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baixueagain · 3 years

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The Gendo & Rei Question, Part III

For the Intro and Part I, go here.

For Part II, go here.

Part III: The Gaze of the Prodigal Son

Both Rei I and Rei III are “alive” for only a short period, and it is Rei II—the clone active from roughly 2014 through most of 2015—that we as the audience get to know the best. This is also the clone that has the most developed and complex relationship with Gendo, and we learn most of what we know about how Gendo views Rei as a whole from his behaviour with Rei II.

Rei II and Gendo’s relationship during 2014-15—especially how they feel about it for themselves—is nevertheless one of the more difficult relationships to understand, since they’re two of the most mysterious characters in Evangelion. We rarely get glimpses into Rei’s point of view, and Gendo only truly speaks about his own emotional and psychological state in the final moments of his life during EoE. Even then, he only speaks of his feelings about Yui and Shinji, not Rei. In fact, he virtually never speaks to others about Rei unless he is talking about her involvement with piloting or the HIP. We only get a few glimpses of their direct interactions, and while these are highly charged with multiple layers of innuendo, those same layers of innuendo make the situation all the more opaque.

One of the best perspectives we have on Gendo and Rei’s relationship, I argue, comes from Shinji. Granted, he’s the main character and most of the story of Evangelion is told from his point of view, but his perception of Gendo and Rei is just as valuable for another reason: he’s an outsider. NERV is by its very nature a place of secrecy and high strangeness, and it stands to reason that most of the people working there have long since become desensitized to their Commander’s odd personality quirks and the strange, solemn girl serving as his first pilot. Even Misato, who has only just recently started working in Tokyo-3 proper, has been in NERV/Gehirn’s general orbit since her childhood and thus seems fairly used to Gendo Ikari’s personality and the odd way things are done under his supervision. But now we have Shinji in the picture, who’s had minimal contact with his father and who has spent most of his life in the “normal” world, sequestered from the truth of the family business. His perspective is that of the everyman, and he is thus primed to see the unusual parts of NERV that other characters take for granted. Moreover, unlike virtually everyone else at NERV (except for Ritsuko, whose perspective I will be addressing in the future), he is uniquely invested in both Gendo and Rei as people: Gendo being his estranged father, and Rei being his co-pilot and thus someone with whom he feels a sense of camaraderie (even if he barely knows her).

Shinji arrives at NERV shortly after Rei has a serious accident—one that he does not yet know about. His first-ever interaction with Rei happens in tandem with his first interaction with Gendo in years, and this consists of Gendo dangling a wounded, crying girl over Shinji’s head to manipulate him into piloting Unit-01. It is a brutal, cruel tactic, and Shinji seems to recognize this for exactly what it is. He has already accused Gendo of just using him (something to which Gendo openly admits); from his perspective, it at first seems that his father cares just as little for the poor young woman on the gurney who can barely stand, much less pilot.

This viewpoint is only challenged when, unknown to Gendo, Shinji spots the burn scars covering his father’s palms in Episode 5. His reaction to being told the truth—that Gendo freed the wounded Rei from her overheated entry plug bare-handed (a scene I will discuss in later essays)—clearly stuns him after seeing the cold, calculating way Gendo used her condition to manipulate him earlier. “Father did that?” he blurts out. The concept clearly seems unbelievable to him, defying everything he thinks he knows of Gendo being a heartless, cold, selfish man.

Interestingly enough, as Ritsuko describes Gendo’s heroic deed to Shinji, the “camera” momentarily moves outside the limits of Shinji’s perspective and shows us what Gendo is doing at that very moment. He is bare-handed (a rarity for him during the A-plot) and for once he has an open, receptive expression on his face as he examines the Angel’s core in obvious wonder and fascination. His lips almost form an excited little smile and the harsh lines of his face are softened. His naked hands touch the core gently, practically caressing it with just his bare fingertips. Considering Evangelion’s repeated use of hand- and touch-related symbolism, it is likely meant to reflect something of his inner emotional world. This is the first time during the A-plot (that is, the plot following Shinji’s perspective and experiences) in which we see Gendo with his emotional guard down. And it comes at the exact moment Shinji learns of his father’s act of self-sacrificial vulnerability for Rei’s sake.

The idea that his father might allow himself to be hurt for anyone is utterly alien to Shinji, and this in turn is what prompts him to become more curious about Rei. Notably, the next scene is one of immediate contrast: “The burns on his palms are from then,” says Ritsuko, recalling the searing heat of the plug. The shot instantly cuts to a young girl’s body plunging into water. It’s just a small touch, but yet another masterful moment in the way Evangelion uses visual language and careful word choices to create an unspoken discussion on themes. This, we are being told, is going to be an episode about contrasts and subversions. It will also be an episode about sex.

The poolside scene is the first in which Rei is first explicitly treated as a sexual being—at least from others’ points of view. Shinji is teased twice about his interest in Rei, the first time by his friends Toji and Kensuke, both of whom clearly see Rei as a beautiful (if unapproachable and intimidating) girl. The two of them (being high school boys) describe her body in explicitly sexualized terms, much to Shinji’s embarrassment. At the same time, we’re treated to shots of Rei sitting quietly in her bathing suit, oblivious to their chatter. She is small and vulnerable, but her bare skin and curvy form has still been made into something with sexual energy and potential.

Back at NERV HQ after school, Shinji watches Rei without her knowledge, still clearly curious about her. Notably, up until this point he has never seen any emotional expressions from her (unless you count her agony in Episode 1). She has kept her distance entirely, and he realizes that despite working together for at least a couple weeks now, he knows virtually nothing about her. There are no relationships in which he can observe her behaviour with others…except for Gendo.

As he secretly watches within his cockpit, Shinji watches his father approach Rei. Rei suddenly begins acting her age in her body; instead of moving stiffly, she skips and hops eagerly down onto the walkway and begins chatting with Gendo, a cheerful smile on her face and her eyes bright and alert.

What’s even more shocking to Shinji, however, is Gendo: unlike the scene with the angel core, here Shinji can actually witness his father’s change in demeanour for himself. The Gendo that Shinji knows is a stern, unfeeling man whose rare expressions are that of irritation or a cruel smugness. But as Gendo chats with Rei, his eyes are soft, and a happy smile is on his face. His cheeks even look a bit flushed. Just as important is the way they’re both speaking to each other: although we can’t hear them, we can see their body language and their interaction. They are standing face-to-face, gazing into each other’s eyes, each speaking in turn. They are practically interacting like equals.

Is it little wonder that Shinji’s jaw is on the floor?

As always, Anno’s masterful direction creates an unmistakable atmosphere laid across what might otherwise look like a pleasant scene. Shinji’s hidden vantage point, the oblivious radio chatter from the control room, the low single chord of background music, and the fact that we can’t hear a word that Gendo and Rei are saying: all these things contribute to the sensation that we, along with Shinji, have just witnessed something intensely private. Something that neither we nor Shinji were meant to see.

The scene immediately following this is, once again, Shinji being teased for showing an interest in Rei—this time by two attractive older women. Again the pressure to see Rei as a sexual being is mounted, and the additional overtones of a discussion about sex between a teenager and adults is added. This rapid switch back and forth between Shinji learning about the relationship between Gendo and Rei and being repeatedly asked if he’s interested in Rei himself (all the above scenes take place over the course of about ten minutes) creates an uncomfortable dissonance that charges the episode with a confusing, unnerving sexual tension. At the same time, Rei and Gendo are explicitly brought up and compared to one another: both are terribly awkward, we are told, at life in general.

And that’s when the climactic scene of the episode drops on us like a N2, bringing all these interweaving themes to an awkward, disgusting, hilarious, and horrifying head. Shinji goes to Rei’s apartment to drop off her new NERV ID card. Nobody answers the door, which he finds unlocked, so he enters. The room is filthy and spartan; the girl who lives here clearly does not care much about her surroundings or her possessions.

But Shinji is drawn to the room’s one treasure: a pair of broken glasses carefully set on top of Rei’s dresser. We as the audience are let in on a higher degree of discomfort by knowing something Shinji does not: those once belonged to Gendo, who dropped them when he recklessly pried open the plug door to rescue Rei. Gendo is thus made extremely present in the scene to the audience, even if Shinji cannot sense him.

I should note here the significance of Gendo’s glasses as a part of his personality. I have noted before that they are an additional layer that he puts on himself as a means of separating himself from others. Though he used to wear clear lenses, after those break he switches to tinted ones, making his expressions even harder to read and representing the increasingly rapid withdrawal of his personal investment and motivations from the rest of NERV and SEELE. His glasses frequently reflect the light, making it difficult to see his eyes even when he’s wearing the clear lenses. The direction of his gaze is thus frequently hidden, and with it his thoughts, feelings, and motives.

And yet the glasses reflect other things on occasion, too, informing the audience of what Gendo is looking at and what he’s concentrating on. Shots of his face thus have a doubling effect of simultaneously hiding and revealing his gaze: we can see glimpses of what he is gazing at, but only by looking directly at his face and into the glasses which reflect his vantage point. His perspective is simultaneously revealed and hidden.

So as Shinji approaches the broken glasses on Rei’s dresser, his face is reflected in them—something we rarely (perhaps never?) see happen when Gendo is actually wearing them. His gaze on his son is thus simultaneously present and absent, accentuating the deep dichotomies of their relationship.

That’s when Shinji does something that feels even more shocking (almost taboo) from the viewpoint of the audience, based on our prior knowledge: he puts them on. It is an incredibly childish gesture, reminding us once again that he’s nothing more than a curious fourteen-year-old boy, but at the same moment he—in the audience’s eyes—becomes his father (emphasized by their similar physical appearance).

And what is the first thing he sees through his father’s eyes after he turns around and looks behind himself?

It’s Rei, fully naked, staring back at him.

Yet at the same time, his view of Rei is blurred and cracked, reminding us definitively that these are not his glasses.

This, the shot suggests, is not his sight to see. This sight of Rei’s nakedness “belongs” to someone else. Already we are being told exactly what Gendo has seen, how much of it, and that he owns this sight—or at least thinks he does.

The events that follow are on their surface hilarious due to the awkward nature of the situation, but the staging and shots used (for lack of a better word) are a recollection of the scene down in the cage: Shinji has entered in on something that he should not be witnessing, something that is not for him. Rei strides forward to seize the glasses from him, Shinji slips and topples onto her, his tote catches on her dresser drawer and sends bras and panties flying everywhere. He lands on top of her, covered in her private items, in a slapstick missionary position with a hand on her breast—and in showing us this, the introductory focus in the pan is of her own hand clutching the glasses. Gendo’s presence is again invoked, even in this deeply awkward, intimate, and violating moment. He is the third, invisible character in this deeply sexually charged scene.

At the same time, this is the moment where we as an audience begin to see what makes Rei tick. She seems to have no reaction to Shinji seeing her nakedness (leading us, of course, to wonder why), but it is the first moment in which she has a direct emotional reaction to Shinji: anger. But instead of hiding herself, she walks towards him and seizes the glasses away. Shinji walking in on her bathing was not a violation in her eyes, but his wearing his father’s glasses is. Once again, we are given the uncanny message that Rei’s body is treated as a commodity—including by Rei herself. This time, however, we are given an alternative source of her identity. She does not derive her sense of self from her embodiedness, but from something more intangible, represented by the one item in her life treated with reverence: the glasses. She is given her sense of identity through Gendo’s gaze, and it is Shinji’s appropriation of this gaze that she finds violating. Even as Shinji lands on top of her, a hand on her chest, her anger is gone because the issue is resolved: she has the glasses back in her possession and Shinji is no longer invading that space (even as he inadvertently invades other spaces).

Shinji’s next violation provokes an even stronger response. Despite the horrifically awkward event, it has at least broken the ice, and as they travel together to NERV HQ he begins trying to make conversation about their commonality: Eva piloting. This then invokes the silent third party in this entire exchange: Gendo. Rei asks if Shinji has faith in his father’s work, and when he furiously denies it, she turns, looks him square in the eyes, and slaps him hard across the face.

And this, of course, seems odd (even humorous) until one realizes why she perceives this as such an insult: she is his father’s work. An insult to her person is of no consequence in her eyes, but an insult to Gendo is an insult to something far more intrinsic to her identity and her emotional world. Between these two scenes, we have seen just how wrapped up Rei’s sense of identity is in Gendo, and in further essays I will argue that the reverse is true as well. Gendo cannot conceive of Rei as existing outside of himself, her identity is so deeply wrapped up in his own. If he ever did conceive of her as a separate being, he will have lost this ability by time Instrumentality arrives.

Yet at the same time, between all these questions of identity and sexual violation, we see toward the end of the episode that there is a layer that is far more simple and human: Rei takes Gendo’s glasses with her into the entry plug when it’s time for her resynchronization, and she hangs them where she can look at them when she feels afraid.

Because she is, in the end, also a fourteen-year-old who wants someone to make her feel safe.

To be continued in Part IV: Green-Eyed Monsters

Like my meta? Buy me a coffee!

#gendo ikari #rei ayanami #shinji ikari #neon genesis evangelion #nge #meta #bai xue writes

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dahlia-coccinea · 3 years

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Wuthering Heights - Chapter 3

This is a somewhat difficult chapter to discuss fully in a single post. It introduces so many important themes and has the first glimpse of the story of the earlier inhabitants of the Heights. Sorry if this is too long - I've tried to keep my comments concise. It is difficult for me to not mention every tiny detail I like lol

We learn that Zillah has worked at the house a year or two and is aware that Catherine’s old room is off-limits but seems to know little else. It shows that despite the emotional unloading that Heathcliff does to Nelly he is very reserved about all that has happened in the past.

It seems the house has been ruled by chaos for years and there is an instinctual need for the inhabits to defend themselves against it. We see this when Lockwood first climbs into the box bed and closes the doors he says he “felt secure against the vigilance of Heathcliff, and every one else.” The need to shut out the world and crawling into small spaces is repeated later in this chapter with Catherine's diary details how, with Heathcliff, in an attempt to avoid the cruelty of Hindley and Frances “made ourselves as snug as our means allowed in the arch of the dresser,” and closed off the world by fastening their pinafores together.

We get some other interesting glimpses of Catherine and Heathcliff early friendship. It is quite popular to say that Heathcliff is Catherine’s whip and he is a blank slate for her, but I think this diary entry is another example of their oddly egalitarian relationship. First, we have this scene of Catherine lashing out against their ill-treatment:

I took my dingy volume by the scroop, and hurled it into the dog-kennel, vowing I hated a good book. Heathcliff kicked his to the same place. Then there was a hubbub!

That Heathcliff swiftly follows her lead certainly shows a reciprocation of the other’s attitude and worldview - or simply that if one is going to get in trouble then the other will follow suit. Still, I do hold that he doesn’t just mimic her or do as she wishes. We get a number of examples that show neither play a clear leader in their antics with one happening shortly after this incident. Catherine's diary continues:

I have got the time on with writing for twenty minutes; but my companion is impatient, and proposes that we should appropriate the dairywoman’s cloak, and have a scamper on the moors, under its shelter. A pleasant suggestion—and then, if the surly old man come in, he may believe his prophecy verified—we cannot be damper, or colder, in the rain than we are here.

Here Heathcliff takes the lead in coming up with more plans to get further into trouble and it seems Catherine is more than pleased to go along with it.

There are other, now iconic, details of Catherine’s character in this chapter. Such as this description of the box bed from Lockwood:

The ledge, where I placed my candle, had a few mildewed books piled up in one corner; and it was covered with writing scratched on the paint. This writing, however, was nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small—Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine Linton.

And later:

Catherine’s library was select, and its state of dilapidation proved it to have been well used, though not altogether for a legitimate purpose: scarcely one chapter had escaped a pen-and-ink commentary—at least the appearance of one—covering every morsel of blank that the printer had left. Some were detached sentences; other parts took the form of a regular diary, scrawled in an unformed, childish hand. At the top of an extra page (quite a treasure, probably, when first lighted on) I was greatly amused to behold an excellent caricature of my friend Joseph,—rudely, yet powerfully sketched. An immediate interest kindled within me for the unknown Catherine, and I began forthwith to decipher her faded hieroglyphics.

Catherine holed up in the box bed and writing on every spare bit of paper she can get her hands on and scratching her name in the paint, tell of someone who has no one to talk to. She’s alone and is compelled to at least make sense of herself with ink and paper. Nelly does say later on that “there was not a soul else that she might fashion into an adviser” beside Nelly herself. Which is a poor adviser, considering how Nelly disliked her throughout her childhood.

Adding to Catherine’s loneliness is the endless abuse of Heathcliff and herself, at the hands of seemingly everyone in the house. In this short excerpt from her diary, we are told Hindley’s treatment of Heathcliff is “atrocious,” and that now he is the new master they are no longer allowed to play, and “a mere titter is sufficient to send us into corners.” Heathcliff has his hair pulled by Frances, Catherine’s ears are boxed by Joseph and they’re both berated and verbally punished by him. Finally Hindley “seizing one of us by the collar, and the other by the arm, hurled both into the back-kitchen” where she says that outside on the moors “cannot be damper, or colder.” Upon their return and proceeding punishment she says she’s cried until her head ached. Consistent with what we later hear her tell Nelly, that Heathcliff’s miseries are her own, it is not her punishment or ill-treatment that makes her so upset but the casting out of Heathcliff. She writes:

“Poor Heathcliff! Hindley calls him a vagabond, and won’t let him sit with us, nor eat with us any more; and, he says, he and I must not play together, and threatens to turn him out of the house if we break his orders. He has been blaming our father (how dared he?) for treating H. too liberally; and swears he will reduce him to his right place—”

Critics that suggest Catherine is glassy-eyed and naive idealist really gloss over these excerpts in my opinion. There is a constant downplaying of her abuse compared to the other characters among those that seemingly think she’s the only character with moral agency and therefore the cause of all problems in the story.

I love how strange the encounter that Lockwood has with the book “Seventy Times Seven, and the First of the Seventy-First,” and the following dream is when first reading Wuthering Heights. Hardly anything in WH is superfluous and when rereading it this makes much more sense. This is quite an interesting segue into meeting Catherine’s ghost, and later learning more of her life. Forgiveness is such an important aspect in the book and will come up many times. Notably, while on her deathbed, Catherine tells Heathcliff she has forgiven him and that he should forgive her.

I think it is amusing and also very interesting how in Lockwood’s dream he’s walking with Joseph (in itself is very metaphorical) and Joseph tells him he should have brought a “pilgrim’s staff” and that Joseph’s staff is really just a “heavy-headed cudgel.”

It’s unsurprising the appearance of Catherine’s ghost is so iconic. It’s impossible to discern if it is merely Lockwood’s dream or him actually encountering her spirit. There are details about her that Lockwood, at this point, does not yet know. Still, he does make many attempts to logically explain what happens. Either way, the imagery of the scene is both frightening and tragic.

We get some really interesting glimpses of Heathcliff’s character in this scene. Normally he is very collected and if his emotions are out of control they tend towards anger, but here we see him truly terrified and unable to maintain composure after finding Lockwood in the room.

Heathcliff stood near the entrance, in his shirt and trousers; with a candle dripping over his fingers, and his face as white as the wall behind him. The first creak of the oak startled him like an electric shock: the light leaped from his hold to a distance of some feet, and his agitation was so extreme, that he could hardly pick it up.

Even after Lockwood identifies himself Heathcliff is said to have found it “impossible to hold it [the candle] steady” and was “crushing his nails into his palms, and grinding his teeth to subdue the maxillary convulsions.” It is interesting that Heathcliff doesn’t become so angry that he throws Lockwood out. It’s another oddly humanizing moment for him. An overly dramatic author would likely have him behave like a complete monster, but he instead tells him to finish the night there and not to scream like that again. This is a scene that I wish we could have some perspective from Heathcliff. Not only is he startled by a noise coming from Catherine’s old room but then Lockwood adds to his distress by rambling about Catherine saying:

And that minx, Catherine Linton, or Earnshaw, or however she was called—she must have been a changeling—wicked little soul! She told me she had been walking the earth these twenty years: a just punishment for her mortal transgressions, I’ve no doubt!

This and Lockwood’s further talk which makes it apparent he has snooped and glimpsed a little bit of Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s past, does set Heathcliff off:

“What can you mean by talking in this way to me!” thundered Heathcliff with savage vehemence. “How—how dare you, under my roof?—God! he’s mad to speak so!” And he struck his forehead with rage.

Lockwood doesn’t quite understand this reaction saying:

I did not know whether to resent this language or pursue my explanation; but he seemed so powerfully affected that I took pity and proceeded with my dreams; affirming I had never heard the appellation of “Catherine Linton” before, but reading it often over produced an impression which personified itself when I had no longer my imagination under control. Heathcliff gradually fell back into the shelter of the bed, as I spoke; finally sitting down almost concealed behind it. I guessed, however, by his irregular and intercepted breathing, that he struggled to vanquish an excess of violent emotion.

And later when watching Heathcliff call for Cathy through the window:

There was such anguish in the gush of grief that accompanied this raving, that my compassion made me overlook its folly, and I drew off, half angry to have listened at all, and vexed at having related my ridiculous nightmare, since it produced that agony; though why was beyond my comprehension.

At one point Lockwood also believes Heathcliff to be “dashing a tear from his eyes” during their conversation. Of course, he is confused because he doesn’t know that one of Heathcliff’s few fixations has been looking for signs of Catherine for the last 17ish years.

I’ve mentioned this before, but something that doesn’t happen in the book because Heathcliff never narrates it, but I think if someone retold the story or made a film adaptation it could be interesting to explore, is how Heathcliff came to find Catherine’s writing on the wall. She must have written it shortly before she talks to Nelly since she’s already considering marrying Linton, and Heathcliff must still be living at the Heights since his name is there also. When Heathcliff returns three years later we know that he takes over Catherine’s old room so really he should have discovered it the first night there, probably after having visited the Grange.

@astrangechoiceoffavourites has mentioned this in one their posts, but another great aspect of the book is the background happenings that are very realistic for the time and particularly farm life. Cats and dogs roam about, Heathcliff mentions that the house goes to bed at “nine in winter, and rise at four,” and there are mentions of chores, etc. The details create a realistic backdrop and ground the characters in reality. I feel like the novel is never overly sentimental because of this and it really strengthens it.

After Heathcliff comes down to the kitchen where the household is starting their day, we are instantly reminded how terrible Heathcliff can be when he swears at and threatens to hit Cathy for not making herself useful and working for her keep. Ironically, he tells her, “You shall pay me for the plague of having you eternally in my sight,” when, as I’ve mentioned before he has her sit at the dining table with everyone else. He also could just send her away if he despises her so much.

I see a lot of similarity between the glimpse we get of Catherine Earnshaw from her diary and the current situation Cathy Heathcliff is in. Their situations are certainly different but both are in a similar state of abuse and neglect and both are quite self-possessed and antagonistic towards those that try to control them. They also are associated with books (Catherine filling them up with writing and Cathy reading) and have an affinity for animals. In this chapter it is mentioned that while Cathy is reading she has “to push away a dog, now and then, that snoozled its nose overforwardly into her face.” There are other similar encounters, such as when the dogs at the Heights come to greet Catherine Earnshaw upon her return from the Lintons.

I’m sure I’m forgetting points I want to make in these posts. I’ll probably to a larger summary after I complete the book and try to tie together some of the ideas I’ve mentioned. Its also difficult because I keep wanting to bring up things that happen later in the book and I want to make a note of it now - but I’m also trying to reread as impartially as possible. Which is really an impossible task lol.

@astrangechoiceoffavourites

#wuthering heights #wh reread 2021 #wh reread #emily brontë #chapter 3 #tw abuse #omg i did it

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scribbles-and-dribbles · 4 years

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Somnium

This is my entry for @sherrybaby14 ‘s prompt challenge (requested via my @im-marie-poppins-yall account) Thank you for letting me join. Your writing is amazing and I am so inspired by you. Also,so sorry I’m sending this so late!

My prompt was:

Geralt spending the night at an inn reader works at after killing a monster that had been terrorizing the town, and reader sneaks into his room at night to give him her own thanks but then gets frightened at how actually Violent and Strong he is and makes to leave, but he insists on following through

It’s been a long time since I’ve really sat down and written some good smut (It’s been a year!),so forgive me if I’m a bit rusty. But nonetheless I had so much fun! And this was what I needed to get back into writing again. (Also I apologize to the person who requested this, if this isn’t exactly what you had in mind!)

Warnings: 18+, Rough Sex, edging,No Archive Warnings

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The room was darkly lit, a single candle in the far left corner was barely a flicker behind the dusky glass. It cast shadows over your hips as they rolled against his. It washed a faint warm glow over the rise and fall of your chest as you tried to catch your moans before they woke the entire inn.

He watched from below you, your eyes fluttering closed in pure bliss, and his nearly predatory gaze drinking in the sight of your shaking body. Your hips swayed to some unheard music as you lost yourself in the pleasure, his cock driving up into you, meeting your eager thrusts. He growled and his hand slid up your back, over your shoulder and into your hair, fisting it and pulling you down into a ravenous kiss. His other hand slid down to grip your hip, and before you knew it, in a whirl he had you flipped and pinned underneath you, pushing your leg up and picking up his pace, driving deep within you.

