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1kook · 4 years

Text

espn & bdsm

this is part 6 of my netflix & chill collection !

summary; You would like to personally thank every loud-mouthed, ESPN commentator out there for saving you from Jungkook’s dangerous seduction skills. warnings; smut (18+) in the forms of brief femdom, handcuffs, nipple clamps, blindfolding, flogging/use of a riding crop, soft dom kook, cunnilingus, spitting, unprotected but passionate, degradation, as always it starts horny n then turns into I love u kink miscellaneous; kook has a swollen ankle so idk how he did all this, jk abuses the fuck outta pet names part 7, revenge gone wrong tbh, this was honestly a beginner’s intro to vanilla bdsm word count; 12.7k

notes; this is like… a healing fic… for the part before lol. also i did not know what was going to happen next as I was writing. anyway entire smut scene was based off THIS bad boy ur welcome fellas and the Jungkook described here is from in the soop episode 2... cutie... yes every single 1 of those words is a link

lmk what you think! a simple ask goes a long way <3

You're at the nail salon with Doyeon when she first mentions it.

“Have you ever, like,” she pauses, making a vague, swivel gesture with her head. You furrow your brows and she sighs. “Topped him. Have you ever been the one to take control?”

Your nail artist blushes, furiously filing away at your nails until the most perfect stiletto shape stares you back in the face. “Oh. Not really,” you admit, wiggling your wet toe nails around in the styrofoam flip flops issued by the salon. “I mean, sometimes I talk him through it.”

Doyeon snorts. “Babe, talking him through it and being the boss are two completely different things,” she says rather dryly, seemingly unbothered by the fact your two nail techs are being subjected to this more than intimate conversation. But you’ve had weirder talks with Doyeon in public; this doesn’t phase you. “Listen,” she says suddenly, dropping her voice down to a whisper that has you leaning closer to hear her. “You know how I’m a member of that site, right?”

You nod. “Oh yeah— Sexuality Unleashed: The Best Toys Worldwide!, right?” She kicks your shin, but the jab is muted by the bottom of her own styrofoam flip flop.

“Yeah, just tell everyone here my credit card number while you’re at it,” she hisses. Her anger fades soon enough. “Well, they’re always sending me all sorts of freebies for my devoted patronage,” she explains. She quirks her lips to the side, throwing one brief glance at the blushing nail artists in front of you. Eventually she seems to come to a conclusion. “Long story short they sent me some cuffs and I’m gonna give you them.”

Your jaw drops. “Woah, really? I don’t know… Don’t those usually run kinda pricey?” you ask tentatively. You’re trying to play it off, act like this isn’t something you want, but the reality is so much worse.

The minute the word cuffs had slipped through her lips it’s like a door opened before your eyes. A big, wooden door with chains strapped across it and a padlock you swore you’d never open.

Somewhere in your mind, you had always convinced yourself handcuffs in bed was something you’d like to have done to you. But, because she was your best friend and by extension a personified version of all your freakiest, often filtered, thoughts, it was like Doyeon had reached straight into your cranium and extracted your most secret fantasy— and that was Jungkook in handcuffs.

Your nail artist pats your hand, motioning you to head over to the drying station. Before you can be separated from Doyeon, you whip around to throw her one desperate look. “I have never wanted anything so bad in my life.”

She cackles loudly, easily garnering the attention of every employee and nail enthusiast in the salon with the evil witch vibes she exudes.

Truth be told, your argument with Jungkook had brought upon a newfound appreciation for him. Weird to say, considering you had wanted to kill the dude when it had originally happened. But the great thing about you and Jungkook was that you were flexible people— both in bed and out. A few long conversations later and you had reached the root of the problem.

And that root was your apparent lack of communicating when something was wrong. It was weird to think that anything could ever be wrong when Jungkook was involved. He was your honeybun, sugar plum, pumpy-umpy-umpkin. Your sweetie pie, for lack of better wording, and he could do no wrong—

—is what you’d like to say. But if there’s anything you’ve learned in the past year of dating Jungkook, it’s that perfection was a made up belief that revolved around the idea that someone’s flaws couldn’t possibly be a good thing. And as you’ve come to realize, Jungkook wasn’t the perfect gentleman you’d initially chalked him up to be. He was human, just like you, with his own list of worries and thoughts, and sometimes those thoughts manifested into flaws. They could be ugly or they could be beautiful, but at the end of the day, they all made Jungkook into the person he was— and you loved that person. Disgustingly so.

You had your moments, and he had his. Everything would not always be sunshine and rainbows for the two of you, but it was fine so long as you learned to play in the rain and stomp in the puddles.

Still.

You were you.

A slightly mean, slightly conniving, petty ass human who had been plotting his revenge since the day the two of you made up. I mean, you weren’t actually just going to let him get off the hook like that, were you? He had saved himself last time with a gooey, heartfelt apology and confession, followed by some extraordinary dicking down that had left you Naked and Afraid for three days after.

But you weren’t that easy! No, ma’am. You had to let him know that some gorgeous demon dick was not enough to satisfy you after a fight like that.

Jungkook was in for a desperately needed reality check, one that jingles in your purse when you step out of the Uber that drops you off at his place. You know he’s home because his front light is on, and also because he’d texted you that he was watching some soccer match on tv tonight. He’s a pretty big fan, especially of the club playing tonight, so you decide it’s a perfect night to strike.

Your copy of his key slips right into the keyhole. Your slippers are in the same place they always are, neatly set off to the side right by the stairs. He’s not in his living room, undoubtedly the most perfect place to watch any type of sporting event with that huge Jumbotron of his. The damn thing made it feel like you were in the stadium itself.

There’s a quiet hum coming from upstairs. You creep up the steps, carefully rounding the corner at the landing until you’re staring right into his dimly lit bedroom.

The way Jungkook’s got his bedroom set up is so that you can look directly at his door from the bed, terribly inconvenient for when that sleep paralysis demon hits in the middle of the night and you’re left staring into the dark hallway. He’s snuggled comfortably over his sheets, about three pillows supporting his back. The light of the tinier, more acceptable television he keeps in his room is dancing across his features in bright shades of green. You almost throw yourself onto his mattress like a starfish until you spot the carefully placed foot on the bed.

“What the hell did you do?” you blurt. A wrong move, considering he hadn’t seen you yet and your sudden appearance makes him jump nearly ten feet into the air, almost knocking down the bag of ice that sits on his ankle. “Oh my god, it was that damned Pilates class, wasn’t it?” you fret, rounding the bed until you’re on his side.

“Oh hey,” he says as if you’re not currently pulling the first eight seasons of Grey’s Anatomy to the forefront of your head to treat him. “When’d you get here?”

“Cut the crap, who did this to you?” you ask, sitting beside him with the utmost care. You drop your bag off to the side, the loud clatter of the inside contents vaguely registering in your head. The ice pack comes off easily, revealing a relatively okay looking ankle save for the slight swell towards the more medial aspect of it.

Jungkook takes the moment to sit up, joining you in your inspection of his injury. “No one,” he answers, using his new position to drop a kiss against the side of your head. “I fell off the ladder helping Mrs. Jung across the street.”

You choke. ��You fell off a ladder?” you squawk, eyes wide as your gaze shifts from his ankle to his entire body.

He places a hand on your shoulder, “babe, I was on like the third step. It was one of those old wooden ones,” he explains with a nonchalant shrug. “The step just happened to snap on my way down.”

You scoff. “That old lady is out to get you,” you warn him. “Remember the time she almost had you plug in those burnt out Christmas lights for her? The ones that would have electrocuted you to death.”

Jungkook laughs, settling back into his stack of pillows. “In her defense, she’s old,” he offers. He’s wrapped up in a black hoodie, fluffy bangs parted down the middle. He’s got on some blue shorts, a huge difference from his usual dark-toned clothing. He looks so good and warm, and you’re suddenly hit with the fact you can’t possibly handcuff this poor, injured angel to his bedpost and ride his cock into the sunset. “You didn’t tell me you were coming over.”

You deflate, wild fantasies thrown out the window. “Yeah, well,” you sigh, ditching your pants and climbing over him until you’re snuggled into his side. “Wanted to show you my nails.”

It’s a lame excuse. But he buys it, so.

“They’re cute,” he says, taking your hand in his. He turns your hand over, inspects your pretty new acrylics like he actually has any idea how much they cost or how sexy they look. He raises your hand to his face, pressing a smooch against your knuckles that has you heart thumping embarrassingly loud in your chest. God, you hated this fool.

You turn your nose up at him, like you’re some snooty rich girl who couldn’t give him the time of day. Except it’s not like that, and Jungkook knows.

“What’re you watching?” you ask instead.

He’s got that stupid dopey smile on you, the one that takes one nudge against his side to snap him out of. “Ah, just the game.”

You squint at the screen. “Is this Fox Sports?” you ask in disgust.

He pinches your side. “This is ESPN,” he corrects. “And you don’t know shit about sports channels,” he points out. “So sit this one out.” You give in with a huff, cuddling closer into his side while trying to jostle him as little as possible. Jungkook seems to have no deeply rooted concerns about his injured ankle if the way he hauls you into his arms is any indicator. “How did nails with Doyeon go?”

“You know, the usual,” you respond, idly toying with one of the strings on his hoodie as your eyes focus on the little figures running across the screen. He hums, gesturing for you to elaborate. “Talked about sex, how much better than you at life she is, some more sex.”

He scoffs at that. “Doyeon is not better than me, and I have a whole trophy case to prove it.”

“Okay, but have you singlehandedly Twitter beefed with an entire sorority in your freshman year of university and won?”

He frowns. “No.”

You give him a look, one that says stand down now unless you want to lose to my best friend and get your feelings hurt. Jungkook understands. “Anyway,” he announces, turning his attention back to the screen with you. You think his team might be winning—you vaguely remember seeing him wear a similar jersey once—so he’s pretty relaxed for now. “They’re doing pretty good considering they just lost their main striker.”

You have no idea what that means. “Who? Messi?”

Jungkook knows you don’t know. “He doesn’t even play in this league,” he explains anyway.

“Oh, I saw him trending on Twitter last week. Thought he died or something. Whole time it was just a bunch of soccer nerds crying about him leaving his team.”

He laughs. “You should be a sportscaster,” Jungkook decides after your ever-so-eloquent recap, tucking his head cutely against your shoulder. There was a study once that claimed the incessant need to squeeze a baby’s cheeks or hug puppies tightly was actually the innate human response to kill something they felt threatened by. Oddly enough, you find yourself thinking of that as Jungkook’s citrusy shampoo floods your nostrils.

“Oh, speaking of Doyeon,” he says suddenly. “Did you give her my address? I got a weird package from that store she likes that I genuinely don’t remember ever ordering.” You frown, sitting up slightly until you can look at the side of his face, the cute mole on his cheek calling your name.

“What?” you ask. “Was it in her name?” Jungkook nods. You’re about to tear the roof off his house and go hunt that evil wench down when realization dawns on you. “Oh, no, yeah I gave her your address. My mom stayed over last weekend and Doyeon needed to order something nasty. Guess it got delayed until now.”

Jungkook nods and then doesn’t say much else, which is weird considering the circumstances. You expected him to gently scold you for carelessly giving the psycho that was Kim Doyeon his address, but she’s been here a few times to pick you up, even came over for beer night once. She probably knew it anyway, but you still expected some type of reaction of disapproval from him.

Something’s off, and you know better than to leave it at that. You poke his cheek, right where that mole you’d been eyeing was. “Did you open her package?” you ask, grin slowly consuming your features at the fact Jungkook was apparently a mail snooper.

He looks away. You laugh. “Oh my god, you did,” you cackle, sitting up beside him to get a good look at the blush growing on his cheeks. “What did you see?”

“Nothing,” he huffs, pretending to be overly invested in his soccer match again, but that ship died the moment you stepped into his room. “Babe, I can't see the match.”

You roll your eyes, purposefully shifting in front of him so he’s forced to look at the maniac look in your eyes. “What did you see, Jeon Jungkook, and are we going to steal it from her again?”

His cheeks bloom impossibly darker at that. “No!” he coughs, pointedly avoiding your gaze.

But your curiosity is at its peak now, his reactions only exacerbating it. You grab him by the shoulders, hands balling the material of his hoodie as you give him one firm shake. “What did you see,” you demand.

“Oh my god,” he gives in. You release him and he flops back onto his pillow mountain. “They were things,” he explains slowly, cheeks rosy. “For your, y’know,” a vague gesture over his chest.

You frown. “A bra?” you guess. “I’m not gonna lie, Kook, think I just lost a little respect for you.”

“No!” he huffs. “They were… little clamps. For your nipples.”

If this was a cartoon, you’re almost certain you’d be that character with the object in question in their eyes, heart fluttering in your chest at the words that leave his mouth.

Immediately, two things become obvious to you.

One, Kim Doyeon was a bigger freak than you’d expected who obviously dabbled in an assortment of trades. Clamps, your brain screams, overwhelmed with the image that appears in your head, the one that has a shiver running straight to your core. You would have to thank her for this gracious, unintentional gift she’s bestowed upon you.

Two, you’re gonna have to write her the best, most plausible apology letter tomorrow when you inform her those clamps have been lost in the mail, never to be seen again. Or you could just straight up tell her you snatched them up the moment you found out what they were, but you doubt that’ll go over well.

Jungkook groans. “You have that look in your eye,” he points out. You snap your attention back to him. “And I just wanna say in advance that I don’t think i can give you the fun night you deserve, baby,” he apologizes, motioning towards his still swollen ankle.

Something distinctly mean switches on inside of you.

You flash him a sweet smile that has him letting down his guard. You lean forward, pressing a soft peck to his cheek as you climb down the bed towards your forgotten purse that’d been resting on the floor until that point. “Who said I needed you to have fun?” you throw over your shoulder, carefully slipping Doyeon’s first gift close to your body so he won’t see.

Jungkook levels you with an unimpressed look. “Really,” he says dryly, “you think you can have fun without me?” He almost sounds cocky, as if the idea of you even enjoying yourself the teensiest bit without his help seems unfathomable.

You grin, padding over to his bedside, where you carefully pick up his hand. You mirror his actions from before, pressing a sweet kiss against his knuckles that makes that conceited look slip off his features for a second, eyes soft.

Click.

Jungkook frowns. “What the—“ before the sentence can leave his mouth you’re lunging forward, wrestling his hands above his head, until they’re both secured at his headboard by the soft cuffs Doyeon had given you that afternoon at the salon. Jungkook’s wide eyes stare back at you, briefly leaving to glance up at the silver chain that wraps behind one of the rungs of his headboard. “Babe,” he says slowly. “What the fuck.”

You beam at him, leaning down to snatch a pillow from beneath him so he’s better positioned, leaning back more. “So cute,” you gush, taking in the way his raised arms have the hem of his hoodie lifting at the waist. There’s a faint trail of hairs around his belly button that disappear beneath the elastic of his shorts. “Do you like them?”

Jungkook blinks. “Baby,” he says a second time, much slower and a little too calm for your liking. It almost gets swallowed by the roar of the fans on TV. “What is this?”

You ignore him, scampering around his room until you find the hot pink Sexuality Unleashed packaging peeking out from beneath his bed. Sure enough, it’s in Doyeon’s name but his address. A whole complicated mess just for some nipple clamps she’ll never see again. It’s what’s inside anyway, not that you thought Jungkook was lying, but there’s something about the actual, carefully wrapped packaging that makes your heart and pussy flutter.

“Oh! Aren’t these the prettiest things?” you exclaim, whirling around to where Jungkook is shaking up a storm with his cuffs, pout growing on his features the longer you leave him there. The ice pack slips off his ankle, falling onto the comforter beside him from all his movement.

Jungkook doesn’t seem the least bit interested in the silver nipple clamps in your hands, too busy trying to free himself from the sudden trap you sprung on him. “Sweetheart, we can play with those tomorrow, alright?” he tries, relaxing his arms and finally looking your way. There’s a frustrated furrow to his brows, one you rarely see but adore very much. “Just undo these cuffs for me, yeah?”

You tilt your head to the side, placing a hand on the inside of his calf that you trail all the way up as you move to stand beside his hip. His thighs flinch at your touch, tensing when you stop just before the crotch of his pants. “Mmm, don’t think so,” you smile, dropping the thin chain beside him.

Your shirt goes first, peeled over your body until you’re left standing in your bra. It’s nothing too special this time, just your average run of the mill comfort bra hugging your chest. But that doesn’t really matter, especially not with the way you’re hoping things play out tonight. You’d discarded your jeans a few moments prior, so the shirt joins them on a pile on his floor.

As much as he tries to act irritated by your refusal to release him, there’s a slow stirring beneath his shorts. It’s emphasized by that bright blue material, cock swelling as he watches you take off your clothes. “Baby,” he warns, possibly for the last time. But you won’t know unless you push some more, you tell yourself, placing one knee on the edge of the bed, the other thrown across his lap.

“Wow,” you marvel, picking the chain up once more. Jungkook shifts beneath you, half hard cock brushing against the cleft of your cheeks. “Don’t you wanna see what it’s like, Jungkookie?”

He says nothing, watching you with solemn eyes that leave no room for reading him. Behind you, the game commentator is chattering up a storm.

Doesn’t matter, especially not when this flimsy metal had you so completely hypnotized. You reach behind yourself, unsnapping your bra with one fluid motion that has the cups falling onto your lap, soft chest on display for the man before you. Your breasts spill out slowly from their cage, pretty hardened buds slowly coming into his view. They make him pause his fussing, half-lidded gaze falling to the swell of your chest hungrily. His hands jerk, the cuffs doing their job of keeping them there.

You grin, placing a hand on his chest, over his hammering heart. “Do you wanna see me wear them?” you croon, tugging the material of his hoodie up his stomach, until your thighs are sitting directly on his tiny waist, thin thong just over his belly button. You trail your hand up, letting it brush up the side of his neck and bury into his scalp. You give an experimental tug that has his eyes squeezing shut. “Yes or no, Jungkookie?”

He’s being a huge brat for you, eyes scrunched up together like the sight of you enjoying yourself sans his touch is unimaginable. Another tug of his hair and he’s exhaling shakily, a quiet, “yes,” slipping past his lips.

The chain drops onto his chest with a quiet thud, shocking him enough to blink his eyes back open. Releasing your hold on his hair, you sit back on his lap, towering over his fidgety body like a goddess at a temple, him the lowly worshipper beneath you.

Your hands crawl over your body, starting somewhere around your waist. The glide up over your tummy, caress the underside of your breasts teasingly. Sure Jungkook knew your body well, but you knew your body best. One hand rubs teasingly over your breast, palm pressing down slightly against where your nipple lies, while the other drops down between your thighs, slowly grinding against your mound.

“Look, Jungkookie,” you gasp, body twitching at your own hands. You take a hardened nub between your fingers, rolling it back and forth until it’s standing at its peak. “I can do it without you,” you tease, rolling your hips against him slowly. The thin material of your thong does nothing to save you from the delicious swell of his cock against you. “F-Fuck,” you whimper, circling a finger over your clit. “It’s, it’s even better.”

His restraints jiggle against the bed frame, an obvious look of distress crossing his features. “No,” he huffs out a whine, tugging at the cuffs as you slowly unravel on his lap. They don’t give, no matter how much he pulls. You know he’s holding back, afraid of damaging his headboard, and you take advantage of the fact as you move to roll both nipples between your fingers. He groans harshly, jaw tight. “Hate you,” he hisses, hips wiggling beneath you. “Hate you, hate you.”

You breathe out an airy chuckle. “R-Really?” you ask, trembling hands finally reaching back for that second gift of the day. Your breath is shallow, so thoroughly wound up from your own playful hands, and you tremble at the mere brush of the cool metal. “Oh fuck,” you whimper, bringing them up to your chest, “I’ve never done this before,” you confess.

There’s a sense of amazement that consumes you at the thin chain you hold in your hands, the pretty gold painted clamps on each end. It makes you shiver, body unconsciously grinding down against Jungkook’s lap where his engorged cock was fighting against the material of his shorts.

“Then let me help you,” he tries, the childish tone from before melting into his usual silky smooth baritone. Jungkook even softens his gaze at you, let’s his tongue peek out to wet his lips as you almost seriously consider his request.

Had it not been for the sudden loud shout from the sports commentator behind you, a long obnoxious gooooooaaal, you probably would have fallen victim to that honey-eyed gaze. You would like to personally thank every loud-mouthed, ESPN commentator out there for saving you from Jungkook’s dangerous seduction skills.

Without a second thought, you bring one of the little camps close to your chest, giving it a few experimental squeezes until the nerves are replaced with an overwhelming wave of horniness that even Jungkook can sense. “Fuck,” he groans, shaking his restraints back and forth like a wild animal as you slowly get to clamping your left nipple.

You’re not sure what you expected; part of you had thought it was going to be an excruciating pain, one that would make you want to scream and shout in sheer agony. The other part had reduced it to a barely there pinch that would never live up to your fantasies. As it stands, the sensation of the clamp around your swollen nipple sits right in between, drawing in a choked gasp that makes your eyes roll into the back of your head.

“Baby, sweetheart,” Jungkook gasps alongside you, eyes zeroed in on the pinched off bundle of nerves. There’s a sudden grinding sound that fills the air, like the sawing off of wood that definitely doesn’t sound good, and it’s a direct result of the fight he puts up against his headboard. “Please, please,” he begs, muscled arms tugging back and forth. “I have to touch—“

The second clamp goes on, making your entire back arch as if you were possessed. You're not, just extremely overwhelmed by the prickle of pain on your tits that makes you grind down against his cock, hands fisting the front of his hoodie like it’s the only thing grounding you right now. “Oh,” you shudder, thighs quivering at the heightened stimulation you receive from the clamps sitting on your nipples. “Kook, I-I can’t.”

He growls, hips bucking beneath you in a crazed effort to better situate you on his lap. “You gotta take these off me,” he rasps out. The next buck of his hips makes the chain dangling between your breast brush dangerously close to his face. He’s unintentionally goaded on by the TV in the room, the annoying drone of the commentator shouting something about never giving up. “Can make you feel so much better, sweet girl,” he cooes, jutting his head out like he needs a kiss.

Your head feels woozy, pussy throbbing at the sensations being channeled down into your core. Your eyes flutter shut, and before you can think it through, you're blindly reaching for the chain, giving it one light tug that has you mewling like a kitten. “O-oh, fuck,” you sob, looping your finger around the thin chain carefully. Another tug that pulls against your nipples sends a gush of wetness down between your thighs. “Cock,” you slur dazedly, “need your cock.”

Jungkook shudders out a long breath. “Le-Let me go then, sweetheart,” he chokes out, “let me fuck that pretty little pussy for you.”

“Uh uh,” you disagree, bringing another angry buck out of him, metal cuffs rattling loudly. “Want you to watch,” you pant, reaching behind you for his shorts. “Watch me, Jungkookie.” It takes three tries for you to get a grip, the elastic material slipping from your fingers before you finally gain some semblance of control and paw them down . The shorts and the boxers came off together, his engorged cock springing up to tap against your ass. “W-Watch,” you repeat dazedly, leaning forward with one hand on his shoulder to line him up with your dripping hole. Behind you, the commentator is droning on about core balance or something of the sort. It takes two tries as you blindly have to tug your panties to the side as well, and just as you have his fiery red tip against your entrance, something else happens.

He catches you, pearly teeth biting down on the chain that connects your clamps in a motion you can only liken to a bloodthirsty shark jumping out of the water, jaws snapping to catch its prey. It dangles in his face, the same way his own necklaces have done to you so many times before. But the difference between you and Jungkook was that while you let his assortment of necklaces hypnotize you, drag across your face painfully, he doesn’t. He snaps forward, catches it between his teeth.

You mewl loudly, foggy vision turning onto him. Jungkook’s got this unreadable look on his face, likes he’s pissed off and turned on all at once. “You’re not in charge,” he murmurs around the chain, the s and c sounds all slurred together. “You will never be in charge, silly girl, you got that?” he spits, yanking his head back like an animal, pulling your upper body with him by the two golden clamps on your nipples.

There’s tears in your eyes, lining your waterline and threatening to fall with each tug his mouth gives against the chain of your nipple clamps. He’s got his neck craned back as far as he possibly can with a pillow beneath him, chain links digging into his bottom lip. “Y-Yes,” you sob, your entire body quivering at the way he so easily manages to overthrow you, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he says, solemn eyes flickering across your twisted features once more. He gives another purposeful tug, head snapping back just the tiniest bit, but it’s enough to tug you forward again, a loud whimper torn from your throat. “Undo these cuffs for me, sweet girl,” he commands softly, jiggling the same restraints he’d spent the better part of fifteen minutes fighting against.

“Y-Yes,” you whimper, hands wildly slapping down on his bedside table. You had had half the mind to leave the key there when you had retrieved the cuffs, telling yourself it would be easy access afterwards. It’s not, apparently, the silver pick falling just out of reach. For some reason— it’s probably the sensitivity and horninesss, the pinpricks of pain that originate from your nipples —this fact frustrates you to the point of tears.

“Easy, doll,” Jungkook talks you through, voice low and soft beneath you, “relax and grab it for me, okay?” You nod, angrily blinking away a tear that drips down your face. It splatters on Jungkook’s cheek, bringing a soft huff of amusement from him.

Finally the key brushes your hand, and you sigh in relief, shakily leaning forward to undo the lock above his head. He releases his killer chomp/grip on your chain just as you release his cuffs. “I-I’m sorry,” you sniffle, a sudden need to apologize as you watch him rub at the raw skin around his wrists. “I didn’t—“

“Shhh,” he says, cuddling you into his chest. “It’s alright,” he says simply and you believe him.

Which ends up being a terrible mistake exactly ten seconds later when he’s shoving your face into the sheets, your cries and whimpers muffled by the sounds of the game on TV as he winds your arms behind your back. You struggle for all of five seconds before a soft click resounds from behind you.

“Did you think I’d just let that slide, sweet girl?” he growls against your ear, hot breath fanning across your skin. “I'm not your dog, __,” he spits, suddenly yanking you up by your cuffed wrists. Your chest is heaving, arms aching from the way he’s got you on your knees, blind to whatever he’s doing behind you. “Don’t lock me up, because I’ll always come back to bite.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” you stammer, flinching when a hand snakes around your waist, an experimental tug to the chain of your clamps. It sends a shudder down your spine, amplified by the hot press of his body behind you. “I won’t do it again!”

“I know you fucking won’t,” he laughs meanly, trailing his hand down over your mound. One finger circles your clit through your underwear, a shaky sigh exiting your lips at the jarringly light touch. “Because I’m gonna fuck you until you’ve learned your lesson, silly girl.”

“I said sorry,” you whimper, thighs quivering. His cock brushes up against you, the same cock you were about to ride until the sunset. Oh how the tables have turned.

A hand slips beneath your underwear, pad of a finger rubbing against your swollen clit. “Oh,” you exhale, surprised with the suddenly gentle touch following his words. “Th-That’s nice,” you murmur, head lolling forward at the slow rhythm he sets, playing with you like you were a toy that needed warming up.

“Yeah?” he husks out. There’s a yank to your clamps that makes you gasp, chest following the motion as if it’ll reduce the shock. “You think this is about making you feel nice?” he murmurs. Another tug, followed by another, until he’s raining down a series of rhythmic shocks onto your tits that make you shiver and twitch, tongue heavy in your mouth to the point you feel like you’re drooling.

“Wait,” you whimper, arms twisting behind you. “Hurts, hurts” you cry, arching your back like it’ll save you from the steady stimulation against your rock-hard nipples.

