#eve aw rambles

[crimsoneveline]

omg, not only did Graphite Edge teach Kuroyukihime to sword fight, but also to hack/program!

So a Kirito-Isotype taught a Kirito-Isotype to code!

[skyrim-forever]

Need to publicly grieve a lil

It's now been over a month since my ex and I broke up, mostly I've been doing okay, I do not miss being in a relationship with him. I ca recognize it wasn't working, I felt like we grew in different ways and there were definitely problems, so yeah I don't miss the relationship. I haven't been single for this long since Fall 2016 and it's so nice to on ly think about my life in terms of what I want and need. I've always wanted the experience of living in a different country, or trying for a PhD again, and now those are back on the table for me. I lost a lot of my sense of self in the relationship, trying to make things work. I became milder, toned down, and it just wasn't me. I had a feeling inside me since the summer, after something had happened, that we weren't going to work out.

But I miss my friend. I really miss the friendship. I see memes that I know he'd get a laugh out of and know I can't send them to him. Things going on in the world that I'd love to talk about with him, We took a break in Jan and I came back to the apartment early Feb and something we decided to do on his request was play video games together, like we used to before we went long distance. His favourite game is Halo Reach and he'd always said he wanted us to play through the whole campaign. So we did. every Sunday night after dinner we'd do a mission or two. It was nice, I'm terrible at FPS games (games in general tbh) but I really liked the story and doing silly shit with the forklifts. We ended up finishing it on what would be our last Sunday games night. When I moved my stuff out and we said goodbye, it's something he mentioned, that he was glad we got to finish the campaign. I'm glad too. We started dating when i came over and we played some Reach, it was fitting to end things like that.

Right now it really hurts, hurts more than it has since I knew we had to end things, accepting that was really hard because I didn't want t to be true. I've grieved the living and I've grieved the dead and they both fucking hurt the same amount

[ifyourereadingthisblinktwice]

the dancing scene in killing eve. oh my god. my heart.

for those who dont know. they're dancing together at a ballroom event and this exchange happens:

villanelle (assasin/serial killer) looks at an elderly couple dancing near them. "would you ever want to be like that?".

eve says "not anymore".

villanelle asks why, and eve goes "we'd never make it that long, we'd consume each other before we got old".

to which villanelle says "that sounds kind of nice.

[aroacesigma]

yknow i really gotta wonder where i get the neverendign guilt about absolutely everythnig from

[piastriprincess]

somethin' stupid  ⸻  isack  hadjar  x  reader  .

featuring  isack  hadjar  ,  friends  to  lovers  ,  university  au  ,  isack  being  a  down  bad  simp  ,  very  rusty  french  and  google  translated  italian  <3 word  count  9.5k author’s  note  literally  no  one  asked  for  this  but  i’ve  been  obsessed  with  isack  lately  and  this  is  the  result  !  loosely  based  off  a  poem  i  read  a  million  years  ago  on  this  website  called '8 ways to say i love you' .  unfortunately  you  truly  never  escape  what  you  thought  was  romantic  at  age  13  !  dedicating  this  one  to  @spiderbeam —  eve  ,  thank  you  for  getting  me  into  this  man  in  the  first  place  .  i  fear  you  have  my  heart  and  all  my  isack  fics  <3  as  always  let  me  know  what  you  think  ,  it  helps  me  so  much  to  get  feedback  from  you  all  about  what  you  like  and  don’t  like  !  title  is  from  somethin’  stupid  by  frank  sinatra  .

one: spit it into her voicemail, a little slurred and sounding like the shot of whiskey you downed for courage. feel as ashamed as you do walking into work in last night’s clothes. wake up cringing for days, waiting for her to mention it.

Isack is forgetting something. He has to be. Because even through a hangover that feels like a jackhammer pounding directly into his skull, there is still an awful tugging in the back of his mind, like his brain is trying to remind him about something vitally important. 

He rolls over, squinting at the harsh morning light filtering through the blinds, to discover he never made it to bed. No, his face is pressed against the scratchy cushions of the living room couch, mouth dry and tasting vaguely like rum and regret. 

Rum. He blinks hard, a memory swimming up through the haze in his head — Pepe returning from his first class of syllabus week last night with a brown paper bag in hand and a devilish smile on his face. He’d claimed one of his fellow comms majors had told him if you mixed Rum Chata with Fireball, it tasted exactly like Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Isack didn’t even like sweet drinks, but that was your favorite cereal, so of course he had to try it, if only so he could tell you about it the next day. 

He groans and pushes himself upright, immediately regretting the sudden movement as the room spins around him. There’s a concerning stain on the worn carpet that wasn’t there the night before, and Ollie’s shoes are swinging lazily by their laces from the ceiling fan. The thought of you is stirring something in his brain, too. You hadn’t been there the night before — despite the fact that it was the first week of class, your thermodynamics professor had assigned you a particularly vicious problem set due at midnight — but you’d wormed your way into his drunken mind anyway. It happens more often than not, he supposes. Gabi’s put together a slideshow montage of all his intoxicated rambles declaring you the most perfect girl in the world that he’s started threatening to play for you if Isack doesn’t make a move before graduation. 

He’s still thinking about you when his phone buzzes from somewhere below him. He has to dig through the couch cushions, shoving aside loose change and a half-eaten sleeve of Triscuits before his fingers close around it. The screen has a thin, jagged crack across it that wasn’t there the night before, but he can still make out the notification from you on his lockscreen:

daily grind at 10:15? senior year deserves an extra special treat, i’m buying :~)

That must be what he had forgotten. Your coffee tradition. Rain or shine, hungover or sober, you always met at the Daily Grind for complicated sugary drinks before your first class of the semester. It was one of the few things in your friendship that was undeniably sacred. 

He glances up at the time. 10:13. Merde. He’s already dialing your number, rehearsing an apology in his head and a promise to be there as soon as he can, but the phone stops ringing and he gets your voicemail.

“Hey, it’s me. Obviously I don’t have my phone right now, but leave a message after the beep and I’ll get back to you! Or you can just text me like a normal person.”

Oh. Oh no. No no no no no.

Hearing your voicemail message — now that is familiar in the worst way. A sick wave rolls through his stomach, part hangover and part nauseous realization that drunk Isack might have done something really, really stupid. He winces, pulling up his call history, already half-knowing what he’ll find. 

Sure enough, there’s one outgoing call to you at 1:54 AM, and the memory clicks into place like the final piece of last night’s twisted puzzle. 

“Hiii,” he’d slurred into the phone, head lolling against the sofa. “C’est Isack. I — you know that, obviously. Your phone probably told you that! I’m — I’m drunk. And I wish you were here tonight. Wish you were here every night, en fait, but especially tonight. Pepe made Cinnamon Toast Crunch but, like, drinks. I know it’s your favorite and — you would have loved everything about it! As much as I love everything about you. I love your laugh, I love your face, I looooove you. Putain. I am going to regret this tomorrow.” With that he’d hung up the phone, immensely pleased with himself, and fallen asleep. 

Well, drunk Isack had been right about one thing, at least. Sober Isack is definitely regretting it. He’s been trying to figure out how to tell you that he likes you basically since he met you, and now he’s gone and done it in the most ridiculous way possible. 

His stomach twists, and it’s definitely not the hangover this time. It’s too late to cancel. You’re probably already there, sitting at your usual table by the window and ordering him something disgustingly sweet. He has no other option but to show up.

His mind fills with increasing dread as he gets ready. He considers faking his own death, but that seems like it might raise more questions than it answers. Plus, his friends would probably find a way to resurrect him just to kill him again for being such a total coward.

“You look like shit, Hadjar,” you say cheerfully as he stumbles into the seat across from you fifteen minutes after you’d agreed to meet. His hair is still damp from the world’s fastest shower, dark sunglasses hiding bloodshot eyes. 

He smiles shakily back at you as you slide a coffee that looks like diabetes waiting to happen across the table to him. You’re acting surprisingly normal for someone whose best friend crooned a love confession into their voicemail in the middle of the night. Maybe you hadn’t even listened to it. Maybe you thought it was a butt-dial and deleted the entire thing. “Blame Pepe. He got me hammered last night.”

“I’ll excuse the lateness just this once,” you reply, face breaking into the smile that’s been ruining his life since freshman year. “Was it worth it?” 

“Jury’s still out,” he says, taking a cautious sip of his drink. As he predicted, it’s absolutely revolting, a sugar rush in a cup. “Mon dieu, this is disgusting,” he groans. “What the hell is it?”

“Cinnamon Toast Crunch latte,” you say, biting your lip, and Isack spits coffee all over the table between you. 

He’s still spluttering when you start talking again, eyes fixed on the table between you. “Look, I know you were drunk when you left that message,” you say, twisting a strand of hair around your finger, “and I know drunk people say stupid things they don’t mean sometimes.”

“Yeah,” he breathes, heart sinking into his stomach. He had meant it, he thinks, but he’ll let you draw the incorrect conclusion if it makes you happier. If it means he gets to keep being your friend, to keep you in his life in whatever way you’ll allow. 

“So I’m not going to hold the whole ‘I love you’ thing against you. But if you really love my face, you should probably ask it out on a date, or something.” 

His head snaps up, almost too afraid to believe he heard you right. “Vraiment?”

“Vraiment,” you confirm, flicking a gaze up at him. Your eyes are bright, hopeful. “Do you want to take my face out, or what?”

You take a sip of your coffee like you’re trying to be nonchalant about the whole thing, but you’re drumming your fingers against the cup the way you always do when you’re in your own head. You’re nervous, Isack realizes. You want this as much as he does.

“I really want to take your face out,” he says, voice hoarse, and you just smile. 

You both finish your coffee, and afterwards he walks you to the engineering building for your class. Since it seems to be a good day for getting what he wants, he holds your hand as you go. He’s only hoping to brush against your palm, to feel the electric buzz of your skin against his, but instead you weave your fingers into his, squeeze his hand tight. 

When he looks down at your hand, intertwined with his, he’s already thinking about how he can say it to you again without fucking it all up. 

two: sigh it into her mouth, wedged in between teeth and tongues. don’t even let your lips move when you say it, ever so lightly, into the air. maybe it was just an exhalation of ecstasy. 

“Okay, seriously, if you laugh at me, I’m gonna break up with you,” you say, voice muffled behind the bathroom door, and the butterflies erupt in Isack’s chest all over again.

The first date had gone well. Better than well. It had gone kind of flawlessly, actually. So Isack took you on a second. Then a third. It’s wonderful — he keeps expecting you to say no, to say you’ve made a huge mistake and you’re better off as friends, but it’s been nearly two months now and you just keep matching his level of enthusiasm.

Your first Halloween together is no different. Halloweekend has always been a blur of mixers and parties spent side-by-side with you, so Isack wasn’t expecting anything new now that you were officially together. But you’d asked him one night a few weeks ago during a study session, ankle twisting around his under the kitchen table, what couples costume the two of you would be wearing this year. Isack had been so thrilled by the idea that you would publicly identify yourself as his girl that every single cheesy couples costume he’d ever seen over the years had flown out of his mind completely. He’d locked eyes with the vintage Mercedes poster he’d hung on their living room wall, and to his absolute horror, blurted “Brocedes,” which even to his lovesick mind sounded like the stupidest thing he’d ever said.

To his unending delight, however, you’d agreed without a second thought. Which is how he finds himself dressed as Lewis Hamilton in a Mercedes race suit and a Pirelli cap, waiting for his Nico to work up the courage to make her way out of the bathroom.

“I’m not going to laugh,” he assures you, teal sneakers squeaking against the floor as he wipes his palms on the suit. “Come on, mon coeur. Let me see.”

