#i find the self-insert debate a bit silly anyway

[ajokeformur-ray]

Never, never change // Joker x Reader // anniversary fluff.

Summary: You’ve been married to Joker for four months and it only makes you want to appreciate him in the corresponding moment of realisation. Luckily for you is Joker a sponge to all the things you freely give to him, and he’s left breathless by you and all the ways in which you make it known how deeply and reverently you love him.

A/N: Self-indulgent self-insert because why not? asdfghjkl; 😭🥺🥰💖🌷 we got married 26.3.2020 and the fourth month slipped past almost unnoticed. So, fully embracing being That Person, I wrote a small something to celebrate! 🥰 I love him so much it hurts.

Word count: 1, 744.

He’s so cute I cryyy ;w; 😭😭😭😭

You gasped loudly and almost dropped your large mug of coffee. “Holy shit!” You put your coffee down on the small table in front of you, your grip now shaky, excited and nervous. Would Joker care about what you had just realised? It was something so simple yet so weighted in new chances, newfound hope and in love, and you briefly wondered if Joker would laugh at you for having such a big reaction over something as silly as the day’s date.

At the sound of your dramatic gasp, a drama queen were you even when you weren’t trying to be, Joker jumped and his eyes darted wildly around the room, his face illuminated in the harsh blue glow of the television screen. Coupled with his painted visage did he look almost ghostly. “What? What is it?” He looked about ready to jump up from his seat beside you on the sofa, and you smiled at his vigilant reaction. Joker caught the smile on your face and he sunk back into his previous position, his green eyes fixed upon your face and a smirk playing on his lips as he realised that nothing was wrong.

No... no, something was right and he wanted to know. 

Joker wanted to know it now and he turned in his seat so that he could fully face you. You copied his movements and moved so that you were sitting cross legged on the sofa. Your fingers played with the gap between the two seats and you were so completely surrounded by Joker’s scent in this moment, saturated was the sofa in his scent from all the months he had spent sleeping on it, unable to move one way or the other because he would just fall off otherwise, so narrow was the sofa. Joker’s impatience was made known to you when he leaned forward a bit more so that he could rest his sticky, painted forehead against your own. “What is it, Y/N? Come on, tell me.” 

His soft rasp almost broke your already trashed and scattered heart and you cooed softly as you reached up to cup his face. You held him gently, not wanted to smudge his paint, but Joker, knowing you as well as he knew himself, pressed into your touch and you understood that he wanted to feel you against him. So you held him tighter and Joker leaned into you, nuzzling into you like a cat. His eyes never left yours and it was with the almost embarrassing and very familiar stinging of tears in your eyes that you said, “We’ve been married for four months today.” When Joker didn’t immediately respond, your grip on his face slackened and you began to pull away from him, worried were you that you were the only one who cared, that you were the only one who celebrated such tiny milestones. Four months wasn’t that long of a time to be with someone, not really, and your lives together had barely started, but to you... to you, every second that you got to spend basking in Joker’s love for you was worth all of those lonely years, all of those tear filled nights when you could only sit in a soul deep yearning for something you couldn’t name. Indeed, some nights did you still experience this feeling, but with Joker was everything just a little easier to bear. Your soul hadn’t breathed a single breath until the day you had first seen Carnival twirling his sign on that crowded, busy street in Gotham. Joker was your soul’s oxygen, your heart’s reason, and your mind’s medicine.

Catching quickly onto your insecurities, well known and familiar to Joker were they, Joker refused to let you let go of him and he grabbed your hands and pressed them back onto his face, his fingers linking with yours so that, while you could still pull away from his grasp, you would have to really try to do so. Both of you knew that you never wanted to let go of him, for even a moment. You were a very affectionate and clingy couple; you were always touching in one way or another. Not only did it ground Joker in the moment in reality as well as reaffirm your continued existence to him, but it also kept you calm. Your world crumbled when your Joker wasn’t with you. “No, don’t let go, Y/N,” Joker’s green oceans calmed your own stormy waters and you felt your heart rate begin to slow as you realised that he did care; you had just startled him, was all. “Are you - is this real, Y/N? Have we - have we really been ma-” A broken laugh climbed out of his throat and Joker clamped his lips shut and turned his face away. You allowed Joker that space to gather himself, your hands still joined upon his face, and when he turned back to you were there tears in his eyes. 

Easy was it and natural was it for you to wipe his tears away and your grip slid off his face. You held both of Joker’s hands with one of your own as the other dashed his tears away. “I’m as real as you are, angel.” In the face of his overwhelming disbelief did your own tears slip down your cheeks and Joker giggled; you cried so easily and for every laugh that Joker had did you have a type of crying to match, and Joker knew all of your cries as well as you knew all of his laughs. It wasn’t unusual for the two of you to be wiping each other’s tears away, and this was how the next few moments were spent, your hearts so full of love and your eyes so full of tears which expressed that love, for it was overwhelming, completely bigger and better than your own selves and no literary great could ever adequately put it into words, even with the use of celestial terms and with time on their side. “I can’t believe it’s been four months already...”

Joker made a contemplative humming noise as he smoothed your hair back from your face, his thumbs deftly wiping away tears which continued to fall. “I know.” His voice was thick with emotion and he leaned forward to kiss your forehead. His lips remained against your skin as he said, “How did I ever get so lucky?”

You smiled unhappily and Joker, attentive was he, caught the movement. He rubbed his forehead against yours, smearing white and blue across your clear skin as he sought to wordlessly comfort you. “I ask myself the same question every day, darling. How did I get so lucky? I look at you sometimes and... then I look at me and I just don’t...” Joker’s high pitched giggle cut you off and he tipped his head so that he could kiss you. His lips trembled against your own, so emotional was he in this moment, and tensions quickly mounted and grew as the kiss became more passionate, fiery in its intensity. You were pushed back so that your head rested on the arm of the sofa and Joker took up his familiar and comforting position atop you as your clown blanket. His scent completely surrounded you, as did the colour red, which had come to symbolise safety, love, passion and home for you. You could never sleep without the weight of your clown blanket on you and the red which surrounded you as a result, and you definitely couldn’t sleep without telling your husband that you loved him. It was okay if he didn’t say it back (he always did, even in the middle of a tense moment between the two of you), but it was an almost primal need for you to say it to him and to know that Joker heard you.

“Don’t you dare say that stuff about yourself. That’s my wife you’re talking about.” Joker’s tone was firm and it very clearly left no room for debate, so you only kissed him by way of dropping the subject; it was much better for you to do that, anyway. Joker could get very frustrated when you spoke down about yourself or didn’t treat yourself properly, and today was a celebration and not a need to gain or receive reassurance. “I love you, Y/N. So much.”

“I love you too, darling.” Your smile was such that you felt the need to cry and Joker only cooed as you did your best to not cry; sometimes the way you expressed yourself irritated you, though Joker continued to find it adorable. Joker leaned down and rested his face in the warm crook of your neck, and you allowed a few tears to fall down your face as you wrapped your arms around him and pressed yourself into your clown blanket, wanting him around all of you. “You’re my whole heart and my reason to wake up every day and try. You are... everything to me, Joker. I’d be so lost without you.” You almost said, please don’t get tired of me, but you stamped it down. This wasn’t the right moment to get into your insecurities.

So well did Joker know you, though, that he heard what you said but he listened to what you didn’t and that was why he said, “I’ll never get tired of my one and only, Y/N. I married you for a reason and I can’t - won’t imagine my life without you.” Joker pressed a kiss to your pulse point and then he settled in, making a show of getting comfortable atop you. Joker was there to stay with you in every way and you both knew it. “Happy four months, my angel.”

You smiled and Joker’s head shot up from your neck, so well did he know you, and his own resounding smile made your heart skip a beat and squeeze in your chest, your stomach swoop, and your mind go blank. You were still so in love with him and you knew that you always would be. “Happy four months, Joker.” A sleepy noise, a clumsy kiss, and Joker slept, so comfortable around you was he. And, well... your coffee was half finished but your eyelids were growing heavy and a nap never hurt anyone, right? Coffee could be reheated or remade but moments like this were priceless and irreplaceable, just like the two of you.

AF/J @impulsiveclown @astheworlddturns @fluffedstar @jokersqueenofchaos @germansarechill @tsukiakarinobara  @lynnesm @sagyunaro  @docsportello  @flowerglitterwoman @ben-solos-writing-avenger @jokers-doll @jokershyena @arthurjokersgirl @antonija89 @lilliryth @hotpacino @obsessedandthirsty  @call-me-harley-quinn

[game-meak]

A Proper Postmortem

Maybe?!  Heck if I know how to actually format a good post but let’s try.  As game development went on for almost four years, this is probably gonna be long... and also give away basically the whole game oops!  Read on with caution.

Sometime around July 2014, a month after the initial release of my first game, my room was being remodeled and I was stuck with nothing for free time but a garbage laptop I could do anything on, an old flip phone, my sketchbook, and my 3DS.  So beyond playing an obscene amount of Animal Crossing and Tomodachi Life, I at some point went “hey, what if I made a second game starring the kids.”  So I started trying to plan it out!  And it went

absolutely nowhere that I intended it to go!!!

For instance, this is the very first page of sketches.  This squirrel was supposed to be really important.  It’s not.  I don’t even KNOW what’s up with that duck.

A thing I like to think about before I set off making any of the story, assets, or scripts for my games tend to be themes and motifs.  And I kept circling back to a very important, very personal “theme.”  Without using the internet at large as my therapy couch, I was emotionally abused and taken advantage of multiple times in my life and it greatly impacts how I interact with people to this very day, as you’d expect events of such a degree would.  Particularly, I kept thinking that the RPG Maker fan crowd tends to skew young and be in the teenage range and at ages 14-16, I could’ve used something to help.

Of course, my entire thought process isn’t necessarily one of charity and selflessness.  It was also a way of me expressing what I’d dealt with in ways I’ve only ever communicated with my friends who were also victims of the same circumstances, the closest I would let myself come to personal stories and retellings with a cover of plastic children and wild adventures.  It was also in some ways a way of me verifying to myself that something ongoing was, in fact, bananas and should not have been happening, but that might be another story for another time.

As you can probably guess, Haze and Seal came into the picture since I needed to make two characters who would have this struggle.  A lot of decisions came about because of my personal experience.  They’re 15/16 because I was at the time of the incidents that primarily inspired me to make this game.  They’re both nonbinary because I am.  They love anime because I did (and do...?!)  One of their friends is even directly modeled off how one of my friends looked in high school.  To that degree, I guess someone, somewhere can call them self inserts.  But they’re also not, since I didn’t want to just do a personal retelling with fictional characters.  I’d just write a memoir or something at that point.

Haze’s design came first, and then Seal’s was sort of made as a foil to them.  Haze’s “colors” are pink, black, grey, and red.  Seal’s are teal and light purple... and also black.  Haze had a rabbit motif (which got toned down as I went on), Seal had an owl motif (which is now just a single mention in their list of likes...), etc.

Though in the beginning, the story was entirely different.  Initially, everything took place in the neon-ish areas with black sky and reflective, celestial water (that I, very eloquently, call “spacewater”).  The idea was that Haze and Seal were beings from another dimension and that their “fighting” was causing a rip in the universe that the kids stumbled into and therefore got wrapped up in this mess.  I had an entire script written and started making assets and when I went to sum up the game’s plot in a neat paragraph, I realized... I hated it!!!

So I chucked all I had done by that point writing-wise and started again.

In fact, I rewrote a lot.  After the first it was mostly small tweaks and adjustments, but the biggest ones (and the ones that still present a challenge to me!) usually involved trying to make Seal feel like a believable character.  I had shown an early draft to someone who said that Seal felt too much like trying to get back at someone, so I scrapped a ton of their lines and tried again.  I still worry whether or not they come across too Strawman-y, but I’ve done the best I can and whatever criticism people have can apply to my next writing attempts.  It’s very hard to separate yourself from subject matter you feel really personally attached to.  I don’t want to write them in a way that you immediately hate them, or hate me for writing such a blatant “villain” character, but in a way that you can formulate your own thoughts.  That said, though, I am violently allergic to people who call Seal a “tsundere,” even in jest.  So I guess I want people to have their own thoughts as long as it’s not that specific one...! (;;;;)

You may be thinking “heck, this is a lot of paragraphs in and you haven’t even brought up gameplay thoughts” and yes... that’s very true.  Shamefully, for a game where I thought “I should definitely, absolutely focus more on making it a Fun Game than a walking visual novel” I might’ve actually dropped the ball in that area.  I’d like to think I was more adventurous than I had been with my first game.  Some parts do kind of fall into the “walk to the next cutscene, find a key to unlock the next cutscene” pit, but I did put effort into figuring out what I could do with RMXP.  My obligatory “please don’t use this engine here, people thinking of using RPG Maker” statements here.  In the final product, though they’re very simple, I’m most proud of the chalkboard puzzle and the paint sorting puzzle.

Even if, y’know... I somehow neglected to include the letter “k”

Speaking of, I’m not sure if this is a general RPG Maker thing, a “man I hate RMXP” thing, or a “meaka cannot gamemake” thing, but I had several event/puzzles just up and quit on me a few times.  Like they would work fine for months and months, but one day I’d go to them and just nope, suddenly they’re not working, sorry.  Copy+pasting the event to a new map wouldn’t work, so I’d have to manually redo the event.  One of them was the chalkboard puzzle.  The other was the sliding puzzle when Tony is by herself.  Which I’m also aware slows the game down a ton, but I have legitimately no idea how to fix that... I tried and I could never get to to not lag like crazy.

Like I said, I started in July 2014.  I’d shipped the game off to my beta testers in March 2018.  A vast majority of that time was spent creating the visual assets since everything you see in the game is custom.  All the sprites, all the tilesets, every little pixel of it.  All me!  Needless to say... it was very exhausting and very time consuming. I grossly underestimated how much time I thought it’d take.  I never accounted for the very real possibility of burnout, which is incredibly silly considering I was making something entirely by myself that was also an occasionally difficult subject matter...!  There were quite a few weeks where I touched nothing because I couldn’t bring myself to and even a few times where I just considered deleting everything and cancelling the project.  I knew I’d be mad at myself if I quit, especially as I got later into production, so I just tried my best to make sure I didn’t turn it into a huge chore.  Obviously, there were parts that were more tedious than others, but this game really is a very large labor of love that I put a lot of my heart into.

Part of that time is also a little bit of indecision.  Did you know I went through 3 possible title screens?  I sure did!  I’ve also publicly posted about redoing both Haze and Seal’s bust sprites before.  I almost redid all of the kids’, too, but I didn’t wanna get caught in the loop of remaking everything, so I opted to just leave them as they are.  Most of them don’t bug me as much.  M...most of them!

I’m hopping back on the Story train since obviously that was my main focus, but the decision to have Seal sort of “reveal” their true nature (or at least have a jealousy-related anger burst) to Octavio as an animated cutscene was one I’d decided pretty early.  Which is also why, unsurprisingly, I was debating getting voice actors for a hot minute.  But I wouldn’t have used it anywhere else in the game, so I opted not to.  I also wanted to keep the file size low, but that wound up not happening so much, h-haha...   For someone who uses the only engine without native support for videos, I sure do like making animated cutscenes, huh.

Anyway.  This scene originally bridged Octavio’s section of the game to Pablo’s, which would’ve been (for some reason) in an abandoned hospital.  But that didn’t pan out because it didn’t fit what I wanted the game to be and also by switching the order of the two, it builds up more tension(?) on the kind of character you expect Seal to be.  I hope their very first “fuck off, maybe” took someone out there by surprise!

This also was the point when I decided I wanted to commission an original soundtrack, since nothing quite got across what I wanted at the time.  Which is when I put out my silly ad post and somehow managed to get the amazing ProjectTrinity to compose for me...!  I’m still amazed by the sheer quality of music he made for my little RPGMaker game.

Having the teen characters curse was also something I waffled on for a bit.  Clearly, I dwell on the important things as a writer.  I wanted it to contrast the cutesy, kidlike way the siblings talk and also the sort of squeaky-clean image the witches (particularly Seal) present to the kids by contrasting how they talk to each other, most importantly how Seal talks to Haze and their other friends.  I did have the same issue with the Mother in my first game, but I opted to not have her curse at all either since she’s childish in her own way, too.  But that’s not for THIS game’s postmortem, get otta here!!!

I also very much was set on a “battle” with words being the final event of the game.  Though I had a hard time imagining what that would be initially, but eventually arrived at a sort of fake battle system that was introduced in the mine.  The setting for this battle changed with time (everywhere from the park to the academy and in between) was considered...!  The dirty secret is that while I did like the decision to make it take place in the voids between worlds, I also sort of did not want to draw the staircase in the witch academy.  Originally, the kids would’ve also helped Haze “reach” Seal (who was putting actual obstacles in the way), but I guess in my own way, I wanted to give Haze the ability to confront Seal on their own, one-on-one.  Or something like that...!  I also didn’t want to add too much needless backtracking.

I’m... unsure what other point I really want to make, so I guess I’ll end this here unless anyone has anything in particular that interests them they’d want me to answer!

All in all, this game means a lot to me and took a chunk of my life to make and I really hope it’s able to reach at least one person who might need it, even if it’s only a little. 

