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amethystdarkwolf · 4 years

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My ‘Orange Side’ predictions, theories and a lot of Logan angst.

So I've had this theory for a hot second, and only recently decided to finally sit down and write it out. This goes on for quite a bit, and is a little bit on the heavier side, as it has my predictions for the last dark side, and a bunch of little patterns that are interesting to point out, that mostly lead to angst.

Okay, enjoy!

TL;DR is right before the little bonus thing at the end that's just more angst stuff for Logan that kind of applies.

So if you've been in the fandom for really any amount of time, you will know about The Rainbow Theory. Basically, all it is, is that the sides colors will make up the rainbow, and it seems to be nearly canon. We have all the colors except one. And that color is Orange.

Using the knowledge that this side will (most likely) be orange, we have a clue about him. That he's watching, and that he's aware of the audience.

From 26:34 to 26:44, in the upper left hand corner there is a score in orange text, the number is '07734'. Now, if you were to put that number into a calculator and turn it upside down, it would spell out, 'hello.'

Now this is mostly common knowledge at this point due to the fandom (me included) absolutely losing it over the hint of a new dark side. Especially since he shows up seemingly out of nowhere. I just needed to get those establishing bits out of the way before I continued on with the theory so it's a tiny bit easier to track my thinking (I tend to not explain my points correctly before moving onto the next one so I hope I did a better job of it this time through).

He is speaking to us. He's not saying hello to Patton or Roman or even Thomas! They don't even notice it! He is speaking to the viewer, which leads to the question of what exactly this side knows, and more importantly what this side is capable of.

There is also speculation that this dark side is going to be somehow attached to or the opposite of Logan. The opposite of Logic, that implication alone should be at least a little unsettling. Now, I love Logan, I love him a lot, him and Janus are my favorites. But he does seem to have kind of not the best relations with the others at times. However, I do not think we've reached him actually despising any side, not even Remus or Janus. I think that is going to change.

The color schemes Thomas and the team have been using are really clever. They convey a lot about the character just by having the color associated with them. They have also been working with the idea of opposites. And those opposites seem to conflict quite often.

What I mean is, violet on the color wheel is the opposite of yellow. Virgil and Janus' colors. Now, it is very, very plain to see that Virgil and Janus do not get along. Whatever history they have is still up in the air for specifics, but it's obvious that they have one. And at least Virgil hates Janus.

Red and green are also opposites on the color wheel. Even though they have barely interacted, it's clear by Roman's language towards Remus that they don't have the best relationship. Roman breaks down at the mention that him and Remus are similar. Also the funhouse simile, (DWIT: 35:56) "It's a little like, looking into a funhouse mirror, but instead of a giant head, or, like, long legs and a tiny torso... It shows you... Everything you don't want to be." That's more than enough evidence to prove they aren't on the best terms.

Now, onto blue. Blue, more specifically, Logan's shade of blue, is opposite to orange. And judging by the pattern we see developing with the opposite colors. Logan will not like the orange side one bit. Hold onto that piece of information for a moment while I make a few more predictions based on some more patterns.

Someone has already pointed this out, (if someone will be so kind as to remind me of who pointed this out that would be lovely <3), but back in Moving On Part 2, in the background, there is a picture hanging on the wall that will typically change to fit whatever topic they're currently on, (ex: it changed to a picture of Thomas preforming in the show he won the golden apple for when it was brought up, or a zoomed in picture of the children's book he made.) At 1:30 the picture changes to show Thomas doing the 'speak no evil, hear no evil and see no evil' poses. (Covering his mouth, ears and eyes)

The dark sides and Virgil seem to each have a connection to one of these.

Virgil: See no evil. (Embarrassing Phases: 7:32. Virgil makes the room go completely black, blocking everyone's field of vision while he changed Logan's costume.)

Janus: Speak no evil. (Self-explanatory)

Remus: Hear no evil. (DWIT: 5:36-5:48. Remus muffles the other sides conversation, making Thomas hear him clearer than anyone else with the "Have you ever imagined killing your brother?" line.)

The last one in that same vein, would be 'do no evil'.

So what does this pattern have to do with the other patterns I've pointed out?

Well, in order to get there, I need to point out, yet another pattern. (I'm so sorry)

Logan has always been a bit more physical than the rest of the sides I think. I don't really like using pre-Fitting In information in my theories, as I'm unsure of exactly how much they had planned at that point?, but I'm unsure of how to explain my point that well without this example. In Accepting Anxiety part 1, at 6:36 you can see Thomas rubbing the back of his head where he was hit with the laptop, immediately after, you can see Logan do the same thing.

To me this sort of establishes that what happens to Thomas can happen to Logan, making him a bit more of a physical presence than the others. The brain is what stimulates pain after all, it controls all the nerve endings and pain receptors.

Another much looser example, is his puppet choice in LNTAO, the whole 'not made of felt' thing was most likely just because of what Logan said that y'know, he didn't feel anything. It is also the fact of, all of the others puppets had felt somewhere on them, except his. Which makes the puppet, in contrast, feel more sturdy and physical.

I don't think this one applies all too much, but it is worth noting that out of all of the sides, Logan tends to always end up holding something/having something more physical in his possession more than the others. (Moving on being the exception)

The note cards.

The yerkes-dodson curve chart.

In Can Lying Be Good he was given a little headset.

Logic Vs. Passion he had a notebook (Which also made an appearance in Embarrassing Phases) as well as the drawings and graphs, while he wasn't physically holding them, they were real and not animation like Roman's examples.

(If you wanna count the crofters go ahead...?)

LNTAO also had the paper ball throwing physically hurting Roman.

In SvS when he was summoned (lmao summoned to appear in court I just got that as I was typing this out.) He is holding a law book.

In DWIT he gets physically hurt, twice. Having his teeth pulled out, and the throwing star. [Side note: the little interaction at 19:07 could also apply here, showing how he's more grounded as he stays almost completely still when Remus practically jump scares him.]

In the Healthy Distractions video he has what I'm assuming is coffee-

Then in the redux, he physically ends up hurting Patton by popping up too close. An odd little detail that really didn't apply, don't you think? And it's immediately followed up with Patton reiterating that they were just figments of Thomas' imagination.

Logan is much more grounded in reality and more physical than the other sides. Which is a very good thing for Logic to be, that's what it has to be.

Now what is the actual theory?

Virgil can blind the others

Remus can mute the others

Janus can silence the others

My theory is that the 'orange side' is going to have the ability to physically or mentally control the others.

And Logan is going to be his chosen victim, at least at first.

Logan is going to have an antagonistic relationship with this side because of the fact that he takes control away from him. Which order and control is what Logan seems to thrive on!

Keeping schedules, having everything in order, being taken seriously, attempting to make sure that Thomas is punctual, all of those things are Logan trying to maintain control. Now that isn't a bad thing in this circumstance at least, he's trying to make sure Thomas doesn't do anything that would cause his life to devolve into chaos.

But when it's taken away from him it's going to send him into some kind of spiral, and lead to his two-part video. Losing control of things is scary as hell. It was one of the points brought up as to why Remus was being a pest more than usual (DWIT: 29:37-29:56). And obviously being ignored and pushed to the side isn't helping either. It could just be the straw that breaks the camels back.

Long story short, Logan's arc is going to be directly tied to that other dark side, at least in my predictions.

And it's going to hurt.

Okay, this last little bit, is purely speculation, with very little connection to anything in canonicity. All of the dark traits seem to have a connection to some kind of animal, and they're typically ones that are seen as gross or creepy in some form, spider, snake, octopus.

What if the last dark side's animal was some kind of bug? A beetle or something. Like seriously the thought of a bright orange beetle or cockroach is, disgusting.

The only reason I'm saying this is because of a random thought I had. We all know Logan's 'robot' persona he puts up, he can't feel anything, he's mechanical, right? Well, a side coming in and completely flipping all of that on it's head, and ruining the control Logan had...

That would be a real bug in the system, now wouldn't it?

Well! Thank you for reading through all of this! I know it got a bit long-winded I just like having as much evidence as possible before stating a theory.

But those were just my thoughts and I'd love to hear yours! So please tell me what you think!!!

TL;DR: My prediction is that the orange side will be able to take control over the other sides, and he will take control of Logan which would cause Logan to spiral enough to warrant his two part video.

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BONUS: Some more angsty bits about Logan and control, that didn't apply to the theory too much!

So first off, to me Logan seems like a very straight-forward (ha.) problem solver. If there is a problem there is no need to go through extensive loopholes or anything, no emotional mires or musical numbers unless necessary, the problem just needs to be fixed, period end of sentence.

I have a feeling that Logan applies that same logic to himself.

In the videos prior to Losing My Motivation, Logan was very very happy and bubbly. Easily excited and willing to participate in things he probably wouldn't have otherwise. He was much more expressive. (I know this is most likely because he was not a fully fleshed out character yet, but it can tie into some angst.)

Then in Losing My Motivation, Logan was brought the conclusion that he was the problem. (Note: this was also where the infinitesimal mistake was also made.)

From then on, we can slowly see minor changes to him in the videos, he starts becoming more reserved, serious, as well as trying new things to sort of fit in? (i.e the note cards) He saw the problem, and he tried to fix it. He became the definite voice of reason. Him smiling also went down a lot.

Looking back on this better explains why Logan was so upset at the beginning of Logic Vs. Passion, 2:28-2:41. To him he's already fixed his problem, he's fixed himself, he was the problem, how could Thomas run into this problem again!

Then we get to the crofters musical, where he just completely drops his walls down and sings and has fun with something he enjoys. Then of course, Virgil and Patton kinda come and unintentionally embarrass him. And he starts getting more feelings of inadequacy which build up to the whole problem of LNTAO.

Then in SvS almost his entire time on the witness stand was Janus subtly poking at him, and at 15:04, he talks about wanting to make sure Thomas is punctual and productive. He in fact calls it his passion project, something he is PASSIONATE ABOUT.

After two or three years, Logan is still trying to fix the problem. He's still trying to fix himself.

Now this link to control is mostly in what Logan is trying to get Thomas to do, be punctual, follow schedules, produce adequate content at a steady pace, and follow the same pattern every day, according to the chart in Logic Vs. Passion. This habit forming, tends to nearly eliminate variables from Thomas' life. Earning Logan more control. Which is clearly what he's wanting, as he feels that is the way to prevent problems from happening.

#sanders sides #logan sanders #ts sanders sides #theory #sanders sides theory #the orange side #roman sanders #patton sanders #janus sanders #virgil sanders #remus sanders #ts logan #ts roman #ts patton #ts virgil #ts janus #ts remus

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csukiel · 3 years

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The photo above is the cover of the Boston Press and Post on Thursday Morning, April 3, 1845 (the year may be butchered due to the tiny print). This newspaper is printed on paper and while this is a PDF cover, one can assume paper is light. Newspapers were sold in bulk and distributed to the people in the respective communities. The print is extremely tiny and this is to get as much information possible on the sheets of paper (most likely to reduce cost). While there are no pictures, when zooming into the paper, you can see little fingers pointing to a new paragraph. The newspaper is well organized as one can see the numerous columns labeled: “Prices Current”, “Boston”, “Poetry”, and the “Boston Post”. The price current section looks like a menu with articles and their matched pricing. For example, I am able to read off “cotton” with numbers to the side. The newspaper is strictly black and white. The “Boston” and “Boston Post” look like politics and news that were current in Boston. Lastly, the “Poetry” section is exactly how it sounds and I take this to be the entertainment column. These are only a few of the labeled columns in the newspaper.

Considering the paper was written years ago, one can assume the paper is extremely frail and thin. It is old paper so it might have a musty smell to it. Although this is a PDF, a real old newspaper would most likely have many ruffles and crevices within. Paper is flammable so the words on the paper are not permanent. One could light the newspapers on fire and it would be ash. Newspapers, through human intervention, are littered around cities and towns. Newspapers also are multi-purposeful as they can be used for other projects. If I was in this scene when the newspaper was released all life as I know it would be turned upside down. My clothes, hair, and speech would all be altered to the 1800s. My emotional response to this is in awe. I am watching history. People in the 1800s used this piece of paper for their news and entertainment. I do not remember the last time I held a newspaper in my hands now that technology has taken over.

This paper is less daunting compared to a book reading. There are roughly five pages in this newspaper opposed to a lengthy book. On top of this, the information being presented on the newspaper, at the time, was brand new. No one in the towns would have access to this information until after the papers would come out. The columns, as mentioned earlier, are well organized and consistent throughout the pages. This makes it easier for the readers to read the paper in the case that some might not want to read it all but only certain sections.

This newspaper was the only source of communication to spread news and entertainment. Civilians who got ahold of the paper would understand how much everyday items were. This would be either to sell items themselves or how much to buy items and when to do so. There were also news and politics being spread in the paper. There were also respected columns for entertainment such as poetry.

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funnylori · 3 years

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Baking alchemy: if the recipe says use a pan, use metal; if the recipe calls for a dish, use ceramic or glass. Otherwise you may need to adjust baking times and temperatures to get an even bake.

For example, my bread pans are glass, and that's why the inside of my banana bread is crazy moist (ie almost underbaked) and the outside is so browned. Though, using glass for pies instead of the recommended metal pans is handy if you're new to pastry. It will help you see when the bottom of your pie is truly baked. It can be dangerous to check the bottom of hot pies, so use the buddy system. Don't be spilling hot pie filling all over yourselves.

Also, know your oven. Get an analog oven thermometer and leave it in there. I used to have one I'd hang from the center rack so I had a good idea of how it was doing. My oven is hella slow on a good day. I think the element needs maintenance.

I like to use chocolate chip cookies as my gauge of how an oven is heating. The time it takes them to be perfectly baked is what I keep in mind for everything else. Normally the recipe I use says it should take 9 minutes to bake but they are still raw then. It takes my oven 12 minutes to get them browned on the edges and still have just baked but still gooey soft centers. If you're not confident about your mixing skills using store bought dough is totally okay! It's honestly easier to check temperature with dough you know is consistently made.

☆☆☆WRITE NOTES DIRECTLY IN YOUR COOKBOOK☆☆☆

You'll learn new things every time you make something. Adjustments you like. Things that work or don't work. You'll 100% forget what those are at some point and then be frustrated. Also, use bookmarks like little sticky note tabs to help you find your favorites.

Anyway, I'm making a rhubarb pie for my dad because tomorrow is his birthday. I'm not sure how I'm gonna deliver the pie to my dad safely, but that's another story. But I make pretty good pie crusts because I use my dad's recipe. It's flakey, tender, and tastes good. I hate chewy or though crusts. My dad mixes his dough so gently it's often not strong enough to actually get a slice of pie out of the pan in one piece. It tastes so good we don't care. I like to mix mine just a touch longer so it holds up better, but it's really easy to over mix it and make a tough crust.

Tonight my husband was chatting about how one of his friends was getting help making pastry for crusts via zoom meetings. He said I should make a video of mine and share it. Maybe I will if people are intrested. I can do the fancy way and the bare bones no special tools way. I like to bake and I like to make things accessible to everybody. I still wrote it out for him, you can have it too.

If you have read this far my perfect pie crust recipe is 3 parts flour to 1 part fat and a pinch of salt.

For me that's usually 2 cups all purpose flour and 2/3rds cup shortening for a single crust in my pyrex 9.5 inch glass pie pan with a little extra left over for decorating. Fruit pies need a top crust or lattice so in that case I'd use 3 cups flour and 1 cup shortening.

Blend the fat with the flour in a bowl. I use a pastry blender cutter thing (not the kind that are a bunch of round wires with a handle, but the kind that's more metal with flat blades like this one). You can also use a couple of butterknives for this. Use a twisting motion with the pastry blender to cut the fat into the flour until it's combined into about pea sized chunks. I like to scrape the blender with a knife or fork every few turns. Don't over work it or it will get tough! You want the chunks, it'll become flakey bits. There will still be some finer bits that are more flour.

Stir in ice cold water a couple tablespoons at a time until things just start coming together. Like, be cautious with the water and use a fork to combine it with the dough with kind of a whisking motion to moisten the dry flour bits and get them sticking to the floury fat bits. How much water you need varies with the weather and humidity. Definitely don't get the dough too wet. If it gets sticky you've gone too far. You only need enough water to get it all to just come together into a ball. Once it starts coming together you'll see it's kinda shaggy, that's your flakes! Gently push it together into a ball and flatten into a puck or disk. Push the edges together so it rolls out evenly later. Don't knead the dough! If it's not staying together maybe give it one or two light kneading turns in the bowl but no more or you'll get a tough crust. If it's warm or a hot day, wrap the dough in plastic and put it in the fridge for a bit. Keeping the fat cold keeps the flakes.

When you're ready, generously flour a flat surface and roll it out. If you're worried about picking it up to put it in a pan, roll the crust out in between two floured sheets of waxed paper. Beware that it'll totally still stick to the waxed paper if you aren't careful to keep checking that it's floured enough while rolling it out. I have a fancy silicone mat I got to put on my table when I roll out crusts, but it's honestly a pain in the ass and stuff still sticks if there isn't enough flour.

For sizing, hold your pie pan upside down over the crust and roll at least two inches wider than that. Drape the crust into the pie pan, don't stretch it. Lift the sides and ease it into the bottom. Wrap it a little bit over the edge of the pan and trim the excess. This recipe has a habit of shrinking in the pan, so having a bit extra around the edges helps keep it in place. Prick all over with a fork if blind baking / baking it empty, and bake at 425°F until golden brown, which is probably around 15 minutes.

For my fat I always always use butter flavored vegetable shortening such as crisco*. It tastes good and works consistently well. Butter is sometimes used, so is lard. They have different water contents and work differently so experiment with them before expecting them to work with my recipe. Shortening is solid and works good at room temperature. Butter should be worked colder and has water in it which changes how bakes turn out. I've never tried making a butter or lard for crust myself though.

My mom always made us a treat with the extra crust bits cut off from the pie pan. She'd put the funky strips on a cookie sheet and dust them with cinnamon and sugar and bake it them for us. Usually she'd forget to pull them out until we could smell them burning around the edges.

*when trans fats were banned because they're truly awful for the body, the formulation of vegetable shortening changed to include palm oil, which is so so bad for the environment and deforestation destroying orangutan habitat. It might be option for crusts, but it can have ethical issues as well. Check your ingredients and where they come from. Bob's Red Mill has an article on shortening, what it is, why you want to use it for crusts, and what it can be made of.

Anyway, I love pies and have strong feelings about crusts that goes quite deep. I can keep going, if y'all wanna know more about anything. Lemme know if you want directions to good videos or if I should make one myself. I'll post a picture of the pie tomorrow once it's set and we cut into it.

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ohemgeeitscoley · 4 years

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Ben Solo is the recently assigned editor for Rey Johnson’s book about star-crossed lovers in space when the world is turned upside down and stay home orders are issued. Ben and Rey begin working together over Zoom and their relationship grows.

Or, an and they were zoomates fic.

Based on this Tumblr post.

The one I have been waiting for (Part One of Two)

Fandom: Star Wars

Pairing: Rey/Ben Solo (Reylo)

Note: This was going to be a really, really short one shot. It turned into a 12k two-shot. Whoops. This is pure fluff.

As always, the biggest thank you to @andyouweremine for being the world’s best beta and friend. Seriously, thank you for all of your cheerleading and input and for convincing me that one more scene never hurt anyone. You’re the absolute best.

Read below or on AO3.

From: Leia Organa-Solo <[email protected]> To: Benjamin Solo <[email protected]> Subject: Quarantine assignments

Ben,

Unfortunately with everything going on right now, I've decided that we are going to close the office and have everyone work from home. I know you were looking forward to the big welcome lunch I had planned. Hopefully we will be able to reschedule in a few weeks once the risk of spreading COVID-19 lessens.

In the meantime, I am going to assign you to Rey Johnson. She is working on a new novel with a goal of having the first draft submitted by May 30. I'm attaching her contact information and what she has sent over so far. Please coordinate with Rey to schedule an introduction meeting.

Warm regards,

Mom

Leia Organa-Solo CEO Rebel Publishing, LLC

From: Benjamin Solo <[email protected]> To: Leia Organa-Solo <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Quarantine assignments

Leia:

I am deeply saddened that the welcome lunch you coordinated over my many, many vocal objections to has been cancelled. I suppose we will have to plan another inner-office get together wherein I can find a way to embarrass and let you down. I'm greatly looking forward to the opportunity.

On that note, was it really necessary to use my full name in my email address? Was Ben already taken? I am fairly certain as my mother you are aware that you are the only person who ever calls me Benjamin. Would it be possible to have IT change this before tomorrow?

I think closing the office is the right decision. Social distancing is quite important now more than ever. I'm assuming this means that Saturday dinners will also be postponed?

I'll look over what you sent and reach out to Ms. Johnson. I'm looking forward to working with her.

Sincerely,

Ben Solo Editor Rebel Publishing, LLC

From: Leia Organa-Solo <[email protected]> To: Benjamin Solo <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Quarantine assignments

Benjamin:

I distinctly remember writing Benjamin down on your birth certificate. I'm unaware of any name change order being in your personnel file. The email stays.

The lunch has not been cancelled, it has been postponed. Despite your assertions, you will not embarrass or let me down in any get together. However, I make no such promises. Seeing as how I'll be trapped at home with your father for the foreseeable future, maybe I'll finally have time to find some of those old pictures of you. I've been meaning to redecorate my office.

It does appear that Saturday dinners will need to be postponed. However, I am working with Chewie and Luke to see if we can perhaps get them set up to attend virtual dinners. I'll keep you updated.

Warm regards,

Mom

Leia Organa-Solo CEO Rebel Publishing, LLC

-----

Ben sighed, pushing his hands under his glasses as he rubbed at the corners of his eyes. It wasn’t that he necessarily thought that agreeing to go work at his mom’s publishing company was going to be the easiest of transitions, but he also hadn’t been prepared for his name to be on the list of things they would argue about.

It only made sense, then, that it was one of the first things.

