#and now i think i have probably analyzed every single frame of that show under a critical microscope lmao

[mrs-gauche]

So, on the new cinematic that was published yesterday, without going into a deep analysis here (because people have already done an amazing job at dissecting every piece of visual/symbolism, like the Golden/Black City, what appears to be the origin of the Blight, the recurring symbols in the seven semi-circle spheres/Evanuris imagery in Trespasser etc etc), I just want to write down some of my general thoughts that I had already put in the tags under the video, but there are also a few things I'd like to add. 🙂

Ok, so generally speaking, this cinematic is basically a recap for anyone who hasn’t played Trespasser/ is new to the series / doesn’t remember every single detail from a game that came out almost a decade ago. I always wondered how they were going to (re-)introduce new people to the lore and the big revelations that were sadly concealed in a DLC and after giving it some thought, I’m actually very pleased with the way they’re doing it. 😁

So in regards to Solas, this is everything you need to know before going into the game. (Though I still try to look at this from the perspective of someone who’s only played the DAI base game and therefore only knows the after credits scene with Solas and Flemeth.. So you would still be kinda lost about as to how Varric even knows about all this stuff with the creation of the Veil/what Solas plans to do and all that, so.. I would hope this still gets addressed in some form, especially if fan speculations turn out true and there will be a ten year timeskip since Inquisition, so regardless of Trespasser, in any case, it would be nice to learn what the Inquisition has been up to these past ten years. lol)

So for anyone who is now like "Ugh, another trailer about Solas?? Don't we had enough???", I get it, I really do, but I also need you to understand that this is *not* another trailer, it's an in-game cinematic, probably part of the very beginning of the game and I feel like people tend to forget that the majority of players will NOT be people like us, who have been sitting here analyzing every single frame and syllable of new content under a microscope for the past eight years. 😂

Most people who've played Inquisition maybe once or twice a decade ago will maybe have a vague memory of who Solas or the Dread Wolf are and what his story is. Of course we know all this stuff, but that's the point, it's supposed to be a recap of everything you need to know before going into the game.

Though I can understand why you would be frustrated that they chose to show this as yet another part of marketing that's solely centered around him. (Heck, even I as a fan of his character am honestly surprised how much focus there is 😂) But even though BioWare’s blog post ended with the phrase "close out this year with a little treat", the fact that this was now a general "reintroduction" to the lore, gives me a little hope that they might not wait another couple of months now to show something new, since this is still fresh in people's minds. They're building momentum and I would hope they would use this to kick off the marketing for a wider audience (and the Game Awards are by far the biggest platform to show something).

That being said, let’s talk about the visuals for a second!

Simply put, they’re drop dead gorgeous! As expected from the great Nick Thornborrow, who also did Solas’ frescoes in DAI (and who sadly left BioWare some time ago). The art style and the way it’s presented/animated reminds me a lot of DAO’s intro or those transitional scenes between acts in DA2 or even those little animation bits from the Keep (which were also narrated by Varric!). So it’s definitely true to the DA formula/getting back to the roots even. lol

So even for those of us who knew about all this stuff, it was still amazing to see it visualized and summed up in such a beautful way. And additionally, it contained hints and symbolism that seem to confirm everything I’ve been thinking for the past seven years. lol (Again, not getting into details here, because people have already done a far better job than I could do to explain all that. 😂) I loved how the visuals transitioned seemlessly into the each other with gorgeously smooth animation! I also love how you’re getting almost blinded by the way it’s portraying the destruction of the Veil. lol Like, it get’s all dark and quiet for a second and then BOOM, spotlight ON lmao, I was instantly reminded of Sandal’s prophecy in DA2, when he’s like “The shadows will part and the skies will open wide, when he rises”.

But we also need to talk about the music and the sound design, because GOSH, this was so GOOD!

I would highly recommend listening to this thing with head phones, because WOW, there are so many different little components build into this one minute track, it’s amazing!! I looove how the music starts off with this anticipation and a single violin and then shifts into this more ominous melody supported by these faint “marching to war” drums when the visuals transition from sun to moon/Solas to Fen’Harel, like the music perfectly encapsulates this feeling of ambiguity, like he’s neither a villain or a hero, and it’s up to you what to believe.

Then there’s that beautiful wolf howling in the back right as Varric says “Dread Wolf”, before the music gets more sinister, followed by this big booming “shutting the gate” sound when the Veil is formed and whatever you call that sound of magic as the gods are sealed away and this creepy whispering as the shadows are slowly spreading from the Black City and consuming everything, when it gets all quiet. And then, if you’re wearing head phones, you get knocked off your feet by that enormous explosion sound as the Veil is shattered, like you can practically FEEL the impact of this wold-altering magic in your bones. lol And then the music culminates in this grand dramatic orchestral piece that is SO reminiscent of Inquisition’s main theme??

And as the title is shown and the music breaks up, there’s that simple melody again played by this traditional string instrument (I’m no expert, but it reminds of like, ancient greek?) that was also in the 2020 teaser trailer!

Like, huge props to whoever did the sound design and I can’t wait to find out who does the score! <333

Lastly, can we talk about how Varric’s talking in the PAST tense, when saying “But now, he wanted to tear down that Veil, and destroy the world”??

It almost sounds like whatever Solas wanted to do, something happened, but as always, it didn’t go the way he intended and now we have to deal with the consequences? lol It sounds like that line was cut off too soon there, like Varric was going to add something like "But now he wanted to tear down that Veil and destroy the world.... but he f*cked up spectacularly (again) and now we have to clean up his mess." 😂

So are we maybe already playing in a post-Veil world right from the start? I hope not, because I would have loved to actually SEE how Solas tore down that Veil? 😂 It makes me think that maybe this narration isn't the final version and it will end up being different in the game, like this was edited for marketing purposes/to avoid spoilers? lol

Also, again like in the 2020 teaser trailer, I wonder who Varric is even talking to? Who is "we"? And why are WE "the only ones who can stop him"? What is it about "us" that's able to stop him?

Also, I've seen people saying he's holding a wand in that last visual? 😂

Guys, for seven years I've been trying to mentally (and emotionally) prepare myself that Solas (like all returning characters in any BioWare game) is going to look significantly different in a sequel that’s released a decade from the previous one, and my biggest fear remains that he's gonna look like Voldemort with a nose, so I can't say I'm overly thrilled at the prospect of seeing him walking around with a damn wand. 😂

Though I’m curious if it’s like some other people are saying and it could also be a weapon/blade like the one that was produced by the red lyrium idol in Tevinter Nights/the Blue Wraith comics? 👀

(But to be completely honest, my main takeaway from this whole thing was actually “OMG, they kept the CAPE for Solas’ ancient elven armor design from the early concept art???” lmaoo I was sure they got rid of it after seeing the 2020 teaser trailer. lol I’m sorry, but for those who don’t know me, I’m the biggest sucker for capes and coats in character design 😂 Give me ALL the capes! All of them!! Edna Mode hates me. lol)

Anyway, this is all I’ve got for the moment, I’m super thrilled! Even though I totally get everyone who desperately wants to see something other than Solas lol, if only to finally get a sense of confirmation after such a long time that there’s a game that’s actually.. real and playable, you know. 😂 Though tbh, I think I’ll only be able to fully realize this the moment we get an actual cinematic trailer with in-game footage and stuff. lol Fingers crossed (and clown wig ready) for the Game Awards! 😁

[alittlepudge-neverhurtnobody]

are you into any horror media (movies, shows, etc.) ?

some! i'm trying to branch out more bc i think it's such a cool genre and i LOVE spooky shit, but i am also a huge weenie who hates jump scares and hits the ceiling at any sound i don't expect, so i haven't really watched a whole lot of horror movies/shows. i do love some Gothic horror though!! i've really enjoyed Penny Dreadful (OBVIOUSLY lmao), Crimson Peak, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, The Conjuring, Hush, The Invitation ... stuff like that -- that gives you more a creeping sense of dread that builds and builds -- is more my speed? like, the experience i look for in horror is the escalating sense of "WHAT THE FUCK!!!" more so than slasher/gore/jump scare kind. i also really enjoyed the CW Nancy Drew, iZombie (which I still need to finish), and Los Espookys, which aren't like HORROR horror but have horror elements to them. i am eternally on the lookout for stuff like that so PLEASE send recommendations if you have them!!

i've started a few things, like The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and The Order, and also have a bunch of stuff on my watchlist, so if any of these are worth my time, pls let me know!!

The Order

Hemlock Grove

Santa Clarita Diet (which I think I WOULD like tonewise, but i have been told there's a lot of v*miting, which i struggle with)

Brand New Cherry Flavor

What We Do in the Shadows (also sure I would enjoy, I'm just not really into vampires)

Wolf Like Me

Evil

Outer Range (not sure if it's horror but def looks creepy and holy shit have you seen Noah Reid in the trailer)

Archive 81 

Ghosts (doesn't look scary but I love ghosts)

i'm slightly more adventurous with READING horror, but still haven't read a lot of it. in the past year i've really enjoyed The Book of Accidents and Wanderers by Chuck Wendig (one million trigger warnings for both, please look before reading!!), The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling, The Ghost Sequences by A.C. Wise, Summer Sons by Lee Mandel (ESPECIALLY if you loved The Raven Cycle and specifically Pynch), Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline (tho it had more than a few incidences of fatphobia :\), The Family Plot by Megan Collins, and Skin Shows by Jack Halberstam (which is queer/critical theory but his work is wall to wall bangers and I highly recommend). i have a bunch more loaded up on my kindle app (Extasia by Claire Legrand, Wake the Bones by Elizabeth Kilcoyne, Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood, The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson, Witches of New York by Ami McKay...) but just need to ... actually read them.

so uhh yeah! tl;dr i DO but i am a big baby and would love recommendations if something sounds like it would fit my tastes!! i especially love ghosts/werewolves/hauntings so hit me up!

[forsworned]

[♥] academyau!substitute teacher {renguko kyojuro x reader}

Genre: Slight Fluff, Comedy

Categories: F/M

Relationships: Kyoujuro Renguko/Reader, Giyuu Tomioka/Reader

word count: 2,538

a/n: this is a pretty long read, so read at your own risk of boredom. i guess it could also b classified as a "x giyuu" but the title is just way too long and kind of throws the main focus off. might turn this into multiple parts so let me know what y'all think! also this is just a filler for the requests i have rn i don't want to leave you guys hanging

❀⊱┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄⊰❀

"I literally don't know shit about history."

Giyu sighed in exasperation. "You don't need to know anything about history [first name]. The teacher already has a lesson plan and you literally just need to pass out the papers. I just need you to cover for a couple of a days because one of the teachers are out sick."

You groaned as you threw your head back in annoyance, pushing your feet up against the edge of your desk. Even though it didn't look it Giyu was practically begging you to substitute for one of his coworkers. And he almost never asks for favors.

Giyu ran a hand through his hair. "He's super picky with his subs and everyone he's had come in hasn't come back."

"So you're saying that I'm a good pick." You mused, with your head in your hands with an annoying smug look.

"Don't push it."

You scrunched your face in disgust. "I just really, really don't want to Giyu. Middle school kids are the absolute worst. All they do is make moaning noises and forget or neglect to wear deodarant."

Giyu lightly chuckled. Your eyes darted to watch his usually solemn demeanor melted away into a small smile which immediately disappeared when you caught wind of it.

He cleared his throat and continued to speak like nothing happened.

"Anyway, so you'll do it?"

You rolled your eyes.

"Yeah, whatever. I'll do it."

Giyu looked pleased with himself when he heard your answer.

"I mean after all, I do owe you like a million and one favors." You sarcastically mused.

Which you kind of did. Giyu was your childhood best friend and always kept your out trouble in the nick of time. Whether it was you getting chased down by the neighborhood cat, or when you got gum stuck in your hair and you didn't want your parents to find out so he quickly snipped it out of your hair with everything seemingly in place like nothing happened. Yeah you could say you were a bit of troublemaker growing up, but Giyu was like the older brother that always looked after you.

"I'm so glad you realized." He replied cooly. "Be here by 7:30AM. Don't be late, I already have enough on my plate and I don't need you embarassing me."

You used your hand to shoo him out of your office space. "Mhm, you can leave now."

"I'm serious."

"Yup."

He squinted his eyes at you."[first name]"

"Ok! I got it. I'll be there 7:30 sharp." You exclaimed throwing your arms up in surrender.

He smirked in satisfaction. "Good."

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The morning air was crisp as the sun shone down on your blurred eyes. You absolutely dreaded waking up in the morning and despite that you still agreed to be here. Oh, how you hated that man.

"Good morning." A familiar voice muffled beside you.

Speak of the devil.

He was munching away at his raisin bread walking next to you in the most nonchalant manner. Typical Giyu.

"Shut up." You mumbled miserably.

"You know, you could be a little nicer."

Your eyes narrowed at him. Expression in full death stare mode, but Giyu was as cool as ever, and as always completely unfazed by your behavior. But before you could retaliate, middle and highschool girls were practically lining up to say good morning to Giyu, blushing like mad when he acknowledged them. You on the other hand, were getting the death stares and whispers instead.

"Must be nice to be the heart throb PE teacher." You teased, poking him with your binder.

Giyu ignored you as you walked into the building, showing you to your classroom. You ignored the stares of kids burning holes through your back as you analyzed everything. Tons of inspirational historical quotes lined the walls, pictures and signatures of past and possibly current students covered one single wall. You inspected closely trying to catch a glimpse of who the teacher you were substituting for. One person in particular caught your eye, and he was hot. With a capital H. But before you could look at the other pictures to confirm Giyu called you over.

"Miss [last name], can you come up to the front and introduce yourself."

You sighed as you approached the front of the classroom and watched as the students all stood up. As their whispers got louder, you had to resist the urge to roll your eyes.

"Good morning class. I'm going to be your substitute teacher for the day as Mr.--"You glanced over at the desk and moved the plaque in your direction. "--Renguko is out sick today."

As the class bowed in respect getting their good morning greetings, some of the children could't help but show their disappointment. You noticed most of them girls.

"I'll leave them to you." Giyu stated, and then looked at the class. "And be good to your substitute. I don't want to hear anyone misbehaving."

They bowed as he exited the room and now all eyes were on you. You sighed to yourself.

I really gotta learn to say no sometimes.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

To say you were exhausted was an understatement. It’s not that you hated kids or anything, but they always just see to have so much energy and well, you didn’t. Not even a cup of coffee could save you right now. You watched as the clock above your desk ticked and felt yourself getting more and more sleepier by the moment. Your consciousness fleeting as you lie under your warm blankets.

The image of that fiery haired man popped into your head and your eyes shot open.

You totally forgot to ask Giyu about that hot guy!

You let out a loud groan, knowing that your timing was off because now he would most definitely be suspicious if you asked him tomorrow. The curiosity of knowing that man itched at your skin. You absolutely had to know who he was.

What if he was a high school student, or worse a middle school student who looked very grown.

You outwardly icked at the thought, closing your eyes and scrunching your face in disgusted.

No way. He definitely had to be an adult. Maybe even a teacher.

“The history teacher!” You exclaimed out loud, shooting your whole body up.

It had to be him. You smiled victoriously to yourself, mentally patting yourself in the back.

And you had the perfect plan set up to find out.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

You had to have looked in the mirror for about three hours to make sure you looked absolutely stunning. Hair curled to frame your face perfectly, and make up subtle but very much enhancing your natural features. You rubbed your lips one more time in the mirror before smacking your hands to your face to wake yourself up. Giyu was not going to be happy.

The morning bells chimed and you were seated at the desk welcoming students as they walked in. You discreetly checked your make up in your compact mirror under the desk to make sure nothing was running and not a hair was out of place.

“Perfect.” You whispered to yourself, running a hand through your blow out. All this work for a man that probably wasn’t even a teacher here.

“Miss [last name], what are you doing here.”

You froze at the voice. Nothing could prepare you for the icy glare that Giyu shot down at you. It sent a shiver down your spine. But his glare melted right off of you as you glanced over to the man next to him. Your mystery man finally come true!

“Oh hello, Mr. Tomioka. It’s pleasure seeing you.” You smiled, standing up. You looked right over to the handsome man right next to him. His hair like rays of sunlight with eyes to match. You could barely contain your excitement. “And you must be Mr. Renguko.”

His smile as big as the sun. Scratch that. He was the sun.

Bright, beautiful and fiery. He physically made you warmer just being in his very presence. You could’ve sworn you heard simultaneous female sighs in admiration, but you were way too distracted by how utterly gorgeous he was.

“Yes, I am.” He cheerfully stated. “And you must be the substitute that was in for me yesterday.”

He took your hand in his and you could’ve sworn you melted at his touch. Finely calloused hands, indicating that he worked with his hands a lot. Not that his physique couldn’t already tell you how absolutely fit he was.

“Yes, I am. Your class was wonderful. I didn’t have any problems with them whatsoever.” You couldn’t help but smile from ear to ear. This really was the man and it took every ounce of you not to pinch yourself to see if you were awake or not.

“So are you going to tell me why exactly you’re here today.” Giyu chimed in. This time his icy glare had no effect.

“Oh yes, I thought I was still scheduled for today. I never heard anything back from Mr.Tomioka so I assumed that I would head back in.” You lied right through your teeth and Giyu could see right through it.

He narrowed his eyes at you. “And I remember emailing you last night confirming that Mr. Renguko was fully recovered and ready to work again.”

You couldn’t see it but Giyu was totally spitting out venom with every single word he spoke. It was almost terrifying, but you were way too distracted by the glow of the man that was the literal sun right beside you.

As if the smile on your face couldn’t get any bigger.

“That’s odd. I don’t remember getting an email.” You innocently put a finger to your lip, and looked upward as if you were searching your head for the memory of the email confirmation that you definitely recall getting.

Giyu’s went from you to Mr.Renguko. And then it finally clicked for him. His shoulder dropped in defeat. He did not have the strength required to dealing with your shenanigans today. He turned around heading out the classroom, raising a hand to dismissively.

“Just don’t burn the place down.”

You gave him two big thumbs up. “You got it!”

"So would you like to observe the class since you're already here?" Mr.Renguko interjected. He motioned to the empty seat right beside his desk and chair.

You beamed at him. "Only if that's okay with your class, of course."

"Oh trust me, they are more than okay with that." He grinned at the students. Most of them smiled and blushed looking away from your direction. You sat there in confusion, but before you could inquire about what he said, he shot out of his seat and grabbed the stack of papers on his desk.

"Alright, class we are going to go over your classwork from yesterday and finish the rest of chapter six."

☆彡

It seemed like forever until Mr.Renguko had settled into his seat while he let his students work together on their classwork.

"I can see why my students are such big fans of you." He mused. You looked up from your phone and saw him warmly grinning at your face. This time you didn't fight the blood rushing to the surface of your cheeks.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well," He pulled out a stack of notecards and began shuffling through them. "I always have my students write their own evaluations of my substitutes and yours were outstanding. Lots of compliments about your appearance and how you carried the class."

Evaluation? Appearance?

Your jaw went slightly aslack at his words. The only thing that left your lips: "Evaluations...?"

His grin grew. Mr.Rengoku knew that this had caught you off guard but he continued. "Yes, I like to know what substitutes are doing their job and keeping my students in line and comfortable."

You were almost speechless. "Wow, you must really care about your students."

He smiled softly this time, and fondly looked over at his students working diligently and quietly together. "Yes, I do. They're kind of like my own kids. I want the very best for them."

Just when you thought you couldn't admire him anymore that you already did. Hot and caring? It had to be too good to be true. You pointed to the best teacher of the year awards on his desk. "I guess you didn't get those just based off your looks alone then."

He visibly blushed and chuckled at you statement as he rubbed the back of his head. "Nah, I don't think so."

You raised an eyebrow at him and pointed at the wall of photos and signatures that lined his wall. "That wall definitely says otherwise."

He laughed a hearty laugh this time. "I don't really think that's the case. Like I said I just look after my students like their my own. They really are my pride and joy."

It really was incredibly hard to not let yourself melt into a puddle in his presence alone. But before you could collect your thoughts, the lunch bell rang and students filed out to their homeroom's and handing in their assignments on their way out. Most of the girls shot you dirty looks before heading out as a way of showing their contempt towards you before the smiled at Mr.Rengoku who was collecting papers at the doorway. At this point, you literally couldn't blame them. Their teacher was a total hottie and you were practically stealing him right under their noses.

As the last student handed in their assignment, Mr. Rengoku closed the door behind them and approached his desk to set aside the stack of papers. He pulled put a box of tissues, picking one out and sneezed rather loudly into it. Cheeks were now a hue of vermillion and he slighted groaned while holding his head.

"You don't look so good, Mr. Renguko." You stated worriedly.

He waved you off. "Nonsense, I'm fine. And you can drop the formalities when were not in front of students. Call me Kyojuro."

You sighed as you fumbled through your bag handing him some cold and flu pills and a packet of vitamin c. "Ok, Kyojuro. You can call me [first name], but I'm going to need you to take these for me and get on home."

He blew loudly into his tissue before tossing into the trash revealing his very red nose. "I-I'm fine, Miss [last name]-- I mean [first name]. Really, I'm ok." He stuttered as he tried to collect himself and get up. Unfortunately, he couldn't hold himself up for more than ten seconds before collapsing and luckily you were there to catch him. He seemed to have been mumbled incoherent words as he laid heavily in your arms. You sighed as you slowly laid him down on the ground and reached for your cellphone to dial the one person you knew could handle this situation the best.

"You didn't actually burn the place down did you?"

You rolled your eyes. "No, idiot. Teacher down."

"Ah, fuck."

[shlutnutt]

𝙍𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙙 5.

this is my first ever smut and probably any writing in general so dont expect it to be the best loll.. hope you enjoy though :) !!!

𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴!! : 𝘭𝘰𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘮𝘶𝘵𝘵𝘵, 𝘬𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘺, 𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘺, 𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘬, 𝘥𝘢𝘥𝘥𝘺 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘬, 𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘵 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘬, 𝘱𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘤 𝘴𝘦𝘹?, 𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘤𝘶𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘴𝘭𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨

ight so boom.

Mr. March continued staring at your pretty face, analyzing and tracing every single one of your soft unique features with his gaze, completely mesmerized and in hunger. You weren't in the mood due to some hotel customers ding dong ditching every door they'd lay their eyes on causing lots of complains. The feeling of annoynce started to rise within you causing you to attempt to snap him out of his dreamy fantasy. His room dark and quiet, the chat you were both having, was soon ready to turn into an avalanche.

"What the fuck, James. Stop staring at me." you snapped raising your voice slightly with confidence. His mesmerized stare quickly transformed into a deep frown, feeling absolutely disrespected. His goal was to intimidate you, to make you beg for forgiveness as he got up from his creaky antique sofa heading behind his work desk carefully leaning down opening one of the bottom drawers. Fully invested you follow his every move, eager to find out what's in his creative murder mind this time.

"Listen to me Y/N... Didn't we talk about disrespecting daddy? I thought we did. Didn't we?" James questions in pure elegance and lust, jingling the heavy handcuffs he had in hand. Your breath got caught in your throat, immediately regretting your previous outrageous comment, predicting what were to happen next giving the best to your ability to not make a single comment, facial expression, or nervious body language to prevent giving him any sort of satisfaction. Making James upset was one of your many favorite hobbies, knowing the effect it has on him and will most definitely have on you also, its like going on a never ending roller coaster, only that this roller coaster is full of teasing and is absolutely stunning. Silence filling the room with an unbreakable stare you both hold, you slowly press your legs together feeling your innocence get wetter by the minute. "Get up" demands James, scanning your every move as you get up from your seat and slowly walk towards him nervousness filling every single flesh in your body. "Yes, daddy?" You automatically innocently question, remembering how much he loved that word slip out of your lips.

The two of you now inches away from eachother, a small seductive smirk appearing on his delicate pink lips. Leaning down to your ear James sassed "You think you can go 5 rounds today, my dereast?" Unsure you responded to his rhetorical question "Of course I can why would you thi-" James smashes his lips onto yours, leaving you breathless. Carefully and discretely putting your hands behind your back as he handcuffs you. He chokes you, hard. Making sure he leaves marks for days, you squeeked in shock realizing that your hands had been handcuffed and your under James' harsh chokehold. March breaks the kiss only to pull your chin down slightly opening your mouth spitting on your tongue and going back to kiss you, tasting him in your mouth, your lips feel painfully numb from the harsh kisses you two shared, shifting slightly from his lips you feel a harsh stinging from James' harsh touch against your cheek, you groan in pleasure loving how aggressive he's gotten with you.

"Get on your knees, my pretty little slut" Still handcuffed you drop down to your knees almost immediately, soaking wet and ready for whats to come next.

"Listen to me, beautiful. You are not to make a single sound. Okay? If you do, I'll make sure I bring everyone from this entire hotel into this room and let them watch how I fuck you." You look up at him totally mesmerized by his masculine beauty ignoring his comment for a second, you pause a little just to admire the man who's soul you were about to suck. You open your mouth signaling James that you were ready for his hard member. He begins grinding his hips lightly against your tongue, you grew in desperate need as his clothed member brushed up and down your tongue. You've been doing a great job following James' intructions until a delightful deep groan slipped out of James, making you want to orgasm in that instant. He was aware of the effect that had on you so he proceeded his deep groans and began taking off his buttoned up shirt, revealing his sweaty toned chest and abs. You were driving crazy and attempted to unzip his pants with your teeth in which you failed miserably, "So needy.. hm?" James exhales, his cock still rubbing on your face completing your attempt for you allowing his member to spring up lightly tapping his stomach and back down to your forehead . You didnt think twice before slipping his tip into your mouth, teasing him lightly as a result from him teasing you beforehand.