Gods it felt amazing, his hips rolled into yours with expert ease, and his teeth grazed your soft neck, marking it giving not a single damn about how visible they were. You didn’t want him to stop. You could stay like this forever if you had your way. But the universe had other ideas.

You wake with a start, the sound of shattering glass and drunk squabbling shaking you out of your dream. You sit up, pressing a hand to your neck where those teeth had felt so real. Your skin is flushed and slick with sweat and you’re sure you look a sight. But you only have time to slip out of your nightgown and into far more suitable attire to deal with your awake and seemingly very drunk guests.

A glance out the murky window and you’re disappointed, but not the least bit surprised to see that the sun has barely risen over the horizon. Smoke still hung low over the village, the last remnants of the winged beast that had terrorized your neighbors for the last four months. Never had you realized just how idiotic the people of your village were until they mistook a basilisk for a dragon, and attempted to lure it into the village square and kill it themselves. Suffice it to say that it didn’t end well.

You’d finally been fed up with the pigheaded men refusing to ask for help. A half-melted town was terrible for business, and you weren’t having any of it. If they wouldn’t admit that they stood not a chance against the beast with their poorly thought out planning, then you were going to take matters into your own hands.

You’d heard rumor of a Witcher roaming the surrounding area, slaying any beast- for a price. You were a small village, but you were one of the lasts villages before any weary travelers reached Cintra. Your inn was always bustling with new and strange characters. Stranger or not, they brought in enough coin to appease the Butcher, as your neighbors so...fondly referred to The Witcher.

So when he stopped in your humble little town, on his way to Cintra no doubt, he was god-sent. He’d come into your inn, ready to pay for one night. You convinced him to stay for three, free of charge and with a hefty bag of coin if he made quick work of something your town’s strongest men had taken four months to fail at. He’d left last night and as you peered out the window, tying your apron around your waist, you caught sight of his unmistakable white mane trekking up the hill atop his gorgeous mare towards the inn, something large swinging from the saddle.

Your dreams were going to have to wait.

“I wager he doesn’t make it back before nightfall.” One of your patrons slurred, swirling his bandaged finger around the amber liquid you’d just poured into his stein. You swatted at his wrist and he reeled back with a yelp.

“You keep stirring that bloody stump in your ale, you’ll not being getting another refill today Byron.” You quipped, tossing him a cloth to whip his hand. The dressing around his finger was already soaked through with blood and you could tell the alcohol was beginning to burn through. He’d been one of the ones to go out first and try to take the beast down. He’d lost his finger because he couldn’t shoot an arrow to save his life. Though that wasn’t the story he told anyone unfortunate enough to be in earshot.

He grumbled and took a long swig from the frothy liquid, grimacing at the acrid taste. You chuckled and swapped his drink. You leaned against the counter an inquiring eyebrow raised.

“I’ll take a shot at that.”

He frowned and took yet another large swig from his stein. “What? I don’t strike you as the betting type? You wound me, Byron, you should know me better than that.” You laugh, moving around the bar and intercepting Beth, and relieving her of two trays of piping hot gruel on her arms and another tray balancing precariously on her very pregnant stomach - she’d insisted upon working despite it being nearly the eve of her bairns birth. She wanted to catch a glimpse of The Witcher herself.

“It’s not that. I just don’t want to have a sore loser on my hands.” Byron slurred after you, watching you whisk around the dining area, weaving expertly between patrons were beginning to rouse and make their way to help themselves to the seemingly bottomless kegs your father had installed years before he passed and left the inn to you.

“Alright then, since you’re so convinced that a man with far superior hunting skills is going to have worse luck than a drunk who can barely drink me under the table- you’re on.” You place the last bowl of gruel in front of Byron’s skeptical face and sidle back behind the counter. You lean towards him, resisting the urge to cringe at the stench wafting off of him. He’d been drinking longer than you’d originally thought. You were going to have to reconsider leaving the kegs out at all odd hours of the night.

“I wager he comes through that door in the next twenty minutes.” Byron scoffs. He thinks you’re ridiculous. “And what, pray tell girlie, will you be winning if he comes through that door on anything but a stretcher?”

“Every round for the rest of the week is on you.” You chuckle at the scandalized look that crosses his face before he tosses his head back and has a good laugh before fixing you with an amused look.

“You’re on. And when I win, you’ll be clearing my tab and-”

Before he can finish the door to the inn swings open with a frame shattering thud and the Butcher of Blaviken stomps in reeking of acid and guts and covered in just that. Every head not hanging from a raging hangover turns to watch him stride over to the bar. His eyes catch yours, and you’re momentarily transported back to your dream this morning. You shake your head and raise an eyebrow at Byron who’s gone pale.

“Clearing your tab and...what?” He scoffs and glares at The Witcher as he stops at the bar. You cast a sidelong glance at him, trying to ignore the fact that you’d just been dreaming of him not even an hour earlier. You place a pint in front of him, he looks like he could use it. He offers a curt nod of thanks and knocks it back faster than you thought possible.

“So, did you actually kill the beast?” Byron asks incredulously and you find yourself rolling your eyes. You wave a hand over the Witcher.

“What do you think? That he just rolled around in guts and called it a day?” Byron scowls at you and the sound of The Witcher chuckling underneath his breath catches you by surprise. You raise an eyebrow at him, smirking. “If he had,” you continue, directing it at your visitor. “He’d be sorry he ever stole money from me.” His eyes look almost amused as he stands.

“If you’re so skeptical, you can ask your Lord of the Manor how he likes his new trophy.” Byron, looking thoroughly pissed, huffs and slips of the stool and wander over to the kegs, muttering something about being bested by a filthy mutant.

You shake your head and wipe the counter down with one hand and refilling the Witcher’s stein. Guests have wondered out of their rooms to stare at him like he’s an amusing new animal, though they keep their distance. And you’re certain it has nothing to do with the state of his attire. You shake your head, ashamed of the people you’ve grown up calling friends and neighbors, listening to their barely concealed whispers about him.

“I’m sure you’ve heard it all.” You say, casting a sidelong glance at him as you mark Byron’s tab down. “But I’m sorry the rest of my town isn’t as grateful as I know they should be.”

He shrugs and takes another swig. He sets the cup down and even though you’re turned away refilling the glasses Beth had just brought to the bar, her eyes unabashedly drinking him in, you can feel his eyes on you. And when you shoo Beth away and turn back to him, he’s still watching you. Dried blood from the beast no doubt has darkened his hair a bit, and a small scar that he’s haphazardly treated is still bleeding a bit on his chin. Despite all of this, you still want him. And the way he’s staring at you, you’re certain he can tell.

“And are you?” He asks, his honey-colored eyes seem to darken a bit and although they’re incredibly intimidating, you refuse to look away. You stare him down, setting your rag down and leaning against the bar towards him.

“Am I...what?” How does one man look so damn kissable covered in the blood of a slain beast?

“Grateful.” He raises his eyebrows, looking genuinely curious, but you know why he’s asking.

“What, the hefty bag of coin wasn’t enough to prove that?” You tease. He chuckles wryly. Twice you’ve amused him, and something tells you that that’s rare and you should relish it. He stands and places a coin on the bar for the pint. You wave it away.

“You single-handedly took the beast down in record time, consider it a thank you.” He raises an eyebrow at you. “Hmm...you know where to find me if you have anything else you’d like to say.”

You gape at him as he strides up the stairs. You laugh incredulously, heat flushing to your cheeks.

“Not very subtle is he?” You nearly leap out of your skin at the sound of Beth’s voice right behind you.

“Good lord Beth-” You laugh, turning to her, watching her bustle about as if that large belly of hers is no hindrance to her. You shake your head, taking the Witcher’s stein off of the bar and wiping it down once more, trying not to think about the meaning behind his words. But Beth has other ideas.

“If you don’t take him up on his very generous offer- I will.” You swat at her with the rag laughing.

“I’m sure he’d happily have you. But you’re near bursting at the seams, and I thought you were happily married.” She scoffs and casts a glance across the inn where her husband is beguiling the young boys with his tall tale of how he lost his finger. “Sometimes I wonder why I let that idiot convince me to be stuck with him until sweet death does us part.” Her words are teasing but you see the endearment in her eyes.

You smile and pat her on her shoulder. “He’s just nervous about his first child. And sore that a Witcher bested him. He’ll be right as rain when he sobers up to see that beautiful baby of yours.” You reassure her. She nods and turns back to you, fixing you with a determined gaze.

“Enough about me and mine. You haven’t been with someone in years girlie.” You flush and open your mouth to protest. “And I know, you’ve been too busy taking care of the inn after your father passed, bless his soul. But you need to take care of yourself, dear. And that includes your more primal needs.” She’s not that much older than you, but she reminds you of your mother the way she plants her hands on her hips and fixes you with that look.

You sigh. “I appreciate the concern Beth, but I barely know the man. And he’s a Witcher, mind you. I don’t think sassy innkeeper girls are what he favors.”

“Ha!” She snorts, shaking her head. “You’re as beautiful as you are blind. Did you not see the way he was looking at you? Not just today, but the day he arrived he couldn’t take his eyes off you. Now I’m not asking you to make the man fall in love with you,just...share something with him. He wants you and you most certainly want him.”

You flush. You can’t say she’s lying. It has been some time since you’ve been with anyone. Taking over the inn that had been in your father’s family for generations had made it a little hard to have flings.

“Fine. But if he laughs in my face, don’t say I didn’t tell you so.”

And now you were standing in front of the man’s door several hours later questioning once again how you let Beth convince you to do this. She’d sent you away hours ago but you’d stubbornly found some other thing that needed doing around the inn. Bedding for the other guests, refilling the kegs with your father’s special blend, cleaning god knows what because you kept the inn spick and span.

Finally, she’d practically swatted you up the stairs. You’d begun to look a bit worse for wear. The word that not only was the infamous Witcher was in town, but that he was fresh off of a hunt, had spread like wildfire. And you finally hadn’t needed an excuse for why you weren’t pursuing ‘your primal needs’ as Beth had so gracefully put it.

But by then your other barmaid had arrived looking like she was ready for a night on the town, and not to serve the hoard of weary travelers hoping to catch a glimpse of the man.

“If you don’t get your ass upstairs and see that man, I have no doubt in my mind that Linda will do it for you.”

Beth wasn’t exaggerating when she’d pointed out that you hadn’t done this in years. You’d felt like a silly school girl standing in front of the mirror trying to make yourself look less like an exhausted, albeit horny, innkeeper. But you did want him. She hadn’t been wrong about that. You could still feel the phantom touch of his hands on your hips, gripping them as he pulled you down onto him. It’d been a dream, and yet it had felt incredibly real.

You sighed and reached up to knock on his door. You were unsure of what you were going to say. You didn’t want it to sound like a proposition. Though you supposed it was. You falter and realize that whatever you ask, it will never sound normal. What if Beth had mistaken a stare of indifference for a gaze of “unbridled lust in those golden eyes”? Maybe it was better to resign yourself to thinking of him as you soothe the ache that had started between your thighs the moment he walked back in this morning, on your own.

You drop your hand with a sigh and begin to turn away. The door swings open before you’ve even begun to walk back down the hall to your room. You give a start, steadying your hand on the door frame, and your instantly aware of just how...naked he is. He's clean of all the guts and blood that had previously clung to him like a second skin, and his hair gleams in the low lantern light that shines on his broad chest. The towel he has wrapped around his hips is barely hanging on.

“Er, good evening.” You hear yourself say, and you internally cringe. God, you were off to a terrible start. You manage to glance away from his pectorals and meet his shining eyes, and you could have sworn that for a split second a smirk tugged at his delectable looking lips.

“Are you coming in, or are you going to stay out there for the rest of the night?” He chuckles, and you blush again scowling as you slip into the room. He barely moves and your arm brushes against his warm skin. It sends a spark of excitement through you. Had it been so long that the mere touch of a hot body was enough to set you off?

It doesn’t matter. You’re here now, and there’s no turning back. You want him, you just have to make sure he wants you too. You turn to him, your hands clasped before you as you open your mouth to speak. But before you can, his hands are on your waist and he’s tugged you against his chest and captured your lips in a hungry kiss. You let out a surprised squeak that slips into a soft moan. It feels so damn good to have someone’s lips against your own.

Your reach up to snake your arms around his neck and push yourself up to meet the kiss with as much vigor and desire as he does. His hands slide up your hips and over your bodice, his fingers make quick work of the laces and removing it and let it fall to the floor. Your breath catches in your throat when his hands run up over your chest, and dip into your dress. You pull away from the kiss to catch your breath and moan softly as his calloused fingers run over your nipples and tweak and tease them in the best way.

You open your eyes a bit to look up at him and are a bit startled to see the color his eyes have taken. The bright golden has seemed to darken to almost deep amber, and they pierce your own with an almost predatory look. His hand's run-up to your shoulders and he pauses, casting a questioning look over you. You’re nervous, and this isn’t how you thought this would all transpire. But you were more than willing. You reach up yourself and watch him as you slip your dress down off of your shoulders and let it fall to pool around your ankles.

He gives an appreciative growl and a smile quirks his lips.

“I thought you’d be too scared to come.” He chuckled. The way he spoke, an underlying growl underneath every word, made you shiver. You watched his hands trail over your shoulders and down your back, his fingers pressing into your skin when he reaches your hips. He slips his arms behind your knees and to avoid falling against him, you hop into his arms, your own wrapping around his neck again.

“Fearful? What do you take me for? A scared little girl?” You laugh because honestly, you were a little fearful. You’d heard the other women tell tall tales about their night with a Witcher when they were young and childless. And how it was best to expect a broken bed by the end of the night. Even if they weren’t 100% truthful, you knew Witcher’s weren’t human, and they more than likely didn’t fuck like a human. “You asked me if I was grateful, and I’m here to prove that I am.” You whisper, your hand slipping into his hair and pulling him towards you for another kiss. Your lips slant against his and you run your tongue across his bottom lip, nipping at it playfully, and drawing a growl out of him.

He places you on his bed and crawls over you, one arm braced against the mattress and the other snaking down your body his fingers tracing over your breasts as they rise and fall with your labored breath.

“Certainly not, if you’re so bold as to invite a Witcher you’ve only spoken to twice, to sleep with you.” You scoff, and then moan when he dips his head down to capture one of your sensitive buds into his mouth, rolling his tongue around it and nipping at it.

“You’re..oh gods..you’re the one who kissed me, Witcher.” You retort, your fingers finding their way back into his pale locks, tugging at them as he alternates between tweaking and twisting one nipple with his fingers and sucking at the other with his expert tongue. He stops his generous teasing at your words and smirks at you.

“Are you saying you’d like me to stop, Innkeeper.” You laugh and fix him with a warning glare. He growls, amused at your determined look, and returns his left hand to your heaving chest while his other hand runs down your side. His fingers trail over your hip, sliding down the v of your body and trailing just above your cunt before stopping.

“You’re certain you don’t want to run for the hills?” He asks, and at first, you think he’s joking, but he looks dead serious. And you open your mouth to answer but it’s cut off by a whine. His middle finger dips down to brush over you. It slides over your lower lips, collecting your juices on it and teasing the hell out of you. He just barely pushes it in, drawing a needy whine out of you. It’s been so long since anyone else has touched you in this way, and now that someone is, you remember just how sensitive you are. He continues teasing your opening, and it’s not nearly enough. The way he watches you, those enhanced eyes catching every flutter of your eyelids, reminds you of something beastly.

And you remember that you’re in bed with a Witcher. Not a ‘normal’ human man. His stamina is far above your own, and your certain you’ll be a sore aching mess in the morning. And a small voice of reason in the back of your head mutters that you should probably leave, and let your dreams be dreams. But just when you’ve just about convinced yourself that you should take him up on his offer to leave, he slides that teasing finger inside you, curling upwards in just the right way. It’s almost too much and just enough to let you throw caution to the wind.

You pin him with a hungry gaze and buck your hips up against his hand moaning out when the movement pushes him deeper, and his palm brushes against your wanton clit.

“If you stop, you’ll wish the Basilisk had eaten you.” You snip and growls amusedly. He sits up and removes his hand from you and you glare up at him incredulously. You push yourself up a bit and open your mouth to protest and demand that he finish what he started. But ever one to interrupt, he’s gripped your hips and flipped you over onto your belly before you can even get a single breath out.

You groan out and bury your face in the pillow when two of his fingers slip inside your now aching cunt from behind, diving into you at an absolutely delicious angle. He leans over you, his chest against your back as his fingers begin to piston in and out of you, the lewd sound mixing with your moans. You gasp softly when his hot breath hits your cheek.

“Be sure to remember that I gave you some warning.” He growls into your ear.

His fingers don’t let up, and only pick up in pace, stroking your walls and stretching them to accommodate his fingers. He continues forcing them deeper inside you at a rapid pace. You groan out and you tighten around fingers, which only seems to make him want to drive into you harder.

You gasp when his tongue teases the shell of your ear, his breath hits your neck, and sends a shiver running up your spine. You feel like you’re being claimed by a beast, and you love it. He growls softly as his fingers start to grip your walls, scissoring at a rapid pace stretching you out.

You open your mouth in a silent whine, and then you finally feel him. His cock brushes against your thigh. You lift your hips to meet his fingers, silently begging for him. He chuckles and only continues to drive his skilled fingers into you. He flexes them, pressing up against that sweet spot and then retreating before you can get too much pleasure out of it.

“Damn it, Witcher-” You snap, your words melting into a muddle of moans when he dips down to kiss your shoulder and lets his underhand slide between you and the bed and flutter his digits against your clit. “You know what I want.” You finish, gasping softly when he flips you onto your back. Your chest is flush and his eyes trailing over your heaving chest, and back up to your eyes only makes your entire body flush with heat as well.

“Then say it.” He murmurs, kissing down your neck and capturing a hardened nipple in his devilish mouth when you rise in response to his fingers thrusting into you at this angle.

Looking back, you could only blush madly at the thought of your response. You weren’t one to be so brazen, even with other past lovers. But something about this man had you tossing bashfulness to the wind. You didn’t care that you didn’t know him, didn’t care that this was nothing more than two bodies fulfilling a need.

Your hands slipped up to cup his chin, pulling his face up to look at you with those honey eyes. Your legs spread a bit more and you groaned softly when his thumb settled on circling your clit, just barely touching it.

“I want you to fuck me, Witcher.” You whispered, biting your lip and grinning at him. You were more than ready for him. He growled, satisfied with that answer. You watched him with bated breath. A needy moan escaped your lips when you caught sight of just how much larger than you he truly was.

His fingers retreated from your dripping sex, and you watched him drink your juices off of his fingers. He lifted one of your legs and ran his hand up your thigh positioning it over his shoulder, pinning your hands over your head and leaning over you. And before you could demand that he stop teasing you, he pushes into you, filling you up and stretching you out.

“Gods yes.” You moan, grinning up at him and wrapping your legs around his waist. His hips roll against yours, just barely moving. Though he flexes his cock inside you, and it sends a delicious jolt running through you. He’s silent, save for his growls and somehow he’s still intimidating- in the best way.

His eyes never leave yours, and it only heightens the pleasure you’re feeling. He watches your mouth fall open into a small silent ‘o’ when he slides out of you slowly and slams back into you. You bite your lip and pin him with a challenging glare.

“I thought, fuck- I thought Witcher’s were known for being rough?” You teased. You’d blame it on being drunk with pleasure and need. It’d been so long since you’d lain with anyone, you might as well get the most out of it. He chuckled and you let out a quiet squeak when his arms wrapped around you and pulled you up to sit face to face with him. You moan and roll your hips in his lap.

“You’ve been listening to too many bored wives.” He chided as his hands settled on your hips and began bouncing you on his cock. His hands run up to tangle in your hair, tilting your head back and biting at the most delicate parts of your neck. With each nip, his thrusts seem to pick up speed until the entire bed is shaking and you’ve given up all hope of silencing your moans.

“Ha, sure, but am I wrong? How many times am I going to get the chance to bed a Witcher? I want the full experience~” Your hands run up his back and your nails dig into his shoulders while your hips bounce against him. You grind against him, your clit rubbing against his skin and burning a hot pleasure through your core.

He growls in our ear, nipping at your shoulder. He pushes you back down onto the bed, raising your hips and bracing his hand on the wall. He grunts and dips his hips down to push into you, the head of his cock reaching the deepest parts of you and driving you wild. You can only hang on for dear life, and enjoy the ride.

He fucks into you for what seems like hours, and every time he feels your cunt tightening around him and your moans turn desperate, he flips you toying with your clit but backing off every time you're ready to let go. By the time he’s edged you for the umpteenth time, you’re a spluttering needy mess. And he’s barely broken a sweat.

“I- Gods-” You can’t muster up a coherent response. He lifts you into his arms and stands walking you towards the wall until your back is flush against it, your shaking limbs clinging to him. His arms enclose your body on either side of your head as he presses on, his hips snapping against yours, the lewd sounds of his cock fucking into your sopping sex filling the room. And just when it feels as if you can’t take it anymore, he slides you down onto the floor, flips you onto all fours, and slides back into you.

“You wanted the full experience.” He teased, his tongue running across your shoulder. Your body is practically buzzing from the over-stimulation. You growl in response and arch your back bucking back against him. You want, and desperately need to cum. His arms lock underneath your shoulders and pulls your back up against his chest. He captures your lips in a hungry, almost possessive kiss that leaves you breathless. With one arm still locked tightly around your body, his other hand trails down your side and his fingers trace tight little figure eight’s around your clip as his cock slams into you.

His golden eyes stare into your own as he draws you closer to the climax you’ve been hungry for since he first stepped into your inn. His roguish smirk is the last thing you see before a pillow comes colliding with your face and wakes you. You sit up spluttering and swatting at the air. You blink into the bright sunlight streaming through your window and glare at your assailant.

“It’s about time. You were giving your guests quite an earful.” Beth chortles, dropping the pillow in your lap. “Now come on, I hear The Witcher is going to be riding through town come nightfall.”

#the witcher #geralt #shameless smut #It's been so long ;-;#sherrybaby14 #prompt challenge

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fieryanmitsu · 4 years

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A Shoulder to Lean On | A3! Rare Pairs Week 2020 – Day 3 (Tasuku/Izumi)

And my entry for Day 3 of the A3! Rare Pairs Week is… Tasuku/Izumi!! For anyone who’s read my series “Intertwined Roots”, you’ll know that I absolutely love the same age group that comprises of Izumi, Tsumugi, Tasuku and Itaru. Honestly, Izumi paired with any of these three guys are my top Izumi ships, and I’ve been meaning to write a Tasuku/Izumi fic since I’ve written the other two ships already! So, I’m very glad that this week has kicked my butt into finally getting one out!

A SHOULDER TO LEAN ON

PROMPTS: One’s strength / One’s fear

CHARACTERS: Tasuku Takato, Izumi Tachibana

PAIRINGS: Tasuku/Izumi

My fanfic masterpost: Here

AO3: Link in my Blog Menu

“Seriously! What were you thinking?!” Tasuku growled, carefully examining Izumi’s rapidly swelling foot.

She winced as he placed the ice pack against her ankle.

“S-Sorry, I thought I could handle it.”

“How could you possibly handle anything if the boxes were piled so high that you couldn’t even see past them?” he demanded.

“It-It’s not like they were heavy! And no one was supposed to be over there anyway, so it’s not like I would risk bumping into anyone,” Izumi protested sullenly.

They were currently sitting in the lobby of a theatre on Veludo Way. Another theatre company had asked for Izumi’s help as an extra stagehand during their rehearsals. She had been moving some boxes of spare props and supplies to the storage area backstage when she had tripped over some uneven flooring and fallen, spraining her ankle on the way down.

Tasuku, who was guest acting for the play, had happened to come across her sprawled on the floor when he had come out of the nearby washroom. After he had helped her to the lobby – with a princess carry, much to her embarrassment – he had fetched an ice pack and was currently fiddling with a roll of bandages.

“It doesn’t matter if you thought no one was going to run into you. There were so many other issues with what you were doing! Like the potential of tripping and falling – which is exactly what happened,” he chided gruffly. “And have you considered that there was also a problem with the fact that no one was supposed to be in that area? What if I hadn’t happened to be there? You know that no one usually uses that washroom – I just happened to be using it because the main one was full. What would you have done if no one came to help you? You would have made your ankle so much worse! I can’t believe someone your age can be so stupid! You need to learn what your limits are and stick with it!”

Izumi couldn’t help but flinch at Tasuku’s harsh tirade. He could give Sakyo a run for his money.

“I’m sorry…” she apologized again, having nothing else to say for herself. Though a part of her wanted to refute that she did know her limits, but that she just hadn’t calculated for the uneven floor, she also knew that he was correct that she could have been more careful and carried less boxes at a time. She was also fortunate that none of the props had been damaged when she fell.

