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simp4konig · 8 months

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"Can I sit here?" König X Gender-neutral Reader

Word count: 3060

*Part one?

*Slow burn?

*Strangers to Friends (to Lovers?)

Not decidedany of those yet 😶

Edited on 23/8/2023 for some grammar tweaks.

*!!Fanfic inspired by @theeggrollslord's drawing on Twitter!! I really wanted to use their art as the cover for this fanfic, but due to me not having an Twitter (or X 🤮) account, and not knowing whether the original artist consents to people reposting their art, I held back. 😿 If anyone knows whether they are able to give me permission or are cool with it, please let me know!! ☺️

*Author has played MW1 + 2... but not the newest reimagines. 😭 all I remember from the campaign is that Shepherd shot Ghost in the face,but in NO way did he look as fine as he does now ☠️☠️

*Author does NOT speak German... but can use Google Translate !!😊

As is customary with all foreigners, English is not my first language!. Pls do not bully me if my grammar is bad i will cry 😢

König sat by himself in the cafeteria.

Three sausages, a spoonful of beans, and two eggs alongside a 500ml water bottle were all that consisted of his daily breakfast. Hash browns would be served raw, and the bagels were solid enough to break teeth when bitten into. He didn't even want to consider the sandwiches, as their stale, stinking cheese and slick ham made him gag. A pity that they didn't serve Bratwurst or order authentic — hell, even half-decent — eggs, as the meat in his sausages tasted out of date and the yolks were a dull yellow. The beans weren't even Heinz.

Looking at the cheap slop on his tray made him lose his appetite. At least the water was drinkable, but its taste was peculiar at best.

König sighed.

Every day "eating" the same breakfast, sitting in the same spot, at the same time.

To say that he enjoyed the routine of the barracks would be an overstatement, as he felt oppressed by the monotony: rigorous and thorough briefings pre-missions; intense training three times a day; shooting drills and target practice right after the sun barely opened its eye or into late hours of the evening when it was hard to see. Yet he couldn't complain, and forced himself to appreciate the predictable structure of the barracks.

After all, routine meant safety.

Knowing the details of the misson and the intel required guaranteed a flawless operation. Knowing how exactly to eliminate an opponent in any given situation meant that it made the job even easier. Knowing when to dive for cover to avoid a rain of bullets and the rumbling thunder of machine guns in an active shootout equalled survival.

And knowing that you intimidated everyone on base at least made social interactions easier. All of these extended his life expectancy, yet by how much was anyone's guess.

Being a 6'10 wall of a pure muscle made him the perfect human bulldozer, and paired with his animalistic instincts taking over while on the battlefield, he struck fear in even his own teammates.

Most of the time, König didn't even need to use a gun, as he could snap an enemy's neck faster than they could blink; and, even if they could do that, they wouldn't be able to react fast enough as he manhandled their body like a rag doll and snapped their spine in half over his knee. Quick and easy kills. Other times, frantic stabs in the abdomen, chest or neck finished with a harsh cut of the throat sufficed when sneaking, and allowed him to release any pent of frustration he felt that he wouldn't have been able to relieve through strangulation alone.

Yet, all of the time, seeing König's brutality first-hand made his teammates lose their balance and struggle to collect themselves during the mission, fearing that he would turn to indiscriminately killing anyone that had the misfortune of entering his field of vision. Compared to König's animalistic instincts taking over in an active firefight and causing bloodshed, his allies putting down enemies with a bullet to the head seemed merciful, and even kind.

Unlike friendships, killing people was easy. Keeping good relations with people was difficult enough for König to begin with — with his first hurdle being his social anxiety, and the hurdle of others being getting used to his frightening exterior — and it grew more and more into a challenge as he moved up the ranks, until his position as Colonel made him feared, not respected. People avoided his eyes, and kept conversations to a minimum, bowing their heads in fear, not respect.

After witnessing him maul enemies like a feral animal, König walking down the barracks had people scuttling away like rats in opposite directions, a horde of people dissipating in an instant. Crowded rooms with rowdy laughter suddenly were brought to silence once he made the mistake of entering, with people speaking in hushed whispers or not even speaking at all, opting to escape before their colonel addressed them.

Truth of the matter was, König never wanted to be a colonel. He'd had rather been the one receiving orders than the one making them, as his social anxiety in front of innumerable pairs of expectant eyes put pressure on him in the moment and made it near impossible to let a single word out.

He was not a natural born leader: he knew it, everyone knew it; but he kept his position solely due to his ruthlessness in action and his cold efficiency, as there was no one like him that could come close to imitating his behaviour.

Then, to say that he enjoyed the daily routine of life in the barracks was a stretch to say the least. The thrill of killing on missions and the primal adrenaline that took over his veins and clouded his senses could not be more of a contrast to this boredom and overwhelming isolation on base: of every day sitting in the same damned spot; of every day pretending to eat the same damned food; and, of every damned day being avoided by the other operators to be at a peace he was forced to accept, whether he liked it or not. What a miserable life to live.

The beans on his plate looked menacing, and he had the urge to crush each one individually until they'd stop sneering at him so, as being judged by off-brand beans was running his patience thin. Yet, he wouldn't do that, as everyone else would view him as not only a brute but a mentally unstable lunatic who was now using food scraps as an outlet for his temper; so, he resorted to just picking at the rations instead. His head was in his palm, and his gaze went elsewhere, his pale blue eyes drooping.

So engrossed in absentmindly pushing the beans on his tray with his fork and contemplating what went wrong with him that he did not hear the footsteps walking towards him.

You cleared your throat. "E-excuse me, sir, but can I sit here?"

König looked up, and saw a young recruit hovering over him with a small brown paper bag in their hands. Your face was one he hadn't seen before around here, and you weren't in the standard military uniform, so he assumed that you were perhaps a groundsperson of sorts.

Your ignorance of him was probably the only reason you dared approach him, as any other person would have avoided his table at all costs and gotten whiplash from how quickly they'd turn their head the other way. However, he was glad that he didn't intimidate everyone that encountered him, and was internally thanking you for giving him a chance. Some hope.

Feeling uncomfortable under his scrutinising stare, you tugged the collar of your t-shirt and struggle for words.

"S-sorry," you begun, sheepishly looking down at the floor. A rub of the neck and a shuffling of feet. "It's just... all of the other tables are crowded, and I don't know anyone here well. And yours—" You looked at him, shooting him a lopsided grin, "—yours is empty."

"I understand," he stated, before looking back down at the mush on his tray. "Not a problem."

You gulped, feeling like he was dismissing you, and beginning to regret approaching him. "Are you sure, sir? I wouldn't want to make you uncomfortable."

Look at you, he thought, so thoughtful over his feelings. When was the last time anyone bothered to ask him how he felt, or treated him like a human being?

"Ja. I am sure."

Still standing, unsure as to how to interpret the tone of his statement, you shot him a shy smile and sat down at a reasonable distance from the man, beginning to unpack the contents of your bag.

König kept stealing glances of you from under his eyebrows, trying to be discreet. Although he actually was uncomfortable — not used to company in the slightest, especially with someone so polite and courteous — he was oddly drawn to you.

He was thankful that you were oblivious to his status around these parts, and he wanted to leave a decent first impression on you before you finally overheard the true rumours about him, and paid attention to how quiet the cafeteria had gotten now that you two were sat together.

The thing was, he didn't know where to begin.

Communication was not his strong suit. He mused over potential ways of starting a conversation, yet not only had he never been faced with a situation like this, the language barrier was ever so present. Perhaps if he could speak to you in German he'd be able to formulate his thoughts better, yet at the moment it felt like all his knowledge of English seemingly evaporated in an instant.

"You prepared well your breakfast," he stated plainly, angling for any kind of small talk. He internally cringed at the order of those words and how wrong that sentence sounded in his voice, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

An awkward smile. "—W-wow. Thank you, sir!"

König felt his chest tighten, but he didn't know why.

"My first day on base I had the misfortune of being served breakfast," you continued, "so, from then on I decided right then and there "never again". The food—" you laughed weakly, "—sure is something."

"Du hast recht," agreed König. "I mean... You are right. If I had a dog, I never would feed it this— these... scraps."

You could sense König hungrily devouring your food with his eyes. Although he tried to be subtle, he was not good at going unnoticed. Really, stealing glances of this behemonth in front of you, you kind of pitied the man, especially when the next edible meal would be in precisely 5 hours. With his breakfast beaten and bruised into an unrecognisable pulp, it was definitely too late for him to consume.

Mourning your sandwiches, you silently bid them farewell and took a deep breath:

"Well, sir. I would assume that you're hungry." You took out the contents from your bag and slid them in front of him, smiling meekly. "You can have my breakfast."

He looked down at your two sandwiches and his eyes visibly widened under his hood; four thick slices of sourdough bread, a generous slather of butter, cheese, rocket lettuce, and thinly sliced pieces of meat, topped with tomatoes, and most likely seasoned with spring onion and pepper.

They looked so appetising, and he felt his mouth salivate, yet he shook his head vehemently. "Nein! Ich sollte das nicht tun, nicht, wenn du dich so sehr bemüht hast!"

You tilted your head in confusion. König mentally facepalmed.

"I-I mean... you tried very hard, and it isn't right of me. They are yours."

You waved a dismissive hand. "Honestly, you need them more than me. Have them."

"Einer wird ausreichen," He shook his head again, and picked up one slowly. "One will be enough."

He reached over to take one and you looked at him expectantly, patiently waiting for him to take a bite and give you his thoughts, yet it hit you. He was wearing his mask. He probably wouldn't eat in front of you.

A cough. "S-sorry. I'll look away while you eat it. Tell me what you think about it."

König practically shoved the entire thing in his mouth the moment your back faced him and and started choking. He saw you turning back to assist, but he raised a weak hand to stop you.

