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violetrainbow412-blog · 11 months

Text

Memories [S. R]

Spencer Reid x fem!reader

word count: 4k

summary: the case of the self-appointed Fisher King comes with too many sentimental implications and you discover that you and Spencer had more in common than you imagined.

warnings: mention of mental illness and some trauma

A/N: directly based on 2x01 of the series "The Fisher King" part 2

people who might be interested: @c-m-stuff @no-soy-fer @synthsescape @bella-fics @cynbx (if you want to be removed or added tell me!)

To say that you were worried about the case was an understatement, you were actually terrified of what might happen. An unsub holding a hostage, who was also her daughter, and who knew so much about each member of the team, was worrying in itself. But Elle being in a hospital dying, the case being so tied to Reid's life, and you being so stupidly far from knowing where Randall Garner was, was what made you want to throw up everything you'd eaten during your interrupted vacation.

The team, as always, had split up and throughout the investigation you had stayed with Spencer and Garcia to try to crack the riddle, using the man's brain, the woman's internet find-anything skills, and your vast knowledge of the world of codes and literature. During that period you never believed that the doctor's mother would be involved, much less did you think that she would find herself in the… condition she was in. Throughout the time she was there, he treated her sweetly and calmly, but you couldn't help noticing the discomfort that was palpable in the environment. Not that he was ashamed of her, of course, although you figured he didn't visit her very often and it was obviously not her intention for the entire BAU to find out that her mother was a schizophrenic who was in a sanatorium.

You remembered, hours ago, asking Garcia to let you tell the man that his mother was fine when he requested a plane to bring her to Virginia, and all day you had that conversation etched in your mind like a tattoo on your skin.

"Your mom it's ok" you had said, approaching her desk and leaning on it to look at it "Agents picked her up. She's flying here right now” you completed, although he seemed too amused with the piece of evidence that he had in his hand and then you felt the need to say something else “How are you?”

"I feel kind of dumb, to tell you the truth," he replied. Most of the time he avoided looking at you, but you had already gotten used to it “I forgot she used to always read me this poem. And I think that I should have realized sooner than that”

"Why?"

“Nobody knows things like the fact that JJ collects butterflies except for me,” he said, with a guilt-tinged shrug. “People tell me their secrets all the time. Think it's because they know I don't have anyone to betray them to… except… my mother. I... I tell her pretty much everything”

"It’s fine”

“Do you know that I write her a letter every day?”

"That's very nice," you said sincerely, for the idea of the man carefully writing a letter to tell his mother about the day was a sweet image to imagine.

“It depends on why I write her”

"What do you mean?"

“I write her letters so I won't feel so guilty about not visiting her,” Reid added. If it hadn't been for that case, probably you, or anyone, would have known that his mother was hospitalized and you thought it was completely logical that he didn't want others to find out about that part of his life about him, including that he didn’t visit her. Spencer was always available for everything, always working, always alone in his apartment and now that you knew about Diana you understood why. He waited a moment and then finally made eye contact with you, looking somewhat fearful “Did you know that schizophrenia is genetically passed?”

And when he mentioned that your world fell apart. You understood that this was the reason why he didn't go with her; because he was afraid. You didn't know how to react, at least not at that moment, and you just looked at him sadly, feeling your own heart tighten a little at unfortunate memories.

Although, for work reasons, the talk hadn't gone any further than that, you'd thought about it all along, even now that you were all gathered to put the last pieces together of what you hoped would be a successful puzzle.

"Nevada? So we don't even know what state he's in?” Hotch muttered, already quite frustrated at how fruitless the search was turning out. There was little time left and you all knew it.

“I'll search the tax records, see if he owns any property”

"Excuse me," Diana Reid intervened from the chair next to the blackboard and her son practically jumped to try and stop her.

"Mom, do you know we're..."

“Just before the agents got me from the hospital, a man delivered this to me” she continued, ignoring “It's a photo of a house with an address on the back”

After showing her direction she turned the image and you saw what was a house that looked just like a castle, with illuminated windows, trees around, and a night sky.

“Shiloh, Virginia?”

“That's only 10 miles from here”

"Well, there's no time to waste. Morgan and Reid are coming with me”

"I want to go too," you said immediately. Something about the whole thing gave you a very bad feeling and you wished you could help in any way you could, but you were surprised to see that Spencer was the first to oppose your request.

“We don't want anyone else to get hurt, Y/N,” Morgan added, his voice almost pleading for you to obey Hotch's orders. You were in no position to demand a ride and only agreed because you knew that an argument would only take away valuable time. “We have to get ready. Reid, let's go.”

"I'll be back soon, mom"

"I'll stay with her" you suggested, hastening to take a step towards him, in an attempt to continue your mission to help.

"Are you sure?"

"Of course," you said to reassure him. Diana already seemed quite satisfied with the fact that you were going to accompany her and you still didn't know why “Go. And be careful, please."

"I will" he nodded and immediately went after Morgan and Hotch, the three of them leaving the room to carry out the rescue mission. You had your heart in your hand for thinking about what could happen to them and only the woman's voice brought you back to reality.

"I'm glad you're the one who stays"

"Really?" you asked, somewhat flattered to think that she had liked you within a couple of hours of knowing you.

"Spencer talks to me about you all the time" she confessed and both you and the other two women present widened their eyes in surprise “He said you like literature"

"Yeah, I'd say so," you muttered, trying to smile at her to hide the nervous wreck you were, partly because of concern for your partners and partly because of what she had just told you.

"He's going to be fine, right?"

By God you hoped so. You didn't know what you would do if he got hurt or… he just didn't come back from there.

"Yes, I promise" you managed to say, as serenely as possible to try to keep your companion calm "And if you tell me about your favorite book? I imagine it will be a good one,” you said kindly, taking her arm and leading her to a couch where the two of you could sit. You knew that part of suggesting the talk was to distract yourself from the bleak outlook and thus kill time until the team returned.

Waiting was all you could do.

Diana had talked to you for a while until she ended up finding it more interesting to write in her notebook so you decided not to bother her, although she left you silent and ready for anxiety to grip you tight. After about an hour JJ herself had come to tell you that Elle was safe after surgery and you swore you could have cried with happiness when you found out. So, the pain that stayed in your chest was just from waiting for news from the three remaining agents and when what felt like an eternity passed without receiving any reports you couldn't take it anymore and apologized to Diana to leave the room. with the excuse that you needed to go to the bathroom. You were confident that she would not be a suicidal or aggressive patient, but you still wanted to hurry to get back to her as soon as possible, and when you had barely walked a section of the corridor you met a gangly figure who was already on his way to look for you.

"Rebeca?"

“She's safe” was the first thing you said, making the knot in your stomach finally dissolve “But Randall died. He blew himself up,” he continued, and you thought you wished you had heard a better outcome, even if the man was a criminal “And my mom?”

"Calm. Writing” you assured him, taking a few steps towards him to get a better look at him. He was dirty and what would later be a bruise could be seen on the left side of his face, but other than that he seemed to be safe and sound. "Is everyone there okay?"

"Yes," he breathed out. It was a relief to know that, it was a relief that things were finally over and that no one had been lost.

“I'm so grateful to hear that, Reid,” you said. You stretched your fingers up to his side and ran the tips over the mark that was beginning to form. "Does it hurt a lot?"

"No," he assured you, with a tight-lipped smile.

"Your mother. It will make her happy to know that you're back" you murmured immediately, and tried to go back the way you had come to go tell him, but he held out a hand to stop you "What's wrong?"

"Do you think I could take a moment before going with her?" he asked you and you retraced your steps to face him, still not letting go of his hand. You nodded and he sat on the floor with his legs drawn up and his back leaning against the wall in an attempt to calm down a bit from the adrenaline rush of all the previous events. You dropped down next to him in the same position and looked at his profile, thinking that if you had something to say, now was the time to talk.

“She told me you talk about me all the time,” you ventured, and he bit back an embarrassed smile.

"You weren't supposed to have found out about that"

"So you say bad things about me?"

"She didn't tell you?"

"No" you answered kindly.

"It's a relief"

“So these are definitely bad things, huh,” you teased, pushing your shoulder against his and seeing him shake his head slightly, too embarrassed to admit what he had written to his mother about you. You were silent for a moment as it didn’t seem that he had any intention of getting up to cross to the meeting room, you spoke again "Do you really not want to see her?"

“It's not that I don't want to see her, it's just that dealing with everything sometimes is so… so hard. You wouldn't understand,” he told you, his voice threatening to crack at any moment. You took a deep breath before opening your mouth to reply and the lonely hallway muffled your words, which were barely a whisper.

"What do you know about Alzheimer, Reid?" saying this, he turned a little to look at you, just in case he had misheard, but he realized that now it was you who wasn't looking at him.

"Excuse me?"

"Alzheimer" you repeated.

"Huh, it's a type of dementia that causes problems with memory, thinking, and behavior," he replied, still not quite sure why you were asking, “It is progressive, which means dementia symptoms gradually worsen over the years, and it is also the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. Live an average of eight years after symptoms become apparent, but survival can range from four to 20 years, depending on age and other health conditions. There is currently no cure."

“Have you ever lived with someone who has it?” you exclaimed and he shook his head. It was easier to look directly at you when you were the one who looked away “There are experimental treatments that reduce symptoms, but none are totally effective, appearing early in life in only about 5% to 6% of people. Although there is no defined cause, the genetic factor can affect you if you had a direct relative who suffered from early Alzheimer's” you exclaimed. He wanted to ask you why you were doing this exchange of information, but he thought it impolite to do so, so he just kept quiet "You said earlier that people tell you their secrets because you have no one to tell them to, but I'm sure it's not because that. We trust you because you are kind, understanding, but above all a good friend who we know will never judge us" you took a moment to take a deep breath again, feeling the nervousness running from the tip of your feet to your head and also to gather something of courage "I personally tell you because I am very afraid of starting to forget them"

It all clicked in Spencer's mind in a split second and he wished he was misreading things, searching your gaze so he could identify something that indicated you didn't mean what he was assuming.

"You…?” he started to say, but the question died on the tip of his tongue.

“It was my father. He was barely 35 years old when it all started, it was with the time he forgot to come to his birthday party. I remember it perfectly, he hadn't been feeling well for weeks due to the stress of work and the company decided to run all kinds of tests on him, without finding anything to worry about, so we just ignored it. But the symptoms recurred: he was disoriented, discouraged, sometimes he became aggressive with the family and forgot plans or things that we had told him. When he almost crushed one of his colleagues with a machine that he forgot that he was working, the company decided to give him a permanent break and we began to worry.

»By 36 it was already a fact that it was the beginnings of dementia. The doctors were surprised by the diagnosis because it is not very common to find the disease in patients of his age and for more explanations that we tried to find, we didn’t find any other. They prescribed a treatment that only kept him calm and it got to a point where it felt inhuman to drug him daily, and about two years after he got the diagnosis my mom decided it was better to put him in a mental hospital.

I was only fifteen years old at the time, but I already understood everything perfectly. I went to see him every day, after school, talked to him, read my homework to him, and we watched movies together, which to a certain extent made his illness feel tolerable. The worst thing at that point was that he asked me to watch the same movie as the day before or that he asked me if I was nervous about the exam I had done a week ago" you looked at the man just to make sure he was following the story, which that you verified with the way he was looking at you; fully attentive.

“Anyway, the years went by and it got more and more complicated. Sometimes a nurse had to remind her of my name and at some point my mother just gave up, probably when my father completely disowned her and started yelling all over the hospital that a woman was harassing him in her room. I continued to visit him, but when I grew up and entered the FBI academy my hours were cut down considerably, so in recent years I only went to see him once a week.

»At 42 my father no longer knew that I was his daughter, he thought that I was a nurse doing social service by keeping him company. He talked to me all the time about his family and sadly told me that neither his wife nor his daughter had been to see him for a long time, but I assured him that they had both asked me to tell him that they loved him very much and that they would go soon” silent for a moment, careful not to burst into tears, and prepared to finish the story “He died during my first year as a BAU agent. I saw his decline over the years and even at the end I think he left thinking that his family had abandoned him. I don't talk to my mother anymore, because I think she feels very guilty about me for having left me all the burden of taking care of my father. But every day I feel at peace with myself because despite how painful it was to see him, I never left him.

»Many times I cried before entering the hospital and when leaving, thinking that I had to pretend to be able to spend a moment with the person I loved the most and who was now only a ghost of what my father once was. And it was terrible to look at it and think that this was my future, even to this day. They say that reading is a good exercise to reduce risk and that's why I always carry a book wherever I go, that's why I always want to do new things and that's why I strive every day to solve our cases because I don't know when the last. I have gone to specialists who have told me that there is nothing to worry about and that, if I have it, Alzheimer's could last until I am an old woman, but even so I am afraid every day.

If I really get sick and manage to get old, the most likely thing is that I will end up in a sanatorium, but right now what is worth it are the things I do every day. I'm scared, yes, but it's worth fighting for if I can help people in this job and especially if I can live with people like you.

I know you said that I wouldn't understand, but the truth is that of all the people in this building I can assure you that I am the one who can do it best. I know that you can't bear to see her because you are afraid of ending up with her like her and that at the same time you are so worried that you take the time to write everything about your life to her. I'm probably boring you with all this stuff that you never asked me to tell you, but I just wanted to tell you how important it is that you be with your mom. And more than doing it for her, do it for you.

I would only give you one piece of advice, which you can decide to take or not: don't waste your time, Spencer. Your mother loves you very much, go and talk to her, accompany her, listen to everything she has to tell you and forgive her faults if there are any. Because you don't know about her when it may be the last time you see her, either for your health or for hers”

There was total silence. You hadn't noticed until that moment that your cheeks were already wet from crying and you still didn't dare to look at his face. No person knew that part of you, because after your father got worse you had decided not to talk about it with anyone, so you could say that you were practically giving your heart to that man bruised by the mission a few hours ago. Suddenly you thought that perhaps you had talked for too long or that for him it had no relevance and he had only stayed to listen to you because he was not rude enough to leave you talking to yourself. But while your head was drawing the wrong conclusions, something you never expected happened: Spencer extended his hands to you and wrapped you in a hug.

It only took a bit of effort to make their bodies fit perfectly and he clenched the fabric of your knitted sweater in his fists, tucking his head into the crook of your neck to allow you to lean yours against his golden hair. It was as if all the time you had been destined for that particular moment, fused in that embrace that communicated everything that words could no longer express.

He wasn't the person who loved physical contact the most, all of you had noticed that, so hugging him was totally new to you. The feeling of peace that this brought you had no comparison point and the softness of his body covered you completely.

