping that they’ll get through and be published, just to pay your bills, you needed to finish that novel.

You started small, writing down ideas, hoping that visually having them on the page instead of floating in your mind would help. Then, you took some of those ideas and jotted down plot points that the story could have. You continued this until you got into the flow of writing a rough draft for one of them.

Your timer went off, reminding you to head back home before it got dark. You finished your last thought before capping your pen and packing your things away. The sun hung low in the sky, a cool breeze rustling the trees, making you wish you brought a light jacket.

You got to your old car, you tried to open the backseat door that wouldn’t budge. It had always caused you problems like this, but you kept it because it at least got you where you needed to go. You sighed, yanking the door handle again before giving up. After years of forcing that door open, the handle looked like it was going to fall off.

“Still haven’t fixed that door, I see,” a voice said with amusement.

You turned to face the source of the voice and froze. Poe freaking Dameron stood in front of you, dressed in gray sweats with his military camp printed on the front and the side, dark spots stained near his armpits and his neck from sweat. He became impossibly more handsome since the last time you’ve seen him. He gave you a wide smile, one that made many of your fellow classmates swoon in infatuation at him and glare in envy at you, showing you the Poe you knew from school.

He briefly turned to open the backseat of his truck, taking out a hand towel to wipe himself down. “Back in town for the reunion?” he asked.

“Yeah. You, too?”

He nodded. “Everyone’s happy that I’m finally taking time off that’s more than two to three days. Apparently I’m a workaholic? Don’t know why,” he said with a shrug.

You raised an eyebrow. He definitely knew why. For as long as you’ve known him, once he got into something, he put his all into it. Joining a sports team? He’d practice during any free time that he had and become an mvp or team captain. Getting into music? He’d started a band that played during homecoming week and at school events. He even composed and wrote his own songs. It was his strongest and weakest trait. You loved his passion, but that passion would sometimes make him forget everything else.

“Huh, what’s your new obsession now?” you asked, leaning against your car.

Poe mirrored you with his truck as he wiped excess sweat from his hair. “Flying… it’s something that I picked up when I was in the military,” he said.

“Oh,” you said, looking down before clearing your throat to try and appear unphased, “What kind of flying?”

“After I left the military, I missed flying and travelling, so I got into doing helicopter tours in a few countries. Just a couple of years ago, I started to fly commercial airplanes. There’s a whole process with that one, but it was worth it.”

“That sounds cool. I know you’ve always wanted to fly those airplanes,” you said.

He nodded. “Yeah, funny how life works, right? You plan something, you end up doing something else, but if it was meant to be, you somehow end up where you had always wanted to go.”

“Yeah, I’m still waiting for that to happen to me,” you muttered.

“You got published, though,” he pointed out, “They’re short stories, but it’s a start. Your writing is amazing, (Y/n). I know you’ll get there.”

The corner of your lips turned up. There goes his award winning pep talks again. You didn’t know that he was even aware of the work that you’ve done. It didn’t do much for you personally, but you were glad that he hadn’t changed too much,

“Thanks, Poe,” you said, opening your driver’s seat door.

“Hey, can I say something before you go?” he asked before you could climb into your car. You paused, turning to face him. “Look, I know I should have told you that I enlisted, but I don’t regret going. I only wished that we had the chance to work it out, maybe take you with me if I could, if you wanted to. Or at the very least, parted on better terms.”

You avoided his eyes as you tried to find the right words to say. There were so many things you wished you had said on the day he told you about his enlistment. It was all too late to bring them up now. It wasn’t going to change the fact that you two broke up over it. You should at least clear the air, so there wouldn’t be any misunderstandings, though, but you were stubborn. You never wanted to admit it, but while your break up with Finn had been easy and painless, breaking up with Poe was one of the hardest things you had to go through.

“I… I understood why you did it,” you said, “And I should have stopped to think about your perspective instead of getting angry and I’m sorry. It’s my fault that we ended things like that.”

Poe sighed, knowing that there was more that you wanted to say. Another thing that you loved and hated about him was his ability to read you. When there was no reply from him, you climbed in your car, shutting the door harder than you intended. While you were turning the engine on and fiddling with the radio, Poe stepped closer, leaning a hand on the roof of your car.

“Could we meet somewhere?” he asked softly, “You know, just to catch up?”

You leaned back in your seat, drumming your fingers on the steering wheel. “I’m running some errands tomorrow. Does lunch at the usual diner work for you?”

Poe smiled. “Sure, yeah. I’ll meet you there tomorrow, then.”

That night, you sat on your bed, wondering why your heart was racing while thinking about tomorrow. It had been so long since you and Poe sat down and talked. Meeting him tomorrow meant that you would have to eventually address all the things that were left unsaid, all the questions that were left unanswered, and all the things that had happened after going your separate ways. You doubt that the two of you could start over, given your different career paths, but maybe you could at least be on speaking terms.

#WritersMonth2020 #poe dameron x reader #poe dameron #brief armitage hux x reader #past Finn x Reader #background Finn x Rey #star wars imagine #star wars sequel trilogy #High school reunion au #high school au #brief mention of Ben Solo x Reader

[mousehole5000]

wow i made this draft on november 1st i really took a break from this huh anyway tgcf chapters 121 - 142

i realize now this coffin scene was inevitable. feel kinda weird about hua cheng  back and forth from Teen to Big Man but it is very funny that theyre having their “dude dont look at my boner” moment while in the jaws of a water dragon

pei ming: why didnt you guys make a bigger coffin so you didnt have to squish together like that? xie lian: haha yep!! anyways what brings you here?

“In the grand, spacious centre of the entrance hall sat a person. And this person, dressed in all black, its face snow-white—was a corpse! Instantly Xie Lian shut the doors soundly.” - king of minding his own business.

okay this is where i stopped putting notes here for a while but i did save some in my e-reader so here’s some of the highlights

“Guzi used to have a good sleeping form, but perhaps with his cheap dad’s bad influence, now he was also spread out on top of Qi Rong’s stomach like a dead fish. Lang Ying himself was curled neatly in the corner, and was covered by a few shirts. Xie Lian lifted the blanket covering Qi Rong, suppressed the urge to smother his face, and covered the two small children.” - xie lian funny moments. also it would be really funny if qi rong redeems himself by learning love through these misfit chiildren and it might actually endear me to him but i hope that doesnt happen

Every heavenly official was yelling, and even Ling Wen was throwing a fit. “DON’T THROW EVERY BIT OF USELESS INFORMATION MY WAY, HOW MUCH DO YOU THINK I HAVE TO GO THROUGH EVERY DAY? DON’T YOU ALL KNOW TO USE YOUR BRAINS A LITTLE BEFORE ASKING ME?!” - ling wen marry me right now

“An expression like “seen a ghost” that only mortals experienced was now showing on his face for the first time. Shi Wudu’s pupils shrank to the smallest they could, and he blurted, “You’re still alive?!” “I’m dead!” He Xuan said coldly.” - okay everythings going tits up rn but i did laugh

i did see spoilers re: ming yi/he xuan reveal + shi wudu’s fate beforehand so i dont have a genuine reaction other than oh shit

“He slowly enunciated each word. “I won’t touch your fate. But, here in this place, chop off your brother’s head for me.”  CLANG! He threw a rusty blade onto the ground. Shi Qingxuan stared at that blade, his eyes wide. He Xuan continued, “Then, never show yourself before me again, and I will pretend you’ve never existed in this world.” - okay idk what else is going to happen but rn im concerned that this is like the 2nd biggest ship. i guess we’ll see?? i mean i am really curious whats going to happen to them. shi qingxuan keeps calling he xuan “ming-xiong” and i... sad

shi wudu im not really invested in you as a character but these next two bits... interesting

“If I don’t die but have nothing, then that’s truly a fate worse than death. If I’m not the Water God, I can’t take care of you. I won’t even be able to protect myself. I’m scared that we won’t even last two days…TAKE IT!” - damn. something about the wealthy losing everything and not knowing how to live without it bc thats their entire life and identity

“EVERYTHING I HAVE TODAY, I FOUGHT FOR MYSELF. I WILL FIGHT FOR WHAT I DON’T HAVE. I WILL CHANGE FATE I DON’T POSSESS. MY FATE IS UP TO ME AND NOT THE HEAVENS!” - okay so the whole committing spiritual fraud by tormenting a man and his family to get your brother a cushy title thing aside this was kind of badass. heretical? possibly. but still. also is he intentionally riling up he xuan so sqx doesnt have to kill him? if so damn...

also okay as long as im here im just gonna say it. the choice that he xuan gives shi qingxuan is fucking brutal but i actually think its probably as fair as it could be. sqx didnt know about or participate in what happened to hx but they did benefit from it greatly while hx lost EVERYTHING and i can understand he xuan’s thinking of “if you really feel bad for what happened to me then you have to make a sacrifice and understand the suffering and this is as clean as its going to get” and theres a bit where sqx is trying to beg for mercy but cant get the words out which im guessing is bc theres no good argument!! what happened was fucked up!!

“When Pei Ming saw that reinforcements had arrived, he didn’t appear particularly delighted; instead he threw the sword into the ground, then rubbed his nose and said, sounding grim, “You all just had to come just as I finished making these, what the heck.” - pei ming making coffins chopping down trees with his sword i love it #wastehistime2k17

“Xie Lian brought that basket of eggs along, and gave them away as souvenirs from the mortal realm. Many who received the eggs were overjoyed; some deciding to eat it along with their own blood, and some proclaiming they would hatch an eight-foot monster.” - GHOST CITY GHOST CITY

“Placing the brush down, he blew lightly at the ink and smiled. “If I like something, then my heart will not have room for any other, and I’ll always treasure it. A thousand times, a million times, no matter how many years, this will not change. This poem is the same." - thats nice and all but king... get therapy. i actually have further thoughts but tbh i dont want to put them into words bc they are simply too personal! moving on

didnt take any notes but somewhere in here was the bit with mount tong’lu opening and hua cheng losing it and kind of um. hm. that scene. thats another trope i really hate tbh i dont care for it as a way of including physical intimacy between characters and idk if it really ever adds anything but whatever moving on

The Half-Maquillage Woman - kind of interesting monster idea bc women and aging…. yeah. however i think this would be a lot stronger if there were a) more girls and this was b) discussed or illustrated at all prior to this moment. still interesting that its included knowing the author is a woman tho and there’s been comments on how ling wen is perceived vs pei ming. this book does keep giving me hope for interesting female character arcs i really want it to deliver something

quan yizhen..... i get u

lmao i have a note on a bit with lang ying that says “please dont be hc in disguise” and..... my clown nose was on but at least i knew that. for real this is bothering me how much he’s just. always. there. i know he’s a lead but we didn’t really need him around for a lot of this. oh well.  okay now to my current notes

“Yet it was precisely because it wasn’t cooked that it had to be eaten quickly. Once Xie Lian cooked it, it wouldn’t be edible anymore” - fucking fantastic

“Xie Lian hugged his belly. “Of course! Only after having met you did I rediscover that it’s such a simple thing to be happy, hahaha…” Hearing this, Hua Cheng blinked. Xie Lian’s laughter quieted a bit, realizing what he just said was a little too revealing.” - okay i know i said what i said about being tired of hua cheng being everywhere but... the line…. the fact that theyre laughing together…. :pleading:

“It’s not,” Ling Wen said. “At least, I believe, there will definitely not be another in history who can create a dish called ‘Incorruptible Chastity Meatballs’” - and truer words were never spoken

“I, DO NOT WORSHIP GODS. “I, AM GOD!” - this was every bit as badass as i hoped but no one told me it was immediately followed up by a little bit of the ol dinner theater fjalkdsfjsd. also puqi shrine noooooooooo

“Xie Lian sighed as he thought, “Qi Rong has taken Guzi away, who knows if the poor child was eaten or abandoned. Wind Master...... ..... who knows if Black Water took him away. Pray they’re both safe.” yeah hey are we going to fucknig. find out what happened to the child???

and yeah i dooooont really care for the age regression? thing thats going on. i just dont like that trope tbh. but tiny hua cheng whipping out his fat ghost king wallet in the store was funny tho. it is really funny that hualian are just like wandering around some random towns while the heavens are in an uproar. i guess theres not much else to do but its funny

“Me too, me too. You all know of my shixiong, right? Talented, with an infinite future! He only had one small vice: he loved playing women. Decades ago, a little prostitute ghost seduced my shixiong and sucked him dry into human jerky, and that Hua, Hua, Hua, that ghost king dared shelter her.” - yes omg give me the forbidden hua cheng lore i love this for him for real it goes along nicely with xie lian’s principles about giving another cup. god i love shared values

“Hua Cheng poked again, and a small hole appeared on the wall, as if the wall was made of tofu.” - how’d he do that. why is this a ghost king power. its useful tho

*me shaking qi rong when he pops up* WHERE IS THE CHILD

mu qing fu yao is here okay im happy now. once again no one has a good grasp on their secret identity and i love that. this inn has descended into chaos and im delighted and im glad lan chang is back

“The good ol’ kitchen was suddenly squished and crowded, loud and noisy. Fu Yao was chasing that fetus spirit leaping up and down, Lan Chang was chasing after Fu Yao like she had gone mad. Half of Qi Rong’s face changed shape by the way Xie Lian was pressing him down on the chopping board, his back turning into a target for those yellow talismans Fu Yao hurled while being observed by a crowd, and Lan Chang would step on him from time to time.” - this is pure chaos. i love that mu qing was in that room when the mob checked and he didnt say a word didnt open the door just sent out a talisman as a warning. king your disguise is transparent

“Xie Lian remembered the way Feng Xin laughed until he was hoarse when he first heard that verbal password all those years back, and couldn’t help but feel nostalgic, even though it wasn’t the right time.” - awwwww omg im emotional about this... faithful friend feng xin laughing at xie lian’s stupid joke password and remembering it!!! ;_;

“They have, but they’re not effective,” Feng Xin said. “Usually they’re the most diligent in scorning the Palace of Ling Wen, like they could do the job way better if they had the position. Now that we need them to take up the task, not a single one can do even half of what she does.” - typical... typical typical typical

also emotional about the fact that feng xin contacted xie lian at all.....

also!! emotional about lan chang as a mom and wanting to help out sick lil guzi.....

xie lian forcing “fu yao” to let him help “his general” is making me.... what is friendship if not playing along with your buddies little shenanigans while also making them accept your help

“Someone like Mu Qing, even though he’s narrow-minded, petty, sensitive and skeptical, has a bad personality, constantly guessing, doesn’t say nice things, likes to nag, always offending people and has a lot of people who dislike him, has no friends, can remember small, unimportant details for a long period of time…” ”Xie Lian went on in one breath with a straight face, but in the end he concluded with, “...But I’ve known him since we were kids, after all, he’s still got principles.” - XIE LIAN PLEASE AFJDLKSFJDL omg ive seen this quote before but i figured he was talking to someone else not actually to mu qing himself fgjasdkfjsl. god thats amazing. hey im gonna help you out because i care but i will roast you first <3

waaaaaait so is lan chang aka jian lan that girl from book 2 we took a page to talk about and then disappeared? that has to be it why else would we have stopped to discuss her

“Jian Lan spat on his face, then choking his neck, she slapped him twice again. “WHAT SHITTY SUPREME! YOU SURE KNOW HOW TO BLOW YOURSELF UP! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, THINK YOU’RE EVEN WORTH TO BE THOUGHT OF AS EQUALS WITH THE OTHER THREE SUPREMES? WHAT ARE YOU EVEN GOOD AT? YOUR THICK SKIN? OF COURSE I DARE HIT YOU!” - oh this feels so good i cant lie. YES GET HIM!! CHOMPING AND VIOLENCE YES!!!!

okay this description of cuocuo.... im... that sure the hell is a creature

this book is so entertaining bc i already saw spoilers for the feng xin/jian lan/cuo cuo reveal and yet i could never have predicted the circumstances that brought it about. imagine being feng xin. the heavens are in an uproar and your only friend/enemy has been jailed for possible fetus spirit-related crimes but he escapes along with this female ghost who keeps causing problems. you figure “fuck it lets see if dianxia kept his old phone number” and he has but then he hangs up on you. you’ve got fuckall else to do so you go find him. mu qing is there but he’s in his disguise the two of you were using so you could watch over his highness while staying aloof. you think you see hua cheng only he’s a chiild for some goddamn reason but who knows at this point. the female ghost is also there and theres a fetus spirit climbing trees and biting your arrows in half. you realize the female ghost is your ex and the little demon is your son. it bites you. what do you do

amazing that despite everything going on everyone is still playing along with the “fu yao” persona when it would probably be easier to drop pretenses at this point. then again tbh if i could explain my actions to my friends while pretending to be a third party.... i probably would so.. carry on

“With all his devotees gone, only Feng Xin still treated him like the Flower-Crowned Martial God and His Highness the Crown Prince. ” “...his protection charms were all seen as trash. However, Feng Xin was still determined and tireless in handing them out; telling Xie Lian, look, you still have devotees.” “After all, he was the darling of the heavens since birth, high and mighty. Feng Xin so naturally spun around him like he was the world, so how could he possibly have his own life, his own heart” “Whether or not that fetus spirit was Feng Xin’s son, if it was that period of poverty that made Feng Xin lose the girl he loved, Xie Lian wouldn’t be able to forgive himself no matter what." ohhhh my god this relationship i. im...

oh my god i still have 30 more chapters until book 4............ its naptime now i think

#tgcf liveblog #so close and yet so far...... #i keep hearing tell of this fabled book 4 i must press onwards...... #but now im sleepy..... #mouse mumbles

[tcthetouch]

𝓈𝑜𝓂𝑒 𝓂𝒶𝓀𝑒 𝒾𝓉 𝓌𝒽𝑒𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓎'𝓇𝑒 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓃𝑔, 𝓅𝑒𝓇𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓎 𝒽𝒶𝓋𝑒 𝒶 𝓈𝑜𝓊𝓁 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓎'𝓇𝑒 𝓊𝓃𝒶𝒻𝓇𝒶𝒾𝒹 𝓉𝑜 𝒷𝒶𝓇𝑒. 𝓅𝑒𝓇𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇𝑒'𝓈 𝓃𝑜𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇𝑒.

『 jamie lee curtis. sixty-one. cis woman. she/her. 』 oh heavens, is that JUDITH MILLER from FAIR LANE i see roaming around mapleview? minnie may’s always calling them -CYNICAL & -SELFISH. i happen to think they’re not that bad! they’re a pretty cool “RETIRED” ACTRESS  and every time i’ve seen them, they’ve always been +MAGNETIC & +WITTY. i hope i see them around again! 『 may. 21. est. she/her. 』

hello my pals ! after a very long day, i am finally here with an intro for a sexy lowkey demon !

BACKGROUND:

triggers: emotional abuse, brief mention of war, brief mention of considered abortion, substance abuse, brief implication of child neglect, brief mentions of death (but like.... from old age)

So… I’m currently too tired to do the ‘whole chart,’ but… a Sagittarius. Know this.

Now, to understand our dear Judith, you must first understand her parents. Her mother was a wealthy young woman, progressive in her views on social issues… for the time. Nonetheless, she was expected to hold up the standards of the time. Her father was the younger brother of a man deemed ‘a great soldier’ who died fighting in WWII. Followed by the memory of him and his own parents’ obsession with the man, he placed pressure on himself to live up to that standard. Shame there was no war………………….

They met at Judith’s mother’s debutante ball and hit it off. It was, what they perceived to be, a match made in heaven. But that’s always easy to say – it’s harder to prove when a good night culminates in an unexpected pregnancy. To avoid any public scandal on her part, Judith’s mother and father married before she began showing and moved to Mapleview where she would become an excellent mother and he would live up to his brother’s standards by… he was still figuring it out… maybe making the next great scientific advancement? or writing the next great American novel?

