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quickspinner · 4 years

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Month of Miracles - Dressing Up Part 2

Find the prompt list here!

Marinette tapped her pencil on the small stack of sketches and sighed. She felt dissatisfied with them, but that was nothing new. She was dissatisfied with almost everything she made these days, so why should this be any different?

Her thoughts drifted back to Luka for the hundredth time. She was going to have to face him again. He was expecting her and she really did need to source some materials from the wardrobe he was offering.

She might be able to put it off a day, though, she mused. Maybe it would be better to give him some space, anyway. She had just rejected him, after all. That had to sting, no matter how chill he acted about it. Marinette would be doing him a favor, staying away for a day. She could go shopping and see what she could get in the way of basic materials first. That was a perfectly plausible excuse.

Coward, she thought sourly at herself, and sighed, dropping her head into her arms.

It would be easier if she didn’t like him so much. Marinette turned her head and looked at her phone where it lay on the table in its cheerful pink case. She could text him, but...would that be weird? People here didn’t seem to do that, they just...popped up. He’d told her just to show up whenever, but…

I don’t have his number, she realized suddenly. How funny was that? All the times they’d talked, and they’d never even traded numbers.

She wouldn’t even be able to text him when she went back to the city. The thought made her ache, but she pushed it aside. That was the kind of problem you could push off for later, she thought as she packed up her things. Not like making out with a guy you were probably never going to see again once the week was out. Which was a real, actual problem that should be avoided.

Right?

Marinette groaned, and grabbed Gina’s car keys, marching out of the door. She had a job to do, and surely she was still professional enough to manage that much.

She had herself mostly together by the time she pulled into the Couffaine farm. The yard wasn’t empty when she pulled in, to her mild surprise.

“Ahoy, Marinette!” Anarka called, waving at her, and Marinette, feeling she should be polite, got her kit out of the car and walked over to where Anarka was working. Ankara was unloading some small saplings from the back of a pickup truck that looked a lot like Luka’s, only about twenty years older. “For a moment there, I fergot it was you and not yer grandma pulling up,” Anarka chuckled as Marinette approached. “Here t’see Luka, I expect? He said ye were comin’ by.”

“Yes,” Marinette tried to smile, and hoped she didn’t blush too hard at Luka’s name. Yes, hi, I kissed your son this morning and broke his heart, so this isn’t awkward at all. Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?

“He’s been working like a demon all day,” Anarka commented, lifting another tree down with a grunt. “He was drivin’ me crazy, bein’ so efficient, and I about bit his head off.” She glanced at Marinette, who tried hard not to look guilty. “Told him to make himself scarce for a bit. I think he went t’ take a shower, but he should be done by now.”

“Oh,” Marinette said lamely, trying very hard not to think of accidentally walking in on a freshly showered and not entirely dressed Luka. Maybe awkward small talk was for the best. “He, um. He said you were done for the year?”

“Aye, closed to the public fer the year,” Anarka smiled. “Though o’ course if there was anyone in town that needed anythin’ we’d open right back up. Nah, the public part of business is done for the year. Now it’s just all the work nobody sees.” She turned away from Marinette for a moment, walking over to the rail fence that separated the rows of trees. Marinette followed, unsure what else to do, her kit bumping against her knees as she carefully skirted the saplings.

“Never really thought I’d end up in a place like this,” Anarka said, leaning her elbows against the fence rails. “There’s a kinda poetry t’ it, though. Renewal. Rebirth. The old makin’ way for the young.” She winked at Marinette, and then went on. “I might not even be here by the time these trees are big enough t’ cut. Got a wandering foot, y’know, and it’ll take seven or eight years minimum for these to get the size where anyone would even consider cutting ‘em. Who’s to say I won’t be off to some new adventure by then? But they’ll still be here, growing, because I planted them. Endings, beginnings. Sometimes it’s hard to tell one apart from the other, aye?”

Marinette made a noise in reply automatically, but Anarka’s musings had put her thoughts on another track, and she barely heard the last bit.

Anarka eyed her sidelong for a moment, and then sighed and shoved herself off the fence, turning to smile at Marinette with her hand on her hips. “Out with it, lass, what’s on yer mind?”

Marinette blushed, snapping back to the present. “Nothing. It’s none of my business.”

“Maybe not,” Anarka shrugged. “Ye can still ask, though. If I don’t want to tell ye, I just won’t.”

Marinette shifted her weight and adjusted her grip on the handle of her kit, still uncomfortable, but...“Were you...disappointed?” she asked in a low voice. “When Luka gave up his career?”

Anarka laughed loud enough that it echoed back to them. “Nah, lass, I was proud . Luka was miserable, livin’ that life. It takes guts to admit that and come home, ‘specially when everyone around you is telling you how lucky ye are, having a talent and a chance like that. Like somehow you owe some cosmic debt and if ye don’t stick it out, yer wastin’ somethin’. Like success is a cookie cutter and ye have to slice away bits of yerself to make it fit.” She shook her head. “It’s not how I raised my kids. I taught them to take chances, and I taught them not to let fear make their decisions—and I also taught them that there’s no shame in what the world likes to call failure. There’s no shame in trying out the different shapes of success until you find one that fits, instead o’ tryin’ t’ force yerself into the one kind.”

Marinette blinked at her, surprised at the way her expression softened as she spoke.

Anarka was silent a moment and then sighed. “Still. You do your best to teach them, but you never know whether the lesson’s gonna stick. So when I think of the courage it took for Luka to walk away, to look so-called failure in the face and turn it into just another lesson learned, to find a way to believe that he’s still his father’s son even if he doesn’t follow in the old man’s footsteps—I’m so proud I could burst.” Marinette started slightly as Anarka suddenly stepped forward and put a surprisingly gentle hand on Marinette’s shoulder. “Luka’s never needed to prove his talent to me, lass. He’s still finding his feet again, and that’s okay. When he’s ready, he’ll make success fit him instead of the other way around, I’ve no doubt of that.” She squeezed Marinette’s shoulder, and looked at Marinette for a long moment. Marinette swallowed nervously, but couldn’t think of anything to say.

Ankara let her hand drop and jerked her head towards the house. “Go on now, we’ve both got things to be doing. Go straight on in, he’ll be expecting you.” She turned back to her young trees, and Marinette, clearly dismissed, turned towards the house, butterflies surging back to life in her stomach. She was being stupid, she told herself. Luka had accepted her rejection gracefully, and tried so hard to make her comfortable. Marinette was sure she’d hurt his feelings if she suddenly got awkward about being around him, and that was the last thing she wanted to do.

Marinette sneaked a glance back towards Anarka, and then despite what she had been told, she knocked as loudly as she could. She lingered on the doorstep as long as she dared (which wasn’t very long, knowing that Anarka could see her not going on in), and let herself into the house. She could hear guitar music even before she got the creaky old door open, and once inside, she followed it to the great room. Luka was perched on the same fragile-looking chair as before, with an acoustic in his hands this time. He looked up as she entered, and smiled, laying his hand flat against the strings. His hair was damp, and his t-shirt sticking to him a little bit. He couldn’t have been out of the shower long and Marinette was kind of glad she’d stopped to talk to Anarka.

Luka stood up and put the guitar in a stand, and Marinette realized she hadn’t even said hi, but it seemed too late now. “I was starting to think Mom was going to talk your ear off before you made it up here,” Luka teased gently as he straightened.

“Oh, we were just, um—” Marinette winced. “Talking.” She was so lame, ugh.

“I saw through the window,” Luka grinned. “Figured you’d get here when you were ready. The stuff’s all in the attic, so…” He gestured towards the stairs, and then reached for her kit. “Can I get that for you?”

Too flustered to object politely, Marinette let him take it, and then followed him. She should say something, she thought, but she couldn’t think of anything.

She sighed mournfully as they climbed the stairs. Part of her ached for what he was offering—but she was pretty sure that same part wouldn’t want to let him go, and that was just...and really, she was such a disaster, and he was amazing, and he deserved so much better than someone who was so mixed up and wishy-washy. Why did they have to meet like this? Would it have been different if they met before?

Except before, she was with Adrien, too dazzled and in love to even see anyone else, and Luka had been a rock star, surrounded by all the glamorous women he could possibly want, and she had never really stood out, as Audrey loved to remind her. She just didn’t have Adrien’s celebrity magnetism, nor Audrey’s force of personality, so she was always overlooked. It was no wonder that nobody ever really saw her until she came here.

“Well, here we are,” Luka’s voice broke into her thoughts. He was reaching up to grab a hanging cord.

Marinette shook her head and slapped her cheeks as Luka pulled the attic ladder down and ascended it. None of this was actually solving the problem at hand. She needed to keep her mind on the costumes. Marinette had sketched out some ideas at home, thinking she could probably get some sheets to use as a base, and then maybe she could source some of the less expensive things from Luka’s old wardrobe for embellishments on the fancier things like the angels, or for the snaps and things. There was a single big box store in town, actually; the selection would be limited but surely she could find some things there too. This project was ridiculously easy, when it came down to it. She had a plan that would work, and it was all simple sewing, stuff she could do in her sleep. No sweat.

So why were her hands shaking?

She lifted her hands and watched them tremble before her eyes. She felt her breath getting short.

She started when a large hand closed over both of hers. “Marinette.” She looked up, and Luka was there, framed against the light coming down from the attic. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” she said, a little too quickly, with a smile that was a little too wide. “Just, hoping there will be some stuff I can use.”

Luka smiled. “It’ll be fine. Come on up.” He shifted his hold to just one of her hands and drew her up the narrow stairs after him.

He let go of her hand once she was up, and Marinette looked around in mild surprise. The attic was cleaner than she expected. Cluttered, like the rest of the house, and full of things in piles and stacked, sometimes draped in sheets, but she didn’t encounter the dust she had expected, and the small, high windows were clean and let in plenty of light. She wondered if they were just carting things in and out of here so often that they kept it clean, or if they used the space for more than storage. There was a clear path to where they needed to be, and she followed Luka across the creaking floor.

Marinette waited nervously as he whisked the protective sheets off two racks of clothes. Marinette had to blink as the light hit the clothes; there were metal accents and rhinestones and metallic fabrics everywhere, and she was unprepared for the amount of light they threw back in her eyes.

“There it is,” Luka sighed, folding his arms as he sat on a trunk a short distance away. “Every bedazzled scrap of it.”

She had to giggle a little at that. Luke Stone had certainly favored ostentation, though that was almost unavoidable when you played with Jagged Stone.

Still, they didn’t have to, she thought, as she walked up and began mechanically sliding looks along the rack to have a look. They could have played up his simplicity. They could have made him stand out by contrast, rather than by imitation. She wondered if they were deliberately setting up an implied rivalry between father and son with their choices, or if they just hadn’t thought a rock star could be simple. Costume design wasn’t exactly the same thing as fashion design, but there was enough overlap that—

Marinette brought her thoughts back to the present, and swallowed as she stepped back again, suddenly overwhelmed. She turned away and opened her kit slowly, taking out the stack of drawings she’d left on top, suddenly profoundly dissatisfied with them. Rose and the kids expected her to work magic with this stuff, and all she had was a pile of generic toga-style costumes.

Simple. Uninspired. Pedestrian.

Her gut began to churn.

Marinette glanced at Luka nervously, and then jerked her gaze quickly away, but of course he caught it.

“I don’t have to be here if it makes you uncomfortable,” he said quietly. “I can go back downstairs and you can just call me if you need help with anything.”

That was so far from her thoughts that it gave her pause. “You...don’t make me uncomfortable,” she said, and looked back at him with a sad smile. “You never have. You’ve been...really wonderful, Luka, now matter how weird things got. I am uncomfortable, but it’s not about you.” Taking a breath, Marinette stepped back to the rack and ran her fingers down the fabric in front of her in a practiced motion, taking in the composition and the drape almost without conscious thought.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Luka asked quietly.

Marinette thought about that for a moment, and then turned back to the garments on the rack. “Not tonight.” She couldn’t afford to get worked up now, she had to figure something out. She...she had to do something, she couldn’t just…

“Okay.” Luka said simply, and Marinette swallowed hard, squeezing her eyes shut. He was so understanding, but—what was she going to do? She couldn’t just drape the kids in sheets and call it a day, they deserved so much better than that. She had to figure something out, she had to—She put both hands in her hair and pulled it, trying to focus on the clothes in front of her, but her eyes stung. She squeezed them shut tight and held her breath, trying to keep it together.

Luka’s hands closed on her shoulders from behind, squeezing lightly, and Marinette turned to him in a rush, burying her face in his chest.

“Marinette, look at me,” he said, pushing her shoulders back gently and taking her face in his hands. “Just breathe, and look at me.”

Marinette stared up into his blue eyes, reflecting calm and assurance while all that fluttered in her chest was panic and self-doubt.

“Slow down,” he said emphatically. “It’s okay.”

“But I—” she began, and he shook his head.

“Marinette. There’s no failure here. Anything you put together will be better than moldy, moth-eaten rags. Without your help we’d all be frantically cutting armholes in pillowcases or something. No matter what you do, Rose will be ecstatic.” He smiled encouragingly at her. “These are the lowest possible stakes. You can’t screw up, so just have fun with it.”

Marinette turned her head out of his hands, looking at the designer, rock star wardrobe laid out for her to use. “But—”

Luka reached over and grabbed her fabric scissors out of her kit. He grabbed a shirt at random off the rack, and cut it in half in a ragged line. Marinette stared as he offered her the scissors back. “That’s how little I care about this stuff,” he grinned.

Marinette’s mouth closed abruptly and she glared at him, and would have snatched the scissors from them if they hadn’t been—well, scissors. Well-sharpened fabric scissors at that. Instead she took them with the appropriate amount of care even as she narrowed her eyes at him. “I might have needed that,” she told him, kicking his foot lightly.

“I have faith,” Luka grinned wider. “You’ll manage.”

She huffed and turned back to the garments, and looked at the second rack next to her. Luka backed away, leaning his elbows on an old dresser as he watched her.

Marinette studied the racks, and suddenly she pulled out her phone, swiping to the group photo she’d taken at the library today. She looked over the children there, at their dyed hair and punk haircuts and all-black outfits interspersed with riots of color, and began to smile a bit. “Okay,” she muttered, picking up a leather garment studded with rhinestones. “I guess this Christmas is about to get a little bit rock ‘n roll.”

Luka raised his eyebrows slightly.

Marinette barely noticed him, eyes lighting up as her mind began racing. She picked up the stack of designs she had done earlier and crumpled them absently in her hands. “I need my sketchbook,” she muttered.

“I’ll get it,” Luka said, shoving off the dresser and crossing the room. “Where?”

“I left it in my car. On the passenger seat, I think.”

Luka clattered down the stairs and out of the front door to grab Marinette’s sketchbook. Halfway back up the stairs he hesitated, and ducked into his room to grab his own notebook. Marinette practically snatched the book out of his hand, digging in her kit for her pencils, and Luka grinned, sitting back on the trunk again and resting his notebook on his knee.

He watched her, fascinated, as her focus narrowed to her task, and she began sketching, making notes and separating out items from the stacks of clothing he never thought he’d look at again. Luka began scribbling notes to himself as well, just...idle thoughts, the web of concepts and ideas that eventually came together to make a song, but he kept looking up to watch her, intrigued by her creative process. She muttered something to herself or tossed something aside with more vehemence than usual and he grinned.

Slowly, the attic transformed, suddenly strewn with gaudy clothes. Several distinct heaps were forming. Every once in a while Marinette would stop, and go back to her sketchbook, scratching in new details or ideas, or crossing something out with a sigh.

He jumped slightly, though, when she tossed the book aside with a little scream, and buried her face in her hands. “I’m such an idiot,” she muttered. “Why didn’t I think of that? It’s never going to hold up with that kind of weight, I’m so stupid —”

“Whoa,” Luka said, a little sharply than he’d meant to, putting his notebook aside and getting up quickly to go to her. “Hey, hey, hey, slow down. What’s wrong?”

“I just—I should have accounted for this, and I didn’t, and now I have to change it—”

“Okay, so change it,” Luka said, putting his hands on her shoulders again to make her look at him. Marinette looked at him like he had two heads, and he almost laughed at her. “Marinette, you’re an artist, not a machine. It’s okay to backtrack and change your mind.” He smiled at her, hoping he looked reassuring and not enchanted. “I know every artist is different and music isn’t the same as fashion, but for me…” he shrugged. “Success comes from a series of small failures. You try something, and it mostly works, but something isn’t quite right, so you make a change and try again. That’s not something to be ashamed of or upset about. If you’re that frustrated, we could take a break. Or if you want to rework it some and come back tomorrow, that’s fine too. I’m not going anywhere.”

Marinette stared at him for a minute, her mouth working soundlessly. She looked down at the sketchbook in her hands, and then back up at him.

“Do you want to take a break?” Luka asked her.

“I...no,” she said. “It’s...it’s not that big of a deal, I’m pretty sure I can fix it if I...um—”

“Okay,” he said simply, giving her shoulders a little squeeze. He really wanted to hug her, to hold her tight and tell her how amazing he found her, how entranced he was watching her work, how alive she looked when she was creating, but—he couldn’t, so he squeezed her shoulders and then let his hands fall. “No need to explain it, I trust you.” He glanced down at the book, and then looked away. “Sorry, I’m not trying to peek, but that—that looks really badass.” He couldn’t help looking again, and, blushing, Marinette turned the book so he could see. His smile grew as he looked at it. “That’s amazing, Marinette, what are you worrying about? If it looks half this cool in real life we’re going to have to have someone standing by to give Rose oxygen.”

Marinette giggled, and looked back down at it herself. “You really think so?” she murmured, with a small smile that made his heart skip. Just when he thought she couldn’t get any sweeter.

