#strange how writing conventions change i guess

[konstantya]

Resisting the urge to read more Cornell Woolrich (a bad idea) or else start writing another fic for “The Love Pawn” (a slightly less bad idea) by catching up on pulp romance stories?

#personal #cornell woolrich #the love pawn #i actually started to read another woolrich short story but then made myself stop #but they're so tempting! 😭 #anyway i also started reading this old-school romance novel (''bandit's brazen kiss'' by kay mcmahon) #and it's...okay? #basically i love the premise/plot but the style is very purple and overwritten which is making it slow-going for me #also the author head-hops a LOT #which is frustrating but also something that just seemed to be more acceptable back then? #like this book is from 1990 and i know it isn't the only one that did it #strange how writing conventions change i guess #romance novels #fic rambles #?

[gamesbyalbie]

The Cursed Journey

PART 3: DEMIGHOST

SIX YEARS AGO

"Ody?"

I looked up from my phone. An astoundingly handsome stranger was standing there, smiling at me.

"Uh, yes?"

"Hey." He waved cheekily. "It's Min-joon." Holy shit, I thought. That's Min-joon? "You know," he continued. "Bidisaster."

"No, y—yeah." I stuttered. "Of course it's you. Wow. Hi!"

He took the seat next to mine. "How are you?"

"Good. Tired, but good. You?"

Min-joon took a deep breath, exhaling like someone who'd been holding their breath for several weeks. "I'm great!" He replied, somewhat unconvincingly. "Also tired, but no major complaints." 

There was a moment of silence as we took each other in, but—even back then—it didn't feel awkward. I don't know exactly what he was thinking, but my brain was struggling to connect this physical body to the virtual friend I knew so well. "Feels kind of wild, finally putting a face to the text."

"Yeah," he brushed his hair back out of his face. "Hopefully good though. It looked like I startled you for a second there."

"Oh, no. Not at all."

"What was this then?" He imitated my stunned face.

"That... that was just—"

The bartender slid down, interrupting our conversation and giving me a moment to think. "Evening, sir. Anything I can get for you?"

"Tonic with lime for now, please."

"Right away."

"Thanks." Min-joon turned back to me. "Sorry. You were saying?"

"This might sound strange and I'm hoping it's not too weird to say, but..." I paused, laughing awkwardly. A smile spread across Min-joon's face. "I just thought you'd look different."

"Really? How? My profile picture is a picture of me."

"Yeah, but I didn't think that was actually a pic of you."

"What do you mean?" He laughed lightly.

"Lots of people online use pics of other people for their profiles. I thought yours was a pic of some idol or something."

"So, I look like an idol?" He smirked. "Is that what you're saying?"

"I didn't say those words exactly." I blushed. "You know how you look."

"Oh. Do I?" He raised an eyebrow and chuckled. "Well, you don't look like a ghost wearing clown makeup."

"No, that's how I normally look but I changed before coming here. Thought this would be more appropriate."

"Shame," he snapped and frowned playfully. "I was really hoping to see you in your natural state." I chuckled. "But seriously, you didn't know what I looked like?" I shook my head and took a sip of my drink. "Wow. Well, I hope this isn't a retroactive breach of trust, but I looked you up the moment you gave me your full name. Hope that's okay."

"It is. I don't mind at all." I answered honestly. "I tried to look you up too, but I couldn't find anything."

"Oof. I guess you are easier to find, Mx. Big Time Book Reviewer." I rolled my eyes at that. "Speaking of which, how's the convention treating you?"

There's a good chance that was the last thing in the world I wanted to talk about. "You know it's... fine."

"Just fine?"

"Yeah, just fine. It's a little—I don't know." I shrugged. "Disheartening?" All day I'd talk to people living the life I dreamed of—writers who would go on and on about how much they loved what they did, how being an author was the most satisfying job they could imagine. Meanwhile, I was stuck interviewing them, bored out of my fucking mind. 

I tossed my hair behind my shoulder—it was a lot longer then—and started massaging my temples. "The longer I write for Biblio, the more I regret majoring in journalism. Like, I cannot do this for the rest of my life."

"You won't." Min-joon looked at me sympathetically. "I have faith in you."

"Thanks. Anyways." I was eager to change the subject. "How's your internship going?"

"Mmh." He made a face that immediately screamed 'Not well.'

"That bad?" I asked.

"Well, it's like what you said. The longer I write for Jackson, the more I realize I need to write for myself. The combination of having someone else take credit for my work and being forced to write things I don't give a shit about is... I don't know."

"Soul crushing?"

"Yeah. Soul crushing. That's a good way to put it." 

"So, life's going great for both of us." We both chuckled. "We're really doing well for ourselves."

"Yeah," he sighed. "Let's not talk about our wildly successful professional lives, shall we?"

"Sounds great to me."

The bartender brought back Min-joon's drink. "You know," he started. "I've been really curious about something."

"And what's that?"

"Why 'demighost'? Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting username, but what's the significance behind it?"

"Well, 'demisexualghost' was already taken so…" He snorted, causing a wide grin to bloom across my face. "Seriously though, I think it came from 'demigod' originally. I'm a big fan of mythology—"

"No. Really?" Min-joon gasped sarcastically. "I had no idea."

"Yeah, shocker. I keep that special interest pretty close to the chest. But anyways, I just replaced 'god' with 'ghost' and 'demighost' was born. As a Specter, I've always felt a kinship with the dead—"

"As you should."

"—so, it just made sense." I sighed and took a deep sip of my drink. "Plus, to be honest and a little morbid, I probably felt half-dead at the time." My hand spun in a tight circle, creating a small whirlpool in my glass. "I was in a really bad place back then."

"Hmm." Min-joon looked down, staring deep into his own glass as he took in my words. Suddenly, his gaze met mine. "I understand."

I shouldn't have been, but I was surprised at how sincere he seemed. 

Anyone can say those words (and they often do), but it's rare for people to genuinely mean it—or for their words to feel meaningful.

The way Min-joon said it, the tone of his voice and the intensity in his eyes, I immediately understood what he meant. He knew how I felt because he felt that way himself. Not once, but many times. I just wouldn't have guessed it. Everything he wrote was so damn cozy and optimistic.

"But," Min-joon tilted his head to the side. His eyes were blazing with pride and I knew that whatever he was about to say, he was happy with it. "Would you say that you're half-dead or half-alive?"

"Ooh," I shifted in my seat. My legs needed to move so bad they were starting to hurt. "Like a reskinned glass half-empty, half-full situation. I like it." Min-joon bowed his head slightly. I nodded several times, thinking. "Are you asking about how I felt back then or how I feel now?"

"Good question." Min-joon leaned in, like he was inspecting my face. At the time, my best guess was that the vodka was kicking in—I wasn't sure why else he would do that. Then I remembered he wasn't drinking. "I care about your past," he murmured. "I really do. But I'm more curious about how you feel now—right here, in this moment."

"Well..." My body felt electric. "Right now, I'm half-alive." Heat was building in my limbs and face, dancing across my skin like the flames of a candle. "That's the better one, right?" I chuckled. "They're both pretty grim. It's hard to tell."

Min-joon smiled. "The way I see it, if you picked half-alive because you think it's better, that's all I need to know. And I'm very glad that's how you feel."

I looked down briefly. His gaze was unraveling me like a cheap sweater. "Are you half-alive too?"

"No." Min-joon bit his lip and shook his head. "I'm fully alive right now."

"Cool." I nodded. "Very cool." I cleared my throat then finished my drink. What else was I supposed to say to that? There were barely any thoughts in my head—a stark change from the frantic cacophony I was normally drowning in. All I could think about was how unfairly attractive he was. Finally, I asked. "Why did you go with 'bidisaster'?"

"That should be self-evident." We both laughed.

We spent the next four hours talking about everything and nothing. At the end of the night, when the hotel bar was closing, we headed to the elevator together. We were silent the whole ride. I think both of us were dreading the inevitable goodbye. It was all we could think about, but maybe if we didn't acknowledge it, it wouldn't happen.

Min-joon's room was on floor 32. The bell dinged. "Well, this is me." He started to leave then turned around, holding the doors open with both hands. "We... we should do this again sometime. Soon, preferably."

"Agreed. Wholeheartedly."

"Great." He grinned. "Then, uh... I'll see you soon, Ody."

"I can't wait."

End of Part 3 of ? • LAST PART • NEXT PART

More Cursed Journey • More by Albie • Image Source

The amazing music video that inspired this:

#writing #fiction #short fiction #draft #cw alcohol #alcohol mention #cursed journey #dpr ian #don't go insane #albie writes #part 3

[bonefall]

do you have renames for all of the duplicate names? at least, the ones that would be relevant, like the two ashfurs. and two frecklewishes, i guess… is -wish still a valid suffix in your rewrite? do you have any “invalid” prefix/suffixes or naming rules other than nixing duplicate names?

Do you have renames for everyone yet?

I update them as they pop up! At one point I was going to try and rename all conflicts in one fell swoop, but then I realized it wasn't fun to do it that way. It's a lot more fun to wait for the conflict to come along, and give individual attention to that particular name as I rework their suffix.

For example, Echosnout trained two cats- Cloudberry and Milkfur, both cats with naming conflicts. I had a eureka moment and decided it would be really cute to fix both by having Echosnout give BOTH of her apprentices the -belly suffix! Cloudbelly and Milkbelly!

Besides, with how I rework CotC, some stories are getting unrecognizably redone. There's no point in renaming Darkstar (CotC) because Darkstar (MV) is getting their story anyway! I just combined them into the same person.

Here's my list so far! It also has all of my rules for renamings. I don't rename unless one of these criteria pops up.

Valid and Invalid Names

-Wish is still absolutely valid. I would have come up with really elaborate naming conventions, but I am trying to stick close to canon.

Besides, I really like the cute suffixes like -wish and -frost and -bright! I did once share some of the renamings I WOULD do, though, when my buddy @nightly-ruse asked the question a while back.

The biggest changes I'd make would actually be eliminating adverb names. I just don't like them for some reason? So Runningnose would become Blotchface, Spottedleaf would be Blightleaf. I initially was going to call Runningwind 'Stripebreeze' but the more I thought about it, I would totally call him Blusterbreeze or Galewind.

But that aside? I want to strange Olivenose specifically and Olivenose alone.

WHERE THE HELL IS THERE AN OLIVE TREE IN ENGLISH WILDERNESS??? IN NORTHERN ENGLISH WILDERNESS, NO LESS??? This is the MISERABLE land mass that Roman soldiers used to DESPERATELY write home about and dread being stationed in because there was NO OLIVE OIL because THE CLIMATE HATES OLIVES im CRYING

Maybe it's just a color, like copper and gold?? But if it's just a color, why the suffix -nose? Is JUST her nose a gross green olive color?? This is a TORTOISESHELL CAT.

I hate her. I hate her so much. Her name is driving me bananas. I even considered writing lore JUST to justify her stupid name, making her an ex-kittypet, or making a freakish unique olive tree growing by twolegplace, or importing Siberian olives which I have NO evidence of being naturalized in England, it bothers me THAT badly

What is your DEAL, Olivenose??

#Olivenose #Bonefall Rewrite

[blockgamepirate]

I've been thinking about how much I enjoy the way roleplay allows stories to live and grow as they're being told, how it creates such unique narratives that nobody would probably have come up with just writing a conventional story

To some extent this is also something that happens with serialised storytelling, like with many TV shows and audio dramas and comics and even serialised novels, whenever a piece of media isn't fully written in advance, where often the story changes along the way, actors might leave, audiences might latch onto a character nobody expected to be popular so the writers have to quickly write them into more stories, storylines might be so unpopular that they get retconned or otherwise redirected, or the writers might straight up change their minds about something in the middle, etc.

And the result is going to be different from what you'd get if you rewrote the whole thing from the start with the changes in mind. The latter will probably turn out more polished and maybe even actually better, but it won't have quite the same kind of organic charm

Conventional, carefully edited storytelling can be great, and I often appreciate it a lot and strive to achieve it myself, but I also tend to find it kind of boring. Sometimes even when it's great, even when I find it to be a really special and revelatory experience, even if I enjoy it a lot in the moment, I just don't end up going back to it. It doesn't occupy my mind the way more flawed works do (and after all, flaws often create texture and style and what would art be without those)

And like I said, often you don't get the truly unique and strange kinds of narratives in conventional fiction because the strangeness gets edited out and polished out of existence, or just never even comes up because people set out to write a Good Story that follows certain concepts of what makes a story good. Concepts that serialised storytelling often completely ignores, because it's always moving ahead and can't look back

And of course improv storytelling is that but even more so because in improv the whole thing is "written" live. Roleplaying can be fully improv but it can also be somewhat of a fusion of serialised storytelling and improv when there's some sort of GM guiding the story to an extent. (Also of course even in improv you can sometimes have some pre-planned story beats that you're trying to hit)

I really enjoy that sort of middle point between full improv and serialised storytelling where a lot of roleplay series in general live, but of course I particularly enjoy MCRP because there's something really fun about having a setting that the players are able to freely move around in and interact with in real time. I mean I guess the same could be said about other video game roleplay too but I haven't watched any lol (also I think in some ways Minecraft could be uniquely flexible because you really can interact with almost everything)

That's also why I tend to find it really frustrating when people try to make Minecraft storytelling more polished and pre-planned. I enjoy how organic it can be, that's its main charm factor for me

I have more thoughts but I gotta go now do real life stuff so idk maybe I'll continue later (also don't have time to proofread this, sorry, there might be typos and weird wording choices)

[erabundus]

@drolliic &&. said... "I'm just dying to say, 'Hey, do you ever feel like jumping off a bridge?' or 'Do you feel an emptiness inside your chest at night that is going to swallow you?'. But you can't say that during an Adventurers' Guild meeting." so why does Aether say it to Ren so easily? Maybe because he's one of the few people who actually treat him like a human being. Plus, whatever blunt response he gets, it's going to be a lot more refreshing than being fed sweet lies about how everything is going to be alright.

❝  jumping  off  a  bridge  is  overrated.  ❞  the  wanderer's  response  is  curt,  slightly  off-putting  —  and  unapologetically  ren.  he  sits  with  knees  curled  to  his  chest,  back  pressed  to  a  tree.  a  book  of  poetry  lays  on  the  ground  at  his  side;  unopened,  a  single  dried  padisarah  jutting  from  the  pages  in  lieu  of  a  conventional  bookmark.  beside it, that familiar hat. it's  a  mundane  (  almost  innocent  )  sight  that  becomes  downright  STRANGE  when  taken  in  the  context  of  who  he  is,  what  he  is,  what  he's  capable  of.  even  ren  has  his  casual  moments.   ❝  i wouldn't want to disturb  the  FISH ...  ❞

arms  cross  atop  his  legs.  the  wanderer  rests  his  cheek  on  them  as  if  to  repurpose  them  as  a  makeshift  pillow  —  eyes  (  lit  by  the  faintest  electro hued glow  )  peering  at  the  traveler  from  beneath  his  bangs.  ❝  your  friends,  ❞  he  spits  the  word  with  a  touch  of  toothless  mockery,   ❝  seem  like  exciting  people.  if  it  were  me,  i  would  tell  them  anyway  just  to  see  the  looks  on  their  faces.  ❞  a  laugh  trickles  from  the  wanderer's  lips  —  but  of  course  he  would  wish  to  stir  the  pot  for  his  own  entertainment.  the  harbingers'  banquets  were  much  the  same;  so  many  delicate  egos  collected  in  one  space.  it's  amazing  to  see  what  power  a  few  carefully  selected  words  can  hold,  like  tossing  a  lit  match  atop  a  pile  of  kindling.  it  certainly  did  him  no  favors  in  terms  of  popularity,  yet  the  balladeer  hardly  cared  for  such  matters  to  begin  with,  and  the  wanderer  frankly  isn't  much  different.

the  mirth  bleeds  from  his  expression,  a  more  thoughtful  look  sliding  into  its  place.   ❝  let  me  guess.  they  want  you  to  be  their  HERO.  flawless  and  unshakable  to  match  the  idealized  version  of  you  that  they've  built  up  in  their  heads  —  without  any  regard  for  the  TRUTH.  ❞   it's  a  bit  amusing,  in  hindsight;  reputation  and  assumption  steeped  in  cynicism  once  had  him  writing  off  the  traveler  as  yet  another  naïve  do-gooder  himself.  how  times  change.  how  reality  differs  from  preconceived  assumptions.   ❝  i  don't  know  why  you  bother.  you  never  asked  for  that,  so  you  shouldn't  be  obligated  to  meet  their  expectations.  ❞

a  joyless  smile.  ❝  the  world  is  cruel.  life  is  unfair.  pain  is  inevitable.  ❞  he  speaks  as  though  he's  reciting  points  from  a  list,  then  shrugs.  ❝  if  you  ever  need  a  reality  check,  i'm  happy  to  oblige.  ❞

#drolliic #( ren vc: have you considered causing problems on purpose -- )

[freezethebeez]

Did you base the catalyst vampires off of other vampires in the media? Or, whats some catalyst universe specific vampire “quirks” or design choices? Lol sorry, got brain rot

the vampires in catalyst aren't really based off of any particular piece of media. they're sort of a strange amalgamation of every vampire au i've ever read, any tv shows or movies (aka twilight and first kill), plus my own little quirky details for the sake of plot.

any of the details i'm going to list below are catalyst specific according to me, but if anyone else has ever done them that's cool, i just didn't know.

vampires can go 2 years without drinking a drop of blood before they die of starvation, similar to how humans can go 2 weeks without food, just elongated to match a vampire's lifespan

most vampires feed once every month, which is less than twilight (i think) and most other vampire au's i've read, although i don't think many of them had specific hunger schedules. oh yeah it's also less than in the sims 4, if the vampire pack counts as vampire media lol

vampires aren't immortal. i gave them an age limit of 1000 because immortality is overrated anyway plus death is kinda nice sometimes. gives you a time limit. idk there was vsauce video about it that i watched once and haven't really stopped thinking about.

