#it's just a thinky thought because of what I've been writing

[guqin-and-flute]

Xichen deserves crows feet.

He deserves to smile with teeth and get those eye crusties you sometimes get from sleeping and cry and sleep in and make a privately goofy noise of surprise when his toe catches on a step and he almost faceplants and saves himself at the last minute.

He deserves to be human.

[allthatglitters-love]

Some Thinky Thoughts

I was so hyped waiting for the TBOC promo last night. For the first time in YEARS I experienced genuine excitement toward a TWD show - I had nearly forgotten what that felt like! It was so, so wonderful seeing Carol again. I loved seeing her riding Daryl's bike and using his crossbow. The Book of Carol will be the first of any of these spinoffs I'll be watching, and I'm mostly looking forward to it - HOWEVER the trailer definitely left me with some reservations. The initial teaser we got a few months ago for TBOC came with the tagline "To find home is to find each other" and I thought "gee, they finally got it right! I'm definitely tuning in for that because THAT is the show I've been waiting for since they announced the Caryl spinoff back in 2020!" But then this new trailer didn't convey that same energy at all. The first thing they showed us in the trailer was Daryl and Isabelle....I'm not at all interested in Daryl and his makeshift family. I'm interested in Daryl and Carol. That's it. That's the show we were promised years ago and that's why I'm still here hanging by a thread. Carol fans were jerked around on the main show for so long, then were promised a Caryl spinoff and had that yanked away, and now this - my threshold for shenanigans is almost nonexistent. I'm feeling hypersensitive to potential ship-bating and storylines with no follow-through and I just don't have the stamina to go through it all again if tptb aren't giving me a reason to keep sticking around. David Zabel in particular is a huge area of concern, as well. He doesn't seem to even fully understand the characters he's been writing about, so I'm not confident he would be able to deliver a satisfying story between Daryl and Carol. I hope I'm wrong on that.

My hope is that the next promo(s) get it together and SHOW us Carylers why we should invest the time into this second season of the show. SHOW me that my worries are misplaced. SHOW me that Daryl hasn't had a total personality transplant, and still cares about Carol as much as Carol cares about him. I know for a fact that Melissa will kill it no matter what. She's such a powerhouse actress and any time she is on screen it's an absolute delight. But I don't want to have to watch a show where we see Carol moving heaven and earth to get to Daryl, meanwhile he's still playing family with the randoms he met in France. That feels awkward and isn't what Carol (or Carylers) deserve.

[caterpills]

10 Questions for Writers

Tagged by the wonderful @firenati0n @alasse9 and @14carrotghoul for this one! ❤️

How many works do you have on AO3? 1 (currently a WIP)

What's your total AO3 word count? 56,853

What fandoms do you write for? RWRB, for now.

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Yes, always. Whether it's just a little thank you or an emoji or something, I want people to know how thankful I am? Not only is it super hard to trust someone to finish a WIP who is new to writing in this fandom or at all, but to stick with them? IDK, it means the world to me that people took a chance. I don't know if people realize how often I re-read comments on each chapter, and it really energizes me when I get through the rest. (Also, just kind of floored when people actually get what I was trying to do, and say so in the comments, I have been PERCEIVED.)

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I know of? I doubt anyone would, but I guess I can never say never.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? I have not! But I have this really wild idea for one that I think would just be fun to be co-written rather than staying all with me. Gotta finish one WIP first though!

What's your all-time favorite ship? For ao3 - firstprince, because that's what I write there. (But Pynch, my beloveds, you're my favorite RP writing ship.)

What are your writing strengths? UH. I've been told my narrative voice has been really good? Like my writing style really works with people, which is incredibly flattering! I also think that I can write some pretty good internal monologues where people are having some Thinky Thoughts or I'm good at whipping out some banger lines in the middle of something heart-wrenching and emotional. So my sad songs playlist thanks you.

What are your writing weaknesses? I have no weaknesses, I can never be defeated. (but actually: people/places/things descriptions, flirty banter, first drafts, and imposter syndrome.)

First fandom you wrote for? RWRB is the first fandom I wrote fic for! There was a time when some X-Men "fic" made it into a word document, but middle school me was doing from cringey self-inserts. Let's not. (But I do write a lot in forum RP places, so I've always been writing something.)

Open tag to friends who'd like to play! I'm very curious and I also want to come scream about how good your writing is in the comments, ty. I wouldn't be here without all of you being inspiring, tyvm.

[thana-topsy]

I love your TES magic headcanons!! Do you have any thoughts about the Thuum? I'm curious about how 'bend will' would feel to the person it was being cast on. I imagine it depends a lot on the intent/mindset of the caster.

Also, what do you think was the deal with the mind control thing that Miraak had going on in Solstheim?

I live for well written TES worldbuilding/lore, the official stuff we're given simply isn't enough. :)

Wow! This ask got SO buried and I totally meant to answer it sooner! My apologies. I got caught up in the thinky thinks over my own headcanons on the Thu'um and then my brain wandered off into the great wild unknown.

As with all TES lore meta, I really enjoy approaching it from an in-world view as opposed from an omniscient, definitive "this is the way it is" view. So I'm going to use this as a writing prompt and allows some of my Dragonborns to answer with their opinions:

---

Aerik: "Well, I'm not sure if it's because I've got Nord blood or because I grew up in Skyrim, but the Thu'um is as much a part of my culture as poetry and song. It's another form of expression, albeit a bit more expressive and, uh, explosive than just belting out The Age of Aggression. Though I guess it depends on the tavern you're in... Anyways, it's just another form of language at the end of the day. Sure, it was a language that was never meant to be used by mortals. But, as history will attest, us mortals love to stick our noses into places they don't belong. We not only learned the Thu'um, but learned how to create our own Shouts never before used by dragons. How great is that? "But as far as Bend Will goes, I've only ever used it on dragons. But I have been robbed of my own free will before, and it's not an experience I'm looking to repeat. Not even on other people. I'll keep my opinions of Miraak to myself for the time being, but desperate men do desperate things. And when those men have a tremendous amount of unchecked power, those 'things' can end up hurting a lot of people."

Elanwe: "All language is a form of creation! The Thu'um is no different. There was a time that we spoke spells out loud in order to cast them, before we refined and reshaped the way we commune with our connections to Magnus. To speak is to create. The Thu'um presents this concept in a very literal form. "I have yet to encounter a Shout that can bend the Will of others, though I have no doubt that it exists. I would hesitate to use it, unless absolutely necessary. Dark magic, that. To control the mind of another. I imagine it would feel like being a prisoner in your own body. Perhaps a bit like when your arm goes numb from sleeping on it. Only walking and talking. Brr... unsettling."

[This Dragonborn wishes to remain anonymous, as they have yet to be revealed]: Well, hmm. I'll be honest, I haven't been able to do much research into the Thu'um yet. And Nordic customs are a bit... beyond me. But I can describe what it feels like, I suppose. When I encounter new words. It's like remembering something you forgot, but you don't remember when you learned it. Like a very, very distant memory. Maybe I'm explaining this terribly. It's like you know you know the word, and you have this deep understanding of what it means. Without ever having learned it. Wow, this makes no sense. I'm so sorry. I'm... gonna go."

[ladymordecai]

I have been reading DC comics fic again for the first time in like . . . a decade-ish? because I'm a masochist, apparently. Finding new stuff and reading old favorites and being reminded of canon and all my thinky thoughts about superheroes and specifically Tim Drake, because he's my Robin and I imprinted (much like he did).

canon has put that boy through the wringer in the last decade, including smushing like, all his tragedies from 15 years of comics into like, ten seconds of comics time. I was reminded of the storyline where his dad found out he was robin and threatened batman into making him give it up, which at the time pissed me off because it was both a clear illustration of what a terrible parent jack drake was (in a way the narrative itself didn't seem to get??), and also because everything about it was so obviously For The Plot.

There was like, nothing in that storyline that I remember that actually came from the characters. It read like the writer or editors or whatever TPTB* decided they wanted to write a story about robin's dad finding out about robin and making him stop**. it's an obvious story for the only robin at the time who wasn't an orphan, and one of few kid heroes whose parents didn't know about them, and also it was Batman and Robin! The Drama! it so clearly had nothing to do with TIM when he should've been the main character, and it made me so angry, and then that anger was compounded because TPTB used it as an excuse to screw over Steph and then make the only non-orphan robin into an orphan, i guess just because. I hated it then, I hate it now.

BUT

I have a lot more perspective now, and have read a lot more (both published work and fanfic), and I have had a thought that I cannot believe I didn't have back then and that I've never heard before anywhere. (which doesn't mean somebody else hasn't had it, i just haven't found it)

One of my core objections about the storyline is that Tim's dad didn't figure out his ID, he just found the Robin uniform in Tim's room. Which is so out of character that it should invalidate the entire storyline.

This is the kid who wore another mask under his mask to prevent his other superhero friends from SEEING HIS FACE--not knowing his ID, just seeing his face. The kid who kept his identity from goddamn ORACLE for a while there. The kid who was able to sneak out and photo-stalk BATMAN AND ROBIN for literal years as a preteen and never get caught. Nobody ever knew anything about Robin III unless Tim made a deliberate decision to reveal the information. This had been a cornerstone of his character for 20+ years. Robin III's secret identity was arguably second only to Oracle's in-universe.

Yet that entire story rested on the idea that Jack Drake, inattentive parent maybe-kinda-misguidedly-authoritarianly trying to connect with his son for the first time ever, snoops in Tim's room and finds proof that Tim is Robin?? AND that Bruce Wayne is Batman?!?? Tim, whose best friends still call him "Rob," left proof of his identity and Batman's somewhere his civilian father could find it??!??!

There is NO WAY THAT MAKES SENSE. There is no version of canon in which that makes sense.

Things that would make sense: Is that old poster of the Flying Graysons how you met the Waynes? or Hey So I Noticed You Have Three Half-Empty First Aid Kits, Talk To Me? or Dad! Did you read my freaking diary and find whatever normal-teenager angst I wrote as a cover and possibly also some real civvie-ID angst mixed in?! Not cool!

OR

Somebody set that up.

That was a freaking supervillain plot.

There's like. No other explanation for what Tim's dad found. Either a supervillain figured out Tim's ID and took him off the playing board in the way most likely to disrupt as many other superheroes as possible, or a supervillain who didn't know Robin's ID mind-controlled him into revealing it for nefarious reasons.

So uh. I really don't want to get into writing DC fic, because I have shit to do that is not that, but SOMEBODY NEEDS TO TELL THAT STORY. Like, either all the characters involved don't contract plot stupidity and thus realize there's something hinky going on, or at some point after that in canon new evidence comes to light or an existing rogue says something suspicious or . . . there's just so many possibilities.

AND THEY'RE ALL MORE INTERESTING AND MORE IN-CHARACTER THAN CANON, DC!!!

(the creators involved in that storyline should feel very very lucky i don't remember who they are and am too lazy to look them up. because i would bring up how bad they are at storytelling every chance i got, forever)

--translations for fandom young'uns and some snark:

*TPTB: the powers that be, shorthand for the vast array of people in charge of multi-creator stories run by companies, such as tv shows, movies, and comics

**Buffy did it better

[auraboo]

About comment and interaction culture

Related to my last reblog, I table at cons and other pop culture events multiple times a year. While it's really heartwarming to encounter people who come by to tell me they love my art/writing and have been following me for years, it's also a baffling experience everytime. And it's specifically because online, I have usually no way to tell that my works are reaching an audience at all.

Most of the time I release art and writing to near complete radio silence. I'm used to it, I don't expect anything else because I know today's online culture has shifted to passive consumption and the way platforms function does not encourage interaction, but of course it often feels demoralising. I just tend to ignore it and keep going anyway because I still love the things I create and want to share them with the world.

It's just a really strange experience to have people come up to you irl and tell to your face that they're big fans and never miss a post, because I have no idea if anyone even sees what I post most of the time. And that's because without comments, likes, reblogs or other interaction there's literally no way to tell. Without cons I'd have no idea that I have fans or that someone out there likes my works enough to keep coming back to them. And I'm lucky, because I've decided to keep this as a hobby and not try to make a living out of it.

I don't know what the solution is - apps and platforms have made us timid to reach out to each other and trying to change that when the way they're designed encourages mindless, passive scrolling is very difficult, if not impossible for individual users. It's hard for me too - I find reblogging unnerving nowadays, like I'm somehow being a bother or annoying the creator, that I need to have something long and meaningful to say in order to leave a comment (and that's the devil speaking). In the days of old deviantART and LiveJournal I used to be a very active commenter on the daily, but nowadays just saying "loved it" once a week seems to take mental effort.

And the people who do reach out, who do reblog, comment, like or anything else, I see you. I think about those interactions all the time, and it's a huge motivator, knowing that something little old me made resonated with someone out there enough for them to reach out with something.

This is not a rant or a guilt trip btw, I'm just having some thinky-thoughts after last weekend's comics festival and seeing a bunch of other posts discussing this.

[jamietarttsnorthernattitude]

I'm thinking thinky thoughts about your fics and how you have a wonderful sense of setting weight.

'Setting weight' being a term I made up for how much weight an author puts on the setting of a scene.

To use examples, Tolkien puts a massive amount of time and energy into his settings. On the other end of the spectrum (and I have thrown a dart at the wall here) I'd put Chuck Palahniuk. Oh, he has settings - office buildings, fight clubs, self help groups - but there's little physicality to those settings. They exist to paint a theme.

But in both cases, the author rarely connects the character to their setting. To its history or its meaning, yes, but not to the sensation of the character within the space.

So as I sat there, beginning to reread Not to Me, Not If It's You, I was struck by how lovely your sense of setting weight is. I think back to this opening image a lot. To Jamie, sitting alone on a bed in a hospital in Qatar, watching the World Cup on this small TV. The space Jamie inhabits here is very clear. You cannot dissect him from this setting and have the same meaning ring through

Take Apologies From My Tongue, And Never Yours. Colin and Jamie on the bus. What's so special about that, you may ask? They're on a bus. Characters be on the team bus all the time. Well, yes, but do they often feel like they're on a bus? It's small, but sometimes the setting really is just a passing mention of where a thing happens to take place.

Rage, Rage, Against the Dying of the Light takes place in a hospital, but more importantly (to me) it feels like a hospital. It feels like, even if the author isn't focused on writing about the setting, they're not forgetting that the setting exists. The room stays in the room with us. It's not an after thought.

The cab ride snippet you posted for the fic you're writing on, that also had an excellent sense of just... space. The space the characters inhabit. It's a sort of visual I can feel through the words. It feels real without overwhelming to a Tolkien-esque degree.

I don't feel like I've explained this right, but especially with your last few fics, it's something I've begun to really notice. Just. Setting weight. Good stuff. I know this is more technical appreciation than anything else, but I thought I'd share how much I enjoy this aspect of your writing <3

Thank you for these generous words and fuck you for making me FEEL ALL THE THINGS. (anyone outside of the TL fandom going to read that like damn girl, relax).

I’ve been thinking about this a normal amount (that's a lie I will cherish this until my dying day I want it used as my euology) but I still can't form words enough to do it justice, it's all shrimp emotions.

But seriously, thank you (which does not feel like enough) for your amazingly nice words and taking the time to send them and looking at my works. It's really an honour to have you read them and that they had any impact that you would remember them is absolutely flooring me.

And it's especially an honor because you are one of the authors I try to emulate with this particularly. There are so many amazing authors in this fandom that I learn from everyday and I while I look at your work with admiration for many, many aspects, I especially have tried to learn from your stories and their setting weight (wonderful term btw!).

Thank you so much for taking the time to share this with me, it's especially helpful when I'm struggling through the normal writer horrors. The imposter syndrome is real and especially because there are so many amazing writers here I often struggle comparing myself. The doubting voice in the back of my mind has been especially loud lately. I think there is no other land is the fic I have had the most interest about on here which is amazing and exciting but also fucking terrifying.

The mortifying ordeal of being known, am I right?

All of this rambling to say THANK YOU, for these wonderful, kind, thoughtful words but also THANK YOU for being you and inspiring me, for talking me through whatever story help I need, for giving me story ideas, for being the extremely supportive person you are, for your kudos, comments and bookmarks, for sharing my work or snippets, for sharing cat photos, for absolutely FEEDING me with your works and snippets (where I can be found laughing and/or crying on a regular basis), for sharing your thought provoking analysis.

