#the opposite ending of my previous comic lol

[dingledraw]

“That's not what I asked” comic (2/2) based on the lovely art and fic by @chernozemm

Part 1

#Aziraphale and crowley not being able to communicate properly??!? #I am shocked and scandalized #also I won’t be paying for anyone’s therapy bills #ask chernozemm for that 😂 #the opposite ending of my previous comic lol #still sad tho #good omens #crowley #aziraphale #ineffable spouses #aziracrow #my fanart #ineffable husbands #azicrow #ineffable partners #comic: that's not what i asked

[lazyjellyfish300]

DD Part 9

Miguel O'Hara x Fem reader

Commissioned art by @/ejpuki on Instagram. Please support the artist 🖤

Synopsis- in an AU where fem reader drinks too much and the bartender calls a random Uber for her which happens to be Miguel O'Hara himself. Her friends suck and ditch her. There's a lot of tension on the ride home...with a twist on the og Miguel O'Hara comic. Word count 2.8k

Part 1 (contains links to all previous parts)

A/N: FINALLYYYY I got myself to work on this. I'm so sorry for the delay..next on the list is The Woman He Didn't Choose Part 3. I think Chapter 10 of DD will be the end then maybe a cute little epilogue but I think it's time to retire this one. 🥺🖤 Idk if anyone is even following this series as closely anymore but it's still my baby lol.

TW: Minors DNI, age gap (Miguel is 34 reader is 26), danger, kidnapping, mild violence, little angst, Tyler is mean and creepy, talks of drowning, mention of abuse, mention of claustrophobia, mention and alludes to sex but no smut

@mysteris-things

@averagefloydlover

@roserfz27

@latenightcravingz

Gloria was gushing on the phone at the sound of her new grandchild a few feet away from your apartment outside when she thought she heard what sounded like her name being screamed. She turned abruptly, waiting for it to repeat but it never did. She did a double take -silence. She shrugged her shoulders and went back to her cooing tone of voice. 

Inside your apartment, you slumped backwards into the hands of the tall, curly haired accomplice. Aaron gulped and wiped a bead of sweat from his brow at your unconscious form, removing the laced rag and stuffing it in a Ziploc bag and tearing off his latex gloves with shaky hands. 

Tyler exhaled and shot an annoyed look at Aaron. "Something you wanna say?" He snapped at him. 

Aaron gave a feeble shake of his head, doing his best not to let his eyes linger on your helpless form. 

Tyler nodded. "That's what I thought. But if you are having any second thoughts about this: go ahead and use that damn thing on yourself and join our little friend here..." 

He grabs Aaron by the shirt collar. Aaron's eye twitches in fear as the smoke from Tyler's cigar tickles his face. His eyes ping pong between the intense blue of Tyler's irises and your unconscious figure one more time before he lets out a shaky, 

"N-no, boss..."

"Good. Everything in my plan has gone to shit. Taking her is our last hope." He nods in your direction. "If his little squeeze being dropped into the river won't reel him back in I don't know what will..."

Aaron's blood runs cold but he gives a shaky nod in understanding, his neck stiff as he resists the urge to look at you again. 

"Let's go..." Tyler strides to the front door, adjusting his blazer, his voice reverting back to a pleasant friendly tone, the wolf shifting back into sheep's clothing as he walked towards Gloria, putting a hand on her shoulders, leading her away in the opposite direction of Tyler's henchmen carefully and quickly stowing you in the waiting suburban in the parking lot, with an anxious Aaron right behind. 

----

Later that evening 

The dread in Miguel's body quickly escalated when he saw all the lights in your apartment had been turned off as he swung into view of it. Immediate self-hatred and regret flashed in his mind.

He knew he should not have left you alone. 

He went to open the sliding door and it was locked. Shit. He pounded the window frantically, "Babe?! ¿Estás aqui?!(Are you here?) Babe?!"

He shook the door, nearly rattling it off his hinges. The sound of your name rolling off his tongue with more and more desperation. Something was gravely wrong when you didn't answer. He had to act quickly. No time for second thoughts. Miguel takes a deep breath and kicks the glass as hard as he can and the whole thing shatters with a loud crash. 

The security system alarm sounds at the intrusion and Miguel curses loudly. He steps over the broken glass and runs into your living room, turning on the light. He darts into your bedroom, your bathroom, the kitchen, the entryway, muttering to himself, cold sweat starting to bead aross his worried brow, his stomach tying itself in sickening knots as he prepared for the worst possible sight of you laying hurt or dead, perhaps, but you're nowhere to be found which sets off a new wave of panic in his head.

Miguel stood at the counter and doubled over, his hands behind his head as he squeezed his eyes shut. The blaring sounds of the alarm started to hurt his ears and he could barely think and let his mind process everything that just happened. He took deep shaky breaths, trying desperately to calm himself as he felt himself inching closer and closer to a full blown melt down. He blew air out of his cheeks and slowly opened his eyes, his vision slightly blurry from the tears of frustration wetting it. He noticed a piece of paper on the counter and brought it closer to him with a shaky hand. It read: 

"If you want her to live, then you'll return to Alchemax at once, turn yourself in, and finish the job you were hired to do." 

Miguel's nostrils flared and his heart rate speed up as he read the letter: his worst fear was confirmed to be true. Somehow or other, Tyler found out where you lived and kidnapped you while he was out. And now he was threatening to kill you if Miguel didn't comply. 

This was truly a living nightmare. This stuff only happened in movies, and now he was quite literally living it scene by scene. His mind raced of images of you possibly tied to a chair, sitting in a cell, duct tape around your mouth, eyes tear stained and red, alone and defenseless and completely at Tyler's mercy, and Miguel knew him well enough to know that Tyler had a very short supply. 

Miguel barely starts trying to form a plan in his head when he hears banging at the door and the sound of men's heavy boots. "NYPD! OPEN UP! IF ANYONE'S INSIDE MAKE YOURSELF KNOWN!" 

Miguel stuffs the ransom note inside his hoodie pocket, scrambling to the window and swinging away into the night just as the door to your apartment bursts open with several men in uniform with guns cocked rush inside only to discover the foe they were hunting had already fled the scene. 

----- 

Somewhere in a bunker along the Hudson River Valley

Your eyes fluttered open, goosebumps dotted your arms and you shivered, a piercing headache suddenly making itself known as you groaned your way out of your groggy haze. You dizzily scanned your surroundings, or lack thereof. You noticed you were laying on a small twin sized bed, the mattress was anything but cushy. The room was dark with no furniture and an empty closet and no windows. You felt a little claustrophobic, walking briskly to the door and trying to rattle it open. 

"Hello?!" You called. Cursing and shaking the door, your breaths coming out more frantic than the last. You backed away from the door, wringing your hands nervously, eyes darting, pleading for a bit of light or at least a clue as to your new, mysterious location.

The door creaked open at last, and Tyler Stone stood in front of the opening, the darkness of your room casting a black shadow on his face, giving him a sinister aura. You cowered backwards, sitting on the bed again.

 "You...." you whispered. "Where the hell am I? Where's Miguel?" 

Tyler didn't answer, and walked to the middle of the room, tugging a small chord that hung from the center of the ceiling, a small yellow light turns on. 

You blink as the room becomes washed in a soft orangey glow. You look around some more, piecing together that you were in a small bedroom, which looked to be in the basement of some unknown dwelling. 

Tyler crossed his arms, tilting his head slightly. "The location of where you are right now isn't important..." 

"Umm yes it is?!" You snapped. Tyler's eyebrows raised slightly at your flippant reply.  "You kidnapped me! You're the one who tried to kill my boyfriend you fucking..." 

At that point, the same tall accomplice with curly dark hair that held you hostage earlier swiftly enters the room, barreling into you and throwing you backwards on the bed before you can lunge at Tyler, his weight crushing you slightly as you let out a pained yelp, your body jerking from the force, the pain in your head worsening from the whiplash. 

"Thanks, Jack..." Tyler twirls a toothpick between his fingers, crossing the room where you lay pinned onto the bed, held in place by Jack, both sets of their blue eyes piercing you with a mixture of fascination and annoyance. "Forgot she could be kind of a handful..." 

Tyler crouches down, so his face is at your eye level, with your limbs still held down by Jack. Tyler gives you a teasing smirk as he holds the toothpick in his teeth. "Been using these to cut down my little tobacco habit..." he muses with a whispery chuckle. "But as I was saying...the location of where you are right now doesn't matter, my dear. What matters is that you comply and do exactly what I tell you to, and stop giving Jack here such a hard time..." he stands up, striding to the door. He gives Jack a little nod when it becomes clear you're not going to fight back any longer. 

Jack releases you and you let out a small groan, your hands running over your arms where his fingers pinched the tender flesh. You look up at Tyler with angry tears brimming your eyes and he chuckles again, shaking his head at your anguish. 

"There's definitely no need for tears. Your boyfriend works for me, you see... And he stole something very important. A drug called Rapture?" He pulls out a small vial from his breast pocket, giving it a little wiggle as he holds it between his thumb and middle finger. He stows it back in his pocket after a brief moment.

"The company I work for... Alchemax, is the only supplier of this drug and, let's say there's a lot of unknown effects, I'm sure as you've noticed..."

You narrowed your eyes, knowing damn well he was lying through his teeth, his story not adding up to Miguel's who already told you it was Tyler who intentionally drugged him, and his new powers were the result of the gene altering machine being sabotaged with spider DNA by his lackey, Aaron Delgado, not the Rapture itself. 

"You're lying..." you murmur quietly. 

Tyler's gaze hardens, it's clear he's losing his patience with you. "I'm lying? What about your boyfriend? He left you all alone, couldn't even keep you safe like he promised. Now you'll wind up at the bottom of the Hudson all because of him." 

Tyler's face twists into a smug smile when a terrified look appears on your face at his revelation of your grim fate. 

"There are worse things to lie about, my dear..." Tyler turns on his heel, and Jack starts to close the door. "If you learn to be quiet, I'll bring you some hot food from the kitchen later on." 

You sniffle loudly and the door closes with a loud click, a thick cloud of dread filling the space and darkness suffocating you once more. 

Miguel, please hurry, wherever you are...

----

Tyler walks upstairs with a loud sigh, the main floor of the remote bunker revealed to have a cozier interior of that of a mountain cabin. Tyler hums and strides into the kitchen, picking up a mug of black coffee, shaking his head at the trouble you were giving him and his henchmen. 

He walked towards the kitchen window, looking out at the tall pines and the forest environment that was covered in a healthy layer of snow, winter well underway in the mid-December season. His eyes flicker past the tall trees and eye the half frozen river in the distance, picturing kicking you into its depths, Miguel's face crinkling in despair when he couldn't save you after he was too stubborn to submit. 

Tyler decided he'd finish this project one way or another. Superhuman powers would be available to anyone who wanted them, or at least to whoever Tyler and Alchemax deemed worthy. No longer would humanity be weak and self-serving, no.

No, he would stand at the grand staircase of the dawning of a new species of humans, ushering in a legacy of immortality and superhuman strength superior to all. He hungered for it, he was depraved by it, the need to be the face of it all. Tyler Stone always had his way. He'd be revered throughout history like the God he was. 

"Sir?" The brawny second accomplice, different from Jack, came bursting into the kitchen without warning. 

Tyler hisses, pulled hastily out of his deep thoughts, "What, Eli...? Give me a signal it's you or something next time, for the love of God..." He sticks a fresh cigar back in his mouth and fumbles in his pocket for his lighter, the slight jump scare enough stress to cause him to forget about the toothpicks earlier. 

"I have an update on his daughter's whereabouts: the FaceTime call from yesterday on the girlfriend's phone was to a number coming from Boston." 

"Boston...?" Tyler grumbles. There wasn't much he could do about that with them being so far away. 

"She's with who appears to be her uncle and grandmother: Gabriel O'Hara and Conchata O'Hara." 

Tyler rips the cigar out of his mouth, nearly choking on his smoke. 

"Conchata?"

He hadn't heard that name in years. No, it couldn't be. Tyler's gaze narrowed and looked at the laptop Eli was holding. "Give me that..." Tyler slammed his mug back onto the counter and greedily grabbed the laptop with shaky hands, his eyes widening even more at the image that was on the screen. 

There it was, a picture of Conchata taking a selfie on what appeared to be a random pier from some beach side vacation on an unknown date, sunglasses shielding her eyes, but not enough to hide her beauty. Her lips were plump and red, curved up into a closed lip smile, her cheeks dimpled and the sun kissing her lovely tanned complexion, a couple of slight gray hairs streaking through her long, thick, wavy raven hair that fell past her shoulders in loose ringlets, a simple floppy sunhat on her head. 

It was her. 

He knew her as just Conchata before. O'Hara must have been her married name. A simple glance at her photo shot him backwards to over 30 years ago when he was just 21 years old, a young man in college who wandered into a dive bar one fateful Friday night and the lovely young lady who was bartending turned around, pulling him in immediately with those tantalizing brown eyes. Pools of the most decadent dessert, the dark char of wood after it was lit ablaze, lighting him on fire too as he knew it. 

That fateful Friday turned into a Saturday, Sunday, Monday, every night he got the chance, he spent it seated at her bar as she spoke to him in that sweet, low, regal voice of hers. 

After two weeks, it lead to a heated kiss in the alleyway, which transpired into him sneaking her into his college dorm. Their quiet tipsy giggles turned to soft moans as they loved each other's bodies for the first time.

He looked down at her sleeping form after the act and muttered "I love you..." bravery slipping past him and only bringing him to say it when she was fast asleep. He stroked her chin and vowed that she would one day hear it. He was sure of it. And he had never been sure of anything in his life up until that moment. 

But, the next morning she was gone by the time he opened his eyes. He wandered into her bar again that night, his baby blues cinched with worry when she immediately turned to leave as soon as he entered, finally bringing her to confess in the bar's bathroom that she was engaged to someone else. Someone she didn't love and who abused her but she felt pressured to stay anyway under the promise that he would take care of her financially. Meanwhile, Tyler didn't have more than $50 to his name. Must have been that O'Hara guy, whoever his name was that she now went by. 

Tyler had left that day a broken man, never returning to that small dive bar, putting her out of his mind indefinitely, never thinking he'd see or hear of her again. Now, he was staring at her picture, the girl who got away was apparently the mother of his number one enemy. But wait...

Tyler's stomach turned lopsided when he gazed at Miguel's file that was open in a window right next to Conchata's. He did the simple math in his head and it all added up. That passionate night with Conchata wasn't just a romantic memory after all. He had left her with something, someone who eventually grew up to be the thorn in his side. The one person who stood in his way of getting everything he ever wanted. The man whose appearance he was waiting on this very second when he'd naively show up to rescue his captive love. 

Tyler exhaled slowly, blinking and shaking himself out of his feelings, not letting his realization get in the way any longer. "Guess it's about time Miguel finally paid his old man a proper visit after so long..." 

#miguel o'hara #miguel atsv #miguel ohara #miguel x reader #miguel o'hara x reader #atsv miguel #miguel o'hara x fem!reader #miguel ohara x fem!reader #miguel x you #miguel o'hara imagine #miguel ohara imagine #miguel o'hara x y/n #Spotify

[genericpuff]

explaining the previous ask—Ariana grande has a big pattern of getting with men she knows is with someone else/married. the latest guy had a newly postpartum wife iirc and she literally was friends with the wife and held one of their kids before she found out. anyways the anon was basically hoping that your Persephone is the type to support other women instead of betraying them for men. (and yes the man is a piece of shit too but what Ariana grande keeps doing is literally the same thing as what OG perse did to Minthe which is prob why they drew that comparison.)

ohhh okay, I didn't know that about Ariana so it was completely going over my head LOL

So when it comes to Kore, Minthe, and Hades, there's a LOT more at play in all three of their backstories that will instigate the overlapping problems between the three of them. Minthe has her own deep fears and doubts of being with Hades that stem even deeper than the issues with his family, Hades has attachment/abandonment issues as well as trauma from his past that manifests in his relationships, while Kore is sort of the complete opposite where she's reluctant to form strong bonds with people (we'll be seeing this more and more as the comic goes on).

I'm really excited to get into all three but for now all I'm really gonna say is that Minthe is gonna be given a much more satisfying ending this time around that won't put her in the position of being cheated on in her own relationship. Kore won't necessarily come out of it all a hero either, but both of them are going to have their own development that will both run parallel to one another and converge at some point in time in a way that I'm really hoping y'all will like <3

#lore rekindled comic #lore rekindled ama #ask me anything #anon ama #anon ask me anything #lore rekindled

[laylajeffany]

What's your favorite piece of Addams Family media? P.S. be warned I have a list of all my burning questions about your amazing fic

The original comics featured in The New Yorker and in compilations over time by Charles Addams are my favorite. I write Wednesday just slightly more in line with that interpretation than the 2022 series in CftF (including her extra toe 😘).

Layla doesn't know how write anything short, so here's more on my opinions of The Addams Family interpretations over time:

I frequently watch the ’64 Addams family television series, have been through it in order with the DVD box set a few times (the very first time I ever saw it, I was five and a flower girl in my cousin’s wedding and I was the only child in the limousine and the adults were boozing and wild - my parents were not there - and my cousin put on the TV that was in the back and The Addams Family was the only thing that would come in on the signal. I was TICKLED by Cousin Its and told my dad about it and he would sometimes find reruns it on TV and tell me to come watch because he was a big fan growing up when it was originally airing). It’s also on free on its own channel on FreeVee 24/7 in the USA with Amazon Prime and I fall asleep to it. If you’ve not watched - like, let’s remember this was filming literally at the same time the Civil Rights act of 1964 was passed so it’s not going to completely fall in line with today’s views of race/gender/culture, etc. For the time, the Addams Family was considered progressive for showing a loving couple on television and poking fun at traditional US expectations (Morticia and Gomez are horrified when Pugsley wants to join the Boy Scouts, for example). In this version, Morticia is far less cold and detached than she is in the comics. She’s sweet on Gomez even if she rolls her eyes at him regularly and when the kids are actually present (Pugs&Wednesday are often not in episodes at all which is probably for the best given we know about everything with children on television sets) she is far warmer than in the original; I probably write her closer to this Morticia than the original or W22. 

Next I’d say Addams Family Values, followed by The Addams Family ‘90s movies, and then Wednesday 2022. I think that the ‘90s movies were a pretty “bold departure from the source material” (to quote the Beetlejuice musical lol) on Wednesday’s character, in particular, than either of the previous media, and then it seems like the ‘90s version of her is what T.B. was running with for her characterization in W22.  I’m not keen on the musical (though I wish I could see Michelle Visage as Morticia in the West End) and I don’t care for the animation style from the 2019 movie so I haven’t watched it and I haven’t ever seen the ’92 animated series. 

I think like anything that’s been done and redone, you can enjoy each interpretation for what it is, understanding it’s more inspired by the source material, rather than a 1:1 match of it. Much on the source material and if you like it, you like it - if not, walk away. I LOVE all three versions of Beetlejucie for completely separate reasons and they all barely mirror each other besides the actual character names and premise (not so sure about this new movie though IGBH, I will be going in with ZERO expectations). In the opposite lens, I ONLY like the ‘90s sitcom of Sabrina and don’t care for the original comics and (believe it or not) I don’t like the Netflix series. These examples are just that this sort of genre is for different audiences at different times, and sometimes you’ll like it and sometimes you won’t. I think taking this fun/macabre genre that is for us weirdos and giving it new life every few generations is a nice way to include other people in on the gags and the kooky and the spooky who otherwise might never have given it a try. IDK - I’m just down to clown with the Addams Family in a variety of ways and there’s really fewer families I’d personally fit in. ☠️

#ask #layla answers questions

[junosswans]

The many times of Midoriya Izuku rejecting Bakug*u Kat*uki & what it means to them

Again, not exactly anti-bakug*u but I'll tag it like so and hide his name so that people who potentially don't want to read it don't have to

(contains: mha comic spoiler, antibkdk but it's really complicated, in general critical of a certain blonde character but I don't think there's anything mean spirited here and my point isn't to shit on him, but to theorize where he's heading towards)

Thinking about how over and over izu chose the other option as opposition to bak*gou and feeling a moment of hope for a liberating ending between the osananajimi but then also grim cause hori probably won't do that (or the jump editors won't let him do that)

It's a thought that only came to me after the comic apology scene, which so many 💥🥦 shippers screamed over, and it led to me contemplating the progression of their relationship & how they were positioned in the story as archetypes.

I kept on thinking about how in the apology scene, Izuku never directly replied to bkg's apology. Bkg said I'm sorry for everything I've done, and Izuku's immediate action after the shock was to apologize to everyone for being inconsiderate in his previous words.

I'll have to say this first, I don't ship them at all and could never see myself doing so (for apparent reasons), and as someone who endured bullying and abuse I hate bkg a lot, but thinking about their character development is really interesting and as far as angst goes, they probably have the most dramatic mutual-but-also-not-mutual pining relationship ever and its honestly kind of fun to think and read about, lol.

And after they have returned to UA, and bkg accidentally called him deku as usual instead of Izuku, his reply was a smile and "you don't have to force yourself", which...

Like, can we stop a moment and think about how Izuku never directly addressed bkg's apology? The way he said "you don't have to force yourself" as if he's given up on hoping? If I am the author and I wanted the apology moment to be the salvation the two needed, I'd definitely let Izuku accept the apology then move on. There's no point in dragging things out unless I'm preparing for a greater moment of enlightenment. Unless the reply Izuku had in his mind was not what we are expecting (acceptance).

From my pov, I think he was hesitating. He was having second thoughts and he was unsure. If it was set before the final arc, Izuku would probably immediately accept the apology, or say "I've never blamed you/been mad at you"-- no matter how we view their relationship, we can agree on that, right? But why the hesitation now??

I think we're close to the reveal of the reason for the change of mind for Izuku, judging from how the story has been building up. And I have a theory which is an unlikely one but I also really want to see if anyone else feels the same.

One of the main theme of this story, or of most stories, is the discovery of self-identity. To establish your name and develop your personality & world view and find where you belong. It's a very common theme, yeah?

MHA is a story that's defined by choices instead of predetermined fate-- todoroki chooses to use his power to neutralise but not harm (unlike what he's been taught), midoriya chooses to save eri despite nighteye telling him he couldn't do it, the LoV thinking bkg would be good villain material and him rejecting them, and the dichotomy between the heroes and the villains? It's "I choose to become what I want to be not what others (eg my father, society, etc) want me to be" versus "society called me a villain so I will be one as my revenge".

