#soggy newspaper art

[kowbojki]

HARRY SWEEP HARRY SWEEP

#disco elysium #harry du bois #kim kitsuragi #my art #cmon soggy newspaper harry community we r almsot there...

[meadow-selfship]

Hans x Ursula (s/i)

Day 1, 2, 3 for Self-indulgent September (first meeting, museum date (if you squint), Autumn weather/rainy day)

Like many of my 'better' works, this is vaguely inspired by a dream I had that I heavily adapted into this piece.

Pairing: Hans Gruber x Ursula (s/i)

Wordcount: 1660

Setting: a very rainy New Year's Eve.

Dividers by cafekitsune

The pouring rain strained our vision, as we ran over the slippery asphalt. My brother, Abel, followed close behind me. Even though we tried avoiding puddles, our shoes were wet and soggy already.

“In there, the museum looks like it’s still open,” I called over my shoulder. We reached the doors and didn’t hesitate for a single moment, before we barrelled in. The light in the lobby was still on, a clerk sat bored behind the monitors, glancing up from his crossword puzzle. The desk was right by the door, but just past the desk was a little area with seats. It reminded of a doctor’s waiting room with the magazines on the coffee table and the white walls.

Abel sighed and slumped against the door. We dripped all over the door mat, from coat to Abel’s jeans to my wool skirt – everything was soaked through. I wiped at my face, trying to avoid messing up my make-up.

“Good evening,” the clerk greeted and I walked a little closer.

“Hello. Do you mind if we stay here and try to dry up a bit? I know it’s late…” I said.

“Nah, go ahead,” he said with a wave of his hand. “The New Year’s party is going on upstairs so we aren’t closing anytime soon.”

“Thank you,” I said with a nod and squeezed the water from the hem of my wool skirt. Disgusting. Boisterous noises came from upstairs; yelling, laughter, people popping small fireworks. Abel and I exchanged a look.

“Sounds like quite the party,” Abel said.

The clerk shifted. “Sure is.”

“Let’s dry off in the bathroom,” I said to Abel.

“Down the hall to the right,” said the clerk and we went on our way.

“Can’t believe it’s still not stopped raining,” said Abel, nudging my knee with his foot. We sat on the couch in the museum lobby, staring restlessly outside. We worked our way through the art magazines that were strewn about the coffee table, but nothing could quell our unease. At some point, the party upstairs quieted down inexplicably, but no one came down to leave. We’d taken our shoes, gloves and coats off and left them on the radiator, hoping they would dry soon. My hair was still dry, thanks to my thick fake fur hat, that now laid sadly next to the gloves, looking something like a deflated wet rat.

“Can I write on this? It’s yesterday’s paper,” I held the paper up.

“Go right ahead,” the man said, hiding a strange tenseness by pretending not to be interested. Bored out of my mind, I circled the fun words, doing as I often do on the train; to see if there is a hidden poem in the front page article.

I turned to Abel. “It’s already half past eight. You were meeting some friends at ten, right?”

The clerk glanced up, something uncharacteristically calculating in his eyes, for a museum desk clerk. Something felt off. We’d better get going soon.

“Yeah. There’s still time. What are you doing?”

“Black out poem.” I nudged the paper to him. “Your turn. Just circle words or connect them.”

He blinked at me. “Mom and dad should’ve never let you study art.”

I laughed. “I assure you I would’ve been equally pretentious even without the education.”

A static buzz made us look to the desk, where the clerk answered a walkie-talkie.

A walkie-talkie is not something front-office workers usually have in a museum, is it? Something was definitely wrong. I pulled the newspaper towards me and penned a quick ‘er is iets mis’ on it. Abel nodded, mirroring my worried expression. We got up, trying to not let our alarmed expressions show.

"You're leaving?" asked the clerk. 

"Yeah, if the rain isn't letting up anyway, we better get home and dry up there," I said, going for my shoes. Ew, still soaked. Cold, too, and I hoped my toes would recover quickly once at home. Not that it mattered now, since it was still coming down in buckets and we'd be soaked through even if our clothes were dry.

"Gross," said Abel, his lip curling with the feeling of it as he pulled the still wet shoe over his socks. Before we could get our coats on, a small group of men came down the stairs. They walked quickly, with purposeful strides, The one who came down first wore an impeccable suit, was he the museum director? Whether he was or wasn't, Abel and me backed away to the door. I grabbed my coat over my arm and held my hat, same as Abel.

"There was only one thing I asked of you, Johan. It was to keep people out," said the one in the suit. With the way he strode towards the clerk, it looked like he wanted to hurt the man. We should've listened to our gut sooner.

I pushed against the door, and instead of it giving way, it made a beeping noise and stayed shut. The eyes of the men from upstairs fell on us. Suddenly it was like I was a kid caught with my hand in the cookie jar, and I stared back at them with unease. The one in the suit, the scariest one, turned around, and our eyes locked. His expression changed.

"See, the alarm was on, I swear-"

"Johan," he drawled, "you didn't say we had such a lovely guest."

He made a jovial gesture, and came closer. "How rude of me not to introduce myself." 

His sudden pleasantness threw me off. He extended his hand, and the way he did it made me take it, despite the strangeness of the situation. "Hans Gruber. And you? Hiding from the rain?"

"Ursula," I said, trying to apply equal pressure to the handshake. "Yes, we're very sorry for intruding. We just came by here from work, and..."

His touch lingered, warm. His smile was the most charming one I've ever seen. "And this is your..?" He gestured to Abel.

"Abel," he said, reaching out to shake his hand. "We're siblings."

Hans nodded, still smiling, as something calculating crept in his gaze. "Good, good. Pleasure to make your acquaintance. Actually, why don't you stay a little while longer? We are just wrapping up here. How about, after that, I'll take you home?"

It didn't feel much like a question. His eyes lingered like his touch did. When Hans turned around, his demeanour changed again. A business man.

"Johan, I'll deal with you later. Karl; get the car. Fritz, Tony; get the bags from upstairs."

They did as he said, dispersing quick and without fuss. One thing is certain; Hans is not the museum director.

Abel and I exchanged a confused glance. I tried the door again, muttering a mild curse when it didn't still didn't open. Before I could ask if this was a good idea, Hans turned back, coming closer now. 

"It's really no trouble for us to walk, we wouldn't want to inconvenience you."

"You're not from here, are you?" Hans ignored my statements to weasel our way out the door. His hand rested on my shoulder, as he directed us away from the exit and towards the elevators. "When I first came here, it was those times when strangers showed great kindness that made me feel welcome. Let me extend that same kindness to you, today."

"Sir, it's New Year's Eve, surely you have something better to do."

"Oh, Liebling, just call me Hans." His hand slipped to my back now, pressing on insistently enough to make it awkward to linger. "Isn't that even better? A festive mood during a festive time. How are you celebrating?"

Even though Abel followed by my side, it felt like Hans addressed only me. We reached the elevators and Hans stepped forward, pressed buttons, no matter that we didn't agree to come with at all. Abel glanced back at the door. I shrugged at him.

"Abel is going to see some friends later," I said, shifting the focus to him. "They're going into the city, find a good spot to watch the fireworks."

"How nice," he said. The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Hans went in first. He expected us to follow, but more so than that, it felt like he didn't even consider it a possibility that we wouldn't. We stepped in and the doors closed. "And you, Liebling?" 

Me, Liebling... "Hmm, watch fireworks from my window and go to bed on time. I'm not such a fan of the loud and the-" I gestured with my arms, "the boisterous."

Hans looked at me for a long moment, no judgement in his eyes, only curiosity and an unexpected fondness. "Then join me in doing the same. My hotel room has an incredible view." Where someone else saying the same thing, would have been a gaud-ish boast, it wasn't with him. His voice was soft, the quietness in which he said it made my heart stir. Would he not be celebrating with those men from before? Or with friends of his own? Not even a wife? If he’s staying at a hotel room, he could be far from home… Just like me.

I kept silence, not breaking eye contact. The moment lasted like that, us staring at each other, Hans' request hanging in the air between us. If we kept it up like this, I wouldn’t need to say anything at all. He could see it all, written on my face, just for him to read – that’s what it felt like. The elevator dinged. Despite having, once again, heard no ‘yes’, Hans led us to the car. 

"Bring Abel home first," I said. "Then we can talk."

Hans’ smile was brighter than even the most colourful fireworks.

#this is so self indulgent it can make me cry or cringe or sob in joy so im just gonna hit post and not think abt it anymore #📔 noli me tangere 🍂 #hans gruber x s/i #hans gruber x oc #hans gruber #im already working on a part 2 to this bc i could but idk if its even going anywhere #self ship #selfshipping #self shipper #self ship community #self insert #die hard 1988 #self-indulgent september

[madmaxinealt]

Platonic with a capital P! (Eddie x Reader) [17+]

-Before anyone says practically anything yes I'm aware that the name of the post is technically a Robin and Steve kinda thing but I don't ever see enough of eddie being just best friends with the reader.-

Summary: You had a rough time babysitting and went over your childhood best friend's house to unwind and relax.

Warnings: !Underage smoking! (The reader is 16 and eddie is 18), !Explicit language!, Talk about past relationships/situationships, !talk of death of a relative! Other than that this is just a simple fluff. Completely PLatonic with a capital P!, If i missed anything please let me know!

~-~_~-~_~-~_~-~_~-~_~-~_~-~_~-~_~-~_~-~_~-~

I'd be lying if I said I hated babysitting these nerds, but sometimes they can be so incredibly difficult to manage. Things were a lot easier when jonathan would pitch in from time to time at the Wheelers residence. But that was a while ago, now that he is with Nancy a lot of things are different now. I never had anything against Nancy, personally that is we were never close though after finding out what happened to Barb..I guess we decided to try and build a bond.

Things have been pretty rough here in Hawkins, It's like the town never sleeps. Being Hopper's daughter it was already hard enough to try and have a calm and quiet life, more now than ever. I have a little sister again...who has insanely cool super powers.

Speaking of which.-

"THAT'S NOT FUNNY MIKE-" A small brown haired girl came running into the room soon followed by a taller boy with black chin length hair. "OH come on el it's just a soggy eggo! Does it really bother you that badly!?' He yells continuing to chase her.

Mike wheeler and my sister Eleven have been dating for what feels like ever now but he's been a bit distant so I snuck her over while I watched him before I have to take her back home and figure out any plans from there.

I stand up and grab a pillow from behind me and whack the boy beside his head, "What the hell have I told you about tormenting her, you're lucky she cares so much about you otherwise she'd make you fly across the damn room!" He lets out a huff and goes upstairs with El clearly learning nothing and following close after him giggling like a mad man. I roll my eyes and spin over to the phone and tap it slightly with my fingernail. There are a few people in mind that I could call, one of them being Jonathan but then again he is probably working with nancy at that little newspaper place Nancy had been non stop talking about. So that's a no go. There's Robin Buckley who has been my best friend since the middle of 7th grade, we met in art class and honestly since then we just clicked and sometimes we drift but it's no biggie I'll end up seeing her tomorrow at work anyways let's just hope I have a shift with her and not the infamous King Steve. Oh well I'll find it out later besides she was gonna come over to my house to watch The Dark Crystal. Even though it's a little too nerdy for Robin she still gives into that side of me-. Holy shit! I completely forgot.

I take the phone off the receiver and dial the numbers.

-brrinnngh....bbbbbrrinnghhh...-

I start to dance in place anxiously waiting for him to pick up.

-BBRRIIIIINGUHHH....BBRIINGGUH- -

Finally someone picked up and a tired grumble came through, "What do you want wheeler?" I smile happily, Eddie mother fucking Munson. My best friend. My best mate if you will.

"Wrong not a wheeler. Just youuu know pshhh the only cool person you talk to." I wasn't that much more popular than eddie being called "The freak Munson." Which genuinely made my blood boil. Suddenly I hear a quick shuffle.

"Oh damn sorry (Y/N), what time is it? Why are you calling aren't you supposed to be third wheeling the wheeler." I roll my eyes at his comment. "oh har har god I hate you." He gives a sleepy chuckle causing me to laugh too. "Anyways I'm gonna head out soon since it's almost 8:30 and my sister's curfew is 9, but I was wondering if you wouldn't mind me coming over and you know..chilling out..for a bit..? I'll pick up a movie too and maybe a pizza your choice."

The line went silent for a few minutes, so he was obviously thinking about it. "Hm..fine come over at 10:30 that's enough time for "the maid" to do her cleaning rounds."

I laugh ending the call, smoothly cleaning up after the two and driving Eleven back to the cabin and getting her settled in. I ended up making her dinner and saving some for Hopper putting it into the oven for it to stay warm by time he comes in and I wouldn't get yelled at two badly for leaving El' to hang out with Munson. I gave Eleven a quick kiss on the head. "You remember where the notepad is with all the numbers are right? If you need anything I'll be at eddie's so call there first if I don't answer call joyce okay? hmm...OH yeah and don't forget-" she interrupts my rambling, "And don't forget to only open the door to the special knock and give you a status report, I got this." I smile down at her and ruffle her hair and grab my bike lock key and run out the door and unlock my bike riding over to the trailer park where Eddie stayed with his Uncle Wayne.

After a while I finally make it, I quickly pull out my inhaler taking a few puffs regretting not taking my drivers test when I was supposed to instead of picking up an extra shift at scoops.

I ran up to the door and did my own little knock so eddie would know that it was me and not some rando. I anxiously tap my feet doing a shaky little dance humming some metallic song to ease my nerves, I was terrified of the dark more so after the fall of '83 seeing hints of the upside down and the demogorgen. If you really wanted to go back into my roots it started right before my sister Sara had passed. We were convinced that there was a goblin that lived under our house and scratched at the walls and bed frames as our parents slept and they were gonna steal our toes and eat our candy. Of course after she got sick it was just me in our old room dealing with the "little goblins" in the dark as I would always hide under the blanket holding my secret bag of candy and my feet safely in a pair of mismatched socks. When I met eddie he showed me metallica and a bunch of different sick rock music some of them I already knew about but metallica really stuck between us, that and Ozzy.

The screen door soon swings open and eddie is standing there and a woosh of the sweet scent of chocolate chip cookies smacked me in the face. "Oh munson you shouldn't have." I squeezed past him setting down the pizza box and taking the movies out of my jacket and placing them on the table before rushing to the cookie tray taking in the aroma. "Well hello to you too I guess." He chuckles and makes his way to the counter hopping up onto it watching my facial features. I turned over to look at him happily, he didn't get too dressed up just a shredded/cropped Dio tank, with a pair of very loose grey sweatpants with miss-matched grey and black socks and lastly had his hair in a messy low bun his bangs still being able to cover his eyes by the smallest amount.

"Oh sorry master Munson, I acquired our dinner and entertainment for the evening." I smile after giggling through my words at my nonsense accent I had put on. It made him laugh too, two times in one night god I'm on a roll! I spin around and open the pizza box, I got the pie split into three halves because I know how indecisive he is. One side is plain cheese, The second is Cheese and sausage and lastly my personal favorite hawaiian pizza. I grab a paper plate and put a cheese pizza and a sausage pizza on it and hand it to him, "Oh Hopper! You do love me" I place the back of his hand on his forehead and swoons almost falling off the counter. I burst out laughing holding onto the chair right next to me.

