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obae-me · 4 years

Note

Hi! I was wondering if I could ask for a hc about the demon brothers reacting to an mc who has low self-esteem and uses dark humor as a way to cover it up? Thank you, and I hope have a nice day!!

Thank you for your request! I love angst solved with fluff, and with someone who struggles with low self esteem this is pretty self-indulging. I really hope you like these! 💜

Lucifer

Being more observant than some of his other brothers, he notices MC’s behavior rather quickly.

It really hit him when they missed class one day, bombing an important test. When he came back home he went straight to their room, ready to scold them for hours.

When confronted, they just shrugged and joked about it, saying that they wouldn’t have done any better anyway seeing as how dumb they were. They laughed like it was a fun joke, but Lucifer was taken aback. This wasn’t how humans normally joked around, right?

Being the Demon of Pride, he didn’t understand how anyone could put themselves down so easily.

He noticed more darker jokes like that popping up in casual conversations more and more frequently, and now he had a mind to put a stop to it.

It started with the subtle gestures. The way he talked to MC more softly. The way he sometimes walked next to them with a gentle hand on their back. How every so often he would rub the top of their head anytime they did something good. However, anything he did didn’t seem to be slowing the behavior. So he needed to be more direct.

He approached MC on a night that the self-depreciating humor was especially bad. He met them privately, and lifted their chin with one of his gloved hands while the other rested on MC’s shoulder.

“The House of Lamentation has an image to uphold...so of course we would never have let you in here if you would not have fit in that image.” His face was serious, but his eyes were gentle. “While you are in my presence, know that you...even while being human...are a magnificent being. So I expect these jokes to cease.”

He will now give MC compliments more often than not, and if he ever hears them make another dark joke about themselves, he’ll say their name sternly, and will wait for them to say something different.

Mammon

Doesn’t pick up on it for the longest time. Ever since MC came to the Devildom, he’s always been teasing and jabbing them, calling them names but with nothing harmful behind it.

Anytime he would call MC dumb or stupid they’d always laugh with him and agree, so they must’ve thought it was funny!

It wasn’t until he joked around with MC about how “typically dumb” they were being, not knowing that MC had just went through a particularly tough day. They tried playing it off, but felt different. The joke didn’t feel half as funny after MC smiled a crooked smile and their eyes went watery.

He tried following them to their room but was turned away. Left shut outside the entrance he always seemed to be allowed in. All because of some joke he made. All the things he had previously said struck him in that moment. Had he ever really said anything good about MC since they had been here?

He couldn’t make jokes like that anymore.

Now instead of “stupid human” he would tell them how smart they were to have him around. He would tell MC how cool they were to be hanging with the one and only Mammon. He didn’t let just anyone stick with him, so if MC was there, they had to be special.

Of course all the compliments had to have him in it, but the new smile MC seemed to show appeared much more genuine.

“Hey, human! I mean...MC. You can’t go saying sad stuff about yourself anymore, even if they’re jokes! Because...because...The Great Mammon wouldn’t hang out with people who were actually that scummy! That’s right, you’ve got some great potential, you could even be my apprentice! So don’t...say stuff about yourself like that anymore...”

MC seemed to now find all sorts of new things they had never had before. A new jacket just their size on their bed. A new phone case slipped into their bag. All sorts of gifts just happened to show up anywhere they went. Mammon’s way of saying he cared, since he could never bring it up with words.

Levi

He knows the feeling of low self esteem. He feels like a dirty, good-for-nothing shut-in. But when he heard MC make similar jokes, he couldn’t take it. He was mostly confused. MC had so many things he didn’t, so many things he was envious of, so why was MC of all people feeling that way?

He invited MC to his room to play games, planning on letting them win so maybe they could feel better. Unfortunately he has a hard time letting go of his true try-hard nature, and ends up winning anyway.

MC just laughs at their loss, claiming that it’s just another thing to check off their Loser list. They’d be the winner at losing, on the bright side.

Levi can’t take it anymore. He grabbed the controller in MC’s hand, put it aside and turned off his console. He couldn’t really look MC in the eye, but had to let them know how he felt. “MC...I can understand me feeling that way but...you’re wonderful, you have everything I don’t, so I don’t want to hear you say anything bad about yourself when-when I’m obviously worse!”

He’ll attempted to put himself down even more to try to lift MC up. Which MC didn’t tolerate in the slightest.

They argued for a while over which of them was worse, which luckily was short lived. They both sat down in silence, neither of them wanting to make eye contact. That was until Levi gently grabbed MC’s sleeve, tugging it, his face against their shoulder. “Y-you’re the closest thing I’ve had to a friend in my life...I-I won’t let anyone put you down, not even yourself.” He goes on and on about a specific anime plot, where the one of the main characters has to fight their childhood friend because they’ve been put under a curse. After the ramble, he makes sure to clarify by meaning that no matter what you’re going through, he’ll make sure you’re safe and happy.

They make a new game with each other that anytime one of them says anything bad about themselves, they have to say something equally nice about themselves. The person who loses has to give their favorite possession away. Maybe that’ll keep them from saying anything bad in the first place.

Satan

He’ll read MC like book, so to speak, but he has no idea how to handle it. He’s only read about similar personalities in his stories and occasionally with Levi. He doesn’t know how to best approach MC about it.

He’ll plan it out, probably like a battle plan. If he wants the best possible outcome, he’s going to need everything just right. The perfect setting, the perfect circumstance.

He settled on what he was sure was the perfect outcome, a rainy Devildom day. It was the weekend so everyone was either at home or out having fun. He knew MC was home in their room, so he headed there with several books he was sure they would enjoy.

When MC let him in, he was sure their face was redder than usual, and their eyes a bit more puffy. “Have you been crying, MC?”

“No that’s just how my ugly face looks.” And they laughed.

The plan was totally trashed now. Satan flared up with anger, dropping his books all over the ground. He took MC by the shoulder and pinned them against the wall. He was mad. Mad that someone like MC, someone who made him genuinely feel calm and happy, could say something about themselves like that. Like it was a joke. Like they were a joke.

“Stop saying things like that. How can you just go joking around like you don’t matter?! Do you know how much you mean to all of us?! To me?!” He took a deep breath and loosened the grip on MC’s shoulders, smoothing out the new wrinkles in their clothes. The aura of anger around him subsiding. “I know how to help you out with this, I have some...self help books in my possession. Purely out of curiosity of course. I’ll be here...to read them with you.”

After that Satan makes sure to meet with MC at least once a week to read books together. Stories about overcoming great obstacles, some self-help ones, and stories that make MC feel better in general.

He’ll also check up on MC frequently, making sure they feel better about themselves, even if it’s just a fraction of what it was before.

Asmo

It’s not until after they’d made a pact together that Asmo truly understood how MC felt of themselves. Asmo almost felt guilty he didn’t start complimenting them more before then, but guilt didn’t look appealing, but neither did what MC was doing.

He saves up a bit of money to be able to take MC on a massive spending spree. All his treat.

He doesn’t really give MC no for an answer when it’s time, and will drag them to all the greatest Devildom shops. He’ll pick outfits for them he knows will complement them, so they won’t have to be self conscious about their body.

Will complement MC to heaven and back. Their hair, their eyes, the curves on their body, the way their cheeks look when they laugh. Everything.

However, all this backfires when MC gives Asmo all the outfits back. “This was fun Asmo...but there’s no point spending money on me when nothing will make me look good.”

Asmo dragged MC into the brightly lit fitting room. He took both of MC’s hands in his. “MC, that kind of talk is not attractive! You can’t say such things when you’re as beautiful as you are! Trust me, there’s no one as beautiful as me, but...you’re a solid second place.” He’ll place a soft kiss on MC’s hands. “You’re stunning, so stunning I...I...I’m going to buy all these things for you right now, and anything else you want I’ll get! Shopping always cheers me up!”

It’s not like him to think of anyone else other than himself, so he got himself all worked up and flustered. But anytime he thought of MC...anytime he imagined that they thought of themselves any less of how he thought of them. It left a bad feeling in his chest that he needed to get rid of.

Won’t give MC any sort of time to deny or joke around any longer. He’ll compliment them now all the time, making sure they know just how amazing they are.

Beel

He surprisingly pick up on it immediately, even faster than any of his other brothers. The things MC does and says remind him of things he felt when Lilith... He couldn’t let MC do that any longer.

He tried to solve the problem at first by changing the subject any time any sort of joke like that came up. It didn’t seem to help. Whenever MC had the chance they would make some sort of joke. He couldn’t just try to distract them to help, he needed to fix this.

He decided maybe it would help their mood if he were to take MC to a fancy restaurant. Just the two of them, so they could talk about it. He didn’t like talking too much but there would be food too. Eating always made him feel better.

While eating, they heard MC make a joke pertaining on how they don’t belong in a place so fancy. Suddenly the food in Beel’s mouth didn’t taste as good anymore.

He’ll stand up and come right over to MC, pulling them out of their chair and into the tightest, most protective hug they had ever had in their life. Bringing MC so close to him, he almost completely covered them with his own body. Some other demons were staring, but he didn’t mind.

“I’ve always loved food, but ever since you came to the Devildom, food always tastes like a gourmet banquet every time...but when you say stuff like that, MC...it reminds me of Solomon’s cooking.”

MC laughed while against his chest. The laugh sounded different, it sounded happier than when they made those dark jokes. He wanted them to always sound like that. He would do almost anything to keep that sound so joyful.

Beel squeezed them tighter. “If you keep joking like that...food won’t taste as good anymore...”

Learns all of MC’s favorite meals and snacks so they always have something on hand for when MC needs a little boost.

Belphie

He notices MC’s behavior and their sense of humor and tends to be the enabler. He has that same type of humor, so it’s hard to stop, even if he doesn’t want MC to do the same thing.

He feels guilty about this and so he avoids MC for a while, not really knowing that this is making it worse. Whenever he shows up for meals or meets them during class he sees that avoiding them has made the jokes even worse.

He doesn’t want to talk about all the nightmares he’s been having about MC. About all the awful things that happen to them, either by his hands or something he couldn’t stop. He wanted the nightmares to end, he wanted all the self-bad-talk to end. All so he, Beel, and MC could finally have that happy dream.

So he takes MC up to the attic, having preparing the bed so it was covered in plush pillows and incredibly soft blankets. Anything he used to make him feel better.

He wraps MC in one of these blankets without a word, and then shoved them towards the bed. He was still learning how to be gentle with a human.

He’s not really good with words, he’s quiet when he’s awake and when he’s asleep, which is most of the time, he doesn’t need to say anything.

So he lays in bed with MC, grasping the blanket he put around their shoulders tight.

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes. “I just wanted...you to stop...So stop.” He attempted to be his typical brisk and demanding self, but it fell short. He sounded upset. He picked up one of the pillows in the pile, pointing it at MC like a weapon. “Stop.” He bopped them on the head with it. “Stop. Or I’ll continue to hit you with my pillow.”

He’s not joking. If at any point after that MC makes any sort of joke to try to cover the fact that they said anything bad about themselves, he will gently hit them with his pillow, giving them a long silent glare until they stop.

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me headcanons #obey me imagines #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me levi #obey me satan #obey me asmo #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #obey me requests

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slythraco · 3 years

Note

I love tour work sm! Please could you do a sfw alphabet for Tom?

Author’s note: yeees omg !!! I’ve been waiting for this one ! Turn in up ! 😂 (thank you for your compliment btw, means the world to me ❤️)

Masterlist

_____________

A = Attraction (how do they show their attracted to you?)

Compliments, a lot of them, all the time. He wants you to feel like the most beautiful thing in the world and it started before you even started dating. He was just so pleased by your smile when he was complimenting you so he never stopped since then.

He also tease you a lot, but it’s never in a rude way, as a genuine funny men it’s really just in his nature to annoy the persons he likes so he always make a little fun of you before making himself apologise to you by complimenting you. It’s his way of having your intention.

B = Baby (Do they want a family? Why/why not?)

It’s a big YES ! You actually talked about it really seriously and considered having a family in a close future. Partly because Tom is already 33 years old so he don’t want to wait to much but also just because he knows you would do an amazing mother at his side.

Not that he wants to put pressure on you but he does talks about it a lot and likes to give slight clues that he wants to make a baby with you really soon. It’s actually a matter of time before you start expanding the family.

C = Cuddle (How do they cuddle?)

Tom’s favorite activity with you is probably it, he could spend his life cuddling with you. Something he loves to do is laying on the couch, his head on your lap as you play with his hair while you’re watching tv. He easily fall asleep in this position which can’t help but making your heart melt every time.

He also loves to lay in bed with you while you read your favorite book. You’ll have you head on his chest and it will be his turn to play with your hair or caress your skin, never failing to give you goosebumps.

D = Dates (What are dates like with them?)

Really cheesy and romantic, one thing he loves to do is prepare surprise meal so you’ll get back from work and discover the whole house decorated in a romantic ambiance. Candles, roses, warm light and Tom in his best costume. Than you’ll share the meal he either spent the whole day making and almost burn the house at least 3 times or pay someone to do it, but it’s always delicious anyway.

One day he brought you to a fairground and you both went back in childhood for a night it was magical ! One of your best date with Tom.

E = Emotions (Do they express their emotions? If so, how?)

Yes ! Tom is a very emotional person and you’re the only one that even if he wanted to, couldn’t hide they’re feeling. He’s also a really authentic person so if he’s happy he will smile and laugh with you but if he’s sad he won’t be scared to cry if front of you because he feels safe enough around you.

F = Feelings (When did they know they were in love)

One day he was just looking at you while you were telling him about your day while cuddling on the couch like you both love to do, and it just hit him, he realised how he loves to just sit and look at your beautiful face. He could listen to your voice for the rest of his life.

G = Gentle (Are they gentle? If so, how?)

Yes, he’s the most gentle person in the world. Every time he touches you it’s always super soft and loving. He loves to caress your skin and never falling to give you chills down your spine.

He’s also super gentle in his words, he always careful of what he says to not hurt you or say something you could take wrongly.

H = Hands (Do they hold hands? If so, how?)

Yes, all the time, but literally ALL THE TIME. He just need to feel you hand in yours, so outside when you’re walking together he takes you hand, when you’re sitting on the couch, he takes your hand, even in public when there’s paparazzi following you around he takes your hand to make sure everyone knows you’re his.

Btw, Interlacing your fingers together is a must for him.

I = Impression (What was their first impression of you?)

The first thing he noticed about you is your smile, you directly seems like a sympathetic person which he loved. So he had a really good impression of you.

J = Jealousy (Do they get jealous?)

A little bit, like every relationship there’s always a bit of jealous when a guy compliment you a little too much but he genuinely trust you so you are not the person to make him jealous.

K = Kiss (How do they kiss? Who intiated the first kiss?)

Kissing Tom is always soft, passionate and just full of love. Also, you do it all the time, it’s like he can’t get enough of your lips, he could kiss them for hours if he didn’t need to breath to survive.

He’s the one who kissed you first, he just couldn’t control himself anymore that night so he kissed you in a passionate and hungry kiss and let me tell you, it was the best kiss of your two lives.

L = Love language (What are their love languages?)

Affection, Tom gives you a lot of affection, he wants you to feel loved and appreciated. He likes to cover you with kisses all over your skin, or hug you for hours. He’ll never get enough of feel your body against his.

M = Mornings (Are they a morning person? What are they like in the morning?)

Definitely not a morning person, it takes him ages to wake up, you usually have to return in your room a few times for him to actually wake up. And when he’s up, he’s really grumpy and slow in his movement, it’s funny and cute to see and you love to annoy him in the mornings.

N = Nickel (Do they spoil you? Do they buy the person they love everything?)

Yes ! Your smile, is the most precious thing to him and he just love to see it when he buys you something. But, Tom offer gifts pretty rarely, one occasion like your birthday, Valentine’s Day, any important day in your couple and maybe a few times between them. But when he offers something it’s always full of meaning !

Like, one time he bought you a shelf necklace because one day, when you were at the beach without him, you took a shelf and brought it back to offer it to him.

O = Open (Do they say everything about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or overtime?)

Tom is a really open person, very talkative so even before you two were dating he already like to talk about his life considering the fact that he had a pretty crazy one. But it’s was mostly about his work and anecdotes on set etc. When he started catching feeling for you he felt comfortable enough to talk to you about more personal things like his past relationships or the problems he struggled with in the past and he just got you two even more close.

P = Patience (Do they have patience? Are they angered easily?)

Tom is the most patient guy on earth, You often wonder how he puts up with you. He needs a lot to get angry at you or anyone else, this is something you’re really wanting to learn from him.

Q = Quaint (What’s their favorite non modern thing to do?)

Take Polaroid pictures, he has that old camera that he carries everywhere and he takes photos of every moment he feels like to picture. He stock his photos in a little hidden box, sometimes you two like to open it again and just remember memories you made together. The pictures are mostly you and willow or him with you.

Your favorite picture is one you took the first night you slept at his house, you can see the naked man being the goofy Tom he is by walking out of the shower with a “hat” made of bubble from the bath you took together. It was hilarious and you two always laugh when you see the images.

R = Remember (What’s their favorite moment in the relationship?)

The first time you told him: “I love you” ! You said it without even realising it, it truly came from your heart and it surprised the both of us but it was such a important moment for Tom that he will never forget it.

S = Security (How protective are they?)

Tom is really protective, he cares about your security a lot and always gets worried when you’re about to do something dangerous and he only calms down when you’re safe again.

T = Talking (what do they like to talk about?)

Everything and anything as long as it means talking to you but the two subject he could talk for hours are dogs and music. You can sit in front of him and just nod a couple time without even responding and he would go on a full conversation about the different breeds of dogs and how they are amazing. And honestly it’s super cute to look at him all excited and passionate about these two subjects.

U = Ugly (Whats a bad habit of theirs?)

Does Tom even have defaults ? Oh yeah, He loves to devalue himself, for absolutely no reason. This breaks your heart every time and always comfort him so that he can love himself more. He’s so perfect to you that sometimes you don’t understand why he’s so hard on himself.

V = Vaunt (Do they like to show you off?

Yes...all the time, the little smile on his face every time he present you as his girlfriend is just too adorable. Then he would talk to everyone about amazing you are and how lucky he is to have you in his life. He’s just proud of himself and proud of your union.

W = Whole (Do they feel incomplete without you?)

Tom is a different person without you. When he has to leave to a set for a movie he looks a little sad. He misses you every time you’re not together and always count the days before retrieving you.

X = Xylophone (What’s a song that reminds of your guy’s relationship?)

It will rain - Bruno Mars

Z = Zzz (Are they a heavy or a light sleeper ?)

Heavy sleeper for sure, like said before you have to shake him up a few times before he actually make up so yeah. He loud snores can testify it !

#sfw alphabet #tom felton fluff #tom felton request #tom felton x reader #tom felton imagine #tom felton one shot

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uglymanchronicles · 3 years

Text

Ugly Man Chronicles Reignition Book 2 Chapter 2: My Breakfast With Evan

Just a couple dudes getting to know each other.

“If you must know,” Evan sighed, spearing a glistening sausage on the end of a flimsy plastic fork, “my jackass older sister thought it would be hilarious to give me a cupcake she'd baked with about a dozen powdered viagra for my fifteenth birthday. I wound up passing out eventually. Burst a lot of blood vessels. Damaged the erectile tissue beyond usefulness.”

Titus froze mid-coffee-sip. “Seriously? What a bitch!”

“Buddy, you don't know the half of it.”

“So... no signs of life down there?”

“Nothing for twelve years.”

“I think I would literally kill myself.”

“It's not so bad, I guess. At least I don't have to drain the blood out of it any more.”

“Eugh! Fuck! Did not need to hear that!”

“Well, maybe you shouldn't ask questions you don't want the answer to.”

“Do you get, like, blue balls all the time, then?”

“That's basically my ground state of being.”

Titus whistled flatly, avoiding looking Evan in the eye. He settled for staring at the table. There wasn't a lot of Evan's face that he felt comfortable looking at; every part seemed to at least be adjacent to some unpleasantry or another. About the only safe area was his right eye, which, as luck would have it, was directly opposite Titus's 'good' eye. Titus rallied and met Evan's gaze again. “Alright, your turn.”

They'd agreed on a sort of mutual interview process, taking turns asking questions to suss out what the other was capable or if he was worth having around. Evan took a bite out of the sausage and chewed thoughtfully for a moment.

“Who's Moreno?”

Titus hissed through his teeth. “A real piece of shit.”

“I'm going to need more than that.”

“I'm getting to it. He's basically, like... a freelance henchman? Like, sort of a mercenary criminal. Sells his services to the highest bidder.”

“And why's he matter?”

“That's another question.”

“No, it is not,” Evan said, quiet and serious. “Do not argue with me in bad faith, Titus. I have very little patience for it in the best of times.”

Titus regarded him for a long moment. The man across from him was wider than the table they sat at. His muscles were so pronounced in some points that Titus could tell when he was about to move by the way they bulged and contracted. Yet he gave the impression that he was constantly trying to pull himself inward, to make himself smaller. He spoke quietly and with a simple formality, but only hours before Titus had watched him single-handedly beat down some of the nastiest people he'd met in the past month.

Hmm.

“Fine. Moreno matters because I'm after the guy he's working for. You see, Moreno isn't just a normal scumbag. He works for people who need nasty things done. Not like regular nasty, either. How much do you actually know about magic?”

“I've got some... notes. So far I'm not able to find a lot of coherent rules. It mostly seems like it relies on things that nobody would normally do.”

Titus snapped his fingers and pointed at Evan. “Hit it right on the head. Rituals, reagents, that kind of thing... the reason—well, one of the reasons—magic doesn't just happen all the time by accident is that it's all weird little things. A lot of the more heavy magic relies on some pretty elaborate and obtuse shit to get it going.”

Evan momentarily thought back to the Book of Fate and his ritual in the woods. “So Moreno does these things for people?”

“Yeah. Thing is, though...” Titus stopped raising a forkful of eggs halfway to his mouth and set it down again, as if he'd momentarily lost his appetite. “The people who use his services generally practice some pretty vile magic. Real depraved shit. And to empower depraved magic, you need depraved rituals. Moreno is the guy you go to when...”