He considered sending another email, pushing the issue. But he knew better than to think it was an argument he was going to win. And, honestly, he was hopeful that if he didn’t respond maybe she’d never again think about coordinating, or asking him to coordinate, a virtual Saturday dinner.

Instead, Ben opened the contact card his mom had sent for Rey, and got to work.

From: Benjamin Solo <[email protected]> To: Rey Johnson <[email protected]> Subject: Introduction Meeting

Good evening Ms. Johnson:

I’m the assigned editor for your next book. Leia has already provided your initial pitch, character sketches, and outline. However, I usually prefer to talk with an author prior to reading these materials. I have found in the past that going into these conversations without any preconceived ideas based on the initial workups leads to a more organic understanding of the material. As such, I’d love to have the chance to talk with you about your book prior to looking over the material.

Given the increased concerns of spreading the virus, Leia has closed the office and has asked that we conduct all of our work from home. Please let me know what your availability is tomorrow or the next day so that I can coordinate the conference. I am just transitioning to Rebel Publishing, so my calendar is currently fairly open.

Of course, if you’d rather me read through the materials and start the process that way, just let me know.

I look forward to working with you.

Sincerely,

Ben Solo Editor Rebel Publishing, LLC

From: Rey Johnson <[email protected]> To: Benjamin Solo <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Introduction Meeting

Mr. Solo,

Leia let me know today that we would be working together. I’m really looking forward to hearing your thoughts. I’d love the opportunity to talk with you prior to you reviewing the materials that have been previously sent. This is a different approach than my previous editors have taken, but I am intrigued by your theory.

With that said, given the recent orders to stay home, my schedule is very flexible. I usually try to block out specific times to focus on writing so that I can turn off notifications and limit distractions. With the times I had previously blocked out for tomorrow, I could make an 11:00 am work? If that doesn’t work, just let me know what does and I’m sure I’ll be able to make that work.

I look forward to meeting with you.

Sincerely,

Rey Johnson

-----

Rey was the first one in the Zoom meeting the next morning. She fidgeted with her web camera, adjusting the angle until the image on the screen blocked out most of her messy apartment. She spent a few minutes pushing things out of the way before sitting back down and waiting for Ben to appear.

She glanced down at the clock on her computer screen, sighing at the time. The meeting wasn’t supposed to start for another five minutes. Being early had never been one of her defining characteristics, but she also hadn’t had any real human interaction in days.

The day the stay home order had been issued by the Governor, Rey had planned on meeting up with Poe and Finn for drinks. They had been on her for days to avoid slipping into a writer isolation. Poe had a lot of experience in knowing just how easily Rey could spiral when she was writing, hiding away from the world for days at a time. It had always just been easier for Rey to stay in when she was writing. Easier to stay focused on what kept her paid and fed and a roof over her head.

She didn’t have to worry about getting too distracted and forgetting where she left off or what she had planned for another scene if she just stayed home. Poe liked to remind her that she was ridiculous and that going out also was what provided her with actual inspiration to write.

There was a balance, she was sure. She just hadn’t achieved it yet. Then the stay home issue was ordered and Rey found herself wishing that she had listened to Poe sooner.

Not that was going to tell him that.

The computer dinged when Ben joined the meeting room. The image was fuzzy at first, Rey could really only make out that he had dark hair and rather broad shoulders. In fact, he looked rather… large, his body taking up most of the space that she could see. The image cleared and Rey took in the rest of his features, the sharp nose and pouty lips.

He was definitely attractive. Which was not what she needed to be thinking about at the moment.

“Good morning, Mr. Solo,” Rey said, smiling politely as she held her hand up in a tiny, awkward wave.

“I would say Mr. Solo is my father,” he responded, shaking his head slightly. “But he also hates being called that.”

“Right, so, Benjamin then?”

“No, no, no, no,” Ben grimaced, as if the word personally offended him. “Ben. Just Ben.”

“Okay, just Ben,” Rey laughed softly. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you too, Ms. John-”

“Rey,” she interrupted him with a grin.

“Well, Rey, tell me about your book.”

Rey took a deep breath before, running her teeth over her bottom lip before she began. She started by attempting to introduce the main characters, Kira and Kylo, and their backstories, but she was easily distracted with certain points of plot that felt so imperative to interrupt and explain.

By the time she finished, she wasn't really sure what information she had shared or left out. But she was fairly positive that she had failed to hit all of the main plot points.

Rey waited for Ben to say something. She knew that he had told her that he found it beneficial to hear about the story in an organic way, but the longer the silence stretched, the more she wished she had spent more time preparing last night to explain to him the story and the characters in at least a logical way.

“So they are connected?” He finally asked. “What was the word you used?”

“A dyad,” Rey answered. “Soulmates, really.”

“Star-crossed lovers fighting on opposite sides of a galactic war," Ben paused, jotting something down on a piece of paper next to his computer. "Doomed from the start?"

"Hardly," Rey snorted. "It won't be easy, but I fully plan on a happily ever after ending for them."

"Really?" Ben seemed surprised. "That's unusual for star-crossed couples."

"Your words," Rey reminded him, "I said they were soulmates."

"That you did," Ben conceded. "I just assumed since they are fighting for different things that one would fall."

"But they aren't."

"What?"

"Fighting for different things," Rey clarified. "It seems that way, at first. But really, they are both fighting for a place in the world. For a family. For a balance that they are being told can't exist."

"It sounds like quite a world," Ben noted. "I'm excited to see you build it."

"Yeah," Rey looked away from the screen, staring at the knick knacks that filled up the shelf across from her. "It's a little scary actually, creating a world this complex."

"That's what I'm here for."

"Right," Rey smiled at him. "Well, I'm glad I have you."

Rey thought that maybe Ben was blushing, even though logically she knew that it was more likely just a shadow or reflection from his computer. Either way, she liked the way it made him look.

"So, same time next week?" Ben asked. "I'll go over everything Leia sent me. Now that I know what I'm getting into, I think my notes will be a lot better."

"Yeah, same time next week," Rey glanced down at the notes on her desk. "Should I send you things throughout the week as I'm working? Or save it for next week?"

"For now I say save it for next week. I have a lot of material to get started with."

"Sounds good."

"It was nice meeting you, Rey." Ben held one hand up in an awkward wave.

"Yeah, you too, Ben."

-----

From: Rey Johnson <[email protected]> To: Benjamin Solo <[email protected]> Subject: Earlier meeting?

Hi Ben:

I know that we have a meeting scheduled in four days, but I was just wondering if you might be available earlier than that? I’m having a bit of difficulty with the corner I think I’ve written myself into, and I am hoping that a fresh pair of eyes might help me find my way out. I understand if you want to keep the meeting as scheduled, I know you haven’t had a lot of time to go through the materials that had already been submitted, but I’d really appreciate any insight.

I hope you are staying inside and staying healthy!

-Rey.

------

Rey groaned, rereading the email she had sent Ben. It wasn’t necessarily a bad email, it was actually lightyears better than the first draft she had written at 2 am. Which went something like ‘Hi Ben, as it turns out despite my years of believing otherwise, I need human interaction and your face is the only face I’ve seen in a week and I’m slowly losing my mind. I sang to my plants. I’ve never written this much in my life, I’ve started reading the dialogue out loud because I’m no longer sure what human conversations sound like. So, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could we move up our meeting? I’m a little worried I’m becoming an insane person. I swear I’m not normally this weird. Quarantine life.’

She, thankfully, pressed the delete button instead of the send button. The other three drafts were slightly more professional, but all with the same undertone of her being slightly desperate for any conversation that didn’t involve her voicing both sides. She had tried facetiming Poe, but he and Finn had been keeping each other plenty busy. Which really, she should have expected.

Logically she knew that she could reach out to either one of them anyways, or Rose, or any of her other friends and just tell them that she was potentially on the verge of a self-isolation mental breakdown and they would be there for her.

But that was a showing of vulnerability that despite years of therapy Rey wasn’t comfortable with demonstrating. And so she emailed Ben instead.

It wasn’t like it was a complete lie. She had written more than usual and she was at a point in the story that she would appreciate some feedback at this point.

Kira and Kylo were at a turning point in the story. Their connection had been steadily growing stronger and more frequent, forcing them to face each other. Now was the time for them to come together and join each other or for them to pull away and keep fighting against each other.

It wasn't a terrible idea for her to get some feedback and opinions before moving forward full speed. Her reaching out to Ben for an earlier meeting had nothing to do with her ever increasing thoughts about how he was rather attractive and his smile was rather enticing and that she wanted to see it again.

At least, she was fairly confident that wasn’t the main reason.

She glanced at the sent email one last time before closing out of her email tab. Only fifteen minutes had passed since she sent the email and she already felt regret settling over her nerves.

It was going to be a long day waiting for him to reply.

-----

In hindsight, Ben probably should have found it strange that he had not received a single company email in over 24 hours. Especially since Leia had a habit of sending him personal messages to his work email. Despite him reminding her numerous times that she had his personal email, and his cell phone, and, really, at least four other ways of contacting him.

A part of him knew that Leia did it because she genuinely enjoyed reminding herself that he came back to her company, that he came home. He also knew her well enough to know that the larger reason was because she also genuinely enjoyed annoying him. And Leia had to know that he would find knowing that her personal assistant had access to all of her emails about whether or not he was interested in attending a virtual dinner, if he had enough food in his apartment or if he would like her to make an instacart order for him, and that Han had been cleaning out the garage to make more room for his ‘quarantine projects’ and found boxes of his old toys and baby blankets and she was just wondering if he perhaps wanted her to bring the belongings home so that he could come get them, you know, for the future.

So, he should have known that something wasn’t working, but he had been distracted going through Rey’s materials, making notes of his questions and of his proposed edits. She was a fantastic writer. The world she had built was fresh and lively, jumping off of the pages in clear images and descriptions. She had provided extremely detailed character sketches for most of the characters, but he hadn’t found that he had to read through them or refer to them to understand any of the characters or to analyze any of the choices the characters had made simply because she wrote them so well.

It was very impressive.

He had finished going through the materials that Leia had sent him in two days. He was working his way through them again, going slower and providing more detailed notes and able to ask more pointed questions given the knowledge of where the story was heading. Still, he found himself wishing that he had told Rey to send over more work.

He noticed his phone light up on the corner of his couch. He picked it up, glancing at the message icon showing that he had four messages from his mother and… 48 unread emails.

Mom: Servers are back up at the office.

Mom: Sorry for the onslaught of emails you are probably going to start getting in five minutes.

Mom: I didn’t realize at first that they weren’t going through.

Mom: It’s possible 75% of them could have been text messages.

Ben: The server was down at the office?

Mom: You didn’t notice that you have received no emails in the last day?

Ben: I guess not.

Mom: That’s an unusual thing for you to not notice.

Mom: What have you been doing?

Ben: Going through the materials you sent over for Rey’s book.

Mom: Ah.

Mom: That makes sense then.

Ben sighed, closing the messaging app to start going through the emails from his mother.

They were exactly what he had expected them to be. A few emails from HR and IT that were sent company wide about how to submit hours when working from home, a reminder to sign up for direct deposit if you hadn’t already, and a few guided walkthroughs on common computer and technology issues. His mother’s emails focused more on whether or not he had all of the ingredients for the Risotto she wanted to make for dinner on Saturday. Followed by an email with the receipt. And another email that went to him, Luke, and Chewie, wondering why it was too much to ask them all to make the same meal as her so that the virtual dinner felt like an actual dinner and not a happenstance of people meeting at the same time.

He almost missed the email from Rey.

-----

From: Benjamin Solo <[email protected]> To: Rey Johnson <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Earlier meeting?

Dear Rey,

I’m truly sorry for my delay in responding to your email. I was just informed that the server at the office went down, which affected our email host and I am just now getting this message.

I would love to go over this with you sooner than we had planned. I have already reviewed the materials you had previously sent, so I believe I will be of much more use in hopefully helping you figure out where you want to go next. I do find it hard to believe that you’ve written yourself into a corner, you seem to have a great grasp on the characters and the story you want to tell.

I’d hate for any future requests to be severely delayed due to technological issues beyond our control. My cell phone number is 917-555-3298.

I am available whenever. I suppose that’s the upside to a quarantine.

I look forward to receiving the materials and discussing them with you.

Ben

Benjamin Solo Editor Rebel Publishing, LLC

-----

Ben: I think it’s abusing your power as owner of a company to go through and change your employee’s email signatures without consent.

Mom: I have no idea what you are talking about.

Mom: Benjamin

------

929-555-4593: Hi Ben. This is Rey. I just got your email and figured I’d send you a message so you have my number. I sent over what I’ve been working on. I’m also free whenever. So, just tell me when and I’ll be there.

Rey Johnson: Thanks again for agreeing to meet up with me earlier than planned. I appreciate it.

-------

Rey threw on a blazer over the red tank top she had been wearing for the last two days when she got the Zoom invite from Ben. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror to the side of her desk, double checking to make sure she didn’t have dried mascara on her cheeks and that her hair looked moderately presentable.

She clicked on the link in the email and---

Ben wore glasses. Ben wore glasses and Rey was not at all prepared for how he looked wearing them. Really, it didn’t seem quite fair that something as innocuous as glasses managed to make him go skyrocketing up from ‘fairly attractive’ to ‘how inappropriate would it be to initiate sexting with her new editor that she had maybe spent a grand total of twenty minutes communicating with’ in her mind.

Rey really, really needed the stay home order lifted. Clearly, she was worse off than she thought.

“Hey,” Ben greeted her. “How are you surviving the stay home order?”

“Oh great. Some might even say I’ve been thriving,” Rey rolled her eyes, shaking her head as she laughed. “At least I’ve been able to get a lot of writing done.”

“I would say,” Ben ran his hand through his hair, and Rey could hear him clicking open something on his computer. “I’m not going to lie, I’ve only skimmed through everything you sent over today. So, depending on what has you stuck, I’m not positive this will be a very productive meeting.”

“The part I think I’m stuck at?” Rey opened the word document on her computer, her eyes narrowing in confusion. “You mean it isn’t obvious?”

“I guess, no?” Ben responded, and Rey can tell from the way he’s focusing on his computer screen that he must be going through the document again. “I just assumed you were stuck on what to do after Kira took Kylo’s hand? But that didn’t make much sense either because you have such a clear plan for the story.”

“Kira doesn’t take Kylo’s hand.”

Ben glanced up to the camera, his mouth slightly open. “What?”

“Kira doesn’t take Kylo’s hand,” Rey repeated, lifting her shoulders in a small shrug. “At least not yet.”

“What do you mean she doesn’t take his hand yet?” Ben asked, and Rey has to bite down on her lip to keep herself from laughing at how insulted he sounded. “You’ve spent the last eight chapters building their relationship for her to take his hand.”

“That doesn’t mean that this is the right moment,” Rey pointed out. “I’m not sure it’s the right moment.”

“Okay,” Ben leaned back in his chair, lifting his hands to rest behind his head. “I guess I’m going to need you to explain to me what you think the right moment will be then.”

“That might take awhile,” Rey admitted. “I don’t know that I even know the answer to that.”

“That’s okay,” Ben said with an encouraging smile. “I have plenty of time.”

-----

They ended up talking for over two hours. By the end of the call, Rey at least had a better idea of the different paths she could take Kira and Kylo down. Even if she still didn't know which one she would choose.

But they also talked about other things besides the book and Rey's struggles with where the characters should go. Rey discovered that Ben was also sheltering in place by himself. She was pretty amused when Ben didn’t immediately end the video call when she started discussing the finer points of being ordered to stay in, like what Netflix show he was binge watching and whether or not he had enough toilet paper to last.

She was oddly unsurprised when he refused to discuss his toilet paper situation with her and when he said that he didn’t watch a lot of TV and wasn’t planning on binge watching anything. Rey gave him a week before he caved on that.

It was nice.

Rey’s mood had significantly improved half way through the conversation. She had forgotten just how wonderful it was to talk to someone else. It also didn’t hurt that Ben Solo wasn’t exactly hard to look at for two hours. It wasn't even the obvious physical features that Rey found herself thinking about hours later, although she was certainly going to be thinking about them for a while. But Ben had a certain way of moving and mannerisms that only added to them.

Getting to know someone over a video call was interesting. Rey kept waiting for the normal wave of must look away to hit her like it would if they had been face to face. Staring at someone the entire time you were together wasn't normal.

If they had been in person, Rey would have felt uncomfortable with the amount of time she had spent just staring at him. Noticing the way his hands dwarfed the size of his coffee cup and the way he talked with his hands when he was particularly passionate about whatever he was saying.

She particularly liked how his face was open when she said something he disagreed with, the way he would narrow his eyes and shake his head, but waited until she was done to raise his counterpoints. There was something about the way that he was just himself that was refreshing.

He listened intently, scribbling down notes when she talked about the story. Even when she started mentioning shows that he should watch, if he were to get really desperate, and he pretended to be uninterested, Rey was fairly positive she saw him write them down as well.

They set up another meeting in two days, and Rey was determined to have at least made a decision on whether or not Kira was going to take Kylo’s hand by then. She had to admit that Ben had made a convincing argument as to why it was the right moment for the characters to move forward together.

Rey sat down at her writing desk, opening up the current version of her project, and began writing.

#reylo #reylo fanfic #reylo fanfiction #reylo fic #reylo au #and they were zoommates #my fic

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eurigmorgan · 3 years

Text

Fuck Biden Flag and the First Amendment

there's a house in the village, right on the busy main road before you turn on the short bridge over the creek that takes you to mainstreet and downtown that had been flying a large "trump2020" flag in a prominent spot from a pole just off the centre of the house for well over a year.it was amusing that the flag remained even months after the election when suddenly it was replaced by an upside down american flag (the flag of distress or great danger) - this too, was amusing, especially considering the homeowner was taking such a bold stand in a small village that is so publicly apolitical, altho votes heavily progressive and democratic.a week or so ago, the homeowner went one step further and replaced the upside down american flag with a large "fuck biden" flag on the house pole. I admit, driving into town on the fairly busy road, I instinctively put on my brakes to make certain I was seeing what I was seeing. perhaps a traffic danger.I wondered how the town felt about the flag. there's a lot of gray area when it comes to first amendment rights, property rights and individual free speech, and even more iffy when or if a sign, banner, or flag can somehow be considered obscene.it is of course well placed for visibility, heavy auto traffic and pedestrian sidewalk traffic pass right by the house.yesterday I thought to call the village hall and inquire if there had been many complaints about the flag. spoke with the town clerk who told me they'd had quite a few complaints lodged, so much so that the village called a special meeting just the night before with a proposal for an addendum to the existing village signage, banner and flag ordinance. the zoom meeting was available on facebook, so I watched it.this is a sensitive subject, and one this quiet little village has never faced before, so they're treading carefully with a team of legal backup.the village board of trustees voted unanimously to go forward with the addendum and scheduled a public meeting on the proposal for april 19th.this morning I had been thinking about how very angry this homeowner must be -- seething -- enraged -- to have gone this one step perhaps too far. andI realised this might actually make a good story for our local rural press, if they already had not begun one. so out of place in a quaint small town with new englandish charm and character.perhaps an unsettling story in such a town that might have many layers that can't be easily seen.a "fuck biden" flag?it's a story.so I contacted the millerton news by email and offered up the details, including the special meeting available on the village facebook page, and suggested it might make a story, especially if someone could get the homeowner(s) to speak about it on record. I imagine there are plenty in town who'd like hear from them.this evening a reporter from the millerton news called me to tell me she had looked into my email information, watched the village meeting on facebook and simply wanted more details on where the house was located (there is no address number on it, and it's difficult to see the other house numbers-- but you can't miss it)the reporter, kaitlyn, said she would be doing the story on the flag and the village response and asked if she could use a quote from me in the piece, I gave her permission. a short time ago I also received an email from the editor of the millerton news letting me know that the paper is planning to cover the village board’s recent meeting regarding the offensive "signs" and how it plans to deal with such first amendment issues in next week’s edition, and asked if I wanted my email reformatted into a "letter to the editor". she'll need verbal permission.I'll give her a call tomorrow.I honestly found the asshole flying the "trump2020" flag for months after the election bemusing. but the upside down american flag gave me a bit of start and further realisation just how angry they are.and the "fuck biden" flag?well that just seems one step away from someone losing it.in all fairness, and good conscience, I have searched myself and yes, while I would whole heartedly agree with the sentiment of a "fuck trump" flag, I would have found it's presence and placement so jarring and out of character for our little village, I would have inquired about complaints.small towns.small town news.big statements.and very timely.19You, Gayle Ellison-Davis and 17 others

Sterling J. Sterling

#fuck biden flag #first amendment #small upstate village

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mammon-sama · 4 years

Text

Poison Apple Crêpes (Fanfiction) Part 2/2

This was originally supposed to be a oneshot, but a few people were asking for a follow-up to this story from Lucifer's perspective, so I finally decided to buckle down and write one! I really hope it met your guys' expectations! 🤞 Read it on AO3 here!

Also, I included some of my headcanons in regards to Lucifer's feelings about angels and stuff, and I hope that doesn't bother anyone. In fact, it has a lot to do with another story I am working on for Obey Me!.

Title:

Poison Apple Crêpes (Part 2/2)

Summary:

An incensed Mammon recalls a fond memory he has of Lucifer from when they were younger.

(Essentially just a fluffy oneshot about Luci doing his best and Mammon just realizing it because he is a dumbass.)

Genre:

Fluff

Rating:

Word Count:

1824

First Part:

Read the first part here!

Lucifer’s mouth gaped open in a yawn, as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. Blinking lazily, he cursed himself when he realized that the arm he had apparently rested his head on while he slept was covered in drool. He sighed in relief as he remembered that he was in his private study and none of his brothers were there to catch him in such a state of disarray.

More awake now, he glanced at a small clock situated on his desk, and his eyes widened in surprise when he realized what time it was. Had he really been asleep for so long? He knew that skipping sleep last night in order to finish the last round of R.A.D attendance reports for Diavolo would no doubt tire him, but he hadn’t expected it to cause a bout of weariness that lasted for this long of a time.