"Oh fuck, Y/N.. You're doing so good." James praises. You now sucking him fully and uncontrollably, his deep lustfilled moans traveling through the dullness of his room. You groan slightly to his moans completely forgetting about his previous warnings, you feel him pull out of you and harshly pulling you up by your throat. Without a word leaving his lips he harshly throws you onto the bed and uncuffs you, searching for another pair of handcuffs as he aggressively handcuffs you again onto the antique bed frame this time that sat behind his bed. A smirk not leaving your lips as you teasingly exclaim "Come on, daddy. Let them watch how you fuck me." James seem to be distracted with something which you paid no mind to but immediately teleports your way and rips all of your clothes apart throwing every item of your clothing to their own direction, leaving you butt naked. Your wetness now leaking onto James' bed who doesn't stop staring at your innocence for a second.

"You're so wet for me already, gorgeous?" James teases as he swipes two fingers through your folds collecting your juices making you clench in pleasure. You watch him as he sucks your juices off of one of his fingers, leading his other one to your mouth allowing you to taste yourself as well. You sucked his finger dry, as he carefully watched you. "Mmm, I would like some more" You hear James groan as he leans down to your leaking innocence and shaky legs, slowly opening your thighs allowing him to have full access to whats been needing him the most. James licked your cunt once causing you to moan pathetically not caring about his previous demands. The pulling on your handcuffs and James' tongue ultimately exploring your sweet insides, driving you closer and closer to your high giving you a huge feeling of ecstasy sending shock waves through your entire body it was unbelievably astonishing.

"Knock, knock! I gathered everyone... Mr. march. We're ready for the meeting.." You hear a familiar feminine voice say in utter confusion as they hear your helpless moans from the other side of the hotel door. Your eyes opening wide in shock, knowing exactly what the psycho eating you out had just done. You feel him get up, you stare at the ceiling for a few seconds in pure embarrassment knowing what was to come as you see James unzipping his pants once more, sneaking his hands under your sweaty naked body to flip you over all in one swift motion. You were now faced down on the humid bed, your back arched in natural tradition. You look back to James slapping your ass.. hard. Causing you to close your eyes tight feeling the harsh sting as he kissed it afterwards. You later hear shifting sounds from behind, making you look back once again. You encounter James with a sharp classic knife in hand, pure lust in his eyes as you see his chest moving up and down aggressively. James had a knife play kink. He loved to see your body quiver in fear as he traced the blade down your body lightly cutting you at times, he admired licking your blood clean as you cry under his touch. He's James Patrick March, nothing too surprising coming from him.

"Are you ready for our guests, my pretty little thing?" Another rhetorical question drops from his lips. Your body aching in eagerness for James, you hear footsteps and whispers from behind you. You don't dare look in pure embarrassment. Closing your eyes tightly in discomfort you feel a familiar thick touch against your folds, making you softly whimper in need. James smashed himself into you not giving you any time to adjust to his size, rapidly thrusting and groaning against your powerless self, your orgasm soon approaching to the experience you were feeling. The crowd watching, James fucking you nonstop and pressing the blade up and down your back softly while you're handcuffed to the bed frame made the desirable experience surreal, making you cum. Your juices coating James' member as he pulls out to lick you clean and go back in. A few people from the crowd had left in disbelief and shock as a few others stayed to enjoy the show such as Mr. Wu and the pornstars, taking mental notes. James fucked you again and again, making you cum again and again until he was on his last round.

Round number 5.

Your body completely exhausted melting to James' aggressive penetration into your now sensitive warmth, made you beg for him to stop. Causing him to thrust a couple more times, before pulling out and nutting on your back. The warmth of his cum on your back giving you a feeling of relief. "Uncuff m-me.. plea- please.." you suggested barely even being able to speak. "Of course sweetheart, you should've asked before" he smiled at you innocently as if he wasn't going to punish you for if you asked such thing. He uncuffs you, wrists red and nearly bleeding, you collapse onto him and hug him tightly tearing from your exhaustion. James realizes you've begun getting vulnerable under him and asks everyone to leave.

"Bath?" James asked innocently, as if he didnt just made you cum 5 times all in one night.

"Yeah.. bath" you answer. Smile forming on James' soft cheeks, dimples appearing.

"Hey, can we not do that again?" you ask. James looks up from his blade which he had been fidgeting with to your face in confusion. "The everyone watching me thing." you specify. Causing a chuckle to fall from his lips. "You told me to, dear. Remember?" You then laugh, remembering that you in fact did tell him to, pushing him playfully which causes him to look up at you, serious expression on his face. You look at him also, breaking the eye contact quickly realising you've fucked up.

"Round 6?"

"Oh God, no James."

[annabethy]

under the mistletoe, watching the fire glow day 21: best friend’s sister

Character A poses as their best friend’s lover for a Christmas party. Character B is the best friend’s sister,, percabeth

Percy truly doesn’t understand how it’s come to this.

He likes to think that he has at least some form of dignity, but he is quickly proven wrong as he is shoved into a suit by someone that has the audacity to call herself his friend.

“Quit pouting,” Piper chastises, pulling on his tie just a bit too tightly. He chokes dramatically, glaring at her, but she just rolls her eyes. “You agreed to this.”

“I did not agree to this,” he says. “I was simply there when your mom told you to bring a ‘lover’ to the party, and you held me at gunpoint.”

“You love it,” she says, laughing. It’s the complete opposite of the truth because he actually hates this, but his windpipe is cut off so he’s incapable of actually pointing that out.

“There’s no way anyone’s going to fall for this.”

She laughs. “Everyone will fall for this, and that’s why it’s perfect. No one’s seen us in forever since we moved away for college. We can just frame it as two best friends falling in love.”

“Yeah, but… I don’t know if I can do that. I look at you and want to vomit.” Piper gasps in mock offense. “You never had feelings for me? Not even small ones?”

“I had feelings for a lot of people, but believe it or not, you were never one of them. Not then, not now, not ever.”

“You really just friend zoned your best friend,” Piper says.

“I’m in love with someone else,” he lies.

Piper snorts. “You’re in love with my sister.”

His smile falls. “I am not. You take that back.”

“Relax, Percy. I think it would be cute if you got with her. You could marry into the family!” She claps her hands before pausing. “We could just never talk about sex again. I don’t want to hear about how you blew my sister’s back out.”

Percy shrieks. “Piper!”

She just laughs, throwing the jacket of his suit in his face and motioning for him to follow him out the front door. He hurls insults at her as he settles into the driver’s seat – also against his will, by the way – but she just throws them right back at him.

The hour drive home is spent with them being about as stupid as possible. They scream along with the music blasting in the car until they’re both laughing so hard they can’t breathe. It helps ease his nerves because he knows who’s going to be at this Christmas party, no matter how hard he tries to deny it.

He can’t even say her name right now because if he does, he might crash just so he doesn’t have to face her. It’s almost as though Piper can sense his frustration because she turns the music even louder until the car is shaking with the bass and he can’t hear his own thoughts.

Percy never ceases to be amazed by the wealth of Piper’s family. The second he walks into the manor, he is overwhelmed by the silvers and golds lining every inch of the place. It’s funny because he grew up around them, but it was always a stark contrast to the way his own life was. He could live a million lifetimes and never get used to being around people with this amount of money.

“So you’re rich rich,” Percy teases, just as he always does when they come home for the holidays,

“I’m wealthy,” she corrects, leading him along the corridors to the center of the party.

“Old money or new?”

“The type that could have you killed with the snap of my fingers,” she answers.

“Oh, please do not have me killed, your highness.” He grins cheekily as they walk into the center of the event.

“I must admit I’m liking the title,” she says. She stops him just before they are close enough to be noticed by anyone else, turning serious, and Percy fails miserably to match her tone. “From here on out, you’re my boyfriend, okay?”

“Oh god, I just threw up in my mouth.”

“That means having to kiss me at least once,” Piper says. “On the lips.”

“Please don’t make me.”

“I will never hear the end of this is they find out we’re faking, so start acting like a good boyfriend.”

“Uh.”

“Kiss me.”

“No.”

“Percy.”

“I can’t do it.”

“You’re going to plant one on these lips, or I’m going to pick up one of the silver forks and stab you with it.” “Fuck you.”

“Yeah, well if you’d kiss me, we might be able to get there.”

And then: “This is getting painful to watch.”

Percy and Piper both jump at the extra voice present. He turns his head so fast he nearly gets whiplash, and of course it’s her.

“Annabeth, my love!” Piper greets, giving her a lazy side hug. “I was just trying to get my boyfriend to kiss me.”

“Hm. I didn’t know you two were dating,” she says, a pointed grin towards Percy.

“Christmas surprise,” Piper adds, addressing Percy. “Aren’t you going to say hello?”

“You act like Annabeth’s my distant aunt,” Percy says, but he wraps her in a sweet hug anyways. It makes his heart stutter just the tiniest bit, and he has to force himself under control.

It’s embarrassing that he’s this caught up on her. It makes him feel a little guilty too, because she’s practically still a baby. He remembers when she was in diapers, wandering around the house with a pacifier while him and Piper messed around with play dough. Still, she had grown up, and he had too, and he hadn’t accounted for how pretty she would grow to be.

Okay, so he’s not that much older than her. He’s twenty, and she’s eighteen, so he supposes it’s acceptable, but now he’s in college and she’s still in high school, so things have grown… weird? He just doesn’t see her as much as he used to, and something in her changed. When she was younger, she would cling to him, but recently, she just looked at him with something he couldn’t pinpoint.

It looks similar to the face she has on now, actually.

“So you two are a couple now?” Annabeth asks, but Percy doesn’t really hear her. He’s too distracted looking everywhere except her short black dress she has on, or the way her curls fall perfectly onto her chest, or the gloss of her lips.

Piper elbows him, and he clears his throat. “Yeah. The happiest. We’re so in love. I want Piper’s babies.”

“Hm. From what I’ve heard, I wouldn’t have thought that was very true,” Annabeth says, giving him a knowing look.  It makes him wonder just what she’s heard. “Anyways, dinner’s about to start. Why don’t you go show everyone just how in love you are, oh-so-real couple?”

Piper laughs, but Percy glares at her. He’s given no choice but to follow Piper as she skips towards the dinner, and Annabeth follows at a distance, eyes analyzing them. Annabeth clearly hadn’t fallen for the disguise for even two seconds, so it has him worrying the rest of the night.

He is rightfully worried because the dinner does not go at all as expected. Annabeth is directly to his right, and Piper to his left, and they seem determined to kill him. Piper’s all lovey on the outside, which is not something he’s used to in the slightest, and it has the entire family’s attention on him. They coo over the new ‘couple,’ and Annabeth laughs into the hand covering her mouth.

Annabeth clearly enjoys the entertainment, and also relishes in embarrassing him even more because she’s started playing footsy under the table, running her heels up and down his ankle. He does his best to not make a face, but then her hand occasionally brushes against his wrist, and it has him wondering what it all means. Annabeth is much more handsy today than she’s been… ever, and he’s enjoying it more than he should with his fake girlfriend next to him, so the next opportunity he gets to leave, he takes full advantage.

He twists and turns through the halls, gets lost about five times before finding somewhere that looks remotely familiar, and then repeating the process. It’s a good few minutes before he finds an empty balcony and pushes open the doors to step outside.

It’s not to take a moment to breathe, really, because he’s fine. It’s just overwhelming, he supposes, sitting next to the girl he’s almost ninety percent sure he’s crushing on that he probably shouldn’t be, and his best friend who is apparently his girlfriend now.

“Hey, Piper’s boyfriend,” a voice calls. “You good?”

Percy rolls his eyes fondly, turning around. “Did you need something, Piper’s sister?”

She just shrugs and steps forward. “Just thought I’d come tease you a little bit.”

“Tease me?”

“A fake relationship? Really?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” he says. “You’re, like, twelve.”

“I’m eighteen, but nice try.”

“A baby,” he emphasizes, heart suddenly beginning to race as she drags her fingers up his chest, tugging lightly on the tie. “Do you need something or not?”

“I guess I just have a question,” she says, leaning against the rail now. “So. I’ve heard things. Suspected even longer because even if I’m two years younger, I’m about two years smarter.”

He laughs. “What do you want to know?”

“You liked me,” she says. “Back in high school, I think.”

It’s a blow to his lungs, and he can’t find the air to breathe. He knew she’d bring it up at some point, because even if they never acknowledged it, it’s been floating between them, unsaid. He never acted on it because she was practically his own little sister at some point, and she’s Piper’s sister, and it just felt wrong.

“I think so,” he answers. “I don’t know.”

“Explain?”

“You’re Piper’s sister,” he tries.

“I’m Piper’s sister. I’m also your friend.” Annabeth tilts her head, a slight smile pulling at her lips. “What’s the problem then?”

“I–” He blinks. “I don’t know. I guess there isn’t one, really. It just never turned to anything more before I graduated, and now I’m hours away.”

“That leads me to my next question.” She stands again to face him head on. “You’re in college now. I haven’t seen you more than five times since you graduated two years ago. Are those feelings still there?”

“I don’t recall you ever being so upfront,” he teases. He doesn’t need to take time and think about her question though. He already knows the answer. He knows it every single time Piper says her sister’s name, or one of Annabeth’s pictures pops up on his timeline. He likes his best friend’s sister.

It might be more than just a crush.

(Definitely more than a crush.)

“I love you, Annabeth,” he says, “but I don’t want to do anything that might make things different, you know? I grew up with you, and I grew up with Piper, and if something happens, Piper will take your side, and I’ll lose the two people I love most, and–”

“That’s not what I asked,” she says. “I asked if the feelings are still there.”

From the way she’s looking at him, he doesn’t need to answer. “Why are you asking if you already know the answer.”

“Because I want to know if it would still be a good time to kiss you, like I’ve wanted to do for the last two years.”

Percy chokes out a laugh. “Annabeth.”

“You love me, Percy. It’s obvious to see it’s as more than a friend, and it always has been.” She bites at her bottom lip. “Do you know how many people I’ve had tell me that you and I would work well together?”

“I’m assuming a lot.”

“Piper was the number one supporter, surprisingly enough,” she tells him. “And I know you’re on a date with my sister, but she practically shoved me out of the dining room chair to come follow you, so it’s safe to say she wants this too.”

“Piper has issues.”

“Yeah, but you love her, and you love me.” Percy’s fingers fidget, because even though all of this has been swimming around inside him for years, hearing it from her is something else entirely.

“It’s only weird if you let it be,” she says, and something breaks inside of him.

Annabeth’s his friend too, and she’s a part of his life.

He loves her, so he kisses her.

It feels an awful lot like coming home. Suddenly, nothing else matters except him and her. Annabeth is his best friend’s sister, but she’s also his best friend too, and the person he loves and always has.

He distantly realizes that it’s going to be difficult to explain to her family how he went from being Piper to Annabeth, but right now, he can’t bring himself to care. It’ll be a cute story to tell in the future if this ever turns to anything more. He really hopes it does.

Annabeth is his family, and his best friend, and she is the one he was meant to be with from the start.

[steve0discusses]

S5 Ep 14: So If You Put a Fraction Into a Duel Disk, the Card Explodes

We left on quite the cliffhanger last episode, so I’ll fill you in:

I did not get the haircut.

Like I seriously considered getting a Zigfried for a cool 3 or 4 minutes there, but then I decided to wait a couple of days and I basically forgot.

But, back to the arc finale, Seto has decided to walk, not run, to the Kaiba lab in order to fix the virus rapidly eating his entire company.

I just want to point out that Zigfried went through a LOT of work to get Seto Kiaba to go “uggggh” turn around, and pretend to calmly walk away. I’m used to Seto losing his nut kind of a lot and blowing things up but this season he’s like “be chill be chill be chill” so that the entire world doesn’t think he’s a spaz on TV.

And little aside about Seto’s design choices here, I fell down a hole of interior design videos, and can I just say: apparently these wood frame things on the wall are back in style? Good on you, 2002(3?) Seto Kaiba. Don’t think that current designers are painting them purple but...we’re halfway there to Yugioh fashion.

Meanwhile, Pharaoh decides to remind everyone that these stakes are hella low. The worst that happens is that Zigfried deletes the plane that Yugi needs to fly home...which would be an impressive virus.

Like it’s hard to tell if Yami even has a solid concept of “capitalism” and whether or not he cares about or understands the makeup of Seto’s company (which up till now has operated like a small country and not a business...which is a little more Pharaoh’s understanding. Either way...hard to tell if Yami would shed two tears for the loss of Kaiba corp.)

And, despite what I say in the caps, I feel like Leon and Zigfried are the first villains we’ve ever had that Yugi and Pharaoh didn’t unintentionally disclose that they are 2 people to. Zigfried and Leon are just...completely oblivious to how effed up Yugi’s bean is. They think that’s just a normal kid and lol no dudes...y’all got distracted by Seto Kabia but you have a literal Egyptian God just hovering around in the background and dating 3 people by accident.

Like when the show shelves the main storyline, it is very funny how it’s all “And we’re gonna put the Pharaoh crisis on hold--just put a pin in it. No one will notice this child is two nervous wrecks stitched together” and then Yugi and Yami just kinda hold it in and watch all patiently until it’s their turn to get off the bench.

(read more under the cut)

In the giant computer tower, Seto Kaiba shouts out a string of orders and numbers, admired the many sonar detector looking windows open on every monitor, and then sat down at his desk to like...check the firewall, I guess?

The virus is past the firewall. It’s um...it’s inside the firewall, pretty sure that was the point, but youknow, it’s a kid’s show so they’re just throwing out computer stuff that has no meaning to the writers of this show.

Mokuba thinks fondly of how Seto Kaiba has never screwed him over (which I mean...maybe not on purpose, ((except for that one time he did screw him over on purpose to get Gozaburo Kaiba to accidentally give Seto Kaiba the company, but you could say that was a grander scheme that he knew Mokuba would see through, which...)) but Seto certainly has screwed Mokuba over accidentally. At least once.)

And meanwhile, Yami fixes everything through card shenanigans.

So here’s the shenanigan this episode: I don’t go over cards here but this one requires a limited amount of explanation.

So every round the golden castle deletes half of Yugi’s cards. So he was like...I’ll just draw down to one card. They can’t delete half a card...so that means the card must delete one of the two cards on the field which means it must delete itself.

...which is like the closest Yugioh will probably ever get to abusing a glitch to do a speedrunning tactic like GDQ.

Anyway, like I stated in the title: there are no fractions allowed in Yugioh. If you do that to your priceless one-of-a-kind card you got from winning one of Pegasus’ murder tournies, it will irreparably bust the card.

I’m sure at least one of you will correct me with the proper way to insert a fraction into your duel disk. Cuz like...as I say multiple times so we never forget, I barely pay attention to this card game and I’m just flying by the seat of my pants.

I want to say Seto and Mokuba were in the hacker chairs for like...3 minutes maybe before they realized “oh...Yugi fixed it...” and walked the half a mile back to the duel arena.

and also, as I’m looking at Seto’s glasses here, I just realized...all of Kaiba’s team wears sunglasses all the time. Inside, outside, night, or day...

They haven’t outright said this...but what if those aren’t sunglasses?

Is Roland and that other Roland wearing fancy cyber glasses? They are, right? Because they wear them indoors?

Damn, they can’t take a piss without being on call with Kaiba Corp, can they?

Now the problem is...Yugi played all of his cards (he has two in front of him face down, but none in his deck) and after milling himself, this means he’s now basically a sitting duck for Leon to take the title of “King of Games.”

Leon insists that he defend whatever scraps are left of his card honor and not duel a person who is carrying no cards and Yugi was like “COME AT ME BRO THIS IS THE ONLY WAY I KNOW I’M ALIVE.”

He didn’t even have to do a horror on Leon, he just...played cards good? I skipped it, I’ll be honest, but overall Leon’s card honor was...saved? Maybe? I mean he also go destroyed when his competitor had not a single card in his duel disk so...

...Leon will have to work on his card honor off screen because he’s pretty well humiliated at this point.

But stumbling onto the playing field like he’s half dazed/daydrunk, Zigfried is like “You forgot I already won, bastards!”

Which is when we find out that Zigfried’s “delete all” virus failed to press “enter” and deleted basically nothing. Just like when my Mom attempts to send something in Gmail but doesn’t press “Send” and tells me that Google is down and broken.

Sorry my bro has informed me that he ALSO has had to help my Mother locate the “Send” button and I just...I know she absolutely did that but I’m in denial that this Riddle of the Sphinx has happened to her multiple times.

Honestly, the pep talk we get from Leon at the end to cheer up his bro was a whole lot of “we will pick ourselves up and we’ll do better next time. Together.” and sure you can translate that as “we’ll be honest next time” or you can translate that as “next time we will be not nearly as obvious about inserting a virus into their computer until it is done doing the job, bro.”

Just like Dartz, we didn’t really get a whole lot of retribution or closure when it comes to Zigfried. But, unlike Dartz, Zigfried didn’t do too much murder, so I guess this is fine. He tried to cheat in a card game...

...and I guess tried to delete Kaiba Corp but youknow...

...people let him have that. The police saw the ticket of “this man tried to delete Kaiba Corp” and they just...didn’t arrest him. The judge saw that ticket and didn’t put out a warrant. They just let Zigfried have this, almost like “better luck next time, ya?”

And then Roland clocked out for the day and went home, thus ending this arc.

Look at all these characters, most of which we never saw duel even one card.

We also got one shot of Mai for some reason although she was not in this arc.

AAAHHHH. Every time I’m like “the show is done screwing geography” we get another freakin geography spook!

But we went back to California in order to get a scene of these guys in an airport to get a flight to Japan...

which means Rex and Weevil just...were they shipped home by the Kaibas? Because way to ditch getting arrested by the American Government, hot damn. They are...literally terrorists who destroyed a Caltrain in a plot to kill everyone in the world so like...really surprised Rex and Weevil are in public...but maybe all the FBI were dead at the time so they just didn’t know?

Meanwhile, Duke has to go back to Death Valley and call a tow truck for his car, RIP.

I sure hope he got PTO during this stunt and isn’t going home to a pink slip.

I’m not sure of Dukes life or anything going on with Duke. I’m sure the thing about Serenity is him joking because we have all forgotten about that girl by this point...but also...is Duke...still living in the Tenderloin? The crime rate is very, very high and the ground isn’t solid, so it will liquefy if there’s an Earthquake, but it is one of the few places in the Bay Area that doesn’t light on fire every year. He has that going for him.

I just really hope Duke moves out of the Tenderloin one of these days, he needs a better life.

Meanwhile, Rebecca does one last crime.

This is like a post-epidemic reaction to a hug, but in 2002(3?).

I don’t think I’ll miss Rebecca too much. Wanted to like her more, but she was under-utilized, like most of the characters on Yugioh. Not even just talking girl characters here--most characters on Yugioh are super under-utilized, just Tristan Wallflowers doing nothing, but also being selectively OP as hell about very specific things they never, ever need to do.

Speaking of the devil:

Yugi...just saved his entire company...

But Mokuba is just has to make sure to make it seem like they owed Mokuba and not the other way around. Just in case.

So off they go on this massive plane. It’s probably more to do with the length of the trip as to why the plane is so big but also...

This plane is overcompensating.

But before we analyze that, lets close the book on Seto Kaiba’s very short therapy arc. Overall, it was a nice distraction, but I can see why people call it a filler arc, as it really doesn’t affect...anything going on in the major plotlines, which makes me think it could have been a movie or a game or something. But overall, it’s not bad, it’s just not what you’d expect if you were a Western audience.

Like I’m preaching to the choir, but typically, Western stories are entirely plot focused, and so our arcs always give or take away from that plot. But in a Eastern story arc, it may instead be character focused, where the climax is a character evolving or coming to some sort of cathartic realization, which this arc was, in a big way. We still had some plot, because this is a Shonen, but overall it was about characters, and specifically whether or not Leon and his bro would reconcile or change--which they did.

We did get to see a little more growth on Seto in that he...didn’t go bonkers and hallucinate during a card game. It’s been a while since we’ve had him not do that. Seto was very chill this arc, which makes sense, it was a very chill slice of life arc for everyone involved.

So, next we move on to the next one, which bro has informed me...is

still not Bakura.

According to Bro, the next arc didn’t even air in the Japanese version of the show? Like he’s got a lot of spicy Yugioh headcanons so he could be wrong (He did tell me that he thought that Zigfried was Seto Kaiba’s ex boyfriend when he saw this as a kid which...that sure is a way to interpret this arc, and it probably wasn’t just my little brother who went down that thought tube there...)

(Bro Note: To be fair, I didn’t watch much of this arc as a kid.)

But he says the next arc was originally a movie. But they released it in the States as episodes to be part of S5, just to put more episodes in there. Which, if he’s correct, makes it seem like we’re getting like the Mulan 2 experience kind of shoved in between this arc and the next

But um..

according to bro it has virtually no card games.

.......

I’m so used to only capping 10 minutes an episode, what?

Anyway, until then, here’s the link to read the rest of these from the start in chrono order:

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

I’m kinda itching to do a Season Zero, it’s been a hot minute--so those take a little longer to do, especially since I need to go to a different site I haven’t...checked out yet...I’ll be back...eventually? I just know that at some point in Season Zero they fight it out with yo-yo’s and I want to see it.