To all of you who gave it a try, thank you, truly, from the bottom of my heart.

A shameless link to the game:  [itch.io] & [RMN]

[ifeveristoday]

Buffy Summers’s Diary (III)

[insert Dawn’s lament here]

My silly little thing has gotten a bit less sillier in this part. Carry on.

1 Lyft carpool with Anya

3 missing pens

1 maybe date

7 outfit options, all terrible

100 years of rain

 When I was little and it rained, my mom would bring me to the living room and watch the rain splash against our bay windows. Sometimes she would get out her box of cassettes and we’d listen to “It Never Rains in Southern California.” Of course, I would point out that the singer was wrong, because what was happening outside then?

She would just laugh, and shake her head. ‘Baby, it’s not that it doesn’t rain, it’s the feeling that LA is always sunny even when it rains.’

I didn’t understand back then.

Watching the sun stream into the street and shine on perfect rectangles of manicured lawns while I peeked through blinds – I understood a little better. LA carries on even when darkness surrounds you, is in you.

 Anyway, it rained today, a deluge even. Kendra arranged for Lyft carpools for the employees and I shared mine with Anya. She lives only twenty minutes away from my apartment, but she drives while I take the bus. I like Anya, but it’s impossible to make small talk with her. She doesn’t understand the concept and launches into whatever she’s thinking with no segues whatsoever. I need a mental crash helmet whenever I talk to her.

She asked me if I used her gift certificate – ‘It expires soon, Buffy. There’s a special sale going on this weekend, I really think you would find some helpful aids there.’

Before I can even respond, she’s off talking about the new vibrator line that’s come in, and the importance of using essential oils in the bedroom.

The backseat of a car never collapses into a black hole when you want it to.

She managed to ask a question about Xander among all the updates from the Magic Box and I guess my expression tipped her off. Her mouth thinned out and she crossed her arms across her chest.

‘What? I can’t ask about Xander?’

I’m just surprised that she wants to. Their romance was pretty volatile at the end.

‘No, you can. He’s fine – sent me a postcard from Cape Town. He seems happy.’

She slumped a little. ‘Oh. That’s nice.’

I’m going to regret this – like in five minutes, I’m sure of it – but I ask her anyway.

‘How are you doing?’

‘I’m fine. I’m the one who broke it off. I’m very happy, I’m busy, my jobs are going great, I found a decent hairstylist in this town – I’m fantastic,’ she babbled.

She straightened up again and looked out the window.

‘I’m happy that he’s happy,’ she said. ‘We’re almost there.’

The driver pulled up to our building five minutes later. He smirked at us as we got out.

 Anya works in a different part of the building than I do and our goodbyes were awkward as I got out of the elevator. ‘Remember the sale, Buffy,’ she said as the doors slid shut.

I’m just not in the mood for that kind of self-care.

 There is an office supply thief on this floor and they are stealing my purple pens. I had four and now I have one. This is ridiculous, we are all adults and surely we can use the office supply cabinet instead of just lifting pens from other people’s desks like thieves in the night.

Why would they even take my pens? Everyone in the office knows I use purple to revise my notes – I know everything is digital but there’s something comforting about the way a pen can glide over the paper. I like the weight of the pen against my palm and it seems more permanent than a blinking cursor on a screen.

  I moved a PR box and found my pens wedged underneath my monitor stand.

Good thing I didn’t write that email to HR complaining about pen theft and being known as the most uptight person on this floor.

I need a cup of coffee but I’m going to make tea instead.

William is lounging in the break room when I come in. He has a rapt audience, the temps and Harmony are there, hanging onto his every word.

I roll my eyes and head for the tea station. Just because a man has good bone structure, an accent, and a leather jacket doesn’t mean he’s the most interesting person in the room.

Okay, maybe in the top five.

 I sit at the lone unoccupied table and hear snatches of the conversation. William is doing research for his next novel. He reached out to several publications and my CEO accepted his request along with the offer of a guest column in the magazine. He’s going to be writing about his travels and whatever else interests him.

It sounds like a dream assignment but I remember my blog is important too. Kendra told me not to read the comments though.

 One by one the admirers flutter out of the break room as editors appear in the doorway, meaningfully clearing their throats. I’m still sipping my tea when William walks over to me and sits down.

 ‘So, Summers. I have a gift for you.’

‘Yeah?’ I say, playing it cool. I am a cool glacial woman of substance.

‘I do,’ he smiles and then reaches into his messenger bag. ‘Freshly autographed.’

He slides Saturday and The Chosen across the table to me. His fingers skim the covers carefully as if he’s touching something precious.

Saturday’s cover shows a picture of a black woman, her gaze defiant and steely. The Chosen has a more generic cover, its title picked out in shades of gold and bronze.

‘Thanks,’ I say as I turn The Chosen over and read the blurb on its dust jacket. ‘Oh. Fantasy’s never really been my thing.’

Except for the period Dawn and I would read Harry Potter to each other under the covers with a flashlight, but he doesn’t need to know that.

He lifts one eyebrow and I notice the thin white scar cutting it into two imperfect halves. ‘Try it, you never know. Or maybe Saturday is more your type.’

‘This the one with your lone female character?’ I lean back and gaze at him over my cup.

He laughs and rubs his chest. ‘Ouch. But fair – I’m going to be writing more female leads in my novels. Nikki won’t be the last.’

‘That’s her name?’ I nod at Saturday’s cover.

‘Yeah. Nikki Danger.’

I choke on my tea. ‘Her name is Nikki Danger? Are you writing the next Bond novel?’

His smile has a hint of teeth. ‘Says the girl named Buffy Summers.’

‘My mom gave me that name, and it’s after a famous singer, you Philistine.’

I heard Will use that once, during debate class in high school. It sounded cool then even though I didn’t know exactly what it meant.

‘I know. And love, I’m in the arts, not exactly a Philistine. Do you want to borrow a dictionary for next time?’

This asshole.

Then I realize what he said. ‘What do you mean next time?’

Full on smile, and is that dimple? ‘How about dinner after work – does tonight sound good?’

He stands up and leaves before I can complete my thought.

I open Saturday. He’s scrawled his phone number on the front page.

  So it’s not a date. It’s a friendly dinner. I’ve done that before. It’ll be like riding a bike.

I have an uncomfortable vision of William riding a motorcycle and I decide that I need some advice.

Willow’s answering machine picks up when I call, so I just tell her I’m looking forward to our weekend brunch.

Andrew screeches when I call him. Literally, I had to hold my phone away from my ears.

‘You’re going on a date with the Spike Pratt?’

‘It’s just dinner,’ I say, fumbling for my apartment keys. ‘I’m going to meet him at some bistro after work.’

‘Are you going home to change?’ Andrew demands.

‘Well, of course.’

‘Then it’s a date,’ Andrew says triumphantly. ‘If you didn’t care, you’d just wear your work clothes.’

‘My hair got wet this morning and it’s sort of frizzy,’ I say. ‘It’s not that big of a deal. And his name is William.’

‘Eh, Spike sounds sexier,’ Andrew says. ‘William sounds like an accountant.’

‘It’s a maybe date,’ I say. ‘I don’t know. I made fun of him this morning, maybe he’s just returning the favor.’

Andrew sighs.

‘Girl, how long has it been since you’ve been on a date?’

‘Not that long,’ I scan my desk to make sure I haven’t left anything important behind. ‘There was Owen and Parker…’ I trail off.

‘Ew, ew and ew,’ Andrew says dismissively. ‘A poet and a day trader? Buffy, Parker was gross, and Owen writes gay erotica on the internet. He hasn’t written a poem since leaving college.’

‘You’ve read some of it,’ I say. ‘And you’ve dated some highly questionable people yourself.’

‘Yes, both the poems and the erotica were terrible. And you can’t hold Warren over my head all the time.’

‘I’m sorry. That wasn’t cool of me. But he really was the worst.’

‘He really was,’ Andrew agrees. ‘Just go on the date. You never know until you try, right? You told me that once.’

‘Okay. Maybe it won’t be completely terrible.’

  It was completely terrible.

All of my clothes weren’t right. I have exactly three types of clothes – athleisure, work clothes, and clothes that are too big for me. I haven’t had the chance to donate them yet or buy clothes that fit properly.

It took me seven tries until I settled on something that wasn’t too much or too little for a casual dinner with a handsome man.

Okay, I admit it. He’s a good looking man.

 I called him on the way to the bistro. He didn’t answer until the third ring. He sounded strange as if he forgot that he asked me out to dinner in the first place.

‘I’m glad you called actually – I was about to call. I’m sorry, Buffy. Something came up and I can’t make it to dinner after all. Can I have a raincheck?’

‘What?’

‘You have every right to be angry at me, but I just can’t get out of this commitment. I’ll call you, love. All right?’

The dial tone rings in my ear.

 I ended up getting takeout from the bistro – it seemed stupid to go all the way there and not get dinner. The ride back to my apartment gave me time to sort out what exactly I was feeling.

It was a tornado of emotions. First, sheer relief. Then, a flush of anger prickling against my skin. Who does he think he is, I muttered to myself. Then seething resentment followed by an aching emptiness. He must have googled me.

 I don’t do that anymore. The last time I checked for myself was right when I got out of the clinic. All the headlines were some variations of ‘Fallen Olympian completes rehab’ or ‘Buffy Summers – where is she now?’

Even the Sunnydale Post had something about me and I only trained there for three summers. ‘Ex-Olympic Gold Medalist in Recovery for Eating Disorder.’

Simple and to the point – though skipping all the reasons why I got there. The byline was a familiar name – Freddie Iverson. He was one of the first people to interview me when I won my medal.

 ‘How does it feel being a champion?’

It feels wonderful. It feels like flying and your feet don’t touch the ground. It feels like nothing can hurt you.

 How does it feel to be washed up at nineteen?

Ten years later and I’m still trying to answer that question.

It starts raining as I clean up the rest of the takeout. I made myself eat every last bite.

 It never rains in California, but girl, don't they warn ya? It pours, man, it pours

 the lyrics are from “It Never Rains in Southern California” by Albert Hammond

and I’m working from the fancanon (in exalted circles) that Buffy is named after Buffy Sainte Marie who would have been very popular during Joyce’s time because you just know Joyce was a hippie.

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[the-sapphiresky]

Possibilities

He stood outside the door, staring down at the key in his palm. A single, innocuous silver key, the sole occupant of the keychain. Never before had it seemed so heavy, burdened with possibilities and uncertainty. It had been a gift, a token of trust; he had never needed a key to enter before, using his skills to gain entrance in whichever way was most convenient at the time. But she had insisted, saying that even if he didn’t need it, he would have it and would always be welcome in her home.

Now, as he remained rooted to the doormat, he wondered if he had broken that trust once and for all. If this symbol of trust from the one person he had always counted on to believe in him, to love him, would be revoked. He swallowed hard and closed his eyes, fisting the key as his hand started to tremble.

oOo

“Sherlock!”

A laughing voice sounded behind him and he spun around.

“Slow down, you numpty! Your legs are twice as long as mine!”

On the pavement, hurrying along beside a different, happier, version of himself, was Molly, in his favourite cherry cardigan and smiling, no sign of any lingering shadows of pain or sadness. His other self slowed down and waited while she jogged to catch up.

“Apologies,” the other Sherlock said.

Molly simple rolled her eyes and grabbed his hand, inserting her fingers between his own as if she had done so a hundred times. The other Sherlock sighed as if put upon, but Sherlock saw the way his thumb brushed Molly’s and the pleased smile that teased the corner of his mouth.

“Anyway, as I was saying, she had a green liver! We had all of the interns come in and watch as we worked. One of them fainted, though, and three others turned as green as the liver…” Their conversation faded as they passed by and Sherlock stared after them until they faded into the nothingness they had come from.

oOo

A longing filled him and he clenched his fist at the phantom feeling of Molly’s hand in his. His heart was split between the hope of a future with Molly at his side, forgiven and beloved, and fear that the future he was imagining was slipping away, leaving him alone to suffer his regrets.

oOo

“Come on!”

Behind him the door opened and he turned to see a little girl in a pink raincoat and yellow wellies just before she ran through him and up onto the street, where phantom raindrops splattered on the ground.

“Hurry up!” She shouted excitedly, jumping from puddle to puddle. Her twin brown braids were flailed around her cherubic cheeks as she leaped about.

“Young lady, where is your brolly?”

Sherlock looked back and down to see his other self, a little grayer around the temples, yet somehow younger, kneeling and buttoning up the coat of a wriggling little curly-haired boy in a pirate’s hat who was trying to escape to follow his sister.

“I don’t like it!” The little girl replied as if that was the logical answer. “It’s got flowers on it.”

The other Sherlock sighed. “That was the one you picked out!”

“It’s a baby’s brolly!” She declared. “I want one like Uncle Myc’s! His has got a sword in it!”

The other Sherlock grimaced. “Absolutely not!”

“Oh, I’m sure we can find one that looks like his, minus the sword and pistol, of course,” ever the voice of reason, Molly appeared, buttoning up a large coat that strained a bit over the swell of her very pregnant belly. “And who knows, twenty years from now, one of them might very well be taking after their Uncle anyway. They’ll have us outnumbered soon enough.”

“Over my dead body,” both Sherlocks snarled.

Molly simply raised an eyebrow and smirked. “Like that would stop them.”

Finally finagling his son into the proper outerwear, the other Sherlock released the boy to race outside. Standing, he eyed Molly with a mock serious frown and tugged her close, one hand resting reverently on her belly. “You, Mrs Holmes, are entirely too cheeky.”

“What you going to do about it?” She wrapped her arms around his neck and smiled sweetly.

Just as the other Sherlock was about to kiss her, a chorus of shouts from the street interrupted them. “Mum, dad, hurry up!”

“This is all your fault,” the other Sherlock grumbled and rested his forehead against hers.

Molly swatted his chest. “Mine? If I recall, you were the one who insisted on ‘putting a baby in me’. And with those eyes of yours, who was I to say no?”

One quick kiss and they followed their children outside, hand in hand. Sherlock watched as the growing, happy family, slowly made their way, puddle by puddle, down the street toward the park, disappearing into the air.

oOo

Sherlock swallowed thickly and ignored the tears that flowed freely down his cheeks.

oOo

The door opened once again and this time, Molly stood on the other side. Her brown hair was liberally streaked with silver, but her face and eyes were as joyfully youthful as ever. Contentment radiated from her smile and she called over her shoulder in fond exasperation, “Sherlock, stop your pouting! They’ll be along any minute.”

When the other Sherlock appeared, silver-haired, scowling, and old, Sherlock nearly stumbled back a step. Years of case work had kept him fit, but age still had its way. A long scar lined his left cheek and more wrinkles lined his weathered face. He pouted and continued to fiddle with his hair, which had lost quite a bit of its curly bounce over the years.

“Come here, you,” Molly reached out for him and he shuffled over to her, gaze fixed firmly on the floor. She ran her hands up his cheeks, the light catching on the well-loved wedding band, and brushed her thumbs against his still-prominent cheekbones. At her loving touch, the other Sherlock relaxed and his face lightened until a chagrined smile tugged on his lips. “There’s my Sherlock,” she whispered.

He tried to pout, but the reluctant smile won out, and he wrapped his arms around her waist. “Even if he’s no longer tall, dark, and handsome?”

Molly frowned slightly. “I never asked for tall, dark, and handsome. I only ever wanted you, you silly clot. You just happened to be all tall, dark, and handsome. And now, well,” she drew out the word and looked up at him with a twinkle in her eye, “Tall, silver-haired, and drop dead gorgeous is just fine with me.”

The other Sherlock preened and cupped her cheek, shaking his head in disbelief. “How did I get so lucky as to be your husband?”

“Maybe because you say the sweetest things,” Molly teased and tugged him down into a sweet kiss.

“Nana! Granddad!” The shouts of children broke them apart and, with one last loving look, they left the flat, walking up hand-in-hand to greet the gaggle of children running down the street toward them, their parents following at a more sedate pace. As the other Sherlock hugged his daughter and lifted up one of the children, smiling widely, they faded from sight, leaving nothing but an empty street.

oOo

“Sherlock?”

It took a moment for Sherlock to realise the voice wasn’t his imagination again and he spun around. Peering through the crack in her doorway, Molly stared up at him. Her eyes were red and swollen and she had clearly not slept well for some nights.

He looked down at the key still in his hand. Then back up at her in silent question.

She chewed on her lip, clearly debating whether to let him in. Or close the door on him once and for all. He prayed fervently that he had not lost her, that she would give him a chance to explain, to show her that the words torn from him in desperation were true. Oh, god, they were true.

She had every right to shut him out of her life. He had done nothing to deserve her love, her forgiveness, her trust.

He swallowed hard, bracing himself to be turned away.

But then. Oh, but then, she did what she had always done better than anyone else. She saw him. And so she stepped back and swung the door open, inviting him inside.

oOo

In that little garden flat, on that quiet London street, they would build a life together from the rubble of what they had come through, filling it with laughter and forgiveness, but most of all with love. And it was in that little garden flat where Sherlock would hear the words that would change his life all over again.

“Sherlock Holmes. You’re going to be a daddy.”