Lucifer’s stomach rumbled slightly, reminding him that in his desperation to finish the reports on time, he had forgone breakfast that morning, as well.

He shook his head, trying to relieve himself of the last dregs of sleep, and took a deep breath to reorient himself.

He realized that he never did end up completing his work. Lucifer reached toward the left-hand side of his desk, where he had originally placed a pencil holder filled with pens and highlighters, but found nothing. Surprised, he noticed that someone had shifted it over to the right side of his desk. He nodded in appreciation at the act—after all, he was right-handed, so it made sense for his pencil holder to be on the right side.

With that, Lucifer’s eyes widened as he realized that not only was his pencil holder’s location changed but many of the other objects’ on his desk, as well. They were artfully displayed, and although he appreciated the neatness of their arrangement, his eyes narrowed when he realized that all of this meant that someone had entered his private study.

His face reddened in fury; he had explicitly told his brothers that while in his private study, he was not to be bothered, hence why the room was locked through voice security and none of his siblings were allowed inside.

And his codeword—Eine klein Nachtmusik! How did any of his brothers even guess that phrase? ‘Eine klein Nachtmusik’ had been his most precious composition as Archangel of Music back in the Celestial Realm, but he never expected the other six demons to remember something as trivial and personal as that.

For a moment, Lucifer was touched that someone would make the connection between his beloved piece and the code phrase, but he couldn’t dwell on the fact when he noticed the sheet in front of him.

He grit his teeth; on the front of the sheet was a glaring pink slip—the telltale sign of test failure. He yanked off the pink paper and nodded once when he saw the name on the test.

Of course, it’s Mammon’s.

Lucifer leaned back in his chair and put his hand on his temple. Was it so much to ask for his money-grubbing second brother to take school seriously?

It was no small fact that Lucifer wanted his brothers to perform and be the best students at R.A.D—after all, they were an elite demon family and considered to be the Rulers of Hell. And of course, excelling in their schoolwork would surely get Lucifer and his family on the good side of Diavolo.

This was motivation enough for him to work hard and maintain his grades, but indeed, there was something else that propelled him to encourage his brothers to put their best foot forward …

All his life, Lucifer had been taught that demons were the scum of Creation—horrid things, with no respect or love for the Father; he himself had considered demons to be absolute worms beneath his feet.

When he was an angel, he was among the many who despised demons—that is, until he was forced to rely on them and therefore become one himself. And for all his bravado about being proud of going against his Father and living a demonic life, a small part of him still considered him and his brothers to still be holy angels (with the exception of Satan, who he sometimes believed could be an angel by proxy).

And as he had been ingrained to believe, angels were better. Angels were the best. Angels were sons of the Royal King, with blue blood flowing through their veins, superior to all other life.

A minute part of him wanted the demons in the Devildom to know that, to never forget that the Seven Rulers of Hell were always going to be above them.

Being the best at R.A.D was such one reminder.

And yet, his brothers refused to take themselves seriously in regards to school, and Mammon, with all his potential, was the worst culprit.

Lucifer realized Mammon must have snuck into his private study to leave this refuse on his desk. He violently grabbed a fountain pen from his now rightly-situated pencil holder and signed his name on the designated line on the pink slip with a flourish.

More irritated than he had ever been, Lucifer shoved the paper forward, leaving it upside down, so he wouldn’t have to see the abhorrent failure notification, again. As he did this, he noticed that he almost knocked over a white paper bag that was balanced on the edge of his desk.

He cocked his head curiously and pulled the bag closer. On it was a sticky note and in Mammon’s very loud handwriting, it read, WOW bro I just realized you drool a lot in your sleep XP hopefully that means you’re hungry!!. Lucifer couldn’t help but blush … and here he thought he was lucky to not have anyone notice his drooling.

Going against his better judgment, Lucifer peeled off the sticky note and opened the bag. As soon as he did, his anger melted away, for his nose was immediately graced with the warm, fruity scent of poison apples.

He froze; it had been years since the homey aroma had entered his nostrils, and instantly, he was brought back to a small café on the outskirts of the Devildom, where he and Mammon would used to enjoy a stack of crêpes when they were much younger.

Without thinking, his eyes zoomed toward a mini picture frame on his desk, where he and Mammon sat underneath an umbrellaed patio table at the café and beamed into the camera of a stranger, who had been so taken with the cheerful pair of brothers and insisted on photographing them.

“Lucifer,” pouted Mammon, his bottom lip sticking out profusely. “I don’t like these creeps.”

Lucifer shook his head and cut off another bite of poison apple. “They’re called crêpes, Mammon. And here, we can try another filling, if you’d like. Choose something else from the menu.”

“Hmph, okay.” He poked their waiter, who was walking by. “I want this!” He pointed to ‘Super Salty Tuna Fish Surprise crêpes.’

Lucifer bit his lip. He knew Mammon well enough to remember that the young demon did not enjoy salty foods.

Lucifer had hoped Mammon would enjoy this outing with him, and there was no way he would if he couldn’t find anything he liked. He took another bite of his poison apple crêpes, disheartened that despite it being his first time eating at this café, he had already found something he liked, while Mammon was left hungry.

“Wait one moment,” Lucifer told the waiter. He turned to Mammon. “Let me see that menu.” For a moment, he perused the list of foods, before landing on ‘Blackbelly Newt Legs Macerated in Vanilla Simple Syrup crêpes.’ He knew Mammon loved spicy foods—blackbelly newt legs were renowned for their heat—and the sweetness of the simple syrup would make sure that the flavor wasn’t too hot for his little demon palate. “Actually bring him this, please.”

“Boo, Luci, you suck,” Mammon grumbled, as the waiter walked away. “What if I don’t like those?”

Lucifer bobbed his head. “I’m sure you will.”

And he was right.

“Yum! This is tasty!” Mammon mumbled between mouthfuls of crêpe, and he grinned.

Lucifer beamed back. “I’m glad you like it!” He spooned the last bit of purple poison apple sauce off his plate. “We should come here, again.”

“Yay! We should!”

Lucifer sighed. That had been the first of many trips to that café. Over the course of many years, he and Mammon had tried every crêpe filling on the menu, but nothing ever came close to dethroning their favorite fillings of blackbelly newt legs and poison apples.

However, as time drew on, Mammon and he had become quite the busy demons, with various responsibilities to look after. Lucifer had always tried to make time to ensure that they still could frequently satiate their desire for crêpes, but Mammon constantly seemed to be occupied, being instantly taken with the glitz and glamor of the Devildom’s exclusive shopping districts.

He shook his head, momentarily wondering why he never thought of venturing to the café by himself, but then he realized that the trips wouldn’t be the same without his silly younger brother.

Lucifer carefully pulled out of the bag a fork and knife—it seemed as if Mammon had thoughtfully pilfered them from the House of Lamentation’s kitchen before bringing the crêpes to him—and a cylinder rolled in white paper.

He unwrapped said cylinder to reveal three crêpes, each oozing with several extra helpings of poison apples, just as he liked. The jewel-tone purple of the sauce glittered under the lights of his study, and he breathed in again the fruity scent of it. He nudged a chunk of apple with his fork and smiled when he realized that it was nice and tender, cursed to perfection.

Lucifer put a hand to his mouth—eating the filling would stain his lips mauve for days … but could that really be helped?

Overcome with nostalgia, he brought his knife down into the crêpe and forked a piece into his mouth. He smiled; it tasted just as sweet and sticky and delicious as it had the first time he had tried it.

Chewing thoughtfully, he noticed some scribbling on the back of Mammon’s test. It read, Mammon already signed up for tutoring ;(.

Perhaps it was the nostalgia talking, but seeing as Mammon was making an effort, Lucifer decided that maybe that was enough.

Putting his fork down, Lucifer pulled out his D.D.D and texted his secondborn brother.

Mammon Lucifer: Crêpes next weekend?

Immediately, he saw three bubbles pop up, indicating that Mammon was typing. A moment later, his response appeared on the screen.

Mammon: I guess the Great Mammon can spare a minute or two!

Mammon: Sounds like a plan! 👍👍

And from that moment on, all was forgiven.

THE END

#obey me #obey me shall we date mammom #obey me lucifer #obey me shall we date lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me shall we date mammon #fanfiction #fanfic #fluff #brotherly love #adverbslut_writes

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x-reader-theater · 5 years

Text

Can I Tell You a Secret?

Relationship: Peter Parker X Male!Cuban!Reader

Summary: You ‘work’ for the daily bugle. You are an intern there, have been for a few years, and you weren’t getting paid for how many photos you had taken. You wanted more, wanted more for how much you worked, you wanted to get paid. That led you to your most dangerous stunt yet. Climbing the Empire State Building.

Warnings: Swearing.

Word Count: 7,692

A/N: Hey guys. So, I know I’ve posted fuck all these last few months, but I was in a really bad place for a while, and Queen was a terrible remembrance of it all. Anyways, I got this idea while playing the Spider-Man game, and wrote it in like three days XD Also, I’m really sad you can’t center stuff on Tumblr ;( Please like and reblog if you like it, and leave a comment to let me know what you think!

This was your most dangerous stunt yet, and it was just past midnight. The city is beautiful at this time of night, and that's exactly why you needed to be up here. The shot was perfect for the front cover of the Daily Bugle, and maybe, just maybe, it would get you on their payroll. Finally. You had been an intern for them for two years now, nonstop, taking photographs, putting yourself in danger, and they have given nothing to you in return.

That is why you are currently scaling the Empire State building.

You feel your arms shaking, hauling yourself another foot above the ground below. You feel your foot slipping, and you course-correct quickly, not looking to become the next Evelyn McHale. Well, whatever the male version of that is, and much less beautiful. You feel your muscles straining against your bones, tightening like cords that hold up a bridge, waiting to snap at any moment. Your feet are numb, ice-like, threatening to shatter if you miss a single step. Your fingers are raw, ragged, bleeding, leaving a trail as you climb. You're dizzy, the nausea of being this high up, and the change of looking up and then down, and then back up again has your head reeling. You feel yourself shaking, a naked penguin in the Arctic, the building is your melting ice block, and you are the penguin. Your hair is whipping above you, falling into your eyes, and the out, and in and out, over and over, so fast it's making you blind for precious moments, and you have to stop. You don't know when you stopped thinking.

Finally, at long last, your fingers touch soft metal, and you look up to see the slanted top of the building. You grin as you grab one of the seams, pulling yourself up and over the ledge. You drag yourself up, using the slight incline to get a better angle at climbing and drag yourself up there. In only a few minutes, you've reached the top.

You made sure to check the weather for the day, made sure the fog was clear and there were no clouds in the sky. You also made sure the smog levels were low.

And you sure are glad you did.

Hanging off the antenna, you watch the millions of lights blinking in and out of existence on the skyline, the glowing buildings like glow sticks, making the sky bright with light pollution. You reach behind you, into your backpack, and take out your camera, and put it up to your eye. Almost… but not quite… if you just tilted a little more…

You snap the picture, and your fingers slip.

The first thing you feel is air, and it feels like you're falling in slow motion, the world passing slowly by you, the city a blur in the distance. And then it's hard, cold metal that bruises your skin. You hold your camera up, trying to save it, but you're sliding down the side of the building. You feel the skin being scraped off your arm, the burn of friction that's hurting you. You grunt as you slam into the slightly raised side of the roof, and you go flying. It's quite freeing as you fall, and you close your eyes, holding your arms out, waiting for the impact.

It's a lot softer, and sooner than you expect.

You're still flying through the air, and you suck some breath into your wind-less lungs, and you open your eyes. You come face to face with the white lenses of Spider-Man. You gasp, your grip faltering on your camera for a moment, but you hold onto it, your hands shaking with the pressure you're putting on the plastic.

Spider-Man shoots out a web, and pulls himself onto a building, panting gracefully on the loose gravel of a New York City rooftop in the middle of Manhattan. You stumble as he lets your feet drop, and you grab onto his biceps. He places a steadying hand on your back, but only for a moment, before pulling it back. You walk back a couple of steps and look down at your camera. You flick through the pictures you had taken today, and when you see the picture you just took, you let out a whoop of happiness. Spider-Man looks genuinely surprised by it.

"What is wrong with you! You almost just died and you're cheering? What were you doing up there!" He demands, and you just turn the camera around to show him the picture. "All this just for some picture?"

You scoff and turn the camera around again, looking at the beautiful art you just created. "Just some photo?" You ask with malice. "This isn't just some photo!" Your expression softens as you zoom in on STARK Tower. "This is going to get me hired…" You trail off quietly.

"So you put yourself in incredible danger, just to get hired! How stupid are you?" Spider-Man shoots back.

You narrow your eyes. "Says the guy who leaps off buildings on a daily basis."

You can't tell if he rolled his eyes or not, but with the way the lenses tensed, and his tone, you're almost sure he did. You put your camera away as he starts talking. "But I have powers!"

"But some of us have to do whatever we can to survive."

That seemed to shut him up, and you turn to walk away. He calls out to you, "Can I give you a ride home?" You look around and smile at where you were.

"I'm already home. Thanks for the ride Spidey." You give him a wave and go towards the end of the building.

"W-what's your name!" He calls out, a hand raised in the air.

"[Y/N]! [Y/N] [L/N]!" You call back. "Remember it! It's gonna be all over the papers one day!" And with that, you climb down the fire escape to the fourth-floor window and crawl inside.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You didn't see the masked hero again since that night. It had been almost two weeks, and there wasn't a sign of him. Bringing the picture to the Daily Bugle, you were almost fired for the recklessness it took to capture the image, but you instead were promoted, from unpaid intern to a paid one. It wasn't much, but it was better than what you were getting before. Still, you weren't given any meaningful work. You had been assigned to fluff pieces, taking pictures of random places in New York. It wasn't what you wanted to do. You wanted action, to be in the middle of everything, to see first hand what it all really was like.

You still climbed buildings, taking beautiful pictures of New York's life, you even climbed the Empire State building again, but you never saw him. Sure, you saw Spider-Man in passing, maybe swinging through the city, or saving someone from getting hit. But you're never able to get a good picture of it. It's either blurry, or he's not facing the correct way. You're also just not close enough to get anything worthwhile.

That all changed however when you were walking home one night, the subway only a few blocks from your apartment. You had just gotten done with a shift at the Daily Bugle, and we're going home to finish some of your homework from that day, when you feel a hand on your arm. You look to see who the person is, but they hide their face, pulling you into a dark alleyway, away from prying eyes. You struggle, trying to leave his grasp, but even after two weeks, and even in those two weeks, your muscles still hurt from climbing.

The man pushes you up against the wall, and you feel his fingers reaching up to your neck. You know it's a man because he speaks a second later. "Mmm. My my, aren't you a pretty one." His voice is deep, and his breath reeks of alcohol. From his words, you assume you aren't the first one he's done this to. "What's a pretty boy like you doing all the way out here?" He asks. You just lean your head away from him and go to scream. He grabs your face roughly and forces you to look at him. "You make a noise and I kill you, here and now." You feel the knife poking at your stomach.

You whimper, an undignified noise escaping you, but you don't have the will to keep some dignity. You are scared.

The man leans in, placing his lips to your jaw, but just for a moment. That moment ends when he's pulled away from you. You press yourself to the wall, expecting the knife to enter your stomach, but nothing comes. You open your eyes to see the man hanging upside-down, webs covering his body like a cacoon, and a white web-like film covering his mouth to keep him from talking. You look around and slowly start taking your camera from your backpack.

That's when you hear it, light feet touching the ground behind you, and you whirl around.

Standing, silhouetted against the street light, you see Spider-Man, looking down at something in his hands. You raise your camera to your eye and take a picture.

The flash goes off, and you see what he's holding in his hands. It's the knife the man had, the one that was pressed to your stomach.

You see him jump in surprise, and the knife drops onto the ground. You don't lower your camera, even as footsteps approach you. You just take another picture. From the flash, you see Spider-Man rushing forwards, and you go to take another picture when something takes your camera and fills it away from your face.

"Hey!" You shout, but Spider-Man already has your camera. You go to walk towards him, but he holds up a hand. For some reason, you stop.

He's looking through the pictures, his mask illuminated by the digital light of the screen. "Oh! You're that guy that climbed the Empire State! [Y/N], right? These are really good!" He exclaims suddenly. You blink at him, shocked. "Well, except for these two you just took… I mean, I look like a gremlin!"

You roll your eyes and cross your arms. "Well, it's not like you're easy to take a picture of…" You mutter to yourself.

Spider-Man chuckles. "Why do you want a picture so badly?"

"They see me as a liability, my pictures aren't worth the pain I go through to get them. I need them to see I'm not a liability, but an asset," you say. You don't know why you're pouring your heart out to him, but it's Spider-Man. How could you not? He's just trustworthy.

He walks closer and hands you your camera back. You grab it and look up at him. Your heart clenches, and tears pick at the corner of your eyes. "Well, maybe I can help you?" He offers. Your eyes widen, startled. "Yeah, yeah! I could swing by you, take the pictures from up high for you. You know, keep you out of trouble!"

You nod, slowly at first, and then faster. "Yeah, yeah that could work!" You reach forward and envelop him in a hug. He doesn't hug you back but slowly squeezes his arms around you.

You pull back and clear your throat, cough into your fist, and look down at the ground. "So, uh, I'll- I'll see you around?"

Spider-Man nods. "Yeah. You should… probably stay here to call the police, and give a report."

You nod as well. He gives you a two-fingered salute and shoots off. You raise your camera one last time and take a picture. He turns his head back and poses for you. You let a chuckle escape your lips, before you drop your camera, stuffing it into your bags and pulling out your phone. You call the police.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You sit on the roof of your building, leaning back on your hands, the gravel digging into your fingers, the sun shining on your skin. You close your eyes, just taking it in. You take a deep breath, and cough slightly, laughing as you open your eyes. The sky is clear today, one of the few clear days in Brooklyn. You hear the crunching of gravel behind you and turn around. You pick up your camera and stand up to greet Spider-Man.

"Hey!" He calls out, waving to you. You wave back and he jogs to you. "So, what do you need today?" He asks.

You shrug. "Well, all they've been giving me are fluff pieces, things that don't require beautiful pictures. But I do want to get something of you, a nice photo, something simple, I dunno…" you trail off, not knowing how to end it.

Spider-Man nods and takes a step towards the edge of the building. "Well, how about this?" He steps off the side, and your eyes go wide in fear for just a moment, before realizing he's Spider-Man, and he's definitely okay. You raise your camera, and just as he pops out from the building, you take the picture. No flash this time, it was bright enough outside. You grin as Spider-Man does it again, a different pose this time, and then again. You get about six pictures before he lands on the gravel roof, ducking and rolling, and popping up right in front of you, his mask filling the camera's lens. You lower the camera, and grin as the masked hero stands in front of you. You can see the outlines of a goofy grin underneath his mask. What a dork.

"That was perfect!" You exclaim, excited.

"Good! Okay! What now?" He asks. He sounds a little out of breath, but that's probably typical.

"Can you help me get some shots of the city? I don't want to, but if I want to keep my job…" You hand the camera over to him, but he pushes it away.

"No, no, I'm not taking those. You have to take them," he says simply. You go to say something, but it escapes your mind, so you just close your mouth again. Spider-Man holds out one of his hands. "Here. I'll take you. And I'll make sure you don't fall off again."

You hesitantly grab his hand. "What are you gonna do? Carry me by the wrist?"

He chuckles. "Not exactly…" He holds up a hand, and motions towards your waist. You nod and he places a steady hand there, strong and commanding, the hold of someone who knew what he was doing. You put your camera away in your backpack and wrap your arms around his neck. His suit is really soft…

That's the last thought you had before your feet are lifted off the ground, and you're flying eight stories above Brooklyn. You gasp and cling tighter to him, but the hand on your waist kept you pretty much in place. He was strong. You wouldn't really know unless he showed it. He was lithe, had the body of a runner, with good proportions. You shake your head. Why the hell are you thinking about proportions? You're flying through the air!

You grip tighter onto Spider-Man, sort of wrapping your legs around his waist, and the hand on your own hips tightens ever so slightly. You push your face into his neck.

Suddenly, you stop, and you slowly open your eyes. You're looking out at a beautiful, clear day, with clouds overlooking the city. In front of you is Stark Tower, a stark contrast to the rest of the city with its high tech blues and silvers. The shadow it creates over the streets is jarring, and it takes you out of the picture. Still, you stare, watching as clouds disappear like streaks from a paintbrush, the blue covering the white after layers upon layers of paint, like it's trying to erase a mistake.

You slowly pull out your camera, and take a picture, making sure to get the magnitude of the building just right, enough to make it look imposing. You pull the camera back and bring up the picture on the digital face. Spider-Man leans in to take a look at it.

"Beautiful," He says quietly. You can hear his muffled voice in your ear. You look over at him, and he's staring at the building.

You scoff. "It's ugly. The beauty of New York City is its old buildings, the people who have been here for decades, telling their stories, the old monuments that give the city vibrancy." You feel Spider-Man stiffen around you. "Dude, it's okay. We can have our different opinions." You feel him relax slightly. "We don't have to talk about it anymore…" You look down, and your vision suddenly becomes sideways, before going back to normal, but the pit in your stomach is still there, and the ground looks miles below you now. Your grip on Spider-Man's shoulders tightens, and you gulp.

"Can we- can we please get on solid ground again? Please?" You beg. Spider-Man looks down at you, his lenses wide. He nods quickly, and soon, you're in the air again. You push your face into the crook of his neck again, shaking slightly as you feel the wind pass by you, and the dropping and rising of your stomach is jarring.

After what feels like an excruciating number of hours, but what was only probably a short and painless five minutes, you feel gravel underneath your feet. You sigh in relief, but you don't move, and Spider-Man doesn't look like he's willing to move either.