Sadly, in spite of her lifetime’s worth of training, Judith’s mother… proved to lack natural maternal instinct. Perhaps it was passed down from her own mother, transgenerational trauma beginning long, long, long ago. Judith’s father was so consumed with his grand ideas that he hadn’t the time to help! Between becoming the next Walt Whitman one day and the next Albert Einstein the next, all while working for his father-in-law, he just didn’t have any time at all!

Their marriage grew strained and, as Judith grew, they made it even clearer that she was the cause. If she, herself, didn’t do something spectacular with her life, then it was all for nothing!

Her father wasn’t forced into the Vietnam War as a part of the drafting lottery. No, as it grew bigger, as the army grew more desperate, as she began slowly maturing, as his marriage continued falling apart, he voluntarily entered in 1965, when Judith was seven. Before drafting even began!

Before he entered the war, Judith was the victim of plenty of degrading remarks and the occasional Unusually Odd Punishment (think bojack horseman w like beatrice seeing ~7y/o bojack take a cigarette and forcing him to smoke all of it bc he couldn’t waste a perfectly good cigarette!). However, the remarks grew more biting after he left for “the war effort.” The two moved back to California, her mother’s birthplace, to be closer to her mother’s father – an even better source of income when his sympathies were being played on.

...but it was suddenly back-to-work, no-sympathies-for-you when the war ended and Judith’s father was still alive… and, furthermore, when the war was lost. 

With her parents’ marriage worse off than ever, Judith’s unconscious attempts to please them and live up to their expectations began sooner than they would have had the war been won. Or had her father been shot. 

Probably.

Commercials began at seventeen, but they weren’t impressive. Minor roles began at eighteen, but they weren’t impressive. It wasn’t until she was picked up by an actual agent at twenty that she began actually shining, so to speak. 

Which is actually a great accidental pun on my part, as her first big role was, much like JLC’s, in one of the first slasher movies ever made. Hoorah! But it still wasn’t impressive. It wasn’t big or prestigious, Katharine Hepburn wouldn’t have taken the role. 

But what was even less impressive? 

The pregnancy that followed shortly thereafter. 

Her first thought was to find a doctor who ‘specialized’ in such ‘inconveniences.’ Between the knowledge that a lack of maternal instinct ran in her blood, all women in her lineage getting mistreated to the point that they were simply unfit, as well as the knowledge that she would have to immediately quit the career that had just begun if she wanted to raise the child… 

But the father wound up being a hurdle. He was meant to be a one-night-stand, but he started showing up… again… and again… and again… until she relented and confessed to him that she was pregnant with his child (so she assumed, at least). He was insistent that she keep it… so the compromise became she wouldn’t abort it, but she would immediately hand it off to the man to raise on his own.

Daniel, named by his father, was born. Judith kept in occasional contact, but ultimately tried to leave that chapter behind her.

After that small bump in the road, her agent began lining up more career offers for her. They ranged from OK-I-guess to Not-Katharine-Hepburn-But-Close-Enough. So she clearly went for the latter ones!

Now, for someone who tried to stay clear-headed enough… it became pretty hard as she grew more popular, was invited to more parties, and… given the decade, was surrounded by cocaine! Thus began some more god-awful decisions, a list so long even Leo Tolstoy would put it down before he could finish reading it.

A few years through her increasingly successful career and she found out that she’s gotten pregnant yet again, this time being the result of a one-night-stand had during a borderline bender. For a few days, she obviously considered abortion again. But… how good would it be for her image if she cleaned up and had the baby… and, who knows! maybe she would break the chain of terrible mothers! if she was willing to sacrifice hedonism, then she was clearly doing something right! and… she also felt some remorse for barely keeping in contact with Daniel… so hoorah! replacement!

Turns out she also didn’t have that mothering instinct :\

But it was not, at all, for lack of trying. She never intentionally mistreated her child, Mia (named for Mia Farrow) – she had family days with her and hung out with her and… tried to figure out how to bond with her. She was never cruel like her mother or her mother’s mother or mother’s mother’s mother, so on and so forth and what have you, but… she was Innocently Insensitive. Still caught up in The Scene, there were some nights that were… very loud when she forgot Mia was trying to sleep and invited a bunch of people over. 

Some hedonistic tendencies returned and she found herself allowing a nanny to care for the child more and more often. Never malicious, never cruel, even asked Danny Devito to be Mia’s godfather… but still wound up being a really bad mom.

When Mia moved out, she was beginning to realize she was too old to continue going down the road she was on – to continue making the same mistakes over and over. One child was college-aged, the other was… somewhat older, although she’d lost track of the years. Yeah, she sent birthday cards and made calls every year, but time had just begun blurring together…

As a side-note, this was also around the time she was encouraged to write a memoir. She wound up having to get a memoirist which is a wc!!

The “best thing possible” happened when her mother died a year ago. Her father had already passed, but that was in Fresno – a quick trip. Her mother died in Mapleview, where her roots were laid. Also pls picture her eulogy for her mother like the eulogy in “Free Churro.” Anyway...

So what did Judith do?

Up and disappeared! 

It would’ve been a really excellent publicity stunt… if she’d ever returned. 

She likes to pretend she’ll never return to Los Angeles. The mountain air is so clean and crisp, life is so much simpler, people are so much less… corrupt.

Alas… somewhere in the back of her mind, has many plans to return to her old life. But she needs to make amends first, right?

TL;DR:

(tread lightly if any triggers under ‘backstory’ are triggers for you!)

born in mapleview. parents were awful but also it was a case of transgenerational trauma so there are nuances there. father “abandoned” her and her mom to go fight in the vietnam war bc he wasn’t able to fight in wwii like his brother. came back and joined them in fresno and judith’s mom was like “well u guys lost.... cant say it was unexpected with someone like u fighting :\” judith was like “well i’ve learned i’m what ruined their marriage even tho i’m also the reason they got married so guess i’ll go make something of myself bc i want them to be proud.” eventually got cast in a halloween-esque movie, because of course. got pregnant, yeet’d it to the father, “it” being daniel. became a class-a hedonist. got pregnant again, but got clean and kept her, named her “mia”. was a pretty good mom for a while, then forgot that kids weren’t “used” to the 1980s/90s equivalent of modern-day raves. mia left for college. judith was like “wait,,, im too old 2 keep living this life omg.” mom died a year ago. was like “oh wow perfect excuse to come back to mapleview and pretend i never lived in los angeles ever in my entire life goodbye all ties and connections!!!”

PERSONALITY/MISC.:

spent the majority of her life trying to live up to the expectations set by her mom when she basically said “you better be something great to make up for being alive” + trying to unconsciously make up for ‘ruining’ her parents’ marriage.

ngl family took inspiration from the sugarman-horseman family in bojack horseman bc i just finished rewatching it and :\ i miss it :\ which, in turn, means there’s a tiny bit of muse inspo from the eponymous, but,,,,,,,, like she may not be a good person,,,,,,, but if u’ve so much as seen up to s2e11,,,,, she aint THAT bad.

further basis was fictional director kelsey jannings (of such fame as “women who love women who love recycling”) when she said that celebrities tend to stagnate at the age they got famous. and judith got famous when she was 20.

I FEEL LIKE I NEED TO MAKE IT EXCESSIVELY CLEAR THAT SHE NEVER HAD MALICIOUS INTENTS TOWARDS HER CHILDREN. she just knew she wasn’t ready to be a mother with daniel - it was terrible timing and she genuinely worried about how she would be as a mother ( considering how poor maternal instincts were... basically passed down through generations ) - and she didn’t know how to connect with mia, especially as an addict in the hollywood machine that was literally filled with drugs, thus proving her hypothesis that she would be a poor mother correct. like... I JUST NEED TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT THERE WAS NO ABUSE INVOLVED. SHE AT LEAST DID BETTER THAN HER MOTHER WITH THAT ASPECT.

but, as marina once said, “[she’s] now becoming [her] own self-fulfilled prophecy. oh, oh no! oh no! oh no!”

saddie disguised as a baddie.

also spent the majority of her life as an absolute hedonist. remains one, but is currently clean and trying to remain that way... maybe...

wants to be good so very bad, but doesn’t know how to be.

in spite of said hedonistic and escapist tendencies, she does have a very strong work-ethic. you know. thanks to both her parents + her capricorn moon.

no way to avoid saying she’s selfish, though. no way to.

CONNECTION IDEAS:

** all are open to any gender

her other child (a wc on the main!)

her memoirist (a wc on the main!)

her childhood friend from when she was still living in mapleview (a wc on the main!)

some fans! idk!

arm candy. pls. she’s bi so. they can be a himbo or a herbo or a thembo. 

you see she’s decently older than all of the characters so i feel like most of this will rely on brainstorming and/or chemistry in threads

FEEL FREE TO EITHER LIKE THIS OR HMU 2 PLOT!!

#mapleviewintro #judith . #judith | intro . #this got so long ahsdlkfjasn #also. for all u aesthetic fans. i apologize for the capital letters i copied and pasted it all directly from google drive and. #did not feel like going back and correcting all of it afhskjdlajs #also!! there's a tl;dr at the bottom j bc. i accidentally wrote the next great american novel.

[yakumtsaki]

Alright you guys, sorry for the delay, I’ve had to restart this post 20 fucking times because my changes weren’t being saved in the draft and then I kept getting the ‘upload failed’ error. In case you don’t remember wtf is going on you might wanna re-read the last update (I certainly had to) which is apparently from JUNE 2018. Jfc I suck so hard. Now this was gonna be really long but tumblr wouldn’t post it so I’m breaking it up in 3 parts, part 2 to be posted tomorrow. For those that don’t feel like reading back, general recap of the last couple updates:

Jojo cheated on Wyatt with Max Flexor and my solution to that marital crisis was to adopt our first dog ever, a puppy hilariously named Maxx.

The puppy grew up to be an asshole and is constantly beating up the cats, who have turned into giant pussies (no pun intended) and are losing every fight to him despite the fact they’re named after Mortal Kombat characters. They’re a fucking disgrace to Alegra’s/Victor’s/Ronroneo’s memory and I haven’t settled on a cat heir yet because they both suck.

Jojo is perma miserable, I don’t even remember how much money away from his 100k LTW, and still not a werewolf despite my pathologically persistent attempts to make him friends with the wolf.

Fucking useless Wyatt didn’t get promoted while Komei was alive providing us with his 100 townie friends, we spent 20 updates befriending every rando that crossed our lot to secure his promotion, and then finally on the day he was supposed to become Captain Hero, Wyatt got, of course, fired and is now on track to take longer to complete his literal career based LTW than Komei took to get 6 pets on the top of their careers.

Absolutely everyone hates noogie addict Shajar, she got a Kylo Ren makeover, and we still don’t know what her sexual orientation is thanks to her ridiculous fitness/fatness turn ons and cleanliness turn off.

Golden child/10 nice points freakshow Cyneswith grew up, rolled romance with the most disturbing turn-ons/offs possible (grey hair/mechanical & charisma turn off) and the 20 simultaneous lovers LTW.

Wulf grew up into a kid, got an Amadeus makeover, is officially a Wyatt clone and the only member of this family I don’t completely hate yet.

Now I’d like to begin the first Union post in more than a year by requesting you do me a solid and lower your expectations for this thing as far down as humanly possible. Like really try to recreate the Jules Verne classic “Journey to the Center of the Earth” with your expectations here, because my brain is so fucking fried that there’s a 20% chance I randomly start citing sources at some point during this post. This grad school crap has seriously been the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals, maybe ever. And speaking of bad trade deals, let’s get this update rolling with the man, the myth, the legend, the husband who managed to make Komei look like a dreamboat in comparison..

..Wyatt fucking Union, née Monif. It’s been a long time, but I’m not gonna lie to you Wyatt, not nearly long enough. Looking good man, just one small question, where the fuck are your eyebrows?

-You àccidéntally deléted thém, imbécilé, et I cannôt exprèss my irritatiόn prόperly becausé I hàve non eyebrôws!

Did your selective French accent get thicker this past year or is it just me?

-It géts thickér whén je suis distrésséd, givé moi mon eyebrôws bàcc!!!

No can do, brother. Actually can do, but I think the Mona Lisa look is working for you, and more importantly I still hate you, so I’m just gonna hardcore ignore you for the rest of this post if that’s ok. Talk to me when you finally get promoted, aka never the way this shit is going.

-Non! NON! MON EYEBROWS!

It’s been lovely catching up.

Jojό I mean Jojo, goddammit Wyatt, is spending most of his time building robots in the mausoleum (sweet hipster band name alert)..

..giving financial advice in Shajar’s room (inb4 what’s the difference between the mausoleum and Shajar’s room)..

..building evil snowmen alone in the middle of the night, like all mentally healthy middle aged men with 3 kids are wont to do..

..and getting the piss harassed out of him by the cat ghosts in the bathroom (sweet hipster band name alert #2). How is this like the fourth time this happens in the exact same spot, will you just stop autonomously cleaning the bathroom after midnight? It’s obviously where the cats hang out, give it the fuck up already.

-I’m actively TRYING TO DIE you absolute moron, what does a guy have to do to get killed around here?

Yea can’t say that I blame you but not happening, you can commit suicide by Ghost Alegra after the kids fuck off to college, ok? I promise.

-Oh like you promised me being heir was a route worth pursuing??

Um obviously you too need to go back and re-read your own life story, because I spent the entirety of our “““cherished””” time together telling you heirship is a shitty gig at generation 2. And then to top it off you went and married Wyatt to ensure maximum shittiness, so there you go, fucking enjoy. God I am so sick of both of you losers and we’re only 5 pics in. Let’s check in with your spawn, I’m sure they can’t possibly be more annoying than their parents-

-oh right, I forgot, this is the generation with 10/10/9 active points where the party never stops. Cyneswith are you somehow twerking to classical music?

-How else am I gonna attract all those hot senior citizens per my grey hair turn on and 20 lovers LTW?

Ok great yea I see how this is gonna go, you’re trying to entice people into voting you for heir based on how torturous playing this fucked up LTW is gonna be for me, well forget it, my readers are intellectuals and completely above such petty entertainment. (istg mofos, don’t even think about it, i already did Komei’s 5 pets career shit, i will burn this place to the ground if you saddle me with Cyneswith banging the elderly for 30 years)

-No need to worry your stupid little head, I will beat Cyneswith for HEIR just like I beat her HAIR up daily! HAHA!

Shajar no offense but you’re a fucking war crime of a sim, nearly everyone who’s ever met you hates you including your parents, and the fact that you’re the alternative here is really not helping my situation in any way. Also how the fuck are you gonna be heir when the only thing you seem to be attracted to is giving noogies, you’re like one week away from college and I still don’t even know if you’re str8 or gay or bi or w/e the fuck you are. You have Jojo’s personality combined with..

..yes exactly, DANIEL’S SOCIAL ABILITIES. I mean I was joking with the whole ‘Shajar’s the spawn of Satan’ thing, but this combo of traits was clearly drawn up in Hell’s boardroom.

ANYWAY. It’s a snowy Sunday morning, and anyone who has been a teen knows what that means:

Time to go clubbing! Man I remember being like 15, waking up on a freezing Sunday morning and my mom making me a cup of hot chocolate before I drove off to the club. Those were the days.

-Uh, Shaj, when did you learn how to drive?

-Don’t be stupid, Cyneswith, people don’t need to ‘learn’ how to drive.

-They absolutely do, actually.

-Well what can I tell you, the dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.

-Here we are, safe and sound! Celebratory noogie!

-YOU RAN OVER 9 PEOPLE

-How many times to I have to explain this to you, Apartment Life townies are not people.

Can’t argue with that logic. Let’s just go in and find out what Shajar’s sexual orientation is once and for all so I can spend the rest of this update aggressively promoting Wulf’s candidacy.

Now I consider ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ one of the dumbest sayings there is, but even I have to concede that this particular picture truly is worth a thousand words. Quick poll, what is more horrifying, Shajar’s literal Joker face or Cyneswith, whom I’ve never seen read a book ever, autonomously pulling one out in the middle of the dance floor, in what I can only assume is an attempt to attract old perverts with the schoolgirl routine?

And I know what some of you are thinking, you’re like ‘bro, you’re just reaching to make a bad joke bro, Cyneswith is just a sweet nice introvert and not like other girls, she doesn’t feel comfortable in the club’, well to that let me reply with another picture that is worth a thousand words:

Yea that’s right, on the first minute of our first time out WE RUN INTO THAT ONE ELDER TOWNIE THAT HAS WRINKLE MAKE UP ON. GODDAMMIT CYNESWITH

Do you guys remember how Jojo was obsessed with Stephen Tinker as a teen? Are you seeing the connection here?? Those kids have literally inherited the worst possible traits from both their parents turned up to 11, it’s fucking unreal.  

Right after I get over Wrinkle’s presence I turn around and what do I see, those 2, who have never had a non-noogie physical interaction, autonomously doing the family kiss thing. I didn’t even catch it on time because I was loling irl, we came out here so these assholes can find age-appropriate partners, and instead they’re kissing each other. Seems about right with this family, and clearly Striped Scarf’s dumb ass ships it.

-They look so much alike, it’s meant to be!

Yes, and they even share the same last name! Talk about written in the stars.

Thankfully Abhijeet is here to save us from incest by perving on Cyneswith. GTFO ABHIJEET. Anyone like ‘bro townies just autonomously come to greet your sims on community lots regardless of age, stop calling them perverts’, see you in about 5 pics down.  

I try to have Shajar chat up Striped Scarf and suffice it to say Shaj ~stole her heart~ and presumably put it on this stick to wave around.

NO. CYNESWITH NO. I’m seriously having déjà vu of all the times I was like ‘NO. JOJO NO’, jfc.

Shajar is unsurprisingly exhibiting no interest in socializing with anyone around her, instead she’s trying every activity this terribly lit place has to offer, and she looks demented while doing it:

I’m feeling a primal urge to photoshop Darth Vader’s melted helmet on the bowling ball here, someone please remind me to do it for the heir vote photoshoot.

-HA. SUCK IT DENISE JACQUET

That’s Denise Jacquet?! I can’t tell who anyone is for shit anymore. The default replacements are a scourge upon premade brands, I’m getting rid of them pronto. Speaking of scourges, where the hell is your sister?

-Who cares?

I wanna say ‘me’ but we both know that’s a lie.

Oh ok, THERE SHE IS.

-So you see Cyneswith, just because something is technically ‘illegal’, doesn’t mean it’s morally wrong-

Yea yea fascinating stuff, now get out of the hot tub or I will fucking neuter you, I don’t know if a eunuch mod already exists for medieval games but I will make one if it doesn’t.

Here, Cyneswith, drink some water, have a nice G-rated convo with your sister about violins and stop pissing me off. 

-First of all this is straight vodka.

Great.

-Secondly Shajar is talking about Mozart’s coprophilia.

-I sure am.

Amazing. Well, I guess it’s at times like these when you need to look inside your heart and truly ask yourself, what did you expect from Jojo’s children.

ABHIJEET ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME DID YOU EVEN HEAR ME TALK ABOUT CASTRATION

-Ha, I went home and put on my most elderly-looking formal wear!

-I hate to see you go but I love to watch you leave Ab <3

CYNESWITH SHUT UP. I can’t believe you people are actually making me miss Gunther’s teenage whoring, at least he kept it age appropriate.

-Is some random lady pressing her breasts against my head?

She most certainly is, Shajar, because it is now crystal clear that this bowling alley doubles as the site of annual perv townie convention and we walked right into it-

-and it’s also clear we have serious issues and are enjoying ourselves. Shaj I legit don’t know what to tell you, this is the first time you get along with someone right away and it just had to be the adult with the bad haircut and the flasher’s trench coat???

-You’re damn right it did.

