#hunger games girlies sound off!!

[love-toxin]

not that i haven't already been slackin on my fics but with barbie in my rearview i do need to let you all know that the MOMENT the new hunger games movie comes out this fall i will simply cease to function !!

[wh0reforcoriolanussnow]

hiii, could you write something about Tom meeting his celebrity crush ( he also maybe said it in an interview) at the Museum Gala? She is a big actress ( maybe did house of the dragon or something). She thinks he is super hot and she has seen the new hunger games movie, so she kinda flirts with him because she knows she is his celebrity crush and he is a nervous wreck. Eventually they start going out and end up dating! Just something about another British Tom manifesting his life LMAO

could you also add some insta posts ? I love this kinda of au! I hope you like this idea

lots of 💋 t!

And They Meet || Tom Blyth x actress!reader

A/n: love love this request ty anon 😙

Warnings: none!

Wc: 1,232

Dividers by @pommecita

“Do you have a celebrity crush?” The question caught Tom by surprise as he chuckles, his fingertips tapping on his chin. “I do actually, uh Y/n Y/l/n.” He admits for the first time on camera.

“I watched House of the Dragon the moment it came out and I just fell in love with how she portrayed Alicent Hightower, truly one of the greatest actresses at such a young age,” He smiles like a mad man as he recalls the time he first saw her on screen.

The gorgeous green coloured dress you would wear looked heavenly, and of course, your impeccable acting drew his attention. He binge watched the first season over and over, a smile adorning his lips everytime you would bless his screen with your beauty.

“Have you met her Tom? She’s a lovely person in real life.” The brunette sighs, “Unfortunately I have not, soon hopefully, soon,” He crosses his fingers as he lets out a low chuckle before moving on.

~

You watch with a grin on your face the interview that mentioned you. After Tom revealed that you were infact, his celebrity crush, you couldn’t help but feel like a giddy high school girl.

The thought that the Tom Blyth took a fancy towards you was mind blowing, especially since you’ve watched him from afar and admired him for quite some time now. You remember you first saw him on Billy the Kid and thought he was exceptional, and quite attractive.

“You think he would be at the museum gala next month?” You lift your head to Ally, your manager as she thinks. “Most likely, why’s that?” She smirks at you as you roll your eyes jokingly. “Nothing, nothing, just wondering,” You put your hands up in defence.

“Okay you have 10 minutes left,” Ally looks at her watch. You were at The Kelly Clarkson Show about to be interviewed about the upcoming season of the House of the Dragon.

~

“Y/n, do you have a type? If so, I think your fans would like to know, don’t you?” Kelly winks to the crowd as they erupt into laughter, including yourself. “Physical wise? Most definitely tall, brunette, blue eyes, a nice smile-“ “That sounds a whole lot familiar to a guest I just had a couple days ago….” Kelly teases as your eyes widen.

“Really?” A nervous chuckle leaves your lips, “Yeah, a Mr Tom Blyth happens to fit that description. I also know he mentioned you as his celebrity crush just the other day,” You play with the ring on your finger as you look at Kelly as if it was new news to you.

“Did he really?” You couldn’t help the smile off your face, “I watched the movie the day it came out and I understand the girlies who were rooting for Coryo,” You fan yourself jokingly, “truly understand.” The crowd cheers as you laugh. “I mean, I’m willing to ignore the red flags because he’s just so incredibly good looking!” You were lowkey fangirling.

“I know right!” Kelly agrees, “Tom did such a fantastic job playing young Snow, he really charmed us all,” You grin.

~

“Do you think she’s going to be at the gala?” Tom lifts his head up, the interview of you at The Kelly Clarkson Show displayed on his phone. “She should be,” His manager says as he smiles to himself, his eyes redirecting to his phone as you continue to talk about House of The Dragon.

Truth be told, after her let the entire world know that your his celebrity crush, he had been basking in the many comments saying how good the two of you would look together. It boosted his ego for sure.

He was hoping he’d finally be able to see you tonight at the museum gala and feed fans content. The second Tom set foot the gala, his eyes wandered around, hoping to see a glimpse of you. "Are you looking for someone Tom?" An interviewer calls out as he chuckles whilst posing for the photographers. "Yes actually," He responds with a shy smile.

Then, he hears loud screaming coming from the entrance as everyone in the gala turns their head towards the noise. And in you walked. Tom was standing in the red carpet section along with other celebrities as you walk towards his way, waving at the cameras along the way.

You wore a beautiful black gown, your hair in curls as the cascade down your back. Tom didn't even realise but he was staring at you, his mouth slightly agape, entranced by your beauty.

Cameras take photos and videos of Tom's reaction to you, it was quite cute. A man who finally got to see his celebrity crush in front of his eyes. Little did he know, you were looking around, hoping to find him.

Your eyes look around the place before you spot Tom, a few metres away from you as your eyes lit up. Abandoning your spot where you were posing for the cameras, you picked up the fabrics of your dress with the help of your assistants and made your way over to him.

It took a few seconds for Tom to realise that you were walking towards his direction. "Tom!" You greet him, going in for a hug as if you had known each other for years. He was slightly taken back but nonetheless hugs you respectfully. "How are you, darling?" He says as you pull back.

The pet name making you blush as you grin at him. You always knew Tom's eyes were blue, but jesus, you didn't realise just exactly how blue they are from up close. "I'm great now that I've finally met you," You chuckle, your hand gripping his bicep as he bites his lip lightly, smiling at you.

"Your eyes are really blue," You blurt out as he laughs, "I get that a lot," "Y/n! Tom! Can we get a picture of the two of you please?" Paparazzi calls out as you and Tom make eye contact, not realising how close your faces were before quickly looking away shyly.

"May I?" He says to you, asking if he could put his hand on your waist. What a gentleman. "Of course," You grin at him as he snakes his arm around your waist, his hand resting on your hip as your arm wraps around his waist.

The two of you looked good, good together. Throughout the night, you and Tom couldn't get away from each other. He was always by your side, even when you were doing interviews, and vice versa. His hand would rest on the small of your back protectively as you two navigated your way around.

Even at the dinner, he was coincidentally seated beside you which made you happy. You even recorded a video for your Instagram story about it and tagged him. The two of you hit it off straight away, exchanging numbers and even planning to meet up in a couple of days.

Being each other's celebrity crush blossomed into even more. Tom asked you to be his girlfriend after a few weeks of seeing each other and fans were going crazy, saying how he manifested it. You and Tom as a couple received so much support from everyone, including those in the acting industry saying how much of a talented young couple you were.

[goldrushenthusiast]

The Hunger Games characters have some unique names based on many cultures we've lived in today.

What's your favourite character names from THG world? What's their names meaning?

Bonus questions :

If you're a fanfic writer writing about characters who lives in Panem, what's their name gonna be?

If you're a reader, what's a name you read in a THG fanfic that stuck with you?

Thank you, @curiousnonny

Got to be Sejanus. By far who his name is based off of and who is is just…perfect.

Copied straight from the Wikipedia page, the very first paragraph;

“Lucius Aelius Sejanus (c. 20 BC – 18 October AD 31), commonly known as Sejanus (/sɪˈdʒeɪnəs/),[1] was a Roman soldier, friend, and confidant of the Roman Emperor Tiberius. Of the Equites class by birth, Sejanus rose to power as prefect of the Praetorian Guard (the Roman imperial bodyguard), of which he was commander from AD 14 until his execution for treason in AD 31.”

Like ok come on now Suzanne at least make me have something more to interpret!!

What’s interesting about him though is the fact that he is district born, and as we see in Katniss, Gale, Primrose, Madge, Mayfair, Carine (Katniss’ mom), Rue, Delly, and any non career district, district kids typically have fairly normal names or names related to their districts (Reaper the farming name from D11, Coral & Mizzen, sea & ship names from d4). While their names still have something to do with their character, they make more sense with district kids and are less obvious (will explain later).

However, with Sejanus, he was born in district two. His parents were from district two. Strabo even can be related to Strabo’s character but that’s for later.

Sure, it can be argued that district two is a career district, but Katniss & Coriolanus’ accounts together hint that this process took decades to be sure of and to really benefit from. District two would be a bit better off after the first revolution, but not much.

I just find it funny it’s so clear with Sejanus what he was always meant to be.

Strabo’s name is a bit more a stretch, but Strabo was an Ancient Greek geographer. He was mostly known for being, and I quote;

“historian whose Geography is the only extant work covering the whole range of peoples and countries known to both Greeks and Romans during the reign of Augustus (27 BCE–14 CE)”

He specialized in geography. District two is full of mountains (that Ma loves), and he literally moved his whole family. As I said, a bit of a stretch, but still there’s SOMETHING there.

Even the family’s last name, Plinth, means a heavy base supporting a statue or vase. Every part of Sejanus’ name includes some type of support, and it’s so apparent with just one google search. I love it, and we know so much about his character so it’s easier to make these inferences than it will be with the Ring Twins or Remus Dolittle, yet I will. This answer might have to be two parts lol.

Now onto other characters that we know just a bit better: Tigris, Persephone, Iphigenia, Vipsania, Arachne, and saving last for last, Coriolanus.

Firstly; Tigris! Tigris was the easternmost river out of two that defined Mesopotamia, one of (or maybe the) the earliest civilizations/cultures, dating back to 14,000 BC as the time period when people originally started settling. Because I’m not here to give a history lesson I’m not gonna explain the importance of a river to a civilization, but I went through 6th grade geography and suffice to say she was important as hell.

Tigris was believed to have been created by the God Enki, the Sumerian god of knowledge, crafts, and creation among other things. Tigris is continually proven to be resourceful, creative, and gives very much DIY girlie vibes, which sound a lot like Enki.

As I said before, the Mesopotamian region was one of the first civilizations. Many have theorized that mankind as we know it wouldn’t exist without Mesopotamia, and what would Mesopotamia not exist without? Tigris.

Tigris provided opportunities for the Mesopotamian region (Coriolanus) to grow, get stronger, become innovative, and provided for them. If that doesn’t scream Tigris I don’t know what does.

Now, Persephone! My favorite capital names are the ones from Greek mythology (I am a Percy Jackson fan page) or ancient mythology, because it’s less work to find connecting factors. Honestly I had no clue who Sejanus was, I just googled his name, and my mom is a Shakespeare fan which is how I know Coriolanus.

Anywho, for y’all who are normal, Persephone was the daughter of the farming/harvest goddess who was kidnapped by the death god. All versions of this myth agree on that. Some say that it was part of a deal with Zeus that Hades (the death god) knew about, but Demeter (farming/harvest goddess) didn’t. Of course these are definitely a very simple and quick way to describe Hades & Demeter, but it gets my point across.

The funny thing is, we don’t know much about Persephone in canon. I don’t know if Suzanne did this on purpose like she clearly did with Sejanus, but I find it interesting that whenever Persephone Price is brought up, so is cannibalism.

See, Nero Price, Persephone dad and Coriolanus was the main example that Coriolanus used to show how bad things were during the war. Coriolanus and Tigris saw him one snowy evening sawing off the leg of a maid with a large knife, wrapping it in the skirt from her waist, and going on his way. It makes Coriolanus question if he could ever be seen as edible, which is kinda funny to me lowkey, but the whole scene is on page 31-32.

Persephone. She is literally torn between the harvest (farmers food & stuff) and the underworld, the realm of the dead. Part of her myth is she stays there for 3 months and in the realm of the living for the other 9 because she ATE 3,pomegranate seeds. She ate something she wasn’t supposed to. Let me also mention, in different versions of the myth she wanted to leave or didn’t. When Festus and Persephone are getting close, Coriolanus questions if Persephone ever knew what was on her plate.

Now Iphigenia!! If y’all didn’t remember Persephone, I doubt yall will remember Iphigenia, as I only did combing the list of names Coriolanus had for interesting ones and finding her. She’s a very minor character- we don’t know much about her hobbies or likes and dislikes or her personality. But I’ll get to TBOSAS Iphigenia in a second.

I’m sure of y’all at least know the Trojan war. If anyone studied it specifically, you probably know Agamemnon. Here’s the paragraph explaining the story from Wikipedia;

“In the story, Agamemnon offends the goddess Artemis on his way to the Trojan War by hunting and killing one of Artemis' sacred stags. She retaliates by preventing the Greek troops from reaching Troy unless Agamemnon kills his eldest daughter, Iphigenia, at Aulis as a human sacrifice. In some versions, Iphigenia dies at Aulis, and in others, Artemis rescues her.”

You’re probably wondering, “wow, what could such a minor character have to do with that tale?”

When I say we get very little from her, I mean it. I don’t mean we get very little from her in the same way as I do when talking about Festus, or any other classmates. We know she doesn’t know if district 5 girl’s (her tribute’s) name is Sol or Sal (it’s Sol).

There’s one piece of information on her that stands out though. I’m going to paraphrase Coriolanus on page 252 when I say this- “her father oversaw food stuff in Panem, but she always looked almost malnourished. Clemensia had once said it was the only revenge she could take on her father but didn’t give any other details,”

boy oh boy. Because of this one, small little paragraph, Iphigenia has always interested me. When Clemensia doesn’t give any other details, she means it. NO details appear afterwards and Iphigenia is maybe mentioned once ever again. Trust me, I know. Every time I reread TBOSAS I look for different things, which is part of the reason I reread it sm.

We never know why Iphigenia takes revenge. We never know anything about her relationship with her father. There are so many possibilities (abuse, Iphigenia the rebel, etc), and considering her namesake’s issues with her father it’s just crazy the amount of detail Suzanne put into such a minor character.

Next, Vipsania- there’s actually not much I can say about her, I just thought it was a funny coincidence this is what came up when I googled her;

“Vipsania Agrippina (/ˌæɡrəˈpaɪnə, -ˈpiː-/; 36 BC – 20 AD) was the first wife of the Emperor Tiberius.”

Two things- first, recognize what emperor she married? Yep! Tiberius- aka the emperor Sejanus was a friend and confident of. I think Suzanne might’ve gone down a Tiberius rabbit hole, because her last is familiar as well- Professor Agrippina. She was the gym teacher, and Sejanus’ mentor. This little circle of names and relations is just funny to me is all, although there’s not much on VA in history or much to say about Vipsania.

Arachne!!! Gosh I love her. Well, I love how plain the connection is between her character in TBOSAS and her character in mythology. Really she’s pretty disrespectful and a jerk in both lol.

In Greek mythology, Arachne is a woman-turned spider, the first spider. Arachne believed she could win a weaving competition against Athena, goddess of crafts, because of how beautiful her work was and how much everyone complimented her.

Athena, hearing this hubris, disguised herself as an old woman and told Arachne not to boast like that. Arachne then challenged Athena, and told the old woman the only reason Athena hadn’t gone against her herself was she was too scared.

Of course Athena then revealed herself, and they battled. Athena’s weaver thing showed the Greek gods doing good stuff, Arachne’s showed the gods in their most unfavorable aspects. Due to this disrespect, and in some versions because it was better (tho I personally don’t believe that), Athena turned Arachne into a spider so she could weave forever.

The pride?? The taunting until it becomes serious?? The permanent change?? The rage that prompted the act?? Arachne as Arachne is the most perfect name on here, because who else would she be?? Another great one of Suzanne’s names. Genius.

Before we get to the last name, Coriolanus himself, let me point out I have no district people on here. Let this show just how interesting Strabo & Sejanus’ names are.

Finally!! The last one!! Coriolanus.

Coriolanus is actually quite disappointing compared to Sejanus or Arachne, but there’s still something here so I’m going to paste the Wikipedia on Coriolanus, the man Shakespeare based his play after & what happened in the play.

“Coriolanus is the name given to a Roman general after his military feats against the Volscians at Corioli. Following his success he seeks to be consul, but his disdain for the plebeians and the mutual hostility of the tribunes lead to his banishment from Rome. In exile, he presents himself to the Volscians, then leads them against Rome. After he relents and agrees to a peace with Rome, he is killed by his previous Volscian allies”

Now, unlike many of these other characters, Coriolanus’ relationship to his namesake mirrors his relationship to another character (Lucy Gray) more than his personality.

Coriolanus wants to be with Lucy Gray, but eventually due to his hatred of the districts and love of the capital, he ends up turning against her. He starts out wanting to help her, yet his own disgust only ends up hurting him.

Coriolanus is eventually killed by his former allies, what he’s created. That’s what happens in the original hunger games series. When Coin does the faked bomb drop, everyone he worked so hard to make love him turn against him quickly. He revolutionized the capital and they turned against him.

He almost changed his own feelings about district people and it ended up almost taking his life and career.

Help I forgot there was another part to the question 😭. Anywho if I was gonna write some, I’d probably just use random names or if I had a really good and accurate name (or totally opposite name) from mythology or a poem or something I’d use that and make it correspond to the character.

This is embarrassing, but a lot of the names from crimson rivers, a hunger games/marauders au stuck with me! Nothing specific, but anything that wasn’t a marauders character always made me go “huh! I like that!”

In conclusion though, Suzanne is a genius. As I said, I might have to reblog this later with more names if I ever think of any. This is probably my most researched answer, due to all the mythology and Wikipedia searches I had to do, so sorry that it took longer! Usually I just remember things and explain them lol.

Thank you for the question @curiousnonny, and as always, feel free to debate in the comments/reblogs but please don’t argue. I always enjoy answering and dissecting questions, so anyone feel free to ask!

[adelaidedrubman]

OCs AS ENTITIES (the magnus archives)

tagged by beloveds @direwombat @simplegenius042 @inafieldofdaisies @corvosattano @deputy-morgan-malone to do this fun little aesthetics game for a horror girlie! sending tags out to @socially-awkward-skeleton @henbased @pathologictwo @strafethesesinners @clicheantagonist @shallow-gravy @direwombat @quickhacked @jackiesarch @v0idbuggy @orionlancasterr @firstaidspray @stacispratt @8bitpizzacoupons @strangefable @roofgeese @ladyoriza @unholymilf @nonfunctioning-queer @voidika @captastra @confidentandgood @belorage @deputyash @nightbloodbix @blissfulalchemist @shellibisshe @cassietrn + like or unlike this post to opt in or out, respectively, of me tagging you in tag games!

i.  THE BURIED.  weighted blankets.  drowning.  the comfort of a loved one’s weight. soil & sand piling on top of you. hugging so hard it hurts a little. cramped hiding spots.  letting out air underwater to sink to the bottom of the pool.  walls pressing in on you. not moving from a position even though you’re cramping a little.  dragging the last second before you have to inhale. lonely subways.  feeling like one with the earth.  a layer of dirt on you. looking for something below.  cardboard boxes & tiny pillow forts.  hands calloused from digging.  knowing that your purpose is just below the surface. entering your final resting place before it kills you.  a storm drowning you out. dust & sand speaking to you.

ii.  THE CORRUPTION. insects.  a close imitation of the natural course of life. an illness in a community. a rag that dirties more than it cleans.   an untreated wound.  containment.  breaching containment.  unbreathable air. fungi.  one with that you love.  one with what loves you.   a corpse unfit for a glass case.  hearing a song in the sound of tiny wings & legs.  honeycomb patterns.  an ecosystem within a person.  a curse passed on.  the hubris of a scientist.  an ugly death where a glorious one is owed. blood on a handkerchief.  parasites.  something pushing up the sewer.  a mask to keep something out.  trypophobia.  knowing you belong.  death weeks after impact.  fever. food that’s gone off. pandora’s box.   death behind a glass.

iii.  THE DARK. shadows. lights that turn off by themselves.  the feel of cold marble.  a beaked creature in the night. the difference between seeing darkness & seeing nothing. touch of something you can’t see.  hiding under a blanket.  white, clouded eyes. months without going outside during sunlight. pouring dark. unscrewing lightbulbs. black matter. light sensitivity. a starless night.  time before light was created.  a shadow on the wall without a body to attach to.  withering plants.  a world without a sun.  footfalls in an empty house in the night.  a light that doesn’t reach as far as it should.  desperate reach for a flashlight.  clothes that hide your shape.  staying unperceivable.  winter months in the north.  an empty church.

*later on but yeah she knows a guy like that

iv.  THE DESOLATION. senseless pain.  warmth of faith. wax where skin should be. a blazing fire.  heat without a source. the third or fourth tragedy in the family. losing everything you’ve ever held dear. so much to live for,  gone so soon.  the smell of gasoline.  touch that scars. coffee cup that never goes cold. scorch marks on wood.  inescapably warm air.  a child born in fire.  death of a loved one.  a candle without a flame.  an altar in the middle of the woods.  animals with burnt fur.  plastic explosives. burning hot metal.  sweating in an interrogation room.  never touching a loved one. disfigurement. kiss that ruins you.  the scent of burning fat. a tattoo that terrifies its viewer.*  the agony of hellfire displayed as art.  auburn hair.  little clothing in cold weather.  a ripple in the air.  trying to cool down in vain.

v.  THE FLESH. body horror.   factories. a hunger for something more filling. never quite happy with how you look. the terror of an animal waiting for slaughter. a very good meal. the liquid of a perfect steak. fighting your worst survival instincts. a twisted bone. long nights working out.  more than one heart.  appearance that shapes like clay. a bag of bones. bone broth in a pot.  knowing to fear pigs.   the butcher’s shop.   plastic surgery.  something alien inside your body. a hunger in the gaze laid upon you. unwitting cannibalism. forgetting what you used to look like. being admired for your appearance & appearance only.  teeth marks on skin. scars from wounds that should’ve killed you.  cooking in scarcity. fenced in with one way to go.

vi.  THE END. the last page of a book.  nightmares that don’t feel like nightmares.  a skeletal hand.  the grip of the grim reaper around your throat. existential pain.  ivory dice.  flat-lining in a hospital.  gambling with death.  as old as the universe.  soul & spirit tied to an object.  a dream where you die. closing your eyes for the last time. the pleas of a dying one.  knowing the fate of someone you know & being unable to prevent it.  a thousand cords tugging you towards your end.  skin that’s freezing to the touch.  an act of desperation. someone’s life for yours. an eternity spent alive. the cost of your selfishness.  watching your own burial.   causing your own burial.  the smell of death. numbness to fear.  words from someone gone. meaninglessness of the actions or lives of single people in the universe.  multiple near-death experiences you refuse to die from.

vii.  THE EYE. googling something you shouldn’t have. eureka moments.* the unforgiving lens of a camera.  witness reports.**  hidden libraries.  eyes of different colors.  feeling of being watched.  a death recorded in tape.   a tragedy you can’t look away from.   endangering yourself for knowledge.  truth. analog records.  a symbol of an eye.  a watch tower.  compulsion to document. turning on recording devices without thinking about it.  saving the evidence before the person. extracting information. truth or dare, without the dare. a thirst for knowledge. books that speak to you. coordinated shelves.  cataloguing systems.  voyeurism.  police report you can’t put down.** reasoning your way out.  smell of old papers.  books that read you back.