“Does it?” Jungkook hums, one hand working away at your clit. He swirls it around his finger, pressing down on the nub in an attempt to distract you. But it only heightens the sting coming from your breasts, the blossom of pain that grows over each mound the longer he plays with you. “Good. Want your pretty little body to hurt for me, baby.”

Right after saying that he releases the grip on your chain, letting it swing back and forth until it eventually rests on your stomach, throbbing nipples spared for now. A breath of relief washes over you now that you only have to worry about the hand playing along your folds. The TV is still flickering to your right, but the commentator's voice sounds fuzzy and so far away, like he’s in a whole different dimension while you and Jungkook are here.

Your reprieve lasts shorter than you expected, as his free hand slowly begins creeping up your waist, fluttering over the little gold clamps pinching your nipples. “Pretty girl,” he compliments, nudging one tender nub with a playful finger. “Pretty, pretty baby,” Jungkook murmurs as he begins massaging the scorching hot skin around your nipples gently. There’s a warm kiss pressed to your shoulder, followed by a trail up the side of your neck. You shudder, trying to focus on the hand that creeps down your folds, teases itself against your entrance.

“Jungkook,” you whine softly, rolling your head to the side so he can suck bruise after bruise onto your skin. You’re definitely drooling, the saliva thick and heavy in your mouth. “T-Too much.”

“Thought you wanted that,” he mumbles, kissing up and up until he’s at your jaw and then he’s at your mouth, languidly kissing you. He’s doing that thing again where he’s hellbent on drowning you in his spit, and if you didn’t know better you’d think he was preparing you for something. “Wanted me to watch you bounce that tight little cunt on me while your tits were like this,” he says, punctuating his statement with a light slap against the side of one breast. It makes you jump, a moan catching in your throat.

The finger that had been playing meanly along your wet folds eases itself past your lips, plunges head first into the aching heat inside of you. He works it against your walls, thumb over your clit as he curls his finger inside of you. You moan loudly, shaking in your restraints. The hand over your chest squeezes, pushes the clamp deeper against your breast until your entire body is short-circuiting.

Your first orgasm comes over you with all the grace of a lightning bolt; it’s sudden and jerky, has every nerve ending wildly spasming as you whimper his name. “No more, no more,” you beg, head lolling back against his shoulder. He shows you no mercy, simply rubs furiously over your clit, until you’re jerking into his maniac hand.

When it’s over, he places a kiss against your jaw, curling his finger inside once more “Play with yourself,” he whispers.

“H-Huh?” you stutter, the rattle of your cuffs loud in both your ears, but not as loud as the breath you were trying to catch post-orgasm. You wonder if maybe he got ahead of himself again—he occasionally did that, thinking ahead to a point you hadn’t reached in your normal progression of sex —but suddenly he’s shoving you back down again, the finger that was slowly driving you insane rudely exiting your cunt.

You flop down against the mattress with a squeal, wiggling around like you actually had a chance of doing anything with him watching you like he is. You struggle for a few beats, every shift against the mattress rubbing harshly against your breasts until you nearly want to cry.

Just as you reach that point, he’s rolling you into your back, hands uncomfortably bent beneath you. It leaves you unwillingly arching to accommodate them, tits practically presented for him to see. “Pretty girl,” Jungkook groans, reaching down for the first time that day to touch himself.

His self restraint was truly unmatched, you realize, watching him squeeze the base of his cock. He runs a palm over his abdomen, up his chest. He drags the material of his hoodie along with it, eventually shucking it off somewhere to the side. His hair, so fluffy and soft, flops over his forehead, a few defined strands tickling his eyebrow.

The mere sight of him alone made you shiver, pussy clenching at the wet dream before you. He’s not an idiot either, obviously aware of what the sight of his body does to you, the tattoos littering his entire right arm that hypnotize you. The faint glow of the TV screen against his side makes him look like the cover star of every middle-aged wife’s erotic romance novel. He reaches said arm down, runs a hand along your thigh until you’re spreading them wide for him.

He doesn’t touch you like you want, only slides over your body until he’s toying with the chain of the nipple clamps that were slowly becoming the bane of your existence. “Open,” he says suddenly, and you do. Your mouth drops open, tongue stuck out slightly even if you don’t know why. He’s ingrained the response into you by now, made you into a desperate slut always ready for anything in your mouth.

This time it’s the stupid, stupid chain connecting your nipple clamps. He tugs it until it’s pulled up, the pull against your nipples making you whimper and writhe. The metal is cool when it touches your lips, but his fingertips are warm. “Good girl,” he praises once you bite down; even this sends a shock of nerves down your spine and to your pussy. “Just like that.”

A muffled whimper escapes your lips, tears clouding your vision at the stimulation that was quickly overwhelming you again. Part of you thinks no more, please, I can’t. But the other has you spreading your legs for him, quivering pussy desperate to be filled.

The distress must be obvious in your face if the way Jungkook kisses your neck is any indication. He’s got one hand massaging against the underside of one breast, like he’s soothing the striking pain of your pinched nipples for you. If anything, it only strings you along more. “Stupid baby,” he chuckles meanly, a soft puff of laughter against your jaw, “thinking she could push me down.”

He leans back onto his knees, that same careful brush against the inside of your thigh bringing about an embarrassing whimper as he peels your thong away. “But you didn’t really want that, did you?” he eggs on, slowly shifting down against the bed, until his mouth is hovering over your exposed lower lips. His breath is warm, makes you yearn for him to be closer. “You like when I shove my cock into your little pussy, right? Like how it feels when I turn you into my little slut like this,” he sighs, pressing one chaste kiss against your thigh that makes you pull at the cuffs behind your back.

Soon, his mouth is on your clit, the same clit he had previously pampered with his hands but chooses to play with again. He licks an obscenely wet stripe from your throbbing hole to your clit, tongue curling devilishly towards the end. You whimper, though the sound is distorted around the chain in your mouth. Jungkook groans, dives mouth first into your cunt until he’s suffocating himself. His cute nose is pressed against your clit, and he takes advantage of the fact by taking one, dramatic sniff with his eyes rolled back. A soft moan escapes him.

“Fuck,” he shudders, “smell like heaven for me.” You moan at his sweet words, eyes squeezed shut as if that’ll stop the buckets of overwhelmed tears that you’ve been fighting off since the moment the clamps came on. “Wanna give you the world, angel,” he breathes, licking languidly against your folds, tongue occasionally peeking inside.

You mewl and writhe, every movement sending a tug of pain over your nipples. You want that gorgeous cock deep in your cunt, want to feel him in your womb, but you can’t voice any of this with the chain of the clamps between your lips.

Jungkook sits up suddenly, and you’re thinking yes, finally, before the look on his face has you screeching to a halt. There’s something distinctly different about him, a look you don’t think you’ve ever seen in bed before. Your thoughts are only confirmed when his foot slides onto the floor, as if he’s about to leave.

The panic must be evident on your face, because Jungkook is quick to swoop in and reassure you he’s not done with you yet. “Wanna fuck your little pussy,” he admits, carding a hand through your hair. “But the truth is I don’t think you deserve that just yet.”

With that he slinks off the bed, leaving you writhing in confusion as he heads off for the closet behind you. You can’t see what he’s doing, can only hear the shuffling of something back and forth. The TV is still on, the loud cheering of the fans muffling his clattering. You’re suddenly reminded of his swollen ankle, craning your neck to tell him to not overdo it, when something dark covers your eyes.

He’s standing just beside the edge of the bed, his signature teddy bear heat emanating off in waves so thick you could touch them. “Do you trust me?” he murmurs, voice close but not close to your ear.

Something swells in your chest, an emotion so intense your entire pelvis tightens up at the realization that Jungkook was asking for permission to blindfold you. You’re almost certain it’s one of his ties, a silky black thing that covers your vision for the most part, save for a little crack by where your nose juts out. A shuffle to your side, and then he’s gently prying the chain he had pushed past your lips earlier out. “Need an answer, ___,” he says quietly, almost nervously.

“Yes,” you gasp, your entire body set aflame at the sudden turn of events.

If you were being honest you would have never predicted your night would end like this. Maybe you came in a little too cocky, a little too optimistic for the night. It was supposed to be Jungkook handcuffed and powerless, you remind yourself— how on earth did you get here?

“Good girl,” he praises, giving you a little encouraging nudge to raise your head for him to actually tie the knot behind your head. It’s definitely one of his suit ties, you realize, because there’s a distinct cross-stitch pattern that you can feel only when it’s tightened against your skin, pressing against your fluttering eyelids. When he releases you, you’re suddenly all too aware of the sense he’s deprived you of.

“K-Kook?” you call out with a tremble in your voice. The rhythmic pattern of his footsteps rounds the bed again, and then there’s a soft touch against your leg.

“Right here, sweet girl,” he reassures you. The bed dips by your legs as he closes in on you, still tied up and on the verge of a second orgasm that he snatched away before your very eyes; not that you can see it anymore. His hand slides over your stomach, tugs playfully at the clamps. You moan, the sensation magnified tenfold by the fact you can’t see nor anticipate his actions now.

His hands glide like two sailing boats over the broad expanse of sea that is your body, molding against your curves like waves as they go. He hums appreciatively, and you find yourself glad you can’t see him. You can’t possibly imagine with what eyes he’s looking at you now.

You bask in the glory of his attention for another beat before he retracts his touch.

And then, suddenly, something distinctly not hand-like, and weirdly soft traces over the inside of your thighs. “Kook?” you ask tentatively.

No response.

It runs over your skin in the same way his hands just did, a unique shape your brain scrambles to put a name too. It’s soft, so soft. But cold to the touch. Inanimate for sure. It’s a toy, your brain supplies belatedly, but that much you already know.

It’s heart-shaped, you realize, just as it thwacks down against your pussy.

You shriek at the suddenness of it all, thighs clamping shut. Your heart is thundering at a pace of a rabbit’s, chest rising and falling as you blindly piece together what just happened. “Kook?” you whimper a second time, head craning back and forth in a desperate attempt to track his next move.

He’s not touching you anymore, but the bed is still dipping by your feet, so you deduce he must be there. You test your theory by sliding your foot against the sheets, lower lip trembling at the idea of him not being there.

Jungkook catches your ankle with one warm palm, slightly calloused from years of weightlifting. He raises it up, the cold air of his room hitting your exposed pussy. “You liked it,” he says, not a question but an observation. Your pussy throbs, the phantom strike against it lingering. A kiss to your ankle.

“Wh-What is it?” you cry, unconsciously pressing your leg closer to him now that you have his location. (You don’t see the soft smile on his face at your action.) Ever so slowly you let your thighs open again, now anticipating the next touch of that thing— that riding crop, you realize.

Jungkook confirms. “It’s a riding crop,” he explains, excitement curling around his words. Suddenly, it returns, this time against your stomach. He doesn’t strike you like he did before, simply lets it run across your tummy. “Heart-shaped. It’s so pretty,” he sighs dreamily. “Reminds me of you.”

You nod anxiously, stomach muscles tensed the longer it stays there. Jungkook obviously sees this, lifting it to give you the lightest of taps that still manages to make you gasp. “Cute,” he laughs, trailing it back to where it first touched down.

“Oh,” you tremble, thighs twitching as it pats tenderly over your clit. “Wai-Wait,” you warn, body arching as he runs it down, down your swollen folds. “No,” you weep, going to close your legs. But Jungkook predicts your moves, pressing your thigh down harshly against the bed.

“Shh,” he soothes, tracing the heart down your folds, pressing it flat against you. There’s a distinct lining over it that makes your hips jump, a faux-velvet covering the tip that tickles your skin. “Sit still for me.”

“No!” you gasp. Your back arches, body betraying you as it pushes your pussy against the toy. “I can’t, I can’t, Kook,” you sob, lips contracting around the gaping nothingness in your hole.

He condemns your attitude with a harsh swat of the riding crop against your cunt, tearing another high-pitched squeal from your lips. It’s followed by another against your clit that makes your body spasm. “Bad,” he chides. “Supposed to be my perfect girl.”

“I c-can’t,” you whine, the darkness over your eyes making the sensations ten times more intense. You don’t know where he or the riding crop are if they’re not directly touching you. Even then, the image is fuzzy in your head. “Need you,” you pant.

You try to reach for him, try to pull him into your arms. But you’re reminded of the cuffs holding you back, the metal digging into your skin behind you. You sob at the realization, angrily shaking your hands back and forth like maybe acting like a tantrum-throwing child will save you. It doesn’t.

Instead there’s a tug at the chain resting on your stomach, one that makes you cry out in pain when it pulls at your terribly sensitive nipples again. Jungkook uses it to pull you close, just a small inch off the bed that has you gasping for breath nonetheless.

“N-No,” you wail, nipples throbbing from all the sensations you’ve put them through tonight.

A chaste peck against your trembling lips. “Tell me how it feels,” he purrs, nose brushing against yours. Even with the tie obstructing your vision, the latest version of your boyfriend burns itself into your eyelids, force feeding you his sweaty skin and damp hair until even his breath against your face is enough to bring you to the edge.

“I-It’s scary, Kook,” you sniffle, listening for any signs of a reaction. But even if he did show one, your breathing is too loud and the ESPN channel is still blaring on screen. “Scary,” you whimper, lunging forward in a desperate move to feel the familiar brush of his tongue against yours. You miss.

“Do you want to stop?” he asks carefully, like he’s afraid he’s pushed too far.

He has. But fuck, do you love it.

“No,” you wail, lips smushed somewhere along his cheek, near his jaw and not his mouth like you wanted to. “Feels good, feels so fucking amazing,” you babble, cut off halfway through by a hiccup from your sad cries. “Wanna cum, wanna cum for you like this.”

Jungkook chuckles in relief, tilting his head until you can catch his lips with yours. It’s probably an awkward angle you assume, him adjusting for your vision-less whims, but it feels so good. It sends a shock to your pussy, his plush lips against yours. Without him telling you, you’re opening your mouth for him. “Spit on me,” you beg pitifully.

Jungkook groans, and you can almost visualize the look on his face perfectly— the tensing of his jaw, the push of his Adam’s apple, the pucker of his lips. “God, you’re disgusting,” he sighs, a fat glob of spit hitting the back of your tongue. Without your vision, you don’t see it coming, recoiling with a whiny mewl. The thin trail of saliva that follows trails across your chin when he finally reels back. You swallow greedily, wondering how soon is too soon to ask him to do it again.

With your full permission to move forward, Jungkook wastes no time trailing the riding crop over your wet folds, collecting your oozing pre-cum on the tiny heart as he roves it over your cunt. “Fuck, you can probably cum like this too, can’t you?”

You can’t answer, too caught up in the featherlight brushes. Even if you wanted to say something, one sudden strike against your pussy renders you speechless. “Mmh!” you hiss, biting down on your lip.

“Come on,” Jungkook encourages, resting a hand on your thigh. He presses the crop against you again, pushes down until the flat apex of the heart where it meets the flexible stem of the toy is pressing against your cunt hotly. He grinds it down against you, takes a sick pleasure in the pathetic way you arch up into it, rut against the little heart like it can provide even half the pleasure his hands usually would. “Talk to me, sweetheart,” he murmurs.

Your body is on fire, every nerve, every sensation shooting straight to your most erogenous areas— your cunt and your nipples. Talking seems like the farthest thing from your mind right now, too caught up in the way he roughly pushes the crop against your clit. A whimper rips itself from your throat, shuddering at the sensation. Unconsciously you jerk away from him, only to be scolded with another thwack against your quivering pussy lips. “A-Ahh,” you wail, squirming beneath him like a worm that can’t sit still. “Good— it feels good, Jungkookie,” you weep.

The soft mushy pet name has him raining down two snacks against you in quick succession. “No baby names,” he warns, frown evident in his voice.

Even with you completely under him like this, shackled and blinded with your love, something unmistakably childish and obnoxious curls around your throat, has you biting down on a grin as the coil in your stomach tightens. “D-Don’t like that, Jungkookie,” you choke out hoarsely, wildly bold for someone in your position. “D-Don't like being m-my baby?”

The crop loses its position over your folds, and for a minute you’re left anxiously anticipating its next touch.

It’s on the side of your breast, harder than the rest, combining with the already powerful pinch of the clamps. It makes you cry out painfully, stomach tightening at what is probably the most unexpected orgasm you’ve ever had. It isn’t like your usual ones that overpower you and make cum trickle out between your folds.

No, it comes in waves— literally. Your pussy spasms, pushes one splurt of cum out between your thighs, almost likes your lower lips are spitting it out. And then again, more the second time, against his mattress. He pushes your legs up to your chest to marvel at the cum coating your lips and thighs. “You’re my baby, stupid,” he hisses. He grabs at your clamps then, twisting the little chain in his hand harshly. You sob at the yank, at the way your nipples feel two seconds away from being ripped off. But you can’t even complain, because the sudden touch has your pussy clenching, before a final trickle of cum oozes out of you.

Even still, your mind babbles on. “N-No,” you choke, shaking back and forth. Despite the tie covering your eyes, they flicker like a mad man beneath it, like you’ll somehow get lucky and develop Seeing Through Fabric Ability if you try hard enough. “My, my baby,” you fight weakly, pelvis trembling from aftershocks of that orgasm. “My idiot b-boy,” you smile dazedly, eyes rolling into the back of your head at the sting you’ve become familiar with by now. “T-Tell me, Jungkookie,” you croon, biting down on your lip to keep a moan from spilling out mid-syllable. “Still the same, r-right?” you stutter, “still think you’re better than me, don’t you?”

He scoffs. “No,” he vehemently denies, brashly landing an unexpected smack against your hip, no warning in sight. “That’s not true,” he defends. You can hear his pout, the little push of his lips when he grows defensive.

You laugh, every bit the insane lunatic, fueled by your two orgasms and slipping sense of reality. “Ffffuck,” you whimper, rolling your hips up into nothing. “S-Say it again, baby,” you plead, tongue licking across your lips. “Tell me, tell me you don’t care about my problems, Kook-ah,” you whimper.

There’s a hesitant pause on his end, an unexpected lull in your play as he’s torn apart between doing what you want or playing it safe.

You know you’re confusing him, because you’re certainly confusing yourself. You don’t even bother trying to dissect your emotions— you’ve long since accepted your mind was a dangerous place when horny and presented with Jungkook’s sole attention. Well, you knew you were into the whole degradation bit, but this whole having-your-boyfriend-throw-the-words-that-made-you-question-your-entire-worth bit was certainly new and unexpected.

But there’s something in your heart (and in your libido) that needs this, needs him to fix this memory for you that maybe, kinda sorta, has haunted you for days, weeks now, as much as you hate to admit it. Needed him to fix the booboo he gave you with a bandaid, only leave a scar you could look back at and laugh off, not a gaping wound that opened at the slightest mention of it. Because while you forgave, you certainly never forgot*.

(*Unless forgetting meant having your boyfriend overwrite said memory that couldn’t be forgotten with the sheer power of his monster demon cock and wicked tongue. Only then could you forget.)

“Don’t be a fucking pussy, Jungkook,” you spit, feeling the hesitancy in the riding crop that brushes against your skin. It fades away quickly. “S-Say I’ve a dead-end office job; just holding you back,” you beg, trying to pretend the entirety of his little outburst hasn’t been ingrained into your mind for the last couple of weeks. Something flashes in your chest, throat closing off when the toy finally leaves your skin. “Tell me, tell me—“

He looms over you, teddy bear warmth covering the entirety of your body. “Is this what you want?” he asks seriously, lowly, breath fanning across your lips. Your makeshift blindfold feels distinctly damp over your eyes, chest heaving with an exertion that can only be emotional when he speaks so softly to you after routinely raining down brutal thwacks on you for the past half hour. “__,” he says sternly, “is this what you want?”

You gasp on a sob, unsure when these emotions had time to manifest outside your heart like this. You nod your head like a bobble head doll sitting on someone’s dashboard, lower lip trembling on a shameful cry that is not sex-induced like all the other ones until now. “I-I need this, Jungkook,” you admit, voice so tiny and soft, it almost gets drowned out by your shaky exhales and the crowd roaring on screen. “Need to overwrite it.”

He presses a soft kiss to your quivering lips, slow and so devastatingly loving. It’s nothing like the one from before where he’d spit down your throat per your request, and the unbridled adoration he packs into one simple kiss makes you crumble in his arms, sniffles piling on by the dozens.

He leans back after a moment, pulls your thigh over his forearm and finally lets you feel the hard ridges of his cock against your folds. “Stupid girl,” he huffs, trying to sound angry and annoyed, but there’s a lilting tone to his words, a love and trust you wouldn’t have been able to see with or without your blindfold, but can feel nonetheless. He pulls it off you anyway, the warm glow of the TV illuminating his face for you for the first time in about half an hour. Eyes soft, sweat trailing down his body. His body lines up against yours, but so does his heart. You feel it in the way he holds you in his arms, the way he’s careful about sinking into your folds. He slips an arm beneath your waist, uses it to hold you up so you’re not uncomfortably squishing your arms anymore. But if you ask, he’ll pretend he’s doing this for convenience sake only.

“T-Terrible fucking job,” he starts out, the stammer eluding the obvious discomfort he has saying those words, but he does it for you anyway. “Big fucking baby,” he tries again, slowly pushing past your tight walls with a shudder. “C-Can’t look away from you for two seconds because you’re such a fucking kid.”

“Worse,” you choke out. “Meaner. Please, Kook.”

He nods, holds your waist carefully when he finally bottoms out inside of you. “Dead-end office job,” he says, repeating the words that had made you want to crawl into a whole and never come out from. “Got some stupid fucking problems,” he tacks on, slowly withdrawing his hips from your heat. “Always complaining about the stupidest shit,” he hisses, fingers digging into your waist when it’s only the tip of his cock inside of you. “I don’t fucking care about it,” he seethes, forcefully snapping his hips into you.

They’re scrambled fragments of what he’d really said to you that night. Line after line that don’t carry a quarter of hurt or even make coherent sense for that matter. And still.

You whimper, mind fuzzy from the thrusting pace he picks up, body fluttering at the glide of his cock against your walls. But your heart is thundering in your throat, his willingness to help fix this memory for you tightening around your every being until you can’t breathe. “I-I love you,” you cry, clenching down around him.

Jungkook groans, pulls you flush against his cock until the thin hairs around the base of his cock are tickling your skin. “Stupid, fucking child,” he groans, “immature ass nobody,” he grunts, bucking into you like your words don’t mean a thing.

“I am, I am,” you wail, suddenly hit with the cold hard truth that your body was desperately on edge. From the stimulation your nipples had gotten all night, to the ghost of the riding crop that lingered across your skin; your body was tired, so ready for a final orgasm that you’re certain Jungkook will provide. “T-Tell me y-you—“

“Shut up,” he barks, sweaty skin gliding against yours. “D-Don't tell me what to do,” he huffs, nailing you into the bed. He’s pushing you hard into the mattress, like he wants to brand you into it. “Need to fix this— alone.”

You nod numbly, the crowd behind him cheering loudly. It’s like they’re rooting for him— for the two of you —as silly as it sounds, and as bothersome as it would be any other day, today the obnoxious sounds of the ESPN soccer match only serve to fix a bad memory from before. It’s loud and cringey as all hell, but you’ll look back to this moment and laugh.

And that’s what you want most of all. You want that memory from before, that nasty fight, to go away, to disappear forever and be replaced with this one. Of him, pounding you into the sheets as his TV blares beside you, just another day, another round of sex filled with your usual kinks. Nothing more, nothing less.

“Ffffuck,” you whine when the tip of his hard cock prods against your cervix. He’s going deep, he’s going all out, because he wants to fix this too. Wants to do anything to make it right, and he’ll never know how much you appreciate him for it. “S-So deep,” you whimper, hips jumping when he rams back inside.

“Stupid slut,” Jungkook snarls, tucking his head against your neck the same way he always does. “Making me do stupid shit like this,” he bites, but you know he doesn’t mean it, know he never will again. He rocks his hips into you, no longer concerned with holding you up from uncomfortably laying on your cuffed arms anymore as he pistons into your squelching heat. He’s pressed so close over you, lips brushing against your collarbone with each snap of his hips.

All the pushing and jostling about has the chain of your clamps wildly jumping about, sprawling across the planes of your chest, above your breasts, where he snatches it up between his lips again. “Stupid, fucking—“ he slurs, jutting his head to the side like a wild stallion. You sob at the tenderness of your nipples, at the way he pays them no mercy as he continues rutting into you like a mad dog in heat. “Slut,” he spits. “S-So fuckin’ pretty.”

Your mind is in another universe, and when that last word, that devastatingly familiar term, slips from his lips mindlessly, something inside you snaps. “N-No,” you sob, legs fidgeting around his waist at the orgasm that wracks through your body against your will. “No,” you cry in frustration, “didn’t, didn’t want—“

“Stupid, stupid angel,” he babbles, seemingly unaware of your orgasm as he continues fucking into your leaking cunt, ignorant of the cum that dribbles out, creams his cock as he carries on. “Fuck,” he pants, gnaws against the chain of the stupid clamps like he can’t bare this any longer. “Love you,” he says, though he’s still stuck in that mindset from before and his sweet confession sounds more like a threat. “L-Love that childish side of you,” he confesses, finally dropping the chain— much to your relief —and surging forward to kiss you on the mouth. He tastes weirdly metallic, a thought you can’t ponder too long as he continues ramming himself past your clenched lips and into your pussy. “Your fffucking dr-drive to succeed,” he grunts, mouth smushed uncomfortably against your cheek.

“Kook, sweetheart,” you shudder, sensitive pussy spent as he drills on. His cock is still so achingly hard, and he doesn’t seem anywhere near completion. “Take it easy,” you gently remind him, can’t brush your fingers through his hair like you usually would, so you settle for pressing your lips to his cheek.

“Fuck, fuck,” he heaves, pushing so deep you practically feel him in your womb, swollen mushroom head begging for entry. “Give me it all,” he stammers, “want you—want this forever.”

“I know you do, baby,” you coo, nuzzling your nose against his when he sloppily surges forward, panting and gasping over you like a crazed caveman. “I’m yours,” you gently remind him.

“No,” he chokes out hoarsely, eyes screwed shut. “Need more, all of it,” he mumbles. “Give me yourself, ___, need you for the rest of my life—“ he cuts himself off with a shuddered whine, so airy and wispy it makes you shiver. “Ffffuck, shit,” he howls, each thrust into your walls only unraveling him more and more. “Give me, give me—“

“Anything,” you whimper, body trembling from his excessivity. “What do you want, Kook-ah?”

He says nothing, losing himself in the warmth of your pussy as his orgasm rounds the corner. He’s in the final stretch, the final straight until achieving nirvana alongside you at the finish line. And, as you’ve long since come to understand, a true Jungkook Danger Zone. He loses all sense of self, random syllables and phrases slipping through his lips.

“Fuck, fuck, marry me— marry me,” he moans, snapping his hips into you with a ferocious speed that has you bouncing against the sheets, and that’s despite the tight grip his has on you. “Let me— fuck— let me fuck a baby into you, sweetheart,” he purrs, eyes shining like an absolute psycho, but you’re apparently into that because the idea squeezes around your chest and burrows it’s way in. “A baby,” he marvels like an idiot, eyes big and sparkly, “f-fuck.”

“Wh-What?” you choke, flinching when he bites down against your lower lip. He’s got you trapped beneath him, stuffing your brain with these ideas that make your heart enter cardiac arrest, body tingling like in Mario Kart when you’ve got the star power up. “Kook—“

“Sh,” he groans, digging his fingers into your sides as he rolls his hips against you. “Almost,” he informs you, but the blood rushes to your ears. “Oh, fuck,” he pants, jaw clenching, “oh, baby.”

