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tsrookie · 5 years ago

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Alright, so today’s the three-year anniversary of Reputation a.k.a the greatest album of all time, my baby, the light of my life, the album that deserved a Grammy (trying desperately not to think about the scene from Miss Americana😭), the album that introduced us to the most beautiful couple ever, the album that shut Kimye up, and I better stop now, or else I’m not gonna shut up.

So in honour of this momentous occasion (and the fact that I reached 200+ followers! Thank you so much you guys!🥺 Love you all 3000💙), here’s a loooooong post on why Reputation is the Ethan and MC album.

1. ...Ready For It?

No one has to know

Throwback to MC saying the exact same words back in Miami.

In the middle of the night, in my dreams

You should see the things we do, baby, mmm

In the middle of the night, in my dreams

I know I'm gonna be with you

So I take my time

Remember back when MC asked for Ethan to get into bed right away during their first time? Ethan told them that he had dreamt about the moment for months, so he wasn’t going to rush it.

2. End Game

Big reputation, big reputation

Ooh you and me would be a big conversation

These two dating would be the talk of the hospital, and they know it.

Even when we'd argue, we don't do it for long

And you understand the good and bad, end up in the song

For all your beautiful traits, and the way you do it with ease

For all my flaws, paranoia, and insecurities

Think these lines are pretty self-explanatory😌

I hit you like bang

We tried to forget it, but we just couldn't

*gets war flashbacks of the ‘reset’ phase*😭 They tried to make it work, but we all know how Ch 8 of book 2 went😌

I swear I don't love the drama, it loves me

Perfect for our chaotic MC😌

3. Don’t Blame Me

Do I... really have to explain this one?

For you, I would cross the line

I would waste my time

I would lose my mind

They say she's gone too far this time

Do we need a recap of our rule-breaking MC?

And baby, for you, I would fall from grace

Just to touch your face

If you walk away

I'd beg you on my knees to stay

He was willing to risk his (mostly) rule-abiding reputation for being with MC. And there’s no way he wouldn’t beg for MC not to leave him if he ever screwed up🤷‍♀️

4. Delicate

This ain't for the best

My reputation's never been worse, so

You must like me for me

Ethan stood by MC’s side throughout the Ethics hearing, when her reputation was completely smeared, and people only saw her as a patient murderer. He didn’t know about the sabotages, but he would’ve definitely supported her if he had known.

We can't make

Any promises now, can we, babe?

Commitment-phobia🙃

Sometimes I wonder when you sleep

Are you ever dreaming of me?

Sometimes when I look into your eyes

I pretend you're mine, all the damn time

They spent so much of time apart, not able to be with each other, so the least they could do was dream of being with each other all the time.

5. So It Goes (an underrated af bop)

What can I say... it’s a sex song, okay? Don’t make me go into the details😂 Just listen to the lyrics, and all will be clear.

6. Gorgeous (Tumblr won’t let me put any more links)

MC’s eternal anthem to Ethan.

Whisky on ice, Sunset and Vine

You've ruined my life, by not being mine

We all know Ethan loves Whiskey, and the second line? C’mon!

You're so gorgeous

I can't say anything to your face

'Cause look at your face

And I'm so furious

At you for making me feel this way

But, what can I say?

You're gorgeous

Ethan Ramsey is famous for two reasons. One: his smart brain, I guess😒 Two: HIS LOOKS!!! HE’S GORGEOUS, AND DON’T DENY IT.

And you should think about the consequence

Of you touching my hand in the darkened room (dark room, dark room)

Ah, the olden days of hand holding in the diagnostics office🥺

Ocean blue eyes looking in mine

I feel like I might sink and drown and die

No explanation required.

You make me so happy, it turns back to sad, yeah

There's nothing I hate more than what I can't have

You are so gorgeous it makes me so mad

The wonderful will-they-won’t-they saga. The frustrating hot-and-cold behaviour. The ‘We can’t’, ‘It’s unethical’ and ‘It’s complicated’. MC deserves an award for her patience😓

7. King Of My Heart

I'm perfectly fine, I live on my own

I made up on my mind, I'm better off bein' alone

Ethan ‘I don’t believe in soulmates and nobody’s waiting at home’ Ramsey.

And all at once, you are the one I have been waiting for

King of my heart, body and soul, ooh whoa

And all at once, you are all I want, I'll never let you go

King of my heart, body and soul, ooh whoa

This could be from both Ethan and MC’s perspectives. The love they share isn’t something that you get easily. It’s something that MC has waited for her whole life, and something Ethan never knew he needed, but now can’t live without🥺

Late in the night, the city's asleep

Your love is a secret I'm hoping, dreaming, dying to keep

Change my priorities

The taste of your lips is my idea of luxury

This was definitely Ethan throughout book 2, after he finally gave in. He let go of his previous rules and regulations, especially during the time of the attack. He was clearly affected, and once MC was alright, his main priority was her, and her alone.

Is the end of all the endings?

My broken bones are mending

With all these nights we're spending

Ethan’s been burnt a lot in the past. But all those wounds are now healing thanks to MC.

Up on the roof with a school girl crush

Drinking beer out of plastic cups

They act like lovesick teenagers around each other, like, that’s literally their description if you choose to kiss Ethan for the first time in Chapter 14 of book 2!😅

Say you fancy me, not fancy stuff

Baby, all at once, this is enough

We all know about his initial fear of his mother reaching out to him for the sake of his money. To him, MC not talking advantage of him is a pretty big deal, even though it’s never mentioned. You just know, you know?🥺

8. Dancing With Our Hands Tied

My, my love had been frozen

Deep blue, but you painted me golden

Again, Ethan doesn’t have the best experience with love. But MC changed that.

I'm a mess, but I'm the mess that you wanted

This could go both ways, cause they’re both piping hot messes😬 (but love each other anyway🥺)

The rest of this song could have made so much more sense for them if we had gotten some sort of a secret relationship storyline. But oh well, I’m definitely not complaining about the gala😌 (and definitely not believing any of the supposed cancelled storylines)

9. Dress

Our secret moments

In a crowded room

They got no idea

About me and you

I mean... pretty obvious😌

Even in my worst times, you could see the best of me

And I woke up just in time

Now I wake up by your side

My one and only, my lifeline

This is practically Ethan’s train of thought, and you can’t convince me otherwise.

As for the rest of the steamier lyrics... I’ll um... let you guys listen to it yourselves😁

10. Call It What You Want

I wrote an entire fic inspired by this song, so excuse me for the shameless self-promo, but go give it a read?🥺👉👈(totally fine if you don’t! I’ve probably made so many posts about this song that y’all know the meaning anyway😅)

11. New Years Day

Don't read the last page

But I stay when you're lost and I'm scared and you're turning away

I want your midnights

But I'll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year's Day

MC has always stayed by Ethan’s side, even when he’s pushed her away. These lines perfectly explain how she wants his worst times, and his best, the midnights they spend staying up together, and the moments where it’s just the two of them, when everyone else has left, like the aftermath of a New Years party (still mad at the fact that we didn’t get to see the gang celebrate New Year together😭)

I'll be there if you're the toast of the town babe

Or if you strike out and you're crawling home

The above explanation for these lines as well.

Please don't ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywhere

Becoming strangers to each other would be their worst nightmares. Knowing that the other was out there in the world somewhere, but not being in their lives would kill them.

You and me forevermore

These two are each other’s soulmate, they know it, even if they haven’t said it yet. Forever wouldn’t be enough for them to shower each other with they love they hold for each other. But it’s a good start.

——————————

If you guys made it this far, then I honestly love you more than words can ever express🥺💙 Thanks for putting up with my Swiftie-Directioner-Ethan stan ass, cause I dunno if I’d ever be able to handle someone like myself. And if you read all the above stuff, then I hope you wanna know why this album means so much to me.

Reputation is perceived as a dark album, when in reality it’s truly about finding love amongst all the noise. This album, and Taylor and Joe’s story, taught me what true love actually is, and Ethan and MC cemented that. This album and these two couples (quite literally) saved my life.

The most beautiful part about both these relationships is that even though they never showed it openly, for the sake of their relationships, both Ethan(in the story) and Joe stood by the side of the one’s they loved, despite half of the people who they knew hating on them, or betraying them. And I think that’s what’s truly important. Forming a true relationship like that, be it platonic or romantic, is long lasting, and I hope everyone finds those kind of people to fill their hearts with. Sending much love, and sorry for being a huge sap😅💙

Tagging a couple of my Swiftie homies: @swiftlydarcy @nikki-2406 @dxnicaramsey @kaavyaethanramsey @caseyvalentineramsey @drariellevalentine @justanotherrookie

#open heart #open heart second year #dr ethan ramsey x mc #ethan jonah ramsey #ethan ramsey x mc #ethan x mc #mercy goes nuts #happy three years of Reputation🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤#ethan ramsey

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immortalcoelacanth · 5 years ago

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HLVRAI Oneshot: Blankets and Burritos

I am weak, I crave gay fluff and family fluff...

Word count: 3428

Summary: Sometimes, Benrey has nightmares. It's a good thing Joshua has a plan to help out!

Gordon had long since accepted that Benrey was a naturally disruptive being. Between how absolutely chaotic he could be at times to his naturally blunt and occasionally abrasive attitude, the second he had moved in Gordon knew that his home would never be peaceful again.

Granted, he had been surprised when Benrey began showing restraint when interacting with people, especially Joshua as the last thing he wanted was to upset the young boy. His jokes also lacked the more intimidating edge they held while they were in Black Mesa. Overall, his more destructive qualities had been toned down and he seemed to be far more at peace than the last time Gordon had seen the ex-guard.

It was… nice, and while he had been hesitant at first to welcome Benrey into his home, he did not find himself regretting that decision.

This did not mean that things were perfectly fine, of course.

Benrey was… not the best at acting human, and it showed. There had already been several instances of Gordon getting up for a midnight snack and seeing at least two glowing eyes staring down at him from the ceiling.

Absolutely horrifying.

Plus, he had been forced to give Benrey a crash course on how humans acted and that no, he could not try and swallow the milk carton whole and please don’t walk up the side of a building and lean into a window to ask someone to play Smash Bros with you.

Y’know, pretty simple things. Things that honestly would have made Gordon’s life a living hell if it was not for how accepting and understanding his neighbors were.

Marguerite, a lovely, partially deaf old lady, had been especially happy to learn that Benrey had moved in with him, although Gordon was pretty sure that this was simply because she thought they were dating. She had been a huge source of help after his divorce, especially during some rather rough days.

She had constantly pushed him to find something, or someone, that he could be happy with. Whether that was a hobby or a partner.

He would never forget how scandalized he had felt when she first visited and saw Benrey. How she had looked the ex-guard up and down before turning to Gordon and winking at him. Her words forever burned into his mind.

“This one will keep you busy, hands and mind.”

It had been one of the few times he had heard Benrey genuinely laugh, too. A loud, somewhat wheezing noise that made him curl up in a ball as he tried to control his laughter. It sounded nice and was something he wanted to hear more often.

And then... there were the nightmares.

Moments where Benny's joy was smothered by something else, something he never expressed a desire to discuss. Gordon honestly had no clue what their source might be, whether caused some traumatic moment in Benrey’s past, or even the final fight between them, but whatever it was it could get bad.

Fortunately, these instances of nightmares were fairly quiet with Joshua never having woken up during them. Less fortunately, Gordon tended to be the one being startled awake since the ex-guard often slipped into his bed after he went to sleep, not that he cared all that much. In the beginning it had been a bit annoying to wake up and find Benrey downright spooning him, getting all into his personal space, and it had been a source of combat for several days until he and Benrey managed to sort things out.

… Not that there was much of a conversation or anything like that. It was more so him listening to Benrey quietly insisting that he “needed someone”, and the gamer body pillow he purchased after that conversation had not helped in this regard.

He loathed to think about it now, the wide eyes and flirtatious pose. Every so often it would move locations, going from being stuffed away in a closet to ominously being attached to the back of a door, and he was fairly certain Benrey was the one responsible for such a thing.

Especially since Joshua claimed to have never seen it before, and he knew for a fact that the ex-guard was diligent in preventing Joshua from being exposed to more… mature jokes.

Anyways, with Benrey continuing to seek out Gordon as a cuddle buddy and Gordon accepting his fate, and enjoying it, a solution to the nightmare problem still needed to be found. Aside from the growling, hissing, thrashing, and mutterings in some other language, Gordon had also nearly been crushed at one point after Benrey had, without warning, grown larger at some point during the night.

He was thankful that the bed had not broken due to the sudden increase in weight.

Currently, the physicist was seated in the living room, trying to put together some sort of solution that might help Benrey. Notepad in hand as he absent-mindedly chewed at the end of his pencil, thankfully lacking an eraser, he wrote down all the methods he had tried so far and what he might try next.

Lists had always helped him keep his thoughts organized, and this was especially helpful given the mild chaos going on beside him.

Otherwise known as Joshua and Benrey playing a racing game.

Naturally, Joshua was currently speeding ahead of the ex-guard, throwing the occasional item back in an attempt to increase the distance between them. Unfortunately, with some quick maneuvers and calculated tricks, Benrey was able to dodge the attacks.

“vroom, vroom, better watch out.”

“Nooooo!”

“beep, beep!”

“NOOOOOOOOOO!”

“you... you gotta go fast little dude, it’s the only way.”

“I am!”

“gotta go faster.”

“Faster?”

“faster, faster!”

Gordon chuckled to himself as he listened to the pair break out in song, reciting the lyrics to some cartoon that they both watched. Saturday mornings were Benrey and Joshua’s designated bonding time as Benrey “educated josh bro on some pro gamer cartoons.”

As the race reached its conclusion, Joshua winning overall, the young boy carefully placed his controller down and then scrambled over to his father. He flung himself onto the sofa and leaned against Gordon’s side. Wide, eager eyes took in the notes.

“Is this some work stuff?” Joshua asked, his eyes lighting up upon seeing the mention of blankets and pillows. “Are you guys gonna have a sleepover?! I can show you how to make an awesome pillow fort!”

“naaaaah,” Benrey casually slid into the conversation, both literally and figuratively. He perched on the armrest of the sofa, a smug grin on his face as he poked at the notepad. “he-he’s just writing ‘bout his crush.”

“Ooooh, so he’s writing about you?”

“ya.”

Gordon snorted and lightly thwacked one of Benrey’s fingers with the pencil, causing the ex-guard to let out a yelp before nursing the wounded digit. The exaggerated pout on his face made the physicist chuckle.

“C’mon, don’t tell me that hurt you-”

“You gotta kiss it better, dad!” Joshua interrupted, placing his hands on Gordon’s leg and pushing himself up into his father’s face, eyes wide and pleading. “Like you did when I hurt my arm! Kisses make everything better!”

“yeah, feeman you-you gotta give me a biiiiiig old smoocher.” The smug grin had returned to Benrey’s face, and it grew wider at the exasperated look Gordon sent towards him. “it’s... it’s a joshie law, feetman, you gotta.”

After rolling his eyes, Gordon ultimately relented. He leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss against Benrey’s wounded finger. Despite how smug he had been about the entire situation, there was no denying the heat that took over his face.

Was Benrey flustered? Yes, but he would never admit to it!

“u-uh…. nice smooch there, feetman. g-gotta give it a perfect score.”

Joshua giggled at the look on Benrey’s face, from the happy smile to the warm glow in his eyes, it was good to see the ex-guard so happy. When Benrey was happy, his dad was happy, and that made him happy! It was perfect!

However, speaking of his dad…

“So, what’s those notes for, then?” He asked, poking at the notes once again. “Benrey’s definitely wrong-”

“owie, ouch, your-your words hurt my bones, little joshie dude.”

The young boy stuck his tongue out at Benrey before he focused on his father and continued speaking. “Is it for work stuff? Or something else?”

It was impossible to miss the look the two adults exchanged upon hearing Joshua’s question, and it made him suspicious. Was this some adult thing he was not supposed to know? Oh, like that thing his classmate Danielle had mentioned-

“Erm, Benrey has been having some trouble sleeping at night and I’m trying to figure out how to help him.” Gordon explained, snapping Joshua out of his thoughts. “These are just some of the ideas I had that might help him relax.”

Joshua blinked, understanding what his father was saying but also wanting confirmation from Benrey. “So, you have nightmares and stuff?”

“uh... yeah.” The ex-guard shrugged as his hands twitched and knit themselves together, an expression of the general anxiety he felt towards the situation. Talking about himself, something he was always uncomfortable with despite the problems it caused. “like... i got some rank e dreams, little bro. i... i keep getting t-posed on and… stuff.”

“Oh!” Joshua lightly clapped his hands together, an idea immediately coming to mind on what he could do to help. “Stay right here, I’ll be back!”

As the young boy rushed to his room, Gordon and Benrey exchanged a confused look.

“you... you, uh, know what joshie’s doing?”

“Nope, no idea.” Gordon shrugged before sending a smile Benrey’s way. “It’s nice to see him helping us out with this.”

Benrey looked down towards the ground, casting more of his face and the associated blush in shadows. “yeah. h-he’s a good kiddo, feetman.”

“Damn right he is.”

Not long after this short conversation reached its conclusion, the sound of approaching footsteps could be heard and Joshua rushed back into the room with something rather large and bulky held in his arms, the ends of it dragging across the ground.

It was his blanket, his weighted blanket to be specific.

From a young age, Joshua had suffered through many bouts of nightmares and periods where he struggled to feel comfortable when going to sleep. This ultimately culminated in both his parents, who had been separated at this point, agreeing to take him to a sleep therapist and figure out what they could do to help. One of the methods they had been recommended to try was getting Joshua to use a weighted blanket to help him feel more secure and relaxed.

While not solving all of his problems, he still occasionally visited the same therapist when dealing with a particularly bad bout of nightmares, the blanket, and the other coping methods he had been taught, had certainly helped.

But the blanket continued to remain his primary source of comfort and seeing Joshua rush over to Benrey and hold the blanket out for the ex-guard to take made Gordon’s heart feel like mush.

It was such a wholesome sight, and even if Benrey did not know the details behind why Joshua had this blanket, he was honored to see that Joshua wanted to use something of his to try and help.

“awwww, little dude, you didn’t have to get this for me.” Benrey said, voice strangely soft and quiet. “you-you really didn’t need to.”

Joshua swiftly shook his head and once again thrust the blanket towards him. “This helped me a bunch, and now I want it to help you! Try it!”

After sending an uncertain glance Gordon’s way, and being met with a reassuring thumbs up, he reached out and carefully took the blanket. He studied it for a moment, unaware of Joshua rocking back and forth in front of him and rubbed the material between his fingers.

It felt… nice. Soft, but not too soft.

The blanket was quickly wrapped around Benrey, and the ex-guard closed his eyes for a moment as he took in the sensation. It felt… comfortable. The added pressure of the blanket as it was draped across his shoulders did help him feel a bit more relaxed, reminding him of that.

That which he would never speak of. Old memories and forgotten places, a history that he never wanted to come to light, a name before Benrey.

He quite liked the name Benrey, anyways.

“Oh, oh dad!” Joshua suddenly shouted as he turned to look at his father, eyes shining with excitement. “How about you make a Benrrito!”

“... a wha?”

“Y’know!” Joshua spun to face Benrey as he made a rolling motion with his hands. “Burritoing! Dad does it to me a bunch!”

Upon seeing the somewhat panicked look on Benrey’s face, Gordon quickly stepped in. He stood up, the action helping to calm the other two down, and gestured towards the floor.

“If you wanna try it, we’re gonna need space.”

“you... you coming on to me, feetman?”

“NO, I AM NOT!”

Joshua giggled at the banter, not quite getting it but happy to see that his father had managed to get Benrey to relax a bit. He watched as the blanket was spread on the ground, patted out so there were no wrinkles before Benrey laid down on top of it.

… Actually, Benrey looked a bit smaller than he normally did! Joshua knew most people would find such a thing strange, but he had long since gotten used to the occasional shape shifting that the ex-guard tended to do.

Be it helping him reach food that was too high on the shelves or giving him piggyback rides, Joshua instinctively associated Benrey’s shape shifting with fun, unlike his father.

Perhaps it was quite fortunate that Gordon was unaware of the shenanigans that these two sometimes got into.

Regardless, as soon as Benrey was set up and ready to go, Gordon got to work. He flipped the edge of the blanket, so it was covering Benrey, and slowly started to roll the other man up. As he was turned over and over, the ex-guard’s smile began to grow larger and larger.

Oh yes, he could just feel the potential chaotic energy.

Once the burritoing process was complete, Gordon stepped back to admire his handiwork. At this point, only Benrey’s head and feet were sticking out of the burrito, and the constant glowing of his eyes seemed a bit duller than usual. A stream of pink to red sweet voice floated into the air.

Joshua giggled and immediately started playing with the bubbles while Gordon lifted a brow and crossed his arms. “What’s that mean?”

“bbbbbbbb,” The string of noises made Gordon smile as he patiently waited for Benrey’s response.

“pink’n red means… i’m gonna bed.” Benrey yawned. Okay, chaotic energy replaced by exhaustion, which was… strange to say the least.

And clearly Gordon agreed with that thought as his brow lifted higher in surprise. “Really? A burrito did you in?”

“ya.” Benrey bluntly replied as he wiggled around a bit, smushing his face into the blanket. “s’nice, cozy… me likey.”

“Operation Benrrito is a success!” Joshua cheered, high-fiving his father in victory. He then let out a sudden gasp and started bouncing in excitement.

“Dad, this means we gotta help him get a blanket! Can we go shopping tomorrow? Please? Pretty please? I can show Benrey all the super cool patterns they have, and the special stuffed animals too!”

Gordon spared a glance at the absolutely blissed out Benrey, who was currently radiating the energies of a content cat going for a nap, before smiling at his son and nodding. “Looks like we’re going to need to.”

“Yay!” Joshua exclaimed and crouched down in front of the ex-guard. “There’s a whole buncha space patterns and stuff like that one! There’s also ones that’re swirls of colours and they look super cool!”

“bbbbbbbbbb.” Benrey grinned, sharp teeth glinting in the light. “Alright then, little dude. let’s... let’s goooooooooo.”

And with that, Benrey slowly started inching towards the door as Gordon and Joshua watched on. The young boy took a step forward, thoroughly intending to join him before his dad placed a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back.

“No way we’re going out now.” He frowned. “It’s busy, and-”

“the karens are out?” Benrey cheekily added.

“... Yeah, the last thing I want to deal with.” Gordon sighed, placing his face in his hands as he recalled the various interesting encounters he had at that specific mall. It was located in the more affluent section of the neighborhood, and the customers tended to reflect that.

Ugh, with his luck he would probably end up running into her there-

“Joshie, I know you’re excited, so we’ll go tomorrow as soon as the store opens.” He exhaled as he lifted his face out of his hands and opened his eyes. To his surprise, Joshua did not seem disappointed in the slightest despite how enthusiastic he had been earlier.

Granted, it definitely helped that Joshua had been the one to suggest going shopping tomorrow. It was not unusual for his father to forget minor details after experiencing some stress and recalling those lovely interactions has certainly been stressful.

But the young boy felt there was no point in mentioning it, so he didn’t.

“It’s okay, dad!” Joshua chirped. “But you should probably stop Benrey from escaping.”

“Wha?!” Gordon whirled around and noticed that Benrey had continued to inch towards the door and was now pressed up against it. Probably trying to clip through it since his arms were stuck at his sides.

The physicist sighed once more, this time in annoyance, before striding over to the door and looking down at Benrey. “What’re you doing?”

“uhhhhhhhh.... y-yo mama.”

“I...there’s no words to describe how disappointed I feel, and you can’t go out like that anyways.”

“i’mma worm off the string, man. look at me gooooooo.”

“You’re not a worm! You’re a burrito!” Joshua chimed in, leaning around his father and smiling at Benrey.

“noooooo, m-my evil plot… has been foiled.” Benrey dramatically, and somewhat lazily, wailed. He started rolling over to emphasize his apparent defeat. “i’m worming, woooooorming.”

At this point, Joshua had broken down into a fit of laughter and even Gordon had a small smile on his face. Deciding to play along with Benrey’s shenanigans, the physicist made his move.

Now, it goes without saying that Gordon was not a weak man. Even without the added benefits of the HEV suit, he was no stranger to some forms of exercise.

Primarily lifting Joshua up into the air as his son loved to feel like he was flying.

In other words, without warning Gordon crouched down and scooped Benrey, in all his burrito’d glory, up. Rather than being slung over his shoulder, as the ex-guard was still heavier than Joshua and the last thing Gordon wanted was to potentially hurt his shoulder or back, he opted for an easier carry.

Bridal style.

Of course, he had not completely thought his plan through, so when he suddenly found Benrey’s face very close to his, his response was immediately and instinctive.

He blushed, badly.

Upon seeing this blush, and realizing his sudden proximity to Gordon’s face, Benrey smirked and made a move of his own.

By leaning forward and quickly kissing the tip of Gordon’s nose.

Needless to say, at this point both men were blushing.

Joshua could be heard happily clapping his hands together in the background, and it was this noise that snapped Gordon out of his stunned state. He, somewhat awkwardly, shuffled over to the sofa and plopped Benrey down on it. The, still blushing, ex-guard did nothing except try to sink into the blanket burrito further.

It was obvious he had no intention of being unburrito’d, for now.

Gordon sighed and looked over at Joshua. “You okay with using your other blanket tonight?”

“The cowboy one?”

“Yeah.”

“Mhm!” The young boy quickly nodded. “Can you wash it first, please? I don’t want it to be smelly and gross.”

“You got it.” Gordon replied with a thumbs up. As he left to go and fix up Joshua’s other blanket, Joshua could be seen joining Benrey on the sofa and huddling beside him, quietly discussing the different kinds of blankets he had seen and how comfy some of them were. It was quite an adorable sight, and one that held potential.

The potential for Gordon to make two burritos today, that is.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It was actually kind of a struggle to finish this oneshot off, it kept getting longer and longer and my muse keeps spitting more ideas at me XD

Also, 10 bonus points to whoever gets the cartoon reference I added in!

I hope you all enjoyed reading!

- ImmortalCoelacanth

#my story #fanfiction #hlvrai #hlvrai gordon #hlvrai benrey #hlvrai joshua #fluff #family fluff #blanket burritos #weighted blankets are good #projecting my childhood on joshua? it's more likely than you think!#benrey just wants to cuddle gordon without his nightmares ruining everything

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jujutsu-headcanons · 5 years ago

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Yes to Yuji wrecking Mahito! Just so much yes my boy needs to avenge those wrongfully killed!

