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woeisme-iamwoe · 3 years

Text

an absolutely massive Haikyuu!! fic rec pt. 2

IwaOi this time around. My favorite ship. The world’s favorite ship...there’s so many

Undecipherable, by ioo (4k. G. canonverse)

I’m pretty sure the author meant ‘indecipherable’, nevertheless! I am appalled that this work doesnt have more hits. Y'all are sleeping on it and that's not okay.

The sound of the door slamming against the wall has Hajime startling back to the present. He looks at the source of the disturbance and finds himself face to face with Oikawa, red in the face with breathlessness and a leather-bound notebook tightly clutched in both of this hands. When he spots Hajime, he makes a beeline for the bench and slaps it down right next to him.

"Koi no yokan," he says. "The sense one can have upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall in love."

primavera, by tothemoon (8k. T. canonverse)

All of tothemoon’s works read so beautifully

They say it takes twenty-six years, for certain breeds to fully bloom.

Learning to Walk (So That We Can Run), by ricekrispyjoints (27k. M. canon-divergence)

I've read this work so many times. Like, so many times and I’ve never tired from it. Gorgeous. The shift from friendship to romance felt so natural, love it.

"I'm not healing like I should be."

In his second year of university, physical therapy just isn't cutting it. Oikawa's knee is getting worse, and he can't hide it anymore.

Or: the light angst, project-your-own-life-experiences-on-Oikawa knee surgery fic you didn't know you wanted.

Priorities, by weirdmilk (2k. T. canonverse)

Kissy, kissy.

‘I just -’ Oikawa begins, ‘it might be difficult to get married, sometimes, I think.’ He chews on his lip.

Iwaizumi makes a questioning noise.

‘Ah,’ Oikawa says, and then, in a rush, ‘if I didn't want a wife at all - what then? If I said that to you. If I told you I can’t see it. Like - the wedding dress. The bride. I just can’t see it.’

Iwaizumi swallows again, his heart beating much faster than the conversation warrants. He wonders whether Oikawa can hear it. ‘You’re eighteen. You aren’t supposed to see it yet.’ He snorts. ‘I mean - if we’re sharing shit, I’ve never even kissed a girl.’ He doesn’t mind admitting it. It’s not something that bothers him - he’s never prioritised girls very highly, and despite Oikawa’s largely undeserved status as Miyagi’s most eligible teenage bachelor, he doesn’t think Oikawa has ever wanted a serious relationship with any of his fan club, either.

Oikawa and Iwaizumi can't sleep before their first practice match with Karasuno.

Before Midnight, by fathomfive (2k. G. canonverse)

Reads like a fairytale.

The sky turns, the seasons turn over, and Iwaizumi and Oikawa track the movements of the stars. Nothing is ever quite constant, but it's close enough.

The grass is stiff with frost. They walk in silence past the raked-over vegetable garden and up the back hill, footsteps crackling, and stand side-by-side at the top of an incline that used to seem much bigger. Iwaizumi glances over but Oikawa’s already gone, eyes searching the sky with no hint of hurry, just a kind of reverent patience.

make a bet, keep a promise, by raewrites (13k. M. canonverse)

Bet still on.

Sometimes, in still moments, Iwaizumi wonders why out of all the people on earth he ended up with Oikawa Tooru. Why it’s his face that lingers on his fading conscious in the last moments before he falls asleep, in the first blurry seconds upon waking up again. Why when he looks to his side, he expects Oikawa to be there in the same way he expects to see five fingers on both hands, a natural extension of himself, ever present.

Why he can’t imagine a future without Oikawa in it.

It begins with a bet made between the two boys in the mid-summer of their eighth year. It starts with volleyball, but like with most things involving Oikawa Tooru and Iwaizumi Hajime, things are never quite that simple.

our hearts still beat the same, by knightswatch

two birds, by thelittlebirdthattoldyou (5k. T. canonverse)

Of heartbreaking letters and paper crane wishes.

Five months into the term, two months after he’s stopped replying to Oikawa’s texts, the first package arrives. A small square box, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, and Hajime almost trips over it on the way to his dorm.

There’s a letter attached.

Oikawa doesn’t know how many times he’ll have to put his feelings down on paper before Iwaizumi believes them.

Through My Eyes, by anchoringsouls (2k. G. canonverse)

Okay! Okay, we were doing great with the soft, happy love up until the last part! That's great, just great!

“I think if you ever saw yourself through my eyes, you would fall in love with yourself the same way the way I did with you.”

in time it could be ours, by deusreks (3k. T. canonverse)

Anyone wanna go back in time and make a time capsule with me only to dig it up years later and we’re actually in love?

Set post Seijou's match with Karasuno. There's a moderate amount of rolling in the dirt. No pajamas were hurt in the writing of this fic.

There, in their joint backyard, was Oikawa Tooru, clad in his silly luminescent space pajamas, digging a hole near a cherry tree.

“What the hell, Oikawa.”

Tooru stubbornly continued digging. He looked pitiful in that moment; everything that was grand about him in daylight was meaningless in the darkness. He was only a boy with a shovel whose broken heart mirrored Hajime’s own.

we can do better than that, by spaceburgers (16k. M. canonverse)

Of course, of course, the IwaOi road trip fic. AnD thErE wAs ONly OnE bED!

Oikawa and Iwaizumi go on a road trip during the summer after their high school graduation. It doesn't go as expected, but maybe that's not such a bad thing after all.

They Say it Rains Diamonds on Jupiter, by exsao (35k. T. canonverse)

I don't know, just gorgeous. Hajime’s so in love.

"You're in love with him."

Hajime considers denying it. He considers deliberately choking on his drink to express surprise, to create a distraction by spitting onto the man in front of him's pristine white shirt and causing a commotion. Instead, he swallows his mouthful of soda and heaves a small sigh once his mouth is free.

"Yeah," he says instead.

He's never been good at lying, anyway.

Midnight boys/sunset town, by carafin (10k words. T. Housemates AU):

The author says they played off of the fact that Oikawa oftentimes forgoes his sleep in order to work, and wrote it so that he doesn't sleep at all. This was so cute, kinda sad, mostly not. Love how Iwaizumi just goes along with whatever crazy stilch Oikawa is on.

In which Iwaizumi Hajime grows a few chili plants, participates in an eating contest, breaks into a park, and falls in love with a man who doesn't ever sleep - not exactly in that order.

5 Reasons Why Iwaizumi Hajime's Flatmate Is A Complete Weirdo (An Incomplete List)

1. He's obsessed with that stupid bucket list of his.

2. He's the proud owner of seven truly ugly, criminally hideous movie posters with aliens on them, which he insists on pasting all over the damn living room.

3. He's always stealing Hajime's sweatshirts.

4. Sometimes, he wakes Hajime up for breakfast. At 5AM. On Saturday mornings.

5. He literally never, ever sleeps.

The Best I Ever Had, by FindingSchmomo (62k words. T. Canon-divergent):

You’ve read it, your mum’s read it, your dog has probably read it (you really need to take facial recognition for him off your phone, he’s got some weird nighttime habits). So basically this fic caused me physical pain and then pumped me full of morphine and now I’m good! Beautiful read, hated Oikawa for a while, Iwaizumi is the only boy I would ever feel safe alone with.

A story of separation and time lost. Oikawa and Iwaizumi lose contact, and life goes on. Now, a decade later and back in Japan, Oikawa wonders if he can pick the pieces back together, despite knowing Iwaizumi has moved on. A story of their past, present and future, pieced together by shaky hands.

darlin', your head's not on right, by aruariandance (13k words. T. canonverse)

Again, I’m pretty sure anybody who's anybody has read this fic and for good reason! Super sweet realizing you're in love fic. Makes me reconsider wanting to get married.

'“Our wedding,” Oikawa says by way of explanation, tapping his finger against his magazine more emphatically. “What colors should we use? Color scheme is important, apparently.”

Iwaizumi feels his lifespan shortening.

“I was thinking our Aoba johsai colors to go for more, you know, softer tones? Besides, I’ve always looked great in that sea foam green color. Oh, and I guess you look decent in it, too.” He grins, saccharine sweet, and Iwaizumi has never been so tempted to knock one of his perfect pearly white teeth right out of his stupid mouth."

or,

Oikawa teases Iwaizumi about a childhood promise he made to marry him when they were older, except suddenly it's not really a joke at all.

the courtship ritual of the hercules beetle, by kittebasu (66k. T. canon divergent)

Is this one of the most famous Iwaoi fic? I don’t know. Looks like it, I know it's my personal favorite. Where Oikawa studies bugs for a living and can’t seem to come to terms with his feelings. Very angsty, love that in a fic.

Tooru is pretty sure he could manage the mating habits of a mosquito. It’s the mating habits of people he can’t seem to get right.

Terrarium, by sausaged (11k. T. Post-canon)

Honestly, I’m so surprised this fic doesnt have more hits! It’s so good! Made me ache! I love the memories and character growth shown through the growing of the terrarium, absolutely adore that kind of symbolism. So beautiful, give it some love because it's one of my absolute favorites.

He's practically a professional at being proactive (lies, lies, and lies when it comes to Iwaizumi).

At this point, is he really happy with just staying best friends forever? Will he be writing journals and collecting rocks forever (he will, he knows, but that is aside from the point)?

Can he really tag his Instagram photos with #YOLO if he doesn't actually put that phrase into practice?

A story about Oikawa Tooru, Iwaizumi Hajime, plants, and rocks.

Lips like sugar, by ohhotlamb (8k. T. canonverse)

Why did my childhood best friend never offer to help me practice kissing only for us to realize we were only interested in each other? I had a fake high school experience.

Hajime is offered to learn the art of kissing from a true professional, one Oikawa Tooru. It's not as bad as he thought it would be.

Falling Slowly, by bravely (commovente) (3k. T. canonverse)

So special, imagine loving one person, and one person only like this for the entirety of your life. This is getting too sappy, I want off of this ride.

over the years, some things change; but over the years, some things stay mostly the same.

(alternatively, mornings with oikawa and iwaizumi over the years).

No sleep in the city, by loveclouds (7k. T. canonverse)

Mass/volume = Iwaizumi, apparently. (Please. If anyone gets this absolutely horrific joke, lets elope).

Along their journey to find Tokyo's best ramen, Iwaizumi finds himself asked again and again why Oikawa is still single.

Time, by surveycorpsjean (5k. E. canonverse)

Growing older together.

When they're twenty-three, their story only begins.

Everything With You, by Ellessey (14k. E. canonverse)

Came damn near to crying, you can just feel Iwaizumi’s pain. Fight scene was probably the most emotion evoking one I’ve read in a long while.

‘Hajime still loves Oikawa, but he understands now. Oikawa can't look at him and see someone he could potentially date.

And that makes it easier to not focus on the little things that used to drive him crazy—Oikawa's long legs, the way he's always hanging off of Hajime, how his whole face changes when he gets ready for a jump serve, and he looks like he could take on the entire world and win.

This new arrangement though, this living together situation, is presenting a new set of variables that must be adjusted to, and the nakedness is one of them.’

For years, being Oikawa’s best friend has worked out fine. Hajime is hopelessly in love with him, but it’s enough. Then Oikawa—who, by all accounts, has never been anything but determinedly, assuredly straight—gets a boyfriend. Or a boy friend-with-benefits. Hajime doesn’t know, and he doesn’t give a shit about the definition.

What he knows is that remaining best friends is starting to seem a bit too painful (way too painful) to be considered a solid option.

The Best Best, by rikke (12k. T. canonverse/future fic)

Takeru is a whole mood. Don’t want kids, but I do want domesticity and this fic feeds me well.

“Congratulations, Iwa-chan! You’re a dad!” Iwaizumi hears as soon as the door opens. He’s dealt with Oikawa for all of his twenty-one years of age now, but this declaration is still sufficiently disturbing enough that he turns from his place on the couch and braces himself for whatever Oikawa has done this time.

Or the one where Iwaizumi and Oikawa babysit Takeru for a week.

cheek kisses, by ohhotlamb (G. 3k. Future fic)

Sooo cute!!

“Every time,” Hajime murmurs, “every time I see you again I remember how fuckin’ crazy I am about you.”

Routine, by snoqualmie (2k. T. canonverse)

Again, anyone wanna be my childhood best friend so we can put face masks on each other and fall in love? I died, truly.

Iwaizumi is fourteen years old, horny too often and angry all the time, and he’s just starting to notice that Tooru’s legs are really long, that his lips are kinda soft looking, and his fingers feel good pressed under his jaw.

Thirty Years and Change (the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad, by sunsmasher (19k. G. canon divergence)

Be wary, I would give this fic an upper rating to probably Teen and the follow-up fic is Explicit. But, Oikawa on the Japanese national team is just a dream as is, but add in a rekindling friendship and an angsty make out sesh? Mwah, delizioso.

It’s July 10th, 2024, and Oikawa Tooru is an Olympian. His smiling face airs on an NHK promo every 45 seconds. He’s captain of the national men’s volleyball team, reigning star of the professional leagues, and he hasn't spoken to Iwaizumi Hajime in two years.

He has, however, sent Iwaizumi tickets for the 2024 Los Angeles Summer Games.

“So go,” says Matsukawa's voice. “It’s only a few weeks. You’ve got a whole city to hide in if it gets awkward, and if it doesn’t get awkward, well…”

It’s like watching the future reconfigure, like being in high school again, watching team after team fall to Oikawa’s faultless planning and shameless charm.

“I’ll get to watch a whole lot of volleyball,” Hajime says, and resigns himself to fate and/or Oikawa Tooru.

“Hey, when you get there, can you bag a gymnast for me?” Hanamaki asks, and Matsukawa squawks.

Chasing Paper Suns, by carafin (10k. T. Future fic)

Again with the growing up and coming back together, this time with more angst than the last. Lovely, really lovely read.

Post-high school, Oikawa makes it to the national volleyball team but Iwaizumi doesn't. The next three years become an exercise in growing up without growing apart.

Some days Hajime likes to think of himself as Oikawa’s counterpart—the two of them blending into a single devastating unit, the invincible setter and his unyielding ace, the bond between them unbreakable and true. Other days he feels like he is chasing after a rising sun, always running and running with his eyes fixed on the distance, trying to cross a chasm that stretches on without end, caught in an endless and exhausting pursuit.

the yellow room, by ohhotlamb (14k. T. canonverse/future fic)

Makki and Mattsun see bullshit and call you out on your bullshit.

“I told you, we broke up like six months ago. We’re not dating anymore.”

Hanamaki eyes him suspiciously. “You live together.”

“Yeah, so?”

“There are pictures of you two kissing stuck to your refrigerator.”

Hajime shrugs. “That wasn’t my idea. Anyways, they’re good pictures. Good lighting.”

the river runs, by tothemoon (11k. T. post-breakup)

My heart ACHES. Happy ending, promise! Just read it.

One year since their breakup, Oikawa Tooru starts a list of daily reminders, tips, and tricks called HOW TO FORGET ABOUT IWAIZUMI HAJIME, and he’s determined to make it stick.

—

This is a firsthand account of how to deal (and rather spectacularly, at that).

I sure hope that guy gets fired, by Xov (29k. T. canonverse/time loop au)

The only thing better than one confession, is MULTIPLE confessions. Oikawa trusts Iwaizumi unshakably, and that's beautiful.

It was the fourth time experiencing the exact same day that Iwaizumi Hajime reluctantly admitted to himself that something was very wrong.

my only friend was the man in the moon (until i met you), by ohhotlamb (7k. T. canonverse)

Just so innocent and sweet. Oikawa said ‘effort’.

In which Oikawa has a life-altering revelation, and Hajime is starting to think it involves him.

Bet On It, by originalblue (13k. E. canonverse)

Tooru being nice for a week? That can only end one way… with a d*ck in Hajime’s mouth.

Hajime knows exactly how shitty Oikawa's personality is, and has no scruples whatsover about betting Oikawa six thousand yen that he can't be nice for an entire week.

especially for tender ones like us, by viverella (17k. T. canonverse/post break-up)

Gods! See? See what I mean? How could I forget about a work as heart wrenchingly beautiful as this? Give it some love, actually, all of the love.

The worst part of it all, Tooru thinks to himself sometimes, is that even as they fought and kicked and screamed and tore each other to shreds, it was never that Tooru stopped loving Iwaizumi any less. The worst part of it all, he thinks, is that loving Iwaizumi turned out to not be enough.

(OR: on finding the right person at the wrong time and learning how to pick up the pieces)

sunset town, by skiecas (33k. T. canon-divergent)

Another work that I just CANNOT understand why it doesn't have more hits. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I almost cried.

In the summer of 2020, Oikawa Tooru returns home from his first successful stint as captain of Japan’s national volleyball team. In one hand, he holds the undisputed weight of an Olympic medal, and in the other, his unresolved feelings for a childhood best friend.

Two years down the road, reconciling his lifelong dream with his lifelong love proves to be the greatest challenge.

of odd numbers and intimate regrets, by bravely (commovente) (5k. T. post-canon/one night stand au)

Basically, Tooru and Hajime sleep together after not speaking for seven years and of course there’s feelings and angst and a belated chance at happiness and a life together.

Tooru’s spent the last seven years of his life in a carefully constructed schedule that is, he realises now, as much a habit as it was a way to forget about the person in front of him.

[or, the one night stand AU between two people more than friends but not quite lovers, measuring the passage of time in distance and long-gone memories, the expansion and contraction of the spaces between their fingers each time.]

cross my heart, open wide, by acchikocchi (7k. T. canonverse)

Super cute, super short. Realizing you're on a date with the wrong person one-shot.

For a minute Hajime doesn't know what to say. Everything and nothing crowds his mind, leaving no room to think. That he's never tried this. That volleyball's over. That he's graduating in five months. That it would be really nice, at least once, to go on a date with a good-looking guy.

Hajime goes on a date. It's not with Oikawa.

Fernweh, by oikawashoyo (19k. G. canonverse/post time skip)

A mature(ish) Tooru?? I love works that show Tooru growing and living happily in Argentina and this one is just beautiful. (Plus! Plus, Skai did a piece on it as well and I love ALL their work so you can visualize everything). Love it.

Argentina is stretching out before him, an opportunity, a challenge. He is reminded of his losses, his insecurities, his disappointments; sees them form a tall, tall wall blocking his path to success. He takes a deep breath and knows he is going to shatter it.

In which Oikawa's whole life is spent longing for the horizon — in the form of a dream, a home, and a boy.

i breathe easily in your arms, by orphan_account (2k. M. canonverse)

Soft, soft sex

When, after completing their high school graduation ceremony and heading home to enjoy their freedom, Oikawa had pulled him into his room and pressed his lips hesitantly against Iwaizumi’s own, it seemed an inevitable development in the unfolding narrative of their shared existence.

Despite years of having a bed to himself, the sensation of another body taking up space in his sheets, curling against his chest, creating warmth, feels natural in much the same way.

old and new, by Mysecretfanmoments (5k. T. canon divergence)

Finally a fic where they don't freak out on confession and it's sweet.

“You seem—sad.” Was that the right word? Others sprang to mind: desperate, lonely, anxious.

Tooru looked away. “Are you going to make me say it?”

“Say what?”

Tooru folded his arms, sighed. “I missed you, of course.”

Hajime swallowed.

“No need to look that way. I told you, I’m not one of your macho man buddies. I’m allowed to say stuff like that without being embarrassed—”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Hajime complained. “No need to be so defensive. I’ve missed you too.”

“Oh?” Tooru seemed to get a little of his own back, leaning forward on his elbows. “What about me did you miss?”

((Going to separate universities, Hajime and Tooru learn the true meaning of "distance makes the heart grow fonder"))

all i wanted was you, by spaceburgers (6k. E. college/fwb au)

This was more emotional than I thought a 6k friends with benefits fic could be, okay? Okay.