[brokenmusicboxwolfe]

I have a lot of catching up to do, but it’s about 1am and so this is gonna get messy. Still, if I don’t do it now I might not ever.

I saw:

The Hateful Eight- Quentin Tarantino does Stagecoach? Well, not exactly. A bounty hunter transporting a killer he caught when the stage encounters another bounty hunter, in his case his catches are the easy to carry dead kind. They then enounter yet another man, this one saying he is the newly hired sheriff of the town they are heading towards, in need of a lift. A blizzard is blowing up so they all take shelter at the last stop before the town, already occupied by the people from the previous stage. But something isn’t right. Of course at least one of these people is secretly out to free the prisoner, but the truth is tensions in the hate filed  group might make it all a bloody mess anyway.

I do mean bloody. Well, it is Tarantino afterall. So you get all the things he typically has in his films, the gore filled, language spiraling out, a bit of non chronolgical story telling, dark humor and so forth. It’s rather silly in a way, this hot dog made of bits and peices of scrap meat from pop culture. Now it is perfectly possible to debate whether it is being offensive or meaningful. Race is a real  theme, but a black man and white man that had hated each other’s guts based on that working together to hang a common enemy is a peculiar statement on racial harmony. The prisoner is a woman, and she is constantly batted about, but is that really sexist or actually a statement of equality when a male murderer making trouble for these sort of folks might be batted about too?  Discuss in the space below for extra credit. Or not. Basically it’s a typical film from the director except with some gorgeous snowy cinematography and a slower pace. Maybe he’s cut back on the caffeine or something. How you feel about it depends on how you react to a self indulgent film about a group of folks heavy on the hate having amusing arguements and blowing each other to bits. In my case I dunno! I kept changing my mind between enjoying it and finding it overly familiar, but then my mind was distracted.

The Killing Fields- An American reporter and a Cambodian work together as the Vietnam war spill over into the latter’s country begins to turn disasterous. When it finally reaches the point it will become a blood bath and the last foriegners are evacuated the Cambodian gets left behind (not all that uncommon for locals working with outsiders). While the American tries to trace what hapoened to his friend, the one left behind is left in a place turned nightmare, a place where reporters are the enemy, intellectuals are to be killed and forced manual labor presided over by fanatical children is the order of the day. Can he survive? 

I know, you are thinking oscar bait what with a true story and a white guy to let the folks identify, since it is sooooo hard to do movies about non white guys (insert giant eye roll), but actually it works really well. The film is about friendship, not just the setting, and the film respects both characters. The American his full ambition, ego and puts aside even personal safety to get a story, which has tragic results for his friend. And it isn’t that he asks his friend to stay in the country when he could have gotten out, but gets him to stay despite his doubts. It’s like the pal who is bold and gung-ho getting you to do something you really wouldn’t do on your own, “You can do what you want. The apples in that tree are the absolute best, and if we run really fast the bulls won’t even notice. You don’t have to go I guess, but I’m going.” And yet this isn’t done maliciously, he just hadn’t really thought about the risk his friend was in until it was too late. And the Cambodian really does want to help, both to get the stories and to be loyal to his friend. The actor playing the Cambodian turned in a magnificent performance, which is a bit haunting when you realize he wasn’t an actor but had actually survived experiences like the person he was playing. I wonder how difficult it must have been to live a recreation of what you barely survived. ** The filming of the scenes of violence have a nice reality to them, if you can call that “nice”. It arrives with shocking suddenness, like a scene where two reporters are having a casual chat at a sidewalk cafe and then BOOM, without the director giving the usual cues to the audience something is to happen a bomb goes off. I appreciate a that. 

The Da Vinci Code- An expert on religious symbolisim has a guy he was going to meet murdered with symbols about. The cops suspect him, but dead guy’s grand daughter gets him away. Together the follow a trail of clues the dead guy left involving religious history. Interestingly, thiugh they make a big point of the girl having been trained all about codes and puzzles it’s the manly hero that does the explaining most of the time. And it turns out it has to do with the fact Jesus wasn’t a Jedi with a thing against love, and the fact he was a papa was almost less controversial to the powers that be than that he treated his lady love as an actual partner in his godly gabbing. So now somewhere out there one religious faction has been hiding the the proof and the identity of the direct decendents. Meanwhile another faction has been wanting to hunt down and destroy all the evidence, and they will kill to do it since the patriarchal establishment would be threatened. And yet others want the world to know the truth, even if they have to kill to get it out there. And guess who has to try not to be killed? 

The story really is a standard issue treasure hunt and ancient conspiracy type thriller. It’s cheesy enough the characters must have existed in a pop cultural vacuum not to figure it out sooner. It could be audience participation, shouting out to the screen not to trust this one or that revelation of where the decendent is. It’s all rather silly and formulaic but I guess it gets it’s buzz because if the religion. Maybe that’s why the movie wants to have an “important” sheen on it, all respectable and big, when if you changed the thing everyone is after it would be rainy afternoon fluff. Since I have no skin in the game (as I have heard people say, but I never have until now) I just sort of shrug. It isn’t history, just bits and pieces fancifully stitched together gaining plausibility by the way various religions have traditionally done nasty things to keep the status quo from being rattled, especially if they worry it might threatened the usual blind faith rule. *** But really  it’s just a new take on an old tune. Make it aliens and you have an X-Files sort of story. I think it would have been more fun as a low budget drive in movie from the 1970s or something.....

**I don’t usually know personal stuff about actors, but that history was a big story at the time. Tragically the actor was later murdered while living in America.

*** Though why Jesus being married and fathering a child would negate anything beyond forcing religions to reconsider a few of ways of worship that have nothing to do with the core concept is odd. Then again, since I have trouble seeing the reason all these subsets of religions fight among themselves I probably just have a great big blind spot when it comes to religion, like having a colorblindness or not being able to hear certain frequencies. Seriously, ask me the difference between a catholic, baptist, methodist and what not I need to look it up and usually end up yawning. I just lump all religions thst  share certain roots together in a category together. Sooooo ....christians, jews, muslims , ya’ll are cousins, so could you quit your damn feuding so the rest of us can get a bit of peace!!! 

[beingheldby-you]

one million invisible lines

He’s eleven.

His uniform is pristine, his nails are clean, and his head full of hair curls upon itself, sticking to him like an unwelcome shadow.

He’s been enrolled in four schools in three different countries by the time he’s in Year 7 but this time, this time, Harry Styles is promised will be the last.

He doesn’t believe it.

Because both his parents are in love with a thrill. The thrill of discovering an idea and starting over. The thrill of building a company from scratch and then selling it and moving on to the next idea, the next country, the next market, the next big thing.

He can’t complain, really. He’s a byproduct of two wanderers who made their fortune by constantly starting over. The incessant stop and start’s have given him a sense of independence. It drilled into him a long form of adaptability. A passion for adventure. A burning desire to paint the sky whatever colour he feels like, whenever he feels like.

But the insurmountable need to regularly start over does eventually exhaust the psyche. He develops what his therapist calls “abandonment issues,” mourning his own exit every time his parents pack them up to the next big venture. It’s not classically the leave-ee who bemoans the separation, but there he is, at the age of eleven, sure that he will never find a place to call home.

But this time is different, they promise.

“This time we’re building something that’s just ours.”

He smiles and nods and doesn’t protest as he waves goodbye to his parents at a six digit per term tuition fee preparatory boarding school.

Alone in his room, he listens to the silence he’s left in.

He never wishes for friends when he starts a new term in a new school. Not since he’s learned that it only serves to make things more difficult when the inevitable happens. But he gets one anyway, in a form of a roommate; a boy with warm brown eyes and untamed hair not unlike his.

Like the sullen quiet of fog in winter, Liam stares at him as if waiting for permission.

He shrugs after a long minute, as though saying to himself that this new specimen will just have to do.

During their first day of classes, Liam points of the kids who are school royalty, because all schools have hierarchies, and the ones who rumour has it are actual royalty.

“The inbreeding makes it particularly easy to spot them,” he says. Harry laughs at his new companion’s subtle sarcasm, soft like the skin above the collarbone. Jagged but beautiful, like stained glass.

They go to their classes and read in their room. Occasionally Harry climbs to the roof and just lays in the meek England sun, counting the new ground secrets he’s discovered.

They will eventually prove useful; he knows it deep in his bones.

Life in conservative schooling establishments goes by in a blur, as they always do. But Harry notices him his first week, during breakfast, surrounded by a mish mash trio who all carry themselves with a same quiet grace.

His bright eyes and sheepish smile doesn’t reveal anything about him at all, and neither does the silent tempest in the eyes of those he surrounds himself with.

There’s something inexplicable about the boy.

They’re the old money people, Liam tells him. Coming from a long line of aristocrats and nobles who practically shit gold. And it’s perhaps the most accurate way to describe him since he’s the son of an oil tycoon; the new gold.

They get partnered during English by some odd coincidence and he learns that the boy with skin golden like the sun is all bravado and bullshit while Harry is all adrift and aerial, head in the clouds and barely present.

It's a cosmically fated connection; both different but just the same enough. Armed with a desperate frustrated attempt to prove themselves smart, whole periods of English became dedicated in debating Twain and Homer.

Zayn likes being the most obscure guy at the party, Harry realises, dropping random bits of dubious facts from books and passages that aren’t even part of the syllabus.

Their conversation soon shift to an array of subjects; from the latest Batman movies to whether or not they are in actual fact facing the possibility of an apocalypse. Zayn Malik, as Harry he learns with each passing English period, is as inexplicable as he is bizarre. Full of snark when you’re not looking and smoothed over by just enough charm when you are.

He never seems to take anything seriously either, each assignment and coursework an opportunity to prove just how smart he is.

As the year moves along, they rack up a number of detentions each, one upping each other with juvenile pranks. For their finals, he dares Harry to insert as many sex puns as possible into his verbal presentation on Shakespeare.

Harry takes him up on that in a gusto.

He’s not even sure if any of his puns and innuendo really mean anything to anyone at that point, but the entire class sits in their silent astonishment when he’s done.

And then, the one known as Louis laughs so hard he falls right out of his chair.

The substitute teacher, twitchy and crimson-faced, dismisses the class in a hurry before the period is even over and Harry moves towards the door with a triumphant glow on his face, while Zayn is waiting on his friends who are waiting on Louis, still laughing.

Harry could spot that recognisable smirk on his lips and amusement in his eyes from a mile away.

He walks out of that final English class sure that he would have to move to another school the coming year. Purely because it’s what he does; he leaves.

And he shuts off the world a little more everytime he does.

But at eleven, Harry Styles is realising that when you leave someone, they can leave you even more.

He’s twelve.

His parents keep their promise and he settles hesitantly into life in a preparatory boarding school.

The entire thing starts feeling weirdly normal. He sits with Liam for breakfast while he absent-mindedly seeks out the boy with hurricane eyes and the madman mind.

He watches as his part-time friend walk to his classes with those with whom he grew up with.

But Harry gets allocated a course alone with someone else in their little closed foursome.

They all have most of the same classes together really, but it’s foreign language and an elective and they’ve both apparently decided on French.

He raises a brow when Addison sits herself down next to him.

With a shrug she tells him that Zayn took the option to drop foreign language as he’s already multilingual, Louis chose German to impress his new neighbour Ada back at home, and Poppy followed suit because she’s spent pretty much all her summers in Berlin anyway and just wants an easy mark.

Harry chuckles.

“Liam’s taking German too,” he offers, “Because he loves everything automobile and he wants to possibly work with engines in the future and there really isn’t much that beats some fine German engineering.”

Addison arches a perfect brow at his spiel, “That’s forward planning right there.”

She takes out her textbooks as he watches, twelve kinds of awed at the ease and confidence of which she embodies.

She’s charm and chaos rolled into a minute frame.

And to be quite frank, Harry never quite had a clear read on Addison.

She’s old money too, according to Liam, as though it’s supposed to mean something.

But all he knows about is that she’s far too loud for someone so tiny, and that there’s a glimmer in her eyes that told tales of her crazy despite every attempt to appear like someone who is condescendingly rich and bored and blue blooded.

He can see in the way that she walks and talks; she has absolutely no desire to be prim and proper, and fit into the crusty upper class mould of London high society.

But a lifetime of hard conditioning of tradition and rules of propriety is hard to undo.

Harry’s sure it had taken her years to fully embody the face of pure disinterest, always unimpressed and not quite an open book. And she’s mastered perfectly the art of laughing in silence too.

“Just a matter of biting your lip and constricting your chest,” she says.

“You'll find it useful someday, trust me."

And he can’t understand it; why wouldn’t you laugh out loud if you wanted to?

“It’s the difference between us and them,” Liam tells him as they have their midnight talks when they both can’t sleep.

He doesn’t often think about that divide though; new money and old money. It makes him want to put his head through the nearest wall. But he wouldn’t do that, not when he’s deciding to grow his hair out.

So he just doesn’t dwell on it.

Harry debates Chaucer with Zayn in the library on Wednesdays, staying too late and talking too loud, and hangs out with Addison twice a week, partnering up for their scheduled class, absorbing orthology and memorising phonology.

And when they’re meant to be correcting each other’s grammar, she spells out profanities in every language known to man, face deadpan and devoid of emotion when he catches her doing it.

She’s smarter than she lets on, that he knows for a fact.

So he just crosses out the profanities and laughs.

It’s something, Harry thinks to himself, the settling in curb is not as steep as people make it out to be.

He’s thirteen.

He’s outgrown preparatory school and enters Wellesley College.

Except this time he’s not the one leaving, almost the entire school comes with him.

And by some stroke of coincidence or perhaps a divine joke, he gets roomed with a scholarship student.

He’s glad for it because it’s not him this time.

There are new faces and he’s now an old face; no longer invisible and no longer imposing. He sits with Liam, Louis, and Zayn for breakfast, Dee doodles more curse words into his homework during independent study periods, and Poppy giggles herself silly at his shitty jokes during dinner.

Harry, for all his bold self-made promises of not making permanent connections, begins to just sort of... fit into all of their lives.

Like they’ve been waiting for him this entire time.

His fists, writhed white from clenching so hard pushing the world away, start to relax.

And it shows.

He assures Niall that they don’t bite, that they’ve just all known each other longer.

Assures the Irish lad that that outside feeling goes away; because you eventually build your own inside jokes, your own personal relationships over time.

Like the way Addison’s become a permanent resident in their room, calling Niall all kinds of pop cultural blonde nicknames, listening to his Kings of Leon albums, and very occasionally condescendingly hover over them while they attempt to make a dent at their respective courseworks.

Like the way Zayn starts calling him Haz and it catches on.

And the way Zayn starts calling Addison Dee and it catches on too.

But he speaks her name differently.

He can’t really explain it, but it’s softer. Gentler. As though his tongue whispers her name like a prayer and his hands long cradle drops of her like water in the shower.

He asks him about it after they successfully steal the Provost’s confiscated whiskey stash.

(It involved, in no particular order:

A fork, two stolen pairs of shoes, three really good hair ties, and a willing Liam and Louis who are bribed into their silent roles by the promise of a share in the spoils.)

“I dunno, really,” Zayn says.

The two of them sit on the ground and drink until they can’t see straight, lying flat on the ground and looking at the stars, whiskey draining into their blood and across their veins.

He starts mumbling off about how everything wouldn’t matter one day anyway, because they’d be long gone; their footprints won’t perpetually stain the tiles of Wellesley hallways no matter how hard they try, and the names they’ve given each other won’t be written down into history books.

“It all just doesn’t matter,” he says.

And it’s like Harry’s been sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool all his life.

The world, as he knows it, full of clouded water.

And he’s just now breaking the surface into a new dimension of living. He almost hopes that Zayn’s words will swallow him whole. He wants to be swallowed whole and spat out something new.

Harry doesn’t know what it all means though, but in that moment, he swears that he could live off that feeling forever; alcohol running through his veins and best mate by his side, drunkedly contemplating mortality.

It’s as though someone had just tapped him on the shoulder and sucker punched him in the face.

And he’s not quite sure what his life is anymore.

He’s fourteen.

He’s grown three inches over summer and his hair is long enough to cover his ears now. He feels like his heart has grown three sizes bigger too and he’s sitting at the edge of the window that he’s managed to wedge open on the highest floor of the library.

Everything looks so small, even though he’s the one who’s young and uncomprehending.

He looks at their little study group; Niall with his attempts to make sense of Louis’ work, Liam explaining something or another to Poppy, and Dee and Zayn just sort of bickering and laughing into their hands about nothing at all.

Zayn somehow always comes out of their study group a little worse for wear, coursework not quite done and eyes a little too glazed over, as though he’s been staring at the sun too long.

And it’s all just... normal.

They’ve all kind of just jumped right into it, finding a surrogate family with one another with their real families on the sidelines kind of a little bit like, as Zayn calls it, “a pile of flaming horse shit.”

Money, as nice as it is to have, doesn’t really do much to protect or shield them from anything.

Harry closes his eyes, soaking in the sun’s feeble rays and feeling the soft hush of the greeneries.

“You’re going to get us expelled,” Niall complains, rolling his eyes.

“Life isn’t all about the rules, Horan.”

