#also tested a new way of coloring and idk how i feel about it yet tbh

[thatsdemko]

something new - l.stroll

masterlist | pairing: Lance stroll x inexperienced!fem!reader

summary: exploration is key to a relationship, and Fernando is a helpful hand for lances significant other.

warnings: smut (18+) + mentions of Fernando + oral (m receiving) + fingering (f receiving)

a/n: idk what it is with inexperienced reader! x Lance it is just a pair I like to write. shoutout @monzabee for being the motivation to write and being the reason I retouched this draft after MONTHS of not writing.

you were sheltered well as a child. you went to bed at 9pm, you didn’t drink, you didn’t party, and your homework was always finished before midnight. you were a good girl in your parents eyes, but something changed when you went off to college abroad.

Monaco was the home of the infamous race track, it was also well known for its parties and its celebrities who occasionally visited.

you had all plans to stay the good girl you were and keep to yourself, but those brown eyes, and devilish smile screamed to you. how could you say no to that?

however, you didn’t take things far with Lance. he knew you were rather protected from the world, and it was obvious when the first time he made a move you were shocked at everything. so Lance knew, you were far from inexperienced. you’d never once touched yourself or even explored your body in the ways he, or many women, did.

which leads you here. to asking the bold questions you would be too shy to ask Lance to now asking Fernando.

“princesa, while I do enjoy your company,” he starts rather quickly, shoving you into his drivers room so the engineers would stop from overhearing you ask about cocks, precum, and much else, “I think you should ask Lance.”

“but he’ll just laugh and tell me I’m not ready.” you pout, a rather convincing argument for the elder gentleman to begin talking.

“what do you wish to know?”

—

permanently scarred, you make your way out of Fernando’s drivers room almost thirty minutes later. every question you’ve ever had was fulfilled and weirdly enough, you wished those questions were to have stayed in your brain.

but now you know everything— well mostly everything, Fernando left you with the task of buying a vibrator and finding ways to pleasure yourself before allowing Lance to do so.

“you look,” Lance pauses, his eyes dramatically scan your body, “pale? what happened?”

“oh nothing!” Fernando intrudes carefully slipping you a piece of paper written in a horrid scribbles, but it’s merely everything you’ve talked about with bullet points on how to pleasure Lance.

the color returns to your face rather quickly and brightly, and before you could shove the paper into your jean pockets, Lance is plucking it out of your hands.

“ay, cabrón!”Fernando gently slaps the side of his teammates head, “not for you… well not yet.” Fernando smirks handing the paper back into your hands and leaving quicker than he arrived into the discussion.

“not yet?” Lance quizzes, and he looks so adorable with his eyebrows knitted close together. you’re so lucky the engineers were calling him to get ready for testing before he could dare ask a question you immediately would fold to the pressures of answering.

you quickly steal a glance at the sheet, seeing what exactly was put on there

1. relax jaw

2. wrap mouth around tip

his scribbled handwriting was barely eligible to read, but the two bullets were all that you could get yourself to read before feeling like all eyes were on you. sweat was glistening across your forehead as you fold the paper into tiny squares and decide to divert your attention on lances pre-season testing and leave this topic behind.

—

“do I have to pry it out of you?” Lance crosses the room, a giddy smile on his face as he climbs across the mattress to where you sit reading. his lips connect with yours and they trail down your neck. you feel the comfort of the paperback book swiftly removed against your thighs, his palm racking up your side, “come on tell me, what’s nando telling you?”

“Lance,” you attempt to whine, but it turns into a giggle when his facial hair tickles a sensitive spot against your neck. you end up folding, attempting to push him off your body, but you can’t help but love his lips lingering against your skin, or the warmth of his hands on your hips.

you definitely weren’t ready for sex, but you were certainly ready to dive into that list Fernando had given you. you’d wanted to see how all of it would play out based off the first two points.

“well?” he pulls away, collapsing his body beside yours, his head rests against your shoulder, “you were gone for thirty minutes and when you came back, it was like you’d seen a ghost.”

he hadn’t worried about you and Fernando being alone. if the age gap wasn’t the thing to not worry him, it was you coming back shell shocked that did.

biting your bottom lip you move to close the gap between you and Lance, delicately placing a kiss against his lips, “can I try something?” you whisper, carefully pulling away, “you can say no.” you quickly add nervously knowing Lance would turn you down anyway.

he cautiously nodded his head allowing whatever desires or wants you had take over. your acrylic nails ghost his skin as you work his shirt up off of his body revealing an area you so dreamed about.

“why’d you ever hide this from me?” you gasp practically pushing yourself off of him to stare at the beauty of his glowing golden skin and how his body curved perfectly like an hour glass.

rather than replying with words, he forces his lips against yours to get you back on track. thinking straight once again, your trail down to his pants and swiftly remove his shorts around his thighs, “can you stand up for me?”

nodding he gets up off the mattress allowing his shorts and boxers to fall into a pile beside his other dirty clothes. alas, there he is. all of him, everything Fernando ever described was right in front of you.

from his shaft to the tip, Lance was hard. you’d expected this, and climbing off the bed to your knees was the last thing he expected.

“woah,” he backs up carefully, you tilt your head upward, brows knitted in confusion, “are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“yes.”

Lance steps forward again and watches you ready yourself. you’d only read the first two points, but by relaxing your jaw and wrapping your lips around his tip, you did what you’ve only ever read in books.

“f-fuck that’s good.” Lance’s hands quickly fly into your hair, his hands are like a guide for what he wants and it’s easy to follow based on the tugging and the moans that escape his lips.

you take the chance to explore what your tongue feels like against him. it’s smooth and slick, but he tastes just as you had imagined.

you explored all sorts of things down there in the two minutes you had before Lance prepared you for his cum. you racked your teeth gently across the skin, you slurped his pre-cum, and you even had a small taste of cum before Lance drew back from you.

“where did you learn to do that?” he asks walking off to the bathroom to find a towel to clean himself.

it’d be awfully embarassing and weird to admit his name, so you simply shrug and tell him about the books you’ve been reading and how they guided you through this process.

“awfully naughty books.” he chuckles to himself throwing his boxers back on.

“how do I do that to myself?” you quickly ask halting lance in the process of re-dressing himself.

“how do you do what?” he asks playing dumb even though he knows damn well what you’re asking.

“how do I get myself to cum?”

red flushes his whole face, words fail to form at his lips as he watches you, doe-eyed and innocent. absolutely painful for his cock.

“well? tell me or I’ll ask Fernando myself—“

“this is how you do it.” he cuts you off watching a smirk lift to your lips, “when you’re alone and no one is watching, you can touch yourself in all sorts of ways you’ve desired.” he finds his answer pretty satisfying, though looking across at you, says otherwise.

your mind still races. alone? why’d you have to be alone?

“but what if I want you watching?”

you watch him bite his bottom lip, running his hand across his face, “cause then you’re just torturing me.”

“and you didn’t think that wasn’t just torture?” you ask moving across the mattress and into his lip, your legs straddling him, “you think it wasn’t pleasurable to listen to you moan, yet I couldn’t do a single thing about it?”

you can feel his heartbeat, your hand rummages across his chest, “let me,” you move off of his aching cock and swiftly remove your shirt, “show you how you make me feel.”

a soft groan escapes his lips as he takes the chance to look up at the ceiling hoping maybe god could interfere, but there’s no use. no praying could stop the twitch in his dick when he saw you were already pantyless when he turned back.

“fuck.”

a smirk seems to be your response of the day. you gracefully move your fingers down your chest that’s covered in lace and travel them all the way down to your pussy. Lance parts your thighs for him to see, “now take your finger,” he instructs, placing his cold hands against yours, and guides your index finger into your entrance, “and feel yourself.”

a soft moan escapes your lips, feeling your slick folds. he guides your finger until you can’t reach anymore and it’s his turn to take control. he slips two fingers inside you and you feel your body clench around him. he begins to pump his fingers slowly, the feeling aches, but pleasure arrives at a certain point.

“that’s your clit, baby.” he mutters and his finger does it again. he watches your back arch up, your eyes fall towards the back of your head and you can’t hold back the gasp that just keeps escaping each time he touches it.

“atta girl, let it out. come on, don’t be shy.” he encourages you, your legs visibly shake until you can’t hold it any longer and warmth exhales onto his fingers. you’re unsure if it’s normal to watch him, but he takes them into his mouth and licks them clean, “not so innocent are you now?” he smirks.

“Fernando’s a good teacher.” you sigh content with the nights work and couldn’t wait to ask more from his elder teammate.

[noemilivv]

Hi pooks, me again lmao

Can I request More Than Anything (letter from a character of your choice) with Alastor ? Romantic????

Likes: Cheese, Snakes, Anime, Stuffed Animals, fruit, Theatre, pretzels, pasta, long hot baths, dark chocolate, sour candy, music, daydreaming, kangaroos

Dislikes: all of the Vees, vegetables, odd textured foods, Sherpa, paper straws, people yelling at me

Personality: I'm a very goofy silly person, with kind of a dirty/dark sense of humor. I have abandonment issues and am very very possessive. As in someone called my friend a whore and I had to be held back by three people, possessive. Once I find someone I like, it's basically I stay calm around them, and test the waters. I'm kinda flirty with my friends too. Once I figure out where I stand with them, I'm my normal weird crazy self.

Hobbies: Crying, drawing, reading, listening to music, day dreaming, theatre

Shenanigans: I said a pizza I made had down syndrome, rolled around and chased people in a colorful tube thingy. moaned as a joke, and didn't know the principal was behind me. Fell off a table from laughing.

Also mutuals?? If not that's fine tho :333 ty schnookums

heyy!! ofc i can do that for you, although it won’t be too romantic, as i’m starting to grow more iffy about writing alastor in that way, i’ve always tried to make my works for him pretty neutral, so their able to be read by both people who read for him romantically and platonically (other than the marriage hc series), cuz honestly i’ve been thinking about it cause like i write for vaggie and angel based off of their sexualities (gn! or male! readers for angel and gn! or fem! for vaggie) and it feels disrespectful to the aroace community to not do the same for al yk?

that doesn’t mean my writing for alastor will go to a halt, it just means that the content of him may grow less romantic, by how much idk yet

also yes, i’m down to be moots haha, always looking for someone new to talk to on tumblr :)

My dear doe,

Absence truly does make the heart grow fonder, so I’ve noticed, and because of that I must say I’m eager for your return back home!

I have a lot planned for us, and your darling face, I’m positive you’ll enjoy it!

Please come to my room at eight, sharp, in your best clothes. I’ve planned a splendid night out on the town!

Yours Truly,

Alastor ❣️

[madwomansapologist]

Hi! I love your Good place story’s and headcannons! Sorry that this is long, but can I request a Sadist Michael x Masochist GenNeu Reader (smut)? Maybe they met Michael when he was still working for The Bad Place?? Idk where you cross the line, but can it can include bondage, derogation, biting, foreplay, etc?

Write whoever, honestly! I haven’t seen any yet, but thank you if you do my request! <3

a match made in hell | Michael (The Good Place)

Masterlist | Rules | Taglist | Library | More Michael | AO3

synopsis: when Michael found someone who also was praying for making something different, he couldn't help himself. [2K]

warnings: cursing. very kinky. masochism and sadism, bondage, derogation and some evil schems to torture our loved Soul Squad.

ps: you simply wouldn't be able to understand how much I love that request!!!! Really, that story was perfecly formed on my mind! Sorry for making you wait, I am not so confident in my english and use some time editing. Also, this is my third time writing a smut more detailed, so... Thanks for requesting, I really do hope you like it!

Tedious.

When did you start feeling like this? Maybe two centuries ago? Eventually, everything becomes a blur. All memomies meet and it's hard to say from what moment they are. But you know for sure that, a long time ago, you didn't feel that way. No. It was exciting. It was funny. It was challenging. You desire it. You felt smat, important, talented. And now...

Design the project, build the new neighborhood, deal with Bad Janet, welcome the shitty humans. Do it all over again. Forever and evermore. Maybe try a different coffee, add vanilla on it. Or change the color of your pants, try a new kinda of suit. What about, instead of designing on a white sheet, use a blue one? At the end of the day, nothing ever changes. Ever.

So, yes, boring.

It was supossed to be your dream. And it was, for a really great time. But now, it is just a obligation. Something you have to do because... well, someone has to. And you are great, awarded so many times, an inspiration. How can you be so important, Shaw's right hand, and still feel like that?

When the new architect start his presentation, you we're almost sleeping. Part of it because your work is to irritate anyone that need do to something important, made them deal with a little patient test, but also because what would change if you pay attention? Everything will still the same, so why bother?

What you couldn't imagine, what made you lean your elbows on the table and look at the presentation board carefully, is that you heard something new. Not only something new, but something not fucking stupid. At least not entirely.

"Psychological torture?" You licked your lips, holding the presentation clipboard and reading his name. You knew what his name was, but you pretend to forget so those new demons can be put it in their places. You talked before Shaw, what was normal. You scare the newbies, he watches and have fun. "Michael, thats riscky."

"As it should." His smile was something. You could smeel his nervousness, literally. He is surrounded by experienced demons, by people that torture for way more time than he is alive. Shaw is the most important person down there. A leader. And you are his favorite. You worked for that. And yet stinking of fear, he didn't stopped smiling. Michael was proud. "We should like that job. It should be marvellous. Yes, this is riscky, but if it works our entire way to deal with humans will change for better. Better for us, obviously."

Shaw silenced some laughs when he threw the clipboard on the table. "And who said we don't like it?"

Even tho you love how nervous Shaw can make anyone feel, that wasn't an ideia that you could just discard. Something on your chest said that to you. Something screamed that it was more than just an attempt.

"I don't."

All demons around the table looked at you. They didn't even say anything, to surprised to use their mouths. What would they say? They are just a group of yes-man without something special to say. The only cruel demon whos oppinion matter to you was Shaw.

"You don't like to hurt them?" Shaw didn't blink. You don't think he ever did that.

"I love to," you reaffirmed to him. "But don't you feel tedious? Like if you closed your eyes for more than three seconds you could just sleep? Yesterday I heard a men screaming because I shoved some spiders up to his asshole and all I could think about was if I had turned off the gas."

At this point you had already stood up, exposing your oppinion as you walked. You approached Michael, the creative novice, but ignored him. With your back to him, you read the million-step plan for the new neighborhood. "The Good Place". You could feel the eyes on your back, but you just stared at the troubled blonde on the sheet.

"Remember when we realized that humans hate when we use their nails to rip out their eyes?" Now you we're looking at Shaw. His faced we're emotionless, as always. "When we started using divorced couples to hurt one another? Or when we finally understood why their vocal cords we're so sensitive?"

"Nostalgia," Shaw said, hating the sound of his own voice. "Thats your argument?"

"Thats the only argument I need," you smiled. "I would do anything to feel that again. Wouldn't you?"

And besides being a cunt on every situation, you knew that he was dying to do something new. "Fine," Shaw said, almost like he didn't want it. Probably he didn't, at least not as politely. "You can mentor him. Have your fun. I bet it on last six months."

"It's a bet."

Exciting with the tought of working on something new, and a little bit worried about making something that Shaw would approve, you didn't realize the eyes observing you. Analysing those four assholes whos lifes you would help turn into hell, you simply didn't pay attention to the man behind you.

Michael wasn't able to use his words.

You defended him. You supported him. You agreed. You felt the same. More than anything, you convinced Shaw that it was a valid idea. Michael didn't expect that from you. Maybe another architect dreaming about something new would act that way, but you? Someone so important, talented, awarded? His inspiration?

Michael was not prepared for this. For you to look at him. To talk to him. To agree with what he said. Michael was not prepared to have you so closed to him, paying attention to his work, believing on him.

And Michael was definitely not prepared for you to mentor him.

Your experience was something that he could only dream to have. Michael lived millennia and was nothing compared to you. And while you mentor him, teaching him what your live had teached you, Michael was responsible for creating the soul of the neighborhood.

"So..." You swallowed. It wasn't what you expected. Walking along the colorful alleys, a strangeness shivered your back. This was so anormal. So different from anything you've ever done. "Frozen yogurt?"

"What do humans thinks that they love but they actually hate?" Michael asked, and even tho it seens obvious, that didn't look like the right asnwer for you. "They took something they love with their whole souls and made it worse so they would have it more. Frozen yogurt."

You agreed, not so sure about that. "It looks just friendly to me. Don't see how that would make their lives something unbeareble."

"It will," Michael smiled, jumping on his pretty suit. "You gonna see it."

The night lit you both. Among the empty alleys, but colored as if they were used every day, you both walked to make sure the neighborhood worked. After so much work, all that remained was to ensure that there was no problem caused by a Janet's mistake and to receive the four little shits. So far, there were no errors. She worked well. Really well.

"I could never have imagined that you were bored," Michael said, walking beside you. "I thought if anyone among us knew what they were doing, it would be you."

"I love this job, but we deserve better. They make mistakes, they hurt others, and it's our job to make sure they're punished the way they weren't while they were alive. But why should that be a penance for us? Those Good Place assholes like what they do. We deserve the same."

Michael couldn't agree more.

"Now that the neighborhood is ready, are you going to move away?" He asked, hoping the answer would be no. "Everyone who will act are ready for work, but you still haven't said what you want."

"I don't think acting is for me. I'll keep causing pain."

"I think you'd do well," Michael was sincere.

When you saw another Frozen Yogurt, you sat in one of the chairs exposed on the porch. Sitting facing each other, you shook your head. "I'm not subtle. It would spoil everything."

"I don't think it would. On the contrary." Michael's smile was... something

"Michael, Michael, Michael. I'm starting to think you don't want me away. Do you like my company or do you just prefer that I am the one addressing Shaw during meetings?"

"You discovered me," he teased. "Now I have to find someone else to do the hard part."

When the silence took a while to break, he spoke again. "Or maybe I enjoy your company."

You just stared at him for a moment, letting the fake moon shine on you. Something in you wished you could touch his hair. It looked so soft. The other wanted to rip that stupid tie.

""Still, I can't see how that would work. I'm sure that on the first problem I would lose my mind and jump on someone's neck. I bet the first one would be the Florida guy. It would ruin everything."

Michael's eyes gleamed. That was a sight that made his chest shudder. He might have shut up, but Michael was never a coward. "You just need to learn to be more patient. I can teach you that."

You leaned your elbows on the table, watching him more closely. The phrase could be understood in an innocent way, but you were too smart for that. A defiant smile appeared on your face. "You think you can teach me something?"

"I know I can try."

You could have stopped that conversation there. Said you was joking, that you needed to get back to work, that you both were co-workers. It was just saying that you didn't want to. No. You just thought: What bad could happen? And that was enough to make any doubts disappear.

"Feel free to try as much as you like. I doubt you'll get anything."

Michael stood up, which surprised you. Thought he wouldn't know what to do. Michael sat on the table, next to his body, and crossed his arms. "I like a challenge," he said.

No.

He promissed.

When his fingers began to undo the knot that held the tie around his neck, a part of you lit up. It was as if he had read your mind. Slowly, he released the fabric and stretched it between his fingers, smoothing out what was previously wrinkled.

"Get up."

You remained seated, arms crossed.

Michael approached. His fingers latched onto the back of your neck, gripping your hair and forcing you to look him straight in the eye. He could even control your head, but not your eyes. You looked down, consciously choosing to make sure he didn't get what he wanted, little knowing it was a sight that made Michael never want to walk away from you again.

"Are you going to make your life difficult, sweetie?" Sweetie. It wasn't an endearing nickname, but rather a harsh word. He released your hair abruptly, causing your body to sway in the chair. "As you wish."

Michael took your hands. With the surprise, you ended up being lifted from the chair. He deftly placed your hands behind your body, bringing them together at the small of your back, and used his tie to secure them. You squirmed, getting in his way, but your intention wasn't to stop him. You just wanted to piss him off a little bit. He knotted it tightly, the fabric brushing against your skin hard enough to mark. You will survive. Better: you liked it

"You don't have to pretend you don't want this," Michael practically purred against your ear. His body was pressed against yours, your back against his torso. When one of his hands pulled your hair back, the other grabbed the knot that held you and played with the battered skin. "Don't act like a saint. That doesn't suit you, sweetie."

The words, the velvety way they came out of Michael's mouth, it made your insides turn. You wouldn't need much more to be ready for him.

"What will you do?" Your voice was husky, as if you hadn't used it in a long time. "I've seen that you can talk, but I don't think you have anything but a foul mouth."

Michael's laugh chills you.

Without warning, Michael forced your spine against the table. Lying on top of it, helpless against the cold metal and with your lower body exposed, there wasn't much to do but wait. Quickly, Michael got rid of your clothes. He just ripped them from your body, not worrying about the future.

The empty neighborhood didn't stop you from feeling like you were being seen by the whole world. Maybe you were. And that was delicious. To think that maybe there was someone lurking in the shadows enjoying the little experiment.

Michael's hands touched you body, grabbing everything he could. He touched you like it was the last time, like he would never feel your soft skin again. He was possessive, brutish, relentless: maybe it wouldn't be the last time.

"I want to hear you beg for me."

"In your dreams." He didn't see it, but he knew you were smiling. It made his cock throb.

He bent down, biting the thin, cool skin of your ass. It would leave marks. A little more force and maybe blood would come out. It wasn't an idea that disgusted you. To think of his mouth wet with whatever liquid your body could produce. Michael hungry for you.

"Is that all you know how to do?"

Michael licked the sensitive skin. His fingers crept up your thighs, tingling, until he reached your core. He pulled his fingers away, brought them to his tongue and moistened them, and without warning he penetrated you. Your body nearly convulsed with the brute act. That muffled sound was so perverted. It almost made you ashamed. Almost.

"Michael," you moaned, knowing full well it would cheer him up. "Oh, Michael."

You felt him spit into you, only to re-enter with force. A few thrusts later, you noticed something crawling on your skin. Something big and thick. Without warning, he started fucking you for real. And Michael had no pity for your trembling body.

"Tell me what you want." His voice was so raw it drew a groan from her. "I thought you liked talking. Come on, I want to hear it."

You wish you could touch him. Pull him close to you and devour his mouth. You hadn't kissed and it was so lewd. You wanted to touch his dick. You wanted to put it in his mouth and choke. You wanted to be seen. You wanted to be heard. You wanted to feel pain. You wanted a lot.

"I want," his hoarse groan stopped you from talking. Michael went harder, laughing at how pathetic you were.

"Speak up, my dirty little whore. I don't bite." Michael sighed, feeling the sweat trickle down his body. "Oh, that's a lie. But you like it."

The more he talked, the more he cursed you, the more you wanted him. Ah, if only you could control the situation. It would make him cry with exhaustion

A slap crackled against your skin. Your ass burned. And more slaps burned your skin. Each stronger. "I fucking want to hear you."

"I want to come." You could barely open your mouth to do anything but moan. "Michael, make me come on your dick."

Michael tapped your thigh again.

"As you wish."

And without mercy, he violated your body until you couldn't breathe. And he didn't stop. Even when it was uncomfortable. He kept going until he was good again and, without saying a single word, he came after your second peak.

"More patient?" Michael mocked.

"Not at all," you replied, barely breathing.

GENERAL TAGLIST: @suakemi @notanalienindisguiseblink

THE GOOD PLACE TAGLIST: @suakemi @notanalienindisguiseblink

if you enjoyed, please reblog! i promise it makes a difference ♡

@ madwomansapologist.tumblr.