For Izuku, I’d argue that his journey of becoming himself relies on the rejection of his childhood, in which he was repeatedly told that he had no right to choose (quirkless people can't be a hero, you should kys instead, you need to become the next symbol of peace, so and so), and he needed to defy those voices and choose his own path. And as someone who played a big part in those negative voices, bkg was someone who Izuku needed to reject. (By reject, I don’t necessarily mean cut off. What I mean is that they both need to reevaluate their view towards each other and stop seeing the other as someone more/lesser, which had been a constant in their dynamic until very recently; Izuku needs to reject what bkg used to say to him and the labels that he had given him. Only with this could they achieve a healthy & balanced relationship.)

It started with him reclaiming the name deku by choosing ochako’s interpretation over bkg’s; and then cheering for todoroki when td and bk faced off in the sports festival;

And Izuku did, repeatedly. It was small but it was there, how he was trying to push the influence & shadow of bkg (his abuser) out of his personal narrative, in a passive way. It was unintentional statements and outbursts at first, and it was kind of a one step forward two steps back situation (which is common for abuse survivors who are trying to make amends), but I think he was coming to the realisation that it’s what he needed to be the hero he wanted to be.

Tbh, I really really didn’t expect this line. Like I was so so so bracing myself for midoriya to cheer for bkg but then he DIDNT and it was insane and I screamed. Anyways--

Then it escalated into deku vs bkg 2 and well, that was definitely a lot of emotional baggage to unpack. It was an incredibly painful read for me because well… the level of mental gymnastics you’d need to do in order to view the world like bkg…. bro needed the psych ward not a hero school. There were definitely a lot of moments that shippers would swoon over, but if you’d allow me to go blue curtain a bit I’d say the most important line is this one:

There was also the “it has to be you kirishima who goes to save bkg because if I was the one who’s holding out a hand he would rather die than catch it” in which, yea it was accurate assessment. But like. Anyway I don’t feel like getting into that today...

Wtf bkg? You thought of me like that?

Judging from how it’s been emphasised over and over by bkg and AM lately, Izuku changing from someone who has no regard for his own well-being will be a major plot point in this last arc, and this will likely include his relationship with people. In order to grow from being overly self-sacrificial, he will need to distance himself from people who hurt him or at least, acknowledge that people who would hurt him doesn’t care for him and move on from there. And this leads us to this line:

Prior to this, I don’t think Izuku gave too much thought to their relationship. He likely attributed all the bullying and namecalling to his quirklessness and “it’s bkg being bkg” and this was the moment when he was like, ah, so you hate me on a personal level, you pick on me not because you look down on quirkless ppl (Izuku probably internalised a lot of the shame & discrimination regarding that) but because you really hate me, midoriya izuku, specifically. You THINK I look down on you, and you THINK I get beaten up by you because it’s fun for me or something. All the while I've idolised you and looked up to you and believed so earnestly that you will be a great hero. It’s through this fight that they finally get a glimpse of what the other thinks of them and it’s when Izuku started to contemplate the definition of friendship, affection, and relationships in general. I feel like after this was when the distance between the two really showed, even though the air between them became less tense. Bkg had learned the truth of OfA, but in terms of plot progression it didn’t seem to do much for the two. The “helping deku to train” acted as a plot device to explain how he got stronger, but aside from that, how did this part contribute to Izuku’s character development?

And really, I think we are seeing bits and bits of how Izuku is mentally distancing himself from bkg (he still cares but not as much and as extreme as before), although it could just be my wishful thinking. one of the notable instances is this frame from the apology scene:

When I read this, I was like...??? So you actually know that friends aren't supposed to beat you up??? On one hand, the IRONY but on the other hand, there's a part of me that's holding out for the possibility that this is hinting at something bigger in the future. Could this statement mean that he will learn to draw a better boundary between himself and people who don't treat him fairly (which is very often)? I definitely hope so.

To be fair, I didn't remember either, so I went back and had a look:

He didn't remember. oh. my. god. You would have thought that he definitely would, but he didn't remember at all. (I ugly laughed, for a moment) Whether it was because he had too much on his mind or that he didn't exactly care is left for you to determine.

The other reason for this theory of mine was Todoroki's development after the license exam. We got to see how Izuku told Shouto it's ok to not forgive his father, but because he's "a caring person," he was waiting for an opportunity. In which, kinda a wack argument but it was indeed very much in character for him to say so.

...ok.

It was said before by many others, but the two really have a lot of parallels as well as opposites, like childhood trauma, refusing to use his quirk to the point where it hurts himself vs forced to cope with a quirk that hurts himself, and of course most importantly, learning to come to terms with your trauma and making peace with your abuser.

What Midoriya said above irked me a little, because no, you are 100% allowed to not forgive him forever and that doesn't make you a bad person, but then in the next chapter we got this:

And then we get to know exactly what Shouto was waiting for:

He was waiting for endeavour to change before deciding whether he should forgive him. In which on this aspect I really think Todoroki was coping a lot better than...... anyone else in this series even though he's often depicted as a dense & slow person. So with the parallels in mind, could this be what bkg and deku are heading towards as well? Would Izuku's mind change after witnessing the conversation between Natsuo and Enji? Could we expect more of the dirty laundry between the two will be revealed to the other characters and they will be forced to face it? Will Izuku need to do the same thing, to hold off his judgement and possibly decline the apology until bkg really has proved himself?

On bkg's side, we have been seeing a lot of references to him being the one who knows Izuku the best, even bkg himself said so. There seem to be this shift of power balance where it used to be izk chasing after bkg, and now bkg might have to chase after izk who's less interested in him now. (If this is the case, imagine the angst. The role reversal. The pining. Oh my god hori would be insane to pull this but it would be so delicious--)

In the latest chapter, we saw shigaraki declaring that he was not interested in bkg at all, aside from his relationship to Izuku. Shigaraki demonstrated his unrivalled power which gave bkg a great shock. By the presupposed logic of “the characters of mha need to learn to be something other than who they’re told to be,” for bkg who’s always been told that he would be the greatest, the most powerful, the protagonist in life, it’s probably his moment to learn how to step aside and support others (which he evidently hasn’t mastered yet, since he burnt hadou’s hair again). If I am to maximise the dramatics in this plot, I might even force him to renounce his status as a hero because I crave the poetics and the internal struggles, but that’s unlikely. However, since right now we are having two people facing off, one of which rejected Izuku’s help in their childhood, and for the other one Izuku wanted to save his childhood (The visual parallels were so blatant that there’s no way it’s not intentional) so I’m really, sincerely looking for a role reversal between Shigaraki and bkg, between a “false hero” and a villain (label wise).

Anyway, I think this is it for me today, I read the lastest chapter yesterday and there were so many thoughts on my mind and needed to vent a little (a lot)...

But then, these are all just theories and most of the time, manga theories remain to be just that. If this really happened hori will probably go to god tier author for me, but I really don't think that's gonna be the case, haha

#anti bakugo #anti bakudeku #anti bkdk #anti bakugou katsuki #lia speaks #bnha #mha #mha theory #my hero academia #mha spoilers #midoriya izuku #midoriya izuku centric #mha deku

[chronic-boogara]

Hello! I love your blog it's so nice looking and spot on with the characters!

But can I maybe request stu with a reader who is super badass like can make anything I not a weapon just super crafty and knows great ways to bunker down and survive crazy situations and one day stuff asks how they are so crafty and stuff and it turns out reader just has severe anxiety and copes with zombie and dystopian stuff like collecting, watching, comics anything sorry if this is to specific lol 😂 well even if you don't answer mine keep up the good work!

OKAY BUT THIS>>>> i have such a bad habit of making reader a helpless damsel in distress😔most def my toxic writing traits. but thank you for enjoying my blog every time someone says that my heart melts into a puddle. love you babe.

sorry this took so long i forgot abt it for a hot second :( i hope you like this , i didn’t want to go too far away from the prompt

•stu never considered himself normal in any sense. he was into the occult , strange things of the world. not like most kids his age

• so when he met someone so like minded it’s safe to say he was head over heels with this person. they were like his soulmate

•when he first tried to make a move he failed because he was too nervous. he ended up just turning right back around

•don’t worry though he’ll come around to asking you out properly it’ll just take him some time. it’s hard being a teenage boy in love.

•finally! he asked you out. he decided to take you to graveyard picnic on halloween which you are totally down for. you’re always ready in case the apocalypse comes anyway.

•the two of you really hit it off!! more dates ensued

•before either of you knew it you two were in a loving relationship.

•stu loves how crafty you are. there’s not much you can’t make and he is just so amazed. any end of the world scenario he can think of you are prepared.

•of course you’ve drawn up a couple blueprints for bunkers for different scenarios. zombies, nuclear war, computer take over or aliens. you’re ready

•sometimes you worry about weather stu thinks your extreme liking towards the subject a bit strange. only to find out he finds the exact opposite.

___

“y’ know y/n, I’ve always wondered why you’re so into all this stuff”. he gestured to the posters plastered across your walls.

you weren’t really prepared for such a question. your boyfriend tended to speak whatever is on his mind without another thought.

you felt your face grow warm with embarrassment. “i’ll tell you if you promise not think of me differently”.

stu was now sitting up from his previous position, a curious glint in his eyes. “i would never do such a thing y/n”.

you sighed. you’d have to break it to him anyways, the time just came earlier than you expected it to.

“i get really anxious…and have a tendency to over think things to the millionths degree. i latched onto things like zombie movies and end of the world stuff it calms me down”. you said , taking a breath after ending the sentence not even realizing you were holding it.

he was silent for a second and you had to fill it. “i know it’s weird”.

he shook his head. “i do way worse stuff in my free time y/n. i think you’re little obsession is cute. it makes you you”.

you shouldn’t be shocked he was so accepting. he was a horror fanatic that could name the most iconic serial killers in ABC order if prompted. but you still found yourself a bit surprised.

whatever higher being was above had really blessed you with the best boyfriend you could ask for.

#slasher fluff #slasher headcanons #fluffy headcanons #fluffy slasher headcanons #slasher x reader #slasher x you #stu macher x you #stu macher x reader #ghostface x reader #ghostface x y/n #scream fluff #ghostface fluff #scream 1996 #esha writes #cannibal-corpse193

[lazaruspiss]

This is unrelated to your previous ask, but somehow your answer makes me curious, has anyone ever asked you about what is your ideal story for Jason? Whether he should be “redeemed” at the end and come back to the batclan, or he should remain as an anti-hero and a sort-of-not-really-with-the-bats?

I have not been asked this! Probably bc I talk more about Dick, lol. But it is interesting to think about. I do think he should stay at odds with Bruce, regardless of where he ends up morally. Not all heroes get along nor should they have to! And being in opposition to Bruce is such a significant part of the role Jason serves as a character.

DC already has countless characters that they can force to get along with their money maker so they can sell more crossover event comics, it just gets tiring after a while. I just want less characters who are made to bend around Batman in general, but that's more of a DC corporate issue.

But my ideal Jason story... Hmm..... I think I tend to like him best when he's either working solo or with one other person. Even a three person group like he has in the outlaws series feels like too much.

And I think I'd enjoy him in a proper noir detective story. I think watching him investigate and plan things is fascinating. A type of solo series where he stalks ganglords with B plots about community service and the like. Kind of picturing "Way of the Househusband" if the househusband still did crime, lol.

I kind of want to say it'd have to be in a city other than Gotham, but I think helping his home town probably still means a lot to him. I just don't want him dealing with Batman or needing his approval to work. A confrontation would be unavoidable in Gotham. That's a detail I'm very on the fence about. I'd like very little bat clan guest spots, if any.

Even Dick, because as much as I love him, a Jason story should be about Jason. I hate it when other major characters spend too long taking up space in a Nightwing issue, and I'd apply the same sentiment to any other character's solo series even when they aren't my fav. If I'm reading a solo series with a clearly established main character than I want it to be about that main character, thank you very much.

In general I'd like more slower paced and self contained story driven comics. No more crossovers, they frustrate me so much.

#asks #anon

[plasticmantalk]

What do you think made Granite Lady such a headliner of a Plastic Man antagonist? She's gotten mention in at least the 2004 solo, Teriffics, 2018 solo, 2006 pilot, one of those DC animated shorts... but her OG appearance is surprisingly brief. Is it really just that "granite" "lady" is the opposite of "plastic" "man"?

It’s an interesting question! I think there are multiple reasons, but really it’s all just my guess work.

My first thought would be in how she stood out among Golden Age Plas villains by not only having a defined origin, but also essentially getting away with her crimes at the end. Most Plas baddies back then usually started the story fully formed, and by the end they were usually jailed or even dead. Take Madam Brawn for example, despite being a great villain (and the ONLY Golden Age baddy to make two appearances). She starts already the big buff gal with no history explained, and ended her second story dead. Even if someone did get an origin, there powers wouldn’t last long and they’d go to jail (Concrete Cargill and The Grasshopper). So Shiela getting an origin makes her unique, and despite her losing her powers at the end, she gets away scot free for it, by having amnesia.

Another aspect I’d say makes her popular is her appearance. It’s very simple but works really well. A beautiful woman in a bright blue dress with bright red hair, but cold grey skin. Plus those weird curl things on her head. When most baddies were dressed in suits and regular clothes and had normal skin tones, something like that really stands out.

(Art by AnyaUribe on deviantart. NSFW as HELL)

I’d also say something about how when it comes down to it, she’s not as silly as some Plas villains. The bad guys, sometimes in the Quality Era, but mainly in the DC Era, are often extremely silly and are portrayed as very goofy, in gimmicks and abilities. Like, Dr. Dome? Professor Forklift? Red Herring? They’re all deliberately silly and over the top, whereas as The Granite Lady is a lot more down to earth, with a simple super strength and toughness power set, simple premise, and easy to understand goals, making it so that she could be portrayed as both silly AND serious… if they let her be used enough lol.

Plus, her being the ONLY Plastic Man character in the old comics to get Plas’ attention, romantically, has a lot of potential and is very cool.

Finally, I’d say the part of her popularity came down to luck. She was referenced, as you said, in the 2003 series and the 2006 cartoon Pilot. Both of those probably got some folks’ attention about her, and combined with the previous things I’ve said, it got her to enough popularity and interest to be considered a “Classic” Plastic Man villain, in the same way that the Joker and Lex Luthor are classic Batman and Superman villains.

I’m sorry if this got too rambley, but I had fun writing this. Hope this answered your question lol

#plastic man #dc comics #eel o'brian #superhero #jack cole #lady granite #granite lady #sheila sorrell

[retrievablememories]

picture me | johnny (m)

title: picture me pairing: vampire!johnny x black!reader genre: fantasy, romance, smut, fluff, angst summary: you meet a vampire-slash-photographer whose self-identity is increasingly lost to him, and you try to help him find some purpose again. word count: 18.3k warnings: age gap (cuz you know, vampires...but everyone is legal), mentions of discrimination/prejudice based on species, self-identity issues/self-deprecation, general angst, sheltered!reader, mentions of blood and drinking blood, oral sex (female and male receiving), fingering, thigh riding, loss of virginity, corruption kink, use of lube, unprotected sex (do not try at home), creampie, johnny is packing in this fic ok! a/n: today (the 28th) is my birthday, so i’m posting this 100% self-indulgent fic that i’ve been working on between requests since september. it was very hard to get johnny’s characterization right for this fic and idk if i actually succeeded but i’m not revising this for the 1000th time lol. i love this fic with my whole heart tho.

i haven’t seen many vampire fics that really explore the whole “doesn’t show up in mirrors/photos” concept (shout em out if you know em) and...there’s probably a reason for that, this shit is hard af to write and there are some logic issues but whatever 🤪

(the beginning quote is from “criminal,” stan taemin!!)

The moment I fall for you is the end of my innocence

—

He sits in the same coffee shop everyday, like it’s a habit he just can’t break. But who are you to judge? You’re there, too. Watching him like a creep. Or maybe like an interested coffee shop patron, trying to be discreet and failing at it.

He wasn’t hard to notice. You’d never been to this coffee shop before, but your friend recommended it to you mostly for their in-house-made pastries; she claimed the coffee was good, too, but she wasn’t much of a caffeine person. You decided to give it a try when you had time between classes and a moment to breathe, not needing to talk to this advisor or that professor.

You saw him immediately when you walked past the shop window. He was sitting at a table near the front, staring down at his phone with a small cup of coffee sitting in front of him. Its miniscule size was almost comical in contrast to his...everything. He was tall—that much was obvious even with him sitting down—and imposing, wearing all black. His hair was equally pitch-black, his bangs hanging to one side and the rest shaved in an undercut. If you didn’t know much better, you’d think you’d stepped back into 2007 and landed dead in the middle of the emo craze.

He was interesting to look at. Not in a bad way, but in a way you don’t see very often. Deciding to walk in before you made yourself look totally weird staring at him through the window, you’d stepped into the coffee shop, the small bell dinging above your head. A barista greeted you at your entrance. Out of the corner of your eye you saw the man, to your left, still looking at his phone.

You’d given your order and waited for it to be ready before taking it to a table on the other side of the shop. From that vantage point, you had a good view of the man. You tried to keep your eyes on your food and your phone, not wanting to spend the whole time looking at him, but it was a little hard not to.

When you took a bite of your pastry, you quickly discovered it was just as delicious as your friend promised—probably even more so. You made a noise of approval before you could catch yourself, and you glanced around the shop in embarrassment to see if anyone nearby noticed. Didn’t seem like it, at first. But then you glanced over to the man again only to find him looking at you below his eyelashes with a small, amused smile on his lips. He only kept his gaze on you for a second before returning to his phone.

What? You hadn’t thought you were that loud. How did he hear you from over there, and above the noise of the café? Even now, you remember how embarrassed you’d felt, ducking your head and looking away.

The man finished his coffee not long after that; he slipped his phone into his pocket and stood up. You glanced up only momentarily when he stood, but your eyes soon slid back to his form when you noticed something odd. On the wall behind him, there was a big oval mirror sitting pretty in its elaborate silver frame. He stood just a few feet in front of it, yet there was no reflection of him. The only thing you could see was the other side of the café reflected back, with another man sitting alone at a booth enjoying his own coffee. The tall man’s reflection was nowhere to be found.

That was when you figured he must be a vampire.

You’d never met one before. At least, you didn’t think you had until then.

Unbeknownst to you, vampires are notoriously able to blend in more easily than most other supernatural beings—until faced with situations like that one in the coffee shop. Ultimately, there’s no faking a reflection no matter how hard you try to remain inconspicuous.

The man had caught your eye again. Thinking back on it, you aren’t sure of what expression you had on your face or what it must’ve looked like to him. It must’ve been something akin to surprise, though; you weren’t quick enough to disguise your reaction at his lack of a reflection.

He gave you another smile, though it felt sadder than the previous one, and walked out of the store, the small bell on the door ringing at his departure. He disappeared down the street in a swirl of black fabric, almost like something out of a movie, and you watched him retreat until you could see him no more.

You scraped your index fingernail over the wood table your food was resting on, your mind whirring with all kinds of thoughts. Your interest was piqued. And yet there was no way for you to know if you’d see him again.

—

At least, that’s what you believed then. Luckily for you, your subsequent visits to the coffee shop have proven fruitful; the strange, tall vampire is there more often than not, always in the same spot in front of that same mirror. Sometimes he reads a book, other times he looks at his phone, and other times still, he stares out the window at the passersby.

He acknowledges you whenever he sees you, either with a nod or a smile. You’ve never spoken to each other, though you know what his voice sounds like from hearing him talk to the baristas. It’s a nice voice, rich and handsome like him, and you find yourself gradually wanting to hear it spoken in your direction. But you aren’t sure how to talk to him, or what you should say.

There’s a lot you want to know about him and his vampirism, but you don’t think it’s fair to bombard him with questions right after meeting him—if you could somehow work up the nerve for that first step.

When you were young, your parents made sure to keep you safely sheltered away from anyone who could potentially be a vampire or any other nonhuman being. This game kept up until you went to college, where they could no longer “shield” you. Because of their lifelong fear and disgust, your knowledge of nonhuman beings is scarce and mostly inaccurate.

The man’s skin isn’t deathly pale like you’ve heard others say vampires always are. It’s nicely tanned, in fact. Nor are his eyes red, or his canine teeth abnormally sharp. And obviously, he has no aversion to sunlight, otherwise he wouldn’t be out here during the day. The only visible marker of his inhuman nature is his lack of a reflection. Maybe he’s not a vampire at all? Maybe he’s another type of being entirely. That only makes you more curious.

It’s not rare to come across supernatural beings, but they only make themselves known if they want to, or if it’s imperative to their survival. Most of them would rather quietly assimilate amongst humans or stay safe and hidden within their own communities. Humans are still too judgmental towards those who are different from themselves for nonhumans to feel truly safe or welcomed—at least not on a global scale. Small pockets of communities forged with human allies are helpful and sometimes vital for survival, but not always enough.

These small tidbits of information cycle through your mind as September gradually bleeds into October. You continue watching the thoughtful man in the coffee shop and making up your own secret theories about his life. You haven’t told anyone from school about this, because you already know the reaction would be nothing short of awful. Your parents would only let you go to school at the one university in the city that explicitly didn’t allow supernatural beings; it goes without saying that your classmates don’t view them in a positive light.

Part of you feels like you might be breaking the unspoken rules just by being at this coffee shop all the time and allowing this man to take up space in your mind. But who will know what’s inside your thoughts except you?

One day, your friend decides to accompany you on your lunch break, finally stopping by the café she recommended to you. The man is already there, as usual, and he smiles slightly when you and your friend enter. She doesn’t catch this, too busy wondering what she’s going to get off the menu today.

“I haven’t been here in forever, I wonder if Sam still remembers me?” You know Sam to be one of the baristas there, having read it on their name tag before.

“I doubt there are very many people who’d forget you,” you answer.

When you both have your food, you take a booth farther away from where the man sits, though you can still see him easily from this distance. Your friend settles into the seat in front of you.

You try to keep things inconspicuous throughout your conversation, but you must glance over at him one too many times, because your friend eventually raises her eyebrows questioningly. She turns around in her seat, making it obvious that she’s looking, and you groan as you keep your eyes in the opposite direction towards the window.

“Who’s that guy you keep staring at?”

You cough. “No one.”

“He’s obviously someone. Someone interesting enough to hold your attention.”

“I don’t know the man,” you say curtly. You shuffle your napkin and spoon aimlessly, your nervousness rising. What if he has some kind of enhanced hearing and can hear what you’re saying right now? He definitely heard you make that noise that first day.

Your friend looks at the ceiling and blows air out of her mouth. “Whatever. I’ll find out who he is sooner or later.”

You take a sip of your drink and lower your voice to just above a whisper. Although you want to leave the subject alone, you’re curious about one thing. “You mean you’ve never seen him before? This café was your hangout spot before it was mine.”

She shrugs. “No, I think I would’ve remembered someone as...visually striking as him. Why are we whispering, anyway? It’s not like he can hear us above all this noise.”

You think to yourself, I’m not so sure about that, but you merely shake your head.