The door creaks open hesitantly, and there you are, the fluorescent bathroom light framing you from behind. Your hair is slicked back, tousled just so. The white suit hugs your body, and you have it unzipped just low enough to show off the soft line of your collarbones and the swell of your chest. 

Isack’s eyes drag down your body, unable to tear his gaze away from you. You’re unreal. 

“Fuck,” he breathes. It’s pretty much the only word he remembers at this point. 

You lean against the door frame, glossed lips curling into a soft smile. “Well? What do you think?”

“I think we’re going to be late to this party,” Isack says, voice rough around the edges. 

He crosses the room in two strides, pulling you into him by your hips. You loop your arms around his neck, threading your fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, and when you tilt your head up to kiss him, it feels like his world is exploding into a million pieces.

He still hasn’t figured out a better way to tell you how he feels about you. It’s strange, in a way; before you started dating, the situation felt wildly romantic in his head, like something straight out of those chick flicks you watch religiously and he pretends not to like. Two friends, madly in love with each other without having the nerve to admit it. Your relationship, though it was practically perfect in every other way, had complicated things. Isack wants to be the guy who sweeps you off your feet, not the creep who tells you he loves you after a month and a half. 

But now, with his teeth scraping impatiently against your collarbone and you breathing his name into his ear like it’s a prayer, he can’t imagine not saying something. It escalates quickly, as it always does with the two of you: he’s hauled you up onto the edge of the sink, and your legs wrap around his waist as he drags his mouth back up your neck to meet your lips. You taste like your strawberry lip gloss, and when you slot your tongue into his mouth it makes his head spin.

“I love you,” he whispers against your mouth. It’s caught somewhere between a gasp and a moan, just a sound you could mistake for pleasure if you weren’t listening closely. You don’t react, just kiss him again so deeply he feels he might drown in it. A small noise escapes the back of your throat, one he wants to make you replicate over and over again, and he’s sure then that you didn’t hear him.

It’s probably for the best. He wants to be sure that when he does work up the courage, you’ll know, and there will be nothing to keep you from believing him. Not alcohol, not desperation, not the heat of a perfect, stolen moment. So he presses the words into the column of your neck, murmurs them into the cut of your collarbone. He traces hard little hearts into your hips with his thumbs. Your suit begins to slip off your shoulders, exposing the teal strap of your bra, and Isack thinks he might have legitimately died and gone to heaven.

That is, until the door swings open behind him with a dramatic bang. 

“Che schifo,” Kimi yelps, scandalized, covering his eyes with his hands. “Isack, your room is right there.”

You pull back from Isack, a laugh bubbling in your throat as you hike your costume back up your shoulder. Your gloss is smudged, cheeks flushed pink, and Isack thinks he’s never seen you look so beautiful, even if he does want to melt into the floor tiles right about now. 

“Sorry, Kimi,” you chirp, not even having the decency to look flustered. “Isack got so turned on by the thought of Brocedes that he just had to have me.”

“I did not,” Isack protests, cheeks scarlet. “Kimi, we were just —”

“This is a communal bathroom, Isack,” his roommate interrupts, frowning. “Don’t get me wrong, I am happy you two finally figured it out, but… we wash our hands in that sink.”

“You’re a menace,” Isack hisses under his breath to you, and you giggle, smoothing your hair.

“We’re late anyway,” you grin, hopping off the sink. “Don’t worry, Kimi, won’t happen again.”

He lets you pull him out of the bathroom, watching as Kimi closes the door behind you. “We can pick that back up later somewhere with a little more privacy,” you whisper into his ear, and he stumbles over his own feet. It’s embarrassing the way he can tell his eyes are lighting up at your words. He sends a small thank you to the universe that the fabric of the costume is thick. 

“Yeah,” he mumbles as he watches you walk to the door, hips swaying. “I’m definitely holding you to that.”

three: whisper it into her hair in the middle of the night, after you’ve counted the space between her breaths and are certain she’s asleep. shut your eyes quickly when she shifts toward you in askance. maybe you were just sleep whispering.

The bed feels far too narrow to fit the both of you, the old-fashioned radiator in your room is clanking so loudly he’s worried it might explode, Isack’s arm is going numb where it’s trapped under your head, and there is absolutely no place he’d rather be.

He’d picked you up at the airport earlier that day — your flight was meant to land in the afternoon, but he’d shown up nearly forty minutes early, pacing excitedly around baggage claim until you descended down the escalator. You were wearing the hoodie you’d stolen from him before winter break and your biggest smile, and you’d jumped into his arms with such force that he’d dropped the homemade welcome sign he’d made, poster board fluttering to the floor. 

Since then, he’s been pretending personal space is a concept he’s never heard of. Hand on your thigh in the car, an arm around your waist as he carries your suitcase into your apartment, fingers tracing through your hair as you lay in bed curled into his chest. He can’t keep his hands off you. It’s as if the two of you were separated for three years, not three weeks.

“You’re unusually quiet,” you observe, one leg thrown lazily over his waist as you scroll through TikTok. 

“Just thinking,” he shrugs, flicking his eyes over your screen. You’re watching one of those kitchen restock videos you like, the light of your screen illuminating your face in the dark room.  

“Dangerous activity for you,” you tease, eyes bright. He grabs your waist and pulls you in, blowing a raspberry into your neck and laughing as you squeal and squirm away from him. “What’s on your mind, Hadjar?”

What’s really on his mind is how warm and comfortable he feels with you, how the sharp, persistent ache in his chest that he’d been feeling since winter break started has finally subsided now that he’s back in your presence. “How I survived three weeks without you hogging all the blankets,” he says instead. 

You gasp and narrow your eyes, but there’s no heat to it. “I do not hog the blankets,” you protest, pulling more of the comforter towards you.

“Sure,” he counters, pulling it back. “And I don’t have the shin bruises to prove that you’re also a sleep-kicker.”

“Those could be from anything,” you say primly. He gives you a look of pure disbelief, and you both dissolve into giggles, foreheads pressing against each other. 

Before leaving for winter break, he’d thought that everything would feel the same way it did when you were just friends. Despite the different time zones, the two of you had managed to talk every day — texts about everything from the prize he won in a Christmas cracker to the dog at your New Year’s party wearing a sparkly hat to his mom’s endless questions about when his copine would visit Paris. It was nice. He was happy, but it wasn’t enough. Not like it used to be. 

When you were friends, even in the years that he’d harbored his frankly all-encompassing crush on you, missing you had been manageable, a dull ache he could soothe with a voice memo or a quick call. But this had been different. Deeper. More essential to his being, somehow.

Every time he slid into his childhood bed, he’d glance over at the empty pillow and be struck with the visceral feeling that you should be there. He’d caught himself saving up stories to tell you, photographing random things because he knew they'd make you laugh, declining invitations from his lycée friends because he'd rather spend the evening talking to you than going out. You’d fallen asleep twice during your marathon daily FaceTimes, and both times Isack had stayed on the line just to listen to you breathe, feeling foolish and smitten and wondering when exactly you’d managed to make yourself feel like home to him. 

Suddenly worried that he won’t be able to keep himself from saying exactly that, Isack breaks the laughter with a clearly fake, very loud snore. 

“Baby,” you giggle, poking him in the side as the radiator clangs particularly violently. “Stop. I’m trying to sleep.” 

There’s some level of truth to that; it’s nearly 2 AM, and the two of you have been curled up in your bed since the early evening. But clearly, neither of you have been trying very hard to actually rest, too excited to be with each other again to let your eyes close. 

“You have a funny way of showing it,” he huffs, pressing a kiss into your temple. “You’ve been talking for, like, hours.”

“Fine,” you reply haughtily, wrinkling your nose up at him. “Look at me, totally asleep.” With that, you tuck your face into the crook of his neck, eyelashes fluttering against his skin, and go silent. 

He listens to the slow rhythm of your breathing, feels the way your chest rises and falls against him. He wants to follow you into sleep, but it’s evading him. There’s something playing on his mind — the thought that with every day he spends with you, he’s falling deeper into something he only thought he understood before. He’d been so sure he loved you back then, but this is something else entirely.

Maybe it’s the darkness, or the feeling of you in his arms again, but he’s feeling bold. “Je t’aime,” he whispers into your hair. And then you sigh, snuggling closer into his hoodie with a soft, instinctive movement. 

Isack freezes, heart hammering against his ribs, and slams his eyes shut like he can pretend he’s sleep-whispering. Counts the seconds between your exhales until he’s convinced your movement was a coincidence, and he can bide his time some more.  

When he says it for real, you’ll be so blown away by how suave and gorgeous and charming he is that you won’t hesitate to say it back.

four: buy her flowers. buy her chocolate. buy her a teddy bear, because that’s what every romantic comedy has taught you. take her out to a nice restaurant where neither of you feel comfortable and spend the whole night clearing your throat and tugging at your tie. feel like your actions are more suited to a proposal than the simple confession of something you’ve always known.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and Isack has a plan. He’s been thinking about it for weeks. He made a reservation in advance at Maison de Lumière, the only restaurant near campus that required anything more than jeans and a sweatshirt. It had taken three calls and a small bribe to one of the hostesses, but he’d finally managed to secure a table. He didn’t have a suit, so he’d had to borrow Gabi’s. It’s miles too big and hangs loosely off his frame, making him look a little bit like a kid playing dress-up in his dad’s closet. He bought flowers — not from the grocery store, but real long-stem red roses wrapped in pink tissue paper that cost more than his weekly laundry budget. He’d even picked up a heart-shaped box of chocolates from the campus bookstore, at the last minute throwing a little stuffed bear into his cart that he almost immediately regretted. 

None of it is his vibe, really. He’s not used to grand romantic gestures. But you deserve everything he’s planned and more, even if it does make him feel a little ridiculous and out of place. And maybe, if everything goes absolutely perfectly, tonight can be the night that Isack finally tells you he loves you.

That is, until you get to the restaurant, and he realizes this is going to be a total disaster. 

You look so beautiful that Isack trips over his feet multiple times trying to open the door for you. Then you’re seated at a table by the window, which should feel romantic but really feels like the two of you are on display. There are several sets of silverware on the table for some reason, and the glasses are heavy crystal that Isack is afraid to touch. The bear sits on the windowsill like a fuzzy chaperone, its glassy eyes staring at you.

The waiter drops off menus in thick leather folders, giving you a ten-minute explanation of the special holiday prix fixe menu. Isack orders the cheapest wine on the list, and the waiter scoffs but obliges. When he finally leaves the two of you alone, silence weighs on the table like an uncomfortably heavy blanket. 

“So,” you say, drumming your fingers against the stem of your water glass. 

“So,” he agrees, trailing off. 

Then the two of you speak at the same time:

“This place is —”

“You look really —”

You laugh, but it’s not your laugh, the familiar sound that makes Isack’s heart flip. It’s stilted, forced. “Sorry, I was just going to say this place is… nice.”

“Thanks,” he says politely, straightening his tie for the fifteenth time, but he can’t keep the frown off his face. Nice. It’s careful. It’s a word designed to be meaningless, to hide how uncomfortable you are, and Isack can feel his perfectly planned night slipping through his fingers. 

It’s torture. Actual, literal torture. In three years of friendship and seven months of dating, you’ve never run out of things to say to each other. You talk constantly about classes and professors and the weird guy in your freshman dorm who collected vintage lunch boxes and whether aliens existed and what you’d do if you won the lottery. You flirt ridiculously and tease each other relentlessly. You send each other stupid memes at 2 AM and argue about linear algebra with the kind of intensity that comes from finding your mental match in another person. 

But tonight, surrounded by white linen and overpriced menu items and the soft classical music whispering from hidden speakers, Isack has nothing. He takes a sip of the wine, immediately wincing at the taste. 