“Except physics is and gravity is real even if you don’t believe in it,��� Dee comments lazily, eyes not leaving the book she’s reading.

“Addison Fitzgerald, is that concern in your voice?”

Harry climbs off the window opening and pulls out the chair next to her a little too hard on purpose, scraping it’s legs against the floor.

She doesn’t so much as flinch.

“I’m just not interested in looking after Zayn at your funeral,” she tears her eyes away from the passage she’s engrossed in, “But I’m sure you'll leave a sizeable enough inheritance for your poor widow to not be all that distraught.”

She shoots her patented wry smile his way.

“A bloke can only wish,” Zayn quips dreamily, expression frozen in an exaggerated seriousness.

Harry laughs, but a feeling he doesn’t quite recognise blooms through his chest.

He’s fifteen.

He has a lower voice now and his limbs have grown some more. Which help, considering that they’re running as fast as their legs can carry them.

They stop to catch their breath, both boys laughing raucously.

He sees Zayn’s outline, shaking in a combination of nerves, fatigue, and laughter. It’s a sight that could start wars and burn whole cities to the ground, he thinks.

“D’you think it’ll work?”

Zayn’s voice anchors him to the present.

“Don’t see how it won’t,” Harry says.

It’s the annual school ball, frumpy soirees with little to look forward to apart from silly dresses and frivolous tuxedos. And it’s about to get a lot more interesting. Not pig’s blood and false nominations interesting obviously. But what they've done is beyond petty meanness.

They’ve set up a mini explosive to ensure plausible deniability thanks to Liam’s expertise, which would burn down a line of gunpowder courtesy of Niall’s chemistry wits, leading to copious amounts of firecrackers obtained by Louis’ wily charms.

Basking in their genius, Harry sits himself on an upturned bucket, waiting on the rest of their group to return from their tasks.

He and Zayn had just broken into the Provost’s office and shifted some paper around, to throw him off, diverting the suspicion of what they were actually planning.

The watch that sits on his wrist says it’s three seventeen when Niall and Poppy emerge at the rendezvous point, triumphant and positively buzzing with adrenaline.

Liam and Louis return shortly after, Dee conspicuously missing.

“McKinney was... out late,” Louis chokes out as he takes a puff of a cigarette he barely manages to light referring to the newly hired discipline master.

Realisation dawns on them as Niall asks what they were all thinking.

“Where’s Dee?”

“We got separated,” Liam says.

“She’s not back yet?”

Concern etches across all their faces simultaneously.

Harry doesn’t worry though; he’s seen her feign contrition to appease many a time. If there’s anyone who could talk herself out of being found with firecrackers and gunpowder on school grounds, it’d be her surely.

But Zayn is not as convinced, pacing up and down, face so pale that white doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Even in the dark, they could see it.

They could all see it.

“If something’s happened with the firecrackers or the gunpowder—”

“We’d have heard it,” Niall cuts him off simply.

There’s logic to his words after all, gunpowder and fireworks are barely inconspicuous things.

“She’s fine,” he says, repeating it over and over again, as though a magical talisman.

After another fifteen minutes of their hairs all standing on end, fidgety and jumpy, Louis suggests that they all go to bed, “If she’s been caught, she’d be sent back to her room, yeah?”

But Zayn is beyond sleep.

“We agreed to meet back here, I’m not leaving ‘til she gets back.”

His voice is raspier than that time he drank an entire bottle of absinthe because Liam says it would kill him.

Everyone stays. Poppy falls asleep on Louis' shoulder, Liam smokes enough cigarettes to tranquilise a horse, and Niall paces around aimlessly and uncomfortably, his first official foray with mayhem. Scholarship students are, after all, not afforded the same rule bending luxury the same way the other students are.

Zayn’s paranoia covers them like a blanket, thick and suffocating. Every sigh and glance at his watch stretches the tension in the room even more, as though waiting for an inevitable implosion.

She appears an hour later and he glows like a lightbulb.

He all but runs into her and envelopes her, burying his head into her neck.

Harry looks away, feeling the tiniest hint of annoyance at the sight, the oxygen that’s finally rushing back into his lungs from a breath he didn’t know he’s holding burns of something he doesn’t quite comprehend. It feels like something private, like he's intruding into something he’s not meant to see.

Niall apparently shares the same sentiment, finding his shoes interacting with the dirt on the ground of the cramped gardening shed suddenly very amusing.

The raw relief that visibly settles into Zayn’s bones spread to every corner of their little hideout.

But Harry’s heart thunders in his chest and he can’t see anything but the dark outline of their embrace.

He is too undone and too put-together to do anything but retreat, standing up in a flummox and tripping on the edge of something or another.

A watering can? A shovel?

The loud clanging startles everyone and the pair jump apart.

“Haz?”

Zayn’s voice comes out softly, a small push, restrained, tinged with worry and concern.

He shakes his head, running his hands through his hair because he’s about to fucking explode.

“Let’s get out of here before we all get into even more trouble for four o'clock in the morning,” he says nervously, hiding the inexplicable anxiety with a nervous laugh.

It’s abrupt, and it’s sudden. His hands clench avariciously at the bits of madness that has seeped into his consciousness.

But he walks out of the gardener’s shed and he doesn’t turn back.

He’s sixteen.

And it occurs to Harry that he is very much in trouble.

His eyes are heavy from the champers, flickering tiredly to the boy across from him on the balcony.

Zayn’s voice hoarse and gravelly from the tobacco.

“I’m so fuckin’ in love with her.”

Trouble, indeed.

“Then ask her out again.”

Harry’s voice has gotten lower too, but it has nothing to do with the cigarettes. Or even the copious amounts of champagne he’s had through the course of the night.

“What, just like that?”

Harry shrugs, unsure of how Zayn can be sort of seeing one of their best friends one moment, and then just as suddenly as it began, not really sure what happened to it the next.

“It’s really not that difficult.”

And besides, if you don’t then Niall might, he thinks.

But he doesn’t say it out loud.

They continue smoking their cigarettes; Harry not elaborating and Zayn unquestioning.

He mind cooks up half a dozen ways for his best mates to sort out their relationship status, or more accurately, their current lack thereof of one. But he reins himself in before his limbs moves them towards inevitable storm.

It’s not going to be one of those nights, he thinks to himself.

Especially not after Dee’s very colourful threats still ring clearly in his mind from the last time he meddled, “Lock me in a closet again and I will slice your knees off and feed you the stew I’ll make of your bone and cartilage.”

Harry doesn’t even laugh. Because he knows if anyone can get away with slicing his knees off, it’d be her. And Zayn wouldn’t even do anything about it.

Heck, he’d probably even slice his own knees off and place them in a pot for her if it’d save her the trouble of doing it herself.

A stab of something punches him in the gut.

He remembers Liam telling him that it’s complicated.

“Just don’t stick your head in it again,” he says.

But it’s not complicated, not really. Harry knows complicated, as a matter of fact, he’s good with complicated.

Complicated is when your parents barely see each other because they’re so busy chasing a dream. Complicated is when their guilt is so strong that they throw mounds of money at you and let you run off with your friends for summer vacation. Complicated is when your sister, freshly graduated, aspires to build an app that’ll become the next big thing to prove herself worthy of said absentee parents’ time and affection.

Wanting or not wanting to snog the living daylights out of someone while leaving all your friends completely in suspense is decidedly not complicated.

Dee’s head pokes out onto the balcony, as if on cue, Zayn's eyes are slightly droopy and mouth loosely grasping at an uncontainable smile.

“Lou is completely smashed, he’s about to cut right through the ice sculpture on the front yard.”

Zayn’s eyes light up, whether at the words or the bearer of those words is as good as anyone’s guess.

“How?”

“How do you think?” She giggles, her entire body swaying, brows arched as though that’s the most ridiculous inquiry ever.

“Dee, you are bloody brilliant,” Zayn drops his cigarette and stubs it out before dashing off with her.

Harry catches his own reflection on the sliding glass doors and decides he might just need another cigarette before he rejoins his friends and the rest of the civilisation inside. Those who just stood around, glasses in their hands, alcohol in their system, basking in their wealth, and physical belongings.

They comment on the tapestries, and expensive china, and pristine furniture. As though an un-lived in house is something to be boasted of.

He is so lost in his own thoughts that he isn’t even aware of someone opening the doors and stepping outside. It isn’t until he hears her heels clicking against the marbled floors that he realises he isn’t alone anymore.

“You came out here to escape too?”

Her wavy black hair blows a bit in the wind, making her tuck a few strands of it behind her ear.

Her movements are graceful and poised and he thinks she must be another one of the bored pin up princesses dragged to these do’s.

The silence sits between them, thick and deafening.

And so he whips out the cigarette box and pops another stick into his mouth before igniting his lighter, gazing at the flickering flame for a moment before touching it to the white tip, crumbling it to ash and burning it bright orange.

“You smoke.”

It’s not a question as much as it is a statement. And her voice, though laced with boredom, isn’t quite the tone he expects. Different from when he firsts makes her presence known, the one that’s refined and rich with a pleasantness that’s dipped in something golden.

She sounds a little more edged the second time around, more daring, as though she had seen something that had her comfortable enough to let loose.

“It would seem so, yeah,” he raises his head to blow out a cloud of smoke.

Not the best small talk, but he’s really not in the mood.

In one fluid movement, she takes the cigarette from his fingers with ease, raising it to her lips for a lengthy drag.

It shouldn’t surprise him really, in all his time in Wellesley, he’s seen Dee outdrink and outsmoke the boys in their form, himself included.

It’s always the most unexpected ones that holds the most surprises.

But her boldness does startle him, and he’s too stunned to do or say anything about this stranger adeptly stealing cigarettes from his fingers.

She blows a thin line of smoke before her gaze returns squarely onto his.

A challenge of sorts; I won’t tell if you don’t.

Her eyes are bright and suddenly they’re both laughing.

“Victoria,” she offers.

“Harry,” he responds.

She’s twenty. She’s a fashion student who’s dropped out of college, the youngest after four boys in her family. A rebel from birth, she says, always starting things before she knows how she’ll finish them, all gut feeling and instinct and a natural compulsion to just do things without a thought of consequence.

Victoria reminds him of someone. Someone he can’t quite place. Someone who he dreams of. Whose name and voice and manner is just at the tip of his tongue.

The cigarette burns out and they smoke another.

And another, and another, and another.

His resolve and self-preservation that tonight won’t be “one of those nights” breaks in half.

He catches himself staring at her.

And when she does too, she asks, unabashed, “And what do you think you’re staring at?”

“You,” he says simply.

She iridescent and lustrous, like a glowstick.

In one swiftly elegant move, she moves towards him again, fisting her hands in the front of his shirt

She tastes sweet, like honey and champagne. His hands grip her waistline, hauling her hips against his as he bites her lower lip.

A moan rips from the back of her throat and he whispers her name against her skin.

Harry knows that this is finally it, the infamous summer fling that Poppy talks about when she returned from her previous summer vacation, tanned from travel. He’s knows what it’s meant to mean and what happens. There are hookups and there are break ups and you just ebb and flow into it.

But he can’t help it.

He finds himself falling for girl with the dark hair and the luminous eyes.

“Come to Tuscany with me?” Harry asks, out of breath and still seeing stars.

“What, now?”

“Yeah.”

She nods her acceptance with a giggle and they take off then and there.

He texts Zayn to prove a point;

It’s really not that difficult.

He’s seventeen.

He stands upright and proud in a vintage suit that doesn't fit him quite perfect and he’s scared. Harry is more afraid he’s ever been, mostly because he can’t for the life of him understand how he’s ended up in a church with happy wedding bells ringing and rose petals on the ground to steal a bride.

Of all the absurdly ridiculous and vapid plans he’s executed in his life, this would probably rank highest.

But he can’t think of that. Not when he has a clear blueprint to follow;

Find the bride, steal the bride, ride off into the sunset.

He somehow manages to escape notice, blending in with the crowd before snaking into the back room.

Find the bride -- check.

She is a vision of perfection.

The sight of her triggers how her lips taste like honey and champagne that first night they met. How she giggles against his lips as his hands wander.

But now she’s dressed in white, in a little chapel off of London, ready to be wed.

They tell him to fuck it; screw the invitation, don’t put yourself through the pain of seeing your dream girl from that perfect summer. And definitely, definitely, do not help her become a runaway bride.

But Harry is a romantic, he always has been.

So when Zayn shows up at his room with a tux in hand, he succumbs.

They break about thirteen school rules getting out of Wellesley in the middle of a school day, and about twenty one traffic laws to get to the church just in the nick of time.

And seeing her, he realises that he needs this. She needs this.

Whether or not she chooses him, there has to be some kind of a conclusion. A resolution. One doesn’t spend a romantic month in Tuscany with someone just to marry someone else without so much as an explanation.

And so there he is.

The silence that sits between them is palpable; lingering and loud.

“You’re not supposed to be back here,” she finally says.

“You’re not supposed to run off with some bloke for the summer and then spend the year writing him emails to suddenly tell him you were engaged the entire time.”

The sight of her, doe eyed and clad in white, is the proverbial last straw cracking under the pressure. It shatters, something beautiful, collapsing the massive, heaping pile of bullshit he's kept in for the last couple of months.

“I sent you an invite because I can’t do this,” she blurts out.

Harry briefly wonders if it’ll still be considered stealing a bride if she walks out willingly with you, “You’ve been writing me in hopes of breaking your engagement?”

She laughs, devoid of any real humour.

“The term break an engagement implies that I’ve changed my mind at some point between saying yes and going out to the bachelorette party,” she declares, voice cold and jarred, moving around the room restless and anxious.

“I can’t do this,” she says impulsively, “I just can’t.”

Her eyes are brimming with tears about to spill over and it’s wrong, and sick, and so, so... wrong.

“Then don’t.”

He pleads so gently, he’s not sure if the words had really been breathed to life.

It is an odd feeling, Harry thinks, to be so sure of what he’s doing, “Come with me.”

She stares at him, wordless.

It’s the longest pause he’s ever lived through.

But then she kicks off her Jimmy Choo’s and they make a run for it.

Zayn is waiting just outside with the engine running, ready to go at a drop of a hat.

He drives off before the car doors are even shut proper and they ride into the sunset together, Zayn piloting their getaway vehicle.

Harry looks to the girl in next to him, and he cannot believe himself. He is about to sit for his A levels in a year and he has no clue what he’ll major in after or if he’ll even be accepted to college.

But he knows he wants her, that he wants this.

If it’s a choice between Victoria and her voice and hair and her smile and her laugh and her everything, or knowing the future, he’d pick her. Every time.

He wants to hear her talk and laugh and smile, more than he wants certainty.

And he can’t remember ever being happier.

He’s eighteen.

He has bigger problems than a bar brawl, yet there he is.

They’re faced with their A levels soon and the whole form is at the local watering hole that they often sneak out to, planning their graduating prank dubbed Project Vanity.

It happens too fast. But then again, doesn’t it always. One minute Harry’s in a conversation with Liam about colleges when out of the corner of his eye, he sees Niall throw his arm over Dee and he’s about to mention in passing that there might be something going on between Niall and Dee, when the next, he’s tapped on the shoulder and literally sucker punched.

He doesn’t even know how it happens, but Zayn is by his side quicker than anything he’s ever seen move.

As though it’s nothing more than a split second decision.

Harry turns to confront this assault head on, ready to defend himself or talk himself out of whatever mess he’s probably created to deserve it. But one look at the heaving chest and snarled lip and Harry just knows that he doesn’t have a good defense.

Or even any defense to speak of, really.

He stole a bride a year ago and now it’s time for penance. It’s fight or flight. And Harry has never been one to shy away from a challenge before, even if he’s not much of a fighter.

His jaw is still throbbing from that first punch hurled his way but his fingers unclench themselves and he’s ready to be beaten a bloody mess when a fist on his right swings.

It hits its mark with a terrifying angry crack.

The sound of flesh on flesh is the most satisfying thing he hears all day.

“Fuck,” Zayn sputters, shaking his hand out as every head in the dingy bar turns toward the scuffle.

And then all hell breaks loose; bottles are thrown, punches land, and bruises form.

Sweat and bone and bloody messes.

A particularly strong swing hits him square at the back of the head and he remembers nothing else. Only the steady throbbing ache reverberating through his skull and deep into every recess of his brain as he comes to with Zayn’s face looming into view, cut lip and all.

He’s nineteen.

And he’s lying on the couch, unmoving, in his pajamas.

Fresh out of school, he moves into the an apartment within walking distance if college. By some stroke of luck, he’s been accepted into London School of Economics.

No one is more surprised than him.

Harry suspects his dad may have a thing or two to do about it.

“We just don’t want you to make the same mistakes we did,” the older Mr Styles says.

“You need a degree to be taken seriously.”

He doesn’t complain.

Instead he lets his parents pay for tuition and rent and amenities. Victoria moves in and blogs from home. The housekeeper comes twice a week. They plan their weekends around what scenic backdrops they can head to for her to take her out pictures.

Life is good.

Until it’s not.

And he’s just there on his couch, wasting away.

There’s a sizeable amount that fills in the apartment; furniture, knick knacks from their travels, decor, food. But it just feels stripped somehow. Bare. Hollow. Like he’s lying in the middle of a home he doesn't recognise.