“Here. That should do it for now. You should ice it more and elevate it when we get home. We’ll have to find you some extra pillows or cushions or something when we get back to the dorm,” he said as he finished wrapping her foot in a bandage.

“Thanks, Tasuku,” she replied. “I guess we should call someone to pick us up? Hopefully Sakyo or Itaru are home… I don’t have enough cash on me for a taxi.”

“It’s fine, I’ll take you home,” Tasuku responded, slinging his bag over his shoulder and shortening the strap so that it hung snug in front of his stomach.

“Huh? But, you walked here too, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. It’s only a 20-minute walk back to the dorm, so I can just carry you home,” he replied without batting an eye.

“You’re going to what?!” she exclaimed.

“We don’t have enough money for a taxi, right? I can just give you a piggyback. It’s such a short distance home, there’s no point in calling someone,” Tasuku responded. “Besides, it’ll be like resistance training.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Hurry up and get on,” he directed, turning his back to her and crouching down.

Izumi was dumbfounded by this turn of events. When was the last time someone had given her a piggyback ride? And to be given one now that she was a full-grown adult… A part of her still wanted to call someone, but what Tasuku had said made sense. They really were only a short walk home… Finally, shaking her head and not quite believing that she was going through with it, she slung her purse to sit behind her and put her arms over Tasuku’s shoulders.

Checking to see that she was securely clasped around his neck, he carefully stood up and wrapped his arms snugly under her thighs. Then, without another word, he walked them out of the theatre and into the night air.

For the next couple of minutes, they strode wordlessly down the sidewalk of Veludo Way. As they caught the looks of passersby, Izumi couldn’t help but feel bad for inconveniencing the man carrying her.

She hated this. Hated feeling this way – like she was a burden. Izumi didn’t know when it had all started anymore, but for as long as she could remember, she had always done her best to be helpful and useful. To prove her worth – as if she needed to remind the world that she existed.

This fear of being left behind and forgotten was one of the reasons that drove her to constantly take on jobs with other theatres. She wanted to ensure that she could learn as many skills as possible and gain as much experience as she could so that she could be of continued use to Mankai Company. She didn’t think she could lose that, too.

“Umm, sorry for being such a bother, Tasuku,” Izumi said quietly, her negative thoughts coming to a head. “It really was stupid of me to have been so careless…”

Tasuku didn’t respond right away. Then, she heard – and felt – him sigh.

“I’m not upset, okay? I was just worried. You… you have this bad habit of taking too much on your plate. You’ve been packing your schedule lately, too, and when I saw you on the floor… My heart stopped. If something serious happened to you, I don’t know how everyone would keep it together. We would probably fall apart.”

Izumi silently mulled over his words. It was rare for him to say so much and to be this honest with her. It made a warm feeling bloom inside the depths of her stomach, and she was glad that he couldn’t see her face, because she was fairly certain that she was blushing. Only just a little, though.

“Thanks, Tasuku… I… I just like to keep myself busy. I want to keep improving myself and do as much as I can for the Company. But, I guess I can get a bit overenthusiastic sometimes. Like with those boxes.”

“Well… it’s not always a bad thing. Just know that you aren’t in it alone, when it comes to Mankai. We all call that place home – none of us want to see it go under. You’ve got at least twenty sets of shoulders to lean on, and… mine’s always open if you need it,” Tasuku replied as he stopped walking to readjust her weight on his back. “Also… sorry about earlier. I was too harsh. I know I say more than I need to when I get, uh… heated.”

“That’s true… I do see you scold Tsumugi a lot. I guess this is just how you treat your friends,” she remarked with a chuckle.

Another silence fell between them as he started walking again, and Izumi felt disappointed that their conversation appeared to be over. However, to her surprise, he spoke again a moment later.

“… You know that I don’t see you as a friend, right?”

“What?! You don’t?!” Izumi exclaimed, feeling both shocked and indignant. “After all this time?! We’ve gone drinking so many times together, too! What the heck?!”

She felt Tasuku sigh again as she pounded his back with one fist.

“Look – I didn’t mean it that way. I just— I see you as more than a friend, okay?” he snapped back, resolutely keeping his eyes facing forward.

Izumi froze.

“Wait. What did you just say?” she asked slowly. She was sure she had heard him correctly, but she almost didn’t believe it.

“Nothing. I said nothing. Forget about it.”

“Huh?! No way! There’s no way I’d forget something like that!” Izumi retorted.

“Didn’t you just say you didn’t hear what I said?!” he growled.

“I just want to hear you say it again.”

“No.”

“C’moooon! Say it again!”

“No!”

“Saaaaay iiiittt!”

“I swear – I’m going to leave you here and you can walk home!” Tasuku finally snapped.

“You wouldn’t dare!” she taunted back, butterflies fluttering in her stomach at the familiar banter between them. “If you do, I’ll tell Tsumugi on you. I bet I could get him to tell me tons of embarrassing stories about you as compensation.”

“Okay, I’m really going to drop you.”

Izumi shrieked as she felt Tasuku loosen his grip on her legs and she started to slip down his back. However, he immediately caught her and bounced her up onto his waist again.

“You’re the worst! I can’t believe you just did that!” she scowled, wrapping her arms firmly around his neck – just in case – and definitely not because she wanted to feel closer to him.

“Serves you right,” he snorted.

“Fine, I’ll let you off the hook this time – since you’re carrying me home,” Izumi replied, her voice softening. “Thanks, Tasuku.”

Then, she stretched her neck forward and planted a quick kiss on Tasuku’s cheek before moving back and nuzzling her cheek against his broad and warm shoulder. She couldn’t help a big smile from crossing her face as she glimpsed – from the corner of her eye – his ears turning bright red.

I really do enjoy the relationship between these two. I’m just such a sucker for friends/lovers who banter with each other. It’s just so much fun writing Izumi keeping Tasuku on his toes, too, haha. I also have a lot of feelings about Izumi. I didn’t go too much into it here, but I hope to further explore my take on her in future fics!!

I’m happy I was able to get out three entries within the actual Rare Pairs Week! I just need to ride this wave of productivity and finish up the rest of the entries in the next week or two before I lose steam (and hoping real life won’t get in the way of my plans)!!

Thanks again for reading and please do leave a comment with what you thought! If you enjoyed this, please do help me out with a reblog!

Please stay tuned! Next entry will be that ItaIzu smut I was talking about previously back on Day 1, haha.

-Anmitsu

#a3!#act! addict! actors!#a3! act! addict! actors!#tasuku takato #izumi tachibana #tasuku x izumi #takato tasuku #tachibana izumi #a3! izumi #a3! tasuku #a3! game #a3! actor training game #act addict actors #a3! rare pairs week 2020 #anmitsu writes

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heythrrdelilah · 5 years

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Lights, Camera, Love (Tom Holland x Reader) Chapter 1

A/N: So, I’ve been wanting to write for Tom for a while now, I hope all the marvel fans approve. I have incorporated some of my personal goals; like acting since I did 7+ years of theater throughout my life and my certification in Radio/film broadcasting. Also, My nursing degree im working on. So this plot may seem cheesy because of it but… oh well. Also playing off the easter egg of Gwen in endgame.

Word Count: 1,642 (the next chapters will be better and longer sorry)

Warnings/tags: Fluffish, slow beginning (sorry.... it’s been a while since I’ve written anything), friend-zone

Pairings: Tom Holland x Reader

The cold winter breeze sent chills down your spine, making you regret not taking a bigger jacket or adding a few more layers to your outfit. Today, was your first day of work as a small part in the new Marvel movie. You hadn’t known much about it, because today was the first table read for your scene. The main cast had done their table reading months ago, however, for certain scenes, the small parts come in with the main cast as needed. You knew that you had more than one line, otherwise you would be placed with the extras. When you auditioned, you didn’t have a preference for a role, which was ideal for the directors. Directors usually want to have complete creative criticism over everything. Plus, you didn’t have an agent anyways, you had just heard of the audition through an online alert you set for google. Your regular day job was a nurse, which you were thankful that the hospital gave you days off for the filming.

“ID and reason for entry please?” The guard at the gates asked you when you arrived in your 2019 yellow and black camero. You nodded, reaching for your purse. Your nerves were causing your hand to shake as you passed your ID along. “Studio 9, Marvel. I play Mikayla, a small role,” You stated with a nervous, shaky tone. He marked you down on the ipad he wielded and passed you your ID along with a parking pass. He pressed the button for the gate to open and you went through, finding your way to the studio. You parked in the assigned spot, which was shockingly close to the studio building and exited.

Nervously gripping your coffee, you walked slowly into the building. There was a security guard in the doorway, who gave you a pass and directions to the reading table. You walked slowly through the building, seeing hundreds of employees rushing around to build sets, props, costumes, lighting, and several agents on their phones. It was seven in the morning and people were already working so hard. You dodged several people rolling giant wooden boards, along with piles of paint. From upstairs, where the reading room was, you could look down to the floor and see everything from above, as the rooms and offices were all around the sides of the building, leaving the middle open. You looked for office number 24 as instructedd in the email. As you reached the windowless room and door, you knocked gently before entering. The room was warm and smelled like a coffee shop. The lights were perfectly balanced between dim and bright. The tables were set in one big circle and the only other person in the room at the moment was a small blonde with rolled up knit sleeves, placing gift baskets at every seat. “Hello! You must be (y/n)! You’re early!” She smiled, placing another basket at another seat. I waved slightly, “Good morning, yeah sorry I actually thought I was running late. Would you like some help?” You placed your coffee and purse down on the table against the wall with the coffee pots, yes...plural. You rushed over to the two carts of baskets and began placing the heavy packets on the table. You hadn't even noticed the names on the baskets either.

"I'm Clara, by the way. I'm the Mr. Whedon's assistant," She placed her dainty hand out for you to shake. She was the same height as you, but probably weighed 20 pounds less given her viable bone lines. You were careful to lightly shake her hands. You didn't want to be objective when looking at her, guessing her weight, but your previous struggle with an eating disorder left a mark on your brain when it comes to this stuff. She was pretty in the way every other shy girl who moves to LA is. Definitely stuck out in this city, Atlanta that is.

"So the director gives gift baskets to even the smallest of roles? That's super cool," You walked over to the coffee stand and took your cup. She followed, pouring herself a nesspresso. "Small roles? No. There are too many characters with less than 10 lines. Why?" She took a second before her Raven black brows lifted, "oh shit! You don't know? They told you that you didn't get mIkayla right?" Wow-what a shot to the heart! You thought to yourself. You swallowed the lump in your throat and shook your head. "Well, you blew everyone away and they didn’t want to waste your talent on a classmate of peter. So, they decided it was time for Gwen Stacy to head into the Avenger world,” Clara informed. You scrunch your brows together, “Wait… is this why we saw a glimpse of Gwen in Endgame? That is honestly so sick!” You couldn’t contain your excitement. Your expression grew into a big smile. You were a big marvel fan, so this job was a double dream come true. It hadn’t actually hit you that you were Gwen Stacy until you found your seat. The gift basket in front of you had a place marker attatched, like one at an office, that read “Gwen Stacy/ (y/n),” you were reading out loud. “How many acting jobs have you had before this?” Clara asked cheerily. You placed your coffee down next to the basket, “This is the first professional one.” Just as Clara was about to state something, the door opened behind her.

Walking in was the tall blonde you could never not recognize, Chris Hemsworth. Your heart skipped a beat seeing him in person. Sure, you’ve met a few small celebrities before at concerts, but never someone with so much recognition. He was wearing jeans and a baseball Tee, his hair was spiked up and his smile was plastered on his face. He looked down at Clara and gave her a friendly side hug, “Nice to see you as always.” His accent was like cutting butter. Smooth and pleasing. She smiled up at him before motioning to the coffee. “As always, same to you. The coffee is set up and this film’s gift baskets are an assortment of pastries. Yes, this means apple fritters,” she smiled, pointing to his seat. You were frozen at your chair, hearing your heartbeat in your ears. “Oh I’m not the first one? This is different!” He began walking over to your direction. You found the courage to stand up, smoothening out the wrinkles in your shirt during the process. “Hi, I’m (y/n). I am apparently playing Gwen Stacy,” You placed your hand for him to shake. He towered over you, as you were pretty short. His firm grip on your heand suddenly calmed you, “i’m Chris. Nervous? I heard this was your first film?” You nodded slowly. This was just another person. Celebrities are people and you would just have to think that when everyone else walked through the door. “It’s so funny, I thought I had a small part, but Clara informed me otherwise just this morning. I thought you had all table read months ago,” You blabbed, taking a sip from your coffee. He chuckled, “They probably meant for it to be a surprise,” He spoke loud enough for Clara to hear that last part, “We read earlier than the small roles, but that doesn’t start until today.” You nodded smiling. This had to of been a dream. “Gwen stacy isn’t even an avenger though and-” Chris cut you off, placing his hand on your shoulder, “It’s the film industry. Nothing has to be accurate. Just accept it and welcome.” Chris walked over to his chair a few down from you, already opening his bag, placing the name card visible to the center of the circle. You placed yours in the same fashion. Shortly after, the door opened once more. Tom Holland walked through sporting a hoodie and jeans. When he looked up from his phone, he greeted Clara and Chris first, before finding his seat beside you. He turned to you, “You must be our Gwen? Im Tom.” He placed his hand out for you to shake, which you kindly did. He was much more handsome in person, in fact, it made your stomach knot up just looking at him. After introducing yourself, you removed the gift basket from the top of the table and placed it beside you, just as the other two had.

“First table read?” He asked, his british accent melting your heart. You nod slowly, “Yeah. I am honestly afraid I’ll be laughed out of the room by the end of the day.” You finished the last gulp of your coffee and pushed your chair back to stand up and walk over to the coffee station. Tom followed, to your surprise. “Listen, Can I tell you a secret?” He asked in a hushed tone, grabbing a glass mug from the table, giving you one after he tossed the paper cup into the trash. You nodded, “If they put you in a role higher than what you auditioned for, you must be good. I highly doubt you will be laughed out of the room.” Your face burned red as his kind words actually sunk into your mind. You shook your head. You had to be professional. These were the people you were going to see every day for a good year. No way could you be blushing at every Avenger walking through the door just trying to create a friendly environment.

“In fact, if you are laughed out of the room, I will walk out with you. Losing both of us. If not… you have to hang out with us after the table read? We all planned on going out for pasta. You aren’t one of those carbphobic ladies are you?” He asked, nudging you slightly. Friendly.

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crystaljins · 5 years

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When the ice melts

Characters: Jimin x Reader

Word count: 10.8K

Synopsis: They say never meet your heroes, and never has that been truer than when you meet your idol- former figure skater and two time Olympic athlete, Park Jimin. But maybe you can turn things around...

Sports!au (Figure skating) + prompt: “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”

Notes: Here is my entry for the btsboulangerie August prompt! I will say, the only things I know about figure skating is from hours of watching Yuzuru Hanyu skate and let’s be real, he inspired a lot of the plotline to this fic. Do yourself a favour and look up the following things on youtube before reading: Yuzuru Hanyu’s performance at the 2014 Cup of China, his performance to Notte Stellata, and Mao Asada’s performance to Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2 (I can send you the links to all of these if you PM me ;).)

Huge shoutout to @yoongi-sugaglider for her inspiration and encouragement while writing this fic.

EDIT: Now with bonus drabble found here.

Warnings: Mentions of blood, bits of angst and fluff, a few scenes that a bit suggestive but not explicit, mentions of hooking up at a club.

You’re sceptical from the moment you set foot into the club.

“Are you sure he’s here, Jungkook?” You call out urgently to your friend, struggling to keep up with him amidst the mass of pulsating bodies. You’re surprised he hears you over the heavily thumping bass.

“This is the kind of place you’re always going to find Jimin in. At least since his accident, that is.” Jungkook answers ominously as he continues to plough carelessly forward. He is nowhere near as uneasy as you are in such a place. As he loves to remind you, he has actively engaged in a social life outside of the ice rink you spend most of your waking hours in. In fact, after high school he actually lost most of his interest in being on the ice, despite his former status as a talented and well-loved hockey player. Instead he now focuses his attention into his degree in sports science. He still works at the ice rink your father owns part time, however, and it was during one of his shifts that he let slip that he personally knew your hero and idol, Park Jimin.

It was that fact that had led you to your current location. Park Jimin, two-time Olympic gold medallist and possibly the most skilled and talented figure skater in the history of the sport, had dropped off the ice-skating radar just two years prior. Such a fact had not deterred you from viewing him with the adoration and eagerness that only a loyal fan could understand. And so, the revelation that your good friend Jungkook knew him personally could only have one possible outcome. You had demanded that he introduce you to your hero. You’ve been a fan of Jimin since his first gold medal win at the tender age of 16, while you had been a starry-eyed 12-year-old taking figure skating lessons in the ice rink your father owned. And after much pestering and begging, Jungkook finally agreed to arrange your meeting.

Had Jungkook more tact and emotional sensitivity, he may have possibly taken you aside and reminded you of the sobering fact: One should never meet one’s hero. He does no such thing, however, and you are so busy in your eager plotting of how you could ask Jimin to coach you that you don’t even pause to consider the fact that you might be disappointed.

As it stands, you nearly collide with Jungkook’s sturdy back when he halts without warning before a plush booth built into the wall of the night club. Your heart nearly skips a beat- this is it, you realise, as you lean ever so slightly to peer around your friend’s back. This is the pinnacle of your career. From the moment you first laid eyes on Jimin’s skills, you have eagerly awaited this moment. His poster has been on your bedroom wall for nearly ten years at this stage. You’ve never been fortunate to see one of his routines live- this is the first opportunity you have ever had to see your role model up close. You inhale deeply as you focus your eyes on his figure.

Only to find him otherwise occupied. He is engaged in a fierce lip-lock with a young woman who seems very comfortable seated upon his lap. Immediately you are mortified and straighten, allowing Jungkook to once more obscure your view of Jimin. It is not like you expected much from his meeting, or that you had anything more than the sort of crush a schoolgirl might have on a celebrity, but it is still, for some reason, crushing to see him in such a way. Your intentions in meeting him had been entirely innocent- you just want him to choreograph your next routine for the competition you have coming up. You had been recruited for the national team on the Olympics just 6 months earlier and this will be your last solo competition before you begin training with the national team for the Olympics which takes place in just one year. A chance to work with Park Jimin would be a tick on your bucket list. Still, your visceral reaction is also due to the realisation that perhaps Jungkook had not warned Jimin that he had arranged your meeting. Which means your request could be entirely unwelcome.

Jungkook seems undeterred by Jimin’s activities and folds his arms. He clears his throat loudly. The music is quieter here and normal conversation is possible, but Jimin does not immediately detangle from his… friend and so you think that perhaps he hasn’t heard Jungkook. But Jungkook merely waits and eventually Jimin pulls away with a long-suffering sigh.

“I’m busy.” Jimin snaps, and these are the first words you hear from your hero. Jungkook rolls his eyes.

“I only agreed to meet you here and not in a coffeeshop because you promised you wouldn’t pull this kind of stunt. You’re being rude to my friend.” Jungkook complains. Jimin smiles apologetically at the girl in his lap, who seems unbothered by the interruption and merely gets to her feet and vanishes into the crowd without a word of greeting. Jimin stares after her for a long moment before allowing his gaze to settle on you and Jungkook. You suddenly feel exposed beneath his stare- you should have dressed more nicely, more impressively. Isn’t appearance so important in the sport you have chosen? The unimpressed expression upon Jimin’s face as his eyes slide passively over you certainly confirms that.

“Hello,” You begin with an awkward smile, ducking your head politely. “It’s such a pleasure to meet you! I’m (Y/N) and I wanted to ask you if you’d-“

“This is the girl you were telling me about, Kook?” Jimin interrupts. Up close, he is beautiful in a way that cameras and youtube videos cannot portray. His face is smooth and sculpted and there is a chilling beauty to the detached way he regards you. There is also a subtle disgust to his gaze that mars his handsome features, however. And its directed purely at you- beneath its intensity you feel your gut roll and you battle the urge to empty the contents of your stomach before his neatly polished shoes. “Her?” He repeats for emphasis. “In the Olympics?”

Jungkook, ever the loyal friend, looks like he may actually leap to your defence. But you are quicker. Though you have always been on the quieter side, too preoccupied with your sport to focus on much else, you have never lacked a backbone. And if there’s one thing you are confident about, it is your skill on the ice. Suddenly you feel anger. How dare Jimin, legendary ice skater or not, evaluate your skill and worthiness to be in the Olympics without even having glimpsed your ice skating? How dare he be so shallow as to think your outward appearance is in anyway indicative of your passion and joy in your beloved sport?

“How dare you.” You snarl. Jimin looks mildly amused at your anger and watches you through narrowed eyes.

“Something wrong, sweetheart?” He mocks. He leans forward and rests his chin idly in his hand. His hair is pushed up and carefully done and it is no wonder that women would fawn over him in such away. He is unfairly handsome in his white button down and well-fitted black trousers. “Do you think you’re special? Do you even know what it takes to get to the Olympics? Because I do, and,” He looks you up and down, your frumpy sweater and messy hair. He wrinkles his nose. You’d come straight from the rink because Jungkook hadn’t told you Jimin would be at a club, and so you look completely out of place. “I don’t think you have it.”

“You haven’t even seen me skate.” You retort hotly. You had never imagined you would one day address your idol with such contempt. But he has proven to be anything but the man you used to worship. Jimin seems surprised at your vitriolic interruption. You look at Jungkook, who looks apologetic and inhale deeply. “I was going to ask you to coach me, and honestly, I would have walked away without a complaint if you’d just said no. But you don’t get to judge my worthiness to be on the ice without even seeing how I skate. I bleed, sweat, and cry on that ice. You don’t get to scoff at me before you’ve even seen what I can do.”

You cannot, for the life of you, give a reason behind your next action. But fuelled by your anger and indignance, you reach into your bag and pull out a crumpled flyer, with the address and directions to your father’s ice rink printed across it. You hold it out towards Jimin who, after a moment of hesitation, accepts the piece of paper.

“I’ll be here practicing tomorrow, if you change your mind and want to see what I can do.” You say quickly. “If you want a chance to be part of something big, then I guess I’ll see you there. But if you want to sit here and get drunk and reminisce about when you had what it took, then be my guess. Have fun watching me perform at the Olympics and knowing you could have been there with me.”

And with that, you stride off, leaving Jimin alone at his booth with an impressed Jungkook in tow.

“Wow, ice queen,” Jungkook calls, when you’re outside the club and able to converse at a normal volume once more. “I never thought you had it in you.”

You don’t pause your hurried walking, however, until you are sure you have left the club well behind.

And then you promptly crumble to the ground, hands shaking and eyes wide.

“Did I… did I really just say all that?” You asks breathily, dizzy now that the adrenaline and anger has fled your system. “To the Park Jimin?” Jungkook laughs and pulls you to your feet with a hand around your arm.

“You absolutely did.” Jungkook declares proudly. “And I can’t wait to see the look on his face when he sees you skating tomorrow.”

“I shouldn’t have said all that!” You lament, and Jungkook laughs.

“As much as I love him, Jimin has needed a kick in the arse ever since his injury and he needs more in his life than just alcohol and girls. You did a good thing. Now come on, I’ll drop you home so you can get a good rest before showing Jimin how it’s really done.” Jungkook reassures you, dragging you off before you can freak out any further.

And you placidly follow, now filled with dread at what is to come.

The sun is too bright and the inside of Jimin’s mouth tastes worse than a men’s urinal. He’s hungover and grumpy and your irritating words ring in his head. And the absolute icing on the cake- he wakes up alone in his bed, instead of with the hot girl he’d been on the verge of going home with before you showed up. He’s going to kill Jungkook. He should have known from the second that Jungkook offhandedly mentioned he had a friend good enough to be in the Olympics that last night was going to suck.

So then, why the hell does Jimin find himself gazing with disgust at the ice rink you had mentioned you’d be practicing at, not an hour after that awful wakeup? He can still vaguely taste vomit in the back of his throat and the sunglasses he wears aren’t big enough or dark enough to lessen the stabbing sensation from the sun. He shouldn’t have drunk nearly as much as he did last night but he’d needed to forget. Your voice and your face and that look in your eyes. The spark, as you had talked about your skating. He’s seen it before- he used to see it every day, when he looked in the mirror before leaving for early morning practice. That spark has long since died- it’s been gone since the moment the doctors told him he would never skate competitively again.

It’s not too late- he can still leave. Pretend he never saw you and that your words didn’t burrow frustratingly deep beneath is skin. He could go back to his life of partying and drinking and struggling to forget a life he cannot leave behind. But he doesn’t want to. He needs vindication- he needs to see how bad you are, so that he can close up the gaping wound you’d reopened. So many old feelings of hurt and bitterness and agony have suddenly been dredged up and he needs something to seal it over. To ignore the ragged, ugly scar on his heart, and this time all the alcohol and drugs and women in the world will not smooth the rough edges. So he sips aggressively from the cheap coffee he’d picked up on the way which tastes like garbage and doesn’t even bother to remove his shades as he steps into the ice-skating rink.