“Isack,” you say gently, touching his wrist across the table as he forces a swallow. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but… this sucks, right?”

He blinks. “What?”

“This,” you say, waving your hand through the air at the restaurant, the pristine tablecloth, the overly perfumed candle flickering between you. “All of this. We both hate this. This isn’t us.”

For the first time all night, Isack feels like he can actually breathe. “Yes. Mon dieu, yes. This is horrible. The wine is horrible. I thought I was the only one.”

“No,” you laugh, and it finally sounds real. “You’re definitely not the only one. The waiter keeps looking at me like I’m going to smuggle the silverware out in my purse.”

He snorts, pulling at his tie until it loosens around his neck. “I’m so sorry, mon coeur. I thought… I don’t know what I thought. I just wanted to give you the Valentine’s Day you deserve, something fancy and romantic and —”

“Awkward and uncomfortable and completely wrong for us?”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “That.”

“I love that you wanted to do something special,” you say, and Isack’s brain short-circuits somewhere around hearing the second word of your sentence. “But I don’t deserve all this. I deserve you. The real you, not whatever tie-wearing, wine-drinking version of you that you think is going to impress me.”

You love that he wanted to do something special. Love. It’s the perfect opening. Three simple words that had been circling in his head for months, waiting for the right moment to be dropped. 

He opens his mouth to speak, finally working up the courage to say exactly what the entire night is for, but you beat him to the punch. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

A half hour later, the two of you are pressed shoulder to shoulder on the hood of Isack’s beat-up Honda with a twenty piece nugget box and two Slurpees between you. Your dress is hiked up around your thighs, bare leg pressed against his, the stuffed bear sitting in your lap.

You lean your head against his shoulder, taking a long sip of your Slurpee. “Next year, maybe let’s skip the fancy restaurant.”

“No complaints on that,” he allows, taking a bite of a nugget. “That bottle of wine basically wiped out our date budget for the rest of the semester, by the way.”

You laugh as the cool February wind picks up, and without thinking Isack takes off Gabi’s jacket, wrapping it around your shoulders. You smile up at him, makeup smudged slightly at the corners of your eyes. “Now that’s romance. Happy Valentine’s Day, babe.”

Isack sighs happily, wrapping his arm around you. He’d spent so long planning what he thought was the perfect night. The flowers, the chocolates, the overpriced dinner, the teddy bear, all because that’s what movies and romance novels and r/Relationship_Advice said you were supposed to do when you loved someone.

But now, with chicken nugget crumbs on his fingers and the taste of blue raspberry in his mouth and your laugh still echoing in the crisp air of the parking lot, he thinks maybe it’s this.

five: blurt it out in the middle of an impromptu dance party in the kitchen, as clumsy as your two left feet. when time seems to freeze, hastily tack on “in that shirt” or “when you make your award-winning meatballs” or, if you are feeling particularly brave, “when we do this.” resume dancing and pretend you don’t feel her eyes on you the rest of the night.

There aren’t many rules Isack has for your relationship. Why bother, when everything is perfect without them? It’s not like you need a set date night, since you hang out with each other all the time anyway. He likes PDA. He would rather die than tell you who you could or couldn’t talk to, and he thinks you’d probably laugh in his face if he tried. Your relationship has always been one guided by what feels right in the moment, and Isack feels awfully right pretty much every time you’re around him. 

There is only one rule set in stone: the Infinite Playlist. A certain list of songs, subject to additions but never subtractions, that the two of you are forever required to dance to. It had started before you were dating, back when Isack would have taken any excuse to watch you smile, to have a private moment with you. Your relationship only solidified the tradition. It doesn’t matter where you are, what you’re doing, or who you’re with. The first few notes of a song would play, and the two of you would drop everything to dance to it. 

“What Makes You Beautiful” comes on in the grocery store aisle? Ditch the cart, because the two of you are finding an area open enough to perform your fully choreographed routine. “Alors On Danse” plays at a frat party? Hopefully you aren’t talking to anyone important, because that conversation is coming to a swift end. 

Normally, Isack loves the Infinite Playlist. Today, he wishes Lando had played anything else.

It’s a classic, unseasonably warm day, the first one of the spring semester. It feels like everyone on campus is outside, textbooks open to pages they won’t read and Frisbees cutting lazy arcs through the air. Your friends are sprawled on picnic blankets on the lawns, idly chatting. Maya and Chloe are passing around a thermos of jungle juice. Ollie has his laptop out, allegedly to work on his thesis, but he’s mostly just scrolling through his Spotify queue.

You’re sitting under a gnarled old oak tree, back stiff against the rough bark and knees pulled into your chest. Isack settles on the grass about ten feet away, trying to make eye contact with you, but you are very deliberately avoiding his gaze, pretending to be absorbed in your multivariable notes. The air between you is charged with all the things you’d said to each other three days ago, heavy with all the silence that had settled between you since.

The argument hadn’t been anyone’s fault, really — just a silly miscommunication, something that should have ended fast and early. But you almost never fought, and you weren’t used to it, both too stubborn to back down and admit it was stupid so you could move on. Halfway through the argument, Isack had said something careless, something that stung, and you’d stormed out of his house with flushed cheeks and teary eyes. Now, everything is tense and uncertain between the two of you, too quiet and too sharp. 

You’re still pointedly ignoring him when Lando pushes Ollie away from the laptop, proclaiming loudly that he absolutely needs to hear a certain song before the sun sets. Seconds later, the telltale bassline of “Get Low” starts blasting through the speakers, and Isack’s stomach drops. You may have been in a fight, but unfortunately, the Infinite Playlist hadn’t gotten the memo.

His gaze snaps to you, instinct winning out over pride. When you slowly lift your eyes from the papers in your hands, he feels a little surge of hope in his chest. After a second of uncertainty, he stands, finding an empty strip of grass, and motions you over. 

He wants to make you laugh. He wants to be over the top, or ridiculously bad, or anything that will break through the stoniness in your face. 

Slowly, almost too slowly, you warm up. When he tries the Sprinkler, you barely look at him, just tapping your toe against the grass. He Dougies, and you move a little bit closer. By the time he resorts to the Shopping Cart, you’ve loosened up enough to give him a snort of laughter. He reaches his hand out, and you take it, letting him twirl you straight into his arms.

“Je suis désolé,” he mumbles into your ear, holding you against him.  

There’s a pause, where you don’t say a word. “‘M sorry, too,” you sigh, and the relief that rolls through him is overwhelming. “That was so stupid.”

“So stupid,” he agrees, dipping you just because he can, because you’re talking to him and the world feels right again. “I don’t like fighting with you.”

You giggle as he drops you, pulls you up again. “Me neither. Let’s not do it again, yeah?”

He tucks a stray piece of hair behind your ear, as you grin like the last three days of cold shoulder could melt away just from the sheer force of your smile. “Deal.”

You rest your hands lazily on his shoulders, moving your body against his, and he presses a kiss to your neck. “Missed this,” he murmurs against your skin, hoping you know he doesn’t just mean the dancing. 

“Missed you,” you retort, and he wraps his arms around your waist, pulling back just enough to look at you. Your cheeks are pink from the sun, eyes bright, and his chest feels very tight suddenly. 

“I love you,” he blurts, and the relief he’s feeling shifts immediately to horror when you falter, feet slipping in the grass as you look up at him, something awestruck in your eyes. Before you have the chance to respond, he pulls you in by your hips, flush to his body.  “—r sweet moves,” he finishes lamely, heart pounding in his chest. “I love them. Very classy, mon coeur.”

You laugh brightly, squirming against him. “Classier when you aren’t trying to grind on me, Hadjar.” 

You don’t say that you love him, not then. The moment had passed. His cowardice had made sure of that. But he feels your eyes on him still, warm and hopeful, and he knows that another song, another moment will come soon enough.

six: write her a letter in which the amount of circumnavigating and angst could rival mr. darcy’s. debate where to leave it all day – on her pillow? in her coat pocket? throw it away in frustration, conveniently leaving it face up in the trashcan, her name scrawled on the front in your sloppy handwriting. let her wonder if you meant it.

By the third morning of spring break, Isack starts thinking about forever. 

The beach rental is chaotic, to say the least — eight twenty-somethings in three bedrooms with one working bathroom, Maya and Gabi holding backflip contests off the porch into the deep end of the pool, an ever-growing pile of sandy towels that no one wants to take to the laundry. 

It’s also kind of perfect, though, mostly because Isack gets to wake up every morning in a room with you. The sheets are mismatched and smell a little like the sea, and the bed is practically child-sized, barely big enough for the two of you to fit. But none of that matters as much as the fact that every time he wakes up, your legs are tangled into his, face mashed into his chest, hogging the entire comforter with your hand curled over his waist like you’d reached for him in the middle of the night and refused to let go. 

It feels like playing house, at first. But then Isack starts letting himself imagine a world beyond the crappy Airbnb, a future where he never has to start his mornings any other way, and the domesticity of it all is doing something frankly dangerous to his heart.

So he writes.

It’s not supposed to be anything serious, at first. Just a way to get all the feelings out, scrawled into the back of his physics notebook and kept to himself. But the words keep coming, looping over themselves as he tries to put shape to the feeling in his chest. 

Mon coeur,

We’ve been together for almost eight months now, and I keep thinking I should have said this already. I’ve been trying to find the perfect moment, the perfect words, practically since we started dating. But maybe that’s the problem. Maybe there is no perfect way to tell your girlfriend that she’s the most important thing in your life. 

There’s this thing in physics I’ve been thinking about a lot called quantum entanglement. You probably know the concept, but in case you don’t, subatomic particles can get magically tied together, and when they do, each particle’s quantum state can’t ever be described again without the other. The particles’ fates get inextricably linked together, no matter how far away they are from each other.

I think I’m entangled with you, mon coeur, because I can’t see a future without you in it anymore. I want to wake up with you every morning, no matter how many times you kick me in the shins while you sleep. I want our toothbrushes to keep sitting next to each other on the counter. I want to keep dancing in the kitchen with you to the Infinite Playlist. I want to keep hearing you try to speak French to me. I want to keep making fun of your terrible French. I want to keep thinking about forever with you in a way that should scare me, but doesn’t at all. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is I love you. Je t’aime. In English, in French, in whatever language you want to hear it in. 

He reads it over three times, stomach churning. It sounds pathetic, desperate, like something from a lovesick teenager and not a very mature twenty-year-old who really should have figured out how to express this to you by now. 

But it’s also true. Every word of it. 

“Baby, get down here!” your voice floats up the stairs, and Isack rips the paper out of the notebook and shoves it into the pocket of his shorts frantically, like somehow you’ll be able to see it from a floor below him. He heads downstairs, where chaos is already in full swing. Pepe is chopping up what feels like a thousand oranges for mimosas, and for some reason, there’s batter on the ceiling. 

“Thank god, our resident Parisian is awake,” you say, reaching for him as soon as he enters the kitchen. “Do you know how to make French toast? Because Chloe’s vision is not translating into reality.”

The letter feels like it’s burning a hole in his pocket all day. He keeps looking for the right moment — nearly gives it to you on the beach while you’re reading, before Kimi interrupts to show you the shells he’d collected. He thinks about sliding it over the dashboard as he watches you drive into the town center for groceries, singing along to Fleetwood Mac with the windows rolled down so you can smell the salt air. Maybe he can leave it somewhere you’d find it by accident, like a secret saved just for you.

On the other hand, the thought of you actually reading it kind of makes him want to throw up. 

When he tries to get rid of it, though, he can’t quite do that either. It feels like he’s crumpling up your relationship, all the things he knows he loves about you. So in the end, he settles for leaving it in the kitchen trash, neatly folded on top of an empty twelve-pack box and stained popsicle sticks, content in the knowledge that he has more time to figure out how to say everything he feels. 