As the night slowly moved on it started to rain which means I had to call back home and let Hopper know I was spending the night at Robin's house since she owed me a get out of jail free card and cover for me. It was about 11;45pm Neither of us could stop talking even after I put on the movies I had brought over, so he pulled out "The magic bag" from in his pillow case and in which thank go already had some pre rolls in it. I pulled out my lighter and tossed it at eddie which he had smoothly caught it, he placed the joint gently on his pretty pink lips. Then lighting it and tossing my lighter back at me, he laid back crossing his arms behind his head relaxing. He took a long drag from the bud pulling it away from his mouth."So..." he began to speak handing it to me. "You never gave me an update on harrington, are you guys dating? Kissing partners? Or what? What's the scoop cap'in."

I scrunch my nose at his question. "Uhm well we are nothing just two people who used to go to school with each other and now unfortunately work together.." I hesitate before bringing the bud to my lips and taking the longest drag I could handle trying not to cough my brains out. "Yeah just two people who totally co parent a group of little kids around hawkins and had steamy and you know what veryyy detailed makeout sessions according to-" I cut him off and whack his arm causing him to burst out laughing. I mean sure yeah maybe me and Steve have a little something but it was kinda clear that he didn't want anything serious seeing he was still in love with Nancy. And we both exchanged some very not so nice things to each other.

I feel his rough hand rub my back, "Hey we don't have to talk about it, just curious is all. Hm.. How about we try and get some sleep and go fuck around at the Hideout or something Garreth missed seeing you around actually they all have, considering you aren't into the whole DND game thing soo." I think for a moment before nodding setting the joint down in the ashtray on his bedside table. "You're right I'm getting kinda tired anyways." I say after stretching back onto the bed cuddling in my spot on his bed closest to the wall. He chuckled slightly as he got up to turn off the lights and layed back down on the bed.

We used to split whenever I'd sleep over, like taking turns on whoever would sleep on the couch or bed but id make him clean his nasty ass sheets before hand. But after the upside down I refused to sleep alone whenever I wasn't home, even though he knew nothing about the upside down or anything about what I went through he didn't ask any questions and was right here and lay with me and waited until I fell asleep first.

I don't really know where I'd be without Eddie. He is definitely a big brother I've always begged for on every birthday wish. And I could definitely count on him with my life and soul, I just pray he knows I'd do the same for him.

"Goodnight Ed's..Thank you for.." I sigh sleepily. "..everything." Though I couldn't see him I could tell he was smiling, I felt his hand pull up the sheets and move the hair from my face. "Of course weirdo..now get some rest." And with that I soon drift off to a comfortable slumber.

~_~-~_~-~_~-~_~

And that's it! I hope you enjoyed reading this little blurb I really loved writing this and if there's any requests please let me know!Maybe a [art two?:0 It doesn't have to be with just Eddie or platonic though this is my first time posting something like this lol. I might end up posting my Masterlist soon with a small plan I have with some characters :P

#steve harrington x reader #steve harrington #shifting #desired reality #reality shifting #eddie munson #eddiemunson x reader #stranger things #fanfic #eddie munson fluff #best friend

[stiftgedichtensimonis]

Stiftgedicht gebaseerd op BRUZZ, woensdag 17 mei 2023, p. 44

“Daniel, the size of a heavyweight boxer, with a hand full of soggy toast and tinned spaghetti, his toes wiggled around the hot tap, reading me articles on the relationship between art and language, out of which we conceived three-dimensional structures animated with lyrics that David Bowie had himself put together by chopping words out of newspapers and scrambling them, like the Dadaists.”

Jane Yardley - Painting Ruby Tuesday (2003), p. 109

[strawdue]

so my friend guessed some stardew characters based off appearances

i dont know what i was expecting it went terribly

So anyway, I decided to draw them!

I’ll be posting these one at a time cause art motivation low but starting with local emo boy one and only, Sebastian:

name: zane from aphmau

- "kill me" energy

- sk8r boi

- goes into hot topic on the weekends THE WEEKDAYS

- goes to poetry bash and writes poetry

- works at a candy store

- if you romance him he'll probably give you a gift of like- a broken heart and be like "this is my heart. but you can put it back together."

- twink

- submissive and breedable

#i take no responsibility for all assumptions my friend makes lmao #stardew valley #stardew #sdv #sdv sebastian #stardew valley sebastian #sebastian stardew valley #how the heck do you tag things #can you tell i dont know how to operate a tumblr blog #hopefully not. #sv sebastian #soggy newspaper art

[lemonsharks]

I'm working on my Stardew Valley museum shed loosely inspired by the Chicago Field Museum.

Layout and collection were put together with both an eye toward Homage to the Field and toward curation.

Items I need: anchor, elven necklace, petrified spine, skeletal tail, amphibian fossil, pink weird doll, ancient doll, two other artifacts for near the door tbd, slime egg (for the space currently filled with qi seasoning). Different wall? Different art for the walls? Crane game junimo? Big junimo plush? Chest of weapons since we can't display them? *Shakes fist*

I'm still not happy with the positioning of the Pinky Lemon statue, but Pinky Lemon has always been my in least favorite of the three. Making her be the receptionist feels like a cop out, and I originally wanted that area to be an interactive exhibit area using the furniture catalog as a table

Next door will be my Museum of Science and Industry shed with a focus on machines, mining, and geodes. (Including interactive chests to "display" every item that can come from every geode and liberal use of the dark sign with soggy newspaper for "informative plaques")

Final shed will be my Shedd Shed, but I still need to catch the spoiler fish and then recatch all the fish I sold or made into sashimi and then sold.

When I'm done I'll slap a farmhand cabin somewhere and if you have Stardew valley for Nintendo switch you can come over and visit in person.

#stardew valley #specialteas farm #museum shed #stardew valley shed #farmer: charlotte 'chai' farmer

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Something Held | Feeding Habits Update #8

Hi all!

Not me not realizing it’s been 3 months since I posted a Feeding Habits update hahahahahaha. Today let’s chat chapter nine, SOMETHING HELD. This also marks the last chapter in Harrison’s POV so prepare to say goodbye to this icon!  TW: body horror, mental illness, trauma

Just a reminder: This is my original work and plagiarism of any form will not be tolerated.

Scene outline, excerpts & a little reflection on making difficult decisions that my not particularly benefit the book but benefit you as the writer under the cut because this update is GIGANTIC.

General taglist (please ask to be added or removed):

@if-one-of-us-falls, @qatarcookie, @chloeswords, @alicewestwater, @laughtracksonata, @shylawrites, @ev–writes, @jaydewritesfiction, @jennawritesstories @eowynandfaramir, @august-iswriting​, @aetherwrites​

Scene Breakdown

Scene A:

It has been two weeks since Lonan found Harrison at his shared apartment with Suzanna and things are getting strange. Lonan and Suz are getting closer, Harrison is getting more distant and slowly losing it. One morning, Harrison wakes hearing Lonan and Suz’s laughter, and crawls to the kitchen to investigate. When he reaches them, Suz is evening out Lonan’s hacked haircut and they’re both sobbing.

Scene B:

Shortly after this bizarre encounter, Suzanna steps out of the apartment for a breather because her son is sort of terrifying her! So Lonan and Harrison double-team to clean up Lonan’s hair shavings. Harrison begins eating the hair while Lonan stares and they have a conversation about the state of their friendship.

Scene Ba:

This scene is gross and confusing! More hair is ingested. My god.

Scene Bb:

After the above ordeal, both boys rinse off because they’ve been rolling?? around?? in??? hair?? but also?? things don’t stop being a little gross

Scene C:

An air of calm finally settles over the apartment. Lonan brews earl grey tea for him and Harrison to share and Harrison asks if he abandoned Lonan in the final chapter of Moth Work. Lonan doesn’t really answer this question so Harrison continues on his confused, but finally lucid (one-sided) conversation, admitting he understands he burdens his mother, who still has not returned. They circle back to the question of abandonment and Lonan answers Harrison the way he wants to be answered (yes), and this is a moment of freeing, where he feels some sort of responsibility in this irresponsible new life he’s led in NYC. They sort of agree to be friends again.

Scene D:

The boys head into the city to find Suzanna, heading to a bakery near the Hudson River. Lonan drives in his used car, a strange experience since Harrison has not seen him drive in years. Taking the opportunity, he searches through the car and finds a map in the glove compartment. The map is erratically scribbled over and it takes him to moment to realize this is Lonan’s map and the first indication that Lonan, who he has assumed is this stable, perfect person, is not as unscathed as he seems.

The boys pass the waterfront and Lonan nearly crashes the car into an oncoming truck. Harrison regains control of the vehicle tucking them into a side street. Shaken, Lonan apologizes for the mess he’s created both physically from his nosebleed and between Harrison and his mother, which gets Harrison a little antsy because he doesn’t like the suggestion that he’s going to leave. Lonan clarifies, stating he won’t if that’s what Harrison wants.

Scene E:

Later, everyone is back at home and Harrison wakes up to a Lonan-less bed. He gets up to investigate the strange dripping coming from the bathroom and opens the door to find Lonan precariously teetering over a sink filled with water. Harrison, concerned, moves him away and tries to ask why Lonan is presumably going underwater, but doesn’t push. They both stand on opposite sides of the bathroom until the sun rises.

My process:

Honestly, writing this chapter was a huge up and down. The first half of it came much easier to me, but the rest was a literal hellfire to get through. I think I was incredibly fatigued with writing in Harrison’s POV as I’d been writing it since June (I finished this chapter in either December or January). This book has been a pain in the ass to write despite me liking what it is, and I really think it being the only place I’ve physically “gone” since the pandemic makes it even harder to write. I felt claustrophobic in Harrison’s POV since I’ve been writing it for half a year, and in a lil ~breakdown~ my beautiful sister reminded me of something she’d previously told me, “it's not about what works, it's about what you want”.

Let’s chat about this for a sec! I think I was watching a Harmony Nice video on her “hard-to-swallow” self-care, and she basically outline (I’m paraphrasing here) that it’s critical we care for ourselves in ways that might not necessarily be easy to do. Honestly, leaving Harrison’s POV is one of those hard-to-swallow self-care things I literally had to do because my mental health was not happy with me! Y’all know my boys are very close to me, and I’m not picking favourites but Lonan is 2500 times easier for me to write with at the moment. I think Harrison’s situation and how he deals with it is much too similar to mine but in a way that is difficult to place (Lonan and I are unfortunately similar but in a way that is easier for me to understand about myself!). From the beginning of writing his POV I’ve been in Struggleville, but kept pushing through hoping the next chapter would be “the one”. Not to burst my own bubble but there is no such thing in the state of mind I was in! I was pushing myself to find something that doesn’t exist because my brain was really not equipped to do what I needed it to do. I really, really did not want to quit on Harrison’s POV, but I had to, not because I don’t like him (he’s my baby) but because I needed a moment to myself. I felt way too seen in ways I don’t really know how to address in myself, so writing him was horribly frustrating at all times (my fault, not his).

My characters really do live in my head rent-free lol. They live in there! They take up space! They take up energy! They take up concentration, and resources I need for myself! Empathy is so integral to my process, that I give a little part of myself in everything I write. This is a blessing because I really get to dig my heels into the mind of another person, but a curse because I’m not a machine (and sometimes I forget that). It is a lot of emotional energy and labour to give everything you have to fictional people. I don’t think an artist needs to be tortured to create good art (this is not it!) but I never truly practiced this well? In my attempt to be empathetic, I was torturing myself a little bit, not going to lie!

So to combat this, I decided I needed a change. Hence, this chapter is imperfect and probably needs some stuff added to it, and while I’ve only written little of Lonan’s second POV, I’m feeling a lot better! It’s nice to get “outside” in a different place lmao this is so sad (pandemic writing things).

Excerpts:

I wrote the beginning of this in a livestream I hosted on my YouTube channel! There’s also a shoutout here to my dragon tree Lisa <3 miss u boo

Two weeks go by. Lonan sleeps on the couch. Harrison wakes up at dawn—no earlier, no later. Suzanna buys a plant: a Madagascar dragon tree she names Lisa. June grows into the collar. Lonan plays sudoku in the newspaper. Harrison learns to bake focaccia, gluten-free, whole wheat. Suzanna learns to palm read, tells Lonan he’s experienced great betrayal (they stop the reading immediately; Lonan goes back to the newspapers). Harrison begins burning incense at sunrise—frankincense. The dragon tree nearly dies (Lonan saves it). It rains every weekday that contains the letter T. Lonan shifts stacks of soggy newspapers onto the breakfast table, answers crosswords with the help of Suzanna (four across, nine letters, Something held). Harrison burns a baguette. Suzanna buys a hanging basket of pothos. The power goes out for two days and the icebox floods the kitchen tile (Lonan mops it with old newspapers, the ink running like jellyfish). June barks for the first time. Harrison eats a bundle of dried bay leaves. Suzanna waters the plants with rainwater, icewater, wrung into a coffee tin. Harrison leaves the stove on while sautéing shallots (he eats them whole). Lonan wakes up feverish and fills out four newspaper crosswords, then falls asleep on the coffee table. Suzanna moulds panna cotta in coffee mugs and shares the batch with Lonan when they won’t tip out. Lonan teaches her how to propagate the pothos and soon they have twenty empty cans of cuttings poking from the windowsills. They rearrange the furniture, the couch facing the kitchen instead of the TV, the dining table right outside the bathroom, then put it all back the next day. They birdwatch from the tiny window with binoculars and a magnifying glass. They sort coupons. Whittle soaps. Watch Norwegian films without the subtitles. Discuss cliff diving. Make matching anklets (blue beads, elastic string, the plastic clacking how Harrison knows they’re coming). All of this they do as Harrison lies on his bed for two weeks, counting the corners of his ceiling and trying to determine a way to multiply them telepathically.

This is the very next paragraph!

At first he assumes they’re laughing. The sun nearly rising between other high rises, blotting his room with dawn. This is not a surprise. They are probably making pancakes out of buckwheat and discussing the hilarity of whole grains. They are probably laughing at store-bought cherry preserves. Too sour. Their cheeks puckered. But then the laughs get louder, and the sun rises higher and it’s not laughing at all, but gasping.

Here’s Harrison crawling!! is this straight out of the exorcist probably!

Harrison’s instinct is to crawl. As if his smallness against the ground will stop anyone from hearing him, even before he unlocks his door. On hands and knees he shuffles from his bed to his doorframe, edges the door open with his shoulder. On hands and knees he hikes through the hallway, the gasping getting louder, shuffling until he sees them. Lonan sitting on one of the kitchen stools, a grocery bag wound around his throat. Suzanna clacking scissors in two hands so their blades ping in the sun. Her fingers loped around his hair, knuckle-deep, the blades snipping, the gasps growing, them both sobbing, the hair falling, the sun stalking, their bodies rocking. Harrison takes it in from his crawl. Experiences it all on his knees.

So this excerpt seems really you know, normal:

They clean up the hair. Harrison with the dustpan, Lonan with the broom. Harrison still kneels. Lonan still cries. The only thing that has changed since crawling into the kitchen is that Suzanna is taking a walk around the apartment complex. She needs air. Room. If she cries long enough, a cigarette. So Lonan sweeps. Harrison collects. This repeats.

The kitchen smells of nutmeg. Freshly grated from a whole club over espresso, Harrison imagines. He smells this as he tracks Lonan with the dustpan, hovering its open belly for clippings of hair. And Lonan is so compliant, brushes cuttings of himself onto the plastic surface so Harrison can trash it. As Harrison looks on from his knees, Lonan diffuses in sunlight, the window illuminating only his edges. A body so familiar Harrison knows exactly where it flares with light or absorbs it. A body with skin like mulberry silk. A body he could recreate in charcoal with his eyes closed. His archangel translucent and luminescing.

