#it's slightly higher percentage than usual but not that out there. it just gives me a minor crisis every time | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

scintillating-galaxias · 4 years

Text

simpatico week day 4 - multiverse

MTMTE and cyberverse perceptor and brainstorm collide!! @simpaticoweek read it here on ao3!

Brainstorm gasped and grabbed Perceptor’s arm while pointing at mech with a familiar red, white, and blue color scheme standing amongst the curious crowd. “Perce, look!”

Perceptor looked around, alarmed. “What? What is it?”

“Next to the red mech with the white face! It’s you!”

Before Perceptor could stop him, Brainstorm hurried off towards the mech. This mech had the same white dials on his forearms, and even the same cylindrical, white scope mounted on his shoulder—a dead-ringer for an alternate-universe Perceptor. i

“Excuse me!” Brainstorm called. The mech turned around, and whoa, he wasn’t expecting the burnt-out optics. “Uh. Hello. You’re Perceptor, right?”

“I am,” said the mech. He didn’t have the same slight accent as Percy did; his voice was flatter, a bit more neutral. The scope on his shoulder lit up, shining a bright blue light on Brainstorm’s face. Definitely, a scanner of some sort, though it left a bizarre, faintly prickly sensation across Brainstorm’s plating he didn’t usually get when Ratchet or First Aid scanned him. “I don’t recognize you. I’m assuming you’re one of our visitors from the alternate universe?”

“Name’s Brainstorm, resident genius of the universe next door. How are you seeing me right now? Is it something with your scope?”

“Correct. I reformatted my scope to operate as a visual feed after I blew out my optics.”

Guess that was a universal concept, Perceptor’s redesigning or changing their scopes for some entirely different use than their original one. “You did? What happened?”

“It’s not any of your business to ask that,” he chided.

Brainstorm put up his servos apologetically. Then, realizing his error, said, “Sorry,” after a second.

The other Perceptor gave him a look of pointed disapproval so similar to his Perceptor’s, he was almost afraid he was about to start getting chewed out for his messy labeling jobs.

“Be more mindful of your questions next time,” the other Perceptor said instead. “As for your other inquiry: I could tell you made a motion in front of your chest with your hands, and you did something else just now, but details such as color and specific body parts such as your digits are lost to me when my scope is inactive.”

“Fascinating,” said a familiar voice. Perceptor, his Percy, had finally made it through the crowd and over to them. Brainstorm felt his spark lift a bit higher in its chamber as Perceptor came to a stop beside him, servo almost unconsciously winding itself into his.

The scope went on again. “You’re… Me, I presume?” the other Perceptor asked, interest coloring his voice.

“I am Perceptor, yes.”

“Fascinating,” said the other Perceptor, and Brainstorm laughed.

“Primus, you two really are the same mech.”

“Of course,” they said in tandem, and then they looked at each other. Brainstorm poorly stifled another laugh.

“Your scope,” Perceptor prompted. “You scanned Brainstorm and I and compared the information it collected to a pre-existing database before confirming you didn’t know who we were. I can only assume you made code-based modifications to it?”

“That is correct.”

“May I ask what kind of modifications? My scope gives me enhanced magnification, but nothing to that extent, so you’ll have to forgive my curiosity.”

Other-Perceptor, who had now earned the prefix ‘Other’ in Brainstorm’s processor because otherwise, it would be a nightmare to try and recount later, cleared his throat. “When in use, it can collect information such as the light values and assign them to colors using a code assigned to every paint color on record, and how the percentage of much of each color is present within the whole subject.” He didn’t gesture nearly as much as Perceptor, either, Brainstorm noted. So far, he was turning out to be far more reserved than his Perceptor. Or... No, he reminded Brainstorm of when he’d first met Perceptor on the Lost Light. Heh. Maybe he’d had an influence on his conjunx after all. “That allows me to tell apart primary, secondary, and tertiary colors, so even if two mechs have similar paint colors, the chances they have the same frame and paint jobs are extremely slim. Decals like those on Hot Rod aren’t so easily discernible. That allows me to match the color codes to virtually any mech in my database. It isn’t the most accurate system, but it is precise enough.”

“That is remarkable,” Perceptor said, reaching up to touch his own scope. “I’ve reformatted myself before, but not to that sort of extent. Have you made any other modifications?”

“Numerous, since the threat of the Quintesson’s and Megatron X were eliminated.”

“Megatron X?”

Brainstorm tuned them out as they traded stories and statistics, looking around the crowd for some mech that could possibly be him. He could see Whirl with his arm slung around another blue, singled-opticked helicopter. Both were laughing rapturously about something. In the next cycle of Brainstorm’s code, they were wrestling each other to the ground. Rodimus was excitedly chatting it up with Hot Rod, who had enthusiastically introduced himself the second the Lost Light crew had stepped out of the portal. Beside Hot Rod was Soundwave of all mechs, and even more bizarrely, he seemed to have his servo loosely held around Hot Rod’s waist. Brainstorm only lingered on it a little bit. He wasn’t one for gossip, but even he knew that was going to be the talk of the ship later. Nearby, Drift was looking spectacularly sulky, though a cheery yellow mech was making valiant attempts at cheering him up. And of course, Megatron was talking to Other-Megatron and Other-Optimus Prime, and seemed to be rather wistfully staring at the two’s shared proximity to each other.

All in all, it felt like a very successful experiment in Brainstorm’s spark. All these mechs had somehow found their alternate selves, even though there’d been no guarantee they would even exist in this universe. And still, more mechs Brainstorm didn’t even recognize who were intermingling with the Lost Light crew. Successful experiment indeed. Except for one, tiny detail.

“Where am I?” he asked, interrupting the Perceptor’s conversation. “I mean, everyone else has a double. Where’s the other me?”

Other-Perceptor tilted his head. “I don’t know. There is no record of a Brainstorm in the Autobot databases.”

“Oh.” Brainstorm tapped his pede while Perceptor lightly squeezed his servo. “What about a Genitus?”

“One moment.” Other-Perceptor’s scope dipped down slightly. Then, after a moment, it straightened back out, and he looked at Brainstorm. “There’s no record of a Genitus, either.”

“Huh.” Damn. He really hoped alternate-Brainstorm wasn’t dead. That would suck. Or maybe he had a different paint job than Brainstorm did. Other-Perceptor had said his database was based on color. Or maybe… “I was a Decepticon for a bit in my universe,” he offered. Other-Perceptor offered no reaction to this fact except for a minute twitch of his scope. “Maybe this one still is.”

“If you wish to search the Decepticon databases, I would ask Soundwave. He and Hot Rod have been in charge of integrating the two sides since the defeat of Megatron X, and though there is still much to work to be done, he is likely your best chance.”

A brilliant idea lit up Brainstorm’s face. “You should come with us!” he said, optics sparkling. “I’m great! I’m sure you’d have a blast with this universe’s Stormy.”

“I’m not sure that’s—”

“Naw, come on, it’ll be fun.”

“I wouldn’t resist him,” Perceptor advised. “He can be extremely persistent.”

Other-Perceptor sighed with a tired acceptance. “Alright, then. Let us go.”

Brainstorm whirled around on his heel and happily marched right through the crowd, cheerfully announcing, “Coming through!” approximately half a second before barrelling through a conversation. He made it through the crowd in record time and stopped promptly before Hot Rod, Soundwave, and Rodimus. All three of them immediately turn towards them, though their interest is evidently in the two Perceptor’s and not the incredibly antsy jet.

“What do you want?” rumbled Soundwave. Jeez. Did he always sound that menacing?

“Be nice,” Hot Rod scolded. “You know these guys. Perceptor, Perceptor two, and… who’re you?”

“That’s Brainstorm,” answered Rodimus over Brainstorm’s affronted noise. “He and Perceptor were the ones who figured out the whole… universe swap magic.”

“Time travel, alternate universe traveling. Twice, I might add,” Brainstorm said, primly turning over his servo as he looked down at his digits with extreme satisfaction. “No biggie.”

Rodimus rolled his optics. “Toot your own horn later,” he complained. “We get it. You’re smart. Primus knows you don’t let us forget it. Now, why’d you come over here?”

“To ask him something,” Brainstorm said, angling his wing at Soundwave, who stiffened. “I want him to look up this universe’s version of me. Your Perceptor couldn’t find me in the Autobot databases and recommended we check the Decepticon ones.”

“I dunno,” said Hot Rod, looking Brainstorm up and down with a doubtful frown. “I’ve met a lot of mechs, and I’ve never seen anyone like him…”

“You weren’t ever a Decepticon,” said Soundwave. “I am.” Rodimus, Perceptor, and Brainstorm all shared a look, but Hot Rod either didn’t care about or didn’t notice the tense. “I recognize the name. Megatron banished the Decepticon scientist Brainstorm to an off-planet site early in the war because his experiments potentially posed a greater threat to Cybertron than anything else at the time. We have not been in contact with him since.”

Brainstorm pouted. “‘Potentially posed?’ You didn’t even let me stick around to find out? Where’s the fun in that?”

Soundwave leveled him with the dryest, most unamused look Brainstorm’s ever seen from someone without a face. “You were a menace to all of Cybertronian society.”

“Nothing’s changed then,” said Perceptor. Brainstorm flicked him in the leg with one of his ankle winglets.

“Wait,” said Hot Rod. “You banished someone for ‘potentially threatening’ experiments, and you still let Shockwave run around? He tried to destroy Earth like, five times! He literally poisoned the AllSpark! He nearly killed everyone and the whole planet! What kind of logic is that?”

“Same old then,” Rodimus said drily.

Hot Rod sighed. “It’s a long story. He’s gone now, anyway. How long has Brainstorm been away? Does he even know the war’s over?”

Soundwave paused. “Uncertain. All contact with the moon he was banished to and Cybertron was cut off directly after his arrival.”

Hot Rod and Rodimus both clapped a servo over their face. Other-Perceptor shook his head, while Perceptor consolingly patted Brainstorm on the pauldron. “Unbelievable,” Brainstorm groaned. “Megatron looked at my EM field and thought it was awful enough to kick me off the planet. And then he forgot. Me! Forgot about me!”

“A slight oversight has been made,” Soundwave admitted. “I will inform Megatron and arrange a ship for him immediately. If he still functions.”

Hot Rod huffed. “Oh, even better! You left some innocent guy on the moon, and now he might be dead?”

“Should we go?” muttered Rodimus as Soundwave and Hot Rod broke out into bickering. Brainstorm nodded and slowly started backing away, and the two Perceptor’s plus Rodimus followed him.

“When can we expect an answer?” Perceptor asked Other-Perceptor once they were safely out of ear-shot.

“Soundwave is usually prompt about these things, based on my work experience with him. Megatron is… less so, I’m told. I would wager at least a couple of weeks.”

“Are we staying that long?” Brainstorm asked Rodimus.

“Is something catastrophic going to happen if we do?”

“There’s an eighty-nine point seven-five-three-four-two-four percent chance that the portal could destabilize and collapse, trapping us here until someone aboard Lost Light reopens the portal. Given that everyone who knows how to operate that portal is currently here, it would be implausible we would be able to return to our universe,” said Perceptor.

“It’ll be fine,” said Brainstorm after a stiflingly tense beat. “C’mon, I wanna go talk to Wheeljack.”

“Still can’t believe they just left me on the moon,” Brainstorm muttered. He, Perceptor, and Other-Perceptor were currently making their way to a temporary condominium in residential Iacon. It currently was housing a number of freshly displaced Cybertronians until something more suitable could be found or built for them. As Other-Perceptor had predicted, it’d taken roughly twelve days for them to be informed of Other-Brainstorm’s (whose name actually was Brainstorm, not Genitus) whereabouts. It’d then taken another two days for Other-Brainstorm to say he was ready to accept visitors, and another four to get plans in place.

“I’m sure it was nothing personal,” Perceptor was saying as they squeezed their way around a group of laughing mechs.

“I’ve never heard of this mech,” Other-Perceptor mused. “But he must have had some truly uncanny ideas if Megatron decided he was too dangerous for his tastes.”

Brainstorm hummed. “Yeah. I wonder what that poor sod discovered to wind up getting him kicked off the planet.” He gasped and stopped suddenly, servos flying to his subspace. “Scrap! I left my notes in the lab! I wanted to compare them with him!”

Perceptor made an apologetic noise but reluctantly said, “That’s probably for the best. You’d be here for years if you had your notes, and we have to make it back to the Lost Light for our reservations at Swerve’s anyway. I don’t want to try and cajole him into giving us the bar for the evening again.”

“Yeah,” Brainstorm sighed. “There’s always next time, I guess. Hey, do you think our next date could be in another universe?”

“I don’t see why not. Perhaps the energon will be different.”

“What if there isn’t even energon in that universe?”

“Hm, true. I didn’t consider that. We’ll bring our own in case that happens to be the case.”

Other-Perceptor was watching them carefully. “What is the relationship between you two?” he asked mildly. “I didn’t want to assume, but…”

“We’re conjunx endura,” Perceptor said, that especially pleased sparkle that always showed up in his optic whenever he talked about their recent unification glowing to life once again. It gave Brainstorm weird fuzzy feelings in his circuits. He’d have to investigate what precisely in his code caused that later.