You’re all on the porch outside when shit goes sideways. The sun is beating down, your legs draped lazily over Isack’s lap as you play Uno with the boys. Gabi’s just won, and he’s being unbearably annoying about the whole thing.

“Alright, I should take out the trash before we make dinner,” you say absentmindedly, putting down your cards and unfolding yourself out of your chair, sauntering inside. 

Isack doesn’t quite register the danger at first. Then it hits him. The trash. His letter. Your name on the front, scrawled unmistakably in Isack’s handwriting. He jolts upright so fast his chair tips over behind him.

“Merde,” he mutters, already scrambling across the deck, splinters digging into his feet. He shoulders past Ollie in the doorway, heart pounding in his ears so loud in nearly drowns out the chorus of confused voices behind him.

By the time he gets to the kitchen, breathing hard as if he’s just run a marathon, you’ve already found it. You’re holding the letter gingerly between two fingers, like you’ve picked it off the top of the trash, and Isack is so unbelievably fucked. 

“Did you mean to throw this away?” you say, voice unsteady.

“I —” he starts, then stops, running a hand through his hair roughly. “It’s, um, nothing. Just trash. Yeah.”

After he finishes stammering through the world’s worst explanation, you look at him for a long moment. Then at the letter. Then back at him. 

“Okay,” you say quietly, and drop the letter in the trash without unfolding it. You tie the bag off, pulling it out of the can, and walk out the side door without a backward glance. Isack stands in the kitchen, listening to the door creak shut behind you with the sinking feeling he’s just made a big mistake.

Dinner, predictably, is loud, full of overlapping conversations and splinters off the old patio furniture. Isack barely hears any of it. You’re sitting beside him, laughing at the story Gabi is telling about the guy next door and his snorkel mask, but there’s a tightness to your smile that hasn’t gone away.

You don’t bring it up. You don’t act weird. You still steal bites of pizza off his plate and brush your fingers over his knee when you reach for your Coke bottle. But he’s known you long enough to know you’re still thinking about it, to know he hasn’t gotten off the hook just yet. 

“Just tell me one thing,” you say later in bed, voice soft and a little hesitant, fingers tapping against his thigh. “Was it something bad? About me?”

Isack stiffens, rolling over to look at you with wide, panicked eyes. “No, mon coeur,” he says gently. “No, never. Je te le promets.”

You nod slowly, biting your lip. “Okay. I trust you, I just — sorry, I just keep thinking about it. What would you write and then throw away?”

You’re looking up at him like you know what the letter said, or maybe like you hope you know, and the air between you turns sharp with potential. He wants to tell you. The words are right there, crowding at the tip of his tongue. He opens his mouth, and then he closes it again.

He’s scared. Scared that if you don’t feel the same, it’ll all fall apart. Scared that if you do, it’ll make everything real.

“It was nothing important,” he lies, and pretends not to notice the way your face falls just a little.

seven: wait until something terrible has happened and you can’t not tell her anymore. wait until she almost gets hit by a car crossing against the light and after you are done cursing at the shit-for-brains cab drivers in this city, realize you are actually just terrified of living without her. tell her with your hands shaking.

“Latte for Isack?”

The Daily Grind churns with the desperate energy of finals week, the scent of stress nearly overpowering the espresso aroma, but Isack keeps pushing his way through the college-age customers hunched over their laptops with dark circles under their eyes. Your robotics exam started just about three hours ago, which means you’ll be stumbling out of the engineering building any minute now. With any luck, Isack will be there with a coffee for you, ready to hear all about it. He’s planning his Best Boyfriend Ever acceptance speech in his head already. 

He picks up the cup from the barista, at the last minute buys one of those lavender honey scones you always stare at through the display counter but never purchase because “twelve dollars for a pastry is capitalism at its worst, Isack, even if it does taste like it’s made by a baby angel.” He doesn’t have the money for it, not really, but imagining the excitement on your face when you see the bag is enough to have him forking over his credit card. His bank account is crying, but some things are worth being broke for. 

He’s just across the street from the engineering building when students begin streaming out like survivors escaping a shipwreck. He scans the crowd until he spots you, hair piled on top of your head messily and shoulders slumped. Still beautiful, even after an hours-long grueling exam. He holds up the bag, knowing you’ll see it before you see him, and your entire face lights up, exhaustion melting into relief. 

“Baby, what are you doing here?” you laugh, hands cupped around your mouth so he can hear you across the street. You’re half-jogging towards him in your eagerness, entirely focused on him and the promise of comfort he represents. So focused, in fact, that Isack sees the cab before you do, the yellow blur cutting through the intersection headed directly for you.

Isack freezes. He tries to scream, to warn you, anything, but the sound dies in his throat. In the entire universe, the only thing that matters is the ear-achingly loud honk of the horn and the startled look on your face. 

You, thankfully, don’t freeze like him. You jump back, cab just kissing the edge of your shin, backpack swinging through the air and clattering back against your side. 

The car doesn’t stop. It doesn’t even slow down. The whole thing is over in a second. But to Isack, the second stretches forever, and in it he can see everything that could have happened, the way his life could have split open in a single, terrible instant.

You stare after the car, dazed, and Isack is moving before his brain can catch up with his body. Not to you, not at first — he’s running halfway up the street, screaming obscenities after the car’s receding tail lights in rapid French about the driver’s ugly mother, the size of his dick, and how terrible he is at pleasuring his partner. 

“Hey. Hey, Isack, it’s okay.” You catch up to him, place a hand on his arm, gently, and all the rage inside of him snaps. 

“Ce n’est pas bien!” His hands are trembling, something hot pricking at the back of his eyes. “He could have killed you.”

“It was my fault,” you say softly. 

Isack pulls you into a tight, desperate hug. He can’t stop seeing it every time he blinks: the cab’s tires squealing on the street, your sneakers jumping back, the bumper brushing against your leg.

He buries a hand in your hair, no doubt filling it with snarls and tangles, and breathes in the familiar, warm scent of your shampoo. His cheeks feel wet, for some reason. “He should have been more careful. Il aurait pu te tuer. You could have died.”

“I didn’t die,” you say, wrapping your arms around his neck and soothingly stroking his shoulders. “I’m okay, Isack.”

“You could have died. I could have lost you,” he repeats, and the words come out horribly strangled thinking about the prospect of a world without you in it. No more forcing him to taste-test your seasonal lattes. No more watching stupid Netflix romcoms because they make you laugh. No more slow dancing in his kitchen, swallowing your laughter with kisses when he steps on your toes. It wouldn’t be a life worth having.

“I love you,” he sobs into your hair. “Je t’aime, et tu aurais pu mourir. I love you.”

You run your hands through his hair, holding him as tightly as he’s holding you. “Isack, babe, you have to breathe. It’s fine. I’m right here, mon coeur.” Your accent is as terrible as ever, but you’re solid and breathing and alive against him, and he lets out a rattling gasp. “See? I’m right here. I’m okay.” 

“Right,” he croaks, voice hoarse as he tries to catch his breath. “You’re here. You’re here.”

“I’m here,” you confirm. “Everything is okay. I know you’re panicking, but I’m fine. You don’t have to be scared. I’m right here.”

“Okay,” he breathes after a moment, pulling back and slowly disentangling himself from you, even as every molecule in his body protests at the distance.

You wipe your thumb gently over his cheekbones, brushing away the tears, and he presses his face against your hand like a cat. Desperately seeking your affection, your touch, any reminder that you’re still here with him. You smile at him, wobbly but real. “What’s in the bag?”

“Scone,” he manages to choke out. He’d nearly forgotten he had the bag at all. It’s ridiculously crumpled, fuchsia paper crushed between white knuckles. His fingers ache when he unclenches them. 

“Really?” you ask. “The one from Daily Grind? Baby, you didn’t. That’s so sweet! You know I love those. Can we go back to my room and split it?” Even though he can tell you’re rambling, trying to distract him, your smile is enough to make him forget a little bit. So he sniffles and lets you lead him across campus, rubbing soothing circles into his palm the entire way home. 

It’s not until later in your room, watching Star Wars and eating his half of the scone as you comb your fingers through his hair, that Isack realizes you didn’t tell him you love him too. You assumed he was panicking, which was true, but it didn’t make the feelings any less real.

He loves you, and you don’t believe him.

eight: say it deliberately, your tongue a springboard for every syllable. over coffee, brushing your teeth side-by-side, as you turn off the light to go to sleep – it doesn’t matter where. do not adorn it with extra words like “i think” or “i might.” do not sigh heavily as if admitting it were a burden instead of the most joyous thing you’ve ever done. look her in the eyes and pray, heart thumping wildly, that she will turn to you and say, “i love you too.”

The air smells like champagne and summer. Graduation day is a blur — sweaty hugs on the lawn, too-bright flash photos where at least one of you is sure to be mid-blink, parents crying as they watch their kids grow up. 

Isack cheers, stomping his feet wildly, as you cross the stage to receive your diploma, tassels blowing in the breeze and smiling into the crowd megawatt-bright. After the ceremony, Ollie pops a mini bottle of champagne and nearly takes out his macroeconomics professor with the cork. Kimi runs a lap around the quad, Doriane screaming bloody murder on his shoulders. Pepe cries twice, once because the dean mispronounced his name during the ceremony and again when Isack presents him with a photo of the two of them from freshman year move-in day, all gawky limbs and awkward smiles.

The party starts as soon as your caps hit the ground. Isack’s house is spilling over with friends who don’t want to say goodbye just yet, dancing barefoot on the patchy backyard grass with beers sweating in their hands. There’s music pulsing through an overamped speaker, loud laughter echoing between the trees. You sit on his lap on the leaning porch steps, sipping from a Solo cup and pressing a sloppy kiss to his cheek when Chloe takes a Polaroid of the two of you. It comes out a little blurry, but Isack slips it into his phone case anyway. 

By the time afternoon bleeds into evening, the two of you slip away from the party, too full of sentimentality to be around anyone except each other. For once, Isack doesn’t have a plan in mind, too content with your hand in his as you walk one last slow loop around campus. The brick paths you’ve worn down over four long years. The benches you’d studied on outside the dining hall, trading smuggled cookies with your head in his lap. The hill you’d sledded down together freshman year, when Isack took one look at your flushed cheeks and pretty smile and realized what he was feeling wasn’t just friendship.

“Oh, the fountain!” you cry delightedly, tugging his hand hard towards the stately stone fixture as you near the main quad. It’s a campus tradition, passed down through generations of sleep-deprived undergrads. Legend has it if you jump into the fountain with your sweetheart, you’ll always find your way back to each other. “Isack, we have to do it, come on.”

You set off across the quad, barefoot and heels swinging from your fingertips, but Isack stays, because every single place on this campus is a memory that leads back to you, and he starts to have the feeling that this very moment is what it’s all been building to all along. 

“Mon coeur?” he calls out from behind you, hands shaking in his pockets. When you turn back to look at him, the setting sun is painting your skin golden, the sleeves of your gown billowing in the wind, and it takes all the breath out of his body. Four years of friendship, nearly a year of dating, and you still have the ability to make time stop for him. 

“Yeah?” you ask, tilting your head with a curious expression, and he knows. 

“I love you.” 

He doesn’t say it drunk, or panicking, or praying for you not to really hear it, or with the desperation of someone trying to stop the clock. He says it with the quiet certainty of someone who’s been waiting way too long.

“I know,” you say, eyes sparkling. He waits for you to continue, heart in his throat, but you just grin smugly at him. 