But most importantly, thank you for your friendship. I am beyond blessed to have the wonderful people in this fandom but especially you. I do not miss all the support you spread through tumblr and ao3 and I have no doubt everywhere you go. You are a joy and I smile everytime I see your name (and esp after I realized you and @jamiesfootball were one in the wonderful same lmao).

Now stop being so nice to me ;)

[terresdebrume]

So. The thinky thoughts of tonight.

(...Aka I don't have a therapist so I put things on my blog because I'm less worried about someone finding that than my bullet journal, and also typing is faster than writing and doesn't hurt my hand.)

As I mentioned on Friday, I've recently come to the realization that actually, I don't feel nervous about the idea of being pregnant here in Phnom Penh. I don't feel nervous about the idea of teaching in my school while pregnant. I don't feel very nervous about being able to financially provide for a child.

I'm not even nervous about not really wanting a child--or at the very least, I'm not nervous that I like the idea of being a parent because society convinced me I should, mostly because yesterday I was almost ready to call the local fertility clinic and make an appointment for a consultation.

But I do worry about:

Being unable to provide for a child's emotional and psychological needs

Being unable to provide for a child's physiological needs

Being able to accept the changes a child would bring in my life

The thing is, sometimes I ignore my cats when they ask for things. I don't play with them nearly as much as I should, though I've been better about at least practicing their tricks every day. Still. Cats need to play something like an hour a day, and I don't know if they play when I'm gone (I think they do) but when I'm here and spend my time lying on the couch they definitely don't. I feel guilty about it because I know I should do more but it's still very shaky, and I can see that it stresses them out sometimes. If I can't (or feel like I can't) provide for my cats needs, how can I provide for a child? Other point of worry (which is probably stupid and all but it still worries me) I feel like my students don't feel comfortable telling me things. They've told personal stories to other teachers so far, but not really to me, and I know it's their right and there may be many factors for that but I also. I worry that it's my fault, that I make them feel like they can't, somehow. And again, they don't have to! They never have to! I want to respect the privacy and their right to pick what they share, and I tell them so. But I worry that there's something about me that makes them feel stiffled or unwelcome. Am I too strict? Am I not listening the way I should? Does it seem like I don't care? Should I simply ask more questions even if it feels like I'm being intrusive? I don't know. I don't know, and it worries me even though I know I'm not entitled to know about their lives (and I don't feel entitled to it, quite the opposite) because A) I worry that it makes me a bad teacher, and B) I worry that if I can't be a good teacher or a good cat parent, it means I can't be a good parent to a child.

Also. It took me two days to do the dishes this weekend. I don't even have that many, but all of them were in the sink, and they'd been in the sink long enough to grow a bit of mold, and for the sink gunk to really smell. The floor was ditry because it took me three days longer than it should have to put the dust compartment back into the robo vacuum. My clothes are strewn around the flat. The living room table is covered in papers because I haven't been back to do the criminal background check I've been meaning to do for months now. Sometimes, I forget to change the litter boxes until the cats start protesting. And by sometimes I mean often. Sure, I'd want to do better if/when a child came in, but what if I couldn't? What if I go through the whole process and bring some poor kid who didn't ask for anything in this world and it turns out I can't care for it properly?

The changes I think is the smallest one. It just. It worries me that I think about the reality of having a child, like having to use tuktuks and maybe not being able to do DND or going for my weekly dinner anymore, and feeling reluctant. I'm also like. A bad sleeper. I've always been, I'm trying to change it, but it's so slow--the prospect of having to deal with potentially several months of being woken up several times a night is not pleasant to me. The prospect of having to share my bedroom is not pleasant to me (this could be solved by moving and doing so early enough in the pregnancy that the cats would have time to get used to the new place before the baby came.) but I worry that these are all things that just come with having a baby and me feeling apprehensive about them is a sign that I'm unsuited for the role of parent :/

I know things are different when it's your kid, and all, but while I'm not worried at the prospect of having a 3 years old or a teenager, I have to admit that I am worried about having an infant and having to devote 100% of my energy to it. I'm scared of having a child and handling the first few years so badly it hurts the child, or me, or both of us. I don't know what it says about me that I'm both considering having a child and immediately considering all the ways in which I would or wouldn't be able to avoid taking care of it (ie. Nannies, daycare, being able to go to work.) I think this one is the biggest of my worries, really. I know people have made fun of and very harshly criticized parents for struggling with having their kids at home full time during the various lockdowns of the world, but speaking as someone who actually teaches preschool and high school kids full time, they take a lot of energy--and I only have them in class! They have a set taks and I have a set task, and they can turn to each other for fun, for something to do, for support, for many things they need that a single person can't provide. I don't want to have a child and find out I can't handle the reality of it.

And if course, I worry that all this worrying isn't normal, that it's a sign I convinced myself I wanted something I don't actually want and I'm being delusional and I'll go through it and then regret it for the rest of my life. It's the same worry that I have about transitioning, which itself is the reason why I haven't really started any official process to even change my first name even though I've been going by Matt everywhere for six years now, so I'm pretty sure I can reasonably expect I won't regret *that* at least. Which I guess partially boils down to: if I haven't been spending my every conscious moments trying to get to that goal, if I've been fine with the limbo for so long, do I even really want to get out of it?

UGH. Well. That's out, I guess. Hopefully, it'll accomplish more than just stressing the cats out x)

[lemonadesoda]

It's been a while since I've aimlessly rambled about my ocs because it's been a rather difficult season and I had been struggling with creative block for most of it which has only recently broken for me (only to be interrupted by a great deal of real life things).

Tbh it's also been an internal fight of me wanting to make more regular creative posts bc it just is fun to share that stuff instead of keeping it private or to a single discord chat vs the feeling that it doesn't really make a difference if i post it or not so why bother. Now that life has eased up a little again, I will once again try to actually blog on my blog.

Things I've been dabbling in lately:

I made a dreamwidth a while back but never advertised it. Haven't updated it in a while either, but I hope to put more things on it, hopefully more original concepts and such, but links to my fanfics are the main thing there for now. Find it [here]

Currently working on: a somewhat long short story reflecting on Lemel's aroace identity and the relationships that illustrated their journey with that. (Icarusverse canon)

Random AUs as usual. Predominant ones lately have been the Fae AU where Tevane is a fae prince who Lemel, a botanist, and their young apprentice Jose (@doodleimprovement) meet and befriend in the nearby forest. DnDads AU, haven't written anything for that because I have been paywalled spoilerwalled from much of the content on account of not being caught up yet. Tevane joins with Jammy (@jam-blue), Cassius (@banyanas) and Azar (@rindomness) on a journey in the Forgotten Realms to seek the people they lost there.

Lots of thinky thoughts on character interactions because that is my one true obsession. There's a lot of text in a google doc that's literally just the play by play of various conversations between my guys that's very indulgent but not really the meat of any particular narrative so. Lol idk if anyone wants to see any of that. I can basically infinitely write character interactions as a hobby. Like, stories have to pull the plot and narrative relevant stuff only, but I'm always fixated on the little conversations that happen behind the scenes, the small talk off camera where you know a lot of relationship building is actually happening. What do they talk about when they're walking to the next plot point? When they're eating dinner together, or getting ready for bed, or waiting for the train? Fascinating stuff to me. Boring for a story tho. What can ya do

[icannotreadcursive]

So, since totally cheating on today's OC-tober prompt, I am having some thinky thoughts about my relationship to fanfic AUs and what "AU" even means.

I do not think of myself as someone who writes AUs, and yet I very rarely write things that are canon-compliant. As I just said to a couple friends "I canon diverge HARD and I love me a “what if” but I do not “AU” in the coffee shop etc sense".

And that's the thing, when I say "AU" pretty much exclusively mean a story where the characters exist in a setting different from canon and have done so all along. Not "the world of canon but with some details changed" and not "the world of canon up to a point."

I think I've written one (1) actual AU ever, and I'm more likely to read AUs for Marvel and DC comics stuff which, by their nature, already have about a million canonical AUs anyway, or for media I'm not super familiar with or don't actually like so my interest in the canon setting is low to begin with.

From certain authors I trust, or on friends' recommendations I will read almost any kind of AU, but it's a reasonable generalization to say I just don't like them.

For me, a huge part of a character is the context they exist in, so when you take them out of their canon setting my interest drops a lot. And yes, I do know that some AU fics do a lot of really interesting things with translating a character's circumstances and dynamics from canon to an AU setting, which--for me--exploring that dialogue between the canon circumstances and how they've been rendered in the AU is the entire point of having an AU at all and just about the only thing that makes them worth reading, but too often they feel like dolls with familiar names and faces just grabbed and stuck in a different story entirely where they can't be the same characters I know, and I therefore absolutely do not care about them.

Especially for source media that's sci fi or fantasy where those fantastical elements are so deeply ingrained in the characters' experience and sense of self, I utterly fail to see the appeal of AUs that strip the characters of that context. To me, a lot of the fun of sci fi and fantasy is exploring the impact that the fantastical elements have on characters, so the impulse to do the opposite of that reflects a view of and relation to that media and those characters that is so alien to me I cannot fathom it. I have a similar, if somewhat inverse, issue with a lot of the kinds of AUs that introduce fantastical elements (they tend to feel shoehorned in to me) or switch out one set of fantastical elements for another (there was already magic there to be explored??? was the canon magic not good enough for you???). Overall, most AUs end up making me feel like, why did you bother writing this as fanfic for this media, since you clearly don't actually want to write about this media or its characters as they exist.

I'm not saying y'all who love to write and read those kinds of of stories are wrong, I'm saying I will never understand you.

All this culminates in my moderate frustration with the handling of the Ao3 [Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence] tag. Because it stacks under the general [Alternate Universe] tag, I can't just exclude that tag and free myself of all the coffee shop, modern setting, no powers, vampire, mafia, high school AUs I'm just not interested in without also removing all the "what if things when differently after episode 3?" type stuff I am into.

Cuz, to me, canon divergence isn't AU, it's canon divergence. Those + canon compliance are three different modes of engaging with canon that I think most fanfic people have an innate understanding are different from each other. It bugs me that one gets stacked under another just on the grounds that it's not the third one.

Most of the time when I'm writing fic it's either an exercise in "how would I have handled this story/filled in these gaps" or its me experimenting with how things could have gone, treating canon as a control group. Either way, there's a grounding in the canon setting the absence of which is what, to me, makes an AU an AU.

The way I see it, because my fics have that grounding point, they're simply not AUs no matter how far they end up diverging, since they're still set in the same basic world.

[lackadaisicalnereid]

top 5 tv episodes? top 5 songs (currently or Of All Time)??

top 5 tv episodes currently, in no particular order, things I've watched or rewatched recently:

1 sharp objects series finale 2 star trek strange new worlds s02e03 3 community s01e23 4 succession series finale 5 black sails s02e01

top 5 tv episodes ever, in no particular order 1 doctor who s01e09 father's day 2 btvs, s02e22, becoming part 2 3 twin peaks s02e22 beyond life and death 4 hannibal s02e13 mizumono 5 the west wing s02e22 two cathedrals

(also, @sunbelieving I loved both your asks (all four of your asks?) but writing the tv stuff took a lot out of me and I just do not have it in me to do the same for songs, which I think might be even more challenging. I might return to it later, however)

thinky-thoughts hidden below

sharp objects series finale

This is one of those cases where it's taken me years to get around to finally watching something I'm convinced I'll like. My life is like that, it makes no sense. It feels weird to single out one episode of a whole that is so strongly one thing, but the finale is where everything culminates & the first two thirds had my stomach in knots. The ending reveal montage was brilliant and gutting. Amy Adams and Eliza Scanlen are forever good in my books on the strength of the finale.

star trek strange new worlds s02e03

Love La'an and what she gets to do in this episode. It's both classic TOS shenanigans in a way that I thoroughly enjoy & it's also character developing in a way TOS arguably could not have been, as that was not really the tv landscape back in the day. I found her attachment to Kirk both sweet and heartbreaking, and there were some moments along the way I thought were just excellent fun, like Kirk getting them money by playing chess, because Kirk plays chess with his first officer in every universe, and La'an and Kirk choosing the same outfit when they go to the shop and need regular Earth clothing. Adelaide Kane put in a good performance as the guest star, and not only was the plot fun, but it also managed to advance some character arcs, primarily La'an's, but also Pelia's. All good in my book.

community s01e23 modern warfare

I accidentally rewatched a few episodes of Community yesterday and just had such incredible amounts of fun with this and some other episodes. The ability of the cast and crew to work across genres and plotlines and tropes and still have convincing characters and even character arcs, as well as relationship arcs, is still a brilliant accomplishment in my books. Also, early Jeff/Britta, what a wonderful sitcom disaster.

succession series finale

Look, I am not immune to siblings and tragedy. I would really love to say I have something to add to the immeasurable amounts of Succession discourse, but I am not sure I do. The final sibling argument scene wherein Kendall, for a shot at the throne, takes back his confession of murder (manslaughter probably?) which was what jump started his patching-things-up-with-the-siblings and was arguably the moment they were all most there for each other in the whole series? Horrifying, beautiful, stupid, inevitable. Tragic.

black sails s02e01

I have decided to cheer for all thing queer and fun and my friends that I am watching this with are both highly into this as well, so it's not necessarily the episode itself that I enjoyed so much, as it was my experience of watching it, but I treasure it. Also, I cannot believe I am getting attached to John Silver of all fictional characters in all the pirate gin joints, but what can you do, I am weak, someone save me.

top tv episodes of all time, in no particular order

Honestly, there's like an extremely slim chance that this is actually my top 5 episodes of tv ever, but I'm really trying here & will try to explain my thinky thoughts. Having written the list and given it a bit of a thing, there's definitely a theme here of themes being developed & brought to escalation, plotlines being finished, tragic and horrible choices being made, high stakes, and (the least in the case of the doctor who episode) the landscape of the show and of what the show is/means being changed forever by the episode.

doctor who s01e09 father's day

Listen, I know. I hear you. I want to say ANYTHING basically with Amy. Amy is forever my favorite Doctor Who companion. But on my recent Doctor Who re-watch I discovered depths of appreciation I did not know I had for Father's Day. I love Rose's self-centeredness, and Nine's anger and then angered resignation to it, which inevitably ends in honest forgiveness. I always cry over Nine's speech to the young couple.

DOCTOR: How did all this get started? STUART: Outside the Beatbox Club, two in the morning. SARAH: Street corner. I'd lost my purse, didn't have money for a taxi. STUART: I took her home. DOCTOR: Then what? Asked her for a date? SARAH: Wrote his number on the back of my hand. STUART: Never got rid of her since. My dad said. SARAH: I don't know what this is all about, and I know we're not important. DOCTOR: Who said you're not important? I've traveled to all sorts of places, done things you couldn't even imagine, but you two. Street corner, two in the morning, getting a taxi home. I've never had a life like that. Yes. I'll try and save you.

tears

(But also, you know. AMY POND.)

btvs becoming part 2

Listen, I know. There's so much of BTVS that's dear to me, and it's hard to pick any one thing and be happy with your choice. But I recently rewatched the first two seasons and was surprised at how much I felt during Becoming. Even as someone who is not extremely attached to Angel/Buffy, the setup and the tragedy of it is beautiful, imo, & SMG's terrific beyond words. And I am a sucker for high stakes. Also, whatever one thinks of Xander's not-telling-Buffy thing, as someone who's just watched s2 of Warrior Nun, DEAR SISTERS IN CHRIST, do I wish someone working on that show was not afraid of having a character make such a radical move. And not just in a show like Succession, where it does not weigh the same, because everyone's choices are horrible exactly all of the time, but in a show about teenagers, super-powered and not, just honest-to-god trying to prevent apocalypses. Not to mention the whole Angelus arc leading us to Buffy killing him. And the fallout from this arguably follows everyone in the main cast until the end of the show. Also, the No weapons…no friends…no hope. Take all that away and what's left? Me. Gets me every time.

twin peaks s2 finale

Still contains the single most terrifying scene I have seen in my life. Honestly, I don't even want to talk about it. Imagine the worst thing that could possibly happen in a show that is ostensibly about the struggle between good and evil and then that exact thing happening. It is horrifying in a visceral, existential way. I don't wanna talk about it, alright.

hannibal season 2 finale

Not me getting attached to fictional men, noooooooo. Why. Also, it's starting to look, as I am writing this, that I am way more into tragedy than I would normally say about myself, and I am not sure what to do with that. There's something so beautifully harrowing and horrifying about the obviously inevitable fallout from Will going through with his planned betrayal and then not being able to actually do it. Hannibal making a family for them and then taking it away. Abigail murdered by a father, again. Alana betrayed, Jack betrayed, all of them relevant victims that in their own right that command BOTH Will and Hannibal's love and respect, but in other ways utterly meaningless because of how blind & careless Will, and Hannibal in particular, can be towards people that are not Will and Hannibal. "Falling in love with a god is not a death sentence. The story is only a tragedy if the god loves you back."

the west wing season 2 finale

The tragedy, the elation, the fucking putting of hands into pockets. YOU GET HOYNES. The Brothers In Arms needle drop to stand supreme to all other needle drops.

