#i miss finding fossils i haven’t gone looking in so long | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lucywritesreid · 4 years

Text

Our own little island

Thank you for all the feedback from my last fic :3 I really don’t have any explanation for this other than....yeah...Spencer during lockdown haha.

Summary: Spencer and Y/N Have been living in their own private bubble during lockdown. YN has discovered a game and initially Spencer shows no interest...

There wasn’t much to say about the last few months other than they had been… weird. Weird on a global scale. You almost couldn’t believe how quickly everything went from normal to complete lockdown and watching the news every night had set you into complete panic mode. Both you and your highly germ-phobic boyfriend were more than happy to comply with the necessary restrictions. Spencer’s rational and calm mindset kept you both prepared and he did everything possible to reduce your anxiety. You would be forever grateful to have him by your side at such a horrible time.

For you the hardest adjustment was not seeing your work friends every day. It was odd to not spend every waking moment surrounded by all the people you loved the most. You didn’t realise just how much you would miss them despite seeing them all the time anyway. Friday night became the highlight. Your team, set up by Garcia, started a weekly quiz whereby everyone joined a Zoom call and one member was chosen to deliver a set of questions. Granted, it took Rossi a few failed attempts to be both seen and heard on camera, but you had all got it working in the end. Garcia’s quiz was based on cute, fluffy cartoon characters, Rossi delivered a mastermind style quiz all about the ratpack, Hotch surprised everyone with an in depth quiz about the employees of the FBI (where you realised he knew way more about personal lives of his colleagues) and you did pop culture through the ages. You had warned Spencer that ‘the history of the atom’ wasn’t in keeping with the Friday night spirit, and despite being met by many groans, he ended up presenting a fun and engaging quiz where losers had to take a shot for every question wrong. No surprise that he was the only one still standing by the end.

The truth was that despite all the chaos and uncertainty, you realised that you were lucky to have so much time spent with the man you loved. Sure, you worked together, but that was as professional as you both could manage. Stolen kisses at the back of the jet and shoulder squeezes were as close as you could get whilst working. But at home, you both had free reign of each other. You were both night owls, sleeping through most of the sunshine. You spent your evenings playing chess, re-watching old horror movies and having a lot of sex. You were sure that you were keeping your local Thai restaurant in business, living mainly off that and tubs of ice cream. It was almost therapeutic spending your time lounging around in your comfortable clothes. Hours would pass while you both sat reading in silence (you, a few chapters, Spencer, a novel or three…), his arm slowly brushing the inside of your leg as you read. On the more anxious nights, Spencer would do absolutely anything to calm you down, making sure you were okay. He’d perform Shakespeare, teach you how to cheat cards, read to you in different languages and even let you braid the ends of his hair.

You were very sure you were going to marry Spencer Reid.

There was one of your hobbies that he didn’t quite understand. In the first few weeks at home, you had invested in a Nintendo Switch, mainly from the push of Garcia but you had been eyeing it up since it first came out. You spent many nights on animal crossing visiting Garcia and her magic candy land island. It was one way to experience the outside world without actually being there. There was something wholly therapeutic about going fishing, planting flowers and giving gifts to your wonderful animal villagers.

Spencer, of course, didn’t really understand the appeal. Despite having the most wonderful brain you’d ever met, he seemed to have a block when it came to technology. He never discouraged you playing, but always looked over your shoulder with a furrowed brow whenever he saw you.

“See that, y/n, there’s no way all those fossils would be in such close proximity to one another in such a small area.” He commented on more than one occasion. “What use is archaeology when they are just there on the ground for you to see?”

“Spence, it’s a fictional world, I really don’t think they took into account geographical locations of fossils…” you couldn’t help but laugh whenever you spoke about it.

“Don’t even get me started on the physical anatomy of these animals! How disproportioned they are from the real thing! And the colours, y/n! Have you ever met a purple tiger before?”

You knew that he meant no harm from his remarks and was probably getting enjoyment out of it. So you’d shrug, offer him a turn and wait for some comment about how he was going to read an FBI report from 1987 again, and open your switch back up once he was distracted.

One night, you had stayed up late to make wishes on your island. You really needed the star fragments to craft your new DIY recipes and had spent hours posed in position, ready to make a wish. You hadn’t realised that you were falling asleep and your switch was falling out of your hand, until…

“YES! YES! Take that you stupid arachnid!” you heard a shout.

Waking up and looking to your left, you blinked in amazement to see Spencer sat with your switch gripped between his fingers.

“Spence? What are you doing? Are you okay?!” Many sleepless nights and bad dreams had left you very susceptible to fear when you heard shouting.

He looked over to you and his cheeks flushed. “Oh, y/n, honey I didn’t mean to wake you I’m sorry! It’s just you fell asleep with your game in your hand, I went to turn it off and ended up talking about the stars with this wonderful little owl… She just tells you all these facts. And they are accurate, too! I even wished upon a star.”

“That’s Celeste.” You commented, and yawned. “Spence, what time is it?”

He squinted at the screen before replying, “4am.”

You laughed. “And how long have you been playing animal crossing?”

His focus went back to the screen but he carried on talking to you. “Oh, a few hours now! I’ve just caught a tarantula, the stupid son of a bitch bit me before! Did you know they could bite you in the game? I was just running around trying to get my bearings and it ran up behind me and bit me. But I showed it who’s boss. And hey! It turns out I was wrong about the fossils, in a sense..”

You raised one eyebrow, “Dr Reid, wrong?”

“Well, not wrong exactly. It’s still highly unlikely that they would be so close together, so close to houses, and be found in just one dig. But I took one to the museum after I dug it up and was really surprised. I hadn’t realised how accurate the information provided was about these fossils! And the details in the display, too! You’ve got yourself rather an impressive collection, y/n.”

“Mhmm.” Tiredness was setting in but listening to Spencer talk about your game was more than entertaining. You sat up slowly, leaned across and rested your head on his shoulder. “What else have you been up to?”

“Well I recalculated the position of some of your flowers to maximise chances of getting hybrids. I know purple is your favourite colour so I looked into the best way to get purple flowers!” Spencer was speaking in that quick, animated tone that told you he was really into something. “I even researched the quickest and most beneficial ways of befriending your villagers to maximise the gifts that they give you. I spent a lot of time talking to the Raymond character.”

“Raymond reminds me of you, y’know. Dapper, sophisticated, looks great in glasses…” you replied, nudging his shoulder with your forehead. “How did you find out all of this?”

“Well, I read the whole Nookipedia website and that gave me a pretty good idea.” He turned to you and grinned. Of course, the genius had become the master of your favourite game in a matter of hours. “You can test me on any of the villagers’ names and personality types.”

You looked down and saw piles of notepaper, all scribbled on, splayed out across the bed. You picked one up entitled ‘terraforming.’ Instead of trying to decipher Spencer’s handwriting, you decided to ask him about it. “Spence… what’s all this paper? What are these drawings?” You tilted your head and the paper simultaneously to try and get a better understanding of his scribbles.

“Oh! I’ve been looking into reshaping your island. I came up with a few designs I thought you might like. My personal favourite is the honeybee, cos I know they are your favourite, so I calculated how we can use the terraforming tool to turn your island into a bee. Garcia would be so jealous and…” he trailed off.

“What’s the matter?”

He looked back at you with big puppy dog eyes. He chewed on his bottom lip a little before he spoke. “I’ve gone too far, haven’t I? This was your game, your private space, I never meant to take over. You really have done a great job…”

All you could do was laugh. You leaned over and planted a reassuring kiss on his cheek. “Honestly? I’m really happy that you’re into this now. It means I can talk to you about it. Just you wait until you see Garcia’s island!”

“Really, you’re not mad at me?”

“It would be impossible to be mad at you, Spence. Maybe we’ll set up your own character now.”

And with that, you kissed him again, nuzzling into the comfort of his arm. “Show me what else you’ve been doing…”

#spencer reid #spencer reid fic #spencer reid imagines #spencer reid x reader #spencer x y/n #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #animal crossing.

367 notes · View notes

i-am-a-bad-influence-writes · 3 years

Text

Hayloft - Part 2

Series Masterlist - Bucky Masterlist - Full Masterlist

Summary: A young girl finds a soldier hiding in the hayloft on her father’s farm. Intrigued, she visits him more and more until her father finds out and puts him to work. As they grow closer, something else grows too.

Pairing: James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes x OC Jenny Richelle “Ricky” Hill

Warning: Strong language, inaccurate war description

Author’s note: Based on the song Hayloft by Mother Mother and the lovestory of my grandparents. I am Dutch and the war was a bit different here, so I will be basing this on the stories I’ve heard about my grandparents.

Word count: 2433

‘What are you reading Jenny?‘ ‘What’s it to you James?‘ ‘Just curious, that’s all.‘ He watches as a smile starts tugging on the corners of her lips. She tries to surppres it, but the sparkle in her eyes is clear as day. ‘Of sons and lovers,‘ she hums, showing him the front, ‘do you know it?‘ ‘Heard of it, haven’t had the chance to read it,‘ he answers, ‘will you read it to me?‘

From that moment on, she’d read to him every Friday and Sunday. Sometimes on Wednesdays if he’d look at her nicely. Though Jenny’s father would rather have her spend time with other lads who are a little more wealthy, he didn’t mind for the time being. After all, the two seemed to be great friends. Meanwhile, Jenny was falling hard and fast. She hadn’t known this feeling before. The butterflies in her stomach when he’d wink at her, the racing of her heart when he’d touch her skin, the way she got light headed when he’d tease her. She could deal with Michelle, the pictures, and the fear of being caught if she knew she could come home to James. The pictures on the cork board at her work kept changing. Eventually, Timothy’s picture disappeared as he lived a town over and couldn’t possibly still be here. James and Johnny’s pictures were moved up to make them more prominent, but with their messy stubble, weathered faces, and much longer locks they were barely recognizable from them. Jenny continuously send secret letters to James and Johnny’s relatives and friends under her own name. When anyone asked about it, she just said she was catching up with pen pals. Then one day a strange letter arrived. Jenny hadn’t seen the handwriting before. As usual, she gathered the men in the living room to read them their letters and burn them right after. They weren’t allowed to keep them in fear they would be found if they were searched. And so she got to the strange letter. It read.

“Dear Jenny,

Thank you for your wonderful letter. I am grateful to hear you are safe and sound. It has been a while. Please say hi to him for me and tell me that I miss him. Tell him I’m not angry anymore and I understand why he left us when he did. There’s no shame in it, I just wish I could visit to see his face again. Tell him I got into the army. It’s not the position I wanted, but I get to represent my country. Please don’t laugh at me when you see my face.

I hope to hear from you soon,

Yours sincerely,

Steve Rogers“

‘Who is Steve Rogers,‘ Jenny asks James, but when she looks up from the letter she can see the tears in his eyes. ‘Are you okay James?‘ ‘He’s my best friend,‘ James sniffles with a smile, ‘I used to be better at everything, but now he’s finally outdone me.‘ He looks proud and nostalgic as he swallows his tears away. ‘You know, I haven’t heard people call me James in such a long time because he always used to call me Bucky.‘ ‘That’s a nice nickname,‘ Jenny smiles and takes a seat next to him on the couch while the others leave, having thrown their letters in the fire. She hands James his. He laughs when he reads it again. ‘He probably spend hours on this,‘ he chuckles, ‘he never knew how to use his words. I always had to help him find friends or a date. Last time I saw him we went to a fair and I was supposed to leave for the war the next day. He wanted to fight so bad, but he’s build like a toothpick and there’s no way they’re letting someone like that in.‘ Jenny hands him a piece of paper. ‘I wrote down the return address for you, might you ever want to write him again,‘ she tells him. James looks at her in disbelieve. ‘You are a goddamn angel,‘ he smiles and throws his arms around her, engulfing her in a tight hug, ‘you are the best thing that could’ve happened to me.‘ She laughs and pushes him off a little. ‘You’re crushing me,‘ she chuckles when he lets go of her. Alpine wanders into the living room and jumps onto James’ lap. Jenny scratches her behind her ear with a smile while James admired her. ‘I like Bucky. It’s a nice nickname. Fits you way better than James.‘ ‘How come?‘ ‘James is way too smooth,‘ she eyebrows knit together a little while she tries to explain it, ‘it’s what most of those soldiers walking around town look like. Bucky is a bit more rugged and strong. It’s a handsome name.‘ He watches her face change to a bit of mischief. ‘You’re going to be the death of me,‘ he chuckles. ‘I thought I was an angel,‘ she bats her eyes innocently, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. ‘Don’t forget to burn that letter. I’m going to help mother out with dinner.‘ And she’s gone while James feels his cheeks heat up. Alpine looks up at him with a judgmental look. ‘Don’t say it, I know,‘ he sighs, talking to the cat, ‘this isn’t going to end well.‘

‘Good morning gents,‘ Jenny chirps, opening the door to the shed to bring their breakfast, ‘I got some jam for you today.‘ Johnny almost jumps out of his bed. ‘Good morning Jenny, how does it feel to be old,‘ he teases her, poking at her side. ‘Ah, stop it,‘ she laughs at the tickling, ‘I’m not old. Call James old!‘ ‘I’m 23, not a fossil,‘ he chuckles in a rough morning voice. ‘Is it your birthday,‘ Timothy asks, peeking from under his covers. ‘Yeah, I’m 22 today,‘ she smiles, pushing Johnny’s face away, ‘so my father bought jam from the neighbors and my mom is making a cake.‘ ‘Cake,‘ James asks in disbelieve. It had been ages since he had eaten cake. Most people don’t have money to acquire the ingredients. ‘Don’t expect too much from it,‘ she smiles, ‘it’s just custard and rusk.‘ ‘Honestly, that’s better than I expected,‘ he smiles, ‘I’ve heard people make fig cakes these days.‘ ‘Oh, I’ve heard of those,‘ Johnny laughs, ‘heard they’re hard enough to bash someone’s head in.‘ James watches Jenny’s smile a she talks to Johnny before her shift. She looks so good in her navy, knee-length skirt; navy, fitted waistcoat; and ivory blouse. As for today she’s holding a jacket in the same navy color over her arm. The nights had become colder and longer. Winter is coming and they all know it. The shed will be a lot colder in the following months. ‘I’ll be back earlier today, I only have a half shift,‘ Jenny tells them with a smile, ‘enjoy the jam.‘ ‘Thank you.‘

Though the days might be colder as winter approaches, the work has gotten harder. It’s harvest time and the boys are busy beyond compare. They work until they’re covered in sweat and only stop when misses Hill comes outside to give them water. The two younger boys in the family help them with some smaller tasks while Penny, the other daughter, sits by the tree behind the farmhouse and knits. Around twelve, misses Hill comes outside with lunch and sets it down by Penny. They boys sit in a circle with her while she continues to knit. James watches what she’s doing and notices the small mountain of knitted materials next to her. ‘Say Penny, what are you making?‘ She looks up from her work. ‘Oh, mother told me to knit some sweaters because the weather is getting colder,‘ she tells him, ‘mother normally does it, but she’s busy sewing jackets.‘ ‘Sewing jackets?‘ ‘Yeah, you don’t think we’re going to let you guys freeze to death do you,‘ she grins and hands him one of the sweaters to show him, ‘you should be happy Jenny has a job. She’s terrible at knitting and sewing.‘ James takes a look at the sweater. They’re just simple, white sweaters. Probably made from the wool of the sheep that stand in the stables. ‘We’re going to dye them once they’re done so you all have your own,‘ she hums, continuing with her work. ‘How wil you dye them? Isn’t that terribly expensive these days,‘ Timothy asks her a bit concerned. ‘It’s fine. We’re going to use wild berries and some other things like coffee grounds,‘ she explains to him, ‘we’re not exactly short on money, but it’s good to be creative in these times.‘ ‘How’d you guys end up hiding stowaways,‘ James ask, taking a big bite out of his sandwich. ‘Well, Johnny was here with Jenny when we heard soldiers were going to check every house for young gents who didn’t join the army,‘ she says, giving Johnny a small smile, ‘so we made him hide in the crawl space under the house until things calmed down, but it turns out they weren’t going to check us because we need the help on the farm so the men that were here would be safe. Besides, they already took our brother away.‘ She doesn’t look far as sad as Jenny does when talking about him. ‘So who wants what color? I’ll be able to make brown, blue, and red.‘ ‘I’d like brown,‘ Timothy mumbles. ‘I’ll take blue,‘ Johnny grins. ‘I guess that leaves red for me,‘ James smiles at her, eating the last few bites of his sandwich before getting up again. ‘Let’s get back to work.‘ Johnny sighs loudly. ‘No fun that one,‘ he jokes to Penny. They hear something on the gravel and Wesley and Nathan jump up. The group sees Jenny stepping off her bike and putting it against the fence like she does every day. James looks at her like the world just got a little brighter. The sunshine in his life returned and seems to just look at him. ‘Ah, did I miss lunch,‘ she laughs as her brothers pull her towards the group, ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here earlier.‘ She presses a kiss to everyone’s cheek, but stops for a second after kissing James’ cheek and smiles. She starts rubbing his cheek with her thumb and he can only think of what her lipstick stain on his cheek might look like. ‘It’s fine,‘ he grumbles, ‘how was your day?‘ Without realizing it, he puts an arm around her waist while she keeps scrubbing at his cheek. ‘Gosh, terrible,‘ she grins, ‘they took half the pictures off the cork-board. It’s horrific to see them take them off and see the poor lads being dragged down the street. Don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.‘ She looks satisfied at his cheek and takes a step back, realizing they all have stains on their cheeks. ‘You guys should wash up.‘ ‘Why don’t we get the same treatment as James,‘ Johnny whines. She steps over to him, grabs his jaw, and violently scrubs his face. ‘Wait, no, I surrender. Stop!‘ The group laughs for a second. ‘Oi, back to work lads,‘ mister Hill calls as he steps out of the house.

After dinner it’s time for the improvised cake. Jenny turns an, to James adorable, shade of red when they start singing Happy Birthday to her. She looks with bright eyes at the candles on top of the cake and closes her eyes with her hands folded together before blowing them out. James can’t take his eyes off of her. Misses Hill divides the cake evenly between the nine of them and everyone is quiet at the sweet taste. ‘It’s great mom,‘ Jenny smiles at her mother, ‘perfect birthday.‘ Misses Hill walks over to her daughter and hands her a small, wrapped package. ‘Your grandmother send this over.‘ Jenny’s eyes shine as she opens the package. Everyone looks curiously at the small box as she opens it. Inside is a dainty, golden necklace with a golden coin on it. Jenny flips it over to see the back of it and smiles. ‘She got it engraved,‘ she smiles, tears of joy poking her eyes as she shows her mother. ‘That’s wonderful sweetheart,‘ her mother answers, ‘shall I put it on for you?‘ Jenny nods and hands the necklace to her mother who helps her put it on while she holds up her hair. The whole scene looks enchanting to James. In fact, it looks enchanting to all of them. She lets her hair fall down and shows her sister the coin. ‘Look, its an angel riding a Pegasus,‘ she smiles. Penny gives it a small glance and shrugs. It’s not special to her, but it means the world to Jenny.

The dinner comes to an end and James and Jenny end up reading on the couch as they often do these days. Alpine is curled up between them and comfortably purrs as both James and Jenny pet her gently. But is James actually reading? He seems to be awing at Jenny’s foccussed face. Heart shaped eyes almost pop out of his skull. ‘Stop looking at me,‘ Jenny whispers at him. He closes his book and pretends to be offended. ‘I was not looking at you.‘ ‘Oh please, you’re a terrible liar,‘ Jenny says as she puts her book down as well. ‘Do you want to go look at the stars from the hayloft?‘ She sighs and puts her book on the coffee table. ‘Fine, but bring a blanket this time. I found hay everywhere last time,‘ she sighs. Alpine follows as the two make their way to the hayloft and open the small window to look outside at she night sky while laying on the hay. James puts the blanket over the hay and arranges it so they can sit comfortably. He sits down first and takes her hand to pull her onto his chest. She turns a bright shade of red when she lands and looks up at his face. ‘You’re adorable,‘ he smiles, feeling tingles going through his whole body. ‘S-stop that,‘ she mumbles, trying to push herself away but his arm has her captured. ‘Hey, where’d my confident Jenny go,‘ he teases. ‘Oh go fuck yourself,‘ she grins. ‘Gladly, through I’d rather fuck you.‘ She stares with wide eyes into his as a smug smirk plays on his lips. ‘Fuck it,‘ she mumbles and straddles him, dipping down to connect his lips with hers. ‘My dad is going to shoot you.‘ ‘Angel, that only makes it more exciting.‘

#bucky #bucky fanfic #bucky fic #bucky x oc #marvel fanfic #marvel fanfiction #marvel

4 notes · View notes

artificialqueens · 4 years

Text

If You Ever Wanna Be in Love (I'll Come Around), Chapter Seven (Branjie) - Athena2

Previously: Vanessa’s plan to kiss Brooke didn’t work out as Brooke pulled away from her Now: Brooke and Vanessa both struggle without each other as they grapple with their feelings

A/N: Really sorry about the ending last chapter! There’s a little more angst in this one, and then that’s it, I promise! I really hope you enjoy, and I’d appreciate any more feedback you have! The comments you’ve left are so amazing. Thank you so so much to Writ for betaing and helping with this one!

Brooke doesn’t get out of bed for the rest of the weekend. She sleeps and wakes and regrets, rolls over and does it all again, with breaks in between to stare at the picture from the carnival, wondering if she should delete it, try to erase the last few months from her mind. She has no idea what time or even what day it is, until her almost-dead phone buzzes with a text from Nina.