I’m sorry, she said, shaking her head. Her bags already packed and sitting just around the corner.

“I just... I can’t do this.”

The same words she had said when she ran out of that church with him.

The same words that left what’s unsaid lingering between them, eating away at his skull like the hum of pain that burrowed into his brain when the man she left at the altar socked him in the face.

It feels like a lifetime ago.

His phone rings.

And rings, and rings, and rings.

He looks at the caller ID and doesn’t pick up, content wallowing in self pity.

His front door swings open, and Harry doesn’t even bother to look.

“She left,” he chokes out.

In her absence, even his voice no longer feels his. And it feels wrong, unnatural, to even dare acknowledge her absence. It’s as though someone had ripped a hole right out of his heart.

“Jesus,” Zayn says, waltzing in without knocking.

“Fuck mate, have you even showered in the last two days?”

His best friend has about all the subtlety of a bus.

He doesn’t go to school for two weeks and his mates take turns checking up on him.

Niall, who is waist deep in a med degree on top of working two jobs to afford said med degree brings beer, Louis gives the housekeeper instructions to work around his designated wallow space for the day, Liam calls every other day from Germany to nag him about personal hygiene, Zayn practically moves in, and Poppy comes by with new lamps and drapes and sheets to rid him of everything she’s ever touched.

Even Dee flies back between classes to tell him to cut it the fuck out as she makes him omelets.

“At least they’re not made of your knees,” she says.

His head and heart and body feels too tired filling up the Victoria sized hole within to even smile.

Dimly, he thinks to himself that it’s a divorce of sorts. That Victoria should be getting at least half custody of their friends. Like the way Poppy had to alternate between Berlin and London from ages ten to eighteen, and the way Louis has double Christmases, and birthdays, and everything in between.

His friends are as much her friends by now, aren’t they?

After all, didn’t Niall, who’s living on campus in Imperial College, have a standing brunch date with Victoria where he helps her take those hashtag outfit of the day things?

And didn’t Louis use to pop by with those infernal films she used to like so much and spend entire mornings talking about old pictures?

He's sure that Poppy flew out with Victoria on at least three different fashion weeks, jabbering away about autumn colours and vintage resurgence.

Zayn’s even road tripped with her and Dee around France before he started reading law in Oxford, didn’t he?

Surely, they should be making up excuses as to why they won’t be round the apartment much and sneak out to see her at the coffee shop every now and then.

He confronts Zayn about it while he’s on the couch, Graham Norton reruns playing on the telly.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says cracking open two beers and handing one over to Harry, “We’d pick you over anyone anytime.”

And it’s the first in fourteen days that he feels any closer to being whole again.

He’s twenty.

He’s taking a sabbatical from college.

Because, “Drop out of college and you can expect all your shares at Styles Enterprises rescinded.”

The threats sound petty and trivial, but Harry is sure that the older Styles is dead serious. A man doesn’t run a multi-billion pound tech corporation without the ability to make good on his threats.

And he’s sure he won’t survive based on his mother’s mercy alone.

So he’s just “taking a term off.”

He moves his life to Spain and spends whole days devoted to a neverending summer siesta. He has the local pizzeria’s number memorised and he has a standing reservation at the quaint little tapas and vino place around the corner of his hotel.

“Alright, it’s been long enough.”

The curtains are drawn open eight days into his little self-seeking vacation.

“If you’re going to grab life by the balls, Haz, at least do it right.”

Zayn’s voice floats into his head through the drunken afternoon nap fuzz, varying in volume and tone like a badly tuned radio.

He’s apparently taken the semester off too.

They’re not broken, Zayn insists, maybe a little beaten, but it’s nothing that a good few weeks of life on the Spanish roads can’t fix.

So they rent a car and drive from city to city. Reading badly translated city guides they get from tourist attractions and plotting out their journey on the fly with Harry navigating from the front seat, eating chips and asking if he’s even reading the damned map right, bitching about Zayn’s terrible taste in music with all that grimy dubstep bass and dirty R&B.

He looks at Zayn and he’s alight during those days and nights, a mixture of crumpled cotton shirts, honey hued skin, and hair humbly adrift.

Zayn doesn’t say it, but Harry knows that he knows that the sudden trip directly coincides with the anniversary of Victoria leaving. He misses her, he misses her like the desert misses the rain and on the exact one year mark to the day that she walked out of their apartment, he gets so drunk that he’s just lying on the floor of their hotel room, staring at the ceiling and slurring his words.

“I was so fucking stupid,” he says, over and over.

“How could I possibly think that someone who gives her word that she’ll marry you, and then bails, could ever keep a promise?”

He is completely and utterly sloshed and his chest feels like a black hole.

“It was all a mistake, wasn’t it?” Harry slurs, beer spilling all over the carpet.

The room is spinning and his head is throbbing and he wasn’t to just power down and hibernate into the next century.

Zayn’s voice cuts through the clutter though, unforgiving and devoid of pity.

“No, it wasn’t.”

His best friend’s face is contorted into an expression he doesn’t recognise, “You loved her, that was real. And you still do, that’s still real.”

He goes on as-a-matter-of-factly, “People just leave sometimes, it’s just.. a thing that happens.”

Harry looks at his best mate, blurry and drunk. So, so drunk. Between the scent of tobacco and the misty haze of its smoke, he sees his best mate’s face and he thinks to himself that it’s the most glorious sight in the world.

He wants to reach out and examine his best friend in deep detail, touch him like a child greedily poring over a treasure map.

But his head pounds, his vision is sliding, and then he’s asleep; the world around him forgotten.

He wakes up with his head pounding and Poppy’s voice on speaker, “Dee’s dying.”

The dying person in question protests from the background, her voice cracking through the phone line like a whip, “FOR FUCK’S SAKE POPPY.”

“She’s in denial.”

Zayn doesn't even say a word and Harry, in his hungover daze, books two flights out to Paris from his phone as the two of them bicker on the line.

He wonders momentarily what it’s like to be loved so surely and confidently by him.

He wants to rip into Zayn’s chest and take his heart between his teeth to devour piece by piece, until there’s nothing left. He thinks that maybe, just maybe, that way he can have him to himself.

It’s a peptic ulcer, the doctor says, brought on by internalised stress.

“She’s got the stomach lining of a 60-year-old air traffic controller,” the man with the white coat chuckles.

Zayn is pale as a sheet as he refrains from throwing the doctor against the wall, “She’s an art history student in Sorbonne, what could she possibly got to be— You know what, I don’t even care. Just, for fuck’s sake—”

It takes both Harry and Poppy to drag him out for a smoke, the smartest course of action really, before Zayn punches out the men of the French private healthcare industry.

He calms down after exactly three cigarettes and the nurses let them into her room.

She’s resting, they say. But the doctors and the nurses know better than to use the words “visiting hours” with Zayn in the room.

They see it in his eyes that those words just don’t apply here.

He imagines them shaking their heads with a small smile curved on their lips.

“Ahh. Young love,” he pictures them saying.

Zayn falls asleep on the uncomfortable bedside chair, head lulling over awkwardly.

With a less than graceful yawn and eyes rimmed red, Poppy leaves and promises she’ll bring breakfast for them the next morning. A couple of croissants, some macaroons for them maybe, and coffee, she promises.

“Don’t bother with the cafeteria rubbish,” she says, “It’s absolute shite.”

Harry assumes that with Louis' obvious absence that the on-again-off-again pair are on an off stage in their relationship again. So he doesn't say anything.

He does wonder though if it's worst to feel like you've lost something you had or to never have had it at all while he kicks his heels up to make himself comfortable for the night. Or as comfortable as he can anyway, with his long limbs and overgrown hair smelling of travel sticking to his face in the single seater.

Moonlight is filtering in through the open window and the whole world is quiet, holding its breath.

Harry looks at his best mate snoozing in his combined fatigue of travel and worry, and his heart suddenly feels eleven times too big for his ribs. Perhaps the worst part about losing someone is if you never even had them to begin with, he thinks.

It’s almost sunrise when a voice distracts him from huffing and puffing, tossing and turning restlessly in the chair that just isn’t meant to be slept in.

“Your shit’s a mess, Styles.”

He lets go of a breath he didn’t know he’s holding in, shaking his leg that’s fallen asleep, “Says the one who’s hospitalised dealing with an art history degree.”

She rolls her eyes, “At least I’ve never missed a haircut appointment, seriously, can you even call that thing on your head, hair?”

“Nice to see you feeling better enough to nitpick at my appearance,” Harry chuckles softly, moving his chair closer to the bed, “Poppy says she came to see you because you’ve been awfully quiet lately.”

“It’s just,” she starts before her eyes shift, taking in his entire appearance, “Alright, seriously what is going on with that hair, and when did you stop buttoning your shirts, you look bloody ridiculous.”

“I cut my summer siesta short to see you,” Harry counters, indignantly.

“I’m sure it’s Zayn cut your trip short to see me, he worries too damned much.”

Desperate to avoid further teasing from the brunette about his life and his hair and his choice of clothing, he steers the conversation elsewhere, “So you do know your effect on him.”

She refuses to meet his gaze.

“Think you’ll ever give him another chance?” Harry presses on.

No one really knew what happened between the pair, just that they sort of were.

Until they weren’t.

“I dunno,” Dee shrugs meekly, “Think you’ll ever quit pining over Victoria and finish your degree?”

Harry grins, even from a hospital bed with a belly full of blood, she’s still sassing him. He mimics her simplistic reply mere moments ago, “I dunno.”

Zayn shifts in his sleep and Harry wonders if he should cough loudly enough to startle him awake and make an excuse to leave.

“What’s it like?”

Dee’s voice breaks through his reverie.

He looks at her, all weak and washed out against the light blue of the hospital gown, her hair splayed across the pillow a stark contrast against the pale of her neck.

“What’s what like?”

“Loving someone for so long.”

She looks exactly like an art history major for once, quietly contemplative, almost as white as a blank canvas and spilling life all over.

Harry reflects on what she’s asking for a moment, eyes landing on the snoozing Zayn before them even though he knows she’s talking about Victoria.

The words come instinctively.

“Like you know them better than you know yourself.”

He’s twenty-one.

He drops out of college and sells everything he owns right down to the designer suits and shoes and ties.

He snaps a picture of the emptied out penthouse that his parents have been paying for, and sends it to them with a note;

Off to make my own way.

Love, Harry.

It’s hard to leave, but even more difficult to stay.

London held too many memories. And it held him back from all the things he wants to do, and see, and experience. His parents lit a fire in him in his youth and the fire, rekindled by the weeks on the road with Zayn, burned too strong to ignore.

So he leaves London on a tide of careful planning and pure brute force of will.

The new place he moves into, in sunny Los Angeles, is completely and utterly a dump.

Harry takes one look at the unpolished floorboards and the old walls, the mould on the tiles in the bathroom and the threadbare couch in the centre of the living room, and he signs the lease.

The wallpaper is peeling itself off the walls, he has absolutely zero furniture apart from the couch that also doubles as a pull out bed, and not all the taps work.

But there’s two bedrooms, a lockable front door, and a piece of paper that says that it’s all legally his.

He loves it.

He builds his first million from that dingy apartment.

And even though Niall's the one who's in the same country code as he is, Zayn and Dee are hte ones who are over with two bottles of champagne within twenty-four hours of him texting the group chat; one to spray him down with and another to drink.

They hit town that night, drinking far too much, running into trouble like flies to honey. And he can't help but think, he's killing it at this adulting thing.

He’s twenty-two.

He’s back in London temporarily because Dee had called and promised to track him down in the city of angels and swing a baseball bat at his head so hard that it’ll be delivered to Zayn as a graduation present.

“It’s also his birthday, in case you’ve forgotten.”

So he buys the first flight out to London and takes a taxi straight to Dee’s address.

The first thing Harry notices is a scent; an utter Zayn-ness lingering in the air.

It’s early, the sun barely has time to get warm, and he isn’t quite up yet. It disconcerts him, that whiff of Zayn. It takes him back to the days where he would lie in his best mate’s bed, back in Wellesley. And hours long road trips in the windy roads of Spain and Portugal.

“It smells like Zayn in here,” he announces, without so much as thought of what the words would sound like out of his mouth.

Dee laughs.

Evidently, it sounds ridiculous.

But recognising the scent is instinctual, like breathing.

And he finds it ironic that becoming so familiar with someone that you can smell them in a room makes them feel like more of a stranger than anything.

“So threats are the only way I can get you home then?” Dee crosses her arms sardonically staring him down from across the room.

But there is a tinkle of delight in her voice that Harry recognises.

And she’s also biting her lip the way she used to when concealing a laugh.

A gust of wind blows in from the balcony and the thrill, that dizzying pull of one Zayn Malik runs through his veins like electricity, igniting them right to their ends.

Before he knows it, he is enveloped in the familiar combined scent of tobacco and lemon and bergamot.

A warmth floods through him.

Must be the sun, he thinks, from the now open balcony.

“You fuckin’ idiot.”

His grin is better than any drug Harry’s ever experienced.

Harry chuckles appreciatively, casually grabbing a slice of uneaten toast from the Dee’s plate and taking a hefty bite.

Zayn starts talking about his post graduation plans, joining his father’s company and working his way from the bottom up.

“I mean, Liam’s working with his dad and they’re making a pretty good run of it, I figure I’ll do alright.”

He keeps talking and Harry’s mind, half awake from the ten hour flight and lack of caffeine can still absorb the continued deep timbre of his voice as he starts excitedly babbling about how it’ll be the first time they’re all in the same place at the same time.

There’s a new lightness to Zayn and Harry’s not quite sure what it is.

He’s going on about how Poppy and Louis have finally gotten their act together and moved in to their own place when Harry completely loses track of his words. Zayn reaches out to grab a mug from the top shelf, moving around comfortably in the kitchen that isn’t his, and Harry’s mind can suddenly register nothing else. He is distracted by Zayn’s movements; swift and seamless.

The way he easily pours a steaming brew into the mug, scoops two sugar teaspoons of sugar into it, dribbles in some milk before giving the concoction a quick swirl has him enraptured.

He extends the mug out to him and Harry’s gaze snaps from Zayn’s hands to his face.

“What?” Zayn looks down at the mug in his hands. “Did I get it wrong?”

“No.”

"So?” Zayn questions with an expression of easy nonchalance.

Harry isn't sure himself, but his stomach is clenching uncomfortably and he doesn't think it's from the long haul flight.

“You and Dee normally have tea,” his mind is apparently just making words up as he goes.

“There isn't any caffeine in tea though is there?” Zayn points out with a chuckle, “And you’re quite the grouch in the mornings.”

He slides the cup over.

Harry takes a gulp; the coffee burns as it fills his mouth and slips down his throat, but the sensation is better than the alternative.

“I got almost everyone home and a reservation at Hibiscus tonight,” Dee stands up, announcing to no one in particular, “Please wear something that’s buttoned up all the way?”

The latter statement is aimed at him, disarmingly sincere.

“And try not to burn down my house while I’m out, will you?” Dee looks at Zayn accusingly after chucking her plate into the sink.

“First of all, it was your candle,” Zayn huffs, an inside joke he isn’t in on, “Second of all, the house is still very much intact, innit?”

She shakes her head, small smile playing on her lips.

And that’s when it happens.

Zayn leans forward and catches her lips with his own. Casually. Comfortably. As though it’s a daily occurrence between them.

Harry barely registers her kissing him on the cheek and walking out after that.

More than any heartbreak, Harry realises, is when you didn't even know there was something to break.

And everyone seems to be moving forward so rapidly; Poppy and Louis, Dee and Zayn, Liam, and even Niall who they barely see anymore because the bastard has the audacity to study medicine while knowing his own health decline, because, "a sick doctor? Come on, it'll be a fuckin' riot."

They all seem to be working towards something substantial in their life. Whether it’s moving in with your on-again-off-again partner or finally labelling your relationship status or fitting into the shoes you’ve been groomed for your entire life, they were all traveling in the same orbit.

Change, Harry thinks, is always bittersweet. A scary monster that hides beneath his bed that he's learned to battle since the age of four, that first big terrifying leap into the unknown guided by nothing but the certainty in his parents hand.

And he’s happy for his mates, really, in all their certainty.

There’s just this bitter taste in his mouth he can’t explain.

He’s twenty-three.

And by now, he’s had one too many broken bones to not instantly recognise pain when he sees it.

Harry knows deep cuts from scrapes, however hidden they are by blood. He knows how bruises hurt and age and heal. And he understands intimately the look of pure stoicism in the face of pain.

So when he sees her, he knows she’s hurting.

He’s at a wedding out in Napa Valley and she’s just by the bar, the wine glass in her hand never too lonely for too long.

He instinctively just meanders towards the girl who looked as lost as he is.

“Let me guess, you want to buy me a drink from the free open bar.”

Her accent American, her voice bored, and her expression unamused.

“I was going to go with the ‘make me the third happiest person in the room’ route, but that works too,” Harry counters before taking a seat next to the one exchanging the proverbial blood bleeding out through her chest with gushing red wine in her hand.

“You’re Harry Styles,” her voice perks up.

“Excuse me?”