(also i apparently have a thing for s2 finales whatdoyoudo. I guess it makes sense to some degree, because shows need to take time to become themselves and then afterwards often they go into directions you don't like. season 2, obviously for me, statistically, is when the show has found itself - whatever the show is, it is that the most in season 2, seems to be my judgment.)

[shareoff-plays-games]

Dark Souls (For A Non Believer)

So recently I have finally completed a playthrough of the original 2011 Dark Souls (well, not quite. What I actually played was the 2018 remastered edition but as far as I can tell it is pretty much the exact same game with updated textures so. You know.) and I wanted to write down some of my thoughts. This review will be mostly spoiler-free, other than minor spoilers relating to the start of the game which are limited to a specific section wrapped with a warning.

Note: I have yet to play any other FromSoft game, so I cannot provide comparisons or speak on the Soulsborne series as a whole, only on the first Dark Souls game.

I add the subtitle "For A Non Believer" because, up until very shortly before starting the game, I was quite sure I would not enjoy a Souls game, let alone ever beat one. I started playing it as sort of a joke - my thoughts were "I'm going to try a little bit and die a thousand times and then give up, that sounds like it would be funny", and then I ended up being fairly surprised by how much the game sucked me in and just kept on going.

The reasons I thought I wouldn't enjoy it are pretty interesting in hindsight - some of them are, in my opinion, fair criticisms or gripes with the game, and were indeed aspects of the game I did not enjoy, and some of them were less so, either slightly inaccurate or completely inaccurate misconceptions. Obviously, I ended up enjoying the game a fair bit (or hence I would not have beat it), and so I find examining those thoughts interesting.

So here it is: why you think you won't enjoy dark souls (probably, I don't know your life, I'm really talking about myself here.)

Notion #1: The game is insanely difficult.

Verdict: Partially Debunked

So before I started playing Dark Souls I genuinely expected it to be the hardest game I've ever played by a wide margin. So I braced myself for an insanely hard game... and then that insanely hard game never came.

Don't get me wrong: Dark Souls is not an easy game, that much is certain. It is definitely punishing, sometimes extremely so; at times it is indeed quite difficult, and at other times surprisingly cerebral and thinky for what is ultimately a "punch bad guys" action romp. It asks, no, it demands that you do not play on auto pilot, that you pay attention, and that in itself can be genuinely hard, especially contrasted with lessons learned by other games.

However, when it comes to the actual difficulty of the challenges presented - I found the vast majority of them to be fair, and comparable to similar challenges presented in other hard games. Some particularly applicable examples that spring to mind are the original God of War trilogy (on the second-to-last difficulty: the hardest difficulty is a fair bit harder than Dark Souls) and Hollow Knight. Other difficult games, like Celeste or Furi, are perhaps harder to directly compare to DS but my experience of them is that they're still of vaguely similar difficulty.

It is worth noting that all of these games, unlike Dark Souls, punch their hardest in optional content which is actually far, far more difficult than anything offered in Dark Souls (player / community imposed challenges excluded).

Ultimately, my point is that as far as difficulty goes, the game doesn't really stand out. Yes, it's a challenging game, but it's a challenging game that honestly stands among so many other challenging games, and the internet fame and cult status it sort of ended up getting as "the hardest game ever" is entirely unwarranted. And in my opinion, it leverages this difficulty well to create a good experience, which brings me to point #2.

Notion #2: The game is difficult for the sake of being difficult OR: the game is incredibly dark and edgy for the sake of being edgy.

Verdict: Mostly Debunked

If you're anything like me, you have been at times put off by the discourse the Soulsbourne games have generated online. There's this sense of... bravado, that beating one of these games is somehow an indication of the player being somehow superior to other people.

It even sometimes feels like people talk of it as if it is an inherent moral virtue to be good at these games, or to persevere to beat these games despite the challenge.

If you're anything like me, this sort of discourse makes you:

Feel mildly irritated.

Roll your eyes so hard you forget their original orientation (metaphorically, of course, because you're just reading idiots online talking about a video game with a completely undue sense of self importance and it does not deserve the energy expenditure that reacting to it physically would be)

Want absolutely fucking nothing to do with the games.

Which I will admit is silly on my part, because first of all, the game does have a lot of players that aren't like this and are fairly reasonable, and secondly, you don't need to be a Dark Souls Fan™ to enjoy Dark Souls. And besides, people are entitled to their opinion... I guess. (this moral position really is dumb though lmao)

Anyway. So there's this Gamer™ sense that difficulty is inherently good and valuable, being gatekeep-y and allowing for massive bragging rights seemingly becoming virtues in their own right, which undeniably is the exact appeal of the game for a certain portion of the fanbase.

I will not lie - it is pretty satisfying to be able to say I beat the game, but my enjoyment and appreciation of the game goes so much beyond that.

The difficulty of the game is a crucial and inherent part of the game design, it is absolutely required to make the game work. I think the game design of Dark Souls is brilliant and well thought out, and the difficulty is a necessary cornerstone of that. Let me explain.

Let's take a hypothetical action RPG game that is, for the most part, not very difficult. (Substituting a game that fits the description in should be easy enough and is left an as exercise to the reader).

In those games, it logically follows that making a mistake is not generally punished (or punished in a way that allows you to ignore the punishment easily enough).

In that sense, these games do not teach you not to make mistakes, and do not ask of you to attempt to actively get better.

The end result of this is that these games are highly ineffective at teaching the player how to exploit their systems, get better, or generally play them well. Any "mistake" the player makes has to either be not a real mistake at all (because really the game allows it) or suddenly insanely punishing out of nowhere.

To be perfectly clear, this is not a criticism of any hypothetical game that fits this description: A game can opt for focusing on other things and still be a great game. It is, however, in defense of Dark Souls.

Why, then, is Dark Souls difficult? It is difficult because, counterintuitively, by being difficult, it allows you to learn in a way you just cannot in easier games.

It is difficult because it allows the game itself to make some paths and methods of facing down obstacles to be more correct than others, or some to be strictly incorrect or impossible, without it feeling downright unfair, because listening to the game and avoiding punishment is a core tenet of the entire game design.

It is difficult because, by being difficult, it can force you to go slowly and actually observe. Observe hints of danger; observe your own mistakes; observe enemy AI patterns; observe any advantages you can turn in your favor. The game being difficult gives all of these things meaning, brings them to life.

The start of Dark Souls 1 is infamous for being a bit brutal, but paradoxically, it is the kindest section of all - it teaches you so many lessons about how to play the game, and it is mostly brutal because you simply don't know how to listen yet. I personally absolutely adore the design of the first few hours of gameplay, and I think they absolutely show the game at its best and show an excellent example of what I mean by the design philosophy I described above.

WARNING: spoilers for the first few hours of gameplay

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

After a brief tutorial section lasting a couple of minutes that serves to teach you the basic controls, you are thrown into a "boss fight" with a message on the floor recommending you run away. I, like most first time players, attempted to fight the boss for a bit, which goes rather poorly because the boss deals a lot of damage to you but since you still only have the tutorial weapon the damage you deal to the boss is quite pathetic.

A careful examination of the boss arena shows an open door in one of the walls which is far smaller than the boss itself, allowing you to escape. By this, the game teaches you that some challenges may be too difficult for you and you need to run away before you are prepared to deal with them: Keep that in mind for later, and also consider that this is in the first place only possible if the game is difficult enough to force you to run away at times without it feeling completely jarring or out of place with the rest of the game.

So you run away. You rummage around a bit, end up finding a better weapon, and emerge on an overhang that overlooks the boss you just ran away from, with a clear crumble in the stone where you can jump down towards the boss.

The game teaches you the controls for a plunge attack from above, and by following the game's direction you jump down onto the boss, deal massive damage, and then with the HP it has left you find that you deal far, far more damage than you have before. Huh, so sometimes approaching things from another angle can give you an advantage... Interesting.

Shortly after the boss, you reach a large hub-like area with several NPCs and a few branching paths. The path I tried first had absurdly hard enemies, and due to the game's reputation for being incredibly difficult I attempted to defeat them for a while, before realizing I should possibly try and see if there's another path I missed.

Lo and behold, the other path had far easier enemies - still somewhat punishing and requiring careful approach, but far easier to deal with, and I found myself suddenly making a fair amount of progress.

Just as the game had taught me earlier, all I needed to do was run away and find another approach, and come back stronger. (when I eventually came back to the area, I found it far easier and more manageable to deal with, just as the tutorial boss had been).

Some time after, I reached what I'd consider to be the first "real" boss of the game. This boss is fought on a sort of narrow bridge. Attempting to fight it at first reveals a couple of archers on a tower overhead shooting at you at the same time, which is quite disadvantageous and I die pretty fast. Before my next attempt, I examine the tower on which they stand carefully and find a ladder that allows me to go up and kill them. One disadvantage down!

I try fighting the boss a few more times and quickly an observation about another disadvantage arises - the arena is quite unfavorable for fighting the boss, as dodging its attacks is either very hard or impossible in the extremely narrow arena.

A bit after realizing this, I look around to try and find an advantage I can use to offset this disadvantage. And then I remember - the archer tower! looking up at it reveals the same crumbled stone at the front facing the boss arena, just as in the overhang above the tutorial boss. I run there, making it just barely up the ladder before the boss slams at me (okay, maybe the boss killed me while climbing the ladder once or twice), go to the edge, jump down and BAM, massive jump attack damage which suddenly makes the boss feel like a joke to beat with all those attempts under my belt allowing me to easily combo down its remaining HP.

This, to me, is the true brilliance of Dark Souls 1. The way the game uses difficulty to force you to look for any advantage you can get, think of alternative solutions, carefully observe and notice your environment, while gently nudging you in the right direction... If you only care to listen.

-------End of spoilers-------

My thoughts on the game being "edgy" are somewhat related, although also separate. That the game has a dark world and many visually and thematically dark areas is undeniable - hell, it is even part of the name of the whole game. The world is gritty and a bit depressing, the lack of fire and firelight being significant both lore-wise and as a symbol, the darkness oppressive both in story and in gameplay. However, it is this darkness that allows the fire to shine so much brighter, both metaphorically and literally.

There really is no better feeling than reaching a bonfire in a desolate place, after fighting your way through a very dangerous zone and nearly depleting your resources. Seeing the glimmer of fire in the far distance is possible because it stands out in the environment so much, visually, and feeling the potent hope it represents is possible because it represents something that is so different from the rest of the game - if the game weren't so difficult, reprieve wouldn't be so meaningful.

In that sense, the game's ludonarrative is incredibly consistent and really drives the point home, because just as the bonfires represent hope and determination to you (as the player), a chance to keep going, they also literally represent the last dying hope of the denizens of the world (including your in game player character).

Beyond my musings on game design, it is also worth noting that while the game is fairly difficult, it does not generally speaking have meat shields or insanely grindy sections that make you hit enemies for ages without them dying. You die fast, true, but so do the enemies. I was a bit shocked by how much damage you deal to most bosses in the game (even ones considered quite difficult), and most normal enemies die in 1-4 hits (depending on the stage of the game and the specific enemy). Even some of the massive giant bosses really die in a few well placed combos.

Notion #3: Some elements of the game seem needlessly frustrating.

Verdict: Mostly True

This was one of my biggest preconceived gripes with the game, and possibly the one I consider in hindsight the most justified one. Personally, I particularly disliked the idea of very tough bosses combined with checkpoints (bonfires) that are decently far away, forcing you to run for minutes before starting your attempt each time, which ends up adding up to hours over a playthrough. Hours of just... Running the same segments over and over to get to bosses.

And, I'm gonna be real here - I still don't love this aspect of the game, although my opinion here does have a bit of nuance.

To explain what I think, I will start by saying that I don't think I'm particularly good at this kind of game, and believe my experience to be overall relatively indicative of the Average Dark Souls Experience™. I believe I probably did better at some bosses than the average, and worse at others.

All of this to say that really, at the end of the day, Dark Souls 1 really does not have that many difficult bosses, and bosses in which this problem is very prominent (as in, the run to the boss feels frustratingly long, and the boss is tough enough for the player to need to repeat it a lot) are surprisingly few.

Still, I am not attempting to defend this point - when it does happen, it sucks. A lot of the discourse online and in Soulsbourne fan spaces is that "it makes it all the more satisfying when you do beat the boss" - I consider that to be artificial difficulty, one that is unnecessary to boot, and this kind of adamant discussion in favor of every single difficult thing in the game is part of what turned me off the game in the first place and made me think it wasn't for me (because if the game glorifies difficulty for the sake of difficulty, I am not interested... but as explained in the previous point, I absolutely do not believe this is the case here)

There were other minor gripes I ended up having regarding the game being needlessly frustrating at points, ones that I wasn't necessarily prepared for beforehand and first encountered while playing the game myself.

Overall, my experience was that every game has imperfections that can manifest in either boredom or frustration, and in a way they just feel somewhat exaggerated and more frustrating in a game like Dark Souls which punishes you so heavily for mistakes.

The other gripes I had are much more specific to the design of certain areas or enemies, or related to random jank of the game mechanics (such as some hitboxes being really strange, the lock-on mechanic having several flaws, etc), and are therefore less interesting to discuss in my opinion - but they do exist, to be sure.

At the end of the day I enjoyed the game enough to be able to overlook all my gripes (although I certainly was frustrated at times).

Conclusion

It is fair to say I think Dark Souls is a good game. It uses its mostly rather fair difficulty to create a very satisfying experience. I mentioned some of the things I loved about it, and some of the things that annoyed me, but there were even more things I loved or didn't love that didn't really fit into any of my preconceived notions and thus didn't make it into this review. To mention a couple of them briefly:

The system for leaving messages for other players and seeing other players' bloodstains (how they died) makes you feel a bit less alone in the dark and lonely world, while also providing the feeling that every playthrough is a bit personal because other people who played the game did not see the exact same messages. The messages are often helpful, sometimes heartwarming, occasionally funny and sometimes provide misleading or deadly advice (which is funny in its own right... if you don't take it at the wrong time). In that way, it gives a dead world just that little extra spark of life.

The minimal UI really does serve the game well. There are no quest indicators, and yet there still are quests, even if they are more subtle than in other RPGs. The game clearly does put a lot of effort into guiding you to go where you need, even with minimal text and no map or quest log, although at times this can be flawed and you can certainly feel a bit lost. Unfortunately and as a direct consequence of this design choice, I think that if I ever stopped playing the game for like a month I would be completely lost so I sure am glad that did not happen.

The second half of the game is kind of noticeably worse and lower effort than the first half, in my opinion. Still good enough to be worth playing as a whole, but a lot of areas are a bit unmemorable or have things that are kind of bullshit (cough cough Bed of Chaos), and the bosses past the midway point are both a bit less interesting and a fair bit easier (although, objectively speaking, this part of the game probably is a fair bit harder... it just feels easier because of the skills you gain from playing through the first half)

And finally, the big question. Would I recommend Dark Souls, to a non believer such as myself? That depends, but if you want a deeply satisfying experience, with a solid emphasis on its own brand of exploration and trial and error, I would definitely recommend at least giving it a try with an open mind, taking the experience as it comes. I am very glad I gave it a shot, even though I never really intended to, and in a way glad for the misunderstandings I had because it allowed the game to surprise me so much more.