See I wanted Geto to be on my shit list (as I'm not normally a bad guy lover) but I swear he wore me down reading the manga. Plus he's just so pretty he makes my brain all static noises 😳 Not to mention that backstory between him and Gojo like YES give me all the drama I need buried drama 🤩

Totally agree on the Mai thing. See I wanted to hate Todo too bc of well him beating on Megumi but the moment him and Yuji were just like "Big Dumb Meat Heads" together I threw that out the window! Those two together are *chefs kiss* Absolutely stupendous I never get tired of them 👌👌👌

Mai on the other hand is just crawling more and more under my skin. Like why you gotta be like that gurl? You wanna go in the crusty corner with Mahito? Cuz you gotta crusty attitude that needs fixing like yesterday 😐

Literary brain tells me it wants more drama/character growth between Megumi and Toji. But my useless overly big heart wants to punch Toji and protect Megumi at all costs bc he just showed up on the screen like the kool aid man and burst right into my heart and I shan't forgive Megumi for that but now I will die for him so ¯\_( ツ)_/¯

But I'm not the only one who lowkey fantasizes about self inserty type day dreams??? Like every day all day I got my thoughts flowing into 500 different lil oneshots I'm too chicken to post anywhere bc I havent written anything in a while and I feel I'm rusty. But your idea! YOUR IDEA WOO BOI- I'm not even a Gojo fanatic (like I adore him but my heart dick thudded elsewhere RIP) but that scene you described of straddling him just to rip his blindfold off in the heat of an arguement that's clearly deadly to either party- Just to see him on the brink of tears fighting back every emotion to slate his composure to cocky/uncaring. Only to have it obviously failing, and the metaphorical reality around you both crumbling along with Gojo's emotional state- Oh God I would read that crap outta something like that. It fills me with the angst and I thrive on it daily *heavy breathing* You should think about posting more of your original content too! Self inserty or not bc that sounds down right brilliant on so many levels

💛anon

Bro I can't help but feel had for Gojo. That shit must have hurted. Like he looked so calm and collected when it all happened but was he really? His best friend potential lover went feral and murdered an entire village AND his family then he tried to kill his first years once and now AGAIN what is happening. Did you see the look on Gojo's face when Yaga told him he went rogue? That was a face of hurt and betrayal he couldn't even begin to understand at the young age of... What was it, 17? 18? He was practically a little itty bitty baby compared to now. I haven't read the prequel yet don't laugh at me but I've heard it hurts so much worse having to face Getou back then AND now. Stupid brain worms, stop fucking around.

I wanted to hate Todo too hut before he even turned good I couldn't. I have a thing for big buff boys who have zero brains and too much brawns I'm looking at you Metal Bat, Captain Ōbi I just wanna adopt/marry them because in all reality they're trying their best. I'm really glad Todo exists and has his big brother delusion because honestly I think that's something Yuji needs, especially in the current arc. Yuji needs as much support as he can get.

PFFFT CRUST CORNER I cannot with you omg they do need to sit on the time out chair for s bit and think about what they've done lmaooo

DID YOU CALL TOJI ZENIN- FUSHIGURO THE FUCKING KOOL AID MAN AHAHAHHHSH oh my god i hate this so fucking much or were you calling Megumi the koolaid man bc really each one is absurd n e wayz I dunno bro I rlly can't wait until Megs wakes up post Shibuya arc and actually has time to process what the fuck happened to him back then. I really want to know if he can connect the dots by himself and realize holy shit that was the source of my daddy issues right there in the flesh and how he reacts to him being a curse and all that. There's so many ways that can go too it's scary to think about.

Low key unrelated but I have a theory that Gojo can see everything from his little cube prison and knows what's going on. Its probably because of the six eyes, or because he's just fucking Gojo, or even because Geto seems kinda sadistic and would do something like that. But I can imagine him watching Megs and Toji fight and it absolutely destroying him. For starters, Gojo killed him .... Right? Wtf is he doing back? What? Second don't commit suicide in front of your kid oh my god Toji what (I'm probably just salty because of a past experience, but also, calm down Toji oh my god) and third I can see it hurting Gojo because in a way it feels like he's been trying to protect Megumi. Its obvious Gojo has this attachment to Megumi, and maybe it's because they've known each other so long, but I don't think Gojo is prepared to deal with the aftermath. Does he have to tell him, if Megs doesn't put the pieces together? Will he have to knock some sense into him to actually tell him? Because he DID try to tell Megs once before and he avoided it like the plague. Its also gotta hurt when you feel like someone's dad and you witness them have a bad interaction with their other dad.

Throw in his daughter being on the brink of death, his other son being emotionally demolished, his second year kids lost in the void and not even his void, his best friend locked him in a box, his other best friend exploded, etc. I think Gojo I pretty distraught even if he doesn't show it

Bro okay my brain is riddled with ideas like this and 90% of them are always angst. Idk where tf they come from half the time but they exist and I hate it. They're always self inserts too.

So I actually read this ask last night, but due to personal reasons I didn't reply to it now, and I actually started experimenting writing out this scenario. I had to stop when I wrote the line "Approximately one year after the first finger was consumed, Itadori Yūji was formally executed. At three minutes to midnight, Sukuna Ryomen was expelled from his body, destroying the vessel along with it. The executioner was none other than the teenager's teacher and mentor Gojo Satoru. When Y/N awoke to this news, they attacked on sight."

Oh god I made myself so sad with that line

And i do really want to post some of my fics, like I did with Nobara Meeting Sukuna For The First Time. However, I only posted that because it was short and simple lmao it was basically just a meme I didn't even run it though grammarly like I do with the headcanons.

I like sticking to the headcanons as of right now because I feel like grammar didn't exist when I make those. I can spell things wrong and leave off punctuation and word then like I'm a third grader just learning English and no one will laugh lmao. Fanfics kinda stress me out because i want them to be perfect. I also have a hard time with fight scenes and transitioning and it's s mess.

I REALLY want to write out my Guardian Angel! Junpei AU because I think it's so cute. Just the idea that this boy is assigned to fight against fate and the higher ups and keep Yuji alive despite him being an idiot and a target is cute to me. Like I just canon him being the plantonic equivalent of in love with this boy and he feels like he rlly owes it to Yuji for trying to save him it's the LEAST he can do. Plus I need the mental imagine if Junpei annoying reader-chan into finding Yuji because "they play a pivotal role in Yuji's future" just for the "pivotal role" to literally be playing therapist and just being there for him and being a medium between Junpei and Yuji because guardian angels aren't allowed to reveal themselves to the person they're guarding but also/// he might risk his wings being stripped just to talk to Yuji one more time////

Okay I'm going to stop now

But yea, maybe if I have time and create little mini works like Nobara Meeting Sukuna For the First Time I'll def post them! I'll work on casually making them longer and soon I'll be confident to posts longer ones. But until then I hope just the headcanons at alright ;-;

#.ask #💛 anon #long post

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mhalachai · 6 years ago

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A decade that was - looking back at 10 years

I have just enough introspection left in me to pull this off - let's look at what fanfic disasters I've put out over the last ten years, shall we?

2010 & 2011

I was between fandoms at the time, but I had a Criminal Minds kick for a while.

Immutability: Once part of the team, always part of the team. That's what Spencer told himself as he walked up the stairs.

Branching Out (Criminal Minds/Stargate): Jennifer Jareau's first day as liaison for the Department of Defense really wasn't what she expected.

In Darkness (Criminal Minds/Harry Potter): To the world around him, Aaron Hotchner is a (somewhat) normal FBI agent, with a somewhat normal son and a moderately normal life. He's never told his team who he was... before. When he was known as Aaron Black.

These Small Bones (Doctor Who/Harry Potter): It starts with a girl. With him, it usually does.

2012

I dabble in time travel with this next one, and I still really like how the paradoxes of time hold up.

Marking Time (Doctor Who/White Collar): These are the things Peter Burke knows about Neal Caffrey's beginnings. None of these things are true.

Next up, a little four-part Criminal Minds series, featuring Spencer Reid (genderswapped)

Fragility Optional: Given all that's happened, you'd think no one would expect Spencer Reid to put on high heels and slink out undercover.

But this was also the year that Avengers came out, and my love for Natasha Romanoff sent me down an amazing rabbit hole for the next couple of years, an Avengers/Stargate crossover series in which Natasha Romanoff was John Sheppard’s mother. And that was the least complicated part of it.

A Widow's Tale series (a 10-part series)

The main pieces of this series are Widow Maker, Baba Yaga's Children, and Old Soldiers, the other bits and bobs lead up to it.

I also dabbled in a bit of Teen Wolf this year, starting Child of the Wolf (Avengers/Teen Wolf) and getting the first five chapters out the door in November-December before I got stymied - I would come back to this 7 years later, see below.

Child of the Wolf (MCU/Teen Wolf): Caught between hunters and werewolves, Stiles almost doesn’t have time to wonder much about the hot new redheaded Deputy Sheriff or the bow-wielding sarcastic gym teacher. Almost.

2013

Before Agent Carter came out, I wrote a Peggy Carter biopic, going off the riff of, what if Peggy had touched the Tesseract and stopped aging? It's two-thirds done.

Rhapsody in Blue: For decades, Peggy Carter has had only two constants in her life: Howard Stark, and the Winter Soldier.

2014

Agents of Shield came out and as I tend towards dark-haired girls with mysterious powers, I latched onto Skye for five minutes. Here's a quick installment...

Hell's Gate: In the wake of revelations of Skye’s past, Phil Coulson wasn’t expecting to find out what happened to Skye’s parents, and certainly not from a former Russian agent turned SHIELD operative showing up unannounced on his plane.

And oh! I finished Inevitable! My Anita Blake/Harry Potter epic, started in 2005 and in limbo for a number of years, I finally got it wrapped! Although, epic; I am fast closing in on its wordcount with Hour of the Wolf.

Inevitable (Anita Blake/Harry Potter): A late-night run-in with werewolves in the woods outside St. Louis dumps Harry Potter into a whole new world of trouble. Now Anita Blake has to deal with a new charge as well as Death-Eaters come to town.

Also in 2014 I started my baby, Hands of Clay, my Stucky kid!fic in which I attempt to give Bucky and Steve a happy ending, and Natasha and Clint happy childhoods.

Hands of Clay: James Barnes leads a busy life as a single working father in New York. But when his childhood best friend Steve Rogers falls back into his life, James will have to re-learn what love, friendship and family are really all about.

Also randomly I wrote a small Night Court fusion with the Avengers that I still love and am including it in the list.

Then Thor: The Dark World came out and after I punched a wall at yet another MCU mother getting fridged (Frigga, fridged, get it?) I started a resurrection fix-it featuring Loki’s children on earth, that was going to be great only I lost momentum, but the structure of this were good.

Hel's Bones: Magic pulled Frigga back from the realm of the dead, but not even Loki's children can shield her from the consequences of long-ago actions coming back to haunt her.

2015-2016

the rest of 2014-2016 were consumed with Hands of Clay. But then! Tumblr caught my eye with a figure skating anime, and after the longest time, I checked it out. Which led to

2017-2018

when my Yuri on Ice! phase began.

First up, we have the Blood in the Water series:

Water's Edge: For years, Yuuri had heard people say Viktor’s skating was otherworldly. He never thought they were being literal.

Undertow: Viktor Nikiforov has spent his entire life pretending to be normal. It's never enough.

There Be Dragons: Seven-year-old Otabek knew two things - he wasn't really related to a dragon, and he was never going to fall in love. Things like that belonged only in fairy tales.

A Late Frost: The one thing that Yuuri didn't expect about the World Figure Skating Championships in Boston was that beating two world records and winning a gold medal was going to be the easy part. (WIP)

I also wrote a bunch of YOI one-shots:

Midnight Salchow: Yuuri is convinced he has hidden his shameful past as a writer of Viktor Nikiforov RPF. Yuuri is mistaken.

Eight Days A Week: okay but a nanny!AU where Viktor has somehow acquired a bushel of children and needs a nanny to help care for his screaming brood - enter Yuuri, freshly retired from what he thinks was a failed figure skating career, and in desperate need of money to help pay off his student loans.

Sex Maniac: Katsuki Yuuri, Grand Prix silver medalist and a sorry example of a human being, was seventy percent sure that sleeping with Viktor Nikiforov had turned him into a sex maniac.

The Trials of Anteros: Of course Yuuri knew about Viktor’s hockey-playing twin brother; everyone in the figure skating world did. But given that Viktor had never mentioned the man, Yuuri never expected to get home one day after practice to find Vladimir Nikiforov cluttering up their apartment.

An Uncertain Arabesque: Yuuri never went to the banquet. Viktor never looked into the eyes of a beautiful, sloshed Japanese figure skater, never had the spark brought back into his life with the idea of coaching, and of love. Viktor never saw the gash in the ice, not in the last minute of his free program at Russian Nationals, and couldn’t prevent his blade from catching in the depression, sending him to the ice with a broken knee and a ruined skating career. Viktor never saw any of it coming.

Silver and Glass: February 14, the Four Continents started in two days, and Yuuri was freaking out. Valentine's Day was the least of his worries... or so he thought.

and lastly, the fantasy swordmaster AU that consumed my summer vacation in 2018:

And each man stands with his face in the light: After the carnage on the fields of the Elven Wars, Viktor Ivanovich, general of the northern armies, was done with fighting. When Prince Regent Yuri asked him to track down the mysterious man who slew the Elven King, Viktor complies, hardly knowing how that one action will change his life forever...

Also in 2018, something kickstarted me down the road of wondering what it would be like if Clint Barton (Hawkeye) was raised by Susan Pevensie (formerly queen of Narnia), as one does.

Turn, Archer, and Heed the Wild Hunt (MCU/Chronicles of Narnia): In the summer of 1983, Clint Barton goes to live with his new foster mom in the middle of nowhere, Iowa. Now he just needs to figure out how negotiate this new life... and also what's up with all the strange things happening in the night.

2019

And as I mentioned in yesterday’s, post, 2019 was the year of salt, in which I got cheesed off at Avengers: Endgame and resurrected Child of the Wolf, and then started my current obsession with time travel and other paradoxes:

Hour of the Wolf (MCU/Teen Wolf): Allison Stark has spent her entire life trying to live up to her father's sacrifice. But when the universe itself starts to dissolve, desperation and magic come together to push Allison back in time to try to right the wrongs.

2020

Who knows where we go? I hope it's going to be great :D

Thanks to everyone who's been hanging out with me in this pocket of fandom!

#my writing #year in review #decade in review #i have been doing this for way too long #what's that saying?#try and fail #then try again and fail better?#that's this decade for me #thank goodness for AO3

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lakinda5654 · 6 years ago

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~~~~A Girl and God~~~~ Chapter 16- Silence

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A Girl and A God is a RATED M Loki Fanfic with an original character, Alexa, who is taken in by Tony Stark after the revelation of abilities of her own. There’s sex, romance, heartbreak, action, fluff, angst, all that good stuff. Full description in blog, and a jump-to-chapter list if you just want the smut or the cuteness bits. Enjoy <3

Chapter Summary: Despite recovering from the past 3 days of events, Alexa manages to make a new friend, and later that night, decides to give Loki one last chance...

Contains: cute friendship, the plot gets thicc

Word Count: 2,391

~Previous Chapter~~Next Chapter~

~~Beginning of Story~~

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When Alexa woke, her eyes fluttered open to the sight of Loki’s cell. He was awake, staring up at the blank ceiling. She recalled everything that had happened, but her head still felt clouded. She longed to hold him in her arms and know what was going on, why had he run…

“Hey”

A voice that wasn’t hers or Loki’s shocked her out of her thoughts. She gasped and scrambled back, failing to gain traction with her one palm against the silky sheets on a polished concrete floor.

It was Peter. He was sitting awkwardly several feet away, by the entrance to the cell hall. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you! I was just wandering around and I got the memo about what happened yesterday and I wanted to see how bad Loki’s arm was which I guess was stupid cuz its all bandaged up but then I saw you and I wasn't sure when you'd wake up so I waited for a bit cuz maybe you’d wanna talk or have help putting your bed back or-”

“It’s ok Peter…” as she sat up, her head began to throb. “You scared the shit out of me though.” She rubbed her forehead, suddenly realizing the embarrassing situation she was in. How could she explain why she was sleeping outside Loki’s cell?

“I was um, my room was too hot and I…”

“It’s okay.” Peter was smiling. “You don’t need to do that. I get it. When I had a concussion a couple years ago I did some craaazy stuff in my sleep too. Oh like this one time I went to the fridge to get something to eat and poured some milk but I forgot the cup and it went everywhere and, sorry for scaring you though.” He awkwardly looked around, as if he needed to ask her something but wasn’t sure how to get there.

It was now that Alexa realized that though Peter was younger than her, he was the closest person to her age here.

“I heard about your head and arm and stuff. Tony told us what happened.” He said. “You seriously flew a skateboard?”

“What? Oh, yeah I did. Didn’t go too well”

She felt embarrassed still. The urge to explain away her stupidity overwhelmed her. Before she could speak though, Peter did.

“I mean you still did it, I mean come on that had to be the coolest thing! How fast did you go? Were you like standing on it like a surfboard or like hanging on like a hang glider?”

Oh my god. That’s what he wanted to know about, that’s why he was here. This sixteen-year-old boy had come down here and waited for her to wake up, just to hear the story of how she piloted a skateboard over New York.

It felt good. He didn’t care that she was an idiot, that perusing Loki was undoubtedly a bad decision, he didn’t care about any of that. Because she flew a god damn skateboard.

After a brief pause, Alexa started laughing, and Peter followed suit.

“Yeah, you know what,” she said between chuckles, “I sat on the skateboard like a horse right, cuz I’ve never even used a skateboard. And it started beelining across New York like I was in a freaking wormhole.” She was laughing with her words. “I flew a skateboard that when it got where I wanted to be, launched me into a fucking tree.” Peter’s eyes brightened. “Oh my god!” he giggled in his young, boyish voice. They both suddenly were in a laughing fit. It felt so good. The previous day was so beyond shitty and making a joke of it somehow made it feel like she’d be okay. Still laughing, Peter pulled out his phone. “Wait wait wait I got it,” he said.

She looked at him. “What??” She was still laughing. He held up one finger, showing her to wait. Their laughter died down a bit, and she checked her phone. Then after a minute, Peter was cracking up again. He couldn’t stop. “WHAT PETER OH MY GOD” he turned his phone to her.

He literally made a fucking meme. It showed a picture of the Lion King scene, with the monkey labeled “a fucking flying skateboard” and the lion baby labeled “u” and the next pic had the lion being chucked through the air, with YEET written across the sky.

Why that was so funny, she couldn’t explain. But Peter and her sat there laughing until tears stained her cheeks. It was one of those moments where the second you stopped laughing, you’d look at each other and immediately lose control again. It went on for far longer than it should have.

“Ok ok come on,” Peter said, holding his stomach. “Let’s get your stuff back up to your room.”

“Oh, I can just send it” Alexa replied.

He looked at her, confused for a moment before his eyes widened as she flicked her wrist and everything on the floor rolled itself into a ball and shot out of the hall and into the stairwell.

There was a moment of silence

“Well ok, sure you can just tell stuff what to do that’s cool, totally cool, that’s fine.” He said, and it was clear he was trying to keep his composure and not completely lose his shit over what he just saw. “I’m going to go to breakfast. You coming or does the breakfast just come to you is that how that all works...”

Alexa paused and looked in at Loki alone in his cell. “I’ll be there in a bit”

“Okay sounds good,” Peter said and he trotted quickly out of the hall, breakfast outweighing the confusion of what he’d just seen in his mind.

As soon as she knew she was alone, she went to press the speech button, then stopped. She looked at his face, as he stared at the ceiling evidently thinking of something. She didn’t want to do this through a wall. She wanted to wait until tonight. She’d open his door and they could really talk, the way that they should.

The day felt long. Loki was obviously not at the group meals anymore, Clint seemed to be giving Tony an “I told you so” vibe with everything he did. Most of her day was spent in her suite, watching tv or resting her aching head and shoulder. She also had a good number of bruises and scrapes from her fall that she kept tending to throughout the day.

That night at dinner, Tony stood up to make an announcement. “Ok, I get you’re all pissed about his escape. I do. It’s reasonable. He’s not coming to meals anymore. But we are making some changes as an additional precaution. After checking cameras it looks like he escaped by using illusion to look like a civilian and conjuring a fake guard after dinner to escort him that night. What I’ve come to find out,” Stark paused. “Is that that particular ability is stopped whenever an electrical shock is administered. Even a small one.” He explained. “So, I’ve come up with this.” He pressed a button and a projection shot up at the head of the table. “It’s like a doorframe that administers many minor shocks so small that you can’t feel them. They’ll be at every exit and entrance to this building we’ve got. It won’t only be for Loki, any small electrical device such as a bomb will also be detected and deactivated.” Tony continued to explain the technology, but most of his in-depth explanations went over her head. Lastly, he said they were adding more security guards to the exits and entrances as well. Alexa waited for the presentation to be over, and quietly left as soon as it was.

Midnight of that evening arrived, and she was well prepared to speak to Loki again. She’d thought through what he’d done, and what she wanted to know. She had her notebook with her, and she wrote down all of the questions she needed answers to. Alexa wasn’t good with confrontation, and once she saw his face again she would probably forget everything she meant to speak with him about if she didn’t have it in front of her.

it was possible that what he said was true, that he despised her... but this entire week had been so upside down, she had to give him another chance. Just one more.

When she reached his cell just after midnight, she looked inside and melted. He was crying. He was holding his head in his hands and crying. She first pressed the communications button. “Loki?”

He jumped, wiping the tears from his face. He immediately got up and ran to the one-way wall, and looked into it, looking desperate, then he did something even weirder.

He held up his bracelet to his mouth and replied coarsely. “When will you learn to leave me alone!” Then he lowered his wrist and shook his head, his eyes filled with tears.

Oh my god. The bracelet isn’t just a tracker.

Loki held up a finger to his lips.

It was listening. It was recording what he said.

She let go of the com button and watched him. He then pointed to the door, holding a finger to his lips, looking desperately at the wall that he could not see her through. After punching in the key code, she quietly opened the door.

Loki immediately hugged her. She grimaced. He was too rough on her shoulder. It was then that he looked at her and realized her injury. He ran his hand gently on her forearm and looked at how it hung delicately in the white sling.

Loki was no longer crying, he looked livid. He saw her notebook in her other arm and quickly snatched it from her and sat down. She followed his lead and sat in front of him, holding the door with her body. He made a writing motion with his hand.

Alexa shoved her hands into her pockets violently and found a single, almost broken pencil. She quickly gave it to him. So much of what was happening already made so much more sense and their silent conversation began.

He saw her list of questions and looked up at her, and turned the notebook over to a blank page. He scribbled quickly, then handed the notebook back to her.

“Who did this to you?”

The fact that that’s why he was angry and that it was the first thing he wanted to know made Alexa feel something, but she had so many feelings right now that she couldn’t process that one, so she shoved it down.

She wrote back. “No one. I crashed when I was trying to ride something using telekinesis.” She turned the notebook to face him. That was the truth. He didn’t need to know that the only reason she was forced to try that was to search for him right now.

He looked skeptical. Then Alexa turned the notebook back to her list of questions, looking at what one she wanted him to answer first. Before she could choose, Loki took the book from her hands, flipped a page as quietly as he could, and then wrote, “can I explain”

Alexa nodded, her heart racing. She waited as he sat there, writing vigorously as if his life depended on it.

When he handed it back to Alexa, everything she needed to know was understood. How he was being listened to, how he was forbidden to speak to her, how Tony had threatened to send you elsewhere. How he was being shocked if he tried to tell her the truth. The story of the day he ran, how he created an illusion guard that escorted him out of the tower instead of to his cell. How he shape-shifted into a normal-looking citizen and was trying desperately to find a way to remove the bracelet. Melting wouldn’t work given that the prongs that sunk into his skin were along the entire thing. He thought maybe if he could smash it, it would release its grips in his flesh. Nothing was working as he slammed his wrist against a rock in Central Park. When he could hear the sound of the Avengers tower alarm in the distance is when he panicked. He began clawing at his wrist desperately trying to rip the thing off of his flesh before Tony came. How he was given shocks rapidly until he blacked out from the pain.

Alexa looked at him, and the bracelet. He was no longer looking at her through tears but through determination. A look of, “what’s the plan?” First, she wrote down “I’m sorry”

Now there were tears on her face. She’d been angry with him, for acting that way when he had no other choice.

He reached out his hand and wiped a tear away with his thumb, shaking his head. His face read “it’s not your fault”

But she couldn’t help but feel that it was. She was the one who was trying to free him in the first place.

Her waves of emotion turned from sadness and pity to anger. No. This was not her fault. It was Tony’s. She had never more wanted to cause someone pain in her entire life. He lied to her, blatantly, and tortured the person she cared for.

Loki’s face had returned to one of urgency. What would they do? What could they do?

After thinking for a moment, she wrote down. “I could try to remove it”

Loki looked at her and raised his eyebrows. Then looked at the bracelet, still wrapped under bandages.

He couldn’t remove it with his power because all he could do was move it. She could command it to release… but what would happen then? Would an alarm sound? Would Tony know the thing had been disconnected…

They were both wondering the same things. Loki could tell by her expression. But he held out his wrist and nodded, his eyes on the floor, thinking of the pain to come. This would not be easy, and he knew it. She knew it too. But what other choice did they have? She refused to let Tony have this power over him any more.

#Loki #lokilove #lokioc #loki fanfiction #lokifanfiction #loki feels #lokicute #A Girl and A God #Fanfiction #fanfic #loki fanfic #loki x oc

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leta-the-strange · 7 years ago

Note

Could you do one where Theseus dies and sort of Leta and Newt mourning him. Or some cute theseus/leta moments. Thankyou, I just love them!

Look, I’m apologising in advance. I wrote this as a damn novel when I was in hospital over night when I couldn’t sleep and its so long…I’m so sorry (but I think I covered all your requests?) Literally I made a part 2, this is only half of it. If it’s not a pain med fuelled mess and you enjoy it, let me know if you want the second part. I’ll put a ‘keep reading’ because oml its so long, forgive me. I am so sorry you poor people on mobile if the keeping reading cut doesn’t work. Put me on a damn leash when it comes to angst. (Thank you for sending me this prompt though!)