Skip this excerpt if you don’t want to read about Harrison eating hair!! i’m sorry!

Harrison picks a bundle of fallen hair from the dustpan. It’s airy from being recently shampooed, smells faintly of pear, maybe even ginger. This hair, touched by a woman, or a few women, and cut by one, or a few, in different contexts. Eliza’s hands deveining the roots, and then Suzanna’s, trying to fix them. So Harrison eats it. That bundle like a toothpicked cube of cheese. He puts it in his mouth and swallows.

Lonan watches like he’s unconcerned. He watches this feral animal—Harrison must be something feral, starved of something and ravaged by that hunger. Chewing mouthfuls of hair like that will quell of him of what is missing, if there even is anything missing, something unidentifiable in this bland circuit of New York City, this time-loop of sonhood, this fresh start a dousing of flatness. As Harrison eats, he understands he consumes that something like it’s holy communion, reuniting with that something by absorbing it. And still, that hunger moves him, from finishing the dustpan of hair, and closer to Lonan.

“Do you think I’m a bad friend?” Harrison asks, wringing the corner of his lips clean from loose hairs. From this perspective, Harrison on his knees collecting hair, Lonan’s eyes look bluer. Maybe their saturation has nothing to do with the angle, but Harrison feels this is true; his eyes are so crystalline, they are temptingly edible. Like two plump blueberries. Or a matching set of clear glass marbles. Harrison swallows. He repeats, “Do you think I’m a bad friend?”

Lonan swallows, adjusts his grip on the broom. “We’d have to be friends for me to answer that.”

“Aren’t we?”

And here’s the rest of this scene!

“You’re my mother’s friend,” Harrison says. “She trusts you.” He crawls closer to Lonan. “You’ve got secrets. Rituals. Tell me her favourite finger-food and who she wants to marry.”

“I don’t know your mother that well.”

Harrison wraps a handle around Lonan’s ankle. A muscle there jumps like a dolphin breaching the water. He’s memorized this plane of skin, could rebuild it from single grains of sand while blindfolded. He furls his hands across its surface, unfurls.

“You garden with her,” Harrison says. “You share a plate for dessert.”

“She’s kind to me.”

“You cook her breakfast.” Harrison tugs on Lonan’s ankle, knowing it won’t raze him, knowing he’ll come down anyway. “You know the exact temperature she drinks her coffee down to the last digit.”

“I’m trying to be hospitable.”

“You’re trying to be a son.”

Lonan kneels. Crouching so they’re huddled over each other, so it’s nearly impossible to distinguish one body from the other, which one sinks, which one rises.

“My mother’s only got one son to live with,” Harrison says, his voice thin from a clogged throat. He reaches for Lonan’s scalp, scrapes a line down the centre, now an even plane of cropped hair. “And it isn’t me.”

“You’re unstable,” Lonan says, burrowing his face either into a cabinet or Harrison’s shoulder—neither can tell. “You won’t let yourself have friends.”

Farther, toward the tile they go, a pile of hair scattering. “My mother wants me to forgive you by replacing me with you.”

“She’s grieving,” Lonan says.

Harrison loses his hands. He doesn’t know where they disappear to, if he touches skin or tile. “I haven’t died,” he says. Skin or tile. Skin or tile.

Here’s an excerpt from scene C ft. this memoir bit from the time I was shocked that this university I visited had real FANCY teabags:

Lonan brews tea. Earl grey, from a tin. Harrison doesn’t know why he expects it to come from a bag. An individual paper sachet, or if he’s lucky, one of those fancy ones woven from nylon. But it’s from a tin. Two teaspoons into the bottom of a single mug they pass back and forth, wordless at the kitchen table. Strung in the bathroom, Harrison’s t-shirt hang-dries, nearly figure-like, an unfilled phantom. He tugs a throw around his shoulders and stares at his hands. Each crest of cuticle. Each bulb of knuckle. Each maze of fingerprints.

He is material. This is fact. Not just outlines. He’s got skin that goes pinkish when pinched, a pulse that juts from his wrist, two eyes that burn at the scent of lavender, ten fingers. But as he holds his hands up, studying them in the faint moonlight, it is difficult to believe his tangibility. In the city, he has lived as a haze. Fogging over grocery stores, eateries, nondescript. Fresh start has always implied an air of zest, a zing that should have fueled him to plant roots in this restart. But Harrison is rotten, aphid infected, overwatered, underwatered, then not watered at all. He flexes his fingers. He pops the joints. He tries to press his pinkie to the back of his hand. But none of this brings him back to himself. His hands continue feeling like someone else’s. His body invisibly marred in some way he can’t reverse, disconnected in retaliation.

Harrison reflecting on his relationship with his mother:

Suzanna has never left him alone this long, and to her detriment. He imagines her now, living the life she always should’ve lived, the life she lived before he crosscut his way to her most important thing. She’s probably at a salon, having her hair twirled with a round brush, making dinner reservations at some place always too expensive for two (extra points if it has a French name, more if she has to wait a half hour before getting a table). When she talks to her stylist, she doesn’t mention a son, but plans to travel up the west coast, all the way into Canada if she’s feeling adventurous. She’ll buy crime novels she’ll never read at duty-free, reapply a lipstick that cost her a paycheck in the reflection of a hand-dryer. After the salon, she’ll meet a woman at a wine bar, converse about children, and still not mention a son. Suzanna’s singleness will be a celebration.

The boys finally trucing it out <3

When Harrison finally opens his eyes, Lonan is staring at him. His eyes two reels of the Pacific. They cycle in blue. So much of him has changed, and yet he is still the same. Beyond the haircut, Lonan isn’t that much different. He can’t be much different. But as Harrison searches, splaying his palm on the wet table, he knows this is untrue. Lonan is hollower than he was last summer. A little more haunted. They have this in common, then.

“Can we be friends?” Harrison asks. With his pinkie, he finds himself writing against the damp table just as he did Lonan’s scalp not too long ago. Lonan’s gaze follows each loop of each letter, Harrison’s steady left hand.

Lonan is consumed studying what Harrison has written, where each letter connects in near-cursive scrawl. After a moment, he nods, once, twice, and then reverts to staring at the table’s new inscription. On its surface are two words: something held.

The boys in the car like old times <3

Lonan drives. This is strange because Harrison has not seen Lonan drive a car in over a year. Usually, Harrison takes the wheel, but tonight he guides them through the city, in search of Suzanna. His car is clean. This isn’t unexpected. A cherry-coloured hatchback that rattles whenever he makes a left turn. It smells vaguely of cotton air-freshener and the undercurrent of cigarettes.

“You still smoke?” Harrison pokes at the plastic nob for the radio, and it crackles to life. Synth and electric guitar pulse in 4/4 time.

“I bought it used.”

They’ve agreed to get to know one another while they search for Suzanna. Another restart, some attempt at an honest hour. As Lonan changes lanes, Harrison pokes open the car’s glove compartment. A tin of nicotine gum falls on the mat. A hot pink feather pokes from underneath the driver’s manual. Harrison hauls out both, runs the feather along the gum tin, then the back of his hand, and then Lonan’s cheek. When that rouses nothing, he unlocks the tin and removes a slit of gum. Right as he’s about to pop it in his mouth, Lonan says, “I wouldn’t eat that.”

“Why?” Harrison asks. “Did you lace it?”

“Like I said, I bought the car used.”

Harrison puts the gum back, and then the feather. He sticks his hand farther into the glove compartment, feels around until he drags out a map of the state, bilgy and half torn. He unfolds it, careful to avoid the rips, and flattens it against the dashboard. Almost immediately, it wilts against the cold, faded from time in the sun. It’s been marked up. Half with pencil, half with a red ballpoint pen. After a few minutes, Harrison understands the previous owner’s route. Or at least he does at first. Following the red pen arrows, they started at Long Island, then reached Manhattan. Then a much longer arrow takes him from Manhattan to Geneva, and then Buffalo. And then the red pen circles, once, twice, three times, four times, and what is in the centre doesn’t even have a city name. What it does say is HELP, in all-caps, each letter then melting into an illegible scrawl. Harrison sees bits of words: Luke, woe, hands, clay, guard, stray, each wobbly and disappearing into the other, becoming cities of their own, destroying others. He tries to understand the route, but the farther he pours over the map, recircling each line with his finger, the more lost he gets in the ink.

“Is this your map?” Harrison asks. There is no proof that it is. Even the handwriting is all wrong. Ragged. Confused. Desperate. Not like Lonan’s careful, hesitant print.

“Like I said, I bought the car used.”

“But is it your map?” Harrison asks again. Gently, he creases the paper and then slots it back into the glove compartment. Outside, they pass three convenience stores in a row, a flock of couples emerging from a bowling alley, tipsy and cradling leftover deep dish pizzas and mozzarella sticks. They pass two more convenience stores before Lonan finally answers.

“I was confused,” he says.

“This is more than confused,” Harrison says. “It’s disturbed.”

“I’m not disturbed.”

“But something is wrong with you.”

Lonan slows at a crosswalk. A group of teenaged girls whisk by in glitter and lip gloss.

“Yes,” he says.

This is Harrison trying to stop Lonan’s nosebleed after their bizarre swerve which I think is kind of <3 tendy <3

Harrison reaches for him. One hand on the back of his neck, and the other reared toward the red stream. His touch is tactful, so faint his fingerprints wouldn’t even be left behind, but still, the dabbing with his jacket’s hem is enough to redirect the blood’s flow from Lonan’s upper lip to the cuff of leather. The radio is still on, garbled like an unmassing of crepe paper lanterns.

This is the final excerpt for this update that takes us to the very end of the chapter! Harrison has just found Lonan supposedly head-first in the sink and though he asks at first why he is doing that, takes an alternate approach as the chapter closes:

Harrison gets up, his knees popping like gnawed bubble gum. He decides he will handle Lonan at a distance, if he chooses to handle him at all. Like a timid pet owner trying to tame their suddenly-rabid yorkie. Like a friend not trying to tip the full glass. To let its contents film at its surface, but never spill.

Somewhere in the apartment, Suzanna probably listens to them. If Harrison didn’t know her better, he’d imagine her pressed neatly against the door, waiting to hear the shuffle of their bodies or the tang of an argument. Instead, he imagines her at the kitchen table, gripping a glass of water for so long, half of it evaporates.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Harrison says, stepping back until his spine hits the counter’s lip. He curls his fingers under the granite. Looks toward the window, now a faint periwinkle. Lonan heaves. His fingers caging his face, an animal restrained. They stand there until the sun rises.

So that’s it for this gigantic update! I have like four short stories to update you on so I hope to be back soon!

—Rachel

#writing #writerblr #amwriting #writeblr #fostered #mothwork #writingupdates #feedinghabits

[i-ntrmission]

Nine (Van McCann)

Just a silly little fic where Van is sporadic regular at a coffee shop. 

Part 1 (4.3k)

They say bad things happen in threes.

Your phone hadn’t charged overnight, leaving you with 15% battery.

A car ran through a puddle during your walk to work, soaking your legs.

An elderly man held the door of the coffee shop open for you, gesturing with a newspaper for you to go ahead, and a smile that you couldn’t help but reciprocate, until a busy mum storms out from the shop knocking into you and spilling fresh coffee down your jacket.

“Tough morning, eh?” Your co-worker, and resident barista genius, Toby comments with a chuckle while you stomped around the counter. Having seen what just happened, and taking in your soaked tights.

Julia, resident window art and slogan genius, glancing around from the till with a sympathetic pout while you roll your eyes at Toby, pushing on the staff door.

“Oh, leave off Tobes - leave her be. That was tragic, babe. Spare tights in my bag, help yourself.” She says before turning back to the line of customers.

“Cheers, Julia.” You sigh in relief while heading into the back, Toby’s dry chuckles and singsong of ‘Happy Friday!’ following you.

Once you have on dry tights, cleaned what you can from your jacket (thankfully it was leather), and hunted down a spare charger for your phone, you grab your apron and head back out.

By some grace of god, you had a later shift for today, meaning you missed the usual breakfast run full of impatient office employees, half asleep students, pass remarkable construction workers - thankful, with the way your morning had went you wouldn’t have been fit for dealing with that kind of stress this morning. Now in the clear for the easy hours before lunch.

“There she is,” Toby, a lazy grin when you re-emerge, Julia leaning on the counter beside him sipping from a mug, basking in the post breakfast rush comedown. “Here ya go, looks like you need it.” He slides a takeaway cup over to you, and you all too eagerly take a sip. Caffeine can nearly always fix anything, especially a bad morning.

Cinnamon caramel macchiato, a hum of appreciation and a drawn out ‘thank you.” He only chuckles out a ‘no bother’, picking up his tea. You had always found it ironic that someone who despised the taste and smell of coffee worked in a coffee shop, and on top of that made really fucking good coffee.

“So what’s happened you? Apparent from the coffee incident obvs, looked like you wanted to throttle all us when you came in,” Julia asks, brown eyes glancing over you as she takes another sip from her mug.

“Nah, she just always looks like that,” Toby says, a teasing grin. You just roll your eyes, it was true that your resting bitch face was Medusa level.

A sigh, taking another mouthful of your coffee and picking up a basin to start clearing the tables with while you shrug and launch into the story of your morning.

“Happens in threes, doesn’t it.” Julia comments when you catch them up.

"Well, that's my three strikes done for the day, thank fuck,” you shrug. She frowns at that.

"Touch wood."

"What?"

"You jinxed it saying that, need to touch wood for good luck!" Appalled that you never heard of the superstition at question.

Rolling your eyes, a huff as you walk away to start cleaning up. “Think I’ll be alright, Jules.” You weren’t superstitious. “Want some salt instead? Throw it over your shoulder!” Toby chuckles.

Julia only elbows him in the side, telling you both to piss off, mumbling something about having to spill salt first before you could do that.

But, maybe there was some truth in her superstitions because no less than ten minutes later, a cup slipped through your fingers smashing on the floor. Cursing yourself and then glancing meekly in her direction, she watched with a raised brow.

“Reckon it’s too late to touch wood?”

After the cup, you break a plate.

After the plate, you stand back to let a toddler and mum pass by you to get to the bathrooms, standing back with a smile - until you knock over a stand of artisan coffee bags.

“Another three down,” Julia mutters with a smirk while stacking clean cups.

“Sure you don’t want that salt?” Toby quips while walking by you as you sweep up spilt coffee beans. You give him the finger behind the dustpan you held, he reaches up as if to scratch at his beard - sliding his middle finger along his cheek, right back at you.

Your bad luck continues. During the lunch rush you manage to burn a granddad’s toasted sandwich, shortchange a regular who worked in the bookies across the street, and upend a student’s iced latte over your top.

You’re hopelessly scrubbing at the stain on your top when Julia walks into the back, grabbing her pack of fags.

“Jesus,” she mumbles, a dumbfounded look at how much you had managed to fuck up today. Completely out of character for you, a perfectionist by nature. “Did ya break a mirror or sommat lately?”

You only sigh and shake your head, “Any significance in the number 9?”

She thinks for a second, then smiles as she pulls a lighter from her jacket pocket. “9 is supposed to be good luck, actually. New beginnings,” she tilts her head, looking at you, “maybe buy a scratch card, or come to the pub quiz tonight!”