Alright then, I’m officially going to nope out of this situation, safe in the knowledge you’re a noogiesexual and nothing will actually happen with this freak, so I’ll focus on Cyneswith instead who is much more of a loose canon. 

Here Cyn, talk to this guy, who I’m 90% sure is the same guy your father rejected in favor of stalking Stephen Tinker when he was your age.

-Ohhhh, he’s dreamy!

Omg really?? Halleluj-

-oh never mind, you were of course referring to adult ass Brandon Lillard. I do like that our townies have recurring roles each generation, we should make rejecting Blondie a rite of passage in this family. We should also officially gtfo because this is happening:

-Um, now that I’m looking at you in harsher lighting, it’s gonna be a no from me dawg. 

Oh, thank the fucking lord.

-Let’s celebrate the fact we didn’t get hopelessly obsessed with any adults here by doing the traditional Dance of Normality!

-We beat Dad’s genes, we beat Dad’s genes!

-We’re normal!

Yes, and we’re definitely showing it. Can we please leave now so I can make sure I’ve uninstalled Inteenminator and turn off free will? 

-Nop! Venue change!

-Got-out-of-the-car celebratory noogie!

-Made-it-to-the-door celebratory noogie!

Shajar you unironically have a noogie addiction, I’m not kidding in the slightest, you need to see a doctor.

Great, great, not another teen in sight and to top it off Denise followed us here to ensure maximum elder presence. I feel comfortable officially declaring this day a complete waste of time.

God, the vintage pink dress and the pink alcohol combo is some straight up current era Taylor Swift nonsense. That’s it, we’re outta here, back home where no one is lurking, waiting to strike at us-

-SOPHIE NOOOOOOOOOOOO💔💔💔💔💔

-The Lord is my shepherd.

NO HE ISN’T EVERYONE KNOWS YOU CAN’T HERD CATS PLEASE DON’T DIE

-Nop, I’m over it. Goodbye heathens, it’s been nice, hope you don’t find your paradise. 

UGH SOPHIE, my beloved Westboro lunatic, the last gangsta generation 1 cat we had.. I can’t believe you’re gone and all I’m left with is stupid Goro and D’vorah who can’t even beat up the fucking dog. This is truly painful.

Yes, pets, I agree, Kaylynn is completely to blame for Sophie dying of old age. The time has now come to decide on a cat heir-

-and since Goro ran away like a little bitch after Sophie’s death despite the fact he didn’t even like her, he’s automatically disqualified and will be going off to live on Melody and Daniel’s farm once returned to us. Congratulations to D’vorah I guess, on being the least terrible of two terrible options. 

On the topic of terrible heir options, Cyn has non-stop wants to go on dates and have her first kiss and all that crap, and since our Sunday morning clubbing was a bust we invite over the matchmaker.

-Hello there young Union, I see your house has been upgraded since I was last here.

Oh right we haven’t required your services since Daniel was a teen and we lived in a trailer, well we are flush with cash now!

-Hopefully your payment reflects that.

It will!! Just please give us someone good, I can’t deal with single teen Cyn for one more second.

-Oh my, what a beautiful BLANK PIECE OF PAPER.

WHAT!? NO THAT’S 5K IT’S JUST A SNOW GLITCH 

-What do I look like to you, a money thawing service?

Does such a service.. exist??

-It does not, so I have to go home and use a hairdryer on this!

Just come inside and we’ll give you non-frozen money!

-No, no, you’ll get what you paid for..

-Have a magical time!

...

.........

......................

Lakshmi this was so fucking evil that I almost want to age you down and see if you and Shajar hit it off. 

-As if, the whole neighborhood knows what you did to Komei.

Helped him achieve his insane 6-pets-career LTW?

-Turned him into a servant while your sim was lounging around all day!

Oh yea I did do that. But Wyatt was also a townie and he does literally nothing, Jojo is the servant now!

-Only because Wyatt is too fucking stupid to do things! Word has gotten out, no townie will ever marry in this family again unless they’re brain dead, so it’s Wyatts only for you from now on, sister!

Well this has been a complete fucking disaster. It was great seeing you again, Lakshmi, thanks for the dream date with the adult farting machine, 5k well-spent.

Pretty sure it was you bro, and yes, how about we don’t do that again.

Wyatt has brought over Amanda from work! (Aka Victoria’s only friend and subsequent lesbian lover, who is really pretty and is definitely getting married in at some point, preferably after the brown hair genes have been weakened so we can go back to being gingers.)  

-Wow Shajar, your grandmother, God rest her soul, mentioned you were her favorite and now I can see why! Loving the Kylo Ren look!

-Is someone being genuinely nice to me?! What is happening?

-Yes, please stop being nice to her, Amanda, we don’t want her getting used to it.

Jojo istg.

-Cyneswith dear, tell Amanda all about how much money your grandmother left you so she can stop being nice to Shajar. 

-Soooo much money, Miss Amanda!

-Ah, what a polite child I’ve single-handedly raised.

-Now, Cyneswith, you really need to get back on the dating scene so you have ample time to find the perfect spouse and continue our line, since you’re clearly the only one of my children that is remotely heir material. 

-Dad, Shajar and Wulf are right next to you.

-Oh they are? I’m wearing my special contact lenses that make those disappointments invisible to me, but even better, they need to hear this. Shajar is a noogiesexual and thus incapable of reproduction, and Wulf is not even a Union, I mean have you seen that kid? Wyatt reproduced by himself like the amoeba he is. Now, your grandmother-

-YOU MENTIONED ME 3 TIMES AND HERE I AM

OH FUCK VICTORIA, deleting the default replacements gave you base game hair!!!!

-That’s the part you’re scared by, not my Beetlejuicesque entrance?

There’s literally nothing scarier than your ghost sporting this haircut for all eternity, I’m re-downloading that default immediately. 

-Oh mom, so good to see you! Let me just hug my beloved child, Shijer-

-Shajar, dad.

-SHAJAR, let me hug Shajar, like I do all the time. 

-I’m glad to see you’re not picking favorites among your children like I did, the way I treated David-

-Daniel, mom.

-DANIEL, is the one thing I’ve truly been regretting in the afterlife. That and not skinning Marisa Bendett alive when I had the chance. 

-Well, as you can see by Shajar’s totally normal and not at all shocked reaction to my hug, I am a wonderful, fair, and emotionally available father. 

(Bruh this freaked me out so much when it happened, I mean I KNOW it’s an animation glitch but I was convinced my sims had become sentient for a good while after)

-Is your grandmother’s ghost still on the premises?

-Yup. 

-When will this nightmare end, paying attention to you is the worst. 

-Ok she’s gone.

-FINALLY. Now it’s back to the crypt for you, and don’t you dare go complain to her urn!

-Ah, Stephen, Stephen, my life is crap and I can’t even🎵

And with the knowledge you have composed a theme song for Stephen Tinker, part 1 of the Union comeback update is concluded. Will Shajar’s sexual orientation reveal itself? Will Cyneswith find true love? Will Jojo become a werewolf? Will Wulf continue to be the only dignified member of this family? Will D’vorah have kittens? Will Wyatt do literally anything worth mentioning? Tune in for parts 2 & 3 to find out, unfollow button on the upper right corner for those who need it. 

#gen 2 #ts2

[veinsandknuckles]

It's a bad life if you don't weaken, pt 6 (Tallahassee/Reader)

(Please consider reblogging if you like the fic!)

Tallahassee would never bother with a ‘nice merlot’ as long as there was stronger stuff for him to grab, his logic being that percentage won out over flavor every time and that drinking wine, especially named wine, was ‘fucking gay’. (Everyone had given up on trying to check his casual homophobia, but at least he’d traded some of his stronger terms for well... words that weren’t slurs.)

So what you got, after a lot of sulking, was neat rum in served up in clean glasses and cups, none of which matched the other. Tallahassee shook his head at you when you poured the left-over juice from the canned pineapple into yours and Little Rocks drinks, then groaned with disappointment when Columbus shrugged and followed suit.

Little Rock cheered to adulthood and immediately downed her drink. Because of your stunt with the juice, she wouldn’t be able to tell that it was practically a mocktail.

You stole both Tallahassee’s and Columbus’ line by cheering to alcohol and knocked back what you hoped would be the first glass of many. Tallahassee didn’t stop you from reaching for the bottle.

Columbus cheered to life, instantly embarrassing everyone before he clarified that he was being sarcastic.

Tallahassee cheered to tits and guns and freedom. Things deteriorated after that.

Columbus was waiting for you in the hallway with the mop when you left Little Rock’s room. You shut her door as quietly as you could and looked up at him.

“Is she... going to be okay?” Columbus leaned the mop against the wall and smoothed back his hair. You prayed he’d actually used it and not brought it up for you as a hint.

“Oh yeah. She got it all up and out and I helped her clean herself up. She’ll be right as rain after a night’s sleep.”

Little Rock hadn’t had a bad first go at being drunk. She hadn’t embarrassed herself any worse than hitting Columbus in the nose and admitting to you, in between vomiting, that she’d made out with Michael once behind the bleachers so he’d teach her how to hot wire a car. She’d just assumed you knew who Michael was. Or who Michael had been.

Columbus still looked a little worried and his nose still looked swollen, but he tried to smile. “It was so nice of you to take care of her like that. You’d make a really good mom.”

“...what?”

“No, I mean, you... you’re just... good, you know? Nice. A nice person.”

You could see he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him but you were too tired to help him untangle this one. Columbus shut his eyes tight. Eventually you relented.

“Right. Thank you. Thankfully we’ll never have to find out about the ‘mom’ part.”

He laughed and nodded and you’d never seen anyone make it look less natural.

The tension out here was as thick as glue, worse than could be expected after only a weirdly put compliment, and it worried you because hardly any of this tension was radiating from you.

Columbus was... there was no nicer way to put it, he was getting weirder. You’d avoided speculation and this was not when you wanted to go there - you were still buzzed, everyone had had a chance to unwind (all over the stairs in Little Rock’s case) and while you’d counted on having to help the actual child, you absolutely did not want to babysit anybody else. Or their... feelings.

“Well, um. It was still really nice of you and I was just thinking that maybe you could use some a-... some time to relax, too. I got an old tape player working in the rec room, it just needed new batteries.”

Oh, you could picture it alright, more terrible cocktails, tinny top 40 music from back when cassettes were still a thing and Columbus trying to make out with you against a fuss-ball table. You shuddered and pulled your hoodie tighter around you to pretend it was the draft that was bothering you. He wasn’t a bad guy, he just didn’t know what he was doing, or that you wouldn’t be willing to teach him. God help him if he found out your real preference... he’d have to accept that when you got quiet and stared out the car window, you weren’t, as he’d apparently assumed, wishing for a life of peace and safety, obscure indie rock and rearing apple-cheeked children but instead daydreaming about crawling into the front seat and choking on Tallahassee’s dick while he was still driving.

You’d been wrong. No attention at all would be better than this. You missed being ignored by Tallahassee.

“That... that sounds so nice, Columbus, but I’m completely wrecked. Can we take a rain check?”

Columbus beamed as if that’s just the words he’d hoped to hear. You’d been too nice, you’d made your negative much too ambiguous.

“Rain check, yeah, of course! The rec room isn’t going anywhere. Did you check it out yet? It’s pretty cool, totally retro.”

“I bet it is.” You sighed and rubbed your forehead to sell the excuse. Actually, speak of the devil - now you were really developing a headache. “Seems a shame to let the cocktails go to waste though. Mind if I steal one as a nightcap?”

“Of course not, I made them for you. I’ll bring one up for you.”

You had to squeeze past him to get to your bedroom and you heard him draw in a sharp breath. God damn it. You shut your door behind you, leaned on it and nearly slid to the floor, then pulled yourself together. The door opened inwards so you wedged a chair under the handle and sat down on the bed.

Something was different and you looked around, eager for anything else to think about. It took you a few seconds, then you brushed your hand across the bed again and realised it was made, not rumpled like you’d left it, and the sheets were different.

At first you felt sick. You didn’t want to have to elevate Columbus from misguided softie to genuine creep... but he’d been outside, and then with Little Rock in the kitchen all afternoon and evening. Tallahassee had been the only one upstairs.

You pulled the blanket back and leaned down to sniff the sheets. They were clean, a little musty from disuse... and then you caught a whiff of Tallahassee’s cologne.

He’d made your bed. It made you flush hot, even though you remembered that Little Rock’s bed had been surprisingly fresh, too and knew he’d probably just done over all of them to keep his hands busy.

Still. The sheets smelled a little like him and you quickly pulled the pillow over that spot, lest it faded into the night before Columbus’ return. You should not have asked him to fetch you that drink....

The door rattled and you got back up, got the chair out of the way and exited into the hallway. Columbus hadn’t even knocked. You smiled at him awkwardly and then pretended you only just now realised that blocking the door against him was a little odd. “I can’t go to sleep these days unless I know no one can get in...”

“Oh yeah, that makes sense.”

You took the glass from his hand and left it on a table just inside your room. Columbus wasn’t leaving.

“Thank you, Columbus. That was really nice of you.”

“You know you’re safe, right? Me and Tallahassee, we’ll make sure we’re all safe.”

“Never hurts to be a little paranoid.”

He tried to laugh that off, and you looked down at your hands.

“Well... Goodnight, alright?” Take the hint. Please, take the hint. He was still there. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Of course.”

Columbus leaned out, gave two awkward finger guns and you couldn’t help laughing even if you were uncomfortable. That was a mistake, because Columbus must have read somewhere that women go for men that make them laugh and he leaned in with one hand on the wall next to your ear and kissed you.

You’d never expected him to just go for it like that... and his other hand was actually on your arm, making it difficult for you to slip away. His breath tasted like pure alcohol. He’d never been a big drinker. You weren’t sober yourself so your reaction time left something to be desired; finally, and it felt like it’d taken an age, you overcame your surprise and pushed him gently but firmly away from you.

“Columbus...” You kept your voice at a whisper because the last thing you wanted was to embarrass him any more than you had to.

“I... that was wrong. Right? I misread you.”

“Yeah. You did.”

He nodded, quickly, head bobbing up and down as if that could dislodge his blush. “It was too soon. I get it. I’m sorry.”

You drew a deep breath. You really hadn’t wanted to have to do this, but now the situation had become too dire for hints. “Columbus, I’m sorry, but it has nothing to do with time. I just don’t think of you that way. And I’m never going to.”

He stared at you. First he looked confused, then almost angry, then lost. “...Why? I mean, why not?”

“Come on, you don’t really want me to answer that.”

“Oh.” He stepped back further and smiled, stiff and proud and this time definitely a little pissed off. “No, I get it. I’m just a skinny nerd, what would you want with me? You should hold out for Mr. Perfect, I’m sure he’s right around the corner.”

As if your taste wasn’t a good enough reason... you drew yourself up a little too. He wouldn’t force you to apologise again, or to give him an explanation that he’d like better. He was drunk and disappointed, sure, but that would only excuse him for so long. “You’re too good a person to want someone who’s just settling for you, or someone who’s with you out of pity.”

“Good guy, that’s me.”

“Don’t start.”

Columbus sucked in a deep breath through his nose and when he exhaled it, his anger left with it. “You’re right. That was a shitty thing to say, I’m sorry.” He rubbed his eyes and added. “I’m so drunk, still... as it turns out, rum is strong stuff.”

But he’d used up all your patience by now so you just nodded and moved back towards your door. “Then go sleep it off. I’ll forget this ever happened as long as you take me at my word and don’t try anything like that again.”

This time, you did slide to the floor when you got back into your room. You sat there for a long time with your arms around your knees and you didn’t cry.

---

Well, it had happened. It’d finally happened.

The two of you had been much too busy to hear him step out onto the landing, and if you’d heard him go back into his room or shut his door and realised you’d had an audience, it wasn’t his problem.

Tallahassee stared at the bottle in his hand. For a moment he meant to chuck it at the wall, but someone would be bound to come running to chew him out for causing noise. And it was still half full. It’d be a shame to waste it.

He would’ve punched a pillow instead, but that’d never done any good for anybody. He stalked to the window and looked down at the abandoned car - maybe the keys were still in the ignition. He hadn’t had time to unpack his own stuff yet, he could just grab his bag and bail, let these idiots fend for themselves and see how they liked it.

But no, he couldn’t do that, not to Little Rock. That boy must have some well hidden talent for manipulation because he’d known just what to say to make Tallahassee start to think of her almost as if she was his own daughter. And now he’d gotten under your skin, too.

Tallahassee had spun on his heels the instant he saw you two locking lips and he couldn’t get the image of it out of his mind. God fucking damn it, his own room was right next yours. Any minute now he’d have to listen to the headboard bouncing off the wall and the two of you doing your best to keep quiet.

Only light at the end of the tunnel was that there was absolutely no way it’d last long. He snorted. Columbus might as well have ‘adult virgin’ tattooed across his forehead and Tallahassee would eat his own hat if that pipsqueak lasted more than a minute.

That wasn’t much of a positive. Because it’d still mean someone other than Tallahassee was fucking you, holding you... finishing in you. Maybe if the kid was bad enough at it, you’d tire of him eventually. Want something real. Someone who’d know what to do with you...

God, that was a real low thought. Tallahassee took a deep drink, ran his fingers over his face and groaned. Definitely starting to lose it, the old him would never have gotten this twisted up over a woman. Maybe he should take that car for a joyride, find some zombies to cut down and -

Someone knocked on his door. Oh, great.

“Now’s really not the time,” he growled. There was a creak as whoever it was shifted their weight from one foot to the other. Then your voice, soft and quiet, replied with a “please.”

You looked as if you were about to cry. Or like you were pissed off, it was hard to tell sometimes. Tallahassee stared down at you, completely non-plussed, then leaned out of the doorway but there was no one else on the landing. “Uh... yeah. Fine.”

You slipped past him barefoot and he, very gently, closed the door and gestured to the bed, the only piece of furniture in here for you to sit on. As it happened, he gestured with the hand still holding the bottle. Oh well. The floor probably could do with being disinfected. He watched you impassively as you padded over and sat down with a shiver, then held the bottle out to you. You took it, drank, made a face and then settled back down to looking tired and miserable.

“I leave you people alone for five minutes and this is what happens, huh?”

If you’d been a friend or a lover, hell, even a kid, Tallahassee would have known what to do. He’d stroke your chin and lift it up so you would look at him and then he’d pull you close, let you give him your weight and keep still and gentle while you cried or talked out your worries. But you were none of those things. The only thing he could offer without crossing any boundaries was words. Of course, he wasn’t comfortable with that kind of talk and you didn’t really look ready to spill your guts unprovoked.

“Come on,” he managed at last. “Romeo couldn’t have been that bad, could he?”

#tallahassee x reader #tallahassee imagines #Zombieland #zombieland: double tap #zombieland 2 #woody #my fics

[mattzerella-sticks]

Self Insert, s15 coda, M, 3.8k

(TW: overdosing - no deaths, but a lot of pills are taken at once)

Ever since finding out that Chuck has been writing their lives, the Winchesters are going off script more than usual. And each act of free will spits on all of Chuck's work and muddles his sharp, writer's mind. It's bad enough he has to babysit a powerful demon he brought back from the Empty, but now he can't write the ending the Winchesters deserve. How can he create an epic, gut-wrenching ending when he's being given domesticity, wallowing, and a badass Castiel to work with. All of it useless to him.

There's nothing anchoring his work. No puppeteer to pull the strings. But somehow Lilith proves her worth and finds the silver lining in the stormy skies.

Chuck raids Becky’s bathroom cabinet, mirrored door swinging wildly on its hinges while he searches for aspirin. Another migraine rips across his temple, flaring as powerful as a dying star. He curses, tossing lotions and bottles randomly until he finds the economy sized tub. “Thank me,” he sighs, grabbing it and twisting the cap off. One pill wouldn’t cut it, so Chuck poured the bottle down his throat until his cheeks puffed. Then he races to the kitchen for a pitcher of water to wash it down with.