“I definitely think so,” Luka told her, backing away. He sat down on the floor this time, leaning back against the trunk. He groped behind him blindly for his notebook and nearly knocked it off the far side of the trunk.

Marinette gave a pleased hum, and then took a deep breath before her brows furrowed into her concentration face. Luka drew his knees up and leaned one elbow on them, smiling like the fool he was.

There were a few more frustrated groans, but no more spirals, and Luka kept quietly in his place even as piles of fabric grew around him. Finally she sat back and sighed. “I think that’s everything I’m going to need.”

“Cool.” Luka looked up from his notebook and smiled.

“I’m so sorry about the mess,” Marinette gasped, looking around as if she had only just now realized the chaos she had created. “I can help you clean it up—”

Luka cut her off with a laugh. “You’re welcome to,” he chuckled, “but there’s really no need. Clutter is a way of life around here. Trust me, the only reason they were so organized to begin with is because they were delivered that way.” His eyes fell to her sketchbook. “Can I see what you have in mind?” he asked, unable to contain his curiosity any more.

Marinette tensed up immediately, biting her lip. She looked at the book and then at Luka, and then she offered it to him.

Luka took it, though his eyes stayed on her, concerned and a little baffled by her hesitation when the one sketch he’d seen had been so cool. Marinette turned back to the pile of garments she had chosen, though, and so he let his eyes fall and began looking through the few pages of sketches she had made, careful not to go beyond even though he was aching to see more. A slow smile grew on his face as he looked, and he shook his head slightly. “The angels are still my favorite, but these are amazing, Marinette. You might want to get some earplugs because Rose is going to shatter glass when she sees these.” He grinned up at her. “I knew you could do it.”

She smiled faintly, but looked away. “They’re just pictures, though. I still have to actually execute the designs.”

“Hey,” Luka said, reaching a hand up towards her. Marinette blinked in surprise, but she slowly stepped forward and put her hand in his. He tugged gently, and she sank to her knees in front of him. “ Yeah, you might have to make some changes when you go to actually put it together, but that’s part of the process for everybody. Sometimes a song I thought was finished doesn’t work out right the first time I play it with the band, and I have to make some changes.” He hesitated, and then went on. “I don’t know what’s going on in there,” he poked her forehead gently. “And I’m not exactly up on fashion, but—” he gestured at the racks of clothes. “I have some experience too, and I gotta say…” he shook his head, and turned the sketchbook towards her. “You outclass anybody else I’ve worked with by far.”

Marinette blushed deeply. “They’re just costumes,” she murmured, tucking her hair back as she looked away.

“They could have been, but they’re not.” Luka offered her the book back. “Marinette.” He waited until she looked at him. “Do you like them?”

Marinette looked back at the drawings, and bit her lip. Her face was growing red again. “Yes,” she finally admitted quietly.

Luka put his fingers under her chin and tipped her face back up. “Stop thinking so hard,” he said gently. “I know it’s easy to lose faith in yourself, but...you’re creating something, you have to find a way to tune all of that stuff out and just be in that moment. You can deal with the aftermath afterwards.” He grinned. “That’s what editing is for, right? Or so I’m told. I was never any good at it.”

Marinette smiled. “That’s why your music was so good. It was...raw, instinctive. Still polished, but deeply emotional. It’s why I always loved it.”

It was Luka’s turn to flame up red, and Marinette giggled.

“That wasn’t fair,” he huffed, pulling his knees up to hide his face in his arms for a moment.

Marinette laughed harder. “How many thousands of records sold and you blush at a little old compliment from a fan?” she teased.

Luka turned his face on his arms so that he was looking at her. “You’re not just any fan,” he said, and smiled at the pink returning to her cheeks. He sighed, raising his head, and letting his legs fall and cross beneath him again. “Don’t ever let anyone let you feel like you’re not special, Marinette.”

“It’s definitely not a problem when I’m with you,” she said, and then bit her lip, like it had slipped out without her intending it to.

“Good,” he grinned, and then decided he’d better move before he did something stupid. “So, show me what you need me to take down to the car for you, and we’ll just leave the rest of it like this until you’re done in case you need to come back for something.”

“Oh,” Marinette’s eyes widened slightly and she scrambled to her feet. “Right.”

She told him which piles of clothes she wanted to take, and Luka got some bags and gathered them up. Marinette made a token effort at tidying up, despite Luka having told her to leave it. She hung a few things back on the rack, and paused suddenly, hand hovering over a jacket still on the rack.

Marinette picked it up slowly, looking at it. The scent of leather and something like electronics hit her nose, and her eyes widened slightly. She felt around the bottom hem and found something hard and rectangular there. Another minute of searching, and the jacket lit up in her hands, the fiber optic lights sewn into the seam pulsing faintly.

Marinette laughed a little, and crossed over to the trunk Luka had been using as a chair all afternoon. She sat down and spread the jacket across her lap. She remembered this. He’d been wearing it at the show she’d gone to. They’d started with all the lights off and just Luka on stage, wearing this jacket and the pants that went with it, making him just an electric outline on the stage when the curtain went up.

Hard to reconcile that image with the guy from the tree farm, she thought affectionately. But then, he’d always had a reputation for being a sweetheart, good to his fans and generous with his time, so...maybe it wasn’t so hard to believe.

At least this contraption is well made, she thought, running a finger along one of the light tubes. It was still secure after all this time, and clearly in working order.

The lights began to flash and jump around, and Marinette giggled. It had started that right before Luke had swept his hand up and down in a dramatic power chord that had rattled her teeth. Once again it was hard to reconcile them in her mind. It was almost funny, now that she knew Luka, remembering those dramatics.

The light reflected back off something in the corner of her eye, and when she looked, she saw it was the metal coil of Luka’s notebook, half buried under a pile of clothes he had shoved out of the way. She picked the notebook up and smiled a little bit as she did so; the page was a mess, full of scratched out lines, and the writing went every which way in a complicated web. Was this how his mind worked? It was so different from her own process—

Jewels Diamonds in the sands of time Those are my memories with you And even if it’s only a precious few They’re the ones I’ll keep when everything else flows away

It made Marinette think of her first fashion show, when she’d been new and excited about the garments she was putting out there, excited and happy. That moment shone jewel-bright in her memory, despite all the drudgery that had followed it. That was she was working for, after all, another chance at that feeling. All of this frustration would be worth it if she could have another moment like that.

Marinette blinked back to reality and suddenly realized what she was doing. She slammed her eyes shut and turned the notebook over in her lap. Oh, she shouldn’t have looked at that, she thought frantically, her heart suddenly beating triple time. This—this was private, just like her designs were, and she shouldn’t have—but she hadn’t meant to—

Luka’s heavy boots thunked on the stairs and Marinette jumped, dropping the notebook so that it landed on the floor splayed open with an inelegant smack . Marinette scrambled up and hurriedly grabbed it again. She hastily smoothed it out as Luka came the rest of the way up into the attic. “Oh, I think this one is yours,” she said, holding it out to him.

“Oh, yeah, thanks,” Luka said, curling it in half and sticking it in his back pocket. Marinette tried not to wince. “Anything else?” His eyes landed on the jacket in her hands. “Oh, I see you found the switch,” he chuckled.

“Will you put it on?” Marinette blurted, and Luka raised his eyebrows at her. “Please?” she smiled, hunching her shoulders slightly as she held it up.

Eyebrows still raised, Luka took it, and slipped it on. He grimaced slightly as he zipped it up. “Definitely doesn’t fit as comfortably as it used to,” he commented, tugging down on the hem. “Not too bad, though.”

“You probably build muscles in different places, hauling trees,” Marinette said absently, stepping forward to adjust the way it sat across his shoulders for a moment. “Not as uniform a workout as using a personal trainer. It gives you a more natural build.” She smiled a little as she smoothed the arms and stepped back.

“It still looks good on you,” she observed. “You were wearing this at the concert I went to. The first time I saw you live.”

Luka smiled ruefully. “Doesn’t exactly have the same effect in my attic, does it?”

“No,” Marinette smiled back. “It was a wonderful performance, though, and I guess I wasn’t expecting to be reminded of it just now.” She bit her lip and asked in a rush, “Were you...were you writing a song? Just now?” She gestured vaguely toward his pocket.

Luka looked a little taken aback, but not offended. “I was starting to,” he admitted. “I...really enjoy the time we spend together, and it was really nice, seeing a new side of you today. I guess I felt a little inspired, yeah.”

Marinette’s breath caught. “It was...about me?”

“About you and me, yeah,” he admitted. “Does that bother you?”

Marinette’s eyes widened. “No!” How could he think she’d be offended by such a thing? It was...it was amazing, that she’d inspired anything in him, when she was so—and—how she had felt, in that first fashion show, was he...was he saying he felt that way with her ? She shied away from the idea even as she thought it, it was so...so much, and she was so—she was—

Oh no. Luka was looking at her intently, a slight crease in his forehead. She tried to think of something to say, but her internal meltdown was too complete, and she just stared at him.

“You’re extraordinary, Marinette,” Luka said softly, and his expression was completely serious and not at all flirtatious. “Getting to see you work today was a privilege. I’m better for meeting you, even if my heart breaks when you’re gone. It’s...it’s a long way from being a song, but I meant it.”

“But I’m…”

Luka shook his head slightly, a smile softening his expression. “You’re what, Marinette? Tell me everything, I want to hear all of it.”

Marinette gaped. “You—you��how do you do that?” she cried, throwing her hands up. “You’re sweet and kind and you have an amazing talent but you’re so laid back and grounded and—”

“And you are all of those things too,” Luka laughed. “Except maybe the laid back part.” He grinned, and Marinette made a face at him. “You kinda maybe worry too—”

Marinette had taken two large steps toward him. She grabbed the lapels of his jacket and pulled. Luka staggered, grabbing on to her shoulders as she dragged him down and kissed him.

He made a very undignified noise even as his arms were coming down to wrap around her. Marinette couldn’t hold the kiss very long; she hadn’t taken a good breath and her nose was smashed against his cheek, so she was forced to break it before Luka really even had a chance to respond.

Luka sucked in a breath, blinking at her. “Are you sure?” he blurted, and then looked like he wanted to kick himself. Marinette had to giggle, giddy with elation and adrenaline, her heart fluttering wildly in her chest.

“No,” she told him when she was able, and a little shiver of fear went up her spine before she stomped it down again. “But I’ve never met anybody like you and...anyway, you’re right. It’s stupid to be tearing myself up over it when I could just be kissing you instead.”

“Very logical,” he laughed, and Marinette kicked his shin lightly.

“Take off this ridiculous jacket,” she told him, tugging. “I can’t take you seriously in this thing.”

“I don’t know, I’m suddenly a lot fonder of it than I was a moment ago,” Luka grinned, putting his hands over hers on the lapels. His tone was teasing, but his thumbs caressed the backs of her hands, and there was a light in his eyes that had her heart galloping all over again.

She slipped her hands away, and Luka fumbled at the hem until he found the switch, turned the lights off, and shrugged the jacket off, dropping it carelessly on the trunk beside them before reaching for her again.

They were still wrapped up in each other when Rose popped her head in the attic looking for them, and rattled the windows with her scream.

Fiction Master Post | Month of Miracles

#quickspins #monthofmiracles2020 #hallmark au #lukanette #endgame lukanette #lukanette endgame #luka couffaine #marinette dupain-cheng #miraculousladybug #miraculous ladybug #promptfic

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

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Hi, I hope this isnt annoying to ask but w the old guard ive seen a lot of people mixing up catholic and christian when it comes to nicky. when by todays standards theyre not interchangeable as catholic is a specific strain of christianity. i was kinda under the impression the crusades were a purely catholic thing since the pope. is that right or were other christians involved??

Hmm. Just to be clear what you’re asking, are you wondering whether it’s a mistake to use “Catholic” and “Christian” interchangeably when talking about this time period or describing Nicky’s faith? And/or asking for a basic religious primer on medieval Europe and the crusades more generally?

First, it’s not a mistake to use “Catholic” and “Christian” as synonyms during the crusades, especially since a) Catholics are Christians, no matter what the militant Protestant reformers would like you to think, and b) until said Protestant reformation, they were the dominant and almost (but not quite) singular Christian denomination in Western Europe. Our source material for the period doesn’t describe the crusaders as “Catholics,” even if they were; they call them Christians or Franks. (Likewise, the word “Frank,” i.e. “French” was often used to describe Western European crusaders no matter which country they were from, since so many crusaders came from France and that was where the crusades were originally launched, at the council of Clermont in 1095.) To call them “Christians” points us to the fact that the crusades were viewed as a great pan-Christian enterprise, even if the reality was more complicated, and nobody would need to specify “Catholic,” because that was implicit.

In short, medieval Europe had two major strands of Christianity, which developed out of the centuries of arguments over heresy, the contents of the biblical canon, the nature and/or divinity of Christ, their relationship to Judaism, paganism, and other religions of late antiquity, and so forth. Eventually these two competing branches took on geographical, cultural, and linguistic associations: Western (Latin) Catholic Christianity, and Eastern (Greek) Orthodox Christianity. The Great Schism in 1054 split these two rites formally apart, though both of them had at least some thought that the internal divisions in Christianity should be healed and dialogue has continued intermittently even up to the present day (though they’re still not actually reconciled and this seems highly unlikely to ever happen.)

The head of Western Catholic Christianity was (and is) the Pope of Rome, and the head of Eastern Orthodox Christianity was (and is) the Patriarch of Constantinople. Both of these branches of Christianity were involved in launching the crusades. To make a long story short, the Byzantine (Greek) Emperor, Alexios Komnenos, appealed to the Catholic (Latin) pope, Urban II, for help in defending the rights of eastern Christians, territorial incursions against Greek possessions by the Muslims of the Holy Land and North Africa, and the city of Constantinople (and Jerusalem) itself. So although the actual French and Western European participants in the crusades were Catholic, they (originally, at least) joined up with the intention of helping out their Orthodox brethren in the East and “liberating” Jerusalem from the so-called tyranny of Islam. To this end, the accounts of the council of Clermont focused heavily on the brotherhood of western and eastern Christians and the alleged terrible treatment of these Christians by the ruling Islamic caliphate in Jerusalem. At that time, that was the Isma’ili Shia Muslim Fatimids (who had replaced the Sunni Muslim Abbasids in the early 10th century -- there are many names and many dynasties, but yes.)

However, despite this ecumenical start, relations between Western and Eastern Christians started to go bad very quickly over the course of the crusades, indeed within a few short years of Clermont. Alexios Komnenos wanted the crusade leaders to swear loyalty to him and pledge to return formerly Byzantine lands that might be recaptured from the Muslims, and the crusade leaders did not want to do this. There were deep cultural, linguistic, religious, social, and political differences between Greek and Latin Christians, even if they were both technically Christians, and these caused the obvious problems. The Greeks were obviously located in a different part of the world and had a different relationship with their Islamic neighbors (they fought them often, but also traded with them and established diplomatic ties) and this caused constant friction during the crusades, since the Westerners always suspected (not entirely wrongly) that the Greeks were secretly in league with the Turks. Albert of Aachen, writing his Historia Ierosolimitana in the early 12th century, referred to “wicked Christians, that is to say Greeks,” and our primary source for the Second Crusade (1145--49) is Odo of Deuil and his De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem (Journey of Louis VII to the East.) He spent the entire time grousing about “treacherous Greeks” and blaming them for the crusade’s struggles (though the Second Crusade pretty much sabotaged itself and didn’t need any outside force to blame for its failure). There was some truth to this accusation, since Byzantium was then engaged in a war against Sicily (Louis VII’s ally, though it had its own connections to Muslim culture and indeed had been Muslim before the Normans conquered it in 1061). The Greeks had thus been working with the Muslims to undercut the invasion of Western Europeans into this contested territory, and this was not forgotten or forgiven.

The best-known example of Western-Eastern relations during the crusades going catastrophically awry is in 1204, at the sack of Constantinople as the culmination of the Fourth Crusade. Basically: the crusaders were deeply in debt to the Venetians and had already attacked the Catholic city of Zara (Zadar in Croatia) in hopes of getting some money back, then got involved in the messy politics of the Byzantine succession, went to Constantinople, and eventually outright attacked it, sacked and destroyed the city, and raped and slaughtered its inhabitants. This obviously poisoned the well all but permanently between Latin and Greek Christians (frankly, in my opinion, it’s one of the worst tragedies of history) and Constantinople never regained its former wealth and pre-eminence. It declined until it was captured in 1453 by the Ottoman Turks and Sultan Mehmed II, and has been an Islamic city ever since. (It was renamed Istanbul in 1923, under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the “founding father” of modern Turkey.) Obviously, Latin and Greek Christianity still had to work with each other somehow, but the crusades were actually the single biggest factor in driving the two branches further apart, rather than reconciling them.

The words “catholic” and “orthodox” both have connotations of universality, overall correctness, and all-encompassing truth claims. Therefore, in some sense, to a Catholic Christian or an Orthodox Christian, defining themselves as such, with both words, is repetitious; they are Catholic/Orthodox and therefore the correct sort of Christian (even if their theological opponents would disagree). However, historians obviously do use that convention to distinguish them, since the identity is important, and makes a big difference as to what religious landscape an individual is living in. As for heresy, it was an equally complicated subject. Numerous “heretical” (i.e. not mainstream Catholic Christianity) Christian sects existed in Europe for this entire period, most notably the Cathars. (They got their own crusade launched against them, the Albigensian Crusade of 1209--29 in southern France.) The lines between heresy and orthodoxy (small-o orthodoxy meaning in this case, confusingly, Catholic Christianity) could often be blurred, and religious practices were syncretic and constantly influenced each other. A big problem in the Albigensian Crusade was identifying who the heretics actually were; they looked like their Catholic neighbors, they lived in community with them, their friends and family members were Cathar and Catholic alike, both rites were practiced, and plenty of towns were just fine with this hybrid arrangement. Hence it was not as simple as just pointing and going “get those guys,” and indeed, one of the leaders of the Albigensian Crusade, when asked by a knight how to tell them apart, advocated to just kill them all and God would know who the good Catholics were. Welp.

