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ohproserpine · 1 year ago

Text

v. deer dolly

see all chapters here tags: fem! reader, reader is a performer in a speakeasy, heavy warning for violence and bloof, graphic descriptions of injuries, manipulation, allusion to death, grey morality, references to alcoholism, twisted view of love, gorey descriptions of love, murder

"THAT SLAG!"

Velvette's piercing scream echoed through the meeting room, slicing through the air. Vox and Valentino jolted, turning their gazes toward the source of the disturbance.

"Good-for-nothing piece of shit twat assistant!" Velvette paced the room, her movements agitated and frantic as she angrily tapped away on her phone.

In a sudden surge of anger, she flung her device across the room, sending it flying above Valentino's head. A crash punctuated the air as it collided with a window, the impact shattering the glass into shards that rained down onto the floor.

"Velvette, darling," Vox raised an eyebrow, his voice calm as always, "What's got you so worked up?"

He took a sip of his coffee, the rich aroma wafting up from the steaming cup as he idly scrolled through his laptop. "Is it that showgirl situation again?"

"Oh, bloody hell!" Velvette rolled her eyes. "Of course, it is, you git! It's been literally the ONLY thing I've been banging on about this week!"

Valentino's sigh cut through the conversation as he adjusted his sunglasses. Holding his glittering firearm up to his face, he pressed rhinestones on it with tacky glue, unfazed by Velvette's anger.

"It's just some performer, babydoll. We can find a replacement."

"Are you out of your mind?!" Velvette seethed as she stormed toward them, her heels clicking loudly with each step. With a forceful slam of her hands against the table, it shifted forward, jolting the items on its surface. With a hiss of pain, Vox recoiled, his hand jerking back from the scalding coffee he had spilled on himself.

"The boutique opening is in three days! How on earth am I supposed to find a girl who's got the looks and a set of pipes in time?!" she exclaimed.

Valentino looked up from his bedazzling, a raised eyebrow visible above the rim of his sunglasses. "Have you tried one of my models? I got a lot of pretty little chicas who can charm the socks off anyone. No need to stress yourself out."

"Your models? Do you have any idea how much time and effort it's going to take for me to wrangle those little amateurs into something remotely resembling a professional performance?" Velvette scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Sod off!"

Valentino snarled in response but turned away with a huff, muttering under his breath, "Have it your way."

"If I may," Vox spoke, wiping his hand with a grumble, the sting of the burn still lingering. He tilted his head slightly, raising a single brow. "Have you tried scouting?"

"Have I tried scouting?" Velvette mocked, her hands waving around in frustration. "Of course I have! All I've come across are bloody singers around here, and they all look like they've been dragged through the dirt backwards!"

"Well, have you tried the back district?" he offered, tapping his claws on the long glass table. He watched as Velvette pulled out a pocket mirror from her purse, visibly cringing at his suggestion.

"Why in bloody hell would I go there?" Velvette grimaced as she re-applied her dark lipstick. "I'm not about to waste my time scouring the back district for some dime-a-dozen talent. I need someone who's got class, not gutter scraps."

"Well, there's this performer," Vox insisted, snapping his fingers. A screen materialized with a whiz, displaying a video of a figure in a sparkly silver dress singing and dancing. As the video drew to a close, the camera zoomed in, capturing a close-up of the woman's face. Her features were radiant, a smile gracing her lips as she gazed out at the audience.

Velvette snapped her mirror shut with a flick of her wrist, interest sparking in her eyes. She leaned in closer, studying the performer's features.

"Who's this?" she quipped.

"Dolly, at least that's what they call her," Vox hummed, sliding the screen over to Velvette. "She works at Mimzy's Lounge."

Velvette's expression darkened, strands of hair falling over her eyes as she took the screen in her hands, leaning down to view the image again. The glow of the projection illuminated her face, casting shadows that danced across her steely expression.

"Mimzy?" she uttered the name slowly, her lips dripping with venom. "That's the cunt who tore up my best showgirl!"

"Drama," Valentino chuckled, spinning his bedazzled gun around his fingers.

"Well, this Dolly girl is her biggest star, and she's been making quite a name for herself there," Vox drawled, gesturing toward the screen. With a tap of his claw on the screen, he zoomed in closer. "She's got the looks, the voice, and the stage presence you're looking for."

"And she's managed to shine even in the shadow of that cesspool," he added with a sardonic grin as he sipped from his coffee.

A flicker ignited in Velvette's eyes as she straightened. "Then it's settled. I'll pay her a visit."

"Sounds like you've got a plan brewing, my dear. Care for some company?" Vox spoke with a smirk playing on his lips.

Velvette shot him a knowing glance before a grin tugged at the corner of her lips. "Why not? I could use some of your charm."

"Cher? Dearest? It's time to get up," the radio atop your bedside table rumbled, your husband's voice crackling through the air.

Grunting in protest, you burrowed deeper into the warmth of your blankets, seeking refuge from the harsh bite of the morning. But Alastor's persistent calls refused to be ignored.

"Mon cœur? Cher? W̷A̴K̶E̴ ̶U̸P̷!̶" it blared, the words amplified by hissing static, demanding attention like a toddler throwing a tantrum.

With a heavy sigh, you reluctantly peeled yourself away from the cocoon of comfort that had enveloped you. Sitting up, you felt the blanket slip from your shoulders, pooling around your hips. Memories of last night flooded in, and the remnants of Alastor's romantic gesture still adorned your room. The bouquet sat atop your dresser, with scattered white roses delicately strewn across your bed like whispers of affection.

Despite the tender atmosphere, a throbbing headache reminded you of an unwelcome guest that accompanied you into the morning—the hangover.

Dragging yourself to the side, you swung your legs over the edge of the bed and sat for a moment, rubbing your temples in a futile attempt to ease the discomfort. Then, pushing yourself to your feet, you padded across the room, the cool floorboards sending a shiver through your bare skin. You picked up the radio, its incessant blare akin to an annoying alarm clock, with Alastor's voice still grating on your nerves.

"Alright. Alright. I'm up, love," you grumbled, rubbing at your eyes which still felt thick with sleep.

The radio rumbled with delight at your response.

"Hellish morning to you, my dear!" Alastor's voice boomed through the speakers, his jovial tone slicing through the early morning gloom. Despite your grogginess, a small smile tugged at the corners of your lips at the sound of his voice.

"Hellish morning to you too, darling," you returned, laced with affection.

"I trust you had a restful sleep?" Alastor questioned.

"As restful as one can get with a noisy radio blaring in their ear," you sighed, already feeling the weight of the day bearing down on you.

"Hah!" Alastor laughed, the sound making you roll your eyes. "But where ever would you be without my dulcet tones to serenade you awake?"

"Probably catching a few more precious minutes of sleep," you muttered, already regretting the start of another day. “You are insufferable, you know that?”

"Ah, but that's why you love me."

Back in his hotel room, Alastor chuckled to himself as he shrugged on his suit jacket. From his microphone, he caught the rustling of your clothes, followed by the gentle rush of running water.

With a flick of his wrist, Alastor summoned a gramophone, its boxy form materializing atop his dresser with a soft thud. Soon enough, the needle gently descended onto the spinning vinyl record, releasing a soft, nostalgic melody that filled the room.

I'll never smile again Until I smile at you I'll never laugh again What good would it do?

As Alastor began to sing along, his smooth voice seeping through the rusting speakers of the radio, you paused in the middle of washing your hair, caught off guard by the unexpected serenade.

"Stupid, stupid man," you muttered under your breath with a shake of your head. And yet, despite yourself, a smile tugged at the corners of your lips, warmth creeping into your heart.

For tears would fill my eyes My heart would realize That our romance is through

Exiting the bath, you toweled yourself off and approached your wardrobe, humming softly as you selected your attire for the day. After scanning through the hangers, you settled on a vibrant red hooverette dress. With matching stockings and white heels, you completed the look, the final touch being a few roses plucked from the bouquet Alastor had given you, tucked behind your ear.

I'll never love again I'm so in love with you I'll never thrill again To somebody new

Dressed and ready to face the day, you returned to the radio, the soft strains of music and Alastor's voice still lingering in the air. As the final notes faded into silence, you stood for a moment, savoring the fleeting illusion of domestic bliss for a moment longer.

With a pang of sadness, you glanced at the clock, realizing that it was time to go.

"I have to head out now, darling," you spoke into the radio, feeling a tug at your heartstrings. "My shift starts in a while."

"Ah, until we meet again, mon cher," Alastor's voice replied warmly. "Do take care of yourself."

In response, you leaned down to press a kiss against the speakers, a gesture of your affection. The soft sound of the kiss was barely audible, but Alastor's ears perked up and caught the gentle touch against the metal surface. He chuckled softly, then, with a soft click, the radio fell silent.

As you slipped your purse over your shoulder, a thought crossed your mind—should you bring the radio along? The temptation to have Alastor's voice with you throughout the day was strong, but the risk of further damaging the precious device gave you pause. With a sigh, you decided against it, opting to leave it safely in your room, where it would patiently await your return.

Heading out of your room, the lounge was already buzzing with the hustle and bustle of customers and staff. Although no singer graced the stage yet, the speakers blasted with the familiar tunes of Hell’s Top 10 Hits.

"There you are!" Mimzy's voice cut through the lively atmosphere, her smile failing to reach her eyes as she bounded towards you.

"Mimzy," you greeted flatly, acknowledging her with a nod.

"How are ya doin', doll? Just the person I was looking for," she purred with a bat of her eyes. "Alright, listen, I've got a marvelous idea for a performance."

You sighed inwardly, bracing yourself for whatever scheme she had cooked up this time. Mimzy's requests were as extravagant as they were challenging, always pushing the boundaries to maintain her club's "reputation" and squeeze every last dime from these sinners' wallets.

"Let's hear it," you replied, mustering a polite smile.

"So, I was thinking," Mimzy began, tapping her finger along her chin, "how about a duet? A throwback to the good ole days, sharing the spotlight. It's bound to be a performance these wayward fools are going to talk about for ages!"

You raised an eyebrow, surprised by the relatively tame suggestion. The blonde wasn't exactly known for her subtlety or restraint when it came to showmanship. At most, a duet with Mimzy was sure to be a spectacle, for better or for worse.

"And when is this going to be held?" you grinned tensely, hands at your hips. There was bound to be a switch somewhere.

"When else? Prime time tonight!" Mimzy giggled as she threw up her hands with a flourish.

And there it was.

"Tonight?" Your eyes widened, shoulders squaring in shock. "Miss Ma'am, that's cutting it a bit close, don't you think?"

"Bushwa! We'll make it work," Mimzy replied dismissively, waving off your concerns with a flick of her hand. "And I've already got the perfect song in mind. It'll be a real humdinger, mark my words."

"Alright," you sighed, hoping for the best but bracing yourself for the chaos that was sure to follow. "Tonight it is."

"That's the spirit! Hell, why don't you take the morning off?" Mimzy grinned as she hurried off down the hallway to make preparations. "I'll see you tonight! Make sure to be here by sunset!"

Standing by the stairs as stiff as a pole, you watched her skip off with an unusually chipper air. It struck you as odd, but you pushed the thought aside, eager to have the morning to yourself. As you turned away, however, your head throbbed once more, the reminder of your hangover cutting through the moment.

"Looks like a ciggy is in order," you muttered to yourself, rubbing at your throbbing temples. Making your way outside, hoping to smoke away the edge of discomfort.

Trudging along the filthy backstreets, you did your best to avoid the muck and other questionable liquids that lined the roadside. The stench of decay hung heavy in the air, assaulting your senses with each step you took.

No one spared you a glance as you passed; the citizens of hell were absorbed in their own pursuits or concerns, and you blended into the backdrop of the grim landscape.

Finally reaching a clearer stretch of street, you took a seat on one of the benches, the worn wood groaning under your weight. The city bustled around you, a mix of sounds and movements that seemed to blur together.

With a weary sigh, you reached into your bag in search of company—nicotine.

Fingers fumbling through the contents of your purse, you felt the familiar shape of the roll, and with a hum, pulled it out. However, as you continued to rummage through your belongings, a sinking realization settled in.

Your matchbox wasn't there.

Dropping your head into your hands with a scowl, you could feel the stress mounting within you, bubbling up like a simmering pot ready to boil over.

Wallowing in your misfortune, you failed to notice someone approaching you from behind. A sudden tap on your shoulder jolted you, and as you turned, you found yourself face to face with a tall and slender spider-like demon. His frame was practically drowning in a plush white fur coat, the color almost blending into his skin. It contrasted sharply with the sleekness of the black bodycon dress clinging onto his curves underneath.

"Need a light?" he asked casually as he held up a pink-colored lighter.

You eyed him skeptically for a moment.

In hell, kindness often came with a price. Whether it was a favor owed, a debt to be repaid, or simply a hidden agenda waiting to be revealed, nothing came for free. However, when your head throbbed again, you sighed and relented with a nod, accepting the offer despite your reservations.

Angel Dust ignited the lighter, the flame pirouetting gracefully and flickering in the wind. Drawing closer, you leaned in, offering the tip of your cigarette to the flame. With a gentle hiss, the tobacco caught fire, wisps of smoke curling into the air like ethereal dancers. As you took a deep, shaky inhale, the saccharine poison of the smoke flooded your lungs, leaving a bittersweet taste lingering on your tongue. Shutting your eyes, a sense of calm washed over you as you leaned back, letting yourself be carried away by the fleeting tranquility of the moment.

Remembering you had company, you grounded yourself and opened your eyes. "Thank you ever so much, dear. Can I have your name?" you asked, tilting your head up at him. The stranger moved to sit down next to you, the worn wood of the bench creaking under his weight.

"Angel Dust," he said, and your eyes shot wide open, lips forming an 'O' shape.

"The porn star?" you blurted out before you could stop yourself.

"Didn't take you as the type to watch my shit, toots," Angel laughed heartily as his grin widened from ear to ear in response, his golden tooth gleaming at you like a wink.

"Well, I may not be your typical fan, but your name does tend to make its rounds in conversation," you chuckled, shaking your head in amusement. Taking a drag from your cigarette, you gestured with it casually. "I saw you in my husb—erm, the Radio Demon's commercial. Hazbin Hotel, was it?"

"Yeah, and don't worry, I know. Dolly, was it?" Angel Dust replied smoothly, his demeanor surprisingly nonchalant given the situation. Extending his hand for you to shake, he continued, "Nice to finally put a face to the name."

His confession caught you off guard, but you shook his hand firmly nonetheless. "How did you—did Alastor tell you about me? You two must be close."

Angel Dust hesitated, a grimace crossing his features. His crimson eyes darted away briefly, as if weighing his words carefully.

"Let's just say... word gets around in our circles," he replied vaguely, tugging his coat closer around himself.

"I don't know him that well, though," Angel Dust admitted with a shrug, his gaze drifting off momentarily. "Sometimes he can be a bit..."

"A pompous dick with a sadistic streak?" you suggested, exhaling smoke as you raised an eyebrow at Angel Dust, testing the waters.

Angel Dust laughed genuinely, throwing his head back. "Something along those lines, toots," he grinned, taking another drag of his cigarette.

"Well, it's good to know I'm not the only one who sees it," you remarked, a wry smile playing on your lips.

"Believe me, ya ain't alone in that," he agreed. "So, ah—What brings ya out here? Aside from the obvious need for a blow."

"Just needed some fresh air," you admitted with a shrug. "Plus, I may have indulged a bit too much last night and woke up feeling like death warmed over."

"I hear ya," Angel Dust replied, nodding sympathetically as he raked his eyes over your worn-out form, noting the slump of your body and the dark circles under your eyes. You looked so different from the sparkly performer he had seen on stage days ago.

"Hey, I actually caught one of ya shows the other night," he piped up, attempting to shift the conversation to a lighter topic.

"Did you?" you cooed, surprise evident in your voice.

"Yeah," Angel nodded, stretching out on the bench, spreading both his arms across the back of the wood. "Gotta say, ya put on quite the show up there. I mean—ya had the crowd eating out of the palm of ya hand."

A faint smile crept onto your cheeks at his praise, a swell of pride rising within you.

"Well, thank you," you bowed your head in gratitude, momentarily forgetting your fatigue in the warmth of his words. "It means a lot coming from someone like you."

Angel Dust waved off your thanks with a casual flick of his hand, lips jutting out in a playful pout.

"Ah, c'mon. I call it like I see it," he grinned with a shrug. "N'trust me, I've seen my fair share of performances."

Lost in the easy flow of conversation, you surrendered to the comfort of the moment, finding solace in the presence of your spider companion. Hours passed, and before you knew it, the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the park in hues of golden warmth.

A jarring ringtone shattered the moment, causing Angel Dust to glance down at his phone with a whistle. His brows furrowed as he scrolled through a flurry of notifications, irritation flashing across his features.

"As much as I'm enjoying our little chat, duty calls," he sighed, flicking away ash from his cigarette. "Can't keep the boss waiting."

You nodded in understanding, offering a wave as he rose from the bench. "No worries, Angel. Catch you later."

"Looking forward to it, dollface," he replied with a wink before sauntering off into the city streets, leaving you to enjoy the peace alone. After a few minutes of watching the sunset, you decided it was time to go. You stubbed out your cigarette and rose from the bench, making your way out.