“‘Conjunx?’” Other-Perceptor frowned. “I’m not familiar with the term.”

“Write that down, write that down!” Brainstorm hissed, grabbing Perceptor’s arm.

“You write it down. I’m attempting to have a conversation,” said Perceptor, brushing Brainstorm’s servo before capturing it in his own. He gave it a light squeeze, which had Brainstorm’s wings fluttering away. “Yes. Brainstorm is my conjunx. The formal term is conjunx endura. It, in an extremely oversimplified definition, means he is my significant other.”

Other-Perceptor nodded. “I see. I don’t have one such partner myself. The war and the Quintesson invasion took away most time for such matters. For most others, anyway.” Brainstorm thought of Soundwave’s servo on Hot Rod’s hip and wondered what in the hell happened to this universe for that to happen.

“But the war’s done now, isn’t it?” he said as they turned down into a plaza and started making their way toward the condominium.

“Allow me to rephrase. I’m not interested in seeking such a relationship at the moment. A new lab partner is more than sufficient. And I must admit I am curious about what exactly it is this Brainstorm created that scared Megatron of all mechs so badly.”

“Eh, that’s fair. Lab partner is still pretty alright.”

“I happen to agree with that,” said Perceptor.

“Oh, you just happen to?”

“You know what I mean.”

The three of them entered through the first set of doors and were met with a wall of buttons labeled with room numbers. Other-Perceptor unhesitantly pushed the button to Other-Brainstorm’s room. A few seconds later, a small screen flickered to life, revealing someone with a familiar orange blast mask.

“My wings look different,” Brainstorm commented as soon as the connection stabilized.

“Good thing they’re my wings and not yours,” Other-Brainstorm snipped back without missing a beat. Brainstorm barked a laugh.

“Fair enough! Can we come down?”

A loud crash! crackled through the speakers. Other-Perceptor grimaced, while Perceptor merely looked faintly resigned. Other-Brainstorm, entirely unperturbed, said, “Yeah, yeah, just watch your step when you come in. I haven’t gotten to organize yet, so the place is a tad messy.”

“Oh, dear,” murmured Perceptor as the second set of doors to the lobby slid open and the trio of scientists stepped through. “I can only hope that this universe’s Brainstorm’s idea of ‘messy’ is far more reasonable than yours.”

Brainstorm narrowed his optics. “Is this about the moldy energon crystal sample again? I feel like this is about the moldy energon crystal sample again.”

“It was there for three years, Brainstorm.”

“So I sometimes lose track of things! Big deal!”

“How did he manage that?” asked Other-Perceptor as they piled into the elevator. Were all elevators in his universe this roomy? This one could have comfortably housed a few more average-sized mechs like himself. Or maybe like, twelve Tailgate’s or Rewind’s.

Perceptor sighed. “I still haven’t quite managed to parse that one out. All I know is that three years ago, it wasn’t possible to grow mold on crystalized energon.”

Brainstorm threw up his servos, narrowly avoiding whacking Perceptor’s scope. “You’re teaming up on me!” he whined. “Okay, fine. I’ll admit it was bad.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you.”

The elevator was a short ride to the basement, so it was only a few seconds before the doors dinged open, and the three of them spilled out into the hall.

“Which way?” asked Other-Perceptor.

At that moment, a shrill whistling began to shriek from the leftward hallway, pitching up higher and louder with every passing second until it was cut off with a loud bang accompanied by profuse swearing.

“G51 sounds like it’s that way,” Perceptor said dryly.

He’s correct, of course, and Brainstorm knocks a cheery rhythm against the door. It slid open, and in the doorway stood Other-Brainstorm. Yep. That was him, alright. There was the teal paint job, the white wings, and… a purple Decepticon sigil, branded right across his orange cockpit. Yeesh.

“I was starting to think I’d cleaned up for nothing,” Other-Brainstorm greeted.

“If this is your idea of clean, I’d hate to see what messy is,” mused Other-Perceptor as he stepped into the threshold, scope bobbing wildly as it drank in the chaotic environment. A criss-cross of thick cables and wires were taped to the ground, winding around the room to various machines lined up against the walls. Multiple experiments suspended in thin air crowded up the ceiling, ranging from maybe-guns to definitely-guns to things Brainstorm didn’t even know what to call. Datapads were scattered everywhere, tossed into open drawers, and haphazardly stacked into concerningly tall towers.

“Hardy har,” said Other-Brainstorm, crossing his arms. “Who’re you to start critiquing my workspace?”

“I am this universe’s Perceptor. I am a scientist like yourself. And my companions are an alternate version of you and I.”

Other-Brainstorm looked distinctly unimpressed. “Alternative universes? Please. That was like, a million years ago.”

“What?” squawked Brainstorm.

“You—Excuse me?” Perceptor gaped.

Other-Perceptor pushed further inside and started scanning the massive whiteboard taking up an entire wall of the apartment. “I don’t recognize any of the formulas here,” he said, somehow sounding simultaneously highly skeptical and impressed. “What are they?”

“Oh, I derived those. They describe a relationship between the mesh that constitutes the space-time continuum of multiple dimensions and any one object,” Other-Brainstorm said with a shrug.

Other-Perceptor stared at the board for a while longer. Then he turned around and said, “I can see why Megatron would perceive you as a class one threat. These could cause insurmountable amounts of devastation if they fell into the wrong hands.”

Other-Brainstorm threw up his hands. “Why does everyone keep saying that! I’m not gonna do anything!”

“Why make these, then?”

“I had to see if I could.” He paused. “And it gets boring on the moon.”

“A test, then? A game?”

“I guess? It’s not that deep, to be honest. I was just having fun.”

Other-Perceptor nodded. Then, he turned and neatly sat down in a nearby stool, chin jutted up. “You’re going to tell me everything you’ve learned,” he said calmly, “and I’m not leaving until you do.”

“Uh.” Other-Brainstorm blinked. “You sure you won’t be missed anywhere? Might take a while,” he warned.

“I might be. I don’t care.”

“...Slag. Okay. I guess I’ll start with… Well, where do you wanna start?”

“The beginning. I meant everything.”

“Well, damn,” Brainstorm murmured to Perceptor as Other-Brainstorm stared for a second before he grinned and launched into his explanations. “That was fast.”

“He might not be missed,” said Perceptor, “but we will be if we don’t leave soon.”

“Aw, c’mon, we were just getting to the fun part!”

“You can get caught up later when you come back,” Other-Perceptor said, half-distracted as Other-Brainstorm brought up a sprawling holograph of notes. Brainstorm whined a bit; he didn’t know what those equations were for either, and he was dying to know. But Perceptor was right. Rodimus’ threats to leave anyone late to take-off behind were not to be taken lightly. He’d done it before, and he would do it again.

“I’m holding you to that.” Brainstorm shimmied out of the doorway and back out into the hallway. “C’mon Percy, let’s go.”

Once they were back outside the condominium, Perceptor and Brainstorm took a bit of time to meander around the city, trying to identify anything they could. But the buildings here were in a completely different style to the ones on the Cybertron they were familiar with, and monuments and popular spots in town looked nothing at all like what either of them knew them to be. God, it was positively killing Brainstorm to have to leave so quickly. Slaughtering him. There was so much to explore still, so many more questions he had, and not enough of them had been answered to tide him over until their next visit.

“Do you think they’ll get along?” Perceptor asked as they finally began to make their way back to the Lost Light. The fuel quills were nearly at full mast, the sharp points just barely peeking out above the city skyline. They’d need to hurry.

Brainstorm glanced at him. “You don’t think they will?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m only asking because I know we didn’t exactly have what one would call an instant connection when we started working together.”

A thunderous, rumbling boom cut Brainstorm off before he could answer. Seconds later, the shockwave rolled over them, just strong enough to force them to take a step back. They whipped around, a plume of black smoke already smudging the air in the direction of the condominium.

“You know what?” Brainstorm said as the smoke rose higher and higher. “I think they’re gonna get along just fine, Percy.”

#simpaticoweek2020 #simpatico #tf #my writing #multiverse shenanigans!#the inspiration behind cbv stormy was the single thought 'lord megatron thought my vibes were rancid'#perceptor #brainstorm #maccadam

68 notes · View notes

thelovelyghostwriter · 3 years

Note

How many responses have you gotten so far, if I may ask?

Hello, thank you for your question. I open the Q&A if you guys want updates on the survey or any problems I'm facing.

Currently, there's 380 responses in total. [It was actually 362 last night, don’t know where I got the boost overnight, perhaps that Kurapika post]

tThere's actually 84 questions in total, but I coded it in such a way that certain questions don't appear when you indicated an option. For example, if you indicated that you are not up to date with the manga (indicating that you have read the post-Election arc AND read till Chapter 390), the questions regarding the Succession arc theories and predictions will not appear. This is why the manga readers' survey is actually longer.

Currently, 149 respondents indicated that they had read up to date, and therefore, they indicated

Another example is the shippings part. For example, if you indicated you don't ship anything, you won't see the list of ships. If you only indicated that you ship, let's say, het ships, you will only see the het ships. This is to make it easier for people to do the survey. The key is for others to not answer unnecessary questions.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to talk about certain issues/explanations that I need to address.

The reason why I'm always emphasising the goal of 385 responses and above (400 is a good number) because based on calculations. I checked on MAL and that there are over 1.2 million who have watched HxH. The "population" in this case is the total number of people who have watched/read the series. Since some people do not have MAL, the actual population number is higher (currently, we do not know what is this exact number).

At 5% margin of error and 95% confidence level*, the ideal sample size is 385 in populations above 100K, and it doesn't change after 100K.

*I do not really know how to explain this, but don't worry too much about it.

Alright, so I'm at 380, do I still need more than 5 people?

Yes, I need more people. Why? I have three concerns:

1) I said this before, but I need more men/boys to do the survey.

As mentioned, I did not put demographic questions because my country is strict with asking people for personal data. While this survey is casual, I do not want to encounter future complications. However, I can roughly guess the gender composition of respondents because of certain questions and the way the survey was distributed.

Firstly, this survey blew up mostly on Tumblr and there’s a lot of mixed statistics. This says that 47% are female in 2021 and this other article says 72% of women use Tumblr in 2014. Anyway, most of my online (majority from Tumblr) are women and they had actively helped me sent it out to other women who likes the show as well. This same thing happened to my friends in real life.

Actually, this is one of the biggest limitations of this survey - convenient sampling, which is giving the survey to only people that we know. Our friends who may have similar views/interest will get to do the survey, but people that we are not friends with who may have a different view/interest does not get to do the survey. Their thoughts/opinions are not recorded.

Secondly, there are certain questions that makes it easy to guess for me if the respondent is a woman/man.

For example, the “which character do you simp for” question.

“nil” means they don’t simp for anyone by the way. Also, note that this is just the word cloud diagram. I will chart them manually in bar charts later on.

Usually, when someone indicates a lot of male characters, they are normally women/girls. The ones who indicated Killua Zoldyck and Gon are usually young girls. Of course, I’m not saying men won’t indicate they simp for a male character or something, but yea know, common sense a bit here. The likelihood of someone placing Chrollo being a woman/girl is higher than the respondent being a man. That also same goes for the shipping questions.

The survey is posted on Reddit that consisted of 83.1% males in the HxH area, according to the 1K survey that they had. This helped me boost more people (and possibly guys who do survey). However, I think only about 20 to 30 people did it (based on the boost I got after the Reddit thread was posted). I also had help from a large hxh IG account that had slightly more guy followers to give me a shoutout. I also went to reach out to some accounts whom I know the admin are guys.

I still need a bit more help though, because currently the survey results... I’m sensing that there are more women/girls who did it from the way the results are turning out.

Why is this important?

It’s simple. I cannot just release the results that had an uneven ratio of the gender of the respondents and claim that this is the hxh fandom. It won’t be representative of the hxh fandom population as a whole when there are many cis-men who actually had watched/read the show, and absolutely loved it. I think it’s important to hear people’s opinions, be it men, women, young, old.

Currently, I’m trying to attract more men to do the survey by designing my hxh analyses posts from Tumblr and transporting them to IG, because I realise they like these kind of posts and they get to see my bio profile (with the survey link) + post about the hxh survey. I also get to befriend some of them in the process (and also because I have long been wanting to post my hxh analyses on IG, but it’s just a hassle to make it into pretty poster designs). So win-win.

Of course, anyone is welcomed to do the survey. I just need help with “balancing” it out, so please help me by sending it to your bros, guy friends, boyfriends, fathers etc. Or if you know any social media platforms where most guys dominate, then yeah please send them. Or if you’re a guy, then yea go ahead and try the survey.

2) While the responses are 380 in total, the number of people who have read up to date is 149.

Okay, I’m not saying I need to get people who had read up to date to be 385 as well. Realistically, not sure if I can do it. However, most of the questions pertaining the Succession arc are the most interesting ones and it takes a large chunk of them.

So yes, it will be great to have more people to do the survey especially if they had read the manga so that we can have more respondents in those questions.

3) The 385 response calculation is only assuming 5% confidence level and 5% margin of error.