[fairyhaos]

yena !! i hope u still remember me ʕ⁠ꈍ⁠ᴥ⁠ꈍ⁠ʔ it's the wind chime anon !! 🎐

how have u been omg (⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠) i had my exams last month n i have da notifs on for way too many blogs on here so i just uninstalled tumblr instead,,, but im back now (i was about to send this ask sooner (2 days ago ?) but i was a bit scared lmao,,, but i just saw ur post about shua so i had to come and say hi >:3) but wahh congrats on all ur milestones ! before i left i think u were about to start ur 500 followers event ! ! n i think u crossed 1234 already !! and probably even more ! that's supa cool n 'm so so proud of you ☆૮꒰ˊᗜˋ* ꒱ა also i love love love ur new theme *ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* ੈ✩

ooo n about finding jeonghan's colour,,, u looked at his pictures to figure out what colour he is ?? that's super intriguing actually. bcs the thing is idk if i have this type of synesthesia,,, im afraid what im doing is just strongly associating colours with people ? like the aspects of their personality play a major role in determining their colour but similar to the process of getting to know someone, it's v hard for me to decide on their colour. for example, jihoon. it's like, , the more i see him the more i feel like i don't even know him yk? for hansol, even tho i don't know what his colour is, i can at least tell that his colour would most prolly be a cooler shade. but for jihoon n sometimes even mingyu i can't rly figure them out? it's like i have options but i don't know for sure. n i don't rly know if this is synesthesia ?? lmdoajdjska i think i should just take the test by synesthesia battery but im just scared lmao </3

anygays i read the rest of your synesthesia posts and wahh, , yena ur just so talented. ur so cool ! ! i rly don't know what else to say. you have a way w words and it's as if i can feel the colors permeating through the descriptions. honestly it's such a gift to be able to share your vivid perception with others and i just wanna thank u for that (⁠✿⁠^⁠‿⁠^⁠) i have sm to say about each member's colour and esp shua's but this got rly long so i'll do that in another ask ?? heh >:3

-🎐

WIND CHIME ANON OMGGGG YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH I MISSED YOU :<

i hope you've been doing okay!! how did your exams go????? literally i'd be sitting here and just thinking :(( i hope wind chime anon is doing okay in this world :(( haha ive missed you sm

it's okayy there's no need to be scared im super nice!! (i think?) thank u sm for loving my new theme too haha i love it a lot as well

and abt jeonghan: yeah! honestly synaesthesia is a really really different experience for anyone so i like to think of it as one of those sexuality labels. if you feel like it fits, then you're allowed to use it! those tests online are sketchy af anyways unless you wanna pay for a Real and Scientific Test

i think assigning colours to vibes and personalities is very interesting though!! i don't think i could do that haha, personalities have always just been so complex and different for me that a colour just doesn't come to mind at all (i don't think my synaesthesia works in that way lmao) so that's really really fascinating! honestly tho,,, im also struggling w jihoon too and maybe that's bc i haven't spent several minutes just Staring at his face yet but i just have a gut feeling that he's gonna be one tough cookie

aww thank u so much please that's so lovely to hear ^^ that really makes me the happiest oml, being told that people are able to feel my writing and my descriptions <3

aww yess please do lmk what you think of the others !! it's so nice to see you in my inbox again 💗

[obliviouskind]

“It had been the nurse who had suggested the lake. A foreigner that had arrived to the town just a winter prior, but whom had been welcomed into the community as though she’d come from their blood. Marnie, she was called...”

[randomshyperson]

The Scarlet Witch Prophecy - The First Year

Series Masterlist ||  Read on AO3

Summary: As the youngest daughter of Howard Stark, you have ordinary expectations for your years at Hogwarts. Little do you know what adventures await you when your destiny is intertwined with the legendary Scarlet Witch.

Warnings: +16. Adaptation of the Harry Potter Saga, Magical Thematic, Prophecies, Mentions of Violence, Torture and dark magic, Language (swearing and minor/major offenses), manipulation of will, Underage kissing, insinuation of smut with minors, Smut (overage), descriptions of death, aggression, obscurity, angst, fluffy, soulmates analogies.

Chapters will have additional warning when necessary.

Tag list ( let me know if you want to be tagged or removed idk haha) @mionemymind / @abimess / @stephanieromanoff / @yourtaletotell / @tomy5girls / @justagaypanicking / @thegayw1tch / @idek-5 // @myperfectlovepoem // @helloalycia // @ENSORCELLME // @AIMEZVOUSBRAHMS @imapotatao / @aimezvousbrahms/ @ensorcellme/ @helloalycia

//////////////////////////////////

Part I - The First Year

Hogwarts will be fun was the first thought you had when you opened the letter in your hands.

Tony, your older brother, ruffled your hair slightly as he came down into the kitchen and watched you open the mail.

"Your letter finally arrived, huh, little witch?" He joked with a smile as he sat down at the table. 

"I can't wait to go!" You commented excitedly rereading the acceptance letter for the third time.

"Miss, after coffee, can we go to diagonal alley if you like?" Jarvis, your butler, asked you politely as he poured Tony's coffee making you hesitate slightly. Tony, who had his eye on you, forced a smile as he patted you on the arm.

"I'll go with you, don't worry." He assured and you nodded.

"I wish dad would come." You grumble as you sit down and Tony sighs.

" Yeah, me too." He says. "But you know he's busy, and we can't leave it to the last minute."

You mumble in agreement as you serve some sweetbreads on your plate.

Eating in silence for a few moments, you are startled slightly when Tony lets out an exclamation.

"Damn, I forgot to write back to Steve." He announces getting up and walking over to the next shelf where there were some stationery and pen.

"Your boyfriend will be upset." You tease lightly, and Tony mumbles softly without responding.

When he finishes writing the letter, he goes to the kitchen window and opens the metal, whistling loudly in a familiar rhythm. A few seconds later, Iron, his barn owl lands in front of him. Tony stroked the animal gently before dangling the letter in his paws.

" Please take this to Steve, Iron." He ordered and the animal made a noise before flying away again.

"Jarvis, I'll get ready to go." You tell the man as soon as you finish eating and head off toward the stairs.

//-//

Diagonal Alley is a noisy place.

Tony asked you to walk beside him, but you stopped walking at the first Quidditch shop you spotted, and he had to turn back halfway when he noticed you were no longer beside him.

"Don't do that." He warned, mildly annoyed, but you glazed over at the exposed broom in front of you, and he let out a chuckle when he noticed. "Come on, Y/N, you already have a broom."

"But that's no ordinary broom." You retorted with an impressed look. "It's a Nimbus 2000, it's the fastest broom there is."

"You have the 99, I don't understand the difference." He retorted with his hands in his pockets and you shrugged.

"Tony, can we buy it?" You asked pleadingly, making your brother laugh slightly.

"Let's buy your stuff first please" He retorted with a smile and you grumbled but accepted the arm he offered for you to hang on. Jarvis walked behind you with a keen eye on your surroundings.

After you had bought the vast majority of your supplies and replenished your stocks of potions items for Tony, Jarvis took you to Blossoms and Blurbs to buy this year's books.

"Good morning! Hogwarts, third and first year books, please." You heard Jarvis tell the clerk who approached you three. Tony nodded his head signaling you to feel free to walk around the bookstore in the meantime, and that is exactly what you did.

You found many interesting books in the place as you walked among the shelves. One in particular caught your attention, as there seemed to be little miniature magical creatures trying to jump out of the cover, and you grabbed it on a table, watching the item carefully.

You smiled when an ink dragon jumped into your hand, moving your head as if you were looking around. Distracted by the book, you let out a low exclamation when someone bumped into you.

"Sorry, kid." You heard a female voice speak in a humorous tone. It is a girl taller than you, short red hair. "I ended up tripping over some of those runner books."

"It's okay." You said with a smile. The girl looked at the one book in your hands for a moment.

"Do you enjoy creature tracts?" She asks casually as she reaches for a book on the bookshelf beside her.

"I don't know yet." You say and she looks at you slightly confused, "I never studied."

"Ah, first-year." She understands and you nod in agreement. "Hogwarts too or some other?"

"Hogwarts." 

"Cool, I guess I'll see you there then." She says. "I'm from Slytherin, third year."

You let out a surprised exclamation.

"Maybe you know my brother." You say and the girl takes her gaze from the books in her hand she was checking to look at you with her eyebrow raised in curiosity. "His name is Tony Stark, he's also from your house."

The girl lets out a short laugh.

"I can't believe you are Stark's sister." She says. "We're not exactly friends, but I've seen him around the dorm several times. And your brother is a pain in the ass, by the way."

You laugh lightly, agreeing.

"I am Natasha Romanoff." She introduces herself next, balancing her books in one hand to greet you. You introduce yourself with a gentle smile. "Good luck with your books." She says before turning away.

You think it's cool that you already know someone besides your brother before you start at Hogwarts.

//-//

Buying your wand is a rather strange experience.

Mr. Ollivander has a glint in his eye as if he knows everyone's secrets, and seems to disappear and reappear in his store very easily.

Tony sat on one of the stools while he waited for you, and Jarvis went to buy something for you two to eat.

After trying almost five wands, and exploding a glass vase when he tried the last one, Mr. Ollivander sighed.

"Sorry, I don't know why it's not working." You asked feeling nervous, but he smiled.

"Don't worry, dear." He said. "Difficult customers are so much fun." 

He walked back in between the shelves after that, and then reappeared with three new packages.

"I remember when Howard Stark bought his wand." He told smiling nostalgically as you opened one of the packages, a black wand in front of you. "Phoenix, Cedar, slightly flexible."

"Dad has changed wands thousands of times." Added Tony wryly, but Mr. Ollivander didn't seem to mind.

The wand you tested let out a faint spark when you tried to cast a simple conjuration spell, and the man in front of you was quick to take it from your hand the next second.

"I think I have a better idea." He announced turning around, and then climbed the ladder supported by the wall, picking up a package at the top.

"Try this one dear." He asked handing you a dark wand, the wood was shiny, a color you didn't know exactly what it was, but it was beautiful. 

When you grabbed the item, you felt a tingling sensation spread throughout your hand, and the wand vibrated slightly for a few seconds, causing Ollivander to let out a noise of excitement.

"You see, I knew I would find an owner for you dear." He spoke and you realized that he was speaking with the item in your hands. Soon he turned his gaze back to you. "Take good care of this one, will you, it was quite difficult to get dark elf blood for the core."

"R-right." You said with a slight frown, not quite sure what to make of that information.

Tony laughed lightly at the interaction, he should be used to Mr. Ollivander's eccentric manner by now, since he kept breaking his wands just like your father and often returned to the store to get a new one.

After paying, you and Tony met Jarvis outside, he was carrying some sweet rolls.

//-//

July ended too quickly for your happiness. You were very eager to go to school.

You spent most of August at home, playing quidditch with Tony in the backyard, curiously reading the magic books you bought, and trying to peek into the basement where your father worked, but he always caught you looking and smiled, asking you to go back to your room.

You would like your father to take you to the station, but he said he had a magic conference in September, and would be traveling for the next few weeks. Tony was upset, but he put his arm around your shoulders and asked you to hurry to get your bags.

When you finally got to the station, you were slightly nervous about going through a wall, but Tony laughed, and showed you how to go first.

You hugged Jarvis good-bye before following your brother along the way.

Tony dragged you across the train cars to the first empty cabin he could find. He commented that it would be nice if you made your own friends, but that he would like you to sit with him.

So here you were, sitting with Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, Tony's best friends since the first year. The boys smiled encouragingly at you. You already knew them, because Tony kept inviting them to spend holidays with him all the time.

"Hey, Y/N, how was your vacation?" Steve asked as soon as you sat down next to him. You shrugged, saying that it was nice, but that you were looking forward to attending Hogwarts.

Soon the boys started talking about what they were excited about next year, and you did your best to keep up, not knowing exactly who the people they mentioned were, or knowing the classes they talked about.

Many minutes after the train was moving, a girl opened the cabin door.

"Hey, strangers." She greeted with a smile. 

"Hi Peggy." Steve said with a smile, you frowned at the slight scowl on your brother's face.

"They're calling for us in the prefects compartment, Steve." She warned and Steve nodded, getting up. He and the girl then left, and Tony crossed his arms.

"What's wrong?" You asked noticing his posture and the way Bucky had a little smile on his face.

"It's nothing." Grumbled your brother, and as he turned his face to the window, Bucky who was standing in front of you, whispered to you.

"Tony thinks Peggy likes Steve." He recounted. "So he doesn't like Peggy very much."

"Oh." You said, pretending to understand the whole plot. It didn't make much sense to you because everyone couldn't be friends, but you figured that when you were your brother's age you would understand better.

//-//

The Hogwarts Express only stopped at night.

Properly uniformed, you smiled when your brother patted you on the shoulder, telling you that he would meet you at the castle, since the first-year students had to go by boat.

Your hands were sweating a little as you walked up to the extraordinarily tall man who introduced himself as Drax.

"First-year students, please, six in each boat." He shouted to the crowd, and the students moved closer together.

You sat in one of the first little boats, five other children you didn't know surrounding you.

"I'm so excited." A blonde girl commented cheerfully, waving her hands. She smiled at everyone as she introduced herself as "Harley Quinn". 

"I bet you''ll blow something up once we get there, Harley" Added a redheaded girl sitting next to you, you could tell by her tone that they were probably friends. The blonde, Harley, laughed.

"Shut up, Ivy." She said, and then Drax was back, climbing into one of the boats beside her. He checked the boats one last time, then waved his hand, and the transports began to move.

Everyone, including you, let out a chorus of excitement.

When you noticed the castle, you smiled. It was huge, and just as amazing as Tony used to tell you. 

"Wow, it must be amazing to fly over all that." You quietly observed, and the girl next to you turned her head in your direction, smiling.

"Do you like flying?" She asked, and you nodded. She looked at you for a moment and then held out her hand to greet you. "I am Diana. Diana Prince."

"Hi, Diana." You said introducing yourself next. "Do you also like to fly?"

"I love it." She says. "I hope i can make it onto the team."

"I don't know if the first-years have any chance, but I'll be rooting for you." You assure, and Diana smiles.

When the boats stop in the harbor, the students are all excited to get out and see the castle, but Drax's almost intimidating posture makes everyone properly behaved.

He leads the crowd to the staircase, and then there is a lobby. There is a woman waiting for everyone, her strict posture makes you think she is someone you wouldn't want to upset.

"Welcome to Hogwarts." She announces. "I am Professor Okoye, head of Gryffindor house."

The students exchange burbles next, but the teacher's gaze shuts them up almost immediately.

"As long as you are here, your houses will be like your families." She continues. "Your triumphs will earn you points, and if you break any rules, those points will be taken away." 

She says, casting a disapproving glance at one of the students in the corner, who giggled. "In a few moments we will begin the sorting hat ceremony."

The teacher then turns around, heading toward a large bronze door, and talking to someone on the other side. You hear someone laughing near you, and you turn your head to the side in curiosity.

It was a blond boy, and he seemed to be enjoying himself as he balanced one of the gold cups he picked up from the surrounding shelves. You thought he would be in trouble if he knocked it over, and this seemed to be exactly the same opinion as the girl next to him, who was looking at him disapprovingly.

"Stop being an idiot, Peter, put that back." She complained and he laughed, shrugging.

"Gamora, you're a spoilsport you know." He retorted and when he put the cup back, it spun and fell to the floor, breaking into several pieces. The boy turned pale as Teacher Okoye turned her head in his direction.

You rolled your eyes, walking over to them.

"Reparo" You said drawing your wand as you pointed at the broken object. Some children let out impressed exclamations when they saw the bowl form again, but you just put your wand away in shame. It was no big deal. Okoye caught up with the three of you next, looking reproachfully at the boy.

"I expect better behavior during the ceremony, sir..."

"Quill"

"Mister Quill." She completed and took one last look at the boy that had with his head down before turning back to the front of the crowd again, waving for the students to follow her.

"Hey, that was pretty cool." Peter commented beside you as you walked. You shrugged, focusing on the path.

//-//

The sorting hat was something exceptional.

Tony never told you how the choice was made, and you knew it was only to annoy you. He had sometimes joked that the students faced each other in a duel, and even though you told him to shut up, you had a look at his spell book before you came.

The actual ceremony was much simpler, however.

When it was your turn to climb onto the small stool, you bit your lips, hoping that everything would go smoothly. Just as the old cloth of the hat fell over your eyes, blocking your view of the rest of the hall, you heard a voice in your head.

" Hello, dear, no need to be so nervous." Announced the hat gently. "You are a curious little thing, I see."

"Is that a good thing?" You thought, and the hat chuckled lightly.

"It might be." He said mysteriously. "Interesting what I see here. Very interesting."

"What are you seeing?"

"Your memories, dear."

"Oh." You thought, feeling slightly embarrassed. That seemed like an intrusion of your privacy. The hat laughed again, and you remembered that he was on your head.

"You're hard to sort out." He says, and you squeeze the stool. "Don't worry, I'm not going to send you home, that's not how it works."

"Oh, right."

Hat was silent a few moments. 

"I see courage in your heart." He says and you try to remember the characteristics of the houses. "But that courage is well forged with your loyalty."

You swallow dryly, feeling your anxiety rising. This was definitely taking much longer than the people who went before you.

"You are as smart as your father and brother, both members of the Slytherin house." He says.  "There's a willingness not to let them down."

"That's personal." You grumble feeling your cheeks flush, but the hat doesn't care to apologize for bringing up your insecurities.

"Ah, this is interesting here. A pure kindness, yet pruned in your origins of shallow paternal affection”.

You frown, not understanding what he is saying.

"You are quite adaptable child, it has always been one of your best virtues." The hat remarks, and you get the impression that the next part is only said for you. "Tell me, where would you like to stay?"

"Isn't that your job?" You retort in thought, and hear him laugh again. You rush to correct yourself, not wanting to be rude. "Sorry, hat. I don't really know. I'd like to stay where I fit in best."

"You would do well anywhere." He retorts, and you frown. "And that's pretty impressive, you know. I haven't met another hatstall since the last century."

You swallow dryly, not knowing if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

"I'll work hard, sir." You tell him. "I don't want people to think I'm a special witch just because of my family. That's something I'm sure, I don't know if it helps you choose."

Hat lets out a sigh of relief.

"Actually, that's exactly what I needed."

It takes a moment for him to speak again, and when he does, you feel your whole body shake.

"Hufflepuff"

//-//

Steve Rogers is the head boy of Hufflepuff and he celebrates excitedly when you sit down at the table next to him.

"That's so cool" He comments. "I'll be able to tease Tony all year about it."

After that, director Agatha Harkness, made the announcement of the beginning of the year. If her goal was to scare the students, she succeeded when she talked about the deadly dangers surrounding the forbidden forest and the punishments for the disobedient. Professor Strange interrupted her speech as he cleared his throat, awkwardly waving for Agatha to stop saying such things, and the woman giggled. 

Dinner is delicious, and then you are following the crowd of students into the communal rooms. 

"Butterbeer" Steve said to the portrait on the wall, and you blinked in surprise when the painting moved to the side, a door behind.

You sighed when you realized how cozy the Hufflepuff's common room was.

"Everyone please come in." Asked Steve in the center of the room, waving to the students who stayed behind. When everyone was around him, he smiled. "The dorms are divided by gender, but you can sleep wherever you feel most comfortable. I will only suggest that none of you try to sleep with the seventh graders, because they are scary." Steve joked making the crowd laugh lightly. "We have a supply of food in those lockers, just in case you feel like having a snack in the early morning, outside of the permitted hours for walking around the castle." He continues and stands thoughtfully for a few moments. "Most of the things you need to know are on the bulletin board on that wall, and you can also ask me anything you want. Your belongings have already been taken to the free beds, but if you want any help, you can organize among yourselves or just come talk to me."

Steve smiled as the crowd moved. You headed in the direction where he said the rooms were.

//-//

You let out a surprised exclamation as something landed on your head.

"Damn, sorry!" Asked an asian girl approaching you, and pulling the small being out of your hair as you entered the room. "Groot, I told you to behave yourself."

"I am groot." Grumbled the little creature. You looked at it wide-eyed, impressed.

"Wow, is that a tree?"

The girl laughed, putting the small creature sitting on her shoulder, sitting on the bed next to the one you identified as having your things.

"Yes and no." She said. "I found Groot in my garden over the vacations, and well, I don't know what he is exactly. But I think he was trying to make my mother's plants grow."

"He's really cute." You commented approaching with your finger extended. Groot smiled, accepting your touch.

"I am Mantis." Says the girl next and you smile at her as you introduce yourself. "We're going to be roommates."

"Yes, and so is Groot." You add as you take off your cape to throw on the bed that would be yours.

After eating so well at dinner, it doesn't take long for you to fall asleep. 

You dream of glowing green eyes and a red light, but you don't recognize them or understand what it means, and when you wake up, you no longer remember.

//-//

Two weeks since you started at Hogwarts, you are used to how eccentric everything can be.

The classes weren't as difficult as you imagined, but that's probably because you've had contact with magic all your life and always had an easy time learning things. All the teachers were unique in their own way. 

Professor Rocket, for example, taught Transfiguration and spent almost the entire period transfigured into a raccoon, even outside of class hours. He was temperamental and got irritated very easily when students talked too much in his class, so it was not recommended to do so.

There was also Professor Fury, who had an eye patch as a mandatory piece in his daily costume, and all the students spent more time trying to guess how this happened, than listening to his explanations of defense spells against the dark art.

Your astronomy class on Wednesdays was taught by Professor Odin, who like to claim that he was a descendant of the Olympian gods, but no one believed him. He was also the father of two of your classmates, Thor and Loki Odinson, who were the exact opposite of each other. While Thor was warm and friendly, Loki was cold and reclusive, plus the former was from Gryffindor and the other from Slytherin. Surprisingly, you liked them both. 

You ended up meeting the head of your house only on the second day.  

Professor Heimdall taught Divination, so you wouldn't have any classes with him until the third year.You bumped into him when you were late for fifth period and had to run to the common room for your Potions books, and almost fell on the floor when you turned the corner without looking and the professor was there.  He prevented you from falling with a wave of his wand, smiling gently. 

" Forgive me." You said clumsily, feeling slightly intimidated by the yellow irises as the magic set you on your feet properly, as well as catching your books in the air and placing them in your hands again. 

"Be careful with the castle corridors, Miss Stark." Said the man, and for some reason, you thought he wasn't just talking about this little incident.

"Professor Heimdall, let's talk in a private place, please."  Asked Professor Okoye, who was standing at his side, she looked at you with a certain disapproval, and you couldn't tell whether it was because of your intrusion, or the fact that your tie was hanging loosely around your neck, in addition to the open buttons on your shirt.

After this little incident, you asked Steve who Professor Heimdall was, and he explained that he was the head of Hufflepuff, and might seem intimidating at first glance, but that he was very kind.

But so far, the professor who has intrigued you the most was Professor Erik Lehnsherr, who taught Potions. He didn't say anything that wasn't related to the subject, didn't make any comments about behavior or events at school. And he had such a stern and mysterious look in his eyes that no student had the courage to ask him anything. You heard Peter Quill make a bet with Thor Odinson that Professor Erik was unable to smile because of some particular sorcery, but you thought it best not to laugh, especially since Mr. Lehnsherr was looking at your direction.

When you had your first Potions period with Slytherin, after herbology professor T'Challa needed to reschedule classes for an appointment, you were surprised to discover that professor Lehnsherr had children.

Gamora ended up on the same bench as you, and she was talking to her sister, Nebula, about an incident that occurred in their dormitory.

"Clearly, the professors' children have an easy time getting away with punishment." Nebula bitterly remarked, and you frowned in confusion. 

"I don't think it was the girl's fault." Gamora retorted as she put the ingredients into her cauldron. She looked at you quickly, realizing that you were listening to the conversation, but she didn't scold you, she just kept stirring the mixture.

"What happened?" you asked next, and Nebula looked at you with mild irritation. She seemed about to tell you to mind your own business, but Gamora smiled, moving closer to whisper to you.

"A girl lost her temper in the Slytherin dorm bathrooms last night." She told. "She's a second year, her name is Wanda Maximoff. She and her brother are Professor Lehnsherr's kids, and everyone is saying that she didn't go to detention because of it."

Your jaw dropped, impressed. 

"I can't believe Magneto has children." You said making Gamora and Nebula laugh at the nickname. Last week you found out that the school had been calling Erik that since he stopped the hall chandelier from falling on the teachers' desk two years ago when he used non-verbal magic to attract the metal, and everyone started calling him that behind his back. Tony told you and you liked the story.

"I know right, he seems so self-contained." Gamora remarked looking back briefly. Professor Erik was focused on his own potions book.

"That noisy kid from Gryffindor said he's married." Nebula added next and Gamora laughed lightly.

"Peter Quill?"

"Yes."

"Wow, that's surprising." Says the girl. You both return to stirring your cauldrons in silence after that little conversation.

When you have finished your mixing, Professor Erik gives Hufflepuff five points for your good work, and you smile with red cheeks.

"You're nice." Nebula suddenly said beside you as you were leaving the room. Gamora stood next to her. "Do you want to walk around with us?"

"We're already walking." You joked and Gamora laughed unlike her sister who grimaced.

"Yep, definitely cool." She added. "Do you want to have lunch with us?"

"At your table or mine?"

Gamora and Nebula exchanged glances.