As you approached the streets leading to the lounge, the neon lights of the city burst into life, casting vibrant reflections on the pavement. Climbing the stairs to the entrance, you were enveloped by the familiar sights and sounds of the establishment. The air was thick with the scent of perfume and cigarette smoke, mingling with the pulsating rhythm of the music from within.

Mimzy was nowhere to be seen, which came as a welcome relief. And with a last scan to ensure she wasn't lurking anywhere nearby, you made a beeline straight to your dressing room, eager to ready yourself for tonight's performance in peace without a certain blonde talking your ear off.

Taking a seat at the vanity, you began to prepare for the evening ahead, carefully applying your makeup and fixing your hair into place.

A sudden knock broke your routine, prompting you to rise from your seat and stride over to the door. With a quick twist of the knob, you swung it open, revealing an imp demon. White blotches adorned his skin, and he sported sunglasses perched high up on his nose. In his hands, he held up a box, his expression expectant as he waited for your reaction.

"May I help you?" you murmured, tilting your head at him, curiosity coloring your tone.

"Yeah. Are you Dolly?" the imp asked, his tone curt and impatient.

"Yes?" you replied, a brow raised.

"Great. This is for you, lady," he said, thrusting the box of jewelry toward you. "If you could just sign here so I can get the hell out of this shithole, that'd be great."

You accepted the box from the imp demon's outstretched hand, eyeing him warily as he thrust a pen and clipboard in your direction. With a resigned sigh, you reluctantly took the pen and scrawled your signature on the dotted line, handing the clipboard back to him with a curt nod.

"Thanks," he muttered, barely sparing you a glance as he turned on his heel and hurried away, disappearing into the crowded hallway of the club.

Interest piqued, you turned your attention back to the box in your hands. With a gentle touch, you ran your fingers along the surface and lifted the lid of the box. Nestled amidst folds of satin lay a pearl necklace, the orbs gleaming as if moonlight itself was captured and trapped within. At its heart, a rose pendant bloomed, its petals of silver.

Taken aback, you reached for the small card tucked within the box. Gently retrieving, you turned it around to see the words "From Al" penned gracefully in elegant script.

"Oh, you cheese…"

With a soft smile pulling at the corners of your lips, you delicately lifted the necklace from its satin-lined cocoon, feeling the cool weight of the pearls in your palm. As you draped it around your neck, the pendant nestled against your collarbone.

Feeling as giddy as a teenager in love, you turned away from the vanity, your heart fluttering with excitement. With a skip in your step, you crossed the room to the wardrobe, fingers dancing over the array of neatly hung dresses.

Before your fingers could grasp onto a dress, a sudden deafening explosion tore through the air. The sound was thunderous, shaking the walls and causing the ground beneath your feet to tremble violently. The shockwave slammed into you with palpable force, knocking you off balance and sending you crashing to the floor amidst a cloud of dust and debris.

Alarm flashed across your features as your heart pounded in your chest, the adrenaline coursing through your veins like a raging river. With trembling hands, you pushed yourself up from the ground.

What in hell was that?

Staggering to your feet, you ran out into the lounge. As the dust settled, you could see the entrance of the lounge now reduced to a gaping maw, the doors blown open by the force of the explosion. The familiar sights and sounds of the club were replaced by a scene of utter devastation, with debris strewn haphazardly across the floor and smoke billowing out into the night air.

Two ominous figures cast dark shadows amidst the panicked frenzy of staff and customers.

Struggling to discern the figures amidst the chaos, you squinted, trying to make out the details. One of them was a slender demon, dressed immaculately, with cedar-brown skin and long, fiery red curls tied into neat pigtails.

A sinking feeling settled in your chest as you recognized her as one of Hell's infamous overlords. Your heart plummeted further as you caught sight of Mimzy, ensnared in Velvette's vice-like grip, fear twisting her features as she struggled against her captor.

But it was the presence of the figure behind Velvette that truly sent a shiver down your spine.

The TV Demon, Vox.

His gaze swept over the room with a detached coldness, as if the pandemonium were of little consequence. Suddenly, his icy eyes locked onto yours, freezing you in place.

"Mimzy, dear," Vox's voice buzzed with deceptive sweetness as he addressed the shaking blonde. "Why don't you go and have a little chat with your esteemed employee about our... conditions?"

Wide-eyed with fear, Mimzy frantically nodded, her breaths coming in short, ragged gasps.

"Make it quick," Velvette scoffed, releasing her grip on Mimzy's throat. The blonde stumbled toward you, her movements shaky and unsteady.

"What is—" you started, but Mimzy cut you off, panic evident as she began to drag you backstage. Without a moment's hesitation, she pushed you into your dressing room, swiftly locking the door behind you.

"Mimzy, what in hell is going on out there?" you demanded, leaning down to her height and shaking her by the arms.

Mimzy's breaths came in ragged gasps as she leaned against the door, her eyes wide with terror. She struggled to find her words, her entire figure trembling as she tried to compose herself.

"It's Velvette," she finally managed to choke out.

"Why is she here? What does she want from us?" you pressed, urgency creeping into your tone as you searched Mimzy's face for answers. But her response only added to your unease.

"You need to go with them," Mimzy decided abruptly.

"Go with who? What are you talking about?" you asked, your voice turning breathless with disbelief.

"She's out for payback, see? And she won't stop until she gets it," Mimzy explained, her tone grave yet determined, like she had some ace up her sleeve. "I gotta level the playing field, doll. She wants a replacement, and she's chosen you."

"I can't just go along with this!" your voice rose to a shout as you began to shake her again, nails digging into the chiffon of her glove. "My contract with you ends in a year. If I go with them, I'll be their pawn for all of eternity!"

"I can't just risk Velvette destroying everything I've built!" Mimzy defended herself, her tone devoid of remorse. "Do you have any idea how much work it took for me to get this place running?!"

Anger surged within you, fueled by betrayal and fear. "What about me? What about Alastor?"

"Oh, him again!" Mimzy shook her arms away from your grip and pushed herself off the door. "You've been so obsessed with that radio fool, you've forgotten who's been with you since the very start! Ever since you got hitched to him, you stopped caring about a damn thing!"

"I cared! And I still bloody well care, Mimzy!" you shot back, your voice rising with anger. Your eyes blazed with fire, cracks beginning to form on your face as your demon form threatened to break free. "But you were an empty, hollow shell of a woman with naught in her head but money! You'd sell out anyone, even me, to get what you want!"

Mimzy recoiled slightly, her façade momentarily cracked by your words. "You-You think you're any better? Running off with your precious Alastor, pretending like he's the savior of your life. But I know you've heard his broadcasts. I know you've seen the news. He's no better than me, playing you like a puppet while hiding behind his façade of being a good man!"

Enraged, you lunged forward, tackling her against the wall. As fury consumed you, your form contorted and twisted, taking on a monstrous semblance. Your features morphed, sharpening into angular lines, while cracks spiderwebbed across your skin like shattered porcelain. Limbs stretched and warped, turning jagged and broken, resembling the joints of a marionette. Teeth elongated into razor-sharp fangs, and as you bared them in a snarl, your lips curled back in a grotesque mockery of a mouth. "Say that again! I fucking dare you!"

"I'll say it as many times as I damn well please!" Mimzy spat, her voice trembling as she locked eyes with your hollow gaze. "Until you get it through your fucking thick, cracked skull!"

The blonde's hand darted to a nearby object, seizing hold of a picture frame within reach. With sudden, fierce motion, she swung it, the weighty wood and glass connecting with your transformed flesh in a sickening thud.

"Mph—!" Biting your lip to stifle a scream, you staggered backward. Thick blood dripped from the wound, pooling on the floor and mingling with the cracks in your porcelain-like skin.

"You've got some nerve!" Mimzy's voice thundered as she stood over you, her pale face flushing crimson with anger. "You wanted that fame, and I made it happen. Now you don't?! Fuck! Some ungrateful brat you are! Willing to throw it all away for some man! Do you really think what he feels for you is love?!"

As Mimzy's tirade continued, her words cutting through the haze of pain and anger, a sense of disorientation washed over you. Her words struck a nerve, stirring up memories that you had long tried to suppress.

Rain poured down, drenching your hunched form. The world around you blurred into a chaotic whirlwind of colors and shapes, disorienting and suffocating.

Beneath the fabric of your dress, your knees throbbed painfully, raw from the harsh scrape against unforgiving concrete. Your hands desperately fumbled in the darkness, searching for something to anchor yourself to. Then, finally, your fingertips brushed against the familiar texture of rusting metal.

With a ragged sigh of relief, you realized you had found the gate of your house. Summoning all your remaining strength, you clasped both hands around the cold, wet metal bars and attempted to pull yourself up.

Through the haze, you felt rough hands sneak around your waist, and as your vision cleared slightly, your husband's face emerged from the blur. His once impeccable suit now clung to him like a second skin, soaked through by the downpour. Strands of his usually neat hair stuck to his forehead, dampened and dripping onto his glasses. Cursing like a sailor under his breath, he scooped you up into his arms, expression turning tense as he felt the icy chill of your body against his own.

If you weren't moving he would have thought you a corpse.

"Cher?" Alastor's voice cut through the fog in your mind, but your response was sluggish, your gaze glassy and dilated. "Merde. Did you drag yourself here all alone?"

Without waiting for an answer, he moved, cradling you in his arms as he hurried back toward your house. Once inside, he wasted no time in laying you down on the sofa.

"Al," you finally spoke, whimpering softly as you raised a shaky hand towards him. Alastor immediately moved towards you, hushing your cries as he pressed a deep kiss on your lips.

Your husband moved to cradle your face in his rough hands, and what he saw shattered whatever fragments of his heart were still intact. Bruises and dried blood stained your body, your skin clammy and pale. Streaks of mascara carved paths down your tear-stained face, and your limbs twitched involuntarily. The taste of whiskey still lingered on your lips, and the fearful haze in your eyes mirrored the terror of a rabbit cornered by a wolf.

"Who did this to you?" he growled, his pupils dilating with anger as he knelt before you, gently slipping your torn stockings and muddy heels off your feet.

"Mimzy," you sobbed out, curling into yourself, the weight of it all feeling too heavy on your shoulders.

"I tried to quit. She didn't let me. The bar. She gave me a drink. More and more. I couldn't stop. I was just so upset." Your words were fragmented, broken by the wrenching sobs that shook your fragile form, vulnerability laid bare before him.

"Mon cœur," Alastor hushed, rubbing circles into your ankle with his thumb. "Calm down. Take your time."

You made an effort, though the first few attempts were shallow and rushed. Eventually, you managed to draw in a deep breath, releasing it in a rush before taking another. And another.

"That's it, my dear. Now, what happened?"

Summoning all your strength, you opened your mouth and began to recount the harrowing events of the night.

Earlier this evening, you had mustered up enough courage to hand in your resignation letter to Mimzy. However, her reaction was far from pleasant. An argument erupted, filled with less than savory words being thrown around like daggers.

Before you knew it, Mimzy's rage boiled over, and she tackled you, raining blows upon you with a fury that bordered on madness, beating you with an inch of your life. And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped.

Her demeanor shifted drastically, morphing from a raging storm into a gentle breeze. With a sickening sweetness, she offered you a hand up, as if nothing had happened. Weak and disoriented, you allowed her to lead you to her private bar, where she poured drink after drink, urging you to indulge.

As per habit, you found yourself consuming the alcohol with reckless abandon, the burning liquid dulling the pain and blurring the edges of reality

Alastor's heart clenched at the anguish in your voice, his expression darkening with a mixture of concern and simmering anger. Slowly, he rose from his seat and lifted you onto his lap, cradling you gently in his arms.

Taking your hand in his, he leaned in close, his voice a soft murmur.

"Let me take care of everything, doll," he whispered, his breath warm against your ear. "She won't ever bother you again."

The tenderness in his voice caused your breath to hitch, and for a moment, you allowed yourself to fall into the reassurance of his presence. It offered a fleeting sense of security amidst everything surrounding you. Yet, slowly as the puzzles fell into pieces, a gnawing sense of dread clawed at your insides.

"Alastor, no," you whimpered, withdrawing your hands and pressing them against his chest, pushing him away with trembling fingers. "Please don't tell me it means what I think it does."

Your gaze pleaded with him, searching his eyes for any sign of reassurance, any glimmer of hope that what you feared was not true. However, your husband's smile remained unchanged—comforting yet chilling—as he pressed another kiss to the corner of your lips.

"I would kill for you," Alastor murmured against your skin, his thumb tracing the contours of your wedding ring. Bending down, he pressed a tender kiss against the golden band, sealing his vow with the promise of bloodshed, lips lingering against the cool metal. As he drew back, you found yourself ensnared by the intensity of his gaze, pools of brown reflecting a manic fervor.

"Please let me kill for you."

Tears blurred your vision as you bowed your head, the weight of his words sinking deep into your soul. You knew Alastor's devotion knew no bounds. Whether it meant causing pain, shedding blood, or delving into the darkest corners of his being, he would do it for you without a moment's hesitation.

A warmth trickled down your cheeks with each blink, tracing a path along your skin. Your eyes burned fiercely, tears cascading down your flushed cheeks and silently dripping from your chin like dewdrops. As you attempted to draw deep breaths, your body shook with a desperation to escape, though you couldn't quite grasp what it was you were fleeing from.

A ragged sound echoed through the room, grating against your senses. It took you a moment to register that the noise came from your own lungs, your breaths torn and jagged as they struggled to find a rhythm.

"Okay," you whispered, the weight of that single word heavy with the burden of guilt and a future tinged with blood.

There was a soft chuckle, accompanied by the gentle touch of a hand moving to caress your cheeks. "Good girl."

Snapping back to the present, you found yourself staring at Mimzy as she raged around the room, her fury unleashed on the surroundings, wrecking anything and everything in her path.

A man who kills for you. A man who dirties his hands for you. Is that not love?

A kick from her sent your vanity toppling over, causing bottles of your perfume and whiskey to crash from its surface. The glass shattered upon impact, releasing splintering sounds that pierced your ears. As the bottles broke, the air filled with the pungent scent of flora, mingling with the rich aroma of spilled whiskey.

It must be love.

With a hand trembling from adrenaline, you ran your fingers through your hair, the sticky feeling of blood staining your palm. Rising unsteadily to your feet, you turned to face Mimzy, strands of damp, bloodied hair falling over your cracked porcelain face.

"You ornery washed-up bitch," you rasped out in a laugh, voice breathless and laced with venom. "I should have left you to rot in that forest."

Mimzy froze, her wide eyes locked on you.

"What did you say to me?" she seethed, her voice trembling with anger as she extended her hand toward the shattered liquor glass and the spilled liquid, her fingers curling into fists.

With a flick of her wrist, the whiskey began to swirl and solidify, forming chains that snaked around your limbs, binding you in place. Your muscles tensed against the restraints as Mimzy manipulated you like a puppeteer. Slowly, you reverted back to your regular form, forced to your knees before her.

The blonde bent down, her grip firm on your face, nails digging deep into your skin as she pulled your head up to face her. "You're here because of me! Everything you've ever achieved was because of me! I made you a star, and this is how you repay me?!"

You recognized the anger in her tone, but beneath it lurked a deeper pain and desperation. The poor gal was fighting to reclaim control over a situation slipping through her grasp.

A sudden knock at the door startled Mimzy, causing her to tense. The door creaked open to reveal the imposing figure of Vox filling the doorway. As he entered the room, a wave of static filled the air, crackling and sending goosebumps cascading over your skin. His gaze swept over the scene, taking note of your restraints and bloodied head before settling on Mimzy.

"What is the meaning of this?"

Under Vox's gaze, Mimzy's confident demeanor faltered, replaced by a nervous tremor in her voice. "I-I was just… settling some unfinished business, mistah," she stammered, attempting to regain her composure.

"You've just damaged the merchandise, sweetheart," Vox stated matter-of-factly, gesturing to you with a wave of his hand. "And we can't have that, now can we?"

With a casual snap of his fingers, the wires from the stage lights above writhed and twisted, tearing free from the ceiling with a deafening creak. They snaked through the air like serpents, wrapping around Mimzy's torso and dragging her away from you with a forceful yank.

With Mimzy taken care of, Vox then turned his attention to you.

"Dolly, was it?" he smiled, voice disarming. "I've got to say, I have always wanted to see you up close."

"You've seen me," you replied with a cold edge to your voice, slowly backing away and pressing yourself against the wall. "I'm here."

"Charmed," Vox smiled, his gaze heating as he drank you in, every detail of you like candy to his eyes. As Vox strode towards you, you instinctively curled into yourself, shrinking back deeper against the wall. He chuckled softly, noticing your reaction, and halted his advances. Instead, he took a seat on the cushion by your toppled vanity, glowing eyes locked onto you.

Pretty Dolly Heart.

Your lips were painted a vivid red, pouting slightly in a frown. Damp, glossy curls framed your face, shimmering in the light and tempting him to reach out and run his fingers through them. Rivulets of blood marred your temple, staining the delicate white flowers nestled into your hair.

The TV Demon was interested in you, and he wouldn't let go until he went home with you tonight, that much was clear.

"I have a deal in mind," Vox turned to Mimzy with a look in his eyes that screamed trouble. "Are you willing to trade your soul for hers?"

Your blood ran cold with fear.

