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faerienextdoor · 4 years

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general relationship hcs with (some) pastas

Fair warning, I'm using and hinting at mine and my friends’ writing for these creeps :) enjoy also as soon as i figure out how to open an ask box, I’ll be accepting requests

Brian:

- oh where to start with this absolute himbo

- he melts around you. like he's your bitch, and you're his.

- he's the type of boyfriend that takes you out in the snow and shoves a handful down the back of your jacket, and laughs until you shove snow in his face

- it is snow war

- it ends with you cuddling him, wrapped in a blanket and content in front of the burning fire he got started just for you <3

- but he also has some weird... habits.

- drinks pickle juice.

- gets his hand stuck in the jar.

- looks at you like 🥺 until you sigh and help him. for the fifteenth time.

- he can cook some basic breakfast foods, and happily breaks out a cookbook to prepare you something as a surprise or to learn something with you!!

- baking with him would be a mess. he forgets flour goes everywhere and now you both look like you took a bath in cocaine

- but the cupcakes are mediocre at best. they aren't absolute garbage, so... cupcake points!

- he worries about how hoodie treats you. he doesn't remember anything when he regains control, but you've reassured him hoodie is just fine.

- and he is

(hoodie)

- hoodie is like a rottweiler or a doberman.

- protective. intimidating. energetic.

- but also a giant fucking baby.

- this large ass man lumbers over and drops to his knees. places his chin on your lap and stares at you from the fabric of his mask until you stop what you're doing and stroke his head awkwardly

- you could swear he does those happy grumbled a rottie does.

- hoodie is silent but shows he loves you just as much as brian does. He strokes your hair silently, even places a kiss to the crown of your head as you sink into his beefy arms.

- he smells nice too. surprisingly.

- but that raises the question: if hoodie showers, does he shower with that damn thing on?

- you won't get an answer if you were to ask.

- brian introduces you to his grandma julia. and she dotes on you.

- the immortal old lady remarks that you’re the best s/o brian has brought to her yet.

Tim:

- a lumberjack man with biceps like a fucking tree trunk

- how'd you land him? give me your secrets (/j)

- he's such a love bug. a tired stressed love bug.

- he finds /every/ excuse to have physical contact with you. it's like a little touch from you reassures him that you're real. you're like a dream to him.

- he's the best for cuddles. He holds you to his chest

- and you get special access to his moobs

- and he gently strokes your head, traces shapes into your back, etc. it's a special intimate moment each time.

- my man's is italian-american but can't cook to save his fucken life

- he always gets your favorite microwave meals though!! he never forgets.

- not feeling good? dw baby he's making it for you <33 shitty low tier bean and cheese burrito coming up

- slowly he learns the basics and surprises you with lunch or even dinner if you're lucky!!

- he loves you so much. and wants you to feel it and know it. all the time.

(masky)

- god where to start with this bitch

- he's not jeff levels of bad ofc, but he's silent and... weird. creepy, some may say. he doesn't mean to be.

- and he's a hard ass. far more strict than tim.

- he follows you around like a giant fucken puppy and will spook you by grabbing you abruptly and holding you tightly

- you can't escape him. he really utilizes his physical strength

- he loves lifting you up and just... holding you. or carrying you off.

- protective and overbearing.

- but tim keeps him under control.

(angst)

- he wouldn't want to lose you like he lost his last wife.

- you find pictures of a woman laying around and a small girl that bears a striking resemblance to her and tim.

- tim goes quiet and questioned but eventually caves and tells you about his family

- or what he used to have

- his wife died and his daughter disappeared.

- it broke him and you're all he has left now

- constantly needs your affection in return to his own

- pls love him

jeff:

- why the fuck would you date him

- he's the absolute worst in so many aspects. But he genuinely tries for you.

- even if his gifts are shitty, it's nice to know he thoughts of you, right? even if it's a half dead flower or a rib torn from a deer caraccas.

- but you get the butt end of his shithead antics. ranch bath, specifically. he smelt like spoiled milk for a week after and you had to cuddle that fucker.

- and don't get me started on mayo bath

- but he still loves finding himself in your arms. or finding you in his. he's demanding affection wise, and will yank you into him for some cuddles. whether you like it or not.

- he isn't one for a lot of pet names, but calls you curse words or "sweetheart" in polish.

- and you get to see the side of him that only shows when he breaks down.

(bit of angst)

- he misses his family and the life he used to have. he'll reminisce what it was like in poland with his mom and family with you, and you sometimes swear you can see his brown eyes gloss over at the memory of her.

- he never talks about his dad, you've noticed.

- don't ask.

- he brushes off heavy conversations with some dumb quip ("wanna see my renegade?")

- he sucks at cooking. god awful at it. but he really tries for you. manages a bowl of oat meal that's edible.

- but he overloads it with sugar and for some reason, salt.

- he's confused. he thinks that's normal (it isn't)

- his idea of a date is napping with you. or rather, forcing you into nap time.

- I mean it when I say this man is strong in a weird fucken way. latches onto you with that iron grip and you won't be able to leave for at least a few hours.

jane:

- ethereal wlw woman.

- could break you with her heels. or a flutter of what eyelashes she has.

- you're lucky to have her, and she's just as lucky to have you!

- she's sweet and charming. very smooth and takes good care of you.

- her love language is a mix of physical touch and acts of service.

- she'll cuddle you all night, and then make you breakfast in the morning.

- she loves showering with you when she's comfy enough around you! it's super intimate and she washes your hair.

- massages the soap into your hair, suds spilling down your neck and back as her fingers scrub circles into your scalp.

- it's heaven on earth. such a domestic life.

- it'll take a while for her to settle enough in the relationship for you to see her without her mask

- you make her feel so loved and wanted

- secure, even.

- she's protective but not controlling or overbearing. shes that type of girlfriend that's just a worrywart and relaxes as soon as you're curled up in her arms. you fit there perfectly, too. like you belong there.

- which you do. at least in her mind

- she has such a gentle touch and hold on you. like she's afraid you'll combust in her arms if she holds you too tightly.

- she loves stroking your hair and having you nap

- using her tiddies as a pillow 👌

(angst)

- she needs affirmation from you when it comes to her scars.

- she thinks that jeff ruined her. permanently marking her once spotless body.

- and she thinks you'll hate her or find her disgusting.

- that's why she freezes if/when you gently slip off her mask.

- she stares at you with those teary green eyes. then leans in and kisses you

- you make all of her worries disappear.

- she's also financially comfortable, but not really rich (on that topic: eat the rich)

- she spoils you every chance she gets. gifts, a nice dinner date, you name it

- she almost spoils you as much as she does her cat Emory

- little shit has the sparkliest fucken collar and acts like he's the shit

- he's your fur baby too now

Helen:

- oh my god this disaster of an art boi

- he's convinced he's the luckiest man in the world (and he might as well be!!)

- he obviously wouldn't have been the one to confess. but it was really obvious by how he painted and drew you constantly, that some feeling for you was lodged into his beating heart.

- he treats you like the finest china. with the most care a man can manage.

- he's the definition of clingy and affectionate from the very start.

- he curls around your sleeping form perfectly when y'all cuddle.

- his hand dances in your hair, soothing you into a dreamless sleep each night without fail.

- he has a magic touch and a gentle voice.

- and he cherishes you so fucken much. (like a simp /j)

- he shies away from kisses at first, but will hold your hand and melts if you hold his face in them!!!

- he's greek, and often speaks sweet things to you in it. he's so comfortable around you that he speaks in his native language to you. that's an accomplishment.

- he loves when you baby him. helen loves being cradled and loved.

- taking a nap with his head on your chest also hits different. he's so in love with you

(angst)

- he's afraid of losing you. who wouldn't be? you're amazing and you love /him/ of all people

- he thinks very negatively of himself. please scold him for self deprecating.

- he always worries he'll wake up and you'll be gone.

- so he holds you extra close at night. and follows you around when you leave for any reason. Trails behind you like a lost puppy in need of a gentle kiss.

- which, is what he essentially is

- and also: pls steal his sweater and wear it. he'll cry over how cute you are.

#creepypasta #creepypasta hcs #cp headcanons #jeff the killer #brian thomas #marble hornets #timothy wright #creepypasta headcanon #creepypasta x reader #cp x reader #scenarios #creepypasta scenarios #jane the killer #jane arkensaw #helen otis #bloody painter

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komahinasecretexchange · 4 years

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Title: School Unity Club

Author: @thatsrightdollface

For: @bebexox4

Pairings/Characters: Hajime Hinata/Nagito Komaeda, with appearances by both Chiaki Nanami and Kokichi Oma. Others mentioned.

Rating/Warnings: T. Some mention of self-deprecating thought might be a relevant warning. There is also occasional swearing.

Prompt: Non despair hopes peak au with Enemies-Friends-Lovers komahina

Author’s notes: Hi there!!! Happy Komahina Secret Exchange, and I hope you enjoy your gifts!!! :D This is prompt one of two you can expect this time around. This was really fun to work on hehehe. Thank you!!!

1. Okay, Why Are We Starting a School Unity Club Again?

The first time Hope’s Peak Academy tried to recruit Nagito Komaeda, of course he turned them down: he was unworthy, he insisted, trying to laugh at himself, trying to raise his metaphorical palms in obvious surrender. I mean, come on. Hope’s Peak… haha, that was for genuinely amazing people. For the Ultimate Students, glimmering irrefutable beacons of hope to everybody else. They were — no. Nagito couldn’t go to school with people like that. Practically superheroes, so hardworking and disciplined and just everything Nagito knew he didn’t deserve to be. What would he even say? How would he know where to sit, or when to participate in class discussions, or how to tactfully say no when they felt obligated to invite him along places?

But, in the end, Hope’s Peak Academy hadn’t so much wanted Nagito as a student, he gathered, as they’d wanted to study his luck. Nagito’d always had unreasonable, relentless, mythically impossible luck. Amazing things happened to him, and then… like clockwork, like the gears of the universe churning away… equally devastating things inevitably followed. The Ultimate Lucky Student. That’s right. After years of fallen-apart loved ones and distant extended family members and snakes slithering out of his bathtub drain the second he realized “You know, I think this might be my favorite brand of shampoo,” Nagito Komaeda’s absurd luck was finally going to help somebody. Hope’s Peak could learn from his luck, and that was worth humiliating himself daily, stumbling around Ultimate Students, rambling and awestruck. That was worth knowing he’d never belong, because he hadn’t worked for his Talent. It wasn’t really a Talent at all.

When Nagito was happy, he knew he was sure to feel tears burning against the back of his eyes very soon. He was happy about the chance to attend Hope’s Peak, despite everything, despite knowing he should have turned the invitation down again, whether his luck could be useful or no… and so, of course, bad things followed. Bad things he hadn’t talked to his classmates about, yet, and probably never would. Because it wasn’t like Nagito had come to such a prestigious institution expecting anybody to actually care about him. It wasn’t like he would have clawed his way in without being invited. Right?

Nagito liked to think that was right, anyway, just the way he liked to think he didn’t actually want any of his fancy, impossible new classmates to contradict him when he described himself as worthless, a faceless background character in their lives. Why should they tell him he was more than a bystander? Nagito would hold the camera when his classmates wanted a group photo. That should be more than enough. If he wanted to get something done for their sake, he could lean on his Ultimate Luck. If he drew a lottery number, it would always win. If a car was careening out of control through the school grounds, it would be sure to hit him before it clobbered anyone else. A weird system — a horrible system, from some points of view — but it was the least Nagito could do. It was his so-called “Talent,” after all.

Maybe that was why the Reserve Course had never made a lot of sense, to Nagito. See, some people could pay a hell of a lot of extra tuition money and buy their way into Hope’s Peak… but not as Ultimates. It felt like a flashlight demanding to be called the sun, to Nagito. Like a puddle on the street insisting it was the ocean. If Ultimates really were “hope,” then how dare anybody scramble around to grab their spotlight away, right? Reserve Course attendants would probably be easier to get along with than the Ultimate Students, given that Nagito was more or less “one of them”… a nobody, a stranger, an intruder here in this place for gods. But he didn’t go looking for friends among the Reserve Course, either. Why should he want to be buddy-buddy with arrogant pretenders? It wasn’t like Nagito had ever felt especially good at talking to people, anyway. He’d probably say something wrong; he’d probably mess something up; he’d probably just get furious. Wouldn’t you want to turn off the flashlight that thought it was the sun?

Better not to delude yourself, even if the truth was ugly, full of shaky, simpering smiles and resignation. Happiness led to pain. Good luck led to misery. On and on and on, and Nagito had been fairly sure he’d graduate from Hope’s Peak without any of his classmates having memorized his full name. You know, if he lived that long.

That’s why it was all the more surprising when Chiaki Nanami… the Ultimate Gamer… kept insisting on talking to him. Of course, Chiaki was kind to their whole class. She had no reason to sit silently and play phone games with Nagito until his phone caught fire in his hands — she had no reason to chat about his favorite super-indie horror titles during breaks in schoolwork, coming over to stand by his desk on purpose. Chiaki wanted to understand everybody: she told Nagito as much, honestly. Chiaki wanted their whole class to be a team, and so when she asked Nagito to show up for movie nights he did. He knew he’d suffer the bad luck for it later, but he picked up the phone when Chiaki called him every time.

If she wanted to be friends with everyone, Chiaki shouldn’t have to work for the Ultimate Lucky Student’s friendship, obviously. He should be a shoe-in. And it wasn’t really that Nagito was having fun that kept him sticking around, probably. It wasn’t really that he was starting to banter with the Ultimate Mechanic and the Ultimate Gangster, as if they were actually… uh… friendly acquaintances, or something, either. Chiaki told him he was reliable, even if he still wouldn’t admit he belonged with the rest of them. Even if he said hurtful things sometimes and didn’t seem to realize it.

“What?!” Nagito had balked, then. “Have I insulted you? Oh, no. No, that’s unacceptable. For someone like me to speak badly of an Ultimate Student, even without meaning to —”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Chiaki had answered. She reminded Nagito of a cat, pretty consistently… heavy-lidded eyes, and a voice like a tail swishing slowly back and forth. She didn’t look up from the game system in her hands as she drawled at him. “You say horrible things about yourself, and about how you can’t understand why I’d want anything to do with you… makes me feel like you don’t think I can pick my own friends. I say I think you’re okay, and you spend the next half an hour telling me why that’s a stupid thing to think. Kazuichi says he’s glad you stopped by to help him work on that robot project he’s building, and you have to make him apologize for thinking ‘trash like you’ deserves to hang out with the Ultimate Mechanic at all.”

Nagito wasn’t sure how to respond to any of that. He’d cleared his throat.

“Your friends will hurt when they see you hurt, Nagito. I always heard people in games saying that, and now I know it’s true. Okay?”

“Hm. Okay… if you’re sure, as an Ultimate Student.”

“I’m sure as your friend Chiaki.”

“Interesting. I mean… yeah, I’ll do my best not to hurt you?”

Nagito had been watching the way he talked about himself around Chiaki Nanami for about a week before she came to him with a plan she’d been working on with the Ultimate Supreme Leader. Kokichi Oma was a couple years behind them, but he was always scheming like the “Spawn of Loki” the Ultimate Animal Breeder declared him to be — his latest plan involved trying to unite the two branches of their school, the Main Course and the Reserve Course, coming together for some sort of mysterious club. Chiaki was all for it, apparently, and Nagito had wanted to say a lot of things. He’d wanted to say it sounded like reassuring the puddle that ships could drown in it after all, and coral reefs were sure to grow. It felt false, and wrong. But a lot of things Kokichi Oma said felt “false and wrong,” and Nagito wanted to be Chiaki’s real, worthy friend so badly. He agreed to help, however he could.

“It’s so generous of the Ultimates to share their Talents with everybody!” Nagito said. That was a fair enough rationalization, wasn’t it? “You really are a commendable person, Ultimate Supreme Leader. Even if practically everything you say is a shameless lie!”

And, “Hey now, most of my nefarious criminal organization members wouldn’t be called ‘Ultimate,’ and they’ve got more talents to share around than this whole stuck-up school,” Kokichi answered, voice light and airy, like he wasn’t actually invested in the conversation… though his eyes said he really was, unless that expression was just another lie from him? Lies upon lies upon lies. People told Nagito he was confusing to talk to, but surely he couldn’t have anything on Kokichi Oma. Was that okay for him to think? “A lot of these titles we got assigned feel pretty arbitrary, if you ask me. And it’s ridiculous we’ve never actually met so many of our classmates!”

Nagito raised his eyebrows. “Classmates?”

Kokichi stared him down, smile practically painted on. “Classmates. Yeah. Just think of how many possible recruits for my organization might be waiting in the Reserve Course… ya think any of ‘em are interested in a life of evil?”

“Most of the people who made the games we play aren’t Ultimates, either,” Chiaki murmured, at Kokichi’s side. She was muted and dusky pink, with a tender, hesitant smile — Kokichi was so glaringly bright and loud next to her. They made a strange team, but of course no stranger than Nagito and anyone in the world. “Please, Nagito. The School Unity Club is going to try and form real friendships… I think it’s a chance for us to do something good, and to learn what it’s like to be in the Reserve Course.“

As if Nagito wanted to understand something like that! Haha! Oh, Chiaki. No.

But that’s what led Nagito here, to the first official School Unity Club meeting. He filled out the Getting to Know Everybody Questionnaire Kokichi and Chiaki passed out, and he hung around in the back of the room, hands folded in his pockets, face perfectly neutral, until a spiky haired Reserve Course guy came storming up to him. What could have possibly gotten this uppity loser so mad? Chiaki had decorated this classroom herself, specifically for trash like the both of them. They should be so grateful. There were streamers and everything.

“Are you Nagito Komaeda?” Mr. Pointy-Hair spat.

“I am. Nice to meet —”

“So you’re the one who wrote that people who joined the Reserve Course have ‘no good reason to be here’ on the questionnaire. Knowing we’d all read it — knowing how much we want to attend Hope’s Peak Academy —”

Nagito nodded, letting himself smile. Ah, okay. This was making a little sense now. “Excuse me, I think you misunderstand something,” he tried to clarify. “I don’t believe I have a good reason to be here, either… really, we’re almost the same, you and me. I probably have more to say to someone like you than my whole class!” Nagito paused. Glanced over at the Ultimate Gamer. “Except for Chiaki. Maybe. If she still thinks so.”

Mr. Pointy-Hair didn’t look reassured by Nagito’s explanation. If anything, his cheeks were flushed red, the fury creeping up to the tips of his ears, and his hands were clenched into fists at his sides. He was a little shorter than Nagito, but he was standing as tall as he possibly could. “Someone like me?” he asked. It was a question, somehow, but what exactly did he expect Nagito to say? Mr. Pointy-Hair’s teeth were ground together, but there was something honest and wholesome about his mossy green eyes. Nagito might have wanted to ask his name, if he didn’t feel sure he was about to get yelled at. Why weren’t they understanding each other, exactly, here?

