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fbfh · 4 years

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“forever” paxton hall-yoshida x reader

genre: fluffy romance + mutual pining (not too slowburn tho lol)

word count: 3.4k

au: none?? jock x theatre nerd ig

pairing: Paxton x broadway baby!reader

requested: yes !! i hope u like it uwu

warnings: one hell one motherfucking and i think that’s it for swearing?? um brief self deprecating/talking bad abt urself from paxton (bby boy needs a self love boost), reader and paxton are home alone together for a little while but nothing bad happens, uh,,, i think that’s it

summary: when Eleanor can’t run lines with you, she sends over a very attractive, mutually pining substitute.

reccomended songs: “Seventeen” - Tuck everlasting OBC, “The Kiss” -The Princess Diaries score

a/n: i’m p sure i kept the reader p gender neutral but there’s implied slightly long hair, and you play the lead (a girl named winnie) in ur schools production of tuck everlasting but like it’s theatre so anyone can play anyone lol,, this took so got dam long bc i’m fucking s o f t for jock x artist and it just sorta happened lol aLsO,, not super thoroughly edited so there might be a typo or two?? im tired lol

requests r open <3

You had only ever seen two athletes present during rehearsals. Once when Madeline (who at the time was playing Penny in your production of Hairspray) was dating a guy from the soccer team. The other was when the star of the basketball team had come in to give your choreographer pointers for the basketball scenes during High School Musical.

Until now.

You had run onstage part of the way through “Live Like This”, which wasn’t out of the ordinary since so much progress had been made on the costumes. You were still tying the ribbon on your pinafore as you jumped into the song, but when your eyes met a face in the usually empty auditorium, you faltered. You almost sang the wrong verse, but recovered quickly, continuing with the blocking. What felt like a moment later, the number was almost done and you were nearing the end of your counterpoint with Mae Tuck - played by Eleanor, of course. Who could be better for the part? You held out the last note, trying to stay in character despite all the distractions in the back of your mind. You had to talk to Eleanor when the director called for 10; she’d started telling you how Devi was being weird recently. Also, what the Hadestown was Paxton Hall-Yoshida doing chilling in the auditorium? You shoved all that away, focusing on staying in character until the director called for a break.

‘I want to go to the fair. I want to go so badly! I just need a change, need to get out of this house for a little while. I never do anything, so this can’t be asking for too much, right?’

You projected all that into your everything - face, voice, mannerisms, energy.

“Hold!”

Everyone froze.

The director wrote a few things on his paper, sighed, and underlined something several times.

“Okay, good job! I need to revise some of the blocking, then we’ll do notes, so take ten.” Your sudden nerves had definitely made you pitchy, you knew that would be one of your notes for sure.

A chorus of “Thank you ten”s erupted, and you immediately ran to Eleanor, telling the others good job as you passed.

You leaned in and started speaking to her, quietly.

“Okay you need to finish telling me about Devi, and that other news you’re being so cryptic about! Also, what’s up with Fierro over there?” you nodded towards Paxton hoping he wouldn’t see, and you noticed Fab is sitting near him. You realized they’re probably waiting for Eleanor and/or Devi. That must be it, he’s been hanging out with them lately, right? Eleanor gasped.

“You’re right! Paxton is such a Fierro!”

You cringed inwardly a little bit as her voice carried through the auditorium, mixing with the others. Your eyes darted over to him for a fraction of a second. Oh god. He was looking at you. Or in your general direction at least. Lena, the costumer, walked around the set gingerly, following you around and getting you out of your dress incredibly carefully as you and Eleanor walked off stage.

“No! Well, yes- but no. What’s he doing here? Jocks never come here during rehearsals. I saw Fab too, are you guys and Devi getting dinner or something?” You said, entering the auditorium, and stepping out of the dress. You grabbed sweatpants and a silky, floral kimono jacket from your bag to throw over your leotard and tights. She waved back at Fab before sitting down in the front. You both grabbed your fans and dramatically flicked them open in sync. Your wrists fluttered, cooling both of you off. A knowing, and slightly mischievous, look came on her face.

“Devi and Fab and I are. Paxton must be here for something… else.” she shrugged, nodding towards Paxton. You looked over again. He was staring at you. You did a double take and tried to hold back your smile.

“Wh- I do not know to what you are referring.”

“To what I am referring is the blush on his cheeks.”

You barely held back a nervous, bubbling laugh.

“He is not blushing! Why would he be blushing!”

“I don’t know,” She shrugged, “Just like how I don’t know that he’s been loitering in the halls outside the music room during your last three solo music rehearsals.”

You struggled for an answer. Before you could form one, you were interrupted.

“Okay, okay what is the best Lin Manuel Miranda musical? Because Kathryn thinks it’s Hamilton-”

“Duh!”

“-But I think it’s In the Heights! It’s an underrated jewel!” Jonah interjected, still wearing his Jesse Tuck hat.

You considered for a moment.

“I mean, they’re too different to compare. In the Heights has the same energy as Rent - showcasing what goes on in ordinary people’s lives, and how love ties us all together,” he nodded in agreement, “But Hamilton is on a way larger scale, almost Les Mis meets Fun Home vibes. But in terms of personal preference…” Eleanor scoffed at your answer, and Jonah went back to debate further with Kathryn.

“Anyway,” you turned back to Eleanor to ask her what the hell she meant by Paxton Hall-Yoshida was blushing. But before you could-

“Eleanor, we need you to try on your blue dress again,” Lena was already pulling her away, “I had the empire waist in the right place but half the pins fell out, and it’s just...” And she was whisked away before you could finish the thought. You just had time to help Holly get out her wig pins and drink some lemon water before notes. Eleanor still wasn’t back, so you made sure to write down hers for her. It was pretty standard; be quiet backstage, go over your lines, don’t touch props that aren’t yours, don’t eat in costume, and a couple blocking changes you made note of. After your end of rehearsal warm downs and huddle, everyone left relatively quickly. You ducked into the bathroom to freshen up a little. Sometimes it was hard coming down from such intense energy after rehearsal. You mentally ran through your to do list. You needed to get some more tea, write that essay when you got home, go over your notes- You gasped, cutting off your own train of thought. You ran out of the bathroom to look for Eleanor, still clutching her notes in hand.

Your voice still echoed in Paxton’s ears. He wished he had a whole album of you singing. Your voice made him want to ruin his spotify algorithm by listening to nothing else. You had looked at him a couple times, and his heart had almost stopped. He didn’t know eye contact could be so intense. It’s probably just cause you’re like, the only person in the audience. Where else is she supposed to look? He deflated a little. He heard his name and looked over to you and Eleanor talking together. Hopefully it was about him. Hopefully it was good. He checked his phone, trying to look busy. When he glanced up to see if you were looking, you were gone. He started to look around for you when he saw Eleanor waving at Fab, and sure enough, you were next to her. What he didn’t expect was you dropping your dress to the ground. Time slowed down (and his heart sped up) as you stretched a little, and pulled out sweatpants from your bag.

Wow.

You had on what looked like a bathing suit on underneath, and a few other people had done the same, but he knew that image would be in his memory, probably forever. His heart was beating in his ears and he knew he must be blushing.

“You okay, Paxton?” Fab asked, a seat or two away. Oh god, he didn’t want people asking why he blushed every time he looked at you! He muttered something about needing to make a call and headed for the doors. Don’t look back at her, don’t look back at her… His eyes involuntarily darted in your direction right before he left. You had on a flowy translucent jacket, your hair thrown back supermodel style as you fanned yourself to cool down. He needed to cool down too. Maybe a cold shower, a really cold shower.

You managed to find Eleanor just before she left. Two girls were with her, you had seen Fab once, and you’d heard a lot about Devi, but had never been introduced.

You gave Eleanor her notes, and she hugged you.

“You’re a lifesaver!”

“Of course, I-”

“Uh, who’s this?” you looked over, and the shorter girl - Devi, based on what you’d heard about her - was giving you a weird look. You introduced yourself.

“Nice to meet you. How do you know Eleanor?” said the taller girl - definitely Fab.

“Oh,” you smiled, “she’s my almost mother in law. And my arch rival,” you counted on your fingers, “my sister, my niece, my lover, my husband, and…” you trailed off, trying to think of the other dynamics your characters had had in past shows.

“Your co-conspirator.”

“Right,” you laughed. Devi and Fab looked at you two.

“We’re in the musical together.” you clarified. You were about to part ways when you called to Eleanor, “Hey, we’re still on for running lines tomorrow night?”

“Uh… Sounds good!” she walked away quickly, speaking to Devi and Fab in hushed tones. Something was definitely up. That was typical Eleanor Scheming behavior.

That night, you almost couldn’t sleep. This wasn’t the normal post rehearsal can’t sleep. In fact, Tuck Everlasting was the last thing on your mind as you readjusted your pillows and snuggled into your duvet. You stared at the neon blue stars projected and swirling on your ceiling. You sighed. Again. Your brain was a 24/7 livestream of Paxton Hall-Yoshida to relax/study to. You saw him again, his face in the dimly lit auditorium, Adonis in a sea of faded seats. If you hadn’t been sure before, you knew now that red was definitely his color. You rolled onto your side. Your heart picked up speed as a thought crossed your mind. You could almost see Paxton now, kneeling next to you, his fingertips brushing your cheek. The piano underscore to “Seventeen” ran through your mind. You could imagine him saying “Wait with me, we could share the world…” so vividly it almost hurt. He leaned in, and…

You let out a loud sigh and rolled over again. Your heart was fully saturated. That’s more than enough pining for tonight.

“Paxton!”

He was a little surprised when Eleanor just walked up to him at lunch the next day. Most people were too intimidated to approach him out of the blue.

“I have a plan.”

“Uh, I don’t know what you-”

“Cut the crap, I know you like her.”

His face blanched. Well, yeah of course he did. Who wouldn’t? He was going to ask Eleanor if there was something he could do to win you over, just not here, not now. Not where everyone could watch and jeer and rib him for it. Just like they were doing now.

“Woah, dude, who is it?” Trent asked. He fumbled for words. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He hadn’t kept his crush a secret because he was embarrased of you, he’d kept it a secret because his dumbass friends wouldn’t get you. Hell, he barely got you. You were so deep, and emotive, and artistic...

“Bro, if you like her as much as it seems like you do,” Trent continued, “you gotta win her over.” He was a little shocked at the agreement murmuring through his group of friends. He didn’t know how to respond. Trent turned to Eleanor.

“What’s the plan, drama mama?”

“First of all,” she said, an almost humorously dangerous look on her face, “never call me that again. Second,” she shoved some papers into Paxton’s hands, “meet me in the music room immediately after school.” She started back for her table. Trent looked back over to Paxton.

“You gotta do it, dude. We’ll cover for you at swim.”

The rest of his friends agreed. He was pleasantly surprised at how supportive they were being.

“Yeah, I guess... we’ve got a plan.”

The next day went by pretty smoothly. No rehearsal was scheduled since they were finishing construction for some of the sets, but everyone was instructed to do a couple read throughs of the script, focusing on scenes they’re still forgetting, to make sure everyone’s off book. You stopped by 7 Eleven to get a blue slurpee (for homework) and a couple coconut waters (for run throughs). You texted Eleanor on your way to the slurpee machine.

okay so do you like the mango coconut water or the pineapple one?? It’s the mango one right?? i always forget lmao

sent at 4:16 pm

btw I don’t have that much homework so you can probs come by around 5:30 if you’re ready by then

sent at 4:16 pm

Bae Tuck

OMFG!! I totally forgot about running lines tonight, I can’t make it! :( but I’ll send someone over to help you out. :)

sent at 4:17 pm

You squinted at your screen. That was weird. Eleanor never used colon parentheses smilies. Like, ever. She always used emojis, and usually way more than two per text.

yeah np, are u good? ♡

sent at 4:17 pm

Bae Tuck

Yes :)

sent at 4:18 pm

Bae Tuck

Also get the passionfruit one 🥥🍠 👀

sent at 4:18

that’s,,, el that’s a sweet potato,,

sent at 4:19 pm

Bae Tuck

Close enough 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

sent at 4:19pm

...Okay? That was definitely weird. You shook it off and headed for the counter to pay. You stopped half way there, and turned back to swap the mango for passionfruit.

Not long after you had finished your homework and tidied up your room a little, the doorbell rang. You exited the kitchen, drinks in hand, and opened the door. Your heart caught in your throat. Paxton Hall-Yoshida was standing outside. And you were pretty sure he looked nervous. You both just stood there for a second. No one breathed, no one spoke.

“Uh, hi, do you want to…” you backed up, motioning for him to come inside.

“Yeah, thanks,” he said, entering the doorway. Paxton motherfucking Hall-Yoshida was in your living room. You held out a hand to him.

“Coconut water?” he took the box, looked at the label, and smiled.

“Yeah, thanks,” he said again, this time a faint, yet unmistakable note of joy in his voice. He took a sip. He smiled.

“Passionfruit’s my favorite.” You silently thanked Eleanor, who you knew must have planned all this. Most of the evening was a blur, and you thanked god your family wasn’t home right now. You went upstairs, texted Eleanor asking what the actual fuck, made some surprisingly comfortable small talk, then filled him in on how to run lines.

“Do you think playing the soundtrack would help you… get into character?” he asked.

“I would probably just end up singing the whole thing,” You laughed and tried to ignore the butterflies in your chest. The main scene you struggled with was before “Seventeen”. It was harder to get into Winnie’s head because you had no romantic feelings for Jonah, and you always just made each other laugh. You had started with a few easier scenes of Winnie and Jesse, like the fair, and the dialogue before “Top of the World”.

“That was really good,” he said, and you felt the sincerity of his words.

“Thanks…” you smiled and took a sip of coconut water, hoping you weren’t blushing too hard.

“So what next?” he asked.

“Probably the scene before ‘Seventeen’,” you said, giving him the page and scene number, “it’s one of the hardest ones for me. I guess I just can’t connect to Jonah the way Winnie does.”

“Huh,” he said, skimming the page. When you looked up at him, he had something between a smile and a smirk playing at his lips. You made yourself look away before you got too distracted. You refused to think about the fact that you were sitting across from Paxton Hall-Yoshida on your bed, in your room, like you were… close with each other. His eyes skimmed the script, finding the dialogue. He glanced up at you and nodded, indicating he found his place. You began.

“I was so afraid you wouldn’t get away,” you said, jumping into character.

“I may be 102, but I can still outrun anyone,” a smile played at his lips. You smiled, then let your face fall.

“I’m so sorry, I-I tried to warn you-”

“No, no,” he interjected almost seamlessly, “It’s okay, it’s… refreshing having someone look after me who isn’t my mom.” His eyes flickered between your face and the page. You smiled with him for a second, then let distress cloud your face.

“Jesse… that man came by my house today. He heard the music box, he knows about you-”

“I know he knows…”

You continued on with the scene and he trailed off when he came to the sheet music for the song Seventeen. You took in a breath to start the dialogue in the middle of the song, but before you could…

“Six years from now you will turn seventeen,

Turn seventeen,

The same age as me,

Six years from now,

Go to the spring,

Go to the spring and drink…”

He was singing to you. He was looking at you and singing to you. His eyes only flickered down to the page to confirm the lyrics. He was nervous, you could tell. But through his hesitance, the emotion in his voice was sincere. Your heart was beating faster. You didn’t even notice your pulse was ringing in your ears, you were too focused on Paxton.

“I'll wait for you till you turn seventeen,

Turn seventeen,

The same age as me,

Six years from now,

Go to the spring,

Go to the spring and drink…” Your hand rose to cover your mouth. He hesitated, and you remembered your dialogue.

“Uh, wh-what if I… forget where the spring is?” He reached out and took your free hand in his. Your pulse was off the charts. “I’ll go get you some water. Just… remember to keep it somewhere safe. Somewhere no one will find it.” You got the feeling he wasn’t just talking about the water. You knew he had never really been in a serious relationship before, and it clicked suddenly - if he learned an entire song to duet with you, just how much he must like you. You exhaled a breathy laugh, unsure how to process the sudden euphoria you felt.

“You make the world sound so… exciting. I just want to drink the water right now!”

“Uh, no. You have to wait.” you both smiled, anticipating the upcoming joke.

“Why?” you ask, “What’s the difference?” You held your breath as he tried not to laugh through the delivery of the punchline.

“Believe me,” he rubbed his thumb over your hand, “there’s a difference.” You both chuckled, and he continued singing. You were so focused on him, so… touched that he would do all this for you.

“Winnie, wait with me,

And we could be married,

Winnie, wait with me,

And we'll share the world,

Winnie, you can stop time,

And live like this,

Forever…”

“I could live like this forever,” you echoed.

“Live like this...” you sang in tandem.

“What do you say, Winnie? Do you want to…” he broke character suddenly, and asked, his eyes boring into yours, “Do you want to go out some time?”

He could see the adorable smile blooming on your face, even from behind your hand. You nodded.

“Yes, I-I would love that,” and you began to sing the last line in the song, “Forever-”

But before you finished holding out the note, his lips were on yours. His mouth moved slowly, intentionally, against yours. You followed his lead, flustered. He leaned further forward, his palm caressing your cheek. It was everything you imagined it would be, and you had quite the imagination. Your head was angled up and your hands rested themselves on his back, one tracing little shapes. Your shoulders were pressed against each other and neither of you could think. He was so warm. He tasted like coconut and passion fruit, and a distant part of your mind silently thanked Eleanor again.

You really could live like this forever.

#paxton hall yoshida x reader #paxton hall yoshida #never have i ever #nhie #nhie x reader #never have i ever x reader

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urmomsstuntdouble · 3 years

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some skater au yao + hk ramblings bc @mysticalmusicwhispers wanted to know more about them in the au

- he's 56 years old and has owned his casino for 30 years. He first got into the business of casino ownership because he thought it'd be a good source of passive income, but he didn't realize how much a job owning a casino would actually be and took over as the head executive manager person after about a year of struggling to manage another job plus the casino. He actually likes it more than he thought he would, because while it's a super stressful job and requires him to coordinate a lot of moving parts basically all the time, it does allow him to be in complete control of something, which he likes.

-yao is 56 because i think 5 and 6 look good next to each other

-hong kong is a skateboarder and local insufferable goose, and has a weird not quite father-daughter relationship with yao. she was born in hong kong and adopted by arthur, who’s doing the single dad thing. they lived in london until she was seven, and moved around a bit before settling in las vegas when leona was ten. she has come to realize that this was kind of stupid, but she can’t really do anything about it now.

-yao and arthur aren’t really friends, but they do know each other from youth and sometimes hang out still

-that’s not actually how yao and leona met though. she and some friends (the gen z squad, which includes taiwan, seychelles, iceland, and macau) were being rascally middle schoolers and trying to see if they could trick anyone into letting them into a club. this was entirely based on macau having been asked one time by one of those people who stands on the street corner registering people to vote if he’d been registered yet. he had not, seeing as he was probably like 12 at the time, but it gave them the foolish confidence they needed to try to sneak into an adult establishment

-yao happened to be there that day when the kids were trying to get in, and he was like okay kids, what are you trying to do rn and they were like wym we’re clearly adults and he was like i know for a fact that you’re not, please leave or i’ll call the cops and that scared them right off

-they were also introduced later by arthur, and leona did get into a bit of trouble for trying to sneak into the casino. it was a whole thing

-leona is one of the youngest skaters in the au. she and seychelles are the only minors that hang about the skate park, and the adults there aren’t fully aware of their ages, so it’s assumed that they’re of a similar age range to everybody else. most of the other skaters are within like. 25-35 age range, and most of them assume that sey and hk are college kids or something, and they don’t correct that misunderstanding. they do tag along on some adult expeditions at times, although that’s mostly just going out into the desert to smoke. occasional gambling though

-leona and yao have run into each other a fair few times since they first met. she likes to hang out in the strip because it makes her feel like she’s an adult and independent, but she can’t hang out by the super famous casinos or hotels, because it’s easier to get into more trouble there, so she mostly hangs out in the moderately-well-to-do area, which is where yao’s casino is located. they also see each other decently often as a result of yao’s not quite friendship with arthur, as they do like to hang out from time to time but are both shut ins. yao owning the casino is actually a great way for them to hang out, because it’s sort of like his second home and it feels casual to him while also being the sort of place where you can go to casually get shitfaced, which is right up arthur’s alley.

-due to yao and arthur’s whatever they have going on, leona has been able to talk to him a few times. she mostly thinks he’s just another old fart who talks too much about the economy (cursed idea but imagine if yao was one of those bitcoin people) but also has a casino, so that’s mildly cool. she does find herself slightly interested in the fact that he is chinese, because she feels a bit disconnected from that part of herself as a result of having been raised and grown up in the west.

-leona’s casino hanging-out-at really gets started when she’s about 14. she gets upset because she’s been outed at school (she’s bi). though it’s not really a big deal if arthur finds out, seeing as he’s also bi, it felt like a really big deal for her and something she wasn’t ready for. she decides to run away, but doesn’t really know where to go, cause she doesn’t want to see anyone from school and doesn’t know where any of the adult skaters live, so she winds up at the casino. yao is ready to tell her to fuck off until he sees that she’s upset and his passive aggression towards her gets more passive and less aggressive

-he winds up taking her out to eat, and he tries to get her to talk about what happened but she refuses to engage. yao tries to give her a bunch of life advice instead, and she also refuses to engage (but still pays attention because he has a way of talking that makes him seem like everything he’s saying is some sort of law of the universe).

-there exists a bit of a rift between arthur and leona, because he’s really not that great of a dad. he has some other kids, but she’s the only one currently living with him. some are in college, some are adults who’ve moved away, but they rarely ever come home for the holidays or anything like that, and most of them have a strained relationship with him. leona is no exception, and she’s sort of like. god i can’t wait to move out. it makes her feel like she has a bit more say in her own life to hang out at the casino, which yao starts letting her do after he gets more analytical of her relationship with arthur. he feels like she needs a space to be herself, and also that he can provide that for her.

-speaking of, yao really likes to analyze people. that’s not specific to this au, i just think that he can sometimes get really analytical and treat other people like they’re characters in a book? like they’re a puzzle for him to figure out, and he sort of treats leona like that. she isn’t pleased with this at all, but that’s the price of being a minor who wants to hang out in casinos, so.

-yao is pretty passive regarding leona and arthur’s relationship. he has put himself in the position that if they’re mad at each other, he might have to hear about it from both of them. or, worst case scenario- mediate. and he doesn’t really want to do that (he doesn’t really want to be invested in any of this, but damn it hong kong, you were so entertaining to examine) so he just sort of stands on the sidelines sipping a smoothie while they argue.

-yao does however come to consider himself a better father figure towards hong kong than arthur. he never tells anyone about this, but he feels like, with all his unsolicited life advice, that he’s doing a good job. leona doesn’t really care, and thinks she could do without it, but he will not stop, so. he also helped her study for the sat, which was nice.

-the idea of fatherhood is a bit tricky with these three though, because leona doesn’t really feel like she has a dad. she knows she has her biological father, and she has her adopted father, but she doesn’t know who her biological father is and we all know that arthur is bad at being a dad. she doesn’t know if she even wants a dad anymore tbh. one time she gets in an argument with yao and she tells him he’s not her real dad, and he just says, totally calm. you don’t have a dad. and that’s pretty shattering to her

-even so, leona comes to abuse her casino-going privileges. yao doesn’t like this At All, and has threatened to call the police on her multiple times, but leona also threatens to tell arthur what he’s letting her do, so they keep it to this mutual agreement to not do anything about it. because of that, she sometimes brings in more kids, specifically the gen z squad and the ily trio. this makes her quite popular at school, which gets to her head sometimes

#that's all for this post i think #this mightve gotten too angsty #hk isnt a ball of angst she's actually quite charismatic and would probably be a bard in dnd #but ye #hetalia #hws #hws hong kong #hws china #nyo hong kong #skater girls au #ceros posting

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ashenburst · 4 years

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Any Which Way

Mista x Reader, fluff (?), 4366 words - oh GOD do I hate this one and I apologize if it sucks in advance I just aaa had no coherent ideas whatsoever and I was trying to write fluff at the time my brain was screaming angst and - well, it shows. Anyway.

