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chaseatinydream · 4 years

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pirate king (86) || atz

Hongjoong has always known that he would have to face his father again.

It was inevitable the second Hongjoong had chosen to become the man he was - a pirate, and one known as the Pirate King of the Caribbean, at that. Hongjoong hadn’t chosen the life of a pirate on his own, it had simply been a means to survival when there was no path left for him to take, but he had to admit he had embraced it partially to spit on his father’s ideals as the Chief Commander of the Royal Navy.

And now, he’s meeting his father eye to eye once again, both on different sides of the beach - both on different sides to this battle.

But while he has Wooyoung and Yeosang flanking both his sides, the hot summer air of the tropics taking on a sudden chill, his father approaches the no man’s land in a tiny boat - completely alone.

“Yeosang, do you notice something strange?” Wooyoung whispers out of the corner of his mouth, and Hongjoong can tell from just tense he is from the way his jaw is clenched. Hongjoong can’t see that well with one eye, but he trusts Wooyoung’s instincts and sight as the head gunner.

Next to him, Yeosang nods, a barely perceivable tilt of the head. “Something’s off, but I can’t tell what it is...” The navigator mumbles under his breath, chewing on his bottom lip. Hongjoong swallows, feeling unease stir in the pit of his belly. Just what is happening?

“They haven’t noticed the Treasure, have they?” Hongjoong murmurs softly as his father’s lone boat approaches the island - it’s barely small enough to fit a single man, yet it captures his attention more easily the massive armada at his father’s back. Yeosang nods again, eyes still fixed intently on the rowboat approaching shore.

“They’ll be able to move into cannon range faster than the armada can react, and we’ll cut a straight path in front of their bows to weaken the ships closest to us.” His navigator speaks quickly, but Hongjoong can hear the way his voice is trembling. Yeosang has never been one to enjoy being in the thick of fighting like Yunho and Jongho are, has never learnt to lift a blade larger than a simple knife for self defense. “There are two ships at the side with their artillery directed to us, but it’s the best chance we have. Once we give the smoke signal, San and Chin Hae should come running... if everything goes well.”

Wooyoung lets out a loud breath, blowing at his bangs to get them out of his eyes before he gives his captain an easy smile. “Nothing ever goes well with you, captain, does it?” He says, trying to lighten the mood, and Hongjoong shakes his head slightly, a small smile curling at the side of his mouth.

“We’re still alive for you to complain, so I don’t see what the problem is.” Hongjoong retorts calmly. Yeosang shakes his head in disappointment as Wooyoung snickers, before turning his attention back to the approaching boat.

The boat draws ever closer, close enough for him to make out the features on the man’s face. He’s completely alone, without a single bodyguard with him, something that Yeosang doesn’t understand. Even when his own father had come on board the Treasure for a negotiation, he had brought with him several men to protect him. But for the Chief Commander of the Royal Navy to approach them alone?

The man before them can’t be over-confident, or a simple fool if he has made his way up the ranks of the Royal Navy. He remembers the snippets of conversation he had heard his father make with the Chief Commander of the Royal Navy before, too young to understand with one ear pressed to a hardwood door, but enough to know that the man inside was one respected and feared. The Chief Commander commanded the room with a single word, and Yeosang had wondered just how capable he was to reach the position.

Yet here he is now, approaching the beach in a solitary rowboat, his presence so large that Yeosang already feels the weight of his gaze.

Just how confident is he?

A cold feeling settles on Yeosang’s shoulders as he continues to stare, watching the rowboat come closer to shore. He knows something is wrong, but what-

The gasp falls from his throat, completely unbidden and he rubs at his eyes frantically to confirm that he’s not hallucinating. No, he isn’t, and Yeosang isn’t sure which one is more terrifying to him.

“Captain...” He tugs at Hongjoong’s sleeve, and it’s only when he misses the red fur a few times does he realise his fingers are shaking. “Your father... isn’t supposed to be a witch or something, is he?”

“What? Only in personality, but not in reality...” Hongjoong begins to say, but then Wooyoung curses aloud, shifting forward to look more clearly at the man approaching the island.

“He’s not rowing.”

Hongjoong doesn’t fully process this until it hits him that his father is alone, in a rowboat, and is fast nearing them. He knows what it’s like to be able to do such a thing, sees the way the waves slide around the underside of the boat to propel it closer to shore. There’s no denying it - his father, too, must have the power of the seas.

And that scares him.

Still Hongjoong swallows, straightens his back and takes a step forward, feeling the weight of the musket strapped under his coat and the blade hidden in the sleeves. He raises his head to meet his father’s gaze, and he swears he sees a smile identical to his pulling at the corner of his father’s mouth.

He hates it.

The boat makes it landing far too fast, the waves pushing the small vessel onto shore. His father steps off board, each action as graceful and elegant as flowing water, befitting a man befitting his station, boots crunching in the sand. Hongjoong instinctively moves to take a step back, thickness forming in his throat before he forces himself to stay still even as a drop of cold sweat trickles down his back.

Remember who you’re doing this for, he reminds himself, nails digging into the skin of his palm. The pain grounds him, and he takes a deep breath to calm himself. The crew is all counting on him, their captain, to steer them safely through this storm. And you... you...

Your smile weaves its way into his mind, entwining with his memories. He has to be brave. You’re still waiting for him.

“Snap out of it, captain.” Wooyoung kicks him not so subtly in the knee, and Hongjoong turns his head to give his head gunner a flat look. The man gives him a beatific grin in response. “Don’t think so hard and just focus on capturing that little bastard snake. I’ll protect you with my life, so there’s no need to worry.”

Hongjoong snorts, but part of him does feel marginally better at Wooyoung’s words. “And here I was thinking that I wish it was Yunho here with me instead. Don’t be so hasty to die too, won’t you?” He looks at the purple haired man, a small grin on his face. “You have something to ask Chin Hae too, don’t you?”

Wooyoung levels a suspicious glance at his captain. “... have you been eavesdropping?”

“Will the two of you stop making me feel like a third wheel?” Yeosang grumbles under his breath, and Hongjoong laughs together with Wooyoung at the put out look on their navigator’s face. “Pay attention to the enemy in front of us.”

Hongjoong takes a deep breath, heart lighter. “Sorry, I got distracted. Let’s do it.”

It’s been years since he’s seen his father’s face, and he hasn’t changed one bit since the last time Hongjoong has seen him.

He still has the same, sharp, fine features that women used to throw themselves at when Hongjoong was still a child, dark hair cropped short and parted in the middle to show his eyes. The only difference is that while one of his eyes are green just like Hongjoong last remembers them, the other is a strange, shifting colour that reminds him or a whirlpool at sea and sends shivers up Hongjoong’s spine.

It’s as if there’s something else lurking in his father’s body that’s not quite human.

His father steps up to the line drawn in the sand, both hands clasped behind his back and a serene smile on his handsome face. At a simple glance, he doesn’t appear to be carrying any weapons on him, dressed in nothing but a smart black coat with the Royal Navy’s insignia decorating the space over his heart. Hongjoong clenches his jaw ever so slightly at the red rose blooming there, but doesn’t say a word, meeting his father’s eyes evenly. The scar along his eye burns at the sight of him.

Don’t speak first, don’t show any weakness, don’t-

“You must have suffered a lot, Hongjoong.”

For the first time in almost a decade, Hongjoong hears his father speak again. It’s the same, steady voice that calmed him when he was trapped in the storms with his father in a tiny sailboat, the one that his ears could pick up even as the winds howled and the thunder crashed through the sky. His father never raised his voice, not once, and at the sound of his words Hongjoong feels like a child who just wants to hold his father’s hand again.

And he hates it.

“That’s not what we came here to talk about.” Wooyoung says loudly, and Hongjoong mentally breathes a word of thanks to his head gunner as he takes the momentary distraction to get himself back under control.

“He’s right,” Hongjoong speaks, and is relieved when his voice comes out firm and steady. Yeosang nods from next to him, eyes evenly trained on the man opposite them. “We’re here to negotiate for our crew’s freedom. ”

“Your crew’s safety is already guaranteed.” The man before him says so warmly that Hongjoong wants to hurl. It’s the exact same gentle smile his father had worn as he abandoned Hongjoong to bleed out on that island. “I mean no harm towards you, or your crew.”

“That doesn’t explain the whole armada behind you.” Wooyoung snaps, seething. The commander simply laughs, shaking his head kindly. “I assure you that they were never here to open fire on your ship. I only brought them to flush you out of Tortuga, otherwise you would never have agreed to a conversation with me. It is my hope that we will be able to resolve this without you having to pull the trigger, good sir.”

Wooyoung and Yeosang both flinch, the former reaching back subconsciously to touch the firearm behind his back before he catches himself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Hongjoong’s father merely shrugs, an easy tilt of the head that shows neither fear nor wariness. The smooth, refined way he speaks almost makes Yeosang’s head feel light, the right amount of politeness softened with the perfect touch of compassion and gentleness that makes him want to believe everything coming out of this man’s mouth, a textbook example of a perfect diplomat. Refusing him would make Yeosang feel awful, and-

“Yeo, snap out of it.” Wooyoung whispers harshly out of the corner of his mouth, and Yeosang startles out of it, surprised. “I don’t know what he’s doing, but don’t listen to it. Remember, he’s our enemy.”

“It’s a pity that you think of me that way, although that is completely understandable.” Hongjoong’s father nods with a resigned smile, and Yeosang almost finds himself rushing to reassure the man before he catches himself, throwing both hands over his mouth. Is this what hearing the voice of a siren is like, he wonders to himself, fear creeping up the back of his throat. “My purpose here is simple.”

“You want Chin Hae, and we’re not giving her to you. So find something else you want, because I’m not giving up one of my crew to someone like you.” Hongjoong says coldly, and his father simply raises an eyebrow in response. His eyes are as perceptive as those of an osprey, and he lets out a pained sigh, shaking his head in what seems to be both disappointment and worry. “So, it is true that you’ve fallen in love with it. Hongjoong, what you call Chin Hae is something that you haven’t fully even begun to understand.”

“What?” Hongjoong spits out, the word tasting bitter in his mouth. Is his father really saying he understands you more than he does? “What are you talking about?”

“You have a starstruck look in your eyes. I say this because I’m worried as your father, Hongjoong.” His father says calmly, and Hongjoong flinches, one hand gripping his eyepatch before he lets it fall back to the side. There’s a pressure building in his chest, a furious, boiling anger than feels like it’s about to explode any moment. How dare his father come after him, after everything he’s ever done, interfering with the life that he’s built and acting like he knows him?

“That doesn’t have anything to do with you.” He practically spits, voice rising in volume as he tries to keep his emotions under control. “If you did give a bit of care about your only son, you wouldn’t have shot him and left him alone to die on an island!”

“Captain, calm down.” Yeosang grips his wrist tightly, and it’s then that Hongjoong realises that he’s trembling, hands fisted so tight that he can’t feel his fingers. “Don’t let him get to you.”

But his impassioned words seem to have struck some sort of chord in his father, because the serene smile fades from his face. His father meets his eyes calmly, voice firm.

“Blood had to be spilled for the ritual.” The man says, and Hongjoong baulks at the word ritual. The closest he’s come to anything mystical in the world has been San’s unique abilities as a healer, the thing that had come to possess Chin Hae last night, and of course... the blessing of the sea goddess. “Don’t you realise, Hongjoong? The sand that you’re standing upon right now, it’s the very same place I left you behind.”

A chill runs up Hongjoong’s back, and he whips around in a circle to confirm it. When he had been left here years ago as a child, he’d been on the verge of deathfrom bleeding out, crying out of his one remaining eye and trying understand the agonizing pain that the betrayal of his only family had left in his heart. Now that he takes a second look, he sees a terrifyingly familiar palm tree that was stained red in his memory, remembers how golden sand was soaked crimson in his blood. He remembers the way the waves had risen and fallen, and the way she had emerged from the sea to stand on dry land-

“Why would you do something as sick as that?” Wooyoung hisses, and it’s then that Hongjoong sees the shotgun already locked and loaded in his gunner’s hands. Hongjoong doesn’t blame him, just being in his father’s presence makes his hairs stand on the end, his fight or flight reflexes kicking in desperately. “What ritual? You mean you’re one of those disgusting bastards who believe in sacrificing their children or whatever?”

Hongjoong feels sick to the pit of his stomach. He just wants to leave, to escape before he hears anything more. But his father opens his mouth to speak, and Hongjoong can’t bring himself move.

“A ritual to summon the gods themselves.”

Hongjoong freezes. “Gods?” The words come out strangled, choked in his throat. The sea goddess who had risen from the sea to save him and gave him her blessing... that was his father’s doing?

“This very place was where I met the sea goddess, years before you were even born.” His father says, and coldness creeps over his body, liquid ice burning cold in every vein as his father’s words ring in his ears. “I was on the verge of death myself after a massive sea storm, and when I came to I was alone... and my crew... lost to the waves.”

Hongjoong remembers this story. It had only been told once, out of the hundreds of sea legends and fantasies that his father had told him while the sailboat beneath them rocked gently on the waves.

“You must have been an amazing captain when you were younger, dad!” Hongjoong had turned behind to grin brightly at his father as the sailboat rose over another wave. “You’re so calm even when I’m scared! You don’t seem to be afraid of the big storms at all! That’s why you’re the chief commander of the Royal Navy, right?”

Hongjoong’s father had continued smiling, but even though Hongjoong had only been a boy then, he could see the way his father’s eyes fixed on a horizon far away, lost in his memories and his smile fading slightly from his face.

“The sea is a dangerous mistress,” his father had said softly, releasing one hand on the rudder to place it on Hongjoong’s head, a comforting weight. “That’s why it’s the captain’s role to guide his crew safely through any storm. As a captain, your first loyalty is to your crew. It’s a bond almost as strong as that of blood ties.” He ruffled Hongjoong’s hair so affectionately the boy couldn’t help but giggle. “Have you heard the saying, ‘a captain goes down with his ship’?”

“That sounds scary...” Hongjoong had shivered, hunkering down in the boat, slightly scared at the thought of falling into the sea. “What does it mean?”

Hongjoong’s father smiled at him. “It means that the captain holds ultimate responsibility for every member of his crew, and every person on board his ship. In an emergency, he will do everything in his power to save them, or give his life trying.” His voice turned slightly hoarse, and Hongjoong, perceptive even as a child, frowned at his father. “Dad, what’s wrong?”

His father had blinked, before he shook his head and gave his son a reassuring smile. “So, there’s no need to be scared, Hong. On this boat, if I’m the captain, who’s my crew?”

“Me!” Hongjoong yelled excitedly, throwing both hands into the air. “Me! I’m dad’s crew!”

His father’s eyes had softened.

“That’s right, my little map.” He pulled Hongjoong into an embrace with one arm, and Hongjoong threw both arms around his father, hugging him tight. “You... will definitely grow up and understand what it means to become a better captain than I ever was. I’m sorry I won’t be there to see it.”

“Dad?” Hongjoong hesitated, pulling away to look at his father in the eyes. Green met green, and his father smiled. “I don’t want to become a captain if it means leaving dad behind. I wanna be dad’s crew! Dad’s gonna be my captain forever!”

His father’s smile was stained with tears at the corner of his eyes.

“Dad’s crew... is already gone. There’s no one like them, and there will never be any like them ever again.” His father hugged Hongjoong harder. “That’s why I’m sorry you’ll endure so much for your selfish father’s sake and his failure.”

That day on, his father had never once mentioned his crew ever again.

But Hongjoong hadn’t been a fool. It hadn’t taken much for him to figure out as he grew older just what his father had meant by failure: failure as a captain, who was supposed to ensure the safety of his crew above all others. He had survived while the rest of his crew had died.

The captain goes down with his ship.

The very same philosophy that Hongjoong has never managed to shake, even if it had been his father who’d said those words. The same principles he lived and breathed by, to be a good captain, just like his father had said he would.

“Why me?” Hongjoong finally asks, his voice breaking. Yeosang and Wooyoung both turn to glance at him at the sound of his words wavering, fist clenched so tightly that his entire arm is trembling. “What exactly did you do to me? Why did you shoot me and leave me on this island to die? What exactly did you want with the gods that was worth killing me?”

“Hongjoong, I never meant to kill you. If I truly wanted you dead, you wouldn’t be standing here alive right now, because I would have simply shot you in the heart and left you dead.” His father says, so serious that it can’t be anything but the truth. “But your blood had to be spilled to call the sea goddess, because only you would be able to find her.”

“Me?” Hongjoong trembles, trying to deny it. “I don’t have anything to do with the gods. I didn’t even know they existed until-”

“Hongjoong.” His father cuts him off, soft voice so commanding Hongjoong falls silent instantly. “You were created with the essence of the sea. The blood of the sirens, the essence and life the sea holds, it flows in your veins. I made you with my own flesh and blood, Hongjoong. Just like the way water always finds its way back to the sea, I knew that you would be the map and the compass to my goal. You’re my son who I love, Hongjoong. I would never want to hurt you.”

Hongjoong stumbles backwards, and his knees feel weak. Is this how you felt when you had found out that you were made of clay? Perhaps he understands that now. He can’t seem to find his voice, head spinning and dizzy. He was made. Yet he can tell, knows the love his father held for him was real, and perhaps that is the most devastating thing of all.

“What do you want with the sea goddess?” Hongjoong manages to croak. He remembers the being that had taken over you last night, with its haunting, ancient blue eyes, the way it had tried to kill him in order to save Chin Hae’s life. What would his father want with something like that?

His father’s next words sends a chill down his spine.

“I’m going to kill the sea goddess.” He says calmly, mismatched eyes meeting Hongjoong’s with such intensity that his breath catches in his throat. “I’m going to become the god of the sea, and bring my crew back, no matter what it costs me.

Because I’m their captain, and they’re my crew.”

#ateez #ateez fanfic #ateez fanfiction #hongjoong #seonghwa #yunho #yeosang #san #mingi #wooyoung #jongho #ateez pirate king #w; ot8 #w; pirate king #w; fanfiction

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ms-katonic-of-tamriel · 4 years

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Saw a fic tagged Lady Miraak/Lucien Flavius the other day.

Oh my god. That poor man. He’ll be eaten alive.

OTOH Lady Miraak?? Have some courage and make it male Miraak. Miraak’s bi as anything, he’ll take one look at this sheltered young Imperial desperate for knowledge of the Dragon Cult and... think things.

Bonus points for Very Sheltered Lucien at one point going “you know, if I were a girl, I’d be really nervous about now! Because... because you’re a bit terrifying!” (Spoiler alert: Lucien Flavius is really nervous, and Miraak is grinning at him like a born predator.)

Miraak chuckles and tells him to report back for his first lesson the next day then goes off to track down the annoying but definitely Not Straight jester, also from Cyrodiil, because he has to ask, have the norms around same-sex relationships changed that much??

“No, no, only Cicero fears that Mr Flavius is... how can Cicero put this. Sheltered. Naive. Barely twenty years old. The only child of doting parents. Has spent his entire existence in academic libraries. Is likely untouched. It is entirely possible he has managed to go his entire life blissfully unaware a relationship between two men is even possible.”

Miraak finds this hilarious and decides to have fun with that idea, and Dovahzul and history lessons are interwoven with VERY seductive body language, near-unmistakeable innuendo, getting Lucien all hot and bothered while not actually touching him then backing off immediately. Eventually Lucien snaps and talks to Kaidan of all people, because he’s confused as all hell, because it’s weird, it’s wrong, he doesn’t understand it, if Miraak was a woman, he’d know it was flirting but Miraak’s a man, men don’t do that to other men, do they?

Kaidan the other bisexual facepalms, wants to know just how they ever let Lucien out on his own, tells him yes they do in fact do that, just as women often go out with other women, it’s perfectly normal and not remotely rare. And yeah, Miraak’s seducing you. Or trying to. Do you need me to have a word with him, because First Dragonborn or no First Dragonborn, he doesn’t get to hassle you.

“No! No? I need to think about this. A lot. Oh Mara.”

Cicero is the next port of call. Did you know about this, Cicero? Men going out with other men? Cicero stares at Lucien, puts down the anatomical diagram of pain nexuses that he’s been colouring in, looks at him long and hard and then bursts out laughing for a good minute before drying his eyes and nodding. Yes, Flavius. Yes, Cicero knew. Cicero thought everybody knew.

“I didnt know! Oh gods. Miraak’s interested in me. Oh gods. Cicero, what do I do?”

“You are asking me for romantic advice?? Oh by Sithis... I don’t know! Are you interested in him or not?”

“I don’t know! He’s terrifying!”

“Good or bad terrifying?”

“Good... there’s a good terrifying??”

Cicero realises he now has to explain kink as well as queerness and wordlessly gets some books out of his personal collection.

“Some people like having power removed from them and being rendered utterly helpless while a ruthless, ravishing brute does whatever they like with them. Other people like taking helpless yet willing victims and having their way with them. It does not surprise Cicero that Miraak is among them.”

“Which kind is he??”

“He just had five thousand years of Mora rendering him helpless, he’s either VERY keen on it or has had enough. For you, boy? Assume it’s the latter.”

Lucien whimpers. Takes the books. Runs. Liriel gave Miraak’s mask to Dragonborn Gallery without hesitation and he’s been bare-faced ever since, with piercing blue eyes and long blonde hair and a smile that could tempt an Aedra to sin. She let him keep the robes though, having had replicas made for her museum, the originals cleaned and mended, and then returned, and the First Dragonborn had been wearing those whenever Lucien had seen him. Without the mask they were low-cut, to well below his collarbones, and while they weren’t tight-fitting, it was clear Miraak had muscles under there, and Lucien knew first-hand Miraak could fight with blade as well as magic.

Miraak was terrifying. That was a given. But Lucien had to know for sure.

Next lesson, Lucien enters the safehouse, sees Miraak sitting by the fire, and Miraak only has to look to know something is wrong. Different. Lucien is staring at him and not coming any closer, and Miraak realises that after three and a half months, he’s finally fucking realised.

About time. Now, what will the young seeker after knowledge do about it.

Silence and it is Miraak who breaks it.

“Is something wrong, goraan?”

“No - yes - have you been flirting with me??”

Bless him, his young student has finally graduated.

“You have finally noticed! Well done, goraan. Yes, I have been... how does Tamrielic put it. Pushing my luck. Nudging at the boundaries. Wondering which will fall first. Note I have not laid a finger on you. Merely left suggestions in the air. And despite becoming ever more blatant, you still come back for more. Why is that, goraani?”

Oh gods, he’s changed to the possessive tense.

“I’m not your... I’m leaving. Right now! I’m not coming back! I’m not paying for Dovahzul lessons in sex!”

Surprise on Miraak’s face. “It was never the intent you should, goraani. Ah, krosis. I took advantage of your naivety. It was wrong. I apologise. If you wish to stop the lessons, I understand. But if not, I will continue - only I promise to behave this time. You have my word as an Atmoran.”

Atmoran honour and the swearing of a vow were covered early on. Lucien doesn’t entirely trust him, but at length he sits down and the lessons resume. Except they’re different. Miraak is a respectful three feet away at all times. No breathing down the back of his neck without quite touching. No innuendo or purring or that damn smile. Just Miraak being calm and professional and, and... Lucien hates it. Hates every fucking second of it because walls have gone up, part of Miraak that was on display is now shut off, probably forever and Lucien... Lucien misses it. Lucien misses the feeling of feeling scared out of his wits but safe at the same time because Miraak wouldn’t really... Miraak apparently would. If Lucien asked him. Lucien does not know how to ask. Or what to ask for. But Miraak behind him, trailing a finger down the back of his neck, Miraak’s chest on his back and his arms round his waist... With arms like that, Miraak probably gives really good cuddles.

“Goraan. You are clearly not paying attention. If your mind is elsewhere, you are welcome to discontinue until it returns?”

“No!” Lucien gasps. Raised eyebrow from Miraak who wants to know where exactly his thoughts are flying if they are not here, and Lucien can take it no more.

“You. Utter. Bastard!”

Miraak doesn’t even look shocked. “I am, yes. Which of my many sins are you referring to?”

“You can’t just... you can’t just do this to me! You can’t just spend months being all up close and personal and then just... just switch it off like it meant nothing!”

Strange look on Miraak’s face. “Krosis, Lucien. I was under the impression my attentions were unwelcome and you wished me to stop.”

“No! Oh gods. No. You utter, utter bastard, I hate you so much, please don’t stop.”

Silence, Lucien’s face going bright red as he realises what’s just come out of his mouth, and he can barely look at Miraak. Then the chair creaks, Miraak’s footsteps are on the stone floor and then gauntlets are removed, hit the table, and then Miraak’s hands are in his.

“Lokaaliin. Is that your wish? Truly? For me not to?”

Miraak’s voice is gentler than Lucien has ever heard it and he finally looks Miraak in the eye to see the softest smile, one he’d not thought the man capable of, and Miraak’s reaching up to stroke his cheek, cupping his face and Lucien can’t stop himself leaning into his touch.

“I’m scared, Miraak.”

“It is all right to be. I have... not had a lover in a long time. But I have not forgotten how to give pleasure. I will give it to you if you ask.”

“I don’t even know how to - I’ve never had one! Oh gods.”

Miraak just smiles and kisses his hand. “It is all right. I will take care of you. It is your wish to move our lessons to a more intimate footing?”

Lucien nods, because Miraak makes him flushed and breathless and eager for... he doesn't even know what for. Miraak takes him by the hand and leads him to the bedroom upstairs, promising nothing below the waist will happen yet, they can just talk and cuddle, yes?

After all the frantic worrying, for it just to be that is a blessed, blessed relief. Miraak sheds his circlet, outer layers, strips down to his trousers, kicks off his boots and lies down on the bed, arms open for Lucien and Lucien hesitantly takes off his outer coat and his own boots and goes into Miraak’s arms, and from the moment skin touches skin, it is safety, reassurance, a throbbing strength that allays his fears as Miraak pulls him into his arms and holds him tight, and it takes Lucien a moment to realise Miraak is shaking.

“Are you all right?”

“Krosis. Yes. I am well. I just... I have had no one in my arms like this in millennia. Ah, goraani, I’m sorry. Be patient with me.”

Lucien hadn’t expected that. For all he’d seen Miraak as the scary First Dragonborn, he’d not even realised there was still a human being in there with feelings and vulnerabilities. That... was a lot less scary, or rather it was still scary in a different way. Goodness, what if he hurt Miraak? He’d never even thought of it that way round before. Well. He’d just need to be gentle, wouldn’t he. Just as Miraak was presently being with him.

It would be a few weeks more before sex actually started to happen. Rather more before they finally told other people they were seeing each other. Round about the time Liriel takes them both in her party, Lucien’s swarmed by Falmer, and then Miraak promptly immolates them all so fiercely you can’t tell flesh from chitin any more and when all the foes are dead, is frantically checking Lucien over, healing his wounds and then holding him so tightly no one can miss what’s up.

Liriel has strong words for Miraak, but sees Lucien leap to his defence and at length decides, what the hell, anyone to be a reforming influence on Miraak is a good thing, and Miraak does seem to genuinely care. Still, she does promise that if he hurts Lucien, she’s coming after him. Miraak just smiles. He’d expect no less.

Not so very long after that, Lucien moved into the safehouse with Miraak, and then it turned out his father got him a lead to this Dwemer ruin on Solstheim of all places and who better to go and have a look with him than a Solstheimer? That led to a whole series of adventures, including that one time Miraak nearly broke up with him for remantling the Dwemer-Daedra entity that had tried to kill Miraak and possess his corpse... but eventually Miraak forgave him. Even if he decided that if Lucien now had a demon horse, he was getting one, and acquired a Storm Atronach in horse form as his mount. At least it wasn’t tentacled.

#miraak #lucien flavius #skyrim #this is never going on ao3

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artificialqueens · 5 years

Text

i hope you've got the time [to keep that air between your lungs] (Trixya) - PinkGrapefruit

[trixya soulmate au]

A/N - this has taken me way too long. thank you to meggie and frey for being the angels they are and getting me through this in one piece - i love them both more than they know. enjoy!

Seeming when I’m older that it’s younger how I feel

Learning that you only get the raw end of the deal

First one to the finish line, but the last one left to know

Second place adorns you no matter where you go

It started on a Monday, except it didn’t - not really.

It started on the day she was born, in a small town in Russia where the rain hadn’t stopped for three days and everyone was a little on edge. It started when the doctor, a sweet old man from St Petersburg, announced loudly, “It’s a girl!” and then, much quieter and with a little sorrow, “and she has a soulmark.” It started when she was five and asked her mama why she had a flower on her arm, and the woman cursed and told her to be quiet, because ‘good girls don’t ask questions.’ When she never heard of the word ‘soulmate’ spoken in the small town she grew up in, not a speck of blood in the snow as the lily rooted its way into the crook of her elbow. When she cried going through test after test to see if they could remove it, uproot it. When a nurse tried to pull the lily out, tried to yank her second heart straight from her arm. It started when they moved to the USA when she was eight, her father explaining in a hushed tone that the small ‘sm’ in her passport wasn’t anything special. And then it changed.

It changed in seventh grade when they did a lesson on soulmarks in biology and the teacher was so proud to show off the daffodil on the back of her neck that Katya almost cried. It changed when she watched Alaska’s black dahlia start to uproot itself from her calf midway through a sophomore baseball practice because she saw an exchange student through the fence - their eyes meeting for a brief second before a petal fell onto the grass next to them. She watched them fall in love, until the flower had long removed itself, leaving a faint outline of the flower that had scarred under her skin. It changed when she learned she was one in a million - an urban myth, a soulmate. Half of a whole, unbreakable.

It changed when she met Trixie.

Well I’ve been out to Austin, back to Boston

Where I’ve been

Following the highways in my hand

It’s a Monday in spring and Katya is 19, but she feels like she’s 30. The cold of Boston has started to dissipate; instead, a warm breeze tickles her ankles through the DIY rips in her jeans. She is that kid, and she is proud of it. Her long sleeves cover the slight protrusion of a soulmate mark, but if you were to look closely enough, you could make out the raised stem of a lily following the river-like path of her veins under the white jersey.

She raises her keep-cup to her lips, lets the bitterness of the coffee overrule the sap that’s filling her mouth more and more often these days, the flower routing deeper into her body with each passing day. She hums to herself as she sketches, letting her ankles catch the sun a little as she sits on her coat on the Charles River Esplanade. Katya is majoring in mechanical engineering at MIT with a minor in women and gender studies - something she finds almost fulfilling when she isn’t frantically sketching out a design that would have been done weeks ago if it wasn’t for the new girl in her team. She’s bright blonde, wears heavy makeup and big, pink dresses to the lab; it’s a different kind of feminine to Katya’s messy hair, messy jeans, messy aura of comfort, and she isn’t necessarily intimidated, but she is stressed. And distracted.

“Who in their right mind wears a dress to the engineering labs?” she’d whined down the phone to Alaska after the girl’s first day. “It didn’t even cover her knees.”

“As if you cared about her safety,” croaked the girl, knowingly. “You’re just a whore who can’t focus.”

“And you’re paying for a linguistics course?” Katya bit back, laughing as she said it.

As she’s lost in her thoughts, a text comes through. She chuckles as she reads it, types out a hasty reply before throwing her possessions into her rucksack. She drains her coffee, ready to return to the flat and see what in the name of hell is going on.

“Your lollipop came round,” yells out Alaska before Katya has even locked the door. The girl shakes off her jacket and stands on the back of her Docs to get them off, shot-putting the cup into the sink from the doorway and letting out a little whoop when it goes in on the first try.

“My lollipop? That’s new,” she responds, launching herself onto the couch with a huff.

“Lollipop, Candy Cane, Sugarplum Fairy? They’re all the same to me.” The girl rubs the scar on the back of her leg subconsciously, checking her watch as she does so. “Shouldn’t Sharon be home by now?” she questions, reading the ache in her leg.

“Said she set off a few minutes ago,” reads Katya from Alaska’s phone - the other girl grabbing it off her when she realises.

She stands up, potters into the kitchen to make a fourth cup of coffee and tries to start a conversation over the whistling of the kettle.

“So Trixie was here?” she yells over the din, answered only by the nodding of the giant space buns sticking up from the back of the couch.

“Uhuh, said something about a double major being shit and meeting somewhere at six-ish.”

“Alaska, you bitch!” she shouts as she checks the time on the oven. It’s five forty-five and she’d promised to meet Trixie at a little cafe twenty minutes away (not that she’d realised, the river seemed to speed up time).

She sprints out the door like she’s on a mission. She sort of is.

When I go back to Wisconsin

And when I come home again

Has anybody out there seen my man?

Trixie never intended to do engineering. She intended to do fashion design and become, well, a fashion designer, but life doesn’t always go the way you plan and, like a cat afraid of water, she’s swimming now.

She switched to MIT in her third year because she was told she could, decided to swap design to design engineering and then mechanical, because two days before school started again, she was told they weren’t running that course - double majoring in biology too, because why the hell not. She thinks like a fashion design student, but works like a physicist - something that’s made her very few friends in the new course, but someone she appears to be especially at odds with is Katya. It’s not a cruel rivalry - nothing about it is malicious or rude, they’re just very different. Katya thinks like an engineer and dresses like an edgy art kid, Trixie - doesn’t.

It’s been three months since she got there and she feels she should probably make peace. It’s definitely her own choice, not the spines that are tearing holes in her clothes as they slowly extrude from her arm. The way they twist in her vein like a bad cannula, bruising, til her arm looks like a galaxy and her freckles are the stars. She’s started bandaging over the worst bits, the spikes getting stuck in her coats, so when she takes them off, they pull and tug. She’s not stupid, she knows what it means. But she doesn’t have to be excited about it.

He parents had always explained soulmates very nicely and concisely, and like they were a choice. Like she didn’t have to have one, like it could go away. They’d said ‘Trixie, darling, that cactus isn’t everything, you are more than it,’ and yet she’s always treated it like it was. Like it ruled her destiny - she believes it does.

They meet on a sunny Monday in April, Boston raining intermittently, but the sun trying its very hardest, like a halogen bulb about to blow. She reckons she has enough time to redress her arm before the other girl arrives, takes a seat in a comfy armchair by the window, ripping off the cover like it isn’t pulling out parts of her heart - tiny needles that were once veins. Maybe it’s because she has her eyes closed in pain that she doesn’t notice Katya. The girl floating in, pausing at the counter to get a refill in her reusable cup and pulling out a metal straw for Trixie as she sits down opposite. She looks in awe at the Gymnocalycium in the crook of her arm. How its tiny spineless flowers sit flush to the skin, while the rest seems like it’s jumping out.

“So,” she says, breaking the silence. “Hi.”

Coming home reminds you that you ain’t got long to go

‘Til you can’t make it to the mailbox, not in all this snow

I hope you’ve got the time to keep that air between your lungs

I hope you’ve got the hand to pull the plug when that day comes

Their tutor calls them into her office on an unusually hot day, both women sweating under their respective overalls and cotton dress. Katya feels the heat like it’s under her skin, splitting muscle from fat with a hot layer of wetness that makes her shiver a little. She’s the sweatiest woman alive, or so she likes to say, but the stuffiness of the basement office isn’t helping the way her skin crawls under the chino cloth. Trixie, despite being significantly less covered, doesn’t seem to be faring any better. The humidity makes her skin flush the colour of cyclamen flowers in the summer.

Katya feels a tug in her arm as she watches the girl listen intently. It’s like the lily has a mind of its own, and she’s not stupid, but she’d like to keep her denial for a little bit longer. It smells like pink gin and tastes like comfort.

“I want a paper on the advancement of bionic prosthetics on my desk in two weeks. It’ll be 20 percent of your final grade,” the teacher drones as if it hasn’t crossed her mind how absurd of a task it is. It probably hasn’t, and it makes Katya’s blood boil in a way that she isn’t so willing to chalk down to heat or some form of ailment that this flower is definitely giving her. Can you boil sap? She vows to google it when she gets home.

They leave in a discontented silence, Trixie thumbing the loose edge of her bandage as they let the slight breeze remove the sheen of moisture covering them. The light hurts their heads a little, but so does the assignment, so they can’t win. Katya texts Alaska a series of angry emojis and the girl replies with a squid.

“Two weeks? Fucking ridiculous,” Trixie mutters under her breath, eyebrows furrowed and teeth gritted slightly as she stomps down the stairs ahead of the other girl.

“I know!”

They sit in a huff on the cool concrete steps of the main block. The height of the building casts a shadow that they bask in as they grumble, each wondering how exactly they got stuck together.

“How do we do this?”

“How much do you like the library?”

Well I’ve been out to Austin, back to Boston

Where I’ve been

Following the highways in my hand

After two days, they have a permanent table in the library. It’s in a private study room off to the side, which the librarian has stuck a reserved sign on. When Katya goes to ask who’s reserved it, the woman just hands her a key and the rest is history. It’s nice though, they can leave their notes there instead of taking them home and forgetting them (after Trixie did that one morning, Katya didn’t speak to her for four hours).

The shorter girl thanks god that her minor finished months ago, is almost grateful that this project means she won’t have to do any more stupid things at the same time. She feels something that could almost be called empathy for Trixie, her biology professor throwing lab work after lab work at the girl, like she’s a women’s softball player and not an overworked college student. Trixie can play softball, that’s just not the point.

She divulges this information when Katya returns with two coffees, a black for herself and a sakura latte for Trixie. She doesn’t point out the irony that the girl is willing to drink the thing that’s killing her, doesn’t think they’re there yet. They discuss the ins and outs of everyone’s favourite lesbian sport and there are points where Katya even laughs.

They are high on life and caffeine when they lean in, slow, tense. The air feels humid and full of pent up stress that drips down the walls like wet paint - smells like despair and tastes like tea leaves. Katya takes two fingers, tucking Trixie’s blonde hair behind her ear before moving them under her chin, pulling it up, so it is angled in a way that leaves her vulnerable. She looks so pretty, eyes closed and lips parted and they almost forget where they are. Then the clock strikes eleven and Trixie’s eyes snap open. She is like a Cinderella when she realises how close their lips are (an inch, maybe less), and she jumps away like she has been burned. Like Katya’s fingers were candles, flaming and hot.

Katya wishes for a second that she had not felt the flower’s roots loosen around her lung, snake their way out of her aorta and her small intestine for a second there. It would make it all easier to accept as Trixie runs out of the room in a state of panic. The dark blonde reaches for the dredges of her coffee, downs what is left as she rubs on the protrusion taking up her forearm. When she coughs, she feels it shift and it hurts. She supposes the pain reminds her she is alive. She wishes it wouldn’t.

When I go back to Wisconsin

And when I come home again

Has anybody out there seen my man?