“You’re not an Ultimate,” Nagito said, explaining something painfully simple. “This is a school for extraordinary people, and you and I are both unworthy of it. You see? But that shouldn’t be news to you…”

Mr. Pointy-Hair was spitting mad. Was he going to punch Nagito, next? Or simply tell him how awful he was? Nagito was bracing himself either way, but he shouldn’t have bothered. That was when Kokichi Oma’s spotlight found them, after all. That was when the Ultimate Supreme Leader — sauntering around on a stage made of pushed-together desks and using a super-chipper ringmaster voice — declared, “Oh! And what’s this? Mr. Komaeda and Mr. Hinata are already picking a fight! I think we just found some volunteers for a club project, guys!”

There was a scattering of polite, confused applause, and this Mr. Pointy-Hair Hinata spun around on his heel and threw himself out of the room. The door slammed, and his footsteps thudded away down the hall.

Nagito took a stumbling half-step after him. He didn’t mean to. This was the sort of pretender who thought he deserved to be an Ultimate without earning it, after all. There was no reason to wonder what their club project would be together, or if he’d ever learn Hinata’s first name. There was no reason to ask what the Ultimate Supreme Leader had in store for them to work on — there was probably no reason to assume he and Hinata would ever see each other again, or get another chance to try and have an actual conversation.

Nagito asked Kokichi what their assignment was, anyway.

1½. Talking to You’s Like Trying to Paint in the Rain

Hajime Hinata figured if he just never attended a School Unity Club meeting again, he could simmer for a while and then amble on like this never happened. Like he’d never met Nagito Komaeda, with his hazy dark eyes and drifting, shaky-yet-infuriatingly-resolute voice. If he never joined up with the club again, then he couldn’t be assigned any weird-ass “club projects,” could he? And since Nagito was part of the Main Course… an Ultimate, even if he’d tried to convince Hajime they were “the same,” or whatever… their paths wouldn’t necessarily cross, otherwise. They even had passing periods at different times, and if Hajime saw Nagito’s fluffy, flyaway white hair from across the hallway he just stopped in his tracks and stalked away.

But, I mean… that isn’t the end of the story, obviously. Hajime underestimated the Ultimate Supreme Leader, and also how ridiculous things could get at Hope’s Peak Academy. Sometimes, the place barely even felt real.

Hajime received the instructions for his and Nagito Komaeda’s club project midway through math class. The guy in front of him — who he’d known the whole year, mind you, and was definitely just some guy who liked comic books and was often a little late to class — turned around in his seat and stage-whispered, “Hey, Hinata, you wouldn’t happen to know the answer to question thirteen, would you?”

“There is no question thirteen,” Hajime answered. “The worksheet only goes to ten —” and then he actually looked up, to raise his eyebrows at his classmate and/or see if they had different worksheets for some reason. And well. Hm. Wouldn’t you know it, this wasn’t his classmate at all. This was very obviously Kokichi Oma from the Main Course in a wig. The Ultimate Supreme Leader was wearing a Reserve Course uniform with the tie knotted all sloppily, and he grinned like the damn Cheshire Cat as he handed over a big envelope with the words “This is not your School Unity Club project assignment!” scribbled on it.

“Oh! Nice eye,” Kokichi grinned. “Aren’t you a smart one.”

“I don’t want to work with Nagito Komaeda,” Hajime hissed. “And Kokichi, this isn’t your class.”

“Are you sure I’m not enrolled in the Reserve Course, too?”

“Ugh. Yes? And you’re two years behind me.”

Kokichi scratched at his forehead. Hajime thought maybe he was taunting him, intentionally fiddling with his wig so that a little of his flippy purple hair snuck out. “Nagito’s stubborn, isn’t he? Kind of like you.”

“We’re nothing alike,” Hajime said, but even as he spat those words he knew they weren’t completely true. Honestly, Hajime felt sick with guilt for getting his family to pay this ridiculous Hope’s Peak Reserve Course tuition — he’d tried to change his own mind, convincing himself it didn’t matter whether the world called him Special. The Ultimate Students were just people, he told himself. So what if nobody thought he was good enough to be one of them? He could still live a happy, normal life… he could still pour attention into the hobbies he loved, and spend time with the people he cared about, and maybe it was kind of a pain to have your face on convenience store magazines anyway.

Hajime told himself stuff like that over and over again, but it wasn’t like it stuck, you know? It didn’t change the tide of his thoughts. It felt like the minute he painted a nice, encouraging picture of an alternative to Hope’s Peak Academy for himself, it got washed away. Staring into Nagito’s serene, self-righteously knowing eyes had felt a little like that, too. Hajime got the feeling that he could talk to him and talk to him, but it was almost impossible to change this guy’s mind until he changed it himself.

It was infuriating, wasn’t it, talking to people like that?

“If you want to prove you’re really different than Nagito — you’re really not super-stubborn and impossible to reach — you can always just do the project,” the Ultimate Supreme Leader grinned. “Up to you. I told him to meet you by those big fountains after school, and I think he’s actually gonna do it. He asked what your first name was, too… I told him it was ‘Daisuke.’”

“But it isn’t.”

“Oops, my bad. So tell him yourself.”

Hajime read the crayon-drawing assignment sheets waiting for him in that envelope during a break, sitting slumped over at a table with a bunch of students he didn’t really know. Apparently, Kokichi and the Ultimate Gamer wanted Hajime and Nagito to make a short documentary film showing everybody what life was like in the Hope’s Peak Reserve Course. They were supposed to interview students and get some funny stories; they were supposed to go over some of the things people were studying, and rate whether the desks were comfy. Just… get a portrait of the Reserve Course as people, basically, the instructions said. And be sure to let the Ultimate Supreme Leader know if anyone seemed open to helping with this prank he had in the works. Get them to sign a short, totally-harmless liability form. It’ll be fun.

Hajime crumpled the envelope and all its assignment sheets up, one by one, preparing to toss them away with the rest of his trash. But then he unfolded them, running a hand through his sticky-uppy hair.

You know what?

Why not.

Maybe it would do Nagito Komaeda some good, to get to know the people he was insulting. To see the school from a different point of view. Maybe it would be satisfying to see him feel like a jerk, fumbling around, trying oh-so-messily to explain himself to anybody a little less forgiving than Hajime. Anyway, it was sort of annoying the guy thought his name was something random Kokichi Oma had pulled out of a hat, too.

So Hajime went to meet Nagito by the fountains. For a moment, before they actually started working on the project, it had felt sort of right. Nagito had stood up from where he’d been bent over some homework; he’d smoothed down his vest, and smiled awkwardly, self-consciously. Hopefully. It had looked like maybe he would apologize. Maybe he’d thought over what he said, and Hajime didn’t need to spend any time convincing him he was an asshole. In that case, maybe Nagito was the kind of willowy handsome that Hajime liked in drama actors, if you got past the funny way he held himself. In that case, maybe his voice was sort of soft and lyrical, and if they were talking about something else… almost anything else… Hajime wouldn’t really mind listening to him.

But then, uh. Hajime got close enough for Nagito to wave, and call, “Do you understand what I meant, now, then? It’s nice to meet you properly, Daisuke!” And it only went downhill from there.

It didn’t help that the minute Hajime handed Nagito the school-owned camera Kokichi had finagled for them to use, it got carried out of his hands by an actual hawk. What the hell? “Ultimate Luck,” Nagito clarified, but what did that even mean? So then they were gonna record the thing on Hajime’s phone, except that they couldn’t decide where to start. Who to talk to. They got into a half-shouting match in front of a few of Hajime’s friendlier classmates, who excused themselves as quickly as possible. They tried to film the gymnasium, but it was closed for emergency fumigation and they ended up gagging, hunched over outside the doors for about five minutes. They tried to film in the dorms, but Hajime’s entrance pass cracked in two when they attempted to use it. Those were expensive! Augh! Why was Nagito laughing?!

Whatever Hajime tried to do, it felt like Nagito came sliding over to step on his toes. They were getting nowhere. This project was getting nowhere. They had to delete the one decent interview they managed to get because Hajime himself accidentally had his thumb over the camera. He had literally no idea how he could’ve missed something like that.

“Ultimate Luck,” Nagito said, again, for about the millionth time that evening. “See? It’s really not always much of a talent!”

That was the last straw. Hajime was done. Nagito was still obsessed with this concept of “talent”; Nagito was the last person who should be making a video trying to show what life was really like for Reserve Course students. The Ultimate Supreme Leader was probably just messing with them, just being a little shit like people said he tended to be. School Unity? What could Nagito Komaeda do to work towards School Unity? He was probably the sort of person who would want to trap a lizard that thought it was a dragon, just to show the poor little guy how small he really was. Hajime didn’t have time for this.

And so he told Nagito as much, and he gathered up his things. He deleted all the footage they’d recorded for their project, and went back home. That could’ve been the end of it. If Kokichi turned up in any of his classes again, Hajime would just tune him out. If the Ultimate Gamer asked him why he didn’t come around anymore, yeah, okay, he’d apologize, but that was it.

Hajime didn’t hear anything from the School Unity Club for about a month. “Good riddance,” he thought. He imagined himself slamming a book closed. And then possibly kicking said book under the bed, or something.

When he got a text from Kokichi Oma — wait, how had the Ultimate Supreme Leader gotten his phone number?! — Hajime almost didn’t open it. But morbid curiosity won out in the end, as it so often did. Morbid curiosity, and that claustrophobic, helplessly-stricken pull to the Ultimate Students Hajime still felt, even now. He had wanted to be valuable, to be seen; he had wanted to be a revelation. Every breath he took on this earth could have been game-changing, if only he’d been born someone else.

“Nice work on your video,” Kokichi said. “Turned out really insightful. I think it’ll help the Reserve Course students feel seen, too.”

Alright. Hold on.

What?

***

2. The Light

When Nagito Komaeda asked the Ultimate Supreme Leader whether it had been difficult, convincing Hajime to come watch his documentary about the Hope’s Peak Academy Reserve Course together, Kokichi said, “You just better not mess this up, kid,” with a big, sloppy wink. Nevermind that he really hadn’t answered the question, actually, when Nagito thought back on it – nevermind that Kokichi was… again… younger than him. Maybe it meant Hajime had struggled against the idea of ever actually talking to Nagito again, and Kokichi’d had to bribe him with glittery promises like, “If you give the video a chance, I’ll delete your phone number from my contacts list!” Or maybe it meant Nagito should feel lucky – lucky in a good way, mind you – because Hajime hadn’t needed a lot of nagging at all. Maybe Mr. Pointy-Hair was genuinely curious. Maybe he’d be willing to forgive how badly things had gone, and try, Nagito didn’t know, “hanging out” again, sometime.

“Why did you lie about Hajime’s name, to me?” Nagito asked. “I looked… inconsiderate.”

“Who knows?” Kokichi said. “I do stuff like that, you know.”

It would’ve been way too easy, if Kokichi Oma had been willing to answer a simple question for once. But all the same, Nagito ended up sitting alone in a dark, lonely classroom after club activities were over for the night; all the same, Nagito had finished up the Reserve Course documentary film on his own. He’d purchased four separate video cameras, and lost them all to his ruthless luck. He’d interviewed people from Hajime’s classes, asking the questions Hajime had scrawled out on the back of Kokichi’s crumpled-up assignment envelope that time they tried working together. “What brought you to the Reserve Course?” “What’s your most precious goal, and how do you hope the Reserve Course will help you get there?” “Do you like going to school here?” “What do you think Hope’s Peak could do differently, to show that it values all its students?” Some of the answers he’d gotten were genuinely shocking – one of them made him cry, actually, and try to shake the girl’s hand afterwards. (She took his hand, yes, but then asked why there was so much mud on it. Oh, crap. Nagito’d forgotten that happened… he’d been swallowed up by a surprise swamp on the way across campus that day.) All of the answers were… human? Maybe sometimes it was easy to get so wrapped up in this business of hope and despair, talent and luck, that Nagito forgot how learning a person’s abilities just barely scraped the surface of what it would be like getting to know them. He didn’t talk much at all, giving his interviews – aside from asking questions, of course. He laughed at jokes, sometimes, but he tried to laugh quietly, without wobbling the camera too much.

Nagito had expected the interviews would enrage him – would make him think these people were ungrateful, were building themselves homemade trophies to take away from the Ultimate Talents the Main Course actually earned. And sometimes, yeah, sometimes he did want to argue back. Put them in their places, back in the dirt with him; click off the flashlight that thought it was the sun. But he listened, for a while, anyway. Maybe it was because Hajime would’ve wanted him to, at first – maybe it was because Hajime might have said he couldn’t do it. But in the end, Nagito found himself with a lot of footage of people telling him their truths, and so many of those stories tasted familiar. That longing, that hurt, that want, that hunger. It had been written all over Hajime’s face when they first met, but Nagito’d never asked his story, had he?

Ah, well. Nagito had tried making the documentary into something Hajime wouldn’t hate, you know? He’d gone to one of the Reserve Course’s basketball games and recorded the crowds cheering, recorded the players’ teamwork and struggle. None of the players were the Ultimate Basketball Star or anything, but it still mattered when they won, didn’t it? Maybe not as much, existentially, or for the hope of the world as Nagito understood it, but – but it could still be emotional watching them come together and ruffle each other’s hair, afterwards, reminiscing about the game. Nagito had attempted to go to a Reserve Course swimming team competition too, but of course the pool flooded the second he stepped in the building… and like, really flooded, in that most of the bleachers were still underwater and they hadn’t been able to drain the dressing rooms, yet. Some sort of weird, constant flow in from ocean?! Nagito wasn’t sure on the specifics. Point being, he’d stopped attending sports events for a while, but he had asked Chiaki to record the Reserve Course’s musical production of Les Misérables so he could splice some of it into the documentary.

Nagito didn’t ask specific questions about Hajime Hinata while conducting his interviews, but he’d heard some stuff about him all the same. He was a good classmate, people said – a hard worker, soft-spoken, but he didn’t just sit back and take kindly to bullies. He was smart, but his handwriting was terrible, and he and Nagito seemed to like the same type of video games. Hajime’s classmates mentioned him in passing, see, discussing him among themselves… or they said, “Oh, no, Nagito’s probably okay. He was with Hajime a couple days ago, remember? Hey, Nagito, are you two friends?”

Um.

In that moment, Nagito had wanted very badly to say yes, yes they were friends. He would’ve been proud to have Hajime like him, as a person, the way Chiaki seemed to. But he just sort of smiled and shook his head. “We were working on a project together,” he offered. “School Unity Club.” It was probably fair to leave it at that, right?

But now the documentary was finished, and Hajime had been persuaded… somehow… to come to some empty classroom after School Unity Club let out and watch it at Nagito’s side. Nagito hadn’t really felt like he should be going to School Unity Club meetings lately: it was surreal to be back here again, inviting Hajime into the ruins of a game tournament. There was a scribbly, multi-color scoreboard, and bits of the floor were duct-taped off into what looked like a beanbag chair/slime vat obstacle course. The janitors at Hope’s Peak must have hated Kokichi Oma. Or who knows, really? Maybe he was planning to slink back in and clean all this up himself, after Nagito and Hajime finished with their video. Nagito showed Hajime over to some chairs he’d set up in front of his cracked-apart personal laptop. He pulled out Hajime’s chair a little bit, like they were someplace fancy, and Hajime scoffed. He sat down, though. And then he gestured to Nagito’s chair, like, “Well?”

They watched the documentary in silence. Sometimes Hajime shifted, or scratched at his neck. Sometimes he gasped, or shot Nagito careful, considering eyes. Nagito… for his part… tried his best to keep his expression neutral, the same as he’d done at that first School Unity Club meeting. The last interview was with himself, after all, and he thought he’d made his own points pretty clear. He didn’t understand what the Reserve Course meant, in connection to the Main Course here at Hope’s Peak Academy… on one hand he still thought it defied the point of the whole place, but on the other it was a class full of creativity and excitement and hope for the future, too. He’d learned a lot from the Reserve Course students, and it had been fun spending time with them. The interview questions had been written by Hajime Hinata, but they’d honestly become Nagito’s questions too, by the end. He thanked the viewer for watching, and the interviewees for talking to him, and the swimming team for their forgiveness when he tried to explain that it was his weird luck that ruined their tournament.

It wasn’t perfect. Nagito stumbled over his words, sometimes, and he contradicted himself, and he went on a short monologue about how it was possible hope came in innumerable different forms. He hinted at one of his most embarrassing thoughts, too – that maybe… just maybe, possibly, against all odds… it might’ve been more merciful to have a world without the worship of talent, a world where all people could just live as themselves and know that was enough. He had almost edited that part out. In another life, he probably wouldn’t have wanted anyone in the world to hear it. It flew in the face of everything he was supposed to honor, after all. It was skeptical of the very concept of the Ultimate Talents themselves.

Nagito might not have been able to explain exactly why he kept that part of his own interview in the documentary. Maybe he wanted Hajime to get him, if they ever spoke again. Maybe so many strangers had been utterly, vulnerably honest with him, he felt like it was sort of his turn. Either way, he winced, taking in the frustrated surrender on his own recorded face. He kept his arms folded over his chest and gritted his teeth. Hajime was watching him imagine a world where all that mattered was the light, whether it came from a flashlight or the sun. For all Nagito knew, he sounded ridiculous.

“That wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be,” Hajime said, slowly, after the credits rolled – Chiaki was thanked for most things Nagito hadn’t attributed to either himself or the conspicuously-absent Hajime Hinata. “Thanks, Nagito. You… are you going to the next club meeting?”

“What? Am I…?”

“I mean the School Unity Club. If you go to the next meeting, I’ll come too.”

Nagito swallowed, fidgeting. He brushed a little messy white hair behind his ear. “Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.” He decided to push his luck, just a little, then, seeing Hajime smile: he decided to try and make this raw, beautiful person that hated him laugh. “Maybe Kokichi’ll stop pestering me if I finally participate.”

Hajime snorted. He relaxed, just the littlest bit, and Nagito felt his insides twist. That was an unfamiliar feeling.

“Probably not,” Hajime said.

“No… probably not.”

That couldn’t have been part of the Ultimate Supreme Leader’s secret conniving plan, though, right? To get them to bond over mutual frustration… to pester them both until they started commiserating about it…

Right?

But then, maybe Nagito shouldn’t put it past him. Kokichi’d earned his Ultimate Student-status somehow. Maybe he and Chiaki hadn’t been completely wrong about a School Unity Club, either.

Well, now… they’d just played right into the Ultimate Supreme Leader’s hands, hadn’t they?

That didn’t matter too much, somehow, when Hajime was taking Nagito out to arcades with his other friends, and on hikes in the forest, and to read quietly on a bench in the park. Sun on their skin, wind in their hair, ruffling the pages of their books just the littlest bit… or else grabbing Nagito’s book away and hurtling it out horrifyingly fast into oncoming traffic. Or maybe it was the first book Hajime got him as a gift that would get stolen by a randomly-appearing hawk, this time? At least now Hajime knew Nagito usually laughed that desperate, rattling sort of cackle when he was upset. Nervous. Panicking. At least now Hajime would rub his back, a little, and tell him they were fine. Hey, hey. Nagito, look at me. Your luck isn’t your fault. Just breathe.

