#with a sentence or two out of context and no hint of context. or of scenes which will be added to the perfect storm later down the line

[amadinan]

TADC episode 5 analysis

I will collect here my thoughts that appeared after watching the 5th episode of TADC. And there are many of them, the episode is really rich in revealing the backstories of the characters and even lore. But I will mainly touch on Caine and the lore of the circus.

But first, some small thoughts before I move on to the Intermission time.

Jax is an NPC?

To be honest, I never believed in this theory, it is interesting in a vacuum, but nothing more. However, at this point we have not one, but three hints about this: Jax's number in episode 4, which refers to the Blender program and how copies are named there, the fact that Caine was able to make Jax a vegan (although Caine stated that he cannot influence the minds of players) and the fact that Jax himself was sure that he had a tail.

This would already be enough to consider the theory probable, but perhaps this hole is a little deeper. In the end, Caine was also able to influence Ragatha, although not directly.

But what if we combine this with the main theory of the circus, that all people are digital copies of minds? Then, Caine can theoretically control them, because from his program point of view, they are no different from very complex NPCs, which Caine churns out himself, like on a conveyor belt. Let's remember that Caine deleted Gummigoo because he was afraid of confusing him with a person (after all, even then there were thoughts that Caine accidentally deleted someone) and probably Caine deleted the original Jax, and then replaced him with a NPC copy that differs from the original only in the absence of a tail. After all, even in the episode with the evil team, we were shown that Caine can easily create humanoid personalities by copying them from players.

Caine and Gangle

In the fifth episode, I noticed two actions between them and both were not entirely direct. First: immediately after exiting the portal, Caine noticed Gangle's broken mask and fixed it without a word. Second: Gangle was not on the evil team, she was replaced by Orbsman. I think Caine realized that Gangle almost abstracted at the end of episode 4, so Caine decided to be a little more attentive to her. And he did not add an evil clone, because this clone ... would have been Gangle from episode 4 herself, which could only upset her.

"Sarcastic eye-flying" after Zooble's sentence.

It's only one phrase, but it's clearly a lore bomb, although it is not entirely clear without context. For starters, Caine does not call Zooble by name, not "player", "guest" or even "human", he calls them "toy-box character". This may again hint at digital copies, but not necessarily. And then Caine says "other intelligent AIs" and this is even stranger, who did he mean? People like him and Bubble, simple NPCs or  like players? It's unclear, but interesting, and Caine seriously doesn't like this idea from Zooble and again it's unclear why? The overload on the system? A possible NPC revolt? Caine is afraid that if there are too many characters, he will completely get confused who is who?

And finally, The Intermission time.

Get ready, there will be a complete searching for meaning where there may be none at all.

To be honest, I didn't understand everything, but some things may well have a context, so I'd be glad to hear your thoughts.

So, right after the intermission there was a bar where almost all the characters shared their past, and what if Caine shared too, just before this adventure? But purely in his style.

Right after the  start scene, we are shown Bubble and how three jaws overlap each other, and then also three Caines, each larger one holding the smaller one. This may refer to his development, how starting with something simple like Bubble, he first became "jaws" (probably an alpha version), and then more and more complex, until he became what he is now. This also corresponds to the fact that at the end of the scene, Caine sort of folds himself, and then a small splash screen plays like in the 2000s games and the computer monitor turns on/off.

Why in the next scene Pomni is not clear to me, but here's why exactly cubes suggested by @poprocksriot. Perhaps there were three parts or even three AI that became a single being: two eyes of Caine and Bubble (possibly a third eye, as in the concept art).

Gangle, Zooble and Jax are sucked into the void: a metaphor for sucking people into the game.

A bunch of eyes in the void and Caine in the light in the middle. I think this is one of the most important scenes, which shows that Caine "came to life" and is no longer just a program. Firstly, the official music, secondly (thank you, @puddingandp1) he breathes in this scene, which may just mean that he is now sentient. In addition, the eyes. There are indeed a lot of eyes, but NONE of them are looking at Caine himself, which could mean how he became an "rogue AI".

Then we see the chessboard floor and the characters. Their world is literally turned upside down. A bowling ball falls on Pomni and Jax, which may indicate their condition as they were affected by getting into the circus. Moreover, we even saw Pomnis' condition in the first series. The situation crushed her, like a bowling ball. With Gangle and Ragatha it is a little more complicated, cakes fall on them. This means that for them the situation in the circus is "sweeter" than what was in reality. We heard about the abuse in Ragatha's family right in this episode, so in the circus, where her mother is not, she could get better. And with Gangle it is even easier. She worked at such a hateful job that even simulating these memories for just one day almost killed her. In the circus there is Jax, as a minus, but she does not have to work and she can draw as much as she wants. And Kinger. He catches the ball, which seems to say that the situation has not crushed him, but then he is not just crushed, but directly knocked off the board (mind) by a black figure, the loss of Queenie.

Then it is more figurative. Caine literally holds everyone in his hands. The characters in Caine's "hat" and they are clearly being watched, then a bunch of mannequins, which can also refer to the fact that Caine, as a puppeteer, holds them under control.

Then Caine stands on the floor and the camera approaches him. Note that this is the same chessboard floor on which the others were standing, and a bowling ball can approach it, as if the camera was attached directly to it, but Caine manages (for now) to not let himself be crushed.

Then a corridor and abstractions. Well, here it is quite clear, the attitude and the display of lost players.

Then Zooble interrupts Caine and he hangs. Perhaps we should have seen something else, from which even Caine hung, but alas.

Of course, there is also a mysterious mannequin that follows Pomni and is possibly Gummigoo, but little is known about him yet.

That's all for now, I really liked the series, I'm sure it will only get more interesting.

[umbracirrus]

I really want to try and do something like some little oneshots with Elyse and Balgruuf to try and get myself into the swing of writing, as I've had the urge to write all day but haven't put a single word down. Just. My brain is completely devoid of ideas. Ugh.

[erwinsvow]

𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐦 𝐲𝐨𝐮 — 𝐚.𝐜.

summary: against better judgement, you send a letter to a man at folsom with very sad eyes. against even better judgement, you send letters every week for years until he stops replying one day. and against everything you know, when he shows up at your door, you invite him inside.

pairing: prison letters reader x andrew cody

word count: 12.4k

tags: reader is silly and does things i do not recommend. kids do not write letters to prisoners and fall in love with them. unless it's andrew cody obviously. lots of context no one asked for. nurse!reader, descriptions of wound (andrew cuts himself to get into your work because why wouldn't he!), descriptions of wound handling, smut (oral - f receiving and mating press and the tiniest hint of breeding). takes place in season one, but just imagine he's got season two's hair. you have to fully immerse yourself in the fact that it's andrew cody and then ask yourself—wouldn't you take him home too? it's not her fault!

author's note: here she is! thank you for the patience ♡

you honestly had signed up as a joke. the club was known through your campus to be run by a couple of bleeding hearts. no one had thought the school would approve their activities—letters to prisoners. it was a recipe for disaster.

you should have known better.

but a friend of a friend was involved, and you knew it would make your nursing school application look better, and honestly, you didn’t think anything would come of it. a couple of letters here and there. you had thought it’d be all anonymous, messages of motivation and prayers signed with a first name only.

until your friend—bleeding heart and hopeless romantic, trying to appeal to those very same qualities in you—had shown you the website. that’s when you should have realized it wasn’t just a recipe, it was going to be a disaster.

the prisoners recorded videos—thirty seconds, short and sweet. a name, a couple of sentences about them, hometown and hobbies. underneath the video you could see what they had been arrested for. only the ones who were in for petty crimes—drugs and robbery, things where no one else had really gotten hurt, were allowed to partake. that was good at least. didn’t need any murderers sending letters to pretty co-eds.

your friend picked the guy she thought was the cutest. you watched his video—he was handsome, you couldn’t deny it. but the more videos you watched, the less you wanted to write a letter. you could almost see it, the desperation behind their eyes. it seemed like every man had nefarious intent. like your prettily written letter would not be used for motivation and prayers of a better life outside.

you decided not to send one. you’d rather have an empty slot on your application than a bad feeling in your gut for the rest of the semester. it’s not like the prison was across the country—it was just a couple of hours away.

she asked you to give it one more chance, watch a couple more videos. just pick a cute one, she’d told you. when you’d made a noise of disapproval, she had rolled her eyes.

“okay, pick whoever seems the nicest, then.”

so you had.

the video had been labeled andrew cody. first degree robbery.

the man in the video had been incredibly genuine. you don’t remember exactly what he had said—just bits and pieces. you knew he was from oceanside, born and raised from the way he sounded. he said he had a lot of brothers and a sister back at home. that he spent his time working out and reading books to distract himself from how noisy it was inside. the first thing he’d do when he got out was go to the beach and listen to the waves and breathe in the clean salty air.

and deep down inside, you knew you were just as much of a bleeding heart as the rest of your friends. you had folded instantly.

but it wasn’t just that. you spent the next several nights thinking about him. sad eyes, a singular half-smile at his own joke and then a real one when he mentioned going to the beach once he was released. he’d followed it up with—not that it’ll be any time soon. that made you sad, in turn. you thought about what he was like before prison—did he smile more? was he always so sad?

you thought about a lot of things. more than whatever your friends did, telling you how they had sent their letters, flirty yet inherently professional, so as not to get in trouble with the advisor.

you took a while to send yours. first you couldn’t think of what to write—everything felt so stupid compared to what he must be going through. andrew would hardly want to hear about the mundaneness of your daily life, or the struggles of trying to get into the nursing program.

you thought about not sending a letter at all after the first few times you tried to put pen to paper.

and then you thought about how sad he must feel, how lonely and scared, how terrible it would be to see all the other prisoners get letters besides him.

so you drove to the beach. you surprisingly had more in common with andrew cody than you even realized when you selected him. there was nothing you loved more than the beach, which is why you had even picked your college to begin with. and now, four years later about to graduate, you couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

you caught the sunrise. you brought your little notebook with you to the water after setting your bag down on the bench. the seagulls were flying around, a couple of other beach-goers walking along the border where the sand met the ocean. it was a day like any other.

there were two sides of you—a hopeless romantic inside of an inherently logical girl. one side argued how stupid it was to send letters to a stranger. the other wondered if this would be the day that changes your life. you push away the thought and focus on writing the damn thing.

you thought andrew might like if the letter smelled like the salt-water. the stupid idea felt a lot less silly when you were attempting it, bringing your notebook all the way down to the water and hovering it. a slightly bigger wave caught you by surprise, the corners getting wet where it splashed up.

cursing to yourself, you walked back to the bench with sandy feet. and then you started writing.

dear andrew, and then you paused. fuck. you got out some of the introductory stuff—your first name, that you were a nursing student. it took a while to get the rest of the page filled, until you stopped for a moment and thought about what you would tell the man with the sad eyes if he was sitting next to you.

i came to the beach to write this letter. i’m sorry if the corners are wrinkled when you get it, i almost dropped it in the water trying to get it to smell like the beach so you had a little piece of home with you. i’m not near oceanside but it’s still the pacific.

i can’t imagine how hard it must be to grow up near the water and then be so far away for so long. but at least you know it’ll always be waiting for you when you get released. they want us to write motivational things but i’m not sure how motivating it would be for you reading this letter about my silly life. so i thought i’d write about the beach instead.

it’s about seven in the morning. the weather isn’t too cold and sky is pink and orange right now. the waves were calmer an hour ago when i got here but now it’s getting more intense. there’s a couple with their dog, and another man running on the sand. i’m on a bench writing this, but i’ll walk along the water again before i leave. i would try to send you a shell but i’m sure they’d take it away. maybe sand?

i love the sound of the waves too. my school isn’t close enough to hear it, but i have one of those machines that makes the noises. it helps a lot when i’m trying to sleep. maybe you can get one when you get out too.

you fill up a page, and then another page. when you fold up the letter and slip it into the envelope, you take a couple grains of sand and drop it in there. a little piece of home for him.

then you mail the letter, and think that was that.

+

two weeks later, you get a letter in the mail. you’d heard some of the other girls had also gotten responses—some had been mildly wholesome, while others had been more along the lines of what are you wearing?

but you weren’t worried when you opened yours. andrew didn’t seem the creepy type to you, it felt more like… like he would be glad to have someone to talk to.

you read it in bed, holding an old stuffed animal tightly. his handwriting is stiff and neat, the evenness of the letters and dotted i’s and crossed t’s makes you smile. the way he wrote your name, with bleeding ink like he had pressed too hard into the paper while doing so, made you smile wider.

the first line—thanks for the sand—made you laugh.

andrew writes of the book he’s just read, how the beach you described sounds just like the one in his hometown, and a request that you tell him more about your life in the next letter. his letter isn’t as long as yours, which makes sense to you. he couldn’t have that much to write about. but the last line is what really gets you—thank you for the letter. it’s nice to talk to someone.

you blink away tears, unsure when you had started crying. you reread the letter twice over the next day and a half, deciding to head back to the beach early in the morning to write the next one.

and you’ve always been bad at this. your friends have always called you a hopeless romantic—but maybe you’re just in too deep. it was the product of having been alone for your entire life, not having the dreamy, intense love that so many of your friends had already gone through once or twice at this age. the result had manifested in how you treated the world around you. every door someone held open, every nice response, every lingering gaze could mean something more. that this could be the person, that this could be your soulmate.

you knew it was stupid. nothing could be stupider than assuming that a prisoner, for god’s sake, would be anything more than just that—a prisoner you write letters to. but your heart still beats faster each time you reread the letter, and when you think of his pretty, sad eyes and earnest expression, the urge to write another letter haunts over your entire body.

dear andrew, thank you for writing back. thank you again for writing back and not being creepy (like the responses some of my friends got). i could tell you more about my life but i really wasn’t lying—it’s pretty silly and mostly boring, but since you asked so nicely i’ll try for you. right now i’m getting ready for graduation. i bought a white dress last week. i’m waiting to hear if i got into the nursing program here. i majored in nursing so I just need to do one more year and then after that i can go work in the hospital. i’m thinking about labor and delivery since i think it would be so nice to see babies all day, but one of my friends said the emergency room is always hiring. she thinks it would toughen me up. but I’m not so sure i want to be tough. just incase all of this school talk is boring you, i’ll just tell you about my day on the condition that you'll tell me about yours. yesterday i woke up early and went on a walk. i made breakfast and went to class, and then studied in the library. my friend showed me a creepy response from one of the fellow inmates (by the way, thank you again for not being creepy.) i walked to get a chai—i don't really like coffee. and then i studied, watched the bachelor. it was terrible! my favorite contestant got sent home :(. and had dinner, then I went to sleep early because i woke up early to come to the beach today to write this for you. so i went to sleep thinking about this letter and woke up thinking about it too.

you add a little bit more about your routine this time, just so he has something to read about. you try to make yourself sound interesting where you can—but you’re really not. and you don’t want to force it, make your letters sound grand and full of lies.

you don’t know why—it’s not like you’ll ever meet him. but lying to andrew feels wrong, you guess.

stupid. you’re stupid for adding the last part—but something in your heart flutters reading the line again, because you did. andrew’s sad eyes are in your mind all the time, and you know it’s just a silly infatuation, that he’s a prisoner and you’re a random student and more likely than not, he’s not going to respond to this letter. but you still keep it in.

and so you send the letter. and what’s worse—the one you get back makes your heart swell. he says that you describe your routine so well he can almost see it happening in his head like a movie. he says that he could describe his day-to-day but that it might make you sad. you’re sure it will. he seems to know a lot about you from just a handful of letters.

you reply. he sends another. you reply. and before you can even discern what’s happened, this has been going on for the better part of a year and a half.

andrew gets all the life updates—your nursing school acceptance, how the first year goes. early morning clinicals, the mean preceptor who made your life hell for a month, the baby you got to help deliver, the cat you’re thinking about getting. and the not so great stuff—despite the nursing shortage, it seems the only available job at the hospital you like is in the emergency room.

you don’t give him names but he figures it out well enough. the program you sent the letters through was smart enough not to include the university’s name in the return address, but dumb enough to use a p.o. box in the same city. and in that city, there’s only two colleges, and only one of those has a nursing program.

these are the things he uses to figure out where you are after he gets out—not that you need to know any of that just yet.

after you get the job, the letters are stamped with the mark of the local post office. you must not know that they’re doing that, now that you can’t send the letters through the school anymore. that’s the last piece of the puzzle, figuring out which emergency room you had been working in.

he keeps those letters. they’re his sanctuary—pages and pages about your life. the highs and lows of an innocent girl who thought it would be a good idea to send letters to a prisoner. letters where you asked about him, how he was feeling, how he was doing. how much time he had left, how he thinks the next parole meeting will go, how that annoying guard has been recently. how’s your family, andrew?

if he closes his eyes, he can almost see you. you’re a faceless entity, a glowing angel with a halo hovering in his mind when he really needs you. you’re too perfect to be real—and he knows you would be outside too. if you can care this much through letters, go out of your way to send them even after you graduate, he can only imagine how you’d be if you stood in front of him.

the other students who sent letters stopped after one or two. he’s likely the only one who’s still getting them, and when someone questions who they’re from, he tells a story about his girl, waiting for him outside. a nurse—smart and pretty and devoted and who never fails to send him a weekly update. lives too far to drive up here but he’ll be there one day.

and then he gets sent to solitary.

he doesn’t like to think about it, if he can avoid it. sometimes the noises of the world get to him, brings him back to days and hours he wish he could wipe from his memory. the sound machine you recommended in your very first letter helps some. but the day he goes free, there’s only one sound he knows will calm him down—your voice, the first time he’ll get to hear it.

he has to go home first. he needs a car, the internet, a couple of phone calls to make sure he’s going to the right place.

days turn into weeks. unfortunately—very unfortunately. the only thing andrew wants is to finally see you in person, to finally hear what your voice sounds like. what color is your hair? what color are your eyes? he knows you like yellow—what would he find if he saw you? yellow hair clips? painted nails? how about your apartment? would the walls be yellow?

no, probably not. you rent. you wouldn’t do anything that wouldn’t get you your security deposit back. you’re too good for that, too safe.

yellow sheets, maybe. blankets, pillows. if he closes his eyes, he can imagine himself in it.

he tries to leave after the first job but there’s too many watchful eyes, too many moving pieces. he needs to get everything together—his truck, cash and some cards, a plausible excuse. he needs to make sure no one comes following him, needs to make sure that in his quest to come find you, he doesn’t get you tangled into the web of his family instead. he’s stuck somewhere between figuring out how to keep you safe and the realization that the safest you’ll ever be is right now, before he comes for you.

but fuck, if it doesn’t haunt him. the fact that he’s finally so close to you. that you’re a car ride away. that somewhere out there is the girl who, one day, realized another letter wouldn’t be coming.

had you cried then? been upset? wondered what had happened? bothered to find out if he was dead or freed or living without you? he hates that he couldn’t get you another letter to explain himself, but he figures explaining in person would be easier, and better. in all those years, you never once wrote him about a date or a boyfriend or anything in that realm.

the way your last few letters were, it were almost as if he was your boyfriend. (he lets the thought linger inside him for a few seconds, if that. any longer and it would possess him like a demon and he’d be rendered useless. unable to work, unable to think, unable to breathe. just him and the idea that he was that important to someone else.)

+

and then one day, a couple days after a job and after being fed up with the entire world being scared of him, he leaves to find you.

that’s just the thing—no one understands him. all his life, he’s been the unstable one, the one others are worried about, frightened of. but no one understands that there’s nothing to be afraid of.

no one, except maybe you.

so he says he’ll be back in a week, and he drives down to the hospital where you work.

he hasn’t gotten a real look at you yet. he spent the first night in the parking lot of the emergency room. he watches hordes of nurses go in and out, and no one stands out. he spends some time doing research—nurses only work three times a week.

his odds of seeing you for the rest of the time he’s in town are fifty/fifty. it feels like he should be able to pick you out from a crowd, with the way he knows you so intimately, but he can’t. he keeps an eye out for yellow water bottles or shoes or lunch bags, but he doesn’t see any for two days.

so he decides that he needs to get inside.

pope keeps a pocket knife on his person, and another one hidden in the car in case of emergencies. that’s what he uses to slice his palm open so he has an excuse to get inside. not too deep—he’s not stupid. just deep enough to need stitches, shallow enough that he can still feel all his fingers and wiggle them around.

and then he goes inside, and he waits.

each time the doors open, a different nurse steps out. some are too old, others too young. no one has anything yellow on them, or the personality that he knows could only belong to you. cheery, but serious. empathetic to a fault. you would probably cry if you saw a kid crying, just like how you used to write to andrew, telling him you had cried thinking about a patient you lost and their family, cried thinking about him alone in prison.

you’ve shed tears for him. a man you’ve never even met. he has to recognize you when he sees you. he knows he will—the two of you are bonded in more ways than one. through ink and blood and tears.

“david?” a voice calls out. so lost in his thoughts, he’d not realized the doors had opened again or the name he’d given them. he looks up, making eye contact with the nurse, his nurse, and she walks closer. “david?” the voice repeats, and he raises the non-bloody hand.

you are just like he thought you’d be. your hair is pulled back, which is a shame. he wants to see what it looks like when it’s down, what it smells like when you get close enough. pieces in the front fall out from behind your ear. his finger twitches momentarily.

and, he thinks with a pleasant sort of smugness, there is yellow—the plastic band around the stethoscope, the badge reel with a smiling cartoon on it, the pens tucked neatly in your scrub top pocket.