It could never have lasted…such happiness.

Leta silently and delicately packed up the items – even the half-crumpled up scraps of parchment with hastily scrawled reminders and mindless scribbles – as if they were fragile shards of Occamy egg shells. With her gloves removed and laid aside, she carefully handled each item individually, feeling the weight and the shape before laying it on the bunched-up newspapers that had been roughly stuffed into the cardboard box that had been left on the desk prior to her arrival.

She was well aware and not at all fretted by the stares of the Aurors that were working behind her, awkwardly trying to busy themselves in their paperwork likely wondering why she was drawing out this uncomfortable, awful task when she could put herself - and the rest of them - out of their misery with the wave of her wand and a simple packing spell.

But even they, as brave and highly skilled wizards as they were, wouldn’t dare approach her with this suggestion.

Leta wanted to do it this way. No one really understood Theseus’ strange insistence on doing everything manually. Collecting firewood, brewing tea, getting out of bed in the bitterly cold morning hours to get an extra blanket or a book on the dresser, making little use of the Ministry interdepartmental owls to cheerily whistle his way across the different floors to deliver his letters himself (though he always took the route – no matter how long and ridiculous – that took him past her desk).

Leta had understood though – eventually.

She absentmindedly pulled the sleeve of her dress further down her wrist, doing little to hide the mottled scars peeking out from the fabric and creeping across her hand. It was hard to imagine magic as being anything other than a mangled, twisted thing.

Leta was thirteen before she found out it could be beautiful – sitting cross-legged with Newt, sometime past midnight, with his first incorporeal Patronus a misty silver cloud above them, her hand over her mouth and unexpectedly, to his horror and her embarrassment, starting to cry.

The war had given Theseus a heroic reputation, the accompanying renown and respect, a notable career and a bravery medal (which Leta had found once she worked up the courage to visit, only days after he had been sent home from the hospital, on the ground outside, among shards of glass and a telling broken window behind it) but it had taken so much more.

For all the fame and admiration that he seemed to amass, she was the only one who would notice him disappear continually.

The first panic attack she had seen was after she had noticed him slip away from the celebratory party the Ministry had thrown in his honour after he was discharged from the hospital. The party, she remembered, that he had no shame in unfairly bullying her into attending with pleading blue eyes, messy brown curls and looking as tragic as possible all bandaged up in his hospital bed. She watched grumpily from the corner where she had taken residence for the past two hours thinking on loop what a waste of a nice dress this evening had been, how long it had taken her to get her hair neat and how her constant attempts to be kind to people kept ending up in her being roped into situations like this.

Everyone had started shooting red coloured sparks in the air which exploded like fireworks in the large room which is when she’d noticed Theseus was gone. Leta rolled her eyes, figuring that he’d probably disappeared with one (or more – she didn’t judge) of the women that were practically trying to hang off for most of the evening. She pushed herself off the wall, slightly annoyed at the fact that he seemed to have been enjoying himself quite alright on his own and her presence that he so insisted upon was, in her opinion, completely needless. Leta could have easily, like any other scorned woman, slipped out tearfully or in a huff but that sounded dreadfully dull and she may as well recoup some enjoyment from the dismal evening in the form of interrupting and annoying Theseus just once more before she left.

She searched the empty corridors and threw open the door to a small store room and froze mid-smirk to see him hunched over against the wall, rocking and hysterical, his hands tangled roughly in his hair as if he could crush his skull with his palms. To anyone else it would have looked as if he had completely lost his mind, but it was all too familiar to her.

Even during the worst parts of his recovery, his spell work was still excellent. His reaction time took a while longer to return but he rarely handled his wand opting to keep it in his coat pocket and only taking it out when necessary and even then, he would lift it with a weariness that was well beyond his age. It was the first thing to be tossed aside when he arrived home before messing up his hair and collapsing back on the couch.

Magic had been weaponised so much for him that it had lost any of the beauty it had held before. He had seen the worst side of it a lot later in life than she, but the effects had been no less damaging.

Leta nestled the Foe-glass and Sneakoscope safely between the pages of the old Daily Prophet’s and fitted the tattered pack of Exploding Snap and roll of Spellotape down the sides expertly. She had plenty of practise from this from building and repairing the Augurey’s nests in the woods around their house during the stormy months. Nothing moved around when she tipped the box slightly from side to side to check.

She ran her hand over the surface of the mahogany wood which had been cleared save for a framed picture facing away from her and a name plaque which she gingerly picked up and ran her fingers over each engraved letter and holding it to her chest subtly before nestling it in the box.

Leta didn’t want to linger on the photo frame and instead wrapped it in his faded scarlet and gold scarf placing it on top of the pile and going to the other side of the desk to check the drawers once again.

The only thing that rattled in the drawer when she opened it was new. Another name plaque though this one was shiny and polished.

Sterling Boyle

Head of Auror Office

He sounded awful, Leta decided letting the plaque slip from her fingers into the draw with a clatter that made Auror Hessington jump in his chair. She imagined a balding, paunchy man with sweaty hands and moist lips. That’s what she would have liked to have imagined. She didn’t plan on sticking around to find out for sure.

To her complete reluctance, Newt’s new American friends seemed to have adopted her against her will some time ago. They had been diligent in caring for Leta and Newt and so exhausted in doing so that when the short-haired woman, Tina, found the rare sight of Newt and Leta sleeping, she had covered them with blankets and passed out in one of the arm chairs. Leta knew it wouldn’t be long before would one of them would wake and realise she was gone.

Leta let her hand lay on the desk a moment longer before slowly curling her fingers away and putting her gloves back on. With great care, she slid the long overcoat and then, due it to being double the size of her, meticulously folded it three times and hung it over her arm. She picked up the box, her small frame, dehydration and sleep deprivation doing very little in aiding her with the weight and walked past all the Aurors who quickly starting shuffling papers at random. Auror Netley held an upside-down report in front of him.

She smirked slightly at their thinly veiled disdain. If it wasn’t her maiden name, the colour of her skin, or her unworthiness as a suitable wife for such an Auror, it was surely the way she could carry all this weight in her arms and her heart without so much as a discreet, politely concealed sob.

“MORNING ALL,” Hector Fawley bellowed as he burst through the double doors to the office unnecessarily. “BIG DAY TODAY, BIG DAY! NOW BEFORE-”

The Minister of Magic stopped in his tracks so quickly, Leta wasn’t sure if she imagined the squeal of his shoes or not. He turned from side to side quickly as if assessing whether there was any possibility, he could avoid the attention of the woman in front of him.

As if Flamboyant Fawley could ever avoid being noticed.

“Ah!” he clapped his hands together as if she were the jolliest surprise. “Miss Le-Mrs Scamander! We weren’t expecting you…”

His eyes, full of badly hidden panic, drifted down to her full arms. “Ah! We would have delivered those items for you. Here, allow me…”

Leta turned herself slightly to keep the box out of reach.

“I am more than capable, sir.”

Fawley let his open hands swing and clap together and Leta could hear him practically screaming in his head. He had unfortunately gone through this uncomfortable talk with women before but likely not with someone like her.

“Well, erm…if you need anything…just ask. We’re more than happy to assist.”

“Thank you,” Leta cut across icily. “I think you’ve done enough.”

“Yes, well. If you’re sure then…I hope, we all hope, you’re keeping well. Sleeping enough and such.”

“Well enough,” she smiled. “And you, sir?”

“Pardon?”

“Your sleeping, Minister Fawley,” Leta answered. “How are you sleeping these days?”

“Um, I suppose it’s…okay,” Fawley answered, entirely aware of the whole office of Aurors watching him be terrified by a five-foot girl. “Um, but, again anything you need…just send word. Rest up and…all the best.”

“Thank you,” she said with graceful iciness, and her eyes drifted to the colourful tea cup in his hand. “And to you as well. Rest peacefully.”

She heard Fawley tip his tea into the sink as she left and hoped Theseus would appreciate that. He had always enjoyed finding comical use of her last name which had, for most of her life, caused her nothing but misery.

“There you are!” she remembered Theseus had exclaimed joyously, skidding to a stop in front of her desk and nearly losing his footing on his unnecessarily (in her opinion) long coat.

“Here I am,” she replied dully, bundling parchment together with a stapling charm.

Theseus knelt in front of her desk and folded his arms on the wood. She was sickened that, even on his knees, he was the same height as her sitting in a chair.

“You’re looking gorgeously glum this afternoon, Lestrange,” he commented.

“Travers is being especially delightful today,” she sighed before freezing and slowly raising her hazel eyes to him. “You ought to watch your wandering hand, Mr Scamander, before it’s stapled to the underside of this desk.”

“My apologises, milady,” he chuckled, surrendering the hand he had rested on her knee. “I have come to rescue my dearest from her boredom.”

“You mean you need a favour,” Leta said blankly returning to her work.

“More of a joint venture,” he explained. “I have some weary business with the Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation who may become a lot more agreeable had he want our meeting over with quickly.”

Leta brightened up immediately. She liked this game.

“You require my sparkly personality?”

“Always, love,” he smiled. “But more so your notorious, though occasionally handy, surname. May as well put it to use while you’re still so reluctant to marry me anytime soon.”

“Goodness, you can sulk,” she rolled her eyes but laid aside her work. “What shall I do?”

“He’s a jumpy fellow, if you just prepare some tea, I think that would suffice.”

“Excuse me?” Leta pouted which made Theseus laugh and kiss both her hands.

“Fine, I’ll make the tea, suffragette, if you can bring it in with that beautiful icy uncomfortableness, you’re so magnificent at emitting and with any luck, I can steal you from here early…”

“Lestrange! I don’t hear the dulcet sounds of work being done!” her boss shouted from his open office door, not looking at her but clearly noticing the absence of stapling, paper shuffling and the scratching of a quill. “Get back to it or you’ll be selling your body in the Prophet for rent money.”

Leta smiled and grabbed Theseus’ wrist to prevent him from standing up and going full Gryffindor. “Please don’t kill my boss. He’s the only person here who treats me the same as he does everyone else. Terribly.”

Snapping out of her thoughts, Leta walked out into the bustling street. It still seemed so inexplicable to her, that the sun was still hanging in the sky, that everyone was going about their day as if the world had not been viciously ripped in two – before and after.

Leta realised absentmindedly that she ought to collect Theseus’ car from one of the side streets. Another time, perhaps. Maybe she could ask Newt’s Muggle friend for help. Theseus, and his fascination for tinkering with Muggle things, had some time ago impulsively decided to get and learn to drive a real Muggle car.

Leta was reading and walking along the footpath to her old flat after work one evening and Theseus pulled up in the noisy absurd thing beside her, accidentally bumping into the curb, causing her to jump and drop her book, and the milk and the bag of apples she had bought.

“Lestrange!” he yelled cheerily. “Want to go for a ride?”

“Not even if it would cure dragon pox, Scamander,” she replied, scooping up her belongings – the milk unsalvageable – and walking off. The next day at work there was a new bottle of milk on her desk.

Even afterwards, she could never fully embrace this strange joy of his for herself. It was certainly handy for the purpose of pulling her into the back seat of during their breaks to kiss her under she was dizzy but apart from that, she found it not at all a desirable mode of transport. She also hated broomsticks, Apparation, Floo Powder and portkeys and would avoid them to the best of her ability due to the unbearable waves of motion sickness that would undeniably follow.

Mrs Scamander, who had never been sick a day in her life and never let Leta or her two sons forget it, used to tell Leta, as she would hand her a paper bag when Newt half carried her off the Hogwarts Express, it was all psychological and that as soon as she fell for a boy cute enough she wouldn’t get sick at all when he was flying her around on the back of his broomstick. The only time she wouldn’t get sick was on a Thestral or a Hippogriff.

It turns out Muggle cars were not an exception either as an unconvinced Theseus found out when he jogged around chivalrously to open Leta’s door and ended up with vomit on his shoes.

She had certainly improved over the course of the next few years and had even started to let Theseus teach her the very basics of driving – only around the empty gravel path near their house – she thought she may have been getting better, but she supposed it didn’t matter now.

Despite her distaste for it, Leta rather decided disapparating would be preferable to being tracked down and dragged back by Tina Goldstein and found an empty street to do it from.

She imagined very clearly in her mind the small clearing that they used to apparate and disapparate from. Knowing how she struggled with apparation and to make visualising the place easier for her, Theseus had conjured a patch of colourful wildflowers that, over time, had spilled out around the mossy rock she would often sit and read on.

Leta felt the soft grass under her knees which had buckled and collapsed as she was violently thrown on to the ground. She had a good enough hold on the box that it didn’t leave her arms thankfully though she put it aside carefully, so she could rest her head on the ground for a moment and let the horrible dizziness pass.

It was still a little walk to their house as Theseus had made it so. This was the closest point you could apparate to and even if one did, it was nearly impossible to locate if you didn’t know precisely how to navigate yourself through the thicket of woods.

A clabbert, dangling from a branch by its green tail, dropped on to Leta’s shoulder as she walked underneath the trees and curled up against her neck. She felt a pang of guilt at her prolonged absence. She had skirted around having creatures as pets, but she certainly couldn’t be held responsible if they all decided to take residence around their home. Leta had, not at all as sneakily as she had thought, made the conditions perfect for all manner of creatures enough so that they could be completely self-sufficient. Though she had worried she may had babied them a little too much and it was one of the reasons she had decided to escape while everyone was sleeping.

Leta walked along the path that led to the house Theseus had built out of what could nearly be described as ruins of a cottage, rather experimentally with his own hands which had seen her foot go through the porch step more than a few times. Besides the twinkle lights leftover from their wedding that she had been too short to pull down completely and left half dangling and half piled on the floor, everything was perfectly in place, suspended in time, and it was surreal to remember her life was not how it was the last time she had stood here little over two months ago.

The window frames with glimpses of cream coloured curtains, the flowering vine climbing frothily up the stone walls, a ball she used to entertain the Hippogriffs if they ever wandered out, and two pairs of muddy boots left beside a table and bench strewn with cushions and blankets. Leta sighed as she saw an empty cup and a small pile of books on the table that had clearly been rained upon and weathered in her absence.

Leta fumbled with her wand among everything she was carrying, careful not to disturb the clabbert now snoozing in between her neck and the dip of her collarbone, and tapped it against the lock. “Alohomora,” she uttered, and she heard the distinguishable click.

“Okay, listen to me, Miss Lestrange, because I am a visionary,” Theseus said standing in the doorless doorframe, covering Leta’s eyes with his hands before releasing her.

He immediately started his pitch before she could draw a breath to comment. “Imagine sunlight flooding through the hallway because of the windows we’ll put here and here. Imagine this -” he gestured to what was a half knocked down wall that reached Leta’s waist. “– as a wall again, obviously, but painted a nice colour. Maybe yellow, your favourite. Or we can keep it as stone if you like.”

Leta went to take a step and felt the ground crunch beneath her shoes. She looked down to see the floor was simply the dirt and patches of weeds that he had blindly led her through moments ago.

“This will be floorboards soon enough – or carpet – though I think floorboards will be more conducive to all the mud you’ll inevitable track in from your adventures outside that you’ll do your best to keep from me. We’ll put a table here with flowers and letters and an umbrella stand here. We’ll hang photographs of our adorable children along this hallway here – not those horrible professional portraits we were all made to do – real photos of them doing child things.”

Leta tried not to laugh at Theseus having to resort to ‘child things’ rather than offering an example of what a child may enjoy and remembered him pretending to read the Daily Prophet thoughtfully while barely understanding the contents while her and Newt played outside, emptying Theseus’ bottles of ink to use as specimen jars.

Theseus continued with his visualisation and she tried to imagine but she was suffering from a bad cold and forgotten to take Pepper-Up Potion this morning, the leftover nausea and dizziness from carsickness was still swirling about in her stomach and her eyes were all watery and sore. Theseus caught her shoulders when she tripped over a hammer that had been clearly been thrown in frustration one day.

Leta looked at the disaster of a project and all the Muggle tools that littered the area and turned around in his arms to stare up at him lovingly with amusement and incredulity. “You’re out of your mind, Scamander.”

“Well, I find my mind is a rather overrated place to be,” Theseus scooped her up with a chuckle and spun her around much to her, and her stomach’s, protest.

But, to his credit (and maybe a little magical help from Leta without his knowledge), it was exactly as he had described it.

The sunlight, the cluttered hall table, the floorboards shining gold, a hat stand filled with hats and scarves. Leta hung his coat on one of the hooks on the hatstand, which the clabbert climbed into the pocket of to snooze, and placed the box down on the table. She continued down the hallway, not stopping, only touching things with a vague caressing fingertip. She glanced briefly at the framed photos, trailing her finger along the wooden frames that had accumulated some dust. Most of them were empty – he had specifically reserved certain ones for photos that would now never be taken – and she didn’t quite feel up to having to face herself beaming like a naïve idiot. She glanced up at the last frame – Newt’s ‘Wanted’ poster. Somehow it felt like his uncharacteristically gloomy scowl was specifically for her.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she muttered as she walked into the living area. It was a lovely open space, so they could see each other from the kitchen or dining room and see out into the back garden. It had been Leta’s idea, all those years ago. She had sketched it on a napkin at the Leaky Cauldron one evening after work and held it up with a proud smile. “You’re not the only visionary around here!”

Leta was not smiling by the time she reached their bedroom at the top of the stairs. She was hyperventilating.

She stood in the familiar bedroom looking for something – anything – that belonged to Theseus. There was no sign of him. No pile of books on his bedside table. No cylindrical columns of sickles taken from his pocket. No ties draped over the chair. Not even a lone crumpled shirt or sock that she was always reaching with stretched fingers for under furniture, eventually resorting to accio.

Leta and Theseus were both messy people despite how orderly her husband appeared. Their clothes were usually tangled together on the floor in messy embraces before washing day. No number of hatstands or clutter-specific tables were quite enough incentive to store things appropriately. Leta thought it might be the former Keeper in him, but he always felt it necessary to toss things across a room rather than walk, what would be in his large steps, a few paces instead.

She threw open their wardrobe to find it mostly empty with heavy wooden hangers, a few containing just her clothes. She longed to see just one of Theseus shirts. Even a boring work shirt or an old Quidditch t-shirt or a large cosy knitted sweater. She would wrap its sleeves around her like his arms and bury her nose in the collar like a lovesick teenager.

As she closed and leaned against the wardrobe door and looked around the room, a feeling of panic exploded in her chest, she realised how clean it was.

Her mother-in-law.

Mrs Scamander had channelled her wave of grief into pedantic tidiness and helpfulness and in doing so, eradicated any sign of Leta’s husband’s existence from their room…

Their room? Her room.

He’s dead, Leta! You stupid girl!

She looked down at her hands to find them shaking. The glass in the bedroom window rattled and the wind of her own creating to violently lash about the room knocking everything over. Her hair became undone and whipped around her face as she sunk to the floor and wrapped her arms around her body to try and contain her feelings before she ended up blowing the house apart, knowing there wasn’t anyone to talk her down from it this time.

Her touch fell upon something cool and smooth on her finger and she was reminded, as she looked down at her wedding band, that he was real, and she was real, and she wasn’t losing her mind. She was married to Theseus Scamander. No domestic hurricane of a mother-in-law, newly appointed, paunchy Head Auror, or Grindelwald or his murderous, maniacal followers could take that at least.

He may not be alive, but they were still married, weren’t they?

Leta let out a tiny pained gasp as a word surfaced to her mind.

Widow.

She was a widow now. It was so ridiculous she could have laughed and sobbed at the same time. Widows were blissfully old and grey and possessed decades of memories. She wasn’t old and grey (or blissful for that matter). She was twenty-nine. And although she did have many years of memories that she may one day be able to think back on without closing in on herself, she had been married for such a short time. She was still picking bits of flower confetti out of her hair, shoes, and belongings sporadically.

The grief she had carefully placed aside since a grave looking Auror had interrupted her and Newt chasing an injured crup in Scotland a few weeks ago, poured out and winded her in the chest like a stunning spell. It was so vicious that uncontrollable nausea hit her in the stomach with equal force. She stood up and ran to the adjoining bathroom where she was more violently sick than she’d ever been in her life.

Leta couldn’t even stop when she heard the front door slam followed by the familiar pattern of rushed, clumsy footsteps taking the stairs two at a time and then hopping over the mess of discarded items her emotions had scattered across the floor.

“Leta!” she heard the most familiar voice in the world from the doorway, halfway between a worried gasp and a relieved sigh. Newt’s world had come crashing down rather swiftly as he fell to his knees upon hearing of his brothers’ fate and sobbed into Leta’s shoulder when she had slowly knelt beside him. The following weeks were the worst of his life and to add to it, he, and the rest of the group, had been cautiously tiptoeing around Leta, who had been acting relatively normal, and waiting assiduously for her careful composure to crack.

Newt slid down to where she lay on her side shivering with her clammy forehead pressed against the tiles. Everything she had repressed suddenly burst open in her chest, enormous weight crushing her from the inside out and escaping in a soul-wrenching wail that bore the weight of decades of trauma. The pain she had once sworn to herself to never experience ripped through her in a way that made her feel like her soul was being separated from her body. She thought this must be what being attacked by a dementor felt like or perhaps more akin to making a horcrux, either way she was certain this kind of evisceration would kill her.

Newt wrapped his arms around her middle and she leaned back into him, absolutely wailing and sobbing irrepressibly. There was no point trying to put a stopper in the devastation now. The rattling window and mirror shattered, and Newt turned them slightly to shield her, the glass bouncing off his back and on to the tiles which had started to crack and peel away from the floor. A more rational person would have run but this was Newt who just squeezed her tighter. Newt who had very little sense of self-preservation but a huge sense of duty to broken creatures. He had tended to wounded dragons and cooed a distressed erumpents to sleep, but far more impressively, he’d done this time after time when her agony or fright took hold though not for many years now. But, just as it had worked when they were younger, he managed to calm her before any more damage could occur.

After what seemed like hours of Newt rocking her and soothing her til his lips were dry and her crying til her throat was hoarse and she was dizzy from it, she finally went floppy against him. He leaned forward to see if she had passed out, but she was still awake, her breath shuddering and her chest still contracting erratically. The light in the room was slowly dimming as the sun slowly sunk down in the sky bathing the room in a warm, peachy orange. Leta probably would have found it extremely comforting and pretty…before. Now she just found it audacious. How dare the sun set yet again on a world without him?

Newt had propped her up against the bathtub and cast a silent spell that swept the shards of glass and broken tiles in to a corner before sitting against the opposite wall and resting his shoes against the bathtub next to her.

They sat in comfortable silence for a while until Newt noticed tiny droplets of blood on the floor beside her.

“You’ve splinched your fingers,” he croaked and leaned forward to examine her hand. Leta looked down at the bloodied fingertips and missing fingernails and then closed her first.

“I…didn’t notice.”

“I have some dittany in my case…”

“It’s not so bad,” she reassured wearily, and Newt frowned in a displeased, determined way she hadn’t seen on him for the longest time.

“I have to take care of you.”

Leta scoffed but she smiled endearingly. “Do you, now?”

“Well, yes,” he said, the tiniest bit offended at her tone and Leta couldn’t help but bite back a chuckle at how he tried to square his shoulders. “You know, you and I are the last Scamanders, besides mother. Can’t have us dying out.”

Leta shook her head incredulously.

“You’re so dramatic. You’ll get married and have children, Newt,” she said, kicking a loose shard of tile he’d missed. She had meant to sound teasing, but it came out flat and strained. She cleared her throat and tried to continue light-heartedly. “It’s just the shame the next generation of Scamander’s are going to awkward, pale, freckly gits. We all knew it was going to be my genes that would save this family.”

“Dramatic?” Newt’s eyes widened and the first smile since Theseus’ death played on the edge of his lips. “You just ripped apart a perfectly good bathroom. And the state of you…”

“I’m GRIEVING. I can do whatever I please. This is a very exciting time for us, Newton. You want to take a Beaters baton to the fountain in the Ministry of Magic? Because we could do that, you know.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works…”

“And the state of me?” she continued, folding her arms and hiccupping. “I’m an extremely pretty crier, I’ll have you know. Look how big and sparkling my eyes are at the minute. Would’ve made you weak at the knees at seventeen.”

“Extremely pretty,” he reassured playfully. “Even with the snot bubbles and vomit you’ve gurgled on to my coat.”

“Well, it’s not a disservice is it? That coat’s absurd. Blue!”

“Absurd?” he frowned. “You said you liked it!”

“Yes, well I missed you terribly, didn’t I? It was hard having to seduce you into being my best friend again now I have to compete with the baker. Its okay, We-I’ve gotten you a very similar coat in green for Christmas.”

“Your house colour, of course.”

“No, because it matches your eyes and it’s always looked nice with your hai-Why do you always assume the worst of me, Newton?”

“Um,” he gestured in an obvious sort of way. “Probably because I know you better than anyone.”

She paused with a frown. It was a fair statement.

“We need to fix that hand,” Newt reminded her and stood up, his legs numb, and offered her his hand. “And then probably get some sleep.”

Leta hesitated. “I…want to stay here, I think. Tonight at least.”

“That’s okay, I’ve brought my case with me,” Newt said. He knew leaving her was out of the question and he’d already told the others that he needed to go find her alone. She would close up around the others and she tended to lash out when she felt trapped. “Why don’t you take a bath or shower, get the wound clean and I’ll make us something to eat and go set up the spare bed?”

Leta did what he asked and wrapped her towel around herself after her shower and padded into her bedroom, her wet hair dripping into the carpet as she stood tentatively in the middle of it, staring at their perfectly made bed.

“Newt!” she called out and he nearly fell through the door.

“What’s wrong?!”

She frowned and clutched on to her towel, feeling her chest start to tighten again.

“I don’t want to stay in here,” she trembled, nearly child-like and she hated herself for it.

“Sure,” he said, unquestioning, and rummaged through the dresser to his left to find a comfortable looking pair of pyjamas which he tossed at her. “Why don’t you get dressed and come down into the case…it’s in the living room.”

Once she was done, she plaited her hair as she walked down stairs to join him. She put on her gumboots that he had placed beside the coffee table where his case lay, and she put them on before going to find him.

Leta nibbled at the pumpkin pasty he nearly shoved into her mouth whole when she declined and followed him around, absentmindedly handing him things he needed while he did his nightly rounds.