Breathe.

No, falling for the Ultimate Supreme Leader’s machinations barely mattered at all, this time.

2 ½. So Glad I was Wrong About You

The first time Hajime Hinata kissed Nagito Komaeda, he hadn’t been expecting to do it, himself, if you’d asked him just five minutes before. They were doing homework together, and the year was almost over – Nagito had asked Hajime to come to the Main Course Graduation Ball with him, as friends, of course, and high school was winding down to an end for both of them. Hajime had just worked weekend shifts at a thrift store to buy himself a set of four-leaf clover cufflinks to wear with his suit, small and gold and hopefully not the sort of thing Nagito would think was tacky. They were… Hajime hadn’t known what they were, exactly, until he found himself watching the way Nagito talked with his hands, staring off into the distance, swept away in what they were discussing. He remembered something their mutual friend Chiaki Nanami, the Ultimate Gamer, had said a few weeks before:

“I don’t think Nagito’s gonna ask you to go to the ball as his date-date. But if he does, be nice.”

Hajime hadn’t pressed Chiaki on that, for some reason. He’d been a little distracted by how she was completely annihilating him in the game they were playing. Why hadn’t he… dammit, why hadn’t he really heard her, then? If Nagito asked him out, like… as a boyfriend… Hajime was supposed to treat him gently. Maybe Chiaki thought Hajime would’ve wanted to say no, to an invitation like that? It was hard to say. Her expression had been all dusty lavender, vague and soft, watching her character defeat Hajime’s so, so mercilessly. The game had been reflected in her eyes, neon and flickering and fast.

But maybe… maybe what Chiaki said had meant more than just some run-of-the-mill politeness advice. It could have meant Nagito’d told Chiaki he was interested in taking Hajime as his date-date, but had backed away squirming from the idea because he was still getting over the concept that he was somehow fundamentally broken. Maybe he didn’t realize Hajime had bought those four-leaf clover cufflinks like a promise, because he didn’t want this Graduation Ball to be the last chance he got to wear them. To be fair, Hajime had only just realized that, himself. Who else was he gonna wear four-leaf clovers for, if not the Ultimate Lucky Student? He’d gotten to know Nagito’s luck extremely well, over the last year together; he knew which scars he tended to keep hidden, because he hated explaining their backstories, and he had watched Nagito’s closing monologue from that Reserve Course documentary over and over in the dead of night. Trying to understand it. Trying to understand this impossible, contrary guy who had just helped him edit his last Japanese Literature essay of the semester.

Hajime had kept telling himself he was done with Nagito Komaeda – for weeks, he’d told himself that. It felt like such a waste, now. They were both growing beyond Hope’s Peak Academy, in their ways, even though obviously there had been a time when Hajime would’ve told you that was impossible. He hadn’t thought he could imagine himself a meaningful future without some link to Ultimate Talent, without this school, whatever exactly it was, but the possibilities had started painting themselves to life without him really noticing it. The change crept in so sweetly, somewhere between the Ultimate Supreme Leader dragging the whole School Unity Club into participating in the next academy-wide musical and that time they’d all gotten lost in the mountains and Hajime found himself spreading his coat out over Nagito while he slept. Living had changed things, brought meaning where none had been assigned by fancy academy board members. When Hajime learned about the Izuru Kamukura Project – a study that had apparently endowed some random Reserve Course student with all the Ultimate Talents under the sun – he was jealous, yeah, but not the way he felt he should have been.

Hajime leaned across the desk and took Nagito’s face in his hands; he kissed him fast and hard, before he could change his mind. Kissed him like he’d yelled his actual first name in his face. Kissed him like truth, and the revelation he’d always thought maybe he could be, if only, if only, if only. He felt Nagito tense and then soften; he felt Nagito try to speak, and then close his eyes, pale lashes brushing against his skin. Hajime ran his hand down Nagito’s neck, and tangled it just a little in his unbrushed hair. Nagito made a wondering, helpless sound, and Hajime held him closer. Pulled back. Kissed his forehead.

“I’m sorry,” Nagito said. Hajime didn’t think he knew what for. Maybe he was still sorry for saying he didn’t think Hajime had any reason to come to this school and that whole tangled-up, confusing introduction they’d had; maybe he was just worried he’d turned out to be a disappointing kisser. Somewhere out in the hallway, Kokichi Oma was laughing, calling, “You’ll never take me alive!” to someone chasing him with a mysteriously bedazzled mop. Somewhere out in the hallway, Izuru Kamukura – Reserve Course student-turned living god – was staring out at the world and realizing it was all immeasurably, heartbreakingly boring, when all the talent possible was limp in his hands.

“Why?” Hajime asked.

“Um,” Nagito said. There were so many words churning inside him, but he was holding Hajime’s hand really tightly, now. He cleared his throat. “I mean, we can try that again, if you want. If I did it wrong.”

Hajime and Nagito were both strong believers in second chances, by that point. They went to the Main Course Graduation Ball with Nagito holding Hajime’s hand just as tight, and no, that absolutely wasn’t the last chance Hajime had to wear those four-leaf clover cufflinks.

#komahina #komahina secret exchange #fanfiction

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snowdice · 5 years

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Gaps in His Files (Part 1) [Relabeled; Refiled Series]

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Logan/Patton

Characters:

Main: Logan, Patton

Appear: Remy

Summary:

Logan Berry has learned many things the last 10 years: a lot of math and physics, a bit of humility, and how to be a hero being just a few. Through his education, his experience teaching, and his exploits as the superhero Bluebird, he’s changed in a lot of small and large ways. He has recorded these changes in well-organized documents and files. He’s even had to create two new file designations: a red one for files about his moonlighting at Bluebird, and a light blue one dedicated to his boyfriend, Patton.

When Bluebird is targeted by a memory device and all of those 10 years of progress suddenly disappear, Patton Sanders and Logan’s extensive files are left as his only resource to get those memories back. But what is Patton supposed to do when there are clear gaps in his files? And what does he do when he is one of them?

This is set 25 years before Sometimes Labels Fail though it’s story is completely independent of it and it is not necessary to read that one first.

Notes: Superhero AU, memory loss, past child abuse, past child neglect, unhealthy ideas about ones place in relationships, emotional suppression, self-deprecating thoughts

There are a few background stories for Logan and Patton’s relationship that are also unnecessary to read, but expand their backstory a bit. They can be read before or after this story. Coffee Shop Meet Cute and Coffee Shop Incident Report deal with their first meeting, The Things We Never Mentioned talks about how Patton figured out Logan was bluebird, and Logan’s 25 Step Plan to Ask a Boy Out is how they started dating.

Logan woke slightly colder than he should have been with a presence in his bed that had not been there when he’d fallen asleep. He squinted at said presence in the dim light of his bedroom. “You are a blanket thief,” he informed the sleeping form as he carefully brushed a bit of hair out of his face. He stirred a bit, pressing back against the touch with a soft sound. Logan glanced over at his bedside table and quickly reached over to turn off the alarm that was set to go off in 4 minutes. Then, he turned his attention back to the bed invader.

“Patton,” he called softly, leaning forward to brush a soft kiss across his brow. He puffed out a breath in response and shuffled closer, still mostly asleep. Logan smiled. He appreciated Patton in any state, but sleepy Patton held a special place in his heart. He started peppering kisses down his cheek to his jaw causing his nose to twitch as he started to stir. “Good morning dear.”

“Uhm nuh humba na ha.”

“Ah yes,” Logan replied seriously, “a compelling argument.”

He was still not quite in the waking world, but he was conscious enough to recognize the mocking. He whined and slapped Logan’s shoulder softly. Logan took that as a cue to roll on top of him and lean forward to kiss his neck.

“No,” he whined and wiggled. “Annoying.”

“Annoying huh?” Logan asked into his neck. “Big words for someone guilty of breaking and entering.”

“No breaking,” Patton complained, “I have a key!”

Logan hummed in response. “When did you get here?”

“About 4am,” he mumbled.

“Hmm,” Logan said and gave him a slow kiss on the lips. “I’ll close the curtains when I get up.”

Patton’s legs wrapped around his waist and he yawned. “Thanks.”

“I am going to have to get up pretty soon dear,” Logan pointed out.

“No,” Patton whined, “snuggles.”

“I think my students may not be happy if I do that,” he said.

Patton snorted. “They would too.”

“Well, at least my supervising professor wouldn’t be happy.”

Patton just grumbled and snaked his arms around Logan’s neck before pulling him down for another long kiss.

It took much effort for Logan to pull himself back. “This is entirely unfair,” he said, fingers tracing patterns over his cheeks. “You are far too adorable to resist.”

Patton giggled which was even more unfair and Logan surged forward for another kiss, though it was a quicker peck this time.

“And yet you resist me,” Patton said when he drew back again, a finger tracing his brow.

“Duty calls,” he responded.

“Yeah,” he replied softly.

“I love you,” Logan said. The hand on Logan’s shoulder clenched into the fabric of his shirt.

“I love you too,” he said, a bit of a shake to his voice before lunging forward to kiss him thoroughly once again. Logan was breathless by the time they finally drew apart.

“I do have to go now,” he said regretfully.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, and released his grip on Logan’s shoulder.

Logan regretfully pulled himself from the warmth that was Patton and stood. He went to his window and pulled the curtain to darken the room before going to his closet. The suit he’d picked up from the store yesterday was front and center, and he touched the outside of the white plastic covering it with a soft smile. Then he grabbed his outfit for the day. When he turned back around, Patton had already closed his eyes and curled himself around an extra pillow. Logan paused and leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek before going to change and get ready in the bathroom.

Once he was dressed, he entered his kitchen and his eyes immediately found the note on his countertop. Don’t forget to eat breakfast! :) <3 was scribbled in Patton’s messy scrawl on one of Logan’s sticky notes. Logan puffed out a laugh and went over to start the coffee machine. He reached for his coffee cup and caught sight of another sticky note inside it. Don’t ignore me. >:( it read. Logan shook his head and went about organizing his school supplies in his bag. He pulled out his planner to check his schedule for the day and another note fell out. Logan…

“Fine, fine,” Logan said aloud and walked over to his cabinet to grab the loaf of bread there. A note was taped to the top. Thankyou! <3<3. “Absolutely incorrigible,” he said fondly. He gathered up that note as well as the other three while he waited for the bread to toast and stuck them in his pocket. He spread peanut butter on his toast and poured himself a cup of coffee before taking his breakfast and his planner into the extra bedroom he’d converted into an office.

There was a pen sitting on his desk out of place and Logan bit his tongue in agitation, picking it up and sitting down on his chair. He took a bite of his toast and opened his planner to his to do list for the week. The calendar next to it had his class schedule in black pen, his personal appointments in green, and his study schedule in dark blue ink. His Saturday had been blocked off from 3pm to 11pm with a lighter blue inked pen. He went to check off one of the tasks he’d finished last night, and nothing happened.

“I’m going to kill him,” he told the empty room before rolling his chair over to the trashcan to throw out the empty pen. It clinked against the two already in the trashcan. He swore Patton had the latent superpower to summon inkless pens and the more time he spent at Logan’s apartment, the more accumulated despite Logan’s best efforts. It was a source of endless torment for Logan but still a small price to pay for his boyfriend’s presence.

Once he’d grabbed a functioning pen from its place in his pen holder and finished editing his weekly task list (Though there were a few important exclusions in this week’s list in fear of prying eyes. He would have to remember to call the photographers to confirm between his first and second class without a note to remind himself.), he reached into his pocket for this morning’s notes. He glanced up at a spot on the far wall that was too high for him and, more importantly, Patton to reach without buying a ladder. Well, at least, it would be too high for Logan except for one important fact. He flicked his finger and a small hidden door slid up. The contents of the secret compartment shot into his hand with barely a mental nudge.

He opened his desk and found the stack of different colored paper he kept there. He flipped past the dark blue and red to get to the pieces of light blue paper in the exact shade of the cover of the binder he held in his hand. He selected one of those pages and used the hole puncher on his desk to prepare it to go into the binder before he carefully arranged the notes from Patton on it in chronological order. Then, he pinned each of them down with pieces of tap and wrote himself quick notes next to each to remind himself of where he’d found them. Once finished, he turned to the binder. He touched the cover with a large amount of fondness and a bit of mortification because honestly, he couldn’t believe he was still doing this.

He’d started taking notes on Patton the moment they’d met in a coffee shop over three years ago. Later he would learn that Patton had just gotten off of a long shift at the hospital and was utterly exhausted, but all Logan had known at the time was that a strange man bumped into him and would have spilled an entire cup of hot coffee on him if it hadn’t been for Logan’s own quick reflexes. Unfortunately, those quick reflexes had not been of the physical variety; he had accidently used his powers to stop the cup and its contents in midair. He’d turned wide eyes to the stranger, dreading a reaction. There weren’t exactly many supers with telekinesis who lived in the state after all, but he’d just said “good catch” as though he hadn’t noticed Logan’s attempts to ruin his own secret identity. Logan hadn’t known whether or not to believe him when he acted as though he’d seen nothing, worried about who this man could be and what he could be planning. (Patton would later tell him that Logan probably could have floated into the coffee shop upside down and kicked Patton in his face, and he wouldn’t have noticed that day.) So, he’d written up an incident report for his red files with all the details he could remember and then resolved to keep an eye on the man in case he was lying and plotting to take action against Logan (he hadn’t been). And well, he had certainly ended up keeping an eye on Patton.

Later the binder had become a cumulation of frankly embarrassing records of his crush along with a failed list of steps to get a date (failed because while executing the third step, Patton had asked him out.) Then, once they’d started dating, it had been a sort of crutch, filled with hypothesizes and observations about Patton as though he were some sort of science experiment. Logan had never had any type of romantic relationship before (barring the two embarrassing incidents where his parents attempted to set him up with dates for school dances). He’d vowed when he first put on a mask that he would never date anyone who did not already know his superhero identity. The nice Catch-22 was that Logan had never told anyone that he was Bluebird. Then Patton barreled his way into his life with no regard for Logan’s emotional walls. Logan had been going in blind and the binder had been his way of dealing with the confusing, though wonderful, feelings.

He was better now, more settled, and more comfortable with the peculiarities of sharing so much of your life with another person. Now he only really referred to the binder for specific, important events. Other than that, it was used more like a scrapbook anymore. Logan had trouble throwing away things Patton gave him.

He flipped to the correct section of the binder and placed the page with this morning’s notes in it. His finger traced the smiley face and heart on the first one. Then, he flipped to the back of the binder briefly, tapped the baggy hanging there with his finger, just to double check, before closing the binder and replacing it back in the hidden compartment with his powers.

He drank the rest of his coffee and packed his bag before leaving to get to his 8:30 am class on time. It was Tuesday now. One more normal day today and three more after that.

Want to read more? Click below!

AO3 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Labeled Master Post.

My Masterpost.

#sanders sides #logan sanders #patton sanders #logicality #tsss #superhero au #memory loss #past child abuse #past child neglect #emotional suppression #self deprecation #gaps in his files #labeled universe #relabeled; refiled #adriana writes

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artificialqueens · 4 years

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Listen To Your Body Tonight (Biadore) - Tanawrites

Summary - (belatedly) written for the Summer Lovin’ challenge for the prompt ice cream. Roy is always there when Danny needs him to be.

A/N - This is a super late contribution to the challenge but I’ve had it half-written for about a month now and I finally finished it! tw for mentions of depression and one brief mention of an eating disorder at the very end of the fic.

CC: @writethehousedown

The first thing Danny noticed when Adore finally won over Bianca and they truly became friends, was that Roy was fiercely loyal. It later translated into protective - both of Roy himself and the small selection of people who were close to him. It was an endless comfort for Danny to know he had a friend who was so unwaveringly in his corner.

It had never felt stifling, never that Roy crossed the boundary into possessive rather than protective. Just that he had someone, even in the moments when Danny didn’t think he needed anybody.

When Danny left All Stars, he didn’t call Roy. There was a whole track record that logically told Danny that Roy would understand, would be on his side and that Bianca had told off enough of their fellow queens that spoke down to Adore to know that Michelle Visage would be no exception to the onslaught of hate as well. Despite that, a voice in his head told him that Roy would be disappointed. That the few weeks they’d spent preparing, the money Roy had generously poured into making custom designs for Adore without a thought of Danny paying him back, it was for nothing. He was forever grateful that his mom had known better and called Roy, who held him and without knowing any of the rest of the story, told him just how much he belonged and didn’t stop until Danny believed it too.

It was like that all the time for them. One of them needed the other and they were there, no questions asked.

This time though, they hadn’t spoken in a while. Longer than they usually went without talking but they’d both been busy, rarely in the same city when they happened to be in the same country. Their groupchat had died down, only used for big occasions like holidays or birthdays rather than the constant chatter it once was. Despite this, Danny knew he could call Roy. That even across the globe Roy had woken up in the middle of the night or answered his call during the intermission to talk him down.

It was a stubbornness that stopped him though. Knowing that he should be able to deal with this himself, to pull himself out of the rut he was in. So he secluded himself, from his roommates, his friends, his family. Instead of finding comfort in the warm body of one of his fans at a show or at the bottom of an empty glass, he locked himself away from the world.

Roy thanked his driver and got out the car, slinging the bag he’d packed in a hurry over his shoulder. It was a familiar front door he rapped his knuckles against, despite how many times he’d been told to let himself in.

His chest clenched in a way it only did for someone who he truly cared about when the door opened and there stood Danny’s mom. Bonnie looked tired. For a woman who usually had personality and warmth oozing out of her, it pained Roy to see her like this.

“Thank you for coming, I’m so sorry to call you like I did. God Bianca, I just didn’t know what to do-“

“Hey, stop. It’s good to see you.”

Roy hushed the woman politely but firmly. He stepped forward for their usual greeting hug and let Bonnie pull him inside once they drew away.

“You know you can always call. He knows he can too.”

“He won’t talk at all. He just came home and said he needed to be alone for a while.”

Bonnie shook her head as they came to a stop in the kitchen, their voices hushed as they came closer to the hallway. The same hallway Roy was practically aching to rush down and into a familiar bedroom. He knew he had to hear Bonnie out first, to get whatever information he could so he knew what to do to help.

Danny needed him.

It wasn’t the first time Bonnie had called Bianca and it certainly wasn’t the first time Danny had tried to hide the fact that he was struggling by hiding out in his childhood bedroom and avoiding the outside world.

It always broke Roy’s heart to see Bonnie like this no matter how many times he’d seen it, the love between mother and son so strong to anyone who met them. What was important was that Bonnie knew that Danny didn’t mean to shut her out. The same way he didn’t mean to shut Roy out. He was hurting and didn’t know how to cope with it, so he didn’t. Roy knew to be grateful though that healing now took place in the safety of his Azusa family home rather than an alley behind a club or a dirty bathroom like it had so many times when they were on tour.

“I wish his problems were still simple enough that it was solved with a tub of ice cream.”