“hi david, i’m going to be your nurse today,” you start, looking at him in the eyes. your eyebrows furrow a little, like you’re trying to remember why this man looks so familiar—it’s not like he had expected it. his hair isn’t the same anymore, longer than the video you had seen of him. if that was your benchmark, he certainly looked somewhat different. he doesn’t fault you for not recognizing him right away. in fact, it’s better this way. “if you’re ready, i can take you back now.”

you smile at him, beautifully. a bright, wide smile, like there’s nothing in this world you’d rather do than take david back, and have a look at whatever’s bothering him. it’s genuine, it’s safe, it’s warm. how do you do it? he thinks briefly to himself, how do you make everyone feel like they’re the most important person in the world? just with a smile and a couple of sentences you must say a thousand times a shift.

andrew’s not one for many words, but his thoughts run rampant—he’s always thinking. he can’t get his brain to turn off, not now, not ever. even putting pen to paper was hard for him, even for you. but you seem to understand him, just like you did back then. without words, without talking, without touching or knowing. you just know him.

you take him to a bed behind a curtain and start rattling off a list of rehearsed questions. first name, age, date of birth. the more he says, the more you seem to get a step closer to recognizing him, but he doesn’t push it.

you come closer to the bed and gesture to his wrapped up, bleeding hand.

“may i?”

“yes. yes,” andrew says, unsure of how it’ll be to feel your hands on him for the first time. you start slowly, unpeeling the layers of gauze that he had brought with him from home as a just incase. he doesn’t flinch or wince, but you still speak up.

“i’m sorry, i know it’s not very comfortable.” you apologize without needing to, and he’s sure it’s because you want him to feel better about it. “how did this happen again?” you ask, staring at his wound closely. you’re not very far from his face. he can feel your breath even against his skin.

“accident. was cutting something.”

“well, you should be more careful, david.” his middle name has always felt foreign to him, though somehow, it doesn’t seem that way coming from your lips. andrew briefly feels like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be than here, no one else he’d rather be than david, getting his hand tended to by you.

“yeah. i should.”

“well i’m going to go ahead and get this cleaned up. just to be sure, any drug allergies?” he shakes his head. “great. we’re gonna clean it and then the doctor will be in here to stitch it up and we’ll get you on your way back home. does that sound okay?”

you look at him earnestly. as if on the off chance he said it didn’t sound okay, you’d have an answer ready to go. nothing to shame him, nothing to make him feel bad. just to comfort him and make him feel better. like there’s nothing more important than getting him back home with aid instructions for the rest of the week.

memories of your letters wash over him like a warm wave over soft sand. you’ve known from the jump that you were meant for this, but it all suddenly makes sense. how kind you are, how gentle you are with him, how you’d be with anyone.

you were meant for this, just like how you were meant for him.

“that sounds okay.”

you sit on a stool at the level of his hand. you dab with the cleaning solution and tell him you’re sorry about the sting. it’s half a dozen apologies in the short time he’s known you, and he sits and wonders, staring at your pretty hair and the undoubtedly smooth skin of your neck, that he’ll have to work you out of that habit.

you shouldn’t be apologizing for anything, much less helping people the way you do.

he stares at you while you think of another question to ask him to distract him from the pain of cleaning his wound.

and your patient is nothing if not a starer. when you got up to add something to the chart and stopped to chat with a fellow nurse and friend of yours about how long it might take the doctor to see him—calling him by his nickname, mister sliced hand in bed four—she interrupted you half way through the conversation.

“the one who’s staring at us right now?” you turned your head too quickly to see what she was talking about, and were faced with sliced-hand david, looking at you and the other nurse.

not in a creepy way, like some other past patients of yours. he’s just…looking. like he’s waiting for you to come back. his gaze doesn’t leave you, you notice. he watches your friend as though he’s watching over you.

the thought is almost… sweet.

and then you shake your head and turn around, breaking the eye contact. you have a bad habit of doing this—turning every interaction, every look into your eyes and held-open door into something more than it was.

your new friends at the hospital also call you a hopeless romantic. you knew that you were just sort of an idiot when it came to these things. it was the long-standing result of still never having been in a real relationship. you’d never felt the fireworks, never known the rom-com sort of true love and happy ending. you had never even gotten to the angst-filled third act breakup.

so maybe you were still a bit of a projector—projecting every single interaction into something more than it was. a patient with a staring problem became a man who was looking out for you, worried for you, love at first sight.

and you shake your head again. snap out of it. you had a problem, seriously.

the closest you’d even come to anything remotely related to love at first sight was the insane amount of letters you’d written to a prisoner a few years ago, and even then—

stop. it. you barely knew what the guy looked like, and yet, you found yourself wondering all the time what had happened to him. if today would finally be the day you’d find out. he could be the stranger next to you in the coffee shop. the person buying fruit next to you in the grocery store.

for all you know, he could be the next guy who walks into your life, and yet—

“you are seriously such a goner,” she says with a laugh, playfully shoving your shoulder.

“what? i-i just got lost in my thoughts.”

“a guy could blink at you and you’d be imagining your embroidered towels and baby names-”

“that is not true-”

“right, i know. you’re right. you’re just gonna hold out for mister prisoner until you’re an old lady with a bunch of cats-”

“hey! i have one cat and he is adorable, okay-”

“yeah, yeah. that’s how it always starts. one cat.”

“i’m going to go take care of my patient now.”

“don’t let him blink at you.”

you roll your eyes and make your way back to bed four, where david stares up at you with pretty, sad eyes. eyes that seem a little familiar, but it’s hour eight of twelve and you’ve taken care of half a hundred people so far. your tiredness seeps through your pores but you still smile and sit on the stool.

“sorry about that, david.”

“are you okay?” he asks, incredibly earnestly. you blink at him dumbly. once, then twice.

“yes?” you reply slowly, unsure of what he means. maybe you’re more tired than you thought. “is everything okay?”

“i saw her push you.” you blink again.

“oh. oh. no, no, she’s my friend. that was just, um-” you blank momentarily. his concern is so palpable you can feel it in the air. “-a joke. she was joking.”

“oh. okay.” david goes silent but his eyes are still on you. you decide the best course of action is to change the subject.

“so! david. this might be hard but no going in the water for at least a couple days. maybe more, depending on what the doctor says.”

“sure. can i.. can i still go sit on the beach?”

“yeah. that should be fine.” you clean out the wound further, but he doesn’t wince. “do you do that often?”

“yes. it calms me down.”

“me too. something about the sand and the waves. the air is just-”

“cleaner.” for the first time that night, david interrupts you. your eyes leave his hand to look up at his face.

“yeah,” you agree, slowly, wondering why his words feel so familiar to you. “cleaner.”

there’s a brief pause, and david doesn’t say anything. you look back down at his hand, continuing your work. but something inside of you stirs, curiosity poking and prodding at your memories. you’ve heard that before, somewhere, and even then you had thought about how no one had ever used that word to describe the ocean air before, when—

“i thought you wanted to deliver babies. do you not want to do that anymore?”

as if it was in slow motion, you retract your hands away from his. you move your head to look up at him and your jaw falls open a little—you had known david looked a little familiar, but when you had seen that thirty second video of him, his hair had been short and his skin had been a little paler, and the man sitting in front of you now—

well he wasn’t cute anymore.

he was handsome now—dark brown curls grown out. he looked like he’d spent some time in the sun, recently. his eyes—sad and pretty as they were—seemed a bit softer now. and your gaze on him made them even softer, like he was trying his best not to frighten you. how someone takes care of a skittish animal, ready to bolt at any second.

you swallow, and then bring your hands back to his, keeping the piece of soaked gauze on top of his wound gently

“i-i do. want to. this was just the only job opening when i-” you pause, sucking in a deep breath. he already knows about this—andrew. it was in one of your letters. “when i finished school.”

you feel his hand move under your touch, and then his other hand, the unwounded one, over yours. his grip isn’t tight, but it’s tense. hard. like he wants to make sure you can’t just disappear like sand between his fingers.

“i thought you might have found another job by now.”

“it-it’s hard. you get used to something and it’s hard to leave.” you pause again. there’s a million and one questions storming through your mind, but you stare into hazel eyes and they all go quiet, one by one. “you said your name is david-”

“i wanted to see if you would recognize me.”

“i’m sorry, i-”

“don’t apologize.” andrew, like his letters, speaks concisely. you should have guessed. you would send him pages just to get a few paragraphs back—and he would always say it’s because he didn’t have much to talk about, that learning about your day to day was much better than whatever he could tell you.

it was the first time your heart fluttered with the knowledge that out there, somewhere, is a man who wants to hear about your day. the closest you had ever gotten to the semblance of a real relationship. a man who cared about you, even if he never said as much. it was always clear to you, through his carefully chosen words and the things he wrote you about and how much he said he liked hearing about you.

he used to ask you questions about things from a dozen letters ago. remember to follow up after some big exam or a really hard week at work. asked you what you did to feel better. tell you what he would do to help you feel better—nothing creepy, never creepy. if you were supposed to be scared of him, you never were. he never gave you any reason to.

“are you okay?” andrew asks, and you blink yourself out of your thoughts.

“yes. yes, sorry. i just-” it’s a little ridiculous.

you’re a smart girl. you’ve always been a smart girl. you don’t do stupid things—you don’t drink yourself silly at bars and go home with random men. you don’t say yes to dates with strangers, despite how much you believe that a stranger can become a soulmate in an instant. you don’t put yourself in situations you can’t get out of.

but when it comes to andrew, you haven’t listened to a single one of your own rules. you sent him letters for ages after the other girls in your class had stopped. you had opened up about your life and wanted to learn about his life in exchange.

and despite every greater instinct, you had fallen asleep for years thinking about the day he might walk back into your life.

“did you ever get my last letter, andrew?”

you’re not even sure where the words came from—that’s the last thing you should be saying right now. how did you find me? when did you get out of prison? why are you here right now? should have all come before.

but something inside you burns, like it has for years, with the knowledge that he never sent you another letter. and you need to know why.

andrew sits up a little straighter, taking heavy breaths and staring at you. it’s the first time he’s heard you say his name, his real name. you two haven’t moved an inch, his hand still on yours. he blinks slowly at you and you don’t realize it, but you’re holding your breath.

“i did. i-i was in solitary. they don’t let you write letters there.”

“oh. i’m so sorry,” you say, and it’s second nature. you hate what andrew went through, and seeing him in front of you brings you back to the first letter you ever got back from him. how polite he was in it, how sweet the whole thing seemed. it was never meant to get this far, but it had, and you—

you are nothing if not a believer of soulmates and fate.

“that’s okay. not your fault.”

“but still. that must have been really hard.”

“i wanted to write back. i-” he stops, pulling out something from the pocket of his button-up shirt. he unfolds a piece of white notebook paper—and the breath you were holding leaves you quickly. that’s the paper you used to write him letters on.

“is that my last letter?” when andrew moves to look at you, he’s expecting it. a nervous lilt to your voice, fear in your eyes. like he’s crazy, like you’re scared.

instead he glances over hesitantly and you’re beaming up at him.

“you carry around.. my last letter?” the words come out as a smile forms on your face—pretty and genuine and sincere. you stare at him expectantly, and he doesn’t know how to respond.

“i…” the words falter. “i just wanted to ask you about it. did you, did you get that cat?”

“i did!” it comes out louder than you meant it, drawing the attention of some other nurses around you. you turn briefly, using your free hand to push the curtain so it’s closed around you two. “sorry. i did, yes. he’s so cute. i don’t have my phone or i’d show you the pictures-”

“that’s okay. you-you can show me later.”

“but i didn’t say i was getting a cat in that one. i just said i was thinking about it,” you feel breathless.

“but there was another one before that. you mentioned it then too. i figured you’d get it since you were thinking about it so much.”

“yeah. yeah, exactly.” your brain can’t seem to compute what’s going on. any fear that had been in you, if there was any of it to begin with, has completely melted away, replaced with a warm, glowing feeling in your chest, slowly spreading out to your limbs.

you had been thinking about getting a cat for ages—a thought you had mentioned to andrew maybe twice. and your justification had been just as andrew said, because you were thinking about it so much.

how did he know that?

and then the curtain opens behind you, and the doctor comes in to stitch up andrew’s hand. you have to pull away from his hand and andrew thinks you’re leaving, eyes following you and his expression shifting, but you don’t leave. you go to the cabinets to pull the supplies and help the doctor and and keep your eyes focused on the wound while his hand gets stitched up. eight stitches and not a single wince of pain or discomfort.

and though the thought makes butterflies emerge and fly around your stomach, when you finally look up at andrew, he’s been staring at you the entire time.

+

you have a tiny apartment in a shitty neighbourhood. it doesn’t feel safe at all, save for the fact that one of the houses down the street is owned by a rookie cop and his wife. there’s not that much crime, but the area inherently feels bad.

maybe it’s just that way to him—since he doesn’t want you living in a place like this.

it’s fine for now though. he’ll get you a better place soon enough. it’s by the water, and when he closes his eyes, he can hear the waves crashing on the sand. the sound alone might be enough to justify why you’d live here.

he keeps his eyes shut, just for a half dozen heartbeats, when he pulls up against your curb. he just wants to hear it before he says goodbye—it’s getting late, almost dark, and you must be exhausted. you’ve been at work all day and though you act like you’re completely fine, he knows how intense it is. there’s other letters, safely stored away, where you told him about how breaks are far and few in between, how you barely get time to drink water and eat a snack because of how busy it gets. he offered to stop and pick you up something to eat but you refused, saying you had food at home that you shouldn’t waste.

you sit in the passenger seat of his truck, staring around it as if you’re looking for some more information about it. anything would help you—half-empty drinks or gum wrappers or extra clothes in the backseat, but there’s nothing. the truck looks like he just got it yesterday, no sign of use or anything branding it as andrew’s car.

“can i walk you to your door?” you snap out of your thoughts.

okay—maybe it wasn’t the smartest idea in the world to let a virtual stranger drive you home. but when his hand was taken care of and you give him the paper instructions with way too many sample packets of antibiotic gel, all he said was that he’ll wait for you.

“wait for what?”

“to make sure you get home safely.”

and, really, what are you supposed to say to that? no, i’m good, thanks. you’d be even stupider than you already are to say that to someone who is just trying to be nice to you.

(he’s more chivalrous than any guy you’ve ever talked to, and probably more than any guy your friends have ever complained to you about. and more than that, it’d be rude to say no, especially once he realized you wait for a shoddy-at-best bus to get you home because you don’t have a car and it’s too dark to walk. he wouldn’t take no for an answer after that.)

and more than that—he waited another two hours for you to get home. every time you’d step out to bring back another patient, you’d see him, sitting there, waiting patiently for you. glancing up when the door would open to get a glimpse of you, of the small smile you shot his way before taking back whoever’s turn it was.

and he’s not a real stranger, a voice in the back of your head keeps reminding you. you’ve known him for longer than some of your coworkers have known their fiancees and husbands. and in all the time you’ve known him (meaning all the letters you’ve sent and received), you’ve never gotten a creepy word or even a fragment of a sentence that frightened you.

so you think the least you can do is let him drive you home and walk you up the two flights of stairs.

“of course. thank you, for-” your sentence gets interrupted. andrew gets out of the car and you turn to do the same, but then you see him—walking around the front of his truck, coming to your side and then opening the door for you.

oh.

your heart thuds dully in your chest at the very idea of andrew opening his car’s door for you to get out. after driving you home and politely asking to walk you up. whatever inhibitions you had melt away and you briefly think that whatever he asked of you, you’d do it in a heartbeat, no questions asked.

if that made you stupid, then so be it. you’d gladly be the stupidest girl on the planet if you get to feel whatever it was that andrew cody has made you feel for the last couple of hours.

his truck is jacked up tall, and he gives you his hand, the one without the cut, to help you get down, and you accept. he closes the door for you and lets you lead the way up the stairs.

silently, you two walk up the creaky steps together. hands brush together for all of seconds and he briefly wishes seconds lasted longer, until you’re standing in front of your door.

you’d once had a cute spring-themed wreath on the door, bought on clearance from the local store after easter, and a matching door mat. your elderly neighbor had told you to get rid of it because it was basically an invitation to criminals that a young girl lived here alone. you’re stupid, but not that stupid.

and now your front door looks barren and empty. there’s a few plants you can see from the window sill but the curtains are drawn and there’s an extra dead bolt a fellow nurse from the hospital’s husband had helped you install.

you look up silently at andrew and he looks back at you. this is it—it’s supposed to be goodbye. any normal girl would know that this is where the night needs to end, that you need to process what all of this means and if you had any friends you trusted with this information, calling them and asking what to do.

but you don’t want to call your friends, because you know what they’d say—to lock your door and get a restraining order and burn andrew’s letters, the ones you kept in a cute box under your bed and reread much too often for anyone’s comfort.

and you’re not a normal girl.

“do you want to stay for dinner?”

there’s not much to study on andrew’s expression—he keeps it stern and serious for the most part. his eyes are soft when they look at you and they soften even further when you say those words.

“yes. yes, thank you.”

you think maybe he wasn’t expecting it. you think that you weren’t expecting it either, not exactly sure where the words had come from. but you still lead andrew inside, showing him the only slightly comfortable couch you had to get delivered since you didn’t have anyone to help you lug a used one up the stairs. the squeaky door that leads to the bathroom, the tiny space you called your kitchen. your bedroom is behind a closed door and andrew stares at it when you go inside to change out of your scrubs and come back out in the kind of clothes that you sleep in.

and then he stares at the shut door even after you leave, before realizing that you’ve already made your way to the space between the living room and kitchen, a narrow expanse with a small round table and some placemats with flowers on them. you set down your backpack and take your hair out of the clip that holds it back for you at work and suddenly, he’s staring again.

it’s just a little too close to everything he’s been dreaming about for years.

“i’m really sorry. i was supposed to go grocery shopping but i hate bringing everything up-”

“don’t apologize.”

“also, i’m-i’m not really a good cook. i’m sorry-”

“i don’t think anything you make can be worse than prison food.”

“i really doubt that. you’ve never had my cooking.”

you glance back him and he meets your eyes at the same time, and you both start laughing. it’s nothing crazy—andrew didn’t seem like the kind who laughs easily anyway, but he cracks a smile and the noise is indelible—all you can think of is how you can get him to laugh again.

“do you like spaghetti?”

+

if someone had told you yesterday that this time tomorrow, andrew from your letters would be sitting across from you at your dining table, eating spaghetti that you made while rushing, looking so in place in your tiny home that your heart hurts, you think you would have passed out.

you watch him while he eats, absentmindedly swirling your own noodles on the plate, unable to focus on eating when he’s really in front of you. after countless dreams and days spent wondering what had happened to him and if he was okay and if he ever thought about you. he’s… bigger than you thought he would be. shoulders broader than you had realized from that tiny video. his mannerisms interest you more than they should—how quiet he is, but how he seems to latch onto every word when you go on and on. just like the letters, it seems he’s still a listener.

(it doesn’t help matters when he tries to clear the table and wash the dishes after—you have to wrestle the plates out of his hand and tell him to go sit down, that he can’t get his bandage wet. jostling against his iron-hard body was not on the list of things you thought you’d get to do today, and the very realization that andrew is twice as strong as you on his worst day does…things to you. things that do not need to be named or explored right now. he’s still a stranger, you try to remind yourself. no he’s not.)

but it seems that he can’t sit still. he wipes down the counter and then comes back to help you dry your yellow dishes and when you both finish up, with you still smiling at him and unsure of what excuse you can conjure to get him to stay, he finds it all by himself. you tell andrew to go sit on the couch while you finish up and he does, and when you follow him out there, he’s standing in front of it. he turns his head to look at you and then back at the couch.

your cat is perched on his usual spot, and you go over to him, scratching the top of his head between his ears and making extremely childish, stupid-sounding noises at him.

“andrew this is wardy,” you say, picking him up and bringing him closer. “he’s really friendly. i promise.”

“hello, wardy.” when he says it, you look up at him with a look he can’t find words to describe. as close to love as you can get it when it’s a technically a stranger. the way he greets your cat and helps you clean and knows more about you than some of your friends and coworkers do.

there’s no words for it. it just is.

so you sit on the couch next to andrew, your cat between the two of you, and you wait for him to tell you that he wants to leave. you flick on the television, settling for whatever silly romance movie is playing on your netflix account, sitting in the almost-silence with andrew and wondering why still, it doesn’t feel necessarily uncomfortable.

eventually andrew reaches out to pet wardy, and he curls up into his touch, settling comfortably against his forearm. (his huge, thick, veiny forearm, you think briefly, before chasing the thought away with a broom. and then another one—no wonder he had bled so much at the hospital. with veins like these.)

“this area’s not the best,” andrew says, speaking as though you need to be reminded of it, to know that he doesn’t approve.

“i know. but it’s cheap and it’s near the beach.”

“but you live alone. it’s dangerous.”

“but-” you glance over at him. he takes up most of your couch, wardy’s head resting against his thigh now, while he continues petting him. he looks over at you and it’s clear—this isn’t an argument. “you’re right. but i mean, how bad can it be? if you’re here now?”

you pause. stupidly, you’ve just revealed whatever thoughts have been rattling around in your head. like the fact that you’re assuming he’s going to be here more often, when the truth is that you have no idea if that’s true.

why would it be true? you tried, in earnest, to make sure your life never seemed anything more than it really was in your letters. but andrew drives a brand new truck and wears an expensive watch and you have absolutely no idea what he was robbing or why he was doing it—and you never asked. the assumption that just because he found you, meant that he was going to keep you was completely insane. a misgiving on your part, because surely, whatever’s waiting for him back home is better than your crappy cooking and a tiny apartment and a cat that you—

“sorry, i’m sorry. that’s such a jump. we just met. i’m so sorry, i can-” you stand up, and so does andrew.

