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juniorgman187 · 3 years

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The Bones (Reid Series) Part 2

Summary: After doing an even deeper dive on Valerie’s past, Spencer finally meets her, but his invasiveness isn’t the worst part ... the worst part is he might actually like her.

Playlist: “The Bones” by Maren Morris & Hozier (BONUS: song includes major foreshadowing) Category: Series, Fluff, Soft Angst, Eventual smut and *NSFW content Pairing: Spencer Reid POV x Fem!OC - Valerie Content Warning: invasion of privacy, allusions to Maeve’s death, arrhythmia Word Count: 3.4k

Part 1 |

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

After firmly deciding not to weave Penelope into my tangled web, I was met with the arduous burden of conducting my own research.

Firstly, I would need a computer - yeah ... a computer. That’s how far I was willing to go for this pursuit. I once vowed never to fall victim to modern technology’s clutches, and yet here I was, doing my research on a public library’s computer. To my credit, I hadn’t gone out and bought one, I was merely using my resources.

With the need for a device out of the way, all that was left was the knowledge of what to look for. But that didn’t pose a problem either.

Funny enough, with as many rules and restrictions as there are regarding patient privacy and confidentiality, all it took was matching dates of news stories with hospital records to complete my research. I was fairly certain I was only scratching the surface of information about Valerie as opposed to the sea of things I could’ve uncovered if I asked for Garcia’s help, but there are only so many lines a person can cross in one week.

This was my limit.

Call me naive, but I was actually quite surprised with just how expansive the internet is. To an almost relentless degree, I would open an article and it would lead me to ten more about the same topic. It was this never ending rabbit hole that seemed to spiral on forever. I kept digging deeper and deeper until I could no longer dig.

I’d officially hit rock bottom.

It took me a grand total of just two hours to unearth all the ‘dirt’ I could on a young Valerie Bishop.

Local 16-year-old Wins Nevada’s Statewide Art Contest! Published by Henderson Press.

Valerie, just a sophomore in high school at the time, was donning what any experimental teen girl would’ve worn in the early 2000s - bootcut jeans and a sequin blouse over top of a plain camisole. And if I zoomed in close enough, I could spot the evidence of a sparkly blue shadow coating her eyelids. Surprisingly, though, that wasn’t the first thing I noticed.

It was that smile. That tooth-achingly sweet smile.

Though I never got the chance to see Maeve truly smile, that’s what I imagined it would look like.

The photographer must’ve caught her midway through a laugh, at least that’s what the image of her slightly open-mouthed grin told me. Meanwhile, her two tiny hands were clenching her overbearingly large trophy while her artwork stood behind her as the background.

It didn’t take me long to figure out why her painting won. Simply put, there was no need to see anyone else’s art to know that they couldn’t possibly compete with hers.

Hers was an abstract rendition of what I believe to be a forest of some sort. The detail is what I was most drawn to. It would’ve been unbelievable on its own but the fact that she was 16 when she painted it? That’s what was unbelievable to me.

If that’s how talented she was at that age, I could only imagine how much more talented she became with time. However, I lost the chance to investigate the current state of her skill before a related article from The Cleveland Gazette about Valerie succeeded this one.

From Award-Winning Artist to Henderson’s Hero

Read my interview with 17-year-old Valerie Bishop to find out more about her struggle with arrhythmia and how she turned her pain into a project!

By Kelli Gallagher from the Cleveland Gazette.

Gallagher: Thank you so much for letting me interview you, Valerie.

Bishop: Of course! I’m happy to.

Gallagher: You’ve become somewhat of a hero in Henderson, Nevada, haven’t you?

Bishop: I wouldn’t call myself a hero ... but if everyone else wants to - I’m fine with that. (laughs)

Gallagher: Don’t be so modest! I mean, what you’ve done is so incredible, and you’re only what? Seventeen?

Bishop: Yes, ma’am. I just turned seventeen this past August.

Gallagher: Wow, I can’t believe how young you are and yet you’ve already accomplished so much. I saw that you won a statewide art contest last year. Tell me more about that.

Bishop: That’s a funny story actually. My Grandma Sheila was the one who entered me in that contest. I didn’t even know about it until I won it. She’s always surprising me, though. In fact, she’s the one that surprised me with my first ever art supplies, when I was about eight or so. They were these super expensive oil paints, and I knew she couldn’t afford them, so I told her we should return them and get something cheaper, but she said, “Nonsense. When the bones are good the rest don’t matter. A house don’t fall when the bones are good.” That was kind of her saying.

A house don’t fall when the bones are good.

The bones.

Gallagher: I’m interested to know more about your relationship with your grandma. If I’m remembering correctly, she was also diagnosed with arrhythmia a while back too, right?

Bishop: Yes, she was, but that’s never slowed her down. And as for our relationship, my grandma and I have always been close, but arrhythmia, in a weird way, has brought us even closer. She has always been my biggest supporter and the fact that we’re both on this journey together makes her my biggest supporter even more so.

Gallagher: Absolutely. Now, I also heard that you’ve started a fundraising program to possibly start a gallery and studio in Virginia Beach. If you don’t mind me asking, why Virginia Beach? Is there any special significance?

Bishop: Actually, that’s where my grandma met my grandpa, and they got married and started a family there, too. So if Grandma Sheila hadn’t been there to meet him, she wouldn’t have had my mom, and that would mean I wouldn’t have been here either. I like to think Virginia Beach is where it all started. In a way, it’s where my bones are. That solid foundation in Virginia gave me everything I have today.

Gallagher: That is just incredible. I’m so glad to see your fundraising project is thriving, but I can’t imagine any of this has been particularly easy for you. You were diagnosed right around the time your senior year was starting right?

Bishop: Yes ma’am.

Gallagher: So what brought you from Henderson to Cleveland?

Bishop: Well, actually, I didn’t want to move, especially not before I graduated, but Cleveland has the best cardiovascular hospital in the country and my health is far more important than graduating in the same state I grew up in. So when my parents were willing to move me and my sister out here, I saw it as a privilege rather than something to be sad about.

Gallagher: I am so inspired by you, Valerie.

Bishop: (laughs) Really, why?

Gallagher: Despite everything that’d been thrown at you, you are still so grateful. I hope you never lose that.

Bishop: I promise you I won’t.

Gallagher: So one last thing before I go, what is one hope you have for your future self?

Bishop: I hope, future self, that your ‘bones’ are still strong.

Gallagher: Beautiful. Thank you so much again for doing this, Valerie. I sincerely hope you reach your goal and you get to open up that gallery and studio in Virginia Beach.

At the bottom of the article, there was a footnote from Kelli Gallagher.

Exactly 10 years later, Bishop was able to move to Virginia Beach and open up her gallery and studio.

By the end of the article, I felt a genuine sense of pride for Valerie, and I know I had virtually no right to know these things about her, but I could still be proud of her for them right?

I would never fully get my answer to this question before I crossed the final boundary.

After exhausting all that I could gather from the internet without Penelope’s assistance, the only thing left for me to do was actually meet her in person. However, this would prove to be a bigger obstacle that it seemed. I decided to delay the daunting task until the next day. A decision partially influenced by the phrase, ‘sleep on it.’ I prayed I’d gain clarity on what to do when I woke up the next morning, but even with a night’s rest, I was still undecided as I drove to Virginia Beach once more.

To sit in my car that was conveniently parked right in front of the gallery was a poor choice. Because with every passing second, the temptation to walk in grew, but the fear of regret dampened those impulses. The more I thought about it, the more I psyched myself out. Between my two choices, to freeze or to fight, I should’ve taken the third - to flee. But I was here now and I couldn’t leave empty-handed for a second time.

After a moment’s indecision, adrenaline coursed through my veins to give me the courage to get out of my car. When I felt an outdoor breeze blow over me, I knew there was no going back now. Right when I walked in, the little bell above the door rang, solidifying that I was officially crossing the threshold, and whether I liked it or not, she was going to see me after hearing me walk in.

“I’ll be right with you!” A small voice called out from somewhere in the back. She was hidden from my immediate sight, and somehow that made it so much worse. It was now I that was waiting for her, instead of her unknowingly waiting for me.

As though I were prey getting ready to escape a predator, I stayed put by the door. It gave me a full view of the entire place anyway.

Scoping out my surroundings, I spotted the paintings that were carefully measured and placed on the walls, almost to perfection. I had no time to notice anything more before the person in the back walked out.

Immediately when I saw her, I knew.

“You’re … not Valerie.” I couldn’t help sounding so disappointed but luckily, the woman that came out took no offense to my observation.

“No, I’m not,” She laughed. “But I can get her for you-”

“No wait!” I uselessly leapt forward to stop her from saying, “Vee! There’s someone out here to see you!” But that’s precisely what she did anyway. Evidently oblivious of my previous protests, she politely smiled back at me. “She’ll be right out.”

For the second time that day, I waited with bated breath, anxiously anticipating the arrival of Valerie. And I was almost too focused on subduing the pounding of my heart to realize that she was actually walking out of the back right now.

“Hi, sorry about that!” A new voice chirped.

Valerie.

The moment I laid eyes on her, it became clear to me that the pictures in her files hardly did her justice. Nothing could compare to the real sight of her. I was only able to catch the profile of her face when I saw her in the cafe, but in her entirety, I began to wax nostalgic. Though her face and hair and body had transformed into that of a grown woman’s features, I could still identify the same tooth-achingly sweet smile that a younger Valerie once wore on the front page of the Henderson Press. She was no beast to conquer, she was just a girl, smiling at me in that same gentle way.

Her expression just as well showed no indication of recognition, not that she would recognize me, considering my letter was anonymous and unless she pulled the same stunt I did, she wouldn’t ever recognize who I was.

“I’m Val,” She made her greeting to me while untying her dirtied waist apron, and it was merely the action that caused my gaze to fall to her hips, but when she shed the apron, I was still staring. There was something sort of mesmerizing about the way they swayed as she approached. It wasn’t until they stopped swaying completely that I realized they did so because there was no more distance to advance - she was already right there in front of me, patiently watching me stare.

“Val?” I blinked hard to revert my gaze while also playing into the part that I had no idea who she was.

“Mhm. Short for Valerie,” She confirmed happily. “Like the Amy Winehouse song.”

This time, I genuinely didn’t know what she was referring to, and my confused countenance prompted her to clarify, “You don’t know that song?”

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, she began to playfully sing, “Well, sometimes I go out by myself and I look across the water ...”

While she watched my face and waited for the recitation of the song to jog my memory, I was just as much studying her face. I could tell she was only kidding when she sang, evidenced by the laugh that followed her rendition, but it sounded so unironically good that I had to question what other talents she possessed.

“Um, I was actually thinking more like Valerie, the martyred medieval saint, whose name stood for strength and health.” No sooner than the words spilled from my mouth did I recognize the freudian slip - the simultaneous coincidence and confession. The coincidence was that, now, with Maeve’s heart beating in her chest, she lived up to her name - she was newly strong and healthy. But I worried, she would see the correlation I drew between her name and her successful transplant and would realize that I knew more about her than I let on. Did I just give away too much?

“Sorry, I didn’t catch your name earlier. What was it?” Her casual dismissiveness of my previous statement did nothing to ease my worries. Was she beginning to piece everything together?

“Oh, right!” I said dumbly. “S-Spencer. I’m Spencer.” I was such a blubbering bundle of nerves that I actually reached out to shake her hand - a stranger’s hand.

“Nice to meet you, Spencer,” She softly laughed, which was hopefully not out of the enjoyment of seeing me squirm. “What can I do for you?”

A loaded question, don’t you think? What can you do for me, Valerie? Well, for one thing, you could’ve answered my letter, but to say something as bold as that would require me to admit the real reason I was here, and how could I do that without mentioning how I found you in the first place?

“Um ...” Whose birthday is the soonest? “My friend Emily’s birthday is coming up and I was wondering if I could possibly buy a painting from you as a birthday present.”

There was the faintest perceptible skepticism in her expression, but that could’ve just been my paranoia talking because in the next breath, she didn’t suggest a proclivity to my deceit. “Yeah, of course! Do you know what her favorite medium is? Or her favorite artist? Or her favorite style of art?”

For every addition to the question, I wordlessly shook my head no. Was my lie already unraveling? Could she see right through me?

“No worries. If you want, you can walk around the gallery and tell me if you see anything you think she’d like.” She made her offer to me sweetly, then disappeared into the back room again. I tried to follow her with my eyes for as long as I could, but from where I was standing, I couldn’t see very far into it. I wandered a little further into the center of the gallery to possibly catch a glimpse of what was occupying her time back there, but when I heard the chattering of two voices, Valerie and the other woman, coming from the same general direction, I realized I was completely alone in this part of the studio.

With no one around to bear witness but these portraits, I could’ve easily slipped out and made my escape, and I might’ve even done it had it not been for the unmistakable gravitational pull forcing me to stay here and walk about the room.

Making my way throughout the gallery, I would pause every now and then when a painting would stand out to me, which was often, considering each picture was impressive.

But there was one painting in particular that piqued my interest. It made me feel something I’d never felt before.

It wasn’t special by any means. By rights, I shouldn’t have even noticed it, for it wasn’t the largest painting, nor the smallest one - it wasn’t even the most average painting. But it felt exceptionally ... Valerie. I had no doubt in my mind that she painted this one - in fact, I had a good bet that she painted most of these portraits, if not all of them - but this one. There was just something about it that I couldn’t put my finger on.

“So,” A draft was created from where Valerie swiftly and unexpectedly joined me at my side. “What do you think?”

“Um, there’s definitely something,” I struggled to find the word. “appealing about this one.” Almost as soon as the word came out of my mouth, I knew it was only a matter of time before she called out the inadequacy of my answer.

“Appealing?” She repeated in mockery. “That’s the best you got? Come on, you’ve been standing here for like ten minutes. There must be something about it you like.”

“I’m not sure.” I honestly admitted with a shrug.

“There’s no wrong answer.” She assured me, but I found that hard to believe.

“So if I said I see a grizzly bear attacking a UFO, that wouldn’t be wrong?”

“Nope,” She popped the p. “If that’s how you interpret it then that’s how you interpret it. Just because someone else sees it differently, doesn’t mean you’re wrong.” It would’ve sounded like complete bullshit or nauseatingly cheesy coming out of someone else’s mouth, but her delivery felt so genuine. It actually moved me.

As she said this, she turned her head in my direction to look up at me, causing her shoulder to brush my upper arm, sending a wave of goosebumps all over my body.

She was so close.

But I was so unbothered by her proximity that I didn’t even notice exactly how close she really was. If someone else had invaded my personal space like that, I would’ve moved in the opposite direction just on instinct, but I didn’t even think to do that with Valerie. I was so comfortable with her being there.

But was that just because a part of her was once Maeve’s? Was the entire foundation of my likening to Valerie built upon that single attribute?

Was that my bones?

“Um,” I began fidgeting with my hands to self-soothe. “I like it. I don’t know why. But I like it. How’s that for an answer?”

There was a pause before her response that compelled me to look at her, but when I did so, she was already looking at me. “I’ll take it,” She nodded. “It’s the biggest compliment to me if my art can make you feel something.”

Was it the art that made me feel something ... or you?

“I’ll tell you what,” She walked over to grab something from the front desk. She came back with a small piece of cardstock. “I’m going to an art exhibition next weekend. Why don’t you come with me and see if you can’t find something for Emily there?”

She handed me the paper, which was actually her business card. “You don’t have to have an answer for me today, but call me when you do.” She seemed to think that was the end of the conversation, but I still had more questions.

“You’re inviting me?” was the first question that came to mind, albeit the dumbest one.

“Yeah, you can be my plus one.”

I gulped to dislodge the lump in my throat. “Like-like your date?”

She furrowed her brows with mild confusion. “Um ... sure, if that’s what you wanna call it,” which was the last thing she said to me before vanishing within the back room again.

I peered back down at the card and tapped it gently on the palm on my hand as though to register its presence really being there.

For all intents and purposes, this card was meaningless. But to me, it was the formal consenting - nay, invitation - to reach out to her again. She was willingly extending this line of contact to me.

No more public library computers. No more files. No more ‘research.’ Just her number - a way to reach her without veering off my moral compass.

Despite this, I still had no clue whether or not I was going to accept her offer.

All that I did know was that I wanted to see her again.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

PART 3 COMING SOON!

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lovelivingmydreams · 3 years

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A story by heroes and villains

Book 2: secrets revealed Virgil Anker: trust and caution

Masterlist book 1

It's not easy to know who to trust and who to be wary off. But Virgil better learn soon.

