#i really like these designs but my brain screams at me that somebody who’s studied his face longer will give me shit over something random

[specialagentlokitty]

Spike x reader - before I laid eyes on you

Sitting under the street lamp, you smiled to yourself as you pulled the pen away from the notebook you were drawing in.

You had been at it for a couple of hours, your wrist hurt a little bit, but since you hadn’t had a break that was to be expected.

What wasn’t to be expected was the sense you had from behind you that there was somebody creeping up on you.

“Hello.”

You heard whoever it was stop.

“How did you know I was there?”

“I know many things, just like I know who you are Spike, I know you’re here to kill me.”

Spike walked around the bench, and he sat down in next to you, leaning back as he lit a cigarette, resting an arm on the back of the bench.

You didn’t look at him, you simply just went back drawing in your notebook.

“You’re not even going to run away? You know that does take all the fun out of killing you pet.”

“I know I would never stand a chance trying to run from you.”

He hummed, nodding his head as he smirked a little bit.

“Is that so?”

He glanced down at the notebook, leaning over to look at what you were doing and you covered it.

Reaching up you placed a finger on his forehead and pushed him back.

“Oi, don’t touch the merchandise.”

“It’s not ready yet, if you want to look you have to wait.”

He huffed a little, and you smiled, going back to your drawing.

“Is this a trap? Am I being set up?”

You shook your head.

“No, they don’t even know I’m out. It’s the only time I can find time. Plus, if it were a trap I’d be an easy hostage so I don’t see any situation in how you can’t win.”

He smirked a little again, nodding his head in agreement.

You glanced up at the building in front of you, studying the design, the structure, the colours.

Looking back at your notebook you carried on, hands moving on their own, as if you had drawn this exact building a million times, burned in your brain.

Spike watched you intrigued.

You made no effort to run away from him, no effort to scream or fight or try save your life in any kind of way.

It made him curious, and it took all the fun out of him wanting to kill you because for him it was all a game, the thrill of the chase, an instinct all hunters had, but you didn’t seem to have the instinct to flee.

You put your put your pen into your bag, and you slowly tore the page from book, and you set it on the bench.

“So, you made me pause my killing so you were able to finish a drawing?” He scoffed.

He picked it up, and he studied it.

It looked so real, as if you had picked up the building from the street and crammed it into the tiny page of a book.

“Intriguing, I wonder if you’ll want to draw what it will look like when I snap your neck.”

He looked up and you were gone.

“What the hell?”

Spike stood up, trying to find any sign that you were somewhere still around, or that you had even been there but there was none aside from the paper in his hands.

Spike flicked his cigarette across the e street and he began to walk up to the building.

You really hadn’t missed a spot of detail when you were drawing it, everything was there, from small cracks in some of the windows to the emblem at the front of the building.

That wasn’t the first time Spike met you, but it was the first time he was intrigued by you, and not in a way that made him want to kill you.

He noticed that when the he was fighting with Buffy or the others you weren’t there.

They made sure to keep you as far away as possible, but then as the nights came he would find you accidentally around the town.

He would just be on the hunt and he would stumble across you just sitting there, in your own little world as you drew something new and his attention would be focused on you.

And tonight was no different, he found you sitting at a table outside some late open cafe, a cup of coffee in front of you, your notebook on the table as you looked around.

Spike slipped into the seat in front of you.

“Hello love.”

“Should I be concerned for the amount of times you come to visit me?” You asked.

“Well, you should know better than wonder alone at night, especially in a town like this. Never know when a big bad will jump at you.”

You gave a small shrug, pulling your scarf a little tighter around you.

Spike watched intensely, and he leant back in his chair.

“Well, you seem to appear most nights, yet you still haven’t killed me.”

“I will one day, after all, it’s no fun if I kill you right away.”

You let out a soft laugh, picking up your cup so you could take a drink, then your turned your attention back to your drawing so you could finish it.

“Can I ask you something?” You asked.

“Depends on the question.”

Spike took your cup so he could drink some coffee and he set it back down, picking up the menu to browse the boring food.

“Why won’t you kill me?”

Spike looked up at you, slowly setting the menu back down.

“Do you want me to kill you?”

He didn’t say it with excitement, you could hear the curiosity in his tone, along with confusion.

“If I ask you to would you?”

“Maybe, might sire you, that could be fun.”

You shook your head at him.

“No sire, just pure death. As in nothing after, I won’t wake up again.”

“Now talk like this concerns a bloke love.”

You sighed, shaking your head.

Ripping the page from the book you handed it over to him and stood up, finishing your coffee before you began to make your leave.

Spike quickly got up, catching up to you in a few long strides and he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

“Ah, ah, you’re not running off that easily. You can’t just say something like that and not expect follow up questions.”

“Please Spike, I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fine.”

You carried on walking and Spike followed you, not saying a single word he simply just looked at you every so often.

Truth be told he would have killed you the first chance he got, now he didn’t want to, even if he could that thought never crossed his mind, but you didn’t need to know that, or about the chip.

You just had to think he was the same big bad.

“I’m not quite sure that was an invitation for you to follow me.” You said.

“I don’t need an invitation.”

You hummed a little bit, clasping your hands behind you as you turned around to look at him.

You smiled softly, walking backwards and he rose a brow at you.

“You can only go so far.”

“I can be rather convincing if I do say so myself, I’m sure I can convince your parents to invite me in.”

“You could try, that might be a bit hard if you live alone.”

Walking up to your house, you opened the door and stepped inside, grinning at Spike as he stood outside.

He wore an unamused look on his face, watching as you sat down on the stairs.

“Now that just isn’t fair love, don’t I get an invite?”

“Hm, I don’t think so. You’re nice company outside but at least u know I can just leave you at the door.”

He placed a hand on his chest, leaning on the doorframe.

“Ouch, now that hurts love.”

You smiled softly, and Spike looked around the hallway, all framed paintings and pictures that looked exactly like the ones you did.

You got up, turning the light on so he could see better, and it worked.

He could see better, a lot better

Now you were out of the dim streetlights, into some bright light that actually illuminated things Spike could see you better.

He could see you clearly.

“You’re blind..” he said quietly.

You smiled weakly, nodding your head as you walked back over to the steps to sit down.

“Not fully, mostly. I can still see a bit, my eyes are sensitive to the light, but I found a few spells that can help me navigate around.”

“A witch?”

“Yeah.”

Spike looked at you, it wasn’t obvious to anybody that you were blind, but he could see the blank look in your eyes, you looked at him but you didn’t.

He would’ve thought maybe you were just awkward at eye contact, but he could see it, the faint gloss that covered the outside of your iris, slowly creeping.

There was something else.

A sickly paleness to your skin.

“What’s wrong with you?” He asked.

You sighed, resting your head on the wall behind you, and you looked over at the open door.

Spike was sat in your doorway, in his hands the new picture you had made of a deer, and it was so lifelike just like all the others.

“Cancer, in the brain, the uh.. the blindness might be a side effect of the tumour but they can’t be sure.”

“What do you think?”

“Maybe it’s making it worse yes, but I’ve always had problems with my eyes, ever since I was a child. Either way I’ll go blind.”

Spike nodded his head, looking up from the drawing.

You still held a small smile on your face.

“Do they know?” He asked.

Your smile a little.

“No. Spike you can’t tell them, they don’t need to know. Not with everything going on with you know.. well.. you… demons..”

“Right, right. It would put a damper on everything considering they think I’m just missing.”

You nodded.

A small silence fell over the pair of you.

“How long?”

You said nothing.

“How long do you have?”

You let out a heavy sigh.

“I don’t know, I’ve been offered surgery to try remove the tumours.”

“Have you accepted?”

“No.”

Spike stood up, slamming his hand on the doorway.

“Well why the bloody hell not?!”

“Either it works, and I still go blind, I die on that operating table, or I die of cancer. All three sound like rather poor choices.”

“But there’s a chance you could survive, you said it yourself you found a way to make it more bearable with the blindness.”

You walked over, sitting against the door and he sat back against the frame on the otherside looking at you.

“It will most likely come back.”

“Then.. then they cut it out again, they keep doing that.”

“Spike, they can only do it so many times before they stop.”

He furrowed his brows, eyes staring into yours.

“You’ll still die…”

“Yeah.”

He put the drawing in to his pocket, and he rested his head against the wood.

“That’s why you asked if I would kill you. Because you don’t want to die to the tumour, at least if I did it you would have control in your death.”

You nodded your head, and a soft smile gracing your face once more.

You closed your eyes, enjoying the feeling of the cool breeze coming through the door.

“Very well.”

You opened your eyes.

“I will do it under one condition.”

You titled your head a little.

“What’s that?”

“You agree to the procedure, if it fails then you hang on for as long as possible, then when the time is right you ask and I will give you a quick and painless death.”

“No resurrection?”

“None, just death.”

You agreed to his terms, and the following day you went back to the hospital to speak to your doctor about the procedure.

Spike was there, lurking in the hallways away from the sunlight, and when the door to your room was opened he stepped aside and waited.

You closed the blinds and he walked in, closing the door behind him.

“Well?”

“They ran some tests, they need to take it out now, and I’ll be hospital bound for a while.”

“Right, you should call your friends. In the event that you die of course.”

You laughed weakly.

“The doctor is doing it, I guess that means I won’t be seeing you around huh?”

Spike sat on the edge of your bed.

“I’ll be around.”

You smiled, and reached up, gently touching the side of his face and he said nothing about it.

You could tell his was smiling though, from the little crinkles at the corner of his eye.

“Thank you.”

Spike got up, leaning forward he pressed his lips to your forehead and took a step back.

“Good luck love..”

With that he was gone.

He hasn’t told you about the chip in his head, that even if he wanted too he wasn’t able to hurt you, but he definitely didn’t want to hurt you.

He couldn’t hurt you, it would hurt him, but if it came down to it and it was what you wanted then no amount of pain in his skull would stop him from granting you that wish

[stayndays]

𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 - 𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧

my gift to @wingkkun for @kafenetwork‘s holiday treats event!

genres & tropes - fluff, minor angst, comedy, misunderstanding(!!!), magical boarding school au (hogwarts but not really), dorm neighbors au, best friends to lovers au, shy!chan, extroverted!reader, gender neutral reader, chan’s pov

disclaimer - the entire fic is based around the fact that the reader was kinda accidentally drugged with a potion, two swear words, chan likes an unnamed female character (but hey in this case he likes everybody!!)

word count - 5.1k (uhm?? what the fuck?? this is coming from the blurb writer guys what the hell happened)

summary - bang chan does not have a crush on you. actually, he has a crush on his partner in potions class, and decides to do something about it… until it goes all wrong, and the liquid of a love potion is running down your throat. now, chan has to deal with your lovesick antics for a week while trying not to become infatuated with you himself. spoiler alert: it’s a lot harder than it looks.

a/n - it is i, penguin anon, the dude who made that survey for stayblr writers, a friend of your own friends, yes hi lol KJFSKDF honestly, this could be a very confusing fic to some people, as some things don’t line up, i will admit that! that’s mainly because i frantically put this together in the last two weeks while preparing for midterm exams, so not all the ideas i had in mind lined up correctly. regardless, i hope you enjoy this, especially you kai ^^ 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐳𝐞𝐫𝐨, 𝐚 𝐟𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞

Bang Chan does not have a crush on you.

You’re his best friend, his next door dorm neighbor at the boarding school he goes to. He comes to you for one subject, while you come to him for another. You’re the person he sits next to at lunch, and the counterpart to his timid personality. You are anything but his crush.

He does, however, have a crush on the cute girl he’s partners with in potions class, aka, not you.

“So,” you start off, tapping your feet repetitively on the wooden floor of Chan’s dormitory, the chair you’re sitting on face away from the desk it accompanies. “Let me get this straight.”

Chan nods for you to continue, playing with the blanket threads on his bed to anxiously wait for your response.

“You’re going to make a love potion for your crush to drink?” you confirm with him, to which he nods, lips pressed together tightly. Chan can easily tell how flabbergasted you are at his simple, yet elaborate idea, wheels turning in your head. “But this could go wrong in so many ways! How are you going to get her to drink it anyways? How are you even going to get the ingredients to make the potion?”

Chan scratches the back of his ear, which is slowly growing red by the second. A nervous grin slowly growing on his face before he answers you. “You see... that’s where you come in.”

He notices the deadpan on his best friend’s face and winces.

“...You want me to steal the ingredients, don’t you?”

Chan nods timidly.

It’s not Chan’s fault really, Chan believes, as you’re known for being a master at being sneaky. Not only can his own clumsy hands barely lift up a pencil before dropping it onto the ground, he has to be a role model to the younger students! It’s only right for you to do the job instead.

“Fine!” you throw your hands up into the air in exaggeration. “What do I get in return, though?”

“Hmm...” Chan ponders on your question, tapping his chin in thought. “Banana milk for a week?”

“Pleasure doing business with you, sir.”

𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐨𝐧𝐞, 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲 

Bang Chan has made a huge mistake. It’s the kind of mistake that’ll affect his entire school year, undoubtedly. The kind of mistake that he’ll scream out at 2 am into his pillow, not only because it’s highly embarrassing, but also because it could ruin everything.

It all starts with a carton of banana milk.

The plan, originally, was quite simple. Chan had seen his crush fold open a carton of banana milk in class and gulp it down right in front of his eyes. Well, while he pretended to be busy looking up something in his textbook, at least. By gifting her banana milk, that was actually drained out and replaced with the love potion he brewed, not only would he seem like a nice person to her, she would be infatuated with love for him. 

Two birds hit with one stone. Simple as that.

Until you came in, strolling down the hallway Chan was leaning his back on, eyeing the pastel yellow carton in his hands. He knows that his first period is potions class, he knows that you greet him every morning with that same smile on your face while he waits outside for the classroom doors to open. However, he should’ve known that openly holding a container of banana milk in his hands for everybody passing through the hallway to see was not a good idea.

And that’s how Chan ended up where he is right now.

“Hey, Chan!” You approach him with a grin, hair thrown back messily. “First of many banana milks you got for me there?”

Chan’s breath gets caught in your throat while you look up at him expectedly. His eyes continue to shift over from the paperboard box in his right hand to your bold eyes.

“Um- Er- I-” His fingers curl tighter around the drink, but his voice just so happens to fail him out of all the times in the world.

And then his head fails him, and he nods out of pressure.

He watches your eyes light up, and your hands lightly touching his own as you snatch the drink from his possession.

You rip open the opening to the carton. Pressing your lips against the entrance, you pour the drink into your mouth and down your throat, all in one go, right in front of Chan. His mouth is slightly agape at your bold actions, his head screaming at him to tell you what you just did in hopes that you’ll snap out of it before it’s too late, yet he stays silent.

“Hmm, the liquid is more like water than milk, but at least it still tastes like banana!” You gently crush the carton before patting Chan on the shoulder. His eyes widen when you pause, and then laugh in a dazed manner. It’s almost as if he can see the hearts forming in your eyes.

“Thank you, Channie. See you at lunch!” You wave him off in a flirtatious manner, something he’s never seen you do to anybody in all the years he’s known you, and his heart pounds faster with worry.

Soon enough, he falls out of his stunned trance and presses his back against the wall shamefully, slowly sliding down it. He’s too anxious to care about the weird stares he’s getting from other students going down the hallway, curling himself up into a ball.

“WhydidIdothatwhydidIdothatwhydidIdothatwhydidIdothat-”

“Chan?”

Chan’s head shoots up from his position on the ground, only to lock eyes with his crush’s worried eyes. He gasps quietly before rocketing up from the floor, brushing himself off, startling his crush. “Y-Yes?”

“Why were you slumped down on the floor like that?” He watches her scanning his face while he bunches up the sweater he’s wearing with his hands. “Your face is really red too… should I take you to the nurse’s office?”

“Oh! Uhm, no, it’s okay. I feel fine. Class is starting in a minute, regardless,” Chan reassures her, and fortunately to him, she doesn’t question it any further and changes the subject of their conversation.

Yet, his back of his mind sends him flying back to what happened previously. The flashbacks of you drinking that love potion right in front of his eyes sends a pit down his stomach, churning it to make him feel sick and lightheaded. He ponders about how much he screwed up this time, thanks to his stupid brain and timid decisions.

That love potion you drank was not meant for you.

You are not his crush.

𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐰𝐨, 𝐭𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐝𝐚𝐲 

Bang Chan is a fool, a dunce, the embodiment of stupidity.

At least, according to his two closest friends besides you: Lee Minho and Seo Changbin.

“You’re such an idiot, Chan!” Minho cackles as he bangs his fist repeatedly on the wooden table of the school’s dining hall, accidentally sending his hot chocolate flying all over the place as he flinches.

“I have to agree with Minho on this one,” Changbin, who’s passive behavior is the opposite of Minho’s wild personality, tells the oldest boy. “You really messed up on this one.” He continues to flip through the pages of his textbook after cleaning up Minho’s mess with his wand.

Chan groans, letting himself fall onto the table pathetically, head first. He covers his eyes with his hands and shouts in agony, making Minho laugh even harder. Eventually, once the rowdy student calms down, he shakes Chan’s shoulder to get him to sit back up again. “No, but seriously, what are you gonna do now? They’ll be completely obsessed with you for the next couple of days.”

“A week, actually,” Changbin corrects, flipping to a specific page of his potions textbook and displaying it to the two. “A love potion's lasting effects depend on the amount you give the drinker.”

“And a milk carton holds like, a liter of liquid? So if you multiply those numbers, it’ll for sure last an entire week, which started yesterday,” Minho points out with his finger, directing Chan’s eyes to the info on the page. 

Chan lets out a deep exhale, scratching his scalp as he processed the information. “So, do any of you have advice for what I’m supposed to do?”

“Don’t look at me-”

“I know, Changbin, you’re too focused on your studies to find a partner. I’m mainly asking Minho, our designated player in our year.”

“Well,” Minho cracks his knuckles before answering. “I’ve never accidentally drugged somebody with a love potion before, so unfortunately you’re all on your own. Fortunately, however, Y/N’s coming right your way!” Minho points cheekily to behind Chan, making him whip his head around.

And there you are, walking right towards them.

“Channie!” you stroll on over to the trio of boys with a pep in your step and a grin on your face. “Let’s go to Insanis!”

Chan’s ears perk up at the name of his favorite cafe near campus, always serving the best scones and cinnamon rolls he’s ever had, and the fact that you know his love for the place. However, he comes back to the realization that you’re under the effects of a love potion, so he shakes off the blush that’s threatening to appear on his cheeks.

Slowly starting to feel under pressure at the fact that you’re waiting for his response, he nods his head repeatedly with a shrug, packing up his belongings spread out on the slightly dirty, wooden surface. Your face lights up at his agreement, and you eagerly wait for him to stand up. Chan waves off his two friends, ignoring Minho’s snarky smile and Changbin’s desire to laugh right then and there, and exits the dining hall with you holding his hand.

You’re going to be hard to deal with these next few days, he thinks.

𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞, 𝐰𝐞𝐝𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐝𝐚𝐲

Chan thinks you’re going crazy.

You’re acting like a drunk person whenever you see him, completely helpless of your own mind. Then again, you’re the one who drank the love potion a couple days ago.

He just didn’t realize how strong of a potion it was.

“Channie!!” you holler out to him from behind, crunching snow beneath your feet as you try and keep up with his pace. “Let’s go into the snow! Come on!”

He turns around to your grinning face, eyes drifting over to the bobble on the beanie you’re wearing that’s covered in snow. You point excitedly to the thick snow next to the outdoor path you two were walking along. “But we have astronomy class in half an hour, and I have to meet up with my potions classmate during that time, remember?” Chan objects, giving you an uncertain look.

You whine dramatically with a pout, stomping to him and grabbing his wooly coat, yanking him with you. “It’ll just be for five minutes!” Leading him off the pathway, the two of you entered the snow covered grass field. Chan shakes his head at your childish, yet heartfelt actions, watching you turn back and fall onto the snow back first without hesitation. 

“You know I’ll get sick if I-”

“You’re underestimating my healing skills, Bang. Now get in the snow and freeze your ass off with me,” you point to the snow below you, slowly feelings your fingers become numb despite the knitted gloves you’re wearing.

Chan breathes out a laugh at your desperate attempt to get him to join you, shaking his head as he finally accepts your offer. Unlike you, he slowly sits on the ground at first and then lies down on his back hesitantly. The cold feeling of the ice on his back makes him shiver, and you giggle at his reaction while making a snow angel. 

The two of you stay like that for a few minutes, taking in the sudden silence of the campus grounds and the snow falling on each other’s faces. Chan’s body is as stiff as a board by now, but he endures it for the sake of your enjoyment. That is, until he finally decides to get up after checking the analog watch on his wrist.