Nina: Are we still doing breakfast today?

Shit. It must be Sunday, then.

There’s no way Brooke can get up and have breakfast and pretend nothing is wrong. She just wants to stay burrowed into this pillow, wrap herself in sheets of sorrow and regret.

Brooke: Sorry, don’t think I can. Not feeling great.

Nina: You’re sick?

Nina: You never get sick.

Nina: Want me to come check on you? I can bring soup.

Brooke winces. Nina is always so nice, nicer than Brooke deserves. If Brooke tells her what happened, Nina will be too nice, will comfort her and offer advice, and Brooke just can’t bear all that sympathy heaped on her today.

Brooke: I’m fine, don’t worry about coming over. Just tired. Need to sleep.

She can picture Nina arguing with herself over insisting on taking care of Brooke, nursing her back to health, or leaving her to sleep.

Nina: Let me know if you need anything. Get some rest.

She loses the phone in the bed somewhere and closes her eyes again. But all she can see is the pain on Vanessa’s face as Brooke backed away from her. That was the only option, though. Brooke is sure of it.

Obviously Vanessa sees her as more than a friend. It makes Brooke’s heart race, but they’re just friends. Just friends, and it wasn’t right to kiss her back, lead her on like that. The kiss could’ve turned into something more, could’ve become a relationship, and Brooke’s not ready for that. She can’t lead Vanessa into a relationship she’s unsure of, because that’s not fair to her. It was too much, too fast, and Brooke couldn’t do that to Vanessa. But she knows it hurt Vanessa, and it’s making her own chest hurt, hurt so much she can’t even move.

Why does it hurt so much if that was the right thing to do?

Why did trying to protect Vanessa’s heart crush her own?

She can’t text Vanessa and try to fix things after such a big fuck-up, and she knows Vanessa won’t text her. Why would she, after Brooke hurt her like that? It’s over now. All of it. She’ll never watch Vanessa try on ugly thrift store sweater vests. They won’t laugh over coffee again. All the talking they’ve done, sharing things Brooke hasn’t told anyone, Vanessa understanding her like no one else–it was all for nothing, and it’s all over now.

Brooke rolls over again, but she doesn’t sleep.

—

Vanessa spends her weekend equally punching her pillow and crying into it.

A’keria plays mother hen for a while, bringing her tea and toast and talking to distract her. On Sunday morning Vanessa croaks out that she wants to be alone, and A’keria’s footsteps go away and don’t come back, and Vanessa feels worse than she did with A’keria hovering and trying to help. She hates being alone, but she doesn’t want to call A’keria back. And she better get used to being alone.

She’s out of tissues and her eyes are out of tears, breaths no longer hiccupy. She wishes her mom was here, but she’s visiting Vanessa’s brother. Vanessa needs her to come back so she can cry into her mom’s shoulder while her mom strokes her hair.

She rolls over and there’s the ring on her bedside table, mocking her. She should have never bought it in the first place. This mess never would have happened if she just left it at the thrift store where it belonged, let it ruin someone else’s life. She reaches over with a grunt and blindly hurls the ring out into the hallway, relishing in the ping of it against the wall.

She turns to her dresser, but there’s the Mary Oliver book Brooke gave her, the neatly-written note thanking her still tucked inside. Vanessa would throw that too, but she doesn’t want to get up, and she can’t throw a book. Not when she spends so many hours reading and re-shelving them.

This hurts worse than any break-up, and it’s not even a real break-up. This whole thing was supposed to fake. But Vanessa had to go fall in love with Brooke, who saw things as fake, like they were supposed to be. Life isn’t some rom-com where everyone lives happily ever after. This is her real life, her real heart that will never meet anyone who makes it stir like Brooke did.

It’s her own fault. She always falls too hard, too fast, can’t stop it. She should have waited instead of just throwing herself at Brooke on top of a mountain, but her heart wouldn’t listen, couldn’t be content with just being Brooke’s friend. She wanted to be in a relationship with Brooke so bad it ruined their friendship. Her heart had to be greedy, had to go for that kiss. It’s not the first time the damn thing’s gotten her in trouble.

It was her heart that got itchy poison ivy all over her legs when she was seven and trying to help an injured bird in the woods, that whole summer scented with calamine lotion. It was her heart that led her to blurt out Jessica’s name when asked who her crush was in middle school Truth or Dare, brushing it off as a joke and saying some popular boy’s name seconds after everyone stared at her. Her heart always leaps out of her chest and latches onto someone too quickly to stop it, too quickly to protect herself.

It would be easier if she had no heart, maybe. There wouldn’t be any pain where she thinks of Brooke’s laugh, or that time she made Brooke run in the grocery store with her and push her on the cart. No pain when she thinks of Brooke’s terrified eyes on the mountain, like Vanessa’s almost-kiss had ripped the ground from under her and left her falling all alone. She can’t claw the pain out, but she can dull it, so she shoves a pillow over her head and tries to sleep.

But all she does is dream of Brooke.

—-

Brooke supposes general misery isn’t a good excuse for missing work, and with the exhibit this Saturday, she really can’t take a day off anyway. Besides, it beats staying home with her thoughts and weekday marathons of some show about librarians that reminds her of Vanessa.

Usually when she comes to work, strolling past that stegosaurus fossil and plopping in her desk chair, her brain is fully alive. She reads through reports and analyzes possible collection additions and doesn’t even realize it’s lunch time until her stomach growls.

But the past few days, her mind stalls when she tries to focus, her whole body sluggish. It’s not like her to struggle like this. The clock stands still, and she reads the same email four times and still doesn’t grasp a word of it. There are five new ones in its place when she finishes like an email hydra, plus three unanswered voicemails and a sticky note reminding her to call and confirm the cake for the exhibit. Brooke pushes her chair back and sighs.

Everything is just too much right now, like trying to stay afloat in a whirlpool. How can she possibly get something as important as this exhibit together when she couldn’t even keep a friendship—one of the best she’s had—intact?

The office she loves so much, her home away from home, is suffocating her today. She needs to get out of here, needs air.

Maybe coffee will perk her up a little. She heads to a different cafe, not the one she’s been to with Vanessa. She opens the door just as Vanessa is stepping out. She must have had the same idea, to come to a neutral place without memories, a place where they didn’t make their agreement and split a giant cupcake once.

Brooke burns with guilt. It’s only been a few days since they haven’t seen each other, but it might have been years for how Brooke’s heart races. Vanessa’s not doing well, Brooke can tell. Her hair is in a messy ponytail, eyes cloaked with dark circles, her pink lipstick missing. It hits Brooke right in her heart. She hates seeing Vanessa upset, and it’s her fault Vanessa is hurting like this. Maybe it’s fate that brought them here. Maybe she can make it right.

Brooke’s throat is drier than a desert. “Vanessa,” she tries.

Vanessa shakes her head and steps around Brooke, quickly gone down the street.

Gone. Again.

Brooke’s fault. Again.

It’s really over, just like that. Vanessa won’t talk to her, can barely look at her. Brooke really has lost her. Not just their friendship, but Vanessa herself. She’s lost Vanessa’s deep, booming laugh. Lost her stories, lost her comfort that never made Brooke feel alone. Lost Vanessa’s hugs, the way she’d rest her face against Brooke’s chest.

Does it hurt this much because Vanessa is more than a friend to her?

Does Brooke love–

Brooke can’t be here anymore. She gets back to the museum and takes the afternoon off before running to her car and just driving, nowhere and anywhere. To a place that isn’t here.

Without meaning to, she finds herself at her mom’s. Her mom answers the door and Brooke is crying before she gets any words out. She’s shaking, and she lets her mom take her inside and rest her on the couch before sobbing into her shoulder. It’s been a while since she all-out sobbed like this. Brooke tries to remember how long it’s been. There was the stupid eighth grade dance she’d been forced into attending, ending with Brooke crying in the bathroom because one popular boy kissed a popular girl and she didn’t understand why she was so jealous of him for kissing her. Before that was when she came in second in the fifth grade spelling bee (she still has a grudge against rhinoceroses) and cried so much her mom took her for ice cream to cheer her up. By the time high school started, she was sick of her sister calling her a crybaby, and she vowed not to cry as much.

Her mom holds her, and Brooke knows she doesn’t deserve the comfort but takes it all the same, knows she’s safe in her mom’s arms. “Brooke, what’s wrong?”

“I lost her,” Brooke wheezes into her mom’s shirt.

“Lost who? Vanessa?” Her mom asks. “Did you break up?”

“We were never together,” Brooke wails, breaths shaky. She should be relieved to tell the truth, for all the time she spent stressing over her and Vanessa passing as a couple, wondering how she’d tell her parents they broke up. Instead, it just solidifies that not only is what she had with Vanessa over, but that it was never real in the first place. Can she really lose Vanessa if they were never together?

Her mom pulls away then, and Brooke looks into her confused eyes. “What do you mean?”

Brooke wipes her raw eyes and takes a deep breath, tries to keep her voice from cracking. “Vanessa got caught in this lie at work and needed someone to pretend to be her wife. So I did it, and then she wanted to return the favor, so I asked if she would pretend to be my girlfriend when I brought her here. It was only supposed to be one dinner, but you really liked her and we had to come back.”

“Brooke–”

“You always say you’re worried about me being alone,” Brooke sniffs. “I just didn’t want you to worry anymore.”

Her mom pulls her into a hug, gently rubbing her back, and it’s like Brooke is five again, with her mom sitting in the rickety old rocking chair she still has, rubbing Brooke’s back to soothe her into sleep after she woke sweating and crying from a nightmare, sheets twisted around her as she tried to run from darkness and monsters all by herself.

“Brooke,” her mom starts gently, “I always worry about you. I’m your mom. But I just want you to be happy. I don’t want you to think being alone is your only option because you’re so used to it. You don’t need another person to be happy. But if someone makes you happy, why not be with them?”

It makes sense, but Brooke shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter now. I ruined everything.”

“What happened? Why is it ruined?” Her mom asks gently.

“It was fake the whole time. It was supposed to be, anyway. But we started spending a lot of time together and we became good friends. Except Vanessa tried to kiss me, and I panicked. Told her it was too fast and I couldn’t do it. I mean…we’re just friends. I don’t know if I love her that way, so it wouldn’t have been fair to kiss her. Now we’re nothing. Not even friends.”

“Well, do you know how you feel now? Do you love her?”

“I don’t know,” Brooke insists. It’s the truth, and the uncertainty swirls around in her chest. Brooke doesn’t know if her feelings have changed in a week, doesn’t know if the love she has for Vanessa as a friend is the same love a girlfriend would deserve. How does anyone know for sure they’re in love? Why can’t a giant sign drop out of the sky and tell Brooke if she’s in love or not?

“I think you do know.”

Brooke shrugs helplessly, turning away from her mother’s knowing expression. Because deep down she does know. She can’t pinpoint the exact moment that things changed—it’s more so a bunch of tiny moments, moments that seemed small but that she knows are much bigger. The way Vanessa always listens when she talks, always understands. How she made Brooke laugh so hard she spit out coffee once. That time Vanessa brought her cookies that she tried to shape into dinosaurs, even if they looked more like horses. How she stopped at the grocery store with Vanessa once and Vanessa caused an avalanche of goldfish crackers that she’d insisted on getting from the top shelf on her own, grumbling that the store purposely put the good stuff on top. The babysitting and dinners and time together just added to those feelings, feelings Brooke hasn’t fully accepted or understood until now. How happy and warm she is around Vanessa aren’t just friendship.

She loves Vanessa.

She loves Vanessa, and it took losing her to see that. Now it’s too late, and it brings a fresh wave of tears, her lip quivering.

“Even if I do, it doesn’t matter. I blew it, and it’s over. End of story.”

“I don’t think so. Sometimes you mess up, Brooke, but sometimes you can go back and fix it. If you really do love her, and she really loves you, I think you can work it out.”

Brooke shrugs again. She wants to believe that, but doesn’t know if she can. “But…it’s scary. To love someone. To be in a relationship.” She hugs her knees to her chest, still a little kid. This would be the first real relationship she’s had in a year, and she doesn’t know if she’s ready for the changes it would bring.

“Maybe it is. But it doesn’t have to be.”

It’s so similar to what Vanessa said about love not being a chore with the right person that Brooke wonders if it’s a sign. She nods.

Her mother smiles at her. “Brooke, of the girls you’ve brought home, I’ve never seen you happier than you are with Vanessa. You were so natural together. There’s something there, and I think you can fix it.”

But what does it mean if she does fix it, tell Vanessa the truth? A relationship? She can imagine their future together in theory, cooking together and cuddling during movies, or going to the zoo to see the new red pandas, but can she take the steps to get there?

Most of what they have is already a relationship, Brooke thinks. She remembers the arm Vanessa threw around her their first time as fake wives, her way of making it look like a real relationship. But relationships aren’t just physical, aren’t just touching or kissing. It’s the way they had cooked together, letting their bodies flow around each other. The way they talked for hours, any self-consciousness fading away. How Brooke sees something funny or something that makes her happy and instantly thinks of Vanessa, wanting to share it with her.

I don’t want you to think being alone is your only option because you’re so used to it, her mom had said.

Brooke is used to it. She’s been independent most of her life, doing things she wanted herself. She likes being able to roll over and hog the blankets. She likes buying a box of cookies and knowing they’ll all still be there the next day, no sneaky fingers stealing them. She likes watching whatever she wants, no one there to judge her when Pride and Prejudice starts for the hundredth time.

But on the other side of that…someone to keep you warm, a reason you didn’t need the whole blanket. Someone to grocery shop with, worth sharing cookies with. Someone to watch a movie with, cuddling on the couch with popcorn.

She’s been alone so long that it’s scary to open herself up, put herself out there. But if she really does love Vanessa, why deny herself that happiness out of fear?

If she was going to have a relationship with anyone, it would be Vanessa.

Brooke stands up, steadies her uneven breathing, and wipes every last tear.

“I love Vanessa,” she says. It’s the first time it’s left her mouth and it feels so right. Like Brooke’s lips have just been waiting to say those words.

Her mom smiles.

“And I’m gonna get her back,” Brooke vows.

—

Vanessa is shaking when she gets back from her lunch break. What are the freaking odds that she’d have to run into Brooke? Just her luck, apparently.

All week, she’s managed, but not much beyond that. She’s shelved books and cut out construction paper lightsabers and just kept breathing, got through a minute at a time. If she really focused, she could go a few minutes without thinking of Brooke, and it was a damn victory.

But now Vanessa had to see her today. Brooke looked exhausted, like she’s barely slept this week, and Vanessa doesn’t want to be mean, but she’s almost glad. If her heart has been shredded this week, Brooke can suffer too.

“V.” A’keria coaxes Vanessa into the office, handing her a tissue and not reacting to Vanessa’s confused stare. Vanessa doesn’t know why A’keria is giving it to her, why she thinks Vanessa needs it, until…

Bringing a hand to her face, she feels the dampness on her cheeks and sucks in a ragged breath.

“I’m fine,” she insists.

A’keria stares at her pointedly, saying nothing, and Vanessa’s resolve crumbles.

“I’m not fine.” she grumbles, sitting lower in the chair and letting A’keria pat her shoulder. “I just…I loved her. And she doesn’t love me back.”

“Do you think if you’re this upset that maybe it means you should try to work things out with her?” A’keria asks quietly.

Vanessa shakes her head. “You weren’t there when I tried to kiss her. She was totally freaked out. There’s no way she wants me after that.”

“But maybe a freak out was all it was. Maybe she just panicked and needed time to think.”

“She needed time to think of whether she loves me or not?” Vanessa snaps. “Shouldn’t that just be something you know?”

A’keria shrugs. “Well, you didn’t know you were in love right away, either.”

Vanessa sighs. Damn A’keria turning into the voice of reason all of a sudden. But she can’t. She can’t take the chance of her heart being blown apart again, of putting herself through the pain of Brooke refusing her again. Vanessa can hardly look at her without her heart tearing and eyes watering.

She gets up. “Look, I’m gonna go work. I don’t want to think about this anymore.”

A’keria nods, and Vanessa marches out to the desk and starts to clean out her emails. She’s fine. She’s focused and she’s fine. Until she sees a tiny head hovering near the desk.

“Miss Vanessa, do you know what dinosaur this is?” The kid holds up a coloring sheet for her to see.

Why, of all the coloring sheets the library has–elephants and giraffes and superheroes and every singing creature Disney has to offer–did this kid have to pick a dinosaur? The universe really hates her today.

She looks down at the coloring, neat for a kid, and gasps. She knows the name, doesn’t even have to Google it, all because of Brooke. She barely chokes out that it’s a spinosaurus before she runs back in the break room and cries.

—

“You’re really not gonna go?” A’keria asks.

Vanessa shakes her head. The T-Rex exhibit opening is an hour away, and though just weeks ago she and Brooke had a fashion show to pick their outfits, she’s not moving off this couch tonight.

She should go, she knows it. Brooke has worked so hard, was so excited about it and how important it is for the museum. She should go, out of respect for Brooke and all her hard work, to hear her voice rise a few octaves the way it does when she’s excited.

But if she goes, she’ll see Brooke. And if she sees Brooke, she’ll want Brooke. And if she wants Brooke when she can’t have her, it will only rip the wound open again, just when she finally stemmed the bleeding. The dull ache in her chest will become a stabbing pain like it was on the mountain, and Vanessa doesn’t know if she’ll manage this time. She can’t go, can’t see Brooke in her purple dress, eyes shining with passion. It’s easier to stay away, try to forget that face. A clean break to get over Brooke. That’s the best thing Vanessa can do.

She flicks through channels and swears after coming across Jurassic Park three separate times. Are there no other 90’s franchises TV stations can air on a Saturday night? She finds some cooking show, and that’ll do. Nothing romantic about it.

She hasn’t touched her dating apps since she started this thing with Brooke, not wanting to be seen by a co-worker when she’s ‘married’. But now she can, and maybe this will help. Flooding her brain with people who aren’t Brooke. She can find someone else, prove she doesn’t need Brooke. The very first person she sees is a pretty redhead named Kameron. But as Vanessa looks closer, her cheekbones are a little too like Brooke’s. So is her smile, and maybe even her nose–Vanessa closes the app and hurls her phone into a couch cushion. What kind of bullshit is this? She can’t escape Brooke, no matter how much she tries. She just hopes the universe is haunting Brooke like this too. If this was a rom-com, it would be some sign that they’re meant to be together. But Vanessa is sick of stupid rom-coms. There’s no fated romance here, no ma’am.

Her phone suddenly buzzes, and buzzes again, meaning it’s a call. Vanessa peeks at the screen. Speak of the devil.

What could Brooke be calling her for? The exhibit opening is in an hour, and knowing Brooke, she’s probably already at the museum, double-checking the seats and refreshments, reviewing her speech like she doesn’t have it memorized. If she can picture what Brooke is doing, she knows she’s not over her, but Vanessa doesn’t care.

She watches the phone ring and ring, wondering what will happen if she picks up. Will Brooke apologize on the other end? Will Vanessa believe her, fall deeper in love with her, will they start anew? Or will Vanessa reject her apologies and move on the way she should, keep trying to forget Brooke?

Or she could just not answer. Avoid either possibility and not give Brooke a voice at all.

The phone gives one last ring.

Vanessa doesn’t answer.

#rpdr fanfiction #brooke lynn hytes #vanessa vanjie mateo #akeria davenport #branjie #lesbian au #fake dating au #if you ever wanna be in love #athena2 #concrit welcome #submission #s11

6 notes · View notes

nelvana · 4 years

Text

In which the territory of others is crossed

First [ARC 1]: In which the human is transformed First [ARC 2]: In which a present is prepared Next: In which the dungeon with fossil foes is explored Previous: In which there are dreams and discussions

The following morning greeted everyone suddenly. Typically, they rested for the nights in forests, or somewhere with cover, and even when they had gone out to Magma Cavern, they had been tired enough to sleep through the early morning. Now though, them being out where it was more open forced the sun to their eyes from the beginning of the sunrise. There were only a couple that slept in very long, but otherwise everyone was up right at dawn. They handled breakfast for the morning, and then began heading out towards Brine Cave.

While they still lacked a proper map for the Grass Continent, the memory of those who had been here in the dead timeline was enough to server as their directions to the dungeon. The four of them took the lead, including Nelvana, who Alex would talk to enthusiastically about their previous experiences in this location that she could not remember, in hopes of prompting some sort of memory. He wasn’t successful, but she enjoyed the conversation nevertheless.

“My only worry now is that we don’t have that relic fragment thingy. Do you think the Rainbow Stoneship will be functional?” Ceebee pointed out, interrupting the other two’s conversation.

“It should be,” Dusknoir spoke up, and then coughed. “The Rainbow Stoneship was only damaged from the meteor, as was the Temporal Tower. We should have complete access to it now.”

“The Rainbow Stoneship… would that have been our first time actually seeing bright colors?” Nelvana murmured, “it was still rainbow, right?”

Alex, who previously had turned to Dusknoir with a frown, grinned as he spun back to look at his partner, eyes lighting up.

“Yes, yes it was!” he answered.

“I bet that looks really pretty, must have been especially pretty then, for your first time,” Keahi chimed in, stepping closer up front. “Hey, you guys haven’t seen a rainbow out here yet, haven’t you? Hopefully we’ll see one soon, they’re always really nice to see!”

“Oh, yeah, an actual rainbow would be nice,” Nelvana agreed, “I’m just excited to see the Rainbow Stoneship for now in the meantime. I have an idea of what it looks like, but it will be nice to see it for myself again.”