“I had no idea,” he murmured, the sound of his voice muffled by your skin. And Spencer was being completely honest, because he didn't even imagine that you could fully understand him after having lived through such a tragic story. He had understood many things thanks to your story and he was eternally grateful that he had felt the confidence to tell him something like this, so he also thought that maybe it was his turn to be honest with you "What my mom said is true, I always talk to her about you. I tell her that you are the sweetest companion I have ever had, that you always pay attention to me, and that you make sure that I feel comfortable wherever we go. I tell her that you are strong, that I want to be half as brave as you, and I also tell her that I have never felt affection and gratitude for someone as I feel for you, because you have made these two years different from any other time in my life” his words, whispered so close to you and drenched in so much love, only intensified your tears "And as long as my conscience remains intact, I assure you that if I need to remind you of all the secrets you have told me, I will do it"

That, more than a proposal, was a declaration of pure love that promised to reach many years into the future.

"Maybe we'll even end up in the same sanitarium, you and me, huh?" you exclaimed, with a slightly joking tone "And so I will have the opportunity to know your wonders again every day"

You felt on your neck that you managed to get a smile out of him and that made you smile too. That's when he pulled away so he could look at you.

“I think that… I will go with my mother back to Nevada. I guess we both deserve it, don't you think?" he told you and you nodded with a small smile. He didn't want to leave your side, but you got up first and held out your hand to help him do the same.

“She still has enough lucidity to tell me what your favorite food is. Maybe you should eat with her on the plane” you suggested. You didn't want to rob him of any more time he could spend with his mother, so you just wished him luck and started walking in another direction.

"Y/N, before you go" he called out to you. You were already a fair distance away, but it was enough for you to still speak in a small voice. "You know you're not alone, right?"

You smiled as he looked at you with those eyes that only showed sincerity, and you wished you could encapsulate that moment for eternity.

"I know" you replied calmly "And I trust that now you know it too"

#spencer reid #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid x reader #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfic #dr spencer reid #matthew gray gubler #aaron hotchner #derek morgan #jason gideon #JJ #penelope garcía

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faux-ecrivain · 4 months

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Yan Investigator

(Fourteenth Official Post)

(Yan’s name is Samuel Goodman)

(This is more of my old writing style.)

(Trigger Warning: You are a serial killer in this post and there is also blood, mentions of death and kidnapping.)

Yan investigator who was hired by his client to find his client’s wife, of course he accepted, because he needed the money.

Yan investigator who finds his Client’s wife, but she sadly passed away.

Yan investigator who discovers that maybe his client’s wife’s death wasn’t an accident, maybe it was murder.

Yan investigator who starts to ask questions about his client’s wife’s (her name is Anna) whereabouts.

Yan investigator who immediately finds you suspicious, especially considering that strange smile on your face. But then you mention other suspicious individuals and you treat him so kindly, there’s no way you could be the killer.

Yan investigator who finds that Anna’s death is quite similar to other deaths in the area where Anna was found. He concludes that Anna was a victim of a serial killer.

Yan investigator who studies the past serial killers victims, who finds that the killers M.O usually involves playing dress up and posing their victims.

Yan investigator who begins to find evidence linking you to the crime, but he has to be sure.

Yan investigator who learns that your a photographer and a makeup artist, but surely you wouldn’t be dumb enough to base your M.O off your skills. (You are)

He groans and face palms, for some reason he found you to be frustrating. This could be due to the fact that you don’t answer any of his questions and keep running the conversation in a circle. He massages his temple and exhales sharply. “Okay, let’s try this again. Where were you Friday the 21st of November at 11:30 p.m during the year 2023?” He made sure that this was a clear enough question, surely you can answer that.

You tilt your head and place a finger on your chin, you narrow your eyes and pretend to be remembering that night. Then you shrug and respond with a rather air headed tone of voice. “Dunno, can’t remember. Would you like something to drink?” Samuel resists the urge to strangle you, as you respond in a rather annoying manner. This is the seventh time you’ve asked him if he wants something to drink and the fourth time you said you didn’t remember. He can’t tell if you’re playing stupid or just playing pretend.

Yan investigator who gives up on questioning you directly, no, he’ll go about this is a different manner. He’ll earn your trust and then gather all the evidence he needs. So, he begins to befriend you, which is surprisingly easy. You’re quite friendly.

Yan investigator who finds himself denying the possibility that you could be the killer, although he knows he shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss such theories, but you’re so friendly, so charming and everyone likes you.

Yan investigator who, over the course of a few weeks, begins to view you as a potential spouse rather than a simple suspects.

Yan investigator who is appalled at your willingness to share everything about your life the moment he simply asks you to share some secrets. (You mean he didn’t have to spend hours questioning you, all he had to do was have a sleepover with you and share some embarrassing secrets?!?!?)

You even show him mementos of your victim and confess that you killed them because they tried to leave you. Which, Samuel wouldn’t lie, it made his heart flutter at thought of your devotion. (If you could call it that, but i would call it possessiveness) Then, you tell him that you’ll do the same to him if he ever tries to leave.

He stares at you, mouth agape as he tries to formulate a response. He’s flattered but also intimidated, how should he respond to this? I mean, he’s never has a criminal (or anyone for that matter) speak to him in such a way. (Samuel has issues) He can’t help but think about the idea that you love him so much (platonically of course, not that he cares) that you would do whatever it takes to keep him with you.

But now he has a moral dilemma, should he turn you in or hide the truth and blame Anna’s death on someone else? Unfortunately his morals dictate that he just call the police, so he backs away and says he’ll be right back. He tries to ignore the puppy dog eyes you give him when he leaves you in the basement. He manages to find his phone (which wasn’t hard, he just misplaced it) and begins to call the police. Then you interrupt him, your voice so innocent and your gaze so confused. (“What are you doing, Samuel? I thought we were friends.”) His morals waver and his mind is distracted by your disappointment.

He tries to speak, explain himself and then you start shaking your head. You sigh, expressing your disappointment with his behavior. (“I thought I could trust you, I suppose I was wrong.”) Then it’s like your mood has switched, you’re not mad, but you aren’t happy. You approach him and he swears that you radiate danger. He decides to just call the police, but it’s too late. You stop him and even crush his phone, he can’t help but wince when the glass digs into your skin, and yet you seem unbothered by the pain.

Yan investigator who tries to escape you, tries to fight back, and even tries to manipulate you into setting him free.

“You don’t have to do this [Y/N], just let me go and I swear I won’t tell anyone!” He cries as he tries to escape from your grasp, you have him pinned down, his arms restrained and he felt an abundant of mixed emotions. “I’m not an idiot, Sammy, I know you’re lying.” Ah, it seems you’re actually smart and your dumb, forgetful behavior was just an act.

Yan investigator who eventually stops fighting and just hopes you’ll be merciful. Although, he’s confused when you don’t kill him and instead drag him down to your basement. (It’s very creepy down there) You tie him up to a surprisingly comfortable chair.

He’s baffled, shouldn’t he be dead by now? Was this part of your murderous process? But no, you just don’t feel the need to kill him and you want to keep the cops off your back. So, you’re going to keep him captive for a few weeks, until the heat dies down and he’s officially brain washed. Then you’ll let him go and he’ll never tell anyone about you, hopefully, you don’t want to kill another friend.

During the first few weeks of captivity Samuel would constantly struggle against his binds and was always trying to convince you to free him. However, it was like you couldn’t hear him, you ignored his cries for help and barely reacted when he snapped at you. Eventually he found fighting futile and decided to take a momentary break from struggling, so he behaves and gives into your desires.

Surprisingly, you take great care of him during his imprisonment. You feed him well and when he starts to behave you give him the right to roam the house. You indulge whatever habits he has and will give him whatever he requests, as long as he doesn’t try to escape. At some point, a few people come looking for him, but you manage to distract them with your faux stupidity and your confusing speech patterns.

Samuel learned not to try and get anyone’s attention after you punished him, by mauling the one who attempted to rescue him. By the time you release the poor being, they were far too mortified to remember anything about you or your place. So, he doesn’t try that again and can only wait until you’ve decides to let him go.

Yan investigator who gets far too comfortable with you, who begins to fall into a strange sense of normalcy. He begins to imagine a domestic life with you and it occurs to him that he might not have a very strong mentality.

Yan investigator who begins to treat you as a spouse, which makes you rather uncomfortable, and seems almost reluctant when the topic of leaving comes up.

Yan investigator who begs to stay with you when you try to free him, he promises to be obedient and he swears to be faithful.

Yan investigator who feels so empty when you do get him to leave, he doesn’t know how you managed it, but he wishes you hadn’t.

Yan investigator who undergoes a psych evaluation due to concerned relatives and then is mandated (by his mother) to see a therapist. (Despite how often he claims to be sane, he believes his behavior is perfectly normal.)

Yan investigator who is reluctant to appear in court when your trial comes, but his family persuaded him too, and despite his strange remarks about the situation you are charged with multiple counts of murder and kidnapping.

He feels so disappointed and angry when you get sent away, he expresses this to his therapist and, regardless of the advice they give him, Samuel decides to visit you in prison. He makes it a habit, he visits you basically every week, no matter how much you try to shoo him off. However, with each visit to his therapist he finds that maybe his friends and family were right, maybe you are a bad person.

He express this to his therapist, who commends him for realizing this, and then to you. You tell him that he’s right, that you’re a terrible person (at least you recognize your faults) and you tell him to stop visiting.

(“[Y/N], you’re a terrible person.” He states with a stern tone, you smile and nod your head. “You’re right I am, which means you shouldn’t visit me! You should talk to someone better than me, someone that didn’t kidnap you.” He observes your expression, analyzes your response and then sighs.”)

Yan investigator who pities you and can’t help but visit you, I mean, it’s not like anyone else is visiting you. But now he has a chance to get better and he’ll do just that. Hey, maybe he could get you fixed too?

(Well, that’s the end, hope you enjoyed it and if you like this, let me know.)

(if you’re wondering what happened to Anna, well the police found evidence that you killed her and also charged you for that crime. As for Samuel, well he retired from the private eye business and decided to open up a small woodworking shop.)

#Fourteenth official post #yandere oc #yandere x reader #my writing #enjoy this short fanfic!#Samuel my oc

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mrscarmenbearzatto · 3 months

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mae girl! i’ve been living for your carmy stuff. k know you’re just getting back but i’ve been thinking about this idea for a while and i believe the last writer i shared with had gotten deactivated. this might be two ideas instead of one so feel free to do whatever you desire. idk why but would you be down to write some fluff and angst with maybe like married!carmy? maybe something where nat and pete legit ambush carmy and his wife to start talking again? but it like a lighthearted fluffy kinda way at the same time ? utilizing the scene carmy yells at syd as a base- i hate to use that scene as an example but it’s one that comes to mind when writing this atm. anyway, like the reader doesn’t work at the bear but’ll come in on her days off and mornings before her shift to help them open. and carm is already on edge about something going on in the resto and he yells at his wife out of overwhelming frustration. evidently, he’s mad at himself for it after he does it he apologized but she’s all like “no.” and she’s literally giving him the silent treatment. ofc her and nat are besties and loves her sil, so i totally see nat roping pete into getting carmy to come over whilst the reader is already on her way since they haven’t spoken in a while. both nat and pete are literally doing whatever they can to keep these two in separate spaces of the house because neither carm or his wife have any clue they’re there. maybe like y/n is inside with nat and pete meets carmy outside on arrival? the reader is walking towards to the door to out and nat’s still stalling like “so are things with you and my brother?” and the reader scoffs and nat’s just like “still not talking to him huh?” and while the reader grabs the handle slowly opening the door open she’s all like “look, sugar- you know i love your brother, but carmy sometimes can be a piece of shit” and then all you hear is carmy being like “oh, i’m a piece of shit- even after i apologized to you?” and i can just see carmy and the reader being like wth is going on here. idk but nat and pete will sillily have to do the most to get these two the civilly sit down inside of their house to even have anything of a talk. and then nat team tagging with pete to get to the bottom of things and then she lets it slip that y/n had mentioned that they were trying to get pregnant and camry’s just like “wait. what? and carmy already up and ready to talk to her alone. this man would be so loving the first time all like “y/nn can i talk to you in the kitchen for a second?” and then she’s tryna explain and carm out here using her FULL name “in the kitchen now.” just hearing how he’d say it makes me squirm and squeak 😂😩. and she’s just speeding over because she knows he means it when he pulls out the first name. and think with that he’s all just hurt that she told his sister and he hadn’t really said anything- since it was their thing they they were still figuring out. seriously feel free to do whatever you desire. just sharing the same idea i’ll dream about in a few moments. tysm in advance 😭.

- 🥣.

i'm so sorry this took me so long to write, my love! this has nothing to do with you i just got a bit concerned and got lost so many times lmfao, im just dumb like that

ʚɞ

naturally, carmen wants to try to keep his anger away from you. you’re his love, his angel, his everything. the idea that he blew up at you makes him wanna cry but you won’t talk to him, you refuse to in fact until you process what he said.

“why the fuck are you here?! i don’t need you messing shit up and crowding me!” he yelled at you. the memory fresh in your mind. it should be since it’s the only thing you’ve thought about for the past few days.

nat and pete, in their own ways, notice this and take charge. pete thinks you two can handle it but nat chimes in with the, “i know my brother. he can’t handle shit. If this is left up to him to resolve, nothing will happen. i love him but still.”

so they form their plan. pete invites carmy over to set up furniture, catch up, whatever and nat invites you over to talk about the baby and ask for your help with meal prepping. “so, have you and my brother talked about what happened at the restaraunt?” she asks.

you walk over to the couch, putting on your jacket and scarf. you let out a scoff as your answer. “taking that as a no.” nat answers. you put your hand on the doorknob, your back to the front lawn where carmen and pete, unknowing to you, stand.

"look, you know I love Carmen. and you know i want-" you sigh. "i want a family with him, Nat. i want a child, or children, with the guy. but your brother can be a real piece of shit sometimes." You open the door fully at that point, where carmen's now staring at you.

"i'm a piece of shit, after i apologized to you?" carmen asks. you stare at him before looking at pete, then at natalie whose got a guilty smile on her face. "okay. what the hell is this?" You question.