"As Velvette and I are business partners, our souls contracts are intertwined. I'm sure there would be no issue if you signed the deal with me instead," he added with a chuckle, his eyes swirling with a dangerous allure.

Panic clawed at your insides, urging you to flee from the impending doom that loomed before you. But rooted to the spot by fear, you found yourself unable to move.

"Yes! A-Absolutely!" Mimzy's words shattered the heavy silence, her voice trembling with desperation as she nodded frantically. Her eyes remained nervously glued to the crackling electricity of the torn wires still wrapped around her, the fear in her gaze mirroring your own.

With a clap of his hands, Vox conjured a new contract and a strong burst of wind swept through the room, ruffling curtains and causing objects to tremble on their surfaces. Blue light flooded the walls, casting eerie shadows and filling the room with an ominous glow. The atmosphere crackled with electricity, every hair on your body standing on end as if charged with static energy.

A tablet materialized and floated before you, its screen pulsing with a faint, golden glow.

"Make her sign here, and it'll be done," Vox instructed, his voice carrying an air of finality as he handed Mimzy a stylus, tapping his clawed finger along the screen of his tablet.

With a trembling hand, Mimzy took the stylus and held it out for you, the strings of her magic wrapping around your limbs once again. You attempted to shout out, but Mimzy's magic stitched your lips shut, leaving you unable to utter a sound.

Helpless, you watched as your hand was forced to reach out and take the pen into your grasp, your fingers moving against your will as Mimzy guided them to sign the contract. With each stroke of the pen, a wave of despair washed over you, a muffled sob bubbling from your throat as your name appeared on the screen, sealing your fate.

Vox's grin widened, a glint of triumph dancing in his eyes as he held up your old paper contract with Mimzy, the words now rendered meaningless. With a swift motion, he tore it to shreds, the sound of paper ripping echoing through the tense silence of the room.

"Welcome to VoxTek, Dolly."

#next chapter will explain all of their background :DD #sephiewrites #hazbin hotel x reader #alastor x reader #hazbin hotel imagine #alastor imagine #hazbin imagine #hazbin hotel x you #alastor x you #hazbin x you #hazbin x reader #hazbin hotel #alastor #hazbin hotel vox

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fmb158581 · 7 months ago

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Chocolate Chip Cookies

“Did you seriously bring chocolate chip cookies on a mission?”, Dick scoffed. Jason stayed silent. He really didn't want to give his brother the satisfaction of the answer, so he stayed silent while his older brother ranted.

“I mean, we are literally about to take out Two-Faces men and you are chomping down on cookies. Loudly I will remind you. Are they Alfreds?” Dick reached into the baggie full of the sweet treat when Jason finally snapped.

“These are my cookies. My girl made them.” Jason realized his mistake as soon as the words slipped out of his mouth. It is common knowledge among the bat family that y/n’s cookies are to die for. “Gimme Gimme Gimme one! Like today, right now!” Dick tackled Jason, almost pushing him over the ledge of the building. Jason balanced himself and wrestled his sibling back. What both the boys didn't know or even notice while fighting over the beloved sweets was Damian sneaking up behind them. Dick was on top of Jason, but Jason's hand was out so far Dick couldn't reach them, but the small boy sneaking up on them could. As Jason prepared to bite his older brother, he felt a tug on the bag and it slipped out of his grip. Jason yelped and saw Damian running away, jumping from one building to another, slowly getting closer to the ground using fire escapes. Dick continued to wrestle Jason, not realizing the cookies were gone. Jason finally managed to pin him down, showing Nightwing that the cookies had vanished with their youngest brother. Dick pushed Jason off of him and raced after Robin. Two-Face’s men are long forgotten, and the two brothers race after Damian. They checked their trackers to see when the young bat had gone, only to run into Tim and Cass patrolling a nearby area.

“Why are you two running? Were you not supposed to be ambushing?” Tim asked.

“We have bigger fish to fry Tim, Damian stole my cookies!” Jason spat out. He looked at Tim and Cass.

“Just cookies Jason. Why so important?” Cass whispered. Tim slowly realized why they were so important.

“There Y/N’s aren't they?” His face lit up. He slowly turned and then sprinted in the direction Damian had run. The whole group raced after Tim. They jumped from building to building until they lost their youngest sibling’s tracks. He had turned off his location and there was only one person who could turn it back on. Their father. None of them wanted to put him in the loop, so they played fish in a bowl.

“Ha, you lose Tim!” Jason shouted!

“But Grayson’s hand was clearly still out!” Shouted Tim.

“No, it wasn't! You lose Tim! You have to call Bats!” Dick stated surely. While the boys argued, none of them noticed their only sister slipping into the darkness. She raced from building to building, relying on her senses to find their father. He was on the Wayne Tech. tower. She snuck up behind him, trying to scare him. But before she could, he started to talk.

“Whats wrong Batgirl?” Batman said darkly. Cass has always wondered how he could do it. Using all of his senses to be aware of his surroundings. Cassandra mustered up her courage and said three simple words.

“Damian. Cookies. Lost.” If it were anyone else, they would be confused but this is her father. He always knew what she wanted even when she couldn't express it fully. He looked at the tracking device on his arm, turned on Damian’s device, and looked at his only daughter.

“He is at her house.” He said not looking up and the only thing he saw was the city before him. He smirked, knowing his daughter took after him.

Back at the sight of the argument between brothers, they finally decided that their father would listen better to his daughter rather than the three boys that drove him up a wall. But when they started to look up to talk to Cass, they realized she wasn't there. They all started to freak out, not realizing that their tracking device was working yet again.

“Where did Bat Girl go?” Tim looked around.

“She must have left,” Dick said.

“Whose gonna call the bat now?” Jason whispered. He threw his hands above his head, frustrated with his siblings when he saw it, The location on his arm. He slowly started to back up towards the edge of the wall while his brothers argued with each other. He had just gotten to the edge when they realized what he already knew.

“It's back on!” The two boys shouted racing to beat each other to the address, but Jason was already beating him. They swung from building to building, running on rooftops, trying to get to her house. When they got to the building, they raised down the fire escape to her window. Jason made it there first but got distracted by the sight. It was Y/N cooking while Cass and Damian sat at the table eating cookies and drinking milk. The room had a soft glow to it, highlighting every beautiful feature of her. Before Jason got to bask in her glow, Tim and Dick were opening the window and pushing forward into the apartment. They climbed through the window followed by Jason.

“Look what the cat dragged in!” Damian laughed, a rarity for the young boy. The girl Jason was staring at in wonder looked up and finally made eye contact with the three boys.

“I was thinking you boys were lost. I am making more cookies if you want some!” She looked at each of them and finally looked at Jason.

“Hey, hun.” She said, putting the bowl of cookie batter down. She didn't even care that the remaining siblings ran to the bowl to get some cookie dough. She crossed the room to get to him keeping eye contact with him. She finally reached him and he hugged her, wrapping his arms around her. She placed her head under his chin.

“I’m sorry about the crazies I brought with me.” He said, feeling ashamed. She started to laugh, her body shaking in his arms. She looked up and him and smiled.

“I don't mind, this place gets a little lonely. My boyfriend works at night. I wonder why?” She giggled. Looking him in the eye. He started to smile.

“He sounds like a real tool”, He said with a smile, “Mind if I take his place tonight?” She pondered the idea.

“Jason, I would love for you to stay with me.” She smirked. She went on her tippytoes and finally gave him a kiss. As the group hung out and ate cookies, they didn't realize the person staring at them from a different building. Batman looked upon the dysfunctional crew and he smiled. He thought about how Jason’s girlfriend really brought out a new side of all his kids. Dick gave less worried looks towards Jason. The girl was giving giving decaf coffee to Tim, allowing him to sleep better at night. Cass was learning how to say more words, and feeling more confident with y/n’s help. Damian was smiling and being a kid more often. And finally, Jason was happier, shining every time the girl was mentioned. Batman was happy his son had found his forever person, even if he didn't know it yet.

#jason todd x reader #jason todd #batfam #batfamily #red hood #dick grayson #alfred pennyworth

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mumbo-updates · 2 years ago

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Mumbo posted on twitter!

[Image ID:

A cropped screenshot of a tweet by Mumbo Jumbo @/ThatMumboJumbo. It reads “I'm leaving this platform with some book recommendations:

- The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher

- Stolen Focus by Johann Hari

- Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport

- So you've been publicly shamed by Jon Ronson

I only have social media on 1 device, and I'm much happier for it.

Finally: Crypto is an MLM, the metaverse isn't the future, Mars will be worse than earth, cities should be designed around people not cars, human art is always more interesting than AI content, giant 3 tonne electric SUV's won't solve climate change, and you should eat ya veggies”.

End ID]

#mumbo jumbo #mcyt #image id #no id in alt text

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httpknjoon · 4 months ago

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the boy is mine! | myg

plot | that time when rumors about bassist!yoongi went around that popstar!yn cannot really stop herself from addressing it.

w.c | 1.1k

pairing | bass guitarist!yoongi x popstar!reader

genre | enemies to lovers, popstar x bassist

note | slightly angsty, but enjoy!

main masterlist | series masterlist | want to request?

DAY 283: MILAN, ITALY

There is this warmth forming in you, specifically in your face. You tried to ignore it, giving your attention to your phone while you waited for the rehearsals to start.

But in hindsight, you looked irritated, annoyed, and sulking in one corner of the stage. Your left hand is literally gripping on the device while you puffed every minute passes, Everyone around you can feel it, they just won't talk about it while you're still around. Cal, your assistant, has been on her phone since last night to talk with your tour publicist after the news that went around last night. Art stood in front of the band with his arms crossed.

The band members were already in their designated spaces. Akio had her lips pursed as she awkwardly looked back to the rest of the present members. Noah, Fred, and Akio joined in this wordless, eyes-only conversation. Fred shrugged his shoulders. The youngest scratched the back of her head, dumbfounded. Noah sighed, rolling his eyes.

Art spoke again as he pushed back his glasses up his nose, "Where is Yoongi?"

It was only day two after you arrived in Milan from your show in Barcelona when you learned about a piece of news through a fan who saw you while strolling around the city. You just came from a lunch with the other band members except Yoongi, who probably went solo touring around. He didn't really say anything about his itinerary.

"I just have to ask..." the fan who stopped you began after you took a couple of selfies. "Is the rumor true?"

Your eyebrows scrunched together before chuckling, "Hon, I need you to be more specific with the rumor. I have many of them."

The fan embarrassed, laughed before trying not to stutter with her next sentence, "Okay, of course, uhm... Is it true that Yoongi is leaving the tour?"

Your smile almost dropped. There was a brief pause as you still processed the unexpected rumor. But you tried to shield any reaction as you pushed the sunglasses that were covering your eyes.

"Well," you chuckled, more awkward this time as what you just heard was unexpected. "I didn't know that. I'm sure my bassist too. That rumor definitely came from the left field."

You said that sentence like an assurance to yourself even though you have not really talked with Yoongi about that. Hell, you two barely have any serious conversation again. But it didn't feel like he had plans of leaving your band despite being petty and childish around each other most of the time.

The fan went on, "Yoongi was literally seen in Verona yesterday with Kylie."

Every background noise faded for a second. Your throat suddenly felt dry and tight. You feel like clenching your teeth, but you don't want to give any reaction that a fan might notice.

Kylie? Like the pop star, you went head-to-head on for number one on Billboard 200 last year? The one you usually chat with during major music events? She's nice and kind. But why is he with her? In Italy? Are they-

"Girl, let's go."

Thankfully, Noah, who was watching everything happen from your table, got up and tapped on your shoulder. He didn't really hear anything because of the other members talking, but he noticed how your mood shifted. So he knew you need to go.

It was like you were snapped out of your thoughts. You tried to smile at the fan again, maybe too tight, before letting yourself be pulled away by your friend. Fred and Akio followed behind you and Noah, who had his arm clung to yours.

Should I ask Yoongi? Text him? Call him? Fuck, why do I even care? He's my fucking bassist, that's why!

Your brain was swimming in questions and thoughts as you walked on the streets of Milan. But, your head is flying to someone who you heard was in Verona with someone. Noah was obviously trying to distract you as he pulled you from one shop to another. He points to every display you see while talking about how glamorous they are, but you cannot comprehend anything.

"So, what do you think?"

You blinked. Suddenly, you are sitting in front of Noah, who's holding two metal-colored tops, in a boutique. Your eyebrows raised as he waited for you to say something like he asked you something. But you barely registered anything.

"Oh. Uhm... The silver one." you acted like you caught up. But Noah looked at you for a second and shook his head, laughing. Lines formed between your brows, "What?"

"I was asking where should we go after this." He hung the clothes back to the rack before sitting next to you. "What's going on?"

You sighed, looking away before pursing your lips. "Is Yoongi leaving the band?"

For someone who only goes running once a week, Yoongi is still pretty fast with the way he is picking up his pace to get to the stage. He can feel the sweat forming at the edge of his forehead while every staff member who has seen him ever since he arrived quietly stares at him. Their eyes feel heavy on him, but the only reason he can think of is him being extremely late for today's rehearsal.

Yoongi could hear that the rehearsals already started and it was obvious that there was something missing. His chest heaves as he stopped near the entrance to the main stage, where Art and Cal stood.

"Where the hell were you?!"

Unexpectedly, it was Cal who seemed to be more stressed out than her fiance who stood there and simply nodded his chin at him.

"Why were you not in the hotel?!" Cal asked again, more tensed this time.

"I was in another city." Yoongi shortly replied. "I'm really, really sorry. I wasn't able to text, I lost my phone last night when I was with my friend in Ve-"

"Friend? You mean, Kylie?" she cuts him off.

Yoongi, unaware of how your assistant knew, dumbfoundedly nodded his head. He was about to ask but Art finally spoke.

"Just fo inside. We can just talk later."

Yoongi nods, "Okay, thank you. I'm sorry again."

He turned his head down as he made his way inside the arena. It was easy to find you in the center of the stage, lazily dancing while singing. He assumed you were just saving energy for the show later, but when you turned around and saw him. You paused. Your eyes met like magnets and suddenly, it's hard to pull away.

The rehearsal lasted longer than usual due to two main reasons. The first is because of the new changes to your setlist. Second, although no one will say it, it's because of your bassist being an hour late for no reason at all.

When you saw Yoongi standing just below the stage, you automatically stopped. Like you had to make sure that he really came today. Your tensed shoulders dropped slowly as the tightness in your chest loosened. Fuck. It would have been really easy to be mad and confront him in front of everyone right now if only you weren't just so relieved to see him. And if only he hadn't looked hot and sweaty.

You were a bundle of emotions and you felt like a mess. And you didn't like that it's because of the same guy you literally had a fight over water bottles with. He's just standing there, probably dating one of your colleagues, and you're here, having mixed feelings upon seeing him.

"Oh, fuck."

As you are the center of the show, everyone noticed when you stopped moving and decided to stop as well. You were too lost to remember that you have an in-ear microphone just under your lips that caught you cursing very clearly. You gasped as you looked around.

"I-I'm sorry."

Yoongi's eyes widened after you cursed while literally staring at him like he was a ghost. He cannot tell if you were pissed or mad at him when he looked into your eyes, but one thing he can tell. Something switched in you while having quiet eye contact with him.

"Come on!" Noah whispered-shouted at him while Akio signaled him to come up and joined them.

Yoongi nodded and jogged up to the stage and immediately put on his guitar. The rehearsals went on. Yoongi watched you from behind as always, but you never looked at him again. When Yoongi's guitar had an issue, you simply signed with your hand without turning around to him. Avoiding him all over again. He still got to play for an hour before the rehearsals concluded.

"Where were you, man?" Fred was the first to ask while everyone began leaving. Yoongi sees you talk with Cal as you walk out, making his jaw clench as he can feel you actively avoiding him again.

He turned back to his co-members, "I toured around Verona with my old friend-"

"Oh, how long have you been friends with Kylie?" the drummer was quick to ask.

"Huh?" Yoongi's brows scrunched together. "I don't really know her. My old friend is her producer though, he introduced me to her before but we barely talked. Why is everyone asking me about her?"

Yoongi hears a collective gasp from the band. Akio had her hand over her open mouth. Fred looked confused. Noah was quick to recover, crossing his arms over his chest.

"You've literally been in a dating rumor with her since last night," he told him.

Yoongi blinked, confused, "What?"

"Where the hell is your phone? It's everywhere." Akio chimed in.

That's why everyone is staring at me?! There was a sudden realization in Yoongi's head. The weird stares from the staff and Cal's reaction makes more sense.

"I lost it somewhere last night," he replied, still in shock and confusion. And that's why you were avoiding him. "I'm sorry, I need to go talk with YN."

The others didn't even get a chance to respond properly since Yoongi was already running off stage to get to you. He really hates running, but he's been doing it a lot today. But he knows he has to explain himself as soon as possible. He then found you in front of your dressing room, talking with Art about your concerns about the stage. Art notices him quickly and can tell that Yoongi needs something from you, so he wordlessly nods his chin behind you before walking away with Cal.

"Can I help you with anything?"

You tried to act normal because that's what your head is telling you to do. But with all honesty, you felt like your stomach was doing cartwheels over and over again as he stood before you, catching his breath. You wondered why was he breathless.

"Can we talk?" he asked, gulping.

"About what?" you replied unbothered or that was trying to be perceived.