When Virgil got back to the new house, he took a shower and sat himself on the couch in his pj’s. He was listening to his ‘winding down’ playlist. He was grinning to himself. Someone else was wearing his design. Sure he’d made Janus a shirt way back in freshmen year, but he barely wore it outside the house. This would be seen by tons of people. And it looked so good! He couldn’t wait till Monday. He could imagine Roman’s reaction. Would there be pictures in the papers? On the news? He just might buy a paper so he could keep a clipping to look back on later. Thinking about gushing over the costume with Roman at school made him think about seeing Janus again. J had skipped school after what happened in the hallway, leading to him having detention all of last week. He hadn’t even so much as looked at Virgil since. Not in a, “I am mad and ignoring you way,”. He looked ashamed. Scared. That was what made it so hard for Virgil to stick to his plan. Janus looked so hurt and lost and ashamed. And during lunch, he was nowhere to be found. Virgil needed to talk to Picani about this tomorrow. It would be a busy session. He contemplated where things had gone wrong for the millionth time for a while until he heard the door and looked up to see his fathers enter the room. “You’re back!” he greeted as he sat up. “So I gotta know, who’s your fourth guy?” he wondered casually. His dad just looked at him confused. “What do you mean?” “For your poker nights,” he clarified with a chuckle. Imagining Patton or uncle Thomas playing poker was kind of funny. It seemed so out of character for them. Still he couldn’t imagine what else would take all three of them getting together like this. Thomas had taught musical theatre classes, back when he was still a professor, and now he was the dean. Then again, Virgil wasn’t certain his uncle was always present. Tonight might just have been one time he happened to be there. But Patton definitely had been part of this project as much as Logan was. The past six months at the very least, but most likely from the start. “No cardgames I’m afraid kiddo. We’ll tell you about the project once it’s finished. It’s all confidential for now I’m afraid,” Patton told him gently. Virgil looked long and hard at Patton. He wasn’t lying. And confidential stuff made a lot of sense. He shrugged, letting it go. Even if his first guess was right after all and his dad was doing some kind of superhero stuff as BrainStorm, if Patton was there to help him Virgil felt assured that they’d be safe. Though he wouldn’t know how Patton, or Thomas, got wrapped up with anything involving a former super villain. “Okay, keep your secrets,” he sighed as he stretched. “Night Pat, night Lo,” he bid before heading upstairs. “Goodnight Virgil, I love you.” Virgil looked back at his dad when he heard that. “Love you to dad,” he replied with a smile. “Love you three kiddo!” Patton added, making Virgil laugh. “Love ya Pat.” And with that he went upstairs to his room. His new room was bigger than the one in his old house. But he didn’t care much about that. His old room had memories. He missed it honestly. He started to worry that he’d been too quick to say that he wanted to move out. No matter how nice the new house was, and how conveniently it was positioned, it would never quite be like the one he’d known most of his life. He let himself drop on his bed. It was pointless to think about that now. At this point, another family had probably moved into their old home. They’d brought their own furniture. Probably painted over the walls. Erasing the little doodles he’d made when he was little and bored. Before his mind could go any farther down that path, he heard a buzzing. Roman sent him a text. “Greetings! I just got back. Sorry for not checking in earlier. Could not be helped. Did you get home alright?” Virgil chuckled and texted back. “LOL. You worry too much. Hope you had a fun night.” Virgil certainly did. Just thinking about it made him impatient. Oh why not? Before he could second guess himself, he pressed call. “Virgil?” Roman sounded surprised, but Virgil was already way to giddy about his news. “I had to tell you now. I saw him!” he whispered. “Who? And why are we whispering?” Roman asked, mimicking his volume. “I’m supposed to be asleep,” he admitted, earning himself a chuckle. “Ok… Who did you see?” Roman asked. “Dream Prince!” expecting the logical next question he edited his story a little. “I went for a walk and I guess he was doing patrol in my neighborhood, I caught a glimpse of him,” well, that was an understatement. But he couldn’t tell Roman everything. Not yet. He’d lectured Prince about being cautious just today. He trusted Roman. But anyone could overhear them at any time. “He was wearing my costume! You were right! I can’t wait to get a good look at it in action!” Again. “You think someone got a picture? I didn’t have a chance. God I should’ve taken a picture so I could show you!” Though he wasn’t sure if he could’ve managed to get a believable citizens picture of him. He doubted Prince could be photographed if he didn’t want to be. “I’m sure I’ll see your work plastered around the front pages Monday. Pretty sure you missed out on the Saturday edition. But the news stations might talk about it.” Virgil’s cheeks hurt from smiling. “You sure you don’t want your name attached to it?” Virgil considered that for a moment. It would be kind of cool, he supposed. But he was trying not to draw any attention to his civilian self so long as he did the vigilante gig. Asides from that, he didn’t want anyone to be able to claim any of his future successes were due to his connection to a superhero, or have expectations based on this one work. “Yeah… I just… I know I should want the credit. But, just in case he becomes like this big time hero,” which seemed very likely to Virgil. His powers were pretty amazing and he had the personality to make it big. “I don’t want my possible career to be defined before it starts, you know what I mean?” He hoped he did, because he was starting to get confused by his own phrasing. “Maybe I’ll come forth with the original sketch when I’m like, 30, to prove it was me if it still matters by then,” he concluded. “Sounds like a smart plan. I’m going to let you go. I do need my beauty sleep after all.” Oh, he made it too easy. “You said it, not me,” he chuckled. “Night Princey.” “Buenas noches. Mi querido amigo,” Roman replied dramatically. Virgil rolled his eyes. Though he smiled as he realized Roman just called him ‘dear friend’. Trying to hide the way that warmed his chest he let out a groan. “Bon nuit,” he huffed in retaliation before hanging up. Janus had taught him a bit of French over the years. And just like that his thoughts returned to his old friend. Janus had been well behaved the past week. He hadn’t gotten in a single fight. Maybe he should try and show that he noticed. Just saying ‘hi’ wouldn’t be that bad right? Show that he meant it when he said he wanted to get back to being friends, real friends, at some point. With thoughts of a happy ending for everyone, Virgil fell asleep. The next morning he woke up early. He made sure to be quiet as he got ready for the day. Once downstairs he turned on the tv. And sure enough, the local station was talking about Dream Prince. A professional picture of him leaping across the street from one rooftop to another serving as background. The anchors were talking about his heroic deeds of last night, ranging from walking a girl home to taking down those criminals ‘single handedly’. “No one can deny it. This young hero finds no feat too great or too small, and he does it with style. Looks like he’s settled on a look.” They thought his costume had style! Virgil was vibrating with excitement. He couldn’t sit still. He had to do something with all this energy. He started on breakfast. Bacon, eggs… It had been a while since he’d felt up to making a big breakfast and been the first to wake up. Patton was as much of an early riser as he and Logan. Which meant he hadn’t had Virgil’s secret omelet recipe yet. He was bouncing on his feet as the two anchors were analyzing the costume in as much detail as they could. They found the heels a bold choice and the mask an elegant way to incorporate a crown. When Virgil heard his dads move about upstairs he turned the news off and set the table. Patton really liked the eggs. That or he really wanted Virgil to think so. Three servings made him think that it wasn’t pretend though. After breakfast, uncle Thomas picked him up for their trip to the zoo. Virgil had been looking forward to it. It felt forever ago since he last spent some one on one time with his honorary uncle. “That’s a nice one. You really got the eyes down well,” he complemented as Virgil finished a sketch of a koala. “Thanks,” Virgil said, pretty happy with the result as well. “You are really talented. Guess it runs in the family. I remember your dad scribbling away in his poetry notebook all the time.” Virgil looked at his uncle with wide eyes. “You knew my father?” he asked perplexed. Thomas frowned down at him for a moment before his eyes widened in understanding. “Oh, no. I never personally met your birthfather. I meant Logan,” he clarified. Virgil was a little disappointed. For a second he’d hoped to learn a little more about his birthparents. But if Thomas had been talking about Logan… “My dad wrote poetry?” Thomas chuckled. “Yeah. He was pretty good. Though he’d disagree. He felt more comfortable using his sharp tongue on the debate team. He won us some prizes,” he recalled. Virgil took this in. He had wondered what his dad was like at his age before. Now was a good time to ask more. “So poetry and debate team… Guess that is why you two became friends, huh?” he asked. Thomas shook his head a little awkwardly. “Not exactly. With my social anxiety I probably wouldn’t have approached him if my mom hadn’t told me about his mom losing custody…” “What!?” Virgil gasped. He never knew that. Thomas cringed realizing he had maybe said to much. He looked down at Virgil. “Your grandparents weren’t parents of the year. Not abusive, but… neglectful I suppose. Logan never talked about it, so I don’t know the details. Just what little ” “He was in the system?” Virgil asked with a shiver. He’d heard about the system. He was glad he never had to experience it. “No, like for you there was someone ready to take him in right away,” Thomas told him. Virgil wanted to ask who had adopted his dad. But he had an idea… And he kind of didn’t want to hear he was wrong. He wanted it to be his parents. It would explain why Logan had such a hard time talking about them, but had so much love and respect for them when he did. “What was it like rooming with him? Was he secretly a slob in college?” he asked hopefully. Thomas relaxed and started talking about a few college stories, though he quickly veered into high school and early parenthood stories. At the end of the day Virgil had a good handful of animal sketches, an idea for his art project for the semester and Thomas dropped him off at Picani’s office. “Hello Virgil. How are you today? I heard you had a good scare earlier this week.” Virgil let out a deep sigh, sat down and started his story. Leaving Picani’s office a little bit later than planned, he felt a lot better. Or, well ‘better’ never had been the right word. He’d realized that sometime during the camp. After talking about Picani about what bothered him, he was still bothered by it. But he understood things more clearly. He felt less confused and had an idea of what to do about it. Picani never told him everything would be okay. He helped him understand what was wrong and how to either steer it in a better direction, or learn to live with it. He now felt less uncertain about wanting to give Janus a sign that there was still hope for them, even after what happened last week. He felt less guilty over indulging the people asking him out even though Roman was still very much on his mind. He even felt better about getting more information than he should’ve from uncle Thomas. It had been a relief talking about his theory that his dad had been in his parent’s custody for at least four years and that that was, maybe, the reason why he took him in when they passed. And the fact that he had at least one set of grandparents that might be still alive. He wasn’t going to ask about them though. If they held bad memories for his dad, he didn’t think he wanted to know them. It was very low on his list of priorities. The fact that his dad never mentioned them told him enough. The whole scare with the ceiling lamp was discussed and Picani left it alone when Virgil said that he didn’t want to waste too much time on it. “I’m home!” he announced as he came through the door. He heard Patton call a greeting from the kitchen and saw his dad come from the living room to meet him in the doorway. “Dad!” he called out eagerly as he gave his father a hug. “Virgil? Not that I do not appreciate you seem excited to see me. But is there a particular reason?” There were a few honestly. Knowing a bit more about how he ended up being raised by the smartest, most patient man he’d ever met had him excited. On top of that knowing what his dad was like at his age made him feel closer to him. He decided to focus on the latter. He’d turn sixteen soon. If Logan hadn’t initiated the conversation by then, he would. He could be patient for another month. “Uncle Thomas told me about your teen years. I didn’t know you were on the debate team!” he told him. He could imagine his dad thriving in that environment though. Maybe they should check out the debate team this year in between Roman’s play and Virgil’s art exhibit. Logan gave Virgil a small smile, a bit of pride in his eyes. It was rare for Virgil to see his dad proud of himself. He liked it. “Well, yes. It was a bit of a hobby of mine, as well as an attempt to get better at socializing,” Logan said modestly. Virgil picked up on the operative word in that sentence. ‘Attempt’. “You were a socially awkward nerd,” he concluded with a chuckle. He was so used to being nothing like his dad. Finding flaws and similarities to himself in the man he’d idolized as long as he could remember, it was strangely exhilarating. Logan, however seemed to misunderstand what had Virgil so thrilled. “Hey, that’s a complement! I’m a socially awkward artsy kid. Sounds like I’m your son after all!” he clarified. That reminded him though. “Speaking off. Uncle Thomas told me you wrote poetry back in the day.” “Really!?” Patton exclaimed from the kitchen. Logan was blushing. Scrambling for a way out of the conversation it seemed. “I… Experimenting with different forms of self-expression is a natural part of discovering one’s identity as a teenager. It was a phase. I would like to forget about it.” Virgil was about to argue against it, but Patton beat him to it. “Aw, but poetry is so romantic,” he pouted. And Virgil could see the way that affected his dad. Well, their date nights were about to get ten times more sappy. Hopefully going for the heart, and his ego, would work out just as well for Virgil. “That’s too bad. I thought I could make a project around your old work for art class,” he sighed disappointedly. And just like that his dad’s firm posture melted away. “I’ll see if I can find some of my old notebooks. Just ask my consent before you pick one.” Virgil couldn’t resist hugging him again. “Thanks dad. You won’t regret it. I promise.” He felt his father put his arms around him gently. A wordless “you’re welcome”. Virgil was feeling very chatty during dinner and so told his parents all about his day. They had to go to the university again tonight. Since Virgil was planning on meeting up with Prince and not sure if he’d be out all night or just long enough to talk to the guy, he bid them both a good night now. Just in case he’d be too tired to wait for them to get home once he got back. As soon as they were out the door Virgil dug in his closet for his face mask, something he wore when he was feeling sick and didn’t want to infect others. And his shades. He was going to take a chance on Prince today. He made sure he had his evidence at the ready. He’d updated it earlier that week and last night he hadn’t learned anything new. He decided to go with the same look as yesterday so Prince would recognize him more easily. He made his way to the street and vanished in the alleys. After a few minutes he found the rooftop they’d used as their rendezvous point last night. Hopefully Prince wouldn’t make him wait too long. He lowered the intensity of his cloak to be more easily spotted should someone be looking for him. Suddenly he heard a sound behind him. “Good evening my shadowy friend,” the grand voice of Dream Prince drifted through the air. Virgil turned around, his coat flaring out with the movement. “Hey there highness,” he greeted as he tossed him the evidence bag. Clear of any fingerprints or DNA as far as he could manage it, as usual. Prince studied it for a moment. “Is this…?” he sounded surprised. “A show of good will. I thought about it…” not enough. Maybe he was biased because he reminded him of Roman. Or because he’d seen him during his training wheel days. Maybe he didn’t want to be alone anymore. “You seem alright. I’ll… I’ll have your back. If you have mine.” They could help each other. Grow stronger together. Weren’t heroes always at their strongest once they learned to work together? “You do know that if I hand this in, they’ll know I made contact?” This guy. Virgil chuckled, finding this strangely endearing. “You mean you haven’t told them yet?” Prince’s posture straightened almost defiantly. “You didn’t say you were alright with that!” Was he actually insulted by the idea of reporting back to his people without Virgil’s permission? Guess he’d read him right. Good to know. “Okay. Well, consider this my permission. If I don’t want to be found, I’ll disappear Prince.” He’d find a way to avoid Prince if it was necessary. “Tell the chief all communication with me goes through you. If you don’t mind.” Because Virgil didn’t trust the chief enough to go anywhere near her. Prince nodded as he reached for his ear. “I am currently debriefing Phantom. I’ll let you know when I’m done here. Tell chief I’ll stop by with a package. Radio silence until further notice.” Virgil couldn’t stop himself from letting out a chuckle. This guy. He really needed to be more careful. “You ever thought I might be a bad guy? You shouldn’t cut off your back up like that in front of me.” Had they taught him nothing at the GTH? “You’ve had plenty chances to take me out,” Prince pointed out, much to Virgil’s surprise. “You could have let those goons get me the first time you saw me. You could have attacked me while I was busy with those guys yesterday. And who knows how many times over the summer. And on top of that. Who says my communicator is my only way of contacting back up?” Okay, so maybe Prince knew what he was doing after all. “Fair enough. So what now?” He had no idea what would come after this. He just knew that Prince reached out, and he’d accepted. The ball was back in Prince’s court. “Now… I warn you about the collector.” That sounded very serious. He almost wanted to get out before he could get involved, but a gut feeling told him that this was important. He eyed the edge of the roof. Well might as well get comfortable. “I feel like this is a sitting down kind of conversation.” Once they both sat down, Virgil put on his sunglasses and dropped his cloak completely. It was symbolic or whatever. Letting his guard down in a visible way. He turned to the prince expectantly, a little annoyed at how the dark glasses limited his vision. Prince took in a deep breath and started his story. “The collector is an old enemy of Manifestor. He recruits Gifted, and those he thinks deserve to be gifted for some kind of revolution. You and I are probably his kind of people. Young, full of potential. All that stuff creeps like that love to go on about.” Virgil’s eyes widened. That did sound bad. He was suddenly very glad he had not confided in anyone about his powers so far. Who knew if the Chief was on the Collector’s payroll? Or maybe Picani was being spied on. “So we should be careful, you and I. I want to help you out,” Prince told him as he offered him two small objects. A stone and lip balm? “These can help you hide your identity without having to use your… Do you have a name for it?” Prince wondered. Virgil wasn’t sure if he could disguise his voice. But if he did, he was not going to risk Prince being someone from school who might recognize his voice. “Cloak,” he replied before dropping his guard again. “Cloak… Cool,” Prince nodded as he showed the black stone. “So this, is a voice modulator. I adjusted it to fit your tempest voice as best as I could.” Virgil couldn’t help laughing. Tempest voice? That sounded so cool honestly. But man was it dramatic. “You clearly have not heard it,” Prince pointed out and he had a point. He sounded normal to himself. “What’s with the lipstick?” he asked. “This will paint your hair black faster than any hair dye. It’s also a very good hair gel and it washes out right away,” Virgil bit his lip as Prince offered him the items. He was not used to being helped. Not as ‘Phantom’ at least. He still struggled with it as Virgil. Letting Roman help him with his English assignment yesterday had been hard. But he had to let people help him. He had to take a leap of faith here. So he took the items and got up to try them out. “No peeking!” he warned, though he would keep his cloak up. It was more to test if Prince would be tempted to go against his wishes. He didn’t. Virgil placed the modulator on his throat where Prince had his red stone and applied the balm to his hair. He spread it out and took a moment to decide on the style he wanted to go with. He tried for windblown, though he wasn’t sure if he did it right without a mirror. “Okay, let’s try this,” he said testing out his new voice. Wow, if that was what he really sounded like then Tempest voice might just have been the most accurate description. He looked back at Prince who was getting up and waling over to him. “Okay. So… what’s the plan?” he asked, curious what Prince was expecting out of this collaboration. “Well… We could try and meet up here regularly. We might not always patrol at the same time, and you might be busy. But I could… If you are okay with it… I could help you coordinate with the cops. Like you kinda suggested earlier. Or we could like, do some patrolling together? Keep each other company…” Oh, that was cute. Prince could be insecure. Virgil was starting to think he was unshakable. “It might be nice talking someone who gets it you know? You’re my age right?” he wondered. Nice try. Very subtle. “I mean… I guess, but I’m not sure how old you are exactly,” he shrugged casually. He wasn’t going to give anything away that easily. “Fair point.” Or maybe there hadn’t been an ulterior motive. He was getting paranoid. “Anyway… What do you want?” Virgil thought about that for a moment. He hadn’t expected to be asked for his opinion. “I mean… Debriefings sound cool,” he said casually. “I’d like to patrol with you, but my parkour is no match to that walking on air trick you got…” He was kind of jealous of that one if he was honest. “I was thinking of hanging around the clubbing district at the end of the night and making sure some party goers get home safe. I’ll see you around there when you’re done?” This talk was fun and all, but Prince should probably check in with his team soon. And Virgil needed to think about things for a minute. “That sounds like a good idea,” Prince agreed as he gave him a bow. “Until then. Know that the GTA’s resources are now at your disposal through me. So if you want to get a proper suit or other fun toys, you need only ask.” And with that Virgil’s new ally sprinted of into the night. A real suit huh? Virgil shook his head. He’d have to think on that some more. For now, he had work to do.

Hero au

@cirishere @hestianerd1 @moonlightshow00 @naturallyunstablegamer @alias290 @meowthefluffy @frida0043 @angelic-cali @selenechris @theblackveilinreverse

#sanders sides #ts sides #hero au #virgil sanders #roman sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #janus sanders #prinxiety #logicality

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littleeyesofpallas · 4 years

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Bleach - Snake Name Games

Still mulling over where exactly I want to take this series of posts [1][2] after being asked about interesting zanpakutou names. I was just gonna do a short blurb about Sarugaki Hiyori’s Shikai at first, but there are a lot of weird vaguely adjacent characters, so this one’s going to be kind of aimless...

Her sword is Kubikiri Orochi[馘大蛇], written with the kanji for 馘:“Decapitation,” 大: “Great”/“Big,” and 蛇:“Snake.” Viz translates it as “Head-Slicing Serpent” which is kind of a weird choice, but other than missing a specific reference, it’s not technically that big a mistranslation. But of course there is a reference, because Orochi [大蛇] isn’t just the words “Big Snake” it’s a reference to the mythological creature, Yamato-no-Orochi[八岐大蛇].

The Yamato-no-Orochi sees a lot of exposure in pop media. It’s an enormous snake with 8 tails and 8 heads spanning the length of 8 hills and valleys, red eyes, and moss and cypress trees growing on it enormous back, and a belly that is constantly bleeding and inflamed. The Orochi would annually devour the daughters of a village, until it was defeated by the god, Susanoo. It was tricked into drinking itself to sleep and then beheaded eight times. From its corpse, Susanoo retrieved the legendary sword, Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi.

The fact that the kanji 馘 isn’t commonly used makes it kind of confusing to parse as part of a name at a glance. But I do recognize the more common, Kubikiri[首斬り] which is the noun “Beheading” (as in the act there of, not the verb) or just “Decapitation.” But I’ve also seen it translated (granted with some liberties based on context) as “Executioner.” Alternatively, Kubikiri[首切り] also means “Beheading”/“Decapitation” but apparently can refer to “a small samurai sword used for decapitation.” So, I think the meaning that the name was supposed to convey was,

“Sword-for-Decapitating Giant[8-Headed]Snake”

...and not, “A Serpent that Slices Heads” the way Viz wrote it out. Which makes sense given that the sword itself is a giant serrated cleaver/saw, appropriately sized for cutting off the head of a giant snake. While the mistranslation would suggest her spirit to be the Orochi, this reading makes it sound more like her spirit is Susanoo himself? Which is a curious idea...

But there's a little more going on here... Because at some point or another, there became kind of a recurring trend of the Orochi being depicted as a white snake, which has vague associations with the Lady White Snake myth, from China. In fact Hakujaden[白蛇伝]:“White Snake Story” (Arbitrarily localized in English as, “Panda and the Magic Serpent”) has a particular special place in Japanese pop culture as it was the first ever full color anime film, in 1958. It was a big influence on an early generation of animators, including Miyazaki Hayao.

In it a young boy is accidentally involved with a magic snake being fed immortality granting medicine, which amplifies her existing magic by multiple lifetimes. She is grateful to the boy for it, and after he grows up the two meet again, the snake being in the guise of a woman, and they fall in love. (That’s the real REAL short version anyway...)

And this is just me going out on a bit of a limb, but I feel like the random intersection of these two myths is where a lot of Orochi characters who are also shapeshifting humans comes from, because the actual Orochi never had this association with being a white snake, having magic powers, or taking on human form, yet it seems to be the prevailing role of Orochi characters in pop fiction.

Also, equally unrelated to the actual Orochi myth and the Lady White Snake myth, some renditions of the Orochi make it a fullblown dragon rather than just a monstrous snake. I don’t know that this comes from anything in particular, other than just wanting to amp up the threat factor of the Orochi to make Susanoo look more triumphant as a hero... There’s some possibility that it’s a conflation of the Nine-headed Dragon God, Kuuzuryuushin[九頭龍神]. Funny enough, I’ve seen Kuuzuryuushin drawn as a nine headed snake instead of a dragon as well...

In fact Kubo’s already has one character who seems to be associated with the Lady White Snake myth: Cyan Sung Sun. Her Resurreccion, Anaconda is written with the kanji [白蛇姫]: “White Snake Princess,” which is a conspicuous name for anyone familiar with the very well known myth. But I think we all remember someone else who is associated with White Snake imagery... Ichimaru Gin.

There’s not actually a lot of word play with Gin and snakes. His name is a homonym for “silver” like his white/silver hair, and his “fox-eyed” look is actually leverage to be more snake-like a lot of the time, so those two bits together kind of orbit around the idea of a White Snake theme. And of course he spends most of the series living up to his cold-blooded, treacherous, viper-waiting-to-strike kind of persona. But it’s not like he or his sword have any snake themes in their names.

Whether or not Kubo had plans for Hiyori to have a more substantial confrontation with Gin, we’ll never really know. Sadly the one we got didn’t last long and wasn’t particularly exciting or satisfying. But it was an interesting brief moment during the weekly publications. And if anyone’s in need of some fanfic prompt, I’ve always been kind of fascinated by the idea that there could have been a parallel between Gin’s relationship with Rangiku and the boy and Lady White Snake of myth, with Gin in the role of powerful snake indebted to and in love with the normal mortal who unknowingly helped them gain great powers.

But while we’re on the subject... There’s another white snake loitering around the Bleach franchise: One half of Zabimaru... sort of...

This one is weird, because by all rights it was the anime, not Kubo, that set the precedent of Zabimaru having white fur and a white snake tail. Zabimaru, btw, is a mythical creature called a Nue, which is supposed to have the head of a monkey, the legs of a tiger, body of a dog, and a snake for a tail. Zabimaru doesn’t quite fit that full description, as it’s predominantly just a baboon with a snake tail, and Renji’s tribal tattoo pattern substituted in for tiger stripes.