You spend a few more minutes talking before movement catches the corner of your eye. At this point, it’s practically a reflex for you to look in that direction. You try not to, but your friend has already caught you and turns her head to spy, too. The man has gotten up for whatever reason to say something to one of the baristas at the counter. Your gaze darts back to your cup after you’ve gotten your eyeful, but you’re nearly startled into dropping the cup at your friend’s gasp.

Oh. The mirror.

She grips the edge of the table. “He’s a vampire…?”

You don’t know what to say to that, and you feel oddly guilty for some reason you can’t pinpoint. Like you’ve been caught with your hand in the cookie jar. “U-um, I don’t know…?” You can hardly finish your thought before your friend is scrambling to grab her purse. She hurriedly stands out of the seat, tugging your arm as she does.

“Come on. We shouldn’t stay here.”

“Are you serious—?” You feel embarrassed heat rip through your body at her display; some other café-goers are already looking at her curiously, probably wondering what the hell she’s doing. She tugs more incessantly, and you already know she’ll get louder if you don’t get up now and defuse the situation. Leaving your half-full cup behind, you grab your things and follow her out of the store, keeping your eyes firmly on her back as you pass by the man. You don’t know if he looked up, or if he could sense the reason for your sudden departure—you’ve never left the shop before him until now—and you don’t want to know.

Neither of you talk until you’re well down the street and around the corner. “That wasn’t necessary,” you huff, your hands still sweating from the spiked adrenaline at suddenly being rushed out.

“Yes it was! We all know bloodsuckers and all these other weirdos are dangerous...even if they think they’re being well-intentioned by living among humans. I hope you don’t go back there.”

“Whatever...you’re the one who told me to visit the café,” you mumble, unable to muster up the energy to say anything more. You both know very well she can’t tell you where to go, but you hope she doesn’t mention this to your other acquaintances on campus and make it into a bigger deal than it is.

When you part ways with your friend and get back to your dorm, you realize you’re missing your planner. The planner with all your upcoming assignment dates in it. You sigh heavily and roll your eyes, knowing it must’ve happened in the chaos of her pulling you out of the shop. Maybe if you’re really lucky, it’ll still be there, picked up by an employee or simply left untouched. Knowing how many people go through that café in a day, you’re not optimistic.

For the first time since visiting the quaint little shop, you’re not anticipating returning and seeing the man again, afraid he’ll ignore you or look at you with distaste—like you’re just another unsympathetic human. And would he be wrong to think that? You’re only strangers to each other.

You try not to dwell on it too hard when you go to bed that night.

When lunch rolls around the next day, you hesitate a couple times on your way to the café, not wanting to show up. However, the desire to see what became of your planner pushes you forward. You don’t even have to stay; if it’s there, you’ll take it and leave. If it’s not—oh well. You can still leave. It’s not hard to buy another.

He’s there when you arrive, of course.

He nods at you when you step inside, though he doesn’t smile as he’s become accustomed to doing. You nod back, but you can’t ignore the renewed rush of embarrassment you feel. You linger at the entrance for a second longer, wondering if maybe you should say something. Apologize, even? But what if he really didn’t know what was going on yesterday? Then how odd would you look for bringing it up?

You decide to move on and go back to the booth to search for your belongings, but his voice stops you. This takes you by surprise.

“Did you come back for this?”

You turn to him to see him holding your planner in his hand. You stare, momentarily dumbfounded, and almost shake your head before realizing it is yours. Definitely the same sticker-covered, scribbled-all-over planner.

“Oh—y-yeah. Thank you.” He passes it to you, though you notice he’s very careful not to let your hands touch. You’re a little perplexed about why, but then the rumors about vampires having cold skin pop up in your mind. Maybe that’s actually true, too. “I usually don’t lose things so easily, but…” Your voice falters, and you don’t know how to finish that sentence without bringing up the other day’s events.

He doesn’t seem to mind as he replies, “It happens to all of us sometimes...I don’t know what I’d do if I lost my camera.”

“You take pictures?” you ask, a tinge of curiosity in your voice.

He nods. “I take photos of anything that interests me. Which often ends up being everything I see. I work at an art museum, so I guess having an eye for photography comes in handy.” He hesitates for a second, then says, “I could show you some?” He waves his phone, indicating that the photos are there.

“Oh, sure.” The man gestures for you to sit down in the empty chair in front of him, and you do so. He swipes through his phone a few times until he settles on what he’s searching for, then puts the device on the table and slides it to you. You lean forward to look at it and see that it displays an album full of pictures, simply titled with the emoji “🌌.”

“It’s okay, you can pick it up.” He chuckles. You pick up the phone and swipe through the numerous pictures. Many of them are nighttime shots of the moon, trees, half-empty streets, darkened storefronts. Others depict nature scenes at sunset or the beginning of sunrise, with the sky colored in darker hues. No matter what the subject matter is, they all look to be professionally taken, even for an iPhone.

“Wow, these are nice. You said you work at a museum…are you a professional photographer, too?”

The man shrugs, and as you look at his slight grin, you realize you still don’t know his name. “Something like that, I guess.”

“You should be if you aren’t already,” you say, looking through more photos. “I’m sure you’d make a lot of money.” When you reach the end of the album, you go to hand the phone back to him but realize he’ll probably want to avoid contact again, so you slide it across the table. He takes it and slips it into his pocket.

“I don’t really care about the money,” he responds. “I just like it because…” He trails off, unsure how to convey his thoughts, wondering if he should even get that personal with a stranger. “It...helps me pass the time.” He’s not quite satisfied by that answer—it doesn’t feel like enough—but it’s all he can think of on the spot.

“Well, that’s nice too. It’s always good to have a hobby just for the sake of it...not for anyone’s benefit but your own.”

“Do you have one?” He takes a sip of his coffee. You don’t expect to be asked about your own interests, and your mind goes blank as you try to think. Why does this always happen when I’m asked these kinds of questions?

“Um, just different things here and there.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” he says, amused.

“It’s not that, I just don’t have a ton of hobbies or anything. I’m kinda boring, so…” And wasn’t allowed to do much of anything until I left home.

“Being boring isn’t always a bad thing.”

You lean back in your seat, shrugging slightly. “Maybe if you see it that way. My friends don’t.”

“Would one of those happen to be the same one who dragged you out of here yesterday?” He speaks casually, putting his cheek in his hand. You slump further down in your seat, feeling exposed. Of course there was no escaping this topic. He notices your mood shift and shakes his head. “You don’t have to feel so bad about it. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last.”

“I’m sorry for all that mess,” you murmur, unable to meet his eyes. “Really, I am.” You stand up from the seat, gripping your planner. “Thanks again for this. I don’t want to take up any more of your time today.” You’re about to turn to leave when he speaks again.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me, you know…you could talk with me whenever you feel like it.” That’s the last thing you expect him to say. His voice takes on a quality that’s...not what you’d call begging, but it’s clear he’d enjoy some company. Maybe he’s doing this for your benefit as well as his own, because it’s obvious how your eyes always stray to his little corner.

You nod, giving him an apprehensive smile. “I’ll keep that in mind, then.”

The rest of your day after that is uneventful, full of classes and unexciting lectures, but you keep thinking of one thing. Though he appears to enjoy his time in the coffee shop, how lonely must he really be? There’s never anyone else around him. His eyes when he’d spoken to you held a certain sadness.

And you still didn’t get his name.

You don’t see him for the next few days, mostly because you aren’t at the café. You’ve gotten busy with a new project and haven’t had as much time to return to the coffee shop, mostly spending your time in the library instead.

When you finally get a chance to buy lunch outside campus, he’s not there. This disappoints you more than you thought it would, and you wonder what his absence means. Did he just decide not to come today, or has he found another place to frequent? You kind of hope the second option isn’t the case, though you also don’t know why you’re even caring this much about where someone else goes on their own time.

You get a drink to-go this time, deciding you’ll just take it back to the library and continue your studies there. The entryway bell rings behind you as you wait for your order to be made, though you don’t pay it much attention; half of your mind is still occupied with what you need to do next for your project.

When you turn around to leave the shop with your drink, you’re surprised to see the man standing there, waiting to get his own coffee. “You’re late,” you blurt out. You immediately feel silly for saying it, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

He gives you a slight smile. “Yes, I am.” Then he spots your to-go cup. “Are you leaving?”

“Uh, well,” you glance at your drink, “are you staying?”

He nods as he steps up to the counter. “Yeah, I’m staying. My offer’s still open, by the way.”

Right. The offer to talk to him sometimes. You’re tempted to stay awhile and talk to him now, though you don’t even know what about. Your project? That’s boring. Him being a vampire? Too invasive. Your school? Also boring, and probably not the best idea considering which one you attend.

“I...think I’ll stay, then.”

You both sit at his usual table, with you grinning nervously.

“How are you? I noticed you hadn’t showed up in a while,” he asks, settling back in his chair.

“Yeah, I’m doing fine, I’m just busy with school stuff. These teachers don’t give us a break.” You laugh a little, shaking your head.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” He grins. “I never did go to college, but I’ve always heard others talk about how tiring it is. And expensive.”

“They’re right.” You roll your eyes at the thought of it. “But I guess it’ll all be worth it in the end. Maybe. If the economy isn’t in the toilet.” The sound of his laughter is nice, and you’re glad you could make him laugh. “Also, I’m sorry—I don’t know how this flew under the radar, but I don’t know your name.”

He shrugs. “Nothing to apologize for, really. It’s Johnny.”

You tell him your name, too. “Since I haven’t seen you lately...how are you doing?” You circle your hands around your to-go cup, feeling its warmth transfer to your palms as you await his answer.

“I think I can say I’m the same as always—which is fine. Life slows down a little when you have a lot of time on your hands.” Johnny’s lips quirk up at that, and you think he might be referring to his vampirism. Your eyes widen a little.

“What’s that like? Having so much free time. I wouldn’t know much about that right now, but…”

“Maybe not as pleasant as you think it’d be. But there’s good in it. Like coming and going when you want to. And you can take up whatever interests you want without worrying as much about busy schedules.” You already know he’s alluding to his photography. “I do like having a job, though…it gives me structure.”

“You’re probably right…I wouldn’t know the first thing to do if I had a ton of free time…like, which hobbies to pick up first.” You consider how you initially thought about him being lonely and wonder if that’s one of the unpleasant parts he hinted to. “Speaking of hobbies...did you take any new pictures lately?”

Johnny nods. “Most of them were on my camera this time, but some are on my phone. You want to see?”

“Yes!”

Johnny lets you have his phone again to look through the newest pictures he’s taken. There are varying shots of car-lined streets and storefronts, some of the latter decorated with glowing jack-o-lanterns for the onset of October. A pigeon sits on a streetlamp during the daytime, holding its head up like royalty upon a throne. In another image, a stray cat and her kittens huddle in an alley, the babies grooming each other while the mother looks quizzically at the camera.

You recognize a few photos from the nearby park; he also had some pictures of it the last time you looked. “Do you go to this park often?”

“Yeah, it offers some great shots. It’s especially pretty if you go just before the sun sets...the light filters through the tree leaves and it looks kinda like a kaleidoscope.”

“Ah, I’ve never seen that before…” you say a little sadly. Your parents didn’t much like taking you to that park when you were younger because of how far it is from their house. And since living away from them, you’ve only been able to visit it during the early hours of the day—like now.

Johnny looks closely at you. “Would you ever want to?”

“If it’s as pretty as you say, I should.” You slide the phone back across the table to him, not catching what he’s trying to hint at as you keep talking. “Do you go anywhere else besides here and the park?” As soon as you say it, you realize this might sound a little rude and try to make a quick save. “I mean, do you have any other favorite places? I’m not trying to say you don’t have a life or anything!”

Johnny laughs at your slight panic at thinking you’ve offended him. “Nothing too out-there, I guess. The bookstore, the photography store, the theater. Pretty much all the same places others visit.”

“The movies are fun.” You trace your finger across the table’s surface, thinking of your own favorite spots. “Me and my friends like to go downtown. There are a lot of cute little shops down there…”

You and Johnny talk for a while longer, and you almost forget you have to get back to campus until you glance at the wall clock. “Oh no, I’m gonna be late.” Flustered, you jump out of your seat and crumple your empty cup. “Sorry to cut it short, Johnny, but I gotta go back now.”

He smiles good-naturedly and nods, his dark bangs sweeping his face. “I understand.” As he watches you gather your things and get ready to go, he speaks up again. “Actually, if you want to see the park at sunset sometime...I could show you? It’s up to you.”

You pause, suddenly curious at the thought of seeing him outside the café. In the back of your mind, you feel a little paranoid and afraid of your friend or maybe even your parents seeing you there with him, though the latter is extremely unlikely. It’s hard to shake that familiar fear of judgment and ostracism when it’s been ingrained in you since childhood. “That sounds good. If it’s not any trouble for you…?”

“Never too much trouble. I usually get off around 4 on Fridays, just before the sun sets at 5. Unless the weekend is better for you?”

You nod, holding your books tighter to your chest. “Friday will work for me! I’ll meet up with you then.”

Johnny smiles. “Great; I’ll see you then, kind stranger.”

Maybe he says it to be joking or quirky, to sound like one of those characters in a movie or drama, but it makes you smile. Nodding to him again, you step out of the café and rush towards the direction of your school. Johnny watches as you retreat, your roles reversed.

You meet up with Johnny at the park that Friday, just as you both agreed. You spot him sitting on a bench near the park entrance, waiting on your arrival.

Johnny’s wardrobe is still mostly dark, but it’s a little lighter than usual today. He’s changed things up with a white polo shirt underneath his black sweater. Seeing him dressed like this, you wonder what he’d be like as a student, or maybe even a university professor.

He stands up when you get closer, hearing the sound of your footsteps approaching and turning towards you. His camera sits safely around his neck, the lens catching in the light of the sun.

When you stop in front of him, he smiles at you warmly. You try to relax into the genuineness of that smile and ignore the still-lingering traces of anxiety about being out with him. “Hi, Johnny!”

“Hi, Y/N.”

You and Johnny walk around the park as he looks for something interesting to shoot. He snaps a few shots of the trees, fallen leaves, bushes, and other natural elements along the way, though it seems like he hasn’t quite captured what he wants yet.

“Are you looking for something specific?” you ask, peering at his camera as he holds it in his hands.

“There’s an aster bush around here,” he responds. “It hadn’t fully bloomed yet the last time I was here, but it should be open by now.”

It turns out he’s right as you two finally come up on the bush. Its blooms make bright purple smudges against the rest of the landscape, which is a monochrome red-and-orange palette from the leaves changing their hues. You watch as he comes up to the bush carefully and quietly, like it’s a small animal he’s afraid to scare away. Johnny is very attentive while taking pictures of it, always conscious of getting the correct lighting and securing the exact angles he wants to capture. “Compassionate” is not a word you’d usually associate with the act of taking photos, but that’s the only word you can currently think of to describe this display. He treats the flowers with a peculiar sense of respect, as if they’re a human subject.

After he’s gotten the images he wants, Johnny offers you his camera to take a few of your own. You’re anxious about holding his prized possession and are afraid you’ll find a way to mess something up, but he promises you it’s fine. You take a few shots of the sky, still with a few wisps of clouds left, and a nearby tree that’s almost stripped bare of leaves. You know the shots will probably end up blurry from your unsteady hands, but Johnny tells you you’ve done a good job anyway.

Something about getting his approval makes a pleasant warmth settle in your chest.

As you both walk down a long trail, you finally ask him, “Sorry if this is invasive, but I was wondering how old are you? Like...as a vampire.” Your voice becomes hesitant on the word vampire, even though you’re the only two in this part of the park.

He chuckles a bit. “I’m 85.” You try not to look surprised. “I’ve been turned for 60 years. Old, but probably a little younger than most vampires you’d think of.”

“Kinda,” you say quietly. “They’re always like 2,000 years old in movies.”

“The ancient vampires are purebloods. They keep to themselves and avoid mingling with turned vampires, let alone humans. Some people are even skeptical if they exist. Supposedly, they use humans as servants or blood banks.” He gives you an apologetic look after saying this, though you don’t really know why. You don’t get the feeling he’d do that to another being, but he is still mostly a stranger... “At least, that’s what my mentor told me.”

Your curiosity is roused at all this new knowledge. “You had a mentor?”

“An older woman. She was also a turned vampire.”

“Turned, huh…”

Johnny nods, toeing at a small pile of leaves on the ground. “She went away eventually, said people are meant to pass in and out of each other’s lives. I don’t think she ever had intentions to stay. But I enjoyed her company while she was there.” Johnny stops at a short bridge above a small manmade lake, and you both look down into the water.

You place your arms on the bridge railing so you can lean over more. You notice he doesn’t have a reflection in the water, and this startles you more than you expected. Before meeting this strange man, you’d never thought much before about why vampires don’t have mirror reflections, but it seems even more unnatural to see this phenomenon happen again in the lake.

You find yourself looking at the side of Johnny’s face, trying to read his expression as he peers into the water’s depths. He turns to you, and you flinch at being caught staring, but he only smiles slightly. You force yourself to form words and break the silence. “What—what did you do after she left?”

“Lived on my own. She taught me a lot of things to help me live independently as a vampire, so it wasn’t too difficult to get along without her...but emotionally? A different story.”

“You sound like you had a very close relationship with her.”

“Yes. Quite close…” Johnny’s tone suggests something deeper, more intimate than a regular friendship. You feel a bit astounded at the idea of him having an older, more worldly lover while being only a newly changed vampire. Your reaction makes you feel foolish, inexperienced. Still, you can’t help imagining a scenario of them living in a big, dark mansion somewhere in the mountains, rolling around in a bed with bloody red sheets—and maybe drinking from the occasional naïve, misled human hiker.

Strangely, too, you feel jealous at his freedom, his ability to go wherever and do whatever with whoever he wants without overbearing relatives always just a step away.

You continue staring at the ripples as they circle in and out of the water’s surface, the motions triggered by a small orange leaf falling into the lake. You’re unsure of what could be the right thing to say to his admission, so you blurt out whatever comes to mind next. “You said she taught you to live independently as a vampire. What does that mean? How do you get...you know. Blood?”

“There are ways,” Johnny says cryptically, which makes your own blood rush faster. He turns to you with a grin, like he finds your naivety endearing. “It’s nothing drastic, though. At least, not for me. I never drink directly.” It does make sense that there are other ways to drink human blood without taking it straight from their necks, though you can only speculate on which methods he prefers. “Drinking directly is lethal, and often not worth it.”

“So, it’s true that vampire bites can kill?” You watch as Johnny pushes himself off the railing, and you follow him as he continues down the trail.

“It’s not false. But it’s never really that simple.” Johnny’s answer is mysterious, and he doesn’t elaborate further. He turns to you. “Where did you hear that, anyway? Your university? The one that bans all nonhuman beings?”

“You know where I go to school?” You feel embarrassed, thinking he must assume you’re like the rest of the student body who hates nonhumans but still nurtures an odd obsession with them.

“I saw it on your notebook one day, the school insignia. I’m not a stalker, by the way.” You laugh only slightly, and Johnny seems crestfallen when he notices your apprehension. “I don’t care if you attend school there. Just because you do doesn’t mean you think the way they do.”

“You must think I’m some weird opportunist, then,” you mutter, heat finding its way to your face. “Asking you all these questions...I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think anything except that you’re a pleasant person to be around.”

You’re quiet for a moment, letting the compliment sink in. You think you should probably give him one of his own, but before you can, he says, “Look. The sun’s already setting.” Just like he told you before, the dying rays filter through the tree leaves and create impossibly intricate patterns on your surroundings. You hold your hand out and watch the latticework that the leaves create dance over your open palm.

You let Johnny take a picture of your hand with the tree shadows flitting over it, but you shy away from the camera’s lens when he points it higher to your face, a questioning look in his eyes. “Maybe some other day.”

You walk around for a while longer until the sky bleeds into a dark purple. “I guess I should be going soon. It’s getting late,” you say, though you’re also a bit sad over your evening with Johnny meeting its end.

“Do you want me to take you back to campus? You shouldn’t walk back alone. My car is just in the parking lot there.” He points to it where it sits in the distance.

You look at Johnny with a confused gaze. “But you can’t come on campus. They have...things to ward off vampires.” Like gates made of pure silver, displaying intimidating, elaborately designed crosses. You don’t know if any of it actually works, but it’s probably better not to find out.

Johnny doesn’t seem bothered by this information. “Yeah…I know. I can just drop you at the street across from the main gate.”

You hesitate a moment longer but eventually agree. He is right; you’d rather not walk alone at night, and getting a ride with him is better—and cheaper—than calling for a rideshare.

The ride to the college is fairly quiet, with the radio filling the silence. It’s not an awkward type of stillness, at least, which you’re grateful for.

As he said he would, Johnny parks on the side of the street that sits in front of the main gate, just outside the immediate vicinity of the campus. The metal crosses stare back at the both of you, glinting in the light of nearby streetlamps. You turn your face away from them, biting the inside of your cheek.

You unbuckle your seatbelt. “Thanks again for the ride. I guess I’ll see you back at the shop next week, yeah?” Again, you get the urge to say something, anything, to remedy or cover up the foreboding source of discomfort sitting just in front of you, but there’s no one sentence you could say to wipe away decades of hatred.

Johnny nods and smiles, and still he shows no signs of being disturbed. He doesn’t cast another glance at the gates. “It’s no problem. See you then.”

You get out of his car and cross the street to get inside the gate; it’s early enough in the evening for it to still be open. Any later, and it’d be locked shut to even humans. You risk another wave at him before turning back around and heading for your dorm, which sits a few yards from the entrance. Johnny lets the car idle on the side of the street until you’ve walked into the dorm, and only then does he drive away.

It doesn’t take very long for you to warm up to Johnny inviting you to other places. The next time you and him go somewhere other than the coffee shop, you accompany him as he buys some film for his camera on one of his free days. You don’t know a ton about photography, so you’re more than happy to let him tell you all about how film works and why he buys certain kinds over others.

The place he frequents is a specialty photography shop that still carries older varieties of film—ones that fell out of favor once digital cameras became a thing. The store looks noticeably old, but not in an unkempt or decrepit way. You can tell it’s been around for a while, holding all kinds of history in its structure.

“There are so many different types.” You look over a shelf of film rolls in awe. “How can you tell them all apart?”

Johnny laughs. “It gets easier if you’ve been doing it for a while…or a few decades.” He picks one up from a row of them and holds it in front of you. “35mm is the most common type, which is what you’ll find the most of when you look through any film shop. That’s what I use.”

He sets that one down and walks past another display of film rolls, gesturing toward them. “There’s also 120 and 220 film formats here…those work for even older cameras, sorta like ones you’d see in 1930s movies. You can even turn a film camera into a digital camera.”

