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justladders · 5 months ago

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To everyone in the art community, please:

Tracing is effective. But only as a learning tool. Telling people "never trace" can be robbing them of methods that could have been effective to their learning process if they'd known about them.

The "art of using tracing" is a bit looked over, so I have five points:

(it's a long one)

1: AS A RULE OF THUMB, DO NOT POST/SHARE TRACED AND STOLEN ARTWORK. This is not only lying to anyone you show it to, if you're trying to come off as, "I'm so good, look at what I did," but most importantly, it's lying to yourself. You'll trick yourself into not needing to get any better, and you will stagnate if you start to rely on tracing as a form of stealing. If you come to realize that you are, you should stop using any tracing methods altogether to keep yourself from abusing it. It's a slippery slope for beginners, and a big reason why you’ll hear almost everyone echo that you just shouldn’t trace at all. The issue is that this ignores the ways that tracing can actually be good.

2: Tracing sets the stage for motor skills/hand-eye coordination. I've seen so many early-stage beginner artists get upset that the art that they make of their favorite character/oc is messy, or maybe they just don't even know what they want to draw and can’t "make themselves mindlessly doodle.” These early arists then become completely disheartened and upset, especially if they start to look at other people for comparison. Tracing over work or even over photos is a way to train your hand to hold and wield a pencil/stylus properly without you being worried about the finished product. Think of it like a way to dip your toe into learning the process of what making art feels like, without having to get overwhelmed with searching up pointers and people telling you, "10 quick tips to become a master artist!!!!!!!" (<- please ignore those) If you’re just beginning, your hand-eye coordination needs to be trained, and you shouldn't bog yourself down so much thinking about end products just yet, so if tracing is the way to get you started, go for it. If you're a bit more experienced, tracing and drawing over reference can also help you warm up without being committal or stressing your art brain too much.

3: Practice "mindful tracing." While I said the previous point was targeted more at beginners, this point is actually about something that experts in their field use. Doing "mindful tracing" over art means that you aren't worried about getting the lines "correct," you're studying why those lines are there. You're taking note of where the shadows meet the highlights based on the light source, how it shows off the forms, and how sharp or soft the lighting is; you're going over the lines of action in the piece to see how your eye is guided by the artist's intention and planning; you're seeing how characters may be stylized into shapes and the feeling that those shapes can give; you're noting how the artist uses line weight or weird blocks of color or stark breaks to split up the art or separate ideas within it; you're experiencing the flow of the poses within the artwork to grasp how that kind of thing feels; you're breaking down the overall composition like in a thumbnail sketch; and the list goes on.

"Mindful tracing" ends up looking like you've marked up an English essay: it should be messy, because the intent with it is not to copy or replicate, it's to notate. It's like how literally writing notes on things helps you remember better than if you only read it. You're acknowledging instead of just looking. And you can always learn, even from styles that you don't intend on actually using. As you get to be more experienced, you may come to realize that you can do "mindful tracing" analyses on artwork without having to literally write over top of the piece, which is great: that means you're improving your creative brain, and prepping it to be able to break down your own works in this way as you make them.

4: Trace for specific character or style studying. For this point, I want to especially stress that this is what makes everyone say, "don't trace," because this is what tracing is most commonly associated with: art theft. There's really no excusable reason to repost someone's art in this way.

I feel like you have to be a bit more experienced to properly use tracing specifically for style studies. The benefits that come with tracing a certain style is that it can quite literally teach your hand/brain to recognize the patterns that are present. You get a feel for how far apart a specific characters eyes are, how big their hands are, how the shapes of the body make up their form, how the exaggeration in the expressions feel, and when traced you know you have all of these proportions correct. This makes it so much easier to start drawing the specific character on your own if you know that you have a correct baseline (and of course you should still use reference from then on). When you study many different characters of the same style, you can start to grasp what actually makes up this style that you're studying, where -similar to point #3- you train your art brain to recognize the original artists' intentions and ideas. I would even argue that doing this is MORE IMPORTANT than using reference at the very beginning of a style study, because it makes you worry less about if you're pulling from the reference correctly and instead lets you focus on the original art by thinking through it during the process; this kind of thing is done by professionals. Although tracing can net you these benefits for studies, it is not a way to get around the rest of the learning process, which is the pitfall that normally ends up making tracing ineffective.

5: Lastly, I actually kind of lied about tracing "only being good as a learning tool." The other case where tracing gets used is within the process of making hand drawn animation, and I do mean the professional stuff. Model guides are constantly used in classic animation as reference to keep by the animator's side so that characters stay on model, but sometimes there are unnoticeable parts of a character that just get straight-up traced from either the model sheet or a different scene that's already animated. When used smartly and sparingly, this keeps the character on model, is unidentifiable to the audience, and takes up less time for the animators to work (and by "used smartly" I don't mean moments where characters blatantly have 5 seconds of reused animation). I can basically guarantee that this practice was done throughout the making of any 2D project you can think of.

In digital hand drawn art, key frames between points in an animation may get the "shift and trace" treatment, where the tween frame is just a smudged-around-version of the key frames until it looks about right, and then it get traced over. Backgrounds get traced all the time by artists in the professional field through modelling a 3D render of the space, going over it so they have the layout, and then painting on top of it. When drawing characters, people will take photos of themselves and trace the pose, then keep it to the side as reference. And this is all without even mentioning rotoscoping.

When people say, "don't trace," what they actually mean is, "don't trace as a substitute for experience."

The issue is that people blanketly state, "x thing is bad," because then people that aren't learned in the field go, "oh, okay, x thing is bad, it will always be bad, I shouldn't look into it or consider it any more, and I should correct/disgrace anyone that thinks otherwise or does x thing."

So please. Trace. Tell other people to trace. But remember: trace mindfully. :)

#justtalks #art tips #art #long post #tracing #tumblr

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revelboo · 2 months ago

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The vehicons car chalk was so cute! Would they like to decorate their human if they got their hands on henna/eyeliner/bodysafe ink?

They would love to!

Love Letters

Steve and Vehicons x Reader

• Some part of you is honestly surprised that your old house’s bedroom floor isn’t caving in as you lean over your vanity and try to line your eyes while Steve and one of his identical brothers stand mass displaced behind you watching like this is the most fascinating thing they’ve ever seen. And it’s a miracle you don’t stab itself in the eye with the end of the liquid eyeliner, because they’re distracting you even though they’re not actually doing anything. Inhaling, you turn and look up at Steve. And he looks at the eyeliner pen while you calculate how badly this can possibly go before you hold it up. “It’s makeup,” you volunteer.

• Reaching to take the impossibly skinny stick, he nearly fumbles it trying to hold it like a datapad stylus. Glancing at your face, the way you’d drawn around your eyes. Like a gladiator marking themself for battle. Reaching out, he tries to draw your little love symbol on your cheek and growls a warning when his brother reaches out a hand in demand. “What battle are you preparing for?” He asks, reluctantly handing over the ink stick so his brother can add a second love mark to your skin.