After a few more days of quiet working, Katya notices something. It’s not a subtle change, comes rather suddenly, but the girl she is working with looks different. Trixie has lost weight, her eyes are hollow and dark as she flicks the pages of research they have been doing for hours. Her hair, that once glistened like it contained the sun, looks limp and flat. There is no sheen, just plain yellow. She has to work up the nerve to ask what has happened as the girl sips her water.

“Are - are you okay?” She hates the way her voice breaks. She hates how Trixie’s voice sounds even more.

“Uhuh, peachy,” comes the other girl sardonically. Her voice is unnaturally hoarse as if she has been screaming for days on end. Katya winces at the sound of it.

“Are you sure? You don’t look well.”

Trixie turns, makes eye contact with her for the first time in days and it’s like Katya was looking through a façade as she sees her skin grey under the warm lights of the study room.

“My body is a temple that has been overtaken with weeds,” she chuckles and the other girl wants to make a joke about poetry slams and spoken word but, ironically, she cannot find the words. She does not know the prayers to make this go away.

They return to the complacent silence they held - it is not comfortable but it does not feel so much like thorns.

When Katya gets home that night, she falls onto the couch, eyeballing Sharon and Alaska cuddling, but more so the Thai food they have spread on the coffee table.

“’Lasky, Shar-Bear,” she starts, earning a cold glare from Sharon and a gesture towards the food. She picks up a random noodle dish and helps herself as she continues. “I think Trixie is the one.”

“Trixie?”

“Lollipop, Candyfloss, Barbie - That one, yes.”

“And she’s the one?” Alaska’s eyes narrow, she might have known this, but the urgency with which the idea is being conveyed now frightens her a little as she melts a little further into Sharon’s side.

“Yes,” replies Katya, mouth full of noodles, “And I don’t know what to do.”

“How much time you got?” enquires Alaska’s partner, muting the television less out of common decency and more pure nosiness. Katya pulls up the sleeve of her sweatshirt, reads the lily like one would read a watch. The marks and clocks are rather similar in their idea, she muses to herself, although only one predicts your death. She doesn’t think any deeper into that.

Sharon mutters something under her breath that sounds like 'Jesus,’ but could have easily been anything else.

“You might want to work fast, Kitty-Cat, that flower isn’t gonna wait much longer.” As Katya looks down, the penultimate petal falls off - she inhales sharply. Sharon definitely mutters 'Jesus’ this time.

Hippodromes and hedons sipping Seagram’s from my mug

Pills at all the parties that we sweep beneath the rug

Figuring that loving’s just the kind of dice you throw

Can a cactus and a lily find a common pot to grow?

It ends on a Monday too.

Trixie keels over after they have handed in their paper, a couple of pages tear-stained and one slightly darkened (although Katya swears she did not spill coffee on it). The blonde falls into Katya’s arms as they walk down the shallow steps outside the main building; it’s almost in slow-motion as the girl has to reach to grab her safely. She retches a couple of times as she lays there, eyes streaming as she holds her stomach like it’s falling apart.

It feels like it is.

Trixie’s always wondered if cacti have spikes on their roots, and, based on this moment and this moment alone, she truly believes that they do.. She feels every organ is being squeezed, the air forced out of her lungs, acid out of her stomach and blood from her heart. Her pulse is simultaneously skyrocketing and bottoming out, and her mouth is filling with the artificially sweet taste of sap. Her mama always told her that she would never have to know what it’s like to never find your soulmate, and the worst part is that she did find hers. All five feet and four inches, with dirty blonde, messy hair; paint splattered rucksack and ripped jeans; loves books but loves maths more, nerd. But she can still feel the roots of her love tearing her up inside as she looks into Katya’s eyes through the sheen of tears.

She cannot hear what is being said through the pounding of her heart and the all-encompassing ripping of her organs. It’s like a violin playing Dvorak’s 'New World,’ but the strings are loose and the bow is torn up and there is no sheet music. It’s an awful cacophony of suffering and hopelessness.

She does not feel when she closes her eyes.

She does feel when everything stops.

Well I’ve been out to Austin, back to Boston

Where I’ve been

Following the highways in my hand

When their lips touch, Katya wants a cosmic supernova. She wants to feel a universe expand and collapse in a second between them, some fiery explosion that tells her this is right. She needs bright lights and flashing words in the sky, 'congratulations dumbass’ spelt out in fireworks. She gets none of that.

Instead, she feels the unmistakable tug of heartstrings as they pick up a song she’d long forgotten, years after dropping violin in sixth grade. She feels her fingers move to the second fret of the A string, vibrato against the low wheezing of Trixie’s breath, the only sign she’s still alive. Her body plays Largo by memory as the lily snakes out of her vena cava. It’s uncomfortable, like pulling out a tooth or popping a dislocated elbow back into place, and as the low G swells in her heart, she feels something push against her sleeve.

She pulls away with a start.

Gently moving Trixie’s head further onto her knees, she rolls up her sweater, hands shaking a little. When it moves past her elbow, a lily falls onto the concrete next to her.

She feels its loss like a dead weight in her arm.

It’s hard to explain how it feels to lose something so dear to you, even if it means you gain something more. The lily that had caused so much grief, so much pain as it rooted its way deep into her being, gone in an instant. An uncomfortable few seconds followed by a lifetime of freedom. She examines the arm with fervour, the flower having left no exit wound, just a perfect scar.

It is then she has the idea to check on Trixie’s.

The girl lets out a heavy breath followed by a hacking cough as Katya twists her forearm. Surely enough, the cactus has left an imprint of buds and needles on the soft skin. It feels a little rough to touch but still has the thrum of a heartbeat under it, rooting it home.

Trixie studies Katya for a little, before moving her head up to meet the girl. She doesn’t taste of sap anymore, she notes, but of strawberries. She decides that it is now her favourite flavour.

When I go back to Wisconsin

And when I come home again

Has anybody out there seen my man?

“So, this is Lollipop,” Alaska teases when Katya brings her girlfriend over for the first time. It’s like an obligatory meet the family dinner, except they’ve already met and they’re ordering Chinese.

When Sharon turns up, she gives Trixie a once over before mouthing something along the lines of 'nice ass’ to Alaska, who rolls her eyes a little before nodding. Ever one for subtleties, Sharon repeats the same sentiment to the girl in question, who blushes the colour of raspberries and mutters a quiet 'thank you.’ The older girl decides she likes her.

“So, Candyfloss, what’s your flower?” questions Alaska once they’re deep on champagne and sweet and sour chicken. Trixie buries her head in Katya’s shoulder for a second, before rolling the sleeves of her dress up to reveal the cactus she’s had painstakingly tattooed over her mark.

“It felt a little more permanent,” she justifies as the other girls goggle, Katya looking smug. “Plus you couldn’t really see it before.”

Her girlfriend takes her hand gently in her own and presses a featherlight kiss to the tattoo.

“I love it, babe,” she whispers and when they kiss, it tastes of strawberry chapstick and she feels the supernova she’s always wanted.

Has anybody out there seen my man?

[alternate ending]

Katya feels Trixie go limp in her arms and wonders if this is where the train stops. If this is where she gets off and never returns to the land of the living, destined only to act as a word of warning to everyone. Romeo and Juliet could never.

She feels the lily tighten its hold on her heart, learnt enough biology during a work placement with pacemakers to envision its roots working their way into her right atrium through the superior vena cava and down into the ventricle. Imagines it as it snakes back up and out the pulmonary artery and round through her lungs. It goes back through the pulmonary vein and into her left atrium and ventricle, before exiting her aorta like some weird bread plait, but less tasty.

As the pressure increases she wishes they’d gone somewhere more comfortable, because the concrete steps digging into her back are almost as bad as the way her kidneys are twisting to accommodate her second heart.

The taste of sap burns the back of her throat, and as she slips under, she swears she feels a whisper of strawberries on her tongue like a promise. A solemn goodbye.

Heaven has more pink than she imagined.

Tags - rpdr fanfiction, trixya, trixie mattel, katya zamolodchikova, shalaska, sharon needles, alaska thunderfuck, angst, fluff?, eventual happy ending, also contains an alternate ending, lesbian au, soulmate au, pinkgrapefruit, concrit welcome

show my blog please V XX

Seeming when I’m older that it’s younger how I feelLearning that you only get the raw end of the dealFirst one to the finish line, but the last one left to knowSecond place adorns you no matter where you go It started on a Monday, except it didn’t - not really. It started on the day she was born, in a small town in Russia where the rain hadn’t stopped for three days and everyone was a little on edge. It started when the doctor, a sweet old man from St Petersburg, announced loudly, “It’s a girl!” and then, much quieter and with a little sorrow, “and she has a soulmark.” It started when she was five and asked her mama why she had a flower on her arm, and the woman cursed and told her to be quiet, because ‘good girls don’t ask questions.’ When she never heard of the word 'soulmate’ spoken in the small town she grew up in, not a speck of blood in the snow as the lily rooted its way into the crook of her elbow. When she cried going through test after test to see if they could remove it, uproot it. When a nurse tried to pull the lily out, tried to yank her second heart straight from her arm. It started when they moved to the USA when she was eight, her father explaining in a hushed tone that the small ‘sm’ in her passport wasn’t anything special. And then it changed. It changed in seventh grade when they did a lesson on soulmarks in biology and the teacher was so proud to show off the daffodil on the back of her neck that Katya almost cried. It changed when she watched Alaska’s black dahlia start to uproot itself from her calf midway through a sophomore baseball practice because she saw an exchange student through the fence - their eyes meeting for a brief second before a petal fell onto the grass next to them. She watched them fall in love, until the flower had long removed itself, leaving a faint outline of the flower that had scarred under her skin. It changed when she learned she was one in a million - an urban myth, a soulmate. Half of a whole, unbreakable. It changed when she met Trixie. Well I’ve been out to Austin, back to BostonWhere I’ve beenFollowing the highways in my hand It’s a Monday in spring and Katya is 19, but she feels like she’s 30. The cold of Boston has started to dissipate; instead, a warm breeze tickles her ankles through the DIY rips in her jeans. She is that kid, and she is proud of it. Her long sleeves cover the slight protrusion of a soulmate mark, but if you were to look closely enough, you could make out the raised stem of a lily following the river-like path of her veins under the white jersey. She raises her keep-cup to her lips, lets the bitterness of the coffee overrule the sap that’s filling her mouth more and more often these days, the flower routing deeper into her body with each passing day. She hums to herself as she sketches, letting her ankles catch the sun a little as she sits on her coat on the Charles River Esplanade. Katya is majoring in mechanical engineering at MIT with a minor in women and gender studies - something she finds almost fulfilling when she isn’t frantically sketching out a design that would have been done weeks ago if it wasn’t for the new girl in her team. She’s bright blonde, wears heavy makeup and big, pink dresses to the lab; it’s a different kind of feminine to Katya’s messy hair, messy jeans, messy aura of comfort, and she isn’t necessarily intimidated, but she is stressed. And distracted. “Who in their right mind wears a dress to the engineering labs?” she’d whined down the phone to Alaska after the girl’s first day. “It didn’t even cover her knees.” “As if you cared about her safety,” croaked the girl, knowingly. “You’re just a whore who can’t focus.” “And you’re paying for a linguistics course?” Katya bit back, laughing as she said it. As she’s lost in her thoughts, a text comes through. She chuckles as she reads it, types out a hasty reply before throwing her possessions into her rucksack. She drains her coffee, ready to return to the flat and see what in the name of hell is going on. “Your lollipop came round,” yells out Alaska before Katya has even locked the door. The girl shakes off her jacket and stands on the back of her Docs to get them off, shot-putting the cup into the sink from the doorway and letting out a little whoop when it goes in on the first try. “My lollipop? That’s new,” she responds, launching herself onto the couch with a huff. “Lollipop, Candy Cane, Sugarplum Fairy? They’re all the same to me.” The girl rubs the scar on the back of her leg subconsciously, checking her watch as she does so. “Shouldn’t Sharon be home by now?” she questions, reading the ache in her leg. “Said she set off a few minutes ago,” reads Katya from Alaska’s phone - the other girl grabbing it off her when she realises. She stands up, potters into the kitchen to make a fourth cup of coffee and tries to start a conversation over the whistling of the kettle. “So Trixie was here?” she yells over the din, answered only by the nodding of the giant space buns sticking up from the back of the couch. “Uhuh, said something about a double major being shit and meeting somewhere at six-ish.” “Alaska, you bitch!” she shouts as she checks the time on the oven. It’s five forty-five and she’d promised to meet Trixie at a little cafe twenty minutes away (not that she’d realised, the river seemed to speed up time). She sprints out the door like she’s on a mission. She sort of is. When I go back to WisconsinAnd when I come home againHas anybody out there seen my man? Trixie never intended to do engineering. She intended to do fashion design and become, well, a fashion designer, but life doesn’t always go the way you plan and, like a cat afraid of water, she’s swimming now. She switched to MIT in her third year because she was told she could, decided to swap design to design engineering and then mechanical, because two days before school started again, she was told they weren’t running that course - double majoring in biology too, because why the hell not. She thinks like a fashion design student, but works like a physicist - something that’s made her very few friends in the new course, but someone she appears to be especially at odds with is Katya. It’s not a cruel rivalry - nothing about it is malicious or rude, they’re just very different. Katya thinks like an engineer and dresses like an edgy art kid, Trixie - doesn’t. It’s been three months since she got there and she feels she should probably make peace. It’s definitely her own choice, not the spines that are tearing holes in her clothes as they slowly extrude from her arm. The way they twist in her vein like a bad cannula, bruising, til her arm looks like a galaxy and her freckles are the stars. She’s started bandaging over the worst bits, the spikes getting stuck in her coats, so when she takes them off, they pull and tug. She’s not stupid, she knows what it means. But she doesn’t have to be excited about it. He parents had always explained soulmates very nicely and concisely, and like they were a choice. Like she didn’t have to have one, like it could go away. They’d said ‘Trixie, darling, that cactus isn’t everything, you are more than it,’ and yet she’s always treated it like it was. Like it ruled her destiny - she believes it does. They meet on a sunny Monday in April, Boston raining intermittently, but the sun trying its very hardest, like a halogen bulb about to blow. She reckons she has enough time to redress her arm before the other girl arrives, takes a seat in a comfy armchair by the window, ripping off the cover like it isn’t pulling out parts of her heart - tiny needles that were once veins. Maybe it’s because she has her eyes closed in pain that she doesn’t notice Katya. The girl floating in, pausing at the counter to get a refill in her reusable cup and pulling out a metal straw for Trixie as she sits down opposite. She looks in awe at the Gymnocalycium in the crook of her arm. How its tiny spineless flowers sit flush to the skin, while the rest seems like it’s jumping out. “So,” she says, breaking the silence. “Hi.” Coming home reminds you that you ain’t got long to go'Til you can’t make it to the mailbox, not in all this snowI hope you’ve got the time to keep that air between your lungsI hope you’ve got the hand to pull the plug when that day comes Their tutor calls them into her office on an unusually hot day, both women sweating under their respective overalls and cotton dress. Katya feels the heat like it’s under her skin, splitting muscle from fat with a hot layer of wetness that makes her shiver a little. She’s the sweatiest woman alive, or so she likes to say, but the stuffiness of the basement office isn’t helping the way her skin crawls under the chino cloth. Trixie, despite being significantly less covered, doesn’t seem to be faring any better. The humidity makes her skin flush the colour of cyclamen flowers in the summer. Katya feels a tug in her arm as she watches the girl listen intently. It’s like the lily has a mind of its own, and she’s not stupid, but she’d like to keep her denial for a little bit longer. It smells like pink gin and tastes like comfort. “I want a paper on the advancement of bionic prosthetics on my desk in two weeks. It’ll be 20 percent of your final grade,” the teacher drones as if it hasn’t crossed her mind how absurd of a task it is. It probably hasn’t, and it makes Katya’s blood boil in a way that she isn’t so willing to chalk down to heat or some form of ailment that this flower is definitely giving her. Can you boil sap? She vows to google it when she gets home. They leave in a discontented silence, Trixie thumbing the loose edge of her bandage as they let the slight breeze remove the sheen of moisture covering them. The light hurts their heads a little, but so does the assignment, so they can’t win. Katya texts Alaska a series of angry emojis and the girl replies with a squid. “Two weeks? Fucking ridiculous,” Trixie mutters under her breath, eyebrows furrowed and teeth gritted slightly as she stomps down the stairs ahead of the other girl. “I know!” They sit in a huff on the cool concrete steps of the main block. The height of the building casts a shadow that they bask in as they grumble, each wondering how exactly they got stuck together. “How do we do this?” “How much do you like the library?” Well I’ve been out to Austin, back to BostonWhere I’ve beenFollowing the highways in my hand After two days, they have a permanent table in the library. It’s in a private study room off to the side, which the librarian has stuck a reserved sign on. When Katya goes to ask who’s reserved it, the woman just hands her a key and the rest is history. It’s nice though, they can leave their notes there instead of taking them home and forgetting them (after Trixie did that one morning, Katya didn’t speak to her for four hours). The shorter girl thanks god that her minor finished months ago, is almost grateful that this project means she won’t have to do any more stupid things at the same time. She feels something that could almost be called empathy for Trixie, her biology professor throwing lab work after lab work at the girl, like she’s a women’s softball player and not an overworked college student. Trixie can play softball, that’s just not the point. She divulges this information when Katya returns with two coffees, a black for herself and a sakura latte for Trixie. She doesn’t point out the irony that the girl is willing to drink the thing that’s killing her, doesn’t think they’re there yet. They discuss the ins and outs of everyone’s favourite lesbian sport and there are points where Katya even laughs. They are high on life and caffeine when they lean in, slow, tense. The air feels humid and full of pent up stress that drips down the walls like wet paint - smells like despair and tastes like tea leaves. Katya takes two fingers, tucking Trixie’s blonde hair behind her ear before moving them under her chin, pulling it up, so it is angled in a way that leaves her vulnerable. She looks so pretty, eyes closed and lips parted and they almost forget where they are. Then the clock strikes eleven and Trixie’s eyes snap open. She is like a Cinderella when she realises how close their lips are (an inch, maybe less), and she jumps away like she has been burned. Like Katya’s fingers were candles, flaming and hot. Katya wishes for a second that she had not felt the flower’s roots loosen around her lung, snake their way out of her aorta and her small intestine for a second there. It would make it all easier to accept as Trixie runs out of the room in a state of panic. The dark blonde reaches for the dredges of her coffee, downs what is left as she rubs on the protrusion taking up her forearm. When she coughs, she feels it shift and it hurts. She supposes the pain reminds her she is alive. She wishes it wouldn’t. When I go back to WisconsinAnd when I come home againHas anybody out there seen my man? After a few more days of quiet working, Katya notices something. It’s not a subtle change, comes rather suddenly, but the girl she is working with looks different. Trixie has lost weight, her eyes are hollow and dark as she flicks the pages of research they have been doing for hours. Her hair, that once glistened like it contained the sun, looks limp and flat. There is no sheen, just plain yellow. She has to work up the nerve to ask what has happened as the girl sips her water. “Are - are you okay?” She hates the way her voice breaks. She hates how Trixie’s voice sounds even more. “Uhuh, peachy,” comes the other girl sardonically. Her voice is unnaturally hoarse as if she has been screaming for days on end. Katya winces at the sound of it. “Are you sure? You don’t look well.” Trixie turns, makes eye contact with her for the first time in days and it’s like Katya was looking through a façade as she sees her skin grey under the warm lights of the study room. “My body is a temple that has been overtaken with weeds,” she chuckles and the other girl wants to make a joke about poetry slams and spoken word but, ironically, she cannot find the words. She does not know the prayers to make this go away. They return to the complacent silence they held - it is not comfortable but it does not feel so much like thorns. When Katya gets home that night, she falls onto the couch, eyeballing Sharon and Alaska cuddling, but more so the Thai food they have spread on the coffee table. “’Lasky, Shar-Bear,” she starts, earning a cold glare from Sharon and a gesture towards the food. She picks up a random noodle dish and helps herself as she continues. “I think Trixie is the one.” “Trixie?” “Lollipop, Candyfloss, Barbie - That one, yes.” “And she’s the one?” Alaska’s eyes narrow, she might have known this, but the urgency with which the idea is being conveyed now frightens her a little as she melts a little further into Sharon’s side. “Yes,” replies Katya, mouth full of noodles, “And I don’t know what to do.” “How much time you got?” enquires Alaska’s partner, muting the television less out of common decency and more pure nosiness. Katya pulls up the sleeve of her sweatshirt, reads the lily like one would read a watch. The marks and clocks are rather similar in their idea, she muses to herself, although only one predicts your death. She doesn’t think any deeper into that. Sharon mutters something under her breath that sounds like 'Jesus,’ but could have easily been anything else. “You might want to work fast, Kitty-Cat, that flower isn’t gonna wait much longer.” As Katya looks down, the penultimate petal falls off - she inhales sharply. Sharon definitely mutters 'Jesus’ this time. Hippodromes and hedons sipping Seagram’s from my mugPills at all the parties that we sweep beneath the rugFiguring that loving’s just the kind of dice you throwCan a cactus and a lily find a common pot to grow? It ends on a Monday too. Trixie keels over after they have handed in their paper, a couple of pages tear-stained and one slightly darkened (although Katya swears she did not spill coffee on it). The blonde falls into Katya’s arms as they walk down the shallow steps outside the main building; it’s almost in slow-motion as the girl has to reach to grab her safely. She retches a couple of times as she lays there, eyes streaming as she holds her stomach like it’s falling apart. It feels like it is. Trixie’s always wondered if cacti have spikes on their roots, and, based on this moment and this moment alone, she truly believes that they do.. She feels every organ is being squeezed, the air forced out of her lungs, acid out of her stomach and blood from her heart. Her pulse is simultaneously skyrocketing and bottoming out, and her mouth is filling with the artificially sweet taste of sap. Her mama always told her that she would never have to know what it’s like to never find your soulmate, and the worst part is that she did find hers. All five feet and four inches, with dirty blonde, messy hair; paint splattered rucksack and ripped jeans; loves books but loves maths more, nerd. But she can still feel the roots of her love tearing her up inside as she looks into Katya’s eyes through the sheen of tears. She cannot hear what is being said through the pounding of her heart and the all-encompassing ripping of her organs. It’s like a violin playing Dvorak’s 'New World,’ but the strings are loose and the bow is torn up and there is no sheet music. It’s an awful cacophony of suffering and hopelessness. She does not feel when she closes her eyes. She does feel when everything stops. Well I’ve been out to Austin, back to BostonWhere I’ve beenFollowing the highways in my hand When their lips touch, Katya wants a cosmic supernova. She wants to feel a universe expand and collapse in a second between them, some fiery explosion that tells her this is right. She needs bright lights and flashing words in the sky, 'congratulations dumbass’ spelt out in fireworks. She gets none of that. Instead, she feels the unmistakable tug of heartstrings as they pick up a song she’d long forgotten, years after dropping violin in sixth grade. She feels her fingers move to the second fret of the A string, vibrato against the low wheezing of Trixie’s breath, the only sign she’s still alive. Her body plays Largo by memory as the lily snakes out of her vena cava. It’s uncomfortable, like pulling out a tooth or popping a dislocated elbow back into place, and as the low G swells in her heart, she feels something push against her sleeve. She pulls away with a start. Gently moving Trixie’s head further onto her knees, she rolls up her sweater, hands shaking a little. When it moves past her elbow, a lily falls onto the concrete next to her. She feels its loss like a dead weight in her arm. It’s hard to explain how it feels to lose something so dear to you, even if it means you gain something more. The lily that had caused so much grief, so much pain as it rooted its way deep into her being, gone in an instant. An uncomfortable few seconds followed by a lifetime of freedom. She examines the arm with fervour, the flower having left no exit wound, just a perfect scar. It is then she has the idea to check on Trixie’s. The girl lets out a heavy breath followed by a hacking cough as Katya twists her forearm. Surely enough, the cactus has left an imprint of buds and needles on the soft skin. It feels a little rough to touch but still has the thrum of a heartbeat under it, rooting it home. Trixie studies Katya for a little, before moving her head up to meet the girl. She doesn’t taste of sap anymore, she notes, but of strawberries. She decides that it is now her favourite flavour. When I go back to WisconsinAnd when I come home againHas anybody out there seen my man? “So, this is Lollipop,” Alaska teases when Katya brings her girlfriend over for the first time. It’s like an obligatory meet the family dinner, except they’ve already met and they’re ordering Chinese. When Sharon turns up, she gives Trixie a once over before mouthing something along the lines of 'nice ass’ to Alaska, who rolls her eyes a little before nodding. Ever one for subtleties, Sharon repeats the same sentiment to the girl in question, who blushes the colour of raspberries and mutters a quiet 'thank you.’ The older girl decides she likes her. “So, Candyfloss, what’s your flower?” questions Alaska once they’re deep on champagne and sweet and sour chicken. Trixie buries her head in Katya’s shoulder for a second, before rolling the sleeves of her dress up to reveal the cactus she’s had painstakingly tattooed over her mark. “It felt a little more permanent,” she justifies as the other girls goggle, Katya looking smug. “Plus you couldn’t really see it before.” Her girlfriend takes her hand gently in her own and presses a featherlight kiss to the tattoo. “I love it, babe,” she whispers and when they kiss, it tastes of strawberry chapstick and she feels the supernova she’s always wanted. Has anybody out there seen my man? [alternate ending] Katya feels Trixie go limp in her arms and wonders if this is where the train stops. If this is where she gets off and never returns to the land of the living, destined only to act as a word of warning to everyone. Romeo and Juliet could never. She feels the lily tighten its hold on her heart, learnt enough biology during a work placement with pacemakers to envision its roots working their way into her right atrium through the superior vena cava and down into the ventricle. Imagines it as it snakes back up and out the pulmonary artery and round through her lungs. It goes back through the pulmonary vein and into her left atrium and ventricle, before exiting her aorta like some weird bread plait, but less tasty. As the pressure increases she wishes they’d gone somewhere more comfortable, because the concrete steps digging into her back are almost as bad as the way her kidneys are twisting to accommodate her second heart. The taste of sap burns the back of her throat, and as she slips under, she swears she feels a whisper of strawberries on her tongue like a promise. A solemn goodbye. * Heaven has more pink than she imagined.

#rpdr fanfiction #trixya #trixie mattel #katya zamolodchikova #shalaska #sharon needles #alaska thunderfuck #angst #fluff #eventual happy ending #lesbian au #soulmate au #pinkgrapefruit #concrit welcome #submission

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otome0heart · 5 years

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Hi! I wish you a very happy birthday if May 29th has already arrived in your timezone! 🎉🎉🎉 . How wonderful it is to share a birthday with Mitsuhide! 😊I was wondering if I could request anything you want to write at all with the man, any prompt of your choice. It would be nice to see it set in the Sengoku period, but modern AU is fine as well! Thank you so much for opening requests!

Hello! ^^ I already exchanged messages with you but, once again, I’d like to thank you for your good birthday wishes. It’s truly a great thing, since I never shared a birthday with a character I liked/loved before.

Also, thanks for requesting something from me, it’s an honour since you write so much and so well. As you stated in your preferences, I set it in the Sengoku Period, and I chose the prompt “Master Marksman”, as it’s specified in Mitsuhide’s profile. I sincerely hope that you like it *^^*

Title: Trust

Characters: Mitsuhide/MC

Words: 5070 (ups, I did it again… and longer)

Notes: I hope there aren’t big mistakes and that Mitsuhide is IC, since he goes under a few changes in this story. Apart from @otonymous, I’m tagging @han-pan, a passionate Mitsuhide-lover like us :)

TRUST

The young woman made her way through the forest carefully. She was looking down as she walked to avoid tripping on a tree root or a fallen branch while she carried a parcel wrapped in a purple and white patterned cloth. She held it tightly with both hands, fearing that she could drop it with the smallest stumble and she knew she would never forgive herself if that happened.

However, that did not prevent her to enjoy the walk. It was a beautiful spring morning and the forest seemed to be alive as the birds chirped happily, playing with each other among the foliage, and the soft warm breeze blew past her from time to time, bringing her the fresh smell of leaves and flowers which grew in the most hidden places of the wood. She loved that season, not only because the the world around her seemed vibrant with life and colour, but also because it was the time of the year when the man she loved had been born into the world.

A soft blush dusted her cheeks as memories of him crossed her mind: his soft smile as he regarded her, the respectful way he had talked and behaved with her since the beginning, when she was nothing more than a frightened girl dressed as a boy in a world of men and war, a poison taster whose life and presence was completely worthless and disposable; his kindness and warmth which were like a balm to her soul in the darkest hours.

She still could not believe that that wonderful, admirable man so above her in all aspects returned her feelings. Sometimes, when she opened her eyes at dawn, she imagined it to be a marvellous dream she wished she had never woken up from, but then, his smile as he wished her good morning, the warmth in his eyes as they talked during a short break or his lips as he kissed her gently behind a hidden corner as they passed by in a deserted corridor, told her that it was all true and that Akechi Mitsuhide, right hand of Oda Nobunaga, had given her his heart and sworn to love only her.

Her foot slipped and she grabbed the trunk of the nearest tree to avoid falling. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, berating herself for daydreaming. It was not a habit of hers, as she was always too busy to entertain fantasies but lately, she had caught herself doing it once in a while. She supposed it was one of the side-effects of being in love and did not give it much importance, but if it was going to be the cause of ruining her plans… Once her heartbeat had calmed down and she felt secure, she started her way again, this time promising herself to focus on the path without straying from her rational thoughts or her search.

That morning, on her way to Lord Nobunaga’s chambers carrying a tray with some cups of tea, she had met Lord Hideyoshi, who had informed her that the ruler of Owari Castle had vanished from his room, leaving a note behind giving most of his advisors the day-off. Upon seeing her astonished face, he had laughed, telling her that it happened from time to time and that nobody knew where he went or what he did, but he usually returned late in the evening and the following day, thing in the castle kept on working the same as always, as if his absence had never happened. And, he had added as he took the tray from her hands, that meant that she had some free time too.

Imagining that Lord Mitsuhide had to be frantic looking for his liege lord, she had headed for his residence to see if she could be of any assistance to him. However, when she had arrived, she had been surprised when one of the servants had told her that he was away too. After receiving news of his forced break, and with a resigned expression, he had mounted his favourite horse and had gone to the usual field near the river. And it had been then that she had had the idea of looking for him and spend some time together, as they barely had seen each other since, after his brother-in-law’s betrayal and Mitsuhide’s disobedience because of her, Lord Nobunaga had been giving his right-hand retainer diplomatic missions and asking for strategies and plans to prevent such situation happening again. Despite his love for work, she supposed that deep inside, he was glad to have a few hours for himself.

Sudden doubts had filled her mind, as she realised that he might have wanted to be alone, since he had not gone to look for her when he had heard the news, and for a moment, she considered going back to the castle and occupy herself with a new recipe or mending some clothes that surely anyone would definitely need to have sewn. However, she changed her mind again when the servant commented that he had not brought anything to eat with him and that that probably meant that he would be back at lunchtime. Knowing him as well as she did, he would probably forget about it. So, after borrowing the kitchen to prepare his favourite food, she had made her way to the meadow.

Soon, she had understood her mistake when she found that there were several clearings along the river and she had forgotten to ask for the exact location of the one Mitsuhide had gone to. She had already been in two fields but there had been no trace of his presence in any of them. A farmer she had encountered on her way back from the second, had indicated her a third one, a very wide open space quite far away from the busy roads.

The sound of a shot startled her, taking her out of her thoughts, and the young woman crouched down instinctively, almost dropping her precious bundle. It echoed through the trees, frightening the birds, which flew away in a haste. However, no other sound followed it. No steps, no shouting, not even the falling of a bird fulminated by a bullet. After a few more seconds, she dared to lift her head, buried in her knees and hidden under her arm, just a bit, enough to survey her surroundings and make sure that no infiltrated enemy was approaching her.

Some more time passed before she felt it was safe to stand up. She did it slowly, using the trunk of a tree as support and at the same time, as a shield, just in case the sniper was waiting for her to make a mistake. She took a step, still alert, toward the trees on her left, concealing her presence among the bushes to have the opportunity to hide or escape if the situation became dangerous.

After walking a while more, the babbling of the river reached her ears and seconds later, she saw the sunlight filtering through the gaps in the trunks, indicating that the field was near, and she found herself praying that her lord was there so he could chase away her fear as her steps became almost a run.

As she reached the edge of the clearing, a second shot broke the stillness of the forest once again, this time so loud, so powerful, that she could not help a cry of fear as she fell on her knees, covering her ears and dropping her parcel this time, trembling violently. She felt terror of those weapons after having been a witness of a feral battle a little after she had come to serve Lord Nobunaga. The only idea that they could severe a man’s life with only the little pull of a finger was truly horrifying. And even though she had been living in Owari for months, she still had not got used to them. A tear run down her face and unconsciously, she called for her lover in a whimper.

However, as before, nobody came to threaten or abduct her. Only silence followed the shooting and finally, she convinced herself to look up. And then, she saw him.

Mitsuhide was in the middle of the clearing, his posture straight, his eyes fixed in something ahead of him. In his hands, he had a musket from which smoke still came out, and suddenly, she understood that he was the one firing. A sensation akin to relief filled her heart, seeing that the illusion of an unknown enemy trying to kill her had been made up by her wild imagination. She sniffled and then, put her hands on the ground to help herself into an standing position. Her knees still trembled, refusing to support her, so she had to sit down on a log she found a few steps further.

From her position, she could see that he had frowned and his lips were pressed in a clear gesture of dissatisfaction as he put the butt of his weapon on the ground, and she wondered the reason. Hundreds of times she had heard in the tales of battle that the men told in the Main Hall, that Mitsuhide was an excellent marksman and that many of them were alive because of his expertise. It was impossible to believe that he was not as good as their praises said, or that he was disappointed even with perfection.

She watched his smooth and fluid movements as he reloaded the musket and, as soon as he took his position, she closed her eyes tightly, covering her ears. Even though she had expected it this time, she jumped when the deafening noise filled the air again. This time, the breeze brought the penetrating acrid smell of gunpowder to her nostrils and she made a disgusted expression. As the echo vanished, slowly, she opened her lids. He had lowered his arms and they hung in front of him, still holding the musket and looking at what it seemed like a kind of target attached to a tree at the other side of the field. The serious expression from before marred again his noble features and he started walking towards the spot he was aiming at.

Despite her distress, she could not help feeling a deep respect towards him. Instead of making the most of his day-off and rest as much as possible, he had devoted himself to improve his skills and keep on serving in one or other way the man he admired and followed so he could obtain Divine Rule as soon as possible. Her heart felt heavy with guilt at having been filled with dreams of love and selfish wishes of having him for herself, at least for a few hours.

The girl lowered her head, her gaze falling on the parcel containing the ruined onigiri she had made for him and sighed. She had been so stupid… She should have imagined why he had not gone to see her that morning. She had known since the beginning that he had devoted his life to the Oda clan, and she had fallen in love knowing that he would die for his liege lord and, even though she did not doubt of his affection toward her, that for him, Lord Nobunaga would always be first. She had already put him between a rock and a hard place once, when she had gone to see Lady Oichi and he had to decide if he was going to follow orders or his heart. She would not do it again.

Frowning deeply, she knelt on the floor and, carefully, she picked up the box, smoothing the cloth as best as she could, and then, stood up. Stealing a last glance at him, who was verifying his shots, she turned to go.

Mitsuhide furrowed his brows as he inspected the holes the bullets had left in the target. Two out of the three were slightly deflected to the left and that worried him. His aim had always been impeccable since he had learnt how to use those European weapons and the fact that it was not being as accurate as always troubled him. He knew his heart was in a turmoil of feelings that day but also, that he should not let them affect him when his comrades’ lives were at stake. If it was happening, then that meant that he was not as strong as he thought.

Breathing deeply and squaring his shoulders, he turned to go back to his position in the centre of the clearing when a silhouette he knew too well, outlined by a line of trees, took a step away, and his heart leapt in his chest. What was she doing there, so far from Owari?

Before he knew it, he had already called her name, his voice bewildered, and she came to a halt. He started to walk to her with brisk quick steps, worried that they had sent her to find him because something had happened in the castle, or to Lord Nobunaga, who had decided to wander away that day. What if he had got injured or… He swallowed hard, feeling sudden guilt fill his heart, and had to shake his head to dispel those negative thoughts. Everything was fine, it had to be.

As he approached her, she looked at him over her shoulder, her face pale and her beautiful eyes troubled.

“What are you doing here?” he asked in what he noticed was a taut voice, giving away his nervousness.

She opened her mouth to answer but then, she closed it again, inadvertently lowering her eyes. What was she going to tell him? That she had wanted to spend some time alone with him when she should have been thinking about a superior goal? Her cheeks turned red with shame.

Mitsuhide frowned, taking in her appearance, her rumpled kimono, stained in the lower part, and her disheveled hair, some strands hanging loosely from the ribbon which tied them, and immediately, all type of fearful thoughts crossed his mind.

“Are you alright?”

To her mortification, her eyes misted and his eyes shone with worry.

“Did you hurt yourself? Did someone-?”

She lifted her head with widened eyes at his words, seeing his anxious expression, and she shook her head.

“N-No… Don’t worry” she sniffled a bit and then straightened her posture, trying to show him a smile. “I’m fine.”

However, the hesitant line that appeared on her lips did nothing to calm him. It was obvious that something had happened to her and it pained him not to know it, but even more her apparent lack of trust in him. Was he so unreliable to soothe her suffering, whatever had caused it?

“Are you sure?” he asked again, cupping her cheek and brushing away a smear of dirt.

“Yes” she closed her eyes briefly leaning into his touch, feeling at ease with just that soft caress.

“Did something happen in the castle? Is that why you’re here?” he took her by the shoulders, looking intently into her pupils. “”Is Lord Nobunaga…?

“No, everybody is fine, and when I went out, he still hadn’t returned” she was glad to notice that her voice was now steadier.

Finally, he let out the breath he did not know he was holding and allowed himself to relax. Taking a step forward, he took her into her arms and leant his cheek on her head. For a moment, he had felt such fear of having failed his lord, of her being hurt in any way… But feeling her warmth through their clothes confirmed him that everything was alright, that her presence was all he needed to dismiss his concerns.

It was then that he noticed that she had stiffened in his embrace, which she did not return, and was about to ask her when he also became aware of something hard between them and he recalled that she carried a parcel. He parted from her and smiled.

“And, what are you doing here?” he repeated his question, this time feeling more relaxed.

She bit her lip and he frowned, feeling uneasy again.

“I was just having a stroll, since today we got a day-off unexpectedly” she finally decided to speak, trying to look and sound as convincing as possible to avoid worrying him again.

However, opposite to what she expected, Mitsuhide’s expression became even more serious.

“Really?” his voice was tight, showing that he knew she was lying, and her heart beat painfully in her chest. “So far from Owari?”

