#I’m always worried that I’ve completely misread the character and them in my head is completely ooc compared to canon💀 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

griffintail · 3 years

Note

Okay so I'm on an angst kick tonight so here's a fic about how Little bee feels about all her new siblings.

Old news

Bee was hitting her breaking point, ANOTHER new sibling? As if Michael wasn't enough now she had to complete with the literal angel that was Boo. Her step fathers new adopted child. How could her dad do this to her? Bringing in this new 'family' as if their real family wasn't God knows where alone. She missed her cousin and uncle dearly, Little (F/L) was practically her sister at this point and sometimes Tommy was more of a father to her then her own dad. It drove the teen up the wall how quickly her father discarded them.

Now she's supposed to consider these strangers her family? No way in nether.

If anyone wants to expand on this feel free too, I wanted to write an argument but I can't think of good dialog for it.-🦊

Hahaha. Angst that I feel on a personal level. I didn’t add Little boo because I try to keep the characters separate when I write for the Lost Ones kids but there’s most certainly Michael! I really wanted to write this....NON-CANON TO LOST ONES

Old News

Pairing: Parental! Tubbo x F! Teenage! Reader

Part 2

Warnings: Angst, Misread Situations, Feelings of Neglect

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She sat alone at the docks, looking back to see her father playing with Michael in the upper story window. She huffed angrily as she looked back to the freezing water.

…They were supposed to go fishing today. But Michael was sad.

They were supposed to go last week but Ranboo wanted a day together with no kids. So, she had to watch the stupid zombie piglin…

God, she never thought she’d miss the days when Uncle Tommy would drag her and Tubbo off on dangerous adventures. She never thought she’d miss all his yelling…she never thought she’d miss L’Manberg…With all the good memories that it held inside…

At this rate, she’d start missing how her father and Tommy fought Dream all the time!

“Hey.” She jumped, looking up to see Foolish. “You’re shaking kid, you should get inside.”

Her jacket had long since felt cold. She just didn’t want to go inside and listen to dad talk to Michael though. Not when he hadn’t properly talked to her in months. She looked at the house before looking at Foolish.

“Is the mansion warm?”

“Uh, kind of. There should be a few rooms, come on.”

She got up and followed Foolish inside. She’d go to her actual room later…for now, she just wanted to sit and watch the trees sway without thinking about everything she missed…

…

She stirred her mushroom soup as she sat at the dining table inside their home after night fell. Ranboo was out, thank god, but Tubbo was upstairs with Michael again and she had to make and eat dinner for one…

“Hey, I need to talk to Foolish before he leaves. Watch Michael for a few minutes alright?” Tubbo asked her as he jumped down from the ladder.

“Ok.” She muttered.

“Thanks.” He smiled before rushing out.

She rolled her eyes and kept eating her warm soup. The kid wouldn’t die, he was old enough to be fine. There was no need to make her eat cold soup to watch the stupid zombie piglin. After a few bites though, she heard a loud thud upstairs and she face-palmed before going up the ladder.

The little zombie piglin was sniffling as a little bit of blood trickled from his forehead.

“What happened?” She sighed, going over and sitting in front of the zombie piglin, wiping the blood away with her sleeve.

Michael pointed to the bed and the floor and she shook her head.

“You jump off the bed?” And he nodded. “Yeah, that hurts like hell. I fell off a lot of crap, mostly because Uncle Tommy dared me but I digress.”

Michael gave a snort and she gave a small glare with no actual heat behind it.

“You think that’s funny little shit?” She asked and Michael shrank but she smiled. “I’m just joking. But hey, watch out, I’ve been taught by a lawyer, I’ll sue you next time.”

She didn’t hate Michael; she just didn’t like how he and Ranboo got all of her father’s attention. Michael was a funny kid and smart when given the chance. She just wanted to avoid him though so she didn’t have to think about what he gets that she can’t.

“Alright, come on, I think there’s some of those special potions for you downstairs.” She said, standing up.

The teenager was about to pick him up when Tubbo came into the room.

“Hey, how—What happened?!” Tubbo exclaimed, rushing to Michael, not a second glance to (Y/N).

“Oh, he just fell a bit.” (Y/N) said.

“He fell?! How? Weren’t you watching him?” Tubbo asked her with even looking at her as he carefully looked at the minor cut on Michael’s head.

“Dad, he’s fine. It’s just a little cut from a fall.” She wasn’t watching him but she also wasn’t going to tell on Michael that he just jumped off the bed.

“You call this fine?!” He motioned to Michael as he finally looked at her.

“Yeah, I had a lot worse going on adventures with you and Uncle Tommy.”

“Yeah! But he’s not you!” Tubbo huffed looking away.

(Y/N) was taken aback by that. He wasn’t her…No, no Michael wasn’t her. He was better than her, just look. Michael always has her father’s attention. What was she? Just…just a disappointment.

Tubbo canceled plans with her, Tubbo rarely spoke to her as much, Tubbo barely spared her a glance some days. He had a better family now…

“You’re right.” She whispered, Michael giving little snorts seeing the tears in the older girl’s eyes. “I’m going to go.”

“I think that will be best,” Tubbo said, once more not looking at her as he picked Michael up.

Her lip quivered before nodding as she rushed downstairs. Tears poured down her cheeks as she grabbed a bag and threw her clothes in. Nothing else.

She left the house, hearing nothing from her father as she walked away from Snowchester.

It was better for everyone…They could be happy without her bothering them now…

The darkness surrounded her as she clutched her bag as she crossed the path back towards Dream SMP land. As she got across, she looked up at the well-lit hotel her uncle had finally won back. Without much thought, she dashed up the path to the building. As she got to the door, she hesitated.

Would it be better for her uncle if she didn’t bother him? Would he be happier?

“(Y/N)?” She heard behind her and she once more jumped as she looked to see Tommy walking past the gates to the hotel.

He stopped seeing her red eyes and the tears staining her cheeks, along with the bag by her side. He then rushed over, taking her arms.

“What happened? Who hurt you? Who the fuck is going to die?”

At his words, she sobbed. She hadn’t felt this cared about in months…

Tommy was startled before hugging her tightly. “Hey, it’s ok, kid. I’ll fuck up their shit for you. No need for the waterworks. Let’s get inside.”

He brought her inside as she cried harder and he didn’t get much of an explanation once she calmed down as she didn’t want to talk about it but he set her up with a room and told her they’d talk about it tomorrow when she got some rest. Yes, Tommy was worried but he knew that he couldn’t just force the kid to tell him everything when she looked exhausted.

“I don’t know how Tubbo fucked this up, but I’ll fuck up his shit later,” Tommy told her, ruffling her hair. “After I beat the ass of who hurt you. Get some rest.”

He left the room after that as she held back the tears this time. If only he knew, and lord did it feel so good to feel like someone cared…She had missed Uncle Tommy…

…

Tubbo came to (Y/N)’s door later after putting Michael to sleep. Tubbo felt guilty about getting so snippy with his daughter. She was right, kids get hurt. He remembered the clumsy little girl that would fall down all the time or who he’d have to catch after Tommy dared her to jump from various places. It made him feel guiltier when Michael tried to stick up for her, trying to take all the blame.

He hadn’t been angry; he was just scared. He had fucked up in some areas with (Y/N), he couldn’t fuck up again. Michael wasn’t the same as her, he was more fragile, a different creature entirely, which meant he had to be extra careful. It was better she went to her room though, so he didn’t say something he’d regret. He felt regret though for being so loud with his words.

“(Y/N).” He knocked on her door.

She didn’t answer and he sighed.

“I’m sorry for yelling. I didn’t mean it. I was just scared because Michael isn’t like you or me. He gets hurt a lot easier. And…shit. I forgot about fishing, didn’t I? I’m making a lot of mistakes today. I’m so sorry little lamb. I…I’ll leave Michael with Foolish tomorrow and we’ll have a day all to ourselves, no matter what. We’ll have your favorite breakfast and do whatever you want, ok? Just you and me my special little bee.”

There was still no answer and he let out another as he nodded.

“I’m going to stick to it! I promise (Y/N). I love you so much. Good night.”

And he left without opening the door to see what he’d find out tomorrow…

#mcyt x reader #mcyt imagine #mcyt fanfiction #tubbo x reader #dreamsmp x reader

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invisibleanonymousmonsters · 3 years

Text

All Men Have Limits - VIII

Character: Dick Grayson x Reader x Bruce Wayne

Summary: A certain bat believes that Y/N is in way over her head, that she’s too naive to act in her best interest. So, whether she wants it or not, the vigilante family is going to help and protect her before she gets herself killed.

Word Count: 3,600+

Warning: Mention of sexual assault

Previously on…

“Going along with this plan seems rather unlike you,” Tim finally pointed out to Bruce.

It was the two younger boys and Bruce sitting in the cave.

“Without her help, we would have never been able to get the evidence we need to take down The Court of Owls,” Bruce sighed as he looked up at the screens.

“Yeah, but like you said before, we never use our own as bait,” Tim countered.

“Y/N knows what she’s doing.”

Tim and Damian shared a look.

“Are you certain things have not gone too personal, father?” Damian finally asked.

The personal question finally forced Bruce to tear his eyes away from the screens and look at his son.

His gaze shifted between Tim and Damian. From their looks alone, Bruce realized that his feelings towards Y/N were not as subtle and secret as he wanted.

But Bruce knew better than to answer Damian.

The boy had never been invested in his father’s personal relationships before. Why did he have to start now? And with Y/N?

“What happens if things go south?” Tim challenged.

But Damian answered for his father. “You know he has a plan B and C, Drake. He always does, even if he doesn’t share it.”

Bruce was not about to have a conversation about his love and sex life with his two youngest sons. So, he thought of something to escape and he thought of it fast.

He stood up quickly and faced them. “Mandatory family dinner. Tonight.”

“What!?” Damian screamed in outrage.

“I don’t want to,” Tim whined like a baby, even though he was very much a young man standing at the ripe age of 19.

“Mandatory,” Bruce repeated solidly before leaving the cave.

Damian and Tim shared a look.

“This is your fault,” Tim accused.

“How is it my fault?”

“You couldn’t keep your mouth shut about the sexual tension we’re all choking on in this damn mansion!”

“But you don’t disagree. You’ve noticed it as well.”

“I was a little late to the game, but yes,” Tim admitted.

“She’s not like the other ones,” Damian muttered so quietly that Tim almost missed it.

“No, she’s not,” Tim confirmed.

——————

Bruce was slightly surprised to find Y/N sitting at the outdoor pool, reading a book.

She wasn’t in a bathing suit – just shorts and a t-shirt.

Bruce walked over with his hands in the pocket of his slacks.

“If I didn’t know better, I would think that you’re starting to like it here.”

She looked up from her book with a smirk. “For the record, I still think we should ‘eat the rich.’”

Bruce smirked. “Right. Of course.”

Y/N eyed him. “Did you need something?”

“Are you sure about this?”

Of course he was coming to try and talk her out of the plan once again.

“Bruce, I’m not changing my mind.”

“Figured you would say that.”

Y/N could see his mind racing. It was obvious he hadn’t stopped thinking about everything that could wrong with. Bruce needed control. And even if he was going into an inevitably dangerous situation, he always had multiple plans to get out alive. Y/N’s involvement made it harder for him to do that.

“Careful,” she warned him playfully, “It’s starting to look like you’re worried about me.”

“I am,” he retorted.

Her amusement vanished. “I didn’t think you worried. Or got scared.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “I thought you had realized by now that both of those things happen when you’re involved.”

She didn’t know how to respond that. She really didn’t.

“I also came out here to tell you we’re having a family dinner tonight.” Yes, Dick and Tim were basically living at the manor while they handled this specific case. But it was rare that the whole family ate together. All the boys would come back from patrol at different times. Alfred usually made something and put each of their meals in the oven or fridge for when they got back.

But Bruce made a habit of having mandatory family dinners. They weren’t frequent. And the boys often viewed them as some sort of punishment. But Bruce saw it as a way to remind them all that they were a family. A chaotic and a strange one, but they were still a family.

“It would be nice if you could join us,” Bruce added politely.

Y/N smiled at how obvious it was that he was choosing his words carefully. “It was really hard for you to not me tell what to do, wasn’t it?”

He narrowed his gaze at her from being caught.

She never seemed to miss an opportunity to tease him.

“Yes. I’ll join you.”

Bruce nodded, clearly pleased with her answer.

“Will you miss it?” Bruce surprised her by asking as he looked around at the exterior of the manor, looking almost lost in thought.

“It’s a home,” Y/N sighed. “And even with all the secrets and dark pasts, it’s still filled with happy memories, too. And a family.”

Then she smirked. “Even if it’s a highly dysfunctional one,” she added teasingly.

“Not sure all the boys would agree with you on that.”

“Are you sure about that?” Y/N challenged.

———————

Y/N walked out of her bedroom right as Dick was dragging Damian down the hallway.

“Come on. It’s never as bad as you think it’s gonna be,” Dick tried to tell the boy.

“Why did Todd come? He never comes to family dinner. He doesn’t even see us as his family.”

Dick smirked. “You and I both know that’s not true, no matter how many times he tries to convince everyone – even himself.”

Then both of them noticed Y/N’s presence in the hallway.

“You look pretty,” Dick complimented.

Y/N looked down at her outfit and shrugged. “Figured I could make a bit more of an effort.”

“Let’s get this over with,” Damian huffed before leaving the two of them behind.

Y/N and Dick both laughed lightly at his attitude.

“I’ve never told you how good you are with him,” she thought aloud.

“I don’t know about that…”

Y/N turned to him with an insistent look. “You are. Sometimes I think he listens to you more than Bruce. He looks up to you. I think it’s because…” her words die out.

“What? What you were going to say?”

Y/N still hesitated, but told him anyway. “I think it’s because you’re more available to him…emotionally, I mean.”

“Sometimes I feel like I have to talk to him the same way I do with Bruce. He’s a younger carbon copy of the guy. Just brattier.” Dick sighed. “Deep down, Damian has a good heart and he cares deeply about the people in his life. He’ll just never admit it.”

Y/N nodded.

It did sound like Bruce.

But Y/N never considered Dick would have a similar impact on Bruce that he also had with Damian. She wondered what Bruce would be like today if he had never taken in an orphaned Richard Grayson.

Sometimes Y/N believed Bruce would be completely devoid of any and all emotions if it hadn’t been for an adolescent Dick. His needs and wants as a child had prevented Bruce from turning completely into a callous vigilante with nothing tying him to his own humanity and life.

Y/N was about to continue her walk to the dining room, but Dick softly grabbed her arm.

“Hey, before we walking into the chaos…” Dick cleared his throat. “I just wanted to make sure we’re okay after the other night.” He shifted his weight and looked at the ground. “If I was too forward or I misread something or–”

“Dick?” Y/N interrupted with a smug look.

His head shot up to look at her. “Yeah?”

She had a wicked gleam in her eyes.

Then she moved into Dick’s space, closing the distance between their bodies and did not stop until they could feel each other’s body heat.

Y/N tipped her head as if she was about to kiss him.

But her lips stopped just a centimeter or two from his.

Dick’s eyes turned menacing once he realized she was messing with him.

“Yes,” Y/N whispered seductively, “we’re okay.”

Then she slipped away quickly and started walking away without him.

“That was cruel!” Dick called after her.

But her only response was her laugher from down the hall.

Dick shook his head, but couldn’t stop his smiling.

Maybe it was avoidance or a distraction from the reality of their relationship. But Y/N couldn’t deny that it was also fun.

—

Dinner was in the formal dining room of the manor. This was the first time Y/N had even stepped foot in the room. The fireplace was even lit. Even when Wayne Manor was hardly trying, it reminded Y/N how out of place she was. “If I have to sit through this bullshit, you’re sitting next to me,” Jason said from behind Y/N, making her jump.

To her horror, Jason pulled out a seat at the head of the table. Two at each end and then two chairs in the middle on both sides.

“Oh, I don’t think–” Y/N stuttered out in panic.

“You’re the guest,” Jason cut her off and gently pushed in the chair when he finally got her to sit.

Damian was already sitting to the right, closer to the other head of the table– probably to be closer to his father.

Jason sat down to the left of Y/N. And when Dick finally caught up to her, he didn’t question Y/N sitting at the head and sat to the right of her.

“Perfect. You’re like our future step mom,” Jason declared.

Damian snickered, despite hating to laugh at Jason’s joke.

But Y/N looked horrified. She was about to jump up and take the remaining middle seat on the other side of Jason. But Tim’s timing was absolutely horrendous.

“Please switch spots with me,” Y/N leaned forward and hissed at Dick.

He smirked. “Absolutely not.”

When he saw her obvious panic, he leaned forward as well and whispered, “That’s payback for earlier.”

Y/N glared at him and huffed.

“Oh, I’m so glad I came,” Jason sighed.

Bruce walked into the room with his head held high. “Tim, no phones. You know better.”

Tim sighed in annoyance but slipped his phone into his back pocket.

Dick leaned to Y/N. “Bruce has a strict ‘no electronics’ rule for family dinners. Phones are forbidden.”

Y/N nodded, even though she would never be so rude as to bring a phone to dinner, especially when she was a guest and this was a literal “manor.”

Somehow Jason had pulled a bottle of red wine from nowhere. Or maybe it had been sitting on the table and Y/N had just missed it.

And Jason had already grabbed Y/N’s glass and gave her a heavy pour. “But drinking is highly encouraged,” he added with a crooked smile.

Y/N barely let him finish pouring before she grabbed the wine and chugged.

When she put the glass back down, Bruce was watching her carefully. She at least had enough shame to sink lower in her chair and give him an apologetic look.

But Bruce was amused more than anything.

He’d never brought a woman to a family dinner like this. And though the situation was not that straightforward, it was still causing him a weird amount of anxiety.

“How are your lessons going, Damian?” Bruce broke the tension with the question.

Damian muttered off what sounded like rehearsed and generic statements about his personal studies.

“I didn’t even know he went to school,” Y/N muttered to Dick as Damian and Bruce talked.

“He doesn’t. He’s technically homeschooled,” Jason answered first. “Which is total bullshit seeing as all of us were forced to go to Gotham Academy with all the spoiled brats of the city.”

“As if it mattered, you died before you were forced to graduate from the stupid establishment,” Damian commented darkly.

Jason beamed and laughed lightly at the comment.

But Dick, Tim, and Y/N all froze and looked to Bruce.

They all knew it was a sensitive topic.

Bruce was clearly trying his hardest not to scold them all night. So he just took in a deep, shaky breath.

“Why get your GED or drop out of high school when you can just get murdered?” Jason offered with enthusiasm.

“Jason,” Y/N warned lowly when she saw the pained look on Bruce’s face that he was trying so hard to hide.

Jason’s death still haunted Bruce and riddled him with guilt – despite the miracle of him being resurrected. Y/N probably knew that more than any of the boys. Maybe only Dick really shared that understanding.

“You’re right,” Jason agreed. “Tonight’s not about me. You’re the guest, Y/N. Why don’t you tell us about yourself?”

Y/N opened her mouth to protest, but the words got caught in her throat when she felt everyone’s eyes on her.

This was not how she imagined tonight going.

But Alfred – her savior – interrupted with the first course of soup and salad.

Everyone was momentarily distracted with the food.

Y/N hoped it stayed that way.

“Who taught you how to hack?” Damian piped up.

Y/N relaxed at that particular question. “No one. I taught myself.”

“Where’s your family?” Tim asked innocently.

Y/N flipped through all the possible lies she could tell, deciding to go with the one that would lead to the least amount of follow-up questions. And it wasn’t a lie at all.

“We’re estranged,” Y/N mumbled without looking up from her food.

“Parents are overrated,” Jason commented with a smirk.

Dick and Bruce glared at him.

However, Y/N couldn’t help but laugh along with Jason.

Little did she know that Jason could relate to her upbringing far more than anyone else at the table. Their childhood’s were parallel. Ones neither of them deserved.

Tim instantly felt guilty for asking an uncomfortable question without realizing it.

“Y/N is not here to be interrogated,” Bruce warned the table.

“Well, why don’t you tell us about her, B?” Jason answered. “How exactly did you two meet again?”

Bruce narrowed his gaze. He knew what game this was. The more emotion and reaction he showed, the more it would encourage Jason to continue with such antics. “We worked on a case together a couple years ago,” was all Bruce supplied.

“More like she threatened you into working with her,” Dick mumbled as he tried to hide his smirk by licking his lips.

Y/N kicked him under the table.

“So, Y/N, have you always had a thing for older men?” Jason asked.

She gave him a death glare.

“Jason, come on.” Dick cautioned.

“I mean, you of all people should be curious, Dickie.”

Everyone went quiet.

Jason rolled his eyes and looked around the table. “Oh. Are we all pretending there’s not a weird love triangle going on?”

“I didn’t realize my sex life was up for discussion tonight,” Y/N mumbled.

But it wasn’t just sex was it?

“Why don’t we all go around the table and share!?” Jason suggested loudly. “Dick, you first. What’s your number?”

“Jason that is enough.” Bruce grunted.

But Y/N had it with Jason’s pot stirring and she wasn’t going to let Bruce fight her battles for her.

She snapped her head in Jason’s direction. “I hope you don’t have a sex tape laying around, because I will sell that shit to PornHub faster than you can jerk off,” she threatened.

The words slipped out of Y/N’s mouth so quickly that she had momentarily forgotten that a literal child was also sitting at the dinner table.

Her hand slammed over her mouth and her eyes widened in shock.

Jason threw his head back with laughter. This was exactly the chaos he was trying to start.

Her eyes whipped to Damian with horror as she blurted out, “I am so sorry!"

“Please, I know what fornication is,” Damian rolled his eyes. “I’m not so innocent. After all, I was conceived from my mother drugging my father and forcing coitus onto him.”

“I also slept with said mother,” Jason chimed in.

Tim made a disgusted gag noise.

Dick rubbed his face in exhaustion. Y/N’s jaw dropped at this new information.

But when she looked to Bruce, he wouldn’t meet her stare, only further proving it was all true.

This was no laughing matter.

Yet the whole family seemed desensitized by the subject.

Y/N was processing that Bruce had gone through such an assault – and by the mother of his only biological son, nonetheless. “Can Jonathan come over soon for a sleepover, father?” Damian suddenly asked.

The subject change was like whiplash on the entire table.

Y/N couldn’t keep up. She couldn’t just move past what she found out like that.

“I don’t see why not,” Bruce answered.

Clearly he was grateful for his son’s short attention span and his inability to read the room and realize he’d said something entirely inappropriate for the situation.

But Y/N could also see the subtle happiness in Bruce’s eyes from his son asking him such a question. And for that split second, this felt like a normal family.

“Who’s Jonathan?” Y/N asked Dick quietly.

She was trying to follow Bruce’s lead and move on.

“Superman’s son,” Dick provided.

“And literally Damian’s only friend,” Jason added.

“I heard that!” Damian shouted.

“I meant you to!”

“Put that knife down, Damian.” Bruce warned. “What have I told you?”

Damian lowered his head in shame. “The knives at the dinner table are for eating, and are not to be used as weapons under any circumstance.”

The table suddenly erupted into various conversations. Tim started talking Wayne Enterprises business with Bruce. Damian and Jason were shooting insults at each other. Alfred brought in another course.

Dick and Y/N shared a moment.

She sighed, realizing that the worst of it was probably over now.

‘Sorry,’ Dick mouthed to her.

‘It’s OK,’ she mouthed back.

The dinner continue with filet mignon, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, mushroom bordelaise, and – thankfully – more wine.

Maybe Jason had helped them all in a way by airing out all their dirty laundry immediately and getting it over with so they could move on.

But as Y/N looked around the table, listening to the boys and Bruce talk, she realized that maybe – just maybe – she didn’t want to leave.

—

Alfred put all the boys to work cleaning the dishes after dinner.

But he refused to allow Y/N to help. Once a guest always a guest.

Alfred handed Y/N a fresh glass of wine and told her to wait in the drawing room and that he’d bring dessert within the hour.

Y/N knew better than to argue with him and did as she was told.

There was a roaring fire in the room, pulling her to it.

“Please don’t take anything Jason said personally,” Bruce said from behind her.

Y/N let out a breathy laugh and shook her head. “He loves to start drama. That’s for fucking sure.”

“He’s constantly trying to get back at me. You weren’t his target. I was. But I apologize that you were caught in the crossfire.”

She turned away from the fireplace to face him.

Her eyes were heartbroken and worried.

“You never told me about…” she hesitated, “about Damian’s mother. I-I had no idea.”

“I try not to speak of it. No matter what happened in the past, Talia is still Damian’s mother.”

“But she still–”

“I’m fine,” Bruce cut her off. “Really, Y/N. I came to terms with it long ago.”

He was irritated, but too preoccupied with comforting Y/N to face the dark truth of how Damian was conceived.

“Well, if you need to ta–”

“I know, Y/N. Thank you.”

Their moment was interrupted by the boys trampling in the drawing room.

Dick had Damian thrown over his shoulder as the boy screamed insults at both Tim and Jason. Clearly Dick was preventing a full-on brawl from errupting.

The bickering and teasing continued but wasn’t anywhere near as awkward or stressful as it was at dinner. Perhaps all the glasses of wine Y/N had were helping with that. She decided to simply sit back and watch the Wayne family.

Eventually it hit Damian’s bed time. Bruce insisted on tucking his son into bed.

Jason took their leave as his cue to leave the manor.

Tim went up to his own room. Except they all knew it wasn’t to sleep, but to get back to work and not stop until he was utterly exhausted.

The drawing room turned relaxing as Dick and Y/N were the only two who remained.

“You survived,” Dick pointed out with a chuckle.

“I did,” Y/N answered with a light laugh.

Dick let a moment pass before he asked, “Why didn’t you ever tell me about your parents?”

She sighed, knowing Dick was going to bring this up at some point.

“Because I don’t tell anyone about them.”

“You told Bruce,” he countered.

Her brow furrowed. “And how do you know that?”

Dick at least looked guilty for answering, “He told me.”