“Natural rainbows usually only show up when it’s raining but also sunny,” Damien pointed out, “considering the season, we’re only going to have a few more chances for that.”

“There are ways to manipulate water to make your own rainbows!” Keahi countered, “we could see about using the waterfall from Whiscash’s pond if we wanted to do that.”

Damien blinked, glancing upwards as he thought back, but then nodded in agreement to Keahi’s idea.

“Hey, you know…” he mumbled instead, “for the ‘Grass Continent’, there sure is a lack of grass out here-“

“Everyone stop!” Tsuki suddenly yelled.

Freezing in place, the rest of the group stiffened and stopped walking at the command, as Tsuki leapt over to the front of the group. She bent her head down, sniffing the ground and taking careful steps back and forth.

“This is the territory of absols,” she said, her voice sounding far away as she lifted her head.

“It is?” Keahi questioned.

Alex paused to sniff the air, and then nodded, “it is. Good catch there, Tsuki, we wouldn’t want to be trespassing on someone else’s territory… I guess there were absols here before the time collapse.”

“Wow, more absols? That’ll be cool, right? Tsuki, you said that you haven’t seen any other absols before,” Edgar chimed in, floating ahead to join Tsuki at the front.

“Are absols typically territorial?” Dusknoir asked, glancing around the area, which had become rockier and slightly more mountainous as they had gotten closer towards Brine Cave.

Tsuki didn’t answer, only continuing to look out into the distance. After a pause, Damien stepped up instead.

“I… From what I remember, they can be sometimes, if they have something to protect,” he said.

Dusknoir glanced back at the gengar, appearing mildly surprised that he was the one that was able to answer, but accepted this and turned back to face ahead.

“Should we wait for some sort of border patrol then? If this territory is marked, there should be someone to check the borders, right?” Nelvana asked, crouching down to the ground as well. “This doesn’t really smell that recent…”

Alex sighed, “well, I’d hate to be trespassing, but we can’t wait here all day… who knows when someone will be back here to check the borders. Best to ask forgiveness then permission in this case.”

Tsuki’s fur bristled, but then she slowly nodded, “that would certainly be impolite, but these are dire circumstances; they should understand.”

“Could we go around?” Damien offered.

“We don’t know how far the borders stretch out,” Ceebee pointed out, “we could get sidetracked and end up wasting more time; we’d be better off waiting for some sort of border patrol in that case.”

“If everyone agrees then, we should keep going,” Nelvana said, “keep your eyes out though, if we see anyone, we should try talking to them.”

“Like how you called out to Tsuki when we saw her for the first time!” Keahi added.

With that decided, the group proceeded forward. Tsuki continued to hold the lead of the group even after this; everyone silently agreeing that in the case of running into another absol, that it would be best for her to be seen first for diplomacy. For the first five tense minutes, they still didn’t run into signs of any other pokemon. Then…

“Stop!”

Following the booming voice came an absol leaping out from behind the rocks to stand in front of the group. Their fur, while still with a blue hue, was greyer than Tsuki’s. As well, they towered over Team Galaxy’s absol by over a foot, and their build was larger as well. Despite this, Tsuki held her head high and locked eyes with the other absol.

“I am Daichi of the tall cliffs! Who are you, and why are you here?” the absol questioned.

“I am Tsuki of the winter night!” Tsuki answered proudly, “and these are my allies, of Team Galaxy and otherwise. We wish to cross these lands to Brine Cave.”

Daichi narrowed his eyes with suspicion, “why do you wish to enter Brine Cave?”

“There is a great disaster to soon befall this world! Surely, you have sensed it as well?” Tsuki answered, “we wish to pass through Brine Cave so we may find Dialga and speak to them so that we may prevent this disaster,” she further explained.

“If I may…” Ceebee fluttered closer to the front of the group. “Please, trust my word with this as well. We need to pass your territory so we can eventually make it to the Temporal Tower.”

Glancing from the absol to the celebi, Daichi slowly nodded. His steely gaze then moved across the rest of the group, finally landing on Dusknoir for a few moments before he directed his attention back to Tsuki.

“I have sensed this danger as well, you are correct,” he sighed, “I would like to believe that I can trust you. Myself and my pack guard these lands against anyone who may even try to enter the likes of Brine Cave. I can tell that you are true in your words of your goal, and I wouldn’t wish to turn down a mythical…” He stood straighter, holding his stance firm. “However, I sense disaster amongst your own group. The dusknoir is not allowed to pass. The rest of you… should be fine.”

Dusknoir stiffened before hastily making his way over to Daichi, who bristled at his approach. Pausing, Dusknoir moved back slightly again to provide some comfort to the two absols before he spoke up.

“Please, sir, I will admit to being such a danger in the past, but I can assure you that I only mean to help now,” he told him.

“No,” Daichi insisted without hesitation, “I cannot, in good conscience, simply allow you to pass through here. I cannot trust you like that.”

“Look, we’ve been keeping him supervised before now, can you trust us to keep doing that and prevent any harm?” Damien offered instead with a sigh.

“Our mission is too important, his help is required,” Tsuki spoke up again before Daichi could respond to Damien. “If you wish, I will prove it to you in whatever way required. From an absol to an absol, you know that I would never allow someone to cause disasters under my watch.”

Daichi huffed, “very well. We shall duel to prove ourselves. Come with me.”

He stepped back a few paces, distancing himself from the rest of the group, and Tsuki followed after a brief moment’s hesitance. The remainder of the group glanced at one another, silently asking each other if they should follow.

“I remember learning about this, back when I was a trainer,” Damien whispered, “we’ll have to stay back, or else it breaks the… the…” He snapped his fingers, trying to recall the right word. “…the integrity of the duel. It has to just be the two of them; if we step in to help her in any way, it doesn’t count.”

“The integrity?” Keahi repeated, “so how… does it work?”

“Not sure the specifics, but I think it’s a way to prove the strength of their goals…?” Damien responded with a shrug. “I only had some books to go off of, so what I know might not be accurate, but I think they’re going to prove whoever’s, uh, intention is stronger.”

“Do you understand the rules?” Daichi’s strong voice asked, breaking through the quiet air.

Tsuki bowed her head, “yes, now, thank you.”

“Aw, we missed what the rules are!” Keahi groaned quietly.

“Hopefully we’ll pick it up along the way…” Nelvana responded.

Everyone falling silent, the two absols began to circle around one another. After a couple cycles of the two simply staring each other down as they paced, Tsuki made the first move. Throwing herself at Daichi, their horns locked against together, before with a heavy toss of his head, Daichi easily threw Tsuki away. She rolled on the ground, immediately pushing herself back to her feet to return to the duel.

“Can she not use moves?” Alex whispered.

“I never thought about it before, but I don’t think so… I can’t remember ever seeing one where they used actual moves, just their horns,” Damien murmured, “no, wait, they can use moves, I have seen that before. Maybe just not directly…? I remember seeing one use slash, but it was only to cut the grass since the other was hiding in it…”

“I’ve seen that in other pokemon,” Dusknoir commented quietly, “it relays more to their true strengths to not use moves directly. It would be disrespectful for one of them to use a move in this sort of duel, but they can use it to affect the terrain, as that commends to their intelligence and tactics.”

“What other pokemon does that, that you would know of?” Alex questioned with a hiss, but Dusknoir did not answer, instead motioning for everyone to quiet down so they could pay attention to the battle.

Circling each other again, Tsuki’s eyes shot around, studying Daichi and the area around them. She threw herself at him again, their horns clashing against each other. This time she managed to hold her ground longer, but had to tear herself away and step back to avoid being thrown again. It was obvious that she could not win by brute force.

They continued to pace, before eventually Daichi lunged at Tsuki instead, their horns clashing once more. Tsuki’s claws dug deep into the earth, the two forcing their weight against each other. After a few moments though, Tsuki changed her angle, forcing them to begin moving in a circle again, horns still locked against each other.

After a few paces, she opened her mouth, puffs of frost floating out before ice was shot out at the ground. She held the attack, continuing to force the two of them to slowly turn in a circle, now with her tracing an outline out of where they had been pacing around each other before. Daichi pushed harder to try and throw Tsuki off, but that only seemed to turn them faster. She was using his strength against him. The more he would attempt to force Tsuki down to the ground, the more she would use that force to push them around, allowing her to continue to freeze their perimeter. Slowly but surely, she was creating a circle of ice around them. Not that it was easy, sometimes Daichi would tug and force Tsuki’s forelegs off the group, but she always managed to twist her way back down to force the both of them to continue turning around in place.

Just as she barely completed the circle, Tsuki tore herself away from Daichi, scrambling away and across the ring of ice she had created. Throw off by her sudden disappearance, Daichi stumbled under his own weight, but caught himself before he fell over, standing tall again. He glared over at her, him inside the circle of ice and her now outside.

Daichi growled with frustration, evidently not expecting this duel to last this long. Tsuki panted from her position outside of the ice ring, exhausted from putting so much force into redirecting Daichi’s strength, but she did her best to continue holding herself high. Daichi saw this sign of weakness, however, and seeking to finish this battle soon he dove at her once again.

As one paw stepped on the ice, however, he slid over, his entire weight crashing onto his chin where he landed, crumpling onto the ring of ice. Tsuki held back a smile of triumph; he was not built for the cold like she was, her paws were larger to handle the ice, and his were better suited for climbing rocky cliffs. Daichi scrambled to pull himself to his feet again, chin bleeding from a cut from the ice, but each time he would attempt to stand, his paws would slip on the ice and send him crashing down again.

Before he could get the idea to slide off the ice instead, Tsuki made her move. Leaping at him again, she landed safely onto the ice without any trouble and firmly placed her forepaws onto his head. He struggled against her, but his head alone could not free itself under all her strength, and the rest of his body still couldn’t manage to even stand on the ice. His claws scraped the frozen ground in a fruitless attempt to pull himself up, and then he kicked wildly back, but Tsuki had positioned herself where he could not simply reach her like that. Finally, she leaned down and tugged on his fur with her teeth.

“Yield,” she growled.

Daichi continued his struggle for a bit longer, but with a long sigh, he relented to her and slumped onto the frozen ground instead, breathing heavily from all his effort.

�� “I yield,” he gasped back.

Accepting her victory, Tsuki stepped off from Daichi, shaking her fur off. He attempted to stand once more without the extra weight, but still slipped over. After a pause, Tsuki padded back up to him, offering her help, which he accepted, and she dragged him off from the ice.

With the battle clearly over, the rest of the group hurried over to their friend to congratulate her, complimenting her tactics and commending her for the success. Daichi sat down during this, patiently waiting for his opportunity to speak again. Fortunately, the cheerful chatter quickly died back down, and Tsuki turned her attention back to the other absol.

“I must admit, I underestimated you, Tsuki,” Daichi said, “but you have most certainly proven yourself; you won that battle fairly. Your resolve for your duty here is greater than mine; you may all pass to Brine Cave.”

Tsuki smiled, “thank you, Daichi.”

“Excuse me, Daichi, your chin is still bleeding,” Edgar pointed out, “would you like an oran berry for that?” he offered, glancing over from Alex to Damien, the two bag carriers.

Daichi shook his head, “thank you for the offer, but I will not need it. I will get medical attention from my pack for it later,” he replied, “now, however, I shall escort you all to Brine Cave.”

“Oh! Thank you!” Keahi hummed, “that would be helpful, thanks! Are you sure you don’t need anything for the cut though…?”

“I am certain. You should all save your supplies for the journey ahead anyway,” Daichi insisted, “now, come along, and stay close. We would not want to lose anyone along the way.”

Shaking the dirt from his fur, Daichi stood again and padded off in the direction the group had been heading in before they had run into him. After exchanging some silent glances, the group followed him deeper into the absol territory.

It was silent for the beginning of the walk, aside from Daichi exchanging some quiet and simple pleasantries and advice with Tsuki for what was to come, most of which she, and the rest of the group, already knew. Eventually though, the terrain grew even rockier, and they soon began spotting dens between the stones, and would glimpse some white pelts darting around behind the rocks. What started as glances though soon became stares, as more absols from the pack were drawn out to stand on the rocks and look over the passing group. None of them moved up or spoke up, likely because Daichi was escorting them, but there were some mixed expressions that could be seen from a lot of them.

Suddenly though, one of the absols bounded out from behind the rocks to greet the group. This absol stood out right away, their red instead of blue fur and green eyes made sure of it. They boldly padded up to the group, smiling politely at them. Standing next to Daichi, she was at tall as him, though not as broadly built.

“Hello! I’m Sabi!” she greeted, “er, Sabi of the mountain ores, that is,” she added.

Tsuki smiled back, “and I am Tsuki of the winter night.”

“Yes, greetings, Sabi,” Daichi sighed, “this group is here to visit Brine Cave. They’re going to do their best to handle the disaster we’ve all been sensing.”

“Ohhh, I see,” Sabi replied, nodding. “Did you two duel?” she asked, looking at the cut on Daichi’s chin.

Daichi nodded, and Sabi grinned and swayed in place, her long fur swishing around her.

“I wish I could have seen it! Daichi getting beat by this runt- no offense,” Sabi laughed.

Tsuki sighed, though still smiling, “none taken. I have… noticed that I am smaller than most of you.”

“Noticed? Couldn’t you tell from… your own pack?” Sabi questioned, her own smile faltering. “Oh. Are you a lone absol?”

“I was. I do not even remember what pack I would have come from,” Tsuki replied, gaze hardening. “I have my own pack now though, right here,” she continued with pride.

“Aww… that’s really sweet!” Sabi purred, looking over the rest of the group. “Shame you lost your old pack, but it’s nice to see you found your way.”

Daichi furrowed his brows, though if he doubted the value behind a non-absol pack, he did not mention it.

“Hey, actually, are you a shiny absol?” Ceebee commented, fluttering up to Sabi.

“Yes!” Sabi chirped with a broad grin, “only one in the pack, and proud!”

“That’s neat, I’m actually a shiny too!” Ceebee replied, “I’ve never gotten to see another shiny before!”

“You’re a shiny?” Sabi blinked, and then chuckled to herself. “Sorry, I’ve never gotten to see a celebi before! This is really cool! What do other celebi look like?”

“They’re green instead of pink,” Ceebee answered.

Daichi cleared his throat, “pardon me, but I sense that this is a time important mission, yes? We should continue heading to Brine Cave.”

“Right, of course!” Sabi responded, “here, I’ll escort you all too!” she offered, “I’ll provide better company than Daichi here,” she teased.

“We don’t mind the extra company!” Keahi replied.

Daichi sighed, shaking his head, “very well, but walk and talk then, Sabi.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, old man!” Sabi barked with another laugh, padding along ahead as if to prove her understanding of Daichi’s instructions.

“Have either of you two been through Brine Cave before?” Nelvana asked, “any… tips you could maybe give about this dungeon in particular?”

“I had been getting to that before we were interrupted,” Daichi replied, “Brine Cave is a fifteen-floor descending dungeon with one rest stop after the ninth floor. There are traps, but no monster houses. Common type is water,” he told them, “its final floor is also the home to several fossil pokemon.”

“Ooh, yeah, them,” Sabi hissed, “we’ve managed to work out a truce with them so we can get through without… too much trouble, but they’re really territorial. Most definitely will attack you all, even if you say we’ll chill with you. They’re the time to attack first and ask questions later.”

“So, expect a big fight at the end, got it.” Alex nodded. “How many of them are there?”

“Uhh… it varies depending on when you go in, but usually there’s at least one kabutops and two omastar; they’re the leaders of the gang,” Sabi answered, “expect those three as a minimum and anywhere upwards to… ten? Other pokemon in the pit.”

“And I expect you would rather stay on good terms with them, so we shouldn’t be too rough?” Dusknoir responded.

Daichi glanced back at Dusknoir with narrowed eyes, “if you could, please,” he grumbled.

Dusknoir narrowed his eye back instinctively, but quickly caught himself and did his best to relax again. Fur bristling again slightly, Daichi turned ahead again to watch where he was walking, electing not to respond to Dusknoir again if he didn’t have to.

Eventually, the sight of other absols disappeared as the rocks grew into mountains spreading out into the distance. The scent that this was their territory still lingered in the air, but they by now had passed the main living area for the pack. It wasn’t long after this that the group stopped at the mouth of a large cave, the path descending into the darkness of the dungeon below.

“Here we are, Brine Cave,” Daichi announced, glancing back at the group again. “We wish you all the best of luck, I trust your strength and intentions. Know that considering the graveness of this disaster to come…” He shook his head. “…the very fate of the world rests on your shoulders. I wish I could help you more from here, but this pack must continue protecting these lands first and foremost.”

Tsuki nodded in return, “we understand. Thank you for helping us here.”

“We’re here if you ever need any other sort of help!” Sabi added, “well, we still don’t travel too much, but we’re still good for advice and directions, and any local-er disaster prevention!”

“We’ll keep you all in mind. I’m sure we’ll want to come back to this continent again some other time in the future,” Ceebee replied.

“Thanks again for the help!” Keahi chimed in.

“May Arceus watch over you all,” Daichi hummed.

Giving their final farewells to the two absols, the group entered their single file line, entering Brine Cave together.

5 notes · View notes

marvelmadam08 · 5 years

Text

The Princess & The Nomad (11)

With your hypnosis gone and your identity fully known, you and Steve reunite and pick you right where your left off. But with The Avengers disbanded and a new danger looming in the future, what’ll keep everything from falling apart?

Summary: After a quick birthday celebration, you and the others plan an impromptu trip to Norway.

Warnings: Mentions of previous smut, hints of Bucky x Reader? Final goodbyes

A/N: Sorry it’s been a while for an update, I’m jumping back and forth between this blog and my original pieces and looking into self-publishing. Lots of big things in the works. Also if you haven’t seen Message From the King you should, Chadwick does an amazing job in that film. Enjoy!

“How many hickies are you trying to give me?” You laughed slash moaned while Steve kissed and bit in random parts of your body

“One for every year you’ve been alive.” He kissed on your pelvic bone, the next spot for him to mark

“I’m 84.”

“Exactly, so let me continue before I lose count.”

“Yes sir.” Your fingers raked through his hair, watching him kiss down your body “Best birthday yet.”

“You made mine special, I’m returning the favor.” He bit down on your hip, holding you in place with his weight, you shuddered softly. When he was satisfied with his work Steve kissed up your stomach before lightly pecking your lips.

“You know we haven’t left this room since I got here. They might think we’re dead.”

“It’s not the worse way to go. And we did leave.”

“For thirty minutes, to find the kitchen. And you couldn’t keep your hands to yourself.” You nudged him with your foot, subtly reminding him of how carried away the two of you got when feeding each other strawberries. Ending up with the two of you hiding in the pantry, half naked and waiting for the guard to leave so you could return to the room.

“We’re lucky we didn’t get caught.” You started to move to the edge of the bed when Steve pulls you back into his chest “Steve-”

“I missed a spot.” He kissed on your shoulder blade

“We told Sam we’d hang out with them today.” You giggled and pulled away “It’s rude to decline an invitation the day of, especially without a viable reason.”

“I want you to myself, that’s reason enough.” Steve watched you move over to the full length mirror that sat in the corner. He smiled as you assessed the bite marks and handprints he left behind.

“Steve, I look like a dalmatian.”

He chuckled before he moved to get ready himself. Despite his not so subtle suggestion for taking a shower together, you didn’t want to run the risk of never making it out the room, so you decided to take separate showers. You watched Steve get ready, since you only had to shimmer on a new outfit, a long sleeved shirt, a scarf wrapped around your neck and long jeans, thanks to him.

“That’s not going to look suspicious.” He told you as you both walked back down to the study to meet everyone else “It’s the middle of summer.”

“Would you rather have me in a skimpy skirt and a low cut top, showing off?” You questioned jokingly

“If you wore anything of the sort, we definitely wouldn’t have made it out the room.”

“Holy shit, she can still walk.” Sam was the first one to open his mouth when you and Steve entered the study “And sporting a modest scarf, odd piece of clothing for summer in Wakanda.”

“My bikini is at the cleaners.”

“Happy birthday Kiddo.” Sam moves in to give you a strong hug

“Thanks Sam.”

“Didn’t think you two would show up.” Bucky said, leaning against the wall on the far side of the room “Guess I owe Nat fifty bucks now.”

“In American currency if you will.” Natasha smirked “Happy birthday, Rayna.”

It took you a second to remember she was addressing you. “Thanks Nat. Shall we go and eat, I’m starving.”

“Well you’ve been working up an appetite for the last two days.”

You all began to file out of the room back into the hall.

“Seriously, like rabbits.” Sam added “I pity who ever had the room next to yours- oh wait, that was me.”

“Sorry Sam.” Steve wrapped his arms around your waist and kissing you on the cheek.

“No you’re not. But you will be when Bucky and I tell (Y/N) all about the goat incident.”

“Stooping low Sam.” A light blush showed up on Steve’s cheeks

“What about a goat?”

“Apparently Stevie here missed you so much that he started having dreams about you.” Bucky started, trailing behind the group “Very vivid dreams, if you catch my drift.”

“So we’re camping out at Bucky’s place, resting as much as we can before we leave again. Steve, being the fossil that he is, fell asleep first. And starts talking in his sleep, calling for you.” Sam gestures to you

“I thought he was having a nightmare again, but when I looked up he was spooning one of my goats. And she was not happy about it.”

“Now the damn goat won’t leave him alone.” Sam laughed, you did your best to hide your amusement but failed horribly

“I’m sorry for laughing, but you have to admit it’s funny.” You said to Steve between giggles “I have tons of embarrassing stories from Asgard.”