Wherein Hajime and Tooru are fuck buddies, Hajime curses his treacherous heart, and Tooru is bad with feelings.

we shine like diamonds, by whitemiists (26k. T. canon divergence)

I couldn't not include this work. It deals with internalized homophobia so well and I really resonate with it.

In all seriousness, I’m very lucky to live in a country where my sexuality is widely accepted and my heart goes out the LGBTQIA+ peoples who are forced to hide themselves. You are loved and your sexuality and gender-identity are not wrong and never will be.

Oikawa is nine when he first hears the word. The boys on the playground whisper it like it's dirty, like the way they daringly mutter the word fuck and then look over their shoulders to check their parents hadn't heard.

"You know Abe-kun from class?" they snicker, hands cupped around their mouths like they're passing along a filthy secret. "I hear his older brother is... gay."

Look For Him, by Leryline (18k. E. canonverse)

A collection of kisses. I love Hajime’s grandmother.

She laughs gently. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so heartbroken before, Hajime.”

Iwaizumi sighs and prods at the mackerel with a chopstick. “Sorry. I can’t help it. It’s just different, you know? Like Oikawa pissed me off so much that now he’s not here I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“But you weren’t always annoyed with him, were you?” his grandmother smiles serenely and takes a sip of her tea. “My, my, Hajime, old women see everything. I saw you out there with my finches, when you were kissing Tooru’s nose. Your mother and father used to do the very same thing, you know, when they were younger. And look how long they’ve lasted. I hope you and Tooru last, Hajime. He’s very good for you.”

Oikawa has kissed Iwaizumi more times than either of them can count; it’s a constant thing, their lips never really leaving the other’s skin. There are, however, times when they’ve kissed that are burned into their memories. Eight of them, to be precise.

film reel life, arsenicjay (8k. T. canon divergence)

Such a unique and creative idea! Reading from the eyes of a camera, so beautiful!

The only person Iwaizumi is lying to is himself, when he insists: I am not in love with Oikawa Tooru.

how to let your planets align, by tether (tothemoon) (15k. T. end of the world au)

This is the only remotely non-happy ending fic I will be including on here, and it's purely because it's a gorgeous read. And yes, I ached. Your lips, my lips, apocalypse.

It is the last day on earth, December 2nd, 1985, when you realize you're in love with him.

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu fic #haikyuu fic rec #iwaoi #iwaizumi x oikawa #Iwaizumi Hajime #oikawa tooru

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onceinabluehanguangjun · 4 years

Text

amare et amari

Summary: to celebrate @mdzsnet Lan Sizhui birthday event, no plot, just love

Word Count: ~2.2k

Relationships: Lan Sizhui & Lan Wangji; Lan Sizhui & Wei Wuxian; Lan Sizhui & Jiang Cheng

Tags: post-canon, seasickness

ao3

“Sizhui.”

Sizhui opened his eyes slowly at the sound of his name, pulling himself out of meditation. Hanguang-Jun stood in the doorway of the room he shared with Jingyi with tea and he, as always, looked like a force to be reckoned with. It was a comforting sort of force, though.

“Hanguang-Jun,” Sizhui greeted in response, bowing his head slowly. Hanguang-Jun came into the room more.

He knelt at the table and Sizhui moved to do the same. They had tea at least once every few days, typically with Wei Wuxian or Zewu-Jun or Jingyi in attendance. Today, though, it was just them. He liked that. It’d been a while since it was just the two of them.

“In a week's time, we’ll be going to Lotus Pier. Wei Ying suggested you and Jingyi attend as well,” Hanguang-Jun said as Sizhui poured his tea. Sizhui nodded eagerly.

“Yes, Hanguang-Jun,” he agreed easily, “Is it for business or…?”

Hanguang-Jun took a deep breath that told Sizhui all he needed to know. He was going because Wei Wuxian wanted to go and he didn’t want him meeting with Sandu Shengshou on his own. But Wei Wuxian didn’t want Hanguang-Jun and Sandu Shengshou butting heads the entire time, so it seemed easier to bring him and Jingyi along to provide more buffers. He nodded.

“Wei Ying wishes to show you Lotus Pier,” Hanguang-Jun said instead. Sizhui smiled.

“Oh,” he said, “That sounds nice. I’ve never explored Lotus Pier.”

“Mn.”

Sizhui watched as Hanguang-Jun drank his tea and then watched as he stared at the table. They’d spent many years having tea together alone‒many days in general together alone. Lan Sizhui knew him well. He knew when he was happy and when his mood dropped. He typically resided in something akin to quiet resignation to everything. That hadn’t shown its face since Wei Wuxian returned and it definitely hadn’t been around since Zewu-Jun came out of seclusion. Sizhui wasn’t exactly excited to see it’s return.

“Baba,” he said, craning his head a little bit and offering the sweetest smile he could muster. When Hanguang-Jun met his eyes, he visibly softened a little. “Tomorrow, could we go to Caiyi? Just you and I?”

They used to go often when Sizhui was little, every time Hanguang-Jun got irritated or needed an escape and couldn’t go on a night hunt. If Shifu scolded Lan Sizhui for something that wasn’t exactly against the rule or if he lectured Hanguang-Jun himself for the way he was raising Sizhui, then he’d take him to Caiyi to get away for the day. Sometimes he would even bring Jingyi, typically if Jingyi had gotten in trouble for running his mouth. Once they got a bit older and started talking on more duties within the sect, their trips to Caiyi had dwindled.

It felt time for one.

“Mn,” Hanguang-Jun agreed, an easy smile finding his face, “That sounds nice.”

Sizhui smiled as he raised his cup to his lips.

Lan Sizhui took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

No one spoke to him as he tried (and failed) to slip into a meditative state. He had a horrible history of seasickness that only got more embarrassing when his fathers were taken into account. The great Hanguang-Jun himself and the fearsome Yiling Patriarch raised a boy who could be bested by a little water.

Currently, they were headed to Lotus Pier and while Lan Sizhui usually would’ve flown without any push back, that wasn’t an option with Wei Wuxian in tow. So Sizhui just kept his eyes closed and his mind on literally anything else. Like the sound of Hanguang-Jun humming every few minutes so Wei Wuxian knew he was listening or the sound of Wei Wuxian’s speech in general. Or maybe he could keep focus and sync up his breathing to Jingyi’s like they did whenever things got a little too overwhelming.

“Ah, A-Yuan, what’s wrong with you?” Wei Wuxian called suddenly. Sizhui flinched in surprise and opened his eyes. It took seconds for the sick feeling to start building in his stomach again.

“Leave him be,” Hanguang-Jun said, touching Wei Wuxian’s arm gently. Sizhui had just enough time to see him pout in confusion before he had to close his eyes again in fear he’d embarrass himself by vomiting.

“He gets seasick,” Jingyi so helpfully supplied.

Hearing the word out loud seemed to only make it worse and Sizhui’s mouth pressed into a frown and a crease formed between his eyebrows. He took a deep breath to try and keep calm, but someone moved and the boat rocked and he was feeling sicker and sicker by the second.

“You’re a cultivator, can’t you just make it go away?” Wei Wuxian asked, “I always just ignored every sick feeling until it went away.”

“With all due respect, Wei-qianbei, I don’t think you’re a very good comparison,” Lan Jingyi offered, though it was very clear he was saying that Wei Wuxian was reckless. And that was true. He was.

“Mn,” Hanguang-Jun agreed.

“Ah, well,” Wei Wuxian said. He moved closer to Sizhui and touched his face, smoothing out the crease between his brows. Then his hand touched his back, rubbing smooth circles between his shoulder blades. “Breathe slowly and focus on Hanguang-Jun’s heart rate. You can hear that, can’t you?”

He was a good few paces away, but Lan Sizhui tried his best to do as Wei Wuxian said. He focused hard, listening closely like he would on a night hunt. He hadn’t sought out Hanguang-Jun’s heartbeat since he was little and needed to be held after nightmares. He would always lay his head on his chest and listen to it until he fell back asleep. Now he was grown and it wasn’t as easy to hear when his head wasn’t against his chest, but he tried anyway.

“There you are,” Wei Wuxian said softly.

He wasn’t even sure if it was Hanguang-Jun heartbeat or if it was Wei Wuxian’s since he was the one who was so close, but it was effective nonetheless. Sizhui breathed and listened and focused on anything but the rocking motion of the boat.

When he opened his eyes again, they were docked at Lotus Pier and his head was slumped against Wei Wuxian’s shoulder. He quickly sat up straight once he realized and tried to ignore the way his cheeks burned. Wei Wuxian was already laughing.

“This disciple apologizes for his impropriety, Wei-qianbei,” Lan Sizhui said, giving a small bow.

“Nonsense! I’m just glad to know you aren’t like Baba over there who will happily sleep sitting straight up! It’s a travesty,” Wei Wuxian laughed, reaching out to straighten his forehead ribbon. Like every time he touched it, Lan Sizhui was unable to suppress a smile. “Come! Let’s go bother Jiang Cheng.”

Hours later, after eating and being shown to their rooms, Lan Sizhui found himself waiting until most of Lotus Pier went to sleep, including Jingyi, before going to wander.

He’d only been to Lotus Pier a few times and each time he’d been a little too nervous to explore by himself at night. It was something he did in the Cloud Recesses and Koi Tower and the Unclean Realm, late at night where things were quiet. He tried not to see it as breaking any rules. The 9 PM bedtime was one of the non-punishable rules.

Tomorrow, Wei Wuxian planned to take Jingyi and Sizhui on a tour, but tonight he wanted to do it on his own.

He walked around the grounds of Lotus Pier and nodded to the disciples who were on night patrol, all of whom didn’t seem phased to see him up. Hopefully, they weren’t the ones to tell on him like the disciples in the Cloud Recesses.

Aesthetically, it was beautiful and warm. The Cloud Recesses would always be home, but he could admit that it could be suffocating. The Unclean Realm, even after Nie Huaisang livened it up, was rigid and bland. Lanling was cold and showy. Lotus Pier felt like people lived here, like children could get a bit messy and run around and that was okay.

Lotus Pier wasn’t closed off like every other major sect, it was open. During the day, it was lined with vendors and people. He’d seen them watch the cultivators practice their sword forms, he’d seen people play in the water, he’d seen people laugh and shriek and play. People had fun here. In another life, maybe he could’ve grown up here and learned how to have fun in that way.

Maybe he still had room to learn in this one.

“Can’t sleep?”

Lan Sizhui nearly jumped out of his skin as he spun around. Sandu Shengshou stood there in only a few layers of his robes, barefoot, and all of his hair thrown up in a bun. Sandu itself was nowhere to be seen. It was concerningly casual.

“This disciple apologizes, he’ll return to his room,” Lan Sizhui said, bowing deep and keeping his eyes off him just in case. Sect Leader Jiang huffed a laugh, shaking his head as reached out to nudge his elbow and unceremoniously suggest he lift out of his bow. He did.

Lan Sizhui hadn’t actually been alone with Sect Leader Jiang before. He had a feeling if Hanguang-Jun knew that he was alone with him now, he wouldn’t like it very much. But Sect Leader Jiang looked calmer than usual and visibly tired, not like the ball of anger he typically portrayed himself as.

“Lan Sizhui, isn’t it,” Sect Leader Jiang said‒distinctly not framing it as a question. Sizhui nodded curtly. He shook his head and walked past him. It took a few moments and for Sect Leader Jiang to look over his shoulder for him to realize he was expected to follow.

He did.

Sect Leader Jiang led him to the edge of the nearest pier where he sat down and dangled his feet over the edge, not quite touching the water. Sizhui carefully removed his shoes to sit beside him and do the same. Staring was against the rules and considered extremely rude, but Sizhui found it more than a little difficult not to stare at him. This whole thing was strange.

“I don’t expect you to remember, I only met you for a few minutes and it was an entire lifetime ago,” Sect Leader Jiang began. Lan Sizhui’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head and he involuntarily leaned closer, eager to hear any story from before. “I went to the Burial Mounds to see what the fuck Wei Wuxian was getting up to and you clung to my leg. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, I was too focused on… But a few years later, I wondered what had happened to you. You seemed to trust me despite me being a stranger and I promptly left you to die, so I suppose that says a lot about me.”

“Sect Leader Jiang had much more important duties than worrying about a child he met for a few moments,” Lan Sizhui said, though a part of his heart went a bit wild in his chest. A whole childhood in Lotus Pier raised alongside Jin Ling with the warmth it gave despite its angry leader. He loved Hanguang-Jun more than anything, but the idea of how easily his life could’ve been different sent his mind running.

“Perhaps,” Sect Leader Jiang said. He was quiet for a moment before he scoffed. “Wei Wuxian saw you as his, though. And once… Well, once everything occurred, you truly were his. He was what you had, just as my sister was what Jin Ling had. No matter my opinions on his actions, you were innocent.”

Years and years of reading between the lines in everything Hanguang-Jun said seemed to prepare him for this moment. The simple hidden statement of ‘you were my nephew and I took care of one but not the other’. Despite the melancholy of it all, Lan Sizhui found himself smiling in the same way he smiled when Hanguang-Jun was quietly resigned, tilting his head to attempt to breach his line of sight.

“But I’m alright.”

“You are,” Sect Leader Jiang sighed, looking over at him, “You’re alright.”

Sizhui smiled brighter and Sect Leader Jiang huffed a laugh.

“You smile like him,” he said, tilting his head up to the stars, “How did I not notice in all these years?”

“It was probably best you didn’t,” Lan Sizhui offered, hoping to make him feel a little less guilty, “Hanguang-Jun wouldn’t have liked it if you tried to keep me.”

“Hanguang-Jun,” Sect Leader Jiang echoed, “You Lans are so formal even with family.”

“Would you like it if I wasn’t formal?” Lan Sizhui asked. When Sect Leader Jiang looked at him again, Sizhui offered a quiet, “That would mean I’d call you Shufu, right?”

A genuine smile pulled at Sect Leader Jiang’s lips as he looked out to the water and Lan Sizhui was giddy with it. That was the first time he’d ever seen him smile. Was that what it felt like when other people saw Hanguang-Jun smile?

“Still formal,” he said, “Shushu. Jiang-shushu, maybe.”

“Alright, Shushu,” Lan Sizhui decided, turning to face him entirely, “It seems we have many years to make up for.”

Shushu shook his head, clearly biting back an even bigger smile. No one would believe this. Truthfully, in the morning, Lan Sizhui couldn’t be sure he’d believe this.

“It seems we do,” he agreed, “We really do.”

#mdzsnet #lan sizhui #lan wangji #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #the untamed #mdzs #my fic #actor/character birthday fic

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 4 years

Text

But You Can Never Leave [Chapter 10: Premonitions]

Several weeks and depressive episodes later...I’m BACK! 😃

And guess what: we’re officially approximately halfway done with BYCNL! (There will probably be nineteen chapters total.)

The Queen/BoRhap fandom is feeling extra quiet lately, so if you’re still out there I’d LOVE it if you dropped me a comment/message/etc to let me know! I appreciate you all so much and hope you are finding things that bring you happiness, fulfillment, and peace. 💜

Chapter summary: Roger makes a purchase, Freddie makes a friend, Y/N makes an unsettling discovery, John makes a bewildering request.

This series is a work of fiction, and is (very) loosely inspired by real people and events. Absolutely no offense is meant to actual Queen or their families.

Song inspiration: Hotel California by The Eagles.

Chapter warnings: Language, babies (but not your babies...or are they?!).

Chapter list (and all my writing) available HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @loveandbeloved29 @killer-queen-xo @maggieroseevans @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @joemazzmatazz @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhye @namelesslosers @inthegardensofourminds @deacyblues @youngpastafanmug @sleepretreat @hardyshoe @bramblesforbreakfast @sevenseasofcats @tensecondvacation @bookandband @queen-crue @jennyggggrrr @madeinheavxn @whatgoeson-itslate @brianssixpence @simonedk @herewegoagainniall @stardust-killer-queen

Please yell at me if I forget to tag you! 😊

“Roger, this is too much.” Your sandals click on the marble tile floor, a sandy gold like the beaches of Ostia. You peer up at the winding staircase, the Tudor-style diamond windows, the chandelier dripping with crystals. “This is way, way, way too much.”

“There’s no such thing as too much,” he parries merrily. “And look!” He pulls back an armful of sheer white curtains that had obscured the backyard. “The pool has a slide!”

You smile because you have to; he’s so elated, so young. “Roger, baby, unless you’re planning to acquire a literal harem of women we will never have a use for six bedrooms.”

“Sure we will!” He counts on his rugged fingers. “There’s one for us, and one can be the guest bedroom for when my mother or your parents visit, and then there’s one for if Chrissie ever wises up and leaves that wanker Brian and requires a place to stay between husbands, and one for when John needs an escape from that mind-numbing domestic purgatory of his, and one for Freddie’s overflow cats...” Roger trails off. He’s lost track.

“That still leaves one unnecessary bedroom.”

He grins. “One for Roger Junior.”

“Oh my god.”

“It’s a wonderful home for children,” the real estate agent chimes, flitting around rearranging pillows and dusting off tabletops. “Plenty of space to spread out in, lots of bedrooms, fenced-in yard, security gate, spectacular school district...and such a lovely garden to explore! Does your wife garden?” she asks Roger.

“Girlfriend,” he corrects. “And no, she’s thoroughly useless in the agricultural department.”

You laugh and shove him away. “I have other talents.”

“You certainly do.” He growls as he grips your waist, inhales you, bites playfully down your neck and collarbones. The real estate agent raises her eyebrows, but politely averts her gaze and pretends to check if an artificial fern needs watering.

It’s the downturn of August, 1976. The sun is glaring and hot and spills in through the windows, setting the metallic flecks in the marble floor alight. It makes you think of the Yellow Brick Road, of fantasies built piece by piece into truth. John and Veronica bought a house in Putney, Brian and Chrissie a far larger one in Chelsea, Freddie and Mary a posh flat in West Kensington. Roger has his heart set on nothing less than a Surrey mansion. On the rare occasion that Queen has been home since the start of the A Night At The Opera Tour, you and Roger stay in his shabby—dodgy, you remind yourself—old apartment and pack boxes late into the evening, giggling over all the random and ancient relics you stumble across, sticks of Freddie’s eyeliner and dust bunnies tangled in strands of Brian’s spiraled hair, crumpled up spheres of paper with excerpts of songs scrawled on them, fossilized crusts of grilled cheese sandwiches beneath the couch. Queen is preparing for a brief UK tour at the start of September, including a free concert in Hyde Park organized by entrepreneur Richard Branson. Then it’ll be back to the studio to record their next album, a highly anticipated album, an album that will make millions regardless of what’s on it; and what’s on it, in your humble and musically unlearned opinion, is pretty goddamn great.

“Seriously,” Roger prompts, quietly now. “Do you like it?”

“Of course I like it. I love it. I just don’t need it.”

He grins. “I know you don’t need it. But I do.”

“That list of yours is getting awfully long.”

“You have no idea. We haven’t even started on the exotic pet collection yet.”

“There’s a marvelous koi pond out in the backyard,” the real estate agent says. “You could add turtles, and frogs, and all different types of fish. I can recommend sturgeon, they have such an alluring primeval sort of look to them, and the shimmer on shubunkins is just delightful...”

“You heard the lady.” Rog stretches his right hand like he does when his arm bothers him, when the bone that will never fully heal aches like something ancient and irredeemable, like hunger, like unrequited love: fingertips sprayed outwards, then folded into his palm, then outwards again.

“Rog...I don’t know.”