They kicked off their boots when they went into his workstation and Newt quickly tried to neaten the quilt on the bed he slept on while travelling before sitting Leta on it and going to his desk to find some dittany.

Leta glanced at a picture of Theseus he had on display and couldn’t bear it, instead letting her eyes slide over the weathered one of her sitting on his desk.

“I’ve only asked you only half a dozen times to replace that picture,” she whined distastefully, and Newt chuckled, walking back over with the dittany. “It’s horrendous, I look like I’m eating a sour lolly and my jaw hurts.”

“That’s your normal face, Leta,” he told her and wrapped up her fingers carefully. “And it’s a sweet picture. You decided to put my wanted poster up as my tribute on your little family wall.”

“It’s my favourite possession,” she admitted, taking a gulp of the tea he put in her hands, and covered her with the quilt. “It wasn’t easy to obtain. I think w-we broke some international law acquiring it from MACUSA but…” her eyes started to droop, and she felt her words becoming thick. “…it was…definitely…quite…”

Newt went back to his desk where he had some work to do and smiled at the sound of Leta mumbling incoherently, finally letting her head flop against the pillow. He hoped the Dreamless Sleep potion in her tea would give her a little reprieve for a couple of hours at least. He intended to stay sitting across from her the whole time, determined to take care of her. The memory of the confusing and short conversation he had last had with his brother, who had hugged him tighter than ever before, was what made him resurface, just a little, from his own grief. Newt had felt something was off in the way that Theseus asked him, his eyes pleading and sombre, to take care of her. Newt had assumed he was just being extremely serious about making sure they didn’t get into trouble while he was gone but now he was starting to wonder if his brother may have known what was going to happen.

Newt paused in counting his lace wing flies to glance back at his dearest friend and his brothers’ whole heart, who was passed out rather ungracefully. He smiled slightly and then picked up Theseus’ picture, who was smiling at him proudly and placed it next to Leta’s.

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monohart · 7 years ago

Text

green tea. (college!au)

ft. wong yukhei and post-midnight fluff.

i wrote this for a friend but she doesn’t know i wrote it for her and i didn’t know she actually isn’t stressed anymore but she secretly reads my stuff so i guess she’ll see it when she sees it hehe

you were on the verge of breaking down when you realised how many things you had to get done before next week.

and when your boyfriend yukhei called you that night, you gave one worded replies which made you depressed because you were actually looking forward to talking to him all day, but you just couldn’t get any words out

he noticed. but when he asked, you couldn’t even answer what was wrong because

because everything was wrong and there was nothing right

you hung up after a while to focus on your work, but yukhei

oh boy, yukhei..

he tried going to sleep early because dang he had a tiring day too

but he ended up tossing and turning for ages as he thought about how sad and tired you sounded..

and how you were probably be curled up in a small blanket cocoon, all alone in your small, cold room....

... probably sniffling and listening to hyukoh or dean to try and sooth your moment of depression....

and that did it.

he grabbed his keys and a hoodie and slipped out of the dorms

on the way he made a detour to the 24/7 hour cafe to grab something warm for you

he knew you liked to drink green tea late at night because it was soothing.

and he smiled proudly as he made his way to your place with the warm drink in his hands.

just imagining you sitting up from that blanket cocoon and watching him walk in with big doe eyes made him giddy

anyway though, on the other side of town...

you were actually wide awake

you were sitting at your brightly lit desk, pondering over a concept you had a lot of trouble understanding.

when yukhei arrived, he placed the tea on your desk and then made himself comfortable on your bed

you didn’t even notice smh

it took you a few minutes to acknowledge the elephant in your room.

yes, a literal baby elephant because he took up your entire bed smh

you turned away from your laptop to look at him.

he already tucked himself comfortably in your bed and was staring at you with a coy smile

your heart stopped right then and there im telling u

that lazy look in his eyes, his unruly hair that was sticking up in different directions.. the shy, innocent curve of his lips that formed just by gazing at your back

the urge to drop your work and pounce on him was real

but

you held yourself and picked up your pen again

and he let you be, because he was partly relieved that you weren’t completely shut down like how he thought you were, but he was also so damn proud??

like.. damn that’s my woman right there...

look at her working that sexy brain of hers.... damn.

while he watched you work, he took in small details

like how long your hair had gotten over the past few months

it was long enough for you to bunch it in a messy bun that sat on the top of your head

he still remembered the first time y’all met, your id photo was the one where you had bangs

literally your worst photo ever.

it was from years and years ago and somehow you haven’t changed it yet

but somehow he liked it and found your panicked smile in the photo absolutely adorable

then he started giggling at the thought of that picture

and it made you jump and lose your train of thought

“wong yukhei i don’t mean to be rude but it’s almost 2am what are you actually doing here?”

he answers your question but he does so while sitting up and running his large ass hands through his locks

you actually want to die

and then he shrugs nonchalantly and tells you that he’s here as your lucky charm

you sigh and looked away with that really deflated look in your eyes, and he immediately went

ohshitohshitohshitohshit

and push the blankets aside to move behind you

and because you were sitting on your desk chair, he had to bend over

in order drape his long arms around your shoulder

and rest his chin on your shoulder to peer at your work

he was warm and smelled fresh

like he just came out of the shower or something

it wasn’t like the usual cologne he’d wear when going out

which you also loved

but it was just that smell of him

anyway

“oh, you’re stuck on that?? i took that subject last year and i aced it. let me tutor you.”

you frown and turn your face to glare at him, with a whole list of rebuttals

but

holy shit

that boy

already had his head turned, waiting for you

and when you glared at him, he leant forward just a hair, to kiss you

and suddenly you felt like you drank 9 cups of caffeine in one go

he was so soft and warm and you didn’t want to let go

so you chewed lazily on his bottom lip as you held his cheek

and idk how long you did that for but it must’ve been quite a while because his back was sore

“uh.. babe.. can’u let go o’m’lip..”

“no.”

“but m’back’urts.”

“no.”

he wasn’t going down without a fight so he caught you off guard by picking you up with his strong arms

holy shit

and carrying you to the bed

all in one swift movement

and by then you were shrieking and attempting to kick him but

he d0dged the heCk

cause you kicked him once before during a ~fun~ soccer play-off and it hurt like hell

anyway

you finally gave up when your back hit the mattress and the whole bed went nYOOM at the sudden weight of both you and your boyfriend

who btw

was shrieking now

actually he was just laughing but boy can’t keep his voice down

and you scold him because its late and you didn’t want to wake the whole house

“also, how the hell did you get in, the front door was locked?”

he grins his hecking cheesy grin that you hate but love so much

so you turned your body to face him

and closed your eyes and puckered your lips

boy caught on immediately

good job, yukhei

so he leant in while placing his warm hands on your waist

and you waited to feel his soft lips on yours

but

uh..

you opened your eyes a hair to peek at what on earth was taking him so long

and you find him staring at you with his gummy smile

and you frown but he just blinks a couple times and continues to stare

“is something on my face??”

he nods wordlessly but really just continues to study every curvature and every little detail on your face.

“where??”

you move your hands to your cheeks and nose and forehead and eyelids and feels around for anything that isn’t supposed to be there

“yukhei... what is it, take it off for me..”

he lets out a small chuckle at your whines and then he

dramatically

clears his throat

“i would love to but i can’t.”

you were about to snap back a reply but he pressed a finger to your lips before continuing

“have you heard of this thing called beauty? yeah, cause that’s all over your face right now and it’s actually been there for a really long time but i just haven’t to-”

when you throw your arms around him and attack him with kisses, he almost tumbles off your small bed

but he wanted to keep his cool yanno

he wasn’t gonna accidentally fall off a bed.. especially not after that applause worthy speech

but you could instantly tell he lost his balance for a quick sec because he let out a quiet gasp against your skin and

and then you were laughing

and he started laughing too

he was laughing because heck yes!!! he missed that smile of yours

you didn’t know but he had been waiting all day to see you smile

and it was just so satisfying

like a breath of fresh air

y’all lay there like that for quite a moment.. to catch your breath i guess

and the prospect of studying crawled back into his mind.. obviously..

and into yours too

but he didn’t want to ask you about it just yet

because you needed a break.. just to lift your head above all the stress

forget about the complex concepts for just a second

and appreciate the little things around you

which he was able to make you do and damn he was a proud lil boy..

so proud of himself.

but

all of a sudden you sat up

and he sat up too

cautiously

(because he was literally on the edge of your small bed)

“holy shit is that...”

you recognised the scent way too well

it was the familiar smell of all-nighters

the familiar smell that calmed your senses and

that little feeling you get when you realise you’re doing well with your work and that you’ve come further than you have since the beginning of the night.

it was sitting there.

it was sitting peacefully on your desk, still warm and untouched.

“wong yukhei, i love you.”

he followed your gaze and laughed.

yeah, green tea.

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homestuckhomestuckhomestuck · 8 years ago

Text

Summary of Homestuck fandom after [S] Cascade.

(2011) Homestuck as a general phenomenon was very active and developed at a swift pace from the time it was published (2009) onwards, especially in 2012-2013, including and past the first years of the Homestuck Kickstarter Project, a.k.a Hiveswap.

Between 2009 and 2012, Homestuck as a webcomic was infamous for updating daily, constantly, multiple times a day, at all hours, for years. There was a calculated average that Homestuck updated 5.5 pages per day, dropping entire bundles of updates of character interaction and plot reveals frame by frame, posted as fast as Hussie could write it. Though it wasn’t immediately obvious, this pace was sleeplessly breakneck, Hussie allegedly didn’t do anything but live, breathe and dream Homestuck for at least four years straight. I’m serious when I say updates came at all hours. I would wake up 2am on a week night and idly check MSPA to see if there was a new update, sort of like a trained parrot. Then in five minutes I’d tab back over to the Homestuck tab and refresh, just in case.

This lead to an phenomenon appropriately dubbed “upd8 culture,” which became the basis of the sheer evangelical furor people still associate with the Homestuck fandom. Quick history: MSPA/Problem Sleuth fans originated and migrated over from the Penny Arcade forums, Reddit, and 4chan to nestle permanently within the bowels of 2011 - 2013 tumblr, and were best described from a distance as ‘zealous.’ Even remembering it now almost feels like recalling a distant riot. If you didn’t cosplay, write up a detailed theory post, or scribble up a crazy level of appropriately detailed fanart within 10 or so minutes any given upd8, you were buried under the force of post overload and were officially late to the party. After years of this, fans had some idea of just how dedicated it came off as, which was used to further spur on fandom and made Homestuck into the most meme filled in-joke community you could possibly imagine.

What’s frustrating about describing Homestuck and Homestuck fandom is they both heavily affected each other and were both unique experiences within themselves, which makes actually trying to get across the atmosphere of the early 2010s a wordy process. Homestuck heyday updates regularly crashed tumblr servers, which became an actual fake rss way of seeing how much the plot progressed that day, which is unusual even if the tumblr servers 2011-2013 were not funded by the corporate might of Yahoo. The bigger the update, the faster the crash. I could tell you Homestuck dominated tumblr to the point it had a virulent hatedom of people who had never even read it and constantly saw it and never understood what was happening in it, and fans couldn’t stop themselves from chattering about it all the time. One thing that has to be noted is all this continual bickering and movement and development and competitive content production was honestly fun as hell.

Besides constant updates and a continual stream of new content, the story was completely unpredictable. Game-changing plot twists continued to happen up until the very ending, and while this made Homestuck’s plot happily convoluted, for fans this meant one thing they never lacked for was barely solvable mystery. Even the (fan)artists and (fan)musicians hired to work on Homestuck had to guess what would happen next even if they were part of animating the next update. Under similar principles of an ARG, story presentation was created with the vague expectation fans would work together to explain to each other what just happened.

What this meant in conjunction with Hussie’s oddly accurate tabs on fandom theory was that when an update dropped you had to release whatever you were doing fast, or you would be outdated, wrong, inaccurate, or irrelevant at some undisclosed unspecific time, very soon. Canon and fanon directly pulled from each other, especially in the small character details. The very fact the comic spun on such accurate knowledge of fandom that was purposefully fostered between fandom and canon means that even now reading Homestuck while updating is considered an experience different from an archival read, even though Homestuck was always a self-contained story.

Upd8 culture followed like this: Popular fan theories had multiple fanfictions written on them just to better explain what could happen next, and fan projects from voice acting to art to music to fiction were constantly being corrected, updated, and replaced by a deluge of new information and characters to pore over every single detail with a fandom magnifying glass. An endless amount of hyper ambitious fandom projects, games, animations, multi media fanstories made in rotating teams were abandoned for new starts JUST because the information they were working off became too outdated by the newest few weeks of updates. Cosplays were mocked up in hours (for the next morning of con,) art in minutes, theory in seconds. You threw everything out as fast as you could so someone else could build off of it. It did give a strong impression of collaboration and possibility. As the fandom grew bigger and younger Hussie seemed to shade more politic in his fandom communication, but Homestuck managed to maintain an “open channel” like feeling between fandom and comic for a long time.

Innovative form encouraged innovative output. The point was to create. Another aspect feeding upd8 culture was in the way Homestuck was told. Not only were Homestuck’s detailed plot points hard to predict, but so was what would happen to the site in a meta way. A page could range from a scribble to a 3 hr fully programmed rpg or 18 minute asset heavy style swapping animation, or most commonly, sprite art followed by several hundred words of dialogue and character interaction. Pages came by different artists, different styles, different mediums, different paces and focuses, but with a breadth-spanning understanding of memes and the internet. Factors of style, innovation and novelty affected the diversity of fan output. Part of my extreme willingness to take part in Homestuck fandom was that Homestuck was so crammed to the brim with open ended creative potential, just the multiplicity of cool ideas and plot mechanics and vivid characters and weirdly novel framing that had really good ideas and existed literally nowhere else, and I say that as a huge sci-fi fan. Time travel in Homestuck was excellent. It was an ambitious story and I really do think it pulled it off. Homestuck was once described as the fossilized excrement of someone’s personal creative experiments, and I think that’s a good way of putting it. Enthusiasm and confusing daring teemed off the page, and translated into a wide variety of fanfiction and art, in style, content, theme, and pov.

Lastly, Hussie had a tendency to canonize fan content and hire fanartists and fananimators if their output was solid enough with a gentle horse kiss of approval and a naturally internet-transparent hiring process, like a forum. This was a purposely fostered atmosphere in the spirit of experimental adventure, and was just fucking nuts. Fans never wrote the story, but they did heavily influence aspects of how it was told and where it went (by design, fans were pretty much involved in making the comic) and even get to actually flesh out the details, like the main character’s names, memes, romances, character, and scope. Everything from canon sprite art to bits of the Midnight Crew to Caliborn’s character to Calliope’s art skill to music and trickster arcs were all originally based on years of fan jokes and fandom. Homestuck was definitely Hussie’s sole property and precious baby, but he built it as interactive-ish and creatively as he could. It added an extra layer of galvanizing egging on to fandom purpose. I don’t know how else to explain everything that came of it. Fandom was like a roiling morass of bullshit activity, like a breaking news bullpen 24/7, there was so much energy sparking off of all facets of fandom because it was just so fun. Fan output was borderline insane in 2010-2013.

Hussie said fandom grew exponentially at the introduction of the Trolls in Act 5 in mid 2010, but I can honestly say I think fandom really started treating Homestuck like a hidden gem worth proselytizing right after the events of [S] Cascade at the end of 2011. Before then, Homestuck was tenuously good, and had a rep on tumblr for having weirdly ubiquitous fans and over- detailed fancontent, but [S] Cascade was the moment every single gamble asked of the reader in the story actually paid off. In fact, Homestuck’s plot was generally constructed to climax at [S] Cascade, as was apparent from the big explosion of fan reaction after the fact. At this point, you would be hard pressed to find a fan that wouldn’t say, “Homestuck is good.”

THE KICKSTARTER (2012)

Right after [S] Cascade, a lot of things happened in quick succession. Act 6 started, revealing what endgame would probably look like. It was slated to be shorter than Act 5, envisioned as a kind of denouement. Lord English, the final villain, was revealed. Hussie stated he thought the comic would end the following year. I think Hussie saw the ending was in sight and started trying to merchandise for real at this point, god tier hoodies started releasing at a faster rate, Homestuck book 1 came out (in addition to Problem Sleuth book 3), there was a Homestuck music (and track art) contest announced with hundreds of fan submissions, and the incongruous but hilarious public induction of Dante Basco, Hollywood superstar, who was instantly whisked into the Homestuck fandom’s fold as soon as he formed a tumblr. Homestuck had a bit of a reputation by then so the fandom (+ Hussie) was legitimately trying to woo him gently. This was entertaining for everybody, including Dante Basco. (For those who haven’t gotten that far, Dante Basco is a character in Homestuck.) (As some trivia, Grey DeLisle also briefly made a tumblr in this time, influenced by the instant rapport Dante Basco had, voiced some Vriska lines, then left due to some unrelated but tumblr-typical drama.)

There probably weren’t even specifics on who was going to be programming, illustrating, producing, and writing Hiveswap- and I’m still vaguely convinced Hussie scrolled through Promstuck and then hired deudlyfirearms (Calliope’s official artist) on the spot to illustrate all his future creative endeavors. I know Guzusuru got hired at least partially due to Lullaby for Gods, not to speak in the least for Paperseverywhere or Toastyhat (tumblr usernames used just in case, dril), plus a literal list of artists you could follow through various Homestuck fan production to official product lines. With Hiveswap, Homestuck went from hobby to full time job for some people. But before all that, in 2012 Homestuck as source material was apparently endless and constant, and let’s just say by 2013, Hussie never had to ASK for specific fan content, assets, musicians, artists, programmers, writers, even money. He just had to allow fandom a place, an address, an email, anything, to let them throw it at him. I have actually never seen anything like it, this weird businesslike use of talents within and out of comic. This is why mid 2012 art assets and minigames suddenly start becoming more populous, culminating in the nearly entirely guest art illustrated, programmed, and animated EOA6 and A7 and guest written post-canon snapchats in 2016. (This is also the time the MSPA forums crashed.) Also the art, programming, and music team for Hiveswap seem comprised of former fan musicians and artists.

One thing that’s no concern for Hiveswap: it will be was beautifully illustrated, scored, and animated by people who loved Homestuck.

In sum: 2012 Homestuck was in full swing. Homestucks flooded cons, more than usual, to such a volume of painted gray tweenagers that cons in general (and hotels) had to rewrite the rulebooks surrounding such things as panels, photoshoots, and draw meets. MSPA servers were still barely holding up, especially after big upd8s, and were constantly being upgraded. Tindeck made a whole genre tag on their site for Homestuck fanmusic. What Pumpkin and Topatoco couldn’t keep up with demand, everything was constantly out of stock. Staff and even Hussie didn’t announce when new products were released until weeks later because if they did, the entire store server would immediately crash for long periods of time. This remained true even into 2016, apparently. There were homestuck plushes, furniture, tattoos, rooms, board games, video games, cards, dolls, products you wouldn’t even think of– a whole years long scrum about establishing copyright and what could sell where to who. Promstuck was a once-a-year reality in random cities around the US or otherwise. Art Team and Music Team had quick fame gain, I know at least Music Team members could feasibly live off of Homestuck revenue as their day job. Ben Nye grey paint actually sold out before a con, and even to this day any gray paint on amazon will be utterly dominated by troll cosplay reviews. Even small trivially related products like the record of the guy who posted “I’m a Member of the Midnight Crew” on youtube was convinced to list the record on ebay for a couple hundred dollars in a sprightly fan bidding war. This was completely unremarkable at the time.

The most interesting thing about Homestuck is that it was a) entirely spread by grassroots efforts and word of mouth, and b) a free webcomic. Though unlike the T.V syndicated and advertised shows like Sherlock or Dr. Who or anime, or the multi-billion dollar industries of Marvel or Nintendo, with nearly zero effort to be anything but weird and internet obscure, Homestuck seemed just as bafflingly popular and literally impossible to avoid as professionally advertised hollywood blockbusters, popular anime, television serial shows, and multi million video games, at least on tumblr, reddit, and 4chan, and conventions. Because of all the factors that went into it’s circuitous development, if you hadn’t read through a huge chunk of Homestuck, you wouldn’t even understand and you couldn’t even properly explain why such a niche but undeniable popularity existed. It was such a phenomenon.

People who had (reasonably) never even heard of Homestuck would stumble upon a fandom antic and observe with growing confusion the busy masses hard at work. Bright blue horse dildo fundraised and sent dutifully to creator? (At least three different dildos on 3 different social media homestuck fan sites were fundraised publicly.) Gruesome artwork of puppet fetish websites carefully placed with pages of critiqued meta with way too much attention? Even the usual deluges of upd8 fanart and fantheory? Entire forum sites and rp sites and chat clients enthusiastically founded just for the constant need to discuss the story? Homestuck became recognizable by horns and grey paint and terrifyingly huge meetups, a nearly frantic aura and art meets or prom dances just for fans - “What the fuck is Homestuck?!” became a fandom catchphrase, because it was always being commented on. Tbh, Homestuck is the r rated precursor for Undertale in memetic inclination and story framing style. Memes, man.

And in the midst of this, in September 2012, Hussie suddenly announced a Homestuck Video Game Kickstarter. The long awaited scalemate plushes were introduced as a reward tier. And unexpectedly, a lavishly illustrated ostensibly Kickstarter exclusive Homestuck tarot deck by popular fanartists as one of the reward tiers.

For context: The entire premise of Homestuck is that it was a transcribed gaming session of a video game that didn’t exist. Opening a Homestuck Video Game Kickstarter was a fitting sequel, the equivalent of waving an 8th book prequel in front of Harry Potter fans, as illustrated by the cream of the crop, if every previous iteration of the Harry Potter series was also free. In addition, the goal was $700,000, and Homestuck had over 2 million online fans. There wasn’t a question if $700,000 was going to be feasible as a funding goal, it was more a question of how far the fandom could goad itself into trying to overshoot it. In fact, I remember being kind of disappointed we didn’t reach 3 million. We capped just below 2.5 million including the paypal donations. Homestuck started making “official” waves in news articles and such, of people who noticed a completely incomprehensible kickstarter got a lot of money somehow, and this in addition to the typically update culture-fast result (the funding goal was reached in about 30 hours of a month long campaign,) was regarded as very bizarre by everyone who didn’t know what Homestuck was.

Trivia: there was even a $10,000 tier introduced as a joke, where “your fantroll will become canon (for one panel, and then die),” which was hastily closed after two people actually took it. (One was an army vet who thoroughly enjoyed the story and basically wanted to donate as thanks, and the other has remained impressively anonymous.) First time I saw Hussie publicly searching for words. I really could say 2012 Homestuck was approaching some kind of mania. Considering how Homestucks were, if someone named their firstborn off a Homestuck character, I wouldn’t have been shocked. The game was funded.

Homestuck hiatus’ started in earnest. This was due to the increased production schedule of both the Kickstarter game being punted into development, the troubled indie game development cycle, and more detailed HTML5 games (openbound) in the comic, and product production, which is, you know, was fair enough. Updates were frequent enough to keep fandom active and frothy well into 2013, where the lack of Game Updates in conjunction with comic hiatus’ were both uncharacteristic and concerning.

Homestuck was abruptly shifted off of regular upd8 schedules, and upd8 notifiers were sadly put to rest.

HIATUS FANDOM (2013-2014)

Here was a unique factor of 2013 Homestuck fandom, for the lack of content, fandom moved en masse to an alternative ‘hiatus fandom,’ in some kind of effort to keep together over the wait. This literally singlehandedly boosted the popularity of games like OFF, Dangan Ronpa, etc. Homestuck hiatus fans were already pro at boosting popularity through word of mouth, and these obscure-but-popular video games were fun to pimp in the meantime. A more recent, toned down example would be 17776.

Here was also something weird. In December 2013 Hussie apparently (as creative director only) had some kind of mysterious would-be trial run with Shiftylook with Namco ips, resulting in Namco High, the Homestuck and Namco character dating sim, where you could date Davesprite (who had a surprising amount of meta character development,) Terezi, Pacman, and Galaga. It was so out of nowhere nobody knew what to do with it. It was an indication of what Homestuck as a franchise was probably going to expand into, though, and an intriguing move on the part of Bandai.

In the comic hiatuses and throughout the roadblocked kickstarter game development, canon-side, the Paradox Space quasi-canon side project and WeLoveFine (later ForFansByFans, who took over merchandising,) continued on the spirit of fandom support- notably the original Art Contest to make new merch- now streamlined into a “fan forge” where any fan can go through a voting process to say, pitch a new product and later be hired on the most recent calendar, then show up working a new Friendsim.... etc.

After this a new generation of internet fans appeared to ‘notice’ Homestuck, hearing it was ending, and joined in, making the Kickstarter garner a kind of shadowed conspiracy-riddled rumortale more than anything, which really outstripped the simplicity of what happened: hardworking but troubled development.

The End of Homestuck was hanging like the sword of Damocles over our collective motivations, you can still find mournful farewell Homestuck fanart floating around to this day! In fact, the fandom believed it was the End of Homestuck several times in 2014-2015. Fandom was tamping down on the corners, cleaning up fanart (relatively), tucking away the crazily ambitious scifi world spanning AU fic. The wild, raw creativity that used to be so rampant through all corners of the internet seemed vaguely diminished, tidier, more understandable, trackable, and efficient. Big Projects never showed their roughs and drafts until the final products anymore, small circles of discourse popped up in pretty polite language and with almost no capslock. The discussions weren’t on What Hussie Would Pop On Us This Time To Overhaul The Entire Plot Of Homestuck, it was more like, did he make the gay Gay Enough™? Vriscourse remained eternal, though.

And it isn’t just nostalgia talking. I’ve noticed some Homestucks still think fandom is a rush of collective community like they’ve never before experienced, that upd8 celebrations are pretty dang wild, and Homestuck convention presences are well-established, but now? In 2015-2017? This is calm and active, there are still some cool projects going on, but nothing like the insanity that was associated with Homestuck. Homestuck was the ‘biggest’ fandom I’ve ever been in, in terms of sheer forced commiseration and activity, and it just has not reached anything close to the levels of 2011-2013 bullshittery and spark plugs.