*not correct ones

**america’s sweetheart verse

viii.  THE HUNT. sharp canines.  sore calves after a run.  the scent of blood.  an adventure for the journey’s sake.  the adrenaline right before the kill.  a whistle’s echo.  the woods.  the doe eyes of a prey animal.  your own breath in the air.  sharpened claws.  being tracked.  fear of someone knowing your every movement.  hunting down monsters.  hide & seek.  running away only to end up where you started.  staying alive purely because the enemy enjoys seeing you run.  a set of footsteps behind you.  blood dripping from bare hands.  barks & growls.  focused eyes.  a victim going limp under your hands.  a mouth full of fresh blood.  catching the scent of something monstrous.  perfecting your craft.  peering into the dark & running after it.

ix.  THE LONELY. an apartment too small for a double bed.  completely vacant streets.  waking up to see everyone gone.  fog.  point nemo.  a house too big to hear your family members in.  alone in a faceless crowd.  a mask with nothing behind it.  separated cubicles.  a deafening silence where joy should be.  a blinding spotlight.  the least missed in your friend group.  streets without lights in the windows.  isolation.  not truly knowing your friends. your friends not truly knowing you.  need for silence.  fear of crowds.  staring into space knowing nothing is looking back at you.  a ship alone at sea.  depression.  knowing your friends are better off without you.  talking to someone only to realize they’re gone.  a family too large to notice you there. safety in being alone.

x.  THE SLAUGHTER. a game of tag.   senseless violence.  a true crime hobby.*   improvised weapons.  blinding rage.  intent to kill.   a horrific day in a quiet community.  a medal of bravery.*  holding on to what validates your anger.   history books that spare no details.  an injury you want revenge for.  war.  counting kills.  songs of soldiers.   a knife block on the counter.  a pool of blood.  shellshock.  unspeakable horrors.  anger pushing you forward.  unimaginable pain.  not seeing who will hurt you but knowing the pain is coming.  a fully human monster.  an authority sending its lessers to their deaths.  kill or be killed.  unedited wartime memoirs.*  a weapons collection.  not knowing the names of who you kill.  too many to remember.  loss of hope.  there’s no heroes in war.

*america’s sweetheart verse

xi.  THE SPIRAL. sleep deprivation.  corridors you can get lost in.  maze puzzles that loop back on themselves.  losing possessions.   losing people.  losing your sanity.  corkscew curls.  rows of funhouse mirrors.  optical illusions.  a separate reality.  walking through the wrong door.   delusions.  not knowing what your hands are doing.   blank spaces in documents.   hallucinations.  wrong proportions.  a nameless thing.  a place that has never existed.  doubting your own mind.  blind faith. losing track of names,  labels,  categories.   distorted sound.  an imperfection in a glass that twists the view.   loss of time.   a garish color.  doors that open to nowhere.  lies. an unnatural laugh.  jokes & tricks.  illusions.  a doorway.  a sculptor with a wild imagination. limbs in impossible angles.  doing what’s fun, not what’s sensible.  fractals you can get lost in.

xii.  THE STRANGER. wax figures.  a close approximation of a human face.  a borrowed appearance.  a strange smell.  glass eyes.  furs & pelts.  a dance.  a song of a choir.  the uncanny valley.  stitching yourself together.  the colors of a circus.  a puppet with no strings. mannequins.  glitter & sequin.  a stranger you’ve always known.  someone strange in the place of someone you knew.  stolen identities.  stolen skins. a machine imitating humanity.  the anonymity of a service worker.  hiding in plain sight.  uncomfortable to look at.  a faked accent.*  concealing.  forgetting who you are. forgetting who others are.  a replacement no one notices.  images that look posed.  the only one seeing the false face of someone.

*not faked, just exaggerated

xiii.  THE VAST. open spaces.   carnival rides going up & down.  fear of heights.  endless infinity around you.  your insignificance in an universe.  stomach turning at a drop.  fear of not the crash down but the moment you slip.  the sway of a cable car.  an adventure holiday.  losing track of where the surface is.  miles & miles of nothing around you.  staring at the sky & feeling like you may fall into it.  loss of control.  a fall that doesn’t end in death.  glass floor to the view below.  terminal velocity.  the sound of wind in your ears.   a reach over the railing.  a jump from the top of the building. falling into nothing.  feeling your feet let go of the ground.  a leap of faith. motion sickness.

xiv.  THE WEB. undecipherable code. a puppeteer holding the strings.  power over the weak—willed.  strings of fate.  manipulation.   an arranged accident.  a hundred minions doing your bidding.*  cobwebs.  spiders.  a laid trap. never voicing discomfort.  outwitting a cheater.  doing things without realizing it.  red string across a corkboard.  finding something lost where you were sure you checked.  power over the unreliability of chance.  watching others dance for you.*  an entangled death.  a thousand tiny legs & fangs.  shady forum threads.*  something important gone missing.  suspiciously disregarded case.*  a missing witness.*  connections.  the world wide web.*  power of victimhood.*  gullibility.  no control over your own decisions.  an invisible leash.  mass psychology.  a horror film in the making.  scapegoat.  never remembering to ask for a name.

*america’s sweetheart verse

+  THE EXTINCTION. the end of an era.  apocalypse movies.  the alarms of warning systems.   a desolate landscape.  end of the world cults.  nihilism.  the last written history. a changed world.  no survivors.  old prophecies.  a thousand predicted ends.  a new chapter.  an end with no escape.  catastrophes.  a calendar counting down.  breaking point. overindulgence.

[annonniiiiieeeee]

i just got the entire hunger games trilogy+the ballad of songbirds and snakes

first of all katniss is so autistic coded like girly didn’t know her and madge were friends until she was about to leave for the death games and that is so funny to me

peeta

PEETA

gale gives me the ick like all times out of 10

“you here to finish me off sweetheart” if that’s not a mona thing to say to raph idk what is

I am so happy for you!!!

Katniss really is autistic coded. My favorite tictok of the hunger games is all the character quotes where they are being genuinely nice to her. Madge giving her the pin Peeta being kinda and then it just flashes to Katniss with the sound but from goob in “meet the Robinsons” where he goes “they all hated me.” No girl your town likes you.

Peeta is also my favorite man right now. Is he perfect no but he funny and kind and does everything he can to help the girl he loves.

I hope to make mona as fun and cheeky.

[heniareth]

I was really curious about what your opinions on the DAO companions are :) I know we have talked about some, but I'd love to hear more and about the others as well :D I hope it's ok to pose this as an ask :)

Sure! That sounds like a ton of fun. This might be a long one tho. Mind you, this is not the finished version of the answer. I'd like to link stuff and add a cut, but rn that's not possible. I'll update it when I can.

Edit: I have updated it ^^

Let's go alphabetically bc why not.

Alistair:

Sweet guy. So sweet. There was a moment when I was hard pressed chosing between him and Zevran (alas, Zevran won). Also, he's weirdly tall according to the wiki? How did I not notice that before?

Let's get a bit more serious now, Alistair is a great guy. The only reason he's not the hero of the story is because he doesn't want to. He has all the qualities of a leader: he's good at dealing with conflict (as evident with the conversation with the mage at the beginning. He gets where he wants to get without antagonizing the mage, but without allowing him to trample all over him). He's a solid tactitian and knows how to make allies (he suggests to use the Grey Warden treaties, after all). I bet if he was in the leadership position, he'd even not bicker with Morrigan. His moral code is pretty tight; some might say too tight, but I think it's less about the moral code and more about learning to judge people by their actions, not by the labels they fit into (Morrigan is a proud apostate and therefore bad. Wynne is a humble circle mage and therefore good). He also has a bit of a black-and-white way of seeing the world. I empathize a lot with Alistair, especially with his experience with the Chantry and his subsequent reluctance to deal with it. I really wish I had gotten to know more about concrete experiences he had during his training as templar, but he seems reluctant to talk about it (gee, I wonder why).

Since I've only played the game once, I haven't really picked up on Arl Eamon's abuse towards him, which apparently exists (Isolde, however... I mean, even if he were Eamon's illegitimate son, he's a kid, ma'am, he didn't exactly get to chose his parents. So that's so not okay). Alistair's way of speaking about them both, however, is either sign that he has not come within a hundred miles of acknowledging how much it hurt him, or that he's already gone through the whole process and has decided to forgive them. The latter shows a very strong character; yes, he relies on the approval and leadership of others, he has his issues, but he's already started working on them.

That being said, irl Alistair would be like a little brother to me. I'd tease him relentlessly (all in good fun and I promise to stop if it makes him uncomfortable, but he's just so teasable). I still wish the videogame gave him the chance to take important decisions for himself. But that, of course, would somewhat defeat the point of the game.

Leliana:

Another sweet, sweet person. Her singing voice is amazing. Her belief in the Maker inspires me (I'm a religious person and seeing religious characters represented in a positive light is Very Cool. It's also sometimes a source of discomfort, because the Church has done a lot of very messed up stuff and positive representation can sometimes veer into apologetics for things that should not be excused, but that's a whole other can of worms. The bottom line is that religious characters sometimes work for me and other times don't and Leliana works for me very much bc she's an outsider inside the Chantry).

Leliana is best friend material, tbh. I'd love to get to know her irl, discuss theology and philosophy and maybe even politics? She makes mistakes and has prejudices, but, tbh, so do I. And I do get the feeling that she tries her best to learn. From the times she intervenes in a conversation between the Warden and an NPC, she shows herself to be compassionate and open to the needs of others. What I get from her character is that she genuinely wants to help, which is something that I adore of her. I suspect that she sometimes has a hard time deciding wether she's a good person or not. She has killed and seduced and worked for a morally dubious person, and she doesn't show the same nonchalance about it as Zevran (though they both do discuss their line of work in very... professional terms). This is, however, more of a headcanon than actual factual canon.

I also very much enjoy her girly side, like her interest in shoes and dresses. She's one badass woman who also looses her cool about the latest fashions in Val Royeaux. I like that. Between her and Alistair, a non human noble Warden has as good a help to navigate the Fereldan court as they're going to get. Leliana is also, I can't forget that, clever and insightful. It'd be easy to write her off as the innocent chantry girl, but she's so much more than that. Her kindness is paired with foresight, I think. She knows that taking on the trouble to help now can go a long way in the future. I just have a lot of respect for her.

Loghain:

This one's gonna be short bc I didn't recruit him. He's an amazing villain and would probably be a great Warden as well. He reminds me of Denerhor from LOTR; once a hero/stewart of his people, ambition and desperation have driven them both down a terrible path. I have also only little idea about his past. People say he lost a lot, and I believe it wholeheartedly; it doesn't excuse the fact that he plunged the country into a civil war in the middle of a Blight. I don't have a lot of sympathy for short-sighted politicians. I wish he hadn't made himself regent. That's what I take away from his character.

Edit: One thing I forgot to mention that really impressed me was his death. I had Alistair duel him (that was a rough duel), and then it kinda just jumped to a cutscene of my Warden nodding and Alistair executing him. That didn't sit well with me. I didn't want to kill Loghain, and less so in front of Anora. But what impressed me was that Loghain just accepted it. That takes a whole lot of guts. Compare that to Howe's death, and how he screams out that he deserved (more, probably, or anything but death) and it's crystal clear who the more noble of the two is. Loghain strikes me as very lawful neutral, and any neutral alignment has the particularity that it can be dragged towards good or bad, sometimes without the characters noticing it (which is interesting from a DnD perspective; neutral is often concieved of as just as stable as good or evil, but that may not be true. But that's a different post). Anyway, Loghain's death was impactful.

Morrigan:

I could kick myself for not maxing out her approval in the first play-through. I got to enjoy a bit of her friendship by the end of it and boy was even that little bit worth it. Friendship with Morrigan is something that is hard-won. It's all the more precious because of that.

Morrigan is full of paradoxes, I think. She's incredibly wise in some ways, yet also very short-sighted (”just kill them, don't solve their problems”. Morrigan, dear, I'm not going to gain a lot of allies if I kill everybody who poses a problem to me). She is so intelligent, but emotionally... not so. She knows so much about some things, and very little about the next. She's incredibly wilful and knows what she wants, but follows Flemeth's orders all the time through. She hungers for power and independence, yet craves closeness, but won't allow herself to have it. She asks you to prove yourself to her and is extremely critical of your actions, I think, because she's afraid. She bites the hand that feeds her because it might hit her next.

Like with Eamon, I haven't managed to catch the undercurrent of abuse that seems to permeate Flemeth's relationship with Morrigan. Except there are signs, because there must be something Morrigan is scared of and who has instilled all that rage in her, and that's Flemeth. Also, she clearly hates/does not care about her and wants her dead (unless killing Flemeth was part of Flemeth's plan as well? Hm.)

Morrigan is that one person who you are nice to, continuously, because nobody else is. And suddenly she becomes less cold. And then friendly. And suddenly you're asking yourself why everybody hates her, because she's a really good friend! I just wish the other companions came to a similar conclusion, especially Alistair and Wynne.

Oghren:

They did this man dirty. He has such great lines and I'm convinced he was a great person before Branka disappeared. He has that dwarven warrior spirit, and while he looks like Gimli, some of his most impactful lines remind me of Dwalin or even Thorin Oakenshield himself. He could be so noble had he gotten some character development, damnit!

Oghren as he is written is somewhat disgusting. I hate the lechering comments and the drunkenness. And still, I don't hate him because of those amazing lines he has when he's actually sober. It's frustrating and I'll give him that character development myself if the game won't. I strongly associate the song Whiskey Lullaby with him, bc that's how he would have ended up if the Warden hadn't taken him along (warning: the song talks about suicide and alcoholism). Like I said, they could have done such cool things with his character. As he is written now... it's just sad. Moments of lucidity drowned in alcohol and creepy jokes. As you can see, I don't blame the character for either. The alcoholism happens all too often irl. The creepy jokes... I put that one on the writers' tab.

I actually think Oghren could have been a great mentor figure (I know, I shock myself as well sometimes). Next to the Grey Wardens, the ones who know most about fighting darkspawn are the dwarves because they have to deal with them constantly. Especially a warrior caste dwarf like Oghren could have brought a lot of that invaluable knowledge to the team, especially since there are no Grey Wardens in Ferelden but two extremely green recruits. Next, you get the chance to give Oghren the command of the teammates you leave behind in the battle of Denerim with the reason that he has lead men into battle before. Where did that suddenly come from? Oghren should have been right up there telling my Warden that they were doing this wrong, that they needed more food (and booze) and a confident leader to keep the armies they've called together going. Oghren should have been able to tell my civilian city elf who got recruited into the Grey Wardens a six months ago how one leads an army. How one presents oneself to inspire confidence, how one doesn't crack under the pressure, how one gets the leaders of said armies (some who hate each others guts i.e. Dalish elves and humans) to work together. And, last but not least, Oghren could have had a great story about grief. This is a man who has lost most of what made him (and what he hasn't lost he's spilling down the drain with every mug of ale). This is a man who, if you take him into the Deep Roads, has to see what his wife did to his family, how his wife got absolutely obsessed, and can be forced to kill said wife or watch her die. All Wardens loose their home and families at the start of the story. It would really have rounded the whole narrative out if the Warden and Oghren could have recognised their grief in each other and hashed it out somehow. Such as it is, Oghren is a depressed drunkard and there is nothing we can do about that. I find that frustrating.

Rascal (a.k.a. Dog):

Best boy. 100/10. I wish we had gotten to see the reaction of the different origins to the mabari (because elves probably have a whole different experience with them from mages or humans. And dwarves just... I think they straight up have none? XD). Other than that, no complaints. The name Rascal was the one I gave my dog because you have to be a right rascal to survive what he did and play the pranks he plays. Smartest breed in the world indeed.

Shale:

Shale is one of those characters that I recruited rather late in the game, so I haven't had the chance to explore their personality and worldview, really. I didn't even get to take them to the Deep Roads (this will be ammended in playthrough nr. 2). As such, I don't have particularly strong opinions on them (or her? The wiki refers to Shale as 'it', but that sounds weird). But, because I know so little about Shale, I have a lot of questions. First, what were they like before they were a golem? Shayle, as she was called then, was the best warrior of her time if I remember correctly. Why did she become a golem? Was it to be able to eternally protect her people? Was the sarcasm the golem Shale exhibits also part of the dwarven warrior Shayle or did that come later (if for thirty years you have nobody to talk to but yourself, you better be entertaining. And I can imagine how it could make somebody terribly jaded as well).

Next, how attached is Shale to their golem form, exactly? According to the banter, they infinitely prefer it to a squishy fleshy form. If that is the case, however, why go to Tevinter to try and become a squishy dwarf again? It's not like that process could be reversed if they wanted to become a golem again; if Shale survives to the end of the game, the Anvil of the Void is destroyed and Caridin is dead. Was the whole spiel about their indestructible form a façade? It might have been, but not because Shale actually disliked their form. I think it would have more to do with the loss of their memories and with the very invasive experiments and alterations of Shale's body made by the mage Wilhelm. The loss of memories means that Shale is unable to remember life as a fleshy creature. They might be deflecting by pretending that they didn't care for that experience anyway because of the superiority of their golem form. The modifications made to their form by Wilhelm would have alienated them from their body. In light of this, it's significant that Shale asks the Warden to decorate their form with crystals.

All of this is, of course, pure speculation. I may have easily missed or forgotten details that would disprove the above thoughts. All in all, I like Shale and I hope we meet them again in DA4 (given that it's mostly set in Tevinter). It's a liking from a respectful distance, because Shale is tall and made out of rock and also way more experienced than I will ever be (they are literally the oldest member of the Warden's little Blight fighting squad).

Sten:

Sten is another person I'd keep a respectful distance from physically. That seems to be the what he would prefer, at least. I've enjoyed his character a lot, especially because he seems pretty clear-cut at first, but slowly lets the nuance of his person show (gruff and stoic, but then he has an eye for art, a sweet tooth and he likes cute animals). It's also very interesting that there's no moment when you learn "the truth" about him the way you do with Zevran or Leliana. There's no big reveal about his life under the Qun before coming to Ferelden. He says he was sent to monitor the Blight, but honestly? If neither Ferelden nor Orlais knew there was a Blight, how could the Qunari know? I think he's lying, and he takes his secrets back with him when he leaves Ferelden. And yet I think I know him enough to say that a Warden who has become friends with him has nothing to fear from Sten.

One thing I find very interesting about Sten is how he thinks. His conversation about how women can't be soldiers has been analysed a lot on this page I think. He seems to be arguing based on a different paradigma than the one the Warden has. He also seems to have a very clear-cut view of the world. What is fascinating to me is that, when arguing with the Warden and learning about their culture, he is not necessarily becoming more lax about his worldview. I think it's more likely that he is expanding his paradigma, the structure of thought through which he understands the world. I don't think that he is now convinced that women can be warriors as well. I think he rather understands that, in Ferelden, the relationship between occupation and gender is different than under the Qun. Which of the two he thinks is more right or more agreeable, I have no idea. I'm also not very interested in that. But I find it fascinating how he always seems to be looking on quietly, gathering data, classifying it and trying to fit it into his understanding of how the world works. I wouldn't be surprised at all if his original party was a scouting party to see how vulnerable Ferelden was at that moment to outside forces. One thing I don't understand with all of this is why he urges the Warden to meet the Blight head on. No smart soldier would suggest that, except if they are foolishly proud (and Sten doesn't seem like that kind of guy tbh). I get that the Warden takes way longer to gather allies than expected because they first have to solve all of their allies' problems. But surely Sten sees the need to have allies? Is he just that impatient? Does he have a death wish (à la, I lost my sword and am without honour, better to die sooner than later and in glorious battle)? Was he his group's previous commander and is he now having trouble following somebody else's orders? Or maybe it's his way to make sure the Warden knows what they are doing? To push them into becoming the self-assured commander their allies will need once they're all gathered? I really don't know. I like the last option best, however.

For me, Sten is my fellow, more experienced soldier. Like Alistair, he can potentially be the Warden's brother in arms, but he's definitely the older brother here. He probably doesn't take kindly to tearful confessions of how hard everything is, but I feel like he's otherwise a solid rock to lean on. I feel like the Warden can trust him to do what is necessary and count on him no matter what, especially after they get his sword back. His devotion from that point on is honestly so powerful.

Wynne:

Wynne was such a support for my Warden (except with the whole conversation about love vs. duty and that she may have to choose between Zevran and ending the Blight and that she should therefore break up with him. Wynne had a point. Astala was so not willing to sacrifice her relationship with Zevran. But the whole conversation came at a point where she was already so disillusioned that she blew up in Wynne's face (”can i please just have one (1) nice thing????”)). But all in all, Wynne is great.

She has a lot of flaws. She was very marked by her life in the Cricle and, for all her age, she has little experience living outside of it. She is also a conformist despite her strong moral core. In a way, her ability to find peace with her lot in life impresses me deeply because it speaks to a lot of strength of character. Sadly, however, strength can be ill applied and used to suppress. I think she has convinced herself that the Chantry is right under (almost) all circumstances to be able to rationalize the life that mages live. She's had her son taken away from her as a baby and an apprentice killed. Her reaction seems to have been to convince herself that this was right, or for the greater good (and now I'm thinking about the Guardian's question at the temple of Andraste's Ashes; are you wise or do you just repeat what others have told you? The answer is not as clear-cut as it might be). This is why she is so irritated by Zevran and Morrigan. By aligning herself with the Chantry, she is, in her eyes, good. Zevran and Morrigan are not; they do not conform to Chantry morality and they defend themselves tooth and nails against somebody who would try and convert them. This is something Wynne never allowed herself to do; she always did the "right" thing and it has cost her so much. I'm not saying she was right (it would probably have done her some good to rebel from time to time, and to trust her own gut instinct more), but in light of this, it hardly surprises me that she's so judgamental. She has to be, or she would be forced to confront all the evil she has not fought against all those years and all the hurt that has been caused to her by the very institution she protects (and thank God she only tries to argue and can appreciate it when people have found a good life outside of her comfort zone. If she tried to convince by force or, for example, drag her former apprentice back to the Circle... boy oh boy that would get ugly). If you think about it, Wynne really is a good example for what happens if you live by a philosophy of always choosing the lesser evil.

Something that I keep forgetting over her grandmotherly and dignified character is how damn powerful she is. She has escaped the carnage at Ostagar; HOW!? She protected those mage apprentices in the Circle tower for God knows how long. In the battle of Denerim, she wades through an army and comes out alive on the other side. The wiki lists her age at 40, I think, but that doesn't make a lick of sense unless 75 years of age are the Fereldan equivalent to 100. This lady, about whom people make grandmother jokes, did all that. It's impressive.

Zevran:

You know, I would really love to know what Wynne thinks about the events at Kirkwall in DA2. It might be a disaster for her, or it might pave the way for one last bit of character development. She certainly didn't want to return to the Circle after fighting the Blight. That may be an indicator of some change in her stance on the Circle of Magi.

Edit: I forgot that she is what the Circle considers a literal abomination! Holy cow, how could I forget that?? Anyway, her conversation about what being an abomination means is so... heartbreaking, actually. It's so tentative. So careful. "Am I an abomination? Am I the same thing that has killed my students? The same thing as Uldred? Am I lost and damned? Did I invite this spirit in? Is this my fault?" Like wow, Wynne is going through something huge right there. I love it. I have to continue playing the game to see what it ends up as, but it's fascinating and such a huge thing that she allows the Warden in on that.