“Come on, baby! It has everything. Roman-style master bath. Bedrooms with mirrors on the ceiling. Space for my own studio. Land. Enormous refrigerators. You’ll have abundant room for John’s drawings.”

“Ohhh, now that’s true.” John is always adding to your collection, slipping you sketches as the boys scurry around getting ready before a show, during songwriting sessions that last long after midnight, when the band and its expanding circle of friends and family gather for birthdays and holidays. You don’t ask him about You’re My Best Friend, or, come to think of it, any of his other songs. You don’t ask him how he feels about his new life as a husband and father. And in return, John doesn’t ask whether you’re ever going to marry Roger, if you even want to, if you worry about what the future holds. It’s a loaded peace, but a comfortable one. A safe one.

“It doesn’t bother you, does it?” Roger asks suddenly. “The girlfriend thing. The not-wife thing.”

“No,” you reply, smiling. “Of course not.” Roger isn’t someone who pens love letters, recites all the reasons why he cannot live without you, sings love songs. He rarely speaks of love at all. Roger is as he always is: all action, all energy, eyes forever looking forward. But he does love you; you’re sure he does. Everything he does bleeds with love.

“Good. Because there’s no one I’d rather acquire a harem and zoological park with.”

“Okay,” you relent. “But no lions or tigers or bears. I’m quite attached to your limbs, and you’ve come close enough to ruining them already.”

“Deal.” He taps the Canon that hangs from your shoulder by its strap. “We should document this momentous juncture. One day we can pull out the photo album and show Roger Junior. ‘Hey look kid, this was the day Mum and Dad bought the house you were conceived in.’”

You laugh, almost positive that Roger isn’t serious. “I can guarantee you that precisely zero percent of children would ever want to hear that.” Nevertheless, you ready the camera and hold it as far away as you can, the lens aimed towards you.

“Don’t forget to smile!” Roger trills in his high, victorious voice as he rests his chin in the dip of your collarbone.

You snap the photo. The flash bursts through the kitchen of the Surrey mansion, blinding you both. The artificial bluish light dissipates like smoke.

~~~~~~~~~~

His name is Laszlo, and he’s one of the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen...even when he’s not especially well-mannered.

Currently, Laszlo—an Eastern European moniker from somewhere in his mother’s comically vast family tree—is whimpering and squirming against Veronica’s chest as she pats his tiny back and sighs wearily. Veronica, ever the good Polish Catholic wife, is already pregnant again. Chrissie smirks triumphantly and puffs on a cigarette, her rings glimmering on her left hand, her dress violet and new and very expensive. Brian is lost in some deep intellectual conversation with Richard Branson, gesturing with his long nimble hands and nodding empathetically, his dark curls rustling in the breeze like the lithe branches of a willow tree.

“Thank god you’re here,” John calls as you and Roger approach. “Freddie is about to get this concert cancelled.”

“I’m about to make this concert fabulous, darling,” Freddie objects. “We need pyrotechnics, we need sparklers and explosions and fireworks!”

Mr. Branson shakes his head. “Can’t do it, Fred. The embers could travel and set the trees on fire.”

Freddie groans. “Tell him, Roger!”

Roger shrugs, grinning, resting his elbow on John’s shoulder. “I don’t know, maybe we shouldn’t burn down Hyde Park.”

“You’ll be under a huge orange canopy, right over there.” Mr. Branson motions with a sweep of his arm. “You can’t do anything aerial. Flashing lights, sure. Fog, sure. But no fire. No explosions. Oh, and there’s technically a noise ordinance, but we’re working out a deal so the city won’t enforce it on the day of the show.”

“Orange?!” Freddie squeals.

“How will the acoustics be in a tent?” Brian asks, troubled.

John smiles mischievously. “Yes, how dreadful if no one could hear the extraneous guitar solos.”

“I have a gong, Rich,” Roger says. “Everyone will be able to hear my gong, right?”

“Your gong?” Freddie whines. “What about my voice?!”

“I miss stadiums,” Roger grumbles. You exchange a knowing glance with Mary and Chris and Veronica, who is imploring Laszlo to take a bottle. Our boys are difficult, aren’t they?

“The acoustics will be fine,” Mr. Branson snaps. “The tent color will be fine. Everything will be fine. You don’t need any fucking fireworks. Please for the love of god just tell me what kind of sandwiches you want.”

“That’ll be an ordeal as well,” Chrissie quips, and you all laugh; even Laszlo perks up, stops wriggling, glimpses around the open green space with curious greyish eyes like John’s.

Some teenage employee carrying a tangle of cables trots over, sweat dripping down his flushed freckled cheeks. “Mr. Branson? There’s someone from the city here to see you.”

Richard Branson smacks his forehead. “Jesus christ. Okay, I’ll be right there. Hey, Steve, hey, have you seen Dom? Go find Dom and tell her to come over here, okay? Thanks.”

The teenage employee nods and disappears into a sea of bustling people ferrying equipment, fliers, chairs, messages.

“I’m so sorry about this,” Mr. Branson says. “These city bastards are out to crucify me. You’d think they’d be a little more grateful that Queen of all bands is willing to put on a free concert in their backyard, but alas. Hey, Dom, over here!”

He waves to a petite young woman with a glossy shock of black hair and olive Mediterranean skin. She’s wearing all yellow: shorts patterned with daffodils, a tank top the color of butter, a headband like a sunbeam. One of her trim arms is cradling a notebook; the other reaches out so she can shake hands with everyone. The gesture is courteous but somewhat unnatural.

“This,” Mr. Branson begins, “is my personal assistant Dominique. She’s wonderful, she’ll listen to all your pretentious tales of woe and do it with a smile, because she’s a true professional. Better yet, she’s going to ask you the tedious questions I was supposed to so you don’t have to wait for me to finish sparring with the city council. Okay? Okay. Have fun. I’ll be back.”

“It’s a pleasure,” Dom says placidly in a heavy French accent. So that’s why her handshake was off somehow, stilted and weak; the French usually kiss as a greeting. You choke back a snort as you imagine Veronica’s reaction to that. Mr. Branson stalks away muttering about litigious twats.

“Oh, aren’t you just darling!” Freddie circles Dom, admiring her outfit, her hair, her gold hoop earrings. He wafts his cigarette around flamboyantly, completely forgetting to smoke it. “The French are so tasteful, aren’t they? You simply must connect me with your stylist.”

“I would be happy to, Mr. Mercury. But regrettably, I am my own stylist.”

“Ahh!” Freddie exhales, enamored. Mary lifts Laszlo from Veronica’s tired arms and cradles him, tickles his nose, beams down into his fresh and inquisitive face.

Dom pulls a pen from her shirt pocket. “May I ask your sandwich preferences for the day of the show?”

She immediately receives four very different answers, and she raises an eyebrow, her pen hovering over the lined paper of her notebook.

“I’m so sorry about them,” Chrissie says, and Dom chuckles civilly.

“Ham and cheddar,” Freddie tells her, synthesizing the responses. “Bacon, fried fish, steak and onion jam...and something for Brian. Cucumber maybe. Could we get some cucumber sandwiches, dear?”

“You’re a vegetarian?” Dom asks Brian, jotting down notes.

“He’s morally superior to us in every way,” John sighs dreamily, and Rog and Freddie cackle.

“I’m not a strict vegetarian,” Bri clarifies. “But for the sake of the animals and the planet, I try to limit meat when I can.”

Roger adds: “And I order twice as much of it, just to spite him.”

Dominique leads Queen around the portion of Hyde Park where the concert will be held, runs through the itinerary, fields a litany of questions and complaints. And you decide that you like Dom; she’s professional and reserved, yes, but she’s also patient with Freddie, smiles at his jokes, compliments his black-and-yellow striped shirt (“We match, and you remind me of a...oh, what’s the word in English? That bug...it flies around buzzing...buzz buzz...a bee!”), asks him what he’s planning to wear to the show. She assuages Brian, listens to John, takes the time to chat with the women about children, makeup, homes, what it’s like to be in love with rock stars. But Dom mostly ignores Roger, dodges his grins, remains staunchly undazzled. And that would worry you—because Roger loves the chase, you know that firsthand—if he hadn’t already taught you how to trust him, how addictively flawless and exhilarating life with Roger Taylor could be.

When Laszlo begins to fuss in Mary’s grasp, you take your turn holding him; and he blinks up at you with eyes that are wide and clear and seeking, and you find yourself feeling like you always do when you’re around your godson: like maybe you have a stronger opinion about wanting children than you thought you did, like you can’t stop envisioning a baby with Roger’s eyes instead of John’s.

That evening—after leaving Hyde Park, after dinner, after drinks mixed out by the koi pond—as you doze in a sweltering bubble bath and steam curls through the air, you hear Roger’s voice floating from the kitchen downstairs. You rise out of the tub, towel yourself off, slip into a white silk robe as rivulets of bathwater slink down the back of your neck. You tread gingerly towards the kitchen, keep silent so you can hear, lurk in the shadows of the hallway with your palms pressed flat against the wallpaper.

“Hello, is Dominique Beyrand in?” Roger says into the kitchen phone. “I’ve been trying to track her down. Sure, I’ll wait. Thanks.” After a pause, he continues. “Hi, Dom! It’s Roger Taylor, from Queen. The irritating blond one. I was just wondering if you’d happened to stumble across my wallet since this afternoon, I seem to have misplaced it. Oh, you haven’t? Bloody hell. Well, thank you for taking my call. Aw, that’s so kind of you, I’m sure I’ll locate it eventually. I’ve got a terrible habit of losing things. Okay, thanks so much. Goodnight to you too. See you soon. Cheers.” He hangs the phone up as you step into the kitchen. His smile is bright and innocuous. “Hey, baby!”

“Who was that?” Your tone is similarly casual; or so you hope.

“Just Richard Branson’s assistant. That French woman Dominique. I can’t find my wallet and thought I might have left it at Hyde Park, but no dice. Oh well.”

Roger begins rummaging through the drawer full of business cards and address books, tapping his foot, humming to himself. And surely he isn’t trying to avoid my eyes. Your gaze skates over the marble countertop. There, by the refrigerator, just a few feet—a meter, you correct yourself to be properly British—from where Roger stands, is his black leather wallet.

“It’s right there, Rog,” you say, pointing. And now your voice isn’t so nonchalant.

Roger spins to check. “Oh my god, I completely missed it!” He snatches up the wallet with a celebratory chuckle. “I’m such a twit sometimes. You’re too fucking smart, you know that? You’re making me look bad.”

He rushes to you, takes your left hand, bites your knuckles lightly like he did outside Massachusetts General Hospital under dawn skies over two years ago. And then Roger whispers to you, nuzzling your neck scented with lavender soap and doubt.

“Let’s go to bed.”

~~~~~~~~~~

There’s a knock at the door. John is standing on the front porch of the Surrey house with his hands in his pockets and a vague sort of smile on his face. He’s in a black suit.

“Get ready,” he says. “Do your hair, throw on some earrings. Maybe the pearls Roger got you last Christmas. We’re going shopping.”

“Why do I need to look fancy to go shopping?”

John shrugs, feigning indifference; but the puckish glint in his eyes gives him away. Yet there’s something a little sad and weighty in them too, isn’t there?

Your own eyes narrow. “I’m onto you, bassist.”

He laughs as you tug teasingly at a lock of his downy hair. “You always are.”

John takes you to a dress shop on Bond Street where the corsets trickle with gemstones and the designers all have Italian names: Armani, Prada, Abate, Cerruti, Valentino, Biagiotti. He sinks into a leather chair just outside the fitting room and lights a cigarette, takes a long drag, points to you with the lit end.

“Go ahead. Go wild. It’s a blank check.”

“Really?!” You glance around the shop, your pulse racing. “But I don’t know the occasion. I don’t want to be underdressed or overdressed or whatever. Although I don’t think I’ve ever been overdressed in my life.”

“Yes, you can’t seem to shake those pragmatic service industry roots, can you?” Another drag. “You need a dress and matching shoes. Formal, but not too formal. Think a record company party. Elegant but exciting. Lots of sparkle. Slightly slutty, if you’re so inclined.”

“This is an unconventional bonding activity,” you tell John, trying to conceal your nerves.

“Love, this isn’t something you can fail at,” he says, gently now. “You’re going to look amazing no matter what. So just have fun with it. This isn’t a test. This is one of those adventures you’re always searching for.”

I can promise you that your life will never feel like a cage; that’s what Roger once told you. But maybe you don’t always want to be quite so free, so unmoored. “Okay. But you have to swear to give honest opinions. I don’t want to show up looking like a wombat because you were too nice to say anything.”

John just chuckles to himself, shakes his head, devours cigarette after cigarette.

With the assistance of one of the shop employees, you climb into a pastel pink dress with a full ruffled skirt, an emerald green dress with an empire waist and loose sheer sleeves, a shimmering metallic silvery dress with a form-fitting silhouette. John nods at all of them, wholeheartedly approves, defers to your judgment. He periodically consults his wristwatch as he taps his cigarettes on the rim of an ashtray, and deflects your questions when you ask him why. Then you step out of the fitting room—balanced on gold heels—in a white dress with a hem that hits just above your knees, a halter neckline, a slim keyhole down the center of your chest; and John’s cigarette tumbles out of his fingers.

“That’s the one,” he breathes, soaking it in. Then he asks the employee to cut off all the tags and whips out his wallet. “Toss your old clothes and shoes in a bag. We gotta catch a cab.”

“We’re going straight to the party?”

“We certainly are.”

“What the hell kind of ridiculously lame party starts at 3 p.m.?”

John smirks craftily. “The kind of party we’re going to. Let’s rock and roll, Florence Nightingale.”

John gives the taxi driver an address and you sail through the streets of London, splashing through shallow evaporating puddles, squinting when sunlight ricochets glaringly off the slick pavement. The taxi rolls to a stop outside of a grand stone building with columns and intricate carvings of leaves and flowers. The sign outside reads: Kensington and Chelsea Register Office.

You turn to John. “Who’s getting married?!”

He just smiles, a deep harbor of secrets.

“It’s Fred and Mary, right? Jesus christ, John, you can’t wear white to someone else’s wedding, Mary’s going to strangle me—”

“It’s not Mary’s wedding.”

Slowly, your jaw falls open. “No,” you whisper in disbelief.

John darts out of the taxi, jogs around to your side, and opens the door for you. You gape up at him senselessly, struggling to remember how to form sentences.

“John...this...this is some bizarre and elaborate joke, right?”

“Nope.” He offers his hand, helps you out of the taxi, leads you up the front steps of the Register Office. Inside, everyone is waiting: Freddie and Mary, Brian and Chrissie, Veronica with babbling baby Laszlo, Roger’s mother and sister...and Roger, of course, in his best black suit and bleached blond hair and trademark guaranteed-to-dazzle (unless of course you’re Dominique Beyrand) grin. He flies to you and takes your hands in his.

“You look incredible, baby.”

“Roger, what’s going on...?”

“Don’t freak out,” he commands, and instantly your panic vanishes. There’s a pink rose pinned to his lapel. “I know we don’t feel like we need to get married. I know we agree it doesn’t mean anything.” Is that still true? “So don’t think that this is about trying to trap you or control you or bullshit white picket fences or anything. And of course you can say no, I won’t be mad, no one will hold that against you, we can find some other reason to party. But the simple facts are that I’m a British national with a mansion and a plethora of perpetual royalties and you’re an American here on a work visa, and the law gets a bit thorny in this situation. And I want to make sure you’re taken care of if something happens to me. That you can carry out my wishes. That you can stay here with the band as long as you want to. So, I’ve got your passport and birth certificate and everything else we need...and some overly-enthusiastic witnesses. Are you cool with signing a piece of paper today?”

“Of course she bloody well is!” Freddie exclaims, and everyone laughs. Mary is carrying a basket full of champagne flutes, Chrissie several bottles of pink champagne, Roger’s sister a tub of ice. Brian has been entrusted to chronicle the event with your Canon. Veronica is more giddy than you’ve ever seen her, even more animated than she was at her own wedding. Well, I suppose she doesn’t have to worry about any illicit pregnancies or condemnatory great aunts this time around.

“Okay,” you tell Roger. And you wish you weren’t beaming so broadly your cheeks ache, because it feels a little pathetic to be this happy about an admittedly meaningless wedding. But it does make you happy, your general aversion towards conventionality be damned.

You sign papers and you toast glasses and you giggle uproariously in the lobby of the Register Office with the best friends you’ve ever had, guzzle pink champagne, pose for photos, take your turn holding Laszlo, kiss Roger beneath the stone arch of the centuries-old building.

It doesn’t mean anything, you remind yourself, suddenly very aware of the missing weight of a ring on your left hand. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything.

But you catch a few furtive glances between Chrissie and Bri, the twist of a frown on Freddie’s face when he thinks no one is watching, the distance in John’s shadowy eyes as he inhales champagne like air.

It doesn’t mean anything.

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joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh · 4 years

Text

I rewatched Koisuru Asteroid episode 12, and it was really nice!

It’s pretty much just continuing directly off of what last episode was doing, the closest big development being that Ao and Mira don’t discover an asteroid at the Kiraboshi challenge, but they almost do, and that alone is enough to make their dream feel really tangible for them, which only encourages them to continue with it. Fuckin poggers.

We also have a conversation about what their goal is afterwards which Mira can’t even really answer, so yeah they’re just wholly committed to that one dream for now. Maybe by the time they discover an asteroid, they’ll be far enough into their astronomy career to where potential new dreams are really obvious. Or maybe their dream will be to get married on the moon. Monroe can officiate the wedding, if that’s the word? Inose’s flower girl obviously. I can’t be bothered dragging this any further. Yeah, cool stuff.

The actual ending is pretty nice too, we get a rather lacklustre slideshow of various things from throughout the show that’s at least accompanied by some nice music, so that’s room for improvement there, but afterwards we get a nice restatement of one of the show’s themes that I’ve made no mention of, and that’s this idea of expanding your horizons through your connections with others.

Mira wasn’t even as into astronomy as Ao was at the start of the show, and then they both get fairly into geology through the other members. And then both halves of the club manage to get pretty into the other halves too, and there’s of course Monroe pushing for her dreams more passionately from that one episode 5 convo, that same thing encouraging Inose, the fact that Nana’s been opening up and becoming a happier person who can enjoy things more, just tons of shit that builds on this theme. This restatement’s a bit on the nose, but I don’t even mind, it’s a pretty and poetic way to end off such a romantic show, and the only thing I could ask for is just, more of it. Season 2 please.

And with that, the rewatch is done, and I very obviously loved it a lot. I think it’s worth knocking what criticisms I do have out of the way still first though. Nana and Chika are introduced a bit too late to really get to flourish under an adaptation of this length, I wish Ao and Mira’s relationship was more romantic in this show called “Asteroid in Love”, and also for a show that’s so much about space, many of the night sky backgrounds are honestly pretty lacklustre in a way that doesn’t help sell the beauty of it all. And then yeah I’ve got occasional nitpicks like that slideshow at the end or whatever. But yeah that’s every issue I have with this show.

And then in terms of pros, just fuckin, everything else. If you’ve been reading my posts this whole time, you’ve seen me talk about how incredible this show is every day for nearly 2 weeks now, and if you haven’t been, you can just go fuckin search the tag on my blog lol. Koisuru Asteroid just manages to be an extremely cute and comfy show with all the same pros as everything in its genre, while also having surprisingly grounded and mature character writing, with tangible goals having impacts on the narrative and characters having realistic aspirations that put them through realistic arcs. That a show that’s so romantic about space and stars and the planets can be as down to earth as this one is is really impressive. Koisuru Asteroid’s just a way better show than even I initially gave it credit for, bearing in mind the score I gave this show originally was already an 8/10.