Getting over his coughing fit, he could finally appreciate the freshness and the flavour of the sandwich. It tasted of... nostalgia. Like the sandwiches his Mama would make for him after school to reassure him and to take his mind off the day's events. He felt like a young boy again. When he closed his eyes, for a split-second he imagined he was in the kitchen with his mother chatting energetically, taking his plate and ruffling his hair when he had finished and feeding him another, insisting that he "was a growing boy".

"So köstlich..." he said, and was disappointed to see that the sandwich was gone from his hands, already eaten. "Mein gott, that was perfekt. A sandwich of the Gods."

You turned around and you were beaming so brightly that König swore he would need to shield his eyes from the sight.

"Thank you so much! You don't know how happy that makes me."

You looked at him, your smile unwavering. "Do you know what would make me happier?"

He gave you a blank look. "...No?"

"If you ate the other one," you said, and König's eyes widened comically. "Though, please, be careful. Sandwiches can sure be a choking hazard," you dared tease him, and was actually surprised when he let out a quiet chuckle.

After savouring his second sandwich, the two of you were quiet. Although the tension had evaporated, the silence was deafening, and you felt suffocated by the lack of conversation.

"Uhm... Sir. What is your name?" A hesitant start, your hands folded neatly in your lap. "If it isn't too much of a personal question, of course."

He deliberated for a few moments, before responding with a quiet "König."

"König," you repeated, making sure to pronounce it properly. Your eyes widened in realisation, and you smiled broadly. "That's King, in German, right? That's so funny, because I go by King!"

König froze up like a statue.

"Holy fucking shit, what are the chances?" You rambled, not realising how quiet König had become. "Honestly, what are we doing here? Where are our castles, our riches? Our chariots led by silver horses and our toilets made of 24 carat gold?"

König shrugged stiffly. "Blown up by a grenade, I suppose."

You looked at him, dumbfounded, then burst into laughter. Like, fits of giggles, too many of them and too strong for his unbelievably dry response. Maybe that's why you were laughing so hard.

Either way, König couldn't believe it at first.

It was so... beautiful. Almost angelic in a way, despite you holding yourself up with a palm on the table and unable to contain your pig-like snorts. He could get used to hearing you laugh more often.

And, just like that, he dropped his guard. Slowly, all of his stiffness melted, and he became more of his confident self, this trait only ever coming out when he was actively shooting.

The two of you spent the entire length of breakfast chatting, joking, and telling each other things about each other. Although König insisted that his English wasn't good, you assured him that you understood him just fine — if anything, his confused looks and furrowed eyebrows at idioms you used were adorably endearing, each time earning a sympathetic giggle from you.

At some point — and though he would've been ashamed to admit it — he tuned out the babbling that came out of your mouth as he admired your face, noting all of your features: the colour of your eyes and how they'd crinkle in happiness whenever you smiled; the way your hair flowed and framed your face; taking the time to count all of the freckles on your nose and committing the number to memory.

He'd only catch himself staring when you'd suddenly finish talking. "But what do I know, I'm kind of stupid if you ask me. It's a wonder I passed the tests to qualify for this job in the first place."

You locked eyes with him, interested in hearing what he had to say. "What do you think, König? I bet you know the answer!"

To which he'd quickly clear his throat and respond with, "Ich weiß nicht. I don't know. To be... frank, though that is strange for me to say when I am not "Frank"—"

You struggled to struggle to contain your laughter, and quickly apologized as soon as you stopped shaking, before attempting to explain to this clueless Austrian man why it was used. König didn't feel demeaned by your explanation, though, as he thought that his blunders would be worth it every time if it meant hearing you laugh so sweetly.

To König's dismay, half an hour flew by in minutes, and it was time to part ways as you began your daily duties.

As the two of you stood up, you initially had realised that König was taller than the average man based off how his knees could barely fit under the table.

You sure as fuck did not expect to see this.

He towered over you, casting a shadow down below. You had to strain your neck to make eye contact with him, and a painful cramp was already forming.

"Ha—ha.... you're pretty, uh... big."

That statement had more than one connotation. Gott sei Dank für diese Maske, he thought. Thank God for this mask, otherwise you would have seen the blush from his neck up to his ears after his mind went to a place he hadn't thought it'd go, especially not with a person he had formally met not even an hour ago.

"Oh well, I can finally put those 4-inch combat boots in the bottom of my closet to good use," you laughed, playfully nudging what meant to be his shoulder but your height difference meant that you instead touched his pec. Not that you minded though.

With your arms behind your back, you shyly averted your gaze. "Well... It was nice to meet you, König."

"You too... King."

Furrowing of brows as you tilted your head. "How do you say it in German? "Auf Wiedersehen"?"

"Ja, das ist es."

"Well then, Auf Wiedersehen, big guy. I'll see you around!"

Big guy... In more ways than one...

God. König had to get a grip.

Yet, with the way he was looking at your backside and fantasizing about your next meeting, he already knew that not even Gott could help him.

...

Note: I HATE this fucking fanfiction WITH MY SOUL 🤬🤬. This fucking thing was NEARLY FINISHED and I was in the process of tweaking yet my phone decided to erase half of my progress !!!! 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡

My phone 📵 and God 🤬 didn't want this fanfiction getting published yet guess what!!! 🖕🖕🖕🖕Fuck you!!!🖕🖕🖕 Ive gotten it out anyways🗣️ fucking shaved a decade off of my life trying to recovervthe opening part of this fic,,

,,,,literally why did I get punished for writing a very mild and unextreme fanfic 😭😭😭😭 like the first half was just in Königs perspective and Ur telling me that i can't do that?????

I mf get fucking crucified like Jesus on the cross, only this time I sarcificed my sleep and sanity to not be ressurected again,, bitch I would have rather died if I had known tjis would happen ☠️☠️ I could have actually SLEPT?!! 🤬🛌

Never again writing fanfictiosn on my phone, I can't trust this evil technology!! I'm gonna draft them with PEN and PAPER bitch!!!! Typewriter!!!!!!!! Chalk On Pavement™!!!!!!!!!!!! PERMANENT MARKER ON MY FOREHEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

...

If you read this rant of mine, I hope you have a lovely day/night, beautiful person. <33 (please wash your eyes after reading that,,I needed to release my anger somrjow don't judge me hhhhhhhHHHH—)

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blueskittlesart · 7 months

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What advice would you give beginner artists?

it's fine to want to do more stylized art, but nothing will help you improve quickly like studying from life. even if you want to draw very stylized figures, life drawing is still going to help you understand how the human body works and then you can build your stylization off of that understanding. I also recommend studying specifically things you're looking to improve--if you feel like your poses aren't dynamic, ask your model to do some quick (1-2 min) dynamic poses and work on getting the gesture down. if you're looking for anatomy, ask for longer, more static poses and really study the contours of the body. this also applies for portraiture and character art--my expressions and facial structure improved like CRAZY when i started doing portrait studies from life! (note: i know live model sessions aren't accessible for everyone. i'm a huge advocate for nude models, if you can find a studio nearby that's affordable to you that offers sessions, that's the best you're gonna get. however, there are sites that will give you photos of nude models to draw from, too, or you can even just ask friends or family to pose for you when they aren't busy, that's what i did before i started getting model sessions from my school!)

materials are not everything but sometimes a good material can make a difference. it's important to know what's worth it and what isn't for your skill level. invest in some decent-quality supplies or a good art program, but understand that you're still going to need to work to understand your materials and use them to their fullest potential. (if you're a digital artist buy csp. trust me on this. get it on sale. it will change your life. also do not fucking use photoshop)

tracing is ok. listen to me. TRACING. IS. OK. tracing is how you learn. don't trace other people's art and pass it off as your own, obviously, but there is literally no problem with tracing real-life reference photos. I routinely trace references for backgrounds and the like. there is no reason for you to kill yourself trying to make complex perspective and shit up from your head when you can very easily just overlay a photo and get what you need.

in that same vein, USE REFERENCE PHOTOS. find pics online or take pics of yourself and USE THEM to see how your poses work. it makes it SO SO SO much easier. the understanding that you need to create a pose out of nowhere will come with time but you're not going to get that skill unless you have a foundation of understanding how the real human body works, and the easiest way to get that understanding is by copying photos of real people.

last but not least, there's generally a sort of 'rulebook' that new artists are expected to go by, especially online, when it comes to digital art. when i was first learning, it was all about lineart and cell shading, two things that I didn't really like. Nowadays it seems to be all about rendering. the single most important thing i can tell you is if it sucks you don't have to do it. if you hate lineart just color your sketches. if you hate shading don't shade, or find a different way to shade that you enjoy more. if rendering is annoying or difficult for you DON'T BOTHER!! art is supposed to be fun. if part of your process is annoying or upsetting to you, cut it the fuck out. don't torture yourself just to do art the "right" way. i guarantee your art will look better when you're having fun making it anyway!

#asks #ALSO don't go in expecting to monetize your social media presence/go viral as an artist. make art for YOU and make what you want to make.#if your art has passion behind it then attention will come naturally!

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sprintingowl · 21 days

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Turnip28

Turnip28 is an indie wargame built around kitbashing models so that they look like the haggard survivors of a thousand years of vegetable-motivated Napoleonic war.

The core rules are free, and (as of 4/2/24) the game is receiving regular support.

Rules-wise, the closest comparison is definitely Warhammer. Models have statistics for Wounds, (in)Accuracy, (non)Toughness, and number of attacks they can make. Solo models (called Snobs) and units (called Followers) are both fielded, and an emphasis is placed on armies being unpredictable, difficult-to-control things that panic and get disorganized and sometimes just don't listen to your orders.