Ah, Zevran, my beloved (he has stolen my heart so much it's not even funny anymore). He's funny, he's charming, he's so so loyal and it breaks my heart. Zevran is the one about whom I've read most meta: these three wonderful posts for instance, as well as this one about his possible lack of scars, and this one about his lack of freedom. All of these have influenced my opinion of him and they are great reads.

I have talked about Zevran with you before, so I'll just skip to the new stuff. I have come to conclusion that Zevran is an artist at heart. This is totally not biased by the fact that I also do art, but hear me out. One of his preferred gifts are bars of silver and gold. While those have the obvious utility of basically functioning as money (they can be sold to any silversmith or goldsmith and their value is pretty stable through time and in different countries), there's also this from his codex: "Zevran shows an affinity for the finer things in life—hardly surprising for an Antivan Crow—but his appreciation can be more poetic than he lets on. A simple bar of refined silver or gold, uncomplicated by a craftsman's hammer, is elegantly valuable." Tell me that is not an artist's eye that sees that gold and sees the beauty in it. Then, there's also the meta about Zevran the Seducer which I linked above and link here again. It talks specifically about how he lets himself enjoy the target and be seen in his enjoyment. Tell me that is not an artist's eye that beholds the beauty of something he is set out to destroy. Even his talk about his assassinations show this. He talks about it as an art, the way somebody would talk about the brutal intervention in stone that produces a sculpture. Yes, it's a rationalization of the act of killing and yes killing is still wrong. But he doesn't go on about it on a moral tangent the way Alistair or Wynne would (”this person was bad, killing them was necessary”) or even through the argument of survival like Morrigan would (”it was either them or me and it sure as Hell wasn't going to be me”). He talks about the pleasure of a job well done, of the satisfaction of striking the precise point and executing a plan to the perfection so as to minimize chances of discovery and to make a clean death possible. And pleasure in seeing and in doing, this I firmly believe, is absolutely fundamental for an artist.

My favourite part about my Warden and Zevran as a pairing is that Zevran precisely brings out that ability to take your pleasures as they come and to really savour them. Fighting the Blight is tough; it's so important to find good things amidst the chaos to stay sane. If Astala saves Zevran from himself by offering him a place to stay and a purpose, Zevran saves Astala from herself by keeping her from running herself into the ground trying to save the world.

There are some things I don't like about Zev. The incessant flirting, for example, sometimes makes me uncomfortable (it becomes enjoyable for me once the Warden and him are in a relationship, but before that? Nah, no thanks). I wish he would also leave the other female characters alone (and there's so many more shameless comments of his aimed at Morrigan, Leliana or Wynne than at Alistair or maybe even Sten).

---

And that's my take on the Origins companions (this was rather long. Whew ^^' I hope it was still readable and that you enjoyed it!!) Thank you so much for the ask!! It's been a joy thinking about this. I was worrying at first that the less prominent companions like Sten or Shale wouldn't get as much content but... well XD

[minutiaewritings]

What am I now? ⋆ Draco Malfoy

A/N- So this is part two to but ‘i knew you’. I was gonna use the rest of the song, ‘cardigan’ by taylor swift. However, while I was showering ‘falling’ by harry styles came on and i got this brilliant idea. This part is in Draco’s pov too:) 

part one- but i knew you

I'm in my bed And you're not here And there's no one to blame but the drink and my wandering hands Forget what I said It's not what I meant And I can't take it back I can't unpack the baggage you left

Draco lied in his bed, staring lazily at the ceiling. There was a party happening in the room of requirements, hosted by the Slytherin house. It was a celebration for winning the quidditch match against Ravenclaw. It was a hard game, so a celebration was in order. Draco could imagine the music pulsing through the room, drunk teens dancing awfully as they rode out their hormone fueled dreams. Draco was much more content with laying in his room, enjoying the rare silence. 

It had been a few months since the start of his 7th year. The war was over, his father was in Azkaban and he was sure to stay there for a while. Draco’s mom had changed, slowly but surely. Over the last summer, Draco had spent his time alone in the large mansion of Malfoy manner. Draco remembered how his mom no longer sat in her favorite lounge, reading one of her disgustingly girly magazines. Instead most of the time, he found her curled up in her bed. Sometimes he could hear her sniffling, choking back tears but mostly he found her sleeping soundly. 

Draco had changed too, he didn’t care for the rivalry of the Hogwarts houses, he didn’t care about teasing potter and his disgusting friends. He didn’t care for a lot of things now. Except Y/N. 

Merlin, Y/N.

The beautiful eyed girl who plagued his thoughts more often than not. He remembered the night at the astronomy tower, the last time he had spoken to her. He remembered how her perfect frame shook with rage before she cursed him and stormed out, leaving the pureblood alone with his thoughts. That night, Draco had cried. He cried alone in the tower, feeling corned. He had broken the heart of one of the most important people in his life. 

Draco knew why he did it, why he pushed you away and broke you. He was doing it to protect you, the last thing he needed was for you to get wrapped up in his death eaters bullshit. He wanted you safe, and if that meant making you hate him, so be it. 

But was it worth it? Was it worth losing you? Maybe you would’ve stayed with him through the war. Helping and soothing him during his night terrors. Maybe you would’ve hated him anyway, calling him a traitor and a monster. He wouldn’t blame you. 

But for now he lied alone in his bed. Suddenly his door flew open, Blaise in the doorway with a drunken smile. “Draco! Theo yacked all over me and this girl, came up here to change. Why aren’t you at the party? It’s absolutely wicked down up there.” His words were slurred and sewed together. He pranced over to one of his drunks and popped it open. Blaise grabbed an emerald green sweater, slipping off his soiled shirt. 

“Don’t care much to be smooshed by a bunch of drunk imbeciles .” Draco said coldly.

“That’s a shame, there’s some beautiful creatures up there. Y/N looks absolutely pang.” Draco wondered if Blaise knew what he had just said. 

“What was she wearing?” Draco asked before he could stop himself. Since when did you party? You never cared to go to any of the house parties unless Malfoy dragged you there himself. 

“I think it was blue or maybe black. Wait!” Blaise held a hand towards Draco, collecting his intoxicated thoughts. “Yeah it’s black. Definitely black” He laughed at himself shamelessly. 

“Black what, you prat. A black sock?” Draco found himself grinning at his friend’s current state.

“A black dress.” Blaise said simply. Draco swallowed hard, despite the voice in the bag of his head nagging him to stay in bed, Draco found himself wanting to see you. He would be perfectly fine with just one glance. Then his hunger would be fine for the night and possibly he could enjoy the party. 

“Stay right there. I’m coming to the party.” Draco rose to his feet and went to his wardrobe. He pulled out a simple, black long sleeve shirt and a pair of nice yet comfortable gray slacks. Draco slipped on a pair of new, shiny black dress shoes before turning to Theo’s small mirror on the wall. He checked his reflection, he looked tired but he doubted anyone would notice. 

When Blaise and Draco arrived inside the room of requirements, he was greeted with the loud music. There were plenty of people there, from all of the houses. He even saw a couple of ravenclaws taking some firewhisky shots. 

Shots sounded perfect right now, it would help Draco calm his nerves. Blaise saw one of his many friends on the way to the drink table, leaving Draco alone as he poured himself a shot. Closing his eyes, he tilted his head back and down the substance with ease. Another one, and another one. On his fourth shot in the span of three minutes, Draco felt better already. His eyes danced around the scenery in front of him, he saw some of his so called ‘friends’. But then he saw you. 

And merlin you looked good. So good. You’re hair was a little longer than the last time he saw you. Your cheeks were painted red as you smiled happily at Harry, who was wrapped up with the Weasley girl. Draco could tell you were drunk, or at least very tipsy. You were sawing softly as you giggled with Potter and his friends. You looked happy, and Draco was content with that. 

After that night night at the astronomy tower, Draco had watched you slowly break. Before summer vacation, he noticed you stopped going to the great halls for meals. You always seemed so tired and empty. You wore a neutral expression almost always. You never laughed or showed any emotion, it broke Draco’s heart. 

Draco was brought to the memory of Pansy and you. You’d been walking down the halls alone when you passed Draco and his friends. You kept your head down as you walked by, and he watched you carefully. He couldn’t stop Pansy’s bloody words. She called out after you, causing you to turn towards the group. Pansy mentioned Y/N’s current state, mentioning and giggling at Y/N’s sudden change in behavior. “Did someone hurt our dear Y/N?” Pansy’s sickening voice spoke. Y/N had stared at Pansy with an empty expression. Draco swallowed as he remembered her eyes. She had looked at the raven-haired girl with nothing in her eyes. No sadness, anger, or amusement. Draco took note of how Pansy shifted uncomfortably under your intense gaze. Then you turned on your heel and left. 

Draco normally would’ve laughed at Pansy’s failed attempt at bullying but he couldn’t. Because Pansy was right, someone had broken your heart. And it was him. 

“Dray.” A girl Draco didn’t recognize purred next to him. He glared down at her. 

“May I help you with something? Or do you take pleasure in bothering people when you’re piss drunk?” He spit out. He repressed a laugh as the girl’s smirk fell and morphed into a sad, shocked expression. When she didn't speak, Draco turned and poured himself a large cup of tainted tonic water and firewhiskey. 

Draco left the drink table and made his way through the crowd, aiming towards a large couch in the middle of the party. No one was sitting on it surprisingly, but he wouldn’t complain. Draco sat in the middle of the couch, sinking into the soft cushions. Draco sipped his drink slowly, wishing he had stayed in his bed. 

But I want her to be in bed with me, playing with my hair and kissing my neck. Merlin I miss her kisses. 

Draco’s brain thought, he shook it away. This was his fault, all of it. He wasn’t strong enough to go against his family, and he had to pay the consequences. 

“Sorry. I didn’t see your legs. You have really long legs.” A beautiful giggle filled his ears as he looked at the girl in front of him. He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn’t even realize that you had tripped over his stretched out legs. You were on the floor, on your knees as you looked down and fixed the top of your dress. When you lifted your gaze, Draco’s eyes met with yours. 

You looked sweaty and had rosy cheeks from all the drinks you’ve must’ve consumed. Draco’s heart hammered against his chest as you just stared at him. But you’re face had so many expressions, you looked shocked, scared, happy and sad. Draco swallowed thickly, past the lump forming in his throat. You just sat there on the floor and stared at him. 

 “Hello.” Draco said simply. He wanted to slap his face, hello? really? The first words he’s spoken to you in 6 months and it’s hello?

You stared at him again. “Hi.” He couldn’t read your tone. 

“Having fun?” He cleared his throat, playing with the hem of his shirt. 

“I was.” Now Draco could tell you were upset. You shuffled up to your feet, trying to stable your balance before you turned away from him. 

Draco found himself reaching out to you, he gripped your arm carefully and pulled you back. A flashback from the astronomy tower came into his head. Draco had turned to leave as well, but you hugged him and cried. Begging him to stay. In return, Draco said some of the worst lies ever. Everything he said to you was quite the opposite of how he felt towards you. 

“Y/N. I’m sorry-” A sharp stinging feeling landed on Draco’s left cheek. His head was whipped around before he rubbed his face slightly. You slapped him. “What the hell, Y/L/N!” 

“You...” You’re voice wavered. You stared at Draco, tears in your eyes. “You don’t get to apologize to me!” Tears were now falling down your cheeks. Draco wanted nothing more than to wipe them away, but he restrained himself. “You don’t get to apologize after you broke me. I trusted you! I gave you everything I had. I gave you all my time and love, I gave you me. I-I just wanted to help you, even if it was a little bit. I just wanted to make you happy, Draco.” You looked so small when you cried, Draco hated seeing you cry. Hated it even more that it was because of him. Guilt burned in his chest as you continued. “I loved you with every fiber in my body.  I used to dream about you, about us. And I hate that I still do. I still dream about your stupid, perfect face. But I-I I’m finally finding myself again. I’m starting to feel better too, I’m not gonna let you walk back into my life and fuck me up again. I can’t afford to lose myself again just to have you back in my arms.” You wiped the tears from your cheeks before you looked at him again. “But like you said, you’re done with me. I was merely an experience.” You turned and left, leaving Draco feeling empty with the encounter. 

Draco watched you walk away, you practically walked across the whole room. You were walking as far away as possible from Draco. Draco huffed out a breath and ran a hand through his hair. Maybe those shots weren’t the best idea. Draco could feel himself getting worked up. He was angry, angry that you were walking away from him. Angry that he was letting you walk away from him. 

Draco turned and grabbed his drink off the side table next to the couch, chugging it. Once the drink was warmly settling into his stomach, Draco tossed the cup onto the floor. Draco needed to get out of the party, away from everyone and their wandering eyes. He pushed passed people, some of them cursing at him. 

Once Draco had reached the empty, dull hallway, he took a deep breath. He could finally breathe again. Draco’s feet carried him towards his favorite spot, the astronomy tower. Once inside, he slammed the door shut, wincing at the loud same. Draco could feel the alcohol taking it’s full effect, making his head spin as he sat on the windowsill. So many thoughts were running through his head. Draco rubbed his temple softly, groaning. Way too many shots. 

Draco looked out towards the horizon. It was a full moon, and the scenery looked absolutely stunning. The boy found his mind wandering to you again, images from your guy’s fresh encounter engraved in his mind. Draco really had broken you, more than he had realized in the beginning.

And he couldn’t fix it. He couldn’t take back those awful things he said to you. He couldn’t reverse the damage that had been done. Draco rubbed the few tears that began to form in the back of his eyes. 

He couldn’t get rid of the memories. Memories of you throwing your head back, laughing carelessly at something he said. Draco couldn’t forget the way you bit your lower lip and the way your nose scrunched at the corners when you were studying. Your perfect hair, the way it fell effortlessly around you. He missed those tired eyes you gave him in the early, dewy mornings. He missed your lips, how they molded with his oh-so-perfectly. How they were always so warm and full, in need of his own lips. 

Draco let the tears fall freely. He was tired of missing you, tired of missing everything about you. He just wanted you to come back to him, he would get on his knees for you, in front of the whole damn school if needed. He didn’t care at this point, anything to have you in his arms again. 

----

What am I now? What am I now? What if I'm someone I don't want around? I'm fallin' again I'm fallin' again I'm fallin'

Everyone must have felt drained from last nights party. A few people littered the great hall here and there, eating their breakfast slowly. 

Draco sat in the middle of the Slytherin table alone, scooping a small amount of vanilla Greek yogurt onto the his plate. He sat and ate his breakfast in silence. His mind drifted to you as usual, particularly last nights event.

Did you not love him anymore? Is that why you were so quick to turn down his apology. No, that couldn’t be. You’d said it yourself, ‘I still dream about your stupid, perfect face.’ 

So maybe there was a chance, a very slim chance that he could get you back. But would you want him back? Want him to stick around? No, you didn’t. You had said it yourself again, he heard the words from your very mouth. You didn’t want to lose yourself again. Draco understood that. He never realized how much you gave him until it was gone; until you were gone. 

Draco didn’t blame you for not wanting him back. He was a negative person, that he could admit to himself. He got jealous quickly, he remembered accusing you once of cheating with one of the Weasley twins. Draco wished more than ever that he could go back and take it back, take it all back. But he couldn’t. 

Draco slammed his spoon onto the table, causing a few students to look up from their meals and glance at the blonde. The boy stood to his feet, making his way back to his bedroom. 

Draco stopped in his tracks, looking at the end of the empty hall. Blaise and Theo were probably still snoring away, and he didn’t want to hear any of it. He could go to the Astronomy tower, yet the idea didn’t seem to please him enough. Where could he go? The room of requirement? No, he was sure someone would monitor the entrance after last night. Draco continued to walk, figuring that walking would do him some good. 

Draco went down two flights of stair before his shoes met the beginning of the green grass. Draco began walking towards the greenhouse in front of him. Pulling open the glass door, Draco took a deep breath. The air felt warm and sticky, the smell of soil filling it. It was a comforting scent, Draco wasn’t sure why that was. Taking a seat on one of the chairs, Draco allowed his thoughts to roam again. 

Draco didn’t like himself anymore, he didn’t like who he had become after the war. He missed how care free he used to be, he missed laughing with Blaise over stupid, childish things. He missed being happy. Some nights, while Draco lied in bed, he felt his skin crawl. Almost as if he was trying to shed a layer of skin. Those were the moments he wished he could shed his skin, become a different person. A new person who was loved by all and genuinely good-hearted. 

Maybe then you would be his again, if he was kinder and more sensitive to other’s feelings. Draco wanted nothing more to be that way, not only for you but himself as well. Draco hated the voice in his head, the one that was always hateful and vile. 

He knew he wouldn’t enjoy his own company if he were in someone else’s shoes. Because who wants someone who is an absolute asshole? Not Draco, and certainly not you. 

----

What if I'm down? What if I'm out? What if I'm someone you won't talk about? I'm fallin' again I'm fallin' again I'm fallin' 

And I get the feelin' that you'll never need me again 

In all his years of attending Hogwarts, he never once had a substitute teacher. Draco peered over at  McGonagall who sat in Slughorn’s usual seat in the front of class. McGonagall explained at the beginning of class that Slughorn had been attacked by a student’s potion gone-wrong. Slughorn was in the medical wing for the rest of the day. Luckily, the new headmistresses allowed her students to use this class as a study hall. Everyone seemed to wear the same surprised expression, but no one complained. 

Pansy sat next to Draco, talking his ear off. Did this girl have stop talking? Just for a minute? Draco looked over his Herbology textbook and rubbed his temples slowly. Her constant yapping was giving him a migraine. “Shut your trap, Parkinson.” He mumbled, his eyes not leaving the words written before him. 

“Excuse me?” Pansy sneered, glaring at the blonde. 

“As much as I would love to hear about your loathsome life, I’m trying to read. You should try it sometime, or are you dead from the neck up?” Draco looked at her with a bored expression. 

“I-I..” She fumbled over her tongue, how pathetic. 

“Go torment Blaise or something.” With that she stood, making her way to Theo and Blaise’s shared table. 

Finally, peace and quiet. Draco pulled out a piece of parchment paper and his quill, taking some notes here and there. His study session was short lived when he heard you voice whisper something harshly. 

“Hermione, drop it. I don’t want to talk about it.” You said softly. Your table was just in front of his, giving the boy the perfect excuse to stare longingly at the back of your head without getting caught. 

“Y/n...”Hermione began to speak slowly. “You promised me at the beginnig of this year that you would be honest with me, that you’d speak what’s on your mind. You haven’t been doing a very good job of that.” Draco could only imagine Y/N’s face at those words, she hated when people spoke down to her. 

“Hermione. Drop it. Now, I’m not telling you about what happened at the party the other night. I have every right to not tell you anything.” Draco could tell you were upset by the tone in your voice and the way your posture slouched slightly. 

“But you have to, you prom-”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what I promised! I’m not talking about Draco anymore, I have no need to! If you want me to heal and move on so bad; stop asking me about him every bloody minute! It’s exhausting.” Your voice was a little louder now. A couple of students turned and eyed you curiously. 

Hermione tucked her head down slightly, mumbling out an apology. Draco’s quill suddenly snapped in his grasp, the noise causing you to turn and look at the cause. 

Draco stared at you, sadness and anger evident in his beautiful blue eyes. He could tell you read his face with ease, you chewed on your bottom lip nervously. You turned forward, Draco still staring at you. Before Draco realized what he was doing, he stood to his feet, scrapping his belongings into his bag sloppily. He stormed out of the class, ignoring everyone’s confused gazes and McGonagall’s shrill voice. 

He let his legs carry him wherever they wished. Draco felt dizzy with all the thoughts swarming around him. You didn’t want to talk to him, you didn’t even want to speak his name. It hurt than Draco could ever imagine, he was losing you. Draco’s hands shook as he waved at the Slytherin portrait before speaking the password with a shaky breath. Once in the common room, Draco sat on the leather couch. He threw his bag on the floor and sighed heavily. Maybe he had lost you, for good.

Would Draco be able to live in a world with her? Could he wake up every morning knowing that the girl he loved the most resented him? No. He couldn’t. The thought alone of never holding you again caused bile to crawl and fight at the back of his throat. He had to fix this, Draco needed to get you back. But how? Surely you wouldn’t want him back, but still Draco needed to fight for you. 

 ----

You said you cared And you missed me, too And I'm well aware I write too many songs about you And the coffee's out At the Beachwood Café And it kills me 'cause I know we've run out of things we can say

Draco stood nervously outside of the library, waiting for you. He knew every Wednesday you would come to the library after your last class, you used the time to catch up with homework and your studies. He always admired how hard working you were. 

Draco sucked in a harsh breath as he saw you making your way towards him, or more so the library. You didn’t even divert your eyes to the boy as you passed him. Draco frowned, catching up with you. “Y/N.” He said quietly so Madame Pince wouldn’t chew him out. 

You ignored him as you continued walking towards your usual table. When you took a seat, Draco followed. You sighed, pinching the bridge of your nose. He could tell you were already annoyed. “Y/N, can I have a word with you please?” Draco asked gently. 

“I suppose you’re already here, Malfoy. What do you want?” You were cold, harsh. 

Draco swallowed thickly before clearing his throat. Why was he so bloody nervous? “Look, I’m sorry. I know you hate me now, but I’m still madly in love with you. I want us again, I need you to be mine again.” Draco offered you soft eyes. 

“No.” You said simply as you pulled out your tattered potions book. 

“Fine, hate me all you want Y/L/N. But all I’m asking is for you to grab one butterbeer with me this weekend, please. We can sit in complete silence if that’s what you wish. All I want is for us to dissolve this tension at the very least.” 

You knaweled on your lower lip, fingers fiddling with the collar of your shirt. “Fine, only so we can both move on and you’ll leave me alone.”  

Draco tried to hide the frown that was dying to creep up onto his lips. He nodded quickly. “Sure, whatever. Meet me at the Leaky Cauldron half past four.” Draco grabbed his belongings and left the library. 

The weekend came faster than Draco wished it to. It wasn’t that he was unhappy to see you, he was above the clouds with that idea. The boy was just nervous, extremely nervous. The type of nervous that caused him to constantly wipe his hands on his pants to rid the moisture from it. 

You were twenty minutes late, where the hell were you? Where you blowing him off? Draco had considered this may happen. Draco was pulled from his thoughts as he saw you approach him. You pulled out a chair and sat down silently. “I got you a butterbeer with extra foam, just how you like it.” Draco pushed your glass towards you with his won. 

“Thank you.” You said quietly, He could see your cheeks growing a beautiful shade of red. Maybe this would go good, hopefully. 

Silence filled the air between the two students, each one of them having millions and millions of thoughts crossing their brains. Draco bounced his leg anxiously under the table. “Thank you for coming, really.” Draco said softly, looking up at you. You nodded shortly.

“Sure, no problem.” Silence again. 

“I miss you.” Draco said before he could comprehend what he just said. You looked at him with wide eyes.

“I-I miss you too.” For the first time in forever, Draco smiled a genuine smile. 

“Really?” He couldn’t believe you. 

“I do.” You ran a hand through your hair, letting out a soft sigh.

“Do you still care about me?” 