• “The grocery store,” you say, biting your bottom lip to keep from laughing as Steve’s head just tips before he’s snatching your eyeliner back and lifting your hand to add a series of strange glyphs to the inside of your wrist. And his brother doesn’t try to take the pen back, just holding out his hand, taking it and adding more from the feel of it to your cheek. You have no idea what they’re writing on you, but they pass the eyeliner back and forth between themselves adding glyphs to any exposed skin. Your neck, your collarbone, your arm. For all you know, they’re writing the alien equivalent of ‘Kilroy was here’ on you.

• Glyph by glyph, he writes a love letter to you on your soft skin, knowing the words mean nothing to you. That you can’t understand their language as you just watch with a bemused smile. Trying to explain what you mean to him, to all of them. That you see them, not just clones or cannon fodder. That they’re important to you. That you’re everything to them and his brother helps, adding his own pledges.

• They’re weirdly quiet as they graffiti your skin in lines of alien symbols and when another of them wanders up to see what the three of you are up to, Steve hands over the eyeliner so he can write on you, too. And they’re so serious about whatever this is that you can’t say a word, can’t interrupt. Because this almost feels like a ritual, some strange magic you don’t understand. Runes of protection drawn on your skin and they don’t stop until the eyeliner runs out of ink and then they almost look disappointed even though they were running out of space anyway. Unless you stripped and you’re not sure where that thought comes from or how you feel about the idea of standing naked as their hands patiently paint symbols on you. Breath hitching, you’re not sure if you want that or not.

• Staring at you, at the words on your skin, he’s torn between an empty sort of longing and pride. If he was much braver, sure it wouldn’t ruin everything, he’d tell you that he loved you. Read those words to you. “Well, no one’s going to mess with me at the store,” you say into silence, offering him a small smile that makes his spark ache. Everything he can’t say right there. Reaching out, he pulls you into his frame, chin on top of your head and he swears he can feel your bones under the skin and muscle, the quick beat of your heart. Those eyes are surprised when he makes himself let go and backs up. ‘Your enemies will tremble in fear,’ he agrees solemnly and he’s rewarded with a real smile, his spark warming at it because your happiness is precious to him. Hoards every smile, every laugh, and touch of those soft hands. Unable to say a thing, so left suffering in silence. Wanting something not meant for him.

#transformers x reader #vehicon x reader #steve the vehicon #vehicons

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wellfine · 13 days ago

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Hello, your art is like a beautifully grown lime to me, I always love to see your posts. I was just wondering, some of your pieces have a slight blur to them which makes them really reminiscent of an aged sketchbook page (graphite smudging I mean). Do you do a layer with a pencil brush and then gaussian blur that with it all one layer? Or do you duplicate it and blur the top layer? I hope you have such a wonderful day, I hope your mind is free of anything that can ale it.

Hi there!

I think you're probably talking about this kind of lineart, right?

If that's the case then I don't do any extra blurring, this is 100% facilitated by the brush I use. It's a brush that comes with Krita (the art program I use for everything) by default called "Pencil-5 Tilted" (I believe you can find it under the "Sketch" category) and I LOVE IT LOL it's my absolute favourite pencil brush because it mimics being able to use both the flat side of a pencil lead to get that soft, feathered look AND the pointed tip for an extremely fine/hard line.

In Krita, the little rotating arrows in that thumbnail mean that the brush has stylus tilt sensitivity, meaning it can tell what angle you're holding the stylus at, which is what allows you to mimic the side/tip angle of a real pencil. I'm sure similar brushes exist in different programs but I'm not familiar with them, but hopefully this gives you some key words to find brushes for your software.

When I use it for sketches it looks very soft and fluffy, but I also use it to build up studies like IRL charcoal.

Other than this brush, very occasionally I do the thing where you take fineliner-style lineart, duplicate it, blur it by like 10% and then lower the opacity on the duplicate layer a bit to get that traditionally animated celluloid effect, but I mostly only use it with anime-style clean lineart and I haven't done it in a while (I can't find any examples). And sometimes I use layer effects that can also change how lines look. But I'm pretty sure this is what you were talking about, yeah?

Thank you so much for the kind words about my art! I hope this could help at all, I highly recommend Krita for anyone looking for a FREE and open-source drawing software that works across multiple platforms (including Linux) and can be installed via Steam; it has a very powerful brush engine and I've truly fallen in love with a lot of the pre-installed brushes.

#a lime.....#also unfortunately much ails my heart at the moment but we stay silly

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fluentmoviequoter · 2 months ago

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Knock Knock

Dalton Lambert x fem!reader

✰ You and Dalton get into an argument when you accidentally spill your drink on his new drawing. He kicks you out, but after a gift is left at his door and he finds a reminder of what he feels toward you, he knocks on your door with more than an apology.

✰ angst to fluff, argument, takes place after The Red Door, 1.9k+ words, requested

Dalton Lambert Masterlist | Request Info/Fandom List

You shift your knees up, tucking your socked feet beneath the comforter on Dalton’s bed as you remain focused on your tablet. Since you last spoke to Dalton, you’ve read a bit, colored with your stylus, and downloaded a new game. Although you’ve been in Dalton’s dorm since you got out of class nearly four hours ago, you haven’t paid much attention to him in the last hour. However, this works for you. It’s become a bit of a routine to spend time together after class while doing your own things. Parallel play, Chris had called it; it's when you do different things of your own interests while being close. Whatever it’s called, you love it.

Perched on Dalton’s bed, mere inches from him where he’s leaned over his drawing table, you’re comfortable. Dalton has become more than a friend, and the more time you spend together, the easier it is for both of you to open up, be yourselves, and show that you feel something toward the person sitting beside you.

Dalton tugs a piece of hair behind his ear in your peripheral, and you shake your head. You’ve been telling him that he either needs to cut his hair or actually use the stash of ponytail holders in his dresser, but when he gets in the zone like this – lost in himself and his memories as his drawing utensils move across the page – that’s the last thing on his mind. You tap an app to open it, shifting closer to the end of Dalton’s bed as your attention shifts away from him again.

Dalton’s hand works faster than his mind as he sketches. He’d had a plan when he sat down: to draw a landscape for Professor Armagan’s class. The second he’d lifted his pencil, however, an image flashed into his mind, along with the soundtrack of a slamming door cutting off screams and the memory of a soft, caring hand against his face. You’d been there after he’d closed the Red Door, though you never pushed him to tell you exactly what happened. Each moment he spends with you, he feels more inclined to tell you everything, to pour his heart out to you, and let you decide if you’d like to fit in his life with everything else. Coming back to the present, Dalton is surprised to see how much progress he’s made. Your face is taking shape on the open sketchpad, exactly as he remembers you looking when you cupped his face for the first time and invited him to let go.

As Dalton focuses on touching up the details of his sketch, you reach toward the table beside his bed. Your eyes don’t leave the tablet screen as you attempt to get your drink, and you don’t realize that your hand is too close to it until it’s too late.