One last thing I'd like to say, in the wake of having completed the game, and this may be just me, but I really enjoy seeing the way Dark Souls influenced all these other games I have played and loved over the last decade, and appreciating the way it has forever changed the landscape of games in every genre. The game is so iconic that spotting shallow references to it in a game like Dead Cells is easy enough, but really being able to consider its wider design influence and compare and contrast it to other games is something I greatly enjoy.

It really is no exaggeration that Dark Souls (2011) changed the landscape of gaming forever. And to the non believer I say - are you curious about the game that changed history? You should be, it deserves it.

[bratbarzal]

On Your Side (NH13) / Chapter Two

Pairing: Nico Hischier x Fem!OC Poppy Jensen*

*I say it's an OC, it's just a name and third person POV. I use minor character descriptions because I don’t get on with writing vague reader inserts/YN for long-form, story heavy fics, but I will generally try to avoid including race and body type or really any physical descriptors. I’m always open to feedback on my writing, or how to be more inclusive.

WC: 15k

Chapter Warnings: there is maybe miscommunication?? in the sense that nico thinks poppy wants one thing and is giving her a chronic case of the over-thinkys, cursing, angst kinda?, fluff, harry potter slander (sorry), rangers slander (not sorry), being set up, mentions of controlling parents again, nico being ravaged by a green-eyed monster, nico being clingy, and mopey, and grumpy, luke being somewhat confrontational, there is also maybe something that rhymes with a miss! don't want to miss that!!

Summary: Poppy Jensen’s job with the New Jersey Devils was supposed to be her first big step into adulthood - a way to prove to herself and her overbearing parents that she could make her own way in life. She was never supposed to become involved with any of the players. Becoming best friends with their captain was stupid. Getting her heart broken by him was tragic. Getting knocked up with his child was just plain messy.

Series Masterlist

Previous Part (Chapter One)

A/N: sorry this took a while I honestly hated everything I wrote every day for a solid week lmao buttt things are kicking into gear now the next chapter is one I've drafted while this one I had to wing so hopefully will be out a little quicker. I know these two are mega annoying with their over thinking but it serves a purpose (I know no other way of existing than to overthink)

please please send me any thoughts any opinions I'd love to hear it whatever it may be thank you!!! again I'll try get another chapter out soon!

Poppy

If anyone were to ask Poppy what kind of impact her older brother, Oliver, has had on her life over the years, she would probably tell them very little. Being 4 years and some change apart has meant that any time Poppy has entered a new space in her life, Oliver has just left it. 

When she started her freshman year in high school, he was starting college. When she was starting college, he was in the beginnings of kickstarting his career. And when she started laying the foundations of her own career, he was too far gone for her to ever catch up.

Their childhood was spent in constant competition - Poppy envying Oliver for being their mother’s favourite child and Oliver envying Poppy for being their father’s - the two of them grew up battling it out to make the other look bad.

Oliver never quite grew out of it.

But, to say she hasn’t learned anything from watching him her whole life would be a lie. A lot of who Poppy is as a person, as a daughter, a colleague, a friend, is more often than not based on who Oliver is not - though the lessons he has taught her have been somewhat inadvertent. 

Poppy likes to think she is independent. She’s seen over the years how much her brother has relied on their parents and the rest of their extended family and suffered terribly for it, always facing their judgements for the decisions he makes - securing himself a lifelong residency under their father’s thumb. He has modelled his own life after the man who raised them, constantly seeking his approval, never quite grasping how much scrutiny this would open himself up to. Poppy very quickly learned that if she wants any semblance of peace in life, she has to source it herself - otherwise, it comes with a million strings attached, all of which are constantly being masterfully pulled by the many hands in her family.

That’s how she navigated her education, getting herself into a great communications and media management programme at Fordham - despite coming from a long line of Wharton alumni and donors - and graduating with honours. It’s how she maintains her friendships, surrounding herself with loving, warm-hearted people who genuinely care for others - a complete contrast to the social circles she had grown up in and around. And it’s how she thrives in her career, working her way up in an organisation and foundation in which their sole intent is to do good and give back. If she achieves such things on her own merit, they can’t be used to control her.

He has taught her how to stick up for herself, which comes off the back of her independence. For years she’s watched her parents pick apart Oliver’s life. His grades, his relationships, his career, his house, the way he’s raising his kids, it’s all up for inquiry in the eyes of Priscilla and Philip Jensen. She’s watched as he’s sat there while they dissect and demolish every little thing about his existence - as he’s invited them into his own home, and let them verbally burn it to the ground. Poppy has too much pride to do the same. 

She remembers when she rented her first solo apartment - a major step in her life, something she was so inherently proud of she couldn’t even put it into words - and her parents had come around to, in her mother’s words, assess the investment. 

It’s a little small, Poppy, was met with, I’m only one person living here, Mom and I don’t much care for the location was contended with, It’s a good thing you’re not living here. They’d turned their noses up at her renting in the first place, but buying a property was out of the picture when she still had student loans to pay, and would mean borrowing money from them, and she wasn’t going to throw herself down that well with no way out.

She’s protective over the things she has worked hard for, and she won’t let anyone bring her down.

Oliver has also taught her a lot about forgiveness, and empathy. This comes from all of the above - from witnessing the path he has taken in life, or the one that was chosen for him, and seeing the kind of person that comes out of the other side. Seeing how the nettles that line such a path sting at the bare skin of his legs, causing him to take much more deliberate, and some may say calculated, steps, even if this means casting others to the edge to protect himself. Seeing how the bricks that line it appear to have been perfectly laid out for him, but are deceptive when stepped upon - uneven and jagged, with the sole intention to trip him up. Seeing how the path winds and loops, and no matter how far down it he goes, the end is never in sight.

And so when he and Poppy argue whenever they’re both home, when he makes digs at her life, or tries to put her down in front of everyone else, she sees him for what he is. She understands the deflection of blame and hurt, and she takes it in her stride. She applies this logic to others, as well.

Poppy believes more than anything in forgiveness. In giving others the chance to be better the second time around - Lord knows she wants the same - but with this comes the expectation that someone has to have understood their missteps in order not to follow the same route again.

But therein comes another lesson Oliver has taught her, or tried to teach her, at least. She’s always thought they’re ridiculous sayings, lessons she has rejected for so long but both things she thinks about a lot, especially lately.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Or beggars can’t be choosers.

It’s usually said following a bribe from their parents to get their own way - Oliver would rather take than question what anyone else stands to gain, and Poppy is far too sceptical to usually bend to any other person’s whim.

The thought of questioning the validity of a promise of gold does bite away at her - makes her fiddle with her fingers and chew at the inside of her cheek in contemplation whenever it comes to mind - but who is she to polish at the exterior? Why would she file and buff until all she has is a rock when she could leave something to be sparkling and beautiful?

Especially if that sparkling something is held by Nico, and comes in the form of picking back up their friendship where it had been so abruptly left off - as if it had never been thawed, never been marred by their time apart. As if she hasn’t spent the last 4 months blaming herself, wondering what she did wrong. 

But the part of her that worries about the why of it all is at war with a side that is enjoying the reconciliation too much to care.

She just needs to reject her own nature to question and over analyse a good thing - needs to let herself bask in what she has wanted back for so long. She needs to be patient. She’ll figure him out sooner or later, if he doesn’t explain himself, first.

It has barely taken a day for their dynamic to shift straight back into its rightful place - for them to be in each other’s constant orbit - either in person or texting non stop in the rare hours they spend apart.

Nico had seen Poppy and Nia off in a cab in the early hours of New Years Day, had made sure she texted him when she got home and was safe in bed, and then had showed up later that morning with juices and pastries for the 3 of them to eat together after texting if she was awake. And when Nia had gone back to her own apartment, he’d spent the entire day with Poppy, lounging around on her couch and watching Criminal Minds until they both fell asleep in the late afternoon. They had cooked and eaten dinner together before he left back to his place so he could get up early for practice.

It’s hard not to immediately slip back into a routine with him - when everything feels so familiar. She had never really reached the acceptance stage of her grief, after all. She’d been stuck floating around bargaining and depression, she thinks. She had never truly let him go, and so it felt more appropriate to press play on things, resuming rather than starting over from the beginning. Accepting rather than dwelling on the millions of unanswered questions that float around the forefront of her mind.

And with that, comes Nico making himself at home in her office while she listens in on a virtual meeting on her first day back working her normal job after New Years Day. 

He’d come in without knocking while she was on a call after his morning practice had finished, had attempted to busy himself looking over the pictures that lined her walls in an attempt not to distract her - like he could ever be around and not be distracting - and had thrown himself down on the chair on the other side of her desk. It’s the constant shuffling around that captures her attention, like he can’t get comfortable, and the little huffs and puffs he lets out as it starts to frustrate him. 

She tries not to visibly react - tries not to let her gaze follow him or roll her eyes - and give away to the other participants of her Zoom meeting that anyone is with her, but he’s making it incredibly difficult for her to focus. She’s grateful her contribution to the meeting has already happened, not having much more to offer, or much need to pay too close attention to what’s going on, or she’d be throwing something at him and gesturing off-camera for him to cut it out.

She watches as he sits legs spread, legs crossed, legs pressed together, sits sideways with his legs slung over the arm, and then tries the other way. She barely manages to make out her boss, Elaine, concluding the call before it ends, making sure to mutter out an adequate sign off to the team. 

Poppy makes sure to leave the call after the chorus of goodbyes and thank yous, before slamming her laptop shut, the second monitor going black as the computer goes into sleep mode.

“What on Earth are you doing?” She questions as Nico seems to be wiggling into the seat opposite hers.

“This chair doesn’t feel right,” he grumbles, picking himself up and throwing himself back down into it with another huff, testing another angle or position only to clearly come up short.

“Whatever you say, Goldilocks,” Poppy rolls her eyes, standing from her own chair with the sudden need to stretch her legs. “It’s the same chair I’ve always had in here.”

“It’s like I can feel Jack’s butt imprint in the leather.” 

“Oh so that’s what this is,” she gestures with a hand towards the chair, where there definitely isn’t an imprint of anyone’s butt. “You’re jealous of Jack’s butt.”

“I just think you should stop letting him hang out in here so much, he’s ruining the furniture.” Nico frowns, and Poppy can’t quite tell if he’s serious or not. “I can practically smell him, too.”

“I’ve tried, unfortunately if you feed a stray one time, they just keep coming back for more.” Poppy starts to gather her things while Nico does whatever it is he’s doing. “And my office does not smell like Jack Hughes, I have a diffuser right here, the scent is literally called Happiness.”

“Tell him he can’t sit in my chair next time he’s here,” he suggests, ignoring her other comment, standing alongside Poppy and offering her a hand. She tries not to get too flustered at how quickly he has reclaimed anything in her office as his.

“You tell him,” she argues, handing Nico her empty I Heart NJ mug and small plate she had used when eating her breakfast at her desk this morning - a toasted cinnamon-raisin bagel and some apple slices. “I can leave you in here on your own for a few hours if you want, let you work on imprinting your butt back into the seat?” She checks her bag to make sure she has the necessities, phone, keys, wallet, lip balm, spearmint gum and a mini perfume. “Or, better yet, why not just pee over the threshold of my door, mark your territory.”

“Do you think that would keep him away?” Nico questions, instinctively following Poppy as she starts to head out of her office.

“For some reason I don’t think Jack would abide by the typical rules of the animal kingdom, so no.” She fishes her keys out so she can lock up behind the two of them. 

“It would probably mess with the whole Happiness smell, too, huh?”

“Exactly.” A couple of her colleagues are working from home this week, and anyone else with an office near hers is in a meeting that she had managed to get out of with the whole auctioneer thing, and so she and Nico stand alone outside the room as she realises she doesn’t even know why he’s here. “Did you actually need something or were you just here to insult my furniture?”

She had text him when she woke up this morning, responding to a message he had sent from practice - a video of Jack stumbling coming off the ice that he’d made one of the social media guys send over to him, his laugh echoing in the background. They’d carried on the text conversation throughout the morning, and the part of Poppy’s daily routine dedicated to missing him has very quickly been scribbled over by the need to keep up with his constant attempts to be close to her.

It’s only been a day since New Years, and Nico has been putting in every effort to make up for lost time. They had spent most of yesterday together, and it’s seeming like, even in the midst of a working day, he wants to carry that on.

She can’t think of a solid 5 minutes since their time on the rooftop where they haven’t been in some form of communication, other than the hours she had been asleep. They’d returned to Jack’s apartment to an almost thunderous applause, and for the rest of the party had remained side by side.

Poppy had only slightly worried about her best friend’s reaction, having left her in a room full of mostly unfamiliar people on such a big holiday. But Nia had been fine with it - had actually encouraged her to take her time when Poppy had originally told her the plan to get some air with Nico - and so any guilt had dissipated with the shit-eating grin that took over Nia’s face at the sight of her being ushered back inside with a large hand on the small of her back. 

A hand that had stayed there pretty much all night.

Jack had been just as happy, congratulating the two of them on getting over themselves and offering them shots to ring in the New Year properly. Poppy was just thankful he’d snapped out of his weird are you enjoying yourself time loop and actually started enjoying the party, himself. 

She’d been fielding questions from both of them about it for the past 36 hours, and she was actually relieved that it was Nico who had poked his head into her office and interrupted her meeting rather than Jack.

She doesn’t entirely know how to explain what is going on with her and Nico, and the longer she can avoid answering questions about it in person - where she is unable to hide the flush of her cheeks or the stuttering of her words - the better.

The questions also tend to arouse that morbid curiosity she has been suppressing, the one that makes her skin itch and tongue tingle with the need to ask why?

“Timo’s throwing me a surprise party for my birthday.”

“He’s doing a real good job at the surprise aspect of it, I see.” Poppy had heard about the party before, back in early December, when there were whispers around the team of something being arranged. She’d dwelled a little too long on what excuse she could come up with to get out of going, only for an invitation never to get extended in the first place. 

It hadn’t surprised her, any ties she had to Timo, with him being one of Nico’s closest friends, had pretty much severed with the ones she had to Nico. He had no reason to invite her to the party when he knew as well as she did, Nico wouldn’t want her there.

Nico must know that she wasn’t invited, she thinks, and dread starts to bubble up within her at the conversation they’re about to have. 

She no longer has to make up an excuse or fake plans to get out of going - she has something else secured, something she won’t be able to get out of now, no matter how much she may want to.

“Jesper told me, he knows I hate surprises. It’s gonna be on Sunday.” He says with an expectant smile tugging at his lips. “Will you be there?”

“I wasn’t invited.”

“I’m inviting you now.”

“You can’t invite people to a party you’re not supposed to know about.” Poppy quickly decides the best way to go about this is to be casual, and standing outside her office waiting for tensions to rise is anything but. She starts to make her way through to the back of the offices to discard her things in the staff kitchen, Nico falling into step just behind her.

“It’s my birthday, I can do what I want.” He practically whines, his tone carrying an eyre of desperation. “C’mon, are you coming or not?”

“Not,” Poppy cringes as casual somehow sounds curt, pushing the door to the kitchen open with her shoulder, and immediately following up with, “I already have other plans that I can’t cancel.”

“You made plans on my birthday?” He sounds like he’s been kicked in the gut, and guilt starts to creep up Poppy’s spine. 

“Well, for starters, your birthday is Thursday, I’m free then.” She says in the hopes it will lessen the blow. He probably has other plans with other people, but she doesn’t mind doing something with him on the day. “And, again, I wasn’t invited, I didn’t know my plans would clash.”

She knows she isn’t being convincing. Something like this never stays a secret within the confines of the organisation they both work in, especially where their mutual friends are concerned, but she hadn’t intentionally made plans for that day specifically - she hadn’t made the plans, at all.

When she turns to face him with an outstretched hand for the cup and plate he’s holding, he has that pouty, sad puppy look etched into his features, and she wishes she’d stayed facing the other way.

“Who makes plans on a Sunday?”

“Clearly a lot of people.” She loads her things into the dishwasher, closing the door until it’s only just ajar so that it can be fully loaded before it is turned on.