Jungkook cums with a shivered cry, body hunching over you like some entity has just exited out of his spine. Maybe something did, because afterwards he manages to hold himself above you for exactly three seconds before dropping the entirety of his hefty muscles onto you. “Ouch,” you whine, wrists twisted uncomfortably beneath you.

“Sorry,” he huffs, completely out of breath and dazed as he rolls away from you. He ends up spread out like a starfish beside you, completely fucked out and definitely zooming through the fifth, sixth, and seventh dimensions.

He doesn’t say anything for a hot minute, chest rising and falling like he’s just run a marathon, until you butt in. “Kook. Undo me,” you remind him.

He looks over at you, dark hair falling over his eyes and sprawling around his head like a halo. Oh, he was going to be the death of you. “Oh,” he says, like his brain has just processed the information. “Right.” He sits up, tucking himself back into the shorts he never fully took off. That was his character flaw; never bothers to get completely naked during sex. Anyway, his straight male-equivalent of booty shorts come up around his thighs again, stretching sinfully across the thick muscles.

The five sonnet poem that was gearing up in your head comes to a halt when he touches your breast. “No, no more,” you cry, instinctively withering away.

Jungkook snorts. “I’m just taking them off, baby,” he says, reaching forward again with the same practiced ease you’d use on an animal. The clamps come off, all the nerves suddenly coming back to life. It’s a weird sensation, not having your tits subject to that prickling pain anymore, and it makes you moan softly. Jungkook soothes you with his wannabe masseuse hands, but you think it’s just an excuse for him to fondle your breasts.

“How’re you feeling?” he asks gently, hovering over you like a damned surgeon or something. His voice is so silky and smooth, hands soft against your chest. He’s so careful in the way he turns you over, somehow magically producing the tiny key pick you swore was lost between the sheets after its first use.

Being on your chest makes you tremble like a leaf, the faintest brush of the cotton against your tits enough to make your pussy clench weakly. “ I’ve got you, sweetheart,” he murmurs, carefully detailing his actions like you’re not watching him with your very own eyes. But it’s oddly comforting, having him walk you through the process of rolling your sore wrists. The inside of the cuffs had a plush lining, but it was a pretty cheap thing. After he’s done massaging the skin, he pads over to his dresser and returns with a shirt and undies for you. “Shirt,” he says, helping you into the clothing.

When you’re all snuggled under the sheets again, the television still loud as hell, he mumbles, “wanna talk about it?”

You exhale against his chest, feeling so light and fluttery from your orgasms and the way he runs his fingers through your scalp and the way his heart thunders by your ear. “Hm,” you hum pensively. “Nah. Think I’m fine now,” you admit.

Jungkook chuckles. “A full miracle recovery?” he teases. You nod, taking in the comforting scent of his fabric softener and just him in his entirety.

“Yep.” A beat of silence, the commentator is back to filling the space between you two. He talks about a mile minute, spewing stats and plays you could never understand in a thousand years. But you know Jungkook will get sucked in soon enough, so you strike while the pot is hot. “Do you wanna talk?”

He cranes his neck a little to look at you. “What do you mean?”

You roll your eyes, pushing yourself up to look at him straight on. “Oh, my mistake,” you drawl. “I seem to have missed the part where we were going to act like you didn’t just ask for my hand in marriage and then offered to get me pregnant—,” you pause, the realization suddenly hitting you like a trash can whipping down a hill on a rainy day at a thousand miles per hour. “Pregnant!” you exclaim, cheeks warm at the fact he really just said that to you.

Jungkook’s cheeks fare no better, a Flaming Hot Cheeto shade dusting his skin. “I, it was just…” he tries, poor tiny monkey brain working overtime to offer an excuse. “It-it doesn’t have to be a thing,” he blushes, big Bambi eyes flickering from you to the television to the heart-tipped riding crop by the foot of the bed. “I was just…”

You raise your brows. “Consumed by the spirit of King Henry IV to have fourteen kids?”

He blinks. “Wait, you actually paid attention to that film?”

“That’s not the point!” you exclaim, shifting onto your knees in front of him. “What,” you inhale sharply, heart beating wildly in your chest, “what was that?”

Jungkook can only play the shocked angel card for so long before he’s sinking back into his pillow stack with the sigh of a man who’s worked in construction for the last sixty-four years. “I just,” he mumbles, “I think about it sometimes.” His admission makes your heart lodge itself into your throat, wide eyes watching him spill out his heart to you.

He misreads the expression on your face. “I-Not now!” he hurries to explain. “Like,” he stammers, rosy hue slowly crawling down his neck, over his ears. “Maybe, y’know? In the future…”

You blink, brain reduced to a series of beeps and clicks like that of an old computer trying to compute information that is simply not processing. “Yeah…” you murmur, unsure of what to do with the film reel that suddenly flashes before your eyes, a look into a doorway you had never considered before. “I— me too.”

Jungkook chokes on his own saliva. “Really?” he yelps, has those sparkly anime girl eyes you always tease him about.

The gulp you do sounds loud in your ears. “Yeah,” you breathe, throat drier than the desert, but more confident than the first peabrain response. “I-I’d like that.”

There’s a bright beam of light that shines right in your face, so vibrant and dazzling it makes you flinch and by the time you’ve recovered you realize it’s his smile. “Yeah?” Jungkook mumbles back, pearly teeth framed by his pretty smile, brows raised at your stuttery confirmation. You nod. His lips twist into a smaller grin, a condensed version of the superstar one he gave you just moments before. Before you can brush it off with a joke, he’s snatching your hand up in his, a soft smooch pressed to your knuckles. “Okay,” he says quietly, dark eyes meeting yours. “One day?”

Your heart constricts in your chest, and all you can do is nod. “One da—“

“Goooooaaaaallllll!” the announcer on screen shrieks, the loud sounds of the TV killing your mood instantly.

Any dumbstruck, love struck, idiotic, ditzy expression on your face is wiped clean, replaced with an unimpressed glare you narrow on him. His nose is scrunched up like he wants to laugh, lips pressed into a thin line at your annoyance. He swipes the TV remote off the side table, arms spread open for you to crawl back into. You do so with a huff, pout smushed against the front of his hoodie.

“That’s enough ESPN for today,” he chuckles, switching the channel about a thousand times until Rick and Morty is playing on screen. “I’ll just watch the highlights later.”

“ESPN,” you scoff like an evil villain in a movie who’s just been presented with their mortal enemy, fisting the front of his hoodie.

Jungkook nods. “ESPN,” he repeats. A beat passes. “Kinda like BDS—“

“Go get your ice pack.”

epilogue

Because Jungkook couldn’t sit still for that one eventful night following his ladder injury, he ends up in a medical boot for one week, loudly clunking around the place like a reverse pirate. You snap a picture of him that you post on Twitter for your twelve followers to see, just him pouting at the doctor’s office with his new boot and club jersey on to celebrate last night’s victory.

It’s just a cute pic for you and your friends to laugh at.

Until it’s not, and his handsome face is circulating around the entire internet.

He’s being called the Face of FC Seoul, with desperate women messaging you left and right for his information. Other fans are bragging about the beauty that is an FC Seoul fanboy. It gets to the point where his face appears on the next night’s ESPN Nightly Recap, a special on social media stars posting about the game. Except Jungkook is neither a social media star nor did he even post about the game— you did.

But there he is, all five feet and ten inches of him smiling brightly at you from the ESPN Sports channel, wearing the boot he got from hand cuffing and whipping you to completion.

#goldenclosetnet #bangtanhq #networkbangtan #jungkook smut #jjk smut #jeon jungkook smut #jeongguk smut #jeon jeongguk smut #bts smut #mine

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beevean · 2 years

Note

Booty booty booty, booty, booty booty booty booty: booty?

Advent was pretty good and an improvement over ZX.

The plot tried to be more ambitious: the two protagonists are different people and not just gender swaps of each other, there is full voice acting (ZX had it in Japanese), and most importantly Prometheus and Pandora are given more depth: Prometheus’s VA is clearly having the time of his life with him, they’re revealed as being DANs (Doctor Albert Numbers) and to be “centuries” old (apparently created during the Zero era?), but they've rebelled against their cruel master for using them as tools.

I must admit, however, that I struggled to follow it because, well, it still wasn’t as engaging as the (good) plots in the X series or Zero series. I’m sorry, I guess I have very low tolerance for this shonen anime stuff :P

I played with Ashe, because I was warned of a certain meme surrounding her. After I got hit with a dozen “booties” in the span of a few minutes, she’s fine to play as. It takes a little too long IMO for her to get Model A, but I really like her laser gun, it gives a different depth to taking down enemies (although I’m sure some purists hated that it made the “run ‘n’ shoot” gameplay easier :P). I didn’t use the homing attack much, but it is pretty useful against quick onslaughts of enemies.

The map was also improved. First of all, it’s actually readable! But also, the main hub is more compacted and now it actually feels more like a Metroidvania, blocking your way until you get the right powerup. The three elemental gates that you need to open before entering the Oil Fields are maybe the best example. The obstacles are memorable just like they should be in a good Metroidvania.

I liked the levels a lot. Especially later on, they’re complex and require you to think about which of your many powers will be the best suited to solve a puzzle, from using Buckfire’s arrow to shoot a switch at a certain angle, to using Chronoforce’s time slowing power to get through a section, to use Vulturon’s flying power to activate a laser that keeps the spikes down... It’s all very thought out. I guess it’s too early to judge how easy it is to keep the flow, though :P

Oh, and I loved that the Control Center is Slither Inc. but on fire. And it looks like the Floating Ruins are what's left of Area A! Always nice to see continuity like this!

But there are a few things that are more ehh.

First of all, who thought that making you pay to activate portals was a good idea? Sure, at a certain point paying 100 EC per portal is more than affordable, but at first you have to grind - what’s with Inti games and excessive grinding? Zero 3 is maybe the only one without it!

I also don’t understand why they’re one-way. I want to go to an area because I remember an obstacle I can now go through, I teleport there, I find what I’m looking for... but to go back I have to traverse half the zone. Why? Again, backtracking is the bread and butter of Metroidvanias, Metroid games sure don’t have teleporters (except for SR), but I don’t understand the reason of this half-and-half approach!

Another minor nitpick is that the game frequently forces you to revert to Model A: during cutscenes, when you talk to people and when activating a warp point. I understand the first case: the original ZX could afford to have different portraits based on the model you were using because there were only 5 of them, while here you can potentially become a boss as well and the number is overwhelming. Fine, but why do I have to be Model A for the warp point? Yes it's very minor, but you feel the waste of time.

(hilariously, I discovered at the end that your base form also works)

The A-Trans gimmick is... a gimmick. Situational at best. Almost everyone moves at the pace of a snail so you’re not encouraged to use the bosses’ forms in the levels. Buckfire is probably the best one thanks to his speed and very high jump, and he got some mileage in the ice level. Rosespark is for climbing vines, and only that as he moves painfully slowly on land. Chronoforce is for slowing down time (really useful) and swimming if there are too many spikes, but he's enormous and clunky. Vulturon is alright for crossing horizontal gaps. Queenbee can also fly, and in more directions, but her main utility is to lift stuff. Bifrost is just for breaking blocks, and every step you take as him is agony. Hedgeshock is another good one, thanks to her being literally Sonichu Sonic :D Overall, the best thing I can say is that it hints at Model A being what is left of Axl, who poor thing wasn’t even mentioned in the Zero series. (yes the end of the game reveals A as standing for “Albert”. I reject that notion because Axl makes much more sense :P)

There are also the standard models! Model F gained a cool ground pound, Model P has better trajectory and his grabbing ability has been implemented better, Model L is largely the same but with a better animation for swimming (and I loved Model L so I’m not complaining :P) and Model H my double jumping beloved <3 As for Model Z, you get it rather late for some reason, but I understand why: it’s as great as ever, yes please let me break enemies in half with the Kuuenzan, especially the final boss <3

The bosses are once again really cool, although I feel some of them were dumbed down a little compared to ZX. I liked Atlas, fast paced and using Model F’s power rather cleverly. Vulturon’s rockstar persona was unique and made him instantly memorable, and the way it ties to his necromancer gimmick (according to the Database) is very clever. And of course, Prometheus and Pandora stole the show, although they didn’t quite kick my ass as mercilessly as in ZX lol. (although the fact that you can't absorb their DNA is a steal)

Graphically the game is just as good as ZX. My jaw dropped especially at the undersea volcano! Musically... I don't know how to describe the different feeling this OST gives me over ZX's, but it feels different. Still, the list of jams is as long as you'd expect:

Destiny, which sadly I didn't get to experience myself but what an opening banger!

Through the Lightning, more lighthearted and fitting Ashe's personality

Target Chaser, just as epic as previous train themes :P

Drifting Floe, a good companion piece to Ice Brain and Wonder Panorama

In The Wind, a more serious rendition of Green Grass Gradation

Brimstone, great theme for the final stage of the previous game but destroyed

Organic Line, a danceable earworm in every aspect

Oriental Sentinels, super cute forest theme and one of my favorites

Whisper of Relics

Slam Down, which is even better than Rockin’ On! Dat piano bass!

Dive into Depth, mysterious and alluring

Path to the Truth, very very Zero and fitting both the beautiful scenario and the rising stakes

Trap Phantasm, for when Prometheus and Pandora are not playing around

Soul Ablaze, a rocking jam in the same vein as Sigma 1st from X1

Divine Hammer, going for the unsettling and creepy rather than epic

(also, hearing Sky High again at the end filled me with joy <3)

As a bonus, I briefly tried "Mega Man a". It's cute! And I bet that at the time a throwback to the Classic series was even more precious. Hilarious in hindsight when you consider that Inti Creates are the ones who later made Mega Man 9 and 10 :P

So, the overall experience was alright. I appreciate that they fixed the Metroidvania aspects of ZX and made the experience more cohesive. I probably would have done without the A-trans gimmick which just makes navigating through your forms more cumbersome, but other than some nitpicks, I have nothing much to say! It's good.

Also

youtube

You weren't kidding with the Sailor Moon joke :P

#megaman #megaman zx advent

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ladynestaarcheron · 3 years

Text

Fears All the Way Down - Chapter Five

ao3 - masterpost

hello, my dears. here's chapter five, without too much fanfare. enjoy<3

---

The morning of her first self-defense lesson with Cassian, Nesta awakes to a cool breeze blowing in the scent of roses from her open window.

"Good morning," Nesta says, smiling slightly. "I guess you liked my gift."

She had finished it yesterday, in the jewelry-making session. It had taken her the better part of the day. A sort of cover for the cracked, broken part of the walls the Illyrians had destroyed. Golden and gleaming and prettier than the beige paint around it, but complementing all the same.

And now the House, apparently, is showing her affection for it: a new rose bush outside of her room, fat flowers dangling down over the top of her window. A very pretty frame for her already spectacular view of the city.

The House gives her different clothes today, too. A fitted shirt, and a knee-length loose skirt, with leggings underneath. As close to pants as she'll wear. By Cassian's slight approving nod when she meets him after breakfast, he approves.

"We'll be starting on the roof," he says, in lieu of a greeting.

She nods once. She remembers hearing him, back in that awful first week here-goodness, but it's not yet been a full month since then, and it feels so long ago-hearing him up there, throwing knives around or whatever it was he did. She guesses she'll soon find out.

The crispness of the morning mountain air hits her in full force, but Cassian doesn't act like it fazes him at all. In fact, judging by the way his wings spread slightly wider, he likes it.

"All right," he says. "Let's begin."

The hour ticks by, slowing and speeding up depending on moments when Cassian touches her. There's none of his usual chatter or teasing; he's serious and unsmiling. The training ring is probably sacred to him.

Serious and unsmiling, but not discouraging. He's generous with his praise when she achieves his simple tasks-too generous, she thinks, but perhaps he has some ulterior motive.

Or perhaps, a small voice inside her head says, he's relieved you'll finally know how to defend yourself, and he means it.

It's not as daunting as it had seemed at first, this self defense. He's good for their agreement; this isn't training. He takes all her weaknesses and her proposed attacker's strengths into consideration and shows her how to maneuver past it all. How to cause an assailant-even one as big and strong as he is-to let her go when they grab her arms tightly in front, how to move her legs when she's caught in a chokehold, and how to break free when someone grabs her from behind.

"I guess no one will be able to pull onto your hair, though," he muses, more to himself than to her. "Keep your arms at your sides; you don't want them to get in the way of this one," he adds, mercifully changing the subject too quickly before he can notice her expression.

No one can pull on her hair now, that's the whole point. But they had, they had, rough enough that strands came out and she had no way to escape. What if she had known these tricks then? Would she have had a prayer? Would she still be human? Elain? And what of Father, would he still be alive? Or would it not have mattered; only delayed her certain torture and death, because she had been human, and they had been Fae, and in the end, that was all-

"Arms like this, Nesta," Cassian says, switching from mock-assailant to instructor as he gently tucks her arms against her sides, and drawing her out of her head to the sound of his voice and the feel of his hands on hers, his body behind her. His wings block out the wind, and she can feel the warmth radiating from him to her core. "Because you don't want them to get in the way of when you break out...and why else?"

"So I don't use them to hurt myself," she says, repeating his words from earlier.

"Right...good. Let's do this one again. One last time."

She takes a deep breath.

"Ready?"

"Yes." She doesn't hesitate. She doesn't need to. He doesn't let her feel trapped.

"All right, I'm grabbing you now-good!"

For she is ready for him, this time. He wraps his arms around her from behind, his arms trapping hers at her elbows, and she instantly draws them in like he instructed. Without waiting for his prompting, she gathers her strength and throws her head upwards and backwards, like he had shown her, and then leaps away as his arms fly open.

"Good, Nesta!" he says, eyes shining as she turns around. He isn't hurt; he keeps moving away for this one so she doesn't do any real damage. "You would've hit his neck there...normally, I'd say go for the chin, but neck's really good...at that speed, with that force, really good..." He grins broadly at her, his first smile of the morning, and after an hour of being in instructor-Cassian's presence, she blinks at the easy switch.

"You did really well," he says, after handing her a glass of water. "Did you...how was it for you?"

She shrugs slightly. "All right." It wasn't fun. But it was hardly suffering. And the movements, following Cassian's instructions...a good way to keep herself focused.

"Would you...do you want to continue?" His voice is casual, but from the careful way he does not meet her eyes, she can tell he is tense.

"Yes," she says, trying to keep her voice casual too.

He brightens, and something inside her dims automatically. His...elation, relief, whatever this spark is, at seeing her agree to do this...it feels, somehow, as though she is doing something wrong. She is cheating or lying. She does not deserve this, is not worthy of his joy. Of him.

"It's not healthy to do workouts every day," he says, "especially...when you're in recovery."

When you're weak, he means. When one is ill and emaciated-even if she is getting better, and trying, it's not going to be enough-never enough-

"So I think...Mondays and Tuesdays...and Thursdays and Fridays? If you'd like to do this long term, I mean."

Nesta blinks. "How long-term?"

He shrugs. "Till you want to stop, I guess."

She purses her lips slightly. "Don't you have...I mean, will you be able to do this four times a week, indefinitely? Don't you have..." An occupation, she wants to say. Running the strongest military on their island, maybe one of the strongest in the world. "You don't have the time," she decides on instead.

He does it again. His deep hazel eyes latch onto hers and don't let her go. She doesn't have a prayer of looking away until he lets her. There's not enough self-defense lessons in the world for her to be strong enough to fight this off.

"I always have time for you, Nesta."

She shivers, and it doesn't have anything to do with the crisp wind under the weak October sun.

He moves his head, and lets her go.

"So tomorrow, then," he says.

"Tomorrow," she echoes. She doesn't stay to watch him fly off.

---

Nesta had done incredibly well. Spectacularly. And she had looked even better.

He had stayed up half the night before, wondering if she was going to show up in pants. She hadn't, but the skirt she had worn had gone only to her knees. The shortest he'd seen her in by far. And her black top...like a second skin. A healthier skin, almost normal. Not translucent any longer. Covering a softer body. More curves, like she used to have. Bones not protruding so much. Golden hair shining in the dim light, coiled and braided like a princess', like a queen's. She even has it up when she goes to sleep, he'd learned during her first week here. Does she ever wear it down? Only to bathe, probably. And what does she look like then, with this slight new weight, this perfect skin, this beautiful hair reaching he doesn't even know how far down...He'd only allowed himself a few moments of ogling her before violently shoving out all thoughts anywhere near the realm of lust from his mind. The training ring was not for this.

Feyre and Elain are beside themselves with happiness, as he knew they would be, when he tells them how it went.

"She agreed to more lessons," Feyre says in wonderment.

"It can only be a good thing," Elain says, tugging on a stray lock of hair.

"Yes," Feyre agrees. "But...maybe, considering...you know. Your history." She shoots him an apologetic look. "Maybe it'd be best if..."

Cassian's heart rate picks up. "You think someone else should teach her?" No, his instincts tell him. She had asked him. She wants him to do it.

But he knows he'll give in. If her sisters think it would be better...because it's her that matters. Not what he wants. What matters is her getting better.

Oh, but he knows he can be the person to help her. Or one of the people, at least. If she just lets him.

Mercifully, Feyre says, "No, no, not that. Just...maybe you could do with a chaperone? Azriel or-well, no, not Rhys. But maybe it would be good for Az to drop by occasionally...what do you think?"

"That's not a bad idea," he admits. A buffer. He could do with one.

"So, what are you teaching her, exactly?" Elain asks.

"Just some self defense. Breaking away from an assailant, today." But maybe, in time, he can convince her to do more. More general exercise, maybe even some offensive techniques. "There was something at the House," he adds. "On the wall where the Illyrians attacked."

"What?"

"This gold...thing. Covering the damage the Illyrians did to it." He clenches his jaw at the memory.

"I thought the House was magic now," Elain says. "Couldn't it have fixed itself up."

"Nesta made it," he says. "She told it she was going to fix it, so..."

The wall had been as fine as any other in the House, in any one of Rhys' homes, before the attack. Painted well, a warm beige, and decorated with any number of ornate pictures and mirrors and shelves for vases and whatnot. But now, the wall was white and bare but for the swirling metal covering the cracks and craters.

Cassian understands. If Nesta had made something for him, he'd want it to be the only thing people saw when they looked at him.

"She made something?" Feyre asks, eyes widening slightly.

"She did say she had that jewelery thing...she said she liked it."

"I never thought of Nesta as an artist before," Feyre says, quieter. "She never had any patience for painting when I showed her."

"Well, I'm sure she doesn't think of herself as an artist...I got the impression she liked it as a way to calm herself down."

"Do you think? What does she need calming down from? Is she-is she angry, do you think?"

Feyre and Elain continue to discuss Nesta and guess at her thoughts and motives while Cassian sits and desperately wishes he could only ask her.

---

Thalia asks to see her as soon as she's available, so Nesta tells Gwyn she'll see her after lunch and heads down to her office.

"Good morning," Thalia says, smiling up at her from her couch.

Nesta sits opposite her. "Hello."

"You're looking refreshed."

"I started...some self-defense. Just a little. With, um, Cassian." Does she know Cassian, Nesta wonders. Probably. He's the kind of person everyone knows.

"Really?" Thalia says, sounding impressed. "How wonderful!"

Nesta shrugs a little.

"Well, I think that comes at a perfect time, actually."

Nesta's eyes shoot up. "Why?" she asks, wary.

"I think I've settled on an idea to help you tackle your goals. I wanted to know what you think."

"All right," Nesta says, after a beat. "What is it?"

Thalia tilts her head back slightly, chin set. Oh, this should be good. "What do you think about keeping a log and schedule of trying new things?"

She sucks in her bottom lip before saying, "Trying new things? How does that help me with my goals?" It seems like Thalia is trying to push her own agenda over actually helping Nesta achieve hers.

"It'll get you in the habit of doing things you aren't used to," Thalia says, patient. "It'll keep you focused on something. It might bring new joys or interests into your life, perhaps personally, or perhaps by bonding with others. And it'll greatly increase your confidence and self-esteem."

Nesta blinks. "That's not one of my goals."

"I know, dear. It's one of mine."

Nesta looks down. "It's..." She forces herself to say the words she would normally just drown in inside her own mind. "Just hard to remember sometimes."

"What's hard to remember?" Gentle, not prodding.

She swallows hard. It sounds so stupid inside her head. How will it sound out loud? "That I'm actually supposed to...get better. Sometimes it feels like that's the wrong thing to do." She bites her tongue-she hadn't meant for that part to come out.

But Thalia never acts like what she's saying is pathetic, even if it is.

"How does it feel wrong?"

Nesta sighs. Not out of irritation over the question, just because she isn't quite sure how to answer. "It's...I don't know. Sometimes one just knows a thing is wrong."

"Hm," Thalia says. Considering, thoughtful. "Well, at any rate, your self-defense lesson today can count as your new thing for the day."

"Well-wait, for the day? You want me to do one new thing per day?"

Thalia's lip quirk. "How often did you think I was asking you?"

"I don't know. A week, maybe."

"I don't think so. Once a day, please. Don't forget to track them all. Write them down. Run along, now, Nesta, and if you could take these books with you? Thank you."

Gwyn finds her putting Thalia's books back on the fifth level. "So, how did it go with Thalia? And with your training session with Lord Cassian?"

Lord Cassian. She'll never get used to that. "News travels fast, I see," she says primly.

"You know it does. How did it go?"

"It went...all right."

"Which one?" Gwyn takes a book from Nesta's hands and puts it on a shelf over her head.

"Both of them. Actually, I think the lesson with Cassian went better," she says in surprise, after reflecting. "And it wasn't training. It was just some self-defense."

"Same difference. What happened with Thalia?"

"She's making me try one new thing a day."

"One per day? Every day?" Gwyn shudders. "I can't believe you go along with everything she says. All her meetings and exercises and now this self-defense...You must be four times as brave as I am, at least."

Nesta winces.

"What are you going to do?" Gwyn continues, either not noticing Nesta's discomfort or respectfully ignoring it. "For your new things, I mean."

"I don't know," Nesta says, weighing two books, as if debating between her options for tomorrow and all the tomorrows after. "I guess...try every fruit I haven't?" Gwyn laughs. "I don't know what she expects me to do."

"I'm sure you'll think of things. You're...you'll do better than the rest of us. You do better than the rest of us. It's so obvious, how much you want to live." She says it confidently, assuredly, her teal eyes set.

Nesta bites her lip. "I did really want to live," she says quietly. That night in Hybern. She had fought with everything she had. The whole way to the Cauldron, and even after, inside it. She hadn't stopped. "I...can't..."

"I know," Gwyn says, voice soft as Nesta's. "You can't remember why. It's all right. You will. I can tell."

Nesta blinks rapidly. She's not about to cry. She's not. She just...she doesn't know what she is.

"I can't believe it's not even noon," she mumbles.

Gwyn chuckles. "Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your day's hardly going to be a quiet one. Calliope wants you all afternoon."

She likes Calliope, generally, so that's not so awful. "For what?"

Gwyn shrugs. "Sorting through her papers, probably. Maybe she wants you as an assistant."

If Nesta gets assigned to a High Priestess, than she doesn't have to do these menial tasks anymore. Of course, there's no promise that the priestess she'll be assisting won't have her own miserable things for her to do...Merrill, Gwyn's priestess, is a royal pain, Nesta knows...

"So I guess I'll see you tomorrow, then," Gwyn says. "Wearing your dress backwards or eating starfruit."

"Ha," Nesta says flatly.