Roy let his hand reach across to rest on top of Bonnie’s as she reminisced, waiting until she squeezed back.

“He mentioned you the first day he got back, that you were home from tour. I offered to call you then but he said he just needed a few days.”

“But it’s been more than a few days now. It’s ok, Bonnie. I’m glad you called.”

“I’ll give you guys a few hours, I have to go to run a few errands but…I haven’t wanted to leave him home alone.”

It was with a heavy heart that Roy nodded, knowing many years ago he had promised Bonnie to take care of Danny and that she still trusted him with that.

With that he watched as Bonnie let herself out and took a steadying breath, braced against the kitchen bench. Roy would always be there when Danny needed him. Even if Bonnie had called and he was on the other side of the world, he would have figured something out. It was hard though, seeing someone he loved so much in pieces.

Roy didn’t want to waste anymore time, not when he didn’t know what to expect behind the bedroom door at the end of the hallway, so he tightened his grip on the strap of his bag and walked the short distance to come to a stop at Danny’s room.

He knocked once on the door before pushing it open.

“Adore?”

As expected, the room was pitch black except for the light streaming in from the hallway where he was standing in the doorway. Danny’s head didn’t lift from the pillow but as Roy pushed further into the room and heard the heavy sigh that answered him, he knew Danny was awake.

“I missed you too, bitch.”

Roy’s lips curled into a small smile as he heard the responding grunt from Danny. He closed the door behind him again and cautiously moved forward, blindly feeling around until he could flick the lamp on beside the bed. Once the room was dim and he could see the outline of Danny under all the covers, he let his bag fall to the ground and he perched on the edge of the bed.

“Let me see your face, it’s been too long and you don’t post enough pictures.”

“Just because you don’t know how to use your phone, grandpa.”

Not expecting the quip back, Roy scoffed but underneath it was a resounding sense of relief. He usually took longer to feel out the situation before pushing Danny. If there was something he prided himself on, it was being a somewhat expert on Danny - both emotionally and physically. It could be magnetic between them sometimes, knowing exactly when they needed the warmth of touch or the intimacy of a hushed conversation meant only for the other’s ears.

Despite the joke, Roy could hear the guttural tone in Danny’s voice and the underlying exhaustion and emotion under it. He was reminded of why he was here and that Danny was struggling.

It only took a gentle coax to get Danny to roll over, Roy reaching to brush some hair out of his eyes. He stopped the motion when Danny pushed his cheek further into his palm though, instead simply resting there as he took in the circles under Danny’s eyes, the hollowness of his cheeks.

“There you are.”

A humourless laugh was the start of Danny beginning to crack and Roy was ready to catch him. He was about to say something, to comment on the self-deprecating laugh that was usually his own forte but Danny spoke first.

“This is so stupid…so dumb. I don’t even know what’s wrong I just-”

It was a sob that cut Danny off this time and Roy was there to meet him when Danny leaned forward, falling into a messy embrace.

“Do you ever get sick of always putting me back together?”

Roy was in the middle of untangling the matted mess that Danny’s long hair had succumbed to after a few weeks without brushing it when Danny broke the comfortable silence they had fallen into.

It had taken a long time for Danny’s tears to slow, Roy patient and tender with steady hands holding Danny close. They had talked as well, as much as Danny could through getting worked up again. Nothing could be fixed with a single conversation but it was a starting point for Danny to arrange his thoughts. Roy’s next task was helping him feel better physically, recognising the all too familiar signs of Danny not taking care of himself.

“Do you get sick of doing it for me?”

Despite being taken off guard by the question, Roy didn’t hesitate in answering it with a question of his own.

It was something that had only come up once in all their years of friendship, in a much different situation than where they were now. It was almost a hazy memory of Bianca supporting almost the full weight of Adore on their way back to the hotel room, Adore more inebriated than Bianca had seen yet and worse than that, sobbing. Loud, guttural sobs that racked Adore’s whole frame and gasping between them why Bianca did this for her. Why Bianca would clean her up, stumble them both into the shower and stroked Adore’s hair while she was slouched over. Why Bianca would open her door at any hour. Why Bianca didn’t ask for any explanation the next morning about what or who Adore was doing or even why.

“What? I’ve…no, you’re never like this.”

Roy shook his head, letting the hairbrush rest against his thigh and waiting until Danny turned to face him.

“No, I’m not,” Roy agreed. “But you’re the reason I try to be home for holidays. You’re the one I call when I can’t fall asleep in a hotel room or the one who comes over when I’ve been away too long and can’t fall asleep in my own bed. You remind me that I’m still human and that Bianca and working isn’t always everything.”

Danny seemed to be mulling it over, Roy could practically hear the argument he was having in his own head. The voice of reason and the other voice, the one that tore Danny down and dragged him into this dark place to begin with. This is what he was here for, to be a steady foundation for Danny to lean on.

Danny had always been a disaster just waiting to happen, eyes that had seen too many bad mistakes and heart strained from all the burdens too heavy to carry. He was entirely too much and wanted for more than he could handle. But Danny would never have to beg Roy to love him. Not ever. Roy was already there. Willing and offering up anything he had to give, love at the very top of the list.

“I mean it. We take care of each other, it doesn’t have to be in the same way.”

Danny softened after hearing that, giving Roy a nod to show he agreed. Danny wasn’t always the best with words in moments like this, his thoughts getting lost in the commute from his brain to his lips and never coming out as articulate as he meant them but the way Danny looked at him sometimes, was everything Roy needed to understand.

Roy had coaxed Danny into taking a shower and done a customary tidy of the bedroom, changed the sheets and remade the bed. Danny looked embarrassed when he came back to see Roy straightening the pillows with new covers but Roy was quick to shake his head.

“Remember when I got so drunk that one Christmas Eve and tried to sleep in the dogs playpen?”

Danny faltered for a moment but as the memory came back to him, a grin slowly spread across his lips.

“And you had to wash both the dog beds, my bed sheets and we both ended up sleeping on the couch with a throw blanket?”

Another nod and Roy knew he didn’t have to continue anymore, that his point was made. They’d been friends for years and the thing about touring together, about spending as much time as they could together between their own tours once their careers took off, was that they’d already seen each other’s worst. Then when they discovered there was an even worse worst, they dealt with that too.

He never minded having to remind Danny of this - that no one was keeping score and that putting the pieces back together always worked better with two instead of one. It was a vulnerable place to be, baring all the times Roy had been at his low points to assure Danny that he was no less for his own but that was the difference for them. Vulnerable didn’t ever mean weak.

“Come on, I have an idea.”

Half an hour later, Roy had them both set up on the couch in the front room. The TV was playing some trashy, mindless reality show that he knew Danny loved and they were bundled in amongst cushions and a throw blanket over both their laps. He’d been fussy around, adjusting the cushions and was about to head back into Danny’s bedroom to grab another blanket when Danny grabbed his hand.

“Will you just sit down, willow?”

Roy didn’t know if it was the nickname or the firm, caring reprimand that was clearly a call for him to relax but he sat down. He let Danny tuck comfortably into his side, a hand coming up to run through the long strands of Danny’s hair and exhaled. Things weren’t perfect but Danny would be ok and Roy felt like he could breathe again.

When the front door opened a few episodes in, the calm air that had settled around them trembled as Bonnie came into view with a grocery bag in each hand.

“I’m sorry, mom.”

Danny’s voice was small but rang volumes with how thick with guilt it was. Bonnie’s concern seemed to lessen somehow, recognising the truth in the statement and more importantly, her son again.

Roy felt like he was intruding on a private moment when Bonnie sat on Danny’s other side and pulled him into a tight hug. He was just pulling back to stand up to leave the room discreetly when he felt a tug on his shirt and Bonnie was pulling him in as well.

She was laughing as she pulled away, fanning at her eyes that were shining with a thin layer of tears that mirrored Danny’s.

“You always come back eventually.”

She patted Danny’s cheek and mouthed a silent thank you to Roy as she took her groceries to the kitchen and took what Roy assumed was a quiet moment to herself, waving off both his and Danny’s offer to help her.

Roy knew exactly why a few minutes later when Bonnie returned with two pints of ice cream and spoons clasped in her hand, a reserved expression on her face.

“I thought you two could use some ice cream.”

He could hear the refusal Danny’s brain was already conducting, the extra weight Danny was now carrying around his hips was something they had discussed earlier that was adding to the burden that had dug Danny into this hole.

“That sounds great, Bonnie. But I can never finish a full pint, me and Dan will share one.”

Danny glanced back at him and Roy returned the questioning look with a smile as he shifted over on the couch, leaving enough room for Bonnie to properly sit next to Danny.

“You’re going to have to catch your mom up though, I haven’t been really watching.”

Danny hitting him with a cushion in response was expected but soon they were all settled. Roy and Danny were alternating spoonfuls of ice cream and Bonnie was running a commentary that had Roy almost in hysterical chuckles, it was like a weight lifted off all of their shoulders.

Nothing was fixed but a pint of ice cream on the couch with his best friend and his mom was helping more than Danny thought it ever could.

#rpdr fanfiction #bianca del rio #adore delano #biadore #angst #hurt/comfort #canon compliant #tanawrites #tw eating disorder #tw depression #concrit welcome #wthd challenge

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poguesofthebau · 4 years

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i was wondering if i could get a ship. my name is bri.i'm 16, 5'5, i love the ocean & beach. i'm mixed, have kinky curly hair. i'm an aries, i'm told i'm hilarious. i love to read & paint. i have bad anxiety in cars & crowds. i'm not easily embarrassed, i like to randomly sing & dance in public. i'm a sociable person but my happy place is alone in my room, bc i can't be around others for long. i wasn't that attracted to blondes until rudy walked in & now i would lay my life down for him & drew.

reading ur description was so wild bc u sound JUST LIKE ME BITCH omg

i ship you with jj!! (honorary mention: kie would be your favorite person to act a fool with. you two would go to the mall and bounce around stores to whatever random music they were playing. you’d have fun sleepovers where you’d go from crying over love to lathering on red lipstick in the ugliest way possible just to have funny selfies to show your kids what a good ass friendship looked like some day. straight out of a movie best friends.)

you were always the person who could handle jj the best. when he started to lash out, you would never think differently of him. somehow, you understood everything he did, and you knew he always had a reason for his actions, even when they seemed completely self-destructive. he always wanted to help his friends, the people he loved, and you admired the fuck out of that. in times when pope, john b, and kie would get super pissed at jj for one of his stupid mistakes, you’d be the one who followed him out of the Chateau when he stormed off. you’d let him rant, and scream at the top of his lungs, and punch shit, not flinching when passersby stared at the blonde boy throwing a tantrum. (often times, you’d give them the finger, or yell “mind your fucking business,” or “do you fucking need something?”) by the end of those fits, jj would usually wind up crying in your lap. the first time it happened, you were honestly shocked. you’d never seen jj cry like that, such self-deprecating, frustrated tears, and you knew none of the other pogues really had, either. maybe a tear here or there, but he never really broke down in front of them-- he wanted them to see his strength, and his willingness to sacrifice anything for them, and his power, and his endurance. with you, though, he somehow knew he could reveal anything, no matter how embarrassing, or dramatic, or weak. you were safety to jj, and the day he admitted that to himself was the day he knew he was in love.

just because he knew what his feelings for you were, didn’t mean he acted on them immediately, though. he’d spend weeks keeping the secret to himself. even when he finally confessed to the other pogues, he’d spend an additional few months hiding it from you. all that time, he was letting you in, letting you get to know the real jj that few people got to see, and he was learning so much more about you. without even realizing it, jj was noticing your ticks, pet peeves, favorite things, tells, everything. finally, one night, jj would expose a big chunk of the knowledge he’d unintentionally gathered on you, thus exposing how he really felt about you. it’d be a summer night at the Boneyard, and there were a lot of people there that night. let’s say it was the fourth of july, so essentially every teenager who was staying in the obx (kooks, pogues, and tourons alike) would be on the beach, getting as drunk as possible to celebrate the selective independence of a corrupt, racist, disgusting country. (oop. moving on.) when you’d woken up in the Chateau that morning, you had been so excited. the day was spent on the hms pogue, the five of you having a typically hilarious and fun-filled time together before heading to the kegger. as soon as you stepped foot on the beach and took note of how many people had shown up, your demeanor shifted. you were still in a good mood, still willing to socialize a bit, but your anxiety had moved from the back of your mind to the forefront of it. and jj noticed. when he saw your face slightly fall before you tried to force a smile again, he knew what was running through your mind. he’d sling an arm around your shoulder unexpectedly, smirking down at you as he spoke. “you’re sticking with me tonight, right?” you’d laugh warmly, nuzzling slightly into him. “i guess i am now, clingy.”

a few hours later, you’d calmed down a bit. you and jj were sitting on one of the fallen trees that scattered the beach, kie chatting up a touron to your left as everyone else laughed at john b and pope ‘fighting’ in the middle of everyone. jj would still have that arm around your shoulder, and at that point, you’d started to take note of all the little things he was doing. all night, jj had been bringing you refills without being asked, and glancing over at you when you hadn’t spoken in a bit to make sure you were still comfortable. at one point, he’d even forced you to stand up and dance with him to a song he knew you loved. it was strange, but you appreciated jj more that night than you ever had before.

as soon as you’d gotten into the rhythm of things, the Boneyard went to shit. you’d be laughing at some sarcastic comment jj had made to just you when someone a few yards behind you started yelling, and when you peeked over to see what was going on, a huge crowd had formed. from your spot on the tree, you could see that a fight between two kooks you didn’t recognize had broken out, and you felt jj’s arm tighten around you as your heart thudded at the sight of the crowd. when you turned back to face him, jj would already have all his attention on you. “you good?” you’d shrug, glancing back at the fight once more before jj gently grabbed you by the chin and swiveled your head back to face him. after looking at you for a few seconds, he seemed to have made up his mind. “c’mon,” he’d say, hopping down from your spot and putting a hand out for you to take. when you looked at him quizzically, he’d smile and shake his hand again. you’d finally put your hand in his, letting him catch you when you made the drop. “let’s go back to the Chateau. the others can catch up later.” for basically the first time in the night, jj removed his arm from your shoulders as you began to stroll away from all the chaos. you’d pass pope (who was jogging toward the fight) as you walked, jj stopping him for a moment to let him know you were leaving. the whole time the two boys talked, your eyes would be on jj, a smug smile playing your lips as you realized what was going on. he cares. a lot more than he used to. the two of you would continue walking in comfortable silence, arms swinging between you as you moved. without thinking it through, you decided to make a move of your own. suddenly you were catching jj’s hand in your own, lacing your fingers together nonchalantly. he’d look at you suspiciously, a mischievous glint in his eye. “you trying to put the moves on me, trouble?” you’d giggled at the nickname, tugging him in closer to you. “maybe. is it working?” jj would scoff, rolling his eyes. “as if you even have to try, bri. you already got me.” and that would be the start of jj and bri.

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thenightlymartini · 5 years

Text

Updated Headcannon #10

Revisiting one of my old headcannons, #10 to be specific, and decided I wanted to update it as my perceptions of Kimchiburger and Rusnk have changed and I didn’t start adding Commieburger to this blog until right after it.

I have a list of songs I feel fit these ships well.

Kimchiburger:

Let Me Love You by Ne-Yo - I still think part of the song fits them really well. South Koreans do have a high standard of beauty, so much that plastic surgery is seen as the norm and the ultimate goal is perfection. South Korea probably has self confidence issues despite putting up his fun loving front, and America knows what it’s like to be self-deprecating because he has and is still there with himself. Yet they make it their mission to love each other as a way to show each other that the other is perfect to them and to help each other love themselves despite their shortcomings. Another song along the same lines is P!nk’s “F*cking Perfect.”

Teenage Dream by Katy Perry - South Korea’s POV. South Korea found someone he can be himself around, and it makes him both happy and nervous. It’s cannon in the comics that he gets nervous around America and looks up to him, so I’d imagine in a romantic setting he would be like a teenager feeling butterflies. I know that once he got more confident he would be super gun-ho about the relationship and be super supportive to America because that’s basically how America was to him, even when he knew nothing about his past.

Cheerleader by Omi - America’s POV. America finds himself to be so lucky to have such a supportive friend and partner like South Korea. Like anytime he is down or is about to give up on something, whether major or minor, South Korea is always right there cheering him on and pushing him forward. He couldn’t ask for anyone else.

Nintendo by Todd Carey - Despite Nintendo being a Japanese company, that’s not what the song is about. This is about a couple/crush that really brings out the fun and nostalgia. Like America is still kind of a teenager, and that’s odd given how the majority of other countries, while some have child-like traits, are not like that. Meanwhile, South Korea, despite the country being about 70 or so years old, himself is way older than that, and the relationship with America is really refreshing, almost bringing him back to the days when he didn’t understand what it meant being a nation and having fun that only innocence can provide. That and these guys are huge nerds and games would be a big part of their relationship.

Rusnk:

Miss Independent by Ne-Yo - This is Russia’s POV because I believe that on a personal level, he was really impressed with how North Korea held himself, and that’s what initially drew him to the Asian nation. Like, he just loved how independent NK was as a person and loved that toughness. Later he found the softer side of NK to be just as amazing, but unlike most other nations, he wasn’t put off by what NK projected himself as.

Miss Independent by Kelly Clarkson - This is North Korea’s POV. Despite these two songs having the same title, it’s a completely different tone and perspective. North Korea does put part of his independent personality up as an act, because he doesn’t want his heart broken or be taken advantaged of. But Russia comes in and changes his whole outlook on love. I still headcannon that Russia was North Korea’s first romantic love with a nation. He is so confused by what he feels but decides to take a chance and try letting his walls down for Russia, and is glad that he did because he finally got to experience that kind of love for himself.

Bring Me to Life by Evanescence - This highlights this deeper aspect of them I think gets missed a lot. These two do have shields and often come across as cold and impersonal. When they finally meet each other, they realize just how similar they are and how much they understand each other and it terrifies them. It terrifies them even more just thinking about living without the other since it would mean loosing the warmth and the feeling of being alive that they finally got a taste of. This is what really makes them a power couple: no matter if the relationship is toxic or healthy, these two are not going to leave each other because that is their first taste at love and are more terrified of losing it than anything else.

Commieburger: (All of Me by John Legend fits them so well, but I wanted to explore more songs that could fit them well)

Give Your Heart a Break by Demi Lovato - This song definitely feels like it comes from America’s POV. This pretty much tells how America, once he learns more about North Korea and Sang Kyu himself, he does grow feelings for him and starts to understand that NK holds back from love due to fear. America would try everything he could to get NK to realize that his feelings and intentions were genuine and he doesn’t want to hurt him. But most importantly, he wants NK to open up.

Clarity by Zedd and Beautiful Trauma by P!nk - While both have similar messages, a roller-coaster of a relationship, the tones are different, and both tones fit the pair. “Clarity” is a more serious and frustrated tone, fitting the frustration both parties feel with their relationship rocking back and forth between an impossible tragedy and still loving with all their being. “Beautiful Trauma” is more accepting of the love-hate aspect and even indicates that it is what draws the couple together, which is more or less how their relationship works after being together for long enough. Like they both know that the arguments and general insanity that comes with the relationship sucks, but they are willing to put up with that because their love is genuine.