“That’s my problem Draco, I never stopped caring about you.” You admitted. Draco’s eyes widened, you did care for him. This was going better than expected. 

Silence filled the air once more as you finished your butter beer. Draco wasn’t sure what to say. You didn’t seem what know what to say either. The silence was killing him, the two of you never had an awkward moment ever. Conversation came with ease, and he always enjoyed talking to you. You made him laugh, his real snorting laugh. But that seemed like such a long time ago, now you guys sat in awkwardness. No words spoken and eye contact avoided. 

“I have to go, I promised Ron I would help him study.” You began to stand, causing Draco’s chest to tighten. Draco nodded curtly. 

“Sure.” With that you left, leaving the boy to stare at your empty glass. 

----

What am I now? What am I now? What if you're someone I just want around? I'm fallin' again I'm fallin' again I'm fallin'

It had been three long, atrocious weeks since you had met Draco at the Leaky Cauldron. He hadn’t spoken to you since, even though he was dying to hear your voice again. You seemed to be avoiding him. It hurt when you dodged his eyes through the crowed hallways and how you always seemed to be leaving wherever he arrived. Draco hadn’t slept in over 24 hours. His eyes stung as he walked through the court yard, since when was the sun so bright? Draco rubbed a hand over his eyes and groaned slightly. Merlin he just wanted his life back, he just wanted you back. 

“What’s the matter Malfoy?” Blaise said from beside him. Draco had completely forgotten they have been walking together. 

“Nothing.” Draco shrugged, Blaise knew he was lying.

“Your an awful liar.” Blaise laughed deeply. 

“Oh yeah? And you’re an impressionable twat.” Draco sneered, glaring at his best friend. 

Blaise stopped walking, turning towards Draco. “What’s wrong? Seriously mate, I know you didn’t sleep last night. And you’re far more irritable then usual.”

Draco sighed. “It’s Y/N. I want her back but she seems to want nothing to do with me.”

“Didn’t you guys just go to Hogsmeade together a couple weeks back?” Blaise raised a curious eyebrow. Draco nodded. 

“But it wasn’t a date, we barely even spoke to each other. It was disastrous.”

“You need to be honest-”

“I have been!” Draco interrupted defensively. 

“Let me finish, you git! You need to be honest with her, bring her somewhere private and be honest. Tell her everything Draco, you need to show her that you’re genuinely sorry. That you want her back.” Blaise said simply with a shrug of his shoulders. 

Draco pondered the idea for a moment. “You’re right. You’re so bloody right!” Draco’s mood changed drastically. He was now more alert, looking around the court yard for you. You were nowhere to be found, of course. 

“Can you do me one, Blaise? Tell Y/N to meet me at our old spot at midnight.” Draco looked at his friend with a pleading expression. 

“I despise getting wrapped up in your shit, Malfoy. But I’ll do my best.” Draco smiled before waving goodbye to his friend. 

“Thank you! I’ve got to run to charms or Flitwick will have my head on a platter.” Draco hurried off, speed walking and shoving aside the people that walked too slow for his liking. Making it just in time, Draco took a seat next to some Hufflepuff girl. She looked nervously over at him, he met her eyes. 

“Hello, do you have a staring problem sweetheart?” Draco said smoothly. The girl shook her head quickly, mumbling an apology and turning her attention to the front of the classroom. Flitwick began the lecture, causing Draco to yawn softly. Merlin he felt drained.

Draco sat nervously on the windowsill on the astronomy tower. Draco had decided during Charms that this was gonna be his final attempt at getting you back. After tonight, if you didn’t want him then fine, so be it. Draco tried his best to believe that this was going to work, but he knew with his luck it most likely wouldn’t The door of the astronomy tower creaked up, making Draco turn. 

“Blaise?” You said questioningly as you stepped inside, shutting the door softly. The moonlight casted it’s presence on you, making Draco’s heart thump harder than before. 

“No, It’s me.” Draco spoke smoothly, trying his best to sound sure of himself. 

“Why did you have me meet you here?” You asked suspiciously. 

“I have something to tell you. And this will be the last time I tell you this.” Draco took a deep breath as he stood to his feet. His damn palms were sweating again. Draco wiped his hands on his pants before clearing his throat and speaking. “Look, Y/N. I fucked up. Big time. Hurting you was the worst mistake of my life, and trust me as you know I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life. I take it all back, all those vile things I said to you in this very room so many months ago. None of it was true, not then and not now. You’re everything to me. Everything. I only said those things so you could hate me, I wanted you to stay far away from me as possible. I didn’t want you to get caught up with a death eater. I wanted to protect you. I love you, Y/N. All I’m asking is for one more chance, one more chance to have you be mine once more. Please.” Draco swallowed the growing saliva in his mouth. “If you don’t want me back, fine. I’ll leave you alone forever. I’ll never bother you again. I promise, you have my word. Draco watched as you raked through your brain, trying to put your words together.

After a long, painful moment of silence, you finally spoke. “How do I even know you’re serious? you played with my emotions Draco, you had such terrible mood swings and I tried so hard to be patient, I’m still patient dammit. It just hurts when you’re warm and loving one day and completely distant and cold the next.” He watched you spoke, a frown cracking through his “unfazed” façade.

Draco straightened his face. “Okay. I understand that and um-erm-I..” Draco scratched the back of his neck nervously. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to work on controlling my emotions, my outbursts. I love you Y/N. I love you with the type of love that I cant describe. you consume me, utterly consume me. every time I'm with you it’s like you’ve completely engulfed me. I love you okay? I want to be a better person for you, eventually for myself too hopefully. I want to be the person you want around, the person who show your ugliest side to, the person you can come to whenever you’re breaking.” Draco felt his cheeks begin to burn as tears filled the boys eyes. Letting out a shaky breath, Draco continued. “I-I never had someone who truly loved me, my dad has always been distant and foul towards me. Anytime I showed any signs of weakness, punishment. Because purebloods and wealthy people have to be strong and unyielding. my mother simply based her parenting on whatever my father wanted and whatever made my family look the best. you however,” Draco stood closer to you now, gripping your hands in his. He rubbed soft circles into your skin as he continued. “You Y/N, You’ve shown me what was love is, what it’s meant to be. You’re so understanding. Everytime I think I went too far and I’ve lost you, you understand and you forgive me. You never have held me to my past, my family’s decisions. You only hold me to my word, and myself alone. That is why I love you. Why I’m so bloody in love with you, right now! At this very moment I would do anything to call you mine again, to have you by my side.” Draco searched your face as you looked at him with tears in your eyes.

Then, you did what he’s missed the most. You kissed him. It was a gentle kiss, no rushed movements, no searching hands. Only two people expressing all the words they couldn’t say with one kiss. Draco pulled away, trying to suppress the smile playing on his lips. “Does this mean you’re mine again?” You nodded shyly, causing Draco’s heart to spike. “Merlin!” He yelled at the top his lungs, causing you to laugh. He wrapped his arms around you, pulling you into the tightest hug he could muster.

“Crushing. Me.” You wheezed out with a repressed giggle.

“I’m sorry my love!” He exclaimed. “I promise you won’t regret your decision. I will spend every moment to make up for our lost time, I’ll always be so sorry about this whole thing. For everything I said.”

You looked up at the him with eyes that would bring any man to his knees. “Dray.” You said softly, lips barely moving. Draco could hear his heart in his ears as he swallowed. “I forgive you, we’ve got this okay? And I’m sorry for slapping you, I assume we both have things to work on.”

Draco gave a toothy grin. “You’re my favorite.”

----

A/N I tried to tie one piece of the taylor swift’s song to this:)  i hope you enjoyed part two! Tbh I feel a little iffy about this one, but I appreciate everyone who asked me to do a part two and showed support and love! much love babes

[vesperlionheart]

Elfen Knight Drabble Practice

It was in her seventh year when Sakura began to suspect there was something that divided her from her peers, something that had gone unnoticed by her mother, her father, the village elders, and all her older and younger friends alike. The only one who noticed might have been Baba-Tsunade who came to the village with the caravan and healed their sick and tended to the ill before drinking her fill and moving on to the next needy town.

“Don’t you hear the horn on the hill? Why am I the only one? What’s wrong with me?” Sakura asked in tears one day when the teasing from her friends had moved her to flee.

“There is nothing wrong with you,” Sakura’s mother would tell her even as her father took steps to close up the windows and doors against the sounds they couldn’t hear. “There’s no horn, there’s nothing over the hills, don’t listen to the wicked wind.”

“It’s not the wind,” Sakura cried, loud and angry. “I know the difference, it’s not the wind. I hear a horn! Where is it coming from?”

They didn’t let her out as punishment for the disrespect. But after her disciplining was finished, they continued to keep her close and would usher her back indoors if she ever looked too long at the hills, as if listening to something.

The next spring when Tsunade came Sakura’s parents paid her with their wedding wine to take Sakura out of the village as an apprentice healer-something Tsunade had never done before and sworn to never do while both drunk and sober.

The reason Sakura was an exception had less to do with the expensive drink and more to do with the story Sakura’s parents told the traveling woman. The story din’t make to Sakura who had been set aside in another room could only hear snippets through the floorboards.

“-Can hear his horn so she can’t stay here. What’ll it be like when she’s of age to fall sway to his thrall? -only a matter of time before we’re ruined.”

So in the morning, without ceremony or extended farewells, Sakura was packed up into Tsunade’s cart and driven out of town. The horn blew louder than it ever had, sounding almost desperate as the cart rolled on, further and further out of it’s reach.

“What was it?” Sakura asked once they were beyond the hill’s sight. Her home was less than a speck in the distance but her hunger hurt more than her sadness. She knew better than to mourn a family who couldn’t love her more than their comforts.

Tsunade didn’t turn around to look back, but kept her eyes on the scruffy ears of her gray mare. The road was long and softly winding down to the sea.

“You think it was something?”

“I know it was.”

Tsunade whistled low in mock surprise. “You know so much so why ask me, girlie? Why don’t you take a guess?”

“Was it…” Sakura swallowed her fear and licked her lips before finishing her words, “was it a demon kin? Is that why I could hear it, cause I’m evil-born?”

“Of course you would come to such a conclusion with a cut off community like that one,” Tsunade snorted. “Sure sounds like some sort of devil story, don’t it? But if I could hear it too what would that make me?”

“You’re too kind to be evil. You heal all the people…even the ones who are mean to you. You can’t be a demon’s spawn.”

“Then you’re not a demon’s spawn, though your parents were a rotten lot they were still human. You’re just one of the lucky ones. You have a ear for the world’s neighbors. Ever hear of them?”

In answer Sakura pulled herself up onto the bench seat behind the horse and held on whenever the cart bustled. She looked up at Tsunade expectantly.

“I’ll take that as a no. That’s to be expected. More than one court still pays tithe to the hells, but humans have no moral superiority in that department, so we’ve no ground to stand on when condemning the good neighbors. The horn you hear is blown by one of their knights searching for those like you.”

“Why?”

Tsunade grinned and reached down between her legs to grab at the wine flask. “You tell me. Give me your best guess.”

“I don’t like guessing.”

“I don’t like doing all the work, get used to it.”

Sakura pouted, but relented without arguing the point further. “Is it to abduct them and steal them away, for food?”

“Sometimes. They’re looking for champions, have been for centuries. You follow the call and there’s just another game for you to play. They’re a picky lot though, so only the ‘touched’ can hear ‘em anymore.”

“What’s so bad about playing games?” Sakura liked games. She was good at them too, she was fast and strong for her age and she was clever when she wanted to be.

“What happens when you lose a game?” Tsunade asked instead of answering.

Sakura thought of when she would play fox and rabbits with the other children, again and again, looping into new rounds with different children being foxes once everyone was found. “You start over.”

“That would make sense for children, but in their lands there is no ‘next game’ for the losers. A loser in their game is as useful as a chicken that won’t lay. What does your father do when a hen is too old for eggs?”

Sakura knew the answer without having to speak it aloud. She had enjoyed the meat dinner more than once when one of their hens grew too old to lay. The reality settled like a weight in her stomach. “If it’s so bad, why would anyone want to risk playing a game like that?”

“Maybe one day you’ll discover an answer for yourself.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Only that we have many more miles to go. My sister will worry if I’m any later.”

-

Word Count 1009 (I couldn’t trim those last 9 words so I fail.)

[rocorambles]

ok, hear me out. yandere sugawara is the delusional type, and will try to mold their darling into perfection. but, his plan backfires when he realizes their darling turned into a murderous and dangerous feral animal instead of the pretty, soft princess he wanted. how do you think he will react? any headcannons for this concept? thanks a bunch, love your writing!!!

I love this concept! Thanks for sending this through and I’m glad you’re enjoying my blog xoxo 

- Suga loves you so much and you believed him at first. He’s so sweet and kind. He always seems to know exactly what to say to make your heart flutter and being around him is so comforting. It’s like being constantly wrapped up in a fuzzy cloudy cocoon. 

- But as time passes, the sweetness becomes sickly sweet and the once comforting cloud around you is now beginning to squeeze you tighter and tighter. Suga’s always trying to control every aspect of your life. Any makeup you had that was deemed too edgy is thrown out and replaced by hues of nudes and pastels. Any article of clothing too dark for his taste is mysteriously replaced with fairy shades of tulle, velvet, and silk. 

- When these things begin to happen, you don’t have the heart to question it because you want to make Suga happy. He’s always taking care of you and you want to try and reciprocate, but you begin to lose more and more sense of who you are as he buries you alive with everything girly and feminine. 

- The last straw is when you’re hanging out with your friends and one of them makes an off hand comment about your new appearance. “I didn’t know you liked pink so much, Y/N.” That sentence makes you freeze. You liked pink? Did you like pink? Doubt begins to grow within you as you look down at your outfit and it’s that same doubt that has you coming back home with bags of new clothes. 

- Suga comes home from work to find you sitting on the couch in a black crewneck and black joggers and his mouth slightly curls in distaste. Much too boy-like. Much too dark. “Y/n, sweetheart, did you get new clothes? I like you better in the stuff I bought for you. Can you change?” He asks it all so tenderly while softly kissing you and you almost melt into his affectionate embrace. Almost. “But Suga, these are comfortable and I like them!” Suga pouts, but doesn’t say anything as he continues to gently embrace you. Little do you know the gears are turning in his head.

- As an elementary school teacher, Suga has patience. And he patiently waits and plots as you revert more and more into your former tomboy self. He strategizes as you go out drinking with friends, as you loudly curse while playing video games, and as you replace everything he’s bought you with your preferred athletic wear. He schemes as you begin to lash out whenever he tries to tell you to do something his way and as you begin to outright reject his ideas.

- It’s the end of the school year and as celebration, Suga and you go on a week-long trip. You go to a cute cabin in the woods to spend some quality time with each other. Suga’s been so busy with end of year exams that you haven’t seen much of each other and despite your recent attitude, you do miss him. You’re finishing up your first dinner on your little vacation when you begin to feel dizzy. “Suga, I’m not feeling good-” You fall into his arms as he shushes you and that’s the last thing you remember before the world goes black.

- When you wake up, you’re lying on a bed, tied in a spread eagle position wearing the daintiest lacy white dress. In any other situation, you would have thought it was pretty, but now it raises confusion and growing panic within you. You’ve never seen this dress before. Why is it on you? Your head whips around at the sound of a door opening and you stare as Suga lovingly looks at you and coos about how beautiful you look. “Just like a little doll. My little doll.” You’re shouting at him to untie you, but he just lies on the bed next to you, tucking your head under his chin as he cuddles your thrashing form. 

- You’re just going through a slight rebellious phase, he thinks. He’s seen some of his students do the same thing. It’s nothing a little discipline won’t fix. He continues to drug you and he also begins to starve you throughout the week. To your credit, you fight him with the fierceness of a wild beast, constantly raving murderous threats at him, always trying to bite and claw at any inch of him you can reach in your position. He hisses as he bandages the wounds you’ve left on him and just increases your dosage. 

- Despite your strong will and your animalistic desire to escape and survive, you finally break as the week comes to an end. Hunger and incredibly high drug dosages have finally etched away at any physical or mental strength you had. You’re sick and tired of feeling hungry and not in your right mind. You just want the fog in your mind to clear and the pangs in your stomach to go away. The next time Suga brings you your pills and water, you feebly plead for him to stop, promising you’ll behave, be his good girl, be the perfect doll. 

- Suga is ecstatic to see you so docile and so obedient. He’s quick to wrap you in his arms and whisper sweet words in your ear. “Sweetheart, I’m so glad you’re finally cooperating. It hurts me to have to punish you like this. You know I love you, right, darling?” A hint of a flame in you burns at those words, but it’s quickly squashed out by the mindless mush the drugs have turned your mind into and it’s all you can do to weakly nod your head before you close your eyes and sink into a sugary cocoon once again.    

[antihero-writings]

The Boy with the Unspeakable Name (Ch8)

Fandom: Harry Potter (and the Chamber or Secrets)

Fic Summary: Tom Riddle may have won his battle with Harry in the Chamber of Secrets, but there were a few unforeseen consequences; loss of Tom’s memory being the most obnoxious of them. Is it possible to stop Tom’s past from becoming his future? Or is the young Tom Riddle doomed to repeat his mistakes?

Notes: Hey! I'm so so sorry there was such a delay with this one! I was having a bit of a block with it. I hope you're still interested in reading! I'm hoping the next one will be a bit faster, as it's one I've been excited for. Cross your fingers everybody!

By the way, I changed that thing I said I would in the Snape chapter! It's towards the end, when Snape's looking into Tom's mind. It's not a big deal if you don't want to check it out, but it is related to this chapter!

I hope you guys like it!! As always, it's your comments, and interest, that keep me writing!! <3

Chapter 8: Only in Dreams 

Tom stared up at the ceiling in the hospital wing, his hand behind his head, thinking about all that had happened…and some of what hadn’t happened.

Sometimes that was very dangerous thing to do indeed.

An annoying woman by the name of ‘Madam Pomfrey’ kept periodically checking on him, and offering him food and medicine. He wouldn’t be surprised if she woke him in the middle of the night just to make sure he was sleeping well.

There was also a boy in the bed beside his. He kept asking him if he wanted to play a game with a strange name. Tom made it clear the only game he was interested in playing was one in which he shut up.

When he had arrived with Snape earlier, a group of students were leaving. Apparently they had been ‘petrified.’ Whatever that meant. That made it sound like they’d been turned to stone, but they clearly were still flesh and blood—(maybe he would have preferred stone).

Snape even pulled aside one of them—a girl with bushy hair. Tom tried to subtly listen, but Snape pulled her into another room, and Madam Pomfrey had deigned that moment as one of her thousand times to ask if he was comfortable.

Which left him here, with the annoying nurse, a boy who probably couldn’t hold in his own pee…and a lot of questions.

So many things about this whole situation weren’t quite right. Waking up in that chamber with the dead girl, the way she died, the way Harry and Snape reacted to his presence, and Dumbledore’s later denial that he had killed her, or that their hatred was all that serious. And though Dumbledore had explained the diary, he wasn’t satisfied there either. Not to mention the fact that everything else in that Chamber still was unaccounted for.

There were things they weren’t telling him.

He highly doubted a teacher would be so vehement against just a bully, not to mention the fact that everyone else he’d met so far hadn’t recognized him…He had to be something more than that.

There was something they weren’t telling him. In fact, he reasoned, there were probably a great lot of things. He wasn’t going to assume they were all on the same side just because they said so.

The idea that this was a magic school, and that he was a student…He wasn’t quite sure how to feel about it yet. They’d done magic in front of him, so he couldn’t deny it—not that he intended to. And the thought did send a certain energy through him…like that word was everything right in the world. And he was indeed excited to learn magic. Well, maybe ‘excited’ was too strong. But that was one of the few things that didn’t give him confusion, question and pause. Rather it create a form of what could only be called hunger within him. He wondered how proficient he had been at magic before he lost his memory. More than anything he wished he could remember the spells.

He was sure he could figure this, them, out—maybe even tonight, if he just stayed awake a little longer. But he was more exhausted than he realized and, in the midst of his pondering, fell into dreams.

“Wait, mom!” His voice sounded strange, high and young…too high, too young. Almost girly.

A plump woman with short red hair turned around at the last word.

“What is it, Dear?!” She sounded a bit put out. “Are you ready to go?”

“I’m missing my Charms book!” Tom’s voice was pained. “Have you seen it?”

She gave a forced exhale. “And you’re sure you checked your room? Didn’t miss any corners?” She inclined her head. “You’re sure it’s not sitting on your nightstand?”

“Yes! That was the first place I checked!”

“You checked under the bed?”

“Yes!”

“The bookshelves and wardrobe?”

“Yes!”

She sighed. “Talk to your father, Fear.”

“Did you say you were missing a Charms book?” A boy about his age with red hair like their mother’s came in front of him, along with an identical copy of him.

“We wouldn’t know anything about it, sure.”

“We’re just a little concerned”

“Of course, for our—” The last word got blurred.

“Boys. You didn’t take”—He was sure she said his name, but for some reason the word became murky, as if she was trying to speak through a veil of water—“Charms book, did you?”

“What?”

“No!”

“Never!

“You know us, Mom, would we ever do something so terrible as steal a poor”—Another blurred word—“—’s charms book?”

“We’re good and virtuous boys.”

Tom looked at the woman who was apparently his mother, who gave him a knowing look. “Check your brothers’ room.”

The dream turned over, and now he was standing on a platform in front of a glimmering red train engine, the words ‘Hogwarts Express’ emblazoned on the front. Steam poured out from its many orifices, and it whistled with the shrillness of a bird being squeezed…though the sound was like music to his ears.

That wasn’t the only loud noise, in fact this place was extremely loud indeed. The whole platform was full to bustling with children, parents, and as many other assorted relatives as it could hold. But the strangest thing was, he wasn’t annoyed by their presence. He was feeling many things: nervousness to leave his parents, and about what house he’d get sorted into, and if the other kids would like him, and excitement, excitement for what the castle would be like, what house he’d get into, what the classes would be like, what friends he’d make…but no annoyance.

Perhaps more than anything there was a pit in his stomach about Harry and Ron. Were they okay? Why didn’t they get through the barrier? He had been so excited to ride the Express with them. His parents tried to assure him they’d be fine, but he could hear the fear lining their voices too. He tried to let the sight of the engine distract him, and the excitement about the coming year overpower him. They’d gotten safely through crazy situations before.

He gave his parents a giant hug, and his mom kissed him many times, and he could tell she was trying very hard not to cry. They told him everything would be fine, and gave him a number of quick quips of advice. He looked towards the engine, about to take his first steps towards it on his own.

The dream crossed over itself, and though he was on the same platform, he was alone.

Well, not alone alone, it was just as loud as before, and there were just as many passersby. Not the same people, still. But this time, the sound was muffled somehow, like he couldn’t completely hear or feel what was going on around him. Just a few loud shouts would break through, and each time they did, annoyance would strike him.

There were no parents to wish him luck, or kiss him goodbye. No brothers to steal his books.

Did he like it better that way?

He looked down at his robes, and felt satisfaction run through him. They were clean and sleek and new. The first clothes he’d had that fit that description in a long time. None of the other kids got those. Well, none of the other kids could do magic either. He was special.