Northern and eastern Europe also remained pagan relatively late into the medieval era (into the 10th and 11th centuries) and the Northern and Baltic Crusades were launched with the aim of converting them to Catholic Christianity. (You will notice that the crusades have a complicated history as both a vehicle of religious warfare and as an attempted theater of conversion.) Heresy was a constant preoccupation of the Catholic popes, especially Innocent III (the progenitor of the Fourth, Albigensian, and Fifth Crusades). Especially in the thirteenth century, splinter religious groups and localized sects of “heresy” were popping up like crazy, and it was a constant point of contention as to how to deal with them, i.e. by force, persuasion, reconciliation, dialogue, etc. No, the medieval Catholic church was not the stereotyped instrument of fear, oppression, and tyranny, and could never enforce its views universally on all of western Europe. Church attendance on the parish level could be so low that in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council, Innocent issued an order requiring Christians to take communion at least once a year. So yes. The standard was very far from “everyone believed Catholicism fervently at all times and if they didn’t, they were immediately punished/burned alive.” The idea of burning heretics at the stake wasn’t even introduced until the early fifteenth century, and even then, it required an often-months-long formal church trial and wasn’t just something that the local village priest could hand out on a whim.

There were also monastic orders, and these (at least in Western Europe) were therefore Catholic, but they had different ways of practicing it and what their orders emphasized. The most common order were Benedictines (founded in the 6th century by Saint Benedict), who adhered to the Rule of Saint Benedict, which is still the basis for the following monastic orders. There were also the Cluniacs (founded in 10th-century France at Cluny Abbey) and the Cistercians (founded as rivals to the Cluniacs at the end of the 11th century, also in France). In terms of the crusades, the Cistercians were by far the most involved with/zealously supportive of them (Bernard of Clairvaux was a Cistercian) and took part in directly financing, preaching, and launching the Second, Fourth, and Albigensian Crusades alike. The better-known monastic orders, the Franciscans and Dominicans, weren’t founded until the thirteenth century, on the tail end of the crusades, and didn’t take much direct part in them. The Dominican inquisition, however, took over the business of dealing with the Cathars after the Albigensian Crusade petered out, and their concern was often with heresy thereafter.

Anyway. This has gotten long, as per usual. But I hope this gives you some introductory sense of the religious landscape of medieval Europe, the divisions within Christianity, and the fact that it’s entirely accurate to use “Catholic” and “Christian” interchangeably when discussing Nicky’s crusades-era faith and counterparts. The crusaders themselves did not specify themselves as being Catholic, and the crusades were (at least initially) viewed as a pan-Christian movement, even if eventually fatal tensions with Orthodox Christians left a permanent scar. The idea of identifying the precise denomination of Christianity is also another Protestant Reformation-era innovation, and wasn’t, at least in this case, necessary to do.

#history #medieval history #history of religion #long post #anonymous #ask

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lambourngb · 3 years

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Why can’t I change

The irony is, you inspired this story. You posted a ficlet about Michael and Max going out to distract themselves from the pain of being separated from their soulmates... and this hit me hard:

Max is drinking too much tonight. This is a good bar – Michael’s actually been in here before. Twice. Both times over the last few months, since Alex and Forrest… yeah. He’s left with guys, both times. He’s… he’s trying to figure some stuff out, with himself. What he likes. What he wants, outside of Alex. Um, and hopefully, eventually, with Alex. It’s been… fine. Fun. Light. Uncomplicated. Pretty much everything the rest of his life isn’t right now.

So I started writing a fic where Michael is exploring things about himself, dating and figuring out what he wants, while he lingers in that “hopefully eventually” feeling in place. Of course, dating is hell, and especially it’s hell when there is so much about Michael that is hard to explain to someone- not just the alien parts, but his genius IQ, his “adopted” siblings, his past in social services, no parents, etc. Then the awkwardness of how he can’t stop from watching Alex whenever their paths cross.

SNIPPET :

It started innocently enough like most of Michael’s life-ruining decisions, during a beer break from his newly re-established lab bunker.

“Alright, worst date you’ve ever been on, and go!” Charlie started, taking a long pull of her IPA, before sending a look over to Michael. “You win on the most embarrassing sibling, Guerin, someone needs to teach your sister to knock, but I bet I have you beat on bad dates.”

So five minutes after she had decided to stay in Roswell, Charlie Cameron had ended up tracking down Michael at Sanders, and opened the conversation unceremoniously with, “So aliens are real and I’m guessing you’re one. Consider me the newest member of your Scooby Gang and tell me everything.” He had dropped a heavy wrench on his boot, pain stealing his voice for a moment. Perhaps there was a man out there that was able to resist the no-nonsense stare of a Cameron woman, but that wasn’t Michael, or even Max for that matter.

And that was that, one more person in on the second biggest secret Michael held (he was still in love with Alex being number one). It came with it’s own valuable reveals, finding out from Charlie that although Helena Ortecho had covered her tracks with the group as a red herring for Flint’s sake, Deep Sky was a very real paramilitary group and they were the source of the depowering serum that Helena had used on Michael to keep him compliant.

So ten minutes after catching her up on all things ridiculous and real in Roswell, New Mexico, Charlie had raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at him and drawled lazily, “Any plans to combat that drug, or are you just going to hope that the next time it’s another benign manipulator? Because the way I see it, I’m a genius biochemist, and you’re a genius period, maybe we can do better than blind hope?”

Whether it was hubris at play to see if it was even possible, or a renewed determination to just fuck up whatever military sponsored plot that was in play, Charlie Cameron signed on to research an antidote to the depowering serum and in the process had become Michael’s newest, and surprisingly easiest, friend to have.

It was strange but Michael was starting to number his friends beyond just Max, Isobel and the currently absent Liz Ortecho. He could begrudgingly add Kyle Valenti to the list, now that Max had come clean with everyone over his heart condition. Although it was exceedingly awkward at times in the wake of their breakup, Maria was trying for friendship with him and it probably said something about them that they fell into that rhythm much easier than he had with Alex.

On paper he could consider Alex his friend. They shared beers together at neutral locations, there was always a conversation to linger over with coffee, and finally, Michael was the person Alex called now, every time he was scheduled to go out of town for work. That was less friendship, and more of a coping mechanism for them both after his abduction by Jesse then Helena.

It meant that Charlie Cameron had won the contest of easiest friend probably by default, but that didn’t make being the target of her knife-sharp sense of humor any easier to deflect when she smelled blood in the water. Thinking about his past, he knew that any conversation about dating was sure to leave him bleeding out.

Michael eyed the open hatch of the bunker lab, wondering if the spanse of time they had spent in the open air was enough for Charlie to nip this conversation to a close and return to the task of experimentation. Long periods of time in solitary confinement in a military prison had left her with a dislike of closed spaces, and it didn’t matter what sort of faux-Restoration Hardware light fixture he hung from the ceiling of his bunker; the walls would start closing in on her after two hours or so of work.

“You win this round, okay?”

“Come on, no bowing out. I told you about the ‘bring your child to work day’ my father suffered through with his conservative asshat co-workers, you can tell me about your worst date.”

“I haven’t dated enough to have a bad one, okay?” Michael admitted, looking away. There was no way he was going to talk about the drive in charity benefit with Alex, when he couldn’t be legitimately sure that it was even a date. Did sharing a six-pack on his tailgate even count? The way that night had ended was better off forgotten. Then there was Maria, where drinks at her bar had started as the natural postscript to an evening together. Did that count? He remembered bargaining with debts to arrange a dinner with Chinese food, that had been postponed almost indefinitely after her visions took center stage.

“Bullshit! Almost the second thing my sister told me about you was to be careful I didn’t end up in your bed.”

Michael ducked his head with an acknowledged wince. Well, Jenna Cameron did have a front-row seat during most of his questionable decisions regarding women and his poor restraint when it came to a certain brand of asshole at the Wild Pony. When he ran across men who reminded him of Foster Dad #5 who thought respect could be beaten into Michael, or men who were like Foster Dad 3 who kept his wife nervously popping pills for her nerves and caked in pancake makeup most Sunday mornings. Some people just needed punching. Michael was always happy to be the one doing it if someone gave him reason to and drunk assholes often did.

He tipped the bottle back to drain the last swallow of nearly flat beer to buy some time as he thought about what to say next. There was little hope of escape, Charlie had the mind of a scientist, sharp and inquisitive and ready to press for more answers. “I’m no virgin, that’s for sure. But that was mainly sex.” He shrugged, dropping the empty into his trash barrel. “From all the movies Izzy makes me watch with her, I gather going on a date is something of a higher tier than a one-off in my truck after last call.”

“What about with Mr. Complicated?” Charlie’s smile was closer to a smirk. Michael revised his assessment of her, from scientist to sadist.

“More than a one-off in my truck,” Michael agreed quietly. “Everything else was why it was complicated. And no, I don’t really want to talk about it, just to say, I have no stories about lost entrées at dinner or suddenly being a part of someone’s wedding reception with him.”

Instead of pressing the knife deeper into him with more questions about Alex, Charlie backed off with a mixed expression. Shit that was pity on her face, wasn’t it? God, it really was a sad story, his relationship with Alex and his life currently, Michael thought. Charlie, who had spent time in the last couple of years in a military prison and was actively evading a paramilitary group interested in her research, actually pitied his life.

“You’re trying to tell me you’re thirty years old, and you don’t have a single dating story to share?” She shook her head giving a sarcastic *bzzz* sound with her lips. “I don’t buy it. What about the hot bartender you were with last year?”

“You ever try to date someone who works in a bar? Her work hours were prime recreational hours. Who wants to go see a movie after last call and closing the till? You especially don’t want to go to another bar during off hours.” Michael pointed out. “Anyway, we kept it low-key. I cooked. Or we had drinks at the Pony. I dunno, life kept getting in the way of anything more.”

“That’s just sad.”

Michael placed his hand against his chest, “Ouch, don’t hold back!”

Charlie straightened up from where she was sitting, on the steps of the old school bus to get to her feet. “Okay you’ve basically described two relationships with feelings, but I’m talking about something different. You swipe right on someone, trade messages, ghost them when they are creepy, you’ve never done any of that? No one has ever slipped their number to you when you’ve gone out with friends?”

“I just told you, those were just one-offs in my truck.”

“Oh my god, give me your phone, we’re downloading some apps.”

#aewriting #michael guerin alien grief cactus #michael joins the dating world #online dating teaches you a lot #wip meme

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sanchosammy · 4 years

Text

You’re My Person

Flip Zimmerman is a stubborn man heavily committed to his job and nothing else. That is until you’re hired to work in the file room. With past history between the two of you, a sudden shift in his priorities that he’s fighting against, and drama in a case that unknowingly involves you... Who knows what will happen next.

Note: I swear the other chapters will be so much better than this! And will include waaaay more Flip content! It was just a bit difficult to get the storyline started. I’m trying to do a whole plot for this series! Hopefully someone can enjoy this, much love from ya girl.

Word count:2123 - Chapter One

It was never in the plan to return back to your hometown Colorado Springs. You moved away without any warning at fifteen because of your fathers’ job problems. Though the recent death of your uncle Tommy had left you with his house in your hometown according to his will… Which surprised everyone in the family including yourself. He never had any children of his own but he always considered you one of his. That being said you had completely run out of options after the breakup with a boyfriend a year ago. With no more money to afford an apartment in your last location, this house seemed like the best option for you at this point.

Back here once again.

It was weird being in a place that had hardly changed since your childhood. Now being an adult and seeing the familiar sights that you once saw each day; it was somewhat comforting. This was home before and it could possibly be home again, right?

You allowed yourself to have the first few weeks in town to mourn the death of Uncle Tommy, and to settle in your new house. It felt a bit strange at first moving all of his stuff into one of the spare bedrooms. Tommy had never remarried after his first divorce, so you never worried much about upsetting anyone by changing some of the décor… It was basically a mancave with a few photos of his long-term girlfriend. Of course, you allowed her to take whatever she wanted from his place, you never felt too attached to the physical items but more the house itself.

After that though came the next step… a job. You watched the newspaper religiously looking for something that would help you not drown in debt considering you were hardly able to keep afloat for the past year. And then there it was!

“Colorado Springs Police Department: Looking for someone to work fulltime inside the file-room. Similar position to a secretary. Call for further details.”

You never considered working for a police department before. It was never something that crossed your mind growing up; but this position sounded so much better than returning to waitressing. When you called for more information on the position the local police chief was the one who wanted to speak with you. He explained that you wouldn’t need any sort of certificate, intense training, or anything truly special for this job. The listing had two requirements: you needed to pass a background check and be able to read… Easy enough considering you’ve never got into any serious trouble in your life.

In the middle of the phone call it had become pretty clear that your uncle was truly your guardian angel. You casually dropped his name and the chief instantly recognized it. They happened to be close friends in recent years and with that knowledge alone, he practically slipped you into the position without a second thought because he “owed that son of a bitch a few favors.”

You laughed that night and said, “considered them paid, sir.”

The first morning at the station you arrived earlier than you meant to. It wasn’t the worst thing because the sweet secretary Brenda introduced herself. She was kind and soft spoken, around forty-two, and the only other woman in the building. According to some sort of immature girl code carried on from high school, this created an instant work friendship between the two of you.

You figured out rather fast that Brenda was real gossip that could talk someone’s ear off and she would if you allowed her to… Which felt somewhat ironic considering she worked for a police station. She mentioned that the rookies were beyond relieved by the news of someone being hired to work in the filing room. Apparently for police officers this was the most dreadful job that came with mockery from their peers.

You were thrilled to have this opportunity though. It was almost stupid how simple the job was. Find a file for the officer and return it when it was no longer being used. Well sometimes you’d need to fill out paperwork but if that was the hardest part of the job then you considered yourself lucky. A reliable paycheck and something interesting to say about yourself at social events. What more could someone ask for?

After talking with Brenda, a man by the name of Ron Stallworth walked you to the file-room. He never made it seem like it was bothersome to be put in charge of helping the new employee though and you felt appreciative for that. He handed over a stack of papers with information about building polices and how to fill out specific paperwork for the future occasions.

Ron was an interesting guy. There was some sort of charm about him; throughout your first conversation he made you feel as if you’ve known each other before. He had an ability to keep the conversation funny and lighthearted. As he showed you around you slid in how nervous you felt in such a new environment.

“I wouldn’t sweat it, (Y/L/N). Once you get the routine down it’ll feel natural.” You recalled his words a few hours later and he was honestly right, the whole routine was somehow calming by how straightforward it was.

The sound of the door being pushed open snapped you out of your thoughts that surrounded earlier this morning. The door was the only bothersome thing about this room, the sound was hard to miss every time someone attempted to move it. You came out from behind the several rows of shelves and nearly died on the spot.

You practically stopped in your steps when you saw him. It’s been so many years since you’ve seen Flip Zimmerman… and somehow you still recognized that face in the blink of an eye. He was one of your closest friends growing up. Throughout school and on most weekends from seven years old to fifteen, the two of you had practically talked every day. Hell, you once had been camping together at fourteen… That was your first kiss.

The memories and feelings nearly overwhelmed you. He looked so different now. The last time you saw Flip was the day before your father moved the family out of town without any warning overnight… You came home and everything was packed up. You never had the chance to say goodbye to anyone. It was practically as if you died in the town, a person who slowly was never mentioned again.

Flip was a man now though. A huge one actually, he was incredibly tall with broad shoulders. A gun holster tightly holding onto them. He now had long hair that covered his big ears but it complimented his rough handsome look. Not only were you shocked by seeing him after all these years but completely blindsided by how attractive he was.

He stepped up to the counter that was separating the two of you still focused on the paper in his hand. You didn’t know what to say, would he recognize you? Would he remember you at all?

“How can I help you, officer?” you attempted to keep your voice steady as you spoke.

“I need a file on a Henry Johnson, case number four-eight-one-five.” You sucked in a breath when you heard his deep voice. The words came out his mouth so smoothly when he spoke. It baffled you how the goofy Flip Zimmerman you knew at fifteen was now the most attractive man you had ever laid eyes on.

“Sure thing, I’ll get right on that.” Your thoughts were racing as you shuffled through the boxes to find the case number. It sounded childish and stupid but this man used to be everything you ever wanted. You cannot explain how much you hated your father for years after not being able to say goodbye to Flip. The childhood feelings were stirring through you with way more intensity than you’d ever want to admit.

What if he doesn’t even remember you? It’s been nearly fourteen years, he probably forgot that entire part of his childhood. Oh God, he could be married… with children! You felt nearly sick with so many thoughts rushing through your mind at once.

As you walked towards him, he finally looked up. His eyes stopped dead on you and didn’t move. He looked serious all of the sudden, his face tense with an emotion you weren’t sure of. He just stared wordlessly as you placed the file on the countertop waiting for some sort of reaction from him.

His eyes being locked in on yours, it was harder for you to look away. You couldn’t. He hadn’t had the chance to say anything to you before a new voice broke the tension between the two of you, and it nearly made you jump out of your skin. “Well, holy shit. I didn’t know they hired a beautiful woman to work in here. I’m Jimmy, what’s your name sweetheart?”

An older man who was standing next to Flip held his hand ready to shake yours. A part of you wondered how long Jimmy had been standing there. Had he really been there the entire time and you’ve been in too much shock to notice?

Your cheeks flushed feeling overwhelmed by so much happening at once, nonetheless you reached out to his hand. “(Y/N) (Y/L/N), you can just call me (Y/N) though. It’s a pleasure to meet you Jimmy.” You nervously bit your lip for a second unsure what to say to Flip, and so you slightly turned towards him.