“I think I get it,” Evan interjected, since Titus seemed to be struggling with deciding whether to continue. “Your turn.”

Titus tapped his fingers on the table for a moment, then looked Evan in the eye. “How smart are you?”

The scars on Evan's face squirmed around as he actually smirked. “What kind of question is that?”

“Hey, we agreed no 'whys'.”

“Alright, alright. Well, there's really no objective metric for it, but... I have Master's degrees in computer science and theoretical physics, Bachelor's in those in addition to mathematics and electrical engineering, and associate's degrees and certificates in everything from EMT training to ballet. I should have my doctorate in physics, but...” he said, with a bitterness that Titus made a note of, then changed gears. “Oh, and I also speak Mandarin, Spanish, Japanese, French, and Arabic pretty fluently. I also know ASL. I can get by in German and Russian, too. I don't know if any of that is what you meant but--”

“Jesus, I get it,” Titus muttered, rubbing the side of his head. “How the fuck do you make money?”

“Software consulting, mostly. I specialize in security and processing efficiency. People pay me to break into their systems and then patch the holes, or to make their code run quicker or make their programs smaller. I've got a few patents I've licensed that bring in most of my income nowadays, though.”

“Anything I would have heard of?”

“If you've used a computer made in the last four years it probably has something I wrote integrated somewhere into it. I also helped develop a protein-sequencing program that helped develop a vaccine for this nasty SARS variant that broke out in China last year. They say if they hadn’t nipped it in the bud it could’ve spread worldwide and we’d be looking at millions of deaths by now.”

Titus scrunched up his face. “Oh yeah, just say that like it’s no big deal.”

“I’m just glad it turned out not to be one. What I'd really like to do is get my compression algorithm out there, but if I do that, somebody's going to try to hoard it all for themselves.”

“Are you talking to yourself or me?”

“Look, I... a few years ago I figured out a way to compress memory down by a exponential factor of six with zero loss. All it takes is a couple software plugins that don't take up much room themselves. Essentially, I could make a gigabyte fit in a kilobyte with very little trouble, now that the math's figured out.”

“Holy fuck, that's insane! Why haven't I heard anything about this?”

“Mainly because I don't tell people. If I put it up on the market, some ISP would buy it and bury it. If you make information smaller, you make it faster. Can you imagine what it'd do to internet access if dial-up and barebones cellular networks suddenly had the bandwidth of fiber optics? It would... maybe not revolutionize our society, but it would level a lot of playing fields. Bring a lot of underdeveloped areas of the world—hell, this country—up to modern levels with no extra cost. The telecomms would crash and burn so hard. But I don't have the means to get it out there without going through someone else. Yet,” Evan added. “So I basically work watered-down versions of the compressor into the software I make. Nothing that can be duplicated, and nowhere near its full potential, but enough to get me hailed as some kind of genius and pay the bills.”

“So why aren't you on your own private island or something somewhere instead of puttering around God's Ashtray in a shitty old Bug?”

“Hey, the Beetle is not shitty,” Evan said, defensively. “And I'm just waiting for the AC in my RV to get fixed or I'd be driving that.”

“Oh hot damn! Now that's the way to live!”

“Not the one I'd choose voluntarily, but it could be worse.”

“How come you're doing it, then?”

“I think it's my turn to ask,” Evan said, mildly.

“Fine,” Titus said grumpily, crossing his arms.

“How do you make money?”

“That's easy. I'm basically a freelance bailbondsman. I just roam around, drop my advertising around bars and courthouses.”

“You get many clients that way?” Evan asked, cocking his remaining eyebrow.

“Oh, you'd be amazed how desperate people can get,” Titus said, shrugging. “Of course, they're usually not the most responsible people, so when they bounce, I track 'em down myself, drag ‘em back to jail, get the money back. My eye usually makes it super easy. Sometimes they don't even see me before I get the cuffs on 'em.”

“Why did you feel the need to rob a bunch of drug dealers, then? The thrill of it?”

“I had a pressing need for a large amount of cash that my normal work doesn't bring in. That got me enough to hold it off for a while. My turn.”

Evan waved down a waitress for a refill of his coffee, trying not to take it personally when she gasped upon seeing his face. “Go ahead…”

“No, no, hang on.” Titus waved a hand dismissively. “I want to try something. Take your hair out of the ponytail.”

“What? Why?”

“Humor me.”

Evan groaned and reached back, removing his hair tie. After shaking his head, his hair fell over his face, obscuring everything but his nose and mouth. Titus pursed his lips and regarded him seriously for a moment.

“Can you see?”

“Yeah, I guess. Well enough to not walk into things, I think, and I could probably read if I had to.”

Titus snapped his fingers. “Good. Go with that from now on.”

“Why?”

“Because now you don’t look like God’s mistake. Now you look like a big, dumb-but-lovable goon. Like Jack Black would voice you in a cartoon.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“Do you like seeing people contemplating their own mortality and the general cruel absurdity of the tragic farce that is human existence when they get a glimpse of your face?”

Evan felt his cheeks burn and was actually grateful his hair was covering most of his face. “…not particularly, no.”

“Then there you go. You’re welcome. Okay, question time. Uh… how did you get your powers?”

“Which one?”

“Oh, now who’s arguing in bad faith? Fucking all of them, you thick-lipped gargoyle.”

Evan had the feeling he hit a sore spot. Titus's easy-going, jocular tone had bled away from him, leaving behind the hard-edged razor-blade of a man that had ambushed him the night before. He decided not to belabor the point.

“I don't know why I can rege—why I heal so quickly. No, I'm serious, as far as I know, it just started happening sometime in the past few months. I can't remember. Don't look at me like that, I'll get to that in a minute. When I was younger I recovered from a lot of injuries a lot quicker than the doctors thought I would, so maybe it's something I was born with and it just got stronger recently for some reason.”

Evan took a sip of coffee, mainly to buy a few seconds to think of how much to explain for the next part.

“The ability to shut off powers... that's part of, well, I guess you'd call it a magic ritual, because I don't know what else to call it. I found a weird old book that said it contained the key to making someone an instrument of universal justice, or something of the sort. Since then I can see... I guess they're souls? Maybe? I can sort of move mine and when I run it into someone else's it seems like I can shut off their powers. Or... take them entirely, if they're dying.”

“Horseshit!” Titus scoffed. “That's... that's like meta-magic. I don't even know if that's real.”

“No, seriously! I don't think it's just magic powers, I think it... 'normalizes' things.” He briefly recounted his encounter with the pain monster.

“Are you kidding me? That...” Titus took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair, exhaling slowly and loudly. “Look, I don't know much, but the fact that you even ran into something like that, let alone survived... those odds are astronomical. And you say you negated not just its powers, but its whole form?”

“Yeah. Once I... reached into it, like I did with you—oh don't make that face. Grow up—I kind of disrupted what made it... different, I guess? Like I cut it off from its special qualities. Like it was...”

“Disjuncted,” Titus cut in.

“Yeah, that's a good word for it. Like the old Mordenkainen spell?”

“Fucking nerd.”

“Eat my ass. Anyway, after I killed it, I was able to reach into its... soul? Animating force? Aura? I don't know what to call it. I was able to grab something and pull it out and it just got pulled into me.”

“Not aura.”

“What?”

“Aura's a different thing,” Titus said, dismissively. “So what did you get from doing that?”

“I.. I feel pain differently. I don't flinch or get adrenaline rushes from injuries that don't actually impede my ability to function. I think I have a better sense of what is actually dangerous to my body now. It still hurts, but I don't react to pain like people normally do. It's like...hmm.” Evan drummed his fingers on the table. “Do you know anything about video games? Fighting games, specifically?”

“I used to fuck around on an old Alpha 3rd Strike cabinet when I was a kid. Why?”

“Do you know what 'super armor' is?”

“Isn't that where a move can't get stopped by being hit when you're doing it?”

“Right. I'm kind of like that now. Pain doesn't interrupt me.”

“Fucking nerd.”

Evan's fist involuntarily clenched. “I'm trying to put this in terms you can understand, you stupid reprobate. My experience with your judgment thus far hasn't given me much faith in your intellect.”

Titus burst out laughing. “So he does know how to banter! I thought you might be one of those Rainman types.”

“Oh sure, call it 'banter' to try to excuse the fact that you've been insulting me for the past half hour. Do you say you're ‘just joking’ when people get mad at you for saying stupid shit, too?”

“C'mon, lighten up! We're partners now! Tell me more about this soul thing. I still think you're full of shit.”

Evan sighed through his nose, then held up his left hand, forming his fingers into a circle and peering through them.

“Yours is... a sort of cross between a sea green and an oil slick. The tendrils of it keep reaching out and snapping back, going all over the place. It seems to keep expanding and contracting. It's almost flickering, like... it's indecisive. Very chaotic. The tendrils that aren't snapping around seem to be kept pretty close to your body, wrapping around you like... I can't tell if it's protective or restrictive.”

Titus's expression slowly became serious. “What does that mean?”

“I don't know. I have a lot of theories, but nothing solid to go on. I'm not sure if it's allegorical or a literal representation of a person's... power, maybe? Yours definitely looks a lot different than most people's.”

“I don't believe this for a second. Let me see.”

“How would I do tha—hey!”

Titus grabbed Evan's wrist and held his hand up to his eye. “Ho-lee...”

He pulled back from Evan's hand, staring at him. Then he looked around the room, mouth slack as he took in the diner's other occupants.

“Huh. Did you know it keeps working until you blink?” He said after a moment, a faraway tone to his voice.

“I didn't even know other people could do it,” Evan said, awe in his voice. “Hey, wow, you're right!”

“Jesus, yours is, like, really blue. It looks like... a bunch of steel cables. It's weird, I felt like I both could and couldn't see the edges of it...”

“I can kind of move it, but I'm not sure if I can do anything with it beyond interfering with people's powers. It's like learning to use a muscle you didn't know you had.”

“Huh.” Titus was again silent for a long moment. “Your turn.”

“Can you do anything else supernatural? Besides your time-eye?”

“Don't call it that, it sounds stupid. And... sorta. I seem to have whatever innate talent you need to actually do magic, but it's not like it's easy to find instructions. Most of the people I know who can use it just dabble with half-broken magic items—wands, amulets, charms,” he pulled the silence charm out from under his coat and bounced it at the end of its chain. “I guess I'm sort of a dabbler. I know a few tricks, I can use a lot of magic tools, I can sense magic pretty well, I can dowse... Most of the time I really never have to use anything besides the eye, though.”

“Is the eye all-or-nothing?”

“Yeah. It's not nearly as useful as you'd think, but any edge is an edge.”

“When I turned off your power and it was coming back, though, you started speeding up—or, I guess, everything else was slowing down? You were moving faster, one way or the other. You were able to touch me, and those punches hurt.”

“Huh, yeah, you're right.”

“Do you think there's a way you could learn to only partially activate it?”

“That'd be great, wouldn't it? Thing is, just using it is a huge strain, and that time spend outside of time adds up. Going by normal calendar time I'm only 26.”

“Fuck, I'm 27!” Evan laughed.

“Yeah, well, I'd rather be prematurely gray than what you've got going on. My turn. Uh... huh, I can't really think of anything else. Uh... are you gay?”

“Are you fucking serious?”

“No, but the question still counts.”

“I'm bi,” Evan mumbled, crossing his arms across his prodigious chest. “Not that it matters. And before you ask, no, you are not my type. We're done talking about this.”

“Huh. You ever sucked--”

“We. Are. Done. Talking about this.”

“Fine, God. Go.”

Evan mentally circled back to an earlier question he felt hadn't been properly answered. “Why are you after Moreno?”

To Evan's surprise, Titus didn't hesitate. “I'm actually after his current boss. He's just the best lead I have to go on.” He took a deep breath, then started talking with a rushed, deadpan pace, as if he was eager to get the words out as quickly as possible so they wouldn't be in his mouth very long.

“Moreno is working for a guy only known as the Soultaker. He has an innate supernatural ability to pull a person's soul out of their body. When that happens, the person just... shuts down, usually. No motive force behind them. Eventually they just die of dehydration, usually. I've seen some people so set in routine that they keep going without a soul, but... it's not really life.

“It seems like the extraction process takes a while, so he can't just walk past you on the street and pickpocket your entire essence. So he needs people rounded up for him, held until he can do his nasty juju. So that's where a degenerate like Moreno comes in.

“So when he pulls out a soul, it, well, it looks like this.”

Titus pulled a battered, faded Crown Royale bag out of his jacket. It bulged strangely and made a quiet clacking when he set it on the table. He pulled out what looked like a large marble, or maybe a dull pearl, and handed it to Evan.

Evan brushed his hair out of his eyes and peered into the milky depths of the sphere. After a few moments of staring, the murky clouds inside the thing seemed to clear and a face floated to the surface. A black man, maybe in his late 40s, going thin on top. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be sleeping, but his expression had a look of discomfort to it, as if he was having a bad dream.

“Jesus Christ,” Evan whispered, “I've seen this guy... Martell Calloway? I saw some news article about how his family found him tied up in his apartment and completely comatose! But he didn't have any injuries beyond being a black eye... so he's dead?”

“Life support,” Titus said, taking Mr. Calloway's soul back from Evan's unresisting fingers, “technically, he's one of the lucky ones. They found his body before it wasted away to nothing, and I was able to intercept his soul before it got to a buyer.”

“Why would someone buy something like this? What use is it? Can you fix him?”

“A human soul is a damn near exhaustible arcane battery,” Titus said gravely. In the split second between sentences, Evan noticed something—after he'd put the bag back into his jacket, Titus surreptitiously touched a pocket on the other side of his jacket, as if he was making sure something was still there.

“If you know what you're doing, you can power a lot of magic using a soul. And you can reuse them as long as you don't overdo it. If you know what you're doing, you can wring all but the last drops of essence out of a soul and let it heal or recover or whatever, and it'll eventually be back to full strength. Very resilient things,” Titus continued. “I don't think they're conscious in there, but... anyway, it's supposed to be really hard to extract a soul. But this guy was born with or spontaneously developed or somehow figured out a shortcut to the whole process. So the market is getting flooded with torture-batteries and ECUs are getting flooded with vegetables. And families are winding up with loved ones who are as good as dead, without having any idea why this happened to them. Dozens of them have been taken off life support in the past few months. Half these souls have no body to return to. And no, I can't fix it. At least not yet,” he sighed again. “I was hoping once I found him, I could somehow get the secret out of him or force him to put them back, or... maybe I thought if I killed him it'd reverse the effect. He needs killing, either way.”

Titus's eye widened as a thought struck him and he looked Evan in the eye for the first time since he'd started the story. Evan realized what he was thinking and looked down at the tattoo on his left arm, flexing his fingers.

“If you can take people's powers after they die...”

“...then we can save these people.”

Titus put a hand over his mouth and for a moment Evan thought he saw his eye well up.

“I'm in,” Evan said, a sense of righteous purpose welling in his heart. “I don't really know what the universe wants, but I doubt... I know it's not this. We'll find him, we'll stop him, and we'll save as many of these people as we can.”

“...thanks,” Titus mumbled behind his hand. He swallowed hard, then seemed to come back to himself. “We're back to square one, though.”

“You said you could dowse? Like, for real?”

“Yes, for real. I can find things and people with the pendulum method. It's handy for tracking down bounties.”

“Why don't you dowse Moreno?”

“Why didn't I think of that?!” Titus said incredulously, smacking his forehead. “Because he's warded. He's not magic himself, but he's collected enough gear through his career that my normal methods don't work.”

Evan rubbed his chin. “What if we used an abnormal method?”

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

An hour later, they were in the RV. Titus was poring over the collection of Evan's notes and the strange papers he'd bought from Delmann's shop. Evan was very carefully slicing a strip of skin from his own ankle up all the way up his leg. The Guiding Light—the Finder's Follysat on the table between them, filled with fresh blood.

“Even if this works, he's going to know we're coming,” Titus muttered, engrossed in the pages. “Remember what I said?”

“That's why we're not going to look for him,” Evan said, adjusting his grip on the potato peeler. “I don't know how we'd even write his name. Can you read that, by the way?”

“Kind of. This is... most of this is written in, like, arcane pidgin. Who compiled these notes?”

“I did, I think.”

“You think?”

“Oh yeah, I forgot to clarify on that. Apparently a couple months ago, before the ritual, I drilled a hole in my own brain to erase some kind of very dangerous memory.”

“You what.”

“That's not a metaphor or anything. Really did it. I could show you the video.”

“I'll pass. So you don't remember where this came from?” Titus shook the Book of Fate at him.

“Nope.”

“Jesus shit, do you have any idea--”

“How reckless that was? Yeah, yeah, I'm still here and I'm the answer to your fuckin' prayers, aren't I?” Evan gave a whoop as the peeling skin reached his thigh. “Got it this time!” he said cheerfully, snipping the flesh-ribbon off with scissors.

“God, that's so fucking gross. Anyway, you haven't explained how we're going to use that thing to find Moreno.”

“We don't set it to look for him. We look for somewhere he's been. Maybe the last place he slept. Do you think you can describe him well enough in that language for it to work?”

Titus looked like he might actually be impressed, but he hid it well. “Yeah, probably.”

“Good. I've got a dictionary I've put together on that tablet next to you, but I'm not sure how accurate it is. Maybe it'll help?”

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

Two hours later, they had it.

Find where a man born between the 27th and 28th north parallels during a new moon under the sign of capricorn with black hair and green eyes who has killed at least 10 people slept in the past week.

They really had to squeeze the letters in, but when Evan put a flame to the wick, it sprung to life, wavered for a moment, and then pointed east. Both men cheered. Evan threw Titus the keys.

“Drive! Drive north until I tell you otherwise!”

While Titus started the engine, Evan spread a map of the United States on the table in front of the lamp, then produced a protractor and a notebook from a drawer. “Okay, you bastard... let's see where you've been hiding...”

It took three days—one spent driving north, one spent driving back to where they'd started, and one spent driving south. While Titus drove, Evan made meticulous notes of the flame's direction, marking angles on the map. Finally he threw the pencil down triumphantly.

“He's in Salt Lake City.”

“Well, that narrows it down a little, I guess. So what, do we just go there and hope this thing points us in the right direction?”

“Too slow,” Evan called, stepping back into what used to be his bedroom and sitting at his computer. “Now I work my magic.”

After parking, Titus walked back to look over Evan's shoulder. The half-dozen monitors on the wall were flickering between rapidly-changing pictures of faces and what appeared to be CCTV footage.

“What is this?”

“This,” Evan said with dramatic pride, “is Blaccat. Facial recognition algorithms that the CIA wishesit had. I actually started working on it years ago before I thought about the implications of it, but I shelved it. I figured since I may be needing to, uh...”

“Be Batman?”

“...yeah...that I should get back to work on it. Right now it's comparing faces to the description you gave me and cycling through every damn security camera in the city looking for it.”

“How illegal is this?”

“Soooooo illegal.”

“Oh, hey, can you get into police department records?”

“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”

“See if you can get into the Las Vegas mugshots from... February 2019. Run your face-recognition thingy there.”

“Alright.... and... is that our boy?”

A handsome Latino man in his early 30s with shoulder-length jet-black hair and piercing green eyes stared at them from over a booking clipboard.

“That's him,” Titus breathed.

“Perfect! Now I just have to feed that into... wow.” Evan made a gesture and a black and white video popped up on the biggest monitor. The man in the mugshot was walking along the street, flanked by a short stocky man in bandanna and a lanky man with the ugliest white-boy dreads Evan had ever seen.

“That's him! Where is that? When is that?”

Evan grinned up at Titus. “That's live. I can track him and put us at the nearest intersection.”

Titus smiled, eye overbright, and began breathing heavily through his nose. “We got him.”

Evan met his eye and nodded. “Let's get him.”

#my writing #urban fantasy #ugly man chronicles: reignition

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shyvioletcat · 4 years

Note

Rowan and Aelin talking about their dream house

Guess who’s back? Enjoy the return of our favourite firefighter.

