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katrinapavela · 1 year

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QTNA: 10 Questions I Would Like Kerry Washington’s Memoir, Thicker Than Water to Answer

Kerry Washington’s memoir, Thicker Than Water, will be available to the masses on the 26th of September, and I have questions that need answers. Well, I would like to have answers. I pre-ordered it in June when it was announced, and I’ll be receiving a second copy when I see her in Manchester in October (Kerry, you better not cancel this leg of the tour. I worry because we’re the only stop that still doesn’t have a confirmed special guest). Before a million reviewers start leaking and the full-court press is unleashed this week, I thought it would be fun to post some of my own questions about Ms. Washington that I hope are answered in Thicker. To be clear, I read the same excerpt on Oprah.com as the rest of y’all. And I won’t be reading any advanced reviews until mine own eyes have completed all 320 pages of Kerry’s words. I am really looking forward to reading it, and hope to recommend it to my Black women-only reading group.

As an actress, I have liked Kerry Washington since I watched Save the Last Dance in the early 2000s. And in each subsequent film I’ve watched that featured her, I’ve felt like Tony Goldwyn (but not as intense): Oh hey, it’s that really great actress and she’s always giving something different. But I never explicitly sought after articles or interviews, preferring to casually enjoy her work instead.

That changed with Scandal. My dedication to the show hedged on its compelling narrative themes. But it was the compelling relationship between Kerry’s Olivia Pope and Tony Goldwyn’s Fitzgerald Grant that created magic. It cast a spell that elicited from me reams of writing about Scandal between 2012-2018. In fact, the series changed the whole trajectory of Kerry Washington’s career (and my life, too ). It also brought significantly more eyes upon her. The first vehicle built around Kerry, Scandal gave her acting space to breathe, develop and shine. I also continued to watch the smattering of films she made during that era (Django Unchained, Peeples, Confirmation), and began reading interviews with her--both before and during Scandal. I began to notice the way in which the availability of information shifted, receded (or removed), and sometimes became opaque under a claim of ‘privacy’ whilst also offering the veneer of accessibility from late 2013 onward. Granted, I do not run any obsequious fan accounts about Kerry, so I know there will be some who try to rattle off any number of things I “should know” because they have inhaled every morsel of information and made its consumption and regurgitation their entire online personality. But I am also not a hater who consumes the actor's every move for the purpose of group chat gossip. I like knowing things about people I admire because I like to find points of connection, perspective, recognition…and differences. I admire Kerry Washington…or what she’s allowed me to see. The problem is, when I think about her, I think about a person who seems good and cares fiercely for her country, family, and other people. She’s well-regarded. She’s funny. She’s stylish. She has a great capacity for information. But.

She also seems secretive, and that’s different from being private. I feel like I know of her, about her. But who is she, really? That lack of clarity is partly by design, of course, due to her profession. Still, I hope Thicker Than Water answers the soul of that question: Who is Kerry Washington?

It is with that central question in mind that I pose the following questions. These are MY questions. I am not here to represent anyone’s fandom. I know, too, that I don’t have a ‘right’ to have any of these questions answered. I’m not delulu (as the kids say). I’m being as honest as I can with my own curiosities about Kerry, as both an actress and a human.

These are my questions. I am not here to represent a fandom. Let’s get into the QTNA of it all.

Q1: What childhood scars still itch even into adulthood?

In a recent interview, Kerry mentioned that her therapist has read her book. Samesies! When I finished the pre-copyedited draft of my first book, I started connecting some childhood dots to a few of my ongoing challenges. I asked my therapist to read it so that we could be on the same page in our sessions. It is for this reason that I wonder if Kerry’s reading back of her own writing was revelatory to her in ways she was not able to consciously unlock before. Are there things still there under the surface, the ghosts of which still tingle and itch sometimes no matter how much therapy she has had? Falling back into patterns is easy; undoing them takes so much self-awareness and intentionality.

Secondly, I ask the question based on the excerpt from Thicker that was chosen to appear on Oprah.com. Beautifully conveyed with a stark honesty I had never seen from Kerry, the selection chosen is one that gives us a sliver into the dysfunctions of the Washington’s marriage. Ones that were quite literally disruptive to 7-year-old Kerry. Aristotle famously said, “Give me the child until [s]he is 7 and I will show you the [wo]man.” The theory of the first 7 years of a child’s life has been debated in Psychology. However, anecdotally, I can tell you that both my wife and I carry deeply impactful memories of our selves at age 7, the threads of which still linger. So, why is that memory offered as the amuse bouche to the drawing back of the curtains of Kerry Washington’s life which Thicker Than Water promises (or ‘her truth’ as Kerry calls it)? Does the excerpt set a foundation for the grown up Kerry we now see? For me, the excerpt made me wonder if young Kerry’s (confessed) determination to be the living embodiment of the pleasing, “good” thing that bonded her parents together was the start of a perfectionism that would be hard to shake. Control issues that would find her guarding a carefully curated image that avoids like the plague the possibility of being seen as ‘problematic’ for a stance, an opinion, a view? Or it could be that I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. That is entirely possible.

Q2: Did you experience any body dysmorphia issues during your first pregnancy? Was your second pregnancy different?

This is a difficult and very personal question. I know. It is based on two things: 1) the unusual language Kerry used to refer to her changing body during that time; and 2) the fact that she mentioned, prior to Scandal, she struggled with an eating disorder.

During Kerry’s first pregnancy (2013-2014), I don’t recall her using the word ‘pregnant’. She would say things like how the ‘condition’, ‘orientation’, or ‘physicality’ of her body changed when discussing how she approached acting during that time. I don’t recall her talking about it in personable ways. It felt like if she didn’t have to acknowledge what our eyes could plainly see, she would not have. Kerry appeared much more comfortable with her second pregnancy (2017). Listen, I have never been pregnant. In fact, I am terrified of it, which is why I wonder what it must be like for someone who has struggled with an eating disorder (which can cause body dysmorphia issues). How did Kerry come to embrace such a purposeful but very disrupting change to her body? I have been around a fair number of pregnant women, so I know it’s not all ‘miracle of life’ stuff. The typical pregnancy narratives out there from celebrities don’t typically discuss this unless we can relate it back to inequalities in maternal health care. Even if they do, I’m asking for Kerry Washington’s perspective. I could be entirely wrong, but I’d still like to know was the changing of her body hard for her. I’d love to know how she felt after her first child was born, and what motherhood feels like for her.

A related thing about which I am curious: Did she have any fertility issues and struggle with getting pregnant? And why did she wait until after it was beyond obvious during her Saturday Night Live appearance in early November 2013 to officially confirm she was pregnant? What fear was the fear behind this late decision?

Q3: What makes you sad, insecure, or sometimes need to retreat into yourself?

Kerry seems like a high-energy, joyful, positive person. She’s commented that as an Aquarius, she loves all sorts of people. I can see that. As an introverted Cancerian, I appreciate high-energy people…in doses. Every talk show appearance, red carpet interview, and social media content are all carefully presenting a woman who is very together. I say this because sometimes Kerry speaks in therapy language even when she’s trying to be sincere about overcoming battles. Of course, the image one projects (me, too) is always only partially true—whatever the industry. Kerry is a person and most of us do not have it all together, no matter how much we present it as such, or how much we sweep aside the less salubrious, more complicated parts of ourselves. It’s that stuff that I’m interested in. Where are her edges? Negativity may be ‘noise’ (as Kerry’s Twitter banner displays), but it also gives positivity its meaning. I also recall a saying that happy people are usually the most fucked up ones. Now, I’m not accusing Ms. `Washington of being uniquely fucked up, because we all are in some ways. The always ‘on’ facade is typically a way of hiding (just one of the tools) the things we don’t think we can show. Is she a trainwreck in the mornings and a bitch in the afternoon? Please, I just want to know something real…about Kerry, not just about her parents and her career.

Q4: In what ways, are you like your character Olivia Pope?

On an episode of Unpacking the Toolbox podcast, Kerry’s co-stars/friends, Guillermo Diaz, and Katie Lowes, said that out of everyone in the cast, Kerry is the most like her character (Olivia Pope). Would Kerry say this is accurate or fair? If so, what characteristics does she have in common with Olivia? Please spare me surface-level, obfuscating comparisons such as ‘We look alike :)’ or ‘We’re both passionate about democracy!’ Somehow, I don’t think that’s what Katie and Guillermo meant. I don’t presume anything untoward. I also understand why actors in long-running shows are usually at pains to separate the actor from the character, especially when that character’s messy humanity is on display for everyone to judge. But, again, give me something of substance here.

Q5: In what ways do you draw on your Jamaican heritage? How are you imparting that to your children along with their Nigerian Igbo heritage? And who are your father’s people?

Kerry has been very vocal about her mother’s Jamaican heritage. She has been vocal about immigration, sharing that her maternal grandparents came to America via Ellis Island. In the summer of 2023, she was in Jamaica to film a special about dance forms from around the world. As a Jamaican myself, I would like something more concrete about her Jamaican background. She often mentions her Jamaican heritage, but in what ways is it important to her? How does she call on that heritage as part of her identity? How is she (or not) imparting that sense of culture to her children alongside their Igbo heritage? Lastly, I’m less certain of her father’s origins (presumably in the American South). I’d like to know more about that.

Q6: Why was Hollywood the calling? Did you feel like changing course? If so, when and what put you back on the path towards who you’ve become?

This question is about Kerry’s early experiences in Hollywood. In an old interview (hopefully, I didn’t hallucinate this), she mentioned being told early on to lose 30 pounds and fix her teeth, at which she scoffed. Despite the contemporary irony juxtaposed against the past demand, where did she get the strength of determination and belief in herself to push past what those assholes could not see? As plucky as she seems, everyone has low moments when they are pushing for a dream. What’s one of hers from those early years?

In another interview (or the same?) Kerry mentioned giving herself a year to become a working actor in Hollywood. This is after her post-University travels to India to study Yoga. I want to know more about the jump from Yoga to Hollywood. What was that internal calling, or was it a casual, young adventurous thing she thought she would try? Did the move to Hollywood occur during a highly ambivalent part of her life? If so, how did that feel as a Black woman, since those women are often under pressure to take up a more guaranteed profession than the arts?

Q7: What did you find most challenging about working on Scandal—both as an actress and as a person? What nonsense did you and your castmates get up to behind the scenes?

Kerry has been very grateful for landing a show like Scandal and for the fine company of actors with whom she got to work. Great, but can she tell us the non-PR stuff? I’m not talking about back-biting—I don’t care. I’m always interested in the process for actors and all the changes they go through when working on a long-term project. American TV shows have 16-24 episode commitments every year. That has got to dominate a person’s life! What are some specific ways it impacted Kerry’s life? Actors have talked about how unrelenting the TV schedule is, including Shonda’s reflections in her 2015 book about the incessant demand to ‘lay track’ (write) so that the train that is the TV show doesn’t run off course. I already know that Kerry has borrowed from Ellen Pompeo, the advice to approach being #1 on the call sheet of a TV show the way an athlete would approach her dedicated sport. The point here is that I’m not seeking more information on enduring the schedule. I’m interested in how she kept the motivation and rationale for her character over such a long period. What did she do when she had disagreements about things Olivia was written to do? Would she have done anything differently? What was the thing that Olivia did that she found hardest to justify? Who was that one guest star who gave her nothing when they acted together (alluded to in Unpacking the Toolbox, episode 107)? And finally, can she stop playing diplomat and just say that Tony is the better kisser?

Q8: IDTAMPL was weird. What was the fear behind that, and how do you now define ‘personal life’?

For the uninitiated, or those with short-term memories, the acronym IDTAMPL stands for I Don’t Talk About My Personal Life. Kerry adopted this saying whenever she was interviewed after her marriage to Nnamdi Asomugha was announced on the 3rd of July 2013. Occurring on the brink of the holiday weekend, the news dropped like a bomb in the Scandal fandom. Even outside the fandom. Many were flummoxed, including me. On the 4th of July, I attended a celebration in London with a fellow American who is a big-time Philadelphia Eagles (Nnamdi’s former team) football fan, including the gossip surrounding the team. As soon as she opened her door to me, she said, “Your girl married Nnamdi?!” She consumed more football than Scandal at the time. Suffice it to say, I have left out the accurate number of question marks and exclamations in her voice. Her face, too, was full of them.

Listen, we used to be a proper country. Many celebrities, with and without talent, have lost the art of mystique, preferring instead to cultivate the marketing skill of capturing attention and selling it to us as actual talent.

I am thankful for those celebrities who maintain the mystique of a bygone era. Intrigue me, but don’t shut the door completely. The latter is what it felt like Kerry did after it was announced that she was married. Prior to the announcement, I don’t recall the media being that interested in Kerry’s dating life. It was not a topic that came up. Nor did Kerry ever let on that she was dating, let alone that she had been involved with Asomugha for three years (according to Kerry’s timeline of their meeting in 2009 when she did the Broadway play, Race). I have no qualms with celebrities who don’t make their partners part of their public image, or the ones who wed outside the limelight (Margot Robbie, Chris Evans (recently)). What I don’t like is when they pretend that they didn’t volunteer the information in the first place. Kerry’s team announced the marriage, even giving PR-friendly People Online titbits from “a source close to the couple” about Kerry’s ‘regular’ looking wedding dress (I kid you not. The source called the unseen dress ’regular’). We even learned that the “secret wedding” (every publication used that phrase so it’s deliberate) took place in the potato-producing state of Hailey, Idaho in the last week of June. These things were volunteered.

But once Kerry emerged back on red carpets and public events that summer, she trotted out a new PR line when asked follow-up questions about her wedding, husband, or newly married life: “I don’t talk about my personal life”. After literal years of not mentioning a romantic life, when her very public engagement to David Moscow ended in 2007, it was Kerry who let the public know: 1) She was hiding a boyfriend (shoutout to Pusha T); and 2) Surprise! I’s married now (shoutout to Shug Avery)…but don’t ask me anything about it! Don’t even ask me for a picture with the two of us together to go with your marriage announcement headlines. That’s what photoshop is for. Figure it out!

I’m being facetious, but, girl...

BFFR. Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining. We didn’t ask, but she definitely told us. And when folks followed up on that telling, Kerry closed up tighter than a sphincter with a ‘do not enter sign. That whole era was awkward. Can we acknowledge that, at least?

Lest you think, “You’re being way harsh, Tai”, I’m not. What I sense is that there was some fear Kerry harboured behind revealing her coupling with Nnamdi. What was the source of the fear that led to the IDTAMPL shutdown? Was it because she did not want her personal narrative to be overshadowed by her relationship status? And what inspired her to begin relaxing that… a little? Like, she waited until her second child was born in 2017 to start allowing articles to describe her as “a mother of three”, revealing Nnamdi’s daughter from a previous relationship, which she had not acknowledged before. Was it simply time that allowed her to all but retire the IDTAMPL line? Or were there key turning points that led to slow revelations? And can we agree that the reluctance to talk about a ‘personal’ life is specifically related to her husband (mostly) and children (I support her keeping them off social media)? Words mean things. One’s parents are part of one’s personal life, but Kerry has no qualms about performing her relationship with them on social media. I mean, the excerpt she chose for us to read busts-open like a ripe papaya their whole past marital dysfunction, and her mother’s contemplating being unalive. Like…are such matters not not both personal and private? With all of that in mind, what has prompted this rethinking? How does Kerry now define ‘personal life’?

Q9: What is your most enduring memory from your time in India? Would you go back if you haven’t already?

On more than one occasion, Kerry has referenced her time spent in India. Besides the fact that she chose to travel to the subcontinent after graduation from George Washington University, we don’t know that much about that period (and that she studied Yoga whilst there). Kerry graduated from GW in 1999 (?). I spent five months in the southern states of India in the first half of 2000. I’m not sure if her trip crossed over into the new millennium, but it’s kind of cool to think about us both being in that vast country at the same time. I would love to know what are some of Kerry’s outstanding memories? What did she love about that place? What does she not miss? Did she visit a favourite place, or discover a dish she continues to enjoy? Does she, like me, share Indian heritage as part of her Jamaican identity?

Looking back, did travelling abroad at such a formative age, shape her coming of age in any way? I would welcome any memories or anecdotes from that time in her life.

Q: Beyond “mutual respect” for each other, why are you at your most playful around Tony Goldwyn?

I cannot be sure, but it is likely that Kerry has come across online theories and conspiracies that are both outlandish and semi-reasonable based on visuals alone. Whenever fans (to be clear, I am ‘fans’) are treated to her interactions with Tony Goldwyn, it feels like a hit of sugar injected directly into our veins. Their power has a hold on us.

It is not simply fans seeing in Kerry and Tony a nostalgia for Olivia and Fitz. Both entities are a force unto themselves. Most don’t confuse one for the other, if they have a shred of media literacy. Even people who hated Olivia and Fitz as a couple can acknowledge that there is a je ne sais quoi between Kerry and Tony. Their chemistry has its own fans; it’s palpable. I know that Kerry knows that the Kerry x Tony appearances are gold because she leverages them on social media. She’s leveraging it right now for her book tour. It’s no accident that the Washington, D.C. tour stop with Tony Goldwyn as the special guest was the first to quickly sell out dates were announced. People are coming to that tour stop for the cerise sur la gateau which is the Kerry x Tony bond. I’m not cynical enough (or blind enough) to believe that their interactions are simply good “PRs” for both their images (as some have alleged). No, there is an energy, an authenticity that crackles and fizzes between them, even when they are simply standing next to each other.

Hell, it’s there when one of them simply talks about the absent other. Fair enough that chemistry works in mysterious ways that can’t be manufactured. But when Kerry is in the vicinity of Tony Goldwyn, there is also Physics at play. There is inertia in their body language to familiarity and comfortability with each other in ways that speak to a shared intimacy. I mean that in the sense of closeness and rapport. Kerry and Tony are clearly very close. Beyond the “mutual respect” they say they have for each other, there is something about who Kerry is when she is around Tony that is different than when she is around others. She doesn’t have that with her other Scandal co-stars with whom she has remained friends. Other than her passionate and on-point political advocacy, her time spent with Tony Goldwyn lends a cozy texture to her personality that is more easily felt than described. It’s like popping the bubble of perfectionism and letting out a giant exhale. Me, I exhale when they are together. Am I trippin, or is there something about Tony Goldwyn that effortlessly extracts this playfulness in her, and can she feel it, too?

Bonus Question (A la Inside The Actors Studio): What is your favourite curse word? What sound do you love? What sound do you hate? What scares you? What makes you cry? What petty thing have you had it with? What did you finally embrace only after you were in your forties?

Even if Bravo were to resurrect Inside The Actors Studio [LINK], Kerry Washington will never have the chance to be interviewed by James Lipton because he passed away in 2020. A venerable institution himself, Lipton’s sincere and earnestly pointed manner of asking questions gave actors the opportunity to embark on a journey of both self and art in the space of an hour, in front of a live audience of actors-in-training. Through this show, the audience could learn more about their favourite actor, and all the ways in which the personal intersects with their art, and much more. My favourite part was always the quick-fire round near the end when Lipton would ask the small, quotidian questions that are the true stuff of life. You know, the anti-Hollywood shit. Though it’s a cheat, it is in that vein that the bonus questions above are designed. A few are taken from James Lipton, and others added by me.

Those are all of the questions…until I read Kerry’s tome.

Perfect-seeming people are boring and untrustworthy. But is the perception entirely a fiction created by the celebrity or us?

“…[She’s] clearly a beautiful, intelligent, multi-talented, quietly formidable woman with a Jesus-like heart. From what we can tell, she is highly respected among her peers. Well, that’s who we’ve made her out to be. We choose to see those things in her because that’s what’s on public offer. Because of that, it’s so easy to turn KW into some Magical Negress archetype imprisoned on a pedestal in our minds. We believe Kerry is clean. Kerry walks on water. Kerry makes the fishes and the loaves. As her fans… we mythologize her, and others like her, because we have this deep-seated human need to create heroes for ourselves. We need to believe that there are people less fallible than we are: that if we believe in their perfection, it might take us a little closer towards that ideal… Kerry doesn’t walk on water. She’s not perfect. The reason I know is because she’s flesh and bone and blood, just like you and me.” (Me, 2013)

It's true: the perception is a little but her, a little bit us (me). However, I can’t say that I’ve seen a lot of evidence of the proverbial ‘flesh and bone and blood’. That perception seems poised to change on the 26th of September with Thicker Than Water’s release.

I was surprised (in a good way) to see Kerry reference this early ‘need’ she placed on herself to be ‘good’ as a point of connection for her parents, whose marriage was in trouble. I was also sad because I know what that means. I did that to myself at age 12, and it’s been hard to completely abandon. But the admission intrigued me, and I hope there is more of that kind of self-revelation in the book as the timeline approaches the Kerry we see today. Above all else, my wish for Thicker Than Water, is this: to offer me insight and greater clarity about a woman whose public persona, for the last ten years, has been highly visible, yet persistently opaque.

I get it. To exist publicly as a Black woman in the 21st Century is to navigate a high-wire act. Perception is always on the mind, especially in Kerry’s industry. If you share too much, people have a problem; not enough, people have a problem. Nothing you share is impervious to being twisted into the most ungenerous or scandalous interpretation. We have watched Queen Mother, Beyonce, in the last decade become more deliberate about what she shares with the public. But even she feels like less of a question mark than Kerry Washington. Beyonce has, at least, given us glimpses into her personal life and thoughts via documentaries, BTS photos, and the intimacy of confession in her art—the parts that are beautiful, fucked up, or ambivalent. This is not me pitting two bad bitches against each other. It is me offering an example of another Black woman who has told us that she battles perfectionism, and who has found a way to let us in (or feel like it), through her art, whilst making her boundaries clear.

Thicker Than Water will be a part of Kerry’s artistic self. It is a product of memory and polished fiction; narratives carefully organized and swaddled in beautiful prose (based on the excerpt) that promises to take the reader on a journey. As someone who recently published a book that is small in its number of pages, but big in its revelations of things unspoken and unshared, I know that writing is an intimate act of exploring one’s mind and interiority; of the past and its pertinence with the present. What your mouth cannot say, your fingers will. It is my most profound hope that Thicker Than Water allows me to feel a sense of connection with flesh and blood and bone Kerry Washington. And I hope for her the book accomplishes a giant exhale of whatever she wants to release into the world. Whether or not I will personally be satisfied by the book... stay tuned.

Q: What are your questions for Kerry?

#kerry washington #Thicker Than Water memoir #thicker than water #scandal #tony goldwyn

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neveah-llama · 7 months

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Why do I have gospel on My Spotify Daylist? I’m Atheist. Oh Also Here’s Some Background Info For the Fic :)

Haha ignoring the title, I just wanted to talk to you more about ‘The Impossible Adventures of the Phantom and the Ninja,’ give a sneak peak as to what I plan and maybe get your guys’ input.

So as I said before I love serialized cartoons centered around teenage superheroes. Maybe because I love comics, or because I too felt like I was living a double-life and found a connection to these characters. Still do even though I’m now older than the characters. But what I love most about them is the possibilities for world-building.

I love stories that center more about the world the author has created, along with how that world affects the character(s) relationships, traits, etc. It shows me the extent to the author’s creativity, having thought of all these cool societies, cultures that seems real like it could belong to the real world, even down to how people in that story keep track of time.

(Off topic but this is actually the main reason why I love the ATLA universe)

However I don’t really get that with the teen-superhero drama. Especially when it airs on cartoons like Disney or Nick. They do explore some topics for sure, but I’m looking more to the drawbacks of living a double-life. Mostly because I feel those drawbacks even today. Furthermore, most of these shows like Danny Phantom and Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja were only able to air due to both the networks and the creators, at least in simple terms. So sometimes shows would be canceled when it’s left at a cliff hanger (I.e. Teen Titians (2003) and RC9GN)

So that’s why I wanted to write this fanfic, I want to try to expand the worlds of both shows by connecting them together, I want to add my own flair to the characters, story arcs, and the direction of the series, and I really hope I do both shows justice because I grew up on these shows and I even still watch them (even when some words they use are outdated and just overly obnoxious/cringe)

Which brings me to the second part of this post. To those who read this far good for you, you get a cookie 🍪.

Anyways I have three arcs planned so far when it comes to this fanfic (more will defiantly be added later on). Granted it’s not all fleshed out so I’ll have to add or take out stuff as I continue with this story. But here’s a brief description and some notes for the first three arcs:

1. Origins

Obviously it’s the introduction to the story. Danny and Randy just returned to their homes a week before school starts, it’s their first year of high school and both of them have big plans for the next four years.

They just didn’t account the chance to become heroes of their respective towns.

The arc is going to be about 4 chapters long, ending with a rewrite on ‘Bitter Reunions’. The chapters will briefly glaze over the first six episodes of Danny Phantom. And the first like two/three episodes to RC9GN.

This arc will mostly focus on Danny struggling to getting a hold of his powers and Randy coming to terms that being a hero isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Only problem is I’m not sure if I want that to happen to Randy this early on the story or not. Eh, guess we’ll see what I feel like, lol.

2) Original Storyline:

It’s in the works! This is set after both of their Halloween specials in season one. Mostly because this is placed in November. I might plan a chapter or two to happen before this arc so who knows (really want to write Fanning the flames- I have plans for that one it’s all based on a joke while I started writing out the three arcs lmao). I don’t want to say anymore other than the fact I want it to focus more on Japanese myths, it’s actually how I got inspired to write this fic so I’m really excited.

3) Interlude:

After that week-long adventure, Randy, Danny and friends slowly adjust to their new normal. Mostly just rewrites of canon episodes to help build up to another major story arc that is forming in my head at the moment. (It’s definitely a canon one just to give you a hint).

Anyways so yeah. That’s all I have so far. Thanks for reading, love y’all!

Ps if you see a poll thing, no you don’t. This is my first time posting on tumblr via phone and I don’t know how to delete it. (I’m not old I swear I’m in my early twenties 😭)

#danny phantom #randy cunningham 9th grade ninja #the impossible adventures of the phantom and the ninja #rc9gn

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pridepages · 2 years

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Make the Yuletide Gay: “Snow for Christmas”

Happy Christmas from Pride Pages! We have a special edition featuring Rainbow Rowell’s short story “Snow for Christmas”...

Here there be spoilers!

It’s a jolly holiday for snowbaz fans! Our favorite rivals-to-allies-to-lovers have grown by leaps and bounds since we left them in Any Way the Wind Blows. They’re cohabitating, domesticated, and surrounded by friends and loved ones. The holiday’s looking to be merry and bright. Except for one thing...The Grimms have invited Baz AND Simon to the family hearth for Christmas!

Although, some things haven’t changed. Baz’s stepmum extends the invitation, saying “we hope you’ll bring a guest...whomever you might want to spend Christmas with, I was thinking Simon Snow.”

You know: Baz’s buddy. His pal. Eight snakes!

When Baz cries out to Simon “I don’t want to be closeted in my own home on Christmas!” I felt that. Deeply.

Here’s the thing: as Simon points out, this looks like acceptance. “They already know you’re gay--everyone knows you’re gay! Are you upset that you didn’t get to give a speech? They invited you to bring your boyfriend home to meet them properly...How will you be less closeted going alone--than with me right there, sitting next to you?”

But people knowing while still refusing to talk about it--living under a taboo that you feel in your heart even if it was never explicitly said--still feels like being shoved in a closet. When you know people around you are uncomfortable in the knowledge of who you are...then YOU feel uncomfortable existing around them as who you are. And you feel pain in that awareness.

Fans of the series will remember that Baz’s queerness is not the only unspoken reality about Baz’s identity. The fact of his vampirism is also censored. For years, the family takes it for granted that Baz does not eat with them. If he were to do so, his fangs would be exposed and their carefully constructed fiction would collapse. But, as readers know, Baz has learned to control his fangs between holidays. And with his boyfriend’s support, Baz gets to flex his new skill. When Baz demonstrates that he can eat Christmas dinner with the family for the first time in years, the party really gets started. Most significantly, Baz’s father goes from “steeling himself at the sight” of his guests to “openly staring...his eyes are shining.”

In the wake of the family celebration, Simon and Baz feel open to be more comfortably themselves. Baz pivots from calling Simon “Snow” to calling him “Darling” at the table, not blinking when Simon calls him “Babe.”

It’s not perfect. After all, “No one asks what’s changed. Or what it means. Where my fangs have gone. For them, the only variable factor is Simon...my family might think I’m cured. If they do, I’ll let them go on thinking it. Cured by homosexuality. Cured by Simon’s ministrations.” I don’t love the implication that Baz has to be thought of as “cured” or otherwise “fixed” of the vampirism he had no choice in contracting in order to bring joy to his family with his presence. I furthermore resent the idea that Baz’s queerness only becomes acceptable to his family--in their tacit way--because it’s seen as somehow related to said cure/fix.

I don’t want to be a total grinch about this little Christmas card to the fans. There are so many snippets of Simon and Baz just oozing love all over each other, whether it’s Baz calling Simon “the handsomest man I’ve ever laid eyes on” with Simon replying “I thought you said vampires could see themselves in mirrors.” Or apparently a shared competence kink: Baz “trying not to look impressed...it’s a constant effort” by Simon’s swordplay or Simon calling Baz’s shooting his wand from a cuff “dead sexy.” Plus, we get Simon Snow deciding the is-Die Hard-a-Christmas-movie issue (conclusion: yes). Still, it makes me wish we could have seen our boys at the Salisbury Christmas where they could have been “as gay as we want...we can be extra gay, as a treat.” Like all queer people, Simon and Baz deserve untempered comfort and joy among friends and loved ones every day of the year...but especially around the holidays.

To all my rainbow siblings struggling to find a safe hearth to keep warm during the holidays, know that hearts are with you. We all deserve celebrations where we are safe and loved, merry and bright.

To those of us lucky enough to have found our forever homes and families, I wish you every good thing today and every day.

Keep making the yuletide gay!

#snow for christmas #snowbaz #simon snow trilogy #simon snow #baz pitch #tw: homophobia #mlm #gay #lgbt reads #queer lit #rainbow rowell

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the-gordianknot117 · 2 years

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A “B-Class” Underdog in an “S-Class” Crisis.

Fubuki’s role in the webcomic Monster Association arc holds a special place for me out of all the things I love about the series, so here I want to delve into it. I’ll organize the content of the post in the following way: first, a quick look at Fubuki’s introduction arc and what it establishes about the character; then, what role is assigned to the esper during the Monster Association, how she is portrayed during those events, and in what way this relates to the overall themes of the arc and the rest of the cast; finally, what outcome the arc holds for Fubuki and where it leaves her at the beginning of the next. Webcomic spoilers.

Disclaimer: my opinion is based on the story so far and future webcomic updates can always make this post obsolete/flat-out wrong and my interpretation of the characters completely off the mark.