Mista is acting up because you fed the Pistols. Oh no.

When Mista asked you out, you told him his joke was tasteless. When Mista asked you out for the second time, you didn’t feel well enough. The third time, wondrously, your grandmother needed your assistance. He didn’t bother asking you for the fourth time.

It was a long gag running between the two of you, and the run started off wrongly. A marathon ought to begin with a leisure pace, and only by the near end should the contestants accelerate – this method would provide optimal results. Your situation was the exact opposite. Naturally, it did not turn out well enough.

At least for you, because you knew this was a silly mishap, from the beginning to the end. Yes, you may had been mean the first time, but it was an automated reaction: Mista was a jokester, and you enjoyed retorting. Many of the interactions weren’t serious, simply put. You were in Buccellati’s team for around a week and this dynamic had already been established.

So when he casually asked you out, after knowing you for such a short period, you brushed it off with a retort. For a moment, though, you were a mess. To be asked out by a guy this pretty, this… cool? Unbelievable, truly – it was only natural that shock rendered you dazed. Then, you procured a reply fitting to that disbelief you were stunned with: a snarky comeback. Afterwards, he quickly changed the subject, but did not change in behavior. There was no flinch in his voice, no meaningful allusion to the possible date, no, nothing at all. You had a valid reason to believe it wasn’t a sincere question.

And once you borrowed more thought to that matter, logic grounded your idea. You had seen Mista flirt with other girls, which meant he had a social life outside the mafia. This was not surprising, he had quite the unique charm. Therefore, he could certainly get together with people who were better than you.

However, this pondering had a side effect. The gunslinger crept onto your mind, binding your daily reflections into a slow realization that, perhaps, you had a thing for him.

But you didn’t feel bad. If anything, you were glad that he was your friend. Although his company was a gnawing reminder of your growing feelings, at the end of the day, he fulfilled you – and you supposed you fulfilled him too. Not once did he bully you, so you took that as a positive sign. On the other hand, you had a slight bullying tendency towards him. Teasing him was something he always loved to respond to, dramatically, exaggerated, which would cause much laughter to the both of you. In other words… there was no harm done.

The next two times you were asked out held terrible luck to them. You simply could not make it. Upon uttering your excuse, in both cases, Mista laughed, commented, and moved on. Swiftly and comically, just the usual. You were left to rethink the tinge in your heart.

This third fiasco had occurred just a couple of days ago. What remained of it was – null, just some void of reminiscence that irked your daydreaming. Early in the morning, in Libeccio, you couldn’t enjoy your drink. The haziness of your mind did not carry a pleasant undercurrent. You did not know what to make of it, or what to remake of it. You were left to stare at your own beverage, hand on your chin, as your empty thoughts tumbled.

It was quite peaceful. The kind of peaceful you’d see in the first morning classes back in school. People all around you were barely awake, and quietly agreed to bask in the mutual silence.

That is, until Buccellati strolled in. His lively “buongiorno” made you flinch. Where did that energy come from?

The team leader explained himself. He already had a long discussion with some Mario La-something (you weren’t focused enough to catch that) and its result was a mission. You clenched your jaw. This early in the morning? Damn. You could only pray you wouldn’t be picked, you really weren’t in the mood –

But alas, Murphy’s law was in effect.

Buccellati rightfully deduced that there was something going on between you and Mista. Therefore he stated, “I’m sending (Y/N) and Mista on this mission, due to their remarkable chemistry.” Something that was, allegedly, apparent right from the start.

Not only that. Buccellati’s decision was (objectively speaking) great, as your and Mista’s stand were a powerful combo. Speaking of the Pistols, there was the amusing fact that you would die internally whenever you saw them. You surely were looking forward to that, and… cooperating with Mista too. This might work out well.

Someone tapped on your shoulder, making you jump in your seat. Looking at the culprit, you weren’t surprised to uncover his identity. It was him.

“Let’s go, sleepyhead,” Mista urged, wiggling his thick brows. Your smile was inevitable. “Or you’d rather trade places with Abbacchio?” He questioned with a smirk.

“Huh?” You took a glance at Abbacchio, and immediately scowled. He somehow slid so much down his chair that his chin was touching his chest – and he was sleeping soundly. How come you didn’t notice?

“Too bad, you can’t trade places with Abbacchio. Duty calls. Come on, on your feet,” Mista blabbered, which barely worked on your half-conscious self. You let our yet another “huh” which was followed by a disturbed squeak – Mista started pulling you up. You had no choice but to stand up.

“(Y/N) secured, Buccellati!” Mista proudly announced. Buccellati wasn’t too impressed. You, however, were impressed by the fact Mista was so… awake, all of a sudden.

Mista then put a hand on Narancia’s shoulder. “Okay, before we go, Narancia – you know what you’re supposed to do, right?”

The boy had a similar reaction to yours. “Eh? What?”

Mista nodded towards Abbacchio. Narancia grinned. You bit your lip, both grateful and sad you’d miss this. That was how you were brought back to your senses, and how you departed for the task.

Now, the nature of the mission was simple, but it took so long. Until you got there, until you found the exact location, until Mista talked with his Pistols (and you tried to, too), etcetera, etcetera – in the end, it took you hours to complete it. Funnily enough, you didn’t even take out your own stand. So, in your eyes, this was a complete waste of time.

Luckily, with that over, you two were free to go. Not before Mista had a little chit-chat with his stand, praising them all for a job well done. However, he didn’t really get the reaction he expected – instead of the usual one, just a “yay” in unison, the Pistols began asking Mista for a reward. A snack, to be specific. Mista quickly turned them down.

“It isn’t lunchtime yet, everyone, you’ll spoil your appetite,” he explained himself, only for the Pistols to start loudly pleading him for food. Mista crossed his arms.

“Come on guys, have some patience. We’ll go back to Libeccio just in time for lunch.”

It was a solid argument. Did that help? No, not at all. The Pistols were still floating in front of Mista and screaming with their tiny voices about how hungry they were. Their user, acting like the usual tired parent, tried to subdue them – but to no avail. They continued rambling, almost every single one of them, like spoiled children. Because, although did not want to be viewed that way, they truly were children. Even the fact they denied it supported the idea.

But these were no ordinary crybabies. They were sly and awfully intelligent, all while maintaining their characteristic lighthearted aura. Those childish antics? They lead to chaos, sometimes even to brutal honesty.

Mista got to deal with the downsides of that, but you? You would just stand aside. And whenever you did get to interact with those Pistols, you were exposed to downpours of compliments and almost perfect behavior. The brutal honesty? It came in the form of their heartfelt words and actions, as you were able to discipline them better than Mista could ever hope to. They listened to you, which came as no surprise.

Because Mista always played the role of the bad cop. In contrast, you were the good cop. It was only natural – you adored them, you had every reason to.

Taking all of these things into account, you couldn’t help but feel bad for them. You took their side.

“But Mista, they performed exceptionally well on this mission. On an empty stomach! Maybe they do deserve a little something, look at them. They’re desperate,” you made sure to point out. The Pistols approved of their new advocate.

“There’s no way in hell I’m wasting my money on them when we have free food at Libeccio,” Mista said, causing various sounds of disappointment. Even you sighed. He rolled his eyes.

“Come on now, shush, let’s go.” He waved his hand at the Pistols who did their best to ignore that.

“Aww, but Mista, we deserve a reward! You told us we did a great job! And! And (Y/N) agrees!” One of the Pistols was heard clearly. You nodded in approval, which Mista didn’t notice. He was too weirded out.

“What’s up with you? Why are you so persistent all of a sudden? I told you not to do this,” his tone suddenly hushed down. Now it was your turn to roll your eyes. He had no idea how to handle the situation, evidently – the Pistols wouldn’t shut up unless they were fed. It was as simple as that.

You shot another question at him, “And why won’t you let them have a snack, Mista?”

“I think I’ve been yelling my reasons up until now,” he murmured.

“Look, your method isn’t working. They won’t calm down. Why don’t you just give in and basically do the right thing?”

Mista made a disgruntled “eh” to that.

“Don’t be on their side. Just don’t. Please,” he pleaded, irritation lowering his tone. He kept that act of an exhausted father even with you – and this confused you. “Why?”

“Because,” Mista said, then paused, waving his hand towards the Pistols who were already parading in joy, “they’re impossible.”

“Impossible? Them? Ha, I wonder why. Maybe because you aren’t a good parental figure,” you teased.

“That isn’t true,” Mista quickly responded, clearly displeased. “If anything, they’re acting like this because they are a reflection of who I am. I’m not perfect, neither are they, but as you can see, I’m trying to make them… better.” He took a deep breath, and you had to think that, woah, he truly was invested. “I know them the best, because they are me and mine, so the task is on me,” he finished.

To that verbal essay, you simply shrugged. “Yeah, sure. So you know they’ll get quiet once they have what they want.”

Reluctantly, Mista nodded. “They need to be taught patience, though,” he added.

You were quick to counter. “Or do they need to be rewarded for doing great?”

You assumed this fried Mista’s brain because he couldn’t devise a proper response. His face, however, depicted the reply quite clearly – a pout appeared, such a childish move coming from the user of a childish stand. Soon, however, he had to react. The Pistols were getting too excited.

He waved his arms in a surrendering gesture, and almost hit some of the Pistols while doing so… purposefully or not. “Fine, you win. What’s your grand idea for the reward?”

That was where your little snack came in. Something you carried around in case a mission would appear out of nowhere. You once had the displeasure of going on a day-long mission without anything proper to eat. This instance, you weren’t hungry enough for the fruit. “I… can give them my apple,” you suggested. You were sure they wouldn’t mind. Their appetite was so blind, they would eat anything.

Mista, on the other hand, once again acted baffling. His eyes widened after he had heard your offer, and he denied it. “Aw, no, (Y/N) you won’t –”

But you interrupted him. “Again? Why?” Now, why was he so insistent on not letting them eat? Out of all people in the team, he was the most relaxed one. Even if he were trying to lecture the Pistols and set an example for them, he didn’t have to go this far. It was out of character, to say the least.

Strangely, it seemed as if he too was confused – he paused, as a furrow brought his brows together. “That’s your apple. Don’t waste it on them,” he reasoned strictly. Strictly?

You sighed, already removing your backpack. Mista obviously had ulterior motives, but you couldn’t care less. The Pistols wouldn’t be silenced until they had their meal – and not only that, but they deserved it. If only Mista realized that…

Maybe he did? Nevertheless, something was going on in his mind. You looked over to him. He was staring at you, despite the mess some of the Pistols were making in front of him. Number Five was already on the verge of tears. Oh, he was definitely hiding something.

You reciprocated his stern tone. “I’m not hungry, but they are hungry. Who should eat the apple? Them. Seems pretty logical to me.”

At long last, Mista gave up. “Aw, man, there really is no arguing with you, huh?” He waved his head in disbelief. “Alright, have it your way. I suppose there’s no harm done.”

And on that cue, the Pistols all flew towards you, squeaking their gratefulness. They were already in front of your face, telling you how amazing you were and how thankful they were. Just a bunch of overjoyed little gremlins. You couldn’t help but giggle.

“Thank you, everyone, thank you,” you barely managed to utter, overwhelmed with their excitement. You had to stop and stare for a moment there – they were actually flailing their hand and feet in the air, performing a dance of sorts. They were that happy! It warmed your heart, it really did.

So, to reward them. As soon as you took it out, they were decimating the apple.

It looked like carnage. You were about to look away when you noticed something odd.

Did… did Number Three just push Number Five? Were you seeing that well? Yeah, you definitely were, since Number Three was now shoving his tiny hand into Number Five’s face.

“Number Three! Don’t be such a meanie, there’s enough for everyone,” you warned.

He looked up to you, his eyes squinted, then he huffed. “Sheesh, fine.”

“Thank you so much, (Y/N),” Number Five mumbled, his voice high-pitched on the brink of breaking, as usual.

“You’re welcome!” You offered a reassuring smile, and the little stand mustered one too. Your heart was melting. You had to squeal.

That attracted Number Three’s attention. “Ass-kisser,” he grumbled. You gasped.

That was when Mista came in. He stepped by your side, pointed at them, and ordered, “Oi, Pistols, behave yourselves! You don’t wanna leave a bad impression on (Y/N), now, do you?”

Naturally, they screamed a “nu-uh”.

You heard their user sigh. “Just as I thought, whew,” he spoke in relief.

You looked over to Mista, and he mustered a smile.

“You were asking the Pistols what’s wrong with them,” you told him, “but in reality, it’s you who has been acting weird.”

He chuckled. “What do you mean?”

The apple in your hand weighted so little that you had to give it a peek. Or at least, you gave a peek to of its last fragments as they were being devoured. They actually ate everything.

Redirecting your attention back to Mista, you told him what was on your mind. “You’re too… uptight. Relax a little, will you?”

“Ah, that. Absolutely, relaxing straight away!”

His showcase of relaxation was stretching himself. What an incredible way to put his muscles on display – but you knew better than to ogle. To avoid the possibility of being flustered, you looked away. The Pistols were a much more pleasant sight. Sitting on your palm, just enjoying the aftermath of their meal.

“Pistols! It’s go time, come here,” you heard their user’s demand, and you watched as they flew back to Mista. They vanished, and thus, the entire hassle was over with. Thanks to you, it was done so in no time. You almost felt victorious.

That would mean that only you and Mista were left – alone. This wasn’t a problem on your way to the mission, but now, after everything you had witnessed, some awkwardness spawned in the air. It was a shame, truly. You finally had some time alone with Mista and you were getting these weird vibes from him, and they unsettled you. Perhaps for a good reason.

The only way to find out more was through communication. You decided to be straightforward, and did not hesitate to inquire, “Alright, so, what’s up with you?”

Mista jumped, as if it were a gunshot he heard instead of your question. “M-me?”

“Yes, you. Have you seen the number four or something?”

“Ew, no. Why are you askin’ – have you seen it?!” He was already getting panicky.

Probably yes, but unlike Mista, you didn’t bother noticing and remembering them. “Nope. But why are you acting so weird? You okay?”

“What exactly are you referring to?”

“You being way too strict with the Pistols.”

He laughed. “Oh. That stupid thing. It’s nothing. Dontcha worry.”

“I am worried. You seemed too aggravated. Almost as if you weren’t yourself.”

He placed a hand on his chest, his expression that of astonishment. “Now that is what you call a surprise.”

You shook your head in misunderstanding. “What are you talking about?”

He then placed a hand on your shoulder and offered you his tearful answer. “You worrying about me! I didn’t know you would do that!”

You were partially offended by this act because, by all accords, you cared about him, more than he could ever imagine. Mista probably caught the meaning of your grim face, so he let go of your shoulder and talked on.

“Kidding, I know you care. Anyway, yeah, they messed up big time. We had a chat, me and the Pistols, and would you believe it, they act like brats so they could get you to take their side.”

Despite the annoyed façade you put on, you had to laugh. Those sly little gremlins, brightening your mood even when they weren’t present.

“Are they like this with everyone or?” You had to ask – because as far as you had seen, nobody was as privileged as you were.

“Nah, just you. You’re the only one who’s willing to help ‘em anyway.” He put a hand on his chin, completely discarding your sudden smile. “Come to think of it, (Y/N), you’re too… hm…”

“I’m what?” You tilted your head, and he snapped his fingers.

“Nice! I think that’s the right word. You’re just too nice.”

Well, isn’t that a lovely thing to hear. “Aww, why, thank you.”

“Yeah, now listen up, you should really take care! There are bad people out there who can take advantage of that!” He raised a finger in the air to further emphasize his point.

“Err, Mista, hate to break it to you, but I’m literally a member of the mafia. I doubt that can happen.”

“And yet you’re so sweet! Sometimes, at least,” he whispered the last bit, and before you could say anything to that, he continued. “I’m telling you this for a reason. I mean, did you know that the Pistols were abusing your kindness?”

“Not that I was aware, and not that it mattered,” you replied with staggering indifference. Mista, on the other hand, was overly jumpy. This was so odd.

He went from one extreme to another in a handful of moments. The shift was so unusually stark that it left you perplexed. Lost in thought, you didn’t pay much attention to Mista’s future ramblings.

“You get it? You – you didn’t recognize their scheme! They’re acting all whiny because they know you’ll react. As I said, you’re too good… for your own good.”

Did you hear that well? You looked at him with a raised brow. He winked.

That sort of “joke” or whatever it was, deserved only a snort. That’s what you gave him, and he wasn’t pleased in the least.

“Did you just – oh come on (Y/N), why not actually laugh? Laugher is so healthy! It prolongs life expectancy. Or am I really that unfunny?”

“You’re the funniest, Mista, don’t you worry about that,” you told him, and as a reassuring act, pat his head (or at least, his hat). His eyes widened and he smiled after the initial shock. You suddenly became aware of what you did, and you averted your gaze elsewhere to continue your explanation. “I… suppose I am simply confused as to why you are so…”

“Worried?”

“Yeah, I guess, among other things.”

He provided you with an elaboration spoken through the smile you had caused him. “Worried, yeah, I am worried because you’re too nice to some people. You see, (Y/N), just like you, I’m simply confused as fuck. Some people get that nice treatment, and sometimes they’re undeserving of that. I mean, just look at you. You’re so weak for the Pistols. Like… why do you like ‘em so much, anyway?”

You looked over to him with squinted eyes. What was this question about?

He leaned in close. “Are they cute? Or just adorably… bratty? Is that what you like?”

It clicked. It finally clicked.

“Mista… oh, Mista…” You began laughing. This was unbelievable.

You were being such a prick towards him sometimes. It was no wonder why he went crazy once he saw you were actually capable of being so caring and sweet for none other than his stand. His stand! The irony! He must’ve been so jealous, even desperate, to see you side with them and not him.

And if he truly suffered from jealousy, well, only one thing could cause it. The revelation, no, the mere possibility was so wonderful –

“You okay?”

Not at all, but he didn’t have to know that. Shit, you had to do something – but what? Maybe this was the opportunity for you to come clean after all this time, and for him to, finally, admit if he was being serious or not. You took a deep breath and decided to delve deeper.

You took him by the arm, which scared Mista, who yelped. You looked in his dark, so comfortingly black eyes, and the lashes that softened their still gaze – and he looked back into yours with unyielding focus.

“You know the saying: it’s not you, it’s me. Well, in this case, it is you,” you chiefly began, and it was enough to bewilder Mista. “You are jealous of them,” you accused, and it did not go as you expected.

Then and there, he broke into a laughing fit. So much so, that you had to let go of him. You thought that, indeed, this was too blatantly exaggerated – but it was no bad thing! It could still, somehow, turn into something good!

He finally calmed down, and naturally, denied the envy. “Pfft. Me? Jealous of them? That’s ridiculous, (Y/N), very funny, ten out of ten, top-notch humor.”

“Aww, top-notch acting, Mista,” you reciprocated the compliment boldly. Despite that sarcasm, he was a grinning mess, and he immediately moved past it.

“Say, hypothetically, what would you do if I were jealous? Just what would you do?” His question was characterized by some shy excitement, as he darted his focus away from your face, then back at it, in rapid repetitions. And you were buying it. You were totally buying it.

But not to accelerate this suddenly delicate conversation, you continued that teasing tone – although your heart was pounding, mind buzzing. You knew things were set in motion and you had to be very careful about what you said next.

And what was on your mind? Mista, who was standing right in front of you, with that heartfelt and yet undoubtedly cheesy smile; his eyes that bore into yours, expectant, so shamelessly looking for a reply. All of that, such a rightfully overwhelming visage, it was too much – and you bent your head slightly, averted your gaze slightly, and with the same rocky smoothness offered him a truthful answer, “Laugh at you, because… it’s adorable.”

His eyes widened, lips parted – now, perhaps he too was having a whirlwind inside his mind. “You think so?”

“Y-yeah, I mean, I…”

And there you have it, the embarrassment you knew would be your doom. You were so unsure what to speak, what to do, even. Should you just say it? Get it over with –

But Mista just ruffled your hair. “Save it for a better time. Say, are you hungry?”

You swallowed hard. “Are you...?”

“Yes, I am,” he confirmed.

That didn’t make any sense, because, as you recalled… “But… isn’t this the fourth time –“

Mista jumped backwards, utterly and wholly terrified. “What the fuck?! Okay, we’re skipping this one too, sorry, (Y/N), but I can’t do this! There’s no way I’m putting either of us in danger because of a date!” He waved his hands around in what you perceived as comical outrage.

In it, you found some amusement. It relieved you, and relief was what you needed. The aftermath of this conundrum left you with an obnoxious heartbeat, and at long last, it was quieting down. Therein laid some peace, and with it, you garnered a brilliant idea. “And what if I invited you to that date? As… attempt number five.”

And he was shocked. Did it align with his logic? Or was the risk of the deadly number too high?

After what seemed like an eternity of processing, Mista’s expression shifted to that of an overjoyed one. He chuckled, commented, “Honestly? I’m sure Buccellati wouldn’t mind it if we were a little late,” and pulled you by your waist, ready to drag you to that goddamned date.

#definitely not my proudest gamer moment #mista x reader #guido mista #mista #mista headcanon #vento aureo x reader #jojo x reader #jjba x reader

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chairismaticchair · 3 years

Text

Star Crossed Enemies

Happy Holidays @yellowartistsunshine ! @sanderssidesgiftxchange

Summary: When two rival theatre majors get cast as the leads in "Romeo and Juliet", something blossoms between them. Something beautiful.

This is Roceit, there are some swears. I had lots of fun writing this, especially since this was my first roceit fic!

If Roman despised a single person in the world with all his body and soul, that would be Janus Taylor. He hated how snagging lead roles in plays and musicals always became a fight between them. He hated how smug Janus constantly acted. He hated his stupidly posh accent that was only really obvious when he was on stage performing Shakespeare. He hated how he couldn't have any straight (not that it was possible with Roman any other way) or slightly logical conversation with Janus. He hated him, from the tip of his dumb black beanie, to the soles of his beige loafers. Overall, he hated Janus.

Whenever they passed in the college, there would be a flurry of middle fingers and middle-school-grade insults like "shit head" and "dumbass" thrown about with as much malice as two theatre majors could. They seemed to lose all common sense when in the mere vicinity of each other, instead becoming caricatures of theatre rivals. Arguably, that was exactly what they were.

"Taylor." Roman spat out. "I heard the LGBTQ+ Club's putting up another play soon. Suppose you're going to want the lead role. But it's mine." He declared, as if no one had expected Roman Diaz Santos to want the lead role.

Decei - shit sorry, Janus hissed back. "I heard it's gonna be Shakespeare, and guess who always gets Shakespeare roles? Me. Shithead." He added the “shithead” as an afterthought, as if this was his first rivalry and he had almost forgotten rule #315 of the Rivalry Book of Rivals.

They then tossed each other middle fingers like mutual salutes and marched off, heads held up high and refusing to turn back.

"Man, Janus really is a dick isn't he?" Roman complained to his best friend Virgil Teo, who sighed.

"Yes, Roman. Just like the -" He pulled out a notebook and made a little mark. "534 other times you've told me. This year. I don't even know what's that bad about him."

"Well of course you don't get it. You two dated freshman year. Honestly, I thought you had better taste."

"And I do. That's why we broke up." Virgil slapped Roman's shoulder playfully. "Who are you to insult my dating life? You haven't had a single date since the start of college."