And so I think, having said all of that, it’s only fitting that I change my score for the show. Lads, I gotta give it the 10/10. I can’t not. It just makes me too happy. I loved this show so much when I watched it originally and yet I still managed to forget how much I loved it even though it’s literally only been 6 months since I watched it. It’s honestly like, in the very top tier of cute girl anime. If you like cute girls, watch Koisuru Asteroid. If you like space, watch Koisuru Asteroid. If you like good writing, watch Koisuru Asteroid. And if you like being happy, watch Koisuru Asteroid.

I don’t think I could end this post any other way than with a confident declaration that...

Ao best girl.

#koisuru asteroid #13.9.20

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where-the-wilds-things-are · 5 years

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Wild Meets Wild Chapter Three

It was hard, saying goodbye to Silverpine City for Rusty. He could tell it was the same for Princess and Smudge. This place, even though they were leaving it behind, was their home for six months, basically their world. They could never see the sights, and inhabitants that lived here again. They would never sniff the same scents again. Rusty would always remember that he came from the City; even if he became a Warrior, he would never forget his origins as a cat that lived on Lucky Land Lane.

Penumbra was the first cat they saw, chilling by a black fountain birdbath. The Black and Gray Chimeria’s face shot up to greet them, four ears crowning her head. “Hello, Smudge, Rusty, and Princess! What brings you here today…” she trailed off when she saw their solemn faces. “Why do all of you have expressions like you are about to make a life-changing decision?” Penumbra meowed.

Rusty met her gaze, but before he could speak, Smudge beat him to it. “We are,” the black-and-white tom said, then seemed to hesitate.

Penumbra cocked her two-toned head. “What?”

The trio nodded. “We’re going to live with the Clans,” Rusty said, “So we came to say goodbye.”

Her nose wrinkled. “You can’t be serious,” she growled, sitting up. “Those snotty cats with their “blood-lines” and their “boundaries?” ” Her tail swished behind her, her long-furred tail catching dust.

“That’s right,” Princess said.

“You three might be crazy,” Penumbra began, her voice hard initially. But when she glanced at Smudge, her tone softened a little. “They will never accept you. Any of you.”

“We know that realistically,” Smudge said, “some cats won’t accept complete strangers into their home. But hopefully with time, our efforts can make some see otherwise, and they will call us clanmates.”

Her whiskers twitched. “Always an optimist, Smudge? That won’t protect you out there in the forest.”

“We’ll keep him safe, don’t worry,” Rusty purred. Princess nodded in agreement.

“Well,” Penumbra said. “You need to try to come to visit. And if I see one hair on your pelt is harmed, Smudge,” she glared at Rusty and Princess, “you’ll have me to answer to me.”

Rusty nodded. “Of course,” he said, blinking. She acted tough and had a soft spot for Smudge, but at the same time, she had a lot of faith in him. “He’ll be ok, Penumbra.”

One set of ears twitched on her head. “He’d better be,” she said.

“We’re going to say goodbye to Johnny and Sephiroth,” Princess said. “Do you want to tag along?”

The molly looked at Smudge, then at Rusty and Princess before sighing. “Okay, but if any Clan Cat tries to spout “pure-blood” rhetoric at me then I hope they have the cat version of medical insurance because I’m not dealing with any bullshit-nonsense. I already have to deal with that from Razoul, no need to get it from some Larpers.”

“Noted,” replied Rusty. He hoped that Lionheart didn’t piss Penumbra or the others off, but he didn’t see the golden tom to be the type to gloat about blood-lineage. Hopefully, they shouldn't have to deal with that once they got to the Clan.

Penumbra sneezed before getting up. “Come on, Sephiroth should be outside sunning his fur by now.” And with that, she took the lead. Blinking in surprise, the others looked at each other before following her.

They had to pass two gardens before they saw the large Nebelung, and sure enough, he was sunning on the patio table that was on the deck. Penumbra wasted no time calling his name. “Sephiroth, come down here, you have visitors. Smudge, Rusty, and Princess!”

The tom grumbled before opening his yellow eyes. “What?” Looking down, he spotted the quartet of cats amassed below him. “What’s going on here? Penumbra, your voice can wake up the dead,” he muttered.

“Rusty and the others have something to say...unless you think you’ll chip a claw and faint if you come down?” she sneered.

Princess shook her head, “Those two argue like old mates, I won’t be surprised if they have kits when we leave,” she said under her breath.

Sephiroth sprang down from his resting place and padded up to them. “Okay, I’m down here, what’s going on?” meowed the dark gray tom, his deep voice vibrating in Rusty’s ear fur.

“Smudge and the others are leaving to join some country hicks who think they're the shit,” Penumbra replied, blue and yellow eyes staring straight at the Nebelung’s face.

Sephiroth’s eyes grew comically large. “Country hic—you mean the Clans? Why would you want to join them? All they do act that they are Gods’ Gift to the world, and then get mad when you even step over the fence. Last time I checked they don’t own the damn city, so why get so torn at that?”

Rusty cleared his throat before talking. “Me and Princess want to join because our owners want us to enter a very high Show-Cat Circuit, and we refuse to put up with all of the drama that goes with it. As for Smudge, one word: Donovan.”

Penumbra’s head turned so fast Rusty was surprised it didn’t break. “Donovan? That little ba- that guy with the dead fish-eyed look? Why didn’t you mention that?” she hissed in anger. “This makes more sense now,” a sympathetic look came into her eyes. “Smudge, you feared for your life, didn’t you?”

Smudge nodded his head. “Donovan is unpredictable, and Charlie and his sister can’t keep an eye on him at all times. Better play it safe. Besides, I want to become a Medicine Cat, apparently, the Clans have some knowledge of herbs, which makes sense since they didn’t all die from some sickness or infections. I can contribute so much Penumbra, I know I can!”

The she-cat stared long at Smudge before she spoke. “I truly hope that you find meaning in this Clan Smudge. Same goes for you Rusty, Princess. Don’t let some glorified Backyardigans tell you can’t strive to do things, show the Clan and everyone in it what cats from Lucky Land Lane can do.”

“Penumbra is right, don’t let them shame you for being born somewhere else. They might not like you since you were born over the fence, but don’t let them say you will never amount to anything just because you don’t have Clan blood, whatever that means.” Sephiroth then looked pensive. “Are you taking anything with you by the way? Maybe if you bring some gifts like a blanket, some will be more accepting of all of you. Winter nights in this country can get harsh, taking one can help.”

Princess’s head shot up. “We did consider that! It was Smudge's idea, so this morning we took three blankets along with some toys for any kittens.” She didn’t bring up Bonnie or PK, much to Rusty’s relief. He didn’t need Penumbra to find out about his plush, or she’ll bring it up that he still needs a stuffed toy to go to bed.

Sepiroth cocked his head, “How do you plan to carry all of that by the three of you? You know what, I’ll help, I'm sure Penumbra would be thrilled to help Smudge.”

Penumbra glared, but Smudge cut her off before the two can argue even more. “We still need to talk to Johnny, Winry, and Seng. Can we please hurry?”

Sephiroth grunted and went to Princess’s side. “Lead the way then.”

Johnny’s backyard always made Rusty envious. Various garden statues from fantasy games littered the lawn, and he even had a koi pond that his owners defended like it was their newborn child, along with catnip plants in colorful pots.

Johnny was located by a garden statue, a red flower with black eyes from games that have some human with a mustache jumping down some green pipes.

The orange tabby seemed to notice that he had company since he started to wheel himself towards them. Today, he wore a white bandana with blue stars on it. “Is anyone going to explain why they are five cats in my backyard? I mean, I’m grateful that I have visitors, but I have a hunch that I’m not going to like what I’m going to hear.

He was right.

After getting a quick rundown from Rusty, Johnny shook his head. “Well, if that is what you want to choose, then I hope that everything turns out well for the three of you. I can’t blame you either, with you and Princess becoming a bunch of fashion divas and Smudge wanting to leave his home so he won’t be hurt. Trust me, I wouldn’t wish to stay in homes like that on my worst enemy. Granted, if they got hit by a fully loaded speeding semi-truck, then I'm fine with that.”

Rusty pointedly ignored the two bullet-shaped scars on the tom’s back, the reason why Johnny had to be in that wheelchair. The tom refused to talk about his past, and only said he came from a rescue center and is now happy with his new owners, especially their daughter, Erina. He also hated to be seen as a liability and would grow cold to anyone who tried to baby him.

“It’s nearly time, how about we stop by Winry and Seng before we get the things and leave?” meowed Rusty.

Johnny snorted. “I’m coming along. I want to be there to see these “wild cats” that I keep hearing about. Too bad I missed Henry fight that tom, I was at the vet getting shampooed.”

Johnny then noticed the looks he was getting. “There’s a hole in the fence that some humans can’t be bothered to fix, I can just go right through it. I’m not stupid, I know I can’t climb the fence,” he said, voice full of irritation.

The others had the decency to look embarrassed, and the group of five became six.

To Rusty and the other’s disappointment, Winry and Seng didn’t seem to be out at all. “That’s right, they should be at HeartGold Park at this time. I guess in all of the excitement, it left our minds,” glumly replied Princess.

“We can tell them what happened,” mewed Penumbra reassuringly. Softly headbutting her in the shoulder, she went on, “They’ll understand, knowing Seng, she’ll be happy that you are happy.”

Princess’s eyes glittered with emotions. “That’s the kindest thing you’ve ever said to me. I’ll never forget that.”

“Good. Don’t get used to it,” She said in a light voice.

“Hey, what about me?” asked Rusty. He didn’t get any encouraging words!

“You two are littermates, you two can share it,”

While Johnny went through the hole he talked about, the others raced back to the garden that Rusty and Princess used to call home. Grabbing PK in his mouth, he carried the autumn blanket carefully as he could on his back so it won’t unfold. Princess carried the Starry blanket and Bonnie, and Sephiroth and Penumbra carried the Jack o Lantern between them since it was the largest. Smudge held his lunchbox in his jaws.

Once over the fence, they saw Johnny was already on the other side. “Finally! I thought humans would have created flying cars by the time you five came here!”

Sephiroth surprisingly rose to his bait. “Okay, oh Sultan of Speed, how about you carry this with Penumbra then? You the only one that doesn’t have any cargo. How’s that fair?”

Johnny puffed out his chest. “It’s because I never volunteered to, I just wanted to see Clan cats and say goodbye to the others. Penumbra is right, you don’t deserve that name. The real Sephiroth wouldn't have whined about holding some fluffy blanket, do you need your beauty rest so you won’t pass out from this grueling labor?!" taunted the orange and white tom.

“Time to go,” hissed Smudge. He was getting antsy, and quite frankly so was Rusty and Princess. Honestly, he loved these cats but they can’t argue right now when Lionheart should be on his way

“Alright, alright,'' said Johnny. “Lead the way."

As they approached the spot where they met the Clan Cats yesterday, Johnny looked around with interest. “Huh, who would have thought that this is behind the fence after all this time. Just how far does this place go anyway?” he wondered out loud.

Penumbra saw a squirrel’s bushy tail darted up a tree with abundant speed. "This makes me want to catch a squirrel or even a bird back home,” she replied. “It feels peaceful here too, I’ll give those forest cats that."

“Okay, we're here, right on time,” muffled Rusty behind the toy. Dropping his cargo, Rusty sat on the grassy floor with a sigh. The others copied his actions, with them carefully placing the items on the soft grass. “These cats better appreciate this, I swear if someone spits on our faces for “bringing frivolous things" than they can catch these paws with their face,” said Penumbra, whiskers twitching.others

Rusty, Princess, and Smudge shook their heads. With Penumbra’s owner being an MMA fighter, that sounded less of a threat and more of a promise.

Rusty turned his head to take in their surroundings. Tall trees shielded the ground from the midday sunshine, making it comfortably cool. Here and there a patch of sunlight shone through a gap in the leaves and lit up the forest floor. Rusty could smell the same cat-scent as last night, and as a matter of fact, he picked up Lionheart’s scent, along with two unknown ones nearby.

“Lionheart! Is that you? You can come out with your friends!” meowed Rusty, which caught the attention of others.

“Someone is here?” replied Johnny, looking around in surprise.

The bramble bush in front of them shook before Lionheart walked out of the undergrowth.

“So you scented me, that’s a good sign that you are aware of your surroundings." His gaze never left the unknown cats as he came to a halt. “Whitestorm, Stonefoot, you can come out now too," he meowed.

‘Who’s Whitestorm and Stonefoot?’ was the thought that was on everyone’s minds.

The city cats watched as two new cats strolled into the clearing. One was a long furred white tom that had a hint of grey on his ears, tail, and face, while the other one had Russian Blue ancestry, and had very faint traces of stripes on his tail and legs.

“Lionheart? Who are these cats? I thought you said there would be three of them? And what are those things beside them? They smell like it came from two-leg place," said the greyish tom, who must be Stonefoot.

Rusty stared at the tom, he resembled Bluestar greatly. ‘Is he related to her by chance?’

Smudge picked up on this and cocked his head to the side as he glanced at the grey cat. “Excuse me Sir, are you related to Bluestar by any chance?”

Stonefoot inclined his head. “Yes, I am. I’m her son, and she was made Deputy when my siblings and I were still kits by her side.” His voice was filled with pride when he mentioned this, and he turned to face the white tom next to him.

Whitestorm, who was probably named for his fur, spoke up. “I have to say, when Bluestar said that they were kitty pets that resembled Leopardshine and was nearly the size of our biggest Warrior, I had a hard time picturing it. But now, I can see why she extended an offer to join the Clan."

“But to answer Stonefoot’s question, who are these cats Rusty?” mewed Lionheart, his voice having the slightest edge to it. Rusty wondered why until it hit him. He might think it is some trap since he had only expected the three of us. He doesn’t know about Pen, Sephiroth, or Johnny.

"I guess it is fair we introduce them." Using his tail, Rusty pointed at his friends. “This is Penumbra, Sephiroth, and Johnny. They decided to send us off when we told them we were leaving and offered to carry gifts for your Clan."

Meeting the Clan Cats gazes, he continued. “As for those items over there; we figured since you said nights can get cold, we brought blankets, something that can keep you warm. We also brought some toys for any kittens for entertainment.”

The cats gave their own greetings.

Penumbra nodded her head. “I always wondered what a Clan Cat would look like, so it’s nice to meet you three,” she said. Smudge gave her a quick glance, and Rusty assumed she was putting a friendly face so she won’t come off needlessly antagonizing.

“And no, I can’t hear out of the other pair of ears, apparently they are for show,” the molly answered.

“Yes, my back legs don’t work. This is called a wheelchair, and it helps me get around so I don’t have to drag myself whenever I want to move,” said Johnny. He wheeled himself in a tight circle to prove his point.

Lionheart, Whitestorm, and Stonefoot looked on with wide eyes.

“I never imagined that I’ll see a cat with Russian Blue ancestry in the forest. And one that somehow has ghost stripes as an adult! I know humans who would pay good money to have you as a pet!” Sephiroth told Stonefoot.

Stonefoot had a look of confusion in his bluish eyes. “...Thanks?”

Whitestorm went to the Jack o Lantern blanket and pressed down on it with his paw. Golden eyes took on a contemplative shine. “Lionheart, Stonefoot, I think they are right. The Elders and The Queens can make use of these.”

Rusty secretly did a fist pump in his head. They seemed okay with it so far!

The tom then looked at PK and Bonnie. “Are those for the kits? They sure are… colorful looking.”

“No, those two are very special and belong to us,” replied Princess. “The toys for the kits are in Smudge’s lunchbox.” She tossed her head to the Spidey themed tin box.

Rusty grimaced as Penumbra got a look in her eyes. “Rusty still needs a toy to go to bed? Oh man, why didn’t you tell me this before you decided to leave? I could have held this over him.”

The savannah tom sighed in resignation. At least she wouldn’t have the time to actually do it.

“Speaking of my lunchbox, can I please train to become a Medicine Cat? I’ll listen to every word my mentor says and my tin box can hold a lot of herbs!” said Smudge with hope in his golden eyes.

Stonefoot stared at Smudge in surprise. “You want to become a Medicine Cat? Hmmm, I’ll let Bluestar and Spottedleaf know that there is a potential apprentice that wants to join. If they say yes, then your odds are good.”

Smudge practically glowed with excitement.

“Can me and the others help carry this to the Clan? If that’s okay with all of you,” asked Penumbra.

Rusty looked at Lionheart with hopeful eyes. Princess and Smudge did the same.

Whitestorm and Stonefoot gazed at the golden tabby, who thought about this question.

“Only because your gifts seem like a pawful to carry.” Looking at Penumbra, Sephiroth, and Johnny, he went on. “It is an honor for outsiders to come to our camp, but don’t try to come back to our territories to catch prey, or you will be chased out.”

Smudge spoke before Penumbra could. “They know not to trespass, Lionheart. Right guys?”

Sephiroth nodded, though his eyes held a spark of irritation at the accusation that he’d hunt in foreign territory.

Johnny shrugged his shoulders. “The Valentines give me beef, poultry, and pork for my meals. So I’m good on that end.”

Penumbra bristled at Lionheart’s tone but nodded her head. “I’m fine with the prey back over the fence, you won’t find any squirrels missing from me.”

Lionheart nodded. “Good to hear. Stonefoot, you can…” he trailed off as the wind suddenly brought new scents into the clearing. Something familiar to the City cats.

Hissing, Lionheart’s fur fluffed up. “Dogs! Dogs are coming straight towards here! You five, hide over there and we sho—”

Out of the bushes shot out two large dogs. One was a brindle Greyhound, and the other was a fully grown black and tan Tibetan Mastiff.

The Clan cats jumped back, the scent of fear and alarm coming off of their fur in waves.

Rusty gaped at the sight, before yowling in joy. “Seng! Winry. You came!”

The dogs now known as Seng and Winry halted in front of the group of felines. The Greyhound huffed, before doing something that nearly gave the Clan cats a collective heart attack.

She spoke. Clearly.

“Why is it that when Seng and I came back from the Park, we find you,” she pointed her nose at Rusty, “Your sister, and the other’s scents near our houses that led all the way to the forest?”

Looking at Lionheart, Whitestorm, and Stonefoot, she then cocked her head. “Are you those Clan cats that think they are descendants from Wild Cats? Because I find that really funny when you live right next to a city, mate."

Whitestorm’s eyes bulged out of his skull. “T-t-talking dogs?!” The poor tom looked like he was going to faint from shock.

“That’s a nice Shaggy impression you got going on there,” replied Penumbra. She watched the spectacle with amusement.

Johnny shushed her, but he had the same expression.

Seng went ahead and licked Rusty’s face eagerly. Causing his fur to stick up. “Rusty! Why are you here? You could have gotten hurt, or worse! The animal catcher could have grabbed you!”

Rusty shook his head to fling off the remaining slobber. “The animal catcher won’t go after us since we have collars Seng, but thank you for your concern." He really meant it. Now they could say goodbye in person, and not by second hand.

Winry narrowed her eyes as she looked at the two Savannah cats and Turkish angora, then at the pile of blankets, before at the Clan cats, who seemed to be stuck in a flight or fight mode.

“Rusty." Her voice took on a knowing edge, which made him shuffle his paws. “Are you planning on joining the forest cats?” Seng shot up from furiously licking Smudge’s face with wide eyes.

“Huh? Winry what are you on about?” the Tibetan Mastiff got up and met Rusty’s green eyes. “Is Winry telling the truth?”

Rusty fought the gulp as he saw the confusion in her massive face. Winry and Seng were the only dogs that were their friends besides Oscar, and he was more of a friendly elder. Rusty didn’t want to break her heart, but he needed to tell her the truth.