But the fandom is still present- people treat it like a phase, but Homestuck is still a clever story that retains all the aspects that attracted readers to it in the first place. Also, the fandom still regularly accomplishes minor feats of economics like this even in 2016:

because that is the level of fan fervor that Homestuck inspires, forever, apparently.

I’d last like to note I’ve skipped a lot, I tried to keep it as zoomed out and as general as possible. I’d like to explain the true foibles of 2013 Homestuck fandom, such as the forced formation of entire rp websites, apps, programs, and platforms dedicated to fanning Homestuck more efficiently, how fans formed new mediums and literal ways of expression and vast organized contests on how to express themselves and collaborate better, how there was almost a fan project-pipeline system in place, and how exactly Homestuck influenced Undertale (think of the meta) and an entire mini generation of webcomics and tv show story boarders spiritually, and I haven’t even tried to explain the aspects of Homestuck’s use of framing and how genuinely interesting it is from a storytelling perspective, and how the interaction of Hussie and the fandom and serial updates affected people’s connectivity because out of scope.

...But just for posterity and context of update culture: Quoth Gankro, programmer:

So the biggest thing to keep in mind with MSPA is that it's based entirely off of collaboratively riffing off eachother's ideas. It started out as a faux text-based adventure where people would post prompts, and Andrew would take the ones he liked and riff off of them. As far as I'm concerned this is Andrew's super power: the ability to take a pile of things (comments, art, music, ideas, people) and rapidly recombine them into amazing things. The chatlogs in Homestuck full of amazing back and forths? That's just what talking to Andrew in chat was. Constant riffing and feedback loops....

Anyway, this is all to say that the genesis of ideas, and even how things got developed, is honestly really murky with Homestuck? Everything was kinda adhoc, a riff-on-a-riff, and done in incredibly little time....

I can't emphasize this scramble enough. Andrew was a ceaseless content machine, and I don't think I was ever "blocked" on him producing content. Which is ridiculous considering how much content is packed into our games. (like, hundreds of pages of dialogue)

Michael Bowman, music team:

Volume 5 going out of its way to include gobs and gobs of material definitely changed the project; the floodgates opened. I think people admired Andrew's astonishingly prolific pace from 2009 to 2012, and between 2010 and 2011 the music project had the same vibe: we released one or two albums monthly.

-fan interviews courtesy though the efforts of u/drewlinky

Homestuck and it’s fandom has the unique distinction of being nigh unexplainable, as in, it took this long just to fully outline how the Homestuck Kickstarter was always going to be wildly successful, and how development was always going to take years even without the incident with the Odd Gentlemen, who clearly didn’t understand why Homestuck was popular or even why that mattered, (pre- Undertale), in the first place, but with the news of Viz taking on Homestuck’s license on account of that viral-like marketability so now there’s an actual possibility that Homestuck will finally become…… anime, why not hearken back to the good ol days and be relentlessly picayune for the hell of it?

Happy 10/25!

#HAPPY 10/25!#homestuck #hiveswap development is such a saga too #i also didn't talk about specifics of recursive fandom (fans of fans of fans) but wow #2012-2014 #hscom

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alluran · 7 years ago

Text

if you like causin’ trouble up in hotel rooms and if you like having secret little rendezvous

a/n: I wrote at least a year and a half ago, so there are some things that probably don’t actually count as canon, but canon compliant. This happens before Shiro disappears and there’s one reference to a Garrison flashback when they’re younger that’s shown in s7e1, but no season 7 spoilers. also, I haven’t written is a long time, but I wanted to do something so here is 4k+ of bonding and revelations

It was easier to slink into the control room unnoticed than he thought it would be with Coran and Pidge keeping the weirdest hours and the space mice popping up out of nowhere constantly. Keith moved to a control board, holding his breath as he listened to the Castle’s hum in the quiet hour.

He had fumbled a bit trying to get Allura’s light show up and running - he wasn’t even trying to get it settled on one particular constellation, just reached a hand out to follow the trail of a comet in motion when suddenly the entire projection went spinning. He slammed his eyes shut against the onslaught of dizziness, though the lights still danced behind his eyelids, and threw his arms up; a yell torn from his lips.

The rough growl of his voice echoed in the room, he opened his eyes frantically glancing back toward the hall way to make sure someone hadn’t heard him or could be running to investigate.

Could blaming it on lingering phantom venom in the castle still be within the realm of blame? Ooor had he expired that excuse when he had broken the-

Keith shook his head, turning back from the doorway to the projection. He wasn’t expecting the Milky Way - that would have been too cliche and besides, he wasn’t really looking for that one - but wherever he did land, had more than plenty to look at. He sucked in a breath, there were at least 14 planets and maybe a hundred moons. Planets with thin rings or wide rings. One smaller planet was almost completely hidden behind its many rings that looped and expanded like the years on a tree. His eyes traced the room at a crawl and it could have been seconds or hours or maybe the entire night by the time his eyes fell to his shoes, studying the neon storms curling over varying constellations and blips of untold worlds on moons and planets and asteroid belts hovering by his ankles. The blue lights were stark against the scuffed up knees of his black jeans where they glowed and pulsed with life. He - carefully, very carefully not to send the entire room spinning again - raised his hands, slowly uncurling his fingers and okay he felt something watching the light of stars wink back up at him from his palms.

He huffed a laugh, “The Garrison’s got nothing on this.”

Keith shrugged out of his jacket, folding it end over end before placing it on floor. The cool temperature of the floor felt good against his back and shoulders, slowly easing him down from the high of beating another one of the gladiator’s levels. It soothed the dull, satisfying ache in his muscles.

Space didn’t really adhere to internal time clocks (adjusting their human bodies to the constant dark of space had been the worst and deemed fit to even deal them jet lag that lasted for whatever two and a half weeks looked like out here.), but at least on some biological basis Earthlings and Alteans had synchronized enough that there was a solid block of time where everyone was quiet, sleeping or getting around to it. When they converted 24 hours to ticks for Allura and Coran had gone on for ages how infinitesimal human days were, how no wonder why they were still primitive. It had been a trip and he still got a migraine thinking about the formulas and charts that had littered the control room in the mathematical process.

So, he didn’t believe Coran and Allura literally went to bed when they did, Altean days had translated to around 32 hours with only six of them needed for rest.

Altean militia worked on four.

Children and adolescents were given eight, but when you reached maturity and able-bodied it was considered lazy.

Honestly, he was just glad Shiro had made it apparent from day one that sleep wasn’t really a matter of negotiation with humans, especially teenagers. He omitted the little detail where the Garrison trained them like the army, up and in uniform before the sun so much as grazed the horizon. Keith didn’t need nine to nine and a half each night, but the look on Coran and Allura’s faces when Shiro had told them stopped Keith from correcting him.

A middle ground was found and, unfortunately, an automatic timer had been put in place on the training deck to shut down after a certain time at ‘night’- as requested by Shiro, chief of curfew police.

Which is what brought him here, breath evening out and muscles still buzzing with an entire solar system arced around him. It reminded him of the desert - weird, since it wasn’t like the desert at all and he hated the desert towards the end of it. The wind had been brutal out there sometimes, turning the skin on his face raw (which is why he had to start wearing the bandanna, not as a fashion statement in homage to old cowboy movies like Lance had accused him of), but it was far off the Garrison’s radar, and property line, he had checked. Not so much that he was biased, which he unabashedly was, the Garrison worked more like a prison with curfew enforcers (guards that probably did a term on the brute squad) and always a light on, somewhere. Of course the instructors and government officials didn’t have curfews, certainly not for the scientists constantly churning out new tech to beat out other countries. Midnight and sometimes you could barely see your shadow on the sidewalk.

But the desert?

Miles and miles and miles out from the Garrison?

It was like space.

He’d use the filched hovercraft and siphoned the fuel energy to get it running just to go out farther, as far as he could go with enough to get there and back and a little left over in case something came up. There was a trail of ridges cut out from thousands of years erosion that he could lay out on and it was like it was just him and the sky - no other point of land high enough to break his line of sight, to break the illusion. It’s what he felt in the cockpit, piloting to the highest point in the sky until the only thing bringing him down was the radio fuzz laced with the familiar, warm voice of his instructor telling him the takeoff example had sufficiently been done 1200 feet ago-

“Now, bring it back in, cadet, before Iverson really does think you’ve hot-wired it this time.”

He chuckled into the comm, “Hey, all he had was a chip on his shoulder and circumstantial evidence, but copy that.”

Just him and the sky.

It set something like butterflies loose in his stomach.

Back in the desert, he got the chance to remap the sky like he did as a kid, not in vectors or pounds of air pressure, but constellations. He’d all but forgotten about the stories he had strung together to memorize the placement of each if you looked backward or forward, up or down. He always liked Aquila the Eagle in summer and Ursa Major the Great Bear in spring, but his favorite was Orion in winter even the relentless teasing from Shiro about Keith always being ready for a fight too hadn’t bothered him (he may have gotten one or two newer digs in since of course Keith’s bayard is a sword).

Sure he missed the familiarity of the Milky Way, but it wasn’t so bad laying under the jumbled mass of stars he didn’t know the names of. It gave him a little bit of freedom, no human eyes had laid on the stars or planets and he could trace out his own constellations - like the mice or maybe one that immortalizes the time he punched Sendak, he’s not picky.

He fit his hand under his head, cushioning it better against the floor and stretched out a leg. He could lay there for hours, even if it meant getting two hours sleep tops before Shiro was knocking on his door for wake-up ca-

“Closing time, open all the doors and let you out into the world. Closing time, turn all of the lights on over e-ver-y boy and e-ver-y girl.”

Keith cursed under his breath and sat up, mentally scanning through a list of escape possibilities. Maybe if he made a run for it Lance (because it was obviously Lance, no one had that much bravado singing to themselves in the middle of the night - let alone that song - and because the universe hated him.) wouldn’t catch him? He could easily hide out in a shadowed corner of the room while Lance cut the projection, mumbling to himself about it being Pidge.

Keith would never be the first suspect, when she’d left it up and running more times than any of them could count.

But was that what happened?

No.

“Closing time, you don’t have to go home, but ya can’t stay here. I know who I want to take me ho-”

The second he sat up and turned around it was just in time to startle Lance on his way past the doorway, he jumped at the sudden movement, frozen in some weird combative stance that just highlighted his lanky limbs and then, took to blinking owlishly back at Keith once he snapped back to himself. His thin brows rose high on his forehead when they made eye contact and Keith groaned as Lance pulled out one of his earbuds. Keith could hear the guitar riffs all the way from his spot halfway across the room. Didn’t he know that could cause him permanent hearing loss? And being a Paladin sort of meant they were supposed to be at their peak form. It was torture watching Lance look around the room slowly, so agonizingly slowly. He was going to ride Keith’s case about being some dopey romantic laying under the stars for weeks, probably years knowing Lance.

He was doomed.

There was no way he was getting out of this.

He’d be nagged and laughed at for being some dopey romantic that took long naps under artificial stars.

Lance nodded his head once, “‘Sup.”

Keith narrowed his eyes. “I’ll punch you if you tell anyone.”

Lance snorted and rolled his eyes as he walked into the room, “That’s dramatic. Dunno what you’ve got going on in that messy mullet head of yours but I guarantee you ‘likes to cool down after training by watching the stars’ is weak material - we were literally enrolled in the same school because we like this stuff. Mind if I pull up a jacket?”

He didn’t say anything, only narrowed his eyes and scooted his jacket over so they wouldn’t be sitting so close together.

Lance sighed, folding his jacket over and fixing the hood as extra cushion. When he laid down, he offered Keith one of the ear pieces on his headphones, turning his phone off and pocketing it with both earbuds when Keith shook his head. It was almost unnerving having someone do that, making a show of giving him their undivided attention and wanting to include him without a second thought. Especially when it came from Lance ‘KEITH AND LANCE, NECK-AND-NECK, RIVAL PILOTS’ McClain.

Lance situated his hands under his head and looked up.

Keith had barely caught the almost imperceptible gasp from Lance. Part of him hated that he only did because he was still watching him.

Not in a weird way. He just still wasn’t convinced this wasn’t going to turn into some sort of roast at his expense, he had to keep his guard up.

“This isn’t the Milky Way.”

“Nope.”

“It’s not any of the ones we’ve received distress signals from either?” Lance scanned the room fervently and Keith distantly wondered if he saw the same constellations or if he formed his own on the unexplored frontier.

Keith laid back down, looking back up at the stars and waving his hand in the air. “Nah, but finding this one...wasn’t exactly intentional. Just, uh, don’t wave your arms in the air or anything like that. Trust me.”

“Got it.” The blue paladin tilted his head, shuffling his legs as he moved the toe of his sneaker out of the rings of a planet. “When I was a kid, I went through at least 20 packs of those glow-in-the-dark stars and planets.” Lance laughed, “I’m pretty sure the white sticky tack is permanently fused into our ceiling.”

Lance looked over at him, expectantly, and Keith felt apprehension, they were sharing, this was a thing, before the words came stumbling far too easily. “I never got to do the glow-stars-on-the-ceiling thing, I never stayed anywhere long enough.”

For a moment, he’s afraid he’s broken some unspoken agreement when Lance flinched, like the clunky words had punched his side. Keith was sure everyone knew his business after the incident with Griffin, the Garrison was overrun with gossips and rumor mills and, unfortunately, he had been the unlucky candidate to have their rumor confirmed as fact. Just as he thought he was going to drown in awkward and be left to wallow in his crap communication skills, Lance spoke up.

“Did you ever want them?”

Keith huffed bemusedly, “Not really, my dad and I lived in the desert, so we saw the real thing that far out from the base. I didn’t really care to notice space as a career or anything until I was shipped off to the Garrison. It was kind of a last stop as a ward of the state - either make something of my life and stop being a parasite on society or go back to juvenile detention.”

Lance cringed. “That sounds like one of Iverson’s more rallying pep talks. Dude, that’s...that’s quiznaked. Or is Quiznacked?”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re saying them the say way, does it really matter?” Keith shrugged. “I didn’t always know I wanted this or even liked it, but then, I did. I didn’t mind the lectures or the homework or mandatory assignments that had us set an alarm at 2 a.m. to catch a meteor shower if it got at the pilot controls.”

“Who knew? Keith Kogane actually listening in class.” Lance scrunched his eyebrows in thought, his words hedged nervously. “But, you never paid attention in the classes we had together? That is, when you bothered to show up at all.”

“Things changed after my first handful of times in the simulator and I got assigned to pilot class. It was fine for awhile, Shiro was the instructor and he bailed me out of hot water I don’t know how many times. For the first time, I could see something past detention halls and rides shoved in the back of official vehicles. He was even looking into guardianship papers.”

Lance’s face lit up. “No way, man.”

“Yeah, it was pretty cool. But then, the Kerberos assignment came up and Shiro had to leave for prep and Iverson stepped in. ‘The Garrison Machine’ started to make sense to me and I hated it. People wouldn’t stop pushing me further and further - Takashi Shirogane was going up into space and there was someone that needed to fill in as top of the class, the next Garrison success story.

“Suddenly, Shiro wasn’t coming back and it went from being honed for his place to “Maybe you can learn from his mistakes.” Got caught breaking curfew to pilot illegal space crafts on a racing circuit and on top of my grades and the fights, that was it.” Keith sat up and rested his arms on his knees. “I had kinda forgotten what it was like to look up at the sky and not see government chains.”

“Understandable.” Lance shrugged as he stood, aloof. “That’s great and all - I mean, congrats on finding your passion again - but using your free time just laying underneath a projection isn’t the solution, Black Parade.”

Keith bristled, his voice racking up a few octaves again. “Are you kidding me?! We were having a moment, I just spilled my guts out to you!” Lance ignored him to shut down the projection and Keith felt his blood pressure rise. Every single time. “Nope, don’t remember. Didn’t happen.”

“You’re an a-”

“Take a deep breath, Mayday Parade.“ The blue paladin scoffed and waved his arms dramatically. “My point is: you’re spending all of your time down here when the real thing is right there, man. C’mon, I have something to show you.”

Keith threw his hands up and huffed. “Wh- Those aren’t even the same thing, Lance. One is a song and the other is a band.”

Lance cackled and he realized too late that he had walked into something. “You would know, mullet. Now, let’s jet.”

Keith didn’t get a chance to answer as Lance yanked him to his feet and dragged him toward the door. It was almost dizzying the amount of hallways and turns he was pulled in. Just when he thought they would be lost in the far caverns of the Castle for eternity, they passed a door and Lance threw on the emergency breaks, nearly reverse slingshot-ting them into the door frame.

“I found this place about a month or so ago when I definitely not snooping.”

“How am I supposed to take that sentence as you not actively admitting you were snooping?”

“I’ll have you know, I was stumbling innocently back from the bathroom and missed our hallway at whatever substitutes as 3 a.m. around here.”

“Fair enough.”

Lance yanked him in front of a door, it was just like every single other door in the castle - crisp and shiny and suspiciously clean if Lance had been coming back and forth here. He was not about to release his breath yet because this wasn’t a Saturday morning cartoon where hidden rooms or forbidden wings were marked with a creepy encryption or giant, bold faced letter spelling KEEP OUT. Allura’s sudden wrath if the mice sent her some ESP message that they were lurking around her house and just going wherever they pleased was a lot more likely though.

He didn’t know what he was expecting, everyone had learned through individualized experiences the hard way about expecting or assuming certain outcomes from Lance’s ‘surprises’, Lance finally dropped his hand to enter a code into the key pad, bringing Keith to another detailed revelation.

Since when did Lance keep up physical contact with him for extended periods of time without griping about it? (i.e. the cuffs, any time they had to train in pairs, or that one time they were the only ones cuffed as a punishment because Coran couldn’t find a garment big enough to fit both of them after Pidge enlightened him on ‘Get Along’ shirts.) And since when was he not painfully aware of every second of physical contact? He blamed Shiro’s comforting dad shoulder pats that lingered for just the right amount of time and Hunk’s not-really-terrible group hugs. The point was, it was still Lance.

Oil and water or, after that one mission, lighter fluid.

It wasn’t a bad thing, it just shocked him.

The doors swooshed open, scrambling Keith out of his thoughts as Lance swept an arm out in a grand gesture. “After you.”

An observation deck definitely wasn’t one of his possible guesses.

The air lock? Yeah, maybe. But not this. “It’s an observation deck, Lance.”

“Thank you, dropout.”

“When are you going to let that go? And technically, you, Pidge, and Hunk are dropouts too, so that insult is null and void.”

“Okay, but we dropped out to save the universe, you dropped out to go sulk in a sand dune.”

His fingers flexed at his side, palm warm and begrudgingly memorizing the feel of Lance’s next to his. He wanted to get along with the team, he didn’t particularly enjoy feeling like the last pick in gym class any time he hung out with Pidge, Hunk, and Lance while they talked endlessly about inside jokes and stories, but he figured it would be harder than this. Keith couldn’t name the day or hour or which planet they had been on when he and Lance didn’t constantly need a buffer or ref. It had been irritating sure after a year out in the desert doing his own, quiet thing whenever, going from that to knowing that he could have been walking off the edge of a cliff and Lance would still be trailing a few paces behind him and working to catch up - talking about marketplace stalls that looked cool or complaining about one of their old professors or asking if it mattered which restroom he went in or goading him into making puns or carrying on a conversation in puns after he had found out that Keith had seen The Princess Bride more than once and knew some of the references.

It was a...development.

That still didn’t change the fact he was standing on a regular, old training deck. He scrunched his eyebrows as he looked into the dark room, eyes trailing deliriously high to follow the dome of the ceiling.

“A little faith, please, Keith.” Lance quipped as he watched Keith look increasingly doubtful.

“Okay, last time you said that we almost wound up in jail on Zowhara and got a month of pod-cleaning duty for the trouble and time it took Allura and Shiro to get us out.”

“Anyways, the point is this isn’t like the other training decks and it’s worth it.” Lance jerked his head in a direction, sliding his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and turning on his heel.

Begrudgingly, Keith followed. Even if it turned out to be a legitimate claim the ‘it’s not like the others’ statement made him concerned and someone had to be there in case Lance somehow wound up getting yanked out into space - again. He felt a little validated in his worry when Lance traipsed up to a window not blocked by a safety handrail.

So he didn’t feel like his hesitancy was unfounded.

He hung back as Lance turned to see if he was following, he looked like he wanted to tease Keith for being the red paladin - temperamental, fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants, zero impulse control - and hesitating, but he didn’t. Not even an eye roll, just grinned at him. “You ever see Ferris Bueller’s Day Off?”

Keith laughed full and loud, the sound echoing off through the high ceiling. He barely managed to wheeze, “Suddenly, everything about you makes sense.”

“Ha-ha. Hilarious. Just get over here, chuckles. We don’t have all night, our wake-up call is in four hours and I want to get some rest.”

Keith felt an old reflex curl on his tongue, the “You didn’t have to stay with me.” all too ready. Hunk had graciously walked him through that one, just because they hadn’t known Keith as long didn’t mean they saw him as less of a friend. He still had a long road ahead of him working through what too many foster placements and a solitary year in the desert did. Lance raised his eyebrow, silently calling him out on it, daring him to say it out loud.

“Get over here, Kogane.” Lance faced the window again, shuffling forward until his toes were touching the window, the bright white of them reflecting in the glass. He bent forward, until his head was angled down against it.

Keith copied his stance, his hair tickling his nose where it was flattened between him and the glass, and looked down, only managing a pathetic attempt at actual words and resigning himself to an audible gasp. Lance mercifully didn’t throw the embarrassing sound back in his face, but Keith could hear his smiles in his words.

“It’s awesome, right? Back in Cuba, I would wake up right before dawn to get to the beach. There were so many of us that it was a thrill just in itself getting changed and out the door without someone waking up or already awake. We’re a big family and I love them, love being around them constantly, but going out there in the morning was my quiet space. I’d paddle out as far as I could.” Something Keith doesn’t think is for him to see flits and settled itself across Lance’s face. There’s a tilt to one side of his mouth that lifted up in a way he hadn’t seen before. His eyes looked out onto the galaxy, but it wasn’t the stars he was seeing judging by the light and distant glaze that envelope his eyes.

‘Varadero,’ Keith’s mind supplied, the scene forming in his head like he could smell the ocean and hear the lapping of the waves or caw of birds. The crisp wind whipping past him. It’s something private and-

Oh.

“I’d get to where the shore was behind me and everything in my direction was sun and sky and the sun lighting up the ocean. In one tiny second of time, the sky and the water are the same and it’s just...just-

“It all feels like flying, y’know? Like, that part in the simulator where you have to maneuver through the tailspin and a dive and it looks like it’s just you free falling into nothing but sky, but way better.”

Him and sky.

And Lance.

#Keith #Lance #klance #Voltron: Legendary Defender #the writing tag #i've stared at this for too long so sorry for any mistakes #I may eventually give it more time and editing to put up on my ao3 #cliche 1d song and i'm only a little sorry

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noorakardemmomesaetre · 8 years ago

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Southside High

Chapter Seven

Or read it on Ao3

Chapter One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six

Pairing: Betty Cooper x Jughead Jones

Summary: Only fools fall for you, only fools Only fools do what I do, only fools fall -Troye Sivan

The Day the Northside Arrived

“Yo, Jughead!”

Sweet Pea’s booming voice combined with the fact that FP had finished off the last of the coffee before Jughead had rolled out of bed twenty minutes late this morning has Jughead in an especially irritated mood. He can feel the way his jaw is clenching, the vein in his neck prominent, as he walks past the unusually long line waiting at security.

The school cop had quickly been made to understand that there would be no need for Jughead to participate in their faux metal detector pat-downs.

Words had not been necessary for the explanation.

“Morning Jug,” Sweet Pea observes, leaning against a locker, his cocky grin begging to meet Jughead’s fist, “you look like shit.”

Toni offers Jughead a sympathetic smile as she swings open her locker next to his and Jughead cocks his neck to one side, attempting to release some pent up tension.

“Northside starts today,” Toni says nonchalantly and Jughead sighs, opening his locker and rubbing his temples. That explains the long security line. He had been dreading this day since the school announced the temporary merge several months ago.

“I can’t wait to see how many Northside girls are interested in what Sweet Pea has to offer,” Sweet Pea grins, rubbing his hands together and speaking about himself in the third person, which elicits a harsh eye-roll from Jughead.

“Even Southside girls aren’t interested in what you have to offer, Sweets,” Toni teases, pulling out her Statistics book and tossing a playful smile at Sweet Pea’s scowl.

Jughead is attempting to yank out his Spanish textbook from the clearly over-stuffed and unorganized depths of his locker when he hears it. The softest groan of annoyance coming from the security line.

“That’s because you’re always stealing their attention away!” Sweet Pea glares past Jughead at Toni, running his fingers through his jet-black hair.

He hears it again, over his friends’ bickering, a soft snap of irritation and Jughead glances over at the metal detectors, his heart sinking when he sees her. Tight blonde ponytail, tight pastel pink sweater, tight dark-wash jeans. Even with the hard frown on her face, she’s fucking beautiful.

“Aw, Sweet Pea,” Toni shakes her head at him, a teasing glint in her eye as she slams her locker shut, dragging Jughead’s attention back to their conversation, “if it’s that easy to steal their attention away, you never had it to begin with.”

The words of frustration coming from security push Jughead to the edge and Sweet Pea and Toni jump at the sound of his locker door slamming as he saunters over to Eugene, the dipshit security guard currently making this girl’s life unnecessarily difficult.

He watches as she walks back to the line, the swish of her ponytail and swing of her hips hypnotizing him until she turns around and he suddenly remembers why he’s there.

“Enough.”

The word is laced with more venom than he had originally intended, but the darkness of his tone combined with the authority in his stance is more than effective. Eugene quickly steps back, allowing the girl to rush through to the container holding her shoes. The aroma of soft sugar cookies and sweet strawberries wafts around Jughead like a light, airy mist and he stands there, watching her, this girl who has peaked his interest in more ways than he would like to admit.

Before she can turn and acknowledge him, he shifts and heads back to his friends, a small part of him hoping the large embroidered Serpent on his back will be a clear warning to her.

“You alright, Jones?” the suggestive curiosity in Toni’s tone only serves to piss Jughead off, knowing how out-of-character he’s acting, and he scoffs.

“I’m fine.”

But he wasn’t fine. Far from it, in fact.

“Are you listening to me, Jughead? Never fall in love. Never even let a woman get close to you,” those drunken words had fallen out of his father’s mouth too many times for Jughead to count since he was 13 years old, “they’ll ruin you. They’ll ruin every single fucking thing we’ve built.”