EDIT 04/06/2024: I decided to change the opening image because I realized that the previous one from Chapter 74 was too low-res, so I opted to change it with the first panel from Chapter 77 (I also removed the text boxes from the page; I apologize for the end result, but this is the best I can do).

Before jumping into the main topic of this post, it is important to remember what preceded the war between heroes and monsters. After the Alien Invasion arc and before the clash between the Hero Association and Monster Association, ONE placed three mini-arcs introducing a trifecta of characters (Chapters 42-50): King, Garou and Fubuki. This isn’t a casual choice. The mini-arcs are inextricably connected to the MA, providing the required groundwork for what follows and forming one cohesive and unified narrative structure resulting in the Garou saga as a whole, whose shared themes and plot threads, introduced in Chapters 42-56 (the mini-arcs and Garou’s Hero Hunt), carry over to the events of Z-City (Chapters 57-94).

Garou's debut monologue/flashback (Chapter 46: 1, 2 and 3), in particular, sets the stage and introduces all the main leitmotifs (i.e., “hero versus monster”) and narrative trails that will be explored in more depth over the course of what follows. For example, “unfairness” (especially, but not only, as in social injustice and in relation to mob mentality), which is explicitly referenced here and is a very central theme of the MA arc, is also present, in one form or another, in every single one of these characters’s storylines and their introductions:

King is the hero Saitama’s heroics are misattributed to, while the real deal has to rise from the bottom of the rankings, accused by the public of being a fraud and a suspicious troublemaker. At the same time, King ended up trapped in a misunderstanding he didn’t cause, and, to make things worse, he keeps finding himself stalked by monsters at every turn, with his fame becoming an unbearable burden more than a privilege;

for Garou, his battle against “unfairness”, referenced in his introduction, is the driving force of his character arc and his crusade against the status quo;

Fubuki, whose powers destined her to greatness but lived under the shadow of her sister, an anomaly of the esper world (Chapter 50).

Even outside of that, there are other recurring elements that encompass all the characters featured in this lengthy, multi-focal “prologue”. For example, King and Fubuki’s mini-arcs, aside from establishing the characters themselves, illustrate the flaws, dysfunctional sides, and shortcomings of the association our main characters work for. The Hero Association is a corrupt organization plagued by rookie crushing, rivalries and flawed and sometimes dangerous individuals - all things that, to a certain extent, justify Garou’s criticism of heroes and the society sustaining them. Additionally, and much like Saitama, both King and Fubuki are living proof (in their own ways) of the unreliability of the HA’s ranking system as a way to gauge “strength” and the individual value of its heroes: if King was granted his placement in S-Class simply because of a massive misunderstanding, Fubuki deliberately chooses to stay way below her actual level, in a “safer” environment with no challenges.

As for their impact on the series, every one of the three newcomers will have a significant role to play in the all-out war over the ruins of Z-City:

Garou is the main character/antagonist of the saga, whose journey constitutes the backbone and emotional core of the story;

King, an ordinary man that somehow ended up being considered the strongest hero of humanity, and Fubuki, the B-Class Rank 1 and the leader of one of the biggest factions of the HA while also an esper with a mysterious past that will resurface during the Z-City’s battle, are two significant additions to Saitama’s group and expand his circle of positive influence in the HA, bringing entirely new side-plots and endearing dynamics to the table.

With the conclusion of the last mini-arc, we enter the events leading to the Monster Association arc. After Fubuki is introduced and Garou hunts down Tank Top Master and co., in fact, the Monster Association makes its entrance by rescuing the Hero Hunter right when Fang, Bomb and Genos put him into a corner. This is what leads to the events taking place in Z-City. With the debut of a group of monsters capable of rivaling the S-Class Heroes and keeping them busy while Garou develops in character and power over the course of the crisis, the chessboard is complete and the spectacle can finally start.

Since Fubuki’s moments in the MA’s conflict are inextricably linked to her introduction, just like the MA arc itself can’t be separated from its “prologue”, I think it is necessary to take a (very) brief look at Fubuki’s first appearance in the series and the setup it provides for her involvement in the MA arc.

Fubuki’s Introduction Arc: Establishing an Underdog.

Before the encounter between Fubuki and Saitama, it’s worth pointing out the general perception people have in the setting of the series of our protagonist and his “heroics”:

Chapter 19 (this and the pages that follow with Tank Top Tiger);

Chapter 22: 1, 2 and the last few pages from the same chapter;

the entirety of Chapter 23 (in particular the pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6);

Chapter 31, where Saitama pretends to be exploiting his colleagues’ heroism: 1, 2, 3.

The examples above paint Saitama, in the eyes of the public, as a troublemaking rookie hero rumored to steal other heroes’s achievements to rank up and profit from their efforts. Therefore, for Fubuki, who formed a group in order to maintain and secure her rank and whose permanence in B-Class is motivated by the unreachable first spots of the upper classes and their harsher competition, press like this is bad news. We do know, in fact, thanks to the dialogue in the apartment at the end of this arc (EDIT: I wrote a post about this scene), that Fubuki is well informed about other heroes and the rumors surrounding them (like the Three Disciples of Atomic Samurai and Amai Mask) and in Chapter 47 Fubuki herself states that she keeps an eye on the heroes who impress her.

With similar rumors circling around this hero skyrocketing through the ranks and the voices painting him as a troublemaker, Fubuki, worried for her status, decides to pay a visit to Saitama’s apartment and deal with this “threat”. This marks the starting point of her journey within the series.

Having met the man, the recruitment attempt goes south when Saitama expresses his disregard for rank and factions, firmly refusing to join the group (Chapter 47). Fubuki doesn’t take that too well (Chapter 47: 1 and 2; Chapter 48). In the “fight” that follows, Saitama sees right through the façade, showing the cracks and the frailty - clearly displayed in Fubuki’s inner monologue - of the surrogate sense of realization Fubuki created for herself in a challenge-free environment (B-Class and the group). Upset by her egoistical obsession for rank and factions, in a reality where humanity is facing constant world-ending threats, Saitama warns the esper about the kind of future awaiting her (Chapter 48: 1 and 2), predicting a scenario that Fubuki will soon experience, where her status as B-Class Rank 1, her group, and all her illusions of security won’t matter: it’s foreshadowing for the role Garou will play in her character arc, something I will return to later. The “big fish in a small pond” strategy may have worked so far and granted Fubuki results while sparing her perils and failures, but this bubble world is only a frail and temporary protection that prevents Fubuki from facing reality and her demons, on top of causing harm to others and their work as heroes.

After having used to no avail her telekinesis, which didn’t even cause Saitama to flinch, Fubuki’s sudden and uncharacteristic reliance on physical strength, completely at odds with her fighting style and behavior in battle as the series will consistently demonstrate (more on this later), reveals how, at this point, her assault is nothing but a desperate act of frustration and powerlessness against an opponent she can’t beat, something she is painfully aware of. There is nothing Fubuki can do against this insurmountable obstacle that speaks unpleasant truths: her tears in Chapter 48 reveal how fully aware Fubuki is of being completely outmatched by Saitama, who, she believes, is going to dismantle everything she built and take from her all her achievements.

But then, the situation takes an unexpected turn when Genos and Sonic’s battle interrupts the “fight” between Fubuki and Saitama, with the latter now dragged into another conflict enraging right in front of his house. It’s in this instance, as she witnesses Saitama take down an S-Class criminal without breaking a sweat, that Fubuki realizes how much of an outlier Saitama really is: this feat is the final proof that Saitama truly “isn’t normal”, as she suspected all along and learned during the battle, and that there is more to this hero than what might appear at a first glance. After Sonic’s defeat, we are finally back at Saitama’s apartment. It’s here that Fubuki starts to be observed from a more sympathetic angle, and so the reasons behind the B-Class esper’s actions are finally addressed: feeling smothered for her entire life by her sister’s extraordinary telekinesis and wanting to be number one. Despite her brilliant intellect, physical strength (“体力”) and incredible psychic powers, the immense telekinetic potential of Tatsumaki always loomed over Fubuki’s life. Fubuki knows that, even with all her aforementioned talents, she is unable to overcome solely by herself this single but significant advantage Tatsumaki has over her: the overwhelming telekinesis Tatsumaki was born with. For this reason, the younger esper decided to create an organization that could level the playing field between them and help increase Fubuki’s chance of success. Future chapters will reveal how much, much more there is to topics only “teased” here (like the real nature of the sisters’s relationship, their conflict and their past, etc.), but, for now, this is the essential groundwork for what is yet to come. During their talk, King pays a visit to Saitama and this allows us to learn about yet another side of the B-Class esper: by seeing Saitama’s (S-Class) acquaintances and their casual and friendly interactions, Fubuki wonders if Saitama will allow her to be part of this strange group of people, unlike any she has ever seen before. This page (and the fourth panel in particular), not coincidentally placed at the very end of the arc, contains, unfiltered and unconcealed by the façade (it’s a thought bubble after all), Fubuki’s inner longing for human bonds, an overarching theme that ties together and encompass her entire character arc - the Esper Sisters arc, in particular, deals with this.

With that being said, from the perspective of a first-time reader, by the time the hero raid starts and Saitama’s group involvement appears to be inevitable, we have only seen Fubuki in a handful of scenarios, as significant as they might be. We have never observed Fubuki in action as a hero in a serious situation. From her reactions to Genos and Sonic and her comments on Amai Mask, Tatsumaki and King (Chapter 50), we may conclude she isn’t a particularly impressive asset at the HA’s disposal. The dismissive attitude and the comments of other characters, coupled with her concerns about the battle occurring underground between heroes and monsters (Chapters 62-66), cast a shadow of doubt on Fubuki’s potential as well. Furthermore, prior to Sitch’s call, Fubuki’s chunni antics during the Hot Pot seem to suggest she talks big in non-dangerous scenarios while being completely useless otherwise. From this first impression and from what is said about her, we may guess Fubuki just hides behind her subordinates and exploits others for her gain without having the strength to sustain herself in a critical situation like the one our characters are about to experience. Sure, there are instances where it is hinted at the fact that Fubuki is no mere B-Class:

like this one (Chapter 24), the first reference to Fubuki in the series,

or this, always from Genos (Chapter 50),

or this line from Tatsumaki’s during her battle with Psykos (Chapter 62),

but these “hints” are buried under remarks that seem to dismiss Fubuki’s prowess and her overall utility on the battlefield. So, while the introduction arc established this new character and her storyline, there are still many things left (purposely) in the dark, leaving Fubuki’s role in the series a question mark - King, the other new member of the group, is another wild card as well. What can we expect from Fubuki as the Saitama group’s participation in the war draws near? It’s easy to write her off as someone you can’t rely on the moment the situation goes south and a hindrance to the powerful S-Class heroes accompanying her.

A “B-Class” Underdog in an “S-Class” Crisis.

But that is not what happens. In Fubuki’s case, ONE didn’t fall into the trappings and the clichés usually associated with female characters, only useful as healers/support to their male colleagues and utterly helpless on their own, barely relevant in the plot and lacking any agency whatsoever. Quite the opposite, in fact.

But let’s go in order.

While the heroes sent by the HA commence their mission against the monsters, the Saitama group, completely unaware of the whole thing, has gathered at Saitama’s apartment and is having Hot Pot. Here Fubuki’s lack of experience in normal social settings is demonstrated by the completely out-of-touch gimmicks she employs in order to fit in and improve her standing. Why this behavior? For a multitude of reasons. First of all, she is in an unfamiliar environment while subjected to social norms she is completely foreign to - later in this post I will discuss Fubuki's friendless and sheltered backstory. On top of that, if we look at it from the perspective of the character, Fubuki sits at the table from a position of total disadvantage:

she is at Saitama’s apartment, the hero she tried unsuccessfully to recruit. Furthermore, not only did Saitama refuse to join the group, but he also displayed a level of power worthy of an S-Class Hero (as Fubuki learned in Chapter 49);

she is surrounded by his acquaintances;

she is outranked by pretty much everyone, save Bomb (not a hero) and Saitama - and while one of the reasons Fubuki is drawn to the place is due to how power, rank and status do not seem to matter, those concepts are still so deeply ingrained in her mind that she feels the need to put up appearances and resort to her habits when dealing with other people; after all, it’s too early for Fubuki to get over this mindset, which wouldn’t make sense at this stage of her character arc;

as far as she knows (aside from Bomb), all of them are stronger than her (for the same reasons I explained in the previous point);

none of these peope are bound to her by a boss/subordinate relationship, and the circumstances of this “gathering”, aside from being all colleagues/heroes, aren’t related to work reasons.

From her point of view, the only way to navigate these tricky waters is to try to appear “powerful” in order to be accepted and respected. Adopting the Fubuki’s group leader persona is, for the character, the way out of her disadvantageous position. At first glance she might come off as arrogant by doing so, but in reality it is the opposite: even if she takes pride in her own telekinesis, Fubuki recognizes that alone it still isn’t enough in a world of “monsters”; Fubuki is profoundly insecure about her own capabilities, bordering on (as the Esper Sisters clearly shows) a lack of self-worth. The existence of the group, staying in B-Class and the safe approaches she takes in life denounce how afraid she is to be reminded of being “weak” (which is how she actually sees herself) and being perceived as "inferior” by other people. The act isn’t a delusional attempt at recruiting the people around her but rather an overcompensation for her lack of confidence and strength. The façade covers these weaknesses, prevents the outside world from peeking into what is hidden underneath the surface and displays an image of superiority and power. Likewise, under the guise of the façade even Fubuki’s desire to be allowed into the group is reshaped in these interactions with the others into her pretending to “admit” Saitama and co. into the “Fubuki’s group”, which covers and reverses her desire for human contact in a way that “protects” Fubuki from otherwise coming off as “weak” - she actually wants to be accepted in it and for Saitama to permit her to become part of them, because the group represents an oasis of ordinarity and healthy, equal and friendly human bonds she always lacked in her life, and yet she can’t help but resort to the protective, faux persona because that it’s the only way she knows to interact with people, since there are no other precedents in her life, no previous knowledge or life examples on how to befriend others and behave in this kind of context. It could appear contradictory, but ultimately it’s a psychological defensive mechanism Fubuki displays in order to justify and strengthen her position, especially (but not exclusively) in the presence of people who outclass her, as in this case. That said, we do get to see a glimpse of sincerity from Fubuki when she asks Genos about his relationship with Saitama - previously, in Chapter 48, learning about a S-Class being a disciple of a B-Class left Fubuki completely astonished. Fubuki receives no answer from the cyborg, but her question denounces her eagerness to learn more about the group she desires to become part of (Chapter 50) and that, at the same time, seems to subvert any rule of human relationships she knows of. This exchange also highlights Fubuki and Genos’s exceptional phrasing skills, so there is that too.

Anyway. The (relatively) peaceful dinner is then interrupted by the increasing evidence that something strange is going on underground, deep below the surface of Z-City. Upon hearing strange noises coming from the neighborhood, Saitama is the first to leave the apartment, in search of the culprit. Later, Fubuki senses Tatsumaki’s telekinesis and realizes how her sister is exerting more power than usual (Chapter 62); a few moments later, Sitch’s call confirms her worst fears (Chapter 62 and Chapter 66): something serious is happening and it involves Tatsumaki and the other S-Class Heroes. With these developments, Fubuki immediately drops her façade, as evidenced by the changes in her demeanor. During this arc, the leader/recruitment shtick will never reappear (not even once) and Fubuki will never try to boss around her S-Class colleagues or attempt to recruit them because the luxury of fooling around or losing focus is something she cannot afford in a scenario like the one the group is about to face, whose gravity is perfectly clear to the B-Class (Chapter 66). She also will never act cocky or overconfident either (aside from employing it as a strategy against Psykos), and for this reason, she will never take on the role of the goofy comic relief of the arc. Naturally, even in these worrisome times, Fubuki still retains her distinct personality and psychological habits. In Chapter 69, in fact, the esper once again puts up a “front” with Genos, but, unlike the “Hot Pot” shaenenigans, here she is simply remarking the value of her actions to someone who is stronger than her, while she is still maintaining the focus on the situation at hand (I already talked about this sequence at the beginning of this post).

In the following events, Fubuki is one of the heroes who will distinguish herself the most out of those taking part in the battle and her efforts will be vital for the final outcome of the arc. Dropped into a war zone with little information at her disposal, at a time when all the top-ranked heroes suffered inglorious defeats against the Monster Association’s Cadres, Fubuki ends up being the one who single-handedly defeated the leader of the Monster Association in one of the major fights of the arc - I talked about her accomplishments, as well as other stuff, here. ONE purposefully introduced a character who is insecure about herself, overly cautious and unadventurous, and threw her in a desperate situation where her strength and abilities could shine without anyone else interfering. At the same time, ONE took away from Fubuki all her psychological reassurances, her group, her plans, and her careful preparations for a mission. Fubuki has nothing to fall back on, and she gets separated from the Saitama’s group early on too. During the arc, the esper is essentially by herself, left to her telekinesis and wits. But even when she was together with Fang, Bomb and Genos, instead of hiding behind them or relying on her companions and taking credit for what they performed in her place, Fubuki proved her value without ever becoming a liability or turning into a damsel in distress they have to keep an eye on. Instead of acting like a delusional aspirant leader, Fubuki understood her position and followed her companion’s orders/directions without question (Chapter 69). Despite all her glaring flaws and issues, Fubuki is a hero and acts as one when the situation requires it - for example, when Genos, Fang, Bomb and Fubuki found themselves in front of the proverbial Threshold Guardian of the Monster Association, Overgrown Rover, Fubuki’s first thoughts were directed toward eliminating the mysterious being before it could reach the surface and endanger innocent lives. To be fair, Fubuki isn’t the only example of this. Keeping company to her, the MA arc contains several other examples of characters subverting our expectations and playing a surprisingly major role in the battles: in regard to “rank”, there is Amai Mask who is “only” the A-Class Rank 1, yet his exploits and performance in the arc put to shame the vast majority of the S-Class (Chapter 78), who outrank him; for “power levels”, King is only an ordinary (or below ordinary) human being strength wise, the very opposite of what people believe him to be, nevertheless he was able to hold down a group consisting of four Dragon Level Threats and buy enough time for the other heroes to show up. It’s worth noting that King, Fubuki and Amai Mask’s unexpected and surprising intervention all happen back-to-back (Chapters 73-74) right after the defeat of the strongest and highest-ranked heroes on the scene (the S-Class Rank 2, Tatsumaki, and the S-Class Rank 3, Silver Fang) that occurred in the chapters preceding their entrance.

On the other hand, during the MA arc, there are multiple instances of Fubuki being underestimated for the B-Class Rank and her supposed negligible strength, which serve to cement and reinforce her status as an “underdog”:

Genos didn’t even take Fubuki into account when assessing the strength of the group for the upcoming battles (Chapter 66);

after coming face-to-face with Tatsumaki’s power (Chapter 62), Psykos completely dismissed Fubuki’s telekinesis and later mocked her former president when the two reunited in Chapter 74;

stating that the monsters’s leader shouldn’t be someone who has trouble with a “B-Class lackey”, Homeless Emperor and the other Cadres abandoned Psykos to herself (Chapter 74);

all of the above is given a poetic comeuppance:

Fubuki saved Genos from a Dragon Level Threat (Overgrown Rover) that otherwise would have killed him (Chapter 69);

Psykos took down Tatsumaki rather easily in the end and played with her prey, enjoying the torture she was unleashing upon the now helpless HA’s ultimate weapon (Chapter 71), only to be utterly beaten by Fubuki;

Homeless Emperor ended up subjected to the same treatment he reserved for his former leader right on the next page, when Zombieman caught the human Cadre off guard (and contrary to Psykos, Homeless Emperor didn’t even put up a fight against the hero).

Fubuki also plays the role of the underdog not only as a B-Class but also as a “member” of the Saitama’s group too, whose members consist of:

the past his prime martial artist who trained the Hero Hunter and failed to capture him,

Fang’s older brother, who isn’t even a hero;

the fraud hero who is mistakenly believed to be the Strongest Man;

the “second choice” esper herself;

and, finally, the new rookie S-Class Hero.

It’s a ragtag group of “outsiders” who were informed about the situation at the last moment and so joined the fight late, only to make the difference just when the mighty S-Class sent by the HA failed their task due to the overreassurance and uncooperativeness of some of its heroes.

In any case.

Fubuki’s and Tatsumaki’s relationship is also re-contextualized (or, better yet, clarified) during the MA arc. Chapter 70, in fact, justifies Fubuki’s wary attitude toward her sister with a concise and effective demonstration of what Tatsumaki is capable of doing at any given time: after detecting a connection between Psykos and Fubuki’s telekinesis (Chapter 62), Tatsumaki decided to suddenly drag the MA’s headquarters to the surface with barely any concern for the heroes or the hostage, and that simply due to her obsessive attitude toward her sister. As for Fubuki herself, this chapter (and, retroactively, her statements about Tatsuamki at Saitama’s apartment) go to show that hers isn’t a mere “inferiority complex”: Fubuki is actually scar(r)ed and afraid of Tatsumaki (Chapter 62: 1 and 2; Chapter 70: 1, 2, 3; Chapter 71), for the latter being a time bomb ready to explode at any given moment, barely held together by a childish and fickle temper. This is clearly shown effectively by every instance of Fubuki taking notice of her sister. In Chapter 62, the sole presence of Tatsumaki’s nearby completely changes Fubuki’s state of mind and mood at Saitama’s apartment. In Chapter 71 Fubuki doesn’t even consider the possibility of Tatsumaki being in danger against the Cadres, but her to be the source of danger. In both occasions, when she senses her sister in Chapter 62 and when she advice Genos to stay underground, Fubuki is clearly more afraid and unsettled at the prospect of having her sister around than to deal with monsters. Actually, she refers to Tatsumaki as “monster” when the base is ripped apart and lifted to the surface. Her concerns toward Tatsumaki isn’t isolated though: the members of the Saitama’s group themselves express reproval and criticism for the S-Class esper’s careless actions, echoing Fubuki’s concerns (1, 2). The narrative is pretty explicit at portraying Fubuki’s opinion of her sister not something biased or unjustified, but shared by the rest of the cast and based on factual reasons. This is top-notch build up to the next arc that it still makes very intuitive the type of relationship between the sisters and their estranged past even without showing anything about their backstory. The Esper Sisters’s arc will delve deeper on the subject, revealing the roots of Fubuki’s traumas and exploring how Tatsumaki’s twisted ideas (spawned, in turn, by her own traumas and by an extreme and literal interpretation of Blast’s words) affected Fubuki’s life for the worse, as well as plenty other topics.

That said, it’s worthy taking a look at Tatsumaki’s role during the events of the Monster Association. While Tatsumaki’s immense telekinesis is highlighted throughout the arc, it is also significant how the Rank 2 Hero utterly failed at dealing with Psykos and the Dragons: by bragging about how she was going to kill every single one of the MA’s Cadres, criticizing her colleagues for not having already eliminated them, and boasting about taking all the glory for the successful operation (Chapter 70), in a single excruciating instant Tatsumaki lost her chances at ending the entire arc early, and was unceremoniously taken down by Psykos (Chapter 71: 1, 2) before she could do anything against the Dragons - at the start of the arc, Tatsumaki was throwing a tantrum insulting her colleagues (Chapter 58: 1, 2 and 3) because she believed she could handle the entire monster organization all by herself and believed that there was no need for reinforcements. As a result, while the Cadres were left completely unscathed and had the time to reorganize (now reunited to their leader), the scattered and injured heroes were trapped beneath the unstable debris of Z-City, confused and unaware of the state of the mission: Tatsumaki’s actions benefitted the monsters far more than the HA, to the point where the Hero team would have lost the battle if it hadn’t been for outside factors cleaning up her mess. In the wake of Tatsumaki’s defeat and the extraordinary but short-lived Fang counterattack, just when King’s antics were losing their hold on the Dragons, the “second choice” esper, the “weaker Witch Sister”, Fubuki, is the one who puts a stop to the MA leader’s S-Class demolition spree, right when Psykos was an inch away from victory.

Before getting to this part, there is something I haven’t addressed yet.

I haven’t mentioned one seemingly minor but important detail from Chapter 55 that is significant for what follows, so I think now is the right time to talk about it: after Fang, Bomb and Genos failed at stopping Garou, who was rescued by the sudden appearance of the Monster Association, the group reunited at Saitama’s apartment, where they discussed the recent events together with Fubuki. During the talk, Fubuki guessed the existence of a leader behind the monster attack. In the following chapters, her statements are proven correct: the Monster Association, more than an ensemble of monsters working together toward a goal, is an organization ruled by a single leader (Psykos) that acts as the mind behind its organization and the activities of her underlings, who, otherwise, wouldn’t be as cooperative and well organized without her supervision. As for how the monsters fare as a team without the direct presence of a leader on the battlefield, we later see how Royal Ripper, Bug God and Senior Centipede fighting against Garou without cooperating or properly working together resulted in the death of the Centipede while the other two, although victorious, were reduced to a sorry state (the dialogue box from Royal Ripper in the third panel of the page); or what occurred to the Cadres once Psykos was taken out of the picture (more on this later). All this evidence proves that monsters are indeed unwilling (or incapable) of cooperating without the presence of someone (a human esper, in this case) pulling the strings behind the scenes - and even then, sometimes, the mysterious beings are unruly even with an authoritative figure commanding them (e.g., how the ugly kid was kidnapped by Royal Ripper against Psykos’s will). It is a small thing, sure, but it proves Fubuki capable of deducing schemes or patterns from a few clues. Her victory against Psykos depends partly on Fubuki’s intelligence and her ability to exploit her opponent’s flaws. By the way, Fubuki correctly identifies the mysterious enemy attacking her at the end of Chapter 77/beginning of Chapter 78 as the Hero Hunter Garou, despite she never having encountered him before, as the narrator points out.

And now, finally, Fubuki’s highlight of the arc, her battle against Psykos.

Let’s start from its inception, writing-wise: tying the newly introduced “B-Class” esper to the leader of the Monster Association, who is therefore revealed to be a human (with nice implications for the overall human/monster narrative), not only does wonders for economy of storytelling, but also places the B-Class newcomer, Fubuki, in a very “plot relevant” position, providing a personal reason for her participation in the arc beyond its original significance once her connection to the leader of the villains is brought up, with the further consequence of Psykos developing into something more resembling an actual character compared to the mere evil mastermind role she fulfilled prior. The fact that this happens shortly (27 chapters) after Fubuki’s introduction also avoids the risk of throwing Fubuki into a bubble of irrelevancy needlessly stalling her storyline before it could reach a turning point, such as this battle.

Regarding the lead-up to this battle, the lack of action scenes starring Fubuki before the MA (save the one with Saitama) preserved her status as an “underdog” and maximized the impact of Fubuki’s actions during her involvement in the Z-City battles. For example, shielding Genos and withstanding point blanck several blasts from Overgrown Rover proves Fubuki to be a force to be reckoned with. Furthermore, this “feat” adds further believability to her chances of fighting a Dragon Level esper and winning. Showing what is strictly necessary for a character and keeping vague what isn’t required at the moment (or that could be more effectively disclosed little by little) is sometimes beneficial for a story and can lead to satisfying payoffs down the line.

In this particular case, Chapter 74 is where the payoff starts to bring a narrative “revenue” to the lead-up preceding it.

In one of the tensest moments in the entire series, when none of the top heavy-hitter heroes were left standing and Psykos was about to launch an all-out assault against King,

Fubuki makes her entrance, halting once again the Dragon’s charge. We are left wondering: what is Fubuki going to do against Psykos, the leader of the Moster Association who put on its knees the Hero Association’s S-Class team? Psykos is of the same opinion, already savoring the flavor of the upcoming revenge. While the Dragon Level esper mocks her opponent and rejoices at the prospect of eliminating both Witch Sisters on the same night, Fubuki, unmoved by these provocations, unleashes a powerful psychic attack against the other esper, leaving Psykos screaming in pain in front of her subordinates, who promptly desert their leader.

In the battle that follows, Fubuki gives proof of her talent and mastery of her telekinesis through the use of Psychic Whirlwind, a technique that allows her to manipulate the direction of her psychic waves. For anyone else (minus a certain esper) this technique would appear as nothing more than a pointless discovery, a fascinating but ultimately useless and inapplicable invention. Still, the B-Class came up with a use for this finding of hers, in particular in battles against other espers: by disrupting the other telekinesis user’s psychic signals in a swirling maelstrom of her own waves, Fubuki nullifies their attacks (1, 2, 3) allowing her to wait for the most opportune moment to deliver the “finishing” blow. A technique that favors ingenuity over raw output, prudence over recklessness, flexibility and innovation over mere brute strength, truly represents Fubuki’s style, her way of fighting and her personality. In OPM we are used to battles ending in a “stomp” due to the mere power gap between opponents, but here the staggering difference is on the “technique”/skill side of things and Fubuki obtains victory without gaining any power-up or “zenkai” boost of sort over the course of the battle, but solely thanks to her superior telekinesis skills and wits. It is even rarer, especially in this arc, for a character to be assured of their victory, boast about it during the battle like Fubuki does here, and then win.

On why this clash is fundamental for the arc, structure-wise, suffice it to say that if Psykos wasn’t taken out of the picture and her authority undermined, the heroes would have found themselves facing another Dragon Level Threat, and an esper at that. Even worse, a Dragon Level Threat who leads, coordinates and keeps united with lethal effectiveness the other Cadres. In a similar scenario, Psykos, unlike the more short-sighted and less tactically skilled subordinates (ready to backstab each other at the first chance), wouldn’t have allowed Zombieman to restrain Homeless Emperor and would have coordinated the Dragons against what was left of the hero party; furthermore, none of the emerging heroes had what it takes to deal with this formation (Black Sperm, Evil Natural Water, Homeless Emperor and Psykos herself): reaching the surface would have culminated in a blood bath for the heroes. By the way, Tatsumaki was also able to recover and rejoin the fight later solely because Fubuki lured away the enemy capable of dealing with espers (Chapter 73), otherwise, she would have kept her role as the MA leader’s personal stress relief toy for the rest of the battle. The entire arc would have taken a completely different, and plenty more gruesome, direction if it weren’t for Fubuki - obviously, she is not the only deciding factor, but undoubtedly one of the major ones.

But what makes this battle interesting is the story of the two espers and how ONE takes advantage of this battle to explore Fubuki’s character. In this regard, perhaps the “boldest” decision made by ONE during Fubuki’s moment of spotlight is to not “sugarcoat” or “whitewash” her personality but to stay true to the character: the duel starts, as we have seen, with Fubuki resorting to an underhanded strike against Psykos, a sneak attack that catches off guard the other esper during the pre-duel conversation, honor and fairness be damned. Truly a classic hero’s move, right? And that’s just the beginning.