“Hey! Do we really have to go now?” you yell at him with wide eyes, making Chan roll his own.

“Yes, Y/N,” he pulls you up from the snow, turning you around so he can brush off the snow sticking onto your back. “Now I have to meet my classmate in just a few minutes.” 

“Why her?” you whine once more. “Do you like her more than me?”

Your sudden question makes Chan pause for a few seconds, before shaking off the feeling of his heartbeat slowly gaining speed. “D- Don’t worry about it. Now let’s go.”

“Hey! Answer my question!” 

You realize that not even Chan knows the answer to your question.

𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐫, 𝐭𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐝𝐚𝐲

Chan is a shy person when it comes to affection.

This day, however, he realizes that you are the exact opposite of him.

You and him have a routine every Thursday where you’d come into his dormitory at 7 O’ clock sharp to study until his brain was filled with herbs and spices he has to memorize for his gardening elective. It’s not his fault he didn’t get into the magical musics class like he wanted to, and got stuck with becoming a botanist instead. You, on the other hand, usually had trouble with your spells class, always pronouncing the Latin words slightly off. The two of you would study until it’s pitch dark outside, and then Chan would walk you back to your own room.

However, Chan already anticipated how this study session would be different.

He flinches slightly when he hears a set of knocks on his door already, checking the clock on his studying desk. Chan shakes his head out of disbelief, and opens the door without even checking the peephole.

“Y/N, you’re ten minutes early, why are you-“

“Chan!” Your face lights up and wraps your arms tightly around Chan’s torso, catching the boy off guard. “I missed you.”

“You- You saw me yesterday though,” Chan tries to tell you, checking the hallways just in case other students were around to possibly witness this. “and the day before, and the day after that, and-”

“Yeah, yeah, but even if I don’t see you for a couple hours, I still miss you,” you admit with a sudden, shy tone, burying your face into his chest. Chan feels himself flare up at your actions, catching him off guard. Not once have you ever expressed affection like this towards him, always settling for high fives and fist bumps, possibly even a side hug if you’re feeling nice. 

“Just uh, come in. I heard from my potions classmate that our upcoming quiz for spells is quite hard,” Chan makes you let go of the hug against your will, and awkwardly guides you inside of his dorm. 

“Ahh, why do you always mention her?” You question him with curiosity flowing through your voice, sitting down on his bed casually and tossing your schoolwork next to you. Meanwhile, Chan goes back to his spot on his desk chair. “It’s like you’re obsessed with her.”

Chan’s ears flare up at your remark, but at the same time, he fights the urge to call you out on your antics for the past few days. Thinking about it, it definitely wouldn’t do any good for you, and you needed his help for your upcoming quiz. “Nothing you need to worry about, Y/N.”

“But-”

“Let’s get to studying,” he urges for you to start with him, to which you roll your eyes at, but place your textbook in your lap regardless. Chan smiles softly at your willingness, and gets to work as well.

Typically, the statement “study until it’s dark outside” applies for at least three fourths of the year, especially since you two tend to stay on campus for the summer simply because you both liked the area. However, once winter rolls around and the snow starts falling, the sun is up for a lot less time, sometimes even disappearing by dinner. Chan knows this well, so the two of you instead set a timer for two hours and pray that you won’t get distracted by each other’s antics.

What Chan did forget is how jumbled up you get once the sun goes down.

“I’m already sleepy...” you mumble out behind Chan’s back, rubbing your eyes with your index fingers. 

Chan scratches his head, contemplating his next move. To be fair, it’s quite difficult to get a love sick person to do what you want, even if you’re the person they’re in love with. “But Y/N, we’ve only been studying for an hour and a half.” He decides to move his stuff to his bed to join you, his joints already becoming stiff from sitting on such an uncomfortable chair.

“Yeah but I’ve had a long day-” you lean over so you can rest your head on Chan’s shoulder. “Even though I wanna spend more time with you, I kinda just wanna sleep...”

Chan freezes up, cursing you for being so sleepy at times like these, cursing you for being so affectionate towards him these past few days, cursing you for being so-

“Fine, you can sleep.”

You smile with a daze, closing your eyes. Mumbling a small thanks of gratitude, it’s the last words Chan hears you say before you drift off. Chan finds himself not being able to focus with the weight on his shoulder, twirling the pencil in his hand back and forth. He lets out a sigh, at last realizing how he’ll never get another word written down in his situation, and uses his wand to place his work away and close the light. Pulling up a spare blanket for the both of you to share, he finally closes his eyes as well.

Until Chan realizes that if his crush did the exact same gesture to him, he wouldn’t treat her nearly as well as he did for you.

You don’t know that, though.

𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐟𝐢𝐯𝐞, 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐲

Bang Chan is not good with love. 

If it hasn’t already been clear enough. Although he’s had quite a few crushes in his teenage life, including the one he has right now, he’s never had the confidence to confess or god forbid ask somebody on a date.

So why not ask the person who’s under the spell of a love potion for advice?

Sure, it’s a far stretch, even Minho agrees, but maybe, just maybe, Chan could get something good out of this week.

He catches you off guard one day, bright and early before class, while the two of you were heading to your locker. 

“Hey Y/N,” Chan asks you out of the blue while waving through classmates left and right. Thinking about it, it was a miracle that nobody was talking about Chan’s mishap and spreading it around. “Would you consider yourself... good at love?”

He watches you almost choke on your own spit with a worried look. You turn to him after clearing your throat with an almost offended expression on your face. “Why are you asking?”

“Well, uh, I wanna try confess to somebody..”

“What?! Who? Tell me,” you blurt out without a second thought, staring at his side profile with wide eyes. “Is it your potions classmate?”

Chan is quick to notice the gazes of your fellow classmates after you raise your voice, motioning for you to keep it down. “It’s nothing for you to worry about! I just need some advice on how to do it, you know?”

“Hmm, well...” you take a pause to think, resisting the urge to pout. “You realize you’re asking somebody who’s never confessed either, right?”

“Still, you’re more.. extroverted? Than me, so you must know more than me,” Chan shrugs, feeling his neck grow hot while he tries to explain to you why he asking you, not anybody else, without telling you the actual reason.

Your shoulders slump down in defeat, “Fine. Just- uh- ask them on a date first? If you just confess straight away, you’re most likely to be rejected because they may not like you,” you explain to him, your voice getting shakier and more quiet as time goes on. “At least if you ask them out first, they can start to like you at the date.”

“Okay.. I can do that,” Chan scratches his red ears, already feeling the queasiness in his stomach just at the thought of being rejected. “Right? Hopefully? Probably?”

You simply hum in response, looking down when Chan turns his head to get a look at you. He holds his breath out of instinct, afraid of a sudden outburst coming from you, but nothing comes. Most likely, Chan thinks, you’re more than upset because you’re not the one he’s confessing to.

It’s a poor idea, and was a poor idea in the first place.

You’re jealous, and Chan can tell.

𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐬𝐢𝐱, 𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐚𝐲

Chan tends to forget instructions.

So when he’s left out in the snow after his crush rejects him, your words from the previous day only then come back to him.

“I’m sorry,” his crush frowns once the words leave her mouth. “I don’t see you the same way.” She shakes her head, and Chan’s shoulders slump down as she turns her heel to walk away.

The feeling Chan experiences is neither his heart shattering into a billion pieces, nor the emotion of relief. It’s in between those two, for a reason Chan can’t figure out straight away.

It’s somehow not heartbreak, yet Chan still wants answers.

“Oh, uhm, one last question,” Chan perks up at the last second, his crush whipping around at the last second. “Why? Why do you not like me?”

His crush stares at him for a few moments, lips slightly apart. Then she laughs.

“It’s because of Y/N.”

“Y/N?”

“I can tell you both like each other. This week, I’ve noticed that your friend has been acting different, and although I saw that you were kind of uncomfortable with it at first, I could see you warming up to it,” she smiles. “Chan, you and Y/N have something that I will never have with you, it’s a given. I hope you come to realize that, if you haven’t already.” She nods one last time, bidding farewell to Chan for the day, and drifts farther and farther until Chan can’t see her anymore.

Later that night, when Chan reflects on his crush’s explanations, staring at the ceiling, he wonders if it would’ve been different if he listened to you more carefully. Maybe he should’ve slowed down, and instead of practically shouting at his crush that he likes her, he should’ve spoken more properly and asked her out on a date like what you said. Maybe then, he’d take her to Insanis, which happens to be his cafe of choice that you and him go to almost every week. And maybe, him and his crush would play in the snow and make snow angels happily, like how you two did a couple days ago...

No. Chan’s crush is right.

His head’s thoughts are slowly being all about you.

You, on the other hand, believe that you’ve lost him.

𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐬𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧, 𝐬𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲

Chan loves you. 

No matter how hard he tries to diminish his feelings for you that has grown in the only the past few days, he can’t stop himself.

From your happiness when playing in the snow, to the way you become cuddly when the moon comes up, to the explanation his own crush gave him. 

It all lines up.

“Dumbass,” Changbin speaks up bluntly when Chan reveals his realization to his two guy friends while walking to the dining hall for breakfast. Minho laughs in response as Chan rolls his eyes.

“I gotta admit,” Minho swings his arms around the two, bringing them in closely. “You only just realize now? It’s impressive how dense you are.”

“Dense? Am I really?” 

“Yes,” Changbin and Minho both say at the same time, and for once, Chan can only laugh. The trio approaches the dining table, while Chan scans the room standing up for your familiar face.

Minho, takes notice of this fairly quickly, “So, what’s your next move? It’s still a gamble, though.”

“Hmm? How come?” Chan genuinely asks his friend.

“Did you fall in love with the Y/N you’ve known this entire time, or only the Y/N you’ve seen this past week?” 

Minho’s question makes Chan silent for quite some time, sitting down slowly on the dining benches. His two friends patiently wait for his answer, Changbin in particular already digging into his breakfast when Chan finally responds.

“I think I’ve always liked them, I just never realized it.”

To Chan’s utter surprise, they both nod their heads in agreement. Changbin swallows the food in his mouth before commenting. “I think you’re right. Maybe you just had that crush on your potions classmate to state that you and Y/N are  just friends to everybody, without even meaning it yourself.”

Minho elaborates further, “And she said that you and Y/N have something between the two of you that’s unique? Then she must’ve implied that you guys have this bond that makes you two inseparable.”

Chan simply hums, taking in the information. He’s glad to know that he’s right for once, finally having a plan on what to do next. He sighs in relief, grabbing the nearest plate of food and stacking it onto his own plate, digging in. Yet, Chan still wonders where you were that morning, and how he only saw you later in the day hanging out with your other group of friends. Not even talking to him once.

You simply weren’t sure anymore.

𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭, 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲 

Chan has not seen you for the entire day.

It’s supposed to be the day that the potion wears off from your body, and you can finally go back to your normal self (despite Chan’s wishes), but Chan has yet to see you. Not once at the dining hall, or the hallway potion’s class is in, or even with your other group of friends who join you in history class. 

Fortunately, though, he’s able to overhear your dorm roommate, who says that you’ve refused to go to class today for reasons they don’t know. So Chan takes matters into his own hands, considering that nothing eventful ever happens in herbology class on Mondays, he decides to skip the period to head to your dorm room and approach you, with the help of your roommate giving him a spare key to enter.

The moment Chan walks into your room, a sudden chill goes down his spine, most likely because of the cold air. The lights are closed, with only the morning sun’s brightness seeping through the cracks of the window. The curtains that hang over your bunk bed, as you sleep on the bottom, are blocking his view from where you are. He closes the door gently, but makes sure he’s loud enough to alert you that he’s there. Peeking through the curtains, he sees your body covered in heaps of blankets, smushing your face into your head pillow.

“Hey,” Chan takes a seat at the foot of your bed, taking in your mellow appearance. “Are you okay? Are you sick?”

It takes you a minute to answer, and Chan starts to wonder if you’re actually awake right now, until you speak up. 

“It’s not like you to skip class, Channie,” you choose to say instead of answering his questions. You appear from your spot in your pillow, gazing up at him with a tired look on your face. “What’s that in your hands?”

“Oh, it’s- uh- banana milk. It’s for you,” Chan extends the hand he’s holding the drink out for you to take, but you don’t budge. 

“Are you sure that one doesn’t have a love potion in it instead of milk?”

Chan gets taken aback at your sudden theory. “You knew it was a love potion?”

“I could tell, even through the effects of it,” you state, finally sitting up and gently taking the milk from his hands. “Don’t feel bad though, since you’re here, I might as well tell you something.”

“During that entire week of being under that spell, I learned that-” you pause briefly. “If you already love somebody, your love for them basically strengthens by ten. It becomes something unstoppable, and you start to unravel your feelings for that person instead of hiding them. Originally, I wanted to kept those feelings inside of me forever, but because I accidentally drank that potion, look where I am now. Have you caught on yet?”

Chan could only stare at you, even after putting the puzzle pieces together. You tense up at his reaction, only fearing the worst to come out of this.

His next words surprise the both of you, however.

“That’s the best side of you, though,” Chan admits without a second thought, and you have to do a double take to see if your best friend, known for being shy and timid, really said that.

“C-Care to elaborate?” you stutter out through your shock, a light tint of red spreading throughout Chan’s body.

“The best side of you is the one you showed me last week. The one where you let your guard down instead of keeping up your confident persona,” Chan explains hesitantly and slowly, gripping his fingers tightly with each sentence. Then, he suddenly smiles, then grins, something you rarely ever see coming from him. 

“That’s the side I fell in love with.”

“Love?!”

“Mhm.”

“Really? You’re not playing with me right?”

“Mhm!”

You groan loudly once it finally hits you, pressing your forehead against his shoulder. Chan starts giggling at your reaction, the both of you finally feeling at peace with one another. It’s as if all the awkwardness and tension from the last week drifted away slowly, with Chan’s now ex-crush leaving his field of vision, only for you to come in at the right time. He wonders how Minho and Changbin will react once he reveals that he finally got into a relationship, and how the rest of the school year will pan out with you by his side.

“So,” Chan starts to snicker uncontrollably. “You really are infatuated with me, huh?”

“Ya, Bang Chan! That’s the first time you’ve ever teased me. Ever!” your eyes widen in utter surprise, punching his arm slightly as Chan laughs harder, you joining him soon after. You nudge him one last time, coming up with something to make him as equally flustered as you are right now.

“But doesn’t that mean you’re infatuated with me too?”

@skzwriternet​ @stayracha-net​ pls reblog my fic for once i beg u 

[boop-le-snoot]

skin starving

tony stark x f!reader fluff. no warnings, just a few f-bombs. touch starved tony’s third person pov. words: 2,5k. no beta because i just really needed to get this off my chest.

recommended music to go with the story: two feet - 'love is a bitch' & 'quick musical doodles'. Or any lo-fi hip-hop radio really.

It started as an itch. At first, a small but bothersome thing, that kept him up at night, steering the already unreasonable hours of wakefulness into dangerous territory. The cold of his bed was unappealing and more often than not, he’d started passing out on the flat surfaces nearest to him: workshop, lab, common room couch, the lazy boy in Bruce’s apartment.

The team noticed, of course, they weren’t blind. They all had been on edge the first few months after Pepper left him. They expected him to act out, lock himself up in his lab or go back to his old habits of boozing and bringing home a different girl every night. And he had tried that, once or twice, but airheaded twenty-somethings weren’t appealing anymore. Most of the time their ass kissing and blatantly flattery annoyed him further into self-loathing abyss. He simply couldn’t step up to be the kind of man they described him to be - it seemed as if every woman on planet Earth had a whole list of expectations he specifically could not meet.

With Thor off planet, not one remaining person on the team was particularly touchy-feely. And that was the thing with Tony Stark: as an engineer, as a mechanic, he made his way through the world hands-first, every approach he had was hands-on. During late nights and early mornings, he laid in bed, sleepless and dreamless, desperately refusing to admit his own touch starvation.

Whenever Rogers threw an arm around his shoulders during a particularly successful team bonding activity, it took every ounce of willpower Tony had to not lean into it and purr like a cat. He hadn’t truly forgiven Steve for his cold, cruel words of criticism shortly after Pepper’s departing. He wasn’t going to chummy up to a man who thought him selfish, opportunistic and self-absorbed.

Tony became irritable and withdrawn. He simultaneously craved and avoided even the casual, friendlier attention his teammates gave him on a daily basis. His usual snark became that much more biting, having caused several people to storm out of team meetings.

On a cold autumn morning, Tony had found his way at the tower’s Starbucks on the employee floor. He had squeezed a generous five hours of restless sleep and he was sick of the plain black coffee in his kitchen. A spontaneous desire for something sweet and creamy and caffeinated led him to the place in line at the cafeteria, only a few early birds ahead of him.

Tony’s brain was hazy as it had been past few weeks, dull from the lack of rest and the hyperfixation of his own skin feeling alien to him. For once, he wasn’t typing away on his StarkPhone as he usually did to avoid being bothered; Tony stared straight ahead, unseeing, nothing but white noise in his usually racing brain.

Two women stood in front of him and he couldn’t help but overhear a part of their conversation.

“… Are you really horny or just lonely or touch-starved, though? I mean, Tinder? It’s not really your style.”

“Eh, I dunno. Probably the second but it’s not like men go on Tinder to find a cuddle buddy.”

“Well, maybe? I’ve heard about arrangements like that.”

“No offense, babe, but it’s probably kids in their early twenties. Those gen-z’s, babe, are weird. I’m not really up to date on all of that.”

The topic of the conversation was what piqued Tony’s interest; the world liked rubbing salt into his wounds and hysterically laugh at his misfortune. Bleary-eyed, he briefly scanned the two women: both appeared to be interns or junior techs in his company, evident by the purple employee badges hanging from their bags.

“So what are you going to do?” One woman asked the other as their turn to order took Tony one step closer to obtaining his desired caffeine.

“Unless someone normal magically appears with an offer of no-strings-attached, good ole’ snuggle fest, I guess I’m getting dicked down on Saturday,” The other replied with a teasing tone. The lack of excitement in the last part of the sentence was obvious.

“Gross,” The first one shook her head and hurriedly rattled off her order to the barista who looked about as disgruntled as Tony felt.

Hours and three coffees later, Tony’s overactive brain was still stuck on that woman from the cafeteria. Her back, her purse stuffed full of colorful manila folders, her neatly gathered hair - Tony Stark had nearly perfect memory and he remembered every single detail despite his brain fog. Objectively, she was attractive, no more no less than a different dozen of women he’d seen at any point in his life before. So why was he hung up on her?

It didn’t take him a long time to find her file, faster than he’d liked to admit. Manually sorting through hundreds of interns, lab technicians and various second-tier employees wasn’t exactly considered productive but with Pepper and her nagging out of the picture, Tony could afford to slack off a little bit.

So he found her name and her e-mail address, skimmed over her performance report with satisfaction, finding her to be a busy bee in the 90-th percentile. Her superiors considered her trustworthy, hard-working and communicative, all good traits.

Pepper’s absence meant he’d have no one to cover his ass should he get slapped with a harassment suit; however, he was the Tony Stark after all. He had more money that he’d cared to count and an army of lawyers at his disposal 24/7.

Amidst the jumbled mess of wires, circuit boards, tablets, empty coffee cups and the occasional piece of paper, Tony typed up an e-mail to the woman sharing his… Condition.

“I heard you and your friend talking at Starbucks. I could use a cuddle buddy. Wine and Netflix at my place? What’s your takeout preference?”

No. That came off way too creepy, like he was some kind of a dirty eavesdropper.

He contemplated some more, typing up and erasing multiple e-mails with various proposals: his penthouse, her place, a three Michelin star restaurant, a walk in the park. Almost all of it screamed ‘date’, like he’d drag her off to bed the very moment an opportunity wouldn’t present itself. It wasn’t so: Tony Stark, the playboy genius, had his dick firmly tucked into his pants. The thought of fucking her crossed his mind only briefly, quickly being chased away by the thought of her fingers running through his hair. Her warm, soft body in his arms. Just laying on his couch, eyes closed, reveling in each other’s arms.

Tony hit send on the least obnoxious option. He baited his breath, clicking his fingers in anticipation as the message showed itself to having been delivered.

“Mary, is this you trying to be funny? Stark is going to fire you if he finds out you’re impersonating him to stop your friend from going on a questionable date. Grow up.” Came the very prompt reply, ending with a short string of angry emojis. Tony could totally trust a person who used emojis unironically and generously.

“For the record, I wouldn’t be mad if somebody pretended to be me for the sake of saving their cute friend from a creep. The problem would be making it look credible.” Tony typed up the answer without thinking, quickly snapping a picture of himself holding the Starbucks cup with his name written on it, throwing his usual sloppy peace sign. He attached it to the email and hit send.