But Yoongi already knows what you are trying to do, so he just went straight to the point. "I am not dating anyone."

A second passed before your right brow raised, "And what do you want me to do about it? Congratulate you?"

Just like your mini, childish banter, you acted sarcastic and you expected Yoongi to maybe fight back. But instead, all you got is him looking at you or maybe your soul. Because you felt like he is reading through you again.

Yoongi knows that you're probably deflecting. You talked about this before, but he wondered if you think he already forgot about it.

"What would you say if I tell you I'm dating someone?" he asked, just out of curiosity, since he knows that you won't really talk seriously with him.

You didn't let his serious tone affect you. You shrugged your shoulders, "Congratulations, I guess."

"Okay." If that is how you want to play this game. Yoongi turned his back.

Getting that unexpected reply, you asked, "What do you mean by that?"

Turning around for the last time, Yoongi shrugged his shoulders, "Okay."

"How's everybody doing tonight?"

In contrast to your mood earlier today and the day before, you asked your fans full of energy and excitement. You were jumping around, dancing, and skipping on stage as you performed your songs along with the band and backup dancers. The fans matched your energy, screaming, even though that is what they have been doing the last hour. You took the time to sip some water and look around the audience and their homemade signs. Your eyes widened as you spotted a particular one.

You put down the water bottle at the edge of the stage before pointing your finger to the fan, "Can I have that?"

The fan excitedly nodded while the others cheered and helped her sign to get to you. One of the guards handed it to you. You immediately pressed the carton sign to your body to hide what was written on it.

"What's your name?" you asked the fan.

She was jumping, "Sammie!"

"Sammie, I think you just made the most relevant sign right now." you chuckled before turning the sign around.

YN PLS MAKE ME UR BASSIST IF YOONGI EVER LEAVES

You posed with it right in front of the camera, making sure that everyone in the arena would see it. Everyone laughed and cheered, including the band members. Yoongi, on the other hand, tries not to show much reaction. But when the camera lands on him, showing him on the big screens, he has a smug smirk on his lips while shaking his head. The arena was filled with cheers when you walked towards him.

"Well, what do you say? Any plans of leaving? Or even moving?" you asked, directly addressing the rumor that played with your emotions since yesterday.

Yoongi, who rarely speaks on stage, shook his head. He leaned closer to your mic, "Never even thought of it."

His voice was deep enough to make you shiver inside. You bite the inside of your cheeks to stop yourself from smiling too hard.

"That's your answer, Sammie. Sorry! Not looking for bassist right now. What's mine is mine, I guess."

note | thank you to the anons who requested this song! <3 this turned more angsty than what I expected haha

SERIES TAGLIST

kindly check out my taglist rules on my pinned post :)

@busanbby-jjk @jimingirl95 @treacherqus @jajabro @marnz1990 @ktownshizzle @notarshia @m00njinnie @thelilbutifulthings @tarahardcore @livisdoingfine @jungshaking @eridanus-lynx @enthralled-bandit @goodnight-n-go-home @ronyiboniyy @jimeg629 @lveegsoi @madussthoughts @jalexad @ryryvna @kiki-zb

PERMANENT TAGLIST (CLOSED)

@dunixxd @cixrosie @jksjx @embrace-themagic @buttvi @starbtslove @missseoulite @vanntaesworld @kenqki @imajinthis @stopeatread @seolaquotes @greyrain23 @chimchimmarie @petalsofink @jayhope88 @moonchild1 @laylasbunbunny @nikkiordonez12 @misshale21 @marblemoonstones

#bass guitarist! yoongi #yoongi fluff #yoongi x reader #yoongi imagine #yoongi au #yoongi x y/n #yoongi x you #bts drabble #bts aus #bts fanfic #bts x reader #bts x you #bts x y/n #yoongi fanfic #bts suga #httpknjoon #love is... on tour myg #Spotify

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sybaritick · 4 months ago

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i posted this whole long thing because while releasing python assignments i had a video on in the background showing a guy making a coilgun. i was yearning for Cool Weapon and what better vehicle for that than long rogue trader post

though i've mentioned playing Rogue Trader recently I've never made much commentary on my RT so please have this and no other context

speaking of "background info about your Rogue Trader" seeing kiava gamma 100% solidified my belief that tessera grew up on a manufacturing world that looked "like that, but the way it did before all the Chaos and crap." for this reason i imagine she has very detailed but currently completely non-useful knowledge about the manufacturing process for one particular piece of mining equipment: the thing her parents, both engineers, were responsible for and something she witnessed and certainly had to help out with repeatedly. Nobody Ask Me About Rotary Drilling Rigs Ever Again (and she got her wish!). She was working there with the expectation that she would take on their roles one day so it was like. apprenticeship/training rather than child labor. though there is a fine line between those things as we all know lol

there is some immaturity to her (which ive talked about before) even tho she is also practical in a sense. deciding "actually i want to be in the military i don't care about making drill parts" is in a sense selfish, or at least indicates she is a certain type of person-- paradoxically it is not the "practical" choice! but her parents were like ok if you're sure you can go to the naval academy then. (idk what it's like in universe i'm handwaving that her parents had the correct connections and she had the right test scores to do it). mentioned it before but i think it's bc she had some critical childhood experiences about the imperial navy showing up and saving everybody from xenos and she has this idealized image of them still in her head. i mean shes not an idiot she knows they're not perfect but she is a patriot who genuinely believes the imperial navy is in the right for ideological reasons.

also, as is often the case, she went from "and i never want to do any more engineering ever" to very quickly realizing that one, she missed it, and two, she had a talent for it and her education was dedicated to it so i imagine they put her on a bunch of weapons stuff. tessera's interest in discussing the technical specs of the voidship's cannons, lance weapons, missiles, and the differences some new installation has made interests no one but Pasqal. u can take the homie out the manufactory world but you cannot take the manufactory world out the homie. still, that background (as a naval officer) makes command of the ship and void combat more natural to her, so it serves her as a rogue trader.

bonus

I love how this explanation includes me saying "It's kind of selfish to want to do something with your life other that the very specific mechanical engineering discipline set out for you by your parents." The Writer's Barely-Disguised Insane Worldview. I swear I do not actually believe that ofc lmao, you certainly do not owe that to your parents it's more in-universe it was her guaranteed path to a decent life, a "well the good opportunity is right there so," so in a practical sense, okay i'm really just digging myself a hole aren't i, However, in my defense, for like several centuries this would have been considered fairly reasonable. (Surely it's fine to justify some viewpoint with "But for several centuries everyone thought that")

#cal txt #i am doing the equivalent of “joe went to his business job at the business factory” about her having been a naval officer. i don't know #what that involves it's just one of the origin options and i picked it. however i know a little about various cool machines and devices so #just hoping if i talk enough about that nobody will notice me covering up the everything else with a sheet

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emakegr · 5 days ago

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Οικονομικές Άδειες RDS για Windows Server 2022

Ανακαλύψτε την Ιδανική Οικονομική Λύση για τις Άδειες RDS σε Windows Server 2022

Σε έναν κόσμο όπου η τεχνολογία εξελίσσεται διαρκώς, η ανάγκη για αποτελεσματική διαχείριση των IT πόρων γίνεται όλο και πιο επιτακτική. Ειδικά όταν πρόκειται για τον Microsoft Windows Server 2022, οι επαγγελματίες IT αναζητούν πάντα τις πιο οικονομικές και πρακτικές λύσεις για τη διαχείριση των απομακρυσμένων επιφάνειας εργασίας (RDS). Μια από τις πιο δημοφιλείς επιλογές είναι οι άδειες χρήσης ανά συσκευή, γνωστές και ως Device CALs (Client Access Licenses).

Οι άδειες RDS Device CALs προσφέρουν σημαντικά πλεονεκτήματα, κυρίως για επιχειρήσεις που έχουν πολλούς χρήστες οι οποίοι μοιράζονται λίγες συσκευές για πρόσβαση στον server. Αυτές οι άδειες επιτρέπουν τη σύνδεση πολλών χρηστών από μια συγκεκριμένη συσκευή στον Windows Server 2022, κάνοντας την επένδυση σε CALs πιο οικονομική και ευέλικτη.

Η επιλογή της κατάλληλης άδειας μπορεί να είναι δύσκολη, αλλά οι άδειες RDS Device CALs προσφέρουν μια ιδανική λύση για επιχειρήσεις που επιθυμούν να μειώσουν το κόστος και να αυξήσουν την παραγωγικότητα. Η σωστή αξιολόγηση των αναγκών της επιχείρησής σας θα σας καθοδηγήσει στην επιλογή του σωστού πακέτου αδειών, εξοικονομώντας πόρους και βελτιστοποιώντας τη λειτουργία του δικτύου σας.

Η οικονομική διάσταση των αδειών RDS Device CALs είναι ένα από τα κύρια πλεονεκτήματά τους. Αυτές οι άδειες παρέχουν τη δυνατότητα για σταθερό κόστος, ανεξάρτητα από το πόσοι χρήστες χρησιμοποιούν τη μία συσκευή για πρόσβαση στον server. Έτσι, μπορείτε να ελέγχετε καλύτερα τον προϋπολογισμό σας και να αποφεύγετε απρόβλεπτα έξοδα.

Για περισσότερες πληροφορίες σχετικά με το κόστος άδειας windows server 2022 rds device cal, μπορείτε να επισκεφθείτε τη σελίδα μας και να δείτε τις διαθέσιμες επιλογές. Οι λύσεις μας είναι σχεδιασμένες για να καλύπτουν κάθε ανάγκη και να προσφέρουν την καλύτερη δυνατή εμπειρία στους πελάτες μας.

Συνολικά, η επένδυση σε RDS Device CALs για τον Windows Server 2022 προσφέρει μια ευέλικτη και οικονομικά αποδοτική λύση για επιχειρήσεις που επιθυμούν να βελτιστοποιήσουν τη διαχείριση των IT πόρων τους. Η σωστή επιλογή των αδειών όχι μόνο θα μειώσει το κόστος, αλλά θα συμβάλει και στην αύξηση της αποδοτικότητας και της παραγωγικότητας των εργαζομένων.

Εξερευνήστε τις επιλογές σας σήμερα και προχωρήστε στην εφαρμογή της πιο αποδοτικής λύσης για την επιχείρησή σας, εξασφαλίζοντας ότι οι τεχνολογικές σας υποδομές είναι έτοιμες να ανταποκριθούν στις σύγχρονες προκλήσεις.

#άδειες RDS Windows Server 2022 #οικονομικές λύσεις RDS #Device CALs για επιχειρήσεις #απομακρυσμένη επιφάνεια εργασίας #διαχείριση IT πόρων #βελτιστοποίηση κόστους αδειών #παραγωγικότητα με RDS

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antoniosvivaldi · 1 year ago

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Neural Filters Tutorial for Gifmakers by @antoniosvivaldi

Hi everyone! In light of my blog’s 10th birthday, I’m delighted to reveal my highly anticipated gifmaking tutorial using Neural Filters - a very powerful collection of filters that really broadened my scope in gifmaking over the past 12 months.

Before I get into this tutorial, I want to thank @laurabenanti, @maines , @cobbbvanth, and @cal-kestis for their unconditional support over the course of my journey of investigating the Neural Filters & their valuable inputs on the rendering performance!

In this tutorial, I will outline what the Photoshop Neural Filters do and how I use them in my workflow - multiple examples will be provided for better clarity. Finally, I will talk about some known performance issues with the filters & some feasible workarounds.

Tutorial Structure:

Meet the Neural Filters: What they are and what they do

Why I use Neural Filters? How I use Neural Filters in my giffing workflow

Getting started: The giffing workflow in a nutshell and installing the Neural Filters

Applying Neural Filters onto your gif: Making use of the Neural Filters settings; with multiple examples

Testing your system: recommended if you’re using Neural Filters for the first time

Rendering performance: Common Neural Filters performance issues & workarounds

For quick reference, here are the examples that I will show in this tutorial:

Example 1: Image Enhancement | improving the image quality of gifs prepared from highly compressed video files

Example 2: Facial Enhancement | enhancing an individual's facial features

Example 3: Colour Manipulation | colourising B&W gifs for a colourful gifset

Example 4: Artistic effects | transforming landscapes & adding artistic effects onto your gifs

Example 5: Putting it all together | my usual giffing workflow using Neural Filters

What you need & need to know:

Software: Photoshop 2021 or later (recommended: 2023 or later)*

Hardware: 8GB of RAM; having a supported GPU is highly recommended*

Difficulty: Advanced (requires a lot of patience); knowledge in gifmaking and using video timeline assumed

Key concepts: Smart Layer / Smart Filters

Benchmarking your system: Neural Filters test files**

Supplementary materials: Tutorial Resources / Detailed findings on rendering gifs with Neural Filters + known issues***

*I primarily gif on an M2 Max MacBook Pro that's running Photoshop 2024, but I also have experiences gifmaking on few other Mac models from 2012 ~ 2023.

**Using Neural Filters can be resource intensive, so it’s helpful to run the test files yourself. I’ll outline some known performance issues with Neural Filters and workarounds later in the tutorial.

***This supplementary page contains additional Neural Filters benchmark tests and instructions, as well as more information on the rendering performance (for Apple Silicon-based devices) when subject to heavy Neural Filters gifmaking workflows

Tutorial under the cut. Like / Reblog this post if you find this tutorial helpful. Linking this post as an inspo link will also be greatly appreciated!

1. Meet the Neural Filters!

Neural Filters are powered by Adobe's machine learning engine known as Adobe Sensei. It is a non-destructive method to help streamline workflows that would've been difficult and/or tedious to do manually.

Here are the Neural Filters available in Photoshop 2024:

Skin Smoothing: Removes blemishes on the skin

Smart Portrait: This a cloud-based filter that allows you to change the mood, facial age, hair, etc using the sliders+

Makeup Transfer: Applies the makeup (from a reference image) to the eyes & mouth area of your image

Landscape Mixer: Transforms the landscape of your image (e.g. seasons & time of the day, etc), based on the landscape features of a reference image

Style Transfer: Applies artistic styles e.g. texturings (from a reference image) onto your image

Harmonisation: Applies the colour balance of your image based on the lighting of the background image+

Colour Transfer: Applies the colour scheme (of a reference image) onto your image

Colourise: Adds colours onto a B&W image

Super Zoom: Zoom / crop an image without losing resolution+

Depth Blur: Blurs the background of the image

JPEG Artefacts Removal: Removes artefacts caused by JPEG compression

Photo Restoration: Enhances image quality & facial details

+These three filters aren't used in my giffing workflow. The cloud-based nature of Smart Portrait leads to disjointed looking frames. For Harmonisation, applying this on a gif causes Neural Filter timeout error. Finally, Super Zoom does not currently support output as a Smart Filter

If you're running Photoshop 2021 or earlier version of Photoshop 2022, you will see a smaller selection of Neural Filters:

Things to be aware of:

You can apply up to six Neural Filters at the same time

Filters where you can use your own reference images: Makeup Transfer (portraits only), Landscape Mixer, Style Transfer (not available in Photoshop 2021), and Colour Transfer

Later iterations of Photoshop 2023 & newer: The first three default presets for Landscape Mixer and Colour Transfer are currently broken.

2. Why I use Neural Filters?

Here are my four main Neural Filters use cases in my gifmaking process. In each use case I'll list out the filters that I use:

Enhancing Image Quality:

Common wisdom is to find the highest quality video to gif from for a media release & avoid YouTube whenever possible. However for smaller / niche media (e.g. new & upcoming musical artists), prepping gifs from highly compressed YouTube videos is inevitable.

So how do I get around with this? I have found Neural Filters pretty handy when it comes to both correcting issues from video compression & enhancing details in gifs prepared from these highly compressed video files.

Filters used: JPEG Artefacts Removal / Photo Restoration

Facial Enhancement:

When I prepare gifs from highly compressed videos, something I like to do is to enhance the facial features. This is again useful when I make gifsets from compressed videos & want to fill up my final panel with a close-up shot.

Filters used: Skin Smoothing / Makeup Transfer / Photo Restoration (Facial Enhancement slider)

Colour Manipulation:

Neural Filters is a powerful way to do advanced colour manipulation - whether I want to quickly transform the colour scheme of a gif or transform a B&W clip into something colourful.

Filters used: Colourise / Colour Transfer

Artistic Effects:

This is one of my favourite things to do with Neural Filters! I enjoy using the filters to create artistic effects by feeding textures that I've downloaded as reference images. I also enjoy using these filters to transform the overall the atmosphere of my composite gifs. The gifsets where I've leveraged Neural Filters for artistic effects could be found under this tag on usergif.

Filters used: Landscape Mixer / Style Transfer / Depth Blur

How I use Neural Filters over different stages of my gifmaking workflow:

I want to outline how I use different Neural Filters throughout my gifmaking process. This can be roughly divided into two stages:

Stage I: Enhancement and/or Colourising | Takes place early in my gifmaking process. I process a large amount of component gifs by applying Neural Filters for enhancement purposes and adding some base colourings.++

Stage II: Artistic Effects & more Colour Manipulation | Takes place when I'm assembling my component gifs in the big PSD / PSB composition file that will be my final gif panel.

I will walk through this in more detail later in the tutorial.