During their reunion and the battle that follows, Fubuki never attempts to talk no jutsu Psykos out of her evil schemes with a speech that exposes the inconsistencies of her adversary’s thesis and gives the evildoer a new purpose and a new understanding of life through some kind of life-changing advice. Fubuki’s “argument” against Psykos is, instead, a plain admission of what her true intentions were at the time: she opposed Psykos simply because of egoism. Fubuki reveals that, when the alarmed members of the "Society for the Study Supernatural" approached and informed her, the president of the group, about Psykos’s plans to use the club for exterminating humankind, her real thoughts were at the time: if the weak and ordinary people have all disappeared, how could she (Fubuki) define herself? What makes one strong, if the weak are no more? All Fubuki’s struggles and efforts would have been for nothing if that occurred. By protecting those “inferior” to her, Fubuki preserved a gap that makes her tower over those who, by existing, allow the esper to standout. To Fubuki, reality appears to be made of contrasts and opposites that exist solely to distinguish the extraordinary beings from the masses: those who are special/”witches” from the common “folk”, the strong from the weak, the leader from the subordinates, those at the top and anyone else below. Furthermore, from her perspective, every interaction between individuals is nothing but a fight for supremacy, which inevitably leads to a polarization of roles, dividing the “contestants” into two rigid “groups”: on one hand, those who win or are capable of imposing their will (the “strong”) and, on the other, those who lose/submit/become followers or subordinates (the “weak”); as a result, when they aren’t actively competing one against the other, humans can coexist solely by occupying different spots within a “boss-subordinate relationship” and never on an equal ground - hence her surprise when Saitama and co. proved this false. What matters, then, is not to be on the lower spot of said asymmetrical “relationship”: only by being “strong” a human being can avoid the discrimination and the suffering reserved for the “weak”, which includes not only those who don’t possess enough strength but also those who refuse their powers. In the Childhood Flashback (Chapter 99), a very young Fubuki used her psychic abilities solely for self-defense and didn’t try to fight her classmates, asking them instead to stop harassing her; that only encouraged the bullies to torment her even more. Tatsumaki, on the other hand, “gained” the respect and the fear of Fubuki’s bullies due to her immense powers and her lack of restrictions, which included throwing a kid into space and lifting an entire school full of children - and thus scaring away, from Fubuki, not only the bullies but anyone else too (be it from school or otherwise), effectively isolating Fubuki with the only company of a traumatized and unstable sister. If dialogue is an invitation to further abuses and the unwillingness to use one’s potential against others is perceived as a lack of strength, the only alternative is to learn the language spoken by everyone: violence. Therefore, in this toxic reality, what determines right and wrong, good and bad is the extent of one’s own power and their propensity to use it against others. When we look at the (very few) human interactions Fubuki was exposed to in her life, prior to her introduction arc, these were all regulated by violence or disparity in power, and Fubuki’s sole role model taught and actively encouraged her to employ force against others (which is how Tatsumaki herself deals with any problem), giving an example of how it’s done, as shown in Chapter 99. The kids who called her a “witch” and mistreated her (Chapter 99), her sister who always used her telekinesis as a way to deal with others (Chapter 99), Psykos with her lofty world-domination goals and her method of recruiting/subduing esper groups (Chapter 77) and, later, even the Hero Association itself, where rookie-crushing is commonly practiced and heroes are ranked in a highly competitive environment, where the success of one goes at the expense of another: it’s a life-long confirmation that might makes right. Divergence/differences were all settled on who held more power and any other method of resolving a disagreement was nothing but a display of weakness. Being ruthless against any opposition and being quick to resort to force were always rewarded and encouraged, being cold, distant and aloft were signs of strength; any appreciation and respect from others always came from the power one possessed and the effectiveness of its usage. The shy kid, who avoided employing her telekinesis for offense and asked her bullies to stop instead of attacking them (despite having the power to do so), was only a prey deserving of being picked on and her “fault” was appearing weak and refusing to use her innate talents “correctly”. Fubuki only started gaining respect and admiration from others when she embraced Tatsumaki’s advice and used her telekinesis against others or as a display of power - as we see in high school. Therefore, in the flashback, Fubuki is doing nothing but putting into practice what she learned back then, following the same “reasoning” (retaliating to an incoming threat) and applying the same method of taking care of the problem (force) that the world taught her. Consequently, Fubuki then concluded: “Psykos is my enemy and enemies must be destroyed”. After rationalizing the situation, identifying her vice-president as her enemy and remembering how to deal with threats in the only way she knows, Fubuki confronted an insane Psykos in the club room. The vice president, still in the middle of her delerious rant, tried to find Fubuki’s support against the other members of the club. In the club room, instead, Fubuki proceeded to fight, defeat and seal her powers, leaving Psykos screaming in pain and vowing revenge.

A fitting backstory for an arc where the dichotomy between humans and monsters, heroes and villains, is questioned and explored. However, there is one more thing I still want to add about Fubuki’s monologue and how it lines up with the rest of her characterization. I think that her actual reasoning to protect the “weak” is a bit more complex and nuanced than what Fubuki let’s out, especially when we consider her backstory. In the previous paragraph, I talked about Fubuki’s upbringing: no one would grow up normally in similar conditions, especially not when every single experience piles up and enforces such toxic ideas with no alternative being ever presented to the character - after all, the first (and only) positive influence that entered her life, Saitama, only appeared when Fubuki was already an adult, long after the high school incident. Similarly, no one who suffered continuous abuse and discrimination from the “ordinary people” for being different and was also isolated by a toxic parental figure who considers non-esper “inferior” would have a high opinion of common people - the “weak” Fubuki is referring to in the flasback. Tatsumaki, in fact, has rather extreme views on this matter, believing that those who possess telekinesis powers are special and inherently superior to ordinary human beings (Chapter 99) and those views (like being inherently superior due to genetics and powers) were obviously projected into Fubuki: Fubuki’s speech at Saitama’s apartment is quite indicative of this (Chapter 50). Someone with a past like this is more than likely to have a warped and unordinary way to perceive and relate to people, and Fubuki is no exception. With that being said, we shouldn’t forget a crucial aspect of Fubuki’s character: her longing for human bonds and the fact that she still decided to become a hero and risk her life for the sake of others later in her life. How can the above statements be reconciled with those sides of her? Well, Fubuki justifies and rationalizes her need for other people by using as a “template” the only significant example of a relationship she ever had in her life, the one with her sister; this time, however, with Fubuki in her sister’s role. This means that Fubuki flaunts a cold and aloft exterior, pretending to be more uncaring and merciless than she is - which doesn’t mean that she is a saint, see how she promptly and ruthlessly dealt with Psykos and Saitama, for example. Fubuki’s philosophy belief system is informed on the criteria that being ruthless and powerful is what a human being should strive for, whereas showing empathy and avoiding violence are the marks of the weak, something she should hide in order to not appear vulnerable to others. Coincidentally, this trait is also shared by Tatsumaki, who similarly avoids showing any signs of weakness in front of her younger sibling (Chapter 104). Therefore, recontextualizing her actions in this light and taking pride in having adopted an egoistical point of view is not a source of shame for her, because the moral system that the environment she lived in inculcated in her doesn’t register her actions as regrettable but actually encourages and enforces this mentality, persuading Fubuki that coldly crushing opposition and standing atop of others is the only way to live, unless she wants to become a victim. Nonetheless, even with this mindset, what at first sight might appear to be cold and stern behavior conceals a more benevolent and less harsh side of the esper, like with her group (for example, in chapter 105) and other people in general. For example, for how egoistical she claims to be, Fubuki doesn’t hesitate a second to take damage and risk her life for a person that was hostile to her pretty much the entire time (Genos), and, always in this battle, her first concerns were for the innocents that could be injured by Rover if the monster reached the surface. This is not what a sociopathic and cynical person would do or think of. For all those reasons, I personally believe that Fubuki choosing to fight Psykos in high school might actually represent the moment Fubuki decided, perhaps subconsciously and deep down in her soul, to become a hero, and that “sparing the weak” is how Fubuki rationalizes her desire to protect others, as warped and twisted as it sounds. Her necessity to cover up her “kinder” and “softer” side is in line with the general psychological habits of the character: applying the same psychological defense mechanism she resorts to for for human relationships even to her desire to be a hero would be perfectly consistent with mentality of the character - in a way, it’s not too dissimilar from Tatsumaki’s herself and her reasons to be a hero. Therefore, it’s not far-fetched to say that this tendency of costantly rationalizing and justifying the role and value others play in her life also factors in her monologue and explains why she stepped in and protected innocents from a wannabe genocider, albeit in such a contorted way. A clue that seems to point into this direction is that the detail about Psykos’ telekinesis “surpassing Fubuki’s”, thus prompting her retalation, as a reason of their clash is something brought up solely by, well, Psykos, who happens to hold a massive inferiority complex toward the president of the club and wants to prove her superiority by taking revenge for her previous defeat. While Fubuki acknowledges her egoism, in her monologue she elaborates on her reasons and reveals that the main factor that made her stop Psykos were her aims at wiping out humanity and take out of the picture the “weak”. Fubuki doesn’t mention Psykos’ telekinesis at all and the only times she comments on them it’s in the present, in relation to her technique countering them. Surely that also factored, but the main reason Fubuki defeated Psykos were her inhuman goal, which lines up to what I wrote above.

As for the flashback itself, ONE interwines it inextricably with the battle occurring in the present, as Fubuki and Psykos’s recollection of the old days is shown to us through glimpses, hints and fragments of the past from the point of view of both Fubuki and Psykos.

This apparently innocuous panel perfectly translates visually what Psykos is stating in the balloon text, i.e., the difference in raw power between the two espers, favoring Fubuki at the time, which is symbolized by Fubuki walking far ahead of the vice president of the “Society for the Study of Supernatural”. But it underlines another, more important element: the distance on a human level between the two (but then again, future updates can always add more context to this and disprove anything written here), even before the Third Eye incident. Fubuki never pays attention to the vicepresident and she doesn’t show any interest in Psykos and what she is saying. Actually, Fubuki never talks to Psykos in the flashback, and the one above, contained in the section from Psykos’s POV, is also the only panel where the two are together and their sole “interaction” in the entirety of the flashback. What this window into Fubuki’s past reveals is a reality inhabited not by close bonds, friends or personal relationships of any kind, but only by followers, underlings and rivals. And as much as Psykos fangirls over Fubuki, throwing praise and rambling about the latter, her admiration for the president appears to come exclusivey from Fubuki’s telekinesis: every time Psykos talks about Fubuki, she is actually only talking about Fubuki’s psychic powers, never about Fubuki herself, as a person - see, for example, the panel above. It is worth adding that Psykos, even in the present, only refers to and addresses Fubuki as “president Fubuki” or simply as “the president” (“会長”), which is Fubuki’s formal title in the Society for the Study of Supernatural, and never by her name alone (not a negligible detail, I think) - it’s the same as the members of the Fubuki group, who always refer to their leader as “Miss Fubuki” and variants, but never in a more direct and informal manner. Fubuki, meanwhile, infantilizes Psykos and demeans her (for example) by employing a harsher and more hostile version of the speech patterns she employs in her interactions with her subordinates, the Fubuki group - it is worth noting that Tatsumaki does the same with Fubuki herself. All this confirms a trend in Fubuki’s life: that power is the sole value a person possesses, strength is what grants respect, recognition, and adoration from others, and hierarchies, titles and ranks serve to underline the gap between human beings. People started showing interest and respect for Fubuki (as in high school) specifically because of her abilities and because, in the case of other telekinesis users like Psykos, Fubuki’s telekinesis eclipsed theirs. Adding fuel to the fire, Psykos began catching up to Fubuki in terms of psychic output around the same time she went insane and threatened humanity (probably, as a result of the Third Eye and whatever contact she might have had with the entity known as God), which surely cemented in Fubuki the perception of others as constant threats, ready to take anything from her at any given moment, especially when the gap in power is reduced.

A couple of words need to be said about the art:

ONE does a terrific job at conveying through his drawings the unsettling and creepy atmosphere surrounding this battle. The panels with Fubuki, never so witch-like, overflow with an eerie and malevolent aura, emphasizing how intimidating she must have appeared to Psykos: like in the panel above, a figure standing on the battlefield enveloped in an ink black dress, seemingly molded out of the solidified darkness of the night, a curtain of shadows and hair strands covering her face save for the void and glowing eyes. The “because I’m an egoist” panel is also very visually striking: an almost monster-like close-up of Fubuki’s face that reflects the unheroic undertone of her speech bubble. ONE’s style, morphing to max out what the single panel is striving to express and characterized by visceral and raw, nervous, lines, perfectly translates on these pages the personal conflict at the center of the sequence. Other choices, like the near absence of other people in Fubuki and Psykos’s flashback, outside of the members of the “Society for the Study of Supernatural”, drawn as indistinct and impersonal silhouettes, and the mysterious shadowy figures of the “Invisible Hand”, drive home a sense of isolation, emptiness and alienation pervading the recollection of these characters’s lives. The lack of dialogue or real human interactions is also further reinforced, in the flashback, by the panels containing only one character at a time - with the exceptions mentioned above, like in the panel where Fubuki is seen walking far away from Psykos, giving her shoulders to us and the vice-president - and empty or human-free backgrounds, which reflect how disconnected these characters are from other human beings, too absorbed in their own cumbersome individuality that they can’t even share, in the panels, the same space with someone else. [EDIT 28/05/2023:] I was re-reading the wc and I noticed how, when a character suffers alienation and estrangement, other human beings are consistently portrayed as vague silhouettes, especially when this happens in flashbacks: aside from Fubuki, it occurs with Genus (Chapter 9) and Garou (Chapter 54: the entire flashback really, but for examples 1 and 2) [end of the EDIT]. Fubuki, surrounded by a white and void background that underlines her estrangement from the rest of the club and the concerns of its members (who lack individual features), is deeply immersed in thoughts far removed from the protests of the shapeless crowd she apparently doesn’t share (not in the same way, at least) and is separated from them, in the only panel where they are together, even visually. When she is not fangirling about the power evoked by the president’s telekinesis, Psykos rambles on and on obsessively about her delusions of world domination and the recounts of her accomplishments against mysterious esper organizations: there is no actual dialogue with the person she is talking to (Fubuki), but an interminable and uninterrupted monologue that never receives a reply or a response of any kind from the silent interlocutor. The narrative doesn’t shows us the vice president hearing Fubuki’s responses - if there were any - and in general Psykos is portrayed to be paying attention only to herself, babbling about her goals and telekinesis, with Fubuki representing solely a symbol of power to her and not an actual person; as their battle demonstrate, Psykos was so caught up in herself and her schemes that she didn’t even listen to Fubuki’s lesson about flexibility and innovations as a fundamental component of telekinesis improvement, and focused more on simply increasing her telekinesis - which, ironically enough, led to her defeat against Fubuki herself. In general, the way the flashback is presented reveals that there was no dialogue, communication or interactions at all between the two, despite Psykos being the vice president of the club: Psykos was doing her own thing, regardless of Fubuki's actual opinions, while Fubuki herself left Psykos to her own rants and took notice of the vice president only when she directly conflicted with Fubuki’s own interests. Psykos utterly shocked and surprised reaction when, in the club room, Fubuki answered to her question by ruthlessly retaliating and attacking is quite indicative of this: Psykos never actually knew Fubuki nor suspected, despite the utter disinterest shown by the president, that Fubuki wouldn’t have agreed with her plans - to be honest, Psykos also believed that the rest of the members of the club would join her too. As for Fubuki, instead of trying to comunicate with her follower and talk her out of the plan, she instantly resorted to violence and dealt with the vicepresident with no hesitation - note the logical progression from to her childhood flashback where Fubuki didn’t use force but asked her bullies to stop with a teenager Fubuki following her sister’s lesson. This flashback is a wasteland of real human bonds.

Now, let’s observe how Psykos works as a foil to Fubuki and how the two parallel each other, starting with their appearances.

The black color-themed B-Class Hero versus the Monster Association leader in white.

(love how the onomatopoeias highlight the difference in power and demeanor between the two espers: wider, “louder” and more aggresive for Psykos while smaller, “quieter” and less chaotically disposed for Fubuki)

This is no casual choice in an arc staging the most archetypal of battles, “heroes versus monsters”. Since the MA blurs (on the surface) the line between the heroes and the monsters, in this fight that is reflected both from a writing and visual standpoint; for the former it has been discussed above, while for the latter, the white versus black aesthetic of “good vs. evil” is swapped between the hero and the villain. While a white-dressed “villain” facing a “hero” wearing a black outfit surely isn’t a new concept (it really isn’t), here it is applied for the battle between a non-final antagonist and one of the members of the main cast - in Garou versus Saitama, the black and sketchy appearance of the villain fighting a white and plain caped hero reverts to a more traditional iconography. It perfectly highlights their nature as a foil and opposition. But there is more: the visual appearance of the two espers is also a callback to the chessboard allegory for the Monsters vs. Heroes battles raised by Psykos herself in Chapter 71 (and earlier by Garou in Chapter 54) and therefore here we have the clash between the white queen and her black counterpart. And just like in chess, where white moves first, Psykos appeared on the surface before Fubuki; likewise, by showing up when she did, the B-Class ended up protecting the (literal) King ( “キング”) of the HA, right when the MA Cadres were about to checkmate him.

On the telekinesis side, the two once again differ by adhering to opposite “schools of thought”:

Psykos’s high school obsession for raw power didn’t fade in adulthood, and overwhelming her enemies with direct and brutal displays of sheer psychic output is her go-to way to dispose of them. Psykos’s confidence in victory at the start of her battle against Tatsumaki, for example, hinged on the tremendous psychic powers she posses (which, she believed, were in the “territory of the Gods”); the moment she saw Tatsumaki’s actual might and how far it surpassed her estimates and telekinesis, Psykos lost her cool and started panicking (Chapter 62). That said, Psykos doesn’t exclusively rely on brute force and the webcomic proves how the leader of the Monster Association can use her mind in battle. When Garou blocked her direct attacks and found her weak spot, Psykos resorted to a distraction before instantly squashing the martial artist (Chapter 59: 1 and 2); after the initial shock, Psykos exploited Tatsumaki’s fatal flaw and took down the Hero Association trump card (Chapter 71). Furthermore, as specified several times already, Psykos is a fairly competent leader and the only one capable of leading the other Cadres effectively by coordinating her subordinates. Still, in the years between the high school clash and the battle of Z-City, Psykos focused more on increasing her telekinesis than to refine it, and and the only time Psykos’s technique is praised (or commented on at all) is in regard to the similarities it shares with Fubuki’s (Chapter 62: 1 and 2). As Fubuki versus Psykos showcases, this has three corollaries: 1) even after all these years and her new immense powers, Psykos was still inferior to Fubuki as far as telekinesis mastery goes; 2) Psykos didn’t (or was unable to) develop her "signature style”; 3) back in high school, Fubuki was already a skilled psychic, capable of teaching others about telekinesis (well, after all, the name of the club, “Society for the Study of Supernatural”, already implies this and shows how Fubuki was an experienced telekinesis user even at the time), insomuch that Psykos’s is still very much reminiscent of hers. Psykos (or the high school club in general) isn’t an isolated case: Fubuki also taught telekinesis techniques to the Fubuki Group (Chapter 99). Lastly, as a testament to the similarities between the two espers’s telekinesis, in the battle against Tatsumaki (1 and 2), Psykos uses a technique that, later in the Esper Sisters arc, will also be employed by Fubuki against her sister (Chapter 100: 1 and 2) - “Hell Cluster”.

In contrast, Fubuki, while certainly no slouch power-wise (once again from this post), prefers a more refined and sophisticated use of her psychic abilities, as evidenced by her mastery of Psychic Whirlwind. Instead of trying to match the vastness of her sister’s powers, Fubuki researched more into innovative applications of her psychic abilities in an attempt to nullify the gap between her and the older sister. As the battle proves, much to Psykos’s dismay, the MA leader’s stronger output falls short against Fubuki’s Psychic Whirlwind, and the B-Class esper’s unnerving calm adds to her frustration.

From the comparison, it’s evident how Psykos lacked originality and was always dependant from others since didn’t have the creativity or ingenuity to improve her abilities by herself, whereas Fubuki honed her skills and became an expert telekinesis user on her own, without anyone else indicating the way. Psykos is an imitator, a follower who lacks her own identity and solely driven by her desire for more power, and this is perfectly reflected in her telekinesis. All in all, Psykos preferred choice is to rely on others and follow the easiest path. Fubuki’s victory against Psykos is another example of the series proving how struggling and pouring effort into something without taking the easy route will always pay off, while using a shortcut and parassitically piggy-backing on others will backfire in the end.

But let’s keep moving forward.

Even their body language reflects their characters:

lost the smugness along with the glasses (Chapter 74), Psykos is left with uncontainable anger and staggering confusion. Psykos’s gestures are heavy and ungraceful just like the telekinesis she employs against Fubuki: her body bends forward with both arms raised in the sheer effort of keeping up the offensive with her taxing psychic attacks (examples).

On the other side of the ring, the B-Class is totally in control, and her postures range from relaxed to vigilant (these panels, for example), in an esper-like equivalent of a martial arts guard, while also flaunting a cocky and overly confident attitude like in the image above.

And so does the content of their speech bubbles: Psykos erupts in an endless catalogue of insults and death threats, declaring that, while their previous battle in highschool ended with her defeat, things won’t go the same way this time and Fubuki will be the one that will end beaten (actually, “destroyed”). The B-Class responds with taunts and cryptic ultimatums, requesting from the MA leader an immediate surrender, as if the outcome of the battle was already decided; Fubuki shows no outward surprise toward Psykos’s achievements but only contempt and dismissal, as if dealing with the kid Psykos once was, a follower and disciple that never grew up, in spite of all the years that passed - which infuriates Psykos. The temperament they exhibit here is perfectly reflective of their telekinesis’ philosophy and their characters in general. There is also how Fubuki skillfully employs her words for achieving victory. Instead of trying to justify herself or negate the true, Fubuki openly admits that she twarthed Psykos’ plans and ruined her life simply because she vicepresident was threatening the “weak” (and so Fubuki’s agenda), in order to exploit the latter anger and inferiority complex that, promptly, fall for the trap - and Fubuki expresses relief at having successfully tricked her. All the other taunts and mocking remarks also fulfill the same purpose: unnerving Psykos and inciting her into a careless assault.

But what about their respective allegiances and the role they play in them? Additionally, how do these two compare as leaders? First of all, as obvious as it is at this point, Fubuki and Psykos are tied to warring factions that mirror one another, which goes to reinforce the dualistic nature of their confrontation and how Psykos represents a narrative foil to Fubuki. Moreover, considering the position the two hold in their respective organizations, it’s clear how the tables have turned since high school: now Psykos is at the helm of an organization she founded, whereas Fubuki is only one of the many “employees” of the association she works for, the top-ranked Hero of Class B and the leader of the Fubuki group sure, but still not one of its higher-ups or key leading figures of the HA. As for their subordinates: for Psykos they are nothing more than assets (she sacrifices the Demons against the S-Class as cannon fodder in order to gauge the invasion force’s strengths and weaknesses before devising the Dragon match-ups) and there is no other relationship between her and the monsters, who are unaware of her real identity prior to Tatsumaki’s defeat; consequentially, the moment Fubuki undermined Psykos’s leadership, the MA esper was immediately abandoned by her allies, who followed Psykos simply for reasons of opportunism and not out of loyalty; similarly, in high school her genocidal plan met the protests of the members of the club (while the Third Eye made her more insane than how she already was), which goes to show how Psykos was always unable to inspire loyalty in her underlings, who abandoned her at the first disagreement/difficulty. This couldn’t be more different from Fubuki and the members of the Fubuki Group (Chapter 105) (up until now, at least), who actually matter to Fubuki on a personal level beyond her reasons to stay in B-Class, form a faction and the psychological reasurance that comes from a group; even if their relationship is still a hierarchical boss/subordinate dynamic instead of friendship, nonetheless, it is still a healthy and positive bond, as clearly shown in the Esper Sisters arc; in regard to her highschool club, Fubuki was the one the member of the “Society for the Study of Supernatural” turned to, asking to intervene against the vicepresident and deal with her mad plans.

If, instead, we consider what they accomplished for their respective factions, both espers did quite the heavy lifting for their parties. Fubuki and Psykos, in fact, turned the tides from a seemingly unavoidable defeat by taking out the worst asset from the enemy line-up when no one else in their place could have done it. I already talked about the impact Fubuki had on the arc, and when we look at Psykos, her actions achieved the same for her faction: if it weren’t for the esper, the Cadres wouldn’t have defeated Tatsumaki by themselves. By sneak attacking the S-Class psychic, Psykos basically gained the other half of the arc for the Monster Association. Later, when Fang eliminated Fuher Ugly and Gums in a matter of seconds, it was always Psykos who made possible the defeat of the powerful hero (Chapter 72: 1 and 2). Lastly, the one who managed to calm down and convince the Cadres to launch a coordinated attack against King was once again the psychic (Chapter 73 and page one of Chapter 74, already linked before). As we can observe, even in the role they played in the battles, the two espers mirror each other, and without them, their respective factions would have suffered defeat much earlier in the arc.

But Psykos’s nature as a foil doesn’t stop there. While Fubuki chose to stay in B-Class, Psykos, who started as a way weaker follower, became a Dragon Level esper and formed a powerful organization of 17 between Demon and Dragon Level Threats - the reason she became stronger and was later capable of reuniting such force, though, seems to be linked to the Third Eye and God more than to her own merits, and this “blessing” came with rampant madness, but nonetheless, the point still stands. Not yet ready and fully operational, her forces brought the HA’s strike team to its knees. Psykos demonstrates how resourcefulness and determination can lead someone from a humble starting point to impressive results, which provides the perfect contrast to Fubuki, who, talented and blessed with abilities as she is, is stifling her potential and her career under a too cautious and risk-averse mindset. Sure, there are outside factors at play, but the series criticizes Fubuki’s unwillingness to challenge herself, and her character arc (from her introduction up until the Esper Sisters) constantly pushes Fubuki out of her “bubble world”.

Conversely, Psykos represents a cautionary tale for Fubuki, her egoistical ambitions and her obsession for power, if the B-Class were to give in to her worst sides. Even before the Third Eye came into play, in fact, Psykos already intended to “rule the world from the dark” and always sought to acquire more and more power, using the club for her goals, which included submitting other esper groups, in a similar way to how Fubuki’ uses her group in B-Class (well, without the world domination part, obviously). On the subject of world domination, whether or not Fubuki agreed with her is left unanswered, but, by looking at what is shown, it’s very unlikely that she did. From what the chapter reveals, it’s only Psykos who keeps bringing up the “world domination” plan and Fubuki never shows any interest in this topic or Psykos’s rants in general - to the almost comical degree that Fubuki ignores Psykos entirely. We know that, in the present, Fubuki is trying to build up an organization that could aid and shield her from her sister, but that’s pretty much it: it would be a massive and baseless stretch to ascribe Psykos’s goals to this, as if Fubuki was following the same plans of the vice president before the latter became insane. In regard to the reason behind the creation of the “Society for the Study of Supernatural”, while it’s mostly up to speculation, I believe that Fubuki founded the club partially because of her terrible, sheltered childhood and complete lack of friends, employing for the first time here the same hierarchical structure and dynamic that we will see later on with the Fubuki group, and, also, as an organization that one day could aid her against her sister (hence why they were studying psychic powers); but again, this is more my headcanon than anything concrete. Considering how things went and how Fubuki grew up from this experience, I would argue that the fiasco and the kind of people that joined the club cemented the negative life views that Fubuki already possessed from childhood, doing additional harm to Fubuki’s already scarred outlook on life. For example, in the flashback it’s mentioned that Fubuki made people join her club simply through talk, whereas Psykos believed that wasn’t enough and that it was better to rely on telekinesis to expand the club’s numbers and submit other psychic groups with force, to the degree of actively hunting them down. It wouldn’t be absurd to conclude that Psykos further confirmed to Fubuki that human beings only interact on the basis of power, violence and hierarchies, gathering around those they consider superior and always aiming to gain more strength at the expense of others. It’s ironic, though, how Fubuki ended up applying this lesson against Psykos herself. Speaking of bad influences, many seem to be under the impression that Fubuki was manipulating and using Psykos in high school. I honestly can’t see this at all. First, because Fubuki doesn’t even interact with Psykos in the flashback - she doesn’t talk to her, much less coerce, exploit or use her in any way - and also because Psykos is shown doing things out of her own volition, while Fubuki has zero interest in her activities and appears to have no say in Psykos’ own goals. So no, Psykos doesn’t seem to have been under Fubuki’s influence, much less manipulated by the latter; Psykos was actually following her own personal, questionable goals independently from Fubuki’s will and opinions (which is, admittedly, just like the entire sequence, a great subversion of clichès on ONE’s part). All in all, the very reasons Psykos and Fubuki sought for power greatly diverges: before becoming a mere puppet, Psykos wanted to dominate the world and rule it from the shadows, whereas Fubuki gatheres people and resources to free herself from Tatsumaki. For one power is the end-point, for the other is a mean to an end. In any case, Psykos’s quest for more power led her to acquire the Third Eye, the ability to peek into the future. But that came with a price. This new ability turned Psykos into a ruthless and bloodthirsty vessel carrying on the will of a mysterious entity beyond her comprehension, which left Psykos, once defeated and unable to realize this obscure mission, a husk of her former self, whom Fubuki, in her attempt at solving this mystery, is trying to recover as of Chapter 134. It’s rather poetic how Psykos, who was a follower driven by her own particular agenda, became nothing but a puppet, a subordinate that could only follow her master’s bidding. Psykos’ search for power and her obsession for it led her to fly too close to the sun, too close to a source of power that consumed her, reducing her to a mere instrument of an obscure design. Her fate is the result of the key differences between Psykos and Fubuki: for all the warped views she possesses, in fact, Fubuki never forsook humanity, and her self-driven will and ego would have never let her become a servant of someone’s else scheme (for now, at least). This is what truly sets them apart and why Psykos represents a dark mirror to Fubuki with none of the morals to placate an insatiable lust for power (she is called Psykos for a reason, after all).

Since both Fubuki and Psykos play a major role in this arc and their battle represents one of its most significant moments, I believe that a comparison between them and the two most important characters of this saga, Garou and Saitama, is warranted, as it reveals interesting analogies, parallels and correspondences between them, not only by highlighting the similarities between the duos of foils of Saitama and Garou and Fubuki and Psykos, but also between the hero (Fubuki/Saitama) and the monster side (Psykos/Garou), while we also take into consideration how the esper sideplot mirrors the main storyline and reinforces its overall narrative.