You laugh but before you can reply your manager walks in, a empathic glint in her eye. Everyone who worked here adored Carly, the ultimate mother figure. A caring but also a take no shit kind of person.

Your name - as she walks in, “what’s going on, pet? You’re a one man wrecking machine today!”

She tells you to take an early lunch, go home and get changed, clear your head and the come back. You sigh in relief of not having to wear a soggy blouse for the rest of the day. Half way home when you realize you’ve left your phone charging under the counter.

Finding Julia’s cat, Kurt, sitting on the steps to your and Julia’s shared basement flat. He purrs, pushing his head into your hand when you reach down to pick him up. You spend the next half hour sprawled on your bed with Kurt, eating rice crackers and watching “Best of Dean Winchester” complications on YouTube. Self care.

An hour later, when you walk back into the cafè Julia does a double take, stretching her arms wide and tilting her head in a ‘what the fuck!’ manner.

“Yeah? What’s up?” You ask, walking around the counter to pick back up your apron.

“Where’s your phone?! I’ve been texting you! Guess who’s bloody back?” A rush, and she’s all but bouncing on the spot, eyes gleaming with excitement.

You reach under the counter to pick up your phone, holding it up to her. It was still turned off but charged now. Telling her you forgot about it before you left. Not really bothered about her sudden elation, probably just one of her newest little crushes that changed every month. You entertain her, nonetheless.

“Who? Your man from the butchers?” Asking, while tying your apron, she shakes her head, eyes alight.

“Hm, weird uni Tolstoy wannabe?” You guess again, she shakes her head, then adds that he’s not weird just a bit eccentric and there’s nothing wrong with that. You still think the fact that he’s read War and Peace four times, and brags about, is a red flag.

You’re about to suggest the blonde and blue haired girl from the library when she cuts you off. “Anyway it’s nowt to do with me, cmon you know who it is!”

You only stare at her, blinking and out of guesses. She sighs your name is exasperation.

“Christ, you’re hopeless today. It’s only Van fuckin’ McCann, isn’t it!”

Your eyes widen, heart kicking around your ribs and blood pounds a bit harder at mention of his name. A reaction that surprises you.

“Fuck off!” It comes out as an alarmed whisper.

Van McCann had been coming to the coffee shop for three years now. Often showing up for a few days at a time and then seemingly disappearing off the face of the earth.

He had an obsession with the loyalty cards you dished out with the paper cups, nine stamps got a free drink. He never filled one.

He first showed up three summers ago, middle of a heatwave. He was wearing all black, ripped jeans, and a holy jumper. The holes and rips didn’t seem to be a fashion statement, more like he had just worn the clothes to death. He was pale, too pale. Shoulder length hair that definitely hadn’t seen a shower in a couple days, bags under his eyes. Towing along a smaller guy with long hair and a bandana. They looked out of place. A cloud of cigarette smoke lingering around them, underlying weed.

You and Julia had exchanged a glance. “Homeless? Junkies?” She mouthed at you, after they had sat down with their teas and cinnamon buns you had freshly made that morning. You had rolled your eyes, told her to stop being a judgmental prick.

He came back the next morning, on his own. Same jeans but a black T-shirt, and fluffy hair. You had been cleaning tables, observing while Toby served him. He wanted another cinnamon bun, Toby told him he was out of luck, you hadn’t made them that morning. Glancing over his shoulder with interest when Toby had pointed you out as the resident baker.

The third morning he was back again, a Glasvegas T-shirt. Julia told him you loved that band while he was waiting on his coffee. You were putting out fresh cherry and chocolate scones, when he caught your eye.

“Ey, they’re class aren’t they? What’s ya favourite song?”

You always struggled to hold his gaze when he looked at you, that didn’t change with time. Insanely blue eyes framed with lashes that were wasted on him. You shrugged, “probably Lots Sometimes.” And he had broke out into a wide grin, giving you the first glimpse of his slightly crooked bunny teeth.

You had given him the first of many loyalty cards that day, seeing as he had come in for three mornings straight, he pocketed it with a little huff of laughter, novelty.

He didn’t come back for months after that.

You and Julia spent the next few days speculating who he was and where he had gone, passing slow shifts. Toby rolled his eyes at the theories, saying that he most likely found the new Starbucks across town. Julia sighed in disappointment while muttering something about how conglomerate multi nationals were the root of all evil.

However, he turned up again a month or two later. A busy morning, frantic. You hadn’t even had a chance to look up at the next person in line when you heard his voice, “well ‘ello again, Glasvegas.”

And that’s how it went on, the cycle of Van appearing for a little bit then vanishing for longer. Each time he easily became the best part of the long days - banter, shameless flirting, footie talk with Toby, taste testing any and everything you had baked as a trial run, swapping stories, endless loyalty cards.

He always had a strange little smile when you added an fresh coffee cup stamp to the grid, something the general customer didn’t really care about and it was often a surprise when they filled the card up.

He never gave a heads up when he would be leaving again, he simply just disappeared. And you tried to pretend it wasn’t weird that you got a plummeting feeling in your stomach when it came to the day he didn’t show up. Blue eyes, freckles, a contagious laugh. It was all lingering stares, fingers brushing longer than necessary, throwaway salacious comments.

“C’mon babe, you know he’ll be back, quit sulking,” Julia would playfully elbow you when the day came, and you shook your head with snort, “Shut up, M’not sulking.”

You eventually found out he was in a band, and sometime last year he had asked you if you wanted to come to one of his gigs. Well, he had asked the three of you - but Julia was going on holidays that weekend, Toby had a wedding, and when his eyes met yours you had instinctively crafted a lie about going to visit your sister in London. Something Julia gave you shit for for weeks afterward. You didn’t have a sister, and you hated London.

A few weeks after that incident - by then Van was long gone, Julia stormed into the café with an NME magazine in hand, slamming down on the counter, Van’s face filled the cover.

“Fucking hell!” You and Toby had exhaled in near unison.

“So turns out he’s actually proper famous then, eh?” Julia laughed.

“Am I the bad boy of rock, then? Oh mate..” Toby read from the cover, laughing. “And you turned down the chance to be his bands groupie!” He joked, turning to you.

“Here, I thought he wanted us to go watch his shite Arctic Monkeys rip off band play sweaty Whelans okay?!” You defended.

“Do you think we can start a wall of famous regulars now?” Julia changed the subject, taking a fresh scone you were laying out, flicking to the pages of his interview.

“Yeah, Rock’s bad boy Van McCann and Barry from Eastenders. What a lineup...” Toby snorted, going back to stacking coffee beans.

“I mean, Van kind of looks like Hugh Grant... If you squint.” You shrugged.

You and Julia went home and watched countless Catfish and the Bottlemen interviews and live sets, you liked seeing how Van never changed. No matter who he was talking to. Treating everyone like they were an old friend, not someone he had just met 5 minutes ago.

The band seemed to really take off that year, he came back less and less. But he was still the same old Van when he did, success didn’t change him. Then their second album dropped a year ago, and you hadn’t seen him since. You were happy for him, it was obvious that he was living his dream. Eventually, you stopped thinking about him all that much, life moved on.

Now you were looking at a smug Julia, instinctively glancing around the shop while she laughs and tells you he’s long gone.

“Came in literally 5 minutes after you went out, this day is honestly like some weird fever dream.” She tells you, while Toby comes out from the back.

“And she told him you didn’t work here anymore, should have seen the poor lad’s face!” Toby chuckles.

The two of them look at at each other with a groan when you ask why he’d be upset about you not being here anymore.

“I swear to god, if I have to watch the eye fucking over coffee cups for the next few days...” she sighs, an eye roll. “He’s made it obvious he’s fancied you since the first day he walked in, yeah? Give him a chance!”

“Fucking hell, that’s pure bollocks,” exasperated. Met with a disbelieving look, which only brings you further into defensive mode. “Look, you even gave him my number on one of the stupid loyalty cards last time, never even heard from him. Obviously isn’t interested one bit.”

Julia had asked you if she could write your number on his loyalty card last spring. You had only half said yes, half said no. Noncommittal, all she needed to run with it. She handed it back to him without saying anything, only a smug smirk. You pretended you hadn’t sprung for your phone at every notification for the next two weeks in hope of hearing from him, you never did.

Julia - another eye roll, hands in the air, “Dunno, maybe he just lost the card! You just need to stop writing people off before you get to proper know them!”

The rest of the day dragged, but no more bad luck. As if the universe realigned around Van, which probably wasn’t too far from the truth.

By closing time, it’s just you and Toby left to do the clean up and lockup. It’s nearly 9 when you hear him drawl your name, walking into the kitchen and leaning against the doorway.

“Hey, Kiddo...”

“Toby, my love, what have I told you about patronizing me before you ask me for a favour?” Humming while you put cling filmed dough into the fridge for the pecan pie you were planning on making tomorrow morning.

He laughs and walks in, leaning against the counter. “Alright, sorry - princess.”

Shutting the fridge as you turn to face him with an eye roll, wordlessly telling him to go on. He launches into the how he kind of maybe forgot that his anniversary with his fiancée is tomorrow, their usual Italian restaurant they go to every year is fully booked but he knows the chef. Who, as of this morning, promised to do a private dinner for them, if he meets him at half nine and buys him a couple of drinks.

You listen while you clean off the counter tops, shaking your head with a laugh. “Dunno, mate. What’s in it for me? I mean apart from the joy of mopping floors and taking out the bins?”

Playful - a long sigh. “Isn’t the selfless act of helping out a friend in need reward enough?”

“Yeah, but we’d have to be friends first for that wouldn’t we?” You tilt your head.

“God, you’re such a little bitch sometimes, y’know that?” He chuckles, you shrug. “Right, how about I take the bins out and mop the floors all of next week, and I’ll treat ya to a Sunday roast down the pub after we finish Sunday, deal?”

He holds out his hand, eyes narrowing. Pretending to mull it over for a few seconds, you wouldn’t have made a fuss about him asking you to finish up tonight anyway, but he was always too easy to wind up. Eventually you sigh out a “suppose so” and take his hand.

Pulling you into a hug, dragging out a noise that resembles, ‘legend’ while kissing your head.

Once he’s gone, along with the rubbish, locking you in and halfway pulling the shutter down outside, you put on a Richard Ashcroft album and start on the floor.

Crazy world - you’re half singing along to the chorus, and finishing the floor, when you hear a faint noise behind the music. Insistent tapping. Confusion clouding - knowing you were here alone, glancing behind you, your grip tightening on the mop. And you almost jump out of your skin, a shadow in the entrance to the shop.

It’s Van.

He had clearly ducked under the shutter, now outside the door silhouetted by buzz of streetlamps, tapping on the glass. He laughs at your startled expression, holding up his hands and mouthing ‘sorry, sorry!”

Heart - thumping even harder now, lightheaded. Grabbing your keys to unlock the door, and when you’re face to face with him your mouth goes dry.

“Thought you’d gone and left on us, Glasvegas,”

Gaze flickering over you, a smile tugging on his lips. You can tell he’s been drinking, the all too familiar scent of hours spent in the pub lingers, mixed with fresh cigarettes, shrunken pupils and glassy eyes. A wave of trepidation prickles along your arms, drunk men made you nervous.

But - it’s Van, all messy hair, drunk eyes, and a lazy tired kind of grin. Relaxed and happy.

“Nope, still here like always,” releasing a breath you didn’t realise that you had been holding. Focusing on his necklace, sliver glinting under opened shirt buttons. “Heard Julia was messin’ with you earlier, eh?”

“Too good at fuckin’ with us that one,” he laughs, licking his lips. “Had me dead convinced you’d gone.”

Creased blue shirt - sleeves rolled up, the colour only makes his eyes look even more blue, and even more pretty. Finding yourself being increasingly self conscious despite his equally disheveled appearance. Knowing that your foundation was separating, concealer caking, mascara flaking and lipstick long gone. Coffee stains and flour marking your clothes.

“Did you want to come in for a sec?” You manage to ask.

“Can I? Won’t get ya in trouble or anything? Cause yous are closed.”

You laugh, rolling your eyes while beckoning him in. “C’mon, didn’t have you down as someone who follows the rules, McCann. Careful though, floor is still wet.”

“Oh, no, you’re dead right ‘bout that, love. Just I had you down as someone who always follows the rules.” Winking at you as he walks in, commenting how different the place feels at night.

“Anyways,” he turns back to you with a hum of your name, “Sorry that I scared you, don’t want ya to think I’m being weird coming here this late or anything, I was on me way home see, passing by and I found these on the ground outside..”

He holds up a hand, key chain around his finger and a Harley Davidson key ring you immediately recognize as Toby’s.

You cut him off, telling him they’re Toby’s, that he must have dropped them after locking you in earlier, and that he’s a fucking idiot. An entertained smile curving his lips at your mini rant.

“Sorry, been a long day.”

“Yeah, Julia mentioned you’d been having bad luck or sommat, tell me about it?” A hopeful glint in his eye, and you wondered if he had ever been denied anything in his life.

Ending up making him coffee and giving him leftover banana bread while you ran him through the dramatics of your day. He, like Julia, was shocked that you had never heard of the touch wood superstition.

“Sounds like you’ve been through it, love... then I show up and make it worse, eh?” Finishing his cake and his eyes find yours again.

“Yeah, something like that,” a teasing sort of lithe, the more you talked to him the more at ease you felt around him. It’s familiar.

“Alright, alright! See how it is!” His voice raising to a squeak, you laughed.

You wouldn’t let him pay for the coffee and banana bread, saying it was on the house for saving the shop from being robbed. He only shrugs and leans against the counter beside you. “Just means I’m gonna have to buy you one back, doesn’t it.”

“Thanks for the gesture, but I do get free coffee working here, y’know,” you tell him, already hearing Julia’s words about writing people off, but he was only being nice, wasn’t he?

“Fairs, I’ll buy ya one from a different place then, good to try out the competition innit?” Arms crossing while he looks at you, and you shake your head. Your cheeks aching from the permanent smile you had since he walked in, and you knew you’d cringe about that later tonight when you replayed the scene over in your head in bed.

“Only competition round here is Starbucks, and I don’t think Julia would let you step foot in here again if you buy anything from there.”

He laughs at that, telling you he was more thinking of crappy petrol station coffee. Something you scrunch your nose in disgust at, asking him if that’s all your worth to him. Drawing another laugh.

“C’mere I’d rather take you out for a pint, but m’sparing myself from the inevitable rejection and heartbreak,” he laughs, shaking his head. Your teeth sink into your lip, picking at loose skin on your thumb nail, practically hearing Julia screaming at you in your head.

“How long are you back for?” Finding yourself asking, though you never had before. Not something you ever talked about, questioned. He gives you a look, a smirk.

“Never talk about that do we, love?” He echoes your thoughts while digging in his pocket, ridiculously tight skinny jeans, until his pulls out the green little loyalty card. 8 empty stamp grids, his first one filled by Julia today. “But I’m gonna fill one of these eventually! Toby’s bet me a fiver that I won’t until I’m 30.”

You’re half tempted to ask him why he never called, or texted, or did anything with your number on the last card. Instead your mouth curls around telling him that you’d best lock up and get home. You’re knackered. He asks how you’re getting home, telling him you’re walking, that you only live 15 minutes away while he glances outside. Orange glow of streetlamps. It’s nearing 10, autumn weather starting to creep in.

“It’s dark out.” He states the obvious.

“And?”