At this hour, there is no one present but you. He’s momentarily taken aback to see you, alone in the centre of the rink. You look different to the uneasy, poorly dressed young woman from last night. You had looked like a geek desperately in need of a makeover from a cheesy teen movie, but the lone figure in a sapphire blue dress ice looks… different. He can’t find the words but something foreign heats in his veins as he is overcome with something other than the nausea and disgust that he usually feels when presented with any aspect of his past.

Music startles him as it crackles in through the speaker. His heart leaps into his throat as he recognises the tune- Notte Stellata. You don’t even know he’s there, yet it can’t be a coincidence that that is the song you have chosen to practice. You extend your arms slowly in a delicate pose as the opening strains filter slowly through the air and he sees your shoulders raise in a gentle inhale.

And then you are gliding across the ice. If the spark he had seen in your eyes last night was enough to plague his thoughts for so many hours, it is nothing compared to the way you smoothly cut through the rink. Perhaps, he thinks, you were not born. Perhaps you were carefully crafted with a loving heart to soar on angel wings formed from thin silver blades. You lift into the air in a triple lutz and land with the lightness and grace of a swan and then you extend your arms outwards.

You’re beautiful. But suddenly it is not you or your performance that Jimin is seeing. Suddenly, in his mind’s eye, another figure that dances over the smooth pool. The figure cuts across the ice with an impressive power and grace- that figure brought tears to the eyes of people who knew nothing about figure skating. That figure was him. People called him the Swan, because of his grace and beauty on the ice. Magazine articles had described him as an artwork as intricate and valuable as the Mona Lisa or Van Gogh’s starry night. It was to this very song that he had stood on a podium at the Olympics and proudly received his first gold medal.

He squeezes his eyes shut before he can be greeted with what happened to that beautiful, mysterious figure. For it had all evaporated like a dream- the kind you awaken from with tears on your face without fully understanding why. His entire life had been ruined in one go. Just one year after his triumphant second gold medal win, he had been in a car accident. His body, carefully trained to float with ease over the ice, to make powerful, jaw-dropping manoeuvres seem as simple as inhaling and exhaling, had refused to obey him. A broken leg, shattered in a way that would never heal properly enough to allow him to competitively skate again. No amount of physiotherapy or surgery or desperation would allow him to shine in the Olympic rink again. There would be no third gold medal win. Every single moment of hard work throughout his entire youth was gone in a single accident.

And when he opens his eyes, only you remain on the ice, hauntingly beautiful in the way that he had thought only ice can be. Lonely and cold yet majestic. Figure skating is about conquering- about overcoming the harsh, unwelcoming cold and holding your ground through gravity defying flips and tricks. Constantly, the sport strips you of warmth and comfort and familiarity and requires gruelling work and pain and blood and danger. It takes something special to make something so ugly and painful look so beautiful. And that it what you have just done on the ice. Tears pour down his face and he is thankful for the way his sunglasses hide the agony that no doubt lingers in his expression. It’s been two whole year and yet the grief is as fresh as if it were yesterday. Somehow, despite the pains such a sport brings, his happiness was on that ice and it was been cruelly torn from him before he could even fathom what its loss would mean.

He clears his throat and covers his face by taking a long sip from his coffee cup as you are startled from your finishing pose. You were completely unaware of his presence and somehow that makes your performance more startingly beautiful- even alone, just practicing, there is such emotion and power in your skating. He now understands, why you were so offended when he brushed you off based off of a cursory glance. You are amazing- better even than he had been, perhaps. And now he understands what you are- a chance to be part of something he had thought he had been removed from. He’s never been able to cut the love of figure skating away from himself- he would have better luck sawing out his own heart. And you have presented him with a chance to relive that joy- through you.

“A week,” He calls. Your hand is clasped over your heart, absolutely stunned by his presence. It is charming, that despite inviting him, you genuinely do not seem to have expected him to come. But he has come, and he’s going to take out all his fear and pain on you. He’s going to take you to the Olympics, and you have no one to blame but yourself. “Give me a week to work out a routine. You’re going to get a gold medal in this comp.”

And he can’t resist a parting shot as he leaves, before he takes his leave. Just one petty phrase, for the sake of his ego.

“Your landing for the double axel was too heavy and uncoordinated.”

And yet somehow you watch him go with an excited smile on your face.

A week later you arrive at the ice rink, your entire body pulsing with nerves. You had not thought Jimin would agree to choreograph your performance, and yet here you are. You can’t help but feel a bit of pride- your skating had clearly won him over, somehow. And so ,with your blood roaring through your veins, you take a step into the ice rink, feeling the familiar way cold air fills your lungs and settles into the base of your chest. You’ve always found the sensation enlivening- never are you more alive than when you are on the ice. And while you have your reservations about working with Jimin, especially after his rude behaviour, you cannot kill the flame of excitement that flickers deep in your stomach. This is a dream come true.

Jimin waits alone in the centre of the ice-skating rink. At your arriving footsteps, he turns slowly and watches your advance towards him with a curious look to his eyes. It’s an intensely probing stare, like he is evaluating every step of your body, measuring the weight that lands in your skates against the ground with each footstep. And then he slowly smiles and your heart flutters. Jimin is beautiful in an inhuman way and that he should ever look at you in such a way is more than your delicate heart can handle. You swallow deeply before stepping onto the ice and gliding towards him with a practiced ease you hope conveys grace and beauty.

Jimin tilts his head and keeps his arms folded across his chest as you stop before him. As you do you register the sombre, heavy tune of a piano concerto crackle through the speakers of your father’s ice-skating rink. It starts slow, with dark chords ringing through the air and climbing in intensity. Gradually the melody crests and builds until the piano erupts in a complex and powerful virtuosic passage, given weight and power by a grave string accompaniment.

“This was his second concerto.” Jimin says, instead of offering you a greeting. “Rachmaninoff’s, I mean. His first ever concerto was met with heavy criticism. It was an extremely challenging piece to write- it took him ten months to write and yet his efforts were spat on. And in the three years that followed he was depressed from the backlash and unable to write anymore. This song is his return after three years of darkness, and it brought his career back from the dead. This,” He informs you. “Is the song you will perform to at the competition for your free program.”

You stare wonderingly at Jimin for a moment and shut your eyes as the mood of the piece shifts to something lighter and freer. The piano bounces along and the orchestra follows behind yet hints of the initial darkness still linger despite the bright tone. You can hear it- the composer’s pain, his determination to clamber back from the pits of despair. You want to dance to this song. An intense longing fills you.

“Can you do it? It won’t be an easy piece to skate to.” Jimin asks, and you peer back at him with your jaw set in determination. The expression wins a slight smile from him.

“I can.” You reassure him. He nods and walks forward. He is not wearing skates- instead he wears heavy boots on the ice. Likely, the instability in his ankle means he cannot balance in skates without significant pain. And you are his chance to overcome that, you suppose. You will do for him what he can no longer achieve.

And thus begins your gruelling practice. You’ve pushed yourself hard before but never in the way that Jimin pushes you. Jimin, much as you suspected he would, has very little patience and his little experience with teaching means he gets frustrated easily when you do not pick things up in the way that he assumed you would. You are soaking in sweat as practice goes on despite the fact the ice-skating rink is kept at such a low temperature.

“Extend your leg further.” Jimin urges, combing a hand through his hair in frustration for what is probably the fifth time. “The pose looks messy if you’re all loose and floppy like that.” You wince and attempt to follow his instruction once more. You’ve been going for hours by this stage. “Once more from the triple lutz.” He snaps, stepping off the ice to give you the room to launch into such a complex and difficult leap. But your body is exhausted from such intensive exercise and from the second you catapult yourself in the air you know you’ve done it wrong. You lift unevenly into the air and though you clench your core and attempt to right yourself, it is too late. You come down at completely the wrong angle and wince as your ankle takes the brunt of your weight. Pain lances up your leg as you crumble, and your body continues to slide.

When you lose enough momentum to begin picking yourself back up off the ice, Jimin skids to a halt, sending up a spray of ice chips. He’s clearly carelessly sprinted across the ice to get to you and he throws himself down beside you without a thought as to his wellbeing. You hadn’t thought him capable of such concern for someone other than himself.

“Are you ok?” He cries out in alarm, wrapping his hands around your outstretched ankle. Despite the low temperature of the room, his fingers are somehow still warm, and you had not realised how chilled your body was until you feel the heat encircle your leg. Carefully, he rolls the ankle you had landed on back and forth and around, scrutinising your face for the slightest hint of pain. It is tender, but you know tomorrow you’ll wake up and not even remember what ankle you had hurt.

“I’m fine.” You wave him off with a smile. “Let’s try that again.” You say, about to get up, but a firm hand against your shoulder keeps you down.

“No.” Jimin almost growls, and there is a sternness and barely repressed anger to the glare he gives you that pins you in place. “It was stupid of me to push you this hard. Let’s get dinner and we can pick it back up tomorrow if you’re feeling ok. We’ll get some ice on this too.”

Despite your protests, Jimin decides to take you out for dinner that night. You almost succeed in wriggling out of it, but a growl of your stomach has him urging you to come along with renewed determination. And to make it more embarrassing, as soon as you arrive at the restaurant, he drags over a second chair and makes you rest your injured leg on it, placing the ice pack over your tender ankle with a gentleness that makes you uneasy for reasons you cannot understand.

“That’s more than enough for today.” He scolds you. “You need to take care of yourself after an injury or you won’t make it very far.”

He settles opposite you and orders you both food.

“My coach used to always take me out for hot soup afterwards. Said we had to warm ourselves up after being in the cold so long.” He remembers fondly as the two of you await your meals. He seems so different from the asshole you met in the club a mere week ago and you still aren’t even sure what made him change so drastically. “He was the best coach in the world. I only made it to the Olympics thanks to him.”

“Are you trying to follow in his footsteps?” You ask in an attempt to subtly determine his motive. Jimin shrugs and shakes his head as the waitress sets down two steaming hot bowls of soup before you.

“Who knows.” He admits. “Even I’m not sure what I’m trying to achieve. A week ago, all I cared about was getting drunk enough to forget what the Olympics were.”

He watches you curiously as you lean forward and raise a spoonful of salty broth to your lips.

“Why did you come, then?” You say, finally asking the question that has been itching at you since you received the text asking you to come to the ice rink. You can probably guess the answer, but you want to hear it from him. He’s made a drastic change after his awful first impression and you aren’t entirely sure he’s someone you can trust yet.

Jimin doesn’t answer for a long moment. Instead he takes a long sip of his soup and fidgets with the noodles that float in the broth. Finally, he raises his eyes to you and there’s a look to his eyes that you can’t seem to interpret. Somehow it is a gaze filled with sadness and yet he looks so peaceful at the same time.

“I love skating.” He admits. “There was a time where it was my whole world. To have it taken so suddenly, with no warning…” He sighs and shakes his head. “I felt like I had nothing yet. But I believe that sometimes we are given second chances, and that’s what you are. My second chance. I want to see you in the Olympic rink. I want the entire world to shed tears because they’ve seen true beauty. And I can’t convey that beauty anymore, but you can. I know you can.” He confesses, and to his credit, his ears are only tinged the slightest bit pink. You stare at him, completely gobsmacked. How can you even fathom such high praise? “But now it’s my turn, to ask you a question.” He admits, his eyes sharpening with interest. You wince, a little uncomfortable with the scrutiny, but you know it is necessary.

“Ask away.” You say, because you suppose that as your coach, he has a right to know about you to at least some degree.

“Why me?” He finally asks, after a moment of hesitation. “Where’s your coach? Why are you even entering this competition if you’ve already been selected to be on the Olympic team?”

The silence between the two of you stretches out for a long moment. You take the opportunity to shove a few mouthfuls of soup into your mouth. It’s not an unexpected question. In fact, he probably should have asked the question long before agreeing to coach you, to make sure he wasn’t stealing someone else’s athlete, and the fact that he hasn’t asked you before now means he probably senses it’s not a question you are ready to be asked. But with the atmosphere between the two of you warm and comfortable, now is the best time for him to ask.

“She died.” You say nonchalantly. The soup suddenly tastes bland, but you continue to eat it. It provides you a distraction from the heaviness of the conversation. “Six months ago. It was cancer. I had just gotten scouted to be on the national team and we realised she wouldn’t make it to the Olympics, probably. So this was our compromise. She was fighting so hard because she wanted to see me skate one last time and… she… she didn’t get to. She died a week later.”

Jimin stares at you in dismay, speechless. Perhaps he had suspected you’d had a falling out with your coach, or that you needed a new one now that you’ve been selected for the national team. He probably never could have guessed the horrible reality.

“(Y/N)…” He says softly. You shake your head and offer Jimin a slight smile.

“It’s fine.” You say. “I’m doing ok. My parents have been really supportive and have even been trying to find me a new coach. But I wanted you. I just thought it would be nice for my first comp after she… passed away. To this day, the routine you did to Notte Stellata brings me to tears and so I thought if you were the one choreographing, then I’d give a performance worthy of her legacy. One that she would have been proud to see.”

Jimin’s expression scrunches up at your words. You don’t shed a tear throughout the whole story even though it all feels so fresh. It still feels like she’s going to ring you and scold you for not being at practice or not following the strict diet regimen she always set for you. Somehow six months of grieving doesn’t feel like enough to get back on the ice, yet at the same time you are itching to go back out there. For her. She had been like a second mother to you and the fact that she didn’t get to see you skate one last time is a scar you know will never fully heal.

Jimin is a bit of an enigma, and you never know how he will react to something. Perhaps this is why his reaction to your story is such a surprise. He stares at you like he’s in pain. A single tear wells up in his left eye and rolls down his cheek, tracing down the smooth contours of his handsome face as it goes.

“Thank you. For that honour. I… Thank you. And I’m sorry for being harsh today. I’ve never been a teacher before and so I don’t know your limits or mine. But if you keep with me and tell me when I’ve gone too far, I believe we can do this.” He admits, and his voice is slightly raspy . “I… After I stopped skating, I didn’t have a purpose or goal in life. I’ve just kind of been… existing for so long. But… thank you. I think I finally have a purpose- I want to take you to the Olympics. I’d decided earlier that I want to go to the Olympics with you but I never actually asked you. Will you do it? Will you go to the Olympics with me?”

And Jimin is mean and harsh and awkward. He’s a drunkard and a loser and a shallow jerk. He’s not even qualified to be a coach and such an ambition with an inexperienced mentor could lead to the destruction of your own career. It would be foolish, to agree to go to the Olympics with him.

And then you recall, being a young teenager skating for the first time and watching his comps. Being lonely as you entered highschool with no friends and rushing home to watch his Olympic performance live. Following his rise to fame and shedding tears because his skating held a beauty you could not put into words. And therein lies your answer- it is thanks to the man sitting before you that you even dared to dream of the Olympics. Your dreams will always feel incomplete if it is not him you go to the Olympics with.

“Yes.” You say. “Let’s go to the Olympics together.”

After that first day, Jimin is softer and far less harsh. Every day he grows in patience. He remains a stern and difficult coach and choreographer, though. He pushes you far past what you think you can handle. But he never pushes you past what you can actually handle. He’s constantly vigilant, for signs of fatigue and always ends practice before you can go too far. And so, each night you go to bed and sleep deeply, satisfied with the work you have done. His choreography is technically difficult and extremely advanced and yet designed specifically with you, your capabilities and your strengths in mind. If you master it, it will carry you to a gold medal without any doubt.

It’s exciting. Who could have ever thought that one day it would be Park Jimin coaching you on the ice? Despite his inexperience with coaching, he knows figure skating really well and you find yourself improving drastically beneath his tutelage, as the months go by and the competition date approaches. He really could have a future as a coach if he was ever inclined to do so. If maybe he learned some people skills, that is.

“Extend your leg further,” He orders from behind you, placing a hand on your knee to prevent your instinct to fold it as he uses the hand wrapped around your ankle to lift your outstretched leg a bit higher. His hands are almost hot on the skin of your legs. You hadn’t realised how much your body had chilled beneath the air-conditioning of the gym you are currently in. You wince as he begins to hit the limits of your flexibility and wobble just the slightest bit.

His eyebrows shoot up, and he shoots you a glare.

“Was that a wobble?” He asks, his tone venomous. Your eyes go wide. Today is one of the days you practice off the ice- one foot is placed in the centre of a balance ball while Jimin adjusts your posture. Despite the ways in which you two have grown quite close, he still comes across as very menacing when he enters what you call “coach mode”.

“N-no.” You stutter as you lie. He releases your leg and you know he expects you to maintain the position. You do, though not without a slight fluctuation. Jimin’s sharp eyes catch the movement though and he walks around so that he is facing you, hands planted intimidatingly on his hips.

“A wobble could cost you your career.” He reminds you, and this is the third time he’s lectured you about this in the past three days. “All it takes is for you to launch yourself airborne from just slightly the wrong angle and you could break a leg.” He scowls, and he steps in close. You drop your outstretched leg and hop off the balance ball. You roll your eyes and fold your arms across your chest, refusing to cower at his ‘angry coach’ vibe. And maybe you would have gotten back on the balance ball obediently if it weren’t for the muttered, irritated comment that follows: “How can a figure skater be so inflexible?” He laments.

“Excuse me?” You blurt, eyes wide in outrage. “I am flexible!”

He winces, probably because he didn’t intend for you to overhear the comment, but also because he’s now quite familiar with the certain buttons he should never push while coaching you. For the most part, you are a reasonable student, one who follows his instructions diligently and practices hard. But any time the slightest comment is made about your skill or ability as a figure skater that isn’t constructive or contributing towards your improvement, you go slightly beserk. And this is one of those moments.

“I’ll prove it to you!” You cry, striding over to the yoga mat laid out in the corner. You almost throw yourself down on your back and glare at him. “Do the stretch! The warm-up hip one.” You order. He almost groans in irritation- the stretch in question is one he had suggested at a different practice to help keep your hips loose. But you had been too embarrassed to try it due to the intimacy of the positioning and so he hadn’t pushed you. But now, your pride has been hurt, and you are going to prove him wrong, embarrassment be damned. He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, scolding himself for his slip up, before kneeling over you and locking his ankle over one of your outstretched legs. He then wraps his fingers around your other leg, placing the flat of one palm against the heel of your foot and the other over your knee, before slowly lifting one leg towards your head.

“Tell me when.” He says with a sigh, his tone resigned.

“I won’t.” You reassure him petulantly. “You’ll see how flexible I am.”

And really his comment was quite unnecessary, because flexibility is a vital skill as a figure skater. A fact which is demonstrated as Jimin continues to push your leg towards your head. You wait eagerly for him to admit that he was wrong as it reaches the point where you are almost doing the splits, but it never comes. Instead, Jimin has gone oddly quiet from where he kneels between your leg. Puzzled, you tilt your head to meet his gaze to find that his stare has gone oddly misty. His lips are slightly parted, and his eyes are fixed on where his hand presses to the heel of your foot.

“Jimin?” You call. It rings out oddly loud in the quietness of the section of the gym you are in, like a gunshot. Jimin flinches like he’s been punched in the stomach. His eyes land on yours and they are oddly wide. The expression reminds you of the face a child might pull if they were caught in the middle of stealing candy from a jar. Wide and panicked and a little bit glazed.

“I…” He says slowly, and his voice is a little bit croaky. He clears his throat and moistens his lips with his tongue before trying again. “I…”

You don’t get to find out what he was planning to say though, because in the next moment you hear Jungkook’s familiar voice call out.

“Special delivery!” He cries. Jimin drops your leg like he’s been burnt and scrambles away like you have rabies. He takes a moment to frantically smooth out his clothes and run his hands nervously through his hair, before turning to face the intruder who strides quickly towards you. There is a wide grin on Jungkook’s face, and he waves a large package wrapped in brown paper towards the two of you. You sit up and watch curiously as Jungkook prances forward. Jimin, oddly, still has a lot of nervous energy and gives off an oddly frantic air and when his gaze lands on the package in Jungkook’s hand, it seemingly worsens.

“Jungkook!” Jimin cries, eyes bugging out of his head and his face almost going purple, so severe is his blush. “How did you get that?”

Jungkook skids to a stop between the two of you and beams cheekily.

“You had it delivered to the rink.” He says coyly, wiggling the package playfully in front of Jimin’s eyes. Jimin makes a hasty snatch at it and grabs it out of Jungkook’s hands. It’s a fairly bulky package. “But I knew you two were here, so I thought I’d use my lunch break to come visit the two of you and deliver the package.”

By now you are standing, and you move in close to examine the package.

“What is it?” You ask curiously, and then it’s shoved unceremoniously into your arms by a surprisingly flustered Jimin.

“It’s for you.” He says quickly, his head turned determinedly in the opposite direction of you. “I ordered it online- I thought you could wear it for the comp.”

You blink a few times, confused. But then you peel away the brown paper wrapping to reveal the contents within. It’s a figure skating dress. The skirt is a deep, midnight blue though the torso is something icier and paler. They mix together in a gentle gradient and jewels scattered over the bodice glint like starts as the catch the light above you. The sleeves and décolleté are nude- when you wear it, it will look like you are painted in the night sky. Your throat goes hot and sticky and you find yourself battling tears at the thoughtful gesture.

“Jimin,” You say softly, genuinely touched. He smiles and rubs awkwardly at the back of his neck.

“It’s nothing… it was on sale and I thought it would look nice on you.” He admits sheepishly. “I was just going to leave it in your locker later today, but I guess someone had other plans.” Jimin shoots a meaningful but venom-filled look at his friend, but you are too preoccupied with examining your new outfit to notice. You clutch it tightly between your fingers.

“I have something for you too.” You announce suddenly. “Wait right here. It’s in my locker.” You urge, turning around and sprinting across the gym. A few people at the cycling machines pause their exercise to watch you go.

Jimin uses the opportunity to whirl on Jungkook.

“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” Jimin snarls, and Jungkook laughs and dodges a swipe from Jimin. “I didn’t ask for a personal delivery!”

“Of course I did.” Jungkook cries mirthfully. “Did you think I’d pass up an opportunity to see you actually be nice while sober? Her reaction was so sweet, wasn’t it? Don’t you just wanna hug her and kiss her and stop being a douchebag 90% of the time? Oh man, I’ve never seen you go that shade of red before. Totally worth the drive over here.” Jungkook wipes at amused tears that are pooling in the corners of his eyes. “I mean, I also came over because there’s a sushi place next door that is to die for and (Y/N)’s father is treating me to lunch, but this has been a great little adventure. Thanks for the show, Jimin.” Jungkook says, waving his friend goodbye. Jimin aims another whack at the back of Jungkook’s head, but his reactions are quicker, and he merely darts off. He whistles a cheerful tune as he goes. Jimin is about to follow after him and give Jungkook a proper piece of his mind, but you arrive back beside him before he can do so. You’re slightly out of breath from your quick sprint, but you quickly straighten and beam.

“There’s a bit of back story behind this.” You explain, stretching out your hand and uncurling your fingers to reveal a long, thin box that fits easily into your hand. Curiously, Jimin accepts it and is about to remove the lid but you hastily place your hands over his to stop the movement. Your fingers are slightly cold, and his eyes catch on the contrast of your skin against his. “I bought this for you right after your second Olympics win.” You confess, and you drop your gaze from his. There’s embarrassment in your expression and it’s oddly endearing. Jimin feels an odd, fluttering feeling just beneath his sternum. But then your words register and he’s a bit confused.

“I didn’t know you then, though- that was 3 years ago.” He reminds you and you shake your head and smile.

“I’ve been your fan since I was 12 years old though!” You exclaim. “I bought it because I was going to mail it to you to show my support. And I never plucked up the courage to do it until my coach managed to get me a seat at one of the comps you were supposed perform at. I was going to throw it onto the ice after you performed. But you… you never got to perform.” You say softly, and Jimin feels himself tense just the slightest bit. He knows the competition you are talking about- it was one of the few ones in his hometown he still competed in. But then the accident had happened, and he’d cancelled his registration. “But I kept this all these years because I still wanted to meet you. Even if you couldn’t skate anymore, you were and are still my hero. And I found it again the other day and realised that I finally have the chance to give it to you.”

Slowly, you release your grip on his hands enough that he’s able to pull the lid off the small box. A thin silver chain rests in it and in the centre against black velvet lies a tiny pendant shaped like a cat. He blinks at it a few times in confusion.

“You always talked about your family cat growing up in interviews. The fat tortoiseshell one. You said she was your inspiration because of her calm approach to life.” You recall fondly. “And fans always through cat plushies onto the ice because of that and I guess I wanted to set myself apart a little.”

Jimin just stares incredulously at the little trinket. It should be offensive, to have such a reminder of how his life has gone wrong resting in his hands. And as a gift from you, no less. But it isn’t offensive, for some reason. It’s touching. It’s flattering. Slowly a smile grows on his face and his hands start to tremble. There’s a warm, full feeling in his chest. What an honour, to have someone like you be such a loyal fan. To have kept this reminder of his golden years despite the fact that you’d never even met him. And your skating is so beautiful and with enough time will outshine his own, but it’s thanks to him. He inspired that beauty in you, and to know that is an honour and joy and privilege that he will carry with him throughout the rest of his life. And this necklace symbolises all of that.