Before going into the comparison itself, a little introduction to Saitama and Garou’s dynamic/relation is needed - Saitama-Garou’s dynamic is a topic in itself and I can’t cover it all here as this post is about Fubuki and it’s alreay long enough, so I will keep it brief. Down to their very appearances, Saitama and Garou are polar opposites in an archetypical sense, Saitama as the white-caped hero and Garou as a horned monster immersed in shadows, both inspired by a cartoon they both saw as kids, which led them down to the path of the hero as a serious “hobby” and a monster capable of overturning the traditional narrative and re-shape the world, narratively and ontologically “arch-enemies”; in this pursue, both of them followed an almost suicidal “training” in order to achieve their dream, but while one was an ordinary young man with no particular skills or abilities, the other was a genius martial arts talent; and while Saitama always stayed true to his childhood dream, Garou compromised his desire for fairness and justice, taking the “easy” route in order to fix the rotten world by choosing the side of the monster, which, in his mind, is synonymous of “underdog” and “emarginated”.

Now, onto the comparison. First of all, the two espers, Fubuki and Psykos, were introduced trying to recruit into their organizations, respectively, Saitama, the protagonist of the series, and Garou, the main character/antagonist of the saga, who, up to that point (and, to be fair, even after that) were forging their personal paths without any sort of affiliation (Saitama works for the HA, sure, but he didn’t pledge allegiance to any of its numerous factions but kept minding his own business). In regard to the circumstances where these characters first met, ONE flips the conventions. On the “hero” side, after the failed recruit attempt, Fubuki fights Saitama over factions and ranking; for the “monsters” it’s the opposite: Psykos sends her subordinates to Garou’s rescue when the Hero Hunter is cornered by the heroes and about to succumb. On the one hand, we have heroes infighting and, on the other, “monsters” providing assistance to each other. The two sides are one the “inverse” of the other, playing and subverting the tropes usually associated with the archetype they represent (”heroes”, “monsters”) and the traditional narrative templates that usually accompany those. As if we were witnessing the events unfold from Garou’s point of view, we observe first the issues of the HA that render its service to humanity imperfect and flawed, proving him right about the shortcomings of the hero system and its members, who seem to not behave like actual heroes but rivals ready to take down the competition, more worried about ranking than anything else, while the cooperative and organized monsters, with their providential intervention, at first seem to live up to Garou’s childhood expectations.

Nevertheless, things are destined to change, and, in a way, the roles the “recruiter” and the “target” (Fubuki and Saitama, Psykos and Garou) play in these two dyads are reversed between the two groups in the chapters following their first meeting: Saitama and Psykos represent, in fact, a turning point for Fubuki and Garou’s characters arc. While Saitama plays a more personal and character-charged role in the development of the esper, in the case of Garou, Psykos’ entanglement in the hero hunter story completely changed the course of Garou’s hero hunt, and her meddling - the very existence of the MA, Garou’s rescue, Psykos’ offer to him, Royal Ripper and co’s ambush, the fight between Psykos and Garou that trapped the latter in the depths of the base, etc. - all shaped Garou’s journey, leading, albeit inadvertedly, into the final stage of the MA arc. In this sense, Fubuki and Garou’s involvement in the war between heroes and monsters was determined by having crossed paths with, respectively, Saitama and Psykos, who provided, for a matter of fact, the circumstances under which these characters were present at all during the events of Z-City - Fubuki, who, drawn to Saitama’s group, stayed at the apartment, from where she and the others later joined the battle, while for Garou everything that followed the intervention of the MA on his side, and, later, the kidnapping of the ugly kid, forced him to be part of the Z-City war as a third “party”. Coincidentally, both Saitama and Psykos reside in Z-City, the epicenter of the conflict: Saitama living alone (prior to Genos) in the unhinabited area of the city; Psykos deep below the sourface and under the monster lair, in a secret chamber unacessible to anyone but her. Interesting enough, both Saitama and Psykos are behind the creation of the two organizations: the HA was created because Saitama saved the butt-chin kid, which inspired his grandparent to come up with and fund the HA, whereas Psykos is the founder and leader of the Monster Association. Despite that, the true identities of both of them are unknown to the members of the respective organizations: one is considered by most an unremarkable troublemaker rookie hero, while the monsters are only aware of Psykos’ coverture, the one-eyed psychic monster, and don’t suspect real her identity as a human being. But let’s go back to comparing the relation between these characters by putting side by side the two dyads of foils (Fubuki and Psykos, Saitama and Garou), which is probably the more narratively meaningful angle from where to look at these foils and the configuration that brings out the most parallels and similarities between them, as well as how these affect the story and play into the underlying themes of the arc. As mentioned before, the espers, as leaders of organizations trying to recruit them, play a similar role in Saitama and Garou’s storylines, which serves to further portray the hero/monster factions (both, as Garou laments in Chapter 76, very disappointingly human) as far distant from the ideal concepts the latters have of these archetypes, thus highlighting the distinct nature of Saitama and Garou themselves in comparison to said factions and their members (the majority of them, at least). And while Saitama has already experienced the flaws of the HA before (and several characters embody these in even more pronounced ways), nevertheless, Fubuki and her recruitment attempt, given its placement in this saga, brings up again an endemic issue within the HA, creating a deliberate and direct correspondence between Saitama and Garou’s storylines, as her precedent is soon followed by Psykos’ own introduction and her desire to make the Human Monster join her forces. These encounters end up prompting Saitama and Garou’s criticism for, respectively, Fubuki (for her obsession with ranking, factions, and status) and Psykos’ monster association (which is completely alien to Garou’s notion of monsterhood, as later remarked in the aforementioned Chapter 76) - Saitama and Garou are also not amused by their telekinesis too (but to be fair, in Saitama’s case, this is a recurring gag he has with any psychic user he comes across). The parallel between them is further reinforced by both the “rookie” hero and the wannabe monster finding themselves standing against their colleagues’ opinions, when said colleagues will push them into committing a murder: the ultimatum the monsters set for Garou, in order to prove his monsterhood, consisted of killing the ugly kid after the Human Monster didn’t murder 100 people as per their first request and failed to take down a passerby hero (who happened to be Saitama) (Chapter 56); Saitama is pressured by the majority of the still stand majority of the heroes into delivering the final blow on Garou (Chapter 94). Linking these two moments there is, once again, the presence of the espers, who express the views of their respective factions: Psykos, who asks Garou to prove his monsterhood by killing 100 people (a stark contrast to the kind of monster Garou aspires to be), while Fubuki advocates (like the other heroes) for the elimination of the Human Monster (Chapter 94). Against this unfairess, both Saitama and Garou do not sacrifice their integrity by abiding to the decisions taken by the majority. Instead of going against their personal beliefs and moral system, they keep carving their path on their own accord, even when it means being the only voice of reason or fighting against overwhelming odds. Interesting enough, this careless attitude is antithetical to Fubuki and Psykos’ spirits; the espers avoid reckless actions, relying instead on groups (though, in Fubuki’s case, has a particular reason) and only picking battle they could win (or think, they could win) - Fubuki’s character arc hinges in part on the character is confronting this, when it becomes a limit and prevents her potential. If Garou and Saitama are characterized by following an ideal, a romantical view of the archetypes they aspire to, Psykos and Fubuki are more pragmantical and utilitarians, less concerned with abstractions and more functional in their approach to the path they chose. By the way: in regard to Fubuki, what I stated above refers mainly to her introduction arc and how she is presented in it, and less about her as a whole, though certain elements still apply to a certain degree.

In regard to the confrontations, for what concerns one of the leitmotifs of the saga, namely “skill” versus “raw strength”, Fubuki versus Psykos is the opposite of Saitama versus Garou: in the esper showdown, “the good-aligned” character wins thanks to wits and superior technique against the “power-oriented build" of her opponent; in the final battle, instead, the absolute power of the caped hero prevails effortlessly against the martial arts of the “monster” prodigy. No matter the plans they devise, the power-ups they gain, their determination and their previous astonishing accomplishments, whether it is pure brute force or refined techniques, in the end the villains are destined to lose ”unfairly” against their designated “heroic” counterparts in the decisive duel between them; this predetermined outcome rhymes with the “the hero always wins and the monster always loses” motif that permeates the whole saga (evoked in Garou’s monologue, mentioned at the beginning of this post). After overcoming the biggest hurdles on their path (the S-Class) and right when their victory was at hand, the unexpected and out of nowhere appearance of their “nemesis” (coincidentally, two B-Class heroes) denies Psykos and Garou the chance of achieving success. Over the course of their respective battles, both the leader of the Monster Association and the Human Monster slowly realized this: Psykos, as her telekinesis is repelled by Fubuki, starts to fear that her battle against her former president will have the same outcome as the previous one in high school; Garou steadily recognizes he is battling an hero embodying the world’s “unfairness” against whom his martial arts, fighting prowess and power-ups all fall short, unable to overcome that very outcome he always strived to subvert and that now seems to await him too, as a “monster” that can’t escape his fate (Chapter 88; Chapter 91; Chapter 92). Both Psykos and Garou are defeated not by traditional heroes, champions of morality and paradigms of virtues, but subversions of those: an egoist driven by warped world views and a jaded man who became a hero just for “hobby”. [Updated 11/03/2024: I was unsatisfied with the previous conclusion I wrote for the present paragraph, so I decided to completely rewrite it and hopefully clarify my original point] The fact that this sideplot and the two espers, considered either individually or in relation to one another, parallel and mirror Garou and Saitama’s story beats is not a random choice. Dichotomis, dualisms, and contrasts are all heavily featured in the arc (human/heroes vs monsters, individual vs society, strength vs technique, the dualistic visual motive of black and white present in both the esper and the final battle as noted earlier, etc.), with foils and mirrors being one of the many ways those concepts are manifested along the course of the story. This is a precise writing decision that reflects the irresolved identity of the protagonist of the arc, Garou, a young man who wanted to change the world and eliminate unfairness but, feeling unable to do so as a "hero", compromised and decided to become its opposite, a “monster”. His inner turmoil and his spirit torn between these two "roles" reverberate throughout the saga and its plot and characters, assuming a concrete shape, plot-wise, in the form of two battling organizations (the Hero Association and the Monster Association) that are a manifestation of the archetypes Garou's perceives in perpetual opposition between one another, heroes and monsters. Therefore, the entire arc lives and thrives on the conflict spawned by these apparently irreconciliable opposites, before the cathartic resolution of the arc overcomes this opposition and brings new-found unity to Garou, when, after his defeat, Saitama reveals that, in reality what Garou really wanted be was a a hero but chose the path of the monster. This, and the appearence of the ugly kid, brings resolution to the saga and represents a new blank, starting point for Garou, now free to figure out who he really wants to be and choose his own path.

Before moving on, there are a few other topics I want to address:

starting with how Fubuki and Psykos’s story intersect with Garou’s. The backstory of the two espers resembles in a way Garou’s summation of the unfortunate villain’s tale (Chapter 46), since it follows its plot and features all the parts required for the play to be represented: Psykos, the hated “Villain/Monster” opposed by the “Majority” (the members of the “Society for the Study of Supernatural”) and defeated by the intervention of the “Hero”, Fubuki, who stands in defense of the current social landscape. And no matter how she tried to surpass Fubuki after the high school fiasco, in the events of the MA arc Psykos still loses again, beaten by an “egoistical” subversion of a hero supported by society - which is all very reminiscent of 1, 2 (Chapter 46). But this story doesn’t stop at simply mirroring Garou’s monologue because it directly connects to the Human Monster plotline. In fact, as the recollection ends and the clash between the espers concludes, with Psykos falling on the ground and Fubuki looking from the distance and questioning Psykos about what made her change, the one who emerges from the night is none other than Garou. The Hero Hunter’s reappearance at the end of the battle couldn’t be more fitting since Fubuki victory over Psykos follows, once again and like in high school, beat for beat the narrative scheme of “the hero fighting the monster/villain” loathed by Garou. No other scenario would have provided a better setup for Garou’s return other than this specific battle. While his kid self powerlessly observed the “tragedy of the monster/villain” occurring on screen countless times (Chapter 46, pages linked above), now, from over the rocks and behind a new frightening appearance, he similarly stares over the conclusion of the esper battle - another iteration of the hero and villain’s tale - before intervening (Chapter 77), facing the hero. Garou is obviously not “vindicating” Psykos, but his return following Fubuki’s victory, seems to almost break, meta-narratively, the “curse” of the “villain/monster” losing unfairly to the heinous “hero” (re-evoked in the psychic battle), since his arrival renders (apparently) meaningless all the victories and the efforts Fubuki and the other heroes obtained against all odds and through immense struggles up until that point, as a new, unstoppable threat emerges from the shadows of the night the same moment the leader of the Monster Association was finally defeated. This reappearance also underscores how far Garou’s progression as a character has come: if in his first appearance Garou declared his resolve to become “the strongest monster ever”, with this entrance, the Hero Hunter has seemingly reached (or at least is on the verge of achieving) that goal, the “Disaster Level God” (”Absolute Evil”), the being capable of changing the status quo. For these reasons, it’s quite symbolic that Garou, in his new “transformation”, is standing above two associations (embodied by Fubuki and Psykos) that mirror each other as two faces of the same coin (see what I wrote about Fubuki and Psykos’ appearances, Psykos being a foil to Fubuki and what purpose this serves as a storytelling device), which also echoes Garou’s rumination from Chapter 76 (1, 2 and 3). Furthermore, this scene perfectly bridges the first half of the arc, the hero versus monster battles, which culminate with Psykos’ defeat, into its conclusive phase, where Garou takes center stage and emerges as the ultimate threat to the two battling organizations. There is another common detail between the espers and Garou, which is to say the setting of their flashbacks: school, also recurring in the other Fubuki’s flashback featured in Chapter 99. In school or its immediate surroundings, those three characters all experienced a crucial event (or, for at least two of them, Fubuki and Garou, the culmination of a process ONE decided to encapsulate into specific turning points) that will affect the rest of their lives, leaving traces and prompting reactions that constitute the basis of their characterization in the present of the series: Fubuki’s pivotal childhood flashback took place near school and involved her classmates (and her sister); Psykos’s first clash with Fubuki occurred in high school; the experiences with his classmates and the school personnel (Chapter 54), mixed and overlapping with the television cartoon villains he rooted for as a kid, led Garou to his current crusade against mob mentality. Far from being mere scenography, in every one of these sequences, “school” is framed as a microcosm that already exhibits forms of inequality and discrimination that plague society as a whole (like herd mentality), marginalizing and oppressing those who do not conform with the popular opinion of the majority or are, simply, “different” (like in Fubuki’s case). Despite their formative function, schools fail in OPM at their pivotal purpose of preparing the new generations for the roles they will take in society, and the school personnel, as well as parents and adults in general, are either absent, like in Fubuki and Psykos’s flashback(s), or actively enforce and promote injustices, as in the case of Garou.

Considering how Psykos refers to Tatsumaki as Fubuki’s arch nemesis and the fact Tatsumaki “connects” Psykos to Fubuki solely for the similarities between their telekinesis (and not because she has any recollection of Psykos herself), it wouldn’t surprise me if the club was a secret thing Tatsumaki wasn’t aware of; this is actually 100% consistent with what is stated in the Esper Sisters arc. When we remember how taken aback Psykos was by Tatsumaki during their clash, as if she had never witnessed her powers before and had only a vague knowledge about the older Witch Sister’s capabilities, it is fair to say the two hadn’t ever met before Chapter 62. Moreover, Tatsumaki never “recognizes” Psykos: the connection Tatsumaki draws between Fubuki and Psykos is strictly based on their telekinesis; taking into account the Esper Sisters arc (where Tatsumaki keeps referring to Psykos as a monster) and how Tatsumaki never refers to Psykos as a Fubuki’s acquaintance from highschool she remembers, it’s safe to assume that she didn’t know Psykos at all and wasn’t aware of her existence or Fubuki’s highschool club in general; if she actually knew Psykos, then the story would have conveyed this information much more clearly and directly (through dialogue, or by showing Tatsumaki looming somewhere in the flashback or in another manner), instead of outright omitting to mention something of this importance - and that because Tatsumaki didn’t know Psykos before the Z-City incident. As for “Fubuki’s friend” (“友達”) (Chapter 62) that is how Tatsumaki always addresses people orbiting around and/or seemingly having a (even remote) connection to Fubuki (panels from Chapters 101 and 102). Besides, during the flashback, we only see Fubuki in a school environment or wearing a school uniform, never in other scenarios; she isn’t present when Psykos recruits and submits other espers groups, which is strange given how Fubuki always leads her subordinates and likes to assert herself as the leader/strongest - at the same time, Fubuki never expresses any interest on the world domination stuff and the other esper groups, so there is that as well. In the panel I posted before (followed by my thoughts on that topic), the only one with Fubuki and Psykos together, both of them have a school bag and are wearing a school uniform, indicating once again that the only place where they interacted, and where Fubuki interacted with other people in general (which is to say the other members of the club), was school and its immediate surroundings, and nowhere else - another subtle proof of Fubuki’s isolation and sheltered existence, all things the Esper Sisters arc delves into and explicitely addresses. The part of the flashback that shows the activities of the club is also entirely from Psykos’ POV, not Fubuki’s, who is basically absent for the majority of it. From this, I can infer a couple of things: it’s as if something, or better yet, someone, was restricting Fubuki’s freedom and preventing her from having any contact with the rest of the world outside of school hours; at the same time, this could be another evidence that submitting other esper groups was Psykos’s exclusive interest that Fubuki did not share; or, better yet, a combination of both. The only time (that we are aware of) the Fubuki Group acted on their own (fighting and defeating a rampaging monster classified Tiger Level Threat, if not above) without being led by their leader occurred in Chapter 134, when Fubuki was too busy trying to contact Psykos telepathically. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if Tatsumaki only allowed Fubuki to attend lessons and school activities, while, for the remaining time, she was under strict surveillance.

So these are Fubuki’s accomplishments in this arc. But not everything goes well for the esper.

After all, the Monster Association is the ultimate reality check for the Hero Association and the majority of the cast. Considering how this arc is filled with thematic comeuppances and poetic matchups with characters being subjected to the “rule of contrapasso” and suffering instant karma as a result of their mistakes, what has been specifically reserved for Fubuki?

For starters, as it was already observed, Fubuki, who prefers to avoid unnecessary risks and is unwilling to throw herself unprepared into a situation, is catapulted with little to no infosmations and without plans into a war between the top heroes and a group of Dragon Level Threats - and the heroes are losing the battle. Despite all her efforts to play it safe, a chain of unforeseeable circumstances pushed her out of her comfort zone at the epicenter of a disaster. This is incredibly ironic in itself.

Furthermore, in the battle against Psykos, we also learn that the technique Fubuki mastered through hard training, Psychic Whirlwind, was already perfected by Tatsumaki. Outside of a typical example of ONE’s humor, this clarification by the narrator will have dramatic repercussions in the next arc, when the two sisters will collide. It also ties to the theme of unfairness: despite Fubuki’s efforts, hardship and ingenuity, her sister was capable of achieving the same result solely thanks to her natural-born psychic potential.

During the arc no one who was helped or rescued by Fubuki thanks or acknowledges her. Genos didn’t change his standoffish attitude toward the esper after the Overgrown Rover battle and, while trapped under the debris, he dismissedively replied to the B-Class telling him to not reach the surface (Chapter 71), the place where her sister was battling the MA. When Fubuki appeared just as the Cadres were about to attack King, the B-Class esper reassured the S-Class Hero that she wasn’t going hinder him (Chapter 74), despite having actually saved King and the whole situation. In Chapter 94, Fang asked King to free him from the rocks and in turn King called for Fubuki’s help; once freed from the boulders by the esper and in response to the fellow S-Class’s concerned question, the martial artist only thanked King. Now, make no mistake: this is not meant to depict Fubuki as the poor Woobie surrounded by ungrateful snobs guilty of mistreating the totally innocent psychic sweetheart; all these characters have good reasons for treating Fubuki like this. If anything, what I’m trying to say is the opposite: in her mini-arc, we learned how much Fubuki regards rank and status as manifestations of individual value and, therefore, how focused she is on securing and improving her standing. Now, in circumstances warranting public recognition as a reward for her prominent role in the war, these efforts go unnoticed, and Fubuki’s chances to shine, as in being recognized by other characters, are negated. It’s another splendid example of the “law of contrapasso” being applied in the arc. It’s solely in the next one that Fubuki will be rewarded for her actions and determination: Tatsumaki will acknowledge her strength (Chapter 101: 1, 2) (well, before going full psycho), Saitama will help her against Tatsumaki (I talked about this here), the members of the Fubuki group will express their gratitude for the way Fubuki took care of them (Chapter 105: this page and the following ones) and Fubuki will, finally, move to A-Class (Chapter 107).

[EDIT: 11/12/2023] I now realize that I didn’t include perhaps the most important consequence of this fight: well, time to correct this mistake. Once the esper battle ends with Psykos being defeated and laying on the ground, Fubuki comments that Psykos was never a strong “child” (she was a weaker esper than Fubuki, after all), and that something must have changed the vicepresident in order for her to acquire vastly more powerful telekinetic powers, with the side effect of twisting and corrupting her mind even more than it already was. I want to clarify that the kanji “強” and the expression “ 強い” refer to “power”, “strength”: Fubuki is questioning how someone who was weaker than her got Dragon Level telekinesis and what unnatural change might have occurred to Psykos (Fubuki is therefore referring only about Psykos’ telekinesis). Fubuki then wonders if that was the result of the Third Eye, the power Psykos obtained before coming up with the plan of wiping out humanity. It’s at this point that Fubuki realizes that Psykos’s plan in high school wasn’t dictated by her own agenda, nor was it another case of Psykos’ personal brand of crazy (like world domination), but the result of something sinister and external, something that threatens humanity as a whole. What was an episode from Fubuki’s teenage years she promptly dealt with and then forgot about, with the only consequence of cementing an already disastrous outlook on life, is now re-entering her life in the form of an unsettling mystery heralding the apocalypse. From this moment on, Fubuki priorities change: her previous concerns, including the source of her traumas, Tatsumaki, all pale in comparison to what this discovery represents. And while Fubuki, as a hero, feels responsible for Psykos’ current state and wants to help her, Psykos is also the key to deciphering this mistery, and so, learning more about the future Psykos saw and the entity that looms over mankind will be one of Fubuki’s main drives in the upcoming chapters, like in the Esper Sisters arc (Chapter 99: 1, 2, 3) and in the following events (Chapter 134) [End of the EDIT].

The lowest point for Fubuki during the arc, though, is represented by Garou: by crossing paths with the self-proclaimed human monster (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6), Fubuki finds herself in the predicament Saitama foreshadowed back in Chapter 48.

This sequence isn’t the umpteenth instance of a character being used for a meaningless gag, but a turning point for the story and Fubuki herself. After all, it marks the return of the saga’s main character after we left him alone over the rubble of what once was Z-City, questioning his humanity the moment his body seemingly started failing him for all the accumulated injuries of his previous battles. Garou’s triumphal reappearance requires, therefore, its due pathos to set the tone for what has to come, reestablishing the main character/antagonist of the arc as the ultimate barrier in front of the heroes in a way that conveys the tonal shift this development carries. Consequently, ONE dials up the “horror” factor by drawing Garou’s exterior as a distorted demon-like figure standing menacingly in front of the tired and caught off guard esper (1 and 2). His new terrifying appearance perfectly embodies Fubuki’s fear of overwhelming power that leaves no possibility of victory or success to those who try oppose it. Any hope to win, any chance at overcoming this new threat vanishes in the face of the strength beyond reason that he radiates, reminding to Fubuki how her struggles and efforts were all for nothing. As I mentioned in one of the previous paragraphs, his appearance seems to nullify Fubuki’s success, to render pointless and meaningless everything she achieved moments after the tides were turned - as we know, Garou didn’t take away from Fubuki’s contribution of the arc, but, narratively, his role in the final phase of the arc seems to throw into despair what the heroes conquered through their battles, representing an invincible final boss no one can defeat.

The Hero Hunter, in fact, makes his entrance right in the moment of her victory against the leader of the Monster Associations and overwhelms any preparation, connection, power and technique Fubuki could have ever employed against him. If the encounter with Saitama gave Fubuki a taste of the unsustainability of her short-sighted mindset, Garou completely shatters the illusion of fulfillment and protection her bubble world gave her. Remaining in an environment with no bigger fish than her, dodging dangerous situations, creating a group and securing the highest spot she could in the HA’s hero score - it was nothing more than administering a palliative instead of treating her real issues, and Garou, as the overwhelming “monster” Saitama predicted, exposes that as such: all Fubuki’s attempts at escaping her own demons crumble against the Human Monster and Fubuki is left with profound despair. Fubuki fear is also effectively used to frame the terror that Garou brings on the battlefied after he effortessly takes down the S-Class.

For several chapters we are left wondering what actually happened to Fubuki and Garou even claims to have killed her in Chapter 83. Solely as Garou viciously beats the last S-Class, we find the B-Class profoundly shocked, delivering (to King) the answer to what Garou previously asked her (Chapter 84: ”What do you see?”): “Fear”.

But Fubuki did actually try to fight Garou. As already stated above, not even a few moments after taking down a Dragon Level Threat, Fubuki was suddenly confronted by the appearance of a new formidable opponent. Left with no other option than to defend herself, Fubuki attacked the demonic silhouette with Hellstorm (1 and 2). By that point, though, very few heroes (or monsters, for what it matters) could face Garou head-on, let alone defeat him, and so the Hero Hunter easily deflected Hellstorm’s rock-barrage with martial arts powered up by his newly acquired “lighter” and stronger body.

As for what “fear” actually means to Fubuki and where the roots of it come from, we have to look at her fight with Tatsumaki in the next arc. Against her older sibling, the same sensation Fubuki felt in front of the Hero Hunter resurfaces once again, filling Fubuki with despair (Chapter 100). It’s the fear of having to battle an overwhelming power that, no matter all her efforts and her struggles, squashes her chances of success and leaves her at the mercy of her adversary. The fear of being powerless in a world where power and strength are the only languages universally understood, what determines right and wrong and the fate of an individual. The hopeless sensation of being forever the “weak”, completely harmless against an opponent that trascends her strength.

In Fubuki’s encounter with Garou there is also a nod (or should it be called a foretaste?) to Fubuki’s childhood flashback from the next arc: as her trauma kicks in, Fubuki instinctively assumes the same “defensive” position her young self took against her bullies as shown in the Flashback from Chapter 99; it’s noticeably distinct from the fetal-like posture of Darkshine, demoralized and trapped underground, or from any other character reduced to a distressed or depressed state during the arc, and seems it was drawn like that on purpose for character-related reasons. Be it intentional or not, it’s a great detail, especially because while the panel seems to convey, at first glance, everything required of it in the context of the sequence, it acquires a deeper meaning in the light of a flashback contained in the next story arc, retroactively adding an ulterior and more personal layer to Fubuki’s reaction here.

As much as the esper is affected deeply by what she just experienced, however, Fubuki doesn’t turn into a damsel in distress or comic relief. ONE doesn’t ridicule her with misplaced gags nor does he downplay her fear for cheap laughs, but uses this sequence (and, to be honest, nearly every panel involving the character) to advance and progress her story and flesh out her characterization. Beside, nobody saves Fubuki, uplifts her morale, or helps her overcome that cloud of terror. King, who found her and stayed with the psychic up until the end of the arc, didn’t bring the B-Class out of that state, because Fubuki will have to do that by herself in the Esper Sisters arc, where the B-Class, confronted by the same feeling of hopelessness and fear, will have to fight back the very source of her traumas, Tatsumaki. Here we have the other purpose this fight fullfills, beside realizing Saitama’s prediction: the encounter with Garou serves as a meter of comparison for a similar, hopeless situations Fubuki will find herself in the next arc, this time, during a much more personal confrontation, where, instead of reasignation and despair, Fubuki will find the courage to stand against an immensely powerful threat. Thanks to the precedent of Chapter 78, the growth she underwent and the way she will face bravely a similar, desperate situation become all the more powerful and impactful than they already are.

Worth mentioning is that the actual threats of the MA arc, in the sense of those aiming to kill the heroes and the kid, aka the Cadres, never reduced Fubuki into a damsel in distress: only Garou represented for her a “death” scenario, if Garou wasn’t, well, Garou, but, in that case, the same would apply to every other character in the arc not named Saitama. By the way, the “fear” sparked by Garou didn’t stop Fubuki from proving her usefulness even at the very end of the saga: in the last chapter of the arc, although still shocked by the Human Monster, Fubuki lifted the builders trapping Fang, freeing the martial artist from the imprisonment Psykos and Homeless Emperor confined him to.

Always in Chapter 94, we find out that Fubuki, alongside King and the few conscious S-Class heroes, witnessed Saitama single-handedly defeat the Human Monster who almost took down the HA. The same hero who “foresaw” the scenario Fubuki found herself in was also the one who put an end to Garou’s rampage. With his victory against the “Devil” (Chapter 94), Saitama proves to Fubuki and to several other characters as well that he is not simply “very strong” but one of those incredible beings that defy any common sense. This development will have major consequences in the setting and in the following arcs. With the end of the battle and Garou’s disappearance, the Monster Association arc finally comes to a close.

So, when we look at the bigger picture, what does Fubuki gain at the end of the Monster Association? Not a promotion, not a power-up, not an improvement in her relationships with her colleagues - nothing. Instead, Fubuki has to carry the burden represented by Psykos and the consequent sense of responsibility for her state, the looming mystery of what Psykos saw in her vision (the “Source of Madness”), and, as aforementioned, the realization of Saitama’s “prophecy” in Garou. Despite her impressive achievements for the HA, Fubuki’s participation in the battles didn’t improve her condition; if anything, it worsened it. Defeating Psykos leads Fubuki right to the worst-case scenario she could think of: a direct clash with Tatsumaki. The Esper Sisters’s arc is kickstarted specifically by that battle.

Aftermath.

We reunite with Fubuki a few days after the conclusion of the MA arc (Chapter 96). She is heading to what we will soon discover is the HA’s prison, where Psykos is imprisoned. Her mission is desperate: learn about the vision of the future and, eventually, rescue Psykos, the only person who posseses any clue about this nefarious future, from Tatsumaki, who intends to execute the MA leader on the spot. It’s a race against time and the odds are stacked against her.

Fubuki’s arrival at the HA’s parking lot (Chapter 98) is a clear callback to her introduction arc, with Fubuki in a reversed role: she is the one who, unintentionally, interrupts a fight between Saitama and a co-ranker, much like Genos and Sonic put a stop to her “fight” with Saitama when the latter was still a B-Class. On this occasion, bumping into Saitama is not her objective but a lucky coincidence that will assist her down the line. It all goes to show how much things have changed for the character since her first appearance and how different Fubuki’s goals are now. If the MA arc threw Fubuki into danger without warning or preparation, the Esper Sisterts’s arc has Fubuki taking action not for egoistical reasons and within the restricted mindframe of her own benefits, as she did in her series debut, but for the sake of Psykos’ current status, her human connections and humanity’s future. Fubuki’s priorities and concerns are no longer the foolish obsession with her own status, the power dynamics of B-Class and the petty competition for ranking, but the quest to learn more about the impending doom that threatens humanity as a whole and the selfless (and thus heroic) volition of rescuing Psykos, who becomes the embodiment of the responsibility Fubuki will have to take care of as a leader and a hero; a burden that will get even heavier later when the Fubuki group as well will become the target of Tatsumaki’s wrath. For their sake, Fubuki will have to take a stand against none other than her sister.