You gasp when the glass tips over, scrambling up as apologies rush from your lips.

“Dalton, I’m so sorry,” you say. “I- I can go get paper towels, and I’ll replace the sketchpad. I should have been more careful, looked at where my hand was.”

Dalton’s chest rises and falls quickly, staring at the soaked paper as you continue speaking. After what feels like an eternity, he pushes his chair back, causing you to flinch, and snatches the paper off his desk as he stands.

“It’s ruined!” he fumes. “Replacing the paper won’t bring back the art!”

“I’m sorry,” you repeat, softer as you step back from him.

“I was working on something new, that’s fresh in my mind, but the other drawing- the one that took me three weeks? That’s gone!” he exclaims loudly. “A dry sketchpad can’t replicate it; don’t you get it?!”

You nod, opening your mouth to apologize again. Dalton cuts you off by slamming his hand down on the wet desk, sending drops flying through the air as you tug your hands behind your back, attempting to stay calm and not cry because of his outburst.

“Typical,” Dalton scoffs under his breath. “Why would you care about the art? You just want to feel like someone wants you close.”

He’s not even speaking to you, but his words cut like a knife through you. You swallow, blinking rapidly to stay as composed as possible. Maybe he’ll think you didn’t hear him, see that it was an accident, and apologize.

“Just go,” he says, turning to face you. “Get out.”

“Dalton,” you whisper. "I didn't mean-"

“Save it!” he yells. “I don’t want you here!”

So, you do exactly as he asks. With your chin dropped you rush out of his dorm, leaving your things behind and not noticing that the door doesn’t close behind you. You do want to feel like someone is close, and you thought that was Dalton. Tears begin clouding your vision as you make your way back to your own place. Avoiding any routes Chris may take, you take twice as long to get home, and when you reach your bed, you collapse into it and let your tears fall, sobbing over the end of something that hadn’t even started.

The night after kicking you out, Dalton is sitting slumped at his desk, drawing on a new sketchpad. He’d gone out and bought one before class this morning and was surprised to see a bag with five leaning against his door when he returned for dinner. They’re from you, of course, but he was too angry to consider thanking you, so he tossed the bag in a corner and got to work on recreating his assignment from memory. Squeezing his pencil too tightly, Dalton remembers what happened last night. You’d been apologetic, looked ashamed and close to tears, and he’d kicked you out. His anger was justified, he tells himself, because you know how much this means to him, and you weren’t more careful.

Looking around his desk, Dalton doesn’t locate the pencil he wants. Sighing, he opens a drawer beside him and freezes. There are a few pages inside with various sketches: a few pictures of his family or the house he saw in his nightmares, a quick drawing of you… and the assignment he thought had been in the sketchpad you ruined.

“What did I do?” Dalton asks himself.

Regardless of whether his assignment was intact or not, Dalton shouldn’t have reacted like he did. He had no reason to yell or kick you out, and as he relives it now, he sees the fear and heartbreak in your eyes. You’d tried talking, but he’d cut you off, upset and angry. You’ve never asked him to listen, only invited him to share his burdens with you, but he refused to listen the one time you tried to speak.

Dalton drops the papers back into the drawer and stands. He has to make this up to you somehow, at least apologize. If you don’t want to let him close again, he’ll understand. As he turns to put his pencils away, he notices that your stuff is still in his room. The tablet you’d had yesterday is sitting atop his dresser, your water bottle and backpack are in the corner where he’d tossed the sketchpads, and a hair tie that he hadn’t noticed yesterday appears to have been slid toward him when he’d been lost in his work.

Dalton rakes his fingers through his hair, tugging at his roots. You were trying to take care of him, and he didn’t even notice. With another sigh, Dalton gathers your things, packing your tablet carefully into your bag. He pulls it over his shoulder then and leaves his dorm with two destinations in mind. The first is a nearby mall. And then to you. He can only hope that you’ll listen to him one last time, long enough to hear his apology, even if you want to walk away after that.

Chris hasn’t responded to your text yet, so you use your remote to navigate to your favorite show without moving out of your bed. You haven’t eaten today, didn’t go to class, and if Chris doesn’t help you, you have no way of getting your stuff back from Dalton’s dorm. It doesn’t matter, you lie to yourself. As another episode of mindless television begins, someone knocks on your door. You ignore it, assuming they’ll go away when no one answers.

Less than a minute later, a louder knock. You stand with a groan, not bothering to look through the peephole before you pull the door open.

Dalton softens when he sees you. He’s not smiling, but his shoulders drop and his eyes seem to grow larger at the sight of your puffy eyes and how your hair has been messily pulled back out of your face. Your backpack is over his shoulder, and a few paper shopping bags are hanging from his wrist. Neither of you speak, taking the other in.

“Can I come in?” he murmurs after a moment.

You don’t reply, but step back and gesture in a silent invitation.

“I’m sorry,” Dalton begins as you close the door. You keep your back to him as he continues speaking, saying, “I’m so sorry. There is no excuse for how I treated you. I should have listened, and I know it was an accident. I’m sorry.”

Slowly, you turn to face him, and he sets your bag and the other things he’s brought on your table. When he steps back to wait, you move closer to the table separating you. Dalton nods, pointing at the bags to give you permission to open them. You don’t care about whatever apology gift he may have brought, though, so you round the table and hug him.

Tightening his arms around your waist, Dalton sighs against you and whispers another apology.

“I forgive you, Dalton,” you murmur. “I get it. I should have been more careful. But we both need to do better next time.”

“Right,” he agrees, nodding as he straightens. “I will. I won’t take you for granted again.”

“Thanks for bringing my stuff back,” you add. “I asked Chris to go get it and she left me on read.”

“That sounds about right. The rest of it is just to say I’m sorry, and I want you close, no matter what we’re doing.”

You smile and peek inside the largest bag. Inside, a book you’ve been wanting to read and two face masks, just like the one you convinced him to do that last time he hung out at your dorm.

“There’s also some snacks and drinks in the smaller one; I just got what you usually bring with you. And flowers in the white bag,” Dalton says. “It’s not much-“

“It’s more than enough,” you interrupt. “You don’t have to buy my forgiveness, but thank you for thinking about me.”

“You didn’t have to buy mine either,” he points out. “But thanks for the sketchpads.”

Your brows furrow as you argue, “I didn’t get you sketchpads. I wouldn’t know where to start with something that personal.”

Dalton sighs. His dad has been trying to make up with him for nearly as long as he’s been trying to find the courage to tell you how he feels. He should have remembered that you have a key to his dorm, anyway.

“Dalton,” you call, carrying the bouquet to your small kitchenette. “Could we… could we maybe go to dinner? Actually spend a few minutes talking to each other.”

Dalton smiles so wide it begins to hurt his cheeks. “Only if we make it a regular occurrence,” he counters.

You return to his side and loop your arms over his shoulders, leaning forward before you murmur, “We can arrange that.”