Fluffy prompt-a-thon masterlist

Striking Matches Masterlist

~~~~~

Aelin was only half way and she had given up. She had three more flights of stairs to go and she was puffed and exhausted and didn’t know how long it would take her to gather the strength to get up the rest of them. The fact that it was winter was a blessed relief, at least she didn’t have the heat to contend with, even though she was most definitely sweating. She was only 7 months pregnant and she was struggling to make it up the stairs. How was she supposed to do it once she was even more pregnant? How was she supposed to climb six flights of stairs with a baby?

Those were things that she had been thinking about a lot lately. She loved her little dingy apartment, or rather loved what had happened there. That was where she met Rowan, where the whole door fiasco had happened. He had proposed to her in that apartment, carried her all the way up these damned stairs after they had got married. The apartment meant a lot to her, but it was getting more and more obvious that their time here was running out.

Finally catching her breath and willing away the tears in her eyes Aelin started to climb again. And she refused to stop until she got to the apartment door, even if that meant she had gone at a snail's pace at some points. She was just glad that Rowan wouldn’t be home and she would be able to compose herself and swallow back her emotions for when he got home, hopefully. Her emotions and hormones had not been her friends of late. So when she opened the door and saw him sitting on the couch it caught her unawares and she almost burst into tears at the sight of him.

Rowan immediately saw that something was wrong and he was up from the couch, taking her work bag from her and put it on the ground before gathering her into his arms.

“Aelin,” he said onto her head and she held him tighter. “Love, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Aelin said into his chest, her voice muffled. “It’s just a lot of stairs.”

Rowan kissed her head once then let her go. “You sit down, I’ll get you some water.”

Aelin did just that, sitting on the couch and taking her shoes off her swollen feet. Rowan was back in a few moments, giving her the bottle of water as he sat down beside her. Aelin immediately lent into his side, taking comfort of the feeling of his body against hers. Then she took a drink.

“What are you doing home?” Aelin asked, her voice still a little strained.

“I convinced Lorcan to let me be on call from home,” Rowan said. That explained while he was in his uniform. “I had a feeling you might need me.”

That was what broke the dam on Aelin’s tears. Damn him and his intuition.

“We can’t stay here,” Aelin said before he could ask. “We can’t stay here and that makes me sad. Because this place was so important to us, but we can’t have a baby here. I can’t do the stairs pregnant, I can’t do the stairs with the baby. There will always be so much to carry and I know I can’t do it. We can’t do it.”

Rowan looked down at her, as she looked up at him. “I know.”

“You do?” Aelin asked.

“Yeah,” Rowan said, the left corner of his mouth dropping in a frown. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.”

“You have?”

Rowan just nodded. Then they were both quiet for a while, both just thinking Aelin guessed. That's what Aelin was doing, a thousand different thoughts running through her mind. All of it getting a little overwhelming. Would they buy? Would they rent? Where would they go? When would they go? They were on a pretty defined deadline.

“One step at a time,” Rowan said quietly, no doubt reading the tension in her body. “We don’t even know what we want.”

Rowan was right again, they had never really talked about moving in a real sense. It was one of those things they just assumed they would do when the time was right.

“What’s your dream house?” Rowan asked, relaxing back into the couch. “What makes or breaks the deal?”

Aelin took another sip of water as she thought. “I think it has at least four bedrooms.”

“Four?” Rowan said looking down, brows high. “What on earth are we going to do with all those rooms?”

Aelin smiled coyly up at him, her hand running over her belly. “Oh, I don’t know.”

Rowan chuckled. “I think I want a place with our own private bathroom.”

“Why’s that?” Aelin asked.

“Privacy,” Rowan said simply.

“For?” Aelin pressed.

Rowan just rolled his eyes at her. “Whatever your imagination wants, Aelin.”

That made Aelin laugh, then she glanced around the room. “I want a dining area. Somewhere we can have a real dining table. And a big kitchen. Not huge, but big enough that we can move around in it together without running into each other.”

“I like running into you in the kitchen,” Rowan said.

“But things always burn, or we’re late. I think it’s best if we have some space,” Aelin explained matter of factly, but she didn’t miss how Rowan's arm tightened around her at the mention of taking ‘space’, like the thought of it right now was abhorrent. Aelin found his hand and squeezed it. “I want a yard. Big enough so we can get a dog.”

“And space for the baby to play and run,” Rowan added.

“I want the house to be cute too,” Aelin told him. “I don’t want some ugly modern thing. I want it to have character.”

“I like that idea,” Rowan said. “Maybe we could find a place on the edge of the city. Still close enough that we can keep our jobs, but a little quieter, more land.”

“I think I would like that,” Aelin agreed. “I don’t want to leave all our friends.”

“Even Lorcan?” Rowan asked.

Aelin let out a burst of laughter. “Yes, even Lorcan. But mainly for Elide’s sake, but please don’t tell him that.”

By some divine intervention Rowan wasn’t called out to an incident, so they spent the whole evening talking about and discussing their new house. They playfully fought over room colours as they ate dinner, whether they would have carpet or floorboards in the bedrooms as they half paid attention to the show on the TV, discussed what exactly they would use all those bedrooms for while they got ready for bed. By the time Aelin was tucked into Rowan’s side under the covers they had a decent idea of what exactly they wanted from a house.

Unbeknown to Aelin, Rowan started looking while she was asleep, trawling through pages of houses. By the time his own eyelids were dropping he hadn’t found anything, but he knew he would find something, it might just take a little bit of time.

~~~~~

It took Rowan about 2 weeks to find something that fit almost all their requirements. He hadn’t expected to find the perfect home but this came pretty damned close.

He’d spent the night at the station on night shift, using the quiet the time waiting looking through every real estate site he could think of searching for right house. And found it he did. It was nearly 2 am so he didn’t call or message Aelin in case she was sleeping, something she was getting less and less of these days, but it left him humming with an excited energy.

When he walked through the apartment door Aelin was in the kitchen making herself breakfast. Rowan went straight to her, kissing her sweetly before holding his phone up for her to look at.

“Rowan, what…”

Rowan watched for her reaction, as her brows furrowed in confusion but then when she saw what was on her screen her eyes went wide.

“It’s… that’s perfect,” Aelin said, taking his phone from him.

“Well, it’s not,” Rowan said, swiping his fingers across the screen to flick through the photos. “The kitchen is old and terrible and the paint job throughout the old house is retro and not in a good way. But those are all things we could fix. The yard is huge, there’s this big old tree in the yard we could hang a swing from. It’s got some flaws, but I don’t think we’ll find anything much better.”

“I love it Rowan,” Aelin said, putting his phone on the counter and wrapping her hands around his neck. “I’ll contact the real estate on my lunch break and –”

“I already have,” Rowan said with a smile. “I’ve emailed them, expressing our interest. I’ve got it all started.”

Aelin grinned and then kissed him. “Thank you, Rowan. You are too perfect.”