His mother had taken his sister and run four years ago, moved to another state without looking back, leaving nothing but a broken alcoholic and a son too young to understand in her wake. He’d spent the next two years picking up the pieces after his father, pushing him to continue leading the Serpents through his whiskey-induced haze.

On his 16th birthday, Jughead had been initiated into the Serpents himself. What was expected of him and what had come easy to him. Joining the Serpents was a given. The initiation beat down ritual had been long awaited. He had embraced the Serpent Prince title like an old friend.

The Serpents were family to him, one which appeared to be his greatest priority alongside his father and the little sister he wrote to once a week. Jughead loved to write, his true passion lay with a laptop and an imagination above everything else. The Red and Black had become the perfect place to focus his energy, when the Serpents didn’t need him.

And while the women of Southside High were interested in him, he could barely see them through the weight of the dim world that rested on his young shoulders.

Which is why, when a petite blonde from the Northside had shaken him to his very core that morning only to end up in his Red and Black meeting later that afternoon, Jughead was seething.

He had survived almost the entirety of high school on the path that was beaten down for him without a distraction in sight. And yet, here she was, bulldozing her way into his life like a burst of sunshine smelling like a goddamn Sunday morning. He had quickly noticed the way she was the only person in the entire meeting taking notes. His gut told him she’d be a fantastic journalist. A great addition to the student newspaper he had built from the ground up.

And so he’d immediately shut it down in the only way he could without calling out her name specifically: No Northsiders.

And she had retaliated.

She was fire and ice, rocky and smooth, sweet with a hint of sour, too much for Jughead Jones, and yet he couldn’t get enough. He was addicted to her wit, her mind, her humor, the challenge she posed him and the way her smile melted pieces of him that had long since frozen over.

He’d fought hard to avoid her and when she’d lost her lack of a decent meal combined with a liter of jungle juice all over his boots, he’d lost his inner battle to keep her at arm’s length. At least for one night. Swooping her up in his arms with ease, bringing her to her friends, attempting to ignore the way her arms were wrapped tightly around his neck like he was some kind of cigarette-smoking tattooed super hero.

He saw it. The way Toni had looked at him, confirming his deepest fear, as if to say, you lost, Jones. You tried to fight it and you lost.

“You’re an idiot,” Toni snaps as she slides a pair of pliers on the ground next to where he’s lying under his father’s truck.

“Yeah, I know.” Jughead had just finished telling Toni about how he had finally mustered up the courage to call Betty late on Friday night, feeling like he’d really put himself out there, only to have her tell him she was busy and immediately hang up.

“I don’t think you do, actually,” she continues, the heels of her boots clicking against the pavement of the garage, “you love her.”

“I don’t.” He attempts to loosen a bolt that’s stuck in a particularly hard-to-reach spot and huffs when it’s much tighter than he had anticipated, wiping the sweat off his brow with the back of his forearm.

“You do, Jones. I still can’t believe you didn’t try to reach out to her,” Toni says in disbelief, tossing a wrench down to him, the metal sliding until it stops an inch from his face, “women like Betty Cooper won’t wait around forever, you know. And some midnight booty call from a cheap burner phone isn’t going to make up for you completely ghosting.”

“I liked you better when you and Cheryl were fighting,” he huffs, sliding the pliers out from under the truck, “and it wasn’t a booty call.”

“You don’t deserve her.”

Her voice is quiet now, laced with disappointment and Jughead rolls himself out from underneath the truck, covered in grease and dirt as he stares up at her.

“You think I don’t know that?” he says, his voice growing louder as he heaves himself up to a standing position, “you think I haven’t thought about that every single fucking day since I met her?”

He steps forward but Toni stands her ground, her arms crossed, her eyes narrowed as she takes him in, running his fingers through his dark wild curls, his beanie slung across the bench seat of the truck.

“You don’t deserve her because you’re not allowing yourself the chance to,” Toni says, shaking her head at him, frustration straining through her voice, “you didn’t tell her your phone’s been broken? You didn’t go see her after Friday night? At school? You just thought you could show up at the Black and Gold on Wednesday and what? She’d be waiting there with that perfect smile, happy to climb back on your lap?”

“I don’t fucking need this,” he says, the wrench he’s holding sliding against the garage door with a loud bang as he walks past her.

“No, you do fucking need this,” she says, reaching out to yank his arm until he looks back at her, “how long are you just going to push away everyone who cares about you?”

He’s staring at her, his mouth set in a hard line.

“You’re not FP. Your mom didn’t leave because of you,” she says, her voice softening as she drops his arm, “so quit punishing yourself as if she did.”

He looks down, swallowing loudly and shaking his head as he stares at the pavement, only lifting his eyes when the clicking of Toni’s heeled boots starts again.

“Well, I’m going to go pick up Cheryl. We’re heading down to Sweetwater River for a swim and you know I can’t wait to see that beautiful bod in a bikini,” Toni sighs wistfully before picking up her purse and turning her gaze back to Jughead, “we’ll be there for a while if you and Betty would like to join us. You know, after you finish groveling.”

It takes 45 minutes for Jughead to take a hot shower, put on clean clothes, and ride to Betty Cooper’s house. 2 minutes for him to gather up the courage to get off his bike and face her. 30 seconds for him to walk up her driveway to her front door. And 1 minute for Alice Cooper to dismiss him with an air of superiority and a clipped, “Sorry, Betty’s not here.”

He debates heading home and being productive, nothing like writing a few chapters of his book or reading a new novel to distract himself from the woes of his current love life situation. But he already knows where his heart lies and he can’t give up yet. He heads over to Cheryl’s, hoping to catch her before her and Toni leave for the river, but is quickly met with a resounding, “they’ve already gone.”

Sighing to himself, he rides to the one place he knows will pick him up when he’s feeling especially disgruntled: Pop’s.

After parking his bike and pulling off his helmet, he yanks his beanie on and heads inside, his eyes scanning every booth in search of a blonde ponytail.

“Jughead! Shall I throw a burger on?” Pop Tate grins a toothy grin at Jughead who’s busy swallowing his disappointment after realizing she’s not there.

“Yes, please. Extra cheese, Pop.”

He finds a seat at a booth in the back, figuring a burger will at least mend his empty stomach pains, and sets his helmet on the space next to him. Running his hand over his face, he sighs, wondering how he had gotten himself into this mess. It’s not like she’s going to want to be with him. A beautiful, intelligent, funny Northside girl and her sarcastic, dark, gang member boyfriend? It’s a cliché he’s read too many times (something he would never admit out loud), but not one he has ever seen occur in real life.

“Thanks Pop!” her voice rings out melodically in front of him as she walks out of the bathroom and grabs a strawberry milkshake off of the counter.

“Betty!” her name leaves his lips before he even has time to think about what he wants to say next, her eyes raising to meet his in surprise.

“Jughead?”

He quickly stands, leaving his helmet at his seat as he walks over to where she’s leaning against the counter, smiling a smile he can’t stop from adorning his face at the sight of her.

“I was just looking for you.”

“Oh?” her eyes are wide as she stares at him, her pouty pink lips parted in surprise as her ponytail stills behind her.

“Um, yeah,” Jughead says, laughing lightly, his nerves starting to get the better of him as he shoves his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket to keep himself from reaching out and pulling her into a warm hug, “I wanted to talk to you, see how you’ve been.”

“You wanted to…see how I’ve been?” she repeats, her eyebrows furrowing as she sets her milkshake down on the counter.

“Order up, Jughead!” Pop calls out, hitting the bell and setting his plated burger next to her milkshake.

Jughead smiles tightly in acknowledgement at Pop before turning his gaze back to Betty, biting his lip anxiously and pulling off his beanie, wringing it between his fingers.

Her gaze is set on him, making no move to continue the conversation, but not leaving either and before he can come up with an excuse to flee, he decides it’s now or never, “yeah, Betty, look, I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I’m an idiot, I-“

“Betty?”

The voice of Richie Sandoval interrupts Jughead’s broken apology speech and his eyes flash to the guy who’s now walking over to them from a booth at the other side of the restaurant. The concern laced through Richie’s voice and etched across his expression makes Jughead grit his teeth, his beanie held tightly between his fingers.

“Is everything alright?”

“Oh, yes…Jughead was just-“

“Leaving,” Jughead finishes for her, putting two and two together and yanking his beanie back onto his head, heat crawling up his neck and onto his cheeks as he heads back over to the booth that holds his helmet.

“Jughead! Wait-“

She’s calling after him but he’s already thrown a $10.00 bill on the table to pay for his uneaten burger, pushing open the back door to Pop’s on his way to his bike.

Wow. The response to this fic has truly been mind-blowing and I can't tell you how much I appreciate every single kudos, comment, and like on both here and Ao3. You all are so incredible and supportive and I can't express my appreciation enough.

I hope you enjoyed a taste of Jughead's POV! I'd love to hear your thoughts, so leave them if you'd like! ❤

#bughead fanfiction #bughead #southside high #betty cooper x jughead jones #southside serpent jughead

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dezembergirl · 7 years ago

Text

Seventeen

Part 7 of a Series (read 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6; as always inspired by @nonibanoni )

fandom: Skam

pairing: Noorhelm

originally published to ao3

Thanks to a loud banging noise and string of curses Noora jolted awake ten minutes before her alarm was due to go off. Her momentary confusion gave way to a mumbled «fuck» when the clock on her nightstand read 06:30. She groaned and let her head drop back into the pillow. It was just her kind of luck, the one time she actually had a halfway pleasant dream Eskild had the glorious idea of rummaging through the kitchen at half past six in the morning. She huddled the blanket over her head and pressed her arms up to cover her ears. When the noises didn’t relent after a minute and the sheet threatened to block out her oxygen supply Noora gave up and tossed the blanket from her body.

There was no use in going back to sleep now and she mentally noted down a speech to properly reprimand Eskild. Half past six, how the hell was he even up right now? At least Linn - the most noise sensitive person Noora had ever encountered - would take her side in this. It was already light outside so she didn’t have to bother with finding the light switch to collect her socks and a sweater. Their shared apartment was never properly heated, partly because the rent was already high enough without any additional heating expenses and the bigger reason being that besides her neither Eskild nor Linn cared about turning on the radiators. She made a mental reminder to scold Eskild about that later, she would not spend another winter sleeping with 3 layered blankets.

Dropping back down on the mattress, she pulled on the socks and reached for her buzzing phone. The list of notifications seemed to stretch endlessly when she scrolled down. It took another loud bang from the kitchen for her brain to kick into gear and make sense of spew of unread texts.

The only thing worse than waking up this early was waking up to find it was her birthday.

If she had to pick, April 6th was easily in the top three worse days of the year; right up their with her annual dentist visit and final exam’s day. Eying her tousled sheets she considered getting back under her blanket and hiding for the next 24 hours. She was an exemplary student when it came to never skipping a single lesson, so one day wouldn’t really hurt anybody, right?

But the thought of her friends disappointed faces if she should really stay home was enough guilt to get her up from the mattress. She rubbed at her eyes and heard the satisfying pop from her vertebras when she turned her head side to side, cracking her neck. She would get through today - for her friends - and who knew, it might not turn out to be as bad as her last few birthdays.

She immediately scratched that flash of optimism when the girls’ group text wasn’t only filled with a wave of congratulatory messages and hearts but also an already half-formed plan on where they would go out celebrating tonight. She thought about shutting them down right now but besides Sana’s text from 10 minutes ago, the rest of the messages had been sent somewhere between midnight and 2 am. It was useless to protest now and it would be more effective in person anyways.

Noora scrolled through the rest of the messages, a few from other people at school and her friends in Spain. Her heart sank when she found her parents’ annual message, wishing her well and good luck for the year ahead. She wrote back a curt thank you and did her best to suppress the squirming in her stomach.

The kitchen had quieted down and opening her bedroom door, Noora almost ran face first into Eskild, holding a plate and her favourite mug.

«Oh, what the fuck Eskild?» Noora squeaked and scolded herself for not managing to sound pissed at him whatsoever.

But before she could go off on an angry tirade on how fucking inconsiderate it was to make that much noise in the morning, her eyes caught the plate in his hands, complete with a burning candle sticking slightly off center out of a - no doubt freshly bought - chocolate muffin.

«What …» she started.

«Happy birthday old lady!» he forced the plate into her hand. «I know I know, it’s not an actual cake but I promise it tastes good. And we got you your favorite tea and I promise I’ll do the groceries and toilet paper today, so you don’t have to worry about any of that.»

Noora must have stared at him with a shocked expression because his wide eyes faltered and his brows furrowed in worry. He opened and closed his mouth, apparently trying to figure out where he had gone wrong but before he could say anything she threw her arms around his neck.

The tea that was still in his hand half spilled on her well worn ‘I heart Madrid’ sweater but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Eskild smelled like a mixture of beer and weed and when she pulled back to look at his beaming face his eyes were smaller than usual; she faintly recalled him announcing he would go out last night.

«It’s perfect, thank you!» Noora said.

«You like it?» he leaned against the door frame and Linn poked her head out beside him.

«Yes, of course.»

«Okay, okay, you have to blow out the candle and wish for something.» Eskild nodded towards the plate.

She did, even though wishing for everything to stay like it was right now felt incredibly cheesy.

After a few bites of the incredibly sugary muffin and listening to Eskild gush about a tall and dark boy he met at a bar around 4 am she checked her phone again. There were a few new messages in the girl chat but she wasn’t entirely sure whether to be disappointed or relieved that William hadn’t texted her. If she was lucky he might not even realize her birthday was today; it probably wouldn’t end well anyway.

As expected her friends’ excitement outdid her own by a mile. Eva and Vilde revealed a box containing a cake drowned in sugary frosting; the slightly squished appearance made her think back to their Harry Potter marathon from three weeks ago at Eva’s sleepover. Several people came over between lessons to congratulate her. Sarah and Ingrid gave her a quick hug while Jonas and Isak found her on her way to the bathroom while the rest of the girls had stayed behind in their English classroom; the Penetrator party had been a week ago and Eva and Jonas were still hard set on ignoring each other.

It wasn’t unusual for her to not see William or any of his closer friends during her school day as the 3rd years spent most of their breaks smoking and doing god knows what down the street from the B building. She supposed it was a good thing, seeing as the girls refused to leave her side except for separate lessons. This meant, Vilde was a constant shadow and she caught her peeking at her phone multiple times as Noora texted back thank you messages. It would have been easier to ignore her stares if she had indeed had nothing to hide; but she did.

She tried to protest, when Eva puller her into the third floor bathroom minutes before their last lesson for the day but retaliated when her friend gave her a stern look.

«Did Vilde see us?» Eva closed the door and squatted down to check the stalls.

«No, I don’t … What’s going on?» Noora asked

«You» Eva bore her pointed finger into Noora’s shoulder «better pray Vilde doesn’t check Instagram in the next 40 minutes.»

«What?» she stared at Eva, who had pursed her lips into a smirk.

«He isn’t exactly being subtle.»

Noora tried to retaliate but stopped when Eva’s knowing look finally clicked into place. Her stomach dropped. «What did he do?»

Eva was only too eager to puller out her phone and after a few quick swipes presented Noora with William’s newest Instagram post - dated 10 minutes ago.

@magnussonwilliam Someone deserves flowers today

«Oh fuck» her brows furrowed.

«I was thinking more along the lines of, damn that’s the most romantic thing since Leo froze to death for Kate in Titanic.»

«Oh my god, Eva this is not funny.» Noora snatched the phone from her friend’s hand and scrolled through the - already 203 - likes. «This is really bad.»

Eva laughed and pulled them both out of the bathroom. «As I said, better hope Vilde doesn’t see it.»

Trailing behind Eva to their Spanish class room, her cheeks turned flaming red when a comment from one of the third year girls popped up under the post ‘Told you all, he has a girlfriend’.

Eva kept throwing her knowing glances throughout their reading assignment and as if things couldn’t get any more awkward the next time her phone buzzed, it was a text from William himself. Seeing Noora’s entire head turn into a very unflattering shade of pink Eva almost choked on her own laughter and ignored her unnerved glares.

She turned towards the wall away from Eva and unlocked her phone.

William: pick you up after school?

Noora bit her lip. This was indeed getting worse by the second.

Noora: NO!!

Noora: are you insane?

Eva squirmed in the chair beside her, craning her neck to get a look at Noora’s phone.

William: ??

Noora: the instagram post, really?

William: Chris agreed it was sweet

She bit her lip to keep from hissing at the display. She’d literally kill him if he told Chris. Not that Eva didn’t know more than she deemed appropriate already, but he’d promised to keep it to himself. Her heart was thumping against her throat and her fingers needed several tries to type the find the keys on the screen.

Noora: You told Chris?

William: No … well yes, but he doesn’t know it’s u

Noora: that’s not reassuring whatsoever …

William: I’m sorry, I’ll pick you up after school and make it up to you

Noora: No! I’m going to lunch with the girls. I’ll text you later!

She didn’t bother waiting for his reply before shoving the phone into her backpack. She ignored Eva’s raised eyebrows for the rest of the lesson.

Eva’s smirk and William’s audacity to presume she wouldn’t have anything better to do on her birthday than to make out at his apartment made her head boil and the last bell couldn’t come soon enough. As if a few lousy flowers would make her forget all the very valid reasons, dating - the word itself seemed absurd in connection with William Magnussen - him was a very unwise choice. Before Eva could even put away her Spanish folder, Noora pushed past the rest of the students into the hallway and down the stairs. To her annoyance she didn’t get very far when Vilde blocker her way two corridors down.

Vilde - who was seemingly ignorant of the Instagram post - pulled her out into the yard to wait for the other three. It was just past three o’clock and the yard was filled with students saying goodbye to their friends. Still, she turned her head every few seconds to check if William was anywhere close. Vilde must have noticed her nerves because she found her staring every time she turned to look at her. Sana and Chris caught up with them five minutes later and Eva shook her head at Noora in feigned annoyance.

«Where to for lunch?» Sana prompted before either Eva or Vilde could make another precarious comment.

«It’s not Friday, but I was thinking tacos?»

The rest nodded in agreement.

They’d made it past the gate and around the corner when Noora froze mid step and caused Eva to shriek in surprise. William and Chris, both their noses in their phones, leaned against the black Porsche, parked not ten meters from the school corner. At the sudden noise both looked up and Noora collected every last ounce of her self control to ignore the forming smirk on William’s lips; knowing just how good it felt kissing them made it all that much harder.

Chris and Sana stayed back and watched the scene unfold while Eva padded Noora’s shoulder and didn’t quite manage to stifle her giggles. Vilde was beaming and Noora hoped she was too distracted to catch William winking at her. Eva didn’t miss it but instead of embarrassing her any further she sauntered up to Chris who licked his lips.

«The party was amazing.» Vilde had positioned herself in front of William. «I hope you got enough donations. The whole auction thing was such a brilliant idea.»

Noora cringed and met William’s gaze over Vilde’s shoulder. She did her best to narrow her eyes and give him a stern look but the execution didn’t succeed when her lips tucked into a traitorous smile. Vilde kept rambling until Sana had the good grace to nudge her along. In one moment that seemed like the perfect movie coincidence, Chris and Eva where distracted with each other and the other three girls already heading down the street. To quick for her to protest William snatched her arm to pull her towards him.

«Happy birthday, text me after lunch!» he was so close to her ear, he barely had to raise his voice.

Noora bit her lip and gave him a nod. His hand squeezed hers before he let her go and turned back to Chris, who had trapped Eva against the car.

Noora had never been the biggest fan of birthdays, so the small mountain of presents her friends pulled out on the table made her heart comfortably warm and her head dizzy. Two books, one lavender scented candle and a box of handpicked sweets laid between the emptied taco baskets. She gave them all a tight hug and for the first time since Noora could remember she was sad when the birthday dinner - technically lunch - was over and they all parted ways. Of course Vilde, Eva and Chris had done their best to persuade her to a party later but she declined and promised to come to the next buss party without any protests.

To avoid any further run-ins she had made William promise to park at least two blocks away. He was again leaning against his car - it was a cool, expensive, but cool car nevertheless.

«Don’t ever do that again!» she whispered when he pulled his arms around her and only huffed in reply. His hands rubbed the tension from her back and she relaxed into his tall frame.

«Happy birthday» he pulled back to meet her eyes and she couldn’t hold the smile back any longer when his thumb brushed along her cheekbone and he finally placed a quick kiss on her lips. He let go to reach down to lift the modest bouquet of tulips from the hood of his car and offer them to her.

«Thank you.» she intertwined their fingers and he returned her smile.

«I’m sorry about the Instagram post. I can delete it if it bothers you?»

«No, no it’s okay.» she cocked her head to peer at him. «I was just a little overwhelmed earlier.» She pulled him down for a longer kiss. They took their time before he opened the passenger side door for her and jumped in beside her.

«Are you up for a proper date?» William flipped his hair back; without the hoodie, it constantly fell back into his eyes and she mustered a smirk when she helped him pull a few strands behind his ear.

«Where the other ones not proper dates?»

«Well, you refused to call them dates.»

«And what makes you think I’ll change my mind today?» Noora raised her chin and straightened her spine against the ridiculously soft leather seat.

«Oh good god.» he groaned and she giggled when he reached over to tickle her. «We’ll go and then you can decide what you wanna call it afterward, deal?»

«Deal» she grinned and let him pull her over the center console for a kiss.

Granted she was painfully aware of William’s disposition to do things that were more than just cliché and bordered on cheesy but he did it in such an endearing way, she couldn’t bring herself to dislike him for it - despite what she might tell herself and Eva. Still she had expected him to take her back to his apartment or even the cinema; after all fresh tulips and a surprise ‘date’ on her birthday seemed romantic enough.

Apparently, she had underestimated him. When he stopped the car after a ten-minute drive through downtown Oslo, the 80% glass building that was the Opera house loomed over them.

«Seriously?» she raised her eyebrows at him. This was maybe the most touristy spot in the whole country, gracing the back of basically all postcards titled ‘Oslo’. Though despite the cheesy undertone she couldn’t deny that it was breathtakingly beautiful.

William chuckled beside her and when they exited the car, there were only a handful people littered across the building with one or two dragging around big touristy cameras. Sunset was maybe half an hour away and pink and orange tones already reflected in the smooth water.

On instinct she meant to reach for his hand but found him occupied with carrying two blankets and a closed basket; so he offered her his arm instead and she threaded hers through his elbow.

The flats she had chosen this morning definitely weren’t the perfect gear for hiking up the opera house but the view from the top was worth her panting lungs and flushed cheeks. William put one blanket on the stone panels and motioned for her to sit while he busied himself with fiddling open the basket. He retrieved two thermos jugs and one small paper container for them each.

«This might really be the most cliché thing you could have done, and that’s saying something,» she said while William sat down next to her, close enough for their sides to bump together, and pulled the second blanket over their feet.

«I considered buying you 17 red roses.» his hand traced down her back again. «And a giant teddy bear.»

«I guess, you have a point.» she let her head fall against his chest. «Thank you!»

«Mhm,» he murmured and pulled her closer. His fingers were tracing her shoulder as he massaged the muscles beneath her skin. He brushed against the tops of her collarbones that peaked out under her shirt and then wandered up her throat placing kisses along the sensitive skin next to her pulse. Noora sighed and closed her eyes when he reached her chin. Despite the public location, his touch felt more intimate than the days before. Her skin flared at his touch and her lips craved his. Instead, his fingers teased the corners of her mouth before he placed a peck on the tip of her nose, which made her giggle and pinch his side in revenge.

He gave in and kissed her properly, shallowing the sighs that escaped her mouth. Heat blossomed in her belly and she felt her cheeks flush despite the mild spring breeze. Her finger found his scarp and pushed into his hair while pulled her closer and closer towards him until she practically sat in his lap. When she pulled away after feeling her lungs ache at the loss of oxygen, his eyes were glossed over and he meant to continue their kiss when she gently put her hand on his chest.

«First, hot cacao» Noora smirked and disentangled herself from his lap to reach for the two thermos jugs.

William groaned, flipped back his now tangled hair but took one of the bottles from her. He must have upped the cacao contents in his recipe because when she uncapped hers, the rich chocolate smell took her breath away for a moment. Under different circumstances, she might have waited for it to cool down but the setting sun was dragging the temperatures down with it and she was thankful for the heat spreading through her torso. When she looked up he was watching her intently and she gave him a kiss on the cheek. «It’s delicious!»

William, clearly pleased with her reaction, offered her a piece of dark chocolate cake from the paper box and took the other for himself. «I meant to buy you candles as well.»

«It’s okay. I think I’ve blown out enough candles for my next ten birthdays today.»

They ate and drank in silence after that and Noora found herself pressing closer to his chest as they watched a family with three little kids play on the incline. He rubbed her arms and made sure the blanket was tucked around them as the sun disappeared into the golden water. She hummed in content while he played with the ends of her hair. They watched the last flickers of light disappear and neither wanted to move from their position that currently was half a hug and half Noora sitting in his lap. When her fingers grew red and numb from the cold they reluctantly made their way back to his car.

During the drive to her apartment she had to repress the impulse to reach for his face again and instead she traced her finger up and down his free arm. He put the Porsche into park in front of the blue door and they eyed each other for a moment until he reached over to pull her close again. Noora hummed against his lips and decided that there was no superior feeling than kissing William after a cup of hot cocoa. His mouth tasted like the faint reminders of his mint gum and overwhelmingly like the baking chocolate powder he used for her hot cacaos.

It took several angry honks from the car behind his for them to pull apart and she left the car with the promise of calling him tomorrow. When she turned the key to their apartment Eskild was already holding a glass of sparkling wine, clearly more than ready for the next episode of Paradise Hotel. The tulips were put in a vase in her room under Eskild's scrutinizing eyes.

«Your lips are .. ehh a little smeared.» He laughed as Noora scrambled for a mirror to examine her swollen lips and properly tousled hair. William seemingly had a very adverse effect on her usually perfectly put together appearance.

Noora: Thank you for today, you were right it was a proper date!

William: I’m glad, talk tomorrow, good night birthday girl x

#noorhelm #Skam #noora sætre #william magnusson #noora x william #william x noora #noorhelm fic #skam fic #birthday fic #gratulerer med dagen Noora

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lavenderprose · 8 years ago

Text

Hey kids I wrote a longer version of The Night Yuuri Katsuki Lost His Mind, AKA the College AU

Yuuri jerks awake just after midnight, realizes that he is surrounded by what to the uninitiated observer would look like the detritus of the insane, and quickly gleans from the angle of the ceiling that he is on the floor.