“And you’re welcomed to tell us all about it over dessert.” T'challa greets you at the doors leading to a screening room. He reached for your hand to kiss it lightly “Princess (Y/N), happy birthday.”

“Thank you.”

Fast approaching footsteps turned your attention to Shuri, who pushed her brother out of the way and wrapped her arms around you.

“Happy birthday. How are you feeling?”

Nat shot Sam a warning glare before he could say anything inappropriate. Steve did the same to Bucky.

“I feel great, no side effects that I know of so far.”

“I got you something.” Shuri reached into her pocket and pulled out a small gift box “Well I made it.”

Sitting inside the box was a bracelet made of round black beads with tiny engravings on them.

“They’re call Kimoyo beads, made from vibranium, they're multipurpose and have better reception than a cell phone.”

“It’s beautiful Shuri, thank you.” You slipped the bracelet on your wrist, they shift and secure themselves on your wrist so they wouldn’t move or fall off. You turn your hand over and the words ‘happy birthday’ shine from the beads “I just hope my powers won’t short it out.”

“It’s perfectly safe.” she assures you before turning to Bucky “Nice to see you again White Wolf.”

“Same to you Shuri." Bucky grinned

"Are you joining us for the movie?” Steve ask

“Unfortunately I have work to do in my lab, plus I am not old enough to sit in on adult conversations.” Shuri rolled her eyes

“Mother’s words, not mine.” T'challa argued “You will get your chance when you are older.”

Shuri mimicked her brother’s voice under her breath as she walked away, a guard right behind her. T'challa stood to the side to let the rest of you in the dimly lit room. The smell of food filled the room, over to your right was a table full of food complete with chicken and beef stir fry, dinner rolls, and few ribs and cesar salad.

“Whoa, you went all out Sam. I would’ve been fine with pizza.” You tell him

“I didn’t do anything.” Sam’s mouth was stuffed with half a dinner roll.

“My sister insisted, said that this should be a special birthday for you.” T'challa explained “Being back with your loved ones.”

“Oh now I wish she stayed.” You slightly pout “She didn’t have to do all this.”

“In her opinion it could’ve been better, but apparently someone ate all the strawberries that were going to be used for the shortcake.”

“Imagine that.” Steve gives you a small squeeze on the butt, you blush and bite your lip.

Everyone moved around the table, picking up different food to place on their plates. You end up drifting closer to Bucky by the crepes.

"So White Wolf? Is that what you're calling yourself now?"

He shrugged, setting down his plate to add more food "I kinda adopted it. I'm technically the black sheep here.... Well the white sheep."

"Do you like it here? You seem a lot more relaxed."

"Yeah, it's amazing. Everyone’s so welcoming, there’s little to no crime. And the sunsets are something out of movies." He gives you a friendly smile before averting his eyes again

"What's wrong?"

"Your scarf slipped." He reached up to fix your scarf back over a bite mark "Looks like everything between you and Steve is going good."

"Yeah, we said I love you for the first time."

He nods, examining a piece of broccoli. "Big step, possible wedding bells in the future?"

You blush and nudge him in his side. "I just got back, let's not jump to life altering choices."

"Alright. It's your day Princess- Rayna? (Y/N)? Which one are you going with?"

"Honestly, whichever you prefer. I have so many names at this point I’ll answer to anything.” you joke, sneaking a bit of frosting from a corner slice of cake

“Sure thing- Princess.” Bucky smiles before sauntering off to a plush chair in front of a large screen. Steve calls you over to settle in the seat next to him.

“So what are we watching? I have a year worth of movies I’ve missed out on.”

You all settle for a movie called “Message from the King”, even on their day off, Steve and the others never strayed too far from action. Although there was a lot of jeering when something unrealistic happened. Which was every twenty minutes. However, the film made you think of Odin and Thor, and how secrets tore you apart from each other, just like in movie.

“You alright?” Steve asks you, squeezing your hand

“I have another birthday request.” You tell him

“Please not here, don’t ruin the screening room with your non-stop super human, Asgardian sex-capades.” Sam looks at you with tired eyes

“It’s not that Sam. I want to go to Norway, it doesn’t have to be right now but the sooner the better.”

“What’s in Norway?” Nat asks, helping herself to another beer

“My grandfather, I want to see him.”

“Your grandfather, as in Odin?” Steve’s shocked expression spoke for everybody “The man who threw you out of Asgard?”

“Yes. He said we would see each other again before…” You looked back to the screen at the rolling credits, then shrug “I don’t know, maybe it’s a stupid idea. If he wanted to see me then he’d find me right?”

“You’ve met him already?” Bucky leaned in a bit from the other side of Sam

“Yeah, I sort of broke him out of a retirement home.”

“What do you get into when we’re not around?” Sam wondered

“I haven’t even got the chance to tell you about the huge python that nearly killed me.”

“The what?” Steve’s face grew pale

“Nothing.” You rub reassuring circles on his back

“You can tell us all about that on the way to Norway.” Natasha stood, Steve gave her a stern look “Clearly she’s made amends with him Rogers, don’t give me that look.”

“I think you should go.” T'challa chimes in “Family, no matter how dysfunctional, is all we have in the end.”

“Steve, I can understand why you don’t like him. But if he hadn’t cast me out then, I wouldn’t be here now.” You tell him “I’m going to say my last goodbyes to him. I’d like it if you were there, if not I’ll go alone.”

“After the year I’ve had, I’m not letting you out of my sight.” Steve wrapped his arm around your shoulders “Wheels up in thirty.”

“We can never have a normal week.” Sam muttered as he stood “I’m taking the dinner rolls.”

* * *

When Steve said he wasn’t letting you out of his sights he meant it, you figured that out when he had you sit in the co-pilot seat before the quinjet began to take off.

“Steve I still can’t drive a car, what in Norns sakes makes you think I can fly the jet?” You asked as he strapped you in

“You aren’t flying, I am and if you need to switch out with Nat then you will.” He assured you with a kiss on your cheek

“Enough, let’s get this show on the road!” Sam punched the roof of the jet, earning an annoyed look from Nat and Steve

You peaked out the window, over at Bucky who gave a small salute from where he stood, along with T'challa and Shuri.

“Why isn’t Bucky going? He’s not afraid to fly with me is he?” You wave back to them while Steve settled in. The last time you and Bucky were on the jet together, you had just tried to kill him thanks to Dr. Schmidt.

“No, he opted out of the trip, in case anything were to happen while we’re away.” Steve says “Buck doesn’t go on missions anymore. Not even small ones. Doesn’t want to risk- relapse.”

“Oh.. is he gonna be fine while we’re gone? I’d hate taking all of you away from each.” Tony was the first person to pop up in your mind, you promised to check in with him, told him he wouldn’t lose anymore family.

“Yeah, he knows we can’t stay too long to begin with, but it anything happens T'challa will get in contact with us.” Steve flipped a few switches on the console before the jet lifted off the landing pad on the ground

“So Rayna, how are we gonna find your grandfather?” Nat asks you once you’re out of Wakanda’s barrier

“I could ask Heimdall, he might know where my grandfather is, he sees all.”

“What do you mean?” Sam’s eyebrow lifted

“Heimdall was the bifrost keeper, until Loki falsely charged him for treason. He has the gift of sight, if he wishes to see you then he will be able to find you anywhere you are.” You explained

“Loki? I thought he was dead.”

“So did I, Thor still believes he’s gone.”

“When was the last time you spoke with Thor?” Steve was the one to ask this question

“Four months? Maybe five. He continued his search for the stones, he believes I’m still on Asgard.”

“Why didn’t you go to find him? Instead of come back here. I mean, if it were me I’d look for the person who could help the most.” Sam suggested

“The world may be small but the universe is infinite. Finding my father is like searching for an empty chamber during Ostara.” You laughed at your joke, the others looked around, confused “It’s…. Nevermind.”

You folded your legs into lotus position, and closed your eyes. “Heimdall, give me sight.”

You were by a creek this time, not too far from the marketplace in Asgard but still far enough so no one could see you. A light splashing drew in your attention, behind you Heimdall was kneeling by the creek, cleaning his face.

“Forgive me for the intrusion.” You tell him

“No apologies necessary Princess. Just glad you didn’t call an half hour prior, I was bathing.” He chuckled “You wish for new information?”

“Yes, I need help finding Odin. I know he’s in Norway, but I don’t know where exactly.”

“Unfortunately I am unable to locate him.”

“How is that possible?”

“Without the bifrost, I can only see so far. My powers are limited, and I will need them in the future.” He rose to his feet and began to stroll upstream, you followed

“But then how will I find him?”

“Magic, you did learn tracking spells during your time here correct?”

“Yes, but how will I be able to reach you? What if you need me? Or if my father is in trouble?”

“You are in tuned with every soul you meet, as Goddess of life and light you will feel if your loved ones are in danger.” He stared off to the distance “I must leave, use what you have learned Princess.” He paused “And I must apologize once more, for my wrongdoings against you.”

“There’s no need to apologize to me Heimdall. I have forgiven you.”

He nods solemnly “You really do look like your mother. Norns rest her soul. It has been an honor knowing you Rayna.”

“You speak as if this is the last time we’ll see each other.” He didn’t respond, only gave you a light hearted smile “Heimdall?”

You blinked and you were back on the jet. Steve was the first to speak, seeing the concerned look in your eyes.

“Did he tell you where Odin is?”

“No, he couldn’t. Without the bifrost his powers are getting weaker. But he said I should be able to find him on my own.”

“What’s wrong Ray?” Natasha asked when she saw your face

“I think that was the last time I was going to speak with him.” You wiped away the forming tear “I think someone found him.”

“I’m sorry Doll.” Steve reached over to hold your hand

“He was my last chance to find Thor, and protect my family. Last chance to return to Asgard.” You took a shaky breath, Sam was looking over the jet, his own paranoia setting in place. You felt his anxiety “I’m good Sam, just processing. The closer we get to Norway the easier it’ll be for me to find Odin. Maybe he can help me fix this.”

“I’m sure he can.” Natasha gave your shoulder a squeeze “Now about this giant python that nearly killed you.”

Taglist: @classybai @moisoverennyi-thestarlessone @floralandspice @bi-bi-bi-bisexualz @theonelittleone @grey-junior @marvelousbuckystark @captainsthor @sebbystanlover-vk @jovialcalzonepaperzine @chook007 @dontchawishyouknewhowtosalsa @geekysimmerthings @codename-buckybarnes @marvelfansworld @emmaschhh @bruisedfaye @mackyk06 @teamcap4bucky @paigeem96 @lily-horvitz @tshollandlove @nerdypisces160 @mrs-captain-evans

New tags: @imnotgonnafightyourwar @winnielinleigh @humongousflapcloudpatrol @tayya-esthetics @nickyl316h @seasaltbitch @lifeisalohaa @dragon--dragon @godlyyoongs @damngirl-youareincredible

30 notes · View notes

surveys-at-your-service · 5 years

Text

Survey #217

“roses are red, and my heart is black. we creep about the floor to indulge like rats.”

Do you know anyone who works in a laboratory? No. What was the very first social media site you signed up for? MySpace. Can you see yourself marrying your current partner? (if you have a partner) Easily. If you were in a coma, who would be making healthcare decisions for you? My mom. Are you the type of person who knows exactly what they want in life? Not entirely, but mostly. Do you have commitment issues? Not at all. What was the last thing you had an allergic reaction to? Silver. Have you gone out to dinner in the past week? No. What’s something you’ve done that sounds too crazy to be true? The only thing I think someone would actually find "crazy" would be I've been in a psychiatric hospital five or six times (I seriously can't remember). Are there any flowers planted outside your house? No. Well, not by us. There's a camellia tree by our back door that we didn't plant. What’s the weirdest decoration you’ve seen in someone else’s home? I'unno. I generally don't find decorations strange. Spice up your house with what you like. Did you have your own bathroom when you were growing up? No. Do you know anyone who never disciplines their children? I know of people. What’s the longest you’ve gone without leaving the house? Weeks. Are you more of a practical thinker, or more of an imaginative thinker? I think I can be on either end depending on the situation. Does anyone in your family smoke? My dad does. How well do you know your neighbors? I've never interacted with the ones to the right of us, but Mom knows the woman to the left, and she's apparently very nice. Mom was talking about her just the other day about how she always brings our trash can back to the fence, actually. How far are you into the book you’re currently reading? N/A Have you ever had a pet escape and run away? I don't believe so, at least not permanently. Do any of your exes know each other? Jason and Juan did. Girt and Jason know each other because of me; we all hung out a few times. It's both funny and sad now to know how friendzoned Girt was... ha ha. Sorry man. What’s an opinion you find impossible to take seriously? "Dinosaurs didn't exist." What the fuck are fossils then, bitch. What was the very first election you voted in? I haven't voted in any yet. Do you know how to make omelettes? No. I could probably figure it out, but I don't know for sure. What is your favorite summer month? Fuck summer. What do you want to be for Halloween this year? One of the witches from Hocus Pocus would be super cool, but yeah, I don't have the money to even try to make a costume. Do you have a desk in your room? If so, do you use it as a desk that you sit and work at? No. Do you wear band tees? if yes, which one is your favorite? Yes. I love my Metallica one. It's got a really cool design. Would you ever want to live in a home with all-white walls and furniture? "Not white furniture, no. That seems like it’d be a pain to keep clean." <<< Definitely. Do you have pajama days often? I'm literally always in pjs unless I have to leave the house and get out of the car. There's no point in changing otherwise; I'd just be creating more laundry. What is one thing you’re behind on? Instead of the usual "life in general" answer, I'll make it more interesting. RP. Jesus fucking holy Christ, I am over a year behind in SO MUCH because I just haven't had motivation, all the while plots have grown like mad. Thank god my partners are really damn patient, lol. And/or have other business, too. Do you ever re-arrange your room? No. I HATE moving/changing shit. Do you share a room with anyone? No. Who was your first roommate? Jason, Jacob, and Amanda. What season do you want to get married in? AUTUMN!!!!!!!! FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Frosting: chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate. Ice cream: chocolate or vanilla? Vanilla. Milkshake: chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate, more often. Do you drink protein shakes? EW that shit mad gross. What was the last type of candy you ate? Uhhhh what was it. I don't have candy a lot now, so uh... I think Airheads? What was the last craft project you completed? It was VERY weakly a "craft," but Sara's first Valentine's Day present. Which is better: starting things or finishing them? Finishing. I start things all the damn time and never finish them. What is the highest name-brand thing you own? Good question. What color GameBoy did you have as a kid? Red. What was your favorite GameBoy game? Hm. I liked a lot. We had a whole case of different ones. I suppose maybe the Spyro one I could never get far into. But I liked it anyway because yeah. Spyro. What was your favorite Backstreet Boys song? "The Call" probably tops the list, but also you're full of shit if you thought "Larger Than Life" wasn't a fuckin BANGER. Damn, "The Shape of My Heart" was great, too. BSB were/are just great, man. Did you ever wonder what it felt like to get slimed? Ha ha you mean like on Nickelodeon? Yup. Did you ever name a pet after an imaginary friend? I never had one. Do you believe in angels and demons? I don't know. I believe in spirits, but I don't know about actual angels and demons. Do you have a PayPal account? No. What race do you consider yourself? ... You can "consider" yourself a race? You don't get to pick that. Whatever, I'm Caucasian. Should unwanted animals in shelters be killed to make room? Fuck that shit. Should cows be killed for human food? See, this is why I want to return to vegetarianism. TECHNICALLY, no. It's murder upon a conscious, feeling, living being. But at the same time, humans are designed as omnivores, and surviving off of a plant-based diet is, sadly, extremely difficult. It's difficult to obtain the proper nutrients and their advised amounts to be healthy. Therefore, I can't confidently answer this question. I wish they didn't have to be, but human civilization would have an incredibly more difficult time continuing with all meat products removed for consumption. Does the technique used to kill an animal matter to you? I mean if I KNEW, yes, but at least from the research I've done, there's no real "humane" method used to kill livestock. Most live in awful conditions/are already unhealthy, too, and that should matter . Should farmers be allowed to cause suffering in animals to save money? Fuck off. Should production of medicines be justification to cause animals to suffer? No. We neeeeeeed to find other ways. Use pedophiles or some shit. Should violence against animals; such as rodeos/ bullfights be legal? Fuck to the hell no. I get some kind of dark pleasure out of hearing about shitheads being gored and stuff for it, honestly. Should homosexuals be allowed to work with children? This shit pisses me the fuck off. Of course they should be. Like I'm sorry, but your children aren't going to be hidden from them forever. Do you believe homosexuality is caused by genetics? Well yeah. You don't get to choose your sexuality; something has to be responsible. Are Americans are truly free, or suffering from controlled freedom? CONTROLLED FREEDOM JFC TRY TO DENY IT. Are there other countries that offer more personal freedoms? Not that I KNOW of. Like yeah, my above answer clearly states I think America could be better, but I don't know I place where it's actually better. Do you trust your government? Fuck no. They hide a lot of shit. Should religious beliefs outweigh science in the making of laws? Lolololololol no, hunny. Separation of church and state. What is one moment that you missed out on that you wished you didn’t? Hm. OH, that solar eclipse that happened I think last year? We saw nothing here. :< Do you or have you ever had braces? For a long time. Got them on, then didn't have the money to take them off for a while. Can you text? Yeah, but not quickly. I am - usually - very thankful for autocorrect. Have you ever had a nervous breakdown? OH BOY HAVE I!!!!!!!!!!!! What are you scared to death of? My mom dying, for one. I DO NOT know what would happen to me. Are you good at art? I'm told so at least; I'm aware I'm at least decent. It also depends on the art form. Are you afraid of needles? Nah. What TV show is the stupidest to you? I honestly had a really big problem (and have, if it's still even on) with the Teen Mom series. Yes, I do in fact believe it made looking like one cooler and more normal than it is. Do you hate being ignored? Yes; I start to think I'm not cared about, badly. Especially if it's family or "friends." Like no, I don't at all expect attention constantly, or even a lot of it, but I think it's only natural people who claim they love you should not pretend they don't know you, particularly when you actually reach out. THEN it hurts. Where do you currently live? North Carolina, please get me out. Do you like marijuana? I wouldn't know. Do you donate to charity? I can't. I seriously don't have money. Where is your favorite place to go out to eat? Olive Garden. What is your favorite TV station? Discovery. Do you think you’re clever? No. Did you wear socks today? No. I avoid wearing socks as much as I can. Know any magic tricks? I don't remember the ones I learned as a kid. Do you sleep well most nights? No. When’s the last time you baked a cake? Never. What’s your preferred frozen snack? Ice cream, yum. Do you work better in a clean or messy environment? CLEAN. It inspires me to do well and with an organized strategy. Do you know any vegans? I don't believe so. Earphones or headphones? I personally prefer earphones since they go into the ear and are just more comfortable than a weight on your head that can move easier. Do you like bananas? Yeah, but the timespan in which I enjoy them is short. They have to be "perfect." What’s a film you’ve seen that confused you? I know there are some, but none are coming to me curr- WAIT NO okay so I saw Warcraft when it came out into theaters, and I barely understood a single thing because the orcs' voices were way too deep. I need to rewatch it with subtitles. Do you ever wear black lipstick? I pretty much always do if I wear lipstick. What would you change about yourself appearance-wise? HEY can I Please fix my fucking weight??? Because I do like everything I can do already & nothing works??? :') How long do you normally spend in the shower? Just short of ten minutes, I think. If you were to get a tattoo, what would it say or what would the graphic be? *opens novel of ideas* Don't make me pick just one. When trick-or-treating as a kid, was there any kind of candy that you didn’t like to get? Tootsie rolls, ew. What is your favorite memory of Christmases past? The time my mom, sisters, and I went to a Christmas light show one night, and we got back to the car only to realize Mom left the keys in there. Sooo while we waited for my drunk dad and brother to come help us, we all chilled on the car's hood with chocolate covered peanuts and THE best hot chocolate. That place is no longer around, and I'll forever be mad tilted about it. What is the most outrageous thing you’ve done for God? Lmfao remember the days I denied evolution and gay rights? Them were the wild times. When you were in grade school, what did you want to be when you grew up? Why? First, paleontologist because I adored (and still adore) dinosaurs, then a vet as I wanted to help animals. In high school, it changed from movie director to game designer. Name the most famous person you’ve had a face to face encounter with. No one. If you could spend 15 minutes with any living person, who would it be and why? Um like have y'all ever heard of this guy named Mark Edward Fischbach because I have time to enlighten you of all the reasons- What article of clothing most closely describes your personality? Pj pants, lmao. Who was your hero when you were a child, and what did you do to be like them? Steve Irwin. I adore animals in general, push very firmly for conservation, and madly support proper education of wildlife, especially your local kinds. How did you learn to ride a bicycle? I had a bike with training wheels at first, then my dad took them off and would jog alongside me, holding the bars and then releasing them after a few moments for me to go on my own. Repeated 'til I got it! Based on something you’ve already done, how might you make it into the Guinness Book of World Records? This is going to be VERY embarrassing to share, but fuck it. I have so little reason to leave my bed that my legs have actually experienced muscle atrophy. My knees especially are extremely prone to awful pain when standing or walking. I don't really have a way to exercise in this tiny house, my road is too sketchy to walk along, and at least this time of year, I physically can't handle the heat if I was to walk in the back yard. I'm dying to go somewhere where I can swim to fix this shit. I could ramble on forever about how painful it is to be on my feet. I'd be happy enough with even just a treadmill. When was the last time you did something for the first time? What was it? Hm. I guess foreplay with a girl. I don't exactly experience new things much. What is your concept of a fruitful day? Actually doing productive shit. If you could rid the world of one thing, what would it be? Violence. What is your best personal characteristic? I am like, incredibly passionate. If I believe in something, you'll know. If I love something, it's to an insane degree. If you had to enter a competition for the “Most Uselessly Unique Talent,” what would your talent be? Being able to hide my thumb under my palm to where it looks like it's entirely non-existent lmao. What is your worst personality characteristic? I am VERY sensitive. I also have a hard time taking criticism without beating my ass up because I feel like I did something "bad." I don't get defensive, I just get hurt. Man, I could go on. There's a lot I don't like about myself. If you had to be a teacher of something, what would you teach? I'd be most interested in teaching science. How would you like to be remembered? I loved ferociously and spoke strong of peace. What is one thing that you constantly think about (other than material things)? The future. Does your country have free healthcare? *points at top five list of things America needs to fucking fix* Does your job allow visible tattoos? N/A How is your road rage? I drive so timidly and rarely that I don't think I really even have a clue. Who are your closest friends and how did you meet them? I'll exclude Sara as she's more than "a close friend." I don't have many close friends otherwise tho, so really... I think only Girt applies. We met in high school band. Well, then there's Alex, but considering she now acts like I don't exist as well, I don't know how close we really are. But anyway, we met in WoW because we were both camping the time-lost protodrake and talking w/ others in the general chat... but she and I really clicked. That was an awesome day. Started some damn adventures with her lmao. Are you still cool with any of your exes? The only two who may still have a problem with me are Jason and Tyler, but I have no bad feelings towards them. What Hogwarts House are you in? I took quizzes once for a survey because I was curious, but I couldn't answer most of the ones I found bc they had HP references I didn't get. But anyway, I think Hufflepuff and Gryffindor were pretty much tied. What’s the next special event in your life? Returning to school. :') Whose birthday is coming up soon? My nephew's. :''''') Do you delete people from Facebook if their views are vastly different than yours? It depends on the views and their severity. Usually I can handle averse opinions if you're actually a friendly person and composed and mature about what you believe and how you express that. What’s your favorite thing to put on bagels? Cream cheese. What’s the most important key on your key ring? I only have one, and that's to my house. What was the last argument you got in about and who was it with? AHAHAHAAHAHA okay so. There was a video on FB of a pet meerkat having its belly rubbed, and it was chirping happily. It was very cute, but especially because this video was on a big page, I commented how awful and unhealthy of an idea it is to have a pet meerkat for both it and yourself. It's illegal in a lot of places for good reason. I got a lot of agreement, but of course there was one imbecile who disagreed enough to tell me to shut the fuck up. Now I am normally very, very terrified of confrontation or even the HINT of it, but for once in my life I couldn't have been more unfazed. At what age did you start picking out your own outfits? I don't know. I've come to find via surveys that I can't really remember events by ages. How spicy do you like your food? Pretty spicy. Spicier than most like, but I don't enjoy it when it's just pure pain. What was the last really intense pain you felt? You know that awwwfuuuulll pinch of pain you sometimes get in your ribs when your lungs expand to a certain, small amount? That. I couldn't take deep breaths for anything. What is the best thing that’s ever happened to you? Recovery from the breakup. What are three things you have been a victim of? Uhhhh. Idk, nothing major. What is your passion? Wildlife conservation, probably more than anything. When was the last time you truly felt alive? Ha, good question. How many siblings do you have? Technically six, but I don't know one at all. Are you married? No. Are you dating someone? Yeah. If not, do you wish you were dating someone? N/A Do you want an indoor or outdoor wedding? I'm not sure. What states (or countries) have you lived in? Just one. Does your first crush know you liked them? No. Do you wish on stars? Nope. Are you happier now than you were 10 years ago? I don't know. I can't really remember exactly what I was like at 13. I think I'm maybe happier now? Are you happier now than you were 5 years ago? Yes. ^If not, why not? N/A ^If yes, why? My depression is under control. Do you live in your dream house? Definitely not. What was your first job? Sales clerk at GameStop. ^Did you like it? No, thanks to feral social anxiety. Have you been bullied? No, very thankfully. What do you wish people knew about you? I sincerely care about my loved ones, a lot, even though I have trouble being the one to reach out first. What health issues do you have? A lot. Don't even feel like putting them all together. Do you still cross paths with your first crush ever? No. What is your favorite Bible verse, and why? None. Do you have a secret nobody knows? Yes. It's nothing major, just little things I don't want to share. Who are some of the most selfish people you have ever met? I don't know. Is there anyone you want back in your life? Yes. What color was the house you grew up in? True shit, I somehow don't remember for sure. I think it was brick? What was the name of the first pet that you loved? Charcoal, a cat, was the first pet I had a serious, deep bond with. Do you receive more insults or compliments? Compliments, I guess. Do you meditate? No. Do you pray? No. Have you ever seen a spirit/ghost/shadowy figure, etc.? I've sure as hell seen something. What would you ask a genie for, if you had three wishes? World peace, end of disease, and the end of poverty. When someone messages you and you know it’s going to be rude, do you ignore it and not read it, or do you read it and reply? Honestly, most of the time, I ignore it. I am so, SO sensitive, so my feelings are super easily hurt by what others have to say. Do you find online drama stressful? Yes. Even more than irl drama because you have to wait painstakingly for them to reply, and you can't hear their tone of voice. How stressful is your life? I'm pretty damn stressed for someone who's trapped inside their house lmao. Was any of your home decor inspired by Pinterest? No. Do you do yoga? No. What is something you have tried and hated? Oral is NOT my jazz. Do you have regrets? Yeah. Are you mad at someone? No. What is this month’s calendar picture? I don't have a calendar. What is your last ex-boyfriend’s or ex-girlfriend’s name? Technically Donald. Do you have an ex-friend that you miss? Yep. What color do you want your wedding dress to be? Most likely black. Would you rather go out for pancakes or steak? Pancakes. I like them more in general, and I'm also suuuper picky with steak. What’s your favorite Ramen noodle flavor? The only kind I've ever liked is the Yakisoba brand of spicy chicken. How do you feel when you read the Bible, if you read it? Encouraged? Angry? I don’t read it. Have you ever suffered from anxiety? I had some anxieties as a little kid, and I was officially diagnosed with it in the 6th grade. Have you ever suffered from depression? Since the 7th grade. What is something a lot of people like but you don’t? Pie is what came to mind first. What’s an uplifting song you like to listen to? "High Hopes" by P!ATD. Think about the person you fell hardest for. Why do you think your feelings for this person were so strong? How is he/she different compared to everyone else you’ve had feelings for? Well, he was my first real love. They're always special. I was fucking crazy for him, and it grew to an unhealthy degree. Trust me, you can love too much. He made me happy when so few could back then, and we had a connection unprecedented in my whole life. He himself felt like my home. I could write you a goddamn novel on why I felt so strongly. Have you ever caught your friend cheating on their boyfriend/girlfriend? If you have, what did you do about it? If you haven’t, what do you think you would do? No. Quite honestly, I'd tell them. I could NOT keep that a secret. Whether they believe me or not, I'm not withholding that from them. When your last relationship ended, how long was it before you felt ready to think about being with someone else? I know this technically sounds bad, but Sara and I started dating the day after I broke up with him. One of the reasons we split is because I realized I liked her. It was so quick because I never had to "move on;" I never came to be truly interested in him romantically. Who was the last person you talked to before you went to sleep last night? Do you remember what you talked about? Sara and I were texting, but I don't remember about what. When are you at your happiest? When I'm with Sara. How many people have you kissed? Three or four. I don't really remember if I ever kissed Girt. How many of those people are you still friends with? Two. Where did you go, the last time you left your house? Mom and I went to multiple places. She had errands to run. Do you like your singing voice? Rarely. I think it fits only a few songs. Are most silences awkward for you? UH-HUH UH-HUH. Name someone you wish you had never met. Why? Jabari. He was scary and almost assaulted someone in my family. Who has the nicest singing voice, that you know personally? Probably Sara. Say something nice about someone you really don’t care for: He loves his kids to death. Ever won school awards? Yes. Do you drink more soda than anything else? Not anymore, thankfully. Do you curse a lot? I curse possibly more than anyone you know. Have you ever been in a courtroom? Yes. Do you eat a lot around Thanksgiving? No. I actually don't like 99% of Thanksgiving food. Were you a chubby child? No. Are you afraid to sing in front of people? Yes. Do you enjoy your family? Yeah. When did you last dance with someone? I forced Sara to last June lmao. Do you feel awkward watching sex scenes? VERY. Did you ever have senior photos done? No. Are your parents protective of you? Mom is for sure. I don't see my father much, and he's changed a LOT since the divorce, so I can't really answer for him. I know he is to some degree, I just don't know how much. Have you ever been bullied? I've had some mean shit said to me, but I don't believe I've ever really been consistently "bullied." Do you ever help decorate during the holidays? No. I just don't have the motivation and don't really care enough to put things up that're only coming down in two months. Do you have carpeted floors? Only my room and my sis's old one. Can you count to ten in another language? German, yeah. Have you ever been arrested? No. Do you always lock your door at night? Yeah. Do you get allowance? No, never did. Do you have a Facebook? Yes. Do you enjoy the presence of children? In most cases, no.