Rowan smiled, “Anything for you, my love.”

~~~~~

I just love these two SO MUCH!

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justablobfish · 3 years

Text

Finding a present for that person that is impossible to find a present for

Day 13 of my Advent Calender. A new drabble or oneshot everyday until Christmas, following the Continent’s favourite found family and what they’re up to in the winter season. Based on this prompt list

Read on AO3

Day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

______

It's going to be Jaskier’s second time visiting Kaer Morhen.

Two years ago, Geralt had asked him only a few days before they were scheduled to separate for the winter. It had all been rather sudden and the whole season had passed in a blur of anxiety and excitement.

He hadn't even met the whole family then, Geralt's little brother Lambert hadn't made it to the keep that year. Then, the year after, Jaskier got delayed by his family until he couldn't make it to the keep anymore; the path had already snowed over.

This year though - this year Jaskier is determined to make the most of his time at Kaer Morhen and charm his way into the hearts of Geralt's family until they can't imagine winter without him anymore.

Step one is to make a good first impression after the Wolves haven't seen him in so long. And the easiest way to do that is to get the perfect welcome gift for everyone scheduled to be there.

He comes across the first gift mere weeks after the snow of the previous winter has melted. After the tedious experience with his parents he decides to spend some time in Oxenfurt to recuperate.

In his favorite dingy little bookstore he finds the perfect present for Eskel.

Yes, yes, a steamy romance novel might not necessarily be the best way to prove himself to his lover's family, but the cover of the book shows your usual handsome warrior with very revealing clothing clutching a swooning damsel in distress in his overly muscular arms. Except this protagonist is drawn with an enormous scar covering the left side of his face.

He's extremely handsome. So is Eskel, of course, but whenever Jaskier tells him as much he just dismisses the compliment. With this book though, Eskel will have to believe him that scars are seen as attractive by quite a number of people. Why else would they draw the cover like this?

His second gift he also finds in a bookstore, though this place couldn't possibly be more different than where he found the book for Eskel.

The "Ye Olde Books" in Toussaint sells only the most esteemed antiquities to rich noblemen who never intend to read them and only display them to prove their supposedly good taste and to exaggerate their riches.

Jaskier quickly determines the oldest book the store has on offer. It's still younger than the recipient of the gift, of course, but the fairy tale stories it holds should still be similar enough to the stories that must have been popular when Vesemir was a child.

After the events of the last winter Jaskier at least managed to guilt trip his parents enough that he has no trouble paying for the delicate tome.

As for Lambert, Jaskier didn't meet him the one year he spent at Kaer Morhen, but he and Geralt ran into the younger Witcher on the Path once. It was a brief encounter and Lambert didn't seem to particularly like Jaskier.

Geralt reassured him afterwards that it's nothing personal and that Lambert doesn't like anyone.

Even though they couldn't possibly be more different, Lambert somewhat reminded Jaskier of himself. Jaskier is happy with his place in the world now, but he had to carve it out for himself, which hadn't always been easy. He remembers a time when he, too, felt trapped in the life he was born into, never good enough to satisfy his parents or to become a person in his own right, not just the heir to a legacy he wanted nothing to do with.

So the bitterness Lambert carries around with him feels very familiar.

His third gift, therefore, is just as expensive as Vesemir's and on top of that requires a large amount of convincing to work out. Luckily, Jaskier has practice annoying someone enough until they agree to anything. He spent most of his life perfecting the skill with the involuntary help of his lover.

By the time winter comes around again, the specially commissioned Gwent card will have started distribution. Though of course Jaskier will carry a copy of the new Lambert hero card with him as well and present it to Geralt's younger brother. He's made sure it would be stronger than the White Wolf card that became popular in recent years.

Ciri's gift is easy enough. Jaskier simply buys the biggest, fluffiest teddy bear he can find. Ciri is going to roll her eyes at him and claim that she isn't a kid anymore, but that's exactly what makes it the perfect present. With all that destiny business, the kid forgets far too often to allow herself to be a child sometimes.

How to get this monstrous thing, which is nearly as tall as Jaskier, back to Kaer Morhen is an entirely different story, though…

The gift for Yennefer isn't hard to find either once he meets up with Geralt and travels with him again. In a run-down little general store in a village in the middle of nowhere, in the furthest corner of the shop, hidden under a fishing net and a set of gardening tools, lies the most atrocious knitted sweater Jaskier has ever seen. There's no reason to abandon old traditions, even if he and Yennefer don’t meet up at Oxenfurt anymore. And in case Yennefer doesn't attend Kaer Morhen this winter, he'll simply keep it around until the next time they meet. The knitwear is so incredibly ugly, it would be a shame to waste it.

Geralt informs him one day that Lambert will bring a plus one. Not a boyfriend or close friend or anything, just a superficial acquaintance. The fact that Lambert risked his own hide to save the man's life is - apparently - entirely coincidental and without meaning. It's just that this other Witcher of the Cat school has no other place to spend the winter. Nothing more.

Geralt calls his little brother an emotionally constipated idiot and Jaskier can't help but burst out laughing at the hypocrisy.

Jaskier isn't sure whether to get this Aiden a gift as well since he never met the man, but as so often in his life, fate takes matters into its own hands.

He's perusing his favorite clothes store in Vizima when he finds the most beautiful scarf. It's big and woolen and perfectly flashy. Every handspan or so the pattern and colours change completely. All in all it shows every colour of the rainbow.

That is not the gift for Aiden, of course. But it's going to look great on Jaskier, especially since Geralt still insists he wears that old grey winter cloak. Granted, the cloak is warm, but oh so boring looking. The scarf will be just the right accessory to add a bit of color to his winter wardrobe.

The gift for Aiden he comes across as he leaves the store. A little boy, who must be the owner's son, sits at the side of the road and busies himself with thread and needle.

Curious, Jaskier steps closer and finds that the boy is attaching pieces of felt to a simple hairband.

Once the kid is done he puts the headband on and the felt pieces stand up in such a way that it appears like the boy has kitten ears growing out of his head.

Jaskier considers for a moment but then decides that if this Aiden is voluntarily hanging out with Lambert, he must have a good sense of humor. He buys the headband off the boy and heads back to his and Geralt's inn room.

Maybe it's because he's traveling with Geralt and can't really go looking for a gift for the White Wolf, but by the time their departure for Kaer Morhen rolls around, Jaskier has a little something for everyone, except Geralt. He doesn't even have an idea what he could gift to the man. Anything practical like a new whetstone, better armor or a fancy dagger is something that Geralt is far better equipped to pick out himself. Jaskier has little knowledge about such things.

And while Jaskier has spent the last twenty years of his life convincing the big oaf that he deserves pretty things every once in a while, too, Jaskier can't think of anything that wouldn't just be in the way when they eventually set out on the Path again.

The end of autumn creeps closer and closer and Jaskier’s head stubbornly remains empty. It shouldn't be this hard to think of something that Geralt would enjoy. After all, Jaskier has known him for over two decades now. But it seems like everything he could get his favorite Witcher he has already gotten him at some point during their travels.

He still has no idea when they pass the last village on the way to the Witchers’ keep.

Or when they start making their way up the mountain path.

Maybe there's a pretty rock he can pick up?

What? No, that's a dumb idea. He's not just gonna pick up a random rock just because he's desperate. At this point he'll just have to accept the fact that he has no gift for Geralt.

They reach the keep after two days of tedious climbing - not something Jaskier missed from his last visit - and are greeted at the gates by the other Witchers. Geralt's family members each welcome Geralt with a short hug and a pat on the back, while another man, who must be Lambert's tagalong, awkwardly stands to the side. Vesemir and Eskel nod at Jaskier courtly, Lambert only grunts at him.

Jaskier makes eye contact with Aiden who rolls his eyes at him apologetically over Lambert's behaviour.

Then Geralt brings Roach to the stables and they all quickly make their way inside.

In the large dining hall they meet Yennefer and Ciri. Apparently they only came here a day earlier via portal, making Jaskier and Geralt the last to arrive.

"I have welcoming gifts!" Jaskier addresses everyone.

Eskel reacts to his present with eyes narrowed in confusion. Then they grow wide with realisation and wonder.

Lambert scoffs when Jaskier hands him his parcel. He doesn't scoff again after he unpacks it.

Aiden grins at him widely and immediately puts his gift on.

Vesemir simply hums appreciatively. It reminds Jaskier far too much of Geralt. He supposes the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Ciri, as expected, reacts with a pout and the declaration that she's not a child anymore. Still, she clutches the plushy to her chest and refuses to let it go when Aiden says he'll take it if she doesn't like it.

Yennefer snarls at her sweater and quickly turns away from the group to hide it, but just like Ciri does with the teddy bear, she clutches it to her chest protectively.

Which only leaves Geralt.

"I, uh…, " Jaskier stutters and stares at his empty hands.

"Hmm," Geralt hums. "Saving the best for last?"

He grabs Jaskier by the shoulder, turns him around so that he's facing the room. He hugs Jaskier from behind and places his chin on Jaskier’s shoulder.

"Seems like you got me the best gift of all," Geralt hums. "Look!"

Confused, Jaskier glances about the room. Vesemir and Eskel are sitting in a corner, flipping through their respective books. Lambert is chasing Aiden through the room, who has stolen his Gwent card and is waving it around tauntingly. Ciri holds the teddy out to Yennefer, who's holding her sweater to the bear's chest to see if it would fit him. There's nothing out of the ordinary that Jaskier can spot.

"I don't under-" he begins.

"Everyone's here," Geralt explains. "My whole family in one place for the very first time. I couldn't possibly ask for more."

#the witcher #the witcher fanfiction #geraskier #Jaskier #geralt of rivia #eskel #lambert #aiden #vesemir #ciri #Yennefer of Vengerberg #theblobfishwrites

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bookcoversalt · 4 years

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SERPENT & DOVE 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO (also blood and honey)

I originally covered (pun intended) SERPENT & DOVE in February 2019, and I wasn't complimentary. While the black and gold color scheme is appealing and there's a nice sense of depth and texture to the snake, beyond that, it is a hot mess. The rendering is plasticky, the imagery is mostly vague ~ AESTHETIC ~ nonsense, the whole thing has an off-center awkwardness, and what, for the love of god, is up with that midcentury typeface. An eagle-eyed blog reader even clocked weird crop mark.

Since then, I've been pointed to the online portfolio post of this cover by the designers, which has some very cool (and enlightening) process shots:

You may notice that this looks better than the actual cover! The serpent and dove figures actually share hierarchical dominance here as a single unit, and their overlap is dynamic and interesting as a focal point. So what happened? Since there's so little color in the comps, I have to assume that either it was originally intended to have a paler overall palette, or the question of color was intentionally punted down the line, but either way, this seems to have been created before the stark black and gold was decided upon. Because that's where we lose the dove completely.

She's also been pushed fully behind the snake, losing any sense of the interaction between them and making our general sense of depth and "physical" space sort of... confused. Knowing how design processes typically work, I would think they tried the dove in gold in that original lockup and for whatever reason, it didn't work: maybe it overwhelmed the cover with too much gold or maybe it interfered with readability too badly. This explains my original discomfort with the size of the snake and weird emptiness of the design between the dramatically spaced type: originally, it was supposed to be (more) filled, and it hasn't been adjusted for the loss of that element.

Full disclosure: the first time I made a post on this cover, I didn't even realize the dove was there. My eyeballs lost it in all the nondescript foliage and flourishes so badly that the meaning-making part of my brain didn't translate those shapes into a specific object. And I spend a lot of time looking at covers when I review them! So that's embarrassing for me, yes, but this is also a failing of the cover itself. Regardless of my other issues with it, I think it's really disappointing that the (interesting! relevant! aesthetique but in a good way!) visual focal point that the entire iterative process centered around ended up completely dismantled in favor of....... ugh, I dunno, the 1950s diner type? Pinterest board trimmings of leaves and sparkles, like turkey trimmings but even less appealing?

Because I didn't know the dove was there, I was, uh, confused when I first got asked about how EXTREMELY similar BLOOD & HONEY is, a sentiment I've heard a number of times now, because BLOOD & HONEY, shall we say, overcorrects on the "bird loss" front.

HELLO, SAM THE EAGLE. LET FREEDOM REIGN, BITCHES. MY COUNTRY TISSSSS OF THEEEEEE-

[Edit: I have been informed that this is probably still a dove, not an eagle, based on the face, but i’m not changing this joke.]

First of all, yes, the red is Bad. The black background of S&D matches the dark coloring of the objects, thereby hiding some of those Rendering Sins and lending a sort of subtlety to the mishmash of Aesthetique Things. It's all out in the open here and no less of a hot mess. The highlights are blindingly shiny and feel arbitrary as hell, like every single spear and leaf is being lit independently of anything else, and the almost pure black shadows that contrast them make my eyeballs burn-- it looks like it's a color being reflected from somewhere, rather than native shadow, because of how metallic objects reflect light, but there's nothing here but a perfectly flat, untextured field of red. I appreciate the emphasized presence of the bird (I'm ASSUMING it's an eagle, but I haven't read it, so correct me if I'm wrong) from a hierarchy and space-filling standpoint, but it is goofy as shit, and I have no idea why its chest has been so aggressively lit and filtered that it looks nearly on fire with saturation.

The primary offense of S&D's cover, that it's a tangled mess of meaningless and poorly crafted flourishes meant to be aimlessly Fancy that ends up being kind of ugly in the process, has been cranked up and the knob broken off here. An "Oooh, shiny!" from a dumb character who is about to trigger a trap manifested through a hypertrendy YA goth lens.

The text is also Still Bad. Compare the font to the one the Fairyloot book box uses for the book:

Although this isn't rendered in the metallic style, which it would have to be to match, it has a dramatic blackletter quality that matches the edgy medieval tone of the story far better than. Whatever the hell this B is doing.

So round!!!! So friendly!!!! So Un-witch-hunt-ey!!!!

To be clear: no, B&H is not a full, exact recolor of the S&D cover-- most of the elements, though the same, are arranged differently, and that's a completely different bird and at least a nominally different snake.

However comma I see why people think it is, because someone got lazy with the bottom left lol.

There is a Behance post for this one, too, although there's noticeably no process work, because the process was quite clearly "do it again but slightly to the left," and that doesn't involve much iterating.

Here's the thing, though; I'm not convinced any of this matters, because the truth is that hot, high-contrast messes photograph well.

Particularly when paired with a moody setting or editing, the red that comes across as kind of a nightmare in the jpeg pops, and the Escherian snarl of detail becomes more a texture nonspecifically indicating luxury and romance than an object theoretically representing something concrete about a story. And I personally may not Love This For Us, but honestly, that's half of a book cover's job these days: look pretty and do nothing.

If there's something to be learned from BLOOD & HONEY's cover, it's that better or worse, instagram filters matter. (Also true of Shelby Maurin's immaculately aesthetically curated, goth-trendy personal brand, which has increasingly been mimicked by other authors since S&D listed, although the author-brand-as-book-marketing-tool has always been a thing to some degree). A book isn't just a book, it's a prop for the countless ongoing performances of book-consumption-as-identity done both for fun and for clout in this particular subculture. I'm not passing moral judgement, here-- anyone buying a new YA fantasy book, no matter what they want to do with it or what my feelings on the book itself are, is a win. But this is the industry moment we live in, and it's savvy of publishers to have it in mind in regards to marketing and design.

Like what I do? Want early access? Support bookcoversalt on Patreon

#bookcoversalt #serpent and dove #blood and honey #YA #book cover

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writeblrfantasy · 4 years

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So! I may or may not have just finished editing pawns? I realize I didn’t tell you guys but last friday I finished the first draft and today I am officially done editing! I’m beyond proud of myself for finishing this, and to celebrate, here is the first chapter of pawns, in Isos’ point of view! I will still be posting excerpts because there’s more of this wip I want to share, but ahh thank you all so much for your interest in this project! it’s meant the world to me and these characters are some of my favorites i’ve ever written <3

taglist: @magic-is-something-we-create @kespada @forgottenrevelation @tmifangirl24 @a-place-of-babble @myhusbandsasemni

transcription under the cut because things are blurry when they shouldn’t be

I had always known a day like this would come. It was only a matter of when.

I changed masters often, more often than any other slaves. I was somewhat famous to the slaveholding lords of the slaveholding country Cera, and I had never stayed with a master for more than a year since I was five.

The least I had ever stayed with a master was a day. He’d taken me, his new prize, to show off to the lord he was dining with that evening. While my master was out of the room, his host restrained me and covered my mouth, lest I did not obey his order to comply. He snuck me away and killed my master when he came looking for me in a rage.

I was so desired partly because I could read, partly because I had a way with other slaves. I could rally them to me or put them in their place as surely as masters could. I’d never known why, but they listened to me.

So when one day my current master told me, “You’re going to become Lord Tohnicar’s tomorrow,” I thought nothing of the change, or even that it was to Lord Tohnicar. If I thought to flatter myself, which I did, he had heard of my reputation and wanted me for himself. Just like every other rich slaveholder in the country. It seemed inevitable that I would catch the eye of someone like him.

What I thought of was Lord Tohnicar himself. If I were anyone else, I would have pled and begged to be spared that torture. Even if I had known I would someday end up at Lord Tohnicar’s estate of Essely, I had not allowed myself to truly think upon it. My master even looked a little sorry as he told me, though this was almost definitely because of his loss versus mine. My ego was not so big as to assume he cared about what Tohnicar would do to me.

Lord Tohnicar was notoriously hard to please. He had high standards for his slaves, and if they didn’t make the cut, he threw them out. He deemed them not worth selling. To throw out a slave as such…I shuddered at the thought. Some thought he was too stupid to realize he was freeing them, but even if that were true, me and many others knew it would be a disgrace to have such a cloud over your head. Not even good enough to be sold.

You would be insulted and fought in every bar, free or not. You would be forced, eventually, to flee across the border to Morland, where slavery was illegal and they looked down on slaveholders with great distaste. Morland was far from perfect, but to some slaves the thought of it was paradise. I was not one of them.

Tohnicar was Moorish, but he’d come to Cera out of nowhere a few years prior. He’d entered the Ceran fold just when the old lord of the Essely estate died in his sleep. Tohnicar pounced on the auction for the estate and won it by a margin. Some said he’d won it with his Moorish queen’s money. His win had angered Ceran lords greatly, because to own that seaside estate was to control the everlasting tensions and wars between Cera and Morland. The estate itself was humble, but it sat on the coast of the Esselian sea, and its borders stretched far down the coast.

Morland was perpetually angry that they had to go the long way around to the sea, since Cera prohibited them from taking the shortcut through to the gulf. Morland had invaded Cera many times throughout the centuries to take the access they wanted and needed for trade from other continents, but Cera had always driven them out. The owner of Essely had the perfect view and the perfect power to restrict the limited access Morland had even further, or they could choose to open it up, ensuring something resembling peace between the two countries, though that wouldn’t likely stick unless Cera got rid of their slaveholders.

Despite the man who owned it, I’d always been excited and curious about seeing Essely in person. I tried to hang on to any positivity I could on the horseback ride there, with nothing but the clothes on my back and the small worn journal tucked inside my thin clothes.

Tohnicar had the money to buy and dispose of slaves as he liked, like they were nothing more than momentary amusements to him. The slaveholders throughout Cera feared him too much to refuse him their slaves when he demanded them. He fit in so well with the savagery of the Cerans, I found it hard to believe he was not one. Moorish were known for being stiff, prudish, and cold, not hot tempered and bloodthirsty like the Cerans they hated. I didn’t let myself think about my dark fate too much, because I could change nothing about it.

I wondered what my duties would be. I was not a troublemaking slave. I did not have a bad record. I was too free-thinking and curious for my own good, I knew that, but I was obedient. I was fortunate not to work in the fields. Each master I had usually put me there a day or two until they watched me faint from the sun. At first the master would think I was faking, and I would never deny these claims. Then he would call in his physician. A weakness of the blood, they would all say. I was not faking.

I learned that this weakness was a gift. I would look forward to the day my new master would decide to put me in the house, as he always did. I would watch the emotions flicker across his face, anger, annoyance, a moment’s cruelty, and finally rueful acceptance, then he would sigh and yank me inside. No man needed a house slave nearly as much as he needed a field slave, which was why I was always quick to prove my usefulness indoors.

I was not like the men in the fields in any way, tall and muscular and calloused from years of grueling work. Skinny, weak blooded me was happy to watch them from the windows while I did my master’s chores, showed his guests in and tended to them, offered to read to his children when he complained of his distaste to do so himself.

When I offered to read to them, he would accept suspiciously and watch from the doorway the first night I did so. If the children had a favorite book, I would read that. If all they wanted was a simple tale or story, I would tell one of the many I’d learned and overheard and read about in my life.

That first night, I would pick a story that was safe for my master’s suspicious ears, something about noble children trumping slaves. Sometimes a useful lesson. But once the master trusted me indefinitely and stopped coming to watch, I’d tell them the stories I preferred, personal favorites I would never let any master hear. Those were some of my best memories. I would tell them not to tell their father about those stories, and most of the time they were young enough not to know why I wasn’t supposed to be telling them those stories. To them I was just the nice man who told them bedtime stories. I’d never gotten caught yet.

Tohnicar had no children, and when we arrived, I was not sent to the fields. I barely had time to take in the tall house perched on top of the rocky cliff with the sound of the ocean crashing down on the beach and the rocks beyond. I had only served one master with a seaside estate before, when I was too young to remember much of it.

Tohnicar met me and my escort at the gates guarding the house. I hadn’t thought much about what he’d look like, but it wasn’t this. He looked younger than any master I’d had before, not much older than me. Certainly barely old enough to be considering marriage, let alone children. Yet his blue-green eyes showed age beyond his young face. My eyes were drawn to the dark hair that favored most Mor, the silver revolver that sat in a holster on his right hip, the thin white shirt unbuttoned at the top to let the summer breeze in, the ugly scowl on his face.

A few slaves watched from the fields, but no guards accompanied Tohnicar. He growled a word at my old master, something like thanks. His took my arm in a vice grip. I thought his fingers would leave bruises, but I also thought bruises would be the least of my worries in my time with him compared to the emotional toll.

He paid my master with a fist full of gold that made my eyes widen, still with his grip tight on my arm. My master pocketed the money, never looking directly at him.

I allowed myself but a glance back at my old master, who grimaced as my new master took me inside the gates and shut them behind us. He locked the heavy padlock with an iron key he kept around his neck under his shirt. I noted this for the future.

“Get back to work,” he snarled in Ceran, and I looked up at the slaves scattered around the tiny yard. They were all holding trowels, hoes, shovels, tending to the pretty garden around the house. He repeated the order when they continued to stare at me. I was surprised he hadn’t forced the slaves to learn Moorish for his convenience. He led me inside the house and the slaves got back to work. I looked at them as we passed, searching for bruises and other signs of abuse, but I saw nothing mottling their skin except the slave’s tattoo on their left forearms.

My new master dragged me to the top of his winding and tall wooden house. I was not given much time to get my bearings, but I knew I would explore later. He pulled open a door and finally let me go. He sat down in a chair beside a window with a breathtaking view of the sea. When I looked at him, the evil snarl had left his face, replaced by a pleasant smile. I blinked, wondering if I was seeing the same person.

He appeared not to have a care in the world, and obviously found my confusion amusing. “Isos, answer one question for me, and then you can have the choice of your complete freedom, I promise you.” His eyes glittered. This was clearly a joke, a test meant to humiliate me. I pitied any slave who fell for it.

My mind began running through the potential questions he might ask and all the ways I would answer wrong. There was no way for me to win here. “What are your feelings about Morland?” he asked.

This, naturally, made me hesitate. He was Moorish. One wrong word and that pleasant smile would be gone. I chose my words carefully. “I think, from what I’ve heard, Master, that Morland is a lovely place.”

“No, no, not what I want,” he said, waving. He looked disappointed, which sent panic spiking in my gut. I was already imagining dark basements from which the screams of the slaves floated up and kept you awake. Or perhaps I would be whipped in the yard, made an example of.

“I want you to tell me how you truly feel. Unbiased. Don’t worry about offending me, you’re not going to. Pretend as if you’re speaking to an equal. One of your friends.”

I barely kept from snorting.

Have it his way, then.

“I have little knowledge about the true lifestyle of the Moorish,” I said with a shrug, “but being a Mor sounds better than being a slave. If the rumors are true, prudes in stiff collars are better than masters with whips.”

He stared at me for a moment, speechless. In the silence that followed, I imagined my death over and over again.

“That’s better,” he finally said. “Thank you.” He ran a hand over his young and beardless face. Pleasant surprise flashed in his eyes. I allowed myself to study him now that the threats of torture and death were temporarily eased. He was tall, taller than me by a head, and the warmth of his eyes was totally different from any master I’d had before. He was, I had to admit, handsome. But those thoughts led nowhere good. I put a stern stop to them.

“Most of my new men don’t understand the words, ‘you won’t offend me,’” he said. “I can hardly blame them, but it’s refreshing to have one who obeys.” He smiled in irony, but the cogs in my brain were turning furiously, hurrying to adjust, to decipher his words. Was this a hidden command to submit? Was the smile fake? By goddess Rhouth, how had I let myself think it was real? I couldn’t afford to let my guard down at the first sign of a real smile. That wasn’t how I’d stayed alive for twenty years.