"I've had dates." Roman protested.

"Bad dates, Princey. Those don't count. Maybe you could send it to the Guinness World Records."

Roman gasped in mock annoyance. "How dare you, Virgil.” He gave a wistful sigh. “Anyways, I just want to find my soulmate. They’re out there, I can just feel it. A Juliet or Julien to my Romeo.”

"You're always are full of bullshit, aren't you, Roman?"

---

Patton, a senior, walked up to the front of the leture theatre and tapped the teacher on the shoulder. He whispered something in her ear and the teacher sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose frustratedly. "Hi! The LGBTQ+ Club is putting up two Shakespeare plays for this November! The first one will be a gay Romeo and Juliet, called Romeo and Julien. The other will be a sapphic 'Much Ado about Nothing'. Audition sign ups start next week Monday and end on Friday! Thank you!" Patton was very chirpy for 8 a.m. .

Now, this was when shit hit the fan and our story gets exciting. Roman turned to Virgil enthusiastically. "I'm totally auditioning for Romeo." Meanwhile, all students in the near vicinity who wanted Romeo's role sighed in unison.

Across the lecture theatre, Janus turned to his friend Remus excitedly. "I'm auditioning for Julien! This is gonna be great."

"For fucks sake." Someone in the near vicinity groaned and his friend patted his back sympathetically.

---

Roman sat outside the auditorium, swinging his feet while waiting for his turn to audition. Walking down the corridor, Janus turned to Roman and picked up the chair beside him. He moved 6 feet away and plopped the chair down.

"So, Santos." He started, staring intensely at the auditorium door.

Roman found his shoes absolutely riveting. "Yeah?"

"What role are you auditioning for?"

Tapping the side of his chair, Roman said, "The lead one, obviously."

"Oh." Janus paused and turned to look directly at Roman. Sticking out his hand, he gave him a slight smile. "Well may the best one win."

Roman took the hand hesitantly. "Yeah Janus. Break a leg."

---

The large board outside the auditorium was a crowd favourite among students. It was constantly updated with rehearsal times, casting choices and upcoming performances, you know, the classic cool stuff.

Roman and Janus were the first to arrive at the board and glanced at each other before looking down the corridor with longing.

A boy with big circular wire framed glasses bounded down the corridor, an A4 paper in his hand. He waved excitedly at the two in front of him. "Hi Roman! Hi Janus! Waiting for results?"

The two nodded in synchronisation.

"Oh, well I got them here!" He got out a stapler and stapled the paper to the board, the sleeves of his turquoise hoodie large and dangly.

Romeo: Roman Diaz Santos

Julien: Janus Taylor

The two boys turned to each other in horror.

"Y - you mean -"

"You thought-"

"Julien."

"Romeo."

"WAS THE LEAD ROLE?"

The boy, Patton, looked at them in amusement. "Well, you both got main roles, so congrats! Rehearsals start in two weeks and I'll give you guys your scripts tomorrow. Have fun!"

He patted them both on the back before heading off, skip in his step.

Janus and Roman turned to look at each other in horror once more.

---

There is a moment in one's life, where they will reflect on everything they have done, and wonder what mistakes they had made to lead them down this path. As Roman flipped through the script Patton had handed him, that was exactly what he was doing. "You mean to say, I have to kiss this - this snake 5 times? Outrageous. Unacceptable."

They sat in a circle, everyone who participated in the play knee against knee. It was far too close for comfort and Roman was probably going to vomit onto the rest of the cast.

Virgil, who was in charge of lights and sound and sitting next to him, smirked. "Princey, this is literally a play about you two in love. 5 kisses are the minimum."

"And I am right here, you know." Janus looked slightly offended, leaning over and looking at Roman, who was a Virgil away. "And I'm not that bad at kissing. Ask Virgil. "

Virgil choked.

Before Roman could retort, Patton interrupted them. "Okay guys! Don't forget to practice your lines. Rehearsals start in two weeks so I hope you manage to memorise some of your lines."

As they left the auditorium, Roman whispered to Virgil. "Is Janus actually good at kissing?"

Virgil just shrugged.

Patton called after the leaving group. "Roman? Janus? Please get whatever feud is going on between you two and throw it away. You two need to cooperate so that we can all work together. Go bond over the next few days. Thanks!”

Bond? With Janus? Roman never wanted to hear those words in the same sentence ever again. There was an odd creeping feeling that grew in his stomach and crawled up his throat invasively. It was foreign and weird. Maybe an allergic reaction.

“Oy! Janus! We probably have to - to get to know each other better.” Roman could feel heat spreading from his toes all the way to his cheeks. Why was he blushing? He should not be blushing. “So, do you wanna go grab some food tonight?”

Janus’ eyes widened and he physically stepped back. He pointed at Roman, before pointing back at himself. “You? Offering me? Dinner?”

Roman shot a wink at Janus cheekily, before turning around to hide his blush. What was he doing? He never flirted with his rival. Was that even flirting? Tugging his hair down in a pitiful attempt to hide his burning red ears, he turned to Virgil.

Virgil wiggled his eyebrows mischievously, before elbowing Roman in the side. “Stepping up your game, Santos? Impressive.”

Roman blushed even harder, and looked away.

---

Roman had had his fair share of dates, if that was what you called a dinner like this, and he never knew what to say. He pulled out his best card.

“So...ya like jazz?”

Janus choked on his iced lemon tea. "Fucking Bee Movie?”

“Well, you do wear black and yellow 80% of the time, so you clearly like bees. Ergo, Bee Movie.”

An eyebrow was raised. “Impressive. You almost sound as smart as Logan.”

“I wish. He’s an absolute genius.” Logan was studying law, would probably become the valedictorian, and was dating Patton. Truly a legend.

“What’s your favourite animated movie then?” Janus asked. “Mine certainly is not the Bee Movie. There are loads of better Dreamworks films. I love Megamind."

“Oh, Megamind is really good! Choosing a favourite… that’s so hard though!” Roman bounced in his seat. Another movie lover? Perhaps, Janus wasn't too bad.

Janus laughed and the food must have been tainted or something, because Roman’s heart skipped several beats.

---

“Right! Let’s start at Act 1, Scene 5. You guys are at the party and this is when Romeo meets Julien for the first time. Action.” Patton, perched on the edge of a chair, announced, eyes shining with excitement.

Roman glanced over at Janus, clad in a hoodie and jeans. He was flipping through his script and mumbling lines to himself. It was their first rehearsal so they were still allowed to look at their scripts. It also happened to be their first kiss scene. Pink tinted Roman's cheeks at the thought. Kiss… Janus? The two words seemed so foreign next to each other, yet they felt as though they were meant to be. He couldn't stop his eyes lingering over Janus' light pink lips. He turned away quickly, glancing at his script. Romeo kisses Julien.

Romeo.

Kisses.

Julien.

Shaking his head, he looked up at the people on stage, waiting for his cue. He had to stop thinking so much. Thoughts were dangerous. Who knows where they may lead?

Roman wondered what Janus' lips tasted like.

Oh for fucks sake.

Okay, this was getting ridiculous. Roman shoved his face back into the script, mumbling his lines under his breath and waiting for his queue to come on stage.

Stepping onto the stage, he channeled Romeo Shakespearean thoughts. It was a little hard in his button up shirt and jeans, but he was a professional. “What lord is that which doth enrich the hand of yonder knight?” He gestured towards Janus.

A server bowed politely. “I know not, sir.”

“Oh, he doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems he hangs upon the cheek of night. Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear, beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear. So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows. As yonder lord o'er his fellows shows. The measure done, I’ll watch his place of stand. And, touching his, make blessèd my rude hand.” He spoke to the audience, but couldn’t help think about how accurate this was. Janus too, was really hot.

Roman spoke some more about how hot Julien was, and the rest of the rehearsal was a blur. He wasn’t Roman anymore. In front of this audience? He was Romeo, a rich lovestruck teenager.

Then suddenly, he found himself staring into Janus’ eyes, and he was Roman all over again.

Janus’ eyes, a deep, rich brown that gave Roman a steady look, pierced into Roman’s heart. He spoke towards the audience, but he sounded so genuine and sincere as he uttered his lines. “Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.”

Roman gave Janus a soft smile, eyes crinkling in the corners. “Then move not, while my prayers’ effect I take.”

Closing his eyes, he leaned in and brushed Janus’ lips. It was hesitant, and soft, and he could hear Janus' quiet gasp, as if he wasn't expecting it. It was barely a kiss, more like a peck, but Roman could feel heat rushing into his cheeks. “Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.” He said, loud enough for the audience to hear him.

“Then have my lips the sin that they have took?” Janus cocked his head to the side, looking far more innocent and coy than Roman had ever seen him behave before.

“Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again.” This time, Janus stood on tiptoes and kissed him. A proper kiss that made the butterflies in his stomach flutter, and Roman wanted to stay like that forever and ever. The scent of Janus' cologne made him giddy and he took Janus' hands, pulling him closer. On one hand, they were playing parts in a play, and on the other hand, everything felt oh so real, from the hoodie toggles that tickled his button up shirt to Janus' soft fingers gripping his hands tightly.

When they finally pulled away, Roman gazed at Janus' shining brown eyes in what must have been a lovestruck expression. He found his Julien.

---

"You BITCH!" Virgil slapped the study table violently.

"What did I do?"

"1 year. 1 fucking year of you making fun of me falling for a white guy and here you are, falling for the exact same white guy." Virgil looked vaguely irritated. "Even my mom was like," He put his hand at his ear like a phone and did an exaggerated Chinese accent. "Aiyah ah boy, I know you like boys, but an angmoh gao is too too much already. But don't worry lah, 4 months is not long, you still can leave him.” Do you even know what that means, you ass?”

He suddenly burst out in laughter. "This is great, it's my turn to poke fun." He rubbed his hands together excitedly. "What was the kiss like? Was it...spicy?"

"Weren't you there?"

"Yeah, but I want a personal recount. Actually, no. Give me the P.E.E.L. format. Point, evidence, example and link on Janus' kissing skills. Go."

"Oh, er. Janus was a… good kisser?" Roman didn't kiss much. "Um, point. His hair is all fluffy and I feel it brushing against my forehead, which gives me butterflies and this warm tingly sensation that ran through my body and gave me goosebumps. And he makes this noise whenever we kiss that is so cute, he honestly sounds genuinely surprised whenever it happens, even though we're following a script. And his cologne smells so good, oh my god I need to get the brand name, it's like kinda ashy, but not quite and it was a bit light, like a nice stroll in a forest. Holy shit it smelled nice. And-"

Virgil raised an eyebrow and paused Roman's tangent. "He wore cologne? He never wears cologne."

"Oh." Roman's eyes widened.

"Maybe…" Virgil wiggled his eyebrows. "He wore it for the kiss scene."

The heat that decided to congregate on Roman's cheeks was undeniable. "Why - why would he do that?"

"He likes you, ya dumbass. And he wanted to impress you, so he decided that hoodie plus beanie plus cologne was a good combo."

Roman stared at his feet. "It was."

Virgil stood up and patted Roman on the head comfortingly. "There, there, it's alright. White guys aren't all that bad."

"Oh fuck off."

Virgil bowed and shot Roman the finger. Truly a man of eloquence and class. Roman opened a picture on his phone from his date with Janus. Janus was smiling, and Roman could feel himself smiling too as he looked at the picture of Janus. Of his Julien.

#secret santa #sanders sides #janus sanders #roman sanders #ts #thomas sanders

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disaster-fruit · 4 years

Note

number 10 just screams brarg

10 - The in-laws

Drabble Challenge: Places

This got longer than I expected, and very silly, but i hope it’s fun. Human AU.

“You’re not nervous, are you?” Luciano teased with a friendly punch on Martin’s shoulder, then returned his hand to the steering wheel of his black pickup truck. “That's not like you.”

“I’m not.” Martin grinned, with his eyes on the unpaved road. Luciano had been driving for a while since the last signs of city life had disappeared behind them, and now all that was left as a rocky path surrounded by trees and nothing else. “I’ve met your dad. It can’t be worse than that.”

Luciano chuckled, and his lack of a reply brought Martin no comfort. He would never miss an opportunity to say something bad about his father like that.

Long minutes went by before Martin saw the first house in kilometers, at the top of a small hill, to which they were heading. Luciano parked the car next to the wood gates as there seemed to be no garage and they got out to meet the small lady standing by the front door.

Luciano smiled and his mother, greeting her in a language Martin couldn’t understand, but he did catch his own name being spoken, followed by Luciano’s hand on his shoulder.

Martin had seen pictures of Iracema before, but this was the first time he’d ever been near her in person. She was shorter than he expected, making even Luciano look tall next to her. It was weird, to say the least, to see someone who at the same time looked so much like him and nothing at all. They had the same dark brown in their hair, but where Luciano had it loose soft curls, hers was completely straight. He definitely got her round black eyes, but her small stern stare resembled in nothing Luciano’s big puppy look. It was… puzzling, especially when those small eyes were scanning him head to toe.

She mumbled something in their language, and then spoke in perfect Portuguese:

“I thought we’d never meet. He talks about you, sometimes.”

Martin wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean. Still, it was Luciano’s mom, and he had to cause a good impression, even if she couldn’t be bothered doing the same, so he smiled.

She again made a comment Martin couldn’t understand and turned around to enter her house.

“What did she said?” Martin whispered to Luciano.

“She said ‘At least it’s not the other one’ Dani. She and his mom have history.”

“History?”

He shrugged.

“She never tells me.”

“It’s not a kid’s business.” She interrupted her voice firm and loud as to assert she had been hearing all that was said. “And I have nothing against her boy, life’s been cruel enough to him just by giving him that mother.” Then, to Luciano, more unintelligible words, and before Martin could ask for a translation, she turned to him. “My son has yet to learn that if I speak Tupi to him in front of people, it is wiser of him not to translate it.”

Martin swallowed and forced a smile. His first instinct was to pick a fight with the old lady, but he as her son’s boyfriend, was the weak link in the situation.

His mood improved a little when he smelled the scent of a homemade meal being prepared in a wood burner. Iracema's house was quite big and cozy, and the kitchen was especially inviting. All the windows were open, bathing the room in green coming from the forest and in the sound of hundreds of different birds.

Martin suddenly remembered the gift he brought her, as a little bribe in order to make her like him. He took from his backpack a bottle of his best wine and offered, hoping it would be enough to make up for that unpleasant start.

“I’m sure you will enjoy it.”

She took the bottle, examined it for a moment, and left it over the table.

“Thank you.” She didn’t smile. “You can leave your things in Luciano’s room. Lunch will still take a while to be ready.”

“I’ll take that.” Luciano offered referring to Martin’s backpack, then gave him a significant look, pointing to his mom with his eyebrows before disappearing in the hall with it.

Silence took over, as Iracema concentrated in preparing their food. Her lips twisted unpleasantly, like she was about to say something but didn’t, until finally she asked:

“Lu told me you’re from Argentina.” She stated, leaving to martin to find a way to turn that into a conversation.

“Yes…”

“I’ve never been there. Seems too cold.”

Martin chuckled, because he had heard Luciano complain about the weather in his country a little too much.

“It’s not that cold, for the most part. It’s nice. Very European.”

He realized, a second too late, that maybe that was the wrong thing to say. She stared at him with narrow eyes.

“So you don’t shower?”

Martin blinked in shock.

"What?"

"I asked," she repeated, but slower. "if you don't shower."

“I do shower! Every day!”

She scoffed at that.

“Luciano is spending too much time with Europeans, and now this. These days he told me two daily showers were enough, and I told him I would not tolerate this kind of filth in my house.”

“Mom!” Luciano cried from the hall and walked back to the kitchen.

“You know the rules, boy. I can’t allow this neglecting to good hygiene. Your little friends might tell you it’s cool, but it’s not. Soon you'll be just like your father, that stinky excuse of a man who can’t even remember the last time he washed his own ass.”

Martin could stop himself from laughing loudly. Luciano looked ready to bury his own head in the ground. Iracema, seeing her son’s reaction, started laughing too, even if more discreetly.

“Don’t worry, I can guarantee you I’m not like that.” Martin said once his laughter receded. He was of course lying, by her absurd standards of god knows how many daily showers, but Luciano had never complained of him stinking, so that should count for something.

“You better not be.” She warned, but embarrassing Luciano did seem to warm her up a bit, and there was almost a hint of a smile on her face.

“And I promise I won’t let him become like his dad. Especially since Afonso doesn’t like me very much. It’s mutual.”

“Well, that’s a good sign.” She nodded and said something to Luciano in Tupi. It didn’t sound like an insult, so Martin took it as a victory. “Now you two go wash your hands and come help me in the kitchen. Lu told me you’re a good cook.”

#my fics #brarg #aph brazil #aph argentina #aph pindorama

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life-observed · 3 years

Text

The Crane Wife

Ten days after I called off my engagement I was supposed to go on a scientific expedition to study the whooping crane on the gulf coast of Texas. Surely, I will cancel this trip, I thought, as I shopped for nylon hiking pants that zipped off at the knee. Surely, a person who calls off a wedding is meant to be sitting sadly at home, reflecting on the enormity of what has transpired and not doing whatever it is I am about to be doing that requires a pair of plastic clogs with drainage holes. Surely, I thought, as I tried on a very large and floppy hat featuring a pull cord that fastened beneath my chin, it would be wrong to even be wearing a hat that looks like this when something in my life has gone so terribly wrong.

Ten days earlier I had cried and I had yelled and I had packed up my dog and driven away from the upstate New York house with two willow trees I had bought with my fiancé.

Ten days later and I didn’t want to do anything I was supposed to do.

I went to Texas to study the whooping crane because I was researching a novel. In my novel there were biologists doing field research about birds and I had no idea what field research actually looked like and so the scientists in my novel draft did things like shuffle around great stacks of papers and frown. The good people of the Earthwatch organization assured me I was welcome on the trip and would get to participate in “real science” during my time on the gulf. But as I waited to be picked up by my team in Corpus Christi, I was nervous—I imagined everyone else would be a scientist or a birder and have daunting binoculars.

The biologist running the trip rolled up in in a large white van with a boat hitch and the words BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES stenciled across the side. Jeff was forty-ish, and wore sunglasses and a backward baseball cap. He had a winter beard and a neon-green cast on his left arm. He’d broken his arm playing hockey with his sons a week before. The first thing Jeff said was, “We’ll head back to camp, but I hope you don’t mind we run by the liquor store first.” I felt more optimistic about my suitability for science.

Not long before I’d called off my engagement it was Christmas.

The woman who was supposed to be my mother-in-law was a wildly talented quilter and made stockings with Beatrix Potter characters on them for every family member. The previous Christmas she had asked me what character I wanted to be (my fiancé was Benjamin Bunny). I agonized over the decision. It felt important, like whichever character I chose would represent my role in this new family. I chose Squirrel Nutkin, a squirrel with a blazing red tail—an epic, adventuresome figure who ultimately loses his tail as the price for his daring and pride.

I arrived in Ohio that Christmas and looked to the banister to see where my squirrel had found his place. Instead, I found a mouse. A mouse in a pink dress and apron. A mouse holding a broom and dustpan, serious about sweeping. A mouse named Hunca Munca. The woman who was supposed to become my mother-in-law said, “I was going to do the squirrel but then I thought, that just isn’t CJ. This is CJ.”

What she was offering was so nice. She was so nice. I thanked her and felt ungrateful for having wanted a stocking, but not this stocking. Who was I to be choosy? To say that this nice thing she was offering wasn’t a thing I wanted?

When I looked at that mouse with her broom, I wondered which one of us was wrong about who I was.

The whooping crane is one of the oldest living bird species on earth. Our expedition was housed at an old fish camp on the Gulf Coast next to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, where three hundred of the only six hundred whooping cranes left in the world spend their winters. Our trip was a data-collecting expedition to study behavior and gather data about the resources available to the cranes at Aransas.

The ladies bunkhouse was small and smelled woody and the rows of single beds were made up with quilts. Lindsay, the only other scientist, was a grad student in her early twenties from Wisconsin who loved birds so much that when she told you about them she made the shapes of their necks and beaks with her hands—a pantomime of bird life. Jan, another participant, was a retired geophysicist who had worked for oil companies and now taught high school chemistry. Jan was extremely fit and extremely tan and extremely competent. Jan was not a lifelong birder. She was a woman who had spent two years nursing her mother and her best friend through cancer. They had both recently died and she had lost herself in caring for them, she said. She wanted a week to be herself. Not a teacher or a mother or a wife. This trip was the thing she was giving herself after their passing.

At five o’clock there was a knock on the bunk door and a very old man walked in, followed by Jeff.

“Is it time for cocktail hour?” Warren asked.

Warren was an eighty-four-year-old bachelor from Minnesota. He could not do most of the physical activities required by the trip, but had been on ninety-five Earthwatch expeditions, including this one once before.Warren liked birds okay. What Warren really loved was cocktail hour.

When he came for cocktail hour that first night, his thin, silver hair was damp from the shower and he smelled of shampoo. He was wearing a fresh collared shirt and carrying a bottle of impossibly good scotch.

Jeff took in Warren and Jan and me. “This is a weird group,” Jeff said.

“I like it,” Lindsay said.

In the year leading up to calling off my wedding, I often cried or yelled or reasoned or pleaded with my fiancé to tell me that he loved me. To be nice to me. To notice things about how I was living.

One particular time, I had put on a favorite red dress for a wedding. I exploded from the bathroom to show him. He stared at his phone. I wanted him to tell me I looked nice, so I shimmied and squeezed his shoulders and said, “You look nice! Tell me I look nice!” He said, “I told you that you looked nice when you wore that dress last summer. It’s reasonable to assume I still think you look nice in it now.”

Another time he gave me a birthday card with a sticky note inside that said BIRTHDAY. After giving it to me, he explained that because he hadn’t written in it, the card was still in good condition. He took off the sticky and put the unblemished card into our filing cabinet.

I need you to know: I hated that I needed more than this from him. There is nothing more humiliating to me than my own desires. Nothing that makes me hate myself more than being burdensome and less than self-sufficient. I did not want to feel like the kind of nagging woman who might exist in a sit-com.

These were small things, and I told myself it was stupid to feel disappointed by them. I had arrived in my thirties believing that to need things from others made you weak. I think this is true for lots of people but I think it is especially true for women. When men desire things they are “passionate.” When they feel they have not received something they need they are “deprived,” or even “emasculated,” and given permission for all sorts of behavior. But when a woman needs she is needy. She is meant to contain within her own self everything necessary to be happy.

That I wanted someone to articulate that they loved me, that they saw me, was a personal failing and I tried to overcome it.

When I found out that he’d slept with our mutual friend a few weeks after we’d first started seeing each other, he told me we hadn’t officially been dating yet so I shouldn’t mind. I decided he was right. When I found out that he’d kissed another girl on New Year’s Eve months after that, he said that we hadn’t officially discussed monogamy yet, and so I shouldn’t mind. I decided he was right.

I asked to discuss monogamy and, in an effort to be the sort of cool girl who does not have so many inconvenient needs, I said that I didn’t need it. He said he thought we should be monogamous.

Here is what I learned once I began studying whooping cranes: only a small part of studying them has anything to do with the birds. Instead we counted berries. Counted crabs. Measured water salinity. Stood in the mud. Measured the speed of the wind.

It turns out, if you want to save a species, you don’t spend your time staring at the bird you want to save. You look at the things it relies on to live instead. You ask if there is enough to eat and drink. You ask if there is a safe place to sleep. Is there enough here to survive?

Wading through the muck of the Aransas Reserve I understood that every chance for food matters. Every pool of drinkable water matters. Every wolfberry dangling from a twig, in Texas, in January, matters. The difference between sustaining life and not having enough was that small.