#survey #quiz #questions #random #bored

4 notes · View notes

cjxkpopxwriting · 5 years

Text

Happy birthday, Jeon Jungkook

Author’s note: I had intended for this to be a... sinday Drabble which meant all sexy and no plot. But I’m feeling fluffy today and Jungkook needed some love. So. Enjoy a bit of a softer one shot for our dear Kookie on his birthday. 💜

The excited chatter from the group chat was all he could hear. Hoseok was louder than usual, his voice reverberating off of the walls around Jungkook as he easily overshouted everyone else. With everyone off on vacation, this was the first birthday Jungkook had experienced in the last seven years without them. “Jungkook-Ah!” Jimin shouted, pulling his doe eyes back down to the screen. “Why do you look so sad? You didn’t like my gift?” Jungkook quickly shook his head, sitting up on the sofa as he rubbed his eyes.

“No, I loved it. I love all of them. You guys didn’t have to buy me all this stuff.” Namjoon waved at the screen and scoffed. “You say that every year, Kook. We like to do it. Makes us feel like we did something.” Jungkook eyed the portion of the screen where Namjoon sat and laughed, his bunny teeth finally showing and the guys chanted with joy. “So... did you hear from her yet?” Tae asked, and suddenly the smile was gone.

No.

He hadn’t heard from you all day. And here it was sunset and you hadn’t shown hide nor hair to him. Not even a message. Or a call. “No, I haven’t. I’m starting to worry about it. Last year she chased me all over the planet to find me on my birthday.” He rubbed his neck, and shrugged. “It’s late... I’m gonna grab a shower and probably eat before bed.” Yoongi hummed softly, leaning in to observe Jungkook closer on the screen. The younger leaned back like Yoongi had actually been here.

“Don’t give up yet. The night is still young.”

The words from his Hyung brought a small smile on his face, and he laughed. “Thank you.” He waved and everyone said goodbye and goodnight before he clicked the red phone icon, effectively ending the face time. He glanced around the empty house, and sighed. First, he gathered up every present, which took multiple trips, and carried them to his room.

From Taehyung, a new camara. With a fancy lens for all of those special shots he was always trying to get. From Yoongi a new piece of tech for recording and editing. From Namjoon, new beats. From Jimin, brightly colored yellow comfort items, everything from blankets to candles and lotions and pajamas. Nothing had been missed. Hoseok had sent him a rather large care package with almost every food item under the sun he could think of wanting in a single day. The chocolate had been the first thing to go. And Jin... sweet Jin. He had purchased a shiny new watch from Fossil for Jungkook. It was too beautiful. And the note attached told him not to forget to make every second count.

But one thing he wanted all day was missing.

You.

Sighing whistfully as he finished putting his gifts away, he admired the things his family had gotten him too. His parents and brother had all gone in together to get him some new gym equipment for his room. It would definitely help him stay sharp. He had all but resigned to really give up after his shower, wandering the house quietly as he made sure doors were locked and lights were off.

The light knock on the door made him pause.

It was nearly 8:00. Who could it possibly be?

He hesitates, looking himself over. Sweats slung low on his hips, and shirtless, he wasn’t exactly presentable. Pushing his long hair from his eyes, he lightly padded to the door to look out the peep hole. His eyes widened at the sight of a massive box of candy over the peep hole, and he threw the door open, curious. “If this is some kind of prank...”

When you peered out from behind the box, his worried gaze fell into something akin to surprise and then sadness. “What, Kookie? You thought I forgot?!” He shook his head, lips pursed, trying to play it off even though you’d caught him. “I was worried maybe I didn’t have a girlfriend anymore, actually... the silent treatment? Really? On my birthday?” You gasped and pushed him back into the house, closing and locking the door before you shook your head.

“Jeon Jungkook, I’ve never ever forgotten our special days. Especially not the day that the love of my life came into this world!” Jungkook blushed at your words, his eyes slowly lifting to find your face. “Love of your life? Really?” You sat the box of chocolate down and nodded. “Absolutely. The one. The only. Jeon. Jungkook.” You backed him into the wall, fingers sliding up his abs to rest on his chest, before pressing a light kiss to his lips.

“Ok. Fine. I thought you forgot.”

You shook your head. “No! I actually planned something. Should be here any minute.” As if on cue the doorbell rang and you practically skipped all the way to the door to open it. “Thank you!” You added as you handed over the cash due and a tip and then closed it. “You were about to eat Ramen, I’m sure. But this will be better.” Jungkook hummed at the sight of the boxes of pork belly, thick noodles and sauce, kimchi, and perhaps even a sweet dessert? “And that box... why didn’t you open it?” Jungkook shrugged again.

“Worried maybe it was weird fan mail...”

You couldn’t help but giggle. “Well I am a fan, but it’s from me! Open it after dinner.” He eyed the box and then followed you to the table. You served him, and he caught you before you made your own plate. “Thank you, baby. For being here. It’s weird being all by myself...” You laughed, and leaned in to kiss his lips, lingering for a moment too long. His fingers slid up your side and along your jaw. His lips were tender as they sampled yours longer, pulling your lips with his own gently.

“You need to eat...” you reminded, and he chuckled, looking in your eyes. “I know. But I want to enjoy you too. You look so beautiful. I’ve missed you all day.” You hum and kiss him again lightly before filling your own plate and sitting beside him. The two of you filled the space by talking between bites, him often making you giggle by adding his chopsticks alongside his canines like long fangs, where he barked at you like a walrus. “You’re a mess, Jungkook. But I love you.”

His eyes were soft but blank as he looked up at you, admiring you for a moment. “I love you too, jagiya.” Your heart fluttered as you held his gaze, before reaching to stroke from his cheekbones down to his jaw, before your fingers lightly tapped along his collarbones. “Now.. get that box and open it.” Jungkook laughed and went to grab it, wrestling it in his lap as his deft fingers tore at the mailing tape. When it finally open, he dug through the packing paper and gasped.

Within the box was a soft yellow set of lace lingerie, and he carefully lifted the bra by the straps, eyeing it with his lips parted in surprise. “You... I... is this for you to wear for me?” You nodded shyly, face slightly pink, and reached out to take the delicate material from him. “This is beautiful... I can’t wait to see it on you.” Nodding again, you picked up both pieces, popped a mochi into your mouth, and stood up.

“Have some dessert, and I’ll be right back.” He watched you leave and quickly stuffed two mochi into his face before he got up to clean quickly, storing the leftovers before he ran to his room to clean up. You found him hanging a few things he’d tried on but didn’t wear, clearing his bed, and when he turned to look at you he sank into the bed with a squeak of a noise. You looked incredible.

“Do you like it?”

He licked his lips as they pursed, his next word barely a breath as he nodded. “Jagiya... you... look amazing. Come here.” You complied with a grin and immediately climbed into his lap. His hands slid over the bare curve of your backside before he tugged you against him and kissed your hungrily. Your breath left you as he kneaded your flesh with his strong fingers, dragging you right over the swell of need on the other side of his sweats.

“I know what makes this the best birthday ever... having you here. You make everything better, baby.” You kissed along his jaw as you eased him back, making him lay out under you. He worked his body back up the bed the rest of the way, and you crawled with him. Finally seated in his lap, you softly hummed Pied Piper and rolled your hips. “I’m taking over you...” you mumbled and he laughed, eyes curving with his grin. “You’re using my own lyrics against me now? Damn, ok. Playing dirty is allowed, I guess...”

When he rolled and you were suddenly on your back, you pouted up at him as he slid between your thighs like he owned the place. “It’s my birthday. I’m pretty sure I should be the only one deciding how this goes down baby. And I think I wanna be on top.” You sighed, stroking your own hair, and he laughed. “But I may let you ride for round two...” he added, his eyes softly finding yours.

“How about... after tonight... you and I plan a trip together? I still have a while for vacation and everyone else is abroad. Gives us some romantic time together... and I can spoil you...” he began kissing down your chest and you whispered a curse word when his lips found a lace covered nipple, teasing lightly. “Love you night after night until were both crazy and sore.” You giggled when he tugged at the tack of the bra with his teeth and let it pop back against your skin.

“Don’t you even think about tearing this off of me, Jungkook. It’s expensive and I will smack you.” He groaned, and rolled his hips into yours. “But I wanted to go all wild man and pound you into my mattress.” Shoving him again at his vulgar words, you giggle when he buries his head in your neck. “I love you so much baby.” He added, lips gently working up to your jaw and then your chin to peck yours. “You’re not going anywhere tomorrow right?” You shook your head and he grinned impishly at you. “Good... because I’m gonna keep you busy all night. Say happy birthday Jungkook...” he sang, leaving you gasping when he tore the panties right off of you and buried his face between your thighs. Finding your breath as you gripped his hair, you tugged hard, head falling back.

“Happy... birthday... Jeon... Jungkook.”

#jungkook #bts #bts writing #happy birthday jungkook

3 notes · View notes

thenixkat · 5 years

Text

Animorphs notes: Megamorphs 2

Megamorphs 2

Marco 1

Saw something on the news and mentioned it to the others leading to everyone in a storm trying to breathe in dolphin morph

Of course its not like sharks need to breath air and might be better in some cases

Marco uses humor to cope

Rainy day

So why are the animorphs getting involved with a sunken nuclear sub?

Marco wants to go out of his way to save people again.

Him and Rachel are like the most likely on the team to become superheros

Or they could put their stuff in a bag and bury it on the beach instead of putting things in the trash?

How exactly do these guys plan on rescuing people?

Cassie 1

Everybody morphs dolphin

They find the sub

Jake 1

Ah yes the plan to kidnap an officer. Totally would have no negative reprocussions

Can’t just act in a weird and obvious manner to direct people to the sub

Sometimes dolphins help people, sometimes dolphins kill people. Its a rulette game as to whichever a dolphin is more interested in at the moment

The writter makes a comment on war and nukes

A nuke goes off and instead of being vaporised by the light the kids get transported through time and space for some reason

Rachel 1

One of these days a kid is gonna get trapped in morph when they’re uncoincious

Cassie’s the only one who had any injuries from the fucking nuke going off

Why is there a volcano over there? There shouldn’t be volcanoes where they are

Rachel watches the Magic Schoolbus

That’s not how plesiosaurs work and you could never mistake them for a whale even with sonar

Ax is smug about those not being whales

Tobias 1

Why the hell are fucking plesiosaurs intered in them in the first place?

Tobias got vored by something big enough to swallow a 10ft at least dolphin whole

This is causing me pain

Rachel got vored by something that can fit 2 ten or so foot dolphins inside its stomach

Looked it up and yeah no, plesiosaurs were def known to not have flexible necks by the time this was written

No that can’t be an ichthyosaur b/c they’re gone by this point in the Cretaceous and the on ly ones that big were likely FILTER FUCKING FEEDERS

Random ass gulper eel dolphin sea monster

Rachel decides that morphing is the best idea in the stomach

Tobias morphs too

Jake 2

Ax doesnt get to have a turn yet what a surprise

Cassie says they should try to rescue Rachel and Tobias, Jake says thats a fucking dumb idea and he’s right

Jake is pissed at people getting themselves eaten and Cassie coming up with dumb fucking idea

There should actually be some seagull like dinosaurs but I think those were discovered much later than these were written

Kids finally put 2 and 2 together and realized that they aint in Kansas anymore

They havent actually put togther the gone back in time bit yet

Jake and the writer seem to be under the impression that dolphins have no natural defenses

They are almost there in realizing what happened

Cassie 2

Still no fucking Ax narration

THESE KIDS ARE REALLY FUCKING DUMB

Sauropods did not leave elephant like foot prints. At all

Nope not figured it out yet

Cassie, you should know that whales can’t swallow whole full gown dolphins

Cassie almost gets eaten by a crocodilian and these kids still haven’t fucking figured it out

Wait a minute. Grass doesn’t exist in this time period

Also Cassie should know better. Herbivores can and will fuck you up with little provication

They finally figured it out

I see we have movie monster Tyrannosaurs

Rachel 2

Wow Ax really doesnt have any rights does he?