He flings out a hand, looking for his phone. The light of the screen, even set to its lowest level, pulls a violated wail from his throat.

"Oh my GOD," Phichit says from the sofa. He sits up, flops himself over the edge. The hamsters start squealing at the sound of their father's voice. "I submitted myself to only getting an hour of sleep but I am getting an HOUR of sleep, Yuuri Katsuki, do you hear me?"

"When does Starbucks open?" Yuuri demands blearily, trying to work up the energy to disconnect his cheek from the carpet. It smells like Timothy hay and despair.

"This is a college town you absolute disaster," Phichit growls from the depths of the couch cushion he has his face shoved into. "Starbucks never closes."

Yuuri would accuse Phichit of being ugly due to sleep deprivation, if he didn't know that absolute disaster was the kindest thing that Phichit has ever called him during a finals week.

"Oh God, I overslept," Yuuri moans into the carpet. "I meant to take a twenty-minute powernap. Oh God. But I was having such a good dream."

"Was Viktor Nikiforov there?" Phichit asks, because he's the worst person Yuuri knows and also because every single person in the state of Michigan knows about Yuuri's massive crush on the World's Most Beautiful Grad Student, Viktor Nikiforov.

"No," Yuuri whispers, hands now folded over his chest like a dead Catholic. "But God was."

"You're Shinto. You don't believe in the monotheistic God."

"That doesn't stop me from dreaming about him."

Phichit glances over his shoulder. "What does God look like?"

Yuuri considers for a moment. "David Duchovny."

Phichit snorts into his shoulder and rolls back over. Yuuri rises shakily to his feet and stumbles into his bedroom, where he opens his computer and scrolls unseeingly down the seventeen-page research paper he abandoned three hours ago in favor of what was intended to be a powernap. There is a cold cup of coffee on his desk which he unfeelingly chugs in the mannerism of those who drink to forget. He neither remembers when the coffee or the milk in it was poured, but it's an occupational hazard.

"Go to college, they said," he hisses under his breath. "It'll be fun, they said."

"Yuuri, I am legitimately going to murder you," Phichit says from the living room. "I have ten minutes left of sleep and I will get them if I have to gag you."

Five minutes later, Phichit rolls off the sofa and crawls into Yuuri's room.

"What final is that for?" he asks.

"It's for my IAH on the Russian Revolution," Yuuri says, whose eyes have not yet been able to focus on a full sentence. "It's my last final but it's due on Thursday and I still need to proofread."

"Well, uh, that's bad news for you," Phichit mutters, "because it's Friday, my dude."

Yuuri experiences a moment of the kind of calm, collected and composed terror that he imagines overcomes soldiers in their last moments before dying in the line of duty.

"WHAT," is what emerges from his mouth. It doesn't even sound like his own voice. It sounds like a bird has momentarily possessed his body and used his mouth to shriek an arcane and evil message to the heavens.

"It's Friday," Phichit repeats. "It has been for about fifteen minutes."

"Oh my God," Yuuri whispers, frantically pulling up the D2L dropbox. "Ohhh my God. Oh my God."

"David Duchovny leadeth me in paths of righteousness," Phichit says, and leans his head against Yuuri's thigh as, above him, the Chernobyl of undergrad crises implodes.

"The drop box is closed," Yuuri whispers as he watches his entire academic career flash before his eyes. "I'm toast. The drop box is closed. This paper is thirty percent of my grade."

"You can email the professor," Phichit says to Yuuri's knee. "Say you had a wifi problem."

"Professor Feltsman said that technological malfunction isn't a good reason for late work," Yuuri says, quoting the syllabus verbatim and feeling his soul leak slowly out of his ears. "I can't email him. He scares me. I think if I tried to get him to reopen the drop box, he'd bury me in the same hole where the Mafia buried Jimmy Hoffa."

"Okay, first of all, Jimmy Hoffa wasn't buried anywhere," says Phichit, wobbling to his feet. He turns on Yuuri's overhead light and blinks into the now-illuminated room like a newborn. "They cut him into little pieces and threw him into Lake Michigan. Secondly, isn't Beautiful Viktor Feltsman's grad student?"

"Yes," says Yuuri, for whom thinking of The World's Most Beautiful Grad Student is a slight reassurance. "He is."

"So send it to him. He has the hots for you, I'm sure he'd be cool."

"HE DOES NOT," Yuuri shrieks, to the agony of every dog in a six-block radius.

Phichit slams a hand against the back of Yuuri's desk chair and spins him around, jams a finger into his face. "Yuuri, I swear to God, if you even consider making a noise like that ever again, I will gut you like a fish."

"Please gut me like a fish," Yuuri whispers. "I would prefer it to being academically crucified by Yakov Feltsman."

"I told you, send Beautiful Viktor the paper. He'll drop it in for you."

"Phichit," Yuuri says, "we've been over this. Either use the full title, or just call him Viktor. Beautiful Viktor sounds like a rejected Muppets character."

Phichit sighs the sigh of a saint whose patience is being severely tested. "Send the World's Most Beautiful Grad Student your paper."

"I can't—"

"Your tongue has literally been down his throat, and probably other places that I don't like to think about, so tell me why he wouldn't A: have the hots for you and B: submit your paper to the dropbox so that Professor Feltsman doesn't rain the fury of the entire Russian Studies department down on your pretty little head?"

"Because he's a Grad student," Yuuri hisses, "and I could get him in serious trouble. Both by convincing him to give me special treatment, and by putting my tongue down his throat. Among other things."

Phichit literally throws his hands up at that point—they go flying into the air and knock Yuuri's framed poster of Daisuke Takahashi off the wall. It falls to the ground, betrayed, and lands face-down. Phichit, unheeding, carries his one-man demonstration into the kitchen, where he fills up the kettle and shouts, "Aren't there papers to sign? That say you guys can date? It's not like he's a professor! These things happen all the time!"

"The papers don't apply to undergrads taking a course taught by the graduate student they're dating," Yuuri says, arms limp at his sides and face on the desk. "It's unethical. He would lose his fellowship."

"You're only his student for the next…twenty-three hours and thirty-nine minutes." Phichit pulls tea out of the cabinet and leans around the door. "It's Beautiful Viktor's ethics, or your GPA. And you're on an athletics scholarship, so your GPA is kind of—"

"Important, I know." Yuuri sits up from his slump and stares at his computer screen, teeth grinding. "Ahh. AHHHH. AHHH. Okay, God, okay." In a flurry of movement, he slams his computer closed, yanks the flashdrive holding the paper out, and scrambles for his shoes

"What the hell are you doing?" Phichit demands, as Yuuri stumbles past him, pulling his bag over his shoulder. "I told you to email it to Beautiful Viktor, not special deliver it straight to his office at midnight."

"If I emailed it to him, he wouldn't see it until tomorrow morning," Yuuri says, hopping frantically on one foot as he pulls his shoes on. "That would be way too late. Feltsman would know it hadn't been dropped in by then. I can take the flashdrive to Viktor's house and—"

"You know where he lives?"

"I mean…" Yuuri pulls the carafe out of the coffee maker and takes several large sips out of it. It's very, very cold. "Yeah?"

Phichit, who's staring at him like he's finally realized that Yuuri is not necessarily a human being, says, "Godspeed, you complete maniac."

Yuuri is halfway down the stairs before Phichit thrusts his head into the hallway and says, "Are you going to put a coat on? It's like twenty degrees outside!"

"I'll be fine!" replies Yuuri, who is wearing a pair of pajama pants in a cartoon mochi pattern, a shirt that says World's Okayest Brother, and Uggs.

The Uggs are probably Phichit's.

Their apartment is located such that Yuuri has to walk past several of the most popular bars in town as he stumbles his way to the World's Most Beautiful Grad Student's Townhouse. He receives not a small amount of scrutiny from students who are reveling in the end of the semester—those who are lucky enough to have their finals week cut short by convenient scheduling or willpower against procrastination. Yuuri glances at them furtively, enviously, as he shuffles through ankle-high snow towards Collingwood Drive.

Viktor Nikiforov, The World's Most Beautiful Grad Student, lives in a townhouse three blocks away from campus with the two other grad students in the Russian Studies Department under Yakov Feltsman. Mila and Georgi are nice enough, although Yuuri doesn't think he has ever seen the front side of Georgi's head—only the back, as he sweeps out the door towards a date with the mysterious Anya. Mila is an incredibly charismatic redhead whom Yuuri has personally seen throw an undergrad into the Red Cedar River, so he's only a little afraid of her.

The townhouse is designed so that each person has their own 'front' door. Yuuri knows at this point to climb the external stairs to a deck around the side of the house, and knock there, because if he knocks on the real front door, he'll wake the entire house.

Viktor opens the door as he approaches the deck. Makkachin rushes out to shove his face into Yuuri's hip, begging to be pet. Yuuri has absolutely no self-control when it comes to pets, specifically dogs, specifically poodles, specifically poodles that belong to The World's Most Beautiful Grad Student, and so he leans down and rubs Makkachin's ears with both hands, despite his core body temperature rapidly dropping to something deeply unpleasant.

"Hi," says Viktor, the World's Most Beautiful Grad Student. "You should have told me you were coming over. I would have ordered extra food."

Behind Viktor, on the desk in his room, is a full container of Lo Mein.

"Oh," says Yuuri, whose stomach protests its emptiness almost immediately in the form of a noise that sounds almost uncannily similar to the groans of souls on their way to Hell. "That's…okay. I'm…good."

"Are you drunk?" Viktor asks, bluntly, obviously examining Yuuri's lack of coat and the glint of mania in his eyes.

"Of course not," Yuuri snorts, "who needs alcohol when you have sleep deprivation?"

"Good point," Viktor concedes, and holds the door open for him. "Come in, then." Yuuri and Makkachin fall into the door, Yuuri kicking off his (Phichit's?) boots at the door and then falling onto the bed. It's unmade and soft and smells very, very much like Viktor.

"I have a problem," says Yuuri, as Viktor settles back into his rolling desk chair.

Viktor rolls over to him, his knees framing Yuuri's, and says, "Alright, how can I help?"

"The dropbox closed on me," says Yuuri, in the wheedling tone of those dealing with dictators. It's not a flattering or appropriate way to speak to the World's Most Beautiful Grad Student, but it's how Yuuri's feeling today. "I couldn't turn in my paper. I know I should have turned it in before the deadline but I fell asleep and I didn't mean to and I was going to read over what I wrote and then I forgot and I—"

"Whoa, okay." Viktor holds up his hands. He's wearing wire frame glasses that make him look So Smart. Yuuri wants to forget about his paper and be pinned to the mattress behind him by Viktor's strong arms. "It's fine, you're fine. I'll just reopen the dropbox for you. Did you seriously come halfway across town in your pajamas to ask me that? You could have just called."

"I, um…thought you would be asleep," Yuuri whispers towards his feet, shuffling his shoulders. "It's…um…late."

"Midnight isn't late in a college town," Viktor tells him, which is true. Yuuri has personally witnessed people heading out for parties at two in the morning. Midnight is the new nine PM. "And I have finals too, you know. Nobody sleeps during finals week."

"You're right," Yuuri says. "I should have called. Um, I'm sorry, I'll—"

"No! No, it's fine." Viktor's hands go to his thighs, and Yuuri's heart goes swooping through his chest. "I don't mind that you came. I'm always happy to see you. I'm actually really glad you came, because I wasn't sure if I was going to see you again before break, and I wanted to give you something."

"Give me something?" Yuuri mumbles. "Viktor, neither of us is Christian. We don't celebrate Christmas."

Viktor laughs. "It's not a gift, really. Here, let's get your assignment turned in, and then I'll show you."

He scoots his way back to his desk, somehow managing to make it look graceful despite it involving tossing his own legs in front of himself and then dragging his body along for the ride. It's entirely possible that it's not really graceful—it's just that he's The World's Most Beautiful Grad Student, and everything he does has a glamour of beauty applied.

What's definitely, irrefutably graceful, however, is the way his fingers move across his keyboard, and the way he rests his chin in his hand as he waits for the dropbox to load, the light of the computer screen glinting off his glasses. Yuuri is so ridiculously attracted to him.

"Okay, it's open." Viktor holds his hand out behind him. "Do you have your flashdrive?"

Yuuri sets the drive carefully in Viktor's long-fingered hand, and watches as he competently uploads the file.

"Is this unethical?" Yuuri asks, clutching Viktor's pillow to his chest.

"No, Yakov is grading the papers," Viktor says. Yuuri's phone pings with the dropbox confirmation as Viktor closes his computer and turns around, scoots across the room to the file cabinet at the end of his bed, and slides it open. He pulls out a nondescript manila folder, which he tosses onto the bed next to Yuuri's lap. He finally extricates himself from his desk chair to throw himself across the bed, settling behind Yuuri with his head braced on his hand. He taps the folder on the other side of Yuuri's hip. "That's what I have for you."

Yuuri opens the envelope. It's some sort of form titled Disclosure of Relationship Form.

"Oh, just what I always wanted," Yuuri mumbles as he sifts through it, trying to figure out what it is.

"It's the papers we have to sign to keep the relationship above board," Viktor laughs. "We each have to fill out a little bit of information about ourselves, you have to sign a paper that says you won't take a class that's taught by me and I have to sign a paper that says I won't use my graduate status to give you special treatment."

"Oh, um…so…these are going to be filed with the university?"

"No, they're just for my own personal records." Yuuri glances at Viktor, eye twitching, and Viktor laughs again. He has a beautiful laugh. "Of course they're going to be filed with the university. It's unethical if I don't inform them that I'm in a relationship with an undergrad."

"A relationship, huh," Yuuri squeaks.

Viktor's hand slides away from his hip, back towards regions unseen and far away. "Oh. Um…yes? But only if you want it to be? We can, um…we can do this another time? But I thought…now that you're not taking a class with me, I would—I should file the papers, and—"

He stops, then, because Yuuri kisses him.

Yuuri throws himself down onto The World's Most Beautiful Grad Student, and then kisses him until he has to pull away to take a breath—and Yuuri, who's equipped with both incredible stamina and the knowledge of how to breathe through his nose, doesn't have to pull away for a long time.

"Wait, okay, so," says Yuuri, who pulls away more because his mind won't stop buzzing at him than any actual need to stop. "It was unethical. For you to be, um, seeing me. These past few months."

"Well, I mean, I wasn't going to scream about it to the Dean," Viktor says, and his hand is warm up under Yuuri's shirt, and Yuuri is in something that's probably a lot like love with him, "but…it wasn't…technically…against the rules? There are, um, y'know, unofficial…courtship…loopholes. Basically, if you report the relationship within the first few months, the dean's office usually doesn't have a problem."

"How do you know so much about this?" Yuuri asks.

"Georgi dated half the grad students at his undergrad."

Yuuri, who is profoundly unsurprised, throws himself back into what's shaping up to be a very successful tonguing session with The World's Most Beautiful Grad Student.

In the morning, after blackmailing Viktor into sharing his Lo Mein and helping Viktor find wording for his presentation on his work for the semester that doesn't sound a lot like he's saying Fuck the Russian Studies Department, even though it's hard, Yuuri wakes up to an email from Yakov Feltsman.

You turned in the wrong essay, it reads. Please fix the problem. I have reopened the dropbox.

And then, ten minutes later,

Tell Viktor to at least ask me before he accepts late work on a zero late work syllabus.

Yuuri, cringing spectacularly, shuffles to Viktor's computer and uploads the appropriate document. Curious, he opens the one that Viktor submitted the night before, which is titled Rasputin Paper IAH 325 instead of Rasputin Paper for Feltsman.

LET'S HEAR IT FOR EVERYONE'S FAVORITE EVIL MYSTIC, MOTHERFUCKING RASPUTIN, reads the first line, and Yuuri shrieks.

"Professor Feltsman is going to kill me," Yuuri informs Viktor. "I have to go back to Japan. I have to hide."

"He's not going to kill you," Viktor grumbles into his pillow.

"Yes he is! You turned in my notes instead of my paper. He read my notes! Viktor, I called Nicholas Romanov Sad Saint Nick."

Viktor cackles into his pillow.

"I'm serious! I just committed academic suicide." Yuuri throws himself onto the bed and curls up as far under Viktor's arm as possible, hoping to just disappear into his armpit. "Protect me."

"Okay," Viktor murmurs. "I'll protect you from my father."

"Thank you," Yuuri whispers, and there are exactly six seconds of blessed silence before Yuuri processes what Viktor has just said to him.

"Your what?" Yuuri hisses.

Viktor stiffens, and not in the fun way. "Um…I'm…adopted?"

Yuuri shrieks so loudly that, halfway across campus, Phichit Chulanont experiences a spontaneous and violent craving for salmon.

#Victuuri #YOI #Yuuri Katsuki #Viktor Nikiforov #Phichit Chulanont #Maggie's Fic #This is absolute crack #But I had fun writing it so maybe you'll have fun reading it

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mirkwoodshewolf · 8 years ago

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Daddy keeps away bad things; Bucky Barnes x reader x oc child reader

This came from one of my fav. blogs here on tumblr @bucky-plums-barnes she runs theme days and one on of the prompts that she was sent in by an anon it just struck me and I had to write it out. I had gotten their full permission and in about an hr. of writing this was born. The idea for the prompt goes to the anon and I DO have that prompt saved underneath my likes so if you want to see the full prompt, go under my likes link and scroll through it till you find it, you won’t be able to miss it. Also @bucky-plums-barnes I also kinda remembered as I was writing the last part of the story on how I ended it like you did to one of your daddy drabbles I hope that’s okay, it just felt so right to write it as I did and I just realized now it’s like how you wrote one of your daddy drabbles, if it’s not tell me and I’ll find someway to change it.

Translations come from Google, if they are wrong PLEASE let me know.

WARNING: BUCKY FEELS!! FLUFFINESS!!! Slight smut around the middle, Sam-Bucky rivalry, DADDY!BUCKY, above anything else just major major MAJOR feels and teeth-rotting fluff.

Taglist:

@evyiione

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I walked through the door after yet another long mission, I swear if I have to write another mission report, I’m just gonna scream. But as I walked in and began to just throw my shoes into our shoe bucket, my ears caught the sound of the most precious thing in the world. As I walked closer I soon found a very familiar sight.

My daughter Grace and Sam together in the middle of the living room. Sam had a frilly pink boa wrapped around his neck and a fake diamond tiara sitting at the top of his head. In his hand he held one of my daughter’s teacups sipping fake tea.

“More tea Lady Nesbit?” Grace asked.

“Why yes I would absolutely love another spot of tea Princess Grace” Sam spoke in an awful British accent.

“Oh I do hope I’m not intruding on Lady Nesbit’s and Princess Grace’s tea party again”. Grace and Sam turned around and Grace called out.

“Mommy!” She ran up to me and I picked her up and kissed all over her face.

Bucky and I had known each other for….oh god a long time, we actually met through Sam surprisingly. I had been friends with Sam since childhood, we even were stationed together in the same para-rescue unit. I helped Sam with the Hydra intrusion into SHIELD back in DC and ever since then the two of us became honorary Avengers, my name was known as “Lady Eagle”.

Anyway fast forward a few years later, Sam introduced me to Bucky Barnes and suddenly a spark happened between us. We were friends for about a year and a half before I asked him out and then after going out for coffee, he kissed me and ever since then things changed between us. We married a year later and now four years later, we now have our little bundle of joy, Grace Rebecca Barnes.

Ever since day one, Grace had all the Avengers wrapped around her little finger but the one she seemed to favor most was her Uncle Sam. She always wanted to be near him or to go visit him, even if the two of us went shopping while Bucky was away, she’d always want to come with us. They did everything together, the watch movies together, the play together, go to the park together, do tea parties (which I catch them more times than Sam cares to admit but I have video and photographic evidence that says otherwise).

Yeah our little Grace was definitely a Falcon fan, I turned to Sam and told him.

“Thanks again for watching her on such short notice Sam”.

“Yeah anything for my favorite godchild and partner in crime” Sam boasted as he ruffled Grace’s hair.

“Must you weally go Uwcle Sam?” Grace asked with that cute little pout of hers that could stop an entire army of soldiers.

“Sadly I do kiddo, because now your mommy and daddy are back. But I promise our ice cream date for this Saturday is still up, think you can wait till then?” At the mention of ice cream Grace perked up and nodded enthusiastically. “Atta girl”.

“So how much is it this time Birdbrain?” Bucky soon asked as he came shortly after me since he had to stay behind back at Headquarters to deliver our mission report.

“Hey I never put a price tag on family, this one’s on me especially at short notice. But if you’d allow me to beat you in the next training session we have, I’ll take that as your payment”.

“In your dreams. So chill out Icarus before you fly into a window”.

“Alright boys, child present no fighting please”. I stepped in before these guys’ testosterone would allow them to literally rumble here in the living room. After Sam left, Bucky and I got ourselves situated and ready for bed since it was pretty dark out.

I tucked Grace in and kissed her goodnight and when I got back to my bedroom I saw Bucky laying against the headrest of the bed with his sulking face on. I sighed and walked up to him and stroked his scruffy looking face and said.

“What’s going through your mind my love?”

“Does Grace even love me?” I looked at him shocked and said to him.

“Of course she does why would you even doubt a thing like that?”

“She always wants to spend her time with Sam, never with me. I try to do some of the stuff she does with Sam but she either runs the other way or asks me if Sam will be joining us” Bucky sighed heavily then finished, “Maybe I wasn’t meant to be a father if my own daughter hates me”. I looked at him heartbroken.

I knew that with Grace always wanting to be with Sam, I had noticed that Bucky was always so broken-hearted at the fact that Grace never seemed to want to be with her father. I sat beside him and turned his face towards me as I spoke in my soft but demanding mother voice.

“James Buchanan Barnes, I never want to hear you say that statement again. You deserve to be one after everything Hydra had done to you, I wouldn’t want to have a child with no one else but you. Never deny that Grace loves you”.

“Then why doesn’t she want to spend time with me!?” Bucky snapped.

“I’ll talk to her about it tomorrow morning, but never forget this my love. Sam is her uncle, you’re her father. And a girl will always need her father in some way or form, maybe she hasn’t needed you for that reason yet”. I leaned in and kissed him before snuggling into his strong, broad chest and fell right asleep feeling Bucky wrap his arms around me.

Saturday came by fast and after coming back from their ice cream date that afternoon, Grace had ran in and took hold of my pants repeatedly begging me if it was alright for her to spend the night at Uncle Sam’s. I turned to Bucky and as usual his eyes were filled with sorrow and I looked down at Grace and said.

“Umm Grace, sweetheart do you remember what you and I talked about yesterday? Why don’t we give Uncle Sam a break and stay at home and watch Disney movies? Get your daddy all caught up with this centuries movies”.

“But I want to sweep over with Uwcle Sam, please mommy please!” With the puppy dog eyes she inherited from her father I almost couldn’t say no. I turned to Sam and looked at him with a ‘would you mind?’ look.

“I don’t mind, besides you and Father Russia haven’t had a night out in a while. I can host a sleepover”. Grace cheered then she ran past her father and raced to her room then I heard her call out to me to help her pack her sleepover bag. I turned to Bucky and touched his shoulder assuringly and pecked his cheek as I left to go help Grace pack her bag.

Once she was packed, I helped her into her car seat and Sam soon drove off back to his place and as I watched them drive off, I saw Bucky just standing on the porch with such longing and brokenness in his eyes. I walked up to him and said.

“She’ll come around, we’ll let her spend the night tonight then we’ll all do something as a family. But now, we have the entire night to ourselves after last year’s sleepover with Sam, so…..” Bucky’s attention soon directed towards me as he smirked at me and he said as he picked me up bridal style.

“I think it’s time we made baby #2”. I giggled then Bucky took me up to our room and tossed me right onto the bed. I giggled profusely as Bucky crawled up over me and he said, “You know I ain’t gonna stop until I’m sure you have a baby in there”.

“I’m counting on that soldier”. Bucky smirked then he leaned down and we kissed passionately before I felt him move down my neck, I knew then we were just getting started.

It was now around midnight, after god knows how many times we did it I lost count after 7. Bucky and I were completely exhausted, well mainly me Buck could’ve gone on all night had I let him but I was too damn tired to continue on. It was then my phone rang and I groaned which caused Bucky to wake up.

“Tell them you’re busy”. Bucky said as he began to kiss my neck.

“No Buck I already said I’m done,” I reached for my phone and saw Sam’s picture across the screen. I slide the answer button and yawned out, “Yeah Sam?” As Bucky continued to kiss any available part of my body I could hear Sam’s voice screaming at me in panic. “Wait, wait, wait Sam I can’t understand you, slow down. Breathe. Now in English tell me what is it?” Bucky stopped as soon as he could hear Sam scream from my phone. “Okay, okay I’ll tell him, I swear he’ll be right there I can promise you that. Okay Sam, bye”. I hung up but before I could talk to Bucky I saw him getting dressed and he left the room with such haste. “I told you Buck, she’ll call you when she needs you, and she most certainly needs you more than anyone else”.

*Bucky’s POV*

I had heard over (y/n)’s phone that sometime was wrong with Grace. I didn’t know what it was but the minute I heard Grace was in trouble, I immediately sprung out of bed, got dressed and raced down the stairs and outside. I didn’t even have time to start the car up so I ran the 9 blocks to Sam’s place.

I arrived at Sam’s and literally bust the door off its hinges. Suddenly I felt a small force embrace my legs and when I looked down, I saw my little girl weeping. Tears were running down her round face and she looked like a frightened little kitten. She looked up at me with eyes just begging me to hold her and I didn’t hesitate for a second. I held her close and soon saw Sam coming down the stairs.

“What happened!” I demanded softly so that I wouldn’t scare my Grace any more than she already was.

“I don’t know, she went to bed just fine and the next thing I hear she’s crying her eyes out calling for you. I’m gonna assume she had a nightmare, is there anything you want me to do?”

“No Sam, I’ll take it from here,” as I started walking I paused and told him, “And sorry about the door” before he could snap at me I was already leaving the hallway and soon found the living room and sat down on the couch with Grace still clinging onto me.