[seijurosempress]

@shoichee​ I hope this meets your expectations✨ (Bc I refuse to tolerate any more bullying today. Also- Matchup under the cut)

First, I just want to say- I’m sorry. (but not really). I know our love for Hayama runs deep but the moment you choose violence with him, that’s it for you. RIP. It was nice knowing you 😔 But, remember when we first spoke and I asked you if you shipped yourself with Imayoshi and you refused to answer my question? Well- [Insert ‘Surprise shawty’ tik tok audio]

Best Match: Imayoshi Shoichi

Your subconscious knew what it was doing when you picked out your URL. The moment you said you related to Dazai and then proceeded to talk about socioeconomic issues revolving around globalization while we simultaneously talked about dumb stuff I knew there were only a few guys that could handle your energy and Imayoshi hands down tops that list

Even though Hanamiya out of all people might say Imayoshi doesn’t have the best personality, I actually think you two can balance each other out and understand each other in a way other people may not be able to

Honestly, right off the bat, y’all will probably bond over some form of teasing. Whether it’s making some remark aimed directly at the other, or one of you takes a jab at someone else and the other happens to overhear, it will be the start of a beautiful relationship

Gemini and Leo’s have really good chemistry so it’s no surprise you’ll manage to get along, regardless of your- argumentative natures.

You two are like the two sides of the same coin. While he presents himself as a kind and easy going person, speaking politely to others- until he inevitable shows them his real personality- you, on the other hand, can come off a little cold and critical, scaring people off when you first meet them even though you’re genuinely kind and easy going once you start to talk to them

If you guys meet purely by chance, maybe you’re in the same class, you’re introduced because of a mutual friend, or because one of you overheard the other, the moment you hear how the other carries themselves in a conversation will automatically peek your interest. 

Have you ever seen that meme where they’re like “oh you wanna kiss me so bad”? yea, that’s you two. I can see you getting into the most amusing squabble, just trying to throw the other one off, Imayoshi smirking if and when one of his comments goes right over your head

You’re both pretty smart (I spent a solid hour trying to double check this and still failed but I’m like 80% sure his IQ is pretty up there) so I can see you two meeting because of that too

Scenario: 

Imayoshi is just minding his business, checking the updated class rankings posted in the hall across your classroom. Why? He doesn’t know, if he’s being honest. It’s not like anyone could ever surpass him, he’s been at the top of his class each time since his firs- What’s this? He got bumped down? Who the hell are you? Wait no, he knows who you are. He’s heard your name before countless times, mostly followed by your voice as it traveled throughout the hallways, your laugh bubbling out of your small frame soon after in reply to whichever friend had just made a funny remark. Funny. You didn’t seem all that smart at first glance, could he have actually... made a mistake? His gaze flickers to the other side of the hall where he immediately found you, eyes wide and a small smile adorning your features as you listened to your classmate speak. A low hum escapes him as he analyzes your appearance once more. He notices the way your makeup highlighted your already attractive features, the small accessories added to your uniform making you look put together and stylish. Maybe he had underestimated you, he though as he saw you take your turn to speak, your answer leaving your classmate open mouthed with a baffled expression. He felt the slight tug on his lips, the beginning of a small smirk forming on his face as you smiled widely at the response you had gotten.  However, the amusement only lasted a split second, his features falling in disbelief when you turned around, tripping over your own feet and falling face first into the open classroom door. “What are you staring at?” Someone, probably Sato, asks as he strolls up beside him. “Nothing” he sighs, adjusting his glasses on his face. Is it really nothing though? a small voice inside him asks just as a series of curse words and noises fall from your lips, eliciting his own to quirk up into an amused, lopsided smile. Even if it is “nothing” for now, don’t be surprised when both of you “coincidentally” find yourselves bumping into each other more often from now on as he tries to figure you out.

I can see him realizing he has feelings for you while you two are hanging out. Maybe you two will be studying after you asked him to tutor you in math since it’s his best subject, or well, attempting to study at least as you’re nearing half an hour of your 5 minute snack break. He’ll probably be doodling in his notebook while you scroll through Instagram, and it’s not until he looks up to see you so focused on whatever was on the other side of the screen, your fingers quickly tapping away as a smile pulled at your lips that he asks what you’re doing. Without a second thought, you absentmindedly tell him about whatever argument you’re getting into in the comments section under a random photo you came across before you’re back to focusing on the matter at hand. 

His whole trademark is that he’s good at analyzing people, and as a Gemini, he is not an exception to his own skills. He’ll suddenly come to the realization that, while he enjoys pushing people’s buttons, he enjoys the thought of you two being a team even more. While you can be loud and social, making and laughing at jokes, you also know when to get serious and get stuff done, something that that he would appreciate considering he likes respectful and considerate girls.

The problem now is- he may be aware of his feelings...but are you?

He’ll probably try out multiple ways to hint at his feelings towards you but they’ll just go right over your head. In your mind, you can’t see anyone having any romantic feelings towards you and sure he may be acting a little weird, but you’d probably just shrug it off as it being all in your imagination.

Meanwhile the whole time Imayoshi is just standing there like- Is she serious? No one can be this oblivious???? but yet  ✨here you are✨

Now it’s his turn to be frustrated by your conversations because you’re just not getting it? So he decides to try something more straight forward. Girls like pickup lines, right?

He could literally see the moment your brain stopped working. Your face flushed red as a nervous giggle bubbled out of you. All common sense left your body as you made finger guns at him, giving him a slight nod before turning around and walking quickly out the room

it would take you a few minutes to collect yourself, strolling back in the room 30 minutes later, leaning against the same spot you left him moments prior and giving him a pickup line of your own. *queue Imayoshi’s mischievous smirk* “Oh? Is that so?” (he’s such a little shit he’ll probably pretend like he didn’t say anything first to get back at you)

I can see this going back and forth for a while until he finally asks you out on a date, but this time he’ll make sure to do it in a way that will prevent you from escaping and leaving him alone and confused again

Your PDA is most likely kept to a minimum, partly because of your Venus in Virgo and partly because he doesn’t like spontaneity. Your outward relationship will consist of hand holding and pecks but that doesn’t mean your private life remains the same, just because you’re dating now doesn’t mean you’re suddenly immune to his habits or him to yours

You say you want to spend some quality time together? “How about a movie night?” he asks, his smile deceiving you long enough to trap you in his arms as a scary movie plays in his blacked out bedroom. “I don’t like scary movies” you whine, your body pressing into his and a pout pulling at your lips as he “innocently” chuckles, “Oh really? I must have forgotten”

You say you’re a bit cynical about relationships but I think it’s because your Neptune, Pluto and Lilith are ruled by air signs. This means you enjoy spontaneity and creativity in what you do and therefore always gravitate to doing things in which your outcome depends on yourself and not other people. Imayoshi is the kind of person that respects other people’s needs as we can see when he allows Aomine to skip practice if that’s what works for him. This will help you maintain a healthy balance in your relationship, allowing you to be able to feel more at ease and not trapped or like you have to be a certain way with one another

You decide to keep pursuing dancing? He’s proud of you, and will not hesitate to show off and boast about your achievements to the rest of the team

You had a rough week and you want to spend the whole day gaming with headphones on? It’s fine he’ll take the opportunity to relax and go fishing

On the other hand, you want to go shopping? Suddenly he’ll find himself walking hand in hand with you as you and his sister stop at every single store only to leave with more bags that you can carry. 

At first, you would insist you could both take care of yourselves at the mall, but he soon found out that you two should not be left alone. She might be his sister but she’s younger and impressionable and she looks up to you? And you can be a bit scatterbrained so you lose track of her time so you always end up bringing her back really late, along with an armful of shopping bags that he’ll only have to go back and return within the week because being hasty runs in his family and his sister didn’t pay much attention to how much money she was spending

Overall- I think that what really makes you a good match is your ability to communicate with one another. Both of you are pretty honest and straightforward (although your executions are vastly different) which will help you navigate through any obstacles in your relationship

You keep each other on your toes and bring fun into your relationship while also settling down, talking about serious stuff and getting genuine advice from one another when you need it the most. The balance you maintain allowing a stable foundation for the relationship to grow and blossom. He did something hasty? It’s okay, you know exactly what to do to fix it. Someone keeps hitting on you insistently? He’s already walked over to intimidate him to go away. You want to spend quality time together but he wants to go fishing? There you are by his side, scribbling in your notebook and reciting your poetry to him as he listens carefully with a small smile on his face that you’ll definitely not tease him about later. You need help with your math again? he’ll tutor you in exchange for you making him a bento with his favorite meal. Until he learns that you somehow burned half the rice and left the other half uncooked. Perfect balance of give and take. 

Bonus: Takao Kazunari

You are literally the girl version of Takao omg. (I literally JUST got your message about being the new Takao too smh I know I’m slow but let me finish this first)

You two are so alike and you would make the most chaotic duo but as much as I want to ship you two, I can just see you two being really good friends so I feel the need to include him in this

Midorima would be so done with your shit, he’d probably see you two together and immediately turn around and start walking the other way because he just KNOWS you’re bound to gang up and bully him

The first time you saw is lucky item you probably burst out laughing and thought he was joking until you saw his face flush red

After that, every time you ask about it he just grumbles out his answer, still salty about your initial reaction

Takao never fails to remind you either, trying to hold back his laugh whenever you try to make it up to Midorima but he ends up ignoring you, or you somehow just manage to make it worse

When it’s just you and Takao, you could be minding your business when suddenly one of you makes ONE singular little comment and that just sets off the other, adding onto it until both of you are crying with laughter

Honestly, the only time I can see you taking one another seriously is when you’re having discourse

He’s an optimistic person while you’re a realist which can set off some very interesting discussions between the two of you, your argumentative nature leading both of you to talk about anything and everything as you challenge the other’s ideologies

If you decide to try out a relationship, it’ll be filled with excitement and adrenaline, both of you needing very little persuasion to try out new things

You’ll be his partner in crime and he’ll be yours. You want to mess a bit with your younger neighbors? Why not? You want to go check out the new mall a few town’s over because they have a store you’ve been wanting to check out for months? He’s your man.

While the relationship is fun, you both can get a little ahead of yourselves, going with the flow and getting sucked into your own world; you’ll need someone to ground you

Usually, this role can be plaid by Midorima but it proves to be a bit problematic when he’s nowhere in sight

The amount of times you two have lost track of time or gotten caught up in something because you ran into some friends or even met new people and got lost in conversation, by this point Midorima has probably given up trying to keep track of your whereabouts when you’re together

I wouldn’t be surprised if you two ended up making your own language. He’s good with kids and bad at being quiet while you enjoy making new words and trying out sound effects which he would without a doubt find amusing. You’d probably go as far as to make children believe they’re actual words, could you imagine Midorima’s face when he goes over to Takao’s house and his younger sister starts talking to him in the made up words you taught her

Ultimately while your personalities are very alike, you tend to clash at the wrong points and it would take you working together to compromise to make a romantic relationship work

Both of you surround yourself by others, often finding yourself in the middle of everything, your personality constantly making other people gravitate towards you. This can prove conflicting when you’re together as now you’d have to learn how to share the spotlight, so to say

While you love fashion and makeup and shopping, the poor man just wants to enjoy his trading cards

Although you should use it to your advantage and make him drive you around in Princess Mia’s Midorima’s carriage.

Your might also find yourself more often than not at a crossroads, your realist point of view conflicting with his positivity which can lead to arguments between you two

Overall- a relationship with you would be exciting. There would never be a dull moment and you’d constantly encourage the other to have new experiences and make the most of your time. But moving into a more romantic territory would mean that you’d have to learn how to prioritize things in your life, knowing when to buckle down and get things down and how to successfully come to terms with and work out your differences. 

Sidenote: I meant to make these a little longer but my brain cell only has so much KNB knowledge stored in her small little filing cabinet that may or may not be a single folder covered in dust and stuffed in some corner

[tarysande]

Follow the...

wardrobe department?

A tale of dissecting the chronology of a trailer (in which chronology is made up and the voiceover definitely matters—but doesn’t always align).

LUCIFER SEASON 5 TRAILER SPOILERS AHOY.

Me: I avoid spoilers!! Don’t spoil me!!

Also Me: Hark! Is that a trailer I see before me?? Better analyze it frame by frame!

So, the truth is, I don’t know most of the other BTS stuff and I really don’t want to. I haven't seen the episode titles. I do know Neil Gaiman’s not ... reprising his role. I’m going on ONLY what’s in the trailer, so some of this speculation may already be wrong.

First: a moment of AWWWWWWW YEAAAAAHHHHH because I’ve wanted Twin!Michael for years.

Okay. Moving on.

Trailers are not chronological. They are magic tricks, designed to manipulate their audience.

Now, chronologically, the crime scene with Ella is at (or very near) the beginning because I’m preeetty sure the victim is Mr. Said Out Bitch (RIP; obviously they did not think they were getting a S6!). It’s hard to make out exactly what Chloe is wearing. Dark jacket, dark shirt with a t-shirt-like collar.

Okay, we know this is Lucifer; we know this is what he was wearing when he went to Hell. Very, very, glowing in the black light white shirt. This could be at the beginning? We assume it is because of how it’s placed right after the goodbye from s4, anyway.

Look how haggard he looks. Like, Lucifer. You need some sleep, buddy. Those dark circles have dark circles. My heart hurts.

Okay wtf, my heart hurts here, too. We assume that Chloe’s pajama(?) stakeout and drinking/dancing and her looking up (and looking super sad on what I think is Lucifer’s balcony) are part of the “since you’ve been gone (everything sucks)” montage. 

I will say it’s very possible that “shots at the bar” happens after “crime scene with Ella.” Chloe’s wearing a black jacket and Maze’s arm is bare. Perhaps this night of drowning sorrows (again) is what leads to the conversation (the next day, I think) between Chloe and Maze (“We don’t need him”). In that scene with Maze, Chloe’s wearing a pinstripe blazer and grey t-shirt. Which is important, because that’s the outfit she’s wearing here (in what I would guess is Mr. Said Out Bitch’s home):

I know the assumption is that this is Michael. Although, I wonder how Michael knows the crime-solving Devil song, and the mannerisms (tugging on the sleeves, “Hello, bad guys” as he strolls in) are definitely Lucifer’s. As is the outfit, which is a perfect mirror of the one Lucifer wears in Hell: black suit, white shirt with texture, red pocket square. (Also, no evidence of Michael’s injury.)

Other questions: If he’s so good at playing Lucifer here, why isn’t anyone taken in by him when the grey sateen shirt (hold that thought) appears? Where has Michael been? Why is he here now?

So, I think it’s the combination of his non(?)-reaction to Chloe kissing him and the expression on his face that Michael this up, right? That it’s shown while Michael is voiceover monologuing is also an indicator (but could just as easily be a misdirect because Michael’s not speaking in the image in front of us, and it’s not like we’ve never seen Lucifer make this kind of face before).

(Incidentally, the non-reaction to the kiss could also be seen as in-character for Lucifer; he can’t be sure of his reception, which also plays well with his hello-bad-guys/cocky-to-cover-insecure entrance.)

If it is Michael in the shooting/hug scene, he may START by playing Lucifer perfectly, but that degenerates.

We know this is Michael. There’s some evidence of Michael’s injury in the unevenness of the shoulders. It is NOT a white shirt. It is a grey shirt with a bit of shine; sateen, if you will. We’re going to see a lot of this shirt.

Michael: grey sateen shirt. Also, Chloe’s wearing the white and black striped (VERY FUNNY, COSTUMING DEPT.) shirt she’s wearing when she tells Linda that Lucifer is acting different—so we assume this is the day(?) after Michael shows up. (There’s also a slight possibility that his Lucifer 2.0 bit is his introduction.)

Michael. Black wings. TINY STRIP OF GREY SHIRT at the wrist. So, we assume this happens right after the previous Chloe-with-Gun moment. Michael might want to mess with his brother, but he doesn’t want Chloe to die—there’s even some protective head cradling. So. There’s that.

Michael. Lux. Still the grey sateen shirt. Important: Amenadiel is wearing a shirt and tie. 

In the bit where he’s (presumably) talking to Lucifer in Hell (“He’s stronger than you think.”), he’s wearing the same Lux-grey-sateen-shirt-Michael suit and tie. I’m guessing Amenadiel was like “Do not pass Go, do not collect $200″ and pops down to Hell ASAP.

The “He is stronger than you think” line also makes me wonder if Lucifer hasn’t worried—or even thought—about Michael because he believed his twin was broken beyond the possibility of being a threat (presumably by Lucifer; I think there’s a Rebellion-related, bad-blood, mutually-assured-destruction story behind Michael’s injuries). That hubris/pride is pretty much what gets Lucifer into 925% of his problems, after all, so it would be in character. 

Oh, Luci. Why do you assume you’re the smartest in the room? Soon that attitude may be your doom. 

Michael is ALSO wearing the grey sateen shirt when Maze shows up and he admits he’s not Lucifer. A lot happens on the day of the grey sateen shirt. To me, this means everyone’s onto him right from the beginning. Also, it means the trailer is pulling pretty heavily from just this one out of the eight episodes. The first episode, unless I miss my guess.

Now, going by wardrobe, we enter a very jumbled section. We’ll call this the Dark Days of the Turtleneck.

During the Dark Days of the Turtleneck, we see Michael fight with Amenadiel in the time-stopped precinct. One assumes Michael’s not even pretending to be Lucifer anymore because ... turtleneck? Bloody hell, might as well be board shorts and Crocs. Note: Michael is NOT wearing (Lucifer’s) ring, here.

Again, the voiceover is misleading because suit-and-tie Amenadiel in Lux and Hell wouldn’t have had a chance to fight (wearing a red jacket) with Turtleneck Michael yet.

At yet another point, we see grey-knit Amenadiel fight with zip-up-halter Maze. Whatever’s going on, Amenadiel is getting around (on different days). And apparently everyone is mad at him.

Okay, so this happens after Michael’s had time to “make a mess.” Of what sort, though? I mean, the penthouse looks fine, so ... what haven’t we seen? What has happened between grey sateen shirt Michael and brown blazer turtleneck Michael? Note: Michael’s also not wearing (Lucifer’s) ring, here. I think Michael’s true lack of fashion sense is turtlenecks and roomy blazers. Yikes.

Well, we assume it’s a mess of Lucifer’s life on earth ... but is that possible? All the evidence points to pretty much everyone knowing sateen-shirt Michael isn’t Lucifer right away, so how could he have had the time or the leverage to make a mess that involves them? 

And if Michael doesn’t mean he made a mess of Lucifer’s life on earth, does he mean a more far-reaching mess? A much older mess? Something celestial? Something involving Hell? Something involving the Rebellion (have they seen each other since?)? Something involving God? Something involving whatever or whoever the REAL Big Bad of the season is (because I really doubt it’s Michael)?

How long has Michael been ... watching? stalking? Lucifer? Has he been involved in any of the other stuff that’s happened over the years? Was he the one who let Mum out of her cell?

But MOST IMPORTANT: How does he know the crime-fighting-devil song????

Well, whatever that mess is, Lucifer’s pretty pissed off about it. 

White shirt, white wings is Lucifer (he was also wearing his black jacket, but not a red pocket square. Note: he has had time to remove his jacket and put his wings away before throwing a punch!). TRAGIC turtleneck under a blazer (with different-colored trousers) and the obvious injury is Michael. But it’s not grey-turtleneck Michael—more than one turtleneck, how dare—so we’re at a different time, chronologically speaking. Could be before Michael’s precinct-fight with Amenadiel, even; we don’t know the chronology of those turtlenecks. We just know Michael, for some unknown reason, chooses them. 

Later:

Okay, I think these two scenes happen in the same episode; Chloe’s outfit is the same. And I think that episode happens a bit later in the chronology. Why?

‘Cause Chloe doesn’t have bangs, yo. And anyone who’s tried to grow out bangs can tell you IT DOESN’T HAPPEN OVERNIGHT.

Head-scratching brown suit aside, that’s Lucifer and not Michael. Because this has to be after Michael has shown his true turtleneck colors. Lucifer also seems to have trimmed down his post-hell angst-beard. 

Chloe’s hand-injury is probably from that explosion. Her heart-wrenching anguish, though? I don’t know what caused it, but my hurt/comfort-loving little heart wants it now.

We have no idea what Michael’s doing at this point: we don’t see Michael with no-bangs Chloe.

Which leaves the scenes that have had Twitter freaking out for most of the day:

This might be after black-shirt-Chloe-anguish-explosion. I know it looks like bangs, but I think it could also be hair-pushed-behind ears; in the shot where you see her standing in front of the elevator, her “bangs” look long enough to be tamed into a no-bang ponytail. But then ... no hand injury. 

It could also be a dream (looking at you “Love Handles”) or a Hell-torment. 

In any case, it is 1000% Lucifer and not Michael. Every single moment of every single micro-expression is entirely That Look Lucifer Only Gives To Chloe Decker (I wrote a thread about this on Twitter today), and Michael is just NOT that good an actor.

I actually find this shot more baffling. It’s Lucifer’s shirt; it has men’s-shirt buttons. Is it a morning after? (But not the morning after the wall scene, because Lucifer was wearing a black shirt there.)

Is this a dream?? A HELL TORMENT?? Look, I just do not trust anything that looks like something the fans have wanted so badly. We were all there for elevator dream sex and Lucifer wing dream reveal. We know how these people work!

(Granted, they also sometimes give us axe scenes and beach kisses, but...)

I have about 32634 things to say about LIGHT AND DARK TWIN BROTHERS IS EVERYTHING and also FURTHER EVIDENCE OF QUESTIONABLE CREATION/PARENTING, but I’ve already been working on this for hours, and that screaming is, I think, best reserved for another post. 

In conclusion, ahh the sweet, sweet song of hyperfixation. I missed you, buddy. You and your neurotransmitters. Welcome back.

For now, I’m just gonna tricycle off to hell in anticipation of August 21st.

.

.

.

Guys, seriously, how the hell does Michael know the crime-solving-devil song???????

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Twitter has basically begun a crusade for crucifixion of a group of girls who have gone to Harry’s shows. One girl tested positive for covid the day after the Las Vegas show (allegedly negative the day before but 🤷‍♀️), and immediately did what she could to get the word out. The internet did what the internet does and found a few other girls who were pictured all massless in a group with her, and who have since gone to the Denver show. All of Twitter has engaged in this super weird, very aggressive attack on these girls - everything from tweets begging them to wear a mask and stop going to shows, threatening them if they don’t wear masks, insulting them, and (perhaps strangest of all to me) attempting to guilt them using the possibility that they’ll get Harry sick and/or get either Sarah and Mitch sick who will give it to the baby. Now I acknowledge Twitter isn’t always the most sane or rational place, but all of this has been a bit confusing to me. What are they trying to accomplish? What do they think they’re actually accomplishing? Did they really believe every single person who went to Harry’s shows would behave with integrity and wear a mask the whole time and/or skip a show if they thought they might have been exposed prior to it? That’s maybe the most concerning to me, because I worry it means a whole lot of people have very, very incorrect ideas about their true level of risk attending these shows. I have pit tickets to one, but I am under no delusions that every single person in the pit with me will be behaving as an angel. That someone, or more likely multiple someones in the pit would be covid positive and would at some point go maskless regardless of the rules was one of the factors I took into consideration when I decided to go to my show. The morality policing really bothers me, too, because it always seems to turn so quickly from “you might get Harry or Mitch and Sarah or the baby sick” to “every single one of you is a horrible person for going to shows in the first place you careless monsters,” and then devolving into these arbitrary rules like no one should ever go to more than one show, or if you have to travel at all outside your hometown for a show don’t go to it. There has also been lots of proposing other risk reduction measures that don’t make sense to me practically, like testing every single ticket holder - great in theory. Practically a nightmare. As I’m getting to the end of this ask I’m realizing it doesn’t really have a point - just that when I saw all this unfold I thought about you, and the way you’ve laid out a framework to analyze the real risk of going to a show like this, which have really helped me think about my own show, and which I wish more people could have seen. Hope you’re well!

Thanks for this anon (I'm finally heading back to some anons from earlier in the tour that I'm really interested in). It's lovely that you say that the way I lay out the risk has helped you.

After I started reading this I read an article about wellness and vaccine denial and the tag line was: 'The randomness of illness is far too frightening for many to contemplate – so they rely on a fiction they’re special and can control their bodies' And that's something we see everywhere - including people loudly insisting that if everyone wore masks we'd know that Mitch and Sarah's baby wouldn't get sick.

The discussion seems to me to be deep in denial about what is known about COVID. In particular, that screaming for an hour, inside, surrounded by other people who are also screaming, is pretty high up there on the most COVID-unsafe activities. Masks reduce the risk (although given how intensely aeorsol friendly screaming is - nobody can be sure how much). But an intervention can reduce the risk and there can still be lots of risk. It's so important that people don't do scream for a long time around other people, unless they accept the full range of risks of what they're doing, including the risk that they might infect other people, even if they're vaccinated, even if they're wearing a mask the entire time.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about what people are doing when they say 'think about Mitch and Sarah's baby'. There's the straight racism of worrying about a white baby (COVID isn't even likely to be the most risky virus for a baby in the arena) when there's a black man with breathing problems on stage. But there's a clear purpose to all of that - which is the moralistic worldview. The baby isn't just vulnerable, but innocence, and by invoking innocence the outraged tweeters are suggesting someone's guilty.

************

In general, 'people just need to be better' is a terrible public health and political response. And what I need to remind myself is that's true of people dealing with their COVID anxiety by seeking certainty when there is none, as well as suggesting perfect masking could stop spread in high risk environments.

While I'm very tempted when faced with this sort of material to rage against what a ridiculous view of risk it is (and I usually give into temptation), it's far more useful to acknowledge that wanting certainty is a really normal response. The last year and a half has been incredibly stressful for so many people. And many people have been left in situations where there's insufficient support, completely untrustworthy communication and absolutely terrified.

The people who are anxious on twitter probably come by at least some of their anxiety honestly. (Although how much of the anxiety is about Harry as opposed to COVID is an open question). And so I do think it's worth saying: 'the situation is really scary, but yelling and trying to control other people won't make you safer, or make the situation less controlling and scary'. But that sort of response if you can suggest something less damaging that people can do and I don't know enough about the US to know what would help (I'm guessing anything that takes vaccines and good information to where people are - and it's worth praising Harry's team for what they're doing along those lines).