"I'm not sitting with Hufflepuff." Nebula declared and you sighed, rolling your eyes.

"You know I'm from Hufflepuff, right?"

"I'm reconsidering the invitation." She retorted and you frowned, but Gamora smiled at you.

"Will you sit with us, please?"

You sighed, nodding in agreement. You could talk to Tony after all.

//-//

Lunch at the Slytherin table became an everyday thing after that day. It took two weeks for Mantis to start joining you, and then you realized that you had a small group of friends now.

At Christmas, neither you nor Tony came home, because your father was working and you didn't want to be alone in the Stark mansion. You ended up turning down Tony's invitation to spend Christmas with Steve Rogers and his family, because you weren't really friends with Steve. Tony insisted, not wanting you to be alone, but you assured him that you would be fine in the company of your friends, and that he needn't worry.

On Christmas morning, Groot woke you up by jumping on your face. You laughed lightly because he was so small that he was like a tickle, and stood up as you returned the little creature to Mantis' bedside table.

A few hours later, as you were opening your presents at the Slytherin table along with Gamora, Nebula, Mantis, and Peter Quill, who had also stayed at Hogwarts for the end of the year, you let out an excited exclamation.

"I can' believe it." You spoke, opening the package in front of you. It was a large box, it was bewitched and only revealed the actual wrapping once you tore the paper off. It was actually a broom.

"Wow, that's cool." Peter remarked as he looked at your present. 

That's how you ended up in the middle of the snow, testing your new broom while your friends cheered and celebrated below you.

"Are you sure you can fly?" You asked Peter as soon as he asked you if he could ride. He shrugged, smiling.

You and the girls watched as he controlled the broom for a few feet above the ground, and then he overspeeded it and sped away.

You all ran into his direction, while the broom seemed almost annoyed at his lack of control, and knocked him into a tree. Peter fell between the branches, onto someone who was resting under it.

When you all reached him, you frowned when there was a boy pushing Quill.

"Watch it, dude!" Warned the boy, but before you could say anything, Gamora was already stepping forward, wand in hand.

"It was just an accident." She said and the boy looked at her surprised with her wand outstretched. He crossed his arms however, not looking scared.

"Oh, you're going to spell me now, are you?" He teased.

"Piss off, Maximoff." Warned Nebula next, taking a step beside her sister. So this was Pietro Maximoff. You figured that confidence should come from being the son of one of the professors.

"I suggest you leave my brother alone." Warned a voice behind you. You turned next, only to catch sight of a girl with brown hair, green eyes that glittered with anger. 

Gamora clenched her jaw, and Nebula drew her own wand toward the girl, who also had her wand in her hands.

You sighed, raising your hands as you stood in the line of fire.

"Would everyone please calm down?" You asked. "It was just a misunderstanding, and the broom is mine anyway, no need to fight about it."

It takes a moment, but Gamora puts down her wand, and everyone follows her after that. She has an insinuating smile on her face.

"You really are a Hufflepuff, aren't you Stark?" She teases, and you laugh sheepishly, putting your hands in your pockets.  "Come on Quill." 

Gamora warns and the boy shoots Pietro an ugly look as he leaves. You accept your broom that he hands to you, and turn around, your gaze meeting that of the girl who is supposed to be Wanda Maximoff for a moment. You feel your face heat up at the intensity of the angry look, and you look away, following your friends.

//-//

The months went by quickly as the rest of the school year passed. You managed to do very well on the exams, and didn't get involved in any near-fights again.

When the year ended and the Hufflepuff didn't win the House Cup, you thought you should have been more upset, but you didn't mind having Gamora and Nebula celebrating beside you, laughing and hugging you excitedly.

You also didn't understand why you felt your stomach turn when you caught Wanda Maximoff smiling amidst the Slytherin celebration when you looked around.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 320: Deku vs. Class 1-A

Previously on BnHA: Flashback!Kacchan was all “fuck Deku and fuck his stupid goodbye letters, I need to speak to somebody in charge.” Endeavor was all “hello, I am Somebody In Charge.” Kacchan was all “listen up asshole, you need to let us go out and collect our wayward nerd because you stupidly left him alone with All Might and that’s a fast track to disaster right there.” Endeavor was all, “[self-incriminating silence].” Rat Principal was all, “okay sure, have fun kids.” Back in the present, class 1-A was all “hi Deku” and Deku was all “I’M FINE!!!!!” and Kacchan was all “THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT YOU’D SAY YOU DUMB FUCKING NERD” and so the kids all got ready to fight, because OF COURSE they’re gonna fight. Sorry guys, but yeah it’s happening.

Today on BnHA: Kacchan is all “what’s up Deku you look like a possessed Rorschach test, so anyway how are the new quirks coming along.” Deku is all “they’re coming along like THIS” and uses Smokescreen to try and get away. Kacchan is all “PHASE ONE COMMENCE”, and Kouda, Sero, Jirou, and Ojiro leap into the fray to shower Deku with heaps of love and violence, because this is a shounen manga and kicking someone’s ass while simultaneously proclaiming your undying admiration for them is just how it’s done in these parts. The KoudaSeroOJirou squad then passes the baton to Satou, Momo, Tokoyami, Kaminari, and Shouji, who are all “fuck this mask” and do a bunch of stuff to tear Deku’s mask off because they’re the real heroes. Shouto is all “LOOK AT THE LITTLE CRYBABY, THAT’S RIGHT, GO AHEAD AND FUCKING CRY and by the way let us share your burden please,” and once again I swear this is all very deeply moving and touching within the actual context. The chapter ends with Tsuyu being all “look at me. I’m the cliffhanger now,” and damn.

lol what

I don’t think anyone was expecting that. I mean, not that I’ve got anything against Tsuyu or anything. anyways it’s a very nice cover and I love the colors and I hope this means Tsuyu’s gonna do something badass

also, “Deku vs Class A” -- pretty much the expected title, but it’s still got me hyped nonetheless fuck yeah let’s go

IIDA ANGST

Iida Tenya really said “fuck the uniform code, we’re leaving the helmet at home today.” sorry kids, prim and proper C-3PO Comic Relief Iida has left the building. can I interest you in some Serious Iida

meanwhile Kacchan is all “sup Deku, I heard you got a few more quirks, and might I just add that you look like the Snyder Cut of Detective Pikachu”

“you look like a tarred and feathered squid” okay easy there Kacchan. I mean it’s all true of course, but still

“thank you all for coming” OH EXCUSE ME SON, WERE YOU PLANNING ON GOING SOMEWHERE. LET’S JUST SEE HOW THAT PLAYS OUT

yep and there’s Smokescreen, right on cue

okay Horikoshi, I leave it in your hands. hopefully you can come up with some more interesting combos than my dumbass predictions lol

LOL THIS ISN’T A COMBO AT ALL

“explosions solve everything” -- Horikoshi Kouhei, 2021. something something shockwave, something something handwave ta-da no more smoke. lol okay then

oh, ouch

he would know, wouldn’t he. nice application of one of your many hard-earned life lessons, Kacchan

by the way you guys, just as an experiment, I’m going to try to anticipate some of the discourse this week in the hopes of preemptively addressing it and thus saving myself some time later on lol. so here’s our first test run!

ANTICIPATED DISCOURSE: “oh my god what a fucking hypocrite can you believe this fucking guy”

PREEMPTIVE REBUTTAL: it’s precisely because Kacchan has been in this exact situation himself that he’s able to recognize his past self in Deku now and call him out on it. just because it took him sixteen years to get it through his head that he can’t accomplish every single thing completely by himself doesn’t mean Deku has to go down that same path. so yeah, maybe it is a bit hypocritical, but if you insist that the only people qualified to call out stupid shit are people who have never done a single stupid thing in their own lives, then what you’re basically saying is that absolutely no one on earth is qualified lol. so yeah, I’d have to disagree

and one last unrelated note, I’m willing to bet the whole “you didn’t even say a word before you ran off” thing is possibly the first thing Kacchan’s said in this whole encounter that actually does stem from genuine hurt rather than his tough-love-harsh-truths strategy. I’M TAKING NOTES HERE HORIKOSHI. at this rate it’ll take twice as many chapters as DvK2 for them to hash out all the stuff between them, geez

anyway so I gotta say, so far Deku vs. Class A is looking an awful lot like a DvK3 wearing a hat, trenchcoat, and sunglasses lol

OH SHIT I TAKE IT BACK??

FUCK YEAH, YOU GO KOUDA. and I guess he ditched his mask as well! excellent

so far the strategy here seems to be “Kacchan says all the mean tough love shit while the rest of 1-A balances it out with warmth and kindness”, which actually works pretty well imo. Deku is one of those people that doesn’t usually need a Kacchan Translator anyway, but just in case, this is very efficient

mm but of course Deku is slingshotting himself away with Blackwhip. all right then, who’s up next!

FUCK YEAH

okay but seriously you guys, what is going on with Sero’s face in these last couple of chapters though, it’s really starting to unnerve me. is he trying to emulate Kacchan’s whole asymmetrical facial expressions thing?

in fact let me just quickly hit pause here because,

ANTICIPATED DISCOURSE: “SERO IS TOGA??!”

PREEMPTIVE REBUTTAL: no

oh snap looks like Jirou’s getting in on the action too!

poor Jirou probably spent days racking her brain trying to think of something she could bond with Deku over. is Horikoshi doing these in reverse order of the kids who have had the most interaction with him? that would explain why poor Kouda didn’t get a flashback lol

omg. well that answers that

so by my count, Satou and Hagakure are the only ones remaining in this first tier of kids who Still Appreciate Midoriya even though they’ve barely ever spoken two words to him in their lives lol. so they’ll probably be next, and then we’ll get to the next tier of kids who are pretty good friends with him but not quite besties. and then we’ll move on to the IidaRokiRaka trio, and then lastly, to the boy who is in a tier all his own

BUT FIRST, A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR

and by “sponsor” I mean the Dekuangst. just in case that wasn’t clear. indeed, many thanks to the Dekuangst for making this all possible

(ETA: okay so this whole “take me away” line seemed pretty weird to me, and sure enough it’s yet another one of those cases where only the verb is specified, and the object is left to the reader’s interpretation. so even though the translation says “take me away”, I’m pretty sure that what Deku’s actually saying is “take you away” -- as in, his loved ones will be taken away by AFO.

and that is literally the way he phrases it, though -- the verb used is “奪う” (ubau), meaning “to snatch away; to dispossess; to steal.” which, god, that hurts my whole goddamn heart though, because for him to say it like that?? not “AFO will kill you”, but “AFO will take you away from me.” he can’t have nice things anymore because of AFO. he can’t be around the people he loves because AFO will hurt them. he can’t have happiness because AFO will take it away from him. anyway so where the fuck is AFO right now, motherfucker I just want to talk.)

by the way can Ojiro just extend his tail to whatever fucking length he wants or what because it’s like twelve feet long in this panel lol

WOOO FUCK YEAH TOKOYAMI

YOU LOVE TO SEE IT!! BUT WHERE’S YOUR FLASHBACK? YOU’VE HAD A BUNCH OF INTERACTIONS WITH HIM, THAT’S NOT FAIR

okay so now Satou’s stepping in which is back to my anticipated order, so maybe Toko will finish his little moment afterward

dskfjfkk

“REMEMBER THAT TIME DEKU BORROWED SATOU’S FOOD COLORING” Horikoshi says, sweating. “AND REMEMBER THAT TIME HE, UM, SMILED IN HAGAKURE’S GENERAL DIRECTION”

actually I am curious about what Hagakure’s part will be because, you know, the whole traitor thing lol

(ETA: funny how we just skipped right over it huh. can we get a traitor reveal countdown started here? definitely getting close to that time.)

whoa lol wtf

MOMO??? THIS HAS MOMO WRITTEN ALL OVER IT DAMMIT

-- SWEET MOTHER OF FUCK

“SORRY MIDORIYA-SAN, I LEFT MY FUCKING CHILL AT HOME IN THE LOCKER NEXT TO IIDA’S HELMET” holy shit lmao

and here I thought she’d get a flashback to her time on the Baku Rescue Squad or something. but nope, no flashbacks from Momo, only terrifying sci-fi torture devices

poor Dark Shadow is such a trooper omg

“why am I the only one who has to make prolonged contact with his smelly disgusting self” taking one for the team there DS

FUCK YEAH KAMINARI NO JUTSU

THE PRICKLY BASTARD WHISPERER STRIKES AGAIN!! don’t suppose you brought any clean clothes you could sneakily force him into huh Kami

okay here we go, so now Shouji and Tokoyami are joining forces

um excuse me this is fucking awesome

wonder how he’ll break free? don’t think he’ll reveal Fa Jin until the end of the chapter, so maybe Air Force or something? idk

TOKO GETS AN EXTENDED MOMENT BECAUSE HE IS A TIER TWO PATREON REWARD LEVEL FRIEND YAY

WHY IS MOMO MAKING THIS FACE LOL YOUR THING WAS WAY WORSE

and Shouji just casually hitting him with what is easily the best comment from anyone yet. too bad Deku’s just gonna ignore it. you deserve better Shouji

KAMINARI OMFG

it only just occurred to me that Kami is currently trapped inside Dark Shadow right along with him lmao omg. realest one in the entirety of BnHA, right here. we will never forget your sacrifice

aaaaaaand Deku’s yeeting himself

do you really hate the thought of taking a bath that much my dude

oh shit the mask!!

-- oh shit the feels

o(TヘTo)

fuck. and I mean, we knew he was crying, that was a done deal. but still, to see him in this much pain is just...

and the acknowledgement that he knows they’re worried about him, but that it doesn’t change his mind one bit. this, right here, is why they have to be a bit harsh with him, you guys. because they’re up against the full, unbridled stubbornness of Midoriya fucking Izuku, and if they don’t match that stubbornness with an equal stubbornness of their own, they basically don’t stand a chance

(ETA: quick note that there is apparently another mistranslation here -- rather than saying that his friends are oblivious to the danger, what Deku is actually saying is that none of his friends have activated his Danger Sense once throughout this entire fight. which I had been wondering about, and it turns out Horikoshi actually confirmed it. so basically none of the kids bears any ill intent toward him, and there’s literal proof right there.

incidentally, as @class1akids​ pointed out, this also casts an interesting light on this chapter in terms of who hasn’t fought Deku yet. not to play the Hagakure Traitor Music for the billionth time you guys, but I’M JUST SAYING lol.)

anyway, but the good news is that they all seem to understand that. and the even better news is that we have reached the tier 3 friends!!

“OR ELSE” lol, great to see Shouto wielding his friendship just as aggressively as Deku once did towards him. I do love a good role reversal

p.s., ANTICIPATED DISCOURSE: “why is Shouto being so cruel to Deku can’t he see how hard this is on him”

PREEMPTIVE REBUTTAL: this is a callback to the classic “even heroes cry when they have to” Shouto line from chapter 137. Shouto is clearly following Kacchan’s lead here and going for the more ruthless approach, knowing that the gentle approach isn’t getting through to him (if anything it’s only making him more stubborn as we saw on the previous page). basically it’s his way of pointing out that even heroes are still only human, and so is Deku last time he checked

ah okay, and there Tsuyu is at last

okay real talk, I get why Tsuyu is included in the tier 3 friends, because she was one of the first people to team up with Deku going all the way back to USJ. but that said, this probably would have had more impact if their most recent interaction hadn’t been like 150 chapters ago

but anyway though it’s still a good speech. maybe not quite a cliffhanger-level speech, but a good speech nonetheless. in a way though, I’m glad to see that Horikoshi seemingly didn’t give a fuck whether he ended this on an actual cliffhanger or not for once

and that “headed toward the climax” part has me excited too, ngl. because if we really are getting to the so-called climax this soon, that makes me even more certain that there is indeed a DvK3 in the forecast. so I presume that next week (or I guess two weeks from now) will be the tier 3s along with the remaining tier 2s like Kirishima and Aoyama

and then after that, well... [orange and green banners being hoisted] [sound of screeching airhorns and vuvuzelas in the distance] [sound of All Might approaching in his car which I didn’t notice until I looked back at this page a second time whoops] THE PROPHECY WILL NOT BE DENIED

[the-sprog]

So since I'm very bad at remembering my ideas, I'm gonna throw this out there and hope one day I'm like "WAIT didn't I have an idea for a fic??? What was it???" And I will find it on my tumblr.

It's about Danny Phantom, obviously.

There are actually two of them in here so:

The easiest one: Jack and Maddie are not stupid. I mean they're scientists, the use the scientific method. One of the things about the scientific method is that if you do a bunch of tests, based on an hypothesis and only one of them comes out disproving it, then your hypothesis is incorrect.

Phantom has disproved basically all of their hypothesis.

So, next thing to do? Create a new one. Do new tests. They take Jazz's suggestion and try and see if the ghosts of Amity are actually conscious. Because obviously they're sentient, but are they like animals? Or are they like robots with artificial intelligence?

Or even better yet, are they like humans?

They grab Phantom's attention and ask him if he would cooperate for this test. A simple Turing test. Obviously they're still wary because of everything that happened with him, and do the test with witnesses to keep both Phantom's and their minds at ease.

He passed the test. With flying colors.

They're shocked and ask him if he knew peaceful ghosts that would be willing to take the test (because, y'know. Scientific method. Need to try over and over again). Phantom would have to explain that not all ghosts are as human-like as him (as, first of all, he's a halfa, but he doesn't say that. And second, lots of them are blobs or animal-like ghosts), but cue his parents meeting Jhonny and Kitty (cause I like the idea that they have a truce with Phantom and that going out of the zone helps them with their couple problems), as well as Shadow (example of a less human-like ghost). Then Sidney, Dora, the Fright Knight (cause king ghost Danny ftw) and Frostbite.

They all pass, more or less. Some, like Dora, the light and Sidney, where given away by their choice of word, but other than that all of them passed the test.

OK SO MORE COMPLEX ONE:

I love crossovers. I love finding ways of putting the two universes together, of making them work with each other, adapting the rules so that they apply to both. (With Danny Phantom it's also really cool to just... Make him travel the multiverse. He doesn't adhere to the rules of where he goes to, so it's always hilarious. But we're not here for that now).

One of the best ones to do this with is My Hero Academia. Whenever a show has someone with powers I end up asking myself "how should that work in the world of my hero?" And start trying to incorporate it in the lore.

So, first thing first, we're getting rid of the canon story of my hero. Completely unrelated to the show. This takes place decades in the past, when the first people where developing quirks (so if I wanted to write something with this and actually use my hero characters, I'd make it so that they where hit with a time traveling quirk or that Clockwork was somehow involved).

The Fenton's hatred for ghosts? Make it discrimination against the people who have quirks.

Danny being half-ghost? His quirk's fault. He calls it Ghost, for simplicity, it allows him to come back as a sort of ghost-like creature after he dies. Somehow, one day, he doesn't die completely so his body fixes it the only way it know how. Making him partially ghost.

Obviously that would mean that all the ghosts he fights aren't ghosts anymore. They're villains with quirks, and their powers would be based on what they can do on the show, minus the basic intangibility, invisibility and flight.

Obviously only Sam and Tucker would know he was Phantom and he had a quirk, he's also kinda the only one in town with one. People would be a little racist against quirk havers, but the kids, like in the show, come around to it. And actually start loving Phantom and thinking of him as a hero.

How do I fit Vlad in all of this? Ehm ahhhh this is the one thing I didn't think about. Very basic, but could give him a power similar to Danny, were instead of a ghost, he becomes a vampire. But his quirk is caused by an accident in college, so it's artificial.

Why does Skulker (who doesn't have a quirk. He's just a guy in a suit) hunt Danny? He has a very unique quirk.

Does Dani exist? I mean. Yeah. Cloning is not so farfetched, especially with the existence of quirks.

Clockwork can control time, he involuntary does that being a child, then an adult then an old man thing. The Observants are people without quirks that keep him in check, an organization that made a pact with him to stay young forever or something in change of idk what. No idea what Clockwork would get out of it I won't lie. Money maybe? Or somehow they found a way of keeping him there against his will?

Walker (and I'll make a seperate post about this) is an ex guy in white. Yes they still exist, but they hunt quirk havers instead of paranormal stuff. Walker was kicked out because he actually has a quirk but lied about it. He's after his own kind in the show as well. I mean, he's a stickler to the rules, but he only ever seems to care when it's ghosts that brake them. Correct me if I'm wrong, but never has he punished a human. His quirk is making semi-sentient minions. They're not copies of himself. They're like clay humans with basic forms. They all look alike and have no special characteristics.

Frostbite is just... A yeti. With cryokenisis. It's a mutation type quirk.

Same goes for Wulf, he's just a humanoid wolf that can create teleportation portals. I can't think of a reason why he would only speak Esperanto though. It could be something similar to Five from umbrella academy. He accidentally got stuck in the 1600 as a kid and managed to come back only relatively recently.

I feel like all the other ghosts have obvious powers.

Cujo can become ginormous,

Technus can control technology,

Dora and Aragon can become dragons,

Jhonny gives people bad luck and can control his shadow,

Kitty can make man disappear,

Ember can mind control using music,

Spectra can use people's negative emotions to stay young,

Bernard has shapeshifting,

Youngblood can't be seen by adults (side effect: can't grow old) and his sideckick has a variant of shapeshifting where he can only transform in animals. A definitive father figure),

Box ghost can control boxes,

Pandora can control the plagues of the world,

Desiré can make people's wishes come true,

Sidney can swap bodies with people,

Undergrowth can control plants,

Pariah Dark- I... Actually don't know...

Lunch Lady can control food,

Aaaanndddd no more come to mind.

I want to do something with this AU but I can't really think of an interesting story, other than "kids from 1A get misplaced in time and Danny has to help, discovering the existence of Clockwork and the Observants, whom he hates. So he tries to get Clockwork out of there with the other kid's help" but that's it, really.

I actually have a 3rd idea, but it basically works the same as the MHA one. Crossover with the X-Men.

Substitute quirk havers with mutants and quirks with mutations and you get the idea.

The plot would be more of a "Danny gets recruited by Xavier after the trauma of almost dying activated his mutation and goes to live at the mansion. This happens after the events of season 3, alla salted to make sense in the world of Marvel, but without Phantom planet. He makes friends there, since Sam and Tucker aren't with him and everything is fine and dandy and happy. Until it comes out that the Fentons actually contribute to the creation of the Sentinels, because they hate Phantom that much.

So Danny has to infiltrate his own family to get info on how the Sentinels work so they can destroy them, since his parents are still oblivious and they made it so that the Sentinels wouldn't attack Danny thinking that his accident just somehow make him register as a mutant on machinery" and that's it.

[masterhandss]

Who do you think katarina will end up with?

Anonymous asked: Who do you ship katarina the most with ?

I got these two questions consecutively, I'm assuming they are coming from the same person so I'll combine them to a single reply, if that's okay.

People who have been following me since the first season can probably tell that I really like Geordo x Katarina (GeoKata) the most out of all ships. At first it was mostly just because I have an unintentional biases towards characters with blonde hair, which is why favorites were GeoKata and MariaKata, but then when I slowly got into the series more, my biases permanently shifted to the G-boy.

I'm not really a fan of laying out why I like certain ships through test to be honest. I usually get super frustrated when zine mods ask contributors to explain why they like a character or ship for contributor spotlight graphics because I can never really say everything I feel correctly hgdsjsdgfj, which is a good thing someone had already asked me a similar question before so I'll just copy paste my response here if that's okay :DD

TLDR; I ship Katarina with Geordo (Maria, Sora and Cezar behind him), and I think Katarina will end up with Geordo :))

You didn't really ask why but I'll give it anyways :)) -> major light novel spoilers, by the way <-

I'm not really the most deep person, if a ship has the bare minimum of something that I like (a trope or a hair color combination) then I stan it hard. That's why I used to be so equally adoring to both Maria and Geordo, because hurrdurr blonde hair hurrdurr. But the more I read the books and got into the community, I eventually liked him more than Maria. I didn't understand how or why at first, since Geordo and Maria are undergoing a very similar character arc: both characters wants to become better people in order to become worthy of Katarina (Geordo emotionally, and Maria physically? magically? in terms of her position/social status? I can't think of a right word but you get it). Again, Maria and Geordo's struggles are similarly written but one of them is more compelling to me. I feel like Maria's problems are easier to solve (her inability to rely on people, her attention seeking and her desire to be more magically powerful) imo, since she's already a well-liked figure in the Ministry and she's already a high-level magic user. Geordo's though; the series doesn't put too much attention on it, but despite the fact that Katarina gave his life color, he still somewhat sees the world in a desaturated light even post-childhood according to the novels and his lack of empathy still prevents him from completely absorbing all the colors. He's still learning how to see and he is happy that Katarina is always there to help him learn how.