You nod to his words, looking over what seems like millions of film canisters—and occasionally glancing at the lines of his broad back as he walks ahead of you. “You should teach a photography class. I’d be more willing to listen to you than some old professor.”

Johnny snickers. “Huh, I don’t know. Not a professor, but I am old.”

You both continue walking through the store, with Johnny giving you the rundown on every item that catches your interest.

Like the coffee shop, there’s another mirror in this store. Many more, actually—there are whole rows of them on a series of shelves, all in varying sizes and shapes. They create a fragmented view of your form as you stand in front of them, though you don’t initially realize you’ve crossed into their glassy line of sight. You’re busier with looking at a roll of film Johnny’s handed you. When you notice your reflection shifting in your peripheral view, you look up.

Johnny’s only a few feet behind you, and you know this because you can hear him and feel his presence. Yet, it’s strange to see yourself as the only person in the aisle.

Eventually, he notices what’s got you preoccupied and comes to stand next to you. Though you see him clearly in front of your eyes, there’s no trace of him in the glass reflections.

Suddenly, you’re hit with the aching loneliness of it—how it must feel to never see yourself. You can see him with your own eyes, and so can everyone else who encounters him, but what must it be like to be virtually invisible outside of other peoples’ perceptions of you? You almost feel utterly alone even though you know he’s beside you.

Noticing your sudden melancholy, Johnny takes the film roll from your hand and tosses it up in the air, making it look like it’s moving on its own in the mirrors. He means to lighten the mood, if only to see the cloudiness disappear from your expression. It works to a degree, though you still feel downcast deep below.

“It’s not good to dwell on it.” Johnny presses the film roll back into your hand, still carefully avoiding skin contact. He has no problem meeting your eyes, though, and you shyly look away from his dark gaze after a few prolonged moments.

“You’re right,” you say softly, turning back to the aisle and away from the rows of mirrors.

—

You and Johnny head to the coffee shop after your trip to the photography store. Once you get your drinks and sit down in your usual spot, he speaks suddenly. “Something’s wrong.”

Your eyes dart around the shop, thinking he’s referring to one of the patrons around you. “What? What’s wrong?” Your voice comes out a bit panicked. He doesn’t want to laugh, but he does.

“No, I mean...something’s wrong with you. You seem far away.”

“Oh…” You wonder if you should even bring it up and potentially ruin the mood. But you have been curious for weeks now, and you don’t think you’ll get a trustworthy answer by asking anyone other than him. “I just...I was wondering why you don’t have a reflection. I know it’s a vampire thing, but I’ve never really known why...you don’t need to answer, though. Like you said, it’s not good to dwell on it.”

Johnny makes a motion like a half-nod once your question is revealed, his eyes darting to the window and back to the table. His fingers trace across the rim of his coffee cup, a thoughtful but stormy expression on his face, and you’re afraid you shouldn’t have reawakened this topic. “You know...being undead means being in two places at once.”

“Two places?”

“We are caught between the living world and the world of the dead. Something that’s not really supposed to exist, yet…” He’s quiet for a moment. “You can only imagine the kind of issues and side effects that can cause. One of them being no reflection.”

“I never thought of it like that,” you say. “Two planes of existence...what does it mean to be a part of the world of the dead?”

“Our blood runs slower. Ours is more like sludge compared to yours. The heart beats only a few times per minute. Don’t need to eat or sleep, either, though many vampires still do.” Johnny pauses. “How much do you really know about vampires?”

“I don’t know much about any of this...stuff.” You gesture vaguely, meaning all supernatural beings and not just vampires. “No one ever told me these things growing up, and it’s hard to tell truth from fiction at school. People will say anything, horrible things, and you just take it at face value, I guess. I never really thought to try to find the reality.” You sigh. “Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person in the world who doesn’t know anything.”

“Learning is good. You can always learn. I don’t think it’s too late for that.” Johnny’s voice is a little lighter. “Anyway, everyone’s knowledge is different. Sometimes it slips my mind that everyone doesn’t know what it’s like to live as a vampire, though the world never lets me forget for long.”

“Then…do you hang out with other vampires who do understand? Or…maybe humans who can sympathize?”

Johnny gives a humorless laugh. “Most humans are hesitant to interact with us, if not full-out terrified or disgusted. At the museum...it’s less pronounced because all the employees already know. They…tolerate it. But every time someone else realizes what I am and doesn’t take well to it?” He shakes his head, acts like he’ll say something else, and then abandons that line of thought. “And do you really think I’d want to spend my free time around other bloodsuckers?” He tries to play it off as a joke, but you’re more inclined to think he actually feels that way. You can only nod, feeling bad for him but also a little disturbed by his view of his own kind.

“I think you’re a kind person, and you being a vampire doesn’t affect that,” you say hesitantly. “I like talking to you. And even if you feel that way about other vampires, I…wish you wouldn’t feel that about yourself.”

Johnny remains quiet, but he nods. You wonder about the struggle occurring in his mind. The only outward hint of his uneasy state shows in the furrow of his eyebrows and the tense set of his mouth. With his right hand resting on the table, he rubs his fingers together absentmindedly, like he’s analyzing your words. You have a sudden and startling desire to hold his hand, to twine your fingers together and feel his skin on yours for the first time, but you don’t dare cross that boundary.

He finally replies with, “You’re much kinder to me, an old and bitter vampire, than you probably should be. But maybe that’s a good thing about you.”

“I think it’s a good thing,” you agree, your voice low. “Every living being needs companionship. Good companionship, anyway.”

The corners of Johnny’s lips shift in something reminiscent of a smile. He turns a rueful gaze once again to the window, lifting his coffee cup to his lips. “Aren’t I lucky to have yours, then.”

On a day when you don’t have as many responsibilities to juggle, you visit Johnny at the art museum after his working hours are up. He’d already invited you to come to the museum any day you felt like so he could show you around. 

When you get there, he’s waiting in the visitor’s lobby for you, framed by receding sunlight as the day starts fading into night. He looks the same as he always does when you see him in the café on his lunch breaks, but within the context of the museum, he suddenly seems more…alive? Vibrant? He could’ve served as a muse for one of the many statuesque, perfectly proportional sculptures in the museum, and you’d never know anything different.

Your heartbeat increases at the sight of him, just enough to be outside the normal range.

“Hi, Johnny. I hope your day went well?”

“It was fine, nothing too crazy. But it’s better now.” And he smiles at you, sincere enough to make your heart ache.

“Oh—that’s great.” That’s it? You scold yourself internally, but you aren’t quick enough to think up a witty reply to his comment before the topic shifts.

“Is there anything in particular you wanna see first?” Johnny asks, leading you further into the museum.

“I guess I hadn’t thought too deeply about that…do you have a favorite exhibit? I want to see what you like.”

Johnny smiles faintly. “Let’s see, then.”

The dark-haired man takes you to a section of the museum filled with oil paintings, all by one singular artist. At first, all you see is varying shades of black and gray and red, with some white splashed in between. When you begin looking at the paintings more closely, it’s easier to see that each one depicts a different scene of chaos. Maybe a sort of organized chaos, but disarray all the same.

There is one picture that holds a clearer subject than the rest. One of the oil paintings is of a vampire—obvious by the fangs—with bloodied lips and anguished eyes. You pause when you catch sight of it, your steps stilled by the sheer frenzy in the other being’s painted eyes. Their hands reach out for the viewer as if begging for an escape that can only be provided by whoever’s observing.

“This one was painted by a fellow vampire, you know. The same one who did all the rest of the paintings in this gallery,” Johnny explains. He points at the placard next to the painting that displays the artist’s name and a short description of the piece. The word fellow comes off his tongue wrapped in cynicism. “And it was one of the ones I personally chose for this exhibit.”

You glance at him, a tinge of surprise blooming in your chest. “Really?”

He nods. “Who better to depict the ills of vampirism than a vampire themselves? I thought it was a…fascinating change of pace from all the humans who try and fail to do so, ironic as that is.”

If you look at the painting for long enough, you think you can recognize sadness in the corners of the vampire’s eyes—pure, unadulterated sadness. Different from anguish or panic. A similar mask of sadness you’ve seen on the man next to you.

You say nothing for a while. You simply feel the painful throb of your heart in your chest and listen to the small sounds around you. Even now, there are still other people exploring the museum and walking through this very exhibit, but you can’t hear or see any of them. Johnny notices the disconcerted look on your face, and his forehead creases. “But I’m sure you want to see something less…morbid than this, right? Come on.”

“Uh, I-I don’t mind,” you insist, even though you feel like you’ve just awoken from a painful trance by the sound of his voice. But he’s already gesturing for you to follow him elsewhere.

The next set of paintings you end up in front of are a series of sunflower studies. One frame depicts the long green stems; another provides an up-close view of their lined petals. One zooms in close on the flower’s brown center, only small glimpses of yellow left at the edges of the frame.

“This is definitely very different.” You look at him, a small smile pulling at your lips. “But it fits you. I see why you like it.” You remember him back in the park, taking careful pictures of the aster bush and of your hands…and then offering to take one of you. You don’t know why that last one makes your stomach jump.

“I thought you might like it.” Johnny’s eyes linger on your face as he observes your reaction to the paintings. He’s seen these flowers probably a hundred times by now in this permanent exhibit, but the wonder in your expression is new to him.

—

You both walk through a few more exhibitions after that, all with different subjects and mediums—some consist of sculptures, others are clay vases and figures. There’s still a lot to see in the museum, but you’re starting to get hungry, and you know Johnny has already heard your stomach growling.

After the 2nd time it happens and you think you might melt from embarrassment, he grins at you and makes a suggestion. “Let’s go to my office. I’ll get my things and we can eat. The restaurant here is pretty good—or at least that’s what everyone else says…”

When you get to his office, you feel almost like you’ve stepped into a room from years past. Your gaze drifts across his desk immediately; it’s not sleek and modern like you’d expect, considering the rest of the museum’s aesthetic, but wooden and heavy and vintage-looking. It’s olden quality resembles everything else in his personal space. Even his desk chair, a big and plush thing, feels vintage with its soft leather and rustic design.

This feeling is far from a bad thing, though. You enjoy the aged look of the bookcases, the picture frames, the chairs, the small decorations here and there—everything about this room.

Johnny notices how you look around, studying everything in sight, and smiles. “It’s not the most modern, but I like it.”

“It’s perfect. Like a world of its own.”

“A woman of taste, I see.” Johnny puts a hand over his heart, giving an expression like he’s truly touched, and you can only grin sheepishly. When he has his belongings, he leads you out and locks the door behind him.

“Let’s see what they have on the menu today, then.”

—

You get dinner at the museum’s restaurant, just as Johnny recommended, and he even decides to eat too. Maybe he does it so you won’t look odd being the only one eating, or because he really just wants to; he doesn’t let on. Either way, sitting across from him like this in a fancy restaurant with both of you having a nice meal feels almost like a date. You let that thought amble around for a few minutes longer before tucking it back into one of your mind’s many small niches.

“I’ll probably be digesting this for the next few weeks,” he says jokingly, pulling a mock-disappointed face at his plate.

“That sounds like the worst constipation in history.” He snorts at your comment, his eyes creasing as he laughs. You notice he has a dimple when he smiles, and your grin mirrors his. You don’t think you’ve seen him laugh quite so genuinely before, but now that you’ve experienced it, you want to hear it again and again.

Anything is preferable to the perpetual gloom, always slinking around the corner.

—

When Johnny gets back home after dropping you off at the university, he undresses himself and showers and pulls on his bedclothes, which are nothing more than his underwear and a pair of sweatpants. His upper canines ache in his gums the entire time he goes through these motions, like two pulses of red-hot heat positioned on either side of his mouth.

He takes a blood bag from the fridge and drinks it in bed, leaning his arms against his knees. A sudden remembrance manifests itself in his mind; he hears the hazy echo of his mother’s decades-past voice in his head, reprimanding him for eating in bed. A sharp pain grips his chest, and he tries to send it back to the depths where it belongs.

When the blood hits his stomach, the pain is eclipsed by the bloodlust, which is no better. His fangs drop immediately, spiking into his lower lip. Johnny closes his eyes and, very gingerly, allows himself to draw a picture of you in his mind, of your blood in his mouth and your heartbeat roaring in his ears. The way your blood would flow out so delicately, crashing into his tastebuds like the high tide. He is usually better than this at curtailing his bloodlust, not even letting it reach the point of his canines hurting—he can’t remember the last time that’s happened—but being around you sets him on edge. Awakens him in some strange, raw way.

That only makes him more wary. And more guilty about imagining himself drinking your blood. He shouldn’t even be around you if he’s losing his grip on his hard-won control. But although it makes him feel ashamed, it also causes his heart to rush.

He drains the blood bag to the last possible drop. To his relief, it calms him significantly, though the thoughts of you don’t leave. More innocent ones now, of your outing earlier in the evening. Deep beneath, they are tinged with his ever-present guilt at his vampiric nature.

Johnny doesn’t need the sleep, but he drifts off anyway, if only to quiet the conflict sending daggers into his mind.

You’ve known Johnny for a few weeks now, not counting the time you spent silently staring at him in the café, but you find yourself intertwining yourself further into his life. You end up visiting his apartment sooner than you anticipated. You didn’t think of anything as ridiculous as him living in a coffin or sleeping in the rafters like a bat, but you also had a hard time imagining what his place might look like.

You come over on a weekend when you have more time to simply hang out and not worry so much about anything else.

Like usual, he waits in that spot on the side of the street for you to come out. In the daytime, you’re more apprehensive about him being here and someone potentially seeing him and trying to cause trouble for him, but there’s a part of you that likes the rebellious aspect of it. And if he truly doesn’t mind coming near the campus to pick you up, you don’t have much issue with him doing it.

Johnny’s apartment is clean—and a little sparser than you’d expected. Maybe he’s a fan of minimalism. One side of the wall is taken up by a wide bookcase, which features a bunch of different knickknacks, books, and a collection of larger hardcovers that look like photo albums. On the other walls are a few framed pictures of different scenes, and you assume they’re ones he must’ve taken.

“This is a nice place,” you say as he takes your jacket for you and puts it up. “It must cost quite a bit, too…” You sit down on the couch, stroking the soft material of it.

Johnny shrugs. “Thanks. It’s nothing I can’t handle...being nearly a century old gives you plenty of time to save money.” He appears charmingly self-satisfied when he’s able to make you laugh. “Do you want anything?”

“Water is fine…thank you.” Johnny nods and goes off to the kitchen.

Despite trying to keep your eyes on the wall photos, your gaze follows him as he leaves. You discreetly watch him move around his kitchen. With his dark clothes, he’s like a splash of black paint against the pale tile and stainless steel.

There are blood packs in Johnny’s fridge. Lots of them. You know because you saw them from your vantage point on the couch when he opened the fridge door. They look like the blood bags you’d see in a hospital, which makes you wonder how he even gets access to those. Another mystery you struggle to wrap your head around.

He comes back to the living room with your water, and you take it gratefully, though you also feel a little awkward. You think maybe the blood bags are something you shouldn’t have seen, although you know he probably would’ve made more effort to hide them or put them away if that were the case.

“You have a good supply of blood, a nice apartment, and a great job. Does every vampire get these kinds of perks?” Admittedly, it sounded better in your head. Your attempt to stave off the awkward feeling—which was really only coming from your end—only makes it more intense. Johnny laughs dryly in response. You can’t tell if he actually finds it amusing or is just trying to humor you, which makes you feel incredibly silly.

“All of it’s government-issued if you promise never to bite any humans.” Johnny gives a wry smile. “But it’s a mistake to think vampires live glamorous lives, filling up on blood and having no cares in the world.”

“N-no, I get it,” you stutter. “Bad joke.”

“I’m not trying to embarrass you or be mean. It’s just the way things are.” Your roles are suddenly reversed, and now he seems to feel some sort of sympathy for you, like you’re just an ignorant little human who doesn’t know any better. The last part of that is more your insecurities speaking out than anything else, but you try to ignore that and take him for his word.

Johnny gets up from the couch to go over to the bookcase as you sip your water. After looking through the photo albums intently, he takes one off the shelf and hands it to you. You set your water down and hold the album carefully as you open the front cover. The cover itself has a neat little label that reads Telluride 1976 - 1980, so you can already expect what you’ll find in it. There are numerous photos of trees, bushes, snowy mountain ranges, lakes, brilliantly vibrant flowers, and woodland creatures. You stop at a picture of a deer looking straight ahead, its black eyes wide and curious as it examines the lens.

“I lived in the mountains back then, a little after my mentor had left. I spent some time trying to reconnect with nature...and all that other hippie shit people used to do back in that era.”

You chuckle. “Did you wear the same kinds of clothes, too? Bell bottoms and tie-dye T-shirts and all?”

Johnny laughs and shrugs. “Maybe…but that’s only for me to know.”

You grin and look at the photos again. “Well…did your plan work, at least?”

Johnny gives a wistful smile. “In some ways, I think it did.”

You continue looking through the rest of the album, which you could probably do for hours if you had the time—just sit and trace every possible line, curve, and ray of light. Johnny sits beside you as you do, occasionally explaining some pictures and their backstories.

“Lately, I’ve been wanting something else to take pictures of...someone else, maybe.”

“What, like a subject?” you ask.

“Yeah, it’d be nice...I haven’t taken pictures of another person in a while.”

You nod quietly as you flip through the pages—another possible hint flying right over your head. Then a thought comes to you—one that makes your skin warm. “Have you ever taken pictures of anyone you were...involved with?” You don’t say it directly, but you hope he can get the gist of what you’re asking.

Johnny nods as if he doesn’t want to admit to it, a nervous smile gracing his lips. “A few different people…but I always gave them the pictures after we, you know, stopped seeing each other...so there’s none left here.”

“I see…” For a few moments, your thoughts circle around that concept. What was it like to bare yourself in front of someone else like that, immortalized on film? What might it be like to allow Johnny to see you like that, to take pictures of you in your most vulnerable form? The idea doesn’t make you as downright anxious as you expected it to, though you can’t completely shake the lingering embarrassment about it.

After you finish looking through the entirety of his Telluride adventures, Johnny shows you some recent pictures he’s developed, and you’re giddy to see your own blurry creations among them. Now that you’re holding them physically in your hands, you can agree that they look nice, each with its own little personality.

“I thought about putting them in a new photo album,” he says, “but you can keep them, if you prefer.”

You hold them to your chest. “Yes, I’d like to keep them. Thank you.” You smile. “I’m sure I’ll leave you with plenty other photos to put in your album, anyway.”

—

The sun is close to setting again. You aren’t ready to leave yet, though, and Johnny is content to let you stay longer. He pulls out another album for you to look at, this one dated with 1960 - 1964. Unlike the others, there’s no title to describe what’s in it except for that year range.

“This is a picture of me someone took before I was turned,” Johnny murmurs, sitting back down beside you. He turns the album to you, and in the middle of the first page is a sepia-toned photo of him sitting on a bed—or maybe a couch?—wearing a suit. White, handwritten lettering on the bottom right of the photograph reads August 4, 1960.

“Oh wow...” You touch the photo gently over its protective lining. “You look exactly the same. Of course.”

“It’s the only photo I have left of myself,” he sighs, leaning back on the sofa. “If it weren’t for that...I’d feel almost like I didn’t exist at all.”

“Do you remember this day?” you ask.

“…Vaguely.” His answer doesn’t feel like the whole truth, and the way his eyes dart anxiously as he says it confirms your suspicions. Then he sighs again, heavier this time, and he seems to be exhaling all 60 years of his burden along with it. “I was...going to be married. It was for our wedding shoot.”

You’re surprised for a reason you’re unsure of, never even imagining that Johnny could’ve been married at one point in time. Could’ve had an entire life and a family, if it hadn’t been for...

“I’m sorry, Johnny.” You know you never would’ve met him if things hadn’t happened this way, and that knowledge tugs at your heart in a way that makes you feel intensely selfish.

Johnny shakes his head and avoids your eyes. “It was long ago.” He wets his lips and his jaw clenches like maybe he wants to say something else, but he remains silent for a while.

You continue exploring the photo album in silence. With its thin size, there aren’t as many pictures in it as the others—much less, in fact, but each one is still enough to keep your interest. Your mind keeps drifting back to the one of Johnny.

You hand the album back to him when you’re done. He takes it from you, but in a gesture you don’t foresee, he allows your hands to touch for the first time. You make a tiny flinch at the unexpected coolness—not ice-cold, but enough to be noticeable—but you don’t draw away from him. You let his fingers slide across yours as the photo album leaves your hands, and it sends electricity racing up and down your spine.

“S-sorry.” You’re not sure if you’re apologizing for flinching or for making contact at all, though there is no reason to because he initiated it.

“Doesn’t it ever disturb you at all that I’m not human?” Johnny asks softly, still holding the album.

“What?”

“You’ve taken all this so easily...much more easily than many others. You aren’t even disgusted at my cold hands.” A ghost of a grin comes over his face.

“If I were disgusted, I wouldn’t even be here,” you say, trying to lighten the tension. It’s not the kind of tension that arises from anger, offense, or upset, but something else that you are lost on comprehending in this moment. “Some of it’s unfamiliar, obviously, but I’m not disgusted.”

He glances down at the album in his hands, as if contemplating something. Maybe thinking about the only living photo of himself beneath the cover. Or maybe he’s thinking back to how he was turned in the first place and subsequently lost the life he was about to have. He still hasn’t told you anything about how he became a vampire, and though you’d like to know, it’s obviously a sore spot for him.

Eventually, he nods, willing himself to smile at you. “I’m glad.”

—

Night has fallen by the time you’re done exploring the decades of his life, though there is still much you haven’t seen and don’t yet know. You let him drive you back to the school as you stare out at the passing cars, wondering how many more of these people sitting in their vehicles are nonhuman and you’d never know it.

You hesitate after he pulls up across from the main gate.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Uh, nothing really, it’s just—I still don’t have your number or anything.” And I want to talk to you more often. I want to hear your voice more often. You don’t want to say anything overly dramatic or cheesy, so you just keep those last thoughts to yourself.

Thinking it had been something serious, he smirks at your concern. “Oh, I see. I’ll give it to you now, then.”

Once your numbers are safely in each other’s phones, you finally bid each other goodnight. 

Though you try to steer your thoughts towards other things, you keep veering back to Johnny. His apartment. His fridge full of blood bags. His photo albums full of years of history. Even when you get into bed that night, you can’t keep him off your mind.

You wake up gasping and sweating when you dream of him with his fangs in your neck, your own blood running down your neck and chest. You glance over at your roommate to make sure you haven’t woken her and rest your head on your knees, trying to catch your breath and settle your racing heart. Your skin still prickles with how you could practically feel his heated breaths on your neck, ice-cold hands gripping your shoulders.

The worst part of it is that you can’t quite say you completely disliked it.