++I personally like to keep the size of the component gifs in their original resolution (a mixture of 1080p & 4K), to get best possible results from the Neural Filters and have more flexibility later on in my workflow. I resize & sharpen these gifs after they're placed into my final PSD composition files in Tumblr dimensions.

3. Getting started

The essence is to output Neural Filters as a Smart Filter on the smart object when working with the Video Timeline interface. Your workflow will contain the following steps:

Prepare your gif

In the frame animation interface, set the frame delay to 0.03s and convert your gif to the Video Timeline

In the Video Timeline interface, go to Filter > Neural Filters and output to a Smart Filter

Flatten or render your gif (either approach is fine). To flatten your gif, play the "flatten" action from the gif prep action pack. To render your gif as a .mov file, go to File > Export > Render Video & use the following settings.

Setting up:

o.) To get started, prepare your gifs the usual way - whether you screencap or clip videos. You should see your prepared gif in the frame animation interface as follows:

Note: As mentioned earlier, I keep the gifs in their original resolution right now because working with a larger dimension document allows more flexibility later on in my workflow. I have also found that I get higher quality results working with more pixels. I eventually do my final sharpening & resizing when I fit all of my component gifs to a main PSD composition file (that's of Tumblr dimension).

i.) To use Smart Filters, convert your gif to a Smart Video Layer.

As an aside, I like to work with everything in 0.03s until I finish everything (then correct the frame delay to 0.05s when I upload my panels onto Tumblr).

For convenience, I use my own action pack to first set the frame delay to 0.03s (highlighted in yellow) and then convert to timeline (highlighted in red) to access the Video Timeline interface. To play an action, press the play button highlighted in green.

Once you've converted this gif to a Smart Video Layer, you'll see the Video Timeline interface as follows:

ii.) Select your gif (now as a Smart Layer) and go to Filter > Neural Filters

Installing Neural Filters:

Install the individual Neural Filters that you want to use. If the filter isn't installed, it will show a cloud symbol (highlighted in yellow). If the filter is already installed, it will show a toggle button (highlighted in green)

When you toggle this button, the Neural Filters preview window will look like this (where the toggle button next to the filter that you use turns blue)

4. Using Neural Filters

Once you have installed the Neural Filters that you want to use in your gif, you can toggle on a filter and play around with the sliders until you're satisfied. Here I'll walkthrough multiple concrete examples of how I use Neural Filters in my giffing process.

Example 1: Image enhancement | sample gifset

This is my typical Stage I Neural Filters gifmaking workflow. When giffing older or more niche media releases, my main concern is the video compression that leads to a lot of artefacts in the screencapped / video clipped gifs.

To fix the artefacts from compression, I go to Filter > Neural Filters, and toggle JPEG Artefacts Removal filter. Then I choose the strength of the filter (boxed in green), output this as a Smart Filter (boxed in yellow), and press OK (boxed in red).

Note: The filter has to be fully processed before you could press the OK button!

After applying the Neural Filters, you'll see "Neural Filters" under the Smart Filters property of the smart layer

Flatten / render your gif

Example 2: Facial enhancement | sample gifset

This is my routine use case during my Stage I Neural Filters gifmaking workflow. For musical artists (e.g. Maisie Peters), YouTube is often the only place where I'm able to find some videos to prepare gifs from. However even the highest resolution video available on YouTube is highly compressed.

Go to Filter > Neural Filters and toggle on Photo Restoration. If Photoshop recognises faces in the image, there will be a "Facial Enhancement" slider under the filter settings.

Play around with the Photo Enhancement & Facial Enhancement sliders. You can also expand the "Adjustment" menu make additional adjustments e.g. remove noises and reducing different types of artefacts.

Once you're happy with the results, press OK and then flatten / render your gif.

Example 3: Colour Manipulation | sample gifset

Want to make a colourful gifset but the source video is in B&W? This is where Colourise from Neural Filters comes in handy! This same colourising approach is also very helpful for colouring poor-lit scenes as detailed in this tutorial.

Here's a B&W gif that we want to colourise:

Highly recommended: add some adjustment layers onto the B&W gif to improve the contrast & depth. This will give you higher quality results when you colourise your gif.

Go to Filter > Neural Filters and toggle on Colourise.

Make sure "Auto colour image" is enabled.

Play around with further adjustments e.g. colour balance, until you're satisfied then press OK.

Important: When you colourise a gif, you need to double check that the resulting skin tone is accurate to real life. I personally go to Google Images and search up photoshoots of the individual / character that I'm giffing for quick reference.

Add additional adjustment layers until you're happy with the colouring of the skin tone.

Once you're happy with the additional adjustments, flatten / render your gif. And voila!

Note: For Colour Manipulation, I use Colourise in my Stage I workflow and Colour Transfer in my Stage II workflow to do other types of colour manipulations (e.g. transforming the colour scheme of the component gifs)

Example 4: Artistic Effects | sample gifset

This is where I use Neural Filters for the bulk of my Stage II workflow: the most enjoyable stage in my editing process!

Normally I would be working with my big composition files with multiple component gifs inside it. To begin the fun, drag a component gif (in PSD file) to the main PSD composition file.

Resize this gif in the composition file until you're happy with the placement

Duplicate this gif. Sharpen the bottom layer (highlighted in yellow), and then select the top layer (highlighted in green) & go to Filter > Neural Filters

I like to use Style Transfer and Landscape Mixer to create artistic effects from Neural Filters. In this particular example, I've chosen Landscape Mixer

Select a preset or feed a custom image to the filter (here I chose a texture that I've on my computer)

Play around with the different sliders e.g. time of the day / seasons

Important: uncheck "Harmonise Subject" & "Preserve Subject" - these two settings are known to cause performance issues when you render a multiframe smart object (e.g. for a gif)

Once you're happy with the artistic effect, press OK

To ensure you preserve the actual subject you want to gif (bc Preserve Subject is unchecked), add a layer mask onto the top layer (with Neural Filters) and mask out the facial region. You might need to play around with the Layer Mask Position keyframes or Rotoscope your subject in the process.

After you're happy with the masking, flatten / render this composition file and voila!

Example 5: Putting it all together | sample gifset

Let's recap on the Neural Filters gifmaking workflow and where Stage I and Stage II fit in my gifmaking process:

i. Preparing & enhancing the component gifs

Prepare all component gifs and convert them to smart layers

Stage I: Add base colourings & apply Photo Restoration / JPEG Artefacts Removal to enhance the gif's image quality

Flatten all of these component gifs and convert them back to Smart Video Layers (this process can take a lot of time)

Some of these enhanced gifs will be Rotoscoped so this is done before adding the gifs to the big PSD composition file

ii. Setting up the big PSD composition file

Make a separate PSD composition file (Ctrl / Cmmd + N) that's of Tumblr dimension (e.g. 540px in width)

Drag all of the component gifs used into this PSD composition file

Enable Video Timeline and trim the work area

In the composition file, resize / move the component gifs until you're happy with the placement & sharpen these gifs if you haven't already done so

Duplicate the layers that you want to use Neural Filters on

iii. Working with Neural Filters in the PSD composition file

Stage II: Neural Filters to create artistic effects / more colour manipulations!

Mask the smart layers with Neural Filters to both preserve the subject and avoid colouring issues from the filters

Flatten / render the PSD composition file: the more component gifs in your composition file, the longer the exporting will take. (I prefer to render the composition file into a .mov clip to prevent overriding a file that I've spent effort putting together.)

Note: In some of my layout gifsets (where I've heavily used Neural Filters in Stage II), the rendering time for the panel took more than 20 minutes. This is one of the rare instances where I was maxing out my computer's memory.

Useful things to take note of:

Important: If you're using Neural Filters for Colour Manipulation or Artistic Effects, you need to take a lot of care ensuring that the skin tone of nonwhite characters / individuals is accurately coloured

Use the Facial Enhancement slider from Photo Restoration in moderation, if you max out the slider value you risk oversharpening your gif later on in your gifmaking workflow

You will get higher quality results from Neural Filters by working with larger image dimensions: This gives Neural Filters more pixels to work with. You also get better quality results by feeding higher resolution reference images to the Neural Filters.

Makeup Transfer is more stable when the person / character has minimal motion in your gif

You might get unexpected results from Landscape Mixer if you feed a reference image that don't feature a distinctive landscape. This is not always a bad thing: for instance, I have used this texture as a reference image for Landscape Mixer, to create the shimmery effects as seen in this gifset

5. Testing your system

If this is the first time you're applying Neural Filters directly onto a gif, it will be helpful to test out your system yourself. This will help:

Gauge the expected rendering time that you'll need to wait for your gif to export, given specific Neural Filters that you've used

Identify potential performance issues when you render the gif: this is important and will determine whether you will need to fully playback your gif before flattening / rendering the file.

Understand how your system's resources are being utilised: Inputs from Windows PC users & Mac users alike are welcome!

About the Neural Filters test files:

Contains six distinct files, each using different Neural Filters

Two sizes of test files: one copy in full HD (1080p) and another copy downsized to 540px

One folder containing the flattened / rendered test files

How to use the Neural Filters test files:

What you need:

Photoshop 2022 or newer (recommended: 2023 or later)

Install the following Neural Filters: Landscape Mixer / Style Transfer / Colour Transfer / Colourise / Photo Restoration / Depth Blur

Recommended for some Apple Silicon-based MacBook Pro models: Enable High Power Mode

How to use the test files:

For optimal performance, close all background apps

Open a test file

Flatten the test file into frames (load this action pack & play the “flatten” action)

Take note of the time it takes until you’re directed to the frame animation interface

Compare the rendered frames to the expected results in this folder: check that all of the frames look the same. If they don't, you will need to fully playback the test file in full before flattening the file.†

Re-run the test file without the Neural Filters and take note of how long it takes before you're directed to the frame animation interface

Recommended: Take note of how your system is utilised during the rendering process (more info here for MacOS users)

†This is a performance issue known as flickering that I will discuss in the next section. If you come across this, you'll have to playback a gif where you've used Neural Filters (on the video timeline) in full, prior to flattening / rendering it.

Factors that could affect the rendering performance / time (more info):

The number of frames, dimension, and colour bit depth of your gif

If you use Neural Filters with facial recognition features, the rendering time will be affected by the number of characters / individuals in your gif

Most resource intensive filters (powered by largest machine learning models): Landscape Mixer / Photo Restoration (with Facial Enhancement) / and JPEG Artefacts Removal

Least resource intensive filters (smallest machine learning models): Colour Transfer / Colourise

The number of Neural Filters that you apply at once / The number of component gifs with Neural Filters in your PSD file

Your system: system memory, the GPU, and the architecture of the system's CPU+++

+++ Rendering a gif with Neural Filters demands a lot of system memory & GPU horsepower. Rendering will be faster & more reliable on newer computers, as these systems have CPU & GPU with more modern instruction sets that are geared towards machine learning-based tasks.

Additionally, the unified memory architecture of Apple Silicon M-series chips are found to be quite efficient at processing Neural Filters.

6. Performance issues & workarounds

Common Performance issues:

I will discuss several common issues related to rendering or exporting a multi-frame smart object (e.g. your composite gif) that uses Neural Filters below. This is commonly caused by insufficient system memory and/or the GPU.

Flickering frames: in the flattened / rendered file, Neural Filters aren't applied to some of the frames+-+

Scrambled frames: the frames in the flattened / rendered file isn't in order

Neural Filters exceeded the timeout limit error: this is normally a software related issue

Long export / rendering time: long rendering time is expected in heavy workflows

Laggy Photoshop / system interface: having to wait quite a long time to preview the next frame on the timeline

Issues with Landscape Mixer: Using the filter gives ill-defined defined results (Common in older systems)--

Workarounds:

Workarounds that could reduce unreliable rendering performance & long rendering time:

Close other apps running in the background

Work with smaller colour bit depth (i.e. 8-bit rather than 16-bit)

Downsize your gif before converting to the video timeline-+-

Try to keep the number of frames as low as possible

Avoid stacking multiple Neural Filters at once. Try applying & rendering the filters that you want one by one

Specific workarounds for specific issues:

How to resolve flickering frames: If you come across flickering, you will need to playback your gif on the video timeline in full to find the frames where the filter isn't applied. You will need to select all of the frames to allow Photoshop to reprocess these, before you render your gif.+-+

What to do if you come across Neural Filters timeout error? This is caused by several incompatible Neural Filters e.g. Harmonisation (both the filter itself and as a setting in Landscape Mixer), Scratch Reduction in Photo Restoration, and trying to stack multiple Neural Filters with facial recognition features.

If the timeout error is caused by stacking multiple filters, a feasible workaround is to apply the Neural Filters that you want to use one by one over multiple rendering sessions, rather all of them in one go.

+-+This is a very common issue for Apple Silicon-based Macs. Flickering happens when a gif with Neural Filters is rendered without being previously played back in the timeline.

This issue is likely related to the memory bandwidth & the GPU cores of the chips, because not all Apple Silicon-based Macs exhibit this behaviour (i.e. devices equipped with Max / Ultra M-series chips are mostly unaffected).

-- As mentioned in the supplementary page, Landscape Mixer requires a lot of GPU horsepower to be fully rendered. For older systems (pre-2017 builds), there are no workarounds other than to avoid using this filter.

-+- For smaller dimensions, the size of the machine learning models powering the filters play an outsized role in the rendering time (i.e. marginal reduction in rendering time when downsizing 1080p file to Tumblr dimensions). If you use filters powered by larger models e.g. Landscape Mixer and Photo Restoration, you will need to be very patient when exporting your gif.

7. More useful resources on using Neural Filters

Creating animations with Neural Filters effects | Max Novak

Using Neural Filters to colour correct by @edteachs

I hope this is helpful! If you have any questions or need any help related to the tutorial, feel free to send me an ask 💖

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weadapt · 2 years ago

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I learned that they’re called code cylinders.

What are those two little cylinder things on Cal’s left shoulder? I think it is only on his Survivor and Fallen Order outfits? What does he use them for? I’m curious why they’re on both of his default outfits. I think they’re on either side of his boots as well.

#headcanon going wild #so they’re like keys??#data probe thingy #to access places and devices??#now my brain is going wild on why he has so many keys for Bracca #cal kestis #mc talks

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s0nasup3rst4r · 7 months ago

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Zero Day Headcanons I Thought While Showering

Modern-day Andre is an Android user. I can also see him shitting on iPhone users, ranting that Android devices have longer battery lives, etc.

Cal gets crushes where he thinks the person is cute, lasting a week or two. Andre would rarely get crushes. Whenever he did, it would last for a LONG time.

Cal's favorite class is English.

Andre is one of those dudes who are straight, but act gay around their friends.

I can see Cal preferring casual relationships, while Andre prefers more serious ones.

I'm unsure how old Andre's brother is, but I think he could be 3 or 4 years older.

Andre would get straight A's while Cal would get C's (Hehe A for Andre and C for Cal, I just noticed that!!)

#andre kriegman #zero day #zero day 2003 #zero day movie #cal gabriel #calvin gabriel #zero day headcanons

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snitchcrimsonwrites · 6 months ago

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Rise and Shine

Tech x Jedi!Reader set in alternate universe set after the epilogue, Tech has miraculously survived and is helping you catalog ancient Jedi temples. The Batch is reunited on Pabu for some needed rest and relaxation when an adorable conversation happens at breakfast.

The small kitchen above the Batch's apartment on Pabu was filled with the soft clinks of utensils and the faint hum of quiet conversation. Hunter sat at the table, leaning back in his chair, a mug of caf warm in his hands. Omega, already bright-eyed and full of energy, was across from him, chatting away about their plans for the day, excited to spend the day with her brothers.

Tech, as usual, was focused on an electronic gizmo in front of him, his fingers deftly manipulating the device as he made small adjustments. His attention was split between his work and the ongoing conversation, but he didn’t seem too eager to engage beyond the occasional response. Altogether a very typical morning for the Batch.

So, I was thinking we could head down by the water after breakfast,” Omega said, her eyes gleaming with excitement. “I was hoping to get an early start before it gets too hot. Taking notice of your unusual absence at the breakfast table, she asks, "Is y/n up? I thought she was usually the early bird?”

Tech, not even looking up from his project, added dryly, "Typically that is the case, however, as I’ve come to know my wife, she will take any opportunity to sleep in if she needs it."

Omega perked up immediately, her eyes going wide with delight. "Wait, your wife?!" She smirked. " I've never heard you say anything like that, Tech! That’s so... so... lovely dovey!"

Tech blinked, momentarily thrown off by the sudden shift in conversation. His fingers paused on the device, though he quickly resumed his fiddling. “Yes, well,” he muttered, clearly not understanding why Omega was so entertained. “I believe that would be the most accurate description of our relationship. You were at the ceremony, after all."

"I know!" Omega gushed, leaning forward on the table, her voice turning teasing. "But hearing you say it is different! I mean, kind of romantic? Who knew Tech had it in him?"

Hunter, equally entertained, raised an eyebrow and smirked. "Yeah, I don’t think Tech and ‘lovey-dovey’ have ever been used in the same sentence before

Tech frowned, his gaze firmly fixed on his work as though trying to block out the teasing. "I assure you, there is nothing particularly romantic about the term. It is simply accurate." His voice, though, was a bit quieter than usual, betraying his discomfort.

Omega leaned back in her chair, grinning ear to ear. "You’re just being modest. Tech, you're a changed man!" she teased, winking at Hunter.