He’s more than a little taken aback; he hardly calls himself a recluse on the long list of millionaire start up owners, but he ever really considered the fact that his face and name might be common knowledge.

“You’re the heir to Styles Enterprises,” she goes on, as though reciting from a list she’s memorised, “You stuck it to your old man by starting up your own company five thousand miles away and you refused his buyout even when your four most expensive start up acquisitions failed. You’re kind of legendary in the industry,” she raises the glass to her lips once more with an eyebrow raised.

He’s more amused by it than anything.

“And what industry is that?”

“Tech journalism,” she lifts her chin at the words, pride evident on her face, “My name’s Beth Matthews.”

“Is that how you met and fell in love with the groom, Beth?”

It catches her by surprise. She’s blinking rapidly at his words, as though wondering if she misheard him somehow, “What are you—”

“Call it an instinct,” he shrugs.

He tells the barkeep that he'll have what the lady is having and plants himself firmly by her side for the rest of the night.

It's a familiarity, he decides. Their connection is one of two damanged people who sought for a home in others without having the blame of being the one who did the breaking.

Harry Styles didn’t unwittingly fall in love with Beth Matthews, he jumped; head first, eyes closed and trying not to think of it too much.

In hindsight, he should have really seen it coming; she does, after all, have the dark hair and eyes to match.

He hates to admit it, but he does have a type. And one moment she’s reluctantly laughing at his jokes by the open bar at the garden party of a wedding reception, and the next she’s whispering secrets to him at 2am from the bathroom they’ve locked themselves in.

He can’t for the life of him remember how they had acquired exactly thirteen thousand inside jokes over a few hours and too many glasses of wine, but all of them made him laugh and they’re snuggled next to each other with every crook and cranny of their bodies fitting perfectly.

Beth’s hair, which held scent traces of a lemon-y shampoo and the cigarettes she’s been smoking all night, reminds him of both home and the open road.

It’s quickly becoming apparent, even in his alcohol hazed mind, that he’s liking this girl a great deal more than he had intended to. It’s evolving into more than what he had hoped for; a few drinks, a straightforward shag, and a number on a napkin that will never be used.

But it isn’t until he finds himself staring at that the way her brow furrows before she sneezes that he realises that he’s a goner.

Hoping to impress her, he recounts the exaggerated tales of how he aided and abetted in multiple runaway brides in Vegas while attending a bachelor’s party.

“If you want, I can totally steal the bride and keep her distracted while you go for the groom,” he jokes.

An inexplicable sadness returns to her eyes.

A distraction; that’s all it had been for her.

“You know, it’s refreshing to see someone who can afford to take a million second chances but still holds on so strongly to the first,” she says.

He loses his trail of thought at that.

“Victoria. You still love her don’t you?” Beth prods on.

“What?”

“I mean, that’s what this all is, isn’t it? You keep falling for the ones you can’t have, like you’re re-living some kind of a trauma,” she slurs, “And it all stems back to that first runaway bride, that first person you fell in love with but couldn’t have.”

There’s a silence between them and Harry’s not quite sure what to say.

He hadn’t realised that he’d told this stranger so much about himself. He definitely wasn’t expecting her to be as perceptive to his words and stories and nuances.

Yet there they are, both stewing in their bleeding hearts and a lung cavity full of confusion.

Stranger still, is that his mind didn't immediately go to Victoria. As a matter of fact, it's been months since he had even so much as thought about her.

“You know, when we were sixteen, we used to sit on his parents roof and dream of a life where we’d go make something of ourselves,” she reaches into her purse and pulls out the wedding invite, the very one that had the smiles of the happy couple plastered on, “And now he has. I’m just not in it.”

His mind is a riot; as if he’s been hit in the head and all the blood is rushing to his head.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts all of the sudden.

She freezes, turning her head to stare at him.

“Well, if we never felt pain, we wouldn’t appreciate happiness nearly as much as we do, now would we?"

His eyes lock on her own hazel hued ones, astonished by her eloquence after drinking half the bar dry.

“You really think it’s that simple?”

She thinks for a moment before deciding on a response.

“I hope so.”

Beth gets to her feet unsteadily and leaves him in the bathroom alone, taking his heart with her.

He’s twenty-four.

It hasn’t exactly been a fun ride so far.

Harry has lived in six countries, aided and abetted in five runaway brides, invested in four failed start ups, been in three fights, and had his heart broken twice.

And he’s pretty sure both times were by the same person, wearing different faces.

Which is probably why when he rushes into the bridal room to find Dee frantically pacing and on the verge of tears, he doesn’t know what his presence is meant to do or not do.

“Tell me something good,” she pleads.

“What?”

“I don’t know, I just—”

“No,” Harry declares, the scene all too familiar for him, “No, no, no, no, no. No! I am not about to find myself involved in a sixth runaway bride situation, especially not with Zayn on the receiving end, Addison, you are not doing this to me.”

His head is spinning and he can’t believe it, she starts saying his name when her head tilts in contemplation.

“Did you just say sixth?”

He assures her it isn’t the time nor the place for the story and she starts moving around nervously once more.

Fearing the worse, he asks relucatntly, unsure if he even really wants to know the answer. Unsure if the deepest darkest parts of him actually wants for an opposite outcome, “What’s wrong?”

“Just tell me something good, Haz, I need to hear something good.”

Her voice is pleading and sincere. And he doesn’t quite know what is good or true is anymore. So he goes with what he knows, “He loves you.”

Dee sighs, sitting herself down, eyes flickering to the bouquet in the corner.

“Zayn’s loved you since he was eleven,” Harry all but forces the words off his tongue.

He hates to admit it, but it had been clear to him since that first English period that Zayn is utterly unobtainable due to the fact that he already belonged to someone else.

“You may have thought that he was interested in a play thing, a doll, a pretty thing to put in a trophy case but you saw the truth eventually, you walked in love with him with your eyes wide open. You chose him every step of the way.”

“That’s just it, isn’t it?” Dee whispers, barely audible, as though she’s talking to herself more than she is talking to him, “Everyone keeps telling me that I love him and that he loves me. And that we make perfect sense together. But how do you tell the difference between something that actually exists and something that only exists because everyone tells you it does?”

“What are you saying?” Harry exclaims, “This is Zayn we’re talking about.”

“The same Zayn who nearly had a heart attack in the garden shed when you didn’t come back from that stupid prank,” he starts, “The same Zayn who came this close to punching out a French physician, the one who bought you that ridiculously expensive painting when you graduated Sorbonne.”

She looks up at him pacing around the room, like she’s thinking.

“I just can’t shake this feeling that that nothing about us makes sense, not the way that—” Dee stops herself mid sentence.

She looks uneasy, even more so than she did moments before, like she’s about to confess something terrible. And for a moment, he’s almost relieved. Almost.

“Not the way that it should,” she finishes the sentence somewhat inadequately.

Dee looks like she’s choking when he says it, like suddenly there is not enough air in the whole room to fill her cracking lungs.

Secrets are a weird thing, he thinks to himself.

“Maybe it’s not supposed to make sense.”

Harry’s not sure who he’s trying to convince more, really, himself or her.

He sits himself down right in front of the bride, reaching to hold her hands steady in his own because she looks like she might disintegrate.

“Maybe there are a million universes out there where you don’t meet Zayn, and you marry someone else,” he suggests, “But you’re here, in this universe, and it’s real.”

She looks at him in something like wonder and he doesn’t know if there’s anything else left to say.

There’s a knock on the door telling him it’s time.

He gets up to leave her to it.

She has probably two good minutes if she wants to run. It’s an instinct he quite understands.

He’s lived in six countries to date.

He’s aided and abetted five runaway brides, put his entire life savings into four failed start ups, been in three physical fights where he's literally had the lights knocked out of him, and had his heart broken twice.

But he’s standing next to Zayn at the end of the aisle on his wedding day. And his smile is so full of light when he sees the bride walk down the aisle, it blinds him.

He’s sure that their paths cross in a different million universes in a different million ways, some of which they probably don’t even so much as glance at one another.

Maybe in all of them, Zayn never loves him back the way Harry loves him.

But still, he’s here in this universe.

So Harry considers himself lucky after all.

[moonshroooms]

Hey here are some OC questions I found and am now answering cause I’m a dweeb

I got the questions from here:

http://ocaskmemes.tumblr.com/post/152807102007/some-oc-questions

in case someone finds this random post and wants to do the same questions as well :3

1. Your first OC ever?

Ah geez. I mean, technically I made a story about a baby unicorn when I was like, 7, but we’re not gonna count that one really. I’ll say my first OC (who I roleplayed as on the official forums), was a cat based on the series Warriors named Moonshine. And yes, she’s where I got my nickname from.

She was a silver tabby with icy blue eyes, and yes she was essentially a self-insert, lol. Overtime she grew into her own person, namely being much more patient and wise than I. (And overtime I grew up to be less like her anyways). She was a medicine cat and eventually I tied in a Forbidden Love™ from her Old Clan™ and her being in love with him caused her entire Clan to go extinct. Which really wasn’t her fault in the end and would’ve later been revealed to be one of the evil ancestors of my evil cat. But whatevs. Eventually her ex-lover found her and they were allowed to be together and have two adorable kittens, one of whom is absolutely bonkers and lovely and the ancestor of two later cats who eventually became human characters. <3

2. Do you have a personal favorite among your OCs?

I could nevaaaaar. While they’re listening. But keep it between us, yeah?

From my Warriors OC (all of whom are RP characters), are two cats named Grayskies (originally just Gray), and Snowfeather (Originally just Snow), two sisters. Gray is super srs and uptight and the best older sister and makes sure Snow doesn’t accidentally kill herself and Snow is a silly and conniving and random and acts more clueless than she really is. Snow ended up having an unhealthy attachment to her sister due to their childhood and, understanding it was unhealthy, purposely pushed Gray away so Gray would open her heart to others and have a romance with my friend’s OC, and is slowly devolving into madness not being the one most important person to her sister anymore. In the end she knows being the only other person in her sister’s life isn’t good for either of them, and she loves her sister more than anything and strives to make her sister happy and healthy, but didn’t try to fix herself either. Something, something, she ended up being tricked/forced by her brother-in-law’s evil dead twin to having his demon kit baby that she tried to kill in the womb by starving herself, something something. We got really out there with our RPs they were so fun honestly. As a side note, Gray and Snow are also my two characters who were later turned into humans. My friend and I loved Gray and Will’s (her OC), relationship dynamic so much we made them human. We actually had them bust into our new roleplay (and I plan on adding Snow in too, albeit a much healthier and less-obsessed Snow).

From my own personal story that I’ve been working on since like, 2013 (really slow-going, since I want it to be a comic, and 2013 is when I started drawing). Geez. There’s six characters. I feel bad about choosing from these guys. I think Caimen is my favorite from all of them right now. It’s a constant toss-up between him and another character. He’s a red-headed half-wolf boy and he’s a sweetheart. Most of his/everyone’s story is they’re genetic amalgamations of animals (though recently been debating to rethink the story into a fantasy instead). Caimen’s sweet and thoughtful and mega-crushing with my other OC. He ends up being a bit co-dependent with her (due to the wolf genes and childhood trauma yadda-yadda), but I planned on having an arc where Kitty (le crush) and maybe the rest of the group are gone and he realizes that without her (and the rest of them), around he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He realizes he thinks of himself as part of a group rather than an individual and has difficulty making decisions without the other’s influence. He’s not 100% sweet-kawaii-desu though. Anyone he views as a ‘lower rank’ than him he tends to be incredibly hostile towards and even cruel in some cases. He and Kitty have a tendency to gang up on my other OC (and while that OC is an absolute asshole and deserves it usually, he doesn’t deserve that antagonizing all the time).

And from my current RP with my friends (though it’s been on hiatus for a long time. RIP), I think my character Kit (Kitchi), is my favorite. It’s not really a big pool to choose from, since there’s really only 2 characters I have (with another on the way, but I haven’t played as her much yet). He’s the most adorable werewolf you ever did meet. Upbeat, optimistic, respectful, friendly, playful. He’s one of my most fun characters to date. He was actually morphed from a story I made long ago about wolves with elemental powers. Originally he was a descendant of ice wolves who meets up with a wolf who was a half-breed between fire and earth (giving her incredibly dangerous lava powers), and something something they go on a journey with others to extra murder people who tried to murder the lava wolf. I never did finish that story. Kit later was refurbished into my old Warrior RP with my friend into Kit/Kitpelt. Same personality, sans magical powers. I ended up never being able to play as him (since back then basically anyone without a major plot or romantic interest was dumped by the curb and forgotten and nobody wanted to be sweet on the little sugar muffin), but I still really liked him. And when my friends and I started up a new RP after a like, 5 years hiatus, BAM I turned him into a werewolf. (She was even excited to see him around and learn that he’s the same Kit from our old RP). He’s been waiting to pounce all this time and his moment is finally here, and he’s a wonderful goblin that everyone loves inside and outside the RP, I’m so proud. He even has the ice powers from his original story (though he didn’t get them naturally. That’s due to his dangerous siren friend and all their hilarious misadventures and her almost killing him a lot).

 3. Have you ever adopted a character or gotten a character from someone else?

Noooooooooooooooope!

 4. A character you rarely talk about?

Mmm. Probably characters from any old stories I never finished. But of currently active OCs, I’d say it’s my character Emily. She’s a part of my big story with my genetically-spliced children and is a normal human. She was the last of my main cast I created, which means she’s the least-developed of them all (hence why I don’t talk about her much).

She’s a 28-year-old half-white half-hispanic (I haven’t discovered/decided specifically what race/nationality she is yet. I only ever decided: something that speaks Spanish, lol) biological/chemical scientist. She’s got wavy hair that’s all over the place, freckles for days, big body, and a big brain.

Her mother (who’s the Hispanic parent), is a CEO lady of a large company and is very Business and Pantsuits. Though she’s very much in love with her job her and Emily are close and she loves her family dearly. Her father (the white parent), is a car mechanic (or maybe a car designer, haven’t decided yet), with a passion for inventing anything he feels like at the time, productive or not. Him and Emily are incredibly dangerous together and there’s next to nothing they can’t create. Emily was raised mostly by her aunt (Tia in Spanish, right?), who’s a lady who loves children (based on my own mom, tbh), but never had any of her own. After Emily was born she coincidentally ran into financial trouble and moved into her sister’s house to help raise Emily and get back on her feet while her parents were working. After she picked herself up again (during Emily’s teenage years), she successfully opened a day-care business where she gets to look after all the children she wants.

Emily herself joined our story after being kidnapped by my animal children and forced into being their doctor after one of them gets Horribly Ill (which is later determined to be asthma). After spending time with them she feels even more guilt about the Illegal Experiments which birthed them (though she didn’t have a direct hand in it. They were already born long before she joined), and defects to their side (losing her job in the process which means she has to move back in with her parents). Emily landed the job at the place the children were made, because they were really secretive and basically like Everything Here is Confidential If You Can’t Handle That Go Away (I’m not exactly an expert on underground operations okay sue me my story’s not very developed either). But she was fresh out of college, couldn’t land a job or pay her bills, and didn’t want to disappoint her parents, so she took the job.

After joining the group of misfit children she becomes a bit of a co-leader with the ‘actual’ leader Talon (who is incredibly grateful for her presence because despite being 18, he’s still a child who needs guidance himself and isn’t really qualified to care for 4 other genetically-altered children alone. Or at all). Emily’s very smart, curious (almost to the point of being nosy), and a bit of a worrywart. She gets a little into the children’s personal space when she starts investigating their anatomy or behavior and rambles way too much. She’s also not good with blood and bruising. Drawing blood from a needle or other female-related blood situations are fine, but someone gets a papercut or a bruise from kicking the table and she just flips the fuck out.

Emily is also incredibly protective of Caimen against his girlfriend Kitty, mostly because Kitty is incredibly Hand-sy and Flirty and Em acts like she’s gonna corrupt him.

Overall Emily tries to atone for what the Facility did to the kids and what they forced their lives to be like, and certainly gets flak from the children when they find out how much/little she knew about the Facility’s underground operations. I really need to develop her personally and her relationship with the other characters, as well as a bunch of other things.

 5. If you could make only one of your OCs popular/known, who would it be?

Kit, because he’s a lovely sausage that needs to be shared with the world.

 6. Two OCs of yours that look alike despite not being related?

Kitty and Caimen. I made them almost back-to-back when I first started drawing and Wasn’t Good At All, thusly they have similar design. Later on I got waaaay more diverse with both facial and body type. And down the road Kitty and Caimen got more noticeable differences, but they’re still pretty similar and on more than one occasion someone assumes they’re siblings. I’m probably not going to majorly change their designs just for the sake of making them different either. If I suddenly come up with a design that fits them better, I’ll do that. But I won’t do it for differences-sake, not when the rest of the cast is as diverse as it is. Two unrelated people looking alike isn’t unbelievable either – me and my one friend are often asked if we’re sisters.

Kitty’s a small, bony little thing that’s more muscle than anything else. Tan skin, dark brown/mottled hair, bright yellow eyes. I’ve debated whether or not she gets a normal collarbone or not since cats don’t get any o’ that. Her facial shape is very angular, with more of a triangle-shaped face and tiny nose.