The biggest mechanical divergence is that players take turns activating units, and the process for this involves using a Snob to tell a gang of Followers what to do. Only if there's no Followers nearby to boss around does the Snob act directly.

The tone of the game's writing and setting is definitely black comedy. War is gross, no one involved is particularly competent, the motive for the fight has been completely lost over the years, and one of the narrative's main characters is a pile of fingers that, due to the decent tactical advice it gives, has been scooped into a box to be carried around. There's a genuine toad-in-the-hole recipe included in one of the factions' unit list.

The overall structure and layout of the book will make you say "this is definitely a wargame," but the rules are well-organized and easy to follow and reference. It's at least as professional as anything out of the big presses, and the art is gorgeous, evocative, and creative.

The game's factions, called Cults, are varied and distinct and come with advice on how to play them. Most of them pull from the same pool of generic units, with a few variations and passive effects, but they all do a solid job of transforming the way the game is played.

Despite this, the real star of the game---which I think gets somewhat overshadowed by how much game there is---is still the kitbashing. You can use proxies or models from another game, but Turnip28 really wants to get you into painting and modeling your unique army. You can still have a good time if you just like the mechanics, but you'll have a great time if you click with the modeling.

All told, Turnip28 feels like a gem. It uses a familiar mechanical foundation in order to get a little weird with its setting, and to encourage players to do creative modeling. The end result is a rulebook packed with gorgeous art, which reads cleanly, and which lets you and a buddy crash strange little squads of gremlins into each other for an hour.

#ttrpg #ttrpg homebrew #ttrpgs #ttrpg design #indie ttrpgs #rpg #indie ttrpg #tabletop #dnd #rpgs #wargame #post apocalyptic #vegetables

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canmom · 7 months

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Music Theory Notes (for science bitches) 1: chords & such

This is one of these series where I use my blog as a kind of study blog type thing. If you're knowledgeable about music theory, it will be very basic. But that's kind of the problem, I've really struggled to absorb those basics!

When I was a teenager I learned to play violin and played in orchestras. I could read music, and play decently enough, but I didn't really understand music. I just read what was on the page, and played the scales I had to play for exams.

Lately I've been trying to learn music again. This time my instruments are zhonghu, voice, and DAWs. At some point I might get my violin back too. But really, I'm a total beginner again, and this time I want to do it properly.

For a long time when I tried to learn about music I would get overwhelmed with terminology and jargon and conventions. I might watch videos on composition and they'd be interesting but a lot of it would just fly over my head, I'd just have to nod along because I had no idea what all the different types of chord and such were. I tried to learn from sites like musictheory.net, but I found it hard to figure out the logical structure to fit it all into.

I feel like I'm finally making a bit of headway, so it's time to take some notes. The idea here is not just to answer the what, but also to give some sense of why, a motivation. So in a sense this is a first attempt at writing the introduction to music theory I wish I'd had. This is going to assume you know a little bit about physics, but basically nothing about music.

What is music? From first principles.

This is impossible to answer in full generality, especially since as certain people would be quick to remind me, there's a whole corner of avant-garde composers who will cook up counterexamples to whatever claim you make. So let's narrow our focus: I'm talking about the 'most common' type of music in the society I inhabit, which is called 'tonal music'. (However some observations may be relevant to other types of music such as noise or purely rhythmic music.)

Music is generally an art form involving arranging sound waves in time into patterns (in the sense that illustration is about creating patterns on a 2D surface with light, animation is arranging illustrations in time, etc.).

Physically, sound is a pressure wave propagating through a medium, primarily air. As sound waves propagate, they will reflect off surfaces and go into superposition, and depending on the materials around, certain frequencies might be attenuated or amplified. So the way sound waves propagate in a space is very complicated!

But in general we've found we can pretty decently approximate the experience of listening to something using one or two 'audio tracks', which are played back at just one or two points. So for the sake of making headway, we will make an approximation: rather than worry about the entire sound field, we're going to talk about a one-dimensional function of time, namely the pressure at the idealised audio source. This is what gets displayed inside an audio editor. For example, here's me playing the zhonghu, recorded on a mic, as seen inside Audacity.

A wrinkle that is not relevant for this discussion: The idealised 'pressure wave' is a continuous real function of the reals (time to pressure). By contrast, computer audio is quantised in both the pressure level and time, and this is used to reconstruct a continuous pressure wave by convolution at playback time. (Just like a pixel is not a little square, an audio sample is not a constant pressure!) But I'm going to talk about real numbers until quantisation becomes relevant.

When the human eye receives light, the cone cells in the eye respond to the frequencies of EM radiation, creating just three different neural signals, but with incredibly high sensitivity to direction. By contrast, when the human ear receives sound, it is directed into an organ called the cochlea which is kind of like a cone rolled up into a spiral...

Inside this organ, the sound wave moves around the spiral, which has a fascinatingly complex structure that means different frequencies of wave will excite tiny hairs at different points along the tube. In effect, the cochlea performs a short-time Fourier transform of the incoming sound wave. Information about the direction of the incoming wave is given by the way it reflects off the shape of the ear, the difference between ears, and the movement of our head.

So! In contrast to light, where the brain receives a huge amount of information about directions of incoming light but only limited information of the frequency spectrum, with sound we receive a huge amount of information about the frequency spectrum but only quite limited information about its direction.

Music thus generally involves creating patterns with vibration frequencies in the sound wave. More than this, it's also generally about creating repeating patterns on a longer timescale, which is known as rhythm. This has something to do with the way neurons respond to signals but that's something I'm not well-versed in, and in any case it is heavily culturally mediated.

All right, so, this is the medium we have to play with. When we analyse an audio signal that represents music, we chop it up into small windows, and use a Fourier transform to find out the 'frequencies that are present in the signal'.

Most musical instruments are designed to make sounds that are combinations of certain frequencies at integer ratios. For example here is a plot of the [discrete] Fourier transform of a note played on the zhonghu:

The intensity of the signal is written in decibels, so it's actually a logarithmic scale despite looking linear. The frequency of the wave is written in Hertz, and plotted logarithmically as well. A pure sine wave would look like a thin vertical line; a slightly wider spike means it's a combination of a bunch of sine waves of very close frequencies.

The signal consists of one strong peak at 397Hz and nearby frequencies, and a series of peaks at (roughly) integer multiples of this frequency. In this case the second and third peaks are measured at 786Hz, and 1176Hz. Exact integer ratios would give us 794Hz and 1191Hz, but because the first peak is quite wide we'd expect there to be some error.

Some terminology: The first peak is called the fundamental, and the remaining peaks are known as overtones. The frequency of the fundamental is what defines this signal as a particular musical note, and the intensities of the overtone and widths of the peaks define the quality of the note - the thing that makes a flute and a violin playing the same fundamental frequency sound different when we listen to them. If you played two different notes at the same time, you'd get the spectrums of both notes added together - each note has its own fundamental and overtones.

OK, so far that's just basic audio analysis, nothing is specific to music. To go further we need to start imposing some kind of logical structure on the sound, defining relationships between the different notes.

The twelve-tone music system

There are many ways to do this, but in the West, one specific system has evolved as a kind of 'common language' that the vast majority of music is written in. As a language, it gives names to the notes, and defines a space of emotional connotations. We unconsciously learn this language as we go through the process of socialisation, just as we learn to interpret pictures, watch films, etc.

The system I'm about to outline is known as 12-tone equal temperament or "12TET". It was first cooked up in the 16th century almost simultaneously in China and Europe, but it truly became the standard tuning in the West around the 18th century, distilled from a hodgepodge of musical systems in use previously. In the 20th century, classical composers became rather bored of it and started experimenting with other systems of tonality. Nevertheless, it's the system used for the vast majority of popular music, film and game soundtracks, etc.

Other systems exist, just as complex. Western music tends to create scales of seven notes in an octave, but there are variants that use other amounts, like 6. And for example classical Indian music uses its own variant of a seven-note scale; there are also nuances within Western music such as 'just intonation' which we'll discuss in a bit; really, everything in music is really fucking complicated!

I'll be primarily discussing 12TET because 1. it's hard enough to understand just one system and this one is the most accessible; 2. this has a very nice mathematical structure which tickles my autismbrain. However, along the way we'll visit some variants, such as 'Pythagorean intervals'.

The goal is to try and not just say 'this is what the notation means' but explain why we might construct music this way. Since a lot of musical stuff is kept around for historical reasons, that will require some detours into history.

Octaves

So, what's the big idea here? Well, let's start with the idea of an octave. If you have two notes, let's call then M and N, and the frequency of N is twice the frequency of M... well, to the human ear, they sound very very closely related. In fact N is the first overtone of M - if you play M on almost any instrument, you're also hearing N.

Harmony, which we'll talk about in a minute, is the idea that two notes sound especially pleasant together - but this goes even further. So in many many music systems around the world, these two notes with frequency ratio of 2 are actually identified - they are in some sense 'the same note', and they're given the same name. This also means that further powers of 2, of e.g. 4, 8, 16, and so on, are also 'the same note'. We call the relationship between M and N an octave - we say if two notes are 'an octave apart', one has twice the frequency of the other.

For example, a note whose fundamental frequency is 261.626Hz is known as 'C' in the convention of 'concert pitch'. This implies an infinite series of other Cs, but since the human ear has a limited range of frequencies, in practice you have Cs from 8.176Hz up through 16744.036. These are given a series of numbers by convention, so 261.626Hz is called C4, often 'middle C'. 523.251Hz is C5, 1046.502Hz is C6, and so on. However, a lot of the time it doesn't matter which C you're talking about, so you just say 'C'.

But the identification of "C" with 261.626Hz * 2^N is just a convention (known as 'concert pitch'). Nothing is stopping you tuning to any other frequency: to build up the rest of the structure you just need some note to start with, and the rest unfolds using ratios.