Hunter reached over and gave Tech a playful pat on the back."I guess love does change people."

Tech squirmed slightly in his seat, his fingers still moving with robotic precision over his device, though his eyes were now darting between it and the group at the table. "I—" He cleared his throat, then tried to redirect the conversation. "I would not call it ‘change,’ but rather a natural evolution."

"Uh-huh," Hunter said, not buying it for a second.

Tech looked at Hunter, his brow furrowing. "Speaking of natural evolution, did you know that the Kalarian root has been known to reduce the fatigue caused by—"

Just then, the sound of footsteps in the corridor reached their ears, pausing the conversation as you entered the kitchen. You moved toward the counter, immediately heading for the pot of caf, the warm scent of it filling the air.

"Good morning, everyone," you said, offering a sleepy but affectionate smile as you poured yourself a cup.

Hunter grinned and took a casual sip of his own drink. "Your ears must have been burning."

"Hmmm, something good, I hope?" you asked, arching an eyebrow as you added a little more milk to your caf, clearly intrigued by the tone of their conversation.

Omega’s grin widened. "Just me gushing over Tech calling you his wife!" She placed an exaggerated emphasis on the word "wife," drawing out the syllables in a way that made it clear just how much she was enjoying the moment.

You glanced at Tech, who was still awkwardly focused on his gizmo but had an unmistakable flush creeping up his neck. His ears were tinged pink. Noticing this you decide to take full advantage of your husband's embarrassed state.

You leaned down to place a kiss on his cheek, a quick, affectionate peck that was soft but lingering enough to make him pause. You could feel the subtle shift in his posture as he immediately tried to regain his focus on the device in front of him.“You should hear what else he calls me,” you said softly, stepping up behind him.

The brief, affectionate gesture made him visibly flustered, and he quickly shifted in his seat, his hands fumbling with the device as he muttered under his breath. "I—I’d prefer to keep such details... private."

Hunter chuckled, taking a sip out of his cup. "Oh, he’s definitely a changed man," he said with a wink. "I remember when Tech would’ve shut this conversation down immediately."

Tech straightened up, his attempt at maintaining composure now strained. "I... do not understand how this became the topic of conversation," he grumbled, though the soft blush on his cheeks still betraying him.

#star wars #tbb tech #tech x reader #star wars bad batch #tbb #tech x jedi reader #tbb x reader

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goosewriting · 9 months ago

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Class is now in session

summary: reader is in university and starts taking a liking to a certain redhead.

relationship: college AU biker!Cal Kestis x gn!reader

warnings: cameo fest, mentions of alcohol, cal punches a guy, idiots in love 😩💞, gets a lil spicy at the end 🫣 this might border on crack tbh

word count: 11k because i am deranged

A/N: this started out as an innocent college AU with jock!Cal, but my insta feed brought me back to the depths of biker guys x booktok girlies so this idea cemented itself into my brain and i just ran with it. this is 100% self-indulgent, packed with every trope i could think of, and got completely out of hand. i am not sorry. bon appetit :)

[all masterlists] 🪶 [star wars masterlist] 🪶 [ao3]

(english is not my first language. constructive criticism and grammar corrections are very appreciated!)

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

A/N2: please excuse the pacing at the start, it's a bit of a mess. but i promise it gets better! also i use college and university interchangeably here because i’ve personally only been to uni, so sorry if it's confusing ;;-;;

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

As you’re leaving your first class at the new college, you think back to orientation week where you met Sabine. She’s the only one you know here now, other than Ahsoka, a friend from your home town who’s come to this university too for her masters. You have no idea how, but Ahsoka somehow managed to have you move in after her roomate left, so that you now share the flat, which you’re super happy about. At least one thing (or person) less to worry about.

In the class that just finished, you sat with Sabine, and she introduced you to Ezra, her friend from high school. So that’s now two people you at least know by name here.

You hurry to get to your next class which is basically across campus in one of the bigger auditoriums, and it’s the biggest class by far. Sabine and Ezra don’t attend this one, so you don’t know anyone here. You look around as you cross into the room, observing how the students swarm in in waves, quickly taking their seats. Walking down to the middle row, you quickly scan the group, thinking who seems approachable to eventually start chatting.

The class goes by rather quickly, being the first one and all, it was more about formalities than actual content. Someone had arrived just on time as the professor also walked in, a redhead that caught your eye, but the moment the class was over, he left quickly. In fact everyone leaves quickly, and you can’t help but be dragged along by the mass of people and you find yourself in the hallway, which just as quickly as it filled, is empty once more.

For lunch you meet with Sabine and Ezra, and you all get to know each other a little better. At first you thought they might be dating, judging by how close they seem, but they never mention it during your meal. If Sabine is willing to have boy talk with you, you make a mental note to ask her about it at some point.

In the afternoon, you start your job at the library. A tall and elegant woman, Shaak Ti, shows you the ropes, and soon you’re left to your own devices at the desk, doing some smaller tasks to get you started. Not soon after, Ahsoka comes by for a quick visit to say hi.

Your shift is almost over when someone comes up to the check-out desk where you sit. You hear them approaching, and as you lift your eyes from your work, you recognise it’s the redhead from today’s class. Putting on your best customer support smile and voice, you ask how you can help, and he says that the self check-out machine isn't working.

How strange, you think, remembering how Shaak Ti showed you earlier how it works, and it did so just fine. But it’s quicker to just ring up his book now, and you could check the machine later. So you take the two books from him as well as his student ID and scan everything, doing your thing. You see his name on the ID: Cal Kestis. So that's what he's called. Maybe if you meet in class again, you could say hi. It would be super awkward if he didn't recognise you, though.

Shaking away your thoughts for the moment, you repeat to him what Shaak Ti told you earlier about the borrowing of materials, the e-mail notice and that he can check the return date on his university account. Taking his books and card, Cal thanks you with a smile and leaves. Standing up from the desk after a moment, you go to the self check-out machine to see what’s wrong with it, trying to remember if Shaak Ti gave you the number for the technician. You try out the process several times with a random book and your ID and it works perfectly. Strange, you think again.

By the time you get back to your dorm, which is a short bus ride away from campus, it’s already evening. You enter your room, grimacing a bit at how empty and lifeless it still looks. But you know you’ll be quick to decorate it and fill the space with your things to make it feel a bit more like home, albeit a temporary one.

Arriving at uni the next day, you get off the bus and walk towards the building. A motor bike passes you and parks in the designated area, your eyes unintentionally following the person, and you check them out a bit. The whole outfit, leather jacket and all, do look good, and you stare for perhaps a second too long. When the person takes off the helmet, you realise it’s the redhead from yesterday. He catches you looking at him and gives you an acknowledging nod and smile. Your head immediately turns the other way, cheeks burning at getting caught, and you walk away hastily, knowing this interaction will haunt you for the rest of the day since you could have just smiled or waved back instead of being so obvious.

Back in the big class, he spots you again and gives a short wave and an unsure smile. This time you make sure to smile and wave back at him.

After lunch with Sabine, you’re at your locker, picking up some things, talking to her and Ezra who joined you as well. They both suddenly look over your shoulder behind you, and you turn around only to be faced with him.

“Seems like I keep seeing you everywhere,” Cal says, leaning sideways onto the lockers. “I think it’s time we finally get properly introduced, don’t you think?”

It doesn’t go unnoticed by you that he exchanges a look with Ezra, which you can’t really decipher, as you don’t know either of them well enough.

“I’m Cal,” he introduces himself. “But I think you already knew that.”

You tell him your name, and as Ezra joins the conversation, it turns out they’re actually friends.

“So how do you know him?” Sabine asks, her eyes going from Cal to you.

“ We share a class, and he came by the library yesterday,” you explain, taking a look at the time. “Which I actually should be heading to now. My shift starts soon.”

Sabine gives you a strange knowing look too, to which you don’t know how to respond. But before you can ask what’s up, she says that Ezra and her have another class, so they leave.

Cal walks you to the library, claiming he has to go to practice and it’s on the way (its not). It’s a short walk but you’re racking your brain for something to fill up the silence. Unable to come up with anything better, you tell him that if he wants to check out another book, you can show him how to use the self check-out machine.

“You said it was broken,” you say, tilting your head slightly in confusion. “But I checked and it worked just fine.”

“I know,” he responds after a second, and you turn to him with a ‘Huh?’. Smiling, he adds, “See you around.”

And with that he leaves you by the library entrance, even more question marks circling in your mind. To your surprise and further confusion, you find that he didn’t leave you with just questions, but also a bit of a racing heart.

Finally the weekend rolls around, and Ahsoka is out with her best friend Rex and his buddies, so you invite Sabine over for a movie marathon and lots of snacks. Since it’s just the first week of class, you don’t have that many assignments yet, which you want to take advantage of while you can.

As you’re both cosied up on the couch, you ask her about Ezra and if there’s anything between the two, and her face makes you laugh out loud. She says he’s more like a brother to her, since they’ve known each other for so long. But then she asks if there’s anyone you’re interested in.

You find yourself stumbling over your own words and end up somehow confessing to both her and your surprise, that you may have a teeny tiny crush on Cal. Sabine’s almost too excited about it and says you should tell Ezra so they can set you up on a date or something. But you make her promise she won’t tell either of them, to which she ends up agreeing. You don’t need the drama or the distraction; you just want to focus on classwork after all and survive one semester at a time.

On Monday you have the big class again, and you stay after it’s done to ask Professor Kenobi something. Everyone is leaving the room, and he’s packing away his things as you approach his desk, starting to formulate your inquiries, but you see his eyes going past you for a moment, then looking at you again with a soft smile.

“Why don’t you send your questions to my e-mail,” he offers. “Isn’t it your lunch break now? Wouldn’t want to hold you off, especially when there seems to be someone waiting for you.”

You blink a couple of times, then turn to look to the entrance door where, sure enough, Cal is waiting for you, leaning back onto the wall. He gives a short wave, which you quickly reciprocate, and you excuse yourself from the professor with heat prickling at your cheeks, telling him that you will do just that.

As you reach the door, Cal pushes himself off the wall to walk beside you. Before you can ask him what he’s up to and why he waited for you, he talks first.

“Are you eating at the cafeteria today? Wanna grab lunch together?”

You consider his offer for a moment, but then give him a short shrug.

“I’m not really super hungry and the menu today didn't have anything that I particularly crave, so I think I’ll just get something from the vending machine.”

“You sure? You shoudln’t skip meals, you know.”

“It’s fine, really,” you chuckle. “I’ll just get early dinner and I promise to eat something substantial.” “Yeah, you better,” he jokes, lightly pushing you with his shoulder.

Turning your face away to hide how flustered you’re getting at not just his playfulness but the fact that he waited for you, you reprimand yourself for a moment for getting your hopes up. Wanting to grab lunch with a classmate is normal! This is normal! Stop being weird, you tell yourself.

Just as you want to face Cal again to change the subject, you hear some voices from the hallway around the corner where the vending machines are. You think you recognise them, and you don’t know what on Earth compels you to, but you walk the few steps to take a peek. At the end of the hall, you see Professor Kenobi with a man. He’s tan, has broad shoulders and is very handsome.

“Hello, my love,” Kenobi says in a low voice barely audible to you, and quickly leans in to kiss the stranger.

Your hand shoots up to cover your mouth before any sound of surprise can come out, and you quickly spin around, directly into Cal’s chest with an oomph.

“Wha–” Cal holds onto your shoulders to keep you from falling with how quickly you tried to recoil. “Whoa there, you okay? What’s wrong?”

“I feel like I just saw something I wasn’t supposed to,” you admit, hiding your face in your hands for a moment, then looking at him with big eyes.

This intrigues him, and Cal steps past you to take a look.

“There’s no one there…?”

You look around the corner again as well, and the hallway is indeed empty.

“Prof Kenobi was just there a second ago, with someone else. Kissing,” you add the last part under your breath.

“Oh?” Cal raises a brow, sounding strangely interested. “Well, let’s go see where they went.”

You shoot him an alarmed look.

“What? Why?”

But he’s already walking, looking over his shoulder and gesturing for you to follow with a playful smile. So you follow suit. You’ve never been to this part of the building, and compared to the bustle back where there were constant streams of people walking to and out of the cafeteria, here it’s surprisingly quiet.

“I wonder where they even went,” Cal thinks aloud and stops where the hallway ends in a dead end. There’s several doors to the left, offices from the psychology faculty judging by the signs next to the doorframe. On the right there’s the big door leading to the staircase. There’s a paper sign stuck to it with tape that catches your attention, so you step closer to read it.

“Seems like the floors below are currently closed off because of repairs,” you paraphrase the warning sign. “So they must have gone up.”

You turn to look at him, and see realisation wash over his face, which quickly changes into a mischievous glint in his eyes.

“Oh, is that where we are.”

“What do you mean?” you ask, narrowing your eyes at him in suspicion.

“I heard that there was an off-limits floor in this wing. It’s been like that for years actually, not because they’re reparing something but because strange things happen there.”

You scoff, giving him an incredulous look.

“Didn’t take you for the superstitious type,” you deadpan.

“I’m not.” He looks at the sign and back at you. “But c’mon, aren’t you a little curious? They say it’s haunted, but if you go there and come back out, then you’ll have good luck in… passing your exams.”

“...Did you just make that up?” you question, crossing your arms over your chest defensively and raising a brow at him.

“...No?” Cal retorts, and it’s anything but convincing. Taking a step closer to you, he adds, “Come on, don’t you feel the call of adventure?”

“The only call you’ll feel is your emtpy stomach when you’re training,” you say, taking one last glance at the big door, then looking at Cal. “Shouldn’t you be having lunch right now?”

“I can eat later,” he shrugs.

“I thought skipping meals was a no-no.”

“I can make an exception today. For both of us.”

Before you even have a chance to stop him, he pushes open the door to the staircase, and you see there’s a chain blocking the way to the stairs leading down, but he steps over it, looking back and offering his hand to you.

You look up, listening for anyone who might be coming downstairs, but it’s still silent. Almost eerily so. You look at Cal’s face for a moment, and sigh in defeat, taking his expecting hand. He grins in victory.

“You’re being a horrible influence, you know that?” you say with a playful smile.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a little bad every now and then,” he points out with a wink, and you roll your eyes at him to hide the beat your heart just skipped.

You both walk down the stairs, taking out your phones to use as a flashlight since it’s so dark. Cal pushes open the big door to the main hallway, and you’re hit with the typical smell of a basement; it’s humid and a little musky, but not necessarily unpleasant. You take a look around, and it’s a mirror of the floor above. The doors to the offices are open though, one is even missing the door completely, and Cal walks in without hesitation, so you follow him.

You’re not normally one to get scared about things like these, especially knowing that the haunted story has probably started as a rumour that got way out of hand throughout the years. This section probably just got closed off because of a water leak or something.

“One of the guys on the team told me that there used to be meetings of a secret cult down here.”

“Okay, now you’re just messing with me,” you laugh, and you point your light to him to see him. He blocks the light from his eyes with his hand but you can see the goofy smile on his face.

“I can’t believe I followed you down here,” you say, taking a step towards him, but something behind him catches your attention. You direct your light to the wall, and he turns around to do the same. There’s a pinboard full of old notes and photographs. Looking at the small table underneath it, you can see a lot of the things that once hung on the wall have since fallen down, decaying. Inspecting the remaining notes on the pinboard though, you notice that there are many that seem newer, the papers are clearer, crisp, untouched by the humidity down here. Many of them are simply just letters and numbers, like… initials and dates? You’re about to take a closer look at what’s written on them when a reflection from the table catches your eye.

Directing your light down onto the table, you move away some scattered papers to reveal the object that was partially hidden beneath: a locket in the shape of a heart. You stretch out your hand to pick it up but Cal stops you.

“Maybe- maybe don’t touch that.”

“Why not?” you ask without looking up. You can faintly make out the engraved letters “P&A” on the metallic surface.

“It could have lead. Or something.”

“That’s… a good point, actually,” you agree, and you retrieve your hand, your nose crinkling slightly in disgust at what could be lying around. “It’s the first time you’ve made sense since we got here. Who knows what else is here. Actually, we should leave–” You turn to where Cal was standing earlier, a couple of steps away, but you find him standing right in front of you now, caging you in between himself and the table behind you. He’s still holding his phone with the light aiming up, so his face is contoured in sharp white, highlighting the scars across his face. You had noticed them before, and thought they added character to his face. But now, with his eyes gazing into yours like that, momentarily flickering down to your lips and back up, you feel the urge to reach out and trace over them.

The air has completely shifted between you two, and your heartbeat quickens at the realisation. His free hand has somehow found its way around your wrist, and he’s leaning in closer ever so slowly.

You open your mouth to say something but you’re cut short by a sudden thud. You both flinch in surprise, aiming your lights to where the sound came from. You see a book, now on the floor, that hadn’t been there before, and a small cloud of dust settling around it. Aiming the light a little to the side and up, you can clearly see the spot where it fell out of the shelf, as there’s no dust on the wooden surface.

“We should– I think we’ve overstayed our welcome,” you say after clearing your throat.

“Right.”

You quickly step around Cal and head for the staircase, swiftly walking up the steps and, after momentarily listening for any bypassers, climb over the chain. Cal follows closely, and you both pocket away your phones. You’re reaching out your hand to open the heavy door that leads back into the building, when he quickly grabs your wrist, holding your shoulder with his other hand to pull you away from the thin vertical window next to the door.