Gwyn laughs once more before going, unbound copper hair flowing behind her.

She's wrong, Nesta knows, about her being braver than anyone else. About her being brave at all. All she's doing now is what other people are telling her. Go see Calliope in her office, Nesta. Come sit with Thalia on the third level, Nesta. Tell Clotho if you liked Daphne's lecture, Nesta. Simple motions, simple movements. Nothing brave about it.

"Now again on the left, Nesta. Good. Good."

It's Thursday morning, and Cassian is the one ordering her about. Sometimes she thinks he sounds like any one of the priestess, with how he talks to her in these lessons, which makes her feel...she isn't sure. It's odd, certainly. Considering all the ways they used to talk to each other. Barbed insults, right in the House, to the other end of the spectrum. The words that cycle in her head some nights, the newest among them being I always have time for you, Nesta...and, of course, intermittent praises from when she does well.

"Excellent. Keep your torso just like that...now with your arms just as I-yes!"

There's really not any bravery required, Nesta decides. Not when the priestesses are all eager to do anything that encourages the girls to, well, do anything, and not when Cassian is...himself. Even now that Azriel, the member of her sister's circle Nesta is wont to consider her favorite if only because he never talks to her, has started showing up for a few minutes every session. Even he, with his face more closed off than Amren's (back when they were on speaking terms), and those dark shadows of his...even he does not discourage her.

Their hour ends, and he watches her drink two glasses of water-discreetly, drinking some himself, too-before turning to leave.

"Um," she says, voice slightly louder than it needs to be.

He pauses. Turns. Waits.

She can't look away again-his eyes-but she has to say something, doesn't she? What was it she was going to say?

"I seem to be doing well," she blurts out. Then flushes crimson.

He grins. "You're doing very well, Nesta."

She smooths her skirt, as if that'll somehow help her regain composure. "What I mean is," she says, voice hopefully not wobbly, "these...lessons...seem to be doing me good."

His grin gets smaller, but his eyes grow soft. "I...am very glad to hear that."

"I mean they help me feel...better. I feel better. Stronger. And I don't get so distracted all the time. And I...don't think about drinking so much." That's true, she realizes. In fact, she hasn't wanted a drink since...Monday? Sunday? She can't even be sure.

Cassian inhales sharply. "Good," he says, rather faint. "That's...that's so good, Nesta."

"So I was wondering if maybe you thought that...because I thought...well, I-I don't know, but maybe..." Stammering, tripping over her own words, it's just-

I have never in my life thought you were pathetic.

She nearly gasps, the words playing in her mind so clear in his eyes it's almost as though she can hear him saying them aloud.

"I thought maybe some other girls would like to join. If you don't mind. Having some more of us."

Cassian blinks. "I...I don't. I don't mind at all. I think that's a great idea, actually."

"Well, I also thought," Nesta starts, encouraged, "that since, you know, you've wanted that female Illyrian legion for so long-" he blinks again, evidently unaware that she knows that-"maybe you could also see if some Illyrian girls wanted to join. Just to see if they have a taste for...any of this."

Cassian's mouth falls open slightly and his hand goes to his forehead. "I...can't believe I never thought of this myself, actually," he admits. "Self-defense as a sort of gateway...that's actually really fucking brilliant, Nesta."

She huffs a sound of amusement at his swearing; it's been so long since she's heard any curse, as the priestesses are all so pious and proper. He starts at the sound.

"Well," she says, ducking her head to busy herself with her skirt so he doesn't see her color again. "I have to go bathe and..."

"Oh, yeah. All right. Well...so Monday? With some other girls?"

"If they want," Nesta says. "I don't know if anyone will want..."

"Well, you just let them know. Maybe ask Clotho..."

"I will. And...will you go to that camp? Windhaven?"

"Windhaven?" he asks.

"I met a shopkeeper..."

"Emerie?"

"Oh," she says. "You know her."

"She's the only female shopkeeper," he says. "We've met."

"I talked to her a little. I think she might be interested. I think she has some friends who might like it, too."

"Oh," he says, surprised. "I didn't know...I assumed-well, never mind. All right, Nesta. Goodbye, then. And great idea, really. And..." he trails off. She looks up to see him smiling. "You did really well. I mean it."

She nods, just once. But then she says, "Thank you."

She can't quite believe she said that. But judging by the way his grin widens enough to show all his teeth, it's something he's been waiting a while to hear.

#nessian #nesta archeron #nessian fic #once again i never have any idea what to tag this #anyway excited that this is getting more into it #the fic i mean #i'm really excited for the next chapter when we see the girls #can't wait for nesta to have friends omg

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raunchyom · 3 years

Text

Vices, Not Virtues: Kindness

[ Chapter 3 ]

[ Previous ] [ Next ]

A/N: Surprise! Wasn’t planning to have this out on Levi’s birthday, but also wasn’t planning that hiatus. School, amirite? On the plus side, I’ll officially be free by May 1, at which point I can start updating this (semi-) regularly again, so look forward to it! Tagging: @devintrinidad // @dweeb-central

word count: 2.7k || warnings: n/a

Listening to Leviathan rant was pretty much something that came with the territory of being his friend.

Whether about anime, his brothers, video games, anime, school, socializing, normies… oh, and don’t forget anime. There was always something on his mind, and his severely limited social circle meant you were often the recipient of his rants. Today in particular, it spanned a lot of different topics. Your recent absence hadn’t gone unnoticed, and the way he was going on made it seem like he’d bottled up every single emotion over the past few days and shoved them into a box labelled ‘re-open for Mc.’

Not that you loved him any less for it, of course. Poor Levi really couldn’t catch a break, and he was so excited to have someone like you who really cared about him-- well, who could blame him for wanting to open up?

Over the past week in particular, he’d been subjected to the usual trauma around the house. Apparently, he’d had Asmo and Satan gang up on him about never leaving the house, even the bookworm agreeing that Levi was too far gone. Mammon had ‘borrowed’ something of his, only for it to never return. Levi knew it was a bad idea every time, but he was too easily won over by promises of his investments being worth it. The last Akuzon delivery was supposed to be a limited edition maid-cafe-style Ruri-chan figurine, that smelled like her bean-cake best friend Azuki-tan-- which, of course, meant that Beel took a bite out of the package before Levi could get there to stop him. Lucifer had lectured him about grades, saying that he knew Levi could do better, if only he stopped playing video games so much-- “as if that’s a compliment!”

Levi finally stopped pacing, rolling his eyes at the mere memory of it. He glanced down to where you sat, perched on the side of his tub.

It wasn’t the most comfortable seat in the house, but his room wasn’t exactly made for visitors; you had to make do when you were there for a rant. He’d generally start talking while playing a video game, then gradually pause it, turn around, and eventually stand up and act out his frustrations. It was better for you to just start off seated on the side of his tub, that way he would have an aquarium backdrop for when he inevitably paced in front of you. It gave you a nicer view from the start, and when he wanted to sit again, he could choose to pull up his gaming chair or, if he was feeling particularly bold, sit down next to you.

As if he heard your thoughts, Levi plopped down next to you with a frustrated sigh. “Ugh, they totally don’t deserve to have you helping them all the time.” He grumbled, almost as if talking to himself. “I mean, I don’t either. I don’t know why you spend so much time around some gross otaku. And listen to all my problems, and--”

“Levi, it’s fine.” You assured him, “I don’t mind; we’re friends.”

Levi glanced at you from the corner of his eye, as if he didn’t believe you. He shifted his gaze back to the fish tank in front of him and continued, “Still, I know I’m always venting to you, and…”

The lack of eye contact didn’t prevent him from seizing up in your presence. You could practically see the buffering symbol in his brain, mouth wavering as he tried to force the words out. His face was getting red just from knowing your eyes were on him, somehow feeling as if every moment you waited politely for him to continue was a moment of pure torture.

“You don’t ever talk to me.” He mumbled. The words slurred together, as if he could barely convince himself to enunciate the syllables. He fumbled with the cord of his headphones and his stare shifted to the floor. Even eye contact with the fish must’ve been too much.

“We talk all the time.” You sounded much less sure than you felt, probably more out of hurt than anything. Did your friendship not mean as much as you thought it did?

“That’s not what I--!” Levi frowned harder, tugging more incessantly at his headphones. He huffed out a frustrated breath, knowing what he wanted to say but not how to say it. “You do talk to me, but… you listen to me a lot more…”

“So… you want me to talk more?” Levi was usually pretty easy to read. Sure, he didn’t say his emotions outright, but they were often written all over his face. In times like this though, when he was stuttering and refusing to make eye contact even more than normal, he wasn’t quite as transparent.

“No! Well, I mean, yes, but not-- I meant-- why don’t you ever ask?” Levi finally blurted out, surprising you both. “...for help? Why don’t you ever ask for help?”

“Uh… what?” Well, this was out of nowhere. You were supposed to be listening to his problems, but now he was upset that you hadn’t brought up yours? Was there some part of his rant that you were supposed to cut into with your own?

“I notice, around the house, and RAD, and-- and everywhere. You never let people help you with things. You never ask for it yourself, even when you need it.” After a second, his eyes widened. “Not-- Not that I watch you! I-It’s nothing weird like that! I-I’m gross, and an otaku, and-- b-but-- I don’t st-stalk you or anything!”

It was funny, watching Levi dig his own grave deeper. On the one hand, it was amusing to hear Levi desperately try to explain away any potential misinterpretation, but it was mixed with a fair amount of confusion about what his point was supposed to be. Your face must have portrayed this in some way, or at least one of these two emotions, because a cursory glance from Levi had him forcing himself back on track before he could say anything worse.

“I mean, I get why you don’t want my help. I-I’m just some yucky otaku, who’s anti-social and um, probably couldn’t help with anything anyway.” Levi was really good at kicking himself while he was down. Given, he always seemed to be down, and he always seemed to be kicking himself.

“Levi, that’s not why...” The words fell away halfway through your sentence, having caught yourself before admitting to anything.

“So why?” You may have caught yourself before admitting anything too damning, but Levi caught it too. He was dense, not an idiot. “No, you don’t have to tell me. I mean, there’s a lot of other reasons you might not ask for help, too. Maybe you don’t want to feel weak, or admit that you need help from other people. Or maybe it’s because it’s hard to ask someone for something, when you’re already annoying them just by being around them. Or… that last one is probably just me.”

“You’re not annoy--”

“It’s not about that!” Levi cut you off, determined to make his point. “The point is, you can’t do everything by yourself. Even Henry has the seven lords to help him. And Ruri-chan has her friends. In fact, her friends are what make her so--”

Levi took a deep breath, for once stopping his own tirade about anime. “Can you just… tell me why, at least?”

Song references aside, it wasn’t an easy question to answer, even if you wanted to. Levi didn’t often ask for this kind of thing though, which made it hard to turn him down. “It’s a lot of things, like you said. I just want to show that I can. Do things on my own, I mean.”

Levi frowned, unsure how to combat you. He already wasn’t exactly a pro on asking people for help, he holed up in his room too much for that. He had been, so far, basing it off the rare times he left his room. But now you were mentioning something that he could relate to on some level, except… “You… want to prove yourself?”

“I guess.” Not how you’d phrase it, necessarily, but not entirely inaccurate. Or really, it was oversimplifying the issue by a long shot, but it was better to give Levi half credit rather than no credit. His self esteem could certainly use it.

“But why!? You’re-- you’re so cool! You made a pact with every demon in the House of Lamentation! You could make a pact with Diavolo if you tried! You taught Satan to control his anger, you got Asmo to care about someone other than himself, you stood up to Lucifer when he was going to kill Beel and Luke-- and you, too!--, you got Belphie to get along with everyone again, you even died and--” It could’ve been that he realized what he was saying, or it could’ve been that he saw your face when he brought it up; either way, Levi clamped his mouth shut mid-sentence.

“I-I mean, not everyone gets to respawn.” He mumbled, hoping a video game reference would make it less awkward again. After a moment of silence, he reiterated his original point. “You don’t need to prove yourself. You already have.”

It was heartwarming, hearing Levi sing your praises as he did. But that wasn’t exactly a quick fix for the fact that asking for help meant admitting you were bad at something. Or even just admitting to needing help at all. Lucifer said he had to teach you some pride, well here was a lesson you could skip. This one you knew well: don’t want to swallow your pride and ask for help? Easy, just don’t ever ask!

Levi seemed antsy to fill the silence, but managed to hit the nail on the head when he spoke again. “I know how it feels, when you see someone that’s better than you at something. It’s frustrating. And painful. Especially if you’re supposed to be the best, and then someone else knows more than you do, about a book series that they just read for the first time, and then spoil stuff about the one that hasn’t even been released yet, even though you’re the number one TSL fan and they shouldn’t even have that informa--”

“That was one time!” You protested. Levi let out a puff of air that was somewhere in between a scoff and a snort, but he didn’t seem to be legitimately angry. Then again, leave it to Levi to hold a grudge from the early days of the exchange program.

“Sometimes though, you can use that jealousy. Being jealous of someone can drive you to get better at things, or to learn from them. Or just ask them for help, if you have to. I’m never gonna work out like Beel, so if I need help lifting something I’ll just ask him for help doing it.” He deliberately didn’t mention his past experiences in asking for Beel’s help in getting fit, hoping you didn’t know about the devilgram posts Asmo made about it. You did, but decided to let it go. After a moment of consideration, he added, “I usually have to pay him with food, though.

“We may not always get along, but at least my brothers and I know how to depend on each other. Lucifer may act-- well, be annoyed a lot, but there’s a reason everyone goes to him for help. He helps the people he cares about… even if it comes with a lecture. Everyone knows to go to Satan if they need information, or help studying. Asmo’s so good with fashion that he works with Majolish, and still--” Levi’s chest puffed out a bit as he spoke-- “he comes to me for help in design too, since he knows I’m the best at cosplays.”

“That almost sounded like you were complimenting yourself.” Levi deflated a bit at your teasing tone, both embarrassed and a bit self-conscious. You felt some guilt about the latter, but none from the former. Not when his embarrassment meant his face scrunched up like that, and he floundered to go back on his own claims.

“W-Well, I didn’t mean-- of course I’m good at otaku stuff! A normie wouldn’t understand!” He floundered, clearly at a loss for what to say if he was falling back on calling you a normie. That was pretty much his version of sticking his tongue out when he lost.

“It’s hard to imagine Mammon ever gets asked for help.” You offered, trying to get him back on track. ...and maybe continue to push his buttons just a tad.

“That idiot--” Levi took a deep breath, gritting his teeth as he sought a way to talk about Mammon without including some form of insult, “He gets into trouble all the time, obviously. He’s a moron because of the kind of trouble he gets into, not because he asks for help. At least he knows to come to us for help when he needs it.”

At that, Levi gave you a pointed look. Well, consider that the last time you ever try to help him get back on track.

“Mc, none of us will think less of you. People usually consider it an ego-boost if someone comes to them for help. Especially if it’s y--” Levi fumbled, quick to brush past his near-slip. “If anything, we want to help. If you asked for help with your work and school and things, you’d have more time to yourself; for watching anime and playing games.”

Levi tried to make it sound like he was being benevolent, but the implied ‘with me’ was hard to miss.

“So, you could try asking for help some more, to lighten your load. If you want. It would make me-- um, make u-us feel better, too.” He seemed content in ending it there, and made an effort to end any potential continuation of the topic. Flipping on a dime, Levi was quick to talk over any potential response. “Th-That’s all, anyways! Uh, we can just-- go back to, you know. Playing devilcart, or um, we can watch some anime, or--”

“Thank you, Levi.” You had to put a hand on his arm to make him listen, the simple action instantly sending the touch-starved demon into fight-or-flight mode. “I’ll try.”

He swallowed back his nerves and nodded, surprised he had managed to make it through that whole talk. You were too, really, as soon as you realized that this was supposed to be his intervention for you.

As much as you might loathe to admit it, his talk made sense. Or at least it had some aspects of truth to it, and perhaps you felt marginally better about asking the bros for help. Levi made it very clear how he felt about wanting to help you, the least you could do was see if the others felt the same. And hey, maybe he had a point about people wanting you to ask them for help in general, too. Who would’ve guessed it, but so far these demons seemed to know a thing or two about sinning.

---

“Is something the matter, my Lord?”

“It’s been awfully quiet the past few days. I wonder what those brothers are up to?” Boredom generally caused Diavolo’s mind to wander to the Devildom’s most notorious troublemakers, but this week especially. His fellow members of the student council had been quieter than normal, without even a yelling match in days; much less something exciting enough to warrant Diavolo’s attention. Thus leaving the prince here, sighing as he pondered their goings on.

Barbatos poured Diavolo’s tea with a knowing smile. “They have been quite busy this week.”

“Oh?”

“It seems they’re corrupting Mc.” Barbatos spoke as if it were a common occurrence.

Diavolo chuckled. “Should we be worried?”

“Quite the opposite. They’re working together to get Mc to take better care of themself.”

“Is that so?” Lethargy had caused Diavolo to ignore his tea at first, but the new information made him forget about it altogether. Diavolo sat up straighter, excitement tugging his mouth into a smile. “Perhaps I’ll bring tomorrow’s meeting to Lucifer, and pay the house of lamentation a visit.”

“Of course, my Lord.”

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olivia-anderson-fanfic · 3 years

Text

A Miraculous TikTok Account

Part 34

First

For those of you who read it Satisfied’s Alternate/Alternative Ending has a new chapter <3 dual update for Easter

Chat hadn’t known what to think when he was woken from his nap by buzzing. His brain had felt fuzzy, sure, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to be audible.

He pulled his face out of his pillow -- ignoring Plagg’s cry of surprise at being displaced -- and cracked an eye open.

Oh. His room was full of bees. And they were apparently taking the glitter out the window to the nearest dumpster. Oh. Okay. Why not? His life was already so weird.

He buried his face in his pillow again and went back to sleep.

When Ladybug stopped by, he had been playing late-night video games on the floor with Plagg. (Did he have an unfair advantage in his ability to hold the entire console at once? Yes. Was he going to go easy on the kwami? No.)

He tensed a little. Was she checking on her prank and about to get angry that Chloe had fixed everything (he made a mental note to thank her later, if they were both still alive)?

Ladybug and Chat looked at each other, silent, unreadable expressions on their faces... until the sound of Plagg finally beating his character with a loud screech pulled them back to reality.

Plagg may not talk, but the way he floated around Chat’s head, pumping his tiny fists in the air, was a pretty clear ‘hahahahaha I won you loser I winnnnnn’.

“Hey,” said Ladybug carefully, pulling his attention away from the gloating kwami. “Sorry if I’m interrupting something, but we really should talk…”

He hesitated slightly.

She held up her hands. “It doesn’t have to be right now but… soon?”

Chat bit his lip, and then turned off his console and set down his controller. “Now is fine.”

Ladybug nodded. “I was thinking we could get out of town for it...?”

Get out of town? Was this risky in some way? Were they about to get akumatized? Or, at least, have akumatizable emotions?

“Sure.”

So, after getting Rena to cover them for an hour while they booked it, they both left. Ladybug had her phone out, apparently to hold a map, though he didn’t really understand why because they were only really going in one direction.

“Alright!” She called suddenly from where she was flying along overhead. She swooped lower until she was buzzing along by Chat. “I think we’re far enough past the border to be safe.”

Ah. That was why. He nodded and skidded to a stop. She touched down on the ground beside him. They both mumbled to detransform and their kwamis almost instantly dove to hide in their jackets despite the fact that they were both still invisible to passerby.

They continued on in the direction they’d been heading in silence. No one was around, which wasn’t shocking considering it was nearing 1. They came to a stop at a bakery that was still open and she hesitated.

“Want something?”

He bit his lip. “Passion fruit macarons?”

She blinked, and for a moment it looked like she was going to say something, but then she nodded and headed inside to get some.

She came out a few moments later with a box of macarons for him and some regular chocolate chip cookies for herself. They settled to eat it just outside.

She nibbled at her cookies, eyes locked on a spot on the ground. He’d tried waiting for her to be ready to talk, but after a few minutes of her looking without seeing he decided he should at least say something:

“... you wanted to talk?”

She blinked a bit and looked at him, then quickly pulled her gaze back to the floor again. “Yeah. I guess I just wanted to say --.” She made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. “I can’t -- I --.” She glared at a crack on the ground like it had personally offended her. “You speak English, right?”

He startled a little. It was an odd question. But, still, he nodded. “I’m rich. I had to learn English and Mandarin.”

Her face lit up and for a second she looked at him again. “You speak Mandarin?”

He nodded.

“Can we…?” She started, unsure.

“Yeah, but I might be a little rusty.”

“That makes sense. If you don’t know a word I can translate it for you. Since we’re using my language not yours,” she said in Mandarin.

(Some vague part of him noticed that she took on a different tone in Mandarin, that her voice was lighter and a little smaller, that she seemed almost happier. He wondered if she’d like it if he spoke it with her more often.)

He nodded and made a vague motion with his hand, wordlessly telling her that he was ready for her to talk.

“I wanted to say that I’m sorry and… I wanted to explain myself.”

He wanted to tell her she didn’t have to, that he was also at fault, but she was already going on:

“Kwami, this is kind of embarrassing to admit to you, but my first few months of being ‘Ladybug’ didn’t go well.”

He nodded his understanding. Memories of his first few months as ‘Chat Noir’ were painful for him, too, despite how long ago it had been. All the people questioning his abilities, questioning his intentions, questioning his choices… had he not been used to media scrutiny, he doubted he would have continued on with it despite finally being able to go out in public as himself.

“I was second -- as you know, obviously -- and… a lot of comparisons were made. You’d had a year’s experience by then, and you’d had fight training beforehand, but I was just… new. You could always do things better, you were always preferred, you always got the bigger akumas while I got stuck with Mr. Pigeon and people like him. I even had a support-class-type power. Everything seemed to point to me being stuck as number two to you forever. And I think a part of me resented you for it.”

“I’m sor --.”

She cut him off with a look. “It’s not actually your fault. I shouldn’t have let it get to me as much as it did.”

He laughed without humor. “You were thirteen.”

She opened her mouth to argue, and then just shook her head and let the subject go. “Time passed, and Carapace came onto the scene, and people stopped comparing us as much… but they kept criticizing what I did. If I tried to be fun I was a ‘copycat’ and if I tried to act more serious I would be ‘bitchy’ and if I was neutral I was ‘boring’.”

He nodded slowly. He was beginning to understand where this was going.

“My sideeffects started coming in, and suddenly I was very lucky. None of the attacks ever seemed to hit me unless I REALLY messed up, and I started getting a reputation as ‘perfect’. And…” Her voice cracked a little and he looked away as she brought her arm to her face to wipe her face. “And I figured that, since I wasn’t even close to perfect, I should go with that kind of personality. At least it wouldn’t hurt as much when people criticized me, y’know? So I became everything I wasn’t, serious and perfect and --.”

He hesitated, biting his lip, and then he grabbed the sleeve of her hoodie and pulled her close. He gave her plenty of time to pull away, but she didn’t. She just buried her face in his shirt and stood there, arms limp at her sides, as he hugged her.

“I’m sorry, I should have helped --.”

“It’s fine, you couldn’t have known.” She gave a wet laugh. “You’re really good at hugs, by the way.”

“And you suck, apparently,” he teased lightly.

“Rude,” she muttered, arms coming up to wrap around him as well.

She actually was good at hugs, he thought vaguely as she molded herself to fit against his body.

He bit his lip. He could just leave the subject there. She apologized and he’d definitely gotten enough of a punishment…

He buried his face in her hair. He couldn’t even admit this to Carapace, how was he supposed to admit this to her? But… he really did want to talk about it with someone, and if anyone could understand it would probably be her...

“I… I’m in the public eye a lot. As a civilian. And my persona is a lot like yours. I’m the perfect, sweet son of --… my dad. And so, when I saw you pretending to be perfect out in public to keep up an image… I might have projected a little. I’d always kind of wanted someone to expose me as not perfect so I could be more free to be myself in public, so I wouldn’t have to spend my few hours out of the house with perfect posture and even more perfect smiles to make sure it didn’t reflect poorly on my dad.”

She smiled against his shirt. “At least you being ‘perfect’ is kinda true. Sure, you’re a little lazy sometimes, but you’re still pretty much amazing. It’s almost annoying.”

“PLEASE. If kwamis could talk, I’m sure Plagg would have a lot to complain about.”

She laughed, properly this time, and pulled away from him. She took a step back and then leaned against a lamppost without even glancing behind herself to make sure something was there. “Tikki probably has some stories, too. But, either way, you’re practically as perfect as people can be.”

He wasn’t convinced. “My first response to negative emotions was to make someone else mad enough at me to be a distraction for a few days.”

She didn’t look surprised. Not that he’d really expected her to. If Carapace had figured it out then surely she had, too; she had a few more months of psychology experience than him.

“Yeah, and? You were still calculated enough to choose the person who was least likely to get akumatized. As perfect as a person can be.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and she mimicked the action.

He looked her up and down twice before locking eyes with hers. “You’re still comparing yourself to me. You have to think I’m perfect so you can feel like Parisians were justified in comparing us and putting you down because, if they weren’t, then you have to accept the people you save on a constant basis are kinda sucky.”

She blinked and then a blush spread across her face. “Oh.”

“Yeah. ‘Oh’.”

“I can psychoanalyze you, too,” she said, breaking gaze with him to glare at her feet. “You can’t bring yourself to believe you’re perfect because your shitty parents probably used that as a basis to punish you and you’d like to believe that they were doing it so you could be your best self rather than admitting the truth that they don’t care about you as much as they should.”

He sniffled. Wait, when did he start crying?

“... oh.”

“Yeah...”

She cleared her throat a little and that’s when he noticed she was starting to cry, too.

“Kwami, we’re both messes, huh?”

She laughed through her tears. “Fuck, maybe WE’RE the ones who need therapy, not the rest of Paris.”

“No no no, everyone in Paris needs therapy. The minute we defeat Hawkmoth I’m getting a psych degree. That’s where the money is going to be.”

“We already have honorary psych degrees. I bet if you ask Chloe she could get her dad to give you a license.”

He snapped his fingers and then pointed at her. “Smart. All those years would probably make it so therapists wouldn’t be needed as much.”

“A few years? With as much trauma as Parisians have? Nah. You’ve got at least a few decades of consistent customers. ESPECIALLY if you market it as therapy from Chat Noir.”

He managed a smile, and they were silent for a moment other than the dying sniffles and shudders.

“Are… are we good?” He asked quietly.

She blinked at him, and then looked down. There was a beat, and then she took a deep breath. She brought a smile to her face and stuck her hand out.

“Hi, it’s nice to meet you! My name is Ladybug! I promise I won’t displace my anger towards Paris onto you!”

He stared at the hand, uncomprehending, and then a smile stretched across his face. He shook her hand. “Hi, it’s nice to meet you, too! I’m Chat Noir! I won’t be blind to your problems and will help out when people are being rude to you!”

She gave him a skeptical look. “You don’t even stand up for yourself.”

“Uh… you’re right… uh… I’ll make Carapace help out when people are being rude to you!”

She laughed and shook her head. “Stupid.”

“I try.”

She smiled and hooked her arm through his.