She glared at him. “So is that what you two do now? You talk about me with each other? Swap notes?”

“Course not. But don’t you think it’s a little hypocritical getting mad about it?”

“Hypocritical?” She shot back.

“Yeah, hypocritical. You did a background check on every single member of this family. You know my entire past. You know every woman I’ve been connected to in my life. But the moment I know something about you, it’s not OK?”

“As if you wouldn’t offer that info freely if I asked…”

“That’s exactly my point, Y/N.” Dick sounded exasperated. “I’m trying to get to know you. I’m really trying. But now I know you’ve done it before. So I’m asking you to trust me enough to do it again.”

“It’s not that simple,” Y/N mumbled before walking out of the room.

Dick let out a groan of frustration and rubbed his face.

That definitely could’ve gone better.

But Y/N’s night wasn’t free of the Wayne men yet.

Just before reaching her bedroom door, Bruce crossed her path.

“Hey!” She snapped at him. “My past isn’t something for you to announce to whoever the fuck you want.”

“Y/N, that’s–”

“Save it,” Y/N snapped before he could get a word in. “Whatever broody and cryptic bullshit you’re about to spew…just…save it, k?”

And with that, Y/N slammed her bedroom door shut.

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Part 9

A/N: I know a lot of people really hate the Talia/Bruce sexual assualt storyline. But that was the version of Damian’s conception that I was most familiar with. I didn’t want to make light of it, because we all know male victims of sexual assault are not taken seriously – and that’s fucked up. But I also didn’t want to linger on it too long since it’s such a disliked plot point

Let me know what you thought of this chapter!!! Pretty, pretty please. 😔

#all men have limits #all men have limits part 8 #bruce wayne x reader #bruce wayne reader insert #bruce wayne x reader x dick grayson #dick grayson x reader #dick grayson reader insert #dick Grayson x reader x Bruce Wayne #batfam #batboys #batman x reader #nightwing x reader

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seancekitsch · 4 years

Text

Ebb & Flow

part 2 for Heat. diego x reader

warnings: angst, hints of diego’s self loathing, low key set in the prize buck universe but obvs not the same reader character, drinking, oblivious idiot love birds, unprotected pre-marital missionary, edgar allen poe reference, corny ass shit

Four days pass, and every day he debates trying to reach out to you. He wakes up in a cold bed that feels empty without you. But he doesn’t; because you made it very clear you did not want to sleep with Diego Hargreeves specifically. He decides to try to go back to what his life was like before you fell into it. Before he fell for you. He tries to pretend that hair pin (which he’s now tucked away into a drawer) isn’t literally haunting and taunting him every second he’s in his boiler room bedroom. It’s hard for him to sleep or function with it in the room with him, like it screams it’s presence as a trace of you. The hair pin is a tell-tale heart of all of Diego’s misguided feelings and how he so severely misread the situation between the two of you. The hair pin is the constant thrumming of his mind telling him over and over that of course you’d never feel the same way as he does. You were a therapist, he was a gym janitor. Of course you’d tire of slumming it with a man that regularly plays crime fighter at night. Diego is constantly reminded of you even without seeing the hair pin because he just knows where he put it. And that address. That damn address carefully written in blue pen on the back of one of your business cards. Would it be wrong of him to still look into the warehouse? You had to have left it for him on purpose, you had to have taken it out of your bag and left it there purposely on the bed; there was no way it could have fallen out of the bag that was on his table and onto the middle of his bed as you were leaving. Diego tries to bury his thoughts of you in vigilante work, tries to stay out late. He succeeds and returns just before the gym opens in the morning. When he finally gets back to his boiler room, Al offhandedly mentions that a woman had inquired about his whereabouts. Part of Diego desperately hopes and wishes it’s you, but he doesn’t do anything about it. You probably don’t actually want to see him. Or it's one of his sisters. Probably just Allison or Vanya. Family stuff. Maybe they had another dad die or something.

Twelve days later, he finally works up the courage to call the owner of the warehouse to ask about pricing and zoning if he wanted to start his own gym there. He had enough in savings that he could have moved out of his current situation and into a studio like Klaus had, but he wanted to put as much money together for his own gym before he thought of himself. He could sleep peacefully alone on a cot in a gym that he happened to own. The current owner remarks that he had heard Diego would be calling, and says he likes the idea of a gym going into the space there. He thanks the man, and they strike a deal, talk about a title and deed change to be drafted and signed for the beginning of the next month. Diego unofficially owns his own gym now. Normally he would be calling you to celebrate, but instead he dials and hopes the landline at Klaus’ apartment is still connected. Klaus’ partner answers and congratulates Diego, and invites him out to the bar with them this weekend. Diego’s voice declines before his mind can stop himself. Maybe because he didn't want to celebrate with anyone but you.

It’s fifteen days later, Friday, when Diego regrets not going to the bar with Klaus and his partner. It's Diego, a six pack, and that damn hair pin having what looked more like a pity party than a celebration of a major life event. But maybe that's not the worst thing, now he can focus himself for the job ahead, get a good night's sleep. Well, he would have gotten a good night's sleep, if there weren't suddenly shouting coming from the hallway outside his door.

“Klaus, I don't want to be here!”

That was clearly, unmistakably your voice. You were outside his door and vehemently expressing that you wanted nothing to do with this place. What were you doing with his brother? Oh, right. Friday night at the bar. He was supposed to have been there too, but he bailed.

“Well it was either this or you officially become part of my harem for the night”

“I have a home, thank you very much! I could go to it”

“But you left your car at the club, and you live across the city. You’re safe here, even if you are afraid of my brother now.”

Afraid. Afraid. Your opinion of him had gone from disgust to fear. He presses his ear now to the door and can only hear one set of retreating footsteps. Someone is leaving, and if hes right, its Klaus.

Then he hears,

“FUCK,” a frustrated half-groan, half-scream. He has to admit to himself, even hearing how unhappy you seemed, he missed hearing your voice. He missed you. And you were outside his door right now in the middle of the night. Fuck it, he thought, I’m not missing my chance.

When Diego opens the door, he sees you sitting on the ground, tight jean clad legs spread and chunky high heeled boot toes pointed outwards. He always loved those shoes on you. When his eyes meet your face, there’s an indignant pout on your lips, but your eyes are apologetic.

“How much of that did you hear?”

“Enough. C’mon, I’m not leaving you in the hallway.” He opens the door a little wider, enough that he could usher you in, but you don't budge.

“Y’know, i’m not even drunk it's just my-”

“-your rule, yeah, I remember,” You had this rule that no matter what, you wouldn't get behind the wheel if you'd had more than one beer or even one drink stronger than a beer. Always best to err on the side of caution, you’d said. Better to not get pulled over at the very least or kill anyone else at the very worst, and you could handle being inconvenienced if it meant safety. But the fact of the matter is that it's the dead of winter and you live across town. You actually live in pretty close proximity to his new gym.

“Come in, you can take my bed, I’ll sleep on the couch in Al’s office. It’s two am and you are not walking home looking like that. I’ll stay away from you,” He's trying his best to sound comforting and respectful, but it hurts. It hurts to be inviting you in and knowing you want nothing to do with him.

“You don't have to-” you pause, as if trying to find the right words, “I’m not gonna put you out like that”

Diego nods, and turns back inside the boiler room, holding the door open, and you catch it, following him. It's just like old times, except it isn't.

“Here, I've got a shirt and some pants you can sleep in,” Diego’s rifling through his drawers as he talks, worried he’ll look at you too long and seem as desperate as he is. He manages to throw a clean tee and a pair of jogger sweatpants on the bed, two of the only clean items he has currently because tomorrow is laundry day. Diego turns completely around to avoid looking at you while he can hear you changing, something he never would have done before, but there are boundaries now. He can imagine exactly what you look like right now, beautiful as ever and tired, changing into his clothes, just as it had happened dozens of times before. Only before he would have watched in awe and then grabbed you all to himself.

“You can turn around now, nothing you haven't seen before,” your voice is soft, you don't sound annoyed anymore and he can’t help but feel a twinge of hope at that.

When he turns around, he sees you've neglected the pants all together. Your bare legs end where the hem of his shirt meets the tops of your thighs and - why the fuck would you tell him to turn around with you dressed like this?

You gesture to his bed, and he sits on it, but you don't. You stay standing, looking more apprehensive and nervous by the second.

“K-klaus said you're afraid of me now?” Stupid thing to say. Diego’s tired. His insecurities are showing. You're the last person he would want to be afraid of him.

Your face crumbles into something unreadable, but what he would guess is pity or guilt. Which are maybe worse than fear and disgust by his standards. He lets his head drop, suddenly finding his draped hands between his legs to be extremely interesting.

You shift from one foot to another, unsure of how to answer, but then it comes to you.

You place yourself in his line of vision, not allowing him to look away as you kneel down on your knees between his own. The sight alone is more than Diego can bear.

“No, no I'm not. I'm sorry you heard that and he said that. Look, I wanted to talk to you, not like this, not right now. I came by last week but you weren't here.” So it was you that had come around. Not his sisters like he had convinced himself. You wanted to talk to him.

“I wanted to apologize. I-I shouldn't have left like that. I need to explain to you why I left.” He nods, and lets you continue. “I crossed a line. I was wrong. Our arrangement, I know it was like a no strings attached thing, but I started to have strings! I have so many strings. I broke our agreement, it wasn't casual for me. I broke your trust. I had to leave. I couldn't do that to you.”

Strings. You had strings, attached. To him of all people. You broke the rules. So did he. He searches your face, as if there's something to read on your features, and feels your hands slide into his own.

“I-I-I’m sh-shitty at t-tying knots.” Diego what the fuck was that? He was more nervous than he thought. But you break into a watery grin, understanding the meaning in his words. You nod, and reply,

“I can teach you, if you've got strings to spare.” That was extremely sappy, and he loved it. He had so many strings to spare. He loved you. And he could show it now.

He tugs on your hands to pull them up to his shoulders, and you lean up into it, lips coming together as his hands wrap around your back to hold you tight. He easily lifts you up until he can gather you in his lap and keeps kissing you, over and over and over until you're dizzy. He holds you tightly, not unlike the last time you were in his bed, but this time his hands roam and grasp and touch, exploring you like it's the first time you're doing this. In a way, it is. It's the first time you're doing this so vulnerable and open with one another. You don't have to hide the smile that forms against his lips, you don't have to feel shame in the way that your lips chase after his own when he tries to pull away. You are taking from each other as much as you are giving, and for once you are giving everything.

His hands slide from your back, to the hem of his shirt, to your ass under the shirt. Diego is, at heart, an ass man you remember. He squeezes one cheek, then slaps it. Not hard, just enough to feel the slight jiggle at the contact. He chuckles against your mouth and then continues south, still kneading his hands into the flesh of your ass as his kisses meet the hem of his shirt at the other side, at your neck. You kiss his cheek, his nose, the scar that connects from behind his ear to his eye. Diego takes the time to lick the base of your neck, making you shudder and moan into it before he flips the both of you, surprising you when your back hits the blankets below. Looking up at him, his eyes are full of lust and admiration.

“You look beautiful in my shirt, baby,” he whispers.

“And you are wearing entirely too much, dear” you reply.

He groans, and it turns into a chuckle as he whips his shirt off his torso, revealing his broad, scarred chest to you, which your hands immediately reach for to pull him back down onto you. He makes no move to remove the shirt covering you, but you think this might be doing something for him. Instead, his hands roam under the shirt again, and tease at the hem of your underwear. They aren't a particularly sexy pair, because the last thing you expected to happen tonight is this. It doesn't matter to Diego, who just pulls them down as far as his arm can reach, letting you kick them the rest of the way off as he fumbles with pulling his sweatpants down. There isn't the usual teasing game tonight, no. You'd spent too much time apart, you are full to the brim with love that even a little teasing would have the two of you spilling and in pain. This is fuck-or-die with no real consequences but your own impatience and need for each other.

Diego wastes no time gently spreading your legs with a smooth slowness you didn't know he possessed before easing inside of you. You gasp, close your eyes, and breathe, taking a moment to remember this. This is what it felt like to make love. Another first for both of you. His pace, when he finally begins moving, is slow and steady, he's in no rush now that he has you. He’s quieter than usual, opting to just kiss you until he's sure you can read his mind and just understand what he's thinking. You rock peacefully, like a boat on the ocean, cresting waves within you mounting, exhaling with low moans he's never heard from you before. You never thought slow and careful would bring you to climax, but here you are feeling it steadily build and build. Waves now beginning to crash instead of ebb and flow, Diego’s only warning being your moans beginning to rise an octave. The release hits you in an all encompassing mighty tidal wave, leaving you shaking in his arms, holding onto him tightly like a lighthouse to the shore. This was not a white hot explosion, this was the tides coming home. As you subside, you almost feel ashamed at how quickly you came for him, but Diego is close behind you, your body pulling him to shore after you. He comes with a tight, close-lipped hum of a moan pressed against the side of your neck, and stills above you. His body cages yours to the bed, a willing prisoner of whatever Diego Hargreeves had in store for you. Whatever happened next for him, you were along for the voyage.

#diego hargreeves x reader #diego hargreeves imagine #diego hargreeves fanfic #diego hargreeves smut #my work

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musings-from-mars · 3 years

Note

Welp, part 5 is a must now

Freelance Love Triangle AU - Part 5

Blake wasn’t sure why she’d been so curious about hard seltzer when she already knew she hated sparkling water. But here she was drinking what vaguely suggested that it might be cherry flavored, yet Ruby seemed to like hers, and Blake had already said she liked it. Gotta finish it now…

Cinder was right about it being quaint. Blake usually shied away from late night trips to the bar because the ones she’d been to were the “loud music, pick up chicks” types. This, however, was more easy going, softer music and people here to chat with friends more than anything else. And since it was a weekday evening, it wasn’t very busy (also a rare treat for a city like Vale).

The three of them sat at the bar, the bow tie and vest wearing barman leisurely drying a glass with a fiber cloth as he handed Cinder her cheap glass of red wine. Blake wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, maybe that Cinder would order something from higher in the big wooden cabinet behind the bar, perhaps to show off her sophisticated tastes. But no, it was just a glass from an already opened bottle of something dark and astringent. At least she was being seemingly authentic.

Blake needed the occasional reminders that Cinder wasn’t the highbrow, high class villainess she made her out to be in her head. She was Blake’s coworker and made no more than she did. Maybe Blake just had a complex, imagining her as an opponent. And Ruby was the prize she felt like they were warring over.

I’m a fucking piece of shit. And dumb. She took another sip of alcohol soda water, accepting it as her punishment.

“Want a taste?” Cinder asked Ruby, sliding her glass to her.

The photographer eyed the dark red liquid skeptically, but she grabbed the stem of the glass anyway. “I’ll try.” She took the smallest of sips, then came away with an expression like she had just bitten into a lemon. “Heghhh…”

Cinder giggled, seeming to be genuinely amused. “It’s an acquired taste.”

Blake reached over, but looked to Cinder for permission to try. Cinder noticed, and for half a second seemed surprised, but then she smiled and nodded. Blake took a sip, and yep, it felt like all the moisture had been zapped from her mouth the moment the wine passed her tongue. She slid the glass back to Cinder. “I don’t think I’ll acquire it.”

Cinder rolled her eye, but continued to smile. Blake took a drink of her seltzer. At least now she knew it could be worse.

“So, uhm…” Ruby began, pausing to sip her drink. “When did you two, like…how’d you become writers.”

Blake looked across to Cinder, and Cinder went first. “It wasn’t my plan initially, but I eventually figured out that I wanted to write for a living. But I didn’t figure that out until I was a third year physics student at my university. Had an identity crisis, had a financial crisis, had a crisis crisis, I’m a journalist now.” She punctuated that with a sip of wine, and both Ruby and Blake laughed. “Blake had a slightly less stressful go at it, if I remember correctly.”

Blake blushed at that, but nodded in agreement. “College was the easy part. It was the after college part that was hard. Urban Valean is, like, the fifth publication I’ve written for in the past two years and it’s the first one I’ve actually enjoyed.”

“I can agree with that,” Cinder added.

“Huh.” Ruby bowed her head a bit. “So I kinda got lucky, huh?”

“Got lucky because of the magazine you’re working for? Or lucky because you’re working with us?” Cinder asked. Blake felt her face warm, both because of Cinder’s obvious flirting, but also because of her use of the word “us.”

Ruby chuckled bashfully and shrugged. Cute. “Both, I guess. You two are really cool, and…nowhere near as mean as I was worried you would be.”

“You thought we’d be mean?” Blake asked, concerned.

Ruby’s back straightened and she shook her head. “I mean, uhh…not you two specifically! I just mean, like, I always imagined I’d get teased, or like, not taken seriously at my first gig. But I liked you both pretty much right away. I’m really enjoying working on this project.” She smiled genuinely, and it made Blake’s heart soar.

“Yeah, you are pretty lucky to be working with us,” Cinder assured her with a chuckle. “And that’s not me being an ass, I mean that. There are a lot of high-strung jerks out there.”

“Yeah,” Blake agreed, then felt her breath catch in her throat. Was she talking about her?

“Blake and I are the types who…you know, we enjoy what we do, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. At least, most of the time.” And then she winked at Blake. It was a little hard to tell at first because, well, one eye, but that was definitely a wink. She tipped her head in her direction and everything.

At least Blake wasn’t one of those high-strung jerks, then.

“Thank you both, seriously,” Ruby told them, then took the last sip of her drink. “I was so scared when I graduated, because I didn’t know what to do, but…now I feel like I’m on a good track, of some sort. I…” She paused and flinched a bit, then she pulled out her phone, and she went a bit paler. “Oh, shit! I totally forgot!”

“What?” Blake asked.

“Did you leave your other laptop in the oven?” Cinder joked.

“No no, it’s my sister. She invited me over tonight and I completely forgot. I…” She suddenly got to her feet and started fumbling around in her pockets. She finally pulled out her wallet and left a few Lien on the bar. “I am so sorry that I’m leaving so quick, I really would love to stay, but…”

“Don’t worry about it, Ruby. This won’t be our last time hanging out,” Cinder assured her. “We’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

Ruby sighed and nodded. “Thanks.” She turned towards Blake and grinned as she began to leave. “Bye! Thanks again!”

Blake and Cinder both watched her leave, and then a relative silence fell over them, with an awkward empty seat now separating the two.

Blake heard Cinder take in a deep breath, then hopped into the seat Ruby had just vacated. “Blake, can I ask you something?”

Blake’s heart was suddenly hammering in her chest, both due to the open-ended question, and the sudden reduction in distance between them. “Uhh…you just did.”

Cinder huffed the faintest laugh. “Blake, I feel like we should probably talk about this like a couple of adults.”

“Talk about what?” Blake asked, apparently deciding to play dumb.

“About Ruby,” Cinder deadpanned. “About how obviously we both seem to like her. Unless I’m misreading things horribly.”

Blake sighed and shook her head. “No, you’re just about spot on,” she admitted.

“I figured. I can’t help but feel like you view this as us both competing for her affections, but as much as I’d normally appreciate drama like that, when I’m involved, I’d prefer we handle it like real people rather than like rom-com characters.”

Cinder’s eloquence got on Blake’s nerves as usual, only now she was beginning to examine why. Cinder was so irritatingly attractive, and yet she was exactly right about the whole competing thing. Why did Blake have to view her as an opponent all the time, when they had just told Ruby how they were both just a couple of stressed out freelance writers? She took another sip of hard seltzer, realized her glass was empty, and despite her disdain for the taste, signaled the bartender for a refill.

“I am most concerned about Ruby herself,” Cinder continued. “Whether she’s even interested in either of us in that way, or if she is interested in such a relationship at all. So I believe that’s our most important concern right now. Let’s be upfront with her as well, right?”

“You want us to tell her that we both fancy her,” Blake asked, as a statement rather than as a question. The bartender slid another pint glass of fresh-from-the-can hard seltzer. “I can’t imagine that going well.” Nor could she imagine her blood pressure handling such a situation well.

“But at least then we’d know early on whether our feelings are misplaced or not,” Cinder pointed out, and finished off her glass. She signaled for another, probably mirroring Blake’s failure to adhere to her “only one drink” declaration from earlier. “It would save us the anxiety.”

“For you, maybe,” Blake said with a dry laugh. “I can’t imagine telling her something like that, especially since we’re supposed to be keeping things professional. Imagine if she freaks out and tells Robyn? She’d be in the right if she did.”

“I doubt she would, I have a good feeling, if I’m being honest,” Cinder admitted as the bartender finished refilling her glass.

“I don’t!” Blake said, an incredulous smile on her face.

“It’s up to you, Blake,” Cinder assured her and took a sip of her wine. Blake noticed a faint red tint to her cheeks. “I won’t make a move without your…input?”

“What, like, some sort of bro code?” Blake asked, raising an eyebrow at her. She took a few hasty sips from her drink, as if that would calm her down at all. “We’re not frat boys.”

“As I said, I want us to handle this like adults,” Cinder reiterated, eying Blake’s glass with faint concern. “And I think going behind your back, undercutting you…” She let that linger.

Blake sighed, her shoulders slumping a bit. “Would be shitty, yeah, I got that.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit, Blake.”

Blake held her breath and looked at her, studying her face as she drank more wine. That came out of nowhere. “What do you mean?”

“You compare yourself to others, or most notably, to me all too often,” Cinder told her, setting her glass back down. “You are a woman of merit, and you shouldn’t hamper yourself with the expectations that other people already deal with. You are just one person. You need to do what you can, and less of what you feel like I can. You’ll stress yourself out far less once you do.”

Blake tried to take in all of that, but at this point, her head was a little too foggy to accept new information for archiving. This hard seltzer wash was more potent than she expected. Or maybe she was more of a lightweight than she thought. “Easy for you to say. You get cover so often…”

“I’ve also been doing this longer than you have,” Cinder pointed out. “You’re putting the expectations I deal with on top of your own by comparing yourself to me. I used to do that all the time, hence the crisis crisis I mentioned earlier? Once I stopped giving two fucks about everyone else, life got easier.”

Blake shook her head. She knew Cinder had a point, but she just couldn’t fathom the full breadth of her testimony. “Well, I guess I’ll start working on giving fewer fucks moving forward.” She finished her second glass all too soon. She shook her head when the bartender asked if she wanted another as he took her glass.

Cinder laughed, which weirdly made Blake feel a little better. “Everyone starts somewhere.”

“Yeah.” It certainly sounded nice, no longer caring what other people thought, or even ignoring her own head and just doing what felt right. But how did that relate to the Ruby situation? The thing that would feel right would be to go find wherever she was right now and proclaim her affections, but even that felt like too much right now. The alcohol wasn’t helping.

Cinder seemed to recognize that and took a few more sips of wine before sliding the almost-empty glass away and pushed herself off of the barstool. “Just put it on my tab, thanks.”

“Are we leaving?” Blake asked, not noticing Cinder had gotten up until she’d gently taken her by the wrist.

“You are, anyway. You need to get home.” Cinder told her as she helped her off her stool. “Lightweight.”

Blake would have argued if standing didn’t make her even woozier. She was in that odd in-betweenness of buzzed and drunk. She felt completely aware of her surroundings but felt like she was controlling all of her body’s movements manually, as if letting something go unnoticed would result in her falling over. Thankfully, Cinder kept ahold of her, though the feeling of her faintly cold hand on Blake’s wrist proved to be a distraction all on its own.

They started down the street. Blake walked as normally as she could, save for the occasional sway that Cinder would correct for her. She felt so stupid for having more than one drink despite what she said before. At least Cinder was being nice. “Wait…”

“Hm?” Cinder asked.

“My laptop,” Blake said. “I left my laptop at the office.”

“It’ll be there where you get there in the morning.”

“No, I need it tonight. I gotta take down my notes and do some preliminary searching for contact information for the artists.”

“It can wait, hun,” Cinder assured her.

“It’s on the way,” Blake half-lied. It wasn’t tremendously out of the way, but going straight home would be quicker and easier, not that Cinder knew that.

Cinder sighed and shook her head. “Fine, dumbass, let’s go to the office.”

Blake might have taken offense, but felt too victorious at successfully convincing her.

Cinder buzzed them both in with her ID card, and sure enough, Blake’s laptop bag was still on her chair. They were the only ones at the office at this late an hour. It felt eerily quiet, considering how noisy it could be during the day. In Blake’s slightly intoxicated state, it was especially surreal.

“Do you…do you need to sit down for a moment?” Cinder asked, her voice lulling.

Blake hadn’t put her bag over her shoulder yet, instead holding the shoulder strap as it rested on the floor. She considered Cinder’s suggestion, then shook her head. “No, I’m fine. Just tired.” Then she swayed a little too far in one direction, overcorrected in the other, and began to stumble. “Huh-!”

Cinder stepped forward quickly and caught her, wrapping her arms securely around Blake’s shoulders in an awkward embrace. “Careful!”

Blake groaned in annoyance, then held her breath when she fully recognized her position, held tightly in Cinder’s arms, face-to-face with her. “Sorry,” she whispered. “I just lost my balance for a bit, I’m fine.”

Cinder shook her head at her. She licked her lips before speaking, as if it was difficult to find the words. “No, you need to sit down.”

“Why?” Blake asked, finding herself unable to look away from Cinder’s lips.

“You’re not fit to walk home yet,” Cinder told her, her voice quieter than before, almost a whisper. She began to slowly lead Blake to her desk chair without letting go of her. “Just sit until you feel better.”

“But…no,” Blake said, almost a mumble.

“Why not?”

“I don’t want you to let go of me yet.”

Blake didn’t realize what she said until noticing the look on Cinder’s face, her eye wide and her mouth hanging open slightly. Blake’s face got so hot she thought she might break out into a sweat.

“You want me to keep holding you?” Cinder asked quietly.

Blake couldn’t meet her face, instead staring at the collar of Cinder’s jacket. At first she wanted to double back and correct herself, but then again…

She let her head drift forward until her forehead rested on Cinder’s shoulder, and she did her best to wrap her arms around her despite Cinder pinning them to her sides. Cinder felt tense, but Blake let herself relax within her embrace, letting out a slow sigh.