“why are you apologizing?”

“because i just.. i don’t know.” you try to pace around your apartment but you only get a few steps away before you have to come back. “this is crazy. we’re both crazy.”

you feel it in the air before you hear him say it. it gets tenser, quieter, more serious. like what you’ve both been dreading for the last few hours is about to happen.

“do…do you want me to leave?” you turn to face him quickly.

“no! no, i don’t. that’s why this is crazy. people are going to think we’re insane. i don’t want you to go. i want you stay. i want you to tell me everything i missed in the last year and a half. i want to know what you did with my letters. i want to know-”

and when andrew reaches forward to grab your forearm—gently, not meant to hurt you—you freeze in your tracks. staring up at him, all the words in your brain, every stupid thing your friends ever told you about this make-shift relationship you had concocted in your head melting away.

“i want that too.”

“oh. well, i just thought-”

and this time, he doesn’t let you finish, leaning in for a kiss that makes your knees give out. andrew’s mouth—wet and hot and on fire—kisses you like you two were made for each other.

as cheesy as the thought feels, you swallow it and wrap your arms around his neck. it’s every stupid romance movie you’ve ever seen coming to life, your life. all because of him. he doesn’t break the kiss, not even to breathe. you feel his tongue poke into your mouth and you accept it gladly. you fall back on the couch and the movement of it makes wardy scamper off, and you move your head just for a second to see where he runs off too, but andrew doesn’t stop. he lines kisses along your cheek and your jaw until you turn back and he gets your lips again.

you feel his weight on top of you, and briefly, you wonder if you should tell him.

countless nights spent wondering what this would feel like, how he would kiss you, all the things he would do to you. you have to keep reminding yourself, you’re just a stupid girl—it’s not your fault that a few nice letters was enough to make you head over heels for the last few years.

because somewhere deep down inside, you knew. you knew that it would be like this, that it would be perfect, that it would be everything you wanted. that he would take care of you and want you as badly as you want him. your crown title of hopeless romantic had finally paid off.

another thought stirs as he keeps kissing you. it’s feverish and hot and makes you warm all over—how long it’s been since he’s had someone, how he kisses you like he’s out of practice. his mouth is so hard against yours it almost hurts, but you welcome the pain. it’s like he’s proving to you that he’s really there now, that nothing can tear him away from you.

but then he does pull away. you catch your breath, hands traveling to his face and running your fingers through his hair. andrew’s pretty eyes close and you cherish it—that you made him feel like that. he leans into your touch, head resting against your hand while you both take long, heavy breaths.

andrew leans in, pressing your foreheads together.

“i-i’ve wanted to do that,” another breath. you feel butterflies continuously emerge and flutter around your chest and your stomach, all the way down to between your legs. “since your first letter.”

and then you can’t resist—leaning back in for another hard, wet kiss. you feel him shift, strong hands on your hips, but staying firmly there, not traveling despite how much you wish they would. he’s been polite again, you think. waiting for you to give him permission.

“you can-” you start, but andrew keeps pressing kisses against your neck that make it hard to finish your sentence. “you can touch me.” you expect his hands to spread—grope and grab and tease until you’re begging for more. for him to be impatient and hungry and not stop until he’s inside of you.

“i can’t believe you’re real,” he says quietly, one hand moving up to your waist and touching the soft skin there gently. he traces up your arms and then down before intertwining his fingers with yours. you stare up at him, stupid as ever. every time you think you know anything about andrew, he proves you wrong.

“i can’t believe you are, either,” you say, tilting your head up for another kiss. a short, chaste one this time. “you’re just as nice as i knew you’d be.”

“you think i’m nice?” he asks, voice low. you nod in response, words escaping you. you settle to answer with another kiss, hands going to his shoulders to steady yourself, tugging and pulling on his bottom lip with your teeth.

you push up until he understands, and he uses two huge hands to get you into his lap, sitting up with his back against your couch. you straddle him, trying your hardest to not lose your train of thought as you realize how hard he is against you.

“i think you’re too nice,” you tease, unsure where you’re finding the confidence. under you, andrew looks spacey and flushed and all kissed out, but you don’t plan to stop. you lean in to press kisses to his cheeks and work your way to his jaw and neck. when you stop to look at him again, he looks hopelessly up at you, and you think he’s waiting again, waiting for permission to do something. “i think you’re so nice that you’re not telling me everything you’ve wanted to do to me these last few years.”

the way andrew looks up at you after you said that—god. you wish you could engrain it into your memory. you’re not someone who does this often, but you might just be good at figuring out how to get andrew to crack. he looks up with some of the hunger you’d imagined there’d be, and it makes something stir inside of you.

it feels strange to be wanted the way andrew wants you right now. you’re just not used to it, not entirely sure that you’d ever feel this way. that someone would ever make you feel this way.

your thoughts are wiped again when he pulls you into another kiss, and you deepen it, moaning into his mouth. you’re being so loud that your older neighbor might be able to hear you, but you can hardly bring yourself to care right now. andrew is quiet, like you thought he would be, but each soft grunt and heavy sigh is enough to make your entire body tingle.

you think you’re being better at staying quiet yourself when andrew scoops you up into his arms, carrying you like it’s nothing for him. you yelp loudly, forgetting everything for a second, realizing how lovely it feels to be carried by him. he leads you two to your bedroom, setting you down gently on the bed.

you stare at him, hovering above you, wondering how you’ll get to do this. how you’ll get his clothes off and watch out for his hurt hand and that you’ll finally get to feel him inside of you—when he just stops moving.

andrew looks up and around your bedroom, craning his neck to take in all of it. you’re not sure why, stuck in a position under him that forces you to just watch.

“is everything okay, andrew?” when you say his name, he turns back to stare down at you.

“yes. yes, it is. it’s just-” he pauses, looking back up and then down. the room is decorated with lots of pretty frames. there’s yellow curtains on the windows and your sheets are yellow under you too, just like he’d suspected. seeing it in real life almost sends him back to years ago—the first time he’d wondered what your bedroom looks like. the place from where you write your letters, the place you read them. “it looks just like i thought it would.”

and just like every other part of tonight, your reaction continues to surprise him. you smile and then laugh, holding onto his shoulder even tighter.

“spend a lot of time thinking about my bedroom, huh?” you tease, and he remains just as confused as ever.

you are such a conundrum. andrew thinks that he wants you so badly he can’t form a proper thought—and then the thoughts merge and blend and anger at the very idea that you’re so trusting of him. you should be more careful. you shouldn’t trust anyone how much you’re trusting him right now—inviting him inside your home, letting him into your bedroom.

and then you pull him down for another kiss and it all washes away like letters in the sand.

eventually he does pull away—though it takes an enormous amount of self control. the words you said on the couch haven’t completely left him yet and he still needs to answer you. you claw and pull at his shirt so he lets you take it off of him, you trace a hand down his chest, stopping at his heart and pressing your palm flat against him.

you’re staring, he thinks, but you’re really just admiring. taking in every detail, every scar and bruise so you can ask him about it later, moving your fingers down his abs and biting your lip while you stare daggers at his chest.

he moves away from your touch though, as sad as it makes you.

“you wanted to know everything i’ve thought about you?” andrew says, and the words make you tense up—thighs clenching, walls fluttering just from words alone. your fingers tighten around his bicep where you’ve been holding on, and you nod up at him dumbly. “can i show you?”

your head falls back onto your pillow with a thud. you nod again.

you let andrew set the pace—he peels off your clothes and you lift your hips and raise your arms in compliance. he starts with a kiss to your stomach that makes you whine, fingers leaving his skin and grabbing onto your sheets instead just to have something to hold on to.

you’re embarrassingly wet—you already know you are. it’s almost painful how badly you want him, even against better judgement that tells you that you could have, at the very least, taken things slowly.

you guess andrew just brings it out of you.

his kisses move south and you brace yourself, every muscle tensing up in anticipation. andrew is silent except for his deep breaths and somehow, with each one deeper than the last, they make your entire body shudder in anticipation. when he finally gets to your leaking cunt, you hear it. a strangled moan, sounding painful and from the depth of his chest and filled with want and need. just from looking at you. you can’t imagine what he’ll sound like when—

“this is what i thought about. this is always what i thought about.”

and then andrew licks down the length of your cunt with the flat of his tongue, and you can’t think about anything else anymore. he’s relentless, exploring you with his mouth like he’s a man starved. you can hear the noises, obscene and sloppy and wet as they are.

and then you feel it—his mouth around your clit while one finger prods at your tight opening. your back rises off the bed but he holds you down with one huge hand over your stomach. his finger slips inside you more easily than he thought it would. though you’re wetter than he imagined, he doesn’t stop teasing your clit.

your wetness coats everything—his tongue, his lips, his chin. your thighs are wet too, and he’s sure he can get your yellow sheets soaked too if he could tease you long enough. but he’s been incredibly patient all these years, unsure if he can wait any longer to get what he’s wanted.

his hand keeps you pinned down while his mouth stays on your clit and then andrew adds another finger and you thrash up against him. it’s useless against the weight of his hand holding you down, but your body moves anyways, hands wrangling into his brown curls, likely making a complete mess of them. you keep pulling and he moans between your legs and the vibration makes you thrash harder, a completely exhilarating cycle.

when he finally releases you from his grip, you think the other hand will explore up and down your body, but true to form, you’re wrong. andrew finds your hand and holds onto it, lacing your fingers with his while he keeps going.

when adds a third finger, you realize that he’s saying something against you. you can’t quite make it out with your heart thudding in your ears and how loud you’re being, but then it becomes a little clearer—

“you taste even better than i thought you would-” and you can’t stop it, the tension in your stomach winding tighter and tighter before it snaps altogether. a white hot heat washes through your body and makes you shake even harder, but andrew’s hold on you keeps you completely grounded. he works you through it, not stopping even once, not until you’re trying your hardest to pull away from him. you try to catch your breath but it’s useless. your head feels completely empty.

incoherent, you grab at andrew, murmuring something about inside, please, and he really tries to stay level headed. but one glance at your naked, writhing body and your expression while you beg for him is enough to tip him over the edge.

resisting you requires a level of self control that he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to have.

andrew doesn’t think he’s ever had any self control when it comes to you. it’s why he did this, isn’t it? showed up at your hospital with your sweet letter folded up and somehow convinced you, without saying much of anything at all, to trust him and let him back into your life. he doesn’t even know how he did it—he can’t recall most of what he said to you. it plays in his head like a movie, like how your letters used to.

he doesn’t know what he did to deserve your trust, just knows that he’ll do whatever he has to in order to keep it forever.

andrew’s thoughts about keeping you cloud him while he lifts up your legs, manhandling your body while you squeal under him. he pushes your knees to your chest and lets your legs hang in the air while he hovers over you. all he can think about is getting inside of you—-giving you exactly what you’ve been begging for, fulfilling every fantasy he’s had about you in the last three years. the noises you’ll make. how tight and wet and warm you’ll feel around him. how you’ll look with his cum dripping out of-

“andrew, please, please,” you plead, and he’s not sure that you understand exactly what you’re asking for. it’s good that it’s him you picked for those letters, good that he’s the one who tracked you down.

someone else, well, he thinks, lining himself up with your soaking wet entrance, someone else might have had bad intentions with you. not andrew, though.

his intentions for you are only good. intentions to keep you happy and safe and move you away from this tiny apartment and make sure you get the job that you want, no matter who he has to threaten in order to do so. intentions to keep everything taken care of so the only thing you ever have to worry about again is him, just like you’d done for all those years when you wrote to him.

and as he slips inside, he knows those letters are in this bedroom somewhere, that this bed is where you read them, that these were the pretty hands that held his letters and these were the pretty eyes that read them.

you stare at him while he hovers over you, not pushing in just yet. andrew’s dick is just like the rest of him—thick and broad and so wide that you don’t know how you’ll be able to walk tomorrow. there’s veins too, just like his arms, and it’s all you can think about with him enclosed over you.

when he pushes his thick head past your fluttering walls, you make a noise like nothing he’s ever heard before. pure want and heat wrapped up with pleasure and pain. you keep begging for more but he’s not sure you can even handle it—but who is andrew to deny you?

he pushes further inside of you, now half way, and you cry out. andrew leans in to kiss you again, swallowing the noise and letting you moan against his lips.

another thrust and he’s almost all the way in. he pulls out and pushes back in, and then he starts his rhythm. your tits bounce with every thrust and he watches entranced, until his eyes go back to where you and him meet. in this position, on his knees with you folded underneath him, he can see it perfectly.

it’s enough to make him finish instantly. you look completely fucked out under him, crying out with each push of his hips.

your open your wet eyes and glance up at him. through wet lashes and blinking eyes, you get out a few words, stopped by each thrust.

“is it-” you gasp, words getting caught in your throat because andrew is so deep inside of you that you can feel him in your stomach and your chest. “is it what you imagined, andrew?”

“god, yes,” he says, and the sound is so perfect to you. it comes out broken, in the form of a gasp and a moan combined, and you want to hear it again and again. he says your name like it’s a prayer grounding him to you and you keep your arms wrapped around his neck, holding him close to you and bringing him in for another kiss. you can feel andrew’s pace start to stutter, his moans getting louder and his grip on you getting tighter. you hold his face in your hands, locking eyes again.

“inside, andrew, please, i want it inside, please, please,” and again, andrew thinks to himself, like some besotted fool, who is he to deny you? he releases whatever inhibitions he had left and fills you up with his cum—rivulets almost never ending. it leaks out around his dick, messing up your sheets and staining your thighs and making a mess of everything. he hears your heavy breaths and looks to see you smiling sweetly up at him.

and then he collapses next to you.

“hi andrew,” you say quietly next to him. your hands go to his, playing with his fingers and running the pad of your thumb over the veins on his hand. “was it how you thought it’d be?”

“it was better,” he says, breathless. you giggle and lean in to press a kiss to his cheek—and for a moment, he forgets everything. the circumstances of your introduction and the way he’d discovered you long forgotten for a few heartbeats. just you and the sound of your laugh and the promise of the future he wants with you before him.

“there’s still some things i thought about that we didn’t get to yet,” you tease, and he wonders, briefly, what he’s going to do with you.

and then you two hear it—scratching at your closed bedroom door.

“oh god,” you say, sitting up in bed.

you groan a little since your thighs are sore and it’s a wet, sticky mess between them. andrew keeps his hand on your arm and helps you sit up, and joins you in the position, like he’s preparing to help if you need something.

“warden, stop,” you say, but he doesn’t listen. you turn to andrew. “i’m gonna get him.” you try to move your legs and put weight on them, but you feel your knees buckle immediately, with andrew rushing to your side to help you back into bed.

“oh my god. you broke me.”

“i’ll get him. just-just sit down.”

andrew opens the door and picks up your cat like it’s second nature, bringing him to you on the bed before getting in right beside you. your cat is sweet but there’s not many people over at your apartment, and you worry for a moment that he won’t be nice to andrew when he wants your attention. but wardy doesn’t move from his position, staying curled up again andrew’s chest and arm, completely at ease.

“he likes you. that makes sense,” you say, smiling up at him, leaning in to pet wardy’s head.

but andrew doesn’t understand.

“warden. i thought you said his name was wardy?”

“that’s just a nickname.”

“why warden?”

“oh well. it’s silly, um-”

“tell me.”

“well, uh. well, warden is just the letters in andrew. uh, rearranged.”

“oh.”

“i’m sorry. i’m so sorry, is that creepy? i was really projecting, i guess, when i got him. i just loved your letters so much and i’ve never had a boyfriend or anything like that-”

“do you think we should get married?”

thanks for reading! ♡

[greyyson-but-wrong]

ALIBIS

pairing: bucky barnes x reader

warning: the winter solider, canon accurate civil war, violence, fighting, swearing, a single sentence hinting that they've fucked in the past lmao, hydra mention, partly edited

summary: you've been living with bucky for the past year, now he's been accused of assassinating the king of wakanda and of course they bring you in as well, but nobody knows who exactly you are

author notes: guys... this isn't a part 2 I actually have no motivation to write that atm icl so have this instead. I'm being so fr I could change one detail about this and have it be part of the same storyline as my previous work but I cba cause then there'll be a bunch of missing context :( hope you enjoy this!!!

word count: 4.6K

"Who the hell is that?"

Tony Stark didn't recognise the woman as he took a peak through the glass of the cell, index finger pointed towards her before moved backward to pinch at his lips. She was perched on the edge of the small bench they had given her, book in hand, leaning forward with her elbows resting against the skin of her thighs. For having just been arrested under the suspicion of harbouring a fugitive, the woman didn't seem too worried, too off-put or irked. She just simply sat there, breathing steady. At the change in scenery outside her window, she looked up only temporarily, the corners of her lips curving upward at the sight of the Iron Man, fingers leaving the paper of her book to wag her fingers in a wave. Tony's eyebrows furrowed at her actions. Suspicious. That's all she was.

Steve moved his eyes from the woman to look towards Tony, hands dug in his pockets, fiddling with the spare lint caught off the inside fabric. "She, is his alibi."

"Come again?"

The solider tilted his head, watching the woman as she went back to innocently reading her book, still as if she wasn't currently in a holding cell under the detainment of the American government. "She's been giving him a home for a year now, feeding him, keeping him stable, stopping him from becoming the Winter Solider."

Tony sighed, lowering his voice. "So why won't she testify again him?"

Steve eyed up the security camera in the corner of the room. It was no doubt someone was watching him on the other side, because while he was an Avenger and allowed somewhat free roaming around the premises, he was still technically a criminal now. They had to have all eyes on him. He had to keep all eyes on her though. "She knows that the government doesn't officially acknowledge the difference between the Winter Solider and Bucky as a person. Until they do that, she's refusing to tell us anything. That includes information about who she is."

"Well, she must have a name."

"She's told us Jane Doe, but, well. We're not stupid." Steve chuckles, shaking his head. "Someone, somewhere has her file, I won't be able to get it for you, though."

Tony Stark shrugs. "I'll get FRIDAY to gather the information about her, for me." He pauses for a second, letting his thoughts gather, letting everything come together in some form. He fiddles with his phone a little, before shoving it back into his pocket, turning to Steve again. "The question is, why is she so protective of him?"

Steve lets out a heavy sigh, eyes moving to watch her. "If only she would tell us."

The glass was soundproof. You knew, because several different groups of people had walked past the locked cell, mouths moving, faces reacting, but you could hear none of it. They had given you a random book to read to pass the time, but you were already about halfway through it and it had only been two hours, by the analog clock that was built into the left wall. The list of people that had walked past ran through in your head in the following order: Maria Hill, Fred the Janitor (he had a mop, so you assumed), a group of lawyers, the Black Widow, Fred the Janitor (again), Agent Ross as part of the CIA, a group of guards who were surrounding T'Challa (who you had made the worst kind of direct eye contact with), a couple more lawyers, then the cherry atop the cake: Captain America and Iron Man. Steve Rogers and Tony Stark.

It was obvious it was them because well, fuck, who wouldn't have known it was them? They were Avengers, they had saved the world countless times. They were also the reason Bucky had to run and hide with you, rather than in a much safer Witness Protection programme. They were also the reason you were trapped in this holding cell, because Captain America had led the Romanian police force directly to the apartment you had Bucky had been peacefully living in for a year.

The peace died pretty quickly when you had walked into your kitchen to find Steve Rogers standing there, shield in hand, looking at the photo of you and Bucky stuck to the fridge.

They had asked for your name. They had asked for your identification and your history. Perhaps a couple years ago you would have told them, but then all that information was revealed about Shield and Hydra, and now there was no way on God's Holy Earth would you ever trust them nor any government body again. After what Bucky had gone through, after what you had gone through, how could they have led Hydra infiltrate Shield like that? Black Widow thought that the encrypted versions of the files would mean the general public wouldn't be able to gain the information.

But you had been trained by Hydra. You weren't their brawn, you were their brains, so if anyone was going to be able to decrypt that information, it would have been you. When you spent hours scouring through the endless files to find out information about his life, that had been the day you had decided to never trust a government body.

So, no, you weren't going to tell them your name. Then they would look you up. They would find out that you used to work for Hydra and just like they were treating Bucky, they wouldn't understand you had been brainwashed and tricked and tortured to work for them. They would treat you like any other Hydra worker who knew what they had been doing; even though you didn't.

Now you were stuck in this cell, Bucky was nowhere to be seen and therefore probably in some containment centre to stop him from hurting anybody even though he wasn't the Winter Solider anymore. Even though he hadn't become the Winter Solider in months, thanks to the work you had been doing with him. What were you supposed to do? Anything you could talk about or tell anyone, they wouldn't believe it. To them, Bucky was a weapon, something that could hurt and couldn't love, but he did love. He had humour, he had a laugh, a smile, he stops in the middle of the street to stroke stray cats, he gets all soppy at cozy rom-coms and he spends his evenings listening to old Sinatra records.

But they would never see that.

Then Captain America and Iron Man walked in front of the glass. You couldn't help but grin, waving your fingers towards the billionaire. It was public knowledge that Tony Stark was on the side of signing the Accords and that Steve Rogers wasn't. It piqued your curiosity as to how they were able to have a real conversation while having such different beliefs, but that wasn't your main goal. You wanted to confuse them.

The name. Jane Doe, of course it was fake. You had told them it to be confusing, make it clear that you were more than just simply a safe house holder for the Winter Solider. What it would do was bring up all the attention towards you. The Avengers, the CIA, the FBI, whoever was in charge here would spend their time figuring out who the hell you were and why you had been so involved in Bucky's life in the past year. To cause a bit of a ruckus, and a lot of confusion.