But the one time Kubo actually colored in Zabimaru himself was part of a joke omake comic (where Renji and Hisagi find out, in the aftermath of Renji’s fight with Byakuya, that Mayuri can apparently perform cosmetic surgery to zanpakutou) and even though they’re only imagining a busty Zabimar as a punchline, Kubo made the fur what I think was supposed to be an olive green/grey, which matches the description of the Olive Baboon’s fur. The anime sort of took that and drifted more green when they adapted the omake, and then drifted it even further when the Zanpakutou Rebellion filler arc brought zabimaru back... In the end her fur looks both nothing like the original color and nothing like the anime’s white furred Zabimaru.

So, hand-in-hand with that, it seems kind of arbitrary that they made snake boy white, apart from the previously mentioned associations of Snakes-in-Human-Form as a trope and Lady White Snake. But I figured if I didn’t mention it someone might ask, and oddly enough it is more of a coincidence than anything else, at least as far as I can tell.

Correction: I totally forgot, when Renji gets his True Name Bankai from Ichibe he appears to have a “mode” where the snake spine that is normally looped around his waist like a belt unfurls to the call, Orochi-ou[オロチ王]: “Orochi King.” So there is a direct reference to the Orochi, although weirdly it’s only in kana and not kanji? But I have no idea for what reason. And in any case, the second bankai came after the anime created snake boy, so it’s entirely possible it was just Kubo riffing off their continuity rather than something he’d had in mind when he made Zabimaru the first time.

Funny thing: Hiyori’s surname, Sarugaki[猿柿] is written with the kanji for monkey[猿], something she points out herself when she’s first introduced. (I did a whole rambling thing on the Visored’s names too, naturally...) So she and Renji both have associations with monkey and orochi imagery. It’s kind of a shame Hiyori and Renji never even got to be in the same room for their wild type routines to interact.

#Bleach #Hiyori Sarugaki #Kubikiri Orochi #yamata no orochi #orochi #zabimaru

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in-flagrante · 4 years

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'I feel sexier as I get older': Back on TV in a compelling new drama, Michelle Dockery tells how her own confidence has soared after playing a succession of strong, sassy women

By GABRIELLE DONNELLY FOR WEEKEND MAGAZINE

22 May 2020

Since she burst onto our screens ten years ago as Downton Abbey’s Lady Mary, all cut-glass vowels and nerves of steel, Michelle Dockery’s kept us in a permanent state of emotional whiplash with the sheer variety of roles she’s taken on.

She was a drug-addicted con artist in the 2016 TV series Good Behavior, a gun-totin’ cowgirl in the acclaimed 2017 drama Godless, and a Cockney gangster’s moll in Guy Ritchie’s crime caper The Gentlemen.

One thing you will not see, she insists, is Michelle Dockery playing a piece of arm candy.

‘I like to play strong women,’ she says when we meet for coffee pre-lockdown in New England, where she’s been shooting her new TV mini-series Defending Jacob.

‘And even if they’re not strong, they have to be interesting. Multi-faceted, complex, complicated, three-dimensional... and flawed too, because people are. Anything but boring!’

That doesn’t mean they can’t be sexy though, and she says the added bonus to playing these characters is that, at 38, she’s finding herself feeling sexier than ever.

‘Sexy is not about having anyone else make you feel sexy, it’s about how you feel inside, and I have certainly felt sexier as I’ve got older.

But I think that’s a confidence thing too. I’ve been lucky enough to play such strong, confident women, and when you do that you definitely take something from them with you into your real life – you sort of get inspiration from them.’

Her latest character in the thriller Defending Jacob is a straightforwardly good woman – although one thrust into bewildering circumstances.

Laurie Barber is happily married to handsome local Assistant District Attorney Andy Barber (Captain America film star Chris Evans), and mother to her wise-cracking 14-year-old son Jacob (Jaeden Martell).

She’s the sort of woman who goes for a run before breakfast, then quizzes her son on vocabulary over coffee before heading to her high-profile job managing a home for abused children.

She’s just so together... until her son is accused of one of the most hideous crimes imaginable – the cold-blooded murder of a classmate – and her entire life and social circle begin to unravel as the police investigate.

‘It’s a really gripping story, because it’s so difficult for this couple to comprehend that their child might commit any sort of crime, let alone a murder,’ says Michelle of the story, based on the 2012 novel by William Landay.

‘They’re both defending their son, and like any parent would, Laurie’s asking at the same time, “Where did I go wrong?”

'There’s conflict between Laurie and Andy because at the start of the story she’s the emotional one and he’s the calm one, but then as the story goes on there’s a need for Andy to be emotional too.

'So they’re always seeing things from a slightly different perspective.

‘It’s a very human, raw story about what something like this can do to a family, and what’s so interesting about Laurie is that as her life is turned completely upside down, she also begins to question things about her family – “How well do you really know your partner? How well do you really know your child?”’

Michelle’s own family background is modest but as stable as anyone could wish for. The youngest of three girls born to Irish-born lorry driver turned surveyor Michael Dockery and his redoubtable wife Lorraine, a former shorthand typist turned social worker, she was brought up in Romford, Essex, working class and proud of it.

‘My mum is loving but she’s also strict,’ says Michelle. ‘When I was about seven I stole some penny sweets from a shop. Mum caught me and made me go back and apologise to the shopkeeper, and I’ve never stolen anything since!’

She was also raised – as were her sisters Louise and Joanne – to speak up for what was right.

‘I was brought up to stand up for myself. To speak up when I felt passionate about something, when I felt the need to make my voice heard about something that mattered.

'I think a lot of that comes from having sisters, because we’ve always supported each other all along.

'If I’ve ever felt bullied or pushed into a corner, I’ve always been able to stand up for myself. And if I see it happening to someone else, especially younger actresses, I’ll stand up for them too.

‘I hate bullying. I have huge admiration for women in Hollywood and elsewhere who have come forward to tell their stories about that, and have stood up against people like Harvey Weinstein.

'It’s horrendous what they experienced and I’m glad something has been done about it.’

It’s safe to say no one has succeeded in taking advantage of Michelle, and she says now that when she first broached the idea of going into acting to her parents they were not in the least bit concerned.

‘They weren’t alarmed by it at all!’ she laughs. ‘They made sure I had a good education so I had something to fall back on.

'Both my parents are wonderful. My mum is the most incredible woman, she inspires me.

'And my dad’s amazing too – even though he spent our growing-up years with a bathroom that was never free! They let me be who I want to be.

'So between them and my two elder sisters, who are still my best friends, I’m very lucky. We call ourselves the Essex Mafia!’

Her career choice can hardly have come as a surprise to the family, as she says she wanted to be an actor ever since she can remember.

When she and her sisters were small they attended a stage school in the evening, and they would put on plays at home to entertain the family.

Michelle apprenticed at the National Youth Theatre when she was a teenager, and as soon as she’d taken her A-levels she enrolled at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

‘I feel I learned more at drama school than I did anywhere else,’ she says. ‘Even when I was at regular school I was never out of the drama department, so I didn’t do very well in other subjects.

'I just didn’t want to be taught anything else. But there’s a huge amount you learn in drama school besides acting, like history and literature, and that was where I came into my own.’

It was, of course, Lady Mary who made Michelle famous. ‘It happened overnight,’ she says.

‘Well, I’d been working in the theatre for seven years, so it wasn’t really overnight, but I remember after the first episode of Downton Abbey aired, walking into my newsagent’s where I was living and seeing a picture of myself, Laura Carmichael and Jessica Brown-Findlay, the three Crawley sisters, on the cover of three papers and that was huge.

'Then the first time I was recognised on the street was in New York, and that was even bigger because that’s when it hit me how big the show had become if I was being recognised in America.’

With talk of another feature film in the works after last year’s hit Downton movie, she says playing Mary is as comfortable as slipping into a second skin.

‘I have huge fondness for her, she’s been a big part of my life. That was a very special show, and I hope it’s one that stays with people forever.’

It was through Downton that she met the man she thought she’d be married to now.

In 2013, her co-star Allen Leech, who played chauffeur Branson, introduced her to Irish-born public relations executive John Dineen.

She and John fell in love, became engaged and were in the process of planning their wedding when John was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. He died in December 2015 with Michelle by his side.

At his funeral, the day after her 34th birthday and a day before what would have been his 35th, she told mourners, ‘He was my friend, my hero, my king, my everything.

'We celebrate him, we honour him, and we will miss him.’ She has not spoken out about her grief, but has admitted that it was her friends and family who helped her pull through, saying, ‘They are the ones who see you through the most difficult times.’

She has been dating Jasper Waller-Bridge, brother of Fleabag’s Phoebe, for a year now.

They met through friends and Jasper, who is six years Michelle’s junior and the creative director at a talent agency, accompanied her to red-carpet events before lockdown.

It was also reported that she bought a £1.7 million house in north-east London before Christmas.

Michelle hasn’t commented on the relationship but she does say that a sense of humour – surely a given with any member of the Waller-Bridge family – is vital in a relationship.

‘My parents always taught me to see the funny side of life and never to take myself too seriously.

'I find that more and more as I get older – I’m finding ways to laugh things off much more than I used to be able to.’

Right now, Michelle Dockery would seem to have plenty to smile about.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8336165/I-feel-sexier-older-Downton-Abbeys-Michelle-Dockerty.html

#michelle dockery #her interviews

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imchangkyuns · 5 years

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hi everyone!! it's your local hyungkyun enthusiast rachel!! so i somehow (???) hit 5.5k a while ago and i just wanted to say thank you to everyone who follows me for supporting my gifs/gfx, even though i’m not as active anymore ♡

anyways i really wanted to take this time to do a moot appreciation to all the lovely people that i follow!! i don’t follow a lot so this ff is kind of small but i want to shower you all with love!! a lot of the people i knew when i first started this blog are gone, so y’all are the real heroes - thank you angels for filling my dash up with all the good mx content! it’s a little long but i wanted to write about each of you so please bear with me hehe

@bluehairjooheon | n..... you make some of the best gifs (all the great jooheon content thank u!) and i love love seeing you on my dash bc your tags are also so fun to read (lol) + i can’t imagine all the work you’ve put into making podsta x come to life, you’re.. royalty

@calemiel | emy, you’re one of my fav multifandom blogs! your colouring on your gifs is always so sexy and nice and your edits are truly the cutest thing ever :(

@chachayeon | hi nicole! i can’t believe you follow me on this blog too lol but i’m glad!! god i love all my multi stans and i adore how friendly and lovely as a human you are!

@changkyuns | arin, you radiate so much positivity and cuteness and i love seeing kyunbebes on my dash!! also your url is godly and all your graphics are the cutest n cleanest thing! truly queen

@ckyun | hi nat!! i don’t know if you’ll ever see this but you were probably the og kyunbebe from when i first made this blog?? i miss seeing your content bc you rly did have the most godly graphics and i hope you’re doing well!

@coups | hi sally! you make the cuuuuutest edits and the colouring on your gifs is always the softest ever!! i love seeing all the content you produce, thank you for feeding my multi ass heart!

@dearmingki | romi you’re a fake monbebe smh (hehe) but thank you for providing all the good ateez content!! when we first became moots, you were still a mx blog but now that you’re also an atiny i’m v v glad! so happy to have you providing all the good mingi content

@hyungkyun | cristina, your tags are so fuckin funny sometimes i lose my mind, also your gifs are wonderful!! i love the moments you always choose to gif and thank you for making so much changkyun content!!

@hyunqheon | hi hi! i haven’t seen you on my dash in a while so i hope everything is okay with you! i love that you post a lil abt everything including girl groups bc it’s rly nice n refreshing to see!

@hyxngwons | agnes i really have to say we’re hive mind.. i think we stan all the same groups hehe... anyways! you’re such a sweet person and i love love all your content bc the colouring and topaz is always so beautiful!!

@insmiles | lauren! honestly.. feels like i’ve been following you forever and we’re moots on like 3 (?) of my blogs lol, you’re the one who feeds me the most with all my fav groups and thank you for always bringing my attention to new/underrated groups!

@jookyun | shrad ugh my good kyunbebe gal sorry i’m so terrible at keeping in touch i hope you’ve been doing well! you’re a little angel but also so so funny and i love talking to you! thank you for reaching out to me when we first became moots, you truly are.. Angel!

@kihyunslips | hi lovely!! feel i like followed you back in mar 2017 when i made this blog, thank you for being so active and keeping up w all the mx content + good text posts and memes hehe

@minhyukie | hi amy! honestly think i followed u when i saw someone rb ur selfies n i was like. is this. Angel? u are so so funny and your love for minhyuk is so so pure! you’re one of my fav gifmakers so thank you for always gifing all the good content w the cutest colouring, hope you’re taking care of yourself!

@mxluv | cheryl! you make such lovely content and i’m so glad the fandom (read: me) has you! i always adore the colouring you do on your gifs as well!

@naekkung | dani.. how long have we been moots... so long.. you’re one of my fav people on here and so so friendly to everyone and i adore you! ur multi ass out there stanning all the good bgs and ggs too, love that.. thank you for spreading so much love and good content.. truly heavenly cc.. your graphics. chefs kiss

@nubebe | fucking no offense but i’m a fool and only realized days later... i can’t believe i FORGOT U bitch someone kill me! anyways going back to write this even though u may never see it bc :( kei every graphic u make is honestly the sexiest and loveliest thing ever, you have SUCH a galaxy brain and are so so talented and i adore u and all ur creations!!! anyways feel free to slide into my dms and kill me in one shot for forgetting u bc ur truly one of my favourite ccs on tumblr!

@showbebe | yoelin baby!! can’t believe you knew me from my mx blog and then i migrated into the fantasy world and you were there again... that’s Fate. you’re such a sweetheart and so so enjoyable to see - i know you’ve been busy lately but i hope life has been treating you well!

@spookiheon | amanda, you truly say some of the funniest things that crack me up.. i think you’re the earliest mx blog i followed that’s still active here so wow ur the true number 1 of tumblr user changkyunned’s heart

@sunnpils | i honestly feel like i’ve been following you forever sam haha, thank you for making gifs for so many groups, esp the rose!! i feel like i never see them enough

@thekihyun | amanda... ur probably like. The OG mx blog i followed i feel like it’s been so long since i clicked that lil follow button.. you’re probably one of my favourite ccs on here and all the gifs you make are always of the funniest content

@wonsheon | lissa!! you always provide w the good mx content n i didn’t realize u also liked sf9 too?? you’re so pure and i love that you’re also multi hehe i hope you had a nice time on your vacation!

@wonstal | hi angel!! please do drop your name in my dms sometime.. i’m dying to know! your gifs are always the top tier quality and i’m so happy you’re not into skz too!! your colouring is always the softest and cutest + your topaz settings!! thank you for always blessing me w your god-tier gifs

@yoonqiful | ash!! you’re a lovely human being and so friendly, can’t believe you sucked me into the hole of long haired hyungwon :( all of your gifs are really lovely and i adore seeing them!

@17dad | not sure why you follow me gen... you’re one of my fav svt blogs, thank you for always bringing so much content of them onto my dash!

@190629seonghwa | nat.. why do u even follow me on this BLOG LOL anyways i adore you, adore all your mx content, adore how sweet and friendly and loving you are and think u are a goddess.. queen of providing all the good hq ateez & seonghwa (satan) gifs

#ANYWAYS. . whew #thats done i love all of u thank u for blessing my dash!!!!!#this is long n a LOT but!#hope ur all doing well 💞#rachel.txt #*ff #alphabetical order from a -> z then numbers!#anyways sorry im bad @ interacting and being active here but!!#i rly rly hope i didnt forget anyone :'( if we r moots then i definitely did so pls tell me

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gryphons-of-aentha · 4 years

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The Approximate Plotline of the Gryphonverse (pt. 1)

Because like. I’m never gonna actually write this shit in any form, it’s gotten too convoluted and weird and pretty much officially exists only as a collection of ideas and drawings, and I guess this blog now.

This is gonna be long as fuck, just so you know what you’re getting into behind this readmore.

The whole thing starts out as fairly standard, fairly tropey high fantasy-type stuff and takes place entirely on Aentha, centered around the country of Andolia, a fantasy-feudal country with a vaguely German bent, with added notes of French and Celtic. It’s populated almost entirely by aquei, which are the closest thing Aentha has to humans (and they are very close, I just couldn’t think of a reason to have actual humans evolve separately on a completely different planet when Earth and actual humans are also canonically a thing). It’s bordered on one side by sea and all others by wilderness that, for various reasons ranging from “it’s impassable and useless” to “it’s literally cursed and/or protected by powers we don’t want to fuck with,” remains virtually untouched by civilization and is at best halfheartedly disputed over with other nearby countries. There’s trade by sea but otherwise the country is fairly isolated from its neighbors. Anyway, Andolians don’t like gryphons. The ‘why’ of this situation isn’t really established, but they’re a rather xenophobic bunch, more so the further you get into the heart of the country. The people who occupy villages/homesteads closer to the borders are sometimes more chill about them, which is fortunate, because that no-man’s-land that the aquei don’t want is full of gyphons, because gryphons are both well suited to impassable mountainous regions, and not afraid to fuck with powers most other people won’t. The latter trait is probably a lot of the reason Andolians are wary of them at best and actively hate them at worst.

So at a certain point, circa 1980 in Earth time (which won’t become relevant for a long while yet but does matter since everything in this lore canonically occurs in real time alongside our world), a half-gryphon baby ends up in the custody of a small Andolian town. It’s too large and central to have had any previous contact with gryphons but still small and out of the way enough that nobody in the capital gives two shits what goes on there, so the existence of this gryphonic child goes largely unnoticed. What exactly happened to his parents is still not established and honestly doesn’t matter, but it’s Andolia, so the likely answer is “nothing good.” Gryphons who do venture into the country proper frequently meet unfortunate ends and people who willfully associate with them don’t do so great either. In any case, it’s likely that the aquei parent’s family were residents of this town and took in the kid, who was subsequently named Talon, because Andolians don’t really do subtlety with their naming conventions. The town proves to be a surprisingly supportive environment to grow up in, mainly on the logic of “if we raise this kid right we will never have to deal with the local bandit problem again because we’ll have a gryphon and nobody will want to fuck with us.” Incredibly, this Timon and Pumbaa logic actually works out, and Talon finds himself more welcome among small town Andolians than any gryphon has probably ever been because he’s quickly developed a reputation as a “good” one and turned into a local hero (though one that everyone in the region keeps kind of quiet about so as not to draw attention from the capital or anyone else who might not like it).

Eventually, some time in the late 90s Earth time, he meets Iadra, a full-blooded gryphon. They form a bond, eventually becoming definitive life partners, and Talon also reconnects more with the gryphonic half of his heritage through her. The townsfolk aren’t really thrilled about Iadra, and she’s not really thrilled about them, but they adopt an attitude of “I guess if Talon likes you, you can’t be too awful, guess you can hang around” to which she basically responds “appreciate the unbridled confidence in my character, but no thank you” and mainly stays on the outskirts and never really gets involved in aquei affairs to the extent Talon does, especially since the interspecies tensions are getting worse lately.

Meanwhile, as all this was semi-quietly going on in a small town nobody cared about, other things were semi-quietly going on directly in the Andolian royal court. The king, Shale, was really hitting it off with a woman who had just kind of shown up in the capital one day calling herself Ember. Through a combination of charisma and political shrewdness she managed to endear herself to most of the court and take on an unofficial advisor position, and also have an affair with the king. Eventually, circa 1989, this led to a son being born, who they named Ash (meanwhile, on Earth, Taylor Swift was being born, which isn’t important to this story it’s just something I realized just now and thought was really funny). The king had no other children at the time, so his first reaction was “hey, free heir” until it came to light that Ember was not wholly aquei, and in fact had some gryphonic heritage and so, by extension, did Ash.

A prudent move here might have been to cover this up, accuse whoever exposed Ember of slander, and just let the kid inherit the throne anyway. Sadly, prudence was not a trait King Shale possessed in abundance. So what he did instead was lose his shit over it and very publicly throw Ember out of his court, after which she quickly fell prey to any one of the many people who were pissed at her for the deception, and was killed. Shale then denied both the affair and the fact that Ash was his son, but made a show of magnanimously “adopting” the gryphonic bastard child and allowing him to remain at court. This was an entirely political move in response to the fact that the gryphons on Andolia’s borders were getting tired of exactly this kind of shit, and he hoped that he could use Ash as a kind of “how can you say I hate gryphons, look at this one who I raised and keep around out of the goodness of my heart” card.

Unsurprisingly this did not work out nearly as well as Shale imagined it would, and instead of a loyal walking virtue signal/gryphonic liaison, what he ended up with was a resentful and confused teenager who had been raised with the combined knowledge that A) gryphons are terrible, dangerous creatures with few redeeming qualities and nobody likes them, and B) he was part gryphon. So, not unlike Taylor Swift, he responded to everyone’s expectation that he would be a shitty person by turning into a shitty person. This uneasy state of affairs carried on until Ash was around sixteen, at which point he accidentally stumbled across the fact that he was actually the king’s son, and not the son of a random courtier with poor judgement as had always been vaguely implied. He also found out what exactly had happened to his mother. He immediately confronted Shale about this. Shale, who had always been paranoid about Ash trying to usurp him, entirely missed the point of the confrontation and instead of addressing the lying or the unofficially sentencing Ember to death thing or the general environment he’d made Ash grow up in, angrily doubled down on the fact that Ash would not be heir to the throne, ever, because he’s still a gyphon and that’s not a thing in Andolia, and even if he wasn’t he’d never be fit to rule and was clearly an ungrateful little shit. Ash, who up to that point hadn’t remotely wanted to rule, immediately decided out of pure teenage spite that fuck you, he was going to usurp his asshole of a father and do exactly that, so he set about stirring up dissent and delving further into his gyphonic heritage, with which he quickly became mildly obsessed since obviously his aquei side wasn’t doing anything for him. In the course of this research he came across records of an unrelated full-blooded gryphon named Kyran who had been executed by the king on trumped-up charges as a political maneuver some years prior and, since he no longer wanted to use an Andolian name and didn’t know his mother’s real name, he decided to adopt that one.