There’s a better angle to draw, Dalton thinks as he meets you halfway, kissing you with a passion that does more than reinforce his apology.

#hanna writes✯#dalton lambert x reader #dalton lambert x fem!reader #dalton lambert imagine #dalton lambert fluff #dalton lambert fic #dalton lambert #insidious 5 #insidious #insidious the red door #insidious fic #fem!reader #requests

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spikezonebby · 2 years ago

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hi !! saw requests for song fics are open, may I request something angsty with fem!human!reader x megatron (idw) to ‘young and beautiful’ by lana del rey ? 🥹 <3 thank you in advancee

Young and Beautiful (IDW Megatron x Fem!Human!reader)

Word count: 1,070

Eighty years. Humans lived for a measly eighty years.

You change right before Megatron’s optics. Your hair grays, your skin sags, your bones grow thinner. Like the very universe was sapping you away from him. Vector Prime alone could grant him all the time he needed to write a poem about all of the moments he lived with you.

But how could he begin to write when every time he picked up his stylus, you were that much further from him? He longed to capture the feeling of you and immortalize it in a data pad, but then you’d touch your tiny, soft servo along his gray bottom lip plate and take him away. Remind him that you were his moment. Here for a second, gone in a blink.

You flare, you flicker, you fade.

You asked him once, if he’d love you even after you weren’t so soft. You weren’t so pretty. And your mind wasn’t as intact as it once was.

Megatron’s answer was immediate.

“Even once the spark of your life extinguishes, and I won’t stop even for a klik after.”

You may have lamented the way time and age changed you, but Megatron learns to see unique beauty in it. There was something beautiful in a life lived so long that you COULD age, it was a promise of peace and resilience. You lived, you fought, you came back again and again. A force so strong that it took time itself to put you down.

Megatron thought that was romantic. Not in the way of kisses in summer or dancing in the moonlight, but the cosmic way. In the way that atoms and space dust collect together and become new stars, or how he realizes, in the grand scheme of things, so, so many tiny and nearly impossible things had to happen for you to be his.

As you grew older, you grew more rapt by his poetry. You blamed it on growing old and sentimental, he argued you were always sentimental. You had always found it fascinating, but Megatron believed that perhaps you took some comfort in it.

“Do you think, because I love you… I’ll be there in the Afterspark waiting for you?”

You were resting against his neck cables, curled up between his shoulder armor and helm vents like a tiny glitch mouse. The ardent heat of energon pulsing up the lines of his throat felt good and helped soothe some of the arthritis in your hands. He had to rest his chin on his servo, propping his helm up at an angle to keep from squishing you, but he hadn’t the spark to stop you.

It’s a question that he’d pondered many times. For he who often pondered the nature of all things grand, the question of life after death was a philosophist’s energon and mineral tablets.

“You do not have a spark,” He points out, shifting his helm minutely to a position slightly more comfortable for you to tuck yourself under, “So I would not expect you to be held to the same rules and expectations of Primus.”

“But, your God is real.” You raise as a counterpoint, “Any proof that various human gods are real could be considered dubious at best.”

“That is a point for the high queries of gods, but what of your lack-there-of spark?”

“What is a spark but life?” You offer, gesturing with your hands and making the round shape of a spark before your breast. Megatron loathed to move you from your warm perch, so instead he tips the data pad in his servo so he can see your tiny reflection. You look comfortable, hidden securely in his collar fairings. “Perhaps I DO have a spark, but it’s simply just a different form. After all, energy cannot be destroyed. It merely changes form.”

You chuckle, knocking your knuckles against his neck cables. “Julius Robert Mayer.”

“A human philosopher?” Megatron asks, setting his datapad aside to instead settle for reaching up and touching his digit to your lap. You take the hint immediately, and hold his huge digit between your two itty bitty hands.

“Founder of the laws of energy conservation. Suppose most of us are philosophers in some way, though.”

You have to be, with lives so short and bright. Megatron keeps that thought private to himself, gently rubbing his thumb against the back of your hand. You were feeling thinner and thinner these days. He hoped you ate well enough.

“So, what have we come to the conclusion of in this conversation?” You prompt, bringing back your point, “That there is no true way to say I do not have a spark, and that it’s ultimately far more likely that Primus and his Afterspark wait for me than say… The Christian or Hebrew concept of God.”

“For there are too many to count.”

“For there are too many to count.” You agree, “But it is the most commonly applicable and the most similar to Primus.”

“But,” Megatron clicks his glossa, a smile coming to his face. He loved it so when he could have these in-depth conversations with you. “That is also dismissing that humanity is a much younger culture than Cybertron was. Perhaps you will find proof that these things are indeed true, or perhaps something you had not even considered. Perhaps in the afterlife, you will have a veritable plethora of ‘heavens’ to choose from.”

“Then I’d choose to wait for you.” You say, “Or I’d choose some religion where I’d be reborn and I could fall in love with you again.”

“You could live again, redo all of the things you had missed. Unmake all of your mistakes.”

“You talk as if I considered you a mistake.”

He feels your tiny, cool lips press to the pulsing line of energon that is connected directly to his spark chamber. You laugh, giddy and sounding just as young as you were when he first met you. There’s a well of emotion there in his chest and, if not for millions of years of carefully cultivated control, he might have sobbed.

Instead, he settles for curling the whole of his huge, warm servo against your body, and recording this moment for all of time. The moment he writes on his spark that you wanted to be his in any life.

“I suppose it is not a mistake then, if you do not regret it.”

#transformers #mtmte transformers #idw transformers #idw megatron #reader insert #megatron x reader #request fill #song fic #Thank you for requesting!!#this got a lot more philosophical than i expected tbh

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thebibutterflyao3 · 6 months ago

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"Charmed"

@pandalilymicrofics - 831 words

part three - part four - part five

**TW: mention of sex with a strap-on**

Pandora sat with her eyes closed and her head tipped back for a long while after Mr. Potter left, gathering her thoughts and processing the unexpected shift the last session had taken. She’d known there was more to his story, but was grateful she hadn’t pushed for it. Seeing his cathartic relief as the words spilled free was exactly why she’d chosen this profession in the first place.

I want to ease the hurt, she’d told her mother. I want to give people a place to heal, to find peace.

Her mother recommended she become a yoga instructor. Her father advised her to be a pharmacist. Her brother suggested she grow cannabis. Pandora chose to pursue a medical degree and specialize in Clinical Psychiatry.

Five long years in a medical program. Two years in general practice. Six years in specialized training. It required thirteen years of hard work just to earn the title, Psychiatrist. Then, another five to establish her practice, small as it was.

And it was worth it.

“He thinks sex ruined his marriage,” she mumbled, pressing her thumb and forefinger against her eyelids until she saw flashes of light. “His wife’s strap game must be phenomenal. Ex-wife, rather.”

Pandora snorted a soft laugh and shook her head. “Goddess save me. When he said she turned him gay after bottoming once, I wanted to ask for her number.”