“Love, I ain’t letting you walk home in the dark alone! Let me walk ya,” Exclaiming, typical Van fashion. Shaking your head, knowing his intentions were good but you were stubborn.

“Who are you, me dad? I’m more than capable of getting myself home, Van.” Teasing but firm, arching a brow at him. He tells you he’ll get you an Uber then, you repeat that it’s only 15 minutes home, that you’re walking. He only stares at you for a second or two, and you can’t hold it. Thankful that he’s obviously drunk and tired, because he gives in.

“Then at least text me when ya get home, yeah?” Curling his fingers for you to give him your phone, something you’re tempted to deny. But finding it endearing that he cares so much. Handing your phone over. He messes up his number twice.

Unexpectedly, he pulls you in for a hug before he leaves. All warm skin, and you realise you wish you could stay here talking shite with him for longer. All night even.

You watch him walk over to the door. “Right, night.. you’ll be here in the morning, yeah?” He glances back.

“Bright and early.” You confirm.

“Any cinnamon buns going?”

“Maybe, if you get in early enough.”

He laughs. “Right, night then. See ya tomorrow, Glasvegas. Text me, don’t forget!” He calls while he walks out and you grab your stuff to follow him out once you set the alarm.

Watching - he pretends to walk down stairs on the other side of the window before ducking under the shutter.

Leaving you to shake your head with an amused laugh. What a fucking day.

#oh hey sometimes i write vanfics when i need to get out of my head #idk prob will add another few parts to this at some pointtt #vanfic #catb fanfic #Van McCann fanfic

[wherearemyglassesbro]

Can I get some sibling Headcanons for Alfred Jones (America) and Matilda Williams (female Canada)?

This ask is from September so....sorry bb

((Edit uhhhh I used Madeline this entire time and I’m too lazy to change it so uh...oopsies lmao))

Alfred watches Maddie put makeup on and asks ‘what’s that?’ ‘what does that thing do?’ Like every two seconds

‘This is eyeliner, it goes on your water line-‘ ‘ITS TOUCHING YOUR EYEBALL WHAT THE FUCK????’

They play hockey on the pond in their subdivision and Maddie has knocked out some of Al’s teeth before. It was kinda Al’s fault for underestimating her

When Arthur cooks, Alfred will occasionally distract him so Maddie can sneak behind him and season the damn food holy cow!!! Then Francis comes over and is like ‘wow honey this is way better than last time!’ And Art’s pride swells....Maddie and Al will never tell their parents what they’ve done lmao

Maddie was taller than Alfred until high school and Alfred would get SO mad when she wore heels or even sneakers with thick soles cause he just HATED being shorter, they’d fight in the car on the way to school about it too

Alfred spilled an entire 2 liter bottle of coke on the carpet while their dads were away and Maddie called her friends over to help clean. He paid them each $5 lol

Maddie likes watching Al play video games with his friends so she can yell ‘wow nice shot bro’ and ‘cant believe I love with a pro gamer’ every time he misses or loses. Francis has stepped in on multiple occasions ‘alright honey, leave your brother alone’...Arthur lowkey encourages it. He chuckles from behind his newspaper ‘Mhm, a real winner...’

Alfred watched Maddie wax her legs once and he could not handle it “BRO??? Doesnt that hurt????” “Well yeah but not that much” and then it turned into waxing Alfred’s leg. Well...One wax strip on the back of his calf. He screamed like a bitch lmao

^^He takes a beating when playing football and lacrosse??? But the wax strip?? His weakness :)

They have almost every Just Dance game on the Wii and they get so competitive, they’ll shove each other over in order to score a few points while the other twin is down

Alfred got his drivers license before Maddie because she had to ‘work on her road rage’. Her driving instructor couldn’t believe how foul she could be :) Yup...She gets thst from her dad for sure

^^ Alfreds just sitting at a 4 way stop waving everyone by like :D you go sir!! You too maam!! Wow your car is very pretty!! And you gotta remind him that it’s his turn to go alsjlakslsks

Alfred gags when he has to do the dishes cause the soggy, leftover food on the plates grosses him out so much. Maddie has a ton of videos saved of him gagging where you could hear him from the livingroom! Then the camera pans over to Fran and Artie totally losing it

Alfred is a ‘I like ya cut g’ menace. He’ll smack Maddie on the back of the head and just laugh it up every time. It’s never hard enough to really hurt! He just does it to be obnoxious. When he’s bored he also takes her glasses or flicks her earphones out of her ears. She does the same to him so it’s fair! Ahh....sibling life...I know it very well

#aph #hetalia #ask away! #headcanons #hetalia headcanons #asks #always up for hc requests #aph america #aph canada #aph face family #aph nyo canada

[dissident-vedder]

- like real people do ( 𝐀. 𝐊. )

ADD YOURSELF TO MY TAGLIST!

person a and b having a romantic lunch date over school cafeteria vegan nuggets and cold french fries.

INSPIRATIONS - like real people by hozier. prompt by @otp-prompts-for-you​.

THIS FIC CONTAINS curse words. 

A/N - layout by @adoresobs​! the vegan nuggets were inspired a lot by @sideways-falling​‘s vegan tags in her animal posts and the many hours we have spent talking about ak! this fic is also a high school!au, so anthony and the reader are around 17/18. the mr. smith part is based on my real life teacher, but name and class were changed, lol.

pushing the tupperware box towards you, anthony smiles as he opens his own, happy that he was finally able to spend a quiet lunch with you. hillel, michael, and jack usually trailed behind you both, so once they told him they were spending lunchtime in the music room, he was excited to be able to finally be alone with you at school. the two of you had met during a poetry workshop class, and the two immediately hit it off. in order to ask you out, he had written a page long poem about what he found interesting about you, and it made you begin to see yourself in ways you never thought possible. your self-esteem and confidence went through the roof when anthony was around.

he made sure what your diet was, never judging you when you told him you were a vegan. he wasn’t, of course, but once he got the gist of the diet, he adopted it, replacing all animal-based products with certified vegan groceries, and one year into your relationship, he replaced everything in his diet to a vegan substitute. 

“how was mr. smith’s class?” he asked you, biting into a soggy french fry that he had packed. the sun was shining brightly on you, the courtyard filled with eating students.

you rolled your eyes, sighing heavily as you readied yourself for your rant. “it absolutely sucked ass! he collects the notebooks, gave us problems from the stupid algebra book to do, and at the end of class, he tells me that i did not, and i quote, ‘write my notes properly.’ how the fuck do i write notes properly? it’s based on how i fucking understand the fucking problem!” two people sitting nearby eyed you suspiciously. you sipped at your water bottle, fuming at your math teacher as anthony reached over to rub your shoulder to calm you down. he had mr. smith the previous year, and knew the frustration he had given many juniors in the years he worked at fairfax. “anyway,” you smiled softly at him, “how was mrs. anita’s class?”

he shrugged, chewing on a nugget as he thought of his answer. “she was out on maternity leave.”

“she had the baby?” 

he laughed, “she had the baby.” a glazed look came over anthony’s eyes, and you knew he was thinking about it, wondering what the gender was and what it could possibly look like. on multiple occasions, mrs. anita’s husband came into the class (mrs. anita was his class sponsor), and would bring multiple boxes of pizza with him (vegetarian and regular). anthony had talked about wanting a child in the near future, and every time he talked about it, this glazed look came over his eyes, like it did now, and he looked so happy, so content in his little imagination, that, deep in your heart, you wished you were the one to grant him that wish. “i think it’s a girl, but she hasn’t said anything about it. i bet her cheeks are so chubby.” his cheeks flushed, heart swelling in his chest as he looked so content. 

“i think the baby is a boy,” you chuckled, eating more fries. “and i think he most likely looks a lot like his dad.” 

“well i think she will look like mrs. anita,” he placed a hand on his chest. “i’m right, you’re wrong. she had pregnancy acne, too!” he smacks the table with his hand, making the bottles jump in the air. “old wives tale says that pregnancy acne means that the mother is having a girl!” 

“sometimes old wives tales lie!” you laugh, enjoying the talk you were able to get with anthony. when the others were around, they seemed to talk about sex and music, the latter being the only thing you actually listen to. growing up in a multi-talented household, you were raised to appreciate the arts, and even to participate in them. by 15, you played the guitar, bass, cello, piano, and the violin, and had written multiple poems that ended up published in newspapers around l.a. 

“perhaps they don’t!” anthony laughed alongside you. “my mother got pregnancy acne and gave birth to a girl! my dad said she had perfect skin when she was pregnant with me.” 

“my mother had multiple girls after me and she was perfectly fine,” you chuckled, closing the lid of the tupperware, pushing it away from you to allow you to lean your forearms against the table. “you just sucked the life out of her, anthony.” reaching over to tuck a piece of hair behind your ear, he smiles brightly at you, flashing his crooked tooth, “perhaps.” 

“but really,” you reached into your bag to grab the juice you had thrown in there that morning, “i hope it’s a boy. i have too many sisters.” 

“it is the teacher’s baby, you know,” he reminded you, raising an eyebrow as he grabbed the bottle from your hand to take a sip. “i know, but it’s just that i want to help take care of a boy for once,” you pouted, resting your chin on your hands, waiting for anthony to give you the bottle back. 

as he gives it back, lid screwed tightly, the bell rings, alarming everyone to begin making their way towards their next class. “see you after school,” anthony reaches over the table, grabbing your shoulder, and pulling you in for a kiss, one of the lunch monitors yelling at the two of you to stop the pda. you dreaded to think about what will happen next year. 

this time next year, anthony will have graduated. this time next year, he will be off at college, possibly meeting a new girl that suited his needs better than you did. but until then, you had him all to yourself, a blessing that you never thought twice about, and a blessing you never wanted to let go off.

TAGLIST:

 @stateofloveandvedder​ @state-of-love-and-lust​ @honeysympathy​ @grossgold​ @sea-sxns​ @d-arknecessities​ @sideways-falling​

#anthony kiedis #anthony kiedis x reader #imagine anthony kiedis #anthony kiedis imagine #high school au #1970s au #lunch au #fairfax high school!anthony kiedis #hillel slovak #michael flea balzary #jack irons

[absentlyabbie]

a family and (mis)fortune fic

on ao3

moments growing up in the life of tommy merlyn, part-time wayne foster child. (seven)

—————

The morning of Tommy’s eighth day in Gotham, Bruce came downstairs in the morning at his usual 6AM, heading to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Dick would be down shortly, still half-asleep and grouchy from their late night, and Alfred wouldn’t be far behind. Bruce had scored a rare victory in their years-long argument that Alfred should take a late morning after manning the Batcave well into the small hours of the night.

What Bruce had not expected to find when he went into the kitchen was Tommy, seated at the small kitchen table with a bowl of cereal and the funny pages from yesterday’s paper spread out on the tabletop, spotted with milk and orange juice. Tommy had slept til nearly 8 every day of the last week, and Bruce had seen no reason not to let him.

Seeing that Tommy had clearly risen before everyone else was a surprise and a concerning break in pattern. To add to the concern, Tommy looked just as startled to see him.

“Good morning,” Bruce tested slowly. “You’re up early.”

Tommy tensed and looked away, one shoulder jerking in a dismissive shrug as he shoveled a too-large spoonful of cereal into his mouth.

Hoping he wasn’t messing this up, Bruce asked carefully, “Bad dreams?”

Tommy ignored him as if he hadn’t spoken and Bruce winced discreetly, certain he shouldn’t have asked. Clearing his throat, he let it drop and went to the coffee maker. He left Tommy to his quiet, thinking on how tired he’d been of people trying to make him talk about what he’d felt and how he was coping when he was that age.

Minutes later, Dick shambled into the kitchen like a zombie in a blue pajama set, hair a wild mess and eyes only barely open. He grumbled a hello at Bruce and snatched Bruce’s mug from under the finishing drip, taking a long sip and hissing even as it scalded his lips and tongue.

Reprovingly, Bruce reclaimed his mug. “You are fourteen. Follow Tommy’s example. Orange juice.”

Scowling melodramatically, Dick dragged his feet to the fridge and grunted, “OJ’s not caffeinated.”

“That’s the point.”

Dick grumbled through pulling down a glass and pouring his juice, and Bruce hid a smirk in his coffee mug as he rounded the large center island. Normally, they took breakfast in the dining room, even when it was just toast and eggs or Pop Tarts for Dick. But since Tommy was already seated, Bruce decided to take a seat opposite him at the little eat-in as if this was as normal and routine as anything else.

Tommy didn’t even look up from his funnies.

Despite his grumbling, Dick was already far more awake and more his normal self by the time he headed over to them with orange juice and a silver foil packet in hand. He perched in the chair nearest Tommy’s and craned across the table with a playful curl to his mouth, “Whatcha got there? Ooh, is that—?”

Bruce looked up sharply at the loud smack of palms on tabletop, his brows arching high in surprise. Dick had tried to pull the comics pages towards him and Tommy had reacted with a swift, hard slap of his palms down on the paper, pinning it to the tabletop where it was.

But what drew Bruce up short was the venomous glare Tommy was pinning Dick with.

Dick had sat back sharp in his seat, eyes wide, shocked and a little hurt judging by the slight inward quirk of his brows. “Geez. Sorry.”

Tommy said nothing, just glared until Dick raised his hands from the newspaper pages and held them up in surrender. Bruce frowned as Tommy pulled the pages closer, hunched over them, and went back to his soggy cereal without a word.

Bruce and Dick exchanged a worried glance. For a moment, Bruce considered saying something about Tommy’s behavior, making him apologize to Dick. But he didn’t feel he’d made enough progress with him yet to practice amateur parenting on him. So he said nothing, and Dick slouched back in his chair to unwrap his Pop Tart and cast furtive, watchful glances at Tommy, who ignored them both steadily.

It only got worse as the morning went on. Not even Alfred got an acknowledgement when he joined them in the kitchen. Tommy looked at no one, spoke to no one, just folded up his funnies, put them in the recyclables bin, rinsed his bowl and glass and set them in the sink, and walked out of the kitchen without so much as a backwards glance for any of them.

Bruce felt he’d somehow not only lost all the progress he’d made with Tommy in his first week, but somehow regressed even further.

All of a sudden, he was quiet to the point of silent treatment, and though Bruce had noticed many times that Tommy carried in him an anger mostly hidden, it was closer to the surface than ever, a pot hissing and simmering and threatening to boil over any moment.

Only he never boiled over.

He kept up that spitting low boil for almost two days, spending as much time alone as possible, speaking as little as he could get away with. Two days of no smiles and no laughter, just clenched tight as a fist and ticking like a bomb that refused to go off.  

Bruce was at a loss. Alfred was concerned, watchful, but insisted on being hands off.

“Perhaps he needs to get something out of his system, Master Bruce. We must let him talk to us when he is ready,” Alfred had suggested gently, and as much as it chafed at Bruce, he saw no other approach that didn’t look like it might make things worse.

Dick, on the other hand, was absolutely determined to recover the kid he’d started to befriend, the one who liked his puns and his comics and video games and talked to him.

It was perhaps unsurprising that it was Dick’s persistence that eventually paid off. He needled and nagged and dogged Tommy at every turn the two days of silent treatment, cracking jokes and performing outlandish stunts and gags and being generally annoying, whatever he thought might get a reaction.

And he did get a reaction, though Bruce wasn’t sure it was the one he ought to have been aiming for.

Tommy broke not with giggles or grins, but with a fed-up howl of “Will you quit it!!”