“Non,” he shakes his head as he walks towards you, smiling despite himself. “Not fair. You cannot pull a Han Solo unless your life is at stake. Actually, you cannot pull a Han Solo at all —”

You swallow his outrage with a kiss, pulling him in by the tie and knocking his cap askew. “I love you too,” you say against his lips, as his hands come to rest on your hips. “Really.”

“I know,” Isack breathes out, dizzy with it, as he tugs you towards the fountain. “Really.”

The fountain isn’t deep, water only reaching to mid-calf. But it’s shockingly cold for a June day, the spray raising goosebumps on Isack’s arms. You shriek with laughter as you follow him in. “Oh god. Not one of my best ideas,” you gasp at the sudden chill, the hem of your gown trailing in the water around you. 

“What do you mean?” he grins, pulling you so close he can see the water droplets on your lashes. “It was a perfect idea. Now we’ll always find our way back to each other.”

You loop your arms around his neck, pressing up on your toes and kissing the corner of his mouth. “That would imply I’m planning on losing you in the first place,” you say, and Isack is hit with a wave of affection so strong it nearly makes his knees buckle.

“I love you,” he breathes out again, spinning you in a slow circle. “I’ve been wanting to say it for so long.”

You crinkle your nose at him, grinning ridiculously. “I love you too. But why didn’t you?”

“I was trying to plan out the right moment,” he admits.

And then, almost shyly:

“Turns out any moment with you is the right one.”

[kivaember]

arthur nightingale character rambling

my favourite thing when it comes to fic writing is really getting into the guts of a character and figuring out how they tick or react to certain situations based on what info you have about them from canon

anyway under the cut is my self-indulgent ramble about my thoughts (which are probably disorganised sorry) on arthur nightingale

okay, first off, let's get to the basics:

he's your knight in sour armour, to break him down into the very basic of tropes. he's difficult to get close to because he's so standoffish with strangers and resistant to showing vulnerability, but he's also genuinely a good guy beneath the gruff who wants to help people just because it's the right thing and because he's naturally a very empathetic guy.

as eleanor pointed out, arthur had dreams of being a hero ever since he was leaping on pine cone grenades as a child. i wouldn't be surprised if as a kid he even fantasied about doing some heroic sacrifice that has everyone like "oh wow he was a true hero!" like you see in movies dfhddh since from what i've gleaned from 1999 they do idolise people being sent to the "hall of heroes" upon death. but i think his friend's death also compounded in arthur a sense of: if someone has to be sacrificed, it has to be him because...

well being the one left behind hurts. it's awful. you have to live with it, while the dead get to die with the satisfaction of doing a good thing. it's a complicated emotion that arthur has 99.9% likely not processed or even thought about too deeply, but i do feel that arthur has a fear of being the one left behind. he doesn't want other people dying for him, and god i bet the shitshow of a mission on new years eve had been the most horrific scenario for him:

Everyone dying before him, leaving him the last one standing, alive just long enough to know he got everyone killed for nothing. awful.

anyway, moving onto his initial curt personality. we always knew he was driven based on aoi's KIM convos where she explains their break-up. arthur's very blinkered and a big picture kind of guy, i feel, where because he's good at setting aside his personal feelings in favour of the "greater good", he forgets that not everyone else functions like that. i think this is also compounded by the whole entrati fiasco, where lettie explains that initially the hex loyally followed entrati against their higher ups' orders, distributing his medicines and encouraging people to take up his vaccines, etc.

and you know, burned once, shame on you, burned twice, shame on me. entrati and drifter are similar in that they're strange people who popped up literally out of nowhere claiming they have the magical solution to your problems if you just trusted them. entrati strung the hex along with promises of a cure for the techrot, and initiatially it seemed like he was telling the truth: his vaccine did stop people getting sick - it just turned them into asymptomatic carriers instead, which the hex didn't immediately clock onto, and when they started to have suspicions, well they really didn't want to believe they'd made the wrong choice. they must be mistaken, right? entrati kept his promise to make a cure so... there's probably a reason why other people are getting sick, right?

it's why they took the second vaccine he offered which turned them into protoframes: because they were desperate and, despite it all, they trusted entrati.

whiiiiiiiich kinda fucks over drifter from the outset, i feel. the whole fiasco with entrati is very likely lurking in the forefront of arthur's mind when it comes to drifter in the initial few months. drifter arriving from the future and locking them all into a time loop, saying "don't worry, i can help you with means you don't understand, you just have to trust me".

so with arthur, i really feel like the entire year of the first loop is drifter overcoming that initial (and understandable) mistrust. arthur was probably waiting for the other shoe to drop with drifter - like, he had no idea how this was going to turn out to be a scam, but he was probably waiting for something to happen... but no, drifter is genuine, they're not playing with the hex or trying to trick them into anything.

the KIM convos probably helped with that, honestly. entrati likely maintained an authorative distance with the hex, whereas drifter was, well, drifter: clearly traumatised and socially awkward, if emotionally intelligent, but genuinely trying to connect and make friends with the hex - wanting to help them but also get to know them.

and that kind of quality i think would draw arthur in. yeah, drifter has no filter when it comes to talking about their fucked up past (ngl its funny that you can practically hear the "jesus christ" reverbing through arthur's brain whenever drifter casually reveals yet another traumatising event from their past like it's no big deal), but they're kinda stupidly committed to doing the right thing no matter how crazy and hard it is. arthur is also stupidly committed to doing the right thing no matter how crazy and hard it is! they have something in common in that!

also drives them both insane because i can just imagine drifter and arthur being in a state of "no i will sacrifice myself for YOU" to each other bc both refuse to be the one left behind. they'd be insufferable on a dangerous mission together. i think eleanor would strangle them both.

this really is a disorganised ramble. but anyways, arthur's fun to write about bc this guy really wants to do the right thing, but he's made a terrible decision in trusting the wrong person which landed him and his comrades in a situation where they get to enjoy the body horror that is being turned into protoframes against their will with a potential future of having their minds consumed by the techrot eventually, where there is no easy route to doing the "right thing", where their future is uncertain and where they have living evidence of someone from the future being all like "yeah so the infestation still exists thousands of years from now and the future is fucked up to hell and back but... well, we're alive!" and they're also stuck in a time loop for who knows how long.

anyway this is why i love drifter/arthur bc i feel like they're both on the same wavelength of "heroically deranged" and they give each other enrichment that others would find diabolically annoying. they know how to respect each other's boundaries but also when to push, and they have that insane quality where they want to hope for a better future, think they can make a better future, if they just keep forging towards doing the right thing no matter how disgustingly hard and painful it is.

this is why aoi and arthur broke up, i feel. they both had different priorities, which is fine! honestly i'm so glad DE had them both be extremely mature about the whole thing, because sometimes relationships do end bc both parties realise that they're better as friends than romantic partners and it doesnt have to result in them being bitter or angry at each other. aoi was justified in wanting to break up bc she wanted someone who prioritised the relationship just as much as she did, whereas arthur kinda needs someone who's willing to butt heads with him when he's being a bit of an ass but also understand that he's not naturally a super romantic or emotional kind of person.

anyway tl;dr i love arthur bc he's a wet cat kind of guy who's trying his best and that's just endearing. thank you for listening to my disjointed rambling lmao

[rapunzelbro]

The Act of Stealing a Loved One |2| (Stanley Pines x Reader)

This chapter is a flashback. So are the others. Enjoy! It's super long lmao

Story Guide

It was the Summer of 1972 when you first met Stanford. You remember it almost all too well. You went to a college for the arts, majoring in music composition. Oh! And you were in a band! It was not good by any means, you all were figuring this out as you went but you were all having fun so it didn’t really matter to you. It’s kinda funny looking back on how the two of you somehow became a couple considering how different the two of you were.

You two only met after you accidentally stumbled in his room one night after you partied too hard at someone else's dorm. You thought his room was your friend's room. His dorm had books scattered around, posters of some scientists on the wall and an absolute mess of notes on his desk. Stanford did not want to spend his night with some random drunk girl in his dorm, but he knew he had to let you in, not trusting what any of the other men on the campus would do if they saw you like this. He didn’t know why you made him so flustered, maybe it was your vulnerable state, or just because you were a girl, talking to him.

It was probably both.

“You know, I never wanted to go to this, it was some promotional stuff for my band. Did I tell you I was in a band? We are amazing!” You were laying on the floor staring at the ceiling smiling goofily, flipping onto your stomach to look at the flustered man whose dorm you broke into. He took a glance over his shoulder to look at you, trying to tell you he was listening, even if you didnt care if he was or not. “Okay so that might be a lie, Gabs is super pitchy, Jamie is still figuring out the drums but that's besides the point..I met you by going to this!” you finally sat up running a hand through your hair “You're so dorky it's kinda cute” you let off a soft giggle pointing at him.

This made Stanford physically freeze, his breath hitching slightly “Thank you I suppose, Are your friends looking for you?” He quickly changed the subject, turning around in his chair, looking at you “I think, I dunno… I kinda wanna stay here with you” you smirked. “Well I-” he started before he heard a female voice yelling in the hallway “Y/N! We gotta go!” “Oh that's Gabs! She’s my friend!” You stumbled up before heading towards the door, pausing before going back over to the man kissing his check with a giggle, causing Stanford's face to turn bright red “Thank you for saving me! I’m Y/n by the way!” “Um… It's Stanford, Call me Ford..” he managed to get out, quickly writing the phone number to the telephone that was in his room, down on a piece of notebook paper. “Just.. Call me when you get to your dorm safe..” he quickly turned back to face his textbooks he had his nose buried in hours ago “Aw you care about me… Okay loverboy. Seeya around!” you poked his shoulder before leaving, yelling at your friend ‘Gabs’ to get her attention

Ford had no idea why he did that, he never had the balls to do this sort of thing. Especially with someone as beauti- No why the hell was he having these thoughts? You weren't going to call him. He has to forget about this encounter, he concluded, going back to his uneventful night.

He got a call the next day, it was you. There was some sort of music in the background, he couldn't place what it was, some pop music maybe. “Oh my gosh is this Ford? I kinda crashed at your dorm last night, I am sooo sorry I am super embarrassed.” you rambled on before Ford let off a slight chuckle “No it's fine. I’m glad you're safe, you seemed very out of it last night” he leaned back in his chair slightly as he spoke “Ugh don't get me started about the hangover” you groaned causing him to laugh.

After that was the beginning of a relationship, you spent your off time together, he helped you with classes and you expanded his music taste, well tried to at least.

It's been 4 months since you two started dating. Ford even told his brother about this, and to say Stanley was shocked was an understatement, he rushed over surprising Ford “So you finally found a girl who doesn’t run off screaming? Tell me all about her” Stanley smirked looking at his twin brother, noticing a photo of you on his desk in a frame, you had a microphone in your hand giving a peace sign to the camera with your other hand. How the hell did his brother score you? Ford went off to ramble about you, he was a love sick mess, but the way his eyes kept shifting to the photo of you when explaining you made Stan confused, why did he have to keep looking at it to talk about you?

He noticed a few flyers to some music festivals, they looked untouched. “Who gave you these?” he picked one up, the show was for tonight, in a few hours. “Oh Y/n did. She’s in a band” Ford looked at the flier before directing his attention back to the textbook that was in front of him “You plan on seeing her right?” Stan raised an eyebrow looking at his brother “Too busy, I have an exam tomorrow” Ford shrugged it off flipping to the next page in his book “You’re joking right? Have you been to any of her shows?” Stan narrowed his eyes in disapproval, Ford didn't say anything “Some boyfriend you are” He muttered looking down at the flier in his hands. He knew what he had to do, he wasn’t going to let Ford ruin the only potential relationship he would probably ever have.