But before he could, Princess answered both of their questions. “Winry is right. Me, my brother, and Smudge are leaving to join the Clan. Pen, Sephiroth, and Johnny came to help carry some things we’ll need for our new lives.”

Winry flicked her ears while Seng surprisingly growled low. “Are they making you do this against your will? If so I”ll—”

“No." Lionheart finally got over his shock, though his eyes were slitted and his tail was puffy. “They wanted to join our Clan with their by their own will. Bluestar won’t force them."

Whitestorm made a noise along with Stonefoot. “Rusty and his friends crossed the fence last night during our patrol, and it was our Leader who offered. She doesn’t make those on whims, which tells us that they have the potential to become something greater," rasped Whitestorm.

“It’s true Winry. Seng. Rusty and Princess wanted to join to escape becoming Show-Cats, while I had to leave because of Donovan," Smudge told them. He didn’t want them to think Lionheart and the others were trying to coerce them into something they didn’t want.

Rusty and Princess nodded in agreement. Penumbra lifted her head. “While I don’t like it, they do want to join, and I wish them the best in their endeavors.''

Winry showed teeth at the name Donovan. “Ouch. Sorry to hear about that Smudge. Heard that the guy is a real headcase."

Seng swung her head to Whitestorm, who stood his ground despite his whiskers vibrating. “You will protect them with all of your might. Right?" While her voice didn’t have any malice in it, the white tom felt the underline pressure in that sentence. The silent ‘Or Else’ was easily picked up by his Clanmates.

“We will protect them with our life, as they will protect ThunderClan," spoke Stonefoot. It seemed that he finally got over the shock, and he looked at the dogs with some kind of awe.

Rusty was confused. Sure, Seng was massive, but other than that, what confounded the Clan Cats so? They know what dogs were, so why act like that?

It seemed like he wasn’t the only one who thought of that. “So, why did you lot act like you just saw a funnel-web spider when we talked? Are dogs talking that big of a revelation to you?” spoke Winry. She had laid down on her side, since sitting down was a bit of a problem for her species.

Stonefoot and Lionheart took a step back. Leaving Whitestorm to speak for his Clan. The tom swung his head and hissed at this betrayal before reluctantly meeting the dogs faces.

“I mean no offense, but the Clans haven’t… had the best experience when it comes to dogs. Some attack us on sight with no provocation, and we never actually heard them talk. Just bark, with a splattering of words. Also, we see dogs with their two-legs on the trail, but I had never seen one big as you." He nodded to Seng, who stomped her paws. Small clouds of dust kicked up in the air.

“Well, dogs can speak, some just don’t try to learn to speak as you cats do." She then let out a series of barks that the city cats could make out as “My name is Sengdongma, and I like to chew on deer antlers."

Whitestorm and the others twitched at the sound but didn’t seem to pick on what she said. “See, that was me talking in the language of dogs. Some city cats know it, like those cats over there”.

A gold, white, and grey head turned to look at them in surprise. “You can understand dogs?!” sputtered Stonefoot. Rusty puffed his chest out with pride. “Yep! We can understand humans too. You have too if you live in the City”.

Winry then took over. “As for dogs attacking you, I really can’t hazard a guess as to why they do that. Unless they are arseholes and help to push the stereotype that dogs hate cats for no reason."

Whitestorm looked pensive before he cleared his throat. “Thank you for this conversation, Winry, Seng. But Bluestar is waiting for us back at camp, and we must make haste to return to it," he mewed.

“What about your collars?” asked Winry. She had gotten to her paws, and pointed at their collars and bandana with her nose.

Rusty had nearly forgotten about them. Their collars! Would the Clan accept them if they still had it on?

Seng had seemed to figure it out. “Hold still Rusty." Lowering her head to his neck, she bit the band and pulled. A quick pinch to his neck, and a loud snapping sound resounded in the clearing. Dangling from her jaws was his collar, snapped cleanly in half.

In total shock, Rusty took a deep breath and felt the hold of the thing that was around his neck as long he could remember disappear.

Princess’s blue eyes shone with realization. “Of course! You’re a genius, Seng. Can you do me next please." Said dog padded over to her, and a couple of seconds later, Princess’s collar met a fate similar to his.

“I feel so free!” she meowed. Turning her head this way and that, she turned to Seng. “Thank you so much, who knows how we could have gotten them off in the Clan?”

“No need to do mine Seng” Smudge simply sat on his haunches before he used his forepaws to play with the bandana around his neck. Soon, it became undone, and it fluttered to the ground.

“Thank you for helping out” replied Lionheart. “You three, take your collars, it will show Bluestar and the Clans that you mean what you say you want to join.” Stonefoot, show the others to our camp since they are holding things that require an easier path. Rusty, Princess, and Smudge are with me and Whitestorm."

“They’ll visit us right?” muttered Seng as she watched the cats get ready to leave. Stonefoot turned his head as he led Penumbra and the others to the side of the clearing.

“That is up to Bluestar, but I’ll make sure she considers it." And with that, they all disappeared into the thicket, Johnny’s ginger tail brushing the forest floor.

“Goodbye, Seng, Winry," Rusty said. They each passed their tongues over his face, then did the same to Princess and Smudge, their tails low but wagging faintly. They then lapped the cheek fur of Whirestorm and Lionheart, who blinked and fluffed out their fur a bit in surprise.

Seng looked at Rusty. "It's been fun," the mastiff said. "Be safe, you three."

"We will," Princess replied.

“We’ll show everyone just what Silverpine cats can do,” said Rusty.

Whitestorm and Lionheart nodded. Rusty collected his now broken collar along with his stuffed toy. With Princess and Smudge beside him as they followed the two warriors, Rusty took one last glance at the canines who befriended them.

“We will see each other again," woofed Seng. Then she, along with Winry, ran back to their homes.

#i speak #wild meets wild #rusty #princess #smudge #lionheart #whitestorm #stonefoot #cats from silverpine #penumbra #sephiroth #johnny #this chapter was supposed to be way longer but google docs became the fun police so I had to half it #otherwise this chapter would had been over twenty pages long #but it was really fun to write!#sepiroth is named after the famous villain from final fantasy vii #penumbra has four ears like yoda the cat #who is real look him up #johnny is based off a jojo character from part 7 #he's kinda like briarlight but he has a cat wheel chair with pouches on the sides #sengdongma #seng the mastiff #winry #winry the greyhound #whitestorm wore revenge for lionheart and stonefoot's stunt with the dogs #thunderclan #fun fact penumbra and sephiroth just just appeared in my head randomly #just like nightsong #i not complaining since i grown to like penumbra #you'll see in ch four

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royalrampionengineer · 5 years

Text

Never Trust Thorne’s Money-Making Schemes-- Cresswell and Kaider Fake Marriage AU

Hello! This short chapter of a fic was inspired from this post here. Summary: Cress wants some extra cash for a new computer, so she takes up the offer of her criminal crush Thorne to send out fake wedding invitations in the hopes that celebrities will reply with money. As you can imagine, there are many, many flaws in this plan, particularly when one of the celebrities RSVPs to the fake wedding.

...

“How about babysitting?” Cress asked, tucked up onto a chair in her and Cinder’s office. “That has to be an easy way to make some extra cash, right?”

Cinder snorted, “There is nothing easy about babysitting, trust me. I grew up with two younger siblings. I know what I’m talking about.��

“Okay, okay,” Cress said, scrolling back on her tablet. “Lawn work? Freelance coding? Grocery store bagger?”

“Look, I’m all for you getting a second job Cress, but I know we’ve been swamped at our business here, what with you doing all the software and me the hardware, and you’ve barely found the time to sleep. How are you going to find the time to add more responsibility to that?”

“I know…but it would be so nice to have a little extra cash to buy a new computer with higher processing power. Too bad there’s no simple way to get the money without putting in extra time.”

“As I’ve said before,” Thorne looked up from where he was sprawled on the ground, placing wrenches on top of one another to see how high he could get them to stack. Despite both Cress and Cinder’s efforts to get their criminal-minded friend out of their workspace, he always seemed to appear and stick around. “I am happy to include you in schemes I have that will make you twice the money in a fourth of the time. And you won’t have to see any screaming toddlers.”

Cress sighed, “Thorne, we’re not becoming criminals. I like to obtain my money the legal way.”

“Boring.” Thorne placed another wrench onto his stack, making the whole thing tilt dangerously to the side. “But if you insist, I have some semi-legal ones. Just a bit of lying, no breaking the law or any consequences.”

“Really? Excuse me if I’m a bit skeptical, since the last time you said no consequences we ended up bailing you out of jail.”

“Trust me, this one’s right up your alley Cress. It’s all over the internet and you can set it up within ten minutes, tops. I call it: the marriage scam.”

“The what?” Cinder asked, eyebrow raised. “You and marriage? Very surprising, our self-proclaimed forever-the-most-eligible bachelor.”

Thorne waved, the tower wobbling dangerously. “No, no, there’s no actual marriage. Stars, could you imagine? That’s like, the worst scam ever. Nah, it’s just something my buddies and I used to run all the time in college. See, there’s all these rich celebrities in the world, and they get invites from fans to stuff all the time—prom, funerals, birthday parties, weddings, ect. Most just trash them, but every once in a while a generous rich soul’s assistant replies and sends a wad of cash in lieu of attendance. Since weddings are the most celebratory, they make the most money. So, you take advantage of this by drafting up a fake wedding invitation, sending it to a bunch of rich people, and cross your fingers that the cash starts rolling in. It’s not a sure thing, but it is a great way to get some spare cash to have on hand.”

Cinder rolled her eyes, “If you spent half the time doing homework and attending class that you spent drafting up get-rich-quick schemes, you would have actually graduated college, you know that, right?”

Thorne winked at her, “But where’s the fun in that?”

“Hold on,” Cress looked at Thorne, her brow creased. “Don’t you run the risk of the person actually saying they’ll attend the wedding?”

“Not really. Just put the wedding in some small town no one’s ever heard of, and no way the celebrity will be bothered.”

“Still seems shady.”

“Think of it this way Cress. Who’s better off with that money? Some rich dude who’s sitting on bags of it, or a co-owner of a computer business who will use the money to better serve her community?”

Cinder tilted her head to the side, “He may have a point Cress. You need money, and this isn’t really illegal.”

“Yesss,” Thorne hissed. “Join the dark side.” Both women sent him unimpressed stares.

“Okay,” Cress drawled. “But who am I going to marry? Don’t exactly have a line of people wanting to fake marry me.”

“I’ll do it,” Thorne shrugged. He placed another wrench on his tower, and the whole thing toppled.

Cress looked away from him immediately, color rising to her face. “Oh you don’t…you don’t have to do that. I was just joking.”

“I don’t mind.” Thorne started rebuilding his tower, carefully avoiding eye contact with Cress. “It was my idea, and it’s not like we’re actually getting married since that would be super crazy and ridiculous because we’re totally just friends.”

“Yeah,” Cinder looked between her two friends, eyes narrowed. “Ridiculous.”

Cress coughed, “Yup, all the friendly feelings for you here!” She turned her face away, wincing at what she knew was the awkward-est way she could have responded to the statement. Cress focused back on her tablet, refusing to acknowledge the fact that she felt Thorne’s stare on her, because that surely didn’t lead anywhere good.

“So, is the con on?” Thorne asked, and Cress was forced to meet his gaze. It immediately caused her to blush.

“Yes,” she coughed out. “Pulling up wedding invite templates online now.”

“Great,” Thorne grinned. “Make it look real official, and don’t forget to make a fake wedding website in case they do a cursory google search. How about we set our fake wedding date about two months from now? Oh, and make sure to include a little sentence about how much you love the celebrity and wish they could be at the wedding.”

“Perfect,” Cress nodded, barely able to look at her fake fiancé without thinking things that were definitely not in the realm of friendly. But really, how could she when he was grinning at her like that with those dimples?

“This is going to be a disaster,” Cinder muttered, already feeling the headache coming on.

…

Kai was sitting by the koi ponds.

Alone. As always.

A side effect of growing up as an only child in a mansion, he supposed, and spending his adult life in boardroom meetings with people twice his age. Being an executive in the billion-dollar tech conglomerate family company really didn’t leave time for making friends, much less finding a girlfriend.

He was startled out of his thoughts by his phone ringing.

“Hello?”

“Good afternoon Kai,” his assistant answered. “I couldn’t seem to find you in the office, so I thought I’d call as requested to give you your daily email updates.”

“Yes, of course. Anything important?”

“Meeting request with a new potential supplier, golf invitation from one of our sponsors, a wedding invitation, and the usual board meeting updates.”

“A wedding invitation? I don’t know anyone getting married.”

“It seems to be a tech repair shop co-owner getting married who is a huge fan of what you’ve done with the family company. Thought they’d invite you on the off chance their idol could make it.”

Kai thought for a moment, staring at the koi pond. “Would they happen to me around my age?”

There was a pause, and he heard some typing. “According to their wedding page, they are very close to your age. What would you like me to do? Ignore it? Send them a monetary gift?”

Well, when life gives you wedding invitations…

“RSVP for me. And clear my schedule the week of the wedding.”

There was a long pause, enough that Kai started to wonder if he had gone truly crazy.

“Yes, of course.”

“Thank you,” Kai replied, hanging up the phone and smiling.

While unconventional, Kai couldn’t help but be excited at the prospect of meeting fans and perhaps gaining some friends who didn’t have grey hair.

...

So thanks for reading! I don’t have any plans to write more of this, but I just had this idea and a burst of inspiration and couldn’t help myself. But please, if you liked it, feel free to continue the story! Just reblog this post with your next chapter, or tag me so I can read it!

#the lunar chronicles #carswell thorne #cresswell #cress darnel #kai #linh cinder #Marissa Meyer #fanfiction #kaider #fake marriage au

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brenli · 6 years

Text

[28]

Tagged by: @goddamnitkastle (YAYAYAY ANOTHER ONE!)

1. how tall are you? 5′3″

2. what color and style is your hair? Dark brown. A couple of stray silver strands. When the light hits it right you can see natural auburn-y red highlights/tones in it, especially near the ends. I wear it long, down to my lower back, usually parted in the middle (sometimes on the left) and with bangs. Usually blunt-cut across my brows, but I'm not as good about trimming them as I ought to be so they usually end up growing out long enough that I need to brush them off to the right.

3. what color are your eyes? Brown

4. do you wear glasses? My cat-eye specs are basically part of my identity at this point.

5. do you wear braces? Nope

6. what is your fashion style? I have contempt for this question that likes of which you cannot believe. XD I guess in the most general sense it's rock-chic. Rock/metal girl elements mixed with glamorous or feminine elements/silhouettes. But this is MASSIVELY boiling down my massive wardrobe and I've certainly had moments of departure from the rock-chic umbrella depending on how I'm feeling. I dislike strictly adhering to specific style labels; I find it stifling.

7. full name? Brenda Lee Larson. My maiden name is cooler to be honest; I only changed it because I was more interested in sharing a surname with the Honey and I know I can still use my maiden name for other things.

8. when were you born? July 24, 1987

9. where are you from and where do you live now? Technically born in Coupeville on Whidbey Island, WA, USA and spent the first 4 years of my life bouncing around different naval stations because my family was about that Navy Life, but the majority of my formative years Spokane, WA, USA so my assumption is that would be more accurately where I'm "from." (Hawaii is where my heart wants to say I'm from though as that's where my earliest memories take place~) After some years spent CA (first in the Bay and then in LA), I'm currently living just south of Seattle, WA. So. Basically I've been wiggling around the West Coast my whole life, including going so far west I ditched the mainland for a spell.

10. what school do you go to? I WORK at a school currently, Cornish. Freelancing as a house manager for 3 of their 4 venues. The 4th one never seems to put on any events that require one of us from the house management roster, otherwise I'd work gigs at that one, too. XD

11. what kind of student are you? Some of you who make these questionnaires clearly cannot think beyond life-after-schooling and it shows. XD I was an above-average student for the vast majority of my years in schooling but I started falling off a little toward the end, largely because I was very keenly aware of what areas of study pertained to me and my interests/goals, and I had no patience for areas of study that did not. I left before it got too bad.

12. do you like school? I liked the parts of school that spoke to me~

13. what are your favorite school subjects? Literature/English was always the major go-to throughout all of my years of schooling. I was in Choir up until highschool; this was when Theatre became available to me and I wasn't able to participate in both, so I parted ways with Choir and focused on Theatre all the way up through my last years of schooling. Other subjects of interest, in highschool: Photography, Psychology, Forensic Science, World History. In college: Creative Writing, Journalism, Japanese.

14. favorite TV shows? The major ones have been racy period dramas The Tudors and The Borgias. I grew up on Star Trek TOS and as such it has a very dear place in my heart despite it not being a racy period drama. XD I also am quite invested in the Netflix MCU with Daredevil and The Punisher being my two favorite shows (Frank is my everything!). More currently I've been expanding my Sanada-san filmography-binge thanks in large part to @anagraves; I recently finished the 1993 Koukou Kyoushi and am through episode 10 of Konna Koi no Hanashi. What I've been learning from this - Hiroyuki Sanada knows how to break hearts whether he's being soft and vulnerable to cold and cruel and anything in between, but that's exactly why I love him.

INB4 "you post Snow White everything so why isn't OUAT on here" I do enjoy OUAT a lot, but I don't know if I would consider it a favorite show overall. I'm more fond of the earlier seasons than the later seasons and it's that ambivalent feeling I have for the later seasons that make the show not a favorite - but still very good overall.

It's also at this point that I should probably explain what my blog description does not - my blog started running a Snow White-themed queue LARGELY as part of an inspiration-drive for a Snow White AU project that I haven't actually touched in a long time. I REALLY should do something about that; I just keep getting pulled in other directions and now it's years on and here I am with what's basically a Snow White queueblog. XD If I can ever get my dumb head in gear and FINISH what I've started, that would honestly result in the queue being mass-posted and then probably altered to suit whatever the next project would be. That's always been the intention, anyway.

15. favorite movies? While I'm still feeling the chilly gaze of my Snow White queue, my favorite Snow White movie thus far is Mirror Mirror. I think it's massively underrated and that makes me sad.

As far as Disney is concerned, while I have a HUGE amount of respect for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, my favorite film growing up was Beauty and the Beast (and my Rococo-loving ass does adore the live action remake). Surprise??? XD More recently, Moana is the film of my heart; it's the closest Disney has gotten to making a Princess culturally-relevant to me as a half-Filipina so my tropical islander ass is just utterly enamoured with Moana. ((Listen Disney if you ever decide to make a super fun colorful precolonial Philippine film THE PERFECT PRINCESS EXISTS FOR THAT, I submit for your consideration - Urduja!)

Because of my rather open-door childhood with regard to media, my earliest favorite movies are actually Nightmare on Elm Street and Nightmare on Elm Street: Dream Warriors. Freddy is my Nightmare King Murder Boyfriend and I'm prepared to face judgement for that. XD

Fondness for Star Trek TOS has resulted in an affection for the AOS movies~

But a movie that speaks to me very much is What Dreams May Come.

Currently I've gotten re-ensnared into The Last Samurai, in correlation with the most recent AU project. Because I am hopeless, Grumpy Samurai is Best Samurai, and I've been spending time manically fretting and pretending that because Ujio drops before the gatling guns are brought out, maybe he SOMEHOW managed to survive in SOME way and he can have tons of cool battle scars. Right? ... RIGHT???

16. favorite books? If manga counts then it's Angel Sanctuary. Hands down. No contest. It's easily woven itself into my life in the form of fanfic that is/was well-received within the fandom, and a weirdly HUGE list of AUs that somehow burst out of nowhere. (Currently all of it, AU work included, can be read via my FF.Net account under brenli. I have a placeholder page on AO3 that's currently empty but may end up holding all my content there as well, in time. If I can ever make the time.)