Just satisfaction. Not really excitement or nervousness…Just that hunger. That hunger for magic, for prowess, for a better world. Nothing compared to the bursting geysers of emotion he’d felt moments ago.

He looked up at the engine, a small smile lining his features as he stepped up to enter it.

Tom woke up to the hospital room, and went from teetering to falling off the bed.

And for a brief moment he was dizzy with unsurity; unsurity of where, or even who he was.

After he took a moment to right himself, the questions restarted themselves:

Was that just a dream? Or were those his memories?

They can’t have been, could they? He didn’t wake in a flurry of remembrance of all the memories preceding and following those. Besides, Dumbledore had told him his family was dead.

Although the final dream, or memory, was so different from the first two…Maybe that was from another year, and explained what had happened to his family?

He could tell from context they were his family, at least at some point. Yet he didn’t recognize them, or remember their names, or much of anything else about them.

Yet…

Yet, at the remembrance of their images, waves of emotion crossed over him, mostly comprised of loss, and longing. He didn’t know where those waves could have hailed from, when he didn’t remember or care for these people. But something inside himself wanted all this to stop.

It overwhelmed him. He wanted to brush it off…but stayed on the ground, leaning against the wall, digging his nails into his shirt.

He tried to feel normal…or even remember what normal was. He thought he felt normal most of the day. Right now he didn’t feel like…himself.

A line of light reached its hands out to him, and he looked up to see the door to Madam Pomfrey’s room open slightly. She must have heard him fall off the bed—(did she have owl hearing? The other kid was still snoring like a troll). Meeting her eyes was a mistake, because she gave a small gasp, and ran over to him with the speed of a rocket powered penguin.

As she helped him up, she quickly began bombarding him numerous questions, comforts, and recommendations—

“I’m FINE!” he yelled, pushing her hand away—(the other kid’s snores abruptly stopped, but he didn’t wake)— “Stop pestering me, Woman!”

Her eyes widened, apparently so shocked a student would speak this way to her, that for a moment she couldn’t speak. And at that look, before she could scold him, he muttered.

“I’m…sorry.”

The words just came out, he didn’t really think about it. But as his tongue traced the words he tasted iron.

“My dreams weren’t very pleasant,” he added. “That’s all.”

She still proceeded to berate him heavily for his behavior, and checked more than once that his dreams really were the only problem, but he could barely hear her. He couldn’t stop thinking about how strange it was that, after all the foreignness both the day and the night had to offer, the most foreign experience of all that day, was the feeling of those two words leaving his lips.

[makemadej]

So today two of my worlds collided in the best way: Ryan and Shane were guests on one of my favorite podcasts. I was totally blindsided by this since there was no promo for it whatsoever (who knows why, maybe they forgot when the release date was, maybe they’ve been taken captive by skeletons, maybe they’re just terrible at promoting themselves), and it killed me that I couldn't listen to the whole thing until after work. It's over two hours long and podcasts aren't everyone's cup of tea, so I'm capturing the ghoul boy highlights here for anyone who wants them.

Wine and Crime is a weekly podcast hosted by three ladies who are feminist as fuck and pair a different crime with a different wine each episode. This time, the theme was Pandora's Box crimes, aka "crimes that were only supposed to be minimal but ended up being a shitshow." Inevitably, they paired it with boxed wine.

Enter the ghoul boys.

Ryan, on Franzia: I do enjoy slappin' a bag Shane: I've seen Ryan slap some bags in my day. [...] Ryan: Shane has to tell me to stop slapping the bag sometimes Ryan: I used to do this thing in college called Tour de Franzia. It was like a drinking game, but it was an obstacle course, and at every checkpoint you had to slap the bag. [beat] I made great decisions in college.

Ryan: You say "nice stream" to the sound of liquid being poured into something, it maybe is not the best...it may not communicate well over audio. Shane: Hey, nice stream Ryan: Nice stream. That's what I say every time I go up to a urinal. To any guy. Tap him on the shoulder. Shane: Men in public bathrooms, we all compliment each other's streams. Ryan: Yeah. It's best if you whisper it. At close proximity. I get really close so he can smell the Popeye's on my breath that I just got at the terminal and I whisper "nice stream."

Ryan: We're drinking the 14% Four Lokos seltzer over here [borderline unintelligible banter about playing Edward Four Lokos hands]

Ryan, on the description of himself on a "which BFU guy are you" quiz: That sounds like the description of a golden retriever.

Shane: I know there's one quiz that was popular where the description [of me] was entirely wrong.

Ryan, increasingly high pitched: A fan sent you all these goat parts?

[What is your favorite wine varietal?] Ryan: Hmmmmmm... [Do you know what a varietal is?] Shane, with gusto: No!

Ryan: Wine to me is just wine at this point. I'm not that far on my wine journey. I was a beer guy that's transitioning over into wine. Shane: Well, it sounds like you're not doing a very good job. Ryan: You know what, I said I am LEARNING, Shane. So why don't you get off your high horse and tell them what kind of wine you like? Shane: I don't even know! Ryan: Mr. "I don't know what a wine varietal is" Shane: Yeah. But I don't call myself a wine guy Ryan: I never said I was a wine guy! I said I was-- Shane: You were like, "Oh, have you see that Netflix documentary, Sommelier?" Ryan: First off, I didn't say it like Elmo from Sesame Street, but I also said I was transitioning!

Shane: I like some red wines and some white wines Ryan, imitating him: I like the stuff with the alcohol in it...and sometimes it has bubbles and makes my tummy feel good and uhhhh, yeah Shane: Yeah, I don't really know... Ryan: Sick answer Shane: There's a kind my girlfriend always gets that's really good but I don't...I can't remember the name of it Ryan: That's a long name. That's actually a good name for a wine! The Kind My Girlfriend Gets, ever had it? They sell it at Trader Joe's. Shane: I'm not even trying to do like a...*weird cowboy voice* "I'm a man, so I don't drink wine. Only my girlfriend does." I like wine, I've just...I've never been good at wine. And wine makes me real sleepy, so I almost never have it. Ryan: That's why I don't drink red wine...and it also makes me look like I've been chewing on mud clots or something.

[What is one "unsolved" case that you're pretty sure you've solved?] Ryan: What was that one where I was like, I think I've pretty much solved this one? The Black Dahlia I'm pretty sure was George Hodel. I'm almost positive of it. Shane: Wasn't there like a missing child one that we thought we had sorta gotten? Bobby Dunbar Ryan: Bobby Dunbar. I think we had solved that one. Uh... Shane: We can never concretely say that we've solved it. Ryan: No, we can't legally, but I'm pretty sure D.B. Cooper's bones are an ornament in some pine tree out there in the Pacific Northwest [...] Shane: The case is pretty closed on Amelia Earhart, too. Ryan: I don't think so. Shane: Yeah, she got eaten by crabs. Ryan: I think it's closed in your mind. That's what you'd like to have happened. Shane: That's what happened. Ryan: Giant, man-eating crabs. It's amazing that those exist. I saw one dragging a coconut. Not hard to imagine that coconut being a head. Shane: Yeah. Of an aviatrix. Ryan: Of an aviatrix, yeah. The most famous aviatrix of all time!

Ryan: Fun fact, shaking my bones is what I call dancing.

Shane: I'll say that Ryan is 100% that bitch. Ryan: I'd say 0% actually. Shane: See, that's what makes you that bitch. Ryan, cracking up: What about you, Shane? Shane: Mm. 45.

Ryan: I don't know if people would like me walking into a room trumpeting "I'm 100% that bitch!" every time I walk in a room. I think there's nuance to it. You can't always be 100% that bitch. [...] Or if I'm trying to make an omelet and I can't make the flip...not 100% that bitch in that moment. I'll tell you, it's the bane of my existence Shane: You can't make an omelet? Ryan: It's impossible! Shane: It's not. Ryan: It's really hard! I don't think I have the proper pan. Shane: It sounds like you don't. Do you have a good spatula? Ryan: Maybe, I dunno... Shane: WHAT DO YOU MEAN MAYBE? DO YOU HAVE A GOOD SPATULA OR NOT? It’s a yes or no question! Ryan: I think it might be, I don't know! I have no idea where it came from, I got it from my mom. Maybe she bought it from Sur la Table? Shane: I was gonna say, go to *French accent* Sur la Table, get a little free espresso... [degenerates into arguing about French pronunciation]

Shane on working at Abercrombie: I was in the stock room, they didn't let me up front. Not my beat. [...] Me and my friends...would just hang out in the back and listen to music and eat cookie dough. And they'd be like "we need you to fold this box of girly shirts" and we'd be like "ah, okay!" and then we'd just take the box and be like "this is too many shirts." And we'd just throw it...this was the area like a loft area where you couldn't see anything. We'd just throw the boxes so we wouldn't have to fold the shirts. They're probably still there. Ryan: Sounds like you were a great employee.

Shane: I started as Buzzfeed as an intern. Ryan had started a month or two before me. So we came up in the same intern class together.

Ryan: I did grip and electric work for two years, which is basically like lifting heavy gear essentially on set and I realized I didn't want to do that for ten years before I even had the chance to sniff a camera.

Ryan: I filmed powerpoints for doctors...I did feel like a prisoner at times when I was there, listening to a doctor from USC's Keck medical school talk about irritable bowel syndrome for two straight hours...I was a couple days away from joining the union...That was concurrent with the irritable bowel syndrome filmings.

Ryan: I chose the internship at Buzzfeed not knowing what it was, met the Shaniac over here, and then, um...we went through that program, which was kind of like the Hunger Games. We saw all of our fellow interns die. [...] We worked our way up, I eventually made Unsolved.I made unsolved actually with a different host, Brent Bennett. He left the show because he didn't like...I believe the quote was "I don't like these stories anymore." Shane: *dies laughing* Ryan: And I turned to my right and was like, "hey Shane, wanna do this instead?" and he was like "sure" and that's that. And from then on I guess we never looked back.

[Shane, how do you feel about being the second choice?] Shane: I'm fine with it. Really, there was so little fanfare to him asking me. Ryan: No ceremony at all. Shane: 'Cause we were just making stuff left and right at that point and series were not really an established thing at Buzzfeed [...] Even when Ryan had asked me "hey, would you like to be in this?" uh...I was like "yeah, lemme..." Ryan says I checked my calendar. Ryan: Yeah, Shane looked over at his google calendar, saw that next week was open, and was like "yeah, looks like I've got some time" and I was like "sweet, lock it in" and he was like "cool." And then we both put our headphones back on 'cause we sat next to each other at a desk and worked on other things and that was that.

[What is some of the silliest feedback you've gotten about your show?] Ryan: Luckily the fan base is pretty nice. There's plenty of fun, positive comments out there, however, this is one that tickled me the most. A guy somehow found my personal email address and emailed me to let me know. He's like "hey man, love the videos, excellent content to get stoned to. Keep it up, cheers!" I don't know who this man was.

Shane: I do have some hope that Bigfoot is real. A little unlikely. The other one I always root for is Champ in Lake Champlain. Ryan: I don't know why you have such an obsession with Champ. [...] Shane: Champ...there seems to be something fishy going on there. There's something going on in that lake. Ryan: Good pun Shane: Not even. There's something going on there and I've seen that lake and I've looked out at that lake and I've felt something inside me just looking out at it. Ryan: You sure it wasn't just IBS? Shane: We've established that you're the one with IBS Ryan: I'm not the one with IBS! Shane: You joined the union! Ryan: You were the one who almost pooed your pants on an investigation Shane: That's a different story! Ryan: You ate two hot dogs that were served at the baggage claim in Philadelphia Shane: We. Were. Hungry.

Ryan on Dyatlov Pass: I'm gonna double down here. I think it was a yeti. Or, not a yeti. I think it was an abdominal snowman. Shane: Abominable. 

[borderline unintelligible banter about an incredibly ripped yeti doing crunches]

Shane: I'm very content with the mysteries of the universe never being uncovered. It's fine. Ryan: It's frustrating. Shane: You're gonna go to the grave not knowing so many things, so you might as well just give up on them. Ryan: Such a nihilistic way to look at everything.

Shane: If you know anyone who's traveling and they're your enemy, you just call the FBI and say "oh, they're up to no good up there." Ryan: If Shane was flying somewhere I could just say "yeah, I think he's dangerous. I know him. He's the guy who couldn't fit a hat on his big head."

[interlude where they decide to name an anonymous suspect Shane Ryanson]

Shane: It would be funny if this was like the highest escalation of a prank war between two friends Ryan: That'd be a hilarious prank, getting someone thrown into federal prison. Super funny. Gotcha!

Shane: If you're the kind of person who is likely to call in a threat to the FBI solely as a way to get a dig in at your friend, that probably stays with you for life. That's pretty hard-coded into who you are. Ryan: That's true. Especially when you look like an out of work Batman villain [...] If this dude walked into a 7-11, I would drop my Slurpee immediately and run to my car. He's a scary man. I'm out. Slurpee's on the floor.

Shane: I'll tell you this in defense of dolphins, they do have funny little smiles.

Shane, on breaking into Sea World: That seems like an extremely Australian thing to do.

Shane, googling fairy penguins: Yes, it's a wonderful little penguin! He's so small! Ryan: This is great, this is like a dark gritty reboot of Mr. Popper's Penguins.

Shane: Just...to meet someone, get along so well that you each drink a half a liter of vodka together and then go swimming with dolphins and blast some sharks with a fire extinguisher Ryan: ...and then decide, let's top off the night by bringing home a fuzzy little friend Shane: I mean, by that point you've got a winning streak going. You're like, "yeah, we didn't get eaten by sharks! we did swim with the dolphins! Of course we'll steal a penguin!”

Ryan: I bet the penguin actually helped the hangover, to be fair. If I was hungover, I normally just see my blinds shuttered in my room, my shoes are somewhere in the house, but if I found a penguin I'd be like "okay, maybe this isn't so bad." Shane: A rehabilitation penguin. He just hopes on your bed in the morning. Ryan: Just starts smacking me in the face with his little fins. It's great, I love it.

Shane: I think she shouldn't have killed her husband. Have a little faith in his worm farm.

[greyknm]

Let's Date | 데이트하자

Kim Namjoon/RM fic

Smut/Fluff/Idols!au

☁summary: You and Namjoon go on a Korean Show called "Let's Date|데이트하자" where they get two idols to go on a fake date for a day. Feelings stay attached to one another after the end of filming.

"I don't even know the first thing to do, say or wear on a date!" You've been complaining about the inventation to the show ever since your manager came with the news. You were going to decline the offer until Bang PD said that it would give you more exposure to the public. With you being the newest act in BigHit that's a girl, things would be harder for you. Trying to be better than the senior- now disbanded group GLAM, BigHit's first girl group, and trying to keep a clean slate. You've stated many reasons on why THIS show in particular is not the best for exposure but, with all your hard work trying to convince, it didn't work. Now you're on the set where you meet your stranger idol- soon to be fake boyfriend.

You're complaining to the stylist as you watch her try to figure out what you should wear. She takes a black dress with red cherries splattered over it. You immediately shake your head no. "No way that you think I'm going to wear a dress!" The stylist looks at you in annoyance and sighs. "It's just for one day. It won't kill you. And you're wearing these black heels with it." You do a little tantrum in your chair. "Unnie, please don't make me. You know I don't do that....girly stuff and showing legs. NO." Her eyes go wide. "Don't tell me you don't have them shaved!" You pout your lips. "I do..." Then a big smile spread on her face. "Then you're wearing it. No ands, ifs or buts." She hands you the clothing items and you get up reluctantly going to change.

You come out with the choosen outfit and everyone applauds and awws at you. Maybe to make you feel better about the fit or to make you more annoyed. You shake your head and head to a seat where they can finish your make up and hair.

You filmed your introduction- greeting, who you were and what company you came from. Then you had to go to this rotary thing on the floor. It would rotate to this wall that lifts up and reveals your partner for the day.

The filming starts and the wall rises. Your eyes grow big and you cover your mouth. Who you see was surprising and relieving. Kim Namjoon.

You bowed to Namjoon and he did the same.

The crew stranded you two in the middle of Gangnam. The objective of the show is for the couple to find things to do on their own.

"What should we do newly found girlfriend?" Namjoon asks putting his arm around your shoulder as you continue to walk. You give him a side glare. "Hhmmm...no clue."

"What? So we walk around Gangnam mindlessly for some hours?"

"If that's what you want...then we can." You respond to his sarcastic question. That's one thing about Namjoon that always ticked you. Whenever you guys got the chance to speak, if you do or say something that ticks him off he doesn't get mad. Oh no, he never gets mad he just lets his passive agressiveness show. And you're not slow to catch on. Everytime he does it, it annoys you. So him being sarcastic will not help.

A colorful sign on a building catches your attention. You squint your eyes to see what it says. It's an aquarium. You let out the biggest gasp. Namjoon quirks an eyebrow at you. You sqeal and hit Namjoon with excitement.

"What?! What?!" He asks confused as ever.

"Look look! An aquarium! I'VE BEEN WANTING TO GO TO ONE FOREVER BUT NEVER HAD THE TIME! PLEASE PLEASSSE CAN WE GO!"

He looks at the sign contemplating. "And see sea animals confined in boxes and not free? No chance." You slump your shoulders in disappointment. Then you hop back up when a special animal came in mind. "crabs."

"What?"

"The aquarium has crabs. You can go see the crabs, Joonie."

It seems like he paused for a moment when you called him Joonie.

"Did you call me...Joonie?" He asks with a small smile forming on his lips.

"...yes." You replay what you said and it hit you that you did in fact call Namjoon, Joonie. Mental face palm.

"Joon! Aquarium! Crabs! Pleasssse!"

"Ok! For the crabs." He sighs.

"Wow. For the crabs and not me." You pout in fake hurt.

He turns his head to the side and sighs. He bends down grabbing your face and kisses your forehead. "AND for you baby." He leans away from you with a smirk. You stand there shocked and trying not to smile. You shake your head and go back to thinking about the aquarium. You grab Namjoon's hand and rush to the aquarium. "Come on!"

You guys entered the aquarium and gawked at all the animals of the sea. You go around pointing to all the things you can point at. Your excitement made Namjoon laugh. You made it seem like it was the first time you've ever been to an aquarium. You took alot of pictures with Namjoon and, without him and took pictures for him.

You went to the snake exhibit, holding Namjoon's arm because you were scared that they could pounce out of the glass somehow and attack. "I've always wondered how a snake so small can take in something so big. Something so small taking in something so big."

"Ya know, you can always find out yourself." You look up at him confused. Does he want you to try and get eaten by a snake? He looks down at you and smirk. Then what he means hits you. You elbow his side hard making him grab his side and groan. Pervert. You walk away from him. "That hurt by the way!" He shouted towards you. You kept walking. "I'm going to the gift shop!" Is all you respond with.

You guys head to the strip of stores and go to what seems like every single store. One thing that's good about Namjoon is that he likes shopping so, no moaning about how he doesn't want to be there. Both of you try on different styles of clothes and laugh when one of you looked absolutely ridiculous. Namjoon ended up buying two matching jackets because it was getting late and it was going to get cold soon.

"Ahh. I'm hungry." You expressed your hunger, poking your stomach.

"Hmmm...we should get some food and sit out on the field and watch the boats pass by in the river." Joon suggested.

"Seems like you had that one planned out." You laugh. Joon wraps his arms around your shoulders, resting his head on top of yours. "Nah..just something...romantic." he laughs and walks away from you. You sigh and follow him.

Joon buys some food and a blanket to place on the grass when you go to sit down. You guys play with the food seeing who can catch it with their mouths and who's chopstick skills are the best. You take a break from the food to watch people. A little boy walks up to you guys and just stares. You hold up your hand for a high five and surprisingly he gives you one and runs away. You chuckle.

"Kids are cute and very weird." You say mindlessly.

"Would you like some, someday?" Joon asks you sounding genuinely curious.

"Mmm...yeah...someday..." You start to pick at your dress.

"Oh! Joonie I got us something while I was in the gift shop at the aquarium." You turn and crawled to your purse. You were on all fours your backside facing Namjoon. Your dress lifts just enough to see your underwear. Namjoon gets flustered and puts his hand on the top of your butt and pushes you down. You look back and realize why. "Oh sorry. But look!"

You showed him two necklaces with a cute crab charm on it. "I was going to give it to you earlier but I felt like it was trash after you got us jackets...very stylish jackets...." He doesn't say anything for a while until you look up at him.

"These are way better than the jackets. I get to have a crab with me at all times now. C'mere let me put it on you." You turn around and he moves your hair out the way to clasp the necklace and you do the same for him. He smiles letting his dimples show as he looks at the cute crab charm. You laugh.

You go to get the last stuffed tofu pouch but Namjoon also reaches for it. You gave him a challenging stare. "Let's play a game." He suggests and you agree. He grabs a piece of paper and puts it to his mouth. "Objective:don't drop it. Three rounds." Simple you thought. You got it from him and he got it from you last round you had to take it back. You looked at him and closed your eyes hoping you don't drop it. Namjoon had removed the paper as soon as you went to get it making you kiss him. You open your eyes and looked at him in shock and hit him. You fell on your back and covered your face in embarrassment.

"I can't believe you've done that." You said in a mumbled voice. You can hear Namjoon laugh. "Open your eyes." You shake your head. "Aw come on open them." His voice got closer. You're still stubborn to keep your eyes covered. You feel hands on your wrist and your hands are no longer covering your face. You open your eyes to see Namjoon's face hovering over yours. His eyes fall to your lips and back to your eyes. He takes his chances and kisses you. It's only a short kiss. He looks at you to see your reaction. You stare at him then smile. He rest his head on your shoulder then laughs. You start to laugh along too.

As you're laughing little drops of rain started to turn into big groups of rain. Namjoon picks you up and runs to the nearest shelter. "Joonie our stuff!" You sqeal as he runs. "The crew will get it!"

"Oppa! Put me down I can walk!" He finally gets you guys to a food tent still holding you.

"You called me oppa." He smiles at you.

"No I didn't." You're quick to deny but it won't stop him from teasing you.

"You never called me oppa. Even when I asked you to." You rest your head on his shoulder.

"Joon~~let it go please." You beg.

"Oh no. This is forever in my book of memories." You sigh in defeat.

Namjoon puts you down finally and you wobble once you hit the ground. You start to yawn. "I'm sleepy."

"You're sleepy. Cute." Namjoon chuckles.

You checked the time on your phone. "Filming will be done soon. I think my body knows."

The staff finally ended the filming for the day and you and Namjoon thanked everyone and changed into the clothes you came in.

"It was fun filming with you out of all people today. I'm glad you were my blind date." You thank Namjoon.

"I never wanted to go on this show but the group needs someone to get on variety shows and this was one of the offers. I'm glad it was you, since I know you and all...it wasn't weird. I liked it." Namjoon confessed. You smiled at his last sentence. I liked it.

"Right! See you for filming tomorrow!" You have to come back and express how you feel and what not after the date and watch the clips with the MCs the following day.

As you got home you layed in your bed thinking about the kisses that you and Namjoon had. Your brain replaying stuff in your mind just so you can overthink it. Throughout the time that you came back home to getting ready for bed you kept thinking why he kissed you. Was it his true feelings or just for the show. If anything you just wanted his lips on you again.