“WTF” Came the reply not a minute afterwards. He let it sink in, giving the woman some time to gather her wits. She did not disappoint. “Okay, even if we pretend this is real - which I doubt - what’s in it for you? If you heard our conversation, you surely know my stance on the matter.”

“I’m always glad to prove you wrong. I’m a genius - comes with the territory.” Tony simply couldn’t resist adding a generous dose of snark. “You’re welcome to meet me after clocking out. Use the private elevator, my AI will beam you up.”

The reply took a considerably long amount of time, seeing as previously, she typed back rather quickly. “Please don’t be a creepy rapist, Scotty. Fingers crossed.” Tony managed to almost break his stylus twice. His hands shook, and he had to tell himself to breathe - still, he laughed at the clever way she replied.

Several more hours later, during which Tony had nearly paced a hole through various floors on the residential side of the tower, he took a quick shower, dressed in a flattering but comfortable designer sweatpants and polo combo and made himself at home on the obscenely large living room sofa on his own, private penthouse floor.

He was up and running towards the elevator when Friday’s voice notified him of the woman entering the elevator on the employee floor. Tony tousled his hair, adjusted his glasses, fiddled with the drawstring of his pants.

The woman was wearing casual office wear, pants and a loose blouse, a lab coat loosely draped over her arm and her purse hanging off the shoulder on a thin strap. Her hair was loose now, a little frizzy as if she continuously ran her hands through it. Tony quietly rejoiced at not being the only nervous one.

Clever eyes scanned the room with unhurried interest before finally landing on him. “Not too shabby, if I say so myself,” The corners of her mouth tilted in an attempt at a smile, it was obvious she was studying him.

“Thanks, I try my best,” Tony smirked. Humble he was not. “So, how do you want to do this?”

“I see a comfortable couch,” She looked to be grateful for being given the opportunity to lead this interaction. “Let’s park our behinds on it, bicker for ten minutes about a movie choice and settle on one none of us really like. Then we can tell each other our no-no zones and, well, yeah,” She started out confidently. Probably practiced in the elevator. But towards the end, her shyness took over.

For Tony, it was kind of cute. A nice change from suck-ups that flocked him at every social gathering in hopes of getting something out of him. The woman that had tossed her bag carelessly on the far end of the couch and untucked her blouse looked and felt like the exact opposite of those people. She looked willing to give.

Tony sat next to her, keeping a couple of inches of free space between them. “Food preferences? Food allergies?” He asked, tapping the food delivery application.

“Nope, and I will eat just about anything.” He felt more than saw her side-eyeing him. Both of them were jittery. So uncharacteristic for Tony, to be blushing and stammering like a high school boy. Sex was easy, but intimacy? Complex. It was addictive and eventually, painful.

Movie decisions were surprisingly easy and she said so. They settled on a Tarantino classic, an old flick neither of them had watched in a long time. As the discussion progressed, Tony used his wits to find out more about her without making it seem like an interrogation. He had run a background check on the woman and her family but those only went that far, besides, it was a great opportunity to practice the tips Natasha had shared with him at one point or another. Being friends with spies had it’s perks.

They ate their food until their bellies were full. A comfortable, relaxing stupor, being warm from the inside out.

Tony noticed when the woman spoke, she spoke with her hands. She had caught herself grasping his forearm multiple times when they’d got more passionate about their discussion. And what Tony loved the most was that she refused to apologize. He saw a kindred soul in the woman; quiet until something struck her fancy. Then, she became a whirlwind of ideas and opinions.

In no time, it became a natural action to extend his arm and wrap it around her shoulders, reclining backwards. There was little grace in laying belly-up like a dead fish but the woman didn’t seem to mind. Watching him out of the corner of her eye, she laid down sideways, throwing a leg over one of his own.

Her palm traced the outline of his arc reactor when something on the screen caught her in a moment of intense interest. Tony preferred to avoid the cursed thing - scars around it definitely did not do any favour to his aging, marked body - but he found himself exhaling the tension when it was obvious the woman really did not care. An occasional quiet hum of satisfaction was the only noise that came from her: he noticed the sound escaped her lips every time his thumb began fiddling with the sleeve of her blouse and rubbed against her arm.

He was quite content. It was warm, he was surrounded by so much warmth.

The hug was mutual when she left home, both of them comfortable with the gesture for people who had met in a rather unconventional way.

She started coming over a couple of times a week, a quiet evening of the best takeout in NYC and (mostly) interesting movies. A solace, always a single e-mail away.

Tony saw her in the cafeteria once or twice; he appreciated the brief, tiny secretive grin she gave him out of her friend’s eyesight. She never approached him. He was grateful for that. He didn’t want to deal with all the drama and all the fuss surrounding incidents between him and his employees. It was nobody’s business what any of them did after clocking out - and him and his cuddle buddy, they weren’t even fucking, for Thor’s sake.

Maybe they would get there someday. Or maybe they won’t. It was only now for Tony. The rare free Saturday night he had, he truly took a vacation from all the bullshit and lured her in with promises of very expensive wine, her favourite New York style pizza and the willingness to entertain watching a few of those funny YouTube videos she liked.

They did watch them and Tony didn’t mind. He stepped over the irrational fear and the initial discomfort and curled up around her, hiding his face in the soft cotton of her worn hoodie, his own breath tickling his face in warm puffs. The hand running through his hair was tender like it never was with Pepper - his ex was far too preoccupied to baby her grown-up boyfriend. But the woman moulded to his body like an extension of himself was happy to do so. Tony’s hair was longer now and it glided perfectly along the woman’s palms.

His heart was steady, thumping in his ears, overshadowing the noises coming from the TV. He exhaled and felt her other hand begin tracing circles on his back, as if she saw the stress and the bitterness leave his body with every caress, every brush of their bodies. Maybe she did?

He held onto her, held her back like she’d held him. Safekeeping the warmth inside of him. Guarding his peace.

[aesthbaby]

Ghost

Summary: Do you remember the episode Demonology where we learned of Emily’s past? What if I told you, you were apart of it. After years of silence on her end, you end up meeting her again.

Pairing: Emily Prentiss x Fem!Reader

Prompt: here

Warnings: Cursing | Sadness | Typos

Word Count:

Masterlist

An: Dedicated to my hundredth follower. Ahhhh I'm too hype about this! I also made a slight change to the prompt but everything else is the same :)  Anon, I hope you enjoy.

Indignation

The screaming crawls up the walls of her oversized, child hood home to shake her ear drums. The thunder only adds fuel to the fire that is the rage possessed by both Prentiss’ as they continue their screaming match.

“Don’t you dare walk away when I’m talking to you!” Elizabeth’s voice matches the rain. The way she stomps behind her daughter looks almost comical.

“Back off mother.” She mumbles this more to herself than her mother.

She stops walking, planting her feet firmly on the Brazilian Chestnut flooring. “I will not ask you again.” She comes to a stop, takes a breath, and slowly turns to her mother. Not meeting her eyes, of course, because it’d hurt too much to see the hate in her eyes. “Look at me.” The mother growls. She slowly moves to meet her mothers eyes and finds nothing but rage there; energy matched to the thunder and rain outside. “You will not see that-” The derogatory term gets caught up in her throat.

Taking a step towards the elder, “What?” Daring to ask the question to which she already knows the answer. “What do you want to say mother?” Her jaw tightens, a sign that Emily knows all too well. “Spit it out.” Its taking everything in her not to raise her voice again and spew the word out for her mother.

Elizabeth takes a breath of her own before replying. “You are not to see that girl again or so help me, I will make sure she goes back to where she came from.” Before Emily could object, she speaks again. “That is final Emily.” Her voice holds strong, and suddenly the storm ceases its assault. 

All is quiet in the Prentiss house yet the tension remains; so thick that you could cut it with a knife.

Disregard

The next morning you arrive to school earlier than usual, but for good reason. Some random college hoodie wrapped loosely around your torso and a dainty neck tucked under it. Your school uniform has never fit you quite right because of how late in the year you transferred, you know...left overs. Phone is going absolutely crazy in your shirt pocket but now isn't the time, you’re looking for somebody. You’re looking for her. Mr. Ricci’s voice can be heard on your left, telling a group of guys its time for class. Emily...where the hell are you?

As the day progresses you still see no sign of the brunette until now. “Emily!” Running up to her you deliver a swift punch to her shoulder. “Where the hell have you been?” When her eyes meet yours they puffy, like she’s been crying. “Em- I-”

“First of all, ouch. Secondly, I can’t right now.” She turns to walk off with her lunch in hand, but you quickly pull her back by her elbow.

“You ‘can’t’ right now? What the hell is wrong with you?” Its taking everything in you not to become overtly emotional. “And where have you been?”

“Y/n I’m sorry but I really can’t right now.” She pulls away from your grip. Leaving you more confused than before.

You scuff at her wording. “You never calls me by my first name...” Its always been her thing, starting with a joke about how she has another friend by the same name as you so she had to call you something else. The next day was the same, avoiding you at all costs.

But it didn’t stop there.

It felt as though you were left on a physical manifestation of ‘read.’ Her name with the red heart emoji attached, did not pop up on your phone for what seemed to be months but in reality it had only been a few weeks. If she were to simply pick up the phone you would have been able to tell her about your unforeseen departure time. Due to sudden changes in international studies, you had to leave and the academy needed their student back. The one of which you exchange places with in January. Tears spring to your eyes at the thought of leaving. Not only are you leaving her, but also leaving this city you got to call home.

Sunny days always seem to appear at the wrong time, your departure day. She’s not here to see you off, hasn’t been around for a while. Can you really blame her? She doesn’t even know you’re leaving because she wont pick up the fucking phone. It doesn’t matter anymore, your time is up and so is her’s. A line of black and white kittens sprint across the cobblestone streets and that right there is what makes you break down in tears. Seeing the delicate kittens run after a mouse while tripping over their own feet. Random yellow flowers peaking through the stone which you’ve never known the actual name of. That one girl in Chem that would bake cookies for the class on Fridays. Your host dad taking you to his favorite café that served an increasing number of Cuban smokers. Going to eat gelato after homeroom with that one guy who would always make Golden Girls references. Then there was Emily, the girl that gave you a dainty gold necklace for valentines day. The girl that got a random jock to stop harassing you. The person whose lap you’d lay in on Saturday mornings at the park, is the same person who randomly started to ignore you. Maybe you could have fixed things with her if you had more time. You were supposed  to have until June but suddenly everything shifted and all you were told is that you needed to come home, promptly. You couldn’t wait for her any longer, not even sure why you thought she’d come in the first place. Casting one last glance over your shoulder before stepping into the buzzing airport.

At least meet me half way.

Hereafter

"I don’t think so.” You laugh at your friend’s proposition to set you up on a blind date. “I am absolutely content with the way I choose to live my life.” Shifting a bit on the new couch that hasn’t been broken in, resulting in the stiff cushions.

He lets out this weird scuffing noise. “No you’re not. Remember last weekend when we tried to pull an all-nighter but your sleep deprived brain betrayed you?” At your nonchalant shrug, he continues. “You started rambling about just wanting to find some well educated, fun loving, female in this world full of bureaucratic straight men. Your words, not mine.” You throw a pillow at him but he swiftly doges it. “But you couldn’t have said it better.” These recent years have been a series of unfortunate dates that have ended in you lying about having to leave early for something.

“Don’t you have a girlfriend you should be getting home to?”

“Not tonight, I’m all yours. Apparently she has her knitting circle tonight.”

“That's what you get for dating an older woman.” 

“Its a five year age difference! What is wrong with you people?”

You hold your hands up in defense. “Nothing, as long as you’re both legal and she’s good to you, its fine by me.”

“Shut up!” He screeches. “Oh shit, don’t you have a meeting in the morning?”

“Yes sir.” He stands to take your glasses and plates in the kitchen but you object. “Leave it,” At his confused expression, you continue. “Cleaning helps me relax so I figured I’ll wake up early so I can do that and reduce my stress levels by at least ten percent.”

“Dude, you’re seriously weird.”

“Say another bad thing about me and I'm sending you home.”

Throwing him a few pillows from the hallway closet and a comforter just for him to scream, “Its too hot in this cottage core apartment!”

Its not even cottage core themed?? Its just cozy with a plant or two. Am I expected to live in an ice cold home? I feel like he’s just saying this because I’m gay.

Your prepared outfit hands on the back of your bedroom door, mocking you. Making you reconsider the entire thing and simply not go but it feels as though you’d regret it if you didn’t. Maybe not, who knows?

And with that as your final though, you drift off to sleep.

You wake at the amazing time of 6 A.M to see your guest gone with a note on the couch:

I cleaned up the mess from last night and I also did the dishes in your sink. Not sure how u slept through all of that...I made a fruit salad for ur breakfast and a normal one for lunch.

Good luck with your meeting!

And one of those old fashioned emoticons at the bottom corner. Idiot.

You eat the food he left from the fridge, brush your teeth with the news playing in the background, and continue on with the normal morning routine.

Gathering your lunch and the little items you feel like you’d need, phone, charger, paper work, and keys; you know, the works. Finally heading out to your destination with nothing but ambition, you run into a slight problem. 

Overlapping breakfast with an old friend of yours. “Hey, babe, I am so sorr-”

“Absolutely not, I don’t want to hear your excuses.” The positive voice rings through the phone like velvet sheets after a cold shower. “You missed our reservation!” Have to admit hearing them whine is pretty entertaining. “You had one job. One!” You guys met some years ago over some random online forum, arguing over some random movie. You don’t talk as much as you’d like but breakfast is always on the menu--mostly in February.

“Quick question, am I allowed to apologize?”

There’s a beat of silence on the other end, “Yes you may, but only in fruit baskets and coffee.”

“I got you, next time though. I’m on my way to something right now.”

“Something...” In comes the teasing undertone. “Does this ‘something’ have a name?”

Bursting into a fit of laughter at what is implied and replying, “Definitely not, its a work thing.”

“Speaking of work, I have to go. Ciao!”

Just in time to end the call, you pull into the designated parking deck from the email. Going through all of the security procedures was hell but blatantly necessary; the rest was gravy. Floating through the rest of the building gave you a slightly stressful feel because of all the men walking around with perfect suits and casting no glances your direction. When the glass doors labeled BAU appear, you take a deep breath and walk in with confidence. Taking in the buzzing sound of agents at work all around you. Agent Hotcher’s office is glaringly obvious: higher up than the rest, perfect overview of the hive, and in direct eye sight of the entryway doors.

Delivering a swift knock to the office door you hear a faint invitation from the inside. Walking in with a smile and straight back you are greeted with a man in a dark navy blue suit and a stoic look to attached to him. It first starts with the small talk of your experience, early life, skill sets, and what not.

“Agent Hotchner, might I speak out of line for a moment.” He gives you a skeptical look before nodding. “I understand the nature of this meeting but I am not completely sure why it was conducted.” His furrowed brown is not a good sign, making you correct your structure a bit. “Right, well,” God his stare is fucking intense. “What I mean to ask is, why am I here?”

That was bold.

“Agent, are you not aware that this is a Career Analysis Assessment?” As it slowly sinks in an O-shape forms with your mouth. Now you feel like a complete idiot in front of this prestigious, tight suited, man. “You were unaware? Its fine if you were,” You let out a sigh at the confirmation. “I have a tendency to write my emails with an excessive amount of four syllable words so one could see where the confusion originated.” You let out a nervous laugh at the realization that this is basically a job interview.

“I see that you’ve spent time studying abroad.” Indicated by the recommendations from your Italian Psychology teacher. “Why not join the CIA?”

“Dare I say, they make me nervous?” He cracks a small, very subtle, smile at the admission.

“What made you want to leave Human Resources?”

“I got tired of analyzing decisions with nothing but dead bodies and messy crimes and having my primal focus be the agents and not the victims or perpetrators. Using what I’ve learned as material for agents in training when I could have prevented it from happening.”

“Well said, but I need to be completely transparent with you.” This can’t be good. “I will admit that I have serious reservations about adding a Human Resources officer to my team.”

Shit let me stop him before this spirals. He thinks I’m a spy. “Sir, with all do respect, I have no intentions of being a bureaucratic spy. I’d also like to point out that I wasn’t that high on the HR totem pole to the point where I had an explicit say on what happens to agents, who is hire, fired, or how they’re trained. I analyzed and compromised while expressing my findings to an unbiased extent. If I wanted to be a spy I would have joined the CIA.” Besides, Head Quarter’s is the one that does all of that internal investigation stuff, not HR.

He doesn’t say anything or make any sudden movements for a good minute. I fucked up. That spy line was too far. “I’d like to offer you a position on this team, so long as you can start immediately.”

“Yes, of course I can! I don’t have much office supplies besides a pen or two and-”

“Its fine,” He stands from his seat and straightens the dark blazer. “I’ll have one of my agents show you around.”

From across the bullpen you spot a familiar blonde. “Oh my god!” The file in her hand falls to the floor. “Its you!” She practically squeals.

“Penelope, I didn’t know you work here.” You give your old friend a tight, unapologetic hug. She said she worked as a tech analysis but you always assumed it was for an activism group or a tech firm, not the FBI out of all things. Despite having such interesting jobs, you never talk about work with each other. She knows you work for the government but not which. Although knowing how good she is at uncovering people’s secrets, there’s a good chance she already knew you work for the FBI too.

“What are you doing here? Like physically here. I thought you were in Florida.”

“I have to get back, can you take care of Agent Y/L/N for me?” Hotchner says before rushing off without an answer.

And there she goes with the snooping. “Actually, I left the Florida office and went to California.”

“Oh.” Her face twists a bit. “And now you’re here?”

“I thought you were the woman behind the curtains, the all knowing.”

“And wonderful!” She points with her perfectly painted finger.

In comes a slim man with a messenger back, making a click in your mind. “Now where have I seen him before...” Turning slightly to follow his trail.

“That’s our resident genius Dr. Spencer Reid.”

Unbelievable. “He’s twelve.” The young agent’s head snaps toward you and Penelope, “Does he have super human hearing too?” She introduces you to the Doctor who is, as expected, socially awkward in many ways. A man named David Rossi of whom you’ve met at least once during a few Bureau seminars; last you heard he had rejoined the BAU after retirement. Jennifer Jareau is gorgeous with a nurturing nature about her, she immediately recognizes your name from exchanged paperwork but that’s about it. The introductions are brief, everyone seems to be busy with their own things. “Penelope your team is kind of small.” You quietly mention to her.

“Oh!” Guess the realization that two people are missing, finally clicks in her head. She starts walking in the direction of a staircase so you automatically follow her. “This is Derek Morgan.” Standing in front of a round table is a tall man with a really toned body. “Derek, this is Agent Y/n L/n from Human Resources.” His eyebrow arches up in suspicion.

“Oh no I’m not here for anything bad, I’ve actual been transferred into the BAU. Working behind a desk and watching as others do the work I can’t, wasn’t working out for me.” Definitely won’t trust me until I save his life or something. “I’ve heard of you, one of the Academy trainers has shown a few videos of you.” He smirks at the implied compliment and finally holds his hand out for you to shake.

“Where’s...” Pen trails while looking around.

“Oh she’s getting coffee.” The darker man points behind himself.

“Who’s getting coffee?”

Reconciliation

Maybe we wouldn’t be so short handed if they sprung for better coffee. Emily thought to herself while stirring the flavorless, dark liquid. What if they attach a coffee shop to the building? Imagine how much money the shop would make off of overworked agents. But then I feel like we’d start developing a true addiction to this stuff. Her thoughts are interrupted by the approach of foot steps. She meets Derek’s figure and smiles at the resident goofball of the BAU. Followed by Penelope’s pink centralized outfit with feathers. Then there’s you, just as beautiful as the last time you saw each other. If not more. Your hair shines amongst the florescent lights, paired with the perfectly tailored outfit and jewelry. The same eyes that would brighten her day as they met. An almost unnoticeable bounce in you walk, same as it were years ago. As you step towards her there is a flash of gold on your wrist that sends a ping to Emily’s heart, its the necklace I gave you in high school.

Intersect

You would have know about Emily’s transfer here from a few years ago, had her paperwork gone through the HR department but apparently it went straight to the top because this is definitely a surprise. Once you realize its actually her you stop dead in your tracks. Can’t be.

“Y/n,” She stutters out your name in disbelief. “What are you doing here?”

“Emily, I work here.” Ripping the band-aid off like this is an every day encounter; seeing your unofficial ex who you were never actually with in the first place but had the same characteristics as a high school couple. Yeah...that.

She also blurted out a ‘no you don’t’ before Garcia interrupted. “How do you two know each other?”

You both snapped your heads to her simultaneously. “We don’t.” Also said that part at the same time.

“Right.” She drags. “I’m sensing some unresolved tension...”