I just love the irony that Katarina sees Geordo as a Perfect Prince and feels that she is inferior and unworthy of him, but then Geordo also seems himself as flawed, inferior and unworthy of Katarina and sees her as someone perfect. Geordo constantly wants to be better for Katarina (and for the people around him), and in time, maybe he could become a motivation for Katarina to be better too (on Katarina's side though, because on Geordo's she doesn't have to because she's already perfect the way she is). Geordo, while being self-centered and aggressive in his pursuits, isn't always selfish and thinks about what Katarina wants too. He'd fight tooth and nail for her and will do whatever he can so that Katarina will love him in the same way, but that doesn't mean he wont respect her decision if she falls in love with someone else, he just wont lose without a fight that's all (and fight, he'll give that's for sure).

Geordo is crazy in love with her; wants to protect her happiness, keep her safe whenever he can, and is even willing to both fight to become king and throw away the life he currently knows if it means he can live a life where he and Katarina can be together wherever she is most content and happy. He wouldn't lock her up in the castle like a caged bird like what Keith and some fans of the series thinks, whenever he does have thoughts like that like in Volume 6, its his internal response to the lack time they can have together alone, rather than being indicative of how he wants to treat her (like in his desire in Book of Desires, he conjured up a literal honeymoon because a honeymoon is the only time where he can spend it with her alone without someone butting in! It's weird and exaggerated, but his desire is simply to just be able to spend a day with her and be able to pursue her romantically without the threat of people like Keith and Mary).

Katarina sees him for himself, and she extends her hand of friendship to him despite all her fears of her bad ends involving him. She knows he's a "sadistic prince" but doesn't always tie him to that title. Out of everyone, Katarina has just as bad, if not worse, initial impression of Geordo compared to almost everyone around him (Others sees him as a Perfect Prince while she sees him as a Sadistic Prince and Future Murderer), and yet she accepts him and wants to learn more about him. She supports him and wants him to find happiness in love with Maria, even if it means she'll get exiled to another country or to a far off farm! (i'll edit this with citations later)

I can't help but want that for him, someone who there for you through thick and thin, who supports him despite everything she knows about her future involving him. Katarina is everything he would ever want in a partner: someone who isn't disturbed by his past, can see through his fake smiles, constantly cares for him, sees him beyond his princely façade, is one of his first friends who has helped him create friendships with other as well that prevented him to wallow in isolation and hate of the version of himself that society created for him, is genuinely interested in him as a person, is endlessly fun to be around and unpredictable, and is overall beautiful inside and out.

Again, a lot of Maria and Geordo's struggles are very similar to each other, but I'm more interested in Geordo's side. I find it more compelling. Geordo's scenes always almost provides something new, we get to see him angry, flustered & embarrassed, scheming/conniving, possessive, grateful, sad & frustrated and so much more. Maria has that too (we get to see her sad and thankful), but this might be my own perspective of reading the novels, but Maria's scenes kinda feel the same to me. It almost always starts with Katarina helping her and her realizing time and time again how much she loves her and become more motivated to be a better version of herself. I mean its unfair to say that they are all the same but that might just be me. (Maria: wow I'm so grateful for everything Katarina has given me, I want to be with her forever (rinse and repeat for the next 5 books))

Yes I know it's beautiful to see Maria falling deeper and deeper in love with Maria, but I'd rather see moments of someone who is trying to advance on those feelings rather than someone who is still trying to understand what they feel. Declarations and descriptions of love are beautiful in literary works and it always gets my heart fluttering, but I can read fanfics if I want to see that be written in 8 or more ways. Give me some action, some internal conflict!

It also doesn't help that it makes me really really happy for Geordo that he's made a dent in Katarina's baka shield? Katarina's heart skipped and fluttered for a second when Geordo was patting her head, and it makes me want to root for him even more! (Yes, go break the bubble! You can do it!!)

It's not even the same doki-doki as when she gets charmed at how pretty Maria is, to me its different in a way that my small vocabulary can't explain.

And besides, it really is just a battle between the protagonist that almost ruined her life (Maria) and the love interest that almost ruined her life (Geordo). Keith is part of that equation too, but he was never a threat after they became close (narratively, its seriously just Maria vs Geordo vs Keith, ignoring the changes to that narrative by FL2). It's always about Geordo (and Maria), everything she's doing in the Fortune Lover 1 Arc is because of Geordo (and arguably, Maria & Keith too) and the consequences of where he decides her future to would lead to.

It has to be Geordo, in my opinion, to show her that things aren't the same as the game (and he already kinda has, just a dent though) (If not Geordo, it should be Maria). He, who she feared and yet cared for so much

(I know Fortune Lover 2 basically removes that importance of Geordo and Maria specifically to Katarina's narrative by making her an active problem in all routes, finally becoming loyal to the title "All Routes Lead to Doom", but its not like the story is digging into Katarina's brain that she's sword training for the purpose of fighting back against all the boys, its still just Geordo, so idk I still count that in my shipper brain)

It also also helps that Geordo is basically the poor bullied animal in the hamefura community's eyes, regardless of how far he is into the battle (like in the reddit discord lmao). Yeah he has the best chances which is why many people both in and out of the series find it so fun to drag him under because of his unfair advantage, which is fair, but just like how you feel when you see a small wounded animal, you can't help but want to help someone who has the whole world against him (there's literally a canon manga page with that joke lmao), which is how I eventually felt over time. He's so misunderstood and bullied by people despite the authors dedication to flesh him out more beyond being a possessive prince fiancé of Katarina because of the anime's adaption, so I'd rather give my biases to someone who needs (and deserves it) rather than other contenders who are already overflowing with love and support. Also who doesn't love a perfect guy who breaks when his beloved is harm/who opens up to the person he cares about most?

I know people will read this and find it unfair that Katarina is giving so much to Geordo, but he isn't really giving anything to her. One thing I'll agree that Maria has over Geordo is that Maria makes Katarina want to try and work hard. Seeing Maria improve her magic wants Katarina to do the same, and whether or not it's from motivation or fear of getting left out depends on the reader. So far we don't really have anything like that for Katarina with Geordo because most things involving Geordo intimidates her, compared to Maria who is surrounded by mysteries and adventure (though arguably it's Katarina and not her lmao, but Kat doesn't know that).

Katarina is already the most well-adjusted character in the story even as a child so the only thing to really explore from her is mostly just her relationships and skewed sense of reality. That's why I hope that Geordo will not only help her realize that she can be loved by her peers romantically despite her self-perceived position/role, but also be one of the persons to make her completely realize that she isn't living inside a game. I mean like I said a few paragraphs ago, he's already kinda doing it by constantly confessing his feelings to her, reminding her that he is a person with his own feelings and not a character programmed to fall for a heroine.

So yeah, I ship Katarina with Geordo for those reasons and believe they should end up together for those reasons.

If you ask me who I think would she end up with objectively, I'd still say Geordo. The author's focus jumps between Geordo and Maria so that really depends on who you're asking. It also doesn't help that Geordo is always in the marketing with Katarina in the books and games, which pretty much cements his Male Lead status to Katarina's Female Lead status lmao

Thank you for the ask lmao, I'll be updating this with more thoughts and possibly citations later :))

[the-last-cuddlebender]

I straight up check your profile daily for the southern raiders analysis you’re working on. 👀👀 where IS IT 😩

bRUH I am so excited to drop this analysis you have no idea (It’s creeping up to 22k+ I am gonna cryyyyyyyyyyyy). The only problem is that my TSR analysis and “Moon theory” are so incredibly hard to structure and articulate. I’m happy you’re so excited for it, though!!! Truly, it’s an honor. I’ll give you a taste of my madness and what’s to come, but be warned: it may be a bit hard to follow because TSR (from how I’ve come to understand it) is about the vagueness of beginnings, endings, and cycles, so there isn’t really a starting point for me to begin with. (So it may seem a tad bit like a ramble in some points that I haven’t fleshed out yet/am summarizing for this ask)

This analysis has me on trails like THIS brilliant nonsense, and I am 1000000000% here for it:

Roku: “The spirit's name is Koh, but he is very dangerous. They call him The Face Stealer.”

Katara: “We’re going to find the man who took my mother from me.”...“That’s him. That’s the monster.”

Lion Turtle: “To bend another's energy, your own spirit must be unbendable, or you will be corrupted and destroyed.”

Roku: “When you speak with him, you must be very careful to show no emotion at all. Not the slightest expression, or he will steal your face.”

Hama: “Congratulations, Katara. You’re a bloodbender.”

(If Katara had killed Yon Rha, she would be giving up her identity--her face. Not only would she have become a killer, but she would be killing what made her Katara)

Aang: “Let your anger out, and then let it go. Forgive him.”

Forgive him--approach him for what he is, not the faces your memories or your heart are having him wear. See him for the pathetic man he is in that moment right in front of you.

Aang’s forgiveness is seeing someone for the sum of their parts. It’s judging them and seeing through into their very soul, just like the Firebending Masters saw through Zuko being the Crown Prince and Aang being the Avatar. That meant nothing to the Masters. What did matter to them was who the boys were right there, right then, right in front of them.

“Why should I hold a grudge against you for something you did in a past life? After all, you’re a different person, now. You’ve come to me with a new face.”

But anyways...

If I can give no other take-away from my analysis and moon theory, it’s that Yin and Yang are not two entities; they are three. I think the fandom’s misunderstanding of it may be why the discourse on TSR (and Aang, Katara, and Zuko) is so black and white (pun intended lol). 

“But Yin and Yang are obviously two things. Don’t you know the symbol?” I hear some people already saying.

Wrong, sir.

It has never been just Yin and Yang. Yin and Yang have never existed as just two things.

They are Yin and Yang and Wu Wei.

(Aunt Wu has her name for a reason, and she has the mark of the wise in her hair for a reason, too...AND she is at odds with Sokka in The Fortuneteller for a reason, too!!!...but that’s for the analysis😉)

Balance isn’t good triumphing over evil. Balance is good and evil. Balance is standing on the flow between two opposites--it’s the compliment that connects them. (The koi fish live in an oasis for a reason.)

I’ll explain what Wu Wei is later in the full analysis (like many things in here), but here’s some of my evidences and proofs for the “Yin Yang trio”:

The Tibetan “Wheel of Dharma”

(I’ll also explain the Wheel and Dharma and etc. later because it has everything to do with Koh and the moon) Long story short, the wheel and its spokes are representative of the 8 steps to enlightenment and the cycle of rebirth. 

Look at the hub of the wheel. It’s a swirl made of 3 parts.

It is also a white lotus

Here’s the colored version of the wheel (as an alter):

Recognize the colors?

BLUE, WHITE (or gold, depending), & RED

These are the “THREE TREASURES” OR JEWELS.

They symbolize DHARMA, BUDDHA, & SANGHA respectively. 

KATARA, AANG, & ZUKO

water, air, & fire

T H R E E

Bato: “Ice dodging is a ceremonial test of wisdom, bravery, and trust.

Bato: “The spirits of water bear witness to these marks...”

Why does Bato say spirit(s) plural? The Ocean and the Moon are only two spirits. The Ocean can’t be two things. Right?

WRONG

Yue: “The legends say the Moon was the first waterbender. Our ancestors saw how it pushed and pulled the tides and learned how to do it themselves.”

The Moon--singular. The Tides--plural (push and pull)

Lion Turtle: “In the era before the Avatar, we bent not the elements, but the energy within our senses.”

The moon pushing and pulling the tide is the moon bending the energy of its world. 

Katara finding balance between “being too weak to do it” or “strong enough not to” is her bending the energy within herself.

It’s two solutions written as a question but said as a statement.

Yue: “Our ancestors saw how it pushed and pulled the tides and learned how to do it themselves”

THE SOUTHERN RAIDERS IS ABOUT AANG AND ZUKO LEARNING FROM KATARA. Katara had already learned from Aang and Zuko all leading up to TSR. That was her studying. TSR was her test.

TSR is Zuko’s and Aang’s studying. Sozin’s Comet is their test.

Bato: “For Sokka, the Mark of the Wise. The same mark your father earned. For Katara, the Mark of the Brave. Your courage inspires us. And for Aang, the Mark of the Trusted. You are now an honorary member of the Water Tribe.”

Aang - Wise (”you’re pretty wise for a kid”)

Katara - Brave (the same mark her mother earned)

Zuko - Trusted (”I was the first person to trust you”)

Sokka - Bato ("I am to have no part in this--you pass or fail on your own.”)

Yin and Yang are nothing without their dance. The Avatar and the Firelord mean nothing if they don’t have a world to rebuild.

The valley means nothing if there isn’t anyone to live in it.

Fighting is useless if there isn’t someone to fight for, otherwise it is “selfish and stupid”

Katara had to have a reason to return from Yon Rha. She needed to have Aang waiting for her. If she didn’t have a reason to stay, then she wouldn’t have a reason to go.

To have a reason to sleep, a person has to have a reason to wake up.

Katara: “Aang. He just took his glider and disappeared. He has this ridiculous notion that he has to save the world alone; that it's all his responsibility.”

Hakoda: “Maybe that's his way of being brave.”

(Bato: “For Katara, the Mark of the Brave. Your courage inspires us.”)

Katara: “It's not brave! It's selfish and stupid! We could be helping him! And I know the world needs him, but doesn't he know how much we need him, too? How can he just leave us behind?!”

(It was, in fact, not easy for Aang to ‘do nothing’)

Katara: “I understand why you left. I really do, and I know that you had to go, so why do I still feel this way? I'm so sad and angry...and hurt.”

Hakoda: “I love you more than anything. You and your brother are my entire world. I thought about you every day when I was gone, and every night when I went to sleep, I would lie awake missing you so much it would ache.”

(AND YUE IS ONE OF THE ONES TO SAVE AANG IN THE OCEAN FOR A REASON)

Thinking and missing: a matter of mind (who) and heart (want). 

Iroh: “Who are you? And what do you want?”

Sokka: “We need to go back. I wanna see Dad, but helping Aang is where we're needed the most.”

Mai: “I love Zuko more than I fear you.”

BUT YOU WANNA TALK ABOUT THE MOON FOR A HOT SECOND???

I’LL TELL YOU ABOUT THE MOON

I’LL TELL YOU ABOUT 2 MOONS

OH

OH REALLY???

OH REALLY, ZUKO

A FEW HOURS YOU SAY?

THEN TELL ME, ZUKO

WHY IS THE SUN GOING UP

WHEN IT IS THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT A FEW HOURS LATER

AND KATARA IS SLEEPING SO YOU CAN’T TELL ME IT’S BECAUSE YOU RISE WITH THE SUN OTHERWISE SHE’D BE WIDE AWAKE DURING THE FULL MOON THAT SHE USES TO BLOODBEND NOT EVEN TWO MINUTES LATER

THIS, MY FRIENDS, IS A HARVEST MOON

WHICH IS THE LAST FULL MOON OF THE SUMMER 

(and looks off color when it rises/falls because of the angle of the rise/fall in the atmosphere...it’s normal once overhead)

AND SYMOLIZES HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF

“We’re going to find the MAN who took my mother from me.”

“That’s him. That’s the MONSTER.”

8 spokes on the wheel

Katara was 8 when Kya was killed

8 steps to enlightenment (the “Eightfold Path”)

8 phases of the moon

8 faces of Koh

“One of your previous incarnations tried to slay me! Be it 8 or 9 hundred years ago” (but time is an illusion, so hundreds mean nothing)

THE OTHER TWO MOONS THAT ARE CONSUMING MY EVERY WAKING MOMENT???:

1.) The WOLF MOON--the first full moon of the new year (a love between the wolf and the moon in the harshest winters...connection is kindof obvious lmao)

2.) THE THUNDER MOON

The Thunder Moon is the full moon of July. It is also known as the Buck Moon--for when young buck regrow their antlers.

Yue: “My hair turned white.”

Zuko: *cuts and re-grows his hair*

Aang: “I have hair?”

The Thunder Moon--the full moon of July--is also the beginning of a certain Buddhist holiday.

DHARMA DAY

WHICH CELEBRATES THE BEGINING OF BUDDHISM AND THE FIRST OF THE 8 STEPS (the first spoke of the Dharma Wheel) TOWARDS ENLIGHTENMENT

AVATAR IS ALL ABOUT CYCLES

THE SOUTHERN RAIDERS IS ALL ABOUT BREAKING THEM

I haven’t even touched Jung, Koh, Hinduism, and Buddhism yet

or the fact that Katara and Kya are the only characters in the entire series to wear moons on their clothing and that, together, they form an actual lunar phenomenon

or why the spirit oasis isn’t a complete circle

or the fact that this thing that Aang is told to chase is just like Whaletail Island:

or how important the Great Divide and the Solstice are

AND I’M JUST GETTING STARTED

BECAUSE EVERYTHING IN THE SOUTHERN RAIDERS--RIGHT DOWN TO THE SOUND DESIGN--IS ABSOLUTELY MONUMENTAL IN UNDERSTANDING THE SHOW, ITS MESSAGE, ENERGYBENDING, AND LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE

TLDR: Idk how the heck I’m going to arrange or articulate this analysis because it is WILD. Be warned: There is literally no exact beginning and ending to this analysis because the whole point of Yin and Yang is that is has no beginning or ending (...kindof...), so you’ll have to bear with me once I’m done editing it into something that’s somewhat coherent.

These are just SOME of the things I’ve been able to answer with my moon theory and analysis of The Southern Raiders as it currently stands:

Why “letting go” isn’t really letting go (as we understand it...see: Aang’s confrontation with Koh)

Why Lake Laogai and the Spirit World are symbolically the same thing.

Zuko’s advice to the bullfrog is actually a summary of the show, energybending, the origin of bending, and the definition of Aang’s “forgiveness” I stg

Why “Sokka’s instincts” are the reason Katara yells at Sokka

Believe it or not, every time Katara mentions her mother, it is at specific times for specific reasons.

^^^same thing for the moon, lack of moon, moon positioning, etc.

Katara’s mother’s necklace is more important than we realize.

Who the faces of Koh are and WHY they are there.

The true meaning of Jet’s sacrifice.

Why Jet’s episode about the dam explains the entirety of TSR as it pertains to Katara (all the way down to the little girl who runs to get her doll after the dam breaks)

Why Katara actually DID forgive Yon Rha, and the fact that she doesn’t even know it is proof that she did

^^^^^Aang’s definition of forgiveness is completely misunderstood by the fandom, and the way he “forgives” is sososo much deeper than “moving on”, and it is DEFINATELY by no means “doing  nothing” or “excusing” past actions.

The importance of lightning, Zuko, Aang, and Katara.

The absolutely monumental and not nearly talked about importance of Jeong-Jeong like holy crap.

How Katara and Azula are just as much of a Yin and Yang as Zuko and Aang but not in the way we think they are

Why Koh has the Blue Spirit’s face

Why Koh DOESN’T have the Painted Lady’s face.

Who Ni-Ni from Katara’s campfire story in The Puppetmaster is 

How and why Iroh was able to learn firebending from the Masters even though he didn’t have a partner. 

How/Why Azula had her breakdown and why she saw her mother in the mirror

Why “Leaves from the Vine” and “Four Seasons” are the same song, explain Azula’s downfall, and explain the Yin and Yang of TSR.

Why Katara and Sokka are so often mistaken for parental figures.

Why Aang’s flashbacks to the Air Nomads are so important in understanding TSR.

Why Toph and Suki disappear after the campfire in TSR.

How Hakoda, Gyatso, and Kya are all connected.

Why it is so dang important that Azula shows up in the beginning of TSR.

The importance of the Spirit Oasis.

Energybending, healing with waterbending, Aang’s trauma, and Zuko’s scar.

Why Zuko gives Katara the exact opposite advise in TSR that he gave her in the catacombs. 

How everything could be predicted and read by the moon.

WHY YIN AND YANG ARE THREE THINGS AND HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THREE THINGS.

HOW ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL OF THIS TIES BACK TO THE MOON AND BUDDHIST BELIEFS--AND YEAH THE MOON AND BUDDHISM AND HINDUISM ARE MORE CONNECTED IN ATLA THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE.

AND HOW IT LEADS INTO OUR MODERN UNDERSTANDING OF THE SELF--BECAUSE JUNG TOOK GREAT INFLUENCE IN HIS DEVELOPING THEORY OF THE CONSCIOUS AND THE SUBCONSCIOUS FROM THE HINDU/BUDDHIST RELIGIONS 

^^^^AND ALSO THE THEORY OF THE SHADOW AND THE PERSONA 

The ocean is a deep, dark, unknown place with a lot of hidden monsters (like Yon Rah). Katara needed a light to find her monster, but she also needed somewhere she could breathe when she came back up for air.

If she didn’t have both Zuko and Aang, Katara would have drowned. 

I wasn’t kidding when I said this was a thesis, and what I’ve said and listed here isn’t even all that I have.

btw This all does line up on the traditional Yin Yang symbol we know and see in the show, but I don’t have enough space here for that lmao. That’ll be in the analysis

I hope you enjoyed this little taste, my friend, because I need to sit down for a hot second before my brain leaks out of my ears. Sorry for the ramble. I promise the analysis isn’t like this lol. This is just me trying to summarize as best as I can. 

***Disclaimer: My points are always subject to change since I am still researching. These are the facts as I’ve found and applied them to the evidences I’ve noted from in the show. I’m always open for friendly discussion or any directions to better sources on Buddhism/Tao/Jung!***

[sanchoyo]

danny phantom 14-20 thoughts!! I finished up s1 :D these last few eps were actually really really good!!!

-did. did tucker really just say esperanto was a dead language only spoken as a secret code between geeks. google says around 100,000 people actively speak it. oh my god...it being an auxiliary language doesn't mean its 'just for geeks to speak in code' ...it helps bridge gaps between people who don't have a language in common...

-danny really isn't pulling punches when it comes to fighting the ghost-cop possessed people huh. like he SLAMMED KWAN INTO THE CONCRETE SO HARD. HE THREW PAULINA INTO A BILLBOARD. will that...I mean it WOULD carry over to their bodies non-possessed, right? like if the ghost piloting their bodies gets hurt?? itd be so upsetting to be possessed, lose time, then wake up covered in bruises (and possibly, broken bones??) real horror movie stuff im sure wont be addressed in any way

-tuckers parents seem nice! I like them :)

-WULF IS CUTE AND I FEEL BAD. im so glad the gang realized he was only causing trouble bc of the shock collar walker put on him and helped. also, him wearing that big hoodie with the hood on, and thinking its subtle. we can tell youre still a giant wolfie :) THEN GETTING SUCKED INTO THE PORTAL AAAAH :( anxiously waiting to see Him Again....

-DANNY BLASTING HIS PARENTS THINKING THEY WERE OVERSHADOWED LMFAO GET THEIR ASSES. maddie marking how many ghosts she gets with lipstick tallies on the side of her portal gun? kindaaa iconic tho. (ALSO, SHE WAS LIKE, 2 FT AWAY FROM HIM RIGHT AFTER SHE TRIED TO SHOOT HIM. HOW DO YOU NOT RECONINZE YOUR OWN SON??? like sure, he might have diff hair/eye colors. but like, if one of my family members dyed their hair, and was wearing contacts, its not like id be like 'wHO IS THIS STRANGER!!!' ...he still has all his facial features!! same everything!!! I hate it here)

-paulina being #1 girl realizing danny's a friendly ghost immediately. smart queen. lancer and kwan ran away right after he made this sweet baby face at them:

which is hilarious.