Harmony and intervals

Music is less about individual notes, and more about the relationship between notes - either notes played at the same time, or in succession.

Between any two notes we have something called an interval determined by the ratio of their fundamental frequencies. We've already seen one interval: the octave, which has ratio 2.

The next interval to bring up is the 'fifth'. There are a few different variants of this idea, but generally speaking if two notes have a ratio of 1.5, they sound really really nice together. Why is this called a 'fifth'? Historical reasons, there is no way to shake this terminology, we're stuck with it. Just bear with me here, it will become semi-clear in a minute.

In the same vein, other ratios of small integers tend to sound 'harmonious'. They're satisfying to hear together. Ratios of larger integers, by contrast, feel unsatisfying. But this creates an idea of 'tension' and 'resolution'. If you play two notes together that don't harmonise as nicely, you create a feeling of expectation and tension; when you you play some notes that harmonise really well, that 'resolves' the tension and creates a sense of relief.

Building a scale - just intonation

The exact 3:2 integer ratio used in two tuning systems called 'Pythagorean tuning' and 'just intonation'. Using these kinds of integer ratios, you can unfold out a whole series of other notes, and that's how the Europeans generally did things before 12TET came along. For example, in 'just intonation', you might start with some frequency, and then procede in the ratios 9/8, 5/4, 4/3, 3/2, 5/3, 15/8, and at last 2 (the octave). These would be given a series of letters, creating a 'scale'.

What is a scale? A scale is something like the 'colour palette' for a piece of music. It's a set of notes you use. You might use notes from outside the scale but only very occasionally. Different scales are associated with different feelings - for example, the 'major scale' generally feels happy and triumphant, while a 'minor scale' tends to feel sad and forlorn. We'll talk a lot more about scales soon.

In the European musical tradition, a 'scale' consists of seven notes in each octave, so the notes are named by the first seven notes of the alphabet, i.e. A B C D E F G. A scale has a 'base note', and then you'd unfold the other frequencies using the ratios. An instrument such as a piano would be tuned to play a particular scale. The ratios above are one definition of a 'major scale', and starting with C as the base note, the resulting set of notes is called 'C Major'.

All these nice small-number ratios tend to sound really good together. But it becomes rather tricky if you want to play multiple scales on the same instrument. For example, say your piano is tuned in just intonation to C Major. This means, assuming you have a starting frequency we'll call C, you have the following notes available in a given octave:

C, D=(9/8)C, E=(5/4)C, F=(4/3)C, G=(3/2)C [the fifth!], A=(5/3)C, B=(15/8)C, and 2C [the start of the next octave].

Note: the interval we named the 'fifth' is the fifth note in this scale. It's actually the fifth note in the various minor scales too.

But now suppose you want to play with some different notes - let's say a scale we'll call 'A major', which has the same frequency ratios starting on the note we previously called A. Does our piano have the right keys to play this scale?

Well, the next note up from A would be (9/8)A, which would be (9/8)(5/3)C=(15/8)C - that's our B key, so far so good. Then (5/4)A=(5/4)(5/3)C=(25/12)C and... uh oh! We don't have a (25/12)C key, we have 2C, so if we start at A and go up two keys, we have a note that is slightly lower frequency than the one we're looking for.

What this means is that, depending on your tuning, you could only approximate the pretty integer ratios for any scale besides C major. (25/12) is pretty close to 2, so that might not seem so bad, but sometimes we'd land right in between two notes. We can approximate these notes by adding some more 'in between' piano keys. How should we work out what 'extra' keys to include? Well, there were multiple conventions, but we'll see there is some logic to it...

[You might ask, why are you spending so long on this historical system that is now considered obsolete? Well, intervals and their harmonious qualities are still really important in modern music, and it makes most sense to introduce them with the idea of 'small-integer ratios'.]

The semitone

We've seen if we build the 'major scale' using a bunch of 'nice' ratios, we have trouble playing other scales. The gap above may look rather haphazard and arbitrary, but hold on, we're working in exponential space here - shouldn't we be using a logarithmic scale? If I switch to a logarithmic x-axis, we suddenly get a rather appealing pattern...

All the gaps between successive notes are about the same size, except for the gap between E and F, and B and C, which are about half that size. If you try to work that out exactly, you run into the problems we saw above, where C to D is 9/8 or 1.125, but D to E is 10/9 or 1.11111... Even so, you can imagine how people who were playing around with sounds might notice, damn, these are nice even steps we have here. Though you might also notice places where, in this scheme, it's not completely even - for example G to A (ratio 10/9) is noticeably smaller than A to B (ratio 9/8).

We've obliquely approached the idea of dividing the octave up into 12 steps, where each step is about the size of the gap between E and F or B and C. We call each of these steps a 'semitone'. Two semitones make a 'whole tone'. We might fill in all the missing semitones in our scale here using whole-number ratios, which gives you the black keys on the piano. There are multiple schemes for doing this, and the ratios tend to get a bit uglier. In the system we've outlined so far, a 'semitone' is not a fixed ratio, even though it's always somewhere around 1.06.

The set of 12 semitones is called the 'chromatic scale'. It is something like the 'colour space' for Western music. When you compose a piece, you select some subset of the 12 semitones as your 'palette' - the 'scale of' a piece of music.

But we still have a problem here, which is the unevenness of the gaps we discussed above. This could be considered a feature, not a bug, since each scale would have its own 'character' - it's defined by a slightly different set of ratios. But it does add a lot of complication when moving between scales.

So let's say we take all this irregularity as a bug, and try to fix it. The solution is 'equal temperament', which is the idea that the semitone should always be the exact same ratio, allowing the instrument to play any scale you please without difficulty.

Posed like this, it's easy to work out what that ratio should be: if you want 12 equal steps to be an octave, each step must be the 12th root of 2. Which is an irrational number that is about 1.05946...

At this point you say, wait, Bryn, didn't you just start this all off by saying that the human ear likes to hear nice simple integer ratios of frequencies? And now you're telling me that we should actually use an irrational number, which can't be represented by any integer ratio? What gives? But it turns out the human ear isn't quite that picky. If you have a ratio of 7 semitones, or a ratio of 2^(7/12)=1.4983..., that's close enough to 1.5 to feel almost as good. And this brings a lot of huge advantages: you can easily move ('transpose') between different scales of the same type, and trust that all the relevant ratios will be the same.

Equal temperament was the eventual standard, but there was a gradual process of approaching it called stuff like 'well-tempered' or 'good temperament'. One of the major steps along the way was Bach's collection 'the well-tempered klavier', showing how a keyboard instrument with a suitable tuning could play music in every single established scale. Here's one of those pieces:

youtube

Although we're using these irrational numbers, inside the scale are certain intervals that are considered to have certain meanings - some that are 'consonant' and some that are 'dissonant'. We've already mentioned the 'fifth', which is the 'most consonant' ratio. The fifth consists of 7 semitones and it's roughly a 1.5 ratio in equal temperament. Its close cousin is the 'fourth', which consists of 5 semitones. Because it's so nice, the fifth is kind of 'neutral' - it's just there but it doesn't mean a lot on its own.

For the other important intervals we've got to introduce different types of scale.

The scale zoo

So, up above we introduced the 'major' scale. In semitones, the major scale is intervals of 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1. This is also called a 'mode', specifically the 'Ionian mode'. There are seven different 'modes', representing different permutations of these intervals, which all have funky Greek names.

The major scale generally connotes "upbeat, happy, triumphant". There are 12 different major scales, taking the 12 different notes of the chromatic scale as the starting point for each one.

Next is the minor scale, which tends to feel more sad or mysterious. Actually there are a few different minor scales. The 'natural minor' goes 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2. You might notice this is a cyclic permutation of the major scale! So in fact a natural minor scale is the same set of notes as a major scale. What makes it different?

Well, remember when we talked about tension and resolution? It's about how the notes are organised. Our starting note is the 'root' note of the scale, usually established early on in the piece of music - quite often the very first note of the piece. The way you move around that root note determines whether the piece 'feels' major or minor. So every major scale has a companion natural minor scale, and vice versa. The set of notes in a piece is enough to narrow it down to one minor and one major, but you have to look closer to figure out which one is most relevant.

The 'harmonic minor' is almost the same, but it raises the second-last note (the 7th) a semitone. So its semitone intervals are 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 3, 1.

The 'melodic minor' raises both the 6th and 7th by one semitone, (edit: but usually only on the way up). So its semitone intervals are 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1. (edit: When you come back down you tend to use the natural minor.)

If you talk about a 'minor scale' unqualified, you mean the natural minor. It's also the 'Aeolian mode' in that system of funky Greek names I mentioned earlier.

So that leads to a set of 24 scales, a major and minor scale for every semitone. These are the most common scale types that almost all Western tonal music is written in.

But we ain't done. Because remember I said there were all those other "modes"? These are actually just cyclic permutations of the major scale. There's a really nerdy Youtube channel called '8-bit music theory' that has a bunch of videos analysing them in the context of videogame music which I'm going to watch at some point now I finally have enough background to understand wtf he's talking about.

youtube

And of top of that you have all sorts of other variants that come from shifting a note up or down a semitone.

The cast of intervals

OK, so we've established the idea of scales. Now let's talk intervals. As you might guess from the 'fifth', the intervals are named after their position in the scale.

Let me repeat the two most common scale modes, in terms of number of semitones relative to the root note:

position: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 major: 0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12 minor: 0, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12

So you can see the fourth and fifth are the same in both. But there's a difference in three places: the third, the sixth, and the seventh. In each case, the minor is down a semitone from the major.

The interval names are... not quite as simple as 'place in the scale', but that's mostly how it works. e.g. the 'major third' is four semitones and the 'minor third' is three.