Because while they would be doing all of that, Bucky's trial would be put off longer and longer, until your people could prove that the Winter Solider was not the same person as Bucky. You were refusing to talk not just because they didn't understand that simply fact, but you also needed time to gather enough evidence that it would be impossible to dismiss the truth. You were not the Huntress that Hydra had turned you into, and Bucky was not the Winter Solider they had tortured him into becoming. Once they understood that, maybe, just maybe, you had a chance of getting out of here with Bucky and living free with him like you should have been doing for the past year.

Hydra had taught you well. Half of the data was already sat in your lab in Romania, proving that brain mechanics, movement, thoughts and procedures changed whenever he was under the throes of the Winter Solider. Pictures and files dating each time Hydra experimented their brainwashing technology on him. Images of the different machinery, some of them with him in it, some of you working at the nearest computer.

Your work from the past year had taken a lot out of you, but damn was it worth it. Once your people took a look at the final conclusions and sent through the final part of the plan, you and Bucky would be one step closer to freedom.

They bought you in for his evaluation. He was in a glass box, restrained at every possible part of his body, particularly the metal arm. His head was hung, hair falling not-so-graciously in front of his face, masking him. The image was projected onto a giant monitor towards the front of the room, where everyone could see what was happening. They still had you handcuffed, behind your back, something strong, perhaps vibranium so you couldn't get out no matter what. Four guards stood around you, stopping any possible escape plan. But none of them were even on the table unless you knew where to find Bucky and guarantees you got out with him by your side.

To the left of you and the guards stood Tony and Natasha, both on the side agreeing with the Accords. Behind a glass door was Steve and Sam. As his evaluator started speaking, your eyes began to droop. Nobody would take this serious, or how they should.

"Hello, Mr Barnes." A Sokovian accent was the first thing you spotted. Nothing too out of the ordinary but it definitely piqued some form of interest in you for a reason you hadn't yet been able to decipher. "I have been sent by the United Nations to evaluate you. Do you mind if I sit?" On the screen, he gestured to the chair and desk. When Bucky stayed silent, he sat down, opening up his briefcase that had been placed on the wood of the desk. "Your first name is James?"

Bucky stayed silent again. You knew this would be difficult, and everyone else in the room was beginning to catch onto that point as well.

"Do you know where you are, James?" Again silence. The examinations officer sighed. "I can't help you if you don't talk to me, James."

A brief pause. Bucky lifted his head, revealing his face to the officer. He swallowed, lips parting to speak. "My name is Bucky."

In the other room, behind the glass, Steve and Sam, plus a woman that you didn't know the name of yet, started speaking. They all had that look on their face. Curiosity, suspicion, a tint of fear muddled in with the rest. Steve was fiddling with a piece of paper, could have been a photo, but it was difficult to see from the angle the guards had you at.

"Tell me, then, Bucky." He started speaking again, making notes in that little book of his. "You've seen a great deal, haven't you?"

Bucky's voice was strained as he spoke, eyes droopy, that fear, that pain having seeped it's way back into his features. The same state of mind that you and him had worked so hard to leave in the past. It was just being dug back up again, unmercifully. "I don't wanna talk about it."

He waved his hands about, barely visible through the screen projection. "You fear that if you open your mouth, the horrors might never stop." He was intentionally poking the bear.

A moment paused. The examinations officer looked down to the left of his notebook to a propped up screen, the camera to far away to read what was visible on the screen. "Don't worry. We only have to talk about one." Another second passed, then—

The lights went out.

The next couple moments were a blur. Agent Ross started pacing between different computers, Tony Stark went off to talk to his AI, Natasha had already left the room. Steve had stood up straight at the outage, looking towards the woman and immediately signalling at Sam to following him. Believe me, you tried to stay put, not let anything get any worse than it already was, but Steve clearly knew where Bucky was, and if what you thought was happening was happening, then they needed you. So you spotted as one of the guards slipped, moved out of space for a single second, distracted, and you bled into the shadows, melting away so that no one could follow you. Hydra didn't simply train you with hardware and software, after all.

You slipped through and into the glass room, then again through the door that Steve had just disappeared through. Once you were in a clear corridor with both Steve and Sam at the end of it, you began running after them, pausing for just a single second to use a door handle to break the handcuffs that were restraining you.

Because, of course, the examinations officer wasn't CIA, or FBI, or actually from the UN like he said he had been. You knew you recognised the book, the red leather front and that stupid fucking black star painted on it. Your own fucking writing was in it! How the hell this man had gotten a hold of it, you couldn't figure out, but that wasn't the priority. Right now, the Winter Solider was being summoned, and would be under the control of some random person, who was also probably at the fault of T'Chaka's death too. Only God knew what he was really planning, but Bucky would be at the heart of it and that was the one thing you aimed to stop.

Eventually, you caught up with Steve and Sam. It took them both a while to clock you were running behind them but neither of them cared enough about you in the moment to stop running because you all had the same goal: finding Bucky.

The three of you made it to the entrance of whichever room Bucky had been put into. Steve came to a halt at the seemingly endless pile of bodies on the floor. It was too late. He was already the Winter Solider and he had already hurt people.

Steve turned to you, chin held high. "How the hell did you get out?"

"Slipped away." You shrugged. Steve's lips parted as if to speak again, but you held a hand up, shaking your head. "But that's not what's important right now. Bucky has just become the Winter Solider again, and if we don't get to that man in order to save Bucky again, then we're all going to be in a lot of trouble and not just with the government this time."

He ran a hand over his face but nodded, turning back towards the doorway.

In the middle of the room, Zemo was curled into the floor, shaking. Steve didn't give you nor Sam any chance to do anything, running forward and picking him up, shoving him up against the desk, chin held high as he began to speak. You were so focused on Zemo, that you didn't notice Bucky standing in the corner of the room, shoulders dilating as he panted, fully reformed back into the Winter Solider. You also didn't see as he made a leap towards Steve, shoving him across the room at lightning speed.

At the sound of Steve crashing against the wall, you leaped too, in a way that left your hands rested on his shoulders, readying to pull off. All three of you had the serum, but they were still both men, and Bucky under the brainwashing programme gave him extra strength, no holding back. When his trapezius twitched and his jaw sharpened, you knew he was going to swing behind him, so you ducked, dodging his hand and using the temporary drop in his barriers to reach for his arm, curling it around his back.

His metal arm was still pressing against Steve, so with your hands still keeping his flesh arm behind his back, you leaped up and wrapped your legs around his waist, your other hand moving around him to cover his face. Confusion, distraction, anything that meant Steve could get himself out of the grasp Bucky had him in.

And while Steve did make it out, slipping from his grasp, Bucky caught on far too quickly. He was able to maneuver himself to make you fall, spinning on his feet and falling to his knees as your back hit the ground. He went for your hands, clasping them above your head so there was no way to get out. This position certainly wasn't unfamiliar, but every other time, you knew he would let you go at a signal. The Winter Solider would not listen to a signal. He climbed your body, eyes meeting yours straight forward.

They were pained. A familiar warmth that looked like home but only once you dug deep. On the surface was simply a message, follow the mission, the unfamiliar blue did scare you. The only thing that kept you going was the knowledge that Bucky was in there somewhere, no matter how much it didn't seem like it — Bucky was there. You'd get him out, or die trying.

"Bucky—" You gasped, gaping for breath, trying to get his attention. His, not the Winter Solider. "I know you're there. I know you can hear me."

He simply snarled, teeth bared. You lifted your head to look outside of his gaze, seeing Sam and Steve after Zemo, who had given in not so quickly. Looking back towards Bucky, you met the blue again, letting your head drop to the floor, letting your muscles relax, your breathing beginning to settle as you calmed. If you were calm, then so was he. If he was calm, then so were you. That was the deal. But that did nothing, if anything it worsened the situation, because he removed his metal hand from holding yours, still able to keep you bound with just one, and moved the metal so that it was pressed up against your neck.

Not pushing, not squeezing; just settled. Acting as a warning, to make sure you didn't try anything.

"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes but— everyone calls you Bucky and you can't remember why." You speak, more wary of your breathing than you ever have been before. A quick glance downward, then back up to meet his eyes. "Your favourite singer is Frank Sinatra, but you think musically, Nancy Sinatra did better work. You—" You gasped for air as his fingers twitched around your neck, your words beginning to break through. "There's a cat, you call her Alpine, that always stops at our window and you shouldn't feed her— because she's not our cat, but— you do any way— because you're secretly a softie."

Bucky blinks. Bucky blinks. Not the Winter Solider. The warmth slowly flows towards the front of the blue, that familiarity coming back.

But that's what Steve didn't see. Steve handed Zemo over to Sam to get rid of then turned to see the Winter Solider choking you, so he leaped towards the two of you. The shield bashed against Bucky's side, knocking him over. Just as he was ripped from your sight, you saw the blue darken again, and Bucky was gone.

"He's making his way to the helipad—" Steve spoke, storming in the direction of the mentioned exit, not even sparing you a glance as he passed you.

The fight had gone shit. Sam had been sent after Zemo and had no luck, the man seemingly disappearing off the face of the earth. Everyone had had their turn at Bucky, only making things worse, only escalating things. You had managed to pull Black Widow away from the solider, pushing her to the side and running after Bucky as he fled. Then Iron Man had wanted a turn, half suited and dodging a bullet that Bucky had managed to aim in his direction. Steve had been in and out of everything, and was now on his way to following Bucky as he attempted to escape.

You hadn't seen Steve since he had knocked Bucky away from you in the bunker. Now he was storming away from you and you had some less than pleasant words that he definitely needed to hear. "Steve, I swear to God, what the fuck—" You paused, still walking after him and scoffing as he simply continued walking. "I had him! I had Bucky back and you ruined it! What right do you even have protecting him or me like that?"

It was a stupid thing to say. You knew that him and Bucky had been inseparable during the war, because who didn't? You knew that he was risking his power as Captain America in order to protect Bucky from prosecution.

Steve paused, turning around and finally facing you, pointing an index finger at you in a accusatory act, eyebrows furrowed in anger. "Listen, I don't know who the hell you think you are, but Bucky is my best friend and I will do anything to make sure he's safe. So don't bullshit me with who deserves him more, because I don't know a single good thing you've done for him in the past 100 years."

You grit your teeth, fighting off a groan. Just about to reply, movement in your peripheral shifted your attention, seeing the solider swing open the door to a free helicopter. "Steve, quick—"

He followed where you were looking, and at the realisation that there wasn't time for a spat, you both started running, outside and onto the helipad. Bucky knew how to work it, getting the vehicle up in no time. Steve leaped, grabbing the landing skids, attempting to pull it downward. Bucky saw, shifting so the helicopter moved away from Steve. You reached for Steve's spare hand, using your joint strength to further pull the helicopter towards the concrete.

Bucky shouted, again shifting and this time behind successful. The helicopter was dragged towards the edge, Steve dropping your grasp and having no choice but to latch onto the yellow railing around the edge of the helipad.

"Let me help!" You shouted, rushing forward and pulling on his hand, you in turn, starting pulling both Steve and the helicopter away from the direction it was heading towards. Knees pressed against the concrete, you grabbed onto the railing as a fail safe, which eventually came in handy as the helicopter tugged the two of you and Steve away from the ground.

You were dangling in mid-air, hand in hand with the Captain America, attempting and failing to pull Bucky back to the ground. What the fuck? What the actual fuck. Steve caught your eyes, a mouthed 'tug on three, yeah?' You nodded in return, and he began to shout over the whirring of the main motor. "One—" You were latched onto the yellow railing, securing your grip. "Two—" It was a struggle, but it seemed possible. Or at least, you tried to tell yourself that. "THREE!"

Steve pulled, as did you, a sudden, unexpected tug. It sent pressure through the helicopter, a shift that Bucky couldn't predict and therefore couldn't avoid. The vehicle stuttered, and lost momentum, crashing into the side of the railing. Rubble was everywhere, you had lost Steve's hand and he was nowhere to be seen.

The helicopter creaked as it collided with the concrete. Then it slipped, stuttered, and slowly dropped from the ledge, falling into the river below.

Bucky groaned, muscles aching. His eyes fluttered open, and he was met with the stern looks of Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson, both with their arms crossed over their chests. He spluttered a cough out, pushing himself to sit up. As the two stayed quiet, Bucky let himself look around the room. Leant against the far brick wall, was your body, limp and still unconscious. At the sight of you, Bucky sat up fully, pushing himself up and moving towards you.

Steve stepped to the left, blocking his path. "Hold it—"

"Let me get to her, Steve." Bucky pleaded, voice wavering in fear of the way she was so limp against the wall, a hand held out pointing towards her. "I need to check she's okay. If she's not— I don't— She has to be okay, just let me ch—"

The captain cut him off, a hand held up to cease his speech. "She's okay, trust me. You can go see her in a second, we just have a couple questions, first."

Bucky swallowed, nearly glaring up at Steve. He shrugged. "Go crazy."

"What's your name?"

He scoffed, shoulders shaking, eyes never leaving yourself. "Bucky Barnes."

"When were you born?" He was being very very quick with these questions. Bucky found it almost demeaning, but under the circumstances and taking into consideration the entire situation, he became a bit more empathetic.

"March 10th, 1917."

Steve swallowed, allowing two quick glances, one toward Sam stood next to him, and then behind him to where you were still unconscious. "Tell me something only Bucky would know."

Bucky sighed, shoulders deflating and finally being able to draw his gaze away from you, meeting Steve's. "Your mom's name was Sarah. You used to put newspapers in your shoes—"

At Sam's small chuckle, Steve held a hand out, pausing him. "Alright, alright. I'm sorry for the paranoia, but with the fight that just broke out, I hope you can understand why. I swear, we've done our checks and she's really alright but you go ahead."

"Thanks." He nodded curtly, rushing towards you and falling to his knees. He pushed your hair back from your face, hands pressed against your cheeks, examining your face.

Steve, arms crossed again, looked to face him. "Who even is she?"

Bucky grinned, forehead pressed to yours, letting out a deep sigh as his conclusions came back that nothing was inherently wrong, you simply needed to wake up. "She's my saviour. She is the reason I'm still alive, that I'm not a slave for Hydra anymore." Pulling back, he sought Steve for a reason. In the small moment he was looking away, you twitched, gasping for air and eyes flicking open, regaining consciousness.

"James—"

At the breathe of your name, he spun, eyes widening at the sight of you awake. Immediately, he pulled you into him, arms around your torso, chest flush against his. You sighed, realising he was here, and safe, and not the Winter Solider. His face pressed against your neck, warm breath jarring against the cold of wherever the safe house was.

He sighed contently into your neck. "You're okay, doll, you're okay. Are you okay? How—"

Pulling back, you laughed, palms moving to press against his cheeks. "Am I okay? Oh, James, I swear. Are you okay? You're the one that was triggered, how do you feel?"

"A bit shaken." He spoke, breathing calming down. "But alive, and happy you are too."

"Good."

Sam cleared his throat, and the two of you were brought back to reality. Steve hid a chuckle behind a cough and in order to force the awkwardness to dissipate, he took over the room, setting about recap of the circumstance and what the next plan of action was. It would be a lot of work, but anything to make sure Bucky was free.

a/n: hope you enjoyed!! lemme know if yous want a part 2 or want me to create a tag list or anything any support is appreciated 👏

[prettycoolgirl]

young rich & in love

pairing: dbf!logan howlett x f!reader. summary: sunday night football with your dad and logan, who knows what’s gonna happen... a/n: hey, my comeback has arrived!! i haven't posted fanfic on here in sooooooo long but hopefully, this makes up for it, i've had this idea in my head for weeks and finally decided to write it (saveeee me old man logan). please lemme know if i made any errors i hateee proofreading 😭 tyyy <33 also feel free to send me concepts!  warnings: 18+, smut ofc, age gap (reader is in her 20s). implied panty stealing. oral (m receiving). small daddy kink? definitely more warnings… word count: 2.7k 

It was your Father's and Logan's daily Sunday routine of watching football games together yet today was different. You walked past the living room and saw Logan sitting on the couch, with a beer in his hand, eyes focused on the screen as he watched the game. Your dad was in the kitchen getting snacks and a couple of more Coors, leaving the two of you alone in the room. Logan caught you just in time and smiled, his eyes lingering on you. "Hey, why don’t you come and watch the game with us," he said.

 “As much as I would love to hear you and my dad constantly screaming at the TV, I can’t I gotta get ready for my date tonight with Jacob, sorry” you smiled slightly. Quickly Logan's smile faded at the mention of your date. He tried to hide it, but you could still see a hint of disappointment in his eyes.

 "Oh no need to be sorry bubs, and How’s he treating you?" he questioned. 

"He’s been treating me well I guess." you said stating the last part quietly, deep down you knew you weren’t telling the truth, the truth is that he’s been flaking on dates between you too because he “doesn’t feel well”, yet your friends send you photos that same night of his Instagram stories where he’s out partying with friends.

 Logan’s eyebrow raised upon hearing your response. “What do you mean ‘Well I Guess’” He asked. “You don’t sound so sure about that baby” He drank a bit of his beer looking into your eyes. 

 That nickname he used so often with you, always seemed to have an effect on you. For context, You always had a crush on Logan, you thought it would have gone away with it just being a ‘stupid teenage crush’ but no it wasn't. The crush on that man had gotten stronger the older you’ve gotten. You hoped he had some sort of crush on you at all. Some days you would notice all the side glances he would make when you exited the house all dressed up or even when you would kiss Jacob goodbye when he dropped you off at home. 

 “It’s nothing, don’t worry about it Logan.” you tried to reassure him. 

You knew Logan was hard to try to convince him of something. He knew you were keeping something from him, and he was going to get it out of you. 

“I know you too well, Something’s bothering you, You know you can talk to me. I won’t tell your old man.” He put his beer down on the coffee table and turned closer towards you.

“Tell me the truth bubs. Is he not treating you right? You shouldn't be dealing with that baby” he said using that nickname you loved, putting his hand on your thigh rubbing it&keeping eye contact while smirking.

Your heart races at seeing him rubbing his thumb over your thighs. His goddamn smirk too.

“He’s ju-” 

You were interrupted mid-sentence by your dad walking into the room.

Logan moved his hand back to himself, grabbing his beer and clearing his throat. Your dad entered the room, with his snacks laid out on a big plate and another six-pack of beer. "Oh, you gonna watch the game with us? I thought Jacob was taking you out." your dad asked settling down the plate and beers in front of the two men’s seats.  

"Uh no sadly not, I'm still going out with Jacob tonight," you said, a hint of irritation in your voice. "So if you guys don't mind me, I need to go get ready. This hair and makeup is not gonna get done by itself." You shot a glance at Logan, his expression unreadable, before quickly exiting the room. 

As you left the room, you swear you felt Logan's eyes on your back piercing right through you as you walked upstairs toward your bedroom. In your bedroom You fixed up your hair a bit and walked back and forth through your closet trying to pick what you were gonna wear but thoughts of Logan’s hand rubbing your thigh just kept invading your mind. The thought of him just alone made you wet. God the affect that man had on you. No matter how much you try to ignore it, more thoughts of him rushed back in and so did questions. Was he jealous? Why did he look disappointed when you mentioned your boyfriend, Jacob? 

You could not let the thought of your dad’s best friend cross your mind anymore, you had to finish getting ready, either way, Jacob told you yesterday to be ready by 4 and time was approaching. You previously made the plan to get fucked tonight, Jacob had to appreciate what he had. You slipped into your mini skirt that matched perfectly with your shirt—sitting at your vanity, applying your everyday makeup. As you moved on to applying a final coat of lipgloss, you heard your phone buzz. You picked it up and felt your stomach drop as you read the message from “jacob <3” 

 "Gotta raincheck tonight I’m not feeling well again, sorry bb" 

He did it once again for the 4th time, yet this time he promised he wouldn’t cancel still yet he did. Anger filled you, you had spent so much time getting ready, just for him to cancel like always. You’re ready for nothing, no plans, no nothing. You were pissed. You began to type up some utter bullshit “oh okay feel better soon love you<33.” 

He quickly replied by liking the message with a thumbs up. 

 Not even a “Love you too” What the fuck, Fuck him, Fuck this Logan was right you shouldn’t be dealing with this. Enough was enough. You were done with his bullshit. Your plan of at least fucking Jacob one more time was not going to happen at all and you needed to get laid lord knows how long it's been. You decided were gonna get some drinks from downstairs and try to forget about Jacob.

As you walked out of your room and down the stairs, scouraging through your dad’s liquor drawer. You heard the voices of your dad and Logan floating through the air, watching the football game. You suddenly had an idea. If Jacob couldn't appreciate you, maybe it was time to play a game with someone else who might appreciate your presence more.

Discarding the drawer you began to walk into the living room walking past your dad and Logan. You could tell Logan was trying hard not to stare at you with that skirt. “oh, is Jacob here?” your dad said.

“No, we’re not going out anymore. He’s not feeling well so I figured I’d just watch the game with you guys” You smiled knowing damn right it was a lie, sitting directly on the couch near Logan. 

Your dad looked over at you with a mix of surprise and a bit of concern on his face. “Really? Everything alright with Jacob?” He asked. Logan seemed to tense up even more as you sat down right next to him, your legs almost touching his. 

“Yeah, he said he’s just gonna stay in and rest up,” you replied as your dad simply nodded in acknowledgment.

 Meanwhile, Your dad's eyes were glued to the screen, not noticing the tension in the room. As the game continued, you tried to act natural, pretending to be interested in the players' moves while secretly glancing at Logan. He stole a few glances your way, his eyes roaming over your short skirt, before quickly looking away. You could feel his gaze burning into you, and you couldn’t help but secretly enjoy the attention. 