-ok. im not saying his bullying is JUSTIFIED, but. dash looked so pleased with the (cute!) poster he just painted, and danny comes thru the wall and spills paint on his nice letterman jacket. his anger is justified maybe 65% of the time so far...(not the way he handles it, but STILL.) at least lancer is stepping in!! and them making a silly little bet was...cute?? until dash pulled out his GROSS UNDERWEAR AND SAID DANNY WOULD HAVE TO EAT THEM???? WHAT THE FUCK MAN. TUCKER WAS SO RIGHT ITS FUCKING WEIRD TO CARRY THOSE AROUND EWWW. THIS KID IS UNWELL. lancer was right, his animatronic setup was SUPER IMPRESSIVE?? hes actually pretty creative. danny meanwhile is stealing the fright knight's design...I hope dash is taking art classes or smth with his sports

-fright knight is the most bestest ghost so far i LOVE THAT DESIGN. I am biased towards knights, and characters with swords, but he fucks so severely. and should sue danny for copyright infringement for stealing his design for his haunted house. if some 14 yr old broke into MY house and stole MY sword, id also be pissed. his evil winged unicorn rules too with its FANGS. and he just CAN SHOVE THE PORTAL OPEN WITH HIS HANDS??? is he the strongest ghost weve seen so far? idk but hes my fav. SOUL SHREDDER IS SUCH A COOL SWORD NAME TOO. ANY NAMED SWORD ALSO FUCKS. 'flaming bedsheets of DEATH' funny king. ALSO he was polite to dash and tucker when just asking for directions and telling tucker 'oh maybe, just a suggestion, maybe be nicer to me and be more respectful :)' I LOOOVE HIM.

-I noticed this in the Ember ep, but jazz has an electric guitar in her room!! talent musical queen!! its cool to see hobbies just in the bg.

-fright knight's murder castle reminds me of the booby trapped murder castle in zexal!! another supposedly 'for kids' show with murder/trap castles! we love that. if you are a dp fan reading this, give yugioh zexal a try. its also got 13-14 year old protags and involves (alien) ghosts. the cardgame is just a vessel for the plot, which is really good. (I just want more people to watch my fav yugioh, man)

-danny. with a SWORD.

-danny doesnt NEED TO WIN this contest, dash didnt STEAL HIS DESIGNS AND STEAL A SWORD. he also got excited to hear lancer got sent to a dimension with his worst fears too just so he could win the contest? DANNY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!!! BRO MAYBE YOURE 14 AND HAVENT FULLY DEVOLPED YOUR WHOLE BRAIN YET, BUT...THATS FUCKED. this kid casually says the most deranged things, I do worry for my spooky son. once again, therapy needed. that judo toss was great tho. I wonder if he actually did pick up some martial arts stuff from his mom?

-danny can fly 112 mph!!! thats so fast! I love the lil montage of him and his friends testing his abilities and stuff, very cute and a good way to showcase what he can do by now and how much more proficient he's gotten from ep 1!!! I'm sure he's going to get more abilities :)

-im glad...maddie's at least TRYING this ep. I do feel for her because her husband is a man baby. but the fact it took 16 episodes to get a kinda semblance of any kind of real concern or attempts at bonding. hmm. jack's 'BACK OFF SHES A MINOR' @ the ghost trying to attack jazz. also was very funny. and him wanting to make an action figure of her? are the parents redeeming themselves to me? slightly. they gotta Work Harder

-THE GHOST. IS FLYING. THE PLANE.

-fenton machete. but she doesnt carry a PHONE??? ???

-I mean I expected vlad when you namedrop him earlier in the ep, and also the title card picture, and dalv corp being fucking vlad backwards. but seeing him just pull up on a golf cart made me bust out laughing. WITH the gift baskets prepared. why wouldnt you at least be suspicious. also, if he wants danny to be his lil sonboy, why is he so fucking malicious?? dude you are going about this in such a bad way. stop it. get some help.

-maddie not even hesitating to drag danny out. fucking good. danny is so right, go on the internet to date. get a cat. how do you spend...how many years?? has it been since college?? at least 20, right, since the parents/vlad are in their 40s? hung up on ONE girl. my god, man. incel drama queen. her kung fu IS impressive, but dude. 'we both know hes a creep' SO right. it sucks but they do need a phone and shit being in the middle of NOWHERE. also, just stealing his helicopter was great. <3

-'you must be exhausted carrying the weight of that mistake you made years ago' 'well we all make mistakes. maybe I'll make one now!' WHY DID THIS EXHCHANGE SEND ME. AND VLAD WITH THE BREATH SPRAY EWWW BITCH. 'OLD BAIT BREATH' SOO RIGHT. both danny and his mom playing him HAHAH hes so dumb. or rather, I think he thinks with his emotions too too much and is...actually pretty gullible? lmao he believed danny was ready to give in SO fast. (which is sad hes that hopeful, like you have SO MUCH MONEY YOU COULD EASILY GET ANOTHER GIRL WHO HAS A KID. AND WOULD WANT TO BE WITH YOU AND BE SUPPORTED. GET OVER THIS (1) WOMAN ALREADY IM GETTING SECONDHAND EMBARRASSMENT AAAAH)

-GHOST BEAR GHOST BEAR GHOST BEAR. it was also in the title card, but I still got very excited. we love bears here

-SAM'S BAT SWIMSUIT COVERUP!!! her outfits are simply iconic.

-'i'd tell you to go to the mens room, but I don't think you qualify' top paulina transphobic moments. :( and him wearing a tanktop to the swim park? hmmm! (actually I think she was overshadowed by then, so, KITTY top 10 transphobic moments??)

-kitty just piloting paulina around makes me feel SO bad tho, paulina's gonna wake up and be like 'wtf do you mean I was dating this rando' like youre leading danny on to make johnny jealous, and also just POSSESSING POOR PAULINA. dude take your relationship problems ELSEWHERE. last time we saw them, they seemed like such a cute couple!! wtf johnny!! I mean, she sucks for trying to make him jealous, he sucks for looking at other girls...maybe they need a break, but Not Like This. or, you know, just. better communication...

-and the A-listers having a full packet and a stamp system. who organizes this. kwan fucking owning being the new danny though, this is hysterical. THE TUCKER/KWAN FLOWER FIELD TWIRL. UNIRONICALLY ADORABLE. and him giving it his all for the poetry slam. bless his HEARTTTT.

-Star owns. actually, all of the extra characters are shining this ep and I love it.

-INVISO-BILL??? NOOOO THEY DID HIM SOO DIRTY. DANNY SWEETIE IM SO SORRY.

-johnny and danny bein friends and staging a fake fight (which danny takes too seriously, once again this child has aggression he NEEDS TO WORK OUT) I hope these three stay friends, I said it before but danny needs more friendly ghosts to hang with.

-at this point, Danny's ghost enemies are a lot like, I dunno, batman's rouge gallery is the first thing that comes to mind. they all have their own gimmick and unique designs, but most of them are easy to beat after learning the Moral Lesson. I still get excited when any of them show up again, though. 18 is another valerie episode!!!! :D skulker really said you two will get along if I have to handcuff you together <3 and the gym teacher really said, youre married now, have a flour baby! ngl, I'm not really watching this show for the shipping stuff (which I am very scared to look at the fandom for after I finish this watch through- I feel like there's probably discourse/arguing about ships...) but. I'm gonna put my opinion out there. valerie/danny > sam/danny. maybe I just really love the enemies to lovers trope. And the secret identity stuff adds Extra Flavor.

-SKULKER JUST HAVING THE BOX GHOST AND DANGLING HIM BY A STRING. HILARIOUS. and him watching them with binoculars and making his silly little commentary. AND MAKING THE SACK BABY CRY. LMAO. THIS DUDE IS A BABY KIDNAPPER. skulker is super fun

-danny, you just...collapsed the water tower. and then attacked the nasty burger machine...mascot thingy...out of anger..I KEEP SAYING HE'S GOT ANGER ISSUES BUT. HE REALLY NEEDS A LESSON IN MANAGING COLLATERAL DAMAGE!!! So does valerie!! They're both pretty focused on each other. I mean it's good of Danny to say he's trying to make sure PEOPLE don't get hurt, but... (I mean I guess it's not something 14 year olds WOULD worry about, but as an adult im like, who's going to fix that? how much money will that take??)

-TUCKER MAKING BANK. and sam and tucker being super emotionally attached to their flour baby and being pretty good parents. that's cute...also him just straight kissing her and being like. WAIT. O_O JDSKAFHD. his mom baking them into cookies was the funniest possible result. tbh I dont feel like this is on tucker, if anything the other kid's shouldve been more responsible! He was just taking an opportunity to get that $$ which I respect

-Danny being more understanding of Valerie's situation in the end (helping her at her job, too, and trying to keep that a secret for her!!!) And seeing them work together this ep, and also her letting phantom get her out of the ghost zone...was very sweet. LOVE that. more valerie eps pls

-me when I realize vlad's big stupid house exploded because of his own carelessness with changing the ghost portal ectofiltrator or whatever: *pointing and laughing*

-me when I realize it means he's gonna go make danny's life hell for it somehow: >:(

-SCOOBY PARODY!!! I feel like there's gotta be some scooby doo/danny phantom crossover stuff, right? also, 'guys in white' men in black wishes

-'oh, that's right! dad married the love of your life! you're bitter and alone!' DANNNNNYY GET HIS ASS ONCE AGAIN WE ARE POINTING AND LAUGHING AT VLAD

-'jack, you captured the ghost boy!!' UMM. he did nothing <3 'we have a weapon's vault??' YOU HAVE A WEAPONS VAULT??? and jack didnt put a handle on the inside. of fucking course he didnt! why would you leave that to your son!! or expect him to clean YOUR LAB when its where you work with probably dangerous chemicals and weapons and hes 14!! give him normal chores, like, I dunno, vacuuming, laundry, dishes...CMON. I hate it here. But I'm glad Jack is more chill about danny while he's a ghost, and willing to work with him for this ep. AND. I DID ENJOY JACK PUNCHING VLAD IN THE FACE. AND GENERALLY JUST OWNING HIM. the ghost punchy fists are actually amazing. like yeah, just punch a ghost in the face. that rules.

-ep 20 opens with the coolest fucking ghost lady design. her tattoos can come off and fight. MA'AM. I like ur nose ring and your cape maam hello 👉👈😳

-sam's grandma is hilarious and the most valid member of her family and I love her. thats my grandma now. and tucker covering for sam by dressing as her. thats true friendship <3 also skipping school to go to a goth circus. just bestie things! sam's parents are haters but for all the wrong reasons.

-'my family has controlled ghosts with this for generations!' WAIT. WAIT FREAKSHOW /ISNT/ A GHOST? I didn't expect that...he's just a fucked up guy controlling ghosts? anyway watching danny shoot at police cars and rob banks while mind controlled. its like, the most stereotypical 'bad' things lmao. (tbh an evil ghost circus troupe is a sick concept)

this gives off big deviantart emo edit vibes

(I'm going to assume evil circus reaper danny has a lot of fan content. people love an edgy au, except this one is canon (even tho its via mind control...having the protag go evil otherwise might be hard, I guess?) but au where he stays with the troupe...that has to exist, right?)

ANYWAY. excited to start s2!! lowkey surprised by how many notes some of these posts have gotten. I've gone back and tagged them all with 'dp thoughts' so they're easier to find on my blog! ^^ and I will probably possibly do (more) fanart on my art blog after I finish the watch of the whole show, so like. @sanchoyodraws follow my art blog :)

[angelaiswriting]

Undercover | Bandit x fem!reader

[video by Yogendra Singh from Pexels]

✏️ Pairing: Bandit x fem!reader

✏️ Summary: In which Dominic realizes he's fallen too hard for a woman during an undercover mission and he doesn't think he's fit to work for Rainbow anymore.

🎁 A/N: I wrote this for @kind-wolf​‘s birthday but she gave me the okay to post it, so hopefully y’all will enjoy it too 💛

✏️ Warnings: slight angst, 18+ only? idk (the sex is generally only implied but there are some paragraphs in which it’s a little less implied), also a dash of fluff?

✏️ Word-count: 11,555

UNDERCOVER

There was something about early-morning runs that just calmed his nerves, even with music blasting in his ears. There was something in the way his trainers would rhythmically slap against the ground; something in the burning in his lungs, in the way the wind would blow against his face every now and then…

The British countryside expanded to infinity on his runs and it erased anything Hereford Base inevitably brought along—training sessions, mission calls, even more simulations, and then endless tests to pieces of equipment that he surely had not missed while on his last undercover mission.

He didn’t think much about it. About the mission. He always tried his best not to, although he did so unconsciously, probably more out of habit than anything else. It was never easy, to go back to a daily routine that didn’t feel yours anymore, to a routine you couldn’t recognize after having pretended to be someone else for the past six years. Some things just get to your head at some point, and going back to who you had once been feels like being reborn completely, and into someone you can’t recognize. You wake up one day, and you find yourself being forced to put on yet another mask, with the only exception that this is no mask. This is your face. Who you are. Or who you’re supposed to be, at least.

And although most likely unprofessional, this was how Dominic Brunsmeier still felt, six months after his mission had come to its end. He woke up every day and for the first, endless minutes he simply lied there, staring at a ceiling he had problems recognizing, with the reality that he was thousands of miles away from Germany hanging like Damocles’ sword above his head. His ears still subconsciously strained for the sound of two dogs’ nails ticking against the tiles of the floor to come to say good morning, and his left hand still stretched out to feel for someone who wasn’t there—who would never be there again.

That’s why running helped. It emptied his mind—and it also filled his lungs with the smell of wet grass and dirt. And although he still turned around to check behind his back every few minutes in search for furry snouts—one of the habits he had developed in the past life he had been forced to leave behind—, it was getting better, and the music in his ear pods seemed to be starting to do the trick.

Sometime later, when he got back to the Base, he was somewhat ready to be a Rainbow operator once again. At least for that day.

The truth was, he had somehow grown almost detached from anything and anyone Rainbow. He would do something, and then he’d mentally compare it to how he did it before. The way his morning coffee would taste; the way her laundry detergent would smell fresh and somehow cozy; how peaceful car trips would feel, almost as though he could lose himself into one of them for the rest of his life. Now his coffee was just Marius’s boring blend, and the detergent they used in the laundry at the base had no scent. And when he did end up tagging along on short weekend trips, there was no dog whining ecstatically in the back of the car and trying to lick his neck.

“How was your run?”

Monika was looking at him from above the file she was reading—a mission report, a test session report, he didn’t know and he also found himself not caring. That life still felt alien to him.

He shrugged. “Good.” He had somehow become a man of few words, and he had also started to realize that maybe undercover missions weren’t for him. Not anymore, at least. Maybe he had let this one get to him a bit too much, and everyone he had met had grown under his skin without him wanting so and he still did somehow feel like he had betrayed his family, sent them all to jail.

It was a stupid thought—he tried to remind himself of that every time that feeling came up, but maybe he just wasn’t cut for long undercover missions anymore. He didn’t remember when it had become difficult to tell right from wrong, but it had happened, and every time his mind stopped on that period of his life, he found himself growing homesick for a home he never had, not there.

“Just good?” 

Elias was there, too. Of fucking course, he would be there. He had been keeping an eye on him for a few weeks now, and Dominic was too much of an expert not to notice. It hadn’t been a surprise to see him enter the kitchen a minute or two after he had.

“Just good,” he nodded

There was some staring, then. Dominic stared at Elias because he wanted to be left alone, and Elias stared at Dominic because he wanted to understand what the problem was, so that he could help his friend. It was all useless, though, and they both knew it: one had closed off too securely to let on anything—or let anyone in, and the other was too stubborn to just stop caring about someone he loved.

That afternoon, though, he was running some errands in town with Marius when a dog stopped right in front of him to sniff his pants. It was a lovely animal, with fur of an almost bronze-red color and a tail that never once stopped wagging.

It brought him back in time, and for a moment he stood there, frozen and rooted to the spot. He could almost still feel the rain on his skin despite that exceptionally bright sunny day. But then, the Irish setter’s owner called Bonnie, let’s go! and Dominic was back to the present day, a bag with stuff he had bought at the hardware store just on the other side of the parking lot in one hand and a bunch of keys in the other.

“Everything alright with you?” Marius asked when Dominic reached him. He had been waiting for him, leaning against the door of the truck, and he hadn’t missed the way his friend had grown rigid. It didn’t matter how much pride Dom felt at the idea of being good at hiding feelings: there was always someone that saw right through his shit. And called him out on it.

“I used to have two dogs,” he blurted out with a smile on his face before he could stop himself. They were both loading bags into the trunk of the car and he hadn’t even felt the words slip through his lips that they were already out there in the open. But the memory had hit him with the same force of a freight train, and he had found himself basking in that warm feeling that had started to blossom inside him at the memory. After all, he loved those two pests like his own kids.

He looked up, the feeling of being caught red-handed quickly seeping in, and he found that Marius had a weird look in his eyes as he watched his every move.

“You had two dogs?” his friend quoted, one hand reaching up for the back door of the car. He closed it shut, and the frown didn’t leave his face for a second. “Back during your mission, you mean?”

“Forget about it. It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have said it in the first place.” It had always been custom for him to not open up about his undercovers—the person he was when he was on one wasn’t the person he was when he came back to his real life, and that’s how things had to be.

“To hell with your bullshit!”

The first five minutes in the car, however, were spent in silence.

Dominic was still cursing himself mentally for opening his damn mouth—or his memory vault, for what it mattered. It had been the first time he had mentioned anything about her since his return—his return home his friends had cheered him with six months ago, but that homely feeling still had to make an appearance. She had become taboo, and he had done so to protect her—and himself, in a way, for not having to bring her up had seemed to be the most sensible way to forget all about her, at least back then.

But now here he was, catching himself just in time before worsening his case.

“Where are those dogs now?” Marius used the excuse of a red streetlight to speak again and when Dominic looked at him from the corner of his eye, he found his friend already staring.

A shrug of his shoulders will do the trick, or that was what he hoped. Unsuccessfully.

“You’ve barely put full sentences together outside of missions since you came back from Germany. And now you mention two dogs. That you owned, apparently.”

“I didn’t own them, they weren’t mine,” he corrected.

“Whose were they, then?”

*

The first time Dominic sees her is on a chilly early-April morning. It’s pouring rain outside, and she’s walking two dogs with nothing to shield her from the rain but an old sweatshirt.

It’s half past five in the morning and his first thought is: What the fuck is this girl doing out here in the rain?

He almost slows down his truck when he drives past her. Probably he should be a good person and ask her if she needs a ride, but this side of town is new to him and he doesn’t want to risk anything that would have Fabian put him on his boss’ black book the month after having been fully accepted into the gang.

She’s in his rearview mirror before he has the chance to think his civilized deed through. He finds himself staring for two seconds at most—red sweatshirt, jean shorts that are a tad bit out of season now, and two happy dogs that walk on either side of her without the need for a leash. Then, he’s pulling over and stopping the truck right before the closed garage door of his new two-bedroom house. He still has to fix it—along with other things inside—but Christian has been keeping him busy with errands and whatnot, and he’s lacked the time.

He’s barely out of the vehicle when there’s barking—short, quick barks in succession coming from two different dogs, defying the sound of the rain and the otherwise silence of the early morning. When he turns around, the girl’s dogs are running across the empty street, their owner right behind them, and they’re aiming at him, tails wagging happily and tongues lolling out from open mouths.

They don’t jump up as he expected them to, but they still do take their few seconds of freedom to sniff him up. His shoes, his legs, a hand—and all the while he’s getting soaked through just as much as the girl running over with two leashes in a hand is.

“Hey, buddy,” he coos, almost involuntarily, as he presents the bigger dog with the open palm of his left hand.

It looks like a nice mutt, the fur a shade of brown streaked with white and black, and it excitedly licks his skin after a moment of indecision.

“I’m so sorry.” When he looks up, the young woman is panting, a hand on her side as the other comes up to wipe the rain from her eyes. “C’mon, Otto, come here.”

The white dog with a chocolate-colored stain on the left side of his face is quickly put on his leash, and he sits still by his owner’s feet as she pries Rex from his hand.

“I’m sorry they’ve bothered you,” she offers, and then groans when she can’t seem to attach the leash to the ring in the dog’s collar. “They’re usually well-behaved.”

“No problem,” he smiles.

Rex lunges forward one last time to get a good-bye caress on his head before he eventually chooses to behave and steps back.

“They didn’t do anything but smell me up a bit, it’s all cool.”

She smiles. He smiles. Rex barks happily and turns back to nudge Otto, and both their tails are wild whips against the soaked grass-less ground of his short driveway. Then, she’s gone.

He stares as she runs down the street, thunder finally rolling up high in the steely sky, and he smiles when he hears her laugh and call for the dogs when the rain starts pouring stronger. Then he turns, walks around the back of his truck and up to his door, and leaves the world outside.

*

That night Dominic sat at the desk in his room. His things had been relocated to a smaller one while he had been away on his mission and although he would have probably complained once, he found that this new accommodation somehow suited him better now. It felt much more secluded and since it was in the newly-built dorm area where his buddies didn’t reside, it felt much calmer. It didn’t give him much need to lie.

And it didn’t give his friends the chance to see that most of his stuff was still in cardboard boxes he had yet to unpack. The mere thought seemed to overwhelm him somehow and even that night, all he did was stare at them for endless minutes before eventually begrudgingly opening his laptop.

The brief and vague chat with Marius that afternoon had given him that sort of push he needed to finally pull out the hard disks and SD cards he had hidden away but that still contained all the files he had to organize. It was nothing major, of course—that kind of stuff had been transferred onto Rainbow servers the moment he had set foot onto British ground, one could say. But he still had private stuff, videos and photographs he had never thought he’d one day keep, back when he had first taken them, but then again, here he was.

Part of his brain did know that wasn’t the smart thing to do, but when he plugged in the black hard disk with that owl sticker she had slapped on it one night after tipsy sex, he found that his hand hesitated on the mouse.

He had chuckled—even now, he could still hear the sound in the otherwise quiet room. It had been at the beginning of that thing that had slowly—and then more and more quickly, like an avalanche effect of some sort—turned into a relationship. Why? he had simply asked, putting his lighter back on the nightstand when she gave it a disgusted look. And she had laughed, too, and he had stared at her sweaty skin glistening in the light of his bedside lamp, at the way her messy bangs stuck to her forehead, and he thought that fuck, what the fuck was he doing? Because I felt like it, she had answered with a shrug and he had laughed deep in his chest before pulling her back over his body.

Maybe he could keep what was in there. He did not have to look, but maybe he’d keep those files stored away in some folder-in-a-folder kind of thing, hidden away from his eyes and hopefully from his mind, until he’d forget all about them. Until he’d stop being a spineless dick, murmured a mean voice in the back of his head.

“Fuck it!” he groaned, finally opening the main folder and watching as his old laptop loaded everything.

There were some pictures he had never stored away in their respective folders, and he suddenly remembered now that it was because he loved them. Loved those two dogs piled up on each other as they slept in his armchair. And loved the way she’d scream song lyrics using an almost-empty beer bottle as a microphone.

Those were memories—and damn good memories at that! There was no reason to shy away from them. Just as a reminder, he reasoned—something to keep for a long time so that it could remind him to keep his head on his shoulders next time he’d be assigned on some other undercover mission. Something that could tell him not to fall for a chick he’d eventually have to leave behind forever. Something that could prove to him that yes, he could enjoy things while living a lie, but that no, there were things he could not bring back home.

Like Rex and Otto.

Or like Y/N.

*

He meets her again two weeks later, when Fabian drags him along to a club to have fun and maybe get some pussy. Dominic’s not exactly in the mood for pussy for once, still exhausted after having come back from a quick ‘business trip’ to Austria with two other guys, but he doesn’t want to be the buzzkill. He’s also not been in the city long enough, so he’d rather fly low and not risk making even the slightest doubt arise.

So he goes. He dresses up in an all-black combo of pants and shirt, and meets his friend outside one of the clubs Christian owns. The air is warm, and the night traffic buzzes behind his back as Fabian leads him all the way up to the entrance while recounting the weird-ass trip Alex had the first time he did acid. Domi laughs along in all the right points and for a split second, before Julian lets them in without a question, he finds himself thinking that it isn’t so hard after all, to pretend to be someone he’s not every time Fabian’s around. The dude is chill, five or so years younger than he but just as crazy, and there’s this tiny voice in Dominic’s head that seems to whisper to him that they could actually be great pals if the situation and the setting were different.

“What’s your poison?” his friend of sorts asks as he takes him through the place and then to a table—not right up under the stage, but a bit in the back.

“Just beer,” is his reply. He didn’t think he’d be seeing girls perform when he left his house, but now that he’s here and he gets a glimpse of a redhead beauty before she disappears offstage, he’s not exactly opposed.

Fabian’s face is contorted into a grimace of confusion before it opens up into a grin as things seem to clear up in his head. “Oh, yeah, as a warm-up, I see!”