Taglist: @bluepanda08 @slay-thou-pookie @karmaisacatluzi @fries11 @marvelous-maniac @cherryblom @leo4242564 @zuzzybakaemperiment

[careyakane]

A fragment from my journal entry recounting December 31st 2024

That was the most wondrous of trips. Leaving Los Angeles at 10:30 AM, atop a cliff wrapped by the rising Big Sur tide for the final sunset of the year by 4:30 PM. Then to the dimly lit Big Sur Inn, with its worn fabric hanging from oak beams and vases of dried flowers cluttering old vanities and desks. Stained glass lamps hummed as we ate brown bread and chickpea soup off white tablecloths, exchanging words with a kind waitress with bright, wiry eyes.

It was well past 8 PM when we were denied entry to the Fernwood New Year’s Eve party, the only event within 50 miles. We settled down, unbothered, on a nice bench and watched the townies walk easily past the smiling face that had just scowled at us moments earlier when we informed her we did not, in fact, have tickets. A hot tea spewing up steam filled my hand as my eyes glowed, reflecting a 50-foot cedar tree dressed with warm string lights and colorful bulbs undisturbed since Christmas.

Encounter after encounter with the strangest of folks ensued: “Joe Mann,” with his paint-stained Carhartt and some rather funny joke I’ve forgotten, and then there was Nico the chef—pupils wide and red, his hands flying about him in slow motion as he threw a plastic bag containing a single mushroom at us and angrily insisted we take it and “GO DOWN TO THE CREEK AND GET OUT OF HERE.” Everyone knew him, but they always sped up while passing, careful not to get trapped as Kii and I were now in his drunken rambling.

Just as the California clock struck 10 PM, a family 15 members long with cowbells came announcing the New Year as the ball dropped three thousand miles east in New York City. The strange thing was that they were an hour late in their celebrations, but I held my tongue and smiled. An hour passed, and many things happened. The party ended, and it felt time to leave the bench. We drove north toward Monterey and turned right up Palo Colorado Road. We slept at its crown, a place called The Hoist, where the road only continues past locked iron gates. I’d been up there once when I stayed with Charlie the goat farmer—his old truck winding up snake-like dirt roads with holes four feet deep and thousand-year-old redwoods, straight and mighty, blocking out the moon and sun alike.

Kii and I, too tired to undress, covered up in a quilt, reclined our seats, and quickly found sleep. But the sleep was thin and short-lived. I awoke in a pale, milky darkness from the stars that seemed so close at this elevation that one might reach out and pocket a few for further inspection. A new year was upon us, but I felt unsettled and watched. I realized just a moment later how quiet it was—my window was open a crack, and not a wisp of wind; the stream far below sat mute, the trees creaked no more—and still I felt seen. My mind went to terrible places as I pictured mutilated mountain people cutting my brake lines and pulling us with three-fingered hands from the car to God knows where.

I whispered to Kii, and he answered immediately in an alert and fearful voice, echoing similar concerns. I didn’t waste a minute starting that car, and only once I had descended the four miles of redwood and broke through the cypress grove that reveals the ocean and Highway 1 did I take a breath and laugh a little at the whole situation.

We began north again and stopped a moment to turn our heads up in awe. The breaking sea filled my ears and comforted me as we pulled over to a regular spot of mine just past the Carmel border. Two other cars sat dark with sleeping silhouettes in the pullout, and I killed my headlights to join them.

Coming from the great quiet of Palo Colorado to this concoction of waves and passing cars, I found relief in the commotion and movement of the world. I woke often but never fearful. I was just as I had done so often as a boy… waiting for the first signs of light to break through the treeline, which back then was my agreed-upon permission with my father to leave my room and begin my adventures.

Now it would mean waking Kii and setting off for Santa Cruz, and past that, to San Francisco.

I waited in eternity—every minute stretched and melting together—but finally the show began, and from black to grey to blue the sky flashed, and an instant later the sun broke the unseen horizon and her gold rays showered over us and over our new year.

[incognito-girl]

matching - L.WILLIAMSON

NOT EDITED and i HATE this but i spent too long on it before it got deleted to just not finish it! hope you enjoy

new year’s eve. the start and end of a year, all at once. every pressure of the year can be left behind leaving you to only think of the future. friends, family, teammates asking what your big goals and plans for the year ahead are. the question had always left you thinking and as you do year after year you shrug out the same answer of “work on my shooting/defence/speed”, whatever you just decided to say that day. everyone around you felt hopeful at the prospect of a new year, new beginning. although for you every year felt the same it never felt as though this was a moment for big change. although this year you had a change. a big change waiting for you. you would be a new signing for arsenal during the winter transfer season. although will all this ‘negativity’ you had towards the prospect of a new year your little secret new year resolution was to get into a relationship, a real relationship. as the years go by though your hope of this dwindling as every prospect ended to be a one night stand or just someone completely awful.

this year your resolution was to do well at your new club. you were following your dear friend, alessia, over to arsenal just a few months later. when you told her the news of your transfer she screamed down the phone at you with excitement, rambling on about different things you can do when you move to london in a few months. this led you here, sitting on the floor on your new home unpacking as you and the blonde catch up on the last few months of your lives. “only thing we’re missing now is ella.” you say fondly thinking of your friend who you had left just a few hours ago. “she needs to come down for a weekend soon, we will just have to see who she stays with” she says with hint of cockiness to her voice. indicating ella would stay with her. this led to the pair of you getting into a playful argument on where the brunette would stay. eventually coming to an agreement she would definitely stay in a hotel not wanting to be staying with the either of you.

eventually the pair of you had mostly unpacked your clothes and had ended up sitting on your new bed ready to spend the evening there, before the blonde sitting next to you received a phone call “katie mc cabe” it read as you slightly looked into her phone. a new found sense of dead came over you realising she would definitely be asking her to go out and you would be left home alone on new year’s eve. she answered quickly while standing up and leaving the room to have the conversation. you sat patiently waiting for the girl as you scrolled on instagram. the taller girl came bounding back into the room with excitement evident on her features “we’re going out.” she states quickly, knowing your detest for celebrating the holiday hand. “no alessia.” you state leaving back against your headboard facing the television again. “come on would you” she moans out to you while flopping on your bed, “you will have to meet the girls anyway.” she says poking your leg. “alessia.” you start “i don’t want to just tag along especially not on a night out when i haven’t even been introduced to them before this.” you say frowning to get some sympathy on your reservations. “nope, no pouty face will work on me. we’re going.” she states standing up to now look at your clothes to see what she could wear.

after about half an hour of moping about while getting ready the pair of you were set for the night ahead of you. “okay so most of everyone is already there so we should probably leave soon.” she states while applying lipgloss in your bathroom mirror. you watching her while sitting on your bed in your short white dress. “alright!” you hear the taller girl shout from the bathroom “i’m ready” she says appearing at the door both her hands on each side of the doorframe. “looks so beautiful lessi!” you say sarcastically all the while giving her a sincere look. with a roll of her eyes she flicks your for each whole mumbling about getting a taxi.

you both stood waiting in the kitchen drinking the last bit of water you would get for the night before you left. “are you excited?” she asks narrowing her eyes at you, wanting a sincere answer. “nervous.” you state shortly back at the girl, not quite meeting her eyes, she doesn’t reply to this in hopes you will expand on your answer if left to your own thoughts. to her confidence you did just as she hoped. “what if they don’t like me. i’m stuck with them all for the next three seasons unless i go on loan, but i couldnt imagine myself liking that to be honest lessi. what if lotte or katie dont like me. i know ive met lotte before but like it’s still so stressful, and katie might not like me because we’re so opposite based on the stories you have told me. everything could just go to shit tonight, and then what will i do for the season. it will be so shocking.” you ramble on not even taking a breath during it all. “they will love you.” she states as if it was a fact written in a history book, someone never sounding so sure of anything. “but what if they don’t?” you quietly ask worry beginning to furrow your eyebrows. “nope! none of that no furrowing your eyebrows tonight. no more overthinking.” she shouts out grabbing her phone and your hand dragging you out of the apartment to the taxi waiting on the side of the roads few floors down.

you could hear the beat of the music from outside the building when you got out of the taxi. the taller girl grabbing your hand once again to prevent you getting lost from her. she dragged you through the bodies of intoxicated people, a mix of smells taking over your senses leaving you a little nauseous. this was before you were suddenly standing in front your entire future team, as they hugged your friend. then after they all said hello they realised you were standing ever so slightly behind her. an excited look came over each of the girls faces as they realised who you were, the new signing. a few of the girls you were familiar with, due to shared friendship with ella and alessia. you had visited the pair during the summer to watch a the final of the world cup, the aftermath very different to the euros. although this led you to be acquainted with a fair few of the english nationals. the few you had spoke to bolted over to your side an excited look on their faces due to seeing you.

you were dragged away from your blonde friend to a entire new group of girls staring at you as if you were their favourite person in the world. you laughed under their gaze of what could only be described as love - weirdly enough. the group around you all introduced themselves, vivianne , beth, leah and lotte. beth doing most of the talking asking you millions of questions. lotte eventually excusing herself from the group followed by vivianne a minute later after telling beth she will get her a drink while she is up. this left just beth and leah to speak to. the blonde girl who you hadn’t been taking much notice of before this moved in closer to the pair of you to join into the conversation. this is when you finally noticed the both of you were in the same dress. “we’re matching!” you state to the girl next to you, feeling the fabric that covered her thigh to see if it really was the exact same dress. to your shock it was. this led the both of you into a long conversation about clothes. the taller girl had a lot to say about this topic leaving you sitting and listening to her as her eyes lit up excitedly, as if she was a child in a sweet shop. “alright love birds” beth starts while beginning to stand up gaining the both of your attention “i’m going to find alessia.” she finished while walking away. leaving the both of you with a crimson colour taking over your faces. you turn back to face leah seeing her with a little smirk on her face. “you are really pretty.” she states as if at the possibility she didn’t say it she would burst. a second round of the crimson colour takes over your cheeks again as you look at her with a smile.

the pair of you now talking about your family’s you start to tell a story about about your brother mimicking his actions when he scored a goal in his sunday league match, doing his celebration that he has now gotten you to start doing for him. leah absolutely scarlet from the way you were throwing your hands in the hair shouting out about a goal she grabbed your hands down and pulled them into her lap. “stop, you will embarrass me.” she said laughing while rolling her eyes leaning closer into you. “oh shush.” you roll your eyes back at her. she looks down at your entangled hands resting on her lap with a small smile. you begin to remove your hands from hers as her smile drops as she starts on an apology. “oh god i’m so sorry i didnt realise” “shush leah” you say grabbing her hand and intertwining your fingers together.

the both of you, so engrossed in your conversation and light touches didn’t realise you had been sitting in each others company for the past two hours. your thumb was gently caressing her much larger hand that was now sitting on your lap. you could feel every little mole, vein and cuticle on her hand. her face barely inches away from your face you could smell the lip balm she had on her soft lips, that looked very kissable in this lighting. you could smell the linger of her perfume that she has sprayed on herself hours before. her eyes scanning over every bit of your face as you spoke. her thumb gently stroking your thigh as you spoke gesturing wildly with your hands. your hand ended up on the back of her neck and on her shoulder as you pulled her closer so she could hear you better. talking into her ear as your breath fanned over her neck and your fingers played with the hairs on the back of her neck, you could see goosebumps rising all over her due to your actions. pulling away once you were done speaking your hands stayed put on the girl keeping her close. not even having an inch between you and the other girl. her hands now coming to rest on your waist. she ever so slightly lifted you up so you could sit on her lap. her fingers dancing over your waist as you pulled her impossibly closer to you. one of her hands began to fall loved resting on your ass. the both of you leaving in breath fanning over each others lips. before you were rudely interrupted by an excited alessia “guys like thirty seconds until midnight come on!” she said while grabbing your hand dragging you off leah and then grabbing her hand. the pair of you being dragged behind her. sharing amused looks at the girls excitement. she bring you both to the middle of the room with the rest of the team to celebrate the beginning of the new year. “so.” she stars a smug look on her face “any new years kiss?” she asks grabbing your waist once again “i was thinking this blonde girl but she might be a bit too cocky.” you answer placing your hands around her neck. the sound of everyone beginning to count down from ten now surround you.

ten

“i’m sure she would love to kiss you” she answers one hand falling lover onto your arse.

nine

“maybe. but i’m not sure if i want to kiss her” you say looking at her through your eyelashes

eight

“well she would be very hurt then.” she said pouting her potting lip

seven

“then i’ll consider it” you say while placing your finger onto her lip getting rid of her pout.

six

her toothy grin gleams down at you.

five

her hands grip your waist pulling you closer.

four

your hands go to her face caressing it.

three

“so gorgeous” she whispered to you.

two

“just shut up and kiss me.” you whisper back to her before pulling her in and connecting your lips.

one

you could faintly hear everyone shouting out a happy new year celebration and wishing the people around them a happy new year as the taller girls lips were on yours. you could taste the alcohol on her lips as she pulled you impossibly closer. her tongue licking your bottom lip asking for entrance to your mouth, which you eagerly grant. her nimble fingers digging into the flesh on your hips as you groan into her mouth, a sudden wave of embarrassment coming over you as you pull back. with your cheeks turning red you look up at her embarrassed, although you were met with a smirking blonde looking down at you. “didn’t know i had that much of an effect on you gorgeous. you are so hot.” she mumbled out to you grabbing your waist and pulling your body against hers, getting you lost in her presence once again.