“Thank you.” He mutters softly. He raises his eyes off the pendant to look at you. Your eyes are slightly round and a little uneasy, but when he responds with gratitude a smile splits your face. “But I can’t accept this.” He tells you with a smile. With careful fingers, he plucks the necklace from its box and comfortable bed of velvet, and steps towards you. “This necklace is yours.” He says. You seem to sense what he’s trying to do as he steps in close, because you raise your hair off the back of your neck to allow him to put the necklace on for you. It clasps shut and falls to rest safely against your collarbone.

You stare up at Jimin and you don’t really understand the tenderness in his gaze, or the ensuing ache in your chest in response. You just feel… happy. Warm. Excited. There’s so many feelings racing through your chest and while you don’t have the time to process them now, you know that things will go well. Instead of pulling away after fixing the necklace in place, Jimin leans in close so that his lips almost brush your ear. You feel your face heat.

“Take it to the Olympics for me.” He whispers softly.

The day of the competition dawns bright and sunny. Jimin is gripped with a fluttery kind of nerves. It’s a thrilling sensation though, one he hasn’t felt since he’d been able to skate. So much of his time has been spent in darkness, spiralling deeper and deeper away from the sun and suddenly today he feels a warmth and brightness he hadn’t realised he’d been missing.

You nail the short program in the morning and are all smiles and jitters as you come off the ice. You’re leading with your point score and if you follow the routine for your free program well, then you’ll take the gold medal home for sure.

“Did I do well?” You ask breathlessly, the second you step off the ice. You stumble a bit, shaky from the adrenaline, and Jimin steadies you with a gentle hand on your shoulder.

“She’d have been so proud.” He reassures you warmly and the resulting beam you give him makes him think that nothing could drag him down.

There is something that could drag him down, though he doesn’t know it in that moment.

Typically, there is a break in the middle of the day, where skaters are allowed to have a warmup on the ice before the afternoon program starts. Jimin is a little hesitant to have you out on the ice, though he can’t really put into words. He writes it off as just nerves though, and sees you off onto the ice with a smile. He doesn’t really focus much on your warmup- you know what to do. Instead, he scans the seating section where he knows Jungkook is. It doesn’t take much time to locate him and Jimin quickly darts up into the audience section towards his friend. Jungkook is waving a little paddle pop stick with an unflattering image of you stuck to the end and watches the figure skaters warm up with his mouth slightly ajar.

“She’s really good, huh?” Jungkook admits aloud, as Jimin takes a seat next to him. Jimin grins and nods.

“She’s got this one in the bag.” Jimin brags, and Jungkook offers him a strange smile.

“She really did a number on you.” Jungkook says suddenly, with a laugh. “To think, just a couple of months ago you’d be angry and hungover at this time of day. And now you’re smiling and laughing. I really think that (Y/N) is the best thing to happen to you.”

Normally, Jimin would deny it. Maybe flush a little and frantically discourage Jungkook from such a sentiment. But for some reason, he can’t bring himself to do it- probably because he can’t deny the weight and truth of such a statement.

“She is.” Jimin admits softly. Jungkook’s jaw drops in response, but a ruckus on the ice distracts him from whatever response he may have given.

Puzzled, Jimin directs his gaze to where medics are suddenly rushing onto the ice. And then, like two magnets clicking together, his gaze lands on you. You’re sprawled out on the ice, unmoving, with one of your competitors similarly collapsed. She, at least, is sitting up, looking slightly dazed and confused, but you are unmoving. Jimin’s heart leaps into his throat as he realises what has happened- there’s been a collision.

He leaps to his feet, but Jungkook’s hand around his wrist stops Jimin for rushing straight for the ice. Two medics help you to your feet and lead you off the ice.

“Wait.” Jungkook calls. “She’s ok- she’s standing up. Don’t get in the way of the medics. We can go to her after they’ve done first aid.”

Jimin glares at Jungkook, long and hard. His friend merely stares evenly back until Jimin reluctantly lowers himself back into his seat. He watches desperately as you are able to groggily step off the ice. Even at this distance, he can see the way blood streams down your face. Once he sees the dreadful crimson staining the ice, he can sit still no longer, and he gets to his feet and dashes off before Jungkook can say a word in response.

In the kiss and cry area, a crowd has gathered around you- some are medics, some are camera crew and some are your fellow competitors. Jimin shoves them carelessly out of the way, forcing himself forward until he is face to face with you. Your eyes are slightly out of focus and they’re in the middle of bandaging your head, and when you look up at him, your eyes fill with tears.

“Jimin,” You cry, choked. They haven’t cleaned up the blood yet - it has dripped down your neck and stained the misty blue of the outfit he had bought you. Jimin crumples to his knees in front of you.

“Is she ok?” He demands of the medic trimming a bandage for you. The medic winces and evaluates you.

“We think it’s just a minor concussion. She’ll be fine with some rest- but maybe she should skip the free program. Maybe if you take her home-“ The medic suggests tentatively, but you cry out in response.

“No!” You almost shout. The crowd buzzing around you goes silent at your outburst, but you don’t seem to notice. “I have to skate. I have to compete.” You cry, begging the medic, begging Jimin, begging anyone who can let you go back on the ice.

“(Y/N)…” Jimin calls quietly. “It’s ok- there will be other competitions. Your health is more import-“

“There won’t be.” You argue vehemently. “I promised her, Jimin. I promised her.” Tears are really streaming down your face now, mixing with the rivulets of blood that pour from the cut on your chin. You’re wearing the cat necklace and the silver is marred with angry droplets of red. You gently push the medic away and struggle to stand upright. You wobble a little, but you keep upright. It’s only minor injuries, but Jimin highly doubts you’d be able to skate properly like this. And if you take another fall, things may only get worse. Skating now could cost you your career. Blind panic rises in his chest and makes him nauseous- it reminds him of a darker time just two years ago, when he had been informed that he would never skate again. You’re so small and fragile and it’s something that could just as easily happen to you, but before you’ve even gotten the chance to compete. He can taste sour fear in the back of his throat.

But when Jimin looks into your eyes, he comes to understand something. As much as he wants to take you to the Olympics- as much as you yourself probably want to go to the Olympics, this takes priority. He remembers how important his coach had been to him during his career, and how he would have reacted if anything happened to him. He can’t imagine what you must have gone through- what it must have taken, to get back on the ice, just six months after her death. You have to do this, and though his heart aches with fear and agony at the thought of you endangering yourself again, he knows that you will never forgive yourself if you don’t do this. You are skating for her and he doesn’t have a right to stop you.

“Finish the first aid.” Jimin requests of the medical personnel, before turning and dismissing the crowd. They quickly dissipate under his intimidating stare, but not without a few surprised mutters of isn’t that Park Jimin?. And then he turns to you. He’s only just met you in the last few months and you’d given him so much hope that now dangles precariously on a thread. But he doesn’t want hope or purpose or ambition if that’s not what you want. “Whatever happens out there, she’ll be proud.” He reassures you, and then you’re smiling with relief through your tears. You reach out and wrap your fingers around one of his hands.

“Thank you.” You say, and somehow the weight of your gratitude now means more to him than any Olympics medals you may win- heck, more than the medals he’s won. He finds himself smiling despite the dread that sits deep in his stomach.

“No wobbling out there is allowed.” Is all he tells you.

Amidst the silvery glow of the white ice, you stand as a lone figure. Jimin remembers when he first saw you skate, all those months ago. This reminds him of that time, although this time your head is bandaged, and your hands shake as the opening piano chords ring sombrely through the arena. There was a lot of murmuring when you first stepped onto the ice but it has all gone quiet as you wait patiently in the centre, raising your arms delicately above your head. Then the piano erupts fiercely, notes scattering and spilling across the ice in the same moment that you take off. There is power as you launch yourself across the ice.

The strings pad the rich sound and climb in intensity as your first jump approaches. Jimin holds his breath as he sees you brace one leg before you push outwards. You spin through the air and he couldn’t breathe even if he wanted to. But you land at the wrong angle and your leg skids out underneath you. You’ve missed your first jump.

You aren’t deterred though. Quickly you scramble back onto your feet and begin to skate across the ice as the piano melody grows more and more complex and urgent. This next jump is your hardest. But again, you miss- you’re dizzy and you miscalculate the angle you must land in. Still, without hesitation, you clamber back onto your feet even though Jimin can see the way frustrated tears are starting to pool in the corner of your eyes.

What comes next is a spin, as you extend your leg outwards, your speed varying and changing as you adjust your position- you hold your leg out in the pose he had been constantly trying to get you to replicate and you execute it perfectly. You raise your leg above your head as your spin becomes more rapid. The music becomes more delicate and thoughtful and so does your skating. You glide across the ice and yet there is a carefulness that isn’t normally there- he can see the way you must concentrate, the way you desperately fight off the waves of dizziness that you are experiencing.

The pitch climbs into something brighter and hopeful and you once more attempt a desperate jump. You land badly again and actually end up on all fours. For a second, he thinks you may not be able to get up and the music threatens to leave you behind. The whole crowd holds its breath collectively. Suddenly your eyes meet his. It’s quick- you just so happen to be facing towards the wall he’s standing behind. But your expression changes, and so does the music, just in time for you to send yourself soaring with your arms outstretched behind you like the wings of a swan.

Suddenly, Jimin remembers why your skating has him to encaptivated. With the brighter music, you suddenly erupt with a brightness and grace that is entirely unique to you- you dance and skip over the ice rapidly. It’s because no one else can skate like this. No one can translate beauty into movement on the ice like you can. You have another leap coming up and this time when you launch yourself up, it’s with a determination and confidence that you didn’t have before. You land perfectly and Jimin’s heart skips a beat. You’re instantly flying again, soaring towards your grand finale. The music slows to another climax, slow and grave but with the brightness from before carried in the dancing piano melody and your feet bounce with the notes- a triple toe loop, a double axel. Gradually your confidence grows, and the music builds again for one last final climax as you enter your last spin.

The music fades and you are left, in the centre of the rink, gasping for breath. There are tears pouring down Jimin’s face. Somehow, despite all the flaws and errors, it is the most beautiful and moving performance he has seen in his entire life.

It’s in the moment that Jimin realises something. He doesn’t just want to take you to the Olympics. He wants to see you all the way through. Every loss, every triumph, every high-point and low-point… He wants to be there beside you for it all. He’d been in darkness for so long and he’s suddenly found his light. It’s you.

You meet his gaze as the crowd roars with applause and people pelt bouquets onto the ice. And your eyes are red rimmed and teary, but you smile, and it is the most heart-stoppingly beautiful smile he has ever seen in his life. It’s only been a few short months, and yet…

And yet he loves you.

Your coach would have been so proud.

You don’t end up taking home the gold medal. Despite your admirable determination to skate in your injured state, there were too many technical slipups for the judges to overlook. Still, with your awesome score carrying over from the short program, and your impressive recovery in the second half of your free program, you land an impressive second place.

Jimin likes the colour on you better anyway- as you walk along side him, the silver medal around your neck bounces against your chest and catches the light and it matches perfectly with the delicate silver chain and silly cat pendant that dangles at your collarbone. But none of it shines brighter than your smile.

“You did really well.” He reassures you, as he follows you out of the rink, towards your car.

“I know.” You say smugly. Your tone is at odds with the banadages around your head and on your face and the medal that glints silver instead of gold.

“She would have been proud.” He informs you, and your answering smile is even more smug.

“I know.” You answer cheerfully, and it brings a smile to his face.

“I’m proud.” He tells you, and you shrug nonchalantly as the two of you arrive just outside his car.

“I know.” Still, you are smug and Jimin is gripped with the sudden and cheeky urge to see what you don’t know.

“I love you.” He tries, one final time, and the smile slides off your face and is replaced with something shocked. Jimin grins as he gets into the car, and it takes you a moment to recover from your shock and slide into the passenger seat.

“I… didn’t know that.” You finally say, and Jimin laughs. He shrugs. You open your mouth and close it a few times before you attempt at last to respond sincerely. “I… I like…. no, I love y-“

“Save it for the Olympics.” He cuts you off, and your eyes go wide in a comical way that makes him laugh. “You can say it when you get the gold medal.”

Your eyes harden with the challenge and you petulantly fold your arms across your chest in answer.

“Just wait and see, then.” Is your answer, your pride provoked, and honestly Jimin wouldn’t have it any other way. Perhaps he should feel uneasy, or desperately need to hear that you reciprocate his feelings. It’s a risky gamble, to not just wait for your response for something that might not even happen, but to delay it. But see, that’s the thing. He knows it’s going to happen. He has all the time in the world, now, and he can absolutely afford to wait for the Olympics.

Because you’re going to take home his third gold medal for him.

#jimin x reader #btsboulangerie #park jimin x reader #jimin angst #jimin fluff #monthly prompt #writing

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shanix-the-stars · 4 years

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Worshipers of the Old

Kylo Ren x OC / Kylo Ren x Reader

Read on AO3

Summary: He arrived at the archive during the late hours of the night, searching for answers regarding a long lost Force ability. When AR-210 is assigned to help him, she would never have anticipated the strange and terrifying series of events that were to follow... and what it all meant for her.

*Written in first person; main character has feminine qualities, but doesn’t have any defining characteristics.

Chapter 1: A Healing World

Warnings: None

Word Count: 3,018

A/N: hello! thank you for taking the time to read my story! this is the first star wars fic i’ve written, so i hope it’s good enough for this wonderful, amazing community.

this story does not follow the movies’ timeline and is heavily based on lore and Legends material. i put my own twist on things so it’s not important to read/look at any background info on any of it. however, if you want to read more, i suggest visiting Wookieepedia (also a great source for inspiration).

please enjoy!

『ID: AR-210

Passcode: ******

Keyword: Lower Level Overview Report』

I press the enter key on my datapad before setting it down on my desk, letting the entry load as I run out to the main lobby. Thirty minutes remain, and we aren’t even ready. Dozens of faculty members and students are rushing back and forth, each carrying some sort of device or package in their hands. I make a beeline for the Director’s office, but a voice calls out behind me before I can rush inside.

“Ahré!”

I whip my head around, seeing the Director himself running in my direction. His graying hair is a mess, and I can tell that his wrinkles are, well, even more wrinkly than before. I can practically feel the stress radiating off of him once he stops in front of me. “D-Director Malobry, I was just about to-“

“Reassure me that all the holobooks on the fifth floor in the east wing are all finally organized and shelved?” He storms past me and slams his office door open. I quickly follow. “It’s hell out there, and if that damn General sees that we’re behind schedule for the third consecutive month, he’ll have my head on a platter.”

“I-I’m sure that won’t be the case, Director-“

He holds a hand up. “Ahré, please.” He takes a breath, clearly trying to calm himself down. He lowers his voice. “Is the east wing done or not?”

I open my mouth but almost immediately clamp it shut. I don’t have any good news, and truth be told, none of those holobooks are shelved.

The Director waits for me to give him an answer, but after a moment, it seems like I don’t need to. Still, I hand my head and close my eyes, uttering a soft "no" under my breath.

There’s a pause. He collapses back into his chair and runs a hand through his hair. “Shit.”

Guilt forms in the pit of my stomach. The fear of witnessing the General’s wrath invades my mind, but perhaps the Director’s anger might be more concerning for the moment. I wasn’t even the archivist assigned to that wing, but I know who was: Jolson. The thought of him being reprimanded—or worse—for the third time this month... I can feel my head swim with fear.

“Go help Jolson with that floor,” the Director says quietly. He’s already accepted his fate. “Make sure you get every droid working on those shelves. We might still have a chance.”

I’m surprised, but I make a point not to show it. I bow my head and exit the office, merging with the traffic of people busying about. Several droids are attending to other minuscule chores in other rooms, so I call on them to go to the east wing before rounding up a few other archivists as well.

I glance at the time on one of the walls, but I don’t give myself the time to process the numbers. I immediately look away and make my way to the fifth floor.

Just focus, Ahré.

Once I arrive, there is a frenzy of excitement and eagerness flowing in the room as piles of holobooks and scrolls are being carried from one end to the other. Half of the staff inside is working on the main lower shelves, while the other is up on the mezzanine. It’s a slightly relieving sight, but I try not to let that get my hopes up. The majority of the shelves are still empty.

“Ahré! Over here!”

I turn to see Jolson on the other side of the room, wearing a fresh new uniform and a pair of shoes. His usually messy black hair swept up into a bun, and I can tell he put a little more effort into today’s occasion. Still, he looks a little tired. I watch him jog over with a stack of new flimsiplast, a big smile painted on his face. I do my best to return it with a disapproving frown.

He raises an eyebrow. “What?”

“We have less than half an hour until the General arrives. He’s already at Aurora looking at things over there. And the Director knows about your...” I gesture to the entirety of the room. “...lack of shelving.”

“Malobry can go die in the pits of Kaon for all I care,” he huffs, walking toward one of the supply shelves. “Hope to the Force one of the scranges get to him before anything else does.”

I trail behind him, suppressing an eye roll. “I know the both of you don’t... get along. But can you please, at least for today, keep your head on your shoulders? If the General sees one thing out of place, what’s to stop him from getting rid of Malobry?”

“Come on, Ahré. You know as well as I do Hux doesn’t have anyone else to look over these libraries. Not after all that’s happened.” He sets the packets of flimsiplast down on the floor before pulling out his datapad. “Besides, the Supreme Leader personally appointed Malobry. I doubt the General would want to oppose him.”

He does have a point... but there’s been talk about infighting among the First Order, especially between the both of them. After Kylo Ren got rid of the former Supreme Leader, things have become rather tense. There seems to be a stricter hold on First Order regions and institutions; not to mention the seemingly never-ending war with the Resistance. However, that only meant escape from the Yuuzhan Vong for Obroa-skai, so I can only complain so much.

Jolson snaps his fingers in front of my face, bringing me back to attention. “Obroa-skai to Ahré, helloooo?”

I swat his hand away. “Sorry, just... thinking,” I say dumbly.

He chuckles. “Sure. Now, stop worrying and help me with sections eight, nine, and ten, okay? We’ll get it done.” He looks down at me, his big blue eyes full of reassurance. A sincere smile graces his lips. He knows how to calm me down, and as much as I hate it, it works. Although he tends to lag behind most faculty and staff, he can always be counted on to do one thing: be a friend.

I guess that’s all I can really ask from him.

The General arrives at the archives precisely on time. He is accompanied by a few other officers with identical uniforms, some of whom seem to care less about the visit. At the entrance remain at least a dozen stormtroopers with blasters gripped in their hands, while a couple of others follow behind the group of men.

Odd.

All of our staff members are lined across the lobby, everyone standing in attention as General Hux and his entourage make their way up to the Director and I. He surveys the lines, eyeing each and every one of us with a scrutinizing glare. I have to stop myself from squirming in my spot and pray to the beings above I look presentable enough. I can already feel a chill running down my spine.

“Very well,” he finally says. He turns to Malobry. “I trust that work on Celebratus has ceased, Director.”

He nods. “Yes, General. We have been working tirelessly on the facility. The east and west wings are complete, as well as the lower levels.”

There’s a hum of approval. “Excellent. The Medical Director at Aurora has reported that there haven’t been any border attacks there as of late, so I believe the situation to be corresponding with this sector?”

“That would be correct,” Malobry confirms. I glance up at him, seeing a thin layer of sweat coating his forehead and neck. Poor guy.

General Hux turns back to the staff, giving them a final once-over before nodding. “You are all dismissed.”

They bow their heads quickly and head out in different directions of the archive. I catch a glimpse of Jolson, seeing him send me a playful wink my way. Warmth blooms in my chest at the small gesture.

“AR-210.”

I snap back into position. “Y-Yes, General?”

“The Supreme Leader is planning a visit later today. Seeing as you are the head clerk for the archive, I believe you could aid him with something he needs.”

My brows furrow together. Need? What in the galaxy would the leader of the First Order possibly need from here?

I manage a semi-nod, but it feels more like a confused tilt of the head instead. I’m sure I look oblivious, but I can’t help but feel like I am. Perhaps I’m missing something. “Of course. May I ask what he is looking for?”

The General scoffs. “He wouldn’t tell me,” he says, a hint of irritation laced in his words. “But I doubt it’s of much importance. Our own records and archives weren’t sufficient enough for his... research projects. He insisted on coming to Obroa-skai.”

My head is swimming with a thousand questions, none of them actually verbalized. Instead, I relax my features and bow my head. “I’d be happy to help, General.”

“Good. Now, Director, if you could show us around the facility, we will be on our way soon.”

I’ve never seen Malobry move faster. “Yes, yes, of course. Please, gentlemen, if you could follow me...”

Within ten seconds, they round a corner and disappear from view. I’m left standing in the lobby with the feeling of nothing but dread in the pit of my stomach. Now I’m the one sweating. There isn’t even a hint of comfort anywhere nearby, just a receptionist desk on the other side of the room. Stormtroopers still stand outside the entrance, perfectly still and ready at a moment’s notice. I decide to step away into my own office and wait there instead. It doesn’t help.

I grab my datapad and scroll through the entry I loaded up earlier. The words are a blur on the screen as I try to read, but it’s useless. Fear grips at my mind. Something about this doesn’t feel right. The Supreme Leader... in need of help with information he can’t already acquire? I sigh and sit down at my desk, letting my thoughts drown in stress.

Hours pass and no Kylo Ren. The General has already left, as well as half the stormtroopers that had initially arrived. The remaining still stand outside. My nerves have somewhat calmed down, but what remains is worry. Perhaps, to someone above, this may just be some sort of punishment for me. For what reason, I do not know, nor do I think it matters at this point.

A knock at my door nearly sends my heart over the point of no return. I get up, composing myself as I make my way to open it. The anxiety kicks back in, and for a moment I begin to feel nauseous. This could be it—the defining moment of whether or not I get to live another day. Would one slip-up ensure my demise? Would he really go that far? What if I can’t find what he’s looking for? I force my thoughts aside and slide the door open, relieved to see that it’s only Jolson. His eyes widen once they meet mine. “Ahré? Are you alright?”

“Jolson.” I let out a shaky breath. “Thank the stars. And no, no, I’m not alright,” I reply blatantly. He waits on me to elaborate, his worry turning into confusion.

“Well... what’s going on?”

I peek out into the corridor to make sure nobody else is present before pulling him into my office. “Sit,” I command, gesturing to the chair in the corner. He obliges, but the concerned expression he wears doesn’t waver for a second.

I slam the door shut. “The Supreme Leader is coming to the archive later,” I begin, walking behind my desk. “Apparently he needs help finding something.”

“Okay,” Jolson starts, hesitant. “What does he need from here?”

“That’s just it. I asked the General the same question, but even he didn’t know.” I fall back into my chair. “I also don’t know when he’s coming. He could be walking through the front doors right now. Maybe he is, and I’m just back here panicking. He’s going to think I’m terrified of him, which I’m sure he already knows, but it’s just going to—“

“Ahré,” Jolson interrupts, tone firm and deep. I shut my mouth immediately. “Why are you worrying so much? You shouldn’t be.”

I huff. “Why not? It’s the Supreme Leader-“

“Who is coming here specifically for help, Ahré.”

I pause, taken aback. He’s coming here... for help. For help.

Jolson’s features smooth out into a tired smile, no doubt exhausted after today’s near-disaster. I take a moment to look at him, really look at him, and see dark circles under his eyes. I suddenly forget about the Supreme Leader.

“Have you been taking care of yourself, Jolson?” I ask, my tone sounding perhaps a little more accusing than intended. “You look tired.”

He stands, chuckling as if amused, and extends an arm out towards me. I walk over. He wraps his arm around my shoulders, squeezing me gently. “I am,” he says. “But you’re anxiety over this whole thing might be tiring me out even more.”

I glare at him.

“I’m joking.”

We walk out into the main lobby. A few librarians and archivists are leaving for the night—no doubt heading out to the bar—while others are coming in for their shifts. Malobry is talking to Vess, one of our receptionists, with a bright smile I haven’t seen in months. The weight of today’s visit has been finally lifted off of our shoulders. We probably won’t have to worry about another inspection for a year or two. I only wish I could celebrate with the others.

Jolson stops for a moment, turning to face me. “You’re going to be fine,” he reassures once again. “Remember, he’s the one who needs your help. No need to get overwhelmed.”

His eyes bore into mine, and all I can do is nod.

He pats my arm softly before heading for the doors. I watch as he slaps Malobry’s back forcefully as he walks by, earning him a near disgusted look from the elder. He too heads out for the night a moment later.

The clock reads 25:00, and I decide whether to go back to my office and wait or just go home. General Hux did say that the Supreme Leader would be coming today... there’s still an hour left. I’ll wait until then.

I walk up the receptionist's desk, replaying Jolson’s words in my head. He’s right. There’s no need to get worked up about it. I know what I’m doing. This has been my job for the last five years, after all... I’m allowed to feel confident.

“Hey, Vess,” I greet with a warm smile. She looks up from the datapad in her hands, immediately returning my smile with her own.