“It doesn’t make much sense to have a Halloween party and dress up as the very beings that you hate, but whatever…” you mumble, looking through a rack of costumes with a certain impassivity. You’re not very enthusiastic about going to this Halloween party, but your friend refuses to go alone. You haven’t been spending as much time with her anymore—partly because of Johnny and partly because you feel even more out of place around her than normal—and with all her begging and pleading, she refuses to let you opt out of this one.

“It’s about having fun, no one really cares Y/N. They’re freaks, aren’t they? That’s why people dress up as them, they’re practically meant for this.”

You become even more apprehensive about the party after hearing that, if that’s even possible. You smooth your hand over the fabric of a witch’s robe and sigh again, shaking your head. It doesn’t feel quite right to keep spending time in her presence—or anyone else who goes to your school—but you feel trapped on all sides, left without much of a choice. You would never hear the end of it if you tried to switch universities…or even drop out.

Your mind strays back to Johnny as always, with his melancholy aura and weird jokes and pretty pictures and monochrome clothes. The smell of his cologne, the lingering scent of roasted coffee beans, and his toothy smile, when he does show it to you. Something in you makes you want to drop everything you’re doing right now and go to him. It might even be nice to settle in his arms, feel them strong and solid around you—though he’d probably need just as much comforting as you.

“Dress up as this!” Your friend breaks the reverie as she prances over to you with a pair of fake fangs, the tips of them painted in acrylic blood. She holds them up to your mouth, and you struggle to manage a smile, if only to sate her enthusiasm. “It actually reminds me of…that vampire at the café. Say, have you seen him since then?”

You shake your head, moving away to sift through another rack of outfits as you try to maintain a detached expression. “Nope, not a glimpse. Haven’t even thought about him.”

When your friend doesn’t suspect anything, you let your expression drop just a tad, breathing out quietly.

The night of the party, the full moon is heavy and bold against the black blanket of the sky, which feels horribly cliché. You wonder if there are any werewolves out tonight, and what they might be doing right now.

“We’re going to have a good time tonight,” your friend insists as you both walk up the front steps of the host’s house. It’s someone you only vaguely know, a friend of a friend of a friend, but clearly a person who has an abundance of money judging by this expansive home. You don’t know why she feels the need to convince you, but maybe it’s because you haven’t seemed very enthusiastic so far. You only give a thumbs up to her words, which feels like an unconvincing gesture. Luckily for you, it works.

After a few hours, the party is still going strong but your head is starting to hurt from the music, and you’re growing weary of all the men crowding in too close, looking at you in your angel costume like you’re something to be devoured. You’ve rolled your eyes at way too many of them and their haphazardly put-together costumes, dressed up as vampires with terrible fake fangs or werewolves with manes of matted up fur.

Your friend keeps flitting around the party, talking to whoever she recognizes from classes or campus organizations, and you’ve given up on trying to follow her around any longer. Every time you turn around, she’s somewhere else. Noticing that you’re currently solo, a guy from one of your history classes comes up to you and begins what he thinks is an interesting conversation on how angels actually look more like Eldritch abominations than the cherubic humans depicted in paintings—so your costume is “technically inaccurate” —and your eyes glaze over as you pretend to listen to him.

You eventually manage to get away from him and get to an undisturbed corner, wedged next to two girls drinking cider and critically rating all the guys’ costumes. You pull your phone out and think about calling for a ride back to campus, but your thumb hovers over the message icon. You press it without thinking too much about it, and Johnny’s name appears as one of your most recent conversations. Though you feel somewhat nervous, you will yourself to open the box and begin typing.

To: Hi Johnny. I hope I’m not bothering you, but can I come over? ��🏿🙏🏿🙏🏿 I’m over this party

You put your phone back in your purse, trying not to get your hopes up for a quick response. You know there’s a good chance he’d still be awake at this time of night since he doesn’t need to sleep, but he has his own life and is probably off doing...vampire-y things. Whatever those things could be.

However, your hopes are met when your phone pings only a couple minutes later.

From: Of course. You’re not scared about spending your Halloween with a vampire? 😏

You smile at that.

To: I think I’ll be fine…as long as you don’t bite me.

From: 🦷🩸

—

You get to Johnny’s studio apartment not too long after, and you hang around outside his door for a few moments before knocking, suddenly feeling bashful about your costume. Maybe you should’ve changed before coming over here; what if he thinks it’s childish? Or maybe too revealing? Does he even care about that kind of stuff? Doesn’t matter now, though. You’re here, and there’s no way you’re turning back around.

He answers a few seconds after you knock, wearing a sweater and black pants. You notice his sweater is a cream color and not the usual black. He looks a little surprised to see your costume, and his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.

“Wow, you look pretty. Nice of you to visit me after falling straight from Heaven.” You cringe at his cheesy line, though you also cannot deny that you secretly enjoy every bit of it.

“Thanks, Johnny...” you say timidly, stepping into his home as he lets you in. “Nice work with changing up the color scheme.”

He’s confused for a moment before realizing you’re talking about his clothes. “Oh yeah, that...um, haha. Thanks.”

Unbeknownst to you, the back of his mind is buzzing with a form of excitement he hasn’t felt in a while. Not the clawing, frantic spikes of bloodlust, but a more physical kind of desire. It’s pleasurable, but he also feels guilty about pining over how sweet and innocent you look in your all-white outfit, stockings hugging your legs perfectly and your dress just short enough to tempt the imagination. Really, you’ve painted a picture of perfect purity, and the only thing he can think about is ruining you. Putting his hands on you and peeling your dress off to reveal the soft skin underneath.

He casts those thoughts aside as you sit prettily on his couch, legs crossed at the ankles—though it’s hard to do so. “Do you want something to drink? Or eat? There isn’t a whole lot of food here, but I can order something…”

“Do you ever make your own coffee?” The question seems a bit random at first, and you try to explain. “You know, since you always get it from the café.”

Johnny smiles. “Do you want coffee? I can make it.”

You nod. “That would be nice…whatever you have.”

“I pretty much have your usual order memorized by now, so I should be good on making it.” Johnny walks to the kitchen. “You can look through the albums while you’re in there. The ones you haven’t seen yet.”

“Oh, thanks.” You feel a little nervous to be looking through the shelf of his treasured photo albums by yourself, but you’re also glad he trusts you enough to let you do it. It makes you feel important. Maybe even important to him, as silly as that might sound.

It isn’t long before the scent of coffee wafts out into the living room. Johnny returns soon with two cups of it, and just as he promised, yours is made just the way you like it.

“Thank you.” You set the album back on the shelf and take the cup from Johnny. For a while, both of you talk of nothing important—just filling the space with the details of your days.

“So how was the party?” Johnny finally asks, and he raises his eyebrows as he scans your outfit again. You grin halfheartedly.

“It was…alright. Kinda weird. I think it’d be more fun if I went to a regular university, but you know…”

Johnny shakes his head. “I can’t blame you for bailing out.”

“Yeah…I’ve been to college parties before, but the Halloween theme was a bit…”

“Strange for an institution that bans all supernatural beings?” Johnny finishes your sentence. He doesn’t look offended or irritated by it—only slightly amused.

You shrug, biting your lip. “Yeah, that.”

“Well, look on the bright side. I wouldn’t have gotten to see you in your natural form otherwise.”

This one almost goes over your head, too, but you catch it just in time. Johnny’s compliments make you feel warm all over, like you’re sitting under the sun. You grin and look down into your cup of coffee, unused to receiving such bold praise and unsure how to respond to it. Something pops into your mind, though, and you think it might be a good idea to run with it.

“You could...take a picture of me, you know. If you want to...since I’m all dressed up now anyway.” You meet his eyes only for a second and then look away, twisting the mug in your hands.

Johnny sits up a little straighter at your words, trying to catch your eyes, though you don’t hold his gaze for long. “You’re sure?” he asks.

“I’m sure. Go ahead! Before I change my mind.” You laugh nervously and carefully set your half-empty mug on the table.

Johnny’s camera is never too far away from him, so he grabs it and plays with the settings for a bit before looking back to you, a small smile on his face. “I’m gonna start, okay?” His voice is surprisingly soft. This, yet again, reminds you of him and the aster bush. He acts as if you might run away at the first shutter click, which makes you feel babied, but you don’t totally hate it.

The first few photos are a little awkward—at least to you. You aren’t sure how to pose, or if you should try to look more casual, though Johnny assures you you’re doing well. He gives you directives throughout, telling you to look in his direction or angle your face a certain way, and you follow his instructions to the best of your ability.

At one point, one of your dress straps slips down. When you go to fix it, Johnny says, “Wait. Could you keep it like that?”

You look at him, your body heating from the suggestion.

“Is that okay with you?”

“…Yes.” Your throat is dry, and your body reacts in a way you don’t expect—little nervous thrills in your hands and feet, though you try to internally explain it away as the coffee’s effects. Johnny takes a few more photos like this, and then he steps closer to gently touch your chin, guiding your face to the angle he’s looking for.

“So good for me.” It slips past his lips in a reverential murmur before he can really consider what he’s saying, and you both freeze. Your heart rate increases, and you wonder if he can hear how hard the red organ is beating in your chest. Probably.

You want to hear him say it again.

Johnny laughs awkwardly, his hand coming back to his side almost a little too quickly to be natural. “Um, I’m really sorry. That was a bit...”

“It…it’s fine.” You avoid his eyes. Johnny takes a few more photos, but the set of his mouth is a little tight, as if he’s stressed about something. Or regretting what he let slip, maybe. You want to tell him you really don’t feel bad about it, but you aren’t sure how to do that without making things more awkward…or revealing your true desires.

When Johnny has taken enough pictures of you to be satisfied with, he sits next to you on the couch, setting his camera on the coffee table and looking suddenly timid.

“I can’t wait to see them,” you say, attempting to break the tension that never really cleared the room after his earlier comment. He blinks for a moment like he doesn’t know what you mean, and then realizes—obviously, he’ll be developing the photos.

“They’ll come out nice, I’m sure. I think you’ll photograph well.”

“Thank you,” you murmur, and now it’s your turn to be unsure of how to resurrect the conversation.

“You’re beautiful.” It’s an abrupt comment. It makes your stomach twist in a pleasant, fluttery way, and you become hyperaware of his form sitting next to yours.

“Haven’t heard that one much, but thanks.”

Johnny turns to you. “Anyone who’d think otherwise is a fool.”

There’s a pause after this where you both simply study each other, watching for hidden reactions that can’t be read on the surface. The way he says it is…decisive, assured. But it also manages to be tender, as if he needs you to know what he thinks of you. Needs you to see yourself the way he does—the same way you do for him. You don’t know where the confidence comes from, but maybe his tone and his words and his endlessly dark eyes have pulled it out of you. “I want to kiss you.”

Johnny’s lips part. “Are you certain?”

“I’m certain.”

He doesn’t hesitate anymore. Johnny moves closer to you and cups the back of your neck. Something awakens in his eyes in the seconds before he presses his mouth to yours. Though he wants to drink eagerly from your lips, his kiss is languid to avoid overwhelming you, and there is an audible smack of your lips whenever he pulls away and presses back in.

His mouth tastes like the coffee you just drank, but underneath that you swear you can taste a hint of the deep iron of blood, and you don’t know how to feel about that. You think about what his fangs would feel like scraping against your bottom lip, if he’d ever show them to you, and you moan quietly.

“Do you want this? With me?” Johnny confirms once more, pulling his gaze away from your lips and up to your eyes. His own eyes are yearning, but there is also an element of something like fear roiling in them. As if you’d turn him away, even though you’ve already shown your desire for him.

“Yes. Just you. No one else.”

Johnny’s body gravitates towards yours, and you think he’s going to push you down onto the sofa, but he scoops your legs up and carries you to his bedroom instead. Even his hands on your waist and legs makes you burn inside.

This is the first time you've seen his bedroom. The sheets are cloud-soft when he sets you down on them, and his window lets moonlight shine through the open blinds and scatter in thick beams across the floor. The only other light source is the bedside lamp, which emits a comfortable yellowish glow.

Johnny joins you on the bed and lets you climb into his lap—encourages you to do so. His cool hands pulling at your thighs as you settle them on either side of his waist makes tingles go through your body. You don’t hesitate to bring your lips back together, kissing each other deeply as one of his hands cradles the back of your head and the other settles on the small of your back.

You are certain vampires don’t have any powers of enchantment—that’s for magic wielders. And yet, you feel like you’ve been put in a trance by his kisses alone, and you wonder how you could’ve lived this long without knowing how his lips feel—how they fit perfectly against your own. As if everything up to now has purposely led you together.

You shift in Johnny’s embrace, and the movement causes his thigh to slide between your legs. Your heat is pressed against his thigh directly now, your silken panties catching against the denim of his pants. You murmur against his lips, not really saying anything of substance but wanting to vocalize your desire to him. Johnny’s hand tightens slightly on your back, and he experimentally lifts his leg higher and slides his thigh across you. That draws a gasp from you.

Noticing your positive response, Johnny continues rocking his thigh up against your pussy and kissing you until you’re breathless and your nipples are straining against the fabric of your dress. You pull away from him for a moment to try to ground yourself, feeling like your nerves are already being singed with fiery pleasure. Johnny’s face is noticeably more flushed than before, but he also looks much more composed than you feel at the moment.

“It takes longer to get hard,” he explains, as if reading the lingering question in your own expression. “Since...you know. Slow blood.” You rock your hips over his thigh more enthusiastically, motivated to get him hard underneath you, and you listen to his choppy breaths as you move. Your movements aren’t the smoothest, but he helps you guide your hips in a way that feels good for you both. You’ve never been with anyone before, so it doesn’t much matter to you how long or quick it takes for him to get there as long as he does.

Feeling the bulge grow underneath you excites you. Johnny groans against your lips as you kiss him and rub yourself over his member. The sound comes from somewhere deep inside him, as if it’s something he’s been containing for a long time. Your hand goes to his waist and tugs at his belt loops, then drifts closer to his belt buckle, pulling the leather and metal apart. Johnny pauses when you get off his lap and slide further down, grips your arms like he doesn’t want you to go. “Are…you sure? You don’t have to…if it’s too much—”

“I want to, Johnny.”

With your affirmative, he lets you kneel between his legs, pull his zipper apart, and trace your curious fingers over the bulge beneath the fabric of his underwear. Johnny loses his breath when you drag his underwear down, sliding it over the heated skin of his dick. His length is thick and long—even with him not being fully hard yet—and the tip glistens wet with precum. You weren’t sure what to expect, but this is much bigger than you think you might be able to handle. It makes your face warm and your stomach do another series of flips. Still, you want it and you want him, so you aren’t going to stop now.

You lean closer to press your lips against his shaft, leaving a few soft kisses behind. Johnny’s mouth parts when your mouth touches him.

Johnny gently holds the back of your head as you leave small licks over his shaft, tasting the salty skin on your tongue. He lets out a shaky breath as he watches you, his other hand brushing the side of your face.

“Just like that…” he murmurs, his voice heavy with lust as you circle your tongue around the thick, darkened tip, catching drops of his precum. He never takes his eyes off you, and this makes you feel a little exposed, but you continue with your actions. When you suck Johnny’s tip past your lips, his thighs tense under you, the thick muscle reacting beautifully to your actions on his body.

More precum drips from him, and you find the taste strangely pleasing. It makes you want more of him, of whatever he has to offer you. You wrap your hand around his shaft, though it doesn’t fit entirely around, and begin stroking him in a way you hope feels good.

Johnny’s hand slips over yours to guide your movements and show you how much pressure to apply, what pace to stroke him at. “Like this, baby…yes, that’s so good…” He showers you with praise as you get the hang of it, and he eventually lets your hand go so you can do it on your own, his own hand drifting back to the bed to grip the comforter.

It’s hard to quantify just how much seeing you like this turns him on, you kneeling between his legs with his cock between your lips while wearing your pretty, angelic outfit. His previous guilt about “corrupting” you descends to the very back of his mind as he savors every moment of your hands on his cock and your tongue circling his slit.

“I’m close,” he whispers. You quicken your movements on him, hollowing your cheeks tighter around his dick, and the moan he gives shoots straight between your legs.

Johnny carefully pulls your head back so you won’t choke before he comes, streams of his seed shooting into your mouth and running down his cock. Your hand still squeezes around him as he comes, and he slowly thrusts into the tight circle of your fist as you milk every drop from him. By the time he’s spent, your mouth and hand and part of the sheets are completely sticky with his release. You imagine it must have been a long time since he’s last had an orgasm.

The vampire watches intently as you swallow his cum, which causes his softening dick to throb in your hand. He takes your face in his hands and kisses you deeply, uncaring of the taste of himself in your mouth. His hair tickles your face as he kisses you feverishly, his nose bumping yours and his tongue prodding past your lips.

“Come here, angel.” Johnny pulls your body up onto the bed before you can get yourself up there first. The pet name makes warmth flood through your body, like drinking a hot chocolate at the café, except a thousand times more satisfying. Johnny’s hands are once again caressing your thighs, though this time they slide up underneath your dress and squeeze your hips. “Can I take these pretty panties off you?”

“Please.”

He hooks his fingers into the sides of them and pulls them down your legs and past your ankles. One of his hands goes underneath your dress to feel you soft and wet against his fingers, and you both moan at the same time. He slides his digits through your lips and over your clit, and him leaning forward to bring his mouth to your throat is enough to have you nearly overwhelmed. His fingers tease your entrance but don’t push inside until you nearly have to beg him.

“Please, Johnny…” You push your hips up to get his attention.

“Do you want my fingers?” he asks softly.

“Y-yes…” At your words, he eases the middle one into you, slowly enough to avoid discomfort. It feels strange to have someone else’s fingers inside you. His finger reaches further than yours can, touching you more deeply than you’ve felt before; it makes you gasp a bit too sharply.

“Are you hurt?” he asks, freezing and thinking he might’ve done something wrong.

“N-no, I’m fine. Keep going.”

Johnny’s mouth edges closer to the cleavage of your dress as he starts thrusting his finger into you, warming you up enough to take a second digit. Shakily, you bring your hands up to slide the straps down and make it easier for him, and his breath hitches when you pull the top of your dress down.

His mouth envelopes one of your nipples as he slides the second finger into you. His fingers encounter a part of you that makes you moan unexpectedly and grab onto him, a little surprised at the sudden spike of pleasure.

“You’re so pretty,” he purrs, his lips moving against the curve of your breast as he speaks. “And so responsive.”

As Johnny’s mouth and fingers work you closer to an orgasm, you marvel at how handsome he looks and how good he feels. He opens his eyes to see you staring at him, your pupils wide and mouth desperate, and he separates himself from your chest to kiss you deeply once again.

When you come around his fingers, Johnny whispers more compliments to you about how good you are and how he wants to watch you come undone because of him all the time. When he thinks you might be on the brink of overstimulation, he takes his fingers out of you, slipping them into his mouth to taste you.

“I’ll take this off now. Is that okay?” He whispers this into your ear with his hands on either side of your hips, caressing the fabric of your dress.

“I-it’s okay.”

Johnny slips your dress off, leaving you in nothing but your white sheer stockings. The sight of you sitting there on his bed, breathing heavily from your climax in your pretty thigh-highs, has his cock throbbing and rising to life once again.

“Lay back on the bed.” You do, and he settles himself between your legs like you did for him earlier. When you glance at him, his eyes are heavy and piercing. In this moment, you are acutely reminded of the fact that he is not a human, with how he looks like a beast of prey about to devour a meal. You are too nervous to look back at him for long, so you stare at the ceiling with your legs shaking from anticipation.

Johnny’s mouth on you is almost jarring in how wet it is, and you arch up into him in surprise and a rush of pleasure. He gently presses your legs back onto the bed and continues licking into you, parting your lower lips with his tongue and making your thighs tremble under his grasp.

If you had to describe it in words, you probably wouldn’t be able to. He kisses your pussy the same way he kisses you on the mouth, passionately and with more than enough tongue to satisfy. Johnny slips his fingers into you again as he curls his lips around your clit, and you moan unabashedly.

You’re quickly spiraling towards another orgasm, maybe quicker than you expected; but it makes sense with you still being so raw from the climax you just had. You gain enough courage to give another glance down at Johnny, and you see the way his other arm moves back and forth from beneath the bed, stroking himself while he eats you out. Something about that pushes you over the edge, and you cry out as you come on his tongue.

As Johnny gives you time to calm down again, he stands and finally pulls his clothes off, baring his body to you. You’re not sure if you’ve ever seen a man so beautiful.

He goes to get a condom, and your words stumble from your lips before you can psych yourself out of saying them. “I-I’m on birth control.” Johnny looks back at you, his gaze filled with something you can’t quite read. He comes closer to you, holding himself above you on the bed so his face is hovering just above yours.

“You want to feel me raw?” he whispers.

You nod under his burning stare, feeling like you’re on a high you won’t be able to get off of. “I need you, Johnny.”

Johnny climbs fully onto the bed then and positions himself between your legs. His cock is thick and heavy between his thighs as it bumps against your inner thigh and leaves a smear of precum behind. After putting some lube in his hand, he slicks himself with the sticky substance, preparing himself to fuck you open. Something deep in your abdomen shudders, and your walls clench around nothing as you watch him stroke his shaft, the squelching, wet sound of his hand on his dick loud in the quiet room.

When he’s done, he grabs your thighs and pulls you a little closer to him. “If it hurts, tell me, okay?”

“O-okay.”

The slick tip prodding at your hole makes you want more, though you are a bit afraid of how this is going to feel. When it finally pushes inside of you, you gasp. Johnny watches your face for signs of pain as he slides forward further.

With two previous orgasms and the lube to help, his cock stretches you open with some discomfort, but not the kind of sharp pain you expected. Your nails leave little half-moon shapes on Johnny’s biceps as you squeeze his arms and try to keep your lower half relaxed, wanting to take all of him in—or as much as you can manage, anyway. You try to keep your breathing even as he pushes into you slowly.

Your eyebrows crease and your mouth tightens when he slides deeper still, and he pauses. “Johnny…” You worry your lip with your teeth, feeling like you’ve been stuffed to the brim—and he’s not even all the way in yet.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No,” you beg, maintaining your grip on his arms. “Just…try moving.”

Johnny pulls out and slowly thrusts back in again, angling his dick to find that sensitive spot within you. Your mouth falls open silently when he does; this feels much, much different from his fingers. This is better.

Johnny repeats the movement, being mindful not to push himself too deep—only enough for you to handle. Beneath him, your body begins unwinding at the pleasure he’s delivering to you, and your eyes flutter closed as the ecstasy takes over your mind. One of his hands goes to tease your clit as he settles into a good rhythm, and you cry out at the extra dose of pleasure.