He laughs, leaning back against the seat before he shakes his head. “One of us gotta stay sober enough to take you home when you’re shit-faced,” he bites back, subtly implying to that one time, three months after Dom had officially become a rookie, when Fabian had ridden himself into a tree on his bike. The others had made him look after and take care of the younger idiot, and he had had to swallow down his pride and cater to any and all silly needs he had been presented with and that had felt like a setback in his undercover path.

A girl hurries by then, a serving platter with drinks in hand as she flags down another waitress and mouths something over the music of the new performance, and Fabian is quick at grabbing a hold of her forearm. When she turns around, an expression on her face that makes it clear she would be more than ready to throw hands, it takes Dominic half a minute to recognize her in this new setting.

“Come back to us later, Baby,” Fabian says, his hand moving to swat at her ass before she grabs a hold of it and presses down hard enough to make him wince.

“Don’t make me kick your ass.”

Dominic turns around when she walks past him and watches as she serves drinks at a table. She’s all smiles as she replies back to something she’s being told, and steps back a little when one of the men tries to stretch a hand out and touch her.

“Is that how you act with women?” he asks when he turns back around.

His friend laughs over a text he’s sending—probably to one of the other guys they’re supposed to meet here tonight, or probably to someone else entirely—Dominic does wonder about it, just as he wonders about many things when it comes to the Club, but he voices none of his thoughts. He never does.

“It’s not what you think,” he shrugs, grinning at him before glancing at the brunette performing on stage. He stares for a long while, and Dominic has the time to study some more of the details in the snake tattoo that crawls up the side of his neck and disappears into his hair. “She’s a friend.”

“She’s still not excited about you slapping her butt, though,” the girl in question chimes in when she finally reaches their table again, her serving platter now held securely against her abdomen. “But Fabian’s— Hey!” she grins, stopping mid-sentence when she seems to recognize him from that rainy early morning of fifteen or so days ago. “You’re the new guy on the block.”

“You know each other?”

“Sorta. The boys ran up to him when we were on a walk a few days ago,” she nods, eyes trailing down to where Domi’s left the first two buttons of his shirt undone, tattoos on full display underneath, before moving back to meet his.

Fabian’s pout distracts the both of them, and when she sets her eyes on him, he’s quick at letting out a childish complaint. “You never smile at me like that.”

“Don’t be a douche.” And then, to Dominic: “I’ll pay you real money if you drag him out of here.”

“Geez, women!” Fabian scoffs. “Anyway. Nic, this is Y/N. Y/N, this is Dominic.” He watches briefly as they shake hands before continuing. “She’s off-limits, unless she’ll somehow consider you worthy enough of her and her p— I’m just kidding, Angel!” he pleads, leaning away from her hand as she slaps at his shoulder. “C’mon, be a good girl.”

“You be a good boy and I might not spit in your drink.”

Dominic’s still thinking about her sometime later, after some of the guys have joined him and his company for tonight. They’re watching girls perform, but he’s unfocused. Even the beer in his hand has been forgotten for a while now, as his gaze finds itself being attracted back to the bar—or to wherever she is at the moment.

He stares, and even blatantly so, half listening to Fabian’s words echoing in his mind, and half ignoring them. She’s close to Christian, that’s what he knows: she used to be his sister’s best friend before the girl passed away a few years after finishing high school. And, as Fabian has half-heartedly complained more than once, she’s not that friendly with gang members—if you know what I mean, Nic. Not that he’s thinking about that with her! He barely even knows her. What he does know, however, is that there’s a file, back at Rainbow, that he has to fill with pieces of information he finds out here, and he’s starting to wonder what she could know.

And sometimes—every once in a while and almost covertly—she glances back and meets his eye, and when she finds him staring, she seems to stumble over her words for a heartbeat before the smile is back on her face and she turns her attention back to whatever patron she’s tending to.

He’s back the next Friday night, and the week after that, and on the third week, it starts becoming a habit. Fabian’s with him sometimes; sometimes it’s someone else, but more often—because he starts hanging out at the club on whatever free nights he has during the week—he goes on his own. He drinks, spends money on women, and goes as far as paying for personal dances—and maybe it becomes a bit too often, because one day Christian asks him—through Alex, because Christian’s too busy with a rival gang to do it in person—and mentions something about it.

But the more he sits in there, the closer he somehow seems to get to Y/N—and the closer she seems to get to him. It’s just smiles at first; even when he goes up to the bar to order drinks, she’s always too busy to focus on him only. But then they start exchanging a few words—and in the meantime they wave at each other from opposite sides of the road they live on, when they pass by—and then a few puns, until at some point, probably three, almost four months into his habitual trips to the club, she starts actively seeking him out. And if by any chance he’s absent on one of his regular nights, he finds her politely asking whether everything’s alright on the first night he’s back.

*

He missed that—missed his club nights and the dancers, even the waitresses. Y/N, of course, although he always did his best not to allow his brain to bring her up. But sometimes, out of the blue, the most random things would make one of the many memories he had stored away out of sight resurface and he found himself thinking about her. It would start subconsciously—with something someone said or did, or maybe it was something he saw in the window of a shop, or in one of the girls he’d find himself dancing with when his friends dragged him along. And then, when he caught himself red-handed, it was hard to stop. His brain would fixate on a memory and the more he willed himself to shift the focus of his attention onto something—anything—else, the harder it was to actually do it.

So, he turned his strategy around. He did that when he transferred all his secreted files onto his laptop—and then onto a new one yet again, when the old thing slowed down too much for him to be able to do work-related things on it. The reasoning was, if he kept those memories where he could easily reach them, then maybe they’d lose that hue of exceptionality and he’d get so used to them that it would finally be easier to coexist with them and all they had once meant.

And the next time Marius asked, tried to pull things out of him the same way he’d done with shards of glass after that one assignment in Bosnia, Dominic found himself loosening up. With him only, no one else for the time being, but it still felt liberating. Marius would listen, and he wouldn’t try to guilt-trip him the same way Domi had done to himself. He’d listen, and chime in every now and then, and then he’d stop asking when it was clear his friend wasn’t comfortable with continuing for now.

Y/N hadn’t come up yet. He told him about the dogs, and the guys—about Fabian most of all, and Markus, the two he had bonded with the most. He talked about the club—and he won’t lie, about the women there and the ones he had ended up in bed or against a wall with, as well. Not many, but enough to make Marius tease him for a while before he eventually relented.

But then one day, when most operators had been sent off on various missions, they decided to go on a trip. They took a Jeep car, loaded it with backpacks and food and tents, and took off for a week to spend camping far from the Base.

It had been quite a long couple of months—with training and simulations and tests, and even weeks spent abroad. And meetings in Harry’s office so that the Agency could see where Dominic’s loyalty lied, and how he was doing, how he was settling back into his old routine, now almost ten months after having come back from Germany. Which he… was, in a way. Settling back into his old routine, that is—everything was normal when he was working, at least.

But opening up to his Director wasn’t the same as opening up to his friend. And probably even Harry knew, or had at least come to that conclusion, for he had relented in his questions and had given him more free time, away from his Rainbow responsibilities.

“So, you were telling me about Fabian the other day.”

Marius’s voice shook him out of his thoughts, and Dominic found himself blinking a couple of times at the pale light of the sun that still had to fully rise. He felt almost as though he had dozed off, his tongue still heavy and laced with the slumber he had been forced to wake up from at two.

“What?” he mumbled, fumbling with his seat belt when he realized his friend had parked the car and it was now time to get out.

He had been sleeping poorly the past few days, with endless thoughts incessantly mulling around in his mind and keeping him awake. Stuff about Germany, but also stuff about Rainbow—missions and briefings and that upgrade he was helping Elias come up with for his shield. It all slowed him down, left him less reactive than he had been in a while, always dozing off when he was supposed to do something else. Even his morning runs had stopped being that nice a distraction.

The cup of coffee Marius pushed into his hands was hot, almost comforting in a way, and it sent a shiver throughout his whole body as they stood there, in the low, late-March temperatures. It was supposed to get warmer as the day progressed, or so the forecasts seemed to promise, and he surely found himself hoping for that to be the case.

“You were saying about how Fabian introduced you to this Angel dude,” Jäger insisted sometime later, when they had heaved their backpacks on their backs and locked the Jeep. They’d be back in a week—or that was the plan, but they both knew that if the weather would take a turn for the worst, they’d be back much sooner, neither of them willing to deal with storms and cold temperatures when they could feel warm somewhere else.

“Angel’s not a dude,” was Dominic’s chuckle.

The sun had finally risen and its light, although still pale, filtered in through the foliage of the forest, casting shapes on the ground and on their faces alike. The temperatures had gone up a bit, but Dom was still glad he had listened to Lera’s advice and had taken off with thermal clothes on.

“Angel is— was,” he quickly corrected himself, casting a quick glance at Marius, walking by his side, “my girlfriend… I guess.”

“You guess?” His friend frowned, not even taking his eyes off of the path they were currently trekking on. They still had quite a few kilometers to go before their next stop and he had absolutely no intention of spending them in silence, not now that Dominic seemed like he had slowly regained his ability to talk and let his tongue loose, although not in everyone’s company. But progress was progress, and he didn’t want to risk and ruin it.

Dominic shrugged. “I’m not sure Y/N and I ever officially defined the relationship.”

“Y/N… Angel, you mean?”

“Yeah, we called her that most of the time. Those dogs I told you about… they were hers.”

Marius nodded. Dominic had started to introduce him to bits and pieces of his undercover life—the clubs, the gang, the dogs, the speed races at night, the way Fabian would often crash on his couch when his partying got too wild and out-of-hand, or the way Markus, three years his junior, would often trail behind him like a lost puppy. It was never a chronological recollection of events, with some kind of thread that would link them together. Sometimes he’d ask questions, making sure to remain as vague as possible when it came to enquiring about someone’s life, and Domi would reply with what came to mind.

But now… Now he had slowly started to piece all those memories together, bit by bit, and he was seeing that it was not all black and white, the way some back at the Organization would make it out to be, but more like grayscale. The good and the bad would mix together in the same bowl, and it would make it hard for anybody to draw absolutes.

“Tell me something about her.”

*

Dominic’s sitting in Christian’s backyard for the first time in two years and a half. It’s something new, but at the same time it feels so familiar, in a weird and convoluted way, as he’s surrounded by people he knew nothing about just three years ago. He laughs at what his friends say, and even whistles with them when the girl Fabian has shown up with leaves in a hurry after printing the fingers of her left hand across his cheek.

“You truly can’t keep them for more than a week, can you?” Christian laughs, taking a sip from his beer as he and Marcel flip the meat on the barbeque.

Fabian groans. “Always pointing out the details, gee. Anyway!”

Some bickering ensues, and Dominic sits back against the seat of his plastic chair with the rim of his beer bottle grazing his lower lip, barely containing his laughter, but still trying his best because he’s usually the one taking Fabian’s sides—even if just out of pure sarcasm.  It all only settles when Franziska walks out of the house, a bowl of salad in each hand, saying something about leaving the poor child alone, what are you? Five? before Marcel pulls her into his side for a kiss.

They’re cute—it’s a weird and intrusive thought as Dominic watches, eyes glinting with a badly concealed smile, but it’s also the truth. Franziska and Marcel are like opposite sides of the same coin, but they somehow fit so well together… He’d tell Marius that, years after that day, and he’d recall the way she’d look up into her lover’s eyes with such emotion that, before Y/N came along, it would have made him feel the pangs of jealousy stab his stomach.

“Ugh, lovebirds.” Markus rolls his eyes, and when Dominic turns his head to look at him, he adds a snort and a wave of his hand.

“Kids.” Marcel shakes his head at Domi, almost as though he knows just how Markus and Fabian can get, and Dominic’s the one who’s spending the most time with them. “Always moaning about what they don’t have.”

But no one’s that serious. They all sort of envy what Marcel has, but they cherish it most of all, and although there’s often some playful mocking during gatherings, Marcel still knows they’d all jump in front of his woman without batting an eyelash if that meant keeping her safe.

There’s commotion coming from inside the house, then. The old dog that had been snoozing by Christian’s feet lifts her head, barking low in the back of her throat, still sleepy, before two dogs dash outside and she’s suddenly chasing them on her three paws, long fluffy tail wagging.

The guys cheer the new-comers and although the white one—it takes Dom a while to recognize Otto, Angel’s dog—jumps and huffs to play with Christian’s Stella, the loud and cheering voices send the other one in a frenzy. Rex runs back and forth, tail wagging as hard as a whip, tongue two meters out of his snout. And it’s such a hilarious sight that it sends Dominic laughing with his other friends as the dog almost trips Eva and that jar of cold lemonade over.

Then, when Dominic’s regained enough breath to stop the wheezing and wipe the tears from his eyes with a hand, he calls him over. “Hey, Rex! C’mere!”

He has no time to see the surprise flash across his friends’ faces, for it’s all downhill from there. Rex stops dead in his tracks, front paws down on the grass to his elbows and butt up in the air, his tail still wagging wildly—and really, he doesn’t know how he hasn’t sprained it yet, or how he hasn’t taken off like in some cartoon. His head turns here and there for half a second before his caramel eyes zero in on him. Before Dominic has the time to beg Stop!, the dog is on him: The impact sends his empty beer bottle flying backward as the chair tips back, a leg snaps, and he’s suddenly half-laying, half-sitting almost horizontally with an ecstatic Rex licking his face and his beard, barely able to keep still in his arms.

The other two dogs are quick to join them, and before Dominic can turn his head to the side and see the way Christian kisses Y/N’s cheek hello or hear the way she groans out a fuck! before she can intervene, two more wet snouts blind and sniff at him.

Sometime later, as Markus is complaining under his breath about the ladies’ ‘rabbit food’, Dominic turns towards Fabian and half-says, half-asks: “I thought she didn’t do members.”

“Huh?” Fabian looks up from where he’s stuffing his face with pork ribs and Franziska’s salad, moaning for a second about how much I love fucking onions, God. But he’s quick at looking where Domi’s quick tilt of the head is pointing.

Y/N and Christian are sitting next to each other, heads close as they discuss something before she feels them staring and sends them a quick smile.

“Oh, no. No.” Fabian coughs as he tries not to choke on his food when he picks up with what Dom’s implying—Jeez, no, shit, Angel and Christian? He laughs, still breathless, and chugs down the glass of lemonade Verena’s poured him. “Nah, she’s like a sister to him. Same for her. It was hard for a while after Mia’s death. The gang…” But he shrugs, cuts himself off and trails his gaze back down on his plate. “It was rough. And they’ve grown real close, but there’s nothing more than fraternal love between them.”

Dominic nods. “Oh, okay.”

He’s thinking nothing of her—or is he? They’ve been hanging out quite a bit these past few weeks. He’s been over at her house for a leaking sink just last Saturday afternoon, and she’s made him stay longer so that they could eat dinner together, watch the wrestling match on TV. He’s not… into her like that, he thinks—yet. Because, really, he wouldn’t mind being.

“Why?” There’s a suggestive smirk growing on his friend’s face. “You thinking of—”

But he’s cut off when Christian calls Dominic and steals his attention. No one discusses business during this kind of gatherings, but there’s a look on the man and his right hand, Marcel’s faces that just makes him think he’ll be hearing from them not long after going back home that night. He’s already made great progress on his undercover assignment, but this truly does start feeling like a step in the right direction.

When the party’s over, that night after dinner, he ends up sitting in Y/N’s car as she takes both of them home. Her dogs would be all up in his neck if it weren’t for the shield provided by the passenger’s seat, and she’s apologizing—although with a grin on her face and a tone that doesn’t make her apology come out that sincere—about their behavior.

“I just don’t understand why they like you so much,” she muses. “Rex most of all.”

He shrugs. “I didn’t even know I was that good with dogs before these two.”

Years later, he’d tell Marius Streicher how pretty she looked, with her make-up slightly smudged and the hair locks that had escaped her now messy bun. How accessible she felt—and not even in a bad way, but more like, he could reach a hand out and poke her cheek with his fingertips, or trail his index along her hairline, down the curve of her ear and touch her piercings, or even just lean back against his seat and just, look at her. How peaceful the interior of her car felt.

He’d tell Marius how Rainbow didn’t exist back then. How it was just him and the wrong waitress he had started falling for. And at the same time, how he still had this thought in the back of his mind, constantly nagging him—what if he ended up blowing up his mission in smoke?

“You’re staring,” she’s saying, smiling, eyes still on the road ahead.

“And you’re blushing.”

If there’s one thing he’s learned about her during his countless nights at the same stupid club, then it’s that she doesn’t blush. Not when his eyes are glued to her. He has stared at her much more lewdly than he’s doing now, most of all with a few drinks too many in his stomach and in his system.

She shrugs, and when she stops the car and Dominic turns back around, he notices they’ve arrived at her house. “You should come in,” she says instead, already getting out of the car and opening the back door to let the dogs out. “You don’t have to,” she adds quickly when he gets out, too. And he can’t see her face now that she’s unlocking her entrance door, but he knows she’s still blushing. “Only if you want.”

He wouldn’t tell Marius how her lips felt against his, nor how the drinks they had in her kitchen tasted when her tongue brushed against his. How she felt in his lap, one of her hands on the back of his head and the other up his shirt, against his tattooed chest. How she ground her hips down against him just right and tore a grunt from deep inside his belly and that vibrated against her lips, making her smile.

He’d tell none of that, but his friend would still understand.

*

What he did tell Marius, however, as they laid under the starry sky, was that, somehow, no one had felt like her again. Not his random hook-ups, the ones he was guilty of picking either because he needed a distraction or because they reminded him of Angel, and not even Katie, that kindergarten teacher Seamus had introduced to him and with whom he had hung out for a month or so. Nothing serious, and he hadn’t even exactly put effort into it, but a part of him still had tried. More for Seamus’—or even just Katie’s—sake than his own.

It was exactly Katie that Marius brought up with a yawn. And when he asked what had been wrong with her—or, well, maybe not wrong per se but more, I don’t know, brother… Amiss?—Dominic had found himself scoffing.

Katie’s not her—but he didn’t say it out loud. He didn’t say how he had fallen for the way Y/N fought in the ring, how she grimaced or grinned, the way her braids would slap against a cheek or a shoulder when her movements would be too abrupt. He’d go to her after the fights, and sometimes still sweaty and bruised, she’d straight up fuck the living sanity out of him—a hand around his throat and the other on his chest to keep her balance as they went at it on either his or her couch.

“Katie was…” He thought it over, fighting with his words and his brain’s ability to pick the right one. “Too nice.”

Y/N hadn’t been just black or just white—she was a whole spectrum of grays, ranging from one end to the other of it. Soft and kind on any day; but then also fearless and strong when she needed to be, ready to raise hell and fight God when she had to.

Dominic would have never been able to picture Katie on a ring, taking blows and also giving them back, because that wasn’t who Katie was. And although there was absolutely nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with being who you are, it just… wasn’t the same. He never found himself with his wrists tied to the headboard of Katie’s bed, with a blindfold over his eyes, almost holding his breath to see—feel—where she’d touch him next. Or how. Or even with what.

And probably that was why he couldn’t take Angel out of his mind—because he knew, deep down, that he wouldn’t be able to have her again. That she was gone, lost in a chapter of his life that he had reached the end of, and that he had left in the past. And although he did often go back to reread it, that was exactly all he could do—read, but never change a word of it.

“You still have time to add something more, though.”

He had almost dozed off to sleep, the exhaustion and exertion of that day’s worth of hiking catching up with him and his tired limbs. And it was only when Marius uttered those words that he realized he had spoken that inner monologue out loud into the darkness of the night.

The stars were blinking down at him, almost winking at his powerlessness in that situation. He wasn’t scared that she might cut his balls off and feed them to the wolves; nor that she might pull her hair back into two braids and teach him a lesson or two.

What stopped him from working was the very last voicemail she had left him, when she had called his German number for the last time. He had seen her cry—cry with laughter at some stupid joke, or sob her lungs out that one time they watched Marley and Me together, the mere idea of one day losing her dogs tearing her up from the inside out. But the way she had breathed into the phone, trying to hold back the sobs, and the way her voice had broken on every other syllable—Please, Domi, pick up. I don’t understand what’s going on, but I know you’re not with the others—it still wrecked him.

He had listened to it so many times that not only did he know every word by heart, but he could hear her voice—the way it cracked, when she’d sob, when Otto would whine in the background. And what was worse, was that he could see her with his mind’s eye—sitting in the empty tub, or on one of the stools in the kitchen, or even behind the wheel of her car. So strong and resolute… crumbling apart because all he had had to offer was a lie.

Or maybe not all—he had been honest with her. Honest the first time he had told her he loved her, and honest the last time he had professed his love. That hadn’t been a lie. The way he’d hold her at night, when she’d sleep with her head on his chest, or the way he had always been ready to pounce on way-too-daring customers at the club, or when he told her she was the light of his life—none of that had been a lie.

But everything surrounding that? His loyalty to the gang? To the guys? To Christian? His made-up past before he settled down in the city? The real reason he’d sometimes love to go on solo trips and enjoy some peace, when he was in fact meeting up with people from his real life?

“I had my chance,” he decided to say instead, closing his eyes against the night sky. He’d been out stargazing with her, once, the first time they had fucked. It had been sweet and peaceful, until it had turned hotter and messier and sweatier. If he stared up at those stars one minute longer, he knew it, he’d be back on that field, with her trapped between him and the plaid blanket, clothes strewn haphazardly all around. And that was the last thing he needed. “And I wasted it.”

He didn’t say how he wasted it by coming back, but the implicature was still out there, heavy and acrid in the otherwise fresh air of the mountains.

But there had been no backing out of it. Rainbow would have come; something would have been done anyway. At some point in his staying, things had moved too forward before his heart had been able to pick a side, and there had been nothing else he could do. He had broken her heart, but he had also broken his own, and that had been inevitable. A fate he had had zero chances escaping. They had found each other too late, and he’d probably die regretting anything about that case.

There was absolutely no going back there, but he had also started to think that his future didn’t lay in Rainbow anymore, either. It had become too much—and also too little, all at the same time. Gang life surely wasn’t for him, but he was starting to realize that his last undercover mission had ended up messing up with him a bit too much, and although it didn’t exactly interfere with the way he acted in Rainbow, it did with the vision he had of it—and of himself as part of it.

“I think I need a break from this,” he muttered into the night, eyes closed both out of tiredness and that lingering sort of embarrassment he felt any time he addressed how inadequate he now felt. “It’s almost been a year and I still haven’t been able to stop long enough to think.”

He didn’t know if Marius had turned to glance at him in the semi-darkness, before they turned off their torches to sleep, but he knew he had heard.

*

“What Angel? You’re a little minx,” Dominic chuckles, still out of breath, his chest burning with exhaustion every time it rises and falls. His sweaty back sticks to the leather seats of the car, and he knows the sensation she must be feeling can’t be much different.

But he doesn’t turn to look at her. His gaze is glued to her lace panties, hanging from the gear shift in the front. If he didn’t feel too boneless to lean forward and take her phone from the passenger’s seat, he’d for sure take a picture.

“Who are you calling little?” Her laugh is breathless, and when she moves around like a contortionist to sit up straight, her lips brush against the side of his neck, making his skin break out in gooseflesh and the short hair on the nape of his head tug. “I’m still taller than you with my heels on.”

Laughter rumbles deep in his chest, and he lets her pull his head back when she tugs on his hair with a hand. “Details, pretty doll.”

She doesn’t remind him how she’s kicked his butt just a couple of weeks ago during training and part of him is happy because all they’ve been using that accident as is some sort of foreplay that always ends up with her straddling him, making him tremble with the unexpected touches his blindfold always seems to heighten.

When her finger traces the underside of his cock, however, that chuckle dies on his lips and he gasps almost inaudibly in the back of his throat. Suddenly, his suit pants pulled down to mid-thigh feel constricting and he knows that if she keeps it up, he’ll be hard again soon.

“Don’t.” He didn’t intend for it to come out that way, but his prayer is soft on her lips, when she turns his head to the side to stare into his eyes. “We’re running late for the party.”

She shrugs—and he thinks that fuck, if this car didn’t feel this cramped, he’d fuck her brains out, party or no party, not even when it comes to his boss. “You made me come twice,” she replies, matter-of-factly, not at all moved by his begging or by his breath hitching in the back of his throat when her fingers move down to his balls. “I think it’s just fair I pay back the favor, no?”

His chest and neck are still flushed when he walks into the villa Christian has rented out for his New Year’s party. The initial surprise of Y/N caving in for a member has quickly subsided, and no one whistles in their direction when they see them walk in hand in hand.