As the first half of the game finished and halftime began, your dad got up and announced, "Well, it's halftime. I'm gonna go use the restroom real quick. I'll be right back." He gave you two a quick smile before heading out of the room.

As soon as your dad left the room, the tension in the air thickened. You were suddenly alone with Logan on the couch, the only sound was the faint commentary from the TV.

From what you could tell you saw Logan fiddling with the remote of the television before he said, "This damn remote won't work. I can't hear anything!" 

"Give me it, lemme try," you offered, pointing to the volume control on the TV box.

Slowly, you bent down to turn up the volume trying to put your skirt down a bit, taking your sweet time. "How's that?" you asked, looking directly at Logan for a response.

He swallowed hard as he caught sight of your ass falling out of your mini skirt. His eyes try to balance between the TV and your exposed skin. "Yeah, uh... yeah, that's better," he mumbled, trying to maintain his composure. Once you sat back on the couch, you casually glanced at him and saw him adjusting his jeans and squirming where he was sitting. You couldn't help but smirk as you looked quickly towards the TV, knowing full well the effect you were having on Logan. Your plan working all accordingly.

Your dad came back from the bathroom and, seeing how uneasy and squirmy Logan was looking, asked him, "Logan, you okay buddy?

"Yeah, I'm good," Logan muttered. 

The game resumed, with the atmosphere was heavy. Both of you were distracted; the game was on, but neither of you watched. Your dad was completely oblivious to the tension you both were building.

Logan kept replaying the image of you bent over, eyes staring right at him. His mind soon began to wander to thoughts about only you. He knew the game wouldn’t be over for a while.

Once 20 minutes had passed, Logan had enough and decided to excuse himself to use the restroom.

”I’ll be back gotta use the restroom,” he said while getting up.

“Are you sure? Man, you're gonna miss the game.” your dad asked Logan.

“yeah, it’s fine.” he quickly replied walking by.

You stayed downstairs with your dad to watch the game. Already getting tired of just watching the game, you decided to go to your room and work on some assignments, using it as an excuse. You bid your dad goodnight and told him you might not come down again that night.

"Alright, kiddo," your dad replied. "Goodnight, and don't stay up too late. Oh, and can you do me a favor?"

"Sure, Dad. What is it?" you asked.

"Can you knock on the bathroom door and call out to Logan? He's going to miss out on the rest of the game if he doesn't come out soon," your dad replied concerned.

"Yeah, no problem," you smiled assuring your dad.

You made your way up to the bathroom, your footsteps a bit quicker than usual. You knocked gently on the door, but there was no response. 

"Weird," you muttered under your breath. Feeling a mix of curiosity and growing worry, you turned away from the bathroom and headed toward your room instead.

As you entered, your eyes widened in shock and surprise. There, standing before you, was Logan, going through your underwear drawer.

"You perv," you exclaimed, jokingly lightly smacking his shoulder.

He visibly jumped, caught in the act. His face reddened as he frantically tried to come up with an explanition.

"Shit, look, it's not-" he began, his words stumbling over each other in his act to explain.

You cut him off, "Oh, it's exactly what it looks like, Lo.”

He was too stunned to speak.

You crossed your arms, in annoyance, and said, "So you're the reason my panties have been going missing?"

Logan's eyes widened, his guilt evident. He tried to protest, "No, no, look, you don't understand-"

But you interrupted him again, "But I do. I've seen the way you've looked at me, and those sneaky touches on my thighs... I've seen it all, Logan."

Logan's face flushed with embarrassment, and he quickly closed the drawer. He looked at you, the evidence of his actions clear.

"I... I can explain," he muttered, shifting uncomfortably.

You raised an eyebrow, giving Logan a skeptical look. "Explain then," you said, leaning against the wall, and crossing your arms.

Frustration and lust appeared on Logan's face as he replied, "You know what, no. You teased me all damn night. I deserve this at least. You were trying to get me killed out there.”

“What teasing are you even talking about?” you acted oblivious.

“You realize what you were doing out there is so wrong. Don't try to act all innocent now.”

“I'm sorry, I don't know what you’re talking about Logan," You started smirking.

“You know exactly what I'm talking about,” Logan growled, his voice low. "You were bending over out there, practically flashing your ass at me. You knew what you were doing, didn’t you? Getting me all hard in front of your old man huh?”

“I was just trying to fix the volume for you.” Still trying to keep the innocent act up.

“Bullshit baby,” he said eying your mini skirt. 

Logan's eyes darkened with desire as he walked closer to you, backing you against the wall. "Don't play dumb. You know exactly the effect you have on me." His voice was low and husky.

"Walking around in these tiny outfits, bending over every chance you get."

As you locked eyes with Logan, your steady gaze holding his, you repeated your question, "And what are you gonna do about it?" You slowly knelt before him, your face now inches away from the button of his jeans. 

Logan's gazed down at you, hand going to caress your chin. He took a step closer to you. "You know what I wanna do, outta teach you a lesson," he said, his voice hoarse with lust.

Within seconds you pulled his pants down, dragging his boxers along with them letting his dick spring freely out. 

"Suck on it." 

Obeying what he said you started coating his cock with your spit. Logan groaned softly as your lips wrapped around his thick shaft, your tongue swirling expertly. His hands tangled in your hair, guiding your head as you bobbed up and down. "Fuck, just like that baby," he breathed, trying to keep his voice low.

“Ah, fuck.” Hearing him moan made you love pleasing Logan with his cock in your mouth. That alone made you soaking wet. 

He grunted as he felt the head of his cock hit the back of your throat, your lips stretched wide around his girth gagging a bit, eyes watering. "Shh, careful now," he whispered urgently, glancing at the door. "We can't make too much noise with your dad right downstairs."

Logan's eyes widened in shock and arousal as you carefully moved your mouth off his throbbing erection, your voice breathy as you said "It's too much, Daddy." He shuddered at the forbidden words, his cock twitching with need even as his mind reeled.

His hands shook as he watched you wipe a strand of your spit off your hand, the sight sending a jolt of desire through him. He quickly glanced at the door again before grabbing your chin and forcing you to look at him.

"Fuck, baby, you can't say that out loud. Not ever."

Gripping on your chin tightened as you wrapped your lips around his hot, hard flesh once more. His voice grew strained as he hissed, "Faster, baby… just like that... Oh God, harder...harder... I'm not gonna last... not with you sucking me off like that..."

Logan's words tumbled out in a desperate, breathless rush as you worked his throbbing cock with your mouth. "This is so wrong... but fuck baby, your mouth feels so good... I can't think straight... shit, I'm not gonna last... oh fuck, I'm gonna..."

His voice rose to a hoarse scream as his orgasm crashed over him, his hips bucking wildly as he fucked your mouth without warning. "Fuckk!" he groaned, his cock pulsing violently as he erupted into your mouth, painting your throat with thick ropes of cum.

He panted, trying to catch his breath as he came down from his high.

"Your dad's gonna kill me," he said shakily, his body still trembling from release. He quickly tucked himself back into his pants before pulling you up into his arms.

[flaetsbnortoriginals]

WATCHING MITU'S ONLY SCENE TO FIGURE OUT HOW HER "GAME" WORKS

BECAUSE I NEED AN EXCUSE TO

So the stuff that's obvious is:

She always needs to guess a four-letter word.

Correct letters show up in green. (Someone in the game said the game she's playing is closer to Wordle than Hangmen.)

If she fails to guess the word correctly, she gets H-U-R-T.

OK, good. Let's look at more objective data:

She starts most, but not all guesses with two letters already revealed. BOSS, WISH, VIEW and BACK all have two letters revealed from the begnning, as do LUCK and MENU, that show up if you talk to her again. DUTY, ORAL and the unknown word that caused her to get H-U-R-T had no letters revealed.

Every four-letter word she says is entered as a guess, but WASTE has five letters and was also entered.

Now here's some stuff that isn't objective but I think can be inferred easily:

WISH was a lucky guess. That's why she sounded so happy after she said it; she didn't expect to win. Which, in turn, means that guessing right does give him something nice, even if it's just delaying her getting H-U-R-T.

Most people say that it takes her five tries for her to get H-U-R-T. But notice that she tries to stammer something after she misguesses WASTE. I think she has a grace period in which she can guess the right word and avoid getting H-U-R-T, but she couldn't (I mean, she only had one letter).

After she gets H-U-R-T, she pays much closer attention to her words. She even focuses to get BACK right, and blurts it out without using it in a sentence. After that she relaxes again - even though she's not being given hint letters any more.

So based on these facts, here's what I think I can gather:

Her game has difficulty levels. It starts more lenient, where each word starts out with more letters shown. She actively wants to progress. (Or maybe the only way not to progress is to get H-U-R-T), so she needs to.

She brazenly wasted guesses before the word she couldn't figure out, but then was much more conservative with the next words. The simplest explanation for that is that she was traumatized and didn't want to get H-U-R-T again. But another explanation is that guessing words correctly gives her more chances to make mistakes. For instance, she only could make five wrong guesses to start with because she had gotten BOSS and WISH right already; she might be H-U-R-T with even one simple wrong guess with VIEW and BACK.

She guesses ORAL without any right letters, and DUTY with a single letter she had gotten less than a second before. This tells me she has ways to figure out what a word is other than the letters. The way she talks suggests to me that she can kinda sense its placement in a sentence. So the word she couldn't guess would be something negative about Ena.

Does she actually need to use her words in a sentence? It might be that she only needs to play her game when she's talking to someone - that certainly has some possible readings behind it. It would also explain why her additional scenes have two letters already revealed, even though in her main scene she 'progresses to the hard level' where she has no letters revealed: she restarts from the first level every time she leaves a conversation. But I actually have a more interesting theory: she doesn't need to use the words in context, and she's doing it because she's gotten too good at the 'base game' and wants to challenge herself. You know how Hank Green plays Connections in a way that he considers a loss if his first guess is anything other than the purple group? She might be doing that! Specially considered that there was no indication she'd be punished for blurting out BACK; she used it in a sentence because she wanted to. Alternatively, since I theorized she can guess words based on how they'd be used, the game might actually be easier for her if she's using these words in an actual conversation.

That's what happens when you're obsessed with a blorbo and can't draw but can write an essay.

[runforthehillsbestie]

Broken Lullaby

Part 1 - the perfect getaway

Pairing - Brahms Heelshire x f reader Read the story context and warnings here

"Think about it," your roommate says, lingering in the doorway of your bedroom with the newspaper clipping. "It'll be good for you. What writer wouldn't kill to be in a big ass country house with nothing but trees for miles? You've been saying you want to get out of London and here's your chance!"

"I don't know..." You look up from your laptop, rubbing your temples. "Who even puts ads in the newspaper anymore?"

You take the scrap and squint at it. "Babysitter needed for eight-year-old boy, a really good weekly salary, no prior experience necessary... For a month?" You squawk.

"That's not bad. Besides, I grew up in that area and I can guarantee it's nice and quiet."

"Yeah, so no one will hear me scream while I'm being killed," you retort.

Your friend, an avid backpacker and couch surfer just rolls their eyes and turns to leave. "Well, just remember that you miss all the shots you don't take."

Their words echo in your mind long after they've left as you stare at the blank screen--with dark mode on, of course--and the blinking cursor. Your brain is giving you nothing but crackling static. No words, not even a hint of an idea you can put down. And then to make things worse, your editor calls to remind you of your deadlines and the goals you need to hit, and you want to bury your head in a pillow and scream. Your roommate is right. A change of scenery might bring your inspiration back and maybe even help stave off the burnout you feel creeping up on you. You pick up the newspaper clipping and call the number listed there.

*Two weeks later*

You step out of a cab in front of the Heelshire manor. From afar it looks like a dollhouse with its faded maroon turret and sloping roof, but now towers imposingly over you. The house is on a piece of land so big that it makes the neighboring houses look like smudges of paint on a Bob Ross painting, barely visible through the trees surrounding the property. There's a single car parked just inside the large black gates, covered with tarp. On the drive over you'd asked the cab driver about the family you were going to be working for, the Heelshires. He'd given you a long, pitying look and refused to say another word for the rest of the ride. You turn to him now, digging in your purse.

"How much do I pay--" Before you can finish your sentence he's reversing and accelerating in a hurry.

Okay then. You grab your two suitcases and haul them up the loose gravel driveway. When you get to the front door, you notice the door is ajar. You ring the doorbell anyway but when no one answers you let yourself in.

"Hello, it's the woman who called about the babysitting ad?" You receive no answer.

The stillness of the house is only broken by a clock chiming the hour before everything goes quiet again. You look around. The walls are wainscoted and the windows, framed with heavy curtains, are doing little to combat the shadows that shroud the hunting trophies mounted on the walls. The floor is carpeted, so you figure it's best to remove your shoes. The last thing you want to do is make a bad impression by tracking dirt all over.

"Hellooo," you call out again, now in nothing but your socks. "Is anyone home?"

No one leaves their front door open while they're away.

You decide to wait and spend a moment debating between two rooms that look like they could be a living room or the old-school equivalent of one. You settle on the one with the piano and bookshelves. There's a charm to the room with its sooty fireplace and aged-book smell. You run your finger over the cracked spines in the shelves and it comes away clean, like someone takes the time to dust the books.

The air is thick and a bit musty, exuding a sense of tired grandeur. Opera music begins to play and you turn but there's no one there. The record player is placed on a table in the corner and the floorboards are creaky enough that you should've heard if someone entered the room. Nonplussed, you walk over and lift the needle. A British-accented voice cuts through the air.

"That tends happens sometimes."

You gasp a little louder than you mean to, whipping around to see a grey-haired man in a crisp uniform in the doorway. He looks to be in his late sixties or early seventies.

"Hello, I am Thorton, the groundskeeper. We spoke on the phone. I believe you're here for the position of nanny?"

"Oh, yes." You walk over to offer your hand.

He takes it after a moment of consideration and offers you a smile, crow's feet appearing at the corners of his eyes.

"It's wonderful to have you with us," he says.

"Where is everybody?"

"Ah, the Heelshires are away on holiday. However, they have entrusted their son into your care."

"He didn't go with them?"

"Well, you see, he is no great lover of the outside world. He much rather prefers the comfort of home, you see."

"I see," you say, though you don't.

What eight-year-old would stay home instead of going on holiday? Before you can ask more questions Thorton says, "Shall I give you a quick tour of the house before I show you to your room?"

"That would be lovely, thank you," you reply.

As it turns out, the room you were in is a drawing room. Thorton, surprisingly spry for his age, leads you through the rest of the house; pointing out various "water closets", the tea room, the dining room, a storage closet where the umbrellas and "wellies" are kept, a fully stocked pantry, and a homey kitchen.

"Per the Heelshire's request all leftovers are stored in the freezer until they are either consumed or need to be thrown out," Thorton says.

There's a vase of freshly cut roses standing on the kitchen table, infusing the air with their rich scent.

"Are there roses growing on the property?" You ask, delighted because that's your favorite flower.

Thorton frowns, quickly smoothing his expression when you look at him. "No," he says, and clears his throat. "You must be tired from the long drive, Miss."

"Please, you can call me by my name," you tell him and he smiles and does exactly that.

"Now, let me show you to your room so you can get settled down." He takes you up the squeaky stairs to the second floor.

There are half-melted candles on side tables and paintings on the walls instead of photographs. You pause for a moment to look at a large family portrait at the top of the stairs.

"That's the Heelshires with Brahms," Mr Thorton calls over his shoulder.

Something about it bothers you, but before you can put your finger on what, Thorton pushes open a door and beckons with a flourish.

"Here we are."

You bring your suitcases in and park them by the door.

"Is this room to your liking?"

You look around the spacious room. There's a four poster bed and antique dresser with a closet to the side and an alcove that overlooks the overgrown yard. "It's perfect, thank you. So, when can I see Brahms?"

Thorton sucks in a breath at the mention of the boy's name.

"Soon enough," he says a little stiffly. "Why don't you rest for a while? The afternoon tea will be prepared in a few minutes."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" You ask.

"No, it's quite alright." He pulls the bedroom door shut, and you listen to his footsteps pad down the hall.

You flop down on the bed to test it, pleased to find it's as soft as a cloud. You don't mean to fall asleep but that's exactly what happens. You startle awake sometime later to find it has grown dark outside, the sky holding the last remnants of a bruise-purple sunset. Something woke you up. What was it? You sit up and rub your cheek where the pillow has left an itchy wrinkle.

You take your laptop from your suitcase and power it on. The words flow effortlessly as the dream you just had comes back to you in bits and pieces. A few minutes pass before you lean back and read the couple paragraphs of what you've written: eyes peering from the shadows, a howling wind that sounds just like a voice, and a mystery that needs solving... It doesn't make sense, but dreams rarely do. Maybe you can spin it into something interesting in time.

Your stomach growls and you recall the groundskeeper saying he would make tea. Well, you've definitely missed it. You stand and check your reflection in the mirror to make sure you look somewhat presentable. Something thumps in the hall as you step out of your room.

"Mr. Thorton?"

No reply. The hall is empty, dimly lit by old-fashioned sconces shaped like flowers. At the end of the hall a tree branch bumps against the bay window, and you can't help but laugh. It reminds you of how you loved to stay at your grandmother's house as a little girl but hated all the weird sounds the old house would make, especially at night. You take the stairs down and poke your head into the kitchen. The lights are off, so you pat around for the light switch. You jump when you feel something brush against your hip. It's just a fucking chair.

You shake your head and scold yourself. You're no longer a little girl lying awake in her bed and staring at the shadow of her jacket on the door until it morphs into a boogeyman. You find the switch and flick the lights on, feeling a little better once the kitchen is bathed in a soft golden glow. There's a piece of paper tacked on the fridge with a magnet.

Didn't wish to wake you, it reads. There's tea in the thermos and cold sandwiches in the fridge. Please help yourself. If you need anything at all, don't hesitate to call the number below and I'll pop by as soon as I can. You meet be meeting Brahms tomorrow.

It would make sense that Brahms is staying with family elsewhere until a babysitter could be found. But why didn't Thorton just say that when you asked? You pour a big mug of tea and find the plate of sandwiches. There's ham and cheese and a couple spread with butter and jam, far more slices than you can eat in one sitting. Every single one is cut in fourths. Maybe he has grandkids and he's just used to cutting them this way? You eat a couple--they taste fine--and finish your tea, rinsing the cup before you decide to explore what is to be your domain for the next month. It's a beautiful home, maybe a little oppressive with all the knick-knacks and taxidermy animals.

Other than the paintings on the walls there's no indication that a child lives here. You head up the stairs to find Brahms's bedroom. Maybe you're intruding in his space, but you're going to be babysitting him for a month, after all. It would be good to have an idea of what he's like. There's a bedroom that must belong to Mr. and Mrs. Heelshire, a guest bedroom, and one more empty room filled with pieces of white-draped furniture. The remaining room can only belong to Brahms. You step into the room and get jumpscared by a porcelain doll lying on the bed, tucked under the covers.

You press a hand to your chest willing your heart to calm down. The doll is the size of a small boy, dressed in striped pajamas. In the moonlight, it looks almost real. You flick on the light and go over for a closer look. It was badly broken at some point, cracks webbing the porcelain. The broken pieces have been glued back on its face, sharp in some places which you discover only after you prick your finger.

"Ow." You instinctively put your finger in your mouth to soothe the sting and look around the rest of the room.

The toys are well cared for but ancient. No kid still plays with toys like these. There are wooden alphabet blocks scattered on the floor and in the corner, there's a rocking horse that's rocking slightly all on its own. You don't think much of it, because there's probably a draft. You absentmindedly pat the fuzzy mane and then rifle through the drawers of the claw-footed desk. There's a stack of unused papers yellowed with age and a box of unopened crayons that looks old as well. There are no drawings or posters on the walls. You glance at the doll again. Was it always facing you? A prickle goes down your back at the sight of those flat, staring eyes and suddenly the air feels stuffy, the walls closing in. You step out and drag the bedroom door shut behind you, taking in a deep breath.

"Okay, enough snooping around!" You mutter. "I'm going to take a shower. That's a brilliant idea."

It's not even been a day and I'm already talking to myself, you think wryly.

Hopefully by tomorrow you'll be too busy looking after Brahms. You're pretty good with kids, so this job shouldn't be too difficult.

Once you're in the bathroom you test the water and adjust the temperature. The pressure is poor, but at least it's nice and warm. You've just started pulling your shirt over your head when the bathroom door creaks open. You're sure you locked it. You freeze and stare at the door for several seconds before you can pluck up the courage to go and check, peeking into the hallway. No one. It's quiet. You check the lock and realize it's loose, meaning the door must have opened on its own.

Even though you're alone you don't feel comfortable leaving the door wide open. What if Thorton comes back for some reason? You could give the poor man a heart attack. You drag a chair in from the hall and use it to prop the door closed and finally, you're free to shower in peace. As the suds slick down your body, you realize what's been bothering you about the painting. If the date in the corner is accurate, then that painting is from about twenty-five years ago. Im that case, Brahms would be an adult. You close your eyes and tip your head up to the spray of hot water. You must have read the date wrong, that's all.

Part 2 - you must follow the rules

@runforthehillsbestie

[cynthia39100]

Merlin rewatch -- S4E1: The Darkest Hour1

"You're not scared?" "Oh, I am, Merlin. Maybe more than you."

Amazing scene! Gorgeous from start to end. This post is going to be long.

Context, Merlin's magic was useless to the Dorocha. He dropped a candle and he was too terrified to retrieve it from the dark corner.

"Just, pick it up."