humans cannot be turned into vampires. if i were to implement that, though, the turning process would be drain all human blood, replace with a bit of vampire blood, yipee ur dead but also not, which just wasn't conventional and wouldn't be used in plot so i threw that whole concept out the window

vampires sleep during the day and wake up when the sun sets. i've read this in another vampire au, but am including it in this list anyway because twilight went "yeah vampires can chill during the day." however, if catalyst vampires could go out in the sun, i think all the sun would do is drain their energy and make them tired lol

for the first 40 years of a full vampire's life (20 for half-vamps), they can't fully see. i have another ask somewhere on here explaining how the process works, as well as other details.

fangs showing up only when needed isn't super original i don't think, but the whole warming of the skin when hungry thing is just a catalyst thing, i'm pretty sure.

also, like, vampires with eating disorders. i've never seen that anywhere else lol.

vampires being able to give birth (technically, minus all the issues that come with it) is also a catalyst thing i think??? idk i've only seen the first twilight movie so if vampire birth is in there.... whoops

vampires being entirely dead pretty much. no working organs, breathing isn't necessary, can't eat human food (unless the specific food holds essentially zero nutritional value), are also things i haven't seen in au's or media

vampires are just straight up a completely different species; they're not a subspecies of human. now, this would be a little weird for vampire-human... uh... breeding (i'm so sorry) but since vampires look so much like humans it's not really a big deal i guess

long story short i pretty much just went "what if we had humans and gave them fangs and a really long lifespan and then we gave one of them a shit ton of mental illness" and ran with that.

as for design choices, they're very similar to the typical vampire: pale skin, human-looking, fangs sometimes. eye colour doesn't really change if they're hungry, their pupils just get a little wider. skin tones can range from white as white can be to a dark grey, and eye colour can be anything, it just depends on the vampire and their genes, however the fuck genes work (i didn't take biology lol)

i've been meaning to write all this vampire lore out for a while, so i may be missing a few things in my list. catalyst (just like syzygy, another c!beeduo au of mine) was supposed to be a 2k one shot containing a silly little idea i had. instead, it bursted into this big, multi-chapter story, which isn't something i do often, so little things like specific details about the setting and all that other stuff aren't really thought out, because initially they really didn't need to be and i was too busy working out the plot to go back over and add those things. i'm a bit of a mess when it comes to writing longer pieces tbh.

now while catalyst may be my magnum opus, i am still– at my very core– just a silly little guy writing about minecraft men.

all the love and support has been insane, though, and i have appreciated it more than anything. it's the thing that keeps me going honestly. all the asks have helped me develop the world just a little bit more, and the insight i've been able to get, like how well my foreshadowing worked and how suspenseful i made each chapter, has helped tons as well.

the mere concept of people actively perceiving the things i put out onto the internet is crazy enough to me, so to have people thinking about my silly little fic and brainrotting about it makes me feel a little less silly (dw anon, i am also heavily brainrotting).

ty for the ask, and sorry for the essay of a response. the only vampire media i've consumed is twilight, first kill, and about 2 or 3 other fics, all from different fandoms (i'm not a big media consumer tbh), but i hope this suffices :]

#people asking me things #catalyst #i was writing a little bit of cbeeduo fluff (not catalyst related just a funny idea i got) when i got this ask #might write a little bit of chapter 10 today #i'm almost done this one scene i've been struggling with for a bit #one more scene after this one and then we're done ^_^ #then i can start chapter 11 #i think updates will slow down a bit once i start school again #my workload is gonna be lots and my motivation is going to be GONE #it's okay. i will cope. #hoping to get it done by january possibly. #if not then i'd say june at the latest #that would mean a full year of working on the same au oh god #idk if i can brainrot that long who knows #i'll push through tho dw i have lots of love in my heart for catalyst

[cats-of-the-wasteland]

Power of Three

Three cats, alone in their colonies, yet united by an unspoken and unknowable tie to each other.

Winter-holly is the best apprentice in her colony. This isn’t a secret, a debate, or tentative; everyone knows just how talented she is. This talent, however, leaves Winter-holly isolated amongst her peers… yet, few have seen her bemoan her loneliness.

Blue-jay never asked for this. He never asked to be a Moon Watcher. The seer roles already struggle to fit in with their peers, but being the only blind seer of his colony means that he is especially alone. He refuses to be the most lonesome cat in the colony, but fate has other ideas.

Red-lion is the second-in-command’s only son, and the leader’s only grandson. He is strong, brash, and stubborn, and gets away with practically everything. This narcissistic attitude, while expected, leaves him with very few friends amongst his peers. No one could guess just how deeply this isolation harms him.

Three cats, each of different colonies, each dealing with their own form of isolation. They couldn’t be any more different from each other, and yet, when they meet for the first time at a monthly colony gathering, they are all struck with the same thought; “I know you.”

About This Story

As I stated in the description, this started out as a Warrior Cats AU of the Power of Three story arc but quickly got out of hand as I kept messing with stuff, lol. I've changed the naming conventions, names, a lot of the characters and just generally went with my own thing.

I wanted to make a blog to collect and share the details of this story as I write it, as well as to share snippets as I write them!

More Info Under the Cut!

About the Setting

As the title suggests, this story takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting where cats have survived either on their own through hardship or in the much safer colony structures. The land is still covered in radiated patches, and even the wind or water can bring a silent death.

Four major colonies exist beside each other in the setting of this story;

Summit-Walkers, a colony that survives the wastes within a mountainside.

Moon-Gazers, a colony that survives near a lakefront.

Gale-Shadows, a colony that survives upon a moorland and within underground tunnels.

Greenwood-Warriors, a colony that survives inside a deep forest.

Humans have been extinct for around 500 years now, and are relegated to colony legend. The cats have found ways to survive, but it's difficult to make it on your own.

Main Characters

Winter-holly

Winter-holly is the Summit-Walker's shining example of a perfect soldier. Where some cats struggle to hunt or fight, Winter-holly excels in all of her efforts. She is an excellent tactician, an outstanding soldier and one of the best candidates as a bodyguard. Her otherworldly tactical prowess is quite frightening to her peers, which leaves her isolated.

Blue-jay

Blue-jay is unhappy with his natural connection with the Sea of Souls, as well as his role as Moon Watcher. All he wanted was to be a healer, but his connection to his ancestors means he must also interpret omens and prophecies. His status as a blind cat already gave him skeptical looks from his Moon-Gazer peers, but now that his role is one that typically deals in visuals, his peers' pitiful looks have doubled. He refuses to let people look down on him, even as strange dreams plague his mind.

Red-lion

Red-lion is a narcissistic and egotistical cat who cannot stop play fighting with his peers. His prowess on the battlefield is well known, and cats fear his claws. Yet, despite his high status as a powerful cat and the son of the Greenwood-Warriors' Second-in-command, his attitude makes him isolated from his peers. Few cats want to be near him, and he secretly feels terribly lonesome. He inflates his own ego to hide his terrible lonesomeness.

#not writing #<- it is writing ofc but I just wanted to make a tag for something that isn't specifically a snippet yknow

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

An addendum to the prehistoric time travel question- more an offshoot, I guess- what if she was transported to when the Volturi became a thing? Like, would she have missed the whole "Blood for the blood god, skulls for the skull throne" thing a lot of the vampires had going on? Hope I haven't stretched the time travel plot past its entertainment value.

Anon is referring to this post.

Depends on when you mean by a "thing", there's when Marcus, Aro, and Caius all ran into each other and when they actually started imposing the secret.

Either could be interesting, but gets us a little too far into fanfiction territory, at which point I tell you to just go write the fic. So, I'll pick one.

Let's put Bella in the era when Aro, Didyme, and Marcus ran into each other, somewhere around 3500 years ago.

Also, obviously, when Bella's sent back will greatly change her actions. To line up with the previous post, she's in her New Moon depressed phase.

Bella's in the Past

Once again, Bella's so low functioning, she has no idea she's time travelled. She does notice she's teleported, the weather is very different and much nicer than Forks (Bella's living for the Mediterranean sunshine) but as for the people in their strange clothing speaking their weird language: eh, she's in a D&D convention or something.

As usual, it's up to Hallucination Edward to keep her alive.

Thanks to Hallucination Edward, Bella is suddenly a survivalist expert, and even more weirdly prophetic than usual. Bella thinks nothing of this, as she never does, but she does gain a reputation as having a gift from Apollo.

I imagine Bella is carted off to Delphi at some point. Bella has no idea what's happening, but hey, these people are giving her free room and board.

Sometime around this point, Bella realizes that vampires appear to be a thing here and... not a secret thing. She hasn't seen much of them, people generally don't, but the local pantheon appear to all be vampires who, when they pass through demand sacrifice in blood and riches.

Bella... has no idea what to think about that.

At some point, Aro hears about Bella, and being the curious sort goes to see her and hear a prophecy. Being a vampire, he's hardly denied access, but he also has to tread carefully in case Apollo does come to see his new priestess and gets pissed when some upstart is chatting with her.

Well, Aro and Bella have one weird conversation.

Bella is very very gifted, Aro discovers, both in her ability to block his gift and that she appears to be highly prophetic. Bella doesn't know about no Apollo, certainly never met the guy, but yeah she's from a completely different time and place and possibly a parallel universe.

Unclear.

Regardless, in Bella's world, vampires are nothing more than legend and there's some group of vampires called the Volturi that will kill them if they let humans know vampires exist.

Saying it out loud, Bella realizes it sounds kind of silly.

Aro is fascinated.

At the end of their talk, Aro offers Bella a spot in the gang (he turned his sister, this girl smells delicious, but he thinks he can do it). Bella says sure, she's always wanted to be a vampire.

Bella ends up unwittingly joining the Volturi, which... Oh I'm laughing, but this is what's going to happen, she and Aro marry each other.

When Aro gets sick of being a third wheel with Marcus marrying his sister and Caius having Didyme, rather than go searching for a wife, he looks at Bella and Bella looks at him. They both go, "Fuck it, easier than finding somebody else."

He then looks at Didyme, "OH YEAH, WELL, BELLA AND I ARE MARRIED NOW. WE ARE MARRIED PEOPLE JUST LIKE ALL OF YOU. HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT?!"

Didyme has no words. None.

Absolutely nothing about Bella and Aro's relationship actually changes in any way. But they insist to anyone who asks that they're totally married.

#twilight #twilight meta #twilight headcanon #twilight renaissance #bella swan #aro #marcus #didyme #caius #volturi #meta #headcanon #opinion

[astro-rain]

delicate; b. barnes

chapter thirteen - “sober desires & the reminiscence of a winsome smile”

delicate masterlist

word count: 4k

synopsis: wakanda gets a visit from our favorite captain, two drinks is too much rum for a reticent psychologist, and bucky knows (& feels) more than meets the eye.

pairings: bucky x fem!reader

[A/N]: this took so long to write but WHEW this chapter!!!! pls let me know what you think >:D

The knock on the outside of his hut was followed by a deep accented voice, one that he had heard before.

"Sergeant Barnes?" it called.

Quickly enough Bucky was outside, facing the king of Wakanda himself. He wasn't sure exactly what to say. You see, the majority of their past interactions included the Black Panther trying to kill him. T'Challa was kind and Bucky trusted him. It was just... a little awkward given the history.

"Your highness," he greeted.

He smiled bashfully at the title.

"I have some news for you."

Bucky's head cocked to the side, curious. News? Should he be worried? He hadn't been expecting anything.

"Captain Rogers is on his way here. He was alerted about our recent complication with N'Jadaka," he said, referring to who Bucky guessed was who Y/N called Erik Killmonger, "and he asked to come check in, make sure you're okay."

Steve was coming. His mood was immediately uplifted. He hadn't seen his oldest friend for months. It was weird to have Steve feeling the need to make sure Bucky was okay; it was usually the other way around. Nonetheless, he was excited. And he had the sudden urge to tell Y/N.

- - -

READER

"Sharon. Hey," she said into the phone.

The friends hadn't spoken since Y/N left for Wakanda - security measures since Sharon helped Steve and betrayed the... well everyone.

"Y/N!" Sharon greeted. "How is everything? Are you alright?"

"Yeah, no I'm totally okay. The Killmonger thing was more the royal family's deal than mine. I was just hiding out in some bunker with Barnes."

Concerned weaved its way into Sharon's voice. "Oh my god. Did anything happen?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, historically, stress hasn't affected him well..."

She wasn't sure why she almost got offended. "No... he was completely fine. He doesn't lose control out of nowhere and turn into the winter soldier. It's a lot more complicated than that... We were fine."

"Oh, that's good. Listen... I'm actually on my way to Wakanda right now."

"You're-... what?"

"Steve needed to check in on Bucky after Killmonger. Wilson and I are coming too."

They must all be together. It makes sense considering what happened after the disaster in Berlin, and then the airport fiasco in Germany and then... everything in Siberia.

Aw, they're in hiding together, Y/N joked in her head. She almost laughed out loud.

"Oh. Is that safe? For you? For everyone?"

"I've been careful. We've all been careful. But, things don't always go as planned. And T'Challa feels bad about putting you guys in a dangerous situation when he was supposed to protect you."

"It wasn't his fault."

"I know. We all know. But, it's kind of his way of making up for it: letting us stay so that Steve can check in on Barnes and we can cool off for a bit."

"Was Rogers mad?"

"Well, he wasn't thrilled that his best friend was trapped alone in a country that just got taken over..."

He wasn't alone.

"...he was mostly worried," Sharon continued. "Still is."

"Right."

"Alright, well I got to go. We'll be there in a couple hours."

"I'll see you. Be safe."

"See you."

- - -

BUCKY BARNES

"Hey Buck," the happiness in Steve's voice was genuine as he patted his oldest friend on the back in the middle of an embrace. "How you been?"

"A hell of a lot better than the last time I saw you, that's for damn sure," Bucky smiled.

Sam Wilson stood next to the star spangled man with a plan. Bucky briefly glanced at him.

"Wilson," he deadpanned.

"Barnes," he returned the greeting.

"I was worried when T'Challa told me about Killmonger," Steve said. "Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful that they let you stay here, but I just didn't think I'd have to be worried so soon."

"It's alright. Everything turned out okay and I was fine the whole time. You don't have to lose your head."

"I'm not losing my head."

"You never had it in the first place."

The blonde changed the topic of conversation.

"You were with that therapist right?"

"Yeah."

"What do we think about her?" he asked with equal parts caution and suspicion. "Do you trust her?"

Bucky wasn't sure why he was almost offended.

"Of course. Why wouldn't I?"

"Well, you know what happened the last time you were with a psychiatrist..."

"Yeah well, this one doesn't have a personal vendetta against the Avengers."

"You sure she's alright?"

He looked serious, and Bucky could see the genuine concern etched into his friend's face. Steve was truly wary.

"I'm positive. She's helped so much since I've been here. I really trust her."

"Okay, if you say so. I trust you."

Bucky smirked. "Hey uh... is Sharon with you?"

Sam said nothing but radiated a smirk to match Bucky's perfectly, a kind of smirk that only a ball-busting best friend cracks.

"She is..." Steve replied. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh nothing. Just wondering, that's all."

"She said she wanted to talk to a friend."

"Oh, she's probably with Y/N."

"Who?"

"Y/N. Dr. Y/L/N. 'The therapist.'"

"I didn't know they were friends."

"Why do you think Sharon recommended her?"

"She said she knew 'the best' person to help."

"That true. She's crazy smart."

"As long as she can do the job, I'm all for it, no matter whose friend she is."

In a short-lived thought, Bucky wondered what Steve Rogers would think of who else Y/N was friends with. He wondered if Steve would think it was strange to be friends with your doctor, or if he'd be pleased that Bucky had gotten close to someone, anyone else in this world.

"How long are you guys staying for?" Bucky asked.

Steve rubbed the back of his neck anxiously. "Honestly, we were only planning on staying for like a week or so. We've been moving throughout Europe, and the other day, when we were in Prague... it was almost really bad."

"We need to stay low for a while," Sam added.

"What did you do?" Bucky asked, used to Steve getting himself into trouble.

"It's a long story..."

"What did T'Challa say about it?"

"He said to take as much time as we needed," Steve filled him in.

"You know, I'm startin' to really like this guy," Sam nodded, smiling. "Obviously when he went all cat murderer on you, he was a bit of a pain in the ass. But now? Guardian angel."

Bucky shook his head at Sam's nonsense. What an idiot, he thought. He wondered what Y/N would think of Sam, but then a more pressing question popped into his head.

"Where are you guys gonna stay?"

"I'm guessing there," Steve said pointing behind Bucky.

When he turned around, Bucky was shocked but he also wasn't. Behind and around his hut stood three more just like it, but slightly smaller. He could've sworn those weren't there yesterday, but that's the beauty of Wakanda. They were ten steps ahead of the rest of the world and he guessed that included speed building as well.

"I will never stop loving this place," he admired.

-

He tried not to sound too eager when he knocked on her door. She looked shocked but didn't really try to hide it.

"Oh," she sounded confused. "Hi, Bucky..."

"Hey," he grinned. "I have a proposition for you."

Her eyebrows lowered as her lips twisted into the most devilish smirk. She could communicate an entire joke with just her face.

"Not like that!" he exclaimed.

She laughed, smirk morphing into an endearing smile. "Like what then?"

"Steve wanted to have like a bonfire sorta thing to catch up since we're all together for once. You know, just like drinks and stupid stories from the forties. D'ya think you could part with your paper work to grace us with your presence?"

"Oh, uh... are you sure?"

"Of course. I'd love to have you there."

She wrung out her hands. "I don't know, Buck. Is that really appropriate? To have your doctor hangin' out with your friends?"

"That may be, but that's not what I'm asking. I want my friend to 'hang out' with my other friends."

Out of her composure seeped a meek smile. The air felt softer to him.

"And maybe you can analyze Wilson and tell me what his biggest fear is later," he added.

She snickered.

"Okay. Lead the way, James Buchanan."

-

The fire was a monster, roaring and crackling with all the life in the world. Bucky loved it. He loved the warmth, the heat, the lack of cold.

"I'm gonna get another drink," Y/N said. "You want anything, Buck?"

"I'm all set," he smiled, gaze lingering for only a second too long.

"Sharon?" she turned. "You?"

The blonde shook her head. "Oh, I think I've had plenty."