So I do have one final answer to a question you didn't ask anon. You say 'twitter' and 'all of twitter' in your ask. I think it's useful to conciously reject that framing. What you saw was being done by some accounts. There were lots of people who thought differently, or didn't care, but you didn't see them because they didn't post. People who say things can end up taking up a disproportionate space in our awareness, because we can't see silence.

I'm sure they've moved on to some absurd other policing now (a few days ago it owuld have been signs, I'm not sure what people are engaging with now). Which shows that a lot of it wasn't about COVID and also that it's worth actively not trying to allow it to grow bigger in importance than it actually is.

[readingsbylibramc]

birth chart reading for @silkdust

hello! welcome to your reading. I’m gonna give you a quick overview of what I’m going to analyze about your natal chart. feel free to ask me anything if something isn’t clear, of course. you’ll find out your dominants’ influence on your persona, your physical appearance, impression on others and the way you approach the world; your ego, identity, the real you; your reactions, your desires, inner emotions; your way of expressing your feelings, your mind and ideas; your desires and approach to love; your energy tank, instincts and temperament; in-depth analysis of each house with their rulers and analysis of heavy aspects; love life + soulmates/karmic partners interpretation; your relationship with your friends; your family life; your approach to career and work in general + possible jobs suggestion; your style, fashion sense analysis; life purpose and past life description; basic transits’ analysis to describe your current mood and, last but not least, your secret skills, how to make the most out of your soul and manifest what you desire based on your birth chart.

🦋 chart shape, dominants

your chart is a bucket shape, with saturn as the handle of the bucket. your saturn is in the 9th house, hence matters regarding learning, experiences, knowledge and open-mindness will be your priorities in this lifetime. you may travel and learn a lot. you also have clear ideas about your future and who you want to be. even though you may have different passions and talents you’re capable of only sticking to one and mastering it, giving your all.

your dominant planets are jupiter, venus and the moon. you're a very emotional and empathetic person, you always try to be kind to people and you strive to make others feel comfortable with you. yet, you may be a bit impulsive and say things that you don't actually mean. on the other hand, you're very easy-going and kind-hearted, you hardly ever mean to harm someone.

your dominant sign is sagittarius. you have an amazing sense of humor, your personality is so bubbly that it naturally draws people towards you. you're also extremely open-minded, you rarely have prejudices. you have a knack for spirituality, religion, philosophy... anything that can stimulate you mentally.

your dominant element is fire. you have a warm heart, even though it may be covered by your confidence and indipendence. in fact, you always strive for the first place. people may be intimidated by your presence, as you're a serious competitor. thanks to this competitive nature of yours you may be very positive and optimistic, making you a good and supportive friend/partner.

🌎 ascendant in virgo, 1° / 1st decan ruled by mercury

you have a practical approach to the world. you’re kind of logical, it’s hard for you to improvize. you always want to keep everything neat and organized, at least in your mind. you could have a natural coldness to your face. you may seem a bit older than you are, or at least very mature and responsible, even though you may be more outgoing than you look due to your many sagittarius placements. with your attentive eyes, you pay attention to every single detail you see. you’re a perfectionist, and you always want and try to be at your best state. I would say you’re quite competitive when it comes to your goals, but you don’t really do it to be above others. you do it because your obsession for details kind of stresses you out. improving and proving yourself is a way to boost your self-esteem, you feel fulfilled when you can achieve your goals. you are extremely intelligent and logical, you’re always up for a deep talk or simply for an occasion to gain more knowledge. you like being smart, you always want to know about everything. even the latest, trendy meme counts for you. your nature is very cautious; you’re rarely impulsive, you always think deeply about your decisions, as you don’t want to commit any mistakes. because of that, you can be particularly picky. not only with material things such as movies, books, food etc. but even with people. it’s hard for you to open up to someone you don’t know at all. you take things slow, both in friendships and in relationships, just to preserve yourself. you may come off as kind of snobby, but you’re just misunderstood. you don’t like flaky bonds, you need security in your life. physically, as I’ve already mentioned before, you have this kind of strict look on your face. your eyes may be almond-shaped, and you could have a natural feline gaze. overall, you have something smaller about your features; you could have thin lips, a small nose, small eyes… you could have a smaller frame with thin bones. you may be of average height, and I’ve noticed that most virgos tend to have pretty long legs? no matter if they’re tall or not, their legs will still be longer than their bust. but possibly, due to your heavy sagittarius dominance you may still have something bigger or larger on your body, maybe you have wider hips or shoulder or maybe a wide forehead. you may also have almond-shaped eyes or larger lips.

virgo ascendant square sagittarius mercury: you appear as a very intelligent individual, and people may even feel intimidated by that. you love interacting with others; even if you're not much talkative, you like hearing about others' theories and opinions. you could also do that by reading blogs, books etc. you may sometimes find yourself in conflict with others, as you’re very opinionated and hate it when others’ opinions are baseless. pretty much, you could seem like a know-it-all. on the other hand, you have a nice sense of humor, you're able to light up the room with your words, even though this quality of yours may be overshadowed by introversion at first. it's hard to find a way to make you come off as more gentle, as you have some of the most fiery and blunt signs in your chart. the fact that your mercury is in sagittariurs squaring your mars doesn't help either. you could take advantage of your astute words and sense of humor to get you out of troubles, though! just be careful not to claim that everything hurtful you say is a joke. it's something that sagittarius placements do a lot.

🌞 sun in sagittarius, 18° / 2nd decan ruled by jupiter and mars

in life, you strive for freedom and independency. you are an extremely wise person, and you believe strongly in your beliefs. you rarely change your mind, but most of the time you’re an open-minded person. you love learning about anything, and you may also have a good memory. in fact, it’s common for you to be the one who explains things and possibly even leads a group, and this could unluckily make you seem as a know-it-all. you do take pride in your wisdom, indeed. your deep way of thinking is also where your desire for freedom comes from, as you wish to be able to expand yourself through travelling and new experiences. you may also be attracted to foreign things, such as foreign literature, fashion, art, music etc. it’s another way to travel and open your mind, without actually having to leave your house when you’re busy. when you get angry, you can actually get very rude and offensive, even towards authorities. you’re short-tempered, and you despise being told what to do. you’re also a good, loyal friend, and you’re the type to stand up for them and defend them during a fight. you’re very outgoing, especially with people you feel comfortable with, and you probably love talking. you’re able to put a smile on others’ face just by telling your stories, even though you never truly go in-depth. in fact, you have a shy side to you that makes you more secretive, regardless of your friendliness.

sagittarius sun square virgo moon: you're the type to start lots of projects, always feeling like you need to transform yourself or your routine. you're very self-aware of your identity, as you're constantly in contact with your feelings. you may even appear as too emotional, as the sun brings all your emotions out to see. this placement most likely makes it hard for you to make choices, you are very indecisive; on one side, your sagittarius sun wants to make new experiences, you're all about the risk. your virgo moon, on the other hand, wants everything to be planned, you despise going with the flow as you feel the need to have everything under control. as a result, you may change your mind often, and people could possibly picture you as shallow or unpredictable. you're interested in knowing more about your roots, your childhood, and also about having a family in general. when you were young, you probably were even more energetic than now. you could be the type to look nostalgically at your old pictures, and you care about your mother a lot. you're also very interested in your own culture; you're not afraid to show the world your interests, reactions and opinions. the problem with this square, especially with the moon being in virgo, is that the individual may become so self-sufficient at the point that doesn't let anyone interfer in their life. it's obviously a good thing to do when someone tries to hurt you, but there's the risk it may happen even with people that are trying to help you if not well-developed. last but not least, your parents' relationships might have had impact on your growth. maybe they're divorced, and one of them had to compensate for the missing parent; perhaps, one of them was highly influenced by the other.

sagittarius sun square pisces jupiter: this is a hard aspect, which could make you feel even more proud of yourself due to your sagittarius sun. you may feel like the universe is constantly against you, you may feel unlucky, or even overindulge in things you like to cope with sadness or anger. you may have the tendency to overeat, buy useless things etc. you go from having a low self-esteem, to even looking very bossy without even realizing it. you struggle to keep your identity balanced, even though you might have not been aware of it at first. to achieve fortune and joy in life, you need to work hard for it. to do so, you have to learn your karmic lessons in this lifetime, which probably revolve around family issues and their impact on your interactions with others.

🌙 moon in virgo, 24° / 3rd decan ruled by mercury and venus

this is the most romantic virgo decan. you want to have everything under control, you can't bear not being organized. you most probably write down your appointments and stuff on an agenda, or perhaps even in the notes app of your phone. you're extremely precise, you want everything to be perfect. mixed with your virgo rising as well, you probably care a lot about your appearance; you most likely have a skincare routine, workout... just anything that makes you feel healthy. you love taking care of yourself, especially of your hygiene. you also put a lot of effort in your outfits, you fear not being at your best state. you're a perfectionist, after all. this also project in your home environment; you may clean your house thoroughly, it's most likely all neat. in addition, this mania of yours of being perfect makes you have high standards; in fact, you need people in your life that try as much as you do. you despise lazy people. you probably have a reputation for always being calm and elegant, as you try to avoid conflicts as much as possible. you're very smart and insightful, and you strive for perfection; you want to prove your power to yourself, as it helps you boosting your self-esteem. in fact, it depends a lot on your achievements; if you don't meet your expectations, you start going through a hard time of insecurity and struggles. you love communicating, but you may struggle to find the right words, especially with your mercury squaring mars. your eyes talk for you, though. you're also very introspective, and you're fond of art and creativity in general. you're very critical, both of yourself and of others. you don't do it with malice, though, but as I've already mentioned you want to frequent people that try to be at their best all the time, just like you after all.

virgo moon square sagittarius venus: there are contrasting feelings in your relationships with others; after all, your virgo moon wants to commit to someone and be loyal to them. on the other hand, your sagittarius venus wants to be free. you don't want to feel tied to someone, you still need your independency. those two desires of yours probably contrast each other, stressing you out. you want a calm, almost boring relationship, but with this placement you can't seem to have one. your feelings and self-esteem may depend a lot on your relationships, not only with your lovers, but also with your friends. if someone isn't loyal to you, you immediately start blaming yourself. in your life you may lack intimacy, and while it may make you feel better at first, based on the rest of your chart you actually need someone on your side. you can't do everything on your own. it's very challenging, but you need to find someone that projects your ideals of love. if you need a free-spirit, go look for one. it may take you a while, but if you learn all the lessons you need to learn from your breakups, you'll be able to live a peaceful life with your spouse.

virgo moon opposite sagittarius jupiter: you enjoy making different experiences and living your life to the fullest, making you also a risk-taker. you may lack self-control, even though I don't really think you struggle with being cautious with all this virgo energy in your chart. with this trait you get bored easily, and you may have a reputation for being flaky. you tend to overindulge; you may spend too much money, or even develop eating disorders like binge-eating. at least, you're able to build your life again and have a fresh start, but you risk to get stuck in this cycle. you have the potential to master different talents, but you may struggle to develop them due to this placement. you're a procrastinator, and you find it hard to focus on more things at the same time. you may also attract people with different beliefs and ideas from you, causing you to fall out with them easily. there are also positive sides to this placement, though! you're probably naturally lucky, even though luck may not always be by your side. you have a nice sense of humor, making you more likeable to contrast your scorpio rising.

🗣 mercury in sagittarius, 1° / 1st decan ruled by jupiter

you say things impulsively, you're bluntly honest, and this could often hurt people around you. in addition, you like having the last word, despite being proven wrong sometimes. you have a knack for wisdom, you love being and looking smart. you're the type to spend the whole day reading and analyzing philosophical quotes and then make them your own, applying them to your life. you want to be and feel experienced, hence you may inform yourself about a variety of topics just for the sake of knowing them, perhaps you're not even that much interested in them. you could go from talking about politics to astrology, your mind is quite messy but still very full. you may possibly have a youthful voice, and sometimes you can speak in a loud volume without even realizing it. you may also exaggerate your words a lot, for example you might have got a single scratch on your cheek and call it a gash. you could possibly also be the type to joke over your own feelings, and then obviously get mad at others when they do the same with you. your mercury is also retrograde, hence you're not much talkative, you're more on the introspective side. you may have troubles communicating your thoughts clearly, or maybe you're the one who may misunderstand/mishear what others say to you.

sagittarius mercury conjunct sagittarius pluto: you may become a bit manipulative. you probably don’t even realize it, though, as you have the ability to make people do what you want them to do. you probably love being right, especially during arguments, and you always manage to be so thanks to your skills. your words are like knives for others, they can truly cut deep through their ego. you’re direct and blunt, as you just say what you have in mind with no filters. you can develop a provocative attitude without even realizing it, which can obviously cause you conflicts. you need to be more careful about how you communicate your ideas, otherwise you could seriously damage other people’s self-esteem. on the other hand, if you acknowledge your flaws and work on them, this can actually turn into diplomacy. take advantage of your interest in your inner self to find out how to be a bit more gentle in choosing your words.

❤️ venus in sagittarius, 29° / 3rd decan ruled by jupiter and the sun

people may consider you flaky, as you value freedom above all. you may be the type that likes making new experiences regarding love, and you often date your crushes. yet, you feel too limited in a relationship. you don't enjoy committing to someone if that someone isn't perfect for you, you're only completely loyal to the one you consider your true love. you can't give up your freedom, your thirst for adventure and experiences for someone else. basically, your ideal partner would be a risk-taker, someone loyal but not too clingy, that is down to go on a road trip in every moment. someone impulsive, that could help you stepping out of your comfort-zone. you're probably into those youthful love stereotypes, e.g. high school dates. you want your relationships to be filled with excitement, you despise boring, traditional and cheesy things. you may also find yourself being attracted to unavailable people; that is, you could fall for people that are already taken, or maybe they're physically unavailable, e.g they live abroad or in another city in general. you're also attracted to foreigners, and people that have a wise, yet bubbly aura around them.

sagittarius venus square libra mars: you are very serious when it comes to love. you seek intense, long-lasting relationships, filled with both romance and passion. ironically, you tend to attract people that are the opposite, who are only looking for fun and casual romance. that could afflict your self-worth significantly, as you feel unlucky in love. this is also another placement that indicates that one of your parents, probably your father, or still anyone of the opposite sex probably influenced your approach to romance and sex. there are different scenarios I have in mind, but I'll talk about it later in the family life section.

sagittarius venus square pisces jupiter: you come off as a very positive, happy-go-lucky person. you're extremely friendly, and this makes you good at social relationships. you may have lots of friends, or at least you have the potential to make many if you opened up and talked to them. yet, while this energy gives you positive vibes, some people may take advantage of that, as you could easily be mistaken for naive. people can try to dominate you unconsciously (sometimes even on purpose) not only in relationships but even in friendships. aside from that, I don't think this placement causes you many problems. you may have the tendency to procrastinate and not work. you could be quite lazy and get easily distracted, as you're constantly with your head in the cloud. yet, thanks to your virgo energy, you still manage to find some motivation to do your work.

☄️ mars in libra, 7° / 1st decan ruled by venus

there’s this stereotype that libra mars people are passive-aggressive. it may be true, but only partially. in fact, you try to avoid conflicts exclusively when you’re in public, or maybe with someone you don’t know well. in that case, you can eventually try to avoid the problem. with people you’re close to, you’re pretty much the opposite. you may say the worst of things that you probably don’t even feel, you may even have the istinct to throw hands. you’re driven by a strong sense of justice, and you probably were the class’ snitch during daycare/primary school. you also strive for equality, hence you may get very defensive when it comes to proving your innocence, or just really anyone’s. overall, you’re a fair person with strong morals, who acts based on the situation you’re in.

🏡 houses

your 1st house is in virgo. you appear as someone intelligent, possibly judgmental and critical. in fact, you’re a perfectionist, and most of the time you appreciate it when someone takes care of themselves just as much as you do. you’re also particularly pessimistic, and this could be annoying for those around you. you’re very logical, you probably lack intuition just like you lack water in your chart. you’re very pragmatic, and you may even be judgmental, but this energy is probably mitigated by your jupiter dominance, which makes you more open-minded and flexible. the ruler of the 1st house is in the 4th house: you come off as a very private, yet mature person. you may be quite secretive, or at least you only prefer to share your persona with those around you. you probably love your family, they're the centre of your life and you'll also be very fond of your future family as well.

your 2nd house is in virgo. you have a practical approach to money; even though you may like spending and shopping, I see you being careful with them, and you may even have track of them through an agenda or something like that. you feel the need to be perfect, and that can cause you self-esteem issues. with your heavy sagittarius energy, I assume that this manifests as sudden bursts of insecurity or of confidence, your image of yourself fluctuates a lot. you take pride in your intellect, you are very proud of your ideas, theories and opinions. you could also make money from communication of any kind. you could be a stewardess, as well as a writer, a singer... with mars placed in this house, I feel like you may be very fond of money. you could do something just to earn material things from it, like money or any other good that satisfies your wants. you may be quite materialistic, you enjoy the finer things in life, or at least you want to be financially stable. you like the idea of saving money, but ironically you may be too impulsive when it comes to finances and spend money in random things you may not need. the moon here also gives you materialistic tendencies; you may struggle to show your feelings with words, you tend to show your feelings through material things such as gifts. you're probably the type to say I love you through gestures instead of words. the ruler of the 2nd house is placed in the 4th house: your future career may include 4th house matters; that means that you could follow your parents’ steps and work in their same field, for example, or maybe even follow their studies. you could possibly work with families, e.g as a counselor, or perhaps in real estate. it could also symbolize that you're going to marry someone wealthy, and hence you'll have a rich family.

your 3rd house is in libra. it's most likely common for you to include other people in your thoughs and speech. for example, you may often find yourself talking about your partners, your friends, neighbors, celebrities... you probably also like gossips. this placement, on the other hand, gives you an opinionated, even poetic mind. you could be interested in literature for example, and you most likely were good at school. your mind and words are your energy tank, what satisfy you the most. you may talk a lot about different topics of any kind, from childhood to videogames, but you never get boring. you're always entertaining to listen to. with the ruler of the 3rd house being in the 4th house, you may often talk about your childhood. you may have lots of memories that you're able to remember, and hence you may tell them frequently to your loved ones.

your 4th house is in scorpio, with also your sun, venus, mercury and pluto sitting in this house. your relationship with your family is most likely very intense, but not necessarily good. it could be that your parents were quite overprotective of you, you felt judged and restricted from acting the way you wanted. or perhaps, they were emotionally distant, your childhood lacked affection. you probably had to grow up sooner than other kids, and it could be that you first came in touch with plutonian topics (drugs, spirits, sex, death etc.) at a young age. you were more mature from this point of view. in addition, it's also probably that your parents were particularly overprotective, and hence they could have limited you from making experiences. this challenging childhood of yours is most likely the cause of your unstable self-esteem, and perhaps you also have troubles with long-term goals and dreams too. still, with most of your personal planets in the 4th house, you are still very attached to your family. you may have good memories of your childhood, even though you had to undergo lots of hardships you are still optimistic about it. after all, you learned how to transform and to be a better person through these experiences, making you more mature to approach life.

your 5th house is in the sign of capricorn. capricorn usually brings a feeling of seriousness to the house it’s in. I don’t think it’s your case, though. in fact, neptune, is also placed in this house. you could be a bit more introverted, probably you’re not the type to frequent clubs, parties, etc. you’re more serious from that point of view. your hobbies could actually drain your energy for you; let’s suppose you’re into videogames. you could literally spend the whole day playing videogames, as you take your hobbies very seriously. you’re not the type to start a project and then leave it, and it could be helpful considering that your sagittarius sun gets bored very easily, you’re very resolute. also, you most likely have 'mature’ hobbies; you could be into politics, economy, history… you could be into slower types of music, for example, or perhaps you like reading about world issues. with your children you may be quite strict, as you see them as a responsibility. also, you may often be attracted or attract older or more mature partners. you’re most likely a very romantic and artistic person, you may be fond of music, dancing, singing, acting… anything creative that stimulates your senses. yet, you may be a bit picky when it comes to hobbies; you probably only like reading specific types of books, you only listen to a certain music style, and so on. you may also be into spirituality such as psychology, astrology, law of attraction, yoga, mediation, etc.

your 6th house is in aquarius, with also uranus placed in this house. people with aquarius in their 6th house need to change their routine throughout your life. probably, when you were you younger they taught you things that aren’t healthy for your body and health. you may have to change your diet, your medicines… also, you may sometimes procrastinate in your day-to-day life. I don’t think you do it too often, but it may still happen due to your sagittarius dominance in your chart, but for example you wouldn’t mind skipping a day of school or work to play videogames. this placement also indicates that you may often come across unpredictable events in your daily life. you may often see strange, unordinary things, or perhaps it’s your routine that is like that. you may lack consistency when it comes to diets and health, for example; you may start a diet and keep it for a month, then you get tired and drop it all of a sudden. you could also develop unexpected diseases. you may pursue a career that looks unexpected for you at first, something that you never thought you'd do. it will most likely be a creative, artistic job. it will be a very pleasant job, it won’t even feel like a duty to you as you’ll choose a job that you like and that you’re passionate about. regarding your health, throughout your life you may often come across sudden health problems, illnesses may come out of nowhere.

your 7th house is in pisces, with also jupiter placed in this house. with this pisces descendant, you attract people that are pretty much very intuitive and soft; they could have pisces placements, or at least they’ll be extremely artistic and emotional. yet, you may as well surround yourself with 'broken’ people. that is, people that aren’t exactly in the best state of their health, whether physically or mentally. neptune, the ruler of this house, is in the 5th house. since in your chart the 5th house represents your job too. you’ll most likely meet your future spouse at your work place. you could pursue the same career, they could be a customer of yours… or perhaps, you could meet them in a fun situation, like a party, a vacation, a night out… any situation where you’re supposed to be chilling and having fun, you may meet your future spouse there. with jupiter in this house, you may meet your future spouse at school, or maybe even directly abroad. they may be foreign, or at least they’re able to speak a different language from yours. they could also have a different culture/religion. also, in a relationship you probably hate feeling suffocated. while your pisces descendant may make you enjoy skinship, you may sometimes also need your space, you still need your freedom, especially since your dominant sign is sagittarius. overall, this placement also indicates that you may have more than one marriage, or in general you’ll date many people. you could also be quite lucky when it comes to love, and you only tend to attract the positive side of your pisces descendant.

your 8th house is in pisces. you may have many dreams, you’re very artistic and creative. yet, due to this placement, you struggle to let this side of you out and make it concrete. since you have a strong virgo dominance in your chart, I assume that the reason for this blockage is your rationality. you’re way too logical, and you don’t leave space for your imagination. that’s probably caused by the fact that you’re afriad of being seen as a failure, and hence you don’t really go out of your comfort zone when it comes to your ideas. to reach your state of happiness, you need to turn what you dream about into reality, just like the fact that the ruler of the 8th house is in the 5th house confirms: you have 8th house-related hobbies, such as astrology, horror, occult, sex, psychology… or perhaps, you could work in one of those fields. you may also handle someone else’s money, hence you could work in a bank. this is also another placement that indicates that you're not the type to be extremely extroverted, you'd rather stay alone than in others' company.

your 9th house is in aries, with saturn sitting there. you have a joyful, child-like approach to adventures. you strive for freedom, you want to be your own boss. you don’t want others to tell you what to do, but saturn here may make you struggle to achieve your individuality. perhaps, during your childhood, you were restricted from acting the way you wanted. it’s like your ideas were disrespected, and you weren’t allowed to embrace them, or perhaps you were afraid of the consequences. it may be that when you try to break free from what you consider to be a limitation, you may come across a few struggles that could possibly hurt you. luckily, this is an aspect that will naturally get better time with time as you get more mature. in addition, saturn is well-aspected, so you don’t really have to worry about anything in particular. the ruler of the 9th house is in the 2nd house: you may be interested in foreign languages, and you may actually be able to speak one, or at least you are skilled enough to learn one. you’re also very open-minded. you could actually earn money from this interest in foreign languages and cultures, you may work abroad or maybe as a translator. you could also earn profit from writing of any kind and / or teaching.

your 10th house is in taurus. when it comes to work, you’re quite materialistic. you want to earn a great income from your job, you aspire to be wealthy, and luckily with your virgo dominance you probably don’t lack ambition. yet, as I’ve already mentioned in the previous sections, you shouldn’t procrastinate nor be lazy, you should break free from your limitations and work hard to visualize and achieve your goals, or it may be hard for you to have a stable career life. you may be attracted to artistic careers, such as designing for example, or even stuff like food. you could be a singer, a rapper, a writer… even a therapist or a counsealor, as well as an actor or comedian. you would do well at a variety of things to be honest! but make sure that you understand who you want to be.

your 11th house is in cancer. this placement indicates that your friends, they’re your comfort-zone. you feel understood when you’re with them, they’re pretty much like a family to you. you can tell them anything, you put all of your trust in them. or at least, if you haven’t met anyone like this yet, you’ll surely meet a friend that is like a soulmate to you. they’ll also be very important for your growth. in addition, it could also be that you’re still friends with someone from your childhood or even high school days, and hence you could literally grow up together. you could also have some step-siblings. the ruler of the 11th house is in the 2nd house: since your 2nd house is in virgo, you could befriend people that are quite similar to you, mentally or maybe even physically. your friends may come from abroad, they may be able to speak more than a language just like you do. or at least, they’re also very open-minded and intelligent. you may also meet them in school / college or even work. in fact, you may earn money from or together with your friends, perhaps you may work together. or at least, when you're with your friends you feel much more secure, it's probable that you act more confident when you're with them.

lastly, your 12th house is in leo. this is kind of a tricky placement, as leo rules the self, the ego, and the 12th house rules fears. you could be afriad of being too confident, of feeling worth it, or even just by being in the spotlight. perhaps, you have stage fright. this fear of embracing your persona makes you very insecure, even though you probably don’t show it. also, since your 12th house is the house of dreams, you could often make dreams that involve yourself. you hardly ever dream of someone else, and if you they’re probably your lovers, possibly your friends. you may also make daydreams or sleeping dreams of creative, utopic scenarios. the ruler of the 12th house is in the 4th house: your family may also be somehow involved in spiritual matters; they may be into psychology, astrology, tarots, religion… you may even have sleeping as a hobby, you could sleep a lot to relax. you could also enjoy yoga, meditating and doing charity work. you could also make dreams about children, about your childhood or about your family.