“Flip Zimmerman?” You asked, the name coming out quiet as if you shouldn’t be saying it. His eyes never left you throughout the interaction with Jimmy, and they remained locked on you now.

“You… (Y/N).” He no longer sounded casual like before when he was reading off the words from the paper in his hand. It was strained and forced. He seemed nearly angry at the sight of you and that made you want to shrivel up and disappear.

His jaw remained tight as if he was nearly grinding his teeth. He just stayed silent looking like a provoked animal who was hurt and ready to bite at the slightest thing that came his way. You picked up on how Jimmy glanced at Flip with a confused look, that was before he picked up the conversation back up in an attempt to ease the uncomfortable feeling in the air.

“How’s the station treatin’ you?”

“I can’t really complain, It’s pretty quiet in here. Anything was better than waitressing if I’m being honest with you.”

Jimmy chuckled in response. Flip snatched the folder off the desk before walking towards the door without a word to you or Jimmy. The feeling of concern creeping in your stomach and the feeling of queasiness returned. He seemed so upset to see you, flat out disgusted and angry. You’d never had that kind of reaction out of anyone… it felt awful.

“Don’t worry about him, we’re just busy with a new case.” Jimmy commented, noticing the tension left behind in place of Flip. He seemed nice for attempting to act as if this was a normal reaction.

You dryly forced out a laugh out of politeness. “I, uh, we know each other. Childhood friends.” You didn’t know how to explain his reaction because you didn’t understand it yourself, what did he want from you?

You attempted to shift the subject “Case?”

“We’re detectives.”

You hummed in response and picked up some folders that needed to be placed back in order. “You’ll have to tell me about it sometime, sounds interesting.”

Jimmy followed your hint which you were so thankful for and knocked on the counter before heading towards the door, saying over his shoulder. “Glad to. We’ve got plenty of stories to tell.”

As you listened to the door close behind Jimmy, you sat down in the desk chair trying to settle your nerves. You don’t know what reaction you hoped for but that was surely not the one. You had never seen Flip so angry; I mean sure he had fights with people at school but this was pure anger… directed at you. You knew he may have been somewhat bitter about you leaving but you assumed being an adult he wouldn’t have held onto that anger to such an extreme.

You wondered if it would be worth trying to talk this out with him. It felt wrong inside knowing that someone you cared so much about in the past nearly hated the sight of you.

Well, work just became more interesting…

Series dedicated to the person who is most supportive in my fanfics... and in my life. I love you dearly, @warrentrash

#flip zimmerman #flip zimmerman x you #flip zimmerman x reader #flip zimmerman fanfic #flip zimmerman fluff #adam driver fanfic #adam driver

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coffeebeannate · 4 years

Text

Nate Watches Things: A Saga

Or in this case, one thing. One thing that was far too long of a thing, but such a bizarre venture that I felt rather compelled to put an actual review of said thing together.

Why? Because I can and because others HAVE to experience this..this journey. A nice lil journey called Die Pfeiler der Macht/ A Dangerous Fortune. And I watched it solely because Luca looks cute in Victorian clothes, and I was intrigued by the gifs.

Curiosity has always been such a great human motivator, eh?

And..guys. I just. I don’t know what the 3-4 hours (it’s two movies, and I took a couple days to watch it) WERE, exactly, but they were..a thing? I know that it’s based on a book by Ken Follett and that this production is German. Despite being based in England.

Oh, and Luca’s character Mickey Miranda, is uh, Spanish. Make of that what you will.

So the summary is this:

A shocking secret behind a young boys death leads to three generations of treachery in this breathtaking saga of love, power and revenge, set amid the wealth and decadence of Victorian England.

And no it does not do this thing justice whatsoever.

Review under the cut. It’s too long *again, two movies here*, and I took far too many screencaps of this absolute wtfery, and uh, it’s probably better suited for a real-time live blog but nah. You can have this instead.

Some images under the cut are NSFW because nefarious boning is a key point in this..thing.

SPOILERS. So many spoilers. This thing is a spoiler fest. The caps have a very obvious Luca bias, I know why we’re here everyone. Hehe. There’s also some triggering stuff in this thing, so be warned there too.

BEHOLD:

So, a point I want to make is that the costuming in this movie is LEGIT. If absolutely nothing else works? Note that the costuming absolutely does.

The opening credits are very nice, Luca’s very pretty, this cap serves purely to showcase that because I’m a very serious man doing a very serious review.

Pretty.

So the beginning is..confusing. We have a girl, Maisie Robinson. (Around 10-13 here?) Her father is very poor and it’s her and her two siblings. He works for a man who is part of our main characters, the Pilasters? and they run this bank. The head of the bank commits suicide, since they’re having financial troubles and he cannot repay his workers. He pens a note to his young son *under 12 at this point*, Hugh.

Hugh never finds out about this letter, but anyway. At the moment, it’s 1866. Maisie’s father was one of those employees. Destitute, he leaves Maisie to..raise her siblings, and goes to America.

We never hear from this man again.

Hugh goes to live with his aunt (Augusta/Augustina?), uncle Joseph, and cousins, Edward and Clara.

THEN IT’S 1877 (we jump ten years)

Maisie’s two siblings have died, and she has a daughter, Rachel now. Who is also dying. This movie is very keen on people dying. I’d also like to point out that there is like, endless plots all happening alongside one another, and it took me until mid-way into part two to even really grasp what the main plot is.

The movie has a LOT of bank talk as well. I cannot express this earnestly enough, there is SO MUCH bank chatter. SO MUCH. This thing does not have to be as long as it is but again, bank stuff.

Anyway, the one plot is that Maisie is from the poor area, she’s had a horrible life and has struggled from day one. She’s in a constant battle with Hugh, and they argue a lot. A lot. (They like each other, they met as kids, but they’re from very different worlds. Hugh has money, she doesn’t, but Hugh has suffered as well and basically it’s your normal class struggle social commentary thing).

Maisie and Hugh in 1866, as kids, after Maisie’s father left for America. This is the funeral for Hugh’s father. So that’s the theme I mean.

Anywho.

Back in 1877, this is Samuel *left*, Joseph *middle* and Edward. The Pilaster’s get marched into work like they’re freaking army Captain’s and not just rich ass bankers. Imagine saluting your CEO. At work. Outside of the military. WHERE IS THIS A THING? Maybe this was a thing in Victorian England I have no clue I’ve certainly never come across it in my studies. Ffs.

Anyway.

So while all this is going on, there’s this man that wants to marry Maisie.

And his name is,

(That’s Rachel, Maisie’s daughter). Anyway, Solly here loves Maisie and wants to marry her. But Maisie loves Hugh, and neither of them realize this yet. Solly is a himbo and we mostly like him, but stay tuned because that doesn’t stick. Sorta. Depends on how-

Nevermind I’ll just keep going.

ANYWAY, more plot.

Here’s Edward again, doing drugs, being gay, and overall..useless. Edward is..Edward is kind of like a person who would make an interesting wall decoration. Fun enough to look at, but utterly freaking hopeless, and useless, and so dumb. Just so dumb. This character is given the substance of ash fault. Kinda like, only vaguely solid enough to be entertaining. Kinda.

I don’t know guys, BUT LOOK!

It’s his good old pal Mickey! And he’s slapped Edward awake out of his drug coma (okay he grabs his face and shakes him rather than slapping but given how much slapping happens in the rest of this movie I think I can be forgiven) and he has PLOTS.

Mostly it’s his dads plot, but it’s a plot. A very devious scheme and he needs our favourite wallpapers assistance!

(Sorry Edward, but it’s true)

So keeping in mind that the ‘theme’ of this movie is bone-and-soul crushing sadness paired with periods of intense chaos and insanity that you never see coming, our plots continue to thicken.

What Mickey means here, is that Edward’s family denied Mickey’s father what he wanted *weapons deal*, and beat the crap out of Mickey in a carriage. But that’s fine that’s fine Mickey is not deterred! BECAUSE.

*sigh*

So.

OK.

This scene.

Remember what I said about how this movie goes from being incredibly boring to so off the walls bonkers without actually WARNING YOU that it is going to do this? Yeah.

Edward, you see, really does not ‘do’ women. He’s gay. He’s extremely gay. Edward’s mother wants him to marry Florence Stalworthy for idk rich people reasons.

So..Mickey. Uh. Mickey’s solution is..this.

What is this, you ask??

Fuck if I know.

Anyway, no, uhm. This is a brothel. So (not) pictured here (I can’t post the scene on tumblr guys we have a ban) is Edward on a couch across from mask-and-feathers MIckey and this tied down woman, with another woman who is not tied down. And this is Mickey..showing Edward..how to.have sex with women. Apparently. Sort of. His lesson falls very flat. It is not a good scene, Mickey’s ‘instructions’ get increasingly louder, and he at one point makes this noise that sounds like a Joker laugh.

It is...it’s something.

(Also note there’s some extremely uncomfortable, misogynistic name-calling on Mickey’s part here..so yeah).

Oh, and it doesn’t convince Edward. At all. IMAGINE.

Around all this time, the Hugh/Maisie/Solly plot is also ongoing. And that also encompasses bar fighting (bare knuckles boxing and wrestling I think? And gambling)

Hugh has gambling debt we’ll get back to this. (He’s also obsessed with getting Russian bonds into the bank, again, the banking plot losses me a LOT)

So meanwhile, Mickey meets up with Edward’s mother.

But why Edward’s mother, you ask??

Well. *sigh*. Something I didn’t mention earlier is that Mickey likes Ed’s mum. A lot. A lot a lot. Mickey wants to take that woman to town and then some, is a very basic way of me putting it and-

Fuck it. Mickey wants to bang Ed’s mum. BADLY.

(She’s not opposed either, at all)

So their little scheme here is that Ed’s mum wants Ed to take control of the bank, but with the father-in-law alive, that’s not going to happen. So they’re plotting to take down the next person in charge who would succeed said father in law, (Samuel) who is in a relationship with the secretary mentioned above, Michael.

Yes, another GODDAMNED PLOT.

(Samuel is fairly unpleasant like all of these people, so I don’t feel that bad for him. He also kinda treats Michael like garbage, and is called out for this by Joseph later in the movie)

So the scheme here is to get rid of the father-in-law, and get Ed married. Cake walk!

(Also, while ALL THIS is going on, Mickey’s got his own mini-plot about doing these things for his father, the weapons and stuff but we don’t actually find out about the main goal of that whole thing till the end, you’ll see)

Oh, and since we’ve not had a good dose of ‘WHAT THE FUCK’ lately, Solly proposes to Maisie with an honest-to-god Alice in Wonderland party.

Yeah.

Meet the Mad Hatter! He’s a guide, he says nothing. Other people are in costume too, but you know-I have enough caps as it is.

So anyway, Maisie and Solly get engaged, Maisie and Hugh meet up at some point and bang instead.

And while that’s happening, Edward is convinced by Mickey to marry Florence.

So he does.

Lookit this shit faced smug ass grin.

(Also ahead is Samuel again, and Hugh)

BUT THEN the bank finds out about Hugh’s gambling debts. So he leaves. Taking his cousin Clara (Edward’s teenage sister-at her insistence) to the USA. And just like Maisie’s dad, another man abandons her for the States.

So the father in law is still alive, so!

It’s murder time.

Perfect wedding time event yeah?

So Mickey murders the father-in-law. (He jumps on him, suffocates him with a pillow, gets caught by Augusta and then they do this..weird ‘tensely make the bed thing’)

Murdered.

And then, exactly five seconds or so later..

Nothing like some murder pre-boning with the dead guy two feet away amiright?

Anyway at this point I was just:

And yelling at my ceiling. Not pictured.

I was a Hannibal fan and I STILL went !?!?!?

END PART ONE.

Part two starts out in 1912, and then cuts back to 1882. So in this messy timeline, note it has been six years since part one. And Hugh is married now to Nora, an American singer, and Clara is older and pregnant. (Father is never determined, but he’s a married man and that’s why Clara didn’t stay)

SO the three of them are returning home. Maisie and Solly have a son, David, and Maisie is depressed and distant, so Solly is the one who spends all the time with David. He’s shown as a legit good dad and it’s quite cute watching them.

(The kids Hugh’s, btw, he and Maisie both know this, Hugh does not, it’s revealed dramatically later but we still have so many plots)

Edward and Florence are childless. Edward doesn’t sleep with her. Everyone knows this.

(At this point I kept asking myself when this would end, I cannot stress how LONG this thing feels at times)

So Hugh and Nora meet up with Maisie and Solly, and they chat and there’s more love plots, more bank plots and a masquerade party where at some point Maisie thinks a little girl at the party is Rachel (who died in the end of part one, sorry!) and there’s a fire and Maisie and Hugh make out and Nora and Solly are both upset and it’s a whole thing.

Samuel now does something of a side business that’s unspecified with Michael, and pregnant Clara is being persued by the only man who might be a good match for her (she’s not keen on getting married. But he’s also..really old.) PLOTS.

And Mickey and Augusta are..still a thing. And Edward being chlidless is becoming an issue. So what is the solution dear friends??

*BANGS HEAD INTO A WALL*

Why the fuck not.

Absolutely flawless! Eddie will NEVER notice.

SO with this plan in motion, Mickey sets out to seduce Florence, Eddie’s neglected wife. He starts in a church, and I have to admit, this one line he gives is quite funny.

“I don’t go to church.”

Cannot begin to imagine why.

Also, around this time is when we get the infamous scene about how he fcked the wives of the three men and then made the guys suck his dick one by one. I didn’t cap that since it’s in gif form, but yeah.

Hugh and Solly and Nora and Maisie are still having their love issues. And there is still bank stuff as all this is going down.

But while on his Florence quest, we see Mickey beat up a guy who was abusing a small boy, and Florence see’s him do this as well and:

He looks so baffled.

‘Me? GOOD? I really don’t think so.”

She’s also holding a baby, and he gives the infant this face:

“Eugh, what is that?”

He also finds her in church again at some point and comes alongside her like this:

”Sup? Whatcha prayin’ about?”

Anyway, while doing all this, he’s still having some issues. He needs Eddie’s signature for a bank transfer (for his father, his father’s plot is STILL a THING) and so it is time to seduce someone ELSE. This time it’s Edward. This won’t be hard. Edward wants him so bad you could probably see it from fucking space.

Mickey is well aware of this.(I don’t think it’s one sided either, he looks at Edward all wide eyed half the time, but he’s so manipulative it’s hard to judge).

Actually me right now tbh.

So that’s this followed by the infamous gif set.

Edward takes him up on it.

‘Come along my dear there’s nefarious boning to be done’.

Absolutely vital screencap below (which is the most we get anyway and I didn’t cap the line about the freaking signature because fuck plots over nice images okay)

Vital

Anyway Edward gives him the bloody signature. And then Mickey goes along to talk to Augusta. But at this point Mickey is very much beginning to unravel. His goal seems to be more centralized to finishing whatever long ass convoluted job his father has been making him do for the last six years (possibly more tbh) and he’s sort of done with everything.

And Edward see’s this exchange. Le. Oof.

SO! IN BETWEEN ALL THIS. There’s some party where there’s drama and then basically Nora..willing gives up Hugh so he can be with Maisie and Solly just..I don’t even know, single dad for life and all. Edward knows that his family has basically been doing shit all around him, and Mickey STILL seduces Florence. He has her meet him outside that night at two am and they get together, but when he’s with her he kinda has these doubts but she wants him anyway so they bang.

Yeesh.

AFTER that there’s Edward again, because Edward knows shit is up, Mickey goes to a room to grab a bag and see’s Edward there. He tells Edward goodbye, but Edward pulls a gun. Mickey just...drops the bag, tells him to shoot. Edward doesn’t, instead he turns the gun on himself and then Mickey shoots himself in a chair.

Yeah.

DEATH! SADNESS! REMEMBER-THIS MOVIE LOVES DEAD PEOPLE~!

At some point in all this, Augusta goes to her daughter, Clara, apologies for being an absolutely evil mother for her entire life and then the movie sort of begins to wrap up.

Maisie and David were going to leave for the States together, but David wants to stay with Solly, who well DID raise him despite him being Hugh’s kid. So Maisie and Hugh are alone and David lives with Solly and the Pilaster bank has discovered the ACTUAL FREAKING PLOT OF MICKEY’S DAD AND THE ENTIRE BACKGROUND THING. Which was this:

THIS DIDN’T NEED TO BE ALMOST FOUR HOURS, GERMANY.

SO Hugh lets the mob inside. We don’t see what happens after that, but Augusta comes in to tell Joseph Edward shot himself.

Lots of sadness.

So the movie ends in 1912, with David and Hugh meeting up. David never saw Maisie again *she’s deceased now, as is Solly.* they talk, there is some moral lesson or something about love. The goddamned end.

OOF.

SO overall?

I don’t know.

It’s a movie. It has a script and plot and..it was put on screen? The costumes are legitimately amazing. They might be the best thing about this thing. But it REALLY feels like Ken really wanted to make a movie about banking, noticed that’d be boring and tried to make it spicy.

It’s so bizarre. So depressing. So many people are horrible. So many bad things happen. So much slapping, so much weirdness. There’s nothing happy in this thing. Not one. The so called ‘good’-ish ending falls flat amongst a sea of depression and I re-iterate, IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE SO LONG.

I distinctly recall lots of clock watching at times, wondering how I could POSSIBLY have more to go. It then goes so completely off the rails that you just don’t know what is happening and it’s just WEIRD.

At times that weirdness makes it fun, but overall it’s really not great. I probably would never rewatch it, and I can say that it’s an uh, experience in movie-watching.

A good one? I don’t know. But an experience, none the less.