If there were a kind of rehab for people ashamed to have needs, maybe this was it. You will go to the gulf. You will count every wolfberry. You will measure the depth of each puddle.

More than once I’d said to my fiancé, How am I supposed to know you love me if you’re never affectionate or say nice things or say that you love me.

He reminded me that he’d said “I love you” once or twice before. Why couldn’t I just know that he did in perpetuity?

I told him this was like us going on a hiking trip and him telling me he had water in his backpack but not ever giving it to me and then wondering why I was still thirsty.

He told me water wasn’t like love, and he was right.

There are worse things than not receiving love. There are sadder stories than this. There are species going extinct, and a planet warming. I told myself: who are you to complain, you with these frivolous extracurricular needs?

On the gulf, I lost myself in the work. I watched the cranes through binoculars and recorded their behavior patterns and I loved their long necks and splashes of red. The cranes looked elegant and ferocious as they contorted their bodies to preen themselves. From the outside, they did not look like a species fighting to survive.

In the mornings we made each other sandwiches and in the evenings we laughed and lent each other fresh socks. We gave each other space in the bathroom. Forgave each other for telling the same stories over and over again. We helped Warren when he had trouble walking. What I am saying is that we took care of each other. What I am saying is we took pleasure in doing so. It’s hard to confess, but the week after I called off my wedding, the week I spent dirty and tired on the gulf, I was happy.

On our way out of the reserve, we often saw wild pigs, black and pink bristly mothers and their young, scurrying through the scrub and rolling in the dust among the cacti. In the van each night, we made bets on how many wild pigs we might see on our drive home.

One night, halfway through the trip, I bet reasonably. We usually saw four, I hoped for five, but I bet three because I figured it was the most that could be expected.

Warren bet wildly, optimistically, too high.

“Twenty pigs,” Warren said. He rested his interlaced fingers on his soft chest.

We laughed and slapped the vinyl van seats at this boldness.

But the thing is, we saw twenty pigs on the drive home that night. And in the thick of our celebrations, I realized how sad it was that I’d bet so low. That I wouldn’t even let myself imagine receiving as much as I’d hoped for.

What I learned to do, in my relationship with my fiancé, was to survive on less. At what should have been the breaking point but wasn’t, I learned that he had cheated on me. The woman he’d been sleeping with was a friend of his I’d initially wanted to be friends with, too, but who did not seem to like me, and who he’d gaslit me into being jealous of, and then gaslit me into feeling crazy for being jealous of.

The full course of the gaslighting took a year, so by the time I truly found out what had happened, the infidelity was already a year in the past.

It was new news to me but old news to my fiancé.

Logically, he said, it doesn’t matter anymore.

It had happened a year ago. Why was I getting worked up over ancient history?

I did the mental gymnastics required.

I convinced myself that I was a logical woman who could consider this information about having been cheated on, about his not wearing a condom, and I could separate it from the current reality of our life together.

Why did I need to know that we’d been monogamous? Why did I need to have and discuss inconvenient feelings about this ancient history?

I would not be a woman who needed these things, I decided.

I would need less. And less.

I got very good at this.

“The Crane Wife” is a story from Japanese folklore. I found a copy in the reserve’s gift shop among the baseball caps and bumper stickers that said GIVE A WHOOP. In the story, there is a crane who tricks a man into thinking she is a woman so she can marry him. She loves him, but knows that he will not love her if she is a crane so she spends every night plucking out all of her feathers with her beak. She hopes that he will not see what she really is: a bird who must be cared for, a bird capable of flight, a creature, with creature needs. Every morning, the crane-wife is exhausted, but she is a woman again. To keep becoming a woman is so much self-erasing work. She never sleeps. She plucks out all her feathers, one by one.

One night on the gulf, we bought a sack of oysters off a passing fishing boat. We’d spent so long on the water that day I felt like I was still bobbing up and down in the current as I sat in my camp chair. We ate the oysters and drank. Jan took the shucking knife away from me because it kept slipping into my palm. Feral cats trolled the shucked shells and pleaded with us for scraps.

Jeff was playing with the sighting scope we used to watch the birds, and I asked, “What are you looking for in the middle of the night?” He gestured me over and when I looked through the sight the moon swam up close.

I think I was afraid that if I called off my wedding I was going to ruin myself. That doing it would disfigure the story of my life in some irredeemable way. I had experienced worse things than this, but none threatened my American understanding of a life as much as a called-off wedding did. What I understood on the other side of my decision, on the gulf, was that there was no such thing as ruining yourself. There are ways to be wounded and ways to survive those wounds, but no one can survive denying their own needs. To be a crane-wife is unsustainable.

I had never seen the moon so up-close before. What struck me most was how battered she looked. How textured and pocked by impacts. There was a whole story written on her face—her face, which from a distance looked perfect.

It’s easy to say that I left my fiancé because he cheated on me. It’s harder to explain the truth. The truth is that I didn’t leave him when I found out. Not even for one night.

I found out about the cheating before we got engaged and I still said yes when he proposed in the park on a day we were meant to be celebrating a job I’d just gotten that morning. Said yes even though I’d told him I was politically opposed to the diamonds he’d convinced me were necessary. Said yes even though he turned our proposal into a joke by making a Bachelor reference and giving me a rose. I am ashamed of all of this.

He hadn’t said one specific thing about me or us during the proposal, and on the long trail walk out of the park I felt robbed of the kind of special declaration I’d hoped a proposal would entail, and, in spite of hating myself for wanting this, hating myself more for fishing for it, I asked him, “Why do you love me? Why do you think we should get married? Really?”

He said he wanted to be with me because I wasn’t annoying or needy. Because I liked beer. Because I was low-maintenance.

I didn’t say anything. A little further down the road he added that he thought I’d make a good mother.

This wasn’t what I hoped he would say. But it was what was being offered. And who was I to want more?

I didn’t leave when he said that the woman he had cheated on me with had told him over the phone that she thought it was unfair that I didn’t want them to be friends anymore, and could they still?

I didn’t leave when he wanted to invite her to our wedding. Or when, after I said she could not come to our wedding, he got frustrated and asked what he was supposed to do when his mother and his friends asked why she wasn’t there.

Reader, I almost married him.

Even now I hear the words as shameful: Thirsty. Needy. The worst things a woman can be. Some days I still tell myself to take what is offered, because if it isn’t enough, it is I who wants too much. I am ashamed to be writing about this instead of writing about the whooping cranes, or literal famines, or any of the truer needs of the world.

But what I want to tell you is that I left my fiancé when it was almost too late. And I tell people the story of being cheated on because that story is simple. People know how it goes. But it’s harder to tell the story of how I convinced myself I didn’t need what was necessary to survive. How I convinced myself it was my lack of needs that made me worthy of love.

After cocktail hour one night, in the cabin’s kitchen, I told Lindsay about how I’d blown up my life the week before. I told her because I’d just received a voice mail saying I could get a partial refund for my high-necked wedding gown. The refund would be partial because they had already made the base of the dress but had not done any of the beadwork yet. They said the pieces of the dress could still be unstitched and used for something else. I had caught them just in time.

I told Lindsay because she was beautiful and kind and patient and loved good things like birds and I wondered what she would say back to me. What would every good person I knew say to me when I told them that the wedding to which they’d RSVP’d was off and that the life I’d been building for three years was going to be unstitched and repurposed?

Lindsay said it was brave not to do a thing just because everyone expected you to do it.

Jeff was sitting outside in front of the cabin with Warren as Lindsay and I talked, tilting the sighting scope so it pointed toward the moon. The screen door was open and I knew he’d heard me, but he never said anything about my confession.

What he did do was let me drive the boat.

The next day it was just him and me and Lindsay on the water. We were cruising fast and loud. “You drive,” Jeff shouted over the motor. Lindsay grinned and nodded. I had never driven a boat before. “What do I do?” I shouted. Jeff shrugged. I took the wheel. We cruised past small islands, families of pink roseate spoonbills, garbage tankers swarmed by seagulls, fields of grass and wolfberries, and I realized it was not that remarkable for a person to understand what another person needed.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/07/16/the-crane-wife/

#CJ Hauser #The crane wife #Essay #story #self #love #relAtionship #break up #grief #marriage #true story #storytelling #paris review #gaslighting

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thisspaceintentionallyleftblank · 4 years

Text

Try, Try Again (pt. 12)

(Cpt 1) | (Cpt 11) || (AO3)

Chapter 12 (2953 words)

There’s this cool movie, the kind that even older kids don’t usually get to watch, where a bunch of evil space aliens show up, eat people, and ruin everything. You know it’s hardcore because the poster has the tagline “In space, no one can hear you scream.”

Now, an angsty teen seeing this poster hanging over the horror movie section of the film store might assume that the screams in question are going unheard on account of everybody getting eaten by aliens.

This however, is not completely true.

Within the scientific community, experts agree that - evil aliens aside - sound simply cannot travel through space. Unlike light or heat, sound waves travel by causing surrounding particles to vibrate until some of these particles happen to smack into someone else’s eardrums.

So, if you happened to be aboard a spaceship whose engines have just imploded, ripping massive holes in the hull, forcibly venting the atmosphere, and leaving you hopelessly adrift in the vacuum of space, then there would be no particles left for your screams to vibrate.

This again, is not completely true.

Even in space, there are a few things left which can transmit sound - namely, the human skeleton. Microscopic vibrations are capable of traveling through the skull, from the jaw up to the tiny bones within the ear. This is the same principle behind those delightful singing toothbrushes, and is the reason why your voice always sounds different in recordings.

The point here is that the truest thing to say, would be that in space, no one can hear you scream except yourself.

Of course, this particular detail was of little importance to Emmet Brickowski as he found himself hurtling through the void of space, his own panicked wails ringing in his ears.

The noise stopped abruptly as he slammed into ground, knocking the wind out of himself. He bounced at least three times, each impact as jarring as the first. Eventually though, his momentum dissipated and he began to slide on his back, leaving clean streaks in the dust and dirt before skidding to a stop in some kind of dark, cavernous space.

It was quiet here, and for a moment, that came as a comfort to Emmet.

Then, with a mounting sense of dread, he took note of his leaden limbs and uncooperative vocal cords.

He couldn't move. He couldn't speak. He was paralyzed - a sensation both alarming and familiar.

“I’ve been here before,” he thought. And, while he didn’t recognize his immediate surroundings, the sentiment still rang true.

Years ago, he’d leapt from Lord Business’s tower into the Abyss below. His memory of the fall was vague, perhaps due to the time that had passed since or to the surreal, ephemeral nature of the fall itself. His memory of the place he’d found himself afterwards was much stronger. Just like now, he’d lain paralyzed on the ground, an unwitting witness to the events unfolding around him.

He’d eventually escaped from that place, sent back by one of its strange inhabitants.

Emmet stared up at the vast thing looming over him, unable to turn or look anywhere else. A cold voice in the back of his mind asked how any of those beings would be able to find him here.

“It’s okay,” he told himself. “The raptors sent me out on this mission. They'll notice that I’m gone. They’re the ones that pre-programmed the flightplan, so they’ll already know where to look.”

At the time, he’d thought it was weird how the raptors had been rushing him around, especially considering that the ship seemed like it had been prepped a while ago. They’d been in such a hurry that no one had even explained what this new mission was or why none of the crew could come with.

Emmet’s lips twitched in an attempted frown. His past concerns all felt so trivial in the light of this new situation.

“They’ll find me soon,” he tried again to reassure himself. “I just have to be patient.”

---

Ironically, Emmet found himself thinking about Vitruvius pretty regularly.

It was ironic considering that Vitruvius was the only one of his friends that couldn’t possibly come to his rescue. Regardless, he was the one at the start of all this, and so Emmet’s thoughts routinely returned to the old man and his “fake but real” prophecy.

Vitruvius had understood that these states were not mutually exclusive - a clarity granted to him after spending countless hours meditating, dwelling on the nature of the universe, and occasionally napping in a super enlightened manner. Trapped here in Undar, Emmet had nothing better to do than meditate himself, and as a result, he was beginning to better understand the truth that Vitruvius had seen.

“The only thing anyone needs to be special is to believe that you can be,” Vitruvius had told him. “I know that sounds like a cat poster, but it’s true.”

The cat poster, like most things, existed somewhere beyond Emmet’s current prison - out of sight and out of reach. But, even here, he clung to his ability to believe.

The thing about belief is that its power is firmly rooted in the mind. It is something that you choose to do, and by choosing, you give power to the belief.

These beliefs can be personal - like a New Year’s resolution. You convince yourself that you will eat better or exercise more and, as long as you remain committed to that belief, the resolution maintains its power.

Beyond that though, there are many things in the world maintained only by the power of collective belief. Things like laws and money might seem like indisputable facts of nature, but in fact, their strength depends on society considering them as such.

Take language for example. We know that every word was at some point invented by a person but, if everyone simultaneously started making up their own words instead of using those commonly agreed upon, then conversing might get eh fideckal discvanger upso.

It’s like the prophecy - something simultaneously made up and real.

At first, Emmet was comfortable with this realization. It gave him a sense of comradery, this idea that society was based on mutual agreement and trust. But, the longer that he ruminated, the more that these thoughts ate at him. After all, the power of belief could only go so far…

The thing about belief is that it can’t go beyond the mind. Believing that 2 plus 2 equals 5 won’t make your math teacher give you back points on your exam. Believing that you can fly won’t suddenly cause the laws of gravity to flip.

Believing that your friends will come save you won’t make them appear.

As time passed, Emmet felt the weight of this truth sink further and further into his chest. Here in Undar, he was quite literally trapped in his own mind. But, as he continued contemplating his situation, he began thinking that maybe he always had been.

Maybe that’s why the other Apocalypseburgers had been tougher than him. Maybe they’d already recognized the lies inherent to the concept of belief. Maybe they’d all seen the truth of the world while Emmet just kept clinging to stupid things like instructions and turn signals.

He lived in the world of belief - either too naive or too afraid to face reality, to face the fact that maybe just believing that you are special, that you are worthwhile, that you are loved… doesn’t make any of those things true.

But now, trapped here, staring helplessly upwards into the maw of the machine above, he had no choice. Now reality screamed at him in the wind, and there was no amount of belief that could save him.

---

“What are you going to do with him?”

The voice, muffled by the thick cell door, snapped Rex out of his reminiscing.

Taped to the prison wall, Rex found himself slipping into thoughts about Undar far more easily than he was comfortable with. It made sense, considering that he was once again trapped and motionless, an unwilling witness to his friends talking, laughing, and joking with each other just beyond his reach.

The familiarity burned, a deep, hot ache in his chest. He pressed his eyes closed and forced himself to breathe, struggling to maintain his composure.

He’d escaped from Undar, and he knew he could escape from this prison too. It was just a question of time, and if there was anything that he’d learned in Undar, it was patience.

He started trying to free his hands again. They were taped across his chest, his fingers tucked into his armpits. With every attempt to move, he could feel the fine hairs on his arms being ripped out. It hurt like heck, but it was only physical pain and so Rex could push past it.

Dimly, he noticed the sound of the door opening. His eyes flashed open, and he forced himself to be still.

Lucy walked in, leveling a hateful gaze his way. Clearly, he thought, she was still upset about his little trick.

“Okay, listen,” Lucy started, her voice rusty. “I don’t know what your deal is, but I know that Emmet doesn’t deserve to get caught up in all this.”

She walked up to the Tape-estry, resting a hand on its edge. “Just tell us where he is,” she said, peeling the corner back slightly, “and maybe we’ll let you go.”

Rex frowned. If the others rescued Emmet from Undar, then things would play out like they had in the last timeline - except that this time, he’d be trapped and unable to access the flux capacitor. Rex wasn’t sure what would happen to him in a “Rex-less” timeline, but… he had a hypothesis.

“Tough luck, sister,” he spat. “I think you'll find I’m a pretty tough nut to crack.”

“Oh, you’re nutty for sure.” Lucy sneered, resealing the edge of the tape.

She turned her back to the prisoner, stepping away as if to leave. Rex’s pulse sped up at the thought, and he cursed his treacherous heart.

She stopped in the middle of the room, getting just enough distance to try and clear her head. She was certain that Rex was their only hope of finding Emmet. Benny may be able to track his ship, but that was less than useless if Emmet wasn’t on said ship.

But how could she get Rex to talk? She knew nothing about the man except that he was dangerous and cruel. It seemed like he knew Emmet, but she just couldn’t understand how anyone familiar with her special best friend could do something as heartless as kidnapping him, or worse.

“Can you...” She started. “Can you at least tell me why Emmet?”

Rex shrugged, wincing as the thoughtless motion caused the tape to pull at his skin again. “To protect him from all of you.”

“From… us?” She stepped back, physically shaken by the utter ridiculousness of the idea. “From his own friends? We wouldn’t hurt Emmet. We- we miss him! We just want him back! Want him to be safe!”

“You don’t want him back.” Rex muttered, exhausted by how obvious it all was. “You guys don’t even like him.”

“How would you know?” Lucy hissed. “You don’t know us! You don’t know Emmet!”

“I am Emmet.” Rex stated flatly, the confession coming easier than he would have expected.

Lucy’s fists clenched at her sides. She scowled, forcing herself to ignore the way her nails bit into her palms. “You’re an idiot if you think I’m falling for that again.”

“I mean, I was Emmet. ” He replied dryly. “It’s time travel stuff, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Emmet could never do the things you've done. He would never lie… never hurt people.”

“If you want,” Rex pressed on. “I could prove it. I could tell you something that only Emmet would know...”

Lucy didn’t turn. She couldn’t let him see the way his words wormed into her brain. She knew Rex was an imposter, a liar, but… she couldn’t deny that she wanted to hear what he’d say next.

“Like what?”

Rex smiled, the scent of blood in the air as the prey lumbered into a well placed trap.

“I could tell you that he liked his coffee with just a touch of cream and 26 sugars.”

“Lots- Lots of people know that.”

“I could tell you that, back before the world ended - the first time that is - he told you that you were the first person to ever tell him that he could be special.”

Lucy kept her eyes pointed down. “That’s not proof, he could have tol-”

“I could tell you that I loved you.” Rex answered, his voice increasing in volume, the raw intensity of the sentiment overpowering his usual stoicism. “Even long after you stopped loving me. Even after you left me behind.”

Lucy whirled around, her face dark with rage. “How DARE yo-”

She stopped abruptly, staring at the trapped man in shock. She was so ready to be angry, but the pain and grief on Rex’s face was dreadfully genuine.

“Why wasn’t I good enough?” Rex screamed, his voice cracking under the strain. “Why?” “Why wasn’t I good enough to come back for?” At some point, he’d stopped forcing his voice and it had slipped back into something unmistakably like Emmet’s, though Lucy had never heard Emmet like this.

“S-Stop talking like that! You’re not Emmet.” She pressed her fists into her temples, trying to convince herself as much as Rex. “You’re just a vindictive jerk!”

“Well, Emmet wasn’t good enough either was he?!” Rex roared.

“I-” Her voice trembled. “You don't know what you’re talking abo-”

Rex laughed mirthlessly, interrupting her. He was rapidly losing his composure, but couldn’t seem to care. He managed to find a point of vulnerability, a chink in her armor. “Soft little Emmet… that poor, sweet guy. What a Hufflepuff he was. What a stupid loser he was.”

“Hey!” Lucy spat. “You don’t get to talk about him like that.”

“But everyone else does?” Rex met her eyes, pinning her in place with his steely gaze. “But you do?”

“I don't….”

“What,” Rex asked in a low voice, “was the last thing you talked to Emmet about? Your Emmet? The real Emmet?”

Lucy froze. The last time she’d seen Emmet had been over a week ago, and the memory came to her slowly. He’d asked her yet again if he could come with her on a patrol, hadn’t he… which meant that…

“I told him that he couldn’t come with me.” Lucy droned, almost mechanically. “I told him that he wasn’t tough enough for patrols…”

“Exactly.”

“But that's not the same thing!” Lucy cried. Pricks burned at her eyes. “I was trying to protect him. Telling him that he's not tough isn’t the same as calling him a loser!”

“It is if you hear it enough.”

Rex’s voice was soft. Lucy took a pause. It was a hard thought to come to terms with.

“You… really are him, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Rex pushed. “And that’s why you need to trust that what I’m doing is in his best interest. If you go after Emmet,” Rex looked her directly in the eyes, “you'll only hurt him more.”

The tears started now. Lucy could do little more than tremble as they coursed down her cheeks.

“Okay,” she whispered, no fight left in her voice.

She stepped forward, and pulled Rex free from the tape. As he stepped down, he stretched out, flexing feeling back into his arms and legs. He turned towards her, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“You made the right choice, Lucy.”

She shivered and watched him leave.

---

The winds had started up again, a persistent, rumbling thunder that shoved any thoughts out of his mind.

If Emmet could have cried, he would have.

There was another sound somewhere in the distance, and Emmet braced himself for another one of those terrible, crawling monsters to appear.

The sound came again, closer and clearer this time. It was a high-pitched droning noise, and with a flash, Emmet recognized it as the whine of an engine.

The drone cut off, abruptly replaced by the whirr of a docking mechanism and the hiss of an opening airlock.

His heart soared in his chest. He knew the raptors would come for him. He knew it!

Unable to look over, Emmet strained his ears, listening for footsteps or voices, willing them to come closer.

A sudden fear struck him. What if they didn't find him? This place was huge and dark, and, unable to move or speak, Emmet had no way to signal them. Frantically, he tried to move, to scream.

His arm twitched.

It wasn’t a lot, but it was more than he’d been able to do before.

His resolve strengthened, Emmet redoubled his efforts. He tried harder than he’d ever tried anything before.

His leg kicked, followed by a flick of a wrist and a twist of his neck. Slowly but surely, he regained some kind of control over his body. He grunted, instantly delighted by the sound of his own voice.

In his self sustained commotion, he failed to notice the sound of approaching footsteps.

“THERE HE IS!” The voice that rang out was muffled, likely by a helmet, but Emmet still vaguely felt like he should recognize it.

A figure ran up to him, kneeling at his side. They reached down, taking his hand. Instinctively, Emmet grasped back, not even noticing how much easier the motion had become.

“DO NOT WORRY,” the speaker continued. They loomed over him, a set of glowing green eyes peering out of the darkness. “WE ARE HERE TO RESCUE YOU, GROMMET!”

#lego movie 2 #tlm2 #rex dangervest #wyldstyle #emmet brickowski #I aint dead just yet #just........incredibly slow

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bitionraingang · 4 years

Text

Comes Around

Sorry to whoever will be reading this. It sucks, but I love writing!

The Quiett angst/fluff(?)

——————————————————————————

He was no longer coming home. I’ve waited until 5AM walking back and forth, from our room to the front door. At around 5:30AM, I would rest my eyes for 2 hours before having to wake up again to get our 5 year old son, Dong Soo up for Preschool. I called and called. But all I heard was “Please leave voice mail in…” I’ve called in sick for over 2 weeks now. Every footstep I took back into our apartment was dreading. I constantly looked around hoping for him to magically pop out of a corner, with a big smile, apologizing, saying he was busy. But no. It never happened.

Joonkyung came over a couple of times. Though he was closer to Dong Gab than me, he felt that it was right that I knew. He’s been seeing some girls. Girls who weren’t moms. Girls who weren’t wives. Girls who he felt a thrill to be with because he was taken. He didn’t want to be taken anymore. He didn’t want to be responsible. He wanted his life motto to be “fuck bitches, get money” again. Joonkyung had been a great support for me and a great role model for Dong Soo. I was happy that at least I had a friend who truly cared.