Love how gentle Arthur's voice was. His expression showed clearly that he wasn't impatient or anything. He looked puzzled. I think he didn't expect Merlin to be so visibly shaken. He thought Merlin was the bravest man he knew because Merlin always seemed unfazed in crisis (no more than Arthur, at least).

The lovely thing is that while he didn't expect Merlin to be as scared as he was, he didn't look down on Merlin just because of it. He told Merlin to just pick the candle up, not to mock him, but to make the situation more casual and less scary.

"Do you want me to get one of the maids to do it for you?"

Same here. Arthur saw how tense Merlin was and tried to lighten the mood by some light teasing. You can see Arthur didn't really mean it from his deliberately performative movement and quiet voice, like he was pushing himself to be funny.

"It's not a joke." "Yeah."

When teasing doesn’t work, Arthur was quick to concede and flip back to serious mode! It's so beautiful. He didn't look shock or offended, or even guilty, just quietly resigned, showing his understanding.

Then he goes to pick the candle for Merlin!! Truly a knight in shiny armour~~~

"You see, Merlin, I could never be like you. I could never let myself look so spineless."

They returned to banter, and I love the self-awareness in this sentence, a hint of Arthur's burden. He can never look afraid because he has to give the people confidence. In contrast, Merlin can (and most of the time, need to) show his fear because people don't look to him for courage (well, maybe Arthur does), and looking harmless is how he survives.

Lovely smile🥹Love these moments when their faces melted into a soft, genuine smile at the end of some jibing match.

I love how clear it was in the two actors performance that they were very much still afraid (and tired), and were only pretending to be casual. You can feel the effort they put it to keep their voice light and cheery.

A sudden noise had them both tensed up again. Arthur's face here!! At first glance he seemed relax and uncaring, still, only the tiny furrow of his eyebrow betrayed his calm exterior. So subtle yet so strong.

"You're not scared?" "Oh, I am, Merlin."

Then! Arthur admits that he’s scared!!! Out loud! The vulnerability on his face here was wonderful. I love how easily he said it. He couldn't show his vulnerability to his people, but Merlin was different. There was also a sort of comfort or validation in his admitting fear, like he was telling Merlin it's okay to be scared.

“Maybe more than you.”

Bradley was doing some amazing thing here. There's this tiny shift on his face after he fully turned and before he talked, that made him look incredibly soft and... indulgent? There was sadness too. Just, so many emotions there in his eyes and they were all directed to Merlin. So beautiful.

The smiles ahhhhh 🫠🫠🫠

What I imagine, Merlin was prompted to smile by the realisation that Arthur wasn't as calm/unfearful/oblivious as he appeared to. Arthur was smiling as a reassurance "yes, I'm the same, you're alright", and maybe also because Merlin finally smiled.

Colin’s face at the end is wonderfully complicated. It's returning to reality from a moment of break. But also, I wonder if a part of him was absorbing the realization that this was what Arthur always felt. This hopeless. It was probably the first time Merlin experienced what Arthur always had to deal with. And still, Arthur appeared calm and confident each time, giving his people hope. Merlin had known how strong Arthur was to be able to do that, but here he actually experienced it. It’s very, very lovely.

[S4E1] [other episodes]

[the-100-days-of-junkan]

Day 90

Alright. So you might be thinking, pondering, desperately contemplating to yourself a simple question.

“JEM. WHAT THE FUCK??? WHY????” And I hear you, I get it, it’s a lot to take in out of nowhere and that’s the point. Sit with me, peer into the biohazard that is in my brain as I explain to you why in the name of all that’s good I made a fucking Music Video.

So last time on the 100 Days of Junkan, for Day 80 I got very silly and animated a gif of Junko and Mikan kissing. And as I keep saying over and over again, every 10 pics I wanted to go BIGGER. And maybe this is just the brainrot causing all of my mental functions to degrade past the point of no return, but the only way up at this point was in fact a music video.

But surely I couldn’t. I mean, I only have that single gif as experience with animation! How the fuck could I try and put myself through a process that I have absolutely no experience making something as ambitious as a Music Video! I’ll have to do something else. But then.

I had a thought, a small thought, an evil little thought that wormed its way into my head and didn’t leave.

“Okay. But wouldn’t it be really funny if you sent a full Junkan music video to Val without any warning?” That was it. I was beaten, I couldn’t counter that. The sheer comedic shock value of keeping my wonderful oomfie, the one who has helped motivate me through this entire project, who has given amazing responses to all of these pics as I made them, completely in the dark over this, and then finally with no context, or warning, or even a hint, dropping a fucking music video on her lap and running away like I’m pranking someones god damn doorbell. It was too much, even moreso considering I could do the same with ya’ll! 

You! My varied followers, the silent and the vocal, or even better the random fucking people who have been staring in confusion as the Junko and Mikan tag got flooded with art of these two kissing out of nowhere for like three fucking months. I had an opportunity to send everyone into surprise and confusion because why the fuck did I make a god damn music video??? How??? It was too fucking funny to pass up!

This is easily the most fucking bizarre thing I’ve done for the entire event! Did any of you think this was the path this would go down?? Did any of ya’ll see that I made a gif and think “Surely this scrawny white bitch also made a Music Video.” I doubt it! But if you did, my undying respect goes to you!

So here we are. A Music Video. A fucking Music Video, one which I now have to talk about. It took a full fucking page just to get to the point where I actually talk about it and this took me THREE MONTHS TO MAKE, spanning from May 8th to August 1st! 

So here’s what I’m gonna do. First, I’m gonna talk about MAKING this fucking thing, and then when I finish that I’m going to switch over to talking about the actual contents of the music video. This is going to get really messy and will probably go into tangents, but ya’ll have hopefully coped with the knowledge that this is going to be a lot of words by the time you hit the end of this sentence. (Future Jem here! I think this was actually shorter than Day 60) So without further delay-

The Making of Snow Fairy, a Junkan Music Video. Yes. Really.

So the first step of this was obviously, The Music. What song would I use for this? Well initially the plan was to animate something using the song “Everything You’ve Ever Dreamed.” And if that name sounds familiar, yes, it is the song that Val’s fic was named after. Now the idea wasn’t to adapt her fanfic into a music video (or at least it wasn’t the idea for more than 5 minutes). I was simply going to use this song to make a music video depicting a romantic journey with these two. So why not this song?

IT’S LIKE 6 FUCKING MINUTES. Not to jump ahead of myself here but I can’t make it any clearer for ya’ll, that Gif from Day 80??? That was it. That was all I had going into this. I didn’t do any other practice, I didn’t make anything else like that gif. I made that gif, took like two weeks to make Days 81-89, and jumped into a music video. And yes, that’s fucking stupid, but you’ve all learned by this point that I don’t make sensible choices. I draw women kissing, scream, and feel endless euphoria- I got so off topic already, sorry.

Anyway that’s a 6 minute song and I had very little experience, even I knew that wasn’t gonna be viable without driving my head into the wall from stress. And while the idea of me dialing it back sounds unheard of given my track record, I did in fact scale back massively.

So I pondered, and eventually came to a quite frankly obvious answer.

(Sorry I could only find an AI Upscaled version with interpolation)

Snow Fairy, the first opening of Fairy Tail, AKA, my favorite piece of fiction. And Snow Fairy is my favorite anime opening of all time, if not just straight up my favorite song ever. The fact that it wasn’t my first thought is a shock. Though that still brought on some questions.

Firstly. What version? Because yes I actually had options. I could either use the original song in Japanese, or the english cover by LeeandLie. I was close to picking the original version by Funkfist, but there was two issues. One, because it was in another language that means I would have had to taken the time to put in subtitles and keep them properly timed, which would have just been one more thing on an already massive workload. The second reason is also why I went with LeeandLie’s version, I just like the translation for the lyrics a bit more. At least in terms of how well I think it works for a Junkan Music Video. So we had the cover of the song I was gonna use, next question.

Full Song? Or the intro edit? Because the version used in the anime is obviously much shorter, and not just that actually includes the very end of the song pasted to a much earlier part of it. So if I wanted to use the shorter version I would have needed to actively edited the song.

After much thought I chose to ask my friend (and now current girlfriend) Yves to edit the song to match the intro version of Funkfists cover and worked from there. Because even if I would have loved to use the full song, that’s around 3 minutes, which for essentially a beginner sounds like fucking torture.

So I had a song around 1 minute and 28 seconds to work with. Much easier- WRONG. WRONG IT WAS STILL PAINFUL. WHY DID I DO THIS- Anyway.

We had our song! Now we had to make the actual video!

Step 1, I actually made a Storyboard, this is the smartest thing I will do during this entire process.

As you can see from this lil joke doodle I made during the process, I didn’t even start the actual video before I had realized I had made a massive mistake, however I was of course going to persevere. The Storyboard took about, 2? 3 days? This is mostly because I had other work to prioritize, and I had to make sure I got this pretty solid. Here it is!

(The file name for this has the phrase "Why god Why" btw)

As you can see it’s very, very professional. 

You can also see there were a few things cut or changed, and even stuff that wasn’t there in the first place. That’s because even if I was going into this with more of a plan compared to other parts of this, I still really had no idea what I was getting into nor how to do it. The scene of all the girls doing their hair was cut because it just seemed like an awkward space filler to try and mimic the actual Snow Fairy Intro animation. In hindsight I do wish I kept it or found a replacement rather than just extending the following scene. And yeah that scene had to be super extended so I could actually time things properly.

As for the scene at the end, the various art pieces flashing in the background (which I will talk about later) were done because I realized without them I had way too much dead air in the scene. I then took advantage of it to show a montage of time passing in the scene itself, of the things that differed from the storyboard that’s the one I’m happiest with.

Storyboard has passed so now I have to talk about making the video itself, i feel like i’ve said some variation of that sentence like 5 times now.

So do you want a fun fact? THIS WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE ANIMATED! This was supposed to be an Animatic, and even that might not be the right word. This was supposed to be basically a storyboard with hints of motion, say for the intro with Monokuma which I always planned to properly animate given his simplistic design. Everything else was supposed to be much simpler.

And then I kept. Accidentally. TRYING TO ANIMATE IT. I DON’T KNOW HOW YOU EVEN DO THAT BY ACCIDENT! And like sure, none of it really gets as meticulous as the Monokuma, but I still ended up learning way more about animating things properly during this project because I just couldn’t help myself. It was always “Well just one more frame to make it look right. One more frame. Okay just another- Oh no.” This is the depths of hell this ship has dragged me to, and even if I haven’t had a chance to fully make use of what I learned here because I’ve been busy, Junkan somehow made me into a fucking animatory at least to the degree of a hobbyist. IF YOU TOLD ME THAT A FEW YEARS AGO I’D THINK YOU WERE LYING! Because if you asked me before this year about my opinion on animating, I’d tell you something around the lines of-

“God I wish I could, but I just don’t have the patience for that y’know?” I GUESS THAT DOESN’T MATTER WHEN IT'S A NICHE SHIP?? Mind you this was still when I was under the impression I was going to get backlash for all this, I didn’t care but I certainly thought it would come to me. The hold these two have on my brain is downright COMICAL.

And I’m sorry if I sound like this is me complaining at all, because I’m really not, I just get more excitable and whacked out during these more high effort projects. This ship has brought me immense joy on its own, and making this project despite the exhaustive work it took to do so has been so fulfilling in part thanks to being able to see the joy my work has brought all of you. I wouldn’t trade this for anything.

But you gotta fucking admit, this isn’t fucking normal right?? None of this is normal! And I don’t mean that in a “We’re all weirdos for liking this” kind of way I mean that in a “What the fuck is going on with me specifically” kind of thing because what is ANY of this?? I re-learned how to write (loosely at least), learned how to actually paint in my program, have developed a deeper understanding of both myself and how to portray expressions, have just generally gotten better at drawing cause of this, memorized these fucking designs almost perfectly (almost, i know there’s some small details of Junko’s design i leave out and Mikan’s apron can be a challenge at times), learned how to animate, LEARNED HOW TO MAKE A MUSIC VIDEO ON ONE GIF OF EXPERIENCE, made angsty shipping art for the first time, and god fucking KNOWS what else that I’m forgetting. And that’s ignoring that by this point we’re edging so much closer to me being able to say “I’ve drawn Junkan 200 fucking times” any god damn day now. 

If this isn’t abnormal human being behaviour, it at the very least has to be really fuckin funny behaviour, right?? Am I just overthinking this?? 

Oh god, right, the main topic. Sorry about that it’s just been eating away at me the sheer absurdity of this project when I really step back and think about it.

Anyway making the vid, I did have a LOT of help from my girlfriend @sunmellows, who actually does have animation experience. She’s more versed in using sprites to animate, but a lot of the techniques could be carried over to what I was doing here. That segment of Mikan and Mukuro running along past a bunch of characters? She helped me so much to get the walk cycles perfect for that.

She also helped me make sure I could actually show this fucking video to people, because fun fact. I made this on an absolute piece of shit laptop! And at first it was relatively fine when I exported projects. But when I got to the point of being actually close to completion? Oh my god not only did it take hours, it just didn’t even work. It would basically KILL my laptops performance to the absolute limit until I would eventually have to force restart the thing. Which thank god didnt’ corrupt the fucking file. So when it came to the final export, I handed off the file to her and she graciously exported it out of clip studio, and then made some minor edits to the timing of the animation in a video editing program.

This is also why, much to my constant irritation, there are still a few animation errors in this because if I fixed them, I’d have to re-export the entire video. And sure, my current laptop is 10 times better and might not try to invent a new form of agony trying to manage it, but also i’m not waiting like 2 or 3 hours for that to happen. No matter how painful it makes rewatching this video. Cause i don’t actually like rewatching this one usually, I’m very proud of it but as I’ve said in the past I am a vicious perfectionist when it comes to my work, so its hard for me to ignore every issue and oddity in the video.

I was fucking losing it by the end of this, I was pulling late nighters for like a week while trying to work on the last few scenes and fix up whatever I could, which was hard because I lacked a convenient way to just watch the whole video in good quality and speed, since playing it in my art program resulted in constant stuttering and made it impossible to tell if it would really look like that, and again, trying to export it made my laptop hate me. But on August 1st I finished it, I had to stay up till 6 AM to do it but I did in fact, fucking do it. I passed it off to Yves, she exported it after some technical difficulties, and now we’re here. 

It was, wild, trying to keep this a secret. And i’m not just talking the 3 months I had to keep it quiet to Val (Though that was difficult but VERY worth it yes), but also keeping it secret up till this point. I don’t even know how many fucking months I’ve had to keep this quiet so none of you would find out about it, I’ve been anxiously waiting to see everyone's reactions to this fucking video, and at the time of writing we’re on like, Day 76. I still have so much more time I need to wait! I’m probably gonna be a nervous wreck the day this actually goes up!

Would I ever do this again? God I fucking hope not! (the answer is yeah someday)

I should actually talk about what’s IN the music video now, shouldn’t I? Will be mildly difficult because that’s probably gonna require a lot of rewatching, and as I already said looking at this music video does make my perfectionist brain scratch bad a bit.

Okay so Monokuma.

So originally the plan for this was for the vid to be a much closer 1-to-1 of the actual opening version of Snow Fairy, and while it did eventually evolve into more of its own thing (both functioning as its own slightly more unique intro for Junkan but also just becoming a more normal music video) the one thing that i always wanted for this was to recreate the first few seconds of the intro but with Monokuma. When this was meant to be significantly less like, animation-y, he was gonna be the only part I went fully into.

It was a real pain in the ass but this guy was basically my crash course on properly animating thanks in part to his simple design. He’s also brought much laughter to my girlfriend! On discord i have this part of the vid saved as a gif, and completely divorced from the context of the music vid it just looks like a silly as gif of Monokuma flying away. Like where the fuck are you going dude??

For the remainder of the first bit I wanted to include Hope’s Peak and Jabberwock island since they’re the most iconic locations in the series, granted, jabberwock feels very irrelevant in a non-despair AU but shhhh. The LOGO! I wish I had the actual thing in my files but I guess I just never thought to save it as it’s own thing. And I’m too scared to open the actual file for the music video to just copy paste it out of there because fun fact, the whole thing is ALL one file. Tip from the Ametuer here, don’t fucking do that.

I’m still really happy that I managed to find the actual font for the Fairy Tail logo to make this with, equally happy that I also managed to sneak in one more reference to Val’s work again! It is once again the tattoo design, because I just can’t help myself y’know?

After that we hit me actually doing this and for a brief moment you get to see it actually be about as slide-showy as I had initially planned on before I decided I was gonna learn how to do a proper run cycle and that took like two fucking days i think. Very proud of it though, Mikan and Mukuro’s little runs were very fun to animate and I like the stupid ass slide I made Mukuro do. I actually wanted to make a stupid animation of her rail grinding using those frames, clearly I didn’t. 

Oh also yeah this style was reused for the cover of the Day 60 Comic, partially because I wanted to retroactively sprinkle bits of this animatic into whatever prior posts I can, partially because i really could not think of an actual cover for that comic. 

So since I was trying desperately to make this seem like the opening to some kind of Junkan Series (and again that concept for the vid dies out real quick) I decided to just include as many other characters as possible during these running scenes. Not only because it would be very fun to draw some of them in this fucked up chibi style I started doing on the fly, but also because then I could insert like three whole ships that I like. We got the Ruruseiko, the Tokomaru, the Ikuzonobuki because hey someone had too.

Fun fact there was supposed to be a little pop up of Mukuro with heart eyes in the corner when Sayaka and Ibuki showed up, but I either scrapped cause I couldn’t make it look right with the limited frames I had, or I accidentally hid all of its layers and couldn’t find it. I can’t remember, this project turning out as well as it did is quite frankly a miracle.

The train scene I don’t really remember why I did like, full linework and shading for that while the rest of the fuckin vid is just sketches. I guess it was fully still animation so it wasn’t that big of a deal. Drawing the very silly little shots of them going by the train was a lot more fun though, I also used it to reference a few more pieces from the past!

The first shot of them with Angie was a reference to the Day 70 Piece, since I always kinda headcanoned (yeah headcanoning my own art, that makes sense) that it was Angie who made it. Then we got Day 82, which at the time of writing this hasn’t been posted! Flashback to whatever day that Karaoke pic with the Ikuzonobuki trio was on for the shot of Junko watching Mikan sing.

And then after that is the Flatwoods monster part, which is the really fun one because I have no idea if I’ll have drawn anything for that by the time this gets released. I really want to though because I love the Flatwoods Monster and I love Junkan, so why not combine them! Alas, I’m working on the December 24th comic as I write this so I might not have time to make that on time. 

Yasuke and Tsumugi! I’ve given my thoughts on them before of course, I think during Day 60? My brain at this point just felt very inclined to include them in this, Yasuke especially.  Even if just as a very small cameo I kinda just associate these two with Junkan? Admittedly it’s mostly because of Val’s fic, I won’t act like that isn’t just the blueprint for everything in the junkan portion of my brain. 

I also used this opportunity to once more make up for the fact that I had drawn so very little kabedon content in this whole project.

After that this probably becomes the cheesiest thing i’ve ever made. The scene of Mikan looking sad was another scene directly based off of the original opening this all based on. After the spin transition I put a little too much effort into was supposed to be a shot of Junko doing Mikan’s hair while Mukuro and Sayaka try to do the same with Ibuki. If I remember the timeline of events I realized I couldn’t make this scene last until the next scene on the storyboard without dragging it out, so I was gonna try adding other little vignettes of antics. However in a rare act of self care I decided to not make this any harder on myself and just scrapped it, skipped to the next storyboard, and extended it out to fit the time. Do I like this in the longrun?? Ehhhhhh, personally I think I shoulda just sucked it up and just added some smaller shots, but miraculously I have people who care about me and would probably prefer it if I didn’t destroy my body for a music video, so I probably made the right choice.

Those outfits look kinda familiar! Whether because I was struggling to think of a new outfit, or because I had just drawn a kabedon, I decided to reuse the outfits from Day 74! Junko’s was a pain in the ass to animate! Never again! Also I colored the Boba to match my pride headcanons for both of them, Mikan being bi and Junko being pan. One kiss and another god damn spin transition i put too much effort into making look good, and we’re at the last scene.

And there’s a mildly fun story for the art used in the background. Like I already said, they were added last minute because the scene would be dead air without them. However I could have done more little clips and vignettes and not fully drawn art pieces. So why did I do fully drawn art pieces?? I was starving, of course. 

You all know my rule that I’m not allowed to draw any Junkan before the current one on the project is finished, correct? Well guess who wasn’t able to draw any normal junkan for like 3 months because I had to focus on making a music video. I can reread a bunch of fics or stare at art forever but the desperate and violent urge to make more and add to the pile so my brain feels nice is insatiable, especially with the rate I was making these previously before the music video began production. 

Sooo, making some last minute assets seemed like a pretty good excuse to finally draw something fresh. And it was a fucking blessing on my brain at this point.

I tried to do a runthrough of their relationship up to this point, flashing back all the way until their first encounter. Was this a thinly veiled excuse to realistically include a halloween pic? Yes. But hey, that last shot was always planned so on some level I have to be justified in my actions. Let’s talk about these pieces one at a time.

First up, hey, that kinda looks familiar. That’s right, assuming the stars aligned and allowed me to gain the strength to draw the December 24th Comic all on time (I’m 17 pages in at the moment send past me your strength, time travel is real if I say it is), then you might notice that I just took the outfits for this winter-y art and featured them in the story! 

So I did in fact draw the Halloween art first and realized I could probably do something vaguely interesting with a timeline of events, so I realized it would probably be best to put the winter art BEFORE October, because I like to dream of a year where I can celebrate Halloween and not freeze to death. It just also happens that it kinda conveniently fits the current time! Since this is releasing in winter! A miracle.