The fourth and fifth, which are dual to each other (meaning going up a fifth takes you to the same note as going down a fourth, and vice versa) are called 'perfect'. The note right in between them, an interval of 6 semitones, is called the 'tritone'.

(You can also refer to these intervals as 'augmented' or 'diminished' versions of adjacent intervals. Just in case there wasn't enough terminology in the air. See the table for the names of every interval.)

So, with these names, what's the significance of each one? The thirds, sixths and sevenths are important, because they tell us whether we're in minor or major land when we're building chords. (More on that soon.)

The fifth and the octave are super consonant, as we've said. But the notes that are close to them, like the seventh, the second and even more so the tritone, are quite dissonant - they're near to a nice thing and ironically that leads to awkward ratios which feel uncomfy to our ears. So generally speaking, you use them to build tension and anticipation and set up for a resolution later. (Or don't, and deliberately leave them hanging.)

Of course all of these positions in the scale also have funky Latin names that describe their function.

There's a lot more complicated nuances that make the meaning of a particular interval very contextual, and I certainly couldn't claim to really understand in much depth, but that's basically what I understand about intervals so far.

Our goofy-ass musical notation system

So if semitones are the building block of everything, naturally the musical notation system we use in the modern 12TET era spaces everything out neatly in terms of semitones, right?

Right...?

Lmao no. Actually sheet music is written so that each row of the stave (or staff, the five lines you write notes on) represents a note of the C major scale. All the notes that aren't on the C major scale are represented with special symbols, namely ♯ (read 'sharp') which means 'go up a semitone', and ♭ (read 'flat') which means 'go down a semitone'. That means the same note can be notated in two different ways: A♯ and B♭ are the same note.

The above image shows the chromatic scale, notated in two different ways. Every step is exactly one semitone.

Since a given scale might end up using one of these 'in between' notes that has to be marked sharp or flat, and you don't want to do that for every single time that note appears. Luckily, it turns out that each major/minor scale pair ends up defining a unique set of notes to be adjusted up or down a semitone, called the 'key signature'. So you can write the key signature at the beginning of the piece, and it lasts until you change key signature. For example, the key of 'A♭ major' ends up having four sharps:

There is a formula you can use to work out the set of sharps or flats to write for a given key. (That's about the point I checked out on musictheory.net.)

There is some advantage to this system, which is that it very clearly tells you when the composer intends to shift into a different scale, and it saves space since with the usual scales there are no wasted lines. But it's also annoyingly arbitrary. You just have to remember that B to C is only a semitone, and the same for E to F.

What are those weird squiggly symbols? Those are 'clefs'. Each one assigns notes to specific lines. The first one 𝄞 is the 'treble clef', the second one 𝄢 is the 'bass clef'. Well, actually these are the 'G-clef' and the 'F-clef', and where they go on the stave determines note assignment, but thankfully this has been standardised and you will only ever see them in one place. The treble clef declares the lines to be E G B D F and the bass clef G B D F A.

There is also a rarer 'C-clef' which looks like 𝄡. This is usually used as the 'Alto clef' which means F A C E G.

This notation system seems needlessly convoluted, but we're rather stuck with it, because most of the music has been written in it already. It's not uncommon for people to come up with alternative notations, though, such as 'tabs' for a stringed instrument which indicate which position should be played on each string. Nowadays on computers, a lot of DAWs will instead use a 'piano roll' presentation which is organised by semitone.

And then there's chords.

Chords! And arpeggios!

A chord is when you play 3 or more notes at the same time.

Simple enough right? But if you wanna talk about it, you gotta have a way to give them names. And that's where things get fucking nuts.

But the basic chord type is a 'triad', consisting of three notes, separated by certain intervals. There are two standard types, which you basically assemble by taking every other note of a scale. In terms of semitones, these are:

Major triad: 0 - 4 - 7 Minor triad: 0 - 3 - 7

Then there's a bunch of variations, for example:

Augmented: 0 - 4 - 8 Diminished: 0 - 3 - 6 Suspended: 0 - 2 - 7 (sus2) or 0 - 5 - 7 (sus4) Dominant seventh: 0 - 4 - 7 - 10 Power: 0 - 7

There is a notation scheme for chords in pop, jazz, rock, etc., which starts with a root note and then adds a bunch of superscripts to tell you about any special features of a chord. So 'C' means the C Major triad (namely C,E,G) and 'Cm' or 'c' means the C Minor triad (namely C,E♭,G).

In musical composition, you usually tend to surround the melody (single voice) with a 'chord progression' that both harmonises and creates a sense of 'movement' from one chord to another. Some instruments like guitar and piano are really good at playing chords. On instruments that can't play chords, they can still play 'arpeggios', which is what happens if you take a chord and unroll it into a sequence of notes. Or you play in an ensemble and harmonise with the other players to create a chord together. Awww.

Given a scale, you can construct a series of seven triad chords, starting from each note of the scale. These are generally given scale-specific Roman numerals corresponding to the position in the scale, and they're used to analyse the progression of chords in a song. I pretty much learned about this today while writing this post, so I can't tell you much more than that.

Right now, that's about as far as I've gotten with chords. On a violin, you can play just two strings at the same time after all - I never had much need to learn about them so it remains a huge hole in my understanding of music. I can't recognise chords by ear at all. So I gotta learn more about them.

As much as I wrote this for my own benefit... if you found this post interesting, let me know. I might write more if people find this style of presentation appealing. ^^'

#Youtube #music #music theory #notes #music notes

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velnna · 2 months

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Hiii!! I have a question I'd be thrilled if you answered. You make such detailed pieces so often! And you're making a webtoon on the side of it all. Is being an artist your main job? If so, how can I follow in your footsteps

Being an artist is my main job, yes! I've only been doing it proper full time for a year so I'm still trying to find the best balance in the content I create.

I've always been fast at art (mostly because I get bored of a piece easily so if it takes me more than 2h I lose the will to finish haha), and got faster when I started working with webtoon in 2019/20. For a long time that was my main focus, but I also use side illustrations and comics to chill so I never *only* worked on the webtoon itself. I'd always have 2-3h in a day for other random doodles

Currently I barely work on the webtoon, sadly, and it's been like that for a long time since I hit an insurmountable sort of writing block with it. I'm just now trying to work around it but it's tough. Besides, patreon has been my main source of income for a while, and that's independent from webtoon, so I've been spending a lot more time working on content that's more focused on that (different comics/stories and fandom stuff I guess)

As for "how", it's a trickier question. I wouldn't recommend anyone do things like I do because it's not a one-size-fits-all and can be unhealthy sometimes. I'm very obsessive with work and creative projects, so I can easily prioritise that over almost everything else, and once I have an idea I like I tend to not stop until I see it through.

I will say though generally a good mix of passion and discipline should give you some progress. Evolving in art (or anything) generally takes some sacrifice and structure, but at the same time needs to be a process sustained in passion, in my opinion. It's unfortunate not very concrete advice but I'd just say find the stuff that REALLY makes you itch to pick up the pencil, then find a way to commit a decent amount of thought and time to it without losing the spark

#bla bla bla #q&a

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denwritesandcries · 5 months

Text

Like a Movie Scene – Van Palmer

Pairing: van palmer x fem!reader

Summary: Van Palmer should come with a warning sign, she invades your life with her crooked smiles and stupid jokes and draws you into her orbit without even asking for permission, as if it were something destined to happen. Which, you assume, it probably is.

Word count: 7,1k.

Content: No crash!AU, cursing, mentions of homophobia (it’s the 90’s), friends to lovers, slow burn, fluff, a little angst, shitty families, LOTS of movie references, the yjs being normal teenagers.

A/N: Van is a flirty little shit but also a complete loser and we love her for that.

English is not my first language.

Van Palmer should come with a warning sign or at least a 'no returns' marked on the tag of her football jerseys.

You don't think it would have done any good, though. Van draws you into her orbit from the first moment you met, like a bright and warm sun; allowing you to exist steadily in her life even though, technically, she has invaded yours.

You suppose then, that you wouldn't have it any other way.

It's likely you guys would never have really spoken to each other if it weren't for a mix-up between your practice schedules and a stupid argument between your coaches.

You see, the track team – which you were part of – always had practice right after the football team, because Wiskayok High School barely had the structure to keep both a girls' and boys' football team running properly, let alone a decent space for the few other sports the small-town school offered. Your practices took place on the same days of the week and one after the other, always at the same time. It was the implicit rule: from 4:30 pm the field is yours.

Coach Martínez didn't seem to care, however, because there he was arguing with your coach, since apparently football practice had run late and the girls needed to train for an hour and a half.

Your coach wasn't having any of it – your time was already too short without these changes –, and now both men were in the middle of the field screaming in each other's faces while poor coach Scott tried to calm them down.

“Dude,” you recognize Natalie Scatorccio’s tired, hoarse voice beside you, “They could just cancel and let us go.”

You and apparently most people there, if the expressions of annoyance and crossed arms were any indication, couldn't agree more.

"Right?" You said, “Look at them, you think they’re gonna fight?”

Nat let out an amused snort, “They’re going to eat Coach Ben alive, that’s what they’re gonna do.”

You would have said something else if it weren't for a third voice coming from right behind you:

“They're gonna kiss, look how close their faces are,” It was Van Palmer, the goalie, with red hair swinging in a ponytail and a smirk on her lips. She shook her head in mock disappointment and crossed her arms, pointing with her chin at the scene, “In front of us, kids? What a lack of professionalism.”

You choke on a laugh and her gaze snaps to you, her smile widening with something like satisfaction in her eyes. The attention made you nervous, you weren't used to interacting with Yellowjackets members other than Nat, who was easy to talk to and was your lab partner as well as sharing cigarettes at parties, meaning that talking to Van Palmer was a completely new territory.