“Ahré, oh my goodness! How are you? How was the inspection today? I heard that Jolson almost didn’t get his level of the east wing finished on time, and that the General asked you to help the Supreme Leader with something, and that Malobry almost passed out. Oh! Is it true that...” She speaks at a pace I can hardly keep up with, but I let her go on. Her golden curls bounce excitedly at the news of today’s events, and I almost feel bad that she has the late shift this month. It’s clear that she likes to stay in the loop.

“Everything is great,” I say once she’s done. “And yes, it was pretty busy today, but also kind of scary.”

“Oh, I’m sure! After all of that? I wish I could have seen it!” She leans back in her chair dramatically, bringing a hand up to her forehead with a swoon. “You are so lucky, Ahré.”

If only.

I giggle and shake my head. “Hey, I’m going to be in the fifth library study on the second floor until the Supreme Leader arrives. If you could direct him there when he comes, that would be great.”

She nods eagerly. “Of course! Absolutely no problem! Have fun!”

I thank her and go back to my office to grab my datapad before making my way up to the second floor. It’s quiet in this part of the building. No students, no faculty or staff... just the low hum of the heater and a couple of droids finishing up their work. It’s the perfect place to relax at this hour. I enter the study and climb up to the mezzanine. There’s an alcove in the back, a small armchair and lamp occupying the space. It looks so inviting, I have to stop myself from running over and laying down for a nap. Out of the couple thousand study rooms, this is by far my favorite.

I pass by a window that looks far out to the border, stopping for a second to watch the red blinking lights on the gate. On the other side lies a frozen wasteland, filled with nothing except what remains of the Yuuzhan Vong. Their arrival to Obroa-skai two years ago was anything but expected, and before we all knew it, they had destroyed much of the planet’s life within the span of a few months. It wasn’t until the First Order caught wind of the invasion did they come. They were able to wipe away a majority of the enemy rather quickly. Since then, we’ve all been trying our best to return to a sense of normalcy... but even now, that reality seems to be illusive as ever.

I tear my eyes away from the view and sit down in the armchair. The anxiety I’ve held back for the last few minutes settles in once again, and this time it just feels a little more real. I run my fingers across my datapad in an attempt to distract my nerves but to no avail. I turn it on and see the lower level report, still open and ready for me to read.

I skim through the subheadings: field reports in need of filing... more software malfunctions... registering new reference codes... Nothing out of the ordinary. Again. I sigh and begin to read from the top.

About a half-hour later, I hear the door open on the other side of the room.

#kylo ren x oc #kylo ren x reader #star wars #star wars legends #kylo ren fanfiction #star wars fanfiction #kylo ren fluff #reader insert #worshipers of the old #shanix writes #kylo ren

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blueikeproductions · 6 years

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So having watched the first season of Transformers Cyberverse, I’ve got some thoughts to express. Overall I thought it was boring and a bit uninspired in places, but I generally think that’s more on me as a veteran fan. The first season aims to tell the abridged origin of the Great War, which seems loosely based on the Aligned and IDW origins: the Decepticons came to power to overthrow a oppressive government. As such it doesn’t do much new, so it’s nothing I, or other veterans, haven’t heard before, but as an entry point for new fans, I think it serves its purpose to give them the general gist of things. Interwoven with the backstory is Bumblebee and Windblade’s exploits on Earth, as they dodge enemy Seekers, fix Bee’s memories (which is where the flashbacks come from), and locate The Ark to reunite with the other Autobots. Like the Bumblebee movie, the titular Autobot has lost his memories, and fumbles his way around in a child like manner, needing Windblade’s Cityspeaker skills to refresh his memory so he can tell her where the Ark is. This part of the story is a little better, as it offers more original material, with additional flashbacks as to how Bee and Windy met. Their friendship is rather touching, if mildly cliche from a teenage romcom scenario. Back on Cybertron, Bee was a charming dork while Windblade was the new girl in town (like in IDW, she’s from Caminus), and feel in with the popular clique: Starscream’s jets. Charmed by Bumblebee’s antics and disgusted by Starscream’s cruelty, Windy decides to hang with Bee and a friendship is born. The sparse prewar segments are generally the best parts, showing a simplified glimpse at what Cybertron was like. There’s a hint of mild Shapeism, in that the jet Transformers think they’re the cream of the crop, and look down on ground vehicles. Similarly, cars don’t have a high opinion of the smarmy jets either. Nevertheless, everyone seems to generally get along just fine at MacCadam’s Old Oil House, with Soundwave and other Seekers providing musical entertainment. MacCadam’s is probably the best episode of the first season, which shows the subtle collapse of Cybertronian society though small timeskips. Cities are reduced to rubble, tensions are high, but the Oil House stood firm for the longest time, helped by MacCadam’s strict no fighting policy. When Megatron intends to rip the place apart looking for Deadlock, owner Mac transforms into an unseen form to frighten the tyrant off, and lets the future Drift stay for as long as he likes. Also a new Cybertronian sport, Cube, is shown, which seems to be Quidditch mixed with football. It’s honestly not that interesting, but Bumblebee was such a big fan of the sport, he tries to sneak into the stadium to see it, ultimately interfering in a game (though at this point he was trying to stop a bored Starscream from ruining the game). Worth nothing Cyberverse’s sister series, Rescue Bots Academy, also includes Cube and it’s other biggest fan Hot Shot. The present day stories though do have their flaws. There’s really no point for the Autobots to be on Earth, as it feels obligatory more so than anything else because that’s what previous stories did. The Robots in Disguise factor seems largely abandoned as nobody bothers to scan Earth modes, and freely run around in their space forms. Grimlock seems to be the only one who scanned an Earth form however, though this wasn’t made immediately clear in flashbacks since he still had saurian like kibble. (Hindsight suggests he probably turned into a vaguely saurian tank however). Really, outside of Grimlock’s brief backstory and Shockwave’s plan to raze Earth in order to kill the Autobots and collect the Allspark, the Transformers could’ve been running around Pluto or Mars instead. Nobody interacts with or befriends humans, so there’s not much of a drive to defend Earth beyond it’s the right thing to do. And also the Ark, but still. Character work is probably the worst aspect of the show unfortunately. Outside of Grimlock, MacCadam and Teletraan X, nobody really has any interesting personality or quirks. Bee is transplanted from his Movie and Prime incarnation, while Windy seems mostly defined by her sisterly relationship with Bee. As such she doesn’t really work on her own, as she lacks any of the traits possessed by her earlier counterparts. At best I can say she’s loyal and a good fighter, but without someone to bounce off of, she’s uninteresting. Bee doesn’t have anything new going for him either. He still speaks with his radio and is the little buddy, but that’s about it. Oh, the Allspark apparently reacted to him on Cybertron, implying a greater destiny, but nothing else is said about this for the time being. The only other major presence are Slipstream’s Seekers, but they might as well have been Vehicons, as there’s little to no character development for any of them. They’re all little more than dumb thugs. At most, Slipstream wants to look good in front of high command, but this isn’t explored much. Really the only interesting Seeker is Acid Storm, who due to animation errors and, perhaps a lack of communication between the show runners and Hasbro, is said to be gender fluid to cover up the error. It’s actually a fun idea that could be fleshed out more, among other things, on how other Decepticons view it (Slip is fine with it, but Shockwave sees no combat value in it), but I fear they’ll not be allowed to do so. The other legacy Autobots and Decepticons seen have nothing new to offer, and are who they’ve been in the original G1 cartoon. Grimlock is an exception as he has a split personality, being prim and proper in robot mode, but his classic caveman brute in beast mode. In an example of telling, not showing, Grimlock was revealed to have reigned on Earth during the dinosaur age, allegedly creating an advanced dinosaur society. It’s another cool idea, but as we’re not really shown how this worked, it feels half baked at best. Many wish we would’ve gotten a spotlight episode of Grim and his dinosaur friends instead, but who knows, maybe a possible IDW Cyberverse comic might dip into that more. Because of the show’s 10 minute time frame, a lot of more emotional and impactful scenes are stunted pretty badly, most notably a flashback detailing a heroic sacrifice by Blurr, but it’s clear the writers are doing their best with what they’ve got to work with. Similarly new Decepticon Shadow Striker also gets the shaft in development. Characteriszed as a shortfused, competitive girl, Shadow was at one point the Decepticons’ top bounty hunter and sharpshooter, but an accident following the capture of Optimus left her severely crippled. Now having a mishmash body cobbled together by Shockwave, she’s no longer able to do a lot of what she was able to, and is driven by an insane fury to get revenge on Bumblebee, who played an admittedly minor role in her accident. They’re supposed to be arch enemies, but their limited interactions feel very forced. If anything she had more chemistry with fellow impulsive wreckloose Hot Rod. It does feel like there might be set up for her to switch sides, as Bee has been shown to cut her some slack that she partially acknowledges, but I might be looking too hard into it. Overall, Cyberverse repackages what came before it, but does very little new to innovate. The season finale ends with the Decepticon Battle Fleet zeroing in on Earth to wipe out the restored Autobots. This at least suggests a straight forward 80’s style clash between Bots and Cons next season. I’m hoping the second season has some better stories, but talk of killing off a lot of the characters (a jokey comment in particular says Optimus dies immediately in the second season, with another implying Bumblebee becomes Goldbug), makes me a bit skeptical of the show’s story going forward. I’m still gonna check it out though, and if the Goldbug thing is true, I wouldn’t mind seeing that side of Bee again.

#Transformers #Cyberverse #Cyberverse review

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Archer Season 12: Casey Willis On Sterling And Cyril’s Emotional Breakthrough

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This article contains spoilers for Archer season 12 episode 5.

Archer has a fascinating relationship with change. Major elements like the show’s genre have transformed, but a constant through the years are the characters and their relationships with one another. The series has made it clear that these character dynamics are quite toxic in many ways, some of which have left the characters looking for ways to grow. The most recent seasons have prioritized the cause and effect nature of Archer waking up from his coma and returning to work, which has left everyone feeling very raw and vulnerable, including Sterling Archer himself.

Archer’s latest episode, “Shots,” dresses itself up as a playful night of liquor and laughs, but it becomes a deep look into Archer’s poisonous effect on his friends, specifically Cyril. Archer EP Casey Willis and producer Pierre Cerrato deconstruct the emotional entry and its significance in the season, putting together the glorious “Pampage” sequence, and if those were really the origins of “Sploosh.”

Archer Season 12 Episode 5 – “Shots”

Written by Matt Roller “Sex, drugs, and monster trucks! Archer and the gang celebrate another barely successful mission.”

DEN OF GEEK: With this being the half-way point of the season, were there any sort of goals or expectations in check for this point in the season, or was it not thought about in such a precise way?

PIERRE CERRATO: We are definitely thinking about how we are telling the story across the entire season. It may feel like a standalone episode, but I can’t really slot this episode anywhere else in our season. We needed to feel that the gang had been on a few missions and could use a break. We also needed to expand on Lana and Robert’s relationship a bit. And we really needed to Weekend at Bernie’s two different characters. That was a must.

There’s a bit of a bottle episode mentality with this installment when it begins and a lot of the entry is contained to the bar. What was the agenda in scaling things down here and was it ever smaller in nature?

PIERRE CERRATO: For the first half of the episode it may feel like there isn’t a ton going on narratively and we are just hanging out at a bar, but there are some nuggets in there that will come into play later in the season. While those early scenes may feel small in scale, hanging out in a populated bar comes with its own difficulties. We have to design and layout every individual character that is present at the bar and make sure they are engaged in just enough activity to feel natural, but not enough to take your attention away from our main action. Once we enter the rave, the scale of the episode gets pretty big.

There’s a self-aware nature to this episode as the characters reflect on the rut that they’ve found themselves in and the predictable nature of their dynamics. Why did this feel like the right time to ask these questions?

CASEY WILLIS: This episode was always planned to fall in the middle of the season. It was a great time for the characters to reflect and take stock of their situations. We also planted a lot of seeds for stories that will pay off in the second half of the season. And it was great to have Sandra, with her outside perspective, act as a cheerleader for the team at the start of the episode. However, by the end of the episode she realizes the team is a mess.

The brewing personal drama and stress with Lana and Robert continus to carry over and be present. Talk on that a little and why having that as a throughline through the season rather than them being entirely broken up or on healthy ground?

CASEY WILLIS: We wanted Lana and Robert’s relationship to get more complex and a bit messy this season. Is it because Archer is back in the picture, or is Archer just shining a spotlight on some behaviors Lana ignored in the past? This is a season long storyline and we are very excited for everyone to see how Lana and Robert handle these hiccups.

Lana seems to regress in some ways in this episode while she searches for clarity. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

CASEY WILLIS: We wanted Lana’s story to contrast Archer’s in this episode. We also wanted her and Sandra’s story to connect to the previous episode and just show Lana having some fun. So many times Lana has to play the “wet blanket” role in an episode and it’s nice to see her cut loose. In fact, it’s Pam of all people who tries and fails to stop Lana from partying with the Prince! When Pam is the voice of reason, your party is off the rails.

The most moving material from this episode is Archer’s resolve to “fix” Cyril. This is a major aspect of the previous season, but why did it feel important to readdress it here and go so far as to resolve the problem?

CASEY WILLIS: Last season we saw the decline of Cyril and while Pam tried to rebuild him, Archer and Cyril’s relationship was much more contentious. Archer and Cyril had some great moments though, especially in last season’s Aleister episode. We wanted to show Archer’s growth and him realizing that he does care for Cyril in his own twisted way. Also, we wanted to show Archer having fun in situations we normally don’t see him in, while also showing a glimpse into Cyril’s free time.

Where is Archer’s head at during the end of this, does he actually feel remorse, and will he be closer with Cyril moving forward at all?

CASEY WILLIS: I think he grew a bit, but he isn’t emotionally mature enough to share that with Cyril. We purposefully had Archer undercut all the progress he made when Pam called him. Then we further rubbed salt into the wound when Archer used Cyril as a step-stool. It’s just Archer’s way of showing affection.

The neon visuals during the “Pampage” dance party look gorgeous and are a serious highlight. Was it difficult to construct that scene?

PIERRE CERRATO: Our team went above and beyond to answer the call of the “Pampage.” It was a very complicated sequence. The script outlined four different areas in the warehouse that Pam takes the gang to. We needed to figure out what it would look like if there was a rave, a bare knuckle fight and a punk band playing while a monster truck is crushing cars in the back. Everyone did a fantastic job with that specific scene, and it took us a long time to get through it. If you take a closer look at the whole episode, you’ll realize just how many beautiful set pieces there are throughout. For example, the game store, the planetarium, Ding Dong’s strip club (the logo is my personal favorite), etc. Our artists, designers and animators are pretty incredible across the board.

CASEY WILLIS: Just a quick side note. We never really promote Archer merch because we are so focused on producing the show, however, when creating the “Pampage” shirts that Pam and the gang wore in this episode, we thought it would be great if FX would sell them. For anyone interested, they’re available soon via https://shop.fxnetworks.com/collections/archer.

This episode also seems to provide the origins of “Sploosh.” Did it feel time to provide some context there?

CASEY WILLIS: Is it the origin or did Lana just think it might be the origin? I am of the opinion that “Sploosh” has an organic origin from deep in Pam’s past. Sploosh, the bouncer, was probably bestowed that nickname by Pam, but I doubt he is the origin of the word.

It’s not just specific to this episode, but there’s some really nice staccato jazzy music that’s present throughout the season. How did this season’s sound come about?

PIERRE CERRATO: We can thank our amazing composer, JG Thirwell. He has been working with us since season seven and prior to that, we used needle drop for all our music. It worked well, but you can’t beat having an original score and developing a musical language with someone as talented as JG.

We had a phone call at the beginning of season 12 to go over our plans and share some musical ideas. We knew that Fabian was going to be a season-long villain, so we made sure to give him his own themes. We usually temp the music in our edit and when JG gets it, he’ll put his spin on it. If we use something that he has composed for another episode, he’ll tweak it to match the new timing, add extra instrumentation or anything else he feels would work for the scene. We don’t really go back and forth too much. We’ll generally do a round of notes and we’re good.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Our writers’ room walkthrough for Archer’s 12th season will conclude with this season’s eighth and final episode.

Our breakdown of Archer’s 12th season premiere and previous writers’ room walkthroughs on earlier seasons are also available.

The post Archer Season 12: Casey Willis On Sterling And Cyril’s Emotional Breakthrough appeared first on Den of Geek.

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hannahindie · 7 years

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Shameless

Characters: Dean x Reader (Age progression: 10 years old, 18 years old, approximately 22-23 years old, 27 years old, and approximately 33 years old) Word Count: 3,777 Warnings: Fluffy Dean and just a hint of angst. Some language. I think that’s it, really. A/N: Welcome to the third entry for my Han’s Sing It With Me! 800 Follower Challenge. This one was written based upon Garth Brooks’ “Shameless”, which you can listen to HERE. It was requested by the lovely @charliebradbury1104, I hope that you enjoy it, sweetheart!

Beta’d by the ever wonderful @trexrambling : “Well hello there COLD CHILLS OF HAPPINESS” and my twinny @pinknerdpanda : “Ouch!!! My heart.” Thank you, loves, for all the encouragement and help you give me every day, with not just writing but just...everything ever.

As always, tags are at the bottom. If you would like to be added, please let me know!

It started with a kiss.

The sun was warm and Dean lay sprawled out on the hood of an abandoned car in Bobby’s junkyard, a rare quiet moment just to himself as he watched the clouds float across the bright blue sky. As usual, John had left Dean and Sam at Bobby’s, and Bobby had taken Sam into town to pick out library books. The sound of a car door slamming shut brought Dean out of his daydream, and he looked over, squinting as the sun struck his eyes.

An old pickup had pulled up next to Bobby’s house, and a man close to his own father’s age climbed out. He spotted Dean sitting up in the distance and waved, “Hello!”

Dean hopped down and walked slowly over to him, his hand resting gently on the knife John had told him to always keep on him. “Hello.”

The man held his hand out and Dean stared at it, his eyes narrowed as he looked quietly at the man. The man smiled and dropped his hand, “You probably don’t remember me, do you? Name’s Daniel… You’re one of John’s boys, right?” Dean nodded, but remained silent. “I thought so, you carry yourself like a Winchester.” He chuckled, but quickly cleared his throat when Dean remained silent. “Anyway, Bobby wouldn’t be home, would he?”

Dean shook his head, “No, he went to town.”

Daniel sighed, “Damn...he said he’d be home. Okay...well…” he glanced back at his truck, then looked back at Dean, “You’ve got a kid brother, don’t you?” Once again, Dean nodded, a frown forming on his small, freckled face. “Alright, great. Can you do me a favor?” Dean shrugged, curious as to what he could possibly do for this strange man, but also disappointed that his quiet afternoon had been disrupted.

“Y/N, baby, c’mon out here! Grab your bag!”

Dean’s eyes shifted from Daniel to the truck just as the door creaked open slowly. A small, scuffed Chuck Taylor hit the ground, then the second followed. Dean’s eyes traveled up to see who the feet belonged to. He took in the scraped knees and messy clothes, the small hands clutching a worn out backpack, and a nervous face with a scattering of freckles across her nose. Her long hair was pulled back, but messy, and there was a smudge of dirt just on her cheek bone. She stood next to the open truck door and stared at Dean nervously.

“C’mon, he's not gonna bite ya. Y/N, this is…” He looked at Dean and raised an eyebrow.

“Dean,” he answered, his eyes never leaving her.

“Dean Winchester, this is Y/F/N Y/L/N. She’s uh...she's a little shy. C’mon, baby, Daddy’s gotta go.” She shut the truck door and trudged over to where Daniel and Dean were standing. Daniel knelt down and put a hand on her shoulder, “I’ll be back soon. Bobby will be back in a little bit, so don't worry. I'm sure Dean can keep you entertained until then, right Dean?”

Dean nodded, “Yes, sir.”

Daniel smiled, “See? It'll be fine.” He kissed Y/N on the forehead and stood up. “I'll be back, pumpkin. What do Goonies never say?”

“Goonies never say die.” Her voice was quiet and unsure.

“That's right, Goonies never say die. I'll call in a couple days. Be good for Bobby, alright? I'm sure he's got his hands full with two Winchester boys.” He winked at Dean, then walked to his truck and climbed in. The truck started with a roar, and Daniel took off, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake.

Dean heard a quiet sniffle and looked over to see a tear rolling down Y/N’s face. “What's wrong?”

She glanced at him, her wide eyes shining with tears, “He always leaves, and he never takes me with him.” She looked back towards the slowly shrinking truck, “I don’t think he wants me around. Ever since Mama died…” she trailed off, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Aw, c’mon, that’s not true. Of course he wants you around, why wouldn’t he?” Dean shoved his hands in his pockets, unsure of what to do with this new development in his day.

“He says I remind him of her, like it’s a good thing...but I think that’s why he leaves me behind. I...I don’t know how to explain it.” She bit her lip, and Dean could tell she was trying not to cry harder. It reminded him of Sam when their own father left them at Bobby’s, or stranded at hotels for days at a time. He reached out and put his arm gently around her shoulders, unsure of what else to do.

“It’s alright, he just wants to keep you safe. Our dad does the same thing. It’s because they love us...and the job they do, it’s important. One day, we’ll be old enough and we can help save the world. It’s kind of like the family business, you know?”

Y/N sniffed and wiped an arm across her eyes, “You really think so?”

Dean nodded, “I know so.” Dean dropped his arm and put his hands back into his pockets, “You hungry? I was going to make some grilled cheese if you want some.”

She sniffed again, but this time a wide smile crossed her face, “Yea, I’m starving!” She swung the backpack around and slipped her arms through the straps, then leaned over and kissed Dean swiftly on the cheek before skipping up the porch steps. “Thank you, Dean Winchester.”

Dean felt his cheeks grow hot and he dropped his eyes to the ground, suddenly embarrassed that he let her catch him off guard. The sound of the screen door shutting snapped him out of it, and he ran up the stairs after her.

Dean was laying under his car, trying to locate the source of the oil leak that had seemingly sprung up overnight, when he heard the front porch door slam shut.

“Oh my GOD!” Y/N practically screeched, her voice getting louder as she got closer to him. “This is such bullshit!” Dean chuckled to himself, but continued to work, knowing she'd eventually find her way to him. He heard her stomping towards him, and he prepared himself for the verbal onslaught she was about to unleash.

Y/N’s familiar, scuffed Chuck Taylors stopped by his feet, and Dean grinned; some things never changed. “What’s up, princess?”

“Oh, not you too, Winchester!” He felt the car shift as she leaned against it.

“Dammit, Y/N, are you trying to crush me?” he yipped, breathing a sigh of relief when it shifted back as she stood up.

“Sorry.” She knelt down to look at him, “What’s wrong with it now?”

Dean sighed, “The damn oil pan has more holes in it than the plot to Batman Begins. I don’t get it.” He shoved himself from under the car, and Y/N stood up and returned to leaning against the side door.

“You know, if you’d quit trying to offroad in this thing it would probably be in better shape.”

He rolled his eyes, “No, it’s just a shitty car. If I could just drive the Impala every once in awhile…”

“First of all, you know John is never going to let you do that. Second, she wouldn’t be any good off roading; she’s a tank. She’d sink in the mud before you got very far.” She crossed her arms and smirked.

Dean stood up and wiped his hands off on his jeans, “Yea, yea, whatever.” He grabbed a Coke from the cooler and tossed it to Y/N, then grabbed one for himself. “What were you screeching about earlier?”

She opened the bottle angrily and gulped it down, grimacing as the carbonation burned her throat, “Dad won’t let me go with him, and Bobby and John both sided with him. It’s bullshit, you go all the time!”

Dean shrugged, “It’s...it’s different with you, I guess.”

Y/N glared at him, “How? How is it any different? You guys go off all the time, and I’m never allowed. I get to stay home and watch Sammy, or sit on my own here, or at some skanky hotel. What happened to ‘when we’re old enough, we can help them save the world. The family business, you know?’? Do you remember that at all Dean? It’s bullshit. I’m just as strong as you, I fight just as well as you, and you know it. You know it.” She jabbed Dean in the chest in emphasis, and he grimaced.

“I know,” he mumbled, unsure of what else to say.

She leaned back against the car, and Dean snuck a glimpse of her. He watched as she took another sip of Coke, how her throat moved as she gulped the cold beverage. Her long hair was braided and tossed over one bare shoulder carelessly. The freckles that spread across her nose also spanned her shoulders, and he found himself wanting to count each and every sun-kissed one. The only thing missing was the glint in her eye when she was truly excited about something, and Dean realized he would do anything to see it.

“Let’s go.”

She looked over at him, her eyebrow raised, “Go where?”

“To a hunt. I actually...I found one. I hadn’t told Dad yet, and then something else came up, but...I found one. It’s like two hours from here, looks like a simple salt and burn to me.” He turned to walk out of the garage, then stopped when he realized she wasn’t following him, “Well, are you coming?”

“We’re just going to go? What about your car? And we don’t have anything-” Dean grabbed her hand and started pulling her back towards the house, interrupting her mid sentence.