“Whatever. Let’s get home.”

~~~

Taglist

@nathleigh @sassakitty @th1s-1s-my-aesthet1c @blueslushgueen @woe-is-me0 @ladybug-182 @cas-and-their-refusal-to-write @trippingovermyfeet @melicmusicmagic @meimei3841 @roseliali

#a miraculous tiktok account #chat noir #adrien agreste #queen bee #chloe bourgeois #ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #carapace #nino lahiffe #rena rouge #alya cesaire #miraculous tiktok account #miraculous fic #ml fic #mlb #chloenette #chlonette #adrino

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grailfinders · 3 years

Text

Fate and Phantasms #170

Today on Fate and Phantasms we take our first steps into the pseudosingularity that must not be named, in search of new and... well, at least they’re new, servants. Today we’re making the Assassin of the Nightless City, a.k.a. Nite Brite, a.k.a. yet another reason why Type Moon should just stop designing child characters.

There’ll be spoilers in her build (obviously), but you can check out her build breakdown below the cut, or her character sheet over here!

Next up: Popular new Amazon service just comes to your house and kills you

Wu Zetian is an Arcane Trickster Rogue to pick up some of the tools of the trade she’ll need to become empress, as well as a Whispers Bard for more social graces. And interrogation techniques, those are important too.

Race and Background

Wu’s a Human, obviously, but she’s a really small human, so we’re going with Custom Lineage anyway since it lets us make her Small and barely changes anything about her abilities. This gives her +2 Dexterity, proficiency with Investigation to rat out dissent, and the Poisoner feat. Now she ignores poison damage resistance, can coat a weapon as a bonus action, and she can make poisons by spending 50 gp to make some weaker poison to apply to a weapon.

Also worth noting: the Dungeon Master’s Guide includes tons of poisons you could already make with the poisoner’s kit, but you’d never know that if you’d only read the player’s handbook. That’s a big reason why so many people think poisonings are underpowered in D&D, they literally didn’t tell any of the players how they work. That being said, the poisoner feat poison is by far the cheapest you can get, so it’ll be a staple.

Seriously, you can make paralyzing poisons, truth serums, knockout poison, time lapse poison, poisons that prevent the damage from being healed for at least a week, so many goddamn poisons. Please check out page 257 in the DMG, it’s a lot.

Also, you’re obviously a Noble, but you’re a scary noble, so you get proficiency with Intimidation and History.

Ability Scores

First up, make your Dexterity as high as possible. Being part of the emperor’s court requires grace and elegance, and being a rugrat certainly doesn’t hurt your ability to slip through small spaces. After that is Charisma, you are the most famous climber of the social ladder in history. You’re also fiendishly clever, so your Intelligence is also pretty solid. Your Constitution isn’t bad, but we’re mostly getting this because you’re definitely worse at the other stuff. Like your Wisdom! You’re nobody’s fool, but you do have a couple quirks that’ll make it hard to pass those saves against being frightened. Finally, dump Strength. The emperor didn’t date you for your sick lats, and becoming a child doesn’t help.

Class Levels

1. Rogue 1: Starting off as a rogue nets you a ton of proficiencies- you get Dexterity and Intelligence saves, as well as four skills. Stealth and Sleight of Hand to get poisons where they need to be, Insight to find out where that is, and Deception to play the survivors like a fiddle. You also get Expertise in Insight and Investigation to double your proficiency bonus in those two skills right out the gate.

You can also use a Sneak Attack to deal extra damage to creatures you have an advantage over. You also get Thieves’ Cant. It’s a language.

2. Rogue 2: Running an empire is a full time job, so use your Cunning Action to fit more into a single turn- now you can dash, disengage, or hide as a bonus action.

3. Rogue 3: Third level rogues get a stronger sneak attack (2d6), and they get all the goodies from their specialty! Arcane Tricksters can cast spells from the wizard spell list (mostly enchantment and illusion) using their Intelligence.

These spells include Mage Hand, which is super useful, because otherwise your Mage Hand Legerdemain would be pretty pointless. Your mage hand comes with all the usual abilities, but you can also: make the hand invisible, stow objects in containers worn/carried by other creatures, retrieve objects from the same places, pick locks at a range, hide your hand’s actions with sleight of hand checks against other creature’s perception, and do all of these as a bonus action.

You also get the cantrips Acid Splash and Poison Spray for even cheaper poisons, Ray of Sickness for roughly the same reason, and Sleep for a less direct kind of poisoning. You can also write Illusory Script to keep your plans a secret from busybodies.

4. Bard 1: Bouncing over to bard will help you understand the mandate of heaven thanks to your proficiency with the Religion skill. You also get more Spells that use your Charisma to cast, and your Bardic Inspiration can give your lackeys a boost as a bonus action, giving one of them a d6 to add to a check, attack, or save when they think they’ll need the help.

You get the cantrips Vicious Mockery and Friends for more social manipulation, as well as Command to start acting for the job you want, rather than the job you have. Bane is yet another poison that’ll dull the senses of a few enemies around you, and you get Unseen Servant and Silent Image to make your first servants. It’s a pain that the servant and their visuals are separate spells right now, but we’ll deal with that later.

Since you’re multiclassing spellcasters, check the player’s handbook to see how many spell slots you get.

5. Rogue 4: Back in rogue, you get your first Ability Score Improvement, so round up your Dexterity and Intelligence. Odd numbers are wasteful, and you have to make the most out of everything you’ve got if you want to become the ruler of China.

You can also Distort Value, doubling or halving an object’s apparent value. Make your presents to the emperor look better and your rivals’ look worse, easy.

6. Rogue 5: Fifth level rogues can make an Uncanny Dodge as a reaction, halving the damage of a single incoming attack. This is very useful if you don’t want to be gallagher’d, so use it often.

Also your sneak attack’s bigger again.

7. Rogue 6: Now that you’ve got your sights on your biggest opponents, it’s time to start taking them out. Use this round of Expertise on Sleight of Hand and Deception to Manipulate, Murder, Misrepresent your way to the top.

8. Rogue 7: Seventh level rogues get a stronger sneak attack, as well as the classic feature Evasion, making your dexterity saves really good. You survive an entire city collapsing into the ocean, that’s got to be a lot of dexterity saves.

You can also cast Phantasmal Force to start making some torturers for real! Er, as real as you can, right now.

9. Bard 2: Second level bards are Jacks of All Trades, adding half your proficiency bonus to any ability check that doesn’t already use it. If you want to entertain somebody that owns everything, you’ve got to be able to do anything. You also get your Song of Rest, making short rests a little more restful while you’re around.

You also get Healing Word for just a bit of healing. You don’t really have a healing factor by the letter of the law, but Imperial Privilege does restore a bit of health for some reason, so you’re good.

10. Bard 3: Third level bards pick a college, and the college of Whispers will help you climb your way to true nobility. Specifically on the backs of anyone foolish enough to get in your way.

Your Psychic Blades spend your inspiration to add psychic damage to a weapon attack once per turn, and your Words of Terror can cause a humanoid to become frightened of another creature for up to an hour once per short rest.If the attempt fails, they won’t know a thing.

On top of that, you get yet another round of Expertise, so brush up on your History and Religion before you ascend to the throne.

You also get second level spells this level. While you specialize in poison in this spirit origin, you’re still a torturer at heart, so grab Heat Metal.

11. Rogue 8: Finally getting back to rogue just in time for another ASI! Use this one to bump up your Charisma for better spell saves and more inspiration.

You also learn how to Enhance your Abilities, giving you advantage on one kind of ability check for the duration.

12. Rogue 9: Ninth level tricksters learn a Magical Ambush, giving your target disadvantage on a spell’s saving throw if you cast it while hidden from them. It’s a shame it doesn’t work on poisons as well, but it’ll make your opening salvo of magic much more effective.

13. Rogue 10: Use this ASI to bump up your Intelligence so your rogue spells match the strength of your bard spells.You also learn True Strike, which will link you to Agartha Rewritten, a tumblr blog that will let you avoid directly reading the real Agartha story. It also gives you advantage on one attack, but honestly you should probably just attack twice.

You can also cast Hold Person now to shove them into a vase for safekeeping. While frozen this way, attacks are made with advantage and automatically crit upon hit, so make sure you dig in with your sneak attacks while they’re stuck.

14. Rogue 11: Eleventh level rogues get Reliable Talent, so now you always roll at least a 10 on skill checks you’re proficient in. That means your insight rolls are always at least a 20, so no secrets can escape your eye.

Your poisons can also induce a frenzy in your foes with a Crown of Madness, letting you control which creatures it attacks each turn.

15. Rogue 12: Use this ASI to bump up your Charisma for more inspiration and stronger bard spells.

16. Rogue 13: As a Versatile Trickster, you can use your bonus action to distract an enemy with your Mage Hand, getting advantage on attacks against them

You can also expand your crown of madness to a full on freakout thanks to Enemies Abound.

17. Rogue 14: Your Blindsense lets you sniff out any creatures within 10′ of you, regardless of whether you can see them or not.

You can also, finally, make some real torturers thanks to Animate Dead. You can use the spell to make one zombie or skeleton, or to exert control over three of them you’ve already made. Given your spell slots are at a premium... good luck with that.

18. Rogue 15: Fifteenth level rogues have a Slippery Mind, giving you proficiency with Wisdom Saves. You’re pretty unflappable, aside from the cats.

19. Rogue 16: One last ASI, so bump up your Intelligence for stronger spells. Sorry if this sounds like a broken record, but we pretty much took care of your physical stats by level 5.

You can also spread Fear to whole groups of enemies now, forcing a wisdom save on all creatures within a 30′ cone. Any creatures that fail their save are frightened, and have to use their action to move as far away from you as possible. If a creature ends its turn somewhere it can’t see you, it can make another wisdom save to try and end the effect. Good luck though, we just made your intelligence really good.

20. Rogue 17: Your capstone level grants you the final boon of the arcane trickster class, Spell Thief. Once per long rest, you can try to steal a spell that’s affecting you, forcing a saving throw of the caster’s casting ability vs your spell save (DC 8 + Intelligence Modifier + Proficiency). If they fail, you negate the spell’s effect against you, and the original caster can’t cast that spell again for 8 hours. Furthermore, if it’s a leveled spell and you have the spell slots for it, you can cast it yourself for those eight hours. Imperial Privilege never felt so good!

Pros:

You are really good at skills, with jack of all trades making you kind of good at everything and reliable talent making you very good at some things. Basically, if something’s happening out of combat and it isn’t strength based, you can probably help.

Most of those skills you’re really good at let you control social scenes, controlling the ebb and flow of politics with your supercharged skill checks and the occasional word of terror.

Thanks to your Psychic Blades, you can convert all your sneak attack damage into psychic damage, which is way harder to block.

Cons:

That last pro is entirely tied to your few inspiration dice that only come back on long rests, so you’ll have to keep your cards close to your chest. Not that that’s anything new for you.

Thanks to your small size and low strength score, you’re easy to knock around. You should probably stay away from the muscleheads until you’ve knocked a couple rounds of poison into them.

Stealing spells is fun, but you’re limited by your spell slots. Unlike Nero, you can’t use wish.

#fate grand order #fgo #D&D 5e #DND #assassin of nightless city

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hamaon · 3 years

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JGY or WWX?

I feel like a fair disclaimer to give before getting to Wei Wuxian is that I watched the Untamed despite, not because of, wangxian! I originally checked out the beginning of the animated series because someone I followed was getting into it, but I already had an inkling that the main romantic relationship in this romance wouldn’t be my cup of tea. The Untamed followed, more than half a year later, really only because I had hit the gorgeous soundtrack on youtube.

How I feel about this character Part of the reason I presumed I wouldn’t be into wangxian was because neither of the main players really spoke to me, and on this account I am happy to have been proven wrong! When I finished the show, Wei Wuxian was probably my favorite character. There's something very satisfying about a surface-level heroic main character hitting his absolute lowest points and starting to be actively harmful to himself and others. “This is all I’ve ever wanted for the class clown type of character”, I think I said at some point. Let it all burn.

I go back and forth on whether I find the flightier parts of his personality charming or annoying, but it’s a spectrum. The Untamed version is my favorite, character-wise.

All the people I ship romantically with this character Nie Huaisang, in the sense that, what with their roles in the plot, it would be fascinating to see how things would play out if this was the main romance, instead. Especially because romance would not be Nie Huaisang’s priority. What would the relationship trajectory even be, teenage sweethearts, ending with a definitive breakup by the finale? I've never sat down with the idea long enough to do anything with it, but sometimes it comes back to me. The main reason I'm into it is because hey, it's the main character & the main driving force behind the story! this is an intellectual puzzle to work out!, but they also had nice, easy chemistry when they were young and seemed to enjoy each other's company, which was something that was... not present in the actual main ship as far as I could see, and apparently my only kink is obvious mutual interest and stability in a relationship. I don't think they really had romantic/sexual chemistry in particular, but hey.

Wen Ning. I just think ningxian is cute. Also has lots of potential for difficult and uncomfortable exploration re: consent and autonomy.

But I think at the end of the day, the only relationship he has that just by the actual shape of it would be something I'd be interested in seeing turn into a romantic and/or sexual relationship is with Wen Qing, which, uh. Yeah. The fond push-and-pull, the two leaders, it’s good stuff. Just a physical relationship during their hunkering together time would be fun, too.

My non-romantic OTP for this character Jiang Cheng. I remember originally being pretty peeved about the fact that the romance (censored or not) is treated as the main focus when the Yunmeng duo is, to me, the real heart of the story. Let Lan Wangji be a supporting character.

I'm not sure if I really want a reconciliation between them, personally, but I want to note that it’s not because I think it would be fundamentally impossible, or because one or both of the characters is genuinely better off without the other. I think it would be very good for them if they managed some sort of genuine healing together!

I don’t want a reconciliation because thinking about their complete and total failure to communicate and consequently never making up makes me experience genuine agony in a very satisfying way. I have in the past gone into people's tags for the two of them and managed to work myself into a sobbing mess within five minutes. It is extremely cathartic.

My unpopular opinion about this character That time when he walks into a Jin party and starts throwing threats 3-2-1, part of me is going “fuck yeah” and part of me is looking at all the collateral damage servants trying to stay out of the way in the background, who never asked to be terrorized by this very powerful man. It’s not something that makes me dislike the character in any way or form, as stated before if anything it just makes him more interesting to me, I just don’t think that it was an uncomplicatedly ‘cool’ moment.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon The man should be actually responsible for his own misdeeds. I’ve heard people say that this was a censorship thing, but I have no sources on that.

And A-Yao gets to go under a read more.

How I feel about this character Continuing down the nostalgia lane, my initial reactions were “this man smiles very deliberately” and, towards the end, “man, fuck the gentry, you should get to win”.

I, hm. It feels sometimes like there are two kinds of opinions that fans have, and I don’t connect with either of them! There’s the “this character is an unrepentant asshole and I’m proud of that, you don’t need to make up sympathetic motivations for villains” which, while I agree that he can justify a lot to himself, just doesn’t ring true to me. I think that many of his actions were either forced by the circumstances, or understandable, or sympathetic and made with decent intentions, or not particularly bad compared to shit that other characters and their society as a whole gets to.

Obviously there are all these breakdowns about the specific acts of altruism that he does that in-universe are rare from someone that high up in power, and those are great, but even without all of that, he was a stable, peaceful, competent ruler who wasn’t doing any large-scale nasty shit after a series of complete nightmares on the throne, and upsetting that long-standing balance should bring about repercussions for several social classes that does more harm than anything he was individually doing at any point.

As for the other take, there’s the “oh no he’s so small and so cute and should be pampered so much” which I don’t... get, emotionally, and additionally it is reaaal hard for me to see the character as someone who either wants or would even particularly enjoy being the one being taken care of. Usually my response is-

There’s that part during Nie Mingjue’s capture in Empathy where he’s just, running the whole show? Like, on one hand it is very important that he’s probably the weakest person in the room, and might lose in a direct confrontation against even the random soldiers standing to the sides, and if he plays his cards wrong or even sub-optimally one of the two big strong cultivators in his vicinity is going to pulverize him, and also aware of all of this at all times and living in low-key terror. But also -- he pulled it off.

If I’m working myself toward some emotional response with “A-Yao small” it doesn’t end with “someone should hold him 🥺” but with “and doesn’t that just make it all the sweeter that he sat on that throne”. (I have two kinks, and the other one is power reversal.)

All the people I ship romantically with this character Only Lan Xichen, really, but there are some tentative side paths to take!

Qin Su, in that the initial attraction would be fun to explore, and then it becomes less about the relationship dynamic and more about the underlying horror.

Nie Huaisang, in a not-particularly-serious, one-sided, never-happened-and-now-it-never-will kind of way. The ideal would be Jin Guangyao thinking of Nie Huaisang as a tiring but cute little brother figure (he doesn't have those, all of his family relationships sans mom take a weird turn at some point! this one sure is about to!), while Nie Huaisang has a lil crush, and then it goes all the way to hell. ...And I know that I set “won’t happen” as a precondition, but I guess if there was a character who keeps the (fierce or not) corpse of the late Chief Cultivator close in an effort to feel alive post-canon, Nie Huaisang is the one I’d want for that role.

Jiang Cheng, because that family unit is so under-explored in canon, and because out of a handful of favorite characters these two are usually my number one, so watching them interact with each other can be fun just because of that. But in my heart of hearts I want Jiang Cheng to stay forever single by choice, and really I'm just here for platonic family shenanigans with Jin Ling. (I've written some of this, but out of everything it's probably the least likely to ever see the light of day.)

But really only Lan Xichen. When I was watching the early episodes and didn't remember the characters well and in my head these two were only “the disturbingly handsome older brother” and “a bit part soldier (lol) from some other sect” I really imprinted on that goodbye scene, like damn, look at these characters who are friendly with each other and showing obvious interest. It's only the circumstances that are getting in the way! If I were to ever read fic from this show, it would be these two. (This was all a counter-reaction to early wangxian haha.) But increasingly it goes to show that what I'm really into is people having mutual and mutually recognized affection for each other, the negotiated part in the relationship being less about whether it'll happen and more about how to go about it. More romances that start with getting together instead of ending there.

I am laughing at my past self here though, after actually finishing the show my thoughts on xiyao were that it was nice that it was both there and stable (until, you know) and unknowable, whatever the shape of their relationship in private they are aware of it and have made their peace with it, and that's all I need to know, and now I'm sitting here with several WIPs, wondering if this is what finally pushes me to start publishing fanfiction.

My non-romantic OTP for this character Lan Xichen. No, I’m not interested in a non-romantic* read on their relationship, yes, I just want him here, too.

Also, the only other relationships of note here are with Meng Shi, Jin Ling and Qin Su, and using ‘non-romantic OTP’ for any of those feels off to me. Meng Shi and Jin Ling are at too much of an uneven level, Qin Su doesn’t reach OTP levels even if the romantic filter is off. Su Minshan and Xue Yang might be a better fit, but again, OTP level is too high. Early-canon Nie Huaisang... maybe.

*non-sexual is fine. never officially getting together w/mutual acknowledgement is fine.

My unpopular opinion about this character I think I already went off, so. The hat is fine, and the hate sounds performative and weirdly ignorant at times. I don't love the Untamed version, but it’s fine and the ones in other adaptations are fantastic, even. The warm yellow-brown combination looks really nice. More of the characters should wear hats, actually! Which I realize is an opinion influenced by historical Japanese and Korean dramas, which are of a different genre altogether (also not Chinese, but hats in official settings are a constant in all of these cultures). Nevertheless.

I wish it was used only post-timeskip in the Untamed, too, though, for more variety in costuming and to further differentiate the pre- and post-timeskip versions of the character.

...................................and a specific xiyao pet peeve also: I am becoming increasingly wary of the... either super common or I just happen to keep finding these, take where he’s some sort of unwilling/particularly hesitant participant in this relationship. Like I went back to watch parts of episode 4 (to figure out why it was that I was so sure Meng Yao would be swinging a sword around in future episodes and my conclusion is: because everyone else was swinging theirs) and even the initial interactions in the goodbye scene are like-

Meng Yao literally runs up to a guy waaay out of his league like “Hello I am bringing myself Forth because I have the audacity to assume you might Personally Want to Know that I am leaving and here are some pretty personal reasons why (gosh you really are lovely)”

Reactions I’ve seen to this: look at the little dude running away from his emotions

Me: w h a t

And then the natural conclusion here is that Lan Xichen is there to love him (with his dick and/or sunny personality) until he’s forced to accept it [serene face emoji] and it makes me. Not enjoy it much.

Ofc this doesn’t include normal human hesitations one might have about... anything and everything in life, really, but when it’s treated like this automatic character/relationship hurdle I’m just hhhh

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon I'm pretty satisfied with things as they stand? Just like the relationship between Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian makes me feel cathartic agony, Jin Guangyao's fate makes me feel cathartic rage. Look at the low-born bastard child go down the stairs of life, one last time!

......Sometimes I have my weak moments and do wish he had gotten away in the end, though.

#tägäämätön #huaisang gets around in this hm #xiyao-feels

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amethyst-wind-uk · 3 years

Text

Finally played Horizon: Zero Dawn (spoilered thoughts within)

First of all: The game’s amazing. Well worth the money. One of the best I’ve played in a good while.

The game itself is beautiful (amazing scenery and dungeons), and the machine enemies are gorgeously designed. They will punish you if you get cocky, too. Combat is by means automatic, especially when the bigger machines start getting thrown at you in more enclosed spaces.

Both the overall myth arc AND Aloy’s personal storyline are incredibly written, and tied together beautifully, allowing for plenty of perspective reflections on the latter as new information for the former becomes available.

Sidequests abound. While most are mechanically very similar (go to [x] and kill the machines there), the tertiary characters who the actual quests revolve around are a delight. Varied and entertaining, they really help to build the world that Aloy explores (some personal favourites of mine are Nil [leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not he wants to die as well as kill a lot of people, but he’s so effectively written as creepy. Like you know there’s something wrong with him from the first line of dialogue], Talanah [veteran huntress who quickly befriends Aloy, and their joint exasperation with their respective mistreatments from others allows them to bond quickly and deeply], Vanasha [manipulative spy/politician who masterminds an operation that is one of the most damaging and disruptive for the enemy faction, all while being so delightfully self-confident]. The Frozen Wilds DLC adds some other gems, like the Hunters Three [a trio of outcasts out to find closure over the death of their mentor while riffing off each other lovingly], Ikrie [a Banuk warrior who acts as a foil to Aloy, choosing to become an outcast with her own freedom when presented with the flaws and restrictions of her people - severing a very close personal relationship to do, to the benefit of both in said relationship], and Varga [Oseram metalworker who effortlessly falls into an easy companionship with Aloy]).

The main plot is long, and heavy on emotionally charged moments. The overall goal is surprisingly hopeful, as well as extremely dark. There’s a recurring theme about how light and shadow both get more powerful as the other does.

Aloy reluctantly allies with the mysterious evesdropper, Sylens, and their interactions are terrifically entertaining. To be blunt: They can’t stand each other. Sylens is a completely unlikeable dick driven solely by a desire for knowledge, while Aloy doggedly pursues any information about her mother. Their interests just so happen to intersect there, but it’s always apparent that they’d rather be dealing with anyone else.

One of the most complete character arcs in the game is that of prevalant and commonly-appearing side-character, Erend. He starts out as an immature mid-to-late-twenties dudebro who dicks around fighting and hitting on 18-year-old Aloy, but pretty quickly starts drinking his respect-women-juice and getting his act together. He grows into one of the most endearing allies for Aloy, dropping his sleaziness and bravado, and acknowledging her prowess and leadership. By the end of the story, he’s definitely one of the most likeable characters. Like, you’d happily share a drink with the guy regularly.

There are some flaws, as with all games:

1) The Fast Travel system is frustrating. For the majority of the game, unless you press deep into the wilderness first thing, it’s not unlimited. Until you finally unlock the Unlimited Fast Travel Pack, each time requires a single-use item. For a game this large, that’s quite annoying. Fast Travel has been a common staple of open-world games for some time now, and I don’t think there was really a need to try to reinvent that particular wheel. The loading screens for fast travel are also 10-20 seconds long each time.

2) For all the varied machine enemy designs, it’s really annoying that you can only ride the horse/goat/bull variants. The game gives you a mechanic to ‘override’ machines, making them non-hostile to you while hostile to other machines, and making the above three rideable. That being said, you’re gonna be supremely disapponted that the game lets you override the twenty-metres-tall robot T-Rex and then can’t ride it. Same for the multiple three-metres-tall giant cat variants. There are also giant condors, giant moles, giant crocodiles and giant rhino variants, and you can’t hop on those either (IT WOULD’VE BEEN SO COOL!). It really makes the override mechanic seem underutilised, especially given how important it is to the story.

3) The Datapoint collectables do really well in fleshing out the mythology of the series, there are just too many of them. Multiple kinds, with double digit numbers to find for all of them, makes it a drag to hunt them all down. They could do with streamlining that for the sequel.

4) I feel like Vala and Bast dying almost instantly was a waste, especially given how Bast was a childhood bully to Aloy (stuff can always be done with that, even on a small scale), and Vala is constantly talked about post-mortem as someone who could’ve potentially been a great friend to Aloy (they seem to warm to each other quite quickly during the five minutes they spend both alive). Vala’s death especially is kinda galling, because it serves to boost Aloy’s interactions with Vala’s brother Varl, as it is very similar to...

5) While Erend himself goes through a very successful character arc, it does unfortunately involve a woman (his sister, Ersa, who is superior to him in every sense [he tells you this himself without fuss]) getting fridged. We only see Ersa for a few moments in person, as she then immediately dies. It’s very unfortunate that Erend’s otherwise great writing is marred by this.

6) The final mission in the story is underwhelming. The significant buildup for both of the primary enemies featured in said mission is not proportional to their actual encounters. The human enemy is easily killed, and the machine enemy is just another iteration of a robot you’ll have killed half-a-dozen times by that point. Something of a let-down.

Still, I fully recommend getting the game (as well as the Frozen Wilds DLC, which adds a solid 8+ hours onto the game’s playtime while introducing new machine variants and gear, as well as the aforementioned characters and a plot that fleshes out the myth arc for the series). It’s a great time overall, and you’ll really enjoy how the game mixes fantasy and sci-fi so superbly.