But let’s see what happens next.

Having run into Saitama, Fubuki manages to convince him to follow her, and the two enter the structure. This leads to one of my favorite Fubuki moments, her “dialogue” with Saitama in the elevator:

Just to be clear, not for pairings and stuff, but exclusively for what this represents for Fubuki and her story. I do not ship any character in this series (nothing wrong with shipping though) and I’m not implying any kind of romantic undertone in what follows.

Up until this point, Fubuki kept her “leader” act on like she usually does (Chapter 98). On this page, though, the same Fubuki who in her series debut antagonized Saitama and went even as far as to rookie-crush him is now praising him, who now as an A-Class outranks her (the very thing Fubuki originally wanted to avoid), for being stronger than her - which, on these terms, is a massive compliment and form of acknowledgement coming from Fubuki. The same person that fought the B-Class rookie out of fear of being surpassed by him is now openly recognizing the accomplishment of this “rival” and showing Saitama her respect. The same Fubuki, who always tries to appear strong in front of others and conceals her weaknesses and limits, is now telling Saitama that, after having fought Garou herself and then witnessed their battle, she recognizes the newly promoted A-Class as one of the individuals who stands above the rest, and, even more significant, Fubuki adds that she can say that despite having renounced doing it herself (“reaching the top”).

For Fubuki, lowering her “denfenses” and opening up to another person is extremely rare, if not unique. Serious situations (like the Hero’s raid against the Monster Association) or unexpected turns of events (like Garou) can temporarily wear off the aura she tries to cover herself with, but these are extreme scenarios with outside factors at play beyond her control. As soon as she can, Fubuki immediately reverts to her usual persona. In downtime and without direct external pressure, it is even more unlikely for the psychic to be genuine and sincere toward someone else when the preferable option of her façade is on the table, shielding and protecting her from exposing too much and coming across as “weak”. Previously in the series, every time Fubuki admitted a limit or complimented someone else, she did it only reluctantly, when in difficult situations (e.g., the Overgrown Rover’s fight) and/or discussing someone who was not present; she never did so of her own volition or in a scenario that didn’t necessarily require it.

For this reason, Chapter 98 is so significant. Sure, the threat of Tatsumaki looms menacingly over Fubuki, but the situation hasn’t gone south yet, and by bumping into Saitama, Fubuki has found an unexpected source of help that evens the odds, if only by a little (from the “in-universe” perspective of the character). Furthermore, with Saitama already accompanying Fubuki, her words here can’t be interpreted as flattering with an ulterior motive. On the contrary, what Fubuki is doing here is a sincere and outward manifestation of respect for Saitama and what he achieved, while, at the same time, an open admission of her “weakness” to someone who has surpassed her, in rank and power. Those are sincere, genuine words prounenced with no other intention but to pay respect toward someone she values as a person. The events of Z-City - meeting Saitama and his circle, the HA-MA war, the pivotal battle with Psykos, the “Source of Madness” and the fear awakened by Garou - made her realize that her concerns about being “number one” and her attempts at achieving a sense of illusory accomplishment were nothing more than an immature delusion in a world devastated by frightening monsters and villains, especially after learning of a threat looming on the horizon, and realizing that Saitama’s words, from when they first met, were indeed true. Hadn’t all of that occurred in the way it did, this page wouldn’t have contained such a poignant showcase of growth for the character that wraps up a plot thread that began back in Fubuki’s introduction arc, when Saitama warned Fubuki about her way of life.

And this is only the start of the Esper Sisters’s arc. What lies beyond is another crucial chapter of Fubuki’s story, representing the culmination of her process of growth and maturation up until this point in the story.

#fubuki #jigoku no fubuki #wc fubuki #webcomic fubuki #fubuki opm #one punch man fubuki #hellish blizzard #blizzard of hell #content: character analysis #it took way more than anticipated but it's finally done

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yeonchi · 2 years

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Doctor Who 10 for 10 Part 1/10: Series 1

In 2018, I decided to review every episode of Jodie Whittaker’s run on Doctor Who. While I had been a fan of the series for quite a while at that point, I realised that I never said much about the revival series even though it forms quite a large part of my personal project. I decided that I wanted to talk about the revival series, but I didn’t want to write full reviews of every episode, thus this series was born.

Doctor Who 10 for 10 means “10 things for 10 series”. In each instalment, I will cover ten things about the ten Doctor Who series in the RTD and Moffat eras, whether they be facts or opinions, in-series or behind-the-scenes. Sometimes they might be a combination of the four, but I hope to give some focus to each aspect.

I originally intended for this series in 2021 to be a filler series to bide the time before the release of Series 13, then at the end of 2021 I planned for it to be done as a weekly series between the 2022 Easter and Centenary Specials. However, I was so focused on other things that I only had time to work on most of this instalment on-and-off throughout 2022, but now that those things are done, I finally have the time to focus on this series before the 60th Anniversary in November 2023.

So without further ado, let’s get right into the retrospective for Series 1.

1. The Ninth Doctor

When work on the revival series began in late-2003 around the series’ 40th anniversary, Russell T Davies decided to cast a new actor for the Ninth Doctor, which was revealed to be Christopher Eccleston on 20 March 2004. There were two other actors they could have gone with - Paul McGann, who played the Eighth Doctor in the 1996 TV movie, or Richard E. Grant, who played the Ninth Doctor in the 2003 animated webcast, Scream of the Shalka.

I can understand why RTD decided to cast a new actor - the revival of Doctor Who was meant to give the series a new start in the face of an audience who, since the end of the classic series in 1989, had considered the series either dead or a joke. In the 1996 TV movie, which was designed to be an attempt to relaunch Doctor Who as an American production, featured Sylvester McCoy in his final role as the Seventh Doctor, which would probably have confused audiences outside of the UK (most who were particularly unaware that this series existed) as to why he was featured in it and hence contributed to that revival not being successful. Having Paul McGann back to film a regeneration scene before introducing the Ninth Doctor would have probably had that same effect to new audiences, so I suppose it would have been better to just have the Doctor already regenerated and get on with the story. Of course, the circumstances regarding the Eighth-Ninth regeneration relationship are quite complicated, which I’ll get into when we cover Series 7.

When the Doctor goes to Rose’s flat, we see him briefly checking himself in the mirror, implying that he has recently regenerated. Although it is acknowledged that Rose is the Ninth Doctor’s first televised story, it is also presumed that the Ninth Doctor did have unseen adventures before this story, judging by the extended media and the photos on the “Who is Doctor Who?” website that was created as a tie-in to the episode. Since the Ninth Doctor travels with Rose (and later Jack) for the entirety of his appearances, fans have found a couple of gaps in Rose where the Doctor could also have had solo adventures; first following his initial visit to Rose’s flat and secondly towards the end of the episode where the Doctor leaves without Rose after she turned him down, but then comes back a few seconds later to tell her that the TARDIS can travel in time.

Two of the Doctor’s iconic tools are also introduced and used frequently in Series 1; the first is the sonic screwdriver, which is actually a reintroduced item from the classic series where it was used more sparingly compared to the revived series; and the psychic paper, which also had its uses throughout the revived series.

2. The Time War

One of the story elements introduced in the revival series was the Last Great Time War, a war between the Time Lords and the Daleks which saw them all but exterminated with the Doctor’s home planet wiped from the face of the universe. I can’t really pinpoint an exact reason why the Time War was created, so here’s my take on it.

In all honesty, the Time Lords have barely been featured throughout the classic series (compared to the Daleks) and keeping the Time Lords would mean that the Doctor would still be tethered in some way, not that he was really ever tethered in the first place due to his renegade status. Writing out the Time Lords meant that there wouldn’t be a need to put significant focus on them, plus it gives the Doctor some mystery and the impression of being a lonely god.

However, there were some downsides to this storyline. Because RTD didn’t feature the Time War extensively, only referring to it in passing, we didn’t really get to see what really happened during the Time War, let alone the Eighth Doctor’s regeneration. The storylines in the RTD era deal with the aftermath of the Time War and its survivors. While that was good in itself, I would have liked to see something in relation to the Time War (The End of Time is a different story that I’ll cover when I get to Series 4), though I suppose RTD was happy to let fans have their own interpretations for the Time War.

In extended media, there was another “time war” known as the War in Heaven, which was introduced in late-1997 with the Eighth Doctor Adventures novels, featuring a war between the Time Lords and an unidentified “Enemy” that would be spun off into the Faction Paradox series. BBC merchandise regulations meant that there could be no official connection between the Last Great Time War and the War in Heaven, though fans were free to make their own interpretations.

3. The Daleks

Series 1 saw the return of the Daleks and the Dalek Emperor, starting a tradition where a monster from the classic series would be reintroduced in each new series (which would later be broken in the Chibnall era).

Although there is good reason for the Time Lords to be written out of the series, the same can’t really be said for the Daleks because their iconic status meant that it would be a crime not to feature them, which almost happened because the BBC were nearly unable to negotiate the rights to the Daleks from Terry Nation’s estate. The Toclafane were to be featured in what would be now known as Dalek had the negotiations fallen through, but they were successful and here we are now. Just imagine what the Time War would have been like if the Time Lords were fighting the Toclafane instead of the Daleks.

I should address the rumour that the BBC apparently have to use them in a story at least once a year, or failing that (since the end of Series 9), once a series. Apparently, this was denied by Steven Moffat in 2014 and debunked in 2020, but given how we’ve been seeing the Daleks at least once every series in the revived era (or at least every year), even in minor roles or cameos, I can buy the possibility that this is true.

The sixth episode, Dalek, only featured the return of one Dalek before the series finale two-parter, Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways, showed an entire army of Daleks led by the Dalek Emperor. Showing a single Dalek in the former story really shows how dangerous and fearsome a Dalek can be, while the increasing scale in the latter story shows their danger in numbers. They also amp up the fearsomeness by showing Daleks made from human cells, being religious fundamentalists and deforming whole continents when they attacked Earth.

4. The domestics

The fourth episode, Aliens of London, starts off with the Doctor bringing Rose back to her home, albeit a year later by accident, resulting in Rose discovering that she was reported missing for the past year, with even her boyfriend, Mickey, being suspected of her murder with no evidence of a body. I don’t think this aspect has really been explored in the classic series, which makes the revival series a bit more down-to-earth as it explores the negative impact the Doctor has on their companions and the people close to them.

A few weeks later in the eighth episode, Father’s Day, Rose asks the Doctor to take her to see her father before he died and in the process, she causes a paradox in trying to save him after having just witnessed his death moments prior. That episode introduced the concept of fixed points in history while also exploring the backstory of Pete and Jackie.

Additionally, the relationship between Rose and Mickey is explored as well. In Boom Town, a rift begins to form in their relationship when it becomes clear that Rose is becoming more attached to the Doctor, making Mickey feel like nothing. Though Mickey ends up leaving alone at the end of the episode, he and Rose still remain friends as Mickey is willing to help Rose get back to the Doctor in The Parting of the Ways.

5. Adam Mitchell, the “forgotten” companion

Doctor Who has never really had a “bad” companion over the years, so RTD wanted to explore the concept of “The Companion Who Couldn’t”. In the original pilot documents released in a special edition of Doctor Who Magazine in 2005, Adam would have been shown to be a coward who was scared of everything on Satellite Five and wouldn’t even bother to lift a finger to save the Doctor and Rose. In the end, Adam became a companion who took advantage of future information for his own gain, endangering the Doctor and Rose in the process, and as a result he was sent straight home with the future information erased before he could even use it. From that point on, Adam would be considered the “forgotten” companion to the point that the fandom says that “we don’t talk about Adam”. However, Adam would later receive a redemption arc in spinoff media.

Throughout 2013, IDW Publishing released a 12-issue comic book miniseries titled Prisoners of Time to celebrate the 50th Anniversary. Each issue would feature an adventure with each Doctor (up to the Eleventh Doctor, obviously) and some of their companions before they were kidnapped by a cloaked figure who would be revealed as Adam Mitchell. After having stolen a vortex manipulator, he would ally with the Doctor’s enemies, including the Anthony Ainley Master, to kidnap the Doctor’s companions and blackmail the Eleventh into saving one of them. However, the Master had his own plan to destroy reality by overloading all eleven of the Doctor’s TARDISes, which Adam never agreed to. After being convinced by the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors, Adam decided to turn against the Master and was killed while foiling his plan. Following this, Adam was given a memorial with the inscription, “Adam Mitchell - A Companion True”, redeeming him in the eyes of the Doctors.

Adam’s actor, Bruno Langley, would gain a little more involvement in Doctor Who over the next few years. He participated in a BFI Q&A session for the Doctor Who Series 1 finale in 2013, was interviewed on Doctor Who Live: The Afterparty and even reprised his role as Adam in May 2017 for the Big Finish Ninth Doctor Chronicles audio story, The Other Side. Apparently, there were plans for further adventures with Adam, but his sexual assault conviction in October that year resulted in those plans being scrapped. Regardless of this, I think Prisoners of Time acted as a great send-off for Adam before he is left in the back of the minds of the fanbase.

6. Highlighting Wales

When the announcement of Doctor Who’s revival was made in 2003, it was announced that BBC Cymru Wales would be producing the series in-house. Cardiff would become the central base for the production of Doctor Who and its spinoffs, with the city and its surrounds being extensively used for location filming. As a result, the city became a top tourist destination as fans lauded it as a mecca for Doctor Who and later Torchwood.

One of the main factors as to why Cardiff was chosen was because at the time, the BBC was looking to move their productions away from London. Another main factor is that Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner were Welsh fans of Doctor Who who had worked together on Casanova starring David Tennant.

Since Cardiff wasn’t mentioned much in the Moffat era, I’d like to think that the RTD era inspired me to use Cardiff extensively in my personal project. Man, I’d love to go there one day…

7. Original iconic monsters

Aside from the returning Autons and Daleks, some original monsters were created for the series. This would be the norm for every other series with both original and returning elements being implemented, but I want to highlight a couple of original monsters from Series 1 that I feel have really become iconic to the series, namely the Slitheen and the Empty Child.

I remember the Slitheen and Raxacoricofallapatorious were iconic enemies in a Doctor Who-esque LARP I used to play at primary school with a couple of my friends. The Empty Child was also featured at some point as well, but outside of that, I think the Empty Child and “Are you my mummy?” became so iconic that even high school friends were asking me about it as late as 2016, my final year of high school. I wouldn’t be surprised if that still gets brought up nowadays.

Of course, I have to give honourable mentions to the Face of Boe and Cassandra as well because they are original monsters that have become iconic through multiple appearances in the RTD era.

8. Bad Wolf

Where the classic series had minimal story arcs as we know them (better referred to back then as thematic links or season-long stories), the revived series began utilising series-long story arcs prominently. The story arc for this series was Bad Wolf, two words that appeared across time and space that was later revealed to have been Rose’s doing after she took the power of the Time Vortex into herself. Rose did this in an effort to save the Doctor from the Game Station in what would otherwise be a deus ex machina, destroying the Dalek Emperor and making Jack Harness immortal in the process. However, Rose taking the Time Vortex into herself would end up burning her, so the Doctor saved her by taking the vortex energy into himself and back into the TARDIS, resulting in a regeneration into the Tenth Doctor.

Following the series, Bad Wolf would make appearances occasionally within the extended universe, presumably as a side effect of Rose’s actions.

9. #MeToo on set (and being thrown under the bus)

I’ve been working on this post on and off since September 2021 and this has been something that always flares up now and again. From late-April to early-May 2021, Noel Clarke (who played Mickey Smith) was accused by around 30 women (according to The Guardian) of bullying and sexual misconduct. Consequently, his BAFTA membership was suspended and his ongoing productions were cancelled. By late-March 2022, the Metropolitan Police decided to drop the investigation, citing a lack of evidence.

Around the same time the allegations against Clarke came out, a video surfaced of him at a convention in 2014 describing how John Barrowman (who played Jack Harkness) would expose himself on set during his time on Doctor Who and Torchwood, which would ironically be confirmed in The Ballad of Russell & Julie, created by Barrowman alongside David Tennant and Catherine Tate as a farewell to the first RTD era. All the people siding with the accusers decided to turn on Barrowman as well, effectively throwing him under the bus over something that, while not as severe as the allegations against Clarke, Barrowman was reprimanded for at the time. He only apologised for these past actions soon after the video surfaced, stating that he has changed ever since a similar incident on BBC Radio 1 in late-November 2008 which he also apologised for.

As a result of this, Barrowman’s involvement in the Doctor Who: Time Fracture theatre show was removed, Big Finish removed Torchwood: Absent Friends (which would have seen Jack reunite with the Tenth Doctor) from their release schedule and they have no plans to release it, and Titan Comics shelved a graphic novel that was set to feature Jack, though he still managed to appear in Revolution of the Daleks due to it being filmed a year in advance alongside Series 12.

At times, Barrowman has been shown to be a bit bitter on Twitter about how he was treated. In September 2021, Barrowman has tweeted about the BBC and Big Finish “blackballing” him, presumably over Absent Friends. When asked in January 2022 if he would make up with the BBC to help reboot Torchwood, Barrowman responded, “Mate they dumped me… I don’t need to make up to anyone.” More recently in December 2022, Barrowman shared an old video (from a fan) of him at a convention with Eve Myles (who played Gwen Cooper) which was apparently praising each other and their friendship, to which he tweeted, “One is telling the truth! One is spewing rhetoric for an audience,” before deleting his Twitter account. Since then, Myles, along with Naoko Mori (who played Toshiko Sato) and Anne Hegerty (who was with Barrowman on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here!) have released statements defending him, but knowing the Torchwood set at the time of filming, Myles and Mori probably laughed and egged him on.

Look, I’ll admit that I was more inclined to believe the victims when the allegations against Noel Clarke came out, but regardless, I thought Barrowman was badly screwed over when the focus was supposed to be on Clarke (tbh if I had to pick between the two I’d pick Barrowman). The thing is, though, Barrowman was reprimanded for what he did at the time and he even apologised as recently as 2021 when the video of Clarke talking about Barrowman surfaced. The people turning on Barrowman are still seeking an apology when he already made it, meaning that they would never have been happy regardless of whether Barrowman apologised or not. He’s already said his piece, he knows what he did is wrong (in a current year perspective) and you are not entitled to anything more than that. Maybe Russell T Davies could have said something to address the situation, but I’m sure he’s got better things to do right now. “But John Barrowman exposed himself on the set of Arrow as well” - look, I wish he would address it as much as you do, but like with RTD, he’s probably got better things to do and if he wants to address it, he’ll do so in his own time. If you’re still not happy with this, then you can either learn to separate the character from the actor or cope harder.

As for Noel Clarke, he released a statement on Twitter in August 2022 saying that he asserted his right of access under the Freedom of Information Act and found that there were no complaints or police reports filed under his name (something which was confirmed by another 4 detectives) even though the Guardian stated that five individuals contacted the police after their investigation was published in April 2021. The Guardian also mentioned that a third-party report (from an industry organisation) related to allegations of sexual offences was received by the Met eight days before the investigation was published, but a spokesperson stated that following a thorough assessment, the information did not meet the threshold for a criminal investigation.

John The White on Twitter has done his own investigation into why the police decided not to prosecute Noel Clarke, digging deep into the Guardian’s investigation and other articles to find out more about the people making the accusations and why they didn’t result in a police investigation. He also made a follow-up post discussing the effects of the accusations in the Doctor Who fanbase, discussing another Guardian article detailing accusations from five people related to Doctor Who (one of them being a volunteer at a convention), with two corroborating the accusations against Barrowman in the same article (as if you needed any further proof that he was thrown under the bus).

On a side note, Sophia Myles, who would play Madame de Pompadour in Series 2’s The Girl in the Fireplace, also spoke up for Clarke in July 2022 when she was holding a Twitter Spaces livestream and people pointed out to her that Clarke was in the audience, asking her why she was platforming a sexual predator (because someone listening into a livestream totally counts as platforming them lmao). Myles responded with this statement and was cancelled by the Doctor Who fanbase for it: “I know wholeheartedly, Noel Clarke is not a sexual predator. He’s not but that’s my opinion, you know, and if you want to base your ideas off an article you’ve read in a newspaper then feel free.”

10. Why Christopher Eccleston left and never returned (for 16 years)

On 20 March 2004, a year before the series premiered, Christopher Eccleston was announced as the Ninth Doctor. On 30 March 2005, two days before the second episode would premiere, Christopher Eccleston was announced to be leaving the role at the end of the series. Another eleven weeks later, the series ended and Eccleston would never be heard from again. For 16 years, it seemed that Eccleston refused to want anything to do with the series, even refusing to return for The Day of the Doctor in 2013 (this was because, as we would learn later, the script Moffat gave him didn’t do his Doctor justice and, as Eccleston stated in an interview at Supanova Melbourne in March 2022, he isn’t a fan of multi-Doctor stories). Over the years, fans had heard rumours and snippets as to why this was the case, but it wouldn’t be until 2018 that Eccleston began appearing at conventions, 2020 that he finally decided to reprise his role in Big Finish audio dramas, and 2021 that he would give pretty much the full story at Dragon Con in Atlanta. This is a condensed account of my research into this question.

The production of the first series was plagued with difficulties because making Doctor Who in the modern era required more work than the production team initially thought and nobody really knew much about what was going on at the time. In fact, it has been noted that the production ran behind by three weeks after just one week of filming. Aside from accounts of Noel Clake and John Barrowman’s behaviour on set, there was apparently some mistreatment of low-level crew that Eccleston brought to the attention of higher-ups like RTD, Julie Gardner and Phil Collinson, but was sadly dismissed; Eccleston even went so far to say that his relationship with them “broke down”. First block director Keith Boak appeared to be the main person to blame for the production difficulties and mistreatment (what with his apparent bullying of extras and crew members along with the flaming sofa incident that broke health and safety regulations), with Eccleston stating in his autobiography that he probably would have stayed if Joe Ahearne had directed the show from day one.

All this, combined with the politics of the show and possibly some other factors (like Eccleston’s stress-related medical condition and his father being ill during filming), resulted in Eccleston deciding to leave at the end of the first series without renewing his contract. He promised RTD that he would go quietly and respect the reputation of the series when publicising it, but then the BBC made the announcement without contacting Eccleston, even going so far to say that he feared being typecast and that he was “tired” because he thought working on the series was gruelling. Eccleston would later clarify that it wasn’t working on the series that was gruelling, but dealing with RTD, Gardner and Collinson. The BBC apologised to Eccleston for this soon after they made the announcement, but given what happened on set, I could see why he never wanted to come back to the series.

Eccleston was apparently blacklisted by the BBC after this, but he did manage to find work on other television productions in the UK and the US (some which were produced by other production companies but still aired on the BBC). Despite all he has been through and his wounds with the BBC not healing, Eccleston has seemingly softened his stance towards Doctor Who, particularly the fandom, in recent years with his willingness to attend conventions and reprise his role in Big Finish, which is probably better than nothing or replacing him with another voice actor.

Series 1 began the foundation of the modernised Doctor Who that people would come to know and love. It not only reached out to a new younger generation of the 21st century, but it also touched older fans from the 20th century who had waited 16 years for Doctor Who to return to television screens. We also got to see more behind-the-scenes content with the introduction of Doctor Who Confidential, its episodes typically being just as long as its subject episode (at least from Series 3 onwards). I just wish the full-length episodes were officially archived or preserved instead of the Cut Down versions on the DVD box sets.

In short, the BBC and the production team really did Christopher Eccleston dirty during his time on Doctor Who, but Series 1 was great nonetheless thanks to him and everyone else involved. I’m sure we would have liked to see more out of Eccleston (and you can with his Big Finish audios), but given what we have now, I think we can agree that what he brought to Doctor Who was truly fantastic.

Stay tuned for Part 2 as we enter the Tennant era with my 10 takes on Series 2. I would also like to acknowledge The Black Archive for compiling the official promo images I’ll be using for this series. Feel free to check it out as there are a lot of high-resolution promo images and stills for Doctor Who and its spinoff shows.

#doctor who #doctor who 10 for 10 #doctor who series 1 #ninth doctor #christopher eccleston

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tropes-and-tales · 3 years

Text

My Best Friend’s Girl, Part Three

Characters: Santiago “Pope” Garcia and F!Reader

WC: 4788

Other Pieces: This is part of a series, which can be found here.

CW: Language, pining, angst, backstory. Drug use (pot, aka jazz cabbage), so 18+ only.

________________

Pope doesn’t see you right away when he lands in Florida. He’s picked up at the airport by Frankie, and Pope grins to see his old friend, his hair out of reg and curling against his collar. Frankie looks a little tired, a little older, but who the hell isn’t?

They drive to Frankie’s house, a cute little Spanish colonial that isn’t too far from where his parents live. Sara greets them at the door, and she welcomes Pope, and everything seems fine.

At first.

The first day is just Pope sleeping off his jet lag and the crushing fatigue that seems to plague him anymore, and he notices nothing out of the ordinary. When he wakes in the late afternoon, he finds himself alone in the house, so he prowls from room to room, casing the place, sussing out his friend’s life as a married civilian. There’s a note on the kitchen table for him, that he should text Frankie when he wakes up because he and Sara are out running errands.

Instead, Pope calls you. You pick up on the third ring, and you sound out of breath.

“Sorry,” he says. “Did I interrupt something?”

“Just taking down wallpaper,” you reply. “It’s miserable work.”

“You need help?”

You laugh at that. “Always, Pope, but you’re on vacation. How was your flight?”

The two of you exchange small talk, and Pope steers the conversation back around to what he really wants to talk about: when he’s going to see you.

“Well, I think Frankie and Sara are going to my mom and stepdad’s holiday party. They always do it up big, and the Morales are sort of secondary hosts. I assumed Frankie would bring you along as a plus-one.”

Pope bites back the sigh; he wants to see you one-on-one, not in a crowd. Frankie still doesn’t know that you and Pope are friendly now, and while it shouldn’t matter, it feels just a little off, like he should have asked for permission or cleared it somehow. Which is stupid, really.

“When is this party?”

“Day after tomorrow,” you answer. “You should come. It’s a tragic comedy, watching my mother play pretend perfect family, and besides, if things get awkward, I can show you my old bedroom and you can laugh at my middle school photos.”

That makes Pope sit up and reconsider the possibilities: sure, he’ll have to come clean to Frankie, which shouldn’t matter, but he’ll also be granted access to your inner world growing up. Embarrassing school photos, posters of boy bands…Pope tries to picture it.

Besides, what guy could resist the fantasy of seeing where his dream girl grew up? Isn’t that a common fantasy, the one where the guy sneaks into his girl’s bedroom?

“I’ll be there,” he finally says.

-----

Pope tries to talk to Frankie. Really, he does. He wants to air out all the secrets he’s kept – that he’s friendly with you, that he saw you in Mexico, maybe even mention how he feels about you – but a stubborn part of him holds it all back. Why does Frankie even deserve to know? Why can’t Pope keep this one, special thing for himself?

Practically, there’s never a good time in the next few days anyway. Pope discovers all too quickly that the chipper welcome he received isn’t the reality of Frankie’s life.

It starts that night, after Pope talks to you. He is just on the cusp of sleep when he hears Frankie and Sara. At first, it sounds like talking but then voices start to raise.

“You never – “ he hears Sara say, but he can’t make out the rest of it. He can hear Frankie’s response, but the words are garbled and low.

It goes on and on until a door slams, an engine in the driveway turns over, and headlights splash across Pope’s wall as someone – Frankie? Sara? – leaves.

In the morning, he doesn’t mention it, and neither do they.

-----

The next day, there’s a definite chill in the air, and Pope gets a hint about what it’s source may be.

Sara seems to want to go somewhere for the holidays. Her family is from South Carolina, but she wants to go to St. Kitts. She has friends that celebrate Christmas there, and if she can’t go to St. Kitts because it’s too expensive, she wants a long trip to Miami.

Pope overhears all of this by accident, of course. Frankie is out in the driveway, changing the oil in his car, and Pope is lying down with a headache. Sara is in another part of the house, on her phone with a friend, but she must be near a vent because Pope can hear her words perfectly coming out of his vent.

“Merry Christmas to me,” she says to the person on the other end of the line. “Stuck in the sticks with a bunch of lame assholes.”

Pope wonders if Sara considers her husband to be a lame asshole too, or if that’s just reserved for Frankie’s family and friends.

-----

Then it’s the day of the party, and Pope pushes all of his speculations about Frankie’s marriage aside: he finally gets to see you.

The day crawls by. Crawls. He’s spent his fair share of long hours killing time, especially in Special Ops, but this is something else. Not only is he anxious for the evening to arrive, but he has to try and hide that anxiety from Frankie.

He fails utterly.

“You seem keyed up,” Frankie notices. “Everything alright?”

Pope huffs out a breath and hews as close to the truth as he dares, in that moment. “I won’t really know anyone there other than you and Sara.” A beat. “And Bean.”

Something passes across Frankie’s face at the mention of your name, some expression that Pope can’t place. “Yeah, she’ll be there.”

Pope peers closer at his friend, and he considers the overheard fight from the night before. “You and Bean…you patch everything up?”

Frankie shrugs at that. “I guess. Yes. No, not really. We…see each other and grab a coffee sometimes, but it’s not the same.”

“Maybe she’s just backing off because you’re married now, Fish. Maybe she thinks Sara should be your friend instead of her.”

Frankie cocks his head at Pope and stares at him for a moment. “You know, Bean told me almost exactly the same thing.”

-----

Early evening finally arrives, and the three of them pile into Sara’s car for the short drive over to your childhood home.

“We always go early to help set up,” Frankie explains. “It’s sort of my mom and Bean’s mom, their annual thing.”

Sara snorts at that from her place in the driver’s seat, and that earns her a sharp look from Frankie, but no one says anything.

They arrive and park on the street, and Pope’s hands are almost fucking trembling, and he used to carry guns and shoot with the surest, steadiest hand around. He follows Frankie and Sara up the walk, up the steps, and into your childhood home, and there you are in the middle of a goddamned Christmas explosion right in your living room.

There’s lights and garlands of pine and two elaborately decorated trees on either end of the room, and there’s Nat King Cole crooning on the stereo, but Pope can only look at you. You’re a vision in dark jeans and a short-sleeved sweater that makes you look like home. At their entrance, you look up, and Pope swears that when your eyes settle on him, your entire face lights up.

But you don’t come over and greet them right away. Pope inches over towards you but your mother – decked out in a green velvet dress – is standing beside you and reading you a preemptive riot act. He catches the tail end of it.