Cut back to Talon and Iadra, who are among the gryphons getting edgy over the king’s increasing levels of bullshit since it’s putting Talon’s town and everyone he associaties with at risk, and making things even more difficult for the local gryphons, who are having trouble even venturing into the outskirts to trade unless they’re very stealth about it. Iadra starts to think that maybe they should take some direct action and go after the king directly, a plan Talon is extremely dubious about since they have zero meaningful political allies and he doesn’t want to paint a target on the assorted farmers and villagers who would back him. That is until Kyran shows up and announces his plan to overthrow the king himself, along with a grandiose plan to change things for Andolia’s relationship with the gryphons once he takes over. And Kyran does have political allies (though not many, and not without substantial effort on his part). Talon decides that’s enough for him to go along with the idea, so he and Iadra join forces with Kyran’s rebellion and know what this is too long I need to make this a multi-part thing.

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marginalgloss · 7 years

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the brocken

When he was not much more than a teenager, Thomas de Quincey went to the Lake District. He was intending to visit the home of his hero, William Wordsworth. After much agonising De Quincey had eventually written to him, pledging his friendship in his typically overwrought, mannered style. The poet responded graciously, and gave what was effectively an open invitation for Thomas to stop by whenever he was in the area. And so he did. But the sight of Dove Cottage was too much for him. De Quincey stole away – he left without so much as a greeting.

This is a very familiar feeling to me. I feel it intensely, often with regards to anything I care about, and sometimes with things that are entirely inconsequential. I felt it just the other day in a mild form when going in to a new coffee shop for the first time; it was somehow so much worse because I'd walked past this shop what must be a thousand times, and now I was going in there to buy something new; and what business had I doing that? I am, after all, the person who walks away from opportunities. Would it not be easier to walk away? And frequently, I do.

The funny thing is that years later, De Quincey came back. And he and Wordsworth became friends for years. De Quincey even came to live in that place he'd once loved and feared, Dove Cottage. He lived there until the place became so full of books that for a while the house was used for nothing other than his library. All through his life books seemed to replicate and subdivide around him, forming new libraries within libraries wherever he stayed, new walls and halls of stacked paper.

De Quincey's relationship with the Wordsworths was complicated. As a younger man, he was so close to them as to almost be part of the family. He was good with their children. But later, things degraded; there was the difficult co-production of a political pamphlet, with William writing and Thomas editing. There was the time De Quincey cut down the orchard at Dove Cottage, beloved by the Wordsworths. And De Quincey never quite forgave their contempt towards his wife, Margaret Simpson, the daughter of a local farmer.

He felt, in short, that they were ungrateful. He had given them much in the way of time and attention over the years and had received little in kind. But his position was much of his own making. His use of opium is now perhaps the thing for which he is best known, if only because his experience of it led to his most acclaimed writing. But until you read an account of his life it is perhaps difficult to understand the extent to which he gave his life over to the drug. In his work opium was a way of seeing; it's harder to find within that the way of being that carried him from day to day.

His family inheritance, and the kindness of strangers, was what sustained him through life. Both were utterly depleted by his dependence. His best work was done as an essayist, but (especially in later years) it was done with the intent of keeping his creditors from the door. That much is an assessment quite separate from any judgement of its quality. But it was always fragmented.

When he was 21 he'd written a list of future goals, titled 'The Constituents of Happiness' -- one of those had been 'some great intellectual project to which all intellectual pursuits may be made tributary'. He would never really find that project, though it wasn't for want of trying. Better to say, perhaps, that all his pursuits were tributaries in angled parallels; an endless delta of pursuits, sub-dividing infinitely.

There is an image that recurs throughout this biography, especially in the later years of its subject: a small man working alone in a room full of books and papers tight around his shoulders, stopping only to accept trays of food and drink proffered at his door. He is at the heart of a labyrinth of his own making. But he is not trapped. He is at home. There is nothing inherently miserable about this except the thought of what sustains it: the writer's own children struggling to survive while the scratching of the pen goes on and on; in later life, the perpetual fear of the bailiffs at the door. The desperate night flight between sanctuaries for the bankrupt was a regular feature of De Quincey's later years. There, he was safe from arrest; but one has to wonder whether his family ever felt at home. Perhaps they were not permitted their own labyrinth.

And yet he wasn't a misanthrope. He couldn't afford to be. He was, after all, an addict. But he was also a sentimentalist. The death of young Catherine Wordsworth, who was born with what we might now call learning difficulties, crushed him. His wife bore him eight of his own kids. How they must have lived is scarcely conceivable now, and in fact half of them did not survive him. His eldest daughter, at eighteen, described how she was expected to keep house for him while minding her young siblings; she writes how he was kept at home for days on end, by fears of pursuit and arrest for crimes both real and imagined. The opium kept anxiety at bay, but it was also what kept him pinned in his labyrinth. Not that this necessarily meant staying in the same room forever: he was the kind of man who would come to your house for dinner and still be there months later, having refused to leave.

The remarkable thing is that young De Quincey got exactly what he wanted. He got to be friends with his literary idols, and his time with them eventually came to be the thing which sustained him, albeit not for the reasons he might not have thought. When he wrote his reminiscences of the Lake Poets, it was to cash in on his memories, and to settle a few scores. The innocent pleasures of youth become an opportunity in old age. He regretted this intensely; he later wrote that it would have been better not to have known his literary idols at all.

It's hard for me to see much in a biography of De Quincey beyond this figure of perpetual disappointment. Like Coleridge, he had a brilliant mind – he was one of the last men to have read everything – and it is tempting to look at his limited output and wonder what he could have become in a life free from addiction. Such speculation is pointless. You could say he might just as easily have passed his years clerking, like Charles Lamb, quietly working to the greater common weal, with writing coming as a sort of happy afterthought; but this feels like measuring his worth according to a certain standard of industrial productivity. If only he had written more, if only he had been more coherent, more consistent; as if there is not already enough coherence and consistency in the world.

#books #thomas de quincey #frances wilson #samuel taylor coleridge

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victoriagloverstuff · 6 years

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The Sound of Black Voices, The Sound of My Father

I. Who Will Build this Ark of Bones ?

Once upon a time I had a house full of cousins, convivial aunties, resounding uncles with gold belt-buckles and big happy teeth, a black grandmother who washed my hair in the sink and taught my mom how to cook greens so tender and comb through my coils. On Sundays we’d all be at the local Baptist church, the whole choir was blood, I would clap and spin and scoot up to the stage in a rile of girlhood and pride, dad would be leading everybody, being the commanding, larger-than-life, chief-of-a-loving tyrant that he could be, for the good times. Nothing mattered but the tone when he got to singing—no one should question the authority of a voice like that, the fear that it would go silent was enough to convince us to endure every scream.

One by one those bodies visiting our house turned into ghosts, figments of my imagination. Day by day our routine was slipping into disaster’s taunting shadow and it seemed everybody was waiting for dad to fulfill a prophecy and enter the afterlife, sing to us from the other side. When he did, his haunting compliance so well-timed it’s my eternal fable for unconventional acts of deep generosity, my mom and I were out in California having left the paradise of phantoms I called home for a safer environment, a less complicated dream. By the time we got word, our Iowa fairytale had turned into a Reparations graveyard.

Maybe they weren’t legal heirs to the rights to his songs but my grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins, deserved something—a gold record, a Stetson or fringed suede and denim jacket, one of his many guns packed in a suitcase like grams—that announced Jimmy was here, was ours. By the time it was my mom’s turn to look through the remaining belongings all that was left was her stuffed childhood monkey, Zip, some pictures and letters he’d written me and her in his broken penmanship, and a shoebox full of tapes he’d been keeping under their circular bed, recordings of his latest music.

Enough for a new beginning.

After all, his voice remained immortal, black with grief and guile, sweet and childlike, chills down the spine, gritty and remote, knowing when it’s time to tremble and when to be still in the low of limbo.

II. Can’t You Hear It?

Listening, knowing one another by sound and voice, is the first law of black liberation—without this skill there is no self-preservation. From differentiating between urgent aggression and routine to separating moments of life-threatening anguish on a slaveship from the casual agony of another day in the hold, from deciphering the outcome of a session on the auction block through the cadence of those in attendance bidding in, to listening for the music of keys and shoes and rippling bills of sale and commands, all while still in disbelief at having become human contraband.

Next came the soul-threatening business of navigating life and forced labor on plantations, using the well-tuned ear of black survival to decode a symphony of footsteps, whips, Bible verses, moans, hisses, work chants, screams, hooflandings, rainfall, collapse, talking drum rising from the tap-rooted foot to the shamed skull, all of it echoing in the trapped and huddled sound of the English syllabics mangling in the planters’ mouths, acting as one of many indications that violently broken logic was the fulcrum of the West and would be used to keep black bodies in captivity in one form or another, for as long as circumstance or the bodies themselves would abide. And if we listened closely enough to that cacophony, we could detect within it the performance of hatred and domination used to mask the violent, obsessive, almost fanatical love American whites harbor for black bodies, black people, and everything we produce—how they tend to often covet and resent all otherness for the trance of envy or awe it strikes in them. We who hear this grand hypocrisy with our whole bodies are the first fugitives from it, running and not in fear.

“That box of tapes my dad left opened up a life of listening to the recorded voices of black people, developing almost pathological kinship with resonant timbres.”

We had to learn to listen through the wall of their deflected self-loathing on the road to turning their heroes and healers—us—into capital, before we could even hear ourselves think. We had to improvise small acts of subversion and freedom using our sensory attention and then project that provisional understanding of where we had been taken and why onto our own musical and spoken and mimed forms as we invented songs and styles of movement to relay the stories our hushed listening helped us gather and remember and invent. Our music became a form of collective listening and we used it to deliver dire messages as well as just to cope and retreat into beauty in otherwise-wretched places.

Learning to read could get us killed on plantations, but a literacy in rhythm and tone so acute we could communicate several very different intentions in one five-word arpeggiated blues phrase, was lost on those too literal, too evil to hear truths they didn’t comprehend: watchmen and slavers. And anything they could not ruin upfront became our grail, our pastime paradise, salvation. The improvisational musics we invented under those hyper-traumatic circumstances—deep listening projected outward, become mirrors to our jailers, deleting their obscene vanities, exposing them to themselves by inventing pure sonic opposition.

III. Alone Together

My own listening practice began early and as a matter of survival and generational reckoning, because I was born into a household brimming with music and conflict, to parents who were either up all night singing and testing chords on the piano, or up all night fighting, with little in between. Everyone was acting funny, all the adults around me were a little lost and crazy—so not only was I both spy and informant for both sides, I was ruthlessly neutral; no one seemed like a victim and at the same time everyone did, and l listened closely.

Before I was three, I’d learned to listen for quarreling between my parents and decipher its severity. I knew how to listen to figure out if dad was sleeping and if so, with or without the phone off the hook. I could tell by the energy in his voice what kind of mood he was in, manic or brooding, and I could tell if mom was hysterical by the pitch of her moments of catatonia. I had to listen to my own breathing or lack thereof to block them out, the acoustics of survival that traveled in my DNA were needed in my household, where the race and gender problems played themselves out in microcosm and became inverted: the black man was in charge here and also petrified of the creative power that guided his rule; the white woman was his willful slave and not meant to get away. I was the evidence of what they could not otherwise say, that life begets life and it’s okay.

I listened in my sleep, my subconscious a vigilante. I’m not exaggerating. I developed a kind of clairaudience that helped me remain one step ahead of the misguided adults around me, I could feel them unraveling acoustically before they knew a new shambles was closing in on them, and I could dazzle them with my innocence just enough to remind everyone who the child was, who was responsible for whom (though I also learned that it’s a blurry equation, responsibility, everyone is everyone’s burden). I had to be responsible for my own psychic protection and it made me feel close to my ancestors—before I even knew their story, I felt it, was guided by events I had not lived in this lifetime, and the guidance came in the form of sound awareness, a kind of keeness no one taught me, born of necessity. Listening offered the distance and dimension I needed to endure, it’s how I drew a boundary around my body in that chaotic space, how I came to be a form, why I am a destiny.

IV. The Man’s Gone Now

There’s an undeniable connection between close listening and absence, a sense that something is missing or has been stolen from us and might be tiptoeing toward us in the night from an unnameable erotic distance, pursuing triumphant reunion. This quiet almost anti-social optimism needs a place to play hide and seek with fate and the song and the sound offer an idyllic landscape. For this reason we rarely broadcast (to the limited radio imagination) our deepest acoustic preoccupations, and the diasporic music that collective listening generates is not always guarded by anything besides generational memory.

In the West the only thing more jarring than being free-spirited enough to make something up as you go along and enjoy it, is the confidence to not spy on yourself while doing it, to not maintain a record of exactly what happened, to not write it down or find some other form in which to engrave every nuance of every event into a lifeless monument.

In Black culture the record is the memory and the memory is the body, so the record is the body, and when it changes form, the spirit, the soul, the feeling and stories and teachings are passed down body to body like trusts without much fear that they will be lost. Even now, as we are lost, we’re not always inclined to create static archives that might lead us back someplace that makes sense. Our archives have always been alive, entities, capricious and at risk and traveling with us and guarding our sense of meaning, the sonic territory we can draw from no matter where we happen to find ourselves, this way nothing ever really goes missing, there is no myth that cannot be repopulated and reborn in any moment. Though spiritually this makes us versatile giants, economically in America it means we don’t always possess the mixture of opportunism and self-esteem that inspires us to keep track of our sh*t in a culture that uses formal recordkeeping as another excuse for the distribution of capital and real estate.

“Listening, knowing one another by sound and voice, is the first law of black liberation—without this skill there is no self-preservation.”

At the same time I realized that the distribution of land and resources in the US was often manipulated by large institutions that invest a lot of money into buying archives, creating exclusive portals through which documented history can be accessed and studied and changed, I saw that my family’s ransacked home and all of the missing parts of my father’s legacy revealed more than just circumstance. With all of that information scattered among estranged family members, a man’s story becomes compartmentalized, eventually forgotten, unless someone does the work of telling it, recording it, gathering it all back in one place, as sound, as verbal action, as music’s own memory, as more music, as better listening.

For black people of the diaspora, that place is often on a vinyl record, because the truth for us remains in the sound. That box of tapes my dad left opened up a life of listening to the recorded voices of black people, developing almost pathological kinship with resonant timbres, and a feeling of brotherhood, sisterhood, toward people I had only heard on a record or tape.

Eventually, after years and years of that practice, I started making my own archives, assembling recordings of black voices in ways that defy typical archival logic simply because the data collecting is improvised and at the mercy of in-the-moment human interaction, what I can grab from one basement or closing record depot—our archives, like our listening, will be collectively improvised. When we finally accept the value of keeping autonomous records of our histories, and demand places to keep those records, places we ourselves own and run, when that demand is universal for diasporic artists, it will be collective improvisation, our shared black technology, that stirs it and ensures our success, lets us tonally recover what has been materially erased or made into ruins. We can make music with those ruins, reanimate them, listen and speak them into new forms.

V. A Brief History of My Improvised Listening

Stevie Wonder’s Ribbon in the Sky One of the first songs I remember hearing and listening to for hours on end was Stevie Wonder’s Ribbon in Sky. I was learning a dance to it and I think sometimes I left out a step on purpose so that my instructor would have to rewind the tape, because I loved that song that much. At home with my Walkman™ I would pace my room and mark the dance and trace the imaginary ribbon with my eyes like some kind of cat entranced by her own leash. I was a prisoner of the song’s somber fantasy and I loved waiting for the divots in Stevie’s tone—I loved the pacing, the whole composition. I guess it’s the first time I remember a song soothing a void I had otherwise ignored, filling in a missing space, running toward me in the dark carrying visions of my father and his mother, and that happy broken home in Iowa transported to Hollywood on the edge of Stevie’s we won’t lose, with love on our side.

Jimmy Holiday I’m Gonna Use What I Got, To Get What I Need Dad wasn’t just singing, he was crying and bargaining with eternity. To me, he had always been a king, always been glorious and formidable and in charge of everything, so hearing my dad talk about being born in a shack and struggling, and needing something from the world, was devastating and a relief. I heard this song on one of those tapes we managed to get away with, and I wore it out, studied it. I wanted to protect the boy he had been on that white man’s farm picking cotton, making weight, with no school to attend. I wanted to console him when he hopped a train to Louisiana and started recording and had to find women enamored enough to sit up nights and listen to him sing and write down the songs because he could not write them himself, had not been allowed the time to learn to read or write.

Eleven words that hit me like daggers. Dad had suffered, had been afraid, wounded, neglected, and was afraid to be loved even after all of his success. He remained, psychologically, the young black boy from the country who just wants to sing into the comfort of night and feel free. Listening to my dad describe prevailing over deprivation, I understood the interplay of vulnerability and violence he had used as a survival tactic; I observed men like him at every level of society, male archetypes who had to pretend to be tough and unruly in order to hide their dangerous sincerity.

Minnie Ripperton’s Loving You I learned this ballad for another ballet solo, this one en pointe. I wore a cherry red unitard and stiff red pointe shoes to match, and was meant to glide across the dance floor like an erotic young nymph, an apparition, someone impossible, at least that’s what I told myself. I decided I was redefining beauty and the weightless bourrees and unwound turnings were my physical manifesto, my way of using my body to tell the world that I loved myself after all, that that love came easy, that I could relax and listen to birds chirping and not worry about some great tragedy lurking behind that mindless bliss.

Loving you, is easy ‘cause you’re beautiful, and everything that I do, is out of loving you. Dedicating this song and solo to myself made it clear to me that I needed my own love and attention, and also made me feel like a desired object of that universal gaze—I felt redeemed and more self-possessed than ever before in all that dance’s bloodred confidence. I didn’t know a black singer could sound so carefree, the way Minnie did, no grinding on her throat, no foreboding blues, just soft almost dainty relishing in common emotion. A new way of being was made available to me with her song, a happy disguise or a part of myself I felt the world unworthy of, my rapacious joy, the part of me I expose when I’m dancing had an analog in Minnie’s soft voicings, of pure unfettered romance.

Billie Holiday In college, she was all I could hear over the self-important rhetoric of my philosophy seminars. I’d leave some critical theory course where we’d spent three hours discussing Freud’s concept of the Death Drive as it relates to warring nations in the throes of late capitalism, and I’d be nauseated. Did this compulsive violence deserve the dignity of high concepts? Not in my estimation. If we’re gonna talk about self-made martyrs and epic self-destruction fueled by displaced love and tenderness without talking about Billie Holiday we’re gonna be liars forever. Her crackling and medicinal tone was how I made it through that indoctrination in western thinking that we call a college education. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Foucault and Derrida and Joyce and them, but without Billie Holiday I might have told everyone about themselves more often than I already did (that white boyfriend I had to dump because he said, verbatim, “who actually listens to Billie Holiday,” like black culture was some kind of Disneyland and she was a mascot for his idea of it, acted shocked that anyone could be that misguided). I urge everyone to listen to “Strange Fruit” or “I Cover the Waterfront ” while reading Plato’s Apology and not believe in miracles.

Miles Dewey Do what he says Davis His voice is broken, gutted, a grammar of aching gashes, but when Miles Davis says My father’s rich and my mother’s good looking, I have never suffered and I don’t intend to suffer and I can play the blues, I forgive everyone for about five minutes and tell all my friends to get rich and scream this through the open roofs of convertibles and it’s lit.

James Baldwin When YouTube democratized listening and looking beyond the capacity of radio and television, I spent months listening to James Baldwin speak. I had found my other father, another prophetic Jimmy, in the most unlikely corner of the digital omniverse—how had I gone so long without hearing a voice like that? After Baldwin, I found Sun Ra and Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Amiri Baraka and Nina Simone and Lorraine Hansberry and Abbey Lincoln, speaking out loud, healing my sense of story and of cadence and oratory as a practice. The meta language that can be heard, the breath or slight cough or rustle of fabric, all of that poetry felt like gold, felt like the first time I heard my dad cry I’m gonna use what I got, to get what I need.

Midnight Girl When I was in grad school and a friend was helping me digitize some of my tapes, I found a recording of my dad singing at home in Iowa. It’s my favorite love song of all time because it feels like it’s for me, for my mother, for my sisters, for all women who feel in some way abandoned by convention. It’s a song about permission to not belong to a man, to recognize when you have more to forge than romance and its specific kind of alienation—in a way it’s him saying goodbye and also saying I’m here always, deliberate, intentional.