I don’t exactly know how to explain this, but I will try to quote for the margin of error:

“Company X surveys customers and finds that 50 percent of the respondents say its customer service is “very good.” The confidence level is cited as 95 percent plus or minus 3 percent margin of error. This information means that if the survey were conducted 100 times, the percentage who say service is “very good” will range between 47 and 53 percent most (95 percent) of the time.”

So if you put it in HxH context, with 95% confidence level, and 5% margin of error, it goes like this:

50% of respondents indicated that Bisky is their favourite HxH girl (this one is only one option). If this survey was conducted 100 times, the % of people who indicated Bisky as their favourite girl would be from 45% to 55%.

But if I actually key in 3% margin of error, the sample size goes up to 1056.

I’m willing to open the survey for 1.5 more weeks. Three reasons:

A) I will wait for more responses of course!

B) I am currently busy with my part-time student research assistant job during summer break till this week, and they are rushing to finish up the research paper. Therefore, it’ll be nice to just wait while I do my work.

C) I am planning to write up the theories that I had included in the survey. This means having a lot of time finding the links/threads to the theories and reading them, making sense of it. I plan to post it and also merge that in my report.

I’m closing the survey in 1.5 weeks because I need time to do up the charts and report by mid-August because I’m afraid I might be busy once the semester starts and I won’t have anytime to do this mini fun project.

Another thing I want to address:

Most of the time, certain options I created is based on technical reasons. The other reason is by mistake.

For mistakes, I went to fix them if someone highlights a mistake.

Now, for the technical reason. I did not appreciate this response in the NOTP section that says:

The reason why I listed out almost all ships in Hunterpedia, including the ones with a large age gap and the incest ones is simple - because it helps me chart easier when I put them into options. It also decreases the chances of nonsense answers like this one. It also places less fatigue on people doing the survey. Text boxes are only meant if the options aren’t clear or “others, please state” so that I can include people’s opinons.

The reason why I didn’t do that for the NOTP section is that I was unable to do a certain specific coding. That’s why it ended up as a text box. It’s also based on the assumption that if something is really your NOTP, you’d know and remember it.

Why do people online goes straight to trying to prove they are morally superior and whatnot, assuming that I listed the options because of my morality. You do not know me personally. It is based solely on technical reasons.

This is why I used this disclaimer:

Which part of this is not clear. You can leave, just like what I said in the beginning. Another thing is not following instructions and being rude about it.

I had also instructed clearly to list out the NOTP combinations. I even noted it clearly. Some people put “any incest/pedo ships”, which happened more than five times. What’s more, one response contained “don’t tell me what to do”.

Yes, I get it, you don’t like these type. But what you’re doing is making me guess everything, which is unproductive. If you don’t like certain ships that are common but a “taboo” like “HisoGon”, “Killumi”, then say that. If you say it generally, I’m just going to assume the ones on the Hunterpedia list.

Another thing is the “any toxic ships”. This is very vague. Often, some so-called “wholesome” common ships in hxh are toxic. Mind you, Killugon is also a toxic ship (let’s not be blind to the CA arc please, this pairing is unbalanced), yet almost everyone perceives it as wholesome. Most characters in hxh are toxic in their own ways, and for sure their canon dynamics if they are in a relationship are likely more toxic than what is often portrayed in the headcanon way. I am wondering what to do with this, I might put it as invalid or “no”.

This is why my instructions are to list them. I had already edited the question twice to make it even clearer yet there’s people who defy them. I’m not just doing the instructions out of fun or make people’s life harder. Those are instructions.

I do not understand why certain people have to feel offended/be rude at an anonymous survey.

I can understand if people don’t follow instructions because you might missed it out and I can help to chart it for you. It’s totally okay, everyone makes mistakes, but I do not appreciate the extra unsolicited comments about me because it implies that you have read them, you just chose not to follow it.

If you think there’s a better way to do it, then DM me. I will explain to you why I had done it so, or I might even change it based on your suggestion. For example, someone actually told me to add certain options and I did it. Another person suggested to add the non-romantic dynamics and I love that, though I think it’s a little too late to add that. Maybe in the next survey.

If you do not like the instructions, kindly exit the survey. Nobody is forcing you to do it. It won’t record your response if the survey is incomplete for one hour.

#hxh #hunterxhunter #gon freecss #kurapika #leorio #killua #killua zoldyck #kurapika kurta #leorio paladiknight

11 notes · View notes

stopeatingwhales · 4 years

Text

“dance with me,” x noel gallagher

this was one of my earliest requests and i’m so unbelievably sorry it’s so overdue! i honestly went all out with writing this (it’s the longest fic i’ve ever written from this date). my honest face by inhaler helped me write the ending/the last part to this, so thank you inhaler anons ;) x

Pairing: high school noel x reader

Warnings: low form of assault, but it’s very brief (from another character - not noel) + A LOT of softness :)

Word count: 4.772

Requested by anon, I’m so sorry it’s so late <3

༉‧₊˚✧

“No, I want you, she’s so heavy is the best song!” I exclaimed, throwing my hands up in the air, a repulsive look plastered on my face. “Imagine thinking that Polythene Pam was the best,” I added, my loathsome expression increasing in disgust.

I was at Noel’s house, sitting on his bed in his shared room, accompanied by his younger brother Liam as Abbey Road by the Beatles blasted out of his record player. The atmosphere of the space was extremely calming - Noel sometimes joining in on Oh! Darling as it spun around on the player, his guitar strumming the notes lightly projecting the song louder, whilst his knee bounced up and down to measure the beat. I laid down on his bed, adorning his scent whiffed all over the sheets as I played with a few of my hair strands, humming along to Paul McCartney’s voice quietly, not interrupting the soothing sounds escaping from Noel’s guitar. The occasional curse word slipped out of Liam’s mouth - his eyes pinned on the simple question written on his homework sheet. He hadn’t done any of his work for the past two weeks, receiving multiple detentions - to which he didn’t attend - until the headteacher of our school decided to threaten him with an expulsion. During the time I was with them, I had slightly helped on a few of the questions littering his maths sheet, hinting at the answers so he would be able to properly figure them out himself. However, trying to teach a naughty 12-year-old how to do long division was exactly like being able to balance a spoon on your nose whilst laughing. Completely and utterly impossible.

Me going over to Noel’s place wasn’t unknown; I tended to go over to theirs once or twice during the week, most times after school because I had nothing better to do. We usually hung out in his room, mainly because we were both drained from how exhausting school always was, and plus, we didn’t need to go anywhere to have a laugh together, we always did. No matter where we were, we somehow found a way to brighten everything up - perhaps by smoking a joint together in a plain field, watching the sunset as we impatiently waited for another rave to pass by us, or by spending our evenings in relaxing moments like these, listening to our favourite albums without a care in the world, the occasional argument slipping out of our mouths about which was the best song - usually ending up in Noel ignoring me for the sum of 10 minutes before I gave in and apologised for my stupid remark. There’s no best song by The Beatles, they’re legendary for a reason.

“Shut it, otherwise I’m ignoring you again,” Noel replied, staring at me with both his eyes squinted together. I lifted my head up from his pillow, scoffing. Knowing this was going to happen, I didn’t reply to his silly remark, dropping my head back down onto his pillow once again. Despite the groggy feeling partnering in the room due to the heater being on, his scent was sweet. He smelt like a packet of heavy Marlboro cigarettes, whisked in with cheap aftershave from the shop down the road because he’s skint from buying too many cigarettes and ‘forgot to buy one the other day’. Nevertheless, it was alluring. I adored his scent, mainly because it reminded me of how the littlest things in life can mean the most to you. It continuously reminded me that doing simple things like these add to the empowering lifestyle of being a teenager in a dying city; Manchester was left to rot due to the prime minister focusing all her time and dedication to unimportant things, rather than helping the poor and lower class. It gave us a sense of freedom, that without the higher class evoking their worry in our troubles, they forgot about everything and let us be. We could do whatever we desired now, whether it be partying until you’re unable to walk for three days, or skipping school because you can’t be bothered to see people that only retaliate at you for petty reasons. It was the bittersweet rivers of life, we were poor but we had fun with it, dancing until our last breath before dawn.

“Noel,” Liam said, lifting his head up from his crinkled worksheet. “Don’t you have that school dance soon?” he added, the temperature of the room now feeling like it was upped one hundred degrees due to my cheeks reddening. Since me and Noel didn’t have that big of a friendship group, and both of us having somewhat a troubled love life for our age, our minds never brushed past the thought of going to the leavers dance. It was itching towards the end of the school year, meaning that we were going to leave school, so going and taking part in the fun of a last dance was quite hyped up. My mind sometimes brushed the idea of me and Noel going together, but we were only friends. Plus, wouldn’t that just be weird?

I tried to subtly raise my head to look at Noel, my eyes trailing from the plain white ceiling to his slim-structured body. The neck of his acoustic guitar was gripped gently by his left hand, his right caressing the strings softly as his playing came to a close from the question hanging in the air. He shifted around in his seat a bit, adjusting where the guitar sat, before clearing his throat and answering the question. I was tempted to ask him the same thing too, my curiosity over the subject now being the only thing pitted in my mind. “Well, yeah but I haven’t got no one to go with, init?” He said, staring straight at Liam, then the piece of paper lying in front of him on his bed. My heart sank a little as that sentence launched out of his mouth abruptly, my thoughts now following on with unspeakable things of what I could’ve answered to that. I knew he really wanted to go with someone, but there wasn’t anyone who would be willing to go out with him, even for just one night.

“Couldn’t you just go with Y/N?” Liam asked, turning his head to look at me. My eyes widened expeditiously, my crimson cheeks now turning to fire as I chewed on my bottom lip. The heat bubbling in my body caused me to feel a slight tingle at my lower back, the feeling of sweat beginning to form on all the spots that weren’t visible to both boys - the skin I owned underneath. “Unless you’ve got someone to go with, but I doubt that,” Liam added, chuckling after his words.

Ignoring his comment, I stayed silent for a few seconds, my eyes darting to my fingers as I fiddled with them - figuring out what to answer. “I mean, we could just go as friends I guess?” I said, now staring straight at Noel. He stared back at me, his eyebrows shifting around a bit, contemplating the idea that was now punctured in his brain. “There’s nothing wrong with that,” I added, reassuring that I did feel the same way at first - friends shouldn’t be going together - when it’s no harm dressing up and having a couple drinks with your best friend, we do that all the time anyways.