This ones pretty simple obviously, I unfortunately have nothing impressive or interesting to say on the art itself, more just stuff surrounding it.

Now the Halloween Art. Well i also don’t have a lot to say there either but god dammit i’ll sure as hell try!~ 

Listen I wasn’t fully confident that I would have the project done in time for Halloween, and as I’ve probably said before (or at least implied), while I could certainly draw more art on my own time after the 100 days were ready, until this was a public thing and the world was made well aware of my obsession, I couldn’t post it. It is extremely good luck (and also burnout) that I was able to get this done in time to actually post during October, so I did get to draw Halloween Stuff! But when I was making this?? I saw an opportunity to say “fuck it” and draw something spooky with these two, my favorite holiday and (probably) my favorite ship?? Yes please!

As for designing their halloween outfits I sure did fucking wing it! Yeah no thought process, just spooky as fuck. 

Though something interesting about this art that my girlfriend pointed out is that the way I shaded and colored it matches up a lot with my older art. Since I’m not gonna drag through my old gallery to find good examples the best way I can sum it up is that my coloring style back in the day was a lot more candy colored. If that makes sense? More saturated colors I guess? Whenever I look at pieces like those and this I just think of a bowl of colorful candy. 

I miss drawing like that, I don’t know what changed. It’s hard to go back, but maybe i’ll try.

The next shot might seem familiar, but not to any of my other pics, but rather a fic! When writing my Vampire Junkan AU I decided that I wanted to do an Aquarium Date for one of the bigger chapters, because as we all know, Fish and Vampires go together like chocolate and peanut butter. When writing it I was thinking of when I wanted to do the big kiss scene, and this art came to mind! So while it’s not very 1 to 1, I tried my best to recreate it through words.

Why did I draw aquarium art in the first place? I wanted to draw a sunfish . . . I’m a very simpleminded woman in most cases y’know?

The next image was actually even more last minute than the other 3, cause even with those I didn’t have enough to cover the timeframe of the scene. Soooo, Junko giving Mikan a flower.

Maybe this was her confessing? Asking her out? I haven’t thought about it enough. 

And after so long we’re finally back to me just ripping straight from the original opening this is based off of, and in the original its a very sentimental memory for one of the main characters. So pretty early on alongside the Monokuma bit I knew I should have that specific last flashback be their first meeting. I think this is like, my 4th or 5th time depicting a first meeting between these two? It’s always fun to do, and the one in this music vid I think you can tell was decently inspired by Kayleen’s “Smile” Fic, albeit not a direct adaptation and with like, 2% more whimsy. 

And a proposal!! We all crack eventually and there was only so god damn long I could stop myself from depicting one, and what better place than an ill advised music video? Also the gleam of the ring just made for a really good transition out of this and I’m still shocked by how well I was able to make it look. 

And that’s it! I feel like I didn’t talk about this one as much as I thought I would?? Granted I think this is still one of the longer rambles I’ve gone on, but given the jump in scale I thought this’d be a bit more, excessive?? 

I already said earlier but for as, fucking agonizing as this was, I will probably, someday, try to do another animation like this. Hell I’m collaborating with my Girlfriend on a VS Project right now and I’m hoping to at least do small bits of actual animating on it. Which I think I can do??

As for music videos, welllll I do have two in mind, one is Vampire Junkan (though not in the way you think), and the other doesn’t specifically focus on Junkan but it sure will have a Billy Joel song. 

So what’s up next??

Well I’m just gonna say this now, Day 100 does not go higher in scale than this, I won’t say what it is but its like, normal. Day 99 should be fun though! As for 91 through 98? Well! We’ve got 8 days of Fanfics! I didn’t write anything don’t worry. I made 8 pictures based off of 8 fanfics, with only one repeat author! There’s reason for that though you’ll see. There’s some direct adaptations of scenes, covers for the story, and like, something more based off the vibe, it’s hard to describe. You’ll see.

Gonna try my best to sing the praises of the fics themselves though I worry that I won’t be able to adequately sing the praises of these stories to the same degree that I did on Day 60, so hopefully I can at least convince ya’ll to give them a read yourself!~ 

Here’s hopin ya’ll enjoy the results!

As always, Reblogs, Comments, and Little Notes in the Tags are appreciated!~ They always make my day!~

[ineffableteeth]

So I was rewatching Good omens and I realized something.

Season 2 brings up Memory. A lot

Specifically Crowleys memory

In every episode something is said about it and I find this really interesting

I’m only going to bring up what I think are major, I want to note there are more instances than this. This is gonna be messy and a little disorganized since I’m just throwing my words on this post as I think of them and read the episode transcripts but I had to write it out.

In Episode 1 we see pre-fall Crowley and are introduced to our amnesiac archangel. This will be important later

We don’t see much of Crowleys memory loss in this episode but the biggest example I could find was the way Beelzebub had said Extreme Sanctions after Crowley misunderstood

It was as if they were expecting him to remember

In Episode 2 we get the first blatant hint of Crowleys memory loss

When Gabriel said he couldn’t remember, Crowley doesn’t say “Well try anyway”

He says “Yes you can.”

Crowley knew Gabriel could remember, he knew he could make himself remember. As if he knew it from experience.

Also in this episode we get Crowleys “I’m a demon, I lied.” As well as several other instances where he lies in this episode.

I also feel like his “Lonliness” is important to point out, because I feel like that goes much much deeper than “[I’m on] my side”

In Episode 3 we get Crowley and Gabriel’s Conversation about “Gravity”

Crowley knows what gravity is on a base level. But he says “I don’t remember” when asked why gravity exists and proceeds to give a very nondescript explanation

Now for Episode 4. This episode is actually what triggered me to start looking for these instances.

Because of Furfur

Near the end of the episode when Furfur enters the dressing room he mentions that him and Crowley were directly next to eachother during the Great War, as well as the fact Crowley used to jump on his back “Like a little monkey in a waistcoat”

And Crowley didn’t remember

All he remembered was going to war

Why does Furfur — A demon — remember but Crowley doesn’t?

In Episode 5 we get one of the most crucial ‘memory’ scenes imo

The aftermath of Crowley threatening Gabriel

When Gabriel tells Crowley “It hurts to remember, my head isn’t built for that” Crowley replies with “I know, do it anyway”

Again it sounds like Crowley is speaking from experience

The most important quote to me though is when Crowley says “I know, looking at where the furniture isn’t.”

Because after the fact he proceeds to ask Gabriel if he wants a hot chocolate

This wasn’t a sympathetic action. It was Empathetic.

He feels for Gabriel, he knows what it’s like to not know

Finally in Episode 6 we get context.

This is where the whole amnesiac archangel comes into play.

Before I get into that though I want to bring up Crowleys meeting with Saraquael. Because something interesting stood out to me while reading her voicelines. After Crowley asks “Do we know eachother?” Saraquael says “When you were an Angel” and pauses before she says the following voiceline “We worked together on the horsehead nebula”

Those were two different sentences. I’m definitely looking too far into this but to me it sounded like she knew he wouldn’t remember so she gave unnecessary context. This as well as the fact she didn’t respond when Crowley essentially said he didn’t remember her.

Back to my original point though, during this episode we finally learn how (and why) Gabriel lost his memories. Angels can remove their own memories as well as have their memories removed by other angels.

But clearly Furfur still has his memories, as well as Shax, Dagon, and Beelzebub

And anytime Crowley mentions “remembering” something it’s post-fall

Adding on Neil’s post about “Crowley not being a reliable narrator on his fall” as well as showing Crowley pre-fall in episode one leads me to believe there’s some foreshadowing in there and something happened to Crowleys memory.

But What?

Why doesn’t he remember?

What did they do to him?

[theaccidentaloutlaw]

Can we talk about the “Sanji talks about the All Blue” scene in the Live Action

because it’s so underrated

and I think it’s not talked or appreciated enough.

I know people have some issues in the way that the Live Action did not do the way anime/manga did with these scenes. Nevertheless, I love it!

One of the benefits of the Live Action is HINDSIGHT. The showrunners and the writers already know what’s gonna happen in the next arcs, what the characters are gonna go through in the future, and what is yet to be revealed.

So they have the benefit and the ability to “plant some seeds” and foreshadow events or reveals in some of the dialogues and scenes very early in the story.

One of those “seeds” can be found in the “Sanji talks about the All Blue” scene. Imperatively, Taz Skylar’s acting choices and micro expressions are spectacular since they are very well thought out, especially in how he expressed some of the dialogue as it hints that there is more layers to the character.

NOTE: For those who are very new to One Piece and for those who have not reached Zou or Whole Cake Island Arcs yet, I will be vague and try not to spoil much. But these two arcs reveal ALOT about Sanji's past and childhood. Whole Cake Island arc, especially, is a very intense and heavily emotional arc for Sanji. Let's just say, in simple terms, that Sanji has been through ALOT before he met Zeff and that past has impacted him immensely.

BUT if they ever mention Germa or anything Germa related or hints at Sanji's past in Season 2, I will go ballistic and would not stop talking about it lmao

It’s not shown the clip above but Live Action Sanji does say to Luffy:

“Sometimes when I try to look ahead, all I see is back.”

And he says this while playing with his lighter.

The first time I watched this part, I immediately noticed how he emphasized the word “back.”

At first I thought nothing of it but rewatching it again and keeping WCI in mind, it sounded like there’s a bit of melancholy and hint of rancor in the way he says that word.

For someone who has only watched the live action, and has not consumed the anime or manga, they might think nothing of that line of dialogue and would think that it just means that Sanji is holding himself back.

BUT for someone who knows about what is revealed in Zou and what happened in the Whole Cake Island arc, this line of dialogue is so interesting especially given the context of Sanji’s “other” backstory.

Like what do you mean by this Sanji?!

This very simple dialogue might have more layers and can mean a lot of things imo. He might not only be talking about holding himself back and feeling “stuck” but he also might be thinking about his time and experience back in Germa. It might mean that he feels “stuck” in a lot of ways, not just physically. I think about that line of dialogue way too much lmao.

Nevertheless, it just makes me think a lot of things and some implications, including his time in Germa and how that has affected him and his mindset.

I’m not really certain that the writers intended for this one sentence to have a double meaning or something. But Taz’s choice in how to say this line and emphasizing certain words is definitely interesting. Also, I want to share that Taz does know about Sanji’s “other” backstory and past since he vaguely mentions it in an interview that I will link below in the Spoiler Section of this post.

Now, in the scene where he actually talks about the All Blue:

I have rewatched this scene so many times, and everytime I grow more appreciative of Taz’s acting choices, micro expressions, and how he says his lines.

There is both an excited but somber tone in the way Taz delivers his speech about the All Blue and I think it’s fantastic.

He starts lighting his cigarette and nonchalantly introduces to Luffy about the All Blue. But then he says “…where you can find ingredients from all for seas, East Blue, West Blue, North and South, they call it the All Blue.”

Notice how he quickly mentions the “North” blue.

Ngl I almost thought he didn’t mention the North at all the first time I watched this scene because of how he quickly mentions it, as if he doesn’t want to outright say the word “North.”

But then notice how he says “they call it the All Blue” and the rest of his lines about this paradise. He gets a bit giddy about it but he can’t help it and just smiles as he continues to talk.

But then he slows down and sombers a bit when he says “It is a cook’s paradise and…I’m gonna find it one day.” Notice how he tries to downplay his excitement about the All Blue as if he is mindful of being mocked that it doesn’t exist as some chefs or colleagues have done so in the past.

There’s also this very slight hesitation when he says “…I’m gonna find it one day.” It’s like he wants and hopes to find the All Blue, he longs for it, but is very conscious of his own circumstances in Baratie and with Zeff.

Also the music/soundtrack used in this scene is amazing and so underrated. I love how it’s starts with this wonder and mystical tone, as if conveying Sanji’s feelings about the All Blue, and then the slow jazz Sanji theme song kicks in and it’s just *chefs kiss. I probably listen to this soundtrack twice a week lol

Anyways, I just wanted to talk and share about my love of this scene, the dialogue, and Taz’s acting because I just adore all these elements in this scene. I feel like it isn’t talked enough.

Ngl I am pretty excited for season 2, mainly because I want to know and see, if and, how they are gonna “plant some seeds” and foreshadow other events and figure out what arcs they have chosen to foreshadow or hint at.

This post getting so long but I just want to share more thoughts.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

JUST SLIGHT SPOILERS

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

In 13 February 2025, Taz Skylar did an interview to promote a film called Cleaner. But, of course, the interviewer asked him about One Piece and Taz was able to vaguely and very briefly talk about Sanji’s biological family. It was very brief but still very spoilery because he mentions some stuff about Sanji that are revealed in WCI.

Skip to 8:29

Here’s some Random Thoughts with a bit of Spoiler:

People have made so many posts about the fact that Sanji's origins have been hinted in the anime's VERY early arcs and its mostly through random remarks from Sanji. It’s pretty amazing how these remarks and Sanji’s actions gets full circle once the story reaches WCI, which means that Oda has been planning Sanji's origins and early childhood 10+ years before the actual reveal.

In Season 1 of the Live Action, Sanji mentions the North Blue very quickly. In the anime, Sanji actually reveals that he was born in the North Blue but grew up in the East Blue. And this was revealed in the Jaya arc while the crew talks about Noland's story. But considering that Noland's story was already mentioned in Season 1, he might mention where he was born in Season 2 and present it as a random fact about him.

I am so curious on how the Live Action show runners and writers are gonna foreshadow and hint at Sanji's past in Germa since they have immense amount of info about his past and how that has affected him mentally, spiritually, and physically.

Sanji has such an extensive, well written and very thought out backstory, character arc and development in One Piece. I really hope that the Live Action can deliver on this in terms of writing. I have no doubt on the acting because Season 1 proved to me that Taz is amazing as Sanji.

I’m certain that the Live Action will somehow find a way to foreshadow things about Sanji’s past. However, I’m very uncertain and doubtful that the Live Action will reach WCI arc. This arc in Live Action would be insane actually! Like—

BUT if by some miracle that the Show reaches WCI, I am confident to say that Taz will nail so many scenes!

I have chills just imagining Taz acting out these scenes in Live Action:

Also let’s not forget to mention that Inaki Godoy (Luffy’s Live Action actor) would be acting out some amazing and emotional moments like this:

EMMY AWARDS HERE WE COME

[mystycalypso]

More of K.O.'s Dad! Featuring some Mr. Box-Gar

I cannot explain in words why I love drawing him so much, maybe it's because he is the most bisexual ever. Maybe it's just because I love Laserblast.

I'll include some episode context with it to explain slight changes or just to explain what episode it is, as most people probably can't tell

"My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad"

Obviously the whole "I don't have a dad" doesn't work as an opener, so I imagine Chameleon Jr's insults would instead start with your mom's insults, except for some reason they aren't able to affect K.O. To which he sheepishly explains he doesn't have a mom. "...But I have a Dad who's super strong!" To which Chameleon Jr challenges him, and K.O. accepts.

"Know your mom"

Almost the same, really just changing Mother's Day to Father's Day. Also instead of stating Carol's name, the shot would cut away from the phone before his real name finished loading, followed by a "Oh yeah, I can't believe I forgot!"

"Face Your Fears"

Mr. Box-Gar's fear at first seems to be Silverspark's head, complete with two large silver-cuffed hands to attack and mimic the plaza trio until K.O. lets out T.K.O., only for him to point horrified at Laserblast. Game Laser's defeat managing to finally get a full sentence out to Laser.

"Plaza prom"

(Mostly an excuse for me to draw him in a nice suit)

Again very similar to the original, after finding out about the prom he asks K.O. who would be the lucky one to take his son to prom, and when K.O. asks him to go he jokingly asks if he's really cool enough to be K.O.'s date before accepting. Demanding Boxy help him chaperone with a firm "John! You're going to prom!" And even trying to get a dance out of him

"T.K.O."

He spends most of his time in the episode being awkwardly supportive of K.O., encouraging him to learn to use his abilities, and even admitting that he was a 'broody' hero type for a while. Potentially a joke specifically about his 'anti-hero' eyeshadow palette getting stolen. His support turning to fear and concern when what he'd labeled as 'practice' turns towards the plaza.

"Glory Days"

To help with K.O.'s project and a because of a love for reminiscing on his hero days, Laser tells the story of his first day at point, showing when he met Silverspark and heavily hinting at their relationship, as well as Boxy's early crush on him.

"Let's not Be Skeletons"

During the dream he mainly gives K.O. a talk about standing up for change, and heroes needing to use more than just force to help change things for the better, right before being turned into a skeleton.

"Action news"

Basically unchanged from Carol's original scenes, uses his fists and abilities similar to K.O.'s rather than his legs

[fairytwles]

hi babyyyy

sending asks bc you’re about to answer a bunch! i was wondering if u have any lottienat or jackienat (or jackielottienat :o) headcanons or anything i love them so bad

love u!

hi baby gorgeous!!!!

i love love love answering asks feel free to send more if u want <3 (if that's what u meant by the first sentence lol) and yes ofc <3 i have a bunch of jackienat headcanons BUT give me a day or two and I will come back with LottieNat headcanons i PROMISE

jackienat

nat 100% made jackie mixtapes before they were dating in order to "get jackie listening to some real music" but really made them so she could put her feelings out there without actually saying anything.... she would put so much thought, love and effort into them but would never admit it

she never necessarily wanted jackie to figure it out since she never thought jackie would feel the same way, it was just something she did so she could get some of the weight off her chest

jackie's oblivious so she never got the hint lol

jackie learned how to make a mixtape (with the help of shauna) and put some of her favorite music on it to give to nat (mostly top fourties pop)

she decorated it with glitter stickers and wrote nats name in a pink paint marker

nat adored it

pop music isn't really her thing.... like at all

but she found herself playing it over and over and over again

she got one of the songs stuck in her head one day and was unconsciously humming it during class

van made fun of her for it when she realized what song it was and nat has never been more embarrassed in her life.

jackie realized she liked natalie (and therefore liked girls) late in her junior year of highschool, nat was giving her these mixtapes and she adored every last bit of them

she always wanted to talk to natalie, but never had the guts to truly try to be friends with her... of course they talked because of soccer, but not really outside of that...

(i headcanon jackie as a lesbian for context) She slowly realized she never truly liked jeff that way but was too scared to break up with him because she didn't think anyone would love her the way he did, she thought she could push through and everything would work out and it made her feel so guilty

she thought about nat often but didn't do anything about it,, the thought of dating her was nothing more than a dream to jackie.

jackie made the first move (completely accidentally) by asking nat after soccer one day if she wanted to go look at CD's and records and casettes with her, that she wanted to look at some more of the music nat put on the mixtapes for her (is this a readable sentence??? idk its 3am)

nat completely freaked out internally but obv said yes

jackie had no idea where to go so nat figured it all out

they spent an hour in the store just talking and laughing as if they were already best friends for years

and then they both went to a cafe afterwards (which was not in the original plan) because neither of them wanted to leave each other yet

I HAVE SO MANY MORE THOUGHTS BUT ITS 3AM AND I GOTTA GO TO BED

so this has to be cut short :((

I love you more!!! the lottie to my jackie <33 thank u for the ask this was so fun

[lupinsversion]

𝐒𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐮𝐬 𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤 - 𝐏𝐮𝐦𝐩𝐤𝐢𝐧 𝐆𝐮𝐭𝐬

• summary: when reader and sirius are meant to be carving pumpkins, they find themselves a bit distracted

• contains: sirius black x fem reader, established relationship, flirting, pumpkin fight, hints at sexual context

• word count: 1.2k

masterlist || requests

The weather is chilly and crisp as Halloween creeps ever so closer. The sun is slowly setting below the horizon, casting a warm golden glow over the scene.

A small pile of pumpkins sits on the ground next to them, fresh from the farmer's market.

A small table has been set up outside, a few carving tools and a couple of old magazines spread out. Sirius stands beside her, a big, goofy grin on his face as he grabs ahold of a knife, ready to start carving the first pumpkin.

"So we have the knives, the pumpkin.” He lists off on his fingers, a playful gleam in his eyes, "Some old magazines for inspiration, oh and your wonderful presence. I’d say we've got everything we need for a fantastic carving session, wouldn't you agree?"

“Real cheeky.” She commented with a playful roll of her eyes as she scooped out the insides of her own pumpkin, the weird goop covering her fingers.

He chuckled heartily as he watched her scoop out the insides of the pumpkin, a mixture of amusement and disgust on his face. He couldn't help but admire her determination to get down and dirty in the gross, pulpy mess.

"I can't help it, love.” He replied with a cocky grin. "Just comes with my charming personality."

She took a small bit of the pumpkin’s guts and seeds and playfully threw it in his direction.

He let out a loud, surprised gasp at her playful act. He hadn't expected her to throw the pumpkin gunk at him, and it caught him completely off guard. A look of disbelief was evident on his face, mixed with a hint of amusement. "Did you just-" He sputtered, unable to finish his sentence from surprise.

“I did, and I would do it again.” She stuck her tongue out playfully before resuming the scraping of inside the pumpkin as if she were doing it this whole time.

He stared at her for a moment, shock still evident on his face. Hs couldn't believe she had the audacity to throw pumpkin guts at him. But then his expression shifted, a mischievous grin spreading across his face. "Oh, that's it." He grabbed a handful of pumpkin guts off the table and threw it back at her with a playful laugh.

She let out a squeal before picking up a clump of her hair that was now covered. “Not the hair.” She whined.

He chuckled at her squeal, finding her reaction absolutely endearing. He tried to look sympathetic, but the hint of mischievousness was still present in his eyes. "Oh come on, it's just a little pumpkin guts."