“…best behavior,” she warns you, and you shoot Pope a beleaguered look past your mother’s pointing finger. “If you act up, you’re out of here, and I won’t even feel bad about it.”

“Yes, mom,” you reply mechanically, but then you push past her to hug Pope, and you even make a little squeal of delight that draws eyes as you wrap your arms around his neck, lay a loud kiss on his cheek, and proclaim that Christmas has come early.

People notice. Your mom watches the scene, and a few others that Pope doesn’t know watch as well.

Frankie notices. Pope glances over at him, and he notes the furrows in his friends brow, the way his eyes are going from you to Pope and back again.

You don’t seem to notice Frankie staring – you give him a nod and a wave, but your old friend doesn’t get the welcome that Pope does. You do notice your mom staring, so you grab Pope’s hand and drag him through the house, to the back porch and into your back yard. There’s a little gazebo there, and you and Pope settle onto the bench.

“Sorry you had to see me get my usual tongue-lashing,” you say a little ruefully. “My mom and I have a difficult relationship.”

Pope nudges your shoulder. “Well, my mom is probably in the Caribbean somewhere playing shuffleboard with women twice her age. So, welcome to the club.”

“How’s your vacation so far? Happy to be back in the states?”

He answers as honestly as he can without seeming like a sad asshole. He’s happy to be back, sure, but it just makes him feel more unmoored, more unsettled, spending the holidays in his army buddy’s guest room.

You read the situation exactly right, but you misunderstand the source. “I’m sorry that things didn’t work out with Marta, Pope,” and for a moment, Pope completely forgets about his imaginary girlfriend.

“It’s okay.”

“Here.” You wriggle in your seat, reach into a pocket and fish out a packet of something. “If you want to partake, of course. I can’t get through family events without them, anymore.”

In the dying light, Pope can just make out what they are – edibles. Gummies, from the looks of them.

“No pressure, of course. This isn’t an after-school special, and you can just say no and still be cool, okay?”

Your tone is playful and it makes him grin to hear that he’s cool to you. He nudges you again. “So this is who you are? You a stoner now? You smoke a bowl and listen to ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ with the lights off?”

Your tone shifts to what Pope calls your “academic” voice, a little all-knowing and completely adorable. “First of all, Santiago, these are medical edibles. I have a known, documented, long-standing struggle with anxiety and insomnia. Second, I don’t smoke the stuff because I have tender virgin lungs. Third…well, stoned is the only way to get through these events. Facing my mother sober is a sure route to madness.”

“I like it when you call me Santiago,” he admits. “You always say it like I’m in trouble.”

“You aren’t in trouble,” you retort, shoving him back lightly. “You are trouble.”

It’s honest-to-god flirting, and Pope refuses to drop the thread forming between you, so he reaches out and takes a gummy from your outstretched hand. Together, you each throw back the piece of laced candy, and shit doesn’t really start until later, when it’s hitting you both.

-----

Pope’s drug of choice was always alcohol, and even that wasn’t very reckless. He hates the feeling of being drunk, and harder drugs were almost always off the table once he joined the army, so all the cool stories of buddies doing lines of cocaine or dropping acid or getting stoned passed him right by.

He had one moment with pot in high school, someone brought weed brownies to a party, but it didn’t affect him at all beyond a dry mouth.

Those medical-grade gummies? Those fucking hit him.

You both go inside because the food is being laid out, and people are arriving, and you separate for a while to mingle. Pope finds Sara and Frankie, and he says hello to Frankie’s parents again, and everyone is talking boring small talk.

Pope searches for you in the room – loses sight of you – finds you again. The pot is already hitting him at that point, but he doesn’t realize it…and he doesn’t notice Frankie noticing the way Pope’s eyes are glued to you. Frankie is on the scent now, he knows something is up, but Pope feels relaxed, loose, and doesn’t notice.

Pope feels good. Not just because he’s with you again, but the pot seems to calm every anxious, dark thought that rolls though his head nowadays. He hasn’t felt like this since he was a kid.

-----

The absolute worst part of spending the holidays with other people are the awkward, earnest traditions they have. He knew a kid in school whose family sang “Happy Birthday” to Jesus before opening Christmas presents. He dated a girl once whose family stayed up late on Christmas Eve and drank disgusting homemade wine that tasted like vinegar.

Your family is no different. This is one of those parties where everyone circles up before they eat. They go around the room and name the good things that happened to them that year, name the things they love and are grateful for.

Pope is starting to feel even better, lighter and looser, but he’s sober enough to fumble through his response – he’s grateful for his new civilian job, and for good friends, and his eyes find yours at that last part.

Then everyone else goes – boring shit. Your mom is thankful for her new car, for fuck’s sake, and your stepdad is grateful for some deep-sea fishing event he attended earlier in the year, and Pope realizes that your family fucking sucks after all. That’s what they’re happy for? A new sedan and a fishing trip?

Mrs. Morales is happy for her family, for her daughter-in-law, and Pope watches you as she speaks. You’re feeling the pot too, he can tell, and it’s as if you and him are connected because you arch an eyebrow at him, and he feels like he can read your mind in that moment.

Frankie mumbles something about Sara, new love or whatever, maybe he says love growing deeper, and when Sara names a good thing that happened to her that year, she skips over any single moment she spent with Frankie and says, “I was really happy when I went to a club in Miami with my friends and met Pitbull.”

It makes Pope laugh, a single dry bark of laughter that he tries to cover by coughing, and the entire room turns and stares at him.

Then it’s your turn, and if Pope thought you were a charming weirdo full of random facts when you’re sober….Christ almighty, does weed ramp it all up to a thousand.

“I’m grateful for my ancestors,” you say. “For mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam, and even further back, for the cyanobacteria which gave oxygen to our planet, for the first creature to crawl onto land – “

You probably have more to say, but your mom darts over and clamps a hand over your mouth, hisses something at you until you nod against her hold. When she releases her hand, you add in a tone of mock-contrition, “I’m grateful for family, who have your back no matter what.” The sarcasm is dripping, and Pope can sense the underlying tension which isn’t even underlying anymore – it’s out in the open. What is the story there?

Your stepdad, the deep-sea fisherman like some lame middle-class Hemingway protagonist, breaks the tense moment by clapping his hands and announcing that dinner is served, and then the music is turned back up.

Pope waits for the room to clear a little, and he makes his way over to you. “You’re trouble too, Bean. Not just me.”

You giggle, and it makes Pope’s heart feel like its floating in his ribcage like a balloon. “Do you have my new name yet?” You reach and out punch him lightly on the arm. “I hate being Bean. I’m ready to be someone new.”

“I have a few. You can pick.”

You make a gimmie gesture with your hands. “Let’s have ‘em then, Garcia.”

“Okay.” He rolls his head on his neck, feels that satisfying crack. “Sunny.”

That makes you scowl. “Sounds like a dog’s name.”

“Okay. Blaze.”

“Like a trail blaze? No, that’s even worse. C’mon, Pope.”

“Siren. No? Elektra. Thunder. Turbo.” He rattles off a bunch of names until it dawns on you, and you turn and punch him again, your face twisted in indignation as Pope laughs.

“You didn’t even try!” you cry. “You’re just naming American Gladiators!”

“Okay, okay.” He swallows hard, and his mouth is suddenly dry as the desert. “How about querida?” Beyond the loose-limbed pot feeling, he feels a panic pushing up in him: it’s only a pet name because he couldn’t really give you the ones he wanted, he can’t call you mi alma or mi amor…

Your scrunch your face in thought, and then nod. “That one’s okay. Spanish. I can go with that. Doesn’t it mean sweetheart anyway? You already call me that sometimes.”

It’s too close, you’re too close to guessing right, and the panic is bubbling up in him so he pulls the kill-switch and jokes with you. “I could call you Electric Slide, instead,” and that earns him a third punch, and the fact doesn’t escape his notice that you are far touchier with him than you’ve ever been before.

“That song is about a vibrator.”

Pope snorts. “Yeah, you told me that fun fact. But I looked it up, and that’s just an urban legend.”

“It isn’t!”

“Yeah, yeah.” He hooks an arm around your shoulders, steers you into the dining room where the food is laid out, buffet-style. “I bet you know a guy who knows a guy who died from eating Mentos with Coke too.”

“There was a couple in my class who were murdered by an escaped serial killer with a hook for a hand, too.”

“You’re such a smartass,” Pope says.

“You love it,” you reply.

-----

You and Pope are the last ones through the food line, and there’s nowhere to sit, so you return to the gazebo.

“It’s better out here anyway,” you sigh. “As much as my mom complains, she loves the drama of having a crazy daughter. Gets her a lot of sympathy. If I stayed inside, she’d just get me stirred up until I snap. It’s our annual tradition, me ruining Christmas, her harvesting the pity for the rest of the year from her friends.”

Pope balances his plate on his knee and turns to face you. “Querida, you aren’t crazy. You’re one of the sanest people I know.”

“Nah,” you shake your head. “You don’t know me that well.”

That stings, even if you didn’t mean it to. “Frankie knows you,” he blurts out. “He never said you were crazy.”

“Frankie doesn’t know me that well either, I guess.”

You’re both still stoned, and you chat in a meandering way while you eat. Pope ends up spilling his guts in a way he hadn’t wanted to: he tells you about his insomnia and how much he hates his job, how he feels unsettled and unsure of what to do next –

You listen to all of it, murmuring words of encouragement, and as Pope rambles, he grows steadily more aware not just of you, but of your body: the heat of your bare arm brushing against his, your steady breathing, the careful way you chew your food. You’re a little restless, you tap your feet in some pattern he doesn’t recognize, but you hit his foot every so often, which makes you sway away from him for a beat before you sway right back.

He watches you as he talks, and the words are spilling out without much thought because all he can focus on suddenly is your face – your slightly-red eyes, your mouth. Fuck, your mouth – he’s thought about that part of you so much, imagined what it would be like to kiss you, to see your mouth on him, to see your mouth slack as he did things to you, the sounds you might make –

He wants to lean forward and kiss you, the moment is too perfect to pass up, but his thoughts feel slippery. He can’t catch just one to focus on before it slips out of his fingers, but the one that keeps cycling through his head is this: you’re stoned, she’s stoned…don’t take advantage of the situation.

So he doesn’t kiss you. He only spills his guts about his lonely, unhappy life as you listen.

-----

Pope is given a view of what your relationship with your mother is like.

It’s near the end of the night. No one has left yet, but the mood in the room feels like the party is about to break up. You and Pope are back inside, standing near Frankie and Sara and the elder Morales, and Pope notes how you stand apart a bit, how you refuse to really engage. Mrs. Morales is making oblique small talk about babies, and your eyes are a little glassy as you stare ahead at nothing in particular.

Then your mother strolls over.

She’d just get me stirred up until I snap is what you told Pope as you ate outside, and that’s exactly what he witnesses: your mother sauntering over to the group, listening for a moment to Mrs. Morales hint at her desire for grandchildren.

Then she turns to you. Fusses with you, as Pope has seen other mothers do with young children – she tugs at the hem of your sweater, brushes a bit of hair out of your face, makes a backhanded comment about how you actually wore mascara, that you actually made an effort this time –

Pope watches your face, and your eyes lose their glassy quality as you clench your jaw. He swears he can hear your teeth creaking at the pressure.

“I tried to look nice for the party, mom.”

Your mother pulls a wounded look. “I said you look nice.”

You huff out a terse breath through your nose, making your nostrils flare a little. “No, you said I actually made an effort, and you used that tone – “

“I did not have a tone.”

“ – to imply that I never make an effort usually, that I’m just your fuck-up of a daughter – “

“Your language, please, this is a party – “

“Oh, this is the party. Yes, I know.” You glance around the room. “People come to the annual Christmas party for the ham rolls, the festive atmosphere, and the screaming match between poor Beth and her crazy daughter, and all the ladies at book club will be aghast with concern until, what? At least June? And then you can switch back to the usual old story until we’re ready for Christmas again.”

That makes the group explode into action: Mrs. Morales clucking her tongue sadly, Sara biting back a vicious-looking grin, your mother daubing at the corners of her eyes in the worst bit of acting Pope has ever seen.

Frankie murmurs your name and reaches out, maybe to lay a steadying hand on your arm, maybe that’s been his role for a while now. But you jerk away at the last minute and don’t let him touch you, and you pivot on your heel before turning back to them.

“Let’s just skip the next part, okay? I’ll just leave.” You step back to face the entirety of the partygoers and recite, “I’m sorry for disturbing your lovely party, as usual. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and a blessed fucking Yule to all.”

Then you give a mocking little curtsey and march out the door without a backward glance.

Pope takes half a step towards you, has the thought to go after you, but Frankie put his hand on his arm and holds him back. “Don’t,” his friend murmurs, and Pope knows he’s too out of his depth to do any good anyway.

-----

Pope is rapidly sobering up now, and he tries to get Frankie to explain it on the short drive home.

“Bean and her mom just don’t get along,” is all he says, and his words are clipped with a terse edge. “Sometimes mother and daughters don’t get along.”

Sara laughs at that, and she turns in her seat to look at Pope. “It’s an annual thing, the two of them fighting. The party last year, the two of them got into a screaming match that - ”

Frankie makes a noise in the back of his throat and gives Sara a stern shake of his head, which makes her pout and turn back around in her seat, leaving the sentence unfinished.

That night, laying wide awake with his thoughts racing, Pope hears another fight between Frankie and Sara. He can’t make most of it out, but he hears your name at one point, and it ends just as before: slammed door, headlights across his wall, and someone driving away in anger.

-----

Over the next few days, it’s hard for Pope to pin you down. You text him, you talk to him on the phone, but you’re noncommittal about meeting up. Things feel weird, tense, and Pope doesn’t know what is causing it.

When he finally sees you, it’s another group thing. The guys are getting together to attend one of Benny’s MMA events, since they haven’t seen each other in a while and since Sara is in Miami with friends now.

When Frankie pulls into the driveway of a house that Pope doesn’t recognize, you come out a moment later and slide into the backseat of the car.

“Evening, boys,” you say. “Ready to go watch a bunch of sweaty, shirtless men rolling around the ground together? I know I sure am.”

It makes both Frankie and Pope laugh, and for a moment it feels like that very first leave together when Pope first met you.

At the event, it’s dark and loud and smells like sweat and spilled beer. Pope greets Will and Tom and Tom’s wife, saving his fiercest hugs for his two brothers-in-arms. You and Tom’s wife seem friendly, and the two of you fall into a conversation punctuated with lots of laughter.

When it’s time for Benny’s fight, everyone sits down – but when Pope tries to finagle himself to sit near you, he finds the seat already taken by Frankie.

-----

Pope never gets a chance to talk to you – not at the fight, not on the ride home. Frankie drops you off, you wave at the two of them, and then you disappear inside.

But Pope does get a chance to talk to Frankie.

“You like Bean,” Frankie says on the drive home, and the edge in his voice is a challenge almost. An accusation.

“Yeah.” No point in denying it.

“For how long?”

“A while.” Pope turns to study his friend as he drives, and Frankie’s hands are gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles gleam white in the darkness. “Does that bother you, Fish?”

“Nope.”

“Because it seems like you’re bothered.” Pope doesn’t want to fight, but a small, mean part of him does. The bigger, nicer part of him wins out, and he adds as a concession, “we’re just friends, Fish.” It’s not a lie, and if Pope wants more, that’s just a desire he’ll keep to himself.

Frankie sighs heavily at that, like he’s relieved. “I just have a lot on my mind, Pope. A lot going on. A lot to think about.”

Pope makes a thoughtful humming noise at that. It’s obvious after only a week that Frankie and Sara aren’t living in matrimonial bliss, and even if Pope is irritated by Frankie, he still loves the man and wants him to be happy. But he’s never been married, and he’s barely even had any long-term relationships, so he has nothing to offer in the way of wisdom.

Frankie takes the silence as permission to continue, and he says, “I think I really fucked up, Pope.”

He doesn’t even need to say the next part – it’s been right in front of Pope the entire vacation. How worn down Frankie seems, how unhappy. How hurt he looked the night of the party when you ducked away from his touch.