“What are-” Em tries to object.

“So we’re going to go.” The tech analysis grabs the sleeve of the darker man and practically sprints off in the opposite direction. Morgan having a dumbfounded look on his face.

It feels like you’re at a stalemate, who will make the first move. What will the emotions be? Are they going to fly? Because I’d like to throw a few verbal punches her way. Who does that to someone? I thought I was over it but clearly the wound is still open. Great now watch her blame me for X, Y, and Z,

“I’ve missed you.” She barely whispers, sounding a bit broken yet insincere. Its like she’s detaching herself from the narrative. So unexpected that you almost think you’re imagining this. Why would she say that? This is not the Emily you remember.

Anger bubbles up in your throat ready to unleash upon her entirety. Instead of bursting into flames right on the spot, in the middle of your new place of employment you take a deep breath. Words of disbelief  dance on your lips before speaking. “You did not.” She tilts her head like a curious puppy. Who am I even talking to?

“What do you mean?” And just like that she’s whisked away by a guy in a suit of whom you do not recognize. Your jaw clinches in a desperate attempt to keep your cool, wondering what the hell is going on.

Realization

Besides the surprise of seeing Emily, your first day went great. Everyone kept checking up on you and you couldn’t tell if it was because they were trying to be friendly, excited to have a new teammate, or nervous of your background. “She used to work for the FBI Human Resources Branch.” You heard the skinny one tell Morgan when they thought you weren’t listening.

JJ and Penelope invited you out for drinks but all you really wanted to do was lay in your bed with a face mask and a bag of chips. Waving a farewell to the blonde women and head to your car, but a few feet away you feel a presence. You quickly loop around in search of the energy with your hand on the top of your gun. “Woah woah.” Emily holds her hands up in surrender.

At the realization of who it is you take a breath and clip your gun back in place. You give her a “what the hell look” before straightening your outfit.

“Were you going to shoot me?”

She’s met with wide eyes from your end. “Maybe?! Who sneaks up on someone with a gun?”

“I didn’t ‘sneak’ up on you.”

“Emily, you wear all black and walk like a feather. What were you expecting?” The buried anger is starting showing through.

“Okay,” She does a weird hand movement that kind of looks like she’s trying to calm you down. “I’m sorry. I just thought we could talk.”

“Talk...” You’re not really following.

“Yes, I’d like to talk.”

“Emily what are you asking? I’m lost.”

She take a moment to figure it out before answering. “For a second chance, I’m asking for another shot.”

You uncross your arms at the admission, letting them lazily fall beside you. “Em- I-” She can’t be asking what I think she is. “Its been years. More than a decade has passed since-” The words suddenly die on your lips

“I know,” And it looks like there’s a slight glimmer in her eyes, implying the presence of suppressed tears. “I’d just like to explain.”

“Explain?” You bite, tasting the bitter flavor of annoyance.

“Yes, I at least owe you that.”

And that’s how you ended up here, with her. In a cozy, minimalistic loft at nine in the afternoon with a coffee table separating the two of you.

“I’m sorry.” Was the first thing to break the silence, and this time it actually sounded sincere. “If I could have explained everything to you back then, I would have.”

You lean forward, closer to her and push the rather large vase off to the side so she has to be vulnerable with you. Nothing to help her hide from herself. At her confused face you lean back in your seat and nod for her to continue.

“My mother was always a difficult woman and although she has gotten better over the years, things were at their worst when she found out how much time I had been spending with you.” The brunette takes a minute before admitting the next part. “She was responsible for your early departure. I tried to stop her, give you more time but she’s relentless.” She waits for your reaction but when met with nothing, she continues. “She threatened me by putting our connection on the line, which in retrospect I now realize was impossible to save. She had already made calls to get you out of the country by the time I could sever what we had. I never wanted to hurt you or end what we shared.”

“And what did we share, Emily?”

Her tongue darts from between her lips, doing that weird little biting thing she’s always done since we’ve known each other. It sparks something in you that you haven't felt in a while. “I think you know. The fact that you still wear the necklace I gave you, bracelet, means you never really forgot.”

“I liked it where I could see it, but Em you could have called, texted even.” 

“I couldn’t I was scared. Then after you left I started to distance myself from everyone and everything was really going downhill.”

“How so?”

“I got mixed up with peer pressure and boys.” This doesn’t sound good. “At one point I did anything I could to fit in.”

“What does that mean?” There’s a moment when a tear wells up on one of her eyes, but not dropping. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“I-” She tries to speak but nothing comes out. “I couldn’t tell my mother and the church wasn’t happy with my actions.” It suddenly dawns on you, like a smack in the face. You want to make her stop and just hold her but this needs to come out. “I couldn’t call you because it would hurt too much. I hated myself at that moment more than I ever have.”

“And you haven’t dated since?”

She sniffles and lets out a little laugh at that. “God no, I’ve dated people but I haven't dated another female since. It felt wrong, like I was replacing you or something.”

“You owe me nothing. You were just trying to protect me and I see that now.”

“I knew better, its been so long and when I heard you joined the academy I-”

“Wait, you knew and didn’t say anything?”

“Y/n I couldn’t bring myself to do anything other that attempt to move on.” Silence fills the room and its not the comforting kind. Its the tense, I need to do something, kind.

“Do you feel anything?” You dare to ask.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Were your feelings lost in transit?”

“They froze the day you left, and thawed the day I saw you again. Today.”

“So its not over.”

She appears to contemplate your statement. “No, its not over. We have a chance to start over.”

What now?

.｡.:*･゜ﾟ･*★*･ ･*･'･*:..:*･゜ﾟ･*☆*:. .｡.:*☆

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[spectrumed]

1. piano

The brain is a musical instrument. How it sounds all depends on who is playing it. The keys, the strings, the tubes, the circuits, none of them make noise on their own. Some may argue (some very aggressively) that every instrument has one exact way that it should be played. That there is one correct way to play the piano, and then there’s several incorrect (deviant!) ways to play the piano. But a classically trained pianist will not play the piano in quite the same way as a self-taught jazz pianist will play the piano. Sure, the latter does employ some stylings unique to them. They have an idiosyncratic way of playing that makes their sound highly notable, possibly even sought after. While the former, the classically trained musician, they’ve been taught to minimise many of those quirky individual traits that could, potentially, distract from the classical compositions that they will be playing. In jazz, music is carried by unique characters and a strong sense of individualism. In classical, music is carried by tradition, norm, and history.

It should not be understood that the classically trained musician plays without soul or passion. While we, in the western world, have become more and more infatuated with the idea of the self-made artist, the amateur who makes their way to success and stardom solely through will, and quite often a manic compulsion to create, there is no wrong way to play an instrument. However you make it work, whatever sounds you are able to produce, you are playing that instrument. You are channeling your inner essence into the music you are performing, no matter what genre you belong to. No-one plays their instrument the exact same way, for certain, but everyone is playing with what they’ve got.

How do you think? You’re used to being asked “what do you think?” But how do you think? Do you see pictures in your head? Do you experience an inner monologue? Are you riddled with anxiety? Have you ever hallucinated? Do you think that you think good, or do you think that you think bad? If we return to our metaphor of the brain as a musical instrument, what sort of music do you think you’d play? Sure, there’s the classical world, and the jazz world, but of course, that’s hardly the music most people will listen to nowadays. Do you think in pop songs? Or do you think in big heavy metal epics? Or maybe what you are is a maniac for dance music. You may find like-minded friends who like the same kind of music as you do. I think that there is a correlation between what music we like and how we perceive the world. Does listening to a certain song send you back? Does a certain tune evoke memories that you may have thought were long since gone? I know that there are some folks out there who say that they do not care much for music, and while I don’t doubt that they absolutely do feel that way, I can personally not imagine where I’d be without my trusty set of headphones and my phone loaded up with a wide library of music I like. It seems to me that music is primal. Almost as if only by understanding music, can one come to understand consciousness. To nab a song title from Jethro Tull (the band, not the agriculturalist,) life is a long song.

But I do admit that I come from a biased perspective. Music means much to me. I’m no musician, but I think that partly stems from a desire to not see “how the sausage is made.” I’d like to be able to listen to a composition without feeling compelled to analyse it, or to study it. I’d rather eat the sausage without having to wonder what bits of the animals this meat came from. Is that the taste of a spleen or a testicle? There are plenty of other things in life to dissect and tear apart just to examine. Perhaps what I wish is to maintain an arcane approach to music. Perhaps I am too enamoured by the idea of the musician as a mystic able to tap into an elevated state of being, some spiritual realm divorced from our own. That look on the guitarist’s face when they successfully manages to convey just the right emotional tone perfectly with that solo. The frisson you feel when the song reaches its climax. That thing we call the sublime. To explain it, well, it simply feels like you are making something splendid mundane. It seems to rob it of its power. Or… Well, maybe that’s not it all. Maybe all I want is just a moment or two when I can relax and avoid thinking about things. For a moment, I’d just like to forget that I’m a person.

The world is so loud. Really, I can guarantee you that if you didn’t have those natural mental filters that we all have, you’d go insane. Every little sound. Every little bit of stimuli. It would all overwhelm you. It would burrow deep into your consciousness, and it would refuse to leave. Ever tried to fall asleep while hearing the dripping water from a leaky tap? Drip, drip, drip. Know how impossible that feels? Well, imagine if you had that feeling always, imagine if all noise felt that visceral and in-your-face. Lucky you’ve got those filters. Turns out, not everyone has them. I don’t. It fucking sucks.

Music is lovely, because music is organised. It has structure. You can listen to a song, remember it, and then follow along as you’re listening to it a second time. Music follows a pattern. There is a logic to patterns. But the everyday noises that surround us do not follow a pattern. Let me tell you, birds are infuriating animals. Sure, their individual little songs can be nice to listen to, but when all the birds of the forest come together, they don’t perform as an orchestra. No, they’re all just doing their own solo piece, completely oblivious to the sounds going on around them. I’m thinking that nature could have done well with a conductor. Someone competent to create order. To make it all just that bit more peaceful. I don’t have those filters others take for granted. I can’t ignore sounds. And that makes the world feel so loud.

It is neat to imagine the human brain as a musical instrument. You can imagine that seasoned player, that old session stalwart who’s played on all the most famous pop hits throughout the decades, and you want to imagine them playing with grace and finesse and showcasing all the amazing sounds that the instrument can produce. But the brain isn’t really some marvel of biological engineering. It’s not intelligently designed. It’s actually just a piece of meat hiding underneath layers of bone, skin, and hair. It’s a complex bit of meat, admittedly. It’s hard to understand exactly how the brain does work. But if you were to open up a person’s cranium, rather than feeling awe, you’d most likely feel grossed out. This thing that we’re supposed to think of as a miraculous product of millennia of evolutionary progress, it looks… Well, it looks awfully pinkish, and wrinkly, and frankly unpleasant.

We’re all mortal beings, made from squishy flesh and blood, scraped together from all that was available at the time. Sure, we may dream and fantasise about one day achieving those heights we aspire towards, to become that perfect superman, whose cognitive abilities put them on par with the mythological titans of the past. But really, we’re all just trying to do our best with what we’ve got. You may not be able to play the finest of Mozart’s many symphonies, the instrument that you’ve been given just simply isn’t up to snuff. Even if all you can play is Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, that shouldn’t weigh on your value as a human being. And besides, that’s still Mozart you’re playing.

I will undoubtedly get back to discussing music in later instalments of this blog. It is truly a major part of my world, and without the joys I associate with it, I would be in a far worse place. But I think that, ultimately, what I wish to arrive at, is the fact that our sensory perceptions have a significant impact on how we piece together our sense of self. While it may be an unnerving thought to consider, what would happen to our understanding of ourselves if we one day were to lose one of our major senses? I am sure that many people could go without their sense of smell. Humans have long since abandoned smell as a dominant sense. To a dog, on the other hand, to lose its sense of smell would be devastating. It would lose part of what it means to be a dog. For humans, we enjoy the scent of freshly baked bread, the whiff of somebody’s perfume, or the bouquet of some pricey bottle of wine. But that’s nothing to what dogs get out of their sense of smell. To a dog, its sense of smell is its world. Is a dog even a dog if it can’t sniff around? Do you think dogs ever take their sense of smell for granted?

I do not think that humans are what we eat, but I suspect that we may be what we perceive. Our consciousness does not exist independently of the world that surrounds it, but rather, it is formed by the outside stimuli it receives on a constant basis. The fury of noises, lights, smells, all kinds of impressions, it shapes you. It is what our memories are built on. I am not at all certain that there exists anything more to the mind beyond that. I doubt that we’ve got some immutable soul hidden underneath it all. Humans are the collection of thoughts and ideas that we’ve attached ourselves to throughout our lives, and naturally, if you’re neurodivergent, that process is going to happen differently to most. At times those differences will be large enough that it can create real conflicts with those others around you. Effectively, to be neurodivergent is to suffer constantly from culture shocks. To me, it is natural to loathe the cacophony of birds in the summer. Their screams feel like piercing needles embedding themselves into my skin. But I try telling that to others, and I’ve yet to find anybody who agrees with me.

So, am I just wrong? Am I mistaken? Am I a freak? Why can’t I just be like everybody else? Why must I be such a buzzkill? I can’t even enjoy birdsong, I really must be a pain to be around. How did it come about that I just can’t be normal? Normal. I want to be normal. It is and it will likely always be grossly underrated to just be normal. Normal people don’t know how good they have it. They’re just too normal to be able to perceive it. When you’ve never been without it, you don’t know what it is to miss it. Normalcy. Having a normal brain. Having others see you as a normal person. Only if you didn’t have it, would you know how great it is. Do you sometimes wonder if dogs know how much they’d miss their sense of smell if they ever were to lose it?

Then again, there is no such thing as normal, is there? If you were to take the world’s most average person, then that person would be abnormal. To be a person is to be unique. We’re all special snowflakes. Aren’t we?

You may not play your instrument in a conventional manner, but who’s to say what manner counts as conventional? It’s all just so arbitrary. Who’s to say you can’t play an acoustic guitar as a drum? Who’s to say you can’t treat your piano as a percussion instrument? Smack your cello with a flute, if you’d like. Isn’t it just delightful when you see a unique performer who is able to play their instrument in a way you could never before have conceived it being played? The novelty of it all. The absolute joy of being exposed to something different. Of seeing something that can barely be believed. You love things that are unusual, and you think people who are different should delight in being different. Surely, it is better than being normal and boring?

But is it all that bad to be boring? And you may love what’s different, but when it comes down to it, despite your positive inclination, you still perceive it as being the other. It is not you. It is not mainstream, it is underground. Secluded. Deviant. Those who truly do struggle to fit in with society, to be just like everybody else, they are constantly faced with these little reminders that they just don’t belong. They are humans (at least they think they are humans,) but they’re not like other humans they know. For as much as they get told that they should embrace their quirky nature as simply being who they are, it is hard to know what it is like to be not normal, when all you’ve ever been is normal. Sure, for a performance or two, it’s fun. It’s fun to get the attention, to be seen as having something others don’t have. But then, at the end of the day, all you want is to be able to fall asleep, without the birdsong outside your window keeping you awake.

[unreachablevoice]

LISTEN, I saw option 22 on your prompt list thing and went like "SAITAMA!!", so If you feel like considering my dumb idea i want to sugest a One Punch Man au for that prompt with Marinette as Saitama(you don't need to make her bald just strong like him) and Damian as Genos(their personalitys are kind of similar, also you don't need to make him a Cyborg unless you want to), that's all have a nice day.

Maribat Master List  | Prompt List

Okay before y’all scream at me, I wanna say sorry for being MIA again. it’s just that right after the week of my pre-test, the next week I had exams. Like the REAL DEAL exams so I couldn’t write or do anything but study (I still did not study because I-I dunno for some reason my brain just went BOOM! so now I’m positive that I flunked that test) 

Some teachers of mine also you know suddenly decided to add some stuff in the exams that nobody knew the answer to??? like Ma’am what is this???? you did not tach us this?????

Anywhooooo because of that little uhh suffering that I had, I decided to extend the sate of my uhhh celebration(???) to uhhh I dunno to as long as I want???? lol

And you know the other reason why I could not upload anything was because my brain just kept on going READ! READ! READ! DRAW! DRAW! DRAW! instead of WRITE! WRITE! WRITE! so what can I do???

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this!

Warning: Swearing and cuss words are present. Please read with caution, thank you!

Sorry, But Discipleship Employment Isn’t Really In Season Right Now

It was a regular day, just like any day, where Marinette comes out of her house to get groceries and punches (re: annihilates) a few bad guys here and there.  

And it sucks.  

Yes, she may be a hero, but always punching villains or alien-looking... organisms (???) who just goes down in one go still felt tedious. Who knew that the villains outside of Paris are more abstract-looking? It made Hawkmoth’s Akuma designs look like masterpieces, to be honest.

But somehow, she doesn’t know how, somebody saw her. And that lead to that man? Robot? Cyborg? (she kind of heard a name but she can’t really remember it) following her and saying something. And she honestly couldn’t understand him. No, she couldn’t even hear him with all the rubbles falling and the debris swirling around her after she just punched that mosquito-looking girl (Come, on! Even Hawkmoth doesn’t go this far!).  

Honestly, she just doesn’t want to be rude so she kept on saying yes and yes. Which, in hindsight, is not the best idea. Ever. Because if she heard correctly, she might have just said yes to a discipleship thingy. Hopefully not. Hopefully her hearing has gotten a bit worse over time.

“Master!”  

Okay, so it turns out that was a fucking lie. Her having a few hearing problems are a lie and it’s the fucking worse time to not exist/to not be a fact.

She drags her feet to her door and doesn’t look at the peephole because she could feel the mechanical energy the cyborg was giving out and just cracks the door open and pops her head out. “You really came,” she points out the obvious. “What was your name again?” she asks.

“I am Damian, Master Marinette!” he all but shouts.

“Can you not call me Master?” she frowns.

“Teacher!”

“Don’t call me that either.” she sighs and rubs the side of her head. This is going to be another headache. She leads him to her living room and sets a cup of tea in front of him (she didn’t want to be rude, no matter how much of a bother he was being, she needs to be hospitable), “Drink that and then leave. I’m not really looking for a disciple right now, sorry.”

The cyborg frowns and looks down at his lap. Oh, merde, don’t be like that. You can’t win her with pity. Nope, nada, no pitying here!  

Marinette lets out a sigh and really looks at him. Somehow, she could kind of see ears on his head and a tail on him like a dog, making her choose to either destroy her image and pet him or make her face stay neutral and refrain from moving.  

“Oh,” she looks at his arms, “You’re all healed up now?” she asks in genuine confusion. Huh... wasn’t he just looking about to combust yesterday because of that mosquito girl?

“Yes, most of my body is a machine so if I have spare parts...” he drags on.

“You're a weird one, aren’t you?” she mumbles. She wasn’t quite sure whether he didn’t hear her and decided to just not ask her anything or if he was just that persistent (so much so that he’s even got o her house—wait, how did he even know her address??!), though because he still continued.  

“Well, what kind of parts do you use, Master?” he asks her with genuine interest that it kind of weirds her out. Not that he was technically normal in her book in the first place, though.

“I don’t use any.” she shrugs her shoulders.

“What?” he asks with shock. “Then what’s that on your belt?” he points at the round metal thing on her hips.

“That’s my weapon.” she nods at the object. It may be small and compact but it has saved her life countless of times.

“Impossible. That would mean you’ve been carrying around a yoyo! A kid’s toy! A—”

“It is a yoyo! So, shut up! What is your problem?!!” she shrieks. How dare he insult her weapon! She didn’t judge him when he came into her home looking like a conjured-up piece of gadgets!

“Y-You want to know about me, Master?” he asks and even has the audacity to look sheepish!

“NO!” she screeches.

“It all started when my mother drugged my father and basically raped him just to conceive me and make me the heir to a bunch of assassins. I wasn’t born normally and was grown and perfected in an artificial womb and as soon as I could speak, I was taught various things that exceeds a normal three-year-old’s mind. And just as I was able to walk, I was given blades and was raised to be the perfect assassin. I’ve had blood on my hands ever since I was a child and I regret it. I regret following my grandfather and mother’s orders and being a dog to the League.”

Wow, that was a lot for something she didn’t even ask about.

“And then I turned ten—”

Okay, he’s still not done.

“And was shipped off to Gotham where I met my father and his gaggle of adopted children, who I tried to murder on my first day because I thought that I needed to establish myself as my father's biological son and the heir to his company; which I also very much regret. But now, we’re... kind of okay? We're still not that close and would sometimes still try to kill each other but I’m working on it. So right now, I am currently travelling all over the world to try and to at least better myself so that when the time that I return home comes, I would be someone that could proudly stand in front of Father. So—”

“Shut up! That’s too long, I don’t have all day! Summarize it in twenty words or less!” she explodes. Why the fuck is she always surrounded by weirdos?