They greet their friends, exchange quick hugs, and before long, they’re all drinking and chatting.

“You were late,” Christian says. The expression on his face is serious, but the left corner of his mouth is slowly twitching up into a smirk he manages to hide when he tips his head back and downs his shot.

Dominic shrugs, gaze wandering back to where Angel is catching up with Franziska and Verena, one leg crossed over the other, left bare by the slit in her dress. “Yeah,” he clears his throat, trying not to think about how her panties are still hanging from the gear shift of the car. “We had a setback.” He hesitates on that last word, for he tries to come up with something that could at least sound unassuming, but by God, the crotch of his pants feels like it’s growing tighter and he just knows kissing her won’t be the only thing he’ll be doing when the clock strikes midnight.

Christian laughs. “If my car smells like sex—”

“We rolled the windows down. We’re not animals,” he replies with a snort.

“Just… get it cleaned before you give it back.”

Y/N glances back at them then, eyes twinkling and lips still kiss-swollen and bruised under the lipstick she reapplied before getting out of the car, he’s sure. But before she can call him to her or he can walk up to her a bit stiffly of his own accord, Christian speaks again.

“We still have some time before dinner. There’s a meeting in the other room. Marcel has news on that seemingly lost package.”

Dominic turns around, brows furrowed in confusion, before his brain manages to quickly piece everything back together and he follows the other man down a corridor and into another room. He’s almost forgotten about the new cargo coming in—it’s been a feat lately, to remember he’s not actually one of them but an undercover agent trying to blow a gang up. It’s harder and harder, and he knows the lines aren’t blurred—not yet, at least—but it’s become way too easy, to lose himself in his new friendships and in the unexpected love he’s found here.

But when reality strikes back, it’s hard to distract his mind again.

Anton’s there—and while he isn’t the boss, he’s high up enough to be one of Rainbow’s main concerns. The oldest in the group, he’s rarely there, he rarely shows up. He does work behind the scenes, but that’s where he’d rather stay—away from the kids’ stupidity, or that’s how he always jokes about it.

He’s tall and strong—a whole wardrobe of a man, but Dominic’s still been promoted to be his bodyguard and he can’t help but feel a pang of something deep in his brain, and there’s this unsolicited thought bubbling up that makes him feel all sorts of ways. Maybe someone’s had some suspicions about him, and this is all a test—or this is what he thinks before Anton moves the wrong way and he’s forced to explain that the reason for that agonized groan is the extent of the injuries he’s incurred into not too long ago.

But then they’re all back for dinner, and Dominic doesn’t have time to bask in that wave of relief washing over him when he figures out there’s nothing to fear. They eat and drink and play stupid semi-drunk games, until it’s half an hour to midnight and Y/N has dragged him into a bathroom and unbuckled his belt.

It’s quick and messy, and his fingertips dig hard into the flesh of her hips as they stare into each other’s eyes in the mirror.

“I was thinking,” she hums, wrapped tight around his arm as he walks back with her at five minutes to midnight—enough time to make her come once more, or maybe twice, but Alex has promised a great pyrotechnic show and neither of them wants to miss how he almost gets himself blown up like last year.

“My thoughts are still in that bathroom and you tell me you’re thinking?” he chuckles, pressing a kiss to her cheek before he gives her hand a squeeze, almost as though he’s telling her to just continue.

“You dork,” she laughs. “But yes, I was thinking. Why don’t you move in with me?” she asks. “You’re already there most of the time, and your house is always messy and your couch not comfortable enough for…” She shrugs, trying her best to hide her smirk. “Plus, I’d really love to have you there.”

He feigns thinking about it, but when she gasps in mock shock, he pulls her in for a kiss—and that is when their friends must see and whistle. “I’d never say no to that, Angel.”

Her smile is bright and in the moment, he doesn’t even realize he doesn’t have forever with her, although that’s what he’s come to crave for.

*

He didn’t know how he let Marius convince him to go back to Germany and see her. He really had no clue, just as he didn’t have a clue about many things—what he’d tell her, how she might react, what he’d do after. How he’d feel after—relieved? like he’s finally had some closure? and how would things be once back in Hereford?

There were a million and one thoughts in his mind as he sat there, on his hotel bed. Harry had offered to let the organization pay for it, but Dominic would have felt too bad if he had let him. This was personal, and there was no saying if his heart still lay within Rainbow schemes. He’d probably keep in touch; he’d probably always be available for anything, really, but the more time passed, the less he thought that was still the right place for him.

Düsseldorf was still buzzing with life despite the torrential rain when he walked out into the street. Y/N—he feared too many emotions and memories would resurface if he let himself think of her as Angel—had moved from the city three years after her lifetime friends had ended up in jail, sent behind bars by none other than her lover. They wouldn’t stay inside forever—he knew how these things worked, he didn’t live a delusion.

He had called her, the day before he had booked his flight. If there was one thing he owed her, it was at least that—let her know he’d be coming… if she wanted him to, that is. If she didn’t want to meet up, then so be it: he’d go on with his life the way he had done throughout the past year and try not to regret too much stuff he had been forced to do because of his job.

But when she had picked up the phone—he had called her old number with his old number—things had felt… well, not normal, of course—he had disappeared overnight without leaving a note or a text or a simple word that could let her know what the fuck had been going on during the past six years of his life—of their life. But she had picked up the phone and she hadn’t killed him through the device, and although she had remained silent for most of the call—and he had done the same, truly, not even knowing what he wanted to tell her, for the words just wouldn’t come—she had eventually agreed to meet up.

Not at her new house, although Harry had done some digging and knew where she lived—a nice apartment in a nice part of the city, but Dominic hadn’t wanted to know where, exactly, when his Director had offered to share the knowledge. She had picked a café, a nice and cozy place he had looked up on the internet, but still popular enough that the awkwardness of their date of sorts would be easily drowned out by the other patrons’ presence.

She was scrolling through her phone when he walked in and spotted her in the far left corner. It was secluded enough to guarantee them some privacy, but still not enough to cut them off from the rest of the world. He figured it was just perfect.

“Hey,” he greeted when he walked up to the table she had picked and he tried not to sigh when he noticed she had pulled her hair back into two braids.

She looked up at him—she didn’t glare the way he had expected her to, but she also didn’t smile. “Hey.”

He sat down, and they both stared at each other until a waiter came up and Y/N called for a coffee and an orange juice before glaring the guy away.

The awkwardness of it all quickly filled the space between them, and wrapped them up like a blanket, but it wasn’t just that. She was pissed, and angry, and probably murderous, but under all that he could still see the heartbreak in her eyes.

“Well, I’m here,” she said. “Say what you wanted to say. It’s the least I deserve, I think.”

Dominic opened his mouth to speak, but then the waiter came back and he closed it again as he watched their order being placed on the table. His cup of black coffee and her glass of juice seemed to put even more distance between them and he had to resist the impulse of passing a hand over his shaved head the way he did when he was nervous.

“I’m sorry,” was what he sighed, lowering his gaze first to the table and then back out of the window and the rain-washed street outside.

She leaned forward and took a sip from the straw before crossing her arms and sitting back against the cushioned back of the booth. “That’s it? You came all the way from wherever the fuck you’ve been hiding to just say I’m sorry? No explanation whatsoever?”

Another sigh, but before he could open his mouth to speak again, she cut him off.

“Was any of that real? Was there at least a crumb of truth? I opened up to you and you just—” Her voice trembled, but whether it was out of tears or pure anger, Dominic couldn’t tell.

“It was real.” He was quick at biting back, probably a bit too aggressively than he had any right to be. “It was real,” he repeated after a moment, voice much quieter and eyes boring into hers. “I did love you.”

“Love’s too big a word for the things you’ve done.”

“It was work,” he tried to reason. “I got sent here on an undercover mission—”

“I know that. I’ve been interrogated by the ones who didn’t go in. They suspected me. Because of you. Because I had been fucking the snitch for almost five years.”

He gaped at her for a moment before sighing in defeat. “I loved you,” but he didn’t say I still do, or You’re still on my mind day in and day out, and not even I still see your panties on the gear shift of Christian’s car. “That wasn’t fake, it wasn’t part of the mission. I told myself I wouldn’t fall for you, that it would mess things up, that it wasn’t fair to you. But I still did. Every I love you I said was real. Every single one of them.”

She was silent for a minute before she scoffed and shook her head. “You’re so full of shit, Dominic.”

It was different this time. She had told him that he was full of shit many a time, always laughing, always joking, but this time those words cut deep—deep enough to rob him of his breath for a moment.

“I trusted you,” she continued then, much quieter, voice barely audible above the sound of the music and of the other people chatting. “I thought you’d be my forever. How stupid I was…”

He looked down at his cup, his throat too knotted to even stomach the idea of drinking his coffee. “That makes two of us. I thought that I—”

“Don’t you even dare—”

“That I’d have more time,” he continued unrelenting, shaking his head with closed eyes for a second before opening them and staring at her again. “That I could buy more time. I kept on hoping I’d fuck up somehow, that things would go wrong and that I wouldn’t have to complete the mission. Or that I could have the time to make you hate me before it was all over.”

“Well, I do kinda hate you now.”

“Breaking your heart was never in my plans, though.” He almost moved his hand on the table to place it over hers, but a last-minute realization made him understand that that was most definitely the worst thing he could do at the moment. And not because she could snap his wrist easily, but because he had no right to. “I really did love you. I wanted to take you back with me. I tried to tell you.”

There was a spark of recognition in her eyes, then, and he knew what memory his words had brought back. The two of them relaxing in the bathtub, her back against his chest, her damp hair tickling his neck and cheek. Come away with me, he had told her, fingers trailing up and down her arms, making her shiver. Let’s go far away, where no one can find us.

“I didn’t want it to end,” he confessed. “Any of that.”

“You built everything on a lie, Dominic.” A scoff. “If that’s even your real name, that is.”

“It is.”

It seemed to take her off guard and erased the words she had been about to say.

“My name’s Dominic Brunsmeier, not Neumann. I work for an international unit of elite agents that fight terrorism. I was assigned on this mission because we were informed Anton was doing more than simply dealing drugs. I went undercover with a Hells Angels chapter in the past, so the GSG-9 called me back for this one,” he confessed, voice flat and almost professional. He would have never thought he’d one day be making such a speech out loud, but there he was, in a busy café, in front of the woman he still had the nerve to love but who didn’t love him back anymore. “And my love for you could’ve never been a lie.”

She nodded once and turned her head to the side and to the city outside. He was trying to gauge what she might be thinking, what might be going on inside her head. But she remained unreadable and distant. “They’d kill you if they knew you’re back,” she eventually said, glancing at him from the corner of her eye, her chin still resting on the palm of her hand.

He shrugged. “I’ve been close to death too many times to be scared today. This past year…” He couldn’t tell her it had been rough; he didn’t think he had the right to when in her eyes he had gone back home. “I knew I had to see you, even if it was for the last time. I didn’t think you’d agree to meet up, but I’m glad you did.”

They were silent after that. They drank their beverages, and all without speaking a word. But then, when they paid and left, she let him accompany her home.

“I thought you’d break my bones,” he confessed with a chuckle as he stood outside her apartment complex and she picked the right key to open the building’s door.

“I thought I would, too.” She was pensive, lost in thought, and it took her a couple of minutes before she pushed the door open. “But the truth is, I probably could never.”

They stared at each other, and before he could have the time to chicken out, he said, “I know it’s too much to ask, but… We could still have time together.”

She looked at him for a moment longer before she stepped into the building and closed the door behind her back.

Later that night, as he sat on his hotel bed once again, on a phone call with Marius, he couldn’t stop thinking about the last words she told him.

Yes, we could.

Feedback is always welcome if you want to drop old me a line 💛

If you want to be tagged, hit me up! xx

[rickybowensfever]

The Smoothie - HSMTMTS SickFic

I’ve had this story brewing in my head and saved for a couple months on my desktop, so figured I’d finish it up. 

Set during Season 1 - Ricky gets sick when E.J. gives him a smoothie out of revenge to become the lead in High School Musical. But, Nini doesn't believe him. Read the story on AO3. 

Opening night was just four days away and flu season had struck the students at East High as Spring sprung.

Sniffles, coughs, and tissues, oh my.

Miss Jenn constantly had her students applying hand sanitizer every five minutes. “Hand sanitizer check!” she would shout with the clear bottle in her hands demanding the students to put out their hands.

Backstage, Ricky stood around chatting with the other cast members as Seb and Carlos performed Bop to the Top when EJ approached him holding an orange-colored smoothie in his hand.

“Hey, Ricky!” he exclaimed walking toward the boy.

“Nini asked me to bring this to you. It’s Strawberry Mango, she wanted you to try it” EJ explained him, handing the boy the cold orange drink.

Ricky furrowed his brow, suspicion sinking in. He stood frozen holding the cold drink wondering where Nini was. She hadn’t shown up to rehearsal yet, but he had just seen her in fifth period.

“Alright, thanks” Ricky said grabbing the smoothie from his hand and took a long sip. He let out a refreshing Ahh after pulling away from the delicious beverage.

 Then, EJ ran on stage after hearing a faint call of his name from Ms. Jenn.

Wow. It’s pretty good, Ricky thought to himself and pulled out his phone to text Nini about it.

R: Hey, thanks for the smoothie! Really good.

N: What smoothie?

R: The strawberry mango one u got me?

N:  ??? I didn’t get you a smoothie.

Ricky looked up from his phone in confusion. Why would EJ do that?

R: Oh? EJ gave it to me, and he said you got it for me.

N: What? Ricky, I didn’t even have a smoothie. Are you pranking me or something?

 Ricky threw his hands in the air in distress and locked his phone, leaving Nini’s message on read. Now, he was more confused than ever.

“Ricky! On stage now! Come and get some hand sanitizer!” Ms. Jenn shouted through the auditorium.

 The Next Day

Ricky woke up in his bed shivering and covered in sweat. His throat felt raw, his nose was congested, his body ached, and his head was pounding.

This can’t be happening, he thought to himself , covering his face with his cold pillow.

Then, there as a knock on his door.

“Ricky! Get up. You’re going to be late for school” his father said as he opened the door to see his son lying in bed. 

Mr. Bowen studied his son for a second before he asked, “You okay?”.

Ricky coughed into his fist which just made his throat hurt more.

“No. Not really” he croaked, wincing at the pain in his throat. 

His father immediately walked over to his son’s bed to feel his sweaty forehead for a fever.

“Wow, you’re really warm. You stay home today. I’ll call the school and tell Ms. Jenn you won’t be at rehearsal” Mr. Bowen told his son.

Ricky scrunched his face in annoyance.

“No! Dad, I can’t miss rehearsal. We open in three days” he cried, wincing at the pain talking gave him.

“Then, you have two days to feel better and you have an understudy. I’m sure Ms. Jenn wouldn’t want you coming in this sick, bud” Mr. Bowen said frowning at his son.  

Ricky groaned and threw his head back down into his pillow.

“EJ” he muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, I was just trying to clear my throat,” Ricky said and curled up onto his side, hugging his pillow.

What felt like hours later, Ricky woke from a deep sleep.

“Hey, sorry to wake you. I just wanted to let you know I’m working from home today to take care of you. I know I’m not your Mom and she’s probably way better at this. But I’m trying” Mr. Bowen told his son as he held a bottle of red Gatorade in his hand and two blue capsules. 

Ricky smirked at his Dad’s statement. Since his Mom left, his Dad was trying his best under the circumstances she had given them. He did wish his Mom was here, just like the thousands of other times he wished for her to come walking in the door but never did.

“Thanks, Dad” Ricky croaked and took a swig of Gatorade, chasing it down with the pills.

“Not a problem, bud. Also, I found the only thermometer in our house. It took me a while. I texted your Mom, but she didn’t answer” he said frantically holding up an ear thermometer in the air.

Ricky changed positions in his bed to let his dad put the thermometer in his left ear.

“A little high, but nothing we can’t manage. Get some rest and keep drinking this” he pointed to the Gatorade bottle on the nightstand beside him, “so you don’t get dehydrated” Mr. Bowen explained before leaving his son.

Ricky’s phone buzzed.

1 Notification from Nini

1 Notification from We’re All in This Together GC  

Nini: Where are you?? We have an Environmental Science test today. We were going to study together :/

Ricky: Home sick. Sorry

Nini: Ricky. Are you serious? Opening Night is three days away. Did you even listen to Miss Jenn’s rules?

 What was Nini even saying? Why would he get sick on purpose? He was really starting to like this acting thing.

Ricky: Yeah, I listened to her. Idk how I got sick, but I feel like shit ok?  

Then, the message turned to read. Ricky threw his phone onto his sheets, rested his head onto his pillow, and drifted back to sleep.  

 “Ricky?” a petite voice called to him.

He woke up in a fog feeling groggy trying to make out the person in his room.

“Huh?” he called out to the voice and wiped the sweat off of his forehead.

 Nini stood at the end of his bed.

“Nini? What are you doing here?” he asked, panicked.

“Your texts worried me. I’m going back to rehearsal, I just needed to pick up a few things at home. So, I stopped by” she said smiling softly.

 Ricky coughed into his fist and sniffled.

Nini frowned.

“You sound awful” she mentioned.

“Thanks,” Ricky said sarcastically taking a sip of his warm Gatorade.

“I think E.J. got me sick,” he told her putting the hood of his sweatshirt over his curls.

“What? You’re not serious. E.J. wouldn’t do that” Nini refuted putting a hand on her hip.

Ricky shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know? But I felt fine before he gave me that smoothie. Then, I woke up like this!” he said emphasizing his sickly body.

“It’s flu season. It could just be a conscience. Anyway, I really have to get back to practice. But I’ll be back later” she said standing by his bedside, frowning at his condition.  

“No, I don’t want you catching this. If both of us are sick, there’s no show” the boy expressed in between coughs.

“Ricky. This isn’t my first rodeo! I know how to prepare for flu season during Hell Week” she exclaimed. “Get some rest and I’ll see you later” smiling back at him before exiting the room.

“Bye,” he said and checked his phone filled with notifications from friends and crewmates and Miss Jenn wishing him a speedy recovery.

Maybe: E.J.

Hey Ricky. It’s E.J. Heard you’re not feeling well. Hope you feel better soon and don’t worry about a thing! – Your Understudy

Ricky groaned at the message which just caused him to cough again.

 Then, his door opened again, and his Dad stood in the doorway.

“Hey, bud. How ya doing?” Mr. Bowen asked.

“I’ve been better” Ricky replied snarkily.

“You’re probably due for another dose of medicine” he suggested holding up two new blue tablets and a package of Saltines.

Ricky nodded, silently thanking his father, and took the tablets with the remaining liquid in his Gatorade bottle.

The last time Ricky woke up, his guitar was strumming.

He had to be delirious at this point, he thought to himself. After dreaming he was running around East High trying to make it to the stage but finding a dead-end every time, he was stressed enough.

He rubbed his eyes and saw a silhouette sitting in the corner of his room on his rolling desk chair.  Nini Salazar coming into focus.

“Hey!” she sang softly, putting the acoustic guitar down against the wall.

“Nini. What are you doing here?” Ricky asked, panicked, clutching his comforter tightly.

“It’s okay! I just came to apologize” she said, sitting closer to the boy, now on the edge of his bed.

Ricky shook his head, confused.

“For what?” he asked her.

Nini laughed, “For defending E.J.” she began.

Ricky rose his eyebrow at her. “Today, when I got to rehearsal he said, he was glad the smoothie worked!” she exclaimed, “I couldn’t believe it! I’m so disappointed in him. That’s not the E.J. I know and loved,” she said, slapping the bed as she explained the situation to him.

Ricky winced as the bed shook.  His head throbbing as she explained her conversation with E.J. more.

“I told you,” Ricky snickered hoarsely.

“Don’t strain your voice” Nini said frowning at the state of his voice.

He shrugged at her and yawned.

“So, I’m sorry that I didn’t believe you,” she told him, smiling softly.

Thanks, Ricky mouthed to the girl.

“You’re welcome. Now, you rest up because we have a show to do! And I’m not doing this with E.J.” she said, smirking.

Ricky returned the smirk and got settled back into his bed and closed his eyes.

The light went out in his room and the sound of the door shut.

[kuiinncedes]

HI JEANNE I AM SO GLAD UR DOING PROMPTS!!! can i prompt general #24 for quinntina with some kuinn friendship maybe pls???? 🥺🥺💞💗💞💗💞💗💞💗

hi rae thanks for prompting!!! <333

General 24 “I haven’t seen (her/him/them) smile in months.”

this got longggg 2796 ish words 👀 (i edited it after pasting into tumblr tho so idk exactly :P) i think this is the longest thing i’ve posted?? i hope it doesn’t suck <3

(also small mention of homophobic parent(s) (mostly quinn’s mom) and just not great parenting... also blood and death mention warning (but like just in conversation?))

i’m like weirdly nervous about this one sdlhgkjf *screams and hits post*

--

“What’s wrong with Tina?”

Kurt gives Quinn a sideways look, fixing his hair in the mirror on his locker. “Tina Cohen Chang? Why are you asking about her?”

Quinn shrugs, trying to play innocent and nonchalant. “I haven’t seen her smile in months.” Because since the beginning of the year, Tina always smiled at her as she walked into their first class and the only one they share, but now she doesn’t, if she even comes to class on time at all.

Kurt looks at her knowingly and Quinn pushes his arm lightly. “Shut up,” she grumbles. “I’m serious.”

“I’ve noticed it, too,” Kurt says after a moment, following Quinn’s gaze to Tina arriving at her locker. They watch as she hurriedly puts some books in her bag and quickly walks off again, head down and giving a wide berth to everyone she passes. 

“Yeah, and that,” Quinn says, “it’s like she’s… scared or something.” She looks at Kurt whose jaw has tightened. Quinn squeezes his arm lightly and he smiles a little at her. 

“I can ask Mercedes,” he says reluctantly as he shuts his locker and they start walking down the hall. “She’d know more than me, but… yeah, I don’t think she’s even been in glee lately.”

Quinn’s barely paying attention and almost runs into another student before Kurt pulls her out of the way. “You know, it’s a little creepy that you noticed this at all,” he teases, a glimmer in his eye, and Quinn elbows him and follows him into their next class.

-

Mercedes doesn’t give them any new information, and then Quinn -- Quinn wants to forget about it, but she can’t. She keeps stealing glances at Tina in the halls, during class, at lunch. She knows Kurt’s right, that it is a little creepy, but… 

They’ve been around each other’s circles since the beginning of high school, and a friendly wave from Tina one morning was the only thing keeping Quinn feeling normal when the least normal thing possible had happened to her the night before. She didn’t have Kurt yet, she barely had any friends because of her work to uphold her status as the ice-cold head Cheerio. Tina was kind to her when she was spiraling after her world had turned upside down and no one was around to support her, to turn it back around. 

So she just wants to know if Tina’s okay. Because of that. No other reason.

-

Quinn gets her chance a week later. 

She doesn’t expect to see Tina today -- she isn’t in English and hadn’t been for a few days. Quinn tries to ignore her growing concern; after all, she still doesn’t actually know anything about Tina’s life.

When Mrs. Harrison splits them off into groups of two for a new project, Quinn is last to pick her partner and everyone else has already paired off.

“Tina’s absent today, I’ll work with her,” Quinn says airily, playing with the end of her ponytail and tapping her pencil on the desk. She acts like she doesn’t care (why would Quinn Fabray have any reaction to getting paired with a relative social nobody for a project?) but part of her is… looking forward to it. Not only because of her persisting concern about what’s going on with Tina, but also because she does genuinely want to spend time with her. So maybe this is her chance.

She tells Kurt about it at his locker between classes and he rolls his eyes and smiles fondly at her. 

It’s the end of the day when Quinn realizes she doesn’t actually have Tina’s number to contact her; it’s too late to ask Kurt or Cedes, she stayed after school to retake a math test and she’s the only one here, as far as she knows.

Except she’s not. There’s another car in the student lot. Quinn glances at it and stops when she realizes someone is sitting in the driver’s seat -- Tina. Before she can talk herself out of it, Quinn walks over and taps on her window. 

Maybe she should’ve talked herself out of it, she thinks as Tina jumps and seems to steel herself before rolling down her window. Quinn smiles a little, apologetically. A wave of warm air comes from inside the car, like Tina’s been blasting the heat even in the relatively warm spring weather.