Lilith watches on, unamused by the laughable scene of God overpowered by a simple headache. “Really?” she starts, waiting until Chuck leans against the counter with an empty pitcher in hand, “You couldn’t snap your fingers and make it go away?”

He shoots her a glare but she doesn’t wilt. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“But swallowing enough pills that could take down all of Jonestown helps?”

“Maybe?” Chuck shrugs, “Power of suggestion?” As he says that, another beat of pain flares up. Dropping the pitcher, he rubs at his forehead. It shatters against the tiles. Chuck walks away, muttering, “Clean that up.”

“Oh, that’s all I am now?” Lilith snarls, defiant, “Your maid ? Not even good enough to be a plot device anymore?”

Another headache wiggles at the base of his skull, where a set of fiery white eyes burn into him. “You weren’t even that good of one to begin with.”

“Excuse me!”

Chuck scrubs his hands over his face, frozen, waiting for the avalanche he knocked over to bury him. Lilith stomps towards him, each blow to the floor adding to his already drumming head. She claws at his arm and forces him to look at her. “ What ?”

“You know what,” she says, squinting up at him, “You wake me up, bring me here, give me one night of freedom and then…? Nothing ! There’s only so much you can do in a damn house. Especially one that doesn’t have any cable !”

Chuck copies her disdainful expression. “There’s wi-fi.”

“That doesn’t help me when you have the only laptop!” Lilith yells at him, “Give me something to do, dammit. Otherwise just send me back to the Empty!”

“I gave you something to do,” he lobs back at her, “And you did it poorly .”

“I got you the Equalizer!”

“You got rid of the Equalizer!”

“Which I still haven’t been thanked for,” she says, hands flying above her, “I know you’re the Almighty Father but would it kill you to express the smallest amount of gratitude? I mean, no wonder Lucifer fell like he did…”

Chuck feels anger bubbling up inside him. Instead of wrecking his current base of operations he directs the maelstrom towards a distant galaxy light years away. Decimates three planets and freezes the core of their sun so the rest of that solar system dies slowly. “I wanted it.”

“For what reason?” she asks,”What reason would possibly warrant you keeping a weapon that can kill you around? It makes no sense.”

“It doesn’t have to make sense!” Chuck tells her, voice loud and enriched with power, “Out of the two of us here there’s only one God and it’s me… I don’t have to tell you anything . I don’t have to keep you here .”

“But you do,” Lilith says, “Not out torturing the Winchesters or their friends. Not back in the Empty sleeping for the rest of eternity. No, I’m here because you need me. Need me to sit around and read through every different ending you’ve written, being slowly driven mad because I’m the one forced to entertain your mediocre bullshit - nggh!”

Lilith hovers inches off the ground. She claws at her neck, where an invisible force applies excess amounts of pressure. Breathing doesn’t matter, but with her windpipe crushed she can’t speak. The pain comes when Chuck’s eyes glow a blinding blue and parts of her essence shrivel from the exposure.

In a blink the light show ends and she falls. Chuck steps to her, glaring at her crumpled form. “You want to know the real reason why you’re not back in the game?” he scoffs, “The Equalizer was only number one on the list of things you seriously screwed up. Because of you, the Winchesters know I’m working behind the scenes! You took my hand and laid every card I had on the table. Your whole chapter went nothing like I wrote !”

“That wasn’t my fault,” she coughs, wiping at her mouth, “You stuck me with lumps and expected statues . Of course nothing was going to plan.”

“Maybe if you tried harder the Winchesters would have responded better -”

“Winchesters?” Lilith laughs, a rough, hollow melody that grates on his nerves. “Kind of a roundabout way of saying Dean , don’t you think?”

Like being shot by Sam again, Chuck recoils from the strike. He considers flexing his power, destroying her and bringing her back again, only to settle after deeming it a waste. “No, it’s not… you failed with both of them -”

“So I was supposed to seduce both of them?” Lilith says, “Because I read your flimsy excuse of a first draft and that part with Sam wasn’t included. In fact, Sam was hardly mentioned in it at all. You still nursing a… wound ?”

Chuck brushes the joke off, shoulder tensing under his jacket. Tendrils of pain squeezing the muscles where the bullet rests. “Sam wasn’t that important then… it was you and Dean  -”

“And the knock-off erotica you wrote in which I, trapped playing a barely legal philosophy major, seduce Big Brother Winchester and we have crazy sex where I’m moaning and screaming ‘That’s it! Slam into my tight, little, virginal ass, Dean’!” She writhes on the floor, giving a Meg Ryan-worthy performance. Lilith stops with one hand tangled in her hair while the other supports her arched back. Bedroom eyes replaced with a harsh gaze. “Sorry I didn’t become the little porn star you wanted daddy. ”

He grabs her arm and drags Lilith to her feet. “I didn’t realize you treated that scene like a joke.”

“I could have,” she tells him, “Really play up the innocent school girl routine, but whatever I would’ve sold Dean wouldn’t have bought.”

“Of course he would have,” Chuck says, defensive, “This is Dean we’re talking about. He should’ve been all over you in that motel room.”

“Well he wasn’t.”

“Because you weren’t playing up your character’s sexuality enough,” he argues, “I made it really easy for you, too, what with all the aphrodisiacs I wrote in. Do you know how hard it is to insert ideas into someone’s head that they should change the layout of their motel rooms so they had mood lighting and antlers everywhere? In such a short time? No!” His finger jabs at her, close enough he nearly pokes her eye. “Since I’m ninety-nine-point-nine-nine infallible than the problem was definitely you .”

Lilith scowls at him, sharp teeth poking between her lips. “Like I keep telling you, it wasn’t me - and it also wasn’t you. It was Dean, he wasn’t interested .”

“Because you weren’t -”

“No!” she shouts over him, “Because he’s not the Dean you knew! Because he realized how creepy it is hooking up with a girl who’s almost half his age ! Who only seconds before was crying about how awful her life was because she felt like she had no purpose. I bet that at no moment of knowing ‘Ashley’ did he think her purpose was to happily take his wrinkled dick and fondle some saggy balls for fifteen seconds until he came and fell asleep without even attempting to return the favor! I’m tired of saying this but he is not the man you know anymore!” Lilith’s chest heaves with the force of her words, a few of the figurines in the room tipping over from how wild her power shot during her tirade. Like whips of electric energy she tore through the room, shattering picture frames and upending Becky’s model Roadhouse.

Chuck watches her through slitted eyes. He snaps his fingers and the room repairs itself. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Chuck says, “Of course I know him - I know all of them. They’re my creations. Nothing’s changed about them, not at all.”

“So you’re completely ignoring what showed up today?”

A shadow passes over his face at the question. Another tidal wave of pain roars through his mind, every nerve in his body swept in its destructive path. “It’s nothing.”

“Sure it isn’t,” Lilith says, backing away, “That’s why you spent all that time ripping it to shreds only for it to reappear on your desk like it never happened -”

“Lilith.”

“I took a peak, of course,” she admits, “I found it… I didn’t immediately hand it over. Like I said, I’m bored . It was interesting… very different than a lot of other things I’d been forced to read.”

“Stop it, I mean it -”

“Dean Winchester, our charming man of action, holed up in his room eating his feelings and nursing some heartbreak,” Lilith mocks, tone heavy with cruel delight. “Sam, the boy afraid of his own powers, taking ownership of his affluence and ability with magic. And Castiel the - actually, I don’t really know how to describe him. The angel never really comes up in your writings. I don’t know why seeing how hot that action scene was. If you wanted me to seduce him, I wouldn’t really mind… if Meg could do it then so can I -”

“ Enough .” Chuck snarls, windows shattering all around the house. Pain from the migraine becomes too much to deal with so he sinks to his knees, unable to use his powers and fix the broken glass. All he can do is focus all his energy on his breathing while he fights the chaos of free will tearing up his future.

When he feels more in control again Chuck opens his eyes and chances a look at Lilith. The angry expression on her face melted into a more unusual one. Curiosity easily shines in her eyes at his pathetic display, outlined with an odd hue of fear. Returning to full height, both school their expressions into masked indifference.

“Those pages were garbage ,” he tells Lilith, “they were… fanfiction . It’s not how it’s supposed to go. Sam’s happiness… Castiel’s confidence and Dean…” Chuck can’t bear to utter the next few words. “Whoever wrote those doesn’t know all the work I put into creating these characters. All the specifics of their characteristics that makes them who they are. That makes them butt heads and become their own worst enemies! I’m the author! Whatever I write is canon! And I do not like being mocked .”

“But you were, Chuck,” Lilith says, a softer approach, “Today you wrote the fanfiction… the story where Dean leaves Sam behind to drown in booze and women didn’t happen. Sam choosing to sacrifice the body of the woman he loves to destroy Rowena’s magic didn’t happen. Castiel being too late to save that mother and kid because he was paralyzed by his depression… that didn’t happen . None of what you’re writing will happen if you sit behind a desk and pray for it to work. Sometimes you need to put the effort in and bend the rules to fit your game.”

Chuck arches a brow in her direction. “Deus ex machina?” he frowns, “I kinda prefer keeping my arrival until the very end… I am God after all. If I show up too early then where’s the plot gonna go?”

“And yet the story of the Winchesters keeps going even though you're a recurring character,” she shakes her head. Lilith inches closer to him, smirking. “This isn’t the time to be holding back. Grand finales mean bringing in your heavy hitters, like yours truly . Who cares if you show up early? Every moment from beginning to end should be filled with adrenaline and action and not this… domestic crap.”

It’s a convincing argument, Lilith presenting her case with honeyed words fashioned to sweeten his ears. Except he doesn’t trust her enough to suspect that her goals are far less charitable than helping him with his runaway characters. In a room full of quickly-closing corners, however, he will take the first exit presented.

“That’s not a terrible idea,” he says, walking towards the study. Lilith follows. “Since Belphegor’s arc wrapped up way too early for him to be the Big Bad… there has been something missing in my work. No wonder Dean and Sam have been circling the drain!”

“It helps they’re already gunning for you,” Lilith adds, sitting in a nearby chair, “Good luck taking you off the board though seeing you’re God .”

Chuck relaxes behind his desk, staring at an open Word document. “But they’re putting up a united front. Kind of makes it hard to have one kill the other when there’s nothing driving them apart.”

“You could have Sam find out what Dean said to -”

“There’s nothing driving them apart.”

“Then be what drives them apart.”

“ How ?”

“I thought you were the writer here?” she scoffs, swinging her legs up over the armrest.

He rolls his eyes. “You said you wanted something to do, right? Help me come up with a wedge.”

“Kind of a waste of my skills…”

“You’d rather I send you into some other girl,” Chuck asks, “have you try and seduce Dean all over again?”

Lilith scowls. “Why don’t you try and seduce him.”

“What?”

“You seduce Dean,” she repeats, “You’re so obsessed with who he sleeps with, clearly you’re sporting a chub for the guy. Every scene you write with him in it makes it obvious, even the ones where he dies at Sam’s hands. No one needs to know how handsome a guy is moments away from death.”

Chuck shrugs, nervously fiddling with his glasses. “Debatable…”

“So why don’t you hop on his dick and get off mine.” She reaches behind her for one of the figures on display, snatching a Dean with opposable joints. Swinging his arm, Lilith takes the knife in its hand and has the miniature Winchester stab himself over and over again.

He pays her no mind, mulling over Lilith’s sarcastic suggestion. “Y’know…” Chuck mumbles, putting on his glasses, “that could work…” Chuck’s fingers begin typing. The story unfolds easily now that the missing element - himself - was added to the page. A wicked smile unfurls the more he types.

Hours pass, and Chuck has a working idea of how the Winchesters’ world will end.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Sam carries a few books through the Bunker’s main room when he hears the door open from above. Glancing up he finds Dean casually strolling down the steps. A swagger in his posture that hadn’t been present in a long while. So taken aback he nearly let his brother walk away without the stern interrogation he planned.

“Dean,” he starts, “where were you?”

Dean pauses under the archway, facing away from Sam. His hand pressed against the wall. “Out.”

“Out?” Sam scoffs, “That’s it?”

“Yeah. I was out.”

“Without leaving a note or answering mine or Cas’s calls and texts?” Sam stomps over, scowling, “You complain all this time about him ignoring us. And the moment he gets here you turn tail and leave? What’s the matter with you?”

Dean shrugs, showing a sliver of his handsome profile to Sam. “Had better things to do then waste hours running in circles with you and a fallen angel.”

Sam’s expression hardens. “Out, huh?” he asks, “Did you go to the jerk store?”

“No,” Dean says, “now are we done? Can you go back to your bitch party?”

“Dammit, Dean!” He grabs his brother’s shoulder and spins him around, stomach clenching at the disinterested stare that greets him. “I thought we were done with this, man! If we’re gonna have any chance to take down Chuck than I need you here, with us. Knowing he’s still playing with our lives it’s… I know it’s hard. But none of us will make it out alive if we’re keeping each other at a distance.”

Dean pouts throughout Sam’s speech, but a spark flickers in his eyes. His tight shoulders droop under an invisible weight, and the indifferent mask breaks. “Sorry,” he says, “I… I know. I get it. But I didn’t want to sit and read and… I found this case in Texas. Thought Chuck was tied to it. Figured you and Cas were okay to sit tight and handle the research while I hit the field.”

Sam sighs, the knot in his chest unwinding. “That’s… okay. Wish you still told us but… did it pan out?”

“What do you think?” Dean shrugs. He scrubs a tired hand over his perfect jaw, plush lips stretching under his touch. “It… it didn’t turn out so well. Wasn’t so much Chuck as it was a djinn. Handled it anyway.”

“That’s… that’s good,” Sam says, attempting a smile, “You feel any better killing it?”

He shakes his head. “Not exactly what I wanted to kill at the time.”

Seeing his brother crack open his hard shell eases some of the tension between them. Sam inches closer, bringing his brother into a hug. Going slow to give Dean enough time to escape. When he doesn’t, Sam wraps his arms around his brother. “We’ll find a way to get Chuck,” Sam tells him, “and the second we get him you’ll have first dibs.”

Dean shifts in his hold. “Funny thing, Sam,” Dean mumbles, “I’m not in the mood to kill Chuck, either.”

“What -”?

Snkkt

A burning pain rips through his chest from where the blade sunk in. Blood rushes up his throat and bubbles in his mouth, Sam spluttering while it leaks from his parted lips. The books in his hand crash to the floor and he stumbles backwards in shock.

Dean watches him with a soft glee highlighting the crinkles near his gorgeous eyes. Sam darts his gaze from his brother’s face to the red-stained knife in his hands. His hands rush to cover the wound, but the blood continues gushing. “W-what…?”

“Enchanted,” Dean tells him, wiggling the weapon like a toy, “got it from a special friend.”

“You…” Sam’s legs give out and he crumbles to the floor, “How…”

A slow clap echoes in the room, drawing Sam’s attention. He uses all the strength left in him to crane his neck to where the sound originates.

Chuck, in a burgundy blazer and pressed black slacks, stands over them. Sam’s eyes widen as he descends the stairs. “Y-you,” Sam mutters, on his hands at this point, “How… why…”

“It’s easy,” Chuck says, passing him on his way to Dean. His brother welcomes him gladly, adoration shining. Darkness edges his vision, but Sam can still see how Dean nuzzles Chuck’s hand when it rubs his cheek. Accepts a kiss as he bleeds out in front of him. “Dean finally understands his place in the story…”

“Your word is law, baby,” Dean says, “Whatever you want, I’ll do.”

“You know what I’d really love…?”

In his final moments Sam becomes a third party to the scene about to play out. Chuck whispers to him, mouth hidden. Dean nods and drops to his knees. His last breath intermingles with the jingle of Dean removing Chuck’s belt. Chuck’s zipper being undone one of the last thing he hears. Sam’s life eeks out of him, and he dies knowing his brother has and will continue to service the very being that controlled their lives from the beginning.

“If only you knew, Sam,” Chuck says, “the glory that comes from giving your life to God…”

-------------------------------------------

Chuck waits for Lilith to finish, leaning on his desk while she reads the printed pages. It’s been very silent, a worrisome song for writers when faced with readers. But given the variety of faces she shuffled through Chuck feels his nerves untangling.

“I have to say,” she says, “I’ve said this before and I didn’t really mean it all those other times. But when I say this is great… I actually mean it.”

“Really?”

“Well?” Lilith shrugs her shoulders, “it’s better than anything else you’ve done. It’s fresh, you’re not rehashing any of the old plot points that’ve come and gone. There’s a strong point of view here… Really appreciated you using Sam’s blood as lube -”

“I knew you would.”

“And that part where Cas walked in on you fingering Dean,” she continues, slapping the papers, “I cackled! Forcing him to stay until you finished and then making Dean kill him was brilliant.”

Chuck blushes under the praise, waving her off. “It just grew organically from where the story was going.”

“And then some…” Lilith lies his work flat on her lap and stares at him. “Now the only question I have is… will this ending actually happen ?”

“Oh… I think we’re winding closer to the end than anyone realizes…” Chuck turns the laptop around and shows Lilith the news article he found celebrating a local celebrity named Leo Webb. “And to thank you for the inspiration… I have another job for you.”

Lilith sinks to her seat. “I’m interested.”

Chuck explains the scene he has waiting, the unfinished threads he will quilt together later on. The more he talks about it the better the finished product becomes in his mind. An excitement that hadn’t existed inside for a long time squeezes his heart. He looks forward to leaving Becky’s house and getting his hands dirty. A joy he thought only came from creating worlds resurfacing in the opening act of destroying one.

Writing about Dean and Sam for so long made him forget who the real star of their story was. And it’s high time he reminds them.

----------------------------------------------------

Sam shuffles into the kitchen, rewinding through the horrible dream he experienced. One of the worst since he shot Chuck with the Equalizer. Thinking about it sends shivers racing up and down his spine like it’s NASCAR. The cars on the makeshift track speed faster when he finds Dean stuffing cereal into his face.

“Morning Sam,” he says, waving with his spoon, “Wanna pull up a seat?”

He doesn’t answer. Sam books it towards the coffee pot and debates pouring the drink over his eyes. Instead he grabs a mug from the cabinet above and fills it. Quickly, uncaring to how a few drops splash onto the counter. The faster he makes his coffee the sooner he can hide in his room until he wipes his memory of the horrible nightmare.

Dean won’t let him. When Sam turns to leave, he’s blocking his escape with a stern frown. “Sam?”

“...Yeah?”

“What’s wrong?”

Sam shuffles his feet, unable to meet Dean’s questioning stare. His brother asks again. “I can’t, Dean.”

“Why not?” he asks.

“Because if I say it, out loud it’s…” Sam sighs, “it’s real.”

Dean nods, leaning against the island. “Another vision?”

“Yeah…”

“How bad was it?”

“So bad.”

“And you’re sure you don’t want to talk about it?” Dean asks, “Y’know… maybe if you let me know I can -”

“No.”

“No?”

Sam shakes his head. “No. Trust me Dean, this… you don’t want to know…

#Supernatural #Spn #Spn15 #15x05 #15x06 #Proverbs 17:3 #15x06 golden time #Supernatural fanfiction #Spn fanfic #Spn meta fanfic #Chuck Shurley #Lilith #Dean Winchester #Sam Winchester #Castiel #Destiel #deancas #destiel fanfic #deancas fanfic #light mentions of deancas no outright mention but its heavily implied and there #Chuck/Dean #Chean or Duck

[chaoticquips]

Wrapped Up

A reminder that @linklyshow is a wonderful person! An angel, best boy.

Continuation to my Coraline AU, although this is more like the end of the movie whoops!

The door slams shut behind him. He’s too busy trying to catch his breath and slow down the mounting panic to really revel in the cold draft that washes over his back. 