"oh! carmy, hi! i had no idea you were gonna be here. come on in, we'll all have some coffee and we can talk about what's happening." natalie says as she pulls you inside, motioning for carmen to come inside.

he reluctantly agrees, stepping inside as he sits at the dining room table. you stand in the kitchen, far enough away from them.

i think once nat reveals that you told her you want kids his reaction changes. maybe you two talked about it or maybe he doesnt know but either way, he wants to talk to you. that changes things in his mind. because you still want kids with him.

while you and carm work out your own issues, of course nat and pete take credit for it, even though you and carmy are both mad at her. also the idea of carmen using your full name as a way to call you stop oh my gosh

#maeberzatto #mae writes!#mae writes: the bear #mae has mail! 💌#mae's anons!#bowl anon #carmen berzatto imagine #carmen berzatto fluff #carmen berzatto x reader #carmen berzatto x you #the bear fx #the bear hulu #carmen berzatto fanfiction #mae answers your asks!#mae answers: carmen and reader making up</3

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ilynpilled · 1 year

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This kind of read still existing legitimately drives me up the wall. One of the worst things GoT has done is turn Brienne into such a one note character when it comes to her emotions which in turn birthed “Brienne being in love with a character who she had a very integral mutual dynamic with all throughout the series and crying about it??? uhhh good job reducing a strong female character!!” Like yall are just saying words. A female character having a love interest and a romantic arc does not reduce her. A “strong female character” being vulnerable and emotional is not counterintuitive. With a character as unconventional as Brienne a romantic arc is pretty cool actually. I am certainly not saying its underrepresented with female characters (it often frustratingly sidelines them in fact), but it is when it comes to characters like her. She is a young woman who yearns for intimacy and love in a world where she is ostracized and deemed unlovable for physical traits out of her control. Where women are valued for the physical attractiveness. She falls in love, and it is extremely scary for her, it is one of the main things we know about her. She IS a romantic heroine as well. And no, her lesson should not be: “dumb naive girl falling in love with pretty men?? do not do that let love and romance go and be a warrior who represses all of her desires for eternity or settle.” When she falls for Jaime she does not fall for a surface either. That is the point of their whole dynamic. Like it is not at all like with Renly, it is the opposite. She had a terrible impression of him based on preconceived notions and his actual behavior, she saw him at his worst, she was at the receiving end of the persona that became a part of him, until she watched him lay himself bare over time to her. She also is not delusional about him right now either. She knows him intimately, she knows all of his sins and his virtues. She does not trust easily, but she chooses to trust him. That is meant to be brave for her character. Renly was very much a safe and distant star for her. It was not true vulnerability, she never entertained the idea of truly having him. It was love from a comfortable distance. She craves that comfortable distance which is why she is trying to repress her very obvious emotions for Jaime. Jaime is gonna be a stage that is not that. A female character being in love with and having a connection to a male character is not inherently reducing her to a love interest. George dwells so much on Brienne and how her emotions work, it is complex and well written and an aspect of HER character. Within the framework of Brienne’s story Jaime is her love interest, not the other way around. Putting her into a box when it comes to how she should behave because of her “archetype” is the opposite of the point of her character. Personally, some of my favorite Brienne moments in the books is when she is being vulnerable, when she is falling in love and struggling with that. If you view that as dehumanizing for a character, I think you are out of your mind.

#still getting GoT/asoiaf shit on my twitter i might kms #brienne of tarth #jaime x brienne #discourse

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iloveyanderes · 1 year

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Based off a fic on Wattpad called everyone loves chuuya by krysing, you should go read it it's a complete 10/10.

The pull was very close, I'll try my absolute hardest to get done with part two, I promise you, anyway here is the fic:

Part one:

People were acting weird today, it's the first thing you noticed, by weird you mean everyone staring at you.

First it was your commanding officer, then your coworkers, and now people on the street's.

Getting some food your astonished when the waiter tells you it's free, did you do something in your last mission that was recorded and sent to the public?

Suddenly your phone rang, not your normal phone but your work phone, must be important.

Answering it you immediately say the basics of when your boss calls you, this serious tone you've managed to prefect ultimately failed you when you heard the news.

"name, your getting promoted to the hunting dogs" spitting out the coffee you had, you look around to discovering everyone yet again staring at you, though they had been doing that for at least 30 minutes.

Turning back to your phone you whisper into it, "please elaborate"

"today the commander himself decided that you were worthy enough to join the hunting dogs, all of the members agreed with this" your coworkers said.

In that moment the excitement you felt was nothing short of pure ecstasy, you had to stop yourself from screaming on the top of your lungs.

Slapping money on the table despite the fact that you were told it was free you rush back to headquarters and celebrate.

You run back, soon becoming aware of the person following you, keeping your smile to play dumb you wait for the attack.

In the distance mark twain had eyes one you, holding a tranquilizer gun he was preparing to shoot.

Counting down you wait for the shoot.

Three...

Get closer to a moveable metal

Two...

Don't see any.

One...

Stop sign!

Grabbing a stop sign you deflect the gun shot onto the ground, wait is that a tranquilizer? Hm he's not going for the kill.

Another dart came down and you just barely dodged it, they tip piercing your shoulder.

You need cover, and you need it right now.

Blocking one final bullet you duck into a subway and immediately exit mark twains view.

As you were making your grand escape mark was sighing over the fact that his boss was gonna get pissed over the fact he let you get away.

"why does he want this person again?.." he mumbled out loud, ow well he forgot, it's not like he doesn't share the feelings of his boss.

Once you were deep enough in the train station you finally allowed yourself to get a moment of calm.

You very briefly got a look at that guy since he was above you and shooting at you but you recognized him as some guy working for the guild in america.

What does the guild want with you?

Well you should get back to headquarters as fast as possible and report thi-

"hey guys!?! I'm lost!!!!" Yelled a voice, you looked up to some guy waving his hands up and down like a maniac.

'should I help him?' you thought, preparing to leave you were stopped when he made eye contact, he had short black hair and green eyes, wearing a hat and some weird detective gear.

"you!" He suddenly pointed at you, "you must come with me!" What???

What is he talking about, you didn't have a moment to register what was going on because he grabbed your hand and pulled you with him.

This guy had no idea where he was going because he pulled you to random places before finally getting to his destination.

'is this the armed detective agency? I've never been here before'

Your wrist began to hurt the moment he dragged you into the agency.

Wait a moment!? If this is a detective agency you could probably take shelter here!

The moment you and this random dude step In everyone is immediately on you.

"are you really name!"

"can I have your autograph!"

"your hair is amazing!!!"

"commit double suicide with me!"

"shut up dazai!" Screamed everyone on the room.

It was a bit more silent after that, you decided to speak up then.

"um.. who are you guys?.." simultaneously they all stopped to stare at you.

"I'm kenji" said a small blond.

"Atsushi!"

"I'm kunikida"

They all took turns introducing themselves until it got to the person who had dragged you here.

"I'm ranpo"

Ranpo...

"well it's really nice to meet you all, I remember your an agency right?"

"yeah!"

"do you mind if I stay with you guys for a bit? before I came here I think someone from the guild was hunting me down"

"you can stay forever" atsushi said before covering ranpo covered his mouth.

"what he means is that you can stay as long as you like" ranpo exclaimed, almost strangling atsushi,

you found this a bit odd, "well thank you!"

{time skip because I don't have the will to write this scene anymore}

the armed detective agency offered to let you stay in one of their rooms, but you declined because you didn't want to bother them, a bit of arguing had commenced before yasano finally let you sleep in the medic center, the bed was not the greatest but you've slept on far worse things before.

normally it be easy for you to sleep but fate had different plans today, around 1 am you heard sounds coming from another room, placing a knife in a secret pocket in your skirt you investigate.

the main room where everyone chilaxed was where the sound came from, rubbing your ears a bit the sound was coming from one of the couches.

the left one, where you saw dazai earlier, placing your ears against it, the sound of ticking became apparent.

oh shit.

three seconds was all you had before the bomb exploded, it was large enough that it damaged you seriously, hitting you left leg and upper body, your arms made it out okay, probably just some first degree burns.

the stinging pain was then accompanied the windows shattering, not because of the explosion but people breaking in.

'wait the port mafia is also following me!' oh crap, this is bad, you could fight that twain guy earlier because you were in tip top shape but now your legs are in agony and you have some serious burns.

one of the people who broke in was a small ginger with a fancy hat, he took one look at you, got angry and then yelled at the weird looking dude beside him.

"kajii! what did I say about hurting her, you said everything would be fine and look at her now!"

"how was I supposed to know that she'd go near my bombs!"

"make ones that don't have noises beforehand!"

wow, you are not prepared to deal with this bullshit, while those two idiots were arguing you prepared to run outside and warn the others.

only to be stopped by some edgy looking guy, "out of my way" you commanded, keeping your voice as strong as possible despite the disgusting pain.

"I can't let you leave" his voice was more firm then yours,more determined, hah! you'll show him determined.

now you have two options run or fight, you may be still able to fight but this guy is obviously an ability user, you'll have to be careful.

eventually you opt to run, bolting down the hallway ignoring the sting coming from your legs,to add onto the pain the knife you had placed on your thigh pocket fell out of it slightly and pierced your leg.

before you could yelp, weird black almost cloak like things grabbed your waist, arms, and legs pulling you backwards.

before you made it to the edgy guy dazai appeared out of nowhere and touched him, within a instant the weird black things vanished, and you bolted once again.

what the actual heck was going on!?

you couldn't think anymore only run, the port mafia was too busy fighting the armed detective agency to notice that you fled, you felt very bad about leaving the ada alone but something told you that they'll be okay.

though you might not be okay, you were slowing down, your vision going a black, and to add to all of it rain started to poor making you shiver.

when you reached a back alleyway your legs finally collapsed on you, the last thing you saw before you passed out was two boys.

one was a blond with an even weirder hat then the one you saw earlier with the ginger.

and the other....were those tentacles?

just as your sense's started to go to black you heard the blonde says something.

"woah is that the target! earlier mark was complaining about how hard she was to catch, she looks beat up, the boss is gonna be mad"

I knew I wasn't lucky enough to get a promotion and then nothing bad happen to me.

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mittensmorgul · 4 months

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Kitchen Nightmares

That's what Mr. Mittens has dubbed the day i have been having. And it's fitting.

Important to know before I begin this tale, though not actually part of the tale:

Our heat pump has been awaiting repairs for about a week now. The heat works, but not WELL. It's painful knowing we're paying like 3x what we should be to keep the house warm while waiting for the Very Expensive Part needed to fix the thing. The part has been received by the repairdude and he's coming out tomorrow to complete the Very Expensive Repair, but in the meantime, we're trying desperately not to run the heat as much as possible. It would kinda suck to break it even worse (and even More Expensively) right before it's scheduled to get fixed.

Okay, now back to the actual Kitchen Portion of this essay...

Last night, I thought it would be fun to make dutch babies as a late night snack. Wednesday is Mr. Mittens' night off every week, and we always have some sort of pastry or other sweet treat with our coffee and then watch bad tv together for a few hours. It's a tradition! So my sister gave us a recipe for dutch babies made in a muffin tin... tiny dutch babies! What a fun idea, right?!

Well I got the ingredients all measured out into the blender, go to turn it on, and... the motor whirs and it SOUNDS like something should be happening, but nothing is actually happening! the ingredients remain a congealed mass in the bottom of the blender.

When I lift the pitcher to make sure i got the blades in securely or whatever, a bunch of heavy plastic nubs go skittering across the counter. These are the nubs on the blender base that engage the blades inside the pitcher. And they are very clearly no longer attached to the blender.

Now, this is a fairly old blender. I've probably had it about 20 years. I don't use it very often, but when I do, it's because I specifically need a blender for that task. And it's a Good Quality Blender! It's a Kitchen Aid! It's not supposed to do this! But it did... with a cup of flour, a cup of milk, and four eggs rapidly turning into something resembling wet concrete in the bottom of the pitcher.

Well, luckily i also own an immersion blender, but I'm not dumb enough to jam it down into the big blender pitcher to engage in some sort of hand-held spinning blades duel, so I scrape all that pseudo-batter into a mixing bowl and have at it. All the while, the muffin tin has been pre-heating in the oven and is starting to smell a little strange.

I pull it out, drop a pat of butter into each well, and pour in the batter, which i'm already not sure retains the correct proportions of ingredients, since it was truly impossible to get everything out of the blender. I was doing my best! I WAS DOING MY BEST!

My best was truly sub-par...

So i get it in the oven, and toward the end of the bake time, it was getting a little smokey in there. Ah, crap, some of the batter overflowed and splatted on the bottom of the oven, but the dutch babies actually turned out pretty tasty! So at least there's that... Aside from being like three times as messy as they should've been, and requiring a lot more cleanup than it should've taken, and my now destroyed blender that I'm pretty sure can't be repaired... well... it was almost one in the morning, i was tired, the oven was still hot, I figured I'd just clean up the spilled mess in the oven in the morning.

That... was a mistake.

Because by morning, I'd totally forgotten about it.

Until Mr. Mittens decided he'd make himself a frozen pizza. So he turned on the oven.

The kiddo was in the kitchen toasting a bagel, I was in the living room typing on my laptop, and when he went in to put the pizza in the oven, the kid was like "uh i think something's smoking a little in there?"

And they opened the oven door only to find it was literally on fire!

so... they closed the oven door and called out to me to alert me to this fact.

"uh, hon... i think the oven's on fire..."

and since this is apparently an event beyond the comprehension of my spouse and my adult kid, I put down the laptop and drag my ass out of my chair and go in the kitchen.

Mr. Mittens and kiddo are just standing there, staring at the smoke now pouring out of the oven vent, like... okay what do we do now?

I was like "wait, you saw fire and just closed the oven door?"

they shrug

I began by turning off the oven, as you do in circumstances like these, then opened the door and started... trying to blow out the fire. as you do... ?

when that quite obviously failed, i grabbed the fire extinguisher and had the fire out in like half a second.

But then I had twice as much mess to clean up as I would've if I'd only remembered the stupid dutch baby spill before the oven got turned on again.

So... mr mittens dejectedly put his pizza back in the freezer and i waited for the oven to get cool enough to clean. I couldn't even air out the house, because it's below freezing outside, and my poor heat pump would've likely exploded trying to counteract having all the damn windows open. So we sat in our smoky house while I made us grilled cheese sandwiches and waited for the oven to cool off.

Then I cleaned out the entire damn oven, and it's fine, nothing truly damaged, just a little bit gross. Thank heck. If anything else breaks, I might start screaming and not be able to stop.

I also don't want to clean anything else. But unfortunately I need to do laundry next... At least I had a nice grilled cheese, and some dutch babies. And the oven's clean.

#my life as a muppet #story time #i really liked that blender and i almost cried when i saw how much a new one in the current model costs #guess i won't have a blender for a while >.>#at least i don't need to replace the whole range... i definitely would've cried omfg...