“Blake?” Cinder whispered to her, but didn’t continue.

“Just hold me,” Blake said back, voice muffled by Cinder’s jacket.

“Do you like it when I hold you?” Cinder asked.

“Yeah.”

Cinder let out a shaky breath, then chuckled softly. She shook her head as she allowed Blake to sink further into the embrace. “Yeah. I like it too.”

#freelance love triangle au #pawling petals #rwby #ruby rose #blake belladonna #cinder fall #drabble

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wellimaginethat · 4 years

Text

Never Stopped Loving You

Pairing: Matt Casey x (female) Reader

Requested?: Yes

Word Count: 2289

Author’s Note: YAY! My first Matt x Reader!

Trigger Warning(s): Jealousy, confrontation, break up, implied hooking up

Disclaimer: I don’t owe nor am I affiliated with any of the Chicago shows, I just like to play with the characters

Summary: Matt and Y/N used to date but ended things because she was leaving Chicago for work, however they never quit having feelings for each other and would hookup whenever she was in town if they happened to be single. Well, Matt is dating Hallie when Y/N comes to visit, and Hallie isn’t too thrilled with how they act together. She ends up finding a box filled with pictures of Y/N and letters she wrote to him, along with what appears to be an engagement ring, which causes problems. Her insecurities only intensify when Y/N announces that she’s moving back to Chicago.

Y/N = Your Name

Y/EC = Your Eye Color

You and Matt Casey had a very strange relationship. You started out as best friends, then became romantically involved. The transition from friends to more was easy. It probably never would have happened if it hadn’t been for you kissing him after a movie night.

It had taken him completely off guard, and when you first pulled away, you were worried that he was going to be upset. That is, until he pulled you back into a kiss, a very passionate kiss.

When the two of you finally broke apart, he rested his forehead against yours, a silence between the two of you except for soft breaths.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to kiss you.” Matt breathed out, his blue eyes meeting your Y/EC ones.

You smiled some. “You should’ve, I was terrified to make the first move.”

“Well I’m glad you did, I’m not sure I ever would’ve gotten up the courage to kiss you.” Matt admitted softly.

After that, the two of you had a beautiful relationship that lasted a total of six months. Until you were offered a glorious job in your field of study in London. You knew you couldn’t turn it down. Matt knew you couldn’t turn it down. You knew it wasn’t fair to ask him to leave Chicago with you, and you also knew it wasn’t fair to keep him on the hook when you might never come back. So you ended things.

Once you spoke the words, breaking both his heart and yours, you kissed his cheek and left the apartment. You sobbed in your car, unable to drive off, and he got in the passenger seat and pulled you into a hug. He kissed the top of your head.

“I’ll never stop loving you.” Matt whispered into your hair. “And you will forever be my best friend, no matter what.”

You sobbed harder. “I can’t turn this down, Matt.” You cried into his chest.

“I know.” Matt whispered. “And I’d never ask you to. I understand that this is what you gotta do.”

So you left for London. You’d periodically come back to Chicago, and when you did, you spent the entire time with Matt. If either of you were in a relationship, it was strictly platonic. But if you both were single, it was a much friendlier time.

Usually, you both were single.

And then Hallie came into the picture.

You were respectful and didn’t say anything to her about you and Matt previously being an item, you were just his friend. You didn’t know why Matt never told her about the two of you having dated in the past, but you assumed it was because he didn’t want it to be awkward when you came to visit.

However, Hallie noticed how Matt acted around you. She could see the way he looked at you and it made her worry.

Matt continuously assured her that it was nothing, that he wouldn’t cheat on her.

She knew he wouldn’t cheat on her, but she was worried that he would leave her.

And then she found the box. It was an old boot box that he kept on the top shelf of his closet, pushed back in a corner so that no one would find it unless they went looking.

Hallie knew she had no right snooping, but his relationship with you just worried her to no end. She was waiting for him to get out of the shower so that way they could go out and she had started looking around, she didn’t really know what exactly she was looking for, just something to either ease her worries or solidify them.

Matt found her sitting on his bed, box in her lap and her hunched over slightly, snooping through the contents. He cleared his throat to get her attention.

Hallie jumped up a little and looked at him, her eyes locking onto his. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She asked him, clearing her throat and wiping at her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me that you used to date? That you were planning on marrying her?”

“I never-” Matt started only to stop when she held up the little velvet box.

“You had a ring.” Hallie’s voice was hollow as she stared at him. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you constantly tell me that I had nothing to worry about?”

“Because you don’t.” Matt told her, going over and taking a seat next to her. He took the box off her lap and gingerly set it on the bed behind them. “I’m with you.”

“And still obviously in love with her.” Hallie rolled her eyes.

Matt shook his head.

“Tell me one thing.” Hallie said and he nodded. “If she were to move back, who would you choose? Me or her?”

Matt didn’t answer.

“That’s what I thought.” Hallie went to stand up and walk out, Matt caught her by the wrist gently. She looked back at him, tears in her eyes.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about us.” Matt spoke quietly, calmly as he stood up. He placed his hands on her shoulders gently. “I didn’t want you to worry.”

Hallie huffed a laugh. “You didn’t want me to worry.” She shook her head. “Did you ever think that if I did find out this would happen?”

“I’m sorry.” Matt told her again, sighing softly. “I should have told you.”

“Yes, you should have.” Hallie answered before walking out.

Things between them were tense after that, despite the fact that Matt was trying to fix things between them.

And then you came to visit again. You had no idea that Hallie knew about yours and Matt’s past, so once again you played the best friend role. You couldn’t understand why she was being cold to you until Matt told you when you finally had a split second alone.

“She found out about us.” Was all Matt told you.

You understood immediately. So when Matt was in the bathroom, you looked at her. “Hallie. I want you to know that I would never do anything to come between you and Matt.” You were trying to be nice, trying to be sympathetic. “We’ve been broken up for years now, long before the two of you got together. We agreed to be friends because we’ve been friends for years and didn’t want to lose that.”

Hallie nodded, although her demeanor didn’t change.

You sighed. “Matt and I are always going to be friends, and I don’t want him to feel like he has to choose between me and his girlfriend. I don’t want to lose him.”

Hallie scoffed. “Like he’d ever choose me over you.”

The conversation was cut short by Matt walking into the room and smiling at the two of you, sincerely hoping that he was misreading the situation and that there wasn’t as much tension in the room as he thought there was.

“So how long are you in Chicago?” Matt asked you after a few moments.

“For a while.” You told him. “I was offered a new job here in Chicago.”

Matt’s brows raised in surprise. “So you’re moving back?”

You could see how upset Hallie was, but you couldn’t change that you had already accepted the job offer. “Well I’ve been wanting to come home for a while now, so I jumped at the offer of a job here.”

Matt smiled wide. “That’s great.” He said, but there was something in his eyes that you couldn’t quite understand.

When you left, you went back to your hotel room and sat there for a long time replaying the night in your head, you had wanted to move back to Chicago since you left, but you couldn’t turn down the amazing offer all those years ago, it was the best way to get your foot in the door in your line of work.

You thought about your conversation with Hallie, how she implied that Matt would choose you over her, you wondered if that held any truth. You hated to admit it, but you wished he would. Not because you wished anything bad against Hallie, but because you loved him. You hated that. You hated being the kind of person to wish for something like that. You wanted Matt happy over everything else, even if that wasn’t with you. It’s not like you’d ever purposely do something to split them up, and that wasn’t even why you’d accepted the job in Chicago, you actually wouldn’t have if you had known. You weren’t that kind of person.

You were pulled out of your thoughts by a knocking on the door. You got up to answer it and, looking through the peephole, were surprised to see it was Hallie. You pulled the door open with a confused frown on your face. “Hallie?”

“I thought you said you wouldn’t do anything to come in between us?” Hallie asked and you could hear the heartbreak in her voice, causing you to feel even more guilty.

“I didn’t know when I accepted the job.” You told her, letting her come in the room. “I’m sorry, I honestly didn’t know. I thought he was over me.”

Hallie scoffed again and shook her head. “You’re like the one that got away, the one he’ll never get over.” She was crying now. “I don’t stand a chance.”

You shook your head some, trying to find the right words to say.

“Save it.” Hallie shook her head and before you knew it, she was walking out.

“Hallie.” You went to follow her but then decided to just let her go.

You avoided Matt after that, you didn’t want to be the cause of their break up. So you avoided him and avoided him and continued to avoid him.

That is until he showed up at your new apartment six months later.

You didn’t even know how he got your address. “Matt?”

He didn’t even say anything, just kissed you.

You pulled away, pushing at his chest and taking a step away from him, shaking your head. “No.”

Matt was shocked and hurt.

“You’re with Hallie.” You stated.

Matt shook his head. “No, I’m not.” He told you, causing you to look at him. “She broke up with me months ago.”

“Because of me.” You hated what you were feeling right now, guilt and heartbreak.

“She said she didn’t want to be in the way of true love.” Matt told you. “I tried denying it, I tried telling her that I wanted her, but she didn’t believe me and I realized that she was right.”

You shook your head, tears in your eyes. “I can’t be with you, Matt.” You said quietly.

His face fell even more than it had, not able to hide the hurt and heartbreak he was feeling. “Why not?” He asked quietly.

“Because you should be with her.” You stated, tears sliding down your cheeks.

Matt shook his head. “Our relationship was falling apart before you came back.” He told you softly. “We were never going to work, no matter what.”

You stared at him, silent, for a long moment, trying to figure out if what he was saying was true.

Matt took a step toward you. “I love you, Y/N. I never stopped.” He said softly. “And even if you didn’t move back to Chicago, that wouldn’t have changed.”

You swallowed hard.

“I would’ve been here sooner but it took me a while to find you.” Matt said quietly. “You’ve been avoiding me, afterall.”

You nodded, swallowing hard again. “Uh-huh, I have.” You said quietly, looking away from him. “Because I was afraid she was right. She said that you’d choose me over her, so I was trying to remove myself from the situation.”

Matt nodded slowly. “And are you still going to avoid me?”

“I don’t think I can.” You admitted quietly. “I never stopped loving you, Matt.”

“And I never stopped loving you either.” Matt said softly, his hands moving to cup your face, causing you to finally look at him again.

You chewed on the inside of your cheek as you looked at him.

“I want you and only you.” Matt told you softly. “I never stopped wanting you.”

“Matt.” You started softly.

“Let me finish.” Matt said softly, his eyes locking on yours. “I could never picture myself spending my life with anyone else, no matter how hard I tried. And I think you being back is the perfect time for our second chance.”

You were quiet, watching him as he spoke. “Do you think we’d still be together if I never left?”

He was taken back by your question but quickly nodded. “Yeah, I do.” He paused. “Do you?”

You nodded some. “Yeah. I always wondered that though, if we’d still be together. You have no idea how many times I imagined what our life would be like if I had stayed in Chicago instead of moving to London.”

“I know what you mean.” Matt said softly. “I always wondered that too.” He wondered if you would have said yes when he proposed, if the two of you would be married, if you’d be working on a family by now. There were a lot of ifs.

The two of you were quiet, just standing there. He was still cupping your face, your hands were on his chest. Neither of you were looking at the other.

“Stay.” He whispered. “Forever, please.”

You finally look at him to see him looking at you.

“I don’t want to lose you again.” Matt whispered.

“I’m not going anywhere.” You whispered back.

Matt leaned in to kiss you again, and this time you didn’t pull away.

#matt casey x reader #matt casey imagine #matt casey imagines #chicago fire imagine #chicago fire imagines

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cuinnamonbun · 3 years

Text

I’m so sorry this took so long! I’ve been so swamped with my work and figuring out how each individual brother would react in the situation :( A bit of warning though, I’m still not quite familiar with Belphie’s character, I had to work with what little I knew of him by reading through every Belphie stan rant about him, the text messages/phone calls that we get from him and the Obey Me wikia page so I’m really sorry if I destroyed his character here >.< !!! But all of that aside, I hope that this is still enjoyable and readable to all of you :)

And of course, a massive thank you to @dawndustleo for the request!!

Big brothers’ reactions here!

Part 2 of How the Brothers React to Accidentally Falling in Love with a Devout Muslim MC (Little Brothers)

Satan

Ah, yes. Our resident academic

Satan did not like our cute lil MC when he first met them (and they him) and these two were wary of each other

Honestly, the only reason these two would even become friends in the first place is because of MC tbh

I doubt Satan would approach them willingly in the hopes of making friends. At most, he would only converse with them to add to his impressive list of connections or for his own personal gain (cough making Lucifer miserable cough)

The more he spends time with them though, Satan slowly unravels the layers that make MC the person that they are and he’d be shocked at the depth of character they present since he usually just thinks all religious people are numbskulls and mindless sheep anyway

But MC managed to surprise him by demonstrating a wisdom to them that he has yet to associate with any human. Sure, it may not be as profound as Kant’s or Nietzsche, but any questions regarding theology or morality that Satan would throw at them for fun (with the sadistic intent of watching them blunder in their answer) MC managed to answer it as honest as they could

To him, most people are predictable

Where most people would reply with a simple “i dunno”, MC did not and it was during these interrogations chatting sessions that Satan could truly admire the rawness of MC’s soul. Be it in the way they viewed the world or their thought process. Satan would be in complete awe of the world that they view through their lenses

Devout Muslims spend most of their life trying to live up to the example of their beloved Prophet Muhammad (may peace be unto him) and MC is no exception to this, their time in the Devildom would make it harder but they’d definitely hold on strong, especially with the angels there as well c:

So even if most of their answers would have something to do with God, the inherent longing and yearning in their voice would be enough to move even him

It’s this part of them that really started his infatuation with MC. They were so pure and virtuous that they were kind to even him, the sworn enemy of every believing Muslim in the world. They looked past his Wrath and understood him and his complexities that often, they would help Satan realise his own mysteries

Unlike the other brothers though, Satan was hyperconscious of MC’s choice in religion

So the second he realised he was in love with them, his sin consumes him and he would destroy anything within sight and cursing God’s name to, well, Hell

When he finally calms down, that’s when the heartache sets in for him ;(

Because even if MC reciprocates his feelings, their devotion to God would far, far outweigh their love for him and they would always choose Him over Satan

Asmodeus

Asmodeus’ idea of love had always been skewed since the minute he fell from Heaven

Maybe he did experience true love back when he was an angel, but that had been so long ago that he’d almost forgotten how it feels like

As the Avatar of Lust, Asmo’s love language is extremely physical. It doesn’t have to be inherently suggestive but even the more innocent touches like a simple hug or even hand holding could escalate into something risqué

It’s not like he intentionally sets it off too. It’s his sin!! He can’t help it if a friendly hug pitches a tent in his pants!!

Like Lucifer, Asmo would first pursue MC for less-than-pure gains

He revels in attention from anyone and anything, if that person shows the least bit of attention to him (especially sexually) he WILL feel genuinely offended, like he’s not good enough

And with MC’s piety and immunity from Asmo’s charm, he would absolutely see MC as nothing more than a goal, a forbidden fruit, or the highest win one can get in a lottery

He would amp up his seduction and sin to the max level that even his brothers had to leave the room because it was so overpowering it began to mess with their heads and I can see MC not being okay with that and this would upset them a lot

Lucifer will have to force Asmo to apologise to MC every time this happens (a lot) and though his apologies are sarcastic and obviously ingenuine, MC was always so forgiving and so kind, treating him more than just lust embodied. With their high resistance against his charms, Asmo knows that MC is genuine in their want to be his friend

And this would definitely cause his heart to palpitate and soar in happiness. Because for the first time, someone is interested in him, his person rather than his body, his looks or his status as one of the seven Demon Lords of the Devildom

The constant impure thoughts of what he wanted to do with MC once they finally fall under his charm slowly turned into wholesome ones, with him thinking of the best ways he can make them smile like that one time when he said something that was truly amusing to them

He still won’t realise this though because the change had been a slow and steady one. The only way he would realise that he is utterly besotted and head over heels for MC is when MC had accidentally tripped and fell into his arms...and he felt nothing. Well, other than genuine concern and worry of course

He would be so shocked by that fact and he would run to Satan to confirm what he already knew

When he finally comes to terms with it, he was ecstatic and a little nervous. It’s his first time loving someone other than himself and he was so, so excited to share this happy news to MC

Unfortunately, MC would be forced to turn him down as gently as they could, explaining the reasons why. I would imagine it would hurt for MC to do this because they would never ever want to cause him pain 🥺

Asmo would be so shocked. Because why in hell would you ever turn him down? Because he was so sure that MC reciprocated his feelings. They were always so kind to him, so warm and gentle. Had he misread the signs?

Asmo would give them a fake smile and assure them that it’s fine, that they were much better off as friends anyway even though MC didn’t look like they believed him

Asmo would act joyful as he usually did, but his brothers and MC knew that it was all an act, and while his brothers didn’t understand what’d happened (with the exception of Satan) it would absolutely crush them to see the most joyous of the brothers so dejected, even if he’d try his best to hide it

When MC left the Devildom, Lucifer will have to deal with the influxes of bills his little brother has accumulated from the copious amounts of alcohol he consumed trying to forget about them

Beelzebub

Unlike his older brothers, Beel fell in love with MC real quick

This demon is a big sweetheart and he treasures his family a lot, so I can definitely see him falling in love with a kind MC

Devout Muslim MC would always be on the lookout to help other people wherever they go and when they found Beel sad and hungry, they gave up their lunch for him

When they found out that Beel’s stomach is just practically a black hole, MC would take it upon themselves to learn how to cook all kinds of cuisines (if they couldn’t already) just so they could keep Beel fed and to make sure he doesn’t go around eating inedible stuff

“Beel! Don’t eat that, that is a plate. Come on honey, let me go prepare you a cheeseburger or a dozen, okay?”

Beel fell in love with them right then and there

With how his brothers have had to keep up with his everlasting hunger, they would definitely give up trying to feed him because one, it’s impossible to keep up with the Avatar of Gluttony’s appetite and two, they’re demons, they don’t do Good Samaritan deeds

In order to maintain their grades AND keep up with Beel’s black hole of a stomach, MC developed a little schedule that they taped above their desk and their bed, as well as digitalized a copy in their DDD to allocate their time wisely

When Beel found out about this, he paused. He paused, then gawked, then engulfed MC in a huge hug because no one has ever done anything like that for him and just knowing the extra lengths they went for him made his heart stutter

Mammon: What the hell, MC you made all of this for Beel?????

MC: You know what they say *putting a buffet of food in front of an awed Beel* The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach *pats Beel’s tummy with a smile*

Beel: *dying from blushing*

From that point on, he started following them like a lost puppy. Of course, it didn’t hurt that they constantly have little snacks on them for him but it was more so because he wanted their company

MC is patient with him and constantly smiles at him which drives his heart crazy and whenever he returns to his shared bedroom with Belphie, he always had this big dopey smile on him as he talked to Belphie about his day with MC and what they did and what MC wore and how cute they were looking at the different plush toys on display at the mall-

Belphie loves his twin but for the love of hell, please just let him sleep

But when Beel told him that he planned to confess to them, all traces of drowsiness would disappear from Belphie and he would have to explain to Beel on why that would be a bad idea

Of course Belphie would do so gently, but there was a heavy hint of urgency and worry in Belphie’s tone that Beel couldn’t ignore

That was the night Belphie would hold Beel while he cried himself to sleep :(

Despite knowing that they weren’t meant to be, Beel would still hang around them even if their mere presence would cause his heart to seize. It wasn’t their fault and Beel would never hold something like this against them. It just isn’t in his nature

Even if MC reciprocated his feelings, he would never pursue anything more with them despite his heart jumping for joy because he knew it would deeply hurt his MC in the long run

It was precisely because of his love for MC that he would let them go, even if it pained him to do so

When MC left the Devildom, Beel tried his best to continue living his life as it were before but sometimes, he felt as though he might just let his hunger and heartbreak take over him 💔

Belphegor

Being the Avatar of Sloth, Belphie is well aware of the recurring nightmares MC has had since he first killed them. But even without his status as the lord of sleep, one could notice. It was that obvious

MC suffered trauma because of him and Belphie will carry that guilt with him to the end of his days

The first few weeks, MC is notably wary of him; preferring to stick with Mammon or Lucifer during group activities, leaving the room whenever he was there and coming up with excuses to leave on the spot whenever he would sit next to them during meals

It brought him and his brothers terrible sadness to see their human change from a bright little thing to a meek little animal, trembling down to their knees. It reminded them of when MC first came to the Devildom; lost and fearful

But eventually MC would finally start interacting with Belphie; you know, a simple hello and no immediate fleeing whenever he wanders into a room. Baby steps, y’know? They would still cling to Lucifer or Mammon though

He would be so confused about it

Like, hello? I am your murderer?? Why are you trying to befriend me???

Like, this man really thought that they were going to spend the entirety of the exchange program just ignoring him. Not that he would blame them

But MC was so determined on moving past that and the least he could do was humour them

He would make sure that they were comfortable every time they interacted; which meant no sudden moves, no being an asshole to them, speaking politely to them and just giving them space in general

It won’t take long for MC to fully be comfortable around him again and trust him enough to form a pact with him

Now that MC is able to relax around him, MC and Belphie would be frequently hanging out with each other due in large part to Beelzebub who is just really, REALLY glad that his two favourite people finally like each other now 🥺🥺

In time, they would be able to trust each other enough to reveal the deepest parts of themselves to each other and the first time it happened, Belphie cried and MC...to his surprise, was not a stifling presence

They were silent as they listened to him speak, their attention rapt on him as he bared his soul to them and their presence was warm and comforting as he cried, with no judgment of any sort to be found

That was when he would truly start to fall in love with them and though he realised that MC would probably reject his advances if he were to pursue anything more with them, it didn’t stop him from trying at all

He found a good human not just for himself, but also for Beel and the rest of his brothers, he wasn’t going to let them go that easily

He finally understood why his little sister sacrificed all that she was to be with her human lover and he really thought that their circumstances were similar (spoiler alert it’s not)

His love for MC was absolutely genuine, which would make this all the more terrifying because he would truly believe that what he was doing was the best thing for them

Belphie is cunning and highly manipulative, he would most definitely attempt to skew MC’s devotion to God and attempt to convince her that the Devildom has much better things to offer than the Celestial Realm

He would try his absolute hardest to get them to stay with him in their realm

“Oh, speaking of God, back when I was an angel, did you know this one time He tried to...” “Do you have to pray now? You could always do it later, you know. I mean, He is Ar-Rahim, the Most Merciful right? He’ll understand”

Devout or not, he will break through their strong will and convince MC to leave their religious path all the while pretending to support them and their religious freedom

If MC reciprocated his feelings, he would be overjoyed because this makes it a HUNDRED times easier for him to persuade them to stay with him and be with him forever

And it’s true, with his silver tongue and patience, he could absolutely crumble MC’s devotion to God if MC’s not careful

If Belphie was unsuccessful with his attempts to keep them with him forever, he would be absolutely enraged by it

“They’re MINE! You stay away from them! I am so irrevocably in love them and I REFUSE to let Him have them!”

He would probably most definitely start a war with the Celestial Realm over this

#obey me! shall we date?#obey me!#satan obey me #asmo obey me #beel obey me #belphie obey me #satan x mc obey me #asmo x mc obey me #beel x mc obey me #belphie x mc obey me #obey me x muslim!mc #muslim!mc #swd satan #swd asmodeus #swd beelzebub #swd belphegor

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rabbitsparklez · 4 years

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Explaining the red rocks + Eugene’s and Rapunzel’s TRUE worst fears

I was rewatching Be Very Afraid and I developed a headcanon about the red rocks and characters' worst fears.

I am not a writer of this show, nor is my logic infallible, but I put together my theory on how the red rocks read people, and the possibility that they can misread people

This is my longest post yet, so grab some snacks.

Rapunzel said that her worst fear was the things Cassandra could do to Corona, and losing her as a friend, but unlike everyone else, she didn't actually see visions of her fears and wasn't screaming in terror, as Eugene observed and pointed out. Maybe the rocks only work when the victim chooses to acknowledge their fear, and if they choose to avoid thinking about their fears, the rocks won't sense their feelings.

In the previous episodes, we see that Rapunzel is obviously trying to push her thoughts about Cassandra to the back of her mind so that she can focus on her life in Corona. She's clearly still upset about it all, but she has always had the tendency to be optimistic and cheerful, even when she's upset or scared. Rapunzel chooses not to acknowledge her feelings, but others do, like Varian and Lance. Of course Varian was having visions of losing his father because of his recent traumatic experience, and he chooses to acknowledge that fear, having every reason to be afraid. Not to mention, being a teenager, Varian must think about his emotions and feelings a lot, and the rocks could easily sense that. What would be giving him nightmares and swarming his mind every day more than losing his father again? Throughout the episode, Varian had tried to keep his mind off of that so he could focus on helping Rapunzel, and mostly it worked. He didn’t see anything related to his fears until he and Rapunzel reached the chamber where the rocks originated, and he had to use the amber to eliminate their power. Varian was scared of the amber because he knew what it was capable of doing, and it was in that moment that he started seeing his fears. We see another example with Lance. He showed that he had stage fright and fear of clowns and spiders, and while he didn't openly admit that, he didn't try to push it back into his head either. When Lance decided to stop letting his fears overcome him, they shrunk and ran away, because he no longer had that fear. It appears that the person doesn't need to confess that they are afraid, but all they need to do is allow themselves to be afraid, and let those negative emotions stick in their minds.

Realizing this, I became very incredulous about Eugene's worst fear.