“I-I was thinking… and I wandered away without noticing…”

There had to be a reason why she was doing that, he told himself swallowing hard upon hearing her new falsehood. She had always been sincere since the time they had met, even when she was dressed as a boy, trying to fool everybody. Her feelings had always overcome her façade, saying what was in her mind or in her heart without caring who was in front of her.

“And” he tried again, pointing at the bundle in her arms. “What’s that?”

She tightened her grip on the box.

“I brought some food in case I became hungry”

“It seems very big for only one person…” he looked at her. “Maybe you could share something with me? The sun is very high, I had an early breakfast and the exercise has whetted my appetite.”

An expression of dismay appeared on her face, and he knew he had cornered her again.

“I ate it all” he furrowed his brows as the first sparks of anger ignited inside him. “Look, it seems that my arrival here bothered you so I’ll be going now, alright?”

She smiled at him as she turned, but he took her by the arm, the movement shocking her, not by his strength, as he kept it in check and his grip was gentle, but because it was the first time he had done it. Taking the box from her arms, which was surprisingly easy, probably because of her bewilderment, he put it on the ground with his musket. Then, he looked into her eyes as he held her hands.

“Please, stop…”

He leant forward and touched her forehead with his, his expression and his voice pained, and her heart twisted painfully in her chest.

“What aren’t you telling me?” he saw hesitancy in her eyes and pressed. “Don’t you trust me?”

“I do” the rushed statement, said in a desperate voice, eased his heart a bit. “But…”

He lifted a brown, his warm eyes encouraging her to continue.

“But I don’t want to be a nuisance to you…”

He seemed taken aback by he words, staring at her, incredulity painted all over his face. Seconds passed by as he kept silent, trying to find the reason why she thought like that. She would never ever be nothing but a blessing for him. She had filled his life with joy and laughter, she had become the reason why he wanted to be a better man, worthy of her love; to return alive from the many battles that he fought because the thought of her being sad was just unbearable.

“Did I do something to make you think like that?” he asked in a quiet voice, a sick feeling gripping his stomach.

She shook her head lightly.

“I-I just-” she tightened her grasp in his hands, pausing for a moment to order her thoughts. “When I heard about Lord Nobunaga leaving, I looked for you to see if I could be of any assistance, presuming that you had to be desperate. At your house, a servant told me that you had gone away too, to the usual meadow, so I supposed you were having a respite and I… I thought I could prepare some food and spend the day with you…” he smiled tenderly but she did not returned it; her eyes became damp and her voice trembled a bit. “However, when I arrived here, I saw that you were training, that even though our lord was away, you were still thinking about his Divine Rule… And I felt so ashamed…”

He had become more disconcerted by the moment with each of her words.

“I want to be your support, to work with you so you can make your dream of peace true…” she shrugged and lifted his head to him trying to compose a smile. “And here I am, distracting you from your training… I’m not some smitten teenager to be daydreaming about love…”

She bit her lip, tearing her gaze from him, a despondent expression marring her face.

“I’m sorry for being so selfish…”

He sighed, a soft smile gracing his lips, letting silence fall between them so she could regain some of her calm, or cry if she felt like it. He blinked slowly, drinking in the sight of the woman he loved more than anything in the world as she tried to regain her composure, breathing deeply and pressing her lips in a thin line, clearly trying not to be overwhelmed by her feelings; because if they were talking about egoism, maybe, he had something to confess too, being as guilty of it as her, probably even more.

“That’s not being selfish, my darling.”

Her eyes widened a bit as she suddenly lifted her head. It was the first time that he had used an endearment with her and her heart filled with excitement, vanishing part of the sadness she felt. She wished that he would repeat it again to savour its echo in her ears and soul, but she kept silent, waiting for the words following his statement.

“Being selfish is wanting to have you all to myself; being so smitten…” he intentionally used the same word that she had said, releasing one of her hands and cupping her face, “… that I’m jealous even of the wind which caresses your skin; desiring to love you until you can only think of me…” his voice had become a low murmur which made her heart thunder and her cheeks burn. “Didn’t you wonder why I didn’t look for you when I discovered that Lord Nobunaga had gone away for the day? I hadn’t seen you in so long that I didn’t trust myself to remain gentlemanly and courteous” he sighed and a slightly crooked smile drew across his mouth. “I’m not as noble-minded as you think I am…”

She swallowed hard at the hidden implication of his words, her stomach clenching in response to the clear spark of desire which had appeared in his pupils as he spoke. An unknown turmoil was unleashing in her chest and she did not know how to respond, feeling thrilled and afraid at the same time.

“May I, my darling?”

She had barely had time to nod when his lips brushed hers in a slow gentle kiss and she surrendered at once, realising how much she had truly missed him and his warmth. They parted slightly, just enough for him to tilt her head further back before returning to her, this time pressing insistently, breaking her defenses and deepening the kiss, the hand in her cheek moving to the nape of her neck. Hers flew to his waist to support herself at the heated onslaught of his mouth on hers as a shiver ran down her spine when her fingertips brushed a sensitive spot just below the collar of her kimono. He had never kissed her with such passion and hunger, as if he was trying to consume her, to make her part of himself. She pulled him closer, wanting to feel his warmth even more. Both lost track of the time, just aware of each other and their shared yearning.

Slowly, he parted from her when a soft moan left her throat, kissing her forehead and burying her in his embrace, feeling her grip the sleeves of his kimono and leaning her cheek against his chest. He could feel her breathing raggedly, trying to regain her composure, her heart beating fast and strong against his own, and clenched his jaw. He wanted nothing more than to keep on kissing her until her own desire matched his, lay her down on the soft grass and make her his forever. However, it was not the moment. Even though she had been distracted by his kisses, it was obvious that she was still upset about their previous exchange and he was not going to take advantage of her vulnerability. When it happened, he wanted it to be an unforgettable memory for her, something as fulfilling and meaningful as it surely would be for him.

“Did I frighten you?” he whispered, caressing her long hair gently, his fingers combing her tresses, still in disarray, noticing that she was calmer.

The young woman shook her head, still hidden in his chest, and her voice reached him low and still a bit tremulous.

“I… only need a little more time. It just took me… unaware… But I’m glad that you showed me this side of you, Lord Mitsuhide.”

His heart seemed to overflow with feelings for her and the ardour that still cursed through his veins, turned into tenderness.

“I love you so much, my darling…”

He brushed her temple with his mouth and felt her move, her eyes, big and innocent, finding his.

“I love you too, Milord.”

They smiled at each other and finally, they let go, their fingers trailing down their arms until their hands twined lovingly.

“I’m sorry I made you worry” her face was still flushed and he was inwardly pleased to see her lips slightly swollen as a result of his ministrations. “And I’m sorry that I lied to you.”

He tightened his hold on her, caressing her skin with his thumbs.

“It’s all in the past now” his pupils regarded her with affection, seeing that the smile she showed him reached her eyes for the first time. “I want you to feel that you can trust me completely, that we can talk about anything and that together, we can find the solution to any problem which comes our way.”

She nodded and his grin widened.

“So” he said, changing the topic and letting go of one of her hands. “Shall we eat? It’s true what I said about being hungry before.”

Her face paled slightly, her eyes showing her apprehension when he bent over and picked up his musket first, putting it under his arm and then, the box with the onigiri. He returned her gaze with an amused one, feeling the unbalanced weight of the food inside.

“There are some rocks under those trees” he lifted his head to the side, pointing somewhere in front of them. “It’ll be more comfortable than sitting on the ground.”

It was then that she saw his pure white horse, free from its reins and saddle, grazing the grass around him. It lifted its ears when it heard them starting to walk and watched them for a moment, losing its interest in them a second later.

“What about your training?”

He chuckled lightly.

“Don’t worry, I’ll return to it once I finish eating” he seemed to think for a moment and then, glanced to her. “If you think you can stand it, you could stay and we could go back riding along the river. The landscape is beautiful in this area.”

She nodded and with that gesture, her sight fell again on the box.

“However… I doubt the food is edible now…” she lowered her head, a delicate frown appearing in her features. “I let it drop when I heard one of the shots.”

Mitsuhide tilted his head to the side to look at her better.

“Then, it’s my responsibility to eat it as an apology for startling you.”

She opened her mouth to protest but he just grinned at her, a mischievous spark appearing in his pupils, as he tugged at her hand, starting a light run, which sent her unbalanced, gasping loudly, and making her focus on the movement of her legs, forgetting about what she was going to say.

They reached their destination in a few seconds among laughter and, as she sat to regain her breath, he leant his weapon against the rock that he had chosen and opened the parcel quickly, before she had time to complain again.

Upon opening the wooden box, he found a mash of crumpled onigiri, bonito flakes, some pickled plums and a few streaks of soy sauce mixed with tiny cut vegetables. Her heart sank in her chest, seeing such disaster, but Mitsuhide only smiled.

“They must be delicious.”

She glared at him. a thin line drawing across her lips.

“That’s why I didn’t want to show them to you” she pouted a bit. “The ingredients are all mixed, so must be the flavours…”

“But savour doesn’t have anything to do with appearance, does it?” he left the lid on the grass, his pupils never leaving what for him were true delicacies.

Finally, his eyes returned to her and his hand took hers again.

“You made these thinking of me, right?”

A light blush dusted her cheeks as she nodded lightly.

“I’m not going to throw that love away because they’re not perfectly shaped.”

Her reply died in her throat and she followed his fingers with her gaze, seeing them pick up a piece of onigiri which still had some bonito flakes hanging from it.

“Thanks for the food.”

He put it in his mouth, eating it slowly, enjoying the taste.

“Excellent, as always.”

“Really?”

“Try them yourself” he said picking up another piece and tending it to her in a way that clearly stated his intention to feed her.

Blushing profusely, she accepted it from his hand, feeling his fingertips brushing her lips.

“It’s not bad.”

“No, my darling” he replied, his eyes never leaving hers as he nibbled a few grains that had sticked to his fingers. “It’s simply exquisite.”

THE END

#otome games #Samurai Love Ballad Party #slbp #ask #fanfic #Akechi Mitsuhide #slbp mitsuhide #HBDMitsuhide #writing

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shadowsof-thenight · 5 years

Text

The long way home: Chapter four

Story summary: An AU about Steve Rogers that takes place in college. When you were kids, Steve was your best friend. Where he was you were and vice versa. So when your father got a new job on the other side of the country your 11 year old heart broken.

Over the years you had stayed in contact, though. And now, seven years later, you were off to college and unknowingly you’d applied to the college he had started at last year. You agree to meet on your second day and suddenly it all seemed a little less scary. Will you pick up where you’d left off? Or will everything have changed as much as Steve’s appearance.

Ship: Steve Rogers X Reader

Warnings: None. Words: 1732

If you want to get tagged, please let me know. I’d be happy too. This goes for all my stories .

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Previous Chapter

A/N: I struggled to get this out today. As of last week I am home from work, with a burnout. It has made me feel a little lost and writing was hard. Thankfully most of this chapter was already written. i'm hoping it wont effect my schedule of posting but I can't be sure.

Also, this chapter was supposed to end very differently, but it was over 3000 words long and I still could not end it properly. So instead I broke it in two. Not sure yet if it will effect the amount of chapters in the end, but it probably will. We'll see.

Hope you like this one!

As you sat in the food court and looked at the people rushing in and out around you, you were surprised by the passage of time. Time was going by so incredibly fast. It was already December and you truly felt that you had gotten into a grove here. You were comfortable, at ease. It felt like you belonged here. Classes were gruelling but, you still enjoyed them. And being away from your family was not so hard with the friends you had made. You had never expected to make those quite so easily.

You smiled when you saw Natasha waving as she walked your way. You moved a seat over towards the window, allowing Bucky, Steve and her to slide into the other seats. Natasha sat across from you, next to Bucky, who moved his chair so he sat as close as he could to her. You chuckled at the sight, while Steve pressed a kiss to the top of your head and sat down in the chair next to you. You gave him a bright smile and said hello to the three of them.

All three of them had just returned from practice in their respective sports and were freshly showered. You on the other hand had been bent over in a chair in the library all afternoon and felt a little crumbled next to them. Then again, in your honest opinion, they tended to look like moviestars most of the time. You on the other hand felt more like the girl next door. Not ugly. Just not....as special. You would think twice to voice those thoughts though. A few weeks ago, you had and Natasha had been quick to berate you. It was sweet, but did nothing to lessen the feelings.

Uni however had been all you had hoped it would be and for some reason it almost felt too good to be true. Your friendship with Steve had picked up more easily than either of you could have guessed. And you had made new friends quite effortlessly. Which, you knew, was mostly thanks to Natasha's outgoing nature. She was funny, sarcastic and incredibly honest. Which most people seemed to like about her. Who could blame them? It was definitely something you loved about her.

You glanced to the side, watching Steve's profile while he spoke animately with Bucky. His hands waving frantically as he tried to explain something, but not finding the words to help him do so.

You smiled as you watched him, while you could hear Bucky's boisterous laughter as he kept repeating that he didn't understand Steve. Something told you that he understood very well what his friend was trying to say. He was just teasing him as Bucky so liked to do. Bucky seemed to thrive on banter, both with his friends and his girlfriend. Which was one of the reasons he and Natasha worked so well together.

After a few moments of gazing, you were quick to direct your eyes to the cup of tea before you. That was when you noticed Natasha looking your way. She winked at you before nodding her head to Steve. She was discreet, though you still checked to see if either of the men had noticed. You shook your head at her and she barked out a laugh. She didn't believe you. You could not really blame her, you didn't really believe it either.

While the men had not noticed the silent exchange, they did notice the laugh that had escaped Nat's mouth and she was quick to divert to attention back to them, telling Bucky to stop teasing Steve. Bucky laughed loudly and Steve's cheeks got a little more colour to them.

Natasha was smile sweetly before turning the conversation towards the match that weekend.

You could not help but smile as you thought back to their first match of the season. It had been a little while ago, but you still remembered the tone in Steve's voice when he had called you. He had been so nervous.

It had been late in the evening when your phone had buzzed. It pulled you from your slumber. If you had not been having trouble falling asleep that night, you might not even have heard it.

As it was, you did. Groggy you had reached for it, expecting a text, but as it kept buzzing you quickly realized it was a call. This had woken you up more and you had quickly turned on a night light, while sitting up straight. Luckily Natasha slept like a log or you would've had to deal with her sleep deprived anger.

With a whisper you answered the call, uncertain who would call at this time of the night. Of course, had you been more awake, you could have checked caller-id.

“Sorry to call this late” Steve’s voice had sounded on the other end, unease clear in his tone.

Confused you assured him that it was fine and inquired why he was calling. When you heard the anxiety laced in his next words, you knew what you had to do. When you had been kids, there was one thing that would always help him. So five minutes later, you were meeting Steve outside of your dorm.

You walked around campus for hours listening to his fears, his worries. How he feared that he would muck it up that next day. That they would lose the game and he would be to blame.

To distract him you had changed the subject. Talked about your combined memories and shared interests. The sun was already peaking over the horizon when you said goodbye to a much calmer Steve.

It had surprised you that he would still get so nervous. If you were to believe Bucky, and you did, Steve had been praised for his game ever since his first year of playing back in high school. It had made you wonder how much of the shy little boy that you had known so long ago, was still inside of him.

You pondered who he had talked to, when things made him anxious, before reuniting with him this year. Though you figured it would have been either Bucky or Sam. They seemed to understand that Steve wanted to do right by everyone and hardly ever teased him about that. Well, only light teasing, which Steve could easily return.

Coming back to the present as Natasha softly kicked you under the table, you apologised for tuning out, claiming fatigue. Natasha barked out another laugh, while Steve fussed over you, wondering if you were working yourself too hard. Assuring him that you would be just fine, Bucky finally repeated the question you had missed before.

“Are you coming to the after party?” he said and you laughed, wondering aloud if they were not being to cocky about their imminent victory.

“Win or lose, a party is a good way to end the day” Bucky shrugged, though he still seemed confident that they would not loose. It was a home game after all. There was the added home court advantage. Or as Steve would most likely see it, added pressure.

“True,” you agreed, “Of course, I'll be there” you promised.

Steve pulled you into his side and kissed the top of your head once more as he muttered 'good'. You had no time to think about it as Bucky began to explain which dorm house would hold the party, as he would be damned to have it at their off campus apartment.

***

The game had been intense, making the elation over winning that much greater. The dorm was crowded and hot, making you wonder if the entire student body had showed up tonight. Pushing through throngs of dancing bodies, you finally made it to an empty bathroom, walking in before quickly closing the door behind you. You closed your eyes and sighed as you leaned back against the cool door.

“I thought I'd locked that” Steve's voice startled you and you opened your eyes to see him leaning on the sink with a beer. He smiled and you relaxed instantly.

“Pretty sure it's faulty” you said, twisting the lock a few times, hearing no click.

Steve shrugged and stood straight, looking you over. You could feel your stomach twisting under his gaze and your cheeks got heated. How could he have this effect on you, without really doing much of anything?

“Thanks for being there today” Steve said as he stepped closer and took your hand in his.

Willing your heart to slow down, you smiled as you looked up at his face again. His blue eyes were bright and alert, his smile kind as always. Squeezing his hand you leaned into his side, wrapping an arm around his waist.

“Always” you promised and he wrapped his arms around you, pulling you into a hug.

“Now, tell me, why is the man of the match hiding away?” you asked him a few blissful moments later.

“Needed a moment of peace and quiet” Steve shrugged and you squeezed him a little closer, wanting to comfort him.

“And then I came barging into it” you looked up at him to assess his mood. Did it bother him? You'd leave in an instance if he needed you too.

“I never need you to stay away” Steve chuckled and you smiled.

He bent down to kiss your cheek and opened his mouth to say something when the door burst open and two very drunken strangers fell into the bathroom. They hardly even noticed you and kept kissing and pulling at their clothes. Swallowing his words Steve was quick to guide you to the door and close it behind the two of you. That's when you both burst out laughing and walked away to find your friends.

Two hours later, with the party in full swing you were taken over by yawning. It was nearing midnight and you really wanted to get into bed. It took you another hour to finally excuse yourself and leave. Natasha had decided to join you, while the celebrating men remained behind.

By the time you were in bed, sleep took over quickly. You were ready to leave the long day behind. If only you had known that it would last a little longer still.

Tags: @musicfreak180

#The long way home #Steve Rogers x Reader #Steve Rogers #College AU #MCUfanfiction

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franklyshipping · 6 years

Text

Marvin the Mischievous ~ A Septic Ego Series ~ Part 5

Another forthcoming victim of Marvin's reign of tickly terror! Will he ever be stopped? Not in this instalment I'm afraid, for now Angus is the target. LET'S DO IT!

TAGGING: @the-survivelee-hunter @heros-helplee and @marvin-lee-magician

Fuck he needed this. Angus let out a lengthy sigh, before taking in a purposefully deep breath through his nose whilst his eyes fluttered shut. Finally, it was just him and nature. Now make no mistake, Angus relished in the company of others; most people do. However....everyone has something that they can only ever enjoy alone. Something private and special that works to keep you calm, make you happy, get rid of stress, reign in anger, provide clarity. Hobbies like these can really define people, and I think you'll agree that Angus' defines him. Walking through nature....in silence. This action and movement may seem normal, but it has depth. Angus was serene as he stepped in-between trees, showing his respect for the natural world around him; his silence enhancing how he didn't want to disturb anything unnecessarily. Yes, he was a hunter, but that didn't mean he didn't respect nature. He loved it. He saw it as utter perfection.

He smiled as familiar ditches, trees, and foliage surrounded him, reawakening countless memories of how he'd taken these paths so many times....the joy Angus gauged never faltered. No matter how familiar the experiences became, they never ceased to be special to him; how beautiful is that? For Angus this meant he knew every inch of his joyful territory, right down to the fungi conglomerations and root patterns....

'Huh....'

Angus suddenly paused....was he imagining things or did this patch of forest seem different to him? No...he was right. The way the leaves were spread showed how they'd been strategically placed, they certainly hadn't fallen like this. They would fall with the wind, like a cascade of colour; nature's confetti so to speak. Angus frowned as he brushed the leaves with his feet with a hum, his brows furrowing.....there was an old oak a mere few metres to his left, and it had a notably large root that ran through this small clearing. Somehow, it had been shifted.

'How could someone....move a whole tree root?'

Angus muttered as he straightened up and decided to stamp on the ground, to see if the compactness of the soil had changed-

'FUCK!'

He was falling, He'd tried to scramble and stop it happening, but on this rare occasion the hunter had been caught off his guard. A trapdoor trap, classic, simple, something he should have recognised! That just goes to show how captivating nature can be, it's the perfect distraction. Angus gasped when he landed on his back, fully expecting the air to be knocked out of him upon impact; but, his expectation was not met. Angus gulped as he breathed steadily....he hadn't even been winded, his fall had been broken perfectly. He sat up and hurriedly looked around him, thanks to the daylight it was all pretty clear. A perfectly square pit had been constructed, Angus had to admire it, the craftsmanship was exquisite, he figured it must have taken quite an effort. Now he looked to what he sat upon....and confusion set in. Plants. Layers of vines and creepers and tendrils of some sort of ivy spread across the entire floor, but why would a hunter bother putting in something to break the fall of their prey? Angus pursed his lips, but decided he's think about it more once he'd actually gotten out; which he was confident he could achieve, he could easily fashion a rope with the materials here. He went to stand up....but tripped.

'What the-? God dammit!'

He sighed when he saw that one of his ankles was caught in a creeper, and he dropped back down onto his butt so he could untangle himself. Angus knew he could easily use his hunting knife to break free, but he didn't like to actually cause severe harm to ecosystems, so he settled for fiddling and unknotting....or an attempt at least. He tried, but it wouldn't budge.

'C'mon ye fuckin vine work with me here.'

Angus grunted, but the vine still didn't budge. Not only that, but out of the corner of his eye....Angus was starting to see things. At first he thought it was just the shadows, but very soon that transpired to be incorrect. It was movement. Movement from the plants. Angus' eyes widened as he watched the vines around him start to slither and shift like pythons in rainforest canopies, and before he could act he found vines looping around his other ankle and grabbing at his wrists, they were clearly trying to immobilise him.

'What the fuck what the fuck c-c'mon th-this isn't funny! Wh-What kinda fuckin' trap is this?!'

Angus was tugging and squirming as his heart pounded, gritting his teeth as he exerted his strength, trying to fight back against this unique aspect of nature. It may not surprise you to know that Angus was the strongest septic ego, he spent all his time wrestling and chasing and hunting and battling, he had the most well trained stamina and collection of muscle out of all of them....and yet it was useless. Wherever he tugged, the vines tugged back twice as strongly, it was like they were made for him. Angus' mind was racing, was this a sentient thing? Was it going to....was it carnivorous? Had he disturbed its home? Upset it? All these questions filled his mind as he watched his surroundings, shivering when vines rose from the depths of foliage and seemed to circle him. He felt like he was being examined. Angus tried to find his voice, smiling a nervous smile.

'L-Look uh, I dunno if y-you can understand me or anythin' but i-if ya can then I'm sorry if I disturbed ya! I-I didn't even know ye existed.....i-if ye let me go I-I promise I'll never disturb here again! I swear!'

Angus couldn't stop the pleading tone entering his voice as he looked at the stationary vines surrounding him-wait....stationary? Angus blinked a few times as he looked at them more closely....it was like....no don't be silly, plants can't listen. However, Angus couldn't help but wonder, after all, they weren't exactly doing anything-

'H-Hey what are you doing? G-Get off my shoe, i-it's seriously not that interesting!'

Thought too soon. Angus tugged at his ankle as he watched one of the vines slide off his shoe and sock, and the hunter shivered as he wiggled his exposed foot amidst his struggling. Angus was about to try and address the plant again, but he was cut off by his own squeak when he felt something drag lightly down his bare sole; a tip of a vine.

'G-Gehet ohoff! D-Don't do that!'

Angus cursed himself. Yes....he was ticklish. Could he repress his reactions? No way. Never. The thing about Angus was that his composure crumbled so easily, despite his strong image and exterior....he broke down inside at the slightest tease to his nerves. The vine didn't stop, if anything it sped up, scratching up and down his sole as a shaky smile rose up on Angus' face.

'Oho yohou've gotta behe k-kidding me ohgod fuhuhuck.....'

Angus giggled as he tried to scrunch his foot, but the vine managed to scratch and worm into all the soft wrinkles at his sole; he had no way to escape. Angus was already breaking from the gentleness, so he let out a yell when he felt something strip his other foot of its protection and give it the same teasing, stroking treatment. Angus could feel his cheeks going pink with confusion and embarrassment, a tickling plant? Seriously? It was so fucking cliché.....but that didn't mean it wasn't effective.

'NononoNO! F-Fuhuhuck plehehehease! Nahahat tihihihicklihing!'

Angus was squirming as he giggled frantically, but his begging went unnoticed; if anything, it made the situation worse. Two more vines had become animated and were slithering towards his torso....but from behind Angus. They were sneaking up on him, rather like hunters. Keeping out of sight and waiting, hovering, being patient as they sought out the opportune moment to strike....which came when Angus arched his back in despair, unknowingly stretching out his upper body. They slipped in, one vine per armpit, wriggling furiously as they snuck under his t-shirt via the short sleeves.

'AAAAAHHH! NOHOHO GEHET AWAHAHAY!! THIHIHIS IHISN'T FAHAHAIR!'

Angus' eyes widened as he let out a cry, before descending into loud cackles that almost seemed to echo around the pit trap. Meanwhile....trapped in his pits, the vines were eagerly poking around in his hollows, brushing and scratching against every inch of skin that they could find; and yet, the sensations they provided were still predominantly soft. So much so that Angus was encased by laughter, but he still had the ability to think straight, which is more of a disadvantage than you might think. See, when you're in this sort of situation' your mind is racing. It's fixating on how vulnerable you are and how you can't escape and eventually you end up flustering yourself with your own thoughts. Angus' mind was working in this way. All he could think about was the strength of those vines and how they kept him exposed and vulnerable, and that this creature could do anything, tickle anywhere, keep him for as long as it wanted, make him suffer in hysteria or whimper from taunting gentleness. Angus' face was burning crimson as he shook his head, like he was trying to banish those torturous thoughts; ''trying'' being the operative word.

'WHY AHAHARE YOHOU TIHIHICKLING?? WHAHAT HAVE IHI DOHONE TOHO DESEHEHERVE THIHIS?!?!'

Angus cried out, grinning hugely as he thrashed, making him look more and more dishevelled and wild every second. They didn't stop. The vines were strange, aside from them being sentient, but they were softer than normal vines, smoother; they glided across his skin perfectly and maneuvered expertly. They made the tickling, despite its gentleness, truly unbearable.

'HEHEHEEELP HEHELP! SOHOHOMEONE PLEHEHEASE!!'

Angus was desperate as he yelled over and over again, although he was deep in the forest he knew that his loud vocals could carry some distance....he hoped and hoped it would work. It did too, for Angus saw someone lean over the pit after a few mere moments of his shouting, and it made him smile in relief.

'MAHAHARVihihin! Oho god thank fuhuck yer hehere!! Y-Yaha gotta gehet me ohohout!'

A lot of things happened here, things that Angus didn't notice. He didn't notice that as soon as Marvin had shown up, the vines slowed to a near stop; they still hovered, but they'd....made way for Marvin's presence. Also, Angus had not yet picked up how Marvin's eyes glittered and how his lips curled into a smirk as he gazed upon his predicament. Marvin was ecstatic to see how his wonderful vines had been treating his next little tickle victim. You may wonder why on earth Marvin was here.....he'd never made himself visible to his past victims, in fact, he'd made a POINT of keeping himself hidden. Not now though. The magician had gained a confidence, an ego, a pride at his work that made a showman inside him crave to be noticed. To confess to being an orchestrator of a devious scheme can be quite enjoyable, as Marvin was about to realise for himself.

'Goodness me, what a fine pickle you've gotten yourself into!'

Marvin didn't bother hiding the amusement in his voice, but for now Angus merely babbled in response.

'Y-Yeheah I-I mean, I thought I knew this f-fuckin' forest b-but here's a damn magic t-tickle plant.....l-look can ya just help?'

Angus looked up at Marvin imploringly, the vines may have halted their onslaught but they still had his limbs securely in their grasp. Angus was just filled with relief, he couldn't believe his cries for help had actually be answered! His brain was slowly calming down and catching up with everything.....so now Angus actually realised something was wrong, when Marvin smirked at him. Why would he smirk like that? More importantly, why wasn't he trying to get Angus out? Angus gulped a bit, a suspicion had formed in his mind. A suspicion, that Marvin's purred reply confirmed for him.

'But Angus.....why on earth would I want to release my prey? I worked so hard to catch you, it would be such a shame to see my efforts go to waste.'

Marvin let out a chuckle that sent shivers down Angus' spine as realisation washed over him.....for fuck's sake it was a MAGIC plant, why hadn't he realised before? As Angus realised the truth, Marvin felt joy building inside him. Seeing Angus see the truth of his predicament, see that it was HIS doing....it gave him so much satisfaction. Angus' voice as soft as he whispered.

'But....but....why? Why w-would ye do this?'

The gentle, shaky nature of Angus' voice made Marvin ''aww'' inside as he looked down at him with a grin. This was the moment he'd been waiting for. His shining moment, filled with well chosen words.

'Angus.....I have undergone, an epiphany. A realisation, like you just now.....about my powers. The capabilities I have do not have boundaries, not in a malicious sense, but in a sense of that the endless possibilities offer an opportunity! For exploration, experimentation, and what better test subjects could there be for my playful endeavours than all of you!'

Angus' eyes widened.....all? Had all the other septics undergone some sort of magical tickle treatment just like him? As Angus looked up at Marvin, he narrowed his eyes, he still had a glimmer of defiance left in him. Seeing Marvin's taunting ego rise up made Angus want nothing more than to put Marvin in his place.

'Ye won't g-get away with this! The o-others'll find out when I get outta this dumb trap!'

Marvin blinked a few times at Angus exclamation, before raising an amused eyebrow and growling tauntingly.

'Oh is that right?'

Angus tensed when he heard rustling around him....oh god the vines were moving again. He let out an embarrassed squeak when he felt the tips curl round his jaw, scratching under his chin and round his ears which made him snort and yelp adorably. Angus found that he regretted his semi-threatening words now, and let out a whimper when he heard Marvin's voice echoing down to him.

'You're not my first victim. I'm well on my way to getting each and every one of you in the devious, tickly ways that I see fit....seeing you all squirm at my mercy is quite addicting.....'

Marvin's soft, and slightly sadistic, laugh bounced about like a tease of its own as Angus shook his head, his voice raising in volume and pitch as he saw an army of vines sliding towards him. His heart was pounding with adrenaline at the thought of that many of them touching his skin, tickling him....all thanks to Marvin's whim. Angus was smiling with pink cheeks as he looked up at Marvin, his begging already present in his eyes before the words even left his lips.

'No noho wait w-wahait y-ye ahalready got me plehease plEASE!'

The rustling and shifting of the vines filled Angus' ears now as he tensed, feeling them start to trace his toes, thighs, sides, they were everywhere at once, poised and ready to ponce upon his tickle spots like they were starving and his laughter was their only sustenance. Angus had.....a glimmer of hope left, maybe Marvin had a sliver of mercy? Maybe he'd realise he'd already been subjected to tickles and therefore see that it was fair to let him go? Ah, no such luck however. Marvin merely playfully cupped his hand to his ear, acting as if the rustling plants had hindered his ability to hear Angus.

'Sorry what was that? I didn't-AH! Of course, pardon me, I'm interrupting your private time! Please, enjoy....'

As Marvin started to straighten up from his crouched position at the edge of the pit, Angus let out a desperate yell.

'MARVIN N-NO DOHON'T LEAVE MEHE!'

The magician merely smirked as he watched his vines start to scratch at their spots, rubbing Angus' sides and thighs, worming their way in-between his toes. The only reply Angus got was an evil chuckle.....and with a swish of his cape, Marvin was gone. Angus could hardly focus on everything Marvin had confessed, the tickle torture the vines provided were all he could think about. They kept his toes spread as they squeezed and scratched them, and his torso was no less attended to; he kept crying out for Marvin through wild cackles and raspy laughter as his cheeks burned vibrantly.

'MAHAHAHAHRVIHIHIHIIIIN!!!'

Angus was just alone with the vines now. They got him everywhere, drew out every reaction possible. When it did end, Angus didn't stop giggling and twitching for a good ten minutes, not even noticing how the vines lifted him out of the pit and softly placed him on the forest floor. Angus was aghast....yeah, him and the septics tickled each other a hell of a lot, but that was just in a league of its own. Ultimately Angus was neither upset or uncomfortable though, he remembered that at no point he'd felt breathless or in pain or too tired; Marvin had tortured him, but still tortured him as a friend. As Angus regained his thoughts he stood up....he hadn't been the first. He didn't know how many had been targeted before him, but Angus knew that some people hadn't yet been touched by Marvin's mischief, he just had to find out who.....if he could.

'You're not getting away with this....'

Angus whispered resolutely to himself, then he set off back home, but will he be in time to stop anything? After all, nothing has stopped Marvin yet, and since it's now five down and three to go....is it too late?

WOOOOO HOOOPE YA LIKE THIS NEXT ONE, LEMME KNOW IF YA DO! LUV YOOOUS XXX

57 notes · View notes

yoon-ing · 6 years

Text

Saudade

Jimin x Reader

Word Count: 8.3k

Warnings: Mentions of violence and death

A fateful day leaves you and Jimin on the run, waiting for the first chance to return home.

The trees around you spin, the tall trunks of oak swaying in the night, the leaves rustling high above your head as the cool breeze slips through the maze of branches and bark, sending chills down your spine. You don’t notice how cold it was until you’re slowing from your sprint, coming to a complete stop before letting your hand slip from Jimin’s grasp to drop your palms to your knees for support as you lean over gasping for air.

“Jimin, can we please take a break,” you’re hardly able to say between heavy breaths.

“Just a little further, Y/N,” he responds, urging you to stand up straight, “I want to get as far away from them as possible.”

“We haven’t heard or seen anyone for miles!” you argue back, the frustration getting the better of you.

“I know you’re tired, but it’s better to be safe than sorry,” he tries to reason with you, tugging your wrist in an attempt to drag you along.

The action only annoys you further and you yank your wrist from his hold, the force startling Jimin.

“I’m tired Jimin,” you firmly speak, your voice flat, exhaustion evident in your face. “Not just of this, but of everything.”

Earlier

“Hyung…” the voice croaks from the other end of the line.

“Jihoon, what’s wrong? Where are you?” Jimin’s words are rushed, concern and panic heavy in his tone.

“I’m by the harbour. Hyung, I’m scared,” his brother speaks, his voice strained.

“I’m on my way Jihoon. Just wait a little longer, okay?” Jimin reassures, trying to hide the fear that creeps up his spine, threatening to spill out into this words. He races to his car, the phone still firmly pressed to his ear as he jumps in and speeds down the road, not caring about the number of traffic laws he’s breaking.

“Hyung-” Jihoon begins, his voice cutting off only to be replaced by muffles before the line goes dead.

“Jihoon? Jihoon!?” Jimin yells into the phone, calling out for his younger brother. There’s no reply on the other end and only the sound of the dial tone responds to Jimin’s desperate voice.

“Fuck,” he breaths out, throwing the phone aside and only pressing harder on the gas pedal beneath his foot.

The tires skid to a stop once Jimin arrives to the shipping harbour where he has spent too many of his teenage days. He swings the door open and begins to sprint aimlessly throughout the maze of shipping containers, the familiarity of the tall crates looming over him. It has been about 2 years since he has last visited this place, but his memory doesn’t fail to lead him in the direction of where he knows his brother will be.

The harbour on the outskirts of the city functions as a shipping yard for most, but when nightfall comes and all the workers have left for the day, it becomes a place where the most notorious gang of the city conducts their business, receiving shipments of narcotics to be sold throughout the area.

The familiarity of the ocean scent is strong with each breath Jimin takes, the fresh but salty air filling his lungs as he pushes himself further, running harder until he can hear the sound of struggling voices between the crashes of waves. Nearly skidding on the concrete wet from the sea, Jimin rounds one last corner to witness the struggle only a few meters away, his feet moving faster as he bolts forward at full speed.

“Get the fuck off my brother!” Jimin practically screams as he throws himself towards the man who has Jihoon pinned to the ground, body checking him aside. He recognizes the man as Jaewon, someone who has been in the gang much longer than himself, highly respected by those around him. But in this moment, with his younger brother on the verge of death, that doesn’t matter.

Jimin doesn’t hesitate to punch him, beating him until his body lays limp and Jimin is abandoning him to bring his attention to his brother.

“Jihoon,” Jimin breathlessly calls out as he kneels beside his beaten and bloodied brother.

“Hyung…” Jihoon croaks, battling with his eyelids to keep his stare on his older brother, the task only getting more difficult with each blink of his eyes.

“Jihoon, stay with me,” Jimin desperately pleads, his hands moving frantically to brush the hair away from Jihoon’s forehead, resting them on his cheeks to get a better look at him. “Come on Jihoon.” Jimin’s voice is hoarse, cracking with each word as he holds back his tears of fear.

“I’m sorry hyung.” Jihoon struggles to speak, his words coming out in broken whispers. “I was almost out… I was going to leave the gang… I was going to get my life together…”

“You are going to leave the gang, you are going to get your life together,” Jimin barks back.

“But hyung…”

“No. We’re going to get you out of here and you’re going to start over, we’re going to start over.” Jimin’s gaze pierces into Jihoon’s, nothing but determination and confidence in his voice.

At his words, Jihoon sheds tears, touched by what his older brother has said. But before he can respond, his eyes are widening and panic strikes his features, Jimin’s own face mirroring the reaction as Jihoon uses the last of his strength to shove his brother away from him.

Realization doesn’t hit Jimin until after the ring of the gunshot echoes throughout the still air, the weapon already fired by time he’s whirling around.

Everything feels like it’s moving in slow motion for Jimin, he watches as Jihoon’s chest rises with his last breath, coughing up blood as his stare meets with Jimin’s, his eyes showing life for the last time before falling shut.

Jimin isn’t thinking when he makes his next move, his body reacting before his brain as he dives forward, knocking the gun out of Jaewon’s hand before snatching it up in his own. Pulling the trigger, Jimin only comes to his senses when the gunshot rings in the air, the man who had his brother pinned on the ground earlier collapsing into a pool of blood.

Jimin drops the gun when the reality of it all comes crashing down; it’s been so long since he last held a gun, let alone fire one; spending years to get out of the gang life, he’s been clean since, staying out of trouble and away from drugs. Jimin’s life has been rough, but he turned it around and is finally on a path in the right direction.