“Is it with Nia? You could bring her along, I’m sure if you let Timo know-,”

“My plans aren’t with Nia, and I can’t invite a plus one to a party that I, for the third time, was not invited to.” 

She really doesn’t mean to keep harping on about it, the memory of dodging conversations about a party she hadn’t been considered for hurting her enough, but it’s the only thing she can think to say to put an end to the conversation. To her, it’s obvious - clear-cut and end-of-story level stuff - but Nico is clearly taking what she’s saying the wrong way. She isn’t trying to hint at an invitation, isn’t trying to make him feel guilty for the fact his best friend had thought he would rather not have her there - she just doesn’t want him to keep probing. She knows it’s naive to think he’ll leave it alone, though.

“I’ll talk to Timo,” Nico decides, his posture straightening.

“Nico-,”

“I doubt he’d mind any of your friends coming.”

“I have a date.”

Poppy sees no use in dancing around it any longer, not with how oblivious and determined he’s being - so insistent on her coming to a party he shouldn’t even know about. She mentally curses Jesper for even telling him about it in the first place. 

She honestly doesn’t know why she hadn’t just said it straight up to begin with, but she has a funny feeling around turning him down.

“You have a date?”

“You don’t have to say it like I’m some sort of gremlin.” Her offence is only partly a joke. She knows he didn’t mean it like that.

“This Sunday?”

“As we have already established.”

“I didn’t know you were dating.”

“You clearly need to check your emails more often, I actually sent out a state-wide memo just last week.” She sarcastically jibes.

“The last time we talked-,” he immediately cuts himself off, clearly thinking better of getting into that discussion right now after having avoided it for the past 2 days. “Who is it?”

“He’s a family friend,” she shrugs, dismissively, not really wanting to have this discussion with him either. She just wants the conversation to end, if she’s being honest. She has a lot to do with her day and the longer they stay in this small kitchenette talking about this, the less time she has to get her actual work done. Her nonchalant tone is an attempt to singe the ends the conversation, leaving no room for it to grow, but obviously this sparks a whole new topic for Nico, who just won’t let her be.

“You let your mom set you up?”

Poppy feels like a part of her has forgotten how much of her life she had shared with Nico, before. All the little nuggets of information sitting out in the ether, caught up in the cracks of their friendship. But, God, does he know her well.

The date had been an unfortunate consequence of her missing out on family Christmas - the only way her mom would forgive her was for her to finally agree to let her set her up. It’s something Poppy has been swerving for years, something she had confided in Nico about in the past - how her mom would always call her at night just to make comments about her relationships, or lack thereof, and always try to elbow her way into setting Poppy up with a well-to-do son of a socialite friend who she’d just ran into at some pointless gala.

She’d shared it all with Nico because she felt safe to do so - felt seen, felt understood.

And then, she had no one to confide in.

Maybe that had contributed to her lowering her guard to her mother’s insistence - not having anyone to vent to about it, no one to talk her down or hype her up, and so her resolve in standing up to her family has slowly but surely whittled way into fine scraps.

“Can’t avoid the inevitable forever.” She shrugs, not quite liking how disappointed in her he sounds, not daring to look over at him to see it plastered across his stupidly-handsome face. “And I’m on my final warning with her after bailing on the holidays, so I can’t get out of it this time.”

“You could bring him to the party,” Nico suggests, “I could rope the guys into helping scare him off, buy you some time until your mom springs another insufferable Wolf of Wall Street type at you in 6 months.”

“Please don’t make me tell you the same thing a fourth time. I can’t do Sunday.” She says with an inarguable finality. Although, she does find it amusing how he automatically assumes she would want him to be scared off. She’s actually resigned herself to the potential of enjoying her date - not that she’d tell Nico that. “But I’ll do whatever you want on Thursday if you have any time spare?” 

“My family are coming over, I don’t know if I’ll be free at any point.” Despite how excited for that reunion she knows he will be, he sounds discouraged. Poppy’s shoulders droop a little too. “What about now? I’m done for the day, we could grab lunch? Get some time in together before I go to DC tomorrow?”

“You say that like you’re going on a 5 week excursion to Antarctica,” she snickers, “Or like we’ve spent 10 minutes apart in the last 24 hours.”

“It may be only 90 minutes on a plane, Poppy, but an away game is an all day thing, you know this. Plus, I have a lot of time to make up for.”

Her stomach twists uncomfortably at the mention of their time apart - like it’s a sordid secret that is supposed to stay unspoken. Bringing it up just reminds her of all the times she’s sat in her office waiting for him to knock, and she doesn’t quite like how casually he manages to invoke the memory.

She knows she told him she was okay with what little explanation he had to offer, but she also knows she let him off easy. She didn’t lie, though - the amount she had missed him had far outweighed the need for answers, especially at a time where she was so unsure about the possibility of settling the tension between them in the first place.

But now, with every time he initiates contact, her mind goes straight to thinking about what had made him cut it before.

She worries about overexposure. Worries about him having time to himself, time to process and time to breathe where he isn’t stressing about keeping up appearances for her.

She wants things to return to normal, wants to spend time with him, but, if this is what had been the problem in the first place, then maybe it’s best to give him that space to cool things off a little.

“So, lunch?”

“I can’t, I have to check out potential auctioneers for this fundraiser” She doesn’t like rejecting him, especially twice within one conversation - doesn’t like the doubt and anxiety that creeps up with a small antithetical voice that warns her, don’t push him away, Poppy, he might not ask again, but she really does have to work.

The fundraiser is in March, and their in-house auctioneer, Keith had decided to enter early retirement in December, having fallen ill and developed some kind of chronic vocal nodule issue. He has already moved out of state, and was no help in offering any sort of replacement. Apparently, Poppy had been told when she called a local agency that specialised in this thing, the auction industry is cut throat - no pun intended to Keith and his nodules - and the guys would rather see their long term, loyal customers suffer than provide any kind of assistance where they had upcoming events in dire need of an auctioneer.

Elaine had thrown the task straight onto the big stack of work Poppy already has to get through for the event, knowing how much she wants to impress her boss and secure further responsibilities and opportunities for the bigger foundation events in the future.

If Poppy had known that taking this on meant trawling around Hudson County sitting in on private auctions, only able to watch, pretty much scoring a bunch of old men on how quickly and how loudly they could yell, she would have delegated it to someone else. Only, she’s run out of good graces and task-trades in the past few months with her many attempts of avoiding working with Nico, so she has to put up and shut up. It’s her own personal version of hell.

“I could come with you?”

“You want to come watch auctions with me?” She asks, in almost-disbelief.

Surely he wouldn’t be so adamant about being around her if he didn’t truly want to - but does he know what he wants?

For as much time as they had spent together before - all the times she’d watched his practices and games, all the times he’d come over to eat lunch in her office, all the events they had done together for the foundation, all the time outside of the Rock they had spent together - he had never done this. Followed her around while she worked excruciatingly mundane tasks, just because.

“Yeah, why not?” He asks, like it’s normal for him to be tagging along. 

“‘Cause you’ll get super bored?” Bored in general or bored of her, she doesn’t quite know.

“Auctions are cool, my grandma used to take me and my brother and sister to them when we were kids.” Poppy barks out an unintentional laugh, eyes narrowing as she pushes herself off where she’s resting against the dishwasher and starts back towards the door. “Why is that funny?”

“I’m just picturing you holding up one of those little paddles and getting into arguments over someone’s coin collection.”

“I was more into trains.” He shrugs, following her as she makes her way toward the stairwell in the back corner of the offices.

“Of course you were.” She chuckles. The two of them walk for a moment in silence, starting down the stairs so she can drop by the PR department - her colleague Josh in possession of a binder of external talent and the locations in which they will be auctioning today. “You don’t have anything better to be doing?” She is genuinely worried that he doesn’t quite understand what he’s signing himself up for - that he thinks this is going to be fun, and is going to end up seriously disappointed and be put off hanging out with her again. 

“Than spending time with you? Never,” That makes her stomach twist in an entirely different way. 

“Charmer,” she rolls her eyes, willing her thoughts to be quieter and her heart to beat back into a steady pace. “Fine, I’m down. You’re driving, though.”

“Of course,” he smiles victoriously, like he seriously has absolutely nothing he would rather do than drive her around for the rest of his day - even when it’s supposed to be her time making up for technically missing his birthday.

“I just have to pick something up from Josh, do you wanna meet downstairs?”

“I’ll wait for you.”

The two of them enter the offices together, and Poppy tries not to acknowledge the conveyer belt of stares as they walk through to find Josh’s desk.

Josh had done the bulk of the work on the agency end of this project, making sure the foundation weren’t aligning themselves with anyone or anything that could blow back on them, and before the holidays, the pair had worked pretty closely to try and stitch up the gaping hole in their in-house talent pool. He’d somehow turned what Poppy considered the stupidest job she had ever been given into something maybe-possibly-fun. They’d worked a couple late nights back in Poppy’s office, Josh pulling up YouTube videos of different auctions and the two of them compiling a scorecard to assess their candidates on. He was one of the few people in the department Poppy didn’t mind spending time with for a project like this.

“Poppy!” Josh’s smile is wide as he stands up from behind his desk in the corner. He rounds the edge and pulls her into his embrace as soon as she is close enough, and the smile doesn’t leave his face for as long as she’s in front of him.

“Hey, Josh,” she smiles back as she pulls away, taking a measured step back so they aren’t standing too close. “I’m just here to steal your talent binder, if that’s alright?”

“Of course!” He rushes back around his desk to his filing cabinet, using a small key on his lanyard to open it and reaching in to retrieve the folder. “The auctioneers are the blue section,” he opens the folder and points to one of the sectioning tabs, “I put them in date order, they have different time slots so you should be able to get through a couple in a day.”

“Oh, that’s so helpful, thank you!” She takes the folder from his grasp and has a quick look through. She’s so used to having to figure out her own systems of working that it’s nice to have someone else put in the effort - especially someone as organised as Josh.

She looks down at his desk, everything neat and optimally placed. She’s always thought herself as a tidy person, but her own desk is cluttered in comparison. Where her pens are haphazardly thrown in the pot, some upside down, ends chewed to oblivion, his are all the right way up, capped with a lid and looking fresh out of the packet. He has no personal items, no picture frames, no Jack Hughes bobblehead that’s starting to get a bald patch from where it’s continuously set off throughout the day. There’s nothing pinned to the walls of his little cubby, but she supposes in his line of work, he doesn’t have kids that draw him stick-figure versions of himself and send them in as a thank you, or pictures from team events. 

“If you don’t find anyone by Friday, I have some time free in the morning, I could come help you?”

“I’ll try keep you posted,” she offers as a hopefully gentle rejection. She likes Josh, doesn’t mind his company, but he’ll most definitely steam-roll her into a decision, and if she’s going to spend her whole week doing this, she wants the end result to be of her own choosing. “But I think I’ll be alright.”

She has completely forgotten who she’d brought into the office with her until she hears a snorting laugh from behind her - a quick puff of air blown from his nose in amusement - and sees Josh’s eyes divert from her figure for the first time since he’d seen her come through.

“Oh! Hello, Nico, I didn’t see you there!”

“Joshua,” is the only thing he says in response, and when Poppy turns her head back to look at him, he wears an uncomfortable, clearly forced smile. His eyes don’t crinkle, cheeks don’t dimple, and his nose is scrunched in something akin to distain. 

She quickly remembers something Luke had once said to her about how much he hated dealing with the PR team, how they make him feel like a puppet and dismiss his autonomy - definitely not the word he had used at the time but she figured that’s what he was trying to get at - and realises Nico must feel the same. In an effort to quickly ease the tension, she takes a step back toward her friend. “We have to go, thanks again, Josh!”

She hears him call a response after her, throwing a wave behind her as she gently nudges Nico back toward the exit. The two of them make it to the parking lot in an almost comfortable silence, Poppy not wanting to call him out on his rude behaviour when she’d been the one to inadvertently force him into an environment that usually only brought him stress. 

If she brings it up, she brings attention to it, and he potentially realises she pushes him out of his comfort zone where it brings him no benefit and he stops wanting to be around her.

The way in which her thoughts so quickly spiral out of control when it comes to him is something that needs to be studied, she thinks.

He opens every door in the building for her, and even when they get to his car, he does the same.

When she’s jumping into the passenger seat, and she realises she doesn’t have to adjust it - already set into the optimal position for her to stretch out her legs - and notices the smiley face air freshener hung from his rear-view, from a multi-coloured multipack she had bought for him forever ago, she takes a deep breath.

She can’t let herself keep doing this - keep thinking and thinking to the point of exhaustion that everything she’s doing is wrong. 

She’s spending too much time with him, and he’s going to get bored of her. She’s not spending enough time with him, and he’s going to stop asking if she rejects him one too many times. The time she is spending with him is doing boring, mundane things and he’d rather be anywhere else.

She has to push her doubts and anxiety to the back of her mind and tell herself those oh-so-annoying words her brother loves so much.

Beggars can’t be choosers, Poppy.

If she wants Nico back in her life, has already promised him her forgiveness and initiated their reconciliation, she can’t be picky about how he goes about acting on it, can she? She just has to embrace the attention in the hopes it doesn’t go away, again. 

Their drive to the first venue hadn't taken long, a stroke of luck with minimal traffic at this time of day. They find a perfect parking space just around the corner from the auction house, and after a short, brisk walk, they step into the welcoming warmth of the building. Nico holds the door open for Poppy, his gesture gentle yet firm, ushering her inside before closing it securely behind her.

“What’s the game plan?” He asks, lowly, his broad shouldered stature towering over hers as he steps up behind her. They hadn’t talked too much on the way over, Nico lining up a playlist that drifted through the speakers of the car and filled the air around them so there was little need for words.

She can’t figure out if she’s thankful for the reprieve in conversation or nervous over what he could possibly be thinking so hard about.

“Didn’t I warn you how dull this would be? There is no game plan.” Poppy peels the gloves from her hands and puts them in a bundle in her pocket, looking around the entrance to assess their situation. She was told by a woman at the agency that her name would be given to the guy who sits in the front of the auction house, but it’s completely empty.

“Surely there’s a way to make it fun,” Nico wonders.

“I’ll leave that to you to figure out,” she chuckles, eyes cast towards the entrance to the auction hall where someone has just come through the doors.

The guy is young, short, gelled blonde hair, thick framed glasses sitting atop a sharp nose, and dressed in a 3-piece navy suit. He fits the exact description she had been given of the guy who would be in the front-of-house. “Hi, can I help you?”

“Hi, are you Mason?” She asks, stepping forward as he approaches.

He startles only slightly, not as if he hadn’t been expecting anyone, but as if Poppy and Nico didn’t quite fit the image of who he had been anticipating. “Polly?” He asks, stepping to the side of the two of them to his desk, he shuffles through some notes scattered across the surface.

“Poppy,” she corrects with an awkward laugh, shuffling the binder she’s carrying between her hands so she has one spare to extend out to him.

“Like the flower,” Nico pipes up from behind her, his tone short and direct, earning him a quick glance back from Poppy.

“What he said,” she chuckles as Mason takes her hand in his, giving it a firm, friendly shake as amusement shines in his eyes. “I was told by Ruth Kennedy I could come sit in on an auction to watch Mr-,” she quickly flicks through her binder for the name, “Byrne?”

“Of course, Ruth said you’d be stopping by, it’s nice to meet you, Poppy.” The smile he offers is charming, maintaining eye contact with her until her cheeks warmed with the depth in which she was being perceived. 

“You too,” she offers a smile, again tucking her binder into the crook of her elbow before gesturing behind her. “This is Nico, we’re here representing the New Jersey Devils, he captains the team.”

Poppy can’t help the instinct to gush about Nico, and it’s only when she sees something flicker across Mason’s face that she realises she’s doing it - a force of habit.

“I know, we’re big hockey fans around here.” Mason stretches his arm toward Nico, and the way their hands clap together as they shake is loud enough to echo in the otherwise empty entryway. 

Nico says nothing as he retracts his arm, crossing them both over his chest and narrowing his eyes at the man in front of them. How he had gone from non-stop yapping back in Poppy’s office to whatever this is, she doesn’t know. Doesn’t want to think about, through fear she’ll find a way to blame herself - but he’s being standoffish and cold. 