“I am exactly as I seem now,” said he, as if reading my mind. The way he looked into my eyes certainly suggested he could. “You do not have to fear me. Though these words, as well, generally fall on deaf ears. I’m afraid my reputation cannot be helped, and I’m sorry for all you’ve heard about me and probably worried about.” He sighed, then brightened. “But I knew you would be different. You have a reputation as much as I do.” He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, and eyed me.

I held perfectly still, betraying nothing on my face.

He smiled. “You are cautious, too. And observant. And, smart, I can tell. Good. Now, I offer you a choice. You can either leave with your complete freedom and a pouch of gold, or you can stay with me as my equal.”

“As you wish, Master,” I said before I could stop myself. To my amazement, he just laughed.

“You have a week to decide,” he said. “Spend time with my other men, see what you think, what they tell you. See how you like the barracks. Should you stay with me, your job will be easy, and I will be a kind master. I swear on my queen. And you, along with all my others, will be taken into the fold of something...” He paused. “Special. I’m sorry to say I can’t tell you what it is.

“Should you choose to leave, that pouch of gold will get you anywhere you wish to go, but your memories of this conversation, and your time with me, will be erased. In their places, I will be painted in a crueler light.” He tried to smile, but it looked more like a grimace. “A necessary evil. You will believe that I, disgusted with you, have cast you out to fend for yourself. If anyone asks, you’ll say you stole the gold before I disposed of you, because who in the world would believe that I gave it willingly?”

He was right. I was instantly intrigued by him, despite the rational side of me whispering I shouldn’t be. But he said I had a week. A week to quiet the excited, curious thrumming of my heart, and listen to the conclusion my brain had already reached: only a slave who had a death wish took freedom from kind, conspiring masters who promised to include you in something ‘special.’

He stood to shoo me towards the door. The little room was cramped with the both of us at our full height and the furniture. Through our entire conversation, he had never left his chair. I realized with a jolt it was so I wouldn’t be intimidated by his height.

“Go be with the others, Isos,” he said with a smile. He said my name with a little flair, like he liked how it sounded in his mouth. Eye-soese. My other masters, on the rare occasions they’d remember my name or bother to use it, would spit it out like bile, usually with rage smarting in their eyes. There was no rage in Tohnicar’s eyes. When he looked at me, his eyes lit up, the same way I had looked at wildflowers in my first master’s garden until I learned that it was not wise to stop my work and smell the flowers where he could see.

“I look forward to your decision.” Tohnicar winked, and closed the door after me.

#excerpt from my wip #my wip #my writing #writing #writeblr #fantasy writeblr #fantasy #my ocs #wip: ppap #oc: isos of cera #oc: chariton #bean's excerpts

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ghostofbambifanfiction · 4 years

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So motivated by anyone who shares they are working on losing weight. FYI 10kg is nothing to sniff at, esp. if you're not being too restrictive (as a lot of restrictive diets basically make you lose water weight at first, prob not your case). Keep it up!! If you don't mind answering, what are your goals?

I don’t mind, but I’m putting it under a cut because it’s going to be a looooooonnnnng ass ramble and I’m going to include some pics and I’m aware that I’ve already clogged everyone’s timelines with enough pictures today. Before I go off on my tangent, though, I want to make it really clear that I firmly believe that any person can be beautiful and love the way they look at any size. This is something that I am fighting very hard to believe about myself, too, regardless of what weight I am. I am not at all a believer in slimming down for the sake of vanity (despite my negative opinion of my own looks, vanity has never been a big enough motivator for me to lose weight), but this has progressed to the point where vanity isn’t even a consideration anymore.

Okay, so, backstory. When I first moved to England, I weighed 140lbs (63.5kg) and I looked like THIS ↓

Aren’t I BEAUTIFUL? I think so, even if nobody else does, I think so. I think so now. That part matters.

I can distinctly remember that when all three of these photos were taken, you see. I also distinctly remember looking at each one afterwards and thinking, “Fat, repulsive, disgusting.” Fat, repulsive, disgusting. That was my opinion of myself. I repeated those words in my head on a daily basis. I truly believed them. Hence, I’m wearing the same ugly cardigan in two of those pictures, because whenever I wore pretty clothes I felt so undeserving that I was compelled to cover them up with something ugly (the red dress is an anomaly because there was a dress code involved). EVERY TIME. It practically become automatic. “I’ve spent £40 on this dress, so what can I cover it with?” was basically my mantra. It was fine, I thought, because I didn’t care about pretty clothes. Liking pretty clothes was beneath me. This was a lie. I love pretty clothes. I love bright colours. I was drawing pictures of pretty gowns and tiaras from the age of six. But hey, easier to pretend that you don’t give a shit about pretty dresses than admit that you don’t feel worthy of wearing them.

I am seven whole-ass years older now, and I topped out at 283lbs (128kg) on the scales fives weeks ago. That is the heaviest I have ever been. I have doubled my body weight. By medical standards, I am extremely obese, and I’ve had seven whole-ass years to think on how I behaved back then. I’ve thought a lot about how much I hated my body and how undeserving I felt and how I stuffed myself full of junk food and said it didn’t matter because I was repulsive anyway, so why not? I wasn’t being kind to myself. How can I be a kind person if I don’t treat myself kindly? My own self-loathing has cost me my health, because in 2013, I didn’t need to take stomach tablets every day. I wasn’t vomiting a few times a week because of chronic digestive issues. I had regular periods. I lived in Sunderland and would get out of bed on my days off and walk three miles to Seaburn beach, just to hang out with a book and build sandcastles and paddle in the water and thoroughly enjoy my life. I had the ability to do that without wanting to collapse. I had the energy to write for hours on end without getting sleepy after forty minutes. I had lots of energy, lots of it!

I don’t have the luxury of enjoying any of that stuff now. I have lethargy and sluggishness and I get breathless walking up the stairs, and a huge part of that is because I have gained so much weight over the years, and because I have been eating things that specifically exacerbate my digestive issues. And I’m sick of it. My brother’s lottery win has been the most insane blessing to my family in that it is allowing us all to live out our wildest travelling dreams, and I don’t want to be the person who takes an eight hour flight to Paradise, only to sit around and do nothing because she just doesn’t have the strength. There is an eleven-year-old diamond in my life who I would do anything for, and I want more than anything to be able to bring him places and have fun with him and partake, instead of sitting on the sidelines holding coats because I am too fat to ride the rollercoaster (which happened to me, FYI, shout out to Port Aventura for sticking to safety measures, though the woman manning the coaster didn’t have to poke my thigh and say, “fat,” to make her point clear).

The thing is, and maybe this is a tl;dr moment that could have saved me a lot of trouble, but I am unhealthy and I’m tired and this is like...my life. My one life. What am I doing? I owe it to myself to treat my body better.

So these are my aims.

I want to get back to 140lbs. That is a healthy and reasonable weight for my height and body type. I am aware that I will not look the way I did in 2013 because I am seven years older, but I don’t care. I am aware that I will have loose skin and a belly and wobbly thighs when I reach this weight, but I don’t care. I will have energy. I will be healthier. I will be able to bring my stepson to all kinds of places and have the most fun with him.

No fad diets ever. This is all I’ve ever tried before, and the end result has always been the same: lose a bit and put it back on. I am making legitimate and incremental changes to my lifestyle. I am building lasting habits. I will weigh myself once a week to keep track of how I’m doing, but never more than that. I will exercise every day for a small amount of time, but if I miss a day for any reason, I won’t beat myself up about it. I will not skip meals. I will not deprive myself of food.

I am an excellent cook and I love trying new things, so I will be using that skill to find and experiment with new, delicious recipes from all over the world for my family to eat. Once lockdown ends, I’m going to start throwing dinner parties. I think this will really help me to change my attitude towards food and make meals fun for me, rather than a self-inflicted punishment.

No denying myself things. If I want to get a McDonalds I will get a McDonalds because, y’know what? Tomorrow I am going to have lots of veggies and cook myself a good, nutritious dinner, and that McDonalds won’t be anything but a delicious interlude in my week that I am not going to feel bad about.

No hiding myself in drab clothes. I hate wearing brown, grey and black and yet it accounts for most of my wardrobe. Both of those cardigan pics were taken in the middle of summer. I have wasted years of my life sweating it out in long sleeves and leggings so other people wouldn’t see, and for who? For what purpose? I am going to buy all the pretty clothes I like, wear loads of bright colours. Fuck it, it’s just for me.

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sesamestreep · 4 years

Text

stack the deck with wild cards (chapter 1)

(read on AO3)

SUMMARY: The situation with Cassian is complicated even before Jyn finds out she's pregnant, but deciding to get an abortion should really be the last straw for him, right? If there was any chance he'd still want to date her, she thought it had to be long gone by now. And yet he always finds a way to surprise her. [AKA - The Obvious Child AU you didn't know you wanted]

A/N: I’m going to be posting chapters of this fic daily, since it’s already completed. I never write chapter fic, so I have no idea what I’m doing and please bear with me. Also, this fic (and the movie it gets its plot from) is about abortion, so if that’s not something you’re into reading about, you should really strongly consider not reading this. I promise you won’t hurt my feelings. For those interested, there’s additional notes if you follow the AO3 link above. If you want to blacklist any future updates of this fic on tumblr, I’ll tag it with [#stack the deck verse] for your convenience. Chapter 2 should be posted tomorrow. Stay golden.

The reality of the current situation doesn’t hit Jyn at the doctor’s office when she gets the news or even when she’s booking her follow-up appointment. It doesn’t sink in when they tell her how much it will cost or give her the information she’ll need or the prescriptions to fill. It doesn’t hit her when she’s on the subway, heading home and texting Bodhi with numb fingers to see if he wants to have a movie night, or even when his cheery reply—replete with emojis—comes through saying he can come over tonight.

No, the moment everything becomes real is when she’s standing in the wine aisle at Trader Joe’s, going back and forth on whether spending eight dollars on a bottle of wine so that she can drink all of it in one sitting is irresponsible when she’s pregnant but she’s also not keeping the baby. It’s only then that she starts crying.

She’ll blame it on the hormones if anyone asks, she decides, which might even be accurate. She’s not really a crier under normal circumstances, but even if she wasn’t pregnant, she’s pretty sure draining her savings account for a medical procedure that she wouldn’t need if she had just been a little more responsible with her body would make her cry no matter how tough she thinks she is. Lucky for her, though, she lives in New York City and no one bats an eye at a crying woman in the grocery store. An older woman with a toddler in the seat of her grocery cart passes by and nods in understanding without saying a word, which is oddly comforting.

It’s the reminder that she needs to be careful about her money that talks Jyn out of buying wine for this evening (Bodhi probably wouldn’t have any and she doesn’t need to drink an entire bottle by herself under any circumstances, let alone these, even if she really really wants to), but she goes on to throw whatever snacks she wants into the cart indiscriminately because it has been a spectacularly shitty day. She spends more than she should (what else is new?) and sweats profusely trying to drag all of it back to her sixth floor apartment. She slams cabinet doors in frustration as she puts everything away and then takes the longest, hottest shower her shitty pipes in her shitty apartment will allow. When she emerges, her skin is bright pink and she pokes her stomach viciously, somehow annoyed and confused and relieved all at the same time that it gives away nothing of her current condition.

She spends too long sitting in a towel on her bed, dicking around on her phone instead of getting ready and ultimately decides Bodhi doesn’t care what her hair looks like and so she runs a comb through it and calls it done. She puts on her softest, stretchiest leggings and an ugly sweater she raided from her dad’s closet when she was a teenager that she loves because it has been washed and worn so many times that the sleeves now have holes in them that she can stick her thumbs through. It’s easily the least glamorous look she could have come up with, but she’s pregnant and she’s mad about it, so she’s going for comfort over style.

By the time the buzzer goes off, signaling Bodhi’s arrival, Jyn has managed to light a few candles and put some of the snacks she bought into bowls, so at least it looks like she put effort into some part of the evening. She presses the button to let him up and fidgets as she waits to open the door. She has to tell Bodhi as a trial run for telling…well, everyone else, basically…but a part of her wants to tell no one, deal with it by herself and pretend nothing is wrong. Of course, that would be stupid—the doctor even told her not to try and handle this by herself—but it seems more appealing than the alternative at this particular moment. It’s not possible, though. She needs someone to come with her to the appointment, at the very least, and Bodhi will do it without hesitation, that much she’s sure of.

When she hears footsteps in the hallway, she undoes the locks and opens the door. She takes a deep breath that is immediately squeezed out of her when Bodhi wraps her in a big hug.

“It’s so good to see you,” he says, rocking her a little side to side as he embraces her. “I’m so glad you suggested this! I feel like I’ve barely seen you lately.”

“I know,” Jyn says, clinging a little. Her eyes feel misty again already and that is definitely the hormones’ fault.

Bodhi pulls back to smile at her and his eyes catch on the candles and food. He gives her a suspicious look. “Okay, if this is an intervention for spending too much time with my new boyfriend, I know I deserve it but also I would have expected a much better turn out. You couldn’t even get Cassian here?”

Jyn winces at the mention of Cassian’s name but she thinks she covers it quickly with a forced smile. “It’s not an intervention,” she says as she steps around him to close the door.

“So why all the fanfare for a regular movie night?”

“What fanfare? There’s no fanfare!”

“Jyn, you put cheese puffs in a bowl ,” Bodhi says, as if she’s being obtuse. “You’re gonna have to wash that later. You did not have to do that for me.”

It’s on the tip of her tongue to make a joke— I’m nesting —but she refrains. “It’s no big deal,” she says, instead, and gestures to the couch for him to take a seat.

“If you say so,” he replies, still eyeing her warily and not taking the hint.

“Why don’t we sit down?” She finally asks, sounding strange and false even to her own ears. She leads the way over to the couch and Bodhi follows her, eventually lowering himself into the armchair with the same demeanor of someone approaching a wild animal.

“Jyn, seriously,” he says, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees once she’s curled up like a cat across from him, “is everything alright? You’re acting...odd.”

“Everything is fine,” she says, lightly, and hopes that saying so makes it true. “I just, uh, need to tell you something.”

“Okay.”

Jyn twists her hands together nervously, not sure how to get started now that the moment is finally here. “I need you to promise you’re not going to freak out,” she says, stalling for time.

“Ah, yes, that thing everyone says when everything is, in fact, totally fine.”

“Bodhi…”

“You’re leaving New York, aren’t you?” He asks, worried. “To be closer to Saw?”

“What? No, I—”

“Oh my god, it’s not Saw, is it?! He didn’t die, did he?”

“No, Saw is fine,” Jyn says, resisting the urge to rub her temple in frustration. “I mean, he’s not fine , obviously, he’s still sick, but he’s not—”

“Tell me you’re not quitting the band,” Bodhi interrupts. “Listen, I know things have been crazy lately, but I think—”

“Bodhi, I’m pregnant,” Jyn shouts, and the silence that follows is overwhelming.

“You’re…?”

“Pregnant. With child. Expecting,” she says, bitterly. “Yes.”

He looks like he’s been hit over the head with a mallet, which is bizarrely satisfying. She handled the news better and it was actually happening to her.

“How long have you known?” He asks, after a long time and with apparent effort. It’s not the first question she expected, but it’s not totally surprising.

“Like, five hours.”

“Five—?” Bodhi shakes his head in what she thinks is disbelief. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Jyn just blinks in response. What is he talking about? “Sorry?”

“You and Reece broke up like six months ago, how did you not realize you were pregnant sooner?” He asks.

“I…Bodhi, I’m not six months pregnant,” Jyn sputters. She smacks her stomach to drive home the point, which in retrospect is a stupid move, but she’s not thinking straight. “I mean, do I look it?”

“No! No,” he says immediately. “That’s why I was so confused, but you…you haven’t been with anyone since the breakup. You would have told me.”

When Jyn says nothing in response, just bites her lip, Bodhi narrows his eyes at her. “You would have told me, right?” He asks.

Jyn takes a deep breath, looking down at her hands. “I’m eight weeks pregnant,” she says, feeling close to tears again. “I found out today, I have an appointment in a few weeks to—to terminate it. I just need someone to go with me, the nurse said I had to, otherwise I wouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“Jyn,” he says, placing his hand over hers. “Of course, I’ll go with you. I just—I’m not upset with you, you know that, right?”

She nods, even though she doesn’t feel altogether certain of it. She loves Bodhi and trusts him, more than she trusts almost anyone else, but she’s not convinced she deserves to have him be nice to her after she’s fucked things up this badly. He ought to be upset with her.

“I know,” she says, anyway. A single tear escapes, which is just perfect. “I’m upset with myself.”

“Are you okay?” Bodhi asks, delicately. “Did this person hurt you or force you in some way?”

“No, no. God, no,” Jyn says, pulling her hands free with more aggression than the act required. She wipes the tears away in annoyance. “Nothing like that.”

“Thank God,” he says, looking heavenward and everything. “Then why all the secrecy? I texted you the minute I finished hooking up with Taidu for the first time.”

Jyn laughs even as she continues crying. “I did not ask you to do that.”

“No, but...not even a braggy ‘I just got laid!’ text? I thought we were best friends!”

“We are,” she replies hastily. “I was just embarrassed.”

“Why?” He asks, intrigued. “Is this person weird? Are they famous?”

She laughs again, feeling better in spite of the bomb she’s about to drop. “No, Bodhi…”

“They’re not married, are they? Because I promise not to judge you, but come on!”

“They’re not married.”

“Good, because for a second I was worried you slept with Baze and that would definitely break up the band,” he says, solemnly.

Jyn smacks his shoulder half-heartedly. “I would never sleep with Baze,” she says. “Don’t even joke about that.”

“Fine,” Bodhi says. “So, it was Chirrut, then?”

“Bodhi!”

“Well, you’re being so cryptic,” he shoots back. “If you just told me—”

“I slept with Cassian.”

Bodhi just blinks at her for a long, torturous moment. She’s never actually seen Bodhi yell at anyone before, so she doesn’t know if that’s what is about to happen but she braces herself for it anyway.

“What,” he finally says, flat like a statement and not a question.

“I had sex with Cassian and now I’m pregnant,” she says firmly, as if just admitting it out loud isn’t making her heart hammer in her chest.

“You’re pregnant with Cassian’s baby,” Bodhi says, disbelieving and Jyn winces. She’s been trying not to think of it as an actual baby, because she’s not keeping it. But if she did nothing for seven more months, she would have a baby and it would be Cassian’s, in a purely biological sense. She doesn’t admit to that line of thinking to Bodhi, though.

“Yes,” she says, instead. “Technically,” she adds, because she can’t stop herself.

“Technically? What is that supposed to mean?”

“Just—Getting someone pregnant doesn’t make a man a father,” she says, with more heat than she intended. “Raising a child does. And there’s not going to be a child, so…that’s all I meant.”

“Sorry,” Bodhi says, placing his hands over hers again. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m just so surprised.”

“You didn’t upset me,” Jyn replies, shifting uncomfortably. “It’s these stupid hormones, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” he says, nodding. He moves to sit next to her on the couch, and she folds her legs up to give him room. “How did he take it when you told him?”

Jyn winces again before she can stop herself and she knows she doesn’t hide her reaction quickly enough from the way Bodhi stands abruptly. He always paces when he’s freaked out.

“Jyn, please tell me Cassian knows,” he pleads as he makes a circuit around her coffee table.

“I’ve only known for half a day! I haven’t had a chance to tell him!”

“Why would you tell me and not him?”

“You’re my best friend!”

“It’s his baby!”

“I wanted to make sure you could come to my appointment with me,” she says, and hopes the reminder is enough to make him feel sorry for her. He only stops pacing, but that’s still an improvement. “I was hoping you’d tell me what to do,” she adds, since it’s the actual truth.

“Well, obviously, go to your appointment,” Bodhi says, sinking back onto the couch.

“No, I mean—what I should do about Cassian?”

Bodhi looks over at her, confused. “What do you mean, what should you do about him? Tell him what’s going on.”

“I know, but how?”

“Same way you told me. Use your words.”

“Can I text him?”

“Absolutely not,” he says, scandalized. “You can’t tell him you’re pregnant via text. Who raised you?!”

“Saw.”

He acknowledges that with a nod. “Fair point.”

“I bet you’re going to say I can’t leave him a voicemail either,” Jyn says.

“You’re right, but mostly because no one under the age of eighty checks their voicemail anymore,” he says, patting her knee absently.

“Really?”

“Really,” Bodhi replies. “Just...sit down with him and tell him what’s going on. Same as you did with me.”

“It’s different with you.”

“It’s not that different.”

“It’s not your baby I’m aborting,” Jyn says quietly. “And you love me.”

Bodhi looks over at her then, some strange mix of emotions playing out on his face. She half expects him to object and say something ridiculous like Cassian does love her, and the very idea stresses her out. When he doesn’t say that, though, she finds herself oddly disappointed.

“Cassian’s a good guy. He’ll understand,” he says, instead, as if she doesn’t know that somehow. As if that isn’t a huge part of why this situation sucks so bad. As if she isn’t mortified that she has to involve him in something like this. As if she isn’t furious with herself because this is going to blow any chance she ever had with him in the first place. As if she hadn’t already done that by hooking up with him and then never calling him afterwards.

“I know,” Jyn says, looking down at her hands. She doesn’t actually know that—that he’ll understand. She thinks she knows Cassian fairly well, in a casual way. They’re mostly friends through Bodhi but they see a lot of each other. She suspects, from things he’s said before about politics, that he’s probably okay with abortion in a general sense, but it’s different when it’s your potential kid. She can’t actually be certain he’ll be cool with it, but she’s also not asking his permission. She just thinks he deserves to know. Or maybe she just wants an excuse to call him, for all this is the worst possible one the universe could have handed her.

“It’s just weird,” she adds, after a minute lost in thought, “for this to be the thing I call him about, after we hooked up. It feels shitty.”

“Wait, hold on,” Bodhi says, waving his hand dramatically at her. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“I don’t know what you think I’m saying.”

“Have you not talked to him since you slept with him?”

“I haven’t,” Jyn says, bracing herself. Bodhi opens his mouth to interject, so she continues quickly, stopping him. “But, in my defense, it was right before the holidays and then he was out of town for like a month, so it seemed weird to reach out, and—”

“Jyn,” he says, and his tone is so full of reproach, it shuts her up immediately. “None of those are good reasons and I think you know that.”

“It’s not like he and I talk a lot anyway,” she objects, but it’s futile, if Bodhi’s unimpressed look is any indication. “We mostly see each other at the shows and the band didn’t have any in December, so I just haven’t had the chance. That’s all.”

“Okay, so none of it had to do with your overwhelming fear of intimacy and vulnerability?”

“No…?”

“Very convincing,” Bodhi says, and Jyn shoves him.

“Shut up,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Well, if that’s not what happened,” he says reasonably, “you have to tell me what did.”

“What—you want details?!”

Bodhi shrugs. “You hooked up with my roommate and didn’t tell anyone about it for almost two months. There must be a reason.”

“Maybe it was bad,” she says, petulantly.

He just gives her an arch look in reply, which she deserves. “Was it bad?” He asks, bored.

Jyn bites her lip, hard. “No,” she admits. “It actually really wasn’t.”

“Well, then. Spill!”

She sighs dramatically—more dramatically than the situation deserves, honestly, and it’s already a pretty dramatic situation. “What do you want to know?

“When did this happen?”

“By my doctor’s estimate, eight weeks ago.”

“Jyn, for the love of—!”

“I was just trying to lighten the mood,” she says, for all she was actually just trying to stall. “It was that night we played at that terrible hipster bar in November.”

“Jyn, we exclusively play at terrible hipster bars. You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“It’s the one with the arcade games in the back? It’s changed names like three times this year?”

“ Oh , that place. Yeah. What is that place’s name?”

“No clue,” Jyn says, with a shrug. “But it was at that bar.”

Bodhi’s eyes widen, though whether it’s with shock or delight or both, she’s not sure. “You hooked up with him at the bar ?”

“No, no. We went home together afterwards, once the rest of you had left.”

“I knew it,” he practically shouts. “I knew something was up that night!”

“You did not!”

“Yes, I did. You can ask Taidu, I definitely said something about it to him.”

Jyn waves him off, not because she’s convinced but because she’s not going to bother Taidu about something this stupid. “Whatever.”

“You still haven’t told me how it happened.”

“Do you need me to explain how sex works? Because I feel like you get the general idea.”

“No, smartass,” he says with an eye roll. “I mean, you and Cassian hang out at bars all the time together and you’ve never hooked up before. So, what happened this time?”

“Well,” Jyn says, taking a steadying breath, “you and Taidu left early for some reason and you said you were going to stay at his place. And Baze and Chirrut left right after that, because I think that’s when Baze had that terrible cold.”

“Jyn, no offense, but who cares?”

“You asked me what was different about that night! I’m explaining!”

“Okay, fine,” Bodhi allows. “It was different because we all callously abandoned you.”

“Yes, thank you! Anyway, it was just me and Cassian at the bar and I had just ordered another drink when Baze and Chirrut decided to leave and I was giving them a hard time about it and Cassian offered to stay with me for another round, so I wouldn’t have wasted my money or have to drink alone.”

“How gallant of him.”

“No editorializing,” she snaps, and Bodhi dutifully mimes locking his mouth and throwing away the key. “Anyway, we had a couple more drinks, we had sex, and now I’m pregnant. The end.”

“Fine,” he says, giving up. “If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to. I was just interested because you’re both my friends and I love you. Also, I know how hard the break-up was on you, so I was excited that you felt comfortable enough to move on. But you clearly don’t want to talk about it, so forget it!” He pivots away from her on the couch and leans forward to grab some popcorn. “What movie are we watching, anyway?”

Jyn groans in frustration. He’s always been way too good at guilt-tripping her into anything she doesn’t want to do. “You’re such a brat!”

“What? I’m changing the subject, like you clearly want to!”

“I’m embarrassed, Bodhi!”

“I don’t see why,” he says, looking at her blankly. “Cassian is good looking and he’s not a creep. You could do way worse. You have, in fact.”

She punches him in the shoulder in retaliation. “Hey!”

“What? I mean, you dated Reece for two years and he wasn’t exactly a catch. Cassian is an improvement, in my opinion.”