I was and am really into Sue Harrison's Ivory Carver series, particularly My Sister the Moon.

It was part of my middle school/junior high reading curriculum but I honestly DID really like The Diving Bell by Todd Strasser. Even if the cover art of Culca coming up out of the ocean looked A LOT like me and resulted in my class calling me Culca for the entirety of our unit on that book. It's fine. Culca is a badass queen of pearls and seawater so I'm happy to be associated with her~!

Every now and then I remember a book that clearly really resonated with my as a child if I still remember it, but the problem is that I don't remember the title or the author, or even any of the characters' names. It was about a Roma girl who lived in the American south - I wanna say Tennesee? - who was discovered for her talent playing guitar and singing country music. The book essentially details her struggle between her traditional roots as a Roma person, including the arrangement for her to be married young, and her interest in pursuing music as a career but feeling alienated by an industry and a society at large that is wealthier than her and has a different culture from her own. The book ends with her running away but it isn't made clear what her ultimate fate is. To this DAY it bothers me that I don't remember the title or the author because I honestly go through periods where I want to reread it. And yes, this was the kind of stuff I was reading as a child. XD I also read My Sister the Moon for the first time when I was like. 11 years old. If you're familiar with the content of that book then you're aware that certain scenes are really not 11-year-old friendly, but. If I can watch gratuitous 80's slasher horror at age 4 then I can read about a young woman surviving sexual abuse at age 11.

17. favorite pastime? Writing at this rate, honestly. Which probably speaks more to my inner tortured artist than anything else. XD

18. do you have any regrets? I feel like everybody has at least one regret and anyone who says otherwise is either very very young, or lying. XD It's not about whether you have regrets, it's about not letting them hold you in the past.

19. dream job? Telling stories, in any and every way attainable to me.

20. would you like to get married someday? I already am~

21. would you like to have kids someday? Absolutely not. I don't feel like my life is conducive to childrearing, and INB4 "you're never truly ready" and "you make it work" the key factor here is I'm not WILLING to become ready and I'm not WILLING to make it work. That's how I know my life is not conducive to childrearing. XD (I'm at that age where tons of people are asking me this and feeding me words meant to encourage me to consider and it's honestly EXHAUSTING by this point. I can't wait for when I'm menopausal maybe people will finally shut up about it because I'll be past my prime~)

23. do you like shopping? I mean, yes, but I usually avoid it because I'm aware of how impulsive I am.

24. what countries have you visited? I'm tempted to say that Hawaii should count because it's so far away from the mainland. XD But honestly I've never been outside of US territory. It's in the plans to try for Japan during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. I'm not sure if we'll make that goal but if not, I figure it won't hurt to continue saving up anyway and making a Tokyo trip post-Olympics. Prices will be cheaper post-Olympics, anyway, so~

25. what’s the scariest nightmare you’ve ever had? At the risk of raising weird red flags I've gone through periods where I'll have reoccurring nightmares about being actively pursued by someone who very obviously intends to do harm. It happens often enough that the Honey wonders if I'm mentally suppressing something. XD I did have a standalone dream though, where me and the Honey were asleep in bed and then I become aware that someone's broken into the house and is approaching our bed. I'm walking through every possible option in my head with my eyes shut; if the Honey and I both lunged at the attacker we could possibly overpower them just because it would be two against one. But I know that I can't possibly wake up the Honey and make him aware of the situation without the attacker immediately acting and resulting in at least one of us being injured or killed. I realize that I have no choice but to try and take the attacker by surprise by myself and hope that is enough. I make peace with that. I can feel the attacker leaning over me. I suddenly lunge at them in full primal adrenaline-filled rage.

I wake up.

26. do you have any enemies? I guess that I have a few, yes, but honestly at this point I've gotten probably a little too used to being vilified. Barring physical assault or turning the animosity on innocent third parties in my life, I am prepared to weather the metaphorical lashes.

27. do you have an s/o? I have my Honey~

28. do you believe in miracles? I believe in miracles that aren't the overt surface-level wish-fulfillment-from-above which I think most people expect a miracle to be. I think that sometimes luck plays out via a slim-to-none chance and that can be a miracle. I think that sometimes a person works very hard at something or for something and when they achieve it, that can be a miracle. I think that the butterfly effect is a double-edged sword, but sometimes that little flutter of a butterfly's wings is a miracle.

Tagging: @yacky-jackie @halorecoil @anagraves @benevolentqueenofstars @lesbomancy @candybunnieholic @lemonedscream @tinathefish

#questionaire

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wndamaximov · 6 years

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I Thought You Were The One

Koi No Yokan

<<<Previous

Series Summary: Tony Stark.The name of the most feared mobster in all of New York. The name that parents would take to terrify their children in to doing what they were told. The name that would send the most fearless man running in terror. The name that by the time this story is over, will not even be worth a penny.

Koi no yokan(Japanese): The extraordinary sense upon first meeting someone, that you will one day fall in love.

Tony leaned back into his chair and stretched. It had been a fairly slow day for Stark Industries and its countless side-businesses. It was like this most days; not as many people dared to mess with the guy who was rumoured to bite the heads of those who crossed him off, and not in the figurative way. Tony’d always wondered who had come up with that interesting myth. Just another thing to ponder as he struggled to keep his eyes open.

The weather outside didn’t help his boredom either. All he noticed about it was the bleak gray fog settling down on the traffic like a blanket of dread. Not good enough for rain, but Tony was high up enough that little droplets had formed on his window, fragmenting the world below him into pieces not nearly interesting enough to put together. New York- the city that teemed with life. No corner was occupied by just a single person, except for his little bubble. No one bothered to venture far enough inside, and why would they? Tony’d built a fortress around his corner, making it impenetrable. His reputation made him a god, a cruel, capricious god who was only to be worshipped, not loved. Only one person had ever taken the time to get to know the man underneath the beast.

Suddenly, the intercom buzzed, the piercing sound shaking Tony out from inside his head. “Yeah?”

“Boss, we’ve got someone who stole something from you. Would you like to see him or should I tell the War Machine to deal with him?”

“Send him up. I want to hear his story.” Not like Tony had anything better to do anyway.

————————

The shaking man was deposited on his knees in front of the emotionless king. That’s what Tony realized he was. A king with his cowering subject awaiting judgement in front of him.

“Please sir,” he sobbed, “I did it for my only son.”

Tony laughed. Children. That was always their excuse. “What’s your name?”

“Joseph, Joseph Rogers, sir.”

“Tell me, what’d you take for your… son.”

“A rose, from your garden,they’re my son’s favorite,” the man said, his voice gradually raising in volume, “but I swear on my boy’s life, I had no idea the flower was yours! I thought it was just city property, please sir, you have to believe me!” Tony was surprised. He thought the old man had stolen something valuable, like drugs from one of his posts. What he didn’t expect was the item stolen to be something so trivial as a rose. And so he gestured to Rhodey to follow him out of the room.

“He stole a rose? A rose? As in singular?” He pushed Rhodey up against the wall, seething. Wasted his precious time over a rose.

“Yeah, I know Tony, it sounds stupid, but remember a couple of years ago when you announced that anyone who stole from you, anyone, would suffer the consequences? And it’s too late to turn back now, everyone’s already seen this- we can’t let him go without seeming weak.”

God, he hated when Rhodey was right. “Take him to my mansion and lock him up. Make sure he never sees the light of day. And get me the son too.” Maybe he’d order in some pizza when he went home. Yeah, pizza sounded good. Even a merciless king needed to eat.

»»——⍟——««

It was Steve’s 30th birthday and so far, not off to a great start. He’d been looking forward to seeing his dad soon, but it turned out that he was late- by 4 hours. Steve would’ve been worried, but this was a common experience. His deadbeat drunk of a dad was probably getting wasted at some random bar in New York- as per usual.

As Steve was about to settle on the couch to channel surf with his beer and pizza in hand, he heard a rapid knocking at the door. It was probably Mrs. Carter downstairs asking him to stop being so loud. The crazy woman hated even the slightest sound that he made.

He yanked the door open and was surprised to see a bunch of men in black suits and sunglasses standing around. The one in front looked down at the gun tucked into his waistband warning him to comply. Gangsters.

“Sir, we need you to come with us.” What had his dad gotten him into now?

»»——⍟——««

Tony ate his pizza into his mouth in a robotic way. Lift, put in mouth, chew. He couldn’t taste any of the flavors in his mouth. It was all bland in his mouth; like eating water. Eating wasn’t even the same anymore- he needed help.

His phone rang, and he knew that Rhodey had done what he had told him to. “You got the boy?”

“Man, sir. He’s somewhere around his late thirties.” That old man must’ve been older than he looked then.

“Still living with his dad?” Tony wanted to get a feel for what this guy was like.

“Yeah. Dad’s an alcoholic- looks like he was there to take care of him.” Fathers. Nothing good ever came out of them.

“Hmm. A stealing alcoholic. What does the son look like?” Hopefully the son was a better person.

“Someone who’s trying to do his best in a bad situation.” Tony flash backed to his own childhood. It was a struggle shaking the past off of himself.

“I’ll see that for myself. How far are you?”

“15 minutes out.”

“Hurry. I want to see whether this son is worth all the trouble.”

————————

He didn’t look like much. A blonde, tall, and muscular guy. “You know why you’re here?”

A guy who looked down with a set jaw and back up with contempt in his eyes. “What’d my dad do this time?” Not contempt for him, but his father.

“He stole something from me. But let’s talk about you. What’s your name?”

“Steve.” As if an afterthought, he added, “Rogers.”

“Well, Steve, I’m willing to let your father go. He’s an old man, I don’t think he’d last long here.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Rogers started to get up.

“But.” Steve sat back down. “In exchange for his freedom, I’ll need your service.”

After a couple seconds of deliberation, he replied, “Fine. Just… let him go.”

“So we have a deal?” They both rose and met hands like equals.

“It seems that we do.” And just like that, the smallest bit of color seeped back into Tony’s life.

Ask to be tagged in this series here!

Angels: @rebelwriter95 @freshly-painted-duck

I Thought You Were The One: @smilexcaptainx @rainbow-onionsandwich

#I thought you were the one #tony stark #steve rogers #bi tony stark #bi steve rogers #tony stark fic #steve rogers fic #stony #stony fic #rhodey #colonel james rhodes #james rhodes #marvel fanfic #marvel fic #marvel fanfiction #trigger warnings #depression

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persephone-damnedqueen · 7 years

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Beginning Thoughts of the Summer Anime Season 2017. . .

Summer Season of Anime is already among us, and I’m so glad it’s here. With Spring being so incredibly weak, I find myself enjoying the fact that the Summer Season is already this good and it’s only the better. Regardless, here are my thoughts on the beginning shows I’m watching. Please keep in mind that these are based solely on the first episode or two, and are purely just my opinion. So please, if yours differs, I’d love to here it.

Kakegurui: Studio MAPPA

Hi, I’m one of the contenders for best show of Summer Season. Gambling. Finally something different. There aren’t as many series about Gambling as there is with so many others, much less done in this high school setting. Regardless, I love the art style of this series, especially when it gets to be those truly disturbing scenes. I can say without a doubt that this is definitely going to be one of the highlights of this season.

Hajimete no Gal: Studio NAZ

Would you hate me if I said this is one of my favorites so far? Yeah, I’m trash, and this is trash, but I don’t care. It’s an ecchi series that isn’t making me hate everything around me so far, so I’m going to enjoy this while it lasts. DO NOT WATCH THIS WITHOUT HEADPHONES.

Koi to Uso: LIDENFILMS

This show is a perfect example of a series where the plot is good enough to save the series. The art style is very generic, granted, it’s higher quality generic, but generic and bland nonetheless. I would love this series so much more if it was done in more of a March Comes in Like a Lion, or even a Scum’s Wish Art Style, but unfortunately, that isn’t the case here. However, I am loving the plot thus far. Who honestly isn’t interested in this concept of Forbidden Love. I honestly can’t wait to see where this series goes from here.

Netsuzou TRap : Creators in Pack

Disappointed. Nine Minute Series. Nine Freaking Minutes. Honestly, unless you live and breathe for Yuri, don’t waste your time. I happen to really enjoy Yuri, so I’ll keep watching it for a little while. The manga is a billion times better compared to this. #StopMakingShittyAdaptations.

Ballroom e Youkoso: Production I.G.

Hi, I’m the other top runner for best series of the season. I really love this series. It’s amazing. It’s unique, and I can honestly see this being almost as big as Yuri on Ice. Check this shit out. I mean you could also just check it out solely for the purpose of that unique I.G. Art Style; I mean, hello this has Haikyuu written all over it.

Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni: Production Reed

Dropped. I’m sick of the “another-world-harem-series” it’s getting old. Granted, this is a slightly different “another world harem” by having the main guy getting to keep his smartphone in this other world. I know right? God understands our first world struggles. Also, this art style is bland. But who knows, maybe you’ll like it.

Nana Maru San Batsu: TMS Entertainment

Annd this is going to be dropped. Calling it now. I hate the art style. I also hate the main girl; in fact, I hate her so much I don’t even like her enough to learn her name. I really liked the concept. A Quiz Anime. It’s completely different from everything else, the only thing that truly kills the series for me is the execution. The execution is absolutely terrible. It had potential, and it’s just really sad to see it wasted.

Dive!!: Studio Zero-G

Honestly, this is probably going to get dropped. As much as I hate to admit it, I find this show just underwhelming. When I first heard about the show, I had high hopes that it was going to be something, maybe not as awesome as Free!, but at least as eye catching, or entertaining, or hell, even just partially lovable as Free!. I find myself disappointed, both with how the show is turning out, as well as with how much I expected from it. Honestly, unless you live and breathe for Sports Anime, don’t bother. I would also like to point out that everywhere I’ve read about it does have Comedy tagged before Sports, yet I have not found a bit of it even relatively close to “comedy,” so there’s that as well. . .

Hitorijime My Hero : Encourage Films

Watching this. Why? Meh, I like BL. In all honestly though, it’s turning out alright; it is a Shounen Ai, series, so regardless, I always go into them with no expectations, so for now, it’s just meh. I’ll let you know more when it gets further along.

Tsurezure Children: Studio Gokumi

I’m actually really enjoying this one. It’s a cute little time killer that’s pretty funny, and is all about kids with these love problems. How cute. The art style is very generic, and the plot isn’t exactly reverting, but it’s entertaining and that’s all that matters.

Youkoso Jitsuryoku Shijou Shugi no Kyoushitsu e: Studio Lerche

I’m interested. Very interested. I went into it thinking that it was just going to be some Assassination Classroom wanna be by the same studio: Class of Underachievers, given up on by this precious elite school. I’m honestly glad that it, so far, isn’t turning into that at all. I’m curious to see where it goes from here.

Jigoku Shojo: Studio Deen

Hell Girl!! *Crying* I missed you so much. You never realize just how much you miss a show until you get another season and it just makes you so happy. This is me with Hell Girl. Thank you. I needed this. I needed an excuse to binge the series again, (which I totally did) just to mentally prepare myself for this new season.

Boku no Hero Academia: Studio Bones

That second half art style change though!!! Still best show so far. Best show of the season. Best Show of Last Season. Just Best. Show. WHY ARE YOU NOT WATCHING THIS?!?!?!

So anyways, that is my first impressions of the series so far that I am watching. Please keep in mind these are merely my thoughts, and I am not going to be watching everything this season. If there’s something I’m not watching that you think I should be, please let me know. Also, let me know what you’re thinking of this season so far!

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a-chan-san · 7 years

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GET TO KNOW ME UNCOMFORTABLY WELL (FILLED OUT)

@prfm-uk tagged me in this like 5 months ago.. heheh

I tag my one friend on Tumblr @p-r-f-m :)

What is your middle name?

Nicole (Oh god I keep fucking with the format I’m sorry)

How old are you? 23. Practically a senior citizen on Tumblr

When is your birthday? May 1st

What is your zodiac sign? Taurus

What is your favorite color? Light blue, light purple and white

What’s your lucky number? meh maybe 14

Do you have any pets? 3 kitties :)

Where are you from? True north strong and free! Close to Vancouver

How tall are you? Not sure? Maybe 5′7

What shoe size are you? 8 but who cares

How many pairs of shoes do you own? Probably like 10 but wear only 3

What was your last dream about? I can’t remember but I woke up mad at my boyfriend :P

What talents do you have? Uh. I do’t really have talents. I can speak Japanese semi decently and can make paper stars. That’s about it.

Are you psychic in any way? Nah but I think I have pretty good foresight

Favourite song? Queen Charlotte of the Hyenas-Chucky Danger, Magic of Love, Party Maker, Koi wa Zenkei Shisei-Perfume, Watching You-Pogo

Favourite movie? Pride and Prejudice, UP, Kiki’s Delivery Service

Who would be your ideal partner? My bf is pretty aight

Do you want children? I want to want children...kids suck so much though

Do you want a church wedding? Nah

Are you religious? I was but now nah

Have you ever been to the hospital? Probably 5 times due to broken bones and asthma

Have you ever got in trouble with the law? Nope!

Have you ever met any celebrities? Carly Rae and lots of hockey players. Also the band Cat Empire if anyone other than me cares!? (it was amazing)

Baths or showers? Showers are more practical but I am a Lush bath bomb slut

What colour socks are you wearing? No socks

Have you ever been famous? Neigh

Would you like to be a big celebrity? I would like to be a middle class celebrity

What type of music do you like? I can’t really block myself into a category. My taste is all over the place.

Have you ever been skinny dipping? Yeah I just went last month!

How many pillows do you sleep with? 2, but 4 on my bed

What position do you usually sleep in? On my side

How big is your house? 3 bed, 2.5 bath, 3 stories but very skinny

What do you typically have for breakfast? Instant oatmeal being as I work at 730 am

Have you ever fired a gun? Nope

Have you ever tried archery? Yeah I used to be hella good

Favorite clean word? I’m sure I could remember if I sat and thought about it for long enough but I can’t be bothered.

Favorite swear word? Good old fuck is my go to

What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleep? Probably like 37 hours or whatever it was on the way/first day of my Japan trip

Do you have any scars? One on my knee form whiping out during Terry Fox run ‘05

Have you ever had a secret admirer? nnnno?

Are you a good liar? Oh my god no. It’s so bad.

Are you a good judge of character? I think so

Can you do any other accents other than your own? Yes but not well. So actually no.

Do you have a strong accent? Nah I probably just sound like an American. No ones ever pointed it out to me.

What is your favourite accent? Aussie maybe?

What is your personality type? Marshmallow

What is your most expensive piece of clothing? Oh god I just spent $95 on a pair of TOM runners. I don’t even run wtf.

Can you curl your tongue? Yis

Are you an innie or an outie? Innie. I feel weird answering that.

Left or right handed? Right

Are you scared of spiders? Yes. The bf comes in handy because of this.

Favorite food?

Perogies, pizza, Sandwiches, curry

Favorite foreign food? Ramen or Indian food on a whole mmmm

Are you a clean or messy person? Messy but improving

Most used phrase? I’m really bad about using phrases to death but I can’t think of one atm

Most used word? I asked bf and he said it’s ‘BOIII’ right now. Kill me.

How long does it take for you to get ready? for work? 20 mins, to go out like an hour

Do you have much of an ego? Nope. At work I can be a bit cocky tho

Do you suck or bite lollipops? NO BITE >:(

Do you talk to yourself? At work alll the time

Do you sing to yourself? Yeah

Are you a good singer? Not really since leaving choir

Biggest fear? Social Anxieties mess with me real bad.