You joke back insecurely, “At least you have real coaches, ours is the art teacher.”

That made her let out an incredulous laugh and you'd be lying if you said you didn't feel pleased about it. Like almost the entire school, you also had a crush on the Yellowjackets.

Your laughter died down just as Coach Scott ran across the field to the two mixed teams with the most genuine expression of exhaustion you've ever seen, “We decided to share the space,” he says, and that's all. Your first interaction with Van: a conversation that lasted less than three minutes mocking your teachers. You would never expect it to evolve into anything beyond that.

It's strange trying to do your usual routine of running through the poorly painted banners around the pitch – which looked like it had never seen better days – with a game taking place just a few meters away from you and your teammates. The fear of getting hit in the face by a ball was embarrassing.

Yet, as you wait for the relay, your gaze tracks the girls in action. You don't know the names of most of them, but recognize Taissa and Shauna fighting over the ball at one end of the field, the confrontation seems a little too intense, which makes you a bit nervous and your eyes go straight to the nearest goal, coincidentally, is the one Van is defending.

You notice how beautiful she looks with her expression completely concentrated and her hands resting on the knees, waiting to act. Shauna overtakes Taissa and kicks hard the ball towards the goal; Van grabs it as soon as she crosses the white line on the lawn.

A giggle escapes you as Shauna turns around in frustration and the ball bounces back into the field, Van and Tai share a wry smile. The goalie turns her attention away from the game for a moment to look around and you swear she's looking for something – or someone.

Your teacher calls signaling your turn and you leave your thoughts while you line up with some other teammates.

You can do your relay routine for exactly fifteen minutes before something goes wrong.

You run on autopilot, so used to it that it's practically a second nature, letting your gaze return to scanning the field with interest when one of the players tries to score again and Van throws herself against the ground to catch the ball with a stronger and clearly exaggerated movement compared to last time. You thought this would be a one-time thing, seeing as the way Jackie and Nat rolled their eyes at her from where they were off to the side blocking other girls, but it kept happening the entire time you spent running until it was time for your break.

You choke on the water you drink when you realize that Van is the one staring at you this time, hands resting on her thighs, face sweaty and red, as if she doesn't have a game to focus on.

Shit, you think, how are you going to keep your head in training now? You wonder what you would have done to get a Yellowjacket's attention so suddenly as you return to your line.

You resume your run at a pretty good pace despite the sudden nervousness, feeling a little more confident when you hear a loud “Come on guys, no one has beaten L/N’s time yet!” coming from your teacher.

And then you're approaching the curve flush with the football field, the curve that gives you the perfect view of the goal.

Van is there, of course, just throwing the ball downfield again. Van, who rests her hands on her hips and catches her breath when Coach Scott blows the whistle and tells that her team won the game. Van, who turns around just in time and sees you approaching. Van, who removes a strand of red hair from her face that has escaped the ponytail and gives you a malicious toothy smile. Van, who winks at you. Van, who makes you fall. Literally.

It's all so out of nowhere, so suddenly that your heart misses a beat and you miss a step, tripping over your own feet as if your legs forgot how to work properly, falling in the middle of the curve and getting in the way of your colleagues further back in the lanes next to your side

Shit, holyshit, fuck, you just fell in front of the entire football team.

One of your friends bends down next to you to help and asks what happened, you blame the laces of your sneakers that untied when you fell because any reason is less embarrassing than what actually happened.

Your knee is bleeding and one of your arms is scraped, so the coach decides to have pity and leave you on the bench until it's time to leave. You make your way there with your ears burning and your head down.

If Van had any kind of interest in you, it definitely disappeared after that.

You remain alone on the bench, avoiding looking anywhere for a long time until Misty Quigley appears at your side with things to bandage your wound and you happily let her fill the silence with whatever she wants to say for the next few minutes.

Your night is spent tossing and turning in bed over the shame you've experienced and the next day as you walk through the corridors, the possibility of the goalie talking to you again doesn't even cross your mind as the first classes go by like a blur.

And then you're at your lunch table waiting for Nat to show up to talk like she usually does when she doesn't disappear around school, but after a few minutes a head of red hair takes over your vision instead of the usual dyed blonde.

“What’s up?” Van is sitting next to you, with the same crooked smile and her cheek propped up in a fist.

“Uh, nothing much really.” You have no idea what is going on; she is sitting with you, smiling at you and talking to you. Why is she doing this? You can feel a few other people's eyes on you through the interaction.

She introduces herself, even though you already know who she is, holding out a hand for you to shake – they’re rough, you notice, with calluses adorning the fingers –, probably just so you can introduce yourself too. “I’m Van,” she says, and that’s it.

She’s been Van since the beginning. Not Vanessa Palmer or the Yellowjackets goalkeeper, just Van. She says it so matter-of-factly that it would simply sound wrong to call her anything else.

You engage in a conversation about anything and everything after you introduce yourself – just your nickname too, you assume Nat already told her your name at some point yesterday – speaking as if you already knew each other, and somehow it doesn't feel weird.

Your eyes end up focusing on a black-haired girl crying at a table on the other side of the cafeteria with another girl, you don't know either of them, but you know that they are both on the main team too.

“Hey,” you point with your chin, “What’s up with her?”

Van finds the source of your attention and raises her eyebrows, “Oh, you mean Mari?”

You answer with a simple nod of your head and that's enough for Van to invade your personal space with a devilish expression and a mischievous smile.

“She had a bad break up,” Van says and you tilt your head at her.

“But was it that bad?” You arch an eyebrow, “People don’t cry in such full places over nothing.”

Van moves a little closer to you and lowers her voice conspiratorially, as if she’s telling you a very important secret, “She were dumped” and then a dramatic pause, “For the guy’s half-sister.”

"What?" Your jaw drops completely and Van nods her head.

“Lottie told me, she knows about these things,” she rests her face in her hand again, “She said she caught them kissing at her last party, Mari must have known.”

“‘The fuck?” The shocked look you give her only seems to amuse her.

“Oh, she's crying right now but boy, she was mad as hell in our math class today,” Van blows an exaggerated raspberry, “I bet she'll end up coming up with an absurd plan to get revenge and burn down his house just like in She Devil if the story spread.”

It will definitely spread, you thought.

An unexpected giggle escaped your chest – you might have felt a little bad for talking shit about a girl you didn't even know later, but not now – and your gaze found Van's face again.

“Yeah,” you start, “Except she was replaced by the guy’s own sister, half-sister, whatever, instead of a famous writer.”

Her face lights up completely as she speaks, bright green eyes like those of an excited puppy.

“You like that movie?” She asks.

“I love that movie,” you correct, “It’s iconic and Meryl Streep looks good.”

"She does.”

This seems to completely cement Van's interest in you, because she continues to sit with you at lunch for the rest of the week. When Nat finally appears, she raises an eyebrow, but doesn't question it.

You and Van get closer in a surprisingly short period of time, but the way she seems to settle into your life is gradual and your silly little crush on the goalie seems to get stronger without even realizing it. Waiting for your lunches in the cafeteria, conversations in the hallways, glances exchanged during physics class – since you sat too far away to really talk – and the exchange of silly words about movies you like.

You have the habit of going out for a run every weekend in the morning – it's not easy to keep the best time in the routines, after all – and one day you decide to change your route by pure coincidence to a longer one that ends up near one of the trailer parks in the city; the fact that Nat mentioned one day that she’s neighbors with a certain teammate has nothing to do with it.

It surprises you that Van is awake at 8 am on a Saturday, but you find her – by pure coincidence, nothing more than that – outside a sad trailer watering an even sadder small garden. When she sees you, your hair is a mess and breathing is a little out of step, and you give her an awkward wave as you catch your breath. It's the first time you've seen each other outside of school.

“You’re stalking me now, weirdo?” Her crooked smile tells you that there's no real bite behind it.

"No," You place your hands on your hips, kicking some loose pebbles on the floor with your sneakers. Yes, you liar, “I always run around here, how come we’ve never seen each other before?”

Fuck it, you think. If Van can just show up for you because she wants to, then you can do the same.

She seems happy to abandon her garden chores when you ask her to go for a walk and she agrees to make you company once there’s no running involved; a walk, because no one deserves to be running around like Rocky Balboa at this time of the morning.

You walk together side by side through the neighborhood with your shoulders brushing against each other as if you've done this many times before, Van whistling a random tune carelessly.

Talking to her when the initial nervousness passes is one of the easiest things you've ever done and you find yourself enjoying and listening to everything Van tells you. This potential friendship – maybe more. Maybe, just maybe – it's the most fun thing that's happened in your year so far.

Your walks together also become a habit after that. You just come back the next day and Van is there with a smile on her face, so you keep coming back and she keeps smiling.

You also start walking home after school. Neither of you have a car, so why not?

You crave her company and she craves yours, you stay for Van's training and she stays for yours – no one else on the teams has the energy to complain about exaggerated movements or stumbles on tracks – and then when you're ready, you head off to your ways together and it makes your heart warm every time.

Everything about Van just makes you want to know her even more; the way she gestures with her arms and declares with the utmost disgust how she keeps distance from any musical that isn’t animated – “But you only watched Cats!” “And that was enough!” –, they way she tells you about how she and Taissa are watching Sabrina the Teenage Witch every Friday, or how she makes fun of any weird thing Misty said during practice that week.

You listen and absorb everything with an stupid drunk smile on your face, letting her entwine your arms and chatter to her heart's content.

Keep talking, you want to say, I love your voice, seeing you happy makes me happy. Keep talking, keep talking, keep talking.

You invite her to your house for the first time under the pretext of studying, after she throws herself on the chair next to you with a tearful expression during physics class.

“I’m gonna fail,” she whines, banging her head dramatically against the open notebook on the table, “The professor hates me.”