#Horizon Zero Dawn #Horizon: Zero Dawn

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imagineitup · 4 years

Text

𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘱𝘪𝘶𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘧𝘰𝘺

𝘳𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺: @spideyboipete

𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵: fake dating au

𝘢/𝘯: i tried out a new style of hc, so let me know if you like this version or my old versions better tysm <3

- -

you and scorpius are those friends

you’ve got that type of friendship where something clicked and suddenly you were both attached at the hip for years

because apparently having the same brand cauldron in the beginning of first year with the same exact hole in the side means best friends ride or die in first year culture

like what even is this? some psychic shit??

but anyway, with you being absolutely intent on making friends, scorpius couldn’t get rid of you if he tried but pls he could never survive without you anyway :p

since then you’ve both been best friends for life! well, ever since the +1 with the introduction of albus potter

and at first you were super happy because yay new friends

but then they kind of stopped hanging out with you in the middle of fifth year or so and went off into their own little world

and you were a little sad

ok maybe a lot sad

but that was okay because that meant you were able to meet new friends and expand your horizons! you even got the chance to focus on yourself and join some new clubs, too!

who even is scorpius anymore lmao you don’t know him

but anyway

it was seventh year and you were so tired of your friends bugging you to get a s/o

“(Y/N) why don’t you date someone?”

“you’d really hit it off with so and so, don’t you think?”

“just put yourself out there”

ರ_ರ

exsqueeze me

so one day you just can’t take it anymore

and maybe you should’ve thought this through but nO

you don’t pause to think things through

because life is for living in the moment hell yes

“guys i’m already dating someone” (▰˘◡˘▰)

needless to say your friends go insane

like who tf is this humans (Y/N) hasn’t mentioned the audacity™

so like any normal person, you say the first name that comes to mind

“hahaha … scorpius!”

your friends stare at you like they’re in the office

blink blink

“but … weren’t you guys just friends”

“NO”

you’re panicking but

hahahahhaha

“we’re in LOVE”

ur friends are really like ok whatever, but go off

and that is how you find yourself dragging yourself over to the slytherin common room and placing your hands on scorpius’s shoulders

“promise me you won’t freak out”

and ofc scorpius is already freaking out

bc why are you sitting in the common room with this crazily determined face and forcing him to listen to you

and this is how you get into this situation

with scorpius screeching and falling off his chair and you doing your best uwu pls help me 911 face

“i can’t DATE you”

what

you give scorpius your best professional face even though inside you’re ???

bc um is it that bad to date you??

you are confused???

you’ve saved scorpius thousands of times in his hogwarts career in both academics and social standing he can afford to pretend to date you ONCE

“WHY NOT”

“BECAUSE”

ರ_ರ

ರ_ರ ರ_ರ

obviously you’re not getting anywhere and you start to stand up, kind of annoyed

“fine then, ig i’ll just find someone else to date me.” sniff

as soon as you say that, it’s like you’ve flipped a switch and suddenly scorpius is very concerned and almost a little upset

and when you don’t notice him contemplating something, he runs in front of you and nearly knocks you over

“second thoughts?”

scorpius scowls

although it looks more like a lil pout pushing at his lips and he crosses his arms

lmao who is this and what’s happened to scorpius

you shrug and start to leave for real until scorpius reaches out to tug at your arm

“NO, NO WAIT … I’LL DO IT”

you whirl around immediately and you are needless to say, very relieved!

｡◕‿◕｡

“perfect!”

but apparently scorpius hasn’t recovered from his fall from before

bc he can’t stop rubbing his hand against his neck and his face is all blotchy and pink

kinda cute, but in a best friends way. like wowie my best friend looks kinda adorable look at that boy go

but ofc scorpius has to ruin the special moment because he offhandedly says, “shouldn’t we have rules or something?”

rules???

rULES???

this is fake dating scorpius wdyfm rules?

“huh?”

“like … things not to do? maybe one big rule is not ruining our friendship???”

ʘ‿ʘ

he smart smart

“ok easy then, just don’t fall in love with me”

apparently this is the WRONG thing to say?

scorpius is RED like boy is not pink anymore his cheeks are burning red

“you can’t just say that?”

????

you are confused bc what does that even mean

“why not?”

“that’s like ... y-you you can’t just say that.”

you are, if possible, even more confused?

“okay and?”

scorpius blinks

bls this boy has the audacity to just shrug

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN

reader u are duMB af scorpius bout to throw hands here

but he won’t bc he luvs u (▰˘◡˘▰)

so fifteen minutes later you guys decide to make three big rules

scorpius had a whole list of like twenty but you narrowed it down to these:

1. don’t ruin ur friendship

2. no kissing

3. and ur paying for three hogsmeade rounds after this is over

honestly you think this is kinda rude considering scorpius is richer than ur entire life but whatever, at least he’s not leaving you out to the wolves

so when it’s finally time to put this fake dating thing to the test, you tug scorpius over to your side of the table at the great hall and make sure to swing his hand

which actually feels kind of nice??

like you’ve never actually thought about this before

but scorpius is comforting

his hand fits right in yours, and he’s so warm

and i mean haha it’s not like this is a new thing, pssh you two hold hands all the time!! but adjkaldjkfl not in a dating way

ur friends are shocked

like they never thought you’d actually show up with a DATE

and bc they’re all ruDE they grill scorpius

but scorpius is best boy

best bf

and answers all their questions like a pro

(▰˘◡˘▰)

(▰˘◡˘▰)(▰˘◡˘▰)

ur so proud

you let ur head rest against scorpius’s shoulder and BITCH

scorpius presses a kiss to ur forehead

AJDKFJDSF

why are u so happy? what is this??

it’s just so gentle and soft and you feel your heart getting all mushy and warm

your friends all give a big collective aww because one, they’re annoying af and yes y’all are cute cute and this is cute

but reader ur going through some existential crisis

and later when you’re walking with scorpius to all your classes, you can’t stop thinking that hey, this fakedating thing isn’t that bad

but whatever it’s just cause u miss spending time with scorpius!

yes, that’s it!

you’re just sad that scorpius always hangs out with albus and you don’t get to see him as much

so this is nice!

you’re just going through some bff nostalgia atm pls wait for (y/n).exe to start working again

anyway now bc of this fakedating thing, you and scorpius just spend so much time together

like y’all have always been best friends, but this feels different okay

scorpius will run over to you when he sees you and wrap his arms around your waist

the first time he did it, he had the cuteness to go “is this okay? are you okay? is this too much?

and YOUR HEART WENT !!!!!

you might’ve blushed

okay you did

but you convince yourself it’s just because ur touch starved

ʘ‿ʘ reader c’mon

but whenever you call scorpius and wave at him, his face just LIGHTS up

and you’re pretty sure yours does too

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ ✧ﾟ･: *ヽ(◕ヮ◕ヽ)

needless to say you kinda don’t want this all to end

because somewhere in the middle of all this, your head has gone from calling scorpius your fake boyfriend to your real boyfriend

and you don’t really want to go back to just being friends if you’re honest

wait hold up

uh oh

UH OH CODE RED

did you just admit you liked scorpius?? in a REALS way?

◉_◉

◉_◉ ◉_◉ ◉_◉

so like the only way you know how to deal with things, you avoid it!

you start to act really distant

and now whenever scorpius wraps his arms around you, you stiffen up

and scorpius like the angel he is pulls away so quickly bc ?? is his best friend upset? uncomfortable?

did HE make his best friend for life uncomfortable? omg this isn’t ok what is happening

everyone can tell sumn is up

ofc they can, what with you going to the extent of running away whenever you see scorpius and scorpius reacting like the entire light got blown out his life

and bruH scorpius may be innocent but he aiNT dumb

he knows your schedule he KNOWS you ignoring him

and baby is upset

because lately you’ve been starting to feel a lot more to him

and now you’re just gone??

that’s not okay and scorpius isn’t just gonna sit around and be sad

if there’s something he can do he’s gonna do all he can to try to fix it!

he corners you one day and holds up an angry piece of paper

“excuse me m’aam/sir but you broke rule number one which is, in case you forgot, don’t RUIN OUR FRIENDSHIP”

“oh haha uh scorpius! hi uhh gotta blast”

scorpius’s face falls

and that was it

you just wanna smush his face together and tell him things are fine and that you love him

wait WHAT

but scorpius is still staring at you with that wounded look

like you’ve just ripped up his heart and torn it to shreds

bc that’s kinda what you’re doing

omg what’ve you done

READER WHAT HAVE YOU DONE

“scorpius …”

his eyes lock onto yours so fast that you’re afraid he’s got whiplash

your mouth goes dry, and for a few moments it’s hard to talk

but you finally manage to tell him that “i don’t think we should fake date anymore.”

scorpius’s face breaks

his eyes go wide, and it looks like he wants to stagger. and he almost does, just a little bit

“is it something i did?”

WHAT

this boy

scorpius malfoy really gonna be the death of you

you’re shaking your head back and forth so fast because NO of course not of course this isn’t his fault

scorpius is still teetering back and forth, and his arms start to wrap around himself. “because i swear i didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. if i screwed up just tell me and i can fix it, (Y/N), please”

you shake ur head, already starting to panic. “of course not. it’s not YOU scorpius. i just can’t fake date you because --”

you clamp your hands over your mouth

“because?” scorpius prompts, his voice careful

you just shake your head, already starting to turn and run back to your dorms because this is stupid and you’re scared

big scared

but scorpius just takes your hand and tugs you backward a bit, almost like a scene from a movie

you do that perfect little twirl back and are face to face with the one and only

“do you … do you like me?” scorpius asks

that’s it

it’s out

you’re ready for your entire friendship with scorpius to come crashing down

“do you?” he repeats softly

you try to pull away but scorpius isn’t having it

he’s still holding onto your hand, gently, of course, and his eyes are boring into yours

you’re too scared to look because you’re afraid of what you’ll find

but when you can’t take it anymore and finally tilt your head up you realize something important

because his eyes aren’t full of disgust

in fact, that’s further from the truth

scorpius malfoy is staring at you with the biggest heart-eyes you’ve ever seen and you’re confused to how you’ve never seen this sooner

it’s almost like you’re his whole world, and now you can’t fucking breathe

is this real?

your heart’s pounding in your chest so fast and there’s something bursting at your lungs

you nod faintly. “yes. i like you”

the huge grin that spreads across scorpius’s face is everything

he rushes forward to pull you into a gigantic hug, even lifting you up a little as he spins you around and lets out a little happy shriek

“i’ve liked you forever, (y/n), i can’t believe this is real”

what

so u could’ve been dating scorpius before??

“you dork why didn’t you tell me?”

“because you didn’t like me like that!”

BITCH WHAT

“well maybe i was confused” you pipe back

scorpius just laughs, burying his head in your shoulder crook. “i’m so happy right now.”

and honestly ?

so are you (´∀｀)♡

#scorpius malfoy #scorpius malfoy x reader #scorpius malfoy headcanons #scorpius malfoy hc #scorpius malfoy imagine #scorpius x reader #scorpius headcanons #scorpius hc #scorpius imagine

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leverage-commentary · 4 years

Text

Leverage Season 2, Episode 8, The Ice Man Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Christine: Hello, I'm Christine Boylan, Writer on this episode.

Jeremiah: Jerimiah Chechik, I directed this.

John: John Rodgers, Executive Producer.

Chris: Chris Downey, Executive Producer, and this is The Ice Man Job.

John: The Ice Man Job was- where did The Ice Man Job come from, Boylan?

Christine: Like all great ideas, Albert brought this into the room obsessed with a certain heist.

John: The Antwerp diamond heist.

Christine: The Antwerp diamond heist. And we just tore the article apart, and we all tried to figure out, you know, what was gonna happen, and what was gonna happen in our version of it.

John: See the thing is, when you write a con and heist show that goes past even 10 episodes, you are now one of the longest running con and heist shows on earth. So as soon as a new diamond heist article hit, we attacked it like piranhas.

Christine: Absolutely.

John: Jeremiah, what was it like shooting Russians stealing stuff in the middle of Portland? Cause this is the middle of the freaking street, middle of the day.

Jeremiah: It was pretty easy.

John: Yeah?

[Laughter]

Jeremiah: I could really do this all day. I think the fun of it was the bridge.

John: Yeah?

Jeremiah: Which kind of kept a lid on the composition, and we found a wonderful driver who is in this scene.

John: Vince Valenzuela.

Jeremiah: And he is a stand up, as you've said.

John: He’s a stand up. I had totally forgotten, Vince and I had worked together for 15 years ago- 20 years ago doing stand up in Seattle.

Jeremiah: He lives in Portland, he came in, killed the audition, and in this particular scene, I just love that he just slipped into that Bostonian sensitiblity and just really sold it to me. I loved it, and-

John: We had a lot of good vics this year. We had a lot of good vics this year.

Christine: Yeah, we did.

John: And that was mostly the Portland talent base.

Chris: I would say, yeah, always.

Christine: Absolutely.

Chris: Now Jeremiah did you- was there any movies that you looked at or anything you wanted to get for the feel of this episode?

Jeremiah: No, I didn't want anything to influence me at work; I like to come clean.

[Laughter]

John: He's a tabula rasa, he just takes a ton of peyote and channels the muse.

Jeremiah: I meditate for a week before and then I just go and do it. Rarely do I even read the script.

John: I know that.

Christine: Oh, I know.

John: He just knows who’s in the scene. He has a rough idea how to shoot it.

Jeremiah: But in this case, I actually did, because the script was really very very fun. It was quite clever and anyone who has seen this episode knows. And if you haven't seen it, then you shouldn't be listening to me, you should be watching the episode.

John: Should go watch the episode.

Chris: You're already gonna be lost.

John: No idea.

Christine: This is another one of those great episodes that every single one of us had a hand in.

John: Yes. Everybody has something.

Christine: Everybody has something- some gem in here.

John: And that was a nice bit with the glass. This is the first episode Sophie's gone-

Jeremiah: This is Elijah’s? cup.

John: Yes this is Elijah's cup. I'm Irish, I kind of know what that is. This was the first episode where Sophie was gone. This was originally gonna be the winter season opener, with the idea that she'd been gone for awhile. And we were really faced with the idea- we wanted to keep Gina and Sophie as a character present, and so that's where the subplot to this came up, the idea that what happens when we’re a man down? Because this is something we faced in the writers room - what are we gonna do when we’re a man down?

Christine: Absolutely.

Chris: Well this one kind of is a piece with 3 Days of the Hunter Job where we have- since Sophie's gone, people have to shift into different roles and that's really- we couldn't really break this episode until we came up with that. What’s-

Jeremiah: Excuse me, can we talk about me now?

[Laughter]

John: Yes.

Chris: I threw it to it you about the influences. You didn’t want to-

John: You didn’t want to talk about it! Do I need to get you more scotch? Is that it?

Jeremiah: Yeah.

Christine: You were influenced by the drinks of the Thai restaurant.

[Laughter]

Jeremiah: I like the dynamic of Christian and Beth in this, being petulant children.

John: Yes.

Jeremiah: Always fun to do.

John: They really fell into a brother/sister vibe this year and it really paid off; it’s a lot of fun. And the gemological institute was nice enough to help us with this.

Christine: Those guys are fantastic. We had a great-

Jeremiah: Didn't we win some award from the gemological institute?

Christine: They were definitely pleased. We got their blessings and then some.

Jeremiah: Best presentation of jewels in a television drama.

John: There’s valuable lessons for those kids out there writing the spec scripts. People like to talk about their jobs.

Christine: Research.

John: Because really, this has got a lot of really fine detail in it and the- this is- Beth is about to introduce the plot point: diamonds are registered. And not even just big diamonds are registered. They have, essentially serial numbers, on them and you called the GIA and you found out the size. They sent us a lot of information, exactly how it's done, how it’s inscribed.

Christine: Answered every question we had - really were terrific.

Chris: We’ve got beer koozies from the GIA now, we’ve got letterman jackets.

Jeremiah: You know my aren’t, but I just implied blood diamonds.

John: You just implied- really.

Jeremiah: I really gotta trade up.

Christine: This is- a lot of the registration is to combat the whole blood diamond issue.

John: Yeah. And that was-when we were writing this, for a while the first act was all about getting the certificates, and then it was just easier- and it was interesting because Chris was actually out of town. He came back, we were explaining the episode with all the certificates and stuff and then I said - it’s like filing the vin number off your car. And you were, ‘that’s it! I get that! That's-’ I was like, ‘Oh, alright.

Jeremiah: But I bet you didn't know years and years ago I did a big commercial for De Beers where they flew me to London and I walked through those vaults.

John: Really?

Christine: Wow.

Jeremiah: Where I realized diamonds don't have any real intrinsic value at all.

John: No they do not, sir.

Jeremiah: There are more diamonds than anything. More diamonds than atoms.

[Laughter]

John: It's a manipulation of perceived value. No, it’s very-

Jeremiah: Well sold.

John: Yeah, exactly. Now this is interesting. ‘Yes! I get to be the con man’. What- how did we wind up with assigning these roles? I’m trying to remember the logic we fell on? I think we wanted to sort of pay off Aldis- Hardison always tends to go too far.

Christine: Right and also Parker playing the inside here, she knows so much more about the product than anyone else.

Chris: It was also a product of - we wanted to figure out why we would get our team of thieves breaking into a vault.

John: Yes.

Chris: That was really the thing that stymied the episode was, we had a great idea behind this which was this diamond heist, but why would our team of robin hood thieves do that? And ultimately what we figured out was if one of them was being forced to do it, and they would have to break in ahead-

John: Then we were like alright, is Maggie being held hostage? And the thing is- I personally, and this is a really irrational thing, I hate hostage episodes. I despise them. They're a cheap manipulative trick. And so really trying to find the most interesting way to do, which was Aldis being grabbed in the middle of the episode because he had gone over; that at least felt motivated.

Christine: But being grabbed and used, he wasn't just like held in a room.

John: Exactly.

Chris: I don’t know if-

Jeremiah: So Die Hard is that one of the movies-?

[Laughter]

Chris: Apparently he doesn’t.

John: No, now you know why? Because she's actually got an agenda in that movie.

Jeremiah: They're hostages!

John: They're hostages, but you know what? I think in TV- in a movie it's viable, in a TV it’s not because, you know-

Chris: You're saying you think it’s schmuck bait.

John: Exactly its schmuck bait. In American TV you're not gonna kill off-

Chris: We can’t keep arguing about this during this shot.

Jeremiah: I really loved shooting this.

Chris: This is a really incredible shot.

Jeremiah: Yes I-

John: It's not bad.

[Laughter]

Chris: Talk to us about this shot.

Jeremiah: I planned this shot. I planned this shot. And how I planned it was I was gonna shoot her in slow motion. This is another shot that was very complicated. I'm always very competitive with Dean Devlin, when he directs, about how many of these moves I can do in a piece. I felt I was reasonably successful here.

Chris: Boy is she just stunning here.

Christine: Gary Camp, our operator, doing heros work again, right here.

John: Just the sort of mantra ‘shut up, trust.’ What's interesting-

Christine: ‘Trust the diamond.’

John: This mantra she's saying is actually the opposite of how Hardison plays this con. We’re actually laying in for the audience here how and why Hardison's gonna wind up screwing up. It's also- now this actor is-

Christine: Sal Xuereb. Fantastic.

John: Great job. I like that he looks at the diamond first, you know.

Jeremiah: And you can't help but look at that diamond.

Chris: Yeah, no it- yeah.

[Laughter]

John: Everyone’s a little hypnotized by Beth Riesgraf.

Chris: I’m a little hypnotized by her right now.

John: Well, you know, because she tomboys every episode. Every episode she's in the Nikes.

Jeremiah: That’s why it's nice to dress her up, and she felt great doing this, and she had a great time doing this. And what I liked about it, I got to walk to the set; that was one of my memorable moments here. I was close to the hotel. That's everything.

John: That is everything. That's how you decide how to take gigs, is whether you can walk to set or not.

Christine: That was a nice morning.

John: And Portland giving us great locations.That bridge, the street- shooting that scene in LA, we would’ve snapped our own necks.

Jeremiah: We’d still be shooting.

John: We'd still be shooting. Portland, yet again, coming through.

Jeremiah: This is good. I like the french reverses that I do here. It’s a style-

John: What is a french reverse my friend?

Jeremiah: It's not a direct over, it’s an indirect over, a left side over.

John: I trust that. and this is-

Jeremiah: This is where we feel his Cockney accent, which he worked so well, and I had to really back him out so we could understand him.

Christine: He was too good.

John: Who was our vocal coach up there?

Chris: It was- what, Mary- Mary Mack is her name.

John: Yeah, Mary Mack.

Christine: Mary McDonald.

Jeremiah: Insert edit here.

John: Mary McDonald and she worked with us for the accents all the way through Gina, Aldis, everything; it was a lot of fun.

Jeremiah: Pasha Lychnikoff playing a Russian, which was not a stretch.

John: Not a big stretch.

Christine: Nice and easy for him.

Chris: The accent you had to write this [sounds like: petoir], what did you do?

Christine: My favorite thing beside speeches is writing in accents.

Chris: Now how did you do that? Cause they were hilarious.

John: Now hold on, I'm going to get Jerimiah scotch cause he's out of Guinness.

Christine: Oh here we go, we’re pouring scotch.

John: Don't get that on the soundboard.

Jeremiah: Fight, fight.

Christine: I did it with pleasure.

Chris: Where did you find it?

Christine: You know, there is a lot of things I find difficult like plot and story, but things I find fairly easy-

Chris: But I mean, did you go on the web, were you going and looking at clips?

Christine: I've been an anglophile since I was a kid.

Chris: So this is all-

Jeremiah: Character and story are your weakest points-

Christine: Are my weakest points, you know that.

Chris: So all the-

John: Why am I bringing you back next year?

Christine: I don't know, are you? I don’t know what’s happening.

Jeremiah: You didn't say that about me, though.

Chris: So all the jargon and stuff you knew.

Christine: Yeah, this was a lot of watching a lot of Guy Ritchie movies, watching a lot of- just the usual sort of British television that I enjoy and a lot of the Brit movies that I like.

Jeremiah: This was reasonably complicated to stage, because there are so many people in this scene and-

John: Yeah, you're shooting 6 people in there.

Jeremiah: Yeah, identifying the coverage, exactly what beats to shoot, was a bit of a trick in that it’s a pretty dark place, and I had to use their, kind of, blocking to move them in and out of the light.

Chris: And to orient the geography so the audience knows where everybody is.

Jeremiah: Yeah. Especially me.

John: I like that nice little, subtle beat she does as he lists her crimes.

Christine: And that she gets more and more-

John: More and more frustrated and he can tell that she's pissed off.

Christine: Oh, she’s brilliant.

John: Where did the mute Eliot bit come from? Was that was Dirty Rotten Scoundrels? I think that was the-

Christine: I don't know, I thought that was just shutting him up. It could've been Dirty Rotten Scoundrels unconscious reference there.

Chris: I think it was general- we wanted him to get under their skin.

John: Yeah.

Christine: Hubris.

John: The whole premise of this episode was, what is the most asshole-ish stuff that Aldis can do? You can swear on these, by the way, the most asshole-ish stuff that Aldis- that Hardison could do.

Jeremiah: Can you say fuck on theses things?

John: Sure. Just don't do it unnecessarily, like in a fake prerogative it's alright.

[Laughter]

Christine: Fucking what?

John: That's good. Oh hey mom, I hope you’re enjoying the commentary.

Christine: My moms heard that.

John: And this is, sort of, the hook and the push. This is- he's- the trick to, and Apollo is very clear about this, the trick to a lot of these cons, is convincing the guy he doesn't want it the first time around.

Christine: You have to refuse.

John: You have to refuse, exactly. And you know, then put pressure on the guy that he winds up coming back to you, so it's his idea when it actually hooks.

Jeremiah: Pasha, knowing better, takes a little bit of the bait for later.

John: And this is great. We actually managed to hit this pretty well, she's gonna- Parker’s got a habit of picking locks when she's annoyed or nervous.

Chris: Yes.

Christine: That's the first part of this.

Jeremiah: This is a very cute little high school bit of business between the boys and-

John: Nice rack focus there; bouncing back and forth.

Christine: This is Nate doing exactly what John Rogers does in the room.

John: What's that?

Christine: When you walk in, and you've stood outside so you've heard what we’re talking about.

John: I don't stand outside, you’re just very loud and I hear what you're saying.

Christine: And then you just walk in, and start in on the conversation, ‘Huh, what?’

John: Do I have the same magnificent presence as Tim Hutton when I do it?

Christine: I would like to- well, no. Sadly, no.

[Laughter]

Chris: Gives the scene a little energy to have somebody enter.

Christine: Absolutely, it’s great.

Jeremiah: ‘Not. Gonna. Help.’

[Laughter]

Jeremiah: And I remember being very specific about this.

Christine: I love this shot.

Jeremiah: With this piece of direction, period, full stop, each word-

John: Each word, land it.

Jeremiah: Take a beat. I think Christian said, ‘No, I'm just gonna say not gonna help.’ ‘No.’

Chris: Now shooting- talk about- talk about shooting through this.

Jeremiah: I shot this in a reflection; this is all reflected.

Christine: In the jewelry store.

Chris: How is that difficult?

Jeremiah: Because it’s a semi-silvered mirror and I put it off-axis and avoided seeing myself.

John: Nicely done.

Chris: That’s great.

John: And that's planting the fact that this is a security guard who shows up later.

Jeremiah: And it's a jewelry store, and all in one iconic image.

John: Yeah, it all moves along very quickly. I don't know why Tim chose to do this as- cause he's playing Sterling in this. And he's chosen Sterling, and he's not really doing Mark Sheppard, I think, just more sort of doing the impression of Mark Sheppard that- the impression of Sterling that Nate would do at like the Christmas party at IYS to piss him off.

Christine: Absolutely.

Jeremiah: In fact, I had that exact conversation.

John: Yes, I'd like to know the motivation.

Jeremiah: Because I said, ‘Are you playing Mark? Or are you playing a fictitious character that you are inventing?’ ‘The latter.’

John: Oh.

Jeremiah: And he was very consciously making that decision. He was not gonna play Mark. He was gonna invent a character that he felt was more appropriate to deliver the kind of bait.

John: Yeah, and this is kind of a fun-

Jeremiah: I think it was right, by the way.

John: Yeah, it was right. It's also a fun recurring bit with Nate Ford's character development this year - he’s a jerk. Nate Ford enjoys screwing with people. Now that he's sober, he's an unpleasant human being and he really does- like in the episode right after this, Papadakolis, Tim loves playing Nate when Nate is playing just that really manipulative jerk.

Jeremiah: And the question is: is Mark’s character becoming more likable?

John: Yeah, possibly.

Jeremiah: And there you go.

John: And there you go. And this was interesting, because we wanted to make everybody check in with Sophie, and- but Eliot would never ask for help.

Christine: He's the only one not asking for help.

John: And that was a big deal, was the fact that instead he's just like, ‘I'm going to kill these people. Please come back.’

Christine: Yeah, he doesn't want to change roles.

John: No, he's happy!

Christine: He wants to do his job.

John: ‘My job was to get punched and kicked.That's my job,’ as he says in 206. This was a lot of fun, clearing people out.

Christine: That’s hilarious.

John: This is actually based on that story when I worked on that gas pipeline. Remember in that high school? I worked on a gas pipeline in my 20s when I quit university for a while, and we were looking- investigating a gas leak, came around the corner and found high school students smoking. Because it was out of line of sight of the principal office. In the middle of a gas leak. So we basically did this, we just like wearing these masks were in full respirators and were like, ‘Get the fuck out, you’re gonna kill us all!’

Jeremiah: I thought the art department really overdid it on that piece of cotton.

Chris: It's a little bit over the top, but you know, it works.

John: A little bit.

Jeremiah: But again, as we say, we’re on the fun train here.

John: We’re on the fun train.

Jeremiah: Whatever it takes.

Chris: And did Marc Roskin do this?

Jeremiah: Yeah, he shot- we were so pressed for time, this scene was done while I was shooting the-

John: The vault? Or the van?

Jeremiah: No, the robbery.

John: There you go. It's always fun- by the way, if you're writing your con or heist show, dropping the jumpsuit to reveal the sexy outfits-

Jeremiah: Always a good-

Christine: Never hurts.

John: Have that tool, have that screwdriver in your toolbox.

Jeremiah: It's always good, even in a hostage show. You can use it.

Chris: What was this place?

Jeremiah: It improves it.

John: ‘Oh no, he might die.’ He's not gonna die!

[Laughter]

Christine: This is a lab facility.

Chris: It is a lab, OK.

Jeremiah: It’s a real facility, they actually etch information on acorns.

[Laughter]

John: Really?

Jeremiah: Yeah.

John: Is that big?

Jeremiah: It’s huge. It will be!