“alright girls we get it. you like each other, keep it in a room though.” katie shouted out her irish accent thicker than ever, probably due to the alcohol consumption. leah pulled away from you throwing the girl a dirty look for ruining the moment she was just sharing with you. “fine, we will go and keep it in a room!” she shouted out jokingly to katie, while mimicking her accent. she grabbed your hand pulling you away from the group while you followed her idly, barely noticing too caught up with the girl. the electric feeling of her hand in yours was exactly what you needed to start your year secretly you hoped that this was every year’s resolution coming through, just a little bit delayed.

[brutus-isnt-avalible]

a wip for my rexmark fic im working on

Mark grunted as he held up the crumbling half of a tall apartment complex, his hands bleeding and throbbing with a terrible pain.

"You can't save it Mark. Let it go-"

"I got it Cecil! I- ... got it-" the heel of his palm slipped, scraping off the concrete and he held it up with his forearm instead.

"You're not your father. If you let go you won't kill those people-"

"Cecil I said- shit shit!" he let out a yell as he pushed up the building with as much strength as he could muster.

"Drop the building. That's an order!"

"I can't! You know I can't!"

"Drop the goddamn building Mark!" And for some reason, whatever reason, he did.

It came tumbling down and Mark flew to the ground. He grabbed as many people as he could and moved them out of the way.

A large pink wall flew under the building before it hit the ground, he looked in the direction it came from and sighed with relief.

"Get them out of here! I can handle it!" Eve shouted to him, letting out quick strained grunts.

Rex stood not too far away, watching the building collapse and didn't move. No matter how many people ran past him or bumped into him he didn't move. The blood of innocent civilians dripped off his face as he watched his apartment crumble, the only thing keeping it from being completely destroyed was Eve's pink support that was bound to break any second now, it was already cracking.

Mark ran to grab him but halted. "Rex what are you doing? I- I thought you were on enemy control?" Mark panted, his body trying to work against him.

"That's my fucking house, dipshit!" he yelled at no one in particular. His fists shaking with adrenaline, an awkward lump grew in his throat as tears poked at his eyes.

~~

"I get it man, it's fine, seriously, just stop apologizing" Rex said as they walked back into the main room of the Guardians HQ. He took off his mask and threw his glasses -- well what's left of them anyways -- to the side and sighed as he sat on the floor, meeting everyone else. "Shit happens it's.." he sighed and lied on his back, stretching his arms out in either side of him and let out a quiet 'oof' sound as he hit the ground.

"I- I can let you stay with me? My mom wouldn't mind and we can share my room" Mark fumbled with his hands nervously "Or I can just sleep on the couch since ya'know-"

"Yes Mark. I do, in fact, know. That doesn't sound like a bad idea though.." he sat up, leaning on his hands behind him. "Yeah sure, fuck it. I got no where else to be" he shrugged and stood up, pushing Mark through the doors.

Mark set Rex down gently infront of his door "Now, all I asked is that you don't show Oliver your powers, please"

He opened up his front door, letting Rex inside first.

"Mom! I'm ba-"

"Mark!" Oliver flew from the backyard straight into his brothers arms. "We saw you in the news! I wanted to go over and help but mom told me to stay" he pulled away with a pout and crossed his arms.

"It's for the best Oliver. A lot of people lost their lives today, it was really scary" he patted him on the shoulder "Maybe next time, okay?"

Rex began wondering around halting for a second before taking off his shoes by the front door -- it's what the new Rex would do! -- and continued to wander.

"Are you a superhero too?" Oliver asked in awe, staring up at Rex.

"Hell yeah I am kid!" he went to go reach for something not that meaningful. A small pebble or a leaf from on of the fake plants maybe but stopped himself and looked at Mark who was busy talking to his mom. He bit the inside of his lip and thought to himself for a moment.

He instead snapped his fingers and a spark of a hot electricity traveled through his hands, Oliver gasped and grabbed his hand.

"Woah! So do you have like electricity powers or something? That's so cool!" Oliver kept asking questions but instantly continued rambling on about how "Viltrumites don't get electricity!" or "So can you give yourself rocket boosters?" and went on and on about how he wished he could rocket boosters.

"Oliver, let's give out guest some space for a moment. He's had a stressful day" Debbie interjected. Rex didn't mind his excited ramblings though.

"Mark told me about what happened, how are you holding up?" she asked as she brought him to the kitchen, pouring him a glass of water.

He was taken a bit back by her kindness and didn't know how to respond.

"I- well I guess i've been pretty shi- crummy-" he laughed nervously, trying to mind his manners.

DO NOT REPOST/TRANSLATE ANYWHERE. YOU DO NOT PERMISSION

@cupids-artist

[crimsoneveline]

So I was rerereading volume 21 of sao and at the end they introduced a new character: Shikimi Kamura, a mysterious new transfer student at the returnee school.

And then I remembered: That last name, that's Kuroyukihime's last name! (And if I remember correctly she is the heir of the Kamura company, not just someone with the same name.)

[skyrim-forever]

Went for my first “run” and by run i mean 2 mins of walking and 1 minute of running alternating for about 25 mins

It went better than I expected! Spending a few weeks walking 50 mins per day helped a lot, I didn’t get any side cramps ☺️

[not-that-dillinger]

"Wings"

(Let's see what happens if you want!)

-CorruptedCodelines-

Admittedly, Ed should have expected to find the old computer from his nightmares in the arcade basement. The Grid itself wasn't even that much of a surprise, considering Flynn's ramblings before he disappeared and how they alligned with his father's angry rants about the MCP and the digitization laser.... and the whole... DataWraith project that had thankfully been shut down just over half a decade ago.

What Ed hadn't expected--couldn't have in his wildest dreams--were the wings.

Everyone had them: giant, bio-luminescent, feathery wings folded on each of their backs. Well. Maybe not bio-luminescent, given he was on the computer, but the feathers were glowing...

And then he looked up, and noticed more programs. He'd been so in awe of them, so fascinated by the variance in wing structure, how one had wings more like a vulture, and another more like a kite, and a third--with a matching tail made of the same luminescent feathers--had the wings of a scissor tailed flycatcher, that he didn't realize they were descending toward him until nearly half a dozen glowing orange programs practically landed on top of him.

It wasn't until after that, when two of them forcefully folded his own wings against his back and a third wrapped a glowing band around his chest to restrain said wings that he realized he even had them.

Everything after that was a blur, he recalled bits and pieces, the programs grabbing him by the arms and taking off toward a building that looked like Encom Tower, and then--then some cyberharpies stripping him out of his clothes and forcing him into a skin-tight glowing suit that made Ed's skin itch--and then being prodded out of the room and forced to kneel in front of... Flynn.

Or, someone that looked much like Flynn did, twenty years ago when he disappeared.

Though whoever he was might have looked like Flynn, it didn't take long for Ed to realize that who he was talking to was another program, and not the missing CEO. It just as short a time for Ed to realize that Flynn's doppelganger--Clu, he'd been called--intended to make Ed his user pet. To control him.

Ed had enough of that from his father for a lifetime, and no intention to let anyone else do the same.

Still, he didn't have much time to do anything about the situation as two glowing orange harpies pinned him to the floor while he struggled, two more held out his wings, and Clu... Ed couldn't see much, aside from Clu's finger igniting, and him kneeling down on top of him. It wasn't until after he'd been let up and saw the feather ends--white, but no longer glowing-- that he realized Clu had clipped his wings, in much the same way Ed would have clipped his pigeons' (Clacks, Turring, Dwar Ev, and Aegius's) wings.

Ed didn't care. All he knew was he had to get out, get away from Clu, and hopefully get back to his world where all he had to worry about was Mackey firing him, and the judge agreeing to renew the restraining order against his father.

There was only one entrance--the one he'd come in through. There were most certainly more guards on the other side, and many, many more between him and the elevator to the ground floor.

The only alternative...

Ed charged at the large window overlooking the city.

Maybe the guards hadn't expected Ed to attempt to escape that way, given they'd clipped his wings, or maybe they hadn't expected him to be able to break the glass. His fist connected with it, and for a fraction of a second, Ed could sense code beneath his fist, and then it was gone, and he was tumbling through open air toward a dark alley below. He focused, and with some concentration, managed to spread his wings. With luck, he'd have just enough to be able to glide safely...

The ground rushed up to meet him.

Ed knew his landing was going to be rough, given the conditions.

He hadn't expected to crash into another program.

[flibbertigibbety-jibber-jabber]

okay so i’m very curious about graysteds parents bc there’s obviously something that happened that lead him into the GDA

ALSO i want to know more about like eve, william (if he’s included in this au, which im assuming he is?) and amber in this au like what’s graysteds relationship with them and stuff

oughhh i love ur au so much its so awesome

THANK YOU!! Sorry for taking too long I kept being Busy then Very Overinvested <//3

Honestly these would probably be better off as two separate posts? And would be a little easier to do them that way lol,,, I’ll do Mark’s parents (AKA the Grayson Incident) first cos I have that outlined the clearest, (+ tag you and link the posts when I get to the others ^_^) This kinda fell into a rambly story on accident but idk how else to explain… I can do stories better than this trust 🙏🙏🙏

Nothing’s truly different about Nolan or Debbie—it’s all in Mark himself.

Mark is clumsy, and gets tired quick, hurt more, dizzy and nauseous, is weak. The doctors say he’s fine, just different, and Debbie scowls at the ones who call him dramatic. She tells him she’ll love him no matter what, with or without his problems, that they’ll figure something out so he can be happy. Nolan… sometimes makes Mark feel weak. He doesn’t say it, but he feels like he disappoints him.

Mark is 7 years old when Nolan tells Mark about his heritage as a Viltrumite. Mark is excited, both to have powers and an answer. Maybe he’s different because he’s part alien, and when his powers come in it’ll all go away! There’s an undertone of expectation that makes him nervous, but he’ll live up to it. He’s sure of it.

I guess the moment the timeline diverges the most is when he trips over himself and loses the baseball game three years later.