"Thank you," you whisper, before pulling back. Spider-Man just nods and takes his own step back, though his hands linger on your waist for just a moment, like he doesn't want to let go.

You give a wave, and he gives his signature lazy, two-fingered salute, before jumping off the building backward, and zipping off into the air, turning behind a building. You stand there and just look for a few moments, a pleasant smile on your face, before turning around and going inside.

You get a weird feeling like you're being watched.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It had been two weeks since you took those first photos with Spider-Man. Since then, you had taken more photos with Spider-Man, been promoted to head Spider-Man photographer at the Daily Bugle, and gotten a raise. You now got thirteen dollars an hour, more than enough money for a high school student, and more money than you've ever had before. It was an incredible feeling to get your first paycheck, to be able to say you made some of your own money. And what did you do with that money? Well, you had Spider-Man get you the best Chinese food in town, and you paid for it.

Right now, you were sitting with your legs dangling off the edge of some random building in Queens, sitting next to Spider-Man, eating Chinese food. He had his mask pulled up to his nose, and right now, you were just staring. He was white, definitely, pale, not like most people in Brooklyn. Almost everyone was a minority, though there were a few trans people who lived here who were white, but that was about it. All you could see were his lips, and damn your brain if they didn't look like the most kissable lips...

He looks over at you. "What? Do I have something on my face?" He reaches up with a gloved hand, palming at one of the lenses.

You smile and shake your head. "No no."

Spider-Man rolls his eyes. "Take a picture… it'll last longer…" he mumbles. You bump his arm with yours, and you both laugh.

You sit in silence for a few moments, the two of you just eating. Spider-Man stops for a moment and looks over at you, the lenses of his mask narrowing slightly. "What school do you go to?"

You finish your bite, chewing and putting your chopsticks down. You swallow first before talking. Your mama didn't raise you to be impolite. "I'm sorry, what?" You ask, confused by the question.

"I asked what school you go to." You narrow your eyes. "Just because- well- I haven't seen you around anywhere, so I just figured you don't go where I go."

"Where do you go, Spider-Man?" You ask back.

He leans in closer. "I asked you first."

You roll your eyes and lean back slightly. "Alright, alright. I go to Brooklyn High."

Spider-Man's eyes go wide, and the white of the lenses take up more space than the black. "The one on 42nd Street? Where the principal has a crossbow? My friend, he told me about it, and I said it's just a myth but he kept insisting, said he knew someone there who told him and everything! Is it true? Does he have a crossbow!"

You laugh quietly at his excitedness, but you pull a straight face to say as seriously as you can, "Yes it's true. I've seen it myself. Held it in my own hands…" You mime holding up a crossbow and shooting it, pulling your arms up to mimic recoil.

"Whoa, that's so cool! I'll have to tell Ned about that! He's gonna be so excited!" He rambles.

"Okay, my turn. I asked you. Where do you go to school?"

He paused for a moment, thinking, considering his answer, before finally giving it. "Midtown High."

"Huh. Smart cookie." You poke him in the shoulder. "Must be smart to have this suit."

"Oh, I didn't build it. Mr. Stark made it for me." You tense at the name, but he just continues talking. "He's so cool. He made all this stuff for me, and when I was a little younger, he took it away from me for a bit- but that's-that's another story for another time- Are you okay?" He turns and looks at you, stock still, unmoving. You can hear the blood roaring in your ears, and your heart is pounding away in your chest. You don't say anything, but you feel something touch your shoulder, gently, so as not to startle you. It's a hand, a gloved hand, Spider-Man's gloved hand.

You nod, shaking yourself out of your own thoughts. "Yeah yeah, I'm okay."

"Was- was it something I said?" Spider-Man asks quietly, all excitement gone from his voice.

"No- well, maybe? Yes?" It's more of a question than an answer. "Just- it's about Tony, Stark." Spider-Man doesn't say anything, just waits for you to continue. "My dad, he was stationed in Afghanistan. Stark was selling weapons to both sides, to keep the war going, so he could sell more weapons. He was trying to get civilians out of a small town that was about to be blown up by the opposing side when suddenly his own man turned a gun on him and told him not to stop him, to let him run. My father couldn't do that and was killed by a Stark branded gun. When the bombs dropped, his body exploded in the impact. We never got to bury him."

Spider-Man seems to deflate at that, his shoulders sinking at your story. He hesitantly places an arm around your shoulder, pulling you into a side hug. "Is that why you hate Stark Tower?" He asks quietly.

You lean your head into the crook of his neck, placing a hand next to his thigh. "Part of it. The other part is that it's just a goddamn ugly building. Like, look!" You point it out, sticking out of the comparatively smaller buildings all the way across the east river, though it wasn't hard to miss. "Just look at it. So out of place. Like, couldn't you have gotten a cool, bigger on the inside studio apartment in like, Soho or something?" You joke. Spider-Man laughs at it as well. You reach your hand up and place it onto his chest, right next to the symbol of the spider. You reach up and feel the cold metal chill your fingertips. You shiver, and the arm around you tightens. Neither of you pulls away.

It's perfect.

You watch the people on the street pass you by, not looking up, so engrossed in their own world they can't be bothered to look away from their phones. You sigh a deep breath of relief and swear you feel the phantom brush of a kiss on the top of your head. You smile and snuggle closer as the night time air of New York starts to blow in, sending a chill up your spine.

You and Spider-Man sit like that for hours, your dinners long forgotten.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The last few days had been weird. You hadn't seen Spider-Man at all in that time. Well, you had seen him swinging around, saving people and the city, and you got a few good shots of him, but none you could send to your boss. You were on thin ice now anyways.

You and your writer MJ were talking about a new article you could publish, another glowing review of Spider-Man, when the Editor in Chief walked in. J. Jonah Jameson, the head honcho of the Bugle, mustache, cigar and all, came strolling into your admittedly not very private meeting at MJ's desk. He demanded that you write something scathing about Spider-Man instead, something horrendous that would get the public on his side. You knew about JJJ's views about Spider-Man, and frankly, you were not a fan. He walked away without another word, and the two of you started talking about a new idea. It went a little something like this:

SPIDER-MAN'S HATERS AND THEIR VILLAINOUS PORTRAYALS! IS IT JUSTIFIED?

Written by Michelle J. Waterson

Photography by [Y/N] [L/N]

It was your best article yet, and the public thought it was too. In the first two days, over a thousand people had clicked on it. You and MJ had a doughnut celebration at her desk, just laughing and talking for both your lunch breaks, before you both got back to work, her writing another story and you going through and meticulously editing your photos.

Today though, we slightly different. Mostly because as soon as you signed into work, you were knocked over.

"Ah!" You exclaim as you topple over onto the ground. You feel pain shoot up your shoulder, and you roll onto your back, gripping your arm. You hear someone curse next to you, and then footsteps approach you. Looking over, you see a man, well, boy. He couldn't be much older than you, probably your age, with brown eyes and hair. He holds out a hand, and you reach up with your good arm. He grips your hand and pulls you up onto your feet with a surprising amount of strength, strength you wouldn't know he had just by looking at him. He looks at you with apologetic eyes. There was also a bit of shock in them.

"Ah shit," he mutters under his breath. You raise an eyebrow as your hand goes back to your hurt shoulder. "I-I mean about that! I'm so sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going!" He exclaims. His voice is familiar. Your eyes narrow.

"It's… fine…" you say, hesitant.

He walks over to you, close enough to reach, but he doesn't. He hesitates before putting his hand down. He puts it back up again, but not to touch you, but to shake hands. "I'm Parker Peter- uh no, I'm Peter. Parker." His voice is shaking slightly.

You take his hand and shake it once. His grip is strong. "[Y/N] [L/N]."

"I-I know. I've been following your photography for a while now. You take amazing pictures of Spider-Man," he says.

"Thanks…" You say cautiously. "What are you doing here Peter?"

His eyes light up. "Oh! I just got an internship here!"

You scoff. "Good luck."

He just nods, and you lean down to pick up your backpack. You give him a wave, and walk away, frowning as you try and place that voice.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You fiddle with your camera settings, taking random pictures as you look up at the brightly lit night sky, only the moon visible tonight. You swing your legs back and forth, humming to yourself and clicking your tongue to some made upbeat in your head. You had been sitting outside every night for the last four nights, and every night, he still hadn't come. For three weeks, you haven't seen him. You were starting to think he didn't care about you.

"Hey."

You jump, yelping as you slip off the back of the ledge, and fall onto the gravel, on your butt. You groan and look up to see Spider-Man holding a hand down to you. You take it and he pulls you up onto your feet.

"Thanks for that," You say sarcastically.

"Sorry sorry," he says laughing, putting his hands up. You just chuckle along with him. "So, what's on the agenda today? Or I guess 'tonight'?"

You shrug. "I dunno. I was playing with the settings on my camera, and I really want to do a long shutter speed photo. You know, like the ones where the cars are just streaks of light?"

He nods. "Do you know where you wanna take the picture?" You shake your head. "Well, what about the Brooklyn Bridge? It's predictable, but it's really beautiful at night. We could find a nice building, sit there for a while?"

You smile and nod, grabbing your backpack from the ground, and slinging it over your shoulder, deftly putting your camera away. You hold out your arms like a little kid, and Spider-Man chuckles, walking over to you and wrapping a strong arm around your waist. You slide your own around his neck, and he jumps. You both tumble over the side of the building, and you have to shut your eyes. You bury your face in his neck and just stay there. The wind passes by you, chilling you to the bone, and you squeeze tighter. You feel yourself shaking from the cold, the small droplets of water from the fog felt like ice shards hitting your skin, and you feel yourself shaking. You try and get as close to Spider-Man as possible.

Suddenly, you feel ground beneath you. Hard ground, not gravel like a lot of the building's roofs, but nice concrete. You sigh in relief and pull away from Spider-Man, pad along the roof, and get to the edge of the building, the corner that's overlooking the bridge. You take out your camera and tripod and spend five minutes setting it up, getting it right, and pushing the button.

You quickly turn around and see Spider-Man sitting cross-legged on the concrete, and rush over to join him. When you're fully situated in the ground, you go to say something, but close your mouth, letting you two enjoy the silence. You wouldn't say you enjoyed it, as it was quite tense. You both had pretended like nothing had even happened like he hadn't just left you for two weeks without notice. You knew you weren't entitled to it, but you hoped that you were close enough, that he would at least tell you. You don't know how he feels about the silence, but with the two of you so far apart from each other, it still feels wrong.

You start shivering slightly, pressing your hands on your arms, trying to converse heat. Something moves behind you, and you realize his hand has enveloped yours, and he's now pushing you closer to him, to his side. You slide over so you're touching, and you rest your head on his shoulder. He rests his head on yours.

It's you who breaks the silence first.

"Why were you gone for so long? I was worried…" You stop yourself, not wanting to finish the sentence. You knew what you were going to say. 'I was worried you were hurt, or worse, dead.'

You hear him sigh, feel his chest rise next to yours. "I'm sorry. I was busy."

You shake your head. "Busy with what?"

"Stuff… things…"

"Things you can't tell me, or things you won't?"

Silence from Spider-Man. It's an answer in and of itself.

You sigh. "I thought that might be what it is."

"I really want to! I just can't…"

You look up at him from your place on his shoulder. "I know. I understand. There's a lot I haven't told you…" You sigh and rest your forehead in the crook of his neck. "I hate secrets," you mumble out, your words muffled by the suit. "I hate keeping them. I hate when they're kept from me." You look back up at him, at the soulless lenses that covered his eyes. The black around the white would move, allowing for some expression to be read, but you really wished you could actually look into his eyes, to see what he was thinking about, how he was feeling. "But I guess that makes me a hypocrite. I keep too many of my own secrets to have anyone tell me about theirs."

There's silence for a moment, and you see his lenses flicker, almost as if they were looking down, towards something, something below your nose. Your cheeks burn even warmer in the cold air, and only your face feels hot as you reach up with one hand.

He doesn't try and stop you as you pull his mask up to just above his nose. You don't go further than that.

"I was scared..." he whispers quietly.

"Why were you scared?" You whisper back.

"Because I like you…"

You don't answer. You just lean in.

His lips are soft, wet, most likely from his breath and being inside a mask all day. Reaching up with one hand, you gently lay it on his soft cheek, and on part of the bunched up mask. You see the lenses close, and you follow suit, closing your own eyes. You feel a gentle hand on your back, the one on your arm had left, and was now slowly pushing on your lower back. You see darkness behind your eyes, no light, no bridge, no city. Just you, and Spider-Man. You take a breath in through your nose and shift slightly, deepening the kids more. Your other hand mirrors the one already on his face, and you run your thumbs across his cheekbones. You turn your body so it's more comfortable to kiss him, and you practically sit in his lap to get a good angle. His free hand goes to your hip, gripping it tight.

You're the first to pull away, gasping slightly at the cold air. You don't dare open your eyes. For a moment, you feel Spider-Man's breath on your lips, but then it's gone. You open your eyes, and he's turned away from you. You use one of your hands to push him back, so he's looking at you.

"Can I tell you a secret?" You whisper, a sky smile on your face. He nods, silent, not daring to make a sound for fear of shattering the moment into a bunch of tiny, silver, mirrored pieces, reflecting them back on the both of you, mocking you and tormenting you with humiliation at what you just did. You didn't feel humiliated. In fact, you felt relieved. "I like you too…"

He kisses you again.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next night, you're sitting on your windowsill, looking out the open window into the loud New York night. You don't have your camera in your hands, nor your backpack near you. You just sit there, empty-handed, still, just watching everything pass you by. The fire escape blocks part of your view though. You rest your head back on your window, and think about the day, about going into work, about MJ questioning you on why you were so happy. You bumped into Peter today, who also looked really happy. You talked for a little bit, and the entire time, again, you couldn't get that voice out of your head. You were terrible at placing voices.

You sigh as you shake your head. It didn't matter right now.

You turn to look at your door, and when you look back, someone's on your fire escape. You slap a hand over your mouth before you can scream, and your eyes go wide as you gasp.

"Spidey? What are you doing here!" You whisper shout to him, trying to keep your voice down. He bends down so he's eye-level with you.

"You weren't on the roof! I was worried about you!" He whispers back. You roll your eyes and move out of the windowsill, beckoning him to step inside. As soon as he does, you close the window behind him and pull up his mask. You kiss him. He hesitates for a moment, before placing his hands on your hips. You wrap your arms around his neck and smile as you pull away. "I missed you," he mutters. You smile and just kiss him again.

He squeezes your hips, and you pull away with a wry smile. He tries to chase your lips, but you put a finger on his, causing him to kiss them. You laugh quietly and pull your hand away, going to kiss him again, but there's a knock at your door.

"¿[Y/N]? ¿estas ahi?" You hear your mother call from the other side of the door.

Your eyes go wide, and you look at Spider-Man, who's own lenses are wide as well. You open your mouth to speak but close it, looking at him in panic. He just stares at you. You turn over your shoulder and call back, "¡Un momento mamá!" You push him towards your closet, opening the door and shoving him in. He closes the door on himself and you take your shirt off, hoping it would convince your mom you were in the middle of getting dressed.

The door opens, and your mom walks in. "¿Por qué estás tan rojo?" Is the first thing she asks.

You wince slightly, and you pray that it's not enough for her to notice. "Es realmente caliente mamá." You fan yourself with your hand, and let out some air, pretending like you're trying to cool off.

"¡Entonces abre una ventana! ¡Está frío afuera!" She walks over to your window and opens it up. A gust of cold air rushes in, and you shiver. "Y ponte una camisa. Vas a atrapar tu muerte." She picks up the shirt you just tossed onto the ground and throws it at you. She walks to your door, and grabs the handle, walking out as she starts to pull it closed. She stops and leans her head in. "Hice Ropa Vieja. Consigue un poco antes de que se enfríe o no vas a cenar." She closes the door, but not all the way. She leaves a little sliver of it open, and you sigh, knowing it's to prevent you from doing anything stupid.

You walk over to the closet and open the door. Looking around, you don't see anything, until Spider-Man drops down from the ceiling. You reach a hand out and place it onto his shoulder, and the up onto his cheek. He put his mask back down.

"Maybe we should try again tomorrow?" You whisper with a small laugh. Spider-Man sighs. "It's a Holiday, I don't have work, we can do whatever you want."

He wraps an arm around your waist and pulls you in. "What if I just want to lay on your bed with you?"

You smile and kiss his masked cheek. "Then that's what we'll do."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You sit at your messy desk, staring at your computer. Well, you weren't staring so much as frowning. It was a picture you had taken a few weeks ago, and you didn't really know what to do with it. You had changed the colour, brightness, and even the contrast, but nothing seemed to be 'right' for it. It was a picture of Spider-Man. He was small on the picture, only taking up a small portion of the otherwise large photo, but he was against a plain building, with sectioned off, blue windows. It was a beautiful photo if you did say so yourself, but you couldn't figure out what you wanted to do with it. You tried making the colour more vibrant, but it made the city look to pretty to be real. The contrast just made it look fake, and the brightness was either too light or too dark.

Nothing helped.

You're broken out of your thoughts by the sound of your window opening, and in a panic, you close your computer. Looking up, you see the same man you were just looking at on your computer, staring back at you. You let out a breath and smile back as Spider-Man crawls in through the window, closing it behind him. You stand up out of your chair, and he walks over to you. You push up his mask and kiss him.

"How are you?" He asks as he hugs you.

"I'm fine. Busy, but fine. How are you?" You ask back, returning the hug.

He just sighs. "Tired."

He sounds tired, and you pull away from the hug. You hold out your hand, and he grabs it, letting you lead him to the bed, where you sit down. He follows suit, and you lay down. You open your arms, and he flops down into them, letting you hold him.

"Do you want to talk about it?" You ask. He shakes his head. "Okay," is all you say in response.

You just lay there, holding him, letting him relax in your arms, and you don't press him don't try and get him to talk, just give him the space to if he needs it. And he does, eventually, though it isn't what you were expecting.

"Why have you never asked who I am?"

You're taken aback by the question, and you think to yourself about his question. "I-I don't know… I guess I never needed to know. You've always just been Spider-Man. I didn't really need to know who you were." You reply honestly.

He looks up at you, his mask pulled all the way down. You can't read the mask. "Do you want to?"

You open your mouth to speak, but you stop yourself, halting the words before they can move past your lips, like a dam blocking a waterfall. Immediately, you want to say 'yes', but do you really? Do you really want to know who he is, maybe ruin this? You tell yourself nothing could ruin what you had, but you couldn't lie to yourself. What if he was someone you hated? You didn't know many people from Midtown High, but of the ones you do know, you only like two, and one you barely even know. So, you rethink what you're going to say, and slowly say it.

"I don't… know…" you answer sincerely. You place a hand on his masked cheek. "I truly don't know. What if you're someone I know, someone I don't like. Even if you weren't, what if you're someone I don't know? We know barely anything about each other. What if… what if I don't like you?" You look away, and your hand drops from his face. You turn, and lay on your back, pulling your arms in so they're over your stomach. It's protective.

"I-" Spider-Man cuts himself off, looks away, and then looks back at you. "I want you to know." It's simple. But it's also a question. I want you to know, but I won't force you. It's also a matter of fact. I don't think I could go on with you not knowing. It's also a hesitation. Are you sure you don't want to know? I'm putting myself out there so you can know, are you sure you don't?

You look over at him, and sit up, leaning against the wall, so you're more or less upright. "Okay."

"Okay?" He sounds excited, but like he's trying to hide it. You can't help but smile.

You let out a breathy laugh as you confirm, "Yeah. Okay."

He sits up opposite you, and he grabs at his mask. He doesn't pull.

"You know, I always expected this to be a lot more dramatic. Maybe I'm hurt and you need to heal me, and in order to help you take off my mask!" He exclaims, and you laugh. "Or maybe it comes off while I'm trying to save you, and you swoon over me!" You laugh harder at that, at knowing he probably has a really goofy grin underneath his mask.

"Just, take it off already! Before I change my mind!" You exclaim in between laughs.

The smile drops from both your faces, and Spider-Man takes a deep breath. He reaches up, grabs the top of his mask, and pulls.

"Peter Parker?" You ask, just confused. "Wait hold on, that's why I recognized your voice!" He just looks at you, confused at your reaction. "I would have never thought it was you!"

"W-what? Why?" He asks, not knowing what to say.

"Well, Peter's like, nerdy, clumsy. I mean, for God's sake, you bumped into me your first day!" You exclaim, a laugh bubbling up behind your lips. "And well, Spider-Man… well, he's…" You trail off, and mutter quietly, almost quiet enough where he can't hear, "sexy." Your cheeks flame up, and you want to die from how embarrassed you feel, but when you look up at the man in front of you, he's also blushing.

"Wait, really?" He asks.

Your cheeks go even hotter. "W-well, yeah. It's hard not to think that when you're in a skintight suit…"

Peter just laughs and leans forward. "Can I tell you a secret?"

You nod and he gets even closer to your lips, so close they're brushing up against each other. You've never seen him this confident.

"The secret is… I feel the same way."

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killjoy-karrot-kake · 6 years

Note

19: What medium/program do you use the most in your art?

Oh boy.... I use a lot. Okay SO. For my digital art at the moment at least, I use a standard iPad Air, my finger (yay...) and a free app called Autodesk Sketchbook for Education (but who uses it for that?) or SketchBookEDU. It’s alright I guess... and definitely great as a starting point in digital art... Its controls and brushes are fairly fluid but unchangeable, you can’t create custom brushes. The main problems with the program is the fact that you can kinda only use your finger to draw, unless you happen to be lucky and have a newer iPad with an Apple Pen, unfortunately I am not one of those. I find it works best by sketching out the line art in a regular traditional-paper sketchbook then scanning it into the app to re-trace.

Colouring is hard and there are no fill options, everything needs to be done in a stroke-only kind of way, like colouring with a pencil in traditional, except y’know, with your finger. This means it takes AGES and the literal skin of my right index finger has begun to wear down a bit with the amount I am dragging it along a screen rapidly to try and kill time then having to go back and painstakingly erase everything that managed to escape the line art. The program also only allows for three layers MAXIM. So I have to line, new layer, do a section of colouring then merge before moving on to the next layer. Each layer cannot be changed after that, once they are merged, they are merged.