I no longer cried. I no longer sighed. I no longer waited. I was happy. 5 years ago, on the day that I sent Dong Gab our divorce papers, he came back home. He was crying. He only cried 5 times in his life. Once when he was born, second when I said I wanted to break up after dating for 2 years, third when I said yes to his proposal, fourth when I gave birth to Dong Soo, and finally, the fifth when he came back home. He said he was stupid. He begged me to forgive him. But my heart was as hard as a stone. I said no. I waited 6 months for him to come back. But now, I won’t. I was willing to give him the freedom that he wanted from me, from us. But why? Why didn’t he want it now? I didn’t understand. So that night, I did what I gave up on a long time ago. I called my supervisor, asking if I can repeal my decision about the transfer opportunity I was offered. I initially had said no because as a mother and as a wife, I had a duty here. Here in our home, or what was our home. I could not just leave everything or force the other two to leave everything in order for me to move forward with my career. But now, I had nothing holding me back. Leaving Dong Gab in tears trying to envelope my body into his, with all my strength I tightly held onto Dong Soo in my arms and forced off Dong Gab off and went into the taxi. I wanted to cry too because I was scared, but now I had no shoulders to lean on. I had to become the shoulder for our, no, my Dong Soo.

Looking out into the night sky, I took the last sip of my Rosé. I felt peaceful. I felt content. But was I truly happy? The arms wrapped around my waist felt so warm. He had fought so hard to be here. I taught Sociology and he taught Law at Columbia University. I did not want to be in a relationship with anyone after Dong Gab, but Jintae had slowly crawled with warmth into my heart. He pecked my neck, tickling me with his facial hair. I giggled and turned around to face him, his arms still wrapped around me. I gave him a big smile and leaned in to give a peck on his neck.

“What’s keeping you up?” he asked.

“I’ve just been thinking.” I replied.

“Bout?” I could feel his voice rumbling in his chest.

Of course I couldn’t tell him what I had been really thinking about. We were almost like a married couple. We lived together for almost 3 years now and even adopted a dog with Dong Soo.

“Let’s go back to bed, I’m tired.” I pulled him towards our bedroom, trying to change the subject.

“Okay,” he never said no to me. Whatever I wanted, we would do.

I laid down towards his side of the bed so I can cuddle to his warmth. He was always warm. So it always had me wondering, would his warmth eventually cool down as well? I haven’t thought of Dong Gab since I moved back to New York. Everything was just so hectic. The explaining I had to do to my parents, friends, getting ready for a new job, taking care of my 5 year old son… it was a lot to deal with at first. Now that I think about it, I had left my home in New York to get married to Dong Gab and 5 years later I’m back, leaving what I thought became my home to get away from Dong Gab.

I loved waking up to the sounds of Jintae and Dong Soo laughing. Jintae took care of Dong Soo as if he was his. It was quite amazing to see the type of bond they have. Their relationship was more about being a father and son. It’s almost as if they were soulmates who understood each other 100% (which sometimes made me jealous). I walked out of my bedroom towards the sounds of laughter in the kitchen. There they were, my two most important people at the moment, laughing over nothing, just making pancakes. Quickly walking towards Dong Soo, I grabbed his cheeks and gave him a big smooch. My big boy who was 10 now still loved my kisses. With his bright eyes, he looked up smiling and said,

“Mommy sit down, we’re making you breakfast with the new recipe we got from Desert Master.”

It was their thing. To watch Desert Master, find a new recipe, and make it for me. Suddenly, Dong Soo said he left an important note for us from school in his room. I lightly tapped his cute bottom so he would go get it and show me. I looked up at Jintae who had been looking at me with a huge grin ever since I walked out of my bedroom. I walked towards him and gave him a hug from the back. I stood there for about a minute, just breathing in his scent.

“Good morning,” I mumbled.

“Good morning. You get more and more breathtaking each day my queen” he replied with a sly smile.

“Stop it” I groaned and reached up to peck his lips.

He snapped around to grab my chin up towards him and gave me more than a peck. I was laughing into the kiss, trying to shake him off before Dong Soo got back. Me trying to break away would only cause him to tighten his grip on my chin. Just as we could hear Dong Soo loudly explaining the reason for the letter, we broke away. I was going to turn to Dong Soo as Jintae held me back and whispered into my ear,

“I’ve been waiting for so long. That was only the beginning. Be ready for tonight.”

With rosy cheeks I looked at Jintae and elbowed his side. We haven’t had sex in over a month because of Dong Soo starting middle school in September and us, preparing the syllabi for our own classes in the Fall. So I guess, I was craving him too.

After having somewhat burnt yet, delicious pancakes for breakfast, I made my way to the bathroom to get ready for a quick check in meeting with the Sociology Department head in a few hours. Dong Soo was in the living room watching Stranger Things 5 on Netflix and Jintae was sitting on the closed toilet next to the mirror which I was standing in front of.

“So what was it you’re exactly doing with her today?” He asked.

“We’re just going over the syllabus and talking about the class structure for the year because you know who fucked up last year.” I replied.

The last semester, a colleague of mine had sexual relationships with multiple students in his class and was teaching anything, but Sociology during his lecture. So at the start of a new semester, the Department Head wanted to meet up with every single professor in her department to make sure nothing like that ever happens again.

“Right… Sociology people are so weird.” He said trying to tease me.

“Yeah, but you’re in Law you doodoo head.” I snapped back at him.

“Yeah, but you love this doodoo head.” He said while laughing.

As I closed my foundation cap, I looked at him in the eyes and said,

“Do I?” And walked out of the bathroom.

Jintae just smiled at me as he watched me getting dressed.

“Can you stop staring and smiling at me like a creep.” I complained.

“I’m just so excited for tonight. I can’t help it.” He replied.

Saying goodbye, I walked into the elevator. 34 floors later, I was out, walking the streets of New York City. The weather was still warm though it was late august. I had a good amount of time before my interview so I decided to walk instead of taking the train. Columbia was just 30 blocks away from my apartment so it wasn’t that bad.

15 minutes into my walk, Spotify just happened to turn on a song with a familiar voice. I guess it was his new album or something. After leaving Korea, I made sure to block him out of my life in any way possible by getting rid of social media and mutual friends. I was contemplating whether or not I should skip the music, but I realized it wasn’t his usual upbeat kind of song. Without the song even starting yet, it seemed to have a deep and heavy feeling to it. I turned to look at the title and it was “All These Girls.” Feeling my throat tightening I quickly skipped the song. Just another song about women. Even after all that has happened with his ex-wife, he still felt comfortable enough to fuck other bitches? I guess I really meant nothing to him. Tears were about to escape my eyes, still broken over what happened. But I was stronger now. I can’t let this affect my life. So with stronger strides, I walked towards the university.

After about 30 minutes, I was finally in front of the main entrance. I smiled at the security guard and made my way to the Sociology department. And just so happens that Dong Gab was there. I could feel my eyes go wide as I saw him from afar. Just as he was about to turn towards my direction, I quickly ran past him and beeped myself in. Why was here? Was here to hook up with some college girls? Was he here to filming something? I took out my phone and did something I haven’t done in over 5 years now. I looked up his name on Google. The first thing that popped was: “Illionaire Records The Quiett becomes Professor Shin.”

It felt very suffocating to hear that. Here I was sitting on a bench right in front of the Department Office just contemplating whether or not I should quit. In the article, apparently they were staying here for half a year to teach the Sociology course on how music affects people. If he were to do that, then obviously we’re going to have to see each other since we’re in the same department. Then he might try to get back into my and Dong Soo’s life. That can’t happen. Alright, so today at my meeting, I’m just gonna tell the Head I can teach this year. And maybe I’ll come back next year. Yeah that’s what I’m going to do becau…

“Excuse me?” Someone asked as they tapped my shoulder.

Too deep in thought, I couldn’t recognize the voice and looked up. Oh shit. Just fuck my life. This is great.

“Y/n? It’s you right? Y/f/n? It’s me, Joonkyung. Remember me?” He asked frantically.

Of course I remember you, you retard. How could I forget. You know what, I’ll just pretend to be someone else and just walk away. I’ll go and tell her right now and just go home and everything will be okay.

“I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong person. My name is not Y/n, it’s Audrey.” I replied as calmly as I can.

“Stop lying, I could see right through you. Where have you been? I’ve been trying to get in contact with you for so long.” Joonkyung said with a look of concern and a tight grip on my arms.

Fuck. Is this where it all ends? No, if I tell him to not say anything to Dong Gab, it’ll be okay. Maybe I’ll take him out to dinner or something. Just as long as Dong Gab doesn’t know.

“Sorry, Joonkyung. I just needed to get away from him. And the only way I could do that was by cutting everyone off. But hey, can you not say anything to him? Like we can have dinner or something and I’ll explain everything to you. Just please, please don’t tell him.” I pleaded.

I knew I was begging to the person who was more than a brother to Dong Gab, but this was the most I can do to save myself from going through hell again.

“Alright… just give me your number… I’ll call you. Dong Gab is in the bathroom right now and he should be getting back soon. So hurry up to where you need to be.” He said while glancing behind himself.

I lightly jumped up at the sound of footsteps coming towards us and the voice I no longer wanted to hear saying,

“Joonkyung, the bathroom here is clean so you should go when you can.”

I couldn’t bare to look at the person walking closer so with my head hung low, I swiftly ran into the department office. With the door to my back, I heard his voice mumbling asking Joonkyung who he was with. Letting out a huge sigh, I walked towards the Head’s cubicle.

I had originally asked if I can get the year off due to personal reasons. She says she would’ve said yes to me, but there were already 6 Professors who won’t be in for the first semester because they were due to give birth. So instead she said I can have off for the second semester. Either that or she would take my year leave for an eternal leave from this university. I couldn’t have my job to go away in a snap just because of him. So what did I do? I called Joonkyung.

After waving at Joonkyung through the cafe window, I pressed call.

“Hey babe, when you coming home?”

“Jintae, something came up so I’ll be home a little but later. That’s okay right?” I asked.

“Yeah, just let me know when you’re getting home so I can drop off Dong Soo at Chris’ house.” He replied.

Right… today was going to be our “date night”. I just know I won’t be in the right mind today and I don’t want Jintae to suspect anything…

“Umm… Jintae, I’m really sorry, but I’m very tired from the meeting today. Is it okay if we moved it? I feel like I won’t be in the mood and I don’t want you to feel like it’s because of you.” I said apologetically.

There was an awkward silence for about 30 seconds before I cleared my throat and called his name.

“Oh, yeah. Of course. Just let me know when you’re getting home.” He seemed to reply with a sigh.

“Yeah, I will. Love you.” I said as I hung up.

I walked into the cafe and sat across Joonkyung. He gave me a tight smile and clasped his hands together. After the waitress took our order, I finally looked at him in the eyes.

“I’m sorry.” I said, feeling tears welling up.

“Hey, don’t be sorry. I know why you did that. I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything.” He said as he grabbed my hands.

“I just couldn’t take it. I waited for him to realize that he was leaving me, leaving Dong Soo, leaving us. He basically gave up on our family. I gave up everything I had to be with him. Joonkyung, I was 21 when I got married to him. He was 37. I thought he would be the mature guy he was when we were dating. But it seems like the lyrics in his songs were right.” I cried.

“I know, but the lyrics thing was wrong. He always loved you. He still loves you. But I think it was the stress catching up to him.” Joonkyung said carefully.

“He didn’t come home until I was done. You know when he came back? When I sent him the divorce papers.” I said.

“I know. I was there. We were in the studio and I was telling him to go back home to you guys. That he shouldn’t be doing this. Once I brought the papers to him, he jumped up and ran home. He didn’t even take his car. He ran home Y/n. And you know what running means for Dong Gab.” Joonkyung said taking my hand into his.

My chest tightened at that. I still loved him, but there was no way that I would be able to forgive him. I looked up at Joonkyung and said,

“That doesn’t matter anymore. I loved him. I’m pretty sure that I still do, but I don’t want to go through this whole drama with him again.”

“But don’t you want closure? Y/n, think about Dong Soo, doesn’t...” Joonkyung spoke softly.

“Dong Soo doesn’t even remember who he is anymore. Joonkyung, I’ve been with someone for quite some time now. He takes care of my son like he’s his own. Jintae will be more than what Dong Gab can offer.” I said fiercely.

“You’re meeting someone else?” He asked.

“What am I supposed to do? Live like a nun after my failed marriage? Joonkyung, I know you’re doing this because you really care, but right now, I’m happy with the family I have right now. Jintae is amazing to both me and my son. There is nothing more I could ask for than having Dong Gab turn down his position as a professor.” I said.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t do that to hyung. He’s excited to become a professor here. As much as I love you and care for you, I can’t do that hyung who’s always been there for me” He replied.

I sighed and said, “I know, I’m sorry. It’s just that I don't know what to do anymore. My life finally is getting better and here he comes like a storm again. Literally a quiet storm.”

“Hey, but everything happens for a reason. Whether you guys meet again or get back together will be in God’s hands. So don’t try to change fate” Joonkyung said with a warm smile.

After some silence, I asked, “He’s moved on right? I just happened to hear the intro to a song that was recently released, though I didn’t listen to the whole thing, I could tell it was about his girls… you know I was always scared that his lyrics would become true? But I never told him because what if that planted a seed in him to actually go on with that act?”

Joonkyung shaked his head and sighed, “You’ve got it all wrong. ‘All These Girls’? That song is about you. He wrote that in regret. While I was mastering the song he said he hoped that you would listen to the song and come back to him. I told him the title was a bad choice, but he wanted to keep it like that.”

“Well, I saw the title and immediately turned it off because I was mad. Thinking how could he just continue with his actions just like that.” I said.

“You know, you guys are technically still married?” Joonkyung brought up.

“What? What do you mean?” Confused, I looked into his eyes.

“After you guys left, he never signed the papers, he put it in the paper shredder. So you guys are technically still married.” He explained.

It still didn’t make sense to me how when someone was given the freedom they wanted, they didn’t take it. Tears started welling up in my eyes. I lightly gasped, feeling my chest tighten with pain from the situation.

“Y/n, no matter how much you deny it, I can tell, the whole world can tell that you still love Dong Gab.” Joonkyung said as he got up and took a seat next to me. He lightly pulled me into a hug and stroked my hair.

“I just want the best for you both, but I know and even you know that you don’t want it to end like this. Dong gab hyung feels the same way.”

Joonkyung held me in his arms until I could look up without having tears well up in my eyes. After 3 hours of catching up, Joonkyung drove me home.

“Why do you have a Bentley here?” I teased him.

“Hey, a man’s got to be ready to take any of his ladies home.” He said with a smile. We finally pulled up in front of my apartment and I got out of the car. He walked from the driver’s side to the passenger side and pulled me into a hug once again.

“Just think about it okay? Don’t think about anyone else, but yourself. Ask yourself if you want to be with Dong Gab or not.”

I returned the hug and said, “Thanks Joonkyung. I had fun today. Don’t forget to give me a call sometimes.”

We released each other and just smiled under the shining moonlight. As he gave my cheek a friendly peck, I felt a presence right behind me and heard,

“Who is this Y/n?”

“Oh, Jintae. Dong Soo, where you guys coming from?” I asked slightly caught off guard.

“Y/n, I asked who this was.” Jintae said slightly angered from the sight he witnessed. I could see Dong Soo somewhat hiding behind Jintae.

“Oppa, this is Joonkyung oppa. He’s a friend of mine from Korea. He’s always been like an older brother to me and we happened to meet today at school.” I explained.

“Dong Soo, do you remember uncle Joonkyung? He was the first person to take a picture of you when you were born. He also helped feed and change your diapers when you were a baby.” I said waving my hands towards Dong Soo so he could come closer.

I saw the Jintae’s grip on Dong Soo’s hand loosen as Joonkyung stepped closer to see Dong Soo.

“Hey man, you remember me? Wow, you’re almost as tall as me.” Joonkyung laughed.

I was surprised to see Dong Soo jump into his arms. Joonkyung looked equally surprised.

“Uncle, where have you been? I missed you. I missed you and daddy.” Dong Soo cried.

My eyes widen at his words. Did Dong Soo remember them all this time, but I hadn’t said anything. Why hadn’t he said anything? Tears were welling up once again as I saw my crying son being held in the arms of his crying uncle. I couldn’t help but to question if all of my actions were done out of mere selfishness. I came to a realization that I had physically ripped my son that I loved so much from his father whom Dong Soo had loved just as equally. Joonkyung was crying softly murmuring apologies into Dong Soo’s ears. I turned towards Jintae who looked very lost. Thinking back, over the course of years of being with Jintae, I realized I have been trying to fill up Dong Gab’s empty spot with Jintae and have been deceiving myself to think everything was fine. But now, I knew that after today, I would have to clear things up with him.

After all the chaos that happened, Dong Soo was in his bed sleeping while Jintae and I were seated on the couch of our living room. There was silence as we didn’t know how to start the conversation.

“I…” Jintae and I said at the same time.

“You go first.” I said.

“No, you go.” He replied.

Taking a gulp of my own saliva, I started with, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Why are you sorry?” Jintae asked.

“I think I’ve been deceiving myself to protect myself from getting hurt.” I replied.

“What do you mean?” He asked, his face cringing with a hint of hurt.

“Jintae, I’m really thankful for everything you’ve done, for me and Dong Soo, for everything we’ve gone through, but I don’t think I loved you. There were times where I did feel flutters in my heart, but I think I missed Dong Gab so much that I was trying to replace you in my heart.” I said crying.

With desperation in his voice, Jintae said as he grasped my hand,

“No, baby. You’ve got it wrong. I love you and you love me. We’re gonna get through this. It’s just because you were reminded of your past today and Dong Soo crying like that, that you feel this way.”

“Oppa, I’m sorry, but I don’t love you. I loved the idea that someone else was in love with me even after all that had happened in my life. I know how much it hurts to be in the position of not being loved by the person you love so I think we need to end this here. I don’t want you to be hurt.” I cried as I pulled him into a warm hug.

“But, think about all the things we went through. If you feel like you don’t love me anymore then, think about the times we had love. I can’t let you go like this.” Jintae cried into my hair as he tightened his grip on my waist.

I could only cry along with him because I understood the emotion of pain he was going through. No matter how much I am grateful for Jintae coming into my life, I couldn't deny the fact that I still did love Dong Gab 5 years after we had “broken” up.

I woke up to the sunlight slowly creeping its way into the bedroom. I turned my body away from the window and faced Jintae who was sleeping next to me. After our long talk yesterday, we had decided to break up. So today would be the last day as being a couple. I shifted myself closer to his body and wrapped my arms around him. As I peppered light kisses on his shoulder, I muttered apologies.

“It’s going to make it harder for me to break up with you if you keep doing that.” I heard Jintae say without moving.

I giggled lightly and removed my arms from his body. I sat up and pushed his disheveled hair out of his face.

“I’m sorry oppa.”

“It’s okay, as long as you were honest with me, I’m okay.” He replied, finally opening his eyes.

How was someone able to be so understanding and warm even if they were thrown off the bus? I really didn’t deserve someone as good as him.

I reached down to give a peck on his lips and said,

“Let’s get up and talk with Dong Soo.”

“I thought we’re breaking up, how can you kiss me like that?” Jintae asked with a smile.

“We haven’t broken up yet so I still can.” I replied as I got off the bed.

We ate at a local diner in front of our apartment as we explained the situation to Dong Soo. Dong Soo also shared his part of why he hadn’t said anything about missing his dad, he didn’t want to see me sad after he did once when he was younger. Hand in hand, we walked back to our apartment. Today was the official last day of Jintae, Dong Soo, and I being a family. I had planned to move out of the apartment with Dong Soo, but Jintae said he would because it would make the move easier and make it easier for him to adjust to living alone.

Hot tears dropped to my chin as I watched the scene of Jintae giving Dong Soo a big hug.

“Hey man, make sure you’re always good to your mom. And remember me leaving doesn’t mean that you can’t call me or come see me when you want to. No matter what I’ll always be here for you. Alright?”

“Thank you dad, uncle Jintae you will always be my second dad.” Dong Soo said.

Jintae smiled with tears in his eyes as he faced Dong Soo. He slowly got up to my eye level and pulled me into a hug. I burst out crying once again.

“I’m so sorry oppa.”

“It’s okay, baby, you’re going to be happy. I’ll be happy too okay?” He said as he pulled away from the hug. I placed my hands on his cheeks as I gave him a warm kiss before he could leave. After a chaste make out, we finally pulled away.

“I’ll get going, make sure to keep in contact!” Jintae said as he walked away waving at us.

Dong Soo gave me a side hug as we watched Jintae get into the uber that would take him to his new place.

Dong Soo and I were cuddled up in my bed after Jintae left.

“Honey, did you miss daddy very much?” I asked hesitantly.

“Yes.” Dong Soo answered with a shaky voice, trying hard not to cry.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t know that. We’ll meet daddy soon okay?” I said as I pulled his head towards my chest.

“Thank you mommy.” He replied as we fell into a 3 hour nap.

It has been 3 days since Jintae left and we were doing fine. With deep breaths I pressed the button to give Joonkyung a call.

“Hello? Y/n?” He picked up.

“Hey, oppa. Can we meet up?” I asked.

In less than 30 minutes, Joonkyung was outside waiting for Dong Soo and I by the passenger side of his Bentley.

“Sorry, we didn’t have enough time to get ready when you said you’ll be here in 20 minutes.” I said.

“No, mommy it was just you. I was done in like 5 minutes, you took the extra time.” Dong Soo said wittly.

Joonkyung laughed as he gave Dong Soo a hug and proceeded to give me one while placing a peck on my cheeks. We all got into the car and went off to our destination for some late lunch.

After placing our orders Dong Soo was off to the kids play section. Joonkyung looked up at me with anticipation and said,

“So, what’s up? I had to lie to Dong Gab hyung to come meet you.”

“Well, first, Jintae and I broke it off.” I said and proceeded to explain everything that had happened after he left that night.

“I mean, I’m happy that you’re happy, but does that mean you’re going to meet Dong Gab hyung now?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I answered truthfully.

“I know we have to meet for the sake of Dong Soo, but I don’t know if things can ever be the same again. I still love him, but I don't know if I’m ready to go back into a relationship with him.”

“I think that’s fine. You don’t have to push yourself to get into a relationship with hyung, but you should clear up things with him for the sake of your son. He misses you and Dong Soo a lot.” He answered.

“But, I also don’t know how and where to get started with him. It’s been such a long time. I don’t even remember his phone number anymore.” I said.

“I guess it was a great idea for me to actually calling him to come here. Sorry, but before I left, I told him to meet me here. He thinks I’m grabbing lunch with him, but little does his know…”

“You called him here? Joonkyung, what if I called you to say I don’t want to meet him anymore? How could you do that?” I asked.

“I already knew where your heart stood after that night. I just wanted you to sort it out first and then let me know. You better thank me for this later on.” He said with a smile.

It was any minute that Dong Gab was going to walk through that door. Joonkyung gave my hand a squeeze as he knew how nervous I was becoming. Then we heard a ding as the door opened, indicating someone walked in.

“He’s here. Hyung!” Joonkyung said as he gave my hand another squeeze.

“Sorry I’m late, there was traffic on the way here. Oh, didn’t know you had company.” I heard Dong Gab say. My back was facing towards the door so all I heard was his voice. He sounded the same from 5 years ago. I couldn’t help, but wonder how he looked now.

“Hello, I’m Dong Gab, I didn’t know Joonkyung had company.” He said.

I saw Joonkyung smile a little and look up at Dong Gab.

“Hyung, don’t be too shocked.’ Joonkyung said as he signaled me towards Dong Gab with his chin.

I slowly turned to face Dong Gab, I could see his face change from a nonchalant look to a look of surprise as he realized who I was.