“I suppose so,” He replied, nodding his head as he darted his head back to the record player, reaching out for the opened water bottle placed by the record player - taking a short sip of it before carrying on his sentence. “But you have to admit Polythene Pam is the best song,”

~~~

As I walked through the school gates I was for once welcomed with a feeling which wasn’t dread. I gazed around the mundane, dimmed colours of the school’s front whilst anticipation filled my veins whole, adoring my body like a little child, after begging and begging for minutes on end for their guardian to buy them a treat they had been eyeing at for what felt like a year, their carer gives in from the child’s immediate persistence, causing the kid to be on a cloud-nine-level of euphoria and exhilaration. For once, I felt excited; apprehension for the tales ahead buzzed through my body, for my usual, stale state taking a departure once my eyes made contact with the known building for once. Tonight I was going to enjoy myself, even if I despised the majority of the people who were attending. This was one of the last chances I got to enjoy myself at school - and since we’re going for the its-the-last-day-of-the-world vibe - I might as well make the most of it while it lasts.

Walking up to the main building, I saw bright, flashy colours being projected from inside the large hall, reminiscing me of the many raves I had hazily attended with Noel whilst we were drunk off of our heads. The sparkling lights, the huge domes of crowded, drunken teenagers - just like me and him - trying to find a place to fit in, accidentally stumbling into an open, warm embrace to another dimension crammed with unknown faces, an introduction to the exact same embrace they’d be entangled in when they go back home to their parents in the middle of the night - whom were sick to their stomach in worry because they didn’t know where their child was. You belonged to your families, but you refused to believe that life was as bland as it had become; there’s more to life than studying for exams, everyone says. You don’t want to end up like the small percentage of people who refuse to live their lives because it's the only one they’ve got. You want to live your life because it is the only one you’ve got.

My shoes echoed a light tap on the concrete as I paced slowly, my mind entranced in thought, wondering the crowds I’d be exposed to once I set foot inside the chattering room. As I made my way to the glass door, I stared at my reflection briefly, adjusting my hair a little bit due to it falling out of place from the small gusts of wind that had accompanied me on my way to the school. A rush of nervousness focused on my mind until I gripped on the handle, pushing the door open, revealing the view of teenagers dancing about, drinking, laughing or slobbering on each other's faces. My anxieties were cleared when I saw every girl dolled up in dresses; the one I was currently engulfed in wasn’t that nice - it being the only dress I’ve had in my wardrobe for a couple years (since I wholeheartedly have a brutal hate for dresses). I was forced to keep it in my closet in case there was a time and a place I needed it, for unexpected times like these, a leavers disco, my date being my one and only best friend Noel Gallagher. I was astounded to realise it actually sat on me the same as it used to, only a little bit shorter due to me growing in height. I was the same height as Noel, yet we would always have arguments over who was taller - always being shushed by Liam as he was figuring how to write a paragraph describing what happens in Act 5 of Macbeth. Get a room, you two.

Wandering on the sidelines of the grand hall, I picked up on the little decorations which had been ripped off the walls from careless students. The colour of the room was a simple blue, making it quite hard to study everything from the human eyes. Bits of what seemed to be silky red ribbon - the flashing lights of the room making it quite hard to figure out what shade it was - ripped up tissue paper, and a few bursted balloons. Music was playing, blasting out of huge Marshall amps, stacked upon each other on the main stage, where years worth of plays and performances were repetitively played almost every half term, my mind reminiscing on the first play I did in year 7 as a side character. The many screams that escaped people’s mouths as the chorus of Boys Don’t Cry by the Cure, prevented me from living out the memories for the last time as I set foot in the hall. Humming along to the melody, I waved my arms around in the air - not too far out, in case I accidentally come into contact with someone rushing past me - my fingers twiddling together as I spun myself around slightly. The ambience of the room felt very uplifting, reminding me of, yet again, those fun times I had experienced with Noel on the many late nights of the summer holidays.

My eyes briefly caught contact with a table as I was walking - the drinks stand. It sat straight ahead of me, yet it was positioned facing the crowds of people mingling about singing along to the new song that began playing. As each step began bringing me closer to it, I attempted to analyse what was suited up for options, squinted my eyes together. There were four fish-bowl-like tubs, with nothing but flavoured beverage inside them, all of them being a different shade - one lighter than the other, one darker than the other. Once I made it to the table, I continued to vary my choice, my eyes completely enthralled by the options. Bowls were left almost empty, some fully empty. As I placed my finger on the one which had the most drink in it, I squinted my eyes together again, wondering if it was the best choice.

“You come here alone?” chirped up a voice in front of me, behind the table. As I raised my head up, I met eyes with the person, noticing that it was one of mine and Noel’s mates. There were stacks of paper cups lined up behind him, along with one small stack sat on the wooden table beside his stood body - for easy access when having a lot of customers, especially at the start of the dance, when all the people attending want is a drink to murder the awkward atmosphere building up in the place.

Laughing lightly, I smiled. “Well, I’m supposed to be here with Noel,” I said, quickly scanning the room after to see if he had made it yet - clearly not. “But he doesn’t seem to have arrived here yet,”

I heard a laugh escape the boy's mouth. “You and Noel?” he asked, grabbing a spoonful of the drink I was eyeing merely seconds previous, snatching a paper cup from the pile lined up perfectly beside him, gathering some of the drink before splashing the liquid into the cup. “I was wondering when that was going to happen,” he added, more or so mumbled, as if he was trying to hide it from me. I noticed he rolled his eyes slightly, his eyebrows furrowing together as he dropped the spoon he was pouring the drink with back into its original position - inserted into the bowl.

“Sorry?” I asked, confused by his comment. He handed me the drink after swishing it around in his hand a couple times - perhaps to check if there was enough to the point it wouldn’t spill, or maybe because he was stunned by my upfront approach against his words, mustering responses in his head before spitting back at me. It felt like there was a lot on his mind - a lot he wanted to say, most likely things to me.

His eyes wandered around the table separating us. Fixating both his palms on the table, keeping it steady, he sighed, sucking in one side of his mouth before exhaling. “Well, he’s more of a pretentious twat if I’m honest,”

I was shocked. My jaw was practically on its way to drop to the ground and smash at full force - as if it were being thrown off the tallest tower in the world. Why did he say that? “Plus, he’s your best mate, are you that lonely not to go with anyone else?” he scoffed, clearly aiming the question towards why I hadn’t gone with him. There was speculation of him liking me between conversations I had with our small friend group at school, but I tended to avoid bringing it up in conversation; I got too uncomfortable. We weren’t close, he was always there simply whenever we hung out at school. Apart from that, we barely ever saw him, let alone know anything about him.

“Come on Y/N, let’s dance,” he said, circling the table, walking round to where I was standing, my eyes facing the bowls. He grabbed my arm roughly - turning me to look directly at him. “You deserve better than that fucker!” he exclaimed, attempting to drag me closer to him, as he pulled us to the middle of the room, where everyone was dancing. Gripping onto the beverage tightly in my free hand, I pulled it close to me, in case I’d manage to spill anything on the floor, becoming the cause of someone’s injury from slipping and ripping their clothes. His body language seemingly began to turn more aggressive as we made it to the centre of the room, the pressure being put on my wrist getting more and more tight. The idea of me and Noel dancing in the room played on his mind as it did with mine too, noticing the amount of people dancing with their significant others. Perhaps the reason he kept adding so much strength was because he was jealous, the same sort of jealousy when you find out two of your supposed best friends had gone out together and forgot to ask you to come - when without a doubt deliberately did it since they didn’t want you attending. His grip was slowly seeming out more pain in my body.

My hand began to ache; the force he was pushing onto my wrist was causing my hand to tingle from the lack of blood circulation. The idea of throwing my drink at him, knowing I wouldn’t drink it anymore due to what he was doing to me, “Get off of me, you bitch!” I shrieked, jittering my hand around in all ways possible, causing him to turn his face to look at me, scold me perhaps, until I took the chance and threw my drink straight at him - aiming for the eyes like pepper spray gauging to the root of your eyes, blinding you in immediate pain. I heard him shout, instantly releasing his hold from my hand, as I headed to leave the room straight away. Practically everyone had their eyes glued to the pair of us, staring both of us questioningly, the sound of my heels clanking against the wooden floor ringing through my ears painfully as I exited the immensely tensed stiff room.

~~~

Walking outside of the building, I made my way towards the gate I once entered, couching to lean against the wall that was placed beside it. The aged wall felt cold, the little bumps of hardened cement sticking out of the bricks digging into my dress, eventually into my back. The contrast of my heated body against the freezing wall brought a feeling of relaxation - the stressful situation that had previously occurred just moments ago finally began departing from its connection to my thoughts. I held my face in my hands, slowly feeling my wrist go from its numbed state to a softened feeling of fuzz; I moved it around a little bit, noticing I had somewhat control of it now. The past tingly feeling I felt on my hand had come to my head instead, as I started to weave myself into thoughts about what people would take and think from the situation. I was almost certain someone was going to mention it to everyone and everywhere imaginable - casual teenager gossip, a girl got assaulted, spread it around!

As the skies unfolded newer, darker shades, welcoming the night, the stale breeze picked up on itself, cluttering my hair, throwing it to other parts of my face - like how it was before I had entered the building, this time as if I had rolled down a mountain and stood up injury free. Collecting my arms in an embrace to warm me up, I leaned my head back against the brick wall, staring at the twinkling night sky. It was surprising how much light the moon emitted. You didn’t need that many lamp posts at all, unless you were walking in an area where the moon was unable to shimmer its colours: a dull alleyway, where there's only one small light hanging on the wall, basically broken, a flickering light flashing out of it, just managing you to get through the dust and dirt cascaded around you. Almost telling you that, you’ll be able to survive your hardships, as long as you believe in the light to keep shining.

Staring at my shoes, I admired the little sparkles glimmering from my shoes. They were small, short-cut heels that I put on to make myself look fit for the part of a schoolgirl ready to depart from her beautiful teenage life and enter a world of womanhood. I was growing up, and I just hoped that the future that was slowly unravelling itself to me was going to be better than I anticipated it to be. Tonight went to shit, though.

“Y/N?” a voice said, speaking up as it walked through the gate’s entrance. Straight away I was able to know who it was. Noel.

Moving my head from the view of the night sky, I locked eyes with Noel - who was standing in front of me, concern miffed on his eyes. He was clothed in a cheap looking suit, perhaps one he found in his mother's closet which belonged to his father previously, or maybe one he stole from a friend. It fit him perfectly, as if the brand tailored to his bodily structure. His hair looked as if he had done it properly for once, rather than having it in its usual, worn down state. “Why are you sitting alone, and outside in the freezing cold?”

I scoffed, recalling the situation. However, I avoided mentioning it; it would only make the rest of the evening more dreadful to experience. “Rough night,” I mumbled, turning my head to the glowing skies again. “Where were you?” I asked, attempting to change the subject expeditiously. Thankfully, it worked.

“Thought it started at ten,” he replied, walking to lean on the wall beside me, but not sitting like I was. He shuffled his feet a little bit, small, minuscule rocks causing a scraping sound to ripple out from underneath. It was a soothing sound at first, the coarse scratches against the floor reminding me of walking in the middle of a sea of leaves in a park in autumn, completely emptied, without a soul to be seen when there's not a single tree alive and blooming anymore. A ghost town, when in summer would be compressed with thousands of people trying to get past the sweaty, sticky air causing you to cough a couple times. You walk through, stomping on whatever leaf your shoe comes into contact with, a crisp, crunchy sound mounting from it. You slow your pace, wanting to breathe in the cool air, capture the moment before it’s too late and you’re getting your keys to unlock your front door. “Guess not,”

Sighing, I shook my head. “It’s fine, don’t worry, really,” I answered, my eyes trailing to the school building once again. “It’s not like you missed out on anything,”

As if on cue, once my eyes made contact with the place, the loud music that was being projected out of it came to a halt - cutting off mid song, forming goose bumps on my arm out of frustration. You don’t cut off a song halfway, patience, please. I’d always say to Noel, when he got sick and tired of listening to I want you (She’s so heavy) for the fourth time. We’ve listened to it four times! Regardless, you twat. You don’t cut off good music.

I heard Noel snicker lightly, knowing I would get bothered - even if I didn’t physically show it. What was replaced with the rasp, echoing sounds of some random dance song, was the music I was silently waiting for all night. The slow dancing song. The most memorable moment of the night. In all honesty, the song that was playing was bad - but that’s not the point.

As the music progressed on, I imagined myself in the hall, slow dancing with Noel. Tonight made me realise something: over the past year and a bit of mine and his friendship blossoming, he became someone that I needed in my life, in my future. Like how tea needs its milk and sugar. Like how to write you need a pen. You couldn’t take one or the other out of the equation; it wouldn’t make sense - at all. It was weird enough knowing we used to hate each other in class, not because someone said something to the other to piss them off, neither of us really didn’t know. We just hated each other’s presence - until we both shared a spliff together one morning before school; I had forgotten my last cigarette at home, and him - not exactly knowing why he did it - offered to have a hit of his.

“Dance with me,” he said, lifting his body off off the wall, once again standing right in front of me.

“What?”

“Every girl deserves a dance,” he started grabbing my hand, preparing himself to pull me up. Our eyes made stale contact, his brunette eyes interlocking with mine. They had a certain shine to them under the moonlight, a certain twinkle I was never able to notice before. “Especially you,” he added, dragging me up from the icy, dirty floor.

My heart fluttered as he pulled my body close to his, his hand adorning my hip as his other held my hand and pulled it closely to his chest. My grin was as wide as the sun in 360 degree view, heating up my face in a light blush, not noticeable in the dark. A part of me felt as if he noticed; his small smile widened slightly when the rush of warmth embraced my skin. I placed my free hand on his shoulder, allowing my fingers to feel the cheap fabric he was wearing. I didn’t care how expensive or how low-priced, all I needed was Noel, no one else. He knew me like no one else did.

Pulling Noel closer to my body, we began swaying, the soft sounds of the music playing in the background. I’m sure everyone else in the town would be able to hear the music at one point; they used an unreasonable amount of amps for the songs. I hugged his body, adoring his scent once again. The same, cheap, worn down smell, whiffed with what smelt like a hit of weed, perhaps to calm himself down. He looked quite nervous when I first saw him. He was nervous, for me.

“Y/N,” he said, causing me to lift my head from his shoulder. I stared into his obscure, enthralling orbs, my heart softening. His pupils were dilated, his bottom lip sank into his mouth. He seemed anxious, worried about what was happening, until he exhaled his breath, a breath seeming like it was meant to escape decades ago, and cocked his head to the side, leaning in.

Heart pounding, I did the same, as our lips brushed against one another's. The kiss felt extremely overdue, as if it was meant to happen on the morning we first bonded on our new knowledge of our shared habit. He tasted exactly like how I imagined: sweet. Sweet with a hint of honey. Sweet with a hint of hunger, as if this was needed far, far long ago. This kiss was a response to every conversation we ever had, every lock of the eyes, every embrace. We continued swaying whilst our lips adventured on the feeling of something new. Love.

So when you ask me, how was your school dance? Because you like to push your nose into everyone else’s business, I’ll tell you, it was the best night of my life, like the end of all things usually is.