❤️ love life, soulmates

in love you attract scorpio, sagittarius, pisces and capricorn placements. your future spouse will most likely have scorpio and sagittarius traits placements, maybe a scorpio - sagittarius cusp. they’ll be very assertive, bold and confident, but also with a warm heart and a hidden insecurity to them. as I’ve already mentioned before, you may meet them during a fun situation, hence at a party, during a vacation, in a restaurant, at a concert… also, your spouse will most likely be one of your soulmates, and hence once you meet them you’ll probably have this 'I’ve already seen you before’ feeling. they’ll seem very familiar, and you’ll find emotional comfort in them. your children will most likely have strong capricorn or pisces traits: they’ll be very hard-working and ambitious, but also very funny and warm. also, they’ll be extremely creative and more mature as time goes by.

👶🏻 family life

I won’t say much in this section as I’ve already talked about your childhood in the 4th house section. anyways, your mother was probably the most dominant figure in your family. she was very intense, even scary at times, especially when she got angry. she might’ve also been very possessive or overprotective. she could have scorpio, gemini, virgo, leo, libra or aries placements in her chart, as well as taurus. as for your father, he was more laid-back, but probably very stubborn and also quite protective too. he may have taurus or libra placements in his chart. if you have siblings, your relationship with them may be quite pleasant. probably, you used to get along very well with them, it was pleasant for you to hang out and talk to them. they could have libra or taurus placements in their chart.

📊 career

luckily, there are many aspects in your chart that indicate that you’ll be able to earn a big amount of money from your future job. it will most likely allow you to communicate your feelings, and it will also be the key to finally achieve a stable relationship with your self-image and worth. there are strong placements in your chart that point out to acting and writing talent, as well as singing talent. you’re just a very charismatic speaker, so I’d suggest you to take advantage of this natural talent of yours to earn money, luck and self-esteem. as I've already mentioned above, you'd do great at jobs that require teaching, hence you could become a teacher or a professor, as well as writing of any kind, especially creative writing; you may write books, poems, or maybe articles for fashion magazines. careers that allow you to interact with others and talk about feelings are also recommended, hence you may do well as a nurse, as a therapist, etc.

👕 fashion sense, style analysis

your sagittarius energy screams grunge! you probably love 90s/00s aesthetic, with fishnets, black, burgundy, belts, leather jackets... all of this stuff. also, oversized clothes are a must for you. you may especially be fond of wearing tight tops with baggy jeans or viceversa: tight pants, possibly leggins, with big, long sweatshirts and t-shirts. it's very comfortable, but you still make it look trendy and particular with your charisma. you may also love printed things, especially graphic t-shirts. for shoes, I'd say trendy sneakers and boots are a must in your wardrobe.

👁 past life, life purpose

in your past lifetime, you used to put your spirituality aside for a while to focus on finding out your identity here on the earth. you learned how to be responsible, healthy and stable on the earth. you know your values, and they’re already very grounded, you’re very mature from this point of view. in this lifetime, you now need to get more in touch with your spirituality. you need to get close to your higher self, and you may actually be quite skilled at it; probably you may interpret your dreams, you could be interested in religion, what’s beyond the world, and you’re most likely also interested in astrology and other occult matters. you’ll finally be able to reach happiness and fulfill your soul when you start having awareness of your soul’s purpose. since you’ve booked a reading, I’m sure you’re already on the right path, so keep going this way.

🤔 major transits analysis / february 27th

tonight's virgo moon will have huge influence on you as your moon sign is virgo, and it's also conjunct your ascendant! a new moon represents new beginnings, and hence it's the perfect time to start making effort to change your mindset or your appearance, in your case. if you want to start a diet, a workout routine, this is the best time for you. in addition, it's also a good time to evolve your mindset, you could start being a bit more optimistic and it's also a good time to manifest or start manifesting. beware of sudden health issues, though!

🧿 manifest what you want, secret skills

the best way for you to manifest is idealizing and acting at the same time. you have both energies combined in your chart, which is great actually! I’d suggest you to first picture what you want in your life, and then do something concrete to manifest it. for example, let’s suppose you want this gucci bag; first, think about it deeply. then, you could try going into a gucci shop and just walk around, maybe even touch that bag. you’ll get results if you believe it! it’s also great to write and read/listen your own positive affirmations, such as 'I love my gucci bag’, 'the gucci bag my mom gave me is amazing’ and so on.

this is the end! thank you again for booking a reading, hope it resonated <3 -libramc xx

if you want to book a reading like this one, check my pinned post!! :)

[cheeseeatingtrashmonster]

White Butterfly

Written for a gift exchange with friends. @you-arelove, sweetie, happy... mid-March, which is when I gave it to you :P

Ao3

-

"You should wear the red sweater dress."

Kagami turned from her closet to look at the love of her life, framed with light pouring through the hallway window behind her.

"Do you really want to be the couple that wears matching outfits to this party?"

Marinette came into the room and held up the dress she had mentioned, draping it in front of Kagami and turning them both to face the mirror in their room. "It's our party. We can match if we want to."

Kagami watched Marinette's eyes bounce around the room. The closet, Kagami's legs, the dresser, the jewelry box, Kagami's waist, Kagami's shoulders and neck, the six other outfits laid out on the bed.

"Aren't you supposed to say 'lucky charm' before analyzing the situation?"

Marinette's eyes snapped back to hers. She blinked, and a grin took over her whole person.

"Why would I need to? I already have my lucky charm since you're right here."

Kagami turned around and leaned her forehead against Marinette's. Marinette hadn't grown an inch since the day they met, but Kagami had experienced a growth spurt and stood half a head taller than her wife.

"I'm the lucky one."

"You two are saps," Alix said from the hallway around a mouthful of dry cereal. She had the box under her arm. "Get dressed and get downstairs so I can stop answering the door for all the early people."

Kagami pulled on the sweater dress. When her head cleared the collar, Marinette shoved a belt in her face. She took it and put it on without comment.

"Who is here already besides you? The party doesn't start for an hour and a half," Marinette said. She selected a pair of shoes for Kagami from their closet and set them on the floor. Just as Kagami was about to slide one foot into place, Marinette shook her head and snatched the shoes up, not noticing Kagami wobbling in an attempt to not fall on top of her.

"I mean, Nath and Adrien only live across town. Did you really think Adrien would wait until the designated start time? When there are people who haven't met their daughter?"

"Oh, just those three?" Marinette asked. "They don't count! They're over here all the time." She stood on her tiptoes behind Kagami to brush her hair out of the way and fasten a necklace in place.

"Nathalie came with them. And Kagami, your mom got here just a minute ago and she scares me, so I'm gonna hang out up here until you're downstairs."

Marinette grabbed Kagami's hands, eyes shining but the rest of her features as neutral as she could manage. "You invited your mom after all?"

"I did." Some emotion bubbled in her chest, fizzing and pressing. Her mother hadn't said one way or the other if she was going to show up. "And she's... here."

Marinette threw her arms around Kagami's neck, giggling and wiggling and bouncing. It took Kagami a moment to hug Marinette back. The ease with which Marinette displayed her feelings would always leave her with a sense of awe.

The doorbell interrupted them. Marinette pecked a quick kiss on her cheek and pulled away.

"I guess no one listened to what time we told them to arrive," Marinette said. "Let's go say hello."

“Is that your cat?” Alix asked, nodding towards the rescue tabby that had climbed out from under the bed to stretch.

“No,” Kagami deadpanned.

Alix looked away from the cat to stare at Kagami for a minute. When the doorbell rang again, she blinked in surprise and laughed.

“You’re getting good at this ‘making jokes with humans’ thing, K,” she said. “Go answer the door. Imma introduce myself to the kitty.”

Kagami wrapped an arm around Marinette’s waist and started pulling her towards the hallway.

“Her name is Catra,” Marinette called over her shoulder. “She likes scritches under her chin, but you have to let her sniff your face before she’ll let you touch her. And if you want, there are treats on the dresser. She likes the-”

The doorbell rang again.

“Yeah yeah yeah, go answer the door,” Alix called, not even turning to look at them. Kagami glanced back and saw Alix laying on her stomach on the floor facing the cat, unmoving except for the hand bringing cereal from the box to her mouth.

When they got to the bottom of the stairs, Marinette said, “We’re never seeing Alix or Catra again, are we?”

“Probably not,” Kagami said, leaning over to kiss Marinette’s cheek. “Now, I’m going to steal little Emilie Agreste-Kurtzberg and use her to distract my mother from actual conversation.”

Marinette greeted Alya and Nino at the door, teasing them for not just walking in like usual. Behind them, Juleka, Luka, Rose, and Anarka were walking up the sidewalk. The Dupain-Chengs arrived next, and then Ivan, Mylene, and their triplets. By the time Max and Kim arrived, the party was in full swing. Marinette gathered everyone around the long dining room table and called for quiet.

"Thank you, everyone, for coming," Kagami said. She and Marinette stood hand in hand at the head of the table, facing a house full of their favorite people and a table full of food everyone had brought. "Ten years ago, Ladybug, Chat Noir, and their fellow heroes saved Paris, and the world, from Hawkmoth's reign. Ten years ago, everyone in this room took part in the final battle. When we-"

A small hand tugged at Kagami's skirt. She stopped and turned to see one of the Bruel triplets staring up at her.

"I wasn't there." With one fist still holding Kagami's skirt, she popped her other thumb in her mouth, wide eyes watching Kagami, expectant.

Kagami bit her lip to keep from smiling too widely. "You're right. You weren't there." She picked the little girl up, settling her on her hip and melting when the toddler’s head dropped to rest on her shoulder. "Ten years ago, most everyone in this room took part in the final battle. When we found ourselves victorious, our rejoicing was strong but short-lived. We had won. But we weren't done."

Here, Marinette reached out a hand to Adrien. He handed Emilie to Nath and came to stand at her side, bypassing her hand and pulling her into a side-hug.

"We found that we had yet to really heal. We all banded together to do just that. We rebuilt this city, every one of us." Kagami held out her hand to Luka, who was seated on her right. He stood and took her hand. Anarka next to him stood and took his hand and reached for Juleka's on her right. All the way around the table, every person stood and held hands with their neighbors. When the circuit had connected, Kagami continued.

"I think every one of us could list the things we've gained from the other people in this room, the ways we've all cared for each other over the years." Five or six agreements of various volumes interrupted her. "But I think the best thing we've given each other-"

Kagami stopped. Halfway down the table, between Max and Sabine, her mother was smiling.

Smiling. Her mother was smiling... at her.

Kagami turned to Marinette but found her vision blurry. She couldn't wipe away her tears with one arm supporting the child and the other hand connecting her to this chain of wonderful people, and she couldn't remember a single thing she was supposed to say next.

"The best thing we've given each other," Adrien said, reaching around Marinette to give Kagami's arm a quick squeeze, "is family. Family built on love. Thank you for supporting us for the last ten years. Thank you for being our family, for choosing to be our family."

Marinette pulled Kagami close and wiped the tears from her cheeks. When Kagami gave her a watery smile and a nod, she took Adrien's hand and Kagami's arm again, keeping the circle closed. "The power of love. Always so strong." She sighed, a smile on her face. "Now please, eat! And happy tenth White Butterfly Day."

The table erupted into voices and clapping and whoops of joy and the clatter of plates and silverware.

This was how Kagami had always wanted family to sound.

[elcorhamletlive]

fandom: MCU ship: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark tags: Light angst, hurt/comfort, fluff, de-serumed Steve.

summary:  Steve deals with discomfort after losing the serum. Tony helps.

If he had known, he would never have entered the ship.

It was easy to say it now, though, in hindsight. During the battle, no one knew if the spaceship had been fully evacuated, and Steve’s position was ideal to drop in. Sure, he could have waited, but HYDRA clearly wanted what was inside the ship, and, if there was anyone in there, any second they missed increased the risk of casualties, and Steve didn’t want any lives lost that day, alien or not.

Except no one was inside.

Nothing, in fact, seemed to be inside – that is, aside from one very small, very significant machine irradiating a green glow, that turned its rays towards Steve the second he saw it.

He was a moment too late to raise the shield, and, if the ray had been a laser, he would most likely be dead by now.

Except it wasn’t. Instead, it was, according to what Bruce said later, some kind of small, focused time travel device. Bruce’s theory was that it was probably used to study alien specimens, being able to take a single sample of a plant or an animal and transform it into different phases of its life, allowing the species that owned the machine (whoever they were) to properly study it.

His eyes had sparkled when he proclaimed this. It was, in his words, “absolutely brilliant.”

Steve hated it.

Now that he was back to the small, skinny frame he had spent so much of his life in, he especially hated it. He would have preferred to be turned back into a baby, if those were his only options.

No one seemed to fully understand the extent of Steve’s frustration. A few moments after he was transformed, he was kneeling on the ground, struggling to catch a breath with his new-old faulty lungs, swimming in his battle suit, and Tony and Thor had flown in, and they both seemed to focus more on the fact that he was alive than anything else.

Sam ended up being the one who flew him back to the quinjet, where he was sent straight to medical while the others surveyed the rest of the ship.

So Steve sat there, alone in the medical area, listening as SHIELD’s doctors took his vitals and gave him a rundown of all the ails and health issues he perfectly remembered having. It was like being trapped in a nightmare you already had several nights in a row, and that you thought you wouldn’t have when you closed your eyes to sleep again, but then you did.

The result was that, by the time the team got back, his mood was already awful, and it hadn’t really improved ever since, in the past few days. He resisted any attempts made by Nat and Thor to talk about it, and, to be honest, he hadn’t so much as glanced at Tony so far.

“Okay, so,” Bruce said, going through a tablet where he could see every single one of the failures of Steve’s body. “I take it that you’re adapting well to the hearing aid?”

Steve nodded.

“Okay. How are your lungs doing?”

“I’m breathing,” Steve deadpanned. He felt a little guilty immediately afterwards – Bruce hadn’t shrunk him, he had nothing to do with this - but Bruce didn’t seem to mind, only typing something else in his tablet. Steve shifted a little, and the already sharp pain in his back increased for one excruciating moment before quieting down once he returned to a more forgiving position. “How about the reverse ray?”

“We’re still working on it,” Bruce replied, and Steve held back a frustrated sigh. “But we think we’ve figured out the ray’s mechanism already – so it’s really a matter of when, and not if.”

“Right,” Steve said. That still wasn’t enough – the reality of being back in that body was enough to overwhelm the rationality that it would all be over soon – but it helped.

“In the meantime,” Bruce continued, back to looking at the tablet, and Steve got the distinct feeling he was avoiding looking at him. “Is there anything else about your health you want to talk about? Anything bothering you?”

Steve clenched his fists. Everything, from his breath to his eyesight to the angle of his vision, had changed in a heartbeat, and Steve had a hard time figuring out what bothered him the most.

Or—on second though, no, he didn’t. For all the old issues he was having to face again, the thing that bothered Steve the most was having to stay benched on the days after the battle for the ship. He couldn’t help Thor while he was guarding the perimeter just in case more HYDRA agents or aliens would show up. He couldn’t help Hulk and Tony to unload heavy machinery they got from the spaceship in a quinjet. Hell, he couldn’t even sit down to analyze the intel they got with the captured HYDRA members to form future strategies to rally basis, because, as Fury put it, he couldn’t plan battles he wasn’t sure he’d be able to fight yet. Even if it was a matter of when, as Bruce put it, the when mattered, because SHIELD couldn’t take any chances he’d plan an OP he might not be able to put in practice when they needed him to.

So instead he went to the infirmary regularly, bore the endless tests Bruce and every doctor at SHIELD seemed to want to do with him, and generally walked around the Tower being useless, watching as his team learned to work without him.

Yeah, that was by far the worst part.

But he couldn’t say any of that to Bruce. He’d sound whiney and unfair—it was, after all, ridiculous to resent the fact that the Avengers seemed to be doing very well without his leadership. He knew he should be glad things were working smoothly, instead of sitting there and complaining about how his back was aching.

“I’m fine,” he said then, because he was. “Can I go now?” He hated sitting there in the lab, feeling exposed and pitiful. He was tired and frustrated and he wanted to go for a run or punch a sandbag, and he couldn’t do either of those things.

“Sure,” Bruce agreed.

Steve hurried to get up from the exam table, but sitting up made his spine ache in protest. He did his best to keep his expression under control. Back then, before the serum, he used to have those pains all the time, a result of his oddly twisted skeleton. He had tried to correct his posture, because God knew he didn’t need to look even shorter than he already was, but all those efforts had been useless.

“Are you going to your floor?” Bruce asked, raising his head from his phone. “Tony said he’ll be coming home in a few minutes. He’s asking if you want dinner.”

Steve thought guiltily of his own phone, carefully forgotten next to his bed precisely so he could avoid that interaction. “No, thanks,” he said, standing up and walking towards the door.

-

Tony ended up ambushing him during one of his checkup sessions with Bruce.

Or, well – it was supposed to be a checkup session with Bruce, or so Steve thought when he came down to the lab. He had been led to believe Tony was still at a board meeting. Instead, as soon as he steps inside, there Tony was, sitting on a chair, fiddling with some schematics Steve didn’t recognize.

“Hey,” Tony said, not raising his eyes to look at him. Steve swallowed.

“Is Bruce here?”

“Nope,” Tony replied, popping the last syllable with a deliberate casualness that just looked, well, very deliberate. He twirled on his chair, looking at Steve. “He asked me to do your checkup today.”

Steve stayed silent for a moment, Tony staring at him as if in a challenge, until Steve broke the dam. “No, he didn’t.”

“Yeah.” Tony raised his hands in a surrender motion, but his eyes didn’t yield. “You’re right, he didn’t. I asked.” He stood up, finally dropping the casual act to look at Steve with a wounded expression. “Because you were avoiding me and I didn’t know what else to do. So I decided to surprise you during your doctor appointment. Sue me – you won’t be the first, or the last.”

Steve looked away. “What do you want?”

Tony scoffed. “I don’t know? To talk, maybe? Perhaps it was different in your time, Cap, but nowadays, when you’re hooking up with someone, it gets a little weird if they just start ignoring you out of the blue.”

The sharpness in his voice – the ironic Cap, along with the mocking reference to his time – stung, a reminder of a time where this was the only voice Tony seemed to have to talk with him. They had been past that for a while, now – way past that, Steve thought, face heating a little at the memory of their last encounters – and it wasn’t fair for Steve to make Tony feel he had to retreat back to this kind of treatment.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He meant it – honestly, his intention hadn’t been to ignore Tony. He just… didn’t want to face him. “I guess I was still—adjusting.”

Tony watched him warily, and then his face softened, though he still looked a little pained. “Yeah, I imagined that.” His eyes studied Steve, who crossed his arms in reflex. “How are you holding up?”

Tonight, I woke up thinking I was dying, Steve thought. Then I remembered to use my inhaler. Then I lay down and kept thinking of how I can’t run half a mile now, and I fell asleep again, because now I’m tired all the time, and I’m sleeping more than I’ve slept in the past three months combined. I dreamt I was useless, and then I woke up and I was right.

In a different world, maybe he’d be able to say it aloud.

“I’m fine,” he said instead.

Tony also crossed his arms, mimicking Steve’s stance. “Really?”

Steve’s stomach twisted. He wanted to tell Tony everything he was feeling – the discomfort, the embarrassment, the frustration, the fear – but the words wouldn’t come out. Part of it was because he felt unable to say those things to anyone, but another part, he knew, was because this was Tony. Tony had spent so much time with him, the last few months. He had touched him and smiled at him and kissed him, and now Steve was too afraid to face him, too afraid to make him realize he most likely wouldn’t want to do any of these things as long as Steve was like this.

He looked down, his face hot with embarrassment and discomfort at Tony’s stare. His behavior wasn’t fair – Tony deserved better than to be avoided, especially with no apparent reason. But still, he found the words wouldn’t come out, locked inside his throat, trapped under too much fear and pride to be set free.

“My back hurts,” he said instead.

That, at least, was true. The pain had varied in intensity since the first hours after the serum was removed, growing and lessening at random intervals, but never truly vanishing.

It wasn’t everything, but it was something.

Tony seemed to digest the information.

“It’s because of the scoliosis,” he said, and Steve’s head snapped at him. “Geez, don’t look so shocked—I mean, come on, it was in your file. It’s hardly a state secret.”

Steve clenched his jaw. He didn’t like the idea of Tony looking at his file—ridiculously, he was embarrassed at the thought of Tony reading his long catalog of ailments, enumerated like an exaggeratedly extensive grocery shopping list. Three chronic colds, a piece of high blood pressure, a pinch of asthma, and some general heart trouble, because you never know when you might need it.

Tony walked closer to him, his face inquiring. “Where does it hurt?”

“Just—all over,” Steve replied without thinking, then quickly added: “On my back, I mean.”

“Yeah, I got that.” Tony circled him, not letting his eyes off Steve’s body. Steve tightened the cross of his arms. “Bruce’s data didn’t mention anything about it bothering you, but I guess it should have been obvious. It just slipped by us.”

Guilt bubbled in Steve’s stomach. “It’s okay,” he said, because God knew he was being enough of a burden without anyone worrying about the effects of his newly re-acquired hideous posture. “You’ve both been working a lot.”

Tony ignored him, pulling his phone from his pocket, pressing a few buttons on the screen. “I suppose it’s a regular back ache, so there’s really nothing to prescribe other than an analgesic. If you were going to stay like this in the long term, the obvious suggestion would be physical therapy, but by all accounts, you should be back to physical perfection soon, so it’s a little pointless.”

Steve winced. Tony wasn’t saying anything to be cruel, he knew, but still, like this and physical perfection hurt. It occurred to him maybe Tony had been working very hard on reverting him back to the serum because he knew how awkward it would be to have to break things off between them entirely because Steve now looked like a malnourished fourteen-year-old.

Then Tony raised his eyes. “I could maybe give you a back rub?” Since Steve didn’t immediately reply, he continued: “It’s a pretty effective way to alleviate the pain. And I know how to do it – I used to do it on Pepper, like, all the time. Gained some experience.”

Steve inhaled sharply. There was no way to refuse without seeming too rude, or to make Tony think he really was just avoiding him because he didn’t want anything to do with him anymore.

Still, he didn’t want Tony touching his body – not that body. He didn’t want him to pay any more attention to it than it was strictly necessary (maybe not even that).

Steve stood in silence for a moment, and then the unwillingness of being unfairly rude to Tony won out his conflict. “Okay,” he said.

Tony smiled. “Alright.” He gestured to a lab table behind him. “Do you want to get started? Usually I’d offer somewhere more comfortable,” his voice lowered a bit, with an edge of suggestion that sent a spark of heat down Steve’s belly, “but I’d like for JARVIS to gather data during the process, if you don’t mind.”

Steve didn’t know how that could help, but he nodded.

He followed Tony to the chosen table, near Tony’s work counter. Tony positioned himself across it and patted a spot for Steve.

“You can sit up or lie down, your pick.”

Steve choose to sat up. It made him feel less exposed, though only marginally.

“So,” Tony started, after he positioned himself. “Is there a specific spot or area that’s been bugging you?”

Steve thought about the question. It was hard to tell – most of the time, he found that his back pain tended to morph into a general, enveloping feel of discomfort, accompanied by a burning ache in a few specific areas. He did his best to point these out – unsurprisingly, they veered mostly to the center, between his shoulder blades, down to his coccyx and up to his neck.

“Okay,” Tony said. Steve braced for his touch, but, even after a moment, there was nothing. “Uh, Steve? I need you to take your shirt off.”

Steve pressed his lips together in a thin line. While that was an obvious request for a back rub, he didn’t want to relinquish the protection of his oversized t-shirt.

“That’s a weird time to get modest, you know,” Tony continued. Steve’s stomach felt tied up on itself, in a painful knot of anxiety. “I’ve seen a lot from you now, so that ship has kind of sailed, buddy.”

Not like this, Steve thought. Tony hadn’t seen the weird curve of his back, how one of his shoulders was slightly more elevated than the other one, or how his spine stuck out against his skin, as if he was going to break with a single touch. He hadn’t seen any of it.

But maybe he should, Steve thought, a little bitterly. It wasn’t as if Tony had any illusion that a beautiful muscular back was under the t-shirt’s fabric, but the reality was still uglier than if Steve had just dropped fifty pounds overnight. He wasn’t just small and skinny – his body was just strange, twisted and frail and nearly broken in its very shape, and maybe Tony had to get a good look at it firsthand to truly understand the extent of it.

“Okay,” Steve said, his heart hammering in his chest. He removed his shirt in one hurried, nervous movement, as if he was pulling a band aid.

For a moment, Tony didn’t say anything. Steve’s face burned, heat concentrating dangerously in his vision. He blinked rapidly to avoid any further humiliation.

“This might be a little cold,” Tony warned, and it indeed was – his hands lay on Steve’s shoulders in a careful, slow motion, and yet they sent a chill down Steve’s back, slick with some kind of oil. “I’m gonna start on top, alright?”