It’s official, I’ve cracked. Not only am I talking to myself, but now I’m considering sex with a client’s ex. She was sure that would warrant a severe ethics violation, at least. Considering the dry spell she’d been in since her husband died, Pandora wondered if it would be worth it.

If her strap game is really that good? Yes, unequivocally, yes.

She opened her eyes and turned to collect her laptop, skimming the transcription document. Over the last few years, she’d found that her clients preferred her note-taking to be minimal. As she often showed them, her notepad was largely a visual aide for herself to guide the conversation, rather than a record of what they were saying.

Notes were the backbone of her profession, however. It was vital that she keep a record of each client and taping them made her uncomfortable, so this was her solution. A simple talk to text program that converted verbal conversations into a typed transcript. She still had to edit it and assign roles to each voice, but it was far more accurate than her memory.

Mid-way through her edit, her phone buzzed to life. Startled, Pandora pulled it out and squinted at the screen. Evan?

“‘Allo?”

“Bonjour, ma crevette. Je t'ai manqué?” (Hello, my little shrimp. Did you miss me?)

“Toujours, tu le sais bien!” (Always, you know it!)

“Bon. I have brilliant news, are you sitting down?” (Good.)

Pandora sank back into her armchair and smiled. “Yes. I’m sat.”

“I am coming to London to see ma lune for her birthday! If my plans work out as I hope they will, I may even be able to stay awhile,” Evan said, his monotone voice tinged with a decidedly charmed lilt. Which, for Evan, was practically gushing. (my moon, aka Luna)

“That is brilliant news! When do you arrive? Her birthday is next week.”

Evan clicked his tongue as he rustled through papers in the background. “Leaving tomorrow, actually. I have an interview with an interior designer that a friend set-up for me.”

“Interior design? That is a bit of a stretch for you, no?” she asked.

“I’ll make it work. Fabric is fabric, whether it’s on a person or a pillow.”

Pandora shrugged. “If you say so. Perhaps if you land this job you can spruce up my office a bit too.”

“You can be my test run, yes? I can design for you and start a portfolio,” he suggested, with the steady tap of a stylus against a tablet in the background. “Send me photos and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Perfect. See you tomorrow,” she said. “Au revoir.”

“Adieu.”

Pandora ended the call and stared at her phone screen, deep in thought. It had been years since Evan visited her in London. He complained about Paris fairly consistently, but she never thought he’d leave. The idea of having her twin close enough to squeeze him made her chest ache. She’d missed him terribly and he was a dry texter.

“I wonder…” she murmured, flipping through her contact list. She found the name she was looking for and opened the text app. If anyone would know what her brother was up to, it was Regulus. His family’s winery had a few vendors in Paris, so he checked in on Evan when he was in town.

Pandora: Do you have a reason to be in London soon?

Regulus: Not particularly. Do I need to be?

Pandora: Evan is coming tomorrow. Says he has an interview and intends to stay.

Regulus: Pardon? That’s news to me! We have plans tonight, I will poke around.

Pandora: Thank you. xx

#pandora lovegood #pandora rosier #pandora lovegood x lily evans #lily x pandora #pandolily #pandalily #pandalily microfics #pandalily microfic #lily evans #evan rosier #regulus black

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itzmellooo · 12 days ago

Note

what software and brushes do you use

I use IbispaintX on an Asus tablet (no digital stylus, I use my fingers). Brushes I use commonly include:

The soft mapping pen for lineart

Soft felt tip pen for rough sketches and the majority of my coloring and rendering

And normal airbrush pen for yknow. airbrushing 💀💀

#im not limited to these three but these are the ones i use religiously #kenny's answering!#kenny's rambling !!

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ravensilversea · 1 year ago

Text

Life's endless toil and endeavor (And to-night I long for rest)

Prompt(s): Loyal/Exhaustion

Warnings: No warnings apply

Relationships: Fox & Stone

Characters: Commander Fox, Commander Stone

Additional Tags: Exhaustion, Paperwork, Stone stages an intervention and makes Fox go to bed, Genfic

Summary/Description: Fox's report is due on the chancellor’s desk at 0800, and he has… 500 words left. He's so tired he's drinking from an empty cup of caf, and Stone stages a minor intervention

Words stopped making sense about half an hour ago. They started dangling just out of reach on the other side of a foggy cloud at least an hour before that, and Fox reaches for his caf only to find it empty for the third time in as many minutes. He sighs deeply and sets the cup back on the coaster. Rubbing his face, he tries to regain the train of thought he lost quite a while ago. The report’s due on the chancellor’s desk at 0800, and he has… 500 words left.

Fox stares at the padd in front of him, twirling his stylus absentmindedly. “Who the fuck decided these things needed a minimum word count requirement?” he asks the air.

There’s a clatter, and it takes Fox a moment to process the fact it was someone tripping into the other desk in the room and scattering padds. “What are you still doing awake, Fox?” a brother whispers harshly.

Grabbing his caf mug, Fox takes a sip of air as he looks over at the formerly empty desk. Stone. It was Stone leaning over it with his helmet still spinning on the floor where it fell. Stone who got that stupid tattoo in a washroom on Kamino from some random CT that Fox never got the name of before they were all shipped out. “Report,” he says and clears his throat. “Writing a report. What are you doing still awake?” Nope, that sounded wrong. “Still doing awake.” And that feels redundant somehow.

Fox takes another sip of air and stares down at his caf mug, feeling somewhat betrayed.

Stone carefully takes the mug from him and sets it down further away on the desk. “Right, you’re heading to bed. I’ll finish your report. Force knows the chancellor can’t be bothered to tell us apart most of the time; I’m sure he won’t notice.”

The padd is pulled out of Fox’s grip, and Stone jerks backwards a bit when it finally comes loose. Fox stifles a yawn. “I’m fine, Stone.” He holds out a hand while the other reaches for his caf mug again. “Just need a little more…” Blank. Blinking, Fox tries to summon the word from beyond the fog.

“Fox, 1010, darling sleep-deprived little brother, you can’t come up with ‘caf’. You’re done.”

“Stone. Padd. Now.”

Stone pointedly sets the padd and caf mug on the other desk before pulling Fox’s chair back, with Fox in it, from his. “Nope. Come on, up you get.” He drags Fox out of the chair, and Fox stumbles into Stone.

It’s a much longer walk than usual back to the barracks. It’s a much quicker walk than usual back to the barracks. Every time Fox blinks they’re still walking; every time he blinks they’ve teleported corridors. The smell of the lower levels clings to Stone, specifically the smell of spiced street food.

“Bastard,” Fox mutters as Stone settles him down onto his bunk.

“What?”

“Didn’t bring any back for me.”

Fox’s boots slide off his feet and thud to the floor. They’re quickly followed by his upper armor and belt. “Dude, you literally hate anything spicier than a mild curry sauce. I still don’t understand how you’re related to me.”

“We’re clones,” Fox slurs, tipping sideways onto his mattress. Force, this pillow. It’s the best thing he’s ever slept on. And the mattress! So soft and comfortable. “Grew up together,” he finishes half into his pillow.