The cyborg—Damian, she reminds herself—looks at her sheepishly and coughs awkwardly to the side. “I apologize,” he says and looks back at her straight in the eyes, but this time with unwavering confidence. “Master, this is the short version: Please teach me how to become strong like you!”

Marinette almost chokes on her own spit and stares at him like his head just got blown off all of a sudden (and it might just come true of he doesn’t stop saying bullshit!). What the fuck?

Maribat Master List | Prompt List

okay I had fun writing this and like the reason I went with like Saitama and Genos’ first meeting is because I dunno I really liked that part :)

oh and uhh don’t expect me to update soon either because I’m like a gremlin just not wanting to get out and see the light of the day hahaha

Taglist:

@joejoejodee @k-poplunardreams @abrx2002 @thornalchemist23 @its-salty-bug @bluesimani @elijahcrevan @spicybelladonna @our-preciousss @kawaiigiantjudgefish @spottedbug @insane-fangirl-of-everything

omg I’ve been gone for so long that I don’t even remember the people who asked me to be added to the anything maribat taglist smk. If I miss anyone please tell me :)

[ashistrashhh]

here are some fic recs!! including sakuatsu, bokuaka, kuroken and matsuhana bc i couldnt help myself

if you want, ask me about a certain ship and ill give you some recs!

-sakuatsu-

Marble and Sandstone by red_camellia

rating: G words: 12,937 chapters: 2/2 

author summary: Miya Atsumu only cares about volleyball and nothing else. That is, until he develops a strange obsession with the marble statue of a young man that seems vaguely familiar in his university's arts department. One day that statue comes alive as the very real Sakusa Kiyoomi, and they are left with the mystery of why Sakusa Kiyoomi was turned into a statue and only came back to life when Atsumu touched him. Their new-found connection and the strange mystery turns Atsumu's life upside down, not least because of his growing feelings for Sakusa.

my notes: this was a rlly cute fic!!! 11/10 would read again!!

let it go (paint my body gold) by lunarism

rating: T words: 3,272 chapters: 1/1

author summary: It becomes a routine for them. Sometimes they go grocery shopping and make dinner together, other times they end up talking until Sakusa feels like his own shower and bed is calling him. Every single time Sakusa gets home, shrugs his coat off, balls it up, and proceeds to scream profusely into the fabric for a few minutes.

my notes: pining!!! sakusa!!! also casual painter!atsumu!!! and they paint together!!!

craft a miracle with these hands, lips, (silence) by chrysanthe (sonderesque)

rating: T words: 4,252 chapters: 1/1

author summary: ‘Someone is here to ruin your night,’ his door tells him. ‘You should let them in.’ “I’M HOMELESS OMI-OMI. HOMELESS,” yells the one here to ruin his night. “LET ME IN.”

(What does Kiyoomi sell his sanctuary for?)

my notes: hnnn rlly fuckin cute,, and domestic,,,,

Clipped To You by littleboat

rating: T words: 8,174 chapters: 1/1

author summary: It starts with Hinata Natsu, of all people.

Well, if Atsumu’s being honest with himself, it started way before that, but he’s not, so that’s besides the point. And thankfully, he’s just petty enough to blame all of his problems on a thirteen year old girl.

or Sakusa starts wearing hair clips and Atsumu is more than a little obsessed

my notes: minor kagehina, bokuaka // god these fics rlly make me simp for fictional characters even more than i should. but!! sakusa!!! in hairclips!!! and a pining atsumu!!!

learn how to lay me down in something other than danger, other than fury by rosevtea 

words: 34,211 chapters: 1/1

author summary: All of the ways fellow college TA Miya Atsumu reinvents Kiyoomi's definition of normal.

my notes: god i loved this. it’s a fake dating au and like,, even though they’re “dating” sakusa keeps letting his guard down little by little around atsumu and it surprises everyone. komori and akaashi just know  that they’re were genuinely pining for eachother

among probabilities and a thousand fates by aalphard

rating: T words: 15,675 chapters: 1/1

author summary: prompt fill for “in a world where the red string of fate exists, person a’s finger always twitches when person b, who can see the string, tugs on their string” | or sakusa thought he had a tic and atsumu liked to see his confused expression when it started to happen exclusively when he was around.

my notes: i! loved! it!! so basically atsumu and osamu have the rare gift of seeing the red string of fate, so they know its real but sakusa, like most other people dont believe it exists. so atsumu gives sakusa a (kinda) hard time. rlly cute!! i love soulmate aus!

-bokuaka- 

love in the time of wifi by dalyeau

rating: G words: 4,177 chapters: 1/1

author summary: Akaashi is coming to terms with the fact that he might be romantically interested in his volleyball captain. Hence, doing what any sixteen year old with a problem should do. He asks about it online.

my notes: really cute fic about akaashi asking what he should do about his crush on a site similar to reddit. its kinda a “i didnt know it was you” kind of fic and it made me happy

steam by orphan_account

rating: E words: 8,474 chapters: 1/1

author summary:

 bokuto: why is he so hot bokuto: why am i so gay kuroo: LMAO you mean your vice captain right bokuto: yeah

The coach blew the whistle for practice to begin, and Bokuto drummed his fingers against the bleachers, awaiting Kuroo’s reply. He was about to walk away, when his phone buzzed in his hand.kuroo: i got this bro bokuto: what bokuto: wtf does that mean

Bokuto started to panic.

my notes: explicit!!! but really wholesome. kuroo is honestly the best wingman. i also think this is my favourite bokuaka smutfic?? 

just to miss the sun by rosevtea

rating: T words: 15,126 chapters:1/1

author summary: Everything begins to implode when MSBY Jackals outside hitter Bokuto Koutarou crashes Akaashi's livestream.

my notes: akaashi is a booktuber and bokuto crashes one of his streams. fans begin to speculate. rlly fluffy and can u tell i like bokuaka

brain fish by iceblinks

rating: T words: 12,026 chapters: 6/6

author summary: Akaashi wakes up to a string of texts from an unknown number. 

my notes: i love text fics and i love wrong number aus so u can tell how much i loved this. really fluffy and i come back to it time to time

-kuroken-

us three by honey_s

rating: T words: 5,137 chapters: 1/1

author summary: Kuroo’s gaze flits over to the utensil. His eyes bulge out of his skull. “Wh—is that a meat hammer? Put it back!” Akaashi’s head recoils back in confusion. “I don’t understand the problem here.” “Why on Earth have you got a fucking meat hammer? We aren’t going to kill somebody!” “Well,” Akaashi begins, clearly taken aback, “I apologise for assuming. I had heard Kenma-san had been hurt in school and after getting a message from both of you to meet late at night, I merely filled in the blanks and assumed we were going to beat someone up, for lack of a better term.” “Not literally! I meant metaphorically, or figuratively, or something!” “Idiomically?” “That isn’t a word, Bokuto-san.” “Jesus Christ,” Kuroo groans, dropping his head into his hands. “We're going to jail."

my notes: bokuaka and kuroo are ready to beat someone up for kenma!! and we stan!! 

Cherry Pits and Cat Tattoos by strawberryriver

rating: G words: 6,141 chapters: 1/1

author summary: 

Kuroo has been in communication with his soulmate ever since they were kids. They've known each other for so long that he never really worried about when or how he would meet them. At least, not until he meets the roommate of Bokuto's soulmate.Soulmate AU in which things written on your skin show up on your soulmate. Companion piece/same AU as Serendipty

--------------------

Kuroo Tetsurou liked to write on his arms. Despite his mother's half-serious warnings about “ink poisoning” or staining his skin, he insisted on marking his arms and legs wherever he could. Not like his best-friend-since-always Bokuto Koutaro, who had to write on his arms or he’d forget to breathe, but artfully. He’d draw designs, animals, the occasional chemical compound. The whole idea behind soulmates fascinated him: how one person could mark their arm and someone potentially thousands of miles away, would have that same mark appear. The amount of articles, studies, and books he’d read about the topic, even at a young age, could put an undergrad researcher to shame.

my notes: again with the soulmate au bc i cannot help myself. but really cute!!! probably gonna read this again later!

Boom, Toasted by protostar (hearthope)

rated: T words: 6,782 chapters: 1/1

author summary:

 FROM: yuuji any bets on who hes texting??

FROM: eita He's smiling at his phone. Kuroo, probably

FROM: kentarou Kuroo

TO: fake family Have any of you ever once considered not prying

FROM: eita You deserve it

FROM: yuuji how can we not when ur in love!!

Kenma gets a text from an unknown number. He'd be lying if he said the guy behind it wasn't kind of endearing.

my notes: again, i love wrong number texts. it focuses more on kenma’s friendship, but kenma’s pov with texting kuroo is more than him realizing feelings and stuff. really cute, ive read it multiple times. 

Japan's most subscribed by NeverNothing

rating: T words: 3,631 chapters: 1/1

author summary: Kuroo Tetsurou @blacktetsurou changed his bio : volleyball player, co-owner of Bouncing Ball Corp. and so much more ;)

my notes: i! love! social media! fics!!! really cute and basically people wondering who the mysterious kuroo is to applepi. 

MATSUHANA!!! the underrated gem

texting (with a capital S) by parenthetic

rating: M words: 2,119 chapters: 1/1

author summary: Hanamaki breaks his No Texting In Class rule, and it's all downhill from there.

my notes: honestly more funny than it suggests, but its matsuhana, they’re meme lords.

rated m for by orphan_account

rated: T words: 10,692 chapters: 1/1

author summary: He should have known that there was a Specific Reason™ why it was so absolutely vital that he and Matsukawa specifically meet for a reading of the script. He should have known that there had to be some evil catch beyond sitting in a tiny, cramped studio with his newly sworn enemy.

Hanamaki stares at the title of the script he’d so gracefully neglected the night before.

FORBIDDEN PARADISE

“Excuse me,” Hanamaki starts, raising a pen in the air while staring blankly at the packet in his free hand. “Just to clarify, you want me to record a boy's love CD with Matsukawa?”

my notes: a very good voice actor au. there is some misunderstanding on hanamaki’s part bc he didnt finish listening to matsukawa, and this is really cute and i love matsuhana. 

In A Quiet Night, All Sounds Carry by levyovochka

rating: E words: 4,794 chapters: 1/1

authors summary: “Ah, ah, Too—!”

Hanamaki hates his university dorm.

“—ru, let me cum, please!”

Hold up. That’s a fucking understatement. Let him rephrase it: Hanamaki loathes his university dorm with passion. Detest the damned abomination, abhors it—

“—ru! Coming, coming—”

It has only been a month and Hanamaki already wants to die.

my notes: as u can guess minor iwaoi // rlly well written and bottom hanamaki rights and maybe my favourite matsuhana smutfic??? and hooh boy i simp for matsukawa

call me maybe by totooru

rating: T words: 33,689 chapters: 14/14

author summary: Hanamaki texts the wrong number when trying to extort tips out of Oikawa in order to defeat Iwaizumi in arm wrestling, and then continues to text the witty stranger who had answered.

my notes: minor iwaoi, daisuga, bokuaka // god i think this is my favourite matsuhana fic overall, maybe in general, but my god is it great. this is probably a common rec, but its understandable as to why it is. basically au where makki texts matsun (who goes to karasuno) instead of oikawa for tips to beat iwaizumi at an arm wrestling match. but they keep messaging. and holy shit i love their conversations. please read this, it is 256/10

there we go!! i might go a part two with more ships (kagehina, tsukkiyama and iwaoi) but this took up way to much time lol. i have an essay due in a couple hours. but hope u like these fics as much as i do!!

[platypanthewriter]

Strangest 1: Pandora’s Trunk

Strangest takes place the same night as the climax of season two, after Steve and Billy’s fight and Joyce Byer’s BF died.  (Did Tumblr eat chapters 1-3?  Did I never post them?  I do not know!  I couldn’t find them, so here’s the first!)

It totally made sense that Max would stay with Lucas and Dustin in the blanket fort that was taking over the living area of the Byers house. And of course El and Mike had laid claim to the table, where it looked like they were assembling crowns and helmets, of Will’s design.

Mrs. Byers and Hopper had taken over Adulting, which was a relief, and Steve had ducked out amidst a general explosion of affectionate profanity and hair ruffling. Through the window, he could see them tearing hot chocolate packets open--he watched Mrs. Byers teasing the kids with different mismatched mugs, and cocked his head. He didn’t really fit in there, he thought, in the blanket fort, or in the tense kitchen after the kids retreated to their realm. He definitely didn’t belong wherever Jonathan and Nancy had disappeared to. It made sense for him to leave.

The fog had lifted, and he willed his shoulders to unclench, all the while trying to figure out the closest place to his bed to hide his bat. An evening project to keep him from thinking about his completely empty house. His house was also fine, since he was not injured, or twelve years old, and had working light switches. Logically, it was over. His brain just wasn’t catching up to breaking news.

He sat more heavily against the Camaro, and it thumped back, which provoked an, again, entirely logical windmilling tumble as Steve tried to keep the bat and both eyes pointed at it all the while scrambling away on three limbs. After a moment of eye-burning terror, he recognized the pattern of sound as kicking and a lot of things Max’ brother probably didn’t need to be calling her, and he stood with a nervous spin, yanking his jacket straight.

He took a breath and held it, rolling his shoulders as he looked back at the cheerily lit Byer’s house with every light on, and back to the car bouncing with the booted feet slamming against the inside of the trunk. After several paced circuits of the car, Billy’s voice had stopped threatening. He was laughing, slamming himself around in there, his voice getting higher. Steve scrabbled at his hair, sliding his hands down to cover his face. He really wasn’t sure any kind of logic applied to Billy Hargrove.

If he let Billy out here, he might just run in there and Hopper would have to shoot him, in front of a ton of little shitheads who had barely escaped being eaten by monsters today. If he just...drove him to his house, somebody would eventually let him out, and...would Max let him out?! Steve groaned to himself, long and slow, because if they were anything like Steve’s parents, Billy Hargrove’d be no trouble to anyone ever again, after he died because nobody looked for him and Steve Harrington knowingly left a human being in the trunk of a car. 

Steve took a few deep breaths, idly walking back around to regard the open car window, and the keys on the seat. He looked back at the house for one long hopeful moment, to see Hopper patting Joyce on the back as she threw weak punches into his shoulders, flailing before he caught her against his jacket. They swayed there in silhouette, their shoulders shaking. Steve sighed. He kicked the trunk. The thumping stopped, then exploded again, and Steve banged again.

“Listen,” he started, and the banging stopped, for long enough that Steve thought it would have been better if he had something to say. “I didn’t leave you in there, and I can’t let you out--” the banging started again in earnest, along with a lot of “fuck”s, “bitch”s, and demands about Max--it was a good thing Hopper’d put music on in the house. “Max is fine! She’s inside--I’ll let you out somewhere else, do you want me to take you home, or--” the thumping stopped.

“Where the fuck is that freak, I’ll kill her, I’ll kill you, you fucking--” Steve banged the trunk again, and Billy pounded back, screaming incoherently.

“Mrs. Byers called your house, Max is staying over!” he tried, on the off-chance this could just suddenly turn into a normal, post-monster, partially kidnapped conversation. “I’LL TAKE YOU HOME, THEN,” he said loudly into the seam of the trunk, and Billy started struggling again.

“Max has to go home,” the muffled, furious voice yelled back, pounding and scraping at the inside of the trunk loudly enough that he was probably injuring himself, and Steve thought it was completely unfair the death threats were still audible. “I’ll be back here the second you open this fucking trunk, Harrington, I’ll drag her back by the fucking hair, I’ll tie it to my car, I’ll run over her corpse, I’ll drive through their fucking house--”

Peaceful options exhausted, Steve climbed in the car, leaning his face on the steering wheel as the car shook with Billy’s screaming fury, and took another deep breath. Count on Steve Harrington to forget how to breathe, he thought, only been doing it for sixteen years. Only Steve Harrington wouldn’t have figured it out enough to let it run in the background. By the time they were halfway to Steve’s house, Billy’d stopped yelling. Occasionally there’d be another kick.

By the time Steve pulled in the garage, he was worried enough about exhaust fumes as a new method of involuntary manslaughter he ran right around and banged on the trunk about six times. “Hargrove! William Whatever Hargrove, you answer me, say you’re alive.” He leaned against it, panting, feeling like he’d aged sixty years in body and vocabulary. The trunk thumped back, and Steve slid down to sit against it, reminding himself to breathe, which was apparently something he did now. He’d probably fail his remaining classes, trying to study while remembering to breathe. How would he hold down a job? He’d show up for the interview and have to say “I’m Steve Harrington, and sometimes I forget to breathe.”

The trunk was silent again, and after a while getting his lungs some breathing practice again--maybe they’d take to it--Steve thumped it again. “We’re at my place. If I let you out and call for pizza will you please not kill anyone.” It came out tiredly even.

“What the fuck,” came from the trunk. “Gonna get the police here, tell ‘em I attacked you like a psycho, have your mommy and daddy hold yo--”

Steve banged the heel of his hand on the trunk again. “Nobody else is here. Look, it’s pizza or trunk. We can figure this out in the morning. Promise you won’t do anything to Max.”

The banging in the trunk was taking on a rhythm, and Steve banged over it. “Fucker. Tell me you won’t rat Max out, I’ll let you out.”

Billy began screaming lyrics to his beat, and Steve groaned, letting his head thunk against the trunk, before doing the math on how long Billy’d been in there, and how little he knew about the random syringe Max had shot him up with, and he opened the trunk. Billy’s ankles and wrists were duct-taped together, wedged in, and he swore roundly as he tried to cover his face. “Come on,” Steve sighed, standing to the side where he hoped he was out of range, but reaching over to rip the duct tape off Billy’s ankles. Billy was laughing, inexplicably, holding his arms over his face.

Steve sighed. “Can you walk.”

“Anyway you want, Princess,” Billy giggled.

“Come on,” Steve stood over by the door, arms crossed as he watched Billy kick a bit out the side of the trunk, then get himself rolled sideways. He scrabbled before landing on the cement with a thud, and lay there, laughing harder. It was starting to sound growly again, and Steve rethought his impulse to offer help. “I’m getting pepperoni. With olives.”

When Billy finally staggered in from the garage, Steve had called for the pizza. He turned to see the door slam shut, and Billy slide down it, gnawing at the duct tape around his wrists. His hands were purple.

Steve slammed a few kitchen drawers and stalked over with the carving knife, and Billy went very still, watching him crouch, and allowing him to pull the duct tape close enough to slide the knife up.

When Steve finished slicing, he tossed the knife behind him at random, grabbing one purple hand and rubbing it until it felt like a hand again and not a dissection frog. “Jesus. Max thought you were gonna kill me. And Lucas. Don’t sell her out.”

Billy drew a shaky breath. “And you’re not gonna tell your fancy lawyer dad I broke your face.”

“...my dad’s not a lawyer,” Steve frowned at him, --“Hopper’d probably have locked you up.” He placed the warmed hand on Billy’s knee, and moved on to rub life back into the other one.

“So I behave,” Billy sneered. “Be a good little cunt.”

“Wish the fucking pizza would get here,” Steve muttered, sinking down against the arm of the couch that let him see the whole living room, kitchen, and stairs. When the pizzas arrived, his kidnapping victim shoved by him to drop into that favoured spot on the couch, and Steve sighed.

When morning came, Steve called Max, and she agreed to Billy picking her up for a ride home. After he left, Steve stood in his silent house, getting a little more breathing practise in as his vision started to haze around the edges, thinking of all the things Billy Hargrove wasn’t, like an underground tunneler, or a demogorgon. Billy Hargrove was from Risky Business, not Alien. He was the sweaty “enhanced human” Khan.

Steve forgot about his breathing regimen entirely as he imagined Billy Hargrove in the cast from Grease, and laughed ‘til he choked. Shaking his head, he leaned back against the door, and rubbed his face. All day at school when his brain started to remind him of the previous week, he’d imagine Billy Hargrove as Danny Zuko, shimmying down his Camaro with Tommy behind him trying to carry a tune.

Hopper called that day, to tell him that Mr. Hargrove had called the cops the last two nights on Billy driving around at night, and they’d escorted him home from close to Steve’s house. “In case he ran somebody over drunk. I hear stuff, kid.” The doubt came clearly through his voice. “I don’t know that he’s headin’ for you, but I don’t know that he’s not.” Steve took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, completing the line for himself--maybe keep that bat handy.

“Thanks, Hopper,” he tried the nickname aloud.

Hopper huffed a laugh and hung up.