Steve nodded, wordlessly. Tony splayed his hands, his two thumbs pressing under Steve’s neck, drawing a circle of light pressure, and it hurt for a moment, until it didn’t, and Steve had to hold back a sigh. Tony’s touch was steady and strong, and his motions brought relief to Steve’s neck and shoulders, as if pushing every muscle to its respective spot. Even with the oil, the contact with Tony’s calloused hands eventually grew warmer, and Steve melted a little at every squeeze.

God, he thought, at a danger of feeling his eyes burning again. It had barely been a week since Tony had last touched him, and he didn’t even know he had missed it so much.

“Feels good, huh?” Tony whispered, sounding amused, and Steve almost instinctively attempted to straighten his back. “Hey, relax. It’s supposed to feel good, you know.”

He kept the massage focused on Steve’s upper body for a while, raising both hands to the back of Steve’s neck to firmly press his fingers, one by one, against Steve’s skin. Steve felt as if his neck was being elongated, relief climbing to his head and spreading all over his body.

“I think you should lie down, now,” Tony said, and Steve, breaking from his trance, opened his eyes.

He turned slowly to place his legs over the table. Tony helped him turn over, and Steve noticed the way his eyes traced the front of his body, studying his exposed chest. He hurried to lie on his belly, even if Tony eyeing his back wasn’t much better.

“Gotta say,” Tony commented as he placed his hands on the area under Steve’s shoulder blades. “I thought you wouldn’t let me do this. Almost asked Bruce to offer it instead.”

Guilt curled in Steve’s chest, but he couldn’t bring himself to argue. He wouldn’t have minded nearly as much if it was Bruce seeing his naked torso. It was the thought of Tony’s opinion on his current body that scared him the most.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Tony chuckled.

“Relax.” He spread some more oil over Steve’s lower back. “He’s the healthcare professional, I get it.” Steve almost opened his mouth to say that clearly, he didn’t, when Tony’s thumbs pressed on his lower muscles and he inhaled sharply instead. “But I’m not so bad, see?”

“You’re… definitely confident,” Steve deadpanned, mostly just so Tony would laugh again, and he succeeded.

“I’m not a pro, but I have a few tricks,” Tony said. “Besides, from what I’ve read, your case is pretty mild. Anyway, nowadays there’s surgery, too, which also can help.”

Steve stayed silent for a moment, but then he couldn’t help himself anymore: “But I won’t need it, right? I’m—I’m getting back to normal soon.”

Tony’s hands stopped moving. “Yes, you are. It’s just a matter of reversing the ray’s mechanism – Bruce and I will get it done in a few more days.” Even already knowing that, relief loosened Steve’s chest. “But…”

Steve tensed up. “But what?”

“But, I mean, you know you don’t have a death sentence, right? A lot has changed since everyone declared you unfit for duty. Everything you have is either treatable or manageable. Sure, you can’t rip off car doors anymore, but—” He paused, and Steve heard a sharp inhale of breath. “The shield isn’t heavy. All you’d need is a little practice with it, to get the hang of your new body balance. At worst, you could get some new gear for extra protection, but that’s it. You can still fight even if your body functions differently – look at Rhodey.”

Steve blinked, the impact of Tony’s words washing over him. He made it all sound so simple, so obvious.

“Tony,” he croaked, a little unsure of what to say. “That’s—that sounds like a lot of work to keep a ninety-pound asthmatic on the field.”

“Bullshit,” Tony countered, and his words cut through the insistent cloud of Steve’s misery, certain and unwavering. “We need you—your… your leadership, okay? Hell, I’ll build an armor if that’s what it takes. Nobody’s benching you, Cap.”

“I don’t want an armor,” Steve smiled. He looked away, his head turned to the opposite direction, so Tony hopefully couldn’t tell his eyes were misty. “But thank you, Tony.”

“Are you sure?” Tony asked, and if Steve were to guess, he’d say he was only half-joking. “I’d be willing to give you some cool party tricks. Not as cool as mine, mind you, but something entertaining, for sure.”

“I’d rather stick with my shield,” Steve said. Tony’s hands started spreading the new oil all over, in soothing, large swipes, and he couldn’t help but close his eyes. Tony’s touch was comforting, his hands heavy and yet gentle, and his words were still warming up Steve in the inside. “You sure people would take my orders in this size?” he asked, a little dazed.

“’Course they would,” Tony replied – immediately, so certain, as if the possibility of the contrary didn’t even occur to him.

Steve bit his lower lip, relief and comfort washing over him, but there was still one last, gnawing anxiety that he couldn’t ignore.

“What would we do?” he finally forced himself to ask, keeping his eyes shut as an extra, though illusory, protection. He didn’t want to see the expression in Tony’s face. “If I… stayed like this?”

There was a silence in which Steve’s heart sank, and he took a breath to brace himself for the inevitable.

“I… don’t know?” Tony said, sounding perplexed by the question. “I mean, we’d probably need to get you a new wardrobe, in the first place. Not that you don’t look cute walking around in shirts that could swallow you or anything, but it would hardly be practical in the long term.” His voice travelled to Steve’s chest, sweet but clueless, completely unaware of the thought that had been frightening him for so long. As if it was unthinkable. “And, uh, I guess JARVIS would need some upgrades to take into account when ordering food, to watch for your dietary restrictions. And—I don’t know, what else would you need?” he mused, and Steve could see his face clearly in his mind, his tongue sticking out as whenever he thought of something new, his bright, clever eyes already filled with ideas. “Oh, yeah, of course—physical therapy for your back, probably.”

Steve’s lips curled in an unavoidable smile. He was glad he had closed his eyes – he had the feeling he wouldn’t be able to keep himself together if he was actually looking at Tony right now.

“Would you give me more of these?”

There was a pause, and then Tony leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Steve’s skinny, uneven shoulder. “As many as you’d want,” he whispered, his voice reverent in a way that made Steve shiver.

“What if I don’t stay like this?” Steve asked, because he couldn’t resist—the warmth of Tony’s touch was spreading all over his body, creating a giddy feeling that made Steve want to giggle and say silly things. “But you gave me back rubs anyway?”

Tony chuckled, giving the back of Steve’s neck a nice, affectionate squeeze. “That,” he said, going back to the task of melting Steve’s heart with his fingertips, “could definitely be arranged.”

[ms-maj]

In This Diary

(Day 3- A song that reminds you of summer. Un-beta’d so please excuse all the mistakes, I drank way too much coffee tonight)

Here in this diary,

I write you visions of my summer

It was the best I ever had

There were choruses and sing-alongs

And that unspoken feeling 

of knowing that right now is all that matters.

In This Diary-The Ataris

The summer before senior year is historically hectic. Between SAT and ACT prep, extracurriculars, community service, it’s a wonder that Betty Cooper even got a moment's rest. Of course, because she had every minute of her summer (including free time) mapped out, she would get notified that a position had become available at the prestigious writer’s retreat she was initially rejected from. 

Getting to it and out of all her other obligations was no small feat, but, with deft humility and what she likened to mental gymnastics, she got there. Eight weeks away from New York, from her narcissistic mother and apathetic father, and the friends who always seemed like they had more important things to do. Eight weeks with likeminded people, good books and herself. 

The campus was warm and inviting, not the monolithic buildings with their windowed walls she was used to in the city. Riverdale’s small university felt like some cliched, idyllic embodiment of what the countryside used to be. And she loved every second of it. From the perfectly manicured lawns to the stone facades of the lecture halls, she felt more and more at home with every day that passed.

Her single dorm had been clean, though surprisingly cold and sterile compared to how homey everything else had felt. She’d decorated modestly, a few framed pictures of her sister and friends from back home, and finally, sheets in a color other than pink. After the long days of instruction and group work, she was happy to come back to her small sanctuary and sink into the seafoam coziness.

It’s wrapped up in the soft fleece she feels comfortable enough to pull out her journal. She hadn’t been able to keep one recently. Her mother was overbearing on a good day and the last year, well, she took it to a whole new level. Not that she’d ever had much privacy, but she had thought her diary at least was off-limits. Everyone had boundaries, except Alice Cooper it turned out. Now, here, far out of her mother’s expertly manicured clutches, she can put the pen to the page and try to sort out her mind. 

She had expected rigorous lessons, these classes were supposed to emulate the college ones she’d be taking in just a year, but everyone in them seemed to be on a different level than her. Betty was a journalist at heart, she wrote well and with conviction, but her writing did follow patterns. Truth. She laid it out as best she could, doing the facts justice while trying to reach her audience, but this seminar was in creative writing. And creative wasn’t something that Betty found came naturally to her.

It was the second week of the eight when she was approached. Sitting in the library, her second favorite place, her overthinking was interrupted by a messenger bag loudly hitting the table in front of her.

Confused, and a little annoyed, she looked up only to be greeted with the most beautiful blue eyes. “Um,” she cleared her throat. “Can I help you?”

He smiled, pulling out the chair, turning it around and sitting. “I think that maybe we can help each other.”

She’d be a liar if she said she hadn’t noticed him. With dark wavy hair and eyes that seemed to look right through her, he was exactly the kind of trouble she wasn’t planning on getting into. It helped in dissuading her that he carried himself the way most disaffected youths do; cool and aloof, sat at the back of the class, injecting only to be argumentative. (Even if his arguments were always thoroughly thought out and actually raised questions that Betty would have never thought to ask.)

Which is why when he dropped his stuff on her table that day, instead of rebuking him, she raised a dainty eyebrow and asked him what he had in mind. 

He needed a critical eye; someone meticulous, methodical, detail-oriented, “With all your color-coded notes and penchant for detail, I figured who better.”  

“And in return?” He leaned in, chair on two legs as its back rested against the table's edge. She wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light, the way his eyes seemed to darken as he watched her, or maybe it was just what she wanted to see.

“Seems like you need help getting out of your head,” If he only knew. “Your writing that is, it’s great—don’t get me wrong—but it’s all very…”

“Clinical?” Betty offered. 

A smirk played on his lips. “That’s a good word for it. You write like you’re trying to convince everyone that there’s a story being untold, instead of letting it unfold organically. It’s your story, you set the tone, you set the tempo, there’s no one-size-fits-all option in creative writing. You have to start letting yourself show through.”

That’s how it started. A new notebook—blue—filled with hastily jotted observations in her perfect print and his semi-legible scrawl. He would always point out when she got too deep in her own thoughts and when her writing started to reflect it, and she helped him rein in his penchant for superfluous detail. They worked in beautiful tandem. One month into the program, two weeks after they’d met in the library, she not only noticed a change in her writing but in herself. 

She found her reflection smiling back at her more often than not. Jughead, his acerbic commentary, and general vitriol were usually traits that repelled Betty, but here, where she didn’t have crushing expectations she was free to feel. Melancholia had been no stranger to Betty, her life a predetermined series of points set out by her parents, a living, breathing, paint by numbers. Pretty, pastel, prosaic. 

But not in Riverdale. 

In Riverdale, she was simply Betty. In her most base, true form. She found people who encouraged her writing and growth, and in return, found she really enjoyed the editorial component of writing. Almost more so than the act itself. There was a kind of peace in restructuring other people's works. Hearing for their voice, helping them to define and refine it. The freedom afforded to her over the summer had started to wear at her Type A proclivities, editing gave her some of that control back. But she had learned to enjoy that freedom in equal measure. 

And she never would have gotten there without Jughead. The townie, she learned later, having lived in Riverdale his whole life and planning on attending this writing retreat since he could remember. Jughead who learned how she took her coffee in a matter of days. Jughead whose words struck chords within her as though he were a maestro, creating symphonies in prose.

Or maybe that’s just how she felt when she’d catch him looking at her.  Staccato heartbeat, blood pounding in her ears, fire burning just under the surface of her skin. The rampant thoughts that ran through her head when they were together only letting themselves out when she sat down with her diary at the end of the day.  What was once a detailed catalog of her day to day, from activities to feelings was now an abstract.

In her diary, she found her voice. She discovered poetry. More aptly she discovered how to use poetry. She found that, while she probably wouldn’t ever be a great writer of non-fiction, she could convey more with less in poetry. That her deliberate words carried more weight than the flowery supposition she thought she wanted. 

It was in there, privately pressed between the pages, she confessed. Her fears, her doubts, how her heart sped up while the time simultaneously slowed when his arm would brush against hers as they lounged on her bed. That she noticed he hadn’t tried to make any other friends here, keeping everyone else at arm's length while letting her—inviting her—encroach into his carefully curated bubble. That even though all signs pointed to yes, even this more confident, more comfortable Betty was terrified of rejection.

She’d never been a stranger to it; she was initially rejected from this intensive after all. Before, she was expected to plaster on a Cooper approved smile and bury whatever feelings that presented themselves. 

Now, she didn’t think she’d be able to do that. Jughead had helped her find so much more than just words. When she’d admitted she hadn’t had a cheeseburger in two years because her mother didn’t approve, he insisted on taking her to Pop’s.

“It’s not just a diner, Betty,” he said, slinging one leg over his motorcycle. He held his helmet up, urging that she take it. “It’s a Riverdale institution. You can’t be in this town for any amount of time without partaking in a milkshake and double cheeseburger.” 

She slid the helmet over her head, hair loose around her shoulders for the first time in her life. She watched as his tongue peeked between his lips as he took her in. “This is my first time on a bike though, so, go slow,” her voice was muffled by the helmet she knew, but he heard her. Straddling the bike, she loosely wrapped her arms around his waist, trying not to think about how soft the leather of his jacket would feel against the skin or how the hard planes of his stomach would feel under her hands. 

“I’m afraid going slow would be much worse. You’re just going to have to hold on much tighter than that.” She felt the air expel from his lungs as she tightened her grip. Maybe he was as affected by her presence as she was his. If he was though, he didn’t show it for the rest of the night. Aside from helping her off the bike, he didn’t initiate contact and made himself impossibly small looking in the booth, somehow physically shrinking into himself when he still seemed so emotionally open with her.

Even from the most mundane of topics the conversation flowed. He could make anything interesting, she loved watching his eyes light up when he got lost in the excitement of a good conspiracy theory or the thought of analyzing and dissecting pieces of popular culture. She could easily see herself like this with him: passionate, wild-eyed, thoroughly engrossed (or obsessed. It depended on who you asked, of course)   

When they’d departed for their separate dorms, she couldn’t help but feel dejected. Back in the safety of her room, she changed into pajamas to get the smell of grease and exhaust and brooding boy she had a desperate crush on, off of her. She pressed play on the saddest playlist she had curated and poured her heart onto the pages of her diary.

The last week of the program came far too quickly. The feeling in the lecture hall was different as well. The homesick were excited for the end to be near, but Betty wasn’t ready to be back in New York. She wasn’t sure this new, improved Betty would hold up under her mother’s increasing scrutiny. She didn’t know how much time she had before she broke completely.

“For your last assignment, I want you to do something that scares you. Obviously I don’t mean skydiving or anything, but something to do with your writing that scares you,” the professor said before dismissing them. “Write in a different tense or point of view; write a different style; share your work with a different audience. Just find the one thing you haven’t done yet here and just...let go.”

Betty snuck a look at Jughead from the corner of her eye. His brow was furrowed, jaw clenched tight, appearing deep in thought. She let out a shaky breath before going to smooth back the ponytail that wasn’t there. 

This is it, she thought. Her chance. To tell him how she felt, to bare her soul to him even more than she already had. She was up and out of her chair the second they were dismissed, talking herself into her decision with every step that led her back toward the dorms. 

“Hey,” his voice was soft, pensive as he opened the door. They hadn’t spoken much that day, just a text confirming he was in his room. 

Producing a hastily wrapped parcel from behind her back, Betty sighed. “If I don’t do this now, I won’t. The scariest thing for me, right now, is you reading what’s in there.”

“Betts,” he started, but she stopped him.

“There’s a lot of me in those pages that I could never share with anyone else. Whether they’d look at me differently or,” she shook her head stepping back, further into the hall. “Just read it...or don’t...either way, you’ll know where to find me.”

She didn’t stay to hear if he had anything to say, turning away from the boy holding the pieces of her heart, of herself, literally in his hands. Back in her room, she called her best friend Veronica and asked if she would watch some horribly cliched eighties teen comedy with her over facetime. She was asleep before “the guy” realized he was an idiot. 

Morning came quickly, as it usually did, but it seemed even faster knowing her days were dwindling. The light filtered through the blinds, dust floating lazily in the haze. She threw her head back into the pillows, hoping to be swallowed by slumber once again. But something niggled at the back of her mind. Something was keeping her firmly rooted in the waking plane.

The sound of a knock on her door.

She wasn’t sure if she was ready to face what she thought awaited her. When another knock came, and then another, more persistent knock, she willed herself out of bed and across the floor. Hugging tight the robe she threw on, she opened the door. 

Jughead didn’t look like he’d slept at all. His hair, normally secured under his beanie, was wildly sticking up in all directions. The eyebags that were everpresent on his face seemed deeper and more pronounced, and she was pretty sure he was still wearing the same thing he’d been wearing when she dropped the journal off to him.

The journal that was presently clutched between his hands.

“Did you mean it?”

Confused, she questioned back. “Mean what?”

“All of it? Any of it?” His voice seemed softer now, more unsure than she’d ever heard him. In their nearly six weeks of friendship he had seemed so confident. He was the one who approached her in the first place. But looking at him now, hands clenching at the notebook between them, maybe she wasn’t the only one who got more than just someone to look over their work.

Her eyes sought his, finding their usually blue hue stormy and grey. “Juggie, if I didn’t mean it, I wouldn’t have written it. And I certainly wouldn’t have shown you.”

He stepped closer, invading her space with his large body. “Betty,” he exhaled slowly. “There’s a reason nothing happened after we went to Pop’s and it wasn’t because I didn’t want it to.”

She watched his Adam’s apple bob in his throat as he swallowed. “Then why?” 

“Because I’m an all or nothing kind of guy, Betty. And I know this has an expiration date! It’s five days from now. You’re leaving Saturday, to go back to New York. Where you’re going to do amazing things. Because you’re amazing, and nothing you do could be anything less.”

“That’s not true, or objective, you know that right? We both only have a year of high school left and then what? You could come to New York—”

He shook his head sadly. “Betty, I’m not coming to New York. I’ll probably never end up leaving Riverdale.”

“Then I’ll come here! I like it here, Jug. I could come here, and we can…” His hand reached for her, finding golden locks and twisting them between his fingers.

“I could never ask that of you.”

“Why are you here then?” She asked cooly as his hand fell from her hair. 

Slowly he dragged the hand that had been playing with her hair through his own before huffing a laugh.  “I honestly don’t know. My plan was kissing you as soon as you opened the door and then my brain got involved.”

She felt the corner of her lip turn up. “Brains are dumb. They always get in the way.”

He smiled back at her, both of them moving even closer together. “Betty, I’m not one of those guys who does casual. I need to know that you're in this. Really, in this. That you want to be WITH me as much as I want to be with you because I can handle the distance if I knew you were all in.”

Brushing one of many unruly curls from his brow, Betty smiled. “Jughead Jones, haven’t you figured it out by now?” 

He raised an eyebrow to her question, his arm coming to snake around her waist.

“I don’t do anything in halves.” 

When their lips finally met she knew instantly that her life would be different. Maybe she didn’t know right then just how different, but she could tell you, with certainty that that summer changed her life. She had followed her heart and finally got it right.

[parkeraul]

pull me in  — 2 

a/n: this series is my new baby, pls don’t get mad at me. heads up: emotions ahead.  warnings: cursing, fluff, smut & use of other languages.  words: 5,258k.

pull me in — 1 | masterlist

The Sunday morning had never felt this warm before — which was weird, since the rain washed Pickering all over during the night and turned the waterdrops into snowflakes, colouring the glass of her still opened window in a vivid white — and home had never felt so cozy. She’s thankful he’s asleep in front of her instead of giving that typical stare that insists on discovering every single thought passing through her mind, because he would definitely make fun of her poker face and tickle her body until she says those three words she never says. And it’s so hard to resist when Shawn is finally quiet and peacefully asleep on her bed. Not the she doesn’t enjoy his voice or those weird whimpers of his that he always lets out when he’s falling asleep more deeply, but she never thought that words were necessary as long as you’re showing your love with attitudes. Shawn, on the other hand, is the complete opposite — his notebook pages are never blank because the papers are filled with loving words for Alyssa. There are songs he plays for her until nowadays and there are songs he’ll probably never let her know about, fearing rejection or the possibility that they’re not in the same place. It’s been tricky since the beginning, and Shawn’s the only one being patient and polite, he thinks. 

“May I call you just Lyssa?” He asks with pity eyes, feeling his frame softening to the sight of Alyssa blushing while she curls a strand of her hair with her forefinger. Her smile is timid, but he doesn’t stick to this impression. Ever since Alyssa and Daniel stepped into that school, the rumours were all around for everyone to hear. ‘Oh, he’s got a car!’ ‘Oh, she knows five languages!’ ‘Oh, their mom is Spanish!’ ‘Oh, their grandfather fought in the World War II!’ ‘Oh, they’ve just arrived from France!’ So he knew she wasn’t just another one. No. Being the helpless passionate guy that he is, he puts himself into an internal bet between him & himself — impressing her in all possible ways, more than he regularly does with the other girls. “Lyssa?” She looks him in the eyes, pursing her pink lips into an intimidating grin. “Is it that hard to pronounce the letter A?” The time seems to stop for Shawn. People from school are filling up the diner, some looking at them inquiringly as he places his hand under his chin, analyzing her features and feeling his mouth water everytime her lips touch to speak her words, wishing he could fit his lower lip in between her parted mouth and taste the chapstick glossing the plump flesh. Alyssa knows he’s having problems resisting her, and she’s obviously going to take advantage on this. She just needs to wait for the perfect opportunity. “What, babygirl?” He tries to recover his confidence, more than observant to see if he can break her self-assurance somehow by being the typical Shawn Mendes: seductive in the cockiest way possible. “Not a fan of nicknames?” Alyssa analyses Shawn as he spreads his arm on top of the headrest of the diner sofa, chewing his gum and exhaling big rebel—boy energy in a very overbearing mode. She finds it fun how hard he’s trying to get her weakening when it’s going to be the other way around. She can count on her fingers how many boys with this same attitude she humiliated all around the globe and there would never be enough hands to fit the amount onto. “Listen…” Squinting her eyes, she plays a thoughtful face as she gets closer, inching her middle towards the table. “Shawn.” He says, swallowing harshly and clearing his throat. How can someone let Shawn Mendes pass just like this? Impossible. “Shawn,” Alyssa confirms, snapping two of her digits in the air like she’s just remembered of something practically unmanageable to get inside her mind. “I don’t know what type of girls you’ve been fooling around with, but I guarantee you that you’ll need to come off stronger than ‘babygirl’ and ‘Lyssa’ if you’re planning to get under my skirt,” She maintains eye contact with his hazel irises, oftentimes dropping her glance to his lips parting in surprise. Yes, she wouldn’t be easy but no one has ever seen Shawn denying a good challenge. That’s what keeps him eager and starving for those pretty lips and incomparable personality. If it’s a game, then game on. “I—“ “Mongola!” A tall guy approaches their table, making the two of them take distance from each other again. He’s got his hair pushed back with gel and his features are different from what Shawn is used to see. Other than that, he’s also got his gang behind him and keys spinning around his forefinger repeatedly, still speaking a language he’s never seen before. “¿Terminaste con tu estúpida charla?” Alyssa rolls her eyes, taking some dollars out of her pocket to place right beside the milkshake she ended ages ago before the flirting started. At this point, the other guy was impatiently waiting for her to finally get her jacket and backpack to slide towards the end of the red long chair, staring at her with a devilish smile while the people from school decide to pay more attention to what’s going on. “Yes, I’m done with my conversation,” She gets up, tossing the jacket on top of her elbows and shifting her bag into the guy’s chest. “And you? Done with your show? Or do you really wanna try to stand out from the others by being a dork?” The boy closes his eyes and squeezes the fabric of her nearly empty bag with his strong hand, exhaling strongly and shooting an intimidating look at Shawn after prompting his eyelids open, the curly haired boy glancing at Alyssa and the man he still doesn’t know totally confused. “What now, Dani? Cat got your tongue?” His friends were at the merge of wetting themselves with silent laughs as she wore a winning smile, shaking her head slightly to move her bangs away from her eyes. They’d never get enough of her sassy attitude, putting her own brother down like he’s nothing. “Better be outside in 2 if you want a proper ride home.” The guy hisses and turns on his heels to get outside, never forgetting to give Shawn a last look and drop her bag on the floor before walking to the parking lot, obviously winking at some pretty girls on his way like he hadn’t put out a whole scene seconds ago. Shawn gets up and grabs her backpack, jaw clenched and mind still lost. What the fuck just happened? When he turns to face Alyssa, her eyes are threatening to water but they don’t. They’ll never. Not because of her brother, not because of the people staring at her — the past 9 years were the worst and they’d always come back to haunt her regardless of the day, regardless of the moment. They made her learn on how to act tough and fierce even though the truth was the complete opposite, so these people would need to come off a lot stronger than this to break the wall she’s been building ever since 1949. “Your bag, Alyssa,” He says while straightening his spine up again, offering her the object with his eyes glued on the door. “Who was-“ “My brother. Nothing you should worry about.” “Are you gonna be okay?” His eyes moves slowly to glance at her. Alyssa’s expression tells him nothing and everything at the same time. He can sense she’s kinda in pain, kinda embarrassed but his mind repeats unstoppably that she can’t fear a thing. Although it’s not the moment, this quick second of weakness gets him more than curious to unravel all the mystery that’s Alyssa. “I am okay.” “Want me to-“ “Thank you,” She cuts him off, giving him a forced smile but sincere look of gratefulness. The wind breaking into the diner by the semi-opened windows blows her hair softly and he can’t understand how can a girl look like both the angel and the devil at the same time. “Mm…?” “Shawn—Peter—Raul—Mendes.” Shawn repeats again, his ego begging to be caressed instead of hurt. He wants to be done by now, hates the heavy magnetism that brings him closer and closer to her frame. She’s hugged gracefully by a white shirt tucked into a light-pink skirt that defines her waist and cascades at her thighs, covering all the way almost to the end of them and it’s probably the first time he sees a girl showing her knees and a little bit more in public. How can teeny-tiny pieces of skin can drive his mind to somewhere else? He’ll never comprehend. “Peter Raul,” Smiling — sincerely, this time — she winks at him and it looks like she haven’t even been through a moment of stress minutes ago. He widens his eyebrows in surprise and her smile widens as well, welcoming a laugh that shoots a wave of dopamine right down his senses. It’s the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard and sure he’s exaggerating, but he doesn’t give a fuck at this point. He could watch her laughing the whole day, just like he can watch the way her necklace moves along with her chest when she catches her breath again. “Creo que tendremos que terminar esta conversación en otro momento,” And the time stops. Again. Her tone lowering a little bit while her words come out to poke his heart and make it miss the beats. Shawn can’t figure out a single word but, if her accent keeps on being this sexy while her tongue touches the back of her front teeth so beautifully, he’ll start paying attention to Spanish classes just to talk to her like this everyday. “Hasta luego, guapo.” She dares to inch closer give him a kiss right on the corner of his lips, but before her mouth can press a warm smooch, she hears the motor of the car getting started outside and she can’t help but leave him with the softest graze of her wet lips that could never fulfill the desire consuming his entire being right now. “What the hell did she say?” Shawn asks to himself while she walks away, her scent stuck on the spot she just left. “It’s latin for ‘you’re totally fucked for the hispanic’.” Brian joked between laughs, elbowing Matt beside him as the guys had the most fun with his face screaming ‘Sucker for Alyssa’ in their imagination. Although Brian couldn’t have been quite correct with the ‘latin’ and ‘hispanic’, he wasn’t totally wrong. 