#a dangerous fortune #nate reviews things #nate reviewing #look don't expect coherency here ya'll this thing is A TRIP #long post #too many screenshots #am i legit posting this thing at quarter to four in the morning #yes because i dont want my drafts to eat it askjdnkas #i'll just rebagel later in the day if needed ok

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emmabodt · 4 years

Text

No Need To Worry

Krista watched the window anxiously, looking for a familiar freckled individual. A few minutes earlier, Porco had stumbled through, looking numb as he disappeared towards the Warriors quarters. He didn't even register that Pieck had tried to talk to him, and just walked right past her. If that was what the reaction to receiving a Titan, Krista didn't know if she was ready for the sight of Ymir. There were so many things that could happen to her friend.

Ymir might come back blind.

Or covered in scars.

Or mentally hurt.

Or physically incapable of taking care of herself.

Krista began to sink into her worry, fearing every possible outcome that could happen to her friend. She didn't hear the door open, or the sound of boots on the wooden floor stop next to her. She was only ripped from her worry when a strong, warm hand gently shook her shoulder.

"Krista, you okay?"

Krista's sunny blue eyes turned to find Reiner's golden ones towering over her.

"Oh, yes, I'm fine. Thank you, Reiner," she said distractedly, breaking eye contact to return to the window. Behind her, Reiner chuckled softly.

"You know, worrying about her isn't going to help anyone, right?"

Krista sighed heavily as she turned to look at the blonde again.

"I know...but I can't help it! Everyone knows that this could cost Ymir her life! And Porco looked so...so out of it when he came back...I just...I just..."

Krista had turned her gaze to the floor, and Reiner saw her clench her fists.

"Ymir has been the only person to truly see me, and always has. She's been there for me since the start of my time at the 104th, through thick and thin, rain or shine. She may not seem like it, but Ymir is one of the most caring and kind people I've ever met in my entire life. And I want to be able to pay her back for her kindness by being there for her like she was for me."

Krista tilted her head up to look back at Reiner, who had quietly shuffled himself to sit on the floor beside her chair. Even sitting on the floor, he was still a little taller than her.

He nodded at her to continue, and after a deep breath, she did.

"Sorry if I got a little carried away, I just...Ymir is so tough and carries a lot on her shoulders, and she helps me on top of that, and I still haven't been able to pay her back. And now she is undergoing a procedure that could very well take her life."

Reiner nodded slowly. " I get it. I kinda feel the same way with Bertholdt. That guy has been through a lot and still manages to help me. But it's nothing to worry over, believe me. If I know anything, people like that don't care about anything else but the person they are helping. I know for a fact that instead of worrying about paying him back for all he's done, Bertholdt wants me to be my best."

Reiner cracked a comforting smile at Krista as he reached over and ruffled her hair. Krista blinked and blew rogue strands of hair out of her face as Reiner withdrew his hand and continued.

"So instead of worrying so much about your debt to Ymir, start showing her your best you. Show her that you are happy, strong, caring. Just be you, Krista," Reiner said, crossing his arms into his usual stance.

Krista looked towards the window thoughtfully. "So I need to show her that her hard work is paying off?"

Reiner nodded. "Yep. That's it."

Krista looked back at Reiner with a bright smile and said, "Thanks, Reiner. That's some great advice."

Reiner quickly looked to the floor and cleared his throat. "It was nothing. Plus, seeing you look out the window all sad and worried would have Ymir ripping out throats."

Krista giggled softly." She's not that bad, I promise. However, I have a favor to ask of you, Reiner."

Reiner looked back at her and asked," What is it?"

Krista picked up the chair she was sitting on and scooted it so she was facing Reiner and not the window. When she finished, she looked at Reiner and said," I want to know more about life here in Marley."

Reiner blinked in surprise. "You want to know more about Marley?"

Krista nodded eagerly." Back in the walls, everyone was familiar with every bit of the walls: it feels strange being in a location I know nothing about," Krista explained.

Reiner chuckled. " When you put it that way, I guess there is no way to refuse. Where should I begin?"

Krista thought for a second, then replied," How about the hometown you and Bertholdt always talked about?"

"Oh, Liberio? Sure. Well, it's basically a place built primarily for those with Eldian blood. it is built the same as any other town, just with less quality materials. We have schools, neighborhoods, markets, plazas...you name it, we probably have it."

"Interesting... and what do you usually do, Reiner?"

Reiner thought for a second, mulling over his answer.

" When I was younger, my mom would take me to school, and take me around the markets. We were pretty well known around Liberio, even before I signed up for the Warrior Program, so we were able to get good prices on everything."

Krista nodded thoughtfully, then asked," The Warrior Program?"

Reiner rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. " The Warrior Program is where a bunch of kids compete against each other to get a Titan, and also acquire honorary Marleyian status for their entire family. It happens around every thirteen years when the lifespan of a titan user is up."

Reiner watched as Krista frowned at the floor. "I remember hearing about that. Why is it every thirteen years that a Titan shifter has to die?"

"Well... it's because of Ymir. Not the Ymir we know," he said quickly as Krista opened her mouth to protest," but the Founding Titan Ymir, the creator of all Titans. After doing whatever she did to get the power of the Titans, she died thirteen years later. And somehow, her soul split into nine pieces, which became the Nine Titans we have today. Basically, since Ymir was our founder and by far the most powerful Titan, there is no way we can surpass her in any, way, shape, or form."

Krista blinked." There are nine Titan shifters all together?!"

Reiner nodded. "Yes, nine. My Armoured, Bertholdt's Colossal, Annie's Female Titan, Zeke's Beast Titan, Pieck is the Cart, Porco is now the Jaw, and the Tybur family's Warhammer Titan. The other two Titans are the Attack and Founding Titans."

"Which one is Eren?" Krista asked. "Eren has to be one of them, so which one is he?"

Reiner grimaced."We actually don't know. He could be either one. We are hoping that he is the Founding Titan though."

Krista nodded slowly, then asked," Why does Marley need the Founding Titan?"

Reiner took a deep breath." About a hundred years ago, Marley defeated the Eldian Empire, which led to the king fleeing to Paradis Island. There, he built the walls of millions of Colossal Titans that-"

"W-what?! You just said...that the Walls...were made of Titans?" Krista interrupted, shocked to the core. Reiner nodded solemnly.

"Yes, the Walls are made of Titans. The king, who had the Founding Titan at the time, made the Walls out of Colossal Titans. He used it as a threat against the entire world. Basically, if anyone messed with the people of the Walls, he would unleash what is known as the Rumbling; thousands upon thousands of Colossal Titans destroying the world just by walking over it."

Krista's face had gone a little pale as she stared at Reiner wide-eyed.

"That is terrifying..." she whispered.

"It certainly is a sweetheart. Now Reiner, stop scaring her," said a voice from the doorway. Krista and Reiner both turned their heads to see Ymir smirking tiredly from the doorway. Krista's face brightened with a radiant smile as she got up from her seat to hug Ymir.

"Ymir! You're okay!"

Ymir huffed as the tiny blonde wrapped her arms around her." Of course I am, why wouldn't I be?"

Krista removed herself from Ymir with the same bright smile." No reason. You know I worry about everything."

Ymir smirked as she turned and walked out the door. " I know. I was out for a little bit. No need for you to worry. Now come on, let's go get something to eat. I'm starving."

Krista nodded."Okay. They should have stuff out, it's only a little after one o'clock...," she said as she walked through the door after her freckled friend, leaving Reiner alone in the room. However, a second later, the small blonde reappeared with her trademark smile.

"Oh! I almost forgot! Thank you for the talk Reiner! It really did help!" she said as she quickly tackled Reiner in a tiny hug. He stood there, stunned, as Krista pulled away as quickly as she came and vanished out of the room.

A slight pink came over Reiner's cheeks as he registered what had occurred. A hand quickly rose to his face to hide the stain of pink as he rushed out of the room.

...........................................................................................................................................................

Word Count: 1565

Hey guys! Another update! Sorry that it took so long! Enjoy!

#reiner braun #reiner x christa #bertholdt hoover #Annie Leonhardt #bertholdt x annie #porco galliard #porcoxpieck #pieck #krista lenz #eren yeager #aot #snk

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solitvdcs · 4 years

Text

* michael evans behling, cis male + he/him | you know ryan kennedy, right? they’re twenty-four, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, one month? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to i’m not okay (i promise) by my chemical romance like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole wrapping boxing gloves in slow motion, permanently arched eyebrow, closet battlestar galactica fanboy thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is october 27, so they’re a scorpio, which is unsurprising, all things considered.

TRIGGER WARNING FOR CANCER AND SUICIDE ATTEMPT

basic info

full name: ryan malcolm kennedy

birth date: october 27, 1996

pronouns: he/him

hometown: small town, idaho i don’t have a specific town

sexuality: bisexual

height: 6′2″

eye color: dark brown

hair color: dark brown

build: athletic

tattoos: fuckin shoulder tat of something idk

piercings: none

style: jeans and t-shirts. style??? he doesn’t know her

favorite color: red

favorite food: tacos

zodiac: scorpio sun, taurus moon, capricorn rising

mbti: isfj

hogwarts house: gryffindor

enneagram: type 5 wing 6

temperament: choleric-melancholic

alignment: lawful neutral

i don’t have it in me to type up a full bio, so we’re gonna try some bullet points xoxo

ryan wasn’t always the beefy, closed off, intimidating guy that everyone lowkey talks about whenever he’s not within earshot. he was just a lanky nerd who wore graphic tees with science puns and glasses and thought he’d never grow into his limbs. he was shoved into lockers, got his books knocked out of his arms, all the things you’d expect in a small town high school. closed off in an introverted way, rather than a “hide your emotions at all costs nobody can know you feel things” kinda way. the people he was closest to, though (read: his family and antonia and nobody else) knew the kind, caring boy underneath.

CANCER TW. his two sisters, paige and allison, were his favorite people in the world. he would do anything to protect them. and they were both so talented, with paige being mensa level smart and allison well on her way to the olympics for gymnastics. tragedy fell when allison broke her ankle after landing a simple dismount she’d done hundreds of times before. many appointments later and the diagnosis was osteosarcoma in her leg, and before long her olympic dreams - and her leg - were gone. it was the one thing he couldn’t protect her from and he still can’t stand that.

he was probably always a little in love with antonia, at least the antonia he’d always known. when they reached high school and she decided to become a completely different person, he felt himself holding onto something like sand slipping through his fingers or some other metaphor like that. it was only the beginning, though.

SUICIDE ATTEMPT TW. maybe being one of the only mixed families in their school made them a target, and he could handle it - he knew he’d get out of their some day. paige was sensitive, though, and high school girls are mean. rumors spread in an attempt to take her down a peg, the rumors mutated and got worse, and one day ryan overheard antonia adding to them. he met her eyes to let her know he’d heard, then refused to acknowledge her for the rest of the day. he was the one who found paige unconscious later that night, an empty bottle of pills next to her.

college was where he thrived, rising to the top of his class and hitting puberty to boot. people from high school found him on social media and started thirsting over him, but he knew the truth and refused to entertain them. as the muscle built up, so did the walls around him. that soft, caring guy is still somewhere underneath, though, for those who are willing to work for it.

he’s a big plant nerd, like his apartment is covered with them. blame the biology major maybe, but he can’t get enough. he’s really got a green thumb and has a garden on his balcony (hoping to have a house once he pays off his med school debt).

he’s not sure what made him pursue medicine. maybe some kind of hero complex, needing to save everyone he could. he’s an intern for the local hospital, no concentration decided yet.

honestly i’ve been trying to write this for three days, pls take this crumb and plot with me <3

#irvingintro #peep how little i'm trying now i'm sry #it's character number five i'm tired

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pandapupremade · 4 years

Text

Danger (Part 1)

WORDS: 1,304

WARNINGS: Mentions of explosions/evil plans basically

in case u wanted to know context of the Sympathy fic I did yesterday, I’m writing a prequel tihngy. this is part 1 and doesn’t feature much Self shipping (though it references my ship with Quackerjack and @sphearts‘ insert Patch), but pls know the next parts will. reblogs also appreciated!!! I had a lot of fun w this ;w;

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The Fearsome Five were once more up to something very dastardly. When weren't they? But it seemed today that in that warehouse just off town, not all members of the group were feeling so dastardly. A nervous Bushroot tapped his leafy hands together as he looked over the crate in front of him, one that wires were extending from.

"Are we sure this is such a good idea? I -I m-mean...There's - there's just - there's innocents down there, you kn-know?" He shook his purple-foliaged head and frowned. "Oh, I c-couldn't bear to destroy the poor things...N-not so gruesomely..."

Bushroot's concerns fell on deaf ears, of course, and in fact his words were met with a laugh from Quackerjack, who was dangling upside down from the rafters for whatever goofy reason. "Since when do YOU care about the civilians, bush brain?"

"W-who said anything about people?" The scientist almost seemed offended, "You know I'm talking about the plants! The - the - the trees! The f-flowers! They're all blooming at this time, I couldn't stand it if they..."

"Are you having second thoughts?" Came the voice of Liquidator, poking up from a puddle on the floor, "Tired of destroying your family trees? Not to worry, the Liquidator will set things right! Lots of water for lots of plants, right?"

"Uh, I-I guess..." Bushroot nodded, but still seemed tense. "A-anyway, Quackerjack - don't think you're one to - to talk. You're the one with a f-family at home. Shouldn't you be worried about them? What if they get caught in the explosion - bet you'd be pretty bummed then...!"

"Please, they know to stay out of any destruction zone!" replied the jester with another laugh, "Well, except Patch - but who knows where they go....Maybe your plants oughta do the same...You know...Make like a banana and split! Hohohohoooo~!" As he said banana, he pulled out Mr. Banana Brain, because of course he did.

"Just better hope they don't get in the way again," Megavolt sneered. "They're always so unpredictable...But then again, so are you."

"Hohohooo!"

"Which one of you idiots is making Quackerjack a fool of himself again?" growled a new voice, and one that shot chills down each Fearsome member's spine. Negaduck had finally arrived. "Or is it just Quackerjack being a fool all on his own? Either way, his laughter is getting on my nerves."

"Oh, goody!" Quackerjack grinned from above. "Boss is back! Great to see you, Negaduck! Buddy, ol' pal!"

"Yeah, yeah, roll out the red carpet." Negaduck waved his hand with disinterest. "Is everything in place, boys? 'Cause if it's not..."

"The Liquidator has a 100% satisfactory guarantee! Indeed, you, Negaduck, will be pleased - or your money back!" The watery dog seemed a bit too cheery considering all this talk of explosions...

Negaduck shook his head. "I'll hold you to that, you walking infomercial..." But at this, Megavolt spoke up, "But Boss, you didn't give us any money, so we can't exactly give it back..."

"Well, your life can repay any debt, don't you think?" He tapped his foot on the ground. "I mean, really, that's what you're gonna give me anyway if you losers screw this up."

"That's our Negaduck! Always so forgiving..." Seems like even the concept of dying a bloody death as punishment for failing sounded like a fun time to Quackerjack. "Anyway, boss..." He dropped down from the ceiling and landed directly in front of Negaduck now, "I've got a question for you, if you've got the time..."

"I don't have the time." Negaduck tried to walk past the insolent clown, but Quackerjack quite literally bounced back to front and center.

"It'll only take a second! See, Bushroot and I were just having a civil little conversation -"

"Nothing civil about it," huffed Bushroot in the background.

"9 out of 10 reviews give that conversation a thumbs down," added Liquidator.

Quackerjack snorted. "Anyway, it got me wondering if YOU have any ties that could be -"

And then, his beak was grabbed quite cartoonishly to shut him up. Negaduck was obviously unamused. "No, Quackerjack. Unlike you, I don't need a family to keep me stable."

"Yeah, you only need a chainsaw," chuckled Megavolt.

"Bingo. And frankly, I don't even need that. Any weapon will do, yeah?" Negaduck let go of Quackerjack now, but walked past while purposely stepping on the guy's foot. (Though this backfired, because there was a honking sound effect and that just annoyed the boss more.) "If that's all you nubs needed, then let's start the operation."

"Aye-aye, sir!" came the chant of his cohorts. Negaduck would walk towards the earlier mentioned crate, which with the little help of a button on a remote he had, opened to reveal a computer inside. On the screen was a map of St. Canard in neon green color, and Negaduck began to type in some coordinates from a sheet of paper - one that he'd somehow taken from Megavolt when the rodent wasn't looking.

"And...we...are...good...to....Eh?" His finger paused over the last number, "No, wait a minute, that ain't right..." He back spaced and tried again. Still no.

"Somethin' wrong, boss?" asked Megavolt.

"The coordinates I'm inputting on this detonator...They're nowhere near the correct ones." He glared at Megavolt. "Where did you set up the bombs?"

"On the south side of -"

At this, Negaduck's eyes narrowed. "The SOUTH side? You LOSER, you can't even follow orders right...I said the NORTH would be destroyed..."

Megavolt stared, and became increasingly panicked. "W-wh-wha? W-well, it shouldn't be too big a difference! A-after all, it's still just a threat, r-right? Not like we won't get our point acro-"

"That's not the point, you dolt! There's some stupid art convention going on in the South Side of town, and I wanted to specifically avoid that area!"

Silence.

"Uh....Why-" began Bushroot, but he quickly retracted his inquiry as Negaduck shot a nasty look at him. "Th-that is....We can just set the bombs up elsewhere, right?"

"Yeah, and it's gonna take all day! Forget it, this plan was a failure...And it's not my fault, I'd like to say..." Negaduck crossed his arms. "Quackerjack and Megavolt can be in charge of defusing all the bombs."

"Hmm...Is it really such a big deal?" Quackerjack smiled in a way that sorta said he was about to cause trouble, "It's just strange you'd care so much about a little setback that you'd cancel your whole plan...Not even a Plan B...."

"Y-yeah, that's - that's right!" chimed in Bushroot. "We should just go ahead with it, already!"

"Act now, and the Liquidator can wash away YOUR worries, with a bang!"