“You think I haven’t been dying to go solo? This isn’t the only car I use. I’ve got one hidden towards the end of the driveway, stocked and ready to go. They’ll never even notice that we’re gone. Sammy’s fourteen, if they leave he can take care of himself.” He paused mid-stride and turned around to face her. The sparkle was back in her eye, and it was everything he’d ever wanted. “Unless you’re too chicken, in which case, I’ll just go alone.” He grinned and released her hand as he turned to go back to the house. He felt her fingers wrap around his as she pulled him back and kissed him on the cheek.

“We’ll see who’s too chicken, Winchester.” She let go of his hand and ran towards the house, braid flying behind her, and Dean couldn’t help but smile.

“Fuck you, Dean!” Y/N spat angrily as she grabbed her bag and stormed towards the door.

Dean stepped in front of her and held a hand up, “Listen, Y/N, it’s not like that-”

“It absolutely is! You have known for years that I can do this job. Hell, you took me on my first hunt and I nailed it. And now, all of a sudden, you don’t trust me? What happened, huh? Who gave you the right to follow me around?”

“It was a big job, okay? I just wanted to make sure you were safe, that’s all.”

Y/N laughed, “Bullshit. I know what it is. It has nothing to do with me being safe, or to make sure I can handle the job. The problem is, you’re like your father. Maybe I should just start calling you John-”

“What is that supposed to mean, huh? I’m like my dad because I’m trying to be careful? I’m sorry if I’d like to keep your hard headed ass alive. I’m sure your dad would really appreciate it if I just let you go off half cocked and you got killed.” Dean’s voice was steady, but he could feel the anger building up.

“Don’t you dare bring my father into this. You have no idea what he would have thought, and you have no right to pretend that you do. He’s gone, Dean, and I don’t need anyone to take his place.”

“You need someone. You can’t just run into these fights on your own. You aren’t…” he trailed off as if he regretted what he’d been about to say.

“I’m not what, Dean? I’m not what? Strong enough? I am strong enough. I was strong when John came home and told me my father was dead, I was strong when I went on my first solo hunt, and I’m strong enough to leave. The question is, are you strong enough to deal with me and Sammy leaving? I’m pretty sure the only reason you want me here is because Sam is gone and you don’t know what to do without having someone to boss around.” She stepped closer to Dean, her hands clenched in fists at her sides.

“I’ll be just fine without your whiny ass following me around! I’ve had to deal with your mopey bullshit since I was ten years old, it’s about time I got a break from it. The door is right there, don’t let it hit you in the ass on the way out,” Dean growled, closing the space between them. They’d fought before, but this time, something was different. There was an electricity, like if he touched her it would go through him and stop his heart.

He didn't know whether he wanted to strangle her or kiss her, and before he could make up his mind, she threw her bag down and pulled him into her. Her arms tangled around his neck, and her lips were on his, hungry and desperate. He gripped her hips tightly and groaned as she bit his bottom lip, pulling it between her teeth roughly. One hand left her hip and buried in her hair, tangling and pulling her harder into him as their tongues met, swirling and exploring like they'd never known what it was to kiss anyone else.

Without warning, Y/N pulled away, her chest heaving as she stared at Dean with wide eyes.

“Y/N…” Dean started, his words stuck in his throat as he watched her pick up her bag.

She looked at him with tears in her eyes as she slipped her arm through the strap, “I...I have to go. I'll see you around, Winchester.” She turned and slipped through the door, shutting it quietly behind her.

“I'm sorry,” he whispered to the empty room.

Dean sat up slowly and shook his head, his ears ringing from the blow he just took. He looked over to see Sam laying unconscious by the door, and, between him and the Colt, a very large and very hungry vampire.

“And here I thought I'd be lucky to get one meal tonight...I've got two, and Winchesters at that! I'm looking forward to tasting that sweet blood.” The vampire licked his lips and Dean groaned.

“Well, the joke’s on you, pal. I replaced my blood with whiskey a long time ago.” Dean grimaced as he tried to stand up. “And good luck with Sasquatch over there, he might as well be made of kale.” Before he could say anything else, Dean’s air was cut off by a giant hand as it wrapped around his throat.

“I'll make do.” He lifted Dean, and Dean smacked feebly at the vampire’s arms as his toes struggled to touch the ground. “Do you know how famous I'm gonna be? The one that finally killed the Winchesters. I'm going to be-” He was interrupted by a giant blade as it sunk into his neck with a sickening crunch. His eyes widened in surprise as the machete was pulled from his neck, and then dropped heavily as whoever was wielding the blade struck him again. Dean hit the floor, his hand at his throat as he struggled to catch his breath.

“Imagine how famous I’ll be for saving the Winchesters. C’mon, Dean, needing a girl to save your ass? You're losing it, old man.”

Dean looked up to see an outstretched hand and grunted as he grabbed it and hoisted himself up, “First of all, I'm 27. Second, we’re the same age, Y/N. What the hell are you doing here?” She looked almost exactly how she did when she'd stormed out of that hotel room years ago. Her hair was a little shorter and was hanging loose instead of in a braid, and she had exchanged her Chuck Taylors for boots, but otherwise, she hadn't changed at all.

“It's nice to see you too, Winchester,” she said softly, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

Dean moved first, throwing his arms around her as he pulled her into him. “You're a little shit, you know that?” he mumbled into her hair and he felt her body shake as she laughed.

“Yea, well...you're an asshole. I guess we’re even.” She pulled back and looked up at him, tears trapped in her lashes, “I heard about John...I'm so sorry, Dean.”

He cleared his throat, “Yea...me too. I'm sorry about a lot of things.”

She nodded, then looked over at Sam, who was finally stirring, “We should probably check on him.” She leaned up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek, “I'm glad I got here in time to save your ass.” She walked over and knelt down next to Sam, and Dean felt something he hadn't felt in a very long time time; he felt whole.

Dean stood in the doorway of the kitchen, watching Y/N as she moved and swayed between the fridge and the counter, singing under her breath. Y/N had traveled with them on and off for years after she'd saved both their asses from that vamp, but once they'd discovered the bunker, he'd built up the courage to ask if she wanted to stay there as well.

He was still trying to get used to them having a home to call their own, had almost been afraid to get too settled in, but then Y/N had moved in and suddenly...suddenly it didn't seem so temporary. He'd unpacked all of his things and arranged them like he'd always wanted to do. He'd gone to town and bought a new mattress, memory foam like he'd always seen on television. For the first time since he was four years old, he had his own room.

But now, standing here watching Y/N fix dinner for them, he wished that it wasn't just his room. He'd thought about the kiss they had shared years ago, and lately all he wanted was to try again. Everything she did was like magic; the way she moved when she fought, the sound of her laugh as it echoed through the bunker, the way she could make him smile even after the most difficult of hunts. If he was truly being honest with himself, she'd had his heart the moment he'd met her; messy pigtails, scuffed Chuck Taylors, dirt smudged face and all.

The longer he stood and watched her, the more it sank in that he would do anything for her. He'd fight for her, put himself into harm’s way, and sacrifice just about anything if it ensured her safety. He was powerless when it came to her, but it was the only thing he was ever truly sure of. He would go to the ends of the world and the depths of Hell if it meant she was happy and safe.

He slowly crossed the kitchen, and carefully put his hand on her shoulder.

“Dean Winchester! You about gave me a heart attack, what the hell is wrong with you?” She turned to face him, obviously ready to admonish him, but stopped when she saw the look on his face. “What is it?”

He pulled the earbuds from her ears and let them fall to the floor, his body pressing against hers just enough to trap her between him and the counter. He traced her jawline with his thumb, his normally bright green eyes dark with want, and then gently cupped her face with his hand. His other hand came up and cupped the other side of her face, and he stared at her, his lips slightly parted as he studied her.

Although he had often noticed how beautiful she was, he had never been this close for this long. He could see all of her freckles, way more than he initially had thought she had. They were spread across her nose and along her cheekbones, even disappearing into her hairline. Her y/e/c weren't just one shade, they were like a sunburst, a myriad of colors that seemed to change as the light shifted. They were wide and curious, but she remained silent as he took her in, his own eyes just as wide as he tried to talk himself into doing what he should have done years ago.

He moved in slowly, his heart racing as his lips finally connected with hers. They were full and warm, soft against his own slightly chapped lips. He wanted to take his time, to memorize every plane and curve of her. His tongue swept along her bottom lip and she sighed into him, parting her lips and meeting his tongue with her own.

Dean slid one hand into her hair, tangling it in the long tresses, and let the other hand move down to her hip. He gripped her tightly, afraid that if he let go the kiss would be over and she'd tell him it was a mistake. He wasn't sure he could take her leaving a second time. Instead, he felt one of her hands move to the nape of his neck, her fingers caressing the short hairs there, and the other gripped the front of his shirt tightly, pulling him even closer to her.

Finally, he forced himself to pull away, to give them space to breathe. She smiled warmly at him, her eyes sparkling.

“Took you long enough, Winchester,” she said as she wound both arms around his neck.

He chuckled, “Sorry about that, princess. Better late than never, right?”

She shrugged, “I guess. But I think we've got about,” she narrowed her eyes and scrunched her nose in thought, “I dunno...twenty-three years to catch up on? Think you've got it in you, old man?” She winked, then squealed as Dean swept her off the floor and started walking to his room.

“Call me old man one more time, and I know someone who won't be finding out.”

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#Han's Sing It With Me! Challenge #Dean x Reader #supernatural fanfiction #reader insert #shameless #song prompt #800 follower challenge

174 notes · View notes

analogscum · 6 years

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THE BURNING (1981, d. Tony Maylam)

Welcome to Camp Analog Scum! Now that summer is in full effect, we’ll be devoting this week to discussing two entries into one of the most hallowed subgenres in all of horror: the summer camp slasher flick! Following the massive success of Friday the 13th in 1980, small studios realized they had an easy formula to print some quick dough: find an idyllic summer camp somewhere in the Northeastern U.S., fill it up with hard-partying horny teenagers, and unleash a bloodthirsty psychopath with some kind of score to settle on them. It’s not hard to understand the universal appeal of the summer camp slasher flick: who doesn’t remember long July days running around in the woods, swimming in the lake, or the white-knuckled terror of a ghost story told ‘round the campfire? After all, a story can’t hurt you…unless it’s real.

Our first entry into this double feature, 1981’s The Burning, was somewhat lost to time for awhile. It was perhaps the first film to try and capitalize on Friday the 13th’s boffo box office, and while it got a more positive critical response than the film it was aping, audiences greeted the film lukewarmly, and it quickly faded from public consciousness thereafter. These days, thanks to re-releases from the likes of Scream Factory and Arrow, The Burning has finally found an adoring audience. I won’t lie, part of the reason I even did this summer camp-themed week in the first place was so that I could finally stop making excuses and watch this movie. And now, time for a controversial opinion: in terms of pure slasher bonafides, I think that this may be a better movie than the original Friday the 13th. Yeah, I said it!

If you grew up around New York and New Jersey, like yours truly, then you probably heard some variation on the legend of Cropsy, the madman who stalked the woods, looking for children to kill. The Burning takes this campfire classic and runs with it: we begin at Camp Blackfoot, sometime in the late 1970s. It’s after lights out, but a few of the older campers are plotting a prank on Cropsy, the groundskeeper of the camp. Quickly it becomes apparent that these kids fuckin’ hate Cropsy’s guts, but we never really get a clear answer as to why. Hey, sometimes kids just decide that a person sucks. The gang slowly make their way into Cropsy’s creepy-ass bunk, set something next to his bed, light that something on fire, then go knock on his window, stifling their laughter. Cropsy wakes up, and to his horror, sees what is burning next to his bed: a worm-ridden human skull! Wait, how did these pimple-faced little shits get their hands on a human skull?! Doesn’t matter, because Cropsy knocks over the skull and sets himself on fire! Oh fuck! Then he knocks over a canister of gasoline that is by his bed for some reason, and now he’s even more on fire! Oh fuuuuuuuuck! He runs out of the cabin, and he’s totally for real super duper on fire, and throws himself into the lake. The kids run off, their prank having turned into a crime scene.

Cut to five years later. Cropsy is getting wheeled out of the hospital or whatever. As he’s being rolled down this hallway, we hear all sorts of ADR voiceover recapping his stint in the burn ward: the skin grafts won’t take, there’s nothing we can do for you, try and forgive those kids, it was just an accident, etc. Suddenly, Cropsy is in Time’s Square, picking up a prostitute. Wait, I thought that this was a summer camp slasher flick? Anyway, she leads our giallo-ed out crispy critter up into her bedroom, understandably freaks out when she sees what he looks like, and then gets stabbed to death with a pair of scissors. If you look up “gratuitous” in the dictionary, its just a picture of this scene.

Now we’re back at camp, but this time it’s a different camp: Camp Stonewater. We meet our cast of characters: there’s Todd and Michelle, the head counselors; there’s Dave, the prankster; Eddie, the lothario; Karen, the virginal shy girl; Sally, the blonde bombshell; Glazer, the asshole bully; Alfred, the misanthropic nerd, and a few more. We get to spend quite awhile with these characters before the bloodshed happens, and we grow to like quite a few of them, so when the bloodshed actually begins, we’re more invested in the story, and more likely to get scared. I don’t know why this concept is so often lost on other filmmakers, but this is the main thing that this movie gets totally right. It’s also fun because these kids are played by some future notable faces: if you’ve seen a mob movie made after 1980, then you’ve seen Ned Eisenberg, who plays Eddie. A shockingly young Fisher Stevens plays a scrawny kid named Woodstock. We get to see future Oscar winner Holly Hunter in a small role as Sophie. And most notable of all is Dave, who is played by none other than Jason Alexander, when he still had a full head of hair! Talk about the Summer of George!

Some shenanigans happen. Alfred spies on Sally in the shower, and he’s a whiny dork about it. Glazer roughs him up a bit and throws him in the lake, because he’s decided that Sally is his girl, which is news to Sally. Dave and Woodstock help Alfred get revenge on Glazer by shooting him in the butt with a BB gun and mooning him. Constanza ass alert! These kids smoke cigarettes and read Playboys and talk openly about sex and jerking off, just like real teenagers do, and it’s very refreshing. At one point Alfred catches a glimpse of a weird, burnt up face in the window, but no one believes him, because he’s a total wet blanket about everything. There’s a really good fake-out scare involving Woodstock in a dark empty cabin which totally got me because even in my thirties I’m still freaked out by the dark. You don’t judge me, I judge you!

The next day, our gang jumps into some canoes and sets off on an overnight camping trip, somewhere near the former sight of Camp Blackfoot. What could go wrong?! That night, around a roaring campfire, Todd recounts the legend of Cropsy, who jumps out and tries to kill everyone! Aaaaaaaah! No, wait, it’s just Eddie in a rubber mask! Oh, Eddie! Speaking of Eddie, he convinces Karen, whom he has the hots for, to go skinny dipping with him in the lake. Karen is apprehensive, but she does have feelings for him, so she strips down and hops in. However, she gets uncomfortable when Eddie starts putting some moves on her, and keeps telling him to stop. Finally, Eddie gets super mad and tells her to leave him alone. In exchange for standing up for herself and refusing to be just another one of Eddie’s sexual conquests, Cropsy shows up and violently slits Karen’s throat with his trusty garden shears. Umm?

Now it’s morning, and Todd and Michelle are freaking out. Not only is Karen missing, but the canoes have disappeared. Eddie tells them what happened the night before with the skinny dipping and the blue balls and the anger, but Michelle is suspicious of him, despite telling Karen in an earlier scene that she should just let Eddie fuck her and get it over with. Whatever, Michelle. Todd gets the bright idea to build a raft out of twigs and branches and shit, which sounds hella stupid, but somehow actually works. They send a bunch of the kids, including Eddie and Woodstock, to row back to the camp and see if Karen or the missing canoes have turned up. Meanwhile, Glazer will not stop getting handsy with Sally, who keeps telling him no, which of course gets him super mad, and so finally to get him off her case, Sally is like, fine whatever meet me in the woods later and we’ll totally clown on each other in the nude, which is good enough to make Glazer stop pawing at her for awhile.

Back on the raft, everyone is tired and miserable. But look! There’s one of the missing canoes! Just floating there ominously in the middle of the river! Let’s row towards it! And so they row towards it, for what feels like 8 hours. Even though you can probably figure out what’s coming, they draw it out for such a ridiculously long time that you can’t help but hyperventilate a little bit. Just when they finally get right next to the canoe, who jumps out but our old pal Cropsy and them garden shears of his! In roughly twenty seconds he disposes of all of these kids in a very gory, graphic manner, and it’s awesome. So, so, so, so awesome. The amount of carnage that they manage to squeeze into these twenty seconds is awe inspiring. Well done, The Burning. Well done.

Meanwhile, Glazer and Sally are finally doing the horizontal polka, but of course Glazer blasts his sauce after like five pumps. Sad. But for some reason, Sally is kinda impressed? And she’s like, how long until you can drum up a new supply, because I’ve got a totally inexplicable case of the hornies. So Glazer is like, holy shit, ok, this truly never happens, sit tight, I’m going to head back to the campground and grab some matches so that we can make a fire. Good thing that Glazer wasn’t sleeping with Missy Elliot, because we all know how she feels about one minute men.

So of course as soon as Glazer leaves, Cropsy leaps out from behind the camera and turns Sally into his own personal shrubbery. Back at camp, Glazer grabs the matches, and for some reason, Alfred wakes up and decides to follow him. Dude, Alfred, what are you doing?! Being a voyeur has already gotten you in trouble once, and you know that Glazer is praying for any excuse he can find to shred you into pulled pork. Ill-advised, this plan is. As Alfred looks on, Glazer very, very, veeeeery slowly pulls back his and Sally’s sleeping back, which Cropsy was somehow hiding in? It’s confusing, but oh shit, Cropsy stabs the shit out of Glazer, and there’s so much blood. Peace out, Glazer.

Alfred runs back to the campground and wakes up Todd, who is understandably not super thrilled to be awoken by this neurotic dork at 4am or whatever, but Alfred runs one of his classic guilt trips on him, so they head into the woods, where Todd is shocked to find that yes, Glazer and Sally are both super duper dead. Oh no, Cropsy jumps up and smacks Todd on the side of the head, knocking him unconscious! Alfred runs around the woods for what feels like the entire first season of Cheers. The makeshift raft drifts back over to the campground, and to Michelle and the others’ chagrin, it’s full of the mutilated corpses of their friends.

Todd follows Alfred’s screams to a shack in the middle of the woods. We’re treated a suitably tense game of Cropsy and mouse as the creep stalks Todd through his lair. All of a sudden, there’s a flashback to the first scene: turns out, Todd was one of the kids who pulled the prank that turned Cropsy into fried chicken! Cropsy is brandishing a flame thrower, because this time, it’s…well, you know. We finally get a good look at the guy, and, well, he looks like if someone took an action figure of Sloth from the Goonies and put it in the microwave. Todd is about to get totally murderized by fire, but at the last moment, Alfred breaks free and stabs Cropsy with his own garden shears! Oh, the irony! Our two heroes are walking away, but oh crap, Cropsy is still alive! He grabs Alfred, but he breaks free and Todd smashes his head in with an axe before Alfred finishes the job with the flame thrower. Oh, the double irony!

As the police chopper in, we fade in on another campfire, and another set of campers. A counselor once again tells his rapt charges about the legend of Cropsy. The man himself may be dead, but he lives on in nightmares, just like Roger Ailes.

There are many reasons to recommend The Burning, and many of them are up on the screen. The acting is good, the cinematography is surprisingly artful, the story is well-paced, and the kills are fantastic. But The Burning is also an intriguing film due to some of the faces behind the camera. Weirdly enough, the film’s soundtrack was composed and performed by Rick Wakeman, the Arthurian legend-obsessed synth wizard from Yes. Though he occasionally dips into his typical ornate, switched on Bach territory, Wakeman also does deep, guttural digital terror surprisingly well. The film’s excellent, gory kills got their bite courtesy of the legendary Tom Savini. As the story goes, the makeup master was less than thrilled with the reveal of the undead Jason Voorhees at the end of his previous project, so he passed on the sequel in order to work on The Burning instead. Savini set out to outdo his work on Friday the 13th, and I personally think he succeeded. These kills are nasty and visceral and stock full of Grand Guignol madness. The only demerit is Cropsy’s burnt face, but in his defense, Savini only had three days to make it.

And then there’s the elephant in the room, in more ways than none: Harvey Weinstein. The film has the distinction of being one of Miramax’s first productions; Harvey and his brother Bob helped write the screenplay, alongside future Sopranos producer Brad Grey, and Harvey gave himself a “Created and Produced by” credit, whatever that means. Sadly, for as much as I enjoyed the movie as an 80s slasher, I found it to be nearly impossible to watch The Burning today without it being colored by what we now know about Weinstein. There’s been plenty of ink, digital or otherwise, spilled on how the Friday the 13th franchise punishes its characters with death for their sexual transgressions, but that trope is somewhat murkily applied to The Burning. Karen is punished with death for REFUSING to have sex with Eddie, whereas Sally is punished with death for giving in to Glazer’s sexual advances despite not wanting to. No matter if you’re the Madonna or the Whore, you’re still just gristle for the slaughter in the end. Given that this film’s “creator” may end this year as a convicted sex offender, could this film be a glimpse into his poisonous views on women? Turns out there were multiple monsters on the set of The Burning, but only one of them showed up onscreen.

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betweenstories · 4 years

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CHAPTER 24

“Girl, you know what winks and then fucks like a tiger?”

I arch a brow and try not to grin at LeRoy, the resident charmer currently holding court behind the Jade Bar.

LeRoy flashes me a wide smile. His brilliant white teeth shine bright against his blue/black skin.

As if he’s posing for the cover of Muscle and Fitness magazine, he arranges himself in an Atlas pose, flexes a massive bicep, and delivers an exaggerated, cheeky wink.

At that, I laugh out loud.

“I’ll give that one an eight. Actually, make it a nine. The bicep action was a nice touch.”

LeRoy chuckles as he pulls a small note pad from his back pocket. Plucking the pencil from behind his ear, he jots down the number.

I sip my Ginger Fig Martini—yuck! too sweet!—and try to hide my reaction.

“What’s the score now?”

After a moment of silent calculation, LeRoy announces, “In the World Championship for best corny pick-up line artist, I’m up by three.” He points at me with the pencil. “Time to bring your A-game, babe.”

I wrinkle my nose.

“I’ve never liked that endearment. Every time I hear it, all I can think about is the pig from the movie.”

LeRoy laughs. “Okay. Time to bring your A-game, chica. Is that better?”

I wobble my splayed fingers back-and-forth in a “so-so” motion.

We’d met LeRoy our second night in town when we’d stopped in for a nightcap at the Jade Bar. The moment I’d heard his thick accent, I’d bonded in the manner of all true southerners “abroad”—instantly and loyal unto death. Taking in the sheer mass of the male specimen, I’d known he had to be an ex-linebacker. Standing on the bar rail, I’d raised my palm high, and in my best southern drawl, I’d shouted above the clamber of the bar,

“Hey Georgia! How ‘bout dem dawgs!?”

His face had instantly split into a wide grin, and then he’d nearly taken my arm off with an overly exuberant high-five.

Once the bar rush had ended, he’d parked a rack of clean glasses on a nearby cooler and begun polishing wine stems before sliding them into the overhead rack.

Reading bartender code for, “I’ve got time to talk, I’d motioned to his name tag and asked if he went by LEE-roy or luh-ROY, because I had no desire to insult royalty. He’d smiled huge and flashed his pearly whites.

“My Mama called me her little king. She was the only one evuh’ called me luh-ROY, but you can call me anything you like.” With a wink, he’d added, “You can even call a ride for ol’ LeRoy when he leaves yo’ bed in the mawnin’.”

I’d decided right then, that LeRoy was unique in all the world. How many people could get away with speaking about themselves in the third person? None I’d ever met. LeRoy had just made it seem easy.

Just then, you’d returned from the restroom. I’d thought the Georgia boy would have the good grace to be embarrassed. Not so. He’d flirted with you as aggressively as he had with me. I think it was just his personality.

I’d wondered how you’d react to this male attention, but you’d handled it with the same aplomb you handled everything else.

When LeRoy had leaned on the bar and said, “I heard you English are the biggest freaks in the bedroom. How ‘bout you? Wha’s yo’ kink?”

You hadn’t missed a beat.

Grinning wide, you’d said, “I’m into listening to a southern woman tell me knock-knock jokes while she braids her hair before bed. Is that a kink?”

LeRoy’s laugh had been hearty, infectious.

Back in the present, I think, “Down by three!” and my competitive spirit kicks in.

Clearing my throat, I sit up straight and crack my mental knuckles.

“You might want to brace yourself for this one.”

LeRoy chuckles.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the back bar mirror.

Tonight’s hair is “concert style”: slicked back ponytail high atop my head (good for if it’s hot inside the venue) with the entire length braided into a long, loose fishtail.