Surrounding the fire sat five chairs. All but one was empty as Y/N went to get her second drink. Of course they were in Sam's hut, Bucky thought. After all, even though it was Steve's idea, Sam was most excited about the whole thing, actually sitting down and just relaxing instead of fleeing from belligerent governments.

"Therapist's pretty," Sam noted with a smirk once she was out of hearing range.

"Y/N," Bucky corrected, mind going completely elsewhere. "She's so smart."

"Smart enough to call you Buck..." Steve said, catching on to Sam.

"What?"

"She calls you Buck."

"Yeah, so? You do too."

"Yeah, but I've known you longer. And I'm your friend."

"She's my friend too," he shrugged.

"She's your doctor..."

"And I'm a hundred year old man with one arm trying to get un-brainwashed in a country that the rest of the world doesn't even know exists. None of this is conventional."

"...fair," Steve said, with only a little bit of skepticism. "Are you guys close?"

Does spending hours alone talking with someone in a hidden bunker make you close? Does them comforting you after a nightmare and then subsequently allowing you to get the best night sleep you've had in forever? What about making daring voyages to quaint waterfalls and laughing a kind of laugh that makes your heart swell? What about-

"Buck?"

He shrugged. Again. "I guess so."

Sam narrowed his eyebrows. "How close?"

"Wilson," Sharon admonished exasperatedly. "Y/L/N's his doctor, come on. That's inappropriate to suggest."

Sam put his hands up in mock surrender. Briefly, just briefly, Bucky imagined kicking the leg of Sam's chair and watching him fall back. He didn't, obviously. But it would have been funny if he did.

The seemingly never ending conversation was cut short when Y/N returned, drink in hand, and took her seat next to Bucky.

"What'd you get?" he asked, demeanor subtly but swiftly changing into something lighter, something happier.

"I don't know, but it has rum in it," she shrugged sardonically before clinking her glass with Bucky's.

"Cheers," Sam raised his glass, trying to engage.

Y/N wordlessly, and with a half-smile, raised her glass in his direction.

"So," Steve started, comfortably crossing his legs and leaning back into his chair before asking Bucky, "you wanna know what actually happened in Prague?"

"Do enlighten me. I've been waiting all night."

"Jerk."

"Punk."

The rest of the night went on sort of like this. The group took turns telling stories and then listening. Cracking jokes and then laughing. Everyone but Y/N, Bucky noticed. She just... sat and drank, livelihood only extending to the borders of her seat.

He hadn't seen her like this before, and he found himself stuck halfway between confused and worried. Had something happened? Had something wrong been said?

He kept an eye on her as dusk melted into night. He told himself it was because he was concerned, but that was only in addition to the way he was magnetized to how she looked with the light of the fire gleaming on her skin.

After she would finish a drink, she'd stare into the fire for a little while, before leaving to get another. When he made sure no one was looking at him, he'd look at her. Discretely. At her eyes. The reflection of the fire in her pupils made him wonder if she would burn the fire before it could ever burn her. He was all too aware of the heat that accompanied her gaze. It was a ravishing burn that made him ache for the searing feeling as soon as it was taken away.

He didn't dare think of it for too long or else he would get distracted. And someone would call his name, pulling him out of a trance he didn't want to be caught in. A trance he wasn't sure he wanted to admit that he was in.

The night remained as such until someone - he couldn't remember who - said they were tired, and everyone bid their farewells, and wished their good nights.

Y/N spared about a side hug to Sharon before walking off on her own. Bucky half volunteered, half insisted on tending to the fire to make sure it went out, only to ignore it as soon as everyone was gone and follow after his psychologist.

He caught up to her as she was in the middle of opening the door to her living quarters.

"Y/N."

She turned around in the spot, door wide open, staring up at him.

He bore into her eyes, looking at something, noticing her dilated pupils and hazy stare.

"You're drunk," he said, but it sounded more like a question.

"Yeah."

"But you don't seem drunk?"

"I'm not wasted," she padded into the room, carelessly leaving the door wide open for him to walk through. "Just drunk enough to remember why I didn't drink in college."

She rubbed her eyes.

"Think I want another one," she sighed, heading for the door with a bitter smile. "More rum."

Bucky gently closed the door, maneuvering himself in front of it, and blocking her from exiting. Another drink is definitely not a good idea.

He changed the subject. "Why didn't you drink in college?"

Her eyebrows raised, introducing a look that said Really? You think I don't know what you're doing?

"Wow, look at you being the voice of reason for my otherwise inebriated brain."

Nevertheless, she cooperated.

She sighed. "It just... makes me miserable. I'm a sad drunk."

"Better than a mean drunk," he offered.

"Possibly. It's a real mood killer, though."

"That why you were off all night?"

"Off... ? I don't know, I guess so... I'm usually pretty inconspicuous when I'm drunk. Didn't think anyone would really notice."

There was no hesitation when he spoke.

"I did."

"I'm sorry..."

"Don't be sorry. Just... why did you keep drinking if it only makes you miserable?"

"Alcohol is a depressant," she breathed mechanically, as if speaking was difficult. "It depresses your nervous system, then you get disinhibited. Then you don't care about rationality and just drink! Then in the moment it feels kinda good... but then it makes you sad... and then you need more to blur the feeling away. It's like... the worse you feel, the more you need to drink... but then the more you drink... the worse you feel..."

"How are you drunk but still talking... sorta still like you usually do?"

She smirked, looking like she was trying not to laugh. He was glad she was smiling.

"Maybe you're not the only one with heightened metabolism as a result of the serum..."

He looked at her quizzically, amused. She wasn't making total sense, but he couldn't find it in himself to give much of a damn. She smiled, again.

"Kidding. I just have outstanding self-control."

She plopped down on the floor, deciding that she no longer wanted to use her legs. Fine motor function was overrated for intoxicated people.

He sat down with her, next to her.

"If I tell you a joke will you be less sad-drunk?"

"I already am 'less sad-drunk.' I wasn't before, but," she took a breath in, "now you're here, so... improvements have been made."

"That's good 'cause I was worried before."

She glanced up at him with brazen eye contact. Her face held a mixture of what looked like a confused and pained expression, as something changed. Some sort of realization or reality check.

She wiped her hands over her face. "God, this is so ridiculous. I'm sorry. You shouldn't be worried about me, that's not your job. I'm sorry. I should just go to bed, and you can leave..."

"I know it's not my job. I just wanted to make sure you were alright."

"I was alright- it... it's not like I was crying at the fire or something. I was fine."

"After your second drink, you were silent almost the entire time."

"You were counting my drinks?"

Not exactly.

"I was paying attention."

"To what?"

To you.

"You completely turned into yourself. Your elbows and legs were drawn in close to your body: unrelaxed and almost apprehensive posture. You were nonverbal, didn't make any jokes, no sarcastic commentary. I was literally purposefully saying things I knew you would correct or tease or laugh at and nothing. I was waiting for a 'smartass' or a 'there's a reason behind everything' explanation or anything science related. But there was nothing."

Her face was blank. It took her a second to catch up. Blinking slowly, she shook her head, eyebrows furrowed, all emphasis on the word. "Why?"

Her tone was truly confused. It was like she, in her heart of hearts, for the life of her, could not believe he was concerned.

"Y/N you're my friend," he chided. "Why wouldn't I be?"

She averted her gaze. Her voice was barely above a whisper. "I don't know."

"Look," his voice was soft. "I know you know everything and you know my mannerisms and micro-expressions and you know when I'm lying and whatever else 'cause you're a genius psychologist. But is it really that hard to believe that, after all the time we've known each other, I know you a little too? That I saw you for once instead of you always seein' me?"

"I think you're the only person who sees me."

The words leaked out before he thought to analyze them, tone lower than a whisper.

"Well I can't seem to look at much else."

He had never felt such potent silence. Did he just fuck up majorly? They just sat, on the floor, eyes glued to each other like twenty year old dried cement. He didn't think he could move away if he tried.

"I see you now," she whispered.

"What do you mean?"

"Blue," she breathed. "Your eyes are so blue. I don't... think I've ever seen that shade of blue."

It happened exponentially slowly, but the closer her face got to his, the more his chest felt like it was going to burst in the best way possible. As if liquid light poured into his lungs, inflating his chest and igniting every nerve with adoration.

Her lips hovered over his so lightly it was as if it wasn't even happening, like her affection was a ghost. But it was happening, and he could feel it. He could feel the softness in her lips and the smell of the rum she drank as they combined into the wondrous dual sensation that permeated throughout his brain.

They weren't kissing by any stretch. Their lips were hardly touching. However, in that moment, he was at her mercy. He was prepared to bend the laws of nature to her will if she would allow the continuation of this feeling for even a fraction of a second more.

Until it stopped and she waned away like the moon bidding adieu to the morning sky.

Her voice shook. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't... it's-"

"No. It's not okay. It's not okay."

He leaned back, examining her face. She looked confused and embarrassed and scared.

"Y/N, it's fine. It's okay, seriously, don't worry about it."

"I'm sorry, I'm... I'm drunk and I'm disinhibited and it's affecting my judgement and making me impulsive. I'm sorry."

He couldn't be exactly sure, but it sounded as if she was trying to convince herself more than she was trying to convince him.

Neither of them moved a muscle.

"Do you want me to leave?" he asked.

She was silent, frozen. It reminded him of a past conversation about the fight or flight response.

Bucky stood up and offered his hand to the woman sitting on the floor in front of him. "Here."

She took it gingerly and stood up with him before wide eyes stared into his apologetically.

"Please don't feel bad," he pleaded. "Barely anything happened."

"Still..."

"Why don't you just get some sleep and we can talk tomorrow. I promise it won't seem like such a big deal when you're sober."

She nodded but they both remained motionless, hands still together. He knew they needed to let go, but her hand didn't move, and she just kept looking into him.

"Okay," she whispered.

She walked him to the door, hand still in hand, and until he was forced to let go of her to open it. He stepped, ever so slowly, out of her room and onto the grass outside. He looked up at her, the doorway between them suddenly feeling like worlds of distance. They stood on opposite sides of the open door like statues. Bucky didn't know what to do and he wasn't sure what to say.

He settled on a, "Goodnight."

He tried not to make it sound so weak and timorous but he failed entirely. He didn't want to leave her like this. Guilty and alone. God knows he knew what it felt like.

Her voice was dry and quiet. "Goodnight."

He wasn't sure when the door shut or which one of them had shut it. The only thing he was sure of was the feeling of formidable regret pooling in his stomach.

On one hand, there was regret for letting her lean in and get so close because now he was scared that their dynamic was ruined and worried that Y/N felt awful. On the other hand, there was regret that he just let her pull away. Regret that he didn't lean in more and shamelessly drown in her. Regret that he didn't unapologetically suffocate himself with the softness of lips, the inebriating smell of rum on on her tongue, and the utterly bewitching taste of her he was sure would follow.

He wasn't sure what he felt, to be honest. He was a muddle of emotions of which he had no idea how to sift through. Momentarily, he wished he was drunk so he wouldn't have to think so hard. Then, he remembered the saying, "drunk words are sober thoughts," and he was damn glad he was stone cold sober; he could only imagine the things he would say to her if he was drunk.

This lead him to pondering, it got the gears in his brain turning. It made him wonder. Maybe... just maybe... if drunk words were sober thoughts, then what if drunk actions were sober desires?

Thinking like this could cause him read the situation completely differently. Thinking like this could make him read the situation in such a way that conceived the slightest sliver of hope for emotions gone repressed. Hope is dangerous...

Hope is dangerous, so Bucky shoved it down into the deepest cavern of his brain, the very same cavern where his feelings for her resided. It was a monster in a cave, growling and hissing menacingly. Intensely.

It scared him, this intensity. It scared him so much that the only way he could fall asleep was by thinking about the way James Buchanan sounded when she said it with a winsome smile.

delicate taglist: ​@bakugouswh0r3 @thefridgeismybestie @strivingforelegance @ilovespideyyy @xpurpleglitter @bluelakeee @darkacademic2 @nickkie1129 @eclipsedplanet @paradisedixon @crazy-beautiful @coffee--writes @lilithknight1111 @buckybarnesishot310 @softladyhours @alwayssandy @quxxnxfhxll @those-sea-green-eyes @hero-ically @devilswaldorf

#bucky barnes #bucky fanfic #marvel #steve rogers #bucky fic #bucky reader insert #bucky x y/n #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes fic #bucky #bucky x reader #bucky x you #bucky x female reader #bucky barnes delicate #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x reader #captain america civil war #black panther #marvel fanfiction #captain america #mcu #james bucky barnes #bucky drabble #bucky headcanon #captain america fanfiction #bucky fluff #winter solider edit #bucky imagine

[not-poignant]

you mentioned that Piranesi hits different if you're disabled, could you like expand on that? if you feel like it <3 I'm always interested in your thoughts on things :3

For me, knowing that Susanna Clarke had - after writing Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - been affected by chronic fatigue syndrome, and had to stop writing for years because of it, and change her writing style, made me really curious to read Piranesi in the first place, because I know both the style of the writing (simpler), the length of the book (shorter), and the actual book itself all actually came from the experience of someone stuck inside a fatigued/chronically ill body, and also the experience of someone stuck inside themselves and therefore inside the home and inside their mind more often than they used to be.

So I actually picked up the book specifically as 'person with chronic fatigue hearing about another person who developed chronic fatigue and wanting to see how that's impacted them.' Clarke also said in interviews at the time that the book was influenced by her own perception of her illness and ways that she'd found to cope.

Which makes the story of Piranesi in some ways even more tragic, and even more hopeful. Because Piranesi is essentially the story of an impoverished man living trapped in a supernatural giant unending building, who has concealed his trauma beneath a naive, hopeful, 'it will be better tomorrow' attitude. It is a story about someone who finds joy in the small things because he has no other choice. And that is something I think many people with severe or serious chronic illness - especially with a fatigue or pain element - really understands well. If you don't learn how to do it, you will probably end up wanting to not be alive at all, because life can seem very difficult when you're trapped, and you know it's permanent and inescapable.

People think they have a concept of it from lockdowns and the pandemic, but the fact is, chronic sufferers of fatigue have been living this way in some cases all their lives, but in many cases certainly for many years or decades. It's inescapable. And it's one of the things we lament as people come out of lockdowns is that...well other people get to, but we don't.

Some of us chronically ill folk and disabled folk have had more accessibility for years because of the pandemic (online classes, telehealth, online conventions), bitterly knowing that the world will move for healthy people locked inside, but they won't make the world accessible for us in general (and some of that accessibility is already dropping away). After years of telling us 'no we can't have an online element for conventions it's too hard' and 'no we can't do telehealth it's too hard' you find out just how much you've mattered all this time. It's a cruel blow.

And Long Covid behaves very similarly to CFS and elements of Fibromyalgia, so when people seem surprised that something can be so cruelly life destroying it's like 'hey buds, we've been here all along, actually - welcome to the club where doctors won't give a shit about you, it'll be impossible to get unemployment or disability benefits, etc.' (Though some of us do kind of hope that 100 million people having Long Covid at once will hopefully cause breakthroughs for all chronic fatigue illnesses).

Piranesi was significant and meaningful to people stuck inside because of the pandemic, but it was a book written by a sufferer of fatigue and it shows to me a journey of a character trying to comprehend how to find meaning and process grief within a locked in body, or mind, or home. So the character of Piranesi for me is like... yeah, I feel like I get him.

The whole book itself is written the way it is, in part, because the author needed to drastically change their writing style because of CFS. So I guess, for me, that's some of the reasons why it hits different. I can't go any deeper than that, because then we'll be getting into spoilers though, lol.

#asks and answers #personal #inadvertent recs #chronic illness #obviously everyone will have a different interpretation #but knowing the context re: Clarke #and how Piranesi came to be #idk it was actually the main reason i bought the book in the first place #because i didn't love her previous writing style

[writings-of-a-hufflepuff]

Prompt List #8 - Lines from love letters

All Prompt Lists

All these lines come from a book called ‘The Love of an Unknown Soldier’ which is an antique book that’s essentially a series of love letters from the Great War that were found in a dugout and published. All unsent from a British Officer to an American Nurse he met in Paris. He never told her that he loved her and presumably died before he had the chance.  

I was so many times on the point of telling you - every evening after I had left you I accused myself and spent half the night awake planning the words in which I would confess when next we met. 

I wonder if you have guessed. Surely I could not have loved you so much without your knowing. 

What right have I, who may be dead within a month, to speak to you of love? To have done so would have been the act of a coward. 

You, all the time you would have been lonely. All the time you would have been worrying about my safety. 

And yet there is still time to tell you. I have only to unhook the receiver and to telephone to you. 

Perhaps it was fate; I prefer to think that it was something else. 

You’d never guess how long I spent in polishing my belt and buttons. Yes, men are like that. 

And my emotions! Shall I be frank? They were awfully muddled. They were made up of longing, hope, doubt and the terror that I might appear absurd. 

The longing was all for you. 

The hope was that you might share my longing. 

The doubt was lest I might have idealised a memory which, when I saw you, would fade into reality. Oh, the heresy of me! 

I have spoken of the touch of your hand, but I think it was the sympathy in your eyes that touched me. 

I suppose you’ll never know how proud I was to be seen beside you. 

I felt so keenly aware of you; your beauty was almost painful. 

The paths were slippery; I took your arm at times to help you over places and laughed within myself at its reluctance. 

She does care for me a little, I told myself - that thought kept my heart singing after we had parted. 

One never hears you coming; you are absent - one looks again and you are there. 

You trusted me so much from the very first; is that a good sign from a lover? 

Strange, that I should have conquered fear in the front-line, should have lived for days quite calmly with sudden death, and yet should tremble before a girl.

The letter I shall send you will be strictly conventional and not too lengthy - it will be the kind that I might write to any acquaintance of either sex. And yet - yes, that is the thought that troubles me - we may have met and parted for the very last time. 

Since you will never read this, I will play a game; I will not send you what I write, but I will speak the truth to you on paper. 

I can at least carry the memory of these things back; they are unspoilt by any sadder knowledge. 

We stopped so long talking over dinner that by the time we reached the opera the first scene was ended. 

I am glad I met you. I am glad of the pain I shall carry back with me. 

Your face will be with me, the sound of your voice and the memory of your gentleness. 

I shall be a better soldier because we have met.