Don’t say it, Fish, Pope thinks desperately. Don’t say it, don’t say…

“I think I fucked up and married the wrong girl.”

~~~Tag List~~~ @marvelousmermaid @bookishofalder @hkmultifandom @cannedsoupsucks @brandyllyn @lawfulgranola @shakespeareanwannabe @greenvita @bananas-pajamas @rachelxwayne @stardust-fray @massivecolorspygiant @imspillingcoffee @amneris21 @paintballkid711 @mad-girl-without-a-box @bestattempt @isvvc-pvscvl @rae-rae-patcha

#santiago garcia #santiago garcia x reader #santiago garcia imagine #pope garcia #pope garcia x reader #pope garcia imagine #triple frontier

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rintarhue · 4 years

Text

instant boyfriend ✆ 011 / desperate

➪ MAIN MENU | PREVIOUS | NEXT

"Brief me about updates with the Instant Boyfriend App,” Kenma nods at Kuroo. The two are seated in the former’s office, the scent of brewed coffee filling the air. Kenma scrolls through his iPad, searching for the nearest store to buy apple pies.

“Well, we did some new changes with it!” Kuroo claps his hands, excitedly. “We added a new feature named ‘Butterfly.’ It’s to test the robots and the owners' compatibility with a series of stages, just like a butterfly. When their relationship grows, more attributes will be added to the robots.”

The robotics engineer stares at him with expecting eyes. “...So, what do you think?”

“Good idea,” Kenma comments. He then quirks a brow, as he puts his iPad down. “Though, how can this feature boost our sales even more?”

The past few months, all Kenma ever thought were the sales and the popularity the app was getting. Kuroo understood him from a CEO perspective, as they needed all the profits to continue operating the app and his best friend had different supporting businesses as well. When he first proposed the idea to Kenma, he thought he was nuts. Well, the whole concept of the app was bizarre, though he had reasons for it; one of them being able to raise the standards of AI technology businesses.

“Well, all we’ve been getting lately are very good results,” Kuroo places the monthly report on the table for Kenma to see, the latter picks it up and skims through the printed documents. “And the sales have been high, as the people who have availed the other additional accessories are satisfied. And with this feature, this can gain even more attention and praise from the public.”

He bites his cheek internally, scared for his best friend since childhood to utter a word. (To be completely honest, meetings like these always made Kuroo nervous, as Kenma is strict about everything that involves his businesses; and he wants everything to be completely organized with no huge problems in store.)

“Great job as always Tetsuro,” Kenma gives him a small smile. Kuroo finally breathes, after a minute of holding his breath. “Which reminds me, why did you even propose this idea again?”

“To set a high standard for AI technology?”

“No,” Kenma shakes his head. “The other one, the one you said about a girl?”

The two sit in silence, as Kuroo’s brows furrowed in confusion. He brings his hand up, to let his fingers comb through his hair, a habit he recently picked up. He wets his lips, thinking hard about what Kenma was talking about.

“Oh, yea! Fuck, I remember now!” He exclaims as he bangs the table. Kenma gives him a side-eyed glance, he smiles sheepishly in response. “I remember a girl being rejected in front of the whole coffee shop I worked at back then. And then, I saw her crying in the garbage dump area, talking about how she just wanted to feel loved.”

A few years ago, when Kuroo was still an empty pocketed university student, he worked at a coffee shop as a part-timer. Nothing special happened, until that one time when he saw a girl ask a boy out—practically shouting her confession out. He chuckled at her perseverance, as he saw her kneel on her knees, continuously begging for the boy to grant back the feelings she had for him.

‘You’re embarrassing yourself, stop it. I’ll never like you back.’ Were the words uttered by the boy to the girl. Kuroo felt extremely bad for her; not only was she rejected, she was also humiliated publicly. Whispers filled the shop, as the girl ran out, tears falling from her eyes. During his break, he saw her by the garbage dump, crying about how she just wanted to be loved.

“People are desperate for love.” Kenma alludes, as he looks out of the window of his office; the bright hues of pink and orange painting the sky. “That they do everything just to feel loved by someone—or even something, in that sense.”

Kuroo stays silent, agreeing. He then ponders if that girl he saw back then discovered his app; he lets out a smile; maybe, just maybe. In a life that has different recurring problems throwing itself in the bunch, you could only stay in the box of uncertainties—in that box of maybes.

— this is Unedited 😵💔 so im sorry if it sucks 💔💔

— some more info ab the app <3 and that sexc stuff

— ALSO ITS KENMA AND KUROO!!!!!! i love them plz

taglist in the reblogs <3 send an ask or message me to be added!

#haikyuu x reader #haikyuu smau #hq x reader #hq smau #suna rintarou x reader #suna rintarou x you #suna rintarou #suna x y/n #suna x you #suna x reader #suna smut #haikyuu smut #haikyuu fluff #haikyuu angst #haikyuu smau series #hq suna #hq #haikyuu

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cjsinkythoughts · 3 years

Text

FATWS One Shot #1 - Back to the Beginning

Word Count: 1644

Warnings: Cursing, Mentions of Intoxicated Automobile Accident, Steve Being a Slight Puppy

Setting/Characters: Directly after Captain America: The First Avenger, New York City; Reader, Director Nicholas Fury, Captain Steven Rogers

A/N: Here it is! The first One Shot that goes along with my FATWS Series! Keep in mind; it doesn’t take place during FATWS. There are NO SPOILERS in this and there will be NO SPOILERS in any of the One Shots. I do recommend still reading the Series, though, to understand the Reader more. These are more like…prequels to the Series. And it won’t be a series. It’ll just be a collection of One Shots based on what I think is important and what you guys wanna see. I also WON’T BE DOING A TAGLIST FOR ONE SHOTS! (Only those in my All Works Taglist will be tagged!) I’ll be adding them to my FATWS Series Masterlist under a ‘One Shot’ section, so you’ll be able to find them there, and I’ll also be tagging them with #fatws series oneshots. Feel free to send in requests for what you wanna see. I’ve gotten a few already, so I’ll be writing those tomorrow. I’ll say that they’ll all be shorter like this one, but...knowing me...we’ll see.

(Also, I’m aware of the theories that SHIELD chose the woman because the resemblance to Peggy, but just ignore that for this.)

As always, not beta’d so please excuse mistakes! Be kind to yourselves and each other! Enjoy and stay tuned!

FATWS Masterlist

cjsinkythoughts Masterlist

You knew. You knew the moment his eyes raked over your form. You knew when he looked over his shoulder at the radio playing some baseball game from 1941. You had done your homework, just like you did with every mission you worked. Granted, this one was a little different, but when Fury called you in personally, you couldn’t say no. You told them your uniform was wrong. You told them the game was too close to when he went under. You told them.

So you weren’t surprised in the least when he smashed through the wall, running out of the room. You didn’t necessarily regret pushing the button; you did it because you knew your cover had been blown, not because you were threatened. But you regretted calling out Code 13, not realizing that they’d chase him out into the middle of Times Square of all places.

Before you could head outside, wanting to know what happened, Fury’s name flashed across your vibrating phone.

“Y/L/N.”

“We’re heading back.”

An eyebrow raised, showing your confusion. “That was quick.”

“He’s fine, if you’re insinuating what I think you are.”

“I’m not insinuating anything, sir.” It was a lie, of course. You wouldn’t put it past Fury to slow down the Captain anyway he could, especially if the Man Out of Time was putting up a fight. “Sir, with all due respect, I tried-”

“I know, Agent. When We get back, we’ll set up in Conference Room C. I want you to join us.”

Your eyes narrowed, free hand on your hip. “You only called me in to ease him into this whole new century thing-”

“And he’s not eased.”

“It’s not my fault, Fury. I told your guys that it was wrong-”

“I know, Agent. Introducing him to the new century obviously went less smoothly than we anticipated.”

“Ya think?”

“Conference Room-”

“C. I heard you the first time. I’ll be there. Give me a few minutes.” He hung up without any farewells, making you roll your eyes. The director had pulled you off an assignment - in the middle of it - and promised you could get back to it once you finished helping him with the Star Spangled Man problem; help Captain Rogers integrate into the new times. But it was starting to seem that Fury didn’t just mean when he woke up.

You quickly changed, switching the old fashioned uniform for the tighter SHIELD-assigned one, before heading up to the level with all the conference rooms. You understood doing this in New York instead of the HQ in DC - the captain was from New York and, as much as it changed, some things would be familiar - and you definitely understood not doing this on the Helicarrier since Rogers didn’t even know about smartphones yet. And you definitely weren’t complaining; you had an apartment here in the City that you hadn’t slept in for months now.

Glancing at the room plaques, you paused in front of ‘C’. You took a couple breaths, relaxing yourself just as you did before any mission, before opening the door and stepping in.

Fury and Rogers were sitting at the table on opposite ends, the blonde looking around warily, eyeing the few agents lining the walls. You shot Fury a look, disapproving of the firepower in the room.

“Captain. Director.” You nodded to them in greeting.

Roger’s eyes snapped towards you, recognition lighting up his features. “You-”

“Agent Y/N Y/L/N. Sorry about the act.”

He nodded hesitantly, watching you as you sat down a couple seats from Fury. “I have some other business to attend to, so I’ll make this quick. To help you adjust, it’s been decided to assign an agent to help you for the next few months. Agent Y/L/N, here, will take that position.”

You blinked, turning to Fury, not expecting that. “What?”

Fury ignored you, standing up and setting down a file on the table in front of you when he passed. “The file has what you need to explain to him. Start now.”

“Fury.” You snapped, eyebrows furrowing as you stared at the file. Looking back as the door opened, you scrambled to stand when you realized he was leaving. “Fury! Excuse me.” You pardoned yourself from the captain, chasing after the director without waiting for his reaction. “Nicholas!”

That got his attention, his stride pausing. He spun on his heel, an eyebrow quirked. “Agent-”

“You didn’t mention anything about months helping him. I thought you meant, at most, a week!”

He crossed his arms tightly across his chest. “You’re the first person he saw when he woke up. You’re the best option.”

“First off,” you mimicked his position, popping your hip for good measure. “Even though I was the first person he saw, I deceived him. Why would he trust me? Second, why me? I understand having me for the little show you put on. I get that. But me? Of all people? You know I don’t do personal stuff.”

Fury narrowed his eyes. “You’re on this, and that’s final. He needs to know politics and technology. Settle him into the apartment in the file.”

You gaped as he turned around and started towards the elevators at the end of the hallway. “What about-?!”

“Your mission is being taken care of!” He called over his shoulder. “Politics and technology!”

You huffed, stomping your foot, frustrated, well aware of the fact that you were throwing a mini tantrum. You worked behind the scenes, acting as someone other than yourself. You didn’t help 93 year old super soldiers settle into new houses, teach them about current politics, and explain what cell phones were.

Walking back into the conference room, you found it empty besides Rogers, who was looking through the file, eyebrows knit in confusion. “Sorry about that.” You apologized, moving around the table to plop into the seat next to him.

He gave a half hearted shrug, glancing over at you. “It’s okay. He didn’t tell you the plan. I don’t blame you for being annoyed.”

“Yeah…it’s nothing personal. I’m not annoyed at you, and it’s not because of you. It’s just-”

“You don’t do personal stuff.” At your quirked eyebrow, he tapped his ear. “I could hear you.”

You cleared your throat, feeling slightly embarrassed at being heard. “Oh. Right. Enhanced hearing. Um, so, I guess you’re already starting without me.”

The tips of his ears turned red as you gestured to the file he was scanning. He dropped it, moving it over to you. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” You shook your head. “It’s your schooling. However you wanna do this, whatever pace you want, we’ll do that. Fury just wants you to know-”

“Politics and technology.” He shot you a small smirk. “I heard that too.”

You chuckled a bit, nodding. “Right. Okay. Let’s see here. Nickie said there was an apartment they got you…”

“Page six.” He informed you as you flipped through the pages.

You hummed, looking at the small apartment, perfect size for one person, right here in Manhattan…in the same building as yours, you noted. “Of course.” You rolled your eyes. You’d basically be his babysitter, and you knew neither of you wanted that.

“What? What’s wrong?”

You sighed, shaking your head. “This is my building.”

He blinked, looking down at the picture of the apartment. “Oh. Well, if you want I can request a change-”

“No, no. It’s fine. I just - I wish Fury told me.”

“Can-can I ask you a personal question?”

You shrugged, thumbing through the rest of the file. They basically wanted you to give him a government lesson starting with the fifties and then go over military technological advancements - a lot of Stark Industries stuff. “You might as well. We’re gonna be spending quite a bit of time together.”

“Why don’t you do personal?” You stopped your reading, tapping a finger on the table as you chewed on your cheek. “Sorry. You don’t hafta share if it’s too personal. I get it. I was never really into sharing my emotions, either.”

Turning your head to him, your lips pursed thoughtfully. His head was ducked, his blonde hair previously parted and styled was falling into his eyes, which were trained on his linked hands in his lap. His forehead was still creased, but it was more contemplative than confused as it was previously.

“I specialize in undercover operations.” Ignoring the way he whipped his head to you, slight surprise in those blues that you were answering his question, your head dropped back to the files, trying to act nonchalantly. “Before that I grew up in foster homes. My parents died when I was little. Drunk driver. No one survived. I was…two. I think. Maybe three. I learned to keep my head down to stay out of trouble; be the kid whoever had me wanted me to be. Anyways, I’m used to playing other people. I’m not really used to being myself.”

The room was blanketed with a silence that wasn’t uncomfortable. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, either, but it was welcomed as Rogers processed what you had just told him. His voice was quiet, almost shy, when he spoke up. “You can be yourself with me…if you want.”

You looked over at him again, your lips turning up slightly as you met his sincere gaze. “Thanks. You can be yourself with me too, Captain Rogers.”

“Let’s start with you calling me Steve, Agent Y/L/N.”

Your features broke into a bigger grin as you nodded, accepting his terms. “Alright, Steve. I don’t really have a preference. Just don’t call me Agent. I get flashbacks to every conversation with Fury.”

Steve laughed and you couldn’t help but enjoy the way his eyes shut, his nose scrunching up. “Alright.” He agreed with a beam. “I think I can avoid that, honey.”

All Works Taglist:

@happygoreading

@bibliophilewednesday

#cjswriting #fatws series oneshots #falcon and the winter soldier series oneshots #fatws series oneshot 1 #fatws series #back to the beginning one shot #steve rogers x reader #kinda #💛🧭#❤🐦💙🦾⏪

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calaofnoldor · 3 years

Text

Sixth Time’s the Charm [4]

(GIF credit: @teamfreewill-imagine)

Characters: Sam x F!Reader, Dean

Words: 6,107

Series Summary: All the times Dean has tried to get Sam to admit his feelings for you. (Each chapter can be read as a stand-alone.)

Chapter Summary: You offer yourself as bait for a shapeshifter hunt. Things do not go as planned.

Warnings: canon level violence, language, idiots in love, mutual pining, huffy!sam, protective!sam, slight angst?, slow burn, fluff

A/N: i am SO sorry for the wait (story of my life) but to make up for it, look, 6k words! (yeah i’m sorry about that too, i don’t know what happened there.) written for @tvdspngirl314‘s birthday writing event with the prompt “You ever feel like that? Like you were just destined for someone?” which is bolded in the fic. this also fills a square for @spnfluffbingo!

Square Filled: Rescue Mission

← BACK UP | MASTERLIST | SERIES MASTERLIST

The fourth time was all you. Dean barely had to lift a finger. The result, however, was far more traumatic than he had planned and rather emphatically revealed the magnitude of his brother’s feelings toward you.

Much like the previous attempts, there was a case: a shapeshifter going after women who conveniently happened to fit your description. The strategy was obvious, and you’d leaped at the opportunity to both make yourself useful and hopefully take the place of what would have otherwise been the next innocent civilian victim. But of course, Sam resisted at first.

“No. Absolutely not! We don’t know enough about this guy for you to just jump into his waiting arms, Y/N!” The fervent indignation in his tone and body language was palpable. Sam was rarely one to raise his voice or sport much of a temper at all really, but lately these heated outbursts seemed to be occurring more frequently, and frankly you were getting sick of it. The false hope they momentarily granted you through the notion that perhaps he cared about you as more than a friend was one thing. What’s more, the way his voice lowered half an octave combined with the sight of his flared nostrils, puffed chest, and straining jaw always seemed to have a sideways effect on you, in that it was impossible to keep your attention on his words alone. But boy did you try.

“Sam, how many times do we have to go through this? I’m a big girl; I can take care of myself. And your wrist is still healing so it’s not like you can call the shots on this one anyway. Besides, I’m not going in alone. You and Dean will be there for backup the whole time, right?”

“’Course we will, eh Sammy?” In a strange turn of events, Dean often appeared to be the one with a more jovial outlook recently.

Sam merely nodded and continued his heavy breathing. He glared down at his bandaged left wrist, the result of skirmish with a couple of wraiths, as if it were the root of all his problems. Then he looked up and through densely drawn brows, those magnetizing multicolored eyes pierced yours, his countenance bearing a charged and sullen expression of pensive exasperation as his jaw visibly tightened. You swallowed and could not for the life of you find the will to look away.

“So it’s settled then,” Dean proclaimed jubilantly, “Unless… you’ve got another reason you don’t want Y/N playing bait, hmm Sam? Maybe something you wanna share with the class? Or, you know, I could leave…”

“Dean, stop it. You’re not helping,” you quickly admonished before steadying your gaze back on the taller Winchester, “Look, Sam, have I ever let you down?”

“No. Never.”

“And do you still trust me?”

“Of course,” he responded immediately in a ‘what-kind-of-a-question-is-that’ tone, at which you simply raised your eyebrow to send him a reciprocating ‘then-what’s-the-problem?’ look.

“OK fine,” Sam huffed out a big breath, “But you’re not taking any risks! Anything seems off at all, just… promise me you’ll wait for me and Dean and keep us in the loop?”

His pleading eyes were so earnest and you’d truly never been able to say no to the giant puppy before, so you offered him a little smile and said, “Cross my heart.”

Sighing, Sam rubbed his face, looking lost in thought for a moment until he spoke up again, much more reserved and hesitant this time, “Do you still have that uh… ring from… that time?” Dean muffled a snort at his brother’s expense but you both ignored him, completely accustomed to his nonsensical teasing by now.

“Uh yeah, I- I think so.” The uncertainty in your voice was a lie. Of course you still had the ring you’d once used to pretend to be married to Sam Winchester. You may or may not have tucked it away in a special place for safekeeping.

“Good,” Sam nodded curtly, “I want you to wear it. It’s silver. I’ll wear mine too and Dean already has his. That’s how we’ll know that we’re still… ourselves.”

“OK, yeah that’s a good idea,” you agreed, trying your hardest not to linger on the memories.

“Well look at you two! Getting hitched again so soon-“

“Shut up, Dean,” you and Sam cut him off together.

When the meeting was adjourned and you were about to part ways to prepare for the upcoming hunt, something inside you forced you to call out his name, “Oh and Sam!” He turned around at once, questioning gaze somewhat urgently searching yours for a sign of what might come next. You stuttered though, feeling suddenly self conscious, so the next words you uttered were not much louder than a whisper, “Be careful with your wrist.”

Sam smiled, his dimples making your fingers twitch with the need to caress them. “I’ll be fine. You just look out for yourself. Remember, we’ll be right behind you.”

Somehow you both didn’t hear the groan Dean emitted as he rolled his eyes to the ceiling and prayed to whoever was listening, ‘Good lord, someone give me the strength to survive another day with these imbeciles.’

There was only one diner in the tiny Pennsylvanian town, and seeing as you were starving by the time you got there, the three of you were forced to make do with soggy fries and questionable milkshakes. As you ate, you went through your game plan once more, which essentially consisted of waiting until nightfall to visit the bar from where the previous girls had gone missing, while Sam and Dean shadowed you covertly.

Before you left, you took a quick trip to the loo and when you returned, Sam was stood outside alone, a broad smile upon his face.

“Where’s Dean?” you asked as you began to walk out the diner, expecting to find the older brother waiting impatiently in the parking lot by his precious car, but the Impala was gone.

“He went back to the motel, said he had something to take care of and that we should go scope the place out first.”

“But I thought we agreed to-“

“Yeah, well change of plans, you know how it is,” Sam replied casually with a shrug.

Little red flags started fluttering in your head, urging your eyes downward to locate the silver band on his finger. You frowned when you found it there untouched on his right hand; Sam almost never interrupted you, not even when he was absorbed in the foulest of moods.

Apparently sensing your hesitation, he added, “I mean, he made a good point. Maybe if you familiarize yourself with the surroundings first, you’ll be able to take the guy out faster.”

Sam was still smiling at you, but it felt all wrong. You couldn’t explain it, but there was something missing from his rainbow eyes. The colors were all there, but they lacked luster and warmth, a delicate twinkle that you’d learned to associate with the beautiful, heroic yet self-doubting giant of a man. Never had you seen that breathtaking magic replicated elsewhere, nor had you ever seen Sam without it, which was why you were almost completely certain that the man before you was not the real Sam Winchester.

But weaving within you was a thread of doubt, insisting that you couldn’t just pull a gun on your best friend because of something as trivial as… a feeling? No, you needed to test your theory. And so, bracing yourself with a deep breath, you slowly reached out your silver-equipped hand to do something you’d grown accustomed to resentfully abstaining from: touching Sam’s bare skin. You aimed for the large target of his hand, deeming it the most inconspicuous of places (given that he was wearing his hunters’ uniform and the only other visible option would’ve been his face or neck), but Sam was faster. Just before you were able to graze his skin with your ring, he caught your wrist in his much bigger hand and pulled it away, twisting your arm until it was locked painfully behind you.

“You think you’re smart, huh?” the shifter snarled with a flash of its eyes, moving in real close as he used Sam’s immense size and his own superhuman strength to easily constrain you.

Even so, you stared up at him defiantly, unafraid, “Sam and Dean will be back.”

“That’s the plan.”

Sam’s sneering face and threatening voice were the last things you saw or heard.

You had no way of determining how much time had passed when you unceremoniously came to in what looked and smelled to be an underground sewer. As your senses sharpened and your muddled brain began to size up your current plight, you nearly scoffed at the clichéd style of your captor. Sat on a peeling wooden chair, manila rope bound your wrists together behind your back and tethered your ankles securely to each of the seat’s front legs.

Ignoring the ache in your head, you set about strategically testing the knots and the integrity of the wood. If only you could reach the silver blade in your boot. But your attempts were interrupted by the reappearance of the shifter, whose shoe hit something as he stepped before you. A metallic clang echoed through the confined space as a result and you followed the sound to find your coveted knife on the ground, far beyond your reach.

“Fucking hunters, always think they’re so clever, always one step ahead because it’s their game. Sure, we might be the monsters but you’re the predators! So let’s see how you like being the prey for once.” Shifter Sam’s upper lip curled up in a way that seemed so foreign to you as he leaned forward to rest his hands on either arm of your chair, caging you in.

The malicious glint in his eye left you with no qualms about affronting this being who, for all intents and purposes, appeared identical to the man you’d recently discovered you were in love with. Lifting your chin, you glared up at him brazenly, “If you’re so keen on being the predator then why am I still alive? What are you waiting for?”

“Why your knight in shining armor of course!” he exclaimed, backing up as he stood to his full height and gestured to himself with both hands. “You think it was a coincidence that all those women looked like you?”

The shifter’s narrowed eyes were alight with amusement and a ripple of fear surged through your body. You were in much deeper than you or the boys had anticipated, though years of practice helped you keep your voice steady and bold, “What did you do to them?”

“Oh, I gave them a fairly painless death, don’t you worry. They were just stepping stones on my way to you. See, the Winchesters owe me a girlfriend, so I figured I’d take the closest thing to theirs. But imagine my joyous surprise when I got into this big lug’s head and discovered that he’s in love with you! No, actually it’s more than that. He’s obsessed with you; you never leave his brain! Every other thought and memory is about you... Well, it’s either you or his brother, but oh, it’s gonna kill him to see you die before his eyes. I might’ve been able to replace my dead girlfriend, but I don’t think Sam here will ever come back from losing you.”

Stunned into silence, the stupid influx of misguided hormones pumping through your veins forced you to focus on maintaining a neutral expression as he rattled on.

“And you feel the same way, don’t you? So this really will be a double kill. It’s OK, you can let it all out. I might be a monster but I’m not one to deny the dying their chance for some last words. Besides, you can say it all while looking into the eyes of the man you love.”

“Fuck you,” were the only words you could trust yourself to spit out at him.

‘Sam’ laughed, but it was nothing like the laughs you normally pulled from him. It didn’t radiate like sunshine or replenish your soul with glee. Rather, it was chilling and conniving and despite the mimicry of Sam’s beautiful voice, you immediately decided that you never wanted to hear it again.

“Not feeling too talkative, huh? Or maybe you’d rather wait until he gets here in the flesh to make that anticlimactic confession of love? That’s alright, I can just tell you more about this dumbass’s feelings for you.” The shifter chuckled with delight, as if every word brought him nothing but pure joy. “Man, he loves you so much, it’s insane. I’ve never been inside the skin of someone so in love. And I thought I really loved my ex. Afterall, this whole revenge thing is for her. But I gotta tell ya, I’ve got nothing on Sam Winchester. Did you know he thinks you were made specifically for him? You ever feel like that? Like you were just destined for someone? Cause Sam does. That’s how he feels about you.”

“Why should I believe you?” you challenged, growing tired of the inadvertent response his words were eliciting. Your heart was pounding in your neck, core trembling at the mere possibility of Sam genuinely feeling the way he’d described. But you knew better than to trust a monster, and one who was in pursuit of maximal vengeance no less. Still, those rose-colored thoughts resonated within you, and you stumbled to dismiss them as they bubbled up, one after another like a game of emotional whack-a-mole.

Shifter Sam smirked, “Yeah, you’re a cynical one, aren’t you? You know everything he said in that marriage counseling session was true. You kinda hurt his feelings when you just brushed it all off. Even big brother Dean’s been trying to get him to confess his love for you. You must’ve heard them arguing about it at some point? They weren’t exactly being discreet.”

Choosing not to respond, you simply scowled at him.

“No? Still in denial? Perhaps you need details… You ever notice how he always sits across from you whenever you’re doing research? It’s because he thinks you’re gorgeous when you’re focused, and it gives him an opportunity to admire you without getting caught. And why do you think he lets you call him Sammy, huh? Yeah, he might not let it on but he fucking loves it when you do, makes him feel all tingly inside. And you remember that cop who hit on you? Captain Anderson, was it? Sam wanted to break the guy’s nose just for touching you. Oh and why do you think he asked you to move into the bedroom closest to his? It’s so he can keep track of your nightmares. He likes to keep you close because it makes him feel like he can protect you better when you need it.”

By now, your ‘neutral expression’ must have surely mutated to betray your shock, and you couldn’t have answered if you tried. The shifter didn’t seem to mind either way. In fact, he appeared to be having the time of his life.

“And it’s not all pure thoughts, let me tell you! Oh man, buddy boy here has dreamed up plenty of X-rated scenes with you, ranging from obnoxiously romantic to just plain obscene. You name a position and he’s imagined it, in high-definition detail,” he embellished, tapping an index finger against his temple, “His mind is like a library of pornos starring the two of you, although he’ll never get to live out any of his fantasies, will he? It’s a shame really; some of these are really hot... Ooh, I’ll have to borrow that one,” he said with closed eyes, as if a figment of Sam’s imagination was playing through his head in that very moment, “Maybe my girl and I can re-enact it while we’re still in your skins-”

“Shut up, just shut up!” you finally bellowed in protest.

Sam watched the bathroom door attentively after you’d disappeared through it, unable to contain the upward jerk of his lips when he saw you walking back out of it. Heartwarming relief had become his body’s intrinsic response to seeing you safe and sound.

“You ready?” he questioned when you made it to his side.

“Yeah, I’m good.” God, even the sound of your voice made him happy.

Once you got back to the motel, Dean plopped down onto one of the full-size beds, exhausted from the drive. Within a matter of seconds, snores began to fill the room, and Sam chuckled under his breath as he sat down around a wobbly table with you to continue your research on the shifter’s victims, hoping to find something else that linked them together or a clue as to where they might’ve been taken.

It wasn’t long before you inhaled a revelatory gasp and abruptly clutched Sam’s wrist to show him what you’d found. But your grip was harsh, causing him to hiss in pain and do something he’d never before done: recoil from your touch.

“Oh, I’m sorry, does it still hurt?�� you asked nonchalantly, smiling up at him innocently.

Worse than the pain in his fractured wrist was what felt like sirens blaring in his head. You were always hyper-cognizant of his injuries and exceedingly careful around them, sometimes even more so than himself. Sam looked you over subtly, eyes landing on the silver ring still upon your finger. Perhaps his mind had been playing tricks on him and all that tender attention he thought you’d shown him was simply a mirage of his own wishful thinking?

“It’s fine, I just wasn’t expecting it.” Sam sent you a tight smile, to which you responded with a dazzling one of your own. It was beautiful but something about it felt off. In the past, you apologized profusely if ever you found yourself the accidental cause of his discomfort, no matter how indirect or insignificant the case, but right now there wasn’t a single speck of concern in your eyes. Indeed, the more he looked into them, the more he struggled to recognize the person staring back at him.

In a flash, Sam had you up against the wall, a silver blade held against your neck. He looked down to see the metal sizzling there, burning your flesh, and cursed himself for failing to notice sooner.

The noise woke Dean from his slumber and what he saw when he opened his eyes was equal parts shocking and amusing. “Whoa! At least wait till I’m out of the room! And isn’t that a little kinky for your first time?”

“Dean, it’s not her. She’s not Y/N,” Sam grit out, “She’s wearing the ring but she’s not Y/N.”

His brother’s brows knit together as he rubbed the sleep from his emerald greens. “Wha- How did you know?”

“She was acting… weird.”

Dean scrambled off the bed, making a quick call on his phone to ensure you really were missing. He paled when a robotic voice over the line told him the number he was trying to reach was no longer in service.

It was then the shifter decided to speak up, “You know, the real Y/N would have liked this, you pressing her up against a wall?” she murmured suggestively.

“Shut up. Where is she?!” Sam slammed her body against the flimsy motel wall once more and dug the knife in a little deeper. In his panic-stricken state, he barely registered her remark, being driven entirely by a one-track mind at present.

Shifter Y/N grimaced slightly, glancing down at the knife, “Maybe if you stop cutting into me with that, I might consider telling you.”

“How did you get the ring?”

“Oh, this little thing? You like it? It’s imitation silver, but otherwise nearly identical to the one on the real Y/N’s finger. You see, we’ve been following you for a while now.”

“Who’s we? Where did you take Y/N?!” he demanded incessantly.

“My boyfriend’s got her, but don’t worry, he looks just like you so I’m sure she’ll find her accommodations to her liking,” she retorted with a smirk.

Sam’s heart lunged in his chest and his mind began whirring with endless possibilities of escalating dread. Had you been deceived and captured by a shifter pretending to be him? Were you being hurt or tortured by someone who looked exactly like him? How would you ever be able to look at him the same way again? Of course, you’d know it wasn’t Sam but the damage would still be done. You would forever remember his face as that of someone who once hurt you, who tried to kill you. That is, if Sam could make it to you in time.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get to see her one last time. That’s actually why I’m here, to take you to her when the time is right,” the shifter added casually.

“I will end your miserable fucking life! Tell me where she is right now!” Sam roared before pressing the blade further into her neck, the veins in his forearms ready to burst through his skin.

“Hey, hey! Sammy, ease up! We need her alive, alright?” Dean bounded over to his brother and after quite the struggle, managed to assuage him enough to release his vice grip and replace it with silver chains that shackled her to a chair.

“Sam, maybe we should also be asking ‘why’,” Dean mused as he fastened the end of a chain against one of the beds.

With a shake of his head, Sam avowed through grinding teeth, “I don’t fucking care. I have to get to her.”

“And what if it’s a trap?”

“Then I’ll find her myself.”

Dean scoffed in disbelief as he turned to his usually wise and level-headed little brother, “Oh yeah, and how’re you gonna do that? Where would you even start?”

“I don’t know!” Sam exclaimed in exasperation. Then, after a pause of desperate deliberation alleged, “Shifters like to make their lairs in sewers, right?”

Taking a step closer, Dean maintained his challenging tone, “So what are you gonna do, just wade through the entire town’s shit and piss until you find her?!”

“If that's what it takes, then yes!” Sam looked like he was about to eat his brother alive.

“Aww, that’s so sweet,” shifter Y/N interfered from her seated position before them, raising her chin to meet Sam’s eyes, “Don’t worry, handsome, I can tell you she feels the same way. But unfortunately, by the time you get to her, I don’t think she’ll be able to tell you herself. In fact, you’ll probably hardly recognize her anymore… so you might want to keep me around, if only as a souvenir of your soon-to-be-dead girlfriend.”

Sam couldn’t contain himself anymore. Despite looking like a carbon copy of you, the evil gleam in the shifter’s eyes made her easily differentiable, and so Sam held back nothing when he lunged across the distance, knife in hand ready to do some real damage. However, Dean pounced with him, having predicted his brother’s violent eruption and felt his shaking wrath, knowing a little too well just how rash he could be when it came to you. Still, it took all of Dean’s strength to pull Sam back, sending him a stern but knowing look once he did.

“Sam, stop!” His low voice rumbled as he went into authoritative big brother mode, “Listen to me, you wanna save Y/N? Well so do I, but this is not how we do it! Now I know it’s hard, but I need you to calm down, alright?”

Sam’s massive chest was practically at his chin as he heaved ginormous breaths. Though his body language was still offensive, his hazel eyes were filled with fear and devastation when they looked toward his brother, “Dean, if I don't get to her in time, I’ll...” Clenching his jaw, Sam made a fruitless attempt to calm his tremoring frame and quell his tumultuous emotions. What would he do? Sam wasn’t even sure himself. All he knew was that every cell in his being was currently screaming at him to get to you, to make sure you were safe and soothe away any of your pain. There was nothing he wouldn’t give in that moment to simply know you were alright and to hold you in his arms. He knew you could look after yourself, but for once he had a terrifying feeling that even you were in over your head, that you might actually need him this time, and he’d be fucking damned if he let you down.

“Woah! Hey, hey! Sammy, look at me! That ain’t gonna happen, alright? We’re gonna find Y/N and we’re gonna bring her home in one piece, you hear me? We’re the Winchesters, man! We’ve faced the end of the world. What’s a couple of shifters got on us?”

‘You,’ Sam thought, ‘They’ve got you.’ But he appreciated Dean’s pep talk nonetheless and nodded in response as a fresh surge of determination swelled within him.

“Alright then,” Dean nodded as well, “Why don’t you let me give her a go?”

As Dean’s silver blade cut into the detained shapeshifter, Sam flinched with every moan and howl of agony. He knew it wasn’t you, but she still had your voice and your perfect face. Yet not a second was wasted on the feeling of relief when they finally managed to get a location out of her. Sam nearly tripped over himself in his haste as he snatched the Impala’s keys and his gun before flying out of the room with a jumbled order for Dean to stay with the monster.

“Well, if you’re not gonna admit your feelings for the giant lumberjack, I guess you’re right. Maybe I should stop yapping and get to prettying you up for that first and last date of yours, huh?” Shifter Sam prodded your cheek with a switchblade.

You said nothing. At this point, you had a sneaking suspicion that physical pain might be more bearable than the psychological torment your imprisoner had been so keen on. It was one thing for you to torture yourself by entertaining the slim possibility that Sam might return your feelings for him, but to hear such outrageous perceptions from a creature who could read the inside of his mind like a paperback novel, and conveyed with such tantalizing conviction… well, it just about broke you.

And knowing that the shifter was yearning to coax a confession out of you simply to cause Sam as much anguish as possible made you more resolute about your refusal to submit, beyond the need to protect your own sanity.

One shiner and a slash to the thigh later, however, you heard a loud clash. Shifter Sam paused his handiwork and began to turn around, “Could your knight be here ahead of schedule?”

‘Dammit,’ you thought. The Winchesters were usually capable of being stealthy when necessary but in case it really was the sound of them making a blunder or encountering some other form of resistance, you figured you’d buy them a distraction.

“Wait, wait! You’re right, OK? Maybe I do feel something for Sam, but even if I told him, I think you’re forgetting… This is Sam fucking Winchester we’re talking about here. He’s been tortured by the devil himself. You really think killing me is going do much damage?”

Your abductor had now given you his full attention, leering at you with a sly smile, so you continued, “Besides, you picked a fight with the Winchesters; don't expect to live to see tomorrow.”

Right on cue, a hulking blur of hair and plaid came barreling in, growling ferally as he grabbed the shifter and threw more than one brutal punch against what appeared to be his own face. The silver ring on Sam’s hand made contact with skin and his shifter counterpart groaned in pain.

You nearly forgot about your ceaseless work of untying the rope that cuffed your wrists together as your looked on in shock. Why Sam hadn’t just shot him with a silver bullet was beyond you. He was smarter than this. There was no need to drag out a monster’s death if a more efficient option existed. But as he continued to engage his clone in hand-to-hand combat, it appeared almost as if he was venting his frustrations on the shifter, as if he drank up every ounce of hurt he was able to inflict. But his high only lasted so long and shifter Sam soon regained his balance, making use of his supernatural invulnerability and superior strength.

“Sam!” you screamed as the shifter threw him across the room.

He tumbled up just in time as the shifter meandered over, “So nice of you to join us, Sam. You know, Y/N here was just telling me about-“

Sam didn’t wait for him to finish, choosing instead to tackle him to the floor with a loud grunt. While they wrestled on the ground, you worked furiously at the knots behind you, wincing with every hit Sam took though it was becoming hard to tell them apart.

When Sam finally drew his gun, the shifter was able to divert its barrel and a shot rang out futilely. Catching a subsequent elbow to the ribs had Sam falling to his knees and you watched in horror as shifter Sam once again gained the upper hand, sending the gun flying out of Sam’s grasp. The binding around your wrists was just about undone when Sam seized a stray rusty pipe and swung it against his counterfeit. Shifter Sam was incapacitated for a brief instant but quickly returned to form with some vicious hooks and a couple of well-placed knees.

With your hands finally free of their restraints, you staggered over to the gun, the chair still attached at your ankles. As you took aim, you shouted, “Sam, get down!” before you shot his mirror image through the heart.

Sighing, you slumped to your hands and knees whilst the real Sam sat up with his back against a wall, gaping at you with a look of awe. Yet before he even caught his breath, he was up and gliding toward you, cradling his left wrist at an awkward angle.

“Sam, your wrist!”

“It’s fine, are you OK?” he swiftly dismissed your concern, cupping your face with his good hand as he examined the darkening bruise around your eye.

You ignored the palpitations in your chest and placed a hand upon his wrist, “Yeah, I’m fine. He wasted more time playing mind games than anything. You know villains and their monologues,” you joked, trying to ease his tension and the deluded self-imposed guilt you knew he must’ve been brewing in.