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cityofnumbersix · 6 years

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Electric Moment - Chapter 7

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Coffee, Kyoka, and Karaoke

Nishikata Niwa Cafe, only a short walk from the main Todai campus, had easily cemented it's status as a popular and convenient place for students of the university to work and hang out. Owned by the Tokoyami family and managed by their son, Fumikage between his studies, and the eldest daughter Moriko most other times, they had made the decision to convert their business from a family restaurant to a cafe when they noticed the influx of local students in need of a quiet refuge and part time employment.

Both Mina and Kyoka had applied together when a notice of employment caught their eyes while passing through the streets not long into their first year. As for Eijirou, his status as the cafes latest bright-haired waitress was the work of none other than Mina herself, and a convincing conversation about Eijirou's popularity with both the cafe's lady customers, and elderly alike. It hadn't taken much to convince Fumikage, and even with Eijirou's parent's supplying him with a steady flow of money to fund his schooling and a modest home life, he was more than grateful to be able to work for himself in an environment where he often got to spend time with his close female friends.

Standing by the warmth of the espresso machine, the steam from the milk frother as Mina prepared their latest patron a drink, eliminated the chill over the left side of Eijirou's body. He stood with his head lolled forward, eyes upon the screen of his phone where his Snapchat app lay open in waiting.

BakuBae Tap to open

Upon his screen was a picture of Michi, a large tortoiseshell feline that Bakugou had apparently adopted in order to teach Mina to 'take more responsibility.' At least, that's what Mina had told them all at the time, back before any of them had ever met Bakugou in person. Back when he was simply the angry roommate that Mina described as the reason none of them had ever been able to visit her apartment in the few years they had resided within Tokyo.

Michi was sprawled out over what looked to be a fleecy black rug, her body stretched upon an open notebook and what looked to be a short stack of textbooks, pens of various colours peaking out from beneath her chubby body. The caption read:

"Aren't you suppose to be working Shitty-Hair?"

Eijirou took that moment to peak his head up from his device, eyes scanning around the near empty cafe, their one and only customer being the person whom Mina had just served, that now sat across the cafe with their laptop upon the table, body hiding amongst a forest of potted plants and seating. Eijirou snapped a stealthy picture.

Red Riot

"I am, unless you want me to go have a chat with our ONLY customer."

BakuBae is tying...

New Message from BakuBae

BakuBae: Looks like they really want your attention

Red Riot: But then I would have to take my attention away from you babe :*

There was a long pause before Bakugou's next message. Eijirou was almost afraid that he'd scared him off with his forward pet name. He stared down at his phone, fingers reaching up so that he could begin to chew idly upon his nails.

"Must be a pretty important conversation for you to risk Fumichi catching you on your phone, hm?" Mina's voice radiated from above him.

When he looked up, his brightly coloured friend was standing upon her tip toes, attempting to reach herself far enough over his phone in order to read what was going on upon his screen. Her hair smelt like strawberries today, similar to the way Bakugou's had smelt the other day at the arcade, they probably shared hair products. It wasn't weird or anything, to remember the way Bakugou smelt, it was unavoidable really. He'd been sitting within his lap for a solid twenty minutes, head falling back upon his shoulders every so often when he became bored of watching his friend's destroy hordes of virtual zombies. If anything, it would have been weird not to notice.

Mina's brightly dyed hair was pressed back from her forehead with a series of colourful hair clips in the shape of small bears and various summer fruits. The earrings that hung low from her ears were in the shape of a pair of violet coloured strawberries, a gift that Denki had purchased for her last birthday. Her makeup was subtle, minus the electric blue eyeliner that swept itself across her eyelids.

She hadn't changed much, even from their years in middle school. The day of the entrance ceremony was the first time Eijirou, and many of the children within the hall, had ever seen someone so elaborate. In a small town, it was difficult not to notice the flash of pastel purple locks and polkadot knee socks. The buttons upon her uniform had been swapped with colourful replacements of various shapes and sizes. It was a sight that had the whole room turning their heads. She never seemed to be scolded for it though, and years later Mina explained that it was probably because the alterations had been a gift from her aunt, a simple distraction from the fact that Mina was now living with her late father's younger sister and her husband, rather than her parents.

Her dress sense hadn't changed either, nor her intoxicating personality, the one that had drawn Eijirou in from the very first moment he saw her. As a young teen, Eijirou had lacked more than a bit of confidence, where in contrast, Mina seemed to lack an interest in even pretending she cared what people thought of her. She was eccentric, yet kind and always willing to stick up for those she cared about, yet never herself. If people spoke ill of her, she always seemed to brush it off. Resilient, brave, smart, funny. Mina was more than just Eijirou's best friend, she was his hero.

But that didn't exempt her from being annoying.

Eijirou locked his phone, moving to shove it into the back pocket of his pants. Even if it was Mina, for some reason Eijirou felt particularly embarrassed about his slight crush on Katsuki Bakugou. It wasn't Bakugou per say, but more about the fact that he generally wasn't Eijirou's type. Growing up, Eijirou had made a name for himself amongst his friends as being the guy who fell hard, too fast, for older guys.

Eijirou was a romantic at heart. He believed in love at first sight, and could scan a crowd of people and feel nothing in the slightest, before a certain person was able to catch his eye. Eijirou would fall hard, quickly, even if the other person hasn't quite realised it yet. Even before he really understood his own sexuality, he had already realised that love for him may prove unusually difficult. Even in accordance with platonic relationship standards, Eijirou had always shot much higher than the norm. He loved his friends so deeply it almost hurt, so you could imagine how he felt when he made a romantic connection.

The thing was, Eijirou really liked Bakugou. He liked how he waltzed around, supported by a carefree attitude and a will to defend his own honour. He liked the way he could appear so aloof, yet if you peered close enough you were able to notice the subtle way his lips or the wrinkles around his nose would shift when showed any sort of positive interaction. He liked the way Bakugou lied more to himself than anyone else, and that it only took minimal convincing in order to achieve ones desired result from him. He liked the way Bakugou looked at him, even when he glared, his eyes felt warm, like the fire pit his mother would build for the three of them in dead of winter so that Eijirou could roast marshmallow, pressing himself into the warmth of his mama's coat.

Also, it might sound stupid, but for once Eijirou liked the idea of being the one to chase a guy around in circles. Especially in high school, Eijirou had always been the one to lead the game, to be sort after, wanted. He'd gotten so use to being the mouse, that he'd almost forgotten that it was perfectly fine for him to step forward and take the lead. Bakugou was recluse, he appeared to pride himself on the way he only seemed to care little about anything, or anyone, and for some odd reason, Eijirou wanted to change that.

That's why it was different, these feelings. They were starkly dissimilar to the simple well of lust within his belly that often accompanied his crushes on men. When he spoke to Bakugou, he felt more than just an urge to remove his clothes and drag him in. When Bakugou apprehensively agreed to go along with Eijirou's antics, or when he sometimes sent Eijirou pictures that contained parts of his life that Eijirou normally wouldn't have the chance to see, Eijirou felt something that was unlike anything he'd felt in his past relationships.

Eijirou had loved, at a bare minimum of two soul-crushing times, but amongst all that, he'd never felt, quite like this. That's why it was embarrassing. That's why he wasn't quite sure how to feel, what to do, how much of this to show to the people closer to him like Mina, and the others. What was happening to him?

"Toko doesn't finish his last class until four, nice try Mi-chan." Eijirou teased, pressing his body further into the counter behind him as Mina stepped forward, her body dropping off her toes, her gaze now reaching up towards his own.

"Who were you talking to...?" She questioned softly, a sly smirk pulling at the corners of her over-glossed pink lips.

"Denki." Eijirou replied immediately, refusing to fall into his smaller friend's trap, "His class is boring, and apparently Kyo is still being weird."

It wasn't exactly a lie. He had been speaking with Denki on-and-off amongst the pauses the occurred due to what he assumed was his friend actually doing some work. Denki had sent him a picture of Kyoka slummed over her textbook upon the floor of one of the pair's shared music or sound technology related classes. They'd all been worried by her behaviour over the past few days. It was unlike Kyoka to let criticism get to her, so they all assumed it had something to do with Bakugou's demonstration, but none of them could be sure.

"Mhm, okay." Mina whispered softly, pressing her face forward far enough that her nose bumped against Eijirou's as he spoke, "Y'know, you've always been the worst at hiding your feelings on your face."

"What does that me-" Eijirou began, only for Mina to shove her fingers within his mouth, wrenching his lips apart, stretching the skin with force.

"You bite the inside of your cheek when you're pining, you can see the way the skin dips from the outside." She explained, pushing the flats of her finger's against the inside of his cheeks, before pulling them out swiftly, inspecting them.

Mina's fingers were covered in a mixture of saliva and a small amount of blood, which had presumably been drawn during Eijirou's cheek munching habit. It was one of the downsides of Eijirou's obscurely sharp teeth, a trait that he had inherited from his mother, and something his other mother always seemed to be complain about. He'd grown use to the feeling, and often hardly even noticed that he was drawing blood, until he was able to taste large amounts of it on his tongue.

"Spill it Shark Boy." Mina cooed, clearing the mess from her fingers upon the dark fabric of her work pants.

"The fact that you just did that shouldn't shock me in the slightest, seeing that you use to refuse to leave my side even when I went to the bathroom in school, but it concerns me that you don't seem at all disgusting with the fact that you just shoved your fingers into my bloody mouth." Eijirou murmured, his eyes following the movement of Mina's hands carefully.

"Stop trying to change the subject!" Mina scolded, wrapping her arms around Eijirou's broad shoulder's, hanging off them limply, "You're keeping things from me and I don't like it!"

Eijirou let a quiet sigh fall from his lips, his eyes softening as he stared down at Mina. There was no one in this world, not even his mothers, that understood Eijirou quite as well as Mina did. She'd been there for him, for years, her acceptance and unwavering love never once appearing to fade at all, not matter the circumstances. Even now, it was hard to not let her in.

Eijirou slipped his phone from his back pocket once more, taking a quick look around the cafe to ensure that their only patron was occupied and content with their own activities, before allowing Mina to peer down at the screen alongside him.

(Snapchat) New message from BakuBae

"Uh-huh! So you are talking to Katsichi! I knew it!" Mina chirped, plucking the phone from Eijirou's grasp, "You can't hide this stuff from me, I know you too well."

"Yeah, well..." Eijirou mumbled, pressing himself closer into Mina's side to stare down at the screen as she opened the snapchat.

It was a picture of Bakugou's face, a light scarf wrapped around his mouth, reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. He was still in the apartment. Eijirou could tell from the faded brown couch in the background, the same one he'd seen in many of both Mina and Bakugou's previous snaps.

"Maybe then I could actually get some work done."

The caption left Eijirou smiling just a bit. Sometimes it seemed as if thats all Bakugou was ever worried about. Whether they were talking during either of their classes, or while studying, he always seemed to complain about Eijirou being a distraction, or distracting himself too easily from work. It had never stopped Bakugou from continuing to talk with him though, which Eijirou liked to interpreted as Bakugou actually enjoying their conversations.

"Face shot, I dont even get those. He's such a stingy little prick. What have you done to seduce the beast into such submission?" Mina spoke, pressing her elbow into Eijirou's ribs, "I've been trying for years."

"Guess I just have talent." Eijirou teased, pressing his fingers into Mina's wild curls, waning his digits through the soft mix of fading pink and hints of bleached blonde that had already lost their colour.

It was in that moment that Eijirou had stopped paying attention, just long enough for Mina to type out a reply to Bakugou, overlaying it on top of a rushed candid of Eijirou's laughing face. His cheeks were pushed high with his smile, dimple poking out from the side of his face that could be seen in the picture. His eyes were squished shut, dark lashes falling against the rise of his skin, resting against the pink haze of his skin.

Before Eijirou could even take the chance to read the text, the snap was sent, it's contents to remain a mystery until Bakugou's inevitable reply.

"What did you just say to him?" Eijirou gasped, his eyes going wide as he slapped the phone from Mina's hand, catching it just shy of hitting the floor.

"Nothing." Mina explained, walking back towards the counter as a young couple enter through the front door of the cafe, a friendly bell jingle indicating their arrival.

Eijirou internally fought against his desire to push the conversation further, instead, he pushed himself back up, scooting further away from the main counter in order to stare back down at his phone out of sight of their new customers. Watching the screen as it lit up once more, his heart began to thud rapidly as a particular notification entered his view.

(Snapchat) BakuBae took a screenshot

And less than thirty seconds later.

(Snapchat) BakuBae is typing...

(Snapchat) New Message from BakuBae

BakuBae: Shitty spikey hair as always. You're gonna get caught.

Eijirou dislodged a shaky sigh that had trapped itself half way up his esophagus, eyelids fluttering as he peered down at the message. Obviously Mina had been kind enough not to completely embarrass him again, if anything she might have even done Eijirou a favour. Eijirou himself had never worked up enough courage to screenshot any of Bakugou's pictures, even if the temptation was extremely high sometimes, but this had been the second time that Bakugou had done it himself, both being seemingly random pictures of Eijirou's face. It had to mean something, right?

If anything, it was mustered just enough courage within him to result in his next move.

Red Riot: My hair is perfect

Red Riot: But you know

Red Riot: I wouldn't have to get in trouble if you came down to talk to me in person.

Red Riot: I know the perfect study spot

Then he added...

Red Riot: Mina is here too.

Just for insurance.

When Eijirou didn't receive an immediate reply, he automatically assumed that his mission had failed. He should have known really, that something that forward might be too much for someone like Bakugou. Out of impatience, and totally not embarrassment, Eijirou slipped his phone beside Mina's in the corner of the counter that contained various extra paper take-away cups and lids, before making his way back to the front just in time for yet another customer to enter the cafe. It was time for their lunchtime rush after all.

It was about twenty minutes later that the chime indicating yet another patron rang for what felt like the hundredth time in the past few minutes, but this time when Eijirou peaked up, shouting out a friendly greeting along with Mina, who was busy behind the cappuccino machine, her hands moving faster than Eijirou could process each order.

But as the customer made their way inside, their identity was far from questionable.

Fair blonde hair, pushing out in various directions, but still neat and orderly in a way that Eijirou had never seen someone's natural hair be. Pale skin was flushed pink from the presumably cold chill of the spring-time wind outside, the loose fitting fabric of a oversized plaid shirt falling just shy of the boys knees, which remained visible through large purposely-worn holes in a pair of dark-wash skinny jeans, showing yet more flushed skin in plain view. His sleeves were rolled up, arms cradling mounds of study material, and he was still wearing his glasses, large and clear against his features, the lenses reflecting the afternoon sun as he pushed his way through a departing couple without a hint of a word.

Eijirou's feet were moving instantly, amongst the tables, a genuine apology slipping out towards the elderly pair of woman whom he'd just been chatting to up to this point, as he made his way over to Bakugou as quickly as he could. Bakugou's eyes were far from focused, so Eijirou wasn't the least bit surprised when the feeling of his presence near Bakugou's side, caused the other boy to stumble slightly, his arms full of resources falling forward and landing directly into Eijirou's awaiting arms.

"Fucking shitty-ass busy fucking cafe bullshit." The blond boy spat, the clear frames of his large glasses slipping down his cheeks, presenting Eijirou with a gorgeous flash of tangerine irises from beneath their glass shields.

"Need some assistance to a table sir?" Eijirou chimed, heaving the pile back upright within Bakugou's arms, before slipping the peak of the pile into his own arms, cradling the heavy books against his hip.

"Tsk, sure, whatever you say Shitty-Hair..." Bakugou shot back, obediently following Eijirou to an empty table that sat not far from the edge of the main counter, but was pressed hidden amongst a few potted plants that concealed it from the rush of the rest of the room.

It was a table that had been set up for the workers to take their breaks, allowing for their young staff members to take some time to themselves, or study secluded from even the pulsing buzz of the cafe's patrons, but with only him and Mina on duty, he was sure that no one would really mind.

Eijirou placed the heavy books upon the table, even going as far as to pull one of the seats out, allowing for Bakugou to shrug himself into it after a moment of hesitance that probably involved the blond contemplating his pride and considering whether he should scold Eijirou for his overly-polite act of gentleman-esque behaviour, but he didn't bother to open his mouth, which left Eijirou a little high in his spirit.

"Something to drink, or eat?" Eijirou asked softly, his mind still vaguely shocked by the fact that Bakugou had actually decided to turn up, all the worry he had been harbouring earlier having flown out the very door that Bakugou had used to enter his place-of-work.

"...she knows..." Bakugou mumbled, motioning his chin towards Mina, who herself, appeared almost as shocked as Eijirou felt on the inside, but went on to wave gleefully in her roommates direction regardless.

"I'll ask her to get started then. We've gotten a little busy, so it might be a bit of a wait..." Eijirou explained, taking his time to let his eyes wandering over the books sitting upon the table.

"Whatever..." is all Bakugou replied, before he was flipping one of the textbooks open, reaching to pull a pen from behind his highly pieced ear.

Making his way back over to Mina, strapping the electronic pad he used to retrieve orders back to the waist of his pants, Eijirou grinned at her wide enough he felt as if he might explode.

"Whatever witchcraft you're using on him." Mina spoke in his direction, eyes focused on drawing a cartoonish bunny upon the side of a regular sized take away drink, before sliding it gracefully to the end of the counter where the customer stood in waiting, "I want in."

"I didn't even do anything though." He gushed, moving to huddle against his friend as she began to warm some milk, "I just kind of insinuated that he should come down...I didn't actually think he was going to."

"Katsuki never leaves the house to study these days. Says people are too loud and he can't concentrate." Mina explained, the edges of her lips curling upwards, "He takes his studies pretty seriously y'know? He's a diligent student. I've never seen him put his work beside for anyone."

"He brought it all with him, Mina. He hasn't put anything aside. You're looking into this too much."

"Mhm. Sure I am." Mina continued, letting yet another drink slip across the counter in the direction of it's owner, "Does he want anything?"

"He said you'd know." Eijirou spoke, watching with interest as Mina worked. He wasn't yet allowed to use the machines, he was too inexperienced and apparently these days you even needed to take a course on it. Eijirou didn't really think he had the time to do such a thing, which probably didn't matter much seeing he'd been hired more for his customer service abilities than his drink making skills. Kyoka was the same at least.

"Uh, black and bitter like my baby boy's soul." Mina giggled, placing three shallow mugs upon a tray neatly, lifting to push it into Eijirou's hands, "I'll get his majesty's drink prepared, you worry about keeping you favourite lady customers pleased for now."

Eijirou's eyes wandered around the busy room, his sight falling upon a group of three highschool aged girls, the tops of their uniforms hidden beneath gaudy sweaters, skirts tucked under the table cloth in hopes that no one would notice the fact that they were probably currently skipping school. Really, Eijirou and Mina should probably ask them to leave, seeing this was becoming a Friday afternoon habit for the trio, but both of them were still quite young, and the idea of trying to order around people not too much younger than themselves, well it felt kind of foolish in all honesty. So, they left them to do and they please, which apparently was spending their afternoon pressed close together at a small table in the centre of Nishikata Niwa, shooting Eijirou with lingering gazes and flirty words of endearment.

"Oh Kirishima-kun, we had no idea that you were working today~" One of the girls greeted as he made his way over to their table, graciously slipping their drinks from the tray upon his hip, to sit in front of each of the girls.

"Oh, Eiko-san, you should know by now that I work every Friday." Eijirou playful teased, reaching to take a small pair of silicon-tipped tongs from the tray, plucking a fluffy, white marshmallow from the dish that's sat neatly upon it's surface, "Who wants marshmallows today? I know you'll have one won't you Maiko-san?"

It wasn't half bad really, being popular amongst the regulars at the cafe. Even though Eijirou had only been working their for just over two weeks, their were already quite a few people that often got excited when he was around. It was nice, knowing that he was well-liked by people other than just his friends, especially in a setting as large as Tokyo, that at times felt far-less familiar and loving than his own hometown, in which almost everyone knew each others names, and were on good terms with their neighbours and other members of the community.

The lunchtime rush was beginning to die down now, with empty mugs and half eaten slices of cake littering the tables as patrons made their way back to their jobs, and even Eijirou's trio of young fans making their way out the door with enthusiastic waves and hyperactive giggling as they pushed each other back into the outside word. The cafe grew quiet once more, their laptop-baring original still sitting in their spot, yet another coffee at their fingertips as their other hand typed away quickly.

When Eijirou's eyes fell back to Bakugou, who now sat with a mug by the edge of the table, his eyes focused upon some text that Eijirou couldn't quite make out from the distance, he couldn't help but smile. It was different now, seeing Bakugou in action doing something so strikingly quiet for someone who's very presence screamed deafeningly loud in every direction. He was still scowling, like he did at most things, but it was softer than usual, similar to the way he looked when he played a slow tune with his guitar. Like how he'd looked the time he'd practiced with Eijirou in the quiet of his shared apartment.

Eijirou made his way over, reaching his hand up to push the boy's mug further onto the table so that it would not slip upon the floor. He blinked down at Bakugou's page of notes, the words swirling around the pages, not fully processing in Eijirou's brain as he read them. It was Friday after all, study had no place in Eijirou's mind right now. Even if the person doing the studying was simply gorgeous as he did it.

Bakugou continued to ignore his presence as he worked, giving time for Eijirou's eye to catch upon the unfolded pages of what looked like a half written letter beside a raspberry coloured envelope.