“You’re taking me so well,” Johnny mumbles as he sits back and watches himself slide into you, both of your lower halves slick from lube and your own wetness. “So warm and wet, angel…” You can tell he’s using a lot of his energy to keep his pace controlled and gentle enough for you to actually enjoy. The idea of being fucked harder makes you ache deep inside, but you figure it’s best to save that for when you’re more used to this. You already know it’ll be difficult to walk in the morning after this.

Johnny leans forward to kiss your lips, changing the angle again and circling his pelvis into you, and a choked gasp escapes your mouth at the slow wind of his hips.

Johnny lavishes your neck and throat with kisses, and though he is a vampire, you aren’t worried about him biting you. His fangs have not made an appearance since all this started, and you doubt if he would ever bring them out in front of you. You don’t know if you should ask about it, either, wondering if it’s too soon after only a month and a half of knowing each other—but maybe you could say the same about him being inside of you right now.

“Johnny…” you whisper into the air, your fingers scrabbling against his sweaty skin. The mounting tension in your abdomen is close to snapping, and you are almost frightened by how intense it already feels. He moves his face from your neck to be face-to-face with you again and plants a heavy, dizzying kiss on your lips.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs against your kiss-swollen lips. “I’ve got you, Y/N.”

Falling apart in Johnny’s arms feels like a form of Heaven that’s meant to be kept hidden, because you might become addicted to it otherwise. Your inner muscles squeeze around his dick as you come. His name flows from your lips in a high song. You can’t imagine any physical sensation that could be better than this, his hips rocking into you as you tighten and cream around him, and you know innately that Johnny has ruined all chances of you ever feeling this fulfilled with anyone but him.

The constant pulse of your walls against his dick is too much to withstand for long, and Johnny’s muscles pull taut with pleasure when he comes, groaning into your neck and spilling overflowing streams of thick cum into you. His hips falter in their former rhythm, and he resists the urge to push himself as deep as he can into you.

When he pulls out, you whine from the discomfort of it, but also because you wish he could stay in you forever. You know you’ll be sore when you wake up—and you can already feel the very beginnings of exhaustion and ache settling in your body—but you’d do it a hundred times over without changing a thing.

—

Johnny curls himself around you after he’s cleaned the both of you up, as if he means to shield you from the world. You’re quiet for a while as you listen to his slow-beating heart and feel his cool skin against yours.

You look up at his face, which is hard to see distinctly in the dark of the room. With the lamp turned out, the only source of light comes from the moon now, but you can decipher enough to make out the shape of his lips and his glittering eyes. You know he can see much better than you in this light, and he takes his time tracing his fingers across your face and cheek, studying your features.

“Would you ever…make me a vampire?”

His body tenses at your question. “Don’t say anything ridiculous. You still have a whole life ahead of you to live. What I have here...this is no existence.” He’s not mad, at least not at you, but his voice hardens at the very idea of it.

“But what if I wanted to live it with you?”

Johnny takes a breath, but he doesn’t say anything to that. He just continues stroking your face and looks at you for a long time, like he’s searching for something. You don’t know if you truly expected an answer from him, or how you would feel if he did give one.

Eventually, your eyes begin to fall low, and sleep overcomes you. The last thing you register is Johnny’s chilly hand touching your cheek. When he notices you’ve drifted off, he pulls the covers tighter around you both. Then he presses you to his chest as he tunes out the sound of cars rumbling on the streets below in exchange for the beating of your heart—still alive, so red with blood.

#all these brown colors...how taurean of me #johnny smut #johnny angst #johnny fic #johnny scenario #johnny imagines #johnny imagine #johnny scenarios #nct fic #nct imagine #nct imagines #nct scenario #nct scenarios #nct smut #nct angst #ambw scenarios #ambw scenario #kpop ambw #ambw imagines #ambw imagine #ambw fic #ambw #nct vampire au #nct vampire

[danniburgh]

Rushingly Bittersweet (Javier Peña x f!reader) part 24

Pairing: Javier Peña x ofc//f!reader with name.

Summary: After the fall of Escobar everything starts happening way too fast for Javier; his raise, his new office, his new team, the Cali cartel’s operation, the sudden arrival of a new agent that was transferred to his team for no apparent reason, the way he was falling in love with her almost unintentionally.

And he couldn’t seem to stop any of that.

Word count: +4.3k

Chapter warnings: feels, a lot of fucking feels

A/N: This chapter is set after season three. // SECOND TO LAST CHAPTER BITCHES (of the main story at least lol) this one was quite difficult for me, idk, DIALOGUE HEAVY so beware, i wanna thank @mouthymandalorian because she read half of this and gripped my shoulders, slapped me and told me it had substance, and @purplepascal042 ​ bc she just makes me feel so sure of myself and this shitshow lmao and she gave us Carlos, i love you guys so much

ao3 // fic index // Masterlist // fic playlist

comments and reblogs are eternally appreciated 💓 let me know if you wanna be tagged

←previous // next→

gif: @pescopadral

Home.

He smelled like home.

“You stopped smoking?” you mumbled against his shoulder when you didn’t find traces of smoke on his shirt, Javier scoffed and gripped you tighter against him.

“Kinda.”

“Good, horrible habit.” you teased him and for the first time in five months, you heard him chuckle.

You let out a sigh and closed your eyes when his hands started roaming slowly through your back.

It was like you two never actually stopped hugging; you were marveled by the feeling of his hands in your body; they belonged there; it was as if his touch was meant only for you. He gripped and caressed you as if his hands had gone through a touch withdrawal. He fit there. You fit there.

“How long have we been hugging?” you teased and Javier scoffed again, a little harder, the warm air he let out clashing with the skin of your neck, it made you shiver and you smiled.

“Don’t know but don’t stop.” he replied softly, and you felt your smile growing, you opened your eyes and saw the way his body was curled against yours, almost wrapping it.

You turned your eyes to the dark sky and sighed again at the sight of the stars; they looked so close and so bright you were sure, in that moment, with him gripping you and anchoring you to the earth you had been walking alone for so long, you could reach them.

“I missed you.” you let out, your voice small, your tone warm, it made him smile.

“Yeah.” he moved his arms and stepped back from the embrace to look at you, his hands slid from your back to your waist and the hand that wasn’t holding the letter back to your face.

“Hi.” you whispered, the muscles of cheeks started to sting because of the smile you were holding.

“Hi.” Javier replied. 

Your wandering hands moved from his shoulders to his arms, and then you cupped his face. He leaned into your touch as you studied his face and re-learned the features you had committed to memory, for later use or later torture, your brain struggling to grasp the fact that he was there, right in front of you; but he was, you were making sure of it as your fingers touched every single inch of his skin, Javier closed his eyes and sighed when the pads of your fingers slid through his forehead and slowly made their way to his mid brow, the perpetual frown you had met him wearing had disappeared.

“Open your eyes.” you whispered to him and he did without questioning, looking at you; there were the remnants of some unshed tears from earlier, but they were the same you had seen in between dreams, they were the same eyes you had craved for when you couldn’t hold yourself whole, when you couldn’t stand up straight, when you felt like your pieces weren’t being glued properly; and they were on you.

“What are you looking at?” he whispered his question as he moved his face closer to you. You smiled at him again as if you had stopped smiling at all, and you remembered that self-doubt that crept inside you all those months before when you wanted nothing more but to have him look at you like he loved you; your smile faded when you realized he was looking at you differently.

It wasn’t the same look he used to give you when he woke you up after spending the night together; it wasn’t the same way he looked at you across the office bullpen at the embassy in Bogotá; it wasn’t the same look you used to get when you said some horrible joke or a funny remark or a teasing comment or a snarky toned word.

But it wasn’t hard. His eyes were looking at you deeply, but you didn’t know what it meant.

“You.” you whispered your reply, and he smiled at you.

“Good.” he said and brought your face to his.

Javier’s lips took yours and he let out a sigh when he felt you kissing him back.

It was as if he never stopped kissing you.

He knew your movements; he knew you loved when his tongue brushed your lower lip, and how you sighed every time he opened his mouth slightly and took your lip again between his.

Every single thing fit; you there, standing in front of him; you there, in his arms; your lips between his lips, your hands touching his skin.

It felt right. It was right.

It was giving him everything he kept longing for when he listened to that tape with your voice; it was giving him the life he thought he wouldn't have anymore, the one he knew he didn’t even deserve.

Javier gripped you tighter against his chest and deepened the kiss. You let out a soft moan and he wanted to smirk; he still had the same effect over you as you had over him.

How could he have gone through life without your kisses? without your touch? without your essence lingering close to him?

With you there, it felt like there was no time in Javier’s life where you weren’t present in some way.

You just crept inside his body and his heart and his mind and you stayed there.

“Let’s get inside.” he muttered against your mouth, you breathed in deeply as he stepped away from you and grabbed your hand.

“Are you sure?” you said, looking at him. Javier frowned.

“Yeah, I just asked you to stay.” he tugged at your hand and pulled you softly towards the house.

You bit your lip and followed him to the house. There was a feeling nagging at your chest you recognized as that self-doubt that you thought you had left inside the glove box of your car and you tried to breathe it away.

The door was still open, and you took then a moment to look around; having been busy crying the first time you walked inside; immediately to the left there was a big archway that led to a dining room that looked simple and comically unused, stiff and almost out of character; straight to the front there was that archway you had seen Chucho disappear into the kitchen and the living room was fairly big; mostly occupied by a dark couch that looked more loved that any other piece of furniture there with a wood, cluttered console table almost protecting the back and two red armchairs on the sides, a sharp-edged coffee table between them that held a few wood figurines on the surface and a big fireplace that filled the opposite on wall; and the free spaces on the walls were filled with pictures and framed newspaper clips with both Chucho and Javier, some of them were in spanish; there were books resting on almost every surface: the fireplace mantelpiece, a cornered bookshelf behind a lamp, an end table next to one of the armchairs.

On the wall above the fireplace there was a mounted alligator gar fish you actually stopped to look at.

“What?” Javier turned to look at you, following your gaze and standing up straighter.

“Did your dad–‌”

“Yeah,” he cut you off. You looked at him and saw him with his proud smirk adorning his face “Carlos has been here since I was a kid,” he explained and you snorted “what?”

“His name is Carlos?” you asked between a tight laugh that helped ease you in, he nodded a few times, enjoying the sound of your laugh so close to him instead of in his mind “you named him, right?” Javier smiled and shook his head.

“My mom did.” he replied. Your laughter stopped, and you scrunched up your nose.

“Sorry.” you muttered almost cautiously. Which he noticed.

“Don’t do that.” he stepped close to you.

“Do what?” you asked him, widening your eyes as if he had caught you stealing Carlos.

“Loosen up,” his hand slid from your hand up your arm and rested on your shoulder, he squeezed it softly and kneaded the flesh a few times “you’re not with a stranger.”

“But you are.” you replied in a whisper before you could stop yourself, Javier licked his lower lip and cupped your face with both hands, leaning to leave a soft kiss on your mouth.

“Am I?” he turned around and kept guiding you through the house. 

You frowned at his response. Did he forget? It was as if the hug you had shared a few minutes before had made him forget the entirety of the time you didn’t even talk and you started feeling anxious about it. You didn’t like not knowing, and even when he turned left into a hallway which was filled with more framed pictures of him and his dad and some older pictures of him with more people; you felt the urge to ask him if there was something else hidden behind that smile you loved, but you weren’t expecting to receive.

You crossed the threshold of a room you immediately recognized as his; it smelled like him; the bed was poorly made and there was a thick brown book resting on top of the left pillow.

“You sleep here,” he said. You looked at the bed and turned to him “I’ll take the couch.”

“Are you crazy?” you shook your head “this is your room, I can sleep on the couch I don’t care.”

Javier stood there for a moment, not looking at you, he sighed heavily and walked to sit on the edge of the bed, dropping the letter on the nightstand.

“What the fuck are we doing?” he mumbled, leaning to rest his arms on his knees and his face on one hand.

“What do you mean?” you stood where he left you and fidgeted with your unoccupied hands.

“We’re dancing ‘round each other,” he scoffed, shaking his head, “why?” he asked as he turned his head to gaze at you.

You didn’t move but took his eyes in and the way he was looking at you that was hauntingly different from the ones you were used to get from him.

“I don’t know,” you sighed out, dropping your eyes to the carpeted floor as you tried to analyze your own feelings “I feel like…” you started and saw him out of the corner of your eye shift on the bed towards you “I don’t deserve this, y’know?” your eyes were stuck to the fibers of the carpet and you felt his brown gaze on your body as you tried to put the mess of feelings that was churning inside your gut into words “I don’t know why you’re taking me in, why do you want me to stay?”

Javier saw you lift your face to him and he sighed when he saw your eyes filled with tears again, he stood from the bed and all but strode to you, his hands immediately found their home on your waist and he shivered at the way you sighed when you felt him close to you.

“You forgot what I did to you?” you asked, your eyes on him and Javier felt your eyes staring deeply inside him.

“No,” he replied “but you’re here, you’re here when I thought I’d never see you again,” he shrugged slightly and you shook your head “and we can work all this out.” he let out on a breath.

“Work this out?” you questioned in a whisper, Javier nodded “we haven’t seen each other in five months, wha–‌what does work this out mean?”

Javier gulped and realized he didn't know exactly what it meant.

And you were there, having doubts about the whole ordeal already.

“You don’t know, do you?” you asked him as your hands slid up to his chest and he shook his head no twice.

“Look,” he whispered out, trying to get you closer to him “I’ve been trying to process everything, and…” he pursed his lips trying to find the words inside his head, “and I realized none of it matters to me anymore.” he muttered.

You looked at him hesitantly, Javier recognized the insecure look in your eyes from earlier and from the last days you two had shared in Bogotá.

He hated that you weren’t saying anything; he despised not knowing what you were thinking because your face wasn’t giving him any hints; it was blank, and there were just jots and iotas of what looked like random emotions to him. He wanted to ask, but he knew you had to think about everything as well.

The silence was warm and heavy with anticipation and doubt, and he wanted nothing else but to light up a cigarette and cover it with nicotine smoke.

He was holding your body; his hands resting on your waist as his thumbs smeared the fabric of your shirt around your skin. You were there, but you weren’t.

“Where did you go?” he asked, his deep timber low and intrigued.

You doubted a bit, biting your lip as you formed your abstracts into shapes inside your head, he looked so sure of everything; he looked at you like you were the one that hung the bright stars on the dark sky you were wishing to grasp minutes earlier, and you felt it wrong.

“It doesn’t make sense,” you mumbled out, to nothing and to the heavy silence and to yourself, Javier narrowed his eyes “I hurt you,” you said, nodding once, as if emphasizing it “I lied to you,” you nodded again and Javier mimicked the action “I hid things from you bu–‌but I’m here, for some reason?” you shrug your shoulders in confusion and Javier huffed, frustrated.

Javier wasn’t sure of what the future looked like for either of you, but he understood that doubt you were letting out, he had felt it for a long time and he wanted to get rid of it; he remembered your earlier words of seeking closure, and he imagined how confusing it must be.

He wanted to show you how much you were wanted, but knowing you, he had to say it out loud.

“Let’s talk,” he muttered “we’re not talking, and we need to,” you blinked a few times while his words sank into you, you nodded and let him guide you to the bed, he gestured for you to sit and he sat next to you on the mattress “but first I need you to stop walking on eggshells.”

“I’m not walking on eggshells.” you furrowed your brow.

“Yes you are,” he whispered, leaning his face to you “you're hesitating, where is that woman that called out my shit as she saw it?”

You dropped your eyes to the floor and felt them fill with tears, Javier pinched your chin lightly and moved your head for you to see him.

“I have no idea where she is, Javi,” you muttered as two tears escaped from your eyes, he brushed them off with his other hand, “I think she left, or maybe she never existed,” you sniffed “I have no idea who I am.”

Javier looked into your watery eyes and, as more tears slid through your cheeks, he understood another nuance of you, the weight of what the two of you had lived, together and on your own, not only harmed him. It harmed you too in more than one way; and he had been blinded by his own pain that he just didn’t think about yours.

“Let me tell you who you are,” he said “you are a smart woman, that fears nothing and if she does she doesn’t let anyone know it,” his hands cupped your face as more tears fell “you are funny,” the corner of his mouth lifted and you scoffed “and you’re beautiful in a way I don’t understand,” his thumb started drawing small circles on the skin of your cheek “you put up with me and I don’t know how, I’m the most difficult bastard I know,” he let out a soft chuckle and you smiled at him “you are restless and brave…”

“I’m not.” you shook your head, Javier brushed your lips closed with a thumb.

“Strong and driven, so damn stubborn you just refuse to look at what I’m doing.” he let out.

“What?” you frowned again in confusion and Javier smiled softly at you.

“I hugged you,” he muttered and mimicked the nodding of his head you directed to him before “I kissed you, I escorted you personally to my room and you still think I don’t want you here.”

“I don’t deserve it.” you whispered against his thumb.

Javier looked at you and tried to dig up with his gaze the feeling that was keeping you from being that woman he had fallen in love with; your tear-filled eyes that looked at everything and at nothing at the same time, your trembling lower lip, your hushed voice tone that was so different and so far away from that tone you commanded and demanded respect with when he met you.

He found it ironic how much the tables had turned in so little time.

“You’re right,” he let out, dragging his thumb from your lips to your cheeks “we don’t deserve it,” he shook his head a few times “this?” he aimed his head around and sighed “it’s too good for both of us,” you nodded and rolled your eyes slightly, he was right, “but I think we’ve earned the right to be selfish, don’t you?”

His words sank inside you like a pebble on a calm lake and eased little by little that uncontrollable cyclone that were your emotions; how was he so right?

“Who are you and what did you do to Javier Peña?” you asked him, making him chuckle again.

“I’m me, baby,” he muttered, and you felt your breath hitch at the endearment “renewed and a bit patched up.”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” you mumbled out, Javier took your head and made you look at him.

“I know, stop saying that, I know.” he sighed and leaned towards you, leaving another soft kiss on your lips.

“I think I’m gonna spend the rest of my time making it up to you.” you whispered against his lips and he smiled.

“The rest of it?” he teased. You bit your lip and nodded.

“Every minute.”

“You don’t have to,” he sat back and dropped his hands from your face, taking one of yours and gripping it tightly. His eyes fell to your intertwined fingers “just be here.”

“Javier,” you called out, and he looked at you “how do I know you won’t resent me for this?”

“You don’t,” he let out, you let out the air that was trapped in your lungs “I don’t either,” you saw him shrug and smirk at you “let’s just hope it doesn’t happen.”

“Fuck,” you chuckled out, he smiled at you and you sighed in relief “I love you.”

Javier’s face fell for the total amount to two seconds that felt like two hours when you saw his smile fade into a wide-eyed, surprised grin.

Your heart was beating at the rhythm of a racehorse’s gallop, but you didn’t take it back, you couldn’t, after showing him and after doing what you did, you couldn’t just erase it because it was true.

And saying it, to him, out loud, made your body feel as light as a falling leaf.

“Good to know,” he let out, his lips curving in a half open smile you had seen exactly once in all the time you knew him “because I love you too.”

As soon as he said it Javier took your hands and pulled you flush to his chest. A soft yelp escaped your mouth because of the force, and your arms instantly wrapped themselves around his shoulders. He hid his face inside the crook of your neck and you felt a shiver roam up and down your back when he inhaled you in.

“This’s nice.” his voice was muffled by your skin and the fabric of your shirt, you huffed.

“It is.” you whispered, laying your head on his shoulder and sighing again contentedly.

“Are you tired?” he asked without moving and you nodded “you wanna sleep?” he asked again and you nodded a second time.

“Will you sleep here?” you mumbled, closing your eyes as his essence and the warmth of his body mingled with yours and settled inside you.

“You want me to?”

“I’d love you to.”

Your phrase seemed to wake him up from the temporal slumber your embrace had put him into and he helped you stand up from the bed; he said nothing as he walked to his closet on the corner of the room, grabbed a white t-shirt and handed it to you.

“The bathroom is just getting out of the hallway, if you wanna change there,” he said with a slight shrug, and you let out a giggle, as if he didn’t know already every inch of your body “I’m serious.”

“I know you are.” you said, walking towards the black desk on the opposite corner of his room and leaving the t-shirt on the surface, taking off your shoes.

Javier rolled his eyes as he turned around and pulled down the bedsheets, he grabbed the book from the pillow to rest on his nightstand. He took the letter he had dropped there first and turned to find you taking off your jeans, already wearing his shirt.

You looked at him and gave him a soft smile as he walked towards the desk, opened one of the small drawers and tossed the letter inside.

“You should burn that.” you teased.

“Never.” he teased back, stealing another chuckle out of you. He walked around you towards his closet and started pulling off his clothes.

“I like that shirt.” you went to the bed and sat back on the edge. He looked down at the red fabric and then shook his head.

“‘S yours if you want it.”

“Mhm,” you hummed in feigned consideration “looks better on you,” he smiled as he slid the shirt off his shoulders, “you still sleep on the right side?” you asked, turning back to the bed, smiling as your eyes landed on his nightstand and recognized the book he was reading: Cien años de soledad… your copy.

“Yeah.”

“You stole my book.” you turned to him as he was finishing putting on pajama pants.

“What?”

“I lent you that book,” you pointed back at the nightstand with your thumb “you sneaky asshole,” you teased and he started laughing in silence, walking towards you “I’m gonna steal it back.”

Javier grabbed your hand from your lap and pulled you to stand up, his hands wrapped your waist as he stopped laughing and your hands landed on his naked chest.

“You were right, though,” he muttered, leaving a kiss on your cheek “I needed to read some fiction.”

“I still can’t believe you never read it.” you teased him, tracing his collarbone with your fingers.

Silence fell upon you again as he rested his lips on the skin of your cheekbone. But, as most things that day, it turned back into a comfortable, lighter silence that was miles and miles away from the ones you had shared in Colombia.

Everything there was so different than it was before but you knew, deep inside, that it wasn’t a bad turn; and it made you think that maybe, the time you two spent apart, as horrid, painful and rough as it was; was needed.

He couldn’t seem to bring himself to stop touching you, his hands had missed the texture of your skin and the warmth of your body, Javier moved his hands only to let you lay down on the bed next to him, he turned off the lights and almost immediately, brought you back to him, your chest resting on his side, your head resting on his chest, the skin on skin contact was doing wonders to him and he knew he wouldn’t need anything else as long as you gave him permission to touch you.

“They offered me México.” he mumbled out, breaking the tranquil, dark silence you were snuggling under as his hand rested on your rib side.

“What?” you asked, turning your head on his chest to face him.

“After Cali, when I resigned, they offered me México.” he said, you frowned.

“That’s ironic.”

“Yeah.”

“You would’ve hated it.” you said, your fingers tracing shapeless figures on his skin.

“Why?”

“They made it a hellhole.” you shrugged slightly and his chest rose with the deep breath he took.