As if to prove your point, Sam lamented, “God, I’m so sorry. I should have known. I should have gotten here sooner.”

“What? No! They were miles ahead of us, Sam. The whole thing was a set up; this was their hunt. How could you have known?”

Rather than replying, he released a breath and busied himself trying to help you out of your binding.

Back at the motel, after icing your eye and stitching up your thigh, you insisted on re-wrapping Sam’s wrist while Dean took care of shifter Y/N’s remains. But when the older Winchester returned and spied you and his brother sitting together on a bed through a crack in the door, he couldn’t resist the chance to exercise his espionage skills.

“How did you know she wasn’t me anyway?” you asked as you gently wound the ace bandage around Sam’s swollen forearm.

“I just…” He looked down at your nimble fingers upon his skin and smiled unwittingly at their tender touch, “had a feeling.”

Sam’s sunflower gaze locked onto yours for a frozen instant and something about his soft expression made you forget what words were, until he cleared his throat, “Did you um- did you know he wasn’t me?”

“Yeah,” you confirmed, smiling for some strange reason. Perhaps you were just glad to see his trademark twinkle return to those otherworldly eyes. “Pretty soon after actually. I… had a feeling too.”

Sam’s dimples made every ache in your body disappear as that twinkle glistened in full force, “And how’d you know which one to shoot?”

Well, that dampened your mood and brought you back to the task at hand, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you kept grimacing every time you used your left wrist?” Although your words had a bitter force behind them, the pressure beneath your fingertips never increased and Sam had almost completely forgotten about his pain.

You, on the other hand, were reminded of your struggle to reconcile with what had happened since his question prompted a restored and growing frustration.

It had been bugging you the whole time and you felt compelled to confront him about it because storming in alone with a bad wrist, ready to throw hands with an out-of-his-league monster was really not Sam’s style. Something must’ve gotten into him and with everything the shifter had told you, you couldn’t help but wonder. Nevertheless, you were a little afraid of how he might answer, so Dean had to lean in closer to hear your next words.

“Why didn’t you just shoot him?”

“W-what do you mean?” Sam stammered out after a pause.

“Sam, you have a broken wrist, but instead of sending Dean or using your gun from the get-go, you came in like a madman and went after him with your fists!” Your voice was full of incredulity though it also carried an undertone of anger.

As Sam picked up on that reproachful tone, you could almost feel the telltale signs of his puppy dog eyes coming on. “He used my face to deceive you, to hurt you. They manipulated us. I had to- ...I mean, he killed those women just to get us here. He had it coming!”

Your hopes plummeted. Of course, Sam was ever the righteous man. Why would you assume his brashness had been purely born out of a need to avenge you? Though regardless of his reason, you were still upset about his self-destructing behavior, “Yeah, but you had to have realized you were in no position to be the one to give it to him, right? I mean, you might’ve looked the same but he was juiced up on monster superpowers, Sam… which meant he was stronger and faster, not to mention uninjured, in his own territory, and apparently the only one with a sound plan.”

A breath of laughter left Sam’s lips though there was no smile on his face. Here he’d been on a mission to save you, but you were the one who’d ended up saving him, again. You must’ve thought he was comically stupid and pathetically useless. How could he possibly think he was worthy of you? “I guess I should thank you for saving my ass again, huh?”

“What?! No! That’s not what I mean. Sam, you’re the one who saved me! And I’m beyond grateful for it, really I am. I just wish you didn’t hurt yourself more in the process.” You finally finished up with his wrist wrap, securing the final ends with a clip, and letting your hands linger on his for longer than necessary, momentarily distracted by the disparity of size between them. Sam didn’t appear uncomfortable though, as his fingers twitched closer to yours and he made no move to pull away.

He couldn’t help but smile again when he noticed the sincere concern in your eyes that was previously absent in the shifter’s. “Yeah well, what was it you once said to me? ‘Your ass will always be worth it’?”

“And if I remember correctly, you once told me you don’t do things on hunts that make your injuries worse,” you quoted him back with an arched brow.

“Yeah well, I guess this is payback. Now you know how I felt.” A playful grin made his dimples deepen and you clenched your jaw to refrain from gushing over the ridiculous cuteness of this ‘giant lumberjack’.

“You’re an idiot.”

“As long as you’re OK,” Sam answered assuredly, and you nearly melted when his free hand caressed your cheek for the second time that day, big thumb tracing a feather-light path below the purpled skin.

‘You’re both fucking idiots,’ Dean groaned internally from the other side of the door. He knew he had no choice but to up his game.

thanks so much for reading! feedback is greatly appreciated!

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anika-ann · 3 years

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Attached: Word Is that We Might Work It Out

Type: Modern-college-professor AU - part of Attached series

Pairing: professor!Steve Rogers x reader Word count: 6850🙈

Summary: You said yes to Professor Rogers – Steve – taking you out for ‘coffee’. Ball’s in your court – and you decide to make your move.

A date, maybe first of many, maybe not. A date with the gorgeous professor who happened to read your erotica about him. What could possibly go wrong?

Warnings: alcohol consumption, professor-student relationship and unspecified age gap, language, lots of fluff

A/N: Timeline-wise, this one-shot fits in after chapter four of Attached!!! At the end, you can find the reason behind me writing this. You can consider it one big flashback, if you will 😅 Gif by capchrisevaans.

Series masterlist | previous in timeline

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You lasted one day. One full day since the encounter in the office, since Professor Rogers admitted he would like to take you out for coffee or something similar. Since you two exchanged numbers.

It took you twenty-four hours – maybe less – to decide that so what if that might be a bad idea. It was not against the university rules and Professor Steve Rogers was a fucking specimen who also seemed to be a genuinely nice human being and if you allowed yourself to play chicken just because something only might go wrong in the future, you’d be an idiot.

Penny, your roomie, wholeheartedly agreed. She actually punched the air in victory as you were nursing a greasy lunch due to the wild-ish celebration of the end of the semester together the night prior and you just said to the void: “You know what, screw it. I’m gonna go for it.”

You didn’t even have to say what you were talking about – Professor Rogers had been the topic ever since the faithful Monday.

So you texted him that if the offer still stood, you’d like to meet up on Friday evening. Was he free?

Hey, Y/N :) Thank you for reaching out. Friday sounds great. Do you have anything specific in mind?

“Dude. He’s such a cutie. Who even texts like that?” Penny chuckled, a wide grin on her face as you couldn’t but read the text out loud.

“I texted him like that.”

“Touché. Because you want to impress mister ‘hot as fuck intellectual’ there.”

You just rolled your eyes, neither confirming nor denying. Mostly because Penny was right. But he was the first to use an emoji and… yeah, cutie indeed.

Well, I never say no to dinner and I’m down for almost anything-

“I bet you are,” Penny hummed to your ear and you swung after her blindly and thought of a better phrasing.

Well, I never say no to a dinner and I’m not picky. You choose. Seven-ish sounds good?

“Spoilsport.”

“Stop reading over my shoulder!” you chuckled and bit your lip as the answer came almost immediately.

Seven is alright. I’ll think of something to treat a girl right ;)

Your stomach made a small somersault, your face instantly radiating heat at the possible innuendo. The phone vibrated again before you could fully process the image your mind painted of him actually saying it in his gentle timbre.

Just so we’re clear, what is the nature of the dinner? It can be whatever you feel comfortable with.

Your heart leaped into your throat, hammering wildly.

That was the question, wasn’t it? Since you texted him, you made one thing clear with yourself. If you were doing this, it was going to be a date. You wouldn’t be doing things by halves.

Penny next to you made a noise that sounded as something between an aww and her gagging on nothing. “He’s disgustingly considerate for a man his age planning on going out with a girl your age.”

“He’s not that much older,” you protested instantly, frowning. He wasn’t. She knew that; you had both done your research. “And I think it’s amazing.”

You caught Penny’s smile from the corner of your eye as you typed.

“Well, it is kinda sweet. And I know he’s not, I’m messing with you. It’s just-- DON’T SEND HIM THAT!”

“Why?” you questioned, looking at her quizzically and totally clicking on send on purpose at the same time.

I’d be comfortable with a date if you are.

“It’s so lame. Of course he’s comfortable with a date, he suggested it. Duh.”

The reply came way too fast and Penny chuckled behind you as your jaw went slack.

“You know what? Don’t mind me. Good job. Keep it up,” Penny patted your shoulder as you stared at the screen where Professor Steven Grant Rogers just texted you a damn heart.

It’s a date <3

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It was a date indeed.

Steve texted you an address on Friday morning (along with an adorable good morning :) ), apologizing that he couldn’t pick you up, making sure you’d be alright getting there on your own. You found it absolutely sweet, considerate and smart. You suspected that his ‘inability’ to pick you up had something to do with the fact that you lived at the dorms and if he showed up there, it would be trending in the university chit-chat room within five minutes.

You spent a better part of the Friday afternoon researching the place and the weather forecast so you could dress accordingly and getting ready.

You were not ready for a date with Steve Rogers however; your nerves were a mess and nothing could ever prepare you for when he showed up perfectly on time in front of the restaurant---- wearing a suit no less.

How were you supposed to function when he was wearing such elegant clothing, a suit he filled up so fucking well?! And he looked just as breath-taking as always, stupidly perfect beard and slightly tousled hair you just wanted to run your fingers through and his smile was so gorgeous and--- Jesus Fucking Christ, the suit- how could you even put words together when looking at him-

“Wow, I feel so underdressed now.”

Clearly, you could speak just fine, only you lost your brain-to-mouth filter. Also, your mouth might have started watering and your heart was pounding like crazy. You would not survive tonight.

But, you also had a point. The restaurant was supposed to be a nice place, but relatively plain. And he showed up in amazingly fitting dress pants, white shirt, a tie and a suit jacket. So yes, you did feel underdressed.

“Oh no, no! You’re not,” he rushed to reassure you, eyeing your semi-leisure white dress with burgundy flowers with an attentive gaze that had you shifting your weight nervously. “I’m overdressed if anything. Sticking out like a sore thumb, I’m sorry.”

You could always just strip the suit jacket, was your first thought, but luckily for you, this time you managed to contain the words before they got out to the open.

“You’re fine,” you said instead, not knowing how else to react; needless to say you were grateful for the smile he gave you despite the double meaning.

Yes, he was fine indeed. Always. It was unfair, really.

“Thanks. You too. In fact, you look beautiful.”

Your heart stopped in your chest, your mind suddenly racing a mile per minute.

It was ridiculous. It was just a word. But for one, it was spoken so kindly and genuinely you couldn’t but think he meant it, for two, it was Professor Steve Rogers who told you that and--- beautiful.

You couldn’t remember a guy ever calling you beautiful.

Cute? Sure. Pretty? Maybe. Hot? Might have happened once or twice . But beautiful?

You might actually swoon.

And you were so lost in your head that you couldn’t but silently stare at the lethally handsome man in front of you and then it again registered in your brain that this was your fucking crush speaking to you and he was on a date with you and he had read your erotica, one that was about him no less-

Your face was set aflame in an instant and you… you couldn’t let out a word.

“It everything okay? Did I… did I say something wrong?” Steve asked hesitantly, a concerned wrinkle appearing between his brows and it reminded you of all the times you had seen him wearing such thoughtful expression in the two classes he taught instead of Professor Barnes and-

You were screwed.

Tonight was going to be a disaster.

“No, uhm, no, sorry--- maybe we should go inside or-“ you muttered, lightly gesturing towards the door and could you get any more awkward?

“Yeah, sure, sounds good.”

He let you walk in first like a real gentleman, the lightest skim of his fingers on your lower back, which caused your heartbeat to skyrocket; and only when the hostess seated you, you realized you never accepted his kind compliment.

It was too late for that now, you assumed, so you sipped at the still water which waited at each table, and repeated like a mantra to yourself that you needed to get your shit together otherwise you’d ruin your shot before the night even started.

But clearly, you succeeded at that already.

Whatever awkward aura you had around yourself, it seemed to extend now to him too – he shifted slightly in his seat (he had pulled out your chair for you before, because of course he had), his shoulders stiff. Despite that, he smiled at you over the menu.

“So… all exams worked out? Enjoying the freedom?” he asked casually.

“Oh, yes. Yeah.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” you uttered with a forced smile, your stomach twisted unpleasantly.

For some reason, you felt like you were having a lame attempt at small talk with a professor, which you were, but it wasn’t supposed to be like that.

Not tonight. Not on a date.

What were you even doing here? What were you playing at? Professor Steve Rogers was entirely out of your league, gorgeous, funny, kind and smart and here you were, barely making conversation.

It was pathetic really. It was embarrassing for both of you.

“You up to anything fun?” he queried, the question less enthusiastic than the one before. He was already growing tired of making your uncooperative brain work at least a bit, it was obvious.

Your gulped as the memory of last night popped in your head – staying in, quiet evening, in a mood for some dirty writing--- oh bless, another reminder of why this dinner was and should be really weird.

Steve read your smutty story. The one about him.

“Nothing special,” you squealed silently, earning a plain nod. “Eh, we went out with Penny, my roommate and best friend in one person. But mostly I just stayed in and--- caught up on sleeping.”

“I know what that’s like,” Steve hummed, clearly as grateful as you were when the waiter appeared by your table to take your orders.

Silence stretched as the man left, your hand beginning to fiddle with the neatly folded napkin on the table, lump growing in your throat due to your nerves.

“What about you? Anything… fun?” you asked reluctantly, noticing a brief smile passing Steve’s lips. Pretty, sinfully pretty lips. Perfect. Untouchable for mere mortals like you.

“Oh, not much. Few exam sittings, faculty meetings – we had one now, hence the suit-“

“You came here right from school?” you blurted out, startled – and clearly surprising him with your rudeness. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. Yes, I did. We have a meeting every last Friday of the month.”

“Oh my god, you must be so tired,” you sympathized with him quietly, the uneasy feeling in your stomach only growing. He came here straight from work and for this? “Why didn’t you say something? We could have postponed or something.”

Steve swiftly shook his head, his warm hand landing on yours, gently stopping your restless fingers. This time, it was butterflies in your stomach erupting with life, the sweet comforting gesture warming your heart. He wanted to be here. He came here for you. He was interested in you.

And the feeling was mutual. So why was it being so weird then?

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m glad you reached out. I’m glad that you said yes in the first place,” he admitted, features softening despite the tension in his shoulders never leaving. His brows furrowed as he slowly withdrew his hand – it must have been an automatic reaction then. “I’m not that tired and… and maybe I was little worried that if I asked for a different date, then…”

He trailed off and your lips parted in surprise, your heart swelling in your chest at what he was implying.

Did he think you’d back out? Did he think that all the potential obstacles intimidated you too much? That you’d think it wasn’t worth it? That it wouldn’t work out anyway?

Seeing as you were now, you couldn’t blame him. Despite him being the world’s most charming man, here you were, being… not at all yourself, stressing for no reason.

It seemed to you that had had chemistry, back there in his office. This date made sense. When you imagined how this could unfold, well, it went a bit differently too. There was considerably less embarrassment going around.

This was why you preferred writing to speaking. That’s why you liked daydreaming. Because reality was often less than ideal, no script, awkward silences, misunderstandings…

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, your voice barely audible as your food arrived.

You both thanked the waiter politely and you hoped that at least now you’d have a good excuse for the lack of normal conversation.

“What are you sorry for?”

You sighed and nibbled on your lower lip, not missing the way his gaze instinctively flickered there, pupils dilating just a fraction – but enough for you to notice. Your heart skipped a pleased beat – but the undeniable physical attraction couldn’t be enough.

“For this,” you said, gesturing vaguely between the two of you. His features twisted in disappointment and something that looked a lot like regret flashed in his eyes. “I want to be here, Steve. I really do. I don’t know what’s wrong with me-“

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you,” he was quick to oppose and you couldn’t help it as a wry chuckle escaped you.

“Well, there’s certainly nothing wrong with you. And still, there’s this…”

“…tension?”

You wished.

“Sort of? But not the fun kind, for sure.”

He grimaced, but a spark of amusement lit up his blue irises. “Awkward air around us?”

“Yes!” you exclaimed victoriously as he voiced exactly what you were thinking. Then you quickly lowered your voice, looking around. Luckily, no one stared at you. You realized you leaned closer to him over the table, your heart racing at that, but you didn’t withdraw; it was a lovely opportunity to get even a better look at his perfect face. “But I don’t know why!” You knew why. “I like you, Steve-“

“I like you too. And I know I already said that, but you look stunning.”

Your cheeks burned again, but this time, you managed to stutter out a thank you at least. Stunning, Jesus, was he for real?

“T-thank you. You look incredibly handsome too. Then again you always do—why did I say that.”

One corner of his lips quirked up.

“Why thank you, I’m glad you did. The feeling’s mutual, believe me.”

“Then why does this feel like one of the most awkward dates I’ve ever been to?!” you whisper-yelled, causing him to chuckle, the tips of his ears turning red.

His hand once again landed on yours, this time deliberately, the gesture warming you in more than one way.

“Well… I’m nervous. You might be too.” You hummed in agreement. Was that all it was? “But the way you said it, at least it seems to me that it could have been worse, right? More awkward?”

You felt the corners of your lips rise at the remark, shrugging. He had a point there. And he squeezed your hand a bit and good Lord, it should not be making your heart race so much, but he was touching you and he was being really sweet and his fingers were nice and warm and long-

“Tell me.”

You blinked in surprise, realizing you had been staring at your joined hands. You raised your gaze, finding him watching you with a subtle smile.

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me about the most awkward date you have ever been to,” he clarified, his thumb caressing your wrist.

You only hesitated for a beat before you nodded in agreement, god knew why. Perhaps you did need a reminder that this could have gone much more disastrously and it was mostly your traitorous brain telling you that you were messing everything up.

Plus, Steve deserved whatever he wanted – so far, he was the only reason this date wasn’t as disastrous as it could be.

“Okay. You ever been to a speed dating event, Steve? Because I have.”

“Oh, this is ought to be good,” he noted with another squeeze to your hand, before he released you. Shame. He sipped at his wine and dug into his pasta. “I’m all ears.”

This is ought to be good, Steve said. Well, maybe. You certainly hadn’t thought so at the time.

Explaining to Steve that as you had been under duress from no other than Penny, you both went to the event which promised you meeting ten dashing men in only an hour. You’d get five minutes with each, as anonymous as you’d wished to be, receiving a folder with nothing but a table with the first names of the men and a yes and no option and a line for your own notes about them.

You weren’t sure what to think of it – but after three epically failed Tinder attempts, you agreed to try. If nothing else, you’d gain a new experience.

And an experience had it been. You even lasted a month with one of the guys, but you didn’t tell Steve that. It wasn’t important.

André was.

André Whatever-was-his-last-name – because that was how it worked, no last names – definitely believed he was important. With the guys moving around the tables from one woman to another, spending five minutes with each, you could already hear André closing to your station from two tables over.

He was hard to tune out, courtesy of the colour of his voice, extremely unpleasant to your ears, and him never letting the woman he faced talk. Always interrupting. Always turning the conversation around so it would be about him.

Asshole.

You liked to think you weren’t quick to judge people, but André was making you cringe before you were even introduced. And then you actually were.

A minute into his monologue to you, you felt like you were being tortured.

And then the waitress managed to stumble and spill a glass of white wine – partly over your table, but mostly on the floor. At least she caught the glass and you had but a tiny spot on your dress.

“She was apologizing so profusely and I wasn’t thinking, okay. I went for the napkins few tables over to help and— I didn’t realize I put the open folder down for everyone to see,” you explained, feeling like face-palming when you remembered the night.

Steve watched you in anticipation, a small smirk and a knowing look on his face as he guessed you had already circled ‘no’ for André at the time.

Oh, you wished it were that simple. You felt your cheeks burn hot as you continued.

“André read it, of course. Obviously, he already got a hard ‘no’ from me, but… I might have written a tiny note for myself as to why,” you admitted and Steve’s eyebrow rose minutely, his curiosity piqued even more.

You took a deep breath.

“I wasn’t exactly kind to him. It was something along the lines of self-important asshole who probably compensated for something.” Steve huffed in amusement. But oh, if he only knew... you sighed and continued. “And If Draco Malfoy and Gilderoy Lockhart had a love child, this would be him.”

No sound came from your companion this time and your teeth anxiously sank into our lower lip, your pulse wavering. What was Steve thinking? Did he think you had been rude? Mean even? Nerdy? All of the above?

He stared at you for full three seconds, clearly rendered speechless by your harsh judgement.

And then he burst out laughing.

Suffocating weight fell from your shoulders and you silently joined him as you explained yourself.

“I was in my Harry Potter phase! And in my defence, I think it was actually pretty accurate...”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that, sweetheart,” Steve chuckled lightly before laughing some more, irises twinkling with amusement and something… softer.

You shuddered upon hearing the endearment spill unwittingly from his lips, upon seeing the emotion on his face. And maybe you were a little proud of yourself for making him laugh and lose the tension in his shoulders completely.

“It was one of the longest and most awkward three minutes of my life, the silence that followed,” you huffed, massaging your forehead. “He did not appreciate the comparison.”

“I bet,” Steve cackled, taking another bite of his meal, smile playing in the corner of his lips as he swallowed and continued. “But you’ve got to give it to him, he knew his Harry Potter characters.”

“Ha! My thoughts exactly. But that’s a little bit of weak base for dating, I think, especially since I kinda already hated him.”

“Oh, you did? I didn’t catch that,” Steve joked lightly, causing you to smile despite the horrid memory.

And funnily enough, telling him and remembering it… it did make you feel better and more at ease with him.

“Ha ha ha, laugh it up, Professor. Your turn.”

“I’m sorry?” he said, clearly puzzled. It didn’t escape your notice as his voice faltered, his Adam’s apple bobbing at the addressing.

Oh, so that’ s still a thing. You couldn’t but smirk a bit at that.

“An awkward date. You have to share now, it’s only fair,” you shrugged, only for a terrible realization to dawn on you. “Please tell me there is at least one awkward date story, Steve. Tell me this isn’t really your worst date ever.”

He shook his head with a soft chuckle.

“Oh, there’s plenty. I’m just trying to think about one that won’t scare you away from me. I’d hate that.”

One corner of his lips raised, he looked you up and down, lingering on your lips for a bit before meeting your gaze, something you could only hope was fondness and wanton in his eyes. Your breath hitched, heat pooling in your abdomen at the thorough onceover despite the gentle tone of his voice.

Fuck how could he make you feel hot and soft at the same time.

Unable to stand the intensity of his stare, you lowered your gaze and gulped, your stomach making an excited slip. He did want you. You had been being silly, letting your nerves get the better of you.

Clearing your throat, you willed yourself to look up, finding him still watching closely – and perhaps, there was a hint of a red to his cheeks, the tip of his ears burning as if despite the blatant flirting, he was unsure of himself too, because he didn’t want to mess up with you either.

You found it absolutely endearing and your heart swelled. The way you got to see there was more to him than his professor side and his dashing looks… you felt incredibly lucky. The more you got to interact with him, the more it wasn’t just your sinful thoughts belonging to him – he was quickly working on stealing your heart as well.

Plucking up your courage, you were the one to reach out this time, carefully sweeping your thumb over the back of his hand, smiling.

“I’m not scared off all that easily, Steve.”

He mirrored your genuine smile, a glint of something you couldn’t read lighting up his eyes.

“That’s good to know,” he said lowly and sighed, narrowing his eyes as if he was assessing you again. “Alright, here goes…”

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You actually managed to get one more awkward date story from Steve, because frankly, his experiences were hilarious. And surprise surprise, he was a great narrator. Plus, while he talked, you could ogle him shamelessly without fear of looking strange.

But you guessed that since you were on a date, you could ogle him anyway. He didn’t seem to mind; in fact, whenever he got the opportunity, he reciprocated it. It finally did feel like a date, the air growing thicker as you gradually shifted closer and closer, the light touches prolonging, feet meeting under the table without parting as soon as they made contact.

Your belly kept warming up with each smile and laugh, with every second of the intense eye contact, with every flicker of his gaze to your lips and vice versa. Sharing a dessert was a terrible idea, because you wanted kiss the crumbs sticking on his lips away. You teased each other, you complimented each other – with Steve absolutely winning the undeclared contest – and you realized that despite sharing your most embarrassing dates with each other at the beginning, this was the absolute best you had ever been to.

And you didn’t want it to end.

The light sweater you had brought with you did nothing to shield you from the surprisingly lukewarm wind. As you wandered the streets, Steve finally heard out one of your first thoughts you had had when meeting him today – he shrugged off his suit jacket.

Which… yum. The seams of his shirt were crying for help and you could only think fo one way of helping them – taking his shirt off too. But alas, Steve didn’t continue the striptease, probably because you were on the street. Instead, he did the most wholesome thing and held out the jacket for you to slip into.

You only hesitated a moment, teeth sinking into your lower lip. How could you say no to that?

“That’s awfully cliché and really sweet at the same time,” you muttered, causing him to shrug, one corner of his lips raised in a smirk as he helped you put it on, forefinger most definitely deliberately caressing the side of your throat before withdrawing.

A shudder ran down your spine, electrifying feeling going straight to your core. The whiff of whatever cologne he was wearing enveloped you, clouding your senses. Goddammit he smelled so good.

“Maybe I just want to see you in my clothes,” he hummed, the suggestive remark knocking the breath straight out of your lungs.

Stepping to your side from behind your back, you caught a glimpse of his expression – a little bit smug, a little bit panicked as it probably registered with him just how much suggestive it was, perhaps crossing a line.

It was absolutely not crossing the line, because the thought of wearing his clothes, preferably grabbing it because you couldn’t find yours after you threw it all around the room as you frantically stripped each other was making your head spin in the best way.

“Maybe I’d really enjoy wearing your clothes after you rip off mine.”

Steve’s jaw went slack, a choked noise leaving him and you couldn’t but laugh at his dumbstruck expression. Surprise, professor, you little shit. I can keep up.

“That was… mean,” he said, clearing his throat. Your eyebrows rose, pot calling the kettle back style. “But I see how I deserved that.”

“Damn right… but that doesn’t mean it’s a lie,” you shrugged, chuckling at the exasperated look he shot you.

‘Man, she’s gonna fuck you up on a whole new level and I’ll be here for it in the front row with a bowl of popcorn,’ Barnes’ words to Steve which you weren’t meant to hear echoed in your head, making you grin.

The teasing was intense, yet you felt comfortable in it. You blamed Steve and his nature – he already felt like a guy to go lengths to make you feel at ease enough; the way he had kept insisting on you choosing whether this was a date or not only proved it. He made it easy to be yourself, making you feel like you could.

And he made it perfectly clear that he was enjoying seeing you like that, that he appreciated you as you were.

But the closer you got to the campus, the more the reality was settling in, your laughter fading, butterflies and heat replaced by anxiety. He was still a professor. If you went for it, it wouldn’t always be uncomplicated like this. The awkwardness crept in as your steps grew slower, the inevitable arriving.

He couldn’t walk you home, to walk you to the dorm, even if the desire to do so radiated from every fibre of his being. He couldn’t do that for the same reason he hadn’t picked you up.

You came to a stop, feeling like there was this invisible border to a safe, students-free part of the city, the line you couldn’t cross side by side.

“So, uhm… this is it, huh?” Steve hummed, grim. You appreciated the lame attempt at a smile though and reciprocated, turning to face him.

“Looks like it.”

Heavy silence settled over you pair. Your eyes trailed all over him, lingering on his face, noting as he did the same. He was beautiful; you didn’t care you should say that about a man. He was. The light in his eyes dimmed compared to that just a few moments ago, but it was still there, expression soft, almost as soft as his beard looked, causing your fingers to twitch in need to run them over it and pull him in for a kiss.

Your lips tingled as the idea. You had never kissed a man with a beard and you wanted to know how it felt. The fact it was Steve only sealed the deal and made the need grow exponentially.

You wanted to kiss him so bad. But here you stood, unable to move, unable to speak. You sighed.

“Would you-“ “I want to-“

“Sorry,” you and him said at the same time again, laughing it off quietly, your fingers running through your hair.

Your stomach clenched when you noticed his eyes following the movement almost wistfully.

“You go first,” he prompted you gently.

You didn’t argue – if you learned one thing tonight, it was that Steve was a gentleman and that was so rare these days that you wouldn’t want to discourage him from being that way. Even if you really wanted to know what he was about to say, as soon as possible.

“I… I just want to say thank you. For the… for the date. I had a good time, so I hope you had too, at least a little,” you offered lamely, feeling blood rushing to your cheeks.

Like a schoolgirl blushing in front of her professor. Jesus, why were you being like this again.

Steve didn’t seem to find you as awkward as you felt however, your name slipping from his lips, kind and soft.

“I had a very good time. You’re amazing.” Your lips parted at the blatant and genuine compliment. His eyes went wide. “I’m sorry, that came out so strong, I didn’t mean to put you in spot like that-“

Stronger than ‘maybe I just want to see you in my clothes?’ you asked yourself. No, you didn’t think so. It was just that the playfulness had left at least two blocks back.

This felt more serious. More intimate.

“Ditto,” you whispered, gracing him with a shy smile he instantly mirrored. “But hey, I already knew that, so…”

He chuckled, shaking his head lightly, his smile only growing. When he looked at you again, his eyes were the beautiful warm blue that made you weak in the knees.

“Would you like to do something like that again?” he queried lowly.

Yes. YES. YES PLEASE. Minus the awkwardness at the beginning and the one a moment ago, preferably.

“Yeah. I’d like that,” you agreed simply, taking note of how his face lit up even more.

How could a man be so indescribably hot and yet adorable enough to tug at your heartstrings?

“Good. I’m glad.”

He tugged at your hand unexpectedly, pulling you to your left, his other hand steadying you by gently grasping your forearm.

Before you could question his actions, a pair of men swaying in a drunken haze passed you, having no care in the world for whom they might crash into.

“Thanks,” blurted out lowly, sparing a second to shoot their backs a dirty glare.

But Steve’s hands were still on you, distracting, as you stood face to face, chest to chest, a little too close, a little too far. Your heart sped up in your ribcage, breathing picking up in anticipation. So close…

But all Steve did was to squeeze your forearm reassuringly, lifting your joined hands to his face.

Just like the day you agreed to get coffee with him, he kissed your knuckles, only this time it was much firmer. His smile was sweet and utterly irresistible as he kept looking at your face and you felt all the worries about the future melt away once again.

He was so precious and this felt so right and--- you didn’t want him to kiss your hand.

Well, you wanted it, but you wanted more too.

You had been aching to kiss that mouth since you had first set eyes on him, on that inhumanly gorgeous and hot creature. You were on a date, you both had a great time and clearly he was giving you the opportunity to decide how far you wanted to take this, because as much as every little touch of his made to crazy, the displays of affection were positively chaste.

And you wanted to take it very very far.

Your rational brain wouldn’t let you just hop into sac with him today, but fuck, you could do with a kiss. You wanted to feel that perfectly trimmed beard of his and you wanted to taste him.

Did he?

You stepped even closer as he let go of your hand, distracting you minutely; due to the sudden proximity, it landed on his chest and Jesus fucking Christ he was firm.

Your fingers clutched at the white fabric of his shirt as you observed his face, your gaze inevitably flickering to his lips. Glancing up once more to find him still watching you intently, pupils dilated, your breath caught in your throat, heat stirring in your belly.

Rising to your tiptoes, you gripped the fabric tighter and shortly pressed your lips to his.

It was a funny feeling – lips hot, soft and slightly chapped, a stark contrast to the beard, less rough than you expected, leaving a tingly sensation behind. It was different; exciting and addicting. Before he could react and before you could think twice, you kissed him again, this time lingering for a few seconds, your eyelids falling shut.

Your heart fluttered when you felt his lips reluctantly respond just as you withdrew, his grip on your arm tightening. You ran your tongue over your lips to savour the feeling, mouth instinctively curling up in a smile, gaze meeting his.

Little wrinkles appeared around his eyes as he smiled as well.

“You okay?”

You nodded, almost too eagerly, lowering back to your whole feet. Involuntarily, your gaze flickered to his mouth again, wanting more.

“Uhm… beard,” you piped up unhelpfully, pressing your lips together as soon as the admission left them.

Steve’s smile widened as he once again grasped your hand, leading it to cup his face – not before he dropped a kiss to your palm.

You almost let out a very embarrassing whine at the curious sensation, your mind, still enveloped in Steve’s warmth and cologne, wondering how the beard would feel elsewhere.

Your fingers unwittingly caressed the hair, thumb brushing his lips, unable to resist.

His Adam’s apple bobbed, lips parting, hot breath fanning over your skin as watched you.

“Sweetheart,” he breathed out and that was it – you pressed against the soft swollen flesh at the pet name, causing a low grumble echo in Steve’s chest.

And then his hand slid to your waist, the other sinking into your hair, and he pulled up into a kiss that had nothing to do with how patient he had been before. He was still a gentleman, but it was a close call – he angled your head to his liking, his lips dancing with yours in a sensual dance with just a tease of tongue licking at the seam of your lips, causing you to sigh in bliss, granting him access.

He hummed appreciatively, the sound shaking your bones as he held you flat against him, the heat of his body seeping into yours – as if every nerve ending in your body wasn’t on fire already. He breathed you in, consumed you entirely – there were no other words for it.

There weren’t many words you could think of to begin with, too busy feeling his broad shoulders under your palm, fingers roaming to find the soft hair at his nape, revelling at the taste of him, just a smidge of tongue and you wanted more, your insides twisting in need--- and oh, your back was pressed against a wall now.

You let out a small startled sound which Steve instantly swallowed – but it was a good wake up call for you both. The motions of his lips slowed, softened, a gentle caress more than anything, his thumb stroking your cheek.

Breathless, you chased after his mouth when he retreated, earning one small peck and then another. He rested his forehead against yours, nose briefly skimming yours, causing you to smile and meet his gaze.

“Sorry,” he muttered and you genuinely wanted to slap his arm or something for apologizing for that. Because you knew what you’d be thinking about for the next few hours, days even, hell, probably weeks. “For springing out like that. I just… wanted to do that for a long time.”

The admission had your heart skip a beat and you couldn’t but lean in to kiss the corner of his mouth – and nope, you weren’t over how it felt, his beard against your lips. You wouldn’t be over it for a long time, you suspected.

“Me too.”

“So… we’re doing this again, right?“

You smirked up at him as he reluctantly released you. “You springing out like that or-“

“Don’t test me, babygirl,” he nearly growled, causing your eyes going wide as saucers, feeling as if you were sucker punched to your gut – and liked it.

Babygirl. Jesus, he was going to be the death of you.

“You can spring out like that again too,” you chimed, your voice sounding a bit strangled, because holy shit he just called you that. His gaze flickered all over your face, a shade darker than before. Your underwear was thoroughly ruined with that single look… and the earlier make-out session. “But if we’re talking second dates, I’d definitely do that too.”

He huffed and shook his head, a chuckle escaping him.

“You’re a minx…. I think I like it.”

You grinned at him and then sighed regretfully, reaching to slip off the jacket, which made him frown.

“You could give it back later.”

“Don’t tempt me… don’t want to rob you of it--- and there would be questions,” you explained, knowing that even walking around the campus like what would raise rumours of god knew what.

Like, maybe someone would think some gentleman like Professor Steve Rogers himself lent it to you or something, gee, where would that come from...

Steve nodded in understanding, accepting the jacket and shrugging it on.

“Plus, I’m thoroughly warmed up,” you added cheekily, causing him to chuckle incredulously again. With a sigh, he leaned in, cradling your jaw in one large hand and pressed a sweet lingering kiss to your forehead.

You could melt on spot.

“Goodnight, sweetheart. Let me know when you get home safe?” he asked of you gently, tugging at your heartstrings some more, because of course he did.

“I will. You too?”

His smile was soft and sweet as he promised to do so, clearly touched by your care. Well, that made two of you.

“Goodnight, Steve. Thank you for tonight.”

“Thank you.”

You breathed in deeply, dropping a last kiss to his cheek and quickly spun on your heels to walk away – because if you wavered a second longer, you might have not left at all.

Sure, you looked back at him several times, finding him standing where you had left him, his eyes following your receding figure. But you kept walking.

And once you couldn’t see him anymore, you broke into a fit of giggles, hiding your face in your palms to muffle your delighted squeal.

You were just coming back to the dorms from the date with Steve Rogers.

And despite the hiccups, it was the best damn thing in the world, leaving you giddy and already craving another date and more. Your cheeks hurt from smiling by the time you made it to the dorms, your heart pounding excitedly the whole time.

As promised, you let Steve know you made there safe, earning another text with a heart. It only made you squeal again, fingers frantic as you replied – and with a kiss for goodnight so he knew you truly enjoyed your night, ending included.

What he didn’t know was that maybe, just maybe, the next evening you wrote a tiny story in which you elaborated at what could happen if he ever pushed you against a wall and kissed your breathless ever again.

And hopefully, he would.

Soon.

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Attached masterlist

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...how it happened? I was asked about the first date, very kindly and in a no pressure manner.

S: Hey, just out of curiosity, you don’t really have to answer… how do you imagine their first date went?

me: Hm, let me think, I guess, mm, it would be like this--- oh shit. Oh no. It’s gonna be a fic again, isn’t it? Maybe I could finally write a headcanon or a drabble--- sigh.

As if I could ever.

Thank you for reading :-*

#fanfiction #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x you #professor steve rogers #steve rogers imagine #captain america au #modern au #professor au #college au #steve rogers #captain america #student reader #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers fanfic #word is that we might work it out #attached #attached: word is that we might work it out #anika ann

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