There had followed a cackling laugh—Dick—and a growling shout—Tommy—and a loud thump.

Bruce had hurried to the library to find the boys wrestling on the floor between two shelves, pulling at fingers and hair and shoving feet in faces. Bruce stared, stunned, from the doorway, struck by how unfair a fight it was with Dick almost five years older and regularly training in martial arts.

But Dick didn’t pull any of his advantages other than size, letting Tommy get on top of him twice and think he had him pinned before bucking the smaller boy or wriggling out from under him to turn the tables all over again.

Eventually Tommy got fed up, kicking Dick off of him with both feet to the chest—almost impressive, admittedly—and jumping to his feet with an aggravated huff and face red. He glanced to the door and did a wincing doubletake on spotting Bruce. Reddening even more, he shoved past Bruce to run stomping down the hall.

Watching him go until he turned a corner, Bruce shifted his attention to Dick with arms crossed and one eyebrow arched. “Was that the wisest approach, Dick?”

Dick, for his part, snorted and rolled nimbly onto his toes with a grin. Rubbing his sternum lightly in appreciation, he gave Bruce a twinkling look and a shake of his head. “You so obviously didn’t grow up around other kids.”

Bruce frowned as Dick danced breezily past him, hands in pockets. “I had friends.”

“Uh huh,” Dick drawled.

“I wasn’t a child hermit, Dick.”

He spun on his heel in the middle of the hallway to look Bruce in the eye with deep solemnity. “I believe you.” Sarcastic brat. “Trust me, this was good. It’s only up from here.”

Bruce hummed skeptically as Dick strolled whistling down the hall.

But really, he hoped Dick was right.

—————

@memcjo @klaus-hargreeves-katz @its-a-pygmy-puffle @keabbs @princesssarcastia @obscure-sentimentalist @icannotbelieveiamhere @p0cketw0tch @andyouweremine @storiesofimagination @acheaptrickandacheesyoneline @cronusamporaofficial @batsonthebrain​ @adeusminhacolombina @nothinglikeweplanned​

#tommy merlyn #bruce wayne #dick grayson #arrow #arrow fic #batfam #alfred pennyworth #family and (mis)fortune au #fam au

[mhdiaries]

Frights, Camera, Action! – Hauntlywood Honey Swamp Diary

2 April

Mama Swamp has always said that navigating the waters of New Goreleans gentility is tougher than a cypress stump, but looking at what’s waiting for me this year, I’ll swear high society has nothing on high school! What with advanced film studies, the school newspaper, Fearbook photography, and all those lil’ social engagements a lady must keep, my calendar is filling up faster than a cistern in a hurricane. Nothing to fret about though, as I’ve formulated a ghoul-proof plan to make this year a success;

Create a student film that simply overflows with passion and originality

Impress Mr. Rougarou, my film teacher, so very much that he enters it into the annual Bayou Boovie Fest

Win accolades galore from the judges for my breakout cinema-togre-phy

Get discovered by Hauntlywood and move out west to work with the  monstrously talented SoFeara Gorepola. We'll make a divine boovie-making scream team!

My student flick last year—"Lurking on the Levees"—scared a major coup thanks to my expert eye for film decomposition, but the script was... well, just a teensy bit lacking, I must confess. Visually I'm always top of my class, but I'll be honest; cryptwriting is not my forte. That's why this time I'm going with a much more "cinéma scarité" approach—my neck of the woods is fairly alive with true stories to tell! Now I just have to find a subject that screeches "Hauntlywood", and I'll be all set.

10 April

Creeping kudzu, I do wish my hair would behave! I've been so busy dealing with the humidity I've hardly had time to think about anything else. Monsters outside this little soggy neck of the world don't know how lucky they have it with the weather; I may have been born here, but my lovely locks have not adapted. Lately they've been either limp as a wet noodle or more ornery than an itchy gator. I should whip up a batch of my famous smoothing marsh mud and see if that helps. A ghoul has to look her best, even if I'm more comfortable spending time behind the camera than in front of it.

19 April

My mama has, at least to my mind, a particularly unusual fascination with vampire royalty. She can tell you all the queens and their names and who their families were down to their 20th generation. She also has a whole bookshelf just stuffed full of stories about the "missing vampire queen" and who she is and where she may be hiding, and if the current jewel they use to detect who the true queen should be is real or a fake. There have been supposed sightings of her all over the world. One ghoul even wrote a whole book that says the missing queen has actually been unliving her life as a high school student. Now I know some drop dead debutante divas in my class that would give any royal highness a run for her money when it comes to acting like a queen but none with the pedigree for it. So, although I don't pay much mind to it, I have to say it has been rather interesting here lately, especially since now the news is saying that the new vampire queen has been found at... a high school. Now there's something you might be able to turn into a film or a book.

25 April

Today in film studies we had to give a presentation about our industry scream job. Most of my ghoulmates talked about being cryptwriters, directors, and boovie stars, of course; I was the only cinema-togre-pher in the class. Not that I'm all that surprised, mind. Most monsters get into booviemaking to see their names in lights, but cinema-togre-phy is a lot of responsibility without nearly as much recognition. A cineme-togre-pher defines the "look" of a boovie; she's a director's right-hand-monster for everything that you see on screen. The lighting, the camera movement, the special effects—everything has to look its beast if she wants an audience to lose themselves in the film. If she does it right, it's almost undetectable—but if she does it wrong, it's all anymonster will be able to see! I must have made a convincing case, because when I'd finished my presentation, half the class wanted to change their focus. Mr. Rougarou was impressed (all according to plan!) and said he'd be "very interested" to see my finished film, which makes me as nervous as a long-tailed werecat in a room full of rocking chairs! I gotta find a subject, and soon.

2 May

Still lurking for the perfect subject for my documentary. So far I've rejected half a dozen concepts, from an exposé on Mardi Claw (too cliché) to a search for the perfect gum-boo recipe (mine, of course, so it'd be a hideously short film). So far, nothing quite has that spark of inspiration I crave. My friends, bless their scary-sweet hearts, call me a perfectionist. Which I absolutely am! But unlike them I don't think of it as a weakness. After all, being a perfectionist doesn't mean you do it right the first time, every time—it just means never giving up until you're satisfied, even if that means you have to do it a hundreds times. That's how truly great art is made. Rotten Scaresese or Alfeared Hitchshock never would have given up after trying just one measly lil' time, and neither will I. Besides, I still have a hundred other ideas I have yet to give a fair shake—a little more time and screesearch should have me in the pink.

5 May

It was club picture day; always a busy one for the Fearbook team. I'm still learning about film, but photography will always be my first and dearest love—even when it's just snapping shots of my ghoulmates making freaky faces. The only fangup was a couple of vampires sneaking into every photo—of course, their faces didn't show up, but the out-there accessories they were wearing sure did! It was so funny I about fell out laughing... and then I realized we'd have to do all the shots again. Sigh... so not scare.

10 May

I took some time this weekend to haunt around Jackson Scare, looking for inspiration for my boovie. The deadline is still far off, but time is flying by and I have to admit I'm getting a lil' bit nervous—what if inspiration doesn't strike in time? I've got a half-dozen half-shot films, but nothing I can really call a boovie yet. And I want it to be good enough to blow away not just Mr. Rougarou, but all the judges at the Bayou Boovie Fest. I had some coffee and boue-uiets at the Cafe du Moau, watching the tourists stroll by, but still nothing came to me. If fangtastic southern cooking can't make your brain give up the ghost, what can? I clearly need to shake the ol' idea tree a little harder and see if something else falls out.

14 May

Last night, Mama hosted a dinner for some visiting digniscaries and asked me to lend a claw with the cooking. Entertaining is a big part of a Southern gentleghoul's repertoire, and you gotta be good at it. Photography isn't my only skill! I come from a long line of excellent cooks on both sides—Mama's always said one of the reasons she married my daddy was for his dead beans and rice! It's hard work, but between the two of us Mama and I kept the ladies and gents grinning all evening. Eventually talk turned to famous New Goreleans legends. It's an old town, and hauntings and happenings are all around. Our frights are famous and our mausoleums are second-to-none! One of the monsters in attendance mentioned the legend of the Bayou Bijou, and I sat right up. I'd heard of her, of course, but had no idea she was still floating. I should mention, "she's" a ghost ship, rising from the waters and floating across the bogs in the dead of night, with the famous plays and performers that appeared there still echoing on her stage. I asked the gentlemonster why this information wasn't better-known, and he said it was because the Bijou is so deep in the swamp that sightings are rare, and information rarer still. But nowhere in the bayou is unreachable for a Honey Swamp. Finally, an idea with bite!

15 May

There are advantages to being born and raised in the bayou—you get to know the lay of the land like your own scales. It was the work of just a few hours tracking through the swamp to find where the ghost ship rises. Seems she only appears on the full moon—so I had to lie in wait for a bit, but patience is one of my many, many virtues. Pretty soon I had the first-ever footage of the Bayou Bijou in all her beauty! It'll take a few more stakeouts, but I think I can finish my boovie in time for the festival—and with a subject so unique and fabulous, it won't be hard at all to make a film worthy of recognition. Just wait, Hauntlywood... Honey's comin'!

#monster high #monster high diary #frights camera action #hauntlywood #honey swamp #sometimes I really question the fonts chosen

[howlsofbloodhounds]

Haru got a letter from his Mom, it had some cookies in it that Haru later gave to Alex.

Haru gave Shane a Sweet Pea and a few days later Shane sent a letter that had Pepper Poppers in it that he took from the back of a JoJa Mart.

Done some more mining.

I got a my first cutscenes with Leah, Emily, and Sam. Haru told Leah to do an art show in the village.

I gave Willy a Sweet Pea for his birthday.

The moonlight jellies dance thing is coming up soon.

I got a quest from George to give him a Hot Pepper for his knee therapy. Got 10g i think?

Made a gate and a couple of fences around my garden.

Bought some Hops on a trellis.

I killed 10 slimes and I'm now apart of the adventure's guild.

I'm still working on Demetrius' quest to bring him a fresh melon for his research.

Went fishing multiple times. Only thing I got was a broken CD and soggy newspaper.

In other news, my Grandpa is playing Stardew Valley on the Xbox [I'm playing on mobile] and he really wants to steal Robin away from Demetrius. [He really wants to rob someone and push Demetrius off a cliff. He also got really excited when I told him he can steal Demetrius' daughter and stepson. He really hates Demetrius for some reason.]

#HowlsPlaysStardewValley #sdv alex #sdv demetrius #sdv robin #sdv maru #sdv sebastian #sdv shane #sdv leah #sdv emily #sdv willy #sdv sam #sdv george

[sexyenquirer]

Copper and Silver

Author: kiranatrix For: missmomentss Pairing/Characters: Beyond Birthday/L Lawliet Rating/warnings: M; mild smut Prompt: L/B mild smut Author’s notes: The prompt wasn’t very specific so I let my imagination wander. I didn’t want this to be the usual kind of L/B fic, so there’s no prison breakout or kidnapping or jam. This is a Magician AU that takes place in Paris in the late 1800s or early 1900s, where L is a famed illusionist and B is…an imposter. Or maybe it’s the reverse. ‘Copper and silver’ is the name of a magic trick, using coins.

—–

There had always been two types of magic in the world. One was quite real, but elusive, and more of a curse than a blessing on those who could channel it. The other was the magic of mankind– the sleight of hand or memory trick, the careful distraction and well-placed mirror. It was the business of the famed illusionist Lazarus, also (un)known as L Lawliet, that no one in his audience should ever know the difference. 

He’d been selling out his shows across Europe for nearly a decade, and from the Thames to the Danube, just the name of Lazarus invoked an aura of mystery and awe. He’d been invited to most of the major courts to amuse the nobility of the continent despite his own very humble birth. Not that anyone knew anything true about his origins; L’s backstory as the exiled bastard son of a Russian prince was his most carefully cultivated illusion. 

The vast majority of people who came to see him desperately wanted to believe in real magic to dull the edge of life’s mundane reality. This made them easy to fool with clever devices of his own invention. A lemon tree that seemed to grow from a seed before their eyes, sawing someone in half who was then put back together again unharmed, submerging himself in chains underwater only to escape at the last dramatic moment. Although each of his tricks did in fact have an explanation rooted in reality, competitors, skeptics, and scientists had all attempted to parse out the mechanisms to explain his illusions and all had left disappointed.  

L had not always believed in ‘real’ magic himself, but he’d never needed to. There’d never been any odd phenomenon he couldn’t eventually provide with a reasonable explanation. He considered himself a man of science and rationality, not someone who was willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of entertainment. He knew he was brilliant, and no one could be a better skeptic than he was of his own performances. Thus, his performances were inscrutable perfection start to end, each trick a thread for the audience to weave their own pretty blindfold with. 

But it took the eyes of a fake magician to know the real thing when he saw it, down a rainy street in Paris the afternoon before a show. He’d forgotten his umbrella, as usual, and had been darting from one sheltered overhang to another on his way back to his hotel when he saw a curious hand-painted board pointing down an oil lamp-lit alleyway. It was nearly as tall as he was, and upon it was was crudely scrawled:

    ~HAVE YOUR MISFORTUNES TOLD BY LAZARUS~

For one silver franc, the Incredible Lazarus will answer the following:

Your real and true name! (Great for orphans or just anyone who forgot!)

The day you will die! (Get your affairs in order!)

Whether anyone in a picture lives or is deceased, as well as their name! (Like deadbeat parents, runaway spouses, or people lost at sea!)

If you need a bath! (Free of charge!)

Guaranteed to be 100% accurate and true or twice your money back! (proof required)

Usually, L would roll his eyes at low-brow hucksters like this and be on his way, but this time was different. This time, someone had purloined his good name and was using it for cheap tricks! Anger and irritation bubbled up in him as he spied the queue to get into a door in the alley, but it was matched with a good dose of curiosity, too. Who in their right mind would so brazenly advertise these services when everyone knew the REAL Lazarus was in town and performing just down the street? The easy thing to do would be to announce at his own show later that this was just a fraud, an imitator, or simply ignore it altogether as the price of fame. 

No, L needed to see this for himself, confront the man. He walked towards the door, ignoring the line-up and grabbing a newspaper out someone’s hand to use as a makeshift umbrella. 

“Oi! I was reading that!” The man glared at L in surprise. 

“I’ll return it shortly.”

“Wha, sopping wet?!” The man pointed to the back of the queue. “And the line starts back–” He cut off abruptly to catch something L tossed his way, gaping down at a gold coin. He tested it with his teeth, piping down after that. 

When L got to the front of the line he announced, “Time for everyone to go home. This man is a fraud and not the true Lazarus. I am.” 

“We’ve been waiting an hour or more! Prove it!” The rest of the people chanted ‘Prove it! Prove it’ until L held up a finger and suddenly, the rain stopped. Amid their awed silence, he deftly folded the wet newspaper into an origami crane which he perched on his hand. He blew on it and it caught fire, the flame changing from white to blue as it floated away down the alley. The crowd parted to let it pass and then broke into an uproar of clapping and cheers as it exploded into a burst of sparks in the shape of an L. 

“How’d he do that?!”

“He MUST be the real Lazarus!” 

L slouched forward slightly in an approximation of a bow. What had seemed like magic to them was nothing more than noticing a break in the clouds and improvising, and a bit of phosphorus dust artfully sprinkled from his ring onto the wet paper. “Now, if you’ll all check your pockets, I believe you’ll find tickets to my show tonight. I invite you all as my guests.” It wasn’t really in his nature to give things away for free, or to be so polite, but he’d learned when being the showman Lazarus versus L Lawliet would get him his way the quickest.