Are you a gossip? Uhh Unfortunately lol

Best dramatic movie you’ve seen? Saving Private Ryan. That counts right?

Do you like long or short hair? on other people? Idc. On me I like it short but currently trying to grow it out and it is a mega pain.

Can you name all 50 states of America? Lol no

Favourite school subject? Japanese and Music

Extrovert or Introvert? Extrovert with unfortunate anxieties

Have you ever been scuba diving? Nope

What makes you nervous? My scary man boss, Thinking about job hunting, having to do shit in public by myself

Are you scared of the dark? Not scared but if I sleep in pitch black I’ll have panic attacks and or sleep walk lol

Do you correct people when they make mistakes? Depending

Are you ticklish? OH YES

Have you ever started a rumour? Nope

Have you ever been in a position of authority? Hmm probably but I can’t remember. I guess at work sometimes.

Have you ever drank underage? Just tastes

Have you ever done drugs? Weed but like barely

Who was your first real crush

Hmm it’s hard to say when it gets real. Let’s say Paris in grade 8

How many piercings do you have? 3 if you could each ear :P

Can you roll your ‘R’s?

Hmm maybe?

How fast can you type? Meh

How fast can you run? so so slow

What colour is your hair? Dark Brown

What colour are your eyes? Hazel

What are you allergic to? Dogs. With a side of lots of asthma triggers

Do you keep a journal? I used to but it fizzled out :(

What do your parents do? Nada. Ma is on disability due to a broken back.

Do you like your age? Sure but it doesn’t mater? Knock on wood I get to try them all

What makes you angry? Hm why am I having so much trouble thinking of something. When I bonk my head while getting into the car >:(

Do you like your own name? Yeah I didn’t when I was younger but I was a stupid kid who thought it was cool to hate your name. My name is my name.

Have you already thought of baby names, and if so what are they? Looove the name Neil even though its a stereotyped nerd name

Do you want a boy a girl for a child? One of each or just a girl

What are you strengths? Honestly, frugality, strong morals in some aspects

What are your weaknesses? Shyness, slow learner

How did you get your name? I think I’m unfortunately named after a country singer. Old men like to believe I was named after a car tho.

Were your ancestors royalty? No. But I think my great grandpa was very famous/important in Vancouver for some reason

Do you have any scars? uh

Colour of your bedspread? Pink. Even though I hate pink...

Colour of your room? Foresty green

Does it ever get better?

It does. It really great to age and look back on who you were and be aware of your mistakes and see your improvements. (sorry I couldn’t get this line to format properly (apparently formatting isn’t where I’ve improved))

#what in the world is Shelby talking about

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sunbrights · 8 years

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fic: by the claw of dragon (4/7)

fandom: danganronpa characters/pairings: natsumi kuzuryuu, fuyuhiko kuzuryuu, peko pekoyama + 77th class ensemble, et al. kuzupeko. character tags will be updated on AO3 with plot-relevant characters as chapters are posted. rating: m summary: The Kuzuryuu Clan stands on the precipice of the greatest era of its history. Kuzuryuu Natsumi promises to be the strongest leader the clan has ever seen, the Overlord of the South born again. That Hopes’s Peak Academy would select her for it’s 77th class was assumed, not hoped for.

To the younger Kuzuryuu son, everything is as it’s meant to be.

She starts getting messages from her European contacts within the day. The publicity of the practical exam was supposed to give her more time, but instead it’s made them all nervous, hand-wringing cowards. Suddenly the assurances they’d been happy to accept before aren’t enough. Suddenly she’s an unreliable partner, and they need more proof of commitment. Suddenly they all want to speak with her father, instead.

Natsumi won’t let them. It’s that simple. She can handle it. She has to handle it. It’s not any different than it was before, it’s just that her timetable is shortened now, that’s all.

The next morning, a car comes to pick her and Peko up for spring vacation. Most of the other students will stay to watch the rest of the exams, but Natsumi doesn’t care what any of them have cooked up. There’s too much left for her to do now, anyway.

The ride back is long, and silent except for the insistent buzzing of Natsumi’s phone. Emails and texts and, once, a call from her contact in Marseille that boils down to an hour of him trying to pressure a better cut out of her.

She puts her phone back in her bag after that, and ignores it for the rest of the trip.

The front gates of the compound are beautiful in early spring, when the cherry trees are budding but not yet blooming. She likes it when there’s a mix of colors: the green and pink from the trees against the deep red of the gate.

The blossoms must be late this year, though: she can’t make out the pink until the car pulls up right to the gate, and even then it’s only because she’s looking for it. They might be further along by the end of her vacation, but then again, there’s a better chance she’ll miss it entirely.

Only Fuyuhiko is waiting when the car pulls up the drive to the main house. He looks sullen, squinting into the sun with his arms crossed. It isn’t as if she expected the same sort of entourage she had as when she left for school, but even for summer break her parents and her aunt had been there to greet her, too.

She knows it’s not an accident or an oversight.

Natsumi rolls down the window to stick her head out. “Gee, be more of a welcome wagon, huh?”

“Will you just get out of the car already?”

The driver takes Natsumi’s bags up into the house. Fuyuhiko tussles with Peko over hers (“I’ve been standing out here all damn morning, at least give me something to do,”) until she relents.

(She takes them back when she parts ways with them at the staff quarters. "I'll see you soon, young mistress." She bows at the waist, and it’s already strange to be separated from her during the day.)

The house is quiet. The staff smile and bow politely to her when they pass (“Welcome home, young mistress,”) but there’s no urgency to their routines. Everything is clean, but not spotless. The kitchen is empty in the late afternoon lull between lunch and dinner.

It’s normal for a Thursday, but not for her homecoming.

When they reach the study, she says, “They’re not here, are they?”

Fuyuhiko grimaces. His shoulders hunch when he shoves his hands deeper in his pockets. “They’re in Seoul,” he tells her. “‘Emergency business trip’. They’re supposed to be back by the middle of the week.”

She hates that some part of her is still surprised, when she knows she shouldn’t be. “Figures,” she says, and flops back onto the cushions of the couch. “Not like that’s something worth telling me ahead of time.”

“Look, they’re—”

“You wanna play cards?” she interrupts. She swings her legs off the couch and reaches for the top desk drawer. “Everyone at school sucks. I’m so rusty you might actually have a chance of beating me this time.”

It’s so transparent it’s almost painful. She knows that; he must know it, too. He sits down next to her anyway, legs crossed under him on the couch.

“So,” he says, after she’s started to deal the cards between them. “You gonna tell me what happened?”

She loses count. She has to poke through his to see how many she’s given him already. “What happened with what?”

“Don’t give me that crap. You know what I’m talking about.”

“There’s nothing to say,” Natsumi tells him. “I couldn’t get her to say yes to a partnership. That’s it.” She nudges his cards toward him. “Now play.”

“Bullshit. You expect me to believe that?”

“Well, it’s what happened!” she snaps. “So yeah! I do!”

He doesn’t buy it. (It was admittedly not her best.) She can feel him staring at the side of her head, so she focuses on her hand. It’s garbage. “You’re telling me that you— you— couldn’t convince her. Last year you convinced an elementary school teacher to run for us out the back of the school playground.”

“That one wasn’t even hard,” Natsumi mutters. “He was up to his ears in gambling debts, all anybody needed was eyes to see that.”

“And you couldn’t find an angle on the princess,” he goes on. “Nothing? You had Peko running around for two goddamn weeks and you couldn’t find anything?”

“Jeez,” she tries, laughing, “If this is about Peko, for the last time—”

That doesn’t work either. He doesn’t flinch or flush or even look away. Maybe she’s just lost her touch. “Don’t try to pull that shit on me. You know what this is about. What the fuck is going on, Natsumi?”

“Just—” She winces when her voice cracks. “Don’t. Okay? It’s fine. I’m handling it.” He squints at her. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

He lets it go, but only just barely. She lays her cards on the table before he can change his mind.

He’s frowning when he lays his cards down over hers. “I win,” he says. “Deal ‘em again.”

She takes her old SLR camera out into the garden, because she feels like it. She’d found it on one of the shelves in her bedroom, dusty and obsolete, but workable. The plum trees are in full bloom, unlike the cherry trees outside, and they’ve scattered white and pink petals all across the little artificial pond at the center of the courtyard. It's pretty, and she’s always preferred taking pictures of nature over portraits of people.

Natsumi crouches down to take a close-up of one of the koi carp investigating a blossom spinning on the surface of the water. It opens its mouth wide and flares its gills, and when she snaps the picture it looks like it’s about to swallow the little blossom whole. The camera has clear focus and a powerful zoom; even this dumb photo of a fish comes out better than anything she’s snapped on her phone in the past year. She sits back on her heels to take another picture of the tree over her head, the plum blossoms dappled in light and shadow.

A plum tree is beautiful in its own way no matter what time of year it is; people are flighty and performative, especially in pictures. It’s easier for a person to ruin a good picture than a flower or a cat or a mountain.

She sits on one of the garden benches to page her way through her photos. It was always Koizumi who was obsessed with taking pictures of people, back in their middle school photography club. Of course people liked that better; everyone likes to see photos of themselves. Natsumi never bought into it. Koizumi’s pictures were always simple, inoffensive, safe. Social media pictures.

Through the open shōji she can see her brother and Peko standing together just inside the house. He’s telling her a story while he helps her set out plates and cups for an afternoon snack; Natsumi can tell because he keeps waving his hands around, even when Peko reaches for something he’s holding. He says something that makes her smile, and there’s a moment where both of them are smiling at each other and neither of them are saying anything.

Natsumi frames them in her camera’s viewfinder, but by the time she presses the shutter the moment’s already passed. It’s not a bad picture— it’s still cute and the image is crisp, and anything that preserves her brother’s dopey smile is good in her opinion— but it still isn’t right. You can’t boil people or relationships down into a single image, that’s what she’s said from the beginning. She doesn’t know how Koizumi does it, or why she even bothers.

Maybe that’s the difference between her and Koizumi, though. Maybe that’s why Hope’s Peak saw Ultimate talent in her pictures and not Natsumi’s.

Fuyuhiko and Peko bring a plate of Peko’s dango out to her. (That is, Fuyuhiko does, after he takes one from where Peko has it balanced on her forearm.) He doesn’t say anything when he sits down next to her, just holds it out for her to take. Natsumi takes a picture of it before she does.

(Peko isn’t supposed to cook, it’s not her role in the household, but she likes it, and her dango are Natsumi’s favorites, so she does it anyway.)

Fuyuhiko scoots over to give Peko room to sit next to him, and he pokes Natsumi with his elbow until she scoots, too. The three of them are more squished on this bench now than they used to be when they were kids, but that doesn’t matter. Natsumi holds her food in her lap while she plays with the camera’s built-in filters. “How is that thing, anyway?” he asks her, mouth half full. “I figured you weren’t ever gonna use it again.”

Natsumi picks a filter with bright, oversaturated colors, and lets the camera drop on its strap around her neck so she can eat. “Eh. It’s okay, I guess.”

“’Okay’? The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means what it sounds like! Jeez, you’re the one who asked.”

“It’s old, but it’s not like it’s a piece of crap. Gimme that.” He jerks the camera toward him and flips through her pictures, one by one. “How many different pictures can you take of bushes?”

Peko leans over to look; the bottom of one of her braids brushes against his shoulder. “I like them,” she says.

Natsumi feels her brother go very still. The strap tugs around her neck when he tries to pull the camera over to give Peko more room, but Natsumi doesn’t give him any slack.

“I mean, sure. They’re… pretty, I guess.”

“The garden is well-maintained. But the young mistress does more than just photograph the flowers.”

“That doesn’t make any goddamn sense.” He taps the ‘next’ button with the edge of his thumb to scroll through all the pictures. “Look, it’s a flower. Look, there’s three flowers. Flower, flower, fish, flower—”

He lands on the picture of the two of them inside the house. Natsumi nearly laughs and chokes when he pulls abruptly down on the camera’s strap, like hiding it against his stomach is somehow better than the alternative.

Then her phone buzzes in her breast pocket.

It’s a phone call, not a text or an email, and she doesn’t need to look to know it’s coming from an international number. She lets it ring out anyway. She’s tired. She just wants to take pictures and laugh at her brother’s expression when he sees the stupid faces he makes in them.

The call goes to voicemail. She has enough time to bite another dango off the stick before it starts to ring again.

She pulls it out of her pocket. Greece.

Her camera jerks out of Fuyuhiko’s hands when she stands. He frowns up at her. “What the hell? Where are you going?”

“I have to take this.” The number stares up at her from the screen. She can see the icon for the previous missed call in the corner. He’s definitely going to ask her for an explanation, and she definitely has to have one.

“Who is it?”

“Don’t worry about it! Here, go take some of your own if you think you can do so much better.” She swings the strap off her neck and dumps it over his.

“Natsumi—”

“Let’s go, Peko.”

Peko gets up to follow, but not before she lingers, just a second too long.

Natsumi doubts her brother even notices.

She loses three of the contracts before dinner.

They all think she’s weak, but none of them are brave enough to tell her that’s why they’re welching. The Croatians tell her that they’d decided to go in another direction. The French make up some bullshit about shipping costs and the viability of the market in Asia. The Spaniards say they “don’t like where the wind is blowing.”

She tries everything she can think of. She ups their cuts. She promises no-charge protection and guaranteed legal immunity. She flirts. She shouts. She holds her knife in one hand and mentally pages through Peko’s forms while she talks about how the Kuzuryuu Clan responds to being disappointed.

Her contact in A Coruña hangs up on her, and she throws her phone across the room.

The bottom left edge hits the floor at an awkward angle and sends a spider web of cracks out over the screen. She considers just leaving it there, broken and useless in the corner, but then the screen lights up again behind all the cracks, and she can’t just ignore it. She scoops it back up on her way out of the room.

The kitchen staff sets out dinner in the smaller family dining room (ginger pork, the chef tells her with a broad smile and clasped hands, her favorite). Their parents have their designated seats on one side of the table, and the children have theirs on the other; even with two of them empty, neither she nor Fuyuhiko feel like upsetting that configuration. They kneel together at the table, and Natsumi sticks Fuyuhiko with her chopsticks when he tries to take the bigger serving of the pork. Peko takes her place behind Natsumi’s seat, hands folded in her lap.

The silence is stifling. Fuyuhiko keeps looking at her. (She has no idea how he made it this far in this family without learning any kind of subtlety.) She tries to focus on just getting through her dinner so she can get back to work.

Her phone starts to buzz in her pocket. She drops her chopsticks to answer it, but her hand only makes it far enough to rub the inside corner of her right eye.

Fuyuhiko says, “Natsumi.”

The call rings out, and she feels it buzz again with a voicemail. She thinks about excusing herself to go listen to it, but by now it’s nearly pointless, isn’t it? There’s no point in pretending this is doable anymore.

“I had dirt on the princess of Novoselic and I didn’t use it,” she says into her bowl.

He’s mid-bite when she says it. He chews slowly, and then all he has to say is, “What?”

She doesn’t look at him. She pushes a single grain of rice in a circle around the lip of the bowl. “Are you deaf now, too? I said I could have blackmailed Sonia Nevermind into taking the deal and I didn’t. That’s why I almost failed, all right? Since you wanted to know so bad.” Her voice wobbles. She won’t let it crack again. “They said it wasn’t good enough that I had it but didn’t do anything with it.”

He’s silent for too long. She wants to see the face he’s making but can’t bring herself to look. “Fuck, Natsumi,” he says finally. “Why the hell would you do something like that?”

Her grain of rice is a third of the way around her bowl. She slows it down. “Does it matter? It’s over. It happened.”

“Uh, considering you had millions riding on it, yeah, I think it kinda fucking matters.” He’s rubbing at his face. She manages to look at him, sideways. “I thought you already confirmed all those contracts?”

“I did.” He jerks his head back to look at her, eyebrows high. “It’s fine! Everybody’s getting what they paid for.“ She looks back down at her grain of rice. “For now.”

“And how exactly are you pulling that off? I thought Novoselic was supposed to be your silver bullet.”

“You think I’d do something this big without a backup plan?” It doesn’t come out the way she wants it to. It sounds too much like an actual question. “Rin’s got her people handling it.”

He groans. “Rin is? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“It’s fine! She has people moving worse things across the border all the time.”

“That’s not the point! There’s no way her and her gaggle of gun nuts are going to be able to keep up once the rest of these contracts start kicking in.”

“It’s plan B. It was never supposed to be permanent.” The rice has already made two laps by now, so she picks at her napkin instead. For once in her life she misses the paper ones from Hope’s Peak’s dining hall; it’d be a lot more satisfying if it tore. “That’s why I need your help, obviously.”

“My help,” he repeats.

She nods.

He doesn’t say anything else. He drops his chopsticks onto his plate with a clatter, and stands up from the table.

Her stomach clenches. “Where are you going?”

“To make some phone calls, since we’ve apparently got a lot of fuckin’ work to do,” he answers. “What’re you wasting time for?” He picks up his plate, and cradles his cup in the crook of his arm. One of the kitchen staff steps forward to help him with the dishes, but he waves him off. “Come on. We’re taking the rest of this to-go.”

Peko helps them carry the serving platters.

They turn one of the smaller spare rooms into a war room. All the furniture gets stowed away except for the low table at the center. (And every single pillow Natsumi owns, which she gets Peko to bring in before Fuyuhiko can tell her not to. If they’re going to be up all night, she might as well be comfortable.) They set up both their laptops and pool all the relevant paper documents they have: hard copies of old contracts and new ones, historical data on moving product through the region, things Natsumi’s read so many times she’s sure she’ll remember them for the rest of her life. The floor turns into a mess of charge cables, USB cords, and unorganized papers.

Natsumi focuses on renegotiating the remaining contracts, and Fuyuhiko focuses on securing longer term shipping partners. Peko drops in and out all afternoon; first she has training, then the rest of her chores. When she is in the room with them, she lets them bounce ideas and frustrations off her, sometimes at the same time.

Fuyuhiko waves over his shoulder at her when she comes back after being gone for a few hours. He’s bent over one of the folders Natsumi put together at school. “Hey,” he says, “How long do you have?” He rubs the space between his eyes with the flat of his hand. “And how in the fuck do you keep track of anything like this, Natsumi?”

She sticks her tongue out at him.

“The rest of the night,” Peko answers. When he only looks at her, she points at the window. “Most everyone has gone to bed, Fuyuhiko-sama.”

“Oh,” he says. “Right. Good.”

They keep going for hours after that. Natsumi dozes off somewhere around three in the morning. She doesn’t sleep for very long, or very deeply; she can make out the sound of people talking around her before she’s properly awake. Even whispering, her brother is too loud.

“—just listen to me, for once?” Fuyuhiko is saying. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t wake up with a neck cramp or something, if that’s what you’re so worried about.”

“That’s not necessary. I’ll stay with her. You should get some sleep.”

“Peko, you got up at four this morning.”

“You don’t need to worry. I can stay awake for up to thirty-six hours without any loss of faculties.”

“That’s not what I…. Are you hearing what I’m saying at all? She was running you all over the damn place even when you were at school. You deserve to have a break too, you know.”

Peko doesn’t answer, or if she does, Natsumi can’t hear it. She feels the tatami tug when Fuyuhiko shifts his weight. “Listen,” he says, his voice wound tight with frustration, and he’s actually quiet this time, enough that Natsumi has to strain to hear him, “I said I wouldn’t argue with you about this again, and I’m not. All right? That’s not what this is about. All I’m saying is you should sleep if you’re tired.”

Peko still doesn’t say anything. Natsumi understands why before Fuyuhiko does; she can feel Peko looking at her. It at least took her longer than normal to notice.