“Hey.” I said with a tight smile. Tears were brimming up in the lines of his eyes and he took a deep breath and pulled me into a hug. I didn’t have the courage to return the hug, but I softly sobbed in his arms. All sorts of emotions ranging from happiness to sadness to anger poured out.

I could hear Dong Gab sobbing as he buried his head in the crook of my neck.

“I’m sorry Y/n. I’m so sorry. Baby, please forgive me for everything. I missed you so much. Baby I’m sorry.”

“Daddy?” a soft voice called.

Dong Gab slightly released me from his arms and turned towards the soft voice.

“Soo, baby. My baby. Daddy is so sorry. I missed you so much baby. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.” Dong Gab cried as he reached down to pull Dong Soo into a tight hug. I could only cry as this scene played out in front of me. Joonkyung got up from his seat and pulled me into his embrace. After everyone had calmed down, we all took our seats to eat. I watched Dong Soo eat happily as he told his dad everything that went on for the past 5 years. I couldn’t eat as I was still overwhelmed with the situation and just watched the two happily conversing. From time to time Dong Gab would look up at me with sad eyes. Joonkyung lightly elbowed me so I would eat and I just gave a small smile back. After lunch, Joonkyung proposed to take Dong Soo on a shopping spree “to make up for the lost years” so that Dong Gab and I would have some time alone.

We were seated side by side on a bench at Central Park. There were children running around with their parents, couples strolling in the sun’s gaze, tourists on horse carriages. Everyone seemed content with the beautiful weather and situation except for us. We were still caught up in the past, not knowing where to start.

“I know I don’t deserve to say this, but I’m sorry and I missed you. A lot.” He said.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Went my heart. It was no lie that I still loved Dong Gab. But will I be able to forgive him was the question. I heard him shift closer to me and I just sighed looking up to the sky.

“I know saying sorry won’t fix anything, but I don’t know how else to express myself.” He said.

“After Dong Soo and I left, I cut off all social media and contact with anyone that had connections with you. I didn’t want to be reminded of you in any way. You know, I waited. No, we waited 6 months for you to come back. I know it must’ve been hard for you to be tied down after long years of being so free. So that’s why I waited. Because I knew you didn’t mean it. But when my river of hope was brought to a drought, I couldn’t do it anymore. Dong Gab, I was 21 when I got married to you. You were 37. I left my home in New York to get married to you and there I was, 5 years later I’m back, leaving what I thought became my home in order to get away from the very reason to why I came.” I started.

“I know. And I will never be able to forgive myself for hurting you.” He interjected while grabbing my hand.

Holding in my tears, I said, “I didn’t understand why you left and then tried to come back when I gave you your freedom. That’s why I’ve been mad. I was sad and upset about you cheating, but more mad about the fact that you came crying when you finally got what you asked for. Dong Gab, did you even love me? Or did the thought of someone leaving you make you want to come back?”

“Y/n, I’ve loved you since the very first time I laid my eyes on you. When I saw you get into that white G-Wagon on that day, I knew that I needed to have you. I still love you. I know I hurt you to the point where it’s indescribable I don’t fully understand why I did that. I think it was because I knew or felt like you would always be there for me to return to. But after seeing the divorce papers, I knew I fucked up. I couldn’t do anything to turn you around. I’m sorry Y/n. He cried.

“After I moved here, there was a man. He taught me to love and be loved again. We were so happy. He was so good to Dong Soo, treating him like his own son. Jintae loved Dong Soo and I so much that he let us go back to you oppa.” I said finally returning the grip he had on my hand. Shocked, Dong Gab lifted his head, face red from crying. I slowly let the tears drip down to my cheeks as I pulled his face closer to mine.

“Meeting Joonkyung reminded me of how I have yet to learn to unlove you. I hate you for everything you’ve done, but my love for you is so much bigger than that.” I said before placing a chaste kiss on his lips.

I slowly pulled away, as he kept pushing in, almost as if he didn’t want to move away from my warm lips. We smiled at each other with tears brimming once again. He said, “I love you” before cupping my cheeks and pulling me into another warm, deep kiss.

#the quiett scenarios #the quiett #shin dong gab scenarios #shin dong gab #khiphop

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ofravensandgenesis · 4 years

Text

OC Quiz

Tagged by @amistrio and @stvnningstrike !! Thank you for the tags in this fun ask game!! :D ♥ Tagging anyone who wants to be tagged, go forth and tell us about your lovely OCs!!!!

—————

Deputy Joshua Rook

————— Asked someone to marry you? - Innocent.

Kissed one of your friends? - Uhhhh, innocent...? What kind of kiss are we talking here, because if we mean cheek kisses or something like that then yeah, guilty, but if you mean a proper kiss on the mouth then pretty sure innocent. Well. So long as we’re counting people as friends that I’ve known longer than the lifespan of a mayfly.

Danced on a table in a bar or tavern? - Innocent.

Ever told a lie? - Guilty guilty guilty, it’s a marvel I have a single pair of pants left, rather than all of them burning up in one of Sharky’s bonfires.

Had feelings for someone whom you can’t have? - ...I mean, yes. It’s a crush, I’ll get over it. Guilty.

Ever kissed someone of the opposite sex? - Innocent ish if we mean strictly me being the one to initiate the kiss. Platonic affection kisses guilty, romantic or sexual kisses innocent. If we’re including being kissed by someone of the opposite sex, guilty then.

Ever kissed someone of the same sex? - Guilty on all counts.

Kissed a picture? - Does it count as guilty if I was five and it was for art time? It was an effort somewhere between painting and cleaning all the paint off my face. If no, innocent otherwise.

Slept in until 5pm? - Guilty and then some, I’ve slept at weird hours before for night work. [coughs.]

Fallen asleep at work or school? - ...guilty on rare occasion, I try not to though. Sleepwalking, you know how it is.

Held a snake? - Innocent which is unfortunate, snakes are cool animals man. I’ve only seen them in pet stores and in documentaries.

Been suspended from school? - Ehhhhhhhh, technically innocent as I was not actually suspended. I was threatened with suspension if I was found to be acting out again. So I made sure to not get found out.

Stolen something? - If I had a nickel for every item I’ve stolen, I’d have a small fortune. Guilty as hell.

Done something you regret? - Guilty again. We all have regrets, don’t we?

Caught a snowflake on your tongue? - ...innocent, I hadn’t thought to try this yet, why am I living this far up north where it gets freezing cold and snows if I’m not going to do these things. I’ll have to do that when winter next rolls around. If I can, anyway.

Laughed until liquid came out of your nose? - Innocent. That sounds uncomfortable.

Kissed in the rain? - Uh. Guilty? It was an out of the blue surprise and I wasn’t expecting it. Nice though.

Sat on a roof top? - Guilty. It’s nice up there.

Kissed someone you shouldn’t? - Innocent?? Who would count as “someone you shouldn’t kiss”? ...maybe guilty? There was that one time I gatecrashed a party to, uh, avoid a close encounter with the law, shall we say, as a teen. Was yanking my hoodie off to try to blend in and change my look when I ran right into this guy—real cute, real surprised, but that left no time for me to really hide though. So I panicked, pulled him out of the way, and sprang a surprise smooch on him. I apologized after the coast was clear, but he was...ahem, more than fine with it. Ended up sticking around to talk to him. Nice night, nice guy, honestly. Rory's his name. We still talk on the regular.

Sang in the shower? - Innocent. I think.

Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on? - Do lakes count? Guilty if so. Blame Sharky and Pratt. Hurk helped.

Shaved your head? - Personally innocent, though others have given me a really close cut as a kid on occasion. Didn’t much care for it at all, then or now.

Slept naked? - Guilty. Sometimes summer got too damn hot and clothes were overkill because there was no air conditioning. Thankfully I make more than enough to afford AC now so I don’t melt into a puddle during a heat wave—or turn into an icicle up here in Montana during the winter.

Made a boyfriend/girlfriend cry? - Innocent. I’d need to have an S/O to run that risk first. Pretty sure if I ever do get one there’ll be fights eventually because I don’t think anyone can avoid fighting forever, can they?

Donated blood? - Innocent, it just never came around as a situation to consider before now.

Eaten alligator meat? - Guilty, it was a food bank donated can of the stuff. Tasted kind of like a cross between something gamey, chickeny, and fishy?? Not real keen on eating it again, but if there was nothing else to eat, probably would.

Eaten cheesecake? - Guilty. Tasty stuff, cheesecake.

Still loved someone you shouldn’t? - ................... [What an uncomfortable question. He doesn’t want to answer that.]

Have/had a tattoo? - Guilty on multiple counts.

Liked someone, but will never tell who? - Guilty, though Joey already knows, she has this ability where she can just stare into your soul and know your deepest darkest secrets— [He’s kidding, Joey’s just perceptive and he knows it. He likes to pretend that she doesn’t know though, helps with the denial.]

Been too honest? - ??? Uh...I...would...not think so? Innocent?

Ruined a surprise? - Guilty, both accidentally and intentionally.

Eaten so much that you can’t walk after? - Innocent. I have wolfed down my food on more than one occasion though, even though I know I shouldn’t. It happens sometimes, but still working on it.

Dressed in a man’s clothes? - Guilty, I generally wear men’s clothes.

Dressed in a woman’s clothes? - Innocent as far as I know, though many clothes are unisex and I’ve gotten clothes from thrift stores and other sources before so who knows? Hoodies are for everyone.

Joined a pageant? - ??? I don’t think so, unless school talent contests and costume contests count? Didn’t really do much for those either. So, innocent.

Still have communication with your ex? - Pfft, I’d need to have an ex first for that. Innocent. Rory isn’t an ex by virtue of the fact that we never dated.

Been told that you’re beautiful by someone who meant it? - Innocent.

Cheated on someone? - See above, have not had an actual serious relationship to speak of for this to happen. Nor have I been the, uh, third person so to speak, so innocent.

Gotten totally drunk and missed an exam? - Innocent. I don’t really get drunk outside of drinking with friends socially, and even then I would prefer to keep my personal intoxication levels low.

A total stranger treated you by paying your fare? - Innocent.

Got so angry that you cried? - Guilty. Life sucks sometimes.

Tried to stay away from someone for their own good? - ...does for our combined mutual good count? Guilty if so.

Thought about suicide? - ...Guilty in passing, once. Not deeply or seriously. [He’s too determined to try to live his life, honestly. Even if he’s kind of worked up into a mess with all of the cult business and the psychic bullshit he has to deal with.]

Thought about murder? - Guilty. Very guilty if dreams and visions of possible futures count.

Actually murdered someone? - Innocent. Hopefully it’ll stay that way regardless.

Thought about mass murder? - ...Guilty. Comes with the territory of dreaming about the Reaping and Collapse for years upon years from different perspectives. Would prefer not to think about that. [It’s unsettling to him.]

Actually committed a mass murder? - Innocent, and hopefully will very much stay that way.

Rode in a stranger’s vehicle? - Do taxis count, or public transportation? Guilty if so, innocent otherwise.

Stalked someone? - ...guilty but it was for a good cause on all occasions. Namely keeping a third party from tormenting and or murdering them and their family members or friends.

Had a girlfriend? - A serious girlfriend? Innocent. A girlfriend in kindergarten school for all of one recess and free play period? Guilty ish? Kindergarten was wild, man.

Had a boyfriend? - Innocent since I would say I haven’t actually had a serious relationship yet. I’ve had...flings?? It’s weird to call them that, we didn’t discuss what name fit it at the time or anything, just acknowledged that we were both on the same page of not looking for something involving commitment at the time from each other. Just...you know, being there with each other for a little while, before we parted ways. It wasn’t a good time to pursue a relationship for me, at the very least. Not sure when a good time would be, though. After all this? [Assuming there is an afterwards worth mentioning once the cult situation is...resolved, shall we say. He doesn’t know what will happen then. Terrifying, isn’t it. Almost as bad as knowing what could and would happen in what he considers the Bad Ending from his point of view.]

Gotten totally drunk during a holiday? - Innocent. Don’t much care for loss of control over myself, as stated earlier. Some drinking is fine in good company and a safe environment.

#ask game #Far Cry 5 #FC 5 #Far Cry 5 AU #FC 5 AU #Deputy Joshua Rook #OC Quiz #in-character responses #in a backstage interview kind of way #lbr he wouldn't talk this much about the shit he's done #unless he really trusted the other person #or there was a reason to open up #bc it's incriminating obviously #and he's supposed to be a sheriff deputy #a lawful sort and all that #he is trying to be more lawful for what it's worth #it was a rough start to life tho

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queenharumiura · 4 years

Note

The nerd friends: Komui and Shugarl

Send me a ship and I will grade it: ||Still accepting||

A: I love it

I mean truly I should give it the A+: OTP status, but I feel like that only goes for canon ships on the blog. They are friends, so it can’t be an OTP status technically speaking, yanno? Who knows if this may change, I’m not sure-- but given the way their interactions are panning out-- I feel like it will happen eventually. kek.

So--- Komui and Shugarl are both... nerds to put it quite simply. They’re nerds in the truest sense. Komui is a lil on the eccentric side while Shugarl is just... a stoic and hateful sort of man. He doesn’t like other people and he doesn’t care for them either. He’s very jaded, which makes him like this.

From what I remember of Komui, he’s pretty messy, but he manages to get stuff done. He seems to maybe run away or procrastinate from his work sometimes, resulting in his secretary type person having to make him get it done. Komui just likes to enjoy life to it’s fullest, but he doesn’t neglect his own duties.

He has to do a good job, else Lenalee won’t be very happy about it. He has to work hard for her sake as well. Komui is very protective of her and he loves her greatly. This is something that Shugarl can relate to as canonically, Jupiter is the only one he cares about. He died for her sake, after all. [he does revive, but- yeah.]

Shugarl is very stoic and ‘cool,’ but he’s also got a lot of lame moments too. He’s just too proud and he always has to keep his appearances up. He’s also stupidly very vain and absolutely brags about his intelligence. I’ll never forget he went into the kitchen, kicked out the chef, and cooked his own meal bc he thought the chef did a bad job.

Then of course, he gives Jupiter a special extra treat in her meal-- like the BIASED BROTHER HE IS.

It’s funny since when he heard Ponsol was defeated, it was basically a: “Ha, so useless, I guess that means I can expect something out of Kucabara.” He’s cruel and ruthless, known to torment even children. He’s a ‘well respected’ demon. Ironically, he does care about the rules and being proper. Going into the human world to kidnap humans when it’s against the law was something that actually pissed him off because it throws off the balance between the worlds.

You can’t do that! We’ve seen canonically that he uses math to determine when you can travel between the worlds. If you throw off the balance, it throws off the math. I reason it’s like physics. How dare someone throw off physics? The INFIDELS.

Jupiter was a great influence on him though. He grew to realize there is more to life than math (lol). He learned to care for other people and what not. As one would expect-- that’s hard to work into a human verse. Hence, I did what I could to make it work so it is close enough to canon, but also somewhat reasonable from a logical standpoint. That’s why I gave him the past that I did.

A few elements are misc but I thought it is the background necessary to give him the personality that he has. Where he’s untrusting and he doesn’t care for the world around him. All he values is intelligence. He looks down on the unintelligent. Jupiter truly is a good influence on him.

Komui is an intelligent man, and Shugarl would respect that about him. I believe Komui respects that of Shugarl as well. They both understand the way the other feels about thier sister figures. Shugarl truly does dote on Jupiter in his own way. There is no canon info on Shugarl’s family aside from he is a highclass demon (due to his shinigami status) and that he has a brother, Ponsol (who is also a shinigami). Other than that... nothing.

I gotta do everything myself in this household;;;

Anyways, so yeah, my DD muses are highly HC’ed and uh... adjusted. Jupiter’s backstory had to be adjusted bc I adjusted the other two so they had human stories. //sighs

So yeah, the two guys first met and respected each other. Then they both started to bond over their mutual nerdiness, and their love to dote on their sisters. I think the fact that Komui doesn’t judge Shugarl for anything really means a lot to Shugarl. He also likes to tease Komui bc lol he’s an ass.

Komui-- it seems that he treasures Shugarl’s friendship because Shugarl also doesn’t care for any superfluous stuff. If you’re smart, that’s all that matters. He doesn’t judge Komui for his weird actions or for how much he cares for his sister. Shugarl is caring in his own way and Komui understands that.

Shugarl is also conscientous in ways, and I think from that, mutual understanding, trust, and respect came about. That’s how they became really good friends. They do say that sometimes the best couples are also the best of friends. I think if they were to be in a romantic relationship together, it would go well. Komui did comfort Shugarl that one time he was having one of this episodes and Shugarl really did appreciate that. So I think they’d have a good dynamic. The only thing is that Shugarl would question whether he has anything to bring to a relationship. All he has is a lot of emotional baggage and that would bother him a lot. I’m sure Komui would comfort him and tell him that he brings him good company and all that.

I’m sure they’d do their best to support each other in regards to life and work. They’d know how to have fun with each other, not worrying about boring the other (bc of similar interests), their family/friends would get along with each other [Ponsol: pending], and idk they just have such a comforting air around the other.

They’d be good to each other. If someone dared to bully one of them, the other would certainly get very angry and retaliate in some way or another, kek.

#Friendlyneighbourhoodscientist #meme answered #answered ask #thanks for the ask!#Neo speaks #((I got one more left from you to answer and i'll be done! I may get to it later today or another day))

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platypanthewriter · 4 years

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The problem with Harry, Ginny, and Cho Chang, and storybuilding theory

Realized I was ranting @horson and could probably stop doing that. @waterhobbit? @susiecarter? Anybody have a burning desire to hear my Harry Potter rant? XD

I think of stories as something you're building to support your imaginary journey, in a way? Like you have to supply the reader with the framework before they'll keep taking the mental steps you want. I felt like the HP series did a LOT wrong there, like for one, why introduce a new character we'd barely heard of for Harry to mack on in book four? Why couldn’t Cho have been somebody Hermione knew in Ravenclaw this whole time? Why spend all that time building and building this mutual obsession with Draco that goes nowhere? (Because the world opens out, and Draco becomes less important, but bear with me.)

Why not spend that time building a relationship with GINNY in every book? Book two (Chamber of Secrets, Voldie’s diary) would have been the perfect time to induct Ginny into the gang as somebody kinda cool, somebody who fights and can solve crimes and isn't just Ron's little sister. Then build on that in book three (Prisoner of Azkaban, Marauders plot)--she knows Scabbers, she could be involved, maybe the rat did something odd she casually mentions. Then in book four, Hermione and Ron fighting is the PERFECT time for Harry to talk to a friend outside of the three of them, and Ginny could be a Friend by then.

Then, during book four (the Goblet of Fire, y’know, with dragon riding), have her have a reaction of some kind to Harry having a crush, and he realizes she still has Feelings, and it’s weird. They’re awkward together, but they’re also worried about this weird thing with Ron and Lavender, and they get laws changed about the use of love potions. (Creepy, Rowling! Kids making roofies that last for an indefinite time?! CREEPY) They have an ADVENTURE!

(Side note: Couldn’t he have had a crush on somebody more entertainingly ill-fated in book four? Cho always struck me as Rowling going “And I guess he’d be hitting puberty *sigh* How dull *groan* Let’s get puberty out of the way I GUESS *sigh* and then I can get back to story” Like if we’d KNOWN Cho it would have been fine, but she was just there to compare him to Cedric? We know nearly nothing about her, she hardly has any lines that aren’t her worrying about somebody else.

What if Harry’d had a crush on Angelina Johnson, and we saw some real feeling from George Weasley, foreshadowing them ending up together. What if Harry’d clumsily kissed CEDRIC, or Neville, when they helped him with the challenges, and part of our love for Cedric was how cool and kind he was about it, or Neville being surprised and flattered and awkward and also actually talking about that girl he eventually marries.

What if Rowling had intentionally mirrored and foreshadowed Dumbledore/Grindlewald by having Harry have some sexually charged scuffle-heading-to-allyhood with Draco, and then Harry finds out in book five (Order of the Phoenix, the Harry Yells book), they fight worse than ever, with Draco turning further toward the dark side with the added bitterness of failed friendship.

What if Harry made out with Ginny, and it was super weird, and they both thought it’d never go anywhere and were awkwardly Definitely Friends until things started to feel romantic again in later books because she was ACTUALLY AROUND, ROWLING, or what if he kissed Luna, because she understood the stakes of actual death more than anyone else? Even if they didn’t end up together, they could have found a spot to look out over the moors, and kicked their feet over the edge, and leaned against each other and talked through their feelings about how their friends might die.

Or what if he DID kiss Cho--I’m loath to cut a role from a female PoC in a Rowling book, dear god--but she was more active earlier, OR she could have been a year older, and played Cedric’s role, that would have been more interesting. She’d have been more active as somebody Harry knew, and been more important to the story, even though she’d have died.

Just saying, there were more interesting ill-fated smooches around, character-wise)

(Also a side note: Hermione needed more friends than her boyfriend and their BFF. Introduce Cho and Parvati as interesting rounded people way sooner, ROWLING, and then it won’t seem so weird when Harry’s mooning over her. Also, who are Ginny’s friends? Doesn’t she know anyone her own age? She should have been friends with Cho and Ginny, at least, and spent some time with them, so that the reader got to know them.)

Anyway, in book five, OotP, Ginny and Harry are living in the same house and barely talk? Come on, Rowling, he’s gonna marry this girl!

He has more interactions with Draco Malfoy, and we know more about Draco and his goals and feelings, than we do about the person our lead marries. Now, I’ve met fanon Draco and sometimes he’s great, but assuming Rowling, for once, was trying to take the classy road and not absolve bullies, or make the lead spend goodness points to redeem one, what if instead of having Draco be a lead character and then drop out of Harry’s consciousness, he was part of a group of bullies? Everybody at Hogwarts is very willing to dump on Harry as soon as Draco stirs them up, there have to be some other bullying characters there, making rude magic buttons, and so on.

If Harry’s obsessed with the sons of Death Eaters, instead of Draco’s person, it’d feel less like it’s building to something between them. She built and built on this “Harry and Draco: Eternal Rivals” bridge, and it’s no wonder some people walked across thinking they were following the plot to redemption, and were annoyed it was a dead end. Have a couple of the Draco plots be a group of jerks in opposition to the main characters (not just Draco and Lackeys), and then when Harry leaves his schoolyard bullies behind to fight the Dark Lord, it’ll feel less like a dangling plot thread.

Basically, if Harry was DESTINED to end up with Ginny, build it up the way Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s friendship was! Give us adventures, conversations, in-jokes, and fights, and have them build trust! See, there’s that word again: BUILD.

In conclusion, if you want your story to go a certain way and feel emotionally satisfying, build your readers the bridge to join you. Don’t leave them back scratching their heads wondering which is the way forward, or feeling like they got hit on the head and missed some important developments along the line!

#Harry Potter #writing advice #story structure #platypan #meta #I guess

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pendraegon · 4 years

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🚫🧠✊ (no brain squad emoji banner)

soifdjasioJOIASFJAERUIOAFJASD it’s 2020, y’all still be having brains?? AND using them?? can’t relate, my meat is too huge for that 😤😤😤

First impression: ok so. i think we started out as mutuals-in-law and i used to be like. omg this is so embarrassing shreya do NOT come for me about this, but i think i followed you first and i was like “tumblr user shreya billybvnes is SO fucking cool..the aura..the panache..the pizzazz..” and then we became mutuals and i freaked out so like foaijsdofijsao i was debating watching black sails at the time but focusing machine broke so i lived vicariously through whatever gifset you reblogged and whatever posts you made foaisjdfoisado also i remember being like !!!!!!! that you had bbc merlin content and i was like,, that’s so hot, very spicy.