It’s all normal again. No magic, no bugs, no sand filled needle creatures trying to grab at him-

It’s over.  

When he moves, there’s a slight sting to his thigh. Grazes left from their fingers-

He pulls off his- Robin’s -glove and tucks the door key inside with shaking fingers. A wave of relief comes in and settles in his stomach as nausea. Numbly, he slides down against the wall until he’s slumped against it.

He almost... died in there. In a little door in a little house in the middle of no where with no one to even realize he was gone. 

Shaky breath in. Shaky breath out. Repeat. He grips the glove tightly, feeling the outline of the key on his palm. It helps a little bit, reminding him of-

The front door opens. Wally scrambles to his feet in what can only be enthusiastic relief. 

“Mom! Dad! Oh my god, I missed you so much!” With tear-filled eyes, he barrels into them. Hugs them tightly and breaths in that wonderful, parental smell of home. They’re home. 

“Whoa! Slow down there, kiddo, you act like you haven’t seen us in ages!” 

That’s... that’s not... 

Eyes wide, he whips his head up to see none other than-

“Uncle Barry?!” 

“What am I, chopped liver?” Iris laughs at his side. She smooths a hand over his wild hair and Wally realizes what a mess he looks. 

And that he’s still clinging to them like a life line. 

He quickly lets go, sniffling. “S-Sorry! What are you guys doing here?”

“Well, your parents wanted us to come see the new place, get our opinion on it since, well...” Barry rubs the back of his head. 

“You seemed lonely, all by yourself.” Iris cuts in, giving him that soft smile of hers that makes his chest feel a little too tight. A little too loved. “Sometimes new environments can be hard to settle into, it’s easier to have some sort of familiarity around, right?”

“What better familiarity than family, right kiddo?” Barry ruffles his hair and Wally chokes back a laugh that almost shoots out of his mouth like a sob. 

“But it looks like you’ve been adjusting fine?” Iris says, shaking off her coat to hang on the rack next to the door. “Look at you, all dirtied up! What have you been up to today, Wally? Hopefully nothing too dangerous?” She shoots Barry that secret little look she sometimes does that makes him all nervous.

“What’s the look for, hun?”

“Oh, you know.” 

Wally feels the weight on his chest disappear. A laugh trickles out as he takes their- warm, soft, real -hands and leads them into the house. 

“There’s a garden outside, you wanna see it?”

“Sure! Let’s get you cleaned up first so your mother doesn’t have a fit.” 

“Iris, we’re heading outside, he’s going to get dirty anyway-”

“Barry. Need I remind you of the dog incident?”

“I’ll shut up now.” 

He can’t stop the smile on his face. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Gah!” At the sudden voice, Wally falls backwards and drops in the deep pit he had just climbed out of. 

“Oh, shi- shoot! I’m so sorry!” Hands suddenly pulling him up, too quickly too quickly, the world spinning as Wally rubs the winded feeling out of his chest. Taking a few deep breaths with his eyes closed, sitting up against the stone wall, he feels hands on his shoulders. 

When he opens his eyes, he glares. 

“Oh, you.”

“Uh, yeah. Me.” Robin says nervously. He’s wringing his hands together and actually looks a little... guilty? Wally sighs.

“Whaddya want now, gonna make fun of me again?” Wally moves to stand up but is swiftly pushed back down by Robin’s surprisingly firm hands. 

“No!” 

Rather than the firm, chunky feeling of Robin’s coat sleeves going over his palms, Wally realizes he’s looking for the soft feeling of gloves. He’s looking for warm, soft blue moonlight on a rooftop where he was taken off guard by someone surprisingly kind to him. 

His face tingles where the Other Robin had...kissed him.  

To push back the rising embarrassment and incoming blush, he immediately tries to focus on the stupidbutreallykindacute way this Robin styles his hair. 

God dammit. 

“I.. I wanted to apologize, for calling you weird.” Robin moves from a crouched position over Wally’s lap to sit with a hard thump on the ground in front of him. “I shouldn’t have said that, I really shouldn’t have. It’s just...” He sighs. 

“I dunno, I don’t really have a lot of friends.” Wally snorts.

“You don’t say?”

“Shut up.” He whines out, nudging at Wally with his foot. “Point is, I said some stupid stuff I shouldn’t have about you and I feel bad. I thought you were like the other kids.” He’s hunched over himself, taking off his glasses for once and rubbing at his eyes. 

Curiosity at what the weird kid who’s been harassing him all summer actually looks like strikes Wally like a harpoon. But he’s still kinda pissed, so he looks at Robin’s shoes instead before he sees anything.

... Jesus, those are some expensive shoes.

“What other kids?”

“The ones I go to school with. They... they say shit about me all the time and I didn’t realize you were just joking around. Defensive measures and all that.” He shrugs, voice muffled by his coat sleeves.

“Doesn’t make it all right though.” Wally says.

“Yeah, I know. It really doesn’t. Trust me, I’ve been beating myself up about this.” With a half hearted chuckle, Robin lifts up his left, bandaged hand away from his face, but stays hunched over. 

“Wha- literally? Dude, what-” 

“L-Like I said, I’m beating myself up about it and now I’m getting yelled at for doing that, so I’m apologizing.” Robin cuts in. A hot flash of sadness and anger rips through Wally. 

“... So you’re just apologizing to me so you wont be in trouble anymore? If that’s all, fine, you’re forgiven, now go-”

“God dammit, no! I don’t want-!” Robin’s voice cracks as he slams his bandaged fist on the ground. “I don’t- I didn’t mean! Look, I’m trying to apologize!”

“Yeah, and you’re really bad at it!” 

“I know!” He yells out. 

“I mean, most people would have the decency to look me in the face if they were going to apologize-”

“I know, but I-!” Suddenly he stops. Wally watches the anger flow out of his body and hears him take a deep breath. 

“You’re frustrating as hell, you know that right?” He says quietly to his expensive shoes. 

“Hey man,-”

“Let’s start over!” He yells, pouncing forward and covering Wally’s eyes with his hands before he sees his face.

“Wha- dude! What the hell!” Wally reaches up and grabs at his hands, pulling them off. Belatedly he remembers the other boy is stronger than he looks. He doesn’t get far until his head nearly hits the wall behind him with the force of the other boy’s hands returning to his face. 

“Let’s start over! First impressions are everything, right? We just got off on the wrong foot.” 

“A few dozen times.” Wally mumbles. 

“Just-!” Robin stops and sighs. “...Do you think we could be friends? If we actually tried this time? I wont call you weird, you don’t call me weird, no arguing unless it’s banter because it’s actually kinda fun with you.”

“Mm, I didn’t know friendships had rules.”  

“Less rules, more like guidelines. A, what do people call it? A bro-code?” It’s the most anyone has ever tried with Wally before. He honestly feels a little touched his creepy neighbor is trying so hard. 

“I... I think I can work with that. Y’know, considering how desperately you wanna be friends with me.” 

“Oh shut up!” He can’t help but laugh at Robin’s expense and he’s pleasantly surprised to find the other boy laughing too. 

“God, you’re a mess.” Robin laughs out.

“Me?!”

“Yes!” It takes them a second to calm down, but finally Robin’s hands pull off his face ever so slightly. 

“I...I’m gonna take my hands off, ok? Then we can start over.”

“Dude, why are you nervous? You’re not horribly disfigured or something like that, right? Like, I don’t care if you are, it’s totally fine, just-”

Robin takes his hands off Wally’s face and gives him a smile so blinding he can’t tell if it’s the sun or not. 

Wait, no, it’s definitely the sun. He had his eyes closed for too long. 

“...So?”

“So what? I can’t see anything man, gimmie a second.” He rubs at his eyes while Robin stays strangely quiet. Then he clears his throat. 

“Hi! You must be Wally West, right? I believe you’re renting one of the rooms in the Pink Palace, right? I’m the son of your landlord, Dick. It’s nice to meet you!” 

When Wally opens his eyes, he almost doesn’t believe what he’s seeing. 

Dick Grayson, acclaimed child prodigy and adopted son to billionaire Bruce Wayne, is sitting in front of him. 

Directly in the dirt he had dug up for the tulips he had been planting. 

When Wally just stares at Dick, his smile shrinks and he moves to pick at his bandages. He averts his eyes from Wally.

“I-I heard you were into science, right? That’s partially why you moved here, so you could go to the academy on scholarship? Or was it to take special summer classes? That’s pretty cool either way.” 

“You’re-”

“I’m more of a math guy myself, y’know? And, uh, acrobatics but you probably already knew that.” 

More silence. 

“...Would you like me to grab you water or something? You look kinda pale-”

“You’re telling me,” Wally cuts him off, “That the creepy little shit who kept waking me up in the middle of the night to knock on my bedroom window, who stalked me for most of the summer, and almost got me killed is none other than the Dick Grayson.” 

“Um. I resent the creepy part and... yes?” Wally takes a deep breath.

“Hoooooly shit.” Wally rubs his face with his hands because, wow. Didn’t see that one coming. 

“But you get now, why I had to-”

“Hide your identity and be a total weirdo? Yup. It’s all coming full circle.” He makes a little circle in the air with his finger and Dick punches him gently.

“Hey!” 

“Unbelievable. That’s... good God, I’m friends with a celebrity.”

“Don’t go telling the world, ok? Mostly because people are, y’know.”

“Nah man, my lips are sealed. Besides, you said it yourself, who would I tell?”

“...”

“...Too soon?” Dick gives him a half smile and helps him to his feet. 

“So, uh, what did you mean when you said I almost got you killed?” Wally snorts. 

“That is a long story that I’m 100% sure you’re not gonna believe.” Dick does his little half smile again and Wally decides that he thinks it’s fitting for the other boy. 

“Try me. We’re friends now, I’m legally obligated to believe everything you say.”

“Alright.” Wally looks the other boy up and down, hand on his chin. Dick rolls his eyes with a grin. 

“Your shoes are way too expensive for gardening.” In mock offense, Dick puts a hand on his own chest. 

“Oh yeah? Well your jeans look too new to be gardening in!” 

“My jeans?Take a look at your- dress pants? Really?”

“I might have taken a reaaaally long break from my ballroom dancing classes at the summer house. Don’t worry about it.” 

“I’m gonna, especially when your nanny yells at me for being a bad influence on a ‘high-class citizen’.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Alfred would never yell at you. He’ll just give you the scariest silent treatment and cook your favorite food slightly off so that there’s something funky about it, but you don’t know what.” When Wally gives him a strange look, Dick starts laughing about how Wally looks funny when he’s confused. 

Wally realizes rich people are fucking weird.

Wally also realizes he really wants to reach out and hold his hand. 

Then Wally realizes that without the glasses, Dick has really pretty eyes. 

He’s so screwed.

#OH YOU KNOW.... #just one boy having a good time #sorta??? #its a yes their arguing is flirting and my mind can only be slightly swayed on that #fics #my work #birdflash #superheroes #dc #thank you for my lovely coraline au commissons linkly!!!! #i love them so much

[scgdoeswhat]

One Drink - Beckett x Clarette (F!MC)

Summary: Clarette persuades Beckett to do something other than study on a Saturday night.

Rating: M

Words: 3832

Author’s Notes: This has been sitting in my drafts for almost a month before finally polishing it up. It takes place sometime during the Fall Semester, a bit canon divergent since Chapter 8 happened. Beckett doesn’t belong to me (unfortunately), but the story does. No Beta used.

Sorry if the “Read More” link isn’t working. It’s Tumblr’s fault, not mine!

Tag list: @xo-endlessmayhem-xo​ @grungeisntmything​ @friendlylilshipper​ @felmasri​ @numberonepoetryexpert​ @hellomynameisdeviblaire​ @beckettbaguette​ @siegrrun​ @choicesthatplayyou @retroangxl​ @askdana​ @50shadesofgrayx​ @darley1101​ @kamybelen-blog​ @herdecisions​ @artchoicesreblog​ @teenytinymagician​ @choicesfannatalie​ @itsstillnotwhatyouthink​ @abigailpoe​ @flyawayboo​ @brightpinkpeppercorn​ @gardeningourmet​ @harringtons-honey​ @manateemilk​ @queenodysseia @thatcatlady0716​ @divergentofhogwarts​ @pottershat​ @topsyturvy-dream​ @choicesyouplayandmore​ @zeniamiii​ @never-neverland​

Please let me know if you want to be tagged/removed on future fics and I’ll tag anyone I may have missed in the comments. Thank you!

The Penderghast watchtower chimed, its bells reverberating to signal the 10 o’clock hour on a balmy, autumn, Saturday evening. Clarette LeFleur stood outside the room of one Beckett Harrington, puffing out a quick breath before smoothing down her outfit.

‘What’s the worst that could happen? He says no. No harm, no foul. Anyway, this is a last-minute thing and it’s not his scene. But since we’re friends, it’s totally normal that I’d invite him along.’ She psyched herself up, resolute in her actions. ‘Right. Let’s do this.’

Before her nerve could take off down the hall in a sprint, she gently rapped on the door, a sunny smile gracing her face as soon as the man in question appeared in front of her. It took every fiber of her being not to openly gawk at him, especially as he neglected to throw a shirt on before opening the door.

Beckett stared at her, mouth agape. It was not often he was left speechless, but he found himself grasping for words as he took in her appearance. He couldn’t help himself as his eyes roved over her; from the curve of her neck, to her black, satin spaghetti strap mini dress, and all the way down her long legs, which were accentuated by how short the piece of clothing was.

She felt her skin heat up under his attentive gaze, silently thanking Shreya for letting her borrow the designer dress. Breaking the silence, she cleared her throat. “So, are you going to invite me in, or are we having this conversation out here?”

Running a hand through his hair, he snapped out of the trance he had been in. “Yes, sorry. Please, come in.” He stepped aside, inhaling deeply after she passed by him. 

Clarette looked around his sanctum, taking note of the books on the desk, one of which was opened to a spell they had learned earlier in the week. His room was uncharacteristically tidy for someone his age, but she wouldn’t have expected anything less from him. The air had a clean and crisp smell, yet it was definitely masculine. The scent was distinctively Beckett.

“Mind if I take a seat?” 

“Go ahead, you can sit – “ he stopped abruptly when she hopped on his bed. He had to stop himself from flinching as he saw the wrinkles on his comforter. “Was there something you needed? Or can I get back to studying for Englund’s course?” 

She regarded him, head cocked to the side. “I was thinking about what we talked about that night in the library, what we do for fun.”

His eyes darted to her in a suspicious manner, crossing his arms to emphasize his point. “I’m almost afraid to ask, Clarette.”

“It’s Saturday night and the books are still going to be there tomorrow.” She shrugged before leaning back on her hands. “What do you say you come with me to Mysterium? We’ll meet up with the rest of the gang.”

He glanced over to the books on his desk, then back to her on his bed. Meeting her question with silence, his posture remained motionless, save for the movement of his eyes. Thank goodness he was known to be aloof; otherwise it would have been very apparent that she was unknowingly distracting him.

The lack of response made her fidget. He normally would quip back, but this silence was almost unnerving.

“I’ll make you a deal. You come out with me tonight and we’ll study all day tomorrow.”

“And how is that beneficial for me?”

“Here’s the thing. I have a basic understanding of what we're going over, but there's a few concepts I could use help with. By helping me review, it’ll reinforce it in your mind and I'll get some much-needed help,” she reasoned, her smile a bit too sweet.

He mulled over her offer. “And if I want to leave immediately?”

“One drink. Then if you still want to go, I won't stop you.”

“One drink?”

“One drink.”

“I'll hold you to that.”

“I wouldn't expect you not to. That being said, I think I'll be able to change your mind, Mr. Harrington.”

He smirked, throwing on a collared, dark pewter shirt. "Are you practicing the magic of persuasion, as well?"

Clarette threw her head back and laughed. The sound was so unlike the high-pitched giggles that usually accompanied the girls who tried so hard with him. Instead, he was taken with her melodic timbre, which was so vibrant and he knew that he wanted to hear more of it.

"No, but remember how I told you I won ‘Most Tenacious’ back in high school? That was before I knew I was attuned."

He shot her a slightly questioning eyebrow before turning to his mirror, combing his hair. "Will this suffice for the dress code?"

She appraised him, from his dark jeans to his tailored button down, her mouth slightly curving into a mischievous smile. "I'm almost shocked that you own such a peasant piece of material such as denim."

Beckett stood, stunned, if not offended, until he realized she was teasing him with that glint in her eye.

"...Clarette," he paused, waiting slightly until she squirmed uncomfortably, "I'll have you know us bourgeois folk wear these as well. They just happen to cost a thousand dollars," he replied, struggling to keep a composed face.

She gasped, pretending to clutch at her heart. "Oh. My. God. Did you just make a joke? Stop the presses!" Jumping off the bed, she grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the door. "Trust me; you've far surpassed any dress code that this place might have."

His smile faltered. "No dress code? What kind of barbaric place are you taking me to?!"

Laughing airily, she led him through his suite’s door to Penn Square. Within minutes, they arrived at the front of the line of Mysterium, the centaur waving them through. The heavy beats of the bass blasted through the speakers, the volume making it hard for Beckett to think. He was starting to regret following the woman who currently was guiding him by the hand through the dim club.

As if she felt his hesitation, Clarette turned around and slowed her pace, the two of them walking in tandem.

"You didn't tell me it was going to be this loud," he yelled over the music.

Putting her hand on his shoulder, he leaned over as she brought her mouth to his ear. "Sorry! I promise it's not that bad in the VIP area!"

He barely registered what she said, instead focusing on the sensation of her hot breath so close to such a sensitive area. They continued past the velvet rope, arriving at the table where Shreya, Zeph, and Griffin sat.

Surprise laced Shreya's face when she saw who Clarette had in tow, followed by a knowing look towards her suitemate. "I never thought I'd see the day where Beckett is out at a club. I guess that's another bottle for the table, then."

Signaling to the server waiting in the wings, a sparkling bottle of Dom Perignon hovered above their table, along with five glasses. Clarette watched, a childlike awe gracing her face, as the bottle poured itself perfectly into each flute, the liquid appearing to glitter with gold.

"I swear, I am never going to tire of that!" Clarette exclaimed as all five long-stemmed glasses gently found their way into each of their hands.

"So much better than having to try and flag down a bartender's attention, that's for sure," Zeph remarked.

"Sure helps having a Mistry in our midst,” Griffin chuckled.

"Oh, I see how it is! All of you are just using me for my connections then!" Shreya faux accused, laughing, before snapping a selfie of herself holding the bejeweled beverage in her hand. "Okay, Clarette, you do the honors. What are we toasting to tonight?"

Clarette tapped her chin thoughtfully, glancing around the table, until her gaze landed on Beckett, who was sitting next to her.

"I'd like to toast to you, for agreeing to come out tonight and be out of your comfort zone." Turning to face him, they locked eyes as she continued, "I'm going to break you out of your shell, just yet. To Beckett!"

They all raised their glasses, taking a drink of the champagne, the bubbles tickling as it went down.

Shreya smiled to herself as she leaned over to Zeph, whispering, "That's not the only thing she wants to break him out of!"

Zeph nearly spit his drink out as he looked across the table.

Beckett observed their surroundings; Clarette wasn't kidding when she said the VIP area was a lot quieter. He noticed an invisible sound barrier filtering the main dance floor and he was thankful he could actually hear himself think. Looking to his right, the girl who had convinced him to come was in conversation with Griffin. He scowled, pangs of jealousy hitting him as Penderghast’s star thief player occupied her attention. Taking a sip, he noticed Shreya across the table, amused at his expression.

A cheeky grin rested on her face. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

"No," he frowned deeper.

Shreya chuckled, earning his ire. "You know, Beckett," she leaned across the table, “there is a reason why she brought you here."

His eyes darted over to Clarette, who was giggling at something Griffin said. He took another sip, eyes narrowing.