Shaking away all those thoughts, Jimin’s mind drifts to something more important in the moment, Jihoon. He drops to his knees next to his brother, taking his hands in his own, screaming out for him, pleading out for him to open his eyes, to take a breath of air, to do anything to show a sign of life. But Jimin has been in too many gun fights to know that it is all useless. Shot in the chest, even with the best medical attention in the country, Jihoon is long gone, sacrificing his own life to save Jimin’s.

Sirens sound in the distance and Jimin knows he has to get out of there; as much as it breaks his heart to leave his brother, he knows Jihoon didn’t give up his life just for Jimin to rot in jail.

“Jihoon,” Jimin speaks, his voice cracking, “I promise I’ll come back for you… I love you…”

It takes everything in him to release Jihoon’s hand, letting it drop lifelessly to his side. Jimin forces himself to stand, his heart tearing, his breathing ragged, and his hands tugging at his hair in frustration.

The blaring of the sirens only gets louder and Jimin doesn’t have much time. Giving one last glance to Jihoon, Jimin grabs the gun off of the ground and chucks it into the ocean before sprinting off as fast as his legs can carry him.

The sun has already set without you noticing, your eyes glued to the TV with the latest episode of a show that has been all the rave. You’re snuggled up in blankets, cozy and warm as you munch on snacks, reality all forgotten as you allow yourself to get lost in the fiction world of the characters on the screen. It’s a rapid knock on the door that has you jumping up, startling you back into the real world when your name is being called.

Immediately untangling yourself from the blankets, you get to your feet and rush to the door, swinging it open without a moment of hesitation.

“Jimin?” you ask in surprise and concern. His whole body is trembling, his clothes dirty and bloodied. Tears stain his cheeks and he struggles with each breath, he looks as if he’ll collapse any moment now. Instantly you’re grabbing his elbow to support him as you urge him inside. “Jimin, what happened?” Your voice is frantic and you shut the door and carefully examine the boy in front of you.

“Can I use your shower…?” he croaks in a flat tone. His face is blank and his gaze distant.

You’re quickly nodding your head and ushering him up the stairs towards the bathroom, carefully holding onto his body that feels so fragile it could break with even the slightest of movements.

“Will you be okay by yourself?” you ask him once you’re standing at the door, Jimin already stepping inside.

He turns and gives you a small nod, unable to find his voice.

You’re reluctant to believe him, but he’s a grown man, and if he says he can take care of himself, then you just have to trust him. “Okay. I’ll bring you a towel,” you say before turning on your heel.

Returning a moment later, you can already hear the shower running and let yourself into the steam filled room. You place the towel on the vanity, along with a change of clothes you found in the bottom drawer of your dresser which is dedicated to Jimin who often frequents your home, spontaneously showing up at your door and spending the night. You gather up his dirty clothes and throw them in the wash, the deep red blood stains not going unnoticed. Ever since meeting Jimin, you’ve learned not to make too much of the horrid colour that often finds itself in the threads of his shirts, the creases in his palms; it isn’t exactly something you’re fond of, or that you could get yourself to get used to, but each time he showed up at your door, hair dishevelled and attire less than presentable, he assured you that he was fine and he hadn’t done anything too illegal. By time you two are dating, the once frightening underlying truth of the specs of blood that colour his clothes has becoming something of the past. He promised you that he was out of the gang life, that he has finally escaped the strangling reins of their leader, and you believe him, Jimin has no reason to lie to you. It’s on two occasions that you find him hunched over the sink scrubbing out the horrid staining substance, but he justified himself, Jihoon was in need, he had no choice, and when it comes to Jihoon, Jimin would do anything, anything for him, even if it means getting himself involved with the people who took away his childhood and made his adolescence the worst years of his life.

Pacing back and forth outside of the bathroom, you anxiously wait for the sound of water to come to a stop, to hear the rings of the shower curtain slide across the metal bar, to see Jimin standing before you, cleaned up and not falling to pieces. But when the door creaks open, Jimin is as motionless as he was when he first arrived, his eyes are unfocused and face drooping. You were hoping he’d be feeling better after standing under the steaming water, but with the sweat and dirt washed away from his features, you can see just how worn out and utterly exhausted he looks. Each of your words are met with a small nod, his lips not parting to make a sound. Jimin is stunned silent and you know there is nothing you can do about it, as much as it’s killing you, you decide to patiently wait for him to begin speaking on his own. It isn’t often he gets like this, but you’ve learned that when he does, all he wants is to be by your side, in the comfort of your home until he’s ready to speak.

“How about I make you some tea?” you suggest, not waiting for a reply as you take his hand and drag him down the stairs.

Jimin complies, letting you lead him to the kitchen and seat him at the small table. Putting the water to boil, you pull out two mugs from the cupboard and set them down each with a tea bag before joining Jimin at the table to wait for the kettle to whistle.

It is when the steaming water has already done its job of steeping the tea that Jimin speaks. Your back is to him as you scoop the second spoon of sugar into his mug, the sweet grains almost spilling over the edge of the metal as you maneuver the heaping amount from the sugar jar to the cup of tea –Jimin has always liked his tea sweet.

“Jihoon’s dead.”

It takes a second for the words to register and you’re dropping the spoon, paying no attention to the sugar scattering the countertop and floor, uncaring of the mess that is sure to bring ants later. The words repeat themselves in your head as you whip around to face Jimin, waiting for him to tell you this is a sick joke or that he doesn’t mean it literally and just figuratively, that Jihoon is living and well, just gone off the grid for a while or even that the two have severed ties; anything, anything is better than the truth being that the beautiful, youthful boy –who is always so full of life and happiness, despite his unfair circumstances, and who Jimin adores and loves with his entire entity, the one person that Jimin would do absolutely anything for in a heartbeat, no questions asked – is no longer walking this earth, no longer spreading joy with his smile as bright as the sun, and no longer breathing and living in a world where he deserves so much more.

“Jimin, please tell me this is a joke, please say it’s not true.” Your voice sounds desperate to your own ears, pleading for the truth to be some kind of sick lie as you rush to his side, kneeling down in front of him to meet his eyes that are glued to the ground. But the way Jimin’s lip quivers and he clenches his jaw shut; you know he wishes this isn’t true as much as you do.

“How? When?” you question unable to wrap your head around the devastating news, needing to know more and refusing to believe that any of this can be true. “Jimin…” you urge when he doesn’t respond, your voice cracking as the tears begin to fall. You try your hardest to hold yourself together for Jimin’s sake, but Jihoon has become your little brother too, always eager to spend time with you and Jimin, tagging along on adventures and treating you as if you truly are his sister, never failing to remind you how happy he is that you and Jimin have found each other. “He’s such a good person… how could this happen…?” you whisper in disbelief.

Slamming his palms on the table, Jimin is shooting up from his seat in fury, nearly toppling you over. “Jihoon’s dead and it’s my fuckin’ fault,” he lashes out, tugging at his tuff of hair in frustration and leaving it a dishevelled mess.

You scramble up onto your feet at once and your fingers thread through the fabric of his sweatshirt as one of your hands finds its way to his arm, rubbing softly in an attempt to sooth him. “Jimin…” you call out, tugging at his sleeve. You aren’t sure what you’re going to say, you don’t know what you can possibly say, but you feel the need to do something, anything.

Letting out a shaky breath, Jimin turns to face you and when his gaze meets yours, you feel your heart shatter into a million pieces; his eyes which are normally filled with warmth and joy show nothing but pain.

“Y/N…” His words are quiet, barely over a whisper. “It should’ve been me… he pushed me out of the way and took a bullet straight to the chest… he died saving my life.” The last words have his voice cracking, and he’s finally letting the tears fall, no longer fighting back the stream of salt that rolls down his cheeks.

“Please tell me what I can do,” you squeak in a pathetic attempt to somehow make him feel better although you know that his entire world has crumbled at his feet into so many pieces that it is impossible to put it back together.

‘I don’t know’ is his response, his tone lifeless and empty as he shakes his head, burying his face in his hands.

Carefully wrapping your fingers around his wrists, you pull his hands away from his face and let your own palms rest on his cheeks, your thumbs smoothing over the damp skin below his eyes as you try to wipe away the tears. “I’ll do anything, please just tell me what you want, Jimin,” you plead, feeling so useless in his time of need that it’s almost unbearable.

“I want Jihoon back,” he croaks in a flat tone, his body betraying him as your hands lose contact with his skin and he collapses back into the chair.

You don’t know how long you sit there, but Jimin pulls you into his lap, squeezing you tight against his body as he sobs into the crook of your neck, sounding so broken and defeated with each cry that leaves his lips. And in the comfort of each other, the two of you mourn the death of the brilliant boy who was Jihoon.

Once the tears have dried and you and Jimin have exhausted yourselves with the endless weeping, you find yourselves upstairs, tucking your bodies beneath plush blankets in hopes that sleep will come soon. But even in the comfort of a place he calls home, Jimin lays awake, his tired eyes staring at the ceiling with sleep a hopeless dream he won’t be meeting tonight. His mind is wandering when he hears a car pulling up in front of the house and normally that doesn’t faze him, but he’s extra alert and it’s almost 3 in the morning. Jimin rolls out of bed to peak out the window and when he sees who it is stepping out of the vehicle, his face drains of all colour; it’s someone he fears much more than the police.

“Y/N, get up.” Jimin’s voice is urgent as he throws a change of clothes at you, and you’re still too much in the haze of sleep to understand what’s going on. You do as you’re told without question, throwing on a sweater and slipping on a pair of shoes before Jimin’s hand is slipping into yours and he’s leading you out the back door.

“What’s going on?” you finally ask when the cool wind hits your face, bringing you out of the sleepiness that has your eyes drooping.

“They’re here,” he responds in a hushed tone, “we have to get out of here, fast.”

You don’t need to ask who, the fear in Jimin’s eyes telling you all you need to know. It should’ve been obvious that today’s events would’ve caused a stir in Jimin’s former gang, sending them after Jimin, but with so much more to worry about, so much more on the mind, neither you or Jimin even considered the consequences before now.

So now instead of being fast asleep in bed, you’re running hand in hand with Jimin down a dirt path, the sound of footsteps in the distance echoing in the night. Heading for the forest is the safest bet, hiding probably a better option than trying to outrun the men who live their lives on the run.

The words repeat themselves as soon as they leave your lips and you’re momentarily in shock, questioning if it is really you who said it, if you truly just spoke to Jimin that.

“I’m tired Jimin, not just of this, but of everything.”

His face mirrors your shock for a split second before betrayal, fury, and anger is etched on his features and you’re desperately reaching for him.

“Jimin, I- I didn’t mean- I’m sorry, Jimin, I shouldn’t have said that, I swear I didn’t mean it, please, babe, you know I-” Everything is a jumbled mess as you try to explain yourself, try to take back the words but he’s cutting you off, his eyes dark and jaw tight.

“Before we started dating, you knew about my past, you knew what kind of life I used to live,” he says, his voice grave. He takes a moment to take a steadying breath that feels like it drags on forever; you stand completely still, not daring to breathe as the wind howls through the forest, the rustling of the leaves the only sound in the silence of the night. “You said it was a risk you were willing to take,” he continues, staring directly at you, his gaze so strong it rattles your bones. “If that wasn’t true, you should’ve walked away, at least you had the choice to walk away!” he practically yells at you, losing his temper.

“Babe…” you say so quietly that if you were anywhere else but the seclusion of the towering trees, your voice would have gone unheard. You reach out for him, taking a step forward that feels awkward and desperate.

“No,” Jimin replies and pulls away. “Don’t babe me. You think I chose this life? You think I wanted this for me? For Jihoon?” The rage is thick in his voice at the mention of his brother, but then it’s cracking and you can see as the pain surfaces, pricking tears at his eyes. “They promised to send us to school if we did their bidding, give us a place to sleep. They knew we were smart kids, but not smarter than them. They used us. We weren’t people to them, but I got out… and left Jihoon…”

Jimin’s devotion to Jihoon was endearing from the moment you met him, but over time you realized Jimin needed Jihoon as much as Jihoon needed him, his little brother his own personal sun that he orbited around, and now without him, Jimin is crumbling to pieces, his world already burned to ashes.

“I’m sorry, Y/N,” he croaks out, his knees giving out as he collapses onto the ground.

You rush to his side and wrap your arms around him, pulling him close to let him sob into your chest, his body feeling so fragile intertwined with yours.

“I’m sorry too,” you say to him, your hand running through his hair. “I never should’ve said something like that. I love you, I really do, Jimin.”

He has forgiven you when his hands are wrapping around your waist, looking for comfort in the nook where your neck meets your shoulder, his tears hot on your skin.

Morning comes with stiff muscles and tangled limbs, Jimin’s body wrapped around yours when you peel your eyes open to be met with blades of grass dipped in morning dew. It takes a moment for you to register your surroundings, the shrubs and trees causing confusion to crease your brows, until you remember all of last nights events, from the heart shattering news of Jihoon to the ugly argument you had with Jimin. You shift in Jimin’s embrace to face him, finding him staring off into the distance, his gaze empty and face stern. It takes a minute before he’s coming back to reality and his eyes meet yours.

“Hey,” he croaks out, his voice rough and strained.

Your response is a simple hum as you pull yourself into his chest and his arms tighten around you. “I’m sorry,” you say quietly, your harsh words from last night still burning on your tongue.

“Shh,” he’s quick to coo, his hand finding its place in your hair. “We better get going,” he announces after a moment of holding you close, untangling his limbs from yours as he stands with his bones creaking and cracking.

The morning chill creeps down your back when you lose contact with Jimin and it feels as if your own body heat is being sucked away with his. An outreached hand helps you up and it is not until you are standing upright, face to face with the wilderness that is wrapped around you for miles that reality sinks in and you feel as if you’re suffocating, drowning in dread and uncertainty.

Trees tower above you, their leaf covered branches casting shadows on the forest floor and blocking out most of the light from the risen sun; the fire Jimin built last night is all burnt out, nothing but ashes remaining in the place of light and warmth. A rustle of the leaves above sends shivers down your spine and the crisp morning breeze that is usually a breath of fresh air in your lungs tastes stale on your tongue; you’re in the middle of no where, cold and lost with even the near future too far away too see.

There’s no other option than to continue walking, searching for a way out of the forest and the situation. The time is unknown with neither of you having phones or watches on you and you’re not sure how long you walk for, but you put your hand in Jimin’s outstretched hand and your trust in his eyes that stare at you with a silent promise that tells you he’ll keep you safe.

The forest thins out and you almost think you’re seeing things when instead of bark standing in the distance, it’s concrete and metal, a huge building just mere meters away with a chain link fence wrapping around it. You rub your eyes to be sure, straining your neck upwards to get a better look and with Jimin’s peaked interest, you know it’s not just a mirage in the desert, but instead it’s your oasis, the one thing that sparks hope and brings a bounce back into your step. Both you and Jimin pick up your pace, your steps becoming rushed as you head towards the building with a lot more energy than you had a few moments ago. It’s probably about a 15 minute walk before you’re standing face to face with a chain link fence and your heart pounds in your chest because maybe this is your ticket out, but a less hopeful side tells you this could very possibly be a one way ticket to hell. Despite the two very opposite outcomes, it’s the only other option other than wandering around the maze of trees for another day and Jimin has already decided to be optimistic, urging you forward so he can boost you over the fence.

“Maybe we should go around to the front,” you suggest as Jimin inspects a chain held together by a padlock securing one of the doors shut. This is the second door on this side of the building that Jimin has taken a closer look at, and in response to your words, he shakes his head no.

“Judging from the rust on these locks, and the boarded up windows,” he says looking up at the windows you hadn’t even noticed until now, “I’m pretty sure this place is abandoned.”

An abandoned warehouse… your saving grace is nothing but a giant slob of concrete in the form of four walls filled with dust and cobweb and who knows what else.

“Should we go in?” Jimin questions as he looks back at you.

“I mean, there’s no harm in checking it out,” you respond, you really don’t have anything to lose and with any luck, maybe you’ll find something that can be of help.

It doesn’t take much effort for Jimin to break open the rusted lock once he’s found a large enough rock. The door requires quite a push to open, the hinges squeaking as Jimin uses full force to get the panel of metal to creak open enough to let your bodies through.

It’s dark and stuffy once you’re inside, the light coming through the crack of the door easily disappearing behind you as you follow Jimin through the pitch black maze. You stay one step behind him, being sure not to lag behind as he walks upfront as a precaution and you’re not sure if this is better or worse than the forest that you spent the night in; its eerie and musky, these halls not having been used in ages, but the walls don’t seem to enclose any danger, however, you don’t let your guard down as your footsteps echo throughout the building, the feeling of eyes watching you creeping down your spine. You’re sure you’re just being paranoid; there’s no sign that anyone else has been through here and you and Jimin are probably the first ones to walk these halls in years.

A chill has goosebumps pricking your skin and you get a bad feeling – you’re about to say something to Jimin but it’s already too late. A hand is being clasped over your mouth and your whole body goes ridged, freezing in your spot as you become hyperaware of the figure looming directly behind you. Only a split second passes before you feel the pressure of cold metal being pressed to your temple and your heart feels as if it stops, every moment of your life flashing before your eyes as thoughts of the inevitable come creeping into your mind.

“Put your hands up and turn around.” The voice is deep, rumbling from behind you but directed to the one in front of you. “Slowly, or I shoot the girl,” the voice draws out with the threat.

Tears sting at your eyes and you watch with nothing but fear running through your veins as your life is put in Jimin’s hands. Jimin does as told, raising his arms before carefully swiveling on his feet, his face unreadable once he meets eyes with you. His gaze is only on yours for a moment before it flickers to the man that has a gun to your head.

“We’ll do whatever you want, just don’t hurt her,” Jimin sternly says, his voice leveled, so calm it’s unbelievable to you.

“We’re going to walk out of here and if you try anything, she’s taking a bullet to the head,” he informs and you can’t help the whimper that comes out muffled from behind his clamped hand. “Quiet,” he sharply demands, his grip tightening on your face, becoming painful with the pressure.

“Baby, just do what he says,” Jimin speaks quietly, staring you right in the eyes, “everything will be okay, I promise.” And if he’s scared, he hides it well, his stare softening before its turning dark again, refocusing on the man and waiting for further instructions.

“I don’t want to hear another word from either of you, now turn around and walk,” he demands, letting the steel drag along your scalp until it finds a new home on the nape of your neck, the man using the weapon to prod into your skin, making you move forward.

It’s a miracle that you don’t collapse right there, your legs numb from the terror. His hand is no longer restricting your breathing, letting go to make a call to who you assume is waiting at the next exit when the man speaks out your location. His fingers now entrap your wrists behind your back in a hold that is uncomfortable and you’re sure your silent weeping doesn’t go unnoticed.

Jimin stays facing forward, not daring to turn around even though all he wants to do is hold you in his arms and tell you everything is going to be alright.

Rounding a corner on demand, a stream of sunlight is flooding the hall, an open door letting the rays pour in and there’s a spec of hope in your chest, your heart swelling until its squeezing shut once more, the little hope being overthrown by dread when a figure stands in the doorway.

The sunlight hits him from behind, leaving him a faceless shadow as he approaches Jimin and takes his hands behind his back. The silhouette of a man leads Jimin outside, your steps not far behind with the pressure on your wrists pushing you forward until you’re exiting the building to be met with an empty lot, nothing but a shiny black car that Jimin is now being pressed against on the gravel that stretches until it meets a chain link fence. After a quick pat down, the man, who you can now see has raven black tousled hair is declaring him clean, clasping his wrists together with the metal rings of handcuffs.

“Hoseok, did you check the girl?” the man asks, tightening the cuffs before directing his attention to you and the man you now know goes by the name Hoseok.

“I thought I’d give you the honour,” the voice behind you says in a sickeningly amused manner.

“Wonderful,” the man says with a smirk plastered across his face, and he waves you over once he’s released Jimin.

Hoseok brings you forward, only letting go of your wrists once the other man has a firm hold on your arm, pulling you towards him and forcefully pushing you against the car. Jimin’s eyes are locked on you and he has his jaw clenched to keep from saying anything that could put you in more danger. You only stare back for a moment before you squeeze your eyes shut and your skin beings to crawl, an unfamiliar touch cold on your flesh as the man ‘checks’ you, letting his hand linger on the swell of your breasts and the cushion of your bottom as he gives you a more-than-thorough pat down. After what feels like the longest few minutes of your life, his hands leave your body and your wrists are being confined behind your back.

“Get in,” he demands, swinging the back door of the car open.

Your movements are hesitant with fear holding you back, but the man is impatient and you’re being forced into the back seat, your body feeling like it’s being thrown across the leather. Jimin is directed to get into the passenger seat and Hoseok slides into the back with you, not wasting any time as he pulls his gun out and holds it to your head. The car rumbles to a start and they make sure Jimin is well aware of the consequences if he tries anything, warning him that your brain will be splattered across the back seat if he even as much breathes too loudly.

“That’d be a pity though, I just had my seats reupholstered,” the raven-haired man comments casually, “Hoseok, call the boss,” he orders as he presses down on the accelerator and the gravel beneath the tires is nothing more than background noise, dull behind the pounding of your heart.

At some point during the car ride, you find out the other man’s name is Yoongi, barely taking note of it with a million thoughts flooding your mind. He’s much smaller than Hoseok, and although he is not the one with a gun to your head, you feel much more frightened by him, a dark glint in his eyes each time his gaze flickers to yours in the rear-view mirror. The ride drags on for what feels like an eternity and you’re certain that all the turns made are an unnecessary part of the journey, the men only taking precaution to keep you and Jimin in the dark, not that you would be able to figure out where you are, you’re not even sure what city you’re in.

Pulling into a parking garage, the car comes to a stop and you are being ushered out, led into an elevator that takes you straight up the center of the building. There’s no longer a gun being pressed to your head, but you know you have no chance of escaping, all you can do now is stay quiet and trust that Jimin will be able to get the two of you out of this. Making it to the end of the hall, a secretary greets the men, giving them the okay to enter the room closed off by giant, eloquent wooden doors that run from the ceiling to the floor. Yoongi gives a swift knock before he turns the knob, taking the first step in as Jimin follows behind him, you trailing closely behind him with Hoseok on your tail.

The office is huge, two walls lined with shelves that must hold hundreds of books, there’s a desk, looking as if it was carved out of century old mahogany, and two chairs and a swivel surround the large piece of furniture, upholstered with the finest fabrics. The windows that act as the forth wall let in a stream of uninterrupted sunlight and the chandelier that hangs from the ceiling reflects the rays through its crystals, casting thousands of tiny rainbows across the room. In the center of it all, stands a man tall and slim; his back is to you with a perfectly tailored suit fitting snugly across his shoulders, his golden brown hair is slicked back and his presence alone is overwhelming enough to make the rest of the ornate room drown into the background.

The room is still and time seems to drag on before he turns around, pulling his gaze away from the window that overlooks the city to face his unwanted guest.

“N-Namjoon?” Jimin stammers when his eyes lay upon the man who stands before you and him.

There’s a moment of hesitation before the man’s face changes, the stern and intimidating scowl pinching at his eyebrows softening as his jaw slackens and the darkness in his eyes melts away.

“Jimin?” he asks almost in disbelief, confusion and unsureness heavy in his voice.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was on your territory,” Jimin instantly says, the words of apology tumbling from his lips as he falls to his knees in shame.

You’re unsure of what to do and your eyes flicker between Jimin and Namjoon before shifting to the other two men who are just as confused as you are.

“Yoongi, Hoseok, it’s alright,” Namjoon says, waving them over in a command to undo the handcuffs. The two do as ordered before they are dismissed and it is only you, Jimin, and Namjoon in the room.

“I thought you got out,” Namjoon says once you’re all seated. You’re slouched in your chair, trying to make yourself as small as possible although Jimin’s body language tells you there’s no more reason to be afraid.

“How did you know- I mean,” he stops himself from speaking out the way he normally would, making it clear that this Namjoon character may not be someone to fear, but he is still someone to respect if you know what’s good for you. “Yeah, I did,” Jimin continues with an adjustment to his tone.

“I have eyes everywhere,” Namjoon muses in response to Jimin’s question. “It’s probably been, what, 10 years since we last crossed paths?” he recalls. “What brings you to my side of town?”

You’re hearing a lot of it for the first time when Jimin explains the previous night’s affairs in detail, his voice tight when speaking of Jihoon; Namjoon listens without a word until he’s sure Jimin has said everything he needs to.

“So what’s your plan now?” Namjoon questions.

“I don’t really know,” Jimin responds in all honesty.

A few phone calls and a short drive later, you and Jimin are standing at the front desk of a small motel, Jimin pulling out a wad of cash he took out from an ATM down the street to limit the number of transactions on his credit card just in case someone tries to track it and he books a room for the next week.

Namjoon advises Jimin to keep a low profile, especially while on his territory and that’s how you end up cooped up in a rundown motel room that holds more secrets in its peeling wallpapered walls than you can even begin to imagine. It’s small and stuffy and the dust coated curtains stay shut for your safety, blocking most sunlight from entering and leaving the florescent light flickering above you although it’s the middle of the day.

“How do you know Namjoon?” you question once you’ve left the bathroom. It’s still early afternoon and after having spent the morning between the forest floor, a dirty warehouse, and now this motel, you’re eager to jump in the shower although the faucet leaks and a faint smell of mold lingers in the walls.

You sit on the bed next to Jimin, running a towel through your wet hair, more nervous than you let on asking such a personal question that clearly roots deeply in his past.

“He saved my life,” Jimin responds, not looking up from the bills of cash he’s counting. “Or rather, he spared it.”

His last words send a shiver straight down your spine, implying that Namjoon was once in the position to take Jimin’s life and you’re not so sure you can trust the man who has you cooped up in this room.

“It happened when I was 13,” Jimin begins, continuing when you don’t have a response. By now he’s done counting the money, tucking a few bills in his wallet before hiding the rest away in the bedside drawer for safekeeping. “I was caught in the cross fire of my gang and Namjoon’s. He had a gun to me, all he had to do was pull the trigger, but instead he told me to run and never come back onto their territory, I was too young to die he said. So I did as told, I turned around and ran for my life.”

“Wow…” is all you can say. Shocked and amazed all at the same time that Namjoon would do that when most in his position would have just ended it then and there.

“I don’t know why he let me go, maybe he saw how scared I was, or maybe he’s been in my place before, but I never stepped foot onto his territory until today, out of fear but mainly respect,” Jimin concludes, and it’s obvious Jimin is indefinitely grateful towards the man who could have easily ended his life.

And just like that, 2 weeks pass cooped up in the small motel room, having nothing to do but entertain yourselves with 3 TV channels and out of date magazines. Neither of you have left the room, except when absolutely necessary and even then, it was usually Jimin who ventured out while you hid inside. Food consisted of anything that was quick and close and you were living in two outfits that were washed and dried in the cubical of a bathroom. Many of the nights you’re too scared to feel miserable in this place where days seem to drag on forever and you're too numb to care.

The aftershock of Jihoon’s death comes the second night in the motel. After pretending all is merry and bright for a day and a half, Jimin cracks; life does not just go on when you witness the life being sucked out of someone you love. You find him sobbing into his pillow when you return from a shower, obviously trying to muffle his distress in the plush cotton. The sight alone brings tears to your eyes and the heart ache you felt when you first found out returns to your chest to tear you open from the inside out. Each night that follows is no different, crying yourselves to sleep while trying to find comfort in each other until you're both cried out, no more tears left to cry.

You’re on the bed with Jimin when a knock comes at the door. He sits up from where his head was just on your lap and waves you off to the bathroom; you already know the drill having gone through this procedure a few times last week when house keeping came by and once when Yoongi was sent to check in on the two of you. Stumbling to your feet, you move as quietly as you can until you're safely tucked behind a wall, Jimin not opening the door until he’s sure you're hidden. It’s mostly just a precaution as you two are relatively safe on Namjoon’s territory and considering all things, Jimin is being more protective than ever, not that you mind, just being in an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous environment has you on edge.

The voice that sounds throughout the room once Jimin opens the door is familiar, one that you recognize as Hoseok’s and you are relieved it’s him instead of Namjoon’s other henchman because you don't like the way Yoongi’s sharp eyes follow your every move. The conversation on the other side of the wall is short and Jimin calls out to you once the door clicks shut. He tells you to pack any of your things and explains that Namjoon has requested the two of your join him in his office.

Once seated across from Namjoon, he doesn't hesitate to begin speaking, taking the opportunity to explain why he has summoned you two here. He quickly reassures that you’ve done nothing wrong when he notices the way you fidget in your chair, refusing to make eye contact with him. In turn, Namjoon offers you some tea, calling upon his assistant to bring in the hot beverage to calm your nerves.

“The reason I called the two of you in is because I have some information,” Namjoon states once the three of you are settled with a cup of the steaming beverage.

“I’ve been keeping tabs on the situation over the past couple weeks,” he begins, “your brother was investigating the man who you found him with. It was his last task in order to leave the gang. It turns out Jaewon was a mole working with the South Side, feeding them inside information for who knows how long. With that being said, you're safe to return home; no one from your side is after you anymore.”

The room falls silent once Namjoon concludes what he needs to say, so much to take in with his few brief statements. Jimin sits perfectly still, his face unreadable as he stares down at his hands that are wrapped around the steaming cup.

He doesn’t look up when his words escape his lips. “Jihoon was almost out… he would've been free.”

And all the hurt and heart break is evident in the way Jimin’s voice quakes, aching for his brother who lost his life when he should have been just starting it.

The bus ride is quiet, no mindless chatter or silly jokes. You sit silently beside Jimin, holding his hand that clutches onto you so tightly. Dressed in black with flowers on your lap, you and Jimin are the only ones on the bus, not many frequenting the route that goes up the mountain side, especially so early in the morning.

After returning home yesterday evening, you and Jimin got in contact with a distant aunt of his, his only family in the state. She had made all the arrangements for Jihoon’s burial and although she made Jimin out to be a horrible person and a even worse brother, he still thanked her once she gave him the name of the cemetery.

By time Jimin hung up the phone, feeling detached and worn out, it was too late to hed to the cemetery that was on the other side of town. You two decided to go first thing in the morning, and of course neither of you could sleep through the night, so at daybreak you put on your finest set of black clothes and headed out, Jimin’s hand in yours as you made your way to pick out Jihoon’s favourite flowers.

The bus comes to a stop and you turn your head to look out at the expanse of land filled with head stones and flower arrangements, a lump forming in your throat as everything finally begins to feel real. Jimin’s grip only gets tighter when you get off the bus, your hold the only thing keeping him grounded. It doesn't take long to find the place where Jihoon has been laid to rest, the sod still fresh and the grass not yet growing. Each step towards him feels longer than the one before, feeling slower as you get closer, until the tips of your shoes sit at the edge of the upturned dirt.

Jimin’s hand slips from yours instantly, falling to his knees as his body folds in on itself. “Jihoon… I’m here,” he breathes, his voice so quiet it's almost lost in the wind. “I told you I would come back for you… I’m here, Jihoon, I'm here.” His last words are broken, caught in his throat with the sobs that follow, crying out for the boy who deserved more than the world could offer.

#jimin x reader #jimin scenario #bts scenarios #reader x jimin #park jimin #wow hello #happy early birthday to jimin?#although this can hardly be considered a present #i started writing this almost 2 years ago #then found out what it felt like to really lose someone and couldnt bring myself to finish it #im not sure how this ended up 8000 words tbh #i just really love jimin #my best friend always asked why all my jimin stories are so angsty :')#im not really sure #anywho thank you for reading!!!#23

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lemonade-of-gods · 6 years

Text

Attack on Osaka (1/??)

Fandom: Fairy Tail

Summary: Zombies and apocalypses were for the movies. Until South Korea made both a reality. And dragged everyone else into the mess. Damn Asians.

Rating: PG-13

Pairings: NaLu, HibiLu, Gruvia (so far)

(NOTE: There are no love triangles in this fic; this fic is a main course of angst and horror with a dash of fluff here and there. I hope you enjoy it!)

(Or, the train to Busan AU no one asked for so here goes)

Five hours ago, a plane en route to Hanaeda airport had crashed into Kawasaki, killing approximately 15 people and injuring a great deal more.

Three hours ago, a man from the military had reported to the government about rabid people biting and infecting any walking thing with a pulse, before doing the aforementioned to the secretary he was talking to.

An hour ago, people watching the news saw reporters describing the apocalyptic situation that had befallen all of South Korea and scoffed at the terms used to describe the erratic behavior of the victims.

“Zombies? Give me a break.” The man seated in front of her jibed as he ran his hand through his spiky blond hair. “I bet on Lector it’ll just be another gas leak or some shit like last time.”

Lucy shook her head as she continued to watch the reporter now talking from her phone screen about possibly infected areas in Japan. “You really think the Busan footage was fabricated? The plane in the crash site came from Gwangju and the attacks started from Kawasaki, remember?”

As if to support her, the cat in the man’s arms purred and rubbed against him.

“She’s right, Sting,” Their other friend Rogue, a man with black hair and a distinct facial scar sitting beside her spoke, “Yukino had called me earlier to check on us. Apparently her sister had gone missing along with the investigation team.”

“Sorano vanishing for five hours ain’t enough to call her missing...”

Lucy sighed, all the sounds turning into background noise. There weren’t any other passengers in their carriage that she could talk to. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to talk to anyone, come to think of it.

She sighed as her gaze drifted to the window. They had another three hours before they reached their destination, from where they’d have to catch a cab to get to the laboratory. Her reflection stared back at her, blonde hair now properly tamed in a ponytail, big brown eyes staring back at her a little tiredly. The ruby studded pendant of her necklace rested on the hollow of her fair throat, a gift from her fiance.

A smile formed on her petal shaped lips as she remembered the day he’d put it on her. One of his favorite parts about her body was her neck, he had confessed once when he’d gotten drunk with his friends in a bar.

(”And shoulders,” He had muttered sleepily when they’d finally gotten into bed together. Lucy giggled, and shivered when he placed a soft, lingering kiss on her shoulder. “Everything about you...god, you’re sexy.”)

He’d gotten her the necklace on the night he’d proposed, when she was working in her home study. She remembered him fidgeting, rather uncharacteristically. before breaking out into a speech, stumbling over his words and how she didn’t need to change his name and how he could change to Hibiki Heartfilia, which sounded way better not that Lucy Laytes sounds dumb it’s all up to you of course-

She had shut him up with a yes and a kiss. Not necessarily in that order. The ring resting on her finger was a silver band dotted with tiny diamonds. Pretty. He’d then slid it on her finger with an adoring look on his face that had made her blush. I miss you.

As the train drifted to a halt, so did her thoughts as she idly examined the empty platform.

And then she jumped back with a screech as someone banged their face against the glass. In the distance, someone had started to scream.

...

It was bloody chaos. Literally, bloody chaos.

“Fucking son of a bitch!” Gray snarled as he vehemently kicked the zombie clawing at him into the seats, “Juvia, run for the doors and don’t look back! Go!”

“Juvia is not leaving you here!”

“Natsu, keep her safe!”

“NO!” The blue haired woman screamed as another zombie pounced on Gray. A calloused hand grabbed her arm, and she was yanked away by the pink haired boy Gray had addressed earlier.

“GRAY-SAMA!”

“I’m sorry Juvia!” Natsu yelled over the din, pulling her as they both ran for the sliding doors. Tears threatened to spill, but he blinked them back as he shoved Juvia into the next carriage, turning to slam it shut.

“We can’t leave Gray-sama out there!” She sobbed as they helplessly watched him struggle. A horrible, horrible feeling washed over him when he saw the matted white hair of the attacking undead as she - for it was definitely a she - sank her teeth into his best friend’s neck.

An urge to hurl had him clap his hand over his mouth as he stumbled to the floor. In a few minutes, Gray Fullbuster would join his family in the ranks of the walking dead and would try to extend that courtesy to them. They couldn’t stay there. He had to protect Juvia. He had to protect her. He couldn’t fail again.

“Natsu-kun!” She screamed, and he looked up to see Gray’s ugly face smack against the glass, his eyes cloudy and the veins on his neck prominent. They had to go. As if reading his mind, Juvia extended her hand and yanked him up by the arm.

“Run...” He hoarsely whispered as they dashed to the other side. A horrible cracking noise could be heard and barely had they reached the next set of sliding doors before the sound of glass breaking reverbrated through the carriage.

“RUN!” Someone screamed and the rush of adrenaline and the furious beating of his heart propelled him on as he shoved her in front of him. People screamed and the dead roared as the air grew thicker with the smell of blood.

The compartment they stumbled into had very few people, two blondes and a scarred man the closest to him. Juvia made to slide the door shut, and then slid down to the floor and began to cry again.

“What the fuck is going on?” One of the blondes, a man with slanted eyes demanded as the other one - a girl who looked Natsu’s age - made to comfort Juvia. The scarred man gingerly approached the doors to take a look at the bloodbath behind.

“G-gray-sama...” Juvia sobbed, burying her face in her hands.

“Those fuckers got in?” The blond swore, and then grimaced on looking at the bloodstained windows. Outside the train, they could see more zombies clawing at the glass and snarling at them.

“We need to go...” Natsu breathed heavily, stumbling into the nearest seat available, “There’s too many to fight...we have to get off this fucking train.” He ran his fingers through his hair, and caught the eye of the girl comforting Juvia.

She bit her lip in a contemplative manner. “Rule out the platforms. If we put enough distance between us we can at least hide out here. The train’s a frying pan but outside’s the fire.” She then blinked, and then extended her hand to him. “Lucy Heartfilia.”

Natsu stared for a few seconds before it processed. “Oh yeah, right, Natsu Dragneel.” His hand engulfed her delicate one as they shook. She looked classy in her cream coloured blouse and black slacks.

“This is Rogue and Sting.” She continued, motioning at the scarred man and the blond respectively.

“I’m Juvia.” Juvia said quietly, her sobs now subsiding. Sting opened his mouth, but was cut off by Rogue, whose eyes widened.

“We need to go.” He mumbled, pulling Juvia to her feet. A glimpse through the glass had Natsu jump to his feet, nausea beginning to form in his stomach. The zombie brigade had spotted them and was stumbling over towards them. At the forefront was the white haired woman who had turned Gray.

“How strong is the glass?” Lucy sounded terrified.

“Against this death wave? We gotta high tail it outta here,” Sting said shakily.

BANG! They jumped back as the undead snarled against the doors, more and more piling up by the second. He heard Lucy stumble with a faint curse. He turned and caught Rogue’s eye.

“Drop everything and run.” How could he sound calm right now? But Rogue was going good on his word, pushing Sting behind him and moving to Lucy. “Lose the heels Lucy, you can’t run in them-”

“Drop ‘em on the way,” Natsu said and started pushing the two of them towards the retreating figure of Sting, who had also taken Juvia with him. They’d barely made it halfway before Juvia’s scream stopped them.