Caimen’s in the middle between gangly-14-year-old and starting-to-fill-out-more. He’s got no noticeable muscles or fat, but isn’t bony either. Light skin, strawberry blonde hair, and I’m not sure what his eye color is yet, surprisingly. I have a hard time deciding between green and hazel. I’m probably gonna go hazel, tbh. Caimen’s got a rounder face and soft features.

One of the biggest things that’s similar with them are their animal-inherited parts. Kitty has the classic slitted pupils of a cat that expand and contract. And Caimen has slitted pupils that stay one size, but yo 2013 me, you remember that wolves don’t have slitted pupils right? I know it looks cool and you like the more feral look to it, but that’s anatomically wrong ya dingus. I can’t bring myself to give it up though, it doesn’t look like Caimen without it.

And yeah, they do have the basic cat/wolf-ears-and-tail design. I fretted over the basic design a lot when I first created my story, but personally? I really like these designs. And I know it’s not incredibly creative, but I wasn’t really striving to have a child with the body of a human and the upper torso of an actual wolf, or one of their legs is feline or it looks human but is shaped like a bobcat. I wanted my character to have some opportunity to be amongst normal humans, and them looking ­too inhuman would ruin that. (Though Kitty and another character Snake Eyes are the most animalistic out of all of them and really have to cake on the disguises to get by). And overall I like these designs. I know they’re everywhere but I don’t mind it much. This is the kind of story I’d want to read. Surely someone else has the same taste as me. And if someone drops the story because they’ve seen the design before and find it boring then they’re really not the audience I was looking for anyways.

And more than that, the one thing I’m proud of with specifically Kitty’s design is that my cat-girl has whiskers. Do you know how much that bothers me? Why don’t more cat-girls have whiskers they’re like the biggest staple of cats people name their cats Whiskers. I named my cat Whiskers. And I mean actual protruding whiskers, not lines painted on the cheeks like Naruto.

 7. Are your OCs part of any story or stories?

All of them, personal stories or RP stories. Absolutely none of my OCs were born in a void without at least a semblance of a larger story. I don’t understand how people make characters but not even have at least a vague idea for a story? Like they’re just there?? Are you magic??? How????

 8. Do you RP as any of your OCs? If you do, introduce one of your RP OCs here!

Tons of them! No like literally, back when I RPed Warriors my friend and I had literally hundreds of characters (many of which were dropped by the wayside honestly).

But that was years ago so we’re not gonna talk about them.

Instead we’re gonna talk about Cara (who I briefly mentioned earlier), my lovely little siren.

Cara’s a red-headed and very dangerous 22-year-old siren. In a strange turn of events that almost resulted in child murder, Cara befriended a young 16-year-old werewolf boy (they were 19 and 13 respectively, when they first met). In order to continue being friends Cara promise to stop literally eating humans and devouring their souls and lives a ‘normal’ life on land.

As a siren she can enchant men with her voice and hates women (though not because she’s a siren. There are reasons and experiences as to why). She is the depiction of a siren that usually crisscrosses with mermaids, but I do have a little history planned out that some original sirens (which are birb women), were saved from drowning by mermaids and mermen, who they fell in love with, and down the line aquatic sirens were born (and there’s still a distinction between aquatic sirens and mermaids, and boy do sirens hate mermaids).

Cara is very superficial, flirty, bombastic, a tad crude, and very dramatic. At the very least, on the surface. Sirens live in a kind of animalistic world, and only a few of them have some semblance of a society. The first human Cara ate was her father, a kind sailor who was dragged to the depths by her mother, and kept alive to raise the future child (though in her defense Cara was like, 6, and didn’t really understand the implications of sucking out his soul until after he was dead). When Cara was 13 or so her mother chased her off after they got into a spat over some food and Cara was on her own since. Because of multiple reasons that I won’t explain now, Cara believes that she (as a siren and as a female), is an inherently evil creature, and even if she does good things it really doesn’t change who and what she is at her core.

Despite her very loud personality, Cara desperately wishes to be someone people can view as a lady. Currently she tries to act more sophisticated and lady-like than she is, an act that comes across more like a child playing dress-up and quickly falls apart if someone triggers her quick temper.

Currently in our big supernatural RP, Cara has a romantic interest in the form of my friend’s fairy-banshee half-breed. Whether or not Cara would be able to ‘love’ him honestly is up in the air. I suppose we’ll find out :D

 9. Would you ever be willing to give any of your OCs to someone else?

So my friend often draws my character Gray (which includes any tiny, funny comics she might’ve drawn), since she’s rather woven into her character Will’s story. In fact she came up with a drawn design of her before I did (since I didn’t draw at the time, though I did tell her what the human version would look like) and she’s got her character pretty spot-on. One day it came to our realization that I had never actually drew her human version. Anyways, while I never ‘gave’ Gray to her, if I were to give someone a character, it’d be Gray to my friend.

 10. Introduce an OC with a complicated design?

Eh, I don’t know if I really have that tbh. I suppose one OC I had back when I first started drawing; a girl named J.C. who could turn into a raptor-like beast. That raptor was so fricken hard to draw and I only drew like one, shoulder-up drawing. But it’s easily one of my most proud creations.

 11. Is there any OC of yours you could describe as a “sunshine”?

Kit, hands-down. And human-Snow.

 12. Name an OC that isn’t yours but who you like a lot

I love my friend’s OC named Dante. And I literally know next-to-nothing about him, but he’s just a little unhinged and loads of dangerous and oooOOOh boy is that my favorite combination of traits! And he’s a cutie too :P

 13. Do you have any troublemaker OCs?

Absolutely. Troublemakers are the best kinds of people.

My character Kitty is pretty chaotic, and Snake Eyes is an asshole for the sake of it. Another character of mine, Hex (short for Hexagon), is a troublemaker, too.

 14. Introduce an OC with a tragic backstory

Hex, the character I mentioned above, has a pretty sad backstory (at least of characters I haven’t already mentioned. They pretty much all have a weird or sucky backstory). It does get a happy ending though.

Hex was created by J.C. (through a lot of magical power mumbo-jumbo that’s too long to explain here). J.C. turning into a raptor caused her mind to start forming two halves. Eventually the other half began to have a conscious until one day Hex said one word: “I”. And in that moment she realized she was a thing, a someone. And she desperately tried to find a way to get J.C. to hear her and know she existed. J.C. was all that she knew of the world. She was everything.

But unfortunately Hex’s voice were perceived as dark and evil thoughts, since Hex often disagreed with J.C. not killing people who tried to harm her. Eventually Hex grew powerful enough to change J.C.’s physical form. She greeted J.C. as a reflection in a puddle, turning J.C.’s face into a scarred, half-beast monstrosity. Since Hex was manifested from J.C.’s frequent transformation into her raptor form, that’s half of what Hex looked like.

Having half her face morphed against her will into a creepy abomination understandably terrified J.C., especially when she connects that this monster is where the thoughts of killing others comes from. J.C. calls Hex a demon and disgusting and Hex is completely confused and heartbroken. And eventually that pain grows to hatred. She was rejected from the being that created her and that she loved and admired with all her existence. And when the one thing you know rejects you, what do you have left?

Hex began to grow stronger over time, gaining more dominance over J.C.’s mind and body. Eventually she used the extra power that built when J.C. transformed to create a body of her own. Hex looks like J.C., but with pale, almost gray skin, and darker hair. The left half of her body being a mix between skin and scales, her hands devolving into a more claw-like shape. The left side of her face is scaled and scarred, with a shredded and veiny fin-like ear and much too-large eye that’s the same as the raptor’s eye. She runs off after separating from J.C., later returning in multiple attempts to kill her unintentional creator.

Eventually J.C. realizes from stuff and things and events, that Hex isn’t actually evil or a demon, she just wanted J.C.’s acceptance. And she’s hurting and doesn’t know what to do to make it stop. She’s almost a child in this world she leapt out into, and doesn’t know how to act and communicate what she needs. And when J.C. finally accepts her all the malice melts away. Hex quickly joins the group J.C.’s in and becomes a powerful ally with very strange powers and abilities.

Shortly after she joins the group, J.C. and co. realize Hex had no name. And after they tried to put their heads together for a name for her, Hex asks if she doesn’t get a say in it. She reveals to them her name will be Hex, and when they look at her for more indication and to why the flip-flap did you name yourself Hex of all things, she just tells them it’s short for Hexagon. And then she leaves like that didn’t just spawn more questions than it answered.

And as a side note: Hex where’s an outfit that’s very akin to a stereotypical genie outfit, because that’s exactly what it is. After shoving herself out of J.C. in the weirdest birth ever, she runs around naked for a while before realizing human people where clothes. She walks into the first clothing store she finds, a Party City Halloween-costume type place, grabs a genie costume, and leaves.

Dang this character is great why did I drop this story

 15. Do you like to talk about your OCs with other people?

No, because no one ever asks me. Which is very sad and also why I’m doing this ask thingy myself XD I do wish my friend’s would ask me questions though. I always ask them questions about theirs, even when it’s small, cause I know I’d want someone taking an interest in mine, ya know?

 16. Which one of your OCs would be the best at biology (school subject)?

Other than Emily, the literal biology scientist? Talon (a character I think I mentioned but didn’t name), would be a wiz at biology + have a passion for it probably.

 17. Any OC OTPs?

All of them. Everyone. Everyone that exists all at once.

Kitty + Caimen

Snake Eyes + Arachnea

Talon + Emily (though for poor Tally it’s his one-sided crush on her and isn’t reciprocated).

J.C. + a character I have an idea of but never created/named.

Gray + Will (does it count if it’s not my OC?? It does now)

Snow + Lewis (Will’s evil twin, with whom they’re in a mega dysfunctional relationship A+)

Cara + Bishop (my friend’s OC)

Kit + Anna (my other friend’s OC)

 18. Any OC crackships?

Naaaaaaah. Well wait.

Yeah.

Cara and Kit. Cara is very defensive and protective over Kit, and while they’re explicitly just friends seriously, it hasn’t stopped me from writing a piece or two where they end up in a very close Predicament. Cara didn’t grow up in a human society and therefore has no qualms or care about Minors = Off-Limits, so she did attempt to instigate something once or twice (though it was out of habit rather than interest), but miraculously Kit managed to keep things strictly platonic.

HOW-E-VER

I do have a few other pieces, which is the result of a never-gonna-happen-this-is-just-for-my-eyes-and-a-random-guilty-pleasure-cause-I’m-dumb AU where, due to whatever reason I never bothered to explain, Cara takes ahold of the siren magic she’s been subtly smothering Kit with over the years to ensure that he doesn’t turn against her (like she fears will eventually happen). She convinces him that he’s in love with her, which he believes. However he can’t stop the feeling that something is off. He knows that he does love Cara and she’s very important to him, but it just feels off.

In a different instance, (which is more true to their canonical history, but ultimately never happened and is still just for me cause I’m a dweeb), Kit kisses Cara out of anger from being dumped by a girl he really liked (and Cara’s subsequent unrefined attempt at comforting him). And when Cara kisses him back and it gets a bit heated, he immediately regrets it (thinking to himself that he’s not treating Cara like a human and hates the kind of person that uses someone as a rebound), and stops everything. To his surprise Cara isn’t upset (with either the kiss nor breaking it off), and only asks him if it helped. And when he admits it didn’t Cara gives him a hug and lets him cry and mope.

That second one is less of shipping and more solidifying how important Kit is to Cara (mostly in the ensuing conversation. He’s the first friend she’s ever had, after all, and she wants to help him however she can), and random sexual tension is there cause I’m complete garbage.

Yes I’m melodramatic for no reason and a complete trash gremlin fite me

 19. Introduce an OC that means a lot to you (and explain why)

Eh. Honestly I’ve mentioned all the ones that mean a lot to me honestly.

Moonshine is the first OC I’ve ever made. Kitty, J.C., and Caimen are the first OCs I made when I started drawing. Kit is just a loveable fuzzball.

Wait I thought of someone.

Ami, a wolf from a large story I made and the first story I’ve ever completed (and also the only story I’ve ever completed, not including shorts/oneshots XD). She was the leader of a pack of wolves who were forced out of their territory due to encroaching humans. It’s only of the few/only story I have with absolutely no supernatural/magical elements (if you’re not counting the fact that the wolves speak to each other like humans, lol).

Honestly it’s the story I’m most proud of, simply because I actually finished it. It’s pretty unrefined and I was kinda young when I wrote it. It’s obvious there are heavy influences from the Warrior Cats series, and also the wolves don’t run like a wolf pack does realistically at all.

But Ami’s story actually came to a close and a happy ending, and so she (and the rest of the cast), are very important to me.

 20. Do any of your OCs sing? If they sing, care to share more details (headcanon voice, what kind of songs they like etc)?

Cara, my siren, obvi.

For Cara’s voice, though she’s crass and rude and loud, I imagine the type of singing you hear from Celtic Woman, for example. When she’s doing her enchanting than it’s more sounds that words (and any words she does sing are usually in foreign ‘siren language’). It’s a haunting voice, like a singing spirit, beckoning you to investigate, to find out who, who is that? Her enchanting specifically focuses on instilling emotion rather than a command. It’s an invitation, a suggestion, to do what she wants.

Other than that she really likes R&B.

Caimen too. I imagine he really likes to sing, and has a fantastically high voice for it too. I don’t have any type of headcanon for his voice, however. I imagine he’s the type to like all types of music, but especially softer songs with a lot of emotion.

 21. Your most artistic OC

Arachnea, who I’ve only mentioned by name. She has a passion for makeup, fashion, and hair, and basically anything attributing to your appearance. Looks at a face like a sketch, and all she needs is to add a little color to finish it off. She loves being able to dress herself up (though her circumstances rarely allow her to do so), and be able to express her style and personality through her outward appearance.

 22. Is there any OC of yours people tend to mischaracterize? If yes, how?

Nah, because no one ever asks me about them.

 23. Introduce OC that has changed from your first idea concerning what the character would be like?

Oh geez, a few. I think the character with the most drastic change was Caimen.

Originally Caimen was created mostly as Kitty’s romantic interest (though it wouldn’t be all he is, obviously). In all honestly, Caimen’s ‘personality’, if you can call it that, was strikingly similar to Kisshu my long-standing OTP from Tokyo Mew Mew. I’m embarrassed to even think about it. Ugh. Originally he was cheeky and mischievous and flirty, and Kitty was not having Any Of It. Kitty’s personality was pretty different too back then, actually. Anyways, as time went on, Caimen quickly got a personality of his own and nOT ridiculously similar to my guilty-pleasure anime, and Kitty went on to be the cheeky asshole instead, which was honestly who she was from the beginning if it weren’t for me shoe-horning what I ‘wanted’ them to be like.

 24. If you could meet one OC of yours, who would it be and why?

AlL OF thEM.

But if I had to choose, probably Arachnea or Kit. They’re the ones who are honestly the friendliest and the ones I’d probably get along with best.

 25. The OC that resembles you the most (same hobby, height, shared like/dislike for something etc?)

AlL OF thEM.

No but, while they’re not self-inserts, it’s easy for me to pick out any part of me that might have slipped into the character (or that we just happen to share), even character that I share mostly nothing with.

Either way

Other than Moonshine, who was basically a self-insert (at first), Arachnea is the character I share most in common with personality-wise.

She’s shy, and not very confident in herself, but strives to be good to others in the same way she hopes others will be to her. She’s rather self-conscious, more in her abilities than anything else, and can get discouraged quickly, and takes other’s criticism to heart way too easily. Sometimes she needs someone to push her, even when it’s something she wants to do. Underneath she does have her own backbone, and if it comes down to it, she’d rather be a subject of ridicule than do something she doesn’t want to do. Arachnea is working towards being a more confident and assertive person, and is making great strides to being as bright and shining as she wants to be. Arachnea’s much more extroverted (despite her shyness), than I am, probably 10x nicer and calmer, and much more interested in fashion than I could ever hope to be, lol. But she’s a lot like how I was a couple years ago. I like to think I’m a bit more of the person I want to be, like hopefully Arachnea can be the person she wants to be one day.

 26. Have you ever had to change your OC’s design or something else about them against your will?

I’m not even sure what this question means. Like. Their design was too similar to someone else and I had to change it? Nah. Thankfully all my characters look like I want them too. And since I’m not legally publishing anything, no need to worry about legal anything ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 27. Any OCs that were inspired by a certain song?

Naaaaah. But plenty of songs that resemble my OCs.

 28. Your most dangerous OC?

Cara, definitely. And not just the male enchant-y powers either (though there is a dragon nearby she’d have total control over should she utilize that power). My sirens, on top of their singing, have another feature. By consuming human souls (and the souls of incredibly powerful creatures, or each other), they starting to grow pearls in their skin. These pearls are vessels of power, be it physical or magical (with different colored pearls having different levels of strength). A siren could, theoretically, become infinitely powerful by growing enough pearls (since consuming the souls of others expands their lifetime. Indefinitely, if they keep eating). Cara went on a massive killing spree before meeting Kit and has enough pearls to consider her incredibly dangerous to other supernaturals most other siren she might come across. Powers tend to develop based on personality and other traits. Cara’s actually an eel-like siren and has electricity powers that she was born with. She later begins to develop heat ability (not fire, heat), that she has trouble controlling due to her inexperience. She’ll actually burn herself if she uses it outside of water for too long/too hot, but she’ll be able to control it eventually. She used to have ice powers, but (from circumstances I won’t explain), those powers were transferred to Kit.