"Writing a letter to someone?" Eijirou questioned quietly, not wishing to upset Bakugou into one of his usual grumpy moods.

"Mm." Bakugou grunted in reply, sliding his pen forcefully through a line of written text, striking it out so deeply into the paper, causing the pen to break through the paper's thin surface near the end. He then began to write out the same exact line once more.

Mina's made her way over to the pair, taking Katsuki's empty mug, before placing a fresh cup of coffee upon the space where the blond was about to write, causing him to growl, gazing up at her. Mina only ignored him, her eyes following Eijirou's to the source of the boys' previous one-sided conversation. Eijirou watched her features as she read over the text written upon the brightly coloured envelope.

"Not going to see her this year? It almost her birthday, right?" Mina chimed in, eyes moving to focus upon Bakugou's own, causing him to force his chin back in the direction of his work, letting an irritated sound escape his mouth.

"With this band thing I'm not going to be able to make this time, but if I don't do somethin' the old bat won't ever let me forget it." Bakugou grumbled out, prompting Eijirou to turn his gaze toward's Mina.

"His sister." Mina explained softly, reaching forward to slip her fingers along the edges of Bakugou's hand written letter, only to have it slid out from beneath her grasp, Bakugou shoving it upon his lap beneath the surface of the table.

"I don't know why I bother anyways, she's just gonna call me on the day and complain about how I didn't talk enough about Shitty-Deku and his shitty life." Bakugou hissed, scrunching his nose up, eyes moving to peer at Eijirou from the side.

"Bakugou's little sister is adorable. They both look like their mother, with pretty foreign hair and eyes, like movie stars or something!" Mina gushed, pressing the foot of her palms against her own chest as she explained the family to Eijirou, who listened with keen interest, wanting to know whatever he could about Bakugou's life, "She's what? How old now?"

"...she'll be fifteen..." Bakugou muttered quietly, turning back to taking notes down within the book in front of him, "She's a first year in high school. Tried to convince my parents to let her go to a better school here, seeing like me, she's smart as fuck, but my idiot dad wants to keep her close to home, said she's too young to be so far away from them. He's a pussy."

Eijirou could practically feel the pride radiating off of Bakugou as he spoke about his sister's academic excellence, and from what he's seen and heard about Bakugou, he didn't once doubt that he was a pretty damn smart guy, a genius even. It should have made Eijirou jealous, but if anything he felt kind of proud that he was able to even be in the same vicinity as someone like Bakugou, even more-so being able to at least call him a friend.

"I'm sure if we spoke to Midnight we could arr-" Eijirou began, before Bakugou cut him off, reaching up to press his middle and index finger against the red-head's lips, stopping his words mid-sentence.

"It's not a big deal, I already promised them I would go see them during Golden Week, so stop your stupid worrying you Crimson-Idiot." Bakugou explained half-heartedly, letting his finger's linger upon Eijirou's lips, slipping them gently along their surface as his hand once again fell back to the table before him, an act that Eijirou hoped went unnoticed by Mina.

"Have you eaten lunch yet Katsuki?" Mina quarried softly, before moving back from the table, "Nevermind. I know you haven't. I'm going to make you something anyway."

"Has she always been like that?" Bakugou asked suddenly, pressing the tip of a fluorescent pink highlighter to the pages of one of his open textbooks, slipping it along a line of text.

"Huh?" Eijirou spoke, far too distracted by the lingering sensation of Bakugou's fingers upon his lips.

"You went to school together right?" Bakugou continued, working as he spoke.

"Oh, yeah. Mina and I met in middle school. She use to scare away people that bullied me, eventually we just started to hang out as friends." Eijirou explained, busying himself with sliding a clean rag across the edges of Bakugou's table.

He could feel Bakugou watching him noticeably from the edge of his eyeline, blatantly dragging his eyes along Eijirou's form as he worked. His expression didn't change, and his hand continued to write for a moment, before his head was digging back down his his work.

"Don't really seem like the kind of guy that needs protecting, or are you one of those honourable, no-violence types?"

Eijirou could feel the warmth rise from his chest to his neck, hand gripping the hem of his sleeve, tugging the fabric of his shirt to cover his muscular arms a tad more than they were originally, an awkward chuckle being his only reply.

"I'm just saying shitty-hair. Those guns clearly aren't just for show. If someone pissed you off, let'm know." Bakugou continued, clearly trying to sound as disinterested in their conversation as he could manage, whilst also giving Kirishima advice.

"M'not really...confident in my abilities...in that field..." he answered, moving back to his cleaning once he knew for sure that Bakugou was no longer eyeing his upper arms, "Plus, guys don't really appreciate it when...guys like me...are like...this..."

Eijirou wasn't even sure why he was telling Bakugou stuff like this, nor did he really think that Eijirou's fighting abilities were really relevant in any way. He liked sports, exercise. He enjoyed going for a run in the mornings when the night air could still whisper against his skin, his eyes drawn to the distant rise of the sun. He enjoyed going to the gym, with friends, or alone, pushing his body to it's limits, and just a little further. He liked the feeling of success, achievement, and he liked his body, he really did. Even if the guys he was interested in hardly ever liked it themselves. Not only did he hate the idea of hurting someone else, but he despised the idea of ever flaunting his abilities around for people to see.

"So, what? You dont fight, because you're afraid of turning guys off 'cause you're stronger than they are?" Bakugou pipped up, causing Eijirou to visibly flinch.

Then, he started to laugh, loud and intoxicating. It was a sound that Eijirou had never heard before, something he believed over these past few weeks, that he might never get to witness. Bakugou's eyes were creased shut, the lines around them softer than they would be if he was scowling like he did normally. His shoulder's swayed back-and-fourth as his chest rose-and-deflated with his actions, cheeks going red. Eijirou began to think that he might even see tears, collecting at the corners of Bakugou's eyes, and he knew for sure they were there when they began to slide down the contours of the other boy's face, slipping along his jaw.

"W-What's so funny?" Eijirou stuttered out, panicked as he froze in his place, dirtied cloth pressed against his chest in shock, "W-Why are you laughing?"

It took Bakugou some time to calm down, his outbursting having even shocked Mina and the computer customer at the other end of the once quiet cafe. Eijirou wasn't sure how he was suppose to feel. Was Bakugou laughing at him? His overdeveloped body? His worries and concerns? Eijirou couldn't tell, but he knew that it made him feel at-the-least, overwhelmed.

"Y-You..." Bakugou mumbled out between dying chuckles, the hand that had dropped his highlighter moments ago, reaching to swipe some stray tears from his own cheeks, "You don't fight, because you're worried guys won't like a tough bottom? That's what you're getting at right?"

For once, Eijirou felt as if he was the one on fire, rather than Bakugou. He pushed the cloth further against his chest, diverting his eyes from the boy in front of him so that he wouldn't have to acknowledge that it was Bakugou who now knew of his one weakness.

"It's..." he started, voice mumbled amongst the sound of Bakugou's receding laugh, "It's a real concern you know...guys turn you down for stuff like that...I'm not...I don't exactly look like...oh forget it..." Eijirou grumbled, turning to stomp his way from the table. Bakugou could never understand. Bakugou was hot in any form. He'd never be able to understand the struggle between doing what you love, and staying conventionally attractive to the people you were interested in. He could pull any guy without second thought, if they could deal with his personality that is.

"You're so dumb." Bakugou continued, and that lit a sense of fury within Eijirou's body, which caused him to spin upon his feet, death glaring the blond with crimson eyes, ready to argue his own defence to the very edge of his self-confidence.

Yet, the moment he turned, everything within Eijirou's body, his anger, his embarrassment, every organ within his being, plummeted to the very base of his abdomen. When he turned to look at Bakugou, he noticed that the other was staring back at him with an oddly fond expression, teeth sinking deep into his bottom lip, probably in an attempt to hold back further outbursts of laughter. Eijirou couldn't help, but fall silent.

"If a guy doesn't wanna stick his dick in your ass, because you don't fit his shitty idea of what a guy should look like in order to have a preference on their position in bed, then he's a fucking moron." Bakugou huffed out, rolling his eyes in Eijirou's direction, "I thought you would know that, loser."

That's the way Bakugou had said it, but in Eijirou's mind, it rang closer to:

"You're fine the way you are Kirishima."

When Denki Kaminari was but a boy at the tender age of four, his dream was to become pirate. He spoke of travelling the world on his ship, eyes set to the horizon. He gushed of defeating ferocious sea creatures, fighting off every rouge sailor that dare cross his path, all with his first mate Kyoka Jirou by his side.

When he was a slightly stocky, yet unwaveringly energetic child of ten, he would lay in his bed, or stand upon the swing set at the park, and dream of being an airline pilot. He wanted to cruise gracefully amongst the clouds, the wide wings of his plane cutting sharply through the mix of white and blue. He wanted to see the world, the way the birds did, alongside his trusty co-pilot Kyoka.

When Denki was but the age of thirteen, just two weeks shy of his fourteenth birthday, he no longer had a dream for his future. When he thought hard enough about it, or when he was asked by his teachers or parents, he would simply tilt his head forward, and mumble out a hushed, "Nothing."

Nothing, fit a socially inept boy, who's once vibrant and bounding personality had been silenced by a year and a half of ridicule from his classmates, from boys at the arcade by his house, by anyone who believed that he was speaking too loudly, breathing too loudly, existing too loudly.

So, Denki Kaminari fell silent, deciding that he would rather spend his days quietly watching from the back of the room, never allowing himself even the chance to speak up. Even with Kyoka by his side, urging him to slip back into the place he'd once been, he simply shrugged her off, ignoring her words. For, surely, there was nothing worse than being best friend's with an annoying presence such as him.

His mother began to worry for him, choosing to take him to a doctor, who could do nothing to calm the boy's nervous stuttering and fidgeting fingers. Who could do nothing to help revive the comatose dreams that laid dormant within his young mind. The doctor could do nothing, unable to even give Denki an answer as to why the bright future he had once seen, now sat shrouded in a deathly black.

When Denki Kaminari was fourteen years old, approaching closely the impending reality that was his middle school graduation, he never believed that he would make it into a high school of his own. He watched as those around him studied, preparing themselves for their entrance exams, or planning how they would be spending their break. Instead, Denki sat glued to his seat in the back of the class, his eyes set on the form of his best friend Kyoka as she quietly chatted with the girl who's desk sat beside her own, whose name Denki hadn't bothered to remember at all, and he thought of all the places he would rather be than here.

For the remainder of his middle school life, and for over half his break, Denki saw nothing in his future but a bleak nothing. He no longer felt the need to attempt much at all with his time, he didn't have to continue on with his schooling after all. Now that it was all over, and he no longer held any hopes, nor dreams in his heart, Denki chose not to even bother to leave his bed.

That was until one fairly dull afternoon, just before his mother's antique clock was due to chime in one p.m., when the doorbell sang it's quiet tune, and the door itself was held open for none other than Kyoka Jirou.

Sometimes even now, Denki thinks back to that day. How Kyoka's consistent begging and pleading had been the thing that kick started what was now his adult life. Instead of wasting away his days as a shut-in NEET, he managed to pass highschool by the skin of his teeth, even making it into the university course of his choosing. He was apart of a kick-ass band, whose name he had picked himself. He was able to meet and keep a wonderful group of friends, and through it all, by his side, had been Kyoka.

Yet now, with his back pressed to the wall of one of their universities many polished classrooms, his text book laid open at his feet, he could not for the life of him think of a way to life his friend's heavy heart.

It would probably help, if he were to actually ask what it was that was making Kyoka's face do that thing that even Mina noticed and hated. The one where the corner's of Kyoka's brows would dip down with her expression, her lips contorting themselves into an uncharacteristic frown.

It sounded stupid, sure, they all knew that Kyoka had feelings, and that sometimes those feelings were negative. They all knew that Kyoka had her bad days too, like all of them. They even knew that she probably cried sometimes, in the privacy of her own bedroom, face pushed against a pillow in an attempt to drown out the sounds of her pain, but that was just it. Kyoka's emotions never read so plainly upon her face. She was as strong as Denki was weak, and never allowed for any of them to see how she truly felt.

This. This unsure expression, bordering on doubtful. It simply wasn't Kyoka and it was driving Denki up the wall with worry. Yet, he found himself unable to say anything, too overwhelmed by the sheer lack of familiarity that the situation held.

"Jirou-san." A voice broke in, pulling Denki's eyes from his friend, to the person who had just addressed her, "Could you help me for a second? We need someone to sing a couple of notes and Aina-chan is out sick."

Kyoka simply shook her head, leaving the boy, who Denki now recognised as their classmate Hisao, with a soft apology and a half baked excuse about being unable to sing as she was recovering from a cold.

That was the final straw for Denki, who shoved his notebook to the side, scooting his way across the floor to place himself directly in front of Kyoka. She lifted her head slowly, watching Denki with a profound sense of confusion. This was the first time since they had met outside the classroom door, that Denki had come anywhere near her. Usually, they spent their classroom time glued to each other, helping in each place that the other fell short in knowledge. Neither of them were academically that great, but together they had always seemed to gather together enough brainpower to make it through. Today however, Denki was very aware that he had been keeping his distance, so the confusion written upon his friend's features, truly wasn't at all that shocking.

"You're quiet." Denki spoke, splaying his finger's outwards over the pages of Kyoka's textbook, pulling the girl's concentration from it's words, and instead to Denki himself.

She merely blinked at him, her expression near blank. Her eye makeup was heavy and black, the edges of her eyes lined with thick product, lashes coated in layers of deep mascara. Her face was as pale as the rest of her skin, though covered with a softening foundation that made her skin appear blemish-free, even if Denki didn't really believe that she needed it. Her lips were mostly clear, despite the presence of a deep red gloss, that was placed exclusively in the centre, the edges of them blanked out with but more of her foundation, making them appear small and bitten.

When Denki looked at her like this, short hair falling at longer lengths near the front, the lobes of her ears stretched large with dark, round gauges, body heavily adorned with chains and spikes, he could almost forget the way she had looked as they grew up.

Denki and Kyoka had known each other since almost birth, their mother's having been close in high school, both families having been raised themselves in the very same town that their children were. Even in Denki's earliest of memories, there was always Kyoka, before him, after him, by his side almost as much as his own mother of older brothers.

Their father's were also close, drinking with each other in each of their kitchens, as their mother's prepared shared dinners for both families. Denki was even there when Kyoka's youngest sister had been brought home, one of the first to push himself to her cradles edge to greet their newest addition, even before Kyoka herself. He clearly recalls the way his fingers had brushed the baby's cheeks, head tilting to the side as her smokey eyes had fluttered open, staring towards the roof rather than at anyone in particular. She was as much his sister as she was Kyoka's, in the same way his two older brother's were as much Kyoka's as they were his, the same going for Kyoka's own older brother. It was simply the way it had always been.

Even now, as he stared at his friend, so close to his heart she was basically his family, he could still recall the way she had looked as they grew, even if sometimes it was hard to associate the two images as the same person.

Even when Denki had piled on his prepubescent weight, cubby and gaudy and his clothes sticking to odd places of his body, Kyoka had remained thinner than most other children, short legs and arms like the twigs from the trees in the park they used to create swords and magic wands. Her hair was just as dark as it was now, but rather a more brown colour than the purple it was today. Her nose had been dusted with freckles, some that still remained, but were hardly ever seen unless around the house where makeup was less frequently used. Prior to the age of twelve, he could even recall Kyoka's lanky body having been a model for both his and her grandmother's homemade floral dresses and brightly coloured sweaters, that now seemed they would be far too vibrant to belong anywhere near her body, nor her wardrobe.

The changes were there, but he supposed his were too, but even despite that, all her intimate details had remained practically unchanged. Such as their way her fringe fell upon her forehead, the hair naturally parting just left of the centre. The way her ears felt slightly larger than they should be, but still pressed back against her skull in the same fashion they had since she was a child. Also remaining unscathed by time, were her subtle mannerisms, such as the way her right eyebrow would tilt upwards when she laughed, or the shuffle of her feet as she walked, never having improved her habit of dragging the soles of her shoes as she moved.

Despite all the changes that had occurred over time, everything about Kyoka seemed just so much like her that Denki sometimes even forgot that they were now adults, and no longer the small children that spent their time at the mountains edge, collecting beetles and butterflies, being scolded by their mother's for their dirty knees and scraped elbows.

He couldn't help but smile, even now when he knew this friend might very well be hurting. Simply looking upon her deep violet eyes gave him a comforting sensation within the pit of his belly, one that gave him just enough confidence to know that even if his worried tone were to irritate her, she would never allow herself to make him feel ashamed for it.

"I've just got a lot on my mind." She answered honestly, something that Denki would never admit had actually shocked him in that moment.

"...like what?" He asked quietly, tilting his head in a way that his mother had always told him made him look like a lost puppy.

"Just something that Bakugou said to me..." she began, drumming the tip of her pen against the roughly carpeted floor, "He said...the other day...that I should look for a muse..."

"A muse?" Denki questioned, pressing his brows together. What the hell did that even mean? Maybe Bakugou was a hell of a lot weirder than Denki had originally presumed.

"Mm." Kyoka hummed in response, her eyes falling back to their pages of her textbook, "A reason to sing..."

Denki pulled his dry bottom lip between his teeth, dragging it through them carefully, pulling at the skin with little care, tearing apart whatever loose areas he could. His bleached hair fell over his brows, something he had grown accustomed to over time, to the point where he hardly ever felt the need to brush it aside.

A reason to sing? He would have thought that Kyoka already had one of those, especially seeing that up until this point, Midnight had never had single complaint about the way that Kyoka sang, nor did she ever comment on the passion, nor reasoning behind her words. It wasn't until now, that N was gone, and Bakugou had taken his place, that this was happening. For some reason, this only lead Denki to dislike Bakugou more. He wasn't sure what the aggressive idiot had done to cause these issues, but he knew for sure that he was the problem, and now he was filling Kyoka's head with messed up bullshit such as the idea that she needed a 'muse' in order to be able to sing, regardless of the fact that she had always done fine without one.

"What the hell does that even mean?" Denki grumbled, turning his nose up at her words, "Bakugou honestly just sounds like he's full of shit half the time, ignore him."

Kyoka took a long pause as she clearly began to think, hopefully considering Denki's words enough that she would choose to actually ignore their asshole of a new guitarist, and pull herself out of this weird slump he had clearly placed her in.

"No." she mumbled suddenly, pulling her eyes up to stare into Denki's own, "He's right...up until this point I was always singing for the band, because I wanted us to get better, to succeed, but...but if I'm gonna sing songs about love, and sex, I have to have a reason behind it right? How am I suppose to make people feel anything...if I don't even feel it myself?"

Denki felt his cheeks tinge just slightly at the mention of the word 'sex'. They were open with each other, sure. Even with their other friend's, it wasn't a taboo subject. Kyoka and him had been the ones to write Overdrive in the first place, a song about sex that had become instantly one of the bands hits, but it was also a song they had devised while under the influence of alcohol, the substances that had been running through their veins, numbing the embarrassment that often came with speaking of the subject in the presence of others.

Following actually writing it, they had become disconnected from it's lyrics, enough so that they weren't embarrassed by them at all when they performed it, so why now did Midnight, and now Kyoka, feel as if their needed to be any meaning behind the words?

"So...you think Midnight doesn't feel like you actually understand the lyrics?" Denki asked, letting a shy laugh slip out along his words.

"I think...I think she knows that I understand them..." Kyoka answered, not shying away from keeping eye contact with her friend, "I think...she just wants to be able to feel them...to feel the music. She wants me to feel it too...so that the audience can fall into it...I need to feel, so that my words aren't empty, so that I can capture people with everything that I sing. I think Bakugou understood that."

"As if Bakugou understands anything about sex. Who the hell would fuck an ice king like him in the first place?" Denki scoffed, rolling his eyes to the side, peering off at their classmates who were all in the middle of their own work.

"Eiji wants to." Kyoka announced, grinning cheekily at the mere thought. Denki felt as if he might physically gag at the very idea.

"Eijirou has shit taste. You know that for a fact, probably more than anyone." Denki grumbled, fiddling with the edges of Kyoka's textbook.

"Regardless, you know what I'm talking about right? When Bakugou hit the mic, even I felt something, and I'm gay as hell."

"So, what you're saying is...Bakugou was able to sing like that, because he had a...muse?" Denki quarried, speaking gently the word that he still wasn't sure if he actually understood the meaning of. Kyoka simply nodded in response.

"I can almost guarantee he was thinking of someone, or something, when he was singing." She explained, moving to point the end of her pen towards Denki's nose, "He could make us feel that way, because he felt that way. When he was singing about fucking, he was thinking about fucking. Fucking in a way that was real enough that he could be heard in his voice. That's what I need. I need someone I wanna fuck."

For a moment, Denki felt all the air that he had collected in his lungs, attempt to escape from both his throat and nose at the same instant. He was practically choking on it, gagging into the air and drawing the attention of everyone in the room. He wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or cry in regards to his friend's straight-forward comment. He simply continued to choke on his own breath, Kyoka's hand reaching forward to slap down upon his back, between his shoulder-blades, with a gentle force.

"W-Well..." Denki huffed out, a collection of tears that had formed themselves in the corners of his eyes, slipping down his face as he spoke, "We're just going to have to find you someone then, aren't we?"