"It will SURELY shock you!" beamed Megavolt.

"Will you all be quiet?! I'm sick of your puns!" Negaduck snapped, "You're all so...useless!" Well, this was getting nowhere fast. Soon, in a comedic fashion, the Fearsome Five became the Fumbling Five - everyone started arguing, and in the midst of it...Somehow, probably when nobody was paying attention, that last digit got put into the detonator.

"Forget this," Negaduck growled, "I'll just have to..." And then he noticed the timer. "W- No! Oh, for the love of -" Everyone watched as he rushed to the computer and began trying to stop the detonator. "UGH! YOU IDIOTS!"

The others looked at each other. Then at Negaduck. Then at each other. And as they ran away so as not to meet his wrath, Liquidator shouted out another quote of "Act now, the offer ends soon!"

"Oh, more than that is gonna end...." But there was no time to worry about that with the clock ticking. He gripped his hat in a stressed manner, yanking on it to try and calm his nerves. But he couldn't stop the detonator - he'd specifically planned that so that Darkwing couldn't screw things up...What irony!

But why did he care about that art convention? Well, as he rushed off to try and find a certain someone, he wondered that himself.

#⚡💞 Stinky Ducksband (Negaduck)#🌿💞 Tragic Blossom (Bushroot)#💧 Liquidator (Platonic)#🦆💞 It’s Playtime (Quackerjack)#🌩️ Megavolt (Platonic)#kermitwriting #🃏🪀🦆 DoraPatchJack (Ship)#ok 2 reblog

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sunshine304 · 3 years

Text

I am so so sorry that it took me this long to continue my LoF watching posts! RL, y’know. Ep 26 felt like a good place to take a breather, as well, so that’s what I did.

Anyway, let’s move on to eps 27 and 28!

It’s exposition time! Zhou Fei and ChuChu are at a tea house and hear about an army deserter who was trained on the Mountain of the Immortals (has this been mentioned before... IDK), was poisoned and became a monk. A-Fei thinks this story sounds familiar (indeed it does, indeed it does...) and ChuChu remembers having read sth like this in a book (the book of ... Peng Lai? I think?).

Oh look, Huo Fort becomes relevant again! I forgot about them. Anyway, Huo Lintao, who is now the boss and seems to not be well liked basically everywhere, wants to fight Disha and invites people from Jianghu to his Destroy Disha Assembly (God, I just love that name XD). Li Sheng & 48 Strongholds get an invite and he wants to investigate. Huo Fort is also... attacked by random cultivators I guess?

Meanwhile, let’s check in on Yin Pei! He still can’t deal with his internal injury (loss of internal power? still not sure; I’m assuming it’s sth like severe damage to a golden core in xanxia or even complete loss of one) and scours Old Daoist Master Chongxiao’s rooms for the Phoenix Pill, which... I think gives you lots of power but is also really super dangerous?

This show sure has lots of useful but also dangerous power restoring/improving pills and needles, huh?

Anyway, Yin Pei takes the pill. He does not feel so good. Uh oh.

Li Yan and Yang Jin go in search for A-Fei again – uhm, didn’t A-Fei simply go into town with ChuChu? Why are they searching for her again, other that Yang Jin wants to fight her because one obvious defeat isn’t enough? I'm guessing there has been a time skip again...

Meanwhile, at Disha Manor! Shen Tianshu is nursing his wounded ego I guess, while Chu Tianyu, an older member, is now supposed to take care of all this drama, but he doesn’t really want to because he’s retired. How many weird members of Disha are there?

Oh okay, so Yin Pei goes kinda crazy because of the scabbard since it seems to be gone, takes more of the Phoenix Pills, which is a fucking stupid idea, we get some exposition that this might turn him into a demon of some sort, and then he kills Chongxiao for the scabbard because he thinks that the old master wants it for himself.

Which, you know, isn’t true, but that’s what you get for being so secretive, I guess. Chongxiao actually wanted the scabbard so a forger could make lots of copies of it, so that Yin Pei can keep the original one. *sigh* Well, too late now. Yin Pei also meets that evil guy from way back in ep 7 or 8 who’d fought Chongxiao and Li Sheng, who calls himself the Black Judge (I’m too lazy to look up his name and hope he doesn’t really become that relevant).

I’m kinda sad that Yin Pei simply seems to go the “Oops I’m super crazy now“ route instead of having a more interesting redemption arc. I also... don’t really know what he wants to do now? He’s got the scabbard of his father... Are there still people alive he could take revenge on? Disha I guess?

But! The song that plays while Yin Pei confronts Chongxiao is awesome! I'm in love.♥

Back to the main characters, thank you! Xie Yun is really ill and freezing, the poison taking its toll. He’s at the same inn as two new characters (noooo, no more characters, have mercy!) Zhu Chen and Zhu Ying of the small Zhu sect, who are there for that assembly. They eye XY and feel sorry for him. We instantly know that these are Good People.

Aaaaaand introducing another new character, Ying Hecong, Poison Doctor! I know he’s relevant because he’s got a poster!

Of course Zhou Fei just misses Xie Yun in that inn. *sigh* But then she meets Li Yan and Yang Jin there, which is nice.

Yet another new character! He’s Black Tortoise Ding Kui and has henchman that are dressed in a rather peculiar way. Is this now the same as with that Azure Dragon guy, and I don’t really have to remember him? He’s from the 4 Guardians Mountain (speaking of which, where tf is Mu XiaoQiao!?).

Okay okay I see now. Everyone is in LingLing for that meet up with the Huo family! Madame Nichang is there too! Ah my beloved! ♥ She tells Xie Yun to follow his heart, and not be stupid and only think of his end.

Xie Yun is all evasive of course, and then he meets up with Cheng Zichen who of course is also there! Because of this he finds out that Zhou Fei is there, too, which puts him into a conflict. Because his running away was going so well, dammit!

On to Ep 28!

Xie Yun hides out in the carriage with Ling Yu of the Feather Robe Troupe, who slyly comments on him running away from Zhou Fei. He’s sad and says that it’s not A-Fei’s fault and that he’s just an unlucky person who is not good for her. T_T Kill me, why don’t you.

A-Fei has learned a lot and notices XY’s ruse, yay go my heroine!♥

She catches him and they fight, and she asks him about the poison. Zhou Fei obviously suspects ahhhh! (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ But of course when XY seems happy that she was looking for him, she goes all haughty again and is like, “It’s only because of the HYTS!“ (although no it was mainly because of him and she looks light she might burst into tears any moment now, too...)

They get distracted by the procession of Black Tortoise Master walking by and A-Fei knocks XY out. They’re even now! XD

Nice to see the whole gang together as A-Fei drags the unconscious Xie Yun to an inn! ChuChu my beloved! ♥

OMG Li Sheng and Yang Jin getting into this peacock fight! XD Li Sheng scolds his sister and Yang Jin is super pissed about it. Li Yan is looking sooo smug, like “Yep that's my very own protective himbo!“ XD

Then Li Sheng is sent off to find Madame Nichang because she at least might know what to do about Xie Yun.

Ding Kui arrives at the Hui Fort. If I understood correctly... Hui Lintao wants to... kill all the cultivators when they arrive for his assembly? Or just those other cultivators that are randomly attacking him? There's traps in the forest they have go through. He specifically mentions that the traps are set after Daoist Master Chongxiao’s design, so hm might Li Sheng be of great help here later? Anyway, that old guy from Disha is there and seems to find all of this very funny. I’m confused.

Mu Xiaoqiao my love!!!!!!! He’s back!!!! For about 5 seconds but there he is, looking fabulous! ☆*: .｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆

Ding Kui (who... has left the Huo Fort I guess) wants to work with him and reminds him of his debt to the Huo Fort. I had forgotten about that.

Oh let’s check in for about a minute on Yin Pei, who is still crazy and slaughters some people... uhm somewhere. He also now calls himself the true Master of Clear Light. [at least I think it’s supposed to be his new name?] Nicely written on the door in blood. Okay then.

But the instrumental of his song plays in the background, making all of this much more epic, so it’s fine.

Madame Nichang arrives, is shocked, and states that Xie Yun is poisoned, as A-Fei feared, and he has a year if he doesn’t use his internal force anymore. A-Fei is devastated and we get their love song while she rubs his (supposedly) ice-cold hand. Oh my heart. T_T

Ying Hecong arrives because he wants to see the poisoned guy! XD He has never heard of tact.

Since A-Fei is desperate she lets him in, and we get some exposition in bits and pieces. Ying Hecong first assumes that XY must’ve been poisoned about a month ago (which fits the fight against Disha, where he used the needle), but wonders how that could be because Lian Sheng (the poisoner known for bone piercing blue) has been missing for a while longer. He lets slip that he isn’t actually a doctor, uhm yeah....

Oh not A-Fei is so sad and crying, nooooo T_T She’s angry at XY, asking why he had to meddle in her affairs and then leave to just die somewhere alone. Oh nooooo. ಥ_ಥ ಥ_ಥ ಥ_ಥ

(side note: easy scene for Wang Yibo, just lying there the whole time, no lines for once XD)

A-Fei gets the Tianmen Lock from Madam Nichang (a special lock that has a double lock mechanism that is very difficult to open. Md. Nichang actually alludes to this lock being very useful for lovers and I’m like... okay XD). YunFei are kinky as ever, nothing new here – A-Fei is so pissed at XY that she doesn’t want him to have the chance to run away again. XD

Loved how XY complained about the lock destroying his posture. XD And how Zhou Fei’s like, “It’s not my fault you’re bound like that, Li Sheng is to blame!“ while the flashback tells us, that uhm no, he’s not. XD

Ending with A-Fei telling Yang Jin about the Hai Tian Yi Se. Ah they’re important relics it seems. Well whatever. XY listens in.

I really need to keep on watching, it seems stuff is happening.

#legend of fei #you fei #sabrina watches legend of fei #my posts #my gifs

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theotakulifechoseme · 4 years

Note

The marriage alphabet for Hendrickson? Hopefully that’s not too much, thanks!

I’m having a lot of fun with these alphabets HEEHEEHEE!

A-About, what about you made them want to marry you?

Your forgiving and nurturing nature. You are just like a druid in the way that you respect nature and he loves that about you.

B-Baby, would they want kids with you as soon as possible?

Yes. Hendrickson basically helped to raise Griamore, Gilthunder, and Howzer, so he will want kids as soon as possible.

C-Celebration, how would they celebrate your anniversaries?

Hendrickson is a hopeless romantic. He would make you dinner and make sure that everyone else stays away so that he can make you feel just as loved as you make him feel.

D-Divorce, how would they handle if you wanted a divorce? What caused it?

His self loathing is what caused it. This absolutely destroys him. He wants nothing more than to be worthy of you and to him he has failed and there was no saving it.

E-Earnest, are they serious about your marriage? Or can they be a little immature about it?

Hendrickson takes your relationship very serious. He is never immature about it because he takes this as serious as his job as a Holy Knight.

F- Favorite, what was your favorite things before and after you got married to each other?

Favorite thing before and after you got married is Hendy’s inability to resist Honey. You have to hide it to keep him out of the honey jar, but if this man gets a whiff of it you have no hope to keep it secret. Sometimes you even buy some just so that you can watch him get sticky from the mess he makes.

G-Giving, do they spoil you?

Hendrickson is sure to spoil you. Flowers, poems, dresses, surprise date nights. You name it. He spoils you rotten and often times you pitty the other women around you whose husband’s don’t treat them with the same respect and reverence.

H-Honeymoon, what did you two do for your honeymoon?

Hendrickson is first and foremost a druid. Even though he was cast out he is still a druid of nature. A honeymoon in the forest with a cliff outlook to the sea was something you never thought you would want to do, but being pulled by the waves on the cliff face would put you to sleep in an instant, that is, after you two had your fun.

I-Invest, how much do they contribute to your marriage?

Hendrickson put everything into your marriage. He still does. You, not expecting this at first, were shocked. Though once the shock wore off you put equal amount of effort into your marriage. The only time he doesn’t put in effort is when he is training your children to be holy knights. You can understand though. This is what will keep them safe.

J-Jealous, do they still get jealous even though you’re completely theirs?

Yes. Hendrickson is very much the jealous type. Part of this stems from. His fear that you will realize that the things that he has done cannot be atoned for and he will always be the monster he thinks he is.

K-Kiss, how often would you two kiss? Do you still have that spark?

Hendrickson is big on formality. He will not kiss you in public. He does love to kiss you when you are home though. Good morning kisses are a must. Goodnight kisses are never missed. Kisses are also always given to you in tandem with thank yous.

L-Live, where would you two settle down at?

You live in Lioness, though you both would like to move to live in the same forest that you had your honeymoon in.

M-Make, do they still make your heart flutter after years of marriage?

The one thing that makes your heart flutter is his soft kisses on the back of your hand. He is such a gentleman that it makes your heart skip a beat every single time.

N-Never, what is something they would never do?

He would never raise his voice to you. Even when you have your days, and that one time that you screamed at him that he didn’t love you the way he said he did while you were pregnant with your first child, he never and will never raise his voice at you.

O-Opportunity, do you two still get the opportunity to be intimate with one another?

Drefus is always there to lend a hand, just as Hendrickson was there to lend a hand to him. Uncle Drefus will always take the kids so that you two can have some alone time. If it isn’t Drefus it’s Meliodas who will let you guys get in some alone time. Though you are pretty sure he is racking up some debt so that he will have that time later on.

P-Pet names, what pet names do you two give each other?

You always call him Darling, and Hendy always calls you My Heart. You find it adorable and you will never stop.

Q-Quiet, do you two keep quiet about your marriage? Or do you always brag about one another?

No, you always brag about each other. You know he brags about you to the guys and equally you find yourself bragging to all of your female friends about how wonderful of a husband he is.

R-Romance, how do you two keep your romance alive?

With how spoiled you are and how much you both put into your marriage there is no short supply of romance in your marriage. Late night walks in Lioness, star gazing, and the trips to town festivals.

S-Selfie, would they take multiple pictures of you? Would they save them on their phone?

If he had a phone, yes he would. He does love to have portraits made, especially of you two and his whole family.

T-Teenagers, do you still act like teens when you’re older?

No. You might act silly every once and a while, but you don’t act like teenagers.

U-Unrelenting, what hasn’t stopped since you two got married?

He is always the one to make breakfast every morning. Normally you are a late riser, or at least later than he is. So you find that you are served breakfast every morning.

V-Valentine’s Day, what plans do you two make?

It’s always a surprise for you. Sometimes you two spend it alone and others you spend it on a short vacation from the Holy Knights.

W-Wedding, what was your wedding like?

Small, with only Hendrickson’s close friends and yours. You find that you liked the small wedding and that even though it was small his vows to you were the most amazing words that you will never forget.

X-X-Ray, can you two see through each other? Can you see when you’re lying or not?

Hendrickson can always tell when you are upset, but lying? You don’t normally lie to each other. The only thing you lie about is when you two have surprises for each other and you two have gotten so good at it, it is like second nature. You can keep these secrets from each other easy as pie.

Y-Yearly Tradition, what do you two do every year for your wedding anniversary?

Being a druid Hendy is big on traditions. You find that he always serves you breakfast in bed, You’ll god out to spend the day together and follow everything up by going out to dinner before you two go to the castle baths before some fun time.

Z-Zesty, Give me your own zesty letters!

Good morning My Heart,

Breakfast is on the table, I’m sorry I had to leave so early for a training mission with the younger Holy Knights Apprentices but duty is duty. I have put the laundry out to dry since it is going to be a nice out. Why don:t you take your free time to finish that book you were enjoying?

The balcony is lit perfectly at noon and you have been desperately trying to find time to finish it. The only thing I ask of you is for you to tell me how it finished when I return.

I’ll cherish you forever,

Hendrickson

#Annonymously Dead #Answered From A Coffin #SenpaiStar #Nanatsu No Taizai #Seven Deadly Sins #Hendrickson #Hendy #Marriage Alphabet #Headcannon #Anonymous #SFW

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jjkfire · 5 years

Text

Obey

Reader x Taehyung // mafia!AU // 8k words

Summary: You’re the agency’s worst escort and yet the local mafia’s head of security still chooses you

Genre: Smut, Fluff (?)

A/N: how long has this been sitting in my drafts? too long. anyway, smut? who is she? i forgot.

Having to pay off loan sharks and save up for graduate school isn’t exactly easy. Your day job pays you good money but the interest on the illegal loan your estranged father left you with, compounds with each growing day. You knew coming back to your hometown had been a mistake but with your mother’s recent death, you didn’t know where else to go. Who knew that when you returned, you’d be slapped with a debt so big that you couldn’t even dream of paying it off? You haven’t seen your father since you were 4 but that didn’t stop the loan sharks. They needed their money back and you were his only available next of kin. You needed more money and you needed it quick. That’s why when your co-worker, Seokjin tells you of an opening at the local escort agency, you jump at the chance.

Seokjin is an angel, that much you’re convinced. He’s pulled so many strings just for you and you don’t think there’s any way you can ever repay his kindness. He pretty much runs the HR side of things for the escort agency and is the only reason why you’ve been allowed to get away with most of the nonsense that you do. In summary, you’re a horrible escort and Jin covers for you every time.

The local escort agency is a rather interesting organization. It serviced mainly the local mafia boys, providing the men with entertainment every time they stopped by the lounge. Whatever it was they were interested in doing for the night, be that gambling, karaoke or even just plain old drinking, the lounge was the place for that. All the newbies to the escort agency were often made to work most nights, servicing these men.

The job was simple. You were basically glorified arm candy. You would bring the boys their drinks, let them touch your butt a little or let them kiss your neck if they wanted to and then go home with a few extra hundred-dollar bills. Now just as all the other girls, clients could choose to call you up and rent you for a night. Yet, you’ve made it a whole year without that happening. Any other one of the escorts would be upset about that because everyone knows you get more money if you actually spent the night with someone. It’s a bit of a talent of yours, turning clients away from you without putting yourself in jeopardy but this time around, you seem to have run out of luck.