John: It will be, there you go. It's a big industry.

Jeremiah: Advertising on grains of rice.

John: Wow, there you go.

Christine: We just gotta give Nadine a nod for the costumes in here, they were really brilliant.

John: Yes, they’re very nice.

Christine: Everybody's outfits were terrific.

John: Why did we name the laser? I can't remember that.

Christine: Glinda. I don't know.

John: I don't remember who came up with it.

Christine: I can’t remember who came up with that.

John: Cause it feels like an improv; I don’t remember that in the script.

Christine: I feel like that was you. Because most of the other Cockney stuff I wrote, but Glinda did not come from me.

John: I think it was an improv.

Christine: Could be Aldis. He’s hilarious, by the way.

John: Cause remember I was working on the next, the 209- 210 with you when you guys, so I really just bombed in for the heist, for a bunch of the det cord stuff, and solving a lot of the heist problems. I like heist problems. Now how difficult was this?

Jeremiah: This was not difficult in that it just took a while of second-unit- you know, we were shooting inserts, and that machine was, it actually- I know I'm giving too much away, it actually did not laser diamonds.

John: What? They don't use the same laser on acorns they use on diamonds?

[Laughter]

Christine: You're kidding me - that's a laser, look at that!

John: That’s madness! That clearly looks like a laser.

Jeremiah: I'm wrong! I'm wrong! I'm watching TV, and I stand corrected.

John: By the way, that's a great visual effect. That looked really nice, with a little bit of mist off it.

Chris: That looked really great.

John: Beautiful lift, nice pass.

Jeremiah: The handoff.

Christine: These two could live a life of crime.

John: They could, they could. Very nice hands. And now the sale.

Jeremiah: Beth does the, kind of, blank look very well.

John: Yes, she does.

Chris: This is a great shot, too. That's a beautiful shot.

John: You like an inside shot, whenever you're shooting a piece of machinery like that.

Chris: Microwave oven from inside, I love it.

John: Fridge- like a good inside the fridge shot.

Chris: Like a good fridge shot.

Jeremiah: What about shoes?

Chris: I have not done shoes.

John: Why would you shoot shoes? That’s madness, just a foot coming at you. Here.

[Glass Clinks]

John: You’re 21 years old, you could have sex with this scotch in every state in the union.

Christine: It’s legal. By the way, I did wait until we were on set to have- to tell Aldis, ‘When you're walking, can you just say, “The Ice Man cometh”? And he did and I was the happiest girl in the world.

[Laughter]

Jeremiah: He didn't know what it meant, though.

Christine: He’s young.

John: That is a very 70’s look, that is really Chris rocking the Life On Mars look there.

Christine: Seriously, right?

Chris: The mod squad right there.

John: There's the mod squad! Right there!

Christine: The mod squad shot.

John: Why aren't they running down a storm drain?

Chris: That's a beautiful car, too.

Christine: Wow.

John: I think you can actually see, though, people watching the shooting in the top floor. I think we kind of missed them that day.

Christine: Didn't Aldis learn how to drive that car in like 5 minutes? It's a stick, right?

John: Well if you remember correctly, if you watch the first season DVD, The Bank Shot Job was the first episode we shot, and he didn't know how to drive a stick and the van was a stick. So the first time the van starts to peel out it [coughs] just rolls away. But it-

Jeremiah: I like not seeing it, and then the car is there.

John: There's a nice locked off comedy frame right there.

Jeremiah: I like that.

John: You’ve could’ve made that- we've done some abductions and really, unless there's a fight or something, you wanna, you know-

Jeremiah: I actually really enjoyed shooting this scene, which was in the most grotesque environment ever, but-

Christine: We were close to death.

John: Really? What was wrong with it?

Jeremiah: It was the basement of a pulp and paper mill and-

John: Oh boy. There were union organizers buried in the floor, you know that. There's some rabble rousing communists from the 30’s in the cement.

Jeremiah: And Pasha is always good. He's- first of all he's a lovely person, but- he may have changed by the time this DVD is released, but when-

John: I don’t think things have gone horribly wrong.

Jeremiah: But this is a- I love this shot.

John: This, by the way, is kind of an homage to a running joke we have in the show, which is- this is in theory downstairs or back- the back rooms of the night club they were in, right?

Christine: The Russian club.

John: And there was a- there is a trope in espionage and spy movies of that moment and Chris and I used to do this sound effect, which is you know the deal that's going on in the back of the Russian bar. Which is, you know, just the sound in the background of, you know [imitating bass-heavy club music] ‘uhn ch uhn ch uhn ch’ and then the guy opens the door [louder] ‘uhn ch uhn ch uhn ch’ and then the door closes again, [quieter] ‘uhn ch uhn ch’ I don’t have the plutonium ‘uhn ch’.

Jeremiah: I love that; that’s well performed.

Chris: See almost every episode of Alias.

John: Almost every episode of Alias there's the uhn-ch uhn-ch in the background.

Christine: She walks through the club - she walks all the way.

Chis: She walks through the club with the ‘uhn ch uhn ch’.

Jeremiah: You have to walk through the club to designate that you are a hip show.

Christine: That’s right, that’s why we walk through the club.

Jeremiah: You know what I mean, if you just cut to the back-

Chris: I'm gonna say, 25th Hour is another movie, there's an ‘uhn ch uhn ch’.

Jeremiah: Oh forever.

John: That's a good blog post is: the top ten ‘uhn ch uhn ch’ scenes.

[Laughter]

Chris: Top 10 uhn ch uhn ch scenes.

Christine: You have to write that.

Jeremiah: Aldis’ phone call here is kind of fun, it's very nice.

John: It’s a ton of fun.

Christine: ‘What accent is that?’

Jeremiah: This is England, this is how I see England.

John: It's rainy and there's cabs.

Jeremiah: And, you know, we actually got caviar for him and I wanted it so bad.

Christine: He loves it, he loves caviar. We had a nice chat about it.

John: I love that Sophie basically, ‘As long as you're not in the current parenthesis (situation you're in) you're fine. I can absolutely get you out of there.’

Christine: I’m a fan of that construction whenever we can use it.

Jeremiah: ‘As long as it's nothing to do with Russians.’

John: Exactly. And this is the fact that she's- again, we talked about this on the other commentaries, every now and then this turns into the detective show where you showcase people that are criminals that in theory- part of their skills is they can put together information very quickly, and Sophie pretty much knows exactly what’s going on the second-

Jeremiah: Even before it happens.

John: Really as soon as Hardison calls.

Christine: The tone of his voice and his failed accent, she can discern the entire thing.

John: Yeah, exactly. And there's a gun on the table. This is the bad day.

Christine: Not his best day.

John: And now the call for help and to take-

Jeremiah: I'm happy with the staging and cinema of this scene.

John: It’s beautiful. Is this also in the pulp and paper mill?

Christine: Yes it is. Oh, breathing that in was wonderful.

Jeremiah: It was a delight.

Chris: Oh wow, look at that. Couldn't ask for more smoke, could you? I mean...

Christine: I had a little mask and one of the crew members said, ‘Don’t use that.’

Jeremiah: It’s funny you said that, I did ask for more smoke.

John: And now this is the-

Chris: The beautiful thing here, is the camera constantly moving swooping around-

Jeremiah: Well I always felt that that is one of the, kind of, operative iconic themes, visually, of the show, and really trying to keep it moving all the time. But not to upstage the actors, I’m always careful never to say, ‘Hey, camera, where are you going with that scene?’ I really do try to- sometimes I fail, but often I succeed.

Christine: It supports them, the way you reveal Parker in that last bit, it really-

John: That's another thing we did this year a lot, which is we never see Parker come in or out of a room.

Christine: She just appears.

John: She's just always there somehow.

Christine: Like a genie.

John: And the- this is competence porn. This is them basically brainstorming- this was the fun of the episode. We had to come up with a heist that wouldn't work, then come up with a heist that did work, but the key to that heist was somehow making the heist that wouldn't work, work.

Chris: Making the failing element of the other heist the key to success.

John: A lot of index cards on the wall that day.

Christine: So many.

John: A lot of stuff.

Jeremiah: This is more than my favorite moments, visually anyway.

John: Yeah, it's really nice; it’s very creepy, you know.

Christine: It really is.

Jeremiah: It’s very-

John: We don't usually see guns on our guys, is the thing.

Christine: Nope.

Jeremiah: Well I wasn't looking at the gun, I was looking at the elegance of the rotation.

John: Well I'm saying the elegance of the rotation, the beautiful light around a very dark moment-

Chris: And the light and the dark on his face.

Jeremiah: It was poetically dangerous.

John: Exactly. It really- it brought home the-

Jeremiah: Entertainment value.

John: I was gonna say menace.

Jeremiah: That too.

John: The vertigo.

Jeremiah: Always love those shots.

John: And another recurring thing, when Hardison’s gone, no one knows how to use the computer.

Chris: Yeah.

Christine: Can’t even check email.

Jeremiah: Which is why I put them on the little computer because I thought it was more manageable than the big computer.

John: Yeah, it is absolutely a great choice. Also that space over the course of the season became the family space.

Jeremiah: I like that space.

Christine: Yes. That's not the computer space, that's the brother/sister-

John: That's the family- family arguments happen around that counter.

Chris: Well you've already- by this point in the episode, you've already been at the briefing so you kinda want to be at another part of the set.

John: It's also great that-

Jeremiah: Guess what kind of store this is?

[Laughter]

Chris: Pork store?

John: Pan up from jewelry to pork?

Jeremiah: Butcher?

Christine: Butcher?

Jeremiah: Cheese shop? No, it’s a diamond shop.

John: I love the fact that Parker gives Nate the hair spray with the implicit understanding that Nate will know what to do with that. And this is part of the fun and this was-

Jeremiah: Also, I love the way she does it without looking at him.

John: Yeah, she knows he’ll take it. What's a lot of fun here, is the- is Nate kind of playing a corrupt version of himself, and really getting to do the- you want more scotch? Alright there you go, alright hold on. [Moves away from mic.]

Jeremiah: Yeah.

John: Really getting to make fun of the guy he used to be, and that's one of the themes of the season, which is Nate Ford's identity-

Christine: And using Sterling, too, to distance himself.

Jeremiah: Notice the receding vocal quality of John's voice.

Chris: Scotch in the back of-

John: Getting more scotch.

Christine: Uhn ch uhn ch.

Jeremiah: Uhn ch uhn ch.

[Laughter]

John: Careful, there you go.

Christine: So he's playing the corrupt version of Nate, and using Jim Sterling's name to distance himself from it.

Jeremiah: This is a vault, this is a very very important kind of- this is the vault, this is how hard it is-

John: You're setting the specs.

Chris: Did we build this? What is this?

Christine: No, this is a vault.

Chris: This is a vault.

Jeremiah: Real vault.

John: That door- getting to her to swing on that door, you're not just gonna build one of those.

Christine: It was fun to be in the vault.

John: And this is, again, the fun of the construction, which is we now must make seem utterly impossible and then solve it.

Jeremiah: Those two shots where they were almost looking at the camera.

John: Yeah. That's- we don't usually do that. Why that choice?

Jeremiah: It was a conceit.

John: A conceited choice or just a conceit?

[Laughter]

Jeremiah: Both. It was hard to do both at the same time, that was one example.

John: This is, by the way, I like to say this is kind of elegant, because a lot of shorthand in both movies and television would just have them take you through the schematics on the computer, or show a film or something like that. Having a guy do the tour with a goal, with a character is-

Jeremiah: I think it's very important to do that since we revisit later in a whole different way.

John: Exactly.

Chris: Right.

Christine: Yup.

Jeremiah: And, you know, I particularly like the way we, kind of, solve the vault problem visually, too. I mean it feels real, it feels solid.

John: And all the security in here is real, I mean, including the fogger, which you were obsessed with. You love the fogger.

Chris: I love the fogger.

John: Calling the security expert you were checking up on.

Chris: This was pre-production, it was ‘Let's just see what's out there in terms of vault security.’ And the guy told me, ‘Oh, you know about the fogger, don't you?’

John: ‘No, tell me more.’

Chris: And I think I said the link with the description of the fog, I think ended up verbatim in the script. What the fog’s made out of.

Christine: Absolutely.

Chris: I think when we were doing pre-production, I made a point to say to Jeremiah, ‘It’s not Batman fog, it's gotta be like thick fog.’

Jeremiah: I mean, if it wasn't fog, it'd be foam.

[Laughter]

John: Foam? Oh. I wish we’d filled the place with foam, my god that'd be great.

Jeremiah: They do on [unintelligible]. They have rooms that, if you breach, it fills with foam in less than 2 seconds.

John: What does the foam do?

Jeremiah: Suffocates you.

Christine: Really?

Chris: Wow.

John: That's cool.

Jeremiah: Not if you're a terrorist.

John: Oh, there you go.

Jeremiah: Or somebody who accidentally enters the wrong office.

John: Yeah I know, Jesus.

Chris: Wow, we got to work that-

John: I don't want that.

Chris: Foam next year? Can we do foam?

John: That’s awful. Sometimes I’ll walk in offices accidentally, that seems harsh.

Jeremiah: There you go, suffocating foam.

John: There you go. And-

Jeremiah: Again, the computer is not exactly working perfectly.

Christine: Nothing works here.

John: Again, the challenge this year- first year we established the team was so good, a lot of the challenge this year was constraints. How do we put them off their game? How do we take one element away from them? And you know Sophie gave us the natural one in this one, everyone off their game, everyone’s in a different role and what was the fun here is, Parker kind of diving back into full thief mode for the first time this season, you know.

Jeremiah: Yeah. Close-ups of these guys. Close-ups I like, they feel right. I like that. One-eyed close-ups.

John: One-eye close-up is that a style? Do you have a name for that, too? The one-eyed close up?

Jeremiah: The one-eyed close-up.

John: That's not bad, I would call it the Chechik.

Christine: The Chechik.

Chris: He sent her out with that $400,000 necklace on, very trusting.

Christine: Oh yeah.

John: He has her phone number, he knows where she works.

Christine: He did- we gave him the line, ‘You'll earn it later.’ Which was the filthiest thing I think I've ever seen.

[Laughter]

John: You know what? No, it's a bonus; she works there.

Christine: Oh that’s right she’s a counter girl, she’s a model.

John: She’s an employee. So what he's talking about is her pension.

Chris: Oh right.

Christine: Right. See? He still gives employees pensions.

John: There you go, and a little apology.

Christine: Innocent guy, he feels kinda bad about it.

John: We tried to make a deal out of the fact that Eliot doesn’t like doing this.

Jeremiah: Oh I like this.

Christine: Oh yeah.

Jeremiah: This is real, she’s up there.

Christine: She's really up there.

Chris: That's a great shot.

Jeremiah: That’s a nice smile from her.

Christine: A lot of people in Portland loved watching this shot.

Chris: Oh what a beautiful shot.

Jeremiah: Yeah, and others didn't.

John: And in the season finale, when you eventually see it that's her on the roof of the City Hall- of the Portland City Hall, a ridiculous height-

Jeremiah: I think you tweeted that.

John: I took a couple pictures of that because I was stunned. There was a moment where I was like, are we out of our minds? Beth Riesgraf on a rig hanging like 6- 8 stories up.

Jeremiah: Tim is particularly funny in this scene. I find him engaging, funny.

John: Whenever he's being corrupt, there's kind of a kernel of truth and funny to it.

Christine: Nate enjoys putting the screws to people.

John: Nate Ford is not the honest man he thought he was. And that's something we had a lot of fun playing with this year. Also the blocking, because this is crucial, because he's playing a role here. Did you- now did you come in and it was set up this way? And then you block or did you-?

Jeremiah: No, I set it up in order to block it a certain way, thereby making my life easier. In other words, I actually thought about it.

John: Oh, that's very nicely done.

Christine: Pre-production meetings were great.

John: The magnetic plates- the trick with the magnetic plates is from the Antwerp diamond heist, that I wound up demonstrating on the writers room doors with two pieces of cardboard and tape.

Christine: Two pieces of cardboard and tape. Yes.

Jeremiah: As one does.

John: As one does, cause people kept reading it and going ‘I don't get how this works.’ And I actually wound up building it.

Jeremiah: Now this is a door- this- I love all of this stuff.

Chris: The cutting here is great, too, all the little bits.

John: Great heist cutting. Yeah this was- it was, again -

Jeremiah: It's gotta be a black van; they would never come in a white van.

Christine: Never.

John: You wouldn't be any self respecting Russian hitter in a white van, you know.

Jeremiah: It wouldn't happen.

John: ‘Oh look at that - there's a scuff on the side.’

Christine: ‘Can I take this one?’

John: But again, you know, people think when you write television shows, you've got this enormous plan and everything. You learn how to write every tv show while you're doing it. And again, part of the struggle this year-

Jeremiah: That was a good punch.

Chris: That was great.

John: That was a great punch. Is realizing we can just watch these people do stuff for an act. You know, you don't have to-

Chris: These guys are so funny. The line here-

John: ‘I'd like to see you do an accent.’

Chris: ‘I’d like to see you do an accent.’ Made me laugh.

Christine: We had many many different ad libs at the end there. The two of them were unstoppable, it was great.

Jeremiah: It was extremely fun to do all of this. This keeps going. Now we're approaching one of the absolute super fun shots.

Chris: Now let me ask you, when you're looking at a script like this and you know there are certain places you're gonna have to make compromises in the budget and what not, I'm imagining this sequence you're like digging in on, the break in sequence.

Jeremiah: Yeah, I mean, I try to dig in on everything.

Chris: But I mean, if you’re looking at one part of the show.

Jeremiah: I actually- I know where the, kind of, emotional roots are. I have to determine where that is on the show. Like, what is the real emotional tracking relationship-wise? And I have to know where everything comes together. Once I make that determination, that's where I- kind of spend my time and really focus, and to the extent that I'm right, it's a good episode.

[Laughter]

John: Those- that is a great outfit on Hardison in that and so, sort of big props to Nadine for that hilarious looking piece of work. What was I gonna say? The- yeah this shot this is an iconic shot for the show.

Jeremiah: This is one of my favorite shots and this happened almost by accident; I'll explain. When we visited the vault and we were scouting- and it wasn't written like this, the problem was that there was no way for her to be on the door. And I just thought, the only way for her to get on the door, or to get in and not trip the wires, is those kind of window cleaner suction cups so I just ordered them up and then positioned her body in such a way that made such a great shot. Because we had a glass door with that iconic- I can watch that shot over and over again, even though I did it.

John: This entire act is like - I will watch Beth Reisgraf as Parker break into a vault for 15 minutes; I'm totally cool with that.

Chris: Yes, absolutely.

John: By the way, that character uses those suction cups in other episodes. And she actually uses them-

Jeremiah: Oh good, I'm glad we didn't buy them just for-

Chris: No no no.

John: She actually used them in the first season, too, and we used them and then we forgot about them.

Chris: On an armored car.

John: On an armored car. Yeah. This is a lot of fun, him hamming it up, trying to-

Jeremiah: This is the fake break in, this is very good. I mean he’s holding it up.

John: Nice little comedy beat.

[Silence]

John: Sorry, scotch is kicking in.

[Laughter]

Christine: Cross-cutting conversations.

John: ‘I'm gonna kill you-’ it's nice. It's the little-

Jeremiah: And then silence befell the entire- as we kind of were.

Christine: But how much fun is it to write the conversations where they’re all on-?

Jeremiah: I love this shot.

Christine: Everyone’s doing different things.

John: Yes, exactly.

Chris: It’s a beautiful shot.

Jeremiah: Love the upside down of it.

Christine: I love this. I love the security cam just capturing everything that's going on, it's great.

John: Yeah it's great work, Derek, our computer graphics guy-

Jeremiah: I know we liked it. I hope everyone watching it liked it.

Chris: Here we really- we have every single character engaged in this, in the plot here.

John: That's the challenge-

Jeremiah: The cutting rhythm is what really translates that.

John: Yeah, that’s really nice. That's the challenge of the show is, there's a lot of shows where there's one star and a bunch of sidekicks. We’re a real five-hander; everyone has to be doing something at every moment of the script.

Jeremiah: It's very challenging when you're cutting, you always have to be aware of it. And when you're shooting you have to be aware that that's what is gonna fit. Again, lovely.

John: That’s also a great shot.

Jeremiah: Classic.

John: Classic heist shot. The little smile she's got when she stands up, that’s what makes her happy.

Christine: Kid in a candy store.

Chris: And no laser grid.

Jeremiah: She likes that. I like doing that with-

Chris: As much as you hate hostage stories, I hate the laser grid.

Christine: I'm with Chris. I'm so with Chris on this one.

John: You hate the laser grid.

Chris: I never wanna see a laser grid on this again.

Christine: I was so happy.

John: I think we'll never top the laser grid we did in 207 - the moving laser grid - and that was pretty great. Even the reflection in her eyes-

Chris: That’s it.

John: That's it, you're done, you're out, cause that was it. We can’t do another one.

Jeremiah: Excuse me, can we talk about me again?

[Laughter]

John: Jeremiah, tell us the challenge of this opening the door with people walking in scene?

Christine: That door is beautiful.

John: That's tough. That's like-

Jeremiah: Those doors you can open with a finger.

John: Yeah exactly, but you gotta act like ‘ugh’. Give them the impression of weight.

Jeremiah: Here it is again.

John: An act reset. We don’t usually do an act reset.

Chris: We do sometimes.

John: Yeah, but it is not a big deal. This is tricky. This is a timing one- this is a timing joke.

Christine: This is all about to-

Jeremiah: This was challenging to stage.

John: Really, how so?

Jeremiah: Timing-wise, this particular moment wasn't, but as soon as everything breaks, it's complicated. You had to hit the-

Chris: It's a lot of people, too.

Christine: A lot of people in play.

John: This was kind of complicated to figure out, I'm mean- I think I was- I was up in the room. Remember? I came down, you were like ‘Ok, we've got everything except how they get out of the vault.’ And I was like, ‘That's kind of a big thing, guys.’ And then it was Mythbusters that came to the rescue.

Christine: Absolutely.

John: I remembered-

Christine: As usual.

John: The det cord for the instant burn through. Well, it was originally thermite.

Chris: It came from two things - it came from det cord and the fact that we had tunnels available in Portland that we had not- on our list of unused locations. We had these fantastic tunnels and that were used- weren't they used to take people onboard ships?

John: They were press gangs. Shanghai tunnels.

Jeremiah: They were press gangs. In other words, they were bars and they used to get people drunk. Shanghai them, punch them out, take them down to the tunnels, wake up at sea.

John: Exactly how I run the writers room.

Christine: What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Jeremiah: Exactly how I became a Director.

John: Boylan was working on another show, and you came to a cocktail party we had and she woke up in our writers room-

Christine: I have no memory of this. What, am I on cable now?

Jeremiah: Me, I remember working on in, you know, probably a death ship Shanghaied and woke up and I was in the DG].

Christine: I used to be a pirate, I don’t know what happened.

Chris: Here we go, here's the fogger.

Christine: Oh the fog, and that red light off the fog is great.

John: Yeah, nice choice. And then the reset to sort of reestablish the geography and -

Jeremiah: -what happened.

John: Again, we have very strict rules about how you use these shots, and this is a nice-

Chris: I knew when I read the script, this was gonna be my favorite shot.

Christine: I love the-

Jeremiah: Nice, good chemistry.

Christine: Oh these two.

Jeremiah: Beth’s look, beautiful.

John: Cause he's a little oblivious right at that moment.

Christine: A little high from the heist as well.

John: And then the moment-

[Laughter]

Chris: Sex and violence folks. Right there, that's a sex/violence sandwich.

Christine: Yes it is. Who doesn’t like a sex/violence sandwhich?

John: What’s the bread on a sex/violence sandwich?

Christine: You don't need bread, it’s carb free.

John: It’s carb free, it's all meat.

Jeremiah: Or all bread.

Christine: Or it’s all bread.

Jeremiah: If you’re into that.

John: And this was great-

Jeremiah: A steadicam in the vault like this, moving was challenging, obviously.

Chris: It’s hard.

John: There's not a lot of room in there, right.

Jeremiah: No, not a lot of room. And again, Gary, our operator, really brilliant. And this had to move to land on specific lines. We did it a lot. I was very focused on just hitting exactly the right beats and ending up in the right place.

Christine: And speaking of brilliant actors-

John: Lieutenant Bonanno. What's really nice was, we finally- it was nice to start to develop a recurring character that we could go to for law enforcement, and it sort of built the Leverage world and he-

Jeremiah: Into the diamonds!

John: He actually became super important in the season finale. We were looking for someone to use in the season finale and that became a character. Now, mostly because we love the Columbo and he really rocks the Columbo.

Jeremiah: He also enjoys doing this a lot.

Christine: He is a pleasure on set, and so consistent.

Jeremiah: Yeah, he’s wonderful.

John: We beat the hell out of him in the finale, too, and he did everything we could throw at him. And now the villain suffers. That’s Dean’s rule.

Chris: Dean’s rule.

John: The villain must suffer and there's always a little gloat going on.

Christine: Often a petard hoist of some kind.

Chris: Here we go.

Jeremiah: Love this shot.

Christine: Look at that.

John: Where the hell is that?

Christine: Edge of nowhere.

Jeremiah: That is under the pulp paper plant on the river.

Chris: Nice.

John: And that was part of- that was really hanging a lantern.

Jeremiah: Like, that is Portland.

John: And that's- well that's Boston, it’s Boston.

Jeremiah: That’s the joy- sorry, Boston.

John: No no no, that's the joy of Portland is, you got all of these really interesting places that haven't been shot at.

Jeremiah: And it was joyful to do that.

John: That was really hanging a lantern on it was, we said this heist wouldn't work earlier and that's the key. We’re actually going to just lay it out in dialogue.

Christine: And this was Joey Cospito, named for my uncle. I just have to say during the commentary, he’s a sweetheart.

Chris: Oh that’s nice.

Jeremiah: Also his softening is good here. He's very soft, I love this guy; it’s great.

John: It's a nice payoff and it’s-

Christine: Beautiful scene, these two.

John: Yeah, it was really tricky.

Jeremiah: Cash!

John: Yeah, ordinarily we don't have Nate alone in these scenes and Tim’s, kind of, choosing how Nate plays this was an interesting beat. He doesn't usually- he does some version of the hand off with Sophie or one of the other characters.

Jeremiah: Now he liked doing this scene, he liked working opposite Vince.

John: Of Vince? That’s cool.

Jeremiah: Yeah, loved it.

John: No, that was a smooth flip. This is a dense script; this is an awful lot going on in this.

Christine: I don't know what you're talking about.

John: I don't mean in the usual way, which I'm trying to cut down one of your four-page speeches in actual dialogue.

Christine: You love them!

John: Yeah.

Christine: You love them.

Chris: Using every part of the animal there.

Christine: What did I get to write this year? Cockney, Irish...

Jeremiah: I use every part of the animal, and that's just in pre-production.

John: This is great. This is the family- the brother dynamic.

Jeremiah: Hug it out.

Christine: Ad lib!

John: Hug it out this time, and then the roll, she’s still pissed and then-

Christine: Oh that’s so-

John: You can see him starting to lose it, too.

Christine: He's laughing.

John: Chris really can't hold it together.

Jeremiah: Now this was a nice, intimate moment. Tim and I really talked about this. I really wanted these moments to be ver,y very charged from his point of view. Because I thought this was the opportunity to invest as much in that relationship, and in the complexity of their relationship. And just seated him alone, and shoot him alone. And I was- we had a good time working on it and dug in with it.

John: This is actually a book end to a huge moment in the finale. We actually- we do the second version of this where he’s, you know, the same but different speech.

Jeremiah: As well?

John: Yes. Not quite as well as this, but the most epically beautiful phone call in television history, Jeremiah; I hope you’re happy. But no, this is- this feels like a coda. It's actually one of the most important moments of the season. Because it really is the moment where Sophie is just like, ‘You know what? I'm actually getting better and you’re not.’

Jeremiah: And here he can't say goodbye. He just can't say goodbye, and he wants to stay on the phone. And I worked that, and I wanted to really make sure he just couldn't hang up.

John: He doesn’t have the emotional equipment for what he's dealing with right now, you know? This is a shut down, angry guy.

Christine: Right.

John: And yeah, even that little frustration look right there, like, ‘Alright, that didn't go like I hoped.’

Christine: Oh, here it is.

Chris: Nice long shot here. You see his isolation.

John: Isolation.

Jeremiah: Very. And her-

John: And then she's done with it.

Christine: There it goes.

John: Yeah. I love she's wearing the mink in the bar.

Chris: Yeah, the mink.

Christine: The mink and that giant cocktail.

John: Yeah. Well that was fun, guys. Do you have anything you wanna say to the nice folks watching before we take off?

Christine: I adore this episode, I adore working with Jeremiah, and I adore everyone here. That's- it’s scotch talking.

Jeremiah: You love everyone.

Chris: [Slurring] ‘Let me tell you another thing!’

Christine: Scotch talking. Let me tell you something else, bartender.

John: This is the scotch-driven commentary. Thank you for watching the episode.

Christine: Thank you for watching.

John: And watch the next one, it’s very good.