“Would’ya ever tell me ‘bout your time there?” he asked softly, bringing you closer to him.

“Yeah, at some point,” he hummed in response, “your dad called me Florecita.”

“Uhm, yeah.” he let out.

“Why? you didn’t tell him my name?” you asked him softly.

“I did… but the nickname kinda stuck.” he huffed. You squinted to study his features in the dark and saw him smirk.

“You called me that, right? when you talked to him?” you questioned teasingly “is that the nickname you gave me?” he nodded, and you rolled your eyes.

“You don’t like it?” he teased back.

“I mean…” you hesitated, knowing he’d tease you “I kinda do,” he laughed, and you slapped his pectoral softly “shut up.” you hid your face in his chest.

“Ay, mi florecita.” (my little flower)

“Don’t call me that.” you said in fake chastisement and he kissed the crown of your head.

He chuckled and the soft movement of his chest and the sound of his silent breathing lulled you to sleep. 

For the first time in months, you fell asleep with ease.

That night Javier slept better than he had in ten years.

←previous // next→

*ABOUT CARLOS*

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#javier peña #Javier Pena #javier peña x reader #javier peña fanfiction #javier peña fanfic #narcos #narcos fanfic #narcos netflix #Pedro Pascal #pedro pascal fanfiction #Jose Pedro Balmaceda Pascal #pedro pascal characters #rushingly bittersweet tag

[senseandaccountability]

Hey, did you get a chance to watch season 6 of Lucifer? What did you think of the finale?

This is going to be salty (sorry) so I put it under a cut for people who prefer joyous things in the feed.

I didn’t like the final season.

To be brief: It felt like a story where the writers knew how they wanted it to end, and therefore the plot ruled over the characters. It wasn't a main plot I enjoyed at all, and it was told in a way that made it difficult for me to appreciate even the small bits I liked. (Ella reveal. Ghost Dan.) I thought it suffered from a jarring tonal shift and when it comes to several overarching themes, I felt it negated/trivialized previous seasons. In many ways it also managed to be both cheesy and cruel, often at the same time. I had the impression it was a compilation of (unfortunately rather boring) fandom wishes and tropes more than authentic storytelling.

To be anything but brief:

I dislike the season in part because it undid a lot of great things about Lucifer as a character.

By the end of 5B Lucifer had come full circle. I think that season finale is great. The Lucifer vs Michael fight was so well done thematically - he fought himself, and unlike the first fight in 5A when he wants to hurt his twin he had now reached a state of personal growth, of compassion. Not even when Michael kills Chloe does he deserve death because everyone deserves a second chance. And then the funny and pitch perfect “Oh, my me”. Ambiguous enough about the details to fuel the fandom, clear enough about the themes and the lore to offer closure. (No, Deckerstar didn’t have a date or much of a snog but I can fill in the blanks there though I am aware that many fans were disappointed by the lack of on-screen love.)

Excellent way to end the show.

Except they didn’t. S6, I feel, tried to tell the same story all over again, only not as well or even coherent.

Over the seasons it’s been pretty clear that while Lucifer can be caring, he mostly cares about the handful of people in his life. S6 even touches upon this, has him trying to care for random people in their hell loops. But S5 already did this, but better, with Michael. The family dinner with God was excellent, it showed broken people all around and had Lucifer, the self-centered drama queen of the family realizing that he’s not the only one that’s been hurt. It showed the best and worst of them all. Sparing Michael, considering Michael worthy of redemption, was peak growth for Lucifer as a character because in that moment he also considers himself worthy of the same thing. That’s when he truly forgives himself. I thought. And then season 6 shows Michael as a prisoner in Hell, just once, never to be mentioned again. Is that a second chance? Is that redemption? Is that really the symbolism they were going for or just a spiteful and stupid little addition because LOL SOME PEOPLE DESERVE HELL. (Do they? Says who? The show doesn’t answer that because the show that focuses on the neutral character the Devil and the totally untarnished place Hell doesn’t much care about such divisive matters, but more about that soon.) I dislike the season, in parts because I wasn't satisfied with the moral/quasi-theological backdrop. The system is wrong, Lucifer concluded by the end of 5B. Season 6 has him return to the system, as an Afterlife Coach of the Damned. Is that really the best they could do?

I mourn all the cool possibilities of what Lucifer, the advocate for free will and defender of desire, could have done with hell as a concept. Blown it apart, closed it, tossed the keys to someone else and rode off in the sunset. At the very least he could have altered it so that it’s no longer solitary confinement but a collective of doomed souls trying together to achieve redemption but hey, never mind me, I’m a bleeding-heart socialist and I don’t believe in revenge and I don’t believe in God but if I did, God would forgive. Otherwise, what the hell is the point?

I parsed through the season with my husband, a real-life minister who doesn't think anyone deserves hell and who gets to suffer my long-ass questions about the theological themes of popular culture a little bit too often. Because we both felt slightly insulted after watching. "Is this bullshit what they offer me?" my husband asked me as the timey wimey time travel plot unfolded. But timey wimey bullshit aside, we concluded that the real reason we were both so annoyed and frustrated with the season is because it highlighted how flat the background lore really is. I mean, I guess they wanted to be yay, neutral and non-divisive themes galore! It’s good to be good, folks! If you’re not, well, I guess you might have your spine broken by the Devil or sent to a never-ending hell loop but let’s not talk about religion! The main issue, for me, with the whole system of heaven and hell and earth on the show is that for every equation, there’s a part missing. The show has borrowed the character from the comics verse but left the entire lore and its internal logic behind. It borrows a bit of moral philosophy, but cuts away the troublesome bits otherwise Lucifer can’t both be on a redemptive path and happily slaughter people in fits of vengeance; it uses Heaven and Hell and vaguely also the concept of sin but never answers any questions about it, apart from the central message of course: it’s up to you. In fact, the show discourages questions about the lore because it has no answers. It doesn’t care. The ending of the show brushes off the much needed systematic changes of heaven and hell like it’s just another joke. (Want to know a show that has compassionate writing about morality while managing to be very funny? The Good Place. And you know what, morality should be serious. I’m a softie and again, a bleeding-heart, but it’s important to be a good person and it’s important to get a chance for redemption. It matters. It’s not just a minor detail.)

Which brings me to the damn therapy theme. I know a lot of people like it and I have also liked it a lot in previous seasons. I have. It’s been quirky. (Also highly unprofessional, but hey.) But as the key to your afterlife/redemption/second chance it’s just not good enough.

It is so very, very individualistic that it makes my skin crawl. It’s the ultimate American solution to systemic injustices and suffering - hey, it’s up to you, man. You decide if you deserve hell. You decide if you deserve Heaven. You make the difference! You can do it! Live the afterlife dream, achieve all your goals, get a hell loop that no longer loops but… stays in one static place where at least you’re moderately happy. Navel-gazing into your soul is certainly one way to get some insights into your mistakes. But it’s not redemption. Redemption is an active choice to be a better person. You don’t have to earn redemption or deserve it. And redemption isn’t the same as forgiveness either. Redemption is the opposite to pointless, everlasting punishment. It’s hopeful and it’s ugly and it’s full of purpose and the chance to be better and add something good to the world. Even Lucifer doesn’t get to do that on the show. He deals only with the already doomed. The here and now on Earth fades into the distance as Deckerstar, too, gets their happily ever after in Hell. You’ll get pie in the sky when you die. Or you get to shag on a throne in Hell. Either way, life on Earth doesn’t matter. (Here the show lean into some really dodgy Christian themes, I’d argue, but hey, it’s not about religion! It’s just a fun romp about a reformed bad boy!)

“Hell is just revenge porn for fundamentalists and other people who believe in eye for an eye. I just want there to be a level of collective forgiveness and hope, you know?” I told my husband whilst chugging down beer. As you do when you watch crap that makes no sense. “A level of hey, I’ve got this, I forgive you, you can do better. Go and do better. And then the actual opportunity to do so, even if it's just reliving your life as a ghost again and again until you figure out what went wrong.” “Honey,” my husband said. “I hate to tell you this since you’re an atheist but that level you’re talking about? That’s Jesus.” Well, screw that.

I really don’t want to need Jesus to make sense of a story. I just want decent bloody storytelling.

#lucifer critical #lucifer season six #lucifer spoilers

[delyth88]

Loki episode 5 rewatch

It’s been a busy week so it wasn’t until yesterday that I had a chance to watch Episode 5 again. And I was a little worried I might not like it as much as I did on first watch, but thankfully I did still find a lot to like about this episode.

Spoilers below...

Firstly, I think it’s taken this long, but I’ve finally gotten used to this new variant of our Loki. To this overly emotive, sweetly stupid at times, often bewildered version of the character.  Let me be clear, he is absolutely not being presented in the same was at the first three films, Infinity War, or even Ragnarok. But I’m finding him easier to watch now that I have no hopes or expectations that he will be the Loki I was hoping we’d get to see again.  Sure, I’m sad they didn’t give us a continuation of the Loki we’re grown to love, but this guy seems to be starting to find his feet, and I’m curious to see what his potential is now.

I was again struck by the increased sense of purpose (no pun intended) of this episode.  It seems to be going places more so than previous episodes were. And again I loved the opening sequence and the music as we travel through the TVA and then out into the Void. It did make me wonder whether the destroyed city was actually a version of the timeline where Loki/Thanos win the Battle of New York, and that’s as far as the significance of that set goes.  My hunch is that we won’t see that long shot of Loki from the trailers in post-apocalyptic New York. They opted for the mirror of the Avengers scene instead as the way Loki finds himself in this place.

I laughed at Loki’s little rant this time too. Particularly the line “plus an alligator, that I’m heartbroken to report I didn’t even find all that strange!”.  In fact there were a few moment when I felt we were getting a little bit of Loki’s old humour. Such as, his “Delightful.” In response to kid Loki talking about cannibalistic pirates, “This is a nightmare.” and “Don’t die isn’t a plan, it’s a general demand of living”.

I do wonder though if this is just about comparison with the other Lokis?  Like they’re all so very much more on the extreme end of comical that it makes our Loki seem the straight guy in comparison? *shrug*

After several days I am still taken by Old Loki and his story.  And on watching it again I was able to appreciate the little moments leading up to his fighting Alioth. He gives the impression of being just so Over It and his crazy comics outfit also directs the audience away from how much he actually cares.  For example he is really quite upset at Lokis in general and presumably also himself after the betrayal by Boastful Loki. He says “We cannot change. We’re broken. Every version of us. Forever.”

And he seems quite affected by Mobius’ offhand comment that “it’s never too late to change”.

And then that look back towards Loki and Sylvie as Alioth approaches.

Gah! This is the kind of thing I wanted for our Loki.  I don’t have the right words to describe it, but it’s partly the back story, partly the change of heart, partly the stakes, the emotional depth. I’m really quite sad that we won’t see more of him.  :( 

@scintillatingshortgirl19​ you asked me what I thought of Loki’s response when Sylvie asks, “How do I know that in the final moments you won’t betray me?”

“Listen Sylvie, I…” Loki pauses and takes a deep breath “I betrayed everyone who ever loved me.  My father, my brother, my home.  I know what I did, and I know why I did it. And that’s not who I am anymore. Okay? I won’t let you down.”

To be honest on my first watch I think I just let it slide over me as yet another one of those lines where they keep telling us what we’re supposed to think of Loki (whether it’s true or not).  I think Episode 4 might have broken me – I didn’t even blink an eyelid.  I think I’ve just heard so many people saying things that I think are absolutely wrong about Loki that I’m just… used to it now?  I dunno. Maybe it was just my mood, or the fact that there were enough other things I enjoyed in the episode that I could ignore it.

But since you pointed it out I’ve been thinking about it and after my rewatch I kinda think Loki has been a little bit influenced by recent events and conversations.  He’s just watched with embarrassment several different versions of himself strike bargains and then betray each other, in such an extreme example of this behaviour that it seemed absurdly comic. Boastful Loki even says “I betrayed you, and now I’m king.” And as they leave the Loki fight behind Old Loki says “We lie and we cheat! We cut the throats of every person who trusts us! And for what! Power!”  So I can kinda see why betrayal is on his mind.  

And perhaps this is something he’s been thinking about for a while now.  Since he tried to strike a bargain with Sylvie before he even really knew her. Old Loki ask if Loki trusts Sylvie and he says” “She’s the only one [of the Loki variants] I do trust! “

But I guess the way I interpreted it is not just literal betrayal like he just watched with the other Loki variants, but also letting people down. Letting himself down. In this context betraying his father would be the events of Thor 1 where he betrays his father’s trust by letting the frost giants into the weapons vault (I think he’s talking about Odin here, not Laufey), and then by not being able to be a good king in the eyes of his father or even his own standards while Odin was in the Odinsleep.  I don’t think he would be thinking of the moment where he lets Laufey into Odin’s chamber because he always intended to betray Laufey and save Odin. Although maybe he feels guilt for that too, in terms of lying to his father.  In regards to his brother, I’d consider any of the times Loki is acting against his brother’s interests, in a serious way such as the times that he was evading and fighting against Thor in Avengers, or when he sent the Destroyer in Thor 1 as betrayals of a sort, and the frost giants at the coronation again. And in regards to his ‘home’ I assume from his perspective this is again about the coronation and the events that led to the destruction of the Bifrost and as far as he’s aware war with Jotunhiem.  Perhaps he’s thinking of the moment when Odin says to Thor “... you are unworthy of the loved ones you have betrayed!” Potentially he’s also thinking of Ragnarok and his actions in causing it after what he read in his file in the TVA. Personally I think he knows it was necessary but still feels a ton of guilt about being the one to actually do it. In this case it’s a betrayal in action but not in heart.

So I think he’s kinda focusing on the guilt he feels. And I think this is why he feels it could extend to Frigga, although he doesn’t mention it I think we as the audience are meant to assume it.  But again, this is in terms of the guilt he feels at a future version of himself inadvertently causing Frigga’s death – as he’s heard this story second-hand from Mobius. You know how if you start feeling bad about something it’s very easy to expand that to a whole bunch of other things you’ve done?  These are the times he feels guilty for his actions in hindsight.

I also think he’s kinda lumping a bunch of things together under the umbrella of the wording of the question that Sylvie has asked.  I think if she’d used a different word he would have echoed that back to her too.

I also think he starts of with “Listen Sylvie, I..” because he was about to defend himself, refuse to acknowledge that he would do such a thing and minimise it, by saying some version of “I would never do that”.  But he catches himself and takes the opposite approach of laying all his faults out plain. Admitting in a slightly exaggerated way that he has betrayed people in the past and he knows it, which he considers is more likely to be believed, and that he won’t betray Sylvie because he’s changed since then.

So I don’t know if I really have a conclusion to draw from this, but I think Loki is exaggerating out of guilt. 

But this is also one of those lines that where the character is telling us not showing us.  Which seems to have started in Ragnarok and is being continued in this series. It’s frustrating, I don’t like it, but it seems this is what they do now.  :/

***

So, it’s taken me a whole ‘nother day to get to finish writing this, and I’ve realised that this is the first episode in a while that has been on my mind since I watched it.  I’m actually invested again! Which I was very much not after Episode 4.

This episode had another piece of Loki’s story, in the form of Old Loki, and that was wonderful, and tragic.  And we’re starting to get somewhere with the plot now.  

And unlike in previous episodes where it looked like they’d left hints of things to come but that turned out not to be the case, I actually feel like we might get payoff for all those comments about Loki’s magic.  Probably not in a way I’d prefer, but at this point I’ll take any sort of change that gives Loki a bit more control over his life.

I’m also feeling again like this story matters.  With episodes 3 and 4 I wasn’t really feeling it.  I hope I’m not too disappointed. lol

I still don’t like the romance, but having resigned myself to the fact this is what they’re doing last week I was better able to watch this.  The fact that Sylvie is as utterly incompetent at personal relationships as our Loki does make it more tolerable to me, and if I take it as some weird AU (which lets be fair is exactly what this is) it is kinda cute. In a way I like that they’re both late 30s/early 40s in appearance, not teens or twenty-somethings. It adds this extra layer to their awkwardness and I think brings home how weird tit is that these thousand year old beings don’t know how to be friends if you can do the mental jumps required to believe this in the first place. I still want it to be platonic or at least not taken any further.  I will gag if they kiss in the finale. 

#loki #loki series #loki episode 5 #spoilers #my review #loki series negativity #loki series positivity #a bit of both

[ishouldnotbhere]

curious! who in blue lock would you genuinely want to be bestfriends with? and why?

OOOOOH that’s a hard question to answer DDD:

Part of me wants to be like… Barou? Bc other than the fact that I am an obvious simp, the idea of being one of the only people whom Barou tolerates on an equal level just appeals to me lol.

Also, he’s such a mom. Total mom friend. When the members of the Blue Lock squad (+U20 crew, maybe, counting only Oliver, Sae, and Shidou) are legal and they inevitably go out bar-hopping at those ridiculously high-class clubs only Reo can afford, Barou’s fussing over everyone, whether he himself likes it or not. He’s yelling at everyone over the music to “Drink water, goddammit!” and handing them water bottles if they’re too out of it. He’s helping them not get filthy when their stomachs can’t hold up, he’s driving them home, and he’s texting them remedies to deal with hangovers because he cares for his friends he needs them to be in peak physical condition for practice and for fuck’s sake, they need to learn how to take care of themselves like adults and not make such a big fucking mess and dirty everything up. Especially the cleanliness part. Barou tells Chigiri he doesn’t care if Chigiri breaks a leg, that Chigiri’s useless anyway, that Chigiri picking his hair up off the floor is more important than his silly stupid leg.

At the same time, Barou helps Chigiri bandage his knee after practice. Not because he cares. It’s because the tape is rolling around untangled and messing up the floor. Don’t get it twisted, buddy. That’s an hc btw lol that was not canon but I totally see him as that kind of person because look, they may be ridiculously talented, but they’re still human as well as children. 5’7”+ babies

But I do believe Kunigami would be the loveliest friend. We’ve already seen it in the manga. He’s trustworthy, reliable, and a man of character, and yet (maybe precisely the reason) he still helps out teammates who readily dismiss or ignore him or possess none of the nobility Kunigami carries. He’s the friend who’s got your back no matter what, supports you always, pays attention to your minute, seemingly meaningless habits, and lets you cry on his shoulder.

The scene that solidified my love for him (other than his adorable blush when Isagi complimented him) was when Nagi chose advancing in his newly invigorated passion for soccer over his relationship with Reo despite everything Reo has given him (including soccer itself), coldly turned his back on Reo, and Reo is breaking down—his love for soccer, in fact, is one and the same with his love for Nagi but no one could understand, no one could possibly understand, and he’s weak, so weak—and Reo is despairing, collapsing in front of a pack of vultures, and at that utterly abysmal point when he’s certain of nothing except his own isolation, buried under the weight of his perceived inferiority, Kunigami has his back. This kid who is technically Reo’s rival and has just as much reason as the others to watch Reo fail, who has barely interacted with Reo before the match, lifts Reo up. Makes him watch Nagi’s retreating back. Makes him feel the visceral pain. And he says, “Never forget this moment. Let it consume you. Let it burn you. And once the embers have fallen quiet, let the final sparks fuel you.”

I think it was in your previous ask where I mentioned how Barou and Shidou are on opposite ends of the spectrum of ego. Barou plays for his own sake, while Shidou plays for soccer’s sake. I believe Kunigami exists outside of that spectrum altogether. His character is almost cliché; the typical hero-idolizing boy who hopes to grow up to become the chivalrous, upstanding men in his comic books. But in a cutthroat world where young men stop at nothing to gain an edge, where competition is the name of the game and the possibility of elimination far outweighs any chance of survival, where the life of a person hinges on being out for himself and himself alone, Kunigami is literally… an alien. Off the rails. Just, straight up, he doesn’t belong. He’s kind. He’s good. He sees, he feels, he cares. Who in their right mind does that in a place like Blue Lock?

Kunigami’s not selfish like Shidou, or self-absorbed like Barou. He doesn’t play soccer for soccer, or for himself. Rather, Kunigami plays soccer because he loves supporting others.

In the spectrum of ego, where the HECK does that fall?

I believe that’s why he’s a Wild Card. I guess I’m going all English-teacher-pointing-out-symbolism-that-was-never-intended here. All of the characters have pointed out that, other than his physique, his actual talent isn’t all that remarkable. But he stands out as a person because in a prison that intends to stamp out all civil decency, Kunigami is still good and kind. And that, above all else, makes him the best friend you could possibly have.

I can’t believe I’m rambling like this over a manga about soccer-obsessed high schoolers. Insert that “calm down, Greg, it’s just soccer” meme here lmao. These boys just got me feeling things .-.

#thank you so much for asking me this fantastic question!!! #I’m sorry I always take so long to get back to you #it’s because I know I’m going to write so fucking much about it that I postpone answering until I have time 😭 #I love Kunigami so much when will he come back from the war #I totally bet Kunigami will shift the balance of the game once Barou makes his moves and Sae achieves flow #blue lock #my post

[ryuichirou]

Can you also share your mikannie/hitchannie headcanons if it's not too much to ask?👉👈 I love both your yuri and yaoi art so much😭❤️

Ohhh THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASK, ANON! I love both Mikannie and Hitchannie to death, I’ll gladly tell you what I think about them haha

I’m sorry in advance if there are not as many headcanons here that were in the previous posts.  I ended up deleting a bunch of them because I really want to draw them out one day… So you’ll see them eventually! Well, let’s hope so lol

This one is also not as smutty, pardon me for that

Ok, so here are some headcanons:

 Mikannie

In the canonverse, when they were cadets, Annie was kind of intrigued by Mikasa. And Mikasa definitely had very strong feelings towards Annie, although she didn’t understand them really well. She was sure that what she felt was pure annoyance and jealousy because Annie got to spend some time with Eren. What she didn’t realize was that both of then felt that they were similar in a lot of ways and were drawn to each other, but never got a chance to know each other properly.

They stare at each other a lot. In the girl’s barracks, in the dining room, in the training ground. Sometimes they end up having a staring contest, and Annie usually looks away first, because she thinks that this is stupid. Plus, Mikasa is much, much more stubborn than Annie.

In Isayama’s Attack on School Castes AU their mutual interest in each other is still there. You can clearly see this in my concert comic lol but I feel like they have a lot in common (they taste in music is similar for sure), although it’s a surprise for both of them. This is a “they could be very close if not for the circumstances” situation, and since this is a High school setting, the circumstances are stupid, superficial and made-up by angsty teens who just won’t let themselves be happy.

After the concert they started to get more and more opportunities to spend time together alone (well it’s almost like the Universe wants Mikannie to happen, smh), and they took them gladly, although both of them tried their hardest to make it seem like they don’t enjoy talking to each other. The tension is still in the air, there are a lot of things that piss them off about each other, but their desire to get closer is stronger.