If I die, I shall die satisfied. 

I didn’t have much time to catch my train, but managed to stop long enough to order you some flowers. They were roses, deep red, the colours of the ones you wore at the opera on our last night. I bought far too many for good taste - I bought the way I felt. 

How far away you seem - how far everything seems that I have loved. 

You’re a captain in rank, aren’t you? Then you’re my superior, for I’m only a subaltern. 

There must be more in you than I have guessed; to have left luxury and come into danger just to look after other people’s babies, that took courage. 

There’s a sacredness of devotion, which goes deeper than mere beauty. 

Do you begin to understand why it is that you seem so far away? 

You can weave all kinds of fancies out of our nights if you’re in love and have an imagination. Those white flares, appearing, racing, vanishing, seem to me a phantom-city and make me think of Paris. 

The boys came in intending to buy something; they hardly noticed you at first. Then they saw you, stared and tried to spin out an awkward conversation...they’d returned to buy something else. They really returned to get another sight of you. 

You fascinated me as well. 

What are you? You are drifting away from me, becoming unreal already. 

Did you care for me at all, even for a moment? 

Did you ever picture the life to which I was going? 

Was I only an incident - some one transiently amusing, and perhaps a little pleasant? 

For me there was always poignancy in our happiness. The thought was constantly with me of our parting. Something within me kept warning, ‘it is the end - the end - the end.’/ 

If I had only met you earlier, in the days before war started, I could have made love to you honourably. But not now. 

And yet - “I wish I had married my man,” your friend said. It’s a problem. Self-interest dictates that I should tell you. That choice might be more righteous than silence; it depends on you. But because the choice would be selfish I distrust it. 

Had you stayed a moment longer I might have spoken the words which were better left unsaid. I think you knew that. 

At the cry ‘mail up’ I forsook my dignity and went out on the pretence of seeing that the teams were clear of the position. 

For a little while memories travelled back to affections and quiet.

You mean more to me than anyone in the world, yet I have never seen your handwriting. That brings home to me vividly how much we are strangers. 

I never knew a man more in love with anybody. 

Why didn’t you write to me? I had counted the days and made allowances for delays. A letter might have come yesterday; to-night it seemed certain. 

I form so many conjectures...you were busy. You did write, but forgot to post it. You posted it, and it’s held up in transit. Then there are other conjectures of another kind: that you do not care; that the knowledge that I care would come to you as a surprise; that it is the knowledge that I care that keeps you from writing. 

When I remember you like that I feel your kindness. You may not care, but you are not careless. 

To have known you as I have is more than I had counted on - more than I deserved. 

To have had love come to one in the midst of a war, was more than could have been expected. 

All my life I had waited for that; then, when one had sacrificed so many human affections, it happened. It was a gift from the gods. Though you may never know, I ought to be contented. 

I must not entertain hopes about you. To do so would be weakening. 

You have happened in my life - that should be sufficient. To have snatched one last glimpse of loyalty should make me braver; it should be like the sacrament pressed against the lips of those about to die. 

I don’t think I will write to you any more, my dear. These unposted letters, written out of loneliness are becoming a luxury which is dangerous. They make the future seem too valuable. 

I begin to realise how sweet life is - how glorious we could make it. 

A letter from you! Such a jolly letter, so full of yourself! It’s just as though you were at my elbow and I could hear your voice.

I’ve read it how many times? I can’t count. I think I know it all by heart, and yet keep on turning back to my favourite passages. 

To save France, Joan of Arc charged on horseback into battle. You go with less drama, but with an equal heroism. 

You would laugh quietly and say that I make too much of what you are doing - that it’s really very ordinary. 

You can’t love a woman and not gaze into the future. You can’t feel the need of her and be resigned to die. 

I wish I knew that you felt the need of me. In the loneliness of this existence the knowledge that there is one woman who cares supremely helps. 

I mustn’t think of you too often. 

But this is foolishness - one can’t get rid of memory. Since I can’t forget you, I must make your memory a help. 

I write you letters which you will never receive, recording the fact that I love you; but I fail to tell you. 

I persuade myself, as Benham would have persuaded himself, that it is honest and fine not to confess. 

I don’t do the passionately human thing - the thing that Jack Holt did when he won his wife. I act idealistically but, God knows, i’m by no means certain of my motives. 

It’s easy to be brave for one’s self, but to have known that you were in danger would have been intolerable. 

Could I see you I should find you changed, you say; the sleepless nights have done their work. I expect I should find you changed - as metal is tried in the furnace. 

Like every man who loves a woman, the desire of my heart was to shut you up in a cage of unreality. 

I beg you to take especial care of yourself. Don’t run more risks than you can help. 

My mind is full of you to-day. I have been trying to remember your face, the tones of your voice - all the things that make you you so essentially. 

At first, when I feel in love with you, I almost resented your intrusion

I used to mistrust love as a kind of sickness, and yet all the while - I must tell the truth - I longed for it desperately. Love always avoided me. 

I wanted to have something so worth giving to a woman: perhaps that was why I was willing to delay. 

Then a quaint little picture forms in my brain of you and me alone in a darkened room. There’s a fire burning. You’re sitting in a great armchair; i’m crouched on the floor beside you, my head against your knees. 

But one grows weary of being strong; one wants to be loved so badly, just once while there is time. 

It’s the feel of you I need, the protection, the security - the sure knowledge that I am yours, whatever happens. 

It’s you that I want - the feel of your hands touching mine in the darkness and your arms about me. 

I’m afraid i’ve been acting like the traditional Englishman; you’re the greatest pleasure I have and i’ve been taking you sadly. It isn’t much of a compliment to you and I must stop it. Unhappiness is a form of disloyalty.

You came upon me so suddenly; you awakened such longings; your very presence spoke so loudly of a future which, perhaps, I may not share; you offered all that I had once hoped for before I put hope behind me. 

Your presence to me was like St. Peter’s shadow to those sick men; it healed me, but it made me long for more than the shadow. The thought that you would walk through other cities where i could not follow, filled me with emptiness. 

I realised then what a gaiety would fill my world if I had the assurance that you loved me. 

In a vain attempt to make you a part of my world I lie awake imagining half the night. What a foolish heart I have!

How sick I am of my own pose of spurious manliness! What I want is to feel your arms about me and your lips against my eyes, whispering, ‘Mon petit.’

I know at last for certain that I am nothing and you have forgotten me. And yet there was a time when - or do I deceive myself? You could not help writing to me if you have ever cared. You are breaking the news to me slowly by your silence. Perhaps that is the kinder way to do it. 

I know that love in one who is not loved, must always seem absurd. I know that I ought to smile and bow in a gallant sort of fashion, excusing myself for having been so mistaken as to have troubled you with my affections. But the men who used to love like that loved lightly; they had scores of years before them to seek their love elsewhere. 

I love you as a man loves only once, and I may have but a few hours. 

If I come through to-morrow safely, I’ve almost a mind to write you a real love letter. I can picture you reading it, if I were to send it. Those straight brows of yours would draw together. The more impassioned I was, the more puzzled you’d become, It would all be so sudden after my carefully proper letters.

I think of you, as I shall think of you to the end, if the end comes. I do not want you less. I want you more perhaps, only not so selfishly. 

And yet there is always you, you, you, to lure me back from death. You with your grey eyes and your intense atmosphere of rest - you with your unconscious womanliness. 

Aft4er such a long wait, two nights ago I received your last letter. You hadn’t quite forgotten me. You hadn’t forgotten me at all. You have been ill, but you’re better now. 

I dreamt of you last night. It was the first time that this has happened. We were in a garden full of sunshine and roses. You were learning on my arm. We must have been married for some time, for there was no strangeness in our being together. We cam to an old stone summer-house and sat down. You sank your head against my shoulder, gazing up into my eyes, and brushing my lips with your hair.           

My heart cries out for you and hears only the silence. 

If I come through this, I have made a pledge that I will tell you. The last few months have educated me in taking chances. 

I shall never know now whether you would have loved me, or could have been made to care for me. Perhaps you did care, and were waiting for me to give the sign. 

It’s the touch of live hands, of lips pressed to lips that counts. 

I want to hold you and to say nothing. I want-                   

#a bit of tragic history that pulls at the heart strings #prompt list #writing prompt list #prompt lists #history #ww1 #world war 1 #wwi #world war i #the great war

[anistarrose]

hello, my love (ao3)

a slightly late @taznovembercelebration fic for the day 19 prompt “established relationship,” albeit in possibly the least conventional sense of the phrase. in other words, this is the culmination of a lot of Blupjeans feelings I couldn’t not write about any longer

*

It — it feels wrong to say I’ll miss you, but —

No, I get it. It’s gonna be so fucking weird, and I — I know it won’t last forever —

Okay, I — I can’t do it like this. Not if we make it sad. Lup, I love you so much, you know you’re the light of my life and undeath…

Of course, babe.

…and I’ll see you soon.

The world Barry wakes up in is tinted green, obscuring everything besides a few ill-defined silhouettes. His limbs are numb at first, but as… red sparks? run down his arms, the feeling returns as a strange sort of weightless sensation, like he’s floating beneath the surface of a lake.

A few bubbles escape from his nose, and oh shit, he really is submerged in something. Before he can even wonder which way is up, his hand grazes something that immediately tears away — and with it drains out the mystery green liquid, which he’s just going to pretend is water. He staggers onto the floor of a cave, blinking rapidly as he adjusts to the light. It’s definitely a cave; he can feel the cool air on his skin and the bare rock beneath his feet — so why is it so bright?

The answer arrives in the form of a voice, whose owner becomes a little more visible to him with each blink of his eyes.

“Care for a towel? Actually, I’m giving you one whether you want it or not, ‘cause if you die of hypothermic shock after everything we’ve gone through to get here, that’s just gonna be awkward.”

She’s beautiful, he knows before he can truly see evidence of the fact. There’s so much care in her voice that her joke can’t disguise, and the towel she slings over Barry’s shoulders is warm, but not as warm as her hands. This feels like the correct moment to freak out over being, as far as Barry can tell, completely buck naked aside from the generous towel gift — but instead, his attention is captivated by his companion, who in complete contrast to himself, seems to be more clothes than body as she comes into focus.

It doesn’t feel right to say she’s wearing her red robe — it’s more like she embodies it, as it moves subtly to indicate her posture, her emotions, rather than to conceal them. What little of her that isn’t a robe is ablaze, but not violently — if Barry only had one word to describe her, he would simply say warm.

Her eyes are negative space amidst the flames, darkness where one would expect unbridled light, but there’s nothing sinister about them — more of a fascination, if anything, evident as she locks her gaze with Barry’s.

He’s been staring, hasn’t he? And she’s been staring at him.

He expects the sheer embarrassment of this whole situation to catch up to him any second, but it just doesn’t hit him. There’s nothing uncomfortable about sharing the room with her.

“Hi,” he says, giving a little wave. “I don’t know how I got here, but… I like your robe.”

She bursts into laughter, illuminating the cave in an ever-changing pattern of red, orange, and pink — and Barry can’t help but wonder if there are a few tears in the mix too, given how hard it is to tell on a face made out of fire.

“Oh, babe. Oh, Barry. Of course you would.” She brings a spectral finger to Barry’s face, evaporating a droplet of water with a single touch, but the warmth that rushes to Barry’s cheeks has nothing to do with the temperature of her hands, only her touch itself. “Sit tight for a second, babe. I’m gonna grab something you’ll like.”

Babe? He’s paralyzed for a few seconds, the word echoing in his head as she floats across the room, sifting through piles of scrolls, jeans, and miscellaneous other items that couldn’t be further from naturally occurring in caves. Does she know me? Does she like me?

He’s finished drying himself off by the time she returns, holding a second red robe — and a corporeal one, no less. She drapes it over Barry’s shoulders, and he slips his arms into the sleeves without thinking twice.

It’s cozy, but something about looking down at himself wearing it brings a fuzziness to his mind that’s not nearly as comfortable as the fuzziness of the fabric. He focuses his gaze on the ghostly woman instead — who makes his mind turn to static in her own right, but in a way that’s more than balanced out by the joy of just looking at her.

“See, we both look good in red,” she says with a wink, and Barry feels the temperature of his face rise another degree or two. He’ll wind up on fire like she is, at this rate. “You’ll want to sit down. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

“Yeah, I can imagine. Um, I think… I might be just a tiny bit amnesiac? Like, just a little. ‘Cause I know who I am, but you sound like you know me, and I don’t know you.”

He takes a deep breath, and decides there’s no harm in admitting what she’s surely already noticed. He’s been too confused to try and be subtle. “Also, I definitely just fell in love with you a couple orders of magnitude faster than I thought I’d ever fall in love with anyone, so that’s, uh… cool, but weird?”

The lower half of her face brushes his forehead — not quite solid, but not unpleasant — and he realizes just as soon as it’s over that it must’ve been a ghostly kiss.

“We were gonna ease you into the ‘us being in love and you losing your memories’ thing,” she tells him with a chuckle, and Barry’s too giddy to even wonder what she means by we. “Lay out the groundwork first. We should’ve known better.”

“My bad?” Barry blurts out, and that makes her laugh even harder, until embers are dripping from her eyes like glistening teardrops.

“Oh my god. This must — this must be so much for you, babe, so much to take in. How are you doing it? How are you — taking this so in-stride, and still sounding so much like you, I mean?”

“I mean… I wouldn’t know,” Barry admits. It is so much to take in, and he knows that if he’d woken up here all alone, with no idea how he’d arrived, then he’d be a mess by now — and not the hopeless romantic kind. As it is, he’s holding it together, trying not to think about his headache and taking comfort in the more pleasant of realizations — but he’s still adrift and disoriented, clinging to a figure he can’t remember his reason for trusting. “It — it doesn’t quite feel real, to be honest? Like, I — I believe you, I believe that I loved you — but it’s the forgetting that gets me…”

He can see himself falling in love, but he can’t see himself falling in this kind of love quickly. This soaring feeling in his heart could only be propelled by years of incremental intimacy, years that he can remember none of, years that don’t exist according to the static roaring inside his head. “How could I forget all this?”

She hugs him in a way unlike any hug he can remember, overlapping with the space he occupies until he’s engulfed in gentle flames, and the threads of her robe feel like they’re what’s doing the hugging, having reformed and rewoven themselves around his arms. Not knowing how else to embrace her back, Barry wraps his arms around his own chest, and feels her presence grow warmer still.

He can just barely wrap his mind around the thought that the warmth coming from his own chest might be borne of subconscious familiarity.

“You still have a big obvious head-over-heels crush on me, don’tcha?” she teases, her laughter surrounding him. “Nothing can make you forget that.”

“Yeah, every version of me’s a hopeless romantic. We’ve got that,” Barry admits. “But I — I don’t even remember your name —”

He would know it if he heard it, he’s sure; it’s so close to the tip of his tongue that he’d probably blurt it out instinctively, if only he didn’t always think so hard about his words before saying them. It’s so tantalizingly close, and he wants to know it again, to say it again, more than any other favor the universe could grant him, and doesn’t the universe owe him at least this much —

“Well, I know how to fix that.” She withdraws from the hug, remaining at his side. “And I think it’ll help if you hear it from yourself — if you hear all the truth we can give you, that is.”

She extends a hand, and a simple golden coin flies across the room to land in her palm. It’s embossed with a vaguely familiar rune that Barry can’t translate, but his mind really starts to reel when she places the coin in his hand, and he hears his own voice emanate from it:

Your name is Barry Bluejeans. You are afraid of the dark. Your very favorite thing in the world is swimming in very cold water on a very hot day, but you cannot remember who taught you to swim, or why you’re always so much more scared of the dark at the end of the year.

The beautiful undead woman next to you is named Lup, and as much as it pains you to realize, you have forgotten her, too. There are fundamental truths about the world, about your loved ones, and about yourself that you have been blocked from comprehending — you’ve had more stolen from you than you realize, and there are very few ways to undo it.

Barry, I’m you just moments ago, and I’m about to forget so much. But right now, I remember, and Lup can help you remember too.

Another voice joins the recording — Lup herself, who sounds just slightly different than she has today, just a little less burdened.

If you haven’t guessed from how this nerd talks about me — Her words are punctuated by an affectionate grumble from Barry — we’ve been dating longer than you can imagine. I wish we could just —

You also can’t remember that Lup’s as much of a nerd as you are, Barry, his past self interrupts. You met because you were both nerds.

Oh, come on, you’ll still be smart enough to figure that one out by yourself! But like I was saying, we had a hell of an epic love story I wish we could just tell you — but you wouldn’t be able to understand much of it, and you’d get a headache trying.

So, Barry adds, we thought about what would be the next best thing. And I think we got a pretty good idea.

A classical music piece fades in, beginning with a piano but quickly adding a violin. Barry can’t put a title or a context to the tune, but he recognizes it from the first note and starts tearing up by the third. His fingers tap out a pattern in sync with the piano part before he even realizes they’re doing it, and when he closes his eyes to let the music wash over him, he realizes that the Lup of the present, the Lup at his side, is almost imperceptibly humming along with the violin.

“You’ll remember this again,” she promises, choking up, when the tune eventually fades. “One day.”

Already, the music has stirred ghosts of memories, fleeting emotions, that Barry can almost imagine in context — quiet moments, private conversations that no one could rip away from him because no one else but Lup ever knew they’d happened — and that day feels close, reassuringly so.

Like him falling for Lup again, it feels like an inevitability.

#taz #taz balance #blupjeans #barry bluejeans #lup taaco #taz balance spoilers #taz november celebration #taznc #rosalia writes fic

[amazingmsme]

Would You Be Ever So Kind?

AN: Wow this took ages but I finally finished my first Twin Peaks fic! I can’t recommend this show enough, it’s suspenseful, funny, eerie, & just all around a great time! My man Cooper is adorable okay, I just know he’s a huge lee don’t judge me. This is a heftier one shot (just over 5k) cause I added some plot! Hope you enjoy the fic!

Cooper was stressed, there was no doubt about it. Windom Earle was always one step ahead it seemed, and closing in. His dreams weren't providing much help and it felt like he kept running into dead ends.