True Love by P!nk - While it could be for both, I so see this as North Korea’s POV because this song really focuses on the inner dilemma that the singer is going through to the point that it mirrors what North Korea would be feeling trying to confront his feelings for America. Like he really hates or gets aggravated with America a lot, but he also loves him, the asshole that he thinks he is, and he can’t let that go no matter how hard he tries.

Suki Kirai by Rin and Len Kagamine - Title translates to “Love-Hate” roughly. Basically North Korea as Rin and America as Len. A story of two people where the guy (America) admits to the girl (North Korea) he likes her, but the girl is really confused and frustrated because she doesn’t know if she likes the guy or hates him. Looking at the English lyrics, America would be slightly pushy but genuine with his feelings, whereas North Korea struggles with deciding if he does like America or wants to hate him.

#hetalia #aph america #aph russia #aph south korea #aph north korea #kimchiburger #rusnk #commieburger #songs #out of my first headcannons this really needed an update #dear lord I think I spent about 4 hours on this

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the-irish-mayhem · 5 years

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Ragnarok AU. Despite his hunt for the Infinity Stones taking him far beyond Jane’s galaxy, Thor had always managed to get word to her that he was safe. When months pass without any word from him, Lady Sif arrives with a dire message: Thor has gone missing, Heimdall has been removed from his post as Gatekeeper, and the Warriors Three wonder if their king is truly Odin.

rebuild all your ruins.

Read on AO3

I. Prologue / II. Theren

“Thor is missing, and the realms are in grave danger, and you are the only person who can help me.”

Jane’s shock at seeing Sif made the worry that had been gnawing at her gut solidify into a heavy brick.

“Is he alive?” she asked, suddenly hyperaware of how warm she was. Her fingers tightened on the door knob. She thought of Thor how she’d last seen him, so broad and warm and seemingly indestructible--

Sif sighed. “We don’t know.”

“Okay,” Jane breathed, determinedly telling the brick in her stomach to kindly fuck off. “Okay. Do you--just come in,” she said and stepped away from the door, allowing Sif into their hotel room and closing the door behind her.

There was a not insignificant part of Jane that suddenly felt self conscious, like when she first got up in front of her upper division Experimental Physics Methods class to answer a question, and she felt the odd urge to straighten the rumpled covers on the beds, stow her and Darcy’s food containers, make their space somehow more than a mid-budget hotel room. This part of her, though, was not strong enough to overtake the fear, shock, and confusion thrumming through her.

Darcy was standing now, looking between Jane and Sif, and Jane said, “Sif, this is my assistant Darcy. Darcy, Sif.”

Sif stepped forward, and reached a hand out. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Darcy met Jane’s eyes before she reached out and took Sif’s hand. Darcy had heard plenty about Jane’s feelings regarding Sif--which were not disparaging thoughts, exactly, but rather more on the self-deprecating side. Jane liked to think she was past that, but old jealousy can be hard to shake completely. Especially when the object of her jealousy was standing right here, looking like she’d stepped off the catwalk and could walk on the battlefield in a blink.

“You too,” Darcy answered with an easy smile. “I didn’t think Asgardians knew how to shake hands.”

Sif smiled back, fondness in her tone when she said, “I have some friends on Midgard who helped me apprehend a criminal not terribly long ago. I’ve made a habit to visit when I can, and they’ve been kind enough to impart me with a great amount of knowledge of your customs. Perhaps you know them? SHIELD?”

Both Darcy and Jane shared a yikes look between them.

“When was the last time you were here?” Jane asked.

Sif replied, “Do not worry, I am aware of the fallout that Hydra caused. My friends were fortunately on the right side. They continue their fight against Hydra even now.”

Jane didn’t really want to get into it with Sif about associating with anyone who even brushed shoulders with a bunch of Nazis, but she figured now wasn’t the time to throw that opinion out there. (Not even remotely brushing all the news about SHIELD functioning as a shadow agency with no government oversight or accountability, and all the panic over rogue agents and Inhumans--)

“They helped me locate you,” Sif continued.

“Oh boy,” Darcy said under her breath when Jane started to think maybe it was a good time after all to talk about the Not-Nazis--

“Jane’s not super fond on SHIELD,” Darcy explained quickly. “Stealing research and whatnot. Neither of us are, especially after the Nazi stuff. Long story. Now’s probably not the time to rehash all of that.” Darcy shot a look at Jane that said maybe now isn’t the time to go into that Jewish cultural scar.

Jane knew Darcy was right, and pushed past her reluctance and asked, “Right, so when was the last time you saw Thor?”

Sif sat heavily at the foot of one of the beds. “He returned to Asgard briefly after Midgard’s war with Ultron.”

“It was more like a long weekend,” Darcy said. “But go on.”

“He seemed--” she paused, searching. “Uneasy.”

“He told me he thought something was wrong with his dad,” Jane said, “and that he hadn’t been himself since Frigga was killed.” It had taken Jane a long time to be able to share that thought without automatically completing it as was killed protecting me.

“He hasn’t been,” Sif agreed. “It’s hard to explain precisely, but I know Odin better than I knew my own father. Fandral and Volstagg weren’t entirely convinced, but Hogun agreed that not all was normal.”

Jane nodded. “Thor said that he couldn’t speak freely there.”

Sif looked at Jane quizzically. “How did Thor tell you this?”

“With this,” Jane said and produced the stone from her pocket.

Sif’s eyes widened, and she drew forward off the bed with a start. “A communication stone,” she breathed. “Thor gave you this?”

Jane nodded. “Just before he left.”

“Have you attempted to communicate with him since he went missing?”

Jane’s brow furrowed. “I thought this was only one way?”

Sif shook her head. “Communication stones can function across the known universe.”

Jane’s jaw dropped.

“That--” Her mouth worked for a few seconds but no sound came out. They can function across the known universe. “That bastard.”

Sif seemed confused for a moment before realization set in. “He said you could not contact him.”

“I cannot believe he would lie to me about this!” Jane said, suddenly steaming. “Oh my god, we could’ve been talking this whole time and yet he decided to just cut me out of his adventure like an absolute asshole. When I find him I am going to murder him.” She held up the stone. “You said this could work across the known universe, right?” Sif nodded, if a bit reluctantly. Jane laughed. “This is a quantum entangled communication device, I bet. Physicists have theorized about it for years, but-- I thought it might be, but I haven’t had the time to sit down and study it and I thought that with the restriction of one way communication ruled out the possibility but oh my god, I cannot believe this. That asshole, he is going to be in so much trouble. Oh my god.”

She turns to Darcy. “Call Tony right now. I’m going to need his help if we’re going to find Thor.”

“If it makes any difference,” Sif offered, “I don’t believe his lie was malicious.”

“I’m with her,” Darcy said, phone in hand, likely already dialling Tony.

“Why?” Jane gritted out. “Wouldn’t be the first time he left me behind.”

With the phone up to her ear, Darcy gave her a look that said she would be paying for the irrationality of that comment later, but Sif answered for her.

“Jane, he loves you,” she said, with such finality and certainty it made Jane’s temper come up short for a moment. “You are an intelligent woman. You would have to be to understand the things that you do, so think about this for a moment. Thor set off on a potentially very dangerous mission, and now he is missing, likely being held captive by an enemy of Asgard. Communications between stones like those can be traced. Not easily, granted, but they can be with the proper time and motivation.

“I do not know much about the enemies that he pursued, but I am willing to wager that they would not have hesitated to abduct the prince of Asgard’s motal lover if they knew where to find her.”

Jane’s indignation began to fizzle; still there, no doubt, but now tempered with reason, and maybe a little embarrassment. “They could just ask Us Weekly,” she said. “They seem to always have the inside scoop on Thor’s love life.”

Darcy’s murmured voice from the corner of the room signaled that she’d gotten through to Stark. And Jane truly would need his help. As far as she could tell, using the communication stone would be the only way to find Thor. She had three degrees, but none of them in quantum physics. Her specialty was the big stuff. Astrophysics. Celestial movements. Universe origins. Wormholes. She needed someone who was into the small stuff. A certified quantum physicist, and that certainly wasn’t her. (Not that Tony would be either, but she figured in the interest of discretion and ease of access, he was probably her best bet on finding one.)

“So why are you here?” she finally asked Sif. “I mean, not that I’m-- I’m not-- I just feel like Midgard is probably the worst staging area for a rescue mission, right?”

Sif chuckled. “Not the worst, but not the best; you are correct.” She sat back down on the bed, looking down at her hands. “A few weeks ago, I was sent on an intelligence gathering mission to Knowhere.” She shook her head with a soft scoff. “Whatever prompted Odin to send me there, it was based on bad information. I was compromised almost immediately, and barely escaped the planet with my life. I called for my brother, but he did not answer.”

“Heimdall is your brother?” Darcy asked, rejoining the conversation.

Sif nodded. “He always answers if able, which means the Bifrost is no longer under his control.

“So it is my sinking suspicion that Odin sent me on this mission without intending for me to return.”

Jane swallowed. “He wouldn’t do that.” A heavy beat. “Would he?”

Sif looked up, pain on her face when she answered, “Before Knowhere, I would’ve said absolutely not. But once it happened, I couldn’t help but notice all the strange things about the mission. He wouldn’t allow me to take Hogun with me. Hogun is my preferred partner for such endeavors. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I did one without him.

“Now I can’t help but wonder if he intended to split us up.” She laughed softly. “Saying such things on Asgard would be considered seditious.”

“I’m not particularly fond of Odin after he called me a goat, so feel free to let loose all the seditious thoughts,” Jane said.

Sif shook her head. “It doesn’t matter right now. I ended up on Midgard because the ship I took from Knowhere wouldn’t get me anywhere else, and of the allies I have the universe, I trusted the ones I had here the most given the circumstances. And thus, here I am.”

“And you need Jane to help you get back to Asgard,” Darcy said, “or somewhere. Am I right?”

Sif nods. “I need to find Thor. No one is looking for him,” she said. “The king doesn’t seem to care, my brother can’t send me to him, and Thor told me that if there was anyone in the universe who would be able to achieve Bifrost travel without a Bifrost, it would be you.”

“Oh,” Jane said. It was exactly the kind of thing Thor would say, and despite her lingering annoyance at him for the unwitting protection he’d forced upon her, a surge of pride welled in her chest. “I have been working on a couple of different things. I’m a long ways off from being able to be as precise as the Bifrost. Like, decades off--” and decades was being optimistic, “--but I have developed a device based off my readings from the Convergence that can sense the natural pathways between realms, and we could hypothetically activate them with enough acceleration and friction.”

“We just haven’t been able to produce enough of either of those things,” Darcy finished.

Sif perked up. “Perhaps we can use the ship I arrived in. It’s not exactly the best of vessels, but perhaps pooling our resources would help solve your problems.”

Jane’s heart began to speed up with the promise of new discovery and innovation because maybe Sif was right--maybe the alien tech in the ship would be just the thing her devices needed to finally function. “It won’t be as effective as the Bifrost,” she warned again.

“But it is more than I had when I escaped Asgard,” Sif assured kindly.

(Jane really was wondering now if she’d imagined the animosity all along.)

“We can continue this discussion on our way to the airport,” Darcy said. “Tony has a jet waiting to take us to New York.”

“What about the conference?” Jane asked, suddenly remembering why she couldn’t just jet off to space to slap Thor again.

Darcy waved a hand, already handing Jane her small suitcase. “I called Dr. Rau since he owed you a favor for all the stuff you did for his last paper.”

“Perfect,” Jane breathed. Anish Rau was a fellow astrophysicist and a good friend, who, in Jane’s opinion, would probably benefit more from this conference than she would, given that he was an active professor at Dartmouth. “Thank you, Darcy.”

“Yes, I’m extraordinary. Now make sure you grab your toothbrush and stuff. I’ve already got an Uber waiting for us.” She turned to Sif. “Ever taken an Uber before?”

Sif looked absolutely confused. “I’m afraid the Allspeak is not working as well as it typically does. A what now?”

Ever since she’d first gone through the Bifrost, since she’d been hurtled through space faster than the speed of light and had seen galaxies and stars and nebulae and the full majesty of space blazing past a rainbow barrier of light, Jane had gained a rather romantic view of what wormhole travel would be like when she finally managed it herself. Realistically, she knew it probably wouldn’t be quite as refined as the Bifrost on her first go round, sure.

But somehow, her imagination had never conjured up this scene of her standing on a dusty alien planet, ship half buried in the sand and quite thoroughly engulfed in flames, standing next to Sif with the scalped remains of the Realm Hopper between them and wondering what the hell they were supposed to do now.

Initially, everything had gone exactly according to plan. Almost too well, even.

With Tony’s help, they’d extracted Sif’s ship from where it had crash landed in northern Canada, and Jane, for the first time, felt like she could relate to Luke Skywalker when he looked at the Millenium Falcon and saw a piece of junk. Because Sif’s ship was, quite frankly, a piece of junk. Leaps and bounds ahead of a lot of NASA’s most cutting edge tech in a lot of ways, but then there were also hundreds of blown fuses, large and small dents scattered across the entirety of the ship’s dull silver body, and one whole section of the fuselage seemed to be held shut with the alien equivalent of duct tape and dear hope. It was a four-occupant skiff, bullet-shaped with a few fins jetting off the body, a bit like a oversized model rocket ship. There were several windows crafted of some element not found on Midgard yet, apparently, that achieved diamond-like hardness and glass-like clarity. According to Sif, it was the only part of the ship that was actually worth much.

With a week of work, approximately sixty gallons of coffee, and less than twelve hours of sleep pooled between the two of them, Jane and Tony, plus a small team of trusted SI engineers, had altered the Realm Hopper 2.0 to function parallel to the ship’s (apparently outdated, Sif informed them, with only minor grumbling about how she “much disliked engineering while in school”) engine, which functioned much like the hypothesized Alcubierre drive (in other words, Jane was basically going to be using a Star Trek warp drive. Sweet.)

While they worked on repairing the ship and conducted experiments to make sure they’d be able to actually do this without dying, Darcy worked with Hope van Dyne on the quantum entangled communication stone. She couldn’t come out of hiding with the Sokovia Accords situation, but was sent data and teleconferenced enough for SI engineers to churn out a rudimentary tracking device in less than a week.

Which brought them to a massive crevasse in the Greenland ice sheet. Working off of the information they’d gleaned from the communication stone and Sif’s memory, they’d mapped a basic plan for how they would realm-hop back to Asgard. Jane would have to calculate new entry points on each planet based on where Thor’s transmissions had come from, but it seemed… doable. Actually, not just doable. Possible. Probable. Likely, even.

It didn’t quite feel real until Tony radioed from the site set up a quarter mile west of them. The crevasse, which plunged at least a mile down into the ice sheet, measured about fifty yards across at the mouth, and narrowed down to a few feet within less than 300 yards.

They’d really have to burn it in order to create a wormhole before they smashed into the sides of the crevasse. And with the speeds they’d likely be seeing, Jane knew her chances of survival would be pretty slim, unless there were some magical alien safety features Sif neglected to tell them about in her rundown about the ship and it’s parts.

The ship’s engine hummed as they hovered over the crevasse about three quarters of a mile up from the surface of the ice sheet. If she and Tony had gotten their math right, they needed to reach adequate velocity to open a rift when they were between 240 and 250 yards, so their margin for error was vanishingly small. (There were a lot of Back to the Future jokes tossed around at that particular point in their sleep deprived calculations--late night laughs about getting their Delorean to hit 88 miles per hour at the exact right time.)

Their radio, a shoddy little shortwave thing that would only serve a purpose for their initial preparations, crackled to life with the sound of Tony Stark saying, “Jane, everything is set to specifications. We’ll be getting a shit ton of data for you to look at when you get back.”

She huffed out a little laugh. “When I get back,” she repeated, almost to herself. She depressed the transmitter button. “Darcy, make sure he doesn’t steal any of my data,” she said.

When she released the button, Tony replied, “What, was one Nobel prize not enough for you?”

Darcy’s voice came over the radio then, sharp and vehement. “Stop bantering about data and just don’t die please. And since I know you’re gonna worry about it low key in the back of your brain, yes, we have several backup drives and another at a secondary location. You’ll be able to play back every minute of this absolutely terrifying experience if you so desire it when you get back.” The last four words were said as an absolute threat.

Jane softened. Her one-time intern, now assistant and arguably best friend was one of the few reasons her journey was even possible in the practical sense. Jane was hardly a renegade scientist chasing down fringe theories anymore, she was a highly sought after lecturer and collaborator in the science world. Darcy would be managing the gap her absence left, which was no mean feat.

And on the other, less rational hand… it was nice to be cared about. With Thor being gone, Darcy had effectively become her support system, and the affection that bloomed in her chest at her friend’s worry stole her breath.

“I’ll be fine,” Jane replied back. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Hate to break up the party,” Tony said, “but we have readings showing that molecular destabilization is at optimal. It’s time for you ladies to hit it.”

Jane looked over at Sif, who held the main control yoke. She wasn’t wearing her armor, but was still clothed in her Earth garb, her chestplate and bracers stowed in a leather-looking bag strapped to the back of her seat. Sif gave a resolute nod and reached for the main ignition switches. The ship’s engine began to hum louder, the deep bass of it pulsing through Jane’s neck and chest.

Sharp excitement welled within Jane. Deep down, every scientist who studied space kind of wanted to be an astronaut.

“Engine initializing,” Jane said. “Activating Realm Hopper in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.” Jane did not have a steering yoke in front of her, but a panel of various switches and dials that would control the wormhole-portion of their engine. She flicked two of the primary startup switches. A sharp, high pitched whir joined the sound of the Alcubierre engine.

Jane felt a smile stretch across her face. It was the sound of the universe at her feet, beckoning her forward. The danger and potential hazards fell away, leaving only pure thrill.

She was about to create her own wormhole, and she was going to cross it.

“I’m the next Neil fucking Armstrong,” she whispered.

Sif maneuvered them into position, tilting the nose of the craft downwards. Gravity pulled Jane forward against her harness. It was a clear day with perfect visibility, so when they were pointed downwards at the crevasse, not a cloud stood between them and the surface but open air.

“Ready?” Sif asked.

Jane could only nod, all of her internal organs having relocated to her throat.

“Engine engaged,” Sif said, and with a flick of one last control panel switch, she pushed the control yoke forward and they literally blasted downwards.

Jane was launched straight backwards into her seat, and though her internal organs may have felt as though they were in her throat, now they felt like they were pressed all the way back against her spine. Her hands dug into the arms of her seat as though her life depended it. The engine began to pulse in a steady one-two rhythm as they approached the terminal velocity. The Realm Hopper’s whine began to get distinctively louder.

The ice sheet was already upon them, and they plunged headlong into the darkness of the crevasse in the blink of an eye.