Stone snorts. “Still a drool monster I see.” The blanket is gently pulled up over Fox’s shoulders, and Stone lifts and moves Fox’s head, running a hand over the curls. “There,” he says softly, “now you won’t get a crick in your neck. You better thank me in the morning.”

Fox hums and burrows into the blanket. Stone laughs. Then the door opens and closes with a swish-swish.

#star wars #commander fox #commander stone #raven's pen #written for commander fox week 2021 #<- i switched blogs and broke my readmores so im making new posts to fix them. dont mind me #the tell tale queue

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aidanchaser · 2 years ago

Text

Full Exposure [REMIX]

remixed from Full Exposure by @ladyofthenoodle for the @mlsquaredance event! A huge thank you for organizing it. It has been such a blast and such a boost to my creativity this past month.

beta'd by @ccboomer and @sunshinemarauder

Marinette snaps her laptop closed and groans into Alya’s pillow. She is so tired of looking at empty bank accounts and red spreadsheets. “How am I supposed to afford anything at this rate?” she whines.

“Out of noodle-dollars already?” Alya asks without looking up from her tablet.

Marinette rolls over to stare at the ceiling. “It’s impossible to be a student full-time, have a full-time unpaid internship, and work enough hours to buy food and pay rent and every other little thing that comes along, while also being a full-time superhero!” Marinette ticks each list item off on her hand as she talks. “I can’t keep taking out loans or putting it on a credit card.”

“The system’s broken,” Alya agrees nonchalantly. “You could always sell nudes.”

Marinette squeals in a combination of horror and disgust and throws a pillow at Alya.

Alya takes the soft blow with the smallest of grunts. “There’s nothing wrong with it! A lot of people make a lot of money that way.”

“I’m not interested in gross comments, people photoshopping my body, or having my image fed into A.I. generators.”

Alya shrugs. “Fair.”

Marinette scrunches up her nose. “How much money?”

“A few thousand, easily.” Alya adds a note into her journalism reading, then sets her tablet and stylus aside. “You could probably make a good deal.”

Marinette rolls her eyes. “No one is going to pay a thousand dollars for my nudes.”

“They might for Ladybug’s though.”

Marinette reaches for Alya’s second pillow and throws it. This time, Alya catches it.

“Ladybug is a national icon! She can’t just post nudes!”

“Ladybug is a full-grown adult woman who doesn’t get paid by the city. She can do whatever she likes with her image.”

Marinette shakes her head as she sits up. She leans back against Alya’s wall and stares out the window. Ladybug is a hero of Paris. She has a reputation. Besides, what would Chat Noir think? He’d see them, surely. How many pussy jokes could she bear?

Marinette taps her fingers against her closed laptop. “What if they were… tasteful nudes?”

“Boudoir photography is very in,” Alya says. “You’d just have to make sure people know they’re paying for almost-nudes.”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start. I’d need you to be my photographer.”

“Girl, I’m happy to help you, but you already know someone who actually does model photography.”

Marinette squeals again and reaches for a pillow, only to find herself out of ammunition. “I can’t ask Adrien to take Ladybug’s nudes!”

“He’s your boyfriend.”

“He’s Marinette’s boyfriend!”

Alya shrugs, as if this is irrelevant, when in fact it is the most relevant that any fact could possibly be to this conversation. Yes, Adrien has turned to directing photoshoots rather than modeling in photoshoots now that they’re in university, but Marinette is not going to ask her boyfriend to take nudes of another girl! And Ladybug is, as far as Adrien knows, another girl.

“You know he’s going to look at them either way,” Alya says. “You might as well make him part of it so he doesn’t have to feel guilty about it.”

“Adrien would not look at Ladybug’s nudes. Not when he’s my boyfriend!”

Alya raises her eyebrows. “He’s loyal, not dead. You remember how he talked about Ladybug when were in school together. He won’t be able to resist.”

Marinette does not remember the way Adrien talked about Ladybug when they were younger. She was too busy daydreaming about him or trying to talk without tripping over her words.

“Adrien used to like Ladybug?” she asks weakly.

“The way a fish likes water.” Alya tips her chair back and, with a mischievous grin that’s rather fitting for the holder of the miraculous of illusion and trickery, says, “Just ask. See what he says.”

✦✧✦✧

Adrien is still not entirely sure that this is a good idea.

He’s flattered, honestly, that Alya, as the admin for the Ladyblog, recommended him to Ladybug as a photographer. He’s surprised and grateful that Marinette assured him that it would be fine for him to do such a risqué photoshoot with such a well-known celebrity. And he’s nervous, more nervous than he has ever been about anything in his life.

Chloé has agreed to give him access to one of Le Grand Paris’s suites for the day, though he hasn’t told her why he needs it—not that he thinks he can fully keep it secret from her. She’ll figure it out once the photos are released.

Zoé helped him haul up his lighting equipment. He didn’t tell her why he needed the room, either, but he imagines she’ll be one of the first people to download the photos once they’re online.

Adrien finishes tightening the C-stand beside the bed. He’ll adjust the lighting once Ladybug arrives, but he wants the grunt work done before she gets there. The last thing he needs is Ladybug standing around in her underwear while he tries to work with heavy equipment.

Adrien rubs his eyes and tries not to picture Ladybug in lacy underwear, though it’s as absurd as it is futile. She’ll be here any minute and he’ll have to photograph her while she’s actually, physically in front of him and is actually, physically wearing lacy underwear.

A knock on the balcony doors breaks through Adrien’s internal battlefield. His heart, which is already nesting in his throat, decides it’s time to run a marathon just at the sound of her arrival. He’s worried it might fully burst before he even lays eyes on Ladybug.

He swallows and reminds himself that he has a girlfriend. That he is going to see Marinette tonight, once this is over. He’ll have to laugh and tell her how absolutely innocent it was when it’s all said and done. Because it has to be innocent. It has to be.

Adrien slides open the balcony door and is relieved to see that Ladybug is still fully clothed in her usual suit. The only thing that makes her appearance on the balcony any different from an evening on patrol is the duffel bag in her hand, like she’s come for a sleepover.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi,” he replies, and hopes she doesn’t notice how breathless he is.

Adrien isn’t sure if the pause between them feels long because adrenaline has his brain running double-time, or if the silence between them really does stretch out interminably.

“I’m just about ready,” he finally says, “whenever you are.”

“Right! I just need to um… change.”

“Right.”

This time, he’s certain that the pause is too long, but Ladybug finally slips past him and into the bathroom.

When she’s gone, Adrien scrubs his face with his hands. His palms come away sticky with sweat. He is supposed to be the professional. If any of his photographers behaved like this while he was a model, he would never have worked with them again. He can’t let Ladybug think he’s some sort of creep.

The bathroom door opens and Adrien’s heart, again, races, but she doesn’t come out in her underwear, not yet.