Jeremiah: Yeah, watch many more, because they're all good.

#Leverage #Leverage TNT #Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts #Audio Commentary #Transcripts #Parker #Alec Hardison #Eliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Sophie Deveraux #Season 2 #Episode 8 #Season 2 Episode 8 #The Ice Man Job

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shinadog · 3 years

Photo

Oh, hey, forgot to post this here - Mob Part 3 is up (and part 4 is on its way).

Summary : Something happened after Haruka’s concert. (PART 2) (AO3 Link)

3 - BLAME

Eventually, people left him alone.

They had tried their best, but since he had refused their help, they decided to give him some space. He was more than alright with that. Not that "alright" could ever be a word he would use to describe himself. Not anymore.

He felt numb. Disconnected from it all.

All the events of the past few days - the concert, the crowd, the call he received in the middle of that fateful night, the sleepless nights where he almost choked because he couldn't stop crying, the funeral... He remembered living those things, but when he thought about them, he felt like a spectator watching them from afar. Not an actor, but a powerless observer, a blurry silhouette who was barely floating above those horrible scenes.

On his good days, the days where he was more or less aware of his surroundings, the awful numbness of loss was replaced by a burning anger. On those days, he started to think about the people he blamed.

He had managed to get his hands on an impressive number of newspapers and magazines. The hyenas who worked for those rags must have had a field day with this disaster - a lot of ink has been spilled over this, and it didn't look like it was going to stop anytime soon. Good. Every new article fueled his anger, made something warm shake his numb, freezing body.

Sometimes, he would see her name in those papers. His own name, too. The sight of it made him sick, and he usually skimmed past it. He didn't want to know what the idiots writing them thought about him and his pain. More often than not, her name was replaced by a number. Lumped together with the rest of the poor souls who lost everything that night. He wasn't sure he liked that better.

The journalists who were feeling exceptionally bold sometimes talked about the yakuza. He kept those articles close. In one of them, he had seen the face of that man for the first time. The buff, scary looking guy in a bad suit. The "Dragon", a big name in the yakuza world, who had apparently moved away from it all years ago. The fucker whose stupid daughter's speech ruined everything. Kazuma Kiryu.

It was so much easier to hate someone when you knew what they looked like.

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

Kiryu had fought many formidable foes in all his years in (and out) the business. Deadly, dangerous men who were out to get him, monsters who wanted to hurt his family. Yet, none of them hit him as hard as the shitty little TV in his hospital room.

Whenever he was back in his room, when very tired nurses managed to drag him away from Haruka so that he'd try to rest for once, he would turn the bloody thing on. No matter what time it was then, it felt like he always managed to find a channel that talked about the concert.

Even though his various babysitters always tried to turn the TV off, to distract him from it somehow, Kiryu seemed to always come back to it. That thing was hypnotizing. He only stopped when he left the room. Or when a particularly pissed Majima threatened to explode the screen with his baseball bat.

Still, Kiryu watched those programs diligently, listening to all the people who had something to say about this whole mess with all the focus he could muster.

Seeing some of the people who were in the crowd that night talk and listening to their retelling of it left him weirdly numb.

The enemies he had faced before were, well, people. They had names, stories, reasons to act the way they did. They were tangible, something Kiryu could punch. Defeat. Forgive. He could do no such thing with a mob. There was no big guy who had orchestrated the whole disaster, no mastermind who ran things in the shadows. No one he could easily blame, fight, and move on from.

For some reason, this lack of a proper target made him resent everyone else.

Kiryu thought himself to be a pretty forgiving person. Those feelings rearing their ugly heads were definitely new, and he didn't really know what to do with them. He mostly kept them bottled up, though, because that's what he usually did with unknown feelings, but it was starting to get tiring. Blaming everyone only made it clearer than no one was to blame, and that made him somehow angrier.

Still, that's what he did.

He blamed himself, first and foremost, as it was the easiest thing to do. He shouldn't have let Haruka go, shouldn't have left the orphanage, shouldn't have left that Park woman come into their home... Oh, he wanted to blame Park herself, of course, but being dead shielded her from his rage. Mostly.

Thinking about their last discussion, before she chased him from his home, was somehow too much for him to process anyway, so he mostly tried to banish her from his thoughts. Which was not exactly easy because every time he saw Majima, he was reminded of the fact that he didn't find it necessary to warn him about her and her history with him. So, naturally, he blamed Majima for that. Among other things, including faking his own death, forcing Kiryu to come out of hiding.

He blamed Saejima and Akiyama, for pulling their annoying "let's fight together" bullshit again and making him believe this would work. It didn't. So he blamed them and their stupid plan, he blamed-

Kiryu took a deep breath, focusing once more on the TV screen. All this anger was exhausting, and he was feeling dizzy already. Oh, that was another one - he blamed his stupid body for being messed up and forcing him to lay still, when all he wanted was to do something, anything, to get his mind out of it.

The TV, showing no mercy, was still going with various interviews when he saw the crying man.

A big guy, with shaking shoulders and his head down, mumbling something as he shook.

Kiryu felt a bit too ill to really listen to what he said, which didn't matter because he couldn't take his eyes off that man. A small text at the bottom of the screen finally managed to catch his attention, and he felt a heavy lump in his throat as he realized what he was looking at.

That guy's daughter was among the four people who died that night. She was fourteen.

As if he knew Kiryu was watching, the man suddenly looked straight into the camera, and the pain in those eyes hit him hard. As if he had been stung, Kiryu immediately stood up, ignoring his stiff body's complaints and bolted out of the room.

He slammed the door behind him, and, taking the time to appreciate that no one was standing guard to see him completely freak out, decided he would not go to Haruka’s room. On his worst days, Kiryu would blame her, too, looking at her sleeping form with uncontrollable anger. He didn't want to go there when he was already this agitated, so he started limping through the corridors.

He had been allowed recently to use crutches to move around, which were replacing the wheelchair. He was shaking, though, so perhaps that it wasn't such an improvement. Collapsing in the middle of the hospital didn't exactly sound like a good idea. Walking at random in the corridors to escape his TV screen was also not a good idea, but Kiryu was already too deep in thoughts to decide to turn away.

As he kept moving blindly, trying to calm down while not losing his already fragile balance, he was startled by a man inexplicably bowing down as he passed. Kiryu found himself blinking at the guy, dumbfounded, before he noticed the Tojo pin on his lapel, and the small, almost inaudible “Fourth Chairman” he had whispered. Right. Just your average Tojo clan goon, lost in a random hospital hallway.

Well, maybe not that random. There was another man standing at the other end of the corridor, staring at him with wide eyes, and a third in the middle, his arms crossed as he stood near the closed door. Before Kiryu could ask himself why that particular hallway was packed with yakuza, the guy had hurriedly knocked on the door and opened it just as fast, getting inside in an instant.

The man who had bowed down to him straightened up, his voice hesitant as he asked, “Have you come to talk with the Sixth Chairman, Sir?”

Not really, no. In fact, if Kiryu could not speak with anyone for the next 24 hours, that would be great. Still, he frowned. “I thought Daigo’s room was a few floors up.”

“It is, but the chairman is visiting his friend.”

Friend.

Kiryu had a vague memory of Akiyama introducing Shinada as “a friend of Daigo”, something that felt like it had happened in another lifetime. And, now that he was thinking about it, someone (Akiyama again, or Saejima, he wasn’t sure) had told him the man had been admitted here after the mob roughed him up. Having been pretty much trampled by the angry crowd, he had been lucky to make it out with, to Kiryu’s knowledge, only a few broken bones and a ton of bruises. Beaten up, but still alive. Conscious, even.

Unlike Haruka.

Kiryu felt something flick in his mind, and suddenly talking didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all. He had been eating up footage of the incident for days now, listening to all the people who wanted to share what they had lived, and while it surely left an impression on him, the last example having been enough to send him running for the hills, it was not enough anymore.

He started moving again, careful not to fall, feeling heavy already after only having been using the crutches for a couple minutes. Not that he cared what the bodyguards would think if he collapsed in front of them. That would give them something fun to share with their fellow Tojo buddies.

Annoyingly enough, Kiryu had barely made two steps when he was stopped in his tracks again.

“Fourth Chairman.”

It wasn’t like he was surprised to see Daigo come out of the door, greeting him with an uncharacteristic anxious edge to his voice. His bodyguard had more or less already said he was in there, but Kiryu still couldn’t help but think there was something odd about this encounter. Maybe it was the fact that Daigo was still using a wheelchair, making Kiryu tower above him. Maybe it was the way he was looking at him now, his whole body tense as if he was expecting some kind of confrontation. Kiryu hadn’t seen this kind of hostility in Daigo’s eyes in years, but mostly, the man looked tired. Worried, too. Kiryu felt his own anger fade away slightly, as he got closer, wincing when a sharp pain on his left side reminded him not to move so quickly.

“Looks like things aren’t going so well for either of us, Sixth Chairman.” he said, realizing they were not exactly the two yakuza big names they usually were, but just two wounded idiots staring at each other in a hospital hallway. The bodyguards were following the scene, looking nervous. Kiryu wondered if they were worried a fight was going to break out. He didn’t really think that was a possibility. Apart from throwing one of his crutches like a spear, which would certainly make him fall, he didn’t see how he could be a threat, right now.

Kiryu cleared his throat, remembering what he was doing here in the first place. “I came to talk with Shinada.” This wasn’t a question or a request. Maybe he was threatening, after all.

“I don’t think that would be wise.” Daigo’s voice was low, his eyes drifting back to the door. “He’s still pretty shaken up by this whole mess. It’s still too soon.”

“Akiyama told me he was doing better.”

“He is, but… I’m afraid talking about this would be too much. For him… Or for you.”

That was new. Talking to him like that was not like Daigo at all, and Kiryu had to admit he would have been impressed, if he hadn’t been instantly annoyed by this. He resisted the urge to get closer, and instead stayed where he was as he asked, “Are you going to stop me, Daigo?”

“ I’m not sure I can. I guess I could roll on your foot if you take one more step, though.”

Kiryu was about to reply that he would definitely hit him with his crutch if that happened, when a voice he failed to recognize came from inside the room. “Let him in already, will you?”

With a heavy sigh, Daigo turned his chair around, letting just enough space so that Kiryu could get in.

Once he was inside, Kiryu realized something. This room was nearly identical to the one Haruka was in. Which wasn’t so surprising - hospital rooms tended to look alike. What made him tick was the silence in this room. No machines or respirator in here, and somehow, this angered him. He didn’t like the ferocity with which this thought had imposed itself on him, but as he looked at Shinada, able to breathe on his own and even having the gall to be conscious, staring back at him with wide eyes, Kiryu felt furious.

So that’s what he was doing, now. Blaming someone he barely knew for having the audacity to be in a better shape than his daughter. Kiryu supposed his sudden surge of animosity must have been noticeable, because all the certainty Shinada had when he asked him to come inside seemed to have vanished.

Now that he was really looking at the man laying in the bed in front of him, Kiryu had to admit he wasn’t exactly looking his best. He didn’t know Shinada enough to really tell the difference, having only met him once before the concert, but he didn’t remember him looking this exhausted. His face was covered in bruises, and part of it was still slightly swollen. Of course the simple fact that he was awake at all made him look healthier than Haruka, but he had clearly been through a lot. Feeling the anger quiet down for a bit, Kiryu greeted the man with a small nod of his head, unsure of what to say, suddenly.

“Well, let’s get on with it.” Daigo’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts. “It’s late, already. You should both be getting some rest.”

And you’re not? Kiryu wanted to say, glaring at the corner of the room Daigo had retreated in. Kiryu had barely noticed he had gotten inside the room as well. Part of him wished he could have talked with Shinada alone, but he was somehow grateful that it wasn’t the case. He still felt agitated, ready to snap back at the smallest thing, so having some kind of onlooker in there was mildly reassuring. Still, Kiryu did not care much for his tone.

He was at least right on one thing. It was time to talk.

“Can you tell me what happened that night?” No preamble, no “hey how are you?”. Kiryu was not in the mood for small talk.

Shinada blinked, dumbstruck. “Haven’t… Haven’t they told you, already?”

“I want to hear it from someone who was actually there. I want to know how it could have come to this.”

He wasn’t wrong. Kiryu already knew more or less how it went. He had been filled in, and had seen enough from the news to fill in the blanks. He wasn’t sure why he suddenly felt like hearing it from Shinada’s mouth would be different, but he still felt a weird apprehension as he waited for the other man to answer.

It took him a couple of seconds, exchanging a worried look with Daigo from across the room, before he finally started. “I don’t… I don’t actually know how it began. The fight against that Baba guy had been harsh and since everything had gone well so far, I… I stayed behind for a minute. Caught my breath.”

Catching his breath. Losing precious minutes he could have used to grab Haruka before everything went downhill. Kiryu tried to be reasonable, reminding himself that he had never asked Shinada to actually get to Haruka after the concert. He was just supposed to stop the shooter. And he did. There was no real reason to blame him, as he had told himself countless times.

“When I left the Dome that’s when I realized something was up. It had already started then, and I heard the noises. The screams. People don’t make that kind of noise when they’re just leaving a concert, so I ran and-”

Though footage of the stampede no doubt existed, people having probably filmed it with their phones, the TV seemed to only show what happened after or before the mob was formed. Kiryu could only imagine the kind of racket thousands of people panicking and running everywhere would make. He frowned, feeling something boil inside him as he realized somewhere in all that noise, there might have been the voice of the child he swore he would protect.

He missed a sentence, and only came back to himself when Shinada started the next one. “It was crazy. It was like a sea of people, and they were everywhere, screaming and pushing and-”

With a nervous twitch in his eye, Shinada suddenly stopped talking. While he hadn’t talked that much yet, Kiryu noticed he seemed to be really agitated ever since he had started. He was breathing heavily now, eyes lost in some corner of the room.

He waited a few seconds for Shinada to catch his breath before he asked, “If you arrived after it had started, how did you end up caught in it?”

“Oh, uh. I heard some staff member guy yell something about one of their idols being lost in the crowd on his walkie-talkie. So I ran into the crowd.”

Somehow, Kiryu had never thought about all the people who were working there that night. Too busy focusing on Mirei Park and the fact that blaming her now was pointless, he had forgotten to add all the other folks who had worked with her to his now long list of people to blame. It was infuriating to think that between the staff members, the people of Dyna Chair who weren’t gruesomely murdered, the other idols and Shinada, all charged to keep her safe, Haruka had still been caught up in the mob.

“I thought “I’m a big tough guy, I can probably push my way into this” but that was really fucking stupid. There were hundreds of them, and everyone was panicking and running all over the place, I don’t-”

Kiryu knew that, had he been there that night, he would have ran into the angry crowd too, with no hesitation, no matter how stupid jumping right into a angry wave of people was. He wanted to believe he would have been able to fight it, too, to punch his way until he got to Haruka, but hearing the panic weaving its way into Shinada’s voice, his breath getting faster, he wasn’t so sure of it anymore. “I got knocked down pretty fast, and then I-”

There was another pause, and when Shinada talked again, it was with such a low voice Kiryu almost didn’t catch it. “It felt like drowning.”

“Enough.”

Having more or less forgotten that Daigo was in the room, Kiryu almost jumped as his hand landed on his shoulder. Apparently, while Kiryu had been busy focusing on Shinada’s retelling of the events, he had managed to drag himself from his chair, standing on his own though he was slightly hunched over, a hand pressed on his side. Kiryu would have yelled at him to sit back down, knowing that he had already messed up with his stitches at least once, but found that he couldn’t talk.

He was still stuck on Shinada’s last sentence.

It felt like drowning.

Maybe it was the word “drowning”. It was visceral. Unpleasant. Kiryu felt sick as he wondered if that was how it had felt for Haruka, too.

Shinada had managed to find some of his composure back in the few tense seconds he took for Kiryu’s brain to finally start focusing on the scene again. Daigo’s hand was still on his shoulder, though he wasn’t sure if that was to get him to acknowledge him or if he was just leaning on him. Kiryu wanted to tell him to back off and sit down again before he hurt himself, but Shinada was faster, his breathing still somewhat erratic as he said, “It’s okay, Dojima, I can-”

“Kiryu.” Daigo ignored his friend’s attempt to stop him as he tried to straighten up, locking his eyes with Kiryu’s. “What’s the point of this? You’re both still too tired to get upset about this. Let’s give it a rest.”

Upset.

The word sounded ridiculous when Kiryu could feel his anger threatening to overtake him at any moment. He was not “upset”, he was furious.

“You’re right.” He managed to blurt out, feeling somewhat nauseous all of a sudden. Maybe that he too could use some rest, that was the longest he had ever been standing up in days. He took a step back, careful not to lose his balance or make Daigo topple by removing himself from his grip too abruptly, giving Shinada one last look. “Thank you. I’ll let you rest.”

“Wait-” Shinada straightened up in his bed, trying to catch his eye. He was still talking too fast and breathing too hard, his voice cracking slightly as he said, “I’m- I’m so sorry. I wish I could have done something to stop this.”

Kiryu had become something of an expert of empty, reassuring phrases after being fed so many of them in the past few days. He didn’t even look back as he walked out of the room, his voice probably harsher than he intended. “You did what you could. I can’t blame you.”

That was a lie, too. No matter how bad he felt seeing the man almost break down over the mere memory of the events, no matter how much he wanted to sympathize with him, Kiryu still blamed him. Like he blamed everyone. Like he blamed himself.

Feeling utterly sick with himself, he retreated to his room. The TV that he had left on when he ran away seemed to be taunting him, the bleak light it was projecting in the dark giving the room a ominous ambiance.

He punched the screen with such force that he almost broke his hand.

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

Shinada had never been good at holding back his tears.

He had always cried easily, and never thought it useful to try to hide it.

Back in the day, he would cry when his baseball team won. Or when they lost. When he was banned after his first real game, he had wept for days. Some of these tears were also for his family, who had swore they would never talk to him again, but mostly, he was grieving the dream he was sure he had lost forever.

While he found many occasions to cry after that (being homeless for a while, being all alone, having no food for days, those kinds of things), Shinada had managed to more or less hold on for the past decades, and only cried every now and then.

The Dream Line concert had to be some kind of personal record. Shinada cried right after his fight against the shooter, overwhelmed by the adrenaline of it all, seeing the group perform from so far away while he was sitting in the stands, away from the spotlight. He also cried a few minutes later, when Takasugi’s call reminded him some people cared for him back in Nagoya. And, obviously, he cried after the incident, too. Because he was in pain, because he felt stupid and weak and useless. Because he blamed himself for what he was certain he could have prevented, had he been stronger.

Not crying while Kiryu, that man he had only just met and that he had still managed to disappoint, was standing in front of him, though? That was something. He could be proud.

Unfortunately, as soon as the door was closed behind Kiryu, he couldn’t hold it in anymore, and slumped back in his bed, and let out a small sob, knowing fully well he would be bawling his eyes out in a couple of seconds. Trying to delay the inevitable tears, he looked around, and was suddenly all too aware of Dojima still being in the room with him, standing awkwardly in the middle of it, looking at him with his usual stern expression.

It was not like Shinada minded him being here, really. If anything, he was grateful that he stuck around while Kiryu was there, a friendly face in a sea of hostility. As “friendly” as a scowling yakuza could get, at least. He supposed he should also be grateful for the way Dojima had insisted on bringing his interview with Kiryu to an early end. He couldn’t help but wish he could have said more, though. Apologized better. Still, he got him to leave the room right before Shinada hit his limit, so that was pretty great.

“Tatsuo…?”

Not expecting to hear his name hushed with such an hesitant tone, he took a second to wonder why Dojima was now looking at him with a slightly panicked expression.

Oh, right.

He was crying. He had barely noticed he had started to.

The room got more blurry now than actual tears were in his eyes, so much so that he almost missed Dojima dragging himself to his bed, gritting his teeth with each step. It only clicked in his mind that he had moved closer when he spoke again:

“Do you mind if I sit on your bed?”

Shinada shook his head. Sure, why not. The man should be sitting down, anyway, if his shaky steps were anything to go by. He still managed to get on the bed fairly quickly, making it creak under their combined weight.

A few seconds passed, the silence of the room disturbed by Shinada sniffing softly as he kept crying. Dojima said nothing, shifting awkwardly on the bed so that he was facing him, bending his body in a way that was probably not doing any good to his still healing bullet wound.

Shinada wasn’t sure why he suddenly felt overwhelmed by an urgent need for some kind of contact, but next thing he knew he had more or less collapsed in the other man’s arms. He felt Dojima stiffen against him, making him aware that perhaps entering the guy’s personal space like that without warning was a bit uncalled for. The man remained silent, though Shinada heard a very small gasp escape his lips.

Alright, so maybe he was out of line. No matter how shaken up he was, in pain and in tears, Shinada knew he wasn’t supposed to just throw himself at someone he hardly knew. Sure, technically Dojima and him had known each other for years, but they were not exactly friends back in high school. And their reunion had been so sudden that he barely had the time to process it. Vowing to protect each other’s dream meant they had something , that much was certain, but Shinada wasn’t sure that would be the kind of relationship that involved offering a shoulder to cry on. Literally.

He could always stop, put some distance between them again. Apologize and blame it on the perfect blend of morphine and anguish in his body right now, making him a tad emotional. Dojima didn’t give him any time to back off though, wrapping his arms around him slowly. “Eh… Can I- I mean, do you…?”

Shinada wasn’t sure what he was asking. He wasn’t sure Dojima knew, either, with the way he was stammering. Still, he soon felt a hand stroking his back slowly, and that gesture was as soothing as it was unexpected. It was weird to think that last time those hands were on his body, they were in the middle of a full on brawl. The vicious punches he had received on that day suddenly felt very far away, replaced by a softness he would have never thought he’d see from his old classmate. He did look way less intimidating in his hospital gown, he had to admit. Maybe being shot just did that to people. Made them a bit more approachable. Or maybe he looked so pathetic right now that even the most cold-hearted criminal couldn’t resist him. Who knew. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, he simply appreciated the fact he was offering some kind of comforting presence.

He allowed himself a few heartbeats to reposition himself, burying his face in the man’s chest before he returned to the task at hand.

Crying.

He cried because Kiryu blamed him, despite what he told him, he was certain of it. Because he blamed himself, too, obviously. Because he was exhausted, not having had a good night of sleep since the incident, waking up in a cold sweat every time he dozed off, his nightmare haunted by an angry crowd.

“I’m sorry,” Dojima’s voice interrupted his pity party, making him flinch. “I’m so sorry.” He kept repeating that, and Shinada had no idea why he was apologizing all of a sudden. He wanted to say that he was sorry too, sorry to have disappointed anyone who had believed in him when he left for the concert with the mission to protect that girl, but couldn’t make the words come out. So he kept on weeping, while Dojima kept whispering small apologies, pulling him closer.

Between two sobs, Shinada noticed there was something oddly familiar about this situation. It was not like it was a habit of his to break down and grab on to the nearest person to seek solace. Sure, he cried a lot, but he usually did it behind closed doors, alone. He had some dignity left, surely. But being held like this as he wept brought him back to his first night in Nagoya, when he had felt a semblance of reassurance in Milky’s soft embrace. Well, sort of. Dojima was no Milky, he was still pretty stiff and the motion of his hand on Shinada’s back felt a bit awkward, he was clearly not used to this kind of gesture. Still, it felt nice.

It went on for a while, and Shinada felt like he was calming down when- “I need to move.” Just like that, Dojima released him, straightening up a bit too abruptly, shoving Shinada away. “Sorry. Bullet wound.”

Shinada watched him struggle to find a position that wasn’t putting any strain on his wound, before he settled for sitting on the edge of the bed, his feet planted on the floor. Dojima grimaced as he pressed a hand to his side, giving him a look that Shinada assumed was meant to be apologetic, but ended up looking like his usual tired scowl. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to rush you like that, but if I open up those stitches again, I’m afraid my doctor’s going to give up on me.” And, because he clearly hadn’t said that enough in the last five minutes, “Sorry.”

Rubbing his eyes with his hands to chase any surviving tears, and feeling pretty confident he had calmed down enough to attempt to talk, Shinada came to join him, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Why do you keep saying you’re sorry?”

Apparently, Dojima hadn’t expected his question (that he had managed to ask with a not-so-shaky-voice, not bad for a guy who had been crying for the last ten minutes), looking at him with wide eyes. Turned out the guy could somewhat emote, when he wanted to. Shinada would have found it funny if his answer hadn’t come with such a sad, almost choked tone. “You’re only here because of me. I dragged you into this. Had I left you alone, you wouldn’t be…”

“A fucking mess.”

“In pain.” His voice was low, sounding more like the man he had fought on his roof again. “I knew of the dangers and I still let you come here. And now you’re…” He trailed off, frowning even more. “I’m so sorry, Tatsuo.”

Shinada hadn’t really thought of it that way. Dojima waltzing back into his life was what had led to him being stuck here, with nightmares in his head and regrets in his heart, that was true. But when he thought of his home, where he was basically starving and where everyone had been hiding things from him, where he was basically rotting away while clinging on dreams that would never happen… Would he really have been better off if the yakuza never came to find him?

He sighed, realizing he would probably never find a satisfying answer to this question. Instead he settled for shuffling closer to his friend (he had decided that “friend” was an alright word to use, now that the guy had seen him cry and had tried his best to comfort him), resting his chin on his shoulder.

“Well, that’s silly.” Shinada’s voice was still a little hoarse, but he tried his best to sound cheerful. Well, more cheerful than he was a few moments ago, at least. “Remember how you tried to stop me from coming with you? And look, you’re nice enough not to go 'I told you so' about it, too.”

“I should have stopped you.”

“You wish. We fought for it, remember? And I won.”

“You won because I agreed to back down. I shouldn’t have. Should have kept fighting. Better have you stuck at home with a broken leg than here and in anguish.”

Shinada never thought he would hear someone say “I wish I had broken your leg” in a nice way, but here he was. He chuckled, and noticing Dojima looked still rather glum, avoiding to look at him as he stared at one corner of the room, took a deep sigh.

“Well, I don’t blame you, okay?”

He really meant it, too. Dojima remained silent, but Shinada noticed his lip twitching slightly. He wasn’t sure if it was because his wound was still acting up, or because his words had touched him somehow, but hoped it was the latter.

He knew what blaming himself felt like, and wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

#in this part MORE CRYING #i know crazy #mob #yakuza #rgg #rgg5 #yakuza 5 #yakuza fanfiction #stories #fics #weird art of mine

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