"She only brought me here to have me help her study tomorrow."

Shreya laughed even harder and Beckett could not contain his glare.

"What is so damn funny?"

Calming down, she motioned to him to come closer. "Clarette’s going to kill me if she knew I told you this, but she’s getting A’s in all her classes. She technically doesn't need your help." She leaned back into the couch, a wide, knowing smile on her lips.

Beckett looked at her, dumbfounded. If she didn't need his help, why go through all the trouble of dragging him out? More so, she was getting A’s? She was a complete slacker!

While he was contemplating this new information, he completely missed the daggers Clarette aimed at Shreya. She noticed out of the side of her eye that her roommate had moved closer to talk to Beckett. Jealousy was not a natural part of her personality, but she could not help the brief frown that disappeared just as quickly. There was a natural break in her conversation with Griffin and she took the opportunity to turn back to the man who accompanied her.

Beckett smiled as she faced him. "Do you come here often?"

"How are you liking it so far?"

They asked each other simultaneously, resulting in Clarette giggling while her hand landed on his knee.

"We've been here a few times and just so you know, that sounded like a bad pick up line."

"I didn't mean it like that at all!" he exclaimed, blushing furiously.

"You're lucky you're cute and FYI; if we didn't already know each other, that line probably would've worked," she winked as she stood up, extending her hand. "Come on, dance with me.”

Taking her hand, he stood up and followed her to the dance floor. The music didn't seem as obnoxiously loud as it was earlier when they had first arrived. He attributed it to the alcohol in his system, but even he knew he was lying to himself as he watched Clarette's hip sway in rhythm to the beat.

She led him to the middle of the packed dance floor, where the lack of real estate pushed their bodies together. He swallowed nervously, though Clarette was completely oblivious to the effect she was having on him.

A cocktail waitress squeezed through the crowd with a myriad of multicolored shots, some of which had smoke rising off them while others had literal sparks shooting out of the slender glass vial.

Stopping the server, Clarette turned to Beckett in excitement. "Beckett! Do a shot with me!"

Looking at the swirling colors of alcohol, he raised a suspicious eyebrow. "I think I’ll pass," raising his voice loud enough to be heard over the speakers.

"Okay, I'll let you off the hook this time." Turning to the waitress, she asked, "Which one is better?"

"Tell you what, sweetie. Buy one and I'll give you the other one for free," the blue hued girl replied, winking.

Clarette clapped her hands in delight before reaching into her purse. Beckett gently touched her forearm, getting her attention as he produced a couple coins. "Let me get this. It’s the least I can do for convincing me to go out tonight."

"Thanks, you didn't need to do that!" She double fisted both glasses. “Are you sure you don't want one?"

“Fine," he exasperated exaggeratedly. "YOLO, right?" Picking the smoking shot, he clinked his vial against hers before they both downed the potent beverage. The slim containers dissolved from their hands as he held back a cough from the strength of the libation.

Stepping up to him, she tiptoed to get close to his ear. "That wasn't so bad was it?"

He shook his head, becoming acutely aware of how close she was to him.

"I told you, didn't I? Now, we dance!”

Beckett was almost caught off guard as she draped her arms over his broad shoulders, swaying against him. He had taken a few ballroom lessons growing up at his parents’ insistence, but this type of dancing left him stiff.

Noticing his movements, or lack thereof, Clarette gazed up at him and smiled. "Follow my lead." She turned around, backing into him until there was no space between them.

He let his natural instincts guide him, his body moving innately with hers. She leaned back against his strong chest, gently placing his hands on her hips. She swore she heard him groan while rocking her hips against him and his fingers tightened, bringing her even closer. Burying his nose in her hair, he wasn't sure if he was intoxicated by the smell of her or if it was that damn shot. Whatever it was, he was pretty sure she was being affected too, if her movements were any indication.

They continued dancing in that manner, mirroring the couples surrounding them. He felt himself getting caught up in a haze, mildly aware of how intimate they were acting. Once the realization hit him, he tried to take a step back to create distance between their bodies, only Clarette made sure he wasn't going anywhere.

The strobe lights and fog machines hid the embarrassment coloring his face, but there was no hiding the stiffness in his pants. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on filling his thoughts with the most mundane tasks, willing his body to cooperate with his mind. Instead, her perfume wafted into his senses and there was no denying it; she paused for the briefest of moments, no doubt feeling him pressing into her.

It was impossible for her not to notice how excited he was. Removing his hands from her hips, he was about to excuse himself when she grabbed his hands and placed them back in the same spot as before. She glanced at him over her shoulder, slightly biting her lip with the smallest of smiles.

His breath caught in his throat.

Clarette was definitely grinding against him.

His fingers dug into her hips, involuntarily bringing her closer. The groan that escaped his lips made her shudder as her eyes closed, letting him support her. She didn't know if it was the shot of who knows what or just the exquisite feeling of Beckett, but everything just felt so damn good.

Throwing caution into the wind, she twirled herself around until they were facing each other, her arms around his neck. His arms snaked around her waist, bringing her so close that she was practically riding his leg. Unabashedly rolling her hips forward, she pushed her chest against his, leaving no space between them.

They locked eyes.

"You wanna get out of here?" She asked, her voice laden with desire.

Replying huskily, he nodded. "Yeah, I do."

"Let's go to your suite. You're in a single right? I don't want to be interrupted by Shreya."

How they arrived in his room was a blur, the click of the bedroom door causing both of them to pause momentarily. She glanced at him from under her lashes, lightly licking her lips as his gaze moved from her eyes to her mouth. He cupped her cheek, his thumb rubbing gently, before leaning over and brushing his lips against hers. He pulled back slightly, his eyes opening to gauge her reaction.

Her eyelids fluttered open, her pupils blown wide. Their lips met once more, this time with no hesitation. His hands were seemingly everywhere, first tangled in her thick, dark mane, down to her bottom, then wrapping around her greedily. She pulled him down as they deepened their kiss, her hands roaming over his chest before she clutched at his shirt, displeased that it was in her way.

He was vaguely aware of her unbuttoning his shirt and tossing it to the ground. Instead, he was relishing how it felt to have her in his arms and how soft her lips were. She broke the contact, only to plant her lips elsewhere. She peppered kisses on his jaw, moving downward, tracing the pulse in his neck with the tip of her tongue. He exhaled loudly as she gently bit his chest, before making her way back up until he once again claimed her mouth with his own. It amazed him how her mouth molded to his and how it felt like trails of fire wherever she touched him.

They tumbled onto his bed, their lips in a continued connection as they made out with her on top of him. She straddled his hips, his hands running up the side of her thighs before resting on her ass. Beckett involuntarily rocked upwards, sending shivers down her spine. He carefully flipped them over and Clarette moaned into his mouth, relishing the pressure of his body on hers. She wrapped one long leg around him, drawing him nearer as he felt the smooth skin of her exposed thigh. He settled between her legs, spreading a delicious warmth through her body. Bringing his hand up, he rested it on her covered breast, lightly squeezing it as he sucked on her neck, leaving a mark.

"Beckett... " She whispered breathlessly into his ear. There was nothing that could compare to the high she was currently on.

Beckett stopped his ministrations and gazed at Clarette, whose lids were closed in ecstasy. He shook his head. There was something wrong with all of this. When he looked down at her again, her heavy-lidded eyes were half open, but the hazy glaze over her dilated pupils was unmistakable. Whoever concocted those shots had slipped a wrongly concocted daydream potion into the drinks.

His larger build allowed him to process the substance quicker than Clarette’s petite frame and she was still obviously under the influence. He felt terrible that he was not able to recognize the signs earlier. The hallucinogenic must have been the only reason she would ever end up in this compromising position with him.

He quickly jumped off the bed, raking a shaky hand through his ruffled hair. She gazed at him in confusion as she absentmindedly ran a hand over her chest.

"Why are you over there? Come back here. I'm not anywhere close to being done with you."

Swallowing thickly, he took in the picture laid out before him. This gorgeous woman was in his bed, sheets crinkled under her, begging for him to come back. If he was a lesser man, he would have easily listened to the head below, but he would not be able to live with himself if their first time was like this - especially if he really had a chance with Clarette. Most of all, it was wrong to take advantage of her in an inebriated state.

She pouted when Beckett made no move to return to bed and it took all his willpower not to go to her when her face fell, eyes glassy and lips quivering.

"Am I still not good enough for you? Is that why?" she asked, blinking back tears.

In an instant, he was by her side, embracing her in his arms, stroking her hair.

"No, that's not it at all. If anything, Clarette, you're too good for me," he murmured, before planting a kiss on her head as she burrowed under his chin.

"Then why won't you sleep with me?”

Exhaling slowly, he pondered how to gently turn her down. "Because you're impaired right now. Our drinks were spiked."

She leaned back, eyes wide with shock, all traces of tears gone.

"And more importantly, I want our first time to be special, not some drug induced hookup that we may not remember. Or even worse, regret.''

She beamed. "So there will be a first time?"

"I sure hope so. But I'd like to take you out on a proper date first if you'll allow me."

Blinking a few times, awareness slowly came back to her as she looked at her surroundings, including Beckett, who was still bare chested and holding her. Her eyes widened in horror, looking straight at him. "Oh God, I'm mortified," she blurted out, a hand covering her face.

His expression dropped. Of course she would be mortified being caught with a nerd like him. Making a move to stand to hide his disappointment, she grabbed his hand and pulled him back down.

"Beckett, I'm sorr-"

"It's fine," He replied sharply, the stiff upper lip demeanor returning. "We can pretend nothing happened and go back to before."

Disappointment laced her eyes as she searched his face. "But what about you taking me out on a first date?"

His jaw dropped in surprise. "You still want to go out with me?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Because we were both under a spell."

"What was it about the daydream potion? That an ill concocted one makes you act out a fantasy?"

He nodded.

"Well, I think it's pretty telling that we were acting out a fantasy involving us almost having sex," she grinned sheepishly. "So if the offer still stands..."

His face relaxed into a breathtaking smile. "It most certainly does. Clarette, would you like to go out with me?"

Gleaming, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "Yes. And I thought you would never ask."

He chuckled, a blush rising on his face. "We're kind of doing this backwards, aren't we?"

"What, you mean us making out in your room and then you asking me out? Totally normal," a bashful smile crossed her face. "Now come on, walk me back to my room. And put a shirt on, unless you really want to give Penderghast something to talk about.”

#beckett harrington #beckett x mc #beckett harrington fanfic #the elementalists #playchoices #the elementalists fanfic #beckett harrington x mc #choices fanfic #choices fanfiction #playchoices fanfic #scg writes

[apparitionism]

Helicobacter 16

Every single time: In everything I write that suggests these two would get hitched, the JK-played character does the “marry me” asking. Every. Single. Time. I don’t know why this makes such sense to me... I should probably think about flipping that script at some point, in some future narrative, so watch this space, I guess. (I’m sticking with you for now, Tumblr, despite your repeated attempts to drive me away.) Anyway, previously on Helicobacter (in the fifteen! parts that came before this one, which are all available to you on this very judgy social-media platform), we learned that Myka had made a significant miscalculation, Helena can think surprisingly well on her feet, and raccoons are likely to get chatty about Pop-Tarts. Of course the only sensical thing Myka could do then was propose.

Helicobacter 16

Helena managed a weak laugh. She said, “Do you and I really need to enter into yet another faux engagement?”

“No,” said Myka.

“Then—” Wait.

Myka nodded. “Now you’re getting it. And speaking of getting it: who’s got it?” She swung her free hand around, in a gesture that seemed to encompass everyone in the room.

“It? What is it? Who has what?” Helena asked.

“The ring. I know it’s in this room.”

“What?” Helena felt she was losing her purchase on the idea that words were meant to make sense. “You know a ring is in this room?”

Myka was solemn again: “I do.”

“Did you use that phrase intentionally?” Varsha asked. “If so, it’s quite funny.”

“Not as funny as the story,” Abigail said.

“What story?” Helena demanded. “Why is there always a story?”

Rick answered the latter question: “Because life isn’t a series of random collisions of atoms.” So helpful.

“It might be,” Varsha told him.

“But we couldn’t perceive it that way, even if it were,” Steve told her in turn.

“I’m having trouble perceiving it in any way,” Helena lamented.

Myka, who hadn’t released Helena’s hand, pulled on it, drawing her attention back. “Let me help you perceive it my way. It’s pretty simple: I bought a ring for you ages ago, mostly as a sort of... gesture of hope. To say ‘there’s a future in which this will be possible.’ But then I showed it to Abigail, and she said it was too risky for me to have it in my possession, because I’d run into you at some point and feel like it was burning a hole in my pocket and just drop to the one knee, regardless of where and when.” She raised “didn’t you” eyebrows at Abigail, who nodded. Myka went on, “I said that was ridiculous, but then one day I saw you down a hallway at City Hall, and I realized I was in fact about to sprint in your direction and do exactly what she’d predicted, so I literally reversed course and went right to her and handed it over. And promised I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t have it. Because even I need the occasional guardrail.”

Abigail snorted. “Occasional. Right.” To Helena, she said, “We should apply for a federal grant to fund the guardrails-against-Helena project. Anyway, I said I couldn’t hold it all the time, because then she’d know exactly where it was, which was almost as bad, given that I didn’t want to be rudely awakened in the middle of the night some night by some lovelorn lunatic who decided she just had to set phasers to nuptial. So I made her promise also not to ask you if she couldn’t pinpoint its location, and we set up a committee—at first just me and Steve, but after she read Rick in, we decided to draft him, too—to rotate possession. Myka doesn’t know the rotation or the schedule, which makes it hard for her to fight through the bureaucracy to get to it.”

“That’s a clever disincentive,” Jane remarked, causing Helena to note that she had not, in fact, exited the inside-joke snowglobe just yet.

Abigail said, “I modeled it on the demonstration-permit regs. They’re so well thought out.”

“I wrote those,” Jane told her, and when Abigail offered her a disingenuous “you don’t say,” Jane bowed her head. She might have been glowering, laughing, or praying... she offered no clarity with her next words: “My staff: the Machiavelli Players.”

Myka, seeming to resent that the spotlight kept shifting away from her, said, “Anyway, I almost did the asking on Saturday night, because it had to be in that room, too, given the committee. But I figured we were so close to getting the work thing fixed—and you’d probably be more inclined to say yes once we did—that I should wait.”

“I’m the one who’s got it now,” Rick said. “Sort of ironic. And I was supposed to hand it off to Steve today.”

Helena looked to Steve. “Behind my back,” she said, “this entire time?” and Steve had the grace to look at least a bit chagrined.

Myka said, “Not entire. It wasn’t until after I told my mom the truth that I really made up my mind.”

“But then you did?” Helena asked.

“But then I did. I’m serious. You’re looking at me like you don’t believe me, but I’m serious.”

“I’m looking at you like...” Helena tried to find words to say about what she was feeling, words that might possibly be correct. She fought through what she recognized as a Myka-esque pause, search... then surrender. “You’re right, like I don’t believe you. We’ve spent only two nights together!”

“Info that I for one didn’t need,” Rick said. “Or want.”

“This I can vote on,” Varsha agreed.

Steve said, hurriedly, “Passed by acclamation.”

Myka gave that attention-tug to Helena’s hand. “If we were fundamentalists, we’d’ve spent zero nights together.”

“We aren’t fundamentalists,” Helena said. Of that, she was reasonably certain, but what it had to do with anything...

Now Myka blinked at Helena: a slow, soft, indulgent blink. “My point is, depending on the circumstance, two is a lot.”

“World wars, for example,” Abigail offered.

“Isn’t that an argument against their spending more nights together?” Liam asked her.

“Emperors Napoleon?” Abigail tried.

“Nope, there were three of those,” Steve said, “but maybe also part of an argument against? The French probably thought the first one was one too many.”

“Waterloo,” Helena muttered, because she still had no purchase on the situation, but defeat seemed a relevant concept.

“That is a very good song,” Myka told her. “I refer you to the lyrics.”

“Mamma Mia movies!” Liam exclaimed.

“That just makes that ‘argument against’ point stronger,” Steve said, and as Liam protested that he liked them, that there should be lots more, Steve gave him a look that Helena decoded—perhaps based on the personal experience of having sent very similar aspects in Myka’s direction—as “your questionable judgment makes me question my own judgment in finding you so appealing.”

Jeannie said, “Here, I’ll try something in a different genre: one of Myka’s great-great-grandmothers was a mail-order bride. She hadn’t even met her intended before the wedding.”

“I didn’t know that. But they lived happily ever after?” Myka asked, with evident hope.

Jeannie shook her head. “Probably not. It was Colorado in the 1800s.”

Varsha clapped her hands lightly, her face a study in joy. “One or both highly likely to have died of cholera!” Her enthusiasm for that outcome was... unsurprising.

“That pile of ‘against’ points keeps getting bigger, guys,” Myka said, “so maybe leave this to me?”

“No, no, the epidemiological point is that you most likely won’t die of cholera,” Varsha said.

Myka smiled, then squinted. “That’s great, but... how is that an argument in favor of our spending more nights together? And/or living happily ever after?”

Varsha squinted back, saying, “It isn’t. It’s a necessary condition for either or both of those outcomes to occur. You’ll have to make your own argument.”

“I’m trying,” Myka said. “Give me the ring, Rick.”

Rick shook his head. “Can’t.”

“Of course you can. It’s mine. And it’s about to be hers, I hope.”

Abigail said, “We have to vote. The committee. It has to be unanimous. You read the bylaws.”

Myka closed her eyes. She breathed in slowly, then said, “You cannot be serious.”

“Isn’t that usually my line?” Helena asked—joking, but not entirely.

Myka’s grip on her hand tightened again. “I swear to god if you people don’t let me put a ring on it, I will water-gun fake blood on each and every one of you, and that will happen at a time you’ll find extremely inconvenient.”

“I move we hand it over,” Steve said.

“Seconded.” That was from Rick.

“I move we vote immediately on the motion,” Steve continued.

Rick again: “Seconded.”

“Aye,” Steve said.

“Aye,” Rick said.

Abigail said nothing.

“What are you waiting for?” Myka demanded.

“Clean clothes,” Abigail told her. “See, I’ve already been water-gunned. I kind of want to make you sweat.”

“Ill-advised,” Jeannie said.

“Why is everyone stealing my lines?” Helena complained.

Myka darted a glance at Helena, a glance of a quality suggesting that Helena’s repeated noting of line-stealing might have been either immensely alluring or extravagantly irritating—or possibly both—and said to Abigail, “I swear. To god. A ring on this, or.”

Abigail sighed. “Fine. Aye.”

“Now,” Myka told Rick.

Rick reached into his pocket, but in trying to extricate what was presumably the ring, he turned the fabric inside out. A loud clink resounded, as did an “oh jesus” from him and a giggle from Abigail, and then he had dropped to his knees and was scrabbling at the floor, and Helena genuinely expected that in a moment, all of them would be examining the linoleum in great detail, for Myka now wore the expression of someone likely to issue a strongly worded decree about what had better be found right now... but Rick quickly bounced up. “Here,” he said to Myka before he looked directly at her face. “Sorry,” he said, after he did.

She held the ring between the thumb and forefinger of her free hand and shook it at him. “You had a diamond ring loose in your trouser pocket? This diamond ring? You are a ding-dong.” Rick looked for a moment as if he might take the fool’s path and protest... but he kept his mouth closed. Myka said, “Good choice,” and she gave the ring, a simple band upon which sat a smallish yet dazzlingly clear stone, to Helena, placing it in the hand she was not holding. “There. Now do you believe me?” She paused. “And now will you say you’ll marry me?”

Helena looked down at what she held. Could a diamond be content to be affixed to a ring? Happy, even, to be there? Because this one’s shimmering clarity seemed not to bespeak mysterious depths, but rather to nestle it securely into its setting. The diamond knew its mind better than Helena knew her own... she cleared her throat. “I’ve never been proposed to before,” she said.