Billy Hargrove was back at Steve’s house three nights later, serenading under his window. Steve looked longingly at his ski boots, but lifted the sash without projectiles in hand. “What the hell,” he shouted back.

“Lemme in or I’ll tell my dad you offer rides to Max all the time!” Billy yelled up. “Alone!”

Steve, who had gone to an in-class-only new sleeping schedule, suddenly wished his vocal cords could produce the earsplitting rage screeches from Ghostbusters, but let his head thud against the glass in surrender before he went down and unlocked the door. “The fuck do you want, Hargrove,” he squinted up at the moon. “Are you a werewolf, is this where I die.” Later, he’d think, that moment would have been the time to call Hopper.

Billy shouldered him aside as he opened the door, cigarette in hand and reeking of sweat, cologne, beer, and...cooking sherry? It was both reminiscent of and an improvement on Steve’s great-aunt, who usually smelled like baby powder, cat pee, and creme de menthe. Steve’s lungs apparently appreciated it, because they decided to do their job for once without his constantly reminding them. He scrabbled angrily at his hair, before tromping into the kitchen to start making some Folger’s. When the microwave beeped, he stirred in about half the remaining jar of crystals, and went to see why there was no noise happening anywhere.

The couch was covered in Violent Highschool Stranger, under a blanket. Steve dropped into a chair, watching the knee-lumps and elbow-lump stay very still. He wondered whether he’d sleep better upstairs with an unpredictable problem on the couch, and whether suggesting a movie would get his face beaten in--with admirable calm, he thought.

He also thought of not living alone--having a mom like Mrs. Byers, or a sister like Nancy, and imagined what they'd do if they came in and saw he'd brought Billy Hargrove, the guy who almost beat him to death, into his house twice. They'd probably murder him, he thought, and then murder Billy. And then him again--this had to be at least a three-murder event on the Stupidity Scale. Hopper would probably have even more to say. It was a strangely comforting thought, except they weren’t here, and Billy Hargrove was. He didn’t seem to want to break Steve’s nose again, but then he hadn’t given that much warning the first time, either.

Between Steve’s new not-sleeping regime and thinking about the Byer’s ceiling, map taped everywhere, Billy’s fists hitting his face, the world had just started to tilt a bit when the blanket said “Take a picture, Princess, you can jack off to it at night,” and Steve lifted his coffee stew and breathed in the smell.

“What didja think I did with that blanket,” he tried, and watched it get flung as Billy scrambled as far from it as possible, thudding onto his back off the side of the couch, and Steve realized he was laughing again, wheezing with his hand against his face. When he finally looked up, Billy was brushing himself off, straightening his jacket, and Steve imagined the look on his own face after his trunk had thumped back. “Nah, I didn’t.” He patted his lip where the grin had stretched it, glancing down to check for blood. “Much.” When Billy’s hackles raised further, Steve shouted over his rising glower. “How about Star Wars?”

“Hell is wrong with you,” Billy muttered, but settled in the corner of the couch, apparently waiting for Steve to set up the movie. By the time C-3P0 was trying to get to Obi-Wan, Billy’d passed out against the arm, his boots tucked up between the cushions. The smell of cooking sherry intensified, and the glint Steve noticed against the black leather and laces proved to be a hunk of broken glass. There was more in the boot treads, and he could see a couple very small pieces caught in Billy’s shirt and hair. It was hard not to imagine the bank-robbing explosion Billy Hargrove would be walking away from, but his car was parked right out front, hard to miss, if the cops were looking for him. Steve had never seen a SWAT team. Count on them to miss out on actual monsters and chase Billy Hargrove to his house, he thought, indignantly sleepy, and shivered awake hours later, to fogging breath and the white noise of the TV. He groaned, leaning forward to flap one arm at the remote, and switched off the TV. In the dark, he realized the slight rasp of Billy’s breathing had stopped.

“...don’t die on my couch,” he mumbled, frowning into the darkness, which remained dark, but the normal, fridge-humming kind of dark, not the strange blue fluttering darkness where Dustin had screamed. He breathed in stale cigarette smoke and cooking sherry.

Billy snorted. “Just for you.”

He was back in the safer kind of movie, again, Steve thought muzzily, kids having sleepovers. There were movies where killers interrupted sleepovers, but they were humans, not monsters, and anyway he was not actually having a slumber party with Billy Hargrove: Probable Bank Robber. He felt around next to the couch for the blanket, and pulled it clumsily over them. It occurred to him he hadn’t actually asked. “Sooooo...you rob a bank?” he tried, keeping it casual.

“Sure did,” Billy scoffed, “--shot four guys, too. And there’s a stolen police car out there.”

“Oh, it’s that kind of movie.” Steve squirmed down against the back of the couch, letting his head fall against his arms in the safe darkness. The blanket fell over his face.

“You’re not going to call the cops and tell them you’ve got a bank robber?” Billy kicked him, and Steve batted weakly at his foot, eyes sliding shut again.

“Watch it, you--broken glass...shoe.”

He woke to the fading smell of cooking sherry, and blinked slowly at the ceiling, the sudden deep sleep disorienting after he’d thought he’d never sleep again outside of Biology class. “...wha--um,” he muttered, scrambling to look around. There was no sign of his home invader. He wondered how many murders “falling asleep with Billy ‘bank punching’ Hargrove a foot away” rated on the Idiot Scale, he had to be up to, oh, at least four. He felt a weird temptation to ask Nancy before first period. He fiddled with his locker, considering it. The line between her brows deepened, and probably became downright thunderous as he grinned awkwardly at she and Jonathan, turned on his heel, and walked off.

That day after basketball, in the showers, Tommy guffawed at the hand-shaped bruises on Billy’s upper arms. “Where were you last night? All night long, huh?” He leered, shifted to making long groans and grunting noises, and before Steve could catch himself, words fell out of his mouth.

“Those are huge, though, is your girlfriend Sylvester Stallone or--” he yelped as Billy shoved him against the wall, grin manic.

“What you trying to say, pretty boy King Steve?”

“I think he’s calling you a--” Tommy smacked the wall and showerhead on his way to the floor as Billy shoved his face. “A fucking faggot,” he yelled triumphantly, from the floor, as Steve wondered why he was allowed to open his mouth, ever, at all, and Billy tried to swing around and punch him and almost fell on his ass.

“It was my fucking dad, okay, it’s no big deal. My dad,” Billy was screaming between them, as they both dodged around, until the teacher and half the class shoved their way in and pulled him away. Steve fled. He dressed wondering how many more deserved Stupidity Murders he’d earned, getting in the communal shower with the guy who’d beaten his face in, and then opening his dumb fuckhead mouth and suggesting he’d had sex with Rambo. Nancy was in the hall listening to Billy yelling inside, when Steve ducked out of the locker room with his pants on but half his head still soapy, and she helped him rinse his hair in the drinking fountain.

“I think you and Hopper and Jonathan’s mom need to murder me about eleven times,” he told her, laughing, as he wiped water from his eyes. “I think I just asked Hargrove if he was gay, in the shower.” Her mouth fell open.

“Uh,” her eyebrows drew together as she looked at the locker room, but her mouth quirked, “--should we be running, then?”

“I probably should carry my bat,” he laughed, feeling around his ears one more time for soap, then grimacing and digging around in his bag for a sweaty gym shirt to rub on his head. When he pulled it out, she looked even more disgusted than he felt.

“I’ve got dry clothes in my locker. You can at least use a clean shirt.” She stuck her tongue out, trotting confidently off. “Bleah.”

Steve’s unfriendly neighborhood home invader didn’t reappear for over a week, but falling asleep to movies apparently worked, so he re-watched the beginnings of Rambo, Tron, and The Last Unicorn, discovered he could not fall asleep to Monty Python, and bought a much larger jar of Folger’s for mornings when even the dulcet tones of Winnie the Pooh hadn’t let his lungs work through the night without reminder.

The next time Billy showed up he just banged on the door, startling Steve out of the haze he’d fallen into during a Secret of NIMH song. Steve groaned, flapped unproductively at the remote to stop the animated mice, and then stumbled to his feet to make the door-abuse stop. The pounding continued through his shouted “I’m coming! I’m coming! ” until Billy Hargrove nearly fell in on top of him, half naked, and began hopping into the other half of his jeans.

“...what the hell.” Steve stared.

“What is that noise.” Billy scrambled to pull his jacket on, shivering, and nearly elbowed Steve in the face.

“...uh, it’s, um, mice?” Steve blinked at Billy’s face, which looked like it needed some frozen peas. “Uh. Lemme get you some frozen peas.” Billy tried to slam by him as usual, but Steve wasn’t good at basketball for nothing, and slid by the predictable motion on the way to the freezer. He tossed over the peas, proudly not adding to his Stupidity Gauge by getting within five feet of the half-naked feral in his kitchen. It seemed unlikely Billy had accused anyone of having sex with Sylvester Stallone in a communal shower, but the parallels to his Eleven On The Stupidity Murder Scale day were hard to discount. The shiner he was sporting looked exactly like Steve would have gotten if he hadn't escaped to the hallway. Focus, he thought.

“Make me some of that coffee,” Billy was shivering, glaring at the peas. If he’d been anyone else, Steve would have teasingly explained how to press frozen peas against a black eye, but given their last interaction, he just let his lips thin.

“Hot chocolate? I’ve got marshmallows.”

The furious disbelief Billy had focused on the peas turned to Steve’s face, amplified. “Did you just offer me marshmallows.”

“I have some,” Steve sighed, taking down his blue mug, and one that said Happy Anniversary. After a pause, he returned the anniversary mug to the cupboard, and grabbed one with a robin on it, filled them both with water, and stuck the robin in the microwave.

“Marshmallows.”

“Look, if you don’t like marshmallows, don’t eat any.” He pulled out the bag, the Swiss Miss, and the instant coffee.

“Rainbow marshmallows,” Billy observed scornfully. “You’re girlier than Max.”

“Everyone’s girlier than Max, except Hopper and Mrs. Byers,” Steve sighed. “Coffee or chocolate. I mix them sometimes.”

“You rebel,” Billy snorted. “Gimme some marshmallows. You call the Sheriff ‘Hopper’?” He held out a hand, finally lifting the other to his face, and wincing as he placed the peas against the swelling bruise. Steve had seen enough marshmallow bags absconded with to just drop some in the outstretched hand, the bag protectively at his side. He watched Billy start to drop the whole handful in his mouth, wince as he tried to open his mouth wide, and begin eating one at a time. “...kinda got to know him. Me and El and the, y’know,” he held his hand at waist level, picturing Dustin’s indignant protest, “Muppet babies.”

“Yeah, how’d that happen?”

Steve reminded himself to breathe. “Barb died. Bob died. You should be careful, you’ve got half the ‘b’s in your name.” He turned away as the microwave beeped.

“What.” Billy’s eyes narrowed.

“Is it raining?” Steve asked. “Why are you all wet?”

“Fuck off,” Billy said around his mouthful of marshmallows, and Steve shrugged, presenting the steaming mug, a spoon, the box of chocolate mix, and the Folger’s.

“I give you the bird,” he said grandly, tossing his mug in the microwave. Billy snorted, dumping three chocolate packets in the mug, and making grabby hands for the marshmallows.

Steve surrendered the bag, leaning against the counter by the microwave. He watched Billy wipe the water away that was trickling down his neck, and try to pretend he wasn’t shaking, dripping wet, in November. Steve stomped off for a towel, returning to throw it to Billy just before the microwave beeped. “Gimme back those girly marshmallows,” Steve began dumping powders in his mug, stirring industriously, before topping it with a pile of rainbow.

Billy stalked off to take Steve’s spot on the couch, before sliding off to flip through the laserdiscs. “Gonna punch these mice,” he muttered, lifting one, and flipped it to read the back. "You have movies for grownups? Whaddaya do when there aren't, like, singing frogs, you just fall asleep or--?"

"Oh no, not that one," Steve breathed, horrified. "That's Nancy's, it gave me nightmares."

"...IRA bombers?" Billy frowned up incredulously.

"No! It's a romance, it's awful, the guy falls in love with the girl and she has a dick and she thought he KNEW--"

"What," Billy's voice had gone flat.

"That night I dreamt I was in bed with Nancy for the first time and she took my clothes off and I was dickless with a secret pussy--"

"Everyone knows that, Harrington--"

"Shut your face, it was horrible, she just kept patting my hand sadly and she's a problem solver, you know, she kept going to the kitchen and getting, like, a banana, and the pepper grinder--"

The laserdisc sleeve drummed softly at Billy's head as he shook with laughter.

"And she just looked more and more disappointed and finally she said she had to leave, she couldn't cope with a relationship where she had to satisfy herself with a garlic press, and she was sure I'd be happier moving on--" Steve had been laughing too, at the image of Nancy earnestly presenting him with carnally unsatisfactory kitchen gadgets, but he sighed, rubbing his face. "Usually when I dreamed she'd dump me it was because I was invisible, or she was the president and she caught me setting up a kegstand in the--"

"I'm gonna call you 'Secret Pussy' forever," Billy interrupted.

"You will the hell not--"

"What?!" Billy laughed harder.

"I'm not a secret pussy, I'm secretly Kurt Russell, all my..." he slid further down in the couch, curling around his snickers, "--ten out of ten trick-or-treaters agree."

"You telling me you're half-blind, because it'd explain--" The doorbell rang, over and over, like a blaring red alert, along with voices and the thump of bicycles against the side of the house, and Steve scrambled up to reach the entryway before Dustin, Mike, and Will all fell in at once. "We need hot chocolate," Dustin said confidently, and Steve grimaced, thinking fast, before inwardly throwing his hands up and outwardly yelling "BILLY! Put on the kettle for hot chocolate!"

Silence fell, all three kids going still, but after a few seconds the couch creaked, and Billy walked into the kitchen, and the sink turned on.

“Is he holding you hostage,” Dustin whispered, eyes wide as he leaned around Steve’s shoulders.

“He’s probably eating marshmallows.” Steve raised his eyebrows at them, wondering whether it was stupid or just evil to allow the kids around Billy, who’d settled in, in a weird way, but also probably bit occasionally. Unprompted. He didn’t want any of his stupidity murders to be because someone got actually murdered.

“Will came for a sleepover,” Mike reported, glancing into the kitchen warily. “And we were gaming, and it was fine, but then there was a short in the kitchen and sparks and--”

Will sniffled, rubbing his eyes with his sleeve. “I can’t call my mom,” he rolled his thin shoulders back, firming his chin as he looked up at Steve, “--she’ll never let me out again--”

“He started crying all crazy,” Dustin put in, ever helpful, to a general elbowing, “--and I said, Steve has hot chocolate, and a bat.”

“...ah,” Steve glanced at the kitchen. “Did you guys let her know you were coming here? So she doesn’t call and find you guys--”

“We called,” Mike laughed apologetically. “We said you invited us over.”

Billy tromped back out to the living room, presumably to sneer at singing mice, as Steve herded the tiny assholes towards hot chocolate.

“Why is he here,” Dustin whispered, very loudly, with his usual degree of subtlety. Mike and Will nodded, and Steve laughed, rubbing his face.

“It’s fine, we have classes together, he’s not going to do anything,” he tried weakly, and Will’s eyes narrowed.

“Do you need a distraction while we phone Hopper?” he asked softly under the noise of Steve getting more mugs and batting Dustin away from stress-eating all the marshmallows.

“Dustin could get your bat,” Mike suggested.

“Thanks, man, send Dustin out there,” Dustin sighed loudly.

“Dustin, get more marshmallows out of the garage,” Steve pointed, trying to channel Nancy’s no-nonsense tones. He flipped off the stove, opting for the hot chocolate prep that kept them all in the kitchen for a longer time. “Will, fill these up and microwave them one by one for two and a half minutes. Mike--” he glanced around, “--get spoons and see if there’s still whipped cream in the fridge.”

They slowly moved to obey, watching him closely as he began rifling the cupboard for candy canes. Steve vindictively didn’t point out the spoon drawer to Mike. It was one thing, he thought, expecting his stupidity assessments from Hopper or Nancy, but he was not having it from children that did things like try to raise demodogs in turtle cages.

Billy had settled in Steve's spot on the couch, as always--Steve rolled his eyes--and Steve headed for the other end, before noticing the kids standing in strained poses like awkward chainsaw art. "Ugh," Steve sighed, before dropping next to Billy, whose shoulders hunched around his hot chocolate.

"Okay, Will, you pick," he pointed.

"Pick this, Will," Dustin held up the animated Lord of the Rings.

"Shut up, Dustin," Mike threw a pillow at him, and Will yelped, dodging aside, before grabbing it and swiping Dustin.

Steve grinned. “I found the candy canes,” he told Billy, who turned another disbelieving look on him, as Will smacked Mike with a pillow, and it turned into a free-for-all between the three of them until Dustin crawled under the melee and put on The Hobbit. As soon as it loaded up, he plonked himself down next to Steve. Will sat cautiously next to him, and Mike dropped at the end, the quieter two studying their chocolate as Dustin elbowed Steve.

“Man, I been wanting to watch these without Lucas, he hates Return of the King--”

Mike grimaced over towards Billy at the sound of Lucas’ name. “Well, it is kinda silly. It’s for little kids.”

“It’s for Steve. He has to have the singing in there,” Billy put in, and Dustin leaned around to stare at him.

“You’re another reason I’m glad Lucas ain’t here, man, you a Nazi or what?”

“Neo Nazi,” Mike corrected quietly. “They’re called Neo Nazis, it’s not 1945--”

“Look, it’s Hobbiton,” Steve sighed into his mug.

“Or the Ku Klux Klan,” Will put in, “Like in the South.”

"No," Billy said finally, and after several seconds Dustin laughed.

"No?! No, you just slammed him into a wall? No, you just told Max to stay away from his kind?"

"I didn't say that."

Steve could feel Billy's entire body going tense, and shut his eyes, breathing in the blended chocolate, coffee, and candy cane smells from his mug. Twelve murders worth of stupidity, today, he thought, wondering whether he'd make it to the phone, and whether one of the kids would save him with the bat, and whether any of his Idiocy Tally would hit them, in a permanent sense.

"Why'd you beat him up, then?" Mike asked pointedly. Eleven's boyfriend felt no physical fear, apparently. Reasonable, if Eleven were actually present.

“Okay,” Steve tried to think of what Mrs. Byers would say, “--uh, whatever reasons he had, they weren’t good enough, can we all say ‘aye’ on that one?”

“Aye! ” proclaimed Dustin and Mike in a shout, Will firmly, and, thankfully, Billy, sounding a little rough.

“And unless he does it again, it’s between he, Lucas, and Max?” Steve continued, pushing his luck.

“Aaaaye,” came the sullen chorus from Steve’s right, and a fervent “Aye,” in low tones from Billy.

Steve sat back, wide-eyed, as his heart slowly stopped pounding. An hour later, his head was draped back over the couch as he snored softly, and Mike had quietly left and returned to drop the bat full of nails across the coffee table. Dustin pointed at it, speaking in his louder-than-speech stage whisper.

“That’s Steve’s bat. Look, it’s got blood on it. That’s bully blood.” He grabbed it and pointed it at Billy, who slammed his elbow into Steve.

“Harrington. Harrington. Is that blood on that bat.” Steve tried to roll sideways, growling, but Billy elbowed him in his chest, this time. “Harrington. Did you kill someone.” He glared around. “Did you guys cover up a murder?”

(I think Tumblr ate my posts for chapters 1-3, so I’m reposting them!)

Strangest chapter 1/chapter 2/chapter 3/chapter 4/chapter 5/chapter 6/chapter 7/chapter 8/chapter 9/chapter 10/  But really I’d recommend reading it on Ao3 under peterqpan, scrolling through it on Tumblr sounds crazymaking

[sadprose-auroras]

‘About Time’ - Roger TaylorxFem!Reader (Part 1)

A/N: Hello my darlings! I can’t decide if I hate this or not, and I’m not sure if I’ll continue writing this, depends on the response. Please let me know if you want me to continue it (it would probably require way more parts, like a full on series). Hope you enjoy! - Also, this can apply to Ben Hardy’s portrayal of Roger. Whatever you prefer!

(This was totally inspired by a couple time travel fics I read a few weeks ago, I can’t remember the authors or the names but all credits to them for the time travel idea…. LOVE. IT. I just HAD to write my own, crappier version)

Find my other works here!

 You sunk to the floor, your knees giving out beneath you. You felt ridiculous, curling up in a ball, in your wardrobe, but you had reached your breaking point; everything had suddenly hit you. As you hugged your knees, sobbing, your jeans became tear-soaked. Your mind wandered, as your cheeks flamed in embarrassment and shame about your current state, despite nobody being around. How did you get here? A few months ago, your life was great. You had a great job, a great circle of friends and boyfriend, and you were pursuing your passion; studying fashion design. Then, everything began to crumble around you. All your friends turned on you, you got fired, and your studies began to slip as a result, causing you to fail an exam.  