“That’s great,” Poppy glances curiously back at Nico before turning back to Mason, “Is Mr Byrne back there?” She gestures to the doors he had just come through, raising a questioning brow.

“They’re taking a quick recess while some pieces are being brought through, you’re welcome to take a look around before they start back up. There’s a few guests in the gallery at the moment, it’s just through the doors to the right once you get through the entrance.”

“Oh, perfect, thank you!” Poppy offers her quick gratitude before looking back to Nico, checking in that he’s going to follow, and setting off with him through the doors at the back end of the room. 

Nico remains quiet as they make their way through to the back of the building, a complete 180 to his mood from earlier, and Poppy keeps glancing over at him, worrying about what’s caused the shift in his persona until she flat out asks, “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” he shrugs, letting his hands sink into the pockets of his jacket as he takes in the art that lines the walls around them. 

“C’mon, Nico, out with it,” she nudges him with her hip.

“I don’t know, I just have bad vibes from this place.”

She knows that’s not what’s gotten him down - he was quiet back at the Rock - but the alternative is that he’s being grumpy because she’s missing his birthday, and she doesn’t want to enter into that conversation again and repeat herself for the umpteenth time. “They’re selling a bunch of dead people’s stuff, of course you have bad vibes.”

“It’s not the stuff,” he mumbles, looking back towards the doors they had just come through as Poppy ventures deeper into the room. The first display case she comes across houses some sort of fine china tea set - a complete collection, it looks like, with the pot, cups and plates all matching. It looks like something her mother would like - would display in her own cabinet, to collect dust and never to be touched - and for a brief moment, she considers what the price might be of winning her affections this way and bailing out on Sunday.

The next display case has a sculpture of some sort, as do most of the others she sees as she walks through the gallery, Nico following her silently, not seeming to take anything in until he hears Poppy let out a soft gasp.

“Nico, look!” She beckons him into her space with an outstretched arm, placing it on his back when he’s close enough and leaning into him slightly. “It’s a model train!”

She watches as his eyes flit over the figure in the case, head tilting as he reads something on the side. “It’s the Hogwarts Express,” he mutters with a reminiscent smile.

“Sounds fancy, is that a good one?”

“Are you kidding me?” Their eyes meet, and he looks down at her in confusion, “Harry Potter, Poppy.”

“Oh, duh!” She takes another look, still not really recognising it. “I never saw the movies.”

“You never-,” Nico takes a short step back, turning to face her fully as her hand falls back to her side. “You’ve never seen Harry Potter?”

“Well, I’ve seen one of them,” she corrects herself, “But they killed the owl and the little hobbit thing, I didn’t wanna watch the rest and get attached.”

“Dobby was a house elf,” he gasps in offence, “How do you only watch the second to last movie?”

“A group of friends went to watch it, I didn’t wanna be left out.” She tells him before realising she has an opportunity to poke fun at him. “Nico Hischier, are you a Harry Potter dork?”

“It’s Potterhead, Poppy.”

“Oh, so you’re a big time Harry Potter dork.” He shoves at her half-heartedly, breaking out into a smile when she giggles at her own taunts. “They even have a name for your level of nerd."

“Don’t act like I’m the weirdo, you’re the one who hasn’t seen one of the single biggest movie franchises ever made. What next, you haven’t heard Thriller?”

“Shut up,” she scoffs, shoving him back. “How can you say it’s bad vibes in here when they have your favourite auction item from your favourite movies? It’s fate!”

“They’re not my favourite movies,” he rolls his eyes, stepping back into her side as he notices other people in the gallery start to make their way through to the auction room. “It is a cool train, though."

She watches his face intently as he admires the train again, angling his head to take a thorough look at it. Her eyes flicker over the warmth of his own eyes, the slope of his nose, the curve of his lips, the sharpness of his jaw, and before she knows what she’s saying, before she can overthink it, she says, “We could watch them together, some time?”

It’s the first time she’s suggested any kind of plans with him, Nico initiating everything they’ve done together so far in the past couple of days, but there’s a remnant of guilt in the forefront of her mind, and she feels the need to make plans that he would enjoy to make up for how she’d disappointed him, earlier. Sharing something he had grown up with, and hoping she might enjoy it, too.

“I’d like that, Mohn,” he gives an easy smile, this time enough for dimples to well in his cheeks. He swings an arm over her shoulders, pulling her in the direction he had seen the others go, and the two of them make their way into the auction room, taking a seat in the back row.

The chairs are close together, close enough that when they sit, their thighs press together, and to avoid his arm getting squished between them, he slings it over the back of her seat.

Poppy opens up the binder she has on her lap, flicking to the blue section and finding the page dedicated to Mr Byrne. 

Works between New York and New Jersey, been in the industry for over 20 years, specialises in the auction of art, artefacts and memorabilia. 

“He looks perfect on paper,” she whispers, Nico craning his head down to hear her better. “Definitely not bad vibes.”

“We’ll see.”

They sit through a round of the auction like school children, whispering and giggling at the back of the classroom. Nico hands Poppy a paddle from the seat beside him, and any time someone throws them a dirty look, she raises it to drive up whatever they bid on. 

It’s a lot more fun than she had anticipated, and she finds herself forgetting why she had been worried about spending time with him in the first place.

The auctioneer is good, too. He’s professional, but has some personality - enough for her not to feel the passing of time like she is counting every tick of a clock, and before she knows it, he’s wrapping up for another recess.

“I think I like him,” she comments, head raising from where it had drooped onto Nico’s shoulder. “Plus, this place is quite nice, he has to be good for them to use him.”

“Hm,” Nico offers back, clearly in disagreement about something. 

“Please don’t tell me he’s bad vibes, I might have to hit you.”

“Not him, the guy at the front,” Nico says, “He’s a Rangers fan, I saw the mug on his desk.”

Poppy snorts out a laugh, shoving lightly at his chest. “Well, as much of a red flag as that may be, we can’t veto the perfect candidate just because someone who happens to work in the same building might have poor taste. Could have been anyone’s mug, could have been an auction item they couldn’t shift.”

“Regardless of where it came from, the man drinks his coffee from filth,” Nico frowns, and Poppy tries her best not to snicker at his theatrics. “What if they’re all Rangers fans, and we invite them into our home for them to fleece us of all our money.”

She reaches to yank his cap off his head and inspects the inner lining, his hair fluffing out onto his forehead as he pouts and tries to get it back. 

“Hey, what the hell?”

“Just checking for tin foil,”

“What does that mean?”

“Doesn’t matter,” she mutters, affectionately, putting the hat back into place atop his head and making sure it’s straight. “We have another auction we could check today, do you think you can behave?”

“I’ll be good.” He promises.

“No more bone crushing handshakes or pouting or judging people’s choice of crockery?”

“Crockery?”

“The mug, Nico,” her lips twist, fondly.

“Ah, we’ll see.” He sighs. “I can’t make any promises when it comes to the Rangers, you know this, Mohn.”

Poppy checks quickly in on Mr Byrne at the other side of the room, he’s talking to Mason from the front-of-house, and she meets his gaze when he gestures over to her. “I need to check something with Mason before we leave, could you wait by the door for me?”

“As long as you wash your hands before you come back.”

She shoves at his arm before setting off away from him to exchange contact information, thankful, despite Nico’s hesitance around the matter, that she has seemingly found the right fit. 

She might just have to have a quick word about his NHL team preferences before confirming anything.

Nico

Nico likes to think of himself as a level-headed person. He takes the time to mentally deliberate over things before he reacts to them, he doesn’t get consumed by annoyance or anger, doesn’t let emotions overwhelm him to the point of lashing out.

And, if he does react, he does so rationally - rarely crosses a line or goes too far over the top that he skews the balance of whatever power within him has caused things to escalate.

It shows in the way he plays - in the way he leads his team in a cool, calm, collected manner - and rarely does he ever make the first hit when it comes to a fight.

It had been something his older brother, Luca, had taught him when he was a kid, fighting in the rink is all well and good, sometimes needs must, just don’t be the dumbass to start something he can’t finish. Not only will it get someone a bad rep throughout the league, and a penalty from the refs, it could get them into serious trouble when it comes to recovery.

Take his injury back in October, for example. He’d taken a pretty gnarly hit to the head in the first period of a game against the Sabres, and, not that he had been able to react much at the time, he hadn’t let his frustrations get the better of him. The refs gave out the appropriate penalty, and as much as it sucked that he was out for almost a month dealing with the repercussions of the illegal check and a further hit in the second period, he had to deal with it and move on. But if he’d have retaliated on the ice, Lord knows how much worse his injury could have been, or how much longer he would have needed to recover.

So, all that to say, when situations arise and his temper flares, he can usually keep his cool.

But this week, or the latter end of the week, at least, something dark has started to swirl within him, and he’s reacting in ways he never usually would. 

Some childish, petulant part of him that is buried under many layers of bravado and strength, is doing its best to push through and rear its ugly head. 

 If he’s honest with himself, he knows where it had started. 

New Years Day he had woken up and his first thought had been of Poppy. He wanted to see her again, wanted to hang out for as long as she’d have him, carry on their conversations that had carried on until the early hours of the morning - and so he had text her pretty much straight away, asked if he could come over with the promise of bringing breakfast.

When he’d gotten into her apartment building, he had taken the stairs, his legs lead by muscle memory to the achingly familiar door, and he had rapped his knuckles in a melodic knock, one he’d hoped she would remember and recognise as his signature.

Only, when the door sprung open, Poppy wasn’t the one behind it. And, thanking all that is holy, Nico was relieved to see it wasn’t her mother, either.

A guy stood before him, dark, short hair, black-rimmed glasses, just a touch taller than Nico, himself, broad shouldered and, Nico could admit, dashingly handsome. He was dressed in gym gear, Lululemon fitted t-shirt stretched across his chest, and pace breaker shorts clinging to muscular thighs.

He wasn’t usually one to check out another guy like this, but the expectation of seeing Poppy and being on the receiving end of this Adonis had him in a state of shock.

She had said she had Nia over, she hadn’t said anyone else would be here.

“Can I help you?” The guy had asked, leaning on the door jamb and looking Nico up and down with an inquisitive stare. 

He had a sickening sense of deja-vu, the last time he had heard those words in this doorway, Poppy had soon come to his rescue, but as he tried to get a look past into the apartment, it didn’t seem like that would happen.

“Is Poppy home?” He couldn’t help but phrase it like a question, never sounding so unsure of himself in his life. If he had thought Poppy’s mother was intimidating, this was like that situation on speed. The thought of another man, a man as fucking gorgeous as this one, being in Poppy’s life - in her apartment, no less - made his throat go a little dry.

“You’re here for Poppy?” The guy asked, looking Nico up and down, eyes lingering on the drinks holder and paper bag in hand. Nico doesn’t entirely know why him saying her name made him feel so much worse. He could only nod in response. “She must not have changed her details on the app,” he shook his head, but it was less in annoyance and more in fond acknowledgement, “She’s upstairs now, 6B, not 5.”

There was a quick flood of relief, ignoring the fact this man thought Nico was a PostMates delivery, he let out a nervous laugh.

“Right, sorry for bothering you.” He went to move back towards the stairs, but was very quickly stopped in his tracks.

“I can take it up for you? I have a dish of hers I need to take up there, anyway.”

The dry feeling returned immediately. 

Who is this guy and why does he have one of Poppy’s dishes? 

Nico had found himself broadening his own shoulders, perfecting his posture as to come across more sure of himself than the other times he had spoke. “You’re good, man, we have breakfast plans.” He lifted the bag as if to give him a hint, “I can take the dish if you want.”

He would rather be loaded up like a pack horse than have Clark Kent stop by later and interrupt his time with Poppy.

“Oh, yeah, man, you’re a lifesaver!” The guy retreated into Poppy’s old apartment and came back out with a clean casserole dish. “I thought you were a delivery guy, I didn’t know she was seeing someone, my bad.”

Nico hadn’t corrected him.

“No worries,” He’d taken the dish from his hands, balancing it in the crook of his elbow. “Have a nice day.”

He’d trudged up to Poppy’s new apartment, knocking on the door with his elbow when he made it - unable to do his usual knock with the amount he was holding.

Nia has been the one to answer the door this time, and Nico’s mood hadn’t lifted until he was ushered into the apartment and saw Poppy in the flesh.

She was still in her pyjamas, always keeping her place warm enough that she could lounge around in loose fitted shorts, and was sat at her kitchen counter typing away on her phone. When she looked up at Nico, any soreness, any tightness or unease had dissipated from his body at the wide smile that broke out across her face.

“Hi!” She had practically leapt up from the stool she was sat on and thrown her arms around him - the warmest greeting he had received from her in recent memory. 

“Hey.” He juggled what was in his hands, stepping around her slightly, still in her embrace, to quickly put the things on the counter so he could hug her back. His large hands took up immediate residence on the small of her back, rubbing comfortingly until she pulled away.

“Missed you,” he muttered as she craned her head up to look at him, and he found himself beaming down at her, cheeks feeling warm when he took in how her own smile lingered.

“Yeah, right,” she scoffed, lightly shoving him away before turning to see what he had put behind her. She didn’t believe him, but he had planned to keep saying it until she did. 

“Please tell me there’s something bad for me in that bag,” Nia had spoken up from behind him, voice groggy, movements sluggish as she rounded into the kitchen to assess what Nico had brought over with him. 

“Sure, as long as you still like those breakfast wraps from the bagel shop round the corner.” 

“The Spanish one?” Nia had gasped, reaching into the bag and pulling out something foil-wrapped. 

“You might wanna heat it up a little,” he suggested, and before he could finish his sentence, she was crossing over to the stove on the other side of the kitchen. As she clattered around trying to find a pan to fry it off and melt the cheese, Nico turned to Poppy, who was also eyeing the bag.

For as long as he’d known Poppy, she was a light breakfast, hearty lunch kind of girl - and, considering she hadn’t mentioned being hungover, herself, when they had messaged that morning, he didn’t think she would want anything big.

“I got you an apple-cinnamon twist.”

She had given him one of those smiles that made his chest feel tight, an acknowledgement of his efforts in recalling her preferences, and he had gulped down any further words in an attempt to relieve himself of the need to choke.

“You’re a lifesaver.”

He didn’t think he’d ever heard her use that phrase before, and he’d tried to let the weight of her smile and gratitude push down on that creeping feeling of envy and bitterness that was building within him.

The guy downstairs had said the same thing. The guy in Poppy’s old apartment.

“You didn’t tell me you’d moved.”

“Oh, shit, is that why you have my lasagne dish?” She had huffed out a guilty laugh, “Sorry, it was in November, I thought Jack and Luke would have told you, they helped me lug all my stuff up here and still hold it against me.” He watched as she picked out one of the juices and took a sip, “Peter and I switched, he needed a smaller space ‘cause him and his girlfriend split, and I’d been wanting to upgrade for a while. I should have told you when you text before.”

Peter. Newly-single, built like a Greek statue, and close enough that Poppy was loaning him cookware, Peter. The name rings with a sinister tone throughout his inner thoughts.

And Jack and Luke, the traitors, had dedicated probably a whole day of their scarcely-free time to help Poppy move and never so much as mentioned it in front of him. 

If he wasn’t so much of an idiot, he could have helped, too - but it would be pointless to dwell too much on that. He couldn’t turn back time, could only dedicate more of it to showing Poppy he wasn’t going anywhere, again, and she could rely on him from then on.

That had been the first layer of bricks laid in Nico’s ever-building foul mood throughout the week.

The second had been in Poppy’s office the following day. He’d let himself in, just like he used to, and tried to busy himself while Poppy’s attention was on a work call. 

He had perused the walls, eyeing over drawings sent in to the foundation from the kids they helped and worked with - drawings of the Prudential Center, of the Devils logo, little stick figures labelled as Poppy and whichever kid had drawn them, some other drawings - a couple in particular catching his eye of her with other players; one of her with Luke, one of her with Jack, one of her with Dawson and Holtzy, seemingly from development sessions she had hosted or attended with them over the past few months. And then, some actual pictures scattered in the mix. Poppy with Curtis and Dougie, Poppy with Jack at the Christmas Toy Drive, Poppy with Luke, John and Holtzy in full gear, that looked like it was taken at one of the games. 