That made Myka not tighten her hold on Helena’s held hand, but gentle it. “That’s because it was always meant to be me.”

That had to be true. It had felt so right to be engaged to marry Myka, even as fiction... Helena said that aloud.

“Told you,” Myka said, but she was not smug. “See, you knew it even before I did.”

“I didn’t buy a ring and set up a committee.”

“That’s because I’m the planner.”

“What does that make me?” Helena asked, and she did not know what Myka’s answer would be. She didn’t know what she wanted Myka’s answer to be... other than right. But what was right? What was she in this improbable relationship?

“You mean,” Jeannie said, “what does it relegate you to.”

Myka smiled at her mother. Then she smiled at Helena. “Dreamer-in-chief,” she said with certainty. “You know, you should put that on your business card. Steve, don’t you think she’d get more work that way?”

“She’d get different work that way,” Steve said. “But isn’t the goal of all this to make sure she gets... similar work?”

With a small eyeroll, Myka said, “Fine. We’ll relegate it to the vows: ‘Do you promise to faithfully execute the office of dreamer-in-chief? To keep dreaming up the never-fountains?’”

Dreamer-in-chief. Perhaps anything Myka had said would have been the right answer, because perhaps it all was nothing more—or less?—than an inside-joke snowglobe. But why not stay in it? The fountain might not exist, but this could. Surely, after all they had been through, this could. Then there is... Helena cleared her throat again. “As noted,” she said, “I didn’t buy a ring.”

“Cheapskate-in-chief,” Myka said, and that was even more right.

“But will you marry me, too?” Helena asked. It was not what she ever would have planned to say today, but now she had said it. And she did not mean it as any push of problems into the future... no, it was a pull of problems. An invitation to them, in the present and in the future.

“Try and stop me, beautiful cheapskate. Just try.” Myka leaned back against her inadequate pillow, looking for all the world like a spoiled princeling, sure that the world—or at least Helena—was hers for the taking. She was of course right, and Helena leaned in and kissed her, savoring it, savoring all of it, even the obvious absurdity, even the likelihood of additional, or at least eventual, catastrophe... “I haven’t changed,” she still wanted to warn, but she still also remembered Myka’s “maybe you shouldn’t have to.” This is how it feels, Charles might as well have been whispering in her ear, as the right wrecking ball knocks you over.

When the kiss ended, Myka didn’t, to Helena’s surprise, return to smiling. Instead she blinked overwet eyes. The planes of her face were ruddy. “You really do believe it,” she said. Perhaps not so spoiled after all, the princeling...

“I do,” Helena assured her.

Varsha said, “That’s funny too! Even more so, because I don’t think you said it intentionally.”

“I have to confess I find it a little hard to follow what you think is funny,” Rick told her.

Helena echoed, “Hard to follow. I have to confess that I find the turn—turns?—my life has taken a bit hard to follow.”

Myka sighed. “If we’re owning up, then I have to confess that I find myself contemplating more often than is probably healthy how adorable this cheapskate looks in a hardhat.”

“What?” Helena said, startled. “How do you know that?”

“That’s the part that’s a little hard to follow, and I’ll tell you later, but I note that you aren’t disputing your adorableness.”

“I—”

“That better end with ‘love you.’”

“It does,” Helena said. “And you knew that before I did.” She had been holding the ring in the palm of her own free hand, where Myka had placed it. Now, to substantiate her words, she loosed her right hand from Myka’s and used it to place that unassuming band onto the appropriate finger, where it fit as if, yes, it had always been intended to live there. She held her hand up, facing its back, and thus the confident stone, toward Myka. “Well? What do you say to that?”

“Everything,” Myka said, and Helena laughed and kissed her again, because of course she did say everything, anything and everything, all of it exactly what Helena needed—and a reasonable majority of the time wanted—to hear.

When this kiss ended, Helena heard a small sniffle, and she looked up to see Jeannie dabbing at her eyes. “I’m not surprised this got to me,” Jeannie said, “because witnessing my daughter so overcome is, to use an inadequate word, rare... but I didn’t know it would get to anybody else.” She looked at Jane. “I’m glad to know she works for someone with such a heart.”

Helena observed, with astonishment, that Jane was touching her own eyes with her sleeve. Jane said, “I did mention it isn’t made of stone. And with that, I’m leaving, before anyone mistakes me for a sentimental fool.”

“Too late,” Abigail informed her, with a laugh that seemed dangerously near a cackle.

Jane confirmed the danger with a raised eyebrow. “Spread that around, Ms. Machiavel, and I will show you how fast a heart can harden.” She then made an exit of a sort that should have been accompanied by a retinue.

Rick sighed. “I guess that means Myka’s cured, and we better get back to work.”

“Unless someone in this room would like to develop some sort of interesting infection,” Varsha suggested.

“I’d rather my day be boring, thanks,” Rick told her.

Varsha gave his cheek a pat that, if bestowed by anyone else, would have seemed overly aggressive. “Of course you would, wallpaper. See how soothing he is!”

Once Rick and Varsha had gone, Liam said, “I guess they’re right. There’s only so many billable hours I can give up in order to ‘visit a sick friend.’ Or visit a ‘sick’ friend. Or whatever it is we’ve been doing.”

“It’s strange but nice to have seen you in the middle of the day,” Steve said.

“Heart-melter. Maybe I won’t badger you to watch Here We Go Again tonight.”

“Waterloo... knowing my fate is to be with you,” Steve sang softly, and Helena added “Steve singing” to the list of seemingly impossible things that had happened today. He turned to her with a slightly apologetic, self-conscious smile. “If I can’t concentrate this afternoon because that’s running through my head, it’s your fault.”

“Accepted,” Helena said. “I think we can safely assume some similar words will be interfering with my thoughts.”

“Obviously, mine too,” said Myka.

“And mine,” Liam agreed. “Thanks a lot, honey. I’m supposed to be writing a closing argument. What if I accidentally put in ‘I feel like I win when I lose’?”

Steve shrugged. “Depends. How many ABBA fans are on your jury?”

“That isn’t something we commonly get around to in voir dire.”

“Then I think we’ve all learned a lesson or two today, haven’t we? About good questions to ask,” Steve said. He directed a significant look at Helena and Myka, then threw an even more significant one toward Liam. “In particular circumstances.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Liam said as they departed. “I will badger you to watch Here We Go Again. Every night for the next week. Or maybe the next year. Or decades....”

Abigail remarked, “They’re almost as cloying as the two of you, but with less drama. Is that good or bad? Anyway, I’m going to bring this back around to ‘clean clothes,’ and the fact that I’d like some, so I should—”

“They have lovely scrubs here,” Helena told her. “The color of an emergent bruise.”

Myka said, “I’ll admit I got a little overenthusiastic with the ‘blood.’ It’s a lot more fun water-gunning it than actually producing it myself. Although I did end up engaged to the most beautiful cheapskate in the world, both times...”

“It seems entirely unfair to Abigail that you were the only one in possession of a weapon,” Helena said.

Abigail nodded at Helena with enthusiasm. “So true. Unfair to you, too, that first time, even if the weapon was her gut. We’ll have to get back at her somehow—I know, a group paintball tournament! Maybe make it an annual thing. For your anniversary.”

“That is the best idea ever,” Myka said to her. Then she turned to Helena and said, as if referring to the sweetest of intimacies, “Isn’t it.”

“Paintball,” Helena said, and did the tone she took with Myka inevitably sound that same tenderness? “Do you know what Charles says to his wife, Jane, on a regular basis?”

“Unfortunately, he didn’t tell me. Do you want me to guess?”

“Actually... I’d love to hear your guess.”

“He says ‘Jane, isn’t my sister so very lucky to have found Myka, and vice versa.’”

That made Helena laugh. “Although you’ve produced a tolerable version of his voice, I don’t believe he does say that. Not regularly.”

“Well, give it time. What does he really say?”

“He says, ‘What a disaster our first meeting was.’”

“Did she really run into his car? Or was he shining me on?”

“And then he thought to return the favor,” Helena affirmed, “to make sure he had her romantic attention. He didn’t tell you that part?”

“God, no. You Wellses are weird.”

“I talked him out of it!” Helena protested.

Myka, doing princeling-against-the-pillow again, drawled, “That’s your evidence to the contrary.”

Helena said to Jeannie, “Do you know, occasionally your daughter sounds exactly like her father. Who has that irrational fear of raccoons, as I’ve so recently come to understand, so if family weirdness is genuinely on the table—”

“I do know they sound alike,” Jeannie interrupted, “but it’s nice to be reminded of it. Do you sound like your father?”

Helena smiled. “No, but I do sound very like my brother—as Myka has remarked, and which is pertinent, because Charles always follows his initial disaster comment with, ‘What a disaster I would be in the absence of that disaster.’”

“That’s sweet,” said the princeling, “but still weird.”

“My point is that I suspect I’ll be following his lead in these ritual utterances as well.”

“I don’t need clean clothes,” Abigail announced. “I need insulin. Is there a special British kind? Because you never sound like you’re made of sugar, but you are, and that makes it worse. That’s it for me.” She paused at the door, turned around, and pointed at Myka. “Pop-Tarts are one thing, but grapefruit’s another.” Then she pointed at Helena. “And raccoons are one thing, but eleven of you, nobody could take.” She swept out, and Helena suspected she would have wanted her departure accompanied by dramatic exit music.

“Grapefruit,” said Myka. “She’s said that to me before, in relation to you.”

“It has vaguely to do with koans. I’ll tell you the story some other time,” Helena said.

“Why is there always a story?” Myka said, a gentle mock.

“I’m told it has to do with atoms.”

Jeannie said, “Colliding, but not randomly. She was so excited when I finally found that book of yours.”

“I suspect she was primarily pleased to have been right. In her identification.”

“Well, she’s Myka,” Jeannie allowed. “But also... she was overcome. Like today. By you. I’m really not giving away any secret when I tell you this matters to her in an unprecedented way—but even if it were a secret, I’d tell you, because of that unprecedented mattering.”

“I’m in the room, Mom.”

Jeannie ignored Myka. She leveled a not-quite-benign gaze at Helena and said, “Treat her well. You seem like you will—I want to believe that you will—but please.”

Not precisely a talk of shovels, but near enough. “I will work hard at it,” Helena told her. “I’m very good at working hard.”

Myka leaned against Helena again. She said, “Mm. In a selfish, Emperors-Napoleon sense, I’m glad you aren’t overly good at being good.”

Not in front of your mother, Helena thought at Myka. She tried to show, by means of a severe brow-furrow directed at the very contented woman at her side, that she was thinking this instruction, but that made Myka laugh, and that in turn made Helena want to forget about who they were in front of.

“I clearly need to give you two a minute,” Jeannie said, and that was, from Helena’s perspective, an embarrassingly accurate reading of the room’s temperature. “But as I understand it, everybody’s supposed to get back to work. And you might want to remember that the idea behind this whole thing was for everybody to keep having work to get back to...” The door closed behind her.

Guilt: Helena had been so, so uncharitable in her initial assessment of Myka’s Rick-promoting mother, yet Jeannie had, now, provided them with their first instance of clean, unencumbered intimacy. She does want Myka to be happy, Helena now thought. With someone. And she genuinely seems to believe that I am that someone...

That they didn’t lunge for each other seemed, paradoxically, a good sign. A marker of this new reality.

“One minute,” Helena said. “Our first real minute.”

“Speaking of what’s real, tell me, do you really want this?” Myka asked. Helena moved her jaw in disbelief, but Myka went on, “I can take it if you don’t, but only if you tell me right now.”

Helena held her hand up again. “Here is what I’ll tell you right now: I will remove this ring for no reason other than a medical emergency?”

“That could just mean you like rings,” Myka said.

“Have you seen me wear a ring before today?”

“That could just mean you like this ring,” Myka said, but she touched the ring, began playing with Helena’s fingers.

“I have no right answer anymore.”

Myka looked up. “You do if you kiss me.”

So Helena did.

“See?” Myka said, some length of time later. “Now I’m persuaded. Want to persuade me some more? Maybe really, really fast? I think from my side of things, I can promise—”

“No,” Helena interrupted, because if Myka kept talking, the answer was going to be yes, because Helena certainly did want to persuade her some more.

A little pout, a pretty blink. “No?”

“Well, not no,” Helena conceded.

“Not no? Maybe I’m wrong, but that seems like a double negative, which I’m mostly sure works out in the math to be a positive, so—”

Helena had to interrupt again. “I mean, no, but not in perpetuity. No for the present moment.”

“You pick the worst times to be good at being good, but fine. Failing that, I don’t suppose you’d want to just go for the whole cheese plate? Fly to Vegas and get married tonight? Bellagio... fountains.... something like, there is no fountain, then there are lots of fountains, and they dance or light up or do some other—”

Helena kissed her again, and this one was sharp and quick, for it was meant both to stop her and to stop the idea, which was, for all its absurdity, ridiculously compelling: fly away and change everything yet again. She remarked, trying to lighten the idea away, “We’ve both said ‘I do,’ as Varsha found so amusing. Perhaps we’re married already.”

“In some version of the world, I bet we are.”

“I would in some version of the world marry you this minute. But I think we’d both enjoy getting to know each other just a bit better first... more importantly, however, if Charles isn’t invited to the event, he’ll riot.”

“All by himself?”

“That would be very Charles. Also, however, my parents.”

“They’ll riot?”

“Doubtful. Well, my mother might. But I would... want them here. For such an occasion. The right one.”

“If that committee hadn’t let me give you this ring, I would’ve rioted.”

“Once I became accustomed to the idea, so would I.”

Myka said, “I sprang it on you. I’m sorry.” She kissed the ring where it lived on Helena’s finger.

As severely as she could, given the kiss, Helena said, “You are in no way sorry.”

“See, you know me pretty well already. I love that I sprang it on you. I also love that you sprang it on me, reciprocally.”

“It did take me a moment.”

“Scariest moment of my life.”

“You don’t mean that,” Helena said.

“Maybe you don’t know me so well after all. What if you’d said no?”

“You never genuinely entertained that as a possibility.”

“I did though. The look on your face right at first? I don’t ever want to see that look again.” She pulled Helena to her. This kiss said Don’t frighten me.

Helena didn’t want to do that, but she did want to tell the truth. She said, “I’ll be honest: I’m not sure this will work as perfectly as I want it to. As some of our interactions have suggested it might.”

“That you want it to work perfectly is a pretty good start... plus that you think that some of our interactions have suggested it might, that doesn’t hurt. I do too, by the way. Want that. And think that.”

Trying to maintain her honesty, Helena asked, “Is it setting us up for failure? Nothing is perfect.”

“It’s all about goals. What’s failure? Aim for perfect, hit pretty damn wonderful.” And then she clearly decided to tell some truth of her own. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. But nothing will if we don’t start, so let’s.”

“I’m fairly certain we have. Look at what’s on my hand.”

“I had moments when I thought about having bought this thing—this thing that was too dangerous for me to have in my possession—and I wondered who in the world I was, who I thought I was, to even consider something like that. Something like that, with someone like you.”

These insecurities... they were Helena’s fault. “Who were you?” she asked, not at all rhetorically, for she intended to give a convincing, sure answer. “Someone with the fearlessness to consider, to push for, a better future. Meanwhile all I did was feel sorry for us. That was all someone like me could do: sit and wait for someone fearless like you to change the circumstance.”

“Fearless, foolish... but no matter how foolish it was, you’re right, it’s on your hand. I like it there.” She stopped, seemed to consider whether she wanted to go on. “Hm. Did you wear a ring before?”

“No, I’ve never worn one. I did the proposing. Gave the ring.” Did Myka want the reciprocal question? Helena went ahead and asked, “Did you? Wear one?”

This occasioned a sigh. “Weirdly, no. The wedding ring was going to be his grandma’s, and we were vaguely planning to retrofit something to go with it. I didn’t press the issue—didn’t care enough to. That should’ve helped clue me in, shouldn’t it?” That was said with a wry twist of lip, not a smile.

Of course both their pasts contained unheeded clues... “I think it’s fair to say that we’ve both made some errors.”

“I think it’s fair to say that we both failed upward.”

What an exquisite thing to say in this context, about what had gone wrong in the past—so exquisite that Helena could barely stand it. She felt a rush of willingness to take Myka up on the idea of being fast, right here... but that rush was an impulse, not an imperative. Instead, Helena got up from the bed. Stepped away. Regarded the woman still in it. Her face, its lines so deft, its beauty barely contained in a too-precise space, would always raise that impulse—no, imperative—to protect.

Pale, sick Myka, in a bed such as this one. Would Helena ever cease to see that day superimposed on Myka’s face and body? And would Helena ever cease to hear, inside Myka’s voice, an echo of that day’s weakest, most distressed entreaty: Will you be here when I wake up?

Of course I will, Helena had told her, and was that when she herself had made up her mind? When you wake up, I’ll be the first thing you see. Helena hadn’t known it then, but she had already begun speaking the vows. Keeping them. “In sickness...” she now said.

“Don’t worry,” Myka told her. “I’ll inflict plenty of health on you, too. Not to mention their friends: richer, poorer, and better.”

“What about ‘worse’?”

That made Myka smile with mischief. “Now who’s the one tempting fate?”

“Destiny,” Helena corrected.

Myka kept smiling, but she also narrowed her eyes. “Hm. Now that sounds like a koan.”

“What does?”

“I asked, ‘Who’s the one tempting fate?’, and ‘Destiny,’ you said. That’s the one tempting fate.”

“But I meant—”

“So the koan is, what happens when destiny tempts fate?”

Helena said, immediately, because it was true, “Charles would say, a car wreck.”

“What would you say?”

Helena would have smiled, largely and with intent, but she was already doing that, and Myka was doing that too, and Helena suspected they both would keep on doing that. She shook her head and exhaled, a little ripple-chuckle of jubilation. “What happens when destiny tempts fate?” she echoed, and Myka nodded. “What would I say?” Myka nodded again, her smile, impossibly, even larger. Now Helena shrugged. There was only one answer, so she gave it: “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

TBC (epilogically in a few scenes that would play over the closing credits...)

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #Helicobacter #part 16 #AU week #how did this thing get so lengthy? #it's an example of how you can produce a work of some size and design #even when all you have at your disposal timewise #are the nonwork interstices of a truly bonkers several months #and I'll say again that I know this is a silly story #but sometimes you just need to somersault around #and imagine people saying absurd things to each other #inconsequential little absurd things #P.S. There will be one more little explanatory twisty twist at the end #because you never know how far back fate and destiny and karma set their traps #they are patient

[doctorsorders-deathboy]

Of All the Nights

lmfao i guess i’m back from the dead bitches. (this wip has existed for so long. i could not tell you why i decided to finally finish it tonight but AAA im so excited to be posting a fic again omg) amusingly, my last fic also involved late night baking. i hope you enjoy!!

Word Count: 1941

Read on ao3

It was 3:07am on the third of January and Nico di Angelo was dressed in nothing but a too-small fuchsia bathrobe, soaking wet, and about ready to commit bloody murder.

It was very possible, he thought, that the bathrobe contributed to his fury.

This was the kind of disaster that he’d recount to Jason later, with countless creative swears thrown in, though as he stood shivering and fuming outside a stranger’s apartment, it occurred to him that this might be one of those stories that would get more laughs from Jason than shared anger. Asshole.

Speaking of assholes, the door finally opened, revealing a very flustered looking blond man around Nico’s age. For a moment, Nico almost backed off on his prepared rant upon seeing how miserable the blond looked, but when another draft of winter air hit Nico’s still dripping legs, his scowl only deepened.

“What the hell were you doing baking at fucking three in the morning?”