The episode said that it was a cowlick, but......No. No way. Why do I think that Eugene's biggest fear wasn't a cowlick if that's what he saw? Because he allows himself to make a fuss about the way he looks. He acknowledges the fact that he hates imperfections in the way he looks, and doesn't try to push that away. His true, deep emotional feelings, on the other hand, are a different story. A while back, @timid-izzie wrote an essay that went over the possibility of him having post-traumatic trauma and the fact that he tends to hide his own fears and negative emotions, covering them up with humor. Eugene doesn't acknowledge his negative emotions and fears, and I think, similar to how Rapunzel wasn't seeing visions of Cassandra, the rocks didn't sense any of Eugene's greater fears because they are pushed into the back of his mind. Deep down, Eugene has very unbearable fears, but pushes them so far back that he doesn’t realize how badly he has them.

A few people have compared his worst fear, being a cowlick, to the scene from “The Quest for Varian”, where he mentions the fact that he had a cowlick before Rapunzel hit him with the frying pan and it was fixed after the blow. Basically, the fact that he doesn’t have a cowlick signifies the fact that he met Rapunzel and became a better person. I agree that this theory makes sense, and it doesn’t exactly disprove what I’m saying, because the cowlick is also related to imperfections.The writers wanted a cheap way to brush him out of the picture so they can focus on Cass, so why not use vanity as an excuse to do so? With or without the significance of the frying pan, the rocks could easily sense Eugene’s discomfort regarding imperfections. But they only show his reflection, not anything related to the origin of having that fear. The rocks sense his “fear of cowlicks” as a vanity-associated thing, because they can’t read the rest of the story. They don’t know why he hates cowlicks, but only the fact that he does. Considering this, I believe that Eugene has more deep fears than just the cowlick.

What are the rest of his worst fears, then? There are many things that Eugene has likely had negative feelings about that might be a lot worse than what he convinces himself to believe. If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. He spent a good 23 years trying to find himself and escaping his identity, having no family, no friends, no home, and no money - until he started stealing. There are many things that can go wrong there. When he grew older, he made a lot of enemies and must have gotten into a lot of conflicts. He worked with and for very bad people who wanted to use him, and almost married an abusive and manipulative girl who only wanted him for his thieving abilities (Not to mention was way to young and naive to get married). Several notably traumatic things happened to him only in the last three years. In one day, he was sentenced to be hanged, witnessed the abuse of the woman he loved, and was stabbed and killed. No matter how much you think of others, there’s no person who can thoroughly escape such horrific events that happen to yourself. I think that Cassandra's taking the Moonstone was just as traumatic for Eugene as it was for Rapunzel, but in a different way. Remember that Eugene’s ancestors dedicated their entire family legacy to destroying that stone because it killed people, including his own mother. The Moonstone is directly the reason he was sent to an orphanage, became a notorious criminal, and received a death penalty. He forbade Rapunzel from entering the castle because he was so afraid for her safety that he didn’t want to risk losing her. Minutes after he built up the courage to let her grab it after remembering his faith in her, Cassandra took it like a piece of candy and ran away with it. He turned his back on the woman he loved to protect her and felt terrible about it, only for the stone to be stolen by someone who resented and wanted to kill her. Later, the unseen events or “No Time Like the Past” apparently forced him to stop resenting her because “friends don’t leave friends behind” (which, let’s face it, completely abolishes Flynn Rider’s persona and I hate it). But no matter what happened in that episode, I highly doubt Eugene immediately came to forgive Cassandra. The objective was to show that Cassandra was still redeemable, but it was poorly written, as a comment in “Flynnpostor” about Flynn Rider leaving people behind basically confirmed that either the events of “No Time Like the Past” never happened, or that he came back to his senses. Either way, there is no way Eugene’s (completely justified and understandable) resentment towards Cassandra just disappeared.

It should be clarified that Eugene was not completely okay in season 3. He wanted to support Rapunzel and keep her hopes up, but logically, he would have serious problems deep inside.

We get an example of this in "Return of the King", when he's irritated at Edmund for suddenly wanting to be part of his life after abandoning him. I've seen a lot of people point fingers at Eugene and call him rude for his hostility toward him in that episode, but honestly, I don't blame him. That was the first time he'd seen him since "Destinies Collide", and in his defense, Edmund didn't exactly welcome him with loving fatherly arms. When Eugene met his father, the first three things he had to do were accept his tragic backstory and identity crisis, dedicate himself to destroying the moonstone, and break his beloved girlfriend's heart. In actuality, Edmund is really a sweet and loving father, but Eugene didn't see that at first and it's not his fault. It wasn't until he found out that his father had kept track of him by reading his favorite books and bringing his childhood toys home that he realized just how much his father thought about him. In the finale, he admitted his resentment and confusion towards him, but that he had come to understand his motive. Until that cursed episode “No Time Like the Past”, he was very worried about Rapunzel’s behavior and the fact that she was thinking about Cass despite the fact that she almost killed her. The point is, Eugene is not immune to having emotionally painful feelings, and the writers didn't fool us when they claimed that his worst fear was a cowlick. It's an absolute pity that in a show where one of the morals is "you should never bury your feelings", one of the main characters has no story whatsoever relating to his very much real trauma.

If my theory about the rocks misreading peoples' feelings is correct, based on my observations, I don't think Rapunzel's worst fear is what she claimed it was either.

It was not losing Cassandra as a friend. You might say I'm contradicting myself by saying this, because my original point for this theory was based off of that, but remember that Rapunzel generally does not express negative feelings. I believe that the rocks couldn't read Rapunzel's fears because she didn't allow herself to think about her fears. Perhaps losing Cassandra as a friend is one of her fears, but not her worst fear. Although she thought a lot about her, she thought in a hopeful sense rather than a miserable, negative sense.

In “Cassandra’s Revenge”, Rapunzel seemed to be completely over Cassandra, wanting to settle down and appreciate her surroundings. I’m not going to elaborate, but I’ve always regarded Cassandra’s and Rapunzel’s relationship as unhealthy, and it was especially bad for Rapunzel to keep wanting Cass to be back because Mother Gothel, her former abuser, was the motive. I saw this episode as a way to show that she was over her - she even painted over the pictures of her on her wall. But afterward she still seemed to care a lot about bringing her back, and even sang a song about wanting to do anything for her (which I don’t believe, seeing that she would use an incantation on her to save Eugene, showing that she wouldn’t give him up for her). Part of me sees this as another poorly written, contradictory scene that tried to cram in Cassandra’s potential to be redeemed, because, for her own mentality, Rapunzel should be over her. But I don’t think all of that was thought out in that way. Rapunzel still continued to pine onto Cassandra and bringing her back, but that came from her compassion for her rather than a deep and serious emotional feeling. The entire “Cass is still redeemable” arc was aimed to show that Rapunzel has compassion for everyone and won’t give up. It was not a matter of having a truly passionate fear of losing Cassandra, and I highly doubt that that was Rapunzel’s worst fear.

Similar to Eugene, I believe she has certain trigger fears that are buried deep down inside of her.

I'm specifically thinking about "Rapunzeltopia", when Matthews controlled her dreams. According to Matthews, the things that he showed her were her worst nightmares. She saw Mother Gothel restraining her, Corona acting hostile, her fear of touching the rocks, and.... Cassandra. But it was not in a "afraid to lose her as a friend" sense. Cassandra was attacking her and blaming her for her problems. She tried to kill her and take revenge for getting her arm burnt. These visions must have had a more valid representation of Rapunzel's fears than the rocks did, because Matthews had entered and taken control of her mind. The rocks (again, if this is correct) merely read peoples' visible feelings; Matthews went inside her head and brought out her traumas, her true fears. A lot of people seem to think that Rapunzel has completely forgotten about Mother Gothel and what she did to her, but that is not true. I believe that Rapunzel’s fears are masked by her positive attitude, and this precisely was why the rocks couldn’t see through her, similar to Eugene. When she saw Mother Gothel keeping her in the tower, she was chained up. There was one time ever when Mother Gothel chained Rapunzel up. That was the day Rapunzel found out her life was a lie, was almost buried in a dungeon for life, saw the love of her life get murdered before her eyes (and might have partially thought it was her fault), and experienced other dramatic changes in her life - especially the part about losing Eugene. Throughout the series, Rapunzel has shown a particular weakness whenever she thought she would be separated from Eugene or lose him. He is her first friend, aside from Pascal, and an infinitely close and beloved one. He was the first person to ever show compassion towards her and care about her, which was the thing she never received from Mother Gothel. Whether she’d realized it or not, she had always craved that sort of attention and love, and Eugene gave it to her. She holds him especially close, not just as her lover but as a friend, because he repaired her life. Whenever his life was at risk, Rapunzel became especially desperate: He was what sparked her to use the Reverse Incantation on Hector to defeat (and possibly even KILL) him. Similarly, she used another potentially dangerous incantation to fight for him when Cassandra threatened to kill him (proof that she would not give anything for her). She stopped and dropped in the middle of a fight with Zhan Tiri because she saw him lying on the ground, possibly thinking he was dead (True, anyone would be concerned for someone they love if they saw them on the ground, but I can’t help but notice they were in a very similar position that they were when he died) Eugene has always been Rapunzel’s #1 priority, and I have a strong feeling that besides loving him above all else, she has the fear of revisiting that traumatic moment in which she lost him. Maybe she even felt responsible for letting that happen to him, especially since Mother Gothel made everything her fault.

I believe, among the other things she saw in that episode, Rapunzel's true worst fear was that day - that fateful day in which she found out her life was a lie and lost the one person who truly loved her.

Well I might be seriously overthinking this and be completely wrong, but from my POV it makes sense. People take trauma in different ways, depending on how seriously affected they are, who they are as a person, and their capacity to rise or fall from their demons. I truly believe that despite their natural optimism and resilience, both Rapunzel and Eugene have deeper fears and traumas than what is focused on in the show. We know as a fact that this show isn't afraid to let the audience know that characters suffer mental afflictions, such as Frederick and Varian, so why wouldn't characters like Rapunzel and Eugene, who have been through so much, suffer the same?

I hope you enjoyed reading this post and if not I thank you anyway.

Note:

I’d love to hear what you think, but please, if you have any questions or comments regarding this theory of mine, do not message me with the chat. I will not be active on Tumblr for a while. (You may use my ask box)

#TTS #Tangled the Series #RTA #Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure #Rapunzel #Eugene #rabbitsparklez #This is a LONG post fyi

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nialledfromfics · 4 years

Text

The Dating Game | Chapter Three

He couldn’t get her off his mind. Her infectiously bright smile, the sparkle in her hazelnut eyes every time they locked on his. The way her hair smelled like the sweetest apples ever grown. Her soft giggle, which played over and over in his head like a never ending carousel. They way his body nearly melted any time she got close to him. He barely knew this girl, but he just could not get her off his mind.

Niall woke up early that Sunday morning after the festival so he could sneak in a small workout. But his concentration wasn’t on his squats or the thirty minutes of treadmill time he was required to do. No, it was stuck on her. On her voice, her hair, her lips, her skin. Every part of her made an aching warmth fill his belly, and his heart race like a goddamn horse in his chest. He hadn’t felt that way about someone in a long time, longer than he could remember. And he had no idea how she felt about him, or if she even thought about him at all, but he was determined to keep this girl, this girl he barely knew, in his life. Somehow.

Wiping the sweat from his browline with a small towel, Niall stepped off the treadmill and chugged back some water. He pulled his phone from the pocket of his shorts and switched off the music that had been playing through his earbuds before opening up his texts. His thumbs idled over the screen, almost like he was too nervous and didn’t know what to say and for Niall, that was something very new. He was usually a pretty confident person and had been so used to networking and meeting loads of people over the past ten years of his career, that talking to others always came easy to him. He was incredibly personable. So, sending a simple text to a girl normally wouldn’t stump him up. Normally.

Niall ran his finger over his bottom lip in precarious thought, nervously scratching his nails though the side of his beard before he decided to just bite the bullet and...hit send.

Hey Joey , it’s Niall. Just wanted to see how your date went last night. no puke I hope .

The text sent and Niall stood there in the middle of the gym, staring down at his phone like an idiot. Was he waiting for those tiny little bubbles to pop up? He wasn’t sure but he knew he wasn’t moving a muscle until he was positive she had seen it.

Joey, on the other hand, giggled like a giddy teenager as Alexis jumped up off the sofa and came bounding over to where her friend was standing. “Lemme seeee,” she whined, “what’d he say?”

“He writes like one of the kids in my class,” Joey playfully teased, Alexis gasping and swatting the side of her arm.

“Be nice.”

Joey smiled. “I’m only kidding. It’s cute actually.”

Hooking her hand on her hip, Alexis urged Joey on. “Joey, c’mon, text back. You have to text back.”

“Relax,” she replied, looking over at her best friend, “I am. I’m just...figuring out what I should say.”

Nipping at the inside corner of her mouth, Joey thought for a minute before sending a text back to him.

Hi Niall! Date was okay, no puke, thank God. How was your night?

It wasn’t but a few seconds before another text from Niall had popped up onto Joey’s screen.

N: We had a good Time. it was nice seeing ya . like talking to you .

Slowly flicking her eyes to her best friend as they both read over the text, Alexis tossed her hands up to her mouth to hold in her squeal. She was always a bit over dramatic. Joey smiled and sent him another text.

J: It was nice seeing you too.

N: I’ve asked my agent and manager about gettin you those tickets . . they’re looking around to see what they can find . It shouldnt be too hard though

J: Oh wow, that’s awesome, Niall, I really appreciate it!

N: No problem , Joey , really. I’ll definitely let ya know when I get me hands on some.

Joey bounced happily on the balls of her feet. “This is too much, you think he’s gonna ask you out?” Alexis said.

“Shhh…”

J: You are a Godsend, honestly. The best person I have ever met in probably forever.

“Wow, Jo, way to inflate his ego.”

Joey rolled her eyes at her best friend’s sarcastic comment, dropping her hands in a huff. “Shut up, he’s not like that. I’m just being nice, like you said.” She smiled big at Alexis and raised her brows.

N: Hahahahaha 😂

J: You think I’m kidding, Niall, but I’m serious lol

N: Well . . . I can say the same about you .

J: Now you’re just trying to charm me, aren’t you?

N: eh Maybe 😉

Running his tongue over his lips, Niall fought off the smirk that wanted to invade them as he softly chuckled to himself. He switched his music app back on, sticking his phone into the pocket of his jogger shorts and hopped back onto the treadmill, now having the focus to finish his morning workout.

•

The texts left a blissful smile on Joey’s face that lasted for the next few days. She’d find herself thinking about them, about him, as she was applying her makeup in the bathroom mirror each morning, or drowning out the sound of her shoes on the sidewalk every time she took Sadie for a walk. Or while reading the children their weekly storybook, and fixing herself dinner every night. Her mind was so preoccupied with the fleeting, and foolish, thoughts of Niall, that she had almost forgotten about her date that coming Thursday.

Joey would normally not agree to a date on a weekday given that she had to be at work early the next morning, but the guy she was meeting up with, Felix, was very adamant on seeing the premiere of some sci-fi movie that Joey, frankly, had zero interest in. But she decided that she should just suck it up and file it right into another one of her ‘experience’ folders. It was just a movie, right? She could live through it?

Felix wasn’t the usual type of guy that Joey would go for. He had long unruly hair, seemed a bit unkempt in his general appearance and from what he mentioned, wasn’t very goal oriented; he was in between jobs at the moment but taking his time trying to figure out what he really wanted to do. He was a slacker by all definitions. But he was really sweet in their conversations back and forth, insisting on taking her out, and she thought that there would be no harm in going on a date with him. She didn’t get home from work until a bit after 4pm that Thursday night, and made sure to hop in the shower first thing. After blow drying her long red hair, Joey slipped on a pair of ankle length jeans and a black fitted top, Sadie already jumping at her legs to be pet.

She let out a sigh and bent over to squish the little dog's face, giving her a sweet kiss on the top of her head. “You’re the only one I really need in my life, Sadie girl.”

Joey was to meet Felix at the theater complex around 6:30 as the movie was to start at 7pm. Standing outside the front of the theater, Joey watched as people went in and out of the doors, and it was nearing 6:45 by the time a car had pulled up right in front of her. The passenger door swung open and a guy wearing ripped jeans and a raggedy worn old t-shirt, and matching the pictures she had seen on his profile, stepped out. He waved to the person driving, an elderly looking lady, as he slammed the car door shut and stepped over to Joey.

“Hey, I’m Felix.”

The young woman smiled politely. “Hi, I’m Joey.”

They shook hands, Joey fumbling with keeping the strap of her bag hooked on her shoulder as Felix peered up at the large marquee sign above the entrance. “Sorry for being late, I had to wait for my grandma to get done making my grandpa his dinner.”

Her lips parted briefly and Joey pointed a finger at where the car had come to a stop. “That was...your grandmother?”

Felix nodded. “Yeah...I live in their basement. And I don’t really have a car right now, so she drives me.” Joey stayed quiet. “Should we go in?”

•

Joey was right about the movie, absolutely zero interest. And she had just about as much interest in Felix. That had to have been the longest, and most boring, two hours of her life. She was not just bored out of her mind, she was also well beyond annoyed. Not only could Felix not hold a conversation to save his life, but he dropped their only bag of popcorn into Joey’s lap when he got up to use the restroom and he also completely misread a polite lean in halfway through the movie to quietly inquire about a character and tried to unexpectedly kiss her. Totally unprovoked and very much unwanted. It did not go over well.

Walking out through the theater doors in a huff, the night air hit with a gust and Joey felt like she could finally breathe again. She quickly yanked her phone out of her bag and, without saying a word to her date, requested a Lyft home. The driver was only three minutes out. Felix followed behind as she stepped closer to the street and paused to stand right next to her. “Thanks for paying, I really can’t believe I left my wallet at home.”

Joey rolled her eyes, checking on how close her ride was. “No worries,” she told him with a forced smile. “It happens.”

He ran his hand through the front of his hair and chewed on the corner of his lip. Joey’s Lyft pulled up and she looked over at Felix. “Um...I guess I should go-”

“Hey do you maybe wanna go get something to eat? Nothing too fancy since you’ll be paying and all.” He laughed, as if what he was saying was an actual joke. It wasn’t.

Furrowing her brows, she just stared at him and shook her head. “No, thanks I’m-”

A text message coming through her phone interrupted her, the device vibrating in her hand. Joey glanced down and clicked open her messages.

N: Hey Joey. . I know this is last minute , but I just got u some tickets to a Wildflowers show at the Echo on Sunset that starts in about an hour . u down?

Her heart nearly beat out of her chest as she read over the text Niall had sent and she quickly sent him one back.

J: Holy shit, yes!! I can totally meet you there in 20?

N: yeah sure . see ya There

Clamping her teeth on her bottom lip to hold in her ever growing smile, she looked up at Felix. “Sorry, I gotta go,” she said, clambering into the backseat of her ride, “thanks for-...uh, yeah, have a good night!” She slammed the door shut and told the driver where she needed to go, the car pulling away and leaving Felix there alone to wait for his grandma.

•

The ride to the venue was one filled with giddiness and a tinge of nerves. Joey had no idea why she was nervous; seeing her favorite band live for the first time, maybe seeing Niall again, she really wasn’t sure, but she did know she was beyond excited. Coming to a stop out front of the club, Joey could see Niall already standing there waiting for her. He was wearing fitted trousers, a vintage t-shirt and a jean jacket. His hands were stuffed down in his pockets, his hair gently tousled to the side and he quietly watched people shuffling into the venue as Joey’s eyes stuck to him like there was no one else around. He looked incredible.

Climbing out of the vehicle, Joey thanked her driver and it was then that Niall finally saw her. The smile on her face was brighter than he had ever seen before, her light brown eyes sparkling in the neon lights that laced the street above them and for a moment, as his stare locked on hers, he could have sworn that everyone else around them had vanished. His heart picked up its pace as she walked towards him, flicking her long red hair over her shoulder and before he could even register what was happening, Niall found Joey crashing her body against his in a hug.

She wasn’t even thinking. She saw him standing there waiting for her, his cheeks rounding in a huge smile that caused the cutest dimple to crease his skin and for a split second, Joey lost all control over herself. Her breath caught in her throat the second her body touched his; her arms curling around his neck so tight like she was a drowning victim who needed rescuing and Niall barely hesitated before his arms wrapped around her middle. Closing her eyes as she inhaled along with him, she felt his splayed hand gently rub just a fraction across the span of her upper back before Joey clumsily cleared her throat and pulled away.

An awkward giggle left her lips but Niall just smiled even bigger at her. “It’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you too,” she replied, biting her lip as she took a tiny step back and adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder. “You actually kinda saved me.”

Niall’s brows wrinkled. “Yeah? How’s that?”

Flicking her stare off of his, Joey dropped her chin down. “Well, I was on another date, a really shitty date actually and you texted me and-…” she peered back up at him, “you just have impeccable timing.”

He laughed, his head tossing back a bit. “I’m glad I could save ya from another disaster.”

“Me too.”

Licking across his lips, Niall found himself locked in her gaze for a moment, unintentional but not surprising before he realized why he was there meeting her in the first place. He shook his head out of his daydream. “Oh…” he mumbled, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out two ticket stubs. “Here, these are for you.”

Joey glanced down at the tickets held out towards her and she stared at them for a second, a slight disbelief coming over her. He really did it. He really got them for her. She gently grabbed the tickets and looked back up at him. “I can’t believe I’m really holding Wildflower tickets,” she giggled, not even bothering to fight the huge smile on her face, “it’s like a dream!”

Niall chuckled, lowering his head as he carded his fingers through his hair. “Well, I hope ya have a good time.”

“Wait…” Joey tipped her head to the side, her brows cinching in, “you’re not coming in with me?”

Locking his gaze on hers, Niall’s mouth gently parted. “Did...did ya want me to come in with you?” he asked, his brows raising.

“Well...yeah,” Joey scoffed, “I-...I mean, I was hoping you would, if you don’t, like, have other plans. I wouldn’t even have these tickets if it weren’t for you.”

Niall darted his stare with hers, Joey softly biting down into her bottom lip as she waited for his answer and he gave her a faint nod, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Okay...yeah, I’d love to.”

“Yay!” she squealed, causing a chuckle from Niall. “We’re gonna have so much fun!” Handing him one of the tickets back, Joey stepped past Niall to lead the way into the venue and he followed behind her, staying as close as he possibly could.

•

He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. She was the prettiest, most alluring woman he had ever seen and the way she let go to the music, the way she felt it, singing along and smiling and laughing, it was all so...captivating. Her eyes gleamed every time he caught a glimpse of them, her body moving like a dandelion seed in the wind; effortless and free. She was beautiful.

Joey did not stop smiling the entire night. Happiness seemed to come naturally to her, it lit her up from the inside and was nearly infectious. So much so, that Niall, keeping his stare on her as much as he could, found himself smiling right along with her. There was something about her that he liked, really liked, almost admired and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. But he enjoyed being around her. More than he had enjoyed being around anyone in a long time.

The concert ended a bit before midnight, and Niall and Joey filed out of the venue along with the other concert goers. Stopping right out front, Joey eased her eyes up to Niall’s as she faced him. Taking in a deep breath, they both stood quiet for a moment before a few giggles broke the silence. Joey tipped her head down in shyness before peering back up at Niall.

As his eyes fawned over her face, soaking in the beauty of the delicate slope of her nose and the fullness of her bare lips, he slowly reached out to her. Joey’s breath stalled. “May I?” he whispered. She nodded, unsure of what she was consenting to as Niall moved his hand closer and lightly brushed a few strands of her red hair from off her cheek to tuck behind her ear.

Her lips gently parted and her eyes fluttered as the warmth of his skin touched hers and Niall froze just as his fingertip slipped down the shell of her ear. Swallowing hard, he flicked his stare over hers before quickly retracting his hand, hastily shoving it into the front pocket of his pants. Joey smirked at his nervous reaction. “Thank you so much for the tickets,” she softly spoke up after clearing her throat, “I feel like I should repay you but...I don’t even know where to begin.”

“No, no...please,” Niall said, shaking his head as he attempted to run his hand through his dark hair, “no need, really. As long as you had a good time, that’s all

that matters.”

She smiled at him again. “I did...thank you.” Letting out a short sigh, Joey peeked over her shoulder at the traffic buzzing past their intersection and grabbed her phone from her back pocket. “I guess I should be getting home.”

Niall watched her click into her phone and start to scroll through. “Did you drive here?”

“No,” Joey replied, catching his stare, “but it’s fine, I’ll just get a Lyft or something.”

“I, uh...I’m only parked a couple blocks up,” he mentioned, pointing up the street from them,”if you don’t mind walkin’ a bit, I can take ya home.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course!”

A soft grin spread over her lips. “Okay, thank you.”

They began to walk in the direction of where Niall’s car was parked, not stressing on time or needing something to chat about. There was no rush, there was no pressure and Joey slowly kept pace with Niall, their shoulders bumping every so often. It was a clear night out, a soft breeze kissing their skin as the bright lights from the storefronts and the blazing of car horns in the distance seemed to drown out between their harmonious giggles and easy flowing small talk.

“By the way, that show was fucking amazing,” Joey commented.

“You enjoyed it?”

“Enjoyed it?” she laughed, “Niall, this was definitely one of the best nights of my life in, like,...forever. It was like a fucking dream.”

Niall’s head tipped back in a laugh, his hand perching on the front of his stomach. “Good,” he managed to stutter out, looking back over at her, “I’m glad you had a great time.”

She brushed some hair from her face and smiled at him. “The best time.”

“Better than your date earlier?” he asked, raising a brow.

Joey playfully narrowed her stare. “What, are you keeping score?”

“No, no...just curious.”

The young woman tilted her head down in a bashful smile before she peered back over at him. “A hundred times better than my date earlier.”

Giving her a nod, he raised his hand up and motioned a checkmark symbol into the air. “One check for me.”

Not being able to hold in her laugh, Joey pinched her eyes shut as the sweet sound left her lips and leaned her face over to rest against the peak of his shoulder. Niall slowed his steps as he flicked his eyes down, seeing just the top of her head. She quickly looked up at him, a smile still tugging at her mouth. “You are too funny.”

“I try,” he shrugged with a half smirk.

“Hey, out of my own curiosity,” Joey started, crossing her arms over her chest as they continued walking, “do you think you’d ever...join one of those dating apps?”