#noel gallagher x reader #liam gallagher #noel gallagher #oasis #britpop #music #90s #imagine #bandimagines #bands #fluff #smut #angst #writing #my writing

122 notes · View notes

into-control · 3 years

Note

Into i need help. I bought a oculus quest 2 right and i tried to connect it to my laptop and it wont work so I realized i needed and actual pc gaming setup you know, problem is idk anything about PCs and i dont wanna get scammed. Can you help me? Ive looked online and idk wtf im looking at tbh. Can you give like advice and shit lol 😂 love you into 💕

well i'm not a professional at pcs by any means but i've always had a huge fixation on them so i can try to help as much as possible and i'll even try to put it in simple terms. fair warning, i talk A LOT in this post because i love rambling about computers :') i tried to use the simplest terms possible since you seem confused but if something doesn't make sense just ask and i can try to reword.

it all depends on what you want out of your pc. and do you want to build one or get a prebuilt one? if you want my advice i recommend building one. getting a prebuilt pc is the easiest way to get scammed because retailers tend to overcharge and they think they can get away with it because they stuck a flashy high end graphics card and colourful lights in it even though it has shit airflow and they cheaped out on the motherboard and power supply or something like that. if you're going to get a prebuilt pc make sure you look at allll the specs and consult some online reviews to see if they're any good, and figure out if you're going to be overcharged. now i'll talk about building one. a lot of this will still be useful if you're considering buying a prebuilt though.

the very first step is deciding your budget. idk where you are but in USD the typical amount to spend on pc parts is i think like $1000 - 1500 (you can spend less but that's if you don't have a lot of money to spend and are still desperate to have a gaming pc). i'm spending around $1700 CAD (before taxes, eugh) on mine bc i want to get into more demanding games eventually. it sounds very costly but computers like these can last you a decade and are very multifaceted. figuring out your budget first instead of going right ahead and buying stuff is important because each component should take up specific percentages of your budget. another important thing to consider when deciding your budget is if you want RGB (the colourful lights as previously mentioned), because components with that capability are slightly more expensive.

after deciding your budget, your first move is deciding what graphics card (GPU) you want. the GPU is responsible for processing and presenting the visuals on your screen. theoretically it should take up between 35 - 40% of your budget because it is the powerhouse in a gaming system. you have two developers to choose from here: NVIDIA or AMD. from what i've seen people tend to prefer NVIDIA but AMD cards aren't bad and they definitely compete in performance. i'll talk about nvidia though because that's what i know more about. by searching up the oculus quest 2 system requirements it tells me you at least need an nvidia geforce gtx 970. this card came out in 2014 and is by no means bad however it is actually the same base price as a lot of newer cards. if you want to go better than the minimum requirements, first consider what your monitor is capable of. if you don't have one yet, consider what you want it to do. monitors are not considered a part of the budget i keep mentioning by the way. idk how much this matters to you since we're talking about the oculus quest 2 but i'm just kind of assuming you're going to use this pc for other games too. the main two things to take into consideration are max resolution and refresh rate. my monitor has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and a 144hz refresh rate. what the resolution means is that there are 2,073,600 pixels in the screen, and can go up to a resolution of 1080p in video games. the refresh rate means the monitor can refresh the picture on the screen 144 times a second, therefore can show a max of 144 frames per second in a video game. to put that in to perspective, most screens have a refresh rate of 60hz, such as regular laptop screens, iphone screens, etc.. monitors come in mainly 60hz, 75hz, 144hz, and 165hz, and for resolution they mainly come in 1080p, 1440p, and 4k. seeing as i don't have any plans on upgrading my monitor any time soon, dropping extra money on a GPU that can achieve more than 144fps and 1440p/4k would be pointless. but forget about the monitor, the oculus quest 2 has a max refresh rate of 120hz and its resolution lies somewhere between 1080p and 1440p. if you know what kind of games you're going to be playing, look up how they perform with different kinds of cards. i'm fairly certain anything above an nvidia geforce rtx 3070 would be pointless because of your display limits, and anything below the nvidia geforce gtx 970 simply won't be enough for the system. you can look at all the GPUs ranked here. after deciding which GPU you want you need to figure out which brand of it you want (NVIDIA themselves, asus, gigabyte, evga, etc), because they all perform at slightly different levels, although the difference is usually only a few frames so it's better to save money. something to watch out for is the quality of the fans in the GPU because if they aren't good, it will overheat and underperform. i'm aiming to get a 3060 or 3060 ti, if that helps. the only problem is that there is currently a worldwide GPU shortage due to covid, tariffs, and the cryptocurrency mining boom (gpus are used in bulk to mine). fortunately there is currently a crypto mining crackdown happening in china, where majority of mining in the world happens, so the demand for GPUs will hopefully start going down soon. you wont be able to build your pc right away but the market is looking better than it has in awhile. this is just about the only argument i have in favor of getting a prebuilt pc, because they have GPUs in them and are more readily available. i don't think that's a good enough reason though especially since part of the reason i'm building my pc is because it looks fun lol. another thing to note is that you should not overspend on your GPU. the shortage has caused a lot of GPU prices to skyrocket into the $2k-3k range but none of them should be above 1k except the highest end ones. when deciding on a GPU, search up the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP). cards made by brands other than AMD and NVIDIA will almost always cost a little extra, but do not pay hundreds of

extra dollars. but anyways!! the GPU is now out of the way and is definitely the longest paragraph here because it's the most important part.

next up is the central processing unit (CPU), which you should be spending about 20 - 25% of your budget on. its job is essentially to retrieve instructions from the RAM and execute it. i suppose you could call it the brain. again you have two developers to choose from, this time between intel and AMD. i've had two laptops with an intel CPU and my current one has an AMD CPU and both are very good, however the general consensus is that you can get the same performance for less by going with AMD. CPUs have cores, and each core can run its own process. the more cores you have, the more your pc can think about basically. you can get CPUs will all sorts of amounts of cores but for gaming, 4 or 6 cores is all you really need. 8 is actually already a bit overkill. so you really don't need to get the best CPU out there. the one you get should depend on what GPU you get (hence choosing that component first). you don't want to bottleneck your GPU by getting a CPU that isn't good enough for it, but bottlenecking your CPU with the GPU by a small amount isn't as big of a deal because the goal is to allow your GPU to be used to its full ability. another detail about CPU is clock speed, which determines how quick it can complete tasks. the higher the faster, obviously. my (non gaming) laptop's CPU clock speed is 2.30 GHz and has 4 cores. the cpu i have for my build is the AMD ryzen 5 5600x. it has a base clock speed of 3.7 GHz but it can be maxed out to 4.6 GHz, and it has 6 cores. the oculus quest 2 has a minimum requirement of the AMD ryzen 5 1500x or the intel i5-4590, which is a little low on the performance list. but like i said the CPU should depend on the GPU. all it takes is a google search for which CPU goes best with the GPU you've chosen and you can find several answers depending on if you want the best possible performance, best budget performance, etc.. a nice little fact about choosing AMD over intel is that most AMD CPUs will come with a stock cooler, which is absolutely necessary otherwise your CPU will overheat (this is another thing prebuilts will cheap out on). this only adds to the whole price-to-performance thing. the stock cooler will most likely do unless you push your pc or want the build to look prettier.

next on the list is a motherboard, where all the parts come together in unity. you should spend 8 - 10% of your budget on this baby. it's easy to over and underspend on a mobo. the most important thing when it comes to choosing a mobo is that it supports your CPU. you cannot use the same mobo for intel and AMD CPUs. fortunately the product page will straight up tell you which CPU brand the mobo is meant for and will typically have two versions of the same board. it's important to note that motherboards don't always have onboard wifi, meaning it wont be able to connect to the internet via wifi and instead needs an ethernet cable or an external wifi adapter. if you can't get an ethernet cable to the room where you want your pc, you're going to need onboard wifi, or a wifi card/usb. onboard wifi mobos tend to be more expensive so it's up to you, but i personally bought one with wifi included so i wouldn't have to worry about it because our ethernet cables are in the basement and i'm upstairs. another very important thing about motherboards is that their BIOS version (operating system i guess?? idk how else to describe it) doesn't always support your CPU out of the box and must be updated before using it. this can present as a problem if you don't have another CPU to perform the update with, however some motherboards allow you to 'flash' the BIOS with a only usb drive as long as it's hooked up to power. there are plenty of step by step youtube videos about how to do this. i will have to do this with my motherboard when the time comes because it doesn't support ryzen 5s out of the box. don't let this deter you from getting a certain board as long as it has a BIOS flash feature. next up is what I/O ports you want, which are the ports (usb ports, headphone/mic jack, hdmi port, etc) you'd find on the back of any desktop computer. that is the side of the motherboard. basically just be aware of how many of each ports you want, and remember that there will probably be even more ports on the front of the case you get. the last thing i can think of right now is making sure your motherboard has all the headers (where you plug components in) you want it to have but i'll get to that later.

next up on the list is RAM, aka random access memory. this stores short term data. the amount of RAM you have kind of determines how much your pc can multitask. RAM sticks typically go up by some multiple of 2GB. most standard laptops and desktops nowadays will come with 8GB of RAM, which is enough for day to day use. it can be enough for mid and low end games however it cuts it pretty close most of the time. 16GB of RAM is the sweet spot for gaming and anything above that is pretty much overkill (and once again a waste of money) as long as you don't have a billion unnecessary background processes. a large amount of RAM is typically needed for video editors or computer programmers. you should always make sure your motherboard can support the amount of RAM you want although any good motherboard will support 64GB or even 128GB. the best option is to get a 16GB RAM pack, which will include two 8GB RAM sticks. splitting RAM between two sticks will increase efficiency. this is called dual channel. i also recommend getting DDR4 RAM, which is simply faster than DDR3. a good speed to have is around 3600 MHz. make sure your motherboard supports DDR4. you also want to be weary that your RAM is compatible with your CPU brand because they do have to interact for your pc to function.

next is storage. there are three-ish options here depending on how much you're willing to spend. generally you should spend 8 - 10% of the budget here. you can always get a good ole hard drive for the cheapest, however they are the slowest and physically biggest option, meaning whatever you put on it will take a bit longer for your pc to retrieve and open (they can load about 100-200MB of data per second). the next option is a solid state drive. they are a little more expensive but can load as much as 600MB of data per second and take up less space. the last and most efficient/expensive option is an m.2 nvme drive. these things are physically absolutely tiny and can load up to 4GB of data per second. anything you put on these will open very very quickly. the fairly standard solution for this is a combination of two of these three. personally i'm using one m.2 drive and one hard drive. the hard drive i have can store 2TB while the m.2 drive can only store 256GB. funnily enough these two drives are roughly the same price. the idea here is to install your operating system on the faster drive. this makes it so it only takes like 8 seconds tops for your pc to start up. you can also put any other programs you use most often on there (like your main browser and favourite games) and they will open very quickly, while the bulk of your games and other files will go on the bigger drive. that's all there really is to say for storage, just make sure the reviews are good on the drive you want to get, but that goes for any component.

next is your power supply (PSU). very very important to not cheap out on this. 6 - 8% of the budget should go to this. the function of the PSU is to do exactly what its name implies: supply power to all the components. this is where the website pcpartpicker can come in very handy. not only does it help you build a list of parts that are all compatible with each other, it will also estimate how much wattage you will need to run your pc. 600W is usually enough for a normal gaming pc. PSUs are ranked, and you should never really go below a bronze ranking. you can also choose between non-modular, semi-modular, and fully-modular PSUs. non-modular PSUs have all the cables permanently attached. this can be desirable to people who are confused by what cable is plugged in where but also undesirable as unused cables cannot be removed and make cable management harder. fully-modular PSUs come with the cables all in a separate bag so you choose which ones to plug in. semi-modular power supplies have the necessary cables attached and the rest can be attached need be. it all depends on preference and how much faith you have in yourself. i have an 80+ gold certified fully modular 750W PSU because the thought of unnecessary cable management makes me sick lol. corsair is pretty much the most trusted brand for power supplies. be careful because this is another place prebuilts will cut corners.

now for the case! this one isn't overly difficult to choose and mainly will just appeal to your aesthetics. it's less important to stick to a precise percent of the budget for this one but you also don't want to spend more than 8%. do you want a black case? a white one? do you want a glass side panel so you can see inside your pc and admire your hard work? besides that, you also need to make sure the case is big enough for your motherboard, GPU, and PSU. most info pages for cases will tell you the max size of the GPU and PSU and what size of mobo it's meant for. you also want to make sure there is a place to put your storage drives (unless you only have m.2 drives which are installed on the motherboard). you also want to make sure it has optimal airflow abilities. a case with no airflow will cause overheating. the best ones have mesh fronts and tops to allow cool air to be pulled in and hot air out. it's even better if you can get a case that comes with fans in the front, because they are what pulls that cool air in.

next is the CPU cooler, which i briefly mentioned. if you don't get an AMD CPU then you'll need to buy a separate cooler. you can choose between air coolers (a fan and a heatsink) or liquid coolers. i don't really have much to say about them and i recommend doing your own research on liquid coolers lol.

last but not least, case fans. like i said a lot of cases will come with front fans and also an exhaust fan at the back, however you might want more, or even replace the ones you already have with better ones. pay attention to how many fans your case manual says can fit and plan accordingly. check out reviews to see if the fans you want are quiet and efficient. if you buy a three pack of case fans there is a chance it will come with a fan hub. this makes it easier to control all of them in sync because the hub will connect all the fans to one header on the motherboard. generally 3-6 fans are pretty good for a gaming pc. two or three in the front pulling in cool air, one at the back and two on the top to pull out hot air.

now that i have all the components out of the way i'm gonna talk about RGB lighting. numerous components that i've mentioned have the option of including LED lights to make your pc brightly coloured, which is always nice if you have a glass side panel on your pc. it's an extra bit of money but i personally was willing to sacrifice that because i want to show off my build lmao. motherboards, RAM sticks, GPUs, CPU coolers, and case fans are the main components that can come with RGB lighting. you can also get special LED strips and power connectors designed for PCs. if you decide to go for RGB lighting, do try to stick to one RGB ecosystem, meaning make sure all the RGB components can be controlled by one program. RGB is controlled by your motherboard. for example if you get an asus motherboard you'll probably want to use their program, aura sync. most components can be controlled by any brand's program however if the motherboard itself has RGB lighting it can only be controlled via its own brand's program, along with the GPU. if you want RGB case fans you really have to make sure your motherboard has RGB headers (the thingy on the motherboard where you plug the fan's LED lights into). most motherboards will only have two-ish RGB headers so if you're going to buy a bunch of fans make sure they come with a fan hub, which lets you plug them all into one header on the motherboard. also, never sacrifice performance for RGB. specifically when it comes to GPUs. if you have a choice between a GPU with RGB and a GPU without RGB, always take the one that has better performance (given it's within the parameters i mentioned earlier).

that's all i have to say :) if you couldn't tell i really love this stuff. i will also recommend you watch youtube videos about this, you can see the build process and the reasoning for using each component, and also tips on what to do and what not to do. i hope this helps and wasn't too confusing. i know you said this is mainly because you got an oculus quest 2 but if you're going to get a gaming pc you should definitely consider games outside of the oculus too.