Since Major Briggs's return, he'd been enamored with the White Lodge. He could feel it's influence, though barely so. It was like he was standing on a beach, barefoot, information and enlightenment lapping at the tips of his toes. So close, yet it pulled back before it even reached his ankles. Teasing him. Dangling the answers right in front of him, but just out of reach. He needed to know what he needed to do to take that final step into the pool of knowledge that laid before him.

Right now, he sat in the conference room with Hawk. He stared at the other man with his usual perceptive gaze.

"If one were to... connect with the White Lodge somehow, how would they go about it?" he asked.

Hawk shifted in his seat as he thought for a moment. He tilted his head, pondering the question. Finally, he spoke. "It is rare to do so without being invited. But not impossible. I believe if you tried, someone with your unique sensibilities might be able to manage it."

Cooper's brows raised and he leaned forward in his seat. "How?"

Hawk shrugged. "The few I've heard of said they had experienced great joy. A mother who found out that she would soon have a grandchild. A man who proposed to his girlfriend. A boy who rode his first roller coaster. They had all experienced intense, positive emotions and the following night, had strange, yet peaceful dreams. Dreams that held answers to certain questions they had."

Cooper nodded, hanging on every word. "And how would I go about triggering these- positive emotions?"

Hawk smirked and shook his head. "I don't know, why don't you propose to someone?"

It took him a second, but his own lips quirked into a smile. He wagged a finger at him, "That was a joke, wasn't it?" Hawk chuckled softly.

"Yeah, it was. But I don't know Cooper, try and do things that make you happy. Take a break, maybe go on a walk to clear your head. Maybe go have some of that pie you love so much," he suggested. Cooper made to stand, grabbing his things.

"Will do Hawk, I shall try these methods as I brainstorm other activities that might induce such happiness." He gave him a tight lipped smile and a quick thumbs up before heading out.

He did end up trying Hawk's suggestions, but with little success. He had even eaten as many slices of pie as he could until he felt like he would burst. All it resulted in was a belly ache that plagued him the rest of the night until he fell asleep. With no strange peaceful dreams, he might add.

The next day he had started jotting down every positive emotion he could think of.

Joy Excitement Happiness Fun Funny Love...

Upon second thought, he marked that last one out. It had only brought him heartache and agony that still plagued him.

Hm. That was a shorter list than he thought it would be. Now was the matter of finding ways to trigger said emotions... He started to think that perhaps this wouldn't be as easy as he had thought. He pulled out his tape recorder.

"In my efforts to reach out to the White Lodge, I have discovered that intense feelings of happiness can bring about interesting dreams. In doing so I have also come to realize that such levels of joy are... unattainable with conventional methods. As it turns out Diane, it will take a lot more than eating five pieces of pie and petting a rather cute dog. I plan to stop by the library and pick up some literature on the psyche of happiness." He clicked the recorder off.

He'd spent the first half of the day doing as he'd said. It was much more boring than he'd anticipated. But at least he'd gleamed some information from his impromptu study session. Joy was triggered by certain chemicals in the brain, and certain stimuli releases them. Exercise was a common method, but it wouldn't be enough for the level of happiness he needed to reach. One thing that might prove to be more effective was laughter.

Laughter seemed to really be the best medicine, or at least that's how the books made it seem. Though just laughing for no reason wouldn't cut it. He needed a reason to laugh: something to make him happy. For him, that was enough to go on.

He arrived at the sheriff's station, pouring himself a fresh cup of coffee and stepped into the foyer where Andy was hopelessly trying to flirt with Lucy. She'd humor him occasionally, but Cooper knew she liked watching him struggle for her affections. She'd even told him so.

"Yes?"

"Well Andy, to be honest I believe you're the happiest one in here," he started. He lit up like a Christmas tree at the

"You really think so? Well that's awful kind of you to say."

"How do you do it? What keeps you in such a good mood all the time?" he asked. Andy shrugged.

"Well gee, I don't know. I guess I've always been this way. I try not to overthink things, my mama said people who do aren't very happy," he said. Cooper hummed in thought and nodded. "I just try to appreciated the little things in life, like the woods and all of you," he said honestly. Cooper wasn't expecting that and felt a warmth grow in his chest Hmm. He supposed he meant something to these people, after working together for so long, but hearing it aloud was nice to hear. Within his work, he was rarely shown appreciation least of all open affection. It felt nice.

His expression softened and he gave him a small but genuine smile. "Thank you. I appreciate you too," he made sure to let him know the feeling was mutual. He went into the empty conference room and grabbed one of the stacked donuts. He took a moment to admire the organized arrangement, noting how a few stacks of two were short one or were gone completely. He pulled out the tape recorder, pressing the button down and talked into it.

"After studying at the library, I now find myself at the sheriff's office. I briefly spoke with Andy about what makes him happy, and he gave the the sage advice of appreciating the little things in life. I know people often say to do so, but people rarely follow through. I'm trying to be better. I stand here looking down at the conference table that has donuts laid out on sheets of paper towels. Donuts are stacked two atop each other, and there are two rows of twelve. Lucy sets this up for us every night before she leaves. I never really gave much thought about how much time she puts into doing this... I find my talk with Andy was rather helpful. I will continue to try and do as he suggested."

He clicked it off and grabbed a donut, taking a bite. He took out his note pad and tapped his pencil against his chin. He started writing down things he liked or that made him happy. He started by listing off names, followed by animals and food. He even wrote down his favorite kinds of trees. Surprisingly, he found he felt lighter after doing so. A soft smile graced his features as Harry walked in.

"Hey Coop, what's got you all smiley?" he asked, his own lips quirking up upon seeing the other man in a good mood. He held up the page.

"Oh nothing, just listing down some things that make me happy. Hawk told me a few instances of people who were able to connect with the White Lodge after experiencing immense joy. I did some reading and found that certain chemicals can cause such emotions. I just need to find a way to trigger them," he explained. Harry hummed in thought, and gestured to the list.

"May I?" Cooper nodded and handed it to him. He skimmed through it, a soft smile of his own appearing on his lips.

"I make you happy?" he asked, dimples shining.

He nodded, tilting his head down shyly. "You all do. You each have such unique and charming qualities."

"Well, uh, thanks. That means a lot coming from you. I don't know anyone else who's more unique and charming," Harry said. Then he cleared his throat and looked back down at the list. "Nature seems to really make you happy. You get a chance to try out that lure yet?" he asked to change the subject.

Cooper shook his head. "No, I've been so busy I haven't had the time," he admits.

"Well, it's a pretty slow day for once. I figure I can take some time to help in your efforts," Harry said, as though he didn't just want to leave work and go fishing. Cooper smiled brightly at him.

"I'd love that," he said earnestly. "Allow me to swing by my room and change." The sheriff nodded.

"Sure thing. I'll meet you by the trail just past the waterfall," he said. After jotting a few more things down, Cooper leaves for the Great Northern. He changed into his jeans and pulled on a flannel. He talked into the recorder as he buttoned his shirt.

"Don't get me wrong Diane, I do enjoy my suit. But sometimes it just feels better to wear something more comfortable." He clicked it off and went to the mentioned trailhead. Harry was already waiting for him, fishing gear in tow.

Cooper furrowed his brows as a smile pulled at his lips as he looked at the sheriff. What was that God awful thing on his head? He let a few snickers slip out as he parked.

"Interesting hat ya got there," he mused, making Harry grin.

"You like it? My lucky fishing hat," he said, pointing up at it. He nodded, not bothering to hide his grin.

"Lucky huh? We'll see about that," he said, taking a pole from his grasp.

"What you don't like it?" he asked teasingly.

"Aú contraire. I find it quite amusing," he said with a wide grin. He reached up and flicked one of the dangly rubber tassels from a lure.

It was a floppy bucket hat, tan in color and adorned in tacky bright lures. Harry was grinning ear to ear, adding to the goofiness of his look. It was impossible not to smile at him. He swatted Cooper's hand away with a short laugh.

"Let's just get down there while the fish are still biting," he joked, punching him in the arm lightly. Cooper beamed as he followed him down the dirt trail. It didn't take too long before they were at the water's edge and found a fallen tree to sit on. Harry opened his tackle box, pulling out a folded throwing net to catch some live bait. Cooper watched as he tossed the net into the water over a school of minnows, pulling it back to them  and dumping them in the bait bucket. They each reached in and grabbed a fish, piercing it on the hook to cast it back into the water. Now, they wait.

They exchanged fishing stories, going back and forth as they waited for a bite. Harry's line was the first to go taught and he snatched up his rod to start reeling. Just as his fish was getting close to the bank, Cooper's own fishing pole began to dip slightly from a few tentative nibbles. Just as Harry reeled it in all the way, Cooper's line shot off and he quickly started reeling as well.

He unhooked the big mouth bass, inspecting it with a proud gaze. "Hell yeah, this'll cook up nicely," he said, placing it in the cooler he brought. Cooper's fish was putting up more of a struggle. He leaned back with all his body weight, biceps flexed and straining as he fought the fish. "Seems like you caught a lively one," Harry said. Cooper spared him a glance and a tight lipped smile; he would've definitely flashed him one of his signature thumbs up if he wasn't preoccupied.

After about 20 minutes he managed to bring the river monster in. It was a large male salmon, easily identifiable by the bright red coloring and large back hump that occurs during mating season. It was well over three feet and flopping on the bank. It seemed that trout weren't the only ones attracted to a green butt skunk.

At first, Cooper didn't know what to do with a fish this size. He placed his hands on it to lessen its flopping before straddling it. Placing one hand on its head to keep it pinned, he held his other out to Harry. "Pliers," he asked for the tool and he gifted it to him. Just as Cooper wrapped his hand around it, the salmon raised its ugly head up and bit his hand. When it flopped back down it yanked his arm down with it.

"Ow-hey!" Cooper exclaimed, steadying himself and smacking the top of its jaw until it released him. He pulled back his slightly bloody hand and removed the hook. He looked to his side and saw Harry stifling his laughter. "Yes I'm fine, thanks for your concern," he sassed, but the amused grin on his face let him know he was only teasing.

Harry was just short of cracking up. "Ihi'm sohorry, you okay?" he asked, grabbing some bandages.

"Yeah, just a few puncture wounds. Nothing I can't handle." He managed to pick up the still struggling fish and brought it back to the water's edge.

"After all that trouble, you're not keeping it?" he asked. Cooper shook his head and released it, watching it leave with a splash.

"Nope. Anything that puts up that hard of a fight deserves to live another day. Besides, I don't really have anywhere to cook it, and I'm not real big on salmon," he explained. He rinsed his wound and accepted the clean bandages, wrapping it up nice and tight.

"How very sporting of you," Harry said, and he meant it. He recast his rod as Cooper pulled out his recorder.

"Thank you," he said, flashing him a smile. "Update on the fishing. I just caught a large salmon and in the process of unhooking it, it bit me. Despite my tired arms and punctures, I found the experience enjoyable. It was... thrilling but not in the sense that I'm accustomed. It was a mundane excitement. Perhaps this feeling is what will help me contact the White Lodge."

He clicked it off and found Harry studying him. "Mundane excitement, huh?"

He nodded. "My line of work is often exciting, but the stakes are always higher. I find it refreshing to feel a rush of adrenaline when mine or someone else's life isn't on the line."

Harry shifted a little closer. "You really think this feeling might be what gets you to the White Lodge?" he questioned.

"I do. But I don't think it's one particular event or emotion that will get me there. From what I've read the optimal amount of endorphins and serotonin come from a range of feelings. Based on my study session at the library, I'd say that a mixture of excitement and laughter would be my best bet," he mused aloud.

"Too bad there's no comedians in town, I bet that would do the job," Harry mused. Cooper allowed himself to smirk.

"I suppose if I stare at that hat long enough, I just might burst into giggles," he said in a teasing manner. Harry's jaw dropped at the playful insult.

"Hey don't dis the hat!" he exclaimed, a hand flying up to cover the top of it protectively.

"Don't worry, it was more of a jab at your taste in fashion," he said good naturedly.

"I'll have you know that's worse. When did you get so sassy anyway?" Harry asked. He chuckled and poked his side in retaliation. The corner's of Cooper's mouth twitched as he flinched away.

"I can have my moments. I do spend a lot of time with Albert," he mused, rubbing the slight tingles from his side when suddenly it hit him. There really was no easier or faster way to pump his body full of adrenaline and endorphins, even if the reaction was more forced than voluntary. The results would be the same, wouldn't they? His eyes widened at the realization.

He clapped his hands together loudly, making Harry jump. "That's it!" he exclaimed, excitement showing on his face from his revelation.

Harry furrowed his brows in confusion. "What- Albert?" he questioned, not following Cooper's train of thought. He shook his head, smiling now that he finally had an answer to his dilemma.

"No, tickling," he clarified. Harry cocked his head, a smirk on his lips. He was intrigued.

"Didn't know you were ticklish Coop." If Harry squinted, he thought he could see the hint of a blush on his cheeks.

"I am, and it's a good thing because right now, it's the only thing I can think of that might work to get me to the White Lodge. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy fishing, but the bite did put a damper on my mood," he grumbled, glaring at his bandaged hand. You could start to see blood seep through the white cloth.

"So a last resort kinda thing?" Harry asked. And was Cooper crazy, or was he a little closer? Cooper nodded.

"Exactly. So uh, would you be so kind as to..." he trailed off, and in lieu of finishing his sentence he wiggled his fingers in the air, hoping he got the message. Oh he got it all right. Sheriff Truman was grinning like the cat who ate the canary.

"To tickle you?" he asked for clarification. The ghost of a blush on Cooper's cheeks darkened. "Yes that." Suddenly Harry was straddling his legs, pushing him down the rest of the way.

"Ya don't have to tell me twice!" he exclaimed.

"You don't have to seem so eager," Cooper said, already squirming. It was the last coherent thing he said before Truman's fingers began prodding his sides. He gasped and soft snickers began to fill the air. There was no point in trying to hold back; he'd be laughing soon enough regardless, and the whole point of this was to create the right concoction of emotions and chemicals in his brain to reach the White Lodge.

Harry kneaded his sides and Cooper yelped, hands instinctively shooting down to protect his sides. You'd think with all his special training that he'd be defending himself better, but he was only weakly slapping at his hands. To be fair, he was practicing a lot of self restraint by not just crawling into the river to save himself.

"You got a nice laugh Coop, ya know that?" Harry asked with a genuine smile. Cooper nodded, mouth open in a wide grin as laughter flowed freely from his mouth. "Ihihihi've been tohohold!"

"Whoa now, I can't have you going all cocky on me like that. Guess I'll just have to knock you down a peg," he teased, walking up his ribs. He shook his head and snorted, nose scrunched as Harry scratched between each rib. The higher his fingers climbed, the louder and more frantic his giggling became.

Just as Harry reached the top of his ribs, he stopped. Cooper sighed in relief, thinking he might be done. He wasn't so lucky.

"Do me a favor and lift your arms up," Harry said, not even trying to hide his mischievous smirk anymore. He curled in on himself, chuckling nervously and shook his head.

"Nohoho," he giggled, wrapping his arms around himself. Harry cocked his head, arching a brow.

"No?" he asked in amusement. Cooper shook his head again to confirm.

"And why not?" he asked, hands on his hips. The sight alone made Cooper feel giddy with anticipation.

"Ihi'm not supid Harry, I know you'll just tickle me more," he answered with a wide smile. Harry snorted out a short laugh.

"I know you're not. And I promise I won't," he said, hiding his crossed fingers behind his back. Cooper gave him a skeptical look. "That's a lie."

"Hey I said I'd promise! Have you ever known me to break a promise?" he tried to convince him. He eyed the sheriff up and down and decided there was a 50/50 chance he'd just attack again, and this little game of theirs was fun, he had to admit. So he took that chance, already knowing the outcome.

He lifted his arms slowly, tentatively as he watched the other carefully. His arms were halfway above his head when Harry smirked down at him, flashing his crossed fingers out from behind his back. Cooper's eyes widened and he moved to bring his arms back down, but alas, it was too late. He immediately darted for his exposed hollows, scribbling over the shirt clad skin. His flannel didn't offer much protection and he was soon thrown into deep hysterics.

His arms came crashing down, laughter freely escaping his smiling mouth. He only succeeded in trapping his hands, however he knew better than to try raising his arms a second time. "You lihihihahar!" he squealed. Harry smirked and picked up the pace, grinning wider when the agent's high pitched giggling turned more frantic.

"If you cross your fingers it's a freebie," he claimed. Cooper shook his head, grappling to shove his friend's hands away.

"Thahahat's such bullshihihit!" he called him out. And yeah, it was bullshit, but Harry couldn't let him get away with saying it was.

"Think you just sealed your fate Coop," he teased, kneading his belly and sending him into a steadier stream of giggles.

"Nohoho dohohon't!" he whined, legs kicking weakly, or rather, weakly for a special agent like himself. Harry scoffed, not even trying to hide how much fun he was having.

"Don't? Don't what?" he asked, drumming his fingers. Cooper's giggles sputtered out as he shook his head, fist pounding against the ground.

"Ihihi'm nohohot falling for thahat one," he forced out through his laughter.

"Falling for what? I can't know what not to do if you won't tell me," he said, sounding so innocent that you almost wanted to believe him. Almost. Cooper wouldn't make that mistake again.

"Dohohon't mahake it wohohorse!" he pleaded. Harry shook his head in "defeat" and clicked his tongue.

"Damn, I was really hoping you'd fall for that," he lamented, hands moving down to squeeze his hips. Cooper convulsed, jolting up slightly and trapping his wrists. They held each other's gaze for a moment, Cooper's eyes full of an excited kind of fear while Harry's shone with an evil sort of mischief.

"Bad spot?" he taunted, giving another squeeze. He evoked the same reaction as before, but this time with an added squeak. Cooper went completely still, cheeks rosy as he gasped for breath. There was no use in lying, he'd be proven wrong anyway. He nodded shyly, looking anywhere but Harry's smug face.

"Good." He immediately drilled his thumbs into the divots of his hips as he gently squeezed them with the rest of his hand. Cooper instantly burst into a tidal wave of cackles that drowned out the sounds of nature around them. Even when thrown in hysterics, it was still a joyous, beautiful sound. It was smooth and had a deep tenor to it that made you feel warm inside. His nose crinkled adorably, and his mouth was open wide in a constant smile, allowing his melodious laugh to ring through the air.