Your nickname in my head: i just call you shreya most times?? although one time...........................i mispelled your name as shreka but like, shrek.. and i almost sent it but i caught it in time and i LIVE IN FEAR that i will accidentally do it again. before we talked i linked u with mr percival actorman though so whenever i saw his face i was like..except now that i know about the gay mag cover thing im like foaijsdfoias OH also himbo extraordinaire..mister thor..

Closeness ratings [1-10]: ofjsiodfjsa at the risk of sounding clingy and annoying but also 1000000, it’s very easy to talk to you and you have such good takes and i love that we rant about wealth distribution...bro, we’re comrades (oh my god they were comrades)..can u lift up this hammer and i’ll hold the sickle and we can entwine our arms together?? haha unless.....

Do I like you: sometimes i feel like. a dog with a new squeaky toy and i keep like making the toy squeak because i want the attention of another dog and that’s how i feel towards you fhdiasudfhasi but also YES, i LOVE you!! both of us live under the yoke of the Asian Experience (TM) lmao and legit you have the Hottest, Coolest Takes on my dash like...ur moving tattoo ideas? genius. ur shitposts? amazing. the time u said you’d make tomato soup with ketchup and milk?????? it haunts me to this day, I will never escape from the legacy of that post I swear to god, you explained australian politics to me and seriously i love you for that, i remember us making fun of pete wentz and wheezer oasjfdias, and idk, you’re always there whenever i need it and even just to see that you liked my textposts..........makes me happy and feel lighter... i sometimes worry about bothering you too much due to the time differences and work and what not, but i get so happy whenever i see you on my dash or when i get a message back from you

You are my: friend!! my fellow jock!! my himbo in holy matriswoley.. no brain club, huge meat club, thoughts empty seconds, thirsting after white men and it’s unfortunate minutes, asian aspect hours, guillotine the rich and then escape via a yacht that we stole as we drink wine and eat like. idk crackers? canapes? cheetos? whatever. ALSO i think it’s a good time to note that shreya has the most AMAZING hair and it’s purple and genuinely,,, King of Purple Hair Dye, no one else but you will not and cannot come close. everytime i work out and i look at my weights i think of you hasodfusa

Ever had a crush on you: besides my weird mutuals-in-law crush thing, the crushing need to give you a thousand hugs and also to force you to eat awful ketchup mayo pasta. mostly the hugs though, that and i want to braid ur hair is that creepy to say?? dojfosai

#im a simple soul. i see boat or the ocean waves or pirates and my mind says it's shreya time #shreya #<33333333333333333333333333 thank u for sending this in i love u #ask memes

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ponyregrets · 5 years

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friends to lovers fic idea: friends who keep meeting at cons for a fandom they both love, they eventually get less interested in the fandom but keep coming back to the con to see each other? or something

oops this did not end up being quick after all

AO3!

one. fan expo boston, august 2017

artfulslytherin: Just landedWaiting to get off the planeI'm going to check into the hotel but then I'm free for the rest of the day

The message is about 90% a relief. Bellamy has been waiting for it all day, even before it made any sense to be waiting. He's been waiting for Clarke to land since before her plane took off, turned on his tumblr message notifications just so he'd find out no matter what he was doing, and then he's spent the whole day looking at his messages anyway, like he doesn't trust the phone to tell him.

Obviously, it hasn't been the most productive day.

augustushadatumblr: I told my boss I was taking a half dayHe nodded and didn't say anything and then like ten minutes later he came into my office and played the victory theme from Final FantasyApparently I'm a workaholic and he worries about meHe bought the ringtone just to celebrate

artfulslytherin: WowDid you tell him you're going to a con?If his reaction to his employee taking a day is downloading video game music to celebrate, I assume he'd throw a parade for you going to an actual convention

augustushadatumblr: I wasn't sure when I should tell you, but I have a chocobo and a moogle on my deskSo he doesn't like Final Fantasy, he just knows I do

artfulslytherin: Why would you not tell me that?Why would that be your embarrassing thing?I'm jealous you have a desk you can put fandom stuff onI feel weird displaying my fandom

augustushadatumblr: Yeah but how much bi pride stuff do you have up?I thought about getting a pan flag and chickened out

artfulslytherin: Is there a My Little Pony that's pan colors? That's a subtle way to do itOff the plane btwNavigating your airportIs there a law about how close you need to be to a Dunkin Donuts at all times?

augustushadatumblr: Yeah, it's for the whole Boston metro areaYou get used to itHow comfortable do you feel taking the train?

artfulslytherin: How many instructions are you giving me?

augustushadatumblr: Take the silver line to South Station, it's freeAnd then take the red line toWherever we want to go

artfulslytherin: Wow yeahReally helpful

augustushadatumblr: It depends on how close you want to be to your hotelI live in Central so most of my regular stuff is around thereBut we could find somewhere downtown if you don't want to go too far

artfulslytherin: How do I get to Central?

augustushadatumblr: Take the red line towards AlewifeIt's probably like 15-20 minutes

artfulslytherin: I can meet you thereWhat time?

augustushadatumblr: Tell me when you get to south stationI'll leave work then, we should get to central about the same time

artfulslytherin: Cool, sounds goodSee you soon!

It's not like Bellamy isn't excited about the whole thing. He's been in the Animus fandom for about eight months, getting into it during the mid-season hiatus of the second season, and Clarke was one of the first friends he made once he got there. She was an already-established fan artist, someone whose work he admired when he saw it, so when she asked if she could draw a scene from one of his fics, of course he said yes, and told her how much he liked her work, and then they were just talking, chatting about what they were working on and what they were reading and what they were annoyed about. Bellamy's never been a big fan of sharing too much of himself online, but it was easy to slip into it with Clarke. They talked so much that it was impossible for real life to not slip in, especially when she would talk about what was going on with her. It wasn't the first time it had happened to him, but there has always been something about this relationship that feels different, weighty.

Which isn't why she's going to be the first fandom friend he ever meets in real life, but it probably is why it feels like such a big deal. He has other mutuals who are planning to be at this con, people he likes, people with whom he's passingly familiar, people who leave nice comments on his fic, but no one else is messaging him to come hang out, and he wouldn't be agreeing to hang out with any of them even if they were.

If he doesn't click with anyone else in person, it's not going to bother him too much. But if he and Clarke don't like each other, he'll be losing a real friend.

And, of course, there's the other part of his mind, the guilty part that feels like it turned on around when he hit thirty and people started acting like his singleness was a creeping illness. He does know that Clarke is twenty-six, single, and bisexual, and even if she doesn't feel like a real romantic prospect, he'd always idly wondered what it would be like if they met, if they'd hit it off. And now he's going to find out.

Obviously, the next half an hour of work is completely pointless. He sets up his out-of-office email for the rest of the afternoon and Friday, returns a few messages he's been putting off, and finally just gives up and goes to wait for his bus, even though Clarke hasn't gotten in touch yet. If he gets there before he does, he can kill time on his phone. He'll feel better just being on the move.

The timing actually works out well; she gets to South Station right as his bus is leaving, so assuming there isn't too much traffic, they'll get in right around the same time. It's really nothing to stress over.

Then she sends a follow-up message: Btw I've been not asking because I don't want to be creepy, but I probably need to know what you look like.

It's not like it's an unexpected request. Bellamy's been thinking about it himself, avoiding asking for the same reason she was. He knows she's white, but that's about it, and he never wanted to be the guy who cared about that.

It is, at least, relevant now. This is less curiosity than logistics.

augustushadatumblr: Like 5'10", black hair, brown eyes. Glasses. I'm wearing a button-down and khakis. No red rose in my pocket or anything, but there's a florist by the train station so I can grab one if I get there before you

artfulslytherin: I was hoping you had made a sign like chauffeurs do at the airportI'm 5'5", blonde hair, blue eyes. Jeans and gray henley. I've also got a nose ring, but you'd have to be pretty close to see that

augustushadatumblr: Yeah, I'm going to skip examining every blonde in Central's noseWe'll probably be fine

artfulslytherin: Probably, yeahI'm on my way to Kendall, by the wayThe part where we went over the river was really pretty

augustushadatumblr: Yeah, that's my favorite part of the red lineNot that it has a lot of competitionI think I am going to beat you here

artfulslytherin: You don't have to buy a rose, ftrDon't waste your money

He still thinks about doing it, just to help break the ice, but it feels a little too on-the-nose romantic, especially when neither of them has talked about this being a romance. And it might not be.

He goes to Starbucks and grabs an iced tea instead, his phone feeling as if it's burning a hole in not just his pocket, but his entire right leg. She'll be here in no time, unless something goes wrong with the red line. Which, given the red line, isn't that unlikely, but he's not going to dwell on it. If she gets stuck behind a disabled train, he might actually die of nerves.

His phone buzzes and he has just enough time to read the message--I'm thirsty, I'm going to hit up the Starbucks, meet me there--before he hears the door opens and sees a girl with wavy blonde hair coming in. She's wearing a gray henley and jeans, looking at a cell phone, and there's definitely a bi flag pin on the strap of her backpack.

It takes him a second to remember how to breathe, but a lot longer to get his act together, so of course that's when the barista calls, "Bellamy!"

The girl startles, looking around wildly, and he waves when her eyes hit him, a small, nervous gesture. She's cute. Like, stupidly cute. He'd been bracing himself for having a semi-crush on her but her not being his type, but that's definitely not an issue. If he met her at a bar, he'd try to get her number.

It's not really something he's prepared to deal with, but he's going to have to do it anyway.

He holds up his finger, signalling her to wait, and goes to grab his drink before joining her in line, heart in his throat. "Hey, I was just about to respond to your message."

She smiles. "I think I've got the general idea."

Her voice isn't as high as he was expecting, and now that he's standing next to her, he can see the nose ring, a mole on her lip, the curve of her smile. Clarke, right here, close enough to touch.

He used to know words, but they're gone now.

"I think you're closer to five-nine," says Clarke, looking him up and down like she can actually measure him with just her eyes.

He chokes on his tea. "What?"

"I don't think you're five inches taller than I am."

"Maybe you're closer to five-six."

She smirks like she's winning already, and the nerves in his stomach reshapes like a balloon animal turning from a dog into a top hat. He's no less fluttery and anxious, the configuration has just changed.

He clears his throat. "So, welcome to Boston."

"Thanks. So far it's muggy and gross."

"Yeah, it's going to keep doing that."

"DC is actually grosser, so at least there's that."

"That's where you grew up, right?" She's in grad school in Indiana now, but he remembers her mom is a lobbyist, still goes back for breaks and holidays. She went to Georgetown too, he's pretty sure.

He already knows her pretty well.

"Yeah. My mom wanted me back for the summer, but getting a job on-campus sounded way better."

"You still think that with how shitty the job is?"

"You're underestimating how shitty staying with my mom is, which I know I've complained about."

He snorts and she grins and they move forward in the line. Clarke asks how work went and he finds himself admitting easily that he was so nervous he got basically nothing done. She admits she completely shredded a napkin on the plane. and that seems to be the magical interaction. They were both nervous, but they're happy, and they can move on with the friendship. It's cool.

They walk over to Harvard so she can see the campus, check out the art museum, which he hasn't been to before, and grab Korean fried chicken for dinner because he's been craving it for a week. The restaurant doesn't serve alcohol, so they get the food to go, buy a six-pack, and walk back to his apartment. His roommate is a nightmare, but a nightmare who usually goes out to bars around dinner, and they have the place to themselves.

It doesn't even feel weird anymore. She's just--Clarke. The same person she's always been.

"That wasn't too bad, right?" she teases as he walks her back to the train, like she can read his mind. "Definitely not too awkward."

"Define too awkward," he says, and she elbows him. "It's been fun."

"What time are you coming to the con tomorrow?"

"I haven't decided yet. Whenever you want me to come. I assume you have a whole itinerary planned."

"And you're just going to follow me around?"

He shrugs. "I assume it's a good itinerary."

"The best," she agrees. "See you tomorrow."

The con itself is fine, if not particularly exciting. Animus is starting its third season in September, so they have a trailer and some promotional material to talk about. And the real draw for him and Clarke was that both halves of their favorite ship are here, which is pretty exciting. He's not generally into meeting celebrities, but the two of them have a good vibe and John Murphy is pretty much the polar opposite of Martin in real life, so it's kind of hilarious to see him being his actual vulgar self instead of a buttoned-up nerd.

Plus, he and Nate Miller is fucking hot. Eye candy is always nice.

It is a little weird being tumblr user augustushadatumblr at the con, which he hadn't allowed himself to consider. It felt too egotistical to think people might know him. But even if there are a lot of guys at the con overall, the Animus fandom skews female, so whenever he's at panels or in line for autographs, he stands out. And he said on tumblr that he'd be here, which he regrets roughly ten seconds into waiting for the first panel, when the someone comes up to him and says, "Sorry, but are you Augustus?"

She sounds so excited that he doesn't know how to respond, just stares like a trapped animal until Clarke leans over. "He is."

"I love your fic!"

He clears his throat. "Uh, cool. Thanks." Clarke nudges him, and he finally recovers, manages a smile. "Sorry, I really wasn't expecting anyone to know who I was except Clarke."

It's the wrong thing to say; her eyes widen as she looks between the two of them. "You're Clarke?" she asks.

"That's me."

"I didn't know you guys were together!"

"Just hanging out," she says, smooth. "B--Augustus here was showing me the town."

"We went to a museum and fried chicken place."

"In the town."

"Technically it was in Cambridge."

"Augustus showed me around a different town," Clarke corrects. "It was fun."

"Well, I really love all your stuff," the girl says. "Both of you."

"Thanks," says Bellamy. "I'm glad you to hear it."

It's the first such encounter, but not the last. Not everyone actually recognizes him or Clarke, but all they have to do is introduce themselves and a not insignificant number of congoers are familiar with one or both of them. It's flattering, albeit surreal, and he's happier when it's just him and Clarke wandering around, anonymous and largely unnoticed.

He didn't purchase any extras, but Clarke got autographs and doesn't mind him following here there too, so he gets to get close enough to both John Murphy and Nathan Miller to (theoretically) touch them, and gets to hear both of them heap praise on Clarke's art, which is awesome. She deserves it.

Clarke leaves straight from the con on Sunday afternoon, so he goes to the airport to see her off. She hugs him, quick but firm, tells him how much fun she had, and he watches until she goes up the escalator to the terminal before he goes to wait for the silver line.

She texts to let him know she's through security--they exchanged phone numbers, that's another cool part of the weekend--and then she tags him in a post on tumblr when he's on the red line. He's expecting it to be just a quick note about the con, and in a way it is, but in response to an anon ask: Who was your favorite celebrity you met???? plz be murph I love him lmao

@augustushadatumblr, no question, she's replied, and he reblogs it to add right back at you and grins all the way home.

two. new york comic con, october 2017

"So, how do you know this person isn't going to murder us?"

Bellamy glances at his sister. "Why would she murder us?"

"I don't know, maybe because you spent my entire childhood telling me to be careful of strangers on the internet and now you're going to bring an internet-stranger to sleep on my couch?"

"Yeah, okay. I've met her before, if it helps."

"But she's not your girlfriend. I'm not being heteronormative!" she hastens to add. "Just, like--you're sharing a bed with her."

"Because we're cheap and if we both sleep on your futon we don't have to pay for a hotel. She's got a girlfriend," he adds.

Octavia frowns. "And her girlfriend is cool with her sleeping with you?"

"We're adults, O. It's not a big deal."

"I'd feel kind of weird if my hypothetical boyfriend flew to another state to share a bed with some other girl. Is she gay? Are you just never going to be her type?"

"She's bi, and you're definitely getting heteronormative. People can just not fuck, seriously."

"It's cool that everyone's so mature," is what Octavia finally settles on, and he doesn't argue that.

The truth is, he's a little bummed about Clarke's girlfriend. It's a relatively new relationship, but they started dating a couple weeks after Clarke came to Boston, and that stung. He'd maybe been hoping he left more of an impression.

The girlfriend thing had also left him a little hesitant to ask Clarke about coming to New York in the first place. Even though a decent number of people from the Animus cast were showing up, he kind of hates New York, and he hadn't felt particularly motivated to try to score tickets. It just seemed like a lot of work.

But one of O's coworkers already had tickets and couldn't go, so he was selling them and Octavia asked if he was interested. It's rare enough for her to actually invite him to stay that it was worth taking advance of.

And since there were two tickets, he figured he'd invite Clarke. If she didn't want to come, he would have found someone else, but he had to at least offer.

In all honesty, he thought she'd say no.

Clarke: I'm outside the buildingAssuming my taxi took me to the right place and I'm not about to get shivved

Me: Only one way to find outI'll come let you in

She's waiting outside the door with a backpack and bags under her eyes, but when she sees him, she brightens all at once.

"Long flight?" he asks, giving her a quick hug.

"Long week. It'll be nice to relax some."

"You say that because you haven't actually seen my sister's apartment yet."

"Are you saying your fifty it's really cramped and she has three roommates warnings didn't prepare me for how it's really cramped and she has three roommates?"

"I guess we'll find out." He hits the button for the elevator. "Why the long week?"

"Just a lot to do for class. And--" She sighs. "Not to be really pathetic, but I feel like I haven't had as much time for fandom since I started dating Lexa? And it's kind of stressing me out."

"What part of it?" he asks, leaning against the wall.

"Everything, kind of. I know I haven't been talking to you as much, you don't have to tell me."

"I wasn't going to. We still talk pretty much every day, but everyone gets busy sometimes. Especially at the beginning of a relationship. It takes a while to figure out how to balance."

"Yeah. And maybe that's it? But I haven't told her I'm in fandom yet, so it feels like I can't engage when she's around. Even when she's just hanging out and we're not doing anything special. She's on her phone and I could be drawing, but I don't want to tell her what I'm doing."

"Why not?"

"I've dated a lot of people who were weird about it."

The elevator dings and he follows her in, hits their floor. "My high-school girlfriend was the one who got me into fandom in the first place, so I never worried about it with her. And then I haven't really had a serious relationship and a serious fandom at the time same time, so it hasn't really come up."

"Yeah. I feel like--" She huffs. "My friends all know and don't care, but I never figure out a good way to be, like, I'm online a lot! I like drawing pictures of fictional characters kissing and a lot of my friends are on the internet. Hope that's cool."

"What did you tell her about this weekend?"

"That my friend got tickets to NYCC and asked if I wanted one. She didn't ask for many other details."

"I think if it's bothering you because you can't be yourself with her, that's a problem and you should figure out how to talk to her. If you're just feeling bad for not being around as much online, don't. You're allowed to just have a life."

"More of the first one," she says. "It doesn't help that I said I liked the show and she said it was cheesy and juvenile."

"It kind of is," he admits. "And this season is starting off rocky."

"Yeah, but you're saying it with love."

"She hasn't earned it." He raps on the door. "O, we're here to murder you!"

"You always say that!" She opens the door, not even looking at him. All her focus is on Clarke. "Hi, you must be Bell's creepy internet friend."

"That doesn't really narrow it down, he has a lot of creepy internet friends."

It's the right answer; Octavia grins and steps out of the way, letting them in. "And creepy non-internet friends. You have really bad taste in people."

"This is why I don't visit you more."

"You don't visit me more because you think New York is too tall."

"Five-nine is a totally fine height to be," Clarke says, patting his arm. "You don't have to feel bad about it."

"I just don't like skyscrapers," he grumbles, but his smile is twitching out despite his best efforts. Octavia and Clarke are together and making fun of him; it's kind of awesome. "And it's too big."

"Title of your sex tape," says Octavia. "Come on, Clarke, I'll give you the tour."

They order takeout for dinner and watch the first couple episodes of Animus season three while they eat; Octavia likes the show but doesn't keep up very well, so it's new to her, while Bellamy and Clarke are already irritable about it. Lots of shows seem to go through third-season slumps, so it's not totally surprising, but it still kind of sucks. Bellamy always feels like shows start going downhill as soon as he gets into them, like he's some kind of weird jinx. Just once he'd like to feel like he's not late to the party.

But watching with Clarke is fun. They get to heckle while Octavia tells them they're giant nerds, which they are, and even if the show isn't everything he wants it to be, friendship is.

"This is why I'm getting you a pan pride pony," Clarke says, when he tells her as much. They're tipsy and trying to turn the futon into a bed with limited success, and everything feels warm and nice, a fuzzy blanket wrapped around the world.

His tolerance might be shot.

"What about a pride pony? That was so many p's."

"You're the writer, you should appreciate alliteration. And I'm getting you a pony because you just love friendship so much."

They finally get the fitted sheet down and Bellamy flops on top of it for a break. "Who doesn't love friendship? You love friendship. You're having fun."

"I am. It's too bad there aren't more cons."

"You know we can be friends without cons, right?"

"Yeah, but--it's easy."

It makes sense to him. It's hard to just decide to meet someone; it's why he's never met any of his other internet friends. If someone told him they were coming to Boston, maybe, or if he was traveling, but he never knows how to just invite himself into someone's life without some other excuse.

"Yeah, I was really glad when O asked about the tickets. I'm never sure how often I can come see her."

Clarke drops a sheet on top of him and then a quilt, and then she lies down next to him, apparently satisfied with how made the bed is. "How old is she again?"

"Twenty-four."

"So--six years younger than you."

"Yeah." He doesn't talk about his sister online, not really, not even to Clarke. It's not worth it. "I took care of her a lot when we were kids. I named her, she's never forgiven me for that."

She turns so she's facing him. "You were six and Octavia was the name on the tip of your tongue?"

This part she'll like. "Augustus had a sister, you know."

As he hoped, she dissolves into quiet laughter, doubling over so her hair brushes his chin. It feels like having a sleepover, or how he thinks having a sleepover would have been. It's not something he ever did.

"How did Emperor Augustus become your patronus?"

"Because of that. My mom was--we were in a really shitty place when she was pregnant. O's dad was our landlord, and my mom fucked him to pay the rent. She was afraid he'd do something awful if he found out about O, try to get custody. So she told me we had to hide what was happening."

"You don't have to tell me."

"Do you not want me to?"

She smiles. "Just--no pressure. I didn't know it was a tough question."

"Yeah. She used to tell me stories to explain--everything, I guess. Why we had to be quiet about Octavia, why she left, why she didn't like the landlord. She liked classics, so that was the theme. Maybe I liked Augustus because he could actually do things instead of just running and hiding, I don't know." He smiles. "It's mostly a joke now. Whenever I ask Octavia what I should name something, she asks if Augustus had one, so I just sort of went with it."

"Was your LJ augustushadalivejournal?"

"No comment."

Her eyes drift shut. "I don't know anything about Augustus, honestly. Tell me?"

"Sure," he says, and tells her stories until she falls asleep.

The con is fine, but he barely even remembers it, later. That's what stays.

three. awesome con, march 2018

"I don't see why you're nervous."

"Really?" Bellamy asks, glancing over at Clarke in the driver's seat. Her mother is apparently so excited she's visiting that she paid for a rental car, which seems like a waste of money, but rich people waste money. It's nice to not have to take public transportation from Dulles to wherever Clarke's mom lives. "You don't have any ideas?"

"I'm just saying, I met your sister, you're meeting my mom. We're even."

"Parents are more stressful than siblings. What did you even tell your mom about me?"

"That you're my friend from the internet. What was I supposed to tell her?"

"I don't know. I assume your mom doesn't know about fandom."

"She knows I'm a semi-popular artist online, so she accepts that I have online friends."

It feels like a sore subject, but the feeling might be all in his head. Clarke and Lexa broke up at Christmas, when they had a mature conversation about how they didn't feel like they really had a future together, and Clarke's seemed fine with it. But he can't help wondering if the fandom thing was a thing, like he's maybe poking something tender.

"Besides, it got me home for spring break. She's happy."

"Do you lie to me about how often you come back home?" he asks. "You were here for Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's not like she never sees you."