About a month after the game, there was a half-day at school. William’s mom dropped him off at his house, where the front door had been left unlocked. Mark didn’t see or hear anything at first, just an empty, still house. He heard a thud, and when he came around the corner to investigate… well. He found Debbie’s bloody body and an open back door.

The GDA appeared not a minute later, taking them both back to the Pentagon with them—mostly because Mark wouldn’t let go of Debbie, still crying and sobbing, but then also because Cecil told them to. When they have to separate them to operate on her, do what they can to see if she’ll make it, he throws a fit but relents to sitting on the floor outside her room, still crying.

Cecil had to make a decision, one that both the fate of a 9-year-old boy and their entire planet rested on: What the hell do we do with Mark?

They don’t even know anything about Viltrumites other than data collected on Nolan from a distance, the “story” they told him, and that nobody—and no group—on the fucking planet could fight one and win. When Mark gets his powers, he’ll take up the mantle for strongest superpowered person on the planet, no matter how old he is. He couldn’t go to a normal family. Being raised outside was a risk, every little factor twisting their fate.

Cecil didn’t know. So, he found Mark, hoping to find an answer there and fast, because Debbie’s outlook was bleak and Nolan wasn’t in the solar system anymore. Pretty soon this kid would have nobody. Mark was still sitting against the door, clothes bloody and tear-soaked, staring at his shoes and sniffling. Cecil sat down on the chairs across from him, and before Cecil could say anything, Mark looked up at him and asked him if they’d found the bad guy yet.

Mark believed his father’s story. He believed that Viltrumites were altruistic saviors, and that his father was a white knight here to protect Earth. The one time he’d seen Mark before this—a complete accident—the thing he remembered the most was his starry eyed ambition, full of naïve trust and awe, so curious about everything involving superhero-ing and hanging onto every vague answer given as Cecil waited for Nolan to show up. So sure that, some day, he was going to save the world.

Cecil could work with that.

Debbie flat-lined after a few hours. Mark was taken in, brought to a room they used when people needed to stay overnight by Donald, who broke the news to him. He told him they were going to keep him safe from the attacker, and train him to be the best hero he could be.

Mark believed him.

[luvjunie]

hiiiii!!!!

idk if ur taking requests or not, but can you scenarios about miles 1610 and 42 (or just one of them) if they were your older brother reacting to you having a boyfriend/girlfriend taking you out or something (they radiate overprotective brother energy idk why😫🙏)

LOVEEE your work!!😊

AW THANK YOUUU SM 🫶🏽 miles42 a/n: this is exaggerated a little for comedic reasons lolll. and ik i’ve done something similar to this alr but i’ll honestly never get tired of writing siblings bickering so idc skskdkd

“Bye Miles I’ll be back by 9 don’t bother waiting up for dinner!” You rambled out in one quick breath as you whisked passed your brother’s open door.

“Aht aht, come back,”

Your lips smacked against your teeth when you stopped in your tracks. He had his damn Beats on and was literally bobbing his head to whatever he was listening to, how did he even hear you?

With the inside of your cheek between your teeth and a huff pushing from your nostrils, you spun on your heels and begrudgingly stomped a few paces back to see him already facing the doorway. You stared at him with an oblivious look that had an attitude written all over it, arms smacking against your sides and head moving like a chicken’s when you asked,

“What?”

He pushed one of the ears to his headphones back and gave you a curious look. “Where are you going?”

“Out, clearly.” you blinked.

“Yeah, no shit, but where?”

You looked to the side, then back at him. “Does it matter?”

“Uh, yeah,” Miles huffed a humorless chuckle. “Mom ain’t here, so that means I’m responsible for you. And even when she is here I’m still responsible for you. Shit, soon as you were born I was responsi—“

“A boy,” you quickly clarified with a hand out, hoping to avoid one of his soap-box rants. “I’m going out with a boy. Cool?”

“Cool, cool.” His lips puckered when he nodded to himself, screwdriver tapping against the little mechanical trinket he’d previously been working on.

Here we fucking go.

“What’s his name? He got siblings and if so, how many? Where he work at? Does he even have a job? Cause if he don’t he a bum. What car he drive or are y’all takin’ the train?”

You stared at him, bewilderment painted on your expression in the form of a scowl.

“Who are you, the CIA?”

“Doesn’t answer my questions.” He disregarded your own with a derisive shrug.

“Jalen. His name is Jalen. What you gon’ ask for next? His mother’s maiden name?” you joked. “Or what, his social security number?”

Miles glanced to the side, pretending as if he were actually considering it.

“Honestly, that would make things a whole lot easier.”

“Dude,” You rubbed your forehead, hand thrown to the air in exasperation. “How would I know half of those things?”

“Wha—You’on see where we live at?” Voice upped an octave in astonishment, Miles gestured towards the window behind him with his thumb. “There’s some crazy mfs out there, trust me I know—“

Your head dropped back when you groaned. “Oh brother—“

“What you should be asking is why don’t you know those things.”

“Look I’m not about to do this with you. You act like I don’t know that you weren’t at Uncle Aaron’s last night. But that’s what you told Mom, ain’t it?” You folded your arms and tilted your head. You looked far too complacent for him to call your bluff.

“Yeah,” You nodded at his silence with a smug smirk. “You think I don’t know about you and Aliyah by now? Especially when last week you were all ‘Mami, she’s my partner for a project, can she come over?’” you mimicked him in an insultingly goofy voice that wasn’t anywhere near close to his.

“Since when do you do ‘partnered projects’?” Your eyes narrowed.

His mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water told you everything you needed to know but you played on; all in a day’s work of sibling banter.

“Huh? What was that?” you cupped a hand to your ear, lashes fluttering when you looked to the side.

You: 1

Miles: 0

He cleared his throat, looking away once his face started to get hot.

“Aight, whatever bro. But share your location with me. Seriously, I’m not playing.”

“Yeah yeah,” You rolled your eyes, opening up your phone and clicking his contact.

“And if ole’ boy try anything, tell him I keep a pole.”

It was a joke. Kinda, but not really at the same time. That wasn’t the exact weapon he used, but it was close enough.

You scoffed. “Stop cappin’, you’ve never even shot a gun before.”

Miles didn’t say anything, but the look on his face suddenly turned dead serious. And as the both of you stared at each other in an eerie silence, you made a wise decision to not take the subject any further.

“Whatever,” You shook your head, motioning to your outfit. “Do I at least look nice, though? Be honest.”

Miles looked you up and down, his top lip arching when he did a so-so motion with his head. He knew you were genuinely asking, but what kind of brother would he be if he didn’t mess with you a little bit?

“Ehh, yeah.“ he shrugged, looking unimpressed on purpose. “Fit coulda been harder though. Shoulda asked me for help, I woulda got you right.”

“Oh good-fucking-bye.”

“Dude, I’m kidding!” he called out with a laugh as you stormed off.

[obsidianpen]

These questions about Lightning make me wonder what direction you plan to take it. I know you don't use the same things in every story, which makes them so delightfully unique. This is just my wishful thinking for you to explore the prophecy more. I know that in the books the power that defeats V is love, but for some reason I feel like there's something more to it than that. Harry is the chosen one, and that could mean so many things. Jamie, have mercy on me and please tell me something about this new story of ours 🥺🥺

omggg what me ramble about my the plot of a fic im not writing? Please

okay so

SPOILERS in case I ever do get around to writing Lightning

Here’s what I know so far about how the beginning of the fic is going to go (and I may, ofc, change my min entirely):

Harry, a young auror in training, goes back by accident, due to a dark ritual involving the ring, an illegal time turner and human sacrifice that he Ron and Hermione attempt to bust on their own, ignoring ministry protocol. Things go very awry, Harry ends up in 1950 ish, alone. Oh and he has a ton of gold, thanks to an interaction Draco that happens earlier that day - how lucky

Harry carries a terrible blood curse with him, and knows immediately that this shit is going to kill him and soon if he doesn’t seek medical help. But he also knows that time traveling like he did, no matter the circumstances, will send probably him to Azkaban, if not off as a test subject to the DoM. He knows they’ll look into his memories if he comes off as suspicious at st mungos, because it’s a real dark curse, and he’s a horrible actor and he’s awful at Occlumency and he knows it, so

harry concocts a ridiculous plot that allows him to pull out alllllll of his memories but with a plan in place to get them back after his curse is lifted, and sets things up so he wakes up right outside st mungos, where he knows they’ll take care of him

he is well taken care of, the poor lamb, to be attacked on Christmas Eve!!! and spends a few days there, maybe makes some hospital friends who have also had their memories fucked with

they assume he was the victim of some awful mugging, and that the perpetrator wiped his memories after and did such a terrible job and that’s why Harry can’t even remember his own name (they deduce his first name is ‘Harry’ only because he wrote it on the inner tag on his robe beforehand; a healer tells him that next time he writes his names on his personal belongings, he ought to put his last name, too)

but he still has his wand - how lucky! So they tell him he should go to ollivanders, as it looks like one of his (man remembers every wand he ever sold, ten galleons says he’ll remember you)

so Harry does, and the moment he asks, ollivander’s face goes slack - he’s clearly been confounded. He goes into a back room, hands Harry a moleskin bag, and bows him out of his shop without another word.

Harry goes back to the room he’s renting, and it’s NYE btw, and he opens the bag to find a shit ton of galleons and two vials, both glowing silver, one so bright it’s almost blinding. There is a handwritten note on each one. ‘Before you died’ and ‘after you died’

another note reads something along the lines of, ‘hi Harry, these are all your memories. I’m not even sure if you should take them all back or not; it might be better if you didn’t. It’s not often you get a chance to start over. But I know you - ha - so you’ll definitely end up taking them back. Maybe think about it first. It’s not great. I think I’d take the do over. really, think about it. Oh, and while you’re considering it - avoid Knockturn alley.’

harry does indeed find this all ominous, and assumes he must have been a horrible horrible person. He probably stole all this gold! What if he killed people for it! So he takes his sad amnesiac self down to the Leaky and starts to day drink heavily as the new year approaches

he is friendly with the young bus boy named Tom, who swears he’ll be running that pub someday.

as if gets busier later in the day, quite crowded, Harry gets more depressed. At one point, half the bar seems to cheer when a new person arrives. harry looks. He’s tall. He’s very handsome. He immediately makes Harry’s mind go on high alert and he’s instantly anxious and doesn’t know why.

tom the busboy tells him that if he keeps staring like that, the bloke is going to notice. Sure enough, he does. Harry looks away and is having a crisis (why am I staring at that handsome man? Why do I keep calling him handsome? Am I gay, and I forgot? Wtf is wrong with me)

so he goes to leave, but Tom the bus boy got busy, so he shouts to get his attention so he can say goodbye to his bestie. “Tom!”

”…Yes?”

wrong Tom. Harry is suddenly eye to eye with the very tall very handsome very scary man. He’s staring down at him, looking confused. “Have we met…?”

harrys body acts without his consent. He moves in ways he did not know he could move - in a flash he has his wand out, pointed at this man’s temple, has him backed up against a wall, his elbow across his throat, pressing on his windpipe.

about a dozen people around them are ready to kill Harry at once, but mystery tall man calls them off with the barest gesture. Harrys heart is pounding and he is having all these horrible confusing thoughts, like ‘should tear his head off, lock him up, stop him now, ruin him’

And he’s looking right into his eyes while thinking all these things, so TR is just drinking it all in, unbeknownst to him

Owner of the bar yells at harry. Harry, so very confused and too guilty and panicked to even apologize, just leaves. he goes somewhere far away for a bit… and decided to take the first vial of his memories then

mental crisis ensues

aaaaaaand I actually have a lot more than that semi planned but that’s the exposition 🥲