“Wait, there’s someone out there.”

“So what, we could have come from upstairs,” you say, trying to ignore the way your skin tingles where he’s holding you again.

He peeks through the glass, his eyes going wide for a moment, then stepping away again, a silly smile playing on his lips.

“It’s Kenobi. And he's not alone.”

You dare take a peek through the glass, and catch a quick look at Kenobi and the man from earlier, both coming out of one of the offices with slightly dishevelled hair.

“If he sees us, we’re so dead,” you say under your breath and lean back away, out of view. On one hand, you’d definitely be in trouble because from the short time you’ve known him, Professor Kenobi seems like the type of person to be really good at reading others, so he’d definitely know you two were up to no good if he confronted you two, especially you; you’re not a good liar. But also he saw Cal waiting for you after class, so surely he’d think something was going on between you two. Then again, would that bother you? Is there something going on between you and Cal? Do you want there to be something? You’re not entirely ready yet to answer that for yourself, especially not right now after what happened earlier, whatever that was. He was totally going to kiss you, right? In a basement of all places?

“The coast is clear,” Cal finally says, and your reeling mind can come to a halt again. He looks down at where his hand is still holding onto you, and quickly lets go, taking a step back, clearing his throat. “Sorry about that. Uh, after you.”

He holds the door open for you, and you walk through, dusting off your clothes of anything that may trace you back to the forbidden underground. Cal makes his way to the office he saw Kenobi come out of and inspects the sign, chuckling to himself.

“Ah, look at that,” he says, and you approach, seeing the name on the sign: ‘Cody Kenobi’. So the man earlier was his husband.

“Get it prof, I guess,” you mutter more to yourself than to him, but Cal snorts at your comment.

“C’mon, let’s go,” he says, and you two make your way back to where you initially came from.

Since Cal still has to get food, you part ways and he heads to the cafeteria. And just like that, you’re back at the vending machine, yet again plagued by the decision of what to get, as well as a million questions racing through your mind.

When your shift at the library ends that day, it’s already the late afternoon. It was pretty slow today again, you mainly just spent your time cataloging some new books and putting back returned ones to their respective spots.

As you’re approaching the bus stop, you can see the bus already there, so you fall into a light jog to catch up on time. Except that everyone is standing outside instead of being inside the bus. The driver is standing on the sidewalk as well, talking on the phone in an irritated tone.

“What happened?” you ask one of the people sitting on the bench.

“The bus broke down,” she explains with a tired sigh, pointing to where the engine door has been lifted, and you can see some faint smoke coming out of the vents. “The driver said we have to wait for the next bus.”

You don’t need to look at the timetable to know that at this time of day, the busses get more and more infrequent. You might as well walk home. It won’t necessarily be quicker than waiting for the next one, but you don’t want to just sit still for the next half hour.

After saying your thanks to the person, you keep walking down the sidewalk to start your trek home. Luckily, there’s a pedestrian path away from the street that is actually quite picturesque to walk, partially going through the woods too, so at least you’ll have a nice view as you ruminate over the day’s events.

To get to the path leading into the forest, you take a shortcut through the parking lot, which to your surprise is not as empty as you would have imagined at this time. You’re not really planning on running into anyone, already lost in thought, so it takes you very much by suprise when you hear your name called out. You turn around to see Cal standing by his bike, waving to you. You wave back with a smile, which is quick to disappear though as you remember your interaction earlier. You just want to get home to crawl into your bed and wallow in self-pity for a bit, but the redhead calls you to him.

“I saw the bus broke down,” he says as you get closer, zipping up his leather jacket and tucking his helmet under his arm. “Need a ride home?”

No, you think, being near you is short circuiting my brain and I need to sort that out.

“I’ve never been on a bike before, though,” comes out of your mouth instead.

“Well, lucky for you I’d be the one driving,” he says with a smile. “As a backpack you just have to lean into the curves, but there’s not much more than that.”

“Backpack?”

“Ah, yeah, that’s what we call the person sitting behind the driver.” You spot the faintest of blushes creeping onto his face, adorning his freckles. “So, what do you say?”

His face, full of expectation, leaning into childish glee almost, is impossible to resist. Heaving a sigh, you laugh a bit to yourself, throwing your hands up in surrender.

“You know what. Why not. We already went to a haunted room today, might as well get ‘riding on a motorbike’ off my bucket list today, too.”

“Great!” Cal’s face lights up at your positive response, and he seems to notice it and clears his throat to take his excitement down a notch. He moves to the side a bit so you can take a better look at the bike, telling you its name is BD-1, and doing the whole introduction thing where he points to you, then to the bike and back, saying your name, BD, BD, your name. You have to bite back a smile at how endearing you find that. After what happened today, it’s nice to see that he also has this cute side to him. Playing along, you greet the bike with a ‘Hi BD!’ and pat the handlebar as if it was a dog. Cal chuckles, and produces a second helmet seemingly out of thin air, presenting it to you.

“Wha– Where did you–”

“A biker never reveals his secrets,” he says with a wink, and puts on his own helmet. Your grips tightens lightly on the one you’re now holding as you avert your gaze from his visor. This guy will absolutely be the end of you.

Cal helps you put on the helmet, adjusting the buckle strap underneath your chin and making sure it’s comfortable but not too loose. Turning to the bike, he folds down some pegs on either side of the back wheel, indicating that that’s where you’re going to put your feet, then he gets on first.

“Once you’re on, you can either hold onto me or place your hands here–,” he shows you, patting the round, elevated part of the bike in front of him. “– on the tank.”

Then he instructs you to hop on by placing one foot first to lift yourself off the ground and swing your other leg over. Holding onto his shoulders for balance, you do just that, tightening the straps on your own backpack (pun unintended) so it doesn’t move around once you’ll be on the move. You scoot in your seat a couple of times until you feel your balance settle.

“You good?” he asks, and you realise you’ll surely have a hard time hearing him once you’re driving, over the sound of the engine and the wind.

“Yup!” you reply, taking a shuddering breath that seems to resonate within your helmet, as you snake your arms around his waist, interlocking your fingers.

You feel his torso tense up ever so slightly at the touch, and he kicks up the stand.

“If I pat your leg it means to hold on tighter, okay?”

“Got it,” you confirm, and he tests it out by patting the outside of your knee twice, and you lean even more into him, if that’s possible, tightening your grip. You just hear him chuckle, then start the engine.

He makes a round or two on the parking lot so you can get used to the feeling, and once you feel more comfortable, he heads out onto the street.

As you’ve already mentioned at some point that you live at the dorms, he knows where to take you. You can tell he’s riding extra carefully, not zooming through in-between cars and making sure that the stops and starts at the traffic lights are smooth.

Because of the noise and the helmets, having a conversation is unfortunately impossible, so you just enjoy the sensations. The whistle of the wind rushing by you, the humming of the engine, which you can feel in your whole body, both through the bike itself and Cal. The way he taps your leg when you loosen your grip without noticing. At least it was on accident the first time. After some minutes you tried it again, slowly letting go, and his gloved hand was on your leg again, lingering this time until you held on properly. Then he placed his hand over both of yours, giving a light squeeze. Ah, did he catch on?

Alas, the ride is already over by the time you feel like you really mastered being a proper backpack, and the bike slows down as Cal drives into the street of your apartment complex.

Once he fully stops and kicks down the stand, he gives your arms a pat, indiciating for you to hop off. Misjudging the height and being slightly sore from the unfamiliar seating position, you don’t properly step onto the ground, your knee giving in and the rest of your body threatening to follow. But Cal is quick to catch you and bring you back to your feet without even having gotten off completely himself.

“You alright?” he asks, sliding off the seat completely, then taking off his helmet and running his hand through his hair. His red fiery hair, now messed up from the helmet… You really want to run your own fingers through it.

At your lack of response, he leans a bit closer into your visor, repeating the question. You snap out of your trance with a sheepish laugh, trying and failing to undo the buckle on the helmet strap. Cal takes off his gloves and skillfully opens it, helping you remove the thing. You don’t even want to know what your hair looks like right now, so you try your best to smooth it out blindly.

“I’m good, yes. Guess getting on is easier than getting off the bike.”

“It gets easier with practice,” he responds. “That is, if you ever want to ride again. You can. I mean with me. If you’d like.”

He looks around, the driveway is luckily empty, so no one can see him embarrass himself by stumbling over his own words. You can’t help the giggle that escapes you; he’s too cute.

“I’d love to, if you’ll let me.”

“Of course. You did good today.”

You look in the direction of your dorm, then down at the helmet you’re still holding.

“Guess you need this back, then.”

“I don’t have any way to carry it right now, so why don’t you hold onto that for now,” he starts, scratching the back of his neck as he leans back a bit to half sit on the side of the bike. “Besides, the bus might break down again. Why don’t I give you a ride to class tomorrow morning, too?”

By now your heartrate is absolutely out of control. How does he look so effortlessly cool? And he’s inviting you to ride again? Maybe more than once?

You involuntarily hug the helmet to your chest, hoping the sound of your erratic hearbeat doesn’t echo through it and make it loud enough for Cal to hear. Taking out his phone, he suggests exchanging numbers so you can text him when to pick you up and he can tell you when he’s on his way. Taking it from his hands, you type in your number and call, hearing your own ringtone coming from your pocket, and give it back. You don’t see what he types in as your contact name as he’s quick about it, putting the device away again.

“See you tomorrow, then,” you say, swaying back and forth lightly on the ball of your feet. “Thank you for taking me home. It was fun.”

“My pleasure,” he says with a genuine smile. “And don’t forget your substantial dinner.”

With that, he puts on his helmet. As he gets onto the bike and kicks back the stand, you consider running up to him one last time to place a kiss on his helmet, but you find yourself paralysed by… what exactly, you don’t know.

“Drive safe!” you call out to him instead with a wave, as he drives onto the street. He gives you a two finger salute, tires screeching on the pavement as he takes off. Yeah, he was definitely being considerate of you when you were on the bike.

You feel like you’re floating on a cloud and being pulled down by a gravity tenfold as strong, all at the same time. You’re clearly into him. It seems he’s interested as well. What’s holding you back? These and many other questions roam your brain as you try to fall asleep that night.

The next morning, as promised, Cal is waiting for you. This time he brings a proper biker jacket as well, which is padded in the important places. Where he got it from and how he knows your size, you don’t even bother asking, knowing he wouldn’t tell.

Despite the buses working just fine, form that day on it becomes somewhat of a routine. Whenever your schedules will allow it, he’ll take you to class and back home. You offer paying for gas since going by your place is out of his way, even though he insists it isn’t. He never takes you up on your offer.

Weeks go by in the blink of an eye, both of you getting more comfortable around each other, engaging in friendly banter bordering in flirtations, but never really crossing the line or making an actual move. Before you know it, exams are just around the corner, so the library is busy. Still, you manage to study in the slower hours. But you keep catching yourself looking at the entrance, waiting for a certain someone to walk in.

After exams are over, Sabine and Ezra organise a well deserved party at her place. Her family is away for the weekend, but they were okay with a party as long as it doesn’t get out of hand. Ahsoka also invites a handful of her friends so there’s a decent amount of people of different ages. You have friendly chats with many of them, who also give you good tips on studying, the best places to get coffee near uni, or tell you funny stories about the teachers.

The party is where you meet Anakin and Padme, Ahsoka’s best friends aside from Rex, who are more or less the power couple at the university. They’ve been together since the first year and everyone knows about them. Even you have heard a lot about them; there are some wild rumours around. But you’re seeing them for the first time now, and you can’t shake the feeling that they look familiar.

As you, Sabine, Ahsoka and the two are standing in the kitchen, sipping on your drinks, the conversation somehow flows into urban legend territory. That’s where Padme tells you and Sabine about the lovebird legend, saying that there is an off-limits room in the uni building where it is said that a couple died tragically as the ceiling came down on them.

“Despite the tragedy, the legends still make people go down there to leave their pictures and love notes,” Padme explains.

“Alleged tragedy,” Anakin interjects with a playful roll of his eyes. “If something had actually happened down there, they would close it off properly.” He turns to you as he sees your blank expression, which he interprets as being scared, and gives you a reassuring pat on the back. “Nothing happened down there, trust me.”

Except that your face went blank not out of fear, but because you finally connected the dots.

“Yeah, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” Padme reminisces, linking her arm onto Anakin’s, who looks down at her with an adoring smile. “Even we went down to leave our own note, remember? And it seems it worked.”

“How could I forget,” Anakin laughs. “Initials, picture, locket; we did the whole package.”

The locket you saw that day in the basement comes to your mind. The engraved initials: P & A.

Padme and Anakin.

And now you can also vaguely recognise their younger selves in one of the pictures you see on the wall.

Snapping back into reality, you look at Anakin.

“Is this… common knowledge?” you ask, fidgeting with the drink in your hands. “Does everyone know that’s what it is? Or are there some people who think it’s haunted?”

“Not really?” Anakin shrugs. “I don’t know of anyone who’s ever thought it was actually haunted. Again, the accident is just a rumour to make it more tragic.”

“Yeah, everyone who hears about the story knows people go there hoping to ensure a good love life,” Padme confirms.

“Huh, is that so…” you trail off, heat quickly rising to your face, visible to everyone no doubt, but you can’t be bothered to hide it right now. So Cal knew? He must have known, right?

Sabine elbows you into the side, almost making you spill your drink.

“What’s got you so flustered suddenly?” She narrows her eyes at you, full of mischief. “Don’t tell me, you want to go leave a note for you and you know who?”

That seems to get you out of your trance, and your head snaps back up, frantically looking around to make sure Cal isn’t anywhere near you two. But he’s actually nowhere to be seen, probably outside with his team buddies who are hogging the grill.

“Do you still need to leave a note when you’ve already been there with the person in question?” you ask at no one in particular, and Ahsoka exchanges a knowing look with Anakin and Padme.

“You what?!” Sabine whisper-screams. “How? When?”

“Uuh, a couple of weeks ago,” you say, suddenly remembering the other thing you saw that day. “Also, did you know Kenobi is married? And that his husband is part of the psychology department? They totally made out in the husband’s office.”

Sabine’s face morphs into several different things consecutively, first confusion at why you’re bringing that up now, then questioning why you even know that, then wondering if she even wants to know.

“You know,” Padme interjects. “Obi-Wan and Cody Kenobi were actually one of the first ever couples to leave their note in the basement. If they’re still together, then it really must work, huh.” She leans in ever so slightly, lowering her voice as she asks you, “Why, is there anyone you’re interested in? Someone who wouldn’t happen to be here right now?”

You pull a bit of a grimace and look to Ahsoka, who had followed the whole thing with amusement but without intervening. Seeing your pleading look, she nods, indicating that Padme is trustworthy with these kind of things.

“Yes, actually,” you reply in a small voice. “To both.”

Padme clasps her hands together in delight, asking if you’ll show her the person in question. Anakin just laughs, saying he’ll go find something to eat, and Ahsoka joins him. So it’s just you, Padme and Sabine left. You walk around for a while until you find your favourite redhead leaning on the open doorframe that leads to the yard, talking to one of his teammates. They’re all wearing their team jackets, and you can’t help your eyes roaming his body for a moment, enjoying the view.

As if he could feel your eyes on him, he suddenly turns his head to you, and you get caught yet again staring. But this time you don’t look away in shame, you stand your ground and give him a smile and a small wave, which he returns, then goes back to his conversation as if nothing happened.

You turn back to the girls, both of them giving you a knowing smile and little giggles.

“Oh, shut up, you.”

“I didn’t even say anything!” Sabine says.

“Your face said it all.”

“Yeah, as did yours,” she teases.

You groan, burying your face in your hands. You might as well be on actual fire right now, as hot as you feel.

“I’m getting another drink,” you say, pinching Sabine in the cheek and looking to Padme. “Please make sure she doesn’t embarrass me any further.”

Padme laughs but agrees, promising to keep an eye on her.

You walk to the kitchen, where a new group of people has claimed the space to have their conversation. You quickly refill your cup, excusing yourself from them with a polite nod, and leave through the other door, looking for a way outside to get some fresh air. But you find yourself in what seems to be the dining room. This house is so big, I think I might actually get lost here, you think, looking around for another exit.

You turn on your heels when a guy, evidently drunk, approaches you. Givng him a quick once over, you find that you don’t recognise him. While this was a closed invitation party, unfortunately there’s always the few people who think it’s okay to just bring another buddy along who also brings their friend, leading to a handful of people that no one really invited or even knows. This is one of them.

You intend to walk past him, but he takes a side step to block your path. Taking a quick step back to have some distance between you and him, you try the other side, but again he cuts you off.

“Can you let me through?”

“What are you doing here all alone?” His words are slurred, and he suddenly grabs onto your wrist with a strong grip.

“Wha–? Let me go!” The back and forth until you finally manage to get your arm free makes you spill your drink onto the floor.

He seems unfazed by this, grunting in annoyance and trying to grab you again, but you evade his movements this time, taking several steps back.

“I said back off! Leave me alone!”

Now he has you cornered against the wall, and you consider your options. He stretches out his hand again to take ahold of you, but before he reaches you, Cal has appeared through another archway to your right and grabs the guy by the collar of his shirt, pulling him away from you. Two of his football buddies follow.