“Motherfucker, they’re here too?!” Sting yelled as they heard snarls from the other side. The sound of cracking glass made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

“We have to get out of here!” Juvia whimpered as she frantically looked through the windows. The window to their right showed the zombie infested platform and the nauseous feeling increased.

"The emergency window.” Lucy suddenly muttered and moved for one of the windows on their left. The left platform was suspiciously empty, but a quick look at the doors told them that they had no choice. Rogue and Sting followed and began helping her.

“Natsu-kun?” Juvia whispered suddenly, her hand moving to grip his arm, “I’m scared.”

“Natsu keep her safe!”

“Don’t worry,” He whispered back, watching the window open, “I’ll protect you, okay? Let’s go.”

#fairy tail #natsu dragneel #lucy heartfilia #juvia lockser #sting eucliffe #rogue cheney #gray fullbuster #hibiki laytes #nalu #hibilu #gruvia #natsu x lucy #hibiki x lucy #gray x juvia #fairy tail fanfiction #train to busan

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magicalgirlartist · 7 years

Text

West City Public Library, Part 30: Red Ribbon

Summary: A censorship group has set their sights on WCPL. Bulma 100% doesn't need this right now. Word Count: 4370 Notes: I tried to be fair because this is a real-world issue but like. Have you guys ever seen the ALA or CLA top banned/challenged books lists they're a fucking joke. From the ALA alone, Drama by Raina Telgemeier and George by Alex Gino were #2 and #3 respectively in 2016 for including LGBT+ characters. The Holy Bible was #6 in 2015 for, I shit you not, "religious viewpoint." Two Boys Kissing was at #5 in 2016, up from #10 in 2015, for LGBT+ content and "other," including "condoning public displays of affection." I wish I was kidding, guys.

You can probably see why I, a liberal lesbian librarian, had a hard time painting these people as anything other than strawmen. I have met people like this; I work with people like this. So tough cookies.

(I will say, however, that this was written before the ALA's 2016 list had come out, so it's not super well reflected here.)

Krillin plastered his best customer service smile on his face and tried to tamp down his urge to scream. "I'm sorry you feel that way, sir. I'll take it under advisement."

The man slammed the novel on the desk and Krillin allowed himself some pride in the fact that he didn't flinch. "Under advisement isn't good enough! Leaving this book around where children could get at it...it's disgusting."

"Sir, Go Ask Alice is part of our teen collection." Krillin picked the book up and gently placed it on the ever-growing pile of books people had challenged at his desk. "So not only is this technically the wrong department, it's not going to be taken out by anyone with a children's library card. Our system is set up so that children can only take books and other materials from the children's section--"

"But a teen or adult could take it out and leave it lying around where a child could read it," the man argued. "Besides, it shouldn't even be in the teen section. It shouldn't be here at all."

"The teen section is a perfectly reasonable place for Go Ask Alice." Krillin turned to Namu, who was very pointedly pretending to ignore the argument by typing up the Reader's Advisory department's program schedule for the month. "Namu, could you grab one of the challenge forms for me? I can't reach from here."

"It is not." The man drew himself up to his full height and Krillin grimaced. Why did people always do that to him? He got it, he was short, they didn't have to rub it in, geez. "It contains heavy drug use, sex, and teenage pregnancy. It's absolutely inappropriate for anyone under the age of eighteen."

"Just a second, sir." Krillin took the form from Namu and grabbed a pen. "Alright, so, Go Ask Alice, on...Namu, what's the date today?"

"The fourteenth."

"Thanks." He handed the pen and paper to the man on the other side of the desk. "Sir, if you'd fill out this form for me with your reasons for wanting to have this item removed from our collection, we'll take it into consideration."

"Into consideration?" The man bristled, wrinkling his nose. "No, it has to be gone, do you understand? Gone completely."

"I don't think you understand how the process works," Krillin said gently. "When a complaint is made, the book goes under review with the employees of the affected department as well as administration and the appropriate members of the library board. Together, they discuss what to do, and a decision is made. I can't just outright remove books from shelves on my own authority." He smiled apologetically. "This is the best I can do. But I promise it'll be looked into."

The man hesitated, then nodded. "Well. Thank you, I guess." He picked up the pen, his sleeve riding up his arm as he wrote. Krillin caught a glimpse of something red around his wrist and grimaced. Oh. So that's what this was. Couldn't just be some conservative kook, no, it had to be one of these guys. He forced his customer service smile back onto his face when the man handed the form back. "There."

"Thank you, Mister, uh..." Krillin glanced at the sheet. "Blue. I'll get this looked at as soon as I can."

"I'll be checking back in on the status of the inquiry," Blue warned.

Krillin's smile never wavered. "Of course. Have a nice day."

Thankfully, he seemed to take that as an indication to leave. Krillin slumped into his chair and let his smile drop, a scowl twisting his features instead. "I hate everything about today."

Namu patted his shoulder as he walked past. "You did great. I'm going on break."

Krillin sighed and reached for the phone. This needed to end, and fast.

"They call themselves the Red Ribbon Army."

Krillin scrolled down the webpage open on his tablet. "According to their website, they're 'crusaders for safety,' but really all they do is annoy people. Red Ribbon members identify themselves by wearing a red ribbon around their wrists and using colour code names." He shifted through the stack of challenge forms. "In the last month, they've been submitting constant complaints to Reader's Advisory, Children and Youth Services, and Info Services. The only reason we know it's them is because they all sign their forms with things like Blue, Silver, Black, and Yellow. I haven't seen anyone named Red yet, though."

"Have all the complaints been from them?" Bulma asked.

"No," Yamcha piped up. "I got one the other day from a law student named Todd who said one of the books we had about preparing for the bar exam was out of date and useless. That's a legitimate complaint and I told him I'd bring it up."

Bulma nodded. "We'll definitely replace that one with something more up to date. But is that really it? Are the rest of them from these Ribbon guys?"

"They even put it on their website." Krillin handed her his tablet. "Apparently they're against libraries, because we allow access to 'unsavory' material."

Bulma snorted as she scanned the tablet. "Unsavory? It's nothing you couldn't find at your local big chain bookstore. Or on the internet, even." She tossed the tablet on the table and looked around at the rest of them. "Ideas?"

"We could always just ban them," Recoome suggested.

"We can't ban everybody who asks us to make sure our collection is up to date and appropriate," Yamcha said. "If we did that, we'd have to ban Todd, too, and he hasn't done anything wrong."

"Can we streamline the process a little?" Piccolo asked. "Dragging everybody into a meeting to discuss a book is time consuming, especially if we have to get the board in on it."

"That's a good short-term solution." Bulma crossed her arms and rested them on her stomach. "But it won't stop them from coming in constantly."

"How about a change to the challenge policy?" Yamcha asked. "We can say that only one complaint can be made per person per month. That'd force them to slow down, at least."

"Make them leave their library card number with their name, too," Krillin added. "That way we can check to make sure they're not just going to a different department."

"Oh! Oh!" Recoome waved his arm in the air. "Make it so they can only challenge a book if they have a valid card! If they ain't a patron they ain't got no right to demand we change our collection!"

Krillin blinked up at him. It was surprisingly well thought out for Recoome. Usually he just sort of blundered around.

Bulma glanced at Jaco. "You're getting all this, right?"

Jaco paused his frantic scribbling to glare at her. "I'm an elite assistant for a reason."

"Just checking. So, boys." Bulma steepled her fingers and looked at the ceiling in thought. "We're going to make three changes to the challenge policy: only patrons can submit challenges, no more than one challenge per patron per month, and we meet no more than once a month to discuss the books." She counted each change off on her fingers as she said them. "We're also going to ask the board if we can oversee the challenges without their help. Honestly, I'm not sure how well that's going to go over, but I can at least ask. And if we're not meeting too often, the time commitment shouldn't be as high." Bulma looked around. "That about cover it?"

"Hey, um, question." Yamcha raised his hand. "What's to stop them all from getting library cards just to make complaints all the time?"

Bulma shrugged. "Nothing. But at least this way we can keep track better."

Yamcha grimaced. "Remind me to apologise to Tien later. His department might get real busy soon."

"Can we stop being so nice to them if they were assholes first?" Piccolo asked.

Recoome glared at him. "Guess."

"Worth a shot," Piccolo muttered. "What if they're complaining to me about same-sex relationships? Or Yamcha, for that matter? Are we allowed to laugh in their faces or what?"

Bulma giggled and Recoome glared at her, exasperated. "Oh, come on," she said, "you have to admit that'd be great."

"No laughing," Recoome said, shaking his head. "But if they start using slurs, call Recoome and we'll get them banned."

Krillin breathed a sigh of relief and thanked his lucky star that Recoome was here now instead of Cell. Sure, Recoome sometimes spoke in the third person and he was kind of terrifying and he was a loudmouthed idiot. But at least he wasn't Cell.

Piccolo fixed the man with the deadest, blankest face he could manage. "You can't be serious."

The man pointed at the book on the desk, face red with anger. "What part of this don't you understand? This book promotes sinful relationships--"

"It's about penguins," Piccolo interrupted, picking up the book in question and flashing the cover at the man. "Penguins. It's a picture book based on a real story about two real penguins who really raised a chick together in a real zoo. Here, I can look it up for you."

"They're HOMOSEXUAL penguins!" The man folded his arms, giving Piccolo a good look at the ribbon tied around his wrist. Out of the corner of his eye, Piccolo saw Chiaotzu lean over the Circulation desk to see who was shouting about gay penguins at two in the afternoon. Well, at least someone was entertained. "You can't put homosexual characters in a picture book! Think of the children!"

Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Piccolo folded his hands and reminded himself that Recoome would kill him if he punched a patron. "Sir, I'd like you to check the date on your phone and remind yourself what year it is."

"You're treating this serious issue like a joke," the man snapped.

"That's because it kind of is."

"I want to speak to your supervisor!"

Piccolo grinned. "I am the supervisor." From the office, he heard Selri giggle, and he mentally patted himself on the back. "Look," he said as the man started turning red again, "I'll get you a form and we'll put it on our 'challenged' list. It'll go in for review."

"Good." The man nodded, smug now that he'd seemingly gotten what he wanted. "I don't see why you had to be so--"

"When we're done reviewing it," Piccolo continued, like the man hadn't spoken, "it'll go back on the shelf where it belongs, because it's the 21st century, gay people exist, gay parents exist, with children, and hey, gay children exist, and maybe they'd like to see a little something of themselves or their parents in a book, or maybe their parents love them and want them to know that same sex relationships are okay, and this book can give them the tools to have that discussion. Or maybe they just want to read a picture book about penguins. The point is, you aren't the first person to contest this book, you won't be the last, I haven't had coffee in over an hour, I am cranky, I forgot where this sentence was going. Libraries only remove items from the collection for very specific reasons and this case fits none of them. We're not going to ban a book because some guy thinks same-sex relationships are too 'adult' for children." He tossed the book on a pile, folded his arms, and stared the man down. He'd said his piece. Recoome could chew him out later if he wanted, but he'd said his piece.

The man narrowed his eyes. "Give me the form."

Piccolo shrugged. "Alright. But you're wasting your time and mine." He stuck his head into the office. "Selri, grab me one of the new challenge forms and go help Mai with today's craft, alright? Looks like I'll be away from the program room longer than I thought." The girl nodded, blue hair bouncing around her face, and handed him a sheet of paper before ducking out of the office. She smiled at the man on the other side of the desk as she passed. He ignored her. "So, if you could just fill this out, we'll be on our way." Piccolo slid the form and a pen across the desk and stepped back.

"Fine." The man snatched up the pen and started writing. Piccolo sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. God he hated his job some days.

"Is this a bad time?"

Glancing over, Piccolo let himself smile when he saw Nail approaching the desk. "No, it's fine. Hi." Nail stopped on the other side of the desk, next to the man with the ribbon. He always kept his distance while Piccolo was working, at Piccolo's request--he was still on the clock, and some modicum of professionalism had to be maintained. Besides, Piccolo had never been one for public displays of affection.

A thought occurred to him. "Dende's not here today."

Nail grinned and hefted the bag on his shoulder. "I'm not here for Dende. I have the rest of the day off, so I'm here working on a group project for school. Just thought I'd stop by and say hello to my boyfriend first."

Piccolo flushed--he still wasn't used to having someone call him their boyfriend--and glanced at the man filling out the form. He'd raised his head and was squinting between the two of them.

A decision was made, and Piccolo leaned across the desk to brush his lips against Nail's cheek. "Thanks," he said, pulling back. "I'm done my shift at six; want to go for dinner after? Since you have the day off."

Nail was blushing and Piccolo bit the inside of his cheek. Nail never blushed. He was so cute; how had it taken him so long to figure out he was in love with him? "I--yeah. I'll come back here around six and we can head out?"

"Sounds good. Thanks for coming to see me." Piccolo squeezed Nail's hand. "See you at six."

"Six. Yeah." Still blushing, Nail turned and scarpered towards the stairs.

Piccolo turned back to the man from the Red Ribbon Army. "All set? I'll take that." He deftly picked up the form and set it on the pile. "Anything else I can help you with?"

Glowering at Piccolo, the man turned away. "No."

Piccolo stretched as the man walked off. He thought he'd handled that fairly well. He glanced over the form. "Oh, sir," he called after him. "Mr. White, you forgot your library card number."

White turned around and glared at Piccolo with open contempt. "I don't have one."

"Then I'm afraid you can't file a challenge." Piccolo shrugged and tossed the form into the recycling bin under the desk. "Library policy."

"What?" White stalked back over to the desk. "I've never had this problem before."

"Recently a change has been made to the policy," Piccolo said smoothly. "Library card numbers need to be written on the forms for our files." The practised words flowed easily, and for once Piccolo was actually grateful for Jaco's pedantic ass making them all memorize patron interaction scripts before changing the policy. "If you don't have a library card, you can't file a challenge."

White jabbed his finger at Piccolo's chest. "You can't do that. You're making it up to make me look bad."

"Sir, you're doing a fine enough job of that all on your own." Piccolo mentally kicked himself. Antagonising a patron never went well for him.

Sure enough, White puffed himself up and raised his voice. "You can't treat me--a patron--like this! I demand to speak to whoever's in charge."

"First of all, without a library card you're not really a patron," Piccolo pointed out. "Just a guest, really." He sat down and reached for the phone. "And I'm sure our Human Resources representative would love to speak with you."

Jaco stuck his head into Recoome's office. "More forms for you."

Recoome held out his hand. "Thank you. Recoome didn't realise banning someone for screaming profanities about an employee was such a boring process."

"Yeah, it's a little more complicated than just having Upa and Bora escort him from the premises." Jaco leaned in the doorway. "How're you getting on so far? Crazy shit to have happen in your first week."

"Could be worse. You should see what Recoome had to deal with over at City Hall. Everyone was backstabbing each other all the time." Recoome shrugged. "Some guy yelling at me about having a gay guy working in the children's section is pretty tame in comparison."

"You only say that because it wasn't really directed at you," Jaco pointed out. "It was directed at Piccolo."

Recoome grunted. "Probably. Well, it might make Recoome's job harder, but hopefully everyone else's job is easier now."

Jaco edged into the room and reached for Recoome, hesitating before patting his shoulder. "I don't know if anyone else has said anything yet, but I for one am glad you're here. Our old HR guy was...a problem."

He was rewarded with a giant grin that was missing a few teeth. "Thank you."

Jaco patted his shoulder a couple more times before backing off. "Well, I should get back to work. Good luck with Red Ribbon."

"Recoome will need it," he sighed, shifting through the forms.

"Well, on the bright side, library memberships have gone up, but because these assholes aren't actually taking out any books our borrowing statistics are skewed." Tien shook his head and poked at his tablet. "I get that this was the only solution they could come up with, but it's making our department look bad."

Chiaotzu patted his shoulder. "Don't worry about it. Bulma knows what's going on, and she'll keep that in mind when you send the statistics report. Hopefully this will blow over soon now that we all know about it."

"I hope so." Tien set the tablet down and stretched out his back. "I'm going to the cafe for break. Want anything?"

"Coffee, two sugars." Chiaotzu glanced at the doorway to the Circulation office. "And a new coworker."

"Har, har. Shu's doing his best." Tien patted Chiaotzu's back and headed towards the front doors. "I'll see you in a bit." He pulled out his phone as he walked, no doubt to text Yamcha and ask if he wanted anything at the Ox Cafe, too. Chiaotzu sighed. Honestly, when Tien and Yamcha finally started going out, he'd been a little worried that he'd be losing his best friend to a relationship. Thankfully, that hadn't happened, but it was still a little weird seeing Tien and Yamcha nearly attached at the hip when he'd always been the one attached to Tien.

Well, whatever, it was nice to see Tien happy. And he wouldn't want to see them break up for anything.

"Where's Tien?"

Grimacing, Chiaotzu looked up at Shu. "On break. Why?"

"I need someone to check my shelving cart before I take it out."

Chiaotzu stood up. "I can do that. You watch the desk for a minute; I'll be right back." He propped his hands on his hips. "And remember, if someone with a red ribbon comes to the desk, you...?"

"Ask them what book they'd like to complain about and send them to the appropriate desk." Shu rattled off the instructions like they'd been drilled into his head, which they practically had been by Recoome and Jaco.

"Good." Chiaotzu scurried into the back room. Shu could organise a book cart faster than any of the other pages they'd ever had, and he was usually mostly accurate, but he was inaccurate enough of the time that someone still had to check for him. He grabbed the footstool in the corner and started checking the spine labels.

Surprisingly, Shu had only messed up once, and it was an easy oversight to make. Chiaotzu hopped off the stool and gestured to the cart. "All yours. Only one slipup today! Good job!"

Shu beamed at him. "Thanks! Okay, I'll be in the stacks then!" And off he went.

Chiaotzu wandered back out to the front desk and grabbed Tien's tablet. He added another cart to the day's tally and was about to start compiling a pick list for Shu to work on when he was done when a voice interrupted him.

"You work here, right?"

He bit back his automatic response of "what makes you say that, smartass?" and instead looked up. A middle-aged Japanese man leaned on the desk. A flash of red under purple sleeves caught Chiaotzu's eye and he sighed. "Yes," he said. "Can I help you?"

"I need a library card. This the right desk?"

"Absolutely." Chiaotzu fished around for a new card form. With all the Red Ribbon people lately, they were starting to run low on forms. He'd have to photocopy a few more. "Fill this in. I'll also need some ID with your address."

The man fished out his wallet and handed Chiaotzu a driver's license before methodically filling out the form. Chiaotzu tried not to sigh as he went into the back to photocopy the license. Yet another Red Ribbon here to mess up their statistics and waste people's time. Fantastic.

By the time he got back, the man had finished filling in his form and Chiaotzu handed him his license back. "Thanks. Let me just get this set up." Tien often said Chiaotzu was the best at setting up new patrons in the system, and Chiaotzu was proud of that fact, but he took his sweet time with the Red Ribbon people. "Sorry for the wait," he lied. He held up his hands. "Tiny fingers."

The man--Murasaki, according to his form--laughed. "Not to worry!"

Chiaotzu shrugged and went back to work, pulling a new card out of the desk drawer they were kept in and scanning the barcode to connect it with Murasaki's account. "Okay, so sign on the white strip here and you're good to go." Chiaotzu handed him the card and sat back.

"Excellent. Thanks!" Murasaki scribbled his name down and handed the card back to Chiaotzu. "I'd also like to take out a few things."

Chiaotzu blinked. This was the first time he'd ever seen a Red Ribbon member actually borrow anything. "Oh. Okay. Hand them over, I guess." He opened the circulation software and scanned Murasaki's card again.

Murasaki deposited a grocery bag full of picture books on the desk. He grinned sheepishly when Chiaotzu raised an eyebrow. "I'm babysitting my grandkids tomorrow," he explained. Chiaotzu nodded and reached for them.

If nothing else, at least this guy wasn't going to screw their statistics up any further.

Bulma tossed a newspaper onto the desk proudly. "Never underestimate the power of press," she gloated.

Jaco picked it up. "'Shushed No Longer: the Growing Book Banning Problem at WCPL,'" he read. He looked up at Bulma. "What did you do?"

"Called in a few favours," she said smugly. "I know a guy who works at the paper, and he got them to run an article about our problem."

"'Libraries have always stood for freedom of information,'" Jaco read aloud, "'but they've also always come under attack by groups who disagree with their materials. Even in this progressive age, there are people who want to dictate the types of materials West City Public Library can and can't have on their shelves. According to WCPL CEO Bulma Briefs, this has been an increasing problem lately.'"

"I never referred to the Red Ribbon Army by name," she explained. "That'd just give them credibility. But they ran this article two days ago and we haven't had a single issue since. And you should see the comments online! We actually have the public's support for once!"

Jaco shook his head. "Congratulations. You solved book banning."

"Don't be like that." Bulma crossed her arms. "I know this is just a temporary solution. But at least I got things to quiet down a little before I go away on maternity leave." She gestured at the paper. "How would you like to be the one dealing with all that while I'm off having my baby?"

"Alright, fine. Thank you." Jaco handed the newspaper back. "You know, one of these days you're going to get yourself in trouble trying to solve things like this by yourself."

Bulma shrugged and started to shuffle back towards her office. "I figure if I'm gonna piss people off, go big or go home."

"Okay, so, um, sir. If you could just calm down--"

"Calm down? Calm down?" Red's face was the colour of his namesake. "You tell me I'm not allowed to file a challenge against this...this filth, and you want me to calm down?"

"Library policy," Yamcha started, "states that only one challenge can be made--"

"Per person, per month, I heard you, I'm not stupid." Red sneered. Yamcha folded his arms and kept his face as blank as possible. "But that's a stupid fucking policy and I want to know who I complain to about it!"

"You can always submit a comment on our website," Yamcha suggested, hoping it would get Red to leave him alone.

"On your website." Red scoffed. "Do you know who I am? Do you have any idea who you're dealing with?"

Yamcha looked at the record still up on his screen. "According to our records, you're Red Sosui, you just got a card last week, and you've already filed a complaint this month, at Reader's Advisory, about A Wrinkle in Time, which was the wrong department by the way--"

"I'm the leader of the Red Ribbon Army," Red growled.

Yamcha nodded. "Oh, that hate speech group. We've had to ban a few of your members already for harassing staff. If you keep causing a scene I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Red drew himself up to his full height (which wasn't much), snarled "This is not the end of this," and stormed out.

Yamcha shook his head and added a note to Red's record about the altercation. "I'm pretty sure it is," he muttered.

#dbz #dragon ball z #writing #fanfiction #library!au #west city pl

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wickedwitch1997 · 7 years

Text

The Water Bender’s Baby

1.It’s the Painted Lady 2.The Blue Spirit 3.The Painted Spirit 4.The Blue Lady 5. The Water Bender 6. The Fire Lord’s Heart pt 1 7. The Fire Lord’s Heart pt 2 8. The Painted Lady and the Blue Spirit 9. The Fire Lady 10.The Blood Bender 11. The Family Reunion

The night that Katara came home, Sokka arranged for a celebratory dinner, he found it odd when Katara wouldn’t even touch the wine.

She loved wine. Sokka didn’t think much of it.

Then she started to disappear, looking for a home, wanting to get out of the place she was sharing with Sokka. Sokka found it odd when she was planning on living alone.

Katara never liked living alone. Sokka didn’t think much of it.

Then she started to disappear into that home, the home on the edge of the tribe, so far away from Sokka’s house.

Sokka began to worry.

Sokka asked his father if he noticed what was wrong with Katara, Hakoda said to leave it be, to leave his sister alone and give her space.

But Sokka couldn’t do that, he was the oldest, he had to look out for her and he felt like he was failing in his mission.

Sokka let Katara be, for a time, but when he hadn’t seen her for more than a few months, he knew, deep down, that Katara was in trouble. So Sokka decided that he needed answers, his father wasn’t around so he went straight to Katara’s hut.

When he heard her screaming his heart raced, he charged into the hut as if he was charging into battle.

What he saw was earth shattering. Katara was in her bed, her father by her side, and in her arms was a babe, still covered in blood and goo from the birth.

“What in Spirits is going on here?!” he demanded, making all eyes turn to him.

“Out with you!” one of the other women in the hut hisses flapping her hands and pushing Sokka out of the door way.

“Dad?” Sokka asks, he sees Hakoda look to his sister then he stands and makes his way to Sokka.

“Son,” he says, putting his arms around Sokka’s shoulders and leading him outside.

Once the pair are outside the door shuts behind them and Hakoda leads Sokka to the living room.

“What is going on?” Sokka asks, frantically searching his father’s face for a clue.

“Katara had a baby,” Hakoda says, “she returned here already pregnant.”

“But… I… who… what?” Sokka is speechless, he has a million question’s forming in his mind but he can’t seem to form the right words.

“She will not tell me who the father is,” Hakoda explains.

“Aang?” Sokka breathes, but his father shakes his head and sighs.

“She is positive that it is not Aang’s child,” Hakoda says, “But she wants to keep the child a secret.”

“Why?” Sokka asks, his heart still pounding in his ears, “Dad, I don’t understand. Was it forced? Is she afraid of the father.”

“No,” Hakoda reassures, “Katara informed me that the father loved her, she loved him too.”

“Then I’m lost!” Sokka exasperates, standing to his feet, “Why would she not want her baby known?”

“I don’t know,” Hakoda sighs, wiping a hand down his face, “Spirits, I wish your mother was here… We can only hope that Katara will tell us when she’s ready.”

“But what if she’s never ready?” Sokka asks, “What if we never know?”

“Then we respect her wishes,” Hakoda says, standing to his feet to calm his son, “Sokka, we have to be supportive of Katara, we can’t let her go through this alone.”

Sokka sighs and sits down, he leans forward and puts his head in his hands, his mind still buzzing with questions that need answering.

“Chief?” one of the ladies says, coming out of Katara’s room.

“How is she?” Hakoda asks.

“Fine,” the woman says, “The birth was fine, no complications, the baby is strong and healthy. You have a granddaughter,” Hakoda’s heart flutters with joy, “She wants to see you,” the lady says, standing aside as Hakoda walks into the room.

Sokka remains sitting on the couch.

“You too,” the lady says, “Don’t you want to see your niece?”

Sokka stands to his feet and then walks into the room, the midwives finish cleaning and then leave the house; one stays behind to keep an eye on Katara and the new baby.

Sokka watches in awe as Katara sits in her bed, holding her daughter close and fawning over the child.

Hakoda sits by Katara’s side and they talk. But Sokka doesn’t know what to say, his eyes flick around the room and then land on Katara’s necklace; their mother’s necklace, sitting on Katara’s dresser.

“Congratulations Kat,” Sokka says, looking to Katara.

“I’m sorry I kept it from you,” Katara breathes, looking to her brother, “But I didn’t want anyone knowing before I wanted them to know.”

“I understand,” Sokka says with a smile, he rubs the back of his neck and then watches as Katara goes back to talking with their father.

Sokka goes over to the necklace on the dresser, the necklace is sitting face down on the dresser, Sokka stares at the pendant, the pendant which should be smooth and white. But the back of the pendant is engraved with a Fire Nation symbol, not just any Fire Nation symbol, but the crest of the royal family, Zuko’s symbol, etched into the pendant and filled with gold, real gold.

‘Holy spirits,’ Sokka thinks, ‘it all makes sense now.’

Sokka bides his time, he stays with his father and Katara until Hakoda is called away, Sokka stays behind.

“Master Katara,” The midwife says, coming into the room, “I have to go pick up some sea prunes for dinner, will you be fine on your own?”

“I’ll stay with her,” Sokka says, the midwife smiles and then leaves, promising that she’ll be back soon.

Sokka sits by Katara’s side, watching his sister rock her baby.

“She’s adorable,” Sokka smiles, “Looks just like you.”

“I know,” Katara beams, “But she has her father’s eyes.”

“Really?” Sokka asks, looking at the baby’s cyan eyes.

“Not in colour,” Katara laughs, “but in shape and softness.”

“Oh yeah,” Sokka says, “And look, there are even little gold flecks in her eyes.”

Katara goes still she doesn’t say a word.

“It’s Zuko’s baby, isn’t it?” Sokka asks, speaking softly, Katara looks to Sokka in shock, “Last we heard from Aang was that you were safe in the Fire Nation. You were with Zuko, weren’t you?”

Katara stays silent, her eyes are wide and glassed with tears, Sokka holds out Katara’s necklace, holding up the side etched with the Fire Nation symbol.

“I love him,” Katara breathes, “He loved me,” a tear slides down her cheek as she takes a deep breath, “I was going to marry him.”

“What happened?” Sokka asks, “Why’d you come back?”

“Because Mai came back,” Katara weeps, her voice becomes shaky, “Her father was threatening to tear the city apart if he didn’t get what he wanted, his people out numbered Zuko’s three to one. The first step to peace was making Mai Fire Lady, to unite the Fire Nation as one again.”

“And Zuko just kicked you out?” Sokka asks, his anger rising.

“No,” Katara gapes, “No, Sokka, he wanted to fight for me, he wanted to risk war to keep me by his side. I wouldn’t let him, I left.”

“And he didn’t know that you were pregnant?”

“No,” Katara says, “and he never will.”

“Why not?”

“Because if he finds out that this baby is his, everyone I love will be in danger!” Katara snaps, “IT’s a shock to think that such a small being is able to cause so much panic. But it’s true, if Zuko, or anyone else, finds out that this baby is his, chaos would ensue. I know Zuko, he would want to claim her as his own, he can’t do that without angering Mai and her father; his country would be in ruin. If Mai somehow finds out, I have no doubt in my mind that she will send assassins after me and after my daughter. I want my child to grow up safe.”

“So what are you going to do?” Sokka asks.

“I’m going to send her to a woman, the woman will raise her as her own,” Katara looks down to her child, “She will stay in the tribe.”

“So you’re just going to abandon her?”

“I’m not abandoning her,” Katara snaps, “I will always be in her life, she will know the truth of who I am and who her father is when the time is right. But if she stays with me, rumours will surely spread, some may fall for the lies I will have to tell, but Zuko is smart, he will know the truth.”

“Don’t you think he has a right to know?”

“Don’t you think I wish he could?!” Katara hisses, “There is nothing I want more than my baby knowing who her father is, there is nothing I want more, than to be by Zuko’s side in this. Sokka, I love him, I love him so much that it hurts, it hurts to be this far away from him, to have this big of a secret from him, but I have no choice. In keeping her secret, I am keeping her safe, I am keeping him safe. What kind of damage do you think will follow if word gets out about her? She’s only baby, but she is Zuko’s first born baby, rightfully the heir to the Fire throne, do you have any idea on what kind of danger that puts her in? Please Sokka,” Katara breathes, trying to stop the flow of tears falling down her face, “You have to keep this secret.”

“Ok,” Sokka breathes, his heart racing, “Ok, I will. I won’t tell a soul.”

“Not even father.”

“Not even Father,” Sokka echoes, “Katara, you mean the world to me, it pains me to see you like this.”

“I’ll be fine,” she breathes, then she looks to her baby, “We’ll be fine.”

“Well she’s going to need a name,” Sokka says, changing the subject, “Any ideas?”

“Senna.”

#it's the painted lady fic #chapter 11 #zutara #katara #zuko #sokka #mai'#hakoda #the plot thickens #dun dun daaaaa

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lonewolfwriter · 7 years

Text

A Taste Of Hazel Chapter 8

Fangmyer left Nick knowing full well he better get back to the office and face his punishment. He had even prepared, by taking off his tie and taking his badge from his wallet.

He starred longingly at the shiny brass that had ZPD etched deep into it. “I became a cop to protect...” he muttered sadness washing over him as he thought back to all the horrible wrong the ZPD had done to Nick.

“This has been my whole life” he explained to himself, thinking of how he would let this badge drop into the hands of the likes of one Jack Savage.

As he starred at the badge he remembered back to high school, being bashed for being in love, he knew Nicks pain, he could feel it each time he looked into his friends eyes. But if the ZPD has changed from protecting the innocent and hiring the scum, then Fangmyer knew, he would gladly hand over the badge.

He got to the ZPD and as soon as he entered the front doors Chuck was sitting on the front counter; Clawhauser’s desk, holding an ice pack to his eyes, Delgato patting his back. His face looked like an artist got mad at a block of clay and simply went to work on it with his fists.

As Fangmyer strolled through the door both Chuck and Delgato look to him, only when he was inside did he notice Jack standing offside, with a notepad in his paws taking down a statement, Fangmyer reached into his back pocket preparing to hand over his badge.

Jack followed Delgato and Chuck’s gaze before turning back to Chuck.

“And you didn’t get a good look at the guy?” quizzed Jack with a disbelieving glance. Chuck and Delgato, whose eyes stayed poised on Fangmyer, simply nodded in agreement to Jack’s statement.

He flicked the notepad shut turning to look at Fangmyer.

“Odd” is all Jack stated, his eyes giving a quick glance to Fangmyer’s swollen knuckles.

“Take him and get him stitched up” ordered Jack pivoting to point at Delgato and Chuck.

Delgato and Chuck both got up heading for the door, neither set of their eyes leaving Fangmyer, who had to struggle to hold back a hiss.

“Tragic isn’t it” interrupted Jack, catching Fangmyer’s attention “the streets are a dangerous place, looks like the new recruit learnt that the hard way”, Jacks eyes scrutinised Fangmyer as he spoke.

“Yeah, better to learn rules like that early on” confirmed Fangmyer.

“So what are you doing back?” pried Jack, flicking his sleeve up to check his watch.

“You aren’t meant to be on break for another hour and a half”

Fangmyer casually held up his ticket machine, “Out of paper” he lied, playing the game Jack so obviously wanted to play.

“You’re a good officer Fangmyer; but you better watch your actions and attitude”

“I don’t know what you’re referring to Jack” replied Fangmyer

“Chief” corrected Jack “Chief Savage, and I’m talking about how you have been conducting yourself and please keep your anger under control”

“Your one to talk” muttered Fangmyer.

“What was that?” asked Jack raising his ear, as if he didn’t hear Fangmyer but so obviously did.

Fangmyer took a deep breath; “I said, sir yes sir”.

“Good, get back to those cars” dismissed Jack.

Fangmyer turned and went to leave, a demonic, victories grin made its way across Jacks lips.

“Fangmyer?”

Fangmyer turned “Yes sir?” he grumbled with as much respect in his tone as he could muster.

“I thought you needed more paper?”

Fangmyer turned and feigned a smile, annoyed he had been caught out, but he kept his cool “That’s correct, thank you Jack” he confirmed as he walked past Savage to head to the stationary cupboard to go get more parking ticket paper.

“Chief” corrected Savage as Fangmyer past him.

Fangmyer froze next to him; “Thank you, Chief” said Fangmyer trying to keep his cool.

“One last thing Fang’s”

“Fangmyer” corrected Fangmyer staring down on the rodent.

“Fangmyer”, corrected Jack.

Jack went to speak, he needed to ask Fangmyer, he needed to know if Nick was okay, for his daughter …and himself , but then he heard it, he heard Nick speak into his ear; the voice coming from over his should; soft and ominous.

Jacks eyes stayed poised forward and his mouth hung open.

Fangmyer went to get angry when he saw the look on Jacks face, and by god he knew the look, it was the same look, the look he had seen a thousand times, the look Darla had given him when her brother and his friends bashed him and put him in hospital, guilt.

Fangmyer took a knee placing his giant paw on Jacks shoulder as he sat paralysed, stunned like a fish out of water. Jack cranked his neck against some deathly invisible force to look at Fangmyer, hoping for comfort.

Fangmyer leaned in deep so his mouth was right in Jacks ear, the overbearing shadow of Nick’s ghost whispered frantically in one ear from behind him and Fangmyer whispered into his left from in front.

“Act tough all you want, but I see through you Savage….If you think the guilt of what you have done goes away Jack, it doesn’t”

Fangmyer pulled back slowly, a strained tear gently rolling down the fur of Jacks face. Fangmyer tapped him twice on the shoulder, simply got up and walked away, Jack simply swaying with the taps standing silent and cold starring into the void.

“Have a good day Chief” called back Fangmyer heading for the door.

Jacks scrapped at the barrel for something to yell back but came back empty, turning and running towards his office, his alcohol and his meds.

Nick was going through store after store; searching racks of clothing for a nice uniform he could wear. Each time he would enter another shop, cruel judgmental glances and whispers would follow; Nick however ignored the scrutiny and drew strength from one thought, the eyes of a vixen, that he pictured watching him, with care and grace.

He stood in front of a rack in K-9mart, a confused and frustrated look plastered to his face, he held a blue shirt in one paw and a black shirt held in the other, they were the exact same shirt apart from colour.

“Excuse me” he whispered gesturing a paw in the air to get one of the worker’s attention. He was ignored by the workers however a very fuzzy and well dressed she wolf noticed his pleas and smiled walking toward Nick.

As the wolf approached Nick her smile became concealing across her face; as if she recognised Nick. She was white as snow, with blue eyes and dressed extremely elegantly.

She promptly walked over “Hello, Maybe I can help?” she asked while chewing gum.

Nick went to reply but was taken off; he could see a sly smirk in the corner of her mouth, she was much younger then Nick, but her eyes danced over him.

Nick held both shirts out, “Which colour do you think would suit me?”

The she-wolf smiled taking a knee; grabbing both, placing them over his chest before changing to the other colour.

“Hmm” she began “Depends” she finally conceded.

“On what” Asked Nick

“What’s it for? I mean this one would be a good going out shirt” she explained holding up the blue shirt to his torso.

“It’s for a job interview” he confirmed.

“Doing?”

“Bar tending…hopefully”.

She smiled, “Oh, that’s easy, definitely the black”.

“You should try it on?” continued the wolf.

Nick felt self-conscious, he knew he stunk, he knew his clothes were tattered and old, and yet this she-wolf gazed upon him, with such admiration that it made Nick kind of uncomfortable.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” he quizzed abruptly; unable to take the odd behaviour any longer, looking around as if it was a big joke about to be played on him.

The she-wolf; had an all too bright smile, like she had been waiting for Nick to ask that question. The wolf went chest to chest with him before she knelt right next to him and put her muzzle to his ear “I know who you are Nicholas Wilde” she whispered with a cute, seductive wink as she pulled away.

Without another word, she reached her paw to her own ear and began to undo one of her love heart shaped earring.

“If you’re going to work in a bar, you’ll need an earring”.

Without any consent, she pushed the earring through Nick’s ear, who flinched back only a little. Before she licked his ear two or three times wiping away the blood, she stood back to admire her handy work.

“There you go, much better” she confirmed.

She placed her paw to the side of Nicks face “See you later cutie” she said kissing his cheek; as she slid her paw across his face and turned to walk away.