━ ━ ━

His broad frame is taking most of the space on her bed when she’s back from the bathroom. She’s sure he might have had his limbs all stretched to get spread on her mattress while she was gone to brush her teeth and hair. It’s the only downside of sleeping with Shawn, Alyssa thinks. He’ll either curl and cuddle her body to keep her warm or throw his leg or arm on top of her frame in the middle of the night, looking for the space that her bed doesn’t have to fit his big body. It’s cutely annoying. Just like him. She gets rid of her slippers after closing the door carefully, slipping back under the covers now with Shawn’s serene expression right in front of her. He’s slowly waking up with eyes still closed, but he starts to take deep breaths and grab her waist lazily, pulling her even closer and hiding his face on the crook of her neck. He takes a moment to smell the moisturizer she uses, enjoying that unmistakable scent of what he thinks it might be a mix of roses and vanilla. He could stay like this for the rest of his days, immersed on the craziest ride of his life that’s Alyssa. He’s in love with the mess, the danger, the uncertainty and the undefined thing that’s their relationship. What they have is somewhere lost between very-frequent hook ups and a proper relationship that includes some I-love-you’s and jealousy. Shawn would define as a couple walking with baby-steps, taking their time while Alyssa would say it’s complicated. Period. And it’s hard for her to care when he’s tilting his head back up and opening his eyes, giving her a lovely look with those tired chocolate eyes and a weak smile. His curls are messy and fluffy, making him look angelic and innocent. As if. “Morning Lyssa,” He greets with that raspy tone that always gets her thighs clenching. She smiles in response, kissing the tip of his nose delicately. “Gonna have to brush my teeth to get a decent kiss?” “Rhetorical question, I hope.” “Still have my toothbrush?” Shawn asks yawning, sniffing and rubbing his eyes. He’s got soft dark circles that draws their ways to the apple of his cheeks, face all marked from sleeping heavily. It’s such a sight that she wishes she could take photos and put them all in frames to embellish her bedroom. “First drawer, it’s the transparent one,” She warns and he blinks deliberately. ‘You think I’ve forgotten?’ He ruminates in silence as he prompts his body up to sit and crawl his way to the end of the bed. “Just in case…” Alyssa defends herself, lifting both hands to the sides of her head. “Be silent, asshole. My dad has a light sleep.” Shawn smirks in response, drinking her in by the way her body’s splayed shyly on her bed with the untidy blankets covering her legs partly — her thighs are bare, capturing his attention as he notices that her nightdress is messy, exposing the swell of her round ass. No one would look at this so accurately — at least he hopes no one would — but the way her tanned skin begs for his lips drives him insane little by little. “You pervert!” She realizes what he’s doing and pushes the fabric back to where it should be, her cheeks burning and turning pink. “Go before someone wakes up. I need to kick you out sometime soon.” When Shawn looks down, it’s just what he was expecting. His hardened member started to nudge the fabric of his underwear still timidly, but nothing that would escape from Alyssa’s attention. It’s been almost ten minutes since he left to freshen up and Alyssa can’t think about something else. That vision got her mouth watering and her brain working twice as faster. But she couldn’t. Could she? She’s toying with the silver foil, looking at it as she twirls the object unstoppably. Her throat goes dry and she feels the urge to gulp, her lungs searching for more air when she thinks about how painful it might be. But oh, it might be so wonderful as well… When she hears footsteps coming closer, she tucks the condom under her back rapidly and covers her body with the blanket just to make sure it’s all well hidden. “Looks like you just saw a ghost,” Shawn teases her, closing the door and copying her intentions on doing it as quiet as possible. “Qué happened?” “¿Qué pasa?” She corrects his terrible Spanish and thinks to herself. She had never felt brave enough to ask Shawn to be her first time, fearing he would say no because of her brother. And father. And their overprotective personalities. And what if she gets pregnant at 16? What if she’s not hot enough or pretty enough? “No pasa nada.” “What?” “Nothing’s going on.” Alyssa lies, her tone flat and unhappy. He gets closer and sits beside her, choosing a strand of her hair to caress and brush it off her face so he can graze her cheek. “Tell me, Lyssa,” Immediately, she shakes her head in denial and stares at the wall. His eyes would get her failing. “If you don’t want to then I’ll go say good morning to Mr. Stempford. He sure would like to know me better—“ “Sit your ass down, Peter Raul,” She hisses, tossing the blanket away and grabbing his arm instantly when he threatens to get up. He ends up falling on top of her upper half, noses touching and she closes her eyes, breathing deeply. It shouldn’t be this hard. “I want you to promise me you’ll be nice.” “May I know when I’m not nice with you?” “Promise me, asshole.” She pinches his arm. Nothing hard already that Shawn can’t make it harder. “I promise, asshole.” “Great!” She starts, opening her eyes but not looking directly at him. Playing with her fingers, she chooses to stare at them like they’re doing the most interesting thing in the world. “See, I was thinking to myself…” “Mm…” “We’ve never… Well…” Clearing her throat, she shakes her head slightly to move her bangs away from her eyes. “Fucked.” “What?” “Fucked,” He repeats. “That’s one thing we’ve never done.” Her heart races. “Fucked… Right…” The stress begins to show up as Shawn fixes his body on top of hers, laying down gently. “We made out lots of times, of course, and they were—“ “Incredible.” “Incredible,” She smiles, finally looking at his face. He’s so close she can hear his heartbeat and smell the minty scent of toothpaste coming out of his parted lips. “Breathtaking…” Whispering, she swallows harshly before being interrupted by him again. “Hun, what’s going on?” It takes all of her not to freak out. It’s simple, Alyssa. Spit. It. Out. Now. “I…” “You?” She covers her eyes with both hands and enjoys the lack of shyness that takes over her. “Iwantustofuck.” “What?” Shawn squeaks, getting shushed by Alyssa at the same instant. His chest prompts up a little and he’s frowning. It’s all very confusing because Alyssa never asks, she practically demands. And she always stops right when they’re about to unbutton their clothes properly. “I’m tired of the ‘what’ question,” She rolls her eyes, masking her apprehension and hoping he wasn’t able to understand a single word of what she just said. “We should come up with another word like… Pardon? Or… Or maybe ne razumijem! Možete li molim vas govoriti malo sporije?” “You want me—“ He’s now sitting on top of her, running his hand through his wild curls and staring at her totally in shock. “You want us to—“ He clutches his own chest while she covers her entire face with her hands, both their chests heaving and screaming for oxygen. “Shut up! No one’s up yet!” “You…” Shawn sobs a little, blinking rapidly as he tries to process the information. “You want me to make love to you, Lys?” He mumbles. “Vielleicht—“ Her voice is muffled by her palms, shoulders shrugging bashfully. “English, Alyssa.” He grabs her wrists carefully, holding them up away from her worried face and entwining their fingers softly. For the first time in years, she feels that knot on her throat begging to be loosened through a cry. “Maybe, Shawn,” She admits, so nervous that her hands aren’t shaking because his giant ones are keeping them stable. “Maybe I do wanna feel you… Inside… Of me?!” “God!” He breathes out, putting her hands on the curve of his shoulders so he can lean down and pin his forehead on hers. “What are you doing to me, Alyssa Stempford?” “You know I love it when you say my whole name?” “Oh yeah?” He smiles against her smile, licking his lips and placing a kiss on the corner of her lips — the way she does when she wants to tease him. “What else?” “W-What else?” Alyssa stutters, feeling her breath now unpatterning as he lets go of her hands to support his body with one arm, traveling his free palm along her side and peppering kisses from down her face to her jawline. She’s turning cold due to the nervousness but he makes sure to cling to her frame so the hotness spreading through his flesh can comfort her somehow. “I…” He kisses the sensitive spot a little down below her ear precisely, making her get chills and he sees those goosebumps coming to the surface, announcing that he’s starting to get the best of her. “I love it when you drag your lips down my throat and…” She has to stop and focus, because he does exactly as she says and ends with a light suction at the base of her neck. Fanning his breath on the wet region he just sucked, Shawn kisses the other side of her neck intensely, unhurriedly. “Fuck, like this…” “Like this, eh?” He mouths against her, lowly and raspy while his teeth scratch her skin tenderly. She’s quiet, eyes squinting close as she thinks about how the hell is she going to ease that aching sensation that’s making her heat pulsate in anticipation. Shawn’s lips goes to her collarbones, loving every single piece of skin and feeling the expansion of her bone being touched by him, being appreciated so devotedly just like his girl deserves. He moves his hand up from her waist to trace her arm and reach the strap of her nightdress. “Are you sure, Lyssa?” He twirls the fabric, face tilted down as he closes his eyes and waits for a yes. “I am,” Alyssa responds, tugging his thick locks and bringing his face to hers. “Will you be gentle?” If heaven has a specific appearance, it sure is Alyssa’s face softening up as she asks sweetly for his kindness. She looks blissful with her bright brown eyes connected with his, honey hair adorning the pillow and her features. Shawn had never felt the need to be nice and gentle to anyone like he does right now. His chest tempers and hurts at the same time with love. Nothing could mess up with him like this; nobody can fuck Shawn up like Alyssa does. “I will, babe,” He pecks her lips. “I always will.” She cups his face with both hands and kisses him deeply. Their lips pressing together is enough to drive them all the way to the edge, her bottom lip in between his mouth as his tongue pokes out to touch hers. The tenderness of their affection is enough to ease her nerves and encourage her to pass her hands through his curls, going further to the back of his head and scrape the nape of his neck lovingly. She pulls him in, impossibly closer to taste all of him as her hands wanders to his back, feeling the muscles moving under her palm due to the way he’s shifting to keep his frame established not to crush her. Shawn finally drags the strap down her arm, slow and as polite as possible, caressing all the spots of her arm where the fabric passed by with his skilled hand. When Alyssa releases her arm from the cloth, she instantly squeezes her breast — now uncovered — with the inner part of her elbow, pressing down on the flesh to hide her nipple from his sight. He breaks the kiss with a smack sound, bringing his tattooed hand back to hers. “Want me to dress you back, baby?” Shawn asks concernedly, his thumb grazing the back of her palm. “I don’t, actually,” She knows she doesn’t want to, but she fears the shame will become too much. “I don’t know.” “Lys, look at me.” “Yes?!” “What makes you think I wouldn’t love you in every single way?” He holds her hand more forcefully, as if he could assure her even physically that he doesn’t give a damn if she’s dressed in her most expensive clothes or naked under the plain white sheets. He wants her no matter what, no matter how, no matter when. Her smile shows some pain, but somehow he knows it has a pinch of happiness behind it. “I know you’re afraid and needs more time to figure out what you feel, but I want you to know that I’m already there,” Shawn catches himself confessing his emotions to her again. He did it before a thousand times and there’s no turning back. His feelings seem to be fresh new even though they showed up a long time ago and everyday feels like it’s the first day he saw her standing there, being her charming self with a sassy attitude. Nobody compares to her. “I see, it’s awkward for you, but I am in love with you. I love you, Alyssa.” And then Shawn gives her no time to feel joy or guilt for not being entirely there, because his lips are on hers again and his touch is firm on her hand, setting it once more on his own body. Alyssa now palms his bare chest as his member presses against her core and lower stomach, spurring her to move her fingers down —still reservedly — and he decides to help her through. With his hand on top of hers, he guides it down his toned abdomen and intensifies the kiss at the same time, taking her breath away. She’s grateful his soaked clothes from last night were long gone under her bed so she wouldn’t need to go through the ceremony of undressing him. Her hesitant hand reaches the waistband of his briefs, making the both of them hitch their respirations suddenly, his mouth leaving hers slowly. “Can I… touch you?” Alyssa asks, eyeing his white underwear between their bodies as her forefinger toys with the elastic band. “Sure you want to? You don’t have to. This is about you, not me.” Shawn’s eyes are darkening, analyzing her expression and he prepares himself to stop at anytime if she asks him to. His hand stays still above hers. “Please?” It’s innocent but it makes him twitch inside the material of his underwear. Fuck, Alyssa. Fuck. Obviously she can. She can do whatever she wants to do. Shawn’s answer will always be yes. He looks down at her small hand threatening to slip inside and he can’t help but contort his face in pleasure even though he hasn’t been touched yet. “Shit,” He hisses out. “’Course.” “But I need you to teach me how—“ “Babe, I know,” Her desperation is clear so he wants to give her the freedom and confidence to move on, because he’s here for her. “Tell me if you want to stop, ‘kay?” Alyssa only nods in agreement, feeling his hand guiding hers inside the fabric leisurely and Shawn watches her breast being released from the harsh touch of her arm. When she touches the head of his cock, touching the tip lightly, her nipple hardens and Shawn gulps to the sight of her. Alyssa is all flushed, from face to chest, and she starts to take a handful of his length. It feels warm against her icy hand and oh so smooth, totally different from what she had previously imagined. He impulsively thrusts into her fist, kissing her chest not to moan in relief while her other hand pulls the underwear past his crotch and it rests on his muscular thighs. She’s still unsure of what to do, so her touch is fragile and insecure. His hand goes back to hers and he embraces her fingers with a gentle strength, squeezing his own cock. Alyssa finds it so hot that the wetness down on her slit and panties is becoming irritating; she can’t quite understand how her hesitation turns into a fiery desire so fast. “You can hold it like this,” Shawn tells her in a whisper as his palm guides hers up and down gradually. “And pump it like this, eh?” She’s too weak to do anything else rather than murmur in confirmation and, to add more to this weakness of hers, he circles her nipple with the tip of his tongue to capture it in between his lips. It makes Alyssa hold him tighter, pumping all the way down to the base and back up to the leaking rosy tip. A sweet whine flies past her lips when he sucks at her bud, tender plump lips enveloping her in the most delicious way as his throbbing cock is massaged by her careful hand. “Gotta keep quiet, hun,” He manages to say between suctions on her wet skin. “Be good for me, hm?” She huffs and Shawn’s hand leaves hers to travel along the inner part of her thigh, grabbing the delicious soft skin with a force that’s definitely not very gentle. At this point, he’s starving and insatiable. His middle finger accidentally touches her clothed entrance and she whines once more, bucking her hips towards his touch. “Holy fuckin’ shit,” He mutters against her chest, squeezing her leg intensely. “Babe I can’t take this for too long.” Shawn confesses, feeling the vein on the underside of his aching length pounding painfully. There’s pre-cum leaking and her hand picks up the pace just a little, testing to see if this is what he needs. Alyssa takes the condom from under her back, managing to pump him meanwhile, and hands him the foil. “Lucky you I was prepared.” “Where the hell did you get this?” He takes the condom from her hand and sits up, her hand never releasing him. The view is far too pornographic: his defined abs clenching as his thick cock gets pumped by her with some inability, but sure leading him somewhere. He runs a hand through his chocolate hair and waits for her to stop looking at his member and face him. “My eyes are up here, Lys.” “Stole from Dani’s wallet while you were in the bathroom.” She says simply, daring to twist her wrist as she edges him and the unexpected sensation makes Shawn growl. Going back to her, he inches down and steals a kiss. “You’re fuckin’ awesome, you know that?” Shawn pecks her lips repeatedly until he cups her face with one hand to lick inside her mouth and make the most of this abrupt kiss. The atmosphere is too pleasant to let them be aware of anything else. Maybe that’s pretty much the reason why she haven’t heard steps coming to her bedroom door before a loud knock brought them back to reality. “Alyssa?” A strong voice calls out and Shawn opens his eyes, utterly scared. “Alyssa, who’s inside there with you?” She pushes him away, the both of them immediately getting up — Shawn searches for the keys to his motorcycle and pulls his underwear back up while Alyssa is bent down on the floor, arm stretched under her bed to get his clothes. “Alyssa if you don’t open this door right now…” “Hold on, dada!” She promptly warns, throwing Shawn’s jeans at his face and tossing the shirt up on her bed with the leather jacket. “Go, go, go!” “If you haven’t noticed yet, my dick’s still—“ The door slams open no longer after, making Alyssa get up on her heels and Shawn cover his hard cock with both hands. The jeans are covering nothing but his shins and knees, the fabric too tough to fit his legs because of the rain that soaked them last night. She crosses her arms in front of her chest to hide her bare chest and they force a smile towards Alyssa’s father, dripping tenseness and fear. “Gareth—“ Shawn greets with an odd smile but stops at the moment Alyssa elbows him mightly. Fuckin’ dumbass. “Mr. Stempford. Good morning!”

[nezumiismissing]

Missing Character Analysis Pt.3

So we come to part 3 of this series, finally. For the uninitiated, this is where I talk about the characters that were included in the novels/manga but left out of the anime for any multitude of reasons, and how their omission affects the story as a whole (Part 1+Part 2). I won’t say it’s the last one, because there are a few more characters I want to talk about, but this will probably be the last long one, as the characters remaining are fairly minor and there isn’t quite as much to analyze. That being said, this monstrosity is over 3000 words, so if you do decide to read it, make sure you have the time. It’s kind of wild, things get a little conceptual/abstract, but it’s at least marginally coherent, and that’s all that really matters, right? 

So this time around we’re actually going to be talking about two characters, Fennec and lab coat man, not because they are too minor to deserve their own posts, but because they are too interconnected to focus on one without talking about the other. As the leaders of No.6 they hold a huge amount of power, and yet their dialogue occurs almost entirely between themselves. And while individually they are completely different people, what makes them strong characters is much more about the role they play as a single force within the city. Each one of them will get a section of their own, and then at the end we’ll move into the discussion of them as a “unit” and how their absence affects certain aspects of the anime. I'm going to start with lab coat man because, for me at least, Fennec is the far more interesting of the two, so I wanted to save him for last, as well as the fact that chronologically, he also makes the last appearance out of the two of them. Also I’m just going to call him Labcoat because he doesn’t have a name and that’s basically his only identifying feature.

Let’s actually start with that. The fact that he doesn’t have a name (even less so than the mayor) but still appears in the story is extremely odd. I’ve mentioned in the past that something I really like about the anime is the lack of any characters guiding No.6’s actions, which make it seem like a full character with a will of its own (I will touch on this later). But there’s something almost as creepy about knowing who the antagonist of the story is, having an in-depth understanding of his ideology (even if it’s bullshit), seeing him have full on one-on-one conversations with other important characters, and yet having no way to really identify who they are or how they ended up in this position. His character is overly vague and simplified, but to an extent that ends up being nearly as terrifying as him not existing at all. He’s the one that’s actually running No.6, making every major decision about what direction the city should move in up until the very end of the story, and yet his death happens without us seeing it, and without the intervention of any of the main characters. This functions not only as a way to show how insane he was or to what extent he isolated himself in order to do his work, but also reveals the fact that he is completely unnecessary. Not to the story of course, he’s very important to our understanding of No.6, but to No.6 itself, his existence was meaningless. No one outside of Fennec and Safu (the two people he is shown interacting with) ever make reference to his existence, and even after he dies, and the main characters find his body in the mayor’s office, he is only mentioned for a moment to explain what had happened to him. He seems perfectly happy with this arrangement, but it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. How did he become the most powerful man in No.6? Why did he do it? Was complete power always his intention, or was he an idealist in the beginning like everyone else? We’ll never know the answer to these questions, but at the same time, it doesn’t really matter why he did it. Labcoat is a character that is so integral to the story and its events that his motives and existence outside of his ideology become completely meaningless. Which almost seems contradictory, but is also maybe the point of his character. Rather than an actual character with a concrete purpose and role in the story, he is a stand-in for the ideology that drives No.6, similar to the way that Rashi acts as a personification of the sociopolitical status of the city (please read my obscenely long post about Rashi).

At the root of this ideology, and Labcoat’s character, is the overwhelming fear of failure and losing control. Scenes including him are centered on his progress updates, which immediately are recognizable as nothing but reassurances, that “it was only a small obstacle”, that “it should be under control now”. At no point are we under the illusion that he actually knows what he is doing, and with no information regarding what is actually going on until near the end of the story, we are left to watch him desperately struggle with something that is either impossible, or doesn’t exist at all, much like the concept of utopia itself. We already know that his ideology and rational thought process will not allow him to accept impossibilities or non-understandings however, and so it is at this moment that we fully become an active part of the story ourselves, not as simple observers or analysts, but instead as a driving force in the plot, here in the form of the source of Labcoat's paranoia. Within the story, there is no doubt in his mind that anything and everything can fall under his control, and to a point, he is right. Elyurias is ultimately able to defeat him and No.6, but only after severe damage has already been done and some control had been taken from her temporarily. By existing outside of the story, we exist fully outside of his realm of control, and in recognizing our existence, he must come face to face with the reality that certain things exist that cannot be rationalized (more thoughts on this concept another time). Again similar to Rashi, this realization causes the collapse of his ideology, and by extension, No.6. Because that ideology is the entirety of his character, there is no reason for him to remain a part of the story, and so he is killed, quite literally, by irrationality. 

Fennec is one of those characters that from the outset is obviously more complex than is let on. He's the undisputed mayor of No.6, wielding unprecedented power over every single character we meet in the story. But he doesn't really want any of it. And as I mentioned above, he doesn’t really have it either. Now whether he realizes that he is being used by Labcoat or not is unclear (up to a certain point), but it is obvious that he knows that he is not fully in control of the city. His only real job is to serve as the face of No.6 and its perceived ideals, keeping the general population from ever suspecting that anything may be wrong. However, even in this job he is unable to succeed, and ultimately only exacerbates the process by which citizens become suspicious of the city’s leadership. He is arguably the most ideologically pure character in the entire series, other than perhaps Karan, whose ideology is not fully developed over the course of the story, and Safu, whose purpose in the story does not even necessitate any kind of socio-political stance on her part. Despite what he has ended up doing and taking part in, I don’t think that he ever really moved away from dreaming of an ideal world, and while much of his uncertainty about his position certainly stems from being unsure of whether or not they are moving the city in the right direction, I believe that much of it is also part of working towards one of the questions that frames the entire series: “Is it even possible to create an ideal world?”. Without an answer to this question, he is unable to overcome his uncertainty about his own position in the city or move forward ideologically, and thus is easily used as a tool by others such as Labcoat to further their own agendas and ideological positions, rather than develop his own ideas and work towards his own goals of utopia.

While some of the other characters such as Labcoat, and to a certain extent Rashi, are very much a personified version of the city in its idealized authoritarian form, Fennec exists very much on the opposite side of the spectrum, and instead paints a picture of the political and ideological structure of No.6 as it actually is, and likely always has been. While Fennec, like everyone else in the Rebirth Project, went into the creation of No.6 with utopian ideals, he is also probably the first, if not only, one of them to realize that what they were attempting was likely impossible, at least in the way they were attempting to do it. With the information about him we are given, it seems safe to assume that he may have been suspicious from the start, and perhaps was pushed into the leadership position not only as a way for Labcoat to become the de facto ruler of the city, but also in order to convince him that the city was indeed possible, and that it could only happen with Fennec's help. This of course was never a good idea, and likely led to a good portion of the instability that allowed the story to happen in the first place, but by portraying a leader that is so uncertain not only of the concept of the city itself, but also in his ability to lead such a city, we are able to see just how unstable the situation has been from the very beginning. This makes Karan’s comments about Fennec much more interesting as well, as at face value these are obviously comments about the distrust of leadership in the city, and thus distrust in the city itself, but in seeing Fennec’s own insecurity, we are able to place these comments also within the context of a distrust of the self, and a recognition that the entire situation is really out of everyone’s control, making the stability that marks No.6 as the “Holy City” subject to collapse at any time and for basically any reason, which of course it ultimately does.