You start teasingly, “Maybe he would hate you a little less if you actually paid attention in his class.”

"I do!" Van protests, “It’s personal, he must think I’m strange or somethin’ and lower my grades for it.” She crosses her arms with a pout and a roll of eyes.

“Of course,” you agree with an exaggerated nod, “And you, yourself, are strange and unusual.”

“Yes!” She exclaims, ignoring the looks she attracts, “But that’s not the point, don’t quote Beetlejuice to me now, woman, this is serious.”

“Oh, wow, okay then.” You shrug.

Van looks at you before resting her head on the table again. She seems so hopeless that you give in.

“Hey, c’mon,” you say, letting your hand rest on her hair and stroke it gently, “You can come to my house today. I’ll help you study for the next test.”

Van's shoulders tense suddenly and her head snaps up so fast it makes you jump back.

"Really?" Her eyes are wide, face as red as her hair: “I wouldn’t want to bother you.”

That's strange. Van is usually the one who makes you nervous, not the other way around.

“You won’t bother me at all,” you reply without giving it much thought, “There won’t be anyone at home anyway.”

And then there's silence, Van's face turns impossibly redder and after a second of confusion, you understand.

You just invited Van to your house. Alone. There is an innuendo there. Several possibilities that neither of you will mention, but that you both know are there.

Your face starts to heat up, so you clear your throat and stutter a confused “Are you coming then?”, because you can't let her realize what you just thought about.

Van responds with a squeaky “Okay, sure,” and hurries back to her usual seat when class finally begins.

When you adjust yourself in the chair and think about finally releasing the breath you didn't realize you were holding, your gaze finds Lottie Matthews staring at you three seats away with her eyebrows raised. Shit.

Lottie says nothing, just wrinkles her nose contemplatively and faces forward, but she knows, she always knows. You feel your hands sweat and shake with nervousness at the prospect of becoming the new school gossip like Mari last month. The queer who fell too hard for a Yellowjacket only to get it wrong and ruin everything.

You shake your head. No, Lottie wouldn't do that. You weren't exactly friends, but she’s not mean, there was no reason for her to upset you, your thoughts were just talking too loud. Plus, it's not like she actually saw anything. You didn't do anything forbidden, friends go to each other's houses all the time. Your crush is not obvious.

That's stupid, you think, it doesn't matter, but you don't really believe it. Yes, it matters, at least in this little town at the end of the world.

You just hope you don't end up crying in the cafeteria too.

There is no training that day, so as soon as classes are over, you leave school together and make your way home. For the first time, the silence is awkward and makes you feel bad for making the invitation the wrong way. Maybe Van just doesn't swing that way and you made her uncomfortable somehow. It's a possibility; you're not exactly in the closet to the rest of the school.

Still, the way her hand brushes against yours gives you hope that this isn't the case.

When Van enters your house, the first thing she does is look around.

“Wow,” she begins, “Its really…”

“Small?” You complete, feeling somewhat conscious. Your house wasn't a trailer, but it wasn't anything compared to the houses of Van's cool friends. Definitely nothing like Lottie or Jackie.

“Empty.” She corrects.

Huh. It's true, your house was praticly always empty, not only because your parents spent as much time as they could out of it, pretending they didn't have a kid to still take care of, but also because of the lack of furniture and personality, it didn't seem like a cozy place to a family live. As a whole, it could be really lonely most of the time. Van seems to have noticed this with a single glance.

You choose to ignore the comment, suddenly thinking that this might end up becoming too intimate. In a vulnerable way.

When Van enters your bedroom for the first time, she gives the place the same curious look as the rest of the house, but her jaw quickly drops.

“You got a TV in your room?” She sounds completely shocked.

“Yeah,” you snort in amusement, “My uncle runs an appliance store, he fixed one that no one picked up last summer, so now it’s mine.”

Van still looks very impressed as her eyes roam the rest of the room. Your bedroom was, perhaps, the only place in the house where someone actually seemed to live. Posters and photos adorned the colorful walls and it seemed like every little thing in the room was directly a part of you, from an old stuffed animal on one of the shelves to the small pile of messy clothes on the chair next to the study table because you weren't planning on receiving no one to remember to put them away.

The tension from before seems to be dissipating and you can see from the expression on her face the exact moment Van notices your small VHS collection up ahead.

“Okay, that's it, we're only hanging out here from now.”

And that awkward moment passes completely.

In a matter of minutes you both are comfortable in your bed with books and notebooks spread around, after convincing Van to start studying with the promise that she could choose whatever movie she wanted for you to watch when you were finished.

Van seems to dedicate herself twice as much, eager to fulfill the agreement and the hours pass quickly as she understands the concepts you explain about the subject and then all you have to do is say that it's time for a break for her to jump out of bed with a smile from ear to ear and choose a movie.

She puffs out her chest holding the tape in her hands and proudly declares that you're watching Jurassic Park and you don't even think to question it when you return the smile and takes on the task of making popcorn.

Van ends up leaning against you throughout the movie, reciting all the lines from memory along with the characters close to your ear – she knows all of them – and your heart remains racing with blood rushing in your ears until she leaves.

The two of you keep hanging out at your house again and again, just like she said it would be. Sometimes you study or watch something together, but most of the time Van simply keeps you company while you do your chores around the house, following you around like a puppy while you cook or do the laundry. Your home has never been so fulled or welcoming.

You go home after classes and practice – occasionally with Nat in tow – and stay together until it's late and dark, every now and then you say that she could just sleep over as a joke, but she never accepts it. You gulps the pang of sadness and rejection each time it happens.

And you guys talk a lot, you've never been so delighted to hear someone blab about anything.

Van spends days talking about how excited she is for summer while helping you chop the things for dinner. She and Natalie always get jobs together and she’s dying to buy a car – “You’re the runner here, lady, not me.” –, an old dark green pickup truck. She shows you the leaflet with a smile so proud that you don't have the courage to admit that you thought the thing was horrible; She tells you about how she wears the clothes of her older brother who apparently left town as soon as he finished school while helping you fold the freshly washed clothes, some of her own included.

It's so domestic that you wonder why this didn't happen sooner, depriving either of you of a routine together like this for so long seemed mean.

One night you’re sleeping soundly when you are startled awake by a loud knock on your window and you turn to find a face pressed against the glass. You almost have a heart attack.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Van!”

She's standing there with a pout and big eyes, pointing at the lock and you consider leaving her outside for the fright she got you. One look at the alarm clock on the table next to the bed tells you that it's already past 2:00 am.

“What are you doing here?” You ask, your voice hoarse and tired from sleep, letting her come in, but only because you don't want her to get a cold outside.

Van sneaks into the room, suddenly shy, playing with the hem of the oversized t-shirt she's wearing and avoiding your eyes. She gives you an awkward smile.

“I was just wondering if we could have that sleepover today?”

She looks upset. Something happend. Something that upset her enough that she decided to run to your home in the middle of the night.

“Van,” your expression softened, worry flooding your voice, “Are you okay?”

“Yep.” She clicked her tongue, still not looking at you in the eye.

Okay, you won't get anything out of it then. Van likes to talk, but not when it comes to problems like this. Problems at home.

The thing is that you and Van have a lot in common, like your dubious sense of humor and your love for movies, but are opposites in many others; the main one: where your house is always empty, hers is always full. Full of people who take away the smile that you always try hard to keep on her face.

“Okay,” you sigh, taking her hand and making your way to the messed bed, “Let’s get some sleep then.”

“Oh,” She looks even more embarrassed, her sweaty hand in yours, “I can take the couch or the floor. I didn’t mean to wake you, I’m sorry.”

You let out an outraged huff, “You run to my house, climb in through my window, ask me to have a sleepover and now you want to sleep on the floor?”

She drags her feet on the floor, “...Yeah?”

You choose to ignore her answer, practically dragging her over to the bed and making her lie down. When she does, Van moves to the other side of the mattress, clearly trying her best not to disturb you, but in a fit of courage and exhaustion, you wrap an arm around her and press her against your chest. She lets out a squeak of surprise at the action.

“Go to sleep, Van.” You mumble against the back of her neck, burying your face in her thick hair.

Her body is still tense against yours, but Van allows one hand to rest on the arm you keep around her waist.

You lose count of how long you spend lying awake in silence cohabiting in each other's space, but when you wake up in the morning, Van is still asleep, her hand never leaving your arm.

You guys don't talk about it and you never find out what really happened to make her feel so bad that day, but Van shows up more often to stay the night. She never tells you when she's coming and you get scared every time when you hear the knocking on the window – you swear she does it on purpose, that little smartass.

You realize that you really love her, not just as a silly high school crush, in the middle of a hot May, when Van makes you stand in the line at the cinema box office for two and a half hours and miss the day of school to get tickets to watch Jurassic Park - The Lost World. Because if you saw the first one together then you should see the second one too, obviously.

You're sure you wouldn't put yourself through this for anyone else – but don't let Natalie know that.

The whole situation feels a lot like a date and you try to ignore the anxiety that washes over you as you rummage through your closet for an outfit that you think is good enough for the night. The way Van's jaw drops when she looks at you when she meets you at the front door makes the effort completely worth it.

She spends the entire movie almost bouncing in her seat with excitement and swearing at the parts that don't make sense, because apparently the movie is also really bad, even though she's so happy watching it, and you manage to be bold enough to hide your face on her shoulder during the “scary” parts and leave your head resting there until the end.

You're not proud at all to say you spent seven bucks on a squeezy dinosaur for her on the way back, but it's your senior year, damn it, let the girl have fun with her silly toy before college.

You go back home – ‘home’ you think now, not ‘your house’. Your home. Your home with Van. – with her ranting about special effects and scenes you don't remember because you spent more time looking at her than the screen and you end up on the balcony before you know it.