The fact that they can spend time together and have fun scares them a little bit, but they enjoy it too much. The realization hit Annie first, and Mikasa understood it, err, let’s just say later lol

As much as Annie teases Mikasa for being a total beast (both in the canonverse and in the AUs), she likes the fact that she is this strong and powerful. It amuses her in a lot of ways. I feel like Annie is the type of person who would feel things while being grabbed and shoved (in a very particular way) by someone who she has a crush on, so Mikasa with her brute forceful nature is a good fit for this kink.

Annie teases Mikasa a lot, but Mikasa is too oblivious to that and takes everything literally. She is definitely easier to provoke than to flirt with. It frustrates Annie sometimes because she isn’t always in a mood to poke a bear just so Mikasa gets angry at her – she isn’t Jean, after all.

She does poke a bear sometimes though and enjoys it very much when the said bear reacts and they get to have a moment.

If Mikasa was to show Annie her caring side, she’d be surprised and probably act like she doesn’t care, but she would still enjoy it. She isn’t used to this type of treatment.

If we’re talking relationship development, these two are kind of stuck, because Mikasa is in denial and Annie would rather die than make the first move. Both of them want to be closer to each other, but Annie is pessimistic about this scenario: she thinks that this just isn’t possible with Mikasa. She still keeps giving her hints though, still having a liiiiiitle hope that Mikasa’ll catch them.

However, things do happen between them, because Mikasa just stops thinking when she’s too emotional and when the mood is right. So they’ll get to the 3rd base pretty quickly.

Annie is always slightly shook when they have sex because she gets from Mikasa much more that she expects. Granted, she doesn’t expect much, because Mikasa is Mikasa and it’s hard to imagine her in this type of scenario (especially considering the Eren thing), but Mikasa can be very enthusiastic and almost aggressively passionate with her. Sometimes she is almost possessive. She also leaves marks on Annie’s body.

Annie makes it seem like she’s more experienced than Mikasa just to mess with her. The truth is, she doesn’t understand what they are supposed to be doing either. And she always lets Mikasa take the lead anyway. Annie gives up surprisingly quickly in general with her.

If these two had nothing else to worry about and all the time in the world, at some point in the future they would just realize that they’ve been dating for a while. They’ve been doing everything a couple does without calling it “dating”, but they are clearly dating.

Hitchannie

In the canonverse, Hitch is very intrigued by Annie from the moment these two meet. She genuinely wanted to be friends with her from the very beginning. Partially because they were the only girls in their group and because they were roommates lol, but these weren’t the only reasons.

She also instantly recognized that Annie is not as scary and cold as she seems, although she jokes about how scary she looks from time to time to tease her.

Hitch likes it when Annie gets shy. Sometimes she says and does things just to see her blush with a more-or-less stoic face.

Annie respects and likes Hitch. She knows that she is way smarter than she makes herself look like and is a good person overall.

Hitch kissed Annie while being drunk at least once. She also kissed her while pretending to be drunk at least once.

Hitch talks a lot. Hitch tells Annie everything that happened to her during the day, even if Annie didn’t asked her (and she never does). Hitch also believes that Annie doesn’t listen to her at all, but she doesn’t mind. Annie does listen to her though….

When Annie was stuck in a crystal and Hitch was complaining to her about the boys, she said a couple of times that she’d rather date Annie than any guy ever in her life. She said it kind of jokingly, but she still meant it every time. It felt very good to say it out loud, although Hitch was sad she couldn’t see if this made Annie shy or mad.

In the Attack on School Castes AU they didn’t get along at first, because well it’s high school and prestige means everything to Hitch in this AU (which is why she wants to be friends with Historia so badly). And Annie doesn’t like this stupid “you are treated accordingly to your friend group” rule. So yeah, total opposites.

But surprisingly, Hitch got curious enough about Annie’s nihilism and started talking to her. At first Hitch denied that she ever talked to her and was very secretive, but after some time (when she realized that Historia gives exactly 0 fucks about who she talks to) she started talking to Annie more openly. She even started being obviously friendly with her, catching her to take a selfie, stuff like that. This development confused Annie very much.

Annie thinks that Hitch is very charismatic and beautiful.

And whether it’s canonverse or AUs, they can have casual “no strings attached” sex from time to time. The strings do get attached though, because both of them develop strong feelings toward each other overtime.

Hitch is more experienced than Annie, so she takes the lead first.

Even though Hitch knew that Annie wasn’t as stoic and cold as she seemed, she got very surprised about how soft and tender she can get. Getting reactions out of Annie kind of broke Hitch in a good way, she’s almost obsessed with getting her as aroused and embarrassed as possible with every position and sexual practice she can think of.

The morning after their first time Hitch teased the heck out of Annie for being so adorable and got her butt kicked because of that. She complained about it for an entire day, even though it didn’t hurt so badly – Annie was very careful with her kick, it looked more painful that it actually was.

 Ok so something like that… <:D

#replies #hitchannie #mikannie #headcanons

[dabistits]

idk if the villains will be saved or if the ending will be Shit but IF they end up getting saved isnt that a type of 'rebellion' (idk a better word) for heros? i mean if the generic premise of superheros stories is that heros defeat villains and thats it then choosing to save one is a type of statement by itself without having the need to do an essay on 'why ppl deserve help'. It started with hwks v. twice with hwks still choosing the wrong path and now the new heros have a chance to be better💫

im not defending the story btw because honestly the only consistent thing here is how the author only explores his themes and conflicts superficially lmao sorry for the long weird text, english is not my first language and i hope you get both my asks lol 💫

you and your english are totally fine anon!

however, i would disagree, because i don't think it's uncommon to have villain characters who are saved by the heroes. there's a reason people have made the phrase "talk no jutsu" because of the general penchant for writing shounen protagonists breaking through to their adversary through motivational speeches, one of the big examples being sasuke who returned to the village that massacred his family. even in bnha, this has already happened through the examples i provided (gentle criminal and lady nagant).

even if you talk about the superhero genre, these examples are not uncommon. i'm personally not too familiar with comics, but through various adaptations i can already name the relationship between batman and harley quinn in the animated series, and wanda and pietro being accepted by the avengers in the mcu.

the idea of "saving the villain" isn't particularly rebellious, and in most cases i would argue that saving the villain isn't about making a statement about helping every kind of person, it's an ego trip to affirm the superiority of the protagonist's ideology, and i believe this because of how often the villain's saving comes with the villain "seeing the error of their ways" and renouncing their previous goals and motivations. for example, what happened to wanda and pietro's rightful grudge against tony stark for being a war profiteer?

sure, it's not always that deep and sometimes the messages that "win" are good ("you are not alone, friends make you stronger!"), but i think in bnha's case, it's pretty distasteful for a lot of reasons. assuming that my fears are correct, then that would mean the LOV would drop their opposition to the hero (law enforcement) system, which has up until now been a significant factor in their and their friends' and families' poverty, abuse, neglect, and/or deaths, and only then would they receive a helping hand.

#ask

[bedlamsbard]

I got a couple of different asks about Luke and Ahsoka in other side AU 10, so I guess I will just make it a regular post after all so I can answer all of them at once.

@slecnaztemnot: 

Okay i just read your latest other side chapter and I wanted to ask about Ahsoka and Luke dynamics. I wonder what exactly where their heretics disagreemts about the jedi doctrine? while i can guess some of the stuff like attachements i guess i mostly see ahsoka as nonjedi and therefore someone who should not be attached to doctrine about attachements (haha) so i am wondering how you see her. i would actually love your take on how their first meetings went. continued in next ask, 1/2

1/2 continuation since most people write them as Ashoka immediately spilling the beans about the whole Vader situation to Luke and yours Ahsoka didn't. So I am curious what do you think Ahsoka feels about it. I got of course lot of it from the fic itself so i am mostly asking about how did you base your interpretation, if that makes sense and what led you to the narrative choices to portray their relationship in such way.

@comentter:

I'm most interested in what Luke and Ahsoka know about each other. Luke doesn't know much about Ahsoka obviously, but does he have any idea why she seems to hate him? He must be desperate lol. And how much does Ahsoka know about what happened on the DS2? And how much does Kanan know about these events? What was Hera able to tell him and what else did Luke and Ahsoka tell him? I always figure that everyone but Luke and a few people he told (like Leia) think the Emperor and Vader from the DS2 explosion.

I now have this image in my head of Ahsoka spending time with Rex and her laughing as Rex does something like tell a joke or a specific gesture. Then Luke walks by, does the exact same thing and Ahsoka is like "Of course, you'd do this stupid thing, you idiot!" :D

I think shortly before I started writing this sequence I had seen some cute art of Luke and Ahsoka hugging, which is a pretty common art trope and which has never sat quite right with me.  I also have the tendency to want to do the opposite of common fanon, which I can’t leave out either.  I also wanted to logic out what the hell was going on with Ahsoka’s charaterization in her Mando episode on a Watsonian level rather than a Doylist one (which I did a few weeks ago), even if other side takes place well before Mando and doesn’t intersect with it in any meaningful way.

When it came to the Luke and Ahsoka relationship (or lack thereof), it came down to three questions for me:

Who knows what?

What do they know?

When do they know it?

I made the decision early on in the chapter to leave Leia out of this relationship entirely, since the new canon seems to at this point in time (within a year of RotJ) be keeping it relatively quiet that she and Luke are siblings, and it’s not something that Hera would have a reason to know.  (Note also that this entire sequence is told from Hera’s POV, which plays into the “who knows what when” angle.)

As per Rebels S4 (not the epilogue, because Mando’s thrown that out the window), Ahsoka knows (or has good reason to believe) the following:

Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader, Sith Lord

Darth Vader was directly or indirectly responsible for the genocide of the Jedi Order and the deaths of any Jedi who survived the Purge (”you and your Inquisitors saw to that”)

Padme Amidala is dead

Obi-Wan Kenobi is dead (Obi-Wan was not dead, but she has no way to know this)

no Darksider can return to the Light side

At the end of RotJ (not taking into account anything that happened in the comics or ancillary novels, which I’m not up to date on), Luke knows (or has good reason to believe) the following:

Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker

everyone Anakin ever knew is dead, mostly because of him

Vader returned to being Anakin Skywalker at the end of his life

(Leia presumably also knows all of this, perhaps with a few more details based on things her parents might have told her, but her feelings about Darth Vader are: Bad, Do Not Want, to be glib about it.)

Now, there’s one other factor here, which is Rex.  Rex knew Anakin and knew Ahsoka and was in the Rebel Alliance -- we know that he was on Yavin IV prior to Luke’s arrival and we know that he fought in the Battle of Endor. (And turns up in a couple of scattered art panels from the comics.)  If we want to take his brief appearance in Galaxy of Adventures with Han Solo’s strike force as canon, then he may have also known Han and probably Luke -- certainly his ears would have pricked up at the name “Skywalker.”  (Okay, there’s one other factor, which is R2-D2, but Artoo never tells anyone anything despite knowing...everything. Or most things, anyway.)  Rex doesn’t seem to know that Anakin became Darth Vader (I believe there’s an interview somewhere where Dave or Pablo or someone says that a meeting between Rex and Vader would be “awkward,” but there’s no canonical reason to believe that he knew about the Anakin/Vader connection), but he probably found out at some point that the 501st was the battalion involved in the assault on the Jedi Temple.  He also, as of Rebels S3-4, assumes that Vader killed Ahsoka -- presumably Ezra would have told him as much as he could.  (And Ezra does know that Vader is Anakin, so he may have told Rex that as well.)  Rex also knows that Anakin Skywalker was having an affair with Padme Amidala, but presumably didn’t know about (a) the marriage or (b) the pregnancy, because how would he know?

Then we come to Ahsoka’s return and unfortunately the current canon gives us no time point for when it actually happened: presumably Ahsoka did not or could not return to the greater galaxy at the point she “left”, during the fight on Malachor (3 BBY), because as of Rebels S3-4 everyone still believes she’s dead.  Maybe she’s still stuck on Malachor without a way to get off, who knows; maybe after S4 Ezra grabbed her into the World Between Worlds she decided to stay on Malachor until she ~caught up with the main timeline, which...you then have to believe that Ahsoka is going to deliberately remove herself from the war, which I can get to, but is not something I’m totally comfortable with.  Or she pops out in the timeline at the same time that Ezra returns to the main timeline and is able to more or less immediately return to the main timeline narrative, plus or minus a few weeks.  (There are, after all, still a couple of Advanced TIE fighters parked in the Sith temple, even if they were potentially damaged in the temple collapse.  Ahsoka could have repaired them or used the comms systems to call for a pick-up -- this is, btw, what happens in Crown.)  We don’t know when the S2 finale scene/S4 WBW scene of Ahsoka walking back into the temple actually takes place in the timeline; it doesn’t have to be at the exact same time as the rest of the S2 finale sequence (since obvs Vader dragging himself out, Maul flying off, and the Rebels crew looking sad doesn’t all take place at the exact same time).

Other side AU is deliberately vague about when Ahsoka returns from the World Between Worlds/Malachor/to the Rebel Alliance; it’s not stated in the story, but I made the assumption that she came back shortly after the (non-epilogue) end of the Rebels finale, but was still deeply messed up from her Malachor revelations.  (Also, like, Sidious, I guess, but she was probably so messed up about Anakin/Vader that Sidious being around barely registered.)  Since she never seems to have held a formal position in the Rebel Alliance, I assumed that after she returned and let everyone know she was still alive, she then immediately took off to try and figure out what the hell happened with Anakin at the end of the Clone Wars, since she saw him like a week before he snapped and at the time he seemed fine.

The problem is that almost everyone involved is dead.

Now, at this point (shortly before Scarif and ANH), a few people are still alive who then die shortly, but whom Ahsoka may have no reason to believe were involved.  Bail Organa, for example, is still around, but aside from him being Padme’s friend Ahsoka doesn’t have a reason to know that Bail was there when Padme died -- and since they were in contact for the nineteen years preceding there’s no reason for her to assume now that he was keeping something for her.  Back in the comics (before I stopped reading them), Vader did some digging to figure out what was going on with Padme and his child; Ahsoka probably would have done the same digging (without having to torture anyone), but without necessarily knowing that Padme was pregnant.  Knowing the date of Padme’s death (same as the Republic, essentially), she may have had a previous assumption that Padme was assassinated on Palpatine’s orders, but knowing that Vader is Anakin probably moves that assumption closer to the truth, that Anakin was somehow involved in Padme’s death one way or another.  Sooner or later Ahsoka will turn up the fact that Padme was pregnant, come to the obvious conclusion that Anakin was the father, and possibly find out the same thing that Vader does in the comics -- that the child was born before Padme died.  (But also probably not that Padme was carrying twins, but even if she found that out, it wouldn’t make a difference.)

While Ahsoka is doing her digging (and there really isn’t much information out there to find), the events of Rogue One and ANH happen, and Ahsoka comes back to the Rebel Alliance to find out which of her friends are still alive.  (Maybe Rex is with her at this point, who knows.)

Everyone in the Rebel Alliance is talking about some young hotshot named Luke Skywalker.

Luke Skywalker who has a very familiar lightsaber, who claims his father was Anakin Skywalker, and who had some kind of relationship with Obi-Wan Kenobi, who turned up on the Death Star, fought Darth Vader, and died.

Ahsoka has just spent the past few months trying to figure out what happened with Anakin, and as best she can reassemble the facts it mostly comes down to “Anakin did something dumb for Padme, that something dumb was ‘turn to the Dark Side and kill literally everyone,’ and then Padme died, the Republic was overturned, and the Jedi Order was wiped out.”  Ahsoka presumably walks into a room, hears the name Luke Skywalker -- maybe sees him -- and is all at once face to face with the living evidence of just how badly Anakin fucked up.

This is just too much for Ahsoka to deal with at the moment, so she takes off again, and spends the next five years brushing in and out of the Rebel Alliance doing odd missions that can really only be done by a trained Force-user.  Rex, who seems to have a more stable position in the Alliance, is always going to side with Ahsoka over anyone else; if she tells him not to tell Luke that she knew Anakin, he won’t.  (And for that matter, he may have somewhat fraught feelings about Luke himself.)  She may have the odd interaction with Luke -- who has heard that there’s another Jedi in the Alliance and wants to be friends/get real training -- but Ahsoka just does not want any part of this. It’s irrational! She knows it’s irrational! But this is the living evidence of Anakin’s failure, Anakin who last she saw him TRIED TO KILL HER, who was at least partially responsible for the deaths of everyone she ever knew.  (And honestly, finding out that Vader topped it all off by killing Obi-Wan is not going to help.)

Ahsoka may also be feeling a certain amount of survivor’s guilt: if Ezra had not pulled her out of the Malachor temple at that exact moment, she came pretty close to bringing the temple down on both herself and Vader, and may have succeeded in killing him.  She did not do so, and who knows how many people died because of that in the years between Malachor and Yavin?  (Just because Tarkin was the one who gave the order doesn’t mean that Ahsoka may at least partially blame Alderaan’s destruction on Vader, if she knew he was on the Death Star then.) She knows he killed Obi-Wan.

The Yoda lineage is very good at going “yikes, I am going off to live alone and beat myself up over my failure for years” and Ahsoka is very much an example of that lineage.

She and Luke have a relationship of “Hi, I’m Luke Skywalker, do you want to talk?” and “I have to leave immediately,” maybe with the odd “please stop using that lightsaber grip it is physically painful for me to watch, do it like this instead, okay, bye.”  Luke probably told all of two other people about what happened with Vader on the Death Star, Leia and Han; he has no reason to tell anyone else about it because it won’t matter to them.  Why would he tell Ahsoka, whom he has no relationship with?  He doesn’t know that Ahsoka knew Anakin Skywalker and would only know if one of four people told him: Ahsoka herself (no), Rex (no), R2-D2 (maybe), or Admiral Ackbar (would never have occurred to Luke to ask, might have occurred to Ackbar to say).  (We also don’t know that Mon Mothma knew Ahsoka very well, or at all, for that matter; they never interacted in TCW.)

As for her swinging harder into overt Jedi-ness by Mando after her blatant “I am no Jedi” of Rebels, it reads to me as a response to the Anakin/Vader revelation (especially the attachment thing).  She had made certain assumptions in the TCW period (see her saving Rex in the TCW finale) and prior to Rebels; Kanan’s method of Jediness was something she could accept in the time period and in those circumstances; the Anakin/Vader revelation shattered all of that, followed immediately as it was by Kanan apparently going full Jedi self-sacrifice despite his attachments.  (Her reaction to Ezra being a trauma response about two very different circumstances.)  All of a sudden what she thought might have been mutable based on the circumstances became something that had to be adhered to in case of dangerous results, which she had just had brought home to her in extremely bad circumstances.

I made a crack somewhere about Mando’s central tension being between “being Mandalorian” and “being doing Mandalorianness”; I think in the post-OT period with Ahsoka and Luke we’re seeing something similar with “being Jedi” and “being doing Jediness.”  Even if Ahsoka isn’t actively claiming the title Jedi anymore (because what does that accomplish in most contexts?), she’s leaning far more into the tenets of the Jedi Order -- which Luke doesn’t know and doesn’t know he doesn’t know.

Thus the doctrinal dispute.

Ahsoka grew up in the Jedi Order.  That’s what she knows, that’s how she knows how to be a Jedi; for her being a Jedi is being part of the Jedi Order, whether or not the actions associated with performing Jediness are being actively practiced.  Luke doesn’t have that context.  For Luke, being a Jedi is...being doing Jediness.  (This is super awkward phrasing.)  Performing the actions of a Jedi.  Luke has a few holocrons, but I’m guessing that a lot of what is on those holocrons makes the assumption that whoever is opening with them has the context of being a part of the Jedi Order and doesn’t explain really basic stuff about the Order or what that means.  Luke’s Jedi Order is not going to be the Republic Jedi Order made anew; it’s going to be something that has a resemblance to it and is based on a similar view of the Force, even arguably its heir, but is just not going to be the same thing.  It can’t be.  Luke doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

Kanan, of course, is coming into all of this from a similar context as Ahsoka: he grew up in the Jedi Order, it’s what he knows, it’s who he is.  Except Kanan never walked away from the Order, so while Ahsoka had been disconnected from her Jediness at the time of the Purge, he never lost his -- part of Ahsoka’s tension from TCW S7-Rebels was “I can’t be a Jedi because the Order is gone” and Kanan’s was “can I be a Jedi without the Jedi Order?”  (Ezra is a whole ‘nother thing but is somewhat outside the scope of this.)  The Jedi Order never factors in Luke’s Jediness at all.  (There’s some lineage doctrinal dispute here as well -- the Yoda lineage seems to be very closely connected to the Order as the font of Jediness, the Windu-Billaba lineage somewhat less so.  The Yoda lineage is like...the hardcore conservatives of the Jedi Order, though, and are probably not typical.)

Poor Kanan came back from the dead, after a week in another universe (which had its own problems; he’s been trying to very gently convince his counterpart that even after being an Inquisitor for months he can still be a Jedi), into Luke trying to build a new Jedi Order from scratch, Ahsoka firmly believing it couldn’t and shouldn’t be done and not wanting to be in the same room as Luke at all (not to mention that she really did not believe that they should have gone for “hey, let’s send Hera Syndulla to another universe” as even being an option), and both of them having essentially incompatible notions of being a Jedi at each other -- this is probably the most time Luke and Ahsoka ever spent in each other’s presence.  They’ve probably never articulated their problems at each other, just assumed that the other knew them.  And Kanan has his own “how to be a Jedi” approach, which is from a very different than either Ahsoka or Luke because despite originating from the same context as Ahsoka, he had a very different path to get to his present position.

As for what Kanan knows -- uh, pretty much only what Hera knew, and Hera knew very little?  She was friendly with Luke and Leia, but didn’t have much interaction with them -- she states that she had a tendency to avoid Luke because even if she would never say it to Luke’s face, she silently believes that if any Jedi should have been in the Rebel Alliance, it should have been Kanan and Ezra and not this relative newcomer.  If the Death Star 2 news about Vader and Palps was never common knowledge, then Hera wouldn’t have known it.  Kanan’s in a position of having to play catch-up, but also having a completely different priority (finding Ezra).  He sat through this meeting where after they’d finished grilling him on “you were in ANOTHER UNIVERSE and also you CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD?” they politely sniped at each other with a bunch of context he didn’t have and flat out decided that wow, he did not want to deal with this at all, whatsoever.

(This is also not stated in the story, but Luke and Ahsoka also disagreed about whether Jacen should be trained or not: Luke said, yeah, of course, when he’s a little older! and Ahsoka said nope, he’ll be fine, it will go away. Hera was just very “...I will deal with this later” about it since it wasn’t an urgent issue.)

#also thanks to reena-jenkins and isweedan for talking this out with me #other side au tag