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samble · 2 months

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kyubey's main defense for "why do you cause the suffering and deaths of billions, if not trillions, of children?" is something about how the magical girl system (girls contracting, girls turning into witches, etc) creates energy to combat entropy and the heat death of the universe. while kyubey and incubators as a whole are presented as extremely advanced, logical, and emotionless as a species, this "defense" shows how irrational and paranoid they are.

the universe is still in its "early" years. it is not near its end or even its middle years in any sense of the word. entropy and heat death will not be any concern in the slightest for trillions of years, and that's an absolute low ball amount based on my pathetic math skill guess of the figures. the actual year estimates until heat death i can find all have numbers so large they aren't even written out normally, they're written using scientific notation. a few have said numbers listed like "1.7×10^106yrs (if protons decay)". that is a truly unfathomable amount of time.

yet the Facts And Logic, "why is human thought so irrational?" species is so worked up over this far future event (that is not an immediate threat in any way, shape, or form) that they use their irrational paranoia over it to justify murdering children and causing them to turn into the literal personifications of their own personal misery. "for the greater good" and "the ends justify the means" don't apply when the argument is this backwards.

even if you want to headcanon that maybe entropy was approaching at some point, and they had to beat it back before, which is why they're so worried — it's implied in canon that the present day pmmmverse is in no immediate danger. besides the fact that they'd likely be issuing contracts to literally anyone and everyone if that were the case, all that is said is that madoka witching out caps their necessary quota or something, so they don't need to worry about it for now. this sort of implies that it's not a current crisis, or else why would they stop the second they met this "cap"? why not continue elsewhere to get extra energy?

if incubators are immortal and are concerned for that reason, they have a literal infinite time to figure out a better or more convenient solution. current human theory already has questioned whether things like creating other/new universes intentionally is possible (and seeing that ours exist, "creating universes" is clearly possible Somehow). why not try to contact (adult) humans and exchange information or theories? sure, incubators are supposed to be highly intelligent and almost see humans as cattle, but they've been outsmarted by even human Children before in canon (madoka's wish being the prime example, and that was something thought out by a middle schooler). logic can only go so far, and this is said by someone who, irl, tends to look and act like the -_- emoji when not masking. humans could toss "dumb/silly" ideas at the wall, and incubators could use their advanced technologies and experience to see if they would work. perhaps a solution to escaping the universe/preventing heat death/etc could be found via cooperation, as opposed to "we must murder children because we are scared of something that will happen a zillion years from today, it's not our fault 🥺". many a human idea has been born simply out of "i wonder if this will work?" as opposed to only sticking to logical steps or only doing one thing forever, because you know that One thing For Sure works. even if it's tedious/more trouble than it's worth for the outcome. but incubators do not know or try this, because due to canon implications, it seems their MO has always been "lets murder the populace for miniscule amounts of energy" (as seen by the alien magical girl in one of the games) instead of "maybe we should try to find a solution together".

#pmmm #madoka magica #madomagi #essays #<- ish #upl #sambling

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just-a-space-rabbit · 15 days

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Henchman's homework 😐📝🐕

Based on this prompt by: @heroes-villains-side-blog TW: none!

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“Supervillain ate my homework…” Henchman said flatly. They felt so stupid hearing their own words, but what else were they going to do? lie?

Professor looked up from their several piles of paperwork with a raised eyebrow. ‘Why am I doing this?’ Henchman thought. ‘Clearly Professor did not believe that, because why would they!’

“Is Supervillain your dog's name…? Or…?” Professor asked, confused.

Henchman twisted uncomfortably on the spot, their face were not really showing any clear emotions, before mumbling a small “no… ”

Professor just looked at them stunned for a while. The excuse was one thing, but the fact that the excuse was coming from Henchman of all people. That's another level. “So you are really trying to tell me that Supervillain, THE SUPERVILLAIN ate your homework?”

Henchman bit their lip, not meeting Professors eyes as they nodded. Internally they began to curse themself. ‘How am I even going to explain this without outing myself as a villain? Can’t just go all. ‘Yeah, Scientist had an experiment gone wrong making all this mess!’ This was such a dumb idea, I should have just taken the fail grade instead!’

“I… Henchman, you cannot possibly think that I can believe that?” Professor said, while trying their best not to sound too harsh on them. “Firstly, how did Supervillain even eat your homework? Or for a better question, why would Supervillain eat your homework?”

A small silence fell in-between the two as Henchman froze trying to form a single sentence. Finally there was a small nervous sound as Henchman asked them “He… he turned into a dog?”

“What?”

“A Big Dog! Giant even! Might have been one of Scientist's experiments that went badly wrong, turning Supervillain into it… or something like that… I don’t know….” Henchman added even more nerves as the professor's confused look began to stress them out. ‘Oh god this is not going to end well…’

“Ok, that is certainly an interesting story, but how did that end up with your homework being eaten?”

At those words all the color drained from Henchman’s face as they tried to find the least suspicious words they could. “Well, I… um… my home was caught in the crossfire,” they said. “I had just come home from printing my homework at the library.” Which was technically true, as they lived at Supervillain’s lair. But the library was really just the office room.

“When Supervillain just burst through the door and ate it! Before they left, running off to cause mayhem somewhere else… It was on the news!” They said before adding, “not them eating my homework! But Supervillain, as a dog, was on the news… so you might have seen it.”

“Do I look like someone that has time to watch the news recently?” Professor said as they were getting frustrated at this outlandish story.

Henchman's eyes glanced away for a second, onto the professor's desk that was filled with coffee cups and exam papers. “I guess not… hang on a moment.” Henchman said, before they dragged out their phone typing away. “Here it is,” they said, handing the phone over to Professor.

The photo cover of the article showed what looked to be a giant dog, it was towering over the hero that it was mid fighting, or playing? The dog was covered in a ripped up supersuit with but the outline and color did seem to match Supervillain’s logo on it.

There was an inaudible noise as Professor looked further into the article. “Well, that is certainly something…” they said, trying to get back on track. “HANG ON!” they suddenly yelled. “If you were printing the homework, then why didn’t you just print a new one?”

“Oh… yeah… that” Henchman said as they opened their mail styled bag bringing out what seemed to be some form of electronic junk. “Supervillain also ate my laptop. Sadly the part they ate had the harddrive on it and I had not made a backup…”

Professor stared at the laptop in disbelief for what felt like ages. The laptop that had very clear, and very giant teeth marks outlining a missing chunk. Snapping back into the present there was a small “Um, Henchman?”

“Yes, professor?”

“Why did you not start with showing me that?” they asked, trying to fold back the flood gate of questions.

“I... I did not think about that…”

#heroes and villains community #hero and villain #henchman #heroes and villains #snippet #supervillain #small snippet

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olivia-anderson-fanfic · 3 months

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OHSHCAU (Keysmash)

Part 3

You know how, when the school year starts up, a teacher might get everyone to go around the room and give a couple of vague facts about themselves? Or, even worse, they might split everyone up into teams based on some random, inconsequential factors and they would all be forced to work together on some dumb task? That way they can get to know new people better?

You know how everyone hates that?

Yeah. Marinette thought that, of all people, her fellow high schoolers would understand. But alas, here she was, glaring down Dick because he wanted to do a team-building exercise. Bastard. She was going to shoot him.

With a paintball gun! Because they were playing paintball!

Do not send cops her way! She will introduce neurotoxins to your system!

Anyways, she had no choice but to agree. Debt’s a bitch.

And, maybe, the idea of shooting the Waynes point blank in the face with paintballs would have swayed her regardless, but who knows. The option was never truly given to her, so who’s to say how she would have reacted?

Certainly, the Waynes would never know.

Which was probably for the best. They could end her life in a couple of phone calls.

She hummed as she absently messed with her paintball gun. They had been split off into pairs. Steph was still on the bench thanks to her copious amounts of injuries, unfortunately, so Marinette hadn’t particularly minded who she was going to end up with (she hated all of the Waynes equally, save fucking Tim, who would avoid her, anyway), and had allowed them to all pair off and leave her with the leftovers.

She was regretting that, now, of course.

Dick wrapped his arm around her shoulders and tugged her into his side. “Don’t get too competitive, please?” He said, and he sounded like he was one more ‘fuck you’ away from begging.

She glanced over his shoulder and found Tim making faces at her behind his back. He was supposed to be heading to one of the other nondescript, frankly unnerving steel tunnels that would lead them to a random place on the map. He should be spending this time with Damian so they could discuss their plans. He was not doing any of these things. He had followed Marinette and Dick to their room instead, and she would be concerned about him trying to figure out where they would end up for the sake of a tactical advantage… but, frankly, that was too smart for him.

He had no good reason to be here. How sweet of him to want to see her off.

She looked back at Dick, her eyes gleaming. “Of course I won’t. Only babies get competitive over stuff like this.”

Tim bristled. But his mic was on, so he was unable to say a word in protest. He could turn his face away from the people to mouth the curses he so clearly wanted to scream, but she could just look in another direction.

Her lips twitched into a kind of grin before she tamped it down.

Dick sighed. Deeply. “I’m guessing I can take that as a no.”

“Aw. You know me so well.”

He snickered. “Well, I’d hope so, since I hired you.”

“No one has ever lied to the people hiring them ever,” she said, nodding sagely.

He grinned. “Which is why we went with… atypical hiring practices.”

“You’ve basically kidnapped me and decided to hold my entire future ransom to make me work for you.”

“Shhhhhhhhh.”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Oh, Marinette,” a voice called, and she was more than happy to let Steph drag her out from under Dick’s arm, even if this meant that a new arm was wrapped around her waist and a face came to rest close to her own.

Marinette raised an eyebrow, but wasn’t too surprised at the sudden closeness. They’d literally slept together, in the same bed, for days. She could handle a little bit of contact. And, besides, they’d both agreed that it fit their characters (a playful flirt would flirt with a girl next door, and a girl next door would blush and let it happen) and it would draw in more customers. Teenage boys and gay teenage girls would both rather enjoy watching ‘wlw content’ when given the option.

Besides, who doesn’t flirt with their friends a little? Now they got to monetize it. A win.

Marinette rested a lazy arm over Steph’s shoulder, careful not to jostle the microphone hovering by the girl’s chin. She gave it a pointed look, and Steph mouthed the word ‘off’. She untensed a little. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Your mic is off.”

“I didn’t get one,” she said, shrugging.

Steph blinked. “Oh. I can give you mine.”

“Well, if I accept that, how am I going to insult Tim without the audience knowing?”

Dick snickered. “You could try not insulting him.”

Marinette gave him a blank look.

He shrugged as if to say ‘well, I tried’. Which, did he really?

But her attention was quickly stolen away when Steph pulled something out from behind her ear and then presented it to Marinette, who looked at it how one might look at a dead rat their cat had just brought in.

“What the hell is that?”

“A mic,” Dick offered.

She glared at him out of the corner of her eyes, and then snapped her attention back to Steph when the girl leaned in to fit the device over her ear. “You’re not putting that on me.”

“What, is the scientist scared of technology?” teased Dick.

She gritted her teeth. “Chemicals are easy to understand. They’re predictable. This? Unreliable. Who knows who's listening in on those wavelengths.”

There was a beat of silence. The two Waynes looked at each other for a moment, something unreadable on their faces.

And then Dick sighed. “Listen, you know how our dad bankrolls the Batman?”

She nodded, still eyeing Steph as if the girl was going to jump her and attach the evil machine to her by force.

“Well, we get a couple of perks. Like this. If anyone tries to hack into these – which, really, why would they? – Batman will be alerted and I’m sure they will never be heard from again… or whatever it is he and his weirdo kids do.”

“Local Batman proves that all cops are corrupt,” she said, still eyeing it warily.

“Not a cop,” said Steph.

“Not corrupt,” said Dick.

She wasn’t sure who was being less realistic.

And it didn’t matter what they said, either way.

Batman was exactly the person she was trying to avoid, thank you very much. But it wasn’t like she could just say that, because being openly wary of the Batman in front of rich people was just begging for them to be suspicious of you. They were too used to their peers being affiliated with the Court of Owls. So, reluctantly, she let Steph place the mic.

The girl drew back slightly once she was sure everything was in place (and, more importantly, that it would stay in place even while they were all running around).

Steph grinned. “There. Done. All you’ve got to do now is press the button and you’ll be live. Anyways. Blush like I said something suuuuper hot, m’kay? They’re staring.”

“Maybe if you do something hot, I will.”

She hummed thoughtfully before she brought her free hand up to cradle Marinette’s face. She tilted her head up, her thumb caressing her cheek, their noses brushing. A quiet click sounded next to her ear as her headpiece was turned on.

“Fixed,” Steph said. Quiet, but close enough to the mic hovering by Marinette’s chin for their audience to hear.

“Thanks,” Marinette mumbled. Thank god she had melanin to hide the reddening of her face somewhat, but she was pretty sure it was obvious regardless.

“Anytime,” Steph teased, going so far as to press a kiss to Marinette’s nose before drawing back. She glanced at Dick. “Your mic is off, too.”

“What, not going to fix mine for me?” Dick joked, lifting a lazy hand to flick the knob by his ear.

Steph snorted. “I’d rather die.”

Dick grinned and immediately tugged Marinette closer to him again. Woe is her. If only she could retaliate by beating his ass like she so wants to do. She hates debt. Thankfully, he didn’t wrap an arm around her this time, instead he let her go in favor of crossing his arms over his chest. “You’re just jealous that you don’t get to teach this sweet little underclassman the ropes.”

Marinette was fighting a valiant battle with her face, trying to keep the unimpressed annoyance off of it. “You’re so kind.”

“Of course! It’s my job as the club leader to make sure that your introduction to the group goes smoothly!”

They wouldn’t be bothering with all of this otherwise.

For you see, a large part of being a Host was based around how physically attractive you were, and if they wanted her to be popular enough to pay off her debt, they would have to introduce her to the potential customers in a way that would draw their attention in that way. So, it had been decided that Marinette’s official introduction should be some kind of physical activity. Especially since their clients were all fellow teens, and likely would see a bunch of people fighting for their lives in slightly skimpy clothes and go ‘ooooooooooh’.

Steph rolled her eyes so hard she must have seen her brain back there. “It would have been easier if we’d just done a pool party.”

“My! A pool party?! Steph, have you no shame? What about her innocence?!”

“Dick. She’s wearing a crop top and yoga pants.”

“A crop top, yoga pants, and tasteful armor,” said Dick. His attempts at defending her honor were… definitely attempts. Marinette could give him that.

Marinette crossed her arms over her chest, grinning. “Would you prefer I work out in a hoodie and sweats?”

“Well,” said Steph. She brought her hands up to press against her own chest, winking. “I don’t want that.”

A glance up at the crowd showed that the people had caught the jist of what she’d said thanks to the overdramatic body language she had opted for. Thankfully. Marinette wasn’t sure how to naturally repeat that for the sake of the people watching.

Her eyes caught on one particular person in the crowd, though.

Fu, leaning against his cane heavily, watching her.