“How ya holdin’ up?” Harry asked just to check in. Cooper was too busy laughing his heart out to answer with words, so he flashed him a thumbs up instead. He shook his head and chuckled at his signature gesture.

Encouraged by his reassurance, he continued his journey downward by squeezing his thighs. Cooper snorted loudly and his blush darkened.

"Aw Coop, I didn't know you snorted! Do it again," he taunted, pinching and scribbling his thighs until he snorted again.

"Nohohooo," he whined in embarrassment, hiding his face in his hands. Harry was having the time of his life.

"Remember bud, you asked for this," he reminded smugly.

"Ihihi knohohow! Shuhut up!"

"I don't think I will. In fact, I think teasing makes it better, don't you agree?" he asked, scratching along his inner thighs. Cooper squealed and clamped his legs together to protect himself.

"Ihihihi said shuhuhut uhuhup!"

"I'll take that as a yes then," he smirked, and even winked at him. Oh he would never live this down. Not if Harry could help it.

He started skittering his fingers atop his knees, and Cooper shrieked, legs kicking out frantically. "Nohohot thehehere!"

Sheriff Truman didn't listen and instead squeezed around his kneecaps. Cooper tried to curl in on himself, laying back on the ground when he failed due to laughing too hard. Though when Harry went to scratch the backs of his knees, he barely laid a finger on him before a fist connected with his face.

Harry recoiled and grabbed his bleeding nose, letting out a pained chuckle. "Damn, ya got me good Coop," he said, still managing a smile. A hand covered Cooper's mouth from shock.

"I am so sorry Harry! I tried to refrain from hurting you, but my instincts took over," he quickly apologized. Harry shook his head, grabbing his other hand and pulling him up to a sitting position.

"Heh, it's okay. Guess I got what I deserve," he mused. His nose had already stopped bleeding, but it left a thin trickle above his upper lip that he wiped away.

"You were just helping me out," he said, patting his shoulder. "Thanks by the way," he said, cheeks still tinged pink.

"Any time," he said with a warm smile. "So, did you have as much fun as I did?" he asked teasingly.

"I'm not answering that," Cooper said, looking away. Harry barked out a laugh.

"I think you did." The FBI agent only hummed. Harry spotted his tape recorder and nabbed it.

"Hey give it!" Harry held him back by placing a hand on his chest and pushing him away as he pressed the record button.

"Hi Diane, Sheriff Truman here. I think it's safe to say Agent Cooper will be successful in his resilient efforts to reach the White Lodge. That's all." He turned it off, wearing a smug grin.

"Proud of yourself?" Cooper asked in amusement.

"Oh very. It's not every day that I get to reduce the famous Agent Cooper to a giggly mess," he said, wiggling his fingers at him. He subtly curled in on himself, chuckling nervously.

"R-right. And it won't be a daily occurrence, unless you want retaliation," he warned.

"We'll see about that," he smirked. They were both distracted by a tug on Cooper's line. He grabbed his fishing rod and started reeling it in.

When they returned to the sheriff’s office, Andy gasped seeing Truman’s swollen, bruised nose and Cooper’s wrapped hand.

“Good lord you two did you get in a fight or somethin’?” he asked with concern. Harry smirked and nodded, casting a glance towards the agent. 

“You could say that.”