#ask #anon

4 notes · View notes

icecoldflames · 4 years

Text

Gold Star (Sanders Sides)

Human AU

Romantic Analogical

Background Romantic Royality

***

Virgil’s eyes flashed open. His alarm went off. The sun streamed in through his window. It’s going to be a good day today, he thought to himself as he heaved himself out of bed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

He padded over to his closet and opened it, eyeing his clothes. Virgil didn’t often care about his outfit. Usually, he just wore his usual hoodie and a pair of sweatpants. Nothing too loud. But today he wanted to try something new.

Virgil’s eyes glanced over to his fancy clothes. He ran his hand over his purple tie but then immediately dropped it. No, that wasn’t the look he was going for.

He eventually settled on a purple plaid shirt with a black tee underneath along with a pair of jeans. Good, he thought to himself as he looked in the mirror. Something different but not too different.

Forty five minutes later, he climbed aboard the bus and sat down next to his friend, Roman, who looked him up and down appreciatively. “I see you’ve upped your style today. What’s new?”

Virgil shrugged, a grin creeping up on his face. “Oh, nothing.”

Realization dawned on Roman’s face. His eyes widened. “You’re getting your Math test and English essay back today, aren’t you?”

Virgil nodded in delight and his heart fluttered.

“I swear, Virgil,” Roman began, “if you get a higher mark than Logan, please don’t shove it in his face and if he gets the higher mark, don’t start a fight. I’m begging of you.”

“I can’t promise anything.” Virgil said, dropping the smile and putting on an annoyed expression. “Logan just gets on my nerves so much. Who does he think he is?!” He griped.

Roman sighed and crossed his arms. “Alright but I’m not going to pull you out from a fight again.”

The bus came to a halt and some other kids boarded the bus.

“Don’t worry, Ro. That was forever ago.” When I did hate Logan, he added in silently. “Besides, he started it.” That wasn’t true but Roman didn’t know that.

Roman huffed. “I think I know what it feels like to be an exasperated mom…”

When the bus finally arrived at the high school, Virgil told Roman he’d meet him at his locker in a bit.

Virgil’s locker was right next to Logan’s. Virgil knew Logan arrived at school at promptly 7:30 and stayed in the library until five minutes before the bell where he would head to his locker to pick up his books for first period.

As Virgil neared his locker, a pair of feet caught up to him and began to match his pace. “Virgil.” Logan said with a curt nod. He had a book under his arm: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Virgil’s heart fluttered. Logan was wearing his usual black-collared button up with a blue tie. Most of the other kids thought he was a bit excessive with his tie but Virgil really liked it. It suited him really well. Virgil put a disinterested look on his face along with his signature scowl. “Logan.” He was early—it was ten minutes before the bell, not five.

They both arrived at their lockers at the same time but Logan was the first to unlock it and swing his open.

Out of his peripheral view, Virgil watched as Logan carefully placed his book on the top shelf before methodically grabbing his Math textbook and binder. He put his pencil case and book on top of that.

Virgil began unpacking his bookbag which didn’t have much in it—just some random stuff like gum and his Chemistry homework. Logan took Biology.

Virgil, just slightly, wished he had chosen Biology even though he was terrible at remembering terms and parts of a cell. Just seeing Logan again for another hour would have made up for his cruddy mark in that class. Then again, if he took Bio, he would lose a lot more in their competition.

Their competition started last year when Virgil moved here. He and Logan were put in the same Math class and the teacher would give out a sticker to the top grade every test or assignment.

Roman told him that, last year, he had heard that Logan had received the gold star every single time. For the entire year.

Virgil had called the whole thing stupid when Roman explained. “What are we?” He had asked Roman with a scoff. “Kindergarteners? A gold sticker?” The whole thing had sounded absurd.

Virgil liked math. It was weird, but he found doing equations were therapeutic. That first unit, Logan had gotten the two gold stars. Virgil hadn’t minded. Again, gold stars were childish in his books.

But then the second math unit was trigonometry. And Virgil loved any type of math that had to do with shapes. And, that first assignment he had scored a 100% and gotten the gold sticker. He experienced great joy that class feeling Logan’s fiery stare boring holes into him.

Virgil had turned to Logan with triumph gleaming in his eyes. “Feeling glum there, Logan?” He had goaded. He hadn’t gotten an answer.

Virgil received the gold star on the trig test too. A 97% while Logan had gotten a 95%. He found that he enjoyed that golden star that the teacher had probably bought at a dollar store.

The next unit was algebra and Virgil was just half percent away from Logan’s 99% and gold star. Logan had looked so triumphant as he flashed the gold sticker in Virgil’s direction. He made a dramatic frown as Virgil scowled in the corner.

And so it went on like that for the rest of the year: Logan and Virgil trying to out-do each other and receive the gold star.

At one point, maybe during the quadratic unit, it had gotten so intense that Virgil almost started a physical fight with Logan after the tests came back and Logan had received the gold sticker. The teacher stopped giving them out after that.

But that didn’t stop anything. Both Logan and Virgil were far too gone to let that stop anything. While the gold sticker was no longer there, their percentage still was.

That summer, Virgil got a job at a LGBTQ+ youth camp with Roman as counsellors. And, lo and behold, Logan had gotten a job there too as a lifeguard.

That was when something changed between them. And not because Virgil often saw Logan shirtless up on that lifeguard chair or walking out of the shower.

It was nighttime when all of the campers were gone to sleep. Or, at least, they thought.

Logan and Virgil had been paired up to do one last sweep of the main campground. It was, understandably, tense until they heard a child’s whimpering off in the distance.

It was terrifying. It had been dark, the paths in the woods filled with tree roots, and the only flashlight they had had run out of batteries. So they were looking for a child in the woods using only the moonlight. Thank goodness it had been a full moon.

Once they found the child (he had gone off to pee in the woods because all of the other stalls had been filled and apparently he really had had to go. He had gotten lost once he had finished), Logan and Virgil had been inches away from each other outside of the boy’s bunkhouse. Virgil had been sure that they were about to kiss but then Patton, another counsellor, had poked his head out of the bunkhouse, asking if they were alright.

They didn’t bring that moment up again.

This year, Virgil shared two classes with Logan: Math and English. They didn’t have the gold star teacher. The competition was still there, maybe with even more vigor, but something else was behind their jabs at one another.

Virgil prayed that Logan felt it too because he wasn’t sure what he’d do if he found that Logan didn’t harbour the same feelings as he did.

He grabbed his math books and stuff and then left to go find Roman before the warning bell rang. “Good luck,” he sneered as he passed Logan.

“You’re going to need it,” Logan retorted, not even glancing up at Virgil.

“Please tell me you’re feeling calm,” Roman said as he saw Virgil.

Virgil took in a dramatic breath and breathed out loudly. “I’m fine.” He said with a roll of his eyes. “So, how was last night?” He asked, changing the subject. Patton and Roman had gotten together recently. They had met at camp last summer but that was when their friendship was formed. Their romantic relationship had started just a couple of days ago.

Roman didn’t seem to notice the subject change. “Oh, it was amazing. To be honest,” he said in a whisper, grinning, his face flushed pink, “I could hardly concentrate on the movie…we were holding hands and his laugh whenever there was a joke was just so cute. I can’t wait until you get a boyfriend and then we can all go on double dates!”

Virgil thought about Logan and just smiled. “That would be so fun.”

***

When Virgil made his way into Math after the bell rang, Logan was already sitting in his assigned seat. Virgil found his own, across from Logan and against the wall.

Logan didn’t even acknowledge Virgil as he sat down, just kept reading his book. Every so often he would push up his glasses when they slipped too far down his nose.

As soon the teacher walked in the two of them immediately straightened up and Logan put away his book with a bookmark filled with old gold stars. Probably just to spite Virgil.

But that was okay. Virgil had his phone case decorated with his gold stars.

When the last student trickled in and the bell rang again the teacher began passing back the tests they had done last week.

It hadn’t been a difficult test but it hadn't been necessarily easy either. The only thing Virgil was worried about was that last word problem where he wasn’t sure if he had plugged in the numbers right.

Logan’s test was passed back first. Virgil stretched his neck and straightened his spine even more. 99%. Logan grinned over at Virgil, his eyes twinkling. ‘Beat that,’ he mouthed.

Virgil pursed his lips. He had to get a 100 if he was going to win. Then again, he still had the English essay later on in the day so even if he didn’t get a 100% he might beat Logan with the essay.

The teacher walked over to Virgil and he held his breath as she placed the test on his desk. 100%. Yes.

He didn’t even bother waiting for Logan to crane his neck at an awkward angle. He pulled up the side of his test with the mark on it and gave him the middle finger with his free hand. Virgil grinned over at him.

Logan scowled.

“Got a little overconfident there, didn’t you Logan?” Virgil said, rubbing it in. His cheeks hurt from so much grinning.

Calm settled on Logan’s face. He pushed up his glasses, crossed his arms, and leaned back in his chair. “We still got one more today, Virgil. Don’t get too cocky. I do write a sublime essay.”

Virgil chuckled. “We’ll see about that.”

***

Their research essays counted for quite a bit of their English mark. It could be on anything they wanted but they had to take a side. Of course, it had to be appropriate for school. They had started preparing for it almost a month ago and now it was the moment of truth.

Virgil had decided to write his research essay on how cellphones have a positive impact on youths (maybe not always positive but they weren’t 100% bad). Logan must have seen Virgil’s topic somehow although he couldn’t figure out how because Logan’s topic was on how cellphones have a negative impact on youths.

Virgil wasn’t even sure that Logan believed that.

Their English teacher was known to be a hard marker so, when Virgil got his essay back and saw the 85 he mentally fistbumped the air. He was going to win this. He lifted his paper so Logan could see his mark behind him.

When the teacher gave back Logan’s essay Virgil spun in his chair and snapped his head down to look at Logan’s mark: 89. Logan smiled triumphantly up at Virgil. “Look who’s overconfident now.”

“Draw,” Virgil sniffed. He had won Math, Logan English. It would have been nice to win both but one was better than none.

Logan smiled as he put his test in his binder smugly. “Sure.”

Virgil rolled his eyes and turned back around to face the front.

***

When the last bell rang Virgil saw Logan already at his locker, piling in books into his blue bookbag.

Virgil pursed his lips as he neared his locker and Logan. He opened his locker and began packing his backpack as well. “Hey,” he finally said, swallowing his pride. “Can I read your essay?”

Logan glanced up at him with slightly narrowed eyes. Suspicious eyes. “Why?”

Virgil shrugged. “I just want to see what arguments you used. Do you even believe that cellphones have a negative effect on youths or did you just choose that because I was doing the opposite?”

Logan grinned but didn’t say anything. He just grabbed his essay and handed it over to him.

“Well?” Virgil prompted. He wanted to know how Logan figured out his topic. It wasn’t like they shared their topics before writing them.

“Oh, I’m pretty neutral on the debate on cell phones. I could have gone either way, to be honest. But I overheard you talking to Roman about your topic outside of the library and,” he shrugged and gave a toothy smile that made Virgil remember that night at camp, “I just thought it would be fun to do the opposite argument that you were doing.”

Virgil had no recollection of speaking to Roman about his topic but it sounded about right. But then a memory resurfaced and he scrunched up his nose. “Hey, no. I told Roman about my topic when we stayed behind to help Ms. Morrison organize her textbooks to get volunteer hours!”

Logan flushed a deep pink and Virgil’s stomach did a little flip.

“I don’t think so,” Logan said quickly, shaking his head. “I’m pretty sure I was in the library.”

But the memory was becoming clearer now. Virgil’s eyes widened in realization. “You were spying on us!” He breathed.

“No—”

“—Yes,” Virgil cut Logan off, nodding his head vigorously. “Or you overheard us…whatever. No difference.”

The crowds around the hallway were beginning to thin out. Logan sighed. “Okay, fine. I was just running back into school because I forgot my book and I overheard you in Ms. Morrison’s class.” His face was still pink as he rubbed the back of his neck.

Virgil grinned as he shut his locker. “Okay.”

“It’s true!” Logan exclaimed hotly, closing his own locker and swinging his backpack onto his back.