“Um, hey,” Quinn says awkwardly. “So… you weren’t in English today, but we’re doing a project and you and I are partners.” Her voice goes up at the end as if it’s a question. She’s really doubting this now. Tina looks like she’s sick and she’s gripping the steering wheel and not meeting Quinn’s eyes. “Or…” Quinn clears her throat slightly, putting her head Cheerio, most popular girl in school mask back on. “It’s fine if you don’t. Just tell Mrs. Harrison. I’ll do it myself.”

“No,” Tina says, looking up at her finally, and Quinn thinks there’s something different about her eye color. Her smile is tight and forced. “Sounds good.”

Quinn raises an eyebrow. “You sure? Doesn’t sound like it sounds good.”

Tina clenches her jaw. “Yeah, it’s good, sorry, I’m just tired,” she says in one breath. “Here, I’ll, um -- ” She fumbles with her phone and offers it to Quinn. “Put your number in, I’ll text you.”

Quinn’s fingers brush Tina’s when she takes the phone and she almost jumps at how cold her skin is, despite the warmth emanating from the car. Even Kurt, who runs cold, isn’t nearly this cold to Quinn’s own unnaturally warm body temperature…. Her concern grows and she watches Tina for another moment, who’s closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat. 

“Are you… okay?” Quinn asks hesitantly.

“I’m fine.” 

“Forgive me for saying this? But you… don’t look fine.”

Tina gives her a sideways look. “Yeah, well.” She closes her eyes again.

Quinn enters her number but doesn’t give Tina’s phone back when she’s done. “Hey, seriously, I -- what’s wrong?”

Tina just exhales defeatedly. “I can’t tell you.” 

“Try me.”

She shakes her head.

“Your skin is fucking freezing, you have the heat on high in the car in almost 70-degree weather, you look different and not in a good way. I know -- I know we don’t talk much, Tina, but please, let me help you.” Quinn even surprises herself with the last part. It’s far from the hard facade she hides behind at school in her Cheerios uniform, even though she’s still wearing that right now. 

Tina stays still and silent and Quinn fidgets with her phone. 

“I really don’t know what to do here,” Tina says softly, opening her eyes, glancing at Quinn again then back away. “I literally… have no. Fucking. Clue.” It sounds like she’s talking to herself more than anything and Quinn isn’t sure how to respond.

“Well, I… whatever I can do -- ”

“Have you ever had something… absolutely, absolutely insane happen to you? Like… you would never believe it yourself but it happened to you and you have to fucking deal with it so you have to believe it.” Tina’s breaths come more quickly as she continues, her fists curling tighter around the steering wheel. “And I don’t know how to fucking deal with it, but I fucking have to because -- because I have to and I’m this thing now -- ”

“Hey, Tina, hey, breathe,” Quinn says hurriedly, trying to put a hand on her shoulder but the angle from outside the car window is awkward and she doesn’t know if it would be appreciated. Her mind spins with those words -- you have to believe it, I’m this thing now -- and it’s scarily similar to Quinn’s own thoughts when she first… turned, over three years ago.

But Tina can’t be a werewolf too, her skin… Quinn thinks. Thankfully Tina’s breathing has mostly gone back to normal and she just looks exhausted again, her forehead resting on the steering wheel and hands loose in her lap now. What the fuck. What the fuck am I about to do.

Despite all her instincts and rationale screaming at her not to do it, Quinn says shakily, “I think I get it,” and when Tina turns to look at her, she inhales and says in a whisper, so quiet she’s not sure if Tina can hear, “I’m a werewolf.”

Tina stares and Quinn starts thinking and thinking about how she can take it back, it was a joke, there’s obviously no such thing as werewolves, what the fuck was she saying, what was she thinking revealing this to a near stranger --

“I think… I think I’m technically a vampire.” 

Oh. Quinn stares back at her.

Some of the tension seems to have gone out of Tina’s body. There’s another silence. “Can I trust you?” Tina asks quietly.

“What -- ? I mean, yeah…” Quinn swallows. “Yes, you can. Of course. I think if there’s one person you could trust with this, it’s me.” 

Please trust me.

“Thank you,” Tina whispers, like she just has no energy to speak louder. “I just can’t think right now, I think I need… like, fucking blood, probably, I don’t know…” She looks down at her hands hopelessly. “I think I might be dying.” She laughs humorlessly. “Again, I guess.”

Quinn thinks for a moment, taking in the almost metallic pallor of Tina’s skin and the difference in her irises that she noticed earlier. “How long have you… been a vampire?” 

Is this the answer to what she’s been wondering about?

“A few months, I guess.” (There it is… Quinn wonders if anyone might have noticed something different in her for the months after her first night as a wolf.) “There was another vampire -- nicer than the one who bit me -- ” her voice goes hard and tight on bit -- “who gave me some blood for a while. But I don’t know where they are now. They said they never stayed in one place for a long time. So I guess I’m starving to death. I don’t know.”

“Can’t you, like, get blood… somewhere?”

“I can barely stand talking to you right now, to be honest,” Tina says. “I don’t think I could go near other people right now.”

Right. Quinn curses her complete lack of knowledge on vampires besides that from popular media, which probably doesn’t apply very well to this situation. This feels absolutely ridiculous, though she’s been through weirder herself… still. Her first full moon was a disaster and she doesn’t know how to deal with this either. But… 

“I might be able to help,” she says, standing up straighter and finally handing Tina’s phone back to her. Tina pauses before taking it, as if she forgot about it; Quinn has, too, for the most part. The project is definitely not a priority now. “I know absolutely nothing about vampires,” Quinn continues, “but I have my own needs as a werewolf. I know a place -- it’s where I hunt. Animals.”

Tina seems to wince at the words. Quinn vaguely remembers hearing about how Tina doesn’t eat meat, for the most part. She could probably avoid thinking about it when someone else was getting her blood, but this will be direct. This will be a change.

Quinn presses on. “You need blood. Everything in history about vampires says that -- they can’t all be wrong. Please let me help you.”

“Okay,” Tina says weakly, nodding a little. “Give me the address, or whatever -- ”

“I’m driving you. In this car. And staying with you.” Quinn doesn’t back down as Tina’s eyes snap to hers, and her mouth opens to protest. “Seriously. I’m helping you with this. And you’ll crash the car if you drive yourself.”

Her head falls back against the headrest. “You’re lucky I’m exhausted and dying, Fabray,” she grumbles. She gets out and goes around the front of the car into the passenger seat, and Quinn slides into the driver’s seat, putting her bag in the back. She instinctively reaches to turn down the heat, but remembers Tina’s freezing skin.

“You can turn it down,” Tina says. “I don’t even feel cold. I just wanted my skin to feel normal to other people, which clearly wasn’t working.” Quinn gives her a glance to make sure, but Tina is just leaned against the window, body slumped and tired. 

She turns it down just a little.

Then remembering something else Tina said earlier, Quinn asks warily, “Are you okay with me in the car right now? I know you said earlier you could barely stand it…”

Tina shrugs. “I mean, I have to be, don’t I?” Quinn doesn’t answer, and Tina looks over at her and chuckles a little. “Don’t worry, Fabray, I won’t kill you and drain your blood. Although it does sound… appetizing right now.”

“Haven’t you read Twilight? My blood tastes awful to vampires,” Quinn jokes, trying to lighten the mood as she pulls the car out of the school parking lot. 

“Is that really a thing?”

Quinn laughs lightly. “I think so, I don’t know. But that is something I’m thinking about when it comes to vampires, so I must’ve heard it somewhere.”

Tina hums. “I never read or watched Twilight. My parents wouldn’t let me; my mom said she thought Kristen Stewart seemed like a bitch.” She lets out a short laugh. “The irony.”

“Do your parents know?”

“No. Yours?”

“No.” It’s honestly too easy for Quinn to hide it from her mom and her mom’s boyfriend. They’re never home and when they are, they leave Quinn alone, which is fine by her, especially on full moons or random weird days when she needs to leave. She does whatever the fuck she wants; they don’t question it. She supposes there are worse ways to live, especially while being a werewolf.

“How am I supposed to tell them?” Tina asks, looking out the window. “I thought I’d have to worry about telling them I thought Kristen Stewart was hot, not that I had basically become her -- or, her character.”

“Well, you could lead with the first thing? Maybe that’ll make it a little easier to accept. Or you could lead with the second, and while they’re freaking out about that, just drop in that you like girls.”

“Ha ha.”

“It’s good advice, I just might follow it myself,” Quinn jokes.

“…You like girls?” Tina asks. “Or -- you don’t have to answer that, sorry -- ”

Quinn glances at her. “Yeah.” 

“Cool. Let me know how it goes, if you do follow that advice,” Tina teases lightly.

Quinn laughs harshly at the mere thought of coming out to her mom. She might’ve been able to come around about her teenage pregnancy, but Quinn doesn’t miss the tone her voice takes on when she asks about Kurt or when Quinn mentions him, when Quinn’s watching something on TV or reading a book, when she sees something in the news. 

“Well I’m not coming out anytime soon.”

“That’s fine,” Tina says, her voice soft and tired but sincere. 

“Kurt’s the only other person who knows, though, so… yeah, you know… trust thing.”

“Of course. Thanks for telling me.”

And Quinn does trust Tina, with this, with the werewolf thing… she’s wondering how Tina managed to win her trust so quickly... and friendship.

Hopefully, Tina trusts her enough for what they’re about to do.

“We’re here,” Quinn says, pulling into a dirt area surrounded by woods. She puts the car in park and hears Tina take a deep breath. She looks nervous and Quinn doesn’t need to imagine to have an idea of what’s going through her head right now. She takes one of her freezing hands in her own, holds it between them. “Tina. I’ll be here for you, okay? I’ll help you. Are you ready?”

“Absolutely not. Do you know anything about vampires hunting?”

“Is it so different from turning into a wolf and hunting?” Quinn jokes, then asks seriously, “Do you need a minute?”

“No.” Tina removes her hand to open the door and Quinn misses the contact, the… warmth, even from her cold skin. 

When she gets out of the car and comes up next to her, Tina shoots her a grateful smile -- small, but genuine. Something Quinn hasn’t seen in months. She’s missed it. 

(Shit, Kurt was right, she thinks, and if this is any indication, she won’t ever get tired of that smile.)

“Thank you, Quinn, for helping me with this.”

“Of course.”

Quinn’s hand suddenly finds itself in Tina’s again, and she can feel Tina’s hand shaking a little. Quinn gives her a small, reassuring squeeze. “Let’s go.”

***

small notes for after bc i didn’t want to “spoil” this before lol !!

this is in the werewolf!quinn / vampire!tina au i’ve written in before :) if u wanna check that out hehe here’s my fic tag :P 

this and this are the two that are most connected to this one tho if u want to read :3 especially the second one -- i think that’s kind of a continuation of this fic, or like the next scene i guess

no one really cares but i started out with this prompt thinking about a more canon s1 au where it was tina saying the prompt about quinn during her pregnancy but idk somehow it turned into this instead slfdkjkd

i really didn’t have many notes lmao that’s it thanks for reading if u did <3

[snlangford]

Let’s Talk About Trackers...

Because of the major talk about them yesterday and how an anon tried to throw me under the bus, I want to make an informative post about the specific tracker I use and certain others do too (assuming they still use these). This will also go under a keep reading so you don’t have to scroll in case you read it and then don’t wanna scroll past it a second time.

I personally use a site called statcounter. What is stat counter? Well, let me explain with an excerpt from Wikipedia!

“StatCounter is a web traffic analysis website started in 1999. Access to basic services is free and advanced services can cost between US$5 and US$119 a month. StatCounter is based in Dublin, Ireland. The statistics from StatCounter are used to compute web usage share for example. As of May 2019, StatCounter is used on 0.9% of all websites. StatCounter statistics are directly derived from hits—as opposed to unique visitors—from 3 million sites, which use StatCounter, resulting in total hits of more than 15 billion per month. No artificial weightings are used to correct for sampling bias, thus the numbers in the statistics can not be considered to be representative samples.”

Statcounter I find has some cool features too if you do run a business site, which I aim to do in the future, here’s some of the cool analytics stuff they have if you’re a business marketer:

This above is a capture taken for the tracker on my OC blog @ / barashikki-dialoversoc

This tool here provides where the majority of your people come from, so it will help businesses to have features such as this, so StatCounter is cool to use for business and marketing.

But that’s not why we’re here, are we?

StatCounter says they provide you with IPs in hopes of blocking/banning them from your site and/or stopping fraud on your website.

Sure, that’s useful as I personally use that to block people’s IPs if they send me hate anons. But here is how it’s an issue... This specific tab, which I know M/C uses quite often from my former friendship with her: Visitor Activity

Now, let’s go there and break it down. I will be censoring sensitive information like people’s locations and IP addresses to protect them.

I want to also address the “xxx is now using 100% of its log space” too.

It may be hard to read, but it says the following 

“Your Project Bara Shikki is now using 100% of its log space. This means that your website traffic data for detailed stats older than 7 months* will be overwritten to make room for new data. You can upgrade for $9/month to increase your log to 10+ years*. If you don't mind losing this old data for detailed stats, then no action is required on your part. Summary Stats are included with all plans and are unlimited.

* Estimated based on your current traffic”

For my other blog @ / dialoving-lemons, it deletes this info in 7 days due to the high demand traffic (it is a LOT more popular than any of my other blogs despite me being on hiatus there).

So while that is good, this information stays for a while. If someone is paying for this service, they can keep this info for a long time.

Now onto the part we are mainly addressing, addresses and IPs. I will use my own visits for the example (the white censor). And yes, you can appear on your own tracker as it picks anyone up who visits the URL.

I color coded this so we can do a breakdown. 

Yellow is my city. Green is the state (will be providence if you are in another country). Then you see “United States” as the country it says I’m from. Your country’s flag also appears before your location.

^^^This here is already pretty accurate and sensitive information, and we haven’t even gotten to the second line yet.

For the second line, we have these: Purple is your internet provider. White, that’s your IP. See that tag next to it? You can click on that and make notes in it for when that person returns to your url. You can even sign up for notifications to get emails or alerts on your phone (if you have the statcounter app). How do I know this? This is how:

Incognito doesn’t have dark mode, so sorry for bright image lol

Idk about you guys, but that’d make me uncomfortable to know someone could just get a ping saying I’m visiting their page. Again, I don’t know what features M/C uses, so I can’t say if she has this or not.

So not only can you find someone’s location, internet provider, and IP (which I think is enough for someone who hack or screw you over somehow, idk. I’d want to look that info up) but you can also stalk when they’re on your blog. This is a big YIKES.

Now back to the breakdown of the image from earlier...

You can learn what device they used, their browser, get a timestamp, and also how long they were on your page. I personally don’t care sharing this info, many of us use the most updated browser of our choice and most of us are on windows 10 for computer users.

So... yeah. While I use statcounter myself to block haters and redirect their IPs so they can’t get on my page anymore, I feel this site does give out too much information. On top of that, the one we all know who uses this software also has some software that checks who unfollows her. She uses these to get dirt on people and to expose them, it is not for her safety.

Now some tips on how to be safe if you don’t want to be tracked thanks to me testing things out:

Use the tumblr app.

The tumblr app uses coding for mobile usage. It does not rely on urls, but another form of code. StatCounter cannot log this code, so you will not appear on the visitor activity tab.

View blogs in side view

This is side view for those that don’t know. Side view acts a lot like the app in terms of the coding. So viewing like this is safe for you to not appear on trackers.

StatCounter relies on you typing in and clicking on urls on someone’s tumblr page (if installed on a tumblr).

As long as you are on a way that doesn’t rely on url systems, you are safe from appearing in someone’s tracker.

And a final note, if you are going to use one like I do, for blocking haters’ IPs, then I highly recommend putting a disclaimer in your description. I immediately did that when I installed mine so people knew they’d get rerouted if they started crap with me. I personally feel that keeping it secret that you have a tracker is violating someone’s consent as you are gathering info without their permission. By saying you have one, them being able to use ways where they won’t be tracked is very useful and helps them feel at ease knowing they can decide if they’re fine popping up on your tracker or not. Here is an example disclaimer you can put if you do put one in. Feel free to copy and paste too!

"Disclaimer: I use a tracker that allows me to see visitors’ IPs so I can block them if they cause problems for me, proceed at your own risk"

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #411

“everybody’s got loaded stories, and i know for a fact everybody sees a bullseye on my back”

Have you ever been to jail? No. Opinion on snow? I absolutely love it! Not big on the slush it leaves behind, though. It gets ugly. What are you best at drawing? Meerkats. Are you scared of going over bridges? Nah. If you had endless energy and stamina, how would you spend your days? Plenty of exercise, lots of exploration with my camera, doing chores much more regularly... stuff like that. What mental or physical space do you go when you want to recharge or relax? I go to my room and watch YouTube. Did you have/use a comfort object as a child (do you continue to have one)? I actually don't remember. Now as an adult, if I go somewhere, my purse is actually like my comfort item in that I like to sit and sort of hug it to feel more secure. When was the last time you said something you regret? What did you say? I'm unsure. What do you tend to get carried away with? New hobbies/interests. It will be like all I care about for a long while, ha ha. Do you believe we have souls; do you believe in a life after death? Yes to both. Do you still talk to the person you last made out with? No. Have you ever seen your best friend cry? Ugh, yes, and it's the absolute worst. What kind of vitamins did you take as a kid? We had those Flintstones ones for a while, but for most of my childhood, we had gummy vitamins. Have you ever gone to court? Well, yes, but not for like your ordinary court hearing. While hospitalized on one occasion, a lawyer visited to speak to the patients informing us that we could argue against our discharge dates if we believed we were going to be committed for too long, which I thought I was, so I signed up to bring my case in front of a judge. So yeah, I've been to court, but not for ordinary reasons. Are you friends with your neighbors? "Friends," no. The people to our left like just moved out, and I don't even know if we've ever been outside at the same time as the family on our right. Favorite color? I like baby pink. How long has it been since you’ve seen The Lion King? I saw the CGI remake when it came out, if that counts? I don't know about the original. When did you last hold hands with someone? Sometime when I was at my sister's house, my niece grabbed my hand to drag me somewhere, ha ha. Have you ever had a crush on your sibling's friend? No. Have you ever gone to a beach? Multiple times. How good is your eyesight? It is very, VERY bad. I need new glasses severely. What’s the best wedding you’ve been to? My former dance teacher's. Have you ever had a negative encounter with the police? What happened? No. What’s your favourite thing to cook/bake? Do you eat it often? I don't do either. How do you flush the toilet in public? I generally use my elbow. I don't like standing on one leg, so I don't really use my foot like I'd prefer. Favorite horror movie? Silent Hill is dearest to me overall just because of what it is, but as a horror film, I think the original Blair Witch Project is best. Do you have your wisdom teeth? X-rays have only ever shown two are present, but I have enough space for those. What would you name your pet snake if you had one? It would depend on their appearance. The snake I have currently is named Venus because her coloration is similar to the planet. Do you like peanuts? Only when covered in chocolate. Where do you typically shop for bras and underwear? Do you tend to keep it simple, or have a variety of different items? Have you ever gotten a professional bra fitting? I don't get new undergarments (or clothes in general) frequently, but historically, my bras are bought online and underwear just from Wal-Mart. I don't really get the second question? I mean I don't have a style when it comes to those types of clothes, if that's what you mean. I've never had an actual bra-fitting, but I absolutely need to but keep putting it off. It seems like NO bra fits me properly all-around, and it's ridiculously annoying. What (if any) types of xrays/scans/other diagnostic tests have you had done? Was anything found? Idk man, a lot. I've had xrays on my wrist (found a fracture), teeth, legs... maybe more? I've also had an ultrasound on my liver for reasons I don't recall. I either had an MRI or CT scan (I can't remember which) when I got a concussion, and uhhhh... I can't think of anything else. Were you breast or bottle fed as a child? If you plan to have children, which do you think you’ll choose? Do you think one is really better than the other? I was nursed, and if I hypothetically had children, I'd definitely try to do the same. It was so incredible to me that I've never forgotten this: when I was at the hospital while my sister had her first baby, there was a chart on the wall of how many more nutrients were in breast milk versus formula milk, and the list was GARGANTUAN. Like, unbelievable. Now, do I think it's BETTER? That's a complicated question for which, in short, my answer is no. More nutritious, well, given what I just said, obviously. But breastfeeding just doesn't work for all mothers for a plethora of reasons, like the time demand, they can be self-conscious, it's painful... and all those things are okay. A mother should do what works best for her. Neither one is "wrong" or makes someone less of a mother because they feed their child less traditionally. Do you find that you have become more selective in terms of friendships as you’ve gotten older? Did the friendships you thought would last over time end up that way? Absolutely. There are just some kinds of people I absolutely do not tolerate anymore. And no, not most. We just drifted apart with time, or given most of my closest friendships are/were online, they just fell off the face of the earth. What are you doing right now? This and re-watching John Wolfe play Bloodborne. Bloodborne is such a comfort series to me... somehow, ha ha. Yet another game I've never played but desperately want to. Where are you? In my bedroom, as always. When you get yelled at, do you yell back or let it go? Depending on who it is, I might yell back, but most likely cry, ha ha. I hate being yelled at, like a lot. Is the person you last texted single? That would be my mom, so yeah. I've hoped she'd find a partner forever... She, probably more than anyone I know, deserves love from the *right* guy. I worry a lot how lonely she may become whenever I move out. Are you easily scared by horror movies? Not at all. Are you friends with any of your ex boyfriend/girlfriends? Girt and Sara, yes. Are you lonely? Be honest. Very. What has made you happy today? It's too early for this. What has made you sad today? Nothing, really. Last thing eaten? I had leftover pancakes from yesterday. Are you wearing anything that’s not yours? No. Do you like to wear makeup? I mean it makes me feel prettier, sure, but the actual time investment doesn't feel worth it for me personally. Especially when you're not even that good with applying it. Have you ever attempted to write a story or novel? Many times when I was younger. Would you rather have perfect hair or perfect skin? Perfect skin. I hate my skin, it has so many blemishes. What’s your middle name? Marie. How big is your bed? Queen. Do you drink? Only a bit for special occasions, really. I'll have a daiquiri on your average day every once and a blue moon. Would you fall apart if that last person you kissed walked out of your life? That's an understatement. Do you prefer pasta, salad, or coleslaw? Pasta. I hate coleslaw. Do you find smoking unattractive? Yes. Where’s the last place you went besides your house? The TMS office. Do you eat breakfast daily? Yes. Who were you with the last time you went to the movie theater? My dad. Do you like your cell phone? No, but it gets the job done. I just wish I had a phone with a good camera. Has anyone ever sang to you? Yes. So, what if you married the last person you kissed? That's the dream, but I acknowledge and accept it just might not work out like that. Do you usually answer your texts? Almost always. Have you ever changed clothes in a vehicle? Yes. Who has seen you cry the most? My mom, for sure. Have you ever just laid down outside and stared at the stars? Yeah, Jason and I did that one night on the trampoline. Have your friends ever randomly stopped by your house? In the past, yes. Think to the last person you kissed; have you ever kissed them on the ground? No. Do you have a condom in your room? No, got no use for one. Do your siblings ever pay for stuff for you? Yes. What brand is your digital camera? Canon. Do you own expensive perfume/cologne? No; I really don't get the point. When was the last time you went tanning? Ew, never. I find NO appeal in just lying in the boiling sun. Do you like the smell of fresh cut grass? No, I hate it. Do you get embarrassed easily? Like you would not fucking believe. It's one of the things I hate most about myself, because I'm embarrassed about everything I like and what makes me me. Has anyone ever thrown you a surprise party? No. Do you always wear your seatbelt? Absolutely. You couldn't pay me not to. Do you sing in the shower? No. Have you ever been called a slut/whore/something along those lines? Only playfully among friends. Have you ever stood up for someone you hardly/didn't even know? Yes. Have you ever fallen in love with a really good friend of yours? Yes. Do you own a blacklight? No. Do you like fruit better than vegetables? Definitely. Have your friends met the last person you kissed? Of my current friends, only Girt has. If you’re straight, have you ever thought about kissing the same sex? If you’re gay, have you ever thought about kissing the opposite sex? I'm bisexual, soooo. What does your laugh sound like? Do you have a loud laugh or a quiet laugh? Bro my laugh is so fucking loud and obnoxious. Is there a reality TV show you would consider taking part in? No.