"You make that sound easier than it actually is. You know I don't just like anyone." Kyoka replied, falling backwards to sit upon her own shins, head slipping back, face directed upwards towards the roof. She was right, it wasn't often that Kyoka was ever romantically interested in anyone, and even when she was, she hardly ever did anything about it.

"Overdrive is a sex song, you don't really have to like someone romantically to want to fuck them Kyo. Just think about someone hot. Someone you would want to take to bed. Like an idol or something." Denki suggested, placing both his hands behind his head, grinning over at his friend in a sheepish manner.

"Ugh, I've tried that, it hasn't been working." Kyoka groaned, kicking her heals out against the carpet.

"Mm..." Denki muttered, his head tilting around as he scoped out the room, his eyes falling on a group of female classmates in the corner, that all seemed to be working together on something that involved a keyboard and a few microphones, "What about Akemi-san? She's really cute, and like..." he began, his hands reaching towards his own chest, pulling forward into the air, "Her tits are huge."

Denki watched Kyoka's head fall, her line of sight following his as he tilting his head in the direction of one of the girls within the small group. Mao Akemi was a petite girl with tan skin, her hair bleached to a soft chestnut colour, and curled softly, sitting pined up above her head in a loose ponytail. They had shared a few classes with her since their first year. She was softly spoken, but never shied away from helping her classmates. She had nice thighs, connected to her rather long legs for someone who only sat slightly taller than Kyoka, but her chest was huge, even if she often hid it underneath modest clothing. All-in-all, she was a pretty great choice, especially, because neither of them had ever seen her interact with guys, maybe Kyoka would get lucky.

"She's...not really my type..." Kyoka replied, but Denki didn't miss the change of colour that came upon Kyoka's face when she looked in Akemi-san's direction.

They had never been shy of sharing their different tastes with each other. They'd only been around thirteen when Kyoka had admitted to Denki that she wasn't really interested in guys, and generally found herself more attracted to their female classmates. Denki hadn't really been that surprised, even if the small part of him that had naturally been crushing on Kyoka as the pair aged, was slightly disappointed at the idea that the feelings would never be mutual. As they grew older, it wasn't rare for them to hide in the corner of convenience stores, peaking past the tightly-taped volumes of adult magazines to get a glimpse of the naked ladies that were contained within their pages. At times, Kyoka would even pry into her father's AV collection, sharing the DVD's with Denki as they both hid beneath her bed, exchanging comments as their bodies warmed over the movie's contents.

So it wasn't that surprising, that they both had a generally decent idea of what the other liked in a woman. Denki often steered towards girls with large breasts, small hips, and outrageous personalities. He liked someone he could laugh with, and often steered away from girls with high educational achievements, they intimidated him.

Where as Kyoka had specific tastes when it came to girls. She usually liked darker hair, long, despite the fact that her own was short. She said she liked the way it felt between her fingers, as she ran them through in any kind of situation. She also liked big breasts, but wasn't as fussy about it as Denki was, but usually she strayed within a thin line of attraction and jealousy when it came to bodies such as those. She didn't mind if a girl was smart or not, as long as she was able to hold a conversation with her and feel comfortable telling them things, even if she wasn't always the most open of people. Height was also another factor that often varied, she didn't generally mind too much, but seeing she herself was quite short, depending on who the girl was it could often make a huge difference when it came to her attraction towards her.

"Yeah." Denki replied, nodding as he moved his gaze away from the corner of the room, instead choosing to continue looking around, his eyes once again falling upon another of their female classmates.

This time it was a taller girl, one with straight black hair that fell low to her back, long enough that it reached the floor in her position cross-legged upon the carpet. Spite the cooler chill of the spring day, she was dressed in silky blouse, and a short-cut pleated skirt that fell mid thigh upon her legs. Her breasts were rather small, but knowing that it wasn't something that really bothered Kyoka, Denki decided to look past that fact. He believed her name was Shiori Hayashida, a girl who neither of them knew too much about, other than the fact that she had a lovely singing voice and often chose to work on projects alone, rather than with friends.

"What about Hayashida-san, she's pretty cute, and I bet if you tried talking to her a bit, she'd probably open up." Denki suggested, looking back over towards Kyoka, hoping no one would notice his blatant staring.

"Pretty sure she has a boyfriend in the law department, he comes to pick her up after class sometimes." Kyoka explained, looking over towards their target for only a brief few seconds.

"Okay, well we shall put her on the hold list for later." Denki spoke, spinning one of Kyoka's pen between his fingers.

"Denki! You can't just assume people are going to break up later." Kyoka laughed, rolling her eyes as she grinning in Denki's direction.

"She's taking this class, and he's in law, they're destined to argue. Won't last until the end of the year, trust me."

"Tokoyami is from the law department you know."

"And I wouldn't fuck Toko-kun, because I understand my place in the hierarchy and I don't dare cross it."

"You're just scared of Tokoyami, that has nothing to do with the fact that he's studying law." Kyoka teased, grinning over at Denki playfully.

"You have to watch the quiet goth ones Kyo." Denki hissed, poking his finger towards his friend in warning, "One minute you're kissing them in a Karaoke booth to stop them bitching about how senseless the music choices are, next minute you're on your back with candle wax being dripped on your nipples, halfway to having your dick sacrificed to satan."

"That sounds way too specific..." Kyoka began slowly, her eyes dipped in suspicion.

"That's it!" Denki suddenly cried, reaching forward to place his hands upon Kyoka's shoulders, forcing her to watch him closely, "Karaoke! There's always tonnes of cute girls at karaoke bars!"

"And your point is..." Kyoka replied, pulling back against his forceful grip upon her, scrunching her face up in confusion.

"We always go drinking the night before a performance anyway, why not go to Karaoke? It'll give you the chance to practice singing, and we might even be able to find you a muse?" Denki announced, smiling brightly in regards to his obviously brilliant idea.

"I'm not sure that's..."

"It's already decided! I'm messaging everyone right now!"

This was it. This was how Denki was going to return the smile to Kyoka's face. He would find his friend a muse, even if it cost him a night spent in the presence of Katsuki Bakugou and the awful singing voice of Hanta Sero. This was his mission.

Eijirou would be lying to himself if he didn't admit that the idea of being able to spend extra time with Katsuki Bakugou in a social setting, after the glorious experiences he had been apart of over the past few days, today at the cafe included, didn't make him want to bound with excitement.

Even now, standing near the wall of his living room, fixing his hair in a oddly placed wall mirror, that contained, not one, but two cracks from two seperate situations, both involving Denki and shoe throwing, he couldn't help but feel giddy at the very idea. He looked at himself in the mirror, running his fingers through his over-gelled hair and trying to fix the strands in place. He held back a smile with the force of his teeth upon his lip, eyes highly focused on the task at hand.

From the corner of his eye, he could see Mina kneeling upon the floor in front of Kyoka, a hair straighter at work upon the smaller girl's hair, heating it into submission. It was usually like this when he group decided to go out together. Due to Bakugou's 'Not a Single Soul in the Apartment' rule, which even now that he was apart of the group, was yet to be lifted, Mina often jointed Denki, Kyoka and Eijirou in their shared home, bringing her own assortment of clothes and makeup products, often also using ones that she left behind in one of Kyoka's bedroom draws, which seemed to be solely dedicated to their pink-haired friend's possessions.

None of them minded much. Really, if they could all find a way to fit Mina and Sero into an apartment alongside them, they'd all being living together regardless of the fact that it would probably cause chaos. They all got along well enough, but even with only the three of them currently living in a single space, there was never a lack of petty arguments and distress.

It didn't seem to bother Kyoka and Denki as much as it bothered him, probably, because they had basically grown up together in the first place, along with Denki's three siblings, and Kyoka's own two. They were use to a busy environment, use to sharing small spaces with large amounts of people. For Eijirou, who had never had the pleasure of having a sibling, he'd only ever been in the presence of no more than two other human's at a single time, both being responsible working adults. In the end though, it hadn't taken him too long to get use to it.

"Ei, you look great, stopping playing around in the mirror and actually put some pants on." Kyoka spoke up, noticeably watching him from the corner of her eye, grinning brightly in regards to her friend's actions.

Eijirou looked down at his near clothes-less body, regarding the tight fit of his underwear, before eyeing the multiple different outfits that he had spread upon the couch to his side. He couldn't seem to make a decision, which is why he had instead chosen to work on his hair, a task he could probably do with his eyes closed at this point, and was planning on going back to his decision making for his clothing later.

"You can't rush perfection Kyoka, that's just how it it." he shot back, turning to wink at her, causing the girl to laugh, near shaking the hair straightener in the direction of her eye. Mina scolded her for his, flicking Kyoka between the eyes with her finger, prompting her to sit still.

"Is that why Denki TAKES SO LONG IN THE BATHROOM WHEN SOME OF US WANT TO WASH OUR HAIR?" Hanta pipped up, screaming loudly in the direction of the bathroom door, sitting backwards upon one of the trio's mismatched dining chairs, laughing as he listened to Denki blow-dry his hair, before the dryer went quiet and the bathroom door creeped open just slightly.

"Are you saying I'm perfect babe?" Denki teased, blowing a kiss in Hanta's direction, "You can come share a shower with me if you like, I don't mind."

"Rather not my dude. You've had just a few too many cones for me to trust your hands to keep to themselves." Hanta retorted, swinging the chair upon two legs, poking his tongue out at Denki as the other boy let the door fall shut once again, the sound of the hair-dryer returning not more than fifteen seconds later.

"Get a room you two, you're gonna make me sick." Mina hummed, hair straightener now discarded to the side as she sponged a gentle layer of foundation upon Kyoka's face, not looking up at Hanta as she spoke.

"Would take a few too many drinks to get me in bed with him, don't you worry." Hanta replied, laying his head long his span of his own arms that rested on the back of the hair, continuing to swing it idly as he spoke.

It was at this point that Eijirou had decided upon an outfit, choosing to slide on a newish pair of black jeans, a reward that he had purchased for himself last Sunday after having been paid by the cafe for the first time on Friday of that week. They'd been completely intact when he'd found them, but now sat full of hand-crafted holes, strategically placed and worn in with some sand paper and a well-loved box cutter. He places most of the holes near the knees, but was feeling brave enough at the time to allow for some further up his thigh, showing more skin than his older pairs, and even allowing for a peak at his boxer-briefs, depending on which pair he had on at the time.

Shirt-wise, he'd opted for something a little more conservative than his past few choices for earlier in the week, wanting to prevent any unwanted attention from anyone who wasn't his friend group. This time, he'd decided upon a rather old tank top, one he'd purchased when he was younger, but had always been too large until recently. Although it still fit rather loose, it sat more snugly upon his hips than it once had, the result of gym workouts, and a few too many trips into the tumble dryer rather than a clothesline. The arms dipped low, in a way that if he hunched forward too far, the fabric at the front of the shirt would fall to reveal more of his abdomen than his mama would allow if she was around at this point in time. Upon the front, was a large picture, faded enough that it was unclear what it had once been, other than the fact that it was framed in a rectangle of white, covering the entire front of the tank, but cracking in many places where the picture had lost it's colour with time. The collar also fell low, but only just enough that the first few letters of a typewriter font tattoo that lay on the left of his chest, was in view of anyone who cared to look close enough.

He completed his outfit with a pair of bright red socks, tucked beneath his prized pair of blood-red Dr Marten's, re-laced with metallic gold laces that matched the gold-chained locket that fell around his neck, one his mother's had bought for him just before he'd left for Tokyo, within it, two small picture's of the both of them. He accompanied this with a tight spiked collar with small studs, one that was far less threatening than the ones Kyoka chose to wear around on the daily. He folded a black-and-white bandana into a thin strip, wrapping it around his hairline and knotting it at the top of his head, letting the knot fall just to the right of the centre of his forehead.

He looked himself over once again in the mirror, one that was just large enough that if he stepped back, he could get a good view of his entire body. It wasn't that Eijirou was a vein person, but he did happen to occasionally take pride in his appearance when he felt the need, and it was just that tonight he happened to feel the need.

"You look good bub." Mina's voice came, causing him to turn towards where she still sat upon the floor, brush dipping into a series of purple eye shadows, before it was moved towards Kyoka's face, causing Mina to once again divert her attention.

He made his way towards the pair, dropping down to kneel by Mina's side, watching her as she worked. Hanta was gone now, presumably having decided that it wasn't worth waiting for Denki to finish off in the bathroom, choosing to join the blond and shower while the other worked on his hair at the bathroom counter.

"Nervous?" Mina quarried suddenly, causing Eijirou to jump in his place. For a moment, he assumed she might be talking about seeing Bakugou, though he couldn't quite figure out why his mind had automatically gone in that direction, but then she continued, "It's the first time you guys are going to be playing in front of an audience in nearly two months, and the first time you'll be playing..."

"...without him..." Eijirou completed, referring to the band's ex-guitarist, which left a sickening feeling in the base of his stomach.

"Well, I was actually going to say with Katsichi..." Mina corrected, eyes never moving from where she was focusing on applying Kyoka's makeup expertly.

"We'll be fine." Kyoka pipped up, attempting to speak in a way that couldn't shift her features too much, fearing she must disrupt Mina's progress, "At practice yesterday, we went through everything we'll be playing in the set. Bakugou knew it all, really well too, he's pretty damn amazing that way."

Eijirou thought back to the past two weeks, the time that they had all spent practicing with Bakugou, and especially the few times that they had practiced alone, just the two of them. It had amazed Eijirou how quickly Bakugou was able to learn each song with expert skill, making it sound as if he had been playing their music almost as long as the rest of them had. He had no doubts that Bakugou was going to do great tomorrow. He wouldn't let them down.

"I knew he would be the right choice for you." Mina replied, a gently proud smile, hiding upon her features as she reached to begin applying Kyoka's eyeliner. She'd never admit it, but Eijirou could tell that she was happy. In a way, Mina had always enjoyed having all the people she cared about in one place, and as much as Bakugou probably tried to resist her, Eijirou knew that Mina cared for Bakugou deeply, and that the idea of having him close to the rest of her friends, was something she probably held dear.

As much as Eijirou wanted to feel the same way, for her comments to have spurred an exciting feeling in regards to Bakugou, from deep within his body, instead all Eijirou could think of was the fact that this truly was the first time they would be playing without N. Since the beginning, since before they had even been picked up by a label, N had been their guitarist. They had followed his sound, creating something around him that even with Bakugou filling the gap, Eijirou suddenly wasn't sure if they could replace.

Eijirou felt like he might be sick, and when he felt like this, he knew there was only one way he was going to be able to fix it. So, with a quiet apology and a rush to his feet, he made his way to the front door, pulling the denim jacket that Bakugou had lent him, from the rack by the kitchen, wrapping it around himself as a shield from the cold. Excusing himself, he had his way out of the apartment, with the promise that he would be back before it was time for the group to leave.

As they made their way up the street, the roads buzzing with life as they generally were in Shinjuku on a Friday evening, Eijirou couldn't help but feel his body practically vibrating with excitement. While Mina had finished up her own hair and makeup, the other four of them had made their way downstairs to the closest Seven Eleven, choosing to purchase a few drinks before they would catch the train, drinking them quietly as they waited for their friend.

The beers effects had hit the group near instantly, the alcohol mixing with the remnants of each of their individual high's from an earlier session over an episode of some obscure game show on a channel hardly any of them ever watched on tv, now left them no more than slightly more alert, and a whole lot of happy. Eijirou walked along with his hand clasped tightly within Mina's the other gripping the back of Denki's shirt, who may have happened to be slightly more high than the rest, his bubbling laughter filling the air with giggles and snorts that had Eijirou's chest scratching with amusement.

"Ba-ku-boiiiiiiii." Kyoka chimed as they rounded the familiar corner, entering the street that Eijirou recognised as the one that contained their usual choice of Karaoke bar, mostly because it's rooms were larger than average and they had no time limit as long as at least someone continued to order at least once per hour.

Her voice caught Eijirou's attention, his chin tilting up from where it had been ducked in an attempt to ignore the purposefully odd way that Denki was strolling down the pathway, trying to make Eijirou laugh. When he looked up, he noticed Bakugou's familiar figure, leaning casually against the glass of the outside area off a smoking zone. He too had changed out of his clothes from earlier in the day, discarding the flannel for a tight fitting white shirt, which sat beneath a dark grey hooded sweatshirt, that hang upon, the sleeves pushed up along his arms.

However, Eijirou was pretty sure he was still wearing the same dark washed skinny jeans he'd warn to the cafe. He recognised the way they clung tightly to Bakugou's thin thighs, sections of skin peaking out from the holes in their knees. His glasses were gone, which probably meant that he had chose to put his contacts in, something Eijirou assumed the boy preferred, as more often than not he hardly ever saw Bakugou wear his glasses outside snapchat's that were taken in the boy's home, or occasionally in class.

Kyoka was the first to make a move towards Bakugou, willingly leaping forward to slap her fist playfully against his chest, causing Bakugou to reach for her wrist, gripping it within his own hand, and pulling her closer towards himself. His eyes shifted downwards towards Kyoka's grinning face, his glare set upon her, hand still gripping her wrist roughly in a way Eijirou presumed mustn't actually hurt as much as it appeared, seeing Kyoka made no action to pull herself from it.

"Missed you." Kyoka spoke again, the familiarity of it shocking what was obviously not only Eijirou, as beside him even Denki stiffened in regards to her words. Their closeness was a shock to pretty much all of them, though Eijirou did recall the fact that the pair had walked in to practice together on Wednesday, but up until now he'd never taken the chance the question the action.

He watched on with the rest of them as Bakugou continued to look down at her. Kyoka's free arm was now wrapped around his neck, her small body hanging limply from his form. She was grinning cheekily up towards him, presumably testing the boundaries of how far should could push Bakugou before he would blow, something that didn't seem unlike her in the slightest. Her bravery up against intimidating people had always been undeniable.

"Yeah, whatever." Bakugou simply grumbled in response, loosening his fingers upon her wrist, letting it drop from his grasp.

Kyoka let him go easily, stepping backwards in order to give him some space. Though his response was less than positive, she still seemed to have won regardless. What exactly it was that she had won, none of them could be sure, but Bakugou hadn't harmed her in any way, nor had he raised his voice, which in everyone's eyes was better than what could have occurred.

"C'mon then, I'm hungry and ready to drink." Kyoka continued, turning her head back over her shoulder towards the rest of the group, before moving to make her way inside.

Denki was instantly following in suit, causing Eijirou to allow his grip upon his friend's jacket to fall, but his hold of Mina's hand stayed, as she pulled him along, dragging him inside despite his distraction, eyes instead following Bakugou as he pushed himself from his leaning position, following after the rest of them silently.

The room they were lead to was a rather large one, easily fitting the six of them without concern. It was brightly coloured with various shades of blue and orange scattered along the walls and the furniture. There was a long, white coffee table in the centre of what was a continuous u-shaped series of couches placed along the back wall and sides of the room. There was a larger space towards the front for people to stand while they sing, accompanied by a small table that help a remote and two microphones.

The TV upon the wall was large enough for them to be able to read the lyrics from the couches, but regardless Mina always insisted that those who were singing stood up while they did. She had a fear of liquids making their way onto the microphones, a fear which had proven to be valid one time when Denki had tripped, spilling his beer over Hanta, including the karaoke bar's microphone that had been in his grip at the time. They never fought against her rule after that.

They all immediately made themselves comfortable, Kyoka even choosing to remove her boots, pushing her back against Bakugou's shoulder as she pressed herself close to him, smirking playfully as they boy let out an irritated huff, shoving at her forcefully as her eyes wandered over the drinks menu within her grasp.

Eijirou couldn't help but laugh as he watched the pair, slipping into a spot next to Mina, reaching to pluck a menu from between his best friend's finger's, reading over to carefully.

"I'll buy first round." He announced, eyes glossing over the various drink options available to him.

At this announcement, the rest of them lit up, quickly calling out their orders towards the woman who had shown them to the room, allowing for her to insert each order into her electronic pad, nodding along as each of them spoke. However, the only one who remained quiet, was Bakugou.

"Drink order Bakugou?" Eijirou questioned after a moment, lifting his head to look over at the blond.

He wasn't sure why he felt nervous, especially seeing he had spent most of his afternoon in Bakugou's presence, chatting with him on-and-off between his studying, and continued work on his letter to his younger sister, which apparently he found harder to achieve than the series of complicated tasks assigned to him by his lecturers. Yet, regardless of this, he almost felt shy when address the boy, his eyes refusing to remain trained on him for too long.

"Water..." Bakugou mumbled, turning his head away from the menu that Kyoka had shoved towards his face, pressing his elbow against her shoulder.

"Just water?!" Denki pipped up, letting a chuckle escape between his lips, "What are you some sort of wea-"

"Katsuki doesn't like to drink in front of people he doesn't known very well." Mina cut in, tilting her head to smile over at the roommate, but he only growled.

"Shut up you alien fuck. I could drink if I wanted to. I just don't fucking feel like it." He hissed, crossing his arms around his chest angrily.

In the end they ordered him a water, but Eijirou also chose to order a cola just in case Bakugou grew bored, which only worked to remind him of Bakugou's comment earlier in the week about his dislike for things that were sweet. He took the cola anyway, setting it upon the coffee table before him, and every once in a while, Eijirou may have caught Bakugou taking a sip or two between songs, even while the rest of them were on their third or fourth drinks by now.