His brows furrowed. “Tinder?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh...fuck, no,” he scoffed, his bluntness causing Joey to cover her mouth in a giggle. Niall’s eyes went big as he caught what he had said and looked over at her, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “I...I don’t mean that in a bad way, Joey, ya know, more power to ya and all, but, it’s just…with what I do, with who I am, I can barely trust the people I already know in me real life. No way I could trust some random strangers I met off if an app.”

Nodding her head, Joey dropped her stare. “Yeah, I mean, I obviously don’t do what you do, so I can’t really even begin to know what that’s like, but...I do understand what you mean about trusting people.”

Her tone had softened with that last bit and Niall instantly took notice. He licked across his lips as his eyes tried to read her face. “You have a hard time trustin’ people too?” he asked her.

Joey nodded and caught Niall’s gaze once more. “I didn’t before,” she began to explain, “you know, I was probably the most trusting person you’d ever meet, which...was probably a fault in the end. But my ex, Jake-...he was...not the greatest person. He was manipulating and controlling and just not a nice guy, and I wasted three years of my life on him. Even when I knew that I shouldn’t have.”

“I’m sorry, that’s fuckin’ terrible.”

“We broke up, like, two years ago, and it’s taken me that long to even think about trusting anyone again,” she lifted her shoulders in a shrug, “It’s pretty much why I haven’t started to date again until now.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. I dunno, though, I just think datin’ is...too time consumin’, ya know?” Niall said with a short laugh, holding out his hands as he looked over at Joey, “I mean, gettin’ to know someone should feel more...organic, it should come easy and not feel so...forced. I dunno.” With a little shrug, he peeked down at the toes of his shoes, “Like I said, I don’t date much. I love the actual relationship part, that’s nice, ya know, bein’ with someone, havin’ all those experiences with ‘em, but the whole...meetin’ someone for the first time and goin’ out and gettin’ to know the person...fuckin’ hell.”

He shifted his blue eyes over and locked his stare on Joey’s. “Kinda wish you could just...skip all that.”

A smile pulled at her lips and she pushed out a tiny giggle. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“It’s not like I never dated anyone or anythin’,” Niall went on, “Me last girlfriend...she was a great girl, don’t get me wrong, we were together for nearly a year but...it got to a point that I just wasn’t feelin’ it anymore and I had to end it. I felt horrible, ya know, ‘cause I did love her in a way, but...it just wasn’t right anymore, somethin’ wasn’t right.”

There was a fraction of quiet that wafted between them as Niall’s words left his lips before Joey spoke up. “Well...at least you didn’t lead her on for years to the point that she was expecting you to propose or some shit.”

“Oh…God,” Niall threw his head back with a loud groan, running his palms over the front of his face. “I can’t even think about that at this point in me life.”

Joey giggled again. “I’m now picturing myself married to that guy from tonight and...wow, complete shitshow.”

They both bowed over in laughter. “At least you can admit it.”

“That’s the first step, Niall.”

After a few more laughs and about half a block, they finally reached Niall’s car. Yanking the keys from his pocket, Niall unlocked it before stepping over to the passenger side door to kindly open it for Joey.

Her brows raised at the chivalrous gesture and she peered at him as she climbed in and settled into the seat. “Still trying to charm me?”

“Absolutely.”

With a lopsided smirk, he gave her a playful wink and closed her door.

Joey lived in Toluca Lake, which was about a thirty five minute drive through Hollywood from the concert venue. Not really unheard of for LA, but still out of the way from where Niall had mentioned that he lived. They had to literally pass his house on the way. If Joey had known that, she definitely would have insisted on getting a Lyft instead, the last thing she wanted to be was a bother.

Despite the extra time in the car for Niall, he rather enjoyed the aspect of driving Joey home. It gave him more time to get to know her, to talk to her. To hear her voice and her laugh and see her smile. Joey was even more enthralled with Niall. Hearing him go on and on about his music and his many passions, seeing the way his face lit up with the mention of his favorite bands and athletes. The deep tone of his voice was so rousing, his accent so sexy, it sent shivers down Joey’s spine with every mention of her name. The way his stare stayed focused on the road ahead, his big hand perched up on the steering wheel as his thumb gently tapped along with the low hum of the music that was playing on the radio.

She couldn’t take her eyes off of him.

Pulling up to the front of Joey’s apartment building, Niall stopped the car and put it in park. Joey turned her head to stare up at the modest brick-front building, and scraped her teeth along her bottom lip. She almost didn’t want to get out of the car. Looking back over at Niall, she smiled. “I had a really great time, Niall, it was nice hanging out with you. No...weird expectations, ya know?

He nodded, dropping his hand into his lap. “Yeah, I had a good time.”

“Thank you again for the tickets, seriously,” she said, “It was one of the best shows I’ve ever been to.”

“I was actually pleasantly surprised, to be honest, I had never seen them live before.”

“Now you know why I love them so much.”

They both let out soft chuckles and Joey peeked down into her lap. “Hey, um…” Niall began, causing Joey to flick her gaze back to his, “would it be weird if I, like, texted you some time? Just to, like, chat or whatever. I quite like talkin’ to ya.”

Joey tucked her bottom lip into her mouth. “I like talking to you too, that’d be great. I’d like that.”

“Cool,” Niall said, carding his fingers through his hair, “Maybe we can, um, go get some coffee or somethin’ this weekend, if you’re free or whatever.”

“Yeah, sure, that’d be fun,” she replied with a nod, reaching down to unhook her seatbelt.

Niall smiled. “Alright, well...I’ll text ya then. Have a good night, Joey.”

Opening her door, Joey stepped out of the car. “You have a good night too, Niall,” she said with a sweet smile before giving him a wave and shutting the door.

Niall watched with hooded eyes as she walked up to her building's door and put in the code, Joey sweeping her hair to rest over her one shoulder as she disappeared inside. Sitting there for a moment, Niall let his eyes fall closed and tipped his head back on the seat, a long and heartfelt sigh sliding past his parted lips

#niall #niall horan #niall fic #niall fanfic #niall smut #niall ou #slowburn #tdg #chap 3 #actually really like this chapter #we get to see more of niall and joey and thats always good ;)#hope you guys like it!#please take a read #share!!!#and let me know what you think!!!!

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taste-thewaste · 4 years

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There’s only one bed-Madderton fic

Title:There’s only one bed Ship: Madderton Word count: ~2800 A/N: So I’ve been seeing a ton of stuff on here about the sometimes overused trope of ‘there’s only one bed’ so the characters have to share and I thought it might be fun to put my Madderton spin on it ;) This is fluff on fluff, friends! The boys just love kissing and being together lol. I hope everyone enjoys.

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Richard didn’t think he would ever get over the sight of New York City lit up at night, the way every building glowed, the billboards, the flashing signs. It was by no means the first ‘big city’ he’d ever been in, but it always felt different, every time he was here. He always felt different, always felt waves of potential washing over him whenever he came here; he couldn’t explain it. He tucked his legs up to his chest and circled his arms around them, relaxing into the sofa and just staring out the large picture window in his hotel room.

He knew he should get some rest, big day tomorrow. It was why he’d begged off of going out with Taron that evening, to get some rest, and yet here he was, up later than he’d expected, looking out at the evening. He could hardly believe he was here. He could hardly believe this was his life. He was a dreamer, Richard was, and this was all he’d dreamed of for years. He’d made it, and he could still hardly believe it.

He was so focused on what he was thinking about that the unexpected loud knocking that came on his door made him nearly fall off the couch in surprise. He looked over at the door to his suite, hoping that it was just somebody lost on their way back to their own room. A moment later, as if the person on the other side of the door could read his mind, the loud knocking rang out again.

“Oy, Rich, it’s me, open up, for the love of God!”

What the hell was Taron doing outside his room at half past 11?

Richard pushed himself off the sofa and padded over to the door, yanking it open and immediately biting the inside of his cheek to try to stifle his laughter. Taron stood in front of him, soaking wet and scowling. His white t-shirt clung to his body, leaving little to the imagination; his green plaid flannel pajama pants were similarly wet, pasted to his legs and unleashing little rivulets of water that drip-dropped onto the hotel floor. Richard finally lost the battle of not laughing as a short, sharp guffaw burst forth from his mouth. Taron looked positively ridiculous.

“D’you think you could continue laughing at me after I come inside?” Taron asked, a slight edge to his voice and his scowl deepening. Richard chuckled and stepped aside, allowing his dripping wet mate into the suite, barely registering that Taron was carting his suitcase with him.

“What the hell happened to you?” Richard asked, shutting the door and throwing the lock. Taron wrung his t-shirt out on the floor, leaving a puddle at his feet.

“The fucking fire sprinklers in my room started going off and wouldn’t stop! Everything’s soaked, and they can’t figure out what’s wrong. The hotel’s fully booked because of the premiere so they can’t move me anywhere, but I told them I could stay with a friend. Is that alright?” Taron asked, looking up and finally meeting Richard’s eyes. His stomach did the briefest of backflips, the way it always did when T’s eyes met his own, and he tried, again, to push it away.

“‘Course you can stay here, no worries,” Rich said, offering up a smile and waving him inside. “You’re always welcome.”

Taron chuckled. “Well, we won’t be here for long, Dickie, but I certainly appreciate the sentiment. I’m having a shower.” Taron dug through his suitcase briefly and loped off towards the bathroom, clean, dry clothes in hand. Richard resisted the urge to follow him.

It wasn’t until Taron had already been in the shower for several moments that it occurred to Richard that there was only one bed in the suite.

Their hotel was ostensibly fancier than many, and the sofa he’d been casually lounging on when Taron had knocked on the door-the way that t-shirt had clung to his body, good Lord, Richard thought-didn’t pull out into a sleeper. He checked just to be sure, but found nothing but couch springs underneath the cushions. He supposed he could sleep on the sofa, but it was dreadful uncomfortable simply to lie on…

In the middle of his contemplation, Taron emerged from the bathroom, backlit by the fluorescent lighting and releasing a rolling fog of steam from inside. He was clad in nothing but a tight-fitting black t-shirt and a matching pair of underwear, and he looked completely comfortable in himself, as though it was nothing in the world for him to show up at Richard’s hotel suite in the middle of the evening, take a shower, and emerge with no pants on.

“Forget your pants?” Rich asked, thanking whatever God was up there that his voice hadn’t trembled on any of the words, giving away his nerves.

“I’ve no dry sleep pants, and who cares? It’s just us,” Taron said with a simple shrug, and Richard marveled at the way he could just make any situation, no matter what it was, seem simple. Taron rubbed a towel through his short hair, drying it off a bit. “What’re you doing awake, eh? You bailed on going out with me tonight so I thought I’d find you all curled up and asleep.”

Richard shrugged, the tiniest blush rising to his cheeks. “I was just about to when you knocked.”

Taron ambled over to him, dropping the towel on the floor as he went. “Dickie needs his beauty rest before the premiere tomorrow?” he teased, pinching Richard’s cheek just slightly.

Rich resisted the urge to grab Taron by the hips, drag him close, bite his lower lip. God, he was just so pretty, Taron was, and cheeky, and lovely. Where the hell was his head going tonight?

Richard cleared his throat, tried to think of dreadful topics to keep his mind from going where it was going. “Well, we have a tiny problem. There’s only one bed in here, and this sofa doesn’t pull out. It’s uncomfortable but I could sleep on it and you could take the bed,” he offered.

Taron looked at the bed, then at the sofa, then back at the bed before looking up at Richard. “We can both sleep in the bed, looks like there’s room,” he said, gesturing towards the queen size bed. Richard’s stomach did a significantly stronger backflip than normal.

“Both of us in the bed?” Richard asked, mentally kicking himself for stuttering over the words. “The same bed?”

Taron laughed and stretched, his t-shirt riding up ever-so-slightly and showing his tummy. “Yes, the same bed. Do you have a problem with that?”

Richard shook his head quickly and furiously, too quickly, too furiously. He ran his hands through his hair, feeling a blush rise to his cheeks again. “No, no problem. There’s plenty of room.”

Taron started to turn down the covers on what he’d decided would be his side of the bed, chuckling all the while. “I mean, we’ve rolled around naked for hours on camera before. I think we can manage to catch a good night’s rest in the same bed for one evening.”

“Shut up, you cheeky bastard,” Rich said, turning down his side and crawling in, pretending to play it cool. He had no doubt that Taron could tell how nervous he was, though, if the wry grin on his face was any indication as he hopped into the bed, too. Richard snuggled down deep under the covers, keeping himself as still as possible, staying as close to the edge of the bed as possible. He was acutely aware of himself, of his body, of the space he occupied. He’d never been more nervous yet excited at the same time, or more tense. Taron looked over at him, the grin still on his face, before going, “Oh,” and hopping out of bed to turn the lights off. He hopped right back in, just as gracefully.

Richard felt himself instantly relax with the lights off, even though the bright lights of the city below them meant the room wasn’t completely dark. The light bled through the thin curtains that Richard hadn’t drawn all the way, and he looked up and found Taron gazing at him. He was still smiling, but it was less of a teasing smile and one of...fondness, if Richard wasn’t misreading things.

“What?” Richard asked, the near-darkness, the closeness making him whisper. “Why are you looking at me?”

“I like looking at you,” Taron whispered back, and Rich couldn’t tell completely, but he thought there might be some pink to Taron’s cheeks.

Richard felt a wave of boldness crash over him, and he whispered back, “I like looking at you, too.”

Taron nodded slightly, and said, “I’m nervous about tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like we haven’t done it before. I just..the more we do this, the more I think this film could really be something, Rich, y’know? I know we haven’t made the next...I don’t know, Forrest Gump or something, but this film could really resonate with people. I think it will. We’ve made something special, and the people it touches are going to be grateful for it. It just adds some pressure, I suppose.” Taron shrugged a little, his eyes gazing off across the room, lost in thought.

Richard bit his lower lip and looked at Taron. “My favorite thing about you is how passionate you are. I’ve never seen anyone put so much of themselves into a role. If this movie is something special, it’s because of you.”

Taron’s eyes moved back onto Richard’s. “Thanks,” he said softly, and the two lapsed into quiet. The only sound was the muffled noise of cars rushing by on the streets below, and the slow even breathing of both of them. Richard felt his anxieties quell, the backflips in his belly still, his entire body fall calm. An hour ago he’d been ruminating on this life he got to live, and if you’d asked him how sharing a bed with Taron would make him feel, he wouldn’t have said calm.

That’s what he felt, though. He felt calm and content. In any other situation, it would’ve been weird for he and Taron to just look at each other, but that was what they were doing and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Finally, after what felt like ages, Taron broke the silence.

“Thanks for letting me stay over,” he said quietly, and (with a slightly shaking hand, Rich noticed), Taron reached out and touched Richard’s face, stroking the soft pad of his thumb over Richard’s cheek. Richard breathed in deeply, his heart fluttering in his chest.

“What are you doing?” he whispered, and Taron drew his hand away like he’d been burned.

“I just--I’m sorry,” he said quietly. It was one of the few times he’d ever seen Taron nervous; the boy was perpetually sunny and confident. Richard drew on a small well of strength, and reached out and grabbed Taron’s hand. He laced their fingers together and squeezed gently.

“Don’t be sorry,” Richard said, and Taron nodded, reaching his hand out again after letting go of Richard’s to stroke his face again.

“Rich, I...can I…” Taron muttered, and he tilted his face towards Richard’s and kissed him, so gently that it was almost as if it didn’t happen, his lips just lightly brushing the other man’s. It was enough, though. It was enough to wake them both up, to send tiny zaps of electricity traveling down their spines. Rich wriggled closer to Taron, ungraceful in his need to be closer to the man he was sharing a bed with. Taron leaned his forehead against Richard’s, casting his eyes downward, unable to look at him.

“I’ve liked you for a while,” Taron confessed, his voice husky with the quiet and desperation of the words he was expressing. Taron was not a nervous person, and yet, the idea of confessing to Richard what he’d been feeling for so long was...maddening and terrifying. He couldn’t stand the idea of being vulnerable like this and being shot down.

Richard reached out and tilted Taron’s face up, so he was looking directly into his ocean blue eyes. “I’ve liked you, too,” he said softly, and that was enough to break the spell of the gentle calm between them. Taron’s lips were on his, deep, powerful, almost aggressive, and he was answering back just as strongly. Their teeth clashed together and their bodies curved in towards each other. Richard ran his hands up Taron’s shirt, gripping the other man’s hips and dragging him closer; their legs twined together and in the back of Richard’s mind, he thought of how similar this was in some ways to the scene they’d filmed together. Taron bit down on his lower lip and Rich moaned, lightly.

They rutted against each other like a couple of teenagers, and Richard thought that he hadn’t felt anything so good in ages. They kissed with no expectations, with wild abandon, and when it was done, it was done. Taron took Richard in his arms and Richard nuzzled into him, curving his body towards Taron and tucking himself in neatly. He laid his head against the soft cotton of Taron’s t-shirt and Taron dropped a kiss absent-mindedly on the top of Richard’s head. Their breathing was synced up, both of them breathing rather heavily, and he was warm. He felt safe, and seen, and known.

“You are exceptional,” Taron whispered after a moment’s silence, and Rich knew in his heart that his words weren’t referring to anything physical they had just done. He knew, somehow, that Taron was referring to him as a person, not just his body, and he could’ve cried.

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Morning came, as it always does, sunlight filtering in through the room. The alarm that Richard had set prior to Taron’s arrival blared, rousing both of them unpleasantly from the warm, comforting sleep they’d been enjoying. Richard was still curved into Taron, their legs entwined and his hand on Taron’s belly. He rolled over and smacked the alarm clock as hard as he could, silencing the annoying sound.

Taron stretched and let out a low moan, opening his eyes and blinking sleepily. A slow smile spread across his face as he looked at Richard, who smiled back at him. Now that it was light out and the day had come, if you’d asked Richard if the night before had happened, he might not have been able to answer yes. He couldn’t be sure, it had been so gentle and like the answer to a long-wanted dream he’d been having.

“Morning, sunshine,” Taron said, sleep still clouding his voice. Richard grinned.

“Mornin’.”

“Ready for today?” Taron asked, kissing Richard softly and enjoying the pink flush that rose to Richard’s cheeks.

“Suppose, I’ll have you there to keep me calm,” Richard said cheekily. Taron nodded and rolled out of bed.

“I guess I should head back to my room, hair and makeup are going to meet me there soon-ish. But we could have breakfast first, if you want?” Taron said, finding his old crumpled pants on the floor and pulling them on.

“Breakfast would be nice,” Richard said, getting out of bed himself and then stopping short. “Hold on, you can’t meet them there, your room is flooded, isn’t it?”

Taron froze, a delightfully evil grin spreading onto his face. “Well, the thing is…”

Richard’s one eyebrow shot up quizzically. “The thing is…?”

“I was thinking about you last night after you bailed on me and I was feeling bold so I…” He trailed off lightly.

Richard sighed. “Taron.”

“Okay, okay. I sort of made up the story about my room being flooded so I could come see you,” Taron said, a tiny laugh slipping out.

Richard couldn’t help but smile, seeing how clearly pleased Taron was with himself. “You made it up?” he asked incredulously.

“Well, yeah,” Taron said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Why didn’t you just...text me, or come by?” Richard asked.

“I didn’t think you wanted me to, I don’t know, I was nervous,” Taron babbled, blushing just a bit. Richard went over to him and impulsively pulled Taron into his arms, pressing their bodies against each other. Richard kissed Taron’s temple gently.

“I wanted you to. Promise,” Richard murmured and Taron snuggled into him briefly. After a few moments, Taron reluctantly pushed himself away.

“Alright. Really have to get going unfortunately, I don’t think we can do breakfast. I’ll see you soon,” Taron said, kissing Richard softly and turning to leave.

“One last thing, Taron?” Richard called, and Taron paused with his hand on the doorknob.

“Yes, love?” Taron asked.

“If your room wasn’t really flooded...then how’d you get sopping wet before you came over here?”

“Oh, that. Well, I got in the shower with my clothes on, obviously,” Taron said, shrugging and waving before exiting the room, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

He’s mad, Richard thought. Then, he smiled to himself. And he’s mine.

#my fic #Madderton fanfiction #taron egerton fanfiction #richard madden fanfiction #fluff fluff fluff

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alecmagnuslwb · 5 years

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Day Twenty-One: Friends to Lovers (Jaia)

Read on AO3

Maia has a problem. A big Jace Lightwood sized problem. They’ve been friends for ages, always in classes together, always sassing each other until they ran out of things to be sassy about. The little blonde boy she’d grown oddly fond of in middle school is now an annoying blonde man who she spends most of her time outside of work with.

They’ve stuck by each other through it all, bad relationships and good, hiring’s and firings, the big moments and the little. They’ve always had each other’s backs and they’ve always been best friends. Until recently an air of something new has come into the mix, something that’s far less platonic than what she’s always put their relationship in the realm of.

She drags a finger along the edge of her drink as she watches the pretty brunette behind the bar blatantly flirt with Jace and she’s hit with a twinge of jealousy. Jealousy. That’s never been a part of them. She’s seen plenty of girls and guys flirt with Jace, just like he’s seen plenty do the same with her. Hell, they’ve been each other’s wingman for as long as she can remember. Jealousy has never been a part of the game.

Jace smiles at the girl handing her the cash to settle their tab before turning back to Maia and extending a hand.

“Ready to get out of here?” he asks with one of those big smiles he’s always directing at her. They’re far less cocky than the ones he directs at everyone else and with this newfound stirring of feelings inside of her she starts to try and feel like there’s something important about that fact.

She nods taking his hand to stand and pull them through the crowded bar out onto the street. They walk quietly all the way back to their building, because on top of the best friend’s thing they’re also neighbors, not saying a word. It’s comfortable, much in the way silence always has been between the two of them, but it’s also deafening because it gives Maia way too much time to think.

Time to think about the way he doesn’t let go of her hand until they’re blocks away from the bar or how he offers his jacket when a shiver runs through her. She’s fairly certain it’s all in her mind, it’s her own messy feelings misreading every action he takes. Every action he’s been taking with her since high school. It’s just how they are and she really needs to get this new burgeoning crush that she’s starting to feel like is a whole lot more than a crush under control.

“Wanna keep the binge-watch going?” Jace says coming to a stop. Maia hadn’t even realized they were in front of their building. Maia shakes her thoughts, truthfully no she doesn’t because alone time with Jace has had this weird vibe to it lately all because of whatever the hells going on with her, but she also doesn’t want him to worry. If she turns him down when it’s barely even nine he’ll think somethings wrong, think he did something wrong which isn’t the case at all, it’s her muddled feelings that are getting in the way.

“Sure,” she says putting on a bright smile that she hopes is convincing. They settle in at his apartment comfortable on the couch sharing a blanket covered in kittens that she constantly makes fun of Jace for owning.

They’re two more episodes deep into their latest binge watch or at least she thinks they are, she’s frankly uncertain since she’s only been half paying attention sneaking glances Jace’s way every now and then and weirdly catching him sneaking his own looks right back. She thinks it’s all in her head, it’s probably just him worrying about her being weird, but she also can’t help but wonder if it’s more.

Somewhere around the halfway mark of the latest episode while looking at Jace from the corner of her eye watching the lights from the television bounce of his damn pretty heterochrome eyes she starts to think she’ll never be able to go back to what she felt before. Onscreen two characters who’ve been lifelong friends fall in love. It feels important, feels like a message. So, before she even notices the words coming out of her mouth she’s diving in head first.

“You know when sometimes you meet someone so beautiful and then you actually talk to them and five minutes later they’re as dull as a brick?” she starts not daring to look at Jace just yet. “Then there’s other people, when you meet them you think, ‘Not bad. They’re okay.’ And then you get to know them and,” she pauses breathing in deep.

“And their face just sort of becomes them. Like their personality’s written all over it. And they just turn into something so beautiful,” she finishes finally brave enough to look Jace in the eyes who’s listening closely, hanging on every word. “I think that’s what happened to me with you.” She finishes and silence carries between them, strong and heavy. It feels like hours before Jace responds, but when he does it’s not with words.

One second he’s sitting there mouth agape like a fish out of water and the next he’s leaning in hesitating for just a second when their lips are a breath away from each other and when Maia doesn’t make any move to stop him he leans in completely his lips pressed to her.

It’s a soft simple kiss with a simmering fire underneath that she knows could ignite at any second, could cause a wildfire. She wants that, but she also needs to know this isn’t just some fast move, mean nothing kiss that she’s seen Jace give dozens of other pretty girls and boys before.

He pulls back after a moment seemingly stopping the burn between them but keeping their faces close. She opens her mouth to say something, to explain, but as he always does with that big mouth of his he beats her to it.

“Fuck, Maia, I’ve been in love with you since high school,” he says lips quirking up on a small smile shaking his head a little bewildered.

Maia’s eyes widen, stunned. So those looks she’s noticed and caught lately, that smile she’s been interpreting a little differently these days wasn’t all just in her head.

But high school? Even at its latest that would mean Jace has been feeling something she just recently started to feel for at least six years. She feels like she is way behind.

“I won’t lie,” he says continuing on. “Being your best friend has been worth every second even if I never got to tell you how I felt, but damn if this doesn’t feel good.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she says and it’s not really what she wanted to say first. I mean she’s been harboring this crush or whatever it is for months and hasn’t said a word so she understands the fear of saying it out loud, of messing up what they already have.

Jace just shrugs, shy, Jace Lightwood shy, she never thought she’d see the day.

“I guess I just never thought you’d see me that way. I mean you were dating Clary and then Bat and that whole mess with Jordan happened right when I finally thought I’d worked up the courage to say something and I didn’t want to pressure you or make you feel uncomfortable when you needed me to just be there,” he says. “And I mean it sucked, but your friendship has always meant the world to me, so I found a way to be okay with it.”

Maia reaches out a hand holding Jace’s cheek, rubbing her thumb across the bone lightly. She smiles when he leans into it.