Cooper quickly stepped in before he could reveal anything too embarrassing. “Nonsense, I got bit by a fish and his line broke when he was reeling one in and he smacked himself in the face with the fishing rod,” he easily lied. Harry’s smirk grew as he hummed in “agreement.”

~~~~

That night, Cooper had a peaceful yet strange dream. He opened his eyes to find he was laying on a white fainting couch. At first he thought he was in a room, but upon inspecting his surroundings, he realized he was in a vast open plain. The floor was marble tile and the empty space around him looked to be white at first glance, but was in fact an extremely pale pink.

Out of the nothingness walked Laura Palmer. Instead of the low cut black dress she normally wore in his visions and dreams, she wore a white flowing gown. It billowed behind her even though there was no wind. Cooper sat up on the chaise lounge and stared at her as she approached.

"Windom Earle is not the biggest threat," she spoke softly and clearly, her voice like a bell. It was strikingly different than her Black Lodge counterpart. "The other you is." He leaned forward in his seat.

"The other me?" he asked. She nodded, a halo of light illuminating her from behind.

"In another world he escapes. Use your second chance wisely and leave the Black Lodge before he does," she advised.

"How can I do that?" he asked, soaking in every piece of knowledge she offered up.

"The Black Lodge is disorienting. You must not show even an ounce of fear or self doubt. In that other world, you did not leave until 20 years later. In another, the Lodge annihilated your soul." Cooper stared at her intently.

"And how do you know these things won't happen again?" he asked.

"Because infinite universes bring infinite possibilities. Use the tools I gave you and you will receive a different outcome," she said. Laura walked up to him and cupped his face in her hands, placing a kiss on his forehead. She leaned in and whispered, "Thank you for giving me justice."

"You're welcome," he said back. His vision faded to white, then to pitch darkness. He jolted awake with a gasp, reeling from everything he had learned. His chest heaved and he reached for the recorder on his bedside table.

"Diane you won't believe it, but I just had the strangest dream..."

#dale cooper #agent dale cooper #harry truman #sheriff truman #officer hawk #officer andy #lucy #officer lucy #? #twin peaks #twin peaks fic #twin peaks tickle fic #ticklish!cooper

[inkweaver22-blr]

HOLY. MOLY.

This has to be the Lóng-est chapter I’ve written so far! It took me almost two whole days to complete!

Please enjoy the fruits of my labor as we all see what Tang gets up to next!

AO3 Link

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Scattered Cicadas - Chapter Seven: Scaled Siblings

Tang wakes up in Mei's mansion.

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Tang woke from the usual dream signaling the start of a new cycle when his alarm went off. With a sigh he sat up and reflexively clapped his hands. He blinked a bit in surprise when the lights turned on in response. He quickly put on his glasses and looked around.

The room he was in was not one he recognized. It was much larger than he was accustomed too, being the same size as either of the apartments he usually lived in. The opulent decorations also screamed wealth and old money to Tang, something he certainly never had.

As he climbed out of the king sized bed, Tang began to suspect where he was. The amount of green accents and jade adornments everywhere made it fairly obvious.

He was in the Lóng family’s mansion.

Shivering a bit as he rubbed his bare arms, (apparently this version of himself slept shirtless), he quickly made his way over the huge mirror that was standing upright in between a fancy dresser and antique armoire. He needed to know what was going on.

Tang’s mouth hung open when he saw his reflection.

He was young.

He was buff.

Tang gaped at his own body for a few moments. Sure, the scholar had never technically been out of shape in most timelines, but dang he had never been this fit before either.

Blushing in embarrassment once he realized he had just been staring at himself for over a minute, Tang did his best to refocus.

(But damn did he look good.)

He was much younger than usual as well. If the scholar had to guess, he’d say he was only a few years older than MK and Mei now.

He really needed to find out what was happening.

Tang took a breath and began his remembering ritual.

“I am Lóng Tang. I am the current heir to the branch of the Lóng family descended from Huánglóng, the Yellow Dragon.”

What the hell?!

Tang rubbed his temples as he felt a headache coming on. He thought being Tripitaka had been confusing enough, but this was on an entirely different level of unexpected. He needed to keep going or he’d get stuck on this single fact for much too long.

“Every family descended from a dragon traditionally takes on the name Lóng. Even though we aren’t tied by blood, all the Lóng branches consider each other family and treat each other as distant relatives.”

Fascinating, but that didn’t really help ease his confusion much. Next detail.

“I’ve been living with my aunt, uncle, and cousin, who are descended from Ao Run, the Dragon King of the West Sea, for the last four years.”

Well that explained why he was in Mei’s mansion.

“I’ve done so at the request of my aunt and uncle, who are hoping that by setting a good example, Mei will learn from me, grow out of her childish pursuits, and become a proper heir.”

What. The. Hell.

Tang searched his memories thoroughly. There was no way Mei’s parents would have said such a horrible thing to him directly.

He came up with no concrete evidence of his aunt and uncle having ever implied that they found Mei lacking in any way. It seemed this version of himself had simply made that assumption himself.

Tang rolled his eyes. He certainly knew how dangerous making assumptions could be. He needed more information to get a better conclusion.

“Luckily for Mei, I find her to be fun and do my best to act as a buffer between her and her parents. She introduced me to her friend MK back in my first year living here, and he quickly befriended me once I began sharing stories about the Monkey King with him. We all like to hang out at MK’s adoptive father’s noodle shop whenever we all have some free time.”

Tang smiled in relief. At least some things never changed.

“Right now, I should be making my way to the mansion’s training room for my daily workout before heading to my job at the city library.”

Tang blinked as he finally checked the time. 5:17 AM. Eurgh. He should not be feeling this energetic this early.

With a resigned sigh, Tang pulled out a set of exercise clothes from the ridiculously nice dresser and got dressed.

He had always heard exercising was a good way to help clear your head when you had a lot to think about. At least, that’s what a lot of martial arts fiction implied. He hoped that it worked the same in practice.

----------

Tang had never felt so in control of his own body before. The way it seemed to flow from one movement to the next as he began some warm up sets was extremely satisfying.

Just as satisfying was the fact that he was trained in martial arts in this timeline. He never had a real desire to fight, but just knowing how to defend himself was a bit reassuring with what he knew would be coming in the future.

He let his mind wander a bit as he let his muscle memory lead him through his pre-workout routine.

This cycle had broken Tang’s previously held conventions on what he had come to expect within these timelines. He had originally categorized them into five types.

The ones where there were no changes to the original timeline.

The ones where there were only small, relatively insignificant changes.

The ones where new events outside of the ones in the original timeline occurred.

The ones where he was the immortal Tripitaka instead of just his reincarnation.

Finally, there were the ones that combined any number of changes from the previous three types.

Tang moved on to a second, more difficult set as he pondered on this shift in perspective. It was obvious this was a new, sixth type of cycle he simply hadn’t encountered before. This one had completely rewritten his and Mei’s background, making huge alterations to their past that would surely affect the coming future events.

Tang felt a shiver of fear creep down his spine but kept his form steady.

Now that his personal history was almost completely unrecognizable, what did that mean for the “No Interference” rule? It didn’t seem to apply whenever Tang himself didn’t know what the outcome of events could be. So with him having an altered life, did that mean the outcomes of the events he knew of would have been altered as well? Could he get more involved than before now as he never knew what those outcomes would have been? Perhaps he couldn’t directly affect the outcomes, but surely he wouldn’t be punished for offering a bit of backup and support now that he could provide it.

Right?

He smoothly moved onto his final warm up set as another complication occurred to him.

This wouldn’t be the only cycle that would drastically change his and his family’s past. Like the other variants, now that he had experienced one, more would begin to show up with increasing frequency as time went on.

What worried Tang was that they would also share the unpredictability of the others. The vast amount of probable changes were too numerous to even begin guessing what might happen until a cycle began and he could remind himself of his history within it.

He supposed that there was nothing he could do about that until those cycles actually happened, so there was no real point in fretting over it now. He let his worries go as he finished his warm up and took a deep breath.

Tang felt good.

Better than good, actually, he felt energized. Charged up, so to speak. It was exhilarating.

With a grin, Tang focused on the part of himself that was dragon in origin. The energy that swirled within him was powerful; a strange mix of wild strength and immovable sturdiness.

He let warm power fill him as he held out his hand. In a flash of golden-yellow light, the young scholar summoned his family’s own sacred weapon to him. Tang examined it in awe.

Dàdì Zhī Yá.

Fang of the Earth.

It was a masterful work of art.

The magical guandao had been a gift to his ancestors from Huánglóng himself and, just like Mei’s Dragon Blade, seemed to be made entirely out of jade.

It wasn’t the same green jade however. It was made up of three other types of the precious mineral.

The intricately designed blade was a bright yellow jade, matching the color of the scales of its creator. The shaft of the weapon was a rich brown jade, symbolizing the element of Earth Huánglóng was associated with. Finally, the connector for the shaft and blade and the counter-weighted capstone at the butt of the shaft were a deep black jade. It was said to represent the color of ink as Huánglóng had supposedly gifted the knowledge of writing to mankind.

The only part of the weapon that wasn’t made of jade was the royal purple silk tassel that hung from the connecting piece near the blade. It complimented the earthy colors of the rest of the guandao rather nicely.

Tang took the weapon in both hands and got into the proper stance to begin his drills.

He had earned the right to wield the Fang of the Earth roughly six years ago according to his memories and had practiced diligently with it ever since.

Being chosen to be worthy of possessing it had forged a sort of connection between him and the guandao. Normally, the weight alone should have made it impossible for him to lift it, but the connection allowed him to hold it with little difficulty. He had still struggled a bit with how heavy it was despite that, but the years of training had helped him gain the strength and muscle to wield it with incredible precision and control.

Simply being able to pick it up wasn’t the only benefit to being connected to his family’s sacred weapon. It seemed to bond with the dragon energy within him, allowing the scholar to summon it to his side at will. The only drawback was that his hands had to be completely free to do so.

He wondered if the Dragon Blade worked similarly for Mei back in his original timeline.

Tang swung the guandao around skillfully, thinking about his cousin in this cycle.

Lóng Xiǎojiāo. Mei.

The young woman was an endless fountain of optimism and positivity. She had a passion for life and its experiences. Riding her motorcycle was just one of the ways she connected to her innermost self and channeled her enthusiasm for existence.

She was fiercely loyal to her friends and family. She may not be formally trained in a fighting style, but if you hurt her precious people you’d face her wrath.

Mei was generally cheerful and outgoing in most aspects of her life. The single exception had been her relation with her family and their legacy.

Tang frowned as he continued his drills.

In the original timeline, Mei had constantly been under the pressure to behave properly. At least she had until the Dragon Blade had been stolen and she unlocked its power. By embracing being a part of her family despite their differences and by being herself, she had become a worthy successor to her clan’s lineage.

But that was still four months away according to the current date. This was certainly the earliest he’d even woken up before the original events.

His presence here wasn’t helping matters. While he and Mei had become good friends, he couldn’t help but feel that she thought she was constantly being compared to him by her parents.

Again, he had no strong proof about whether that was the case in this cycle. It was just a suspicion he had.

Tang hummed to himself, trying to think of some way to fix this problem while slashing downwards with the Fang of the Earth.

He couldn’t do anything overt that could change things so that she accepted her place in her family too early. He was sure that violated the “No Interference” rule despite the changed history.

Perhaps he could try subtly raising Mei’s self confidence? But how could he go about doing that?

Tang twirled the guandao around him before ending his first set.

As he looked down at his own family’s legacy and heritage, he couldn’t help but think that learning to use the weapon had made him more sure of himself over the years.

Tang blinked.

Huh.

Perhaps he could use that.

He started into his next set of drills, already brainstorming about what he would need to make his plan work.

----------

Tang was certain his earlier suspicions about Mei’s parents were, thankfully, completely wrong. The dinners they shared as a family proved to him that they loved their daughter completely. They just didn’t see eye-to-eye on some things.

He was also able to get their permission and help with the idea he had. That showed how much they actually cared considering the things he had asked for weren’t something people only obsessed with their image and wealth would agree to.

It took nearly three weeks to prepare but he was finally ready.

“Uncle, do you remember that issue we discussed a few weeks ago,” he asked at dinner that evening.

“Oh, is it ready?”

“Yes Uncle.”

“Wonderful! Mei darling,” his uncle addressed the young woman, who eyed him warily.

“Yeah dad?”

“Tang here has come up with a bit of a surprise for you. Would you be willing to join him in the training room after dinner so that he may share it with you?”

“Uhh… I guess so,” Mei agreed hesitantly, glancing over at her older cousin.

“Don’t worry. It’s a good surprise,” Tang reassured.

“It’s also one we support and gave our full permission for,” Mei’s mother added. “Listen to what your cousin has to say and try not to dismiss it right away, dear.”

Tang winced a little as Mei glared down at her plate.

He clamped down at the growl that wanted to roll from his throat at the slightly tactless comment. Dragon instincts had been interesting to deal with these past few weeks. Especially the protective ones.

Dinner finished soon after and Tang led Mei to the training room.

“So what’s this big surprise you’ve got for me,” Mei asked, slouching as she looked around the room.

“Don’t sound too excited now,” Tang drawled as he pulled out a wrapped package.

“I don’t know. Something that has my parents' full support sounds soooo cool,” Mei snarked, earning a snort from the scholar.

“Trust me on this. You’ll like it,” Tang said, slowly unwrapping the item. “How would you like to learn how to wield a sword?”

“Wait, what?” Mei straightened her posture in surprise. She gasped when Tang finally unveiled what he was holding.

A replica of the Dragon Blade.

“Wha- But- How?!” Mei gaped at the sword. It wasn’t an exact copy, but it had the same dimensions as the original.

“Your parents allowed me to commission a copy of the Dragon Blade so that I can begin teaching you how to use it.”

That had been a bit of a hard sell. He had to agree to only go through a smith of their choice and all schematics of the blade had to be destroyed afterwards. But they had gone through with it, at least once he explained it was for Mei’s benefit.

Mei’s expression flickered between several emotions before settling on anger.

Uh oh.

“Oh I get it! This is because I’m ‘undisciplined’ isn’t it,” she bit out, a growl rising in her voice. “I need to be reined in! Taught how to be a dignified heir to the clan like you, right?!”

“No! That’s not-” Tang took a breath. He wouldn’t get through to her if he started yelling too. “That’s not what’s going on here, Mei.”

“Oh? Well it sure looks like it is to me!”

“Will you please let me explain?”

“Ugh!” Mei threw her arms in the air before crossing them and looking away in a huff. “Fine! But once you’re done I’m out of here.”

“That’s okay. No one said you had to go through with this if you didn’t want to,” he reassured. That seemed to make some of the tension ease out of her.

“First, this was my idea, not your parents’. The only thing I needed permission from them was to make this replica.

“As for why... I just wanted to spend more time with you is all.”

“Huh?” Mei looked up at the nervous scholar. “But we hang out all the time!”

“Yes, but that’s usually with MK as well. Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” Tang hastily added at her sudden glare. “I love the kid, really I do!

“But we don’t really do anything that’s just for the two of us. Since I enjoy training with a weapon, I thought it could be something we could share?”

Mei had her brows furrowed in uncertainty.

“But… Why go through the trouble of making a copy of the Dragon Blade then? Couldn’t you just teach me how to wield a guandao as well? That is the weapon you actually know how to use.”

“I suppose that’s a fair point,” Tang conceded. “But what about when you claim the real Dragon Blade for yourself? Shouldn’t you know how to properly use it when that happens?”

“When I-” Mei’s breath caught. “You think I-! I’m not-! My parents would never-!”

“Mei, Mei!” Tang placed a hand on her shoulder and gave a comforting squeeze. “Take a breath. In and out.”

The young woman took a few deep breaths, calming herself. Then she stared into Tang’s eyes, looking for any deception.

“Do you really think mom and dad would ever let me use the blade?”

“I’m not sure what they might do.” That was a slight lie, but he couldn’t force her into a realization about her family too early. He was pushing it as it was just by telling her he thought she’d get the blade.

“But I do know you. You’re optimistic. You’re funny. You’re loyal. You’re incredibly brave. I’m sure that just by being yourself everything will turn out.” That was not a lie. His cousin was all those things and he admired her for it.

Mei, who had tears in her eyes, launched herself at him and pulled him into a hug. Her grip was powered by her dragon strength, but luckily for Tang this time, he had his own so he wasn’t crushed in the embrace.

“Thank you Tang.”

“No problem, Mei.” He held her for a moment before pulling away and asked, “So does this mean you want to learn swordplay?”

“Heck yeah it does!” Mei pumped her fists into the air. “This is going to be awesome!”

“Good.” Tang gave a mischievous smirk. “Then I expect you to be here bright and early tomorrow morning.”

Mei froze in her celebrations.

“Uh… How early, exactly” she asked nervously.

Tang’s grin was filled with too many fangs as his eyes sparkled with humor.

“5:30 sharp.”

“NOOOOOOOO!” Mei’s dramatic cry of horror and slump to the floor made Tang burst out in laughter.

Who knew teasing a younger relative could be so much fun?

----------

Tang grit his teeth as he slashed through another bull clone with Fang of the Earth.

It was finally the day of Demon Bull King’s invasion and the group had just returned from the volcanic ring where MK had seemed to perish. They were fighting their way through the army of bull clones in an attempt to get to the center of the city where Demon Bull King was.

What they were planning to do once they reached him, Tang still had no clue no matter how many timelines he lived through.

Tang dodged a strike from his left and countered with a quick sweep of his guandao.

There were definitely way more clones than there were originally. He supposed that this was whatever higher power that controlled the cycle's way of balancing out his ability to actually help out.

He dispatched the group of enemies surrounding him and looked around.

There was Pigsy who was beating away clones with a loose pipe. Sandy stood next to the chef, deflecting any attacks that came their way with two trash can lids. Where was-

Tang’s pulse quickened when he heard Mei scream.

He searched frantically, dodging or redirecting the strikes coming his way when-

There!

Mei was backed up against a building, surrounded by clones. She was holding a gash on her arm and the broken remains of her training sword lay at her feet.

She looked scared.

Tang could feel it as his eyes narrowed into slits and a menacing growl tore from his throat. With a roar of fury, he leapt into the air towards Mei.

He let his power loose, manifesting an avatar of his dragon form behind him as he filled the Fang of Earth with golden-yellow energy.

“STAY AWAY FROM MY SISTER!”

He landed in front of Mei and shouted in rage as he stabbed the ground with the guandao. A shock wave of power spread through the earth around them, causing it to spike up to stab any clone it passed.

The energy dissipated once all the bull clones in the area had been destroyed. Satisfied they were safe for the moment, Tang swiftly turned around and began checking over Mei.

“Are you alright Mei?! What am I saying, of course you aren't! You’re bleeding! Let me see that.” The dragon scholar fussed over the young woman, inspecting the wound before tearing off the hem of his robe to serve as a bandage.

“Did… Did you just call me your sister?” Mei’s eyes were wide as she stared at him.

Tang froze for a moment. Had he?

Oh. He supposed he had.

Well that explained where the fondness and protective feelings he had developed for her over the course of their daily training came from.

Tang finished tying off the bandage before looking at Mei.

“Is… Is that okay,” he asked nervously. “Because if you aren’t okay with it I won’t call you that again- oof!”

He was cut off by Mei launching herself at him and hugging him tightly.

“Of course it's okay you goof!” He could hear her sniffles as she fought back tears.

“Oh! Well… That’s, uh, good,” Tang relaxed into the hug as his nervousness melted away.

Mei snickered and pulled away, giving him a blinding smile.

“Come on, big bro. We’ve got a city to save!”

Tang felt his own face light up as he picked up Fang of the Earth and followed his sister to regroup with Pigsy and Sandy.

He knew they were no match for Demon Bull King and would have to wait for MK’s arrival to defeat him, but right now Tang felt like he could take on anything.

----------

Tang grew accustomed to being able to help in fights. They had all been scaled up in scope so that while his support was useful, it was never the tipping point that could change the outcome into something different.

The cycle moved on swiftly.

He celebrated with Mei and her parents when she obtained ownership of the real Dragon Blade.

He fought in their resistance when the Demon Bull King invaded a second time.

He did his best to be there for MK when the signs of his stress began to show.

All too soon, the day of training in the desert came.

Lady Bone Demon’s attack was just as brutal as ever.

However, when he and the rest of the group jumped to attack her once MK got caught, Tang instinctively dodged out of the way of her retaliation.

Before he could think of the potential consequences of attempting to change the outcome, he began to slash downwards with the Fang of the Earth.

Only to be stopped dead in the air when the Mayor grabbed the blade with no effort.

Tang felt dread crawl up his spine as the demon smiled nonchalantly at him. Flashbacks to that early cycle triggered in his mind, causing him to freeze up.

The Mayor casually ripped the guandao from Tang’s loose grasp, tossing it over his shoulder like a discarded piece of trash. Then he punched the dragon scholar with enough force to launch him back onto the ship.

Tang could only assume the events continued as normal from there.

He was too busy having a panic attack to notice.

Years of training and experience and still he was powerless against that man! He vaguely acknowledged he had started to cry at some point.

“Tang! Big brother! It’s okay. He’s gone. We got away.” Mei was holding him as he sobbed.

“M-mei?”

“I’m here, big brother. We’re safe.”

Tang began to breathe deeply in order to calm himself. He wanted to be composed when Wukong showed up with MK so as not to worry them too much.

He hugged Mei fiercely before pulling away.

“T-thanks, little sister,” he said with a shaky smile. She just smiled back and helped him to his feet.

As he leaned against the younger woman, Tang couldn’t help but feel extremely lucky to have gotten to know her like this.

She was fierce, loyal, brave, and kind.

She was the best sister someone could have ever asked for.

----------

Welcome to the Golden Dragon Tang AU!

This is my own personal creation, and most of the prominent details (minus Tang knowing the future from timeline jumping) are laid out in this chapter. If I got any of the details about the Yellow Dragon wrong I apologize! I'm not a mythology expert.

A guandao is basically the Chinese equivalent of a glaive; a short sword mounted on a 1-2 meter pole. I may get around to drawing Fang of the Earth at some point. Also please forgive me if the Chinese for the name is wrong for I am but a humble google translate user.

In case you haven’t noticed, a few of the chapters have been dedicated strictly to character studies of the other members of the Monkie Kid crew through Tang’s perspective. Mei’s just happened to occur at the same time as my really long debut of the cool AU I had made up! Also does anyone have some good fanon names for Mei’s parents? I was dying never referring to them by name.

And yes, Tang does still have some issues with the Mayor. I’m sure that won’t be too relevant in the future.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought and see you next time!

#Ink Writes #Monkie Kid #Scattered Cicadas #Golden Dragon Tang AU #Tang #Tang Monkie Kid #Mei #Lóng Xiǎojiāo #Mei's Parents #MK #Pigsy #Sandy #Demon Bull King #The Mayor #Sun Wukong

[squadrablog]

Would you consider a reader (whatever gender interests you)/Ghiaccio fic? Scenario: he's trying to impress the person he's dating with White Album tricks to varying success. Most Ghiaccio content, regardless of if its reader!fic or not, writes him as abusive, demeaning, or boils him down to angry screaming and nothing else, so it'd be refreshing to see something that's not that!

I have to admit that the use of the word “tricks” really threw me off, but I pieced together some sort of coherent scenario based on the premise. Most of my work went into the other part of your request, because I 100% agree with your thoughts on Ghiaccio’s typical characterization. I hope you like it! (Also this goes for this fic as well as what I’ve written before but I haven’t mentioned it, my use of italics is preserved on Ao3 but not on tumblr. Just a heads up.)

Ghiaccio x They/them Reader (some feminine language used)

Ao3 Mirror Here.

Word Count: 5393

Warnings: Uhhh. None this time as far as I can tell!

Under cut for length!

“So are you going to help or not?” Ghiaccio grumbled under his breath. Formaggio was currently leaned back leisurely in the base’s common room recliner with a smug grin on his face, basking in the rare moment of Ghiaccio’s humility.

“Sorry, sorry,” Formaggio said, finally leaning forward, placing his elbows on his knees and chin on top of his knuckles. “I just don’t want to forget the time that Ghiaccio came to me for relationship advice.”

Ghiaccio was practically biting down on his tongue to keep from snapping at him, but the truth was Formaggio was the most experienced in the art of romance relative to all his other squadmates and he really was desperate for any help he could get.

What else was he going to do, ask Melone? Yeah, right.

“I just need your help deciphering some shit they said, don’t get a big head about it,” Ghiaccio said, leaning back in his spot on the couch and crossing his arms over his chest. “You’re better than me at...  people.” It was a tough thing to admit out loud, but Ghiaccio’s social awkwardness was of course no secret to anyone who knew him. For all the talent he had reading people’s intentions in the midst of a battle, when it came to his interpersonal relationships he felt less capable. Of course, that was on other people and their arbitrary social conventions, not him.

But you were different. You said what you meant and spoke in plain language without ulterior meanings or motivations, and you accommodated him and his idiosyncrasies in all the ways that mattered. In fact, you were such a nice change of pace from other people that he tended to overthink everything you said out of habit, projecting hidden meanings where they normally would have existed with others.

“Lay it on me, dude. I’ve gotcha,” Formaggio assured him, his smirk turning into something a bit more cordial and supportive. Ghiaccio let out a deep exhale before talking again.

“We were on a date and I don’t remember what we were even talking about, but they give me this… weird smile,” Ghiaccio began. “And they said ‘Ghiaccio, it’s okay to be more vulnerable around me.’ Said that I could ‘trust them,’ and that if things are going to get any more serious between us they want to see more of the ‘real me.’” He leaned forward as he steepled his fingers. “They know, don’t they?”

“Know what?” Formaggio asked, his eyebrow raised.