Jane didn’t even have time to pray to whoever was listening before the familiar streaks of rainbow light began to flash sporadically out the windows and suddenly their craft was bursting through the rift.

Light from the planet’s sun blinded her shocked retinas only for a moment before she adjusted and saw a vast expanse of desert sand, sulfuric yellow with streaks of dark brown across it. Sharp black pillars that looked like thin, tall mountains made the horizon jagged. Jane didn’t have much more time to ogle the world she’d brought them to; Sif cursed as their craft took a sudden dive, the Alcubierre drive whining in a way that did not sound great.

“Try to cycle down the hyperdrive!” Jane shouted over the din of the engine.

Sif grunted a response, and began flicking switches across the dash. The engine did become decidedly quieter, but it still sounded ill and they were still losing altitude. The planetary rift they’d crossed only spit them out about 20 meters off the ground, so there wasn’t much more altitude they could lose before they would crash.

Sif was hauling the control yoke backwards, desperately trying to pull up and decelerate at the same time, and neither was going particularly well.

“Hold on!” Sif shouted before the bottom of the ship made contact with the sand, bouncing harshly and causing the ship to rattle around them. The nose tipped down on the second bounce into the planet surface, harsh vibrations causing Jane’s teeth to clack together as the ship swiftly decelerated. The craft sheared into the yellow sand, the cloud of blowback obscuring their view until the ship finally ground to a halt.

The main viewport was almost completely covered in dust, but there was enough of a gap towards the top of the craft that Jane could look out.

(Crash landing? Unplanned, but Jane was sitting on a literal alien planet! And her tech had gotten them there!)

The sun was shrouded in clouds that had a pink cast, and the ground itself, aside from the yellow tinge, looked a lot like the salt flats seen on Earth. Across the horizon, sharp spires rose up into the sky, black and blurry with distance.

She looked over at Sif in the captain’s seat; she was breathing hard, one hand poised at the steering yoke as the other flicked across various dials and switches across the dashboard. Jane felt the vibration of the ship’s engine finally cycle down and give one last pathetic sputter, and Sif met her eye once the ship had fallen still and silent.

“We made it,” Sif said, at the same time Jane laughed out, “We didn’t die!”

Sif’s eyes widened. “What?”

“There was like… a definitely nonzero chance that we would literally explode as soon as we hit terminal velocity, but it’s fine. Because we didn’t!”

Sif stared for a moment, mouth slightly agape, but then dissolved into laughter and tipped her forehead against the steering yoke.

“Oh, Jane Foster, we will get along splendidly,” she said. Sif sat back, and squinted out the window, taking in the landscape as Jane had done a moment before.

Jane had just hurried through unlatching her harness and reached under her seat for her bag, which had thankfully remained secure as well through their less than stellar landing when she registered the smell of smoke.

She stood like a shot and turned towards the back of the ship where the engine was located. In their slapdash haste, they hadn’t bothered to make the ship habitable for the four people it was meant to hold.

Apparently, a skiff like this would host a gravity generator and the engine side-by-side beneath the floor. The gravity generator had been shot to hell and she and Tony had scrapped it for parts to build the Realm Hopper addition. The engine itself had required a few bulky Midgard repairs, and thus about two-thirds of the floor behind the captain and co-pilot seats had been removed to make room, much like a supercharged engine that protruded above the hood of a vintage car.

So Jane did not have any real obstruction when she looked back to see smoke pouring out of the Alcubierre drive.

“Shit, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire--” Jane said, and began looking around for-- “Do we have a fire extinguisher?”

Sif looked confused. “A what?”

Jane kept spinning, looking for the red canister she knew would absolutely not be anywhere because why would an alien ship have a fire extinguisher--

“We need to get outside,” Jane said.

Sif noticed their predicament and uttered a word she’d heard Thor say numerous times and the Allspeak apparently didn’t have a translation for.

“Come on,” Sif urged. She untied her own bag from where it was lashed behind her, stood from her seat, and headed to the door. Without much fanfare, Sif kicked through it, the metal screeching as it tore open.

Jane hitched her bag across her shoulders and followed Sif outside.

She didn’t have much time to marvel at the majesty of the planet (!!!) they’d landed on, as she jogged a ways away and dropped her bag and then headed back for the ship.

“Jane, what are--”

“We need the Realm Hopper,” she threw back over her shoulder. The smoke was fairly billowing out of the fuselage, dark gray and ominous, and Jane thought she saw the light of full flames beginning to flicker through the open doorway. She swore loudly and ran her hands through her hair.

Her mind whirled through ideas--she didn’t have anything big enough to throw over the whole engine to starve it of oxygen, but it was a spaceship, if they just closed the door, maybe that could--

She groaned when upon closer inspection, she saw one of the body fins had been ripped away, exposing the inside of the ship and allowing more oxygen in. Who knew how many other gaps in the body had been created in their less than graceful landing?

That’s when her attention turned to the yellowed sand beneath her feet.

She dropped to a knee and scooped up a handful of the loose solid.

“So I have kind of a dumb plan,” she called over to Sif, “but it’s the only one I’ve got right now.”

Sif appeared next to her, kneeling as well. “Tell me.”

Jane sniffed hesitantly at the small pile of sand in her hand. While not overtly offensive, she did smell a faint undercurrent of rotten egg. A chemist she was certainly not, but she’d taken enough classes to know a bit more than the basics.

“I’m pretty sure this is a sulfur compound,” she said. “And sulfur is highly flammable.”

Sif gave her a confused look but said nothing.

“I don’t know how much is in this, so my plan I guess is kind of two-fold. Either it’s a low enough content that it doesn’t burn and we smother the fire. Or, it’s a high enough content, it burns for a bit and replaces all the oxygen on the ship with sulfur dioxide gas, which should smother the flames anyway.” Jane paused, thinking of everything she knew about sulfur. “It might explode after that at some point because sulfur dust is really, really easily ignitable, but we should have time to get the Realm Hopper out, in whatever condition it’s in.”

“You’re right, this is a dumb plan,” Sif said, but not in dismissal.

Jane shrugged. “I don’t have any other ideas, and starting from scratch on the Realm Hopper is going to be a huge delay that I don’t think we can afford.”

Sif shook her head, and then laughed lightly. “Okay, Jane Foster. Tell me what I need to do.”

Jane outlined her plan, and they set to work.

Sif used her shield as a shovel (which, by the way, she just reached into her very normal sized bag and just took out like she was goddamn Hermione or something), and Jane the broken off fuselage fin to heap piles of sand in the door and over the source of the flames. At first, it looked like basic smothering might work, until Jane saw a blue cast flame emerging at the edges of their sand covering.

“Sif!” Jane shouted, “It’s time!”

Sif tossed her shield back towards the safety zone of their bags, and lifted the door back into place. Sif turned to that her back was against the door, and with a determined plant of her feet, she pushed the door fully back into the frame.

Jane retreated to the safety zone a few dozen feet away. They couldn’t afford for Jane to injure her lungs with the fumes from the sulfur dioxide, so she would stay a safe distance, and watch for the smoke still pouring out of the hole where the fin used to be to die off. Jane felt like it shouldn’t take too long, right? The sulfur would probably burn pretty quickly and all the oxygen would be gone, replaced with sulfur dioxide long enough for Sif to make a mad dash inside, rip the engine out, and bring it out to Jane so that she could extract the Realm Hopper from it.

The smoke began to taper, and then ceased all together.

“Go!” shouted Jane, and Sif pulled the door open once more and she leapt into the craft. There was the sound of shrieking metal and an aggravated groan from Sif, but she appeared no more than ten seconds later, bearing the main driver of the engine upon her back.

Jane began to feel a little shock that her dumbass idea had worked, but they still weren’t out of the woods yet. “We should move back a bit further.”

It was a good thing they did, because not thirty seconds later, the ship ignited in a concussive explosion that knocked Jane forward a few steps.

Sif dropped the engine between them with a huff as they turned back toward the ship. There wasn’t much to properly burn, but the panels that made up the fuselage were bent and singed beyond repair. The door had been blown off of one hinge, and several electrical fires seemed to be working their way through the rest of the ship’s systems. The glass windows seemed perfectly intact, but otherwise, it seemed like a lost cause. They stood in silence for a moment while they looked upon the remains of their craft.

Sif was the one to break it. “Not even a day into our journey and we’ve already caused an explosion.”

“To hear Thor tell it, this is usually how all journeys including you go.” The joke slipped out of Jane without her thinking about it, and a flash of nervous anxiety fled down her spine before Sif’s laughter made Jane look over at her.

Sif responded, “Perhaps if I stopped carousing with the both of you, I might not find myself in such predicaments.”

Her words struck a chord, and Jane looked back at their destroyed ship. “I’m sorry for this,” she said. This was not how she’d imagined her first self-made wormhole trip across the universe, and she’d given them a whole set of problems that were all worst case scenarios.

“This is through no fault of your own,” replied Sif. “I knew this ship wouldn’t last us much longer. Admittedly, I hadn’t planned on the explosion, but I have been in worse straights. We will see this through.”

The steadfastness and surety reminded Jane of Thor in the best way, and calmed her rapidly spiraling thought process.

“You’re right. Yeah, we got this,” Jane said, almost to herself.

Don’t try to fix the whole thing in one go, she thought. Break it down and go one step at a time.

She dipped down to her bag, where she had, amongst other things, a set of tools that would allow her to remove the Realm Hopper from the engine. She withdrew those, neatly packed together in rolls of fabric, and handed the bag over to Sif. “Can you take out the tablet in there? It should still be interfaced with your map.”

Interfacing a modified Stark Industries tablet with a holographic data crystal from another world was essentially like trying to take Ada Lovelace’s Analytical Engine of 1822 and sync it with a modern AI. Thankfully, the data crystal was able to fill most of the operational gaps the tablet left, and it functioned more or less in cooperation so that Jane could calculate each of their jumps.

Jane took to her knees next to the main driver of the engine and set to work extracting the Realm Hopper.

“Our first jump was supposed to take us to Theren,” Jane said as she began the semi-arduous process of extracting her device. It was built a bit like a spider that wrapped its legs around the main body of the engine. Since it sat on top of everything, the damage from the flames was minimal, but Jane needed to be careful if she wanted to avoid any further harm.

Sif held the tablet with one hand and placed the data crystal on the ground with the other. With practiced movements, tapped the crystal to bring up a portion of the planetary map. The hologram was three dimensional and glowed a soft bluish white. The planets, stars, and moons glowed, their positions latticed with a criss-crossing network of navigational lines that resembled longitude and latitude on a map. One of the planets on the map was particularly bright, and Sif reached into the hologram and used two fingers to enlarge it. The hologram magnified the planet, bringing detail of the surface into focus and displaying a small information box that was written in a language Jane didn’t recognize.

“We’re certainly here. I’ve been here a few times,” Sif confirmed. “Admittedly, not to the Flatlands,” she said, gesturing around them, “but if my crystal is properly calibrated, then I believe that is Renos--” she pointed to the horizon, where the black spires Jane had noticed upon entry were starting to look distinctly civilization-like, with small dots whizzing around the spires and up towards the sky that were most certainly ships, “--and that’s where we’re going to get our next ship.” Sif spared another look and a scoff at the flaming remains of theirs. “I promise it will be much, much nicer.”

Jane nodded, glad that it seemed like Sif had some semblance of a plan, and gestured towards the tablet. “Can you run the program to calculate the next jump point?”

“Of course.”

Silence settled over them as Jane worked on detaching each of the “legs” of the Realm Hopper from the matching components on the engine. Jane’s mind has been relatively in the present for the duration of their time on Theren--what with all the unplanned excitement, she didn’t really have the time or capacity to worry about what would happen a few hours from now.

But now, as she settled into engineering mode and her hands moved over the device like it was second nature, her mind regained the latitude to wander.

“I don’t suppose we have money to buy a ship?” Jane asked.

Sif sighed. “Some. I didn’t start with much in the first place in Knowhere. I’ll have to look around and see what dealers there may be in the city.” She looked contemplatively over at the ship. “It may be worthwhile to salvage the windows and sell them. Geodin glass fetches a good price.”

Jane nodded absently. “Thor’s transmission from this planet is old. One of the first ones he sent. So I’m not sure what information we’ll be able to find about what he was doing or where he was going, but it puts us in a good position jump-wise to get to more recent stuff.” Jane glanced back at their burning ship, the smoke from the blaze drifting high into the air in a pillar of dark gray. “Is anyone from the city going to come investigate that? I don’t want us getting arrested by the alien version of SHIELD or local police or something.”

Sif shook her head. “Flatlands fires are common, and as for a police force, this is an outpost planet. Planetary security is outsourced by the corporations who do business through the space ports. They usually don’t bother with anything besides theft in city limits.”

Jane was wholly fascinated by the entirety of Sif’s explanation because by the sound of it, alien capitalism was also a thing, but she was struck by her first statement a bit harder than anything else. Flatlands fires.

Her hands paused in their work, and she looked back down at the ground, at the sulfurous compound she’d recently used to blow up their ship. It was literally everywhere.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news again,” Jane said, “but we should probably move. And then probably keep moving until we get somewhere that we’re not standing on flammable sand.”

Sif’s eyes traveled the same path that Jane’s did--to their burning ship, down to the yellow sand beneath their feet, and then up at Jane. She let out a half-hearted chuckle, “I do think you and Thor may be cut from the same cloth in terms of bad plans poorly executed.”

Jane smiled a little bit. “How about a bad plan well executed with unintended consequences?”

“I suppose I can’t deny that.”

While their movements around each other weren’t exactly practiced, but they managed to get themselves set to move with minimal difficulty. After harvesting the fancy glass from the burning ship while Jane called out numerous warnings to please be careful, Sif dragged them back over to where Jane had begun to pack her tools away and check on the progress of the jump calculations (they were still quite a few hours away yet from having new coordinates.) The Realm Hopper legs were fully detached and she lifted the device off of the ruined Alcubierre drive.

There were three Geodin windows, unscathed from the crash and explosion, if a little foggy from the smoke residue--the main viewport, which was about seven feet by three feet and gently curved, and the two smaller windows from the sides, smaller ovals which both fit well within the confines of the main viewport with room to spare. Sif had them tied together and created a basic harness for herself with what looked like ratchet tie-down straps, procured from the magical bag of hers, so that she could drag the large plates of glass behind her.

Jane adjusted the Realm Hopper in her arms so that she could carry it like a bag of groceries--a thirty-one pound bag of groceries, anyway.

“Ready?” Sif asked. Jane nodded. “Good. It looks like it will be about a day’s walk, so let’s get moving.”

And so they began their trek to Renos. Thankfully, the sand was somewhat firm, so Jane didn’t have to slog like she was going over Saharan sand dunes, but it was not nearly as easy to traverse as the familiar, hard-packed sands of New Mexico surrounding Puente Antiguo. Despite the day being partially cloudy, the sun was harsh and the sand radiated heat, and after about 20 minutes of walking, Jane started to regret all those skipped gym days.

The Realm Hopper hadn’t felt like too terrible a burden, initially. She had some heavy equipment, and was well used to lugging it from place to place. However, “place to place” usually meant “lab to van, van to research site.” This sustained carrying was definitely not agreeing with her arms, and with the heat making her palms sweat, she kept having to readjust her grip on the device, which seemed at least ten pounds heavier than when they’d started walking.

She was starting to regret her clothing choice as well. She had several sets of clothing packed away, and her typical boots-jeans-tee-flannel research combo had seemed a perfectly reasonable choice when she’d been preparing for this journey, but now Jane would kill to have a tank top and shorts on. Not that it’d help for very long, and she’d open herself up to sunburn (which, she realized with a start, she hadn’t even thought about. She didn’t bring sunscreen, or even a hat. Oh god, she was going to be beet red by the end of this day.) The shirt under her flannel was thoroughly soaked through with sweat, her flannel not far behind. She didn’t even want to consider her jeans.

The worst part was, Sif was definitely starting to notice. Jane tried her best to keep up with Sif’s steady clip, but she was, without a doubt, starting to fall behind.

After about twenty or so minutes of silent slogging, Jane’s breathing becoming progressively labored, Sif stopped.

It took Jane a few steps to notice, wrapped up as she was in putting one foot in front of the other, and when she did she turned. “What are you doing?”

Sif answered, “Put the engine on the glass.”

“What?”

Sif’s answering sigh was frustrated. “I appreciate your fortitude, but please set your pride aside and let me help.”

“My… pride?” Jane should probably drink some of the water she’d brought with, because her mind felt sluggish.

Sif’s ire seemed to grow. “Midgardians are not as physically capable as Asgardians. That is simply a statement of fact. Refusing to utilize this is not only stupid, but actively counterproductive. You’re more likely to drop dead of exhaustion than you are to reach Renos as you currently are. Now put the damned engine on the glass.”

Jane felt a bit like a chastened child, which wasn’t particularly pleasant, and she clutched the Realm Hopper closer to her chest. She replied after a few beats of heavy silence with Sif’s impatient gaze upon her, “It’s not pride, you know.”

Sif didn’t say anything, but cocked her head slightly.

Jane bit the inside of her cheek, trying to scrounge up the courage and the words to explain herself. It all ended up coming out in a bit of a rush--“I still feel like I should be apologizing for ruining our only mode of transportation. And I always thought you hated me, and now I get you stranded on some remote outpost planet without a way to get off it. I know science doesn’t go perfectly the first time, engineering even more so, but I still feel like a bit of a failure because I’ve seen what Asgardian tech is like compared to what we have on Earth. Let’s just say I have a complex about it. And what with the whole Odin calling me a goat and everything--”

“Jane,” Sif gently interrupted, “I never hated you.” That certainly drew Jane up short. “Resented you? Perhaps a bit, when I first heard about Thor’s mortal, and then when he brought you to Asgard… It was more what you represented than who you were.”

“And what--what did I represent?”

Sif smiled, a soft, sad thing that spoke of times long gone. “I was never supposed to be a warrior. I decided to enter the military academy instead of pursuing a traditional education when I was young. I met Thor there. After the Valkyrie massacre, women were a rare sight in the army, but Thor accepted me right away. I spent most of my formative years running around with him and Loki, and once we grew older, it was assumed that we would marry.”

There it was, the thing that Jane had always assumed but had never confirmed. She’d never pressed Thor on it, had never wanted to be the naggy girlfriend who worries about her significant other’s exes. Her insecurity welled up against her will.

Sif must have noticed her expression. “I cannot say I never loved him. I’m still not sure if I can say I don’t love him now.” She laughed a little bit. “But I am quite certain that he’s never thought of me as more than the sister he never had. I was trying to come to terms with that since long before he met you.

“But please understand, the only thing that stood between us was my feelings for Thor. I have truly never thought less of you because of you being mortal, or being of Midgard. In fact, I admire you. It takes great fortitude to walk straight up to Loki and slap him,” she chuckled here, and Jane felt a smile tugging at her lips as well. “You carried an Infinity Stone within yourself, you helped Thor defeat an ancient enemy that threatened the entire universe. You’ve managed to create Bifrost-like travel with the most rudimentary technologies. It would be the height of churlishness for me to refuse friendship with a woman of such caliber simply because I felt some jealousy for her romantic ties.”