You hit your wrist scolding yourself of thinking of your colleague that way. It was just for the show and thats it. Though thats what you wish you could truly think.

You start thinking about how his lips would feel other places and what he said when you were thinking out loud. Ya know, you can always find out yourself.

How big is his-

There were knocks at the door. Who could be here at this time.

You get out of bed and walk to the door. You unlock it and leave the chain lock on. The door creaked when you opened it slowly. You cringed at the sound. Your eyes trail up to a face. A very familiar face.

"Namjoon?"

"Hi." You close the door to unlock the chain and open it again to let Namjoon in.

"I know it's late but...I couldn't stop thinking about today...and you. Especially you." He rubs his neck and shifts from one foot to the other. "I kept thinking about how cute you were and then how much you had irked me throughout the day." You raised a brow at him.

"I-i irked you?" You asked in conplete confusion. You irking THE Kim Namjoon.

"Like when you crawled to get the necklaces and you flashed me. When you looked back you smirked at me then said sorry but there wasn't an ounce of you being sorry in your face." You bite your lip remembering that you did smirk at him.

"Or how that dress fitted you so well. Everytime you walked it twisted on you good enough to show your figure."

"Namjoon-" Namjoon had cornered you to the wall, grabbing your leg holding it to his side. He pushes up on you to make you feel his growing bulge. You breathed shakily. When you go to bed you don't wear underwear and he for a fact didn't know that... yet. He pushed up on you again making you squeeze ypur eyes shut. He had touched your clit.

"And I scolded myself for thinking of you that way. But my mind goes back to when I was on top of you in the field, and how if we were on our own you would've been undressed immediately. Or back to when you flashed me and I saw your ass and i was thinking on how it would be so good if I fucked you from behind. Just seeing how your ass bounces everytime I thrust into you while you moan out my name." Namjoon whispers in your ear. And you're mad at yourself on how turned on you're getting. You'd be surprised if you weren't wet right now but you are.

"I-I've wondered how your lips would feel on other places. And also h-how good you could fuck m-me. Iscoldedmyselftoobutfuckmeplease." With that Namjoon picked you up, letting you hit his bulge again making you moan. He kisses you on the lips as he guides your hips to grind on his bulge. He trails down to your neck. You let out small moans while you bend your neck for more access. "Namjoon please fuck me." He groans at that and takes you to the room.

He throws you down on the bed and spreads your legs. "No panties, naughty girl." He smirks. You watch as he looks down at your cunt like a man that hasn't eaten in days. He kisses your thigh in down and where you want him the most he misses. He goes to the next leg and kisses on down. You feel his breath on your cunt making your pussy squeeze on nothing. "Greedy." He kisses your clit and sucks on it for a second. You jolt up in response. He spreads your lips with his fingers and starts to to do soft licks.

You whine and moan at every lick. It's been a while since you've touched yourself. This would be the first for you to let anyone have sex with you. Namjoon starts to do long strides with his tongue and with every lick the tip of his tongue would brush your clit. He would go from long slow strides to quick soft licks. You grab his hair for something to hold on to as you start to grind into his face. He doesn't seem to mind only moaning into your cunt that has you arching your back. He pulls back having you whining in protest.

He takes his fingers and puts them in your mouth. You look him in the eyes as you take his fingers in your mouth. You swirl your tongue around them. He looks at you with hooded eyes. He gets his fingers back and slide them up and down between your lips. "Joonie please." You beg him. He slides his fingers in slowly, mesmerized by how your pussy takes his fingers in so well. He looks up at you. You had shut your eyes, whimpering.

"Look at me." He demands you. You open your eyes and look at him. He speeds up the pace still giving you eye contact. Everything's too much with the change of pace and the eye contact. Then just when you thought you could adjust he starts to slowly rub your clit. Your legs snap close. "Joonie I-I can't." He still does his movements and looks back at you.

"Open your legs baby." You shake your head.

"Baby. I'll only say it once. Do what I told you." You slowly open your legs again. You look down and see how his fingers glide so easily in and out of you as he abuses your clit with a slow circle movement. You curl your toes and grab the sheets. "You like that don't you. Seeing how dirty you are letting me do this to you." Namjoon moans to you. You nod your head yes. He pushes down in your clit making you cry out. "Joonie please!"

"No. Only on my cock." He pulls his fingers out of you leaving you pouting. He pulls down his joggers and underwear in one go. You finally get to see his cock. It's thick and long and you wonder if it would even fit in you. He signals you to come foward. You crawl to the edge of the bed. You know what he wants you to do but you don't know how. You've seen girls do it hundreds of time but you don't know how. You look up to him with wide eyes.

"You don't know how?" You shake your head no. He grabs your hand a wraps it around his dick. "Move your hand up and down" he guides your hand to slide up and down his shaft. He grunts in pleasure and lets go of your hand, letting you take over. "W-when- shit! When it starts to get a little hard to s-slide you gotta put it in your mouth."

You do as told, not caring what the directions were and put your lips to the tip of his dick, only sucking that part. You think you have the dick in your mouth part down, watching many porn videos, looking at the women suck the men's cock. You bobb your head and swirl your tongue around his dick. Taking his dick fully out your mouth to do open mouth kisses and licks down his shaft while still sliding your hand in the motion he told you. You remember of course to not forget his balls and suck them, soon heading back to his cock. You moan at the feeling of him in your mouth and how he has his head tilted back as he gives you praises. "Shit, baby. Just like that. You're doing so well. Daddy's gonna fuck that pretty mouth of yours" You whimper at the name he gave himself your pussy reacting to it as well clenching to nothing.

Namjoon grabs your head making you still, pulling out his dick completely. He pulls your hair back to make you look up at him. "Daddy's gonna want you to do well, ok? You've done so good so far, tap me if it's too much, ok?"

You nod "o-ok."

"Ok who?"

You bite your lip and let out a small whimper. "Ok daddy." You'd never thought that, that would turn you on but it did in every way. You feel your arousal drip down your thighs.

"Good girl. Open your mouth for daddy." You open your mouth, feeling eager to have him back in your mouth again. He groans looking at how innocent you look waiting for him to destroy your mouth. He slides his cock in your mouth again making you moan. He keeps a steady pace but he gets eager and start to fasten the pace. You keep up, loving the feeling of his cock hitting the back of your throat. You look up at him through teary eyes watching how much he's enjoying fucking your mouth. Him being turned on only wants you to make him fuck your cunt. You start to rub your cunt on the sheets, moaning around his cock. He opens his eyes to the sight of you being turned on, cock in your mouth and grinding on the bed for friction. He smirks. "Dirty girl. You want daddy's cock, don't you?" You look up at him and nod.

He pulls out of your mouth letting you gasp for air. He lays you back down and kisses you sweetly. Bringing his hand down to your clit he starts to play with it. You jerk your hips up and start grinding into his hand. Your moans are more like whinpers and cries. "I could make you cum like this. Just playing with your cute little clit. Watching you beg me to fuck you with my cock. I might just do that."

"N-no no please Daddy. Fuck me please!" He hears your pleas but doesn't abide to them-not yet. He kisses your collarbone and abandons your clit to start playing with your breasts. Rolling your nipples in between his fingers he enjoyed the moans you made and how you rolled your hips on nothing. He enjoyed the way you closed your eyes tight and furrowed your eyebrows. He wonder how you'd act once he was inside of you. That thought made him throb and he let a moan himself. Like a mantra you chanted please over and over again almost making a little pout if it wasn't for you catching your bottom lip between your teeth. He chuckled. He kept one hand busy on your nipple while the other went to fish out a condom in his pants pocket. He rips open the pack and slides it on as he bends down to suck your tortured nipples letting go with a lewd pop! noise.

Spreading your legs he pulled you towards him positioning you where he could easily slide in. You look at him with pleading eyes, begging for him to fuck you.

"You sure baby?" He holds your thighs, his thumbs massaging deep into the insides of your thighs.

"Yes, daddy." You nod frantically really wanting this. "Please." You wiggle your hips to show him how eager you were. He chuckles at your small action.

As if you haven't been waiting long enough he comes down and kisses you deeply as he slowly enters you. You whimpered at the stretch he gave you. It felt new to you, you were breathing heavily. Namjoon grunts at the way your walls clench around him-just begging him to move. "You ok, baby?" You didn't realize but you've grabbed a hold of him with your head buried in the crook of his neck. You calmed down and nodded. "Let me see your face." You loosen your grip on him and look him in the eyes. He searches yours for a moment and finally moves.

His thrust were long and slow. Taking his time to feel you around him and let you adjust.

"Fuck baby you're doing so good." He praises. It made you moan louder and clench making him hiss. "You like that? You like when daddy praises you?" You nod. "Use your words baby."

"Yes! Yes! I love it when you praise me, daddy! G-go faster p-please?" You cried out. He wastes no time in fucking you faster and a little rougher than before but you didn't mind. You liked this much more than what you were doing at first and he could tell. Your moans were getting louder and slowly started to turn to screams of just his name mixed with small whines.

Each thrust had you bouncing on the bed and crying. He felt so good and you felt so full of him. He steadies himself, hands beside your head so he could look at you. You looked up at him with eyes filled with tears and adoration.

"Shit. Mmmm- baby you were made for me. You feel and sound so good. You hear how wet you are for me right now. I started that and no one is going to make you feel like how you are got that." You arched your back and moaned. Fuck. You love it when he talks to you. The way his dominanceoozes out and you enjoy every drip of it. He places his hand around your neck and you focus back on him. "I asked you a question, i want an answer."

You place your hand over his. "W-what i-if i don't want t-to?" You asked him. He tightens his grip on your neck that makes you moan. You didn't think you'd be into that but you liked it.

"D-daddy, N-no marks." You managed to choke out. If you had marks on your neck for tomorrow staff would become suspicious.

He stops his movements and you look up at him. He only smirks and tightens his grip. He fucks into you harder and lets go of your throat. He dips his head in the crook of your neck and sucks and nibbles your skin till it turns pink.

"You are mine. I'll mark you how I want and everyone's gonna see. Got it." You clench around him again. His voice was husky and demanding you didn't feel ashamed letting out a moan when he finished his statement.

"And you never answered me like you should've, don't think I forgot."

He pulls out of you and you whine of the absence.

"Hands and knees, ass up. Now." You looked at him bewildered but you obeyed.

He rubbed your ass and smacked it. You yelped and looked back at him. He only smirked at you and repeated the actions. You grunt again, curling your toes and grabbing the sheets.

"This is what you get for not answering. So start answering me when I speak to you. I'm going to fuck you now. And it won't be soft, ok."

"O-ok, d-daddy."

And he didn't lie that's for sure. He fucked you slow but hard each thrust earned a grunt from him and a cry of his name from you. He slapped your ass a couple of times with the thrust. He held still for some time making you look at him.

"Fuck into me baby." You hesitated at first but did what was asked. You grind your hips into him moaning everytime, enjoying yourself. He gripped your hips and guided you. You stifled when you hit your g-spot. Namjoon noticed and started thrusting into you, each thrust he hit the spot. It had you crying.

"N-namjoon p-please I-I can't hold anymore." He noticed your slip up but didn't say anything. He reached down and started to rub gentle circles on your clit each time he found your g-spot. At this point it was silent cries, grunts and moans. Only sound that was noticeable was your slick newd sounds and the slap of skin wich turned you on more. All this was so much to handle for your first. You couldn't go on for long and neither could Namjoon. You felt him twitch inside you. You clawed at the sheets and screamed out his name.

You tightened around him as you came down. He let you ride out your orgasm. Once you were done he slipped out of you and turned you on your back. Slipping off the condom he fucked himself in his hand looking at you and your worn out body. With one of his hands he wiped your cunt and it made you flinch since you were so sensitive. He got his hand that he wiped you with and put it in his mouth and moaned. Even though you were done the scene before you made you want to pounce on him again. His breathing got heavy and you knew he was close, stroking himself faster.

Since he was close you wanted to tease him.

"Mmmm...daddy?" He looks at you in question. "You know you look so sexy like that. Fucking into your hand in front of me. It makes me want to take you again." You moan at the thought of him in you again and maybe even letting himself soften inside you.

"Daddy, you wanna know what I'm thinking right now?" His breathing gets even heavier he's almost there. "You releasing inside my warm, wet pussy as I cry out your name and tell you how you feel." You rub your hands down your self, one playing with your breasts and the other spreading your lips so he can see inside you and imagine with you.

He watches your hands and follows your hand going to your pussy and watch as you spread yourself for him. He stutters out a shit and finally releases and cums on your torso. You take your finger and scoop his cum up and put it in your mouth and moan.

"Daddy, you taste so good." You moan. He chuckles and bends over you. He pulls your hand away from your mouth and kisses you sweetly. No lust in this one just love.

"You're very naughty in the bedroom, baby." You give him a soft push.

"Yeah? You too...daddy." He laughs at your statement.

"You got me. Now lets clean up and get some rest. Remember we have a show to do tomorrow." He climbs off of you and you get hit with reality. You have a show tomorrow and you're going to be in a good mood. Too good of a mood, they'd know something was up. How'd you act knowing what you did the night before.

"Oh yeah good luck to your make up stylist for trying to cover up those marks." You throw a pillow at him.

"Namjoon you bitch!"

[honeymoonjin]

A/N: Sorry for the wait! I’ve finally got some semblance of plot sorted out so that I don’t write myself into a dead end. And thank you for your continued support on this story! This chapter is 2.5k.

LOST IN TRANSLATION ↳What do you do when you have no qualifications but want to see the world? You help teach English in a Korean primary school, apparently. ↳Principal!Jin, math teacher!Yoongi, PE teacher!Hoseok, English teacher!Namjoon, school nurse!Jimin, art teacher!Taehyung, and science teacher!Jungkook.

CHAPTER FIVE ↳You learn a little more about the unorthodox way Principal Kim runs the school, and begin to start getting closer with some of the staff there.

“Cheer up, Hoseok,” Jimin chimes, “you stole Min’s food for a week and a half. You only have to eat plain rice for three days.”

Coach Jung eyes the scowling math teacher nervously, picking at the grains of steamed white rice. “At least I gave you other food, Yoongi. This isn’t fair.”

The man sniffs. “Did you guys hear something? I think it was just the wind.”

Hoseok groans. “Come on! Somebody please give me something with a little flavor! Jungkook, there’s no way you can get through all that pork yourself! Give some to your hyung.”

“You know I can’t do that, Hoseok. I’m just as scared of Teacher Min as the rest of us.” Yoongi raises an eyebrow and Jungkook just shrugs. “What? We’re all intimidated of you.”

“I don’t think the new girl is intimidated of me,” Yoongi corrects. “Are you, Y/n?”

You glance up from awkwardly maneuvering your chopsticks around the noodles that had been piled onto your plate. “Hm? What is this word?” Namjoon leans over and translates quickly. “Oh. I am not very. He is not scary.”

“Maybe if she could understand Korean well enough to understand my insults she would be scared, but alas.” Yoongi sits back smugly, enjoying all the best parts of the shared lunch that had been deferred to him as an apology.

“Anyway,” the principal cuts in, “I think the real tragedy here is that Hoseok won’t be getting his raise after all. Who wants to try for one next?”

Taehyung shakes his head morosely. “It’s not healthy to be pitting your employees against each other for your entertainment, especially not when their salaries are on the line.”

Seokjin purses his lips. “Seems like an extra thousand won an hour might cheer you up.”

The art teacher sets down his chopsticks delicately. “What would I have to do?”

“You know what you have to do.”

Taehyung screws up his face. “Yah, seriously? For the last time, I’m not going to paint a portrait of you! You’ll just hang it up in the reception.”

“Of course,” Principal Kim replies breezily, “where else would I put it? There’s certainly no more room on my walls at home, not when I’ve already got that one you painted last year.”

“Oh, god,” he groans, pressing his fingers over his eyelids, “don’t remind me. I can’t believe you convinced me to paint you nude.”

“And who’s the best paid teacher in the school, huh? That’s what I thought.”

You clear your throat lightly. “Uh, I maybe am not understanding, but you get more money if you do these, um, these games?”

Hoseok, sick of his unsatisfying lunch, drops his chopsticks and puts his elbows up on the table, leaning towards you. “Seokjin is a cruel master who has developed his own version of the Hunger Games and he pays us not according to our ability and hard work, but to how much we benefit him.”

“Correct,” Principal Kim affirms. “I think it’s a great process.”

You find yourself becoming more curious. “What have the teachers done before? For more money.”

Taehyung buries his face deeper into his hands at that, and Jimin just pats him on the back, smiling sweetly at you. “The first one was Jungkook. He wanted more money for a school trip and so Seokjin promised to fund the trip if Jungkook wore a shirt with his face on it the whole time.”

“I still have that shirt,” Jungkook muses, “Someday, when the kids start learning about energy and combustion, I’m going to burn it.”

The principal winces. “If you don’t want it, give it to me and I’ll wear it.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” Jungkook counters, “I have to destroy it before it falls into the wrong hands. Like Frodo and the ring.”

“Are you calling me Gollum?!” Seokjin cries in outrage.

“Sexy Gollum?” Jungkook offers. Principal Kim nods thoughtfully and relaxes his shoulders. “Anyway,” Jungkook continues, “we’ve done things like that a bunch since then. Sometimes it’s secret missions, sometimes it’s public displays. Depends on what Seokjin wants you to do. For example, Jimin had to wear a slutty nurse costume on open day last year.”

Instead of being embarrassed like you would’ve thought, Jimin beams proudly. “A one hundred thousand Christmas bonus for one day. It’s not much, but it’s honest work.”

“Oh, put a sock in it,” Hoseok fires across the table, “you just liked the way your ass looked in the skirt.”

“I do recall,” Jimin announces, “everyone liked the way my ass looked in that skirt.”

You chuckle at their antics. “I want more money, too. Can I wear a skirt, and get money?”

Seokjin hums his disagreement around a mouthful of rice, cheeks bulging. “No, no, you can’t do something you’d do anyway, and besides, I can’t pay you more money since you’re on a government contract.”

“Come on, hyung,” Yoongi interjects, having been eating in content silence for a while, “give the girl some extra coin. I want to see what she’s willing to do for some pocket money.”

Seokjin swallows his mouthful, tapping his chin. “I’ll think about it,” he promises, “I need to come up with something good.”

Namjoon scoffs. “I don’t think you should be getting her involved in this, Seokjin. It’s irresponsible.”

“She asked for it,” the principal defends. He turns to you, waving his metal chopsticks in your face. “Any talents I can exploit, girly?”

You shrug. “Speaking English is good. I don’t know about more things. I am university soccer team.”

“Hmm, good at soccer? That’s not much to go off, but I’ll think of something.”

Hoseok sighs dramatically, pulling all the attention back onto him as he stands up. “I’m going to the store down the road for some snacks. Anyone want to come?”

“No!” You jump a little as Yoongi yells out passionately. He gets out of his seat too, stomping over to the taller man. “It’s only steamed rice for you for the next three lunches, Hoseok. I’m not letting you out of my sight until the school bell rings.”

Hoseok looks down at him and sighs again, this time in defeat. “Okay, then,” he mumbles, “can I at least have a coffee?”

Teacher Min frowns suspiciously. “Lead the way.”

As previously arranged, you made your way to the little medical clinic-slash-shed on the side of the school at the end of the day. Jimin had mentioned in the car this morning that often he had to hang around a little later on a Tuesday since it was the time for the children to have check-ups or get flu shots. “Most of the time there’s nothing,” he had told you, “but I have to keep it open just in case.”

There was a tiny kettle plugged into the wall, sitting on his desk, and a box of chamomile tea. When you arrived, he had set out two polystyrene cups, still steaming. He gestured for you to have the one that hadn’t been sipped at already and gave you a seat on the examination bench.

You watch him now, lips pursed, and eyebrows scrunched up as he focuses on locating something in the cupboard underneath his desk. Instead of pulling out some sort of medical tool or important document like you’d expect, he calls out a triumphant “aha!” and straightens up with a sleeve of biscuits in one hand.

You laugh and gladly take one as he rips it open and offers it to you. “Isn’t eating and working bad?”

He shrugs, crumbs clinging to his lips. “If someone comes in, I’ll just put them away. We don’t want any students finding out I keep food in here, they’ll never leave.”

“It is very, uh, empty in here. Maybe you are needing more students.”

His eyes twinkle. “Are you saying I’m not working hard enough?” He takes another biscuit and dunks it in the chamomile tea. You try not to screw your face up at the little floating bits on the surface after he pulls it out. “I did my hard yards in medical school, now I’ve earned a little peace and quiet, don’t you think?”

“Was medical school good?”

He tugs at his shirt cuff, avoiding your gaze. “I remember loving it, but now that memory is a little bittersweet.” You frown, not understanding his word choice, but he mistakes it as an invitation to keep explaining himself. “I met my ex-girlfriend there,” he discloses, “she was actually working at a café I went to a lot, studying to be a teacher. When we both got jobs here, we were over the moon, but a school nurse’s salary is far lower than most medical practitioners. She wanted me to leave and get a better paid job, but when I wouldn’t, she left instead. That was just over a year ago.”

You sit in stunned silence for a moment, unsure what to say. You knew Koreans didn’t say sorry like Westerners did, but you weren’t sure what the alternative was for expressing condolences.

Jimin obviously got the wrong idea by your silence, and scoffed bitterly at himself, sniffing and blinking like he was getting teary. “I apologize,” he mumbles sheepishly, “you don’t need to hear all that. Sorry. I tend to overshare.”

“It’s okay,” you automatically assure him, “that sounds difficult. It is sad.”

He runs a hand through his hair, ruffling it up before patting it back down. “You should tell me about yourself,” he says, “I’ve talked for long enough. What brings you to Korea?”

You hum in consideration. “I don’t know the using right words, but…My university is not very good. No, my, um, my study is not very good. I have gotten annoyed because I am always writing and reading and not doing, do you understand? I want to be living, but in my university, I am only learning about living. I think that I have not said it right.”

“No, no,” he hastily responds, “your Korean is very good! I understand you. I think you’re right, as well. In medical school, we could answer any question, outline the steps for any procedure. And then you graduate, and you go to start working in a hospital, and you freeze, because you realize you’ve only done things on paper. Not in real life. It’s a good thing, I think, to get some life experience. We’re all very happy to have you here, Y/n.”

Your cheeks heat up a little. “I am very happy now. Everything is very much, but I enjoy it. I am wishing that I make good friends here.”

Jimin chucks his empty polystyrene cup in the trash and holds his fist out to you, pinky finger extended. “We’ll make a pact,” he announces, “to be good friends. You and I can get some takeaways and have a movie night or something to celebrate the start of a wonderful friendship.”

You chuckle but lean forward nonetheless, intertwining your littlest finger with his, squeezing and giving it a little wiggle for good measure. “I have one friend now! It is good. Now I only need one more friend so that I have plural friends.”

He laughs, tipping his head back. “Wow, not a single minute goes by and you’re already moving on? Alright then, who else do you want to be friends with? We can track them down and force them to join our friendship pact.”