“I see we’re not sparing my feelings anymore where Reece is concerned.”

Bodhi covers her hand with his own. “Jyn, that guy cheated on you for a long time, and then he broke up with you so he could be with the other woman—right before you went onstage to perform, I should mention—and he had the audacity to blame you for the cheating because you ‘didn’t give him enough attention,’” he says, with the most judgemental use of air quotes she’s ever seen. “I care about your feelings, truly I do. But I do not care about Reece and I will not pretend you aren’t way better off without him.”

“I’m not his biggest fan either,” she says, defensively. “But what does it say about me that I dated him for all that time without realizing what a dick he was?”

“That he was an even bigger scrub than we thought, because he managed to hide his true colors for so long,” Bodhi says, easily. “You’re not responsible for his actions.”

Jyn wants to believe him, and most days she already, mostly does. But sometimes she catches herself replaying the break-up in her head and the part where Reece said that if she’d really cared, if she’d really been in their relationship for the long haul, she’d have paid more attention to him and he would never have even thought about cheating. She’d left him no choice, with all her weird part-time jobs and her crazy schedule and her gigs with her silly little band all over the city in the middle of the night. If she were more together, if she knew what she wanted from her own life, she could have been there for her partner, but she was too much of a mess. Too much of a work-in-progress to be the sort of girlfriend someone wanted to be serious with.

“I know,” she says, half-heartedly. If Bodhi’s told her this once, he’s told her a thousand times. Maybe she’ll really believe it someday, but not quite yet. “It just gets in your head, when someone treats you like that. You start to wonder if you have a neon sign over your head that says you’re not really relationship material.”

“You do not have a neon sign over your head that says anything of the kind,” Bodhi reassures her, surprisingly earnestly. “If your relationship with Reece needed work, he could have brought those issues to you to resolve them. Instead, he cheated on you. He took the easy way out and then blamed you when it made him look like an asshole. That’s on him.”

Jyn sighs, hating how often she and Bodhi have to have this conversation or some variation of it. She wishes she could just magically not be upset about it anymore, but it’s not like she didn’t have trust issues before this. The situation with Reece just made them worse. That was part of the appeal of hooking up with Cassian; she wanted to get back out there and feel desirable again, but she couldn’t do it with just anybody. Cassian was safe because she knew him and trusted him, but they weren’t super close, so it’s not like hooking up with him would ruin their friendship. He knew enough of what happened with her breakup to know that it was just a rebound, but not enough about her mental state to worry about her when she initiated things between them. She didn’t need someone to worry about her; she just needed someone to take her home.

The bar had been surprisingly busy that night, probably because some local favorite band was on after their set and they had a weirdly devoted following. Even though the rest of their group had abandoned them, the spots around Jyn and Cassian at the bar quickly filled in with noisy patrons, which left them no choice but to lean close to each other when they talked. Cassian’s arm had been curled around the back of the barstool that she was perched on, not possessively but in a way that didn’t encourage anyone to interrupt them. Jyn didn’t object; she didn’t want to talk to anyone else anyway.

Something about having Cassian’s full attention, her elbow brushing his ribs anytime she reached for her drink and feeling the warmth radiating off him in the already overly warm bar, felt nice in a way that went right to her head. She was shamelessly leaning into it, both literally—if she had curled any further into him, she would be hugging him—and figuratively—asking him personal questions she’d never bothered with before and laughing a little too loudly at his answers in a way that would have probably made him suspicious if she hadn’t distracted him by constantly touching his arm. It was the oldest trick in the book, and he must have known that, but Jyn wasn’t really in the mood to be subtle anyway.

If he was wary of her motives in flirting with him so obviously, he hadn’t mentioned any of his concerns to her. Cassian tends to be wary as a rule, which is part of why Jyn trusts him. He’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop too, just like she is. There’s a subtle understanding between them as a result. Other than that, Jyn had never given him much thought. Sure, he’s good looking, even when he comes to their gigs still in his clothes from the office, which make him look like an accountant. He’s not actually an accountant, though; he works at some organization that works with kids in the foster system, which is the sort of job that immediately put Jyn on edge when she first heard about it after he’d moved in with Bodhi. She’s technically a freelance illustrator, but since that doesn’t pay the bills with any consistency, she also works all sorts of other odd jobs to make up the difference. She doesn’t have a 401K or a high yield savings account, but she’s pretty sure Cassian does, even if he’s also probably underpaid. But he’s underpaid in the good way, the what-a-Saint way, while Jyn is underpaid in the no-one-values-your-skills, get-a-real-job way. So, at first, she’d been a little suspicious of him.

But, back then, he was Bodhi’s new roommate who also took him up on the invitation to come see his band play during one of their glamorous midnight slots at some crummy dive bar, which earned him a little respect in Jyn’s mind. When he kept showing up, she was surprised. It didn’t seem like his scene at all, but when she said as much to him one night, he’d given her a self-conscious smile and said that coming to Bodhi’s shows gave him the pretense of a social life when his co-workers asked what he did with his free time. He had a tendency to look worried or miserable when left to his own devices, but self-deprecation was a good look on him and it was nice to know he wasn’t dead serious all the time. They never became close friends after that, but Jyn always liked talking to him after the shows.

Something changed when she was going through the break-up, though. Cassian knew what happened, of course, enough to tell her he was sorry to hear about it from Bodhi, but they didn’t exactly talk in depth about it or anything. He treated her the same as he always had. The change had come from her, honestly. She’d always thought he was attractive, in that split-second way you decide when you first see someone, but she’d never given it any thought beyond that, really. But once the initial fog of I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening lifted after the break-up, she started to notice Cassian more and think about him in a way she hadn’t before. She was disappointed if he couldn’t make it to one of their gigs. She started to appreciate the dorky work outfits he wore to the dive bar venues they played and she liked talking to him after the set, when he’d give her his full attention like she was the most fascinating person in the world.

She couldn’t tell, though, if he was genuinely interested in her or if he just thought she was hot and (now) single. If she’d been smart, she would have figured that out before hooking up with him. Instead, the universe handed her the perfect opportunity to be alone with him, without any of their friends to talk them out of it or ruin the mood and she’d taken full advantage of it. She had felt almost dizzy with the possibility of it, that she could ask him to leave with her and that he’d probably say yes. Next to her, some drunk guy stumbled up to the bar and, in his haste, accidentally and rather fortuitously shoved her even further into Cassian’s arms. He’d tightened his hold on her to catch her fall and when she’d looked up, he was glaring at the man, who was completely oblivious to having made an enemy. It was ridiculously charming, to think he was offended on her behalf, as if her honor had been threatened. Really, what was she supposed to do then, except kiss him?

He’d been surprised, at first, and who could blame him? Sure, she’d been giving the corniest, most textbook signals that she was into him all night, but she hadn’t even known she was going to actually make a move until she did it. He recovered quickly, though, which was nice, and reciprocated immediately. Jyn’s not sure what she would have done if he’d asked questions or tried to talk things through first, even though she kind of expected it from him. They’d both had a few drinks, not enough to impair them by any means but just enough to embolden them.

His hand had come to rest on her back when she got pushed into him and she felt it flex, as if he was trying to hold her even closer. The other moved to her face as soon as she kissed him, though it was really just his thumb grazing her jaw, like he was worried she might turn away and he wanted to offer a slight incentive to stay where she was. She probably would have kept making out with him at the bar like they were college students or something, but she didn’t actually want to spend another second with the drunk patrons or the shitty band that was onstage. She wanted to be someplace else—anywhere else, really, so long as it meant she and Cassian could be alone. She pulled back, with great effort, and the look on Cassian’s face made her think he expected to be let down easy.

“Do you want to get out of here?” she asked, instead.

His eyebrows went up, as if that was the last thing he expected her to say. He closed his eyes, like gathering his thoughts was difficult at that moment. “I, uh—what are you asking?”

Jyn bit her lip, which was a bad habit of hers when she was nervous, but if it also happened, by pure luck, to look flirtatious, that was fine too. “I’m asking if you want to go back to your place and have sex with me,” she said, because she wasn’t about to waste time and not get exactly what she wanted out of this.

“Do I want that?” He’d asked, dumbfounded, and if she hadn’t just been having a completely normal conversation with him, she’d have worried he was drunker than she thought. But this was entirely her effect on him and it was incredibly flattering. “Do you?”

“I think the fact that I suggested it makes it pretty obvious what I want.”

Cassian had run his hand through his hair, clearly a nervous tic. “Yeah, but—yes, I would like that.”

He said the last bit decisively, as though he realized he might be accidentally talking her out of it with his hesitation. He needn’t have worried—Jyn has her mind made up about this—but she thought it was better to keep him on his toes than reveal that. She gave him a bright smile before turning to get the bartender’s attention. They paid their tab and got the hell out of there in record time.

When they left the bar, it was raining lightly, barely a drizzle at this point, but there was evidence that it had stormed earlier in the evening. The small heel on Jyn’s boots brought her close enough to Cassian’s height that, even standing outside the bar, she didn’t have to strain to reach him and pull him down for another kiss. His hands came to her hips to steady her anyway and she’d have happily continued like this for a while if the bouncers by the front door didn’t wolf whistle at them and ruin the moment.

They started walking to Cassian’s apartment without discussing it, like they agreed via telepathy that no cab driver would tolerate them given their current amount of PDA. It wasn’t a far walk, though, and Jyn had internally thanked the forces of the universe for making this happen at the closest bar to Cassian’s place, because she’s sure they would have lost their nerve over the course of a lengthy subway or cab ride. Instead, they headed for his apartment in silence, more because they were focused than not having anything to say. He held her hand the whole way, as if he was afraid she’d disappear if he wasn’t touching her. While they waited for a crosswalk signal at one corner, he pulled her into his side and kissed her again, like she really needed the reminder that he was a good kisser. How could she forget?

“He’s a really good kisser,” she says, suddenly, to Bodhi, as they sit together on the couch.

Bodhi scrunches up his nose, looking disgusted. “Who? Reece?”

“No! I’m talking about Cassian!”

“Oh!” His eyes light up. “I thought you didn’t want to.”

Jyn shrugs, noncommittal. She wants Bodhi’s reassurance that she didn’t fuck things up beyond repair and this is probably the only way to get that. “I’m obviously not going to tell you everything . But we can talk about it, a little. I guess.”

“Okay, but how good is he?”

“Is there an accepted scale I should use?”

“One to ten would suffice, I think. Ten being the best kiss you’ve ever had and one being…well, you already said it was good, so we don’t need to worry about that.”

She exhales noisily, not sure how to describe it. “I don’t know. I can’t even think of the best kiss I ever had.”

“That’s kind of sad.”

She punches him on the shoulder. “I hate you,” she says, petulantly. “It was really, really good. Definitely an 8.5 or a 9. Maybe a 9.5.”

“Really?!”

Jyn nods, feeling awkward. “Yeah. We made out for a really long time before we…well, before anything else happened.”

She doesn’t mention that she’d almost lost her nerve, when they first got back to Cassian’s apartment. Being in his bedroom, the idea of sleeping together suddenly became real and all of her tipsy confidence evaporated. She’d been in a relationship for two years—she’d thought she and Reece would move in together whenever their leases were up, even though she hadn’t had the confidence to bring it up to him before he turned around and left her for another woman—and suddenly she wasn’t ready to be with someone else. Naturally, Cassian had picked up on her change in mood and asked her what was wrong. She lied and said it was nothing, though he hadn’t looked convinced. To prove her point, she’d kissed him again, hard, trying to psych herself up, but he’d eased back, turning their kiss into something easier and softer. He’d kissed her like that for a while, his hands in her hair and on her jaw, not reaching for her clothes or straying anywhere new. It was only after they’d continued like that for a long time that Jyn felt her nerves mellow into pleasure and then sharpen into desire again. Even though they’d kept things fairly chaste, all of that kissing had made her want more, and she clearly had to be the one to take the lead.

“And was he a gentleman with you?” Bodhi asks primly, interrupting Jyn’s thoughts.

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” she says, with a frown.

“Did he…how do I put this…take care of your needs?”

“Oh. Uh, yes.”

“First?” He asks, clearly enjoying himself.

“Yes,” Jyn replies, through gritted teeth. She leaves out the fact that she’d not-so-subtly rushed them past the point of foreplay so Cassian wouldn’t get any ideas. Maybe it was wishful thinking on her part, that he would have even tried something like that with her, that she got in the way of some grand plan of his to gallantly fulfill her needs before worrying about his own, but he had looked surprised when she took them straight from kissing to taking his clothes off to fucking him. Maybe it was a pleasant surprise, maybe he was relieved to find someone who didn’t expect so much effort from him. She didn’t ask. She just knew that she couldn’t handle the idea of it being unequal, of him being smug or, worse, expectant with her. She didn’t want to owe him anything, so they were going to have sex once and then she could move on. Naturally, she hadn’t counted on getting pregnant.

“I told him I was on the pill and I wasn’t,” she blurts out before she can stop herself.

The way Bodhi swings around to stare at her would be funny, under any other circumstances. “Why would you lie about that?” He asks, unable to keep the judgement out of his tone.

“I didn’t lie ,” she says. “I thought I was on the pill! I’ve been taking it for years, so I didn’t think anything of it. I forgot to get my prescription refilled a few months ago and I was like, ‘who cares?’ because Reece and I had just broken up and I was convinced I was never going to have sex again.”

“But then you had sex with Cassian!”

“I know! And I forgot I wasn’t on the pill anymore.”

Bodhi covers his eyes with his hands. “Please tell me you used a condom.”

“Cassian definitely offered,” she says, trying to sound upbeat.

“And you said, ‘yes, of course, because you’re a man I’ve never slept with before and that’s the safest way for us to have sex!’”

“No. I said, ‘it’s fine, don’t worry about it, I’m on the pill.’”

“Jyn!”

“Before you yell at me, I would like to remind you I’m already pregnant, so the worst case scenario has already happened.”

“That’s not the only reason you should use a condom!”

“I know, but I got tested for STDs when I went in for my pregnancy test and nothing has come back positive yet, so hopefully I’m not that unlucky.”

“Listen, I know you’re going through some stuff right now and I don’t want to pile on, but that was really risky,” he says, looking more serious than she’s ever seen him. “You have to promise me that you’ll be more careful.”

“I promise,” she says, feeling like a teenager being chastised. “Believe me, paying out of pocket for an abortion is a pretty great way for me to learn my lesson.”

“God, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s my fault. Like you said, I wasn’t being careful.”

“That wasn’t—I’m not trying to hit your nose with a rolled up newspaper, Jyn. I’m just worried about you.”

“I know. This is why I was embarrassed. I made a complete idiot out of myself. And now I get to explain all of this to Cassian, which won’t be humiliating at all.”

“He’ll understand,” Bodhi says, with enviable levels of confidence. “He’s good like that.”

“I said I’d call him and I didn’t,” she says, trying not to cringe as she remembers how quickly she’d left after they’d had sex, how she hadn’t even looked Cassian in the eye when she promised to call. “Even if he was fine with a one-night stand, I still lied to him. I doubt he’ll be happy to hear from me, especially under the circumstances.”

“If the alternative is not hearing from you at all, I think he’d rather hear from you. No matter what the circumstances are.”

“I don’t know.”

“Jyn, you and Cassian are friends, even if you don’t think you’re particularly close. And you’ve slept together, which involves a certain level of intimacy—”

“Not the way I do it,” she jokes. Although there’s some truth to it, she thinks.

Bodhi smacks her with a pillow, which she completely deserves. “Call him or I’ll kick your ass.”

“God, fine!” She slouches down in her seat on the couch. “Do I have to do it right now?”

“God, no. I don’t want to be here for that conversation,” he says, grabbing another handful of popcorn. “Besides, you promised me a movie night. What are we watching?”

“I don’t care, as long as it doesn’t involve babies or pregnancy.”

Bodhi’s scrolling through the titles on Netflix as she speaks, nodding absentmindedly. “‘Sleepless in Seattle’?” He asks, when he lands on it.

“That totally has a baby in it!”

“The kid is, like, eight,” he argues. “And it’s not about the process of having kids!”

Jyn sighs, defeated. “Do you want to watch ‘Sleepless in Seattle,’ Bodhi?”

“Yes, but I’m mostly in it for Bill Pullman.”

“Fine,” she says, settling in next to him. “I’m probably going to fall asleep in twenty minutes, anyway.”

“That’s the spirit,” Bodhi says, and hits play.

#rogue one #rebelcaptain #jyn erso #cassian andor #bodhi rook #obvious child #obvious child au #baze malbus #chirrut imwe #star wars #abortion #abortion tw #my fic #my writing #stack the deck verse #otp: built on hope #otp: your mother and i have been together ever since #anyway here's wonderwall

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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The multiverse trip trope, with the canon Batfam ending up in a No Capes AU, where their counterparts, being equally hyper-competent but having no secret identities to hide or vigilantism as the primary focus for channeling their energies into....are equally ridiculous to all vigilante versions of the Batfam, but in vastly different ways.

With no need to hide his athletic abilities or to try and distance himself from immediate association with his past acrobatics, Dick focuses his time and efforts on gymnastics after Bruce takes him in. He’s an Olympic gold medalist before he’s twenty, hailed for practically reinventing the nature of high-bar routines thanks to his innovative ways of melding elements of his former acrobatics with his gymnastics regimens.

Because of his many medals and natural charisma, he’s also a highly sought after brand face, asked to endorse or act as a spokesmodel for all kinds of things. He takes a particular savage joy in having his revenge on society as a whole, for the grief they gave him growing up, between the jokes about his circus background and ‘garish’ ensembles he patterns after his old costumes. Each year, he himself quietly seeks out talented designers who because of their backgrounds and the elitism of the high fashion world, are only able to advance so far in that industry.

Acting as a silent investor for them with the funds from his endorsement deals, he charms his way through backroom deals and opens the necessary doors to get his designers into the high profile fashion shows that can make designers’ careers, allowing them the much needed opportunities to showcase their designs and get them out into the world and in front of potential buyers.

But in addition to their own designs, Dick then commissions the designers he patrons, to design for him the most absurd things they can come up with. The kind of high fashion wtf’s that Ugly Betty’s wardrobe department could only dream of making, and then making into a punchline. Design for me an outfit you wouldn’t even inflict on your most hated enemy, Dick says to them.

And each year they do, and Dick models those looks personally. Then he sits back with his siblings and cackles with malevolent glee as the snobby ‘it crowds’ of his generation later turn out in droves to purchase his ‘signature looks.’ Strutting around town in imitation of the poise and charisma he pulls off effortlessly - but those, no amount of money can buy, and given they’re the only reason Dick Grayson alone can get away with wearing this stuff and still look as good as he does when doing so - well, the socialite circles inevitably end up looking utterly ridiculous. The harder they try and sell it with artificial confidence that Page Six and talk show hosts see right through, the more they get shredded to pieces with scathing jokes and headlines that put anything they ever managed to come up with to shame.

Meanwhile, the revenue from their frenzied purchases of these ‘must-have’ looks of the season? More than enough to launch the careers of Dick’s designers, right up to the A-List, where Dick leaves them to do what they want and make the most of it, with his eternal gratitude for humoring him and his rich kid eccentricities. (Not that his designers haven’t all since long figured out the joke and gotten vindication of their own out of it, as the designers and buyers who tried previously to shut them out because of their humble backgrounds, now all rush to try and rip off their more out there and high profile ‘Dick Grayson Looks’ with their own versions, over-saturating that particular market demographic just as people start catching on that these designs were always doomed to fizzle without Dick wearing them himself......leaving Dick’s designers with an open, uncluttered path right to the demographics they actually want to sell to, with the designs nobody’s attempted to imitate yet because they were too busy keeping eyes glued to Dick’s peacock ensembles).

Bruce has long since given up expecting he’ll ever understand his various children without them making an effort to translate first.....so the first time he walks in on Dick, Jason and Duke watching E! with a focus they’ve never displayed for sports, and with the coffee table covered in so many papers and flow charts and graphs, the den looks more like a War Room rather than just three of his boys watching Entertainment Tonight with frightening intensity.

Bruce just waits in the doorway for them to notice him and arches one eyebrow when they do. Oh, there’s a point to all of this, he’s sure. But damned if he can figure out on his own just what the hell it might be.

His eldest just beams at him with his thousand watt smile.

“Love me or hate me, they all want to be me,” Dick sing-songs. Then he shrugs innocently, as though that explains it all.

It doesn’t, Bruce is fairly certain.

“Why?” He asks somewhat plaintively, after his struggle to select one of the many, many questions buzzing in his head glitches on that one syllable and refuses to budge until he at least voices that much.

“We’ve been over this, B. Its part of our Twenty Seven Step Plan to Destroy the Upper Class,” Jason says impatiently, still jotting notes in pen on one of the graphs, eyes still locked on the TV. “God, its like you never listen, I fucking swear.”

“That running joke you two had when you were in high school?” Bruce asks blankly, focusing on his two eldest. Duke is paying absolutely no attention to him any way, leaning over to cross something out on the same graph Jason’s working on, scrawling some kind of correction while Jason nods like that makes total sense in whatever bizarre arithmetic they’re all working off of.

Dick sighs in the fond manner of a parent whose child has just done something particularly endearing. “You gotta admit, its kinda cute he still thinks we’re joking when we talk about class warfare.”

“Eh,” Jason grunts noncommittally. “Benjamin Button he is not.”

“If you boys don’t mind, could you do me a favor and make sure to clarify when you’re making fun of me? I have trouble spotting the insults otherwise,” Bruce says dryly.

“But that’s what makes it fun!” Duke says, beaming with his own version of Dick’s thousand watt grin. Equal in intensity, but where Dick’s tends to burst into being all at once like a supernova, Duke’s tends to sneak up on you, slowly increasing the illumination until you realize you’re blinking spots out of your vision and it hits you that you haven’t been able to see anything but blinding luminescence for awhile now, and you don’t even know for sure how long.

“Well how about just this once, you boys take pity on me and cut your old man a break,” Bruce says, still in tones as parched as Saharan dunes. “Explain what I’m looking at here as though I’m five.”

“Christ, B, you’re not freaking geriatric,” Jason mutters. “You’re only in your forties, its way too soon for you to try and milk the senility angle.”

“We’re documenting record of public reactions to the latest fashion crimes of Gotham’s A-List,” Dick cuts off Jason, taking the aforementioned pity on his father as he provides an explanation that is in no way helpful.

Bruce squints at the screen. “But aren’t those the same outfits you wore during your Fashion Week thing last month?”

“Well yeah, but on me they look good,” Dick shrugs.

“Don’t gloat,” Jason says to his brother. “It’s tacky.”

“Facts are facts,” Dick says without a hint of apology. “Lying in the name of false modesty would be the true dishonesty.”

“Incredible. You even manage to put a pious-sounding spin on being an egotistical shit,” Jason marvels. “How do you do that?”

Dick shrugs again. “It’s a gift.”

Bruce clears his throat. “And what’s all this documentation for, anyway?”

“Dick’s book,” Duke says matter of factly. Bruce would be flattered by his children’s apparent belief he can intuitively leap from one esoteric comment straight to an epiphany like some kind of goddamn gazelle - if he weren’t still so lost.

“Dick has a book? Since when? I thought Jason was the writer in this family,” Bruce frowns. “And I’m quite certain there was a big to-do made when you were all much younger, where it was decided that each of you would focus yourself on distinct pursuits not overlapping with any other siblings’, so as not to kill each other in your inevitable quest to be number one.”

“Well first off, Dad, if you couldn’t handle a little competition between your children, you shouldn’t have adopted competitive children,” Dick lectures absently, still scribbling away at those damn pages.

“Its not like you all came labeled with future character traits,” Bruce says crankily. They ignore him.

“And secondly, upon discovering that the agreement we all signed was the end product of carefully dropped hints aimed at making us believe we all came to the table of our own volition, when in fact, they were merely the machinations of the mastermind known as our meddling father,” Jason intoned, finally looking up at Bruce to raise one eyebrow at him significantly, “the Treaty of Wayne Manor’s South Family Room circa 2012, was thus deemed by all signatories to be fruit of the poisonous tree, and subsequently rendered null and void.”

Bruce’s frown deepens. “How did you figure that out? And why are you suddenly talking like a Bond villain?”

“Well it was mostly more of a theory until just now,” Dick beams at him. Dammit. You’d think he’d know better than to walk right into things like that by now. “But Tim had a hunch pretty much from the start, except then we all ended up branching out towards different interests anyway so it didn’t seem to matter that much, and we figured why not let you keep thinking you got a win there, you know?”

“I have the most thoughtful children.”

“We do try,” Jason hums.

“We try,” Duke snorts. “You add snarky commentary.”

“That was implied.”

Duke rolls his eyes and rolls right past that. “And Jason’s talking like that because he’s got that book tour coming up in a couple weeks, and he’s test driving new Eccentric Author Aesthetics.”

“Gotta give the people what they want,” Jason shrugs. “My fanbase expects the precociously grumpy darling of the New York literary circuit to be baffling and unpredictable, I give them baffling and unpredictable.”

“And here I thought you’d said you hated your fanbase. And rather then giving them anything, last I heard you were claiming to be withholding your sophomore manuscript just to spite them,” Bruce says. His voice is still lost and wandering in the desert, not a hint of precipitation to be found. “In fact, I distinctly recall wanting to take you out to celebrate the rave reviews of your debut novel, the week of its release. Only you were busy having a diatribe about how ridiculous the reviews were and how nobody had any business calling the barely coherent linguistic finger paintings of an emotionally stunted twenty-one year old the ‘next great American novel’ and it called the entire slate of reviews’ credibility into question as any brains capable of producing thoughts that erroneous should be required to display a count of their individual brain cells before anyone even considers viewing any thought produced by them as potentially being credible.”