The blond blinked once, twice, three times. He opened his mouth, closed it, and Nico was about ready to break his damn nose when he finally said, “Sorry… Do I know you?”

Nico had never had height to his advantage but hell if he didn’t know how to make himself intimidating. The blond shrunk back as Nico reared himself up to hiss, “Luckily, I was able to make it through 21 years of my life without meeting you before you had to go and nearly set the damn building on fire because of your insomniac cooking. Do you have any idea what kind of night you’ve caused for me? Did it ever occur to you that maybe you should save your incompetence for the waking hours when most people will be out at work anyways? Honestly, what kind of bullshit did you pull to make the fucking fire alarms go off? Did you pull this shit on purpose? Is this some kind of a joke to you?”

The man took much too long to answer again and Nico was collecting every bit of self control he had to keep himself from wringing this jackass’s neck when the response finally came. “Why are you wet?”

Nico must have reared up spectacularly that time because the man quickly amended, “I mean―! I’m sorry, that’s not the point here, um…” He peeked out of his apartment and looked around the deserted hallway. “If you want to yell at me, can you do it in here? I don’t want to wake anyone else up.”

“Like hell, you care,” Nico grumbled but willingly stepped into the man’s apartment. In hindsight, this really wasn’t Nico’s wisest move considering this guy was a stranger and Nico was nearly naked, but the blond seemed about as threatening as a frightened mouse. A tall, blue-eyed, frightened mouse who somehow had a tan in the dead of winter.

“Sorry, who are you again?” the blond asked, closing the door behind a fuming Nico.

“Your pissed off neighbor from two floors up,” Nico snapped. Unfortunately, the blond visibly cringed, looking like a kicked puppy, so Nico muttered, “Nico. Di Angelo,” as a reconcilement.

“Will Solace,” the blond introduced himself in return. He held his hand out to shake but quickly drew it back when it was clear that Nico’s arms were not moving from where they were crossed against his chest.

They stood in uncomfortable silence until Nico repeated, “How the hell did you set off the fucking alarm?” in as dangerous a voice as he could manage.

“I, well…”

Nico shot another fierce glare and Will didn’t waste anymore time in getting to the point.

“I was making pizzelles for my sister’s birthday and the iron must’ve broken because it was making a lot of smoke. It set off the fire alarm which went off throughout the whole building and… yeah. It was a mess. I’m really sorry. I feel awful.”

Nico didn’t doubt Will’s sincerity. The poor man was hunched in on himself with bags under his hands and his hands firmly stuck in his pockets. That didn’t make his story any less ridiculous, though.

“I’m sorry,” Nico said without a hint of remorse, “I think I missed something. Why the hell were you baking at three in the fucking morning?”

Will frowned at him. “You curse a lot,” he muttered.

“Why the fuck were you―”

“I was working until 1am!” Will exclaimed, which was the first indignant comment he’d made. “And I have classes at ten in the morning, but I promised to meet my friend for coffee at eight so I figured I’d just power through and bake when I got home but―” His voice broke off.

Nico’s cheeks tinted with embarrassment upon seeing Will’s face crumple a bit. God, please don’t cry. Nico hadn’t ever been very good at comforting crying people.

“Sorry,” Will said, his voice hoarse. “I should probably… I’m just going to clean up and go to bed. No more smoke. I promise.” He attempted a laugh to lighten the mood but it came out strangled and pitiful.

Nico was about ready to leave Will to mope when he spotted a picture hanging on the wall across the room. Will stood in the center, looking much happier than he did standing in front of Nico. The Will in the picture had a smile that made you want to smile back and had each arm thrown around a friend, pulling them close. He looked jubilant; the kind of person who you felt certain you could approach without fear. It was a painful contrast to the melancholy man Nico had met.

It felt very wrong to Nico that someone so happy could look so broken.

“What about your sister’s pizzelles?” Nico asked quietly.

Will shrugged. “I’ll have to buy her something on my way over tomorrow. Hopefully she won’t mind. I just feel bad, I promised I’d bake for her. Those pizzelles are her favorite.”

Nico considered this for a moment before internally rolling his eyes at himself. “Then we’d better make some pizzelles, shouldn’t we?”

~*~

“You still never explained to me why you showed up at my apartment soaked and nearly naked,” Will said conversationally, as he stood washing the dishes while Nico carefully arranged pizzelles in a tin.

Nico cleared his throat. “That’s a conversation starter I haven’t heard before.”

“Seriously,” Will said, grinning. “Were you swimming?”

“Why would I be swimming in the dead of night?”

Will shrugged. “I dunno, that’s why I was asking.”

“I wasn’t swimming.” Nico put the lid on the tin and turned around, pulling his fuchsia bathrobe tighter around himself.

Will turned towards him, too, eyebrows still raised.

Nico exhaled very slowly before admitting, “I was taking a shower.”

Will blinked. “At… three in the morning?” When Nico’s expression darkened, he added quickly, “Not that I’m judging! Obviously. I’ve taken many middle-of-the-night showers. I just… So, are you a med student, too, or what?”

Nico scuffed his shoe across the floor and grumbled, “No.”

“Okay.”

Silence.

“So…”

“I had a dream,” Nico blurted, probably due to a combination of his lack of sleep and the way Will’s eyes had this kind, dreamy quality to them that made you feel like you could tell him anything.

Will’s eyebrows furrowed. “You showered because you had a dream?” His eyebrows shot upward. “Oh.”

“Not like that!” Nico said quickly, heat rushing to his face. “No, oh my god, no, that’s not…” And then he was laughing harder than he had in a long time and Will was laughing with him and he hardly felt embarrassed anymore. “No, it was a nightmare, not…” Nico tried to catch his breath. “Not that.”

Will tsked. “That’s a shame.”

“Yes, very disappointing.”

“So the shower was, what, to calm you down?”

Nico shifted, his mind flashing back to the dark, blurred images of a few hours ago. Bianca’s smile melting off her face, his mother screaming for him, a packed, dark room where people were crying and disappearing one by one, and he was next, he was next―

“Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat. “Basically.”

When he’d woken up, he’d had to spend what felt like eternity reminding himself how to breathe again. He’d been having more nightmares recently, ones so bad that he almost considered Jason’s advice to start seeing a therapist. I mean, shit, he knew college wasn’t doing much for him in the mental health department but things hadn’t been this bad since he was thirteen.

He tried different things each night to get himself back to sleep―whatever it took. One night he didn’t manage to properly get back to sleep afterwards; he just lay in his bed with the lights on and music playing, counting the beats of his heart as he dozed on and off. That night, after waking up, he couldn’t stand his own skin, couldn’t stand being trapped in his body any longer, couldn’t stand the way he could still feel cold, dead hands from the dream clutching him―

So he’d gotten in the fucking shower and made the water as hot as he could stand and then the goddamn fire alarm went off. Jesus Christ, of all the fucking nights.

“Must have been a pretty bad dream,” Will murmured.

Nico shrugged. “Yeah, I mean… Yeah. I was… Sorry for being so harsh on you earlier. I was still kind of shaken up, I guess. I probably wouldn’t have marched to your apartment for a stupid mistake on a normal night.”

Will grinned. “Probably?”

“Maybe.”

Will laughed. “Oh, here!” He handed a small tin to Nico. “You helped make em, you should get some for yourself.”

Nico opened it to see that it was crammed full of pizzelles. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, of course. I love the bathrobe, by the way―I never said.”

“Oh god.” Nico groaned. “It’s not mine.”

“Your girlfriend’s?”

And then Nico was laughing again. Christ, that was twice in one night. Something must be wrong with him. “Yeah, no. It’s my sister’s.”

“Ah. Well, for the record, my next guess was that it was your boyfriend’s. I don’t mean to assume anything.”

Nico sucked his teeth. “I don’t have one of those, I’m afraid.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Yes, very disappointing.”

Will smiled softly to himself and Nico noticed that he had a dimple on one side of his face. God. Nico really wished he smiled more.

“Well, thanks so much for the baking help. You really didn’t have to,” Will said as they walked towards the door.

Nico waved him off. “I’m the one who came to your apartment in an angry rage. I needed to make it up to you somehow.”

“Do you frequently get in angry rages?”

“Yes, but mostly just for the aesthetic. Usually I’m too tired to be properly angry.”

Will laughed.

“I’ll return the tin to you, by the way,” Nico added.

“Will you be showing up at my apartment nearly naked again?”

Nico flushed and laughed nervously. “No, I promise I will be fully clothed.”

Will hummed disappointedly. “Well, I suppose I can’t have everything,” he murmured. He smiled then, full and warm, and his eyes crinkled at the corners, and yes, Nico definitely wanted to see that smile more. “Goodnight, Nico,” he said cheerfully.

The door shut before Nico could figure out a way to respond. He stood there staring at it for a solid thirty seconds before turning and heading back to his apartment. When he got back, he decided, he’d put the pizzelles in a different container. He wanted to return the tin to Will Solace as soon as he could get away with.

#solangelo #will solace #nico di angelo #fanfiction #fanfic #pjo #hoo #toa #fluff #request #anon #i cant believe im actually posting a fic in 2018 omg

[daddysfangirls-marvel]

Polyamorous: The day they left for war

Pairing: Steve rogers x fem! reader x Bucky Barnes/ Stucky x Reader 

Warning: language, fluff, sad, mention of alcohol, choking ( not in a kinky way),fighting,minor abuse , smut, oral (female receives), overstimulation

Summary: Three people fall in love with each other at a time when loving more than one person is looked down upon. But even in a time when it’s not allowed they still share love and memories. Here are their Polyamorous memories. 

First kiss | First touch | Moving in | The day they left for war 

It was February 1941 Steve age 21, Bucky age 22, and (y/n) 20.

She didn’t mean to she didn’t even remember when she sent it in.oh, god what had she done. (y/n) had enlisted herself for war. She was going to be a nurse. She was leaving tomorrow. She was leaving Steve and Bucky. Tomorrow.

“hey doll we’re back” (y/n) quickly stuffed the letter in a kitchen drawer straightening herself up she greeting Steve and Bucky in the living room.

“how was your morning”. It was their day off they had the whole day to themselves and that’s how they spent it. “stop it” (y/n) laughed as Steve tickled her Bucky smiled at the two shaking his head.

(y/n) brought lunch to the couch. They ate read Books and danced around atypical Saturday for them. It seemed as if (y/n) didn’t want them to leave their little living room she didn’t want to leave.

Bucky picked up their plates and headed for the kitchen, recalling (y/n) had made a cake last night but everyone was too tired to even taste it. Not even a minute after he enters the kitchen he hears laughter turn to moans Bucky rolled his eyes.Opening the drawer to the utensils Bucky found a crumbled up paper. Why was it in here?

It Read:

United States Cadet Nurse Corps Enlistment Record

Name: (y/n) (l/n)    DOB: November 15 ,1919  State: New York City   City: Brooklyn 

Bucky didn’t have to finish reading to know what this was many of his friends waved it in his face after Pearl Harbor. “it’s your duty” they said “come serve” they begged and now a good majority of them were dead. He knew exactly what this was. 

He marched into the living room pissed beyond belief. How could she do this? Pushing Steve off of her Bucky grabbed her by her hair and yanked her up she screamed “BUCKY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”, Steve tried to push away put was pushed back.

“when were you going to tell us huh, huh? what? were you going to keep it to yourself and-and just disappear into the night, huh?” Bucky grabbed her throat and pushed her back into the couch and showed her the paper “what is this?”.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry” (y/n) cried trying to pull his hand away from her throat. He had a little bit of control left he wasn’t squeezing her throat, he may have been angry but he still cared. 

“Sorry, you’re sorry. YOU’RE FUCKING SORRY" 

"BUCKY” he pulled away and stuffing the letter in Steve’s face

“She enlisted. did you know that Steve, she enlisted”

“what?!" 

"I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, I’m sorry please” (y/n) cried out trying to grab Bucky’s hand to make him sit down to make him understand. He ripped his hand away from her and left the apartment slamming the door. (y/n) cried out as he left she repeatedly cried out her apologies as she curled up on the floor. Steve sat against the wall as he read the letter over and over and over again.

(y/n) promised right after Pearl Harbor to never ever attempted to even step into war and the boys promised the same. No matter what war was not to separate them. Yet here it was separating them so brutally.

“why” Steve balled up the paper “WHY?” he cried 

“m-my step-mother. She was going on and on about paying my dues to the country or getting a man. I figure I-if I signed it she’s shut up. I didn’t sent it in I didn’t do the physical, I don’t know. I just- I just don’t know …I’m scared Steve I’m so scared. What do I do?” (y/n) began to sob again.

Steve crawled over and took her in his arms” shhhhh, it’s okay. I’ve got you, it’s okay”

Steve helped her stand and walk to their room. They laid down and cuddled together (y/n) cried until she couldn’t cry any more then she slept. While she slept Steve packet a few bags for her. She was going to leave tomorrow and they couldn’t stop that. She had to go but he wanted make sure she didn’t leave with a heavy heart, when she left that there wasn’t bad blood when she left, he wanted to make sure she felt loved before she left , but he couldn’t do that without Bucky.

It was hours later Bucky returned bringing the stench of alcohol with him.He was mad and what did a young madman do in his time they drank and drink he did. Stumbling into the house Bucky plopped on the couch. In a few minutes, he was out cold but that didn’t last long. Minutes after he fell asleep he has pushed off the couch “what the hell, Steve?" 

"the hell is wrong with you,” Steve said kicking at him “she’s in there scared out of her mind" 

"war does that you”

“her stepmother. Her stepmother enlisted her. But that doesn’t matter she would have been drafted anyway.  She’s got medical history they would have taken her anyways." Bucky didn’t say anything he just stared at the ceiling "you…you shouldn’t have left. She is scared it’s her last day. She’s leaving tomorrow” Steve walked away back to their room where (y/n) pretended to sleep. 

Realization finally hit Bucky he went out and spent the day getting drunk when he should have stayed here and made his girls last day a good day filled with love, instead he left it filled with tears and pained. Angry with himself Bucky let out a frustrated sign punching the couch. 

“Fuck”

Standing up Bucky made a slow march to Steve’s room where (y/n) was sleeping. Steve sitting at his desk in the corner of the room reading a book. Steve Looked up as Bucky entered the room and walked over to the bed but said nothing. “I know you’re awake and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I left you I just … we said we’d never sign up we’d never leave each other. But you’re leaving and I don’t know if you’re coming back I don’t know I don’t know. But I’m going to love you before you leave I’m going to leave you so hard”

Bucky leaned down over the bed and kissed her hard “ I’m going to love you so fucking hard” he pulled the covers back and straddled (Y/n)  “I’m so sorry, please let me love you, please?" 

(y/n) opened her eye "yes, yes please love me" she opened her arms and pulled Bucky down to her she kissed him hard and wrapped her legs around his waist. 

-

Bucky, unlike usual, was slow with it removing her cloths touching her, he didn’t make her beg like usual. He took his time making sure he’d touch ever part of her wanting to remember every part of her even when she was gone. He made her moan his name , as well as Steve’s, not wanting any of them to forget the beautiful sound of her angelic voice moaning their names can confessing her love. 

“Are you going to cum my Love, go a head cum”  Bucky said as he thrust into her at a steady pace as ,he whisper constant confessions of love into her ear.

The feeling was overwhelming and perfect to (y/n). You see Bucky usually fucked he fucked hard, long, and good. His goal was always to make it so no mans touch could be compared. Steve, Steve made love he made sure you were taken care and felt good there was emotion in his every touch every move.The both of them were so very different but together they were so fucking good. Together they were magic.

“oh my god” (y/n) cried when she set of fingers touch her clit, Steve had decided to join. Bucky’s cock combined with Steve’s fingers was overwhelming and brought her orgasms like a fucking train. She was pretty sure the whole neighbor hood heard her scream. 

With her clenching and moans Bucky came soon after.  Once Bucky pulled out Steve came into catch the cum dripping out of (y/n) cleaning up his mess. (y/n) was hypersensitive and with Steve licking, sucking, and biting at her clit she quickly came again.

“no more, no more” (y/n) as she tried to push Steve away.

“one more just one more” Bucky encouraged as he took her hands away from Steve’s head and pinned them above her.

“can you do one more, sweetheart” Steve asked as he pulled away and rubbed her thighs “can you sweetie?”

looking at both Steve and Bucky she took a deep breath and nodded “one more … just one” she said.

"good girl,” Bucky said Steve leaned up and gave her a peck on her lips before for going back down. Bucky captured her lips and fondled her breast as Steve worked on her sensitive parts below. She was so sensitive she felt everything Steve was doing to her  she couldn’t help but moan out when he thrust his tongue and fingers into her. Her moaning gave Bucky the chance to explore her mouth with his tongue.

(y/n) orgasm came quicker than before with the fondling and pinching of her nipples plus the nibbling on her clit and tongue thrusting it was overwhelming. So overwhelming in fact that she past out.

-

 When (y/n) woke up again she was dressed in one of Bucky’s large button up shirts the sheets were changed and both Steve and Bucky were by her side. Steve was laying in bed with her while Bucky sat at the desk with his head. Trying to sit up (y/n) let out a whimper feeling faint.

“You’re awake,” Steve said when saw her eyes open immediately Bucky just up coming to her bedside he gave her a glass of water “drink” he demanded and she did as she was told drink two whole glass. “what happened?” she asked once she felt better “ you passed out” Bucky sat on the edge of the bed he rubbed her thighs “ cleaned you up and changed the sheets while you were out of it. You were out of it for a good 15 minutes” he kissed her forehead. “how are you doing, sweetheart?"  Steve asked as he took her hand "are you okay are you hurt in any way” (y/n) giggled of course Steve was worried “I’m fine Stevie”.

This was her first time every passing out during sex she did often fall asleep after sex never had she ever passed out in the middle of an orgasm. But then again she had never had them touching her all at once one of them would watch as she had sex with the other or she’d watch them a full threesome had never really happen between them. This was definitely a first but not the last.

(y/n) spent another 20 minutes reassuring Steve she was fine.The three made themselves as comfortable as they could in Steve’s small twin size bed. (y/n) had to lay on Bucky’s chest and Steve cuddle into his side. The three talked and talked until (y/n) fell asleep to the sound of Bucky’s beating heart and the feel of Steve’s fingers trailing up and down her back. “she’s leaving tomorrow… what do we do?” Steve whispered as he traced shapes on to her back.

“We… wave her off and send her letters,” Bucky said staring at the ceiling “ we wait for her to come back” “how … how about we follow her we could both enlisted and then-” “you better not” both boys looked to (y/n) who wasn’t so asleep anymore, “you’re going to stay right here and wait for me. You’re going to be right here when I get back. I need someone to come home to. I need you two to come home to. So, please, just stay right here”.

-

The boys kept their promise.For a year and six months (y/n) sent  two letter a week to the boys but August 1942 they stopped coming. They tried to stay positive her letter were lost in the mail or she was somewhere where they couldn’t send letters or she was to busy to send any. But even the positive words could not keep what they thought to be the truth away. An MIA letter arrived in January.

Seven months after her letters stopped Bucky was drafted to war he told Steve he had enlisted he couldn’t bare to tell him the truth. March of 1943 Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes joined the 107th. Steve watched him go just as they both had watched (y/n) go. “I’ll find her pal and we’ll be back before you know it” he said trying to give Steve hope.

The same night Bucky had left Steve joined the super solider program and was off two days after Bucky had left. No one was there to see him go.

Request tag and /or stories up to anything (within reason)

@geeksareunique  @iamwarrenspeace  @totallyweirdsam @sexysamsungl

#steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader smut #steve roger x reader smut #stucky x reader #stucky fanfiction #smut #fanfiction #captain america #steve rogers #sergeant barnes #bucky barnes #steve roger smut #bucky barnes smut #captain america first avenger #steve rogers x reader x bucky barnes