...that’s not how anatomy

Bears are not herder to digest than dolphins

This is hurting ,me

Tobias everything you said aside from the hadrosaurs was pure bullshit

Rachel thinks the dinosaur angle is rediculous

Tobias 2

Tobias you have a fucking hork-bajir morph you utter dumbass

Wow Tobias is bad at morphing, he can’t even get rid of his injuries

Tobias gets to be extra useless and cause Rac hel pain by haveing to perch on her

Grass doesnt exist in this time period

There was a gradual decline in the late Cretaceous of nonavien dinosaurs, the asteroid was the last nail in the coffin

T. rex was just another animal not not much more dangerous than say a lion, just bigger

Marco 2

Ax doesnt get to narrate I guess

There is no reason for the tyrannosaur to be chasing them it just made a fucking kill

They aren’t even the right size to be worth the fucking effort either

Marco almost gets eaten and is saved by Ax who papercuts the thing to death

Ax 1

Yeaaaah Ax vs Tyrannosaur should not end in victory for Ax

I flatout don’t belive this rediculousness and my suspension of disbelife died several chapters ago

Ax is fucking shook that worked

Ok good Ax was very very fucking lucky that worked and not gonna try that again

No, Ax, no that is not scientificly possible b/c theres no fucking dna in the fucking fossiles they are bone and other shit shaped rocks

When the fuck did Cassie get any survival skills? Did she decide to brush up after the Karen incident

Well we have ‘I will survive this with or without you’!Cassie today

Yall could actually morph Ax and have your own andalite tails. Or fucking morph hork-bajir

Rachel 3

Grass still doesnt exist yet

At no point did rachel think to escue some modesty and make wraps for her feet

Rachel suggests that Tobias morph human, even perminatly

He is very shit at morphing

I guess he expects that he’s got days to live as a wounded bird over anything else he could fucking morph

Rachel refuses to fucking make it known that she’s suffering

In what fucking world does that description matach a triceratops

Also deinonychus, not around at the end of the cretaceous

Deinonychus is about almost 3 ft tall at hip and a ft longer than that

Naked ass ones at that

Them going after them at least makes sense

Cassie 3

Camping and eating tyrannosaur meat

Gonna sleep in shifts

People keep forgetting that they have hork-bajir morphs which are amazing and also that they could just aquire Ax

Tobias 3

Nothing about the majority of large dromaeosaurs suggests that they’re fast. The opposite actually. Ambush predators not chasers.

Tobias and Rachel split up

Tobias and the writers forgot about wing assisted incline running and the fact that raptors can fucking climb if the have to

Tobias drops on one and aquires it

Tobias 4?

This is going with the not-dynonicus being diurnal for some reason

Tobias lost control of the morph and will probably attack Rachel

Jake 3

The rock that was the final nail for the dinos is estableshed bvery firmly\

Stampede

And a nother tyrannosaur

Jake trips and falls when it matters most

Rachel 4

Tobias is really serious about not identifying as human

Rachel tries to reach him over smashing the lead raptor

Jake 4

Jake gets vored by the tyrannosaur whole even tho it was already eating bigger more interesting prey

Jake aquires the thing and starts morphing imediately

That tyrannosaur broke its fucking tail

Everyone aquires the injured dinosaur

Marco 3

Marcos not happy and everyone misses Rachel

More travel

Ax says the flash of light that started the stampede was artifical

Did Ax just say he can see ultraviolet and infrared

They find an alien city

Tobias 5

Tobias is bitching about Rachel still being mad that he gutted her

Neither of them are healing their injuries for no good reason

Ew, Tobias gross.

Rachel has a raptor morph now

Rachel isn’t a coherent person when hrungy and tired

Why are there coconut trees? They dont exist yet

Rachel eats a not coconut

No. That is not a fucking spinosaurus. Spino is fucking African and didn’t live at the same time as T.rex

Tobias metally calls Rachel stupid

Rachel 5

This is really fucking poorly reserched

And lo an alien:

And that's when I noticed the other creature step smoothly out from the

bushes.

It walked on two legs. It was rough-textured, like it had really chapped

skin. It was reddish in color. It had two big eyes and a small mouth,

all of the same reddish-rust hue. It stood about eight feet tall. It was

carrying a weapon.

The creature gazed curiously at us with what seemed to be eyes, although

they were mere indentations in its face. From its head a pair of

antennae, flexible as whips, grew and began waving toward us.

The alien calls dibs on the dinosaurs and speaks Fucking English

The nesk

The nesk is a pile of antlike creatures

Anmd really Rachel just fucking escalate things to outright violence

Cassie 4

Cassie suggests that they just go see who the aliens are

And that Jake stay behind b/c she doesnt want to loose more people

The alien city:

We flew toward the shining city in the valley. With osprey eyes I could see much more clearly. I saw buildings that rose in steep, smooth sweeps, like they'd grown from the bedrock. Windows were stuck in odd locations, some aiming out, others more like skylights. And there were fields planted with green and arranged in neat circles instead of rows.

The aliens themselves:

As we got closer, I could see creatures of some sort. They looked a little like large - very large - crabs. Only with shells in a wild array of colors, deep blue, spring green, orange. And while on one side there was something very much like a large pincer, on the other side there was a pair of hands.

Crab people

TRhe kids are attacked by naked pterosaurs

Tobias 6

Wow its almost like starting a fight with an unknown party can go wrong

The ship:

The ground beside me exploded, like it had been ripped by an invisible

plow. I jumped. Another plow mark just behind me! I saw movement. And

there, racing toward us across the plain, was a gleaming, silver craft.

Maybe twice the size of a Bug fighter, but shaped like an elongated

pyramid, long end forward.

The nesk herd Rachel and Tobias away from their claimed territory

Ah they’re falling over the cliff of the mercora city

Jake 5

Daring mid air antics and the team is reunited

Also a force field wich is smart\

Ax is tired of having to be the info guy

At least its not a killer forcefield like the kind that yeerks use

The mercora introduce themselves

Ax 2

Ax and his andalite bullshit

More of the mercora:

There were three of the creatures. They moved upon seven legs. Four on

one side, three on the other. To make matters worse, the four

legs were larger than the three. So they scuttled sideways in the

direction of the small legs.

They stood about half the height of a tall human, and seven or eight

feet wide.

On the side with the four big legs, there was a sort of three-way pincer

claw. It looked very powerful. It looked like the sort of thing I would

not want to have to fight against.

On the other side, the weak side, there were two arms similar to my own,

but even stronger than human arms. The arms ended in long, tapered,

delicate fingers.

There were a lot of eyes. They kept opening and shutting, one or two or

three at a time. They were each hidden beneath tiny trap doors in the

Mercora's exoskeleton or shell. Eyes were forever appearing and

disappearing. It was very, very distracting.

Which is a cool design

They talk in thought speak

Just b/c humans in the future don’t know about the mercora doesnt mean they left or were destroy you dumb fucks

Marco 4

The mercora healed Tobias, gave everyone food, a place to stay and even offered to make them soem clothes

The crabs wear clothing or at least make it

And they have force field furniture

Also that’s not how broccli works

Marco makes a vore joke about the mecora

Really Cassie?

The mercora are herbivores

All you have is the mecoras’ word on that and they are in direct conflict with the nesk

And so what if they’re scavengers?

Very rarely but sometimes Cassie has a valid point

Ax 3

Ax is still kinda specist

Hmm I wonder why the mercora aprove? Its not like they can have an alterior motive here

And the mercora are going to help

Ax is very lonely in genera;

Cassie 5

The writers are fucking awesomebros

And they can’t control the morphs

Cassie gets wounded by a ceratopsian

Jake 6

What? We were just with Cassie oh forget it

Jake is suicidally confidant that Cassie wouldn’t eat him

Apparently Jake is right

Cassie freaks out

Ax 3

Tobias keeps being wrong.

The nesk have thought speak detectors

Tobias 7

They group steal an explosive and destroy the nesk ships

Rachel 6

The nesk retaliate very effectively

Ax calls for back up

TRachel throws herself around to draw away fire from the others

The mercora attempt a rescue and loose a ship

Culture:

The Mercora saucer picked us up, us and our little nuke. But they were a

grim, depressed bunch of aliens. It was hard to tell at first. But then

I noticed that each of them was minus one of their smaller legs. There

were just oozing stumps.

"What happened to your legs?" I asked. But even as the words were out of

my mouth, I saw the limbs in the corner. They were laid out on a

brightly colored cloth which was draped over a shelf. There was

something ceremonial about it. Almost religious.

<Can you explain the meaning of this?> Ax asked politely.

<We must make the sacrifice of pain. The legs will regenerate, but those

we honor will not,> the Mercora pilot said. <This is a symbol. It speaks

to our spirit's pain, by echoing it in physical pain.>

"They did this for the Mercora who were in the other ship?" Jake asked.

<For those who were in both ships,> the pilot said. <To be killed is a

sadness. To kill is a sin.>

Jake says the they owe the mercora for saving them

Fuck you Tobias

Tobias 8

Tobias this is premeditated murder

The nesk have decided to leave the earth

The mercora claim that the nesk altered the path of the meteor

They want to use the bomb to save themselves

Cassie 6

Fuck you Tobias

You need to be held accountable for this shit

Its almost like the vast majority of things to ever live never leave any fucking fossils you nit

This bastard is really trying to justify himself like this is anyway defensible

Fuck you Tobias, you get to join Cassie and Jake in the bin of fucking terrible people

Jake 7

Oh what you little bitch babies can’t handle the consequences?

Tobias deserves his unhappines and eventual death

Cassie 7

Cassie at least decides to bear witness to their crime

CVassie saw the time pass

No good reason given why they can’t retain those morphs

Tobias needs to pay for his shit

#nix reads animorphs #animorphs #this was very poorly reserched #and tobias deserves his suffering

5 notes · View notes

makomaragi · 5 years

Text

Listen, here’s the deal!! I know I’m going to be posting some of these out of order. I have fics for the other prompts that I am working on but aren’t totally happy with yet, so I’m just going with prompts that I have finished/the day is past/whatever. Wish I hadn’t gotten a late start on this but whatever here it is I’m doin it!!! Also I super feel the need to say I haven’t written any fics for almost a year so I am quite rusty but trying hard to remember how I do this

Title: Lost

Pairing: Professor Aurea Juniper/Fennel (Scientificshipping)

Rating: G

Fandom: Pokemon

More often than not, Fennel awoke alone in bed.

She never horribly minded, such was the nature of their schedules, really. Aurea was late to bed and early to rise, always had been and probably always would be. Fennel herself preferred to go to bed early and sleep in. Their schedules only ever seemed to be in sync when they were on vacation or at a conference together, but never at home.

But this time was different.

There was a note on her bed side table, and multiple unread texts on her phone.

She sat up urgently, grabbing her glasses and beginning to read the note first.

Had to go ASAP – huge fossil find in Johto. Will call you when I get there. Love you.

It must have been something huge if she left in the middle of the night without warning to get to. The professor knew better than to try to rouse Fennel from her sleep in the dead of night by this point, taking the apathetic route and dealing with it later.

Well, there was nothing she could do about it now. The string of texts from her wife were all in the same breath – Getting on plane now. Flight will be about 6 hours. Will call you later.

Six hours from when, though? The timestamp of the sent text was 3 in the morning, but that wouldn’t take in to account what time zone she was flying in to. Backwards, forwards, what? A quick search on her phone showed that Johto was about 8 hours ahead of them.

There was a passing thought in that anyone else would be concerned that their spouse disappeared in the middle of the night and boarded a plane to another region. But, Fennel wasn’t. A bit annoyed, surely, but not much more than that.

She went on with her day. Leaving in such a rush meant that most of her usual research team stayed behind, but from what she gathered, they planned on joining the professor soon and were waiting to hear from her. Fennel spent her time at the lab scouring science articles, and indeed find what Aurea had gone off to do. Something about fossils found at the ruins of Pokemon that they didn’t think had existed in a certain time from. Nosey as Aurea was, she probably had a hint that they were excavating there, and soon as the slightest clue came about, she was off to be one of the first to research there. The time posted on the article suggested that they weren’t certain about much, and that Aurea had left before the article was even published.

A text had come through at some point while she was reading – Just got to Johto. I’ll call you when I get settled. Have a good day. Miss you.

Fennel shrugged at this, and went on with her own lab work.

It was around 4 or 5 that her phone finally rang, a video call, even. Perhaps the professor had timed it as such that Fennel would be finishing up at work and heading home soon, she always had an internal knack for figuring out the time zones quickly.

“Aurea! Hi,” Fennel was eager to finally speak with her personally instead of relying on displaced texts and news articles to figure out what she was doing.

“Hey,” the professor sounded groggy yet excited, smiling as brightly as ever. “Look at this, isn’t it cool?” She flipped her phone around and scanned over what looked to be a lot of torn up ground, with various things wrapped in tarps, and scientists at work under the lights they had set up to continue under the night sky.

“So, what happened? Why’d you leave so quickly?”

“Lenora e-mailed me last night. She had been there for a few days and found some Girafarig fossils. We had thought that they hadn’t evolved until a few thousand years ago, but this stuff tells us otherwise. There’s all kinds of ruins here from some ancient civilization. Papa is here somewhere, this is more of his thing, he’s going to help us make sense of it all.”

“So...you had to get there first, and make sure you get credit for finding stuff, right?”

“Sort of. She asked me to come and help them identify and excavate the Pokemon fossils before too many research teams show up. I mean, it’s fair game,”

The dream scientist couldn’t help but laugh at this. “Well, I miss you. I didn’t even get to say good bye to you.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“When are you coming home?” Maybe it was premature to ask, but she was well within her rights to wonder.

“I...I don’t know,” the brunette’s face fell at this. “I might be here for a while, Fen.”

Fennel could feel the sinking sensation in her stomach, looking away slightly, but forced a smile. ‘A while’ could mean a lot of things, especially to Professor Juniper. Three days? Three weeks? Three months? “Well, honey, I hope you find lots of cool rocks then.”

“Listen, it’s pretty late here and I have a lot of work ahead of me. We can talk more tomorrow, okay?” she could sense the other woman’s disappointment, but her statement was true. She had been awake for nearly twenty four hours at that point, but she was going to keep at it as long as the adrenaline was working in her favor.

“I love you. Stay safe, okay?”

“Love you, too. Remember to feed the pokemon. Take care.”

The dream scientist finally released a pressed sigh. For half a second, she felt tears welling up in her eyes but fought them off without much effort. Her wife was doing what she loved and that was the important thing. Discoveries like this didn’t happen every day, and this was the trip of a lifetime for her, as last minute as it was.

So it was. She’d get herself some dinner, go home, and read a book or watch TV. Maybe call her mom or sister. Maybe plan a trip of her own to go see her parents so she wouldn’t feel so alone. It wouldn’t be all bad. She always felt a bit lost when the other researcher wasn’t around, but she had become better at finding things to do on her own.

It would be fine, it always was.

#scientificshipping #my fics #femslash february #femslashfeb2019 #fennel #professor juniper #femslash

8 notes · View notes

marlutterianae · 5 years

Text

Memories from the Fall of Berelith.

- A vision of the Past -

The young witch spotted a relic from ages past. A floating monolith in the middle of a scorched field. Powerful arcane echos could be felt as she approached the structure with cautious steps. The witch had been on this journey of discovery for a couple of years now. Her knowledge and dominion over magic has gone through a drastic improvement. And her speciality was her psychic sensitivity. An ability common for witches, but hers was way more potent. With enough deep focus, she could gaze at visions of the past from just touching an object that was present in cataclysmic events. And the magic essence around the colossal monolith was enormous. Even without entering in a trance, she started to have visions the more she approached the floating relic. Quick images of a slaughter between humans, demons and anything in between. She accelerated her step, going over piles of petrified fossils and ash. With each ash mound she kicked, she envisioned another brief moment of the past. Duels between man and demon. There were no victors, only death.

Once under the monolith, using a trick she learned a few weeks ago, she conjure a spell to levitate, driven with a powerful vertical jump. Ascending serenely, contemplating the markings and glyphs carved in the stone monolith. It was filled with cracks and entire holes broken in it. As she approached the top of the monolith, she felt as she was rising towards the sun. An overwhelming amount of energy could be fell, but it didn’t stop her ascension. Once at the top, she step over a flat surface, with symmetrical engravings in it. More glyphs, that all converged at the center in a circle. The witch was starting to lose her balance, her consciousness drifting away, attempting to reach the center. A painful feeling, but it was a good sign. That meant there was a powerful arcane memory accessible in that very spot at the center. With the last of her physical strength, she sat at the circle in the middle, on top of the floating monolith, several feet above ground. Once there, she straighten up, close her eyes and began to meditate. After just three long breaths, she was out of this world.

…

“Behold, child of witch blood. For your kind brought this upon themselves”.

The demon spoke with a crushing authority and a deepness in his speech that could overwhelmed the heart and mind of a common human. But she was no common human. A figure of authority within her brethren, the witch replied to the demon without showing any form of inferiority towards it.

“I won’t deny the sins of our people. I am as disappointed by them as much as you. The royalty kept many secrets from their people, and even from the Order…” both creatures stood at the top of a floating monolith contemplating a cataclysmic sight. The destruction of the world as they know it. The fall of her empire. The ultimate purge of traitors for the demon. Colossal pillars of fire forming tornadoes burned all of the fields, corrosive rain melted the flesh of the living, explosions of raw arcane magic destroyed entire cities and magnificent structures with ease. Countless magical phenomena was cleansing the once mighty empire of Berelith and the pair of watchers could only contemplate what brought them here.

The winged humanoid demon towered over the witch with his arms crossed. The witch broke the silence once more.

“I won’t lie to you, but the Order had a contingency plan in case something like this happened. Even the Great Witches were surprised by the magnitude of the event, yet the plan persists. I shall join them, and we will return once the world falls into silence”. The demon sighed deeply.

“Your kind are better off dying right now than to wait for an agonizing last stance. I can’t see the future but it will not be bright for any of you. Besides, I’m sure your lineage won’t be the only things left after the cleansing”. Another prolonged moment of silence between the two, as the incomprehensible sounds of destruction surrounded them.

“Considerate gesture to conjure a field around us. We are missing out on the pain of the world”.

“It’s the last thing I’ll do. The last I can do, before parting ways. I’m not entirely sure if I will be able to survive. The demons are suffering… A change in structure as well. Many tied to the old ways won’t make it. So I wanted to make this farewell as peaceful as possible”.

And for the first time in their brief meeting, the witch looked back at the demon with a contempt smile.

“We will be alright, Hishter. And I have faith in you as well. Call it naivety, but whatever the outcome is, remember to fight with your ideals unharmed”. The demon looked back at her disciple and his monstrous features shaped into a melancholic expression, before returning his eyes to the cataclysm ahead.

“Troublesome times are coming for those who make it. Berelithians, witches, demons… Everything in between… I can only, for the first time, hope… That this will not be the end for us”.

…

And so, slowly, almost peacefully, the memory faded into a void. And the consciousness of the witch returned to her present body, in a meditation pose, on top of the worn out floating monolith. She took some time to recover from the journey. Her body felt numb and her mind was cloudy as if she was awaken from a deep sleep.

She then pulled out a journal, in which she wrote down with meticulous detail all that she was able to see and perceived in the body of her ancestor. She browsed past entries to find any patterns or connections, but they all belonged to different individuals through the same lineage. She wasn’t done with this journey, however. She was in a hunt for memories of the fall of Berelith, and she won’t return home until she gains clear answers of what went down. Among the important details of today’s vision, the name of the demon, Histher, to whom she felt a deep connection and familiarity with, will be something to consider in the future.

----

I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN ABOUT THIS!

And I’m NOT DONE.

October might be over and the Inktober Guantlet of World Anvil done, but I started this challenge and I will finish it. There were a lot of things happening around me and to me in the last days of October, and I wasn’t able to continue on the writings for the last two entries. But right now, it’s not over until I’ve written and submitted to the very last one.

For now, we get another glimpse at the fall of Berelith from a Witch’s point of view. I still need practice with plot driven short tales.

One more to go!

#short story #worldbuilding #writing #witches #demons #fantasy #eldritch continent #viorg #dorok #berelith

3 notes · View notes

hopefulfestivaltastemaker · 3 years

Text

September 19, 2021

My roundup of things I am up to this week. Topics include peat in the Dutch Golden Age, research productivity, asteroid risk, and solar storms.

Peat and the Dutch Golden Age

That is the subject of this most fascinating article by Davis Kedrosky. The article outlines the role of peat in the prosperity of The Netherlands in the 17th century. We often split the long arc of history into the agrarian and industrial periods, with the Industrial Revolution as a transition, beginning in the 18th or 19th centuries in Britain. If so, then the Dutch Golden Age is a kind of intermediate period, with peat, the leading fuel, a transition between traditional biomass and fossil fuels.

One thing in particular jumps out at me.

Davis argues, fairly convincingly, that it was not energy limitations that brought the Dutch Golden Age to an end. During the decline, the Netherlands had as much access to coal at Britain, but they didn’t develop imports to a great degree. This is in contrast to the point of view generally associated with ecological economics, which gives energy availability and prices central importance in the evolution of an economy.

The whole substack is interesting and worth a browse. Davis focuses on economic history, particularly the history of the industrial revolution. The article about the timing is particularly interesting.

Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

This is the title of a paper by Bloom et al., on which I have commented a few times. Since the first preprint appeared around 2017, I haven’t seen a good counterargument to the paper, making it seem fairly strong. This essay, which came out this week, is the strongest I have seen so far.

Bloom et al. argue that ideas really are getting harder to find, and their evidence rests on three case studies (semiconductors and Moore’s Law, life expectancy, and agricultural yields) and total factor productivity (TFP). In each of the four cases, they argue that research productivity has fallen by dramatic margins. Research productivity is defined as the amount of progress in the area divided by the number of researchers.