“I won’t say it’s been that long for me,” she says honest. “But lately it’s like I finally noticed you in a way I hadn’t before and how you always fit in a way no one else has and it just changed, shifted. I’m sorry it took so long for me to catch up.”

Jace immediately starts shaking his head. “You have nothing to apologize for, ever,” he says strongly, a determined and endearing edge in his voice. “And you don’t have to say it back. Not right now, it’s okay, I get that it’s still hard for you.”

The big L word is what he’s referring to. She hasn’t said it since Jordan, hasn’t felt it until maybe right now, but the word even in passing has become a tough one to say aloud. Her fondness for Jace just grows tenfold in the moment with his understanding.

“I want to,” she says quietly, meaning it, letting her brain call this what it is for the first time instead of the crush she’s been trying to play it off as. “Even if I can’t say it just yet, know that I want to.”

He nods, his smile growing as he pulls her in close for a tight hug. They hold onto each other for a long while, the show still playing on the television long forgotten.

“So what the hell do we do now?” Jace says with a chuckle still holding her close. “By my account we go on at least two dates a week as is.”

Maia laughs thinking about their dinners and drinks and things that normal friends always do, but have been carrying emotion on one side and eventually another for ages now that makes them seem a whole lot more like dates.

“We keep doing just that,” she says pulling back her hands resting on his biceps. “Except now we can just add bonus hand holding and kissing and stuff to the mix.”

Jace smiles again. This time one of those cocky, infuriating ones of his.

“Stuff, huh?” he says waggling his eyebrows. Maia laughs curling her hand into a fist and punching him in the shoulder lightly.

He falls back feigning injury rubbing at his shoulder with a pout.

“You’re the worst person I know,” she chuckles rolling her eyes at him. He lifts back up, cocky little smile still on his lips. She wants to kiss it off of him and a second later she realizes now she can.

He’s just about to say something, no doubt some retort that will divulge into one of their epic back and forth rounds of friendly insults and jibes, but she has no time for the sass right now.

She leans in shutting him right up. She giddily laughs against his lips happy to find such an enjoyable way to shut him up.

#my fic #jaia #maia roberts #jace lightwood #shadowhunters #jaia fic #shadowhunters fic

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eyfey · 5 years

Note

Do you have advice on how to improve on translating? Also, what made you want to start translating? Major props to you for translating Saiki because Akechi Touma’s lines kinda make me wanna die inside.

Thanks!!! (though tbh Akechi’s blathering is not NEARLY as bad as the non-stop puns/obscure references lol)

For what made me start translating:I found some Pyu to Fuku Jaguar raws for cheap at a used bookstore and started learning Japanese so I could read them. Once I got a little faster at reading, I noticed the Jaguar scanlation team had lost their translator, so I offered to join. My first translations were super not great (the only reason they’re even somewhat accurate is because Mangahelpers was more active at the time and I posted my translations there in the forums for people to proofread/asked for help whenever there was any kanji/grammar I got stuck on.

(If you want to go read my first translation, it’s ch62 of Pyu to Fuku! Jaguar. …Looking at it now, there’s so many places I could’ve translated better lol)

Since then I’ve gotten a lot better:

So here’s my hot tips on how to get better at translating!!!(under the readmore ‘cause it’s looong)

The number one thing that I recommend is… Just Translate! Pick up some raws and start doing some translations! They’re probably gonna be bad at first but who cares! You gotta start somewhere! Translating forces you to think about how to actually translate stuff and makes you look up words/grammar you don’t know. If you’re translating for a group/actually releasing your translations: You’ve got deadlines now! People looking forward to your translations! You’ve got consequences that will make it harder for you to slack off and drop your studies!

Google things! Whenever there’s a word/phrase/grammar that you don’t know: Google it! Google is a translators best friend!!!

Here’s some keywords I use:“[vocab/phrase in japanese] 英語で” will give you a google translate of the vocab, and if you scroll down a little like a weblio page or something with some translations for the vocab (the weblio/other pages are usually more accurate than the google translate option).

“[grammar in japanese] grammar” - Example 食べさせた (tabesaseta). Can’t remember what the -saseta verb ending meants? (I don’t blame you lol) Google “させた grammar” and you’ll get some pages in english explaining it along with several examples.

Have another translator proofread your translations! They can help you with vocab/grammar, parts that you misread, or even just suggest different ways to translate things that might fit better in different situations. The first scanlation group I was in did this and I learned soooo much that way! I don’t know how many other groups do this though (or how many other groups even have more than one translator) so maybe I just lucked out!

Fun fact! If something seems out of place when you’re reading/translating, it’s probably one of the following:a). A pun/cultural reference. b). A specific phrase/saying that shouldn’t be taken literally. (Googling the entire phrase will usually give you an equivelant phrase or appropriate definition in English.)c). Some weird grammar that you’re translating wrong (do a deep google: a lot of grammar forms have multiple meanings/change meaning based on very small factors/are very similar sounding to other different grammar forms)

Understand that a literal translation is not always a good or accurate translation: There’s some famous Natsume Souseki shenanigans where the line “I love you” was translated as “The moon is beautiful” in Japanese, because of how Japanese people are more shy or something and would never say “I love you straight out”. Natsume Souseki is valid- some things when you translate directly lose their nuance and change the meaning to something completely different.

That being said, changing TOO much will also ruin your translation. It’s a fine balance.The point is: once you understand what the Japanese says, you gotta think “okay now how would they say this in English?” If this series were originally in English, how would the author write that dialogue? What is the main point that needs to get across and what is the tone and how do you accurately convey both of those in English?

Consume! Consume media! Read stuff! Watch TV! Listen Learn how people talk! Get a bunch of English vocabulary up in your head and save it for later. Translating is not just understanding, it’s also WRITING. You need to have at least SOME understanding of how to write a poem if you want to translate a poem. You need to have at least SOME understanding of how to write comics/fiction if you want to translate comics/fiction.

Read/watch translated stuff! See how other translators translate certain words/phrases and take notes. Steal their cool ways of translating things and incorporate them into your own translations. Notice what DOESN’T work in a translation and make a mental note to not do that. (Season 2 of Aggretsuko on Netflix had me going “WOW that’s a good translation!” constantly while watching it. Good job Aggretsuko S2 netflix translator!)

Google again! Remember how you had to google to learn Japanese words? Good! Now google English words too! Google vocab terms! Google synonyms! Google phrases/sayings! Google words to make sure you’re spelling them right! Google grammar to make sure you’re using it right! GOOGLE!

Accents/dialects: Tread carefully with accents and speech quirks. Sprinkle them in, don’t lay them on heavy. Read the dialogue you’ve written and think “Does this sound like how an actual person would talk? or does this sound like someone putting on a shitty fake accent?” I’ve seen so many translations where people slam the accent on so hard you can’t even read the dialogue any more… It’s not great. *Exceptions for if the character IS putting on a shitty fake accent in Japanese, in which case go hog wild.

Puns: If you hate yourself, you will try to translate the puns instead of putting a translators note. Don’t worry too much about translating the pun EXACTLY. With puns/jokes, there’s two important factors at play: 1. What is the joke? Is it a reference? Is it a play on words? 2. What is the text ACTUALLY saying?Start by translating the line with no pun, just regular dialogue, and then adjust from there. Then re-word to try and fit in the pun- swap out words for ones that lend themselves better to punnery, or change which part of the sentence has the pun worked into it. (Wanna know a secret? Sometimes*, if the pun is the main focus of the line and there isn’t actually any important meaning to the dialogue? You can just write whatever the fuck you want to fit the pun. *but only if you’re ABSOLUTELY sure that it’s 100% about the pun and there’s no other significance)

しかたがない: This sucks. This phrase sucks. “It can’t be helped” sucks 98% of the time. “What choice do we have”, “Fine then” “What did you expect?” “I guess” “If you insist” “Whatever”. There’s a million ways to translate it, but no one way works for every situation. Sometimes you can just take it out completely. It all boils down to “I don’t want to do this but I’m doing it anyway” so think of what someone might say in that scenario that conveys that feeling and still feels natural.

Sentence structure/double bubbles: Japanese grammar structure is weird. Sometimes they do stuff like put the subject at the end of the sentence. It sounds weird when you do that in English. Don’t do that in english when you’re translating it. If you’ve got a line like 強いね、君は (tsuyoi ne, kimi wa). Please don’t translate it as “You’re strong, you are”. Just translating it as “You’re strong” is good enough. If you want to try and keep the pause in there, you could do something like “Yknow, you’re pretty strong.” If you’ve got something like this that’s split up across multiple speech bubbles- DON’T try to translate each bubble individually. Translate them all together as one big block of text, then divide it where it feels natural, and THEN re-distribute it to the speech bubbles. Sometimes what was in the last bubble will end up in the first bubble.

If it sounds awkward in English- Change it. Figure out what doesn’t sound awkward and make it be that.

PROOFREAD. You’re gonna spell things wrong. You’re gonna misread things. You’re gonna go back and decide to change the wording of a sentence but forget to change the tense of one of the words. You’re gonna translate something too close to the Japanese sentence structure and you won’t really notice it the first go around but when you go back to proofread you’ll be like “Wow. No one talks like that in English.”

For reference, here’s my translation/proofread process:

1. Translate. Get it into English. Doesn’t matter if it sounds janky or awkward right now, just try to get the meaning down in English. Anything you’re not sure you translated right? Mark it so you can double check it later. (I usually do this in a google doc on my phone.)2. 1st passthrough. Go through, and turn all that janky english into more natural sounding English: Check for anything that sounds off and give it some tlc. Reword anything that needs it. Do some hard research on the places you weren’t sure about the first time.3. 2nd passthrough. One more sweep through to polish up any parts that still sound awkward in English. If you’re not pressed for time it’s good to do this one a day or two after the previous passthrough so you’ve had some time to let the translation simmer in the back of your mind. Maybe you’ve come up with a better way to word something? Maybe you came up with a good way to make that joke work?4. Final proofread. Usually I do this after it’s been typeset: Sometimes something that read fine as a script doesn’t read so great when put on a page, divided into bubbles or split into separate pages. Adjust those parts. Check extra hard for any missed typos or messed up grammar ‘cause there IS going to be some that slipped through.

KEEP NOTES: If you’re working on a series, consistency is important and makes you look professional! Keep a document somewhere with translation notes so you can do a quick consistency check whenever necessary. Write down things like: How to spell/translate the names of characters/places/special attacks/etc (especially side characters that only show up every once and a while), how you translate certain catch phrases, how you handle certain characters’ speech quirks. You WILL forget if you spelled that name with one R or two Rs and it’s WAY easier to keep it all in one document than to have to go back and scan through every chapter until you find the ONE panel to see how it was written before. It also helps if you have multiple translators working on a series.

Put your name on your translation scripts if you want to be credited! Doesn’t have to be on every page, just once at the top- I used to not bother 'cause they were always just uploaded directly to the scan groups/never publicly uploaded, but then one day someone used one of my translations and the credit page just said something like “don’t know who to credit” lol

…and that’s all I can think of right now! Hope that helps!

#saiki asks #silenthikari #translation tips

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absentauthor · 6 years

Text

Halloween Homebody

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: You spend Halloween alone every year, eating candy, baking, and watching scary movies. This year, Bucky invites you to come along with him, Steve and Sam to Tony’s Halloween Bash. Things don’t end the way you hoped they would.

Warnings: A bit angsty. The reader is a bit insecure.

Words: 1400+

Halloween was always your favorite holiday. As a kid it meant dressing up and trick-or-treating, coming home to get into pajamas and watch spooky movies while sorting your candy with your siblings.

Once you grew up, it became about scary movies and baking sweet treats. You didn't really do well with the parties. You loved everything about Halloween; just not the parties. You had a few bad experiences with them in the past and after a while you never got invited to them anyway, so creating your own traditions maintained your love for the day. Even when you joined the Avengers and received an invitation to Tony's yearly Halloween Haunting bash, you still chose to sit out the party.

Instead, dressed in Jack-o'-lantern printed pajama pants and a Halloween poster sweatshirt, you ignored the raucous race to get ready for the party and hid in the residential kitchen, baking cookies and listening to your ‘Spooky’ playlist. Complete with songs like The Monster Mash and Bette Midler's I Put a Spell on You.

The latter being the one you were currently dancing and singing along to while baking slutty brownies. Sliding across the floor in your fluffy socks and singing into your ice cream scoop, Halloween was already shaping up pretty okay.

"I put a spell on you, and now you're-"

"Nice moves, Doll."

You jumped at the sound of a voice, yelping like a heroine in a horror movie. You dropped the ice cream scooper you were using as a microphone, staring up at the reason for your surprise.

You were a generally klutzy person. Bucky Barnes (and your immense crush on him) didn't help that fact. Especially when he appeared in doorways, all smirking and clean cut, dressed like he'd just stepped out of a 1940's recruitment office. Decked in an army uniform from the 40's, Bucky was increasingly meta and undeniably gorgeous.

You couldn't pinpoint when exactly you fell for Bucky, but it was moments like this that you wished you knew how to function like a normal frickin' person instead of some lovestruck moron.

"What are you doing here?" You ask abruptly. "Shouldn't you be leaving for Tony's party?"

He came to stand beside you, glancing over your shoulder at all the baked goods you had spread out on the counter. His sudden proximity wasn't doing much in the way of keeping you calm and collected. He smelled good. Looked good too, especially up close.

"Just waitin' on Sam and Stevie. They're dressed as soldiers too," he said with a smile, stealing one of your already baked cookies. You giggled as he popped it into his mouth, eating it whole.

"You'll have all the girls swooning and wishing they were born in 1942," you mutter before you can stop yourself.

"According to Sam, that's the plan."

You tried not to dwell on his response, focusing on cleaning your ice cream scoop and returning to your latest batch of pumpkin shaped cookies.

"What's with all the baking?" He asked. "Aren't you dressing up for Tony's party?"

"No. I'm not going."

His surprise was undeniable, clear in his strained and shocked, "Why?"

"Halloween parties aren't really my thing."

He had that cute little crinkle between his eyebrows, his confusion resembling a puppy. "But you love Halloween."

"Yeah, just not the parties. I was never really invited to them and when I was I always ended up disappointed. So now I decorate, buy candy and bake, all before sitting down for a spooky movie marathon."

He leaned back against the counter, taking another cookie before meeting your eyes. You swallowed hard and looked away, unable to handle the intensity of his bright blues eyes on yours.

He smiled, "That actually sounds fun."

Should you ask him to join you? No, he has plans. Why would he want to join you?

"I-I'd ask if you wanted to join me, but Sam and Steve would probably kill me for messing up your lil' group costume."

"Yeah, you're probably right," he chuckled. "Why don't you come and hang out with us at the party? If anything can make your night interesting it would definitely be watching Sam strike out again and again and again."

You considered it, you honestly did. But part of you knew that watching Sam hit on girls left the possibility of watching Bucky hit on them too. He was very much single and a real flirt. He was just being nice in inviting you; you weren't a factor in his love life and you knew it.

But he was a factor in yours and you knew your ego couldn't really take watching him flirt with another girl right in front of you.

You shook your head, "I don't want to be a fourth wheel on your guy's night. And besides, I don't have a real costume. Just these pajamas."

"Doll, you wouldn't be a fourth wheel. And I bet you've got somethin' in that closet that looks like a costume."

You heave a sigh. He's just being nice. Stick to your guns.

"Bucky, it's okay. I love Halloween. And I've been spending it like this for years and that hasn't changed. Don't worry about me. Just go and have fun!"

He opens his mouth to protest, only for Sam and Steve to walk into the kitchen before he can.

"Y/N! You're baking?" Steve asked with a furrowed brow. Bucky may use the confused puppy-dog look from time to time but Steve had it down pat.

"She's not going to the party," Bucky blurted before you could even attempt to answer Steve.

"What? Why? You've had your Halloween decorations up since September!"

You sigh and glare a little at Bucky. He seemed frustrated now and you couldn't understand why.

"I have my own little traditions, boys. Including baking the cookies Wilson is currently stuffing in his mouth and pockets because he thinks I can't see him."

"Shit," Sam mumbled through a bite of sugar cookie. "Run!"

He took off for the door, handing Steve a couple of cookies from his pocket, only for the Captain to follow suit, running out with a ghost cookie sticking out of his mouth.

Soon enough it was just you and Bucky, locked in a disagreement you didn't fully understand.

"Your friends are waitin' on you, Sarge," you said, trying to break the indescribable tension.

It was his turn to sigh. He fixed his hat on his head, stepping towards you again. You didn't step back this time.

"Doll, if you change your mind, I'll be there. I'd love to see you there." He stepped in your space again, this time leaning in and pressing a kiss to your cheek. "Happy Halloween."

He turned and left, leaving you standing there with a hand over your suddenly warm cheek and a racing heart.

"Happy Halloween, Sarge."

---

Sometime during your viewing of Orphan you came to a decision.

You'd give Tony's party a chance. You'd put the effort in and maybe it would pay off. The prospect of spending the night talking to Bucky was a powerful notion, especially when it felt like his kiss was imprinted on your cheek. Maybe you'd misread a signal, maybe he saw you as someone who could be more than a friend.

You rushed to your closet, searching for something resembling a costume.

Everything looked pretty plain, until you came across the full-skirted red dress you wore to your friend's wedding a year earlier. Tea length and satin, it was the prettiest dress you owned. It gave off an old Hollywood glamour vibe; one that you could maybe pass off as some starlet from the 50's. . .maybe even the 40's.

You dressed quickly, pinning back your hair and applying your favorite red lipstick. Your nerves were returning, the anticipation of disaster returning in droves.

But you pushed them away. You let yourself hope. You walked into the Tower's intricately decorated lobby with your head held high.

It only took a moment for everything to change.

Some naive part of you hoped you'd been missing out on something, especially when the man of your dreams was the one encouraging you to step outside your comfort zone and show up to a type of party you never enjoyed.

You ignored every warning and every inkling that came to you, everything that protected you from the usual disappointment that came from a once eventful night for you.

You showed up at the party. You took a chance, a risk.

Only to be faced with Bucky locked in a passionate kiss with a girl dressed as a frilly-skirted maid.

You turned and left. Maybe you’d be back in your pajamas in time to watch Jennifer’s Body.

You realized that maybe you were just better off spending your favorite holiday alone in your bed after all.

___

Part 2

A/N: So, I wrote this lil’ oneshot. I hope you all like it; I do have a part two planned, if you’re feelin’ it. Happy Halloween, witches!

Disclaimer: I do not own any character that is a part of the MCU or Marvel universe.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x you #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes #littleredwrites

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ahopefuldoubt · 5 years

Text

somehow-you-will had asked: Aw yeah! *rubs hands together* First of all, The Prince of Egypt?

Send me a fandom and I’ll tell you...

the first character i ever fell in love with: Aaron — The well scene did a lot for me in terms of just seeing both his vulnerability and strength: specifically the way he uses himself as a shield to protect a family member, from another family member. Moses is someone Miriam believed in, whose return she’d been looking forward to, and for Aaron to be unsure of it all, and then to watch, rather powerlessly, as this semi-mythical brother-prince throws her to the ground… I have such a love-hate relationship with this scene. It’s emotionally exhausting — the three of them interacting like this — but it’s also the moment Aaron became my favorite character. (And it’s one of the reasons why my feelings towards Moses were ambivalent for a long time. I feel for his confusion, but what he does to Miriam here makes me twitch.) I still identify with Aaron the most: his anxiousness, his reaction and approach to the reunion with Moses, his relationship with God. He’s a compassionate person — so aware of the power structures in place yet still so inclined to protect and do for others — and I admire that about him. I love that he’s the one who takes those first steps into the Red Sea (with that slightly dorky, lopsided little smile). I’ve always found his journey the most powerful.

a character that i used to love/like, but now do not: none

a ship that i used to love/like, but now do not: none

my ultimate favorite character™: Aaron ♥ — I’m not exactly shy about how much I love him :)

prettiest character: Oh, Miriam and Yocheved for sure~!

my most hated character: Seti (shit parent to both sons, shit human being)

my OTP: none

my NOTP: Moses/Rameses, because it’s incest

favorite episode:

saddest death: Well, the movie opens with infanticide, but there’s also Yocheved’s off-screen death… (Everything hurts, nothing’s okay :\)

favorite season:

least favorite season:

character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but i hate: Rameses — Intellectually, I know the movie wants me to feel sympathy for him, and “hate” might be too vague a word. The film gives him layers, such as the pressure he feels to live up to (to eclipse because he’s the morning star) his father’s legacy, but I feel those layers actually reveal/emphasize the fact that he makes some pretty dang awful decisions. Rameses doesn’t see the Hebrew people as people, which is terrible enough but also implies that he doesn’t see Moses either… doesn’t accept or love him as unconditionally as the fandom seems to think he does. That he is wrong — that his father was wrong — never enters his realm of understanding, and that kind of blindness frightens and angers me.

my ‘you’re piece of trash super disappointing omg why, but you’re still a fave’ fave a complicated character i will endlessly debate about: Tuya — I won’t call her a “piece of trash.” It’s more that I’m frustrated with her for lying to Moses, and that that pain feels sharper because I love her: She’s caring, comforting, and such a(n adoptive) mom, with all her flaws. It’s clear that she loved her son, and that’s why I wanted her to do better. (Seti and) Tuya’s erasure of Moses’ identity/culture/family is neglect. It’s not okay when it happens in real life, and in this story it’s particularly gross due to the massive power imbalance between the Egyptians and Hebrews. I don’t think she’s doing a revolutionary or subversive thing by raising a Hebrew child. [2019 note] At this point, it’s hard for me to say that I love Tuya unequivocally (the operative word being “unequivocally”).

my ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave: (I’m not a fan of the “cinnamon roll" meme, in general.) Anyway, my answer is Miriam, Aaron, and Moses. This is certainly true in a story sense, but the way they’re treated (ignored, misread, to varying extents/depending on the character) by viewers and the fandom is…. weird, too, to say the least. (Also I’m going to write about them not in the (birth) order I just listed them…)

Moses gets cast as Rameses’ bully; it’s rare to find a review that doesn’t say or suggest that Moses betrays Rameses. However, and for one thing, adoptees don’t owe their families their undying loyalty. And Moses’ goal, his desire, is to liberate people from actual slavery/oppression. That’s not ignoble. That’s not something he does to Rameses or to get him into trouble. I imagine it’s upsetting, it’s difficult, for Moses to learn that it’s his brother who’s been working the Hebrews (including his biological siblings) to the bone in order to build “a greater Egypt than that of [his] father,” and to watch that brother repeat the mistakes of the past.

Miriam may receive respect, but she seems to suffer because she’s not an acceptable Strong Female Character (a label that’s limiting and limited in itself). Her admirable qualities of compassion and moral strength only go so far (“It’s lovely that she’s so kind, but she’s too kind to really be ‘strong’”), and that’s incredibly frustrating because these are such amazing, potent, and hard-to-cultivate-and-maintain traits, which she uses to, well, move mountains. Furthermore, any notion that she “ruins” Moses’ carefree life with Rameses/his adoptive family by telling Moses about his identity is just totally off the mark. That information was his adoptive parents’ to tell, and they failed to do that for him.

…I still don’t know what to make of the consensus out there that Aaron is a jerk or a coward, and/or that he doesn’t add anything to the story. (I have far more stuff in my head and heart than I can put into words.) People seem to take the mud pit scene as the sum total of his character, or they characterize him as a misanthrope, to the point of being constantly belligerent, because he represents doubt (it doesn’t work that way, not in Aaron’s case, not to that extreme — and on a related note, Miriam and Aaron’s dynamic doesn’t work that way). His compassion and courage get completely overlooked. It’s… odd… to me that when Moses, Rameses, Tzipporah, Miriam, etc. express things like anger, fear, and doubt, they’re not defined by these emotions, yet when Aaron expresses anger/fear/doubt, he’s often reduced to them, is lifted out of the story and his family. Why do Rameses’ insecurities garner sympathy, while Aaron’s worries get met with indifference? Is Aaron inferior because he doesn’t follow the standards of his gender? Does he need to be more like anyone else, or anything less than himself, in order to be considered valid or valuable?

my ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship: none

my ‘they’re kind of cute, and i lowkey ship them, but i’m not too invested’ ship: none

Originally from 2017.

#the prince of egypt #aaron #my stuff #my writing #incest mention #*#ah man i remember the writing process for this and just ahh

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betweengenesisfrogs · 6 years

Text

Toward a Critical Re-Evaluation of Homestuck, or: A Prayer for Andrew Hussie

(aka Off-the-Cuff Homestuck Thoughts #7)

This might be a manifesto.

Since the ending sequence of Homestuck in April 2017, and even well after the establishment of a canon aftermath for its main characters and the confirmation that there will be a further Epilogue, I've seen a sentiment among Homestuck bloggers and the Homestuck fandom that I find very frustrating, one that persists well into 2018.

The sentiment goes something like this:

"Homestuck is a meaningless work by a flippant, irreverent prankster (Andrew Hussie) who dropped his commitment to the story at the last second, and made fun of his fans for expecting there to be a meaningful ending. Furthermore, he continues to harm and belittle his fandom in the creation of Hiveswap, and only continues his work on Homestuck-related projects to exploit his audience."

Not only is this idea wrong, I find it disingenuous at best, malicious at worst, and actively detrimental to an understanding of Homestuck as a work. While it comes from an understandable frame of mind - the feeling of disappointment many of us felt at the end of Homestuck's pretty short and to-the-point Act 7 - it actively ignores the main reason *why* that ending came across as disappointing at first glance. Namely, it ignores the role serial storytelling - a necessity at that point in Homestuck's existence - played in creating misleading impressions of where the story was going among fans. Furthermore, it completely ignores how well the story arc of Act 6 Homestuck generally works when taken as a whole.

It demonstrates a very shallow understanding of Andrew Hussie as a storyteller, conflating his in-story persona with the actuality of a creator who demonstrates nothing but work ethic and commitment to his creation.