“Alright, Steph, stop flirting with the new recruit,” Dick said, slinging his arm over Marinette’s shoulders again, tugging her closer to his side. “Shoo. Scram. Other synonyms that start with ‘s’. I need to teach her how to shoot – shoot! No, wait, I’m thinking of ‘shoo’, and I’m pretty sure I already said that. Anyways. Leave so I can teach her.”

Marinette’s head jerked around to look at him, her eyebrows disappearing behind her hairline. “I know how to shoot. You just…”

She pointed her paintball gun at a nearby wall and pulled the trigger. A disappointed look crossed her face when, despite the gun clicking to tell her that the trigger was working, nothing came out.

“Hm,” she said, eloquently.

He snickered. “Well, I know why that happened, but before we fix that…” He reached a hand out to adjust her fingers. “Let’s not keep our fingers on the trigger. Unless you want to shoot at anything that dares to surprise you.”

Marinette absolutely wanted that. Unfortunately, she couldn’t say that while in character, so she was stuck smiling and saying, “Thanks, Richard.”

“Dick,” he corrected lightly, as usual.

“You don’t understand how much I can not call you that,” she said. Even if Dick was, often, a dick, and she didn’t usually mind going with whatever nickname or name someone called themself, it’s hard to say the word and still come across as demure.

“Well, then, you can call me something else. How does ‘my liege’ sound?”

Marinette snickered into her hand. “Terrible, King.”

“Oh. Hate that.”

“Got it, Queen.”

He sighed.

“Themporer?” she tried, batting her eyelashes.

“How many of those do you have?”

“So many, gender nonspecific monarch.”

“That one feels like a stretch.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, it is a bit of a mouthful.”

“You know, I’m starting to realize that you use humor to stall.”

Marinette’s face flushed at the direct callout. That had been unnecessary. And she couldn’t even curse him out for it. She hated life.

Whatever. She’d roll with it (not like she had any other choices). She gasped, pressing a hand to her chest. “What do you mean? I was trying to figure out your royal-title-specific pronoun preferences! I had only the best of intentions.”

“Of course, of course. Pretend to get ready to shoot your gun.”

Marinette huffed, mumbling that he was ‘no fun’ as she lifted her paintball gun.

He walked around her slowly, knocking his foot against the inside of her own until she moved them to be shoulder width apart, bending her arms so the recoil wouldn’t hurt as much, bending her knees slightly so she wouldn’t fall over at the lightest of hits…

“You sure know a lot about this,” Marinette said, eyeing him warily.

“Dad made me take some self-defense classes after I got held for ransom for the eight and a half-th time.”

“Eight times is a lot but I guess that’s still surprisingly competent for hi – wait, half-th?”

“Yeah!” he said, and then did not elaborate.

She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting.

He checked her form one last time before nodding to himself. He squinted at her gun for a moment, before cringing.

“I – uh – I’m not used to turning off the safety from an outsider’s point of view…”

“Then here,” she said, starting to stand up straighter and hand it over to him, only for him to rapidly shake his head.

“No, no, no, we need you in that position for as long as possible to get your body used to it.”

Marinette fought back a grimace, her eyes briefly flicking to the people still watching them intently. Dick, as the self-proclaimed ‘king’ of the Host Club, was easily the most popular among guests. She did not want to put a target on her back by looking like she was trying to come onto him. Or because it might look like he was coming onto her. She hated this fucking job. They were coworkers, damn it. She shouldn’t be stressing about getting, like, Court of Owls-style assassinated for being near him!

“Just – just… do it quick,” she said.

He nodded sharply.

Arms wrapped around her from behind, a chin coming to rest upon her shoulder. Warm breath just barely wafted over the side of her neck, earning a few goosebumps. His hands ghosted over the back of her own, briefly, fixing the positioning of her fingers once again (he really didn’t like her tendency to hang onto the trigger, apparently) before flicking the safety off.

He pulled back the second everything was in order, hands up like he was already actively surrendering. They sent the people watching them mildly embarrassed looks. It isn’t doing them much good, though.

Quick! Take legitimacy away from the intimacy!

“I need to stop bringing desserts from home, you’re getting heavy.”

Dick spluttered. “What?”

“I said what I said.”

She would apologize later.

… wait, would Babs count mental damage as adding to her debt?

She was going to apologize so profusely later.

Dick sighed, running a hand through his hair, briefly pushing his bangs out of his eyes. “Tell me why we made you the girl next door again?”

“Out of ideas,” Marinette said.

“Right, right. Any chance we can change it?”

“Well, you’re the king and all, you can choose,” she said, before winking and blowing a kiss to the people up on the viewing platform. “But, hey, everyone knows that most ‘harsh’ people are just hurt people trying to protect themselves from more harm. I’m sure that, with the right person, I could actually be the soft, kind person I portray. After all, every act needs at least a little bit of truth to work, right?”

She glanced at Dick out of the corner of her eyes. He gave the barest trace of a nod.

Good.

She had a bit of a reputation in the school. Not really because she was outright mean to people – she would never say half the shit she said around Adrien and the host club members to people she didn’t know, not without good reason – but because pretty much every student knew about her… antagonistic relationship with Tim. Because during the last finals season they had only been a step above fistfighting in the middle of the hallway. And not even because they had been scared of punishment or expulsion, but instead because Duke and Steph had physically dragged Tim away before he could jump at her.

Whatever. It was totally water under the bridge and she definitely didn’t want him dead anymore.

(Yes, Tim and Marinette could just put aside their differences, and show that they had changed… but Marinette would rather just kill him, to be honest.)

Regardless, it would be hard to convince the general population that the person that had almost fought another member was all that shy and kind. So, they needed to rework her image. Recontextualize her personality.

Whether or not Marinette or any of the other host club members really believed what she was saying didn’t matter, all that mattered was that their guests believed it. Thankfully, they had years worth of toxic media to back up their claims, and the rich kids who had never had real reason to distrust what they’d been told fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Great. The goal for today is done. Now, if only she could get out of this stupid paintball tournament. She has changed her mind. A chance of shooting Tim in the face is not worth having to simulate a battle.

Maybe if she annoys Dick enough he might just call it off?

She watched him out of the corner of her eyes as they continued down the hallway. He caught her stare and, instead of being confused or upset or uncomfortable, sent her a tiny smile.

Yeah, she didn’t think it would work. You can’t annoy someone with as many younger siblings as he has. They are immune to outside annoyances by this age, she is pretty sure.

There’s no getting out of this.

She almost laughed. Story of her fucking life.

Dick rested his hand on the doorknob, glancing back at her.

“Ready?”

She flashed a wink. “As I’ll ever be.”

Their door opened up into what seemed to be a trench, carved into the ground. Once they had clambered out of the trench, their clothes already stained with dirt (at least she didn’t have to pay for any of it), they found themselves in a heavily wooded area, with a couple of concrete structures dotted around.

She walked to a nearby tree. All of them looked long dead, blackened, as if they had been burned. As if this was a real battlefield.

She rapped her knuckles against it lightly, and wasn’t surprised to find that, whatever it was made of, it wasn’t organic material. Judging by the sound, she would guess styrofoam, paper mache, paint, and a dream.

A quick check of one of the structures revealed it to have no ceiling.

The entire world around them was fabricated to give the people so far above them, standing on the glass and peering down at them with excited grins she didn’t want to look at, a good view of what was going on. No leaves, no roofs, nothing was allowed to take away from their fun.

Oh shit, she thought. This is what it feels like to be in the Hunger Games.

Or to be in one of Riddler’s escape rooms, she supposed.

She watched Dick carefully toeing at the dirt, checking to see how far down it went. Whether it could actually be used as padding, or if the metal hidden beneath would give some nasty bruises if someone fell on it for any reason. Such as dramatically falling over when shot ‘dead’.

Her lips twitched into a wry kind of grin. And he’s supposed to be the ‘dumbest’ one. Who does he think that he’s fooling?

It wasn’t until long after he had confirmed that the ground was, in fact, soft enough for them all to drop dead on without issue, that an alarm alerted them to the fact that the grace period was over, and they were now supposed to be hunting each other to the death.

Marinette brushed her bangs away from her eyes, taking advantage of the opportunity to see how the audience had dispersed themselves. They were, largely, grouped into four spots. No guesses why. Sureeeeeely not because this was where the four pairs of competitors were…

Okay, that wasn’t fair to the customers. There was no way for them to know that the glass wasn’t a one way mirror like they’d been told. They shouldn’t be aware of the fact that this was all a play that had been planned out well in advance. The Waynes weren’t the types to let on that they weren’t quite as ‘airheaded’ as they often portrayed themselves to be, for whatever reason.

Still… Marinette stretched lazily, rocking back and forth on her feet, trying not to laugh aloud at just how obvious they were all being.

“So, are we heading to the center or skirting around the edges?” she asked.

“Center,” he said, because that was where most of the male clients were, and therefore where Babs and Cass were likely to be. “Let’s see whether there’s a Hunger Games-style cornucopia or something.”

Marinette clicked her tongue lightly. “You can’t tell people what we’re ripping off.”

“I think they already know.”

She huffed, but it’s not as if she genuinely cared.

Without further ado, they were off.

*****

They happened across Babs and Cass in the middle. They seemed to be doing the same thing that Marinette and Dick were, picking around for anything that might be useful. As if the people who had made this place would make an entrance in a spot where they had special items.

“Find anything?” Dick asked, pointing his gun at Babs.

Cass retaliated by pointing her gun at him. He did not seem particularly pleased about this development.

Marinette wasn’t pleased, either, because this meant she had to point her gun at Cass in retaliation. Fuck this script for making her defend Dick Grayson of all people.

Their guests looked to Babs, expecting her to point her gun at Marinette and complete the circle, leading to a dramatic standoff…

Only for Babs to hold up her hands in the universal sign of surrender. “We don’t have to fight,” she said. “It’s better if we don’t. We can’t have Jason or Tim’s teams winning.”

If nothing else, Marinette had to admit that this strategy would have probably worked on her and Dick even if it wasn’t scripted. Because fuck Tim Drake. And, in Dick’s case, Jason, in particular, cannot win, because he would be insufferable about it. They would both take shady deals in a heartbeat if it meant that the other two teams wouldn’t win.

“What do you get from this?” Marinette asked, because it was expected of her.

Cass shrugged. “Fun.”

Valid reason. Marinette (and Dick, too, though she loathed to admit it) could sometimes be fun.

As for Babs…

“If we’re the last two teams, I want to shoot Dick in the face.”

Dick gave a screech of offense, complaining about his ‘beautiful face’. But Marinette sees now downsides! They shook on it before he could get a word in edgewise.

“Alright, team, let’s roll out,” said Babs.

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Dick whined.

“No. We are misandry-ing,” Marinette informed him.

“Perfect. Us girlies have to stick together,” Babs joked lightly.

“True. Can’t wait to kill ‘my liege’ for the sake of women everywhere,” Marinette said, snickering to herself.

Dick snorted at the ‘my liege’ callback, and then seemed to process what she had said. He pressed a hand to his chest. “Excuse you, I’m a girlie, too.”

“Woo, slay queen,” Marinette deadpanned. And then she frowned to herself. “Is ‘my liege’ a gendered term?”

“I… think so?” said Babs. The grammar rules for royalty is not the kind of thing the average teenager is looking up, after all. And, if Babs doesn’t know, then Cass (ESL speaker) and Dick (a liar pretending to be the ‘dumb one’ in a group already known for being stupid) had no shot. Pain. She must live without knowing for the next few hours. Why does god hate her so? Truly, she has suffered more than Jesus.

… perhaps it is jokes like that that make god hate her.

Whatever. She did not believe in Him, therefore He could not hurt her.

Anyways.

“Let’s roll out, then, I guess,” she said.

“Only I’m allowed to make that joke,” said Babs.

Marinette blinked. And then her face reddened. “Oh — I—!”

Cass shook her head in mock disappointment.

Marinette huffed. “Is it too late to un-team?”

“Nah, we shook on it, it’s binding,” Babs said.

Well. If that’s the case. They rolled ou— started off in search of others.

It was, honestly, a lot of meandering around. If they managed to go in the right direction too many times, the illusion would break, after all.

But, if nothing ‘entertaining’ was happening, they needed to work extra hard to have interesting conversations to listen in on. Which was hard. Usually, they entertained their guests by flirting, which was easy and didn’t take that much mental energy, but that was no longer really an option. They weren’t going to flirt with each other, especially since Dick and Cass were siblings and Dick and Babs were exes (Dick once again ruining things for everyone, shame on him). So…

Marinette walked alongside Babs. “If you don’t mind me asking, how the heck are you able to use your wheelchair when the ground is like this?” she said. The wheels didn’t look all that special, after all – it was all clearly high-quality, don’t get her wrong, but it wasn’t like she was looking at the wheelchair version of four wheel drive. And the gun in her lap was barely even moving.

“That’s the most fucked up question anyone’s ever asked me,” deadpanned Babs.

Marinette huffed. “Now, I just don’t think that’s true.”

“When have I ever lied?”

“I’m still convinced that the debt was a scam,” she sniffed.

Babs rolled her eyes but distinctly didn’t deny it. Because she couldn’t, clearly, not because she just didn’t feel that this was worth her time or energy. “This isn’t any worse than going down sidewalks.”

Marinette envisioned the Average Gotham Sidewalk. Then looked at the ground. She supposed that the sticks kind of resembled used syringes, now that she thought about it, and the dirt was surprisingly much smoother than the pothole-riddled concrete.

“Oh,” she said. “Okay, makes sense, yeah.”

Well. She had done her job. Someone else needs to pick up the slack, now.

Babs sent her a flat look that said she needed to say something that would interest the audience, not just her. She fought the urge to grumble under her breath. The microphone would pick that up, too.

She turned to look at Dick.

“Okay, philosophical question: if you are aware that you are in denial, is it really denial, or is it a weird form of acceptance?”

It was silent for a moment.

“Er… I guess… acceptance?”

“But then it’s not denial. Different stage,” Cass said.

“But if you’re aware of it, it can’t be denial,” Dick argued.

Babs sighed. “How ‘aware’ is this ‘awareness’? Because, I’m pretty sure, even people in denial kind of know things are weird.”

“Nonono, you’re aware of the denial,” said Marinette. “Like, you know the thing you’re in denial about is bad and you go ‘nahhhhh’. But it’s a conscious decision.”

“Then… ugh. Denial, I guess.”

Babs and Cass started arguing. Marinette was pretty sure this was the most talkative and passionate she had ever seen Cass.

As for the guests… they were either arguing vehemently themselves or watching other people argue with amused grins.

Marinette, discreetly, gave a little bow in Dick’s direction. He gave a huff of laughter.