Alexey Guzey’s essay, in contrast, makes several criticisms of Bloom et al.’s methodology. The main one is that the measure of ideas, and of “progress” in each of the four fields, is rather ad hoc. For example, with semiconductors, if the baseline measure of progress is taken to be a linear or quadratic growth of transistor density, rather than exponential, then productivity has gone up dramatically rather than down. There are a number of other criticisms as well, which I won’t enumerate fully. The essay is worth a read.

Regarding TFP, it is pointed out that TFP is not a very well-understood metric. TFP is the residual of economic growth when growth in capital investment and the labor supply are accounted for. TFP is often taken as a proxy for technological development, but really it is a sort of dark matter in macroeconomics that is only weakly correlated with technology.

The weakest point of Guzey’s argument, in my opinion, is a heavy reliance on mismeasurement. It is asserted that actual TFP is higher than the measured value because large contributions are not adequately accounted for. Operations like Google and especially Wikipedia, for example, capture only a small portion of the consumer surplus they generate. I have two problems with this argument. First, it is not clear that this is true. While Wikipedia only formally contributes to GDP a small fraction of the value it creates, easy access to knowledge should allow workers and firms to be more productive, increasing GDP indirectly. Second, even if this argument does hold up, it is not clear that mismeasurement has gotten worse over time, which would be necessary if there is recent growth in TFP not being captured by formal statistics. For instance, there is a great deal of informal household labor not captured in the economy, and if anything this value has been going down (e.g. home cooked meals being replaced by restaurant meals).

The above criticism notwithstanding, this essay is a useful contribution to the productivity debates. I think the weak correlation between TFP and innovation is the most important point. It should be borne in mind in trying to explain the paradox of how a sluggish economy seems to coexist with astonishing advances in synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, space flight, and other areas.

Asteroid Risk

The last asteroid impact to do significant damage to humans was the 2013 Chelyabinsk impact. That asteroid was about 20 meters in diameter, and though it airburst rather than hit the ground, the explosion caused about 1600 injuries, mostly from broken glass. The 1908 Tunguska impact is believed to have been caused by an asteroid about 50 meters in diameter. That did minor damage to humans because it hit in a remote area in Siberia. If it had hit a major city, the damage would have been catastrophic. Despite the light damage that has occurred historically, there is a small risk of a much larger impactor, and thus asteroids feature prominently on almost any list of existential risks to humanity.

This report from NASA has a chart (see p. 25) on the risk of impacts by size. The report is from 2006, but more recent material seems to say similar things. The risk of an impact with global consequences seems to be on the order of 1 in tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, per year, and 1 in millions before we get to extinction risk. I would be much more worried about other things.

Nevertheless, it is worth a modest investment of resources to identify and deflect asteroids. NASA’s budget to do so has grown considerably, though for a variety of reasons that are separate from planetary defense. As a result, the number of large asteroids found has also grown. As of 2018, about a third of 140+ meter asteroids are found; I think it’s about half now. Over 95% of 1+ km asteroids are found. We’ll probably never get to 100%, since there is the risk of an unexpected comet or something. Considering that the Tunguska impactor was estimated at around 50 meters, we are definitely far from finding everything that could do major damage.

It’s not clear to me what would happen if an asteroid with a high risk of impact was found. So far no deflections have been demonstrated, though there are plenty of ideas on the drawing board.

I don’t have too much to add that is novel. Having looked at this issue in more detail lately, I’m pleased to see that there has been a lot of progress, even if there is still a long ways to go. NASA now spends about $150 million/year on planetary defense, according to one of the articles above. That seems reasonable.

Solar Storms

One of the best known solar storms in recording history was the 1859 Carrington event. This storm disrupted telegraph lines and cause the Aurora Borealis to be visible as far south as Cuba. It is estimated that if a similar event happened today, the damage could be in the trillions of dollars.

This report has some figures on strengths of storms and their likelihood of happening (see Table 2 on p. 19), though they seem to misreport the strength of the Carrington Event.

Evidently there was a near-miss in 2012 of a major coronal mass ejection. It had a peak intensity is -1200 nanoteslas, while the Carrington event had a peak intensity of -850 nT. A direct hit would have been catastrophic.

Thanks to SOHO and other solar monitoring, we would have advance warning of up to a couple days in the event of a solar storm. The main thing to do would be to harden transformers and disconnect vulnerable equipment from the power grid. I would guess that some sort of Kuznets curve applies here. Since 1859, we’ve gotten much more vulnerable to solar storms because of the proliferation of power grids and electronics. But in more recent years we have gotten more resilient due to better forecasting, better design of equipment, and more knowledge of what to do. But unlike other areas where Kuznets curves apply, major solar storms are too rare to test this hypothesis rigorously.

Evidently it was proposed that the United States build a strategic reserve of transformers to prepare against solar storms or EMP attacks, but this was not deemed to be cost-effective.

0 notes

theendlesssummerstory · 6 years

Text

Endless Summer, Chapter 2/44 - We’ve all got secrets (Part 1)

“Hello?” Michelle yelled, banging on the reception bell. What she thought that would accomplish, with the hotel deserted, I’m not sure.

Sean stood there open-mouthed, looking around the empty lobby.

“This’ll make for one weird yelp review.” he managed.

“The hotels staff knew we were coming this week, right?” asked Grace, sadly. “This is not good.”

“I’m with Grace on this one.” I told the group. “Something like this doesn’t just happen. We should split up and investigate.”

“Thanks for backing me up, Taylor.” said Grace, smiling. I smiled back, letting her know she had my support.

“You know what I don’t understand?” said Craig. “I don’t have any service on my phone. Do you, Zahra? Raj?”

He had turned to face the female student with maroon streaks and the male student with the cranberry T-shirt. Both checked their phones, then shook their heads.

“Maybe they don’t have towers here.” Craig suggested.

“Of course there are cell phone towers here, you complete, utter simpleton.” Aleister insulted him.

“And how would you know that?” Zahra challenged him.

“Well, of course I... uh, I...” Aleister started, flustered, but quickly composed himself. “Maybe because I’m not a complete imbecile?!”

“What matters more is finding answers.” I told the group. “Lila, do you know-”

I stopped when I realised Lila wasn’t with us.

“Have any of you seen Lila?” I asked the group.

They shook their heads.

We left The Celestial through the front door and found Lila, pacing nervously and talking to herself.

“Where could they be? They’re all gone, all gone... what would Everett say if he knew Lila had-” she stopped when she heard us approach. She shook off her melancholy.

“Hey everyone! I’m sure this is nothing to worry about!” Lila told us with her cheery facade. “Maybe the hotel guests are all... having a picnic on the beach!”

“Yeah.” Jake scoffed, falling into his sarcastic manner once more. “Or maybe the care bears came and took everyone to Happy-Happy Land!”

“Jake.” Sean glared at him. “That’s not helping.”

“What’s not helping is just standing here, not getting any answers, doing nothing.” Jake retorted.

“Well, in order to get some answers, we need leadership. And it doesn’t look like you’re up to the task.” Sean challenged him.

Jake met the challenge, balling his fists. “YOU THROW A BALL AROUND AND YOU THINK THAT QUALIFIES YOU TO TALK TO ME ABOUT LEADERSHIP?!” he shouted.

They stepped towards each other, getting in each others faces, Sean having a slight height advantage. Before the situation could get uglier, I got between them and forcefully pushed them apart.

“Taylor-” Sean started.

“Captain America here’s trying to-” Jake protested.

“I don’t want to hear it. Both of you, stop puffing your chests.” I told them off. “The only thing getting us nowhere is this macho standoff. Put your petty squabble aside, and put your heads together, to help us make whatever sense we can of this.”

Sean and Jake looked at each other... then reluctantly shook hands.

“Better?” I asked them.

“Yeah, better.” Sean replied.

“Whatever.” Jake muttered, but got serious when he saw the look I was giving him.

“We’re good.” he quickly said.

“Great.” Diego spoke up. “Now we have the power of friendship. What do we do now, Taylor?”

Everyone turned to me for advice, even Lila, which I thought was odd, given she was the tour guide, and should probably be in charge here.

“Me? Well... as I said in the lobby, we should split into groups of 3-4 and investigate the different parts of the hotel.” I eventually said.

“Good idea, Taylor!” said Grace. “I’ll search the pool.”

“The pool actually sounds great.” Jake decided. “I’ll go with brain trust.”

“Craig, if things were normal right now, where would we be?” Raj asked him.

“Uh... the restaurant, stuffing our faces?” answered Craig.

“Exactly!” Raj replied. “We’ll search the restaurant.”

“Where do you want to look, Zahra?” Lila asked her.

Zahra shrugged. “Don’t care.”

“Well then...” said Lila, stunned, as Zahra’s gloominess contrasted her cheeriness. “How about we check out the ballroom?”

“Still don’t care.”

“I’ll go with you two.” I decided. As the tour guide, Lila (hopefully!) knew what she was doing, and I certainly wasn’t going to eat, or swim, at a time like this.

As we split off into our various groups, I noticed something - the female student in the blue hoodie had disappeared too. Who was she? Did she know something about the hotel guests? If so, what? And how?

Anyway, Lila, Zahra, Quinn (who had decided to join us) and I went to the ballroom. It was set up for a wedding, but there was one important thing that was missing.

“There’s no-one here.” I pointed out.

“Wow.” said Zahra, acerbically. “We can all relax, people, ‘cause Taylor’s here to point out the obvious.”

“You like being the jerk?” I asked her as nicely as I could.

“...you’re two for two.”

“What happened here?” Lila asked herself. “Everything’s set up for a wedding. What happened here, Lila?”

“Maybe the bride realised that marriage is a joke and hightailed it out of here?” Zahra suggested.

“Marriage? A joke?” Lila stepped back from Zahra. This time, she couldn’t hide how stunned she was.

“Personally, I have nothing against marriage itself, but I don’t see the point in big, fancy ceremonies. As long as you’re with your soulmate, who cares?” I commented, earning a bright smile from Quinn.

“You really believe that?” she asked me.

“Shouldn’t everyone?” I replied, earning a derisive snort from Zahra.

“I originally thought you were just a captive of the marital-industrial complex, but you’re even more of a sap than I thought. You believe in soulmates.” I might’ve taken offence from Zahra’s comment, but I knew she didn’t mean it personally. She was a jerk to everyone. It was her nature.

She walked up to a wine bottle and her eyes widened.

“Hey, Lila... why does this place have wine from 1921?!” she asked.

“Wait, what!?” said Lila, shocked, but I was sure she knew more than she was letting on.

“Well, this wine may be ancient, but that ain’t stopping me.” said Zahra, popping open the bottle and filling some wine glasses.

“Zahra! That wine doesn’t belong to us!” Lila and Quinn protested. But I took a glass and drank with Zahra - it was still a holiday, and all expenses were paid off. Besides, it wasn’t like anyone was here who would need the wine.

After a further investigation of the ballroom, in which we found nothing, we met the other two groups back in the lobby.

“In the restaurant, we saw something on the volcano!” said Craig. “It was, like, there, and then... not.”

“At the pool, Grace was nice to Aleister and he totally freaked out!” Diego added, laughing.

I noticed that Aleister wasn’t with the group. He was at the other end of the lobby, staring at a man’s picture. As I approached Aleister, I recognised the man from my dream - he was the man in the grey suit, and his taunt still haunted me. “You don’t understand yet... do you? Of course not. But you will... in time.”

“Aleister, who is that?” I asked.

Aleister jumped a little, surprised by my sudden appearance, but answered me calmly.

“That’s Everett Rourke. The owner of Rourke International, and the man who built this hotel.” he explained.

I thought I’d heard his name before, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

Aleister turned to leave, when he bumped into Grace.

“Oh!” she gasped, startled.

“Grace, I, uh...” Aleister started, but then tightened his face. “Watch where you’re going.”

As he left, I noticed Grace looking despondent.

“Can I... talk to you, Taylor?” she asked, almost a whisper.

“Of course. If it’s about Aleister, though, don’t take it personally-” I started, but she shook her head, hard.

“It’s not that, Taylor. I found something, and you, you just... seem to be a person I can trust.” she admitted.

“If you have a secret, Grace, I hope you know it’s alright to keep it. I trust you.” I consoled her.

“You do?!” she said, shocked.

“Of course. I trust you’ll make the right decision, and when you’re ready, you’ll share.”

Grace hesitated... then pulled something out of her orange sweater. It was a long, sharp tooth. One that looked prehistoric, as if it were a dinosaur fossil.

“I found this at the pool.” she told me. “I don’t know what to make of it. Do you think we should tell the group? See what they think?”

I agreed, and we went back to the group. They stared at the tooth with fascination.

“Woah.” said Jake. “There’s no way that’s normal. No animal today has teeth like that. It must be some kind of fossil.”

“We need to focus on the real problem guys.” said Sean. “We haven’t found out what happened to the hotel guests. And we need to find them.”

We heard someone come in through the front door. I turned and saw the female student in the blue hoodie enter the hotel, looking slightly disappointed.

“Oh - you’re back!” I said, unsure what to make of her sudden reappearance.

She ignored me and grabbed a hotel key from behind the desk.

“Estela!” said Lila. “There you are! Where have you been?”

“Lookin’ around. Trying to make sense of things.” she replied.

“Did you find anything?” Michelle asked her.

Estela shook her head. “Nothing that matters to you.”

“Shouldn’t we be the ones to decide what matters to us?” I asked her, and she finally looked at me, as if she had just noticed I was there.

“We’ve all got secrets.” she told me, somewhat hesitantly, before taking off, going to her room.

“Well… now that Estela’s taken hers, I guess I should all give you your room keys!” Lila decided.

After getting my room key, I went up to my room, and unpacked, still trying to work out what could have happened to the hotel guests.

Half an hour later, I heard a knock on the door. It was Diego.

#endless summer #mc x estela #estela x mc #lila sethi #jake mckenzie #diego ortiz soto #grace hall #sean gayle #estela montoya #quinn kelly #aleister rourke #zahra namazi #raj bhandarkar #craig hsiao #michelle nguyen #the endless summer story #playchoices #choices stories you play #pixelberry

3 notes · View notes

rey-kryze · 6 years

Text

When night time folds around our bed.

a modern reylo fic : chapter one.

pairing : rey x kylo ren / ben solo / reylo.

rating : explicit ( it will be , its only chapter one , lads ).

word count : 2628

read on ao3.

Her alarm's freakish screams jar her out of bed , hard enough that she falls onto the floor, where a pile of textbooks dig into her ribs.

its celtic music , calming --- Finn had insisted , that her usual go-to of Nineties' one hit wonders , weren't going to help her start her day on the right foot . Rey, currently , only wanted to stomp defiantly on his . Her roommate's newfound love of this hippy-dippy nu-age crap was the least of her concerns, as she stares at the red numbers from this angle she's suddenly aware that there's an eleven o'clock , where there should have been a nine. She slept through her class .

The class that cost her ... Fuck, a lot of zeroes .

Rey thinks in numbers , and , while her friends mock her for it , left brain crap makes more sense to her than just about anything else -- maybe if her wake up call was in binary, she'd actually have woken up .

She huffs, as if by sheer an abject defiance, she can will time to turn back, and give her the strength to power down to a lecture that had absolutely nothing to do with aerospace design , but was a weird sidelined requirement in the engineering part of her degree . Whatever . Rose took that class, Rose , whose notes were a verbatim recount of what their fossilized professor would have spewed over the last two hours. Rey smiles to herself , realizing that she'd never actually made it off the ground.

I'm too young for this , bitterly, as her joints pop and crackle , a protest of her having moved at all -- least, when she's stretching towards the stucco ceiling that's got a concerning number of tac-mark holes in it , and she's never looked up long enough to notice them until now . She'd add it to her to-do list, buy some Spackle .

Stumbling , Rey's arms only come down when she yawns, and nearly trips over herself on the way to the kitchen - the smell of coffee was , to the bleary eyed college student, a siren's song for which she'd brave the storm of her housemates . All of whom , have been up for hours .

" Rey , no offense , but you look like crap . " Poe , who is currently side-eyeing Finn's choice in late-morning beverage ( something green and thick -- couldn't he have the common decency to pour it into something that wasn't transparent ? ) , was always the one for honesty , except , apparently , when it came to his partner's dietary habits. He simply raises his brows, and resumes drinking his coffee , " You okay ?" After a moment has passed and Rey, usually quick on her wit, hadn't said a word.

" Huh ? Yeah of course ! I'm just peachy ." Deadpanned , she's still glaring at Finn who has made a point to read a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal. Rey's half inclined to pour his kale-something-or-other all over it, she doesn't, and fishes around for a clean mug while grumbling , " I overslept. Missed my only class for the day, and with Spring Break around the corner i'm running out of things to do . Too much free time ."

" You're the only person in the world who is mad that classes are out for two weeks , " Finn , finally choosing to speak , levels at her. They've mastered the art of copacetic trash talking and it unnerved anyone who didn't understand just how much these two cared for each other. ( its a lot , a lot a lot , and if he wasn't with Poe , people might have thought it was puppy love ).

He's not wrong , but that doesn't mean Rey's any less annoyed with him for saying it . " Hey . " A snap , " Us scholarship kids have to pull our weight around here. Idle hands are the devil's play things , or however the adage goes ." She's slowly lost any heat to her words, lulled into a caffeine-induced complacency as she nurses her first of many cups of coffee . It was the only way she could balance her usual routine, but , with classes winding down, and her almost done with her degree three years in advance ( how it'd back fired, overlaying as many credits as she had ) , its bringing too much to light. Like the things she doesn't have, or what she never does .

Poe, who has an apparent death wish,( alongside psychic abilities ) quips , " If your hands had something to play with maybe you wouldn't be so tightly wound ." Finn chokes on his drink, and Rose, who'd just come in with a smile, frowns .

" You know Rey." Her voice is happy. How is she literally always happy ? The arch of Rey's brow , normally wilting, isn't even enough to stop her now , " He's got a point. You never even go out with us . You visit skeevy bars , but never take anyone home --- " Finn clearing his throat is a saving grace that's got Rey forgiving the panflutes from earlier in a heart beat . Rose concludes quickly , " It just might do you some good to have some er --- human contact ! Not that the engine of a 747 doesn't get you plenty hot ."

Its a bad joke. The group collectively groans .

" I date ." She corrects, but when all eyes turn on her , the burn of her cheeks is telling , " -- I mean, its not that I haven't been asked. I'm just not interested in ... college boys." Yes, that's believable . Let them think you're into older men, or something . Rey's internal dialogue is more convincing than her outer one, as they continue to stare at her in growing disbelief , " Get off my case ." Is all she can manage through the thicket of their laughter . Her blush recedes, and she's left with a certain begrudged fondness for the ragtag group of people that were her friends .

Its only two p.m , and Rey's run out of things to do . It's stupid , really, how a friendly jibe could unearth so many truths that she'd worked hard to keep at bay. There's a reason she focuses on numbers instead of letters , on equations instead of poetry . Math and physics didn't call on that certain romantic quality that always, always found its way into any art she'd dared be interested in . Romance is crap. All of it is just ... crap.

Or maybe it isn't.

Crap.

She knows herself well enough that this nagging thought wont go away on its own . Its not that Rey's a virgin , or that she'd silently sworn herself to celibacy . More or less .. her feelings were baseless . She'd never known intimacy in a way that made her seek it out . It felt forced, uncomfortable , too-tight and too .. much . Rey knows Dr. Kanata and her had worked through a lot of her ' intimacy issues ' but that didn't make it an overnight fix ( A decade of therapy didn't qualify, evidently ). She' had boyfriends, but nothing that she could make sick . Ninety percent of the time , Rey got tired of them , bored with the compulsory tenderness and saying shit that she did not , in earnest , feel. It was all to fit in , and placate herself more than anyone else .

Crap.

Her legs are bouncing with nervous energy, sitting on the edge of her bed with her beat up phone in her lap - Rey frowns at the screen like it'd insulted her . She still can't believe that her own two fingers , in a flurry of doubt and defiance ( that'll prove them wrong is never sound reasoning ) have pulled up the app store , and typed in six letters , in that specific sequence , no less.

The only things she'd had downloaded to her phone besides the generic , standard set were : uber , youtube , a scientific calculator ( have you seen how expensive those things are ? this was free ) , a moon tracking bit , and something meant to organize her routine .

Now , this garish gradient of pink and orange is sitting dead-center on her home page . She hadn't dragged it into a group , yet , but it certainly didn't belong with any pre-existing thing . The whole ordeal is stressing her out when it was meant to provide the exact opposite. She nearly deletes. Nearly. but Poe's voice of all thing echoes , and then Rose's ... They'd sounded so ... pitying . Rey hates pity. And its with that intent -- to never see them look at her like that again, that she lets it download in full.

Her phone pings , and a groan runs through her at the sight of the notification that , really, only further cemented the fact that Rey at only twenty one years of age, was desperate to get laid. Tinder had downloaded successfully.

Turns out, Rey's got a fascination with setting up profiles .

She'd spent nearly two hours filling out the respective boxes , her interests , while minimal , had been gone into great detail - though , if this was solely for finding a quick lay, she can't imagine anyone would get past her profile picture ( a rather flattering one ) -- Rey'd never been any good with selfies, but Poe snapped a candid when they'd all gone out for a boozy brunch . Her smile takes up too much of her face, but her freckles glimmer under the nascent sun , a filter provided by the oversized red umbrella that kept their table in the shade , highlights her tan ( long lost to the unforgiving winter ) beautifully. All in all , with her hair in its standard ' space buns ', as Finn called them, ( the first astronaut with style , Rose had amended ) , she could call herself an attractive girl. Attractive enough to warrant a swipe , god , that felt silly, even just to think.