“And you thought he never listens,” Duke snickers at his older brother. “Sounds like a direct quote to me.”

Jason just shrugs again, not remotely moved. “Yeah but I hate everything, so its not like that really means anything. Also, I’m full of shit. I thought everyone knew that.”

“He’s not subtle,” Dick informs Bruce.

“Subtlety’s for losers,” Jason defends himself. “Like tact.”

Bruce clears his throat again. “Back to the matter of Dick’s book?”

“Oh, right!” Dick chirps. “I have a book. Well, will have. This is research for it.”

“So you are taking up writing after all?”

“Hah!” Jason barks out loudly. “Dick can’t write for shit. He can’t even write a thank you card, forget about a whole fucking novel.”

“Umm, I can write, I merely choose not to,” Dick sniffs pointedly. Then he rolls his eyes in disgust. “And Jesus Christ, chill, Prince Passive Aggressive. I can’t believe you’re still making such a big deal about that. Let it go already.”

He and Jason both shoot quick looks over at Duke about two seconds after Dick’s last sentence. Duke looks up just in time to catch their glances darting away again.

“Hang on, why did you both look at me, like you thought I was about to start singing that stupid song from Frozen?” Duke frowns at them suspiciously. “You guys do know that I’m not Stephanie, right?”

“Yeah but you have been hanging around her an awful lot lately, and she’s contagious,” Jason points out. Duke’s frown deepens for a moment, but then it wings out of sight and he shrugs, perfectly at ease again.

“Yeah, that’s fair.”

“Anyway, its Dick’s tell-all book on Gotham high society,” Jason continues on. “I’ll be the one actually writing it of course. He’s just the pretty face getting slapped on the cover, but I mean, that’s the only reason people are gonna wanna buy it, so I’ll probably just phone it in anyway.”

Bruce focuses on the only part of that reveal he can handle at the moment. “Jay, you’re not remotely capable of ever phoning something in.”

“How dare you accuse me of having a work ethic. Rude and disrespectful. My reputation isn’t built to withstand that kind of slander.”

“And feel free to mock all you want, but my pretty face on that cover is what’s going to earn me my first SCPF,” Dick announces loftily.

Duke looks up. Opens his mouth. Shakes his head. Closes it. Looks back down. Sighs. Looks back up again.

“Not that I don’t know better than to ask, but what the hell is an SCPF?”

“My version of an EGOT that I just made up while Jay was being offended by a compliment to his work ethic. Spokesmodel, cover model, print model, fashion model. The four cornerstones of the modeling world, which I will then have conquered, leaving me free to move on to other endeavors.”

Jason studies his older brother gravely. Then he shakes his head.

“Even as a complete and utter joke, that combination of words disgusts me. You make me physically nauseous sometimes, you know.”

“Another gift of mine, I suppose. I have so many,” Dick muses, leaning back and examining something on the chart he was scribbling on, as if trying to take in another angle for some no doubt ridiculous reason. Why were his children like this.

“Before this migraine finishes settling in and pitches its tent for the night, anyone care to tell me just what exactly this tell-all will be telling?” Bruce sighs. It was never too early to start damage control when this particular combination of his kids were conspiring together.

“Oh, everything,” Dick says breezily. “Who had affairs, who embezzled from their companies, who bribed or blackmailed or bought off this or that. All kinds of juicy sordid stuff, real page turner stuff, you know? You’d think important people would do a better job of keeping high stake secrets all hush hush instead of dropping them all willy nilly at various galas over the years, but c’est la vie.”

“Its almost like there are potential hazards to condescendingly assuming the uneducated circus brat someone adopted as an obvious PR stunt, like, just can’t understand a lick of what people say around him, what with his thick foreign accent obviously conveying he just don’t know English words so good nope, nope, nopers,” Dick concludes merrily, a familiar sparkle in his eye. One that usually heralded social cataclysms to come.

“And so you’ve taken it upon yourself to warn the public of those potential hazards. Good for you, son,” Bruce says sardonically. Despite his best efforts, the corners of his lips keep tugging stubbornly upwards.

“Just trying my best to give back to the community that’s given me so much,” Dick shrugs in the closest approximation to an ‘aw shucks’ vibe that Bruce has ever seen his son manage in as long as he’s known him. Jason reaches over and smacks the back of Dick’s head.

“Hey!” The elder brother snaps back, rubbing the back of his head with wounded dignity. He glares at his smirking brother.

“My bad. I thought you were against false modesty. Just trying to help keep you honest, bro.”

Dick narrows his eyes at him. “Touche,” is all he says.

“Last question before I give up and admit defeat,” Bruce interjects before that escalates. As tends to happen in moments like the previous. With no limit to how long or how far that escalation might last. By his count, his two eldest boys were somehow still engaged in four entirely different extended, longterm feuds they seemed somehow able to treat as separate and distinct from each other, with one of those stretching all the way back a good ten years, and still no end in sight as far as anyone knew.

How did they determine what fights would end in minutes and which warranted stretching out over a course of years? Bruce really couldn’t say. How did they manage to stop and start the same argument off and on for all that time, without letting the last-addressed state of the argument affect how they interacted when their fight was back on ‘pause’? No idea. How did they seem able to treat each different matter they fought about as its own distinct entity that had no bearing on anything outside that particular argument, with no overlap or cross-pollination as far as anyone else had ever been witness to, and why did they even bother doing so in the first place? God, Bruce dearly wishes he knew.

Unfortunately, for all that his entire horde of children often at times seem to exist on a wholly separate and private plane unreachable by the rest of humanity, Bruce’s first two children to fill the halls of Wayne Manor with laughs, screeches and occasional declarations of war and an intent to maim, dismember and murder -

Well. They at times seemed to possess a language and extra senses unique just to them, and baffling to the entire rest of the world and their own siblings as well.

Oh well. At least Bruce could take some small comfort in Duke’s occasional glance of wary confusion, thrown towards one or both of his brothers when they weren’t looking.

“Yo, this is Planet Earth, hailing one eternally out of touch bachelor billionaire way up in the atmosphere,” Jason sharply cuts into Bruce’s distraction with a snap of his fingers. “Are you trying to milk the senility thing again? We’ve been over this. You need at least another decade of mileage before we’ll validate your senior citizen card.”

“Right.” Bruce rolls his eyes at his son, but shakes his head to clear it nevertheless. Ah, yes. “Yes. Indulge me, please. What exactly does what you’re watching have to do with Dick’s....tell-all, and how does whatever all of this is count as research?”

“Oh, we’re just keeping record of public shaming of every snobby rich jackass to buy one of the fashion monstrosities Dick wears at Fashion Week, only to then look utterly ridiculous and absurd when they try and wear it in public and everyone points and laughs,” Duke chimes in.

“I see,” Bruce says, his lips twitching again. “And this of course all ties back into class warfare and...what was it again...oh yes, the Twenty Seven Step Plan To Destroy The Upper Class?”

“That’s right,” Duke nods.

“I even know what the title is going to be already,” Dick smiles with bared teeth. “I’m going with: ‘Weapons of Choice.’“

“Of course, as I keep explaining to him, nobody gets final say on the title of their book, and there’s every chance the publisher will end up changing the title to something they pick,” Jason says with a pointed look at his brother.

Dick’s willful obliviousness visibly deflects Jay’s arched gaze long before any point can hit and make an impact. “And as I keep explaining to him, if they try and change the title, I will simply explain to them that they are incorrect and it already has the perfect title and one can not improve upon perfection.”

Jason strangles a gutteral, incoherent growl before it can fully escape from his throat. “I want to throttle you.”

“I know,” Dick says sunnily.

“Well, as long as you’ve thought this through, which you clearly have, I have no doubt you’ll get the results you’re after,” Bruce says. Doubtfully. Though of what, he’s not entirely sure. His sanity, thinking that yes, half a dozen precocious, willful and utterly incomprehensible children, that’s the ticket, exactly what my life needs. Yes, that was probably the matter actually in doubt.

“Ugh, B, you’re not getting it,” Dick complains. He exchanges frustrated glances with his brothers. “He’s not getting it.”

“It’s not rocket science,” Jason says patiently. “Basic rule of street fighting....the most effective takedowns come from aiming at someone’s weakest point. Whenever possible, go for the throat. What’s the equivalent of the throat as far as Gotham’s upper class is considered? Public image.”

“Destroy their public image, destroy them,” Dick finishes cheerfully. “They crack, get egg on their face like the nursery rhyme says, and bam, Humpty Dumpty has a great fall and all the queen’s knights working as a team still can’t put them together again and while they’re distracted the pawns can slip past them and become queens!”

Jason stares at him. “I know what you’re doing and its not going to work.”

“What am I doing?”

“Deliberately mangling the fuck out of a bunch of different well known sayings that you know perfectly well how they really go, while doing that thing where you act like you’re the most airheaded ditz to ever live and have a brain that runs off of helium instead of oxygen like the rest of us. Because you know damn well how obnoxious that is to anyone who knows exactly how intelligent you really are and that you actually have a mind like a steel trap that remembers fucking everything, no matter how inane, which is fucking rude, because that’s wasted on you and also, stop it. I told you. Its not going to work.”

“Oh Jay.” Dick tilts his head to the side and grins wider. “That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Uh huh,” Jason says, unconvinced. “Then what, pray tell, are you doing?”

“That thing where I trick you into believing I’m doing the more obvious seeming thing and then annoy you with my fake airhead routine until you end up flattering me and paying me compliments when pointing out why my airhead routine could never work on you and is thus just annoying,” Dick says brightly.

Jason’s eyebrows inch incrementally together with the slow, ominous scrape of stone grinding across stone. Dick is entirely undeterred, and simply shrugs again with a painfully fake display of innocence.

“Its dinner time and my ego needed feeding. Thanks for that bee tee dubs, it was getting hungry. Nom nom.”

“Yeah,” Jason says casually, after a good ten second pause. He nods decisively. “Okay, I’m going to murder you now.”

He lunges for his brother, but Dick’s resting pose is the equivalent of anyone else impatiently waiting at the starting block of a race. He’s up and on his feet, gracefully dancing out of range of his younger but bigger brother’s wider reach, and has darted halfway towards the other exit to the room by the time Jason finishes scrambling to his feet. Not that any of that delays the younger man from taking off in a dead sprint in pursuit of his laughing sprite of a brother the second he does.

Bruce stares after them for a moment and then shifts his gaze down to Duke, who’s still seated contentedly on the floor, blithely unaffected by Dick and Jason’s mad dash out the room as he continues scribbling down notes.

“I will pay you all the money I have, not to grow up to be like them,” Bruce says in the gravest possible tone he can manage. “You don’t even have to wait til I’m dead.”

Duke sighs and shakes his head. “B, c’mon, man. I’m clearly on Team Class Warfare. I’m insulted you think I can be bought.”

Bruce frowns. “You all are way, way too fond of this trolling thing you do.”

“Mmm. Agree to disagree.”

446 notes · View notes

jenoptimist · 4 years

Text

florist!xiaojun

The flower shop was a new addition to the street. It was pretty; all pastel colored, decorated with beautiful flowers that were color coordinated and had Rainbow V just above the entrance, a cute logo beside it that included an actual rainbow in a shape of a ‘V’ with two clouds and a sun. The brightness of the shop contrasted with the bookshop you worked at which was a dark mahogany, the only pop of color coming from the books that were on display and the gold plated letters of the name of the store.

The job you had was a simple one, shelve and organize books and man the register, because of the small size of the shop. Usually you worked with Mark but because he requested a day off to spend some time with his friends, you were rostered with Johnny. The two of you played rock-paper-scissors to see who would have to redecorate the display tables and, unfortunately, you lost. You stuck your tongue out at Johnny as he laughed from where he stood behind the cashier, cheek in the palm of his hand as he stared out the window.

There weren’t many customers that came into the shop, bookshops closing with the rise of the digital age, but the few that did were regulars. So, when a man with sharp features walked in like it was a runway, you did a double take from your position in the far corner of the room. Your eyes followed him, hand holding a book frozen in the air, as he went over to inspect the fiction section. Johnny coughed loudly, breaking you out of your trance, and flashed a shit-eating grin at you when you met his eye. After making sure that the customer wasn’t paying attention, you flipped off your coworker.

Unlike large chains, the bookshop you worked at had cozy seats littered around so that the customer can have a little read before committing to buy anything. You thanked your lucky stars for it because it meant that you could secretly spy on the customer as he slowly flipped through the pages of a book that he picked up. He paid no mind as Johnny called you over, his eyes staring intently on the page.

“I’m going on my break,” Johnny smirked at you as he wiggled his eyebrows. Then he leaned down so that he could whisper in your ear. “You better have his number by the time I’m back.” You squawked, attempt to punch his arm ineffective when he dodged it and skipped away chuckling. You silently cursed at him as he exited the building. With your company gone, you decided to continue your task. You refused to look at the customer’s direction in fear of him catching you and never returning. But when you convinced yourself to allow just one, tiny peek, he was gone. You sighed wistfully, bidding him farewell in your mind.

The handsome customer was completely forgotten since you never saw him again. Well. It had only been a few days, so maybe you were being a little bit dramatic but honestly, the chances of him returning? Extremely slim. A lot of people came in to have a browse and never returned, so you wouldn’t be surprised if he had decided to do the same. So maybe you hadn’t forgotten but you probably should.

“New book delivery?” Taeyong, a charming regular, asked as he saw you come from the back with a large box in your hands. Mark, like the sweetheart he was, wasted no time grabbing the heavy box from you and setting it near the small table that you set up near the counter.

You hummed an affirmative. “Yep!” You replied as you began to cut open the box. “Taeil said we needed more popular books to attract customers.”

“Ah,” Taeyong peeked at the box, “books like what?”

“Harry Potter!” Mark replied, then he scratched his head as his features pinched in confusion. “But he only got one limited edition set.” Taeyong ‘ooh’d in awe as you set the limited edition hard covered boxed set.

“How is it limited edition?” Taeyong asked curiously as he studied the box that you were placing on the table, “it doesn’t look like anything special.”

Although you silently agreed with him, you answered his question matter-of-factly. “Well this box that the books come in,” it was brown and trunk-like with handles and a privacy lock, “is the limited edition part. It also comes with some stickers.” You kept readjusting its position until you were satisfied. When you were finished you smiled at one of your favorite regulars, “so, T-yong, how’s your book? Tell me all about it.”

“So you don’t have his number?” You were on another shift with Johnny and all you could do was groan in response when the first thing he asked you was about the man he caught you gawking at. “It’s been a week, y/n!”

“Yeah and he hasn’t come back, now shut up.”

The tall man shook his head at you, sighing dramatically, as he delicately placed his fingers on his forehead. “I expected more from you.”

You guffawed. “You’re so annoying!”

Johnny placed a hand on his chest, staggering backwards. “You wound me.” The two of you laughed as you continued to joke around while Jeno, a friend of Mark’s and a regular, snorted at your antics. This continued until you heard the soft chime of the bell ring, signalling that a customer walked in. “Uh,” Johnny said as he slowly removed his hold on your wrists, “we promise we’re normal?”

The sound of your hand hitting your face was loud enough to coax a laugh from Jeno. The man smiled, although it came out awkwardly, as his eyes drifted to the table where the Harry Potter books still remained. Nobody bought it yet and you suspected that it was because they weren’t willing to spend the substantial amount of money that it costed. The thought of spending that amount of money, for something that was essentially a box and some stickers, made you cry internally but you understood that some people were willing to spend that, and more, when it came to limited edition merchandise.

“I’ll take this, please.” The customer said, voice a pleasant timbre, as he began to approach the display table. Johnny, like the little shit he was, scurried off to pretend to be busy. “Can I?” He asked as he gestured to it. When you nodded, a brilliant smile made its way onto his face and he immediately lifted the trunk lid. Allowing him a moment to fawn over it, you half-heartedly pretended to price up some books that were laying by the register.

“Big fan?” You asked when he eventually placed the trunk on the table with extreme care.

“Oh yeah,” he breathed out, “the biggest.” Then, much to your delight, he started going on a tangent about the series. You listened, enthralled by his passion and beauty–if you thought he was handsome from afar, he was absolutely devastating up close; his stark brows were softened by the pretty shape of his eyes, his whole face lighting up when he smiled that made him look like a cute boy next door rather than the model you first thought he was. All that and his incredible jawline? You were surprised that you hadn’t fainted on the spot with the way he was looking at you as he spoke. “And, also, it is so out of character for him to laugh along with the others when Ron got his robes in Goblet of Fire for the Yule Ball. He knew what it felt like to get hand-me-downs, so they made a mistake on the producers part. They should have stuck with his reaction in the book.” When he finished his rant, he looked sheepish. As if he had forgotten himself for a moment. “Sorry,” he mumbled as he shuffled slightly, hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. “I got, uh, a little carried away.”

“It’s okay,” you smiled kindly as you began to ring up up his item, “I didn’t mind.” From somewhere behind the Harry Potter fan, you heard Johnny try to cover up his laugh by coughing and it took all your willpower not to you roll your eyes and flip him off. Instead you continued to smile brightly at your customer. “Thank you! We hope to see you again!” You chirped as he walked away with his purchase. When he looked back and smiled at you, you definitely melted on the spot.

“We hope to see you again!” Johnny mimicked, his voice shrill, as he flipped his hair. Jeno snickered along with him.

“I do not sound like that!”

It was a few days later and, upon Taeil’s request, you made your way to Rainbow V across the road. You checked your pocket to see if the money you were told to take from the cash register was still there, you didn’t want to lose it and have to spend money that you didn’t have, as you walked into the fragrant store.

You didn’t see anybody but could hear the low strumming of a guitar somewhere. It was a pleasant sound that you listened to as you inspected the different flower arrangements. Taeil wanted to decorate the bookshop a little bit by adding a vase of flowers here and there to ‘jazz up’ the atmosphere with a pop of color. He also planned to add a menu for teas and coffees for those who wanted to stay and read for a little bit in the shop in the near future.

“Sorry about that,” a familiar voice said. You spun around to find none other than Harry Potter man. “I–” he paused when he finally laid eyes on you, “hey it’s you!” If the smile that made its way onto his face made you fall in love with him a little bit, that was nobody else’s business but your own. “What brings you here?”

“My boss wanted me to buy some flowers to make the shop a little more colorful.” You paused for a moment before adding, “any recommendations?”

“Plenty!” He replied cheerily then backtracked. “Not that the shop is ugly or anything! Just, uh, I know a lot about flowers?”

“Nice save.” You giggled.

For the next fifteen minutes or so, he took you around the shop and told you which he thought would suit the atmosphere and which ones would compliment the smell of books. You were thankful that he did and just picked any random bunch of flowers, sure that Taeil would be easily pleased with any bouquet that you chose.

“Great choice!”

And with that he lead you over to the register as made some small talk about the weather. You responded readily, commenting on how it was meant to be sunny for the rest of the week. Just as you took out money to pay for your purchase, a tall man came from the door behind the register. Your jaw almost dropped at the sight of him. Were all florists this attractive or did Rainbow V just happen to attract them? He nodded at you, smiling widely, before nudging your cashier. They spoke in rapid, you listened intently, Cantonese. Not that you understood a word they spoke. Although something stirred within you when you realized that his voice had gotten deeper when he spoke the language. After shoving the taller man away, who was laughing merrily, your cashier smiled shyly as he gave you your change.

“Thanks a lot, uh.”

“His name is Dejun! Xiao Dejun!” His companion shouted from the other side of the store. Dejun shouted something at him in Cantonese again but the other man only snickered in response.

“Thanks Dejun.” You beamed.

“No problem.”

As you took the bouquets you said, “my manager is going to start, like, selling tea and stuff soon if you ever want to come over and read.” Dejun nodded, smiling at you and you took that as your cue to leave.

“He’ll be there!” His friend bellowed just before you took a step out of the building and you couldn’t contain your laugh when Dejun said something in Cantonese, sounding exasperated.

The day Taeil decided to begin his plan of selling refreshments to customers, Dejun had made an appearance–just as he had ever since he sold you the bouquets a few months ago. In fact he made sure to consistently bring you fresh bouquets every morning for the store, never failing to chat with you whenever he did. He flashed a quick smile at you as he made his away over to his usual spot, a seat in the far corner that was adjacent to the cash register. This always gave you a good view to admire him as he read.

“It’s your turn.” Mark said as he handed you the menu.

“It is not!” You responded. Somehow, in between the days when you weren’t rostered, Johnny had managed to inform Mark all about your small crush on the florist. And now they were in cahoots with one another. They didn’t even try to be sneaky about it! They were so obvious about it because whenever Dejun walked in, they suddenly remembered something that Taeil had specifically told them to do.

“It is!” Mark replied. If he were Johnny you would have cursed at him but, no, he was adorable Markie-pumpkin who was always trying his best and helped you whenever he could. That and he gave you his puppy eyes, pouting at you.

“You’ve been hanging around Johnny too much.” You sniffed as you swiped the menu from his hands. He did nothing but smile at you innocently.

The closer you got to Dejun, the more nervous you got. You wanted to turn around and not offer him anything but alas he had already spotted you walking over to him and dropped his book onto his lap, thumb stuck in between the pages so that he wouldn’t lose his place.

“Hey, y/n.” He smiled.

You greeted him back with a smile of your own and thrust the menu in front of him. “Would you like to order anything?”

Dejun took the menu from you and scanned it intently. It was a few minutes of silence before he said, “what’s your favorite?”

Taken back you scrambled to remember the items on the menu. “The cha-yen is quite good! The condensed milk really adds a nice sweetness to the orange blossom infusion and the other spices included.”

“Oh really?” He hummed as he lowered the menu, eyes lifting to stare at you. “My friend Yongqin who works with me grew up in Thailand and makes the best cha-yen. Or, well, he claims that he does anyway.” Your brows lifted in interest. “I’ll have it and rave to him about it.” He said as he returned the menu to you. When you took it, he continued smiling at you for a little bit longer before relaxing back into his seat.

“Wow. He’s, like, really in love with you y/n!” Mark immediately whispered as you approached the counter. You lightly slapped his upperarm which made him raise both of his hands up in mock surrender. “He totally is! Oh my goodness, I need to tell Johnny!” And with that, he fished his phone out of his pocket and began texting your friend.

After you served Dejun his drink and returned to your position by your counter, you felt a series of buzzing from you pocket. When you slyly took a peek, the notifications were from none other than Johnny. You stared at Mark accusingly as you quickly read over the texts. He did nothing but smile sweetly in return.

“I hate you both.”

“You two are so pathetic.” Taeil said as he slid in the seat opposite to you. It was one of those rare days when he visited the shop and closed it for an hour so that all the employees on the shift, and whichever regular was present, could eat together with the food that he bought. You scowled as you tore apart your wooden chopsticks with more force than necessary. From beside him, Johnny hummed in agreement as he slurped his noodles.

“I hope you choke.” You replied to which he flipped you off.

“I hate to say it,” Taeyong said as he took the seat beside you. “But he’s right.”

Your jaw dropped. “Not you too!” You then turned to stare at Mark and Jeno, who happened to be passing by when Taeil was approaching the shop, groaning when they wouldn’t meet your eyes guiltily. “Does nobody here love me?”

“No because Harry Potter boy is the only one who does.” Johnny retorted. You crumpled up a piece of tissue and threw it at his direction. He stuck his tongue out at you when you missed.

“And, anyways, there is no way he is pathetic.” Johnny and Taeil groaned. “He isn’t!”

“So why hasn’t he asked you out yet, then?” Jeno asked before taking a big bite of his food.

“Because he doesn’t like me at all.” You replied as you blew on your food. After taking a bite, you looked up to find them staring at you as if you were an alien. “What?”

“Oh my goodness.” Mark griped as he dropped his head onto the table dramatically. Jeno patted his back and shot you a look that was a mixture of disappointment and disbelief.

“Like I said,” Taeil piped up, mouth full of food. “Pathetic.”

“Alright that’s it. I’m quitting.”

“No you aren’t.” They all chirped in a freaky kind of synchronization.

You hated that they were right.

The next morning you found yourself facing a man with cropped, silver hair. He smiled brightly when he spotted you, large bouquets in hand. “Y/n, right?” When you nodded in response, he placed the bouquets on top of the counter. “Xiaojun couldn’t make it, so he asked me to give these to you. But he said he’ll be by later.” He finished with a wink.

“Oh, uh, thank you!”

“So, Xiaojun mentioned something about the cha-yen being amazing here?” He said while mirrored your smile and, yeah, you were pretty sure that it was a requirement that people who worked in Rainbow V to be attractive. There was no way there wasn’t with the way the staff looked.

“You must be Yongqin!” You said as you remembered what Dejun had said months prior.

Yongqin straightened his posture, looking immensely pleased. “He’s talked about me?”

“He’s talked about all of you.”

“Okay then I’ll take seven of those!” After quickly whipping up his orders, trusting that Mark could hold up the fort, you gave at to him at a discounted price. Yongqin tried to pay it for the full price but you refused, insisting that it was the least you could do because of all the flowers Dejun had been kind enough to drop by everyday. “Oh alright,” he said as he gave up and tucked away the remainder of his money. He paused for a moment, hands on the bag you placed the drinks in, then grinned at you as his eyes sparkled with mischief. “Since you gave me those on a discounted price, I’ll tell you a secret.” He waved you over to him. When you did he whispered in your ear, “our Xiaojunie always makes sure you have a bouquet arranged by him even though he has a day off.”

Your eyes widened. “Really?” Your heart jumped at the thought of him taking care in arranging a bouquet and delivering it to you himself.

“Mhm,” Yongqin hummed. “Have you ever asked Xiaojun about the flowers?”

Your forehead creased. “No?” You replied, still in shock.

“Never?”

“Never.”