Virgil began to walk to the bus line. Roman was probably wondering where he was.

He knew Logan walked home so he was surprised to hear his footsteps trailing behind him. “Hey, listen. I got something for you.” Virgil was so used to their witty banter that he was caught off guard when he heard how genuine Logan’s voice was.

Virgil spun around in surprise and waited for Logan to catch up. “What? Really?” He raised his eyebrows.

“It’s-it’s nothing really,” Logan fumbled, digging around in his jean pocket. “It’s just a little trinket I saw at the store and thought…” he shrugged and pulled out a gold star keychain.

For a long moment, Virgil stared at it. “But I tallied it up last week, overall you’ve won!” He had gone through all of his old tests and assignments, curious to see who was in the lead. Logan had been ahead by two tests. “I mean,” Virgil amended, “thank you, but why?” Why would Logan give him a gold star keychain if he wasn’t winning?

Logan ran a nervous hand through his hair. “Because I think you’re intelligent.” He pushed up his glasses and coughed awkwardly. “And I really like you.”

Virgil froze but then hesitantly took the keychain from Logan’s hand. He looked at it closely before carefully clasping it onto his bookbag. “Truce?” He asked, holding out his hand.

Logan smiled and took Virgil’s hand. “Truce,” he repeated. He cocked his head to the side. “So does this mean you like me too?”

Virgil grinned. “What do you think?” He laughed and intertwined his fingers with Logan’s. By now, the entire hallway was empty and Virgil was sure that the busses had already left.

They walked down the hall hand in hand.

#sanders sides #sanders sides fanfic #sanders sides fanfiction #analogical #royality #roman sanders #virgil sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders

125 notes · View notes

pricklybulbasaur · 3 years

Text

Universe: My Hero Academia

Prompt: Sneaking out Together

Pair: OC/Todoroki

Cortez was even more thrilled than usual today, as the feathers on her wings fully grew back and she was ready to fly back into the air. The minty-haired girl could not wait to get back into the air, being grounded for weeks made her feel trapped like a bird in a cage, unable to fully explore. Now she wanted to have fun tonight.

She had talked to Todoroki about this and at first, he was hesitant because her wings just grew back, and not sure of their strength as well as the curfew Endeavor had set up. However, when did he ever fully follow his own father’s household rules?

So, they decided to go ahead and have some fun one Saturday night when everyone was asleep. The two of them snuck out to the backyard and Cortez was flapping her wings to prepare for the flight.

“You ready, Aurora?” Todoroki asked while securing his pouch and looked at his schoolmate. “Where do you want to go first?”

“Pretty much, Shouto. As for where to go I am not sure, I only know a small percentage of Musutafu so maybe we just fly around and see what interests us.” Cortez then ruffled her wings again, releasing a chill mist in the surrounding area.

The dual-haired teen looked at Cortez’s wings as it was getting to full wingspan. “Will you be able to fly for long periods of time? They are still pretty new…”

The minty-haired teen smiled happily. “Yeah, they are fine. If I do get tired we can rest a bit.”

Todoroki looked up and down at her for a brief second just to make sure she was indeed strong enough. Her arms still had braces, so he was not sure how they would fly together.

“Hey, eyes up here, Canelo.”

Todoroki jolted and looked straight up into her green eyes. He was stunned as her normally green eyes were glowing a blue from the moonlight that was almost the same color as his left eye. She was beautiful, how he did not see this part of her he never knew.

“Did I surprise ya?” Cortez said while tilting her head a bit, still smiling. I don’t think you have seen my bioluminescent eyes.”

“I-I never seen you like this fully. Last time I saw that similar glow was during the training camp.” Todoroki said and got closer.

Cortez deadpanned, “That’s right, it was when Dabi and the other villains went and kidnapped the Yapping Chihuahua.”

“Can’t you ease up on that nickname for Bakugou? I know he irritates you but I think you should at least stop calling him chihuahua.”

“Yeah, you’re right. He’s actually pretty cool and much more tolerable since we first met. I’m not making any promises though.” She said and then turned around and put her back facing her friend. Todoroki blushed. “What?”

“Ummm, what exactly do you want me to do?” Todoroki said, not sure with the whole thing, let alone where to position himself to not interfere with Cortez’s flying.

Cortez got the gist and chuckled nervously. “Well, I don’t think you want me to carry you bridal style, plus I couldn’t anyways due to my arms still recovering from the calcium deficiency so the only option is kind of like piggyback. Keep your legs close to my hips and your hands just below the shoulder blades, that should not interfere with my wings.”

The poor boy blushed even more. “You can’t be serious…”

The minty-haired girl then pouted. “You don’t want to fly with me?”

*doki* Todoroki's heart pulsed at the cuteness of her face and his stomach did a stab of guilt. She wanted to fly into the skies but the way he was acting, it was like he was trying to force her to stay grounded.

“...Okay.” He finally relented and got onto her back, making sure he stayed clear of her moth wings. She was soft yet strong, and he was really trying hard to not get distracted.

“Ready, Canelo?” Cortez asked and when he nodded she started to flap her wings for a few seconds to gain momentum and eventually they took off and started to fly higher into the sky.

The up and down motion scared him at first where he inadvertently closed his eyes and leaned closer to his female classmates back. The bees buzzing inside his stomach was not a pleasant feeling, attacking him where he was starting to feel nauseous. However, it started to settle as he started to feel the chill in the area, and when he opened his eyes, he and Cortez were high above the clouds.

“...”

“Are you doing ok?” The girl said, giving Todoroki a look of slight concern. She had noticed him tense up in flight, so she was worried he may have gotten nervous. “If it is too high, we can lower the elevation.”

“J-just give me a moment.” Todoroki shivered slightly and took deep breaths calming his nerves. Once the buzzing bee feeling slowed down, he straightened up slowly so he would not jolt his girlfriend’s flying. He then got a better look and saw the entire city lights in the Tatooin District. “You see this every time you fly?”

Cortez smiled. “Yep! I also like to do flight aerobatics, but since you are flying with me that will be put on hold for the moment.”

The dual-haired teen paled and chuckled a bit. “I appreciate it.”

“Heh,” Cortez chuckled and then looked ahead when she noticed a glowing Ferris Wheel on the horizon. A theme park. “Hey, want to fly around the area?” She asked the candy-cane-haired teen while pointing at the park.

“Sure, we can fly around the area for a bit, then I would like to fly around the beach.”

Cortez’s smile brightened and her eyes shone almost as bright as Midoriya in fanboy mode. She then told her boyfriend to hang on and she sped up a bit to the park and flew around the park, enjoying the colors and the little dots of people.

They then flew towards the beach on the east and the moon glowed just as brightly upon the waves. The waves were dancing, and a few times he saw a few patches of jellyfish that glowed a greenish-blue hue, and some boats out on the water farther away. They even waved to the Seal Hero Silkie, who was looking back in surprise but smiled at their enthusiasm. He did, however, tell them to get back home soon. The duo agreed and promised to return home in about 10 minutes.

Todoroki smiled as he took in the view. No wonder she likes this. Not only is it a free feeling, but you can somehow feel the peace in the surrounding area. He then looked at Cortez, still mesmerized by the luminescent blue glow of her eyes, and the shimmering pale purple color of her wings. She looked even more beautiful with her hair waving around in the breeze that she almost reminded him of the Roman moon goddess Selene: One who rules the moon. Also known as Luna in the Latin language.

The duo then got back to the Todoroki residence and Cortez was slowly bringing the two down when the Icy-Hot teen was in some thought.

“Luna…”

“Hm?” Cortez hummed when she heard him say something but it was too quiet to hear. “Did you say something, Canelo?”

“I don’t have a nickname for you yet.” Todoroki said and the Climate teen blinked in surprise and blushed a little. “I have thought of a perfect nickname I can call you, if you will accept?”

Cortez nodded, “Sure, it would be fitting as I call you Canelo. So what do you have in mind?”

He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. “Luna, name for the Roman moon goddess. You have a beauty that shines in both body and soul that is soft and gentle. Would it be ok if I call you Luna from now on?”

The minty-haired girl thought about the name and the meaning he had provided. He had called her beautiful, something no one had told her she was. She could tell by the pheromones he was giving off that Todoroki was telling the truth, and it made her really happy.

“Yes, I like it. Luna, goddess of the moon.” She then giggled as they both touched down in the backyard. “Quite ironic really? My first name is Aurora, which is also a celestial name meaning dawn. I love it.”

The two teens then walked inside the house where they were confronted by the rest of the family. Endeavor was looking stoic as usual, but Natsu and Fuyumi were looking furious.

Needless to say, they were stuck there for the rest of the weekend.

#my hero academia #flufftober2021 #Todoroki/OC #day 2

1 note · View note

caps-lockdown · 5 years

Text

Harden My Heart

A/N: This is my entry for Mimi’s one hit wonder challenge! I chose “Harden my Heart” by Quarterfish.

@captain-rogers-beard is an incredible writer and even though I’m far from worthy of her existence and writing talent I decided to take a stab at my first writing challenge! Congrats on 11k!

Y/N Y/L/N format, and no beta so just me owning my mistakes. Bold Italics are thoughts.

Pairings: Steve Rogers x Fem!Reader

Words: 3,845 (Ish)

Warnings: Some angst with unrequited love, but there is a happy ending! Language, alcohol use (a lot of it), and some crude humor. Hopefully this comes across as funny as I imagined it.

Summary: A night out with the Avengers is always a bad idea when you mix them with heartbreak and booze.

Enjoy!

Harden My heart

Why did it have to be raining?

Because fate was cruel, that’s why. So here you stood, on the corner of the street under the barely there cover of a random bar’s awning. Waiting, like you always did. The glowing of the neon in the bar’s window reminded you why you were here tonight.

Karaoke.

The bellowing laughter poured out of every crack of the establishment’s walls as you bounced from foot to foot, nearly catching your death in the chilly air. That’s what you had been good at after all. Patiently waiting for one Steve Rogers to make his presence known. He had promised tonight would be different. He promised you. And Captain America never broke a promise.

Right?

~~Earlier~~

It started the same way it always did. Fourth Friday. Eight thirty in the morning. A marathon of meetings going over the end of the month numbers for Stark Industries. Sheets of notes hastily scribbled and multiple cups of coffee ingested. The occasional cough from suited investors and higher management as the illustrious Tony Stark boasted the climbing stock percentages. You had been the eccentric billionaire’s assistant for nearly a year now, and you had come to know that the end of the month was everyone’s least favorite time.

Tony Stark hated Fourth Friday.

The day flew by in a haze, you absentmindedly chewing on the end of your pen deep in thought on the merger that would be taking place next month. Tony assured you that you’d still have a job, but if he had it his way you’d get your own assistant. You weren’t complaining, as the work load kept getting heavier as time went by. Another pair of hands would be extremely welcomed right about now.

The loud sound of a hand smacking the table jolted you to reality, you giving a timid smile to Sam Wilson, his own gap toothed smile spreading across his face.

“Y/N! Welcome back to earth.” You released a chuckle, trying carefully to calm your hammering heart. He loved making you jump, which wasn’t hard as you scared so easily. “You comin’ to team building tonight?”

Ah yes, team building. Tony did this every Fourth Friday. He dragged everyone in the Avengers (and usually you) to do things to “relax” after stressful meetings and even more stressful missions. Your first team outing was laser tag. He rented out a whole roller skating rink once, another time you were roped into inflatable obstacle courses for an afternoon. You partook in paintball and movie nights. You actually came to look forward to the adventures, as it so happened you didn’t have a lot of your own friends. But the team took you in, making you comfortable and never pushing you past your admittedly long list of limitations. You weren’t chicken, but you weren’t stupid either.

But the best part about the team building evenings, and working for Stark in general, came in the form of Steve Rogers. He had been the first to introduce himself to you on your first day working for Tony. He even accompanied you to lunch the whole first week, made sure you met everyone you needed to and answered any questions to put you at ease. Tony had joked that Steve liked taking in strays so they didn’t run away. You didn’t mind in the slightest, and you grew to get on like gasoline on a fire. And that also meant like so many other women, you found yourself harboring feelings for the man out of time. An absolute cliché, but it had been too late to catch yourself when you fell.

“What’s on the docket for tonight Sam?” You asked, staring into your coffee cup and bracing yourself for whatever crazy idea Tony had gotten in his head.

“Karaoke!” You looked up at the second voice, smiling warmly at the tall blond that joined the two of you in the otherwise empty conference room. Steve looked positively delicious in his dark blue button shirt and gray slacks. You had to remember to breathe, choking on nothing when he got closer to you. You would never get tired of the tall drink of water. You swore that man could wear a potato sack and you’d still gladly let him ruin you. “What do ya say Doll, you in? I got your first round of drinks.” He smiled and a whole conservatory of butterflies erupted in your stomach.

He already had ruined you, in a way.

“Depends, you actually going to show up this month?” You cheekily replied, a slight hint of bitterness in your voice. It should be noted that you had been inseparable in the beginning. After you got the hang of your job Steve started inviting you out for coffee. Then he asked you on walks in the morning before he went on his runs. You did everything together for the first six months. Everyone pestered you to find out if you were dating, and you would have jumped at the chance, but he was always quick to fire off that you were just friends. Even though it felt as if he was chipping away at your heart with a pick axe you never confronted him or confessed your feelings. After all, you got to be close friends with Captain America, what more could you ask for?