The man who’d had his newspaper snatched hung back a moment as the others meandered away, smiling and excited. He thumbed at the closed door behind L, “Another coin and I’ll give that fraud a thrashin’ for ya.”

“No.” L turned and opened the door, stepping aside quickly as a woman in tears bustled past him. 

From further inside came the call, “Well, you asked!” followed by some soft cackling. “Next!”

L pressed a thumb to his bottom lip as he brushed aside a ratty tasseled curtain, his already large pupils widening to near blackness to adjust to the flickering candlelight. The darkness partially hid the ramshackle state of the room, and exotic-looking but cheap carpets were flung around to hide the rest. When he approached a table set in the middle of the room, L had to check that he wasn’t looking into a mirror. But no, his mirror image was seated and grinning like the cat that had caught the canary. 

“There’s not going to be anyone else.” L climbed into the opposite chair, perching in it as he was his habit when he wasn’t performing. “I sent them away.” He quickly scrutinized the man, looking for flaws in the disguise. They were approximately the same age, mid-20s, of similar built and features, although artful makeup and posture must be contributing to the effect. 

“Well, well, well…” Beyond Birthday gracefully moved into the same crouching position, mimicking each of L’s movements with precision but allowing his eyes to flick briefly above L’s head. “That was a very rude thing to do, don’t you think? I guess they all got soggy for nothing.”

“Stealing a person’s name and pretending to be them is what strikes me as rude.” L tilted his head, frowning when the imposter did the same. 

“A man’s gotta eat.” Beyond’s grin didn’t falter as he modulated his voice closer to L’s timbre and pitch. “And I wasn’t stealing it so much as…borrowing it. I suppose you can have it back now.” He had what he wanted– L’s presence and undivided attention at last. 

“I don’t appreciate it being stolen OR borrowed.” L squinted in the darkness, both unnerved and impressed by the exactness of this imitation. Fraud or not, this mysterious man had real skill in makeup and impersonation. “Who are you really?” 

“Why I’m Lazarus of course! Didn’t you read the sign?” Beyond laughed at the annoyed look on L’s face, finally breaking his mimicry and lounging back in his patched armchair with a sigh, one leg thrown over the side. He stared for a moment then said with a flourish, “I’m a fan.” He twirled his fingers and produced a silver franc, letting it flip over his knuckles like the flow of water. “A performer like yourself, although not quite so famous. I’ve wanted to meet you for some time.” He tossed the coin high into the air, but it didn’t come down again.

“And now that you have, will you kindly get lost?” Even as L said the words, he wasn’t sure he meant them. Something about this man was fascinating. And where did that damned coin go? He looked up at the ceiling and saw nothing, and the man’s hands were both empty. “Cheap parlor trick. Open your mouth.” He didn’t want to admit he hadn’t seen the sleight of hand, even if he knew the coin must be there. 

Beyond extended his tongue, revealing the coin sitting right on it. He spat it into a box containing a few more coins. “Very good. But of course I doubt I could stump the real Lazarus.” 

The way those words were spoken sounded like a challenge to L, and he’d been here before. Countless other illusionists and street magicians had challenged him and become laughingstocks. “No, I doubt very much that you could.” 

“Hmmm.” Beyond leaned forward, elbows on the table as he stared. “Would you give me the chance to try?” He kept his eyes on L but swiped his hand over the flames of the candelabra beside them, appearing to transfer one flame to his finger where it burned a moment before he blew it out. 

“You dipped your nail in oil. It didn’t burn long enough to blacken it.” L raised an eyebrow when Beyond chuckled and nodded. “I hope you have better tricks than that.” He sincerely did hope that, because this was already more amusing than he’d expected, although his deadpan expression didn’t show it. 

“Oh, I do. Such wonders as you’ve never seen before.” Beyond snapped his fingers, his nail aflame again, and he transferred the fire back to the dormant candle. “If I can’t stump you, I’ll ‘get lost’ and you’ll never hear from me again. Does that suit you? A little wager between magicians.” 

“A wager?” L smiled for the first time since coming into this dismal hovel. “Just so you know, no one’s ever been able to stump me. I’ve seen it all.” He worried his lip with his thumb, unconsciously leaning forward, betraying his interest and excitement at a game. “Debunked them all and taken their tricks, improved them for my own.”

“You can’t take my tricks.” Beyond knew that for a fact. He was unique among all humans, if he was even human, in his abilities. “But I’d love to see you try.” 

He traced his long fingernails over the battered table, watching L’s thumb brush back and forth across slightly parted lips and wishing to touch them. Yes, he was a ‘fan’ of Lazarus, but it was so much more than that. An obsession, a yearning to be Lazarus. It was so unfair that he, someone with real supernatural powers, should always be in the shadow of just a clever illusionist. Beyond had been L’s actual shadow for years, never making himself known as he followed in the wake of show after show. Trying to make enough money for cheap flophouses and tickets for every performance, hiding in the back of the balcony but watching with eyes where distance didn’t matter. And when there hadn’t been money, he’d stolen. When people had tried to hurt or rob him, he’d killed. Beyond had given everything for this one moment. 

“You seem quite confident. In that case, what do you get if you manage to stump me?” L had zero expectations that anything like that could ever happen, but he wanted to be aware of the game’s rules.

Beyond pulled a deck of cards from his jacket and shuffled them in one hand, focusing on keeping his breathing slow and even as he held L’s gaze. Softly, “To be your apprentice.” 

“My apprentice?” L laughed, letting his hands rest on top of his crouching knees. “Everyone knows I take no apprentices. I have no desire to train amateurs or tell my secrets.” 

Beyond purred, “But do you desire to hear them? I can tell you secrets even you don’t know about yourself. Or ones you’ve desperately kept hidden from others.”

L was past being intrigued now, he was hooked. It didn’t help that the man’s languorous, cat-like body language was so very seductive, his gaze so intense. It was rare for L to find anyone with as much self-confidence as he had, and this man had a natural bravado that L had to work for on stage. In fact, the longer L looked, the more differences he noticed between them. The soft swell of muscles hidden beneath clothing slightly too large, hair of a silkier texture, eyes that were a pale blue instead of his own grey. He swallowed when his scrutiny was rewarded with a smirk. “I agree to your wager. But first, tell me your name.” 

Beyond wet his lips and whispered, “No. But I’ll tell you yours.” He glanced down at the coin box seriously. “Pay the fee.”

L stared unblinking, unbelieving, but pulled out the same trick ‘gold’ coin he’d given the man in the street and taken back furtively. 

When L tried to put it in the box, Beyond covered it with his hand. “No copper. The real thing.”

L’s eyes narrowed and he pulled his hand back, pocketing the trick coin and reluctantly flipping a real silver one into the box with a soft clink. He sighed, “So?” 

Beyond smiled looked above L’s head once more, not that he hadn’t read these words a thousand times already. “L Lawliet. Although the pronunciation eludes me. Do you say it in the French way, mon cher?” He smiled and sounded it out a few ways, giving up with a little shrug.

L felt like his heart had stopped beating from the shock of what he’d heard. His mouth was agape, fingers digging into the fabric of his pants. “How….” Absolutely no one knew his real name. He’d spent a small fortune to find it out himself, buried at the bottom of the rubble of the London workhouse for orphans he’d grown up in. His birth certificate, locked in a well-hidden safe at his house in Surrey, was the only document in existence with that name printed. That safe hadn’t been opened in 10 years.

“Ah! Are you stumped then?” Beyond eyed him greedily, breath coming quicker. He didn’t even need to declare he was right. He’d never been wrong, even when people tried to insist he was. The truth was always written on their faces. 

“No! You…you must have hired a private investigator.” L’s brow knitted, because that didn’t make sense and he knew it. “Someone in London told you. ”

“Does it look like I have the funds to hire an investigator, Mr. Lawliet?” Beyond gestured around at the bleak surroundings. “But if you remain unconvinced….show me a picture of someone. I’ll tell you their name as well, and if they live.” Telling L the day he would die was something else he could do, but what a morbid way to start a partnership. Plus, L had plenty of life left and no reason to believe him. Inclining his head to the box, “Pay the fee.”

L let out a shaky breath and reached into his coat to produce a cheap locket. His mother had given it to him at the workhouse before she’d died of pneumonia, and it contained pictures of his parents. He pried it open and laid it on the table, flipping another silver coin into the box. “Tell me about them.”

Beyond pulled the locket across the table and stared at the pictures of the man and woman inside. These were no Russian nobles, no princes. They were plain, simply-dressed folk who looked older than their probable years and had no death dates above their heads. “Martha Briggs, maiden name. Henry Lawliet. Both deceased.” He lifted his eyes to L’s as he slid the locket back. “Sorry if that wasn’t what you wanted to hear.” His fingers briefly brushed L’s and lingered before pulling away. “Your parents.”

“Yes.” L picked up the locket in pinched fingers and carefully put it back in his jacket. He’d never known his mother’s maiden name but all the rest was correct, although he had no idea how. He went quiet as he considered what to do. It was a first, being unable to discern the trick, and all the possible scenarios that cycled through his mind were dismissed just as fast. Only one actual explanation remained but he was loathe to say it. How could it be that? 

“Have I won then, Mr. Lawliet?” Beyond wasn’t sneering or gloating, but soft and sincere. He knew that all L had to do was refuse to keep his promise and all of this, everything he’d done to be in this room, would have been for nothing. 

A long silence passed between them as they stared at one another across the table. “You have real magic.” L couldn’t keep the puzzlement off his face. He’d spent his whole life creating the illusion of magic in opulent ballrooms and the parlors of royalty, and had he finally found it buried in a rat hole? It was ironic and tragic that no one could tell the difference but him, but Lazarus. Who was the real fraud?

Beyond’s face crumpled, “Is that your answer then? Real magic?” No no no! This wasn’t how it was supposed to go! He’d never believed that a skeptic like L, who knew so many tricks and manmade artifices, would choose the most improbable answer. Unfortunately, it was also correct. 

“Yes. That is my answer.” 

Beyond made an angry, frustrated sound and leaped up from his chair but stopped in his tracks, floundering. He wanted to run but where would he go? The majority of his adolescence and adulthood had been focused on L, following L, trying to get close to L and failing. Now that he finally had his chance, he’d failed. He turned away and clutched his hair, whispering, “Correct. You win. I’ll leave Paris tonight and you’ll never hear from me again.” 

L hummed to himself, uncurling from his crouch and slowly stepped closer to the distraught man. “Are you joking?” He touched the man’s shoulder, gently turning him around so they faced each other. “Do you think I’d walk away from real magic? You’re a unicorn.” L smiled and brushed the man’s cheek, fingers trailing along his jaw. He’d never touched anything magical before and it thrilled him. “A unicorn that had to pretend to be a horse pretending to be a unicorn. But I can see it.”  

The black kohl around Beyond’s eyes used to approximate L’s eyebags was smeared and running down his face, his blue eyes brighter for his tears. He gazed back at L in amazement, finally sniffling and giving him a little smile. “So does that make you a horse?” He leaned into L’s touch, eyes lidding and not entirely sure he wasn’t hallucinating now. “Or maybe just an ass.” Beyond’s eyes flew open as he realized what he’d said, but L was just laughing and nodding. “S-sorry, my mouth can run away with me and—”

“I’ve been called worse.” L’s fingertips traced along the man’s mouth, his heart hammering for a different reason. He wanted to know this magic, this man, and felt an electricity between them that only two of a kind could. “But I can’t call you ‘unicorn.’ What’s your name?” 

“Beyond.” He whispered it reverently, closing his eyes and taking the chance to kiss L’s fingers at his lips. What did he have to lose now? His ‘trick’ was exposed. “Beyond Birthday. It’s a stupid name.” 

L’s hand threaded into Beyond’s hair and the noise he was rewarded with made him shiver, made his pants uncomfortably tight. Was this feeling some kind of magic too? He’d never felt such a powerful attraction. “It’s a name that would look perfect next to mine on a poster.” Lazarus and Beyond….it had a certain ring to it. But you shouldn’t hide yourself under all this makeup.” He tentatively pressed closer, bending to kiss Beyond’s neck which tilted for him instinctively. “Hmm, we could work that into some good tricks, couldn’t we?” He pressed his hips against Beyond, smiling as he felt the man’s body jerk at the realization, the feeling. “Like swapping out coins, but…us.”

Beyond inhaled audibly, wrapping his arms around L’s body as he melted into this perfect dream. His idol, his everything, wanted him too? Accepted him? “But…” He quickly shrugged off his jacket when he felt L’s fingers start to unbutton his shirt. “…you said you don’t take apprentices.” He mentally cursed himself for not just shutting up. Why couldn’t he just enjoy this and not ruin everything?

L raised his head, “True, I don’t.” Before the stricken look on Beyond’s face could sink in, he added, “But I’d take a partner.” The voracious kiss that followed made L stumble back against the table edge with a grin, hidden pockets spilling their contents as their clothes were hastily pulled away. A trick wand clattered to the floor and bloomed into a rose, a crystal box of fireflies sprung open and let its luminescent prisoners flit about the room blinking.

“You have no idea how long I’ve waited for you.” Beyond kissed him deeply again, lifting L onto the table. His hands caressed L’s body like he was afraid the man might break open too, releasing doubts and regrets, second thoughts. “Years I’ve waited to talk to you.” Beyond made magic for others, magic never happened for him. But those doubts didn’t come even when L did open for him, parting his legs and wrapping them around his waist.

L laid back against the table to gaze up at Beyond, amazed that he’d ever thought they looked alike now that they were naked and the makeup had been largely kissed and rubbed away. “I’ve waited all my life for magic.” He smiled and pulled Beyond closer, finally really understanding what his audience had been paying to see. It wasn’t just entertainment or amusement or distraction from their lives. It was hope that even if what was in front of them was only a horse, there might be a unicorn out there somewhere. “The real thing.”

#Fic #submission #kiranatrix #missmomentss #death note #L Lawliet #Beyond Birthday #ship: LxB #rating: m #20192020

[adelaiderhosynweasley]

The Artistic, uh... Process.

“Sunny, don’t you fucking dare!” Addie hollered across the classroom, one hand raised with a finger pointed at her friend who was currently holding up a spray paint can and a match. The blonde jumped, eyes going wide at the yell, dropping the match on the floor where it ignited several pieces of newspaper the group had laid out upon the floor. Adelaide rushed over, dropping her paint brush and stomping at the flames while Willow ran to join them, already spewing water from her wand. They gathered up the charred bits of soggy paper and dumped them into the waste bin among others that had already been scorched. Addie snatched the spray can from Sunny before bopping her over the head with a rolled up thing of newspaper. 

“You promised, hand them over.” Willow held out her hand as Sunny hung her head, digging into her pocket and pulling out the box of matches she had in there. Willow didn’t drop her hand, just gave her fingers another bend and the blonde sighed, tugging out several more boxes to add to the stack. Willow dropped them on a desk and then moved, her hands shifting up Sunny’s sides, frisking her from top to bottom. She shoved one hand right on down the other girl’s bra, extracting yet another box, and then, the last one from the inside of one of Sunny’s socks. “You can have them back when we’re through.”