When he had sat in front of her desk, and the little bobblehead version of Jack was staring smugly back at him, he had started to feel like his bones didn’t fit right in his skin. 

He’d remembered seeing Jack lounging across the exact chair he had thrown himself into, back when he’d stumbled across him and Poppy talking in her office the week before, and he couldn’t shake the thought of his lingering presence in Poppy’s space - Poppy’s space that didn’t have a single trace of Nico’s existence.

Whatever bitterness was starting to brew was only exacerbated by the revelation that Poppy was going to miss his birthday party because she had a date.

Poppy Jensen.

Dating.

On his birthday, no less.

For as long as he had known her, Poppy had never had any serious relationships. There had been dates here, flings there, but she was committed more to herself and her career than anything else, and would especially never take her own mother up on her advances to set her up.

His stomach had started to turn at the thought of it. She’d always been so resolute in her refusal when it came to her mom - had always been strong-willed and defiant, knowing that, even with what she argued were the best intentions, Priscilla Jensen didn’t have the first clue about what kind of person Poppy wanted to, or would suit to, be with.

But what if, after all this time, Poppy’s mom actually did have a clue?

What if she and whatever Page 6, heir-to-a-small-fortune, business-school-graduate son of a socialite-friend of her mother’s hit it off?

She’d have no time for Nico if she started dating someone, surely.

Can’t avoid the inevitable, she had said - and he hadn’t liked it. He’d wished she would have looked at him so she could tell how much he didn’t like it.

Poppy had never believed in the inevitable, before. She forged her own path. It was one of the many things he loved and admired about her.

And, apparently, she’d forged her own path straight down into the PR offices one too many times, because the way Josh had reacted to seeing her when they ventured down - springing out of his seat like an excitable puppy that had caught sight of a tennis ball - made his stomach crawl.

He knew he hated dealing with the PR team for a reason. Josh was giving off major creeper energy, inviting himself along to watch auctions with Poppy as if she wasn’t capable of doing it on her own. And, he had barely even acknowledged Nico was there the whole time, which was rude in and of itself. 

And then, as if the universe hadn’t been cruel enough to him in the past 2 days, he had to watch some leech at the auction house look over Poppy like she was a piece of meat - eyes wandering from head to toe, taking his time to take every part of her in, while Nico stood behind her willing the steam not to blow from his ears.

Bad vibes.

And that judgement was made before he saw the hideous mug on the guy’s desk.

He had felt off for the rest of that day - when he and Poppy had gone to view another auction, only for them to find out Josh had gotten one of the dates wrong, and they’d driven all the way up to North Bergen for nothing. 

He had felt off when he took Poppy out for dinner - the two of them sat facing one another in the cosy corner of an Italian bistro they had found on their way back to Jersey City, sharing breadsticks and conversing over pasta and gelato for dessert - and he tried not to overthink the way the waiter purposely brushed her hand whenever he took the menu back. Had tried to live in the moment of being able to watch the flicker of the candle between them in her irises, and how she so intently listened to whatever he had to say like it was the most important thing in the world.

He had felt off when he dropped Poppy back at the Rock to get her car, splitting with a hug over the centre console just like old times, a quick peck to his forehead and a kiss to her crown, her promising to text him when she got home - and as he watched to make sure she got in her car okay, he had noticed her looking down at her phone and smiling at a message he hadn’t been the one to send.

How he had managed to pull himself together to play the Capitals, to score two goals and for the team to bag a great away win, he doesn’t know.

But the off-feeling returns on the quick flight back to New Jersey.

As he sits on his own, headphones on, distancing himself from the rowdy celebrations of his teammates, he types and un-types too many messages to Poppy.

Will you still be awake in an hour?

Can I come over?

Do you want to come over?

Just saw Harry Potter is on Netflix now.

Can I see you?

Facetime when I’m home?

For some unknown reason, it feels like a matter of urgency that he has to see her, or at least speak to her, tonight, before his entire day tomorrow is taken up by plans with his family.

He has waited for them to make the trip out from Switzerland since seeing them in the summer, but now, when it’s potentially the only time he can celebrate his birthday with Poppy, it’s starting to feel like an inconvenience.

She was the one that had offered to do something, so she should no doubt be down to see him, but it will be late by the time he gets back, and the last thing he wants to do is inconvenience her.

It’s when he has just sent a simple, Hey, and is watching intently for the read receipt and the 3 little bubbles to pop up that Jesper drops into the seat next to him.

“Timo needs you to reply to his texts,” he sighs, running a hand through his light hair. “Something to do with Sunday, says he’s on a time crunch and needs to know something from you.”

“Can’t, I’m ignoring him.” 

“And why would you be ignoring Timo?” Jesper snorts, turning in the chair, intrigued as to why his captain has all of a sudden started behaving like a child.

“He didn’t invite Poppy to my party.” Nico shrugs, eyes remaining on his screen and still waiting. It isn’t that late yet, and Poppy always has her phone on her.

“Right,” he drags out, eyes shifting quickly to glance down at Nico’s screen until it’s tilted away from him. “You weren’t exactly speaking to Poppy when he put the list together, Nico, you can’t blame him for that.” 

Nico knows he can’t blame Timo, but he doesn’t want to blame himself, so he is left with no other choice than to let the resentment bubble toward someone else. 

“And we can just add her now, it’s no big deal, I’ll text him so it’s not obvious you’re asking.”

“She has plans, now.” Nico scowls. It doesn’t matter how much he knows he’s being an idiot about it, he wants Poppy there on Sunday, wants to celebrate his birthday with his best friend, and now he can’t.

“Okay, so what’s the big deal?”

“She wouldn’t have made plans if she were invited in the first place.”

“You’re losing me.”

“She has a date.” He huffs out, bitterly, the word souring on his tongue. A date she might never have agreed to if Timo had asked her to come in the first place. “And she won’t cancel it.” Can’t, won’t, doesn’t want to, it’s all semantics.

“Oh.” Jesper frowns, then follows with another exclamation. “Oh!” Loud enough, this time, to capture the attention of Jack and Luke on the next row over.

“Yeah, oh.” Nico scoffs, “It’s Timo’s fault.”

“Since when does PJ date?” Jack asks, inserting himself into the conversation, him and Luke both leaning over to truly immerse themselves in the discussion. 

Probably since she developed friendships with guys in the PR department who colour code documents to please her, and get wide eyed and bushy tailed at the mere sight of her. Or since she attracted the attention of fancy auction house hosts dressed to the nines with charming smiles and prolonged handshakes. Or maybe since she played house-swap with her gym-buff movie-star looking single-and-clearly-looking-for-love neighbour. Nico thinks, at one point when they were outside walking back to his car after the second auction house had been closed, he’d even seen a flirtatious pigeon make advances towards her.

How is she not supposed to date people when every person she bumps into is putting moves on her?

“I don’t know.” He mutters, checking his phone again only to see a big fat bunch of nothing.

“And you want to date her?” Luke asks, perpetual confusion etched into his features.

“What? No!” He denies before he can even think about it.

“Right,” Jesper drags out again in a way that is starting to get on Nico’s nerves. “So, what’s the problem again?”

“If she starts dating someone, she’s gonna spend all her time with them and not have any time left for me.”

“Oh, so like how you were with Talia?” Nico thought Jack was the unfiltered one in the Hughes family, but with every time he talks to Luke, he is quickly proven wrong. Jack speaks to purposely stir the pot, Luke doesn’t even realise he’s doing it - just calls Nico out like it’s nothing - and he doesn’t know which is worse.

Nico can’t help but grimace, the mention of his behaviour over the past few months serving only to humiliate him and make him feel worse. He doesn’t need to feel worse. “It’s not the same.”

“Because you like her.” 

“Dude,” Jack scoffs at his little brother’s brazenness. Jesper smirks knowingly beside Nico.

“I don’t-,” Nico can’t bring himself to finish the sentence, feeling unknowingly uncomfortable at the thought of flat out shutting that down. “It’s just weird, I’ve known her a lot longer than you have, okay, Poppy doesn’t date.”

“Poppy’s hot,” Luke says it as if he’s saying the sky is blue. Jesper snorts out the sip of his water he had just taken and Jack throws his head into his hands. “Of course she dates.”

“Excuse me?” Nico almost chokes, himself.

“You all have eyes,” Luke scoffs. 

“I don’t use them to look at Poppy, she’s like my sister, which means she’s like your sister.”

“She’s hot, and she’s funny, and she’s cool, and why she wastes her time hanging around any of us, or even caring about any of us in the first place, I don’t know. Whatever guy she’s dating is a lucky fucker, it’s normal to be jealous.”

“Sounds like you like her,” Nico challenges with a hardened jaw, trying to hide the clench of his fists by pressing his hands down either side of his legs. It’s a date, she isn’t dating. The latter end of Luke’s statement doesn’t even register in his subconscious thoughts. 

“Yeah, what exactly are you getting at?” Jack questions his brother, an amused glint in his eye.

“I don’t want to be the person to call his captain an idiot,” Luke sighs, throwing himself back into his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. 

“You think I’m an idiot?” Nico scoffs, unable to gauge the level of offence he wants to take at the younger Hughes’ outburst.

“I think you’re being an idiot, there’s a slight difference.”

“Just so you know, Schao, I take no responsibility for my brother’s stupidity. His opinions are his own.” Jack interrupts, holding his hands up as if surrendering.

“You literally said earlier you think he’s being a dumbass,” Luke argues, more than ready to throw his brother under the bus. If he’s going down, Jack’s coming with him.

“Whoa,” Jack shoots a wide eyed, panicked look over to his captain, “He’s misquoting me, that’s fake news.”

“You think I’m a dumbass?”

“Being a dumbass,” Jack corrects, “Luke’s right, there’s a difference. Using the right words is important, here.”

“You two have a death wish.” Jesper chuckles, reclining in his seat to observe the circus in front of him, happy he isn’t the one to have to call Nico out, for once.

“Please enlighten me, how am I being a dumbass?”

“We’ve just won an away game with 6 goals, two of which you scored. This whole plane has been celebrating the result, and you’ve been sat here with your bottom lip out, pouting over a girl you won’t even admit to yourself that you like.” Jack is the first to speak up, but Luke soon takes over - the two of them laying into Nico like they’ve been rehearsing. 

“All because she has a date.” Luke mimics Nico’s previous whining. “All because the two of you have wasted all those years that you’ve known her longer than I have pretending you aren’t like crazy into each other.”

As the two of them bounce between each other, Nico takes a second to think about what they’re saying - or, specifically, what Luke is saying.

It’s his rookie year. Sure, he’d played a couple games at the end of last season, but he hadn’t really been around to witness Nico and Poppy in the depths of their friendship before the summer. How did he know how long the two of them had wasted pretending not to be into each other?

“She’s into me?” 

“For Christ’s sake,” Luke mutters, rolling his eyes, “I changed my mind, I do think you’re an idiot.”

“Has she said that?”

“Not in those words,”

“Then how do you know?” Nico questions, leaning forward in his seat.

It’s Jesper who counters this time. “C’mon, Nico,” he scoffs, “You can’t be serious, right now.”

“Yeah, Cap, there’s oblivious and then there’s downright brainless.” Jack chimes in. “She was so cut up about you and Talia she turned into a full-blown recluse. Party Poppy didn’t come to any team hang-out for months.”

“And if she did, she’d just sulk in a corner and slip out early. She didn’t even do anything for her birthday, last year. Poppy loves her birthday. Timo was looking forward to weaselling in on her plans.” 

Nico remembers going out for Timo’s birthday - some haphazard, last minute gathering at a bar in Hoboken, just after the season had kicked off. He remembers Talia grumbling to him, wanting to leave to go meet up with some of her friends in New York, and so he had given in and they had dipped out. Timo had said he didn’t mind. Nico had assumed Poppy would have joined the team, later - her and Timo sharing a birthday - but had never actually checked in the end to see if she had. Had she spent her birthday alone, too? All to avoid having to see him with Talia?

“And even if we’re ignoring the whole Talia thing, back when you two were close, she’d do things with you she’d never do with the rest of us. The first time I ever saw her apartment was when I was helping her move out of it, you were there all the time.”

“I’ve never even seen it,” Jesper adds.

“And she has pictures of you in her apartment, doesn’t have any of me and I’m her favourite teammate.”

Nico doesn’t remember seeing any photos in her apartment - can only remember the ones at work, the ones of everybody but him. 

He thought she’d erased all evidence of his existence in her life - but had she just moved it some place more sacred, more intimate?

“None of us have met her family, either. You’ve met them several times.”

“You don’t really want to meet them, trust me,” he mutters, suppressing a shudder when thinking about all his encounters with the Jensen clan. “Why have you gone quiet all of a sudden?” Nico wants to hear what Luke has to say about it, having a sneaking suspicion that he holds the most damning evidence of all.

Poppy has said something to him. 

He wouldn’t be being as hard on Nico if she hadn’t.

But, if he thinks hard enough about it, he can’t recall seeing them hang out that much. He’s seen her more with Jack, and sure, there were the pictures with Luke in her office, but why would she confide in him of all people? Why not his brother - or, better yet, why would she not just tell Nia and leave anyone from the team out of it?

“I think you need to be speaking to Poppy about this.”

And as if manifesting it on his captain’s behalf, Luke’s words bring forward a brief buzz to the phone now in Nico’s lap.

He looks down at the screen, heartbeat slowly but surely regulating itself as he reads the messages.

Poppy: Hey congrats on the win!!💖

Poppy: I know you’re busy tomorrow but can I see you tonight??

Poppy: Might have a gift for you 👀

Nico: I’ll come to you 😊❤️ 

Maybe Luke is right - he needs to talk to Poppy about it.

Nico takes the steps up to Poppy’s apartment two at a time, tired muscles from playing and travelling be damned, and when he makes it to her floor, he finds her leaning against her already open doorway, waiting for him.

The flight home had dragged despite being so short, the coach back to the Rock seemed to move at the pace of a push bike in low gear, and he had hit every red light on his own drive from the arena - but all that dwindles away into a distant memory when he sees her.

“Did you stalk me on find my friends?” He asks, closing the gap from the stairs to her front door, wondering how she had known when he got here.

“You know me so well,” she jests, opening her arms and stepping into him, wrapping them around his shoulders and squeezing when he embraces her back. 

His arms circle around her waist, and he fights the urge to lift her and spin her around in a demonstration of his own elation.

“I’ve missed you,” he speaks lowly into the top of her head. He thinks he could say it a million times and it won’t be enough. 

“You saw me yesterday,” she mumbles into his chest, stepping back without loosening her grip around him so they waddle through into her apartment together.

“Too long.”

“You’ve been texting me all day.”

“Not enough.”

He manages to softly kick the door closed behind them, hearing the soft click of the automatic lock.

“Are you hungry?” She asks, finally stepping out of his hold and stepping through her apartment towards her kitchen.

He does usually have a snack before settling in for the night after he gets home from an away game, but he doesn’t want to put Poppy out this late, especially knowing she has work in the morning and he has most of the day off.

“I’m good,” he follows her into the kitchen, where she seems to be ignoring him, swinging open the refrigerator and reaching inside for something. She hides whatever she’s taken, closing the door behind him and moving it to the counter, shielding it from his view with her body.

He’s too distracted by the feeling of his chest swelling to try to peak. He notices pictures stuck with magnets to the door - pictures of the two of them, alone and in groups, scattered between different notes like appointment cards and an invitation to a baby shower.

It’s only a slight burst of heat in front of his face that diverts his attention, eyes straining to focus on the small flickering flame of a birthday candle stuck into a blueberry muffin. 

“Happy birthday!” Poppy squeals, holding the small plate in front of him. 

“Is this my gift?” He chuckles, blowing out the candle and taking the plate from her hands.

“Nope, wait here,” she rushes out of the kitchen and he pinches the candle from the muffin, placing it to the side of the plate so he can break off a piece and throw it into his mouth.

He recognises it from the bakery down the street from Poppy’s apartment, a place they’d once frequented together when craving something sweet, and the taste takes him straight back to their little table by the window, so small their knees would knock as they sat beside each other, chatting over mini muffins and coffees.