Either way, while Cara’s not infinitely powerful, she’s my most dangerous character currently and the character that has the potential to be the most dangerous creature on the planet.

 29. Which one of your OCs would go investigate an abandoned house at night without telling anyone they’re going?

Kit, seeing as he investigated a siren that already tried to eat him once.

 30. Which one of your OCs would most likely have a secret stuffed animal collection?

Talon, Arachnea, and Kit. But Talon and Arachnea would totally own up to it and Kit would be embarrassed to the moon and back.

 31. Pick one OC of yours and explain what their tumblr blog would be like (what they reblog, layout, anything really)

Kit would probably run a supernatural blog, full of both real and fake supernatural sightings, information, discussions, jokes, and more.

 32. Which one of your OCs would be the most suitable horror game protagonist and why?

Probably Kit or Arachnea. I don’t play many (or any), horror games, so I don’t know what the stereotypes are. But Kit would be the type to get himself into dumb situations over curiosity alone, and would probably be creative enough to get himself out of some sticky predicaments. And Arachnea is a beast when push comes to shove. Though she prefers to not fight physically, she’s literally my most muscular and physically strong character (not counting supernaturals), and if it came down to it she’d sock a zombie right in the face and probably knock its head off.

33. Your shyest OC?

Arachnea

 34. Do you have any twin characters?

I do actually, though they’re hardly fleshed out at all (I haven’t even decided on names). Kit has adoptive twin sisters, a couple of were-foxes his parents found abandoned in the wild. They managed to find them early enough in childhood development so they wouldn’t grow up into completely feral children (though they tend to prefer their fox forms to human forms).

 35. Any sibling characters?

Yes, yes.

Kit, as mentioned above, has adoptive twin sisters.

Gray and Snow are sisters (though I haven’t decided if their human versions are twins or not).

Cara likely has dozens of unknown siren sisters.

 36. Do you have OC pairs where the other part belongs to someone else (siblings, lovers, friends etc)?

Gray’s husband Will belongs to my friend, Snow’s boyfriend Lewis belongs to the same friend, and Cara and Kit’s romantic interest belong to my friends!

 37. Introduce an OC who is not quite human

Almost all of them. Let’s talk about one I haven’t said much on. Snake Eyes.

Yes, the characters in one of my stories have names that are almost all animal puns and there are actually reasons for it. Kitty was often taunted by people shouting ‘here Kitty, Kitty’. As a child she assumed it was her name. Talon was an uncreative kid who came up with his own name and relating it to the fact that he’s part bird. Arachnea read about the Greek mythology of Arachne and named herself Arachnea after her, since she’s part spider. Snake Eyes didn’t have a name until long after he met the main group. Arachnea used gambling to survive and explained at one point what snake eyes were pertaining to dice. He decided on his name based on that. And finally Caimen, who chose his name not based on what animal he is but what his favorite animal was at the time, a caiman. Keeping in mind that literally all of them are/were children when they named themselves and let’s be honest how many people would have the stupidest name if their 13-year-old-selves were allowed to legally name them? That was my point :D

Anyways back to Snake Eyes.

He’s part snake (black mamba, specifically. Fun!), and is an asshole. The biggest asshole around. You could see this asshole from space.

Physically he’s so fun to draw. He’s of Asian descent (haven’t decided what specifically though), but due to his snake-genes and him being the most animalistic-looking of the group, it’s not easily apparent. I did draw him if he wasn’t gene-spliced though and maaaan, Asian eyes (elapids? Or something like that. The folded quality they have to them?) are a little difficult to draw. I don’t know if it’s because it’s actually difficult or because I never drew them before, but it’s clear I’d have to work on it a bit. His limbs are a bit long for his body, as is his neck. I draw the back of his head a bit differently as well. There’s not much of a hook to it, the back of his skull goes straight to his neck in a smooth slope, and it gives him a more snake-like quality to the shape. He has fully functional venomous fangs (which I always draw reallyreallyreally big, though I should probably think about making them like, not saberteeth XD).

Coloring-wise, Snake Eyes is actually albino. His eyes are indeed pink rather than the usual human albinism coloring of light blue, but since his eyes are ‘snake eyes’ they’re pink and red. He’s also got himself a nifty, super skinny forked tongue and that weird tongue-hole snakes have. His skin is very fair and hair is light blond. Also he doesn’t have eyebrows, because snakes be hairless. So no eyebrows, eyelashes, or body hair (when he gets to the age of body hair doom), but I just couldn’t bring myself to make him bald though. I couldn’t. XD

Snake Eyes, as I’ve mentioned, at the beginning and end of the day, is an asshole. In the place him and the group grew up he was basically deemed everything they wanted him to be. They way they lined up for his genes to go went all exactly to plan, he had the perfect temperament and attitude, no major health problems. Except one: the albinism. So rather than being told he was perfect he was constantly told he was almost perfect. Cancer, eye problems, the albinism made him a risk factor for all that (and more, for when I do more research on albinism). Now, in actuality, the albinism didn’t really put him at a disadvantage for anything they needed him for. The reason they told him that was specifically to make him feel inferior, like he had something to prove. So he’d always, without fail, do everything he was told with little need for restraint because he wanted their approval. And it worked. Snake Eyes grew up with a massive inferiority/superiority complex (I’ve done little research on the two, and thusly am unsure which one fits his behavior more accurately). He constantly put down the other experiments in the same boat as him, antagonizing and reminding them that they’re more flawed than he is, lower ‘rank’ than he is, and completely expendable unlike him; that if it came down to it they might just be used as a guinea pig. All the while he feared his own flaws and needed to remind himself that there were others who were horribly flawed (which they hardly were, but he acted like it anyways to comfort himself).

Eventually, after the facility disapproved of a failed mission of his and his near-death experience because of it, Snake Eyes decided he’d never gain their approval, and that it wasn’t worth it to never hear that he was perfect. And he successfully escaped due to their belief in their control over him and thinking they needed no devices to ensure he didn’t leave. He did stab a tracking chip out of his arm with a dirty sharp rock and nearly bled to death as a result, but he gets saved by lo-and-behold, our ragtag group of escapees that he failed to catch in the first place. And, being a person who will do anything that benefits him regardless of pride or morality, saw fit to join them when Arachnea was willing to put up with his bad attitude. Eventually he comes around and is legitimately on their side, but Arachnea is definitely the main reason he stays, as Kitty and Caimen hate his guts (and he lovingly reciprocates), and Talon and Emily are mildly agreeable towards him at best.

Eventually he grows more confident in himself with some support from Arachnea. Unfortunately for everyone this didn’t result in him putting others down less or becoming less of a pain, but instead becoming completely self-absorbed and convinced of his own greatness. And I honestly love every second of it. And the worst part is that he is as great as he often spouts he is. He’s very intelligent, physically capable, and dangerous to-boot. He’s snarky, sarcastic, and intentionally antagonizing to Kitty and Caimen (purely to prod a reaction or violence from them only for him to smirk that he could enrage them so easily). The only person safe from his prickly tongue is Arachnea (though he was certainly cruel to her at first). He came to admire her quiet backbone and endless compassion (and learned at some point her fist is very painful), and fancies her the only person he doesn’t find annoying and he’s genuinely fond of.

I do have a bit of a romance with him and Arachnea, but there’s a 3-year age gap, so that doesn’t happen until they’re at a much more acceptable age. That, and Snake Eyes is asexual, so it takes him a while to figure out. And though doesn’t fancy Arachnea physically, he enjoys her company and knows she’s the most important person to him and wants it to be reciprocated. Arachnea on the other had is a big fat romantic sap and, while she’s the one that gets a crush first, doesn’t push him to do more than he’s comfortable with. There’s a bit of angst on her side at first after she realizes her feelings for him and her believing it would be completely one-sided. And *cough* when they’re both ConSEntiNG adULtS and whatnot, while he’s completely neutral to the deed, he does ‘pamper’ her from time to time iF yOU kNoW what I’m SAYiN’.

Down the road him and his group will probably get tighter bonds (or at least a somewhat positive relationship), but I haven’t really thought that far ahead in the story. Or at least, I haven’t found the trigger that starts the slow process of them working together better.

P.S., Snake Eyes being an albino black mamba means he’s a white black mamba and that amuses me to no end.

 38. Which one of your OCs would be the best dancer?

Caimen and a side character in the same story as him named Candy (Candace). Caimen is already pretty in-tune to music and rhythm anyhow, and while he doesn’t ‘know’ how to dance, were he ever to take classes he’d be A+ bomb at them. And Candy is a big party girl and, while she’s certainly no professional, knows how to shake it how she likes, albeit she may look silly from time to time :P

 39. Introduce any character you want

Hey, let’s introduce a couple of side characters I have!

Amy and Candy (Candace). These are a couple of minor characters in the story I’m writing with all my half-animal children. They’re part of Talon’s co-workers and a large backstory for them happened to crop up despite me not intending to make one.

Amy and Candy met in the 4th grade. Amy Luong is a very shy Vietnamese girl with a love for writing stories. She’s always alone with her nose stuck in her notebook. One day Candace Carter, a very outgoing Welsh girl, snatches her writing from her hands and reads it. Candy quickly falls in love with the story and characters in the little she scans and makes Amy a deal: They’ll be best friends and make a team. Amy writes the story and Candace plays the roles. They’ll become a famously successful and beloved duo in Hollywood!

And Amy’s reaction is: ‘what the fuck who is this girl give me my notebook back ur rude the hell?’ And calls Candy out on her rudeness, the fact she read her notebook without permission, and is angry that Candy thought any of it would be okay. Candy counters that she’d seen Amy turn people away before when they asked to see the notebook and this was the only way she’d see what’s inside. And while Amy admits to herself that it’s true, it doesn’t make it okay. And she flatly turns down the ‘plan’ Candy laid out for them.

After a lot of pestering, a bit of stalking Amy to her place of residence, a lot more pestering (much to Amy’s chagrin), begrudging hanging-out time at recess, and a fantastic display of acting talent, Amy finally opens up and the two become friends.

And the two work towards the dream little Candy decided for them long ago. Candy works towards the big-screen and Amy strives for a spot behind-the-scenes. They both know it’s a lofty and risky dream, but it’s a dream they want to work for and a dream they have passion for. And with their personalities clashing and working together, there’s certainly no shortage of stories and ideas that have a real chance of getting them into the film industry.

Amy’s very much a shrinking violet kind of person. And while she definitely didn’t appreciate Candy trying to forcefully barge in her life, she’s happy to have her as a friend in the end. She likes all things with a story, from comics to cinema to anime and reading. She’s a very smart and creative girl, but a bit socially awkward and very stubborn.

Candy’s almost the exact opposite; a social butterfly, confident, bullheaded, and a bit manipulative. She loves being in the spotlight and being in charge. She could get behind not only acting, but directing as well. Hollywood is her ideal fantasy and she has the looks, talent, and drive to make it a reality.

These two characters are just fun to write, especially the way they work off each other. Candy especially is a bit odd in that one quickly learns to not make promises or play along with Any of her ‘pretend’ schemes, no matter how ridiculous, cause you never, ever know when she’s serious. Amy accidentally made a blood pact that if they’re still single the day before one of them turns 40 they’re going to elope and marry each other so, as Candy puts it, “no one can call us old spinsters.”

In a little side-story I made, after Amy comes out to Candy, Candy asks if Amy had ever had a crush on her. Amy admits that (while she’s like a sister to her now and couldn’t possibly think of her that way) yes she did have a crush on her when they were younger, a little bit after she’d started warming up to her. She recalls that she squashed the feeling since she was embarrassed by not just a crush, but a crush on a girl, and what Candy or anyone else might think of her. And as time went on she matured and accepted and was happy with herself, and happy her family and friends were accepting and it didn’t matter to them who she was interested in if she was happy. And she tells Candy:

“You were pretty, and clever, and inspiring. And you still are, honestly. And later on the closer we got, the more I got to know the real you, I realized,”

And Candy’s gushing at this point because who doesn’t love compliments?

“That I dodged one hell of a bullet.”

Candy: :|

“Like, Candy I love you, but you are the hot mess of a hot mess. I’d probably pull my hair out if I had to be your girlfriend.”

Candy: :/

“Like my god I feel so bad for your boyfriends. Remember that one time with Andre when you—“

“AlRiGHtY theN hOneSTY hOur’S OVER.”

 40. Any fond memories linked to your characters? Feel free to share!

I think my fondest memories are when my characters slapped me in the face and said ‘no that’s not how I act I do things like this’ and go completely opposite of what I envisioned.

Most notably was Kitty, who was originally a design I drew that would represent me and was a blank model I could use for vent art. I didn’t even get to draw her a second time before she seemed to grab me by the collar, shout what kind of person she was exactly, and chucked a random story and two other characters at my face. It’s certainly a decision I’m perfectly happy with, as the result birthed many characters I absolute love and a developing story that’s kept me going for years. It’s definitely the story I’ve stuck with the longest, despite it all not being fleshed out. It’s so much fun.

Second is my character Snake Eyes, who I originally had as a pure villain character and was slated to die. But at some point all these ideas started cropping up about how he’d interact with the other characters in a non-hostile setting and hmmm, I bet he might actually get along with this character. And at that point it felt like he was completely offended I planned to kill him, like, did I even know who he is? How dare I, lol.

 41. Has anyone drawn fanart of your OCs? If yes, maybe show a picture or two here (remember sources & permissions!)

Yes, I suppose! My friend has drawn my OCs and aaaaaah I die whenever it happens it makes me so happy! She’s a much better artist than I since she’s been at it since she was little, but I love her art style so much and love seeing her take on the characters! AAAAAAA~

 42. Which one of your OCs would be the most interested in Greek gods?

Arachnea, considering her namesake is based on some Greek mythology. And my character J.C., who’s very lost and doesn’t know what she wants to do in life, but has a passion for history and lore and legends.

 43. Do you have any certain type when you create your OCs? Do you tend to favor some certain traits or looks? It’s time to confess

Oh dear I do believe so >~< For one I have a bit of a bias towards drawing somewhat attractive people in the face department. I’m not gonna say every one of my characters is Aphrodite or anything, but I certainly haven’t drawn anyone that’d be considered unattractive, at least by my standards. On that note, Emily is probably the most average-looking I’d say, though she’s not unpleasant to look at. I don’t know man. They don’t all have the same face or anything and have a mix of traits that people might consider conventionally attractive or unattractive. Kitty for example is very bony and angular, with a small button nose and very thin lips. Arachnea controversy has a big/wide nose, with full lips, sort of half-lidded eyes and thick eyebrows. Snake Eyes has a very long oval-shaped head, a flattened face, and large eyes. Emily’s got kind of a baby face, with a little nose and eyes, and a really big forehead and freckles all over. Talon has a very square jawline with a prominent nose and wide chin. They’re all different. I guess it depends on your taste on whether or not they’re all attractive? Snake Eyes, going by the description, seems like the most ‘unattractive’ person, but I think he’s one of my cutest ones tbh but eeeeh maybe I’m not the best judge of faces.

Second, in the personality department, I definitely favor my characters that are more animalistic, or have a primal side to them (see: Kit). I mean, I have so many beasty characters for a reason; animals are my passion. So when a character sees the world in the way an animal might, or whose priority in everything is survival, or has a trigger in which they become more beast than man, I get so invested in their psyche. And while not all or even most of my character have that, I certainly favor the ones that do. It’s so interesting to think about.

 44. Something you like about your OCs in general

How fun they are. Even my character Gray, an uptight pantsuit all-professional type lady, is fun to write. And though much of Gray’s humor comes from her being a straight man, she still can roll with the punches and dish it out occasionally. They’re all just a joy to write and watch, mostly when they interact with each other. And I have a blast making their day or breaking their spirits. I love when they do something unexpected that deviates from what I originally imagined.

 45. A character you no longer use?

Tons, I’ve listed a bunch already. Moonshine and 99.99% of all my old Warrior OCs. Plenty of OCs from stories I never and will never finish. There’s so many. I only regularly think and write about a handful of them now.

 46. Has anyone ever told you that you treat your OCs badly?

Nope, because no one ever talks to be about my OCs.

 47. Has anyone ever (friendly) claimed any of your OCs as their child?

See above answer.

 48. OC who is a perfect cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pure

Arachnea and Kit. They deserve nothing of what I do to them. And there’s nothing they can do to stop me.

 49. Which one of your OCs would most likely enjoy memes

Kit is confirmed to like memes. He’s 100% garbage. He and my friend’s OC write ship fics about the other characters in our RP and send them to each other. Their favorites are the crack pairings and genderbend AUs.

 50. Give me the good ol’ OC talk here. Talk about anything you want

Blah I was gonna talk about my OC Kitty, since I’ve mentioned her a bunch but didn’t introduce her. But I made the mistake of going to bed before answering the question and now I’ve lost my motivation so pbbbbbbth. Maybe I’ll go back and edit this one day, but that day is not today!