 If all that wasn’t bad enough, you found out your boyfriend of two years had been cheating on you for a year and 11 months. Go figure. It was as if the universe was playing some long, cruel joke on you, just to see how long before you gave up on trying to pursue any kind of happiness. Just as you came to the conclusion that you really had nothing to fight for, leaning your head back on the wall behind you and closing your eyes, the strangest feeling overcame you. Your head began to spin, and pins and needles covered your entire body. You tried to open your eyes, to move your body, but you were frozen. Your heart rate increased rapidly, and you began to think that this was really it. Whatever was happening, you were going to die. Strangely enough, you couldn’t find it in yourself to care.  

 By some miracle, everything stopped. The pins and needles ceased, and, save a throbbing headache, you felt much better. You experimentally wiggled your toes, and you had feeling back again. Hesitantly, you opened your eyes, looking around you. It was dark, but you could make out the shapes of the clothes hanging around you. Oddly, you didn’t recognise any of them. The chair that was next to you when you closed your eyes was gone, replaced by a shoe rack.  

You stood up, closed your eyes again and rubbed your temples, trying to rid of the probable hallucinations. You racked your brain, thinking back to when you studied psychosis in high school. You couldn’t remember a thing. Was temporary paralysis a symptom? 

 You decided you needed to call a doctor. You pulled your iPhone out of your pocket, still in the dark, and opened up safari. You had no wifi, and no reception. Frowning, you opened the wardrobe door, the knob feeling unfamiliar, to be greeted by a figure doing the same. The door swung open suddenly, bouncing on its hinges.

 You both screamed loudly, and, without looking at the figure in front of you, you tried to push past to get away, however, a hand gripped you and pulled you back. 

 Your eyes became fixed on the man in front of you. You frowned, unable to tear your eyes off him. The hallucinations were getting worse; you were conjuring up images of people in your home. Hang on. You knew his face all too well; you had spent hours watching him drum and sing at concerts on YouTube. It couldn’t be, could it?

 “Who are you, and what the hell are you doing in my wardrobe!?” he asked, releasing his grip on you. You winced, rubbing where his fingernails had dug into you. This was all too much.

 “I should be asking you the same thing, why are you in my house? What’s going on?” you looked around the room, expecting to see your familiar bedroom; your posters plastered around the walls, your colourful duvet, and your plush white carpet. Instead, the walls were empty, the duvet was blue, and the carpet was grey.

 “I need to sit down,” you said, overwhelmed, perching on the edge of the unfamiliar bed. You glanced up at the man in front of you, his expression still shocked and wide-eyed, as he looked you up and down, his brows furrowing. 

 “God, you seem so real,” you laughed. “But there’s no way.”“What the fuck do you mean?” he replied. “I know I’m real, but I can’t say the same about you. I’ve never known anyone who can just appear out of thin air,” he shook his head in disbelief. 

 You frowned, rubbing your hands through your hair. “What do you mean, I appeared out of thin air?” your stomach began to sink. For reasons you couldn’t explain, something else was going on. Something much weirder than you initially thought.

 “Well, I don’t see how you could have got into my wardrobe without me seeing. I’ve been in my room for 20 minutes.” You glanced at his legs, frowning. What kind of person wears flared jeans anymore? 

 “I, um,” you began, a laugh escaping your lips despite yourself. This was all too ridiculous. You were actively avoiding eye contact with him. You figured if you acknowledged that it was him, at that age, in front of you, this would all go away. It was impossible. Suddenly, it all came together, as shocking as it was. It wasn’t him that was in the wrong place, it was you. This wasn’t your house. You had no wifi or reception. And, Roger Taylor, looking as he did circa 1972, was right in front of you. Had you time travelled? Your head span at the possibility. What else could explain these strange occurrences? 

 “What year is it?” you asked, this time properly meeting his eyes this time. Photos didn’t do the real thing justice; his baby blue eyes were maintaining steady eye contact with you, his lips were slightly parted, and his hair looked so soft and angelic. He was insanely beautiful. You internally cursed yourself. Now was definitely not the time.  

“1972…” he said, becoming even more confused. Your theory was confirmed. You’d watched all of the Back to the Future movies countless times, but you’d never imagined anything like that could ever really happen. Especially to you; plain, boring, old you. 

 “I know you’re probably not inclined to believe the crazy girl from your wardrobe, but I think,” you bit your lip, concerned at how he would take the news. “I think I’m from the future.” 

----------

 “So, you’re telling me you didn’t do anything for this to actually happen?” Roger asked. After trying to explain to him a million times, that yes, you were in fact just as confused as him, and no, you didn’t climb through his window, you tried to remain patient. He had every right to be confused as hell, you would definitely react the same if you were in his shoes. Despite this though, he was oddly trusting, allowing you to remain in his house and actually giving you the time of day to explain your side of the story. He even offered you a glass of water and something to eat, which you accepted gratefully. You were starving. 

 “Yes, I was literally just in my wardrobe, then the next thing I knew we were screaming in each other’s faces.” 

 “How do I know you’re telling the truth? You don’t seem very sane so far. I’m going to need some proof. You could just be a crazy girl who will do anything to sleep with me,” he smirked. You rolled your eyes. So the stories were true, he really was cocky.

 “Don’t flatter yourself, Taylor,” you retorted. “And no,” you said quickly, as he opened his mouth to speak, “I don’t know your surname because I’m a crazy stalker.” Your mind wandered to your extensive Queen record and CD collection. Okay, so maybe you were a little, but he didn’t need to know that. 

 “I know because Queen makes it big. I mean, massive.” You bit your lip nervously. If Back to the Future taught you anything, nobody should know too much about their own future. For the first time in your life, you had to think about what you said before you said it.

“How can I convince you?” you asked.

“I don’t know,” he sighed. “What year do you claim to come from, anyway?”

“2019,” you bit your lip. 

His eyes widened in disbelief. “Shit,” he mumbled. “Am I….?”

 “Still alive? Yeah.” Suddenly, you had an idea. You pulled your phone out of your pocket, thankful it was still charged. You turned it on, the time and date you had left still displayed on the screen (18th January 2019, 11:00), in front of a picture of Queen from 1975. You turned the screen towards him. 

 “Holy shit, is that me?” he gasped, leaning forward. “2019.” He looked up at you, and you shrugged and nodded. You were thankful he didn’t know the implications of having a picture of somebody as your lockscreen. 

 “There’s something else,” you unlocked your phone, opening music and searching for ‘Doing Alright.’ You pressed play, the song pouring out of the speakers.

Yesterday, my life was in ruin

Now today, I know what I’m doing… 

“Oh my god, that’s our song! We haven’t even released it yet.” He chuckled. You couldn’t help but grin at his excitement, encapsulated by his gorgeous smile. 

 “Wanna hear more?” you smirked. It’s funny, you had never felt so comfortable around somebody so quickly. You couldn’t quite put your finger on it, but something about him relaxed you. 

----------

 “Have you noticed I haven’t asked about that thing you’re holding, ‘cause I’m too scared to?”

 You laughed, covering your mouth with your hand. You’d spent the last half an hour playing Roger a few more Queen songs. A small nagging voice in the back of your mind was telling you to stop, to not reveal anything about his future, no matter how small. But Roger’s pleading to hear more won.

 “It’s actually a phone,” you said, to answer his question. “Well, that’s its main purpose anyway. You can use it to take and store pictures, play music, and use the internet. Which, well, you’ll find out about in approximately 18 years.”

 “I’m intrigued, what’s the internet?” he asked. You thought of all the unspeakable things you had come across on social media, and shook your head.“You don’t want to know.” He raised an eyebrow at you, and you tried to suppress a blush.  

You cleared your throat, averting your eyes from him as you straightened up in your seat. “What’s the time?” you asked. He glanced down at his watch. “3am,” he laughed in disbelief. “We should probably get some sleep. I’ll sleep on the couch.” 

 You shook your head rapidly, taken aback by his utter kindness. “Oh my god no, please, I will. It’s your house,” you said, getting up from the chair you were sitting on. He did the same. You both stood awkwardly, basically staring at each other. You couldn’t help but think of the times you watched a Queen documentary on TV, with the Roger of your time’s commentary. It was hard to believe the man in front of you was the same person.  

 He cleared his throat, tearing his eyes off you, and going into his bedroom, mumbling something about getting something for you to sleep in.  

 As you awaited his return, you couldn’t help but wonder why you were so focused on how flustered you were around Roger, and not worried about the fact that you were literally stuck in the wrong year, and had no idea how to get back. The funny thing was, you had no desire to. You hadn’t felt so at home in a long time, than when you were laughing and talking with Roger. He made you feel so safe, so quickly. And that feeling would only grow stronger when you both gave up on convincing the other to sleep on the couch, and ended up sharing his bed. 

PART 2: BONUS CONTENT THAT I WROTE THE SAME DAY AS PART ONE. I’M NOT GOING TO CONTINUE IT BUT WHAT’S THE POINT OF HAVING IT IN A WORD DOC N NOT POSTING IT?

When I was writing this, I couldn’t stop imagining rom-com moments. Like, the outfit section? A cute montage with a cute song. Damn I wish I could express the images in my head more clearly, in words. My writing sucks. 

“Y/N, wake up. Y/N!!” A familiar, yet foreign, voice startled you. As you came to your senses, you realised your usual soft, silky sheets were replaced with cotton ones, and an unusual smell wafted around you. You slowly opened your eyes, to be greeted by Roger leaning over you, a slightly annoyed look on his face. Fuck. It was real. He must’ve read your disappointment on your face, and he smiled sympathetically and nodded.

“Yep, you’re still here,” he mumbled. You couldn’t help but sigh; you’d hoped it was a really long, unusual dream.

“I have to go to rehearsal for a gig tonight. Do you wanna come?” Of course you didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to meet the rest of the band, and literally see the magic happen, you couldn’t help but feel like you were invading. But then again, who could say they had the chance to sit in on an early Queen rehearsal, especially knowing how successful and impactful they were going to become?

“I don’t – I don’t want to intrude,” you mumbled, sitting up in the bed and clutching the duvet around you, suddenly feeling exposed in Roger’s white shirt.

“Well it’s your choice, I understand that you probably don’t want to sit around with us when you could be finding a way back home or finding your parents or something,” he said.

Although you would never admit it, you wanted nothing more than to go with him. Not only was it literally history in the making, but the absence of your birth parents in your life, leading to a childhood of foster families who couldn’t care less about you, gave you a sense of independence at a young age. You knew how to be alone, seeking solace in music. Music created by the greats like Queen made you feel less alone, as silly as it sounded. It was your escape from the struggles in your real life.

“Wait, no. I want to come. If you don’t mind. But I need something 70s appropriate to wear,” you chuckled, glancing over at your high-waisted skinny jeans and cropped knit jumper folded neatly on a chair.

“I think that can be arranged.” Roger grinned at you, and you were struck with yet another wave of disbelief. Roger Taylor was going to lend you come of his iconic clothes.

After spending a couple of hours going through Roger’s clothes, which was your absolute dream, you finally settled on a pair of pants that were a little too short, and a shirt that was slightly too tight across the chest. You tried to spice up the outfit with a few of Roger’s necklaces, much to his dismay.

“Do I look okay?” you asked when you stepped out, twirling around with your arms out.

Roger, standing with a pile of clothes in his arms that you had rejected, furrowed his brows and looked you up and down. You couldn’t help but stifle a giggle at the sight; he was taking his job as your stylist very seriously.

“You’ll almost fit in,” he said, “although, the shirt is too tight,” he finished bluntly, gesturing to your chest. You folded your arms instinctively.

“Don’t worry, I won’t look at your boobs.” You frowned at this. Was that meant to make you feel better? Why did you feel slightly disappointed?

“Um, thanks?” you scoffed. “What should I do with my hair?” you tugged on each of your French braids. Roger walked towards you without warning, and pulled out your hair ties, running his fingers through your hair.

“Just leave it loose.” He said hoarsely, his face dangerously close to yours. Your heart was beating rapidly, and you couldn’t take your eyes off him. He was biting his lip in concentration, his eyes squinting as he adjusted your hair. It took everything in you to not lean into his touch; his fingers were so delicate. As he pushed a strand of hair out of your face, his eyes met yours.

“Perfect,” he almost whispered, his breath sending shivers down your spine. You knew you should pull away. You knew this would get way too complicated. Your rationality was telling you to snap out of it. But as his hands smoothly came to rest around your neck, bringing you closer, something else entirely was driving your actions.  Just as you began to lean in, he pulled away, clearing his throat loudly.

“Let me get you a coat,” he said, quickly rushing away from you. You bit your lip, cheeks flaming. You were humiliated. What were you thinking, trying to kiss him? He obviously wasn’t attracted to you; the weird, pathetic crazy time-traveller. You didn’t even belong here anyway, how could you possibly think he would want you? Your eyes began to well up, you just had to get out of there.

As you quickly began to gather your clothes and phone, furiously wiping the tears from your eyes, Roger returned with a fur coat in his arms.

“Here, this should fit – wait, what’s wrong?” he asked, realising your state.

“I’m just gonna go. I’m so sorry to have invaded your life like this, you shouldn’t have to deal with my weird ass problems. Thank you for everything. It was nice meeting you, I guess. I’ll never forget you,” you rambled, becoming increasingly embarrassed, trying to walk past him. He gently placed his hands on your upper arms, turning you to face him.

“Hey, hey, I don’t have to help you, okay? I want to. If you’ll let me.” he said, a surprisingly vulnerable look on his face.

“But, I’m burdening you too much! You can’t have me holding you back from living your normal life. You don’t want me clinging to your side like some kind of….” You paused, struggling to find the right words in your frazzled state. “Some kind of leech. I mean, I’m just annoying. For God’s sake, we have nothing in common! I’m technically young enough to be your daughter!”

Roger laughed softly. “Okay, first of all, you’re not a leech. And yes, it’s weird that you’re from the future, and I’ll probably never wrap my head around it, but so what? We shouldn’t get along, but we do.” You hoped he couldn’t notice your blush at this.

“And, lastly,” he said, a cheeky smirk on his face, “the thought of you being my daughter is gross, but me being your daddy on the other hand…”

“Oh my god, Roger! No!” you couldn’t help but laugh, as you rapidly shook your head. You couldn’t tell if he was joking or not; you secretly hoped he wasn’t.

“So, do you still wanna come to rehearsal?” he asked, all joking aside.

You sighed, hoping you weren’t being a burden. “Okay, give me that then,” you grabbed the coat off him, pulling it on.

“Do I look normal?” you asked.

“No,” he smirked, and you raised your eyebrows at him. “In a good way, though. Come on,” he said, grabbing your hand. You tried to ignore the jolts of electricity you felt from this sweet gesture. You never thought simply holding hands with someone would give you so many butterflies.

[jnometeora]

A TASTE OF GREEN

I had to deal with a big problem my dear, I’d never match up to his success and I’ve always been in his shadow.

For this reason I sold all my participation quote in my father’s empire to my brother and decided to move to Paris looking for new opportunities and new loves.

Last time I went to Paris I ramble over (…) and took a general view of the city. I crossed the Seine at the Pont Louis Quinze, and walked along the noble quays as far as the Island, admiring, on the opposite side, the vast extent of the united palaces of the Tuilleries and Louvre,(…) and whether I looked up the river, towards the Pont Neuf and Notre Dame, or downwards, to the Champs Elysees (…) I had always a noble scene before me. [1]

Charmed by this memory I returned to that bridge and I walked up the Seine to widen my glimpse; arrived at the height of “pont neuf” I decided to cross it and to reach the “Ile de la cité” ;

the only instance where Haussmanns destruction was total [2]. Passed by Notre Dame, I crossed the “Pont Saint-Louis” leading to Île Saint-Louis; a big white sign with the red inscription “A vendre” caught my eye. I immediately called the number reported on the sign;

That was really the beginning of something new.[3]

After spending some months in Paris, [4] I made the acquaintance of some interesting people. One of them, Edmond, a really smart guy who also seemed to be feeling lonely and was very ready to keep me company [5]

Together we decided to use the beautiful space I bought and to start organizing parties and events to strength the links between the people we knew in the city and expand the connections. In fact, the real essence of a city is its people they provide its buzz, its soul, and its spirit, those indefinable characteristics we viscerally feel when we are participating in the life of a successful city [6]

We cleaned out the entire block, letting only the facades and the roof, and we throw our first Party.

That evening Edmond introduced me to a Swedish couple, who were in the city, like me [7], looking for new opportunities, enjoying an uncommon drink they called “synesthesia”.

They offered me a metallic glass which contained a viscous liquid, slightly aromatic with a bitter green apex. wait… green? Did I just tasted a color ?

One sip after I was watching myself chatting and entertaining the Swedish couple. I could feel how cold it was, I could smell the dust around me. I was completely immersed in the memory. I could smell, see, taste, everything. This went on for some time; my mind wasn’t anymore allocated in my body which was melting in the surrounding while my mind was rising above everything. I slowly started to feel new sensation, to experience the space from another dimension, I was able to discern all layers of sounds: the chatting of people, the music, the footsteps, the sound of the empty space and to isolate the one I wanted. Then I entered another dimension, the dimension of smells and tastes, the touch dimension and finally sight. I suddenly realize that I was able to combine them at will and even more sensations were defined.

I just had the time to realize someone were pouring some more bitter greenish “liquid” in my glass, before watching myself walking back to my car and drive away.

——

The young architect was enjoying some “Chateau Musar 1975” while reading in front of his fireplace; when the bell rung, a blond, woman on her early thirties was chaotically speaking through the videophone.

The architect interrupted her and let her accomodate on the LC4 at his place; he went to the  kitchen sideboard and poured her a glass of the same wine he was drinking asking her to calmly repeat from the beginning.

Elizabeth tried to explain the experience she just went through, telling him she really liked them and she wanted to create a path into spaces were “normal” people can live the same experiences.

“You could never describe (…) what happened in a more accurate way [9] there is no experience of society which is not first the experience of a few individuals. [10]” said the architect.

“What you just described is a neurological condition of involuntary cross-modal association[11] called synesthesia ‘abnormal’ only in being statistically rare. [11] By imagining the world that people with synesthesia perceive, we investigated the generation of spaces. [11] what kind of world do people with synesthesia perceive?[11]

Take this great wine, for example, taste it,(…) a sensorial bomb(…) If we had to set out what the wine contains, and taste the list would be as long as our admiration of the wine was profound, the label would cover the bottle, the cellar, the vines and the surface of the countryside, mapping them all faithfully, point by point [12]”

In the comfortable silence that followed (…) Elizabeth, keeping the wine in her mouth looking for the taste of the vines, experienced that strange but widely familiar sensation of having been there before, of having had this precise exchange with this very gentleman in this location some time ago, a fleeting moment of experiencing the present as a memory. [3] But the present itself was somehow a vivid dream, she couldn’t really explain herself where she was and how she came there.

Her wondering about that feeling was suddenly interrupted by somebody screaming “A votre santé” and she emptied her glass before realizing that the young architect was speaking about some sketching and ideas he had in developing the spaces.

She pleased him to repeat, apologizing for being absentminded.

“The aim of the proposal is to induce a synesthetic experience in the visitors, by taking both architecture and function to the limits of perception, to the critical point where synesthesia might occur in ‘normal’ brains.[11] Passion spaces here are compared with conceptual spaces (Noma et al, 1998) in the analogy of ‘logos vs pathos’.[11]”

She was excited of his proposal and immediately asked him how to conceive those spaces.

He continued on articulating his idea:

“According to some studies, Elizabeth, Sensory deprivation proves to be an efficient method: the reaction of the neurological system in absence of any stimuli is to invent its own. A brain deprived of external input starts to project an external reality. [11]"

She explained him she bought an entire block in the city center of Paris where she would like to organize those spaces.

The young architect asked her about the materiality of the block explaining that, there are two types of skin, the inner and the outer. If the outer skin is made of hard stone, the durability of the building will be improved. [13] Elizabeth’s happiness couldn’t be greater in becoming aware of that.

“ We will organize the inner space as follow: The part next to the facade will be left [14] empty in order to perceive the facade in its integrity from the outside but even on the inside, and working as a puffer space, an osmotic membrane between the city and the inner tensions; in fact the entrance hall is the first step in the de-conditioning process.[11] This took the place of the atrium or vestibule.[15]”

The architect then continued in articulating the inner space, probably already having the pathway in his mind.