“That was so good.” Van is just inches away from you, looking at you with bright eyes full of happiness; your hands are sweaty, so you put them in your pockets so she doesn't notice.

“Yeah, it really was,” you return with a playful smile, “Even though you convinced me to spend hours under the sun for it.”

“Hey!” She protests, moving impossibly closer, “What would the experience be worth without a little effort, huh?”

“Sure.” You giggle.

She's so pretty, you think; hair down and a black jacket draped over her shoulders, looking at you as if she actually saw you. Knows you. I want to kiss her.

“You had fun today?” Van asks, unable to avoid the small tone of doubt that escapes her voice.

I want you to kiss me, you think.

“Yes,” you answer instead, “Yes, I did.”

One night Van simply comes in through your window and you don't even react anymore, leaning into her body against you under the covers.

“You gotta stop coming in through my window,” you grumble.

“Then stop leaving it open,” she huffs, “Someone might break in, you know that?”

You can feel her smile against your neck and you're about to fall asleep again when you hear her voice whispering:

“You’re gonna go to my games, now that we actually have a chance to go to the nationals, right?”

“Of course,” you mumble with a comforting pat of her hand on your stomach, “I’ll be the first one in the stands cheering you on. You’ll be embarrassed of me.”

Van buries her face in your shoulder, “Good.”

You get sick the same exact week her last game until nationals takes place, lamenting the stupid flu that left you feverish and stuck at home for days.

You can't go to school and Van can't come to see you because Coach Martinez has increased the training routine as the team advances in the championship, you assume it must be really tiring because Van doesn't show up at night either. It's embarrassing the way you can't sleep properly without her.

The worst of all: you lose Van's game.

You resign yourself to spending the afternoon on the couch brooding in remorse until you hear a knock on the door.

Coming across Van's sad face with her clearly trying not to cry was not what you expected when you opened the door, knowing for sure that you would only be greeted later – probably after a victory party – with excited screams and bright little dog eyes asking for help to pack her bags.

"We lost." She says, eyes glued on the carpet.

“Oh,” you say stupidly, “Oh, dear.”

Your voice seems to turn a switch inside her, because Van lifts her head to you with her lips trembling and the next moment you two are on the couch with her practically sprawled on your lap and crying, crying hard. You've never seen her like this before.

You hear something about Jackie hitting the post at the last moment as she sobs, but what seems to make her really upset are the balls she couldn't save during the game. Like it would’ve make difference.

Comforting was never really your strong suit, you can't say you're really upset that the Yellowjackets lost, the idea of having Van so far away from you even for a few days didn't please you at all, a bad feeling in your chest told you that something could go wrong.

“Well,” you run your fingers up and down her back, “You know one good thing about this? We can go to Homecoming now.”

Her breathing hitches, but if Van notices how you say 'we' instead of 'you' she doesn't say anything.

She's on your lap, nose close to yours, eyes swollen with tears but with the same look from that night at the movies, the one that makes your hands sweat and leaves your heart weak.

Unlike the movies, however, she kisses you. Like, she actually moves forward and kisses you.

Her lips are wet and soft against yours and you tilt your head to pursue them only for her to pull away with a panicked expression.

"I'm sorry!" Van exclaims, scooting toward the door as if her skin had burned, “I’m sorry! I– I shouldn’t– I’ll see you at school.”

And then she leaves. You don't even have time to react, she runs out the door and gets into that horrible pickup truck – which she had parked in the driveway for the first time less than two weeks ago, wanting to take you for a ride to celebrate the purchase – and you're left standing in the doorway like an idiot after the car disappears from your vision, as if you were waiting for her to come back – you were.

You don't see her at school for the rest of the week, she doesn't show up in class or practice and she certainly doesn't show up at your house, Van is avoiding you and it's so obvious that you feel like crying the entire time you're there, trying to catch a glimpse of her through the halls.

Fuck, you knew this would happen, that you would screw up and make the person you care about the most hate you.

You huff in frustration, letting your head fall against the table feeling someone's gaze on you, someone who isn't Van.

Lottie Matthews isn't skipping physics class, she has no reason to be, so you shouldn't have freaked out as much as you did when you looked up and saw her towering over you next to your desk.

“Shit–” You gasp, jumping back in your seat and almost hitting her chin.

Lottie tilts her head, completely unfazed, with a look of false innocence and curiosity on her face. The look of someone in search of an information.

The vision of Mari crying at the beginning of the year comes back to your mind and a shiver with a line of sweat runs down your spine. Oh no.

“Did you guys break up?” She asks and it's the last thing you expected.

“What?”

Lottie sits next to you, smoothing her skirt over her legs, completely at ease.

“Look, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” she starts with an anxious air, “But please do because I really want to know.”

"Know what?" God, your head is already hurting from this conversation.

Lottie seems to realize that your confusion is genuine, because she stops and frowns at you.

“Didn’t you and Van break up? I thought you were together.”

What the fuck?

"...No? We’re not?”

“Are you asking me?” Lottie arches an eyebrow, also confused.

"No." You clear your throat and roll your tense shoulders, “We’re not.”

“Oh,” she doesn’t seem to know what to say after that, strangely disappointed – just like you.

The class passes with the two of you in an awkward, resigned silence and as you're leaving, Lottie follows you down the halls, attracting glances as you pass by, which was the last thing you wanted at the moment.

“What now?” You sigh.

“I think you should talk to her and sort things out,” Lottie says, “She seems so sad lately, without her usual sparkle.”

You could understand where Lottie was coming from, seeing Van upset was truly heartbreaking, but you couldn't help the bitter pang in your chest. She ran away after the kiss, not you. The kiss she gave you.

“She’s hiding from me,” you admit begrudgingly, “Where else could I talk to her, anyway?”

“In the Homecoming, of course!” Lottie nods at you sagely, as if couldn't be more obvious.

“Of course.” You agree, because, the hell, why not?

The Homecoming is on the weekend, the same weekend the team was supposed to be away for the nationals, which must be why the girls are there, to try and lift their spirits.

You recognize Jackie talking excited to Taissa about something near the tables at the back of the gym, next to a grumpy Shauna with a glass of punch in a hand and the other placed on her waist – in a definitely more then friendly way –, but no sign of of Van in sight.

You end up outside with Natalie, smoking against a wall, as always happen at every party you're at together. She's telling you about how she saw Jeff and Randy with a bottle of liquor before coming in and that they would probably baptize the punch, you both talked about ratting them out to one of the teachers in charge after sneaking a few cups and you probably would’ve done that if Lottie hadn't joined you – coming from who knows where – to ask for a cigarette too.

Nat joked about how it probably wasn't like the expensive brands she seemed to prefer at her parties, but she handed one over without a hitch and the three of you sat there, looking up at the dark, starry sky for a moment.

“You haven’t seen her yet?” Lottie breaks the silence, casually breathing in the smoke.

Nat looks at you sideways and all you do is shrug, not wanting to admit the defeat.

“You should try it near the stands.” She declares.

“What are you, a psychic or something?” You scoff, but go anyway because like Van said, Lottie knows about these things.

She is there. Of course she is. Sitting in the stands staring out at the empty field, wearing a light blue suit with a white shirt and a matching shiny tie that you have no idea where she could have gotten, because there's no way her mom would have let her buy it.

Van notices you approaching by the sound of your footsteps on the ground, her head turning to watch you and for a moment you're afraid she'll run away again.

She doesn't, so you approach, trying your best not to run towards her.

“I gotta quit smoking soon,” you say, stepping on the cigarette your hand was holding and making an overly dramatic effort to sit next to her with heavy breaths, “Or I’ll end up being kicked of track ‘till year is finished.”

Van snorts, “Right, Ponyboy Curtis.”

For a moment it's like anything hasn’t changed between you both, you bet that if you tried with conviction you could almost pretend that nothing had happened. Almost.

“You ran away from me,” you say.

“I did,” Van lowers her head, quietly. Embarrassed. You’re not sure of what exacly.

"Why?" You ask, because that's the question that's been running through your mind for days.

“I–” Van looks away from you, “I thought you wouldn't want that.”

“And I thought you knew how much I wanted it,” you say and Van lifts her head to stare at you with wide, hopefully eyes, “What do you want, Van?”

Her jaw drops and she looks like she was expecting everything but that, her hands twitch on her thighs, as if she wants to reach you.

“You look so beautiful right now,” she sighs softly before steadying her voice, “You look so beautiful that I want to kiss you again.”

"Do it."

And she does, hard and desperate, crushing her nose against yours, as if she's hungry and can't get enough; you wrap your arms around her, hands touching her with the same need.

The lack of air is too much, so Van pulls away from you to immediately start distributing quick kisses down your neck, as if it could all disappear in a second, becoming confident when you tilt your head to grant her more access and only stopping after the hiss that you let go because she bites.

“So…” she laughs nervously, “What now?”

"Now?" You’re out of breath, “Well, can we go back inside and help Nat steal liquour to screw with Jeff and Randy or…”

"Or?" Van arches an eyebrow in amusement.

“We can go home and I can show you how much I missed you.” You shrug, casually tightening your hands on her waist.

“Hm,” she pretends to think about it, “I guess I like the first option better.”

Van laughs at the sound of your offended squeal and avoids the slap you try to give her shoulder.

“Careful, baby,” she intertwines your hand with hers, “I’m gonna start to think that you love me.”

“Oh, you better know that.”

You pull her by her stupid shiny tie and kiss her when she laughs again and let Van guide you to that hideous truck staggering laughing through the crowd of students.

Yeah, you think, I wouldn't have it any other way.

#yellowjackets x reader #van palmer x reader #van yellowjackets #yellowjackets #vanessa palmer x reader #yellowjackets x you #denwrites

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