Tonight, you find yourself standing in line with 4 other girls, facing a double-sided mirror. It’s common practice for when someone high up in the mafia hierarchy was looking for a new plaything… or so you’ve been told. This is your first time ever being in this room. To put off the client, you chose an ill-fitting dress for the night. You hadn’t even bothered to put on make-up either. Your agency has long stopped trying to tell you what to do. Lord knows Jin has given up months ago. Anyway, you’re not sure why you’re even here. You rarely— or more accurately, never got selected from the binder because you had made it a mission to make yourself sound rather boring, unappealing even and you even made sure to be extremely honest about your lack of sexual prowess.

Yet, despite all of that, you were selected… and by Kim Taehyung no less. See, this time you were actually nervous. No one had seen you in this state before, actually trembling.

Last week

“Why was my profile even in the binder? Don’t you usually offer some sort of premium binder with only the best girls to clients as important as him?” You ask Jin as you pace up and down his office.

“We did but then he asked for the general binder. Said that he didn’t quite trust our taste.”

“Honestly, my profile shouldn’t even be in the binder anymore,” You groan.

Truth is, you shouldn’t even be an employee anymore but they needed pretty faces to entertain the boys. See, you wanted the money from being an escort but you weren’t quite sure about the sex part. The last boyfriend you had, had made sure you were painfully aware at how bad you were at pleasing men. So, you and Jin came up with the master plan to help you become an escort without really being one. Together you curated your profile, making sure that the men would skip right past your page when going through the binder of girls they could select from. It’s worked so far. You’ve fooled every single man that’s gone through the binder… except Taehyung of course.

Seokjin and every living, breathing soul had told you to keep your distance from him. See, Taehyung was the Head of Security for the local mafia. That meant he was the fixer. If there was a problem in any form, that being a situation or even a person, he would make the problem disappear. Easy, fast, quick. Taehyung embodied efficiency. They said he worked like a robot, pulling the trigger with absolutely no remorse. So, the word on the street was if you just so much as breathe wrongly in his presence, he could end you right there, right then. Around him, mistakes weren’t allowed and thus, you were told that if you ever got selected to be his regular, your life expectancy would sink like a rock.

You should’ve listened, you really should’ve. You should’ve found other ways to keep yourself busy but it’s not your fault that the girls didn’t give you a good enough description of him the first night you met him. They said tall and dangerous but to you, Taehyung seemed anything but dangerous.

There were girls aplenty that night you were working the lounge. You slipped away into the other room, knowing full well that you wouldn’t be missed. You arranged and rearranged the strawberries and assorted snacks on the many different plates. You twisted and turned all the alcohol bottles laid out and read their labels over and over just to pass time. You munched on the snacks, humming a tune as you looked out the window to see the town you call home. It’s not until you saw Taehyung in the reflection that you jumped in your spot, quickly swallowing what you had in your mouth before dusting your dress off any crumbs.

“C-can I get anything for you? Whiskey, maybe?” You asked with a smile despite the fact that you had been caught red-handed slacking on the job.

“A double shot gin and tonic would be nice,” He smiled and you got to work immediately. You were stirring the tall glass soon after, ready to lead him into the main room but he made himself comfortable on one of the couches behind you instead.

“It’s getting a little rowdy out there,” He laughed. “You know how Jimin gets when he’s having a good game of blackjack.”

You only nodded, laughing before you set down his drink in front of him. You stood awkwardly before him, unsure if you were meant to join him or return to the main room. As if sensing your unease, he called for you to take a seat.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you here before,” He hummed, stirring his drink. “Are you new?”

“Me? Oh, I’ve been here a few months already so not exactly new… but I’m Y/N,” You smiled, introducing yourself.

“Taehyung,” He grinned in return and he watched your eyes go wide, like you had a moment of realization. “Judging by your expression, you’ve heard of me?”

“Y-yeah… You’re the Head of Security. A very important man,” You laughed but he could sense the fear behind your laughter.

Though you were awkward at first, you quickly became comfortable. Taehyung was easy to be around, interesting to talk to and with every night you saw him, the two of you only grew closer. He would often find you in the back room, the same way he found you the first time, munching away on snacks meant for him and the boys. The two of you would be lost in your own world, talking about anything from conspiracy theories to sports to world politics and even local gossip. That’s not to say all the two of you ever did was talk. Sometimes he had his hand halfway up your skirt, your lips melding against his, moving at a set rhythm until you pull away, breathless, but aching for more. You guess you didn’t actually mind it. Taehyung was easy on the eyes, and that was an understatement. If anything it was sure as hell better than being fondled by some 50 year old guy. Maybe it also had to do with the fact that you were inexperienced, that this was the most action you’ve gotten since you broke up with your boyfriend more than 3 years ago. If anything, it was an ego boost. Who would say no to making out with someone like him? The answer is well… almost everybody, but contrary to what everyone said, Taehyung seemed harmless. In fact, he was rather sweet. Always taking his time with you, always respectful.

You believed it, you really did. You understood that Taehyung might be a ruffian at work but when it was just you and him, he was anything but. Jin had to sit you down and really knock some sense into you, detailing his crimes, reiterating stories he had heard. He was ruthless, a maniac. Someone who would slit your throat without hesitation. Jin said you and the other girls had to understand that if Taehyung picked any one of you, there was no room for anything but perfection. You knew among the 5 girls that he had chosen, you were the weakest link and for your sake, everyone prayed he wouldn’t choose you because if he did, it was game over. It wasn’t just your life at risk you see, it was everyone’s. If Taehyung was unhappy with the service, after dealing with you, the next to go would be Jin and given Taehyung’s reputation, everyone would follow suit. It won’t be you, you mumbled. He wasn’t stupid. The boys talk about the escorts among themselves. He must know that any of the other girls would be a much better choice. You were worrying for nothing, you smiled. It wasn’t going to be you, you were confident it wasn’t.

“Y/N,” Jin hears Taehyung say through his earpiece. With unsteady fingers, he points at you and Taehyung gives an affirmation.

When Jin grabs you by the hand, attempting to lead you out of the room, you hesitate. You were so sure you weren’t going to be chosen, not when you were standing next to what were the top stars of the agency. Panic rises within you because you’re not ready for this responsibility. You couldn’t have the fate of the agency resting in your hands.

“I have herpes!” You shout, lying, eyes roaming around the double-sided mirror, not knowing where exactly he was standing. “Tell him I have herpes,” You tell Jin who winces when you tug his arm with urgency.

“He says he doesn’t care,” Jin mumbles, tapping at his earpiece.

“W-wait— Taehy—”

You don’t get to finish your sentence because Jin is already dragging you out of the room. He wears an expression you’ve never seen before. It’s anger and fear, all mixed into one and when he pins you with his stare, you choose to look at your feet.

The elevator ride is silent, the doors opening with a ding when it reaches the top floor, the suite reserved for only the best clients. The last time you were in here was for a training session. You were taught how to work the room. Where to sit, what to do, how to entice the men. You struggle to remember most of it now, not when you’re thinking of how you were going to even survive tonight.

“Jin, please, you need to do something,” You whine, almost thrashing in your spot when you stop in front of the door. “Tell him something, tell him—”

“Stop making a scene! There’s nothing I can do now, do you understand?” Jin grumbles, shaking you. “Listen once you go into that room, I can’t really protect you anymore. You know what he’s capable of so, keep that pretty trap of yours shut.”

You simply nod, suddenly rendered mute by the warning. Before shutting the door on you, Jin flashes you a thumbs up, trying to look optimistic but you know more than anyone that he’s scared. In some way, he feels responsible for all of this and god, if anything happens to you, he’s not sure he can forgive himself. With shaky legs, you step further into the room, scanning the suite for a place to sit. Your eyes snap to the bed and you assume that’s where he would want you to be. It’s where you’ve been taught to sit anyway.

It isn’t long before you hear the door creak, Taehyung stepping into the room with a soft smile on his lips. He greets you and all you do is wave dumbly. God, you’re absolutely adorable. While unbuttoning his blazer, he realizes you look different tonight. The expression you wear mimics the one you had on the first time he met you. Fear. He could see it on every inch of your face.

“I uhh— I have herpes,” You mumble, again, as a last-ditch effort.

“I know you don’t,” Taehyung sighs, holding up a piece of paper that you know holds the results from the STD test that the agency made you go for just a few days ago.

“How are you so sure? The test results could be fabricated.”

“Oh your agency wouldn’t dare,” He laughs, placing his blazer on the back of a chair.

“Maybe I slept with someone last night,” You mumble, shuffling your feet. You mean to sound confident but it comes out sounding as anything but that.

“Yeah? And how was it then?” He asks as he removes his gun from his waistband, setting it down on the table. The sight makes Jin’s numerous warnings sound in your head again. This was no time to lie, no time to joke.

“Mustn’t have been that great if it’s taking you so long to answer,” He chuckles, noting your silence.

“I-I didn’t sleep with anyone last night,” You sigh, hands folding nervously in your lap.

Taehyung simply laughs before striding over to take a seat next to you. You’re nervous that much he can tell. You can’t even look him in the eye.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” He murmurs, and you gulp, forcing yourself to look at him just so you can nod.

At that, he smiles. He stands up and makes his way over to the ice bucket tucked in the corner of the room.

“Champagne?”

“Yes, please.”

That’s the only sentence you’ve said so far with absolute certainty.

He walks over, glass of champagne in one hand and plate of strawberries in another. You accept them both meekly. Twirling the glass of champagne in your hand while you munch on a strawberry.

You’re a nervous eater and drinker. You knocked back glasses of champagne and almost cleared the whole plate of strawberries on your own.

“I have a feeling you don’t do this very often,” Taehyung smiles, refilling your glass for what must’ve been the 5th time now.

“H-huh? Oh, um, sorry,” You mumble as you snap into action. You tug your dress a little lower by the cleavage before you move up on the bed. You move slow, Taehyung watching as you kick off your shoes. Taking your time, you lay on your side, shoulders rolled back so your chest was on display. Your other hand slides to rest on your hip, before it slides down lower, drawing his attention to what he wanted the most. With your champagne still in hand, you put on a sultry expression, one you’ve been coached to make. Your free hand reaches for a strawberry, stopping to lick your lips just after a bite.

Taehyung takes a seat on the bed, laughing as he shook his head. When he turns to look at you, he sees a frown on your face. You didn’t understand. You did everything they told you to do. He was supposed to be smirking, not laughing. Taehyung pats the spot next to him, beckoning you over to take a seat.

“It doesn’t suit you,” He hums, when you’re finally at his side. “The whole sexy act they teach you girls to put on.”

“But, I-I’m plenty sexy,” You pout. You knew you weren’t a bombshell like some of the other girls were but you had your… well, charm.

“You are, you are,” He grins, pulling you onto his lap with ease as he’s done many times before. “I never said you weren’t. I just think you’re sexier when you’re doing your own thing, not whatever they teach you,” He hums as he pulls you in closer, his chest now flush against your back.

“But the act is what you boys like,” You mumble, as he rests his chin on your shoulder. “You know, we flash some skin, sway our hips, wink a little and by then you’ll all be drooling already.”

Taehyung lets out a breathy laugh, one hand wrapped around your centre while the other reaches for his champagne glass. He simply clinks his glass against yours with a smile.

“I can’t deny that,” He sighs after setting aside both his glass and yours. “But you see I much prefer you like this. Disobedient and sassy.”

You can’t see his face but you can almost imagine the smirk he’s wearing right now. It’s the one he always flashes you when he’s busy ogling you. His fingers toy with the sleeves of your dress that sit awkwardly on your shoulder, slipping them off with practised ease, as if he does this all the time and you sit there in his lap, too afraid to move.

“T-Taehy—"

There’s a hum of approval that leaves his lips, when your dress pools at your waist, his fingers brushing the underside of your bra. He peppers your shoulder with kisses, moving along until he reached your neck, his lips moving slow, leaving marks that you are sure will show tomorrow. Your breath stutters, quiet moans leaving your lips as his hand moves up to wrap around your throat. It’s right and it’s wrong. You want to but you can’t and you mean to stay silent but you can’t help but say what’s been on your mind since he stepped into the room.

“I haven’t had sex in years,” You blurt out, your eyes shut tight as you feel his lips pull away, the grip around your neck now loose as his hand drops back to your waist.

“I don’t know if they lied on my profile but I genuinely haven’t done it in years,” You sigh, hands toying with the material of your dress. They must’ve lied on your profile. Otherwise, Taehyung would’ve never picked you. “And I know they give us ratings, in terms of how good we are in bed and—”

“They rated you a 1/10.”

“Really? Wh—wha— T-That’s mean. I think I’m at least a solid three,” You huff. Three was the arbitrary number you and Jin had decided on because you were bad, but you weren’t that bad. “Anyway, that’s not my point.”

“What is your point then, love?” He asks and you twist in his lap to look at him. His hold on you is still tender, hands softly sitting on your hips.

“There’s a girl we have, Mirae. She’s a 10/10. Everyone that’s been with her, loves her.”

“Yes, I’m familiar with her. She was in the final line-up,” Taehyung mumbles, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. What did she have to do with anything the two of you were doing right now?

“Exactly! You can just call them up, say you’re dissatisfied with me and ask for Mirae,” You smile. “They’ll send her right up.”

“But I’m not dissatisfied with you,” He frowns, utterly at a loss at why you would think so.

“O-okay, but she’s a guarantee 10/10 will blow your mind type of girl,” You mumble.

Your gaze is fixed somewhere else, as if you were too afraid to look him in the eye. It’s odd. You seemed to have had no problems being in his presence all the weeks prior to this. Maybe he was just so caught up in his own emotions to realize that you wanted none of this. Though, he’s sure that’s not the case. Most of the times he had you in his lap in the lounge, you’d be moaning into his mouth as you kissed him back as fervently as he did. You’d drive him crazy, grinding down on him as if you wanted more, moaning sinful things into his ears.

“Do I make you feel uncomfortable?”

“No… no, not at all.”

“So then do I scare you?”

“Not exactly,” You murmur, fingers pinching at your dress. “It’s just… you’re an important guy a-and we strive to impress. I also can’t afford to lose this job,” You mumble, eyes downcast.

“So you think you’re going to lose this job if I’m not impressed?”

“It’s a possibility, yes.”

“I’ll tell them you were a 10/10 mind blowing experience even if you were atrocious if that’s what you’re worried about.”

You look up at him with wide eyes, as if hope was gleaming in them and at that he could only smile. My god, you had him wrapped around your finger and you didn’t even know it.

“A-and you can’t take it out on anyone at the agency,” You mumble.

“You have my word, love,” He grins, nodding. “And I am always a man of my word.”

See, he’s anything but dangerous. You didn’t understand why everyone sees him as some type of monster.

“So,” He hums, twisting you back into your original spot, his chest pressed against your back once more. “Now back to business. You said you haven’t had sex in years? Is that why you’re always dripping even when all we’ve been doing is kissing?”

“I-I do not know what you’re talking about.”

Taehyung laughs, lips tucked between his teeth when you attempt to shrink away.

“There’s no need to be shy about it,” He smiles, hands moving down towards your thigh. His fingers massage your inner thighs, slowly making its way up. They creep higher and higher and you whimper, especially so when he lets out a breathy laugh. “So, you decided to skip the panties today,” He notes when he finds nothing but your smooth skin. His fingers move through your folds, making you squirm in his hold. “And here I was, thinking you didn’t want any of this.”

“I… I ran out of time,” You mumble. “Couldn’t find a clean pair.”

Taehyung snorts, shaking his head. You surely are an interesting character.

“I’m not complaining,” He smirks. “It just makes my job easier.”

Taehyung surely takes his time, his fingers moving at a glacial pace as his lips continue their work on your neck. You want to tell him to speed it up, to do something because you needed your 3-year drought to come to an end.

“You have something to say?” He questions as you continue to whine and fidget.

“I want more,” You murmur.

“More? More what, love?”

You know he’s just teasing. He knows what you want. How could he possibly not.

“Tell me, what do you want? Is it my fingers in your pussy?” He smirks, plunging two of them into you without any warning whatsoever and you moan, your eyebrows knit together at the sensation. “Or do you want me to touch you here? Work this until you’re sore and begging me to stop?” He queries, his thumb beginning to rub your clit in tight circles. You screw your eyes shut at the feeling, your hand fisting the sheets by your side as you spread your legs wider. God, it’s been too long, you think to yourself. This could hardly compare to your nightly routine of rubbing one out yourself under the blanket. The way his fingers stretch you when he curls them upwards makes you feel delirious and all you can do is mumble his name over and over. His thumb rubs tighter, faster circles against your bundle of nerves and you bite down on your lip to muffle the choked noises that threaten to spill out of your mouth.

“Look at you, you’re making such a mess,” He murmurs into your ear. The way his lips ghosts the shell of your ear makes a shiver run through you. His lips slowly moves down to leave marks on your neck, his tongue laving across the spots he’s decorated your skin with. “You’re dripping all over. Is it because you haven’t been touched in a while or because you’ve never been touched like this at all?”

You can’t answer, not when he’s doing all of that. Your mouth hangs open, almost as if you’re trying to answer him but all that leaves your throat are soft moans. Taehyung only laughs, his free hand moving to unbuckle your bra, fingers pinching your nipples when you finally help him rid yourself of the bra.

“Answer me, love,” He grins, teasing your nipple again, the act eliciting yet another moan out of you. “Has anyone else made you feel like this?”

“N-no,” You manage to say. “M-my ex wasn’t into anything other than doing it in the doggy position.”