It ignores what actually happened with Hiveswap, which is that despite a frankly horrific set of circumstances that nearly prevented it from being made, Hussie was nonetheless able to gather a small team to create a game studio that delivered on every promise it ever made to Kickstarter backers and created a pretty solid, fun, and novel adventure game, with more installments and a rich evolving mystery on the way.

Finally, this interpretation completely misunderstands the way the idea of narrative is being used in the ending of Homestuck, not as a cudgel to beat off fan desire for thematic completion, but as a tool for delivering a thematically powerful narrative that draws parallels between the specter of Lord English and the way stories themselves are used as tools of oppression.

Homestuck isn't perfect, and neither is Andrew Hussie. But by and large, this popular perception of him is flat-out wrong, an exaggeration of whatever flaws he brought to the creation of Homestuck, and contributes to a misunderstanding of its ending. Indeed, I'd argue it is, in some ways, part of why Homestuck has rarely been acknowledged as a significant work of art. To understand why Homestuck is important, first we need to be able to acknowledge what it achieved.

Here's a daring notion: overall, Homestuck was and is pretty damn good.

Here are some reasons.

1) Being Forced To Tell the Story Serially Over a Slow Drip Messed With the Experience for the Reader

I can hear the bristling now. "I hated the ending," I can hear some of you saying. "It left me cold and unsatisfied, and damn it, that's an objective fact. Who are you to take that away from me?"

Actually, I'm not trying to take that away from you. Like, you're allowed to have been disappointed. I just want to point out that it might be a better ending than you gave it credit for, and explain why it came off the way it did. If you're interested in hearing me out, read on. You should know that initially, I was disappointed, too.

But after rereading Act 6 and the whole narrative leading up to that ending? I changed my mind. Rereading, I found it pretty satisfying, making a great deal of sense, capitalizing on major themes, and delivering a meaningful ending for most, if not all characters

I'll talk more about *what* I think the narrative is doing in a bit, but here's why I think it was misread, by me among many others.

Serial reading fucks with the quality of a story experience. I feel like this is a pretty uncontroversial statement. The problem with serial storytelling is that stories build on themselves, drawing on themes and ideas from earlier on to make a powerful build-up to moments of catharsis. This is the nature of story and character development. However if you're getting a story as little bits and pieces, it is much more difficult for this to happen. You lose track of these threads.

More dangerously, it's very easy to develop a set of expectations around a narrative while it's in pause mode. Little moments - intended to be part of a larger flow of ideas - completely dominate one's thinking for as long as they hold the stage. This is a common thing in fandom, especially webcomic fandoms, who deal with the slowest-drip narratives. Again and again I've seen expectations generated during webcomics' hiatuses lead fans to disappointment with the results, simply because those results have nothing to do with what was expected during one of those moments of downtime. El Goonish Shive, Sluggy Freelance, Gunnerkrigg Court - I've seen it in webcomic fandoms again and again, that the dashing of narrative expectations seemed like a betrayal of the story when read at a drip pace, but made perfect sense when viewed as a whole story.

This is not a problem Hussie was ever unaware of. Here’s an excellent discussion (among many) from one of his early Q&As that takes on the problem in detail:

The longer I do this the more I'm struck by how radical the difference is between the experiences of reading something archivally vs. serially, both for the reader, and the author if he's prone to sampling reactions frequently as I do. For the reader especially, I think the experience of day to day reading is so dramatically different, they might as well be reading a different story altogether.

The main difference is the amount of space between events the reader has, which can be filled with massive amounts of speculation, analysis, predictions, and something I guess you could call "opinion building", which can have both positive and negative effects. On the positive side, these readers become more closely engaged with the material than archival readers can be, zeroing in on details and insights which might be overlooked otherwise. On the negative side, I think that excess mental noise the space between pages allows can potentially be a bit suffocating, and put a strain on the experience the material was intended to deliver.

The archival reader always has the luxury of moving on to the next page, regardless of how he reacts to certain events, and thus can be more impassive about it. That internal cacophony isn't given time to build, and if there are reservations about a string of events, whether due to shocking revelations, or questions over the narrative merit of something, or really any form of dissatisfaction, all he has to do is keep clicking to see how it all fits together, and can make a more complete judgment with hindsight.

He goes on to discuss a specific example of how this played out for the readers:

The recent pages [the start of Horrorstuck] had me particularly conscious of the nature of serial delivery. [Eridan's betrayal] was rolled out over the course of a weekend, first with Feferi, then Kanaya. When Fereri dies, this registers as one extremely dramatic event. Cue the waiting, speculating, worrying and all that. When Kanaya dies a day or so later, it registers as a second dramatic event! Again the scrutiny begins which the space allows. Is this all too much? How do I feel about this narrative turn? Is this setting a trend for a bloodbath? Does that serve any purpose? The reader projects into the future, does a little unwitting fanfiction writing in his head, and may not like what he sees! All this activity becomes the basis for opinion building, which is sort of the emergence of an official position on matters, good or bad, which is only able to flourish in the slow-motion intake of the story. That official position can be a very stubborn thing, especially when it's negative, and seriously textures the way additional developments are regarded. It's really hard to shake a reader off an entrenched position on a matter, even when it was formed with an incomplete picture.

Reading the same events in the archive is quite different. Very little of that inner monologue takes shape. And while the events are still shocking, and the reader may raise his eyebrows a mile high, he then simply lowers them and keeps reading. In fact, because of the reading pace, I would suggest these two deaths actually register as only ONE DRAMATIC EVENT! One guy snaps and kills two characters. In the flow of straight-through reading especially, it is quite startling, tension-building, and can only serve to propel the reader into further pages, at a pace which suspends the experience-compromising (augmenting??) play-by-play.

Hussie would return to this topic again and again, including here and here and here and h8re.

This is in incredibly valuable insight for anyone who creates stories over the long term, especially webcomics. You may or may not agree that Homestuck's finale is well-executed, but I think it's hard to escape the fact that the response to Homestuck's ending, indeed, to most of Act 6, was hugely influenced by these factors. Why? Because the experience of Act 6 and 7 was more affected by hiatuses and the speculation problems they create than any other part of Homestuck.

It's hard to remember these days, but one thing that Homestuck was known for from about 2010-2013 was its absolutely preposterous rate of updates. I'm pretty sure that *was* the initial fuel for the fire that made Homestuck a huge fandom. What other website could you go to see a huge chunk of a story drop on you so regularly? No other webcomic had people using Update Checkers, programs designed to check the RSS feed of Homestuck and tell you within the minute that it had updated so you could check it out before your friends spoiled everything to you. What other webcomic ever needed such a thing? But the first era of Homestuck fandom was predicated on the idea that the comic would update every couple of days, sometimes once a day, sometimes *multiple times in the same day*. No wonder it got so huge so fast. It was an experience unlike almost anything else out there.

Around 2013 this began to change. Homestuck began having large hiatuses, the famous "pauses," and though Hussie indicated the story was working its way towards the finale, it ultimately took until the 2016 anniversary to complete.

Interestingly, it's around 2013 or so that we started seeing frustration with Homestuck break out into a large phenomenon, with many people arguing that the comic had stopped being good, and it's after the largest of these pauses, the Omegapause before the end of Act 6 and Act 7 updates, that we had the famous ending backlash.

The fact that very few people seem to have considered this in their analysis of whether Homestuck is good or not is absolutely staggering to me.

Given these factors, we would expect to see some of the enthusiasm taken out of the Homestuck fandoms during these periods, and strong opinions on where the story should go next, and, lo and behold, that's exactly what we see. The common sentiment is that Homestuck "stopped being fun during Act 6." Well, yeah, it's a lot less fun to have a comic that updates rarely than a comic that updates with loads of content very, very often. That doesn't necessarily mean the content got worse. And yet I see no one asking if this altered our perception of the story.

2) Serial Reading Problems Are Worsened In an Experimental, Twisty Story

This hiatus problem was exacerbated by the nature of Hussie's storytelling. I'd describe his writing style as "affectionate teasing": testing and pushing readers' boundaries, aiming for strong emotional reactions, constantly working to defy and mess with expectations, but ultimately working towards a rich character-based story. Hussie's work whiplashes between humor, horror, worldbuilding, action - it's intense and disconcerting at first, but once you get familiar with it, you see these that all these elements build toward a coherent whole.

I'd argue that this storytelling style is *uniquely* well-suited to long-form reading and endangered by drip-feed reading.

Because when you read piece by piece, you experience whiplash slowly, and that’s not everybody’s kink. Pieces that are meant to work together take on a different tone when read on their own. As discussed above, continuous events seem like separate events when read on their own, and this creates a *false* expectation of where the narrative is going. Furthermore, it's not as much fun to be teased or messed with in slow motion. The expectation that there will be satisfaction and resolution disappears when the current update is all you can think about. This, not a deficit in storytelling, is what created the feeling of "Homestuck’s not fun anymore." But it was the same affectionate, gently teasing storytelling as ever. But this only comes out when the work is re-read.

This is exactly what happened in Act 6 Homestuck. Events seemed like they would go on forever, when in real story terms, they went on for moments. Take the notorious Trickster "arc" (I can't even call it an arc - it’s more of a sequence if anything). Today it's remembered as an unendurable gauntlet of Hussie pushing buttons. The reality of it is, though, if you read through it, it's like Hussie pushing buttons for all of five minutes, like half a chapter from a novel. Literally all it is is: The Gang Gets High on Magic Candy > They Do Stupid Things > Blackout. Mostly it's an excuse for some serious character development *afterward* as the Alphas discuss the bad decisions that led them to this place. It may or not be perfect, but it's definitely a lot more reasonable when you see it's a quick tangent.

Act 6 is full of things like this: events remembered as horrible slogs that are really quite brief in retrospect.

This is brought home when you consider that events in Act 5 – hell, even Acts 3 and 4 – also brought on strong negative responses from the fandom - it's just that they were quickly buried under a story that was quickly moving on to other things. Here are some strong fan outrages from those days I can name off the top of my head:

--This interlude with the trolls is too long, nobody cares about the trolls, Hussie has abandoned the human kids --Nobody cares about troll romance, switch back to the kids --Jade hasn’t been seen onscreen for ages --Vriska’s creation of Bec Noir shows that she is too powerful a character, she will never face comeuppance --John is dead again and Vriska killed him??? --Killing Feferi, Tavros and Kanaya? That’s too many deaths --I thought Feferi was supposed to unite the troll races! You’re telling me that’s not going to happen? --Kanaya is dead??? Fuck that --Scratching the timeline? What, Hussie, you’re going to reset everything and ruin the story? --Equius should have gone out with more dignity, this is a betrayal of his fans --Nepeta shouldn’t have been murdered, this is a betrayal of her fans --Gamzee used to be cute, now he’s a murder machine, this is a betrayal of his fans --We never found out what happened between Gamzee and Karkat? Why won’t the narrative switch back and tell us? --Nobody cares about Doc Scratch --Nobody cares about these stupid Ancestors, switch back to the trolls --Vriska is DEAD? This is a betrayal of her fans

And so on. Reading Hussie’s old Formspring archives is a graduate class in this era of Homestuck fan frustration.

And yet today Act 5 is universally remembered as brilliant, thought of by many as “the time when Homestuck was great.” In my book, while Act 6 does take on different themes than Act 5 (focusing more on the protagonists’ psychology and failures), and thus may not be to everyone’s taste, the biggest difference between the two is that during Act 5, the twists and turns of the story were thought of as part of a unified whole, because the story was barreling along too fast for these complaints to stick around for long.

Given that Hussie has always been aware of the challenges of serial vs archival storytelling, I feel like the relentless output of the first five acts was in part an attempt to mitigate those problems. As if by shoveling content into the mouth of the behemoth, he could propitiate the ravenous fandom horrorterror and thereby stave off the descent of the Infernal Internet Speculation-Expectation Monster that was prophesized to devour all.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t stave it off forever, and lo, in 2013 did the IISEM descend with its glistening tentacle teeth, IA, IA, IA! CHOMP CHOMP.

It astonishes me that in some quarters folks talk about the 2013-2016 pauses as if they were something Hussie wanted, when by all evidence he tried desperately to avoid them up until that point. I don’t need to explain that these hiatuses had to do with restarting the whole process of creating Hiveswap and building a game studio from scratch, right? I don’t need to explain that he got screwed over and these were circumstances outside his control, right? Let’s assume we’re on the same page there. If not, I suggest you look into the matter before assuming these hiatuses had anything to do with creator apathy.

After a certain point, Hussie faced a difficult choice. Unable to keep up the rapid-pace storytelling, he could change the storytelling to make it suit a serial reader, or he could focus on making the story the best it could be for an archive reader.

I think he went for the better option: aiming for the archive reader. If you’re going to argue that he should have put the emphasis on the serial reader: which serial reader are we talking about here? The one who started following in Homestuck in 2010, like me? The one who started after Horrorstuck, and viewed it, but not the end of Act 5, as a complete whole? The one who joined during late Act 6? How the hell would you decide that? Whose experience is the one to privilege?

The only option that really makes sense is to aim for the version of the story that will be around the longest and experienced by the most people: the archive that is the complete story of Homestuck.

Ultimately, I don’t think he could have changed his style of storytelling anyway, and to do so would have been to lose the combination of humor, madness, and surprises that brought us all to Homestuck in the first place. Forced to reckon with a difficult situation, he focused on making his kind of story the best that it could be, and I think Homestuck is better for it.

Given his awareness of the problem as expressed above, I’m sure Hussie knew proceeding over the long term would stoke a lot of resentment in the fandom. But he went ahead and did it anyway, because his goal was not to live up to a certain set of expectations. His goal was to tell what he saw as the best possible version of the story. I have an immense respect for him for that.

3) The Last Pause is the Deepest (or: Omegapause Killed the Character Development Star)

The final hiatus problem I want to point to is that in terms of the narrative arc of Homestuck, the final pause, the Omegapause, came at the most inopportune time for readers to get a sense of the conclusion of that narrative.

Basically, many character arcs in Homestuck were concluded *before* Collide and Act 7. Before the Omegapause. Indeed, Hussie brought many long-running arcs to an end in a very satisfying way during the “conversation” sequence before the final fight, from Dave’s long-needed conversation with Dirk about Bro to Rose’s finally getting to meet and befriend Roxy, to Game Over!Terezi and (Vriska’s) reunion. In narrative terms, Collide was not the climax, even if it might have been perceived to be. The climax was the Retcon sequence preceding the conversations – the desolation of Game Over, our surviving protagonists’ despair, then victory in the form of negotiating with the Denizens, representatives of Skaia, to create a timeline in which victory may take place, both in game terms and emotional terms. The conversation before the final battle showed us an emotional victory – victory in game terms was really just icing on the cake, or an echo of that emotional victory.

The trouble is, having a long pause before the final battle sequences created the false perception that the conversation was merely the prelude to the climax: that, in fact, the climax had not yet taken place. For us serial readers, it was easy to conclude that there was further character development to come.

Well, in some ways there was, and in some ways there wasn’t. Dirk and Dave got to have another big moment in Collide that drove their themes home, while Rose and Roxy had basically already done their thing earlier and just got to fight alongside each other. Meanwhile Vriska and Caliborn’s arcs really culminated in Act 7, and some, like John’s and Ret-Terezi’s, were complicated and continued by the Credits aftermath and probably won’t be brought to a final end until the Epilogue. There’s a degree of variation, which I enjoy. Collide does serve some functions: characters who were at an emotional distance from each other (for instance Jane and Jake), got to fight alongside each other and start building back their friendships. Overall, though, the bulk of emotional entanglements got resolved in that conversation, making the Retcon the load-bearing piece of Homestuck’s climax.

This is why the Omegapause was the most dangerous pause: because it built up an expectation that things would further develop from there with new entanglements and complications, instead of aiming towards a tying-off of plot elements into a conclusion.

I remember what *I thought* the post-Omegapause sequence was going to be: a showdown between the kids and Lord English as he entered the game session through Bec Noir, Spades Slick and Lord Jack. I expected there would be a twist, and I expected one or more of our protagonists would die. I was thrown for a loop when I realized the story had basically been almost over, with no last twist, no “secret final battle” of kids vs LE in sight.

But as I reread the ending of Act 6, I realized: that would have been so much stupider than what actually happened. The fact that the kids don’t directly face LE and Vriska does is one of the most brilliant parts of the ending, and on the reread I rapidly fell in love with the Homestuck’s conclusion. What had thrown me off was the fact that I developed my expectations during a period where it looked like we were further from the end.

But in retrospect, Hussie had been saying all along that we were very close to the conclusion – it was just, at that moment, very easy to get the wrong impression.

Rarely do I see anyone taking anything like this into account.

I do think we could have benefited from more character development after the pause, if for no other reason than to overcome these problems and make the victory feel a little more grounded, and I do feel like certain characters (Jane comes to mind) got more limited and abbreviated endings. But these are minor points for me in the overall arc of Homestuck’s narrative, which in my experience establishes its conclusion very, very well.

4) Homestuck’s Ending Is a Glorious Queer Gnostic Account of Escaping from Narrative Oppression (and Yes, Virginia, it Has Character Arcs)

Okay, so I’ve written a lot about *what* I love about the ending of Homestuck elsewhere, going on for pages and pages, which you can read here and here. For now, let me just attempt (as absurd as it is) a quick summary.

Homestuck in Act 6 parallels many different motifs to drive home the idea that escaping from Lord English’s domain is an escape from a cosmic oppression, and serves as a metaphor for escaping and defying real-life oppressions and hegemonies. These motifs include Gnosticsm, queer identity, pluralism, and a metafictional examination of the controlling role of the narrative that is Homestuck itself.

Gnosticism is an ancient early alternate version of Christianity that posits a false reality created by a false creator, the Demiurge Yaldabaoth, who rules over human beings but whose domain it is the Gnostic’s quest to escape. The Demiurge styles himself a Lord God (often the very same one from Judaism and more mainstream Christianity) and an artist but is in fact incompetent and limited in comparison with the true harmonious reality. That he was able to create such a false world was a cosmic accident caused by angel-like beings known as Aeons, who existed perfect symmetrical pairs until an asymmetry caused Yaldabaoth’s creation. Sophia, the asymmetrical Aeon is our path back to that perfection. Furthermore, the false world is the world of flesh and matter and material things, while the true world is the world of ideas, symbols and archetypes, a place of divine Platonic form. By knowledge (gnosis) we become our true selves and are set free. Gnosticism is anti-authoritarian, anti-patriarchal, and devoted to each human being’s quest to connect to the divine on their own terms.

Gnostic motifs proliferate everywhere in Homestuck, especially Act 6, from such chat handles as GardenGnostic, TimaeusTestified, and TipsyGnostalgic to basically everything about Calliope and Caliborn, including and especially their role in the finale. Act 7 depicts Caliborn as trapped within the realm he is created, destined for power but ultimately doomed to it, destroyed in the perfect moment where Calliope, his counterpart, brings his domain to an end.

Caliborn’s realm is the sequence of time loops and set of worlds that brought Lord English into being, but it’s also the narrative Homestuck that depicts those events and worlds. He complains about the narrative Homestuck, argues with its author, and tries to make his own version, just as a demiurge would. (Secretly, because of his cosmic influence, he’s more of an influence than he realizes. He places limits and boundaries on these worlds in the form of the narratives he perpetuates, and is obsessed with sexist ideas, exploitation, and themes of masculinity, importance and power. That the heroes escape this realm in which he has control is also them escaping these narratives that have been placed upon them.

This is the sense in which Dave says “we don’t have arcs.” As I’ve said elsewhere, it’s not Hussie rejecting the idea of giving his characters meaningful stories (this is largely a false impression generated by the Omegapause weirdness), as shown by the fact that Dave himself has one of the best, strongest arcs in the whole story. What Dave means, and what Dave’s arc is about, is that he had to let go of the false ideas, false narratives placed on him by the world (Lord English’s world, the Demiurge’s world) in which he lived. He did this by understanding the abuse he suffered from Bro (a Caliborn-esque figure) was wrong, and by overcoming his internalized homophobia to realize the value of the relationship he’d found with Karkat.

This is a frequent motif in the final pages of Homestuck. Queerness is represented as a way of escaping the patriarchal, conservative God of the Demiurge, and that these revelations about Dave appear in parallel with the final departure from the domain Caliborn controls is no coincidence. Queer relationships and identities build in the ending of Homestuck into what Hussie tongue-in-cheek called “the gay singularity.” This growth in queerness is represented as growth toward meaning, and further queer figures like the non-binary Davepeta appear as idealistic mentors to teach our heroes to understand their cosmic circumstances.

At the same time, the growth from a material world to a world of ideas is represented as the heroes taking on God Tier identities that embody aspects—ideas that are literally the building blocks of the universe. To know yourself as an aspect is to know who you are, and by knowing who you are, you become an idea that is divine. This all takes place at the same time characters grow towards queerness. To know your own queer identity is also to become divine.

And, at the same time, the characters leave the narrative. Everything that was Caliborn’s – his worlds, his time loops and influence— is left behind by the characters as they move into the realm where they are heroes, leaders, and gods. They pass through a door that resembles the weapon that he used, that is his narrative, the weapon shaped like the symbol of Homestuck, the weapon that *is* the narrative Homestuck. It is a weapon against him because he stays behind, on the other side of the door. Lord English can never leave. He’s in the dark pocket of the black hole forever. Caliborn enters a realm that appears to give him power—but he never comes out. He’s trapped by his own limited idea of who he is and what the world should be.

This is a fantastic, culturally resonant, and very Gnostic ending.

And as to Vriska—I’ve seen many people say that Vriska’s retconned revival gives her too much power and agency, but I actually think it strikes the perfect balance. The story understands what she wants. But it’s not on her side. I have a lot more to say about her (perhaps l8r), but here’s the most important thing: Vriska can’t leave, either. She gets what she wants: the ultimate fulfilment of her identity as The Hero. She gets to Kill the Bad Guy. But at a cost she is incapable of recognizing. Like Caliborn, she never gets to go on to be a fulfilled, happy patron of the new universe. She is always on the inside of the door, stuck inside Homestuck. And the fact that we’re asked to observe her breaking off her relationship with Terezi to go out in a blaze of glory? The fact that we’re asked to compare her to another version of herself who’s let go of her ego, whose bond with Terezi is the most important thing in her life? The fact, that in her eyes, she comes up better, but in ours, she comes up short? How incredible is that?

Neither the Hero or the Villain, trapped in their own ideas, trapped by their own ideas, can ever be free.

It’s a pretty good ending, is what I’m saying.

5) Against Apathetic Lazy Troll Hussie

So, back to that perception of Hussie I discussed earlier. The idea that he’s a flippant, irreverent prankster who never cared about bringing his story to a good conclusion.

By now it should be clear why I don’t really buy that line of thinking. The sheer effort put into Homestuck after the pauses began, the level of thematic complexity Homestuck was going for at the end—these belie the idea that he was apathetic or lazy or wanted to piss off his fans. What seems obvious to me was that he was committed. He devoted himself to driving towards an end he was personally satisfied with, whatever anyone else thought of it, and chose to accept the consequences of having to tell it over the long term.

I could see how it might be easy to get the impression that Hussie’s a very frivolous, thoughtless guy, when his in-story self is a ridiculous, flighty orange goofball. But come on. That’s mistaking the persona he uses for comedy with his actual self as a writer. Reading any interview, Q&A session, or discussion with him reveals how much thought he put into every moment of Homestuck, and above all, that he was committed to putting an incredible amount of effort into it from the very beginning.

He was also committed to challenging himself and bettering his work, whether that meant trying new experiments (flash games, new animation styles, splitting panels and dialogue, messing with formatting, letting the villains take over the website, etc., etc., etc…) or rethinking his work to take account of a larger, more diverse perspective, as we saw with the developing queerness and introspection of characters like Dave.

Yet he knew that not all experiments would be received well. He chose to accept that, to not wallow in the familiar but to take on new things regardless of in-the-moment reader reactions. As he put it:

I guess I just believe in sticking to your guns as a creator. It doesn't mean you completely ignore what people have to say or fail to take it under advisement, but pandering and caving into critics for fear of diminished appreciation is the wrong way to go. Staying the course with your vision doesn't mean you'll do everything right, but if included in that vision is serious, concerted exploration, you can only benefit as an artist. Adversaries to this cause should be regarded as villains.

There are two ways to do the "obstinate douche bag" thing as an artist.

One is in vehement defense of stagnation. Some artists I've encountered do this, and it's completely indefensible. It's as low as you can get, creatively speaking.

The other is in vehement defense of exploration. This is just the opposite. This is a posture everyone should strive for, and these artists are the ones people should be most inclined to offer their attention and support.

That's just how I feel about it, and I come from a zero-BS standpoint on it all. This isn't a job for me, and I'll never modify my approach to protect a bottom line. If it was just a job, I guarantee I wouldn't spend every waking hour doing it. It's kind of a strange personal mission I'm on, which I happen to make money from, and that's cool. People are welcome to come along for the ride.

There’s a deep, deep irony to me in the fact that some talk about Act 6 Homestuck like it was a stagnant period in Homestuck’s development, when in fact, it was one of its most creative and experimental periods. This is true both of its structural and visual experiments, where messing with form finally revealed itself to be central to Homestuck’s major themes, and of its storytelling experiments. It’s understandable that diving into the kids’ psychological problems was a shift, and not everyone was down with it, but the very fact it was a shift shows that Hussie was trying new things. It would have been easy for him to stay in a comfortable place doing the same things he did in Act 4 and 5, but instead, he began to ask different questions and take the story someplace new. And honestly? Act 6 took a long time to pay its full dividends, but I loved where we ended up in the end.

(What kept us from enjoying it in the moment? The pauses. Once again the pauses.)

But for me, the thing that most puts the lie to the idea of Lazy Hussie is the sheer fact of Act 6’s existence itself.

Consider how easy it would have been to drop Homestuck completely when things got rough in the middle years. Consider how many webcomic authors would have done just that. I can name many webcomic hiatuses where the webcomic never came back.