Despite that there are some upsides. It allows you to zoom in close enough for fine details and once you get the hang of constantly spinning the piece round to get better angles for colouring or sketching its pretty good. It also allows for an infinite amount of both folders and sketches. Which is really great if you are seriously OCD like me, it keeps things together. Plus for a free app, it’s not too shabby. Although VERY amateur, I’m getting a tablet soon so I’m really looking forward to that and hopefully my art might start being of a higher quality. Free apps don’t give nearly the same amount of satisfaction in the final artwork as say, Clip Studio Paint Pro or Adobe Photoshop.

(*shudders* it’s so blurry and pixelated though....)

As for traditional art, I use a lot of medium. Mostly I will use markers, primarily Chameleon Colour Tones (the best markers ever in my opinion, refillable, allow for different tones and are slightly cheaper) and Copics. I do use watercolour, however I use watercolour pencils, furiously scribbling on a piece of separate paper before using it as a palette, then transferring on to my work. Uh, I use Derwent coloured pencils, when I use coloured pencils, and derwent pastels. Charcoal Pencils from Typo are actually not half bad, they can be sharpened in a regular Staedtler pencil sharpener and actually work really well for perhaps being the cheapest in the market.

Thank you so much for the ask! This kinda turned into a review though.... :P

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writingwitchly · 6 years

Text

A piece of the past

Request: JamesxLily and I would love it to have a bit of Sirius and maybe of lil Harry too. But it’s okay with only Jily too. You keep the plot and everything like you want to, I’ll love it anyway! <3 ~ @jily-live-on aka my wonderful S

Ship: Jily A/N: My first request ever! I’m so happy that it was from you, S! A/N2: Ok, so, I cried. The writing drove me crazy, didn’t feel too confortable using past tense, so if anybody sees a mistake, please let me know! Hope you all like it! Word count: 1,9k

James Potter was not the kind of guy that gets scared easily.

“Hand me the towel. Quickly!”

He had become an animagus during his teen years, without any adult’s help…

“Faster Pads, this is horrible!”

… because he was friends with a werewolf…

“I can’t- Did you find it?”

“I’m not good at doing things under pressure, Prongs!”

… he had fought against Dark wizards...

“Are you sleeping or what? This is getting out of hands!”

“It’s coming! Resist a bit mo-”

Tunk

… dealt with wicked magical creatures during his time at Hogwarts…

“How am I supposed to do this?”

“I don’t know, mate. Let me have a few seconds to recover, I just tripped over a giant lizard and almost broke my teeth.”

… asked Lily Evans out…

“That’s what happens when you don’t watch your steps. Just throw it away. The towel?”

… at least a hundred times…

“The tow- Stop looking at yourself in that mirror, you self-obsessed idiot!”

“I told you I almost got disfigured, you four-eyed moron!”

… he was brave, a true Gryffindor…

“Hand the bloody towel, Pads. And come help me, I can’t hold it much longer!”

“It’s your fight, don’t- What the hell is that?”

… but some things are bound to destabilize a 21-years-old man.

“That’s called a diaper.”

Under Sirius’ curious look, James tried, for the umpteenth time, to secure Harry in his diaper, with no better result than the previous attempts.

When his wife asked him to look after the baby a couple of hours before, James accepted, considering that he had enough experience, now, to deal with the situation. But apparently, after almost a year of being a father, he was no closer to knowing how to take care of his son than Dumbledore to rejuvenate.

“And how do you know which part is the front and which is the back?”

He also thought that Sirius’ help would make it all easier. His plan was to feed the child, put him to sleep, and then play wizarding chess with his best friend. But then again, it was easier for Nearly Headless Nick to enter the Headless Hunt.

“I guess this is the front. I’m 99% sure. Okay, maybe just 98%. Anyway, Lily’ll be up in no time.”

The real reason that had pushed James to be alone with the baby -- because being with Sirius at that moment was as good as being alone -- was because he wanted Lily to have some rest. The loneliness, the pressure, and the sleepless nights were starting to feel heavy on her shoulders.

“Well, I’m telling you, I’m glad to be single.”

Hurried steps coming from the stairs made the young men look up from the changing table. When they heard a series of loud bangs and disgruntled mumbles, their gazes met in a frightened coordination.

“James Potter! Sirius Black!” The cry, echoing from the living room, belonged to a half-preoccupied, half-enraged Lily.

After losing a rock, paper, scissors battle with Sirius, and taking what was left of his courage with both hands, James stepped in the next room, finding himself to be facing nothing but darkness. Remembering that he had closed the curtains in his effort to put Harry to sleep, he took a few steps toward the window, bumping into a pair of boots on the way.

When the feeble sun rays illuminated the interior of the house again, the young man turned over to look at his wife. Her nap did her good, by what he saw, as she looked more fresh than in the past days. But a rested Lily was also a more high-tempered Lily.

“Yes, darling?” James let out in a shy tone.

“James Fleamont Potter,” she said in a shaky voice, probably because she was trying to hold back her anger. “I take a few hours of peace and leave you in charge, and look at the state of the house!”

For the first time in the afternoon, James shot a glance at his surroundings, and he couldn’t help but understand Lily’s mood: Never, in his life, had he seen a more upside down room. Rests of baby food were spread on the couch; Sirius’ backpack laid open on the floor, its content dispersed here and there; there was a jumble of clothes in the middle of the room; something - feathers? - was showing from under an armchair; a broken vase had released its water and flowers everywhere; the big lizard toy on which Sirius had tripped was sticking his tongue out to James, from the corner where it had been dumped after the attempted disfigurment; an odd looking green substance was hanging from the roof; and Lily was blocked behind a mountain of old books, built by the men earlier in their attempt to stop Harry from climbing the stairs.

When James freed her with a flick of his wand, they were both surprised by a rather outraged ginger cat zooming away from the spot.

“There you were, Nuts! You should have told us that you liked to read so much!” joked the man, but his wife’s serious glance made him quiet again. Apparently, she didn’t believe that trapping the cat under the whole content of the bookshelf was a good idea.

“Do I have to worry about my child, or is he still alive?” asked the woman after a pause.

For a response, a disheveled and totally soaked Sirius got out of the bathroom, holding a pink and chubby mass wrapped in a towel. “Hi, Lily, had a nice rest?”

Answering with just a smile, she approached him to take the babbling baby in her arms.

“How’s baby Harry?” she said in the sweetest voice ever heard from her.

A small hand extricated itself from under the cloth to clumsily caress Lily’s face, ending up pulling her nose.

“Mommy loves you too,” laughed the woman, and then she added, “And as you look like you’re enjoying your time with your Godfather, Mommy is going to have a small talk with Daddy in the kitchen.”

Lily didn’t notice, as she was busy kissing Harry’s feet and laughing with him, the silent conversation between the two men.

“You are not leaving me alone with the monster,” mouthed Sirius.

“I’m going to have a worse time than you,” mouthed back James, pointing at Lily with his head.

“You four-eyed traitor,” said the former with his eyes.

“You self-obsessed coward,” glanced back the latter.

Some fog, a gray garden, an empty street, and a lot of rain: That’s all that James managed to see from the window of the kitchen.

“Quite a depressing scene,” he thought.

Then, his gaze went back to the red-haired woman that was standing in front of the stove, stiring some hot chocolate.

“Now, this is a view,” he said to himself.

With her lose hair and sparkling green eyes, she looked as gorgeous as she did during their Hogwarts years. The shadows under her eyes and the preoccupation that contracted her traits were the only proofs that some time had passed since when they were teenagers without a bigger concern than their Potions marks.

James still couldn’t believe that, finally, Lily Evans -- no, Potter, please -- was his wife. And it had been two years or so since the wedding.

After a few seconds, he cleared his throat, recalling the “small talk” she wanted to have, and considering that the sooner it was over, the better.

“Um, darling?”

She turned her head to look at him, apparently lost in her thoughts.

“What did you want to talk about?” the man asked.

An expression of comprehension, soon replaced by a childish grin, relaxed her face.

“Oh, nothing,” she explained, “We’ve been locked in here for almost a year now, but with Harry we barely have time to spend together. I was just taking advantage of Sirius’ presence to be alone with you.”

A rush of deep love toward his wife ran through James’ body, and he moved to hug her, burying his face in her flower-scented, flaming-red hair. For a moment, he wondered whether Harry would have such a strong attraction as him toward redheads, but then he pushed the thought aside: There was just a chance in a million.

Meanwhile, Lily’s hands closed around her husband’s waist, fists clenching the soft wool of his sweater, a Christmas gift by Molly Weasley. She rested her head on his chest, feeling his heartbeat and synchronizing her breathing with his. Her eyes closed, she silently hoped that Harry would turn out to be like him: a handsome, caring, brave man.

Suddenly, she realized something: What if James and her were not there to raise him? What if something happened to them? With their parents gone and Petunia and Vernon not wanting to come any closer than one mile, she felt no support.

“Don’t worry, darling, we’ll be fine,” she heard, “We love each other, we love Harry, and we have friends that love us. Everything is going to be alright.”

It was as if James had read in her mind.

“Do you promise?” she asked in a frightened, naive tone, very unusual to her.

What are promises in times of war? He didn’t want to lie to her, but he loved her so much. He knew he would do anything to keep her safe. To keep Harry, the fruit of their love, safe.

“I’ll do my best.”

He grabbed her chin and pulled her lips toward his, kissing her as he did during their first date: shyly, but pouring all his adoration into this simple action.

During their embrace, they felt plainly happy, forgetting the chaos that was submerging the world and all the difficulties and miseries that were awaiting outside. They were protected by this force that only the pure hearts can produce: the force of love.

Unfortunately, their moment of quiet couldn’t last long.

“My p- Harry! Harry no! Help!”

With a reluctant smile, James and Lily pulled apart.

“Poor Sirius. Harry can’t even walk properly, and his Padfather is already overcome,” remarked James.

“Imagine when he’ll start to talk,” said Lily dreamily.

“When he’ll go to school for the first time…”

“When he’ll have his first crush…”

“When he’ll be in his teenager crisis…”

“Argh! That leather jacket was new!”

“I guess we better go help him,” whispered Lili.

“Yeah, maybe,” answered James, and after a quick kiss on her cheek, he left the kitchen. “Reinforcements are coming Sirius!”

Remaining alone, Lily smiled to herself: This evening, she would have to bear with three children. Then, she stepped in the next room as well, ready to have a pillow fight or whatever else the guys were preparing.

The next hours went by between jokes and laughter. The photo album was commented -- “Sirius! There are more pictures of you at our wedding than of us!” -- and pictures were taken to fill it. Songs were sung -- “Stop singing, James, you’re frightening Harry!” -- and poems were written -- “What do you mean by ‘roses are red, violets are blue, Lily’s cute but not you’?” -- until the four peacefully fell asleep on the living room couches, wrapped by the silence of the night.

Untouched, on the dining table, stood the two mugs of hot chocolate, which, after all, were not needed by the newlyweds to bring back a piece of their past.

#jily #jily forever #jily married #jily one shot #jily fanfic #jily fic #jily fanfiction #baby harry #harry potter #Sirius Black #hp fanfic #hp fanfiction #***writing

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marvelsuperfangirl · 6 years

Text

Welcome To Brakebills (Avengers x Reader)

A/N: 🎃👻Happy Halloween!!!!👻🎃

I honestly don’t know what happened to the costumes, I tried to imagine each of them in the perfect costume. Originially Pietro was going to be a clown but I wanted him to be sexy and I wanted to bring a small agrument between Sam and Bucky. This is an Avengers / The Magicians cross-over. I’m not really proud of the end because I had trouble writing it and the writing became worse as I wrote.

Words: 2449

Trees, trees and still trees. The team has been wandering in the woods during a good hour now and they lost track of Y/N. Actually it’s a funny story, she left the tower with a big backpack and with the excuse of having a really important meeting to intend. But none of the Avengers believed it; it was Halloween, she loved Halloween and she was the one who brought up the idea of the horror movie night. With only one look to one another, they all bolted up and ran up to the elevator. Something was up and they needed to know what is was. They all entered the elevator, even through they were packed like sardines; that’s how the Avengers’ Halloween night started. When they reached the lobby of the tower and hurried toward the door they got stopped.

-“ Mr Stark!”

Tony stopped while some continued on their way out and some others stopped to wait for him.

-“ Excuse me, to interrupt your night activities but Mrs Y/L/N let something for you.” said the receptionist while fiddling with something under her desk.

Tony and the remaining of the team approached her and she finally pull out the backpack that Y/N had when she left. Tony took it and open it.

-“ What’s inside?” Natasha asked looking over Tony’s shoulder

Tony took hold of the content of the bag and took it out. It was a dress; a typically witch dress. The bag was full of costumes.

-“ She left us costumes, why is she doing? If she wanted to dress up she could have just asked!” Sam grumbled.

Someone cleared their throat.

-“ She said that you had to look at the bottom of the bag” the receptionist add.

-“ Move, we don’t have any time to waste if we want to know what Lady Y/N want us to know” Thor said pushing Tony out of the way. He grabbed the back and turned it upside down, it’s content hit the floor and a paper fell among all the costumes.

Bruce, took it from the floor and adjust his glasses before reading what was written on the piece of paper.

-“ She want us to put the costumes on and to find her”

They all groaned at Bruce statement and looked over at the pile on the floor.

-“ Okay, but I certainly won’t be the one wearing this buny costume!” Tony said

-“ Well, she also made a list of wich costumes we should wear.” Bruce continued “ And you’re the bunny.

The billionaire let his head fall back and let out a dramatic sigh.

-” Which one is mine ?“ Natasha asked, walking to Bruce to have a look at the note.

-” Sexy Spider" Bruce said blushing a little.

The red head smiled

-“ At least I’m not a bunny” she smirked at Tony before going back to the pile to pick her costume.

-“ Oh which is mine? Which is mine?” Thor aksed cheerily bouncing slightly in excitement.

-“ Hmm you’re the bear” Bruce said

-“ I will have to thank Lady Y/N. A bear is a very good choice, symbol of strength and fearlessness; just like me”

The little group start to rummage through the pile to find their dedicated costumes when the sliding glass door of the tower opened, revealing the rest of the team.

-“What the fuck are you doing !?” Clint screamed panting .

The others entered the lobby just behind him and looked at the five avengers bend over a pile of clothes.

-“ Guys, we lost Y/N” Steve said

-“ No shit, sherlock, she want us to find her, so she obviously won’t stand in front of us, where’s the fun in that!” he scoffed

-“ What’s going on here?” Wanda ask going out of behind the Captain and walking toward Natasha who held her costume proudly.

-“ Y/N let us costume to wear” she said.

-“ And she choosed to make me wear a fucking bunny costume!”

Steve chuckled

-“ Come on guys, let’s put on these and find Y/N”

Once all of the Avengers were dressed in their costumes they all head out of the tower, earning giggles from the receptionist on their way.

-“ We look ridiculous” Sam whined

He has been one of the unlucky of the team to have a lame costume.

-“ Let’s be real, you’re nothing but a clown, she made a good choice, in my opinion” Bucky said, obviously mocking the poor falcon.

-“ Well, nobody asked for your opinion. And she choose to make you a ghost, it’s not better. At least we don’t have to see your ugly face”

-“ If you don’t shut up I will make you eat your fake nose, idiot!”

-“ Will you guys stop. We really need to find Y/N. I honestly don’t understand why she wanted us to wear costumes.” Wanda interrupted.

She, on the other side was wearing a beautiful witch dress with a hat to match. Natasha was also under Y/N good grace because her sexy spider outfit was fitting her perfectly.

Steve was a werewolf, he had a tored off shirt stained wit hfake blood, fake werewolf hands and a mask. Pietro was a devil, he had a jacket and pants in red leather and black shirt and black shoes; he was also wearing red devil horns on top of his head. Thor was rather happy with his bear onesie, hiding him completely except for his face and some of his golden which escaped all round his face. Bruce was a doctor, nothing too different from his usual outfit, his had a white blouse and a stetoscope, Y/N knew he wasn’t the type to show off and he was grateful for her choice. Clint was wearing a bird onesie, with a beak and eyes on the hood and little wings on the back, his grumpy face described perfectly what he thought about this costume. Tony was cursing and grumbling since he put his costume on. And finally, Peter was wearing a unicorn onesie, the girls had assured him that he was super cute but he was walking with his head down with the hood falling over his face showing the unicorn face that was on the hood and he already tripped over his tail multiple times and decided to put it in the pocket of the costume.

As they walked through the city to find their teammate they got looks and even compliments on their costumes, some of them were sarcastic but the heroes ignored it.

They walked for a good quarter of an hour before they reached a small park with almost dead trees and flowers everywhere. They entered and as they went deeper into the park they found out that it turned into woods.

-“ Hey look!” Pietro exclaimed before zooming over the entrance of the woods and coming back in less than a second. He was holding a piece of paper, similar to the one Y/N placed in the backpack.

-“ Give me that!” Tony snatched the paper out of Pietro’s hand

-“ I’ve had enough of that. My reputation will be tarnished forever because of this thing” he said gesturing to his costume before resuming to reading the paper.

-“ Go in the woods and count fifty steps. Don’t give up yet, we’ll have fun soon XX” Tony read.

A collective sigh was heard before they all start walking again, making the dead leaves and sticks , that covered the ground, crack in their trail. The woods became darker as the time passed and as they reached the deeper side of the forest.

-“ Fifty” Bucky said

They all around, but there was nothing but trees, trees and still trees. Did Y/N made them go all the way through the city in those garments just to make fun of them?

-“ It’s a trick, I should have know it ” Tony screamed and yanked his hood down.

-“ Let’s go home” Steve said and they turned back to where they went.

-“ Hey guys!!!” a voice from nowhere said

The team all jumped and turned back again to see where the voice came from.

Then they saw it.

On the background of trees, suspended in the air, white glowing lines and geometrical figures appeared and the trees became blurry and finally a totally different place. And in the middle of the new background was Y/N, she was wearing a Harry Potter’s wizard gown and was waving at her friends.

-“ Y/N?!” they called

-“ Come on guys” she said and gestured with her hand for them to join her.

They all looked to the trees around them and to the place Y/N was in and carefully step the magic line that separated the both different places. When the last of them passed on the other side the dark forest disappeared .

They were left to admire the new background. A grassy court was extending before them, leading to a cluster of late Gothic buildings with contemporary architecture elements. The one in front of them was made in redish brown bricks with a clock at the top. Near this building was a stone panel which in majuscule letters was carved “ Brakebills”. Trees were scattered in the court as well as many people dressed in costumes, drinking, chatting and laughing.

Y/N walked to her friends with a big smile on her face.

-“ Welcome to Brakebills, guys!”

You extended your arms, like you were showing what was around you.

-“ What the hell is this place?” Sam asked

You chuckled

-“ It’s my university ”

-“ An hidden unversity? In the middle of the forest and invisible to outsiders? What kind of school it is?” Natasha asked

- You know, if it wasn’t hidden we would have been discovered and probably arrested or something"

-“ You didn’t answer our questions, Lady Y/N” said Thor.

Your smile got wider

-“ Come on, I’m gonna show you” you said, gesturing for them to follow you.

You start walking in the opposite direction of the building that was facing your little group, in the same direction as the other people were going.

The Avengers walked behind you, still on their defensive mode in case something weird would come out.

-“ Here at Brakebills, we learn how to become magicians, so we learn magic, pretty logical. But not the magicians that you can see at kids birthday’s parties; the kind who can do real magic.”

-“ Like in Hogwarts?” Peter asked in an excited tone with a big smile.

-“ Hum…yeah technically it’s like Hogwarts, we just don’t have wands.”

You continue to lead your teammates to god knows where when out of the crowd of people someone called out your name.

-“ Y/N! I’ve been looking for you, the ceremony is about to start!”

A young woman with tanned skin, brown hair and equally brown eyes was walking toward you. She was dressed as a witch, a kind of sexy witch; her cleavage was showing off her boobs and the dress was short, but it suited her very well.

When she stopped next to you, she put her hand on her hips, waiting impatiently for your excuse.

-“ I’m sorry Margo, but my guests were a bit late” you said pointing to the team.

Margo turned briefly to your friends and then back to you.

-“ Well, that’s interesting but we have a ceremony to attend; so let’s go!” she said clapping at the end and starting to walk back to where she came from.

You rolled your eyes but still obliged and followed her.

-“ Let’s go guys” you said to the team.

Margo led you further from the building where all the student walked earlier. They were forming a circle around something that the avengers couldn’t see yet.

-“ Come on, they’re waiting for us” Margo said and grabbed your hand to lead you through the crowd.

You gave an apologetic smile to your friends

-“ Don’t miss the show guys!” you screamed to them before disappearing between all the other students.

-“This is becoming too weird, even for me” Tony said.

The group walked to the circle to see what was happening in the middle and when they reached the front row of the crowd, they were meet by another circle. You, Margo and some other students formed a circle while holding each other’s hands. Around the heroes the laughter, chatting, and drinking stopped to let a complete silence take over.

The inner circle’s students separated their hands from each other’s and placed them in front of them. They started moving their fingers, forming shapes in the air and approximatives movements. A small light was emitting from the tip of their fingers and the more they were moving, the more the light was becoming brighter. Then, they all stopped and raised their hands above their heads; the crowd mirrored their actions.

All the light from every fingers started elevating in the air and joining each other to form balls of light that floated above the inner circle’s students head. The balls flew high, so high that they became small points, ressembling stars and when they threatened to disappear, they blew up.

The dark, night sky was now illuminated by fireworks, thousands of colorful fireworks. Everyone was watching, their eyes reflecting the lights as they started cheering. When the fireworks had died down, bringing the obscurity back to the place, fairy lights that were previously placed in the trees, magically lighten the place as the crowd cheered again.