You shrug. “It’s all okay. Who is your friend?”

“Well, of course you’re my best friend in this whole world, but if I had to pick another, I’d say Jungkook.”

“Really? You are very different.”

Jimin smiles wistfully, fiddling with a loose thread on his pants. “I know. He’s very strong and confident, and I’m just small and shy. But we’ve gotten really close, since we’re neighbors, and I feel like we get each other. He’s a good guy.” He opens his mouth, blushes a little, and closes it again, staring off into space.

You smile awkwardly and go to respond, but his eyes dart to the clock and widen along with his mouth. “Ah, finally,” he states a little too loudly, “the open hour has ended, we can go home!”

“Oh, okay,” you stammer, “let’s go home.”

How are you?

You blink at your phone in confusion as a notification drops down while you’re brushing your teeth. Who is this?

Those three little dots hover, and hover, and then disappear.

It’s Taehyung. Jimin gave me your number.

Your response is short but typing out the Hangeul isn’t something you’re used to, and before you send it off, Taehyung’s sent another message.

Sorry if that makes you uncomfortable.

You revise your message and hit send. That’s okay. But why?

You spit out the last of your toothpaste and rinse, but hang around in the bathroom, nibbling at your thumbnail while you wait for him to reply.

Tomorrow is a school trip to SeMA. Would you want to come?

You frown. What is SeMA?

Seoul Museum of Art. The trip is 10am til 1pm. I’ve already asked Principal Kim if you can go, he says yes.

He already got permission? It was sweet of him to think of you, and you would really love to see the sighs while you were in the country. Yes please!

It takes him a while to reply, so long that you assume he’s not going to. You give up loitering in the bathroom and make your way into your bedroom, calling out a ‘sleep well’ to Jimin as you pass his half-open door.

It’s only once you’re in bed in an old sweatshirt and undies, ready to get a solid 6 hours that your phone vibrates on the floor. You pick it up, squinting at the harsh blue light.

If you like it maybe I could take you to another gallery on the weekend.

Barely ten seconds pass before another message pops up.

Or if you don’t like it, we could always get dinner or watch a movie on the weekend instead.

A flurry of messages buzz through.

Or maybe you just don’t want to hang out on the weekend, that’s okay too.

Tell me if I’m annoying you!

Sorry, I’ll shut up now kekeke

But do you want to hang out on the weekend?

You grin at the personality coming through the messages, and you’re almost able to picture him hunched over the phone, biting his lip and rubbing his brow. You punch out a response as fast as you can to put him out of his misery.

I want to go on the weekend!

He simply sends you a smiley face emoji, beaming with its eyes in little crescents, followed by two exclamation points. You laugh at his antics and do a little happy wiggle in bed. Not even two full days in Seoul and you had already nabbed yourself a date. The grass really was greener on the other side.

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[sad-sweet-cowboah]

A Happy Hunt

Summary: You come home to find Arthur had disappeared, and he returns with a surprise.

Warnings: Cursing

Your hollow stomach growled with hunger as you walked into your house that evening, eagerly awaiting for any type of food regardless of it was home cooked or ordered. Although you do prefer home cooked as of late, knowing Arthur had to be close to a master chef by now after going through all of your cookbooks. As you opened the door, you were greeted with silence. Usually Arthur was in the kitchen or the living room, but you heard nothing but the hum of your air conditioning.

Confused, you stepped in further. Artemis appeared from the kitchen to greet you. You bent down to pet her. “Hey girlie, where’s Arthur?”

Of course the cat wouldn’t answer you. She simply meowed and walked off elsewhere. You figured he could be in the bathroom or your bedroom, but after a quick sweep, he was nowhere in sight. A frown crossed your lips. “Arthur?” You called out, hoping you’d somehow missed him and he’d appear from around the corner. Nothing but silence.

“Shit.” You murmured, hoping he didn’t randomly go out into town. Even though he’d gotten mostly used to the modern world, you still knew he could be a danger to himself and others in the wrong situation. You hurried out into the living room, preparing to grab your shoes and keys to search for him.

You paused when something caught your eye, a flicker of movement from the patio doors. You blinked and turned, your heart skipping a beat to see a figure in your backyard. At first you thought it was an intruder, yet with a second glance you were able to recognize him.

Bounding toward the patio doors, you threw one open and barreled out. “Arthur!” You exclaimed.

The first thing you noticed was the carcass of a small doe slung over his broad shoulder. The golden glint of his carbine repeater shone in the evening light. You could see some blood staining the vest he wore, the original one he’d come with. He was even wearing his cowboy hat. Upon hearing you, he turned. “Hey Y/N!” He greeted cheerfully, as if the dead animal wasn’t there.

“What in the hell are you doing with that thing?!” You demanded.

He seemed surprised by your outburst as a frown played on the edge of his lips. Stepping towards the patio, he leaned down to prop the carcass across the table. “Well,” he began as he straightened up. “I know you were complainin’ about the cost of meat, so I reckon I hunt some instead.”

At any other time, the gesture would have sent your heart fluttering. But this out of all things, and going out without telling you has easily pushed those feelings aside. “You can’t go hunting whenever you feel like it!” You scolded, throwing your hands up. “It’s not even deer hunting season!”

Unfazed by your anger, he stared in confusion. “What? There’s a deer huntin’ season?”

“Yes!” You huffed. “You need a license too or else it’s illegal!”

Arthur scoffed at that. “I’m an outlaw, remember?”

“I know,” you groaned. “But that doesn’t mean you can still do whatever you want, Arthur. The law is a lot harsher than it was in your time.”

“But I wasn’t caught.” he pointed out, folding his arms.

You sighed heavily. “That’s not the point. This isn’t 1899. You can’t hunt whenever you feel like it, or disappear without telling me!”

His blue eyes flickered toward the ground for a moment, pursing his lips in thought. He unfolded his arms and sighed, tilting his head down to hide his gaze behind the brim of his hat. “Alright, Y/N. I’m sorry. Jus’ wanted to do somethin’ nice for you.”

The look on his face made your heart melt a little, almost like a little kid who had gotten in trouble. You couldn’t be angry at him for long, especially since he didn’t know. You took a step toward him, keeping a slight distance at the sight of the blood staining his clothes. “Arthur…”

“Hmm?” he hummed lowly, although didn’t look at you.

You glanced at the doe briefly, a shiver running up your spine as you accidentally made eye contact with its dead, empty gaze. You focused on him once again. “I….appreciate it, really.”

He lifted his head just an inch, and you could see him peering at you beneath his hat. “Ya do?”

You nodded. “I mean…I know venison is very nutritious…I used to have it sometimes when I was a kid. Burgers, kebabs, grilled, jerky, you name it. My dad hunts.”

You caught the gleam in his eye as he smiled wide. “Then I guess we’re set for the next week on meals, then!”

You chuckled at his enthusiasm. “I guess we are,” you couldn’t help but to stare at the blood stain for a moment. “Where…did you go anyway?”

He turned and pointed westward. “The forest on the edge of the neighborhood, I went in far enough so the gunshots wouldn’t scare nobody.”

Smart. “And you found your way back?” You inquired. The forest was at least a three mile walk from your street, and even then some to travel further enough to distance the sound. And he carried that doe back? How did he do it without someone noticing?

He threw his arms up in a half shrug as if to gesture to himself that he was indeed here. “S’not that hard.”

Of course, this man had to be an expert at that. Such an art that has been lost to most of civilization. Hell, you couldn’t go anywhere without the GPS on your phone. You’d have to ask him to teach you sometime, amongst the growing list of other things he’d be more than willing to teach you.

“You really are something, you know that?” you said with a smile.

“I ain’t that special,” he chuckled. You opened your mouth to rebut otherwise, but the smile that remained on his face told you he was joking. “Anyway, I’ll get to preparin’ this beast,” he spoke again, turning to the doe. “You go on and relax, I’ll have somethin’ good.”

“As long as you don’t get blood in my kitchen, Mr. Morgan,” You chided teasingly. “Any more on that vest of yours and I’m gonna have to strip you.”

He gave you a grin, sultry and teasing. “Yes ma’am, but I prefer if you did it anyway.”

I’ll be honest I looked up the history of hunting seasons and I couldn’t find a straightforward answer on when it was nationally implemented, only state specific details. All I know is that in the 1800′s, Whitetail deer were almost extinct in certain parts of the country from how much hunting was going on, and there’s no indication of hunting seasons in the game either  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ sooo I have no idea what’s accurate and what’s not!

[anubislover]

Of Friendship, Captains, and Wedding Dresses

It was rare that Luffy asked to go shopping with his navigator. The hyperactive captain usually didn’t have the patience for following Nami around a peaceful town as she tried on clothes, instead complaining that he was hungry or bored and why couldn’t they go on an adventure? It was best to let him go off on his own whenever they reached an island with decent enough shops, as it saved her the headache and trouble that came with reigning him in.

This time, though, the rubber captain had practically begged to go with her, agreeing to carry all her bags and not mention meat once. Three hours in and he’d kept that promise, not even complaining that she was taking too long trying stuff on or haggling down the prices of navigation equipment. Once or twice, he even gave an opinion, even if it wasn’t much more than “the color’s nice” or “can you fight in that?”

To be honest, it had Nami worried.

“Why’d you want to come shopping with me, Luffy?” she asked as she handed him another bag stuffed with shoes. Sparkly sandals with three-inch heels had caught her eye, but she had intentionally taken her time deciding between the turquoise and the teal, testing if her captain would say anything. Throughout the grueling twenty minutes he’d sat patiently, not commenting that the difference between them really was miniscule.

Stretching his arms to make room for her latest purchase, he merely shrugged. “I just wanted to spend time with you. Is that ok?”

“I mean, of course, but wouldn’t you rather explore the island?”

“I can do that with Usopp and Chopper later. Robin says there are some cool beetles in the forest that are supposed to come out at night, so I’ll have a midnight adventure!”

A giggle escaped her lips. That sounded far more like the man she knew. Maybe she was overthinking things; they’d spent two years apart after Sabaody, and since the crew had reunited there hadn’t been much opportunity for leisure time or hanging out. Luffy often asked her to play games with him, but between the maps she had to draw, tending to her mikan trees and the New World’s dangerously unpredictable weather, she rarely accepted, knowing she had to be ready for a storm or other disaster at any time.

Even when danger wasn’t imminent, she wasn’t always around; Law had gotten into the habit of “running into them” quite regularly and spiriting her away to his ship to make the most of their “alliance.” Hell, part of the reason she was so anxious to go shopping was because he’d started ripping her clothes off in the heat of the moment, which usually meant she had to borrow his shirts and hoodies just to get back to the ship. The sight never failed to leave Sanji in tears, and even Luffy had started looking grim at how often she returned in the surgeon’s clothes.

Regardless, something was clearly up with her captain. Maybe Luffy just really wanted to spend some time with her, and he felt shopping was the only way since he could never manage to stay quiet long enough to join her in the library and she didn’t trust him with her precious mikan trees. Or maybe he felt bad over how often his reluctant friend ruined her clothes and wanted to make it up to her by acting as a pack mule. After all, she regularly repaired his hat when it got damaged. Mentally, she made note to play one of his silly games next time he asked. If he was making this much of an effort, she should too.

Strolling down the street, she glanced about, trying to decide where to go next. There was a bookstore, a patisserie, more shoe stores, and some dress boutiques she definitely wanted to check out, but maybe they could duck into the toy store for a little while and see if they could find a new beetle-catching net. Best to reward good behavior now so he wouldn’t get antsy and ruin the rest of her shopping plans.

“Hey, why don’t you try on those dresses?”

Glancing over to the shop window Luffy was pointing at, she did a double-take. A high-end boutique loomed before them, gorgeous white gowns featured prominently in the display window. Lace veils draped softly across the mannequins’ shoulders, and gem-studded tiaras and jewelry caught the early afternoon sunlight.

Jaw dropping, Nami stared at him. “You want me to try on wedding dresses?!”

The captain seemed bemused at her reaction. “Why not? You like fancy dresses, don’t you?”

“Yeah, except I’m not getting married, Luffy!”

“But you looked pretty in the one you wore on Thriller Bark.”

“I’m not saying I didn’t, but I wasn’t exactly happy with the idea of getting married then, what with the kidnapping, remember?” she cried, too flabbergasted to smack him over such a ridiculous idea.

Crossing his arms (which was no simple feat, given how they were covered in her bags) he cocked his head to the side. “So, you wouldn’t marry someone who kidnapped you?”

“Of course not!”

A look of relief crossed his face. “Good.”

Sighing, Nami rubbed her temples in exasperation. Perhaps she was overreacting. Luffy was generally clueless about girly stuff like weddings and romance, so maybe he didn’t realize how crazy his suggestion had been. All she had to do was distract him with something else, and he’d drop the topic entirely. There had to be a food stall or butcher shop nearby…

“But if you did get married, you’d have to leave the Sunny, right? I mean, husbands and wives usually live together, and if he were on another crew…” he trailed off.

An unusually serious expression had taken over her captain’s perpetually smiling face, and her frown deepened. “What’s all this about, Luffy? Are you worried about Big Mom coming after Sanji-kun again?” It certainly crossed her mind often enough. She didn’t blame the blonde cook for never telling them about his past, or his royal lineage, and even if he had, none of them could have predicted he’d nearly get married off because of it. “I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen; for better or for worse, she’s more likely to kill him on sight than make him marry any of her daughters.”

“But Sanji seemed to like Pudding. What if they do get married? When people get married to someone on another crew, they leave,” Luffy replied, chewing on his lip in thought. “I mean, Baby 5 left ‘Mingo to be with Sai. How am I supposed to become King of the Pirates without my nakama?”

A surge of sympathy welled up inside her. Had Luffy ever been to a normal wedding where no one was being forced or blackmailed? If not, it made sense that he’d be paranoid, given the horrible examples they’d dealt with.

“Luffy, from what Law-kun’s told me, Baby 5 was treated like crap by her crew, especially Doflamingo. He called her family, but really, he was just using her. Don Sai just gave her a way out, kind of like how you helped me break away from Arlong. People stay with the captains that make them happy.”

“Hmmm, I guess so.” Lifting his head, his expression remained pensive. “And if she’s already married, no one can take her away and make her join their crew, right?”

Nami had yet to meet Baby 5 personally, but from what Law and Robin had told her, some concern was warranted; after all, the woman had gotten engaged eight other times simply because a man had “needed” her, not because she loved them. Even though he despised Doflamingo with a burning passion, Law had admitted that his former captain murdering her various grooms had probably been for the best. Luckily, the respect and emotional stability Sai provided was doing wonders. Nami had heard from Bepo that when the Heart Pirates had crossed paths with the Happo Navy not long ago, Baby 5 had ignored Law’s request for a glass of water for a full twenty minutes.

Of course, she’d eventually caved and brought him a whole barrel of water, but progress was progress. Law was apparently so impressed he hadn’t even glared at her when she slapped him. Nami was just glad they both seemed to be healing from the mental and emotional scars Doflamingo had given them.

“Well, I can’t say she won’t get kidnapped, but you can be sure her husband will rescue her, and she won’t be joining any other crew,” Nami assured with a smile, hoping to finally put this rather strange conversation to bed. “Being a good husband is like being a good captain—if a man looks out for his wife’s needs, protects her, and cares for her, she’ll do the same, and he’ll never have to worry about her leaving him.” Of course, there was more to it that, but she really didn’t want to explain the more intimate stuff to him. She wasn’t even entirely sure he knew what sex was, and she had neither the energy nor patience to give him the Talk.

Her words seemed to make something click in Luffy’s mind, and the serious glint returned to his eyes. Taking a deep breath, he squared his shoulders, put down her bags, and sank to one knee.

“Nami, will you marry me?”

The navigator’s hands slapped over her mouth in utter shock. People started to cheer, a small crowd forming around them to offer congratulations. There was a flash, and Nami noticed a photographer out of the corner of her eye, probably hoping to cash in on the “happy couple’s” moment.

A thousand emotions surged through her, most of them varying shades of confusion, with a heaping helping of fury mixed in. What the hell was he doing? Marry Luffy? Was he delirious from hunger? Was this a prank? Would she be Monkey D. Nami? Where was the ring? If he became King of the Pirates, would that make her Pirate Queen? Did this entitle her to a bigger share of the treasure? How long had he been planning this?

What the hell would Law think?

Unfortunately, before she could give voice to any of the jumbled thought spinning about her mind, a completely different question came from the crowd.

“Wait, isn’t that Straw Hat Luffy?”

“The pirate?!”

“Holy crap, and that’s Cat Thief Nami!”

“Call the Marines!”

“Shit!” Nami cursed, and Luffy seemed to agree, grabbing her hand (and her bags) as they made a run for it, the gaggle of well-wishers swiftly turning into an angry mob.

Later, when she had calmed down and was safely back on the ship, she’d have a good laugh over it. Only someone like her captain could cause such mayhem with a simple marriage proposal.

That wouldn’t be for a while, though, as she was too busy freaking out while winding through the confused crowd until Luffy managed to pull them into an alley long enough for her to throw up her Mirage Tempo and render them invisible.

So much for a day of retail therapy, Nami groused, watching the mob stampede past, shouting that the Straw Hat pirates were in town. A couple of them poked their heads into the alley, but the illusion held true and the mob moved on, calling for someone to contact the marines.

The danger having passed, she dropped the illusion and smacked Luffy over the head with her Clima-Tact, at last free to focus her full wrath on her companion. “Monkey D. Luffy, you’ve got five seconds to explain why the hell you just proposed to me in front of everyone!” she whispered harshly, hands gripping his vest so hard she was pretty sure it would rip. “You didn’t even get me a ring! You should know I’d never say yes to anything that’s not at least 200 karats!”

“Shoot, I knew I forgot something!” he said, snapping his fingers.

“What you forgot is that I asked you a damn question! What the hell were you thinking?!”

The murderous look in her eyes told him she wasn’t in the mood for games, and he immediately panicked. “That if we get married, no one can make you join their crew!”

“Idiot!” she growled, slamming her fist down onto his head. “You think that’s reason enough for us to get married? You’re not even my type! You’re…” she trailed off, struggling to find the right words. Luffy was a lot of things to her, but a potential romantic partner was definitely not one. He was immature, reckless, a fool, and one of the most ridiculous men she’d ever met. He had no fashion sense, couldn’t be refined if his life depended on it, and had no appreciation for treasure or the finer things Nami coveted.

On the other hand, he was also loyal, caring, strong, fun-loving, always able to make her laugh, and perhaps one of her closest friends. The bond they shared was unspoken and unbreakable; one that had kept her at his side throughout his insane antics and dangerous adventures. She couldn’t say he wasn’t handsome, either, especially on the rare occasions when he cleaned up and wore a suit. And sometimes, when he was being particularly heroic, maybe her heart would flutter a little bit, but she was sure that was purely admiration that her silly friend was willing to put everything on the line for what he believed in.

Finally, she settled on, “You’re my captain.”

“So, you wouldn’t marry a captain? But you said being a good husband is like being a good captain…”

“Luffy, explain yourself right here and now or I’ll tell Sanji-kun to only make vegetarian meals for a month!”

“I’m just…do you want to join Law’s crew?”

“What?!” Shocking as the question was, Luffy not calling him Tora-o nearly short-circuited her brain. Even though she’d mostly dropped the silly nickname, the rubber man insisted on using it no matter how much it annoyed the doctor. Heck, it was probably the exact reason why he kept it up. It was pretty amusing to see how flustered and grumpy Law got over something so silly.

Using his proper name meant that Luffy wasn’t joking around.

He rubbed his arm nervously as he stared at the ground like a scolded puppy. “I know he’s smarter and more serious than me, and you’re always complaining about how I attract trouble, and his powers are a lot better at keeping you safe and are great for stealing treasure…”

Seeing her normally happy-go-lucky captain so pensive diminished some of her anger, and her fingers fell away from his shirt. “Luffy, there’s no way in hell that I’m leaving the Straw Hats, not even for Law-kun. And what’s any of that got to do with marrying you?”

“Well, Sanji’s been crying about how someday he’s gonna ask you to be his wife and steal you away from us. Whenever he shows up, you always make time for him, even though you always say you’re too busy to play with us. Then Usopp said Law told him he’s gonna marry you and you’ll have sixteen kids together and—”

“Usopp’s a damn liar and Sanji-kun’s completely overreacting! I’m sorry if I haven’t been spending as much time with you, but you’re being ridiculous!”

Earnest black eyes finally met hers. “But last time he came by, I heard you call him ‘Captain Law.’ You don’t call me ‘Captain Luffy.’”

Red bloomed across her cheeks. She only called her lover “Captain Law” when they were roleplaying; he’d be the enemy pirate threatening her crew unless she convinced him to spare their lives. Luffy must have overheard them last time Law’d cornered her in the cargo hold. She really hoped that was all he’d heard. Law loved dirty talk, and he got particularly graphic when she called him “Captain.” She’d nearly died of mortification when Robin had stumbled across them one time. If her dim-witted, loose-lipped captain had been eavesdropping…

Oblivious to her embarrassment, Luffy continued, “I mean, I get you two are together, but he’s always talked about stealing you away. It’s my job to protect you in every way I can.” There was a flash of fear in his eyes as his fists clenched. “Rayleigh said not every problem can be solved by beating people up, though. So, I thought if I married you first, no one could take you away, and I’d stay your captain. Sanji said we needed to do something fast before you got your heart stolen, otherwise you’ll be under his spell! I didn’t know Tora-o could use magic!”

I’m going to kill Sanji-kun, she thought viciously. Maybe Law, too. I told him we needed to be more discrete! Surprisingly, she wasn’t really that mad at Luffy anymore; she was almost impressed that he was trying to solve a problem with his head, not his fists. Plus, his reasons were so stupidly sincere it was almost like getting mad at a child. “Look, Law-kun and I might be in a relationship, but even if he asked me to join his crew, I’d stay with you; the Straw Hats are my nakama, remember?”

“But if we got married, he wouldn’t even ask. He’d know you’re a Straw Hat forever.”

“He does know it; I made that very clear to him when you two were constantly forcing me to wear your hats.” She owed Law an apology, though. He’d insisted Luffy was staking a claim on her, yet she’d brushed off his concern as petty jealousy. He was possessive and paranoid, but for once, it seemed justified.

Actually, no, she wasn’t going to apologize. If she admitted he had been right, he’d be insufferable for months and there was the high probability that he really would kidnap her.

Her reassurance wasn’t as effective as she’d like. “He’s not the only one who might take you away, though. Lots of guys want you, like Absolom and Sanji’s brothers, and Shiki tried to make you join his crew because you’re such a great navigator.” Ducking his head, the brim of his hat cast his eyes in shadow as he whispered, “I used to think I was strong enough to protect everyone, but I was wrong. I couldn’t stop Kuma from sending away my nakama. I couldn’t save Ace. I don’t want to lose you, too.”

Her heart bled a little at his voice. She’d never seen him so insecure. He was always so happy-go-lucky, but this must have been eating at him for a while. Yes, Law was more serious and imposing and intelligent, whose crew was obedient and would never dream of talking back like the Straw Hats did to Luffy. When people looked at him, no one questioned whether or not he was the captain. He was a sharp dresser, devilishly handsome, quick-witted and exuded cool confidence. One could even argue he had cooler powers, and he could use a sword, and he was a doctor. To the untrained eye, Law was everything Luffy wasn’t.