“What I do for a living, what else!? They figured it out and now they expect me to say it out loud,” Ghiaccio said, throwing his hands up in the air. “That’s what that means, right? The ‘real me’ they’re talking about?” Formaggio gave a small chuckle and Ghiaccio turned to shoot him a glare. What was so funny about your safety, as well as La Squadra’s, being compromised?

“Dude…” Formaggio said, trying his best to keep a straight face. “You’re fine, chill ou- I mean… calm down.” Ghiaccio mercifully let the original choice of words slide. “If they did know, that’s not how they’d bring it up. No, what they’re trying to tell you is,” Formaggio began, leaning over in the recliner towards the edge of the couch to clap his hand on Ghiaccio’s shoulder, looking him dead in the eyes, “you’re not romantic enough.”

Ghiaccio crinkled his nose at that, but tried to stop himself from getting immediately defensive. “What do you mean exactly?”

“I know you already know this, so don’t freak out if I actually say it, but you’re not exactly… the suavest guy. Or the best at flirting.”

“We’re already together, what do I have to flirt for?” Ghiaccio said, his eyes narrowing.

“See? That’s exactly what I mean! You said they like cute stuff and sweet foods and cuddling right? Someone like that definitely wants you getting a little mushy and lovey-dovey. Everything you say about them makes them out to be this real sweetheart, but the way you say it is always so… technical. So analytical!”

“They say my attention to detail is one of my best qualities,” Ghiaccio protested.

“I don’t doubt it. Look, you’ve got plenty of passion, and based on how much inane shit you know about them that I think they don’t even know about themself, you’re very attentive.” Formaggio might have chosen to say ‘neurotic’ instead, but it was obvious Ghiaccio genuinely loved you and he was trying to compliment him to soften his initial criticisms. “It just sounds like they’re looking for a different side from you as well. The charming heartthrob buried deep within that hard bitter exterior.”

“How is any of that the real me?” Ghiaccio asked, his eyebrows furrowed. Was this really what you had meant? Were you not satisfied by the way he was currently showing his affection? Did the ‘vulnerability’ you talked about really mean you wanted more sappy saccharine schlock?

“It isn’t… yet,” Formaggio said with a wink and a finger gun in his direction. “I’ve got a few ideas though that’ll spark that flame.”

“...I control ice,” Ghiaccio said flatly.

“That you do,” Formaggio said, his eyes twinkling. “That you do.”

---

“Hey, babe,” Ghiaccio said after you opened your front door for him, his posture a bit stiff, one hand behind his back, and his eyes staring at you intensely.

“Babe?” you asked with a laugh, raising your eyebrow. The usage of a nickname was strange enough on its own, but the way he said it was so wooden.

“Does that bother you?” he asked bluntly, his eyebrows furrowing in concentration. “Is there a name you prefer?”

“Whatever comes easiest,” you said with an amused smile.“Which for you is usually just my name, right?”

“I just thought I’d try it out,” he said with a shrug, trying to look unaffected by how you had brought attention to the unnatural way he said it. “Anyway, I got you this.”

Ghiaccio usually never came to your apartment empty handed. Before picking you up for a date he always met you at the door with the intention of handing off whatever he had before the two of you headed out. While they weren’t exactly ‘gifts,’ he always brought exactly what you needed, usually before you had even realized you needed it.

One time he came over and saw that you were low on milk, and the next day before you two headed out he had a gallon in his hand when you opened the door for him. Another time he brought a new lightbulb for the lamp in your living area, and once he replaced the old one you couldn’t believe you had been living in such awful lighting conditions for so long without realizing it. It had been the right wattage, right size, and it even had the LED filaments you liked that gave the light a warm natural texture.

Today he had a box of chocolates. You took the box and gave them a look-over. It clearly wasn’t from a grocery store; they looked expensive. Needlessly so. Sometimes Ghiaccio would spend a little extra on things he knew you really needed or things that you had personally expressed you wanted. You liked chocolates well enough, but they weren’t exactly your favorite, and you were pretty sure he already knew that.

“Fancy,” you murmured. “What’s the occasion?” You smiled up at him, tilting your head to the side. While you of course appreciated the gesture and were not ungrateful to receive free chocolate, it was very out of character for him and you were beginning to get suspicious.

“Do I need an excuse to treat you?” he asked, scratching the back of his head a bit sheepishly.

“I guess not. Thank you very much, Ghiaccio. I really appreciate it.” You said it genuinely, and you gave him one of your sweet smiles that always made him smile back involuntarily. You turned around to head to the kitchen and set them on the counter. “Let me just get my jacket and we’ll head out!” you called back at him.

“The weather is going to be warm today,” Ghiaccio blurted out, a bit too quickly. “I don’t think you’ll need it.” You turned around and your eyes raked over him before you met his gaze again.

“But you need one?”

He was indeed wearing a red athletic jacket, to match his glasses, over his black turtleneck shirt. He turned away from your eyes. “I dressed before I checked,” he mumbled as an excuse.

You supposed it seemed warm enough out, even if you thought you should bring your jacket just in case it got chilly later since the seasons were changing. But that still didn’t give a reasonable explanation for Ghiaccio’s behavior right now. You acquiesced, which seemed to appease him, and headed out with him to his car. You’d ask him what was on his mind once you were on the road.

“Hey, what’s that?” Ghiaccio asked suddenly, pointing to the side as the two of you approached his car in your complex’s parking lot. You followed the direction of his finger before you suddenly lost your footing on a smooth slippery surface, yelping and falling forward towards the asphalt in a mess of flailing limbs.

You were saved, however, by Ghiaccio’s arms catching you as you collided with his chest, awkwardly clutching at him, a bit frazzled by the near-fall.

“Watch your step,” he said, with something playful about his tone. You glanced up and he was giving you what looked like a friendly smile, although it didn’t reach his eyes. Usually if this kind of thing happened he’d be cursing under his breath as he fussed over you, making sure you were alright. While you were glad he wasn’t getting worked up right now, it still stood out as yet another strange change in behavior.

“Thanks…” you breathed out, righting yourself. His arms were wrapped around you just a moment longer than they needed to be, and when he let go you turned around to look at the ground, only to see nothing of interest. “What did I even slip on?”

“I don’t know, but I’m right here if you slip on anything else,” Ghiaccio said, his hand slapping down on your shoulder. You gave him an incredulous look, and a small huff. Now that you actually had time to process it you had to ask yourself what the hell happened. Was that fall somehow on purpose? If you didn’t know Ghiaccio any better you’d think he was just trying to play the dashing hero there. But you did know him better, which is why it didn’t add up.

“I probably wouldn’t have slipped if you hadn’t distracted me,” you asked, your eyes narrowing before you turned back towards the direction he had pointed earlier. “What were you even trying to show me?” It seemed like he didn’t have an explanation ready, fumbling over his words.

“Sorry,” was what he settled on, facing away from your gaze, his cheeks saturated with a bit more red as he looked properly embarrassed. Sorry for what exactly you weren’t entirely sure since it wasn’t an explanation, but you would drop it for the moment, if only to give him the proper time to come up with the right words. Obviously there was something deeper on his mind that was making him act strange, and when that was the case he needed time to reflect before he spoke so it didn’t come out as a frenzied incoherent mess.

It was quiet in the car at first, as he scrunched his eyebrows up while he got lost in thought. Once you had been driving for a bit he finally spoke. “You know I’m committed to this relationship, right?” he asked, his tone wavering just a bit.

You smiled. “Of course I know that. You show me that every time we’re together.”

“But I’ve never said it,” he said, sparing half a second to glance at you before his eyes were back on the road.

“You don’t need to.” You set your elbow down on the center console and turned towards him. “You’ve been really weird since you picked me up. Is everything okay, Ghiaccio?”

He quickly glanced over again and let out a small sigh. “I just want today’s date to be special.”

You gave him a quizzical look, which he couldn’t see, before leaning back in your chair. You hadn’t made any grand plans for today other than going for a walk at the park and getting some dinner together later in the evening, but perhaps Ghiaccio had planned some sort of surprise that he was nervous about? You’d let his weird behavior slide and not prompt him for details for now, as curious as you were, if it meant you were going to get a proper explanation eventually.

---

Ghiaccio knew he was already off to a bad start. Formaggio made it all sound so easy, but it seemed like the more he tried to turn up the charm the more awkward it made things. He hadn’t wanted to orchestrate a situation that would cause you to slip on some ice he summoned with White Album, but Formaggio said that saving you would get you all flustered. You mostly seemed annoyed. Ghiaccio just felt like an asshole.

Why did he spend so much money on chocolates when he could think of a dozen other sweets you’d enjoy way more? Formaggio said chocolates were ‘classic’ and the price tag would show just how thoughtful he was. He had spent so much time trying to find the highest quality chocolate possible that he forgot to pick you up shampoo like he had planned. Last time he was over at your place he noticed your hair smelled different, like the old backup shampoo you used when you ran out of the stuff you liked.

While the two of you took your stroll at the park Ghiaccio was a lot less talkative than usual, trying to split his attention between listening to you and convincing himself to go through with another one of Formaggio’s suggestions.

He slowly began lowering the temperature around the both of you in small increments over the course of your walk so that you wouldn’t notice the change right away, and although he had been uncharacteristically quiet so far he finally spoke up once he saw you shiver.

“Are you cold?” he asked suddenly, cutting you off just before you could finish your current sentence, which you were noticeably unhappy about.

“Yeah, a bit actually,” you said, wrapping your arms around yourself, looking up at the sky. “Even though it’s really sunny out.”

“Do you want to borrow my jacket?” Ghiaccio asked, already slipping it off himself.

“I wouldn’t need it if you’d let me bring my own,” you said, giving him a peeved look and a half-smile. He awkwardly started to drape the jacket over your shoulders. “But thanks.”

There was an uncomfortable pause in talking as you two walked for a bit before Ghiaccio said: “You look cute,” and after a beat, “In my jacket.”

You just shrugged, turning to give him a halfhearted smirk. “Bright red and sporty isn’t exactly my style.”

Ghiaccio let out an involuntary shiver of his own, not realizing he had unconsciously been letting the temperature continue to drop. You frowned at him before shrugging the jacket off and handing it back to him.

“I don’t need-” he grumbled defensively, but you moved to stand in front of him, stopping him in his tracks. You draped the jacket over his shoulders like he had done to you and then zipped him all the way up before he had even moved to put his arms through the sleeves properly.

“You look cuter in your own jacket,” you said, before walking on ahead while he fumbled with his arms, his cheeks heating up at the predicament you left him in. Once you were a little ways away and out of the range of where he had focused White Album you called back, “I think it’s warming up again, anyway!”

“Get back here, you clown!” he shouted back at you, finally getting his arms where they needed to be. Since that had panned out so poorly, Ghiaccio just called off his stand and jogged ahead until he was back in line with you. All this had managed to do was make him feel like a real jerk for telling you to leave your jacket at home just so he could offer you his. It was so utterly transparent, shamefully so.

“Hm… ‘clown’ sounds much more natural coming out of your mouth than ‘babe,’ does,” you said. You had a bit of a skip in your step that you didn’t have before, and he was glad that getting back at him had improved your mood. His expression softened when you smiled earnestly at him. You bit your lip for a second, looking a bit more hesitant, before you asked: “Are you done trying to be a romcom cliche yet?”

“Is that what I’m doing?” Ghiaccio said with a small scoff. Of course it was. Everything he’d been doing felt so fake in his own mind and body, so there was no way you weren’t seeing right through him. 

“Is it not?” you asked with a quiet laugh, your smile falling just a bit. “Is there something wrong, Ghia?”

God, whenever you called him Ghia he always had a hard time keeping his cool. He grabbed your hand, intertwining his fingers with yours, his gaze fixed forward and his jaw set tight, his face starting to match his jacket in color. “No,” he said firmly. “Nothing is wrong. I’m just being stupid.”

You squeezed his hand. He wasn’t big on PDA, and considering the context of everything else you were still unconvinced he was okay. “You don’t have to do things you don’t like just because-” you started, but he squeezed your hand a bit harder than you had to his.

“I’m holding your hand because I want to,” he said, plainly, if not a bit embarrassed. “Getting you chocolates was stupid, you never get chocolates on your own if you have a choice on sweets. Making you leave your jacket at home was stupid, you’re too pragmatic to rely on me to give you one, and too considerate to keep it on while I’m cold. But I’m doing this,” he said while giving your hand a softer squeeze, “because I want to.”

The matter-of-factness of it cleared all your doubts, and you blushed a bit yourself. Ghiaccio knew you very well, and it wasn’t empty flattery or false acts of chivalry that got your heart going. It was things like the systematic way in which he described the things he noticed you liked or that he found attractive about you. Or the way he surprised you with genuine moments of vulnerability like this that you longed to see more of.

The two of you finished out your walk in silence, a comfortable one this time, hand-in-hand.

---

“I do trust you,” Ghiaccio said, a bit of a non-sequitur since it was unprompted by your current topic of conversation. You were both at the restaurant that you had made reservations for, seated at an outdoor table on a rooftop with a nice overlook of Naples. You had your jacket on; Ghiaccio had insisted that the both of you go back to your apartment to pick it up, and now that you were out in the crisp early evening air you were glad. “I need you to know that I do.”

He scratched the back of his neck, thinking of the best way to say what he wanted to say. “But when you said you wanted me to be more vulnerable, what did you mean? Because it obviously wasn’t whatever the fuck I tried doing today.”

“That was your take on ‘vulnerability’?” you asked with a barely restrained laugh.

“No. It was Formaggio’s take,” he clarified, looking off into the distance with a grumpy expression. You had never met Formaggio, but you had heard many stories about the man and his various antics. “He said you wanted me to be more romantic.”

“Maybe? But not if it’s forced and you set up convoluted situations yourself like some sort of jackass chessmaster. I also said I wanted to see the ‘real you’. Where did that factor in?” You raised an eyebrow at him as you took another bite of your meal.

“I don’t know,” Ghiaccio admitted with a groan, poking at his food and scowling.

“When I said I want you to be vulnerable I meant that I want you to do things like… how you held my hand because that’s what you wanted to do, not because you thought you should. Or things like… I’ve seen you happy, and just about everyone has seen you angry, but I’ve never seen you sad, or afraid, or… well, I hadn’t seen you particularly shy before, but I guess you showed me that today, even if you weren’t trying to,” you said with a smirk.

“You don’t need to deal with my bullshit,” Ghiaccio said, looking at you with an unreadable expression. You frowned.

“Ghiaccio, I want to deal with your bullshit, I want you to rely on me! I also want to know more about the person you are on your own, outside this relationship. You’re always so closed off about things like your personal life.”

Ghiaccio looked back at his food with furrowed brows, stabbing at it a little harder and more frequently. “What if you don’t like the ‘real me’?”

“Ghiaccio.” You reached across the table to grab his free hand, but he just scrunched his neck further down into himself, withdrawing like a turtle. “I love you.”

He stared at you blankly, before his fork was clattering to the ground in his frantic attempt to take your hand in both of his. “Are you fucking serious!?” he spat out, causing several other diners to look over at your table. He had been thinking the same thing for a long while now, but he had been too anxious to say it out loud.

“Dead fucking serious,” you confirmed with a big smile.

In that moment he really felt like he could tell you everything. About Passione, about being an assassin, about stands, even about the lofty goals his squad had for taking the whole criminal empire for themselves. And maybe he would, but right now he realized that he was staring at you slack-jawed like an oaf.

“I love you too!” he said, letting go with one of his hands to slap the table to punctuate his next declarations. “So goddamn much, I’m thinking about you all the fucking time, about how much I don’t fucking deserve you, about how beautiful you are, about how you always eat what you like the least first so that you end your meals on the best note possible,” he said, gesturing to your plate of food, the central part of the dish still untouched as you worked on everything else around it. You brought your hand up to hide your growing blush and stifle a giddy chuckle. He would often compliment you, and he would often get worked up, but rarely did he ever get worked up over complimenting you.

“Ghia, you’re going to make a scene,” you said, more for the sake of appearances than anything as the other patrons watched your table. Honestly, you could listen to him shout praises at you all night.

Eventually after he got everything out of his system he was panting a little from the exertion of it all. “How’s that… for vulnerable…?” he asked between exhales.

“It’s an improvement,” you said with a cheeky grin.

“I had one last thing planned for our date, but I wasn’t sure if I should go through with it after everything.” He smiled at you, one of those rare gentle smiles where all the creases in his brow smoothed out. “But I think you’ll like it.”

“Oh?” you asked. So he did have a big surprise planned after all?

You waved a waiter over and after you paid the bill you and Ghiaccio were soon back in his car, driving down unfamiliar streets towards what was for you an unknown destination.

---

“What do you mean ‘closed for repairs’!?” Ghiaccio demanded of the person on the other side of his phone call, trying once again to open the locked doors in front of him. “The lights are on in there and I can see the rink from here! Looks frozen to me!”

After a few more frustrated exchanges on the call he hung up. “Apparently the system is malfunctioning and it’s not safe to skate on it,” Ghiaccio grumbled, pressing his face up against the door of the ice skating rink one more time, watching the various maintenance workers move about, pointedly ignoring the irate blue haired man banging on the front entrance.

“It’s okay, we can do it another time,” you consoled him. “I can’t ice skate anyway.” You had never expressed interest in it before, and while it seemed like a fun thing for a couple to do you weren’t exactly too excited about trying it or too disappointed that you couldn’t.

“We weren’t going to be-” he huffed out before trailing off, rubbing a hand down his face in annoyance. “Okay, originally Formaggio had pitched this as another one of his schemes, but I didn’t bring you here to pretend to teach you how to skate while you stumbled around. Instead I was thinking… I wanted to show you something.”

You tilted your head to the side. “Show me what?”

“Look… I’ve got one more idea to make this work out, and if it doesn’t then I’ll tell you. But I really want to show you first if I can. If we head out now it’ll still be light enough,” he insisted, heading back towards the car. You followed after him, your curiosity now piqued.

You two were in the car for a while as you noticed you were getting farther and farther away from the city and out onto the countryside. When you pulled up to a makeshift dirt parking lot at the top of a small hill you realized where you were.

“I used to come to this lake a lot when I was a kid,” you mused quietly. “I hope you aren’t thinking it’s going to be frozen over? It’s way too warm for that.”

“Well, I guess we’ll have to see,” he said with a smug grin. You just raised an eyebrow at that response. “Can I ask you to stay in the car for a few minutes?”

“Sure…?” you said slowly, watching as he exited the car and disappeared down the side of the hill. Not too much time had passed and he was walking back up the hill and towards the back of the car, popping the trunk then closing it, before eventually coming around to your door. You opened it and let yourself out, noticing that Ghiaccio was holding laces in his hand with a pair of shoes slung it over his shoulder, and based on context those were probably ice skates. Did Ghiaccio really like skating enough to own his own pair? He’d never mentioned it as a hobby before today.

Soon the two of you were trudging through some dense foliage and over to the side of a lake that was inexplicably frozen. You stared at it, wide-eyed.

“What the…?” you muttered, turning towards Ghiaccio with an expression that demanded answers. He offered none, giving you another smug smile before sitting down on a rock. “How did you know it was going to be… it hasn’t even snowed yet this year!”

“I’ll tell you later tonight, if you really want to know,” he said. And he meant it. But right now there was something else he wanted to show you. “But I didn’t bring you here for the lake.”

You were able to suspend your incredulity for his sake, though it wasn’t easy. After the shock of the lake had fizzled out a little you watched him take the very nice, if not a little bit worn down, pair of ice skates in his hands. He slipped off the shoes he was currently wearing and slid his feet into the skates, lacing them up, while you watched him in silence.

“So you’re going to skate… by yourself?” you asked, arching an eyebrow at him. “And I’m just going to do what, watch?”

“That’s the idea,” he said, finishing up and standing himself upright, maneuvering to the lake’s edge, and before you could complain he shot you one last look, a genuine smile, before he pushed himself onto the ice.

Your boyfriend didn’t share a lot of things with you, but you were surprised that he never saw fit to mention the fact that he was apparently a professional Olympic-level figure skater. Your initial shock at the state of the lake was completely forgotten as you watched him dance across the ice with a level of precision and grace that you had never expected from the man.

And he was pulling out all the stops to show off for you. Spinning in the air, skating low and practically parallel to the ground, skating backwards, skating on one leg with the other poised far behind him in the air. Every jump he made looked too risky, too intense to possibly land smoothly, but as you stood mesmerized you could almost swear that the ice raised up to meet him each time.

After his initial bout of tricks, he skated back over to you and his face looked more relaxed and content than you had ever seen it. “Impressed?” he asked with a confident lilt to his voice.

“Ghia… you’re incredible,” you said, still in a daze. “Why didn’t you tell me you skated?”

“Because I don’t,” he said, his posture tensing a bit, his expression almost embarrassed. “Not anymore. I’m banned from every major figure skating organization in Italy.”

“Oh my God, what happened?” you muttered, finally snapping back to reality and looking up at him with concerned eyes.

“Scandals. Sabotage. None of it helped by my temper,” he grumbled. “It’s this whole big fucking complicated nightmare that I don’t want to talk about right now.” He gestured for you to come meet him at the edge of the lake, and you stepped forward, taking your hands in his as he held them out. “But I loved figure skating. It was the best time of my life, before I met you, and I’m tired of pretending that time never existed. Even if all I can do now is share it with you, then that’s still something.”

“Oh, Ghiaccio, it’s okay” you cried out, your tone consoling, wrapping your arms around him in a firm hug, causing him to stumble a bit on his skates. “I love you so much. Thank you for sharing this part of you with me. I love you, I love you!”

“I get it, I get it, I love you too, you’re going to push me over!” he yelled, trying to pry you off of him. Eventually you released him and stepped back to flash him a tender smile, tears threatening to spill over the corners of your eyes. “What are you crying for?” he muttered, looking away from your intense expression.

“You were crying first!” you shot back, your tears finally flowing. Ghiaccio brought his hand up to his face and realized that he had indeed been gently weeping for a while and it had gone completely unnoticed by him. He huffed before turning around and skating away. “Don’t you skate away from your feelings, Mister!” you called after him.

You watched him skate for some time, seeing him getting lost in his own world out on the lake, chasing after something he thought he’d left behind. He was beautiful. Utterly beautiful. The whole night had been magic, the impossible frozen lake something from another realm. Eventually it got too dark to see properly before the both of you headed up the hill to the car, hand-in-hand.

#ghiaccio x reader #la squadra #jojo imagines #jojo's bizarre adventure #jjba x reader #my writing #anon #ghiaccio

[massoccurs]

1, 10, 19

1. what is your favorite trope to rp?

gothic romances !! i think there's something so fulfilling about how gothic literature demands subversion of conformist norms and especially the inherent queerness and queer coding of gothic romances. gothic literature is especially interesting because it's a trope that can't stay exactly the same - it changes with the times and what is subversive within the confines of a given era and this creates a trope that is not only super diverse in what you can do with it, but one that sort of naturally tracks your own history and what mood and mental state you were in when you began writing it to now. i find gothic and otherwise subversive romance to be super comforting to write because i exist as a queer, neurodivergent person who doesn't experience interpersonal relationships, and especially romance, the way people want and expect me to.

10. why do you write?

im not good at connecting with other people. i can't hold small talk without driving myself insane, most of my interests are obscure and at times, off putting to those i meet in person. i feel like when im masking or pretending to be someone else, i get, like, a feeling of suffocation. ive spent so much of my life not being allowed to be real or exist in the world with others, that throwing myself into fiction just made sense. i find writing so comforting and it's what im good at. it's something ive received praise for since my childhood and it makes me feel better about myself alongside giving me an outlet to express my more abnormal thoughts and feelings. it gives me somewhere where im not confined by social convention and i don't have to pretend to be someone im not to be palatable to others. it's also so much easier for me to hold a conversation about characters and plotting and dynamics than it is to hold small talk or casual discussions.

i think the other reason i write is because so much of what i write is very personal and suited to my personal and, at times, niche interests and preferences. a lot of what i write is based in fictionalized and metaphorical versions of real experiences and real feelings. i am my own target audience - but i know im not the only person like myself. i always get genuine happiness when people tell me they also connected with my writing and that it made them feel seen and heard because so few pieces of art actually make me feel that way and i can only imagine how many people are like me and in search of something that really resonates. i guess the tldr of this is: i write for me and people like me who may not feel represented elsewhere.

19. who is an author that inspires you?

jeffrey eugenides, specifically with his novel the virgin suicides. influence from that book can honestly be seen across all my original characters and i even wrote lux lisbon for a time. his poetic yet understandable prose aside, i loved the way he portrayed romanticization by romanticizing content in his novel. he writes from the perspective of the lisbon sisters' neighborhood boys that are utterly obsessed with them and while his prose is flowery and romantic, the content itself makes very clear these boys are strange, obsessive, and creepy to be fetishizing the deaths of girls they hardly knew. what eugenides does in this novel is a precarious balancing act of portraying the mentalities of these boys while also presenting us with the horror and disgust of what they're doing and what's actually happened to these girls. it's not something that every author can do successfully, that careful mix of dread and prose and i genuinely aspire to produce content that does that very same and evokes those same conflicting feelings that really make a reader think about what they're consuming and how they're consuming it.

#thank u!! #𝐀𝐍𝐒𝐖𝐄𝐑. ➥ mission success.