"I know. She acts like I never come home, but I see her more than a lot of my friends see their families."

"Yeah, definitely more than I see my sister."

"She really wants me to move back to DC after I graduate," she says. "I think she always thought I'd stay in the area, since I was here for college. That's part of why I wanted to go away from grad school. I needed to live somewhere else."

"Do you think you'll come back to DC when you're done?"

"I don't think so. I don't think I want to stay in the midwest, but--" She flashes him a smile. "Honestly? I'll go wherever I get a job."

"Yeah, that seems right."

"Boston's cool."

His heart lodges in his throat. "Yeah. I like it."

Clarke's mother is polite in a brittle way he's used to from upper-class white women of a certain age, this awareness that they feel like they should be nice to him and are very conscious of trying to treat him correctly when they could just be treating him like any other person. But Clarke is good at running interference, and by the time they're going to dinner, it's pretty much normal, aside from the way Abby seems convinced that they're dating, and Clarke just isn't ready to tell her yet.

Which, to be fair, she probably wouldn't be. He can't fault the logic.

Awesome Con doesn't have a ton of Animus stuff going on, which is honestly fine by Bellamy. The season is wrapping up in a few weeks, and while they could miraculously pluck something good from the garbage fire that's come before, his hopes aren't high. It's not enough to kill his passion entirely--he still likes his pairing and (parts of) the fandom, and he's not sure his friendship with Clarke would survive his ditching the fandom, if he's honest--but he's more interested in checking out DC than he is in the con itself.

Clarke, of course, has a plan.

"So, the only Animus actor at the con is Niylah," she says. "And she'll be there on Sunday, so I figure we can just go stop by and check out vendor stuff today and then go to as many Smithsonians as we can handle."

"That does sound pretty good. What's Niylah doing?"

"She's on a Women of Sci-Fi panel, which sounds pretty cool, and then she's got autographs and photo ops. The usual."

"Did you get an autograph?"

"Yeah, my art is going to be so good she falls in love with me and we live happily ever after."

"Solid plan. Which piece did you pick for that?"

"The pin-up one? Where Ariel is winking with the gun."

He nods. "Yeah, that would do it."

"Fingers crossed."

The museums are awesome, of course, and there's a large part of him that wants to just blow off the second day of the con too, but Clarke really likes Ariel and by extension Niylah, and her panel will probably be fun. She and John are siblings in real life, so they always have good stories about each other, and it's not like Bellamy doesn't like her. But being with Clarke at a con isn't particularly an improvement on just hanging out with her outside of the con. Clarke is the draw.

So he'll go wherever she wants.

They have autographs first and Clarke actually seems nervous, which is a new look on her. She was cool as a cucumber meeting John and Nate.

"Are you really not into Nate?" he asks, surprised. "He's so hot."

"Yeah, but gay. You're not into Niylah. It feels disrespectful."

"I'm not not into Niylah."

"You also didn't actually get tongue-tied around Nate."

"Because I'm smooth."

"Uh huh."

"But really, why are you so nervous?"

"I want her to like my art."

"I think her running away with you isn't actually realistic, if that's what you're worried about."

"Damn."

The line isn't that long, so Clarke doesn't have a ton of time to fret. Bellamy makes to leave when there's only one person ahead of them, in case Clarke wants to be alone with the celebrity, but she latches onto his arm like he's a lifeline.

"Why are you going?"

"Leaving you alone to charm her."

"I can charm her with you watching."

"Oh good, I've always wanted to see what game looks like coming from you."

"Don't go?" she asks, sounding almost shy, and of course he obeys, but he doesn't actually get it until she hands over the art she's having signed.

It's not the piece she said it was. It's one he's never seen, one he recognizes only because it's a scene from one of his fics. Ariel and Prima on a first date at the zoo, Prima with a melting sno-cone. He'd written it for her birthday, because she said there wasn't enough Ariel/Prima in the world.

It's been months. She never even told him she'd illustrated it.

"This is so cute!" says Niylah, beaming. "Did you draw it?"

"Yeah."

"I love the idea. Ariel would love the zoo."

For one horrified second, Bellamy is afraid Clarke's going to give him credit for the fic and he'll have to start praying for the earth to open and up and swallow him, which seems unlikely. There are probably people who would know how to deal with the I write fanfic about you conversation, but he's not one of them.

Clarke knows that, of course. "Yeah, it's one of my favorites. Hopefully I'll get to a con with Anya sometime and she can sign it too."

Niylah writes a quick message praising the drawing and Clarke thanks her, which Bellamy registers like he's watching it on TV, like he's not even in the same world. It's not like she's never done art based on his stuff before, but she's never surprised him with it, not like this.

"Was that okay?" she asks, soft.

"Honestly? It was weirdly emotional. I didn't think I'd care." He winces. "That came out wrong."

"No, I get it. That's what I wanted to do. It's really cool, getting to have that moment, and I knew you weren't going to print off your fic and show it off."

"Yeah, uh, I have nightmares about that."

"Yeah, I figured. I thought this would be a good compromise."

"Yeah, that was really awesome of you." He swallows, manages a smile that doesn't feel like enough. He doesn't know how to be enough. "Thanks."

"You're welcome. Want to go get seats for the panel?"

"Yeah."

She doesn't ever actually give him the picture; he finds it, wrapped and framed, in his luggage, when he gets home. We'll get Anya to sign it later, says her note, and he smiles at the we.

He doesn't know when he'll see her again, but it's going to happen. They'll make it work.

four. animate, february 2019

Bellamy is not prepared for Animate.

He thinks he is; it feels easy, actually, because it's a con just for Animus, and even if he's a couple bad plot twists away from breaking up with the show, he still likes the actors and the fandom, and a con with just the stuff he cares about sounds like a good match. Plus it'll be smaller, less overwhelming, and, of course, Clarke will be there. He hasn't seen her in almost a year; if she wanted him to go to the moon to hang out, he would have been selling a kidney to afford tickets.

The main stumbling block is that it might not actually happen. Even if he didn't personally go to cons for his first few years in fandom, he kept up, and he knows that first-time cons are a risk, that they can fall apart or under-deliver or be a total scam.

But, again, Clarke wants to go, and she's not worried.

Clarke: If the con doesn't fire, we just hang out in Chicago for the weekendThere are tons of museums there, we'll be fine

Me: In the middle of winter?Not exactly the best time to wander around the city

Clarke: You're already in Boston, Chicago can't be that much worseBesides, it'll be my last semester of grad schoolI'll need a breakAre you worried about your girlfriend being weird?

Me: I told you, she's not my girlfriendWe went on a couple datesAnd we decided to just be friendsYou're being weird

Clarke: So what I'm hearing is you're going to need to nurse your broken heart

Me: I'm barely heartbroken nowI'm definitely not going to be heartbroken in like six months

Clarke: You could beYou can find someone else to date and then you guys break up because they're jealous we're sharing a hotel room

Me: I'll see if I can set that up

Clarke: Keep me postedSo, I'm booking the room?

Me: YeahSee you in February

Over the next few months, he keeps waiting for something to go wrong, but nothing does. Everything keeps lining up exactly right, right up until he's at the airport waiting for his flight and he realizes that everything going right actually counts as things going wrong. He'd been so focused on thinking about how this wasn't going to happen that he's not ready for it.

The problem isn't really that he's falling out of the fandom, although it's certainly a little stressful. It's weird to be going to what is, essentially, a two-day party for something he's not actually invested in anymore, but that's not nearly as weird as the fact that he's on his way to Clarke. Because in the last few months, since that first date with Echo, the one that never managed to turn into anything, Bellamy's been thinking. It's getting harder and harder to ignore that there's no one he likes as much as Clarke, no one he wants to talk to as much as he wants to talk to her. No one else compares to her.

And now he's spending a weekend sharing a hotel room with her. There's a non-zero chance it's going to be torture.

Her flight gets in before his, so she's already waiting for him when he arrives. She's gotten her hair cut short and there's a pink streak in it, and it makes it feel like it's been so much longer since he last saw her than it really has been. Like it's been years instead of months.

He missed her.

"Hey!" she says, putting her tablet into her bag and jumping up for a hug. "How was the flight?"

"Fine. How was yours?"

"Incredibly short. I barely had time to put down my tray table."

"Doesn't sound so bad to me." He shrugs his shoulders, getting his backpack settled more comfortably. "So, taxi to the hotel?"

"Sounds good. Some people from tumblr are having dinner, they invited us but I said you might be too tired. In case we want to get out of it."

"Do you want to get out of it?"

"I don't think so? We're usually not social at these, we should try it out."

His whole chest warms with the natural, unconscious pronoun. They're a unit here; she's not doing anything without him.

"Yeah, that sounds fun."

There's a surreality to the meal that there hasn't been since that first con, when he kept getting recognized. He's been incognito before, but everyone here is someone in fandom, and he's a fairly conspicuous someone. He still doesn't post many pictures of himself, but Clarke drew a little cartoon version of him as a birthday gift (along with a Fluttershy plushy, since she finally decided which My Little Pony was the pan one) and he's got it set as his userpic now. Even with the stylization, it's pretty easy to recognize him. Clarke's good at what she does.

It's not bad, exactly, having people who already know and like him. He likes them too, for the most part. But it feels like he's passed into another world, with Clarke his only tether to reality.

She's even less comfortable with the situation than he is, though, flagging faster, drifting away from the conversation before their food's even arrived. She's mentioned that she's somewhat introverted, that she struggles in social situations where she doesn't have a clear goal.

But she's also the most stubborn person alive, so he's the one to plead exhaustion to get them out of going back to Harper's hotel room to watch a smash-cut of Martin/Conner scenes.

"We could have gone," Clarke tells him, like he might somehow not be aware.

"I'm tired."

Her mouth quirks. "It's weird, right?"

"It really is."

"I know it's supposed to be this big draw, getting to hang out with everyone, but it's so much harder in person."

"Not for us."

"No. I was so worried, that first con."

"Yeah, me too. I thought it might be awkward the whole time."

"It's only awkward like half the time."

She laughs. "Sixty-percent, tops."

"I really missed you," he admits. "Is that weird?"

"Maybe. But I missed you too."

They watch Bob's Burgers in their own hotel room, and that's so much better than anything else he could be doing with his time. Clarke fills him in on the classes she's taking, he updates her on his weird boss and his own idle thoughts about maybe trying to do grad school, now that he's somewhat financially stable.

"How much longer do you think you're going to stay in this fandom?" he asks her, once the lights are out. This is their best talking time, as adolescent as that feels. "I feel like you're drifting out."

"And you're not?"

"I am, but I wasn't sure if yours was just that you were busy trying to graduate."

"Not just that." She sighs. "I still draw a lot honestly, but putting it up and dealing with the reaction just stresses me out? I think I'm not good at this stage of fandom. The one where people tag creators in my art and ask them why the pairing isn't canon yet."

"Yeah, I'm glad I don't get that."

"You get other stuff, though."

"It's worth it when I'm into the show," he muses. "Or at least when I'm really into the pairing. But Martin and Conner haven't even talked in like half a season. It feels like they heard people were shipping them and decided they could stop us if they tried hard enough."

"Well, you are stopping."

"I'm also stopping watching the show, so I don't think that's an overall win for them."

"Probably not. Any new fandoms on the horizon?"

"Not yet."

"Well, let me know if you find one. I'll tag along."

He smiles. "You'll be the first to know."

With the con's laser focus on Animus, it's actually a lot easier to fill their schedules for the next day. Clarke sprung for all of the autographs because she has one group shot she wants signed by the whole main cast, so their biggest scheduling issue is figuring out which panels they don't mind skipping to wait in line instead.

"I did get you a surprise, too," he offers, a little shy, while Clarke is putting together their battle plan over breakfast.

"A surprise?"

"I owed you."

"You didn't. What's the surprise?"

"Photo op with John and Nate. I figured we could do one together, it would be fun."

She grins. "I thought you said celebrity pictures were a waste of money."

"Pictures with friends aren't."

The smile turns a little wistful. "So, is this your last one of these, you think?"

"I'm not willing to bet you and I will ever make it to another con with John and Nate. And if we do another one, we can always get another picture."

"Start a collection."

He shrugs, but he knows how pleased he looks. She's definitely grateful. "It'll go well with all our art."

"It will. Thanks. I would have gotten one, but I didn't want to go alone."

"I'll always go up with you."

Her smile is soft. "Yeah, I guess you would."

Aside from the picture, Bellamy only purchased one extra: an autograph from Anya, for Clarke's Prima/Ariel picture. It's the first autograph he's ever actually gotten for himself, and he's already fretting about what he'll say and how he'll come across.

Clarke is delighted. "You do get weird around celebrities!"

"I'm bad at small talk."

"It's not small talk, it's barely talk. They do most of the work, they're used to it."

"I forget you're an expert."

"I kind of am. But you're definitely starting off at a higher difficulty level. Anya is intimidating."

"Thanks for your support."

"I'm here, aren't I?"

That finally gets him to crack a smile. "You are, yeah. You can go first."

Anya's line is pretty fast-moving, but it's also long. This is the first con Bellamy has ever seen her attending, and she's definitely a fan favorite. He and Clarke are far from the only ones worried this will be their only chance to get their stuff signed. It's hard for Bellamy to imagine doing this without a buddy; he'd be awkward and bored without someone to talk to, and when he needs to go to the bathroom, she can hold his place in line.

He knows what it looks like, the two of them, but that's not bad.

But then, when they're only about ten people from Anya, Niylah shows up for her session. Bellamy doesn't think much of it as it's happening; he saw her spot, knew in theory when her session was starting. They were already planning to go to her next, their last autograph of the day before they found dinner.

Clarke's autograph is straightforward. Her piece is the whole cast of Animus having a nice day at the beach, and Anya immediately finds Prima playing volleyball with Ariel, Martin, and Conner and nods her approval.

"Cute. Did one of you draw it?"

"I did," says Clarke.

"You're very talented. Everyone's going to sign it?"

"No one's said no yet, so I assume so."

Anya cracks a small smile, signs her name, and hands it back to Clarke before turning her attention to Bellamy. "You have something for me too?"

"Yeah, more of her art."

To his surprise, when she sees his picture, she breaks into a real smile, bright and unexpected as sun breaking through storm clouds. "This is even cuter."

Niylah just happens to be looking over, and she grins too. "Hey, it's you two! Good to see you again."

"Friends of yours?" Anya asks.

"You can see I signed it. He was so nervous last time," she adds, which is not at all how Bellamy remembers it. "His girlfriend had to grab his arm so he didn't run away."

That does actually seem like a pretty valid way to remember it, when she puts it like that. Clarke is certainly more than happy to go with it. "He's not great with celebrities."

"Thanks as always for your support."

"I'm glad you guys got it to Anya," says Niylah, her smile apparently genuine, and Bellamy smiles back.

She says something similar when they get the autograph, and Clarke doesn't correct her that time either. Not that Bellamy really knows how they would correct her. It's such a quick interaction with someone they may never see again, who cares if she thinks they're dating?

It's not actually a big deal, he knows that. In the grand scheme of things, it's nothing. An actress remembered them and made an incorrect assumption. She's not the only person to think it, not even the first person to say it. But it feels weightier, coming from her.

Maybe he's just looking for a sign.

"So," says Clarke, and that feels heavy too. But all she adds is, "Dinner?"

"Do we have any plans?"

"I think there are plenty of people we can talk to if we want plans, but we don't have any."

"I want to order pizza and hang out in our room."

"I could live with that."

She finds a pizza place while he gets his picture back in the frame. He hadn't actually looked at it yet, too swept up in the celebrity encounter, but he sees now that Anya wrote, Your girlfriend is very talented as her message, which is one reason to have maybe corrected her.

But it's kind of perfect too. He'll take it.

"Okay," says Clarke. "Pizza ordered, ETA half an hour."

"Cool. Anya thinks you're my girlfriend."

"Anya probably already forgot we exist."

He hands her the framed print and she just studies it for a moment, her expression unreadable.

Then she hands it back. "Should I have corrected her?"

"I could have done it."

"That's not what I meant." She looks at him, her eyes almost comically intense, given what they're talking about, except that it is important. His heart is beating out of his chest. "Was she wrong?"

He opens his mouth and then closes it. It's such a Clarke question, this weirdly aggressive way to say, well--

She probably likes him too.

"You're definitely very talented," he says, and her expression cracks into a laugh. "I don't want her to be wrong," he goes on. "But I figured we should talk."

She worries her lip. "I've been looking for jobs in Boston. For after graduation."

"Are you finding any?"

"I think I've got some good prospects."

"Fuck," he says, grin overtaking his face. "Can I kiss you yet? I want to kiss you so fucking much."

She doesn't answer, just pulls him down, her mouth warm and smiling under his, everything he's been waiting for. Everything he's wanted since the first time he met her. Before then, even.

They miss the panels the next morning; it's totally worth it.

five. san diego comic con, july 2022

"I can't believe we're here," Bellamy says, flat and not particularly enthused. He's not sure he's ever been anywhere that felt so packed.

"We always said we wanted to go at least once."

"We say a lot of things."

Clarke rolls her eyes. "It's just three days. We'll survive."

"Hopefully. And I think we're getting more introverted as we age. This is probably the last year we could do this."

"Exactly. It's a good thing we're getting it done now."

"And it has absolutely nothing to do with you wanting to meet Lincoln Tremont."

"Like you don't."

"Yeah, but mostly to make O jealous. She's had a thing for him since he was on that shitty ABC Family channel show about homeless werewolves."

"We all had a thing for him in that show, his character was allergic to shirts. Stars Beyond could learn from them."

Even after they started dating, Bellamy had been a little worried if his and Clarke's relationship could survive the final fall of the Animus fandom. It's not as if he thought that was the only thing they had in common, but there's something about meeting through a mutual interest that makes the connection seem transitory.

And he is, admittedly, kind of a paranoid person. It's hard to believe he's really allowed to get anything as good as his life with Clarke.

But she was done with the fandom by the end of season four, if not earlier--she admitted a few weeks after Animate 2019 that she wouldn't have even made it as long as she had if she hadn't liked him so much--and only he held on until the third episode of season five, when Prima died for no reason except that they couldn't think of a better storyline to write for her. He still watched through to the mid-season finale, but he never picked it back up after the hiatus, and that death. was why. It was just such a waste. And it had been tough in the same way that falling out of a fandom always is, the sudden gaping hole where his hobby used to be, but having a girlfriend kind of helped there. They watched Netflix and played video games and made out, and they're probably going to get a cat soon.

Still, it's nice to be back in a fandom, and to be back in a fandom together. Stars Beyond just finished up a (no pun intended) stellar first season, and it's got just the right combination of interesting characters and untapped potential to be fandom catnip.

Plus, Lincoln Tremont. Bellamy remembers him on that werewolf show too, but he's definitely gotten better with age.

Not surprisingly, his line is huge. Clarke thinks Emori's might be shorter--she's a guest star who's getting promoted to main cast next season, but she's definitely not as popular--so she goes grab her autograph while Bellamy holds their place in Lincoln's glacially slow line.

"She's really hot in person," she says, when she gets back. "You should walk by her table."

"I do need to go to the bathroom. Lincoln's taking time to talk to everyone and make a real connection."

"Dick. Can you get me a Coke on your way back?"

He gives her a quick kiss. "I'm drinking half of it."

"Deal."

The autograph room is busy because everything and everywhere is busy, but it's kind of a nice, spread-out busy-ness. There's so much going on and so many different draws for so many different fandoms that even lines for big-name stars aren't as bad as they could be. Some people don't have a line at all, which always happens, but it always makes Bellamy feel a little shitty. He'd feel weird if he was the C-list celebrity who went to a convention and nobody cared.

On his way back from the vending machine, after swinging by Emori's line to see that, yes, she is even more gorgeous in real life, he spots Anya as one of the ones with no line in front of her, and before he knows it, he's walking over. She's been doing voice-acting on a pretty decent Cartoon Network show since Prima got killed off, and he's sure she's got plenty of fans here, but it's weird, remembering how long her line was at Animate and seeing her with no one here now.

He doesn't have to feel bad for her, but he actually does want to talk.

"Hi, uh, this is weird," he starts, and her coolly raised eyebrow nearly stops him in his tracks. "But I actually wanted to thank you for something."

"Oh?"

"A few years ago, I was at the first Animate in Chicago? And you signed some fanart for me. I'm not expecting you to remember," he adds. "But my girlfriend drew it, and you wrote that she was really talented. Or, uh, that my girlfriend was really talented. We weren't actually dating yet back then, and your message gave me the excuse I needed to talk to her about it. So--thanks."

"I don't remember that," she admits. "But I'm happy I helped."

He worries his lip, the idea coming to him through a fog of half-formed fantasies, scenarios he'd imagined but never quite perfected. When the time was right, when everything aligned, he'd know. That's what he'd told himself.

"Can I actually get you to help one more time?" he asks. "I need another autograph."

Clarke is nearly at the front of the line when he makes it back to her. "I was about to text you," she says, frowning. "I thought you were going to miss it."

He hands over the Coke. "The line for the men's room was really long for some reason."

She snorts. "Yeah, that's a real mystery."

"Nervous?"

"He's wearing his shirt, so I think I can control myself." Her eyes sweep over him and her forehead crinkles. "Are you okay?"

It feels like he's experiencing all of the anxiety that has ever existed in the world at once, but there's no way he's saying that. "Too many people around."

"Good thing we're done after this."

It doesn't feel even a little true, but he smiles. "Good thing."

Lincoln, once they get to him, is the perfect convention guest, warm and engaged, friendly, apparently genuinely interested in the two of them. It might be bullshit, but it's at least fun. Bellamy tells him that his little sister had the world's biggest crush on him when she was in middle school and Lincoln immediately offers to record a video of himself saying hi to her, which is going to be the perfect thing to send her like twenty-four hours after he sends the selfie they're taking with Lincoln. First he makes her jealous, then he shows he loves her; it's the older brother way.

And then the encounter is over, and Bellamy is left with a grand gesture to pull off.

"Okay, back upstairs, watch some TV, figure out what to do for dinner?" Clarke asks.

"Yeah. Maybe see if we can go somewhere nice."

She looks amused. "Somewhere nice? How nice?"

"Mid-range. Somewhere we have to try to get a reservation."

"That might be hard in San Diego during Comic Con."

"Spring for room service?"

Clarke cocks her head at him. "Are we celebrating something I don't know about?"

The elevator opens at their floor, and he leads her into the room before he exhales, says, "I hope so. I, uh--I got you something. Another autograph."

The drawing is undeniably shitty; Bellamy isn't an artist, and he was drawing with Anya's sharpie on a piece of scrap paper her handler found for them. It's just two stick figures holding hands, labeled Prima and Ariel to make it theoretically fan art, and there's a heart over them.

Anya used her gold pen to add, Your boyfriend can't draw, but he'd like to be your husband anyway.

Clarke just stares at it for a second after he gives it to her, but he's not actually worried about her saying yes. They've talked about this before, in broad terms. She loves him, she wants to spend the rest of her life with him, she's planning to marry him. Anya asked if he was sure, and he promised he was.

Still, the pause feels endless.

"I can't believe you didn't tell me you were an artist," she says, and he laughs, and then she's kissing him, saying yes over and over, and he's grinning so hard he can barely stand it.

"So that's why I want to go out to dinner," he says, when they've finally recovered. "Or get something fancy."

"Room service," Clarke says. "Room service works for me." She grins. "You know, Anya isn't a guest tomorrow."

"And?"

"That means we can't tell her I said yes. We're going to have to find another con so we can let her know."

He laughs, kisses her hair. "I think I can live with that. We're pretty good at these, right?"

"Yeah," says Clarke. "I guess they're kind of our thing."

#millipop

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