By the time they stumbled across another person, Cass seemed pissed off enough to go all out. This wasn’t intentional, but it was still funny to watch Duke go from relatively calm and in control to immediately ducking behind a tree for cover for fear of death.

Until he started firing at them all, too, and they were forced to book it to the nearest shelter.

You might argue that they were cowards, and should help out Cass, and you’d be right, but…

They wouldn’t be much help, to be honest.

The way Duke and Cass were fighting was insane. Like they already knew what each other’s movements were going to be ahead of time, and thus were more intent on waiting for the other to slip up than outright outsmarting each other.

Marinette whistled lowly. “How often do you guys come here?”

“Here? This is the first time, actually,” said Dick, brightly. “But we have something like this back at the Manor.”

She hated rich people.

(This fact has been made abundantly clear over the past few chapters, but she would like to say it again. And again. For as many times as it would take for them to stop pulling Rich People Shit.)

“Woooow,” she said, trying to infuse as much fake cheeriness into her tone as was physically possible when her main thought was about how, technically, friendly fire is possible here. “What a perfectly amazing use of your money.”

He nodded his agreement. Whether or not it was joking did not matter when her blood was boiling beneath her skin. She started to lift her gun, intent on either helping Cass or betraying both Cass and Duke at once, only for a stray bullet to nail the wall by her head the moment she started to poke her head out.

She stared at the purple paint for a moment, eyes wide, before slowly shrinking back into hiding.

She was still pissed off, though!

Before her eyes could drift to Babs and she could weigh the moral implications of sending her out first, a handful of skittles was shoved in front of her face.

“Want some?” said Jason.

She nodded, taking all of the red ones and popping them in her mouth. Dick did the same, but with the green pieces, like a weirdo (who the hell prefers green?). Babs wasn’t nearly as picky, just taking a handful of the rest and popping them like pills.

And then she started to lift her gun.

Marinette nearly choked on her sweet treat.

“JASON?!” Dick yelped.

They scrambled for their own guns.

Jason managed to get a shot off on Babs before he was covered in yellow. Maybe they shot him more times than was strictly necessary, but that was what he deserved for using Skittles against them. Honestly, the fact that Dick didn’t believe in the death penalty was the only thing saving him right now.

As for Marinette… well, she had been too intent on looting his ‘corpse’ for more candy to bother with murdering him via paintball gun. After all, what if the Skittles ended up getting blood or — god forbid — paint on them? She wouldn’t even be able to kill him in retaliation for messing up her snack.

She grumbled when she found paintballs, but pocketed them for extra ammo, in case Cass won and needed more.

Then, finally, she procured her prize: a sharing size bag of candy.

Life is good.

Unless you are Jason Todd.

“Maaaaan,” he groaned. “Those are mine, y’know.”

“Shhhhh, you’re a corpse, you can’t speak,” Dick said, holding his hand out for some.

She set the paintballs in his hand instead.

And then watched on in horror as he bit down on one without thinking.

Dick stared at her for a moment, purple dripping from his mouth.

Marinette swallowed down the temptation to joke about him looking like a vampire in favor of frantically looking up whether paintballs were nontoxic or if they were about to cut this paintball tournament short.

… which she wouldn’t mind, actually, now that she thought about it...

She considered the google page saying that they were nontoxic (for humans, at least, apparently they were not good for animals, which Damian was going to be distressed about when he learned), wondering whether an ambulance visit would be added to her debt. And then decided she didn’t want to risk it.

“You’re fine.”

Want to know who wasn’t fine? Cass and Duke. Apparently, in the time it took for everything to settle, Duke and Cass had killed each other off. Or, well, Duke had slipped up and Cass had ‘died’ in solidarity with him. Mildly concerning behavior, but it was a paintball game and therefore has no real indication of actual behaviors. Hopefully. Marinette genuinely liked Cass.

No time to linger on that particular line of thought.

“If Tim wins I’m pulling a Cass,” Marinette told Dick.

Dick raised an eyebrow. “You’d already be ‘dead’ if Tim wins.”

She thought this over. “Then I’ll come back as a zombie and be killed again. Perfect.”

Jason did not seem to find this funny, but maybe he was still bitter about having his Skittles stolen. Dick grinned and, really, that’s all that matters.

“What do you think real life zombies are like?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Nonexistent.”

“Don’t know what I was expecting from the scientist,” he huffed.

“Fiiiiiine,” she said. She thought, long and hard, about what a real life zombie would be like. Blüdhaven got nuked a while back (deserved, fuck Blüdhaven), and she hadn’t yet heard of zombies, so radiation poisoning wasn’t going to do it. So probably an intentional thing — Jurassic Park style experimentation, or something. Which means that the circumstances would be controlled… except zombies would probably escape the labs, if Marinette were to ever see them. The body would have to be very cold to slow down decomposition. It wouldn’t even halt it entirely.

“Gross,” she decided.

Dick stared at her. “All that thought and you come up with ‘gross’?!”

“I’m not wrong. They’d be gross.”

“That is not the point!” he groaned. “Talk about whether you think they’d be fast or slow, strong or weak, intelligent or not! Talk about whether their decomposition would affect them!”

She snickered. “Careful, Richard, or you’re going to make people think you have a brain in there.”

For a moment, he froze. And then he purposefully relaxed, each muscle individually untensing, one by one. He laughed lightly, but it was a tad bit forced (when wasn’t it, though?). “Yeah, the zombies will come after me if they know.”

“Being stupid has its benefits, yeah?”

He chuckled humorlessly.

Before he could come up with a proper response, though, Tim wandered into their area, drawn by the sound of gunfire from Duke and Cass’s fight. Marinette and Dick pointed their guns at him immediately.

Tim narrowed his eyes. He pointed his gun at Marinette, but seemed hesitant.

Marinette fought off a smirk. She loved having plot armor. At the sight of her face, he only seemed more irritated, which was even better.

But there was nothing he could do.

He set his gun down.

“We could take him as hostage,” Dick offered. “See if that lures Damian –.”

“Nah, too risky,” said Marinette. Without any further ado, she shot Tim.

Tim fell over, and not entirely because that was standard for ‘dead’ people. He hugged himself. His dignity, breaking. In a very literal sense.

It was very quiet. Marinette’s hand found its way to her mouth.

Dick looked at her, his eyes wide and horrified.

“I know I hate you, but… I didn’t mean… I forgot that men have… Tim, I’m so sorry.”

Tim made a pitiful sound.

Shakily, he lifted a hand in a thumbs up.

She made a heart with her own hands. This did not seem to help in the slightest but, frankly, there wasn’t much else she could do.

Luckily, she didn’t need to think about it for long before she was distracted — a voice called from behind them: “Found you.”

She whipped around and shot Damian in the chest.

There were a few moments where no one knew what to do. The boy stared at the paint staining his armor bright yellow. Marinette’s grip felt clammy on her gun.

Dick tipped his head to the side consideringly.

She met his eyes.

She was no longer amused by the intelligence lingering in his gaze as he scrutinized her. She narrowed her eyes at him, briefly, daring him to say something. She wasn’t the only one hiding things, after all.

Play along, she told him. Help me fix this ending.

He relaxed his expression carefully.

They had an understanding. Despite Marinette’s supposed incompetence with guns, when startled she was quick to shoot and accurate. Despite Dick constantly acting as if he was dumb, there was clearly a brain hidden somewhere there. They both knew more than they tried to let on. Maybe that was why they didn’t have much trouble identifying each other’s acts… but, so long as their own secrets remained intact, they could keep each others’.

It was a little nerve-wracking, and yet, strangely, nice, to have someone you don’t have to lie to. That can see past it even when you try.

She smirked and lifted her gun. “See? This is why you keep your finger on the trigger, Dick.”

He grinned and held up his hands in surrender.

*****

Marinette and Dick grimaced as a cooler full of paint was poured over their backs. They definitely felt victorious right about now. This was their prize for winning. Yay them.

Sure, they didn’t exactly, genuinely earn the win, but that’s besides the point.

He looked at her. “You’ve got red in your hair.”

She yelped and brought a hand up to try and get it out, only to remember just a second too late that her hands, too, were covered in paint. She stared at the glob of paint-covered hair hanging limp in front of her eyes for a moment, devastated, and then glared at him.

“You did that on purpose.”

“I was just pointing something out for you,” he said ‘innocently’, unable to quite keep himself from smiling.

She hummed, and then slapped her hand onto his hair. He hissed and reflexively his hands flew up to touch the sore spot, only for him to realize that now he had been the one baited into getting paint in his hair.

“Marinette,” he said, smiling sweetly.

For a moment, one could almost see the regret flickering across her features.

And then he rushed forward to try and trap her in a hug. She shrieked, managing to get only a few steps before she was snatched up, dragged into the evil monster. She barely even had time to fight back before she was thrown over his shoulder, only able to yell off-brand curse words and try to writhe around in hopes of freedom – or, at least, in hopes that she could smear her own paint over every part of him she could reach.

Within minutes, they were swirling messes of red, blue, purple, and the occasional scrap of visible skin.

There were people laughing at their antics.

Both of them froze.

They looked up, and found the other members of the Host Club were enjoying the show.

As well as a few guests, but they couldn’t really retaliate against them.

So, Dick set Marinette down and they met each other’s eyes and silently resolved to make up for that by attacking their fellow club members twice as much to compensate.

*****

Marinette heaved a sigh as she sat on a bench, scrubbing paint off her arm with her millionth wet wipe of the day. Where did the green even come from?

It was then that she realized someone was nearing her.

She looked over her shoulder and found…

Well, someone her age. She recognized her, vaguely, from her English class, but their name eluded her.

The girl smiled nervously at Marinette, wringing her hands and somewhat avoiding eye contact. “I – uh – was wondering if you could Host for me sometime?”

Marinette stared at her for a moment, processing.

And then she lit up, practically jumping from her seat in order to shake the girl’s hand.

“That sounds great! What day would you –?”

She drew her hand back, and cringed at the red strings of paint now connecting their hands.

“I… don’t know if I have more wet wipes,” she said, blushing.

The girl smiled, amused. “If you walk me home, I’ll consider it even.”