I proceeded to rock her gently as I rubbed my thumb against her back as I whispered softly to her in Romanian before singing to her a Romanian lullaby I once heard a mother sing to her child at the park while I was in hiding. I continued to rock her gently and sing to her in her ear while hearing her sobs softly ceasing.

After a while she finally stopped crying and whimpered out in her sweet voice.

“Tati?” (Daddy?)

“Da ingerul meu?” (Yes my angel)

“Can you stay the night? Pwease?” I was shocked. At first I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, did Grace really want me to stay with her and not Sam?

“Are you sure sweetheart?”

“Da, all I want is you papa” she stated as she looked up at me with teary eyes.

“But I—I thought that you would want Uncle Sam and Uncle Sam alone”. Grace shakes her head and replies with the most heart-warming answer I had ever heard from her as she clings onto my chest.

“Daddy makes the bad guys go away. Daddy always protects me. I don’t want Daddy to leave”.

It took every ounce of will power in me to not let tears come falling down my face, I’d knew Sam would never let that down but it was mostly because of Grace’s words. (Y/n) was right, I was needed in Grace’s life, and that was to protect her from the bad dreams, and I knew that was something I was willing to do because I know what she’s gone through. Even though I’ve rarely had a nightmare before meeting (y/n) and having Grace, I knew the horrors that still comes with having nightmares, especially when some of them are so real.

I held Grace close to me and rocked her again as I rubbed her back with my human hand and stroked her long brown hair she inherited from me with my metal hand and said to her.

“I swear to you Grace, I will always be here to protect you. No matter what it is, I will always be here for you because you are the light of my life, my precious angel, and I love you more than life itself. Even more than your mother, but let’s keep that between us okay?” Grace let out her beautiful giggle she got from her mother which made me smile even wider as I held her at arm’s length and stroked away her tears to see my happy girl coming back. “There’s my happy girl, let’s get you back to bed”.

I stood up holding Grace against my chest as I continued to rub her back with my thumb and carried her back up the stairs into the guestroom Sam and (y/n) had made for her.

I set Grace down back on the bed and tucked her in before coming around the other side of her and lying right next to her and brought her close to me.

“Now close your eyes and go to sleep”.

“What if the bad men come back though?” she asked me as I noticed the fear in her eyes coming back.

“Well right now I know one sure fire way to make sure they don’t, you wanna know?” Grace nodded furiously then I smirked at her and began to tickle her. Her sweet musical laugh filled the entire room as she squirmed and tried to get away from me but she never did.

“Dahahahddy! Stop ihihihihit!”

“Uh-uh not until I know the bad guys aren’t gonna hurt my little girl again, you can never be too sure about those vicious villains”.

“Daddy! There’s gohahahahe now!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes hehehehe….”

“Are absolutely, positively 100% with sprinkles and a cherry on…..”

“Daddy!!”

“Okay”. I ceased my tickling allowing Grace to catch her breathe. After she calmed down, I stroked the hair out of her eyes and said to her, “If they do come back, just wake me up and I’ll be sure they stay away because…..” I urged her to finish up and she stated.

“Because you’re with me till the end of the line”.

“Good girl”. I chuckled as Grace crawled up towards me and I held her close to me, making sure to place her head over my heart to let her know that I was here. Soon I could hear her soft breathing a sure sign that she was now asleep. I kissed her head gingerly and lay there watching my little girl sleep in my arms clinging onto me as she slept the night away.

#bucky barnes x child reader #bucky barnes oneshot #daddy buck barnes #bucky barnes fluff #father-daughter relationship #bucky-plums-barnes #anon prompt #daddy wednesday

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your-not-invisible-to-me · 8 years ago

Text

Piece By Piece- (Rob Benedict x Reader) PART 5

Chapter 4

A/N: Holy Shit. This was hard to write. It’s 4:50 AM as I post this and I started writing it around midnight. Thank you guys so much for reading this story. Considering I cried the entire time I wrote this last chapter, the story means a lot to me. I hope you enjoy the ending. I hope it you all like how it ended.

Although the story itself is done, I am open to taking requests for it! If you want a one-shot of moments between their relationship during those three years, I’ll gladly take requests.

Enjoy.

Summary: Reader is a teenage actress on Supernatural, and at 15 years old her abusive parents kick her out of the house because they disapprove of her career. After an emotional breakdown at the latest convention, Rob takes her in.

Pairing: Father Figure Rob x Reader

Word Count: 2,827

WARNING: There actually isn’t any warnings in this chapter the story should be happy from now on.

LISTEN TO THIS SONG FIRST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwTMz6Nfhjg

It was the summer before your senior year before you turned 18 when someone else called you Rob’s daughter for the first time.

Rob’s brother Matt’s wife had a baby, and while you were in Vancouver filming Wayward Sisters, Rob didn’t have to work. So, he flew down to Missouri and you were planning on meeting him a few days later.

It was a small town where Rob grew up, everyone knew everybody, this included the doctors at the hospital. It was obvious people wouldn’t know who you were.

“I’m looking for Matt Benedict’s wife’s room. She just had a baby.” I said to the nurse sitting behind the desk in the hospital lobby. I had just landed and had taken a cab straight to the hospital.

The nurse typed something into the computer before looking up at me.

“Ah, yes. I’m sorry however, only family is allowed right now.”

That’s when Matt popped out of nowhere.

“Oh, there you are Y/N! Rob stepped out to get us some food, but geez, he was worried you got on the wrong flight or something.” said Matt with a laugh.

“Sir, I thought you said only family?” asked the nurse.

“Oh, she is family. This is Rob’s daughter.” my eyes went wide, not having been referred to as Rob’s daughter by anyone before.

I followed Matt down the hallway towards the room, still a little stumped.

“Did, did you just say Rob’s daughter?” I asked.

“Yeah, I mean you basically are. At least that’s what Rob told me.”

It was the day you turned 18 that you drove yourself to Rob’s lawyer’s office, her not being surprised in the slightest when you told her your request.

“I can have them to you within the hour, Y/N. I think it’s an amazing idea.”

It was a few weeks later, on the three-year anniversary of Rob finding you at the con that I got the courage to change my life forever.

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I sat on the couch backstage in the green room, my leg bounced up and down as I was freaked out of my mind.

It was the three-year anniversary of my parents kicking me out, and in two days it would be the three-year anniversary of Rob telling me I was staying at his house for the night.

Well, it turned out to be a bit longer than a night; and if this weekend worked out how I planned, it would be a lot longer than I think Rob and I had ever planned.

But, frankly, I was having a hard time staying still with the forms in my backpack next to me.

I had gotten to the green room extremely early, and was sitting by myself when Rich walked in.

“Whoa, Y/N, you alright?” asked Rich. “It looks like you’re trembling in your seat there.”

I rubbed my face, trying to convince myself that I was being stupid and that I just needed to calm down.

“Hey, um. Rich. If I tell you something. Um. Will you promise not to tell Rob?”

“Oh my god you’re pregnant.” said Rich. I stood up immediately.

“What? No! How would you think that, no!” I said. I picked up my bag, taking the folder out and walked towards him.

“Sorry, you know I’m kidding. That was just the first thing that came into my mind when you said not to tell Rob. Of course, I can keep something to myself. What’s up?” asked Rich.

I took a breath, handing him the folder. Richard took it, his eyes going wide as he read the first word printed at the top.

ADOPTION PETITION

“Y/N. Oh my god.”

“I turned 18 a few weeks ago. Without needing my biological parent’s approval anymore, all he would need to do is sign the bottom and I’d be legally ‘Y/N Benedict.’” I said.

“When are you gonna ask him?”

“Wait, so you think it’s a good idea?” I asked, surprised.

“Of course, I do. You know when Rob introduces you to people in conversations, he already calls you his daughter, right?” asked Rich.

“No, actually. I didn’t know that…”

“Look, the guy signed on to be your legal guardian three years ago without even a moment of hesitation. There’s no reason to be nervous about asking him to sign this because frankly, he already sees you as his daughter, legally or not.”

“Thanks Rich, I actually really needed to hear that.” I said. Rich handed me back the forms and I put them back in my backpack.

“No problem. When are you planning on asking him? I’m here to assist if needed.”

All of a sudden, a plan instantly came to me.

“You know Rich, I may just take you up on that…”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was Saturday night, and the Saturday Night Special was winding down. I stood backstage with Rich as other people in the cast were hanging around and drinking.

“Y/N, you’re trembling again.” said Rich. He placed two hands on my shoulders to get me to stay still.

“Sorry, I’m sorry. My brain’s just been trained in the past to think of the bad results, you know?” I asked.

“Yeah, but you gotta remember. Rob’s the one who stayed and untrained it.” said Rich; he rubbed my shoulder in reassurance.

“Thank you, guys! Good night!” I could hear Rob ‘s voice on stage as the band was waving the crowd goodnight.

“You ready?” asked Rich. I nodded. Rich grabbed his mic from the table. The second Rob walked through the curtain, Rich grabbed his arm, pulling him back on stage.

“Rich, wha-.” Rich cut him off, getting the crowds attention before people left.

“Excuse me everybody!” he said. The crowd cheered at the sudden appearance. “If I could have your guy’s attention. Also, if we could have the full house lights on please!”

“Um, Rich. What are you doing?” asked Rob, grabbing a mic.

“Well, Robbie. There’s one last thing that needs to happen tonight.” Rich turned back to the crowd. “I would like to invite back on the stage, Y/N YL/N, and, well, everybody back there who wants to come out.”

I could hear the crowd cheering as I stood backstage, the folder of papers in my hand.

“Y/N?” asked Kim.

“Come on stage with me, just go with it guys.” I said. With a breath, I walked on stage, not surprised to be greeted by Rob’s confused face.

Rich handed me his mic, “You got this kid.” said Rich.

“Thanks again, man.” I said quietly. Rich gave me a smile before going to stand behind me with the others.

“Y/N? What are you planning, kiddo?” asked Rob, still using that nickname he gave me when I was 14.

Ignoring Rob, I turned to the crowd.

“Heya everybody. I’d like to tell you guys a story really quick that I’m pretty sure none of you know.” I took another breath, trying to calm my nerves as the crowd quieted.

“Three years ago, yesterday, I was 15 years old. I woke up Friday morning planning on attending a convention at this exact hotel, ready to hang out with my friends. I was ready to have a great weekend meeting you guys.”

“Y/N…?” asked Rob, cutting me off.

“Rob, let her say this.” said Rich from behind me. Rob tilted his head in confusion, having absolutely no idea what the heck was going on.

“I walked out of my bedroom that morning ready to go to work,” I said, continuing on. “But when I walked out, I was met with the faces of my angry parents. A fight broke out, because they told me they wanted me to quit working, or else. It turned physical with my father, and after I refused; with a duffle bag in hand my parents quite literally kicked me out of the house.”

The gasps could be heard from the crowd, even the actors behind me as most of them never knew the exact details of why I was kicked out in the first place.

I kept going.

“I got to the hotel that day scared out of my mind. I was 15, I didn’t have anyone. Hell, even with a job I knew I wasn’t capable of living on my own. But, I didn’t tell anybody.” I turned to Rob.

“But this guy, Rob knew something was wrong. For the past year he had been my friend, helping me pay for meals I didn’t have money for when the cast would go out for dinner, helping me with homework backstage, heck he started booking two-bedroom hotel rooms at the cons when he found out I had been sleeping on the greenroom couch.”

The crowd cheered at the information, Rich’s eyes going wide.

“Dang Rob, I didn’t know you did that.” said Rich into the mic.

Rob shrugged. “I wasn’t gonna let her keep sleeping on the sofa guys.”

“Well, when I walked into the green room that morning, Rob knew something was wrong. But, I lied. I kept it in because I didn’t want to have to bring Rob into the hell that was my life at the time.” I turned back to the crowd.

“I was able to keep it to myself for most of the entire weekend as I was trying to think of a plan. To be honest, I didn’t have one. But, it was the end of the con Sunday. Rob had offered to give me a ride home, and was walking to our hotel room to get me when, from what he has told me, he heard me screaming from our room. I was having a nightmare, and Rob rushed in to wake me up. It was then I had to tell him the truth, and it was three years ago tomorrow that Rob offered to let me stay at his house for the night.”

I kept myself together as I tried to keep going, but I could feel the tears coming.

“It was a week or so later when we found out that I didn’t have any other family, when that social worker told us I would be turned over to the state. I was taking it, I knew I didn’t have a choice because, well, I was a minor.”

Emotions took over me as I turned and pointed at Rob.

“It was then when this man, with no hesitation what so ever, told the social worker that he wanted me to stay with him; that he was more than willing to petition for legal guardianship.” I wiped the tears from my face as I looked up at the man standing in front of me.

I turned to my cast mates behind me, seeing tears in some in their eyes. Kim gave me thumbs up, I think she had figured out where this was going judging by the papers in my hand.

I turned back to the crowd.

“A few weeks after that it was official. Rob Benedict was my legal guardian, and I never had to see my asshole parents ever again because of this man right here. And here we are, three years later.” I pointed at Rob as I could see the tears falling slowly from his eyes at this point as well.

The crowd cheered so loud that I could barely hear myself think, and I could see Rich out of the corner of my eye trying his best to quiet them, but it gave me the time to wipe my eyes as the tears kept falling. I turned to Rob now.

“Rob, you stayed with me night after night as I kept having nightmares. You stayed up for hours on end for weeks on end as I was trying to get through them, and you didn’t complain once. Not once. You took me to get my driver’s permit, and taught me how to drive. You went to every single parent conference at school, you helped me with my homework, and still let me continue my career no matter how crazy or busy it got.”

I tried to wipe my face as quickly as I could, but to no luck.

“Sorry guys.” I said to the crowd as they awed. Kim walked up behind me, handing me a tissue.

“Ha, thanks Kim. Where was I?” I looked at Rob, trying to regain my focus.

“You okay?” I could see him mouth. I nodded, continuing.

“Rob, you paid for school clothes each year, even for school supplies. Hell, whenever I went on a date you gave the guy the dad speech. You helped me fill out college forms, and were there when I got each acceptance form.”

Rob smiled, reliving each memory being brought up in his head. Sure, the last three years had been tough, and it was definitely something he hadn’t expected, but he didn’t regret signing those guardianship forms for a second. You had changed his life as much as he had changed yours.

“Rob, you saved my life. In the past three years, you have been more of a father to me than I ever thought possible.”

“And I don’t regret it for a second, Y/N.” said Rob. I think by this point the both of you had semi-forgotten about the crowd of people in front of you, but you didn’t care. And he didn’t either.

“I know. And that’s why, when I turned 18 a few weeks ago, I drove myself to your lawyer’s office and picked up this.” I raised my arm up that was holding the forms, handing it to him.

“It’s why, after all this time, I hope you say yes.”

I raised my hand, holding the papers out to Rob. He took them, a questioning look still on his face.

But it immediately left when he opened up the folder, the mic dropping to the floor in shock as Rob pulled his hand up to his mouth, covering it. I could suddenly feel a shoulder sling around me as I looked to see it belonged to Rich.

“Wanna tell the crowd what those papers are, Bob-O?” asked Rich.

Rob blinked, ignoring the tear that fell from his eye as he reached down to pick his mic back up.

“They’re, they’re adoption papers.”

Rob wasted no time pulling me into a hug as the crowd cheered louder than they had all night. We both lost it at that point, letting out all the emotions we had been holding in for the past 10 minutes I had started this speech. I could feel the tears drop on my head as I sobbed into his chest.

“Is that a yes?” asked Rich, seeing as he was the only one emotionally capable of speaking into his mic at the moment.

Rob laughed, releasing me from the hug for a second.

“Y/N. I would be honored to sign those papers. I’m honored that you would take the time to ask. Of course, the answer is yet.” He tightened the grip he had on me into a side hug. “But frankly let’s get off the stage cause I think we’ve both cried on stage enough tonight.” He pulled me into another full hug.

“Thank you, guys.” I said to the crowd. Richard helped bid the crowd goodnight as everyone headed off stage. We all headed back to the green room

The second Rob and I stepped into the green room, he pulled me back into a hug. Tears fell as we were both heavily overcome with emotion. The rest of the cast just stood in the doorway, letting us have our moment before we eventually separated. Both of us wiped the tears from our faces.

“Y/N Benedict. Kinda has a nice ring to it, don’t you think, guys?” asked Matt. He walked up to Rob, handing him a pen. Rob took it immediately, signing the papers he still had in his hand.

“I will get these to my lawyer myself Monday morning.” said Rob, smiling. He handed me back the papers so I could keep them in my backpack again for safe keeping.

Everybody slowly filed out of the green room, it was super late at this point and everybody was exhausted.

Rob and I were upstairs, walking through the hallway to get back to our hotel room.

“Hey, hey Rob?” I asked. The two of us stopped walking just before reaching the hotel room.

“Yeah?” Rob turned to me, leaning against the wall. I stuffed my hands into my pockets, still nervous to ask this even though Rob was now considered legally my parent.

“Is it alright if… Is it alright if I start calling you dad now?”

Rob smiled, standing himself up as he again pulled me into another hug, as tight as he possibly could.

“I love you, kiddo.” said Rob.

Piece by piece he restored my faith, that a man could be kind… and a father could stay…

“I love you too, Dad.”

STORY TAGS: @thebookisbtr @emilywells19 @littleshone @a-banana-for-your-thoughts @pancake-pages @stationary-queen @bryannekenzie @alicat-life @winchestergirl-13 @melodyhiddleston @flamequeen12 @anayacortez

ROB TAGS: @nerdyforyourbooks @madame-marilyn @tas898 @internationalmusicteacher @lizzy077 @natasha-cole

FOREVER TAGS: @laffytaffyhumor @hudine @fandom--0verdose @madame-marilyn @casgrl @nerdyforyourbooks @waywardswain @goldenolaf25 @88dragon06 @dont-hate-relate-pls @crowley-you-sinnamon-roll @i-dont-understand-that-url @b-northington @idk-fandom @bea789 @nanie5 @jelly-beans-and-gstrings @captain-amelia-bradley @a-michellerae-things

#supernatural #supernatural fanfiction #Chuck Shurley #god #original female character #supernatural fanfic #fan fiction #fanfiction #fanfic #Rob Benedict #Rob Benedict x Reader #Rob Benedict Fan Fiction #Rob Benedict Fanfiction #Rob Benedict Fanfic #supernatural one shot #one shot #oneshot #supernatural one shots #Louden Swain

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thesummerfox · 8 years ago

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do you have any headcanons for wish soulmates au?

OH GOD DO I (in fact, I have a backbone for an entire fic I’m never gonna write so here you go lol)

Okay, so, I wrote a soulmate AU for Kastle not too long ago that works off the idea that most of us get soulmate dreams that do not reveal our soulmate's actual identity and that since the first dream we see electric bright colours the closer we get in physical proximity to our soulmate and we begin to display certain mannerisms etc that our soulmate has. When we're almost on the verge of knowing who they are our dreams turn blindingly white, and when we finally meet we switch places very briefly to literally stand in each other's shoes. When the bond is finally acknowledged by both out loud, the world just explodes into vivid colours/sounds/smells/etc.

I'm situating the Wish soulmates AU in the same universe, so imagine:

* Trish gets her dream first, on the first night after she moves out of her mother's house. It means she wakes with the taste of coffee lingering in her mouth and the smell of expensive aftershave hugging her body. The yellows and pinks in her new apartment are vehemently at war with the midnight blue and brightest cyan that streak past her out of the corner of her eye. She can't work her way through her breakfast without wanting to spit the chia seeds back out.

* She calls Jessica the next morning when she steps outside and the sky overhead is teasing her with technicolour flashes that all travel toward Grand Central. Her soulmate is here in the city somewhere and it takes all her willpower to meet Jess somewhere other than the place all the colours seem to be converging on. It's not until Jess cautions her with a "needle in a haystack, stop looking, just live your life" that Trish relents on the idea of going out to look for her soulmate.

* Just because she's not looking doesn't mean she's not rolling her eyes more often, nor does it mean that she can stop herself from making snide comments she usually would've kept to herself. Jess thinks her soulmate's an asshole and calls it "beautiful". Trish just thinks it's a pain in the ass.

* She catches herself humming along to rock songs on her morning commute. When she finally belts out a pitch-perfect rendition of Whole Lotta Love, she rests her head on the steering wheel and vows to never again ridicule Jessica for all the times her sister began to rap mid-sentence since meeting Luke.

* Sometimes, she walks past a newsstand and watches bright flecks of cyan dance across the headlines. Tilts her head at it before straightening again and moving on. She never purchases any of the things that turn blue before her eyes, although she is sorely tempted when the NY Bulletin keeps dancing blue circles around her for a whole week whenever she goes out to grab her coffee from the stand next to it.

* Words get stuck in her throat when her first and rather vehement reaction concerning Danny Rand's return to the city is to smash her coffee cup into the nearest wall. She goes into hiding for a full week when the newspapers all light up with brightest blue and there's a rainbow dancing overhead that trails to the exact location of Rand Enterprises. (She knows that much, because her curiosity got the better of her one night. Drove all the way up to that exact city block before losing her nerve.)

* There's blood all over the cuffs of her white blouse and she can't wash it out. Or so she thinks for the first ten minutes in which she's desperately trying to salvage her best blouse. It's not until Jessica walks in on her and confusedly asks "what the hell are you talking about?" that Trish comes to realise the blood's not really there at all.

* She wakes one night feeling as though someone just hooked her up to a new life supply of oxygen and she can breathe properly again for the first time in her life. It reminds her of the time she finally said "no" to her mother and that fact alone is enough to make her curl up around a pillow and pray for her soulmate's wellbeing tonight.

* She finally meets Danny Rand properly in the aftermath of the Midland Circle fiasco and stops dead in her tracks when he laughs out a "you remind me of someone I know" in response to a rather acidic comment she throws his way. Claire shoots her a too-knowing smile when Trish has to steady herself on her feet the second Danny takes a phonecall. Her dreams turn white that night.

* Ward is convinced he won't ever have a soulmate dream. Goes all the years without it, claiming to be married to his job, until he has his first soulmate dream the first night after Harold's cremation. He wakes with the taste of cherries on his lips and the smell of bubblegum shampoo in his nostrils. Stumbles toward the bathroom in a daze as competing streaks of yellow and pink curl and fold around him in what is almost an embrace. It's the first time he ever showers cold, because his skin feels as though it is burning up.

* He doesn't tell anyone about the dream, not even when he steps outside and the sky overhead fills up with a glaring rainbow of colours that almost makes him purchase sunglasses out of spite. He doesn't go out to look for his soulmate. Who'd want him now, anyway?

* He realises something's wrong when his first instinct at signs of trouble is to shout out a "fight me!" that leaves Danny shaking his head at him. Just about breaks down in the office when he can't renegotiate a deal without appealing to the other party's empathy. Thinks it's a good thing Harold's dead when he starts to cry over nothing one night.

* Pink hues dance just on the outskirts of his vision when he calls Danny about the dramatic events at Midland Circle. He chooses to ignore that, mostly because he's too busy yelling at Danny about improper business conduct that's going to get all of them killed one day. He surprises Danny, himself, and a smiling Colleen when he pulls Danny in for a hug the next time he sees him. (Makes them vow to never speak of it again.)

* It's harder to ignore the voice that finally seeps into his ears after a long night at the office has him turning the radio on for background noise. They're doing a rerun of some talkshow or other, which Ward is sure he's listened to a million times before now. He's not certain why the warm intelligence in the woman's voice suddenly has him parking the car or why his fingers grip the steering wheel so hard it hurts. (He tells himself he's not sure, anyway, even though he's lying to himself when her name flares up brightest yellow that sets his car alight in the dead of night.)

* He almost refuses Claire's offer of "drinks with a support group, we all look like we need it", but then Danny takes up Daredevil's mantle in earnest and the budding migraine behind Ward's eyes suddenly craves a drink or twenty. He's somehow not surprised to find his dreams turn glaringly white the night he calls Claire to confirm his presence.

* Trish decides Claire is evil when the nurse shouts out a "please get the door for me, my hands are full!" upon hearing the incessant knocking at the door on the evening of their get-together. Or, well, she decides Claire is completely and utterly evil when she opens the door and feels as though the earth tilts and shifts on its axis the way no earthquake ever could force it to. It takes considerable effort before she is able to right herself against the doorpost. The only comfort is that the sharply-dressed man in front of her looks so shaken that it almost seems like he saw a ghost.

* They don't switch places right away. Most of the evening passes with them sneaking glances at each other every so often. Claire's full house (seriously, how many vigilante friends can one city contain?) makes it easier for Ward to pretend he doesn't feel pulled into the direction of the very blonde and very intimidating woman who's cradling a cup of tea in her hands and talking up a storm with Karen Page. Colleen, next to him, mutters an "oh boy" when she finally catches on to the reason why Claire keeps looking back and forth between Ward and the blonde as though she's watching a very interesting tennis match.

* Trish finally plucks up the courage to say "it was nice to meet you" before she swings out the door with Karen in tow. She spends the better part of the night headdesking over the stupidity of that comment. Ward goes home smiling.

*They don't switch places until Danny's done something monumentally stupid that puts them both in danger. For one, brief, scary moment, Trish's hands are the ones that are coiled around a gun and Ward's hands are the ones growing sticky with Jess's blood. The moment is gone as quickly as it came and it's not until they're out of danger that they allow themselves to acknowledge that it happened at all.

* A hospital waiting room is not exactly the place Trish had envisioned the acknowledgment of the soulmate bond would take place in, but Ward is far too tired and far too highstrung to care once they get stuck in one together. He's off ranting about vigilantes and superhero siblings and the continuous downward spiral of life before he grounds out a "I know you're my soulmate but there's no way in hell you're actually going to stay" that leaves her raising her voice in anger and yelling a "consider yourself stuck with this soulmate, asshole!" that she's sure is going to reverberate in the walls of this place for years to come.

* The technicolour explosion comes after they're done yelling at one another for the better part of an hour. Ward mutters out a "jesus christ" when the subsequent noise level in the hospital spikes up to the point where he's sure he hears Whole Lotta Love playing in a room five stories down, while Trish just rakes her hand through her hair angrily at the noises before commenting "is blue your favourite colour because it's literally everywhere right now?" that has him choking out a laugh. "Is pink yours?" he asks soon after, and thinks he's just about done fighting this soulmate-thing when she smiles back an affirmation that makes her entire face light up.

#wishship #prompts #wishfic #Anonymous

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