Yongqin hummed before gripping onto the bag and swinging it by his side. “You should ask him what the flowers mean.” And with that he wiggled his fingers at you then spun on his heel and left.

Several thoughts swirled in your mind after your encounter with Yongqin. What had he meant about the flowers? Of course you knew that different flowers had different meanings but you weren’t proficient in floriography. It never occurred to you to ask Dejun about the flowers he gave you for the shop recently, either, because the one time that you did, he just remained mute and thrust the bouquets towards you and then practically ran away. You had always just assumed that Dejun gave you whatever flowers he had on hand but you thought there had to be something going on with the look that Yonqin gave you. Then your thoughts switched onto Dejun. Precious Dejun who went and arranged bouquets to give to you for the shop even though he had a day off.

When the person running around in your mind walked in, you attempted to appear casual–as if you hadn’t spent the entire afternoon waiting for him to walk in. Johnny snorted at you and wandered off, claiming to have something to do. But not before pointedly inclining his head at the florist and then staring you down.

“Hey,” you greeted as he walked up to the register rather than his usual spot. You noticed that he didn’t have a book in his hand like he normally did and frowned. “Not staying long?” You asked, swallowing the disappointment that threatened to crawl up.

“No,” he replied before hastily adding, “but could I, uh, maybe borrow you for a few minutes?”

As you opened your mouth to respond, Johnny did it for you. “Yes! Absolutely! They’re free!” Your head snapped to where he was speed walking towards you, giving him a look that said, ‘are you serious?’.

Dejun shifted his weight onto his other foot. “Are you sure?”

“Yep! Definitely! I mean, look at this place! It’s basically a ghost town!” With that, Johnny placed his hands on your shoulders and steered you until you were beside the florist. “Keep them away as long as you need to!”

You felt your palms begin to sweat when Dejun held his hand out towards you so before placing your hand in his, you wiped it on your jeans. As he lead the two of you out, you turned to give Johnny a freaked out look that he returned with a thumbs up and a goofy smile.

Curiosity gnawed at you as Dejun walked the two of you over to Rainbow V, which had a ‘Closed’ sign on the front. You remained silent as he lead you to the back room where Yukhei appeared from when you first walked in. Dejun gestured you to take a seat and when you did, he immediately spun around to grab his guitar that was leaning on the wall by the seat across from you. You didn’t have time to ask him what was going on because when you finally were about to ask, he gave you a nervous smile and started strumming. Just when you thought he couldn’t be anymore perfect, he began singing. You swore that you soul ascended into a different plane of existence with each note that he sang, making sure that he looked directly into your eyes as he did so.

You immediately began clapping as soon as he ended. “That was– You were so–” you had difficulty finding the right words of praise. “Oh my God, Jun-jun, you are so talented.” A smile blossomed on his face, bowing his head as he accepted your compliments. “What was that song, by the way?” You asked. “I’ve never heard of it before.”

“I, uh, wrote it.” Dejun cleared his throat, squaring his shoulders. “I wrote it for you.” He said with more confidence than the last time. Your jaw dropped as you began to stand up but he stopped you by holding out a hand and saying, “hold on, I need to get something.”

A song. He wrote a song for you. He wrote you a song and performed it for you. If you hadn’t been sitting down when he told you, you were pretty sure you would have swooned. That had to mean he had feelings for you, right? You were pretty sure that nobody just went around writing songs for people they didn’t have feelings for. It was like the time Taeyong told you that he made a mixtape for his crush. Nobody went around doing stuff like that casually.

When he returned, bouquet in hand, nervously meeting your gaze you couldn’t help but melt. Dejun pushed out the bouquet towards you as he lowered his gaze. Slowly, you took them from him as you stared at him in disbelief. Suddenly, Yongqin’s words from earlier came back to you and you spoke before he could.

“What do the flowers mean?” You asked him softly.

“Well,” he breathed out, “the bouquet I arranged for you is a mix of tulips, purple and red roses, baby’s breath and alstroemeria, or, uh, Peruvian lilies. Obviously,” he licked his lips, “they’re all different flowers. But I arranged them together and gave them to you because I want to tell you that I like you. And that all of the flowers I’ve ever given you for the bookshop has always had something to do with my feelings for you.” He took in a quick breath before continuing. “I want you to know that it’s alright if you don’t like me back but if you do, would you maybe want to go on a date with me?”

“Wait,” you said as you lowered the bouquet, “you mean to tell me that you’ve been, what, confessing to me all these months?” Dejun looked at you through his lashes, wincing ever so slightly before he nodded in response. “Oh my God, you absolute sap! Yes, of course I’ll go on a date with you.”

Dejun’s head snapped up, eyes full of disbelief. “What?”

“I said yes, dummy, now come over here and kiss me.” He wasted no time in doing what he was told, walking up to you with purposeful strides. You gently laid the bouquet on the chair behind you and just had enough time to see the desire in his eyes before you closed your own as he leaned in to kiss you. “Maybe I’m a little bit in love with you.” You whispered when the two of you pulled away.

“That’s good,” he replied, eyes shining with adoration as he huffed out a small laugh. “‘Cause I’m a little bit in love with you too.”

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all1e23 · 4 years

Text

Between the Stars [Pt. 1]

Pairings: Past!Steve x Reader, Bucky x Reader

Summary: Struggling with the death of your husband, you find comfort in someone unexpected.

Series warnings: CHARACTER DEATH. Grief. Overall sadness. Depression. It’s pretty angsty if I’m being honest. Things mellow out as the series goes on. TW: Military/Spouse death

A/N: It’s a military AU with the loss of a spouse. This was the only WIP of mine I was really upset to discontinue. Which is why it’s the only one I left up. After some love from my @moonbeambucky, I’m posting the first chapter and we will see how it goes. No, I do not have a posting schedule nor do I know when the next part will be up. No Bucky yet but the next chapter is nothing but Bucky. It’s still very heavy in the angst but hang tight. It gets better once Bucky comes home. If you like it write a book report, sing me a song or come scream at me.

***My fics are not to be saved or posted on any other sites without my written permission. Reblogs are my jam, though! Thanks!****

“Sweetheart,” Steve’s breath warmed your skin, making you shiver. “It’s time to wake up, my sweetheart.”

You pulled the cover over your head, hiding the grin on your face and blocking out the sun along with your husband. Steve’s chuckle made your smile widen enough to make your cheeks hurt. There was a gentle tug to the blanket, and you knew Steve was attempting to tenderly coax you out of bed. You slowly lowered the quilt down to your nose, only letting your eyes peek out, and you find your husband’s gorgeous smile beaming down at you, making your heart flutters from the sight.

“It’s Saturday, Steven.”

“Steven?” Steve chuckled and tried to pull the covers off your face yet again. “I’m in that much trouble?”

You narrowed your eyes and tightened your grip on your blanket.

“Yes, Steven, you are.”

Steve settled himself on top of you, leaving the blanket wedged between you, but he pulled it down far enough to see your whole face. He placed a kiss to the tip of your crinkled up nose and smiled at the exaggerated pout you put on.

“We have brunch with everyone, or did you forget that it was your idea?”

“I did forget,” You whined quietly. “You know better than to let me plan things when I’m excited, and I’ve had more than two glasses of wine.”

He only grinned wider at that. Didn’t say a word, and you started to fidget from your own self-consciousness. You hated and loved it when he looked at you like that. It made you fear the day he would stop. Eight years in, and it was still there despite fights over how to load the dishwasher, silly tiffs about money and arguments over what way the toilet paper goes on the holder.

“What are you going to do when our kids come running in here to wake you up? Are you going to send our sweet babies away?”

He just had to go there. Steve just had to go and mention sweet moments of babies and cuddles -- Your weakness.

You relented and finally wrapped your arms around his neck, dipping your fingers into his longer than usual hair. He would have to cut it soon. Couldn’t be a soldier and have hair long enough to tuck behind his ears. You liked when he let it get long, though. It made him your Steve again. Which sounded ridiculous. He didn’t have long hair and beard when you met, or the night he kissed you for the first time, but it didn’t matter how silly it was. This version was your Steve, and the short-haired, clean-shaven one belonged to the Army.

“Well, if they are running up here to wake me up because their daddy made me breakfast, I could be convinced to get out bed for some kisses and cuddles.”

Steve’s sweet laugh made your skin prickle. You wondered if he would let you record it before he left this time or if that was going too far. Probably not. Steve would do just about anything you asked of him, so you couldn’t imagine he would ever tell you no for something that would put your heart at ease while he was gone.

“Maybe we skip brunch and get started on those babies, hm?”

You grinned.

Steve always knew exactly what to say.

“God, I love you, Rogers.”

Steve’s right hand slipped under the sheet and under the white cotton shirt of his that you were currently using as a pajama, his fingers dug into your ribs making you squirm, and he dipped his head down, barely brushing over your parted lips, he whispered, “And, I love you, baby.”

Your eyes opened, and you weren’t met with the sight of your husband. It was the same ugly white ceiling you’ve stared at for the past month, the past thirteen months, really. It’s been a month since everything was finalized. By someone’s good fortune that was not your own, Steve had insisted you buy your house off base so at least you could keep the home you built together. It hadn’t made this last month any easier. Thirty-six days since you got the news and thirty days since you laid Steve to rest. You were supposed to be improving, or so the books and all your friends and family said. You didn’t know how anyone expected you to get better. You could barely put one foot in front of the other, let alone think about moving on with what little bit of a life you had left.

The sun was hitting the full-length mirror hanging on the far wall at the perfect angle, and you knew it was nearly seven, judging by the position of the glare coming off the glass. You could spend the rest of the day in bed, and you would have every right to. No one would let you get away with wallowing today you had a feeling. Besides, you had to stop by Sarah’s and make sure she was okay. It has been far too long since you checked in on her, and that wasn’t fair to her. She was grieving just as much as you were. So, you forced yourself out of bed, stood on shaky legs, and made the short, dreadfully long walk to your closet.

The red flannel you pulled out of black felt-lined hanger still smelled like Steve. All of his things did, and his scent hung heavy in your room. You pulled it on over your tank top and brought the collar up to your nose, taking in a deep breath. That earthy citrus smell still made your knees a little weak. Eventually, you were going to have to wash his things. You glanced at your bed, the pile of crumpled sheets you would typically insist on making before your day started. What was the point in making them now? No one would see them but you. No one would know if you made your bed or left it a wreck for days on end.

You should wash them, a voice in your head nagged.

No, you shouldn’t.

His pillow is still his pillow, so long as you don’t wash it. Maybe next month. You haven’t been sleeping much as it is, and when you do, you usually fall asleep on the couch so the sheets could stand to go a while longer.

The house was eerily quiet in the mornings. Steve was always the first one up and the last one down. The quiet made those times harder. It was the heavy reminder he was gone, and the weight of that on your chest left you unable to rest. Landing at the bottom of the stairs, you found Sam still fast asleep on the couch with no signs of waking any time soon. He had shown up last night claiming he needed to see you, but you knew Sam was there to check up on you. It had nothing to do with his own grief. Sam became your shadow the moment the funeral ended, and part of you wished he would just go away.

You wanted everyone to go away and let you grieve in the only way you knew how.

The coffee pot was empty, and it glared at you the moment you entered the kitchen. As it has been for the last year. Another reminder that Steve was gone and never coming back. When he was home, Steve would set the timer before his run, so by the time you woke up and made your way downstairs, there was always a fresh pot waiting for you. You’ve been making your own coffee since he deployed, and not one morning had it come out right.

You should have known then something was wrong.

A large, calloused hand slipped around your waist from behind, and gentle kisses landed on your neck. He shouldn’t be here, and yet, he was. He was late for PT and was surely going to get yelled at the second he arrived. Steve didn’t seem bothered by the thought, or maybe kissing you was really worth it like he claimed.

“I believe you're wearing my favorite shirt,” Steve’s voice rumbled against your skin, and you tried to suppress the shudder it sent through you.

“What’s yours is mine, Husband.”

Steve chuckled.

“How many cups of coffee does that make for you, Wife?”

“Two,” You said with shaky confidence and a scrunched nose that said you weren’t being entirely truthful.

Steve nuzzled his nose along your jaw, and he roughly whispered in your ear, “Liar. Wanna try that again?”

“Fine,” you conceded with an eye roll. “This is cup three, but I’m not having any more for the day because you’re here stealing the rest.” Steve smiled fondly and took his travel mug from its spot next to yours.

“No more until you have some water. You’re going to give yourself a heart attack.” Steve cupped your jaw with his free hand and tilted your head back to rest on his shoulder. He pressed a tender kiss to your lips and one to your nose.

“I’ll see you tonight beautiful.”

“Y/n… Hey…”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise, baby. When do I ever break my promises to you?”

“Hey, Y/n.” Sam tried again, more forceful his time. “Are you okay?”

You blinked, finding Sam standing in front of you with a look of concern drawing his brows together. You looked down at the counter where two cups were resting, full of black steaming coffee. You had only meant to pour one cup. Or had you? Sam realized the mistake before you did. The cup was for Steve. He quickly leaned forward and slid the mug towards him.

"Mind if I get a cup? Didn't sleep great last night."

A breath of relief.

You nodded and slipped the carafe back where it rested, avoiding Sam’s watchful eyes.

"...How are you sleeping?"

"Fine."

Sam raised a brow.

"Decent." You reluctantly confessed. "Enough that I can make it through the day."

"And what are you doing... to make it through the day? Have you tried to play?"

Your eyes shifted to the piano that sat in the den, and you quickly looked away. There was no point in beating around the bush with that one. Someone was coming to look at it at the end of the week, and you were hopeful by the weekend to have it sold. There were some things that you wouldn’t be able to pick back up again, and falling in love and playing the piano was on the top of the list. There was no reason to pretend.

"No. I don't--" You shook your head. "It's as if my fingers can't remember the keys. I don't know. Nothing feels right anymore."

That was normal. Everything you were feeling was perfectly normal, and Sam wanted to tell you that. You knew he did, but he didn’t, and you let out a breath you hadn’t known you were holding. This was hard enough without feeling like your closest friend was counseling you.

“It’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not--”

“I haven’t washed his pillowcase yet.” You blurted without thinking. “I, uh, I’m scared if I do it will lose his scent, and it won’t be his anymore. Which is stupid. He hasn’t slept on it in over a year. I could easily spray more cologne on the cover like I have been since he left, and it would be the same. It feels different now. Final. Am I going crazy? Because it feels like I am losing it, Sam.”

“That’s all normal. You’re grieving. It’s normal to not be rational--”

No. That was not what you wanted.

“I don’t want therapy Sam right now,” You snapped. “I want Sam. My Sam.”

Sam leaned back against the backing of the barstool and stared at you. Your gaze didn’t waver. You picked at your nails, and your bottom lip was trembling, but you held your gaze steady. Sam knew when to push and when not to. Right now, you were right. You didn’t need him to baby you, to walk on eggshells, and repeat well-rehearsed phrases meant to aid in your recovery like everyone else was doing. You just needed him to listen and tell you your life wasn’t over.”

“Okay.”

Sam reached across the counter and cupped a large hand over yours. There weren’t many people you would let see like this, or at all. Since the funeral, you haven’t been getting out much. You were sure Wanda called Sam and tattled on you after your meltdown in the market yesterday. It wasn’t a big deal. Yes, you cried over an apple pie. It was not the first time someone has gotten upset over baked goods. It happened every day, you were sure of that, and no one made a fuss until it happened to a widow.

Widow. You really hated that word. It was a stupid word, and you refused to use it. However, the incident in the market didn’t help the way people were looking at you, widow, or not. You had thought things would be slightly easier once you talked to Bucky. He’s always had a way of calming you and putting your restless soul at ease. You waited on a call from Bucky, but none came. He hasn’t even sent a letter. That might have been part of the reason for pie-gate 2020.

At first, you were angry. He was ignoring you? After everything? You lost your husband, the man’s best friend, and Bucky couldn’t be bothered to pick up the damn phone and make sure you were okay? But you realized he was grieving, too. It was different from yours, but it didn’t make it any less real, and he had a right to do it in his own way. Besides, Bucky probably didn’t know what to say. You wouldn’t if it was you because there was nothing anyone could say or do to make this okay. That was when your anger turned to tears, and that moment just happened to be in the bakery, in front of twenty or so people.

It wasn’t like there was some guidebook on how you should grieve and move on with your life. You wished there was, but there wasn’t a ‘right way’ to navigate this. You had to take one day at a time and handle each moment as it came along.

“I’ve loved him for most of my life am I supposed to just stop now?”

“No one expects you to stop loving Steve.”

“It feels that way sometimes,” You mumbled weakly.

Sam gave your hand a gentle squeeze, but he didn’t say anything else. You needed to sort through what you were feeling on your own, so he was letting you decide what you needed; from him and yourself. When you finally looked back up, he could tell by the murky waters in your eyes, you were still just as lost as the day Steve left you. Only now, there were expectations for improvement and time limits on how long you were allowed to stay floating in the dark. Even though it had only been thirty-six days, eight hours, and forty-three minutes, everyone was tired. Your friends and family wanted to move on. After all, they didn’t lose their other half. They were tired of being sad, and you were tired of pretending it was okay.

“How am I supposed to move on without him, and what? Just start over?”

Sam gave you a small smile and tightened his grip on your hand. “I don’t know, but we are all here to help you figure it out.”

“Not everyone is here,” you grumbled petulantly.

Bucky didn’t have a choice, but he did. He could have been the one to come home, and while you were not upset with him for sending Sam in his stay, it still hurt. The three of you had been close, and once upon a time, you were closer to Bucky than you were Steve. He was the first person to talk to you when you moved to town, and if it wasn't for Bucky, you never would have met Steve.

“He will be home at the end of the month and from what he said last night. I think he’s hoping it would be okay for him to stay here.”

On the one hand, you were relieved to know Bucky was coming home. You needed to see him, to hear his voice tell you that Steve would want you to move on and be happy. On the other, Bucky hadn’t called you. He called Sam instead. That stung.

“Why?” You slowly pulled your hand back and crossed your arms over your chest, shielding yourself from Bucky’s reasoning and maybe a little bit from Sam, too. “Why does he want to stay here?”

“Well, he didn’t re-enlist, so I think he’s trying to figure out what his next step is and what he’s going to do with the rest of his life and… I think he wants to be close to Steve and maybe to keep an eye on you. You could help each other, you know?”

“Right,” you snorted.

As if anyone could help you, let alone the friend that left you in the lurch when you needed him most. You didn’t know what Sam was putting in his morning coffee, but Bucky didn’t want to help you do anything. He has made that very clear from the moment Steve died.

“I doubt he wants to be here with me, and what exactly are we going to help each other do?”

Sam sighed and shook his head, “Grieve, Y/n. Grieve and move forward.”

That would be easier said than done.

Previous // Next

#past!Steve Rogers x reader #Bucky Barnes x you #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky x reader #alternate universe #james bucky barnes #james buchanan barnes #tw: character death #tw: military death #tw: death of a spouse

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faustonastring · 4 years

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Oh?? In the stuffed animal headcanons you mentioned furbies,,, my time to shine! Can I ask for headcanons of the main 6 with an s/o Who has a furby collection? And seriously doesn't get why people are afraid of them? I'm like Nadia, but I tinker with my furbies. I have about 60.

Hey! Thanks for requesting I hope you like it! ( I also agree with you, I don’t get why people are scared of them, I have two in my room atm if were being honest I just think they’re neat

Request r open!

Main Six with a Furby Fanatic Mc

Asra

If he doesn’t have one already. He has one now. And he’s happy with that. A little too happy if you ask me.

There have been times where you were wondering where the rent money has gone, then, enters asra, holding one of those 200 dollar long furbies, so it can ‘guard over the shop’ this is the third one and if he buys another one you have every right to be scared. He most definitely buys those stuffed animals with the furby face sewn on, that go for about 50-300 dollars, putting the both of you in more debt

He probably buys really cheap, probably most likely haunted ones from the thrift store and spiffys them up the best he can with out spending too much money. Congratulations asra put you in crippling debt because of his ‘cursed’ furby collection. He likes to paint them nice vibrant colors, and if you wear false lashes, he hot glues them onto your furbies- and if you don’t, he buys some. And good ones at that (the one time he tried using dollar store ones to hot glue on, they melted and ruined his whole creation.)

He vibes the hardest with the wizard furby and has spent a good chunk of your rent money to buy it. He doesn’t regret it though, it’s a great mascot for the shop, (if your still doing the witchy magick thing in a modern au, if your not he keeps it around anyway) he also likes the jester furby and proudly named it after lucio.

Nadia

She. Does. Not. Understand. Like at all. She’s trying too! A+ for effort, but uh-ohmygod

Look, if it makes you happy, she doesn’t mind, even though their lifeless eyes are staring into her soul.... Does she find it a bit unsettling? Yes. But she’ll push through and buy you as many as you’d like as long as you promise to keep them out of the bedroom and away from guest :)

She does find a lot of joy In tinkering with them though. If you were to buy a broken furby, and want it working, she’ll have it working in no time. One to do some major modifications but don’t want to mess it up. Babe she got you covered. Do you want one torn arpart so you could use the parts for another modification? She has it done. Also if you have any your not to wild about, she will gladly take them off your hands and use their parts for one of her projects.

I feel like Nadia would like customizing plain white ones a lot, I think she’d find it as a good stress reliever, but her favorite one has to be the limited edition Easter furby she thinks it’s cute and classy. It’s also to only one she doesn’t mind having out if you have company over.

Julian

God. Oh god. Oh god please no. No. Nope nope nope nope NOPE.

Look, your his light, the love of his life, he loves you more than anything in the whole world and he doesn’t want to deprive you of your interest, no not at all. Just why. Why must your interest be so.....interesting? No unique. Why must your interest be so..unique. That’s a nice way to put it. Unique

Some one mentioned under my post about the stuffed animals- I don’t remember who it was or what exactly it said but I remember the gist of it, (and if your that person and your seeing this make your self seen so you can get the credit- if you want it of course!) they pretty much said that Julian would be scared shitless if he were ever doing something and furby accidentally turned on, and I agree. Bonus points if it’s during sex, because not much turns Julian off, but a furby waking up in the middle of it say “feed me mama” definitely does the trick. Espically if it’s this bad boy. That’s also the breaking point for him. You can have them, just hide them some where when he’s around. Please for his safety and sanity.

Julian hates all furbies equally sorry. He doesn’t have one that he even tolerates, espically after the furby being hungry during sex incident.

Portia

“They’re so cute!” She digs it. She probably had a furby collection when she was a kid and proudly used them to torture Julian. She still does. Julian still has nightmares. From then and now.

She goes thrifting with you to buy some for cheap that the both of you can customize, together, (she makes it a weekly date night for the two of you to customize a furby together. How cute.) and often buys customized furbies from small Etsy creators because she loves buying from small brands/creators, no matter how expensive it may be.

She also loves customizing her own furbies, she has like a million diffrent dies, paints, furs, eyes, glitter, anything else you need. She’s got it. She usually doesn’t sketch out what she wants it to look like in advance, she just goes for it, but if she does have something specific in mind, she does a quick sketch of it so she doesn’t forget. (She also customized a furby that looks like you, it came out more creepy than cute, but you like it anyway)

She likes cute looking furbies more than the creepy, cursed, ugly ones *ahem* asra, but as I mentioned before she usually buys customized ones from small Etsy accounts, but she is a big fan of the pink furbish furby. She thinks it’s very pretty.

Muriel

Bold of you too assume that he will judge your interest in anyway shape or form. If anything he admires how comfortable you are in your own skin, and hopes he can be like that one day. One day...

He doesn’t mind where you keep them at, if company is over or not, and let’s be hones, is company really ever over? He also doesn’t care if you have them on or off, BUT. The furbies get put away when your having sex. You see unlike Julian. Muriel has comon sense. (Well, more common sense than Julian, I should say, they’ll all dumb in their own way. Except for Nadia.)

He’ll pick up furbies and supplies for you if he’s ever running an errand and sees one, or something you might like, or we’re looking for. He isn’t big on furbies, but doesn’t mind customizing them with you, it gives him something to do, and a excuse to spend time with you. So it’s a win-win in his book.

Like I said before, he’s not to big on furbies. The ones he likes most are the ones you make together. But he doesn’t mind silver wolf furby he thinks it’s near, plus it reminds him of Inanna

Lucio

Is very weirded out, and is not afraid of showing it. If he feels like he struck a nerve, he tries his best to cover it up, or play it off as a joke. But let’s be honest. It’s not a joke.

They don’t creep him out as much as they creep out Julian, they just....give him the heebie-jeebies. He also doesn’t really seem the appeal. Why would you want something that looks like that, and wants you to take care of it all the time. “Jeez for that we should just have/adopt a kid.”

If you tinker or customize them too often or for too long, he gets very impatient and needy, which is very ironic being that he just recently said that he didn’t like furbies because “they’re ugly and you need to take care of them all the time! They’re just sooOOOoo annoying!” Ah irony. Gotta love it.

Also unlike Julian he does infact have a favorite. The angel furby. And if you customize it, tinker with it, or ruin it. He pouts until you buy a new one. He likes the white and the gold ya’know. It’s kind of his thing

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed reading this very cursed content as much as enjoyed writing it! Also psa: ��don’t make fun of people’s interest because you don’t understand them✨ :)

Also thank you for 150 followers and all the love on my last post! Today was my birthday and seeing that made my day instantly better than it was before so I really appreciate it :)

Next headcanon: main six reading and cuddling with mc!

Request R open!!!

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