Basically every death in this story has immense impact, often resulting in significant character development or otherwise important shifts in the story, and Fennec’s death is no exception to this. Like Labcoat, his death occurs without being seen and without intervention, although this time the main characters are at least aware that it is happening, but nonetheless it shifts the tone of the moment. In my experiences reading this scene, it’s always been there to create a quiet, grounding moment for both us and the characters to come back to reality and start processing everything that has happened over the past 9 books. The entire last half of the series is incredibly dense with action scenes, sensory overload, and things that are so far separated from reality that it’s difficult to figure out exactly what their purpose is, and even before entering the Correctional Facility, peaceful scenes are few and far between. So in this brief moment at the end of the series, when we know for a fact that No.6 has finally fallen and the nightmare is (mostly) over, we are finally able to enjoy a single moment of certainty amidst what is otherwise complete chaos. In these moments we are able to see Fennec realize not that he had necessarily lost against Nezumi, Shion, and the protesters, as his actions were almost entirely a result of Labcoat’s manipulation, but that he had been manipulated in the first place, and that his own life had been taken over by the “idea” of No.6, rather than the reality of it. The death of Labcoat and the realization of what had truly transpired within the city results in a return of control to Fennec over his own life, as well as over the city. With his knowledge of the city’s truth, and newfound power over it, he must now make the choice of whether or not to justify everything that has happened up to this point. Manipulated or not, he recognizes his position as the symbol of the city, and therefore his role in its actions, and so in keeping with his utopian ideology, he does the only thing he feels is appropriate in order to avoid going against his ideals and once again relinquishing his self determination to a yet-undecided power. I can’t say whether or not that choice was the right one, and opinions are probably going to differ a lot between people, but it is at least an action that, unlike so much of the rest of the series, is not unexpected and can be rationalized outside of an authoritative framework.

I’ve already done some of this, but this last section is going to go into how these two function as the single unit running No.6, and thus how their lack of presence affects the structure of the anime. On their own of course neither one of them would be able to take on the position of leading the entire city, and although neither one really seems interested in being deeply involved with the other, they have become dependent on each other in order to remain individually stable, with Labcoat needing reassurance that he is indeed in charge, and Fennec needing reassurance that an ideal society can exist, despite neither of those things being entirely true. As a unit, they represent two sides of No.6 in reverse relation to their own positon within the city. That is, Labcoat represents the idealism and scientific superiority that characterizes the world’s perception of the city while remaining a highly secretive figure, while Fennec represents the frailty of the city that is kept hidden from the citizens, despite acting as the city’s public persona (I will be referring to them as a unit from now own because their function is collective rather than individual here). This unit itself is a highly isolated structure (relationship), interacting with only a few other characters within the story during important moments, but otherwise interacting only within itself. This is what allows this setup to work at all, as their isolation enables them to freely trade information and plans between themselves without involving others or worrying about the information finding its way out of the structure. While it is clearly highly manipulative on the part of Labcoat, this is unclear to Fennec as well as the citizens who watch the mayor speak, and so the unit is able to stay intact as it is without being questioned by those who may seek to oppose it. This does not free them from criticism, obviously, but instead makes it impossible to criticize only one or the other from the perspective of a citizen, because as far as they are concerned, they are the same person. The unit, in having two distinctly different personalities functionally taking the place of one, is able to efficiently complete tasks semi-publically that would otherwise be seen as unacceptable by publicly presenting itself, and in fact believing itself to be, an idealized system of leadership which works in the citizen’s favor. Labcoats’s mistakes are able to be rationalized as small obstacles through the lens of Fennec’s nonunderstanding, and Fennec’s paranoia of this nonunderstanding mitigated through Labcoat’s complete trust in scientific inquiry and methods.

Despite the omission of these characters and the unit entirely from the anime, the story is still able to work because the city itself is able to take the place of the unit as the primary actor in the events of the story. With no leadership being portrayed throughout the anime, we are left with the impression that the events are unfolding independently of any kind of governmental system, or at least the government that does exist is vague and devoid of ideology outside of “militant authoritarianism”. Instead these events are framed almost as a type of natural occurrence that likely could not be avoided without the formation of some kind of mediation system such as a government, and without such a system, the responsibility falls somewhere else: society as a whole (or more specifically No.6). With no visible government in the form of the Fennec/Labcoat unit to control and mediate the situation, the unit expands to include everyone, as they become collectively responsible for governing themselves and thus understanding and accepting to a certain extent what is happening throughout the story. It would be a significant understatement to say that the sociological implications of this are immense, and someday I will write that essay. But today is not that day, so we’re going to stay surface level.

I would like to point out that yes, obviously this is not actually how No.6 functions. It’s not an autonomous collective governed by the people. It’s not even kind of a democracy. My point isn’t so much to say that No.6 is or even approaches being either of those things, but rather that the structure of the story, by excluding certain details and characters, gives us a conceptualization of No.6 that is far different from the one portrayed in the novels, and thus may in certain instances be seen as ideologically distinct. In this instance, the omission of Fennec and Labcoat, both independently of each other and as a unit, serve to create the feeling of the situation in No.6 as being entirely out of control, not as a planned series of events or experiments, but rather as a spontaneous occurrence fed by unexplained impulses felt by certain members of society, here taking the form of those recognizable as government officials or soldiers. While the government is certainly mentioned in the anime, and clearly exists in some form that is able to exert that level of control over the citizens, it exists mainly because the way we live requires a government, and so any story that does not explicitly state otherwise is simply assumed to have one that functions in a way we can recognize and relate to. 

In the novels, although they are not the only ones in the government, Fennec and Labcoat occupy the highest position, and are able to confirm the existence of a structured government, and give insight into the background and current issues facing that government. Through them, the events taking place are to a certain extent demystified, and while not explained entirely, we are able to more accurately identify those events as being somewhat purposeful and directly related to the overarching story. Their absence in the anime, while useful in its own way for adapting the themes of the story and creating a sense of mystery in a visual medium, also result in a (perhaps unintended) ideological shift in the overall message of the story, leaving it unclear as to what exactly happened, or could happen in the future. Also, like most things that got left out of the anime, this seems to be at least partially a result of the time crunch of fitting 9 books into only 11 episodes, so while I may have (a lot of) issues with the overall result of this particular change, there also isn’t really much that could have been done about it outside of just making the show longer (which they should have done but I know that wasn’t really an option). Ultimately though, through Fennec and Labcoat, and their existence as a unit in the series, we are able to better contextualize the events of No.6’s story, understand how those events came to take place, and get a better sense of how No.6 as a city and a society really functions. With their omission, we not only lose those understandings, but the ideology portrayed and supported by the story also change, and while that change may not be important to the overall enjoyment of the story, the implications end up being quite significant, and not necessarily in the way you would want.

[sitonmyhot-seatoflove]

A Sós - Brian May x Brazilian!Reader

(aka my insanely belated A Night at the Fandom gift for the lovely Ana @bismillahnah. there's an author's note for you at the end, darling! thank you so much @dtfrogertaylor for pulling this together for all of us! you rock! this was amazing! once again, I'm so sorry for being this terribly late)

word count: 3988 words

warnings: some making out, some implied sexual content, lots of cheesiness, a little bit of untranslated Portuguese (it’s set in Brazil!), and some playing fast and loose with the timeline.

Só nós dois e uma madrugada inteira pra conversar / Só nós dois e uma infinidade de Amor pra cantar / Com você o manual da vida fica fácil de ler / Com você a hipótese de uma vida pra ser / Vivida juntos / Nesse e naquele que é só nosso mundo / Um mundo de nós / Eu, você e a existência a sós.

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

You were never really one to talk to strangers.

Not this incessantly, at the very least, and certainly not this intimately.

Something about this one made him a little extra special, though.

Maybe it was just that you'd had a couple of drinks, and had gotten free entry to what was supposed to be the best Carnival party of the year - only to be ditched by your best friend when she found someone to make out with in some random corner. You were all alone in the Baile Vermelho e Preto, and hell, it was Carnival - you weren't supposed to be alone.

Maybe it was something about him - maybe the way his curls framed his face and bounced around him as he walked, a little messy and a little frizzy, giving him a frazzled sort of look you couldn't help but find endearing. (It was all the humidity, he'd explained, from being so near the ocean - his hair was usually much tidier.)

Maybe it was how cute he looked when his pointier teeth showed whenever you said something clever. It was nearly addictive, that smile, and from the moment you saw it for the first time, your sole purpose for the rest of the evening was to make sure you could produce it as many times as possible.

Maybe it was the way he'd never lost his temper while trying to communicate with that bartender - even after seven whole minutes of failed attempts to order a different drink, even as there was a line forming behind him, even as he was sweating through his white button-up so much it was sticking to his skinny back. His voice was soft even as he half shouted out his order over the music in a heavily accented Spanish/Portuguese/English blend of a language - and even though everyone behind him seemed annoyed, they all seemed too reluctant to do anything about it. You'd noticed some of them looked almost intimidated - maybe by his height? Maybe by the fact you didn't usually get that many tourists in this part of town? You weren't sure. But, while they all stared and whispered, no one seemed about to step in, and you were a translator, damn it, even if you only did it as a side gig.

He was nine minutes into his attempts to communicate with the bartender when you'd decided to intervene.

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

"Ele tá pedindo uma cerveja escura. Tipo Guinness. Se não tiver, ele quer só uma água tônica mesmo." The bartender looked exasperated at your attempt to help. You couldn't blame him - that crowd wasn't exactly the nicest to be around, and the last few minutes probably hadn't helped improve his mood.

"Eu entendi, moça. Tô tentando explicar pra ele que a gente só tem Brahma e água mesmo. É open bar, olha essa fila, pelo amor de Deus..."

"Desculpa, moço. Vê duas Brahmas mesmo." You turned to the tall stranger, who looked dumbfounded by your meddling. "Sorry, buddy, you'll have to make do with light beer and regular water. It's not too bad, though, I promise." You pulled him away by his upper arm - surprisingly toned for such a skinny lad - while holding the two beers in your other hand. He was wide eyed, and you assumed he'd been a bit stunned by your unabashedness.

"I'm-" He paused as he saw the line that had formed behind him. "Jesus. Sorry. Didn't mean to be a prick."

"I know. Figured I'd rescue you both." You offered him his beer and a soft smile, and he looked down at it, looking less than excited to give it a try. "C'mon, now. It won't kill you."

"No, no, I know, I just - not my favorite drink, really, but it'll do," he said, tilting his bottle to clink with your own before taking a tentative sip. "Thank you."

The smile he gave you right then completely changed your entire evening. The only word that your fogged brain could come up with to describe it was magical - you cursed yourself for the cheesiness of it. It really was how it felt, though - from the moment you saw the way his eyes crinkled just a tiny bit, and glowed just a little more than everyone else's, you were done for. And after he took a moment to look at you up and down, apparently taking notice of you for the first time that evening, and his eyes seemed to brighten up at the sight - that was it, this was the best Carnival ever. Never mind your friend, never mind the fact that you'd have to wake up at an ungodly hour. Who could possibly give a shit that your feet were hurting from the pretty shoes you'd chosen when this man was looking at you like that?

His raised eyebrows seemed questioning all of a sudden, and you realized his lips were moving. They had been moving. Cacete, Y/N, acorda, ele tá falando com você, responde- 

"Sorry, what?" You ask in response, finally waking from whatever weird type of trance this stranger's very handsome face and unearthly pretty eyes had put you under. "Hard to hear over all the music."

"I said, do you wanna step outside for a smoke?"

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

“I swear to God I can speak Spanish.”

The smoking section kinda stunk, you couldn't lie. It was pretty rough - while the front of the building had been spruced up recently, probably for the party, the side, where most smokers had gathered, was all just rough cement with exposed orange brick in some spots. He - Brian, you'd learned, Brian from the UK, an Astrophysicist who was in town for work - leant on that wall while trying to justify his faux pas from earlier. You tried to stay serious, but a little scoff of a laugh escaped your lips at his proclamation. “I’m dead serious! I even spoke Spanish very well to some native speakers last week," he bragged, taking a long drag of his cigarette before speaking. “For work.”

His work was interesting. You were a little confused as to why an Astrophysicist had come to spend so much time in South America - he'd told you he'd been in Venezuela just last week, and Argentina was coming up next - but, really, you weren't complaining, not when it had landed him here, right in front of you.

“What do you do, then?”

“I’m still finishing my degree too," you said. He'd talked a little bit about his unfinished PhD - something about 'various pressures', but he'd been weirdly coy about those. Busy with work, he'd said. “Still on my bachelor’s, though. Wanna be a psychologist.”

“Been analyzing me this whole time, then?”

“Obviously.”

That one got you a smile. Score.

You both were comfortable with each other - weirdly comfortable, as far as your experience with handsome strangers went. Because he wasn't just asking you questions for the sake of asking - when he inquired further about your interest in psychology, he asked about the specifics and couldn't stop asking follow up questions. What you wanted to do with your degree, what type of approach you preferred, whether you actually bought all the stuff Freud had come up with, what was your take on the more recent developments in Cognitive therapy stuff… He also seemed to be knowledgeable in nearly every subject. An hour had passed, you'd noticed, and all you'd done was talk - about your interests, nonetheless. He shifted the subject slightly, only once, interrupting you mid-sentence while you mused at him about the more philosophical aspects of Freudian theories.

“I would like to see you tomorrow.” You were a bit taken aback at the interruption - and his interest - and he noticed. "Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, I just - you're brilliant. And beautiful. And I would like to see you again."

"That's not how Carnival works, Brian." He frowned at that, and you realized that maybe he'd forgotten what this was - where you were, what you were supposed to be doing. You weren't supposed to be discussing philosophy and he wasn't supposed to be taking an interest in your intellect; you were supposed to be making out in some corner, just like your friend had been, both of your names having slipped from one another's mind by the time morning came. "It's usually a one night thing… And I'm busy tomorrow." You were completely busy for the next few weeks, as a matter of fact; a fantastic job opportunity had turned up, but you couldn't help but want, just for a second, to say 'screw it' and give Brian all the time in the world. You could, at the very least, give him the rest of your night, though, so you tried to find a way to stretch your time together a little longer.

"You seen the beach yet?"

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

Copacabana was just as beautiful at night, he'd decided. Turns out he had seen the beach, but only in passing - his hotel was a few of blocks from where you two were now, walking aimlessly, slowly, shoes in your hands so you could feel the sand. Just trying to pass the time with one another.

The sky was clear enough for you two to stargaze, too, which gave you a nice little way into his mind, for a change. He marveled at the constellations he'd never get to see back home, and cursed himself for not bringing a telescope along for the trip. You teased him for that - how does an Astrophysicist travel halfway across the globe and doesn't bring a single telescope? But he only shrugged at that, blushing a little and turning your attention to the Southern Crux, bright and beautiful and right above you both.

"Do you think we're ever gonna have a real answer?" He didn't seem to get your question, so you expanded. "I mean, do you think your lot - the hard scientists, I mean - do you think you guys will ever be able to tell us why we're here after all? What it all means?"

"Science's really good at the 'what's and the 'how's, but it doesn't have much to say about the 'whys'," he replied, thoughtful as ever, sounding a little more confident now that you'd switched lanes and were talking about his specialty, rather than yours. The way his voice had shifted was more attractive to you than anything else about him so far. "Neither should it, I reckon." He shrugged. "And I don't think we can ever come up with those types of answers. We know so little, as much as we like to pretend otherwise. I mean, think about it, we only know the size of the observable universe," he said as his eyes shifted upwards, "we can hypothesize all we want about what's on the outside of that, but, truth is, we have no bloody clue." 

"Great, that's not nerve wracking at all."

"It's kinda nice, if you think about it. We're tiny specks in a tiny world, which is a tiny speck in our Solar System, which is a tiny speck in our galaxy, which is a tiny speck in the part of the universe we know." He shrugged once again. "Puts things in perspective, you know? I mean, how special are we, really? But, then again, maybe we are. Maybe the Christians are right. I don't know."

"You think there's life out there?"

"Well, you ever heard of the Drake equation?"

God, you could hear him talk for hours. Even if it was about numbers. You did hear him talk for hours - and he heard you, too. About psychology again, sure - why you'd chosen it, and why you'd become passionate, and all the professors you hated and all the ones you loved. But things got a little more personal, too. You talked about how you'd moved up to Rio from the South because they had the best Psych school in the country, and while you really missed your family, you'd fallen in love with what you believed was the most beautiful city on Earth. How you liked the beach, but Copacabana was overrated - "it's touristy and there's prettier places" - and, really, you preferred the short stretches of woods you could find in the local parks. He kept up with everything you said, and your conversation moved so quickly you couldn't really tell how you'd skipped from one subject to another. He could discuss the complexities of Nabokov and the psychological analysis you'd done of his characters, laugh at a stupid pun you'd made about the ocean, and show real interest in your passion of history all in a matter of minutes.

"And there's this really swanky café," you said, while doing your best to give him a mental tour of Rio's historic downtown, "it's called Cafeteria Colombo. Bit touristy, but I'm into it. They're really traditional - the Emperor of Brazil supposedly used to eat there, which is kinda ludicrous but super fun at the same time."

"Take me there." You looked confused - it was the middle of the night, and you opened your mouth to explain that it wasn't exactly a 24-hour joint, but he beat you to it. "Tomorrow - let's go there tomorrow. My treat."

"I... don't think so, Brian."

"It's the least I can do after you saved me at the bar." You chuckled a little at that. "And introduced me to the best damn light beer I've ever had." You actually let out a full-bellied laugh, and he seemed satisfied to see it. "Let me see you again, Y/N. Buy you a cuppa."

And you wanted to, but that's not what this was. You had to keep it in mind, and he had to get it into his - it was not what this was. He beat you to your argument before you could even protest, though.

"I don't care how Carnival works." He stopped walking. "You can't possibly believe this is a one night thing, Y/N."

"You should really be more respectful of the holiday traditions, Brian."

He didn't have an answer for that, which made you a little disappointed. Still, you'd meant what you'd said - he was leaving in a couple of weeks, and you knew that if you got to see him again - if you got to hang out with him for any longer than a single night - you'd serve him your heart in a silver platter to take across the ocean without hesitating. Hell, you'd been with him for a few hours and already felt tempted enough to do it.

You kept walking in silence, the air feeling a little heavier from the higher rise and from the way you'd shut him down again. Before you could come up with something else to say - anything, puta merda, Y/N, inventa qualquer coisa pra falar - he moved his hand and placed it over yours, and you swore your heart started wanting to jump out of your body and physically reach over to him.

"Can you ever feel your heart in your ears?" You blurted out and immediately cursed yourself; he laughed a little, though, and had a surprised expression on his face when you dared to look over. "Sorry, that was stupid."

"It wasn't." You stared at him in mock seriousness, pointedly. "I swear." He was smiling at you, and at this point, you couldn't help but smile back. His eyes lingered on your lips for a half second too long. "Why'd you ask?" You stopped walking again, a little too stunned at his bluntness to keep going. Wasn't it obvious why you'd asked? "Can you feel yours now?" He asked, his voice softer than ever.

"Yeah."

He placed both hands - God, he had really large hands - on either side of your head, fingertips playing a little with your earlobes. "Well, your ears are hot."

"Well, you're not exactly helping with that right now, are you?" You wrapped your hands around his wrists, hoping to feel a quickened pulse, hoping to God his heartbeat was as strong and erratic as yours was right now. Did his heart want to come find you, too?

"How do I ask 'May I kiss you?' in Portuguese?"

"Eu posso te beijar?"

He tries to repeat it, and something comes out - it sounds more like Spanish than Portuguese, but you forgive him the second you look into his eyes. You thought you could get lost in them - Jesus Christ, where the hell were these romcom thoughts coming from? You could, though, you swore you could, and that looking straight at them felt like plunging deep into the ocean, and ugh, that particular thought was made so much cheesier by the fact that you were right by the ocean - and wait, puta merda, he was looking at you - at your lips, then back at your eyes, then back at your lips - very expectantly. Right, he had asked you something, you were supposed to say something, even though you were honestly about to go blind from how warm his hands felt on your face. "Close enough," you managed to whisper out, your swirly mind getting swirlier by the second as this beautiful stranger pulled you in.

His kiss felt huge - bigger than the both of you, bigger than tonight, certainly bigger than Carnival. That's the only way you could describe it. His lips were soft on yours, and as you opened your mouth with a gasp, you could taste a tiny bit of Brahma on his tongue. It was mostly mint and ocean salt and cigarettes and him, all around you, his tall body enveloping you and somehow putting your brain in a haze where time seemed to move outside of reality. There was nothing other than you and Brian and, for all you knew, Copacabana was the whole world.

You were trembling by the time you'd stopped kissing, and, as he moved his hands to encircle your waist, he was trembling too. You were giddy to notice it. He seemed giddy just from kissing you.

“Let me see you tomorrow.”

“Can’t live in the moment, can you?” You teased, pulling him back into you and playfully biting at his lip to get your point across.

You quietly inquired, in between warm kisses, where he was staying, again - wasn't it close by? And, wouldn't you know it, his hotel was just a block away from where you were standing right now.

And, well, that had to be kismet, right?

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

His suite was fancy - too fancy for an Astrophysicist, and you might have realized that, maybe, if you weren't so otherwise distracted by his lips, seemingly all over you at once, setting your skin alight one peck at a time. By the time he started using his tongue on your neck, you were done for - nothing would come out of your mouth that night other than kisses and loving and strangled moans of his name, which happened by the minute. He seemed to love it - every time you said his name, he was a little spurred on, grabbed at you with a little more force, and, in turn, you loved that. Every time he said yours, your stomach did somersaults. You hoped you sounded as sweet to him as he did to you.

He fell asleep before the sun rose, and your heart sank a little at the thought of leaving his embrace and making your way back into reality. You tried to commit everything to memory - the smell of the crook of his neck, the curve of his tiny bottom, the pattern of the freckles on his upper back, the way he sighed in his sleep when you scratched his scalp, the freaking hotel logo on the face towel in the bathroom - absolutely anything you could get your senses to grasp at. You had to make sure you had a full picture to come back to, otherwise you feared you might think it was all an alcohol induced illusion of some sort. Besides, he looked so pretty while he slept, so that's how you chose to remember him - the crease between his eyebrows gone completely, lips slightly parted, drool starting to come out, hair more frazzled than ever.

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

It was always great working with musicians - you liked talking to artists, you'd always get to see their shows for free and, as part of the 'entourage', you'd always get some damn good amenities - and this was an especially sweet gig. Queen was the biggest client you'd ever gotten - their original translator got sick and, when a producer friend of yours had referred you, you were more than happy to step in for them. The four members would need a translator to work closely with them for the next couple of weeks, and you couldn't have been more excited to run around town with rockstars for a longer stretch of time, especially while on break from school. It was perfect, really - good pay, good gig, and, hopefully, some good company.

You tried to keep this in mind - to conjure up how excited you'd been when you'd gotten the job; how, because of it, you had been able to buy tickets to go home for Holy Week; how excited your family had sounded on the phone. This was worth it, you thought, it was worth not seeing Brian again. He would go back to the UK so soon anyway - it was just a fling, just a sweet memory you had to lock up in a little box and keep in the back of your brain for now. 

And you did. You did such a good job at compartmentalizing you only thought of him once during your morning shower. Once again while making your coffee - you wondered how he took his, or if maybe he was a tea drinker. He was British. But maybe that was just a stereotype? Maybe he loved coffee, maybe he took it with three spoons of sugar just like you did. You wished you'd stayed long enough to find out.

You did a great job of keeping him out of your mind while commuting to the convention center all the way across town where you'd be meeting the band. You were running late on your first day, which was less than ideal, and the anxiety of it kept your thoughts stuck on the traffic and on your watch. They couldn't fire you on the first day, could they? You'd assumed most journalists at the press conference would be ready to ask in English, but you never really knew - Brazilian journalism could be unpredictable. They still needed you. You were fine, you were not going to get fired, and you were certainly not going to be distracted by the memory of the tall, handsome, unattainable man you'd left in bed that morning.

You were so consumed by your thoughts - your non-Brian thoughts - and the desperate need not to be late that you ran inside the venue, not bothering to take a second glance at the journalists setting up in the main area or at the Queen poster someone had put up near the entrance to the meeting room a staff member directed you to.

In retrospect, paying a little more attention might have saved you a lot of grief, or, at the very least, a hell of a scare. It would have been shocking to see Brian looking down at you from the huge poster right outside the room your new client was supposed to be in - but it was a much bigger shock to walk in and find the man himself, staring at you, eyes wider than ever, dropping his half-drunk tea on the carpet.

Well, you thought, guess he's a tea drinker.

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

A/N: oi, Ana! espero que você goste do seu presente. não sei se você já sacou, mas eu sou brasileira kkkk e, como boa brasileira, tô chegando bemmmm atrasada por aqui com sua fic. desculpa o atraso, de verdade. não sou uma escritora necessariamente boa, mas juro que a fic foi feita com muito carinho - eu quase pirei quando recebi você no sorteio e vi que você era brasileira!! fiquei mandando mensagem em inglês pra manter o sigilo e não estragar a surpresa.

o título da fic e a inspiração vieram de uma música do Rizzih, como você deve ter percebido (aliás, não conhecia ele! fiquei super feliz de conhecer um artista novo). na real, eu tava querendo fazer uma fic com uma Reader brasileira e tradutora faziam décadas, e achei seu presente a oportunidade perfeita pra explorar esse relacionamento e essa personagem. ainda tenho algumas aventuras planejadas pra ela e pro Bri (um dos motivos da demora foi justamente o fato de que eu queria que essa fic fosse três ou quatro vezes mais longa, mas resolvi dividir em partes e ir postando conforme for conseguindo escrever). como as sequências não vão tecnicamente fazer parte do seu presente, apesar de serem da mesma história, me avisa se você quiser ser marcada quando eu postar! eu amei conhecer um pouquinho mais sobre você durante esse mês e espero poder conhecer mais ainda daqui pra frente. mil abraços e, novamente, espero que você goste! com muito amor, sua amiga oculta, finalmente podendo falar com você em português - S (🕺🏻)