“Well, that--” Jane cast about for more words, coming up woefully short. “Okay,” she settled on. She moved forward, gingerly placing the Realm Hopper on Sif’s glass sled.

“The satchel too,” Sif insisted, and Jane complied without complaint, laying her bag next to the Realm Hopper. “I would suggest you get on as well, but I’m not about to push my luck,” Sif quipped.

That pulled a laugh from Jane’s chest, a little breathless yet, but genuine. “Thank you,” she said softly.

Sif stepped toward her and placed a friendly hand on her shoulder. “You are more than welcome.” With a tip of her head and a determined step, Sif set off again, and Jane followed, significantly less burdened, both physically and mentally.

“If I may offer you some advice,” Sif added, “don’t listen to what Odin said. I--I care for him as though he were my own father,” this said with a grimace and Jane remembers Sif’s suspicions about Odin’s motive in sending her to Knowhere, “but he is not without fault or without mistakes in judgement.”

Jane scoffed. “Oh, I know that. But then I think, ‘How much easier would it be for both of us if we just didn’t do this?’ I know that’s what his dad wants.” The thoughts almost felt traitorous spilling out of her mouth. When she and Thor were together, it was easy to push those thoughts to the back of her mind. But in the last months without him, they’d become louder. This was the first she’d spoken them aloud, but certainly not the first time they’d been felt.

Sif exhaled, her profile against the sky thoughtful. “My brother has said that destinies are shaped of their own accord by those walking the path, not by the outside observer. It was one point upon which Odin and he disagreed often. In the time I’ve spent with you, the more I realize how true his sentiment is. You’ve traveled across galaxies to find Thor, Jane Foster. You’ll be traveling across several more. Odin cannot stop you, and I can say based upon years of experience that he certainly cannot stop Thor either,” she finished with a chuckle.

A silence fell between them again, but Jane made it a brief one. She made sure to catch Sif’s eye so that she could hold her gaze as she said, “Thank you. It means a lot to me to hear that from you.”

Sif smiled. “I find it’s best to begin long endeavors with a partner with the air between them clear. So if you’ve any further grievances, air them now,” she said, a touch of mirth to her words.

Jane replied, “Not anymore, really. The, um, jealousy thing. I mean, you’re literally perfect so I was intimidated by you.”

Sif let out a cackle. “Hardly perfect, but the sentiment is appreciated.”

“I do have one grievance left, though,” Jane said. “Or, I guess more of a worry. How are we going to get another ship? Are three nice windows really going to be enough to buy us something that won’t break down after a single jump?”

“I suppose if that’s your only worry so far, we are in far better circumstances than I imagined.”

“Well, for all the other problems, we at least have something of a path to a solution. The ship is the one thing I’m stuck on.”

Sif sighed, “You are right, these will fetch us a good deal of money, but not enough to buy a ship in fair enough condition to complete our journey. Which is why I’ve had to come up with another plan.”

Jane nodded. “So what’s the new plan?”

Sif turned and grinned. “How do you feel about thievery?”

#fosterson #actually there is basically no fosterson in this #just jane x sif #jane foster #thor #fosterson fic #my fic

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musicprincess655 · 5 years

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Youichi ripped another page from his sketchbook and threw it to the ground at his feet. The crumpled pieces of paper had gathered around him, and if Youichi wasn’t feeling so stubborn and contrary, he’d consider now a good time to stop.

Drawing was frustrating at normal speed. It shouldn’t have made a difference. After all, he could perceive things at super speeds as if they were happening in regular time, but somehow it changed everything. Youichi sometimes drew at normal speeds, just to change things up, but being forced to do so felt stifling.

Usually, drawing was an escape. It was something that was just his, and if what he wanted to escape from something to do with the team, what better place to go than somewhere they couldn’t really follow?

“Did that sketchbook do something to offend you?” Youichi turned to see Barry drop onto the porch beside him. “Need me to fight it off for you?”

“I should probably give it a rest, huh?” Youichi asked, mouth quirking up in a self-deprecating grin.

After two months in America, his English had already started to smooth out. Barry couldn’t speak Japanese all that well, and his aunt Arisa had insisted Youichi practice English if he was spending time in America.

“It’s an interesting coping mechanism, but not a bad one,” Barry said. “At least you’re only raining down destruction and mayhem on paper. I’ve seen worse methods.”

“I’ll run out of sketchbook at this rate,” Youichi said.

“So we’ll get you another one,” Barry said simply. “It’s a solvable problem.”

Unlike my speed, Youichi couldn’t help but think. Barry seemed to notice his shift in mood, and reached down to pick up one of the crumpled sketchbook pages at his feet.

“So what did this one do to offend you so badly it had to be purged?” Barry asked, holding up the sketch of the house across the street that Youichi had been attempting. “I think it looks pretty good.”

“The perspective is all wrong,” Youichi said, pointing out all the flaws he could see. “And I didn’t get the roof right at all, it slants different. And over here…”

“I can’t see any of that,” Barry admitted sheepishly.

“You don’t know much about drawing.” Youichi said it without accusation, even though it was true. Barry was a scientist, and it was how he’d come by his speed. Youichi had just been the product of an accident and a particularly fortunate lightning strike.

Or particularly unlucky, in light of recent events.

“This has always been just your thing, huh?” Barry sighed. “I understand the world through science, and your aunt has her words, and you have this.”

“Don’t have it so much right now,” Youichi said. He was pretty sure they weren’t just talking about art anymore.

“Maybe you’re just focusing in on the finer details too much,” Barry said. “If you step back, maybe it’s not so bad.”

Youichi stared hard at the drawing, glare deepening.

“I don’t think I can keep doing metaphors in English,” he said finally. Barry laughed.

“That’s fair,” he said. “Have you talked to your team at all since you left?”

Youichi looked down at his hands. It was a fair question, but not one he wanted to answer.

“Thought not,” Barry said, not unkindly. “They’re worried about you, you know. They keep calling me to ask how you’re doing. Ryou especially.”

Youichi tried to laugh at how hard Barry hit the R in Ryou’s name instead of feeling the separation between them more keenly.

Because he missed his team in a way that hurt to his core. He missed Miyuki’s shitty personality, and Sawamura’s bright, obnoxious laughter, and Jun’s shouts, and Tetsu’s terrible jokes.

And more than anything, he missed Ryou. They’d been best friends since they were young kids, practically inseparable since the day they’d met. Ever since they’d formed their own team with just the six of them, they’d been even closer.

It had been easy, falling for Ryou. From the first day, he’d captured Youichi’s attention, and as Youichi had slowly learned to translate the jabs and insults and appreciate the genuine words when they came, as they grew up together...he couldn’t imagine a world where he didn’t fall hopelessly in love with Kominato Ryousuke.

And his feelings were returned. That was something Youichi was sure of. It wasn’t just the one kiss they’d shared, either, it was everything put together. It was the shared looks, the easy partnership, the quiet moments where both of them were content to just be. Youichi missed those most of all.

It had been easy to just let things develop at their own pace. After all, they should have had their entire lifetimes together. What was a few years while they figured everything out? It couldn’t feel like a waste of time, not when they were together. They’d been friends first, and they would always be best friends first, no matter what else happened.

And then the time Youichi had left had changed from decades to potentially months. Oh, he could still live a long life, but it would mean giving up what he loved doing the most. Every day, he got to wake up and do the best job in the world. Being a hero was cool, and it was all he’d ever wanted to do, and he was expected to drop all that because his body was starting to reject the lightning that flowed through it?

Surviving wasn’t living, and Youichi couldn’t be content just surviving.

“They’ll be okay without me,” Youichi finally said. “They’re all strong.”

“I’m sure they’ll survive just fine without you,” Barry said. “But it’s obvious none of them want to.”

“No place on a hero team for a speedster who can’t run, right?” Youichi asked. He could feel Barry’s eyes boring into the side of his head.

“You know, kid, when you first got your speed, I had no clue how I was gonna handle it,” Barry admitted. “And I’m not ashamed to admit that I was terrified.”

“I never noticed,” Youichi said. He’d been too starstruck, in awe of the fact that his favorite uncle and personal hero was a real superhero, and that Youichi was all of a sudden just like him.

“Well, I did at least one thing right, then,” Barry said. “You were just so young, and so different from me. I could understand all this hero stuff with science, but even when you came to the lab with me, it was pretty obvious you were just humoring me.”

Youichi shrugged. He’d never been much of a science kid. Like Barry had said earlier, it wasn’t the way he understood the world.

“You took to this better than I ever expected, considering I had no clue how to teach you,” Barry continued. “I was still learning myself. I was barely an adult, and suddenly I had this sidekick who looked at me like I hung the moon?”

“American saying,” Youichi said out of habit.

“Oh, sorry. It means…” Barry trailed off as he tried to find the words.

“I kind of get it,” Youichi said, cutting off the explanation. “You’re still my hero. All I wanted when I was a kid was to run just like you. I still want to do that.”

Barry looked at him for so long that Youichi was sure that he’d said something wrong. But Barry’s face was gentle, not angry, so maybe it was okay.

“You know, kid, you’ve spent a long time trying to run just like me,” Barry said. “Maybe it’s about time you started running like you.”

He clapped Youichi on the shoulder, getting up and heading back into the house.

“I’ll let you get back to your angry sketchbook rampage,” Barry said.

Which left Youichi alone with that thought.

Maybe it’s about time you started running like you.

What did that mean, though? Youichi had always tried to follow the theory of running from Barry, and then from Bart too. Both of them were faster than him, because they understood the physics of speed, the mechanics of running. Their brains worked with numbers and scientific principles and Youichi had spent years trying to keep up.

But Youichi wasn’t a scientist. He wasn’t a numbers guy. He didn’t see the world through hard constants like that.

Youichi worked on instincts. He saw the world through feelings, through images, through emotions. He couldn’t always describe his world, so he had to feel it out. His gut had always been good, and he’d learned to trust it even in the face of conventional logic.

Maybe it’s about time you started running like you.

So if he was supposed to run like himself, did that mean to let go of the theory? The form he’d spent so many years forcing himself into? Was he supposed to just listen to his instincts? What were they even telling him?

Youichi stood, grabbing his comm. as he left the house. He’d come to love Central City over the years, but right now, as he tried to think, the bustle and noise was only distracting.

He’d gotten familiar with the bus system, and after an hour jumping from bus to bus, he was finally outside the city. There was nothing romantic about this country. There was just a cracked asphalt road, dead grass on the sides, and a fence quickly falling into disrepair.

It was perfect.

Youichi stood perfectly still, trying to listen. What were his instincts trying to tell him? What did his gut say was the right move?

Wind swirled around him, cooling the warm sunlight that fell across his cheeks as he closed his eyes and really tried to listen. The wind hummed in his ears, and if Youichi really listened, he could almost pretend he heard a voice in it.

Run, the voice seemed to say. Run like the wind, run faster, run like you have a force of nature inside your soul. Run to the ends of the earth just because you can, run just to feel the freedom in your heart.

Youichi couldn’t help the half-hearted chuckle that fell from his lips. He couldn’t tell if he’d just imagined the voice saying everything he wanted to hear. After all, he wanted to run again, and he’d always wanted to be fast. And it was impossible that there really was a voice on the wind. That was only his imagination.

Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was wishful thinking.

Youichi opened his eyes anyway. He could see all the way to the horizon, and all he wanted to do now was see what was beyond it. And then see what was beyond that horizon, again and again and again. He loved his speed because he loved being a hero, but more than that, when he was running, when he was flying, that was when he felt truly free. There was joy to it, joy to the action itself, and that was what truly pained Youichi to lose.

It was a reckless idea. Stupid beyond belief, stupid in a way that Youichi had never been before. But he’d always been reckless. He took risks, just to see if they paid off, and even if it killed him, he’d wanted to stay in this game for just a little longer, for just one more glimpse at the summit.

Youichi set his feet for a sprint, and then he let go of all the tension in his shoulders, dropping them from the form he’d forced himself to adopt, letting his arms fall wherever they wanted, shaking out his legs until they felt just right instead of stiff.

“New message from Nightwing,” the comm. link said in his ear, and Youichi jumped. He’d almost forgotten that even if he was alone out here, he’d never really be alone in this world, not when he had his team.

Youichi tapped the comm. It wasn’t often that they left each other messages. If it was important enough to call each other on the comm., it was important enough to speak directly. But Youichi could understand the difficulty in speaking directly. He’d let go of his anger towards Ryou almost as soon as he’d left, but reaching out was something he was still trying to do.

“Hey,” Ryou’s voice said in his ear, and Youichi clenched his jaw against all the emotions inside him. But even with the lingering frustration, even with the pain...it was obvious which ones he felt the strongest. “I just wanted to say one last thing before we go out on this mission. I bet you’ve seen the Warworld thing on the news. We’re going to go take it down. I need to say this before we go, just in case. This isn’t a guilt trip, though. I’m definitely coming back. Just in case.”

Youichi snorted. That was all Ryou. Of course he’d deflect from what he really meant. Youichi chose to ignore the part where they were maybe going on a suicide mission in favor of listening to the rest of Ryou’s words.

“I’ve decided you’re right about one thing. I have really shitty timing.” Ryou laughed a little. “I had two months to tell you all of this, and I decided to wait until now. I guess I really am a coward. But I still need to say that I’m sorry, one more time, because I never said that. I never said it that way. I’m sorry for calling you replaceable, and for implying that you weren’t hero enough to defend yourself. I wanted to keep you safe at all costs, but that wasn’t right. The choice I tried to force you to accept was one that would hurt you, and I’m sorry I was selfish enough to ask you to accept it anyway.”

Ryou cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, his voice was steadier.

“So that’s it. I’m sorry for everything. And when we get back, if you’re willing to hear me out, I want to say it in person. Because you deserve that. You deserve so much more than I’ve given you. You’re a better man than I am, but I can promise I’ll try. For you, I’ll try. You’re worth that. So just wait for us to get back, and I’ll give you a real apology. And I’ll tell you everything else I was too scared to say before.”

The message ended, and Youichi tried to force the lump in his throat down. There had been so much raw emotion in Ryou’s voice, and it told so much more than his words. Ryou had bared his soul to Youichi, and even if his message was unspoken, Youichi had heard it loud and clear.

Youichi tuned into the comm. link that the team would be using on the mission to the Warworld. Even if he was stuck on Earth, he could still listen, supporting them in spirit.

“We’re losing in here!” Haruichi’s was the first voice Youichi heard. “We need backup!”

“There is no backup!” Nori said, his voice edging into desperation.

“I can’t get the power core shut down!” An screamed. “Arsenal’s down!”

“I could use backup in the crystal key chamber,” Ryou said, and Youichi shivered at the fear in his voice.

“There is no backup,” Nori said again. “All other squads are pinned down.”

Youichi stopped listening, staring up at the sky while the sounds of everyone he cared about slowly losing surrounded him.

Run with the wind. Run faster.

Was this it, then? Was he really better off staying here, staying safe, listening to the deaths of the people he loved.

But was the alternative better? Was throwing all his hopes onto a vague feeling, knowing it would probably kill him, but praying that it wouldn’t, the right way to go? If this was his last run, was it worth the price he would pay for one final look at the summit?

There was no question. Youichi turned and ran.

#kuraryou #miyusawa #daiya no a #dna #my writing #dc!au #inv

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ethearealssaved-blog · 6 years

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⋅ ˚ ✩ ˋ 𝐒𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐍𝐀 𝐋𝐈𝐋𝐘 𝐊𝐀𝐘𝐄 . twenty . fuckin’ pissed . about as british as you can get . rose tyler .

LAYER ONE . QUESTIONNAIRE .

001. when the virtual reality shut down, what was your muse’s reaction ? how did they handle the dark period ?

her first thought was that the stars had finally gone out, that despite all their efforts the darkness had come and to an extent, she was right. if she looks back on it, it all seems like a blur --- one minute the sun’s out, the next minute everything feels dark and like it’s moving in slow - motion. all she really could do was find jackie, the baby, her doctor and hold them together for fear that they;d disappear too.

during the dark period, rose spent hours upon hours trying to find the doctor to tell him that they were in trouble and that she needed him more than ever now. it’s a horrible time, to say the least ; she cries on jackie, on pete, on her metacrisis doctor but more than anything, she hopes. she hopes that it’s the darkness, because at least then he’ll come back and save them, she knows him well enough. he never comes, and the darkness stops feeling like momentary. she never stops hoping, but it gets shoved to the backburner instead.

002. what was their reaction to finding out they were fiction ? how did they feel about the offer to become human ?

at first, she laughed. after everything she’s seen, everything she’s done, everything she’s fought and saved and nearly died for, the world she knows isn’t real ? she nearly left the room right there and then because she genuinely thought they were having a laugh but the grim expression upon the directors’ faces told her otherwise. the realisation was swift and sudden and left her gasping for breath, clutching at the edge of the table to stay vaguely upright.

003. before the island, where did they live ? what was their reset life like ? who are the significant people in their lives ?

sienna kaye is sick of this shit, and that’s a fact. born in a council estate to a single mother and the unfortunate string of boyfriends that have ruled her life since before sienna can remember, she learned to fight for herself at a very young age. nicknaming herself si at five years old, she’s always been frighteningly independent, too fierce to be told what to do by anybody. she grew up fighting, arguing with anyone who dared to try and correct her behaviour. she finished her a levels but never bothered to even try to apply to university, instead choosing to find work and essentially find an escape from her mother and the ever - judging estate that she’d been trapped in.

004. what drew them to the island ?

she won’t admit it, but it was to get away from her mother. the elder kaye was too overbearing for sienna, too involved and yet too apathetic to what she was facing. alison kaye never paid enough attention to the good things si did, never stopped to notice how bright her daughter was but instead hyperfocusing on her rebellious, wayward behaviour. si viewed the island as a way to escape that, to finally rule her own life without her mother’s critique on her every move.

005. does your character have any secrets, big or small, that they think are private when in reality they were broadcasted live to the whole world ?

si’s biggest secret is probably that she feels nothing but cold indifference towards her mother. she’s never particularly viewed alison as a maternal figure, moreso inclined to understand her as a particularly nosy, annoying roommate that she got stuck with.

006. what are the major similarities between the character’s canon life and their reset life ? what about the differences ?

sienna runs on anger alone, whereas rose is very different in that respect. rose understands the intricacies and the shortcomings of human beings and accepts that --- fuck, she even did that for alien races. si, on the other hand, doesn’t stop to understand or to acknowledge, she fights and fights and fights because she’s never known otherwise, doesn’t know how to stop and relax and appreciate. she’s too caught up in her own battles.

i suppose they’re very similar in their background alone, i guess ????? i wanted to make them super different so uh i’m runnin on fucken empty for this bit lads

007. how much of their old life do they remember ? what triggered these memories ? when did their memories return ?

rose remembers everything. she remembers the cybermen and the daleks and flying into the void, she remembers finding her way out and finding the doctor again. she remembers the human meta - crisis doctor and how happy she was to have him, to have him all for herself but how it never felt quite the same.