She smiles . Its been a long time since she'd felt this way.

Unfortunately , she forgot about her pending beaus within the hour , busying herself with repairing the garbage disposal in the kitchen sink. Despite having warned her friends to stop shoving all their leftovers down its gullet, it was broken after only a two week lapse since she'd last fixed it. More than once , she'd threatened to charge them for her services, but they all knew that Rey took mundane delight in doing things like this , her hands and mind preoccupied was just the way she liked it . She's smiling to herself , almost absurdly , as she hums along with the music trickling out from her phone's warped speaker -- the music's interrupted by a sound she doesn't recognize -- everything , every app , every reminder had been set to a certain Morse notification , this one was shrill and annoying and gave her a brief flashback to this morning's unfortunate Celtic incident.

She cleans her hands off with a dish towel, and pulls it out of her coverall's front pocket . ' congratulations ! you have a match ! ' bloody hell . Funneling embarrassment, and regret, she slides her phone open -- expecting a frat boy with a Ralph Lauren polo , or maybe some older 'gentleman' whose picture looked like a grayed big toe.

Her assumptions had been ( mercifully ) wrong .

'Ben Solo' , a name that was vaguely familiar , but in that sort of way you half-remember a dream, she shrugs it off - Ben wasn't uncommon , and being ' solo ' had become something of a plague . She shouldn't chuckle at her own pun that was at the expense of a man that, apparently, thought she was someone he'd sleep with .

He's handsome. Startlingly so . But not at all in any traditional fashion . Rey finds herself flipping through his pictures over and over, smiling when he did , which was only in one of the ten images he'd uploaded. Its enough , she's sold , her hearts beating frantically and her stomachs probably in her shoes, but she's riding the high that came with being .. wanted. However impersonally, through an app she'd trashed for months now , no less.

' Hi !' Crap . is that too impersonal? She adds a smiley face emoji a minute later , feeling out of practice and , quite frankly , ridiculous for having been so eager to message him - she'd only gotten the notif moments before. What if he thinks she's some girlish little waif who has been waiting, tragically , by her phone for him to match with her ?

' Hello .' Oh . He's formal too, Rey worries her lip a bit before replying,

' I'm Rey !' ... that's spelled out for him above, dummy. She'd already hit send though, no going back. Typing bubbles appear before she can ad to that.

' I see that . ' Was he being rude ? Or playful ? For whatever reason, she feels like he smiled to himself when he sent it. Her toes curl a little.

She takes a deep breath -- better to be honest with it , if he didn't like her forward nature, this wouldn't work to begin with.

' ive never done this I mean you can see that too I figure I'm not sure ... the protocol for these things . er .' a.k.a How do I ask for casual sex even if that's the primary directive here ?

He's kind, when he answers , about ten minutes after -- The whole time Rey's spent , still crouched under the kitchen sink , using the light of her phone to go by, but not accomplishing any actual work while she waits.

' Ah. I'm new to this , too .' He's being oddly formal. Punctuation , capitalization -- Rey's immediately aware that she hadn't checked his age, she'd been so enticed by his images and the prospect of scratching a newly - woken itch . She scrolls back over to his profile, and sighs with relief. He's only thirty. Which is only nine years her elder . Her friends had dated professors twice that age -- oh , a new message.

' To be frank , I'm finding it hard to believe you're real . It isn't often a woman of your caliber resorts to using a dating app . Not that I myself have extensive familiarity with them. ' Okay .. He wasn't actually getting anywhere with this , and its edging dangerously close to a real conversation . Usually, now's when Rey's attention would be thrown sharply and wholly into whatever she'd been doing before -- but she can't seem to stop herself when she replies,

' A woman of my caliber ?' Rey adopts his cadence , its easier to feel less like a messy child by comparison .

' Yes. You're beautiful, and educated . Did you run out of characters in your bio ? I felt that it ended abruptly. ' She had, but that he'd noticed makes her blush furiously. Its so hard to confine a person to two thousand words or less -- she'd had that same issue in her papers , enough so that her teachers have given her a page limit in contrast to her classmate's minimum .

' I did.' She pauses. ' I didn't think people payed that much attention to the girls they're trying to sleep with . ' Its crass, and she hopes it wouldn't chase him off. He's typing for a long while , a long ... long while ... oh no is he going to lecture her ?

' You're not just any girl, though. Are you ?' All that time an that's what he said ? He must've deleted and re-written that message a half dozen times ; she wonders at his first drafts of it , and then she's wondering at her wondering, and ....

' I would like to take you out to a nice place. We can take an uber, so you're not trapped in my car with me, a public setting. Nothing too intimate or personal . But I think you are someone I'd rather like to hear speak before commencing in other activities.' did he just make hooking up sound eloquent ? Damn . Damn . Damn. Crap.

Rey smiles again, for the fiftieth fucking time , in the half hour she'd been messaging him - he had a way with words, that's how she justifies this conductive energy spiraling through her limbs .

' Tonight ? I'm free around seven .' Which gave her ... two and a half hours to fashion herself into a human being .

' Absolutely. I'll message you the address , one moment.'

She did it . She had a date -- or whatever this qualified as.

Wait. Rey had a date. Crap .

' Hey peanut we're home !'

#reylo #reylo fic #reylo fam #reylo trash #ao3fic #*my writing.#m*3 #*wnfaob

9 notes · View notes

blairaptor · 6 years

Text

Jurassic Portal: San Jose Airport

Here’s a little preview from what’ll probably be chapter 1 of the fic (if I ever have time to write more of it). In this scene, Chell meets Mel and Wheatley at the airport on her way to the island. Names are subject to change and I've yet to invent a surname for Chell, as you can see. But I’m pretty pleased with the dialogue.

Chell’s flight to the San José airport in Costa Rica was uneventful. Mr. Johnson was paying for everything, and she’d been told that once in Costa Rica she’d meet with an Aperture Science representative who would show her to the private helicopter that would be taking them to the island.

Chell approached the gate where she’d been instructed to wait for the Aperture representative. Only one person was sitting there: a young woman with red hair tied in a bun, wearing cargo shorts and a t-shirt bearing an Olympic ring design.

She looked up as Chell approached, and Chell recognized her immediately, spotting the beauty mark above her mouth. It was Melanie Meyer, an Olympic track athlete who had just won gold in Nuremberg.

“Melanie Meyer?” Chell blurted out, shocked at the idea of meeting a celebrity who was not famous in paleontology or the sciences.

“Hi, that’s me!” Melanie said, standing up to shake hands. “Mel’s fine! Are you here for the Aperture Science project?”

“Yeah, Mr. Johnson invited me to the opening of his new park,” Chell said, smiling. “I’m Dr. Chell [redacted]. But Chell’s fine.”

“Chell and Mel,” Mel mused, returning to her seat. Chell sat beside her. “I like that. You’re a paleontologist, right? Sorry I didn’t recognize your face. I’ve heard your name, though. Something about fossils in... what’s the place called? Hell Creek?”

“Hell Creek, exactly,” Chell said, impressed. “Most people don’t know about Hell Creek unless they’re into fossils.”

“Well, I have to confess I squeezed your name out of a contact at Aperture,” Mel explained. “I wanted to know who else might be going on this weekend excursion. You dig up dinosaurs, right?”

“That’s right,” Chell said, “So what I’m wondering why Cave Johnson invited a paleontologist and an Olympic athlete to see the unveiling of his private island theme park.”

Mel laughed. “I’m wondering the same thing. I’ve actually done some work for Aperture before, I think that’s why Mr. Johnson invited me to come back.”

“What kind of work?”

“It’s mostly classified,” Mel said. “But they wanted the ‘greatest’ to test their products.” She waved her hands in front of her apologetically. “I’m not saying I’m the best,” she clarified quickly. “Mr. Johnson said that. Olympians, astronauts, people like that. I hadn’t won any medals yet back then.”

“I suppose you can’t tell me about the products you tested?” Chell said, raising an eyebrow and smiling grimly.

“Nope, all classified,” Mel said. She glanced around the near-deserted gate and then lowered her voice. “But it’s pretty cool, so I’ll tell you about one. It was a handheld device that could create a portal. Like something out of science fiction.”

Chell stared at her. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not! They were trying to punch holes in space-time in their facilities!”

Chell was not convinced. “Sure,” she said with a smile.

Mel shrugged. “Well, it never worked out quite how they wanted it to anyway,” she said, still keeping her voice fairly low. “I think they cancelled it. The rumor is they moved on to genetic stuff.”

“Genetic technology…” Chell muttered, thinking out loud. “Genetic tech, paleontology, and a biological park. Maybe it’s - nah.” She scoffed to herself.

“What is it?” Mel said, cocking her head.

“Well,” Chell said quietly, “I was just thinking that if you add those things together, you get a biological park full of genetically modified extinct animals.”

“Is that at all possible?”

“I don’t think so. The only dinosaur DNA Aperture would have access to would be from ground up fossils, but that’s almost nothing. There’s no way you could even make a complete gene from that stuff.”

The conversation died down as they sat there, lost in thought. Chell took out a notebook and started sketching the fossil her team had just found, hoping to get back it soon enough after all this Aperture business was completed.

Suddenly Mel laughed. “Get a load of this guy.”

Chell turned to see where she was looking. A very tall blond man in khaki shorts and a blue windbreaker was standing at the nearby coffee counter, stuttering something to the cashier. He paid and turned around, and Chell saw that he had purchased a fresh drink but was already carrying two cold coffees under one arm. His other hand was occupied with holding a half-eaten sandwich from the Subway across the terminal.

“Wonder where he’s headed,” Mel said thoughtfully. “I love peoplewatching at airports. You never know what kinds of characters might be passing through.”

Chell nodded in agreement. The man was coming closer, now trying to look at the watch on his left hand without spilling his hot coffee. Finally he glanced up and looked right at her.

“Dr. [redacted], hello!” He said, making his way over to where Chell and Mel were seated. “Fancy meeting you here! That’s, um, that’s a joke because I’m supposed to meet you here…” He scrambled with his things for a moment and managed to set down all three coffees and move the sandwich to his other hand.

“Jonathan Wheatley,” He said, shaking her hand. Chell recognized his voice now from the phone messages. His mouth was mostly full, but that didn’t seem to stop him from talking. “People just call me Wheatley - I’m in charge of Public Relations right now for Aperture’s park… And you must be Miss Meyer!”

He turned to Mel, who also shook his hand. “Mel’s fine,” she said, smiling.

Wheatley sat down across from them, fumbling at the neck of his jacket for a moment. He extracted a lanyard with an ID tag on the end, and Chell saw that his photo was accompanied by an Aperture Science logo.

“I’m sure you’re dying to know what’s on that island,” Wheatley continued conversationally, “But I’m afraid I’m still under nondisclosure until we actually get there, in which case you’ll find out straight away - Mr. Johnson has arranged a tour of the facilities for all the guests.”

“How many other guests are there?” Chell asked.

Wheatley stuffed the rest of the sandwich in his mouth and counted on his long fingers. “Uh, we’ve got you two, another paleontologist I’m sure you know, and a mathematician.”

“A mathematician,” Mel repeated quietly, looking confused.

“To see the computers, I expect,” Wheatley replied. Now that the sandwich was gone he was practically chugging the coffee. The steam had fogged up the entirety of his huge, rounded glasses, making him look like a milky-eyed insect.

Chell was still frowning at the mention of Rick. However it sounded as if he would be her only paleontological competition.

Wheatley was on his phone now, alternating sipping the coffee and looking at the screen as he typed busily with one hand. He seemed to be stretched quite thin with things to do.

“So Mel,” Chell said. “Who’s your contact at Aperture?”

“Oh yeah, my contact!” Mel’s eyes lit up. “I was talking about my best friend, Virgil! He worked for Aperture when I did the testing there a few years ago. He really helped me out, here - ” She fished out her phone and showed Chell a picture. Mel was standing with her arms around the neck and shoulders of a man her age. He was slightly shorter than her but both had striking red wavy hair.

“Is he at the park?” Chell asked. She noticed Wheatley had perked up a bit at their topic of conversation, though he was still distracted.

“He is!” Mel said proudly. “Most of it’s classified but he’s working on maintenance and doing computer work. You know, behind the scenes. But I’m hoping we’ll have time to talk when I get there.”

“We’re gonna be touring the facilities where he’s working,” Wheatley put in, and Mel turned to him eagerly. “Our schedule’s going to be pretty tight but you’ll be seeing him.”

“Yes!” Mel was grinning. “I can’t wait. I haven’t seen him in a long time since he’s been at work developing the park project,” she added for Chell’s benefit.

Chell checked her watch. “Hm, not long until we board the helicopter. Are the others meeting us here?”

Wheatley was squinting at his phone. He took another swig of coffee. “I think they’ve just arrived on the far side of the airport. They should be coming in on a shuttle soon enough.” He stood up, collecting the trash from his sandwich. “I think it’s time we get going.”

#my writing #jurassic portal #portal fanfic #fanfic #wheatley #chell #mel

42 notes · View notes

the-desolated-quill · 6 years

Text

Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Quill’s Quickies (No Spoilers)

This year, Star Wars has been almost mired in controversy. From the loot box controversy in EA’s Star Wars Battlefront II to the noticeable lack of non-white characters in The Last Jedi’s marketing. Rian Johnson making a total prat of himself by claiming that Kylo Ren is a dual protagonist with Rey, and now the reviews are in it turns out Episode 8 is the most divisive movie in the whole franchise, with critics clambering over themselves to praise the movie for its ‘bold new direction’ while the fans decry it as the arse-raping of their collective childhood. On the whole, I’d say this has been a complete and total cock-up.

I had no idea what to expect going in. I’m sure you all know how lukewarm I was about The Force Awakens. It didn’t surprise me in the slightest that the critics were praising the hell out of The Last Jedi considering they were doing the same thing with the previous film, which in my opinion was mediocre at best. The fan reaction surprised me. After all the blind (and arguably undeserved) praise The Force Awakens got, if even the fans are struggling to find good things to say about this movie, something must have gone spectacularly wrong.

So what did I, diehard Star Wars fan and professional arsehole, think of The Last Jedi? Well honestly I’m disappointed I didn’t hate it more. Truthfully I liked this movie about as much as I liked The Force Awakens, which is to say not very much. Like The Force Awakens, it’s a competently made movie and it’s possible to derive some enjoyment from it if you switch your brain off for two and half hours, but otherwise it’s just yet another tired retread of the original Star Wars movies that brings absolutely nothing new to the table. Not for the first time, I feel a real disconnect from the rest of the Star Wars community here. I have no idea why the critics are praising this movie for being a game changer because there’s genuinely nothing very revolutionary or groundbreaking going on here, and I’m confused as to why the fans have chosen to fling their bile and venom at a movie that, in my opinion, is the very definition of average. I mean sure, The Last Jedi isn’t very good and there were some bits that did kind of annoy me, but there’s nothing about it that’s outrageously offensive as far as I can see.

Let’s start with the things I liked. The biggest, shiniest gold star has to go to Finn. He was quite possibly the only new character I was in any way invested in last time around, and he’s just as brilliant here. We see him slowly embrace his new role as a hero of the Resistance and we also see him get the chance to stick it to his First Order oppressors, which I thought was quite emotionally satisfying. He’s joined by Rose, played by Kelly Marie Tran, who I thought was a nice addition to the cast and who undergoes the traditional everyman turned hero journey. I really liked her relationship with Finn and their scenes together are by far the highlight of the film, which makes their subtle erasure from the Star Wars marketing campaign all the more offensive to me because, as far as I’m concerned, they’re the main characters. They were the most developed, the ones I was most invested in, the only ones that actually grow and develop over the course of the film and who pretty much drive the plot.

The other thing I liked (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) is Kylo Ren. I really wasn’t impressed with him in The Force Awakens because he was pretty much just a shitty rehash of Darth Vader, and I mentioned in my review at the time how it might have been better to embrace the more weaselly and slightly pathetic nature of the character to help better distinguish him and give him his own identity. So I’m extremely pleased to see that’s exactly what this film does and it’s great. There’s no pretence anymore. Kylo Ren is this spoilt, impotent man-child that desperately craves power and attention, but doesn’t really know what he wants to do with it, and that’s glorious. That’s just the burst of inspiration the character sorely needed and Adam Driver does a great job with this new material. I’m actually looking forward to seeing where he goes in the next film and if they handle it well, he should make for a very unique antagonist (that’s antagonist Rian Johnson. AN-TAG-GON-NIST).

It’s just a pity that in order to prop up Kylo Ren, Rian Johnson felt the need to completely warp Luke Skywalker’s character into something wholly unrecognisable.

Yes now we come to the bad stuff, and there’s quite a bit. My main gripe is with Luke’s characterisation. In order to justify a lot of the plot, they have to make Luke this cynical halfwit and there are loads of moments where he says or does something that just simply doesn’t ring true with what we already know about him. His reasons for his exile are utterly out of character for one thing and his reasons behind his provocative statement that ‘it’s time for the Jedi to end’ are even more ludicrous. What’s worse is that the majority of the movie is dedicated to Rey trying to persuade Luke to come out of exile and rejoin the fight. Remember the scene in The Empire Strikes Back when Luke tries to persuade Yoda to train him? Well imagine that dragged out for an hour and a half. That’s pretty much the movie in the nutshell. I think that’s part of the reason why I loved Finn and Rose so much. Because it was a blessed relief to get off that fucking island for a while. There were several moments where I came close to dozing off.

I’m sure it’s no secret to anyone by this point that Rian Johnson has played pretty fast and loose with the Star Wars canon. Luke’s odd characterisation is one example. There are a few others. None of them truly insulting in my opinion. But the most notorious is a scene involving Leia, which I will hereby refer to as ‘The Scene.’ This got a lot of Star Wars fans riled up, but I personally thought it was absolutely hysterical just because of how random and idiotically daft it was. I’m not going to tell you what happened in ‘The Scene’ because this is a non-spoiler review. All I can say is you’ll know it when you see it.

Of course this was Carrie Fisher’s last film before her untimely death and that’s incredibly sad. Does The Last Jedi offer a fitting tribute to Princess/General/Queen (she’s a a Queen in my eyes) Leia Organa? Not really. In fact, outside of ‘The Scene’, Leia doesn’t really do anything worthy of comment. Some say she was mischaracterised too, but I don’t think so. At a push, I could see Leia doing some of the things she does. I just wish Fisher could have been given something with actual substance.

My views on Poe and Rey remain virtually unchanged. Poe Dameron is still a one dimensional cardboard cutout and I’m still continuously baffled as to why people like him so much. He doesn’t have a character. We’re two movies in and we still haven’t learnt a single sodding thing about him. Frankly I’ve seen fossils with more life in them. Rey meanwhile is still quite possibly one of the blandest protagonists I’ve ever seen. I’m struggling to find any reason to actually give a shit about her. Why should I be invested in her Jedi training? Why does she even need Jedi training when she seems capable of pulling any random superpower out of her arse at the convenience of the plot? At no point have these films ever given me a reason to care about her. Maybe if they focused more on her looking for her missing parents, I might be slightly more invested. And that’s another thing. In The Force Awakens, her missing parents are basically used as sequel bait. Here (without giving too much away) they’re pretty much just swept under the carpet entirely, which begs the question why was JJ Abrams wasting our time with them in the first fucking place (yes I am blaming JJ Abrams instead of Rian Johnson because Abrams was the one that actually came up with this shit and it’s very much reminiscent of his bullshit ‘mystery box’. The principle where an audience are naturally drawn to some big unknown or mystery and that he frequently utilises in his projects, most notably the TV series Lost. What he often forgets however is that good mysteries tend to have a satisfying fucking answer at the end).

And that’s pretty much all I have to say really. No doubt some of you are disappointed I haven’t quite given The Last Jedi the vengeful pummelling you’ve come to expect from me, but honestly I can’t work up the energy to get properly angry at it, and that’s largely because I’m past caring about this sequel trilogy. I think I’ve made my views on the sequel trilogy quite clear by now (that they’re a soulless cash grab concocted by studio execs who wouldn’t recognise a decent script if one jumped up and bit them on the arse) and I think it’s my total lack of interest that kind of shields me from some of Rian Johnson’s ‘creative’ decisions. These movies don’t count as far as I’m concerned. I’m not especially bothered by Johnson’s ‘reimagining’ and there’s nothing truly terrible going on here. The only crime The Last Jedi is really guilty of in my opinion is that there’s large swathes of it that are just really, really boring. And the main reason for this (apart from the obscenely long running time and a plot that drags its feet) is because, like with The Force Awakens, a lot of this stuff has been done before and done better in the original trilogy. While The Force Awakens ripped off A New Hope and a few elements from The Empire Strikes Back, The Last Jedi rips off The Empire Strikes Back and a few elements from Return Of The Jedi. What makes it slightly more egregious here is that The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi are both very emotionally charged stories that rely on three films’ worth of character development and buildup to make an impact, whereas The Last Jedi just blunders in, trying to replicate these emotional moments, but fails to recognise what made them so powerful to begin with and hasn’t done any of the legwork to make us feel truly invested in what’s going on, and thus it has all the impact of a feather duster.

So that’s The Last Jedi. A pointless and mediocre middle chapter to what has so far been a pointless and mediocre trilogy. The one bright side is that now it appears they’ve finally rehashed all they can from the original trilogy, there’s a chance we might finally get to see some original ideas in Episode 9. Unless they’re planning to ripoff the prequels next. In which case Disney must be more creatively bankrupt than I thought.

#star wars #the last jedi #quill's quickies #no spoilers

9 notes · View notes