The Ravenclaw sulked, flopping into a chair with a sigh, muttering about how they were buzz kills. Adelaide tossed a paint brush at her and moved back to her station, joining with Gulliver and Margret-Maeve to work on painting one of their pieces of scenery. Willow, as it turned out, was quite good at art, so she’d done the basics and some scale models on paper for them to follow and now it was all about getting the background layers onto the boards before the dark-haired Hufflepuff would go over them with her own brush to do the details later. Addie wasn’t that great at painting, having not gotten any of her mother’s talent for it, so she stuck to the basics of filling in the spaces towards the top of the board while her shorter club members did the middle and bottom.

The club was going well actually. Professor Mendes had secured them a nice large classroom for rehearsals and yet another next door for their storage of costumes, scenery, and props. Music flowed in from the door that led into the adjoining room. Zander was currently working on a dance number with some of the cast, using Adelaide’s phone hooked up to a speaker for the time being while she helped work on their backdrops. They had realized they were probably going to need more than just a piano for most of the bits and had also held auditions for students who knew how to play instruments after ransacking the music room again. Those had gone as well as could be expected, but they’d gotten some promising people as well. Adelaide was in charge of that bit and once the dance lessons were over, she was to be leading a rehearsal for their small band. They had all fallen quickly into their roles, using their own individual talents. Adelaide did the music, Zander the dancing, Willow the scenery, Margret-Maeve always had plenty of snacks for everyone, and Sunny was in charge of the special effects. Gulliver though, as it turned out, had taken on a more director-esque role, making sure everyone was where they needed to be, carefully scheduling rehearsals, going over the scripts, and taking care of most of the other club related paperwork. He kept everything running as smoothly as possible, his passion overflowing.

“Right, I think I’ve got this bit-oh! Look out!” Adelaide yelped from the ladder she had climbed up to reach the very top of the current piece she was working on. The bowl of paint she’d been dipping into fell from it, clattering downwards and spattering green all over both M&M and Gulliver. “Shit, fuck… sorry.”

[maggotmouth]

        hi i’m nora ( 23. gmt. she/her ) and it turns out i really miss playing bridget ! i wasn’t feeling frida bt i wanted to explore som of her backstory more so ive kind of fused bits of her into bridget..... sue me.... for those of u who didn’t know her before i dropped her, bridget grew up in a trailer park in texas, she’s an angsty socialist leftie who gets fucked at the pub and goes off on one about capitalism.  film nerd. got in on a partially subsidised scholarship and works in a bar and a fast food place to pay for her accomodation. here’s a pinboard !! everythin else is below this cut, like this post n i’ll (probably forget to) smash that im button for plots x

application template.

( cis-female ) haven’t seen BRIDGET MATUSIAK around in a while. the MARGARET QUALLEY lookalike has been known to be GARRULOUS & CANDID, but SHE can also be FICKLE & ERRATIC. The 21 year old is a JUNIOR majoring in FILM. I believe they’re living in AUDAX but I popped by earlier and no one answered the door.

aesthetics.

thumb holes poked through the cuffs of your sleeves, roller blades, grazed knees, not eating your greens, smiling with a mouthful of blood, sleeping in a cherry lip balm and scrunchies to keep the wild locks from your eyes. piercing your own ears with a safety pin when your dad wouldn’t take you.

connection to tatiana & did they choose her name during the watershed?

knew each other from the cheer team in bridgets freshman year and tatiana’s sophomore year. had a competitive friendship to start with but then they got into a discussion about politics at a party one night, and maybe hooked up a few times after tatiana had jst broken up w someone. they were sort of seeing each other very casually for a bit, but…. they came from vastly different circles n it didn’t really work. they were in a bad partch at the time of the reaping so to speak, and bridget picked her name For A Giggle but now regrets it big time obviously

tw drugs, teen pregnancy

BACKSTORY TIME.. her mother was from the wrong side of the tracks, was chucked out of home pretty young after a teenage pregnancy, wanted 2 go to art school and started working as an erotic dancer to pay for college but then jst…. ended up staying there. one of those girls u see in the documentaries who had Big Plans but ultimately never got to pursue them n jst got…. sucked in by the money 

her mom n dad met in high school at a parents evening. alice was fourteen, toby was thirty-one. bridget’s mom alice was a roman catholic – uneducated in matters of safe sex, mother mary around her neck, bras hanging over wooden crucifixes – and willing to give it to the first boy who seemed interested enough, gift-wrapped or not. toby was the father to a girl down the road who alice knew nothing of besides her name and the few encounters in the corridors facing a stoney stare that screamed homewrecker. it only happened once, but once was enough. alice was out of the house as soon as her parents knew a child was growing in her womb.

bridget n her mum alice were more like sisters growing up, probably because of the closeness in age. alice should’ve known that you couldn’t have a thirteen-year-old-daughter at 27 without everyone knowing you’d been one of those girls who gave it away fast as a hot potato, and maybe bridget should have known that she’d inherit more than her mother’s wide eyes, that things have a way of circling back to us --- that at fourteen she too would lose it on the floor of a swimming pool changing room, soggy back, polka-dot nylon of a swimsuit pulled down to her ankles.

she grew up in a trailer park just outside of orlando resort, but she was raised in dressing rooms surrounded by sparkly costumes and nipple pasties and leotards and the like. as a kid she’d try to trot about in her moms heels n yearned for the day she’d be able to be on stage. 

if you’ve seen the florida project its a bit like tht.... just kids left to do their own shit.... mother’s a bit all over the place... made money by stealing wristbands off orlando theme park visitors, and bridget was p much raised by the community, to be honest. most of her youth was spent scurrying about half naked in cowboy boots and glasses too big for her face. a smol feral child

gilly (referred to as junior) was born four years after bridget, the son of a carpenter and sculpture artist named gilbert “gilly” senior, her moms latest squeeze. whenever she wasn’t at school bridget would be in gilly’s workshop doin her homework surrounded by parts of furniture or hanging out with the kids who were visiting disneyland but couldn’t afford the hotels on the resort

like her mother, bridget fell pregnant barely out of her gingham print dresses, hair in two plaits down her back, teddies still lining her bed. unlike her mum, she was not box-shipped out to a home for fallen women but rather booked into a clinic, given a pill, just like taking your vitamins.

her mother flaked out when bridget was around fifteen and junior was eleven. they were in the system for a while, before gilly was finally granted custody as legal guardian. the three of them moved to marfa, texas so that gilly could run classes in sculpture and woodworking at the art institute. they’re not sure where their mother went. some say she rededicated herself as a virgin and joined the convent in penance for her sins. some say she works in a las vegas strip club and sells pills to minors. bridget likes to believe that she’s an actress, her name in newspapers and her face in a star-spangled dressing mirror.

bridget used to do sponsored silences and hunger strikes for kids in developing countries. was that kid in school who was always raising money something. i mean its kinda cute but also she just wanted the acclaim and attention so…. and most of the time it didn’t even make it to the disadvantaged kids she was raising it for cos her mom needed rent money or to buy the kids new shoes n they could barely afford much themselves

she’s a strident feminist, an activist for human rights and animal rights, a vocal vegetarian and an all-round soapbox sadie. catch her in the quad shouting about human rights through a megaphone. will most definitely have quizzed your character on institutionalised racism whilst inhaling nos at a party and snacking on a big bowl of cheesy wotsits

aesthetic: big military or leather jackets over tiny little sundresses. always in docs or creepers and a beret with an anarchist symbol painted on it. wears a long green trench coat covered in badges for alt punk rock bands or a red denim jacket that she hacked into a crop jacket with a pair of kitchen scissors. cuffed jeans, thrifted or stolen. white converse, more grey tbh through years of wear. crop tops and plaid shirts tied round her waist. smudged mascara. glitter smeared over cheekbones from the previous night. cigarette smoke shrouding you like a veil, the red string of a thong peaking out purposely from jeans, piercing your own ears with a safety pin when your dad wouldn’t take you, kate moss posters lining the walls of a teenage bedroom, thumb holes poked through the cuffs of your sleeves, feet pounding the earth until your soles bleed crimson.

an aspiring screenwriter. she has a very image-based view of memory and experience. always doing a screenplay or shooting film. her style has a lot of catholic iconography (think virgin suicides style or baz luhrmann’s romeo + juliet if it was done on a super 8 camera) bcos catholicism is one of the few things she remembers about her mother. she’s never actually tried to find her mum / find out about her, jst…. occasionally channels that energy into her work.

struggles with self-image and the need to be Loved By All a lot. uses sex as an affirmation of her worth and also kinda manic-depressive (though not officially diagnosed) bcos her upbringing was a bit unstable, she was a looked after child for a while when the adoption papers were still going through… struggles a lot with feeling unwanted, especially since her grandparents refuse to acknowledge her existence cos she was born outside of marriage….. so she craves feeling wanted,, like despite being a real women’s rights activist and hating objectification, at the same time to bridge there’s nothing better than someone sizing you up with hunger in their eyes

she’s queer, but i guess she favours women, and is incredibly vocal in her support of the lgbt+ movement. often at rallies. has done a face-sitting protest. really is that bitch

there’s a degree of anger for anger’s sake in bridget. she likes passionate, angry music – particularly garage rock, punk and riot grrrl. she loves the slits and skinny girl diet. viv albertine inspired her to take up bass guitar.

back at lockwood she was working two jobs to pay for uni !! at the bowling alley polishing the shoes and fixing the bowling lanes, and also as a burger flipper at mcdonalds. in amsterdam she’s managed to secure a part-time bar job at one of the hendrix university bars

massive film buff. is majoring in film at uni also spends a lot of time at the movie theatre n probably has like a season ticket. is one of those pretentious film nerds who’re like “what do u think of goddard’s work?” but also just really into shitty horror movies

she spends her evenings in downtown bars willing away her boredom, trying to find something that’ll jerk her out of apathetic lethargy. she toys with the idea of becoming a stripper — it certainly pays better than flipping burgers — but she lacks the energy to dance for several hours a night.

she loves b movies and slasher flicks. at parties, she’ll occasionally try to make a horror of her own, on a super 8 camera in someone’s basement, very paranormal activity, but she’ll inevitably get bored, or too drunk and give up, like she does with most things in her life. she lacks drive and motivation. she’s bright but there’s no hunger in her.

she’s fickle and enigmatic. one moment she could be your best friend, the next, she’ll behave like a total stranger. bridget’s unpredictable because she’s still unsure of her own identity, frequently flitting between different characters, like snake skins, before she grows bored of being bubbly and eager and becomes spiteful again. her core personality traits are probably forthright, impulsive, restless, thrill-seeking, selfish, gregarious, easily bored, childish.

SOME ?MILDLY AMUSING? FACTS

writes shitty poems on the back of napkins and quotes dead philosophers she’s never read. romanticises herself a lot. like will be standing there in a ripped t-shirt and her undies smoking a cig like “hmmm… i bet someone is falling in love with me right now”

is vegetarian for environmental reasons but snorts coke at parties like that isn’t shit for the environment ?? sis, it don’t add up

loves dirt. ate a worm once because someone dared her too. shamelessly disgusting.

she’s slightly obsessed with true crime, up late watching documentaries on the manson family murders.

favourite drink is cherry coke

a lot of her time is spent in the record store, plugged into a set of headphones, head-banging in the corner to a scratched record. music, for birdie, is a form of escapism. that and dropping acid in parking lots lmao.

sells nudes on twitter. whenever she gets low on cash she contacts one of the seedy old men who used to visit her mom’s club to venmo her $500 in return for pictures

that girl who’s always harping on about body positivity on instagram while wearing cute underwear and looking absolutely bomb

really good at rodeo bull riding. the club in marfa had one so as a youth she got really good at it bcos she was constantly tryin to outdo her friends on who could stay on for the longest. a video of her staying on one for like 4 minutes after downing several jager bombs went viral once.

micro-doses acid for mild depression bcos she didn’t believe in “that CBT bullshit”, thought that therapists, like her, were jst con artists so always a bit spaced out

volunteers at one of the local galleries but mostly just rants to old white dutch men about how cis white men have dominated art for years :/ is one of those SJW-types , like.... have a day off, jameela jamil......

has a pet rat called popeye

takes photographs of dead animals to use in her art and often posts them side-by-side with stills of women in porn to show the shelf-life of female sex workers in a patriarchal-dominated industry or some bullshit idk

big into spoken word poetry, even if its shit. likes savage depictions of femininity

wrote a thesis on art as an act of masturbation that got published

this bitch HATES capitalism and LOVES karl marx

time isn’t real. nothing exists. the self is a social construct. finger guns.

an awful person, really

plots i want that i mostly stole from the tags

muse a tries to stand up for muse b in a bar but unfortunately cannot fight for shit.

muse a (prob bridget cos works in a bar) works somewhere that’s open late and muse b comes in to take shelter from the storm.

‘I got in my car and you were sleeping in the backseat who the hell are you and how did you get into my car’ 

 umm a wlw plot isnpired by san junipero ! esp this post. could have been a former fling that ended sourly !! cos i dont like ship forcing but still?? give me wlw stuff

 “i just decked you in the face because i’m drunk and you were pissing me off but ow my hand really fucking hurts i think i might have broke it and oh look your nose is bleeding and now we’re both sitting awkwardly in the hospital while i glare at you from across the room. but wait are you giving me sex eyes?? stop that i’m supposed to mad at you??”

“platonically sharing a bed until i wake up and you’re curled round me and my nose is buried in your hair so i’ll pretend to stay asleep to keep this for a little while longer” plots

 “highkey want a ‘someone wrote your phone number on the wall of a bathroom in my dorm with ‘call for a good time’ and i just texted you to let you know that i scribbled it out and oh wait you’re actually funny and easy to talk to and now we’re talking every day and i might have a tiny little crush on you even tho  i don’t even know your name’ plot”

 goddamn its another shippy wlw plot apparently that’s all my tag is but this post

“known for being rebels without cause, MUSE A and MUSE B are synonymous to their fast cars, nights out beneath the stars, empty bottles of alcohol, and loud music. they meet by chance one night and immediately click, and embark on a careless adventure after it despite not knowing each other. it’s them against the world: after all, what could go wrong ?”

any of these sad sour unrequited love plots

‘we take the same elevator every day and due to a misunderstanding I assumed you didn’t speak english and I’ve been talking to my friend about how hot you are for three weeks and apparently my friend has known from the start but you agreed not to tell me bc you both think its hilarious what the fuck’ au

‘I accidentally dropped you while you were crowd surfing and you broke your ankle and now I feel responsible so I’m carrying you out of the moshpit’ au

walked in on my roommate and you screwing except i know you from class and i freaked out a little

i was hustling you in pool for money but you were hustling me for free drinks so who’s the real winner here?

bridgot goes to strip clubs n peep shows like every day, cos she’s writing about the history of pornographic film n its basically research for her, so if ur characters would be into strip clubs they might see her there

i feel like she’d be on student council if they had one of those. shes that kind of bitch, turning up like elle woods with a big feather pen or a light-up heart marker, slamming down some truths before upping and leaving to go for her 11am chai latte break

som1 who attended the art institute in marfa for a summer n maybe knew her when she was a bit younger ??? idk

drama. angst. horror. also nice bike rides in amsterdam please

feel free to im me if u wanna plot, or, like this post and i’ll hit u with a message!

#i have literally just slapped bridget n frida in a blender. #sorry if u had plots with frida. pls feel free 2 discuss w me n we could just do them w one of my other characters instead if it fits. #xxxx plot with me my goblin children xxx #water:intro