The visitor will encounter a series of chambers, located on three different levels, corresponding to the conceptual organization of the nervous system and the associative routes of synesthesia [11]

These three levels should be connected by a staircase; we have two types of staircase (…) one ascended not by stairs but by an inclined ramp, the other by steps. Personally, I strongly approve of stairs; the fewer the stairs in a building and the less room they take up, the less of an inconvenience they will be.[16] We will use both of them.

The entrance hall shall be directly connected to two staircase ascended by steps, one private and one public. The public one lead directly to the third floor where the pathway begins. The three levels are then organized on ascending or descending ramps more or less inclined without differing to much from this rule: an incline of one part in height along the vertical to six in length along the baseline.[16] The ramps are designed and disposed following the natural men’s flow, their linger and their crossing principle.

This organization should lead the visitor to naturally plunge throw the street level where the chamber representing the deepest level of the nervous system is located.

“The private staircase will be closed to the visitors and be accessible only to you, on that pathway, which will mostly be organized in the nordest part of the block, we will organize your life spaces and some synesthetic chamber you prefer to keep private; the two pathway will cross several times but never interchange, in order for you to imagine how do they fill the inner space try to think about a double helix, such as the DNA, where two different (but complementary) helix will intersect keeping their belonging track. You should think the block, the facades, as the skeleton of the head, containing the brain organized in its 3 level and the staircases the connection between the spinal-chord and the brain stem”

Elizabeth felt like the architect was describing and building up the building at the same time, she could perfectly follow his thought and imagine what he was explaining.

“We now come to the opening. There are two types of opening, one for light and ventilation, and the other to allow man or object to enter or leave the building. Windows serve for light; for objects there are doors and stairs [16], doors should only be placed in accordance to the ramps disposition and windows are in our case only for light because the ventilation will be automatically regulated.”

The public pathway should be articulated as follow, the first room is the “TIME SEEING” chamber, which should blurring the boundaries of the interior and exterior space [11] treated as a portico where the exact view of the site is displayed with an eight hours delay, is the only part emerging from the existing building, this circular Portico shall be covered with a Cupola. [16] the covering hemisphere is perforated from small opening bringing zenithal light into the space, corresponding to the displayed moment.

Sloping further through the pathway, the visitor will be brought to the “SOUNDS WATCHING”  chamber: a theater in which a full orchestra is playing directed by a passionate and vigorous conductor, but nothing is heard. The length of the “scaena” ought to be double the diameter of the orchestra.[17] And the wall has a height one ninth the radius of the central area [13]. The ramp exiting this chamber is slightly ascended and leads to the “LIGHT HEARING” chamber

A chamber were lights openings are modulated and an obscure, cold, humid and foggy atmosphere makes it possible to see the small rays coming from all directions. Freely moving into the space single tones are reproduced when interrupting a light ray.

Next up is the “HEARTBEAT SMELLING”chamber: here the participant is seated in an anechoic chamber [18] were even the visual boundaries of the chamber are blurred, the participant start to hear two sounds one high and one low.’[t]he high one is the nervous system in operation. The low one is blood in circulation’ [19] The brain then compensates the loss of auditive input by heightened attention to all other senses, and at this moment the brain is stimulated by introducing into the chamber an Imput such a particular smell and a wall changing color; hallucinations can occur after only a short while [11].

Leaving the “heartbeat smelling”chamber the visitor will enter the “SOUNDS TOUCHING” chamber where the symphonies played by the orchestra are reproduced; every color is associated to an instrument, the “artist” is now called to paint what is hearing in real time. Every color is only available when the related instrument is playing. Finished the symphony paintings are collected and distributed at the end of the next chamber: the “TASTE HEARING” chamber.

This chamber is the only one accessible also from the street, is the apex of the path, a food court were finger food is served and notes are played on regular interval, or the space is suddenly saturated by one color.

——

I started to feel cold and I wanted to ask him to add a new chunk of wood to the fire, but suddenly I realize to be out of the block were the party started, and a splash of water and mud thrown by a passing-by car covered my beautiful pale red dress. I looked for the swedish couple in order to get some more “synesthesia” but none of the guests was still there, neither was Edmond which I saw walking away hand-in-hand with Alizée in the fog. So I turn my back to go back home and all I saw was a blurred Ferrari symbol and lots of light, I open my eyes and I found myself laying in my own bed, it was late in the morning and doorbell rung, was the mailman carrying a roll of plans, sketches and annotations. Every sheet was labelled:

jnometeora_[#] 48.852604, 2.353694

[1] Woods, Letters of an Architect from France Italy and Greece 1

[2] Kunstler, The City in Mind

[3] Hovestadt Buehlmann, Quantum City

[4] Ruskin, The Stones of Venice

[5] Freud,The Psychopathology of Everyday

[6] West, Scale The Universal Laws of Growth

[7] Hollis, Cities Are Good For You

[8] Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968

[9] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[10] Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty

[11] Ascott, Art Technology Consciousness Mindlarge

[12a.] Serres, The Five Senses

[13] Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books 1988

[14] Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture 1999

[15] Williams, Daniele Barbaros Vitruvius of 1567

[16] Alberti, 10 books of architecture 1755

[17] Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture 1914

[18] Broeckmann, Machine Art in the Twentieth Century

[19] Smith, Bare Architecture A Schizoanalysis

[zutaraverse]

Chapter 2: Katara Returns Dressed In Red

[[nb posting this one all in one go because it’s pretty important!! Sorry its so long in one bite :p ]]

——————2 years later———————

Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation collapsed, starfish style, onto his bed and promptly fell asleep still in his royal garments. He’d had delegations from various ex-colonies at the palace all week discussing the change of power from fire nation back to earth kingdom - or as it happened for about half of them, no change at all. Each person and come with their own set of demands which seemed to be uniquely designed to oppose the next person’s - and they all sought solutions from the Prince. Fire Lord Iroh was in the Northern Water Tribe discussing fishing boundaries and (Zuko suspected) playing multiple games of Pai Sho. So that left Zuko to step up and act as Fire Lord in his absence.

Now, at least, the delegations had all left, and Zuko had managed to stay awake through their farewell dinner. He was done! The next few months would be a breeze, comparatively speaking. But for now, sleep.

Three sharp knocks resounded through Zuko’s room and, rather painfully, through his head. He groaned, stretching his cramped muscles but didn’t get up.

Another three knocks, followed by a timid “Prince Zuko?”

“Go Away!” he shouted back, giving in to his childish reflexes. Why couldn’t they damn well leave him alone?

“Apologies Prince Zuko but you have a visitor…” Zuko could hear the hesitation in the messenger’s voice and immediately felt sorry for shouting. It wasn’t his fault after all.

“Who is the visitor?” He asked, barely lifting his face off the pillow, eyes still cobwebbed in deep sleep.

“I… I don’t know Sir, all she said was: ‘Tell him not to keep Sweetness waiting’. Should I tell her to leave?” Zuko sat up as a smile slowly lit up his face. He jumped off the bed - vaguely recognising that he was still wearing his clothes from the night before - and ripped the door open. The messenger didn’t realise what was happening and jumped back in shock at the disheveled Prince in crumpled clothes and messy hair that appeared in front of him.

“Run to the kitchens and get me two mangos. Then come back here and take me to her.” The messenger blinked at Zuko in surprise at the odd request. The Prince rolled his eyes. “NOW!” he barked. Was it possible that any time he wanted to get something done quickly he had to shout?

As the messenger scurried away Zuko retreated to his room and peeled off his formal clothes, changing into maroon casual baggy trousers and matching shirt, with a black sash tied around his waist. His hair… well… it would have to do.

There was another timid knock at the door, and Zuko opened the door, grabbed the two mangos from the messenger’s hands and ran off to the palace entrance, forgetting to wait for him to lead him.

He expected to find her seated in one of the waiting rooms surrounding the main Palace, but he checked all of them and found them completely empty. Confused he walked outside into the sun and saw five guards at the gates forming a human wall - and beyond them, Katara.

She was dressed in Fire Nation red, and looked much older than she had when she left two years before. She had lost weight and had a new determined set to her jawline. Her blue eyes were more guarded and icy than he remembered and her hair hung loose instead of that childish plait. She still had her hair loopies and her mother’s necklace though, which contrasted the otherwise dangerous looking woman that stood before him.

She was more beautiful than ever. And red looked really good on her, he thought.

Katara noticed him approaching the gate and squealed in delight.

“Sparky you brought mangos!!!!!” she cried, smiling from ear to ear and clapping her hands. Ah. There was the old Katara.

“A peace offering for keeping you waiting in the hot sun,” he replied, grinning as much as his scar would allow. The guards turned to look at him in shock and glanced at one another in confusion. “Guards, stand down. This is Master Katara of the Southern Water Tribe. She has free access to the Palace. Always. And for future reference, when people come to see me, take them to the waiting rooms, it is barbaric to have them waiting outside.”

The younger guards’ eyes widened - the legendary water bending master! But how was she so young?!  They scrambled to get out of the way as she passed them and smiled, a little too sweetly at them. The two who had been making inappropriate comments at her gulped audibly, keeping their eyes trained to the ground.

Katara walked to Zuko and hugged him tightly. He returned it as well as he could still clutching his mangos. When she pulled away he saw that she had tears in her eyes.

“It is good to be back. I’ve missed everybody so much!” she said, her voice breaking half way through.

“Its good to see you again. Finally a friendly face that isn’t threatening to bring down the Nation! Come, lets go get breakfast. Are you staying for a while?”

“Yes. If its not an issue of course..” Zuko smiled brilliantly.

“We might need to find some more mangos but apart from that, stay as long as you like. Oh Chan! Could you prepare the Personal Guest room please? And tell the kitchens to bring breakfast to my room.” The servant bobbed her head and scurried away to fulfil the Prince’s orders.

—————————

A while later, when they had both had time to wash and dress in casual clothes, they reconvened in Zuko’s chambers, sitting around a table laden with fruits, tea and breads.

“So tell me, Master, what did you find in your travels? Did you learn much about water bending? And blood bending? Did you find Hama?” He tried to keep his tone light, but underneath there burned a powerful curiosity. What on Earth kept her away for two years? It must mean she found something very important.

“I… yes I did. But its a long story… and actually has to do with why I’m here,” she said, fastidiously picking grapes from the bowl.

“I have time. Start from the beginning.”

“Well, I tracked down Hama. Obviously it didn’t take her long to escape from prison once again, and she had moved around and ended up in the Earth Kingdom. Thankfully she had shaken her obsession with locking people under mountains, but under a full moon she still toyed with people without them understanding what was happening. She didn’t hurt them though, so at least that.

She was incredibly happy to see me even though last time we met it ended with her being taken to jail. But I think it was the thought of somebody else sharing the bloodbending she had discovered. Anyway under the full moon she taught me all she knew - including some pretty harrowing descriptions of what she did to the guards when she first broke out of jail. Did you know most of the human body is water? And just like we can extract water from the air, from the grass, from the trees - you can do that to a person. It kills them instantly and reduces them to ash apparently. Or, you know, if you don’t feel like killing them you can always take all the water from their eyes - which apparently deflate and they go blind…”

She trailed off, taking a deep breath and pouring out some more tea.

“Hama had developed a bit of a taste for blood. But the more I learned, the more I started thinking that you didn’t need to use bloodbending for harm. You could heal. You saw what I could do with water - but the body wants to heal itself! If I could use somebody’s own blood to heal them, surely it would be more effective!”

“Did you manage to?” asked Zuko, leaning forward in fascination. Katara sighed.

“Will you let me show you? You shoulder is in pain, can I heal it for you?”

“How did you know my shoulder was in pain? Yes, yes of course…” Katara closed her eyes and Zuko felt the pain that he had been sporting in his right shoulder (in his opinion from writing too many reports) slowly fade, and in its place a pleasant warmth spread. He lifted his arm above his head with no issue.

“I have not been able to move it properly in weeks! How did you do that?”

“Well, soon after I started thinking about healing, a little girl’s leg got trampled on by an ostrich-horse. I tried healing her with water but that made her scream in pain and I just couldn’t make it right. So I tried to bloodbend. It was rudimentary compared to what I can do now, but it fixed her leg. You have to follow the flows of the blood and see where they are ruptured, then coax them to regain their usual path. Like your shoulder, you pulled something and that disrupted the flow of blood to that area, meaning it was dry and painful. By letting the blood back in I am basically speeding up the natural process.

I left Hama when I realised she couldn’t teach me anything more. Unlike her I can blood bend at any time of the day or night, whereas she was only powerful enough during the full moon. I surpassed her quickly and moved on. I think she plans to return to the Water Tribe at some point even though her old brain is addled and confused.

I travelled North to the Northern Water Tribe. I knew they had a library of sorts about healing and wanted to look into it to see if there are any references to what you can do with blood. Of course I couldn’t tell them what I wanted to do, I simply said I wanted to become a better healer. I studied a lot and learned about all the flows of the body - about the main bloodways and the minor ones, about how to calm an ulcer and to combat frostbite. I applied everything to bloodbending and I was immediately more successful and more powerful than any of the other healers. I was considering teaching them - and I might still go back and do that -, but then my father arrived.

Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe was on a formal visit to the North and was pretty shocked to find me there. He was acting strangely, but I was too absorbed in what I was learning to pay much attention to what was going on politically. After one of their meetings, he came to me and told me that they had finally reached an agreement and that I would be betrothed to one of the Northern Tribe men.”

Zuko snorted.

“That must have been a fun conversation!”

“You would have enjoyed it I think. I had to inform dear father than I was a Southern Water Tribe girl and that it meant that I could choose whoever I wanted to marry. And that, under no circumstance was I going to marry into a culture that did not train women in combat, that would not respect what I wanted as equal to what my husband wanted! I told him he could forget it immediately. Nobody took that too well.

They forced me to go to a meet.

Which was very frustrating because I was learning about the heart - which is incredibly interesting by the way - and I had to talk to this council of old men who knew nothing about me. It was only when I reminded them rather… forcefully… that I was a master water bender, capable of taking out their entire army and that I would not hesitate to bring down the hall we stood in to prove my point.”

Zuko laughed at Katara’s dark expression.

“I mean come on! We ended a hundred year war, I’m the youngest and strongest water bender in both the tribes, I helped rebuild and negotiate peace, I trained the bloody avatar! And now that I’m definitely not going to marry Aang, they seem to think I’m fair game to decide my future. It is not happening. You would have thought they would have taken the hint when I forced Master Pakku to teach me, but no, apparently not.

Anyway, after that argument they pretty much left me alone and I absorbed all that I could from the information there. I think healing is much easier once you understand blood - I didn’t need to memorise all the things the other students were learning - I can just feel it.

Then I found out that they had a whole other section dedicated to combat water bending. Of course, since I was accidentally born a girl they wouldn’t let me in. Idiots. So I snuck in anyway and read to my hearts content every night. And it was actually fascinating - they have no idea what goldmine they are sitting on! There were all the old water bending fighting styles, as well as so much on meditation that I was never taught. The fighting won’t do much good now apart from if you want to surprise somebody with something outdated, but you can take the same techniques and apply them to blood.

There is this one where you create a square of water and you sort of shoot it at somebody, the idea being that they get hit straight in the face so it stings and they have trouble seeing for a while. But the way in which you do it makes it so that from rest the movement is very quick - kind of like some of your fire bending moves. It basically sends a shock. But what if you can do that with blood? What if, when a heart stops, you can shock it into coming back by shooting the blood through it quickly? Or there is this other one where you take the water from the air and you basically make it implode to one point - it makes a noise, so it is only used as a distraction. But muscles are soaked in blood and what if you can contract a muscle like the heart to keep it working?

I’m rambling aren’t I?”

“A bit, but it is interesting. Did you get to try any of this out?”

“Yes. I left the Water Tribe and travelled back into the Earth Kingdom. I volunteered in hospitals as a water healer - but used blood instead. I learned how to remove disease, how to coax out poison, how to not only redirect but build bloodways. I gave a child a functioning leg that had been lame since birth. Zuko, it was incredible!

Except people started noticing how much better than the normal healers I was and started asking questions. Mostly I diverted them, but it made me uneasy so I moved on.

I decided that it was not possible that only Hama and I could blood bend. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became. So I spent a long time each day in meditation like the scrolls from the North had described, and my control grew. At the same time I travelled to all the sites of ancient knowledge that I could possibly think of…”

“Even the Air Temples?”

Katara looked down with sad eyes.

“No. Not the Air Temples. They don’t contain anything but air bending and meditation information - and most of it was burned. And I was scared of bumping into Aang.”

There was a moment of silence while they both considered the day the avatar had run away from them all. Zuko had seen him since, but he had kept a stolid silence with Katara - not even answering her messenger hawks.

“Well, you were in the Earth Kingdom looking for these records…”

“Yes. Except there were none. In Ba Sing Se and Omashu I found some really interesting things but only referring to water bending, and water meditation. I’m still at a loss as to why the Water Tribes don’t practice meditation anymore, it brings almost Toph levels of awareness of the world. But the rest were destroyed during the war.

So I was angry. As angry as sixteen-year-old-Zuko!”

“Hah! That is quite angry…”

“Yes, well I had good reason! I felt like ripping my hair out - there must be something, somewhere about bloodbending! And as I thought, I realised the only place likely to have anything would be Wan Xi Tong’s library - but that is gone La knows where.

Eventually I decided that, although I didn’t think there would be anything about water bending in general in the Fire Nation, I might as well look. After all, if there ever was something it would probably still be there - why would you destroy your own knowledge?

Most of the temples and libraries held nothing. Which, by the way, you might want to do something about - at least something updated, something recounting the final part of the war… There was a lot on Sozin but not much after that. Anyhow, I came across one Fire Temple, which apparently was one of the oldest. It was a pain to get to, on Ka’Bei Island. There is nothing else there apart from the temple and the sages who are crazy enough to live there - no wonder it hasn’t been touched in centuries!

It is stunning though. In a very derelict way, eaten by the salt of the sea and looking all too fragile in the wind. But they assured me it was safe inside. Thankfully the sages took kindly to me - some of them had not been off the island since Ozai took power, and others had retreated there to escape the war. They were buried in meditations and exercises and seemed completely at peace. They invited me to stay as long as I pleased - knowledge is important and it is the least they could do to freely impart it when fire had caused the destruction of so much, they said.

For the first month I lost myself in a myriad of things, deciding to meditate with the sages at sunrise, feeling the tides of the sea pull me with them.

Then I came across a book that was completely unintelligible. Some of the others were old and the language was different to our own but not incomprehensible - just took some getting used to. This though, I understood nothing. It looked like a bunch of scribbles!

I asked the sages and they told me that it was an ancient tongue - they had yet to find out when it was used, but it grew in isolation at the poles of the world before the time of the first Avatar.

It took me another month to translate, using some of the references contained in other scrolls. They told me that this was not the original - the original resided in Wan Xi Tong’s library and this was a copy that was made at the time when humans could freely pass the threshold. I have the whole translation here,” she said, opening the bag she had on the floor and taking out a nondescript and quite worn black booklet.

“It talks about all the bending styles, but mostly about water bending. These were my ancestors Zuko! I don’t know how they developed bending - here it says that they learned from meditating and being at one with the ocean and the dolphins. But I don’t know how true that is. I can’t create a picture in my mind of how the world must have been back then and I cannot understand if this was before or during the reign of the lion-turtle cities. Regardless, they could bend.

The whole text was written almost poetically. But I figured out what they were referring to. Blood is never called blood, but is called ‘inner tide’. There were so many things you could do with your inner tide, and I spent a long time in meditation - except looking into myself instead of looking outwards. I found issues I didn’t even know I had and smoothed them out. I let myself flow in my own bloodways for a while…

But then I came across a long passage about the ‘inner moon’ and about how the ‘inner tide’ and the ‘inner moon’ reflect the true tide and moon. It took me a long time to understand that the ‘inner moon’ is your chi. So it was suggesting that your chi controlled your blood. But that made no sense! I started looking for chi in myself and the sages and I realised that if I did think of it like the moon and if I looked for that glimmer of brightness in the darkness of blood, I could find it. I could not find how it controlled the blood though.

Then it struck me. It was a reflection of the original!”

“I don’t get it.”

“If I hold up my right hand, looking into a mirror, what happens?”

“Your reflection holds up their left hand?”

“Exactly! The reflection means the inverse. So whereas normally the moon controls the tides, here the ‘inner tides’ control the ‘inner moon’. Blood controls your chi. And each type of person has a different chi flow - or ‘moon orbit’ as they put it. Fire benders, water benders, earth benders, air benders, non benders - they all have different chi flow. And it is that flow that determines what type of bender you are.”

“So?”

“So, I can control blood. Blood controls chi. I can control chi and I can alter its flow so it does more than just one type of orbit… and… well…”

Katara held out her hand, palm up, and produced a flame.