But Homestuck did. Not only did it return, it returned spectacularly, scorchingly, with the shocking and dynamic Game Over, with Caliborn’s claymations, with two spectacular, full-length animations, one of them lovingly-hand drawn. It returned with metafictional shenanigans and glorious queer Gnostic themes. Hussie kept going, and kept experimenting all along the way.

This is the furthest thing in the world from laziness.

And the same is true for Hiveswap. It astonishes me how much I’ve heard Hiveswap talked about as a debacle or a betrayal of its fans. Despite having horrible problems dropped on him, the sort that would ruin any other Kickstarter, Hussie spent the next few years working to make sure he met the promises he’d made to his fans. He did.

My dudes, Hiveswap is real. It exists. It delivers on every promise that was made about what it might be: it’s a fun, pretty, point-and-click adventure game telling a new story in the world of Homestuck. It’s creative and clever and updates an old style of gameplay by letting you put things on things to your heart’s content. It’s certainly more accessible than Homestuck, and not yet as structurally complex, but given future installments, there’s plenty of time for it to grow into something rich and thorny. And rather than see this idea go under, from basically nowhere Hussie worked to bring together a small, diverse team of queer artists and creators to make this thing happen.

Again, not exactly laziness.

That’s why it angers me when I see people calling Hiveswap (somehow?) a betrayal of Homestuck fans, or advocating pirating Hiveswap or demanding their money back because it doesn’t live up to some weird set of expectations they placed on it. Maybe during the periods of drought and ambiguous release dates, both for Homestuck and Hiveswap, it made a little sense to be skeptical of Hussie making promises, but now?

It’s basically spitting in the face of a creator who kept working in the most difficult circumstances, and the small, insanely hard-working team who made it possible, over something that they’ve handed to you exactly as you specified right on your doorstep in a gift-wrapped box.

I’m not saying you can’t critique Hussie or his storytelling. He’s definitely a weird dude with a lot of quirks (Which is perhaps the only kind of dude who could have made something as quirky as Homestuck.) I think it’s fair to say he hasn’t always communicated well with the fandom. But the reaction to him these days is totally, ludicrously, out of proportion, beyond anything that would be a useful critique.

A related question is whether Andrew Hussie is burnt out on Homestuck.

Well, maybe?

It’s certainly true that since 2013ish he’s stepped away somewhat from communicating directly with his fans. But 2013 is also the time when Homestuck fandom was at its most massive, its most full of infighting and meaningless arguments, and its most overwhelming to keep up with. I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to hear more of his insights, but it’s pretty understandable that he wanted to step back a bit under the circumstances. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s burnt out. I mean, he seems to be living his best life, posing glamorously with his fidget spinners and Minion t-shirts. Not exactly hiding in a cave. Rock on, dude.

If he is burnt out on Homestuck, though, that makes what he’s done with Homestuck and Hiveswap all the more impressive. That he brought them this far, and wants to see them keep going and keep doing well, when he could have let them drop unceremoniously a long time ago. If he’s delegating some of the work to others, all the better. I can think of nothing better for an artist who’s burnt out and ready to move on than to find people he can trust to keep the things he started going into the future, and that, I think is exactly what we have in What Pumpkin, Viz, and Homestuck’s artistic team.

But even to assume that he’s burnt out is to presume a lot about his mental state from some very scant data. By many other indications, he wants to keep engaging with Homestuck. There’s an Epilogue to come—a capstone for those last few ambiguities surrounding the timeline, John and Terezi. And he’s getting the Homestuck books re-published with new commentary through Viz—so maybe that’s where he wants to have his conversations with his audience. And he’s still the creative director of Hiveswap itself. It’s very possible he’s not burned out—if anything, wants to keep building the world he created in Homestuck and seeing where he can take it next.

Ultimately, I think people’s ideas about Andrew Hussie say a lot more about their lingering feelings about the ending of Homestuck—a backlash brought on by the pauses he had to work with—than anything about Hussie himself.

6) The Conversation Around Homestuck

Homestuck is a goddamn triumph.

There are certainly critiques I could make of it. But they pale in light of what Homestuck is: is one of the most rich, genre-bending, experimental, character-driven, hilarious, innovative, metafictional, transcendent, optimistic works on the Internet—to say nothing of how it dwarfs much of the rest of literature.

Ultimately, I think Hussie was right: as an archive, as the story it is from beginning to end, Homestuck stands. It’s a rich, meaningful work with a meaningful finale, and it’s right there to be read by anyone who wants to read it. In that sense, Homestuck was and Homestuck is. It doesn’t really need me to defend it. Nor does Andrew Hussie.

So why did I write all this? Why did I write everything I’ve written here on this blog?

Well, mostly for Homestuck’s readers. For fans like myself.

Because I still see people who came away from Homestuck feeling totally burned and abandoned by its creator, when that was anything but the truth. Because I still see people who feel like they can’t escape an awful negativity about this comic, about the ending of something they passionately loved. I want them to see that it doesn’t have to feel that way.

And because I want Homestuck criticism to be better. Because I see prominent bloggers, some of whom I really respect, taking so little of this stuff into account. I want to see people talk about Homestuck’s place in literature, in internet culture, without discounting how circumstances shaped how it was perceived. I want to get away from a lazy cynicism—that cynicism everywhere online—about whether stories can be meaningful at all. A cynicism that Homestuck is the very antithesis of through its themes of transcendence and hope.

I think for some people, Homestuck is that weird old obsession they cringe at. The ghost of teenage fandoms past. Which is fine. It’s reasonable to want to move on. But it frustrates me when I see the same cynical, cringing attitude affecting how people feel—or feel like they’re allowed to feel without social stigma—about the work Homestuck itself. I’m not interested in cringe culture.

I frankly don’t have time for it when Homestuck’s as good as it is.

Don’t get me wrong, I want Homestuck to be criticized, too. I want to hear what its flaws are. I think that’s also an important part of the conversation. But don’t tell me it’s a pointless, apathetic work, that it’s just the product of laziness. Because we know better than that by now. Because we need a better conversation than that. Don’t tell me that Homestuck doesn’t have Gnostic themes. Tell me how it uses them, and how it could use them better. Don’t tell me Homestuck’s meaningless. Tell me how it strives to be meaningful—because it does, in every aspect of its storytelling—and tell me where it succeeds, and where it fails.

That’s the kind of conversation I want to have about Homestuck.

You may not agree with the things I’ve pointed to here—you may think that Homestuck’s ending is much more flawed than I do. But that’s totally fair. All I want to say is this:

If you were holding off from letting yourself enjoy Homestuck, or if you once enjoyed it and wish you could enjoy it again, or if the experience of the ending left you feeling disappointed and frustrated and burned out…

Give it another read, especially Act 6 and 7.

You might be surprised how much you like what you find.

#homestuck #homestuck ending #homestuck analysis #homestuck criticism #andrew hussie #off-the-cuff homestuck thoughts extravaganza 2017 #now in 2018 #in defense of homestuck #homestuck fandom #understanding homestuck #ending themes #understanding the ending #serial vs archival reading #homestuck is good actually #against lazy cynicsm #towards a better conversation #keep rising

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thelibrarianintraining · 6 years

Text

The Division - Chapter Nine - Mitch Rapp

Author: @thelibrarianintraining

Title: “Princess”

Word Count: 4,370

Warnings: violence, character death, angst, language

Summary: Gallowin finally gets answers and, with Rapp’s help, a chance to redeem herself.

Masterlist

Chapter Eight - Chapter Nine - Chapter Ten

Eve couldn't believe it. She'd wished that he could see her out having fun without him and she'd only made herself look like a fool. She had let herself get wasted for reasons that upon reflection didn’t make any sense. Now she was showering in some trashy motel because she'd puked on the way there. Plus, Rapp thought King was probably watching her hotel and she'd had no idea. Her night had turned into a disaster.

She stared at herself in the mirror as she brushed her teeth. Well, more glared at herself in the mirror. She was sobering up and despite the shower, she felt more disgusting than she had before. She couldn't help but feel ashamed of the way she'd been acting. So they’d slept together a few times, but that had been it. Neither of them had ever implied that it meant more than that. So why had she been so upset about him being gone? It wasn’t like they were a couple. It wasn’t like he had any obligation to come find her or even make contact with her. She’d been acting ridiculous. And it didn’t matter how many times she told herself that, she was still upset.

"Feeling better?" he questioned, when she stepped out of the bathroom wearing his clothes. They didn't really fit her, she was too short and too thin, but they smelled like him. She'd missed his scent, though she wouldn't admit it. She'd missed him too. He was so many things that she disliked, but when you put them all together to make Mitch Rapp, it turned out that she loved them. There was just something about him beyond that headstrong, angry, aggravating exterior that she couldn't resist.

"Not particularly, no. I feel sick and stupid and gross. Thanks for asking though," she snapped sarcastically.

"Oh, no problem, princess. I promise next time I'll let you sleep it off." She glared at him and he stared back silently from his chair in the corner. Despite her rational thinking in the bathroom, she had to know.

"Two months, Rapp. Why are you here now?" The question came out exactly how you’d expect a pissed off girlfriend to ask it.

"Eve, what was I supposed to do? I've been chasing him this whole time. I couldn't risk losing him again." Rapp had pushed himself to his feet and he held his hands out in front of him like he wanted to know what more she wanted of him.

"You might be losing him right now." She pointed out.

"He's coming after you. I haven't lost him yet."

"Is that why you came after me? You needed me as bait?" She frowned, her feelings only slightly hurt. Afterall, there wasn't much more that he could do to hurt them.

"Eve, I had no idea where you were. You think your dad would tell me that?" Rapp sighed. He seemed genuine, but Eve wasn't so sure.

"Like you needed him to tell you shit."

"I had to update your dad everyday on where I was and where I was going. Why? So that he could make sure to send you somewhere else so you'd be safe. I'm guessing that the only reason that we crossed paths was because he doesn't know where you are."

"You've never followed his orders before." She glared at him, her hands clenched in fists at her sides as Rapp made his way closer to her.

"Maybe I wanted to keep you out of harm's way just as much as he did," stated Rapp as he paused right in front of her. There were only a few inches between them. She could easily wrap her arms around him and breathe in as much of his scent as she wanted, but she didn't. She couldn't forget that he hadn't made any contact with her for months. He'd basically disappeared. Saying something and meaning it were two completely different things. "If I could have found a way to safely contact you, I would have, Eve. I couldn't risk it. It was enough for me just to know that you were alive."

"Yeah, well, no one was keeping me updated. You could've gotten yourself blown to bits and I never would have known." Her voice dropping in volume as she spoke, staring at the floor because she couldn't let him see how much the thought of that happening had scared her. She didn't want to admit it, but the thought of something happening to him absolutely terrified her. She'd lost people before, but Rapp was different. It was true that you never knew what was going to happen. There was always a possibility that you might be seeing someone for the last time, but with Rapp, it was an extremely high possibility every single time. He was great at his job, but there was no guarantee that he'd make it back to her.

"Hurley would let you know," he said quietly, letting one of his hands rest on her shoulder before sliding down to grip her arm gently.

"Orion's agents don't exist, Rapp, and my father made it very clear that he disapproved," she murmured. Mitch pulled her into his chest.

"Your dad might be an asshole, but I don't think that he's that big of an asshole. He loves you a lot more than he lets on."

"Wouldn't that be all the more reason for him not to tell me?"

"Aren't you supposed to be the optimistic one?" chuckled Rapp, grabbing her chin between his thumb and forefinger so that he could lift her face towards his. She looked up at him, still frowning.

"I'm not forgiving you yet, Rapp," she warned. He nodded as if to say that he already knew and then he bent his head down and kissed her. She kissed him back for a moment and then pushed him away. "I'm serious, this doesn't mean that you're forgiven."

"I know," he chuckled. She buried her face in his chest. “I missed you, Rapp.”

“Yeah, I missed you too, Gallowin. How about you get some sleep and we’ll take care of all this in the morning?” he questioned. She nodded and pulled away from him slowly. When she crawled onto the bed, suddenly feeling extremely exhausted, Rapp followed. He pulled her into his chest and it didn’t take her long to fall asleep. She slept better than she had in over two months.

Eve had slept until mid afternoon and when she finally woke up in Rapp’s arms, she felt astonishingly well-rested. She’d assumed that she’d feel awful, but she felt fine. She kind of wanted to curl up against Rapp and continue to sleep. With her head resting on his chest, she could hear the steady beat of his heart and the easy in and out of his breaths. It would’ve been enough to soothe her back to sleep had he not already noticed that she was awake.

“It’s about time you woke up, I was starting to wonder if you had gone into a coma,” he grumbled teasingly. She sighed and pushed herself into a sitting position, the moment ruined. He followed her lead, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. She stared at his back for a moment as it suddenly hit her the kind of danger that she’d actually been in, if his theory was right. She also realized that Rapp could’ve killed King two months earlier, if only he hadn’t paused to make sure that she was okay and able to defend herself.

“Thanks, Rapp,” she said quietly. He glanced over his shoulder at her and she had to resist the urge to wrap her arms around and just hold him tight.

“For what?”

“Everything that you’ve done for me. You could’ve already finished this job, if I hadn’t been in your way,” she stated. This time he turned to face her.

“Who would’ve found out that it was King we were after?”

“Who let him get away the first time?”

“Oh, save it Gallowin,” snapped Rapp in annoyance. “We’ve all screwed up. Even your dad has screwed up.”

They were both silent as they looked at each other. He had a point, she had to admit.

“We’re gonna finish this together, all right?” he asked. She nodded.

They'd had to stop by a store to replace her clothes, and now they were in an alley a couple blocks from the club. It was time to take down King.

They didn't have much of a plan. Nothing more than to hope that King really was following Eve and he'd show up in the club. Hopefully, Rapp’s presence hadn’t spooked him. Eve was expecting a bloodbath, but hoping that it'd just be a simple kill. She glanced over at Rapp as she buckled her shoulder holsters. He was in the process of tucking his Beretta into the waistband of his jeans. He let the back of his henley shirt fall to cover it and then turned to face her.

"Could you take any longer?" he questioned, teasingly.

"I like to be prepared," she laughed, tucking her guns into their holsters and tugging a leather jacket on.

"We barely even have a plan," he laughed.

"All the more reason to be prepared," she responded, then gave him a once over. "Only the Beretta? C’mon, Mitch."

He shrugged.

"Be careful, Rapp. I just got you back," she ordered. She had too much left to say to him. If anything happened to him, she’d regret not saying it for the rest of her life, but she couldn’t. Now wasn’t the time. They both needed to focus on this mission and if she was misreading his feelings, it could throw both of them off their game.

"Yes, Princess," he sighed in mock exasperation before leaning in to kiss her. "Wait for me, all right?"

"Of course. I'll see you soon."

Eve had no issues getting into the club. No one was going to check her for weapons. And who would want to tell her she wasn’t allowed in when she looked so damn good?

She grabbed a drink while she waited on Rapp and nursed on it while she watched the other guests enjoying their night. Halfway through her drink, she started to question what was taking Rapp so long.

"What’s a girl like you doing sitting all by herself?" questioned a voice and she turned to face the speaker, a little worried that she might have put herself in danger. She gave him a quick once over. Dark hair, light eyes, a slight bit of stubble. It was possible that she'd seen him before, but she didn't recognize him.

"Ah, no, thank you. I was just having a drink while I wait on my friend," she replied. She glanced at her phone to check the time and pretended to be checking a message.

“Well, would you like me to buy you a drink while you wait on her?” questioned the man. She smiled but shook her head.

"He'll be here any minute."

"Is he usually late?" questioned the man, his tone changing slightly now that he knew her friend was male. She thought about the "I'll see you soon," that had upset her so much and laughed.

"Occasionally, but he always shows up," she responded. "I'm sure that he'll be here any minute."

"Just in case, I could buy-"

"Hey, darling," said a smoky voice as Rapp slid onto the stool beside her. She shivered at the feeling of his breath on her neck as he leaned in close to her. "Sorry that I'm late. I found a little trouble on my way here."

"You find a little trouble everywhere you go," she smiled as she turned her seat back to face him. Rapp shot a pointed look at the man beside her, who made a hasty exit. It was smart choice on his part. "Thanks, Rapp."

"I think we need to have a conversation about you and I," he responded, before leaning on the bar and asking the bartender for a water. He turned his attention back to her. "Seeing that guy sitting here next to you, offering you a drink..." The bartender set a glass of water in front of him and Rapp thanked him before settling into silence for a moment as if he was thinking. He glanced back up at her. "It really pissed me off. Not as much as last night though. I hated seeing that guy touching you. God, I wanted to be him so bad. I know we talked about some stuff last night, but there's a lot of stuff that we need to sort out and a lot of things that I think I need to say."

There was a different intensity to Rapp's eyes. It wasn't the same kind of look as when he was on a mission or when he was doubting loyalties or when he was seeking justice or revenge. Eve's heartbeat picked up. This was a side of him that she hadn't seen before and she definitely wanted to see all of it.

"This isn't really the place or time for it though," he added as he glanced around the club. "Maybe the best thing is to wait until we're stateside."

"What if one of us doesn't make it stateside?" she questioned. She didn't like to think that way, but this wasn't just a fun personal trip and she’d had a bad feeling all evening. It had started out a fun trip for her, but she'd always unknowingly been in danger. Rapp hadn't finished his assignment yet. They were both at risk. He stared at her, twirling the glass of water on the bar unconsciously.

"If you think I'd ever let anything happen to you, then I have a lot more to say than I thought," he replied, his brown eyes staring into hers. He pulled out his wallet and placed a few bills on the counter before he handed a picture to Eve. Rapp was holding onto a beautiful blond woman. He was grinning, the kind of smile that Eve couldn't say she'd ever seen on his face before. He looked like a different man. She hadn't even known he was capable of feeling that kind of joy. Then she realized what she was looking at. It was the beach. It was that day. It was Katrina. It was supposed to be the beginning of a new life for both of them, but it had ended the life of one. It was the catalyst.

"I let her down." he stated and she looked back up at him. The intensity in his eyes was almost terrifying. "But I swear that I will never ever let anything happen to you. I was only a hundred feet from her and I couldn't do anything, but I swear to you, if I'm a thousand miles away, three thousand miles away, I'll do whatever it takes."

The look in his eyes left her with no doubt that he would kill for her. He tucked the picture back into his wallet and then slipped the wallet back into his pocket.

"How about we finish this mission, because I feel like we have a lot to talk about and we're gonna need a lot of time. We better not waste too much of it on King," she said, leaning towards him. "But in the meantime, how about we dance?"

He studied her for a second and then stood up to offer her his hand. She grinned and tugged him along behind her into the crowd. When she’d seen him the night before, she’d wished that it was his hands holding her hips against his own, his body that she was exploring with her fingertips and grinding against. At least, until she’d realized just how pissed off she actually was that he’d picked that moment to show up. Now that they’d talked it over though, she was going to make that dream a reality.

At first, he was reluctant and his movements were a little stiff, but when he finally started to move with her, she wasn’t disappointed. She pressed her body in close against it and moved to the beat of the music that she could feel pounding in her chest. It was like she didn’t have her own heartbeat anymore. Just the music. And she didn’t have control over her body anymore. The music guided her with it’s beat and Rapp guided her with his hands.

It was nearing closing time before Rapp caught sight of King. He'd been starting to question if the arms-dealer would show, but there he was on the second floor, scanning the crowd. He locked eyes with Rapp and nodded to him. This was it. Their wait was over and they were going to end this once and for all.

"He's here," he said as he leaned in so Eve could hear him. She nodded and pulled away from Rapp to make her way toward the restrooms where she'd pull the fire alarm. The plan was for the remaining people in the club to get out and leave only King and his men. They wanted as few casualties as possible. Rapp kept his eyes on King as he waited for the alarm.

When it went off, King ordered his men to stay in the building. When the club cleared, only Rapp, Gallowin, King, and his men were left. He had one with him and a few spread out through the club. It added up to four men, not including King.

"I see you finally figured out my game, Mr. Rapp," King shouted. "I admit, it took you much longer than I had anticipated."

"How did you know where she'd be?" questioned Rapp.

"I've had a man tailing her since Hurley picked her up. He's an expert in that kind of thing, kept me updated on where she was heading, who she was with, that kind of thing. It's how I knew that you'd found her and now that you're both in the same place at the same time, my life is going to get a little bit easier. No surprises this time," he replied as he made his way down the stairs with his bodyguard in front of him. "This works better for me. I thought she'd been playing you like she had me, but when she refused to kill you, oh, I knew otherwise. That may have hurt me even more, honestly. I offered her the world. Nice cars, a big house, anything she wanted. What have you got? Some fancy tactical training, US government wages, and what? That's it."

Rapp's gun was drawn and he aimed it for King as two simultaneous shots rang out behind him.

"Left, Rapp!" shouted Gallowin and he turned his gun, firing on the man in the doorway as soon as his sights landed on him. Then he took out the third man. He heard one of Eve's guns go off behind him, but when he spun back around, a fifth man had appeared and he had a gun held to her temple. She had her hands on the arm that he had wrapped around her neck as she tried to escape. She locked eyes with him and her gaze shifted to King. "Eliminate the target, Rapp."

"He's not going to do that, princess," laughed King, using Rapp's pet name for her, the one that he'd only ever used when they were alone or no one was close enough to hear. His eyes widened and he glanced at her. Her eyes were just as wide as his. "Like I said, Mr. Rapp, he kept me updated on everything." King pressed his fingertips together in front of his chest and glanced at Eve. "Ms. Gallowin here is quite troublesome, yes, but not as much so as a highly trained assassin that isn't even supposed to exist. You pose a big problem. How do I fix the problem? Well, I exploit your partnership with Gallowin. But, of course, it was even easier when I found out that you'd gotten a little too close to her. Heartbreaking, but much much easier."

King's bodyguard stepped towards Rapp and Rapp fired on him. The man fell to the ground and Rapp turned his attention back to a smiling Jackson King. He kept his aim on King's forehead.

"Uh-uh-uh. Don't pull that trigger. You do and Gallowin is dead before I hit the floor. You kill me and you're killing her too," stated King, finally drawing his own gun.

"I'm dead either way, Rapp. Do it now!" ordered Eve. She grunted as the man lifted her off the floor, choking her as her feet dangled beneath her. Rapp glanced between the two men, his heart racing in his chest. Why had he promised to keep her safe, when he knew that he couldn't keep anyone safe? Katrina, Anika, and now Eve. Either, Eve's blood was on his hands or he'd fail this mission and question her safety everyday. King was getting closer to the exit with each passing moment. Rapp saw only one way out.

He took a deep breath and turned, firing the Beretta three times, overkill maybe, but he didn't care. All three hit their mark. Eve stumbled to the floor gasping for air as the man holding her toppled to ground, his gun firing as he hit the floor, dead before he even began to fall. King collapsed a few feet from the exit, two bullets through the back of his head.

"Go, Rapp," urged Eve, and when he didn't move, she shouted at him again. "Rapp, go."

He shook his head and tucked his gun into his waistband as he crouched down next to her and tried to help her to her feet. She inhaled sharply and collapsed onto her back, pulling her jacket to the side to reveal the blood staining her white tank top. The blood was still spilling from her side, just below her ribcage. "Shit, Gallowin! When did that happen?"

"Damn, that hurts like a mother," she grunted, glancing down at the wound and covering it with her hands. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back as she winced. Rapp pressed his own hands to the wound, trying to quell the flow of blood. She took a deep breath.

"You should've went after him. Now we're both fucked," she grunted.

"No, we're not," he said, nodding in the direction of King's body. "I just saved our asses."

She closed her eyes and let out a sigh of relief before she looked at Rapp again.

"We should probably have that conversation right now."

"Oh, don't give me that bullshit, Gallowin," he snapped. "What happened to your whole patience deal?"

"You could at least try to have a little sympathy for me," she argued. "I'm bleeding out here."

"You're not dying. Just keep pressure on that."

“No, I was just going to move my hand and let my guts spill all over the floor. Shit.” He resisted the urge to roll his eyes as her sarcasm shifted into a pained hiss when he scooped her up as gently as he could and headed for the door. They were almost to the front door when they heard shouting outside. Eve huffed out a sigh of annoyance and reached for Rapp's gun, keeping one of her hands pressed to her side. The door swung open and she aimed, ready to fire on whoever entered the building, but it was Hurley.

"You are two of the most reckless little shits on-" he cut himself off as his eyes fell on Eve. "Let's go, we've got supplies in the van."

"How'd you know?" questioned Rapp. He and Hurley had settled down at the table with coffee as soon as they'd made sure that Eve was comfortable. They’d rushed her to the hospital first to patch up her wound that had turned out to be fairly minor. It had gone straight through and somehow missed everything important.

"You didn't call in to update me this morning..." Hurley glanced at his watch. "Sorry, yesterday morning."

Rapp opened his mouth to say something, but Hurley immediately shut him down.

"I don't need an excuse. I don't want to know why...And then Eve was supposed to call me before she boarded her flight home yesterday. Usually she'd call me to let me know that she was staying longer than expected. She didn't do either so I did some snooping. Found out that she was here. You'd already let me know that you were here following King. I figured it was better to waste a trip than lose two operatives because I didn't act on a gut feeling."

Eve shot him a glare when he mentioned snooping, but didn't bother to say anything. She was too tired to worry about it and too smart to interrupt her father. It'd saved their butts in the long run anyway. It was hard to say where they’d be at that moment, if Hurley hadn’t shown up.

"What about the club?" Rapp was asking all the same questions that Eve wanted to so she just kept her mouth shut and let him roll with it. She needed to preserve her energy for the flight back home anyway.

"It was one of King's only connections in the area so we were watching it already. When you set the alarm off we took it as a good sign that something was going down."

"Damn good thing," stated Rapp, glancing at Eve.

“I know that I told you to never let it get personal, Rapp, but this time, I’m glad you didn’t listen to me.”

"Does getting shot mean that I get to take time off to recover? Because it sucks. Big time," said Eve, finally joining in the conversation.

"I think you both need some time off," stated Hurley, glancing between the two of them as he stood up. "I'll let you know when we have something else."

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