He reached out and gently picked a clump of the pumpkin guts out of her hair. "I think it's an improvement, honestly. Really brings out your highlights."

She looked up from her hair to his face, her eyes narrowed in a cold glare.

He couldn't help but chuckle at the cold glare in her eyes. He loved seeing her riled up, even if it was just playfully. He took a step closer, the mischievous grin still present on his face. "Oh, don't look at me like that," he said, feigning innocence. "You started it."

“I didn’t get it in your hair.” She protested grumpily.

He just smirked, enjoying the way she pouted and protested. He loved seeing this grumpy, slightly bratty side of her. He took another step closer, closing the distance between the two of them. He reached out and gently tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, his touch almost tender.

"Trust me, love, if you had gotten it in my hair, we'd be having a different kind of conversation right now," he teased.

She had to suppress the smirk that threatened to pull at her lips, he was walking straight into her trap and didn’t even know it. She pouted as he spoke as she sneakily lifted up her hand with a bit of the inside of the pumpkin between her fingers, slipping it in between his lips and onto his tongue.

He opened his mouth to respond, fully confident in his banter, when he suddenly felt the cold, slimy sensation of pumpkin guts slide onto his tongue.

A look of surprise mixed with disgust flashed across his face as he sputtered, the bitter, cold flavor of the pumpkin guts hitting his taste buds. He immediately pulled back, a mixture of shock and annoyance in his expression. "What the-" He grumbled, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, "What was that for?"

“My hair!” She expressed dramatically.

He couldn’t help but roll his eyes at her melodramatic display. He knew she was trying to get a rise out of him, and damn it, it was working.

He reached up and ran a hand through his hair, trying to assess the damage. thankfully, not a lot of the pumpkin guts had gotten in his hair, but he was still slightly annoyed.

“Really? You’re gonna play the ‘my hair’ card?” He said, trying to sound frustrated, but failing to hide the hint of amusement in his voice.

She waved her pumpkin covered hair in his face. “Look at it!” She demanded playfully. “It’s all mushed together. Besides, pumpkin is edible, it’s not going to kill you.”

He grumbled, reluctantly admitting that she had a point. he couldn’t stay annoyed at her for too long, no matter how much he tried. He reached out and grabbed a handful of her pumpkin-filled hair, gently combing through it with his fingers to untangle it. “Fine, you got me.” He conceded, a playful glint in his eyes. “But next time, aim better.”

“I’ll aim for your nose next.” She smiled up at him innocently.

He chuckled at her innocent smile, finding her boldness endearing. He took a step closer, towering over her with a mischievous smirk. “If you get it in my nostrils, I’m pinning you against the wall.” He warned, a hint of challenge in his eyes.

She couldn’t help the little giggle that escaped her. He found her giggle adorable, and it only served to make his desire for her grow. He took another step closer, closing the distance between them even more.

He reached out and placed a finger under her chin, tilting her head up to look at him. “Be careful, love,” he teased, his voice low and sultry. “I can only hold back for so long.”

He could feel his desire for her ignite, his need to have her and be close to her growing with every passing second. He leaned closer, his face mere inches from hers, his breath hot against her skin.

"You really do like pushing my buttons, don't you?" he whispered, his voice a low, hungry rumble.

“A little bit.” She confirmed in a whisper as she brushed her lips over his.

He felt a thrill run through his body as her lips brushed against his. He was completely captivated by her in this moment, his need to kiss her and explore her body overwhelming.

Without warning, he cupped her face in his hands and claimed her lips in a fierce, passionate kiss. his tongue teased at the seam of her lips, seeking entry into her mouth.

© lupinsversion 2024

[todayisdeadinside]

My Thoughts on @quietasides 'Just Like You' Analysis (x) (x)

Okay, I'm going insane, I need to yap. I just read the two part analysis for the first time, and I have some background info on Simon Cowell that I wanted to tie into this since OP pointed out how many Simon references there are in JLY.

This bullet point list is about as organized as this post will be. After the cut I start quoting and talking about OP's analyses, elaborating on what I picked up on. I really tried to make this coherent.

Immediately I picked up on the overall themes/repeated concepts-

Louis comparing himself (and artists at large) to race horses, who are very notably worked until death and killed when they are no longer in peak condition.

The Weinstein case being shown in articles, including statements from his accusers, as well as various related and unrelated snippets and headlines about sexual abuse and specifically pedophilic sexual abuse.

"Everyone else here before me" repetitive themes of Louis not being the first artist to be used by the industry, with precedent of Weinstein's accusers and Pat Sephton.

Silencing and victims being too afraid to speak out, and various subtle calls for the industry to change. Subtle visual allusions to the GP having access to more info than they know because they choose not to look at what's in front of them.

Various allusions to One Direction and sometimes specifically Harry.

Thoughts on Part 1:

Okay. Louis being blurred out by the word "cash." He's a product, he's a dollar sign.

"Right to oppose despotism" I didn't know what despotism meant so I googled it. It's essential tyranny. Right to oppose a dickhead ruler who controls your life and fucks you over. So, Simon Cowell, in context.

“Hairdresser with HIV pressured victim into having sex” headline comes up SO many times and I think the hairdresser with HIV part is less important, and it's meant to drive home that theme of being pressured into sex acts as an aspiring artist.

And it showing up on the same page as the name Pat (Sephton), tying in the theme of being a child or otherwise young when this pressuring typically occurs. And add what I talked about in my Simon Cowell post about his pedophilic sex parties he hosted with Max Clifford.

“In sentencing the judge said he had taken into account psychiatric issues...” I wonder if this is about the trend of pedophiles and rapists in the industry accusing or painting their victims as mentally ill, or crazy, to destroy their credibility. We see this all the time with artists being slandered because they were going to speak out about something. There's that theme of silencing and fear again.

The crossword being brushed over with transparent white paint makes me think it's conveying that the puzzle pieces and hints of what goes on in the industry are all there, just thinly hidden behind plausible deniability and distractions so few people ever figure it out GP-side. It's right in front of you, it's barely hidden.

The race horse tables. It's all about numbers in the industry. For horses it's times, for artists it's sales. Money. And that appearing with the lyric "same shit/stress." Again Louis saying this is nothing new, and he isn't the first.

The court thing reoccuring- contracts, being sued, lawsuits, all the settlements that abusers have with victims to avoid charges, this is all very common in the industry. Also "bounty pursuit" is very much how these moguls and industry folks see artists- a bounty, a pursuit towards money. Louis could be the Daring Guest, a speck in the wider industry who's daring enough to subtly speak about it.

The whole bit about the owners and the codes being old, this is a cycle, this is STANDARD, artists aren't just seen as objects by some shitty managers, the system is designed to treat them as walking dollar signs. This and the "gun reform" mention make me think Louis is calling for the standards in the industry to be changed, to be more humane.

"It's like we take, then backwards—form of distraction—enormous reaction—so we—instead of talking" Take, then backwards. They get a win, they get punished. Form of distraction is about the media and tabloids, how they control the narrative and distract the GP when they need to, enormous reaction is what the form of distraction wants to prevent. Instead of talking about the music industry's systemic abuse, distract with glitz and glamour.

Followed by another direct mention of sexual assault and victims being afraid to speak out.

The silhouette over Louis' shoulder is a clear metaphor for management, as an entity, contracts, whatever and whoever is keeping eyes on him.

Followed by another mention of sexual harassment with Cara Delevigne's story.

The three strongest themes are artists being dollar signs/objects akin to race horses, Simon Cowell, and sexual assault/pedophilic sexual assault. I think it's clear what this is getting at, maybe not specifically but broadly with what I've uncovered about Simon and what I know broadly about the music industry. Combine those entwined themes with the subtle calls for the industry to change, but fear holding victims back. It's starting to tell a story.

Half of the story with the 1D fonts on Story, comes after all of that set up for the main themes Louis is trying to convey. Simon of course owned One Direction since they were teenagers. Louis is saying we only know half of the story about Simon Cowell and One Direction, how we can find the bits and pieces of how this industry works, of Simon's pedophilic sex parties, but we don't know the other half of how 1D was affected specifically. But with Louis' repetition of him not being the first, and the Weinstein case being prevalent as an example of the past, I think the message he's trying to convey is clear.

Five pound notes for five members of 1D, again that money cash cow comparison, how we only know the glorious story of world famous boyband One Direction, but not the other half.

Followed by the hairdresser with HIV pressures victim into sex article again. I think this is poignant.

The bits about "his downfall not being by chance" is about the fact that most big exposures of pedophiles and rapists in the industry are planned. The Diddy case, for example. A kingpin who gets thrown under the bus is thrown under the bus for a reason, because this industry has ways of protecting the kingpins it values. Diddy was caught on purpose, Weinstein was exposed on purpose. If Simon's crimes ever get exposed on a major scale, it will be by design. The info about Simon is out there (at least as off 2024-25) but he won't have his downfall until the people above him want him to.

"...Even life under—radar in the UK can—better than life at home where economic opportunities can be extremely poor..." And of course alluding to the fact that Louis and the boys (and most aspiring artists) were promised the world in exchange for just a little bit of their human rights and sanity. Being under radar- constantly monitered or filmed- is better than being poor, right?

"Weinstein’s disgrace and defenestration are not happening now wholly by chance. They are part of a changing world." That call for change again, the outright statement of Weinstein's downfall being planned. Louis is telling us how the industry functions as a precedent for the side of the story with Simon that he can't outright tell.

A hallway where it's dark and things are hidden behind closed doors? The metaphorical sense of things being hidden behind closed doors, but also the related metaphor of "behind the curtains" in industry speak, and also also the fact that there's been multiple instances in my recent research of illegal sexual "favours" taking place in LITERAL dark rooms behind literal closed doors, usually in strip clubs or members-only clubs (Groucho club, anyone?)

...And Louis being placed in that hidden hallway. Being whited out with that transparent paint that shows what's going on if you were to pay close attention, that transparent paint of distraction that the GP accepts, so that nobody pays attention to what's right in front of them.

"Look" and "Do" being important makes me think he's saying to look at what's happening, and then do something about it. Observe the information, then take action. It's another subtle call for change.

Alongside Pat Sephton's obituary. According to OP's post, a 14 year old who performed naked on a stage. This being an older example, again hammering in that Louis isn't the first. "Like everyone else here before me" and then he proceeds to show Weinstein, Weinstein's accusers, and Pat Sephton's names.

And references to Simon Cowell again after that. Really clearly outlining the message, I think.

The bit about a powerful and dangerous weapon, which I think is less about Louis and more about the industry and it's ability to "bomb" someone's credability in an instant- a very powerful ability to possess- if they speak out. Or even the bomb that is controlling when a kingpin gets exposed, also a very powerful weapon to possess.

Followed by the hairdressing pressured victim into sex headline, again.

Thoughts on Part 2:

Starting off strong with the word "watch" telling us to open our eyes.

“open secret—for years that—is a sexual—epic scale but—the horrific—the public.” With THIS basically saying "look at the sex abuse in the industry it's literally an open secret."

“...He was surrounded by yes-men and despite stories of his appalling behavior being rife in the industry, senior figures queued up to laud the producer...” This being followed by the bullhorn is showing us that these kingpins are protected up until they're not. They're lauded and praised and beloved- until the industry needs a scapegoat, or they've stepped out of line. Bullhorn! Weinstein in the news. Bullhorn! Diddy in the news. This is the cycle.

Followed by Cara Delevigne's accusation of sexual harassment. Perhaps highlighting how victims only feel safe to come out with their stories after their abuser is already disgraced by the GP? How the industry controls when victims speak out with this planned downfall pattern?

(It's an open secret -> industry protects abusers until -> bullhorn! planned exposure -> victims feel safe speaking out)

And followed by the bit about fear of speaking out again.

"late because—in the same—2013 he said—make good" This stuck out to me because Jeff Azoff started scouting Harry in 2013. The Azoffs are known for being big kingpin names and they have some sex abuse stories attached to them, but they haven't been bullhorned yet. Shelli Azoff sexually abused her maid for a year, Irving Azoff supposedly funded a sex trafficking plot. The rabbit hole with that family goes DEEP, I need to make a post about it.

"if only you knew" "stared at me like I was a piece of meat." These being right alongside each other on screen feels very intentional. He's saying "if only you knew how I was treated. That other half of the story you don't have."

That image ripping away to uncover “I wish I had—have been braver—I will be when I—that sexual abuse—in Hollywood” is continuing the story. "If only you knew I was stared at like a piece of meat, I wish I had been braver, I will be [braver] when (something comes out about Simon?), that sexual abuse in hollywood." Look I know I'm probably insinuating a lot here but this is what the video is conveying, to me at least.

The dog barking poem, I feel is an analogy for the constant expectations and constant surveillance in that industry. Always being barked at to do this, do that, perform better, sell more. Day and night. "it never stops."

By Louis' photo the bit about “brothers who grew up—the abuse they suffered” and 1D being as close as brothers, I think it's another 1D reference with them being teens when they formed and growing up as essentially brothers in this industry. With the Simon is a rich twat bit, and then court being mentioned again. Being threatened via contracts or with threats of lawsuits is very common in this industry, and Syco contracts and known to be INSANE (see: Katie Waissel)

2 speakers but one is off and one is on. I think this is another "half of the story" bit. Followed by the photo of Louis edited onto the article about Weinstein's victims, and followed by the phrase "I was a kid, and I was petrified." Louis mixing himself into the precedent is an even more clear show of Simon being another Weinstein, and Louis being another victim who was too young to know what they were getting into.

The part where the Weinstein article highlights the line about "him sexually abusing women over decades" which then switches onto the race horse article and a circled letter H. I think this is meant to portray the power dynamic in the industry, and maybe an allusion to Harry? The Weinstein and sexually abusing over decades bit, then it shows the H and race horse bit. So far, these kinds of stories being laid out have alluded to Louis, but the H? Is that alluding to Harry as well? 1D on the whole has been alluded to multiple times, so it's plausible.

“unsatisfactory” experiences for owners... want to see “fair, transparent and responsible practices in place to remove significant actual and perceived barriers to new owners” joining the sport" Another call for change, to stop treating the "race horses" (artists) so inhumanely.

Then Louis sets off a bomb and walks away, the same Louis cutout who's pointed to different bits in the articles. The call for change followed by Louis bombshelling the truth, essentially saying he's shown us the missing half of the story through this video, and he's been calling us to LOOK and DO about it. He's telling us to pick up what he's put down.

I don't think OP picked up on this in their post but the guitar doodle encases the phrase "brain-dead bigot" and then of course the jetski -> Simon Cowell reference. Louis called Simon a brain-dead bigot. Thought that was very important to add.

So Simon Cowell, followed by "come and see" and "no further warnings needed." Louis again saying "Look at this, it's visible, I've given all the warnings and precedent with Weinstein and whatnot, so now take that knowledge and look at Simon. Look at my story I'm telling."

"I thought I was safe" "I asked him if he knew I could sing." Louis hammering in that point that this is all precedent that explains his untold story. His face is on the screen during this bit. History is literally repeating itself so clearly he can use past stories to explain his own.

End Notes:

This was driving me crazy, sorry it's such a long post, but I hope I got my point across with what I was seeing. OPs analysis is amazing and I'm just expanding on it with my own thoughts and connections/themes I picked up on, mostly aided by my background knowledge on the music industry and Simon Cowell. I'm not saying I'm definitely correct, but I'm curious to hear people's thoughts.

The Simon Cowell post I mentioned is under my "The Music Industry is FUCKED UP" tag, it gets into alllll of the evidence I have for Simon Cowell being a pedophile and running underage sex parties during some of the years 1D was active & before.

The stuff about Groucho club I'm planning a post on, but basically: pedophilic sex trafficking. Again.

And the Katie Waissel mention on Syco contracts is about her reading her original Syco contract on her twitter a while ago, which I also plan to make a post about.

[al-hekima-madara-blog]

Madara NEVER awoke his sharingan for Hashirama

(and I can prove it)

It is a common urban legend in the naruto fandom to say that Madara awoke his sharingan because he has to give up his friendship with Hashirama by the river. And it is COMPLETELY FALSE. Yet I see where the confusion is coming from and I'm gonna show you step by step that Kishimoto is a better writer than your reading skill.

Step 1- you read way too fast People believing that Madara awakes romantically his sharingan for Hashirama usually use this scan from chapter 624 and call it a day :

Step 2- Madara's confession

Yet the previous chapter 623 Madara gives important information about himself, not only hinting he has the sharingan already but he also reveals how he got them. The beauty of japanese language is that everything is often implicit. You really need to pay attention.

note that when Madara is wistful about the death of his brothers, Hashirama is visualising the death of his own brother (we will come back to that later)

Step 3 : A bit of japanese grammar

For those still sceptical, let's go directly to the japanese translation, and go word by word.

I'm not fluent in japanese but I understand the grammar and can read hiragana and katakana so with a good kanji dictionnary I'm able to translate basic sentences. So it starts with :

Madara : in term of eyesight I'm pretty sure you can't beat me, wanna challenge me?

Hashirama: What? You seems really proud of your eyes, eh.

Madara : そりゃ そだろ! なにせオレは写… sorya sodaro! Nanise ore wa sha...

そりゃ /sorya/ familiar contraction of sore wa, "That is".

そだろ! /sodaro!/ familiar way to say "right?" a cocky affirmation like "hell yeah it is!"

なにせ /nanise/ after all

オレは /ore wa/ casual, masculine and bold way to say "I"

写... /sha.../ a kanji that means on itself "copy" but the sentence is unfinished

in japanese there is usually two ways to pronounce a kanji, the japanese prononunciation (kunyomi) or the chinese one (oneonyomi). usually the second one is used when there is two or more kanjis stick together to form a noun. The manga itself clarifies the correct pronunciation which is -sha, the chinese one. When you type the kanji on a dictionary and look for words starting with this kanji this is what you found :

写真 : shashin photography, 写真家 : shashinka photographer, 写本: shahon a written copy of a book, 写生: shasei sketching, drawing from nature ect...

the root of all this words is always referring to "copy" but obviously none of those words are coherent with the context. You may ask yourself, how do you write sharingan in japanese?

写輪眼 = sha (copy), rin (rotation), gan (eye) so the copy wheel eye.

So put it back into context Madara is bragging because of course he will win the competition since he has the sharingan! The end of his sentence could have been :

sorya sodaro! Nanise ore wa sha...[ringan wo motterun dakara na!]

Obviously! After all ME, I've got the sha...[ringan, duh!]

Madara childish boasting is hard to translate but you get the vibe.

ok still not believing me? Hear it directly in japanese:

Step 4 - Now read everything in chronological order

When they were hanging out on the cliff, Madara's almost revealed he has already the sharingan and that he got it after witnessing his brothers being killed. Later by the river when Izuna almost get killed by Butsuna, he precises that his brothers were killed by the Senjus. This type of awakening is coherent with the canon so far, Sasuke awoke his sharingan at 7 after witnessing Itachi's killing his parents and ethnically cleaned their clan then forgot and awoke them again to save Naruto's life, Itachi awoke his sharingan at 8 after being unable to save the life of one of his comrade killed by Obito (not Shisui though, this is the MS). Obito again while trying to protect Kakashi. Basically they need to be in a very stressful situation where the life of their loved one is at stake.

Hashirama's life wasn't at stake, actually Madara even admitted that Hashirama is stronger than him. Also he didn't look stressful at all when switching on his sharingan as if he already did it in the past.

When Hashirama said 'I felt I understood what awakening the sharingan signifies' we need to connect the dots when he thought about his late brother while Madara revealed he couldn't protect his owns few pages ago. What Hashirama meant: Because I know the pain of losing two brothers from the Uchiha, I empathy with your pain of losing your brothers by the Senju and I can see that grief for your loved one is the reason you've awakened your Sharingan.

It's way deeper that simply : He awoke his sharingan because his dad says I can't play anymore with the neighbour' son.

step 5 : Implication of Madara hiding his power

It adds an extra layer of mystery to realise he had the sharingan for a while but decided to not disclose this information even to his father or Izuna. Sharingan is known to be rare even among Uchiha and a source of power specifically during the warring state era. Here's my theory why he kept it secret:

1 / to not be separated with his brother. Having more power include more duties. Maybe Tajima would have been more inclined to send him in far away missions, and Madara would'nt be able to closely watch over Izuna.

2/ Shame. If he awoke them while witnessing the death of his brothers and being unable to interfere or protect them, he might have feel awfully ashamed to tell his father that even with the so powerful sharingan he couldn't save them. Let's remember he's a child, he maybe thought that sharingan was the power-up solution to everything and had to sadly realised that actually not. So maybe he decided to train on his own until he's strong enough to reveal them to his family. And there is a pattern with Madara to isolate himself when he needs to solve a problem. He went alone by the river to mourn the deaths of his brothers the first time he met Hashirama. Later he left Konoha alone to look for a way to establish a true peace, and didn't inform anyone during the founders era about his real plan. Madara has a tendency to be stubborn in his routine and he thinks he needs to do the same thing but stronger with more intensity.

To put it in a nutshell, Madara has always prioritised his family and his clan before anything else. He repeated it a lot of time : 'to protect my brother' or 'to protect my clan' To the point that losing the last member of his family and the support of his clan was the moment he spiralled down into his villain era. Even Hashirama revealed he loved Izuna MORE than Itachi loved Sasuke. Don't you think he had the same intense love for his other brothers? Only being unable to save his beloved brothers is a reasonable reason to awake a sharingan. He cares about Hashirama , yes, but come on! He met that friend like what... 2 weeks ago? You won't have a chakra meltdown just because you can't see him anymore. His brothers' death was what triggered his power.