Marinette hesitantly took her hand again, intertwining their fingers. “Okay. Don’t know if that’s much of a punishment, but if that’s what it takes to repay you…”

~~~~~~~~~~

TBC

Taglist: @ev-cupcake @thatonecroc @toodaloo-kangaroo @fangirlingfanatic

#ohshc au #keysmash au #maribat #one day izzys birthday chapters are gonna be uploaded on like january 1st or something #dickinette #stephinette #cassinette #adrienette #timinette #jasonette #dukinette #daminette #babsinette

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horrorisunknowntoyou · 1 year

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Simon "Ghost" Riley x Fem! Artist-Reader [Tattoos]

A/n: This is technically a part two but it's not needed to read this. Also ooc Simon maybe? Idk but I'm here to supply wholesome fics for my fellow fluff enjoyers.

Also c/n = codename

Credit to @punkwrld for this idea. They commented this on my other post. This is a more wholesome approach to it.

_______________________________________________

So it was a known fact you can draw within the task force at this point.

From mindlessly doodling or staring at things that caught your attention or the huge folder of save pictures and photos in your phone.

It was obvious at this point.

Simon knew since he looked through your sketchbook when you accidentally left it on a bench.

Since then, he would sometimes watch you draw or give you little requests, mostly of soap in dumb shit. But that's fine.

But one day one of his requests caught you off guard.

You sat on a table, it was your free time and you had pieces of paper on the table, scribbling random things that you consider interesting or whatever idea stuck in your head. As you draw, you hear footsteps behind you and see a shadow blocking over you. A hand gently places on your shoulder as they soon sits besides you on the bench.

Simon left whatever he was doing to join you at the table to watch you draw.

"y/n"

"yes?"

"I want you to do something for me. Do you think you can handle it?"

"Depends, what request do you have this time?"

He thinks about it before his glove hand gently taps on the paper, " I want you to design a tattoo for me, of a skull and your codename. "

The pencil stopped, and you turn at him, surprised at his request.

"w-wha? Are you sure? I know you like my art, but that's permanent Simon."

"yes I'm sure, why else am I asking you."

You just sat there, " umm I get that, but like I said it's permanent and I don't think my art is that good. I can give you ideas and basic stencil but a finish idea? I don't know."

All he replied with was a hum.

After much thought, you flipped to a new piece of paper, you set the pencil down and faced him. You gently grabbed his arm much to his surprised, inspecting it, trying to guess where he would want to add it. Your face close to his, focus at the task.

"Will it be on the arm that already has tattoos or a different place?"

Simon was just staring at her before answering her question. " Same arm."

"hmm, okay...I get it." She then faces the paper as she starts to work on rough ideas.

Based on previous tattoos Simon's has, and his requests. Black and white, it has to have a skull and some reference to your code name.

It took ALOT of debriefing and rough ideas to get a design you liked.

You want to make sure, it works well with his other tattoos and the placement is right on him.

He could tell you were focused on this as you barely talked during the drawing process. And at the end stages he wasn't allowed to see it until you thought it was perfect.

He was pretty happy at the design at the end.

And when it came the day to actually get it inked, you were nervous. He reassured it's fine.

He let you come along to watch. He wasn't even faze with the pain. In his words he said "It tickles."

Most of time, you mainly talked to the tattoo artist over art related things and Simon stayed quiet.

He wasn't a jealous man but, he was definitely watching how excited you got with the artist.

Did he understand the conversation? No.

But overall it was a pleasant time, and once it was done, it looked really good on him. You were so excited over it.

Simon stared at it on the mirror, silently taking it in as now a part of you was on him.

And that comforted him.

As the tattoo artist wrapped it up so it can heal you sat on the chair looking through folders curiously at the lettering and designs.

" Simon, maybe next time I'll get something based off you tattooed on me. I don't know maybe something cheesy like ' I love you' in your hand writing or something. "

"Is that so?" Simon replies, " maybe I should too."

" you just got one! Wait until that one heals or something! " You closed the folder in hand, setting it aside back to the bookcase.

Once it was healed, Simon didn't show it off to others, even Soap. But you knew he adores it. He was still same old him but you swore, you heard him say your name is a happier tune.

Oh and at home, he still wears his hoodies but sometimes you'll catch him in tank tops or shirtless staring at the tattoo.

Overall you did a good job and Simon seems a little more brighter then before.

A/n: my oc's codename is raven so my Headcanon is he has a skull and raven on him. also fun fact, I have a tattoo on my wrist. It didn't hurt a lot but it.

Also I'm so sorry if this is bad.

#ghost x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley x reader #call of duty x reader #simon riley x you #ghost imagine

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ryuichirou · 3 months

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Replies

We have A LOT of replies today! <3 Thank you for your asks!

Quite a bunch of them are related to our latest comic about Riddle and his mom, some are related to our previous replies, and some are just about the characters in general.

But before I start I wanted to note one thing: I’m probably going to start skipping some asks, and I’m sorry for that. I always try to answer everyone, but it’s getting more difficult for me to keep up, especially when writing replies where I don’t really have much to say. I’m not saying that you should stop: we read everything and appreciate you sharing your thoughts about characters with us; but please keep in mind that I might not reply. Like I’ve mentioned, me writing replies takes one (sometimes up to two) hour per day, and since I’m an artist, not a writer, it’s especially exhausting for me mentally lol I’m sorry about that.

I love talking to you, and I don’t want my replies to feel forced and burnt-out, that’s the main thought.

So, starting with the asks about Riddle’s mom and her amusing poster.

characharing asked:

i see Riddle's mom doesn't know of Chenya yet

I guess Chenya is just better at not being noticed when he wants to, being the Cheshire cat and all~

Anonymous asked:

Alrighty, who wants to go and throw apples at Riddle’s mom?

Probably the entirety of Heartslabyul…

Anonymous asked:

Your artwork with Riddle’s mom reminded me of a fan manga I saw on Pixiv by SIG. It’s about Trey confronting Riddle’s mom during winter break and helping Riddle get away from her (that’s what I can tell, I don’t speak Japanese)

Unfortunately I haven’t seen that one, but I’m glad it exists! After experiencing ch1 and seeing Riddle being so down and kind of anxious about returning home during winter break, it’s impossible not to get a “GO DO SOMETHING TREY TELL HER TELL HER” kind of thought. Or “MURDER HER”, it depends lol

Anonymous asked:

Trey needs to use his UM towards Riddle's mother. Trey can be a secret murderer if you ask me.

I feel like this idea is so prominent in our minds, we’ve mentioned it a couple of times, in the hc post about twst guys murdering people for sure lol

But yeah, Trey’s UM could be very dangerous…

blackbutlerfandomnerddomain asked:

Based on this, Riddle's first rebellion act is inviting Trey over when she's not around. Slowly the anxiety of him leaving before his mother came home faded and soon he began to feel the urge to have sex while Trey and him had the house to themselves. Bonus: They fucked on Riddle's desk AND Riddle's mum's bed

That would be absolutely scandalous, unacceptable, super nerve-wracking but also cathartic and completely necessary. Not to mention very hot lol You go, Trey, break that bed.

Anonymous asked:

Idia wants that poster too. XD

Yes please. And then the version of it with Rook’s face. And then the version of it with the Tweels. And then-

Anonymous asked:

My line of thought is 'ofc Riddle can still collar people' because some of the other prosecutors have gimmicks (Franziska and her whip, Godot and coffee, etc) but realistically it would probably just be Ace getting collared frequently during trials and investigations.

(This ask and the next one are related to the idea of Riddle being an Ace Attorney prosecutor, we mentioned it in these replies)

Yeah that makes sense, the prosecutors of this franchise just can’t do their job without doing something funky lol But what I love is the fact that it’s completely useless, be it a regular collar or a magical one, so basically it’s just a petty way to humiliate Ace because he is being annoying.

Lovely.

Anonymous asked:

Riddle would definitely lecture Phoenix about letting Trucy use her magic panties.

Oh man, so now Phoenix is disbarred and collared? This man just keeps winning lol

You can tell Riddle wasn’t allowed to use magic panties as a kid :(

Anonymous asked:

This is a dumb question but do you think Idia has what is the stereotypical NEET things? You know, hentai dating games, body pillows and the like. Also, what sexuality do you see the cast as? Just curious 😃

Idia is absolutely aware of all of these things and they absolutely surround him, and he is probably far less innocent than the game allows him to be lol But whether he really loves playing hentai dating games and buys erotic doujins depends on a story we’re telling in posts and drawings. Sometimes it fits better for him to be totally into all this stuff and be that gross otaku trope (with body-pillows, waifu-mousepads and kinks that are absolutely vile), sometimes it fits him better to just be aware of all that but not necessarily do it actively.

I guess the “default” state for us it that he has seen and actively read/played some stuff, so he is aware! But then again, he also seems like someone who wouldn’t want to see any smut with his precious waifus lol

We also don’t really headcanon characters’ sexualities, so I can’t really answer that question, sorry :( Whoever we ship them with, that’s their sexuality. So I guess they’re all gay lol

Anonymous asked:

I feel a bit stupid for not knowing this but the comic where Azul discovers the tattoo on Idia’s lower stomach and Idia freaks out, is that a kink or something?

You’re not stupid, Anon! It’s inmon (lewd crest, womb tattoo), basically a hentai trope. I don’t know if there are any strict rules about these tattoos, but in doujins that I’ve seen they’re usually used to make a character having it uncontrollably horny lol “Stupid and eager to breed” kind of horny. So I guess it really is a curse of sorts. But sometimes a succubus-type character could have it.

Anonymous asked:

HAHAHA, I just read the ask about Kalim at Frollo's school... I liked that. You can see this dynamic ending HORRIBLE. I can actually hear Kalim playing popular music in class while Frollo pops a vein... I need Kalim to expand his harem, I need more characters to share Jamil's nightmare, haha! (I love Kalim, but Kalim💢💢)

Anonymous asked:

*I'm not sure if I wrote Frollo or Rollo (HAHA??) in my last anonymous ask abut Kalim in NBC, thank god these are anonymous, is 2 am here, I'm sorry

No worries, Anon, neither of us even noticed that you wrote Frollo until you pointed it out lol

Oh poor Rollo… He really got lucky that neither Kalim nor the Tweels or Lilia went with the NRC guys that year lol He wouldn’t be able to handle them.

And with Kalim being a student at his school, and Rollo being a school counsel president, he’ll HAVE to keep an eye on Kalim all the time.

And the worst thing is, there is no way Rollo is getting used to all this dancing and music and stuff, and there is no way Kalim is getting rid of all that either lol

Anonymous asked:

I will never understand why KaliJami and AzuJami fans fight. Jamil has two hands and deserves more than one boyfriend that he can barely tolerate.

See, maybe the last part is the reason, maybe Jamil’s psyche can’t handle two of these idiots messing up with his brain in two completely opposite (but equally annoying) ways lol If we asked Jamil, he would’ve probably said that his hands are not for Kalim or Azul to hold, and that he would rather drink rat poison.

Wow, he is so mean, that Jamil… Kalim and Azul both need to shower him with love asap lol

Anonymous asked:

Ruggie x Idia be like:

Ruggie: I can't believe you spend so much money on useless figurines. Talk about a waste!

Idia: Excuse you! Do you you know how much these will be worth in a few years?!

Ruggie:.......................Go on.

Yeah, pretty much lol This is basically their interaction in the Glorious Masquerade event. Ruggie has a lot to learn from Idia-the-master-of-anime-auctions…

Anonymous asked:

Post chapter 5 Epel: Did you know that Rook is a Neige Leblanche fan boy?

Pre chapter 5 Vil: What? Where did you here that from?

Post chapter 5 Epel: Rook.

Ahh, so this is what that ask was about!

A perfect opportunity to hit Vil where he expects you to hit him the least lol But I feel like even Epel feels bad for Vil when it comes to this topic, so I don’t know if he would do it. Although it would definitely be tempting at times, especially when Vil’s complaining about Neige under his breath and Rook’s just sitting there smiling and being awfully quiet…

#replies

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andbrokenmemories · 7 months

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So it's weird how like. The Kennet girls are good at everything, aren't they? [pale spoilers ahead]

Like that's obvious, it's textual -- it's very textual, other characters being in something like awe over it over and over and over across the story. The girls are very good at this, and they have a deep well of power. This comes up continuously.

what's weird is thaaat a lot of the fanbase seem to like, enjoy that. Enjoy having protagonists who can play around with magic in a way Blake never ever could have. I kind of get that, I won't like shit-talk it too hard. (I do like Verona, y'know?)

But it's an interesting fact. Because Wildbow's the underdog protagonist guy! At least in action scenes, that's his whole thing! Taylor and Blake have to eat shit and die to claw their way to victory, and often those scenes work for me. And it's one of the things I think WB gets the most praise for? Like, from his established base. It's a conscious choice to not do that for Pale. He like, introduced the idea that this kind of wild practitioner would be especially powerful. He made that up for this book.

I wonder what that decision looks like -- after Ward, and Ward's issues, especially, since that seemed to be the first break from this. Underdog protagonists seem to be the default, for him; the thing he has most experience with. I've seen posts from him describing his process -- put characters against the wall without having a pre-planned out for them, so WB himself has to puzzle out exactly what they can use to make it out alive -- and he seemed to derive like... An actual enjoyment, out of it?

Yeah, there are fights in Pale where they're up against the wall... even one where, with Dire Consequences for us all, Wildbow had them lose because he couldn't see a way for them to win!

But it's not the same. I'd honestly say they usually lose because of their like, lack of full maturity -- their child soldier-y emotional rawness and uncertainty -- their lack of cohesion, as the book usually plays it. Lucy cannot stop John from joining the Contest because she can't hold her nerve against him. The girls cannot stop the murder plot from coming to fruition because they lack unity, aren't working together as a team. Emotional stuff. The girls have more tools in their box than any Wildbow protagonist before them, by far, but they can't always use them properly to get the W, for emotional reasons, for character reasons.

In theory, that's an interesting direction (maybe, possibly), and I should be relieved that Wildbow is trying something fresh. In practice... I've said I don't like Pale's fight scenes. I think Wildbow is plainly worse at this than the content of his previous works.

Part of this is seen in the Contest. Or, at least, how Wildbow Posts about it. If you can't tell, a specific WoG lives in my brain: Wildbow said once that he kept the story going past Break because he genuinely did not believe the trio could beat Maricica. I can imagine him doing his typical calculus for this, and what led him to that conclusion, maybe. For example, we've heard a lot about the ability of the Fae to manipulate stuff, aaaand to have the girls come along and undo all of that with minimal information to begin with wouuld sort of. Damage our belief in Faerie significance. Still, though -- cards on the table, here -- I think this was a Dumb and Bad choice. (It's a sidenote to this post, but I think it's very strange that, in-story the straw that breaks the camel's back is shown to be the Alabaster allowing shit to go on rather than throwing in with John, effectively a betrayer revealed moment -- a thing that, even if sorta his intention from the start, he could simply say 'aw beans i never really planned this out far enough' and just drop. for the sake of wrapping up a better story. and naturally i believe this would have been better also because it means we never would have fucking gotten White Woman Animus!! i digress. i digress.)

Maricica had weaknesses the story gave us to nibble on, and those weaknesses... are just kind of dangling threads, now? As of where I hopped off? like, guess she can't be that inexperienced with people if she became a goddess and started a cult and helped with all that red heron shit lol

So it's that thing I said, about fight scenes being more character driven. But then also, he's clearly thinking about this the same way as ever! As shown by his weird logic with framing the story going past Break as a thing he Had To Do, for Logical Reasons, or at least that weighing on the decision. a thing that is silly and i disagree with on it's face. right?

And then this shows in the sheer quantity of fight scenes -- if the girl's main limiter is internal emotional context and stuff........... uh... why are there so many fights? Why wouldnt the story naturally curve towards. having fewer fight scenes when theres no other way to square things away. that progress character arcs. whyyy do i care about fight scene 129 when i know how strong these girls are. whyyy are we fighting so many random others, and dedicating genuinely long segments of story to them, rather than montaging that shit? Getting it over with? If it has to be there at all? (for reference -- I just tried to think of a Random Pale Fight i fully don't think mattered. i selected the random like. angel summoner guy? with the fortnite constructor angel. that's a part of the musser invasion or whatever. this is a character with literally no substance, just a musser-side goon. From him entering the ongoing! fight to Lucy getting out of dodge is 4.6k words. Plague 12.7, the Mannequin fight, up to Mannequin leaving -- that's almost the entire chapter -- is 6.9k words. on the worm wiki, i saw there's a brief 'major events' summary of that chapter. i couldnt tell you the major events of the Pale chapter, of which that section of fight is like a third, maybe. lucy gets a bit more upset. lucy gets in a few quips against musser-side characters that actually matter but actually dont matter much to how that broader conflict is resolved. i guess.)