Instead, Ladybug is wearing a thin, silky black robe. They discussed a color palette—one of the hardest conversations Adrien has ever had to keep a straight face for—and settled on blacks and reds, which not only keep with Ladybug’s theme, but are sensual enough on their own.

Her hair is pulled up in a bun and her mask covers her eyes—or rather, a replica of her mask. Even the earrings in her ears have to be a copy, at least for the moment. Adrien, knowing how his ring camouflages itself, asked her if her earrings bore her iconic spots when she was not transformed. If she was surprised he knew to ask, she didn’t show it. She simply confirmed that he was right, and she would have to wear a copy if they wanted to maintain the traditional icons of Ladybug.

He can tell that she’s taken his advice about makeup, too. The low dip in her bathrobe reveals perfectly smooth, pale skin. She’s covered up any blemishes and freckles, something he suggested not only because of his own experience in modeling, but because anyone who knows her, like a partner, might recognize such marks.

She blushed and said that her boyfriend didn’t know that she was Ladybug, so that was probably smart.

“I can also clean it up in post,” Adrien told her. Then, he dared to ask, “Does he know you’re doing this? Not that he has to—it’s your choice—I just… if you’re nervous about him finding out, that sounds… bad?”

Ladybug wrinkled her nose and stared down at their notes. “He sort of knows?”

But Ladybug’s relationship isn’t really Adrien’s business.

“Where to first?” She fidgets with the tie around her waist.

“I’ve set up over here.”

Adrien leads Ladybug to the bed, where he’d already pulled back the hotel bedspread and laid out a black silk sheet to cover the stark white hotel bedding.

Ladybug’s fingers slips into the knot around her waist. Adrien picks up his camera and busies himself with the settings, intentionally missing the moment she slides out of her bathrobe and onto the bed.

“I’m just going to check the lighting,” he says, and lifts his camera.

It’s easier to stare at her through the lens.

She’s not only taken her bathrobe off, but she’s pulled her hair down. Her dark hair falls along the curve of her neck and brushes over her shoulders. Adrien follows those curves down to the black cups edged in red lace that cover her pale breasts, though he catches the tiniest sliver of pink peeking out from behind the lace. Black straps fasten her bra to the high-waisted underwear that, while it covers her stomach, curves high over her hips, leaving her legs long and exposed. Her bare feet are decorated in bright red nail polish. Something about that nail polish nags at his brain—didn’t Marinette paint her toes last night?

But the shutter on his camera clicks and he forgets to finish his thought. It takes all his mental fortitude to look at the photo professionally and academically. The shadows on her skin are too harsh; her hair blends in with the black silk; one of the straps of her bra is twisted.

Adrien adjusts the bounce of the light around the room, softens it with a flag, switches the bedding from black to red, and asks Ladybug to fix her bra strap.

“And then the robe back on,” he says, “but open.” It takes all his effort to keep his voice steady and even.

He checks his settings again, adjusts his camera, and finally, they can begin to shoot in earnest.

Once he gets going, it’s fairly easy to maintain his professionalism. There isn’t a whole lot of sensuality when it comes to adjusting angles, clicking the shutter, checking the shot, adjusting the pose—it really does feel like work. But Adrien would appreciate it if his heart would stop jerking in sudden bursts whenever Ladybug turns her brilliant blue eyes to the camera, or when he has to set the camera down to direct Ladybug into a new pose.

She, at least, behaves like a professional.

“New pose?” Adrien asks, and Ladybug readily shifts so that one arm drapes lazily above her head. Her face tilts up so that her neck slopes in a soft arch into her shoulder, and one knee cocks, suggesting a subtle invitation.

Adrien very gently touches her elbow, and she moves her arm at his direction. “Have you done this before?”

“No!” she says quickly, then swallows. Her bright red lips open and close as she looks for the right words. “I mean—I just did a lot of research beforehand.”

Adrien did, too. He’d never done any shoots like this during his time as a model. He quit before he was old enough to even have conversations about these sorts of shoots. So he’s spent a lot of time looking at boudoir photos in the last few weeks. Marinette helped him, and it had certainly been nice to discuss ideas with her.

He still doesn’t know why Marinette was so calm about it all—at least, for Marinette’s standards. She fell into her high-pitched, nervous voice when they discussed the shoot; she laughed awkwardly and blushed terribly. But Adrien knew that Marinette had absurdly jealous tendencies. He still didn’t understand why she didn’t exhibit any of that during their conversations about Ladybug.

Adrien had certainly felt a pang of jealousy when Ladybug told Chat Noir.

“I just… wanted to warn you,” Ladybug said. “And—you don’t have to, er—feel bad if you look at them. I mean, not that I want you to look at them! And I think—just don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

Chat Noir leaned against his staff and tried for a smile, but it was hard with the anxiety curling in his stomach. He no longer loves Ladybug, but she’s still his partner. He doesn’t want to share her with the rest of Paris this way. He also wanted to promise her that he wouldn’t look, especially if it made her uncomfortable, but he couldn’t very well promise abstinence if he was going to be the one taking and editing each and every photograph.

“My lady,” he finally said, “I would never let this change anything between us. Maybe I’ll even do my own.”

But Adrien doesn’t think that he’ll ever be able to do something like this as Chat Noir. Not only does he have absolutely no desire to get back in front of a camera and let someone else take control of his image again, there are too many photos of Adrien Agreste out there. Someone will inevitably hold up Chat Noir and Adrien’s bodies against each other and put it all together, and then it will be over. He’s grown since his modeling days, certainly, but it isn’t a risk he wants to take.

As Adrien pauses to check over the photographs, Ladybug relaxes into the bed. He risks a glance away from his camera to look at her properly, to shut out the stands and equipment and take a moment to see Ladybug as she is.

Her fingers twist in the ends of her hair, like an anxious fidget. Her eyes are locked with the ceiling and there’s a pinch to her cheek, like she’s gnawing her way through a difficult thought. Her black hair fans out on the red silk just as the black robe does, and as she shifts, it falls from her neck and shoulders, revealing the sharp angles of her collarbone. Her lipstick is the same shade of red as the lace that curls around her breast and her waist. Adrien can’t help but stare.

“Is everything all right?” she asks.

“Yes—” Adrien wishes he could sound less defensive. He glances back down at his camera. “Did you want to see them?”

He sits down on the bed next to her and she leans over his shoulder. A shiver runs down his spine as her bare skin presses against his arm. He has never touched Ladybug’s bare skin before; not in all their years of pulling each other out of danger has he ever been this close with her.

“Is that really me?” she asks.

He laughs, but it sounds as forced as it feels. “Yeah. You—You look great.”

She feels warm against him, too warm. He wishes she would pull away.

“You’re really good at this,” she says.

“Thank you. I think knowing what it’s like on the other side of the camera helps.”

Her brow furrows beneath her mask. It doesn’t shift fluidly with her expression the way the magical one grafted onto her might have, but it tilts and twists with her confusion.

“Have you done shoots like this before?”