Nick stood stunned and completely confused, he gently moved his paw up, touching the piercing, his ear hurt only a little.

“Who the hell?” he spoke to himself completely at a loss of who the she-wolf was.

By the time Nick finished shopping and the she wolf was no longer in his thoughts, Nick had bought several loads of clothes, changing into a new shirt and pants and throwing the old ones away, although he had been scrutinised the entire time he was shopping, he was happy that he was refreshed.

He had bought a green shirt with leaves over it, as similar to his old clothes as he could get, and some generic brown slacks.

However, he did not wear these, instead he sported a black shirt and pants, thinking that, this uniform would be more proper to go to a job interview in. He was walking down the street, several bags of clothes in his paws, a bottle of aftershave, toothbrush and comb and his old tatty bag he had gone back to the park to collect; flung over his shoulders. He felt on top of the world with the little he had.

He got to the watering Hole and waited outside, it was only 2:00 and he knew he had to be there at 5. He had some money left and saw a small coffee stand just down the ways, he leisurely made his way to it and waited in queue.

He got to the front and there was a Rhino and a Buffalo both talking. “Hello sirs” he greeted.

“Oh great another fox” grumbled the Rhino, ceasing to talk and looking away while the Buffalo turned to Nick. “Hey can’t you-”

“See you were talking?” finished Nick, “perhaps you should be working instead” he snapped.

The buffalo pulled his head back insulted “Excuse me?”

Nick pointed a claw; he knew the Buffalo and Rhino didn’t remember him, but Nick sure remembered them. They were the same two that had made Nick wait to speak to a manager when he had gone for a job once before. Only to find out he was being made to waste his time.

“You heard me” Nick growled “You shouldn’t be talking during work, you should be serving”.

“Oh yeah, or what?”

Nick thought for a moment before he remembered a very specific scenario that had worked a charm, in a similar situation.

Nick smirked dropping his ear to the side a sincere look on his face projecting his voice for all to hear.

“I’m so glad you asked! I mean are your customers aware you were found to be using stale bread thrown away by the bakery?” he explained walking over to a table and gesturing to an armadillo eating a sandwich. The Armadillo looked at the shop owner, opening her mouth so a slop of half chewed sandwich fell onto her plate; she placed the rest of sandwich down and walked away from their al fresco Cafe.

Nick flicked a claw in the air and took centre stage now that all eyes were on him; “Or how about the worse fact that this rhino” gestured Nick to the Rhino standing next to the owner, “is selling you homemade rhino milk to make your coffee…isn’t that against regulation? Section 12 of the food act clearly states you need to be buying from a pasteurised and certified business, not a friend” he accused.

He paused for a moment for dramatical effect, leaning against a table “And male rhinos for that matter” added Nick matter of factly, leaning casually on a table where other animals sat.

“Male Rhino’s don’t have milk” interjected one customer with a coffee in hoof.

Nick gave him a sympathetic glare; “I know…” he explained gently rubbing his claw across a table, a look of apologetic regret on his face.

Nick heard one customer who sat at a seat spit his coffee out; understanding what Nick was trying to say. Nick trying with all his strength not to blurt out laughter.

The Buffalo and Rhino stood shocked at Nick’s allegations.

“We’ll now that this is done, I bid you adieu” he confirmed saluting them before strolling off pleased with himself. He looked back to shout one last thing over his shoulder “I hope business goes well, hang in there”.

As he walked away he saw several customers also get up and leave. The Buffalo and Rhino yelling at him as he walked away, while simultaneously being swamped with customers demanding refunds.

Nick sat on a bench across from the watering hole, a gleeful feeling deep in his gut, this is the Nick he knew, this was the Nick he remembered. He had not felt so alive in so long that it was making him shake with happiness.

He checked the watch he bought, he had only fifteen minutes to wait, he thought he would head in early to show promptness and that he was keen.

Nick entered the pub the rickety door creaking open, inside the air was stale and smelt of old beer he poked his head in but couldn’t see anyone. A cool breeze seeming to be ever present in the waterin Hole atmosphere; likely because the air-con above the bar was always pumping.

“Hello” he whispered in a shout.

“Oh hey sweetie, come in” came a voice from seemingly nowhere.

Nick walked in, the door shutting gently behind him, from behind the bar stood Pricilla, a tray of glasses in her grasp.

“Hey stranger” she yipped gleefully placing the glasses on the top of the bar, before walking around and giving Nick the tightest hug he had ever felt.

“Hey” he nervously replied, hugging her back.

“Nickie” she sighed “what happened ta you? I never got a cawl? And now you show up oudda thin air, how ya bin?”

Nick didn’t reply he just shook his head.

“Dat bad huh? ere have a beer” she offered walking back behind the bar, she raised a glass and began pouring him an ale.

Nick was going to decline, he hadn’t drank beer in such a long time, but by the time he went to protest the glass was half full and he felt his throat beg for the cool indulgence.

The crisp white head frothed over the top sliding down the side of the glass and the glass instantly became moist with dew, the bronze colour and tip of the beer showed it was a perfect pour, obviously hours of practise, she placed the beer on a coaster and slid it in front of Nick, who watched as the bubbling carbon dioxide made its way from the base of the glass to the head of the beer.

“Thank you” he stated taking a seat at the bar grabbing his lower back as he sat, a slight nerve pain shooting up his spine. He grabbed the beer in the other paw and tilted his head back to let the moist beverage make its way down his throat, the tingling in his back slightly subsiding, he downed half the beer when he stopped to take a breath.

“Whoa, easy tiger, you might choke” giggled Pricilla.

Nick put the glass down and took an almighty huff to get his breath back.

Pricilla proceeding to only laugh louder as Nickie now sat on the bar stool with a foam moustache made from the froth of the beer.

Nick looked down at what she was laughing and pointing at, he rolled his eyes with a smile and wrapped his tongue around his lips to clear it.

They both chuckled and as the chuckles slowly subsided the conversation became more serious.

“What happened der?” quizzed Pricilla, noticing the pain inflicted on Nickie simply trying to take a seat.

“I got shot in the back” he explained coldly “three times…”

Nick wrapped his paws around the cold glass and took another swig, it had been years since he had a drink.

“So, whacha afta anywayz?”

“Just some work” explained Nick.

“Day shift, night shift?”

Nick laughed a little, he gathered that Pricilla didn’t understand that he was at her mercy, or perhaps she did realise and was simply being kind.

“Any shift”.

“Okay sweetheart, I’ll put tagether a rosta for ya and we’ll get ya started ASAP, Most likely night shift, cause you’re a fox and you’ll mainly be doing bar work, cause I don’t think youd be able ta do any security work wit dat injury you got, hows dats sound?””

“That’s the most amazing thing I’ve heard for a very long time” he confirmed. There was a paused, while Nick thought of one other thing “Pricilla?”

“Ye Nickie?”

“Do you guys have rooms here?”

“Coarse we do sweetheart, whys dat?”

Nick drank the rest of his drink; Pricilla had done right by him, the least he could do was let her know why he never called. Once he had finish his beer he proceeded to explain all that had happened to him to Pricilla, throughout Nick’s story her face went from horror to shock to anger to pity and by the end she simply reached into her apron and placed down a small keychain on the bar her eyes moist with tears.

“You can stay ere for as long as you need sweetheart” she confirmed with her hand over her mouth, she had never heard such dread from anyone before or seen a fox look so hollow.

Nick picked up the keys in his paws, holding them and just starring for the longest moment before he looked to Pricilla with reverence

“Thank you” he choked.

She just nodded, sniffing, trying to compose herself.

“You’re on the third floor, room 21”

“What about payment?”

Pricilla wiped her tears on her apron and feigned a laugh “Don’t be a dunce Nickie”

Nick smiled holding the key close to his chest walking to the stair case and going up to find his room.

As he was about to be out of site Pricilla called out.

“You can do a practise shift on the weekend if you’d like?”

Nick turned poking his head out so only his shoulder and head were visible from the doorway and with a smile replied “That would be awesome”.

Nick went to leave when Pricilla called him and he poked his head out once more.

“I like your ear ring Nickie, it suits you”

Nick had completely forgot the earring and flicked his ear to bring it to eye level, starring at the love heart, he smiled at Pricilla putting his ear back in place, but then his thoughts became congested by the thought of who the she-wolf was once again as he headed up to his new room.

It was seven o’clock and Jack turned his computer off grabbing his coat and rubbing his red, sore eyes, his meds making him drowsy and the hidden bottle in his desk not helping by any stretch of the imagination.

“Long day captain?”

“Always” he confirmed looking up; only to see the room was empty.

“Nooo, Nooo” he grumbled, sluggishly making his way over to his desk, going to his top draw and taking out some more medication; taking three tablets. He walked over to the wall collapsing against it and placing his eyes in his paws.

“Just stop” he pleaded.

“Stop what?” asked a familiar voice.

Jack cautiously looked up, fearing he would see his haunting illusions; however he looked up from his paw to see Clawhauser standing in the room.

“How long have you been there?” asked Jack

“I just walked in?” confirmed Clawhauser.

“What do you want?” continued Jack; trying to sound professional, but realising he was sprawled out on the floor leaning on the wall.

“Aaare you okay sir?” questioned Clawhauser a little concerned. “Fine, just tired, what do you want?”

Clawhauser reached into a folder and pulled out a small booklet of papers stapled together; handing it to Jack.

“Is this okay?” he asked

Jack took the book, flicking through the pages, checking prices and what the place had to offer”

“If you want this one I need to lock it in, they need three months for a party of this size”

Without a thought, Jack just nodded handing it back to him “Set up for like 7:00pm, put on a bar tab, food, the works”

“Got it” confirmed Clawhauser going to leave.

“Oh, and Clawhauser”

Clawhauser stopped in the door; turning to listen to Jack.

“Try and keep the surprise party a surprise this year” chuckled Jack.

Clawhauser chuckled nervously and saluted “Yes sir, I’ll try sir”.

Jack dragged himself to his feet once Clawhauser had left, he took a few deep breathes, keeping his eyes poised on the exit, before heading for the door; ignoring the shadow that sat swivelling in his chair, in his peripherals.

Maria had finished four hours earlier then Jack and sat at home with Alison, they were on the sofa watching a movie together, ‘A fox tales”, Alison’s favourite movie.

They sat eating popcorn and Alison was quoting the movie word for word. Maria smiled, as her daughter sat in awe at the characters on the screen.

“You know, this was you fathers favourite movie and he use to do the same thing, he was able to quote every single word of this movie”

Alison, who was only partially listening, picked up the remote and paused the movie, a strange look on her face.

“What?” she asked, not hearing what her mum had said or thinking she misheard her.

“I said this was your father’s favourite movie, he loved watching this” repeated Maria with a deep smile, that was soon washed away at the look on Alison’s face.

“Dad HATES this movie” Alison confirmed.

Maria was confused for a moment before she realised her mistake, Nick loved a fox tales…. Not Jack.

Maria quickly giggled, slapping a paw to her forehead “Oh silly me-” she confirmed

“Must have been another movie similar to this that your father liked. Ha-ha popcorn?”.

Alison nodded reaching her tiny paw into the bowl; pressing play on the remote with her other paw, but felt something deep inside her guts twist.

Maria sat in bed once the movie was over and Alison had been tucked in. she was reading a new book that was on the top of the best sellers “A wolf in sheep’s clothing” it was about a wolf and a sheep who had fallen in love, the wolf having been killed by his pack for loving someone he shouldn’t have. She had gone through twelve pages when her eyes closed.

“Say slick” began Judy as she and Nick watched ‘A fox tales’ “what would you name your kids if you had any?”

“Oh you know me carrots, kids are annoying brats!” he confirmed; waving his paw at her dismissively.

“Naw, come on Nick, just imagine you found the girl of your dreams, what would you call your little Nicks?” she asked again as she walked off to make more popcorn

Nick sat starring at Judy as she danced around the kitchen; “Alison, I would call our daughter Alison” he whispered

“Huh?”

Nick shook his head with a laugh “My daughter, Alison would be her name and if I had a boy, probably Jasper” he explained with a nervous chuckle.

Judy sat placing the popcorn in the microwave, blushing; she had heard Nick the first time.

“What about you?”

“I would call our kids, anything you wanted” she whispered into the microwave.

Judy woke to the bed shaking and gently grasped her small paws around her head; only stopping when she saw a dark silhouette to the side of her, Jack was trying his best to sly his way into the bed without waking her. She glanced at the clock it was almost 10:00pm

As he was pulling the blankets up he saw Maria had her eyes open starring at him

“I’m sorry did I wake you?” he groaned, annoyed he was not able to slip in without annoying her and nervous she may smell the undenying scent of alcohol on his breath.

Maria was to sleepy to noticed and simply yawned, throwing her book to the ground and wrapping her arms around his waist snuggling close to him as he reached out to turn off the bedside light.

“It’s okay, I was having a nightmare anyway” she explained, placing her head gently between his masculine shoulder blades, spooning him and trying to get back to sleep.

However there was a pit in her stomach and although she tried with all her years of training to fill it with paperwork, family time and exercise, she knew it was the shape of a fox and could not be filled, no matter how long she was trained or how long she went to therapy to be convinced she was Maria Savage, some part of her would always be Judy Hopps, who fell in love with a dumb fox and left him for dead.

AUTHOURS NOTE: Hey guys =] so good to be back with more time; So, as requested(by one of my awesome followers) I rolled like 2-3 chapters into one long one; this will probably be the last one for like another week or so, as I go back to my other job (where tumblr is locked)- No art this time, people wanted it quick, I hope that is okay for everyone. anyways guys, I hope you enjoy as always and leave some feedbax =D

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breezytealy · 7 years

Note

Do you have a headcanon for the Super Seven ages in your comics? You're an amazing artist. Love your arts.

Hey nonnie! Oh my gosh thank you for the compliments I’m glad you’re enjoying them ^^Super7/nextGen headcanon was like the BestWorst question you could ask because I have a timeline and notes hahaHAHAHAHAHAaaaaa. Here, have 3,800 words, most is under the cut. Everything I draw/write is in this “Super7″ AU :) (I wish I could write well ;A;)

–

The Earth still isn’t officially part of the federation of planets under the Galactic King’s control. They’ve had a few public alien contacts (that some are convinced are still hoaxes, Buu is just a weird-ass looking guy maybe) but no official Galactic welcome and the Z-team are selfishly keen to leave it that way to prevent what would amount to exposure. The kids would like to balance real jobs and training too thank you very much, they have enough pressure on their shoulders without the entire planet looking to them.

But come 796 it’s all getting a little dicey; there’s civil unrest at the Galactic level with the King under threat and the powers wanting to steal the throne taking a more expansionist approach, fighting amongst themselves in the the power vacuum left by Frieza. This is all putting the Earth in danger as an untapped resource full of biodiversity. The Gods go quiet, leaving it up to the Earthlings to sort themselves out, they see the problem with intervening to save just one planet. The “Super7” take on the challenge to defend alone (the older gen have their own loose team too but are taking a back seat on purpose). As skirmishes had been becoming more frequent and difficult over the years and they start to see the patterns in who’s arriving, Pan and Bra get brought in a little earlier than planned (17 and 16 respectively rather than 18) to prepare for what might end up as a battle for survival. This all coincides with someone after Bulma’s tech (the blue #15 electrofluid used in the time machine she’d recently repurposed as a general high-yield fuel) that they suspect may be an off-worlder, and someone asking extremely pointed questions of acquaintances that makes the group think their relatively anonymous existence as fighters may be coming to an abrupt end at the worst possible time.

–

In 796 their ages are roughly: Bra 16, Pan 17, Uub 22, Marron 25, Goten 29, Trunks 30, Mai ~30/31(+).

I’ve put a crap tonne of character outlines/headcanons under the cut explaining where this all comes from, but to summarise at 796 -

- Trunks is at CC as vice president to his mother’s president/COO and his grandfather is still CEO. He is looked at as team leader too- Mai is also at CC, although moonlights making ki-based weaponry and defences without the CC logo so she can participate in battle- Goten runs a dessert café in Satan City (food and hospitality! it’s a bit random but makes sense I promise) and uses Nyoibo - both G and T keep up fusion training so Gotenks is around a lot.- Uub is full time Papayaman, taking the traditional superhero role and sense of purpose that brings, he take over from Great Saiyaman and takes credit for saving the world as Mr Satan’s protege- Marron’s way of helping is to uncover corruption as a journalist to stop the incidents Uub deals with happening in the first place, and she’s frantically working to find out who’s trying to uncover their identities- Pan is a little of a crimefighter, though keeps the extent of her abilities on the down-low, a more normal face to Papayaman’s superhero and keeps up the Satan brand, whilst she pushed against it for a while she’s settled into it.- Bra is an social media darling, and is becoming the face of CC to the youth market in particular. She’s extremely calculated in this and does not give any hint at any point she can punch you to the moon. Both her and Pan have just started to learn the fusion dance from Trunks and Goten.

General character outlines and other h/cs under the cut because it’s longgg -

I’ve shoved a ten hour time difference between West and Satan city (it’s probably closer to 12 but ten gives more overlap in daylight) which is really fun to think about!

Due to Shenanigans in Super, God ki gets banned under pain of erasure by Beerus. Realistically this means they can only use it for universal level threats when Beerus okays it. Only Goku and Vegeta have the ability and they aren’t allowed train with it either. Whis tells the others that hybrids can’t use the technique anyway so not to bother. They suspect it’s a lie as the potential of hybrids is higher so it’s a way to prevent them from overpowering Beerus in the future, but they daren’t risk trying the ritual.

Because there’s seven in the main group they each hide a Dragonball for security, making what they hope is the start of a tradition. Four others in the group know where it’s held, no one knows all seven locations. The idea being - the balls aren’t in the same place to be stolen, they can find them without the dragon radar with two/three of the group left, and they’re nearby so the group will know if anyone’s searching for them. Further any mind-reading techniques would need at least two sets of memories to find them all (Trunks’ idea, he’s extremely careful).

Actually having the power to revert disaster but not use it (saving the wishes for the big events) weighs heavy though so they’re more domestic in helping out in Act of God events like earthquakes than their parents were. Uub takes the lead in these sorties as Papayaman as he’s the traditional hero. Gohan will sometimes tag along as Great Saiyaman, and Goten also has a GS uniform and can pass as GS, though he absolutely hates it. For everyone else (and a pining Goten) Bulma and Mai design pure black “camo” gear, impossible to get a fix on body shape and untraceable on radar, which frees them to use the full extent of their powers should they need to. Their traditional gis/armours are usually underneath, and they’ll revert to them when they need the freedom of movement in a real fight :’).

Goten’s attitude is like his dad’s - very zen and open, although he’s massively empathetic and knows how to behave himself. He’s responsible in a fiercely protective way. He’s easy-going to the point people think he’s not smart as he won’t question ideas, but that’s because he’s able to quickly follow people’s logic and doesn’t need to question suggestions, he just gets people. He won’t do something if he can’t see the sense in it though and will dig his heels to the point even Trunks can’t change his mind. He loves people, and his openness and “big-picture” mindset mean relationships are all a big blur to him. He sees his close friendships just as deeply as any romantic relationship would be. He’s always on hookup apps to meet interesting people, but he’d just as happily “hook-up” ::cough:: as going out for dinner. Fun is fun is fun to him :). Goten loved the idea of swords but really struggled focussing his ki to an edge. Goku fetches Nyoibo for him instead, which he finds far easier and he gets proficient in staff forms, using Nyoibo’s extension abilities in battle. Like the real monkey king, Goten shrinks Nyoibo down and keeps it in his ear so he has it ready to go at all times. To everyone else though it looks like an industrial piercing and Chichi flipped out when she first saw it “first the hair, now piercings???”. (and I freaking forgot to add it in when colouring that strip, I kicked myself when I saw it missing!!!)

Goten goes to college, more on his Mum’s insistence that he get furtherly educated with that prize money they put aside for him to use than anything else. Trunks took a gap year so they could “coincidentally” room together too (taking a CC internship in his gap year where he learnt to be Responsible) so he feels pressure to go. Goten picks most of the same courses as Trunks so they can use Gotenks to study quicker freeing up their time, but he does feel a little directionless and languishes. But then, but THEN! As they have to look after themselves (“NO we’ll be INDEPENDENT SAIYANS TYVM”) he gets sick of not having sweet treats (canon his fave food is pocky and strawberry daifuku) so he spends time learning to make pastries/sweet treats/baking to get his fix. Obviously the recipes aren’t great to his amazing smell/taste (that he inherited from his Dad) so he improves them. After seeing how people match wines with savoury dishes he starts flying to remote places to buy rare coffee/teas to test with his recipes. All the while Trunks is just watching like “you’re absolutely mad”, but he keeps it up and starts pairing things and testing them out on friends. He even gets good enough to make flavour profiles for people based on their likes/dislikes to pick /exactly/ the right flavourings, he’s a savant.

People are so pleased and excited it warms his heart that he can make people so directly happy, and making things with his hands feels so natural and grounded. Eventually Trunks just pulls him aside and says “I still think you’re insane but you should do this". So Goten works up a business plan for a desserts cafe in his final year - without getting Trunks’ help - and pitches it to his parents. Chichi’s obviously a little “this is left field”, expecting him to go with the flow as usual and end up at CC, but they agree seeing how excited he is, the last part of the prize money/education pot gets put towards a run-down place in Satan City after graduation instead of a masters degree. There’s not enough money to buy /and/ do up the place, but Mr Satan agrees to put up the rest of the money as long as Goten helps cater (bodyguard at and babysit Buu at in truth) events, so it’s not a handout. At first he hates the idea of more help but reluctantly agrees when Gohan chides him. He calls it Paozu Place, (PP vs CC) and when he starts making a profit (which happens towards the end of the first year as Goten flies around himself to get products saving money, plus the flavour-profile gimmick gets him an early cult following) he sends a portion of the money back home. Chichi is so proud :’) PP and Goten’s flat above is their base in Satan City.

Trunks - is also responsible but like a Prince (“stick to the plan guys”, weight of the world etc), he meticulously plans sorties to the point Goten will actively ruin things if he thinks Trunks is over-thinking things. Public think he’s hot and suave and he has a fanbase but it’s because he freezes in front of the press and, with his severe facial structure, his deer-in-headlights look gets interpreted as “handsome brooding”. In truth he’s a giant, easily flustered dork, happier when in control and enjoys things being “just so”. All throughout college he wore a beanie hat to hide his hair and therefore his identity, but people quickly learnt to look for the kid wearing the wooly hat in summer, nothing saves him from recognition poor guy. Although, due to Trunks’ extremely guarded nature and contrasted with Goten’s social charisma, people quickly bored of him and focussed on “his friend”, which Trunks prefers. He’s not shy per-se, but is used to over-thinking everyone’s intentions and prefers to people-watch. Unlike Goten he has a serious romantic streak, (the one thing his sizeable fanbase /have/ got right) but sucks at expressing it, attaching like a limpet to close friends. He also has a dark sense of humour and is really inventive for stupid shit but he’s usually biting it back. When he’s comfortable a different side comes out and when in free flow puns are quick and his banter is razor sharp. The only time he’s ever actually “cool” or “smooth” is when he’s relaxed and trying not to be, which gets ruined when people point it out - “WOW that pose is so cool” “wait what :|?” “aaaand ya ruined it”.

Combine that in Gotenks you’ve got a guy who’s fiercely loyal with a plan to save everyone, leading from the front, but also has a sick sense of humour with no inhibition to reign it in. “Gotenks no - GOTENKS YES” kinda deal. He’s a massive flirt because he knows it’s inappropriate (also best wingman, texting people on the boys’ behalf) and King prank. He’s more focussed than when he was a kid but the dumbass techniques remain, mostly to embarrass Trunks. They communicate through journals as memories can be a little fuzzy, it all started with a little piece of paper Gotenks carries in the fight against Buu :’)

Gotenks has his own complicated angst regarding Personhood and being a fusion. The Worst Thing you can do is call him “Trunks'n'Goten” or use “they” pronouns. The guys (obvs) understand and respect what autonomy he has, even fusing so he gets some downtime so it’s not all fight-train-fight for him. At first they kept him back, but he was so desperately lonely during the college years, hating living vicariously through Trunks and Goten’s memories, that they let him start talking to Mai, Uub and Marron on texts. When that seemed to go okay they let him hang out with them every now and again. T/G/GT only let Pan and Bra in on Gotenks’ partial social life when they ask to learn fusion without any prompting, (not wanting to influence what is a huge change in life circumstance) and Gotenks is massively excited he gets to properly meet and teach his two favourite people he’d been fussing over from a distance.

Marron is not a fighter (ack sorry Swol!Marron I love you) though is trained in ki use as a form of self defense (of course!) and particularly practises flying; she was adamant to keep up with Goten and Trunks when trailing them on adventures. Good thing too as she was the sneaky little shit eavesdropping on everyone, puzzling out every mystery so the boys didn’t have to. She considers herself the common sense of the outfit, to the point she’ll reach for the alcohol when the Saiyans are being particularly off the wall (“oh my god you’re all so ridiculous and unrelatable let me get drunk and tell you more”). Despite not fighting she does want to help people just like her chief of police dad, eventually settling on investigative journalism as way to help. Her over-ambitious final-year college project led her to make enemies in a mob boss which ended up in kidnapping. She used the time to wrangle more info out of them before being “rescued” by an extremely disgruntled, recently debuted Papayaman (“well they can’t find out that /I/ have superpowers”) that led to the mob leaders’ eventual arrests, and it got her her first job. She keeps an eye out for anyone researching how deep the connections between everyone in the group go and subtly tries to scupper it, so far successfully. In the rare serious fights she work on recon and civ defence with Mai, or if she’s present as a reporter actively supports the “oh it’s totally Mr Satan’s protégée saving us” narrative.

Mai is a complicated one and I could really get into the neurodevelopment of her. Whilst some things remain as-is (skill sets like engineering and weaponry that she uses, some habits and vocabulary) her regrowth means her ability to understand her adult memories isn’t there, they slowly cloud and fall away, becoming this fussy mess of facts-of-things-that-happened rather than a complicated nuance of emotion they would be if she’d aged normally. She dreams less and less of being an adult. She’s also at the mercy of hormones and brain structure at that age, still making the same mistakes she made the first time around. As a result she’s a little maturer than you’d expect for someone her age but not massively, and gets along with Trunks, Goten and Marron fine. She works on a number of ki-based techs like integrating ki-sense onto glass for an improved ki-scouter that can cope with the numbers the gang pump out (yay for logarithms) and display the complicated flow of individual ki signatures through different colours. With enough ki behind them the shield from her barrier seeds can protect cities for a few huge hits, and she can pick off lackeys with the ki gun she developed. None of these have the CC logo however as CC “doesn’t develop weapons.”

RE: shipping - When she’s a teen she rebuffs a clingy Trunks at every turn, (poor dude) hoping to stay just friends. He’s lovely but he’s just a kid! Kiddo can’t understand why she’s being so cold though, surely they’d be great together, they were in the future! Before he goes to college she eventually tells him the truth but of course, Trunks insists he doesn’t care if she’s “old”, she’s not anymore, not really, and besides he’s the real problem. But he’s only nineteen, and she knows that’s not as mature as it feels. She has just enough wherewithal to say no, and whilst he mopes for a little they reframe their friendship around this new information. Of course, they eventually crack when he starts working full time at CC when he’s 24, they have a massive heart-to-heart about her experiences with memory and his own through fusion (because think about how ef’d up that is), they give it a tentative go, and Goten and Gotenks weep with joy they don’t have to put up with his pining anymore. Truten was a Thing at college but didn’t stick, although they are so freaking close you’d probably think they were still in a relationship of sorts anyway.

Uub is great! He is 100% the traditional hero type, taking his training so seriously when he joins the crew it winds up Trunks and Goten enough they pick up the slack again. It takes him a few years to catch up with Pan but soon becomes the complete tank for battles. He looks up to Trunks and Goten and even tried to learn weapons to be part of the cool gang but it just wasn’t his style in the end. He does his training mostly at home, though gets dragged around to Mount Paozu by Goku (Goku-totally-ITs-back-home-you-can’t-convince-me-otherwise) and Satan City, eventually working as Papayaman full-time as “Hercule’s student” to take over from Gohan’s Great Saiyaman. He supports his village, going back home as much as possible to see his little siblings, and his family is mega proud if fussing over his safety in big fights. Papayaman takes the credit for saving the Earth nowadays, and all the news articles cover the walls at home (equally with his other siblings achievements). Uub can 100% ham up the media appearances to be the dashing hero due to Mr Satan’s training, but it’s definitely something he’s only capable of with the mask on and otherwise he’s an eager, polite, caring, but ultimately shy guy.

Pan is fascinating, she’s at an intersection of being known as a publicly talented martial artist, and is well-known in Satan City for being a crimefighter (though not as into it as her Mum was as Papayaman is around now) but is privately a beast. People don’t know she has the same super-strength and flight abilities as Papayaman and she’s very keen to keep it that way. She uses the stage name “Pan Satan” for tournaments and to help maintain her Grandfather’s image. Whilst when young she got frustrated at the lack of recognition the Son side of her family got, the negative reactions a sizeable minority of the public have to the few public alien encounters the Earth’s had and to Papayaman’s “possibly real” superpowers scares her as she gets older. She has on occasion tagged along in disguise after Papayaman and used her powers freely in the background in things like hostage situations to provide barriers and prevent explosions “just to help :3”. The one time she was spotted Papayaman was asked about his friend and he despairingly referred to her as his “little shadow” and the name stuck for the gang when in camo. She has a massive number of teachers - Goku, Gohan, Picco"yo", Roshi, Chichi and Videl, Trunks and Goten (and of course Mr Satan), even advice from Vegeta. With all that her understanding of ki control, particular focuses and intents is terrifying, (maintaining barriers with very little concentration etc) and she’s eager to teach what she’s learnt to the group.

Bra took ballet as a kid, is graceful, a real effortless beauty, great with people, the model socialite … is a freaking scrapper in a fight. She spent so long working out how to guard her “perfect” nails as a kid during daily training (a frivolous challenge Vegeta set her) she can form solid and fast ki fists with an almost impossible momentum behind them given her size. She’s very physical in her attack forms, and takes a “point me in the right direction and I’ll smash them” approach. Like her Dad she can take a hit, acting as off-tank for the group (Trunks had to be convinced to let her participate, so close to danger is her attack style). She’s also calculating as hell, crafting a perfect social media profile to push the capsule corp brand amongst teens and young adults and is a media darling, every photo and hashtag considered and poured over to further her image. She is very, /very/ invested in keeping that intact. Trunks on the other hand just can’t work social media, so doesn’t do media other than official interviews if he has to as COO. Bra keeps pushing him to engage, so he has two posts - “This is my official account, all others are a fraud” and “Hey.” “Hey.” has the third highest number of engagements on the site, which both perplexes and amuses Trunks and really irritates Bra. She has a horrid temper in private and in honour of that, Trunks calls her Giggles. She and Pan are two peas in a pod though, getting into their own brand of trouble at all times and Pan is probably the only person she’ll listen to to get her out of a mood.

I could literally go on forever but I’m going to stop now aaaaaaaaa

#db super #dragon ball #dbz #super7 au #anon replies #hi anon!#I ended up writing this for you and also for me so I have it somewhere rather than just in my head #hope it's not OBNOXIOUSLY LONG SHRIEK #I also have enough ki rules to write Son Gohan's groundbreaking science book #and i've done fandom textbooks before so that might be easier #have a lovely day #:)#Anonymous

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Costumes Quotes

Official Website: Costumes Quotes

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• A film is a great deal about what you see, and the silhouette of a character tells you a lot. I’d love to go into film costume. – Clemence Poesy • A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a short time ago. He slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist. – Ronald Reagan • A lot of movies try to set up a world with cool sets, costumes, camera work. In Brick, the world is born from the words. – Joseph Gordon-Levitt • A producer has to know all about everything from set-building to costumes to acting – Alan Ladd • A screenplay is really an instruction manual, and it can be interpreted in any number of ways. The casting, the choice of location, the costumes and make-up, the actors’ reading of a line or emphasis of a word, the choice of lens and the pace of the cutting – these are all part of the translation. – David Nicholls • A simple garb is the proper costume of the vulgar; it is cut for them, and exactly suits their measure, but it is an ornament for those who have filled up their lives with great deeds. I liken them to beauty in dishabille, but more bewitching on that account. – Jean de la Bruyere • A woman in the depths of despair proves so persuasive that she wrenches the forgiveness lurking deep in the heart of her lover. This is all the more true when that woman is young, pretty, and so decollete as to emerge from the neck of her gown in the costume of Eve. – Honore de Balzac • Acting is not my favourite thing. I don’t like wearing costumes and wigs. – Victoria Wood • All through my life what I’ve loved doing is watching movies. I love the escapism of film, I love stories. So it is incredible to be able to be in them as much as I am, to see them from the first stitch in a costume to the end product. – Keira Knightley • And that’s when I realized, when you’re a kid you don’t need a costume, you ARE superman. – Jerry Seinfeld • And weren’t, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren’t. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and and playing guitar at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow. – Neil Gaiman • Another thing I take issue with are people who take their dogs on “play dates,” or even worse, people who choose to dress their dogs up in outfits better suited for homosexuals participating in a gay pride parade. Dog costumes are right up there with something else I find particularly offensive: sweater vests. – Chelsea Handler • Any time you talk about the look of the film, it’s not just the director and the director of photography. You have to include the costume designer and the production designer. – Spike Lee • As a costume designer, it’s important to give each person his or her own personalized look. – Eric Daman • As a rule, I try to avoid the French Quarter because of the crowds, especially Bourbon Street. But hey, some people love it. A great, wild, adult thing to see is the costume competition in front of the bar Oz on Bourbon early morning on Fat Tuesday. – Bryan Batt • As I wouldn’t wear a costume, I couldn’t imagine him wanting to wear one. And seeing that the greater part of my wardrobe is black (It’s a sensible colour. It goes with anything. Well, anything black)[…]. – Neil Gaiman