"Don't give up, look your goals are coming closer~" Mina and Kyoka attempted to sing in unison, Kyoka drunkenly stumbling over the words as she wrapped herself around Mina, clinging to her shoulders and causing the pink-haired girl to laugh between the lyrics, free arm coming down to slip around Kyoka's waist.

"No matter how distant we are, our hearts are linked as one~" they continued, singing loud above Hanta's booming laughter as they went, bouncing up and down in their spots, spinning as they went.

Eijirou couldn't help but laugh as well, shaking his head in their direction between taking sips of his beer. He adored moment like this, where all of them could come together and just be themselves, let loose and act the way they had since their high school days. It'd been a long time since they'd gone to karaoke, a tradition that had started not long into their high school careers. Friday afternoon karaoke at the minute bar near the station had been such as large part of the bonding that had brought them so close. Eijirou couldn't help but feel giddy.

"Feel my eyes upon you~" Mina cried out, having dropped her microphone in split decision to instead use both her hands to cup Kyoka's cheeks as she screamed out the last lyrics, Kyoka laughing too hard at this point to even be able to sing at all.

Eijirou's chest heaved as Denki wrapped his hand's around his wrists, hauling the red-head to his feet, grinning as he dragged him to the front of their room, reaching to pick both of the microphones from the ground, shoving one into Eijirou's grip.

Eijirou was trying his best not to stumble at this point, though he was significantly less drunk than his blond counterpart, who appeared to be well over the rest of them in terms of intoxication. Regardless, Denki held the remote as steadily as he could manage, skipping through the songs as he tried to pick one that he could sing with his friend, all while forcing his weight upon Eijirou, allowing the slightly taller boy to wrap his arms around Denki's thin waist, holding him steady upon his feet.

Suddenly, a familiar tune began to play, and Eijirou could almost feel himself on the verge of hysterics once again. It was an English song, one that he and Denki always chose to sing together from their high school days, and one that he still messed up the lyrics to despite his multitude of experience. Suddenly, as the lyrics began to flash upon the screen, Denki wiggled his way from Eijirou's grip, spinning to look his friend in the eyes as well as he could in his drunk state, holding the microphone to his lips.

"Don't go breaking my heart~" he sang, stumbling over the English words, but reciting them despite the fact that he wasn't even looking towards the screen. Eijirou immediately held his own microphone up.

"I couldn't if I tried..." He sang softly, his cheeks warming even more than they had been so far due to the alcohol running through his veins.

"Honey if I get restless~"

"Baby you're not the kind~"

Denki reached forward, wrapping an arm around Eijirou's waist, taking hold of the back of Eijirou's tank, his jacket having been removed around an hour ago after he began to feel too warm in it's confines.

"Don't go breaking my heart~" Denki sang out, pulling Eijirou to dance around with him, Eijirou's alcohol infused brain going along without hesitation as they began to sway as they sang.

"You take the weight off me~"

"Honey when you knock on my door~"

"I gave you my key~"

He knew they sounded horrible, his english had never been the best, and since leaving school it had only gotten worse. The best he could do it flash his eyes towards the screen every so often, and attempt to put things together inside his swirling brain. Luckily, no one seemed to care, as they clapped along to the pair regardless, laughing and cheering as they went.

"Woooohoooo, nobody knows it~" They sang together, swinging their hips in time with the music, dancing along the front of the coffee table, smiling over the their other four friend's as they went.

This continued for the remainder of the song, the boys moving between singing playfully towards each other, swaying their bodies around, hugging each other through the lyrics as they slowly began to disregard the screen, singing from the heart, even when the words were wrong and their voices sounded horrible.

Once they were done, Eijirou giggled his way back towards the couch, passing the microphone over to Hanta, who took it easily, standing to make his way over to Denki, snatching the remote from his drunken grip, refusing to pick a song until Denki was able to calm himself down enough that he could breath easily instead of huffing for air between his laughing.

Eijirou grinned happily, reaching to high-five Mina as he passed her. He reached to scoop his half empty beer bottle from the table, tipping his head back to down a large mouthful of the still-cool liquid, enjoying the chilled sensation as it made his way down his throat.

He allowed himself to fall backwards upon the couch, landing halfway into someone's lap, only noticing it was Bakugou when he could hear the older boy swearing beneath him, familiar hands falling upon his waist in an attempt to shove Eijirou off his outstretched thigh. Instead, Eijirou rolled closer, pulling himself into Bakugou's lap, allowing his arm to come up and wrap around the blonds shoulder, ignoring his grumbled insults, the sound of Hanta and Denki's singing practically drowning him out.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing Shitty-Hair? There's a whole damn couch you could be sitting on?" Bakugou growled, his voice falling close to Eijirou's ear, the feelings of his breath unusually warm against the red-head's skin.

"I don't wanna sit there." Eijirou chimed out teasingly, turning his head to the side so that he could stare into Bakugou's eyes, pushing his legs up far into the air, causing his body to fall even further back into Bakugou's own, "You let me before~"

Bakugou only scoffed, turning his face away from Eijirou enough that he could only see his profile no matter how far he turned his head. In order to combat this, Eijirou swung himself so that he sat with his legs slung outwards across the surface of the couch, resting himself comfortably between Bakugou's legs, allowing him to turn his head easily to the side, eyeing Bakugou's face with drunken curiosity.

Eijirou reached his bottle up, placing the rim of it against Bakugou's mouth gently, letting the cold surface of the glass roll against the other's bottom lip in offering.

"Y'should drink a little and maybe you wont be so grumpy~" Eijirou announced, tilting the bottle a little so that some of the liquid could escape, only for most of it to roll down Bakugou's chin instead, his clenched teeth blocking the beverage from entering his mouth.

"I'm not a fucking child you shitty little idiot, I can fucking drink by myself." Bakugou growled, snapping the bottle roughly from Eijirou's grasp, watching him for what felt like minutes, but was probably only close to five or so seconds, before Bakugou was moving the bottle to his own mouth, taking a long swig, before shoving it back into Eijirou's own grasp. Eijirou smiled proudly, his drunken brain telling him that this time, he was the person who won.

Finishing off his drink, Eijirou allowed for the bottle to roll from his grasp and upon the floor, which caused Bakugou to scold him for the action, but the blond made no move to attempt to pick up the bottle, nor force Eijirou to do so either. Instead, Bakugou sat still as Eijirou lifted the hem of his own shirt, clearing the mess of liquid from upon Bakugou's jaw, laughing at the way he scrunched his face up like a child in response, his hands moving further up Eijirou's body to hold the boy steady in his lap.

When Eijirou allowed his shirt to fall back down, it fell to rest over Bakugou's hands, that now sat, one upon the small of his back and the other resting just bellow Eijirou's navel. It was the same place it had been momentarily just a few days prior, when Eijirou had once more been sitting between Bakugou's thighs, a place he was slowly learning that he enjoyed being.

"You drank in front of me, does that mean we're friends now?" Eijirou beamed, wiggling in his spot, attempting to get comfortable upon Bakugou's lap, enjoying the feeling of the cool skin of Bakugou's hands against his own warm body.

"Don't go getting your hopes up." Bakugou huffed, blinking down at Eijirou as he shimmied, nose twitching with each movement.

"So we're not friends?!" Eijirou gasped, blinking towards Bakugou, pushing himself forward enough that he was sitting right up in the blonds face. The silence that followed was almost deathly, and Eijirou felt as if in his drunken state he might just be completely unable to read Bakugou's mood, which was pretty irritating.

"Don't ask stupid questions." Was all Bakugou chose to say, moving his head so that he could peer past Eijirou towards the front of the room, where Hanta and Denki were still singing loudly. It was another English song, one that Eijirou didn't recognise, and from what he could hear, they probably didn't know it that well either.

"You two sound like shit." Bakugou announced, pulling a laugh from Eijirou who moved to hold his hand over his own mouth, not wanting to offend his friends, but being incapable of hold back the involuntary sound, "What sort of shitty school taught you two how to speak English, huh?"

Denki, who over the past few weeks had apparently obtained some kind of 'Bakugou Insult Detector”, immediately fell silent, shifting himself in a drunken stumble so that he was able to face Bakugou, pointing his microphone towards the other blond in an accusing manner.

"You shut your trap Baku-boy, not like you've sung a single word since we got here." Denki slurred, spinning the microphone around in his grip, moving to catch it quickly as it almost slips to the floor.

"Because Karaoke is stupid." Bakugou retorted swiftly, his sober brain clearly running far faster than Denki's own, "No competition singing against you losers anyway."

"Awww, yeah?" Denki shot back, taking his time to process Bakugou's words, before coming up with an appropriate response.

"Yeah." Bakugou responded, his eyes never leaving Denki as the hand that had been sitting carefully upon Eijirou's abdomen, thumb flicking carefully at the piercing that sat just above that, then moved to sit high upon Eijirou's thigh, a few finger's making their way into one of the worn holes in the fabric of his jeans, sliding along the skin as he spoke, sending a shiver along Eijirou's spin.

"You're so full of shit." Denki scoffed in return, flicking some hair from upon his brow, before reaching up to smooth his sweat-damp fringe completely back from his face, pressing it against his scalp with the rest of his hair.

"Oh? Am I fucking now?" Bakugou shot back, his brows pressing together.

Eijirou could tell what was coming, and he silently cursed Denki for having ruined his moment with Bakugou. There was no way either of them were going to let this slide, especially not with the impending sense of challenge that was now lingering in the air between them.

Eijirou allowed a hand to reach up, slipping itself atop of Bakugou's own upon his thigh. He pressed the heel of his palm against it, pushing Bakugou's finger's further into the hole in his jeans, in a vein attempt to secure his crush's place beneath him. His attempts fell short however, as Bakugou's hold came to a close with a strong squeeze of Eijirou's leg, before he felt himself being picked up off Bakugou's lap, the blond boy wordlessly allowing Eijirou to fall upon the couch as he stood to his feet.

"That a fucking challenge you bleach-brained fucker?" Bakugou hissed, not hesitating to make his way around the table, stalking towards Hanta, who willingly handed over his microphone before it could be forced from his person.

"You accepting it?" Denki slurred back, cocking his hip to the side. Eijirou wanted to choke him in that moment.

"Just pick a song loser, and get ready to be fucking destroyed." Bakugou announced, a cocky smirk pulling upon his features, one that hit Eijirou in parts of his body he never even knew existed, let alone that they could so easily be stimulated by such a simple assertion of dominance.

Eijirou sighed, pushing himself up enough that he was able to crawl his way towards Mina, falling drunkenly into her lap, his head thudding against her thigh as he situated his cheek satisfyingly upon it, digging his nose into the soft fabric of her geometrically patterned leggings. He instantly felt her finger's reach into his hair, pressing themselves through the rough gel to slide through the soft sections beneath it's surface.

"I'm going to use Denki's face for my next bicep workout routine..." he grumbled into her leg, eyes following Bakugou and Denki as they fought over the remote, unable to agree on a song for their sudden-death challenge of superiority.

"You don't mean that." Mina cooed, holding back a smile as Kyoka snorted beside her, rolling her eyes down towards Eijirou's dejected form.

"Left hook, right hook, then fucking knee strike him in the dick..." Eijirou mumbled, blinking lazily, trying to ignore the laughs he could hear from both girls behind him. This was nowhere near a laughing matter, they shouldn't challenge him on this in the slightest. This wasn't just some sort of drunken rambling, he's serious.

"Fucking hurry up and pick a song you fucking shit head." Bakugou's voice came again, causing each of them to turn their gaze back to the front of the room, where Denki was flicking through the Karaoke suggestions intently, eyes as focused on the screen as he could manage in his impaired state.

"Shut up, god you're so damn impatient." Denki retorted, causing Bakugou to roll his eyes, arms pressed tightly over his chest as he turned momentarily to look over at the couch, eying Eijirou for a moment.

"Ready to see how a real man sings Shitty-Hair?" Bakugou asked suddenly, catching Eijirou off guard.

The red-head's eyes grew wide as he pushed himself up from his place in Mina's lap, blinking over at Bakugou as he pressed himself into the couch cushions, holding his knees close to his chest, arms wrapped around them tightly as he began to grin.

"Oh? You giving up to Denki already?" Eijirou shot, teeth digging roughly into the skin of his bottom lip as he watched the way Bakugou's brow twitch with a sense of irritation, before he was flinging himself around to face the screen once more.

The song began to play, filling the room with the loud thud of the music, the sounds vibrating off the soundproof walls, and suddenly Eijirou thought that he might be able to enjoy this, even if it was slightly less exciting than the concept of seducing his way into gaining Bakugou's affections.

"The seasons die off one by one, their voices of demise turn to winds, the man who can't get drunk, of this colorful town..." the pair begin to sing, though it quite obvious from the get go, that Denki is far too drunk to be capable of reading the lyrics correctly, let alone singing them with any kind of accuracy. It would almost be comedic, if Bakugou's own force wasn't working right alongside his, picking the words up easily and letting them flow from his mouth with melodic beauty. Even Hanta's laughs gently died to a close as they all listened, zoning their way in on the sober boy's words.

"It's like a translucent shadow, which is uncertain to me, it calls to me, it's living...If I sing to the rain, would the clouds break? It's a withered life, in a boisterous summer..." Bakugou continues to sing, alongside Denki, who's own voice was slowly beginning to fall silent, his eyes set on Bakugou as he breathed the words out against the microphone, letting them fall with a fiery passion almost unfamiliar in the way it poured like a burning oil spill from his lips.

"Tomorrow's die off one by one, even if we hurry, we can't reach it and it becomes the past..." Denki had become completely quiet now, his own microphone having fallen to his side as his arm hung limply from his shoulder, eyes, like everyone else's, focused on Bakugou as he continued to sing the lyrics, "We rush to live, the fire is only lit for a moment...something like a reason to live would come later..."

"Should I go? Should I return? I do wonder, but after some time, I start walking, showing my back to who I was..."

Eijirou wasn't sure when it had happened, but at some point, his hand had made it's way to slip into Mina's own, the grip of her finger's becoming tight upon his as they all listened, the room caving in for none other than Bakugou. Eijirou felt as if his world might actually be spinning, his body still as everything around him continued to move, but his own form unable to glide along with it.

"...the season's come back to life one by one." Bakugou sung out, the song falling quiet with his voice as it dipped low to almost a whisper, still loud enough for everyone to hear above the stagnant silence that engulfed the room.

Bakugou allowed his arm to drop to his side, mirroring Denki's as the microphone hung limply from his grasp. There was a horrendously long pause that followed the fade of the music, one that seemed as if it would never end, but as always, Bakugou was the one to make the first move. He turned on his heal, reaching the microphone in his grasp upwards to mirror Denki's earlier actions as he pointed it towards the blond boy, who still stood beside him in an apparent state of shock.

None of them had heard a voice like that, not since they'd began playing beside Kyoka. No voice but her's had ever sent the lot of them into such a state of unwavering awe. Yet, here Bakugou was, standing before them as if he'd done nothing more than simply beat Denki in a playful music-fuel dick measuring contest, but maybe that was the most amazing thing about it. The way Bakugou had no idea the effect he could have on people, especially Eijirou.

"Now what, pretty boy? Got nothing to say?" Bakugou teased, moving to throw the microphone back upon the table where it belonged, making his way over to the table to gather up his glass of water, now lukewarm, but still drinkable. He downed the last of it in one go, swallowing thickly as he did so.

"I am way too fucked for this..." Hanta mumbled quietly, his voice distorted as he spoke around his alcohol-heavy tongue.

"Maybe it's best we get you guys home." Mina announced, laughing at the state of both Hanta and Denki, who were both slouched over themselves, clearly far too drunk for their own good. Luckily, neither of them had classes in the morning, which was a miracle in itself. Hopefully they'd at least be well enough to play their concert the next night.

Eijirou, who was still frozen in his position, his eyes following Bakugou as he slipped his way around the table to gather his wallet and sweatshirt, sliding the grey material over his arms. He couldn't look away, not after he had witnessed something of that degree.

Sure, he'd been pretty damn aware that he was attracted to Bakugou before, but now it was on a whole other level. Maybe it was a mixture of the alcohol pumpoing through his blood, even if now he felt pretty damn sober to say the least, but there was something about the moment that had just occurred, something that left him with a series of emotions whirling through his body that he couldn't quite explain.

His eyes continued to follow Bakugou, even when his friend's had already gathered their belongings, Mina having placed Bakugou's borrowed jacket into Eijirou's lap sometime before she'd made her way out of the room. Bakugou was the last to make his way to the door, only stopping as to turn to stare over at Eijirou, who still sat upon the couch, unmoving.

"What the hell are you doing? Hurry up Shitty-Hair, or I won't hesitate to leave you behind." He spat out, tilting his chin in the direction of the doorway, which had Eijirou pulling himself to his feet, shrugging the cool denim over his arms and shoulders, pulling the fabric tight around his body as he followed Bakugou's receding form out of the karaoke bar and onto the street, where his friends stood in waiting.

Denki was pretty much passed out at this point, leaning himself against Kyoka, his face dug deep within her neck as she struggled to support her taller friend's weight. Hanta was much the same, using the nearby light post as his own form of support, holding his weight against it as he pushed at Mina, who was attempting to offer her assistance.

"Y'know..." Denki slurred loudly, the tips of his finger's noticeably dipping beneath the fabric of Kyoka's shirt, only for her to shove them away softly, placing his hand securely against the fabric of her denim jacket, "If Ei goes home with Bakugou, that means I get to sleep on the top bunk~"

Eijirou immediately felt all the blood in his body relocate to two very embarrassing places, luckily, the most of it being his cheeks, rather than the other area, which would be far harder to disguise as simply drunken skin discolouration.

"Shut it Denki!" Eijirou cried out, holding back the squeak in his voice that threatened to disclose his obvious interest.

"What the fuck are you on about Blondie?" Bakugou grunted, turning his head in the opposite direction of where Eijirou stood.

"Eiji and Bakufuck, sitting in a tree~" Denki sing-songed, pulling a snort from Kyoka, who immediately tried to bail out of her laughter after noticing Eijirou's horrified expression, "F-U-C-"

Kyoka reached her hand up, covering Denki's mouth mid-song, shooting both boy's an apologetic smile.

"C'mon Ei, lets get Denki home before he gets too sick and passes out on the train again. I'd rather not have to carry him home bridal style, bad for my back, y'know?" Kyoka announced, removing her hand from upon Denki's mouth the moment she felt him go limp enough that she knew he wouldn't have the energy to continue his taunting. Instead, she reached it out towards Eijirou, making a grabbing motion in his direction, "C'mon baby."

Eijirou refused to look back at Bakugou as he began to move forward, the sheer embarrassment of the ordeal being too much for him to face, even if he was still slightly drunk. He let himself be gripped by the wrist, standing still just long enough for Mina to make her way over, pressing a loving kiss upon his forehead, just shy of his bandana. With hushed, "I love you"'s and a casual wave in Hanta's general direction, he allowed himself to be dragged along by Kyoka, making their way for the station in hopes to arrive before the last train was due to depart.

"Bye bye Baku~" Kyoka yelled loudly, holding Denki close to her chest, Eijirou's sleeve held tightly in the grip of her other hand.

Hopefully this wouldn't make for an awkward morning, they did have their first performance as a band that night, after all.

Bring on the revival of Electric Moment.

Notes:

Welcome, welcome, I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Im really excited to put this out there rn, but its also very late at night so beware I may be coming back to actually edit this trash.

Anyways, you all should really check out currygah's amazing Kiri art, because I'm undying in love and honestly it kind of brought me to tears, so here you go:

PREVIOUS CHAPTER | NEXT CHAPTER

Notes:

Nishikata Niwa isn't a real cafe, though it is set in a real location. Nishikata is the area, Niwa means garden.

Also Todai is short text for Tokyo University.

Yes, yes we do know who Bakugou's sister is. Though, obviously she's not his sister in the original series.

AV is short for Adult Video, basically porn guys, there ain't no secrets here. I ain't hiding nuss from you.

And yeah you can buy porno mags in convience stores, Japan has no limits my friends. You raise your children, not the conbini's.

The three songs that I used for Karaoke are as follows:

Mina + Kyoka sang Makenaide by Zard, which is a pretty popular Karaoke classic in Japan, as well as a popular song used for sporting events and such. Pretty motivational, super fun to sing as well.

Denki + Kiri were singing Don't Go Breaking My Heart by Elton John, a popular Karaoke song in western countries, but also in Japan as well. English songs are a lot of fun, even if sometimes the lyrics don't always come on perfect, but that all depends on the person.

The final song was Kisetsu wa Tsugitsugi Shinde Yuku by Amazarashi, which are one of my favourite bands of all time. Also fun fact, they do the third opening theme for the Boku no Hero anime, Sora no Utaeba, which, unbiasly is by far my favourite opening so far for the series.

Also, next chapter we finally get to the concert, and KyoMomo begins, as well as...other things...

Anyways guys, I'm so sorry for how long it's taken me to put out another chapter, and I'm super sorry if it's a piece of trash, I've just been super duper busy.

#electric moment #electric moment fanfiction #kiribaku #bakushima #kyomomo #momojirou #my hero academia #boku no hero academia

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