“That’s a shame,” He sighs. “He never got to see you like this, moaning and whimpering, all desperate for more,” He hums, his hand abandoning your chest to move up to your throat, squeezing it lightly.

“I’m gonna cum,” You choke out as you begin to see white behind your eyelids, your legs trembling as he picks up the pace, his fingers pumping in and out of you with fervour.

“Not yet, love. You only cum when I say so.”

“I c-cant—”

“Ah, but you will,” He mumbles, adding a third finger, making you let out a choked sob. He wears an evil smirk as he teases your breast with his hand, his fingers moving to pinch your nipple harshly. You let out a whimper, your head lolling back as you try to ignore the tension in the pit of your stomach that threatens to snap.

“Please, please Taehyung, I—" Your sentence is cut short by a moan because he presses against your clit harder, rubbing figure eights at a pace that almost makes you go limp. You can feel your control begin to slip, your legs trembling as the pressure building in your abdomen finally snaps and you see nothing but hot white behind your eyelids. You’re panting, grinding down onto Taehyung’s lap as a slew of cuss words escape you. The man is relentless, his digits curling into your walls, his thumb still continuing on at its furious pace as you climb down from your high.

“I guess you’re not very good at following orders,” Taehyung sighs, clicking his tongue as he finally stops, pulling his hand away from your sopping pussy. He brings his hand up to your mouth, forcing you to lick clean your juices off his fingers and you do, tongue moving across them as you suck. “Dirty girl,” He smirks, pulling his digits out of your mouth before he grabs you by the waist, twisting you in his lap so you were facing him again.

“So what shall we do with you, hmm?” He prompts, his hold tender but his gaze otherwise. “I don’t take too kindly to disobedient sluts,” He huffs, removing his hold on you to loosen the tie he’s been wearing. You gulp, almost trembling because you couldn’t quite tell what he was going to do next. With the tie still in his hands, he reaches over to lift you up off his lap, urging to make yourself at home higher up the bed. He smirks, eyeing you in all your glory and with a single finger he points at your dress still pooled at your waist. You nod in understanding, discarding it without him having to say a single word. There was no more room for mistakes.

“This time when I say you only cum when I say so, I hope you listen,” He exhales as he stands up to unbuckle his pants. “Unless of course, you wish to be punished,” He smiles, devilishly so, as he unbuttons his shirt, tossing the tie onto the bed.

“N-no, I don’t,” You mumble, stuttering, unsure exactly what kind of punishment he meant. Did he mean punishment as in he would put a bullet in your skull or punishment as in a light spank on the ass? Though the latter sounds tempting, you’re not willing to find out just what he has in store for you in case of your disobedience. “I’ll be good,” You murmur, hypnotized when he rids himself of his pants and boxers, his cock slapping against his stomach.

“Will you?” He hums, hands wrapped around his member, groaning as he pumps himself a few times, precum leaking out of the tip. You watch, mesmerized, almost drooling as he pads over closer to you. “But you know, I can’t help but think I’m being too easy on you.”

You freeze in your spot, unsure of what to do next. Luckily for you, Taehyung does all the work. With his back sinking into the pillows, he pulls you onto his lap again but this time you’re facing him.

“See, this isn’t the first time. You’re always defiant, sassy, and I can’t count the number of times I’ve wanted to fuck you stupid when we were in the lounge just so you could understand who you were dealing with,” He hums, rubbing the head of his cock against your folds. You shiver, biting your lip as you could feel it just mere centimetres away from where you wanted it to be.

“Then do it,” You tease, hand slipping down to guide his length to your entrance because if he was going to leave you waiting for so long, he obviously needed help. Taehyung only laughs at that, slapping your hand away. He guides you onto your back, pinning your hands above your head as he leaves kisses down the valley of your breasts, only stopping because he can hear you release a shaky exhale.

“Oh, I will,” He smirks, pulling away to line up his cock to your pussy. He starts slow, teasing you as he rubs his cock against your core, groaning as your juices coated his length. You whine, about to demand him to do something but before you can say anything, he plunges into you, thrusting upwards in one swift motion, giving you no time to adjust to his size. You gasp, mouth hanging open as you let out a choked sob. “Baby, I’ll fuck you so good, so hard but only if you promise to listen.”

“I-I will,” You whimper, soft moans filling up the room as he rocks against you slowly.

“Good,” He mumbles before his tongue envelops one of your nipples. “Now keep your hands there. No touching until I say so.”

You only nod in response, barely able to hear him as your mind goes blank, his cock brushing against the spot that made your toes curl. Your body felt like it was on fire, his touch making you keen against him, his lips making your mind grow hazy.

“Fuck, you’re so tight,” He groans, eyes screwed shut as he delivers on his promise, thrusting into you so hard that you could almost feel him in your throat. He lifts your legs up over his shoulder and god, you didn’t think he could make you feel any better but as he buries his cock into you to the hilt, you can only moan in return. Taehyung whines, meeting your tongue in a sloppy kiss, lips moving against yours with fervour. It takes everything in you to not reach out to tug at his hair, to pull him closer. You needed him, wanted him.

“Tae, I-I want—” You manage to choke out between kisses but he silences you with his lips.

“More?” He asks, laughing breathily as he pulls out halfway before he slams back into you. Your eyes roll back as he does it a few more times, rendering you silent apart from the long moans that leave you without your consent. “You’re a greedy little slut, aren’t you?”

“Tae,” You murmur, your walls clenching around him as he thrusts deeper, harder.

“Don’t do that, baby. Not yet,” He warns, slipping a thumb into your mouth. You nod, tongue wrapping around it as you suck. Fuck, you were driving him insane. His other hand holds onto your waist with a grip so tight you’re sure it’ll bruise tomorrow. You could care less, especially when he was making you feel this good. You could already feel it, the coil in your stomach being held together solely by your will threatening to release, your muscles tightening and Taehyung warns you once more when you clench around him yet another time.

“Be good,” He grumbles, his grip on your waist tightening and you wail, nodding as you focus on keeping yourself together. You lace your hands through his hair, finding purchase on whatever you can, as if doing any of that could help you from falling apart.

“What did I say about touching?” Taehyung growls, as he pulls away from you, your pussy clenching at the sudden emptiness. Your eyes snap open, eyebrows tucked together in worry as Taehyung sighs, reaching for his tie at the end of the bed.

“S-sorry, I was just trying to—”

Taehyung isn’t interested in your excuses. He flips you over, almost as if you weighed nothing, quickly pinning your hands behind your back.

“Since you have trouble listening, let me help you,” He mumbles, using his necktie to tie your hands together, the soft silk digging into your wrists as he double knots it. He huffs, lifting you by the waist so you were now on your knees, the side of your face still pressed to the mattress. “I knew I was being too easy on you,” He mumbles, hand splayed over your ass that was now on show for him. Without warning, he brings his hand down harshly onto the flesh of your ass, making you tuck your lips between your teeth, partially muffling your moan.

“So, are you going to behave now?”

“Yes!” You cry, nodding into the sheets.

“No more chances,” Taehyung mumbles. “Next time you disobey me, I’m going to leave you high and dry, begging me to make you cum.”

You don’t even have the chance to say anything because Taehyung wastes no time, hand around your neck as his cock pushes past your folds, filling you up once again.

“Fuuuck,” You moan as he thrusts into you, his fat cock stretching you out deliciously. You clench your fists, wrists struggling against his necktie because all you wanted right now was to tug at his hair or dig your nails into his skin. God, he was driving you insane.

His hand around your neck isn’t there to choke you but more so he could find leverage to slam into you harder. You whimper and whine, legs threatening to give way with every time he thrusts into you.

“You don’t know how long I’ve thought about you like this,” He groans. “All pretty and obedient for me, moaning my name. So fucking good for me.”

The latter part of his sentence is punctuated by his thrusts, his arm wrapped around your centre helps hold you up as your thighs turn to jelly. His rhythm is sloppy now and you can tell he’s close just by the way he’s whining in your ear.

“Just for you,” You cry, as his hand slips down towards your clit, rubbing the nub with just the right pressure, making your head spin. Your sentence seems to spark something in Taehyung because he grips your neck tighter, quickening his pace.

“Fuck, baby you’re driving me crazy,” He grunts as you begin to lose control, your pussy clenching against his length, making the man lose his composure. “God, your pussy feels so good, so fucking wet and tight just for me.”

“L-let me cum, please,” You beg, almost sobbing as your toes curl up in pleasure. “Please, Tae, I c-can’t anymore.”

Taehyung grunts, pulling out all the way before he plunges back in, his following thrusts short and shallow as he struggles to keep a grip on you. He bucks his hip forward, hand grabbing your shoulder as your name comes out in the form of moans. From your spot, you can see his eyebrows tucked together, his face looking absolutely fucked out and god, you’d do anything to see him look like that again. He chases his high desperately, groaning long and hard before he jerks forward, his cock stuttering as his seed spills into you, your walls clenching around him. You whine, cussing as he brings you to your high, his fingers circling your clit, making your vision go white. As he comes down from his high, he thrusts into you, hitting the bundle of nerves inside you, hitting the spot that made you hold your breath.

“Pl-please, please, please, Taehyung, I need to cum,” You cry, wail almost as you feel the coil in your stomach grow even tighter.

“You want to cum?” He asks, grunting. You nod, whining as he picks up the pace. “Then be a good girl and cum all over my cock, baby.”

You swear you almost black out, your orgasm so intense that you can no longer hold yourself up, your limbs betraying you as you sink into the mattress, pussy pulsing as it clenches uncontrollably. Taehyung pulls out, flipping you over before his lips finds yours between your pants. His kisses are languid and soft, almost as if it’s an apology. His touch is gentle, cradling your cheeks as he kisses you senseless, sucking at your lips so you would part them for him. His free hand moves down to your pussy his fingers slowly gathering his cum that was spilling out just to push it back into you and you squirm under his hold, whimpering. He continues for a while, his fingers brushing over your clit every so often so he could hear you whine, asking him to stop as your pussy throbbed, feeling a tad bit sensitive.

“I wasn’t too rough, was I?” He asks as he undoes the necktie that holds your hands together. He frowns, hands smoothing over your wrists that have been rubbed raw. The question catches you off guard, his entire demeanour does. You’re pretty sure most guys do not treat their escorts this way.

“It’s fine, Taehyung. I-I liked it,” You mumble, eyes downcast. At that he smiles, grabbing the soft towel from the nearby table along with his blazer with him. He’s mostly quiet as he cleans you up. Of course he kind of sits there mesmerized as he watches his cum leak out of your pussy. Damn, you seriously don’t understand what you do to him.

Taehyung offers you his shirt before he puts on his boxers and you sit there, awkwardly buttoning his shirt because isn’t he supposed to leave now? Isn’t that how these things usually go? The men would come here, have their fun and leave immediately after. Why was he still here, lingering?

He soon returns to the bed, his hand reaching into the pockets of his blazer to pull out something. Your eyebrows furrow in confusion as he produces two packets, a giant foot printed on each one. You stare it for a little longer before a dawn of realization hits you and you smile, immediately unwrapping the packet when he hands it to you.

“Oh my god, I love these. I almost forgot they existed,” You smile, pulling out the lollipop that was shaped in a foot before carefully dipping it back into the bottom of the packet that held the fizzy powder. “It’s so hard to find them nowadays.”

“Yeah, you can only get them at those really old family owned sundry shops now,” He smiles, unwrapping his own one.

“Seriously, I love this candy so much,” You laugh. “It brings me back to my childhood.”

Taehyung only grins as he makes himself comfortable among the pillows. He beckons you over by patting the spot next to him.

“You know, this sort of feels like it’s meant to console me. Like a hey, you were bad in bed but here, have a lollipop! It’ll make you feel better,” You laugh and Taehyung blushes.

“Th-That’s not what I meant by giving you this lollipop. If anything you’re leagues better than the 3/10 that you think you are.”

“Well, what was your intention then?”

“Nothing really,” He hums. “It’s just that I’m a man of my word is all.”

18 years ago

“It’s not that bad really,” You assure the boy that’s crying in front of you. “It doesn’t hurt one bit,” You smile, wiping the blood away from your lips.

You’re lying. It hurts… a lot and you kind of regret standing up to the bullies but you weren’t just going to sit back and watch those older boys beat up that same little kid again.

“I’m so sorry,” He mumbles, sobbing. “Next time you shouldn’t try to help.”

“I can’t leave you alone like that,” You frown. “They’re just being big meanies. You didn’t even do anything wrong.”

The boy sighs. You’re as stubborn as an ox. How could you not see that this was a losing battle? They were going to bully him forever. He was an easy target, the poor boy with tattered clothes and no money for food. He just came to the playground to escape from the constant fights his parents would have. He just wanted one moment of peace, and if not the playground, he had nowhere else to go. It was better than home anyway. Even if he got beat up here, at least he would get his moment of peace whenever he laid in the sand box alone, sobbing. At least there was no shouting here once the sun begins to set.

“Oh, my mum’s here,” You hum, breaking the boy out of the trance he was in. “Come on!” You smile, grabbing him by the hand, leading him to your mother.

“What the— Y/N, what happened?” Your mother questions, panicked.

“Well, we—,” You point to yourself and then to the boy next to you. “—stood up to the bullies!”

Your mother sighs, crouching down to inspect your split lip. She can only shake her head as you give her a grin, wincing in pain when you smile too wide.

“And you, oh sweetheart,” She mumbles, softly turning to see his face littered with bruises. “Where are your parents?”

“Busy fighting, throwing things at each other,” The boy answers honestly.

Your mother hums, gulping nervously.

“What’s your name?”

“Kim,” He answers easily with his last name that he shares with thousands of people. His father had told him not to give out his full name. Especially since there’s an order out to kidnap a Kim Taehyung. The mafia needed some leverage so that his father would actually pay back his debt.

“O-okay, Kim,” Your mother smiles. “Would you like to join us for dinner?”

“Can I?” He asks, absolutely beaming at the thought of finally being able to eat a hot meal.

“Sure, what would you like to have? Y/N here likes— Where’d she go? Y/N—”

Your mother only grumbles to herself as she watches you run back towards her, two little packets in your hand.

“I told you to stop running off like that,” Your mother frowns.

“But he was going to leave,” You mumble, pointing to the ice-cream man who’s packing up his cart, putting away the assorted candies he sold along with his ice-cream. “Here,” You smile, handing a packet to the boy. He inspects it with furrowed eyebrows, twisting the packet with a large foot printed on it.

Your obsession with the weirdly shaped lollipop honestly drives your mother crazy. It certainly didn’t help that it was not the easiest candy to find.

“It tastes funny,” The boy mumbles, noting that the candy fizzes in his mouth. “And it’s sour,” He murmurs, face scrunching up at the taste. “But I like it.”

“Exactly! It’s the best!” You smile, dipping the lollipop back into the packet to pick up some more powder.

Your mother takes the both of you by the hand, leading you two to a nearby restaurant. She picks the place because she’s had a long day and she really just wants a good plate of fried rice to heal her soul. She notes the Kim boy is rather quiet, but in your presence, he seems to light up. Shame, she sighs. It’s nice that you were getting along so well with this kid, but you and your mother are moving away to another town in just a few days. Moreover, it didn’t quite sit well with her that the boy had said some rather disturbing things about his home life… and the fact that he was being bullied daily at the playground, that hurt her heart too. But, it was hard taking care of you alone. She didn’t really need more to worry about, in fact she couldn’t afford it.

“You sure you’ll be okay walking home?” Your mother asks, as the three of you stand outside the restaurant.

“Yes.”

“We can walk you home if you would just let us know where it is.”

“My parents really don’t like me giving out our address to strangers,” He mumbles, staring at his feet.

“Okay,” Your mother hums. “You be safe, alright?”

Taehyung nods, ready to walk away when you stop him, making him stand there as you tug at your mother’s sleeve, making her crouch down so you could whisper in her ear.

“Please,” You beg, hands clasped together as your mother gives you a pointed look after having heard your request. She sighs before she nods and digs into her purse for her wallet. The grin you have on when she hands you the money is truly precious.

“Here, take this,” You smile, handing the boy the $20 your mother had just given you. “Don’t let those stupid boys hurt you anymore a-and get yourself something nice to eat tomorrow.”

“Y/N,” He says, dumbfounded, staring at the bill in his hand.

“Oh and here,” You grin, putting the lollipop packet in his hand. “I was saving this for later but I think you should have it.”

“Y/N,” He repeats in the same tone, still in shock. He knows he should say something along the lines of no, I can’t take any of this but the truth is… he wanted both of those things in his hands badly.

“I’ll see you around Kim,” You mumble as you wave at him, walking backwards to your mum who’s waiting further ahead.

“I… I promise I’ll get you this when I have money next time!” He shouts, holding up the packet. “I’ll pay you back 100 times the amount,” He says, pointing at the $20.

“You promise?”

“I promise!”

Taehyung is a man of his word, always has been and always will be. It’s why when you go to drop off your monthly installment for the debt your father owes, they inform you that with the amount you had just paid, you had completely cleared the debt. They tell you that they were surprised to receive the money you mailed in last week and the truth is, so are you but you only nod nonchalantly. You make sure to get the proper documentation from them, to confirm that they were absolutely certain that your account has been cleared. You walk out of there with a nice little slip with their insignia and a gang member’s signature that verifies that the debt has been paid in full. You laugh to yourself, absolutely grateful for their miscalculation or rather, mismanagement. You actually had hundreds and thousands left to pay but hey, you’re not going to tell them that. God, you can’t wait to tell Taehyung what dumbasses his rivals are.

*bonus*

check out this ask for extras like how tae knew it was oc and if he ever tells her that he’s the little boy she helped out!

A/N: as always, thanks for reading and feedback is always welcome!!! (: also this was meant to be a drabble… i swear… but u kno meeeee

#bts smut #taehyung smut #bts fanfic #bts scenarios #taehyung fluff

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