Wildbow writes any random fight the girls get into as being worth as many words as his fights in the past! the scrappy, pay-offy ones. bleh. My point in all this: you cannot simply set your protags up in the way I'm positing, here, and then continue to use the same vocabulary of every other serial anyway. it straight up doesn't work. it's exhausting. The Future is An Eternal Slaughterhouse 9000 Arc. Look, thats a criticism that boils down to 'web serials are too long'. And I'm not sure I care too much about web serials being too long! I have read longer web serials with longer fight scenes! I have written fiction with a longer average word count per chapter than Wildbow, at least during Worm! its a real criticism, but its not one im amazingly interested in personally. But the Kennet three could've had weaknesses to play around -- or at least, more weaknesses. We are in a Post-Pact world, and in this Post-Pact world, the magic in Pale really barely feels like it, uh, relies on discourse and presentation. like at all. And that seems like an option to give these characters obstacles! An option Wildbow gestures at during the Musser meta-arc!

but what struck me getting that word count comparison earlier, skimming that fight? The girls just aren't operating in that world. There's never a thought for presentation -- maybe sometimes, for a slight edge. But it never really matters, certainly not after the blue heron. They're using glamour as a workhorse tool, covering goblins in it for brief misdirects to get an edge in a fight; they're calling on the same shrine spirits over and over. They don't build up tools over a portion of story then cash them out for a satisfying win, they're just... strong. They have more items in their bags than Wildbow probably knows what to do with. Strong enough for just Lucy to dunk on any random set of practitioners, but not strong enough for the story to just skip that part, and not strong enough to just solve the plot until it's time to go fuck up Charles and end the story.

I know you could argue that I'm making this up, or that it's what some people prefer to what Pact was doing. But I just think it's not even what wildbow is good at! (and i always theorize that when wildbow is writing kind of bad, it's probably because he's not actually engaged or happy with what he's putting himself through. did he read a specific thing that made him personally excited to make the girls so versatile? I don't really know, but I don't get that vibe.)

And I have a couple of specific things I want to point out to try and prove this is like. a thing at all, to wrap up on: First, Glamour is used as this very, uh, soft magic thing, this very basic narrative tool. A pure mechanic of, like, mental states. If you're shaken, if you're uncertain, your glamour gives out on you -- if you shake your opponents, make them skittish, your glamour is better at misdirecting them. This is fiiine? But too vague for what Glamour is. Wildbow simply failed to properly present tradeoffs to one of his character's main action verbs, one that literally had those tradeoffs in Pact. And one last example to try and prove this: they dont even wear the hats and cloaks anymore duuude. Like, in my eyes: there was a very simple to read gambit being made, with the hats and masks and cloaks? You are awakening early, you will always have awoken early: You accepted an early shield against what that meant. A constructed image in place of the image of a fully-fledged adult, masking that youth; Whimsical and inherently magical, inherently wild. It's a very basic tradeoff, and one the story promises you it knows: even if they really would rather not have to go through the whole song and dance of suiting up, if it's tactically suboptimal or else they mature out of it and realise it's not for them, they will never be able to escape it -- not without giving up power. A mark accepted that cannot be given up. A mechanical restriction on their powersets to make up for some of their advantages, that also has some character relevancy. The Good Stuff.

except yeah it can. be taken off. it doesn't super matter. not really. they do plenty of magic without all the stuff on or even any of the stuff on -- it's rarely presented as an obstacle. it doesnt really matter. Because then, you see, they couldnt mature out of it and do cool stuff! it'd be. annoying. frustrating. they'd have to like. deal with changing past the natures they made for themselves. they'd have to. be characters. with character issues. that present themselves in fight scenes. you know?? what are we doing.

#ramble analysis #look. this is long but im not super confident i have the deets to back it up #analysis of my memory of pale ass post #but! the books long. frankly #so this is what you get #pale #wildbow #pale web serial #palecrit

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mxmarsbars · 4 months

Text

the gold feels heavy in impulse’s hands.

familiar in how it grounds him, yet at the same time is all too suffocating, like an anchor dragging him to the bottom of the sea. secure isn’t the right word for it, despite how an anchor should make you feel. it’s constricting. he feels trapped.

he wanted an apple. he had planned on getting an apple, and he wasn’t one to give up on his ambitions so easily. he was going to make a golden apple for himself, and that was set in stone. no wasting it on anything else.

but then he sees bdubs, stalking around one of the guard towers at the cherry blossoms’ base, and impulse doesn’t know how to feel.

bdubs hadn’t gotten a clock yet, surprisingly. not from any of his mounders, not from his on-and-off roommates. nobody had given him one, and impulse couldn’t help but find it a little amusing.

impulse knows the clock is bullshit. always has been, always will be. he’s glad other people learned that, too, apparently. a clock didn’t save him before, and a clock won’t save him now or tomorrow or at all. it’s futile. he doesn’t plan on wasting precious resources to try for a third time. it’s all in vain. he knows that.

but something inside of him, something primal, urges impulse to scrap the golden apple idea completely. grab some redstone from his pockets. make one anyways.

he knows it’s just some sort of dumb trauma response, instinct that shouldn’t even have to be there in the first place, a reaction only bdubs can pull out of him. bdubs, to put it simply, makes impulse stupid. an idiot. scared.

the prospect is even more tempting when bdubs greets him, smiles up at him with those jacked up pearly whites, wraps an arm around him to rub the small of his back. it feels familiar. it feels gross.

they make small talk, ask each other what they’re up to, how their sessions have been. bdubs’s voice isn’t as grating as it used to be, which is nice. impulse can actually think somewhat clearly when he talks to him, can listen and analyze and stay focused. things have gotten better in that department. impulse is grateful for that. very grateful.

when bdubs asks what he’s doing up there, impulse responds how he ought to: that he’s looking for an apple. to make a golden apple. for himself.

the word “gold” has bdubs’s eyes lighting up a little, impulse can’t help but notice. those big brown eyes stare up at him, one swollen and bruised, and yet they both shine in the moonlight. he could’ve sworn he saw a star or two twinkle behind them.

impulse continues on like it’s nothing, because that’s exactly what it is. it’s nothing.

apple. impulse wants an apple. nothing else.

bdubs continues to stare at him, lingering at his side, and impulse can only assume he’s studying his face. his gaze trails from impulse’s eyes to his lips, stays there for a second, then back up again, and there’s almost something pleading in how he looks up at him. seemingly searching for something that says, “oh bdubs, I love you, take this clock as a symbol of my loyalty.”

he won’t find it, impulse is sure of that.

apple, bdubs speaks aloud, and it’s more of a question than anything. impulse doesn’t know if he’s talking to him or himself, but he nods regardless, a gentle smile tugging at his lips. he affirms it. apple.

impulse turns away to wack at some leaves, mumbles something about how they’re barely dropping anything, how he’s been searching for forever. he doesn’t really know if bdubs is listening, but babbling about random things is easier than having to face the fact that he knows what bdubs wants, even if he won’t say it. he always wants that. nothing’s new.

he’s surprised to hear the sound of leaves and wood breaking, eyes glancing over and widening a little when he sees bdubs cutting down a tree.

bdubs doesn’t say much, but the action speaks louder than any words could.

it’s okay. he won’t demand a clock from impulse again. impulse can do what he wants, and bdubs will let him. bdubs will help.

the two of them search a little longer, and when it comes up futile, impulse looks at bdubs directly again. bdubs looks back at him. his eyes, even in their red, ugly haze, are gentle. understanding. a little defeated.

impulse smiles down at him, taking a deep breath before asking if he should try somewhere else. bdubs nods, swatting away some stray leaves as he recommends dark oak. impulse agrees.

it’s a little awkward, saying goodbye. but impulse does it anyways, and bdubs bids him farewell, patting him on the back. it’s almost comforting, strange enough. there’s tension between them, there always is, but it’s manageable. impulse feels okay.

a part of impulse hopes bdubs will get a clock, just to ease his mind, to keep the tradition going. it won’t be him, though. impulse won’t do that. not again, not ever.

besides, it’s about time he takes care of himself. treat himself to something nice. he deserves it. he deserves a chance to be selfish.

(it’s not selfish to want to look out for yourself, impulse knows that. he needs to break out of that mindset. he’s working on it.)

finally, impulse finds himself using gold for what he should. himself.

anyways hope nobody minds the little drabble thingies they’re fun to write :P

#impulsesv #bdoubleo100 #clock duo #secret life #secret life smp #trafficshipping #technically I think

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likesunsetorange · 2 months

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“mikasa and eren are antisocial af so they probably end up talking bc they’re little losers lol, and eren probably can tell mikasa is bored and here’s this gorgeous model, so he’s gonna whisk her away and they go to his ranch they have a romantic night under the stars and all that but he’s dumb and doesn’t get her number and she goes back home to ny without it”

DORKS!LOSERS!*AFFECTIONATE*

them slipping out of the room all giddy!!!!!!!!!! him not getting her number is sooodooooso my doodoo head…….. he’s already resigned himself to being a notch on her post, a lover if one may (can he call himself that? he will in his head anyways!)

like a global model would’ve never taken a relationship with him seriously so he’s should just treasure the moment then boom she shows up! and if we’re really leaning into the romcom of it all it’s during like crazy rain, her car gets stuck, she trucks herself to his doorstep by foot, and he stares slack jawed when he opens the door to se her <3

cowboy x model au drabble # 1

omg anon i was using your ask to draft a drabble and then this little incident of mikasa showing up to eren’s house has since spiraled further so we will be compiling all the ideas into one and since i had already been writing on this one we’re still gonna use yours lol!

also very much enjoying the dramatics and hallmark vibes here like is that just the energy i exude? extreme unseriousness and hallmark level corniness lol??

but fuck it drabble let’s go 🦅🦅🦅

(this actually ended up being so long lol 1.6k so enjoy!)

The rain only started falling harder every minute longer Mikasa continued to drive down the gravel road, the pitch black of the country sky only adding to the lack of visibility. She gripped the steering wheel hard, trying to focus on what little bit of the road she could see. The high beams of the rental car were doing little to nothing to help her see, only adding to her anxiety.

Her only saving grace was the fact that the GPS was telling her she was only five minutes away from Eren’s house—the last place she should be on a Wednesday night in the middle of April—not to mention she was halfway across the country, in the middle of nowhere, driving down a country road to see a man who’d she had only seen once.

Had it been her best idea? No. Was she still doing it? Absolutely.

There had been few times in her life when she had run off pure spontaneity, and she would allow herself this one instance of a lack of sensibility. It certainly wasn’t wise to book a flight in the act of impulse after finding out said man would be free all week, a pause in his hectic schedule, a schedule she had acquired by coercing her assistant to do some potentially not-so-legal things.

But the ticket had been bought. The rental car reservation had been made. So there was no turning back. (There certainly was opportunity to turn around, but Mikasa didn’t want to give herself any potential out or else she wouldn’t ever commit to doing so.)

So here she was, 0.75 miles from his house, running off pure adrenaline, rehearsing the speech she and Sasha had prepared.

“Hi, Eren. I know this is sudden, but I probably should’ve asked you for your number before leaving. I had to come back to Texas for another shoot, so I thought I would stop by.”

Maybe it was partially based on a lie, but tomato, tomato. It would be fine, she would be fine, and she told herself that all of this certainly wouldn’t blow up in her face.

Until that was precisely what happened.

She had been driving down the curve that led up to Eren’s ranch house when she felt the car jerk, suddenly drifting off the road, before halting to a stop, the Low-Pressure light immediately flashing on. As soon as she saw the lights flash on, she immediately knew one of the tires had blown out, leaving her stranded in the pouring rain just outside of Eren’s house.

“Fuck,” she muttered under her breath. Mikasa leaned her head against the steering wheel, her stomach beginning to pool with regret.

“Do you think it would be weird if I just showed up at his house?”

Yes, Mikasa. It would be weird—it’s fucking insane of you, she thought to herself. And you certainly wouldn’t be in the fucking predicament you are in now if you just called him like any sane other sane person.

Mikasa glanced at her phone, the GPS alerting her she was only 0.25 miles from his house, and the weather app telling her the rain wouldn’t stop for at least the next four hours.

She sat there weighing her options.

Call a tow truck, and stick out the wait in her car

Walk to Eren’s house

Mikasa could see the lights of his house shining through the rain like a lighthouse in a stormy sea, signaling a potential safe return. At this point, she had already risked so much—her pride, her sanity, and almost her life had the tire incident gone any worse—what more did she have to lose?

She shut off the car, grabbed the keys and her phone—leaving her other belongings so if she needed to do a walk of shame back to her car, at least she’d be traveling light—and shoved on a jacket, thankful to whatever higher power she decided to bring one with her on the plane that day.

Mikasa told herself that if she ran as fast as she could, she would be there quickly, but she didn’t anticipate having to trek through mud, puddles, and essentially pitch black to make it to his front porch. By the time she made it up the steps, her white shoes were ruined, her white tank top was practically see-through, showing every lace detail of her black bra, and her bangs were plastered to her face. (Suddenly, there didn’t seem to be any point in asking how she should do her hair.)

There wasn’t much left to do but ring the doorbell, and at this point, she didn’t have anything left to lose, so she jammed her finger against it, giving herself no opportunity to back out. She heard the chime echo through his house while she stood there fiddling with her thumbs, trying to ring out as much water as she could from her hair, trying to make herself look the least bit presentable.

She heard the low timbre of a man from the other side of the door before the fumbling of the lock and doorknob snapped her attention forward. Mikasa felt her heart get stuck in her stomach as she saw the door pull back, Eren’s tall frame coming into view.

Mikasa had to stop herself from letting her jaw drop when she saw him; the first time she saw him practically paling in comparison to how he looked right now. From the fact that he had no shirt on, allowing her to see just how much muscle he had from all those days he spent working hard, to the sweats that hung low on his hips, leaving little to her imagination. He even looked prettier when he was home, as if the sense of comfort it brought him added an extra glow to his face.

His hand was clenched around his phone, holding it to his ear when he finally spoke, breaking Mikasa out of her ogling.

“Hey mom, I’m gonna have to call you back later… No ma’am… Yes ma’am, I will. I promise… I love you too… Okay, bye. Talk to you tomorrow.” His voice was velvety when he spoke, something about the way he spoke sweet and rich, a sound Mikasa didn’t think she’d ever get tired of.

Eren stared at her blankly once he hung up the phone, dumbfounded that she was standing on his front porch, not to mention that she was muddy and drenched from the rain.

The two of them were stuck in a staring contest, neither of them able to formulate words—all of Mikasa’s confidence had suddenly flown out the window, leaving her at a loss for words, because as soon as she opened her mouth, she knew she would be babbling like an idiot.

“Umm… Hi?” Eren said, his greeting coming out more like a question than anything.

“Hi,” Mikasa somehow managed to squeak out.

“Umm…” He repeated, still at a loss for words.

Mikasa’s mind, a jumbled mess, opted to go for it, knowing her babbling would be better than whatever awkward mess this was.

“You forgot something,” she said blankly.

Eren looked at her confused, his brows furrowing, “What?”

“You didn’t ask for my number the last time we saw each other. You forgot to ask me for it when I left here,” she said, stepping closer to where he stood in the doorway.

“You wanted me to ask you for your number?” Eren stared at her in disbelief, whether it was because he was shocked at her words or that she dared to show up and say them; Mikasa didn’t know.

“You brought me to your ranch, took me on a ride on horseback underneath the stars, called me beautiful, and then still didn’t ask me for my number. You didn’t even try to kiss me.”

“Did you want me to?” Eren said as his eyes flickered to her lips.

“Do you really think I would fly across the country on a whim and walk a quarter mile in the rain if I didn’t want you to ask me for my number or kiss me, Eren?” Mikasa asked.

She stood before him, glancing up at him, her face merely inches away from his. She could see how long his lashes looked beneath the porch light, the strands of gold and bronze within his hair, and the plush pink of his lips—right where she could kiss him.

“Mikasa, you walked a quarter mile in the pouring—”

He didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence before Mikasa pushed herself upward, so her lips met his, her hand steadying itself on his broad chest. He tasted like sweet tea and a touch of Chapstick, his lips as soft as she could have imagined. His hands steadied on her waist, bringing her closer to him. She relished in the way he felt before the reality of the situation began to plague her mind—clarity being her cruelest enemy.

Maybe it was the second-guessing running through her head, but the sudden urge to pull away instantly flooded through her mind before she jerked herself back.

“Hey, don’t do that,” Eren’s voice immediately rang through her ears as she pulled away. “Who said I wanted you to stop?”

“Oh, did you not?”

“You show up on my doorstep with all these questions, then kiss me, and now you’re surprised I wanted to kiss you back?”

“Umm… maybe?”

Eren didn’t give her much time to think before he picked her up and walked her into his house. “How about I let you into my house so you don’t end up sick from being drenched in the rain, get you some dry clothes, and you can ask me all the questions you want?”

“Okay,” she responded shyly, her face flushing red at his directness.

“Never met a girl so pretty and bold before, surely I have to keep you around.”

#cowboy x model au #vic’s drabbles #asks #eremika

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