With slow, exaggerated movements, I lift my hand. My silver bracelets chime as they tumble down from my wrist to my elbow. Circling my fingers around the top section of the braid, I lower my eyes to half-mast and slide my fist slowly down the length. I move back up to the top and stroke down once again.

When I reach the end a second time, I bring the tip to my mouth and slide it back and forth over my bottom lip. Pitching my voice an octave lower, I let my words roll out slow. For LeRoy’s benefit, I inject as much of the south into my accent as possible.

When I see the pulse point in his neck kick into high gear, I deliver my entry for best corny pick-up line.

“Hey, Big Guy.... I hope you got a good lawyuh...”

I close my eyes and softly moan. When I open them again, I lean forward and whisper,

“ .... ‘cause you just caused a flood in my basement.”

Immediately, I fall out of character. Dropping my braid, I’m all innocence as I sip my too-sweet martini.

LeRoy blinks once and then there’s that grin again.

“Day-yum, girl. You bettah get a permit for that voice, ‘cause you can slay fo’ sho’.”

I smile and wonder how much of LeRoy’s twang is fo’ show.

After writing in his note pad again, he points at me. “Up by seven.” He smiles. “You might wanna brace yourself for this one.”

In a move I’m sure took countless hours to perfect, he stretches his arms up to grasp the top edge of the overhead glass rack. His shirt comes untucked revealing three inches of finely chiseled male.

Before he speaks, I jump in, “Ten! Tens across the board for the best v-cut I’ve ever seen!”

Trapezoids dancing, LeRoy grins at me. “You sure you ain’t hittin’ on me? ‘Cause it feels like you’re hittin’ on me.”

“I’m sure.” I tap my chin as I look to the ceiling. “Actually, I’m ninety-two percent sure.”

LeRoy shakes his head.

“You might be worse than I am.”

“Entirely possible.”

As LeRoy clears away my plate, he tells me he likes a woman who cleans her plate. I thank him for the compliment.

For me, food is gas for my vehicle. Having dessert and high sugar alcohol for lunch had been low-grade fuel. I’d needed every bite of the simple grilled chicken breast and steamed veggies to get something better in my tank. When he starts to take my martini glass, I start to protest.

“I know you doan like it.” With a wink he adds, “You doan hafta be gentle with ol’ LeRoy.”

“In that case, luh-ROY, I’ll try the Ruinart. Where I’m from, nobody sells it by the glass.”

Just then, my spidey-sense tingles. I feel as if I’m being watched. I scan the room for the source until my gaze lands on you.

Casually leaning an elbow on the far end of the polished oak bar, your gaze is locked on mine. I can just make out the faint smile that always hides at the corner of your mouth, the one that peeks out whenever our eyes meet.

You’ve shaved. The line between your beard and cheek is sharp. I watch as you take in my thick braid, my deep red lips. I see the way heat flares in your expression as you track down to my skin tight black leather pants. When you raise your gaze, I don’t miss the way you zero in on my thin white tee, the black lace demi-bra, or—more specifically—the two tight points visible underneath.

Tucking a hand in the front pocket of your jeans, you hook your black leather jacket on a finger and drape it over your shoulder. My body hums, electric, as you slowly stroll my way. I glance at your midnight blue cashmere sweater, the sweater I’d once told you I loved to rub my bare breasts against. Your sleeves are pushed up to just below your elbows. Wicked man! I know you’ve done this on purpose. I know because I see your smirk when you see me notice.

Pre-you, I hadn’t noticed forearms whatsoever. Now, I wish I had a “forearm of the month” wall calendar featuring you in twelve themed vignettes. I smile and silently deem this look, “Mr. October.”

A few months earlier, I’d texted you, “I’m currently imagining riding you till I’m slick with sweat. I want to pin your arms over your head, wrap my fingers tight around your forearms and suck on your tongue till you buck beneath me, till I scream, till you fill me up with... compliments.” I hadn’t realised auto-correct had struck again until you’d texted back,

“Yes, please! 😋 But is “firearms” a euphemism? Even if it’s not, my answer’s still yes!! We’ll have to explore this whilst on your side of the pond though, as they’re basically illegal for civilians here.”

Suddenly, you’re in front of me. You bend and kiss me slow and sweet. Your mouth is soft and warm. You taste faintly of peppermint.

I smile. “You can do that again if you’d like.”

Draping your jacket over the back of a bar stool, you slip your hands around my waist and kiss me again.

“Y’all need to get a room, for real.” LeRoy slides a wine stem from the overhead rack, holds it up to the light to check for water spots, then pours a generous glass of your new favorite Merlot.

At that moment, a server appears, dome-covered plate in hand. LeRoy takes the plate and places it in front of you. With great ceremony, he lifts the lid to reveal ...

Brows furrowed, I lean in for a better look. It smells fantastic, but I have no idea what he’s revealed. Since you’d talked to LeRoy about food for more than an hour a few nights earlier, I’d left your meal selection up to him.

Reminding me of a big-eyed puppy, LeRoy looks at you, eager, clearly seeking your approval. He announces, “Braised oxtail tacos with chef’s special sauce.

You unroll your silverware.

“Thank you, my friend. It smells delicious. What’s chef’s special sauce?”

“It’s his secret. All I know is it’s good. It’s what I imagine it would taste like to go down on Charlize Theron.

While you chuckle, I raise a forefinger, “I’ll have a plate of that please.”

At that, you and LeRoy both laugh. While you tuck into your meal, you pepper LeRoy with enough compliments to send him into service personnel ecstasy.

“LeRoy and I were in the middle of a contest for best corny pick-up lines.

At that, LeRoy’s expression turns mischievous. “Okay, I got one.”

Propping an elbow on the bar in front of you, his bicep bulges as he pinches the material of his shirt and rubs it between thumb and forefinger.

“You know what kind of fabric this is?”

Fork suspended in mid-air, you shake your head.

LeRoy grins. “Threesome material.”

I never thought I’d live to see the day, but you’ve actually been rendered speechless. A fine blush spreads over your cheeks.

LeRoy maintains his grin. “Think about it. S’all I’m sayin’.”

Still shaking your head, you take a large bite of oxtail.

Twenty minutes later, you take your last sip of wine while I take my last sip of champagne. When I turn to look at you, your eyes are suddenly fierce.

Seizing my hand, you press a kiss against my palm. Your lips are soft and warm.

“What was that for?”

You raise my hand to your face, close your eyes, and press my palm to your cheek before covering it with your own. You inhale deep.

“I’m happy. That’s all.”

Such a simple statement. In this moment, I realize I’m happy as well. I raise your other hand to my cheek, smile as I cover it with my own.

“Seriously, don’t y’all have somewhere to be?”

With a look of feigned irritation, LeRoy clears away your plate and wipes down the bar.

I check the time on my phone while you look at your watch.

I lean over the bar and speak low. “Just put this on mine with thirty percent. Kay?”

He nods. We’d discovered the easiest way to handle travel expenses was to split the room charge and keep separate accounts for additional charges. We took turns paying for food. We didn’t have to clear personal purchases with each other, and it made my accounting easier since I could write off some expenses on my taxes.

Thanking LeRoy, you reach over the bar to shake his hand. “Have a great night. Maybe we’ll see you later? Are you closing?”

He shakes his head. “I’m here till Volume, so probably not.”

Flashing his mega-watt smile, he adds, “But y’all have fun and tell Teddy I said hello.”

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academiablogs · 7 years

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Yes, It’s All About You (in Writing, Anyway)

I recently noticed that in every one of my novels—five of them now—there’s at least one “letter scene.” Sometimes two. These are scenes where we watch someone write a letter, and what is written, as well as what the character imagines writing, becomes an important part of the story. Letters fascinate me for a number of reasons, though chiefly because we tend not to write them anymore. But imagine a world where people only really spoke through letters, since in society you were carefully monitored, especially as a woman, with family members forever watching you, making sure you were doing your duty and never going too far. To speak your mind to someone you cared for could only be done in a letter, and even then, it had to be done carefully, meticulously. And once delivered, the letter was a precious object, a one-of-a-kind artistic creation that only one other person in the world possessed.

Imagine how different that is today, when even e-mails are never private. We never possess the actual first draft of someone’s thoughts. Being able to see someone’s handwriting and imagine the pressure they placed on a specific word or letter speaks as loudly as the letter itself. In short, to write a letter was to escape from the strictures of society and speak unfettered, truly naked before one other person, be it a friend, a lover, a parent, or a child. You could act, you could quibble, you could even lie in a letter...but it was so much easier for the reader to see the truth.

Since I write fantasy set hundreds of years ago in an alternative past, letter writing is how my characters see the world. In many of the great novels of the past, letters frame an important moment for the characters—think of Elizabeth Bennet’s letter from Darcy in Pride and Prejudice or more humorously, the letter delivered to Malvolio in Twelfth Night. We love these meta moments in fiction, allowing us to read a character in the act of reading, or even better, envision a writer writing about a character themselves trying to put words on a page. As writers, many of us enjoy this, too, since it reflects our own frustrations and doubts about writing. We want to see our own creations struggle with the same problems we do, since they are, in a sense, versions of us. We want to see them cross out words, not find the right words, or not be able to write at all. Perhaps we merely want our characters to suffer the same hell they put us through?

Or should I say, I want to see this, since my books are fundamentally pieces of my own autobiography. So often when I’m writing, there are two kinds of passages: (a) passages that move the story along in some fundamental way and (b) passages that allow me to look at myself in a mirror. The letter scenes are exactly that, and I dash them off like nobody’s business. No Writer’s Block here, just sheer fun and inspiration. The “a” passages are much harder to write and I tirelessly revise them, often losing inspiration in the process. Of course, this begs the question: if the “b” passages are more autobiographical and so much easier to write, are they really all that good? Are you merely indulging in some shameless diary entries or budget psychoanalysis? After all, everyone has an equivalent to my “letter scenes” where they get to indulge in subject matter that is the verbal equivalent of a warm bath. You sink into the words and lose yourself in a bliss of self reflection/satisfaction.

I would argue that every novel (or any kind of writing) needs both passages, “a” and “b.” Maybe a little more of “a,” but the “b’s” make the story. Because a story without your unique stamp as a writer and thinker is no story at all. You have to play to your strengths as a writer and know what motivates you and allows you to get inside the mind of your character(s). The powers-that-be always say, “write what you know,” but that doesn’t necessarily mean “write about someone like you in a place like the one you live in,” etc. It means write about the things that make you excited about the world around you; those things that make you understand your fellow man and woman; the ideas that make character seem alive rather than cardboard cut-outs or convenient tropes. For that reason, a letter scene in my novels helps me ground my characters and truly talk to one another—and quite often, discover what they really want and who they truly are.

In my novel, The Winged Turban, the main character is trapped in an earlier time and appears there as the spitting-image of another character’s lost love. Clearly, she is not this woman, and yet everyone is convinced that she is, to the point that she begins questioning who she is, too—all the more so, that she begins remembering shards of the centuries-deceased woman’s life. She eventually allows herself to believe that she could, possibly, have a life with Charles, but only if such a life is based on the truth; he has to know who she is, or was, if they can ever mean anything together. How could she tell him this? Through a simple conversation? A series of them? Or...a letter?

The Crystal Ball by Waterhouse, 1902. I caught myself here, since I knew I was falling back on my old bag of tricks. And yet, this is what made the story exciting for me: that a woman who was falling in love had to convince herself, and the man she loved, that they weren’t fooling each other. That they could actually see one another for who they were, rather than what they might have been. The story became much more personal for me at this moment, since I understood what she wanted and why she couldn’t let herself have it. So I wrote a letter, probably the letter I, myself, would have written in her shoes. But I did it in her voice, and the result is pasted below, and I continue to think it one of the more successful parts of the novel:

[From Chapter 32]

Beatrice slumped against the wall, feeling trapped in more ways than one. In her mind she had already written most of the letter; the question would be which parts to leave out.

Dear Charles,

You once dropped a glove to catch my heart. You caught it: I gave you everything a young girl could give, all her dreams and secrets. I think this letter is my own glove, what I fear to give voice to and can only place in a letter. Read this before you see me again, and if your feelings still hold, then I will try to accept myself as Isabella, though I fear I can never be what she was for you.

Here is the truth: I am a married woman from another land. Married by contract, of course, but married nonetheless. I am the Duchess of a great estate, of a great family. Though the match was never consummated, it is only a matter of time, and I must do my duty. Should I return, I would have to be his wife, the wife of a man I’ve only met once and can scarcely recall in my head. I would have to forget everything I am and hope to be, and of course everything I’ve seen and experienced with you.

But what if I didn’t return? What if I stayed here and forgot who I was and who I married? Would you accept me? Would you hide me? Would you help me forget? Of course you could never forget, and by coming here I am breaking my vows, shaming my family and offending the gods. I would never be accepted in the world to come. But I would risk that, if only to be here with you. Even if I only lasted a year, that year would be worth an eternity of whatever followed. Because I could remember that once upon a time someone loved me and claimed me for his own. I would do this. But I can’t ask this of you.

And yet I am asking you. I don’t dare ask it to your face, so I write it here, for you to find when I am gone. I hope you will pick it up, but if not, you’ve already given me a glimpse at a beautiful life, one I will carry with me forever, whether I’m Beatrice or Isabella. I await your answer...

Beatrice shuddered at the thought of writing it all down. No, she could never do it. He would never agree.

#amwriting #writing advice #bookish #writer's life #writing process

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kookieseyes · 7 years

Text

I hate you │3

summary: Getting wasted at the party gives you enough courage to confront Jungkook but gets you in trouble with parents. member: Jeon Jungkook x reader genre: fluff, romance, angst word count: 2515 warnings: fuckboy!Jungkook badboy!Jungkook I hate you Masterlist │ 1 │ 2 │ 3 │ 4 │ 5 │ 6 │ 7 │ (ongoing)

A/N: For some reason, the previous part’s tags didn’t work, so it didn’t show up in recently posted. Hope you like this part and read the previous one as well. Of course, I have the next part planned, but if you have any suggestion, please message me.

you tried your best to avoid Jungkook after the incident in the classroom.Even his presence made your stomach turn. You ran to the opposite direction if you saw a glimpse of him and did a pretty good job at it until one day Mr. Jenkins announced:

“Everyone, this is your assignment for the next month, you need to create a diary of a fictional character with at least 30 entries. Try to compose a story and make it as detailed as possible, write about her thoughts, emotions, happiness, loss, whatever you think will help you show that it’s impossible to know what’s going on in someone else’s head, even if you think you know them”

You’ve always liked your professor’s assignments. He probably wasn’t more than ten years older than you and always found a way to give you relatable and interesting tasks. You’ve been writing your own diary for as long you can remember, desperately needing to express your emotions, since your inexpressive parents were no help. The sensation of forever inking your deepest feelings on a piece of paper was helping you cure your bottled up emotions better than anything else.

“Oh, and you need to pair up, I already made pairs randomly, so please come by my desk to check your name before leaving”-group assignments were not your forte, but there was nothing you could do. So you walked up to Mr. Jenkin’s desk to ask him who your partner was when he without looking at the list said:

“You’re with Jungkook”-and smiled with one of those “I-know-you’ve-lied-to-me-and-here’s-what-you-get” smiles

“But… Is there any chance to switch partners?” you started panicking, that couldn’t be happening to you.

“I thought you’d be happy, isn’t he your friend?”-that sneaky son of a…

“I just can’t afford to get a low grade on this one”-maybe being pitiful would be your best way out

“Why would you? Didn’t you say he was just shy and not disinterested?”

“Yes, yes I did say that”-stupid, stupid Y/N you told yourself. One simple lie and everything goes to hell

“I’m sure it will be alright”-he said motioning to Jungkook to come

“Now what?”-Jungkook said with an annoyed tone but instantly changed it after Mr. Jenkins fake coughed couple times “I mean, why did you call me, Mr. Jenkins?”

“Here’s your partner for the assignment, Y/N”

“Huh?”Jungkook’s eyebrows raised in surprise, ignoring your presence right next to him “How random was your “random choosing, exactly?”

“I’d say pretty random”-replied the lecturer with a hint of amusement in his voice

“Mr. Jenkins, see? He doesn’t want to be with me either, so won’t it be easier to switch us with someone else?” you decided to speak up, maybe it wasn’t too late to make everything right

“Rules are rules, can’t make an exception”

“Doesn’t she get affected if she gets a low mark or something?”-of course, Jungkook had to use you as an excuse to get himself out of this mess you both ended up in and you gave him so-now-you-care-about-me look, but this time you didn’t mind as long as you switched partners.

“More of a reason for you to work hard then!” you were doomed, officially. Jungkook wouldn’t help you out with the project, that was obvious, and making 30 entries was too much to handle by yourself.

“I tried my best but it looks like you’re going to have a first B in your whole life”-arrogance in the irritating boy’s voice was obvious

“Not funny”-you centered you gaze into his eyes, maybe the intense eye contact would convince him how important this matter was for you

“Sounds funny to me”-he smiled and avoided your eyes, just to look outside,

“Jungkook, take it outside, I already told you what to do, so unless you have any questions you can leave” Mr Jenkins was obviously annoyed by both of you, trying to get you out of his classroom

“When are we starting?” you asked as soon as you started walking in the hall

“who said I was starting anything”

“Come on, don’t be a jerk”

“Why should I do anything for you when you keep calling me a jerk”

“Technically, I didn’t say you were a jerk, I said you would be one if you didn’t help”-you were not going to lose this argument

“Touché. I guess I could if you apologized”-of course, he wouldn’t just oblige and be a decent human being for once.

“Me? Are you kidding me? After what you said to me?!”

“I don’t even know what I said, or why you got so butthurt about it”-and there he was, again ruining your mood in the worst way possible, what did you do so wrong to deserve this?

“You know what, forget it, I can’t believe I was stupid enough to think you’d be less selfish for once”

“What do you want me to do anyway, I’m sure you already have everything planned out”

“He’ll know if I write all of it myself,” you said motioning towards the classroom behind you

“I’ll think about it,” Jungkook said and left as if it was not an important enough matter to discuss. You wouldn’t fuss over him not doing anything, but getting a B also meant losing your scholarship and you couldn’t afford it. You were not letting a nobody like Jungkook ruin your life

You’ve texted him multiple times over the weekend: “Did you think about it yet?”

“Who is this?”

“Y/N”

“how did you get my number?”

“Mr. Jenkins, answer the question”

“Nope” And that was it? A single nope was going to decide whether you needed to get an extra job to pay for university fees or not? You definitely didn’t have time for that. Juggling between assignments, work, and social life was as hard as it was. making new friends was not hard for you, it was finding time to hang out with them you were struggling with. People invited you to hang out and you almost always had to decline, Ava was the only one who could understand you and she always said the same about you. Every time one got into trouble, the other one would have her back.

Today was no exception, she had had a bad day. She and the guy from the party- Jimin had started dating and now they were having their first couple’s fight. So Ava wanted you to go with her to the party to get him to apologize. You were her partner in crime so there was no way you’d say no.

When you got to the party you immediately started taking shots, with each one Ava said why men were the worst and how you had to avoid them. But as soon as Jimin caught her eye, she stopped. He was standing next to Jungkook, sipping from the red plastic cup, leaning on the wall for support and playing rock paper scissors with his friends. He whispered something to Jungkook and he nodded in response. He patted the guy’s back, who was now moving towards Ava.

By the time you realized it was time for you to leave them alone, you had consumed a fair amount of alcohol, making you dizzy but giving you so much needed confidence for what you were about to do next. You said you were going to leave for a second and smiled at Ava, whose hand was now intertwined with Jimin’s, listening to his apology. She didn’t even pay attention to you and watched him with sparkly eyes. You knew she had forgiven him even before they got to talk.

You got up from the couch and felt how alcohol diffused to your legs, making them tremble. You walked up to the wall Jungkook was standing next to, now celebrating his victory in the game by screaming “fuck yeah” with deafening noise. It was now or never, so you just called out his name:

“Jungkook!” and he didn’t notice, annoyed you gently pulled the end of his shirt to make your presence noticed, just like kids do when somebody doesn’t pay attention to them. He turned his head to follow the voice calling out his name and raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“Listen, I need to talk to you”

“Okay, talk”-he shrugged his shoulders

“Not here, somewhere you can actually hear me”-you couldn’t believe how much courage and boldness the alcohol had given you.

“Fine, lead the way”, only then you noticed your hand that was still holding on to his shirt and decided to drag him outside like that. Once you were far enough from the noise you stopped.

“You can let go now,” he said with a tiny smirk appearing in the corner of his lips. You could tell he was still sober, amused by your drunk actions.

“Sorry..”-you let go immediately, cursing yourself for not doing so earlier. “So, about the assignment, did you make up your mind?”

“I told you not yet”

“I know what you’re doing and that’s not gonna work with me. You’ll never decide and I’ll be left with the student loans for the rest of my life”-it was embarrassing, telling him something so personal, but the alcohol seemed to increase your confidence.

“You’re making too big of a deal out of it, one B won’t change anything”

“Yes it will, once I lose my scholarship”

“You have a scholarship?”-you saw a sudden change in his expression as if he went deep in thought.

“Yes, now please could you just pretend that you don’t hate me until we’re done and then we’ll go our separate ways”-you didn’t want to talk about yourself and tried to quickly change the topic. He didn’t say a word and that made the situation ten times more embarrassing than it already was.

“What do you say?” You added when he refused to say anything.

“Deal”

“Deal? Well, that was easier than I thought”

“You can keep asking some more if that was too easy!-he smiled and only then you noticed how much his innocent smile didn’t match up with his fuckboy personality.

“Uh… No no no, it’s cool, we’re good” and you raised your hand, trying to get him to high five you

“High five, partner!” Alcohol made your stupidity filter disappear along with your eyesight “more like high ten!” you added with a tone of confusion and chuckled at your own joke. Much to your surprise, he didn’t embarrass you by leaving you hanging and returned you gesture:

“I like your drunk version better”

You disregarded his remark, although your cheeks seemed to have changed its color to light pink. “I’ll text you the place and time to meet,” you said and left in a rush. You returned back to where Ava and Jimin were supposed to be but once you got to the room they were already gone. You checked your phone to see Ava’s text: “Jimin and I made up, I’m going to his place, please get home safely”

Loud banging on the door forced you to wake up. You didn’t remember how you got to your bad, vivid pictures of calling an Uber, stumbling while going to your room and waking up your parents were flashing through your eyes. You were pretty sure it was still early in the morning, but your parents had different things planned for you.

“Y/N wake up, Tucker needs to be taken for a walk”-you barely could tell if it was happening in your dreams or you mother was actually calling you at 5 in the morning to take her dog on a walk. You almost went back to bad, but the door opened, making you jump up instantly “Didn’t you hear what I said?”-she asked while being as tranquil as one could be “I did, just give me a minute” “Make it quick” “I’m already getting up”

“You father is downstairs, waiting, we want to discuss some things with you”

You always felt like you were a laboratory rat, following the rules your parents set up for you and just in case you decided to go against them, they would somehow manage to make your life a living hell. Everything you did in life was somehow a part of a bigger plan your parents had created.

When you dared to tell them you had a boy you liked they said: having a boyfriend at your age is good, you get to experience a lot before getting into a real relationship. When you asked to take a drawing class they said: you are not talented at that, let’s focus more on social studies, when you told them you wanted to play some sports they said: you should mind your academics more.

They were cold, straight to the point, and practical, which is not a bad thing unless you use same principles for raising a child who needs parents, not counselors. You got up from your bed, quickly dressed up and went downstairs to see your parents sitting at a coffee table. What were they planning for you now?

“Y/N, sit down, please”-and you did without saying a word. You already knew what was coming, they would make you apologize for coming home drunk, and how these mindless actions affected your academic success and how one mistake could end up destroying your future and reputation.

”We were extremely disappointed with your behavior last night. We expected more from you. We know you are a college student and you must enjoy the experience, but everything has its boundaries”-their gentle tone of voice was unfailingly having a reverse effect on your mood, making you angrier by second.

“Dad, mom, I know what you are trying to say, but I don’t see what I did wrong, you should know by now that I always put my studies first and one party is not going to change that”

“Of course it won’t, we can’t force you not to go to parties, so that’s why by our mutual decision, we would like to receive a report card every two weeks, just to assure ourselves that you’re not going on the wrong path”

“Is this a joke? I’m not 5 anymore, why do you always have to control what I do”

“We’re not trying to control anything, it’s just a precaution for your own good” “For my own good? How about some independence? Do you have any idea how that makes me feel? I can’t breathe around you anymore, nothing I do is ever good for you, why can’t you let me live my life as I want, have you ever thought about me? What I want? “Think rationally, you are overre…” “You know what? fuck this, why can’t you understand that I’m your daughter, not your pet?”-years of holding back your feelings just burst out, you simply couldn’t take it anymore. You got up from the couch, hands shaking still shaking from anger and stormed out of the house. You took Tucker with you for a walk and got some fresh air, words that had spilled from your mouth earlier were still lingering on your tongue. “Tucker, you know my parents love you better than me, right?” You rumbled and caressed his ears. Million thoughts were running through your mind and none of them were reassuring.

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