008. what were they bribed with ? and if they couldn’t be bribed, what did the programmers try to bribe them with ?

the programmers bribed her with the one thing they knew she couldn’t live without, the one person who means the entire world to her: the doctor. her doctor. they threatened to cut off all contact, to wipe any and all memories á la donna noble, to erase any trace of him from her life whatsoever and she couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand the idea of a life without him so she agreed.

LAYER TWO . AESTHETICS , TID - BITS , ETC .

union jack crop tops, leather layered on top. scuffed doc martens, blood in your spit, snarl permanent on sullen features. fire in your belly and edge in your tone, afraid and angry and tired, so very tired. no one ever tells you to breathe, no one ever teaches you to relax your fists out from their perpetual tension, no one ever lets you know that it’s okay to stop. sharklike ; sharks don’t stop, or else they die. black coffee and faux politesse, always had a flair for the dramatic. the ever - present desire to scream from the top of your lungs, fight or flight instinct on main but you always choose to fight. self - deprecation, neatly disguised beneath fury and fire, all wrapped up in torn jeans and the smell of liquid confidence you’re too young to be drinking.

#⋅ ˚ ❀ ˋ 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐠 & 𝐝𝐮𝐦𝐛 & 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐟 - ⊱ intro.#fun fact rose tyler has been my Girl since i was like . idk rl fuckin young #so im Invested in this shite #reset:intro

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missvalerietanner · 6 years

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The Unseen Soldier | Part 35 | A Sight To Behold

Subject: Hades & Persephone (aka Aiden & Sophie)

Genre: Southern Gothic retelling

Words: 1,676

Summary: Sophie says her goodbyes.

Author’s Note: This is probably my favorite part in a LONG time. :B It’s just so cute, and I’m super happy with its ending. Also: FIVE more parts, baby!

Updates every Sunday! Click to read.

Sophie woke the next morning, bare and alone in bed. She stirred among the cool sheets and buried her head in the pillows. She stared at the exposed rafters of the ceiling with an ache in her heart as the reality of what this day meant returned to her. Leaving him, leaving her new home: the idea seemed unbearable, and her nerves were on fire from the dread of returning to town--to a place she now realized had never really been her home. All those years: they led to this, to her being in this forest with Aiden.

She puffed her cheeks out and released a defeat sigh. She told herself this had to be done, that she was doing the right thing. But if she was right, why did leaving feel so wrong?

“You’re awake?” Aiden’s cautious whisper echoed around her.

She lifted herself onto her elbows and found him standing in the doorway. His arms were tucked behind his back, and he was dressed for the perimeter check outside. But his forehead was a bit damp with sweat. His pants were smeared with mud around the ankles, and the sleeves of his jacket were rolled up and pinned at the elbows. And she knew if she dared a glance out the window, she would see the dogs lounging in the warmth of the sun, happy their morning task was out of the way.

“You walked the boundary without me,” she said, more disappointed than angry.

His lips were pulled tight in a thin line. “I did, but I thought you might like to sleep in on your last day.”

She groaned and sat up fully in bed, unafraid of letting the sheet fall from her chest. “Aiden, I’m not leaving forever. I’ll only be gone one day.” Her shoulders dropped. “Depending on how they react, I may return tonight.”

“Then count it as a selfish act on my behalf.” He offered a weak smile as he moved into the room and sat at the end of the bed. Bringing his arms around ot the front, he revealed a long, narrow box cradled in his hands. “Letting you sleep in gave me time to find this.”

“What is it?” she asked, scooting closer to him.

“I--I’m not good with stuff like this,” he said, fumbling with his words.

“O.K.” Her voice had fallen to a whisper, and she felt all of the oxygen flush from the room.

He tossed the lid of the box aside, revealing a wad of purple fabric waiting within. Dropping the box to the floor, he bent down and lifted the dress from its insides, shaking free its folds from its time trapped inside. He stood from the bed and held it out her, watching as she closely examined every inch of the garment: a halter-top A-line dress colored a deep purple with layers of tulle draped over its form.

She rose from the bed, letting the sheet fall away completely without a care as her eyes roamed over the dress. “I--is this for me?”

“I can’t send you home in rags.” He shrugged. “It was my mom’s.”

She traced her thumb over the hemline, tangling her fingers among the tulle. “It’s beautiful.”

“Try it on.”

She smiled wide. “Are you sure?”

He stepped behind her and lifted the dress over her head. “Arms up.”

She obeyed and raised her arms high. He slid the dress over her head and guided it down her body with ease. When its hemline reached its limit, just above her knees, he dropped his hands to the small of her back, pinched the fragile fabric between his fingers, and tugged it tight against her form. With one hand, he guided the zipper upward, enclosing her in the cool material, and with the other hand, he swept her mass of orange hair over her shoulder to keep it safe from the zipper’s teeth.

When he finished, he grabbed her hand and spun her around as if they were mid-dance, and he drew a harmonic laugh from her lips. He was entranced by the way the dress clung to her slender body, highlighting the curves that made her a woman and accentuate the budding strength in her arms and legs that would build her to be a queen.

“You’re a sight to behold, darlin’.”

She flattened her palms against the front of the dress and dropped her gaze from his overpowering stare. “This was sweet of you.”

He lifted her chin and kissed her cheek. “You’re gonna be amazing tonight.”

She retreated from his touch and kept her eyes focused on the floor. “Would you get Bea ready? I’d like to walk with her to the boundary.”

He was taken aback by her request. What a fool he’d been: too focused on her leaving to even consider offering to escort her out of the forest. He had been so consumed with the worry and guilt of what could happen, of what could go wrong when she faced those savages in town. He had forgotten to consider such a basic amenity for her.

Her fingers draped across his wrist with the lightest touch. “I assumed you would walk to walk me to the edge, but I thought it would be best if we just said goodbye here.”

Selfless as she was, she didn’t want him blaming himself for anything.

He nodded, stole a quick kiss from her lips, and left the bedroom to fetch Bea outside where she was lounging in the sun with Sir and Russ. A quick pat on his leg brought the dogs to his side. Sir and Russ made their way inside the house and sat by the door, waiting for their next command. But Bea loomed outside and stood tall, as if she knew of the task that awaited her.

Sophie emerged from their bedroom and strolled down the hall, as radiant as ever in the vibrancy of the purple gown that swayed around her as she moved. She patted Sir’s and Russ’ heads as she passed, and each dog rolled out their dogs in appreciation, gaining a light giggle from her lips. She paused before Aiden, and they shared a smile--despite the ache hovering just beneath their skin.

“I know you said you wouldn’t, but,” she stared deep into his gray eyes, “please come tonight.”

He grimaced and ran his hand through hair, brushing it back from his face. And as he stared at her, at those wide, brown eyes begging him to do the one thing he always promised to do--stand by her side--he was ashamed. He was a failure. No matter how badly he wanted to do right by her, no matter how much he longed to loom before those worthless cowards and hold her up on the pedestal they deprived her of for too long, he knew he couldn’t. His presence would be a distraction from her words, an intimidating force they couldn’t ignore.

“I need you there,” she whispered.

His heart crumbled.

This needed to be her fight. Alone.

“No,” he whispered through a tightening throat. “I’ll be here.”

Dry-eyed, she nodded, accepting his decision but heartbroken by it. She bowed her head and turned toward the door where a pair of black slingback heels awaited her. A smile touched her lips, but she bit at her lower lip, suppressing its growth.

“Another gift of your mother’s?” she asked, not daring to face him.

“They need to recognize the woman you’ve become, Sophie,” he said in a low, almost threatening tone. “Otherwise, they won’t hear a word you say.”

She slipped her feet into the shoes with care.

“That’s another reason I can’t be there tonight. They need to see you stand on your own.”

“I understand,” she admitted and dared a glare back at him over her shoulder. “I’m not afraid anymore.”

She stepped out of the church and walked down the path with her head held high. Bea barked and fell in line beside her as she strolled by, and together, they marched for the trees.

Aiden stared at the empty space in the doorway until his mind snapped him back to reality. He sank into one of the chairs at the table and dropped his head into his hands, disgusted with himself. But amid his internal tirade of self-deprecating remarks, he recalled her final words, realizing neither of them truly said goodbye. In fact, she said something far greater.

Her words slithered into his mind like a dose of adrenaline, alerting every muscle and tissue to the truth she admitted. His heart beat faster, hammering behind his ribs, and his breathing grew rapid, panicked.

He leapt from the chair and raced for the front door, but the forest outside was calm. Sophie and Bea were out of sight, and to chase after her would be a waste. The sinking feeling in his stomach told him he was already too late.

He spun on his heels and raced down the hallway and through the living room, recalling he had left her alone in their bedroom minutes before her departure. He burst through the door of their room, and there, he saw the truth of his worries.

A ripe peach plucked from the trees outside from the grove she had created sat on the center of the bed. A clean bite was ripped from its side, and a folded-over piece of paper rested beneath the bleeding fruit.

Releasing a slow breath to ease his pounding heart, he approached the bed on light feet and lifted the peach into his palm to prove it was real. The peach was warm from the sun still, and its cool juices dripped from its bite mark and streaked across his fingers. He ignored their trails and reached for the letter. Folding open the note, he read over her words, and his fist clenched the peach tighter.

I am not afraid to be bound to you.

His heart stalled, his hand relaxed, and he dropped the peach to the floor.

#tus #the unseen soldier #retelling #writings #southern gothic #greek mythology #hades and persephone #hapsgs

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nipponnomad · 7 years

Text

Translation: ONE-Sensei Young Sunday Interview :D

youtube

I did my best to summarize this hour-long interview with ONE-sensei, uploaded to YouTube by Young Sunday in March and uploaded to Tumblr by the lovely and talented @one-blog last week. Please note, while my Japanese is decently high-level, I typically translate written Japanese rather than spoken Japanese (which, by its very nature, is harder to translate), so there might be mistakes here or there. That said, I believe I captured the general gist of things. If you're fluent in Japanese and want to do a more comprehensive translation in the future, please feel free!

EDIT: Here are some more detailed translations of selected parts of the interview, based on Japanese transcripts that @isasm found. :)

ONE-SENSEI: YOUNG SUNDAY INTERVIEW

Things to note:

-I mostly focused on what ONE said, as the hosts talked a lot and tended to get off on tangents.

-ONE comes across quite shy in this interview, especially in comparison to the super-chatty hosts. There are times when the hosts start to ask him a question and he doesn't seem to know what to say. There are also a few times where it looks like ONE is honest-to-god dissociating. That said, it's a good interview that includes some pretty insightful commentary.

-ONE is forced to sit in the creakiest wooden chair known to man.

-Maybe this is common knowledge, but is ONE married? You can see what looks like a wedding ring in a lot of shots.

-Instead of “ONE-sensei,” the hosts refer to ONE as “ONE-kun” throughout. I'm not sure why. It's kind of cute though.

The Interview: ONE's Life Story

The hosts begin with small talk, chatting about a new album they've listened to, and introducing ONE-sensei and his work in general terms. ONE doesn't actually show up until about nine and a half minutes in. The hosts ask if he's seen their show before and he says he has, that he watched it after he was invited to appear on it. The hosts seem quite pleased and amused about that.

ONE is asked what sorts of activities he did in middle school and high school. He responds that he did tennis in middle school, but he wasn't at a super high level. Because ONE comes across pretty shy and self-effacing, the hosts joke that they can now understand where Mob Psycho came from. They then announce that they're going to do an abbreviated life history for ONE, who says he's nervous.

ONE says he was born on October 29th, 1986, and is a Scorpio. His birthday is next week or the week after next (from when this interview was filmed). The hosts remark on how he's relatively young.

ONE says he was born in Niigata but raised in Saitama Prefecture, where he's lived for 22 or 23 years. His hometown is near Kounosu (wherever that is). He specifies that his town shares a DMV with Kounosu, which is such a charmingly mundane detail. :P

The hosts ask what kind of kid he was. He says he was a normal kid, but “low tension” (i.e. low energy, quiet, laid back). The hosts say that that explains why his characters tend to be low tension as well. ONE agrees that might be the case. He says there are times when he gets more energetic, and the hosts tease him, implying that now is certainly not one of those times. ONE says he did get really energetic when the One Punch Man anime was announced.

How ONE Started Drawing Manga

The hosts ask how he felt when the One Punch Man anime was announced, and ONE says it was really awesome. The hosts remark that One Punch Man reminds them of American comics and is like a “Japanese Marvel.” ONE agrees that he has a similar image of One Punch Man and has always found its advent a little mysterious—like he doesn't quite know where it came from. ONE states that it's now been about three or four years since One Punch Man debuted in Ura Sunday and Shonen Jump.

ONE says that he started drawing manga in elementary school and can't remember exactly how he got started. He says he remembers reading Crayon Shin-chan on the shinkansen and stuff and trying to draw it (he specifies that he was very slow at drawing at the time). He says that Crayon Shin-Chan was an early influence on him, which the hosts find unusual.

The hosts ask about his upbringing and whether or not his parents were strict. It seems his family was a bit strict and he didn't show them his manga growing up—because he was embarrassed, but also because he expected he would be scolded for drawing manga instead of studying. So basically, he hid his manga hobby until he got to college. The hosts compare him to Kamuro from Mob Psycho, presumably because of the strict family.

The hosts ask if ONE ever submitted one of his comics for publication. ONE says he did submit to Shonen Jump when he was a first-year college student, but that it didn't go well because “it wasn't an interesting story.” He says the guy who reviewed his manga at Shonen Jump went through it really fast with a totally blank face and that ONE was sent packing pretty quickly.

Because the submission didn't go well, ONE started putting his comics on his personal blog. At the time, it was really hard to read the comic on your phone because you could basically only see one panel at a time and you had to go through all fifteen pages that way. Eventually, he started drawing manga on his computer and uploading it from there. He got really into the “pasokon manga” culture and bought himself a drawing tablet and downloaded Comic Studio.

He began uploading his work to a pasokon manga site where all the users were beginners or semi-professional. As far as I can tell, the site was called NEETsha, short for “NEET Shakai” or “NEET Society.” (Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that one.) This was when he started drawing One Punch Man.

About One Punch Man

The hosts ask where the name One Punch Man (“Wanpanman”) came from. One host points out that it obviously sounds like Anpanman. Obviously it also sounds like One Piece (“Wanpiisu”), which is a sales juggernaut in Japan. ONE points out that actually “Wanpanman” outsells “Wanpiisu” overseas.

They ask what kind of character ONE was aiming for when he created Saitama. ONE says he always loved shonen manga and read a lot of it, and he thought about the final episode/battle, when the character was at their greatest strength. Basically, he thought it would be funny to start with a character who was already at the peak of their power and go from there, watching each successive villain get taken out in one hit.

Within the world of One Punch Man, the hosts note, Saitama is basically a regular person, he's laid back and flexible and his main concern is everyday stuff like going to special sales. They also note that Mob is similar, being a quiet type of guy who keeps a low profile until his percentage starts going up.

The hosts ask if One Punch Man immediately became popular after ONE posted it to NEETsha. ONE says it was pretty soon afterward, and that he enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts and comments and encouragement.

At this point, the hosts realize the interview is half over and they've totally forgotten about the personal history thing.

About Mob Psycho 100

As the hosts see it, there are three major themes in ONE's work: 1) What is power? 2) What should be done with power? 3) What is our true power, and how are we supposed to live with that power? We don't typically see the characters longing for more power; instead, we're dropped into the middle of the story and watch what they do after they've already become powerful. This is evident in Mob Psycho 100.

The hosts ask if the Mob Psycho manga has changed from when ONE put it online to when it was released in print. ONE says it hasn't really changed but it was worse reading it online because it was so small and hard to read on a cell phone screen. The hosts also ask if ONE has had assistants helping him to edit and fix things up, but ONE says they weren't there in the beginning.

The hosts look at some of the pages from Mob Psycho and comment on the art. When they compliment ONE's use of lines for emphasis in one picture, ONE says, in a self-deprecating sort of way, that he just did it using a tool in Comic Studio. The hosts also remark on the way Reigen holds a phone in one panel (you probably know which one) and laugh a lot. However, following this seeming criticism, one of the hosts keeps calling the art in Mob Psycho “punk” or “hip hop.” I had a hard time figuring out what he meant by that, but I think he's calling it a sort of indie, outsider art. He goes on to say that it's not like how everyone else draws and isn't imitating the prevailing manga style.

The same host states that there are two kinds of mangaka: 1) the “cover band” type that imitates others without really thinking for themselves, and 2) the type that doesn't imitate others and thinks for themselves. For example, many “cover band” mangaka imitate the battle scenes in Dragonball, whereas the ones in Mob Psycho look—if anything—more like battles in Akira. The hosts ask ONE if he was inspired by Akira. ONE says he likes Akira but doesn't really answer one way or another.

The hosts have been talking a lot, so they interrupt themselves to ask if ONE wants to correct them on anything. ONE has just one thing he wants to say: when he was drawing the picture of Reigen holding the cell phone, surprisingly enough, he drew it while looking at his own hand. This comment gets big laughs.

Themes in ONE's Work

The hosts discuss the issue of “leveling up,” comparing it to “geemu nou” (“game brain,” a type of dementia allegedly caused by playing too many video games). In English academic discourse, we would probably call this “gameification.” Basically, people who play a lot of games—as well as the protagonists in a lot of shonen manga—become obsessed with “reaching the next level” and don't focus on anything else. The hosts ask ONE if there's some sort of lesson in his work about the dangers of this type of single-mindedness.

ONE says that he's noticed this tendency in shonen manga. By contrast, he discusses the series he was influenced by as a child, Crayon Shin-chan—specifically, the movie version of Crayon Shin-chan. As a series about a normal family, Crayon Shin-chan was generally fairly peaceful and funny. However, in the movie, things got kind of serious. ONE believes that, when things get serious in a gag series, they hit extra hard.

He compares this to One Punch Man. Even though it's a gag manga, the world itself is pretty serious, with people being killed by monsters all the time and so on. Existence itself is like a gag in the world of One Punch Man, which ONE finds interesting.

Finally, the hosts show pages from the fight between the esper kids and Claw's 7th Division. They discuss the part where Mob very calmly and directly tells Gas Mask Ojiichan: “Having psychic powers won't make you popular.” Gas Mask Ojiichan then gets upset and yells: “EVEN SO, I SHOULD BE TREATED SPECIAL!” So basically, Claw is full of children who never managed to mature into adults and don't want to become “commoners.”

ONE then talks about “commoners,” average people who get up in the morning, get on the train to go to work, and do their best day after day. ONE thinks that this in itself—being a member of society—is difficult in its own way, and that's what Saitama and Mob are trying to do.

I feel like that's a really lovely way to end the interview. Sadly, they never finish the personal history and we never find out what ONE's favorite food, color, movie, manga, and type of woman are. :(

#ONE #one-sensei #one-blog #one punch man #mob psycho 100 #opm #mp100 #translation #interview

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