“Which part of ‘back off’ do you not understand?” he growls at the guy, letting him go with a shove. “Get lost.”

“And who do you think you are? You’re interrupting–” the guy starts, grabbing Cal by the shoulder and turning him around, but before he can even finish his sentence, Cal clocks him in the jaw, and the guy falls to the ground ungracefully, landing in your puddle from earlier with a grunt. The two other guys that arrived with Cal grab him, one arm each, and carry him away, probably outside to kick him out.

Cal turns to you, shaking the hand he hit the other guy with.

“Are you okay?” he asks as he approaches you, wanting to hold your arms, but his hands only hover over you as he looks you over for any injuries.

“I’m– I’m okay. Thank you,” you croak out, blinking repeatedly to process what just happened. Cal gingerly holds your wrist up, inspecting it. You can already see some dark marks forming where the guy before had grabbed you. Cal’s thumb strokes over the inside of your wrist soothingly, his eyes finding yours, and you’re unable to look away. He’s about to say something when voices call out to you. He turns around to see Sabine, Ahsoka and Ezra approaching.

“Are you okay? What happened?” she asks, seeing the puddle on the ground just in time and walking around it.

“Some guy was really drunk, he grabbed my arm and–”

“And I punched him,” Cal finishes.

Sabine raises a brow at that, giving you a look.

“Ugh, I’m so sorry,” Ezra apologises. “I told everyone to not just show up with random people. This shouldn’t have happened.”

“Ezra, it’s okay. Really guys, I’m fine.” You swallow down whatever is trying to bubble up, be it a nervous breakdown after a scary situation or just the fact that Cal saved your bacon. Shoving it all into the back of your brain to deal with later, you smile at your friends. “The jerk is dealt with, it’s all good, really. Now let’s go back to enjoying the party. I heard you have a karaoke machine?”

“Yeah,” Sabine says and gives you a questioning look. ‘You sure you're okay?’ At the insistence in your own eyes, she nods. “Okay then, let’s go sing our lungs out. C’mon, guys.”

Ezra apologises again before following Sabine. Ahsoka asks you if you’re sure you’re good, you insist that yes everything is fine, so she leaves as well.

You look to Cal with a grateful smile, about to head out as well, but he stops you.

“Uhm, actually, I’ve been meaning to ask,” he says, again scratching his neck in that adorably shy manner, and your breath might or might not have hitched there. “Next week we have a big game against another school team. Do you want to come? And possibly cheer for us?”

“I was wondering if I could ever go to one of your games,” you reply sincerely, smiling up at him. “I’ll cheer for you.”

“For my team or for me specifically?” he remarks with an inquisitive grin, but to your relief, the music from the living room hits your ears before you can even come up with a smooth reply.

“Oh, that’s my jam, c’mon!” You hook your arm around Cal’s and drag him to where everyone’s waiting, both of you laughing.

— — — — —

The match is intense. You don’t really know all the rules, but you can feel the tension in the air.

You cheer for Cal from where you sit on the bleachers with Sabine, Ezra and everyone else, all of you shouting and cheering. You haven’t even entirely recovered from the karaoke session, so this surely isn’t helping your vocal chords, but you don’t care.

Every now and then he looks up from where he is on the field, searching for you in the crowd. He pats the outside of his knee twice when he does, and every time you can feel the rush of heat and giddiness crashing over you. It’s the same gesture he does when you’re on his bike. It’s like a secret signal between the two of you. You don’t care about biting back the giant smile on your face or trying to hide how flustered you look every time he spots you among the audience, and Sabine catches on.

The timer on the giant screen counts down the last seconds of the match, both teams are tied. Cal goes into the offensive, and they make one heck of a play, scoring the last point just before the timer buzzes. Everyone in the audience stands up cheering, clapping, whistling. You as well.

As the announcer wraps up the game and the players leave for the changing rooms, Sabine and you head down to the entrance. Many are already leaving, since the match is over, but friends and family of the players are waiting for them to come out to celebrate.

Sabine and Ezra exchange curious looks with each other, and Sabine elbows you into the side.

“So?” Ezra asks.

“So what? “ you retort.

“Are you gonna make a move?” Sabine chimes in.

“On Cal?”

“Who else!"

“I don’t know…” you respond, unsure. “I don’t want to read too much into it–”

“Ohmygod,” Ezra groans as he shakes you by the shoulders. “You’re both so smitten with each other, it’s starting to be unbearable to watch.

You laugh nervously. Does he really think that?

“Guys! Here they come,” Sabine interrupts you two as she spots the winning team.

Ezra lets go of you after one last shake, and you all turn to face the players, now showered and changed back into their normal clothes.

Cal’s eyes roam the space until they find yours, and you think you might go blind by his smile. He’s positively glowing. You’re just expecting to maybe hug him, congratulate him on the win, and then you’ll all go get food together as you’ve planned.

Instead, Cal doesn’t slow down as he approaches you, throwing his arms around your torso and lifting you into the air, spinning you around a couple of times. You hold on to him with a squeak of surprise, and he laughs so heartily, you’re actually glad he’s holding you in the air, because your legs surely would have given out.

Once gently placed back onto the ground, you just kind of look at each other, until Ezra loudly clears his throat, and Cal quickly lets go of you. After you guys say your congratulations to Cal and the rest of his team, you head out to the restaurant. It’s nearby so you decide to walk, the weather is nice even though it's the evening.

The rest of the night, you and Cal seem to tiptoe around each other, like there’s suddenly an invisible line that has been drawn, and you’re both waiting for the other to cross over first. You exchange smiles, glances, accidental touches followed by apologies.

Once the food is gone and the adrenaline starts depleting, it’s time to head home. Cal offers to walk you home, since you’re still relatively close to the dorms. Anakin drove to the game, so he takes the rest back with him in his car.

After you say your goodbyes to the group, not without getting some definitely non-inconspicuous looks from your two besties, it dawns on you that once you’re home, Cal will be stranded there. You bring it up to him, and for a minute you actually consider offering for him to stay the night, but you’re actually not mentally or emotionally prepared for that. So you’re glad when he says he doesn’t mind, he’ll just get a cab or something when he's there, since he got a ride with his coach to the game today and didn’t ride his bike.

You’re walking down the street in comfortable silence, surrounded by the darkness that's already taken over the sky. You look up expecting to see stars, but you’re disappointed to see clouds. In fact, dark, low hanging clouds, threatening to spill over any moment.

“Huh, when did it get this stormy,” you wonder aloud, and as if on cue, a gust of wind picks up, sending some leaves and debris flying over the street.

“I’m pretty sure there was no rain announced today–”

The moment Cal says that, it comes pouring down all at once.

“What the–! Argh!” you groan in frustration at the sudden downpour, but Cal just laughs, taking your hand as he pulls you away.

“Come on!”

You let yourself be led to take shelter under an awning. You look down at yourself, already soaked even though you were exposed for mere seconds. The sound of rain hitting the ground drowns everything else. You look out with a pout, knowing you’ll have to wait out the weather to get anywhere.

Suddenly you feel a weight on your shoulders. You look to the side to see Cal placing his varsity jacket on you, and you’d be lying if you weren’t welcoming the warmth. Given that today was supposed to be a clear night, you didn’t really have that many layers, so you gladly slide your arms into the sleeves, hugging yourself.

Instead of letting go completely of the jacket though, Cal keeps readjusting the collar, tugging on one side so that you turn until you’re fully facing him. A droplet of water falls from his hair onto his cheek. You uncross your arms, slowly bringing your hands up to his forearms, shyly holding onto them.

“Can i kiss you?” he asks without looking away. And you couldn’t have even if you wanted to, it’s like his ocean eyes held yours in a tight embrace, unable to move. You don’t answer immediately, despite every fiber in your body screaming yes!

“I’m scared,” you finally say in a small voice, almost getting drowned out by the raging rain. Cal’s head backtracks a bit in surprise.

“What of?”

“It’s silly,” you pout again, this time looking away, but his hand finds your cheek, bringing your gaze back to him.

“You can tell me,” he assures you. You let out a sharp breath of frustration at yourself.

“I’ve just… never felt like this before,” you admit. “I'm scared of how much of an effect you have over me, I suppose, and as such making a fool of myself. I want you to like me, so badly.”

Cal tilts his head slightly to the side, offering a warm reassuring smile.

“I can assure you, I feel the same way about you.”

“I don't believe you,” you retort with a scoff. “You always look so collected and confident and just generally cool.”

“On the outside, maybe. But trust me, I'm freaking out on the inside. Check for yourself.”

He takes your hand and places it on his chest, leaving his hand on yours. His heart is beating at a quick pace. The moment you look up again and meet his eyes, the pace picks up. In the faint light you can see a blush spreading on his face, heart pounding against his ribcage, with yours to match.

“Same here,” you say.

“I know,” he replies with a bit of mischief, his other hand on your cheek moving down a bit to your neck, where you now know he can feel your pulse.

You know he’s still waiting for your answer, but you decide to tease him. Just a bit. Besides, this question has been burning on your tongue for what feels like an eternity now.

“When we went down to the basement, you knew it wasn’t haunted, right?” you ask, and he has to adjust to the sudden change of topic, looking surprised at first, then laughing heartily. You continue, “You knew it was a thing that couples do?”

“Ah, you got me,” he replies with a light shrug.

“Did you plan the whole thing out from the start?”

“Actually, no.” He looks away for a moment with a faint smile, thinking back to that day, then meets your eyes again. “I did want to go there with you but didn’t know how to ask. Then I saw you at the vending machine, and the whole thing with Kenobi happened, and it was just too good of an opportunity to pass.”

“I can’t believe I got played like that,” you say with a dramatic sigh. “You know, had you told me back then that you liked me, I would have gone willingly to the basement to leave a note.”

“Guess I was scared, too.”

“That’s fair,” you say, your hands coming up to his face to hold it properly now. You smooth your thumb over his cheekbone, and he leans into your touch. “Well, now that that’s sorted out: yes, yes you can.”

Cal leans in, catching your lips in his, and he holds you so tenderly, you might as well melt down and get swept away by the rain. Your whole body burns, and you grab a fistful of his shirt in an attempt to pull him closer. His hands travel down your arms to snake around your waist between his jacket and your damp shirt, holding you up as you involuntarily put more of your weight on him, the legs under you threatening to give in completely.

He breaks the kiss and pulls back only enough to pepper your whole face in little kisses, making you giggle.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for a while,” he remarks, trailing kisses down your jaw, then coming back up to place one last kiss on your lips, which you chase after as he pulls back again, and he chuckles.

“We should get going,” he says, taking your hands in his. “The rain stopped, we should get you home before you catch a cold.”

“Right,” you mumble, still trying to come down from the high of that kiss.

You start walking down the street hand in hand, and you swing them back and forth between the two of you. You’re almost at your place when he gets a call. Taking his phone out, he picks up and puts it on speaker; it’s Anakin. He asks if Cal needs a ride because of the sudden rain.

“You’re asking now?” Cal laughs. “Well, you sure took your time.”

“I assumed you were… occupied.”

Your face burns up yet again, tips of your ears on fire, as Cal shoots you a funny look.

“Well, you’re not wrong,” he says into the phone.

“Oh my god–!” you squeak, hiding your face in your hands as you hear Padme’s cheering in the background. “But yes, please come pick him up. Or he might get sick. We’re both soaking wet.”

Cal holds back a laugh, and you grab onto his wrist to bring the phone closer to you.

“From the rain! Soaked from the rain!” you say firmly into the phone. “Geez...!”

After some more snickers, Anakin and Cal coordinate where he should pick him up. It’s just a street over from your dorm, so you have to part ways there.

“Let’s go somewhere this weekend,” Cal suggests as you’re hugging him goodbye.

“Like where?”

“I’ll show you one of my favourite spots. How about that? Bring your helmet.”

“Ooh, roadtrip with BD. I’m in,” you agree.

Cal leans in to leave a lingering kiss on your cheek, but before he can pull back completely, you sneak in a peck on the corner of his mouth. Even in the darknes, the streelight the only source of illumination, you can see the furious blush on his face. If it were up to you, you’d kiss him until the sun comes back up, but the both of you really need to take a warm shower and get to bed.

“It’s a date then,” Cal says with a wink and takes a couple of steps back, waving at you, then turning fully to walk towards the pick-up spot.

“Yeah, a date…” you whisper to yourself dreamily.

— — — — —

True to his word, Cal takes you to his favourite place. You packed some food and drinks for the road, then headed out. By now you’re far more comfortable on the bike, so you can actually enjoy the view as well. The farther away you get from the city, the more you’re surrounded by forests, farms and you even cross a lake. Starting to gain elevation as he drives up the meandering narrow street, you arrive at a vantage point of sorts. There’s a small parking lot by the road, with a public restroom and some picnic tables. You two get off the bike, walking to the fence which feels to be right at the edge of the cliff, showing a fantastic view into a giant valley.

Your date takes its course; you eat, you chat, you even remembered to pack some cards so you play a couple of rounds on the table.

When it’s time to head back, you’re packing your things, both of you standing by the bike.

“So, how’d you like it?” he asks.

“It’s beautiful,” you reply, letting your eyes roam over the landscape once more. You arrived here in the early afternoon, and now the sun is just about to set.

“Anything else you’d like to do before we head back?”

You think it over. You already ate, took some pictures, enjoyed the view. There’s really not much else to do here. But then a thought occurs to you.

“I, uhm…” For some reason you get shy with your request. “Is there any way we can sit on the bike facing each other? Not to drive, just to chill here a little longer. I’d like to see the full sunset.”

His brows rise in surprise, the slight blush on his cheeks not escaping you, and you wonder what it was about what you’re asking that caused it.

“Sure. Here–”

He grabs you from underneath your arms, picking you up as you wrap your legs around his waist. He holds you like you weigh nothing, and swings one of his legs over the bike to take a seat like he normally would, placing you onto the tank. You unwrap your legs so that they’re hanging over his things, and that’s when you realise you just asked for you to straddle him. Not that you’re opposed to the result.

You try finding your seat on the round tank, but you slip down further into his lap, now fully sitting on him.

“Whoah, sorry,” you try to scoot back up but you’re essentially stuck. “Is this okay? Should I move back?”

“Don’t worry,” he says, looking to the side for a moment as he holds you by your waist, trying to hold you still, and he clears his throat nervously. “This is every biker’s dream, believe me. Are you comfortable?”

You hum in positive response, trying to accommodate to the position in his lap by squirming a little, and his grip on you tightens again. You hear him take a sharp breath though his teeth.

“Ah, sorry…” you say as you realise what you’re doing. You place your hands on his chest, trying to hold still. For a moment you just sit there, looking at each other in silence, both of you starting to relax into each others’ holds.

Then a gust of wind picks up, ruffling up his hair. Golden hour hits him just right, the fiery red strands on his head shine gold and copper in the sunlight, his hundreds of freckles seem to glisten on his skin, begging for you to trace over them with your fingers, his ocean eyes now have a hint of green and specks of gold in them, darting up and down as he studies your face as well. Your heart all but bursts at the sight.

“What?” he asks after a while, chuckling.

“You're breathtaking,” you blurt out in full honesty, holding his face, wondering how it was possible for such a beautiful human being to exist? And he chose to be with you?

Your answer definitely takes him off-guard, as his face blushes violently, from his neck to the tip of his ears. He can’t hold your gaze, looking to the side. It takes a couple of attempts to form a proper sentence.

“You can’t say that with such a straight face, damn,” he laughs nervously. He leans his forehead on your shoulder in an attempt to hide his burning cheeks, but you cup his face and bring him back up to look at you.

“Besides,” he adds after a moment, “You only say that because you haven’t seen yourself. If you think that of me, then you’re nothing short of ethereal.”

So much for watching the sunset. You can’t take your eyes off of him, and his words pierce your very heart, but in a good way. Not really knowing what to reply to that, you kiss him instead, burying your fingers in his hair.

Cal reciprocates just as intensely, and you can’t help but arch your back into him, thus rolling your hips into his, to which he groans. Your brain is instantly turned to mush, your body now in charge. He tilts his head to the side, his tongue tracing over your lips, and you gasp as you grant him access. Right now, Cal tastes like honey and cool mornings and the pine trees surrounding you. Your senses are on overload, your skin burns as Cal’s hands slip underneath your shirt, slowly travelling up your back, pressing you into him even more.

Finally breaking for air, Cal kisses your jaw, your neck, biting where your pulse is, and if you could still hear yourself, you’d probably be embarrassed about the noises you’re making.

Then he pulls back rather suddenly, you notice his jaw is tense but you notice his dishevelled hair more, as well as his puffy lips, and the dazed look in his eyes which you’re surely sporting yourself too. You’re both panting, trying to calm your breathing. His hands slide back down and out of your shirt, staying on your thighs instead.

“Maybe,” Cal says between breaths, “Maybe we should take this somewhere… else.”

You run your hand through his hair in an attempt to smooth it out.

“I think Ahsoka is out for the rest of the night,” you say, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

He raises a brow at you. You give him an innocent smile.

“Let’s head back then,” he says, picking you up again like before, this time to get you off the bike.

You finish packing up everything, hop on and start your way back to the dorms. All the while, his hand is either on yours or on your leg, lovingly stroking the side of your thigh.

His biker gear really does suit him and you like how he looks in it, but for once, you can’t wait for him to take it off.

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