Then music started blasting from nowhere and the students started dancing as the avengers looked around with similar smiles as the other people there.

-“ This is beautiful” Wanda said and the other agreed.

They all started to laugh and enjoy the moment along with the students around them.

-“ Did you enjoy the show?”

They all turn to the voice and saw you, standing there.

- “ So…all those magical things were true?” Pietro asked

-“ I’m surprised that you doubted it. Our team has an asgardian god, an android and people with superpowers. ; me being a magician is pretty average.” you said, letting out a laugh.

-“ Now come on, the night is still young and the party’s waiting for us.” you add

Your teammates and yourself joined the other students to drink, dance and chat, for your friends it was mostly asking questions about how the kind of magic we learned at Brakebills worked. This Halloween was special, very special but who would complain, everybody needs a little magic in their life.

#marvel #marvel imagines #avengers #avengers x reader #tony stark #steve rogers #sam wilson #natasha romanoff #wanda maximoff #pietro maximoff #peter parker #thor odinson #bruce banner #bucky barnes #mcu

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bubble-tea-bunny · 7 years

Text

the rule of cool (part 1)

[peter parker x reader]

author’s note: yaaaay this is finally done! spent the last week or so writing it. this idea came out of nowhere but it’s probably the most fun story i’ve written. big ups to my cousin (i know you’re reading this lol) for helping me develop the plot because holy hell it went everywhere. hahaha hope you all enjoy

also tried to post this as one giant post, and while chrome and my phone’s browsing app (safari) handled it just fine, the app kept crashing, so i’m posting this in 2 parts. so sorry if you saw this before

word count: 10,167

PART TWO

some foreword stuff: never played d&d before, just did some research, so please don’t judge me lol. also do y’all recognize the reference in the first paragraph. i think ya do(;

FRIDAY

When Peter Parker leaves the premises of Midtown High School that bright Friday afternoon, there are only two things on his mind: the thrift store and his latest Dungeons and Dragons campaign.

As he leaves the station after his short subway ride, there is an extra spring in his step as he walks to the end of the block. When the crosswalk sign turns green, he’s quick to cross, and soon his ears are filled with the sounds of the city: the whoosh of cars zooming past, the hum of the above-ground subway as it slides along the tracks. Peter grabs his iPod from his pocket and puts his earphones in. His playlist is on shuffle and the first song to greet him is the electronic rock so characteristic of Ratatat, and the smooth synths and electric guitar elicit a smile from the boy almost automatically. It feels like he’s in a movie. The breeze is cold against his face as he continues on down the street.

As he approaches the corner of the current street, he can see the windows of the thrift shop, and if he should gaze inside from there, he’d see the front half of the store, which houses most of the clothes (and he says “most of” because the baby clothes are kept near the back with the toys—yes, he’s got the layout of this store memorized. He’s been here enough times). But he doesn’t stop to look inside, for there’s no need, and walks past those windows and turns the corner. He’s quick to arrive at the entrance, where above the glass double doors hangs a neon sign, some of whose letters flicker intermittently, as though they may go out at any moment. They’ve been like that for a long while though, so perhaps they won’t go out. Those bulbs must be awfully resilient.

Peter’s well acquainted with this shop. It’s on his route home and besides the dumpsters, is a primary source for his retro tech. While finding things that still work is a toss-up when searching via dumpster diving, at least in the thrift store, what’s there functions, albeit slowly most of the time, and practically on the brink of death from how old and outdated the software is. It’s still something to work with though, and garners much less stress. If he didn’t have a budget to adhere to, he’s sure he’d wipe the shelves clean of whatever was there, but since he does have a budget, thrift store or not, he still needs to pick and choose carefully what to buy.

Peter grabs hold of the handle of one of the doors and steps inside. It’s still early for many people to be on their way home, much less thrifting, so it’s quiet inside the store. Self conscious that his music may now be too loud, he turns it down a little and takes out one of his earphones, so that in his right ear remains the beloved neo-psychedelia and in his left is the thrift store’s music which sounds an awful lot like something you’d hear in an elevator.

He makes a beeline for the back of the store, passing all the clothing racks along the way. The screeching as customers push the hangers along the metal rod never ceases to hurt his eardrums, and he suppresses a cringe at the uncomfortable noise. The fluorescent lighting illuminates the electronics section like a sort of beacon, a quest marker telling him he’s found what he was looking for. He almost swears this aisle smells and feels old, but he can’t quite describe how. It’s a musty air, antiquated but almost charming as his eyes rove over the treasure trove of ancient technology. Or maybe he’s trying too hard to be poetic and it’s really just dust and he probably shouldn’t be inhaling it because—

“Achoo!”

—because that.

Peter sniffles and lets out a cough as he starts taking a closer look at what’s on the shelves, sifting through all the electronics. There are cassette players, some floppy disks, some film cameras. He never really has anything specific in mind when he’s searching around, which now that he thinks about it, can get dangerous, since everything looks so exciting and he just wants it all, but he can’t spend all his money at once, never mind the fact there’s no way he could carry all of it home.

There’s an old Macintosh monitor that catches his eye farther down the aisle, and he makes a beeline for it. It’s just the monitor by itself, no keyboard or mouse. it’s bulky as hell and the screen is tiny and he’s falling in love with the thing the longer he studies it. He turns it around until he can find the sticker with the price, and he deflates a little when he finds it’s practically all the spending money he’d allotted himself for this week’s thrift store trip. He’d have liked to leave the store with more, but this is much too good to pass up, and out of everything else in this section, it’s the only item he’s not sure will be here the next time he comes by.

With a determined breath that signals he will buy only this and not get sidetracked by the other hidden gems here, at least not today, Peter picks up the monitor, caught a little off guard by the weight of it. He cradles it in his arms as he walks over to the front registers. There’s only one open because there aren’t many people, but luckily there’s only one person in front of him.

His eyes roam around the store as he waits, since he doesn’t exactly have a hand free to get out his phone to keep himself occupied. He can hear the cashier reminding the lady paying that all sales are final, and he immediately recognizes the next song his iPod plays purely based on the familiar low-tuned riff, one that’s almost menacing. When the drums come in, beat consistent and deep, he nods his head slightly in time with it.

It’s not long until the woman finishes her transaction and leaves. Peter doesn’t notice because his eyes have dropped to a sleek black pen sitting in a bin nearby, perched almost perfectly atop some random items—CD’s, pouches, so on and so forth. Given the fact it looks so out of place there, it seems someone had decided last minute not to get it and set it down while waiting in line. Peter glances at the monitor he holds and readjusts it so he can carry it with one arm and reach out to grab the pen with his free hand to take a look at it. It’s cool to the touch, and he carefully maneuvers it, turning it upside down so he can twist the mechanism between his index finger and thumb to bring up the tip of the pen. It reminds him of the Mont Blanc Tony sometimes writes with, except this one is much, much cheaper. Peter rotates the pen until he sees the sticker with the price—it’s about $463 cheaper than the Meisterstück Classique model, in fact.

Well, Peter had just lost one of his favorite pens the other day. He’s pretty sure it’s just somewhere hidden in the mess in his room, but he hadn’t had the chance to go looking for it. And this one isn’t terribly expensive; if he bought it, he’d still leave here today under budget. He purses his lips as he thinks, twisting the mechanism again to retract the nib.

“Sir, I can take you right over here whenever you’re ready,” the cashier remarks, and Peter turns to look at her, then glances at the pen. Why not. It couldn’t hurt.

He leaves the thrift store with his new monitor in one arm and the pen tucked away in his pocket. He’s determined not to lose this one this time. Despite being cheap enough to replace should he do so, it still looks pretty sleek. He’s extra careful as he walks the rest of the way home, lest he stumble and drop the monitor. There isn’t any room in his backpack to put it. Today he’d had to bring home quite a few books for the weekend’s homework, and his bag would need to be mostly empty if he wanted to fit this bulky unit in it.

It doesn’t take long for him to arrive at his apartment building, and he rides the elevator alone. There’s a ding to signal his arrival on his floor, and when he’s at his front door, he fishes his key out from his pocket. The apartment is empty since Aunt May doesn’t get out of work until 5. Peter tosses his key into the bowl by the door before kicking the door closed with his foot. He goes straight to his bedroom, setting the monitor on his desk. He heaves a sigh of relief when he's alleviated of the weight. It hadn’t been a problem holding it at first, but it seemed to get heavier the longer he’d been holding it. He’d really like to start taking a more in-depth look at it, but a glance at his watch tells him he doesn’t have time to do that.

He pauses the music on his iPod and takes out his earphones, tossing the device onto his bed before shrugging off his jacket. The others will be here soon, which means he should probably be putting snacks together. He walks to the kitchenette and wonders if there’s still anything left or if he should try to run down to the corner store really quickly. He rifles through cabinets and the fridge and comes up with a couple of bags of family size chips and the liter of soda from last session. These will do for now. They might end up wanting to order pizza, since they hadn’t in a while.

Peter sets the food out on the dining table and switches on the lights in the living room. A large piece of graph paper sits in the center of the coffee table, and on it are drawn seemingly random shapes connected together. Four pieces of paper rest on each corner of this map, one for every party member. The die are arranged in a line in front of the dungeon master’s screen, ready for use. It was Peter’s turn to host the current campaign, and the setup has been sitting in the lounge since they started just a few weeks ago. Fridays are the normal meeting time, the day where it’s a guarantee that everyone is available, but if they can squeeze in an extra day, they make it happen.

In half an hour everyone has arrived and they’ve situated themselves in their spots around the coffee table. They pick up right where they left off. They’re still in early game, so they’re all relatively low level, but they’ve done a good bit of exploring, as evidenced by the map.

Aunt May comes home around 5:30 and greets them with a warm hello. Peter lets her know they’ve just decided to order pizza. It doesn’t feel like it takes too long for it to arrive, but that’s probably because they’re so engaged in the current adventure, as the party has found itself in a dungeon slightly too high level for them currently. Ned, as current dungeon master, had decided to make the new campaign a bit more challenging, so this probably shouldn’t have come as surprise. They take their time moving from room to room, and aren’t even halfway through the dungeon map when they call it quits for the night, since it’s getting late.

When it’s just Peter on his own again, he puts away the snacks and leftover pizza, then tosses the now empty liter bottle into the recycling bin. A glance at the clock on the wall tells him it’s almost midnight. He contemplates finally sitting down to look at his new find from the thrift store, but at that very moment, he yawns, signaling to him that perhaps he should just go to sleep for now. He wouldn’t want to fall asleep in the middle of working.

———

MONDAY

Unsurprisingly, the weekend is gone in a flash, with all the homework and saving civilians. Monday morning rolls around and it is dark outside when Peter’s alarm goes off. He groans and hits snooze, rolling onto his back and staring at the metal supports of the top bunk as he tries to wake up. His eyes are only half open when he finally gets himself to stand and head to the bathroom, and his yawn is so big he almost feels like a snake unhinging its jaw in preparation for a meal. Mondays suck.

Everyone in first period is practically still asleep. That’s no surprise. Peter drops down in his seat and rests his head on his propped up hand, which probably isn’t the best idea because he finds his eyelids sliding closed and he’s on the brink of dozing off. It’s only when the bell rings to signify the start of class does he jolt awake, just in time for his teacher to step inside the room and set his laptop case on his desk.

The next fifty minutes Peter spends in and out of consciousness, doing his best to stay up but finding it hard to fight against the heaviness of his eyelids. It just feels so nice when he closes his eyes and maybe he can get away with doing it for just a few seconds—no, he knows he can’t. If he lets his eyes close now, he’ll be out like a light. With a yawn, he sits up straighter, digging out his new pen from the pocket of his jeans. He might’ve been more awake if there were notes to be taken, but so far it was all just things he needed to listen to, and without any way to keep his hands busy, it was easy to get bored and then sleepy.

There are a few blank pieces of copy paper tucked into his notebook he’d stuffed in there specifically for times like these. He grabs a piece and pulls it out, setting it atop the still blank page his notebook is open to. He sits there for a moment, actually alert and staring at the board, but he’s not quite paying attention. He’s wondering what to draw. Well, he supposes he could draw the teacher… But he’d already done that. Multiple times in fact. This class in particular is rough because not only is it first thing in the morning, it’s incredibly boring. And there were only so many times and ways he could draw caricatures of his teacher. Where had he put those pictures anyway? Make that another thing to find in the mess of his bedroom, the aftermath of what Aunt May jokingly claimed was a hurricane.

Well, there’s Neoma.

At this point Peter’s surprised he hadn’t actually drawn her yet. He’d created her as his character for the new campaign, and it’s been long enough that it probably should’ve crossed his mind to draw her. But you know what they say: there’s no better time than the present. Even if he is sitting in class and should probably be paying more attention to what’s so interesting about the author’s metaphor in line 27 of the poem.

Drawing is successful at keeping him awake until the bell rings. He doesn’t get the chance to return to the piece until lunch time, when he’s finished eating early and there’s ten minutes left until next period. He’s so focused on the task that he doesn’t notice Ned leaning over to look at the paper.

“Why’d you give her white hair?”

At this question, Peter pauses and looks up at his friend. He shrugs. “I think it looks cool. And in a fantasy setting, naturally white hair doesn’t seem like such a big deal.”

Ned laughs. “True.” He goes back to studying what Peter’s completed so far, which is almost everything. All that’s really left is the smaller details on her mage robes. “She’s pretty. Is she based off someone?”

Even though the answer to that is no, Peter can’t help the way his cheeks warm at the teasing. He hadn’t even seen her in a dream, the way all those corny romance novels always seem to have the male and female leads brought together by fate because one had seen the other in a dream. He’d come up with Neoma all on his own. She’s the first one of his characters he’d drawn, strangely enough. And he doesn’t think too hard about how she looks when he does, but with every line he lays down on the page he finds her to be perfect.

“She’s not,” Peter responds finally. Ned’s still wearing a small smirk which betrays the fact he doesn’t totally buy it, if only so he can continue teasing him. But luckily he doesn’t push it.

“Will you draw the other characters too?” Ned inquires.

Peter looks back down at his drawing of Neoma. “I could. Maybe Caligari.” Caligari is the primary antagonist of the current campaign, one that Ned had introduced to the party early on. He had destroyed a whole city for not bowing to him, right at the start, when the group was too weak to do anything but watch. It had angered them all, that was for sure, and it drove them to get better and take their time leveling up for when they finally encounter him. Of all the campaigns Peter has played, this villain has made him the angriest. Nothing maddens him more than being powerless to stop those who are wrong, those who kill people that can’t defend themselves. Perhaps that’s why all his characters had had some sort of alignment with good, whether lawful, chaotic, or now neutral, as Neoma is.

“You could probably illustrate the entire adventure.”

Peter chuckles as he tucks his drawing away. The bell rings. “Maybe I can get a job as a children’s book illustrator,” he jokes.

There isn’t much of Neoma to finish drawing when he arrives home. When she’s done, he contemplates starting on Caligari right away, but decides he should probably get his homework done first. But after homework, there’s dinner, then getting ready for bed, and it’s quite late when he finally gets the chance to grab another piece of copy paper and sit at his desk. He pushes aside the tools he’d used to tinker with his web shooters yesterday, clearing a comfortable amount of space. He’s really come to like his thrift store pen. The ink glides on smoothly for a secondhand writing instrument. It makes him wonder why anyone would give it up in the first place. Surely it was worth more than the $2 he’d bought it for.

The light of the lamp is what illuminates the page in front of him, and Caligari is just about complete when 1 AM is twenty minutes away. Peter yawns and glances out his window, where he can see skyscrapers and the blinking lights of planes flying among the clouds. It’s quiet on the streets. He thinks he can fall asleep right at his desk, but he knows his neck and back will hurt like a bitch come morning if he does, and his bed is only three steps away.

With a tired sigh, Peter stands and tucks the drawing in his notebook. He then stores the pen in his backpack before he switches off the lamp and ambles over to his bed, falling onto it none too gracefully. As he pulls the sheets over himself and rolls over, getting tangled in the blankets, he wonders which character he should draw next. He doesn’t bother neatening the blankets out. He’s asleep before he can even consider doing it.

———

TUESDAY

Tuesday morning is a repeat of Monday. The alarm hurts Peter’s ears and he can’t suppress a groan as he hits snooze. Based on the way there’s no light bouncing off the walls, it’s darker outside today than it was yesterday morning. He looks at the time on his phone, squinting against the bright light, to confirm that it is indeed the time for him to wake up. His eyes slide closed and he sighs heavily at seeing that yes, it is time to get ready for the day. Why couldn’t it be Friday already?

He sits up so he can look out the window, but his heart all but jumps from his chest when he sees a figure standing there, back to him. He shuffles off his bed in a panic, but given that he’d spent the night tangled in the blankets, his feet get caught and he falls off with a thud. His web shooter is sitting on the nightstand and he throws it on quickly. He stands, feet apart and bracing himself should he need to fight. His heart is beating rapidly and his veins pulse with adrenaline, because he becomes aware of multiple things at once: there’s an invader, Aunt May is also in the house, and he needs to get rid of this person quickly and quietly.

He doesn’t say anything, just stands with web shooter at the ready. The commotion prompts the figure to turn to him, and he almost doesn’t believe what he sees. Scratch that, he doesn’t believe what he sees.

“… Neoma?”

Your hair is the color of a cold and cloudy morning. It’s perhaps the most immediate giveaway as to your identity, and the boldest feature, which is why Peter notices it first. But then he takes in the rest of what you wear, and he questions whether or not he’s dreaming. You’re donning mage robes, along with the bulky scarf which sits around your neck and conceals your face from the nose down. Your eyes are a piercing blue, brows drawn together as you study him, which make your scrutinizing gaze all the more nerve-wracking. Your arms are crossed, and you slowly bring a hand up. Peter tenses the moment you move, since he’s still not sure if you’re going to attack.

But you don’t. You pull the scarf down and fully expose your face. “You know who I am?”

Peter hadn’t necessarily imagined a voice for you when he’d first made you. That’s a little challenging to begin with, making up a voice. He could’ve assigned you a voice of someone he knew, but he didn’t feel it was right to even do that, not when the rest of you was his own creation. So when he hears you speak, he’s not left disappointed nor does he find his expectations fulfilled. It’s just… you. It’s soft, a contrast to the firm expression you wear as you wait for his response.

“U-Um…” Peter stutters. His arm is still raised, palm up and ready to shoot webbing should the need arise. “I do.”

Your eyes drop down to the web shooter. “I mean you no harm. You can sheathe your weapon.”

Peter glances at the contraption around his wrist, contemplating for a moment if it was a smart idea to lower his arm. Well, it is clear you’re telling the truth considering you haven’t attacked yet, and as the one who’d created you in the first place, he knows you need no staff to carry out spells, just your hands, which are crossed currently, and your stance is relaxed. He slowly does as you say, then takes a moment to assess the situation.

You’re not a home invader. That’s good.

You’d been somehow brought into his universe from your own. That’s not good.

Peter is having a very hard time processing the situation. You’re standing in the middle of his bedroom in mage robes, looking like you’re about to go to a LARP session in Central Park, for goodness’ sake! Is he completely certain he isn’t dreaming? Should he pinch himself for good measure? Why are you here? How are you here? He’s wondering now if he should skip school today to get this sorted out, but he knows he can’t, because there’s a test they're reviewing for in history and he really needs to show up. He runs a hand through his hair, his textbook tell that he’s stressed, as he surveys you. You remain in your place, watching him like a hawk.

“Where am I?” you inquire.

“You’re in, uh… you’re in New York. Queens, specifically.” He doesn’t know why there’s a need to specify. You don’t know what New York is anyway.

“That name isn’t familiar to me.”

“Which is expected, because you see…” Peter trails off as he walks to his closet, finding whatever smells clean and pulling it out, because he does need to get ready. “You’re not in Galerion.”

Your brows furrow. “Inter-universal travel? I thought such magic was only speculation.”

Peter's less inclined to call it inter-universal travel considering your universe isn’t actually real. But he doesn’t know what it could actually be, and right now inter-universal travel is an adequate answer until he finds out more. He knows that sooner or later he’ll need to tell you the truth. He’s surprised that you haven’t freaked out at the notion of being dropped in the middle of a new world, but you are a mage. Magic users deal with the seemingly impossible all the time, their powers giving them the ability to manipulate reality itself if that’s their goal. Even so, it will be difficult for you to come to terms with the idea that your world isn’t real, that there is no Galerion. So for now he plays along, if only to keep you calm. There’s no way you’d believe him if he told you the truth right now, and you might actually lash out then, and he is in no way equipped to deal with magic.

“Apparently it’s not,” Peter states, smiling nervously.

“So you were the one to cast the spell? Because it wasn’t me.”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t cast it either. I’m just as in the dark as you are.” Wow. He’d said “cast” in the context of casting a spell. It feels like he’s role-playing. If he weren’t so shocked at your presence he might be excited.

“Who are you then? You’re not a wizard or a sorcerer?”

“My name is Peter, and… no, I’m neither of those things. I can��t use magic.”

“Well if it wasn’t you, then we must find who did this.” You start to walk to the door, but Peter moves to stand in front of it.

“You can’t leave.”

You frown. “Why not?”

Plenty of reasons. Where do I begin? “Well… my aunt’s out there. And she’d freak if she saw you.”

“She has no knowledge of arcane magic yet you do?”

“Basically.” Peter shrugs. To say that he has knowledge of any sort of arcane magic is definitely a stretch. What he does know he’d acquired from playing a role-play game! He deals with the physical, not the mystical. Though he supposes what meager information Dungeons and Dragons has given him is certainly better than nothing, if anything. “Just… wait here for a second, okay?” Thankfully, you listen to him without complaint, sitting on his bed as he leaves and closes the door behind him. He skips the shower this morning, settling for washing his face so that he can get back to you quicker. When he pads down the hallway back to his room, he hears Aunt May call out.

“Peter, I’m leaving now!”