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Costume', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_costume').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_costume img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Calvin: Trick or treat! Adult: Where’s your costume? What are you supposed to be? Calvin: I’m yet another resource-consuming kid in an overpopulated planet, raised to an alarming extent by Madison Avenue and Hollywood, poised with my cynical and alienated peers to take over the world when you’re old and weak… Am I scary, or what? – Bill Watterson • Cause a costume can be comfortable It can make you feel more beautiful It can even make you look like someone else But it’s still you, so there’s nothing you can do Like a bad habit, the one you couldn’t kick, there it always is And it’s nothing that no doctor’s gonna fix. – Conor Oberst • Celebrate your success and find humor in your failures. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Loosen up and everyone around you will loosen up. Have fun and always show enthusiasm. When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. – Sam Walton • Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story. – Mason Cooley • Costume design is so important and really helpful, and I really love that aspect of character development, just figuring it out. – Katherine Waterston • Costume designers don’t care about trends. They appreciate, above so many other qualities, that tailoring is everything, which is a mantra for the way I dress. Ladies: The most important thing in clothing is to find a good, inexpensive tailor, because clothes at the stores are made for bodies that are anomalies. – Ginnifer Goodwin • Costume is a huge part of getting into character. Your body soaks in what you’re wearing, and you turn into someone else. – Jane Levy • Costume jewelry is not made to give women an aura of wealth, but to make them beautifu – Coco Chanel • Costumes and scenery alone will not attract audiences. – Anna Held • Costumes are fun. Dress up like a pilot some night and watch as people stare! – Tim Heidecker • Costumes are so much better than clothes. They’re like drugs, they change your personality. – Mary Woronov • Costumes are the first impression that you have of the character before they open their mouth-it really does establish who they are. – Colleen Atwood • Costumes, fashion, it’s all an expression of self, and the more you push the boundaries – the more that people work at creating alternative ideas – the more it changes people’s ideas of beauty. – Reese Witherspoon • Courtrooms contain every symbol of authority that a set designer could imagine. Everyone stands up when you come in. You wear a costume identifying you as, if not quite divine, someone special. – Irving Kaufman • Debased men, but they all had something in common: They showed a keen regard for virtue, and tried to dress themselves in that costume. Hypocrisy, for all its bad reputation, at least showed a decent respect for goodness. – Orson Scott Card • Diplomacy is the police in grand costume. – Napoleon Bonaparte • does you costume involve leather?” she’d asked. and he’d said, “Actually, yeah, it might.” it really did. it involved a leather dog collar, leather pants and a leash, and the leash was held by Ysandre, who was in skintight red rubber, from neck to knee high boots. she’d topped it off with a pair of devil horns and a red tridant. she’d made Shane her dog, complete with furry dog mask. ***”Breathe,” Myrnin said. “I’m not much for it myself, but i hear it’s quite good for humans.”*** – Rachel Caine • Drag for me is costume, and what I’m trying to do is, sometimes I’ll go around and wear makeup in the streets, turn up to the gig, take the makeup off, do the show, and then put the makeup back on. It’s the inverse of drag. It’s not about artifice. It’s about me just expressing myself. So when I’m campaigning in London for politics, I campaign with makeup on and the nails. It’s just what I have on, like any woman. – Eddie Izzard • Each character represents a different color on the big palette of what this ultimate painting is going to look like, who your guy is, and just try to be as honest and simple and real as you can possibly be. The outer trappings are incidental – costumes, period, makeup – all of that is rather insignificant at the end of the day. – Ron Perlman • Every day each of us wakes up, reaches into drawers and closets, pulls out a costume for the day and proceeds to dress in a style that can only be called preposterous. – Mary Schmich • Every year, I have to spend another hour working out. Pretty soon I’ll be spending eight hours working out just to fit in the costume. I have the feeling that the minute I stop doing the character, boom, Roseanne Barr. – Cassandra Peterson • Everyone goes to the ‘Grands-Boulevards’ (in Paris, ed.) and let himself loose… …Do not picture these in costume, they are not for the most part… …perhaps a clown with a big nose, or two girls with bare necks and short skirts… …the parade of the queens of the halls (markets) is also one of the events… …Some are pretty but look awkward in their silk dresses and crowns, particularly as the broad sun displays their defects – perhaps a neck too thin or a painted face which shows ghastley white in the sunlight. – Edward Hopper • Fashion offers no greater challenge than finding what works for night without looking like you are wearing a costume. – Vera Wang • Figure skating is theatrical, and a part of it is wearing costumes. My costumes were very over-the-top and outrageous for figure skating. But for me, it’s all beautiful. Even when nobody else believed they were beautiful, I felt beautiful in them. – Johnny Weir • For each human being there is an optimum ratio between change and stasis. Too little change, he grows bored. Too little stability, he panics and loses his ability to adapt. One who marries six times in ten years won’t change jobs. One who moves often to serve his company will maintain a stable marriage. A woman chained to one home and family may redecorate frantically or take a lover or go to many costume parties. – Larry Niven • For the kind of thing that we were showing, the budget was sufficient. As we were speaking of in Haiti, we had not done that before in exactly this form and we had to have costumes for it. – Katherine Dunham • Fresh from a costume fitting, where I had been posing in front of the mirror assuming what I thought was a strong position – arms folded, butch-looking…you know – I met with the woman in charge of Holloway police station. She gave me the most invaluable advice: never let them see you cry, and never cross your arms. When I asked why, she said ‘because it is a defensive action and therefore weak. – Helen Mirren • Get my swan costume ready. – Anna Pavlova • Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I always go all-out with my costumes. – Ginnifer Goodwin • History, we know, is apt to repeat itself, and to foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight change of costume. – George Eliot • I always go into a blocking rehearsal with an anchor, with a blocking plan. And sometimes they’ll step into the room and they’ll be in costume and you’re like, “That sucks, that’s not going to work. Let’s think of something new.” – Ava DuVernay • I am interested in costume. Clothes in your daily life are important: your choices say something about you, even if what they’re saying is about non-choice. And what you wear in a film is crucial. – Clemence Poesy • I am out in public and using the phone. I am in a phone booth, got the phone in my hand and a man taps on the glass and says You using the phone? Nope, I’m superman, i am just looking for my costume. Here’s your sign! – Bill Engvall • I am very sorry if I have caused any offence. It was a poor choice of costume. – Prince Harry • I believe that God—if he exists at all—is what we want him to be. The true God is unknowable, and so we dress him up in costumes that make him visible to us. Then we come up with a lot of very silly rules that we attribute to him and tell everyone if they don’t follow those rules, they can’t be part of the gang. – Michael Thomas Ford • I can still fit into my Battlestar Galactica costume! – Dirk Benedict • I consider myself an artist, but instead of paint or clay, my medium is drag. I put so much of myself into my drag from every detail of the costume, makeup and hair to my performance, the way I speak or even stand. – Manila Luzon • I definitely feel, when I’m wearing the costume, that I could scare people and hurt them. – Joan Severance • I design all of my costumes. I like to go out there and feel like I have contributed to every part of what I do. I choose the music, the choreographer, I’ve obviously chosen my coach, my costumes – all if that falls under my realm of power, my realm of influence. – Johnny Weir • I don’t believe in fashion. I believe in costume. Life is too short to be same person every day. – Stephanie Perkins • I don’t think I ever said, “I want to be an actress.” But for Halloween, I dressed up as a movie star from when I was seven to when I was twelve. The costume was always a long dress, with makeup, and my hair curled, and jewelry on. And the movie star was always Jenny McCarthy. So right there you could see a little pattern. – Jenny McCarthy • I don’t think that I could fit into the costume anymore. – Lee Meriwether • I dressed up as a veterinarian for a Halloween costume party. I had the lab coat. I got a couple of stuffed animals for patients and put bandages on them. – Tracy Chapman • I felt like, in the recent past, people have been apologizing for Superman, a little bit, for his costume, for his origins, and for the way he fits into society. – Zack Snyder • I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience’s ear a chance to understand what’s going on. Particularly in the theater, where you have costume, story, acting, orchestra. – Stephen Sondheim • I gradually work myself into a frenzy as the shoot approaches, while we’re choosing the costumes or working with the make-up artist. I’m not so much interested in my character as the film itself. – Jeanne Moreau • I had a lot of fun with my costume designer. – Adam Lambert • I had nothing and I was still changed. Like a costume, my numbness was taken away. Then hunger was added. – Louise Glück • I hate bananas. I just hate them. But I also think a banana suit is the funniest fruit costume a person can wear. – Paul Neilan • I hate Halloween. I hate dressing up. I hate – I wear wigs, makeup, costumes every day. Halloween is like, my least favorite holiday. – Amy Poehler • I hate Technicolor. Everybody in a Technicolor movie seems to feel obliged to wear a lurid costume in each new scene and to stand around like a clotheshorse with a lot of very green trees or very yellow wheat or very blue ocean rolling away for miles and miles in every direction. – Sylvia Plath • I hate the terminology of “costume” because my clothes are not costumes at all. I think they’re high fashion, avant-garde, and more couture, definitely, and yes, some of my pieces are not particularly wearable, but I wouldn’t say they’re costumes, I’d say they’re more couture. – Christian Siriano • I have a ton of cousins on my moms side of the family, and we would put on shows together all the time and put on costumes, and we even charged our parents money. – Maulik Pancholy • I have been interested in fashion since I was a kid. Then I lived in London, where it was more about costume and a personal statement of who you are than about fashion. – Zaha Hadid • I have friends who wear Star Wars costumes and act like the characters all day. I may not be that deep into it, but there’s something great about loving what you love and not caring if it’s unpopular. – Kristen Bell • I have over five thousand costumes and props and cars, and I have a twenty-five thousand square foot warehouse full of memorabilia. – Debbie Reynolds • I just love doing costume dramas; I am very lucky, as I see myself as a part-time time traveller. – Julia Sawalha • I knew ‘Be Our Guest’ would be performed on a set and in costume, but anyone with a history in Theatre In Education will know that can mean anything. – Pippa Evans • I knew I would grow up and wear a costume one day, and that’s exactly what happened. – Cassandra Peterson • I like that totally mixed up kind of eclectic group of personal props and bits of costume and I think the fun of doing that is where I was very lucky with Doctor Who. – Lalla Ward • I like to work in costumes, makeup, and hair that allow me tremendous freedom. – Jessica Lange • I liked the choreography, but I didn’t care for the costumes. – Tommy Tune • I love all the voiceovers I do. I can’t remember them all, but I seem to do them all of the time. And there’s nothing easier because you just stand and read the script, and you don’t have to act the way actors do. You don’t have to be made up and put costumes on. – Stan Lee • I love costumes. I love getting dressed up because it really helps my imagination make the leap to believe that I am who I say I am. – Alessandro Nivola • I love costumes. My dream growing up was always to have my own costume and prop shop. – Amy Sedaris • I love fashion. I always have. When I was a kid, I was in almost full-on costumes when I went to school, and I’ve retained a bit of that in my adulthood. – Lake Bell • I love putting on an outfit or a costume and just looking at myself in the mirror. Baggy pants or some real funky shoes and a hat and just feeling the character of it. That’s fun to me. – Michael Jackson • I loved doing all those costume dramas. I didn’t think, ‘Ooh I’ve got to avoid being typecast’ – you can’t ever be dictated to by what other people think. I just do things because I fancy the parts and the directors. – Helena Bonham Carter • I only assumed those dresses were costumes, based on the garish nature of the plumage. – Kami Garcia • I picked out my Halloween costume. I’m going as ‘Slutty Madeleine Albright.’ – Conan O’Brien • I put the costume on and said ‘It’s not very comfortable, but it looks amazing,’ so it’s all good. – Chris Hemsworth • I read and watch movies. I can’t go to the movie theater much anymore, though, because I get recognized. It’s worse sometimes if I wear a costume and try not to get recognized. I watch most of my films on airplanes – Ayumi Hamasaki • I realized that I wanted to play characters and do traditional theatre. I wanted to make believe again. I like putting on a costume and pretending to be someone else for a few hours, and I have a great respect for playwrights. – Lusia Strus • I remember playing football dressed in peculiar costumes with some friends in France and laughing so hard we couldn’t even stand up, let alone kick the ball. – Fred Frith • I said old Jesus probably would’ve puked if He could see it – all those fancy costumes and all. Sally said I was a sacrilegious atheist. I probably am. The thing Jesus really would’ve liked would be the guy who plays the kettle drums in the orchestra. – J. D. Salinger • I see my face in the mirror and go, ‘I’m a Halloween costume? That’s what they think of me?’ – Drew Carey • I see myself wrapped in lies, which do not seem to penetrate my soul, as if they are not really a part of me. They are like costumes. – Anais Nin • I thank you for your kind invitation to introduce me to the president of the Republic. Since I have not been out of my atelier for two months, I have no appropriate costume for this circumstance. Please excuse me. – Camille Claudel • I think color, for a costume designer, is one of your biggest storytelling devices. – Alexandra Byrne • I think I’m better at live shows than I used to be because I’m way more comfortable with the uncomfortable pauses between songs. Now, rather than trying to talk or do a costume change, I’ll use those moments for myself. I listen to what other people are playing, or just rest, or dance, even though I don’t know how to. – Fiona Apple • I think of clothes a lot like costumes. I think of what I wear in real life as being my real life character’s costume. – Ginnifer Goodwin • I think people feel starved of nice, glamorous entertainment. They want to see costumes and gaiety and a singer; old-fashioned entertainment – it won’t die easily. – Ronnie Corbett • I think that when you put yourself, as actors have to do, in other people’s shoes, when you have to put on the costume that someone else has worn in their life, it gets much, much harder to be prejudiced against them and even to be – to not try to look at the world in a sense of “I’m not going to judge somebody. I’m going to try to understand who they are and what they’re about.” – Kevin Spacey • I tried to end our little duel. I called out pacifying words; I entreated; I finally surrendered. Still Clyde came, my pirate costume so great a success that it had apparently convinced him that we were back in the golden days of romantic old New Orleans when gentlemen decided matters of hot dog honor at twenty paces – John Kennedy Toole • I try to get to know the actors as much as I can. I feel like I’m friends with them for starters and for a week or two, we rehearse when they’re getting the costumes together. – Gus Van Sant • I try very hard not to take work home, but it can be tricky. Sometimes it feels as if you are wearing your costume underneath your own clothes! I suppose things are always ticking away in the back of your mind. – Anne-Marie Duff • I wanna begin saying a story about my son. I have a four-year old son who loves superheroes from Spider-Man to Iron Man to Batman. He’s got all the costumes. One day he looks at me and says ‘Dad, I want to be light-skinned so I could be Spider-Man. Spider-Man has light skin.’ That was sort of a shock. This is why I am excited to be a part of the Marvel Universe, so I could be hopefully provide that diversity in the role of the superhero. – Djimon Hounsou • I want to create things while I have time on Earth, and the art of costume and culture has always inspired me. – Johnny Weir • I was obsessed with being popular when I was in high school and never achieved it. There’s photos from our high school musicals and things, and I’m comically in the deep background, wearing a beggar’s costume. – Mindy Kaling • I will confess I did none of my own singing. I did all my own costume and makeup, though. – Gary Cole • I would love to play the Femme Fatale or an action role like Trinity in the Matrix or something like that. You know, a part with a lot of costume changes. – Josie Maran • I’d hear some beautiful Sade or Kings Of Convenience ballad remixed in a club and I liked that these simple little songs seemed to be masquerading. They had put on superhero costumes, got all beefy, and here they were on the dancefloor. I was interested in that. I can’t make electronic beats, so I leave it to the pros like Boys Noize and Chromeo. – Feist Ideas, Possums, Officers • If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character, would you slow down? Or speed up? – Chuck Palahniuk • If human beings had genuine courage, they’d wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. – Douglas Coupland • If I’ve learned anything in twenty-nine years, it’s that every human being you see in the course of a day has a problem that��s sucking up at least 70 percent of his or her radar. My gift – bad choice of words – is that I can look at you, him, her, them, whoever, and tell right away what is keeping them awake at night: money; feelings of insignificance; overwhelming boredom; evil children; job troubles; or perhaps death, in one of its many costumes, perched in the wings. What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives. – Douglas Coupland • If Jacob was right and clothes were costumes and makeup a mask, then our attitudes and habits must be our shields. – Justina Chen • I’ll tell you…why Wonder Woman worked. Or Bionic Woman. Or any of those [shows] really. It was because it wasn’t about brawn…it was about brains. And yes, she happened to be beautiful, she happened to be kind of extraordinary in some way, but she wasn’t a guy. And I think that, [now], they…put out a female hero, and all they are doing is changing the costume from a man to a woman…they’re not showcasing any of the tremendous dichotomies than women possess in term of softness and toughness, sweetness and grit, inner and outer strength. – Lynda Carter • I’m a big comic book nerd so every time I’m in costume and see everyone in costume I’m just like “This is sick.” – Franz Drameh • I’m a child of the downloading age. I remember when I was 10, a friend who went to the same school as me came to our [school’s] costume party with a really weird hairdo. She had all these little knots in her hair. I asked her who she was and she said she was Björk. I thought this Björk must be a really cool person, so I got on the internet when I got home and found as much as I could on Björk and I fell in love. – Tove Styrke • I’m a fiend for costume jewellery and have countless pairs of rhinestone or diamante earrings, which are so flattering when they catch the light. I love the designers Alexis Bittar and Kenneth Jay Lane, and I always go to jewellers Butler & Wilson. – Joan Collins • I’m a pain in the ass to all of the costume designers with whom I work because I have very strong feelings about the subject. – Meryl Streep • Im able to hang up the character with the costume at the end of the movie. – Kevin Spacey • I’m glad I was born when I was. My time was the golden age of variety. If I were starting out again now, maybe things would happen for me, but it certainly would not be on a variety show with 28 musicians, 12 dancers, two major guest stars, 50 costumes a week by Bob Mackie – the networks just wouldn’t spend the money today. – Carol Burnett • I’m not the best audience for that because I’m not a great science-fiction fan. I just never got off on space ships and space costumes, things like that. – Gary Oldman • I’m sure favorite moments in movies are things that just happen accidentally when the camera is there. You have to do all the homework to get yourself into the period, the costumes, the style, the voice, the hairdo or whatever it is, but once you’ve done all that work, you have to kind of let it go and just be there. If you’re always thinking about it, it just looks a bit over-thought. – Tom Hiddleston • I’m sure that there must have been times when you have read books or watched films and found yourself secretly wishing for the villain to win. Why? Isn’t that against the rules by which our society lives? Why should you feel this way? It’s simple, really; the villain is the true hero of these tales, not the well-intentioned moron who somehow foils their diabolical scheme. The villain get’s all the best lines, has the best costumes, has unlimited power and wealth- why on earth would anyone not want to be the villain? – Mark Walden • I’m very good at living out of a suitcase. I love dressing up every morning. It feels like a costume, in some ways. – Morgan Saylor • I’m very much into the costuming of any character that I portray and it’s one of the great things about making movies is it’s a collaborative art form so you get all these artists who are looking specifically about for this instance your character’s costume and what that might tell about your character. – Jeff Bridges • Immortals is without doubt the best-looking awful movie you will ever see. Eiko Ishioka’s costume designs alone deserve an Oscar nomination. “They weren’t at all historically accurate,” grumbled a woman in the elevator after the sneak preview, as if lots of documentation exists about the wardrobes of the gods. She added: “I guess that’s what we deserve for using free tickets we got at a Blackhawks game. – Roger Ebert • In a costume, you need very exaggerated body language – as you say, sort of mime-type skills. – Warwick Davis • In dreams we are true poets; we create the persons of the drama; we give them appropriate figures faces, costumes; they are perfect in their organs, attitudes, manners; moreover they speak after their own characters, not ours; and we listen with surprise to what they say. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • In general, costumes are the first thing in life that let other people know who we are. They indicate who the person is without saying anything. – Molly Parker • In some ways, Halloween is much easier for women. They can just dress as sluts, and it’s kind of a costume, if they never do any other time. – Chuck Klosterman • In the old days when I first was coming up, you would turn up on set in the morning with your coffee, script, and hangover and you would figure out what you were going to do with the day and how you were going to play the scenes. You would rehearse and then invite the crew in to watch the actors go through the scenes. The actors would go away to makeup and costume and the director and the DP would work out how they were going to cover what the actors had just done. – Paul Bettany • Inside the envelope with the letter was a little Princess Leia action figure USB flash drive. For me to store my novel on, since he was right – I never back up my computer’s hard drive. The sight of it – it’s Princess Leia in her Hoth outfit, my favorite of her costumes (how had he remembered?) brought tears to my eyes. – Meg Cabot • It is a process of finding the right music then planning a costume to fit that style of music. – Nancy Kerrigan • It is amazing to me how deeply into the popular culture the creature has become. There are zombie walks in every major city. I live in Toronto, and last year 3,000 people came out dressed as zombies…. I do not get it. Maybe it’s an easy costume: Splash some ketchup on and rip up your jeans — although most people already have torn jeans — and you’re done. – George A. Romero • It is only in the case of the Priestly Code that opinions differ widely; for it tries hard to imitate the costume of the Mosaic period, and, with whatever success, to disguise its own. – Julius Wellhausen • It reminds me of how grandmother always had the right costume for me to wear. You wear the right outfit and you feel like the person you’re pretending to be. – John Boyne • It took me a while to warm to the ’20s costumes on ‘Downton.’ I love it when women accentuate their curves, and that era was all about hiding them. The shapes they wore then were in tune with female empowerment. Cutting off their hair and hiding their busts was a way of saying, ‘We’re equal to men!’ – Lily James • It was amazing that during rehearsals, without any of the costume on, the character was there complete. It just happened. Half the time, I didn’t know I was doing it. – Peter Mayhew • It was something I was more interested in myself. When I went to see my sister dance at ballet, I was really into costumes and the arts, and my family was also supportive of whatever me and my sister wanted to do. I would say I pushed myself the most to be into design. – Christian Siriano • It was the sheer variety of the pain that stopped me from crying out. It came from so many places, spoke so many languages, wore so many dazzling varieties of ethnic costume, that for a full fifteen seconds I could only hang my jaw in amazement. – Hugh Laurie • It’s an addiction. I love clothes. I like to go down Melrose and look in all the windows and I go to different flea markets. I have lots of costumes. You never know when you’re going to have to dress up like a milkmaid from the 1600s. – Zooey Deschanel • I’ve always been attracted to romantic secondhand clothes. But my style developed as I started going to these strange raves where everybody had these very definitive costumes. – Florence Welch • I’ve always been misrepresented. You know, I could dress in a clown costume and laugh with the happy people but they’d still say I’m a dark personality. – Tim Burton • I’ve always wanted to be Wonder Woman, of course. She had the greatest costume. – Kelly Hu • I’ve always worked closely with the designers and whoever’s making the costumes. Comfort is the last thing you want on your mind when you’re competing. In an ideal situation, you’ll have something where you’ll put it on and you’re fine and you don’t have to worry about it at all. – Kristi Yamaguchi • I’ve done a lot of costume drama and theatre – the National Theatre and In fact, most of my work at the theatre, at the National Theatre anyway, was period. – Brenda Blethyn • I’ve done approximately 15 films, and most of the things I’ve done have either been stunt or costume work. – Verne Troyer • I’ve made quite a number of movies like Castaway and a few others where I’m the only guy in the movie and the only place to be is right next to the camera in costume ready to go in order to get it. The years, and more specifically probably the four months prior to beginning shooting, is where the big preparation is that the director does because I knew we were going to get on the set. And the good news is, if you’re the boss, if it ain’t good, you don’t use it. You just cut it out. – Tom Hanks • I’ve never done a lead role in a film this big [like Doctor Strange], in a franchise this big. One of the reasons was, I wanted to know what the toy box was like. And it’s just insane, the amount of facility that everyone gets, but the amount of artistry and craft that’s brought to every aspect of filmmaking. I mean, you go to your first costume fitting and it’s one of thirty. It’s a myriad, but it’s for a reason. There are so many incredible costumes in this. – Benedict Cumberbatch • just because I don’t have on a silly black costume and carry a silly broom and wear a silly black hat, doesn’t mean that I’m not a witch. I’m a witch all the time and not just on Halloween. – E. L. Konigsburg • Madonna has a far profounder vision of sex than do the feminists. She sees both the animality and the artifice. Changing her costume style and hair color virtually every month, Madonna embodies the eternal values of beauty and pleasure. Feminism says, ‘No more masks.’ Madonna says we are nothing but masks. Through her enormous impact on young women around the world, Madonna is the future of feminism. – Camille Paglia • My book is very wild. But you know during the period of BATMAN, that there were thousands of Batman and Robin costumes sold and these weren’t just for kids. – Burt Ward • My costumes were made for sex appeal not for women. – Brenda Holloway • My fancy dress costume of choice is… something 1920s or 30s, when there was still so much elegance and attention to detail. An excuse for ultimate dressing-up indulgence. – Ellie Goulding • My father has developed a tradition of surprising us at some point by appearing in fancy dress. He buys a new costume each year and typically gets carried away. A couple of Christmases ago he appeared in an inflatable sumo outfit. Its endearing, really, and only quite embarrassing. – Pippa Middleton • My first acting experience was a non-speaking role as a robot. My costume was a cardboard box covered in tinfoil, but I was so shy I refused to go on stage. – Jessica Raine • My girlfriend’s a costume designer in the theater. – Philip Seymour Hoffman • My mom did costumes for the Pointer Sisters. – Slash • My mom used to make my costumes when I was little; she sews a lot. One year, I was a bride and I had a big wedding dress and a bouquet. Another year I was a medieval princess with a long teal dress and a veil. It was a little extravagant, but it was cute! – Sasha Pieterse • My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will. – Henry David Thoreau • My objects dream and wear new costumes, compelled to, it seems, by all the words in my hands and the sea that bangs in my throat. – Anne Sexton • Nice costume,” he said. “Ditto. I can tell you put alot of though into yours.” Amusement curled his mouth. “If you don’t like it, I can take it off.” I tapped my chin thoughtfully. “That just might be the best proposal I’ve had all night.” “My offers are always the best, Angel. – Becca Fitzpatrick • No matter how many modern parts I do, people still refer to me as Mrs. Costume Drama. – Helena Bonham Carter • No touching Baby Jesus.” “But we’re his parents!” proclaimed Mary Beth, who was being generous to include poor Joseph under this appellation. “Mary Beth,” Barb Wiggin said, “if you touch the Baby Jesus, I’m putting you in a cow costume. – John Irving • No, officer, I have no idea why I’m wearing this possum costume. I called you what? OH. My bad.” -Nastasya – Cate Tiernan • Nothings makes a woman look older that a rich costume. – Coco Chanel • Now people need special costumes to ride bicycles. I mean, a helmet, what, are you an astronaut?? – Fran Lebowitz • Now what else is the whole life of mortals, but a sort of comedy in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each ones part until the manager walks them off the stage? – Desiderius Erasmus • O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales. – Leo Rosten • Oh, hello,” Dr. M says, shaking Balder’s hand. “Wonderful costume. I’m a bit of a role player myself on the weekends. Tell me, where did you get the helmet?” It was forged in the North, blessed by the hands of Odin, given to me by my mother, Frigg,” Balder answers. Lovely. I got mine on the Internet. – Libba Bray • On the side of box of my superman costume it actually said – ‘Do not attempt to fly!’ – Jerry Seinfeld • Once you embody the language, the character comes really naturally, especially when you put the costume on. – Lucy Liu • One time I forgot my costume, and I had to do a scene in my pants, and I got my knob caught in a clapperboard. – 2D • People always seem to assume that we have a full, back-up support team – make-up, costume and a driver – but usually, in a war zone, there’s only me and the cameraman. – Kate Adie • People assume, because I’m Hef’s girlfriend, that I’m a Bunny and I’m a Playmate and I’m a centerfold, but they’re different things. If you’re a Playmate or a centerfold, which is the same thing, you pose for the magazine, you are one particular month, and not every Playmate is a Bunny. A Bunny is a girl who used to work at the Playboy Club, she had the Bunny costume, and now that we don’t have Playboy Clubs, it’s just Playmates who work special promotions and are fitted for a Bunny costume. – Holly Madison • Period costume films are fun to discover, but they’re not relatable. It’s more, ‘Wow, that’s cool – did it really look like that back then?’ Whereas with a comedy, you’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s me, that’s my friends.’ No matter what, I want people to relate. – Paul Feig • Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon). – Harold Rosenberg • pools of blood are not recreational even lifeguards drown when the undertow breaks bread with the underbelly demons disguised as sharks have not put enough thought into their costumes a wiseman stays ashore when pointed fins read like italian subtitles the end is near (…) the beginning – Saul Williams • Radio is truly the theater of the mind. The listener constructs the sets, colors them from his own palette, and sculpts and costumes the characters who perform in them. – Mercedes McCambridge • Satan himself can’t save a woman who wears thirty-shilling corsets under a thirty-guinea costume. – Rudyard Kipling • She said, “I’m going to have you fired.” I had two people say that to me today, “I’m going to have you fired.” Go ahead, be my guest. I’m wearing a green velvet costume; it doesn’t get any worse than this. Who do these people think they are? I’m going to have you fired!” and I wanted to lean over and say, “I’m going to have you killed. – David Sedaris • Shigure Sohma: [got Tohru a maid costume for White Day] I can’t wait to for her to call me master while wearing this. Hatsuharu Sohma: Just don’t get arrested, okay? – Natsuki Takaya • Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to a deed. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to deed. A skillful man reads his dreams for his self-knowledge; yet not the details, but the quality. What part does he play in them – a cheerful, manly part, or a poor, drivelling part? However monstrous and grotesque their apparitions, they have a substantial truth. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • So you couldn’t protect yourself? The absolute erodes; the boundary, the wall around the self erodes. If I was waiting I had been invaded by time. But do you think you’re free? I think I recognize the patterns of my nature. Bud do you think you’re free? I had nothing and I was still changed. Like a costume, my numbness was taken away. Then hunger was added. – Louise Glück • So, did the costume come with a condom, or is that sold separately? – Rachel Vincent • Some directors hand over portions of their movie to their head of department to the point where it’s like, “I’m not going to talk to you about the costumes, but I’m going to let you talk to the expert.” Rather than, “You want to talk stitching, let’s talk stitching. You want to talk grade of leather? Let’s.” – Idris Elba • Someone’s going to put the clothes on you, and part of being an actor is wearing costumes. Costumes tell you an awful lot about who you are, so you just, it’s nothing. – Morgan Freeman • Sometimes I steal costumes. – Rich Fulcher • Steampunk is…the love child of Hot Topic and a BBC costume drama – Gail Carriger • Tales of adultery are much improved by period costumes. – Mason Cooley • The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture, but that the spirit of its form shall communicate itself to the very disguise and indicate the shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn. A majestic form and graceful motions will express themselves through the most barbarous and tasteless costume. – Percy Bysshe Shelley • The costume designer designing clothes that helped the comedy in The Proposal, that sold the character. Each and every detail was so perfectly thought of, what wouldn’t be here? That’s a lost art. – Sandra Bullock • the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life. – Oscar Wilde • The costume of women should be suited to her wants and needs. – Amelia Bloomer • The costume that I wear on the show is a little snug and doesn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination. I don’t have a problem with it because of the way this character’s been written. – Jeri Ryan • The Dutch at close proximity looked much like Americans, apart from their peculiar uniforms, and so it was their uniforms I fired at, half convinced that I was killing, not human beings, but enemy costumes, which had borne their contents here from a distant land; and if some living man suffered for his enslavement to the uniform, or was penetrated by the bullets aimed at it well, that was unavoidable, and the fault couldn’t be placed at my feet. The private charade was not equivalent to Courage, but it enabled a Callousness that served a similar purpose. – Robert Charles Wilson • The fashion I’ve acquired over the years is so sacred to me – from costumes to couture, high fashion to punk wear I’ve collected from my secret international hot spots. I keep everything in an enormous archive in Hollywood. The clothes are on mannequins, also on hangers and in boxes with a photo of each piece, and there’s a Web site where I can go to look through everything. It’s too big – I could never sort through it myself! But these garments tell the stories of my life. – Lady Gaga • The first time I met Prince he invented me to his birthday party in Minneapolis. It was a costume party and I came as a beatnik – a beret and a charcoal goatee. He was dressed like an executioner. I talked to him for awhile and he didn’t know who I was, and when I told him he was real surprised. – Paul Reubens • The historical side of fashion was very attractive to me when I was a teenager in Moscow, working for the costume departments in various Russian theater companies. – Alexander Vassiliev • The Hulk was a unique character because of his strength and power. He doesn’t have a costume like Spiderman or like Superman – The Hulk is more visual. His passion and his strength, that is what separates him from anything else. – Lou Ferrigno • The kinds of things I like with crystals are the really beautiful costume jewelry, vintage pieces, and they usually have that diamond shape. – Zoe Kravitz • The only difference is that religion is much better organized and has been around much longer, but it’s the same story with different characters and different costumes. – James Randi • The skeptics said you can’t put on a costume in the middle of New York – which isn’t true, because everyone’s in a costume here. – Avi Arad • The tabloid that said that I dressed up as a medieval, like a sexy medieval something and that upset me more than the dating rumors that have been circling around that were fake. If somebody thinks I’m going to dress sexy to a costume party, they have another thing coming. – Jennifer Lawrence • The threats against democracy today are in general completely normal. They walk around in costume and tie. – Carl B. Hamilton • There is the danger of over preparation, of loss of spontaneity; over rehearsal is the most terrible thing you can imagine. We do have a very close association between costume and set designer, though. And the cameraman is very important, of course. – Terence Fisher • There’s going to be a Halloween costume [of lavash from Sausage Party]. The whole thing is just so ridiculous. It’s nice. It’s silly, and it’s surreal. – David Krumholtz • There’s no mystery to it. Nothing more complicated than learning lines and putting on a costume. – Morgan Freeman • There’s nothing more fun than putting on an old costume and jewelry and being in a house that’s decorated from the ’20s or ’30s or whatever. • There’s something about being there, on the set, in costume, in the moment, where you start to get a feel for the scene, which is not the same as sitting in your office writing it. – Lionel Wigram • They know they’re going to look beautiful, and I don’t think women should look like costumes. They shouldn’t look like fashion victims. – Ralph Lauren • They said they wanted a lot of feathers, glitter, colourful colours. A costume. So I had a lady here in Calgary make it. She just kind of put together what I had in mind. – Owen Hart • They take the paper and they read the headlines. So they’ve heard of unemployment and they’ve heard of bread-lines. And they philanthropically cure them all by getting up a costume charity ball. – Ogden Nash • This is my costume. I’m a homicidal maniac. They look just like everyone else. – Christina Ricci • To me, achieving tone, achieving consistency, is exactly the job of a director. It is to be the fusing, the nexus of a whole bunch of people contributing to the complex life of a movie. There are actors, there’s a cinematographer, there’re costume people, set people, there are all these things, and you somehow have to be the person in the middle of it who is making it all synchronize into the same magic bubble. – Edward Norton • To me, the appeal of opera lies in the fact that a myriad of singers and instruments, each possessed of different qualities of voice and sound, against the backdrop of a grand stage and beautiful costumes, come together in one complete and impressive drama. – Junichiro Koizumi • Vitamins ruined my life. Not that there was much left to ruin, but still. I know that blaming vitamins for my horrible life sounds strange. After all, vitamins are supposed to keep people healthy. Also, they’re inanimate objects. But thanks to them I was stuck in the Jackson Center Mall watching my father run around in a bee costume. – Elizabeth Scott • We have a costume closet at home. My family will put on a costume for any excuse. – Bryan Batt • We needed to have a great set decorator, a great D.P., a great costume designer, everybody. Without all these people, we would have made a shitty movie. – Vincent Paronnaud • We post photos of the Halloween costumes and the mustaches made of cupcake frosting. We don’t record the tantrums?and that’s as it should be. But we shouldn’t mistake that for reality. It’s stagecraft. – Libby Copeland • We talk about theatre museums filled with old costumes and things. What we also need is a theatre museum of the old routines on videotape. We are only the custodians of those techniques, and they should be preserved. – Jim Dale • We were a family that made our Halloween costumes. Or, more accurately, my mother made them. She took no suggestions or advice. Halloween costumes were her territory. She was the brain behind my brothers winning girl costume, stuffing her own bra with newspapers for him to wear under a cashmere sweater and smearing red lipstick on his lips. – Ann Hood • Well, I design costumes because I started with the theater in Chicago, but somehow a few lines just sort of fell to me to do it. And I studied it in school and I always liked it. – John Malkovich • Well,the fun part of being a writer is that it’s like making a wonderful film, with no limit on my budget. I can design the sets, the costume, the lightings, I write the script, and then I get to perform all the roles as I step into each character’s skin, zip up, and adopt that point of view. So, to me, they are all compelling and fascinating. – Robin Hobb • What keeps this industry alive is creators doing their own work. Once you change a costume or origin enough times, it’s a dead body – you’re just electrocuting it and keeping it sort of shambling on. There is a lot more creator-owned stuff now, and some of it I look at and go, ‘Oh, that’s his pitch for a TV show. That’s his pitch for a movie. That’s him saying oh, this kind of thing sells.’ I didn’t do that. – Mike Mignola • When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. – Sam Walton • When I get up in the morning, I go and I work with beautiful women and charming men and funny comedians and dramatic artists. And I’m presented with costumes and great music to choose from and sets. I travel a certain amount of places, so I’ve been living in a bubble. And I like it. – Woody Allen • When I go out and I’m presenting the best side of myself, I want to look different from everyone, but I don’t want it to look like I’m wearing a costume. – Rachel Roy • When the Strokes first started playing gigs, instead of getting into a costume for the shows, we talked about how we should dress every day, in real life, like we’re playing onstage. I don’t really care about clothes, but it’s about wearing something that gives you social confidence. Or maybe helps you pick up chicks. – Julian Casablancas • When you put your costume on and you get your hair and your makeup done [for a role] and you stare in the mirror you feel like a different person. – Michael Shannon • When you’re wearing an animal costume and something bad happens, your facial expression doesn’t change. The animal is deadpan the whole time. If you’re skiing in a gorilla suit and you fall, you just see a gorilla who has no emotion. It’s just a stoic gorilla, wildly falling down a hill, out of control. – Demetri Martin • When youre young, the blue blazer feels like a grown-up costume. – Willie Geist • White is too brilliant to be seen, so yellow is its filter, its costume, revealing that pure light has not only brightness but emotional resonance and depth. – Richard Grossinger • Wild Bill was a strange character, add to this figure a costume blending the immaculate neatness of the dandy with the extravagant taste and style of a frontiersman, you have Wild Bill, the most famous scout on the Plains. – George Armstrong Custer • Without my husband’s costumes I wouldn’t have known how to accomplish what I saw in my own mind’s eyes for choreography. And then seeing our choreography and knowing the background of it I am sure helped my husband a great deal with what he designed for us. – Katherine Dunham • Women: You can’t live with them, and you can’t get them to dress up in a skimpy little Nazi costume and beat you with a warm squash or something. – Emo Philips • You cannot climb the ladder of success dressed in the costume of failure. – Zig Ziglar • You can’t do a machine without knowing something about how it’s going to work. As for the romantics, the costumes bored me and I don’t enjoy doing period clothes. – Boris Vallejo • You can’t have a bad time at Disney World. It’s not allowed. They have hidden electronic surveillance cameras everywhere, and if they catch you failing to laugh with childlike wonder, they lock you inside a costume representing a beloved Disney character such as Goofy and make you walk about in the Florida heat getting grabbed and leaped on by violently excited children until you have learned your lesson. – Dave Barry • You know, being in a rock band, you can’t overdo the costume changes too much because everyone thinks, oh, that’s not a real rock band. Look how many times he changes costumes. That’s not rock. Rock’s about going on in a T-shirt and staying in it and getting it all dirty. But that’s not really my approach. – Mick Jagger • You look at Cheney, Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, and Bush – if you saw them on Halloween, they wouldn’t need a costume. You’d give them a treat and compliment them on what great-looking demons they were. They are demons. There’s no doubt about it. – Tommy Chong • You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for success. You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World. – Dave Barry • You only get one shot in your life and you might as well push yourself and try things. There’s so many interesting aspects of making a movie; the costume department, the set design, the casting itself, the locations. It’s a great, great thing to be involved in if you have the headspace for it, and I do. Try anything once. – Jason Statham • Young people, however, tend to ignore the customs of their elders. Adolescent rebellion has been responsible for all manner of absurd costumes. The more ridiculous a certain fashion is, the more adolescents will cling to it. – David Eddings • Youth is terrible: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and a variety of costumes mouthing speeches they’ve memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand. And history is terrible because it so often ends up a playground for the immature; a playground for the young Nero, a playground for the young Bonaparte, a playground for the easily roused mobs of children whose simulated passions and simplistic poses suddenly metamorphose into a catastrophically real reality. – Milan Kundera • Youve got to leave the reader with more than just a name and a costume – they need to know who the character is, what theyre like, what kind of attitude they have, what sort of role they play. – Kurt Busiek