“No, no, nothing like this. This is… new for me.” Adrien swallows and stands. His arm feels cold where she had been touching him. “But if they turn out well, maybe I can convince my girlfriend to do one.”

Ladybug crosses her legs and leans over onto her knee. “Oh—do you think she’d like that?”

“She did help me plan this shoot, so maybe?”

Ladybug posed so neatly before, but now she looks small and drawn into herself, hunched over her own legs. Adrien wonders if she’s thinking about her own boyfriend, and how he’ll feel to see her like this. Does her partner know her well enough—love her well enough—to recognize her like this?

“Lean back?” Adrien says.

Ladybug places her hands behind her, fingers pressing deep into the mattress and slipping along the silk.

“Chin up, chest out?”

She does, but the worry in her blue eyes doesn’t fade. The pose should be haughty, a look Ladybug has been giving him easily for the last hour. He wonders why she’s so lost now.

He snaps the pictures anyway, then suggests she lean back on her elbows and look away. If she can’t be haughty, he can redirect and lean into pensive.

But after a few more clicks of the shutter, he has to ask, “Are you all right?”

She turns back to him and stares like she’s wandered in from another planet. “What is it?”

“You just look worried.”

“Oh. No. I—I was just thinking. Your girlfriend—I mean, my boyfriend—I mean—I don’t know if he’d want pictures of me like this.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“I just mean I’m not like this, you know, without the mask.”

“You are very pretty. I’m sure your boyfriend agrees.”

It’s hard to tell in the dim lighting, but he thinks she blushes. “I’m a lot more awkward without the magic,” she says.

“You’re not wearing any magic now.”

He doesn’t realize how much attention he’s giving to her breathing until he notices her chest go still, her breath caught in her lungs.

He snaps a photo.

“Oh, I wasn’t ready!”

Adrien glances down at the preview. Her blue eyes are wide and her red lips drawn into a small pout. It’s different from the looks they’ve been leaning towards—powerful, dominant, desirable. Instead, she looks surprised and vulnerable. It’s his favorite picture of the day so far, but it’s clearly not what she wants, not the way she wants others to see her. He deletes it.

“Maybe we should try some of the tease shots?” he suggests.

She shifts onto her knees and reaches behind her to the hooks of her bra. Adrien captures the moment of her unclasping her bra several times before she lays back down on the bed, cups still in place, but backstraps splayed out on the bed.

Then they take a few with the bra cast aside, first with her hands covering her nipples and then with a red ribbon reminiscent of Ladybug’s hair ribbons.

Adrien looks away each time she changes her minimal modesty coverings out, but he can’t help but think about how many nights he spent as a teenager dreaming about Ladybug beneath her mask and beneath her suit. It wasn’t always fantasies like this, but he’d be a liar if he said he had never dreamed of Ladybug like this.

She bites down on her lip and he snaps another series of photos.

Then she puts the robe back on and Adrien’s heart stutters as he remembers what they agreed to shoot next.

Ladybug said she wasn’t interested in full nudes, that she didn’t want all of Paris to see all of her. But they agreed that they would shoot the robe without lingerie.

She shimmies out of her underwear and climbs back onto the bed.

Adrien swallows down a host of anxiety and desire that wells up in his chest as she adjusts herself on the bed. Ladybug leans back against the headboard, one leg bent up and the other out, but her black silk falls neatly between her legs. Adrien’s heart races as she tugs the silk up at her waist so that the V covering her chest pools into something loose and inviting. Adrien can see the lines where her breasts press against her stomach.

“Can you move the knot?” Adrien gestures to her waist, where the knot of her silk tie is hiding behind her thigh. It doesn’t need to be exposed, but it would give the shot more intrigue, though he supposes Ladybug has enough of that all on her own.

She shifts the tie as he directs and shifts all the silk with it.

“May I?” Adrien asks and, with heart racing, fixes the tie for her.

He does everything he can not to brush her skin as he adjusts the way the silk falls against her chest and around her thighs. He checks each wrinkle at her waist to make sure it looks intentionally casual and comfortable. He double-checks the fall of the silk against her chest to make sure the best parts of her are hidden. Finally, he smooths the silk over her thigh and tugs on the ends so that there is only just enough fabric to cover between her legs, but leaves most of her legs visible to the camera.

He catches sight of the tiny, heart-shaped freckle on the inside of her thigh and goes very still. She goes still, too.

“What is it?”

Adrien swallows. “You and my girlfriend have the same freckle.”

“Oh—I’m sorry—I can get my concealer—”

She’s already trying to get out from under him, ruining every bit of staging he has just finished setting. He means to get out of her way and to tell her that he can hide any freckles in post but his brain is too busy trying to figure out why Ladybug just apologized to him for having the same freckle as Marinette.

She crashes into him and he tries to catch himself on the bed, but the silk is smooth and they both go tumbling to the floor.

“I’m so sorry!” she says. “I told you, I’m clumsy without the magic.”

She’s on top of him, and the red silk sheet falls onto her waist, draping over them both. Adrien stares up at her from the plush carpet. She tries to get up, but he grabs her hip and holds her steady. She freezes.

His other hand, as slow and automatic as if it belonged to a machine separate from him, drifts up to her mask. Her breath hitches as he thumbs the end of it, just where it covers her cheekbone.

“Ladybug,” he breathes. They’re so close to each other that he can see the bob of her throat as she swallows.

He knows the next logical thought, but he can’t bring it to his lips. It makes sense, though. Ladybug choosing him, Marinette’s lack of jealousy, the toe nails, the one, single mark on her skin that he’s seen a dozen nights before in Marinette’s bed…

“I’m sor—”

But he cuts off her apology with a kiss. He knew, before he kissed her, but he truly knows it now. He knows Marinette’s shy, hesitant kisses, and the taste of her tongue and the curve of her lips. He feels dizzy as years of flimsy excuses and missed flirting in all directions flood his memories, but it also feels good. It feels right to know that this is how it has always been, that Marinette has always been the girl that he loves.

He drops his head back to the floor and stares up at her with a satisfied grin.

She looks back with panic in her eyes. “Adrien, I’m so sorry,” she says.

But he only smiles. “I don’t know why you’re apologizing. I feel like the cat that just caught the canary.”

✦✧✦✧

Alya yawns and leans against Nino. He pulls the blanket tighter around them and turns the movie up.

Then Alya’s phone buzzes.

“It’s Marinette,” she says, and Nino groans, but he pauses the movie.

“If something happened between Adrien and Ladybug today, I probably should call Adrien.”

“It might be nothing,” Alya says, though neither of them believe it. She leans away from Nino as she answers.

Nino can’t hear Marinette’s words on the other end of the call, but he can pick out the frantic tone. He starts thumbing through his own phone to text Adrien.

Alya frowns and gets to her feet. “Girl, slow down, I have no idea what you’re saying.” Then a grin spreads across her face. “Ah, well, that was always a possibility… No, I’m not saying I planned this on purpose. I’m just saying it’s been years and maybe you should have told him by now… What did you just say about Chat Noir?”

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