“Okay!” he replies. “Have a good day!” He stays where he is until he hears the front door close, and once it does, he rushes the rest of the way to his room. You’re still sitting in the same spot, hands folded on your lap. Your gaze slides to him.

Since you’re the only two occupants of the apartment now, when he opens the door, he leaves it open. He stands in the frame, and the two of you watch each other for a moment in silence. And then he claps his hands together loudly. “We’re gonna get this sorted out. Later.”

Your brows furrow at this statement, and you watch as he walks around the room, grabbing his jacket and his backpack. “What do you mean later?”

“I need to go to school. Like, really need to go.” Peter slips his jacket on, zipping it hastily and squashing down a curse when he pinches his finger. “Just stay here. I’ve got books and video games. Knock yourself out. But you can’t leave the apartment. Magic is… It’s not common here. You can’t just go asking people about it.”

You tilt your head. “Magic governs reality itself. I don’t understand how it isn’t common.”

“This is a conversation we can have when I get back, all right? There’s food in the kitchen. Try not to make a mess.” Peter looks at you with a raised brow, as if to ask if you’ve got all that. He’s relieved when you nod slowly, still not complaining. Out of all his D&D characters that could’ve been brought to life, he’s glad it was the mage. The paladin and the ranger might be demanding he help them this instant, caught in a panic as they might be.

Peter passes by the living room on his way to the front door, and pauses to glance at the coffee table. The game is still set up. He quickly crosses the small distance to it and picks up all four character sheets, tucking them into his backpack for safe-keeping. Then he folds the DM screen carefully, to make sure he doesn’t see what information is written on the inside, then sticks it between some books on the shelf. He can’t have you finding any of these items.

———

He’s jittery the whole day at school. His mind is buzzing too much for him to concentrate, and he thinks maybe he should’ve just missed today, since all he can think about is the fact a mage is in his apartment right now and while you’d been compliant earlier, who’s to say you’d actually end up listening?

Actually, he supposes that would be him.

He had been the one to design you. He’d given you traits, flaws, ideals. And assuming you really are Neoma from his D&D campaign, then all those aspects should be the exact same. It’s now that he realizes he really does know you. He knows the way you think, the way you act if things don’t go your way. He knows everything. He’d gone through the current campaign as you, your own personality, not his own, dictating his decisions. Reasonably he should be able to predict your next moves, but he’s less sure of it now that you’ve become an actual person, your own person, and maybe what’s written on his character sheet is correct, or maybe you’re completely different, and the only thing he’d gotten right was your name and your class. That’s why he was more inclined to play along with you earlier.

The implications of being totally wrong about you give Peter a headache to consider, for it’s just more stress on top of the fact you’re here in the first place. For all he knows, you could’ve left the apartment and sought out whoever had done this. But where could you possibly start? How far would you even get looking like that, clad in mage robes? He’d told you magic wasn’t common here, but would that stop you? Would you cast spells regardless?

As he thinks more about this, he exhales slowly, resisting the urge to groan. This is not a good week, and it’s only Tuesday.

Ned notices how fidgety Peter is during history. Come lunch time, he decides to bring it up.

“Hey, you doing okay, man?” he begins.

Peter freezes and glances at his friend, wondering if maybe Ned knew, somehow, what was going on. “Yeah.” Peter nods and shrugs. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Really? You looked like you were barely focusing in history earlier…”

“Just been a little stressed lately, that’s all.”

“Is it”—Ned leans closer and lowers his voice—“Spiderman?”

“No, it’s not.” Peter shakes his head and hopes Ned doesn’t try to question him further. Right now this is an issue only between him and you and it will remain that way. “I’m fine, Ned. Really.”

Ned doesn’t look very convinced, but thankfully, he doesn’t say anything more. “If you say so.”

The end of the school day doesn’t arrive fast enough, it seems. Peter is gone as soon as the bell rings, rushing like mad back to the apartment. It feels like the subway takes even longer to arrive today than usual. The first matter of business was to get you out of those robes. If you were to go searching for the perpetrator of this whole ordeal together, you certainly couldn’t stay in those clothes. You’d stick out like a sore thumb. He decides he’ll stop by the thrift store. He’s definitely going to go over budget for this week, after buying that Macintosh monitor and now clothes for you. He’ll just need to go dumpster diving more often the next couple of weeks to make up for it. That’s no big deal.

When he gets to the thrift store, he slows down as he approaches the door. His hand is poised on the handle, and through the glass he can see those clothing racks which rest in the front half of the store. He purses his lips. The clothes in there will be cheap, no doubt, and he’d considered just buying a bunch of different things that look like they could fit you. He looks down the block, where not much farther is his apartment building. It would be much better if you were here, to try things on. He really doesn’t want to have to guess and potentially end up with too many extra clothes that don’t fit.

His hand drops from the handle. He resumes his walk back to the apartment. When he gets there, he stills at the front door as he tries to listen for anything going on inside. It’s quiet. He’s not sure whether or not to panic because it could mean you’d listened to him and you remained in the flat, waiting for his return and keeping yourself occupied with the books or the video games he had (well, maybe not the video games, it’s not as if you know what those are). It could also mean you’d left, maybe through the window. He’s several floors up but with your magic, getting down wouldn’t have been a problem. When he unlocks the door he hopes desperately it’s the former.

He ends up being right. You’ve stayed. But what he wasn’t expecting was to come home to you casting a spell in the middle of his living room.

He freezes momentarily when he sees you sitting there on the couch, legs crossed and eyes glowing a shade of white to match your hair, before he remembers to shut the door behind him. He does it quickly, and the loud thud as it clicks back into place grabs your attention. You close your eyes and when they open, they’re normal again. Your blue eyes are wide in surprise at his return, which had interrupted your task.

“What were you doing?” Peter asks worriedly. He starts glancing around at what he can see of the apartment to see if there’s any indication that the spell, or any you could’ve casted earlier while he was out, had messed it up in any way. Because he’ll need to put it all in order before Aunt May came back. This prompts him to look at his watch: he’s got 2 hours before she’s home.

“A clairvoyance spell,” you explain. “Nothing dangerous. I’ve been trying to detect any other mystical presence. It could be the source of what’s happened.”

Peter nods as he digests this information. It makes sense for you to know clairvoyance. It’s one of the spells he had—you had?—begun the campaign with. It’s low level, simple. “And? Anything?”

You shake your head with a frown. “Nothing.”

Peter sighs. It isn’t entirely unexpected. It was too much to hope that it would be as easy as that. “We’ll get it figured out, I promise. But for now, we need to get you into some new clothes. You can’t stay in your mage robes.”

You look down at what you’re wearing. “What’s wrong with my clothes?”

“No one wears anything like that.” Unless they’re role-playing, he wants to say, but he stops himself because how would you know what that is?

“All right…” you trail off. “So what do I wear instead?”

“We’re going to buy some right now. But let’s get you into a more… normal-looking outfit before we leave.” He motions for you to follow him to his bedroom, and you wait on his bed as he searches around his closet for anything you could wear. He pulls out his Midtown High School sweatshirt, which has been freshly washed and hung up, but takes slightly longer finding bottoms for you. Eventually he pulls out a pair track pants.

“Here.” He hands the two articles of clothing to you. You take them but look at them as though they’re something alien. “They’re gonna be a little large, but it’s better than nothing.”

You set the clothes down on the bed and stand up. You shed your scarf, tossing it to the side. The soft bundle lands with a quiet plop. When you begin to undo the ties of your tunic, Peter sputters. “I’ll, uh… I’ll wait outside,” he tells you, and before you can say anything, he rushes out, closing the door a little too hard on accident. He takes a deep breath as he tries to ignore the blush on his face.

While waiting for you to change he searches the shoe closet for sneakers that might fit you. He takes a look at what Aunt May has and finds an old pair of red Chucks she clearly doesn't wear anymore, seeing as they were all the way in the back. The red is dull and the laces are gray—the signs of a well-worn pair of shoes. He turns the shoes over in his hands to look for the size as he walks back to his room. He hears the doorknob twist and he stops short in the hallway when you open the door and come to stand in the frame.

As expected, the clothes are large for you. The shoulder seams of the sweatshirt are way past your own shoulders, and the sleeves are much too long. You’ve tried to pull up the material to prevent it from covering your hands, the excess fabric bunching up at the bends of your elbows. You have the same issue with the track pants, which you’ve folded at the bottom a few times so you wouldn’t trip. Peter can’t help but think how cute you look like that. He’s never had a girl wear his clothes before but now that he’s experiencing it, he discovers he enjoys it a lot.

“Are you all right?” you ask, brows furrowed in concern, and that’s when he snaps out of his train of thought.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Peter laughs nervously. “I found these. Tell me how they fit. They’re my aunt’s.” He hands you the shoes, which you’re able to slip on without having to untie them.

You wiggle your toes. “They fit fine. Your aunt won’t mind if I borrow them?”

“No, she doesn’t wear them anymore. She won’t even notice they’ve gone missing.”

You take a few test steps, getting used to the feeling of them on your feet. They’re definitely a change from your normal boots. “Okay.”

The moment the two of you step out of the apartment building, you pause to take in your surroundings. It’s not as bright outside now but it isn’t any less magnificent. The buildings here are so unlike what you have in Galerion. You lower your gaze to the streets when you hear the whoosh of cars, your brows furrowed as you watch the unfamiliar machines travel down the roads. The stoplights flash red and yellow and green and they bounce off the cars waiting at the intersections. At the end of the block, the crosswalk sign turns green and while you can’t hear it, Peter can pick up the sound of clicking, a signal for blind pedestrians that it’s safe to cross. He studies the wonder on your face as you look in awe at everything, even though to him this block is nothing exciting. He sees it every day.

“This is incredible,” you breathe out.

The statement makes Peter smile. “It’s just a small bit of what New York has to offer, believe me. Come on.” He gently sets a hand at the small of your back to guide you down the sidewalk.

When you arrive at the thrift store, Peter pulls the door open for you, and you blink a few times as you adjust to the fluorescent lighting. You follow him to the clothing rack, but when you get there, you stand still, not entirely sure what to do. He picks up on this quickly.

“Just find anything you like,” he explains.

You nod slowly, eyes roving over the numerous racks of clothing. He smiles encouragingly, and you start to walk down the first aisle, running your fingers along the clothes that hang there. Peter watches you for a moment to make sure you’re okay before he pulls up his jacket sleeve to look at his watch: 4:30. There’s an hour until Aunt May should be coming home. That should be enough time.

He wants to look at the electronics aisle just for fun, but knows he can’t let you out of his sight since you don't have a phone and he can’t risk having a lost mage running around New York. He tucks his hands into his pockets and he waits. He doesn’t even notice the smile that creeps onto his face as he watches you, and it widens when you make your way back to him, armed with several articles of clothing.

“All right, now you have to try these on.”

“You can do that without buying them?” you question, trailing behind Peter as he walks toward the changing rooms. He finds an empty one and holds an arm out to let you know you can head inside.

“I’ll be waiting right here,” he informs you.

He’d forgotten his earphones this time around, so he’s stuck listening to more of the screeching as hangers slide along the metal racks. He sighs as he stands there, analyzing the current situation, if only to help block out the grating noise. You’re under the impression you’ve been transported from your universe to his, and that isn’t the case. You’d simply been brought to life—and by what? By who? Peter has never felt so confused. He might be Spiderman and he might deal with far beyond what the normal teenager does, but this kind of stuff, it’s not something he’s even remotely familiar with. Whenever he does find what or who did this, what is he supposed to do then? There is no “home” to send you back to, as you believe. Did that mean you were stuck here? How could he possibly break that kind of news to you?

“Everything fits fine,” you comment as you open the door, clothing bundled up in your arms.

Peter forces a smile onto his face. “Great. Let’s get these paid for.”

The same lady is working the register as the last time he was here. You wait patiently behind him as he pays, eyes glued to the type of currency they use. There’s no gold exchanged. Peter pulls out a plastic rectangle and inserts it into a small machine. That’s all you’re really able to follow. He tells the lady thank you after the clothes are bagged and he picks it up before you leave the store.

“So… what did you do today, while I was gone?” Peter asks as the two of you walk back to the apartment.

You shrug. “I took a look at some of the books you had.”

“And?”

“They’re interesting. Certainly different from all the spell books and tomes I studied in Galerion.”

It sounds strange for Peter to hear you say this, to talk about this realm of yours like you truly do live there. “You were a student?”

You nod. “I was a wizard’s apprentice before my companions and I left to hunt for Caligari. Caligari is a ruthless monster who’s decimated city-states without batting an eye, and we aim to defeat him, no matter what it takes.”

The more you say, the more Peter comes to understand. This matches his character sheet perfectly. You learned magic as an apprentice before Caligari destroyed Rimmen, as recounted by Ned, the current campaign DM. It seems you’d come to life with the background Peter had given you and what they’d covered in the adventure so far. It makes sense that you truly believe you’d been transported from there to here.

“What’s that?” You stop walking to point at the pizza joint, with its neon sign and a poster of a pepperoni pizza which advertises some special deal for “a limited time only.”

“Pizza,” Peter says matter-of-factly. He glances at you and the curiosity in your eyes is hard to miss. He looks at his watch again: 5:20. At this point, they’ll be late anyway. So he smiles, corner of his lips tilting up. “Come on, I’ll buy you a slice.”

You wait for him at the table in the corner, the plastic bag filled with your clothes sitting on the floor next to you. The lighting in here is brighter than what had been in the thrift store, and it glares off the table tops. There’s a little girl a few tables away staring at you, and you smile softly in hello. The woman across from her whom you assume is the mother sees this and smiles back.

“I think she was looking at your hair, that little girl,” Peter remarks as he sits down across from you. He has a slice of pizza on a paper plate which he sets in front of you, along with a cup of water.

“Is there something wrong with my hair?” you ask, reaching up to feel if there are any unruly strands.

Peter chuckles. “No, but it’s white.”

“Is that strange here?” You try to pick up the slice of pizza but feel awfully clumsy doing so, using your fingers to support it as you bring it to your mouth.

“Usually the only people that have white hair are old.”

You take a bite of the pizza, and when you pull it away, some of the cheese stretches. Peter watches in amusement as you try to break the string, and when you finally do, you’re able to set the slice back down on the plate.

“How is it?” he asks.

You swallow and grab the water. “Greasy.”

“Sounds about right.”

It’s almost 6 PM when the two of you return to the apartment. When you’re at the front door and Peter’s unlocking it, he glances at you. “I need to see if my aunt is there so just wait for a second, okay?” You nod and remain where you are, holding your bag of clothes, as he steps inside He doesn’t see Aunt May in the lounge, nor the kitchenette, but he can see light peeking out from the crack at the bottom of her bedroom door. Silently he walks back out to you and motions you inside.

Stay quiet, he mouthes, and you’re swift and light on your feet as you walk to his bedroom. You set the plastic bag down by his desk and turn around to face him as he enters behind you and closes the door.

“So where will our search begin?” you inquire, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Is there a library we can go to?”

“We have libraries,” Peter begins as he shrugs off his jacket and tosses it on the back of his desk chair, “but they don’t have tomes or anything like that.”

“Right,” you say, remembering what he’d say this morning. “No magic here.”

Peter smiles slightly. “Exactly.”

“So what do you use to research?”

“The Internet. There’s all kinds of stuff there.”

“Brilliant.” You clap your hands together. “And where is this ‘Internet’?”

Peter walks over to his desk to pick up his laptop and hold it up. “It’s here.”

Your brows furrow. “But that’s so… small.”

“The Internet isn’t physical. It doesn’t need a lot of space.” He sits next to you and opens his laptop, and your eyes are glued to the screen attentively. He opens the browser and goes to an online newspaper, showing you the array of articles that appear in seconds. He sneaks a glance over to you and you’re clearly very enamored with the piece of technology. It’s almost endearing. No one ever gets this excited about the power of the Internet anymore.

“May I?”

It takes a moment for Peter to understand what you mean, but when he does, he immediately says of course. He balances the laptop on his lap as you set your fingers on the trackpad, and your smile widens when the cursor on screen moves along with the movement of your finger. You follow what he did and tap the trackpad once to open up articles, and you might be skimming them, you might not. He speculates you’re too caught up in the wonder of it to really try to read.

“Since this is already here, we can begin our search tonight?” Your hand leaves the trackpad and you return your attention to him.

The smile on Peter’s face drops. “Not quite. We still need to know what to search, and right now we don’t know anything. I think I might know someone who will that I can talk to tomorrow. But in the mean time…”

“No research.”

“No research.” Peter shakes his head.

You sigh, and it’s rife with dejection. “If we must.”

“Sorry.”

At this, you smile a little as you glance at him. “Don’t be. We can’t make morning come faster. Only the greatest of magic users can manipulate time.”

He stands to set his laptop back down on his desk. “I have some work I need to do for school. Will you be okay while I do that?”

“I’ll be fine.” You stand and walk over to the shelf where his books rest. You run the pad of your index finger along the spines. “You have many books and I have the time to read them.”

“Great.” Peter smiles. He settles down at his desk and pulls his backpack next to him while you settle down on the bed with his copy of Down and Out in Paris and London. He'd bought that book for an essay earlier this year, but he’d never finished it, stretched thin as he was with his other homework and patrolling Queens. He distinctly remembers getting to page 84 three days before the essay was due, giving up on it, and writing the paper with what meager knowledge he had the night before the due date. He got a 95%.

The homework for tonight moves slowly. Peter’s history review notes are all over the place, due to his inability to focus in class. He’ll need to ask Ned if he can look at his notes tomorrow. He ends up saving English for last because it’s just more poems and if he tries to read them now he’ll fall asleep immediately. At least with chemistry it requires him to be actually write, and that can keep him awake. He’s halfway through the problems assigned for the night when he hears you shuffle around.

He looks back over his shoulder to see you’ve set the book down next to you so you can lean over to grab the camera he has sitting on the nightstand. He’d bought it a couple of months ago, and he has an extra pack of film stored in the drawer, but he hadn’t even gotten through the first pack. He sets his pencil down and settles for watching you, to give his mind a break. You turn the thing over in your hands, locating the viewfinder and putting it against your eye.

“That’s a Polaroid camera,” he pipes up, and you set the camera down to look at him. He moves to sit on the edge of the bed and gently takes the camera from you. You scoot up to be closer, as you’d been leaning against the pillows. “You use this to frame the picture”—he points at the viewfinder—“and when you take it, it comes out here.” He turns the camera around to point at the slit in the front.

Your eyes are concentrated on the camera, and you can’t help but smile. “I know you’ve said there’s no magic in this universe but I’m inclined to disagree.”

Peter smiles softly. “Here, I’ll take a photo of you.” He’s adjusting the light meter when you speak again.

“Why not a take one of both of us?”

Peter doesn’t look up immediately but when he does his smile is wider due to the idea you present. “I can try, but no promises that it’ll come out well.” He turns the polaroid around so it faces the two of you, and he leans his head to the left to motion you closer. You slide over, shoulder to shoulder with him, and he hopes he’s angling the lens correctly to get the two of you in frame properly. You glance at Peter to find him smiling, so you grin at the camera as well, and then suddenly there’s a bright flash which momentarily obscures your vision.

“Sorry,” Peter apologizes as he lowers the camera, which now begins buzzing as the photo slides out.

“Do they all flash so brightly?” you ask.

“The older ones do. You can turn that off in newer cameras.” He grabs the photo carefully. Since it’s fresh, it’s still blank, and you point this out.

“There’s nothing there.”

“It needs time to develop, so you store it somewhere dark.” He puts the camera back on the nightstand and stores the photo in the drawer.

“How is the school work?” You motion toward the desk, which has since become a mess of papers and textbooks. Peter follows your gaze and sighs as he too studies the materials on his desk.

“Boring. Slow. Tiring.” He shrugs.

You laugh. “I felt the same with all the work my mentor would assign me. Studying late into the night and waking up early to train in the field. It was frustrating, but it was worth it.”

Peter smiles. The way you stare at the far wall, as if remembering memories not called upon for a long time, he could swear that maybe everything—the realm of Galerion, your training, the destruction of Rimmen—was real. The way you act, the memories you have, the expressiveness in your eyes and the softness of the smiles you grace him with… It is all so real. As he considers this, it’s now him who’s having difficulty coming to terms with the idea that your very being is made up. You’d been a figment of his imagination. And now you sit here before him, in his Midtown High School sweatshirt and his track pants which are much too large for you. This morning he wondered if he was dreaming. He knows now that he isn’t.

It's another couple of hours until he’s just about finished with his homework. He pauses momentarily to roll his neck, stretching the muscles after having looked down at his work for so long. You’d fallen asleep a while ago. Peter puts his homework away in his backpack and makes his way to the bathroom to get ready for bed. It’s been a long, very confusing day, and he can’t help the sigh that escapes him when he showers.

Before he leaves the bathroom, he grabs his jeans which he’d left on the counter and empties the pockets before he tosses them in the hamper. He grabs his wallet, some change, and his pen. He carries all of this with him to the room. The first two things he sets on his desk, but the last he starts to put away in his backpack. He’s tucked it into the front pocket, but then he pauses. He pulls it out and studies it, rotating it in his hand. The expression on his face shifts to one of realization. He stands slowly, and his eyes slide from the pen to you.

What else could it be?

You popping into existence the day after he’d drawn you is too much of a coincidence. You looked just like the drawing, right down to your clothes. Peter huffs and rubs at his temples. A pen is basically the cause of the entire ordeal. It’s no ordinary pen, that’s for sure, but what had it been doing sitting in a secondhand store? It’s very clearly a magical artifact that shouldn’t be there, yet it had been. He supposes this could’ve gone worse. Someone else could’ve taken it, set such things into motion, and not known how to deal with them. Peter won’t deny that despite his inexperience with magic, he’s still better equipped than most. He’s glad he hadn’t decided to draw a dragon or something. The notion of a pen he found in a thrift store being this powerful is kind of ironic, he can’t help but think.