He rounds the corner of the kitchen island to check out the photo frames on Poppy’s bookshelf that takes up most of the wall connecting to the back rooms of her apartment. 

It’s a new piece of furniture, way too big to have been in her old apartment, and she’s decorated the shelves not filled with books with trinkets, frames, candles and a few small plants.

One shelf has a picture of Poppy with her girlfriends - he only knows Nia, but he recognises the photo as one she’s had a while - another has a picture of Poppy with her family. There’s a photo of the family dogs, Springer Spaniels Mabel and Gus, who Nico had become infatuated with when Poppy had looked after them for a week while her parents were on vacation. 

On the shelf closest to his eye level, Nico spots a photo of him and Poppy taken on Halloween a few years back. Nico dressed as a prisoner, Poppy dressed as Mia from Pulp Fiction, he remembers someone had made a comment how even in polar opposite costumes, they had still turned up colour co-ordinated, and the picture does that justice - giant, smiles, and flushed cheeks coming out bright against their black and white outfits.

Poppy returns with a small box and a card, and a smile just as big as the one in the picture.

Nico takes the box, instinctively rattling it. “Doesn’t sound like the Hogwarts Express model train I wanted,” he speculates, lips pouting into a mocking frown. 

“Don’t get me started on that train,” she swats Nico with the card, “That Rangers loving asshole said it was against house code to reserve an auction item for me.”

“I told you he was bad vibes,” he postulates, heart warming at the thought of her trying to get him such a sentimental gift.

“That thing ended up going for over $6000!”

“Jesus,”

“I love you, but if I’m spending $6000 on anything, it isn’t a dorky Harry Potter train.”

I love you. 

Nico doesn’t even register the rest of her sentence.

He tears carefully into the Devils branded wrapping paper until a plain black box is revealed, and when he lifts the lid, the gold chain inside immediately reflects the soft light coming from the corner of the room. 

“It’s so we can match,” Poppy says, shaking the wrist that adorns the welded chain bracelet - the bracelet that she wears as a symbol of an unbreakable bond with the people she loves the most in this world. “I know you already have a chain, so you don’t have to wear it all the time, I couldn’t really think of anything else so last minute.”

She sounds unsure - insecure, almost, which is abnormal for her.

“Put it on for me?” He asks, holding the box out for her to take the chain out. 

She handles it with care, and when it’s in her hands, he can see that it is the perfect match to the chain on her wrist. Oh, he will be wearing it. All the time.

She unclasps the necklace, and he cranes his head lower so she can bring it around his neck, closing it together at the front and manoeuvring it until the clasp is at the back.

When he lifts his gaze, his eyes catch hers, admiring the glint of gold against his skin until she looks up at him with a soft smile.

It’s that same smile she seems to reserve just for him - where her eyes sparkle like a something out of a cartoon and swirl with so much warmth he feels it spread throughout his body.

He feels so much in the moment, a million words flooding through his brain at the rate of a thousand miles a minute. He has so much he wants to say to her - so much they need to talk about - but as he stands in an apartment only he is allowed to spend time in, with scatterings of his pictures throughout every room he’s been in so far, the link between his brain and his mouth becomes severed.

Fuck talking.

Nico moves quicker than he can comprehend, his brain not processing the actions of dropping the box his chain had been held in, placing his hands on either sides of her face and pulling her in until his lips collide with hers, and she doesn’t pull away. He can barely make out the sound of his birthday card falling from her grasp and sliding across the floor until all sound that isn’t coming from Poppy drowns out.

Her mouth moves with an equal bruising pressure to his, fingers raising to clutch at the shirt stretched across his torso, and he can barely feel the scratch of her nails through the fabric. He uses his grip on her face to angle it until their noses slot beside each other like pieces of a puzzle, and he doesn’t feel the ache in the bridge of his own as it is squished against hers.

After a few measured seconds, he tries his luck with the quick swipe of his tongue against the slight parting of her lips, and she lets him in, sending vibrations through the muscle as her lips close around it and she hums against his mouth. 

Nico can’t think of a time he’s ever kissed someone like this before - with all-consuming passion. 

He’s had half-hearted, means-to-an-end make-out sessions, quick, loveless pecks, sloppy, drunken kisses with fumbling hands and heavy petting.

But this is other-worldly. It’s mind-boggling, soul shattering, earth-moving.

Even when they part, noses smushed together, panting breaths tumbling heavily out into each other’s parted, swollen lips, he feels like his whole body is continuously thrumming. 

He gives into the slight push of her hands against his chest, only when he feels her eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks, wanting to see what revelations lay within her eyes.

She blinks slowly, as if in a daze, and a self-satisfied smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.

Clarity washes over him almost immediately.

He hasn’t been off this week.

Hasn’t been grumpy, mopey, moody, pouty.

Luke was right, earlier.

Nico has been jealous.

He wants to spend all his time with her, wants to tag along to whatever boring work task she has when he’s free, wants to tell any other guy interested that she’s off limits, wants to fill his apartment with pictures of the two of them and wants her to fill her office with the same.

Nico Hischier likes Poppy Jensen.

And, if that kiss and her reaction to it is anything to go off, Poppy likes him back.

The thought fills him with conviction, makes his chest puff out and his back straighten in unabashed confidence, and gives him the courage to make a request that the Nico of barely a day ago wouldn’t have dreamed of asking.

Something else he wants.

“Don’t go on that date, Mohn."

> Next Chapter

taglist: @alwaysclassyeagle @bunbunbl0gs @idgaf-if-youre-here @youflowerr-youfeast @thearchersstuff @bellsdi0r @wonderheartz @jjgsunflower @butterflies35 @kenziepickle (sorry if your tag hasn't worked btw)

[emilykaldwen]

11, 12 and 26 for the bts fic asks (the maiden and the drowning boy)?

Behind the Scenes Fic Asks

Thank you so much for sending this!!! Okay *cracks knuckles* let's see what thinky thoughts I need to make coherent.

11. Was there a scene that you hadn't originally planned to include? Why did you decide to fit it in?

Ooooh nice! So this is the first fic I've like truly outlined because there's so many plots and subplots and moving parts that I need to be aware of. Like putting a bunch of feral toddlers on leashes! The thing I make sure I do though, is to leave breathing room for scenes exactly like this where they come up because you find the story needs it in that moment. I think I have to go with... (me checking what I've written so far) So there's a scene in chapter 14 (the ball!) that I ended up writing between Abby and her grandfather, Rodrick Reyne that I'm incredibly pleased about because the man isn't dumb. He's totally acknowledging that Alicent is picking Abby to be queen, but he will absolutely fight against the betrothal if it isn't what Abby wants. And it just made my heart incredibly full because there is one fucking adult in her life that isn't trying to use Abby to their own ends/mold in their own image/try control Aegon through her. He cares about her and there is absolutely an AU somewhere where Abby goes to foster at Castamere after Lyonel's death.

12. Was there a scene you wished you could have included? Why didn't it fit in?

So I had wanted to do a scene with Aegon and Viserys where Aegon is asking permission to go into the royal treasury to get some jewels for Abby to make a necklace. This was meant to be right after the gallery scene in Chapter Nine. I scrapped it for a few reasons, I think mainly due to length? And Tonally in this chapter I wanted to keep it between Abby and Aegon in terms of them feeling like their relationship is changing before knocking them apart for the next chapters. If I can find a place to include it in the back half of the chapters, I absolutely will though because I really do need a scene with Aegon and Viserys. (Initially I thought of posting it as it's own outtake/one shot side story but it really is something I need to include)

26. Wild Card! A fun fact about this fic!

Well fuck LOL man, what's a fun fact... So I had come up with the concept of this story... fuck. It was the week that The Princess and the Queen aired, or the following week (I had created Abby back in August pretty quickly, although she was her canonical age at that point) and started writing mid-october or the week before nano started. It all began with what I intended ot be a one shot, with 15k words of young!Alicent and I wrote about... 32k of backstory route. There was going to be... 10? chapters of Alicent/Abby/Aegon rotating POV through Driftmark, and then time jump 3 years later to what is our opening chapter in Maiden. However I was really struggling with young!Abby POVs because she was such a happy kid? and she doesn't have the language or understanding or self realization to understand the 'Oh I need to be happy all the time because my dad was sad mom was dying and everyone around me is mentally unwell so I need to be happy because it makes other people happy'. And then I ended up scrapping that essentially and starting over and then at that point I got a very quick surgery approval and immediately started in on my fasting diet which took away any ability to string words together. Some of it is actually getting recycled for some stuff: there's a scene in particular where Daemon showed up for Aegon's 13th nameday, and Daemon was the one who introduced Aegon to Mysaria (because I had been trying to figure out how this little menace ended up becoming a regular fixture in flea bottom). Anyway, there was a really good dragon face off scene that will be repurposed for a later chapter in arc one!

[olderthannetfic]

On the subject of blocking, I think entering a new fandom and blocking a huge section of it straight away is self care at this point. If I read any post along the lines of "if you like this fictional thing then you are..." I block immediately. If a friend knows the fandom, I follow their advice and block the people they suggest too after a quick scroll (I know a lot of people do this). Fandom isn't a community anymore. It's finding a small handful of people to enjoy the thing with and hiding from everyone else.

I read a post on Twitter that talked about how old school fan culture was dying, and how preemptively blocking/antis were killing fandom because it was forcing people to engage and communicate less. I was sad to realize I was part of the problem, but I've had so many bad experiences. I preemptively block based on a particular ship and two characters in A fandom, because of how horribly disgusting the fans are (to each other, to people who like something different, and the content they create is often squicky/poorly tagged). I realize this is almost "anti" behaviour (judging people's character for their fictional tastes), but it was endemic. I don't harass, I walk away silently and filter them out. So hopefully not as bad?

The final straw for me was the "antis in disguise". People who profess to love Dead Dove content (and also write it), but then are aggressive/vile to people who like/don't like different characters, forms of canon, etc, and have extensive trigger lists in their servers, while telling people the right way to fandom (which is to only like what they do). For me, the only "right way" is to let people love their thing and don't harass, while making content for your thing. I was in one for an IP where hunting, death and murder were a huge part of the narrative... and death is on the trigger list. Any and all mentions of it. Yes. Even "that's so funny, I'm deceased".

I'm sorry for the ramble. I have a lot of feelings about being guilted for blocking and setting up boundaries. Especially one person using their RSD to claim they were being bullied! Fandom is mad these days. Mad!

—

I die laughing every time I see someone who thinks they’ve been around a long time but who is somehow still such a n00b that they could say blocking kills old fandom culture.

You know what kills oldschool fandom culture? TWITTER

It’s short form quips. Oldschool fandom was interminable tl;dr. It’s open and public. Oldschool fandom was invite-only with dense webs of social connections required to access it and a natural result of being in it. Some people took their old friendships to twitter with them, but if they want to know why things feel different now, it’s because they went to that piece of shit website. That’s not the fault of the rest of us.

Back in the day, m/m shippers often found a little group of their own people and hid from the haters. Those few tragic souls who liked whatsherface from the last season of Beauty and the Beast did the same. Anime fans weren’t always in the buddy cop fandoms and vice versa, except for FAKE. Fandom has never been just one community. That’s an illusion born of nostalgia and planting one’s head firmly in the sand.

You know what forces people to communicate and engage less? Platforms that make them feel unsafe. Randos being able to turn up in the comments to go “Well, actually!” without the poster having any ability to keep them out. And sure, antis are part of that, but we’ve always had haters of other sorts and always had to get rid of them in order to have a civil discussion.

Denying dickheads access to your time does not kill communication.

If someone on twitter actually meant what you’ve written about above, then they’re clueless. If they want oldschool fandom culture, they need look no further than their own pen. Post long-ass “thinky thoughts” (and use cringe-inducing terms like “thinky thoughts”) and oldschool culture will come to you… And maybe, while you’re at it, figure out if oldschool means LJ culture, forum culture, FFN culture, mailing list culture, Usenet culture, fanfic convention culture, AMV editor culture, 80s multifandom zine culture, 70s Star Trek zine culture…

[kio-may]

heyyooo i've just been looking around in your blog and i just wanna say that your writing is *chef's kiss* 💕

kinda surprised that request are open but can i request headcannons of the first years (plus ortho(?)) with an mc that says the weirdest things when they're nervous? like for example "hey hey hey- do you remember that horror movie we saw? yeah this seems like the princess waiting for a rescue only a lot lot worse and with a dash of childhood trauma added into it" during an overblot when they should be coming up with a plan or sumn-

Hello <3

Tysm for the kind message 😭 ur so cute ong qkmdkend

Had a bit of fun with this one but i think the hcs are a bit short 😭 im sorry

I hope you enjoy!!

(Ortho is specifically PLATONIC. Others can be taken romantically or platonically)

---

Honestly? Impressed

"What're you doing?! We aren't watching that show right now!"

Very agitated from it

After the overblot is over he skips over to you and asks about it

Makes light conversation with you about it

Internally questions what goes through your mind normally

He admits though, it is something of a funny memory looking back at it, with Riddle going apeshit in the background and you referencing a clip from a show

He snorts a bit thinking about it

In class when he sees you nervous before a test and you reference another bizarre cli

He catches on

He immediately understands it's your.. "thing"? He doesn't know how to explain but he'd a bit amused. And a bit sarcastic.

Bastard /j

LAMSOWJSOWdeuJ

Man's already no thinky no brainy

And when you reference to something that's completely out of context?

He's short circuiting

"Eh..?.. uhh.."

Completely forgets the problem at hand for a solid 4 seconds

Snaps back immediately to the problem

After the situation is over, whether the teacher is picking on students or facing an overblot, he probably won't remember it or bring it up until a good few hours later when he's thinking back to it and your comment comes to mind

Asks you how you come up with it on the spot

He's a bit shocked at how you came up with it when everyone's hitting their brains for a plan and can't even think of anything else

A bit concerned for you

"You might get in trouble.."

"Now's not the time!"

Probably the most neutral

Kinda lowkey about it when he approaches you

"About that.." he asks you after everything's settled

"What was that?"

Just plain confused

Kinda sus too

Actually one of the more understanding ones

He still doesn't grasp the whole concept but he understands the nervousness

A bit sympathetic actually

He thinks maybe it's a way for you to calm yourself down or lighten the situation a bit

Still a bit unsettled with your choice of words though

"What the hell?!"

Shocked

If it weren't for the current situation at hand, or vil anywhere nearby, he probably would've burst out laughing then continue to add onto your references

A bit annoyed since trying to listen to you interrupted his train of thought

After everything's over he just kinda takes a moment to step back and doesn't really do much

But when he sees you he immediately lights up 

And cue him rushing over to you

Asks you about what that was because it lowkey freaked him out

"What was that?"

One of the more unsettled ones

But when he remembers it long after the situation has passed?

He's ugly snorting

It's very funny in his eyes

Wonders how you come up with it

"Human! Focus!"

If it's a dangerous situation and he's beside you, he's gripping your shoulders tightly and very firmly telling you that and to be focused at the task at hand

After the situation ends he's half blowing up

He's a bit hard headed please forgive him-

You have to explain it's a habit to him or he'll never catch on and treat it like you're easily distracted

And when you tell him,outside he puts on this showcase, "how will you complete your tasks if you keep doing that?!" But inside he's super confused and a tad bit conflicted

And whenever he's facing a similar situation your comment comes to mind

A bit annoyed but y'know how he is

"Humans, what else could I have expected?"

A bit caring in his own way though

Often asks if you need help.. indirectly

He sometimes subtly keeps an eye on you

Does not think this habit is healthy

Highy disapproving like an old strict mother

Tries to help you keep calm

"Lilia said this might help!"

Yes he goes to Lilia for advice

Goodluck babe LWNSLSJSK

"Are you okay?!"

Concerned

His brother does this from time to time when he's losing a game match or when a cutscene comes up

So he's worried about you when you do that

Makes sure you're safe throughout the situation if it's something dangerous like an overblot because he doubts you're able to pay attention or be aware of your surroundings

Approaches you after the situation to ask you about it

Searches about it, and helps you with it

Calms you down and later talks about the references with you

Amused by your creative twist with it

"You should be careful! Getting distracted may get you into more trouble"

Sometimes checks up on you

Advises you a lot from then on

---