She was suddenly reminded of something Luffy had said back at Arlong Park.

“I can’t use swords! I don’t know how to navigate a ship! And I can’t cook! Or lie! And I’m pretty sure I can’t live without being helped!”

At the time, those words had been a statement of defiance, proclaiming that he was ok with his weaknesses because he was strong enough to beat the Fishman, but a lot had happened since then. Was he scared of losing people because he knew he needed them? Or was he scared because those limitations might be what cost him the people he loved? If he’d been a little stronger, or a little faster, or had powers like Law’s, would they have been separated back in Sabaody? Would Ace still be alive?

Nami wanted to hit him and hug him at the same time. How dare he question her loyalty? How dare she not notice one of her closest companions had been hurting?

One thing was certain; she definitely had to make more time for this idiot if he thought she wanted to leave.

She settled for squeezing his shoulder comfortingly, promising, “Being someone’s wife would never affect my loyalties. I swore a long time ago I’d help make you Pirate King; after all you did to save me from Arlong, it’s the least I can do. So you don’t need to marry me, Luffy. Besides, you shouldn’t marry someone you aren’t in love with.”

“Robin says that plenty of people have gotten married without being in love to strengthen alliances,” he replied with a grimace. “It’s everywhere in her books. And Tora-o always insists we’re in an alliance…”

It was shit like this that made Nami all the more annoyed that Law refused to just admit he and Luffy were friends. “Well, that’s not for us. He’d be an absolute idiot to suggest it, because he knows you wouldn’t just hand me over like that. It’ll be a cold day in Hell when I let a couple of reckless, stubborn captains use me as a bargaining chip.”

Her stern declaration seemed to help him relax, though he still looked thoughtful. “You said you shouldn’t marry someone you don’t love, but you didn’t say you wouldn’t marry Tora-o.” Dark eyes stared at her curiously. “Do you love him?”

“Wha—I don’t know, Luffy!” she said, exasperated. “I mean, we only just accepted we’re in a relationship and not just sleeping together.” She really wasn’t sure what she felt for the dark doctor. In the beginning, it was just sex, but the more they ran into each other, the more she found herself enjoying his company even when he didn’t have her pinned to the nearest flat surface. Once she got past the creepiness, he was pleasant company; she enjoyed hearing about his adventures with his crew and even some of the medical procedures he’d done in the past, so long as he didn’t get into the gory details. Whenever she talked about weather patterns or natural phenomena, he never brushed off her explanations as “a mystery” and at least tried to pay attention. Lately, she especially liked how he’d quietly read in the library while she worked on maps with Bepo or kept her company while she picked her mikans, content to just be in her presence. She even found herself missing him at random times, wishing she could just hear his voice or see that cocky smirk.

Was that love? Did Law feel the same warm contentedness when she was around, the same ache when she was gone? Or was he less attached, simply pleased to have a gorgeous and intelligent bedmate to make his alliance with Luffy more tolerable?

She really didn’t like the way her chest tightened at that thought. This kind of introspection was way too heavy for what should have been a nice, relaxing shopping trip; it was much better suited for a late-night glass of wine with Robin. Given Luffy’s now-apparent fear that she’d leave him for Law, he was definitely not the right person to discuss her confused feelings with.

“Whether or not we’re in love, I don’t see marriage on the horizon anytime soon,” she assured, though her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “They call it the old ‘ball and chain’ for a reason. Getting married to anyone would totally cramp my style! Wedding rings especially repel the dumb creeps in bars I like to steal from. So, quit worrying so much, ok?”

More astute than she gave him credit for, he didn’t buy her forced cheer. “It’s just—I don’t want you to leave, but I also don’t want you getting left.” For a moment, Nami swore she could hear Luffy’s teeth grind together. “Back in Fuchsia, a few people started calling Makino-chan terrible names. The mayor said it was because she loved someone who left her behind, and he didn’t marry her first. Ace offered to marry her so they’d stop, but she turned him down, so we beat them up instead.”

An understanding frown touched her lips. “Are people calling me names?” If they were, there would be hell to pay.

“I heard Tora-o call you a few of them.”

“When?”

“When I heard you call him ‘Captain.’”

Her blush returned tenfold as she screamed inside her head. “Ok, Luffy, Law-kun has permission to call me those names, but only when I call him ‘Captain.’ It’s…kind of a game we play.” She really had no interest in explaining the ins-and-outs of her and the Surgeon of Death’s dirty talk and roleplay to the rubber man. Hell, she’d been uncomfortable enough explaining it to Robin, and she knew for a fact the older woman was into way kinkier stuff. “But I absolutely understand why that upsets you, so if you ever hear it again, just stop listening and walk away. Preferably to the other side of the ship.” Mainly because Nami was certain, if the hard look in his eye was anything to go by, Luffy would beat the crap out of her lover if he didn’t. Which was sweet, she had to admit.

“It’s a game?”

Nodding emphatically, she replied, “Yes, it’s a special, secret game only he and I know about, and it can only be played with two people.”

Luffy actually rolled his eyes. “I know you’re having sex, Nami. I’m not stupid.”

He laughed as she buried her face in her hands, the beet red tips of her ears clashing horribly with her copper hair. “Shishishi! Rayleigh told me there are people who are into some pretty weird stuff, so I shouldn’t judge, but it’s ok to step in if I think someone’s getting hurt. If you’re ok with Tora-o saying that stuff, I promise not to punch him for it. I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t being mean to you!”

“Thank you,” was her muffled response. She wasn’t sure if she should be grateful that his mentor had taught him about sex or horrified. The old man was kind of a pervert, but at least she didn’t have to treat Luffy like a little kid. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she managed to meet his eyes. “I swear, I’m ok with it so long as it’s in private. If you ever hear him or anyone else call me stuff like that in public, though, bash their face in.”

“Can do!” he said enthusiastically, toothy grin once again splitting his face. Rubber arms wrapped around her, pulling her against his chest in a near-crushing hug. “I don’t want you to leave, but I promised Genzo I’d never break your heart. If you want to marry Law…”

Despite the blush lingering on her cheeks, a small, warm smile curved her lips. “I’ll tell you what, Luffy; traditionally, if a guy wants to marry someone, they have to ask her father for permission. Genzo’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a dad, but there’s no way Law would go all the way to the East Blue for that. So, as my captain, I’m letting you stand in for him.”

“So, if Law doesn’t get my permission, he can’t marry you?”

Normally, Nami was the sort of woman who would be annoyed at the idea that any man felt he could dictate her love life, but for Luffy, she’d make an exception. If it eased his fears and ensured she would never have to deal with this conversation again, she didn’t mind so much. It would probably be a moot point, anyway; Law didn’t seem the marrying type, and while she wasn’t against the idea, at the moment she was more interested in having adventures and fulfilling her dream.

Still, that didn’t quite dispel the image of her walking down the aisle in a beautiful white dress with a handsome, tattooed doctor waiting for her.

A loud growl interrupted the moment, and Luffy pulled away, rubbing his head bashfully.

“I know I said I wouldn’t mention meat…”

“Well, things seem to have calmed down, so let’s get you some food,” Nami laughed, pulling him out of the alley. “I’ll even treat, just this once.”

“Really?!”

“Within reason, and only because it’s cheaper than a wedding banquet.”

It didn’t escape her notice that a certain straw hat was plopped onto her head by the time they reached the food vendor, nor did it escape Luffy’s that she kept it on the rest of the day.

[ld9-the-draft]

Are They Our Enemy?

Hella late, yet again, but at least I’m posting something for @alexprompts again. (I’ve got others, too, that are even more late. Ssshhhh.) This is for the Stamp out the Rebellion prompt. Loosely inspired by The Hanging Tree song from The Hunger Games series, I wanted to explore something new to me and write a story about the generational fading of a culture due to colonization and imperialism. Probably a little heavy handed at spots and I apologize if it’s not done well. This isn’t a topic I have any personal experience with whatsoever. Critiques are welcome and encouraged, as always.

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He pulled the little girl close as the Nivarri soldiers stomped by, all gleaming silver and blazoned red stars. He kept his head down, but watched them closely from the corner of his eye.

“Papa?” The little girl tugged on his sleeve.

The man paused counting the soldiers to glance down at her. He must have looked grim, because she hesitated when she normally would not. Quickly, he spread a loving grin over his features and bent to touch her nose with a finger, a reassuring gesture. “Yes, little one?”

She shook her head at his touch, but smiled, then pointed a tiny finger. “Papa, why is that tree in the middle?”

The tree in question was the only tree of its kind in the city. Others once dotted the countryside surrounding it—before they were ignorantly cut down—but this was the first, from which all the others had been taken. It soared high and broad, powerful boughs swathed with green. Its thick trunk, at least as wide as two men, emerged like an extension of the dark earth in which it grew. The open courtyard, on the edge of which they stood while the troop of soldiers pressed by, was arranged to draw attention to the magnificent tree.

“That is Hotuatha, the lasting tree. Our ancestors planted it to claim this place and to grow blessings for our people.” He waved a hand toward the verdant foliage. “Each leaf represents one of us. When we die, our bodies are returned to the soil and we feed the world, while our spirit returns here and becomes a leaf on Hotuatha.”

A passing Nivarri officer overheard and stepped nearer. The man’s smile faltered, but he forced it to remain. “That’s the hanging tree, girly,” the Nivarri said. He stared down at her from beneath his helm. He pretended to be friendly, but he did not kneel as the man did. He did not speak on level terms with her, but towered over her like the Nivarri always do. “That’s for those nasty renegades. Not cute things like you.” A wink and a flash of teeth and the officer marched off again.

A few ropes still hung limp from the tree’s branches. A reminder.

She holds her son’s hand and pulls him across the courtyard, circumventing the great Nivarri star that has dominated its center since the storm split and burned Hotuatha. She misses the comforting shade the great tree provided in these hot summer months. She misses the fall and the voices of the dead in the crunching leaves.

“Mama, how come we never walk over the star like everyone else?” The boy’s question reminds her of when she is. She looks down to see he is still scanning the half-crowded courtyard. Not for the first time, she wonders what or who he is looking for.

“The dead lie beneath it, remember?” she says, kneeling down beside him. “It is rude to walk where the dead sleep.”

Her son nods absently. “Oh. Yes.” He frowns and looks at her. “But they taught us in school the dead sleep outside the city, where the stones are.”

Before she can answer, another voice cuts in. “Aye, your mother means her great tree, young lad.” An elderly Nivarri woman ambles over, her cane more a gesture than a necessity, a swinging basket beneath her arm. “Used to be a giant of a tree right where that star is now, long before you were born. Your momma’s people thought it had a soul.” The old woman smiles sweetly and gazes at the star. “Shame it burned, but it’s nice to see the king still thinks of us all the way out here,” the old woman says with a nod towards the star. The Nivarri pulls a candy from the basket and offers it to the boy. “Here you go, lad.”

The boy hesitates. She wonders if he is afraid or simply shy, but lets him make his own decision. For herself, she wants—needs—so deeply to hate this elderly woman, her kind gesture, her vicious ignorance, her genuine politeness, her subtle violence.

Are the Nivarri our enemy?

Yes.

These words hide behind each of hers every time she speaks with the invaders. But she is tempered by her father’s wisdom. She knows this Nivarri does not, cannot, carry the weight of that responsibility. But she hates the woman all the same.

Her son takes the candy and thanks the old woman who smiles again and shuffles on her way. “Can I eat it now, Mama?” he asks.

She watches the elder a moment, then gives him one of her father’s smiles and lightly taps his nose with a finger. “Yes, my son.”

—–

Each night, before he would step onto the shadowed city streets cloaked in wool and worry, he would sing to her. He taught her his favorites first. Then, he sang hers. Later, in his final days, she sang his. He sang myths of the sleeping spirits who guided dreams and cared for the dead and of Ouranan, the child who played with spirits and taught them to see wonder in their own world while they taught her respect and love for nature. He sang tales of her ancestors, warriors and scholars, priests and artists, thieves and kings. As he did, taught her how to curl her tongue and hold her lips around the sounds. He taught her the truth in her voice to protect her from the false Nivarri noise.

“Who are they?” she asked sometimes. He knew she did not need to ask, but he enjoyed telling her.

The man paused in the doorway each time she asked and a wry smile would peek from the corners of his mouth. “Who is who?” He knew, but this was how they said it.

The girl stared at him from her pillow, wide dark eyes missing nothing as her face revealed nothing. “The ones you sing about,” she said every time.

His answer was always the same: “They are me and your mother. They are the smiths and the priests and the warriors. They are our past, what makes us who we are. They are you.” He leaned over and kissed her head and touched her nose. “And you are them, because now you will carry their stories, too. Sleep well, little one.”

She does, her mind filled with dreams of great spirits and mighty heroes and silent prayers to keep her father safe.

—–

She does not remember what life was like without the Nivarri, but she has her father’s stories. She tells them as best she can. She sings, using all the true words for things she can recall, and acts out fantastical plays with her son’s toys that leave him enraptured. She tells him of Hotuatha and Ouranan and all the spirits she can remember. Most of all, she tells him about his grandfather and his marks and the ancestors long passed.

“I know why you tell me these stories, Mama,” he announces with the biggest self-satisfied grin.

“Oh?” she asks, smiling back. Most of the time, she sees her father in him, but sometimes she sees a bit of herself. She wonders if this will be one of those times.

“Yes. It’s so we can keep grandpa and the spirits and everyone and everything else alive!” He throws out his arms, a dramatic gesture encompassing the world. “So we can keep them in us,” he adds, placing one hand over her heart and the other over his own.

A curious feeling erupts in her. A jagged and bloody longing entwined with a hot and golden pride immersed in purest love. She struggles to hold the tears back, but cannot contain her laughter. She throws her head back and lets the sound of her joy, her pride, her love fill the room and wrap around her son. They hug each other so tightly and giggle together.

She kisses his head and tangles her fingers in his hair so he will not feel her tears fall. Her son wriggles around and sits with his back against her. They both look at the meager sapling on the window sill.

“Do you remember what that is?” she asks.

“That’s…part of Hotuatha, right?” he answers.

“That’s right,” she says. The tears flow freely now, but she leans away from her son enough they fall on her tunic. “Each of those leaves is the spirit of someone who has died. They were forced to scatter when Hotuatha burned, but as it grows, they will return. One day they will all return.”

She sleeps holding him close, afraid that if she does not, he will be gone, too.

—–

There was blood on the table. He sat with his arms laid across it. A hiss escaped his gritted teeth as his wife poured a clear alcohol over the gash in his right arm. His second brother smirked and shook his head while he steadily needled ink into the man’s left.

“What happened, Papa?” the little girl asked.

The adults startled. “You should be sleeping,” said the man’s wife as she returned her attention to the injury. The little girl peered through a cracked door, barely visible in the wavering light of two candles. Heavy curtains were drawn to keep from disturbing the moonless night.

The man’s second brother made to rise, but the man shook his head. “Did we wake you, little one? I’m sorry.” A concerned glance from his wife, but she said nothing.

The girl watched from the door a few seconds, then stepped out and sat across from her father. Her eyes flicked from his wife’s hands to his second brother’s. “What happened?” she repeated. Her voice was soft as the starlight outside.

“Your father earned his marks,” said the man’s second brother proudly. This earned a disapproving glare from the man’s wife. The man ignored them and smiled at the little girl.

“We tried to take back what is ours.” He looked down at his wounded arm. “Though, it did not go as well as we hoped.”

His second brother paused to look him in the eye. “Well enough to earn you three marks. They’ll remember that next time.” The man made a noncommittal sound.

“Marks?” the girl asked.

The man turned his gaze back to her, searching her face, as he often, did for some sign, some indication she was ready for the whole truth. He never found it. “A warrior’s marks,” he said finally. “A warrior receives a mark for each of his enemies he has defeated.”

She absorbed this information and watched in silence as his family worked. The man focused on keeping his breath steady and watched her. Finally, she asked, “Are the Nivarri our enemy?”

The adults stopped and stared at her. The man opened his mouth, hesitated, closed it again. Then his second brother said, “Yes.” An exchange of looks took place among them, but no other answer was offered. The little girl watched them a while longer, then returned to bed.

—–

Blood drips on the floor. The water in the basin is rusty with it. There is more than she would have expected when her son arrived with a broken nose and scrapes and bruises. She had nearly struck the boy who followed him through the door, the pallor of his skin and the shape of his eyes screaming Nivarri, before her son had knowingly grabbed her arm and shook his head.

“The other boys said he couldn’t talk to the Nivarri girls,” the Nivarri boy says once the bleeding is under control.

She refuses to look at him and insists he sit at the table and not move. She gingerly and efficiently cleans her son’s injuries—each one minor, to her great relief, except the broken nose, but it will heal—and applies bandages the way her mother taught her. “Is that why they hit you?”

Her son gives a gentle shake of his head. She spares his face a glance and sees the shame in his eyes that will not meet hers. “Then why?”

Silence first. She gives him time. In this moment, he is like her and she knows pressing will only make things worse. Eventually, he mumbles, “I wanted to be friends with one of the girls.”

She stops applying the last bandage, less than a second, then presses it onto his skin and ties it off. “Friends?” She returns her things to the satchel and places it on the table. “That is why they hit you?”

“No,” her son answers. Another strained silence. She fills it with the sound of clinking dishes as she begins preparing food.

Finally, the Nivarri boy starts, “He—” But she cuts him off with a hiss and a swipe her hand.

Her son leaps to his feet. “Stop being mean to him!” She spins, startled at the ferocity in his voice. She sees it now, the defiance in his eyes, the will to fight.

Your father earned his marks.

“He has always been kind to me and helps me learn to be like the other boys and he is the only one who will be my friend!” Then, he sees what he has done and drops his gaze to the floor. His shoulders droop, but his fists stay clenched.

The Nivarri boy speaks again. “He stood up for me,” he says, low and cautious. “I tried to tell the other boys to leave him alone. They called me dog-lover and shoved me. He fought them for it.”

For the first time since he entered the house, she looks at the Nivarri boy. His clothes are ruffled and he is sporting a couple of bruises of his own. Only now does she see the worry on his face, the childish obviousness of his concern for her son, for his…

Are the Nivarri our enemy?

The boy rises and crosses the room to put a hand on her son’s shoulder. Her son meets his eyes and they share a sad smile. Her son finally releases the rage in his fists and places a hand on the boy’s shoulder, as well.

Yes.

—–

Once the crowd was gathered, the executioner began his lecture. The man stood side by side with his fellow warriors. The rope was heavy and bit into his neck. “Dissenters,” the executioner called them. Savages. Animals. Vicious and malcontent. Rabid dogs biting their generous master’s hand. They had heard the words before. It changed little from one execution to the next. Always it was a reminder of the Nivarri’s harsh benevolence, that the Nivarri brought enlightenment and civilization to their backwards people, that the executions were a public lesson against such insolence.

The executioner marched back and forth in front of them, staring hard into the crowd as he made his speech, as though daring someone to object. The man knew no one would. Not after he had lost his first brother to such foolishness.

Finally, the executioner moved with imperial steps before the first to die. “You, dog, stand accused of stealing food from Nivarri defenders that they would starve. Your crime is punishable by death. Have you any final words?”

The warrior tried to spit in the executioner’s face, but missed. “We will—” he started, but the executioner kicked the stool from beneath his legs before he could finish.

The rope pulled taut. The warrior choked and struggled. His hands were bound, so he lashed out at the executioner with a kick, but a Nivarri soldier intervened with the edge of his axe, slicing the warrior’s leg clean off. Blood splashed on the warrior next to him. The first warrior tried to scream, but the noose would not let him. The executioner was already recounting the next warrior’s crimes and asking his final words. When he said nothing, the executioner kicked the stool from beneath his feet.

And so it went, each warrior informed of his crimes, asked his final words then, murdered.

The executioner stood before the man. “You, dog, stand accused of murdering three Nivarri defenders. Your crime is punishable by death. Have you any final words?”

The man would not look at the executioner. A man should always honor his enemy by looking them in the eye when one of them dies, but this Nivarri invader deserved no such honor. He was content to die silent and defiant.

Then, he saw her. The flash of blue flowers her mother always put in her hair gave her away. The little girl stood just behind the man’s wife and his second brother. Her wide dark eyes were locked on his face. He knew his final words.

“I do not die today. My body will feed the earth and nourish my people. My spirit will return and bless them. I will live on in them.” He looked into her eyes. “For they are me and I am them.”

The executioner kicked the stool from beneath his feet.

—–

Once the crowd is gathered, the priest begins the recitation. She stands alone behind her son. The rope is heavy and bites into her neck. The priest speaks of love and eternal bonds. Words like devotion, loyalty, and death are used. He speaks a grandiose image of prosperity and longevity. The crowd beams and weeps. Across from her, behind the Nivarri boy who followed her son home one day, are the boy’s siblings, as is Nivarri custom. Her son has no siblings, so an exception is made for her, so he will not feel alone. Draped over their shoulders are multicolored ropes, strands of gold and blue and red and green and black woven into thick cords. As the priest nears the completion of the rites, these are wrapped around the couple’s clasped hands and laid over their shoulders. Another Nivarri custom.

She does not want to bind her son in rope, and told him as much weeks before, but he insisted, insists in the subtle plea in his eyes as she approaches. “I want this,” he said, “Do this for me, please.” She puts a rope around her son’s neck. The glee and excitement radiating off of him is almost too much.

Your father earned his marks.

She gives him another of her father’s smiles. When the priest is finished, her son and the boy—a man now, the Nivarri say, though she does not agree—kiss.

Then, the celebration begins. There is much feasting and congratulating and dancing. The Nivarri boy’s family make speeches and wish blessings and good fortune on the newlyweds. She makes a speech of her own, asking her son to remember to visit once in a while. Her son insists they dance a traditional dance and it is the best part of the night, sharing this piece of who they truly are with her son.

The rest of the dances are Nivarri, as are the food and the dress and the music and the words. A part of her is genuinely content with her son’s vibrant joy this day. But it is impossible for her to ignore the absence of her culture, his culture.

“Thank you, Mama,” he says at the end of the night. He kisses her cheek and squeezes her to his chest. “I can’t explain how much this means to me.”

She squeezes him back. She believes him, and it hurts. He is happy. He is in love. She remembers her mother would have said he is stronger now, bolstered by the spirit of his love. “I am glad,” she says and she means it, but it still hurts.

She doubts the legitimacy of his love, wonders in some quiet angry part of her mind if it is another lie he has been taught, another stolen opportunity to love someone proper. He did not marry the proper way, with offerings to the spirits and vows spoken in true words. She is happy for him, but cannot stop thinking it is a farce, that he is being stolen from her.

“Now that I’m Nivarri, I can try to get you moved into a better part of the city,” he says. The words cut through her, an invisible razor line she cannot heal. Married only a few hours and already one of them.

She can only offer another of her father’s smiles as he begins discussing plans to improve their lives with his citizenship.

Are the Nivarri our enemy?