V, JoeNicky & Nile
V. An abandoned or empty place.
When Joe pulls the sheet off the couch it kicks up enough dust that it makes Nile sneeze. The couch underneath is old, wooden frame rotting, fabric stained and full of holes where moths have eaten away at it.
“Sorry,” Joe says to Nile when she finally manages to get the sneezing under control. “Didn’t realise it was that bad.” He puts his hands on his hips and looks down at the couch. Nile looks it over.
“There’s no saving that,” she says, wiping at her eyes. She can heal from falling over ten stories, but she can’t get away from allergies.
Joe frowns. “I liked that couch.”
The house is older than anywhere else they’ve brought her, and has been abandoned for long enough that it’s falling apart. But through some trick of posing as their own sons, or something, Joe and Nicky still own it, even if there’s a giant hole in the roof and all the windows are broken. Why they’d decided to come back here, Nile doesn’t know, but it’s a nice enough area, and a good distraction from, well. Everything. Growing back a leg, she’s discovered, is not fun.
From one of the other rooms – she thinks it’s the kitchen, she’s not actually sure where Nicky had wandered to – there’s the sound of something breaking and crashing to the ground, and a muffled curse.
Joe makes a questioning noise in the vague direction of the kitchen. A few moments later, Nicky appears in the doorway, covered in dust. “I am okay,” he says. “But I think we will need to go out to eat tonight.”
“Nothing?”
Nicky shakes his head. “Unless you want to start a fire and go hunt some rabbits.”
Joe grins. “Just like old times, right?”
Nile shakes her head firmly, which makes Nicky smile. She loves them, but there’s no way they’re doing that.
“We can probably clear out enough space in here,” Joe says, gesturing to the floor. “Get the sleeping bags out of the car. Probably have to start a fire anyway, but…”
Nile looks around again while Joe says something to Nicky in Arabic that makes him laugh. The house is falling apart, sure, but it’s structurally stable, and the bones are all there. It could be something. They’ve got time to make it something.
Nicky is the one who goes for pizza in the end – he doesn’t trust Nile and Joe to order it if left to their own devices – while they try to clear out a space in the living room. Eventually, though, after Nile has another sneezing fit, Joe suggests they just take the sleeping bags outside instead, which works out a lot better. He sets about starting a fire with practiced ease while Nile sets out the sleeping bags around it. They’re far enough away from civilisation that she can’t hear cars passing by, which is kind of surreal, and the stars are brighter than she’s ever seen them.
When Nicky gets back, two boxes balanced on one arm and a bottle of wine in the other, he looks over their makeshift camp and laughs. “Just like old times, then?” he asks.
Joe grins. “Except we have pizza.”
“And actual sleeping bags,” Nile says.
“Ah, these modern inventions could never quite match the comfort of a pile of furs,” Joe says wistfully. Nile gives him a look. She’s ninety percent sure that one’s bullshit, but she can never quite tell with him.
Nicky sets down the pizza boxes, and jogs back to the car to grab the pack of plastic wine glasses they’d bought before they got here.
“We should’ve bought marshmallows,” Nile says. “Could have made s’mores.”
“Well, we’ll have to go to the hardware store tomorrow anyway,” Joe points out. “And I think it’ll be a little while before we can actually sleep in there.”
“Tomorrow, then?”
“Tomorrow,” Nicky agrees.
65 notes
·
View notes
Just started rewatching futari wa precure (I had a huuuuuge precure phase when I was a kid and I watched like all the seasons available then) and I was reminded of just how similar miraculous ladybug is to precure. Like legit it is just a magical girl anime but with normal superhero outfits pasted over the top and it got me thinking about how we were fucking robbed of magical girl Adrien.
Like they should have based the outfits on what the user deemed a superhero outfit cus Adrien would be rocking up in frills and thigh high heels while Marinette would rock up in gotham hero grunge.
Like you cannot tell me that lonely baby adrien wasn't an avid consumer of precure and sailor moon but in the same vain, Marinette would have definitely been a western superhero fan with emphasis on the batfam.
Like just imagine:
Adrien: "I run off the power of love and will protect the people of paris with the help of my fairy plagg!"
Marinette, who's favourite show is batman and the only magical girl show she's seen is magi madoka: "w h a t???"
-
Adrien, going through cutesy choreography that is 100% unessesary for his attack: "with the power of light I dispell you!"
Adrien: ✨️disintegrates a man✨️
Marinette: "..."
Marinette: "I am both terrified and amazed..."
(Adrien is upset he doesn't get a beam attack but he will make do by just making his cataclysm as extra as humanly possible)
-
Marinette summons her lucky charm by rummaging through her utility belt, also she also has a gun because she was having a red hood phase when she got the miraculous. It shoots whatever bullets she's feeling like because creation magic bullshit.
They're mostly rubber but whenever hawkmoth shows up they become metal and also explode... Gabriel Agreste is terrified of the both of them and refuses to attend fights in person ever again, after the time that Ladybug almost blew off his leg because he was temporarily blinded by cat noir's petticoat.
33 notes
·
View notes