Natsumi stretches her toes and sniffles into her elbow. She makes as much of a production of it as possible, so that Fuyuhiko doesn’t have any excuse not to be paying attention. She throws in a big yawn and some exaggerated blinking for good measure.

Right on cue, he clams up. When she sits up to rub at her eyes she spies them sitting close enough together that their knees are almost touching, before he scoots back across the floor.

“Jerks,” Natsumi whines. “You didn’t wake me up! I can’t sleep yet, there’s still stuff to do.”

“You’re not going to get anywhere with anyone if you’re falling asleep on the phone, dumbass.”

Natsumi jumps on the opening. It’s too easy, sometimes. “Good point! Hey, Peko, there’s energy drinks in the mini fridge in my room. Can you go get them?”

Peko rises to her feet in a single, smooth motion. “Yes, young mistress.” Fuyuhiko doesn’t look up at her when she steps around him to get to the door.

Natsumi counts to ten in her head after Peko slides the shōji closed, and then she shoves her laptop over so she can lean both elbows on the table. “So! What’s going on with you and Peko?”

Fuyuhiko does his best not to rise to her bait, but she can read him better than he thinks she can. His eyes flick to her face, even if it’s only for a second, and his opposite hand curls into a loose fist. “The hell are you talking about?”

She pokes the lid of his laptop with one finger; he forces it back up with the heel of his hand. “Are you seriously still this dense?” He lifts his eyes enough to glare at her over the top edge of the screen. She sighs at the ceiling. “I wasn’t asleep, dummy.”

That does the trick. He flushes up to his ears. “You were eavesdropping? Goddammit, how childish can you be?”

“I was sleeping until you woke me up. It’s not my fault you don’t know how to whisper.” She puts her chin in both hands. “Don’t change the subject. Are you guys fighting about something?”

He grits his teeth. She can see where the muscles jump in his jaw. “No.”

“You’re a crappy liar. I dunno what Peko would even want to argue about, though. It sounded to me—”

“Well, it wasn’t,” he snaps. “It’s fine, all right? So just leave it alone.” He slams the keys of his laptop harder than he needs to. “Not like it was any of your fucking business to start out with.”

She could push it. She usually does. Usually he wants the opportunity to rant and complain to her and just doesn’t want to admit it, but this time feels different. She was only teasing, but the way he hunches his shoulders over his keyboard makes her think she touched a real nerve. Which would be fine; usually he’d talk to her about those things, too.

Not this time, maybe.

“Fine,” she says eventually. “Be like that.” She sits up to fluff the pillow under her belly. “But if you like her that much, you should at least do something about it.”

“For the love of—”

“I’m not teasing, I’m being serious.”

He stands up from the table too fast; he ends up knocking his knees against the edge of it. He plucks his phone from where it’s set near her elbow. “It doesn’t work like that,” he says. His face is pinched as he dials. “How do you still not get that?”

He turns his back on her before she can say anything. He doesn’t look at her again after the line connects, even though she spends his entire conversation glaring at the back of his head. He’s right: she doesn’t get it. She’s never understood how one person can be so determined to stand in his own way when what he wants is right in front of him.

Peko comes back with a four pack of drinks. Fuyuhiko drinks two of them and spends the rest of the night on the phone.

The second night starts out worse than the first.

They settle on creating a shipping network in lieu of the central waypoint Novoselic would have been. It’s more expensive and involves pulling manpower from other groups, but it also opens doors to more deals in other regions and protects them from having a single point of failure, which was the whole problem in the first place. (That, and hiring a bunch of incompetents.)

It also means sweet talking a whole lot of people into doing what they want.

Fuyuhiko gets into a shouting match with a potential partner at two thirty in the morning, while Natsumi tries to salvage the last of the Greece contracts over email. He paces the room in tight circles, the phone wedged between his ear and his shoulder so that his hands are free to page through numbers and percentages and projections.

“Listen here, fucker, I didn’t ask for a goddamn laundry list of your excuses, all right? … ‘Cause it’s not a fucking reason, that’s why! Yeah. Yes. … Like hell it is! I’ve given you those numbers six fucking times now, and they all say the same goddamn thing! ... Are you kidding me? That’s bullshit. … What? ... How is your fuck up supposed to be our fault? Yeah, your fuck up, asshole, you fuckin’ heard me.”

Natsumi isn’t sure which one of them hangs up, but someone does; Fuyuhiko jerks the phone away from his ear and hurls it into the pile of pillows she constructed on the floor. He doesn’t bother going digging for it; he just flops back on top of them, too, one arm thrown over his eyes.

Even still, they’ve made progress. Decent progress, even: it’s looking like they’ll definitely save the existing business in the region, if not improve on it.

That doesn’t change the fact that this is a joke compared to what it was supposed to be. She doesn’t feel like congratulating herself for staying above water when she was the one cutting holes in the bottom of the boat. They’re wasting all this time and energy, for what? Because she wanted to be Sonia Nevermind’s friend? Sonia hasn’t even texted her once since spring vacation started. It’s beyond pathetic.

Natsumi stares at the blank counter of her inbox until her eyes hurt. Her head feels hazy and her chest feels tight, and it just comes out: “It should be you. You know?”

Fuyuhiko shifts his arm to peer at her.

She wants to slap the lid of the laptop shut, if just for the satisfaction of it. If something comes in, her phone will go off; there’s no reason for her to keep watching it like a lifeline. She still doesn’t, though. “Leading the clan. Hope’s Peak. It should be you, not me.”

He sits up. She rubs at her eyes so at least later she can pretend they’re red because she hasn’t slept.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “did you not listen to a single fucking word of the phone call I was just on?”

“Yeah, I did,” she snaps back. “And if it’d been you, you wouldn’t have had to talk to that dumbass at all.”

“You’re right. I wouldn’t have had to talk to him, because I wouldn’t have had the guts to get this far in the first place.” She doesn’t realize he’s gotten up until he leans down and snaps her laptop shut for her. “Seriously, Natsumi?”

“You were right about Niijima.”

“That doesn’t mean I should be the one calling the shots all the time.” He drops down to sit cross-legged next to her, and rubs both hands into his forehead. “And even if it did, I don’t want to anyway. So you’re stuck with it.”

She goes quiet. It feels lighter than it did before, at least, like they’re actually taking a break instead of just gearing up for the next wave. She slouches in her sweatshirt until the hood rides up past her ears. “Why not?” she asks, quiet. “You’d be good at it.”

He laughs, a rush of air through his nose. “No, I wouldn’t.” He scrubs one hand back through his hair. “Are you kidding? The only reason I’m halfway decent at any of this shit is because of you.”

Her phone pings. It’s her contact in Athens, agreeing to her terms. There are some strict counter-terms, but nothing the two of them can’t manage.

Fuyuhiko bumps her shoulder with his. “See?” He pushes himself up to standing, and wanders back over to the pillows to go diving for his phone. “Now cut it out with the self-pitying shit. We’ve got work to do.”

Their parents arrive back from Seoul early in the morning. Natsumi couldn’t have slept more than one or two hours; the sky is still dark when Peko nudges her awake, one firm hand on her shoulder.

“I apologize, young mistress,” she says. She keeps her voice soft; Natsumi struggles to understand why, her mind still murky and sleep-addled, until her eyes adjust enough to make out her brother passed out on the other futon. “But Master Kuzuryuu has called for you.”

Natsumi finds her feet, and is able to navigate her way out of the room without waking Fuyuhiko or tripping over the precarious tangle of laptop cords. She’s still dressed in the same jeans and sweatshirt she was wearing last night, but if her father asked to see her as soon as he got in, then there’s already not enough time to change. She flattens down the wrinkles in her clothes as best she can, ties the mess of her hair into a high ponytail, and tries in vain to rub the sleep out of her eyes.

Her father is waiting for her in one of the smaller gardens near the back of the house. It’s not much more than a few flowering bushes and a carefully designed arrangement of stones, but it’s quiet, and most importantly, private. He’s standing at the center, inspecting a white-petaled flower in one big hand.

He never smokes his cigarettes in the gardens, but he must have had one just before coming; Natsumi can smell acrid smoke still clinging to his clothes when he turns toward her. He twists the flower off the plant, and lifts it in the direction of the small, decorative bench that acts as the garden’s centerpiece. She takes the cue to sit.

“You and your brother have been busy,” he says.

She falters, even though she should have known better. Of course he’d know about what they were doing. There’s no reason he wouldn’t, and her father has never pulled a punch in her life. “Yeah,” she says, “We were making some— arrangements. For the contracts I was working on. That’s all.”

“Covering for your mistake,” he says in plain, even tones, “you mean.”

Natsumi nearly swallows her tongue. She laughs instead to give herself more time to think, and reaches up to smooth back a wisp of hair that’s fallen loose from her ponytail. “Dad, it’s fine.” No one would ever call her father a warm person, but today there’s no give in his stare at all. Her words trip on the way out of her throat. “It— There was a hiccup, okay? Yeah. But we’re still clearing a bigger profit in that region than we were before. If you look at the contracts me and Fuyu-chan put together, I think—”

“You think I want to hear about contracts?”

Her train of thought evaporates. She’d had a speech ready in her head, one she’d been rehearsing since the car ride home from school. It was about how she was making money for them, not losing it, even if it hadn’t gone the way she’d planned. It was about expansions and alliances and how she’d saved the ones she did, and not at all about the ones she didn’t. It was about contracts.

“I don’t—” He doesn’t give her any prompt or leading hint. Frustration flares in her belly. “Well, that’s what we were working on! So what, then?”

It’s the wrong answer. His eyes narrow. “What did I say to you when you left for school, Natsumi? The clan is watching. The world is watching.” He makes an expansive hand gesture, the flower held in his palm like a goblet. “You said you understood. That you were ready for the responsibility.”

She doesn’t understand, until she does. “Is this about my exam?” He levels a stare at her, which as much of an answer as she needs. She has to hold on to the bottom of her seat to keep from springing out of it. “My grade is fine! I handled it!”

“‘Handled,’” he echoes. “Is that what you call that public display of desperation? ‘Handling’ the situation?”

“I— Those judges were—”

“You made a sub-par presentation and you knew it,” he says over her. He hasn’t even raised his voice. She thinks if she were shouting he’d still drown her out. “After the scene you made, the rest of the world knows it, too. This isn’t about money, Natsumi. This is about you.” The last of her protest shrivels in her throat. “Is that the woman you’ve become? Someone who makes excuses? Someone who blames others for her own mistakes?

“Tell me, do you think this clan deserves a woman like that as its leader?”

Natsumi’s cheeks are burning. She drops her head to hide them, spending a moment to wish she hadn’t tied her hair back, and says nothing.

Her father answers for her, his voice like ice: “No.”

She’s never seen him angry before. Not like this, quiet and unyielding, and especially never towards her. He gets into shouting arguments with Fuyuhiko on the regular, and his fights with their mother have drawn blood more times than Natsumi can count, but she’s always been her father’s little girl. The clan’s princess. His expectations for her have always been high, but only because she’s always met them. She could run circles around Fuyuhiko with the slack she’s given, and she’s known it for most of her life.

Maybe that changed when she started at Hope’s Peak. Maybe that should have been obvious to her from the beginning. She feels like a stupid dog at the end of a leash, who doesn’t know when it’s been drawn back against its throat.

“So I miscalculated,” she mutters, her head low. “Once. One time.”

Her father pulls a slim pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket, and slides one out to hold between his teeth. He won’t light it until he’s out of the garden. “I see,” he says. “And do you think your ratio of good intentions will stop our people from whispering behind your back, when the time comes?”

Natsumi’s throat feels tight, so she only shakes her head. Her cousin Yuina already does whisper behind her back. She’s not naive enough to think there aren’t others.

How many more do now?

“There’s no room for you to act like a child anymore,” her father is saying. “You are a leader now. You represent this family. You represent me. You represent all the people who will serve under you someday. At some point you need to understand that the decisions you make affect more than just yourself.“

He drops the flower on the ground. He doesn’t crush it under his shoe, or sweep it behind the rocks; he just leaves it there to interrupt the aesthetic of the space until it rots.

“Go wash up,” he tells her. The sky above them has faded to pale pinks, blues, and golds. “It’s time for breakfast.”

She goes back to her room and splashes cold water on her face until her cheeks are ruddy. Her eyes are still red around the edges and purple underneath, but that’s fine; the point is, it wakes her up. Everything else she fixes with makeup: dark liner around her eyes, pale powder on her cheeks, and lots and lots of concealer. She twists her hair out of its ponytail and brushes it out smooth. She throws her jeans and sweatshirt into the laundry basket and pulls her favorite black dress from her closet.

She hasn’t been feeling like herself. She hasn’t been herself. That changes now.

Peko is waiting for her outside her bedroom. She bows when Natsumi steps out into the hall. “Good morning, young mistress.” Natsumi jerks her chin when she passes; Peko nods and falls into step behind her.

Fuyuhiko is already sitting when they get to the dining room. He’s changed his clothes, at least, but his hair is still rumpled and he looks like he’s one too-long blink away from falling asleep right there at the table. She reaches out to muss the back of his head when she kneels down next to him, and he doesn’t manage much more than a jerk of his shoulders and a muttered, “Fuck off.”

He livens up when the food starts to come out; the kitchen staff set out plates of grilled salmon and bowls of rice and fresh greens in advance of their parents coming to the table, and he sits up straighter to get a better look at each of them when they come out.

Anxiety bubbles in her chest. “Hey,” she says, on impulse. “You’d help me if I needed it, right?”

“I sure hope so,” he answers. He’s preoccupied with maneuvering the bowl of pickled plums closer to his side of the table. “‘Cause otherwise I don’t know what the fuck I’ve been doing the past couple days.”

Their parents come into the dining room together, their father in the same suit, and their mother in a shining white and gold kimono. They look pristine, the both of them, even though they must have been up hours before her, and travelling for most of it.

She waits for her opportunity. It needs to be near the end of breakfast, when everyone is in the best mood possible, but that involves waiting until the end of breakfast. She’s too anxious to enjoy her food and too nauseous to pretend, so she takes only a small piece of fish and only picks at her rice.

(Fuyuhiko notices. She can see him looking at her from the corner of her eye, his eyebrows pinched together. She doesn’t look back.)

“I want to ask for something,” she says, finally, when she can’t put it off anymore. “For school.”

Their mother sets her chopsticks down delicately. She lifts her chin. “It’s good to hear you’re beginning to take school seriously, Natsumi,” she says. “What is it?”

She made the mistake of not committing to the right choice once. She’s not going to do it again. She twists her fingers together under the table, and keeps her eyes forward when she says, “I want Fuyuhiko to enroll at Hope’s Peak with me.”

Fuyuhiko chokes on his soup.

“Your brother wasn’t scouted for enrollment,” their father says. His gaze doesn’t break from hers even while Fuyuhiko pounds his chest. “Hope’s Peak doesn’t allow unscouted transfers.”

She knows he knows the answer. He’s testing her resolve, because that’s where she failed before. She tosses her hair. “Obviously,” she says. “He doesn’t need to enroll in the main course. There’s another branch of the school with open enrollment. All we’d have to do is pay the tuition. Boom, done.”

“You have your tool with you already,” their mother offers. “Is she not fulfilling her duties?”

Peko is silent and still behind her. “It’s not that,” Natsumi says. “Peko does what I need her to do, but it’s not like she can do everything. It’s a different skill set.” She finds firm ground. “I need them both.”

Their parents look at each other. They’re considering. Natsumi holds her breath.

“Hey!” Fuyuhiko has both hands balled into fists on the table. His knuckles are white. “Don’t I get a say in this?”

Their father looks at him. His gaze is heavy, but her brother doesn’t bend under the weight of it. “You have an objection, Fuyuhiko?”

“Yeah, I got an objection. I got a lot of objections.” He sits up on his heels, and counts them off on his fingers. “It’s a waste of money, for one. The Reserve Course is the most blatant money grab I’ve ever seen. It’s only there for Hope’s Peak to dupe as many pathetic morons as they can into shelling out. For two, there’s nothing I can do that the two of them can’t do already. It makes more sense for me to stay here. For three—” His tone is vicious. Natsumi can feel his glare on the side of her face. “I don’t fucking want to go.”

Their mother’s dagger-glare does cow him, at least a little. “Language.” He ducks his head and glares sideways instead.

“Natsumi.” Their father’s gaze turns on her. “Your brother has voiced concerns. Do you believe his services are still necessary?”

Fuyuhiko is staring at her. Natsumi focuses on their father, his face like stone and his eyes like steel. She can be that. She has to be that. Bending wasn’t ingenuity, it was weakness. She knows that now.

She breathes in, and her voice doesn’t shake at all when she says, “Yes.”

“Explain that to him.”

Turning her head makes her feel like there’s a weight attached to the bottom of her skull. It turns out there’s steel in her brother’s eyes, too, but it isn’t cold like their father’s. It’s searing.

“We can cover the cost,” she tells him. “And I can’t be everywhere at once. You can help better there than you can here.” And the clan comes first, her mind supplies, but the words stick in her throat. “And we’re a good team,” she says instead, and she hates the way her voice wilts.

His face twists. It’s like he’s smelled something sour, or like he’s found cheese in his dinner; like she’s disgusted him down to his core. He slams both hands down on the table to stand up, and it sends cups and cutlery clattering together. “Bullshit.”

Fuyuhiko would never hurt her. She knows that. Everyone in the room knows that. Not because they don’t fight; they do. The whole family does, and always has. (When he was nine he sprained his wrist after she shoved him off the low branch of a tree for teasing her about losing a climbing race.) But he’s too gentle, with her and with everyone. Always has been.

She’s running on no sleep today, though, and so is he. Her nerves are stripped raw, and when he looms over her, fury in his face, she flinches.

That single flutter of her eyelashes is all it takes to put Peko on her feet. She’s expressly forbidden from drawing her weapon on any member of the Kuzuryuu family, but Peko is enough of a weapon on her own for that not to matter. One moment Natsumi is staring up at her brother while her cup is still spinning on the table, and the next Peko’s shoulder cuts between them.

The room is silent. Their parents just sit there and watch, like this was the predictable twist of some television drama and they’re disappointed it met their expectations. Her brother is the only one apparently wound up enough to be surprised, and he jerks back, momentum broken.

Peko doesn’t follow him, but she also doesn’t budge from where she’s standing in his space. “Fuyuhiko-sama,” she says, her voice low. “Please sit back down.”

He stares up into her face for a long, tense moment. Whatever he’s looking for there, he doesn’t find it; the anger in his expression cracks with something else. “Get out—” he spits, every word dragged painfully out through the trap of his teeth, “—of my fucking face.”

Peko does not move.

Natsumi says, “Stand down.” It’s only then that Peko obeys, her place taken again behind Natsumi’s seat. Peko’s head is low and her eyes are downcast, but Fuyuhiko isn’t looking at her anyway. He isn’t looking at anyone; he stares at the back wall without blinking, shoulders drawn together and both fists clenched so tight there’s no way he won’t leave marks.

“Then we’re in agreement,” their father says. Fuyuhiko doesn’t look at him, either. “The both of you will return to Hope’s Peak for the new school year. The rest will be handled.”

Fuyuhiko turns on his heel and walks out. The shōji rattles in its frame when he forces his way through, and he just leaves it like that: half-open, drawing a draft in from the walkway outside.

One of the kitchen staff rises from the back of the room to close it behind him.

#natsumi kuzuryuu #fuyuhiko kuzuryuu #peko pekoyama #kuzupeko #danganronpa #rises from editing hell #this chapter gave me so much trouble but i think i'm finally happy with it #sorry for such a long wait!!#lordy loo #fic: by the claw of dragon #sunwrites

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