If this pen is what’s started it all, you aren’t the only one it’s brought to life. Peter had drawn Caligari as well. When he remembers this, he almost wants to punch himself in the face, never mind that he had no way of knowing the powers this pen held. Although he wasn’t too far into the D&D campaign, he knew a fair amount about its main villain, and he knew that at this point your companions were still too weak to face him—you on your own, even more so.

He walks up to his window and gazes outside as if he’ll see Caligari standing there somewhere. But he knows he won’t. New York is large and, well, who’s to say he is in New York anymore? Had he gone somewhere else, to a new state even? There’s no way to track him, and with his shapeshifting abilities, he could be practically anyone. Was he laying low for now? Peter would’ve expected Caligari to wreak havoc the moment he’d spawned, yet there hadn’t been anything disastrous reported. Aside from you showing up, it was a normal day—as normal as a day like this can get, anyway.

Peter glances over at you. You’re hugging a pillow to your chest. Had Caligari sensed you at all? You hadn’t sensed him after doing your clairvoyance spell, but then again, you may not have the precision to detect more powerful mystical beings, early on in the game as you technically still are.

With a sigh, he turns off the lamp and goes to his closet, digging around for some extra blankets. There’s no room on the top bunk from all that he’s stored there, and he’s too tired to move any of it. He grabs one of the extra pillows from it instead before laying down on the ground, doing his best to get comfortable on the wooden floor. To clear more space he has to push aside clothes he’d haplessly thrown around. He really should clean up his room.

Once he’s finally settled, he stares up at the ceiling, the blood rushing to his head so forcefully he has to close his eyes for a moment. There is now an actual threat out there somewhere in New York (hopefully, which is strange to say, but it’s the best case scenario because at least Peter can reach him), and he's the cause. It won’t be fun seeking out that help he’d mentioned to you earlier, but he has no choice.

A heavy feeling bubbles in the pit of his stomach. He rolls onto his side, staring at the pile of clothes to his right and listening to the sound of your breathing. This is not a good week.

PART TWO

#peter parker x reader #spiderman x reader #tom holland x reader #peter parker imagine #spiderman imagine #tom holland imagine #peter parker #spiderman #tom holland #bubble-tea-bunny

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spinach-productions · 7 years

Text

Baby Spinach, chapter 4

Summary: cleaning up after two magicly superpowered kids takes a lot of work; cleaning up after a suspicious childhood takes more work.

Wordcount: 4034

The next morning, Gaster calls Gerald for the second time in so many days.

“What happened?!” He exclaims upon opening the door to the wreckage of Gaster’s former apartment. Splinters of glass and wood are imbedded in the walls, the furniture is upended and dented in places, and papers are scattered absolutely everywhere. The only visible floor is a narrow path leading to the bedroom. Gaster carved it out with a broom the night before in order to put the children to bed.

“Shh,” Gaster shushes him, pointing towards the bedroom, where Sans and Papyrus are still asleep.

“What happened,” Gerald hisses quietly.

“You were right about children getting upset.”

“This is more than upset, it’s a natural disaster! The kids did all this?”

“I did mention that they have extreme magic capabilities.”

“You did not.”

“I didn’t?”

“No!”

“Oh.” Gaster looks at the mess. It is, perhaps, a bit much. “Well, would you mind helping me clean up? This is really a two-person job.”

Gerald sighs heavily. “Alright, but we need to have a discussion about the kids as soon as it’s done.”

The two of them make quick work of clearing the floor, throwing out the worst of the debris and pushing everything else into a pile by the kitchen door. Nothing is irreparably damaged, and quick check reveals that both the pipes and electrical wiring are all in working order, so they move on the putting things back into a semblance of order.

“What did you want to talk about,” Gaster asks as he slots books back onto the bookcase.

Gerald continues to file a rough edge of the kitchen table. “What exactly happened last night? You were gone when I got back.”

“I thought it might be best be if the children and I were out when you got back, so I took them to the lab.”

“I’m hoping you didn’t know they were this volatile at that point?”

“I didn’t know Papyrus’ magic had already kicked in, no.”

“Doctor, are you telling me you knowingly brought a child with extremely unstable magic into our top security government facility that houses the most delicate, dangerous experiments in the Underground?”

“I’d hardly call their magic ‘unstable’,” Gaster replies.

Gerald wipes a hand over his face. Three more are making increasingly exasperated gestures in Gaster’s direction. He sighs heavily and turns the file over a few times before setting it on a chair. “I have to report this.”

“What? Why?”

“Because they tore your home apart! I can’t even tell what kind of magic did this.”

“They didn’t mean to, it was an accident—”

“I’m sure it was, but what if they’d been around someone less durable than you? Someone could have been seriously hurt, and with whatever they’ve already been through, what do you think hurting someone would do to them?”

Gaster laces and unlaces his fingers. It’s an old agitated gesture, learned when he was first figuring out how to use hands. He’s not sure if the agitation stems from anger that Gerald thinks Sans and Papyrus could hurt someone, or concern about what could happen if they did. “They’re just children, Gerald. They didn’t know.”

Gerald drifts across the room and puts two hands on Gaster’s shoulders. “I know, and I’m not saying they can’t stay with you, but they need support and guidance to make sure they aren’t a danger to others or themselves. Do you even do have the same kind of magic that they do?”

He looks at his own hands, still contorting around each other in an effort to calm himself. They’re connect to his body through a series of purple strings. “No.”

“They clearly need you, but they also need help from someone who has experience with their abilities, and possibly some kind of trauma counseling for whatever drove them into that bush in the first place. It would be best if they could meet with someone who understands where they’re coming from and what they’re going through.”

“They stay here, though,” Gaster says firmly.

“They stay here,” Gerald agrees.

“We stay here,” says a quiet voice from the doorway.

The bedroom door is open. Sans is standing just inside the threshold at a distance where he can still close the door. He’s gripping the knob for support, but otherwise looks absolutely resolute.

Gerald smiles gently. “You stay here.”

He and Sans watch each other for a moment. Gaster gets the distinct impression they’re sizing each other up.

“You try anything weird and we’re gone,” Sans says.

Geralds nods. “Understood.”

“And my magic is perfectly under control. We’re not going to any specialists.”

“I’ll leave that decision between you and Gaster.”

“We’re not.”

“I understand,” Gerald says, “I want to hear what you have to say about that, but first maybe we can clean the house and I’ll make some lunch?”

Every piece of displaced houseware suddenly leaps into the air and begin to shuffle itself back into order. They’re not in exactly the right place, Gaster notes as his books arrange themselves upside down and slightly out of order on the shelf, but everything settles approximately where it belongs. Through the process, Sans glares at Gerald with folded arms.

“Well,” says Gerald as the chipped cups and plates file neatly into the cabinet, “That does explain what kind of magic you use.”

A pan clatters onto the stove, and as the food sorts itself into the cupboards and refrigerator, a loaf of bread and block of cheese are land pointedly on the counter.

“Right,” Gerald says, drifting to the cutlery drawer for a spatula.

Sans sits at the table while he cooks. He glowers with his arms crossed, and it’s very clear that Gerald’s precense will only be tolerated for the length of time it takes to make lunch. Papyrus, on the other hand, is over his mood and completely thrilled to have company. He babbles at everyone who will listen (which is mostly Gaster) and kicks his feet in the booster seat Gerald got the day before. He lets Gaster hand him various (child safe) things for inspection, moving them between his hands and chewing when appropriate. He also sometimes reaches over to pat the back of Sans’ head.

“There we are,” says Gerald, carrying four plates, “Three grilled cheese sandwiches and one small cup of mashed carrots. Would you like ketchup with yours, Sans?”

“I don’t know what that is,” Sans grumbles, pushing the bowl of mashed carrots out of Papyrus’ reach.

Gerald sets the bottle near his plate. “Mostly tomatoes, with some vinegar and sugar mixed in for flavor and preservative measures.”

Gaster eyes the bottle with distrust. He will allow it in his home until Sans official decides he doesn’t like it.

Gerald watches Sans glare at the plate for another moment, then tilts his head the way he does when he’s figured out a puzzle. “Sans, please point to any part of the sandwich.”

Sans raises an eyebrow at him, but points to a small section near the corner.

Gerald breaks off the piece, dips it into Papyrus’ mashed carrots, and eats it while sharing a look with Gaster. Why does an eight-year-old think there might be something wrong with his food?

Mollified, Sans grabs the sandwich and stuffs half of it in his mouth. After a moment’s thought, he grabs the ketchup and tries to pour some on his plate. It resists, then falls out and splashes over the plate and table. Sans freezes, looking first to Gerald, then to Gaster.

Gerald puts a napkin on the table and slides it to Sans. “No harm done,” he says gently.

Sans hesitantly takes the napkin and wipes up the worst of the mess without taking his eyes off Gerald’s face.

“I’m not angry,” he says, still gently.

Sans doesn’t look away, but he does start eating at a slower pace.

As always, Gaster is impressed by Gerald’s ability to understand people. He reflects that it’s a skill he’d like to learn one day as he takes a small spoonful of mashed carrots and tries to feed Papyrus. Papyrus gurgles and bats the spoon out of Gaster’s hand, sending it clattering across the table. Sans freezes again.

Gerald smiles and uses a fresh napkin to sop up the mush. “Looks like this table is due for a cleaning, huh doctor?”

“That seems to be the case,” Gaster replies. He tries to feed Papyrus another spoonful and is met with the same results. “This is not how mealtimes are supposed to go.”

“Here,” Sans says, taking the spoon from him. He makes a complicated flight path with it to get Papyrus’ attention, then taps on his mouth with the other hand. Papyrus watches the spoon zoom through the air, past his face a few times, then bites down on it when it gets close enough with a delighted noise.

“I don’t know how you did that,” Gaster says.

“He likes it when food is interesting,” Sans says around the second half of the sandwich, which he’s now eating with one hand as he feeds Papyrus with the other. Most of the carrot mash ends up on Papyrus’ face when he grabs the spoon and sends it flying; roughly half of the food ends up in Papyrus’ mouth. Sans immediately cleans up each spoonful that doesn’t make it.

Lunch passes in more or less the same fashion until Sans begins to examine the ketchup. He pushes the puddle around his plate with his fork, then cautiously rubs some between his thumb and forefinger, then even more cautiously licks his finger clean.

And seems to experience some kind of enlightenment.

“What did you say this was,” he asks faintly.

“Ketchup,” Gerald replies, pushing the bottle his way.

Sans looks between the ketchup and Gerald several times.

“You can keep that,” Gerald says.

Sans grabs it off the table and stuffs it into his jacket. “You brought this?”

“Mhmm,” Gerald says. He’s making a face like he’s trying to take the situation very seriously, but is also smiling around the edges of his mouth.

“I still don’t trust you,” Sans says.

“Trust isn’t given automatically; it has to be earned. I wouldn’t expect anything less of you.”

Sans continues to watch Gerald’s movements, but as he also clutches the ketchup tight to his chest as he collects Papyrus for their nap.

“Not one word from you,” Gerald says as Sans leaves the kitchen.

“It’s important to Sans, I’m willing to let one bottle go,” Gaster grumbles, “But just the one.”

Gerald pulls the not-smiling face again.

Gerald sets up an interview with a specialist for that evening. He takes Gaster aside to explain the situation: child social services is sending an agent to gather more details about Sans and Papyrus' case in person. They've agreed that Gaster is doing an excellent job sheltering and building a connection with the kids, but the agent wants to collect more information about their circumstances and background to see what kind of support they might need in the future. It hadn't occurred to Gaster that he might not be able to adequately provide for the children’s' emotional needs. He feels an unexpected twist of emotion at the idea.

“Don't worry, the agent has years of experience,” Gerald says as he gathers Sans' library books. “I worked with her during my rotation in the daycare center, you won't find anyone better in the field.”

“I don't care,” says Sans from the end of the couch. He's somewhere between angry and scared, and is consoling himself sitting between Papyrus and the door. They've rearranged the sitting room so Gaster's armchair sits across from the couch, giving the specialist somewhere to sit and Sans somewhere to hide.

“I won't let anything happen,” Gaster says, from where he's sitting between Sans and the door.

“For what it's worth, I won't either,” Gerlad says, placing the books by the blankets and pillows in the bedroom closet. They’re saved from further conversation by a knock on the door. “Ah, there she is.”

“I'm right here,” Gaster says as Sans curls further into himself.

“I know,” Sans whispers as Gerald drifts to the door.

Gerald says as he opens the door and extends an arm for a handshake. “Hello Lieutenant, thank you for coming.”

“Pretty sure I told you to call me Donnie,” says Donahue, taking Gerald’s arm in a firm grip. She's swapped her official uniform for a band t-shirt and some jeans, but civilian clothes can't hide the fact that she's First Lieutenant of the Royal Guard. She carries herself too confidently, and she very obviously spends her free time on strength training. “I hear there's some neat kids in here.”

“There are. Two of them, in fact.” He shows her into the room. “Donnie, this is Sans and Papyrus; Sans, I believe you and Papyrus have already met Lieutenant Donahue?”

“Just 'Donnie',” Donahue repeats. She crosses the room and throws herself into the armchair. Gaster raises an eyebrow at her unprofessional demeanor, but doesn’t comment.

“I thought you were a guard,” Sans says from where he's scooted behind Gaster.

“The Guard paid for my education, so I act as a liaison between them and child social services. Basically, I've got the resources and muscle to make sure kids are treated right.”

“We are being treated right.”

“You definitely are now, but I need to make sure you're getting all the resources you need.”

Sans glares over Gaster's shoulder. “Are you implying that Gaster is mistreating us?”

“No way. It's easy to see how much this guy cares about you. I'm saying you need stuff that he can't give you. You've been doing great on your own so far, and you've been doing a great job taking care of the little guy. I want to give you everything you need to keep doing great. Plus, I want to know more about you.”

Gaster can't see Sans, but he can hear the suspicion in his voice. “About me?”

“Sure. I've never seen you before and you seem pretty cool, so I'm wondering where you've been up until now.”

Gaster privately admits to his own curiosity around Sans’ and Papyrus’ origins. Their accents suggest they learned to speak somewhere in Waterfall, but their knowledge of the Capital City’s layout is too broad for them to be anything but locals.

Sans hesitates. “Around,” he finally says.

“I heard Doctor Gaster found you in a bush, did you live there?”

“For a while, yeah.”

Donnahue leans against her knees with her forearms. It effectively paints the picture of having a friendly chat. “Did you like living there?”

“No.” There's no hesitation this time. “I hated it.”

“Then what were you doing there?”

“It... was better. Than what we had.”

Donnie nods. “Sometimes it's better to live somewhere you hate less.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you always live in that bush, after you left the place you hated?”

“No. We moved around when people started to notice us. In the summer we'd sleep on benches, but it got cold.”

Donnie asks about the kind of places they stayed (wherever they could find somewhere to sleep) and how they got food and clothes (things that were left out, and on occasion the garbage, the garbage, they're just children and they were eating out of the garbage). She seems to be teasing out details of their previous whereabouts without asking directly; the children seem to have run away from somewhere in the capital approximately three months ago. It's impressive to watch her work.

“Sans, I'd like to ask you an uncomfortable question. You don't have to answer it, but I'm going to ask, okay?”

Sans gives a reluctant nod.

“Why did you decide to start living in parks and bushes?”

Sans breaks eye contact. His fingers dig into Gaster's shoulders. He'd started to come out from behind him as it became apparent that Donahue just wanted to ask a few questions, but upon mention of his former residence, he shrinks back again. Gaster's hands aren't biologically attached to his body, so it's a simple matter of manipulating the magic to place one on Sans' back and rub in circles while Sans puts words together.

“I had to protect Papyrus,” he says finally.

“Can I ask what you were protecting him from?”

Gaster squeezes the hood of Sans' jacket; Sans squeezes the fabric under his hands. “No.”

“That's okay,” she says gently, “You don't have to tell me. No matter where you came from, I'm glad both of you are here now.”

Sans ducks his face into Gaster's shoulder. “Me too,” he says quietly.

Sans locks himself in the bedroom once the interview is over. The bedroom closet nest, furnished with a mountain of pillows (courtesy of Gerald), is stocked with books and snacks and a few chewable baby-toys. It was constructed so he would have somewhere safe to hide after meeting with Lieutenant Donahue. Gaster takes advantage of the childrens' absence to sit down with Gerald, Donahue, and three hot drinks.

“Something's definite up with their past,” Donahue says, taking a sip of her scalding hot coffee, “The number one reason kids run away is because something is going on at home. Papyrus is too young to tell, but Sans is terrified of something they left behind. Plus, from what you've been describing about your conversations, Sans' education and development are all over the place.”

Gerald, who is holding his own hot drink (a cup of tea), nods in agreement. “They're not like any children I've met. Sans can hold an in-depth discussion about energy transference as in pertains to the expression of magic, but he's never seen a bottle of ketchup before.”

“That's exactly what I'm talking about. He knows too much in a few specific areas and nothing about anything else. There's a good chance someone was grooming him for something, and the fact that he said he left to protect Papyrus could mean that he was next on the list.”

Gaster listens to the conversation with a pinched expression. The fact that Sans and Papyrus might have actively run away from someone, as opposed to wandering off or being forgotten, has eluded him up until this point. The thought of someone inspiring the behaviors he's seen is unsettling. “As much as this pains me to ask,” he says, “Do you think I'm the right person to be looking after them? I already have a difficult time understanding people, and I'm afraid that I might not be able to properly support these children.”

Donahue sets her empty coffee cup on the matching saucer. It's still hissing with heat, and a few puffs of steam escape from between her teeth as she talks. “I think you're fine. These kids see you as a safe adult, and if they're going to recover from this, that's something they're going to need.” She sets both the saucer and cup on the table. Her face is steeled in a way that suggests an unpleasant topic is coming up. “You're not going to like this, but I have to see if I can find their previous guardian.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Let me finish. I need to try and figure out where they came from because they might have living relatives, or there might be other kids in the same situation, or maybe because this whole thing might be a big misunderstanding. I doubt that one, but it's standard procedure in a case like this to make inquires.”

Gaster sighs heavily. He doesn't like the idea of digging into the Sans' and Papyrus' past. What if Donahue finds the decision to run away was unjustifiable and they have to be returned home? Or, what if it was perfectly justified because someone saw fit to hurt these two gentle children? He isn't sure which answer is worse

“I'm heading back to the office,” Donahue says, extracting a small square of cardstock from her pocket. “Here's my card. If you need anything, please don't hesitate to call.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“Not you, too. Just call me Donnie.”

“Donnie, right. Thank you for your time.”

“No sweat,” she says, “I'll be in touch. Gerald, see me out?”

Gerald drifts to the door with Donnie. They have a short, quiet conversation just outside Gaster's hearing range, and then she's gone.

“I think that went well,” Gerald says when he gets back.

“As well as could be expected,” Gaster agrees, “Do you think they'll be allowed to stay here?”

“Donnie is optimistic. The foster program is overcrowded as it is so they're willing to look at alternative housing, plus the kids really like you. Trust is the best way to get someone to open up and accept help.”

“She'll want to meet with them regularly, yes?”

“Probably. She wants to build a rapport with Sans, hopefully get him into some kind of counseling, and eventually a schooling program so he can interact with other children his age.”

Gaster reviews what he's learned about Sans and frowns. “I'm not sure he'd get along with children his age.”

“Maybe not, but being around them would help him learn how to behave in social situations. It couldn't hurt to give him the option.” He finishes the last of his tea. “I need to get to the lab, it's my turn to watch the determination experiments this afternoon. Would you like me to make some lunch before I go?”

“No, you've done so much already. But if it's not too far out of your way, I'd appreciate it if you could collect the reports on the desk in my office.” He glances at the closed bedroom door. “Given the situation, I think it would be best if I worked from home for the next few days.”

“I'll bring them after five,” Gerald says, adjusts his respirator and collects his bag, promising to call ahead when he's on his way back. They exchange few short goodbyes, and he leaves.

The door clicks shut behind him. Memories of Donahue's conversation tumble in to fill the sudden quiet. Gaster sits on the couch and waits for them to sort themselves out, but several minutes go by without yielding a pattern. He frowns and puts on the kettle for a second cup of tea. This might take several hot drinks to get through.

“Sans,” he calls, knocking on the bedroom door, “I'm making tea, would you like some? Or maybe a hot chocolate?”

The lock clicks and the door eases open. Sans' face appears in the gap. “Uh, no thanks, but could I get some stuff for Paps? He's getting hungry.”

“Of course.” Gaster stands to one side so Sans can pass him and move to the kitchen. He peeks into the bedroom in time to see Papyrus tumble out of the closet with the corner of a blanket held in his tiny fist. Papyrus considers this development from his new spot on the floor. “What did you think of Lieutenant Donahue?”

“She was okay. Kind of dangerous-looking at first, but she doesn't act dangerous,” says Sans as he drags a chair to the cupboard.

“She'll probably want to talk to you again.”

Sans picks at the corner of the cabinet door. “Why?”

“She wants to learn about you, I think. She wants to help.”

“We don't need help,” Sans says firmly, “Me and Paps are doing fine now.”

Gaster opens an adjacent cabinet, pulling a box of tea from the shelf. “Everyone needs help sometimes, Sans. There's nothing wrong with that.”

“Not me,” he grumbles, grabbing a jar of pea-flavored baby food and hopping down from the chair.

“Will you do it to help me, then? I'd really like to make sure you're getting the support you need to grow up healthy.”

Sans pauses. He looks at the jar of food in his hand, and the chair he just used to scale the cabinet. He takes the chair and pushes it back into place at the table. “Okay,” he says quietly.

Gaster smiles. “Thank you.”

Sans wanders back to the bedroom. He scoops up Papyrus to give him dinner, but doesn't close the door this time.

- Baby Spinach - Part 4

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#Spinach Productions #Baby Spinach #undertale #fanfiction #fanfic #undertale fanfic #undertale fanfiction #undertale gaster #undertale sans #undertale papyrus

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