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Costumes Quotes

Official Website: Costumes Quotes

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jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Costume', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_costume').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_costume img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Calvin: Trick or treat! Adult: Where’s your costume? What are you supposed to be? Calvin: I’m yet another resource-consuming kid in an overpopulated planet, raised to an alarming extent by Madison Avenue and Hollywood, poised with my cynical and alienated peers to take over the world when you’re old and weak… Am I scary, or what? – Bill Watterson • Cause a costume can be comfortable It can make you feel more beautiful It can even make you look like someone else But it’s still you, so there’s nothing you can do Like a bad habit, the one you couldn’t kick, there it always is And it’s nothing that no doctor’s gonna fix. – Conor Oberst • Celebrate your success and find humor in your failures. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Loosen up and everyone around you will loosen up. Have fun and always show enthusiasm. When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. – Sam Walton • Clothes make a statement. Costumes tell a story. – Mason Cooley • Costume design is so important and really helpful, and I really love that aspect of character development, just figuring it out. – Katherine Waterston • Costume designers don’t care about trends. They appreciate, above so many other qualities, that tailoring is everything, which is a mantra for the way I dress. Ladies: The most important thing in clothing is to find a good, inexpensive tailor, because clothes at the stores are made for bodies that are anomalies. – Ginnifer Goodwin • Costume is a huge part of getting into character. Your body soaks in what you’re wearing, and you turn into someone else. – Jane Levy • Costume jewelry is not made to give women an aura of wealth, but to make them beautifu – Coco Chanel • Costumes and scenery alone will not attract audiences. – Anna Held • Costumes are fun. Dress up like a pilot some night and watch as people stare! – Tim Heidecker • Costumes are so much better than clothes. They’re like drugs, they change your personality. – Mary Woronov • Costumes are the first impression that you have of the character before they open their mouth-it really does establish who they are. – Colleen Atwood • Costumes, fashion, it’s all an expression of self, and the more you push the boundaries – the more that people work at creating alternative ideas – the more it changes people’s ideas of beauty. – Reese Witherspoon • Courtrooms contain every symbol of authority that a set designer could imagine. Everyone stands up when you come in. You wear a costume identifying you as, if not quite divine, someone special. – Irving Kaufman • Debased men, but they all had something in common: They showed a keen regard for virtue, and tried to dress themselves in that costume. Hypocrisy, for all its bad reputation, at least showed a decent respect for goodness. – Orson Scott Card • Diplomacy is the police in grand costume. – Napoleon Bonaparte • does you costume involve leather?” she’d asked. and he’d said, “Actually, yeah, it might.” it really did. it involved a leather dog collar, leather pants and a leash, and the leash was held by Ysandre, who was in skintight red rubber, from neck to knee high boots. she’d topped it off with a pair of devil horns and a red tridant. she’d made Shane her dog, complete with furry dog mask. ***”Breathe,” Myrnin said. “I’m not much for it myself, but i hear it’s quite good for humans.”*** – Rachel Caine • Drag for me is costume, and what I’m trying to do is, sometimes I’ll go around and wear makeup in the streets, turn up to the gig, take the makeup off, do the show, and then put the makeup back on. It’s the inverse of drag. It’s not about artifice. It’s about me just expressing myself. So when I’m campaigning in London for politics, I campaign with makeup on and the nails. It’s just what I have on, like any woman. – Eddie Izzard • Each character represents a different color on the big palette of what this ultimate painting is going to look like, who your guy is, and just try to be as honest and simple and real as you can possibly be. The outer trappings are incidental – costumes, period, makeup – all of that is rather insignificant at the end of the day. – Ron Perlman • Every day each of us wakes up, reaches into drawers and closets, pulls out a costume for the day and proceeds to dress in a style that can only be called preposterous. – Mary Schmich • Every year, I have to spend another hour working out. Pretty soon I’ll be spending eight hours working out just to fit in the costume. I have the feeling that the minute I stop doing the character, boom, Roseanne Barr. – Cassandra Peterson • Everyone goes to the ‘Grands-Boulevards’ (in Paris, ed.) and let himself loose… …Do not picture these in costume, they are not for the most part… …perhaps a clown with a big nose, or two girls with bare necks and short skirts… …the parade of the queens of the halls (markets) is also one of the events… …Some are pretty but look awkward in their silk dresses and crowns, particularly as the broad sun displays their defects – perhaps a neck too thin or a painted face which shows ghastley white in the sunlight. – Edward Hopper • Fashion offers no greater challenge than finding what works for night without looking like you are wearing a costume. – Vera Wang • Figure skating is theatrical, and a part of it is wearing costumes. My costumes were very over-the-top and outrageous for figure skating. But for me, it’s all beautiful. Even when nobody else believed they were beautiful, I felt beautiful in them. – Johnny Weir • For each human being there is an optimum ratio between change and stasis. Too little change, he grows bored. Too little stability, he panics and loses his ability to adapt. One who marries six times in ten years won’t change jobs. One who moves often to serve his company will maintain a stable marriage. A woman chained to one home and family may redecorate frantically or take a lover or go to many costume parties. – Larry Niven • For the kind of thing that we were showing, the budget was sufficient. As we were speaking of in Haiti, we had not done that before in exactly this form and we had to have costumes for it. – Katherine Dunham • Fresh from a costume fitting, where I had been posing in front of the mirror assuming what I thought was a strong position – arms folded, butch-looking…you know – I met with the woman in charge of Holloway police station. She gave me the most invaluable advice: never let them see you cry, and never cross your arms. When I asked why, she said ‘because it is a defensive action and therefore weak. – Helen Mirren • Get my swan costume ready. – Anna Pavlova • Halloween is my favorite holiday, and I always go all-out with my costumes. – Ginnifer Goodwin • History, we know, is apt to repeat itself, and to foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight change of costume. – George Eliot • I always go into a blocking rehearsal with an anchor, with a blocking plan. And sometimes they’ll step into the room and they’ll be in costume and you’re like, “That sucks, that’s not going to work. Let’s think of something new.” – Ava DuVernay • I am interested in costume. Clothes in your daily life are important: your choices say something about you, even if what they’re saying is about non-choice. And what you wear in a film is crucial. – Clemence Poesy • I am out in public and using the phone. I am in a phone booth, got the phone in my hand and a man taps on the glass and says You using the phone? Nope, I’m superman, i am just looking for my costume. Here’s your sign! – Bill Engvall • I am very sorry if I have caused any offence. It was a poor choice of costume. – Prince Harry • I believe that God—if he exists at all—is what we want him to be. The true God is unknowable, and so we dress him up in costumes that make him visible to us. Then we come up with a lot of very silly rules that we attribute to him and tell everyone if they don’t follow those rules, they can’t be part of the gang. – Michael Thomas Ford • I can still fit into my Battlestar Galactica costume! – Dirk Benedict • I consider myself an artist, but instead of paint or clay, my medium is drag. I put so much of myself into my drag from every detail of the costume, makeup and hair to my performance, the way I speak or even stand. – Manila Luzon • I definitely feel, when I’m wearing the costume, that I could scare people and hurt them. – Joan Severance • I design all of my costumes. I like to go out there and feel like I have contributed to every part of what I do. I choose the music, the choreographer, I’ve obviously chosen my coach, my costumes – all if that falls under my realm of power, my realm of influence. – Johnny Weir • I don’t believe in fashion. I believe in costume. Life is too short to be same person every day. – Stephanie Perkins • I don’t think I ever said, “I want to be an actress.” But for Halloween, I dressed up as a movie star from when I was seven to when I was twelve. The costume was always a long dress, with makeup, and my hair curled, and jewelry on. And the movie star was always Jenny McCarthy. So right there you could see a little pattern. – Jenny McCarthy • I don’t think that I could fit into the costume anymore. – Lee Meriwether • I dressed up as a veterinarian for a Halloween costume party. I had the lab coat. I got a couple of stuffed animals for patients and put bandages on them. – Tracy Chapman • I felt like, in the recent past, people have been apologizing for Superman, a little bit, for his costume, for his origins, and for the way he fits into society. – Zack Snyder • I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience’s ear a chance to understand what’s going on. Particularly in the theater, where you have costume, story, acting, orchestra. – Stephen Sondheim • I gradually work myself into a frenzy as the shoot approaches, while we’re choosing the costumes or working with the make-up artist. I’m not so much interested in my character as the film itself. – Jeanne Moreau • I had a lot of fun with my costume designer. – Adam Lambert • I had nothing and I was still changed. Like a costume, my numbness was taken away. Then hunger was added. – Louise Glück • I hate bananas. I just hate them. But I also think a banana suit is the funniest fruit costume a person can wear. – Paul Neilan • I hate Halloween. I hate dressing up. I hate – I wear wigs, makeup, costumes every day. Halloween is like, my least favorite holiday. – Amy Poehler • I hate Technicolor. Everybody in a Technicolor movie seems to feel obliged to wear a lurid costume in each new scene and to stand around like a clotheshorse with a lot of very green trees or very yellow wheat or very blue ocean rolling away for miles and miles in every direction. – Sylvia Plath • I hate the terminology of “costume” because my clothes are not costumes at all. I think they’re high fashion, avant-garde, and more couture, definitely, and yes, some of my pieces are not particularly wearable, but I wouldn’t say they’re costumes, I’d say they’re more couture. – Christian Siriano • I have a ton of cousins on my moms side of the family, and we would put on shows together all the time and put on costumes, and we even charged our parents money. – Maulik Pancholy • I have been interested in fashion since I was a kid. Then I lived in London, where it was more about costume and a personal statement of who you are than about fashion. – Zaha Hadid • I have friends who wear Star Wars costumes and act like the characters all day. I may not be that deep into it, but there’s something great about loving what you love and not caring if it’s unpopular. – Kristen Bell • I have over five thousand costumes and props and cars, and I have a twenty-five thousand square foot warehouse full of memorabilia. – Debbie Reynolds • I just love doing costume dramas; I am very lucky, as I see myself as a part-time time traveller. – Julia Sawalha • I knew ‘Be Our Guest’ would be performed on a set and in costume, but anyone with a history in Theatre In Education will know that can mean anything. – Pippa Evans • I knew I would grow up and wear a costume one day, and that’s exactly what happened. – Cassandra Peterson • I like that totally mixed up kind of eclectic group of personal props and bits of costume and I think the fun of doing that is where I was very lucky with Doctor Who. – Lalla Ward • I like to work in costumes, makeup, and hair that allow me tremendous freedom. – Jessica Lange • I liked the choreography, but I didn’t care for the costumes. – Tommy Tune • I love all the voiceovers I do. I can’t remember them all, but I seem to do them all of the time. And there’s nothing easier because you just stand and read the script, and you don’t have to act the way actors do. You don’t have to be made up and put costumes on. – Stan Lee • I love costumes. I love getting dressed up because it really helps my imagination make the leap to believe that I am who I say I am. – Alessandro Nivola • I love costumes. My dream growing up was always to have my own costume and prop shop. – Amy Sedaris • I love fashion. I always have. When I was a kid, I was in almost full-on costumes when I went to school, and I’ve retained a bit of that in my adulthood. – Lake Bell • I love putting on an outfit or a costume and just looking at myself in the mirror. Baggy pants or some real funky shoes and a hat and just feeling the character of it. That’s fun to me. – Michael Jackson • I loved doing all those costume dramas. I didn’t think, ‘Ooh I’ve got to avoid being typecast’ – you can’t ever be dictated to by what other people think. I just do things because I fancy the parts and the directors. – Helena Bonham Carter • I only assumed those dresses were costumes, based on the garish nature of the plumage. – Kami Garcia • I picked out my Halloween costume. I’m going as ‘Slutty Madeleine Albright.’ – Conan O’Brien • I put the costume on and said ‘It’s not very comfortable, but it looks amazing,’ so it’s all good. – Chris Hemsworth • I read and watch movies. I can’t go to the movie theater much anymore, though, because I get recognized. It’s worse sometimes if I wear a costume and try not to get recognized. I watch most of my films on airplanes – Ayumi Hamasaki • I realized that I wanted to play characters and do traditional theatre. I wanted to make believe again. I like putting on a costume and pretending to be someone else for a few hours, and I have a great respect for playwrights. – Lusia Strus • I remember playing football dressed in peculiar costumes with some friends in France and laughing so hard we couldn’t even stand up, let alone kick the ball. – Fred Frith • I said old Jesus probably would’ve puked if He could see it – all those fancy costumes and all. Sally said I was a sacrilegious atheist. I probably am. The thing Jesus really would’ve liked would be the guy who plays the kettle drums in the orchestra. – J. D. Salinger • I see my face in the mirror and go, ‘I’m a Halloween costume? That’s what they think of me?’ – Drew Carey • I see myself wrapped in lies, which do not seem to penetrate my soul, as if they are not really a part of me. They are like costumes. – Anais Nin • I thank you for your kind invitation to introduce me to the president of the Republic. Since I have not been out of my atelier for two months, I have no appropriate costume for this circumstance. Please excuse me. – Camille Claudel • I think color, for a costume designer, is one of your biggest storytelling devices. – Alexandra Byrne • I think I’m better at live shows than I used to be because I’m way more comfortable with the uncomfortable pauses between songs. Now, rather than trying to talk or do a costume change, I’ll use those moments for myself. I listen to what other people are playing, or just rest, or dance, even though I don’t know how to. – Fiona Apple • I think of clothes a lot like costumes. I think of what I wear in real life as being my real life character’s costume. – Ginnifer Goodwin • I think people feel starved of nice, glamorous entertainment. They want to see costumes and gaiety and a singer; old-fashioned entertainment – it won’t die easily. – Ronnie Corbett • I think that when you put yourself, as actors have to do, in other people’s shoes, when you have to put on the costume that someone else has worn in their life, it gets much, much harder to be prejudiced against them and even to be – to not try to look at the world in a sense of “I’m not going to judge somebody. I’m going to try to understand who they are and what they’re about.” – Kevin Spacey • I tried to end our little duel. I called out pacifying words; I entreated; I finally surrendered. Still Clyde came, my pirate costume so great a success that it had apparently convinced him that we were back in the golden days of romantic old New Orleans when gentlemen decided matters of hot dog honor at twenty paces – John Kennedy Toole • I try to get to know the actors as much as I can. I feel like I’m friends with them for starters and for a week or two, we rehearse when they’re getting the costumes together. – Gus Van Sant • I try very hard not to take work home, but it can be tricky. Sometimes it feels as if you are wearing your costume underneath your own clothes! I suppose things are always ticking away in the back of your mind. – Anne-Marie Duff • I wanna begin saying a story about my son. I have a four-year old son who loves superheroes from Spider-Man to Iron Man to Batman. He’s got all the costumes. One day he looks at me and says ‘Dad, I want to be light-skinned so I could be Spider-Man. Spider-Man has light skin.’ That was sort of a shock. This is why I am excited to be a part of the Marvel Universe, so I could be hopefully provide that diversity in the role of the superhero. – Djimon Hounsou • I want to create things while I have time on Earth, and the art of costume and culture has always inspired me. – Johnny Weir • I was obsessed with being popular when I was in high school and never achieved it. There’s photos from our high school musicals and things, and I’m comically in the deep background, wearing a beggar’s costume. – Mindy Kaling • I will confess I did none of my own singing. I did all my own costume and makeup, though. – Gary Cole • I would love to play the Femme Fatale or an action role like Trinity in the Matrix or something like that. You know, a part with a lot of costume changes. – Josie Maran • I’d hear some beautiful Sade or Kings Of Convenience ballad remixed in a club and I liked that these simple little songs seemed to be masquerading. They had put on superhero costumes, got all beefy, and here they were on the dancefloor. I was interested in that. I can’t make electronic beats, so I leave it to the pros like Boys Noize and Chromeo. – Feist Ideas, Possums, Officers • If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character, would you slow down? Or speed up? – Chuck Palahniuk • If human beings had genuine courage, they’d wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. – Douglas Coupland • If I’ve learned anything in twenty-nine years, it’s that every human being you see in the course of a day has a problem that’s sucking up at least 70 percent of his or her radar. My gift – bad choice of words – is that I can look at you, him, her, them, whoever, and tell right away what is keeping them awake at night: money; feelings of insignificance; overwhelming boredom; evil children; job troubles; or perhaps death, in one of its many costumes, perched in the wings. What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives. – Douglas Coupland • If Jacob was right and clothes were costumes and makeup a mask, then our attitudes and habits must be our shields. – Justina Chen • I’ll tell you…why Wonder Woman worked. Or Bionic Woman. Or any of those [shows] really. It was because it wasn’t about brawn…it was about brains. And yes, she happened to be beautiful, she happened to be kind of extraordinary in some way, but she wasn’t a guy. And I think that, [now], they…put out a female hero, and all they are doing is changing the costume from a man to a woman…they’re not showcasing any of the tremendous dichotomies than women possess in term of softness and toughness, sweetness and grit, inner and outer strength. – Lynda Carter • I’m a big comic book nerd so every time I’m in costume and see everyone in costume I’m just like “This is sick.” – Franz Drameh • I’m a child of the downloading age. I remember when I was 10, a friend who went to the same school as me came to our [school’s] costume party with a really weird hairdo. She had all these little knots in her hair. I asked her who she was and she said she was Björk. I thought this Björk must be a really cool person, so I got on the internet when I got home and found as much as I could on Björk and I fell in love. – Tove Styrke • I’m a fiend for costume jewellery and have countless pairs of rhinestone or diamante earrings, which are so flattering when they catch the light. I love the designers Alexis Bittar and Kenneth Jay Lane, and I always go to jewellers Butler & Wilson. – Joan Collins • I’m a pain in the ass to all of the costume designers with whom I work because I have very strong feelings about the subject. – Meryl Streep • Im able to hang up the character with the costume at the end of the movie. – Kevin Spacey • I’m glad I was born when I was. My time was the golden age of variety. If I were starting out again now, maybe things would happen for me, but it certainly would not be on a variety show with 28 musicians, 12 dancers, two major guest stars, 50 costumes a week by Bob Mackie – the networks just wouldn’t spend the money today. – Carol Burnett • I’m not the best audience for that because I’m not a great science-fiction fan. I just never got off on space ships and space costumes, things like that. – Gary Oldman • I’m sure favorite moments in movies are things that just happen accidentally when the camera is there. You have to do all the homework to get yourself into the period, the costumes, the style, the voice, the hairdo or whatever it is, but once you’ve done all that work, you have to kind of let it go and just be there. If you’re always thinking about it, it just looks a bit over-thought. – Tom Hiddleston • I’m sure that there must have been times when you have read books or watched films and found yourself secretly wishing for the villain to win. Why? Isn’t that against the rules by which our society lives? Why should you feel this way? It’s simple, really; the villain is the true hero of these tales, not the well-intentioned moron who somehow foils their diabolical scheme. The villain get’s all the best lines, has the best costumes, has unlimited power and wealth- why on earth would anyone not want to be the villain? – Mark Walden • I’m very good at living out of a suitcase. I love dressing up every morning. It feels like a costume, in some ways. – Morgan Saylor • I’m very much into the costuming of any character that I portray and it’s one of the great things about making movies is it’s a collaborative art form so you get all these artists who are looking specifically about for this instance your character’s costume and what that might tell about your character. – Jeff Bridges • Immortals is without doubt the best-looking awful movie you will ever see. Eiko Ishioka’s costume designs alone deserve an Oscar nomination. “They weren’t at all historically accurate,” grumbled a woman in the elevator after the sneak preview, as if lots of documentation exists about the wardrobes of the gods. She added: “I guess that’s what we deserve for using free tickets we got at a Blackhawks game. – Roger Ebert • In a costume, you need very exaggerated body language – as you say, sort of mime-type skills. – Warwick Davis • In dreams we are true poets; we create the persons of the drama; we give them appropriate figures faces, costumes; they are perfect in their organs, attitudes, manners; moreover they speak after their own characters, not ours; and we listen with surprise to what they say. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • In general, costumes are the first thing in life that let other people know who we are. They indicate who the person is without saying anything. – Molly Parker • In some ways, Halloween is much easier for women. They can just dress as sluts, and it’s kind of a costume, if they never do any other time. – Chuck Klosterman • In the old days when I first was coming up, you would turn up on set in the morning with your coffee, script, and hangover and you would figure out what you were going to do with the day and how you were going to play the scenes. You would rehearse and then invite the crew in to watch the actors go through the scenes. The actors would go away to makeup and costume and the director and the DP would work out how they were going to cover what the actors had just done. – Paul Bettany • Inside the envelope with the letter was a little Princess Leia action figure USB flash drive. For me to store my novel on, since he was right – I never back up my computer’s hard drive. The sight of it – it’s Princess Leia in her Hoth outfit, my favorite of her costumes (how had he remembered?) brought tears to my eyes. – Meg Cabot • It is a process of finding the right music then planning a costume to fit that style of music. – Nancy Kerrigan • It is amazing to me how deeply into the popular culture the creature has become. There are zombie walks in every major city. I live in Toronto, and last year 3,000 people came out dressed as zombies…. I do not get it. Maybe it’s an easy costume: Splash some ketchup on and rip up your jeans — although most people already have torn jeans — and you’re done. – George A. Romero • It is only in the case of the Priestly Code that opinions differ widely; for it tries hard to imitate the costume of the Mosaic period, and, with whatever success, to disguise its own. – Julius Wellhausen • It reminds me of how grandmother always had the right costume for me to wear. You wear the right outfit and you feel like the person you’re pretending to be. – John Boyne • It took me a while to warm to the ’20s costumes on ‘Downton.’ I love it when women accentuate their curves, and that era was all about hiding them. The shapes they wore then were in tune with female empowerment. Cutting off their hair and hiding their busts was a way of saying, ‘We’re equal to men!’ – Lily James • It was amazing that during rehearsals, without any of the costume on, the character was there complete. It just happened. Half the time, I didn’t know I was doing it. – Peter Mayhew • It was something I was more interested in myself. When I went to see my sister dance at ballet, I was really into costumes and the arts, and my family was also supportive of whatever me and my sister wanted to do. I would say I pushed myself the most to be into design. – Christian Siriano • It was the sheer variety of the pain that stopped me from crying out. It came from so many places, spoke so many languages, wore so many dazzling varieties of ethnic costume, that for a full fifteen seconds I could only hang my jaw in amazement. – Hugh Laurie • It’s an addiction. I love clothes. I like to go down Melrose and look in all the windows and I go to different flea markets. I have lots of costumes. You never know when you’re going to have to dress up like a milkmaid from the 1600s. – Zooey Deschanel • I’ve always been attracted to romantic secondhand clothes. But my style developed as I started going to these strange raves where everybody had these very definitive costumes. – Florence Welch • I’ve always been misrepresented. You know, I could dress in a clown costume and laugh with the happy people but they’d still say I’m a dark personality. – Tim Burton • I’ve always wanted to be Wonder Woman, of course. She had the greatest costume. – Kelly Hu • I’ve always worked closely with the designers and whoever’s making the costumes. Comfort is the last thing you want on your mind when you’re competing. In an ideal situation, you’ll have something where you’ll put it on and you’re fine and you don’t have to worry about it at all. – Kristi Yamaguchi • I’ve done a lot of costume drama and theatre – the National Theatre and In fact, most of my work at the theatre, at the National Theatre anyway, was period. – Brenda Blethyn • I’ve done approximately 15 films, and most of the things I’ve done have either been stunt or costume work. – Verne Troyer • I’ve made quite a number of movies like Castaway and a few others where I’m the only guy in the movie and the only place to be is right next to the camera in costume ready to go in order to get it. The years, and more specifically probably the four months prior to beginning shooting, is where the big preparation is that the director does because I knew we were going to get on the set. And the good news is, if you’re the boss, if it ain’t good, you don’t use it. You just cut it out. – Tom Hanks • I’ve never done a lead role in a film this big [like Doctor Strange], in a franchise this big. One of the reasons was, I wanted to know what the toy box was like. And it’s just insane, the amount of facility that everyone gets, but the amount of artistry and craft that’s brought to every aspect of filmmaking. I mean, you go to your first costume fitting and it’s one of thirty. It’s a myriad, but it’s for a reason. There are so many incredible costumes in this. – Benedict Cumberbatch • just because I don’t have on a silly black costume and carry a silly broom and wear a silly black hat, doesn’t mean that I’m not a witch. I’m a witch all the time and not just on Halloween. – E. L. Konigsburg • Madonna has a far profounder vision of sex than do the feminists. She sees both the animality and the artifice. Changing her costume style and hair color virtually every month, Madonna embodies the eternal values of beauty and pleasure. Feminism says, ‘No more masks.’ Madonna says we are nothing but masks. Through her enormous impact on young women around the world, Madonna is the future of feminism. – Camille Paglia • My book is very wild. But you know during the period of BATMAN, that there were thousands of Batman and Robin costumes sold and these weren’t just for kids. – Burt Ward • My costumes were made for sex appeal not for women. – Brenda Holloway • My fancy dress costume of choice is… something 1920s or 30s, when there was still so much elegance and attention to detail. An excuse for ultimate dressing-up indulgence. – Ellie Goulding • My father has developed a tradition of surprising us at some point by appearing in fancy dress. He buys a new costume each year and typically gets carried away. A couple of Christmases ago he appeared in an inflatable sumo outfit. Its endearing, really, and only quite embarrassing. – Pippa Middleton • My first acting experience was a non-speaking role as a robot. My costume was a cardboard box covered in tinfoil, but I was so shy I refused to go on stage. – Jessica Raine • My girlfriend’s a costume designer in the theater. – Philip Seymour Hoffman • My mom did costumes for the Pointer Sisters. – Slash • My mom used to make my costumes when I was little; she sews a lot. One year, I was a bride and I had a big wedding dress and a bouquet. Another year I was a medieval princess with a long teal dress and a veil. It was a little extravagant, but it was cute! – Sasha Pieterse • My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will. – Henry David Thoreau • My objects dream and wear new costumes, compelled to, it seems, by all the words in my hands and the sea that bangs in my throat. – Anne Sexton • Nice costume,” he said. “Ditto. I can tell you put alot of though into yours.” Amusement curled his mouth. “If you don’t like it, I can take it off.” I tapped my chin thoughtfully. “That just might be the best proposal I’ve had all night.” “My offers are always the best, Angel. – Becca Fitzpatrick • No matter how many modern parts I do, people still refer to me as Mrs. Costume Drama. – Helena Bonham Carter • No touching Baby Jesus.” “But we’re his parents!” proclaimed Mary Beth, who was being generous to include poor Joseph under this appellation. “Mary Beth,” Barb Wiggin said, “if you touch the Baby Jesus, I’m putting you in a cow costume. – John Irving • No, officer, I have no idea why I’m wearing this possum costume. I called you what? OH. My bad.” -Nastasya – Cate Tiernan • Nothings makes a woman look older that a rich costume. – Coco Chanel • Now people need special costumes to ride bicycles. I mean, a helmet, what, are you an astronaut?? – Fran Lebowitz • Now what else is the whole life of mortals, but a sort of comedy in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each ones part until the manager walks them off the stage? – Desiderius Erasmus • O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales. – Leo Rosten • Oh, hello,” Dr. M says, shaking Balder’s hand. “Wonderful costume. I’m a bit of a role player myself on the weekends. Tell me, where did you get the helmet?” It was forged in the North, blessed by the hands of Odin, given to me by my mother, Frigg,” Balder answers. Lovely. I got mine on the Internet. – Libba Bray • On the side of box of my superman costume it actually said – ‘Do not attempt to fly!’ – Jerry Seinfeld • Once you embody the language, the character comes really naturally, especially when you put the costume on. – Lucy Liu • One time I forgot my costume, and I had to do a scene in my pants, and I got my knob caught in a clapperboard. – 2D • People always seem to assume that we have a full, back-up support team – make-up, costume and a driver – but usually, in a war zone, there’s only me and the cameraman. – Kate Adie • People assume, because I’m Hef’s girlfriend, that I’m a Bunny and I’m a Playmate and I’m a centerfold, but they’re different things. If you’re a Playmate or a centerfold, which is the same thing, you pose for the magazine, you are one particular month, and not every Playmate is a Bunny. A Bunny is a girl who used to work at the Playboy Club, she had the Bunny costume, and now that we don’t have Playboy Clubs, it’s just Playmates who work special promotions and are fitted for a Bunny costume. – Holly Madison • Period costume films are fun to discover, but they’re not relatable. It’s more, ‘Wow, that’s cool – did it really look like that back then?’ Whereas with a comedy, you’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s me, that’s my friends.’ No matter what, I want people to relate. – Paul Feig • Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon). – Harold Rosenberg • pools of blood are not recreational even lifeguards drown when the undertow breaks bread with the underbelly demons disguised as sharks have not put enough thought into their costumes a wiseman stays ashore when pointed fins read like italian subtitles the end is near (…) the beginning – Saul Williams • Radio is truly the theater of the mind. The listener constructs the sets, colors them from his own palette, and sculpts and costumes the characters who perform in them. – Mercedes McCambridge • Satan himself can’t save a woman who wears thirty-shilling corsets under a thirty-guinea costume. – Rudyard Kipling • She said, “I’m going to have you fired.” I had two people say that to me today, “I’m going to have you fired.” Go ahead, be my guest. I’m wearing a green velvet costume; it doesn’t get any worse than this. Who do these people think they are? I’m going to have you fired!” and I wanted to lean over and say, “I’m going to have you killed. – David Sedaris • Shigure Sohma: [got Tohru a maid costume for White Day] I can’t wait to for her to call me master while wearing this. Hatsuharu Sohma: Just don’t get arrested, okay? – Natsuki Takaya • Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to a deed. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to deed. A skillful man reads his dreams for his self-knowledge; yet not the details, but the quality. What part does he play in them – a cheerful, manly part, or a poor, drivelling part? However monstrous and grotesque their apparitions, they have a substantial truth. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • So you couldn’t protect yourself? The absolute erodes; the boundary, the wall around the self erodes. If I was waiting I had been invaded by time. But do you think you’re free? I think I recognize the patterns of my nature. Bud do you think you’re free? I had nothing and I was still changed. Like a costume, my numbness was taken away. Then hunger was added. – Louise Glück • So, did the costume come with a condom, or is that sold separately? – Rachel Vincent • Some directors hand over portions of their movie to their head of department to the point where it’s like, “I’m not going to talk to you about the costumes, but I’m going to let you talk to the expert.” Rather than, “You want to talk stitching, let’s talk stitching. You want to talk grade of leather? Let’s.” – Idris Elba • Someone’s going to put the clothes on you, and part of being an actor is wearing costumes. Costumes tell you an awful lot about who you are, so you just, it’s nothing. – Morgan Freeman • Sometimes I steal costumes. – Rich Fulcher • Steampunk is…the love child of Hot Topic and a BBC costume drama – Gail Carriger • Tales of adultery are much improved by period costumes. – Mason Cooley • The beauty of the internal nature cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture, but that the spirit of its form shall communicate itself to the very disguise and indicate the shape it hides from the manner in which it is worn. A majestic form and graceful motions will express themselves through the most barbarous and tasteless costume. – Percy Bysshe Shelley • The costume designer designing clothes that helped the comedy in The Proposal, that sold the character. Each and every detail was so perfectly thought of, what wouldn’t be here? That’s a lost art. – Sandra Bullock • the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life. – Oscar Wilde • The costume of women should be suited to her wants and needs. – Amelia Bloomer • The costume that I wear on the show is a little snug and doesn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination. I don’t have a problem with it because of the way this character’s been written. – Jeri Ryan • The Dutch at close proximity looked much like Americans, apart from their peculiar uniforms, and so it was their uniforms I fired at, half convinced that I was killing, not human beings, but enemy costumes, which had borne their contents here from a distant land; and if some living man suffered for his enslavement to the uniform, or was penetrated by the bullets aimed at it well, that was unavoidable, and the fault couldn’t be placed at my feet. The private charade was not equivalent to Courage, but it enabled a Callousness that served a similar purpose. – Robert Charles Wilson • The fashion I’ve acquired over the years is so sacred to me – from costumes to couture, high fashion to punk wear I’ve collected from my secret international hot spots. I keep everything in an enormous archive in Hollywood. The clothes are on mannequins, also on hangers and in boxes with a photo of each piece, and there’s a Web site where I can go to look through everything. It’s too big – I could never sort through it myself! But these garments tell the stories of my life. – Lady Gaga • The first time I met Prince he invented me to his birthday party in Minneapolis. It was a costume party and I came as a beatnik – a beret and a charcoal goatee. He was dressed like an executioner. I talked to him for awhile and he didn’t know who I was, and when I told him he was real surprised. – Paul Reubens • The historical side of fashion was very attractive to me when I was a teenager in Moscow, working for the costume departments in various Russian theater companies. – Alexander Vassiliev • The Hulk was a unique character because of his strength and power. He doesn’t have a costume like Spiderman or like Superman – The Hulk is more visual. His passion and his strength, that is what separates him from anything else. – Lou Ferrigno • The kinds of things I like with crystals are the really beautiful costume jewelry, vintage pieces, and they usually have that diamond shape. – Zoe Kravitz • The only difference is that religion is much better organized and has been around much longer, but it’s the same story with different characters and different costumes. – James Randi • The skeptics said you can’t put on a costume in the middle of New York – which isn’t true, because everyone’s in a costume here. – Avi Arad • The tabloid that said that I dressed up as a medieval, like a sexy medieval something and that upset me more than the dating rumors that have been circling around that were fake. If somebody thinks I’m going to dress sexy to a costume party, they have another thing coming. – Jennifer Lawrence • The threats against democracy today are in general completely normal. They walk around in costume and tie. – Carl B. Hamilton • There is the danger of over preparation, of loss of spontaneity; over rehearsal is the most terrible thing you can imagine. We do have a very close association between costume and set designer, though. And the cameraman is very important, of course. – Terence Fisher • There’s going to be a Halloween costume [of lavash from Sausage Party]. The whole thing is just so ridiculous. It’s nice. It’s silly, and it’s surreal. – David Krumholtz • There’s no mystery to it. Nothing more complicated than learning lines and putting on a costume. – Morgan Freeman • There’s nothing more fun than putting on an old costume and jewelry and being in a house that’s decorated from the ’20s or ’30s or whatever. • There’s something about being there, on the set, in costume, in the moment, where you start to get a feel for the scene, which is not the same as sitting in your office writing it. – Lionel Wigram • They know they’re going to look beautiful, and I don’t think women should look like costumes. They shouldn’t look like fashion victims. – Ralph Lauren • They said they wanted a lot of feathers, glitter, colourful colours. A costume. So I had a lady here in Calgary make it. She just kind of put together what I had in mind. – Owen Hart • They take the paper and they read the headlines. So they’ve heard of unemployment and they’ve heard of bread-lines. And they philanthropically cure them all by getting up a costume charity ball. – Ogden Nash • This is my costume. I’m a homicidal maniac. They look just like everyone else. – Christina Ricci • To me, achieving tone, achieving consistency, is exactly the job of a director. It is to be the fusing, the nexus of a whole bunch of people contributing to the complex life of a movie. There are actors, there’s a cinematographer, there’re costume people, set people, there are all these things, and you somehow have to be the person in the middle of it who is making it all synchronize into the same magic bubble. – Edward Norton • To me, the appeal of opera lies in the fact that a myriad of singers and instruments, each possessed of different qualities of voice and sound, against the backdrop of a grand stage and beautiful costumes, come together in one complete and impressive drama. – Junichiro Koizumi • Vitamins ruined my life. Not that there was much left to ruin, but still. I know that blaming vitamins for my horrible life sounds strange. After all, vitamins are supposed to keep people healthy. Also, they’re inanimate objects. But thanks to them I was stuck in the Jackson Center Mall watching my father run around in a bee costume. – Elizabeth Scott • We have a costume closet at home. My family will put on a costume for any excuse. – Bryan Batt • We needed to have a great set decorator, a great D.P., a great costume designer, everybody. Without all these people, we would have made a shitty movie. – Vincent Paronnaud • We post photos of the Halloween costumes and the mustaches made of cupcake frosting. We don’t record the tantrums?and that’s as it should be. But we shouldn’t mistake that for reality. It’s stagecraft. – Libby Copeland • We talk about theatre museums filled with old costumes and things. What we also need is a theatre museum of the old routines on videotape. We are only the custodians of those techniques, and they should be preserved. – Jim Dale • We were a family that made our Halloween costumes. Or, more accurately, my mother made them. She took no suggestions or advice. Halloween costumes were her territory. She was the brain behind my brothers winning girl costume, stuffing her own bra with newspapers for him to wear under a cashmere sweater and smearing red lipstick on his lips. – Ann Hood • Well, I design costumes because I started with the theater in Chicago, but somehow a few lines just sort of fell to me to do it. And I studied it in school and I always liked it. – John Malkovich • Well,the fun part of being a writer is that it’s like making a wonderful film, with no limit on my budget. I can design the sets, the costume, the lightings, I write the script, and then I get to perform all the roles as I step into each character’s skin, zip up, and adopt that point of view. So, to me, they are all compelling and fascinating. – Robin Hobb • What keeps this industry alive is creators doing their own work. Once you change a costume or origin enough times, it’s a dead body – you’re just electrocuting it and keeping it sort of shambling on. There is a lot more creator-owned stuff now, and some of it I look at and go, ‘Oh, that’s his pitch for a TV show. That’s his pitch for a movie. That’s him saying oh, this kind of thing sells.’ I didn’t do that. – Mike Mignola • When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. – Sam Walton • When I get up in the morning, I go and I work with beautiful women and charming men and funny comedians and dramatic artists. And I’m presented with costumes and great music to choose from and sets. I travel a certain amount of places, so I’ve been living in a bubble. And I like it. – Woody Allen • When I go out and I’m presenting the best side of myself, I want to look different from everyone, but I don’t want it to look like I’m wearing a costume. – Rachel Roy • When the Strokes first started playing gigs, instead of getting into a costume for the shows, we talked about how we should dress every day, in real life, like we’re playing onstage. I don’t really care about clothes, but it’s about wearing something that gives you social confidence. Or maybe helps you pick up chicks. – Julian Casablancas • When you put your costume on and you get your hair and your makeup done [for a role] and you stare in the mirror you feel like a different person. – Michael Shannon • When you’re wearing an animal costume and something bad happens, your facial expression doesn’t change. The animal is deadpan the whole time. If you’re skiing in a gorilla suit and you fall, you just see a gorilla who has no emotion. It’s just a stoic gorilla, wildly falling down a hill, out of control. – Demetri Martin • When youre young, the blue blazer feels like a grown-up costume. – Willie Geist • White is too brilliant to be seen, so yellow is its filter, its costume, revealing that pure light has not only brightness but emotional resonance and depth. – Richard Grossinger • Wild Bill was a strange character, add to this figure a costume blending the immaculate neatness of the dandy with the extravagant taste and style of a frontiersman, you have Wild Bill, the most famous scout on the Plains. – George Armstrong Custer • Without my husband’s costumes I wouldn’t have known how to accomplish what I saw in my own mind’s eyes for choreography. And then seeing our choreography and knowing the background of it I am sure helped my husband a great deal with what he designed for us. – Katherine Dunham • Women: You can’t live with them, and you can’t get them to dress up in a skimpy little Nazi costume and beat you with a warm squash or something. – Emo Philips • You cannot climb the ladder of success dressed in the costume of failure. – Zig Ziglar • You can’t do a machine without knowing something about how it’s going to work. As for the romantics, the costumes bored me and I don’t enjoy doing period clothes. – Boris Vallejo • You can’t have a bad time at Disney World. It’s not allowed. They have hidden electronic surveillance cameras everywhere, and if they catch you failing to laugh with childlike wonder, they lock you inside a costume representing a beloved Disney character such as Goofy and make you walk about in the Florida heat getting grabbed and leaped on by violently excited children until you have learned your lesson. – Dave Barry • You know, being in a rock band, you can’t overdo the costume changes too much because everyone thinks, oh, that’s not a real rock band. Look how many times he changes costumes. That’s not rock. Rock’s about going on in a T-shirt and staying in it and getting it all dirty. But that’s not really my approach. – Mick Jagger • You look at Cheney, Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, and Bush – if you saw them on Halloween, they wouldn’t need a costume. You’d give them a treat and compliment them on what great-looking demons they were. They are demons. There’s no doubt about it. – Tommy Chong • You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for success. You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World. – Dave Barry • You only get one shot in your life and you might as well push yourself and try things. There’s so many interesting aspects of making a movie; the costume department, the set design, the casting itself, the locations. It’s a great, great thing to be involved in if you have the headspace for it, and I do. Try anything once. – Jason Statham • Young people, however, tend to ignore the customs of their elders. Adolescent rebellion has been responsible for all manner of absurd costumes. The more ridiculous a certain fashion is, the more adolescents will cling to it. – David Eddings • Youth is terrible: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and a variety of costumes mouthing speeches they’ve memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand. And history is terrible because it so often ends up a playground for the immature; a playground for the young Nero, a playground for the young Bonaparte, a playground for the easily roused mobs of children whose simulated passions and simplistic poses suddenly metamorphose into a catastrophically real reality. – Milan Kundera • Youve got to leave the reader with more than just a name and a costume – they need to know who the character is, what theyre like, what kind of attitude they have, what sort of role they play. – Kurt Busiek

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