Then he met Camille.

Three months ago felt like a lifetime to you. Camille Straughton was the daughter of some big wig investor for some company you couldn’t care less to know about. She was gorgeous, her features exact opposite of yours, and didn’t have an insecure bone in her body. Everyone fell in love with her upon meeting her. She was nice to you and you wanted to drop a piano on her. She brought everyone homemade sweets whenever she visited and you imagined pushing her in a vat of hot wax. Alive and screaming the whole way in. The way she said Steve’s name had you sharpening your imaginary pitchfork, torch at the ready.

She was nothing short of perfect, which sucked, and she seemed to have her sights locked on your favorite blond. You didn’t think you were capable of hating someone so much.

Steve told you not to worry. That you couldn’t be replaced. That you were still one of his best friends. Idiot. So when he skipped lunch with you the first time to grab a bite with Camille you did your best to hide your disappointment from everyone else. Wanda found you crying in a supply closet on the seventh floor five til five and held you until your mascara stopped running. It wasn’t hard for her to figure out why, and you made her swear not to utter a word.

Steve apologized the next day but made a habit of it after that. You eventually got used to eating alone.

When she kissed Steve on his birthday in front of everyone, he returned the favor, everyone “Aww”ed and “Oooo”ed at the now “official” relationship. You took up shooting lessons. Sam and Bucky became increasingly impressed and terrified at your progress. Carol, Maria Hill and Nat dragged you out for a “Men are trash” party and after drinking too much you found yourself crying into homemade cupcakes on someone’s kitchen floor. You made a promise to yourself that you wouldn’t cry over him anymore after that. The hangover of the century the next day helped drive that promise home.

Everyone else didn’t notice how you’d managed to become even more reserved, keeping your smiles to yourself in a lock box that once held your heart. Sounds pretty pathetic right? Steve saw you less and less. Tony said he’d come around. That Camille was good for him, but he’d eventually need to come up for air and want to see his friends.

Then he missed team building for the first time. Tony had kittens. Then the second month he missed it Tony slapped Steve’s face on all the coffee machines and milk jugs in the building, looking for the “Missing Blond Neanderthal that sometimes answers to Capsicle”. By the third time you had accepted the new norm, but Tony screamed so loud that everyone in the limo remained silent for the duration of the travel time to the Drive in theater. A whole forty minutes, not a sound being heard except Tony’s fast and angry fingers typing empty threats into his phone. You learned quickly not to engage Steve in conversation, keeping your replies short and sweet unless you wanted to hear about Camille. Which you most certainly did NOT.

So needless to say you had to cover your obvious shock when he nodded vigorously at your question that cloudy Friday afternoon.

“I promise Y/N. I’ll be there.”

~~Present~~

And this is how you found yourself in slightly damp clothes waiting outside for a little less than an hour, darting your eyes down the sides of the street with an unopened umbrella and slowly diminishing hope.

“Y/N come inside already,” Tony called from the doorway as he pushed the door further out for you, “You knew better than to believe he’d actually make it.”

You shuddered, turning on your heel and walking into the mouth of the rented out bar with a defeated sigh. “He promised Tony.”

“I know, but he’s too wrapped up in her to care about us anymore,” He patted you on the shoulder as you shrugged out of your coat, the knockout outfit you had picked out for tonight falling on blind eyes. “You know she demands that he calls her when we leave for missions and the second we land? How suffocating. Pep would beat my ass if I was that annoying.”

“Bold of you to assume she doesn’t think you annoying to begin with.” His redheaded wife clapped back and you only nodded, not really paying to the conversation after that. This wasn’t the first time you had waited for him in the rain. This wasn’t the first time he had told you something and did something else. You should be used to it. But it didn’t make it hurt any less.

The first shot of tequila went down like battery acid, Bucky’s look of understanding spurring you on to your new goal of drinking to forget Steve’s empty promises. Screw him.

It was during Sam’s cringe worthy performance of “Danger Zone” that Nick Fury entered the bar, Maria hill accompanying him and nearly dying of laughter when he stared at everyone.

“What the actual fuck? I picked this bar to get AWAY from my job. I just want some damn peace and quiet! That too much for a motherfucker to ask?”

You bought him a drink for his troubles. Maria and you threw back another shot to “Fourth Friday” while Fury kept complaining, sipping his bourbon the whole time.

“Here Y/N, pick one!” Sam slammed a large tome of songs down next to you awhile later, a high pitched yelp jumping out of your throat and landing on the bar with a loud SHIT. “Jumpy much?”

“Get bent Wilson.” You muttered into your glass of whatever fruit drink Nat ordered you. He laughed when you flicked the tropical paper umbrella at him before thumbing through the cracked and water damaged pages. “They should laminate these….” You pulled a face, barely reading the titles. Not that you could make out more than a couple words anyway.

Your gaze zeroed in on a song and you flattened your index finger next to it. “This one. I’ll do this one. But not now, maybe when I’ve had a few more?”

“Whatever you want Y/L/N, shot time?”

The third shot went down like water, as did number four.

Nat, Carol, and Wanda all got up to sing “Girls Just want to have fun” you had politely declined, although you were a girl, you were not having fun. Nor did you want to.

Tony wrapped up the nine o’clock hour with an atrocious cover of “Baby got Back.” The slap that Pepper gave him when he suggested that she “Turn around” and “Stick it out” was heard around the world.

Everyone decided to take a small break from the singing after that.

You toasted Sam and Pepper, who had agreed they needed alcohol to burn Tony’s very dated dance moves out of their memories. You decided against another shot for now, not wanting to overdo it when Stark had planned on closing the joint down. Can’t take him anywhere really.

Thor found you an hour later after belting “I would do anything for love (But I won’t do that)”. You hadn’t moved from your spot at the bar, even when the MC reminded you that after Tony it would be your time to sing.

“You look really beautiful tonight Y/N. Is that a new dress? That color really suits you.” His compliment made you beam in thanks, the same blinding smile that landed you the job and put people at ease. “There’s my favorite smile. Who made you hide it away for so long?”

Did I get feelings for the wrong blond?

“You’re too sweet Thor. It wasn’t hidden, just taking a break. Can’t have it out on display all the time you know.”

“Well you wouldn’t hear me complain if you did. I hate seeing you upset. You doing alright?”

“I will be after another shot I think.”

“Then it must be done! Barkeep!”

You both exchanged shot glasses, fully knowing it would do nothing for the Asguardian but he thanked you none the less. By the time midnight came around you were good and tipsy, clinging to the mic stand for dear life as the room spun around and the small squares counted you in on the screen you desperately focused on. As if you didn’t know the words. You could belt this tune in your sleep.

“Cryin' in the corner, waiting in the rain, I swear I’ll never ever wait again. You gave me your word, but words for you are lies.”

Nat and Wanda cat called you from the side of the small brightly lit stage and you felt your confidence, entirely alcohol fueled, soar. You stood up straight, imagining telling off a certain super solider with the song lyrics with newly found power. Douchey, stupid, hunk of perfect idiot. I’ll show him. I will.

“Darlin in my wildest dreams I’d never thought I’d go, but it’s time to let you know, oh

I’m gonna harden my heart. I’m gonna swallow my tears. I’m gonna turn and leave you here.”

As you kept belting out lyrics to the heartbreak ballad everyone tried to hold in their amazement. You were so engrossed in your own imaginary confrontation you didn’t catch the very real and very taken back Steve Rogers practically running into the bar, a pained and confused look on his face as he watched the group of heroes sway and cheer on your impressive vocals.

“Where did she get those pipes?!” Sam excitedly exclaimed as Steve neared the stage, the lights far too bright for you to see past the dingy dated monitor.

“I have no idea, but I TOLD you this was a great idea! As all of my ideas usually are.”

Sam side eyed Tony before knocking back the last bit of his drink, shaking his head.

“Darlin in your wildest dreams you never had a clue, but it’s time you got the news. I’m gonna harden my heart. I’m gonna swallow my tears. I’m gonna turn and leave you here.”

You repeated the chorus and slowly trailed off the end of the song, praising yourself for keeping your pitch in check and not slurring you words to the point of incoherence. The loud clamoring of applause and shouts broke you from your power trip, you giving a small curtsy and taking a large hand off the stage.

When your eyes came to focus on who the hand belonged to you released it as if it had bitten you. Drunken tears welled up in your eyes as Steve appeared in front of you. Without the incredible she-bitch. Your flight instincts kicked in and you promptly turned on your heel and ran awkwardly into the bathroom, heels clicking the whole way as you locked yourself in.

He can’t get me in here you cackled triumphantly, before the dam broke and you started crying your heart out on the hard tile floor. Screw the promise. The booze was more than effective now, your vision blurring from all of the shots and heartache. How dare he show up tonight. What was he playing at? Was he some kind of sadist? As if all of this wasn’t hard enough already. You couldn’t feel your toes due to the heels. So you tore them angrily off your feet and threw them at the door for good measure. Sure showed him huh?

Your thoughts drifted off, the amount of hard liquor finally catching up to your body and forcing you into a unwelcome blackout sleep. You didn’t notice Wanda walk in and levitate your body out of the bathroom ten minutes later, safely putting you into Steve’s arms and telling him sternly,

“You did this to her, you can deal with her.”

You woke up in a bed that was most definitely not yours some time later. Your eyes and throat burned as you groaned, the thunderous banging of your own pulse making you nauseous. You attempted poorly to shield your eyes as the sun glared in through the window without mercy. Where in the hell am I? Checking to make sure your clothes were still on you slowly pulled yourself out of the massively comfortable bed.

Cold hardwood met your feet, eliciting a short squeak from your mouth upon contact. Where the hell are my shoes? Steeling your nerves you were relieved to find the room empty, padding across the floor and inching the door open to the living room. The smell of coffee and hot bacon assaulted your nose and your mouth began to water. The door then decided to release a loud creeeeeaaak causing the subject of your dreams and your most recent nightmares to turn around from the stove.

“Morning sleeping beauty. Rest well?”

He chuckled at you confusion covered face, placing a mug of steaming life juice on the island in front of him and sliding it towards you. “I imagine you could use this.”

“Stop…screaming…head….hurts…” Broken sentences were the best you could manage in your current grogginess, greedily snatching the mug off the counter and relishing the hot liquid climbing down your body and bringing it to life as if it were Frankenstein’s monster. “What…what happened….last night?”

“Before or after you blew everyone away with your singing?” Steve smiled as a blush crept over your face and neck.

“After.”

“Not a damn thing.” He said confidently, turning to the stove to shut off the burner and plate the remaining bacon. “You passed out in the bathroom and Wanda got you out. She blamed me for your knocked out state and demanded I fix it.”

“You know Wanda,” You hastily tried to cover up your embarrassment, waving your hand, “She always has had a way with words.” A nervous laugh echoed into your coffee cup, noting it was the one you had bought him for his birthday. Peachy. This brought back great memories. Not

He placed a plate of food in your line of sight, complete with a couple aspirin.

“Where…where’s Camille? I don’t think she’d be okay with me sleeping in your bed…”

He shrugged, “Well we broke up last night so I honestly don’t care what she thinks anymore.”

You stared at him with wide eyes, the fork loosely hanging in your fingers mid bite.

“Oh Steve I’m…”

He waved you off. “Don’t say it. We both know you and everyone else were hoping we’d end things. It was exhausting living up to her expectations of me, so I called it quits.”

You nodded, chewing your food as he began to pick at his own. “I can understand that. Relationships shouldn’t feel forced.”

“You’re damn right.” He sighed, taking a bite of bacon and looking at you. “I can’t believe I let her control me so much. I’ve missed everyone. I’ve missed you so much.” He let out a bitter laugh, “Why do I always date the crazies? My dumb luck right?”

“Hey love makes you do crazy things Steve. And your luck isn’t that bad.” You offered a small smile, to which his frown deepened.

“Oh yea?” He questioned, folding his arms and staring you down, “If my luck isn’t so bad then why am I not dating someone like you?”

You stared at him as if he had sprouted a second head. “Ex…excuse me?”

“Did I stutter?” He asked simply, knocking the air out of your lungs as you clung white knuckled to the marble. You stared at him in a stunned silence as he merely shrugged as if it were nothing, “You’re kind, massively intelligent. Beautiful without trying. All of my friends already like you. You don’t belittle me or try to control every aspect of my life. You don’t make me contemplate murder on a daily basis.”

Another deep sigh and agonizing silence before he spoke again, his voice cracking slightly,

“If someone like you would even think about dating me, I’d be the luckiest man I know.”

You couldn’t help it. You started laughing. Months of emotions poured out of your mouth, your laughter on the edge of sounding like that of a lunatic’s. But you couldn’t stop, tears springing to your eyes as you held your sour convulsing stomach. It was Steve’s turn to look stunned.

“You....you moron!” You accused between giggle fits, “I’ve been in LOVE with you for MONTHS!”

Steve started nervously chuckling at that, “You…you are?”

“Yea you big dumb Neanderthal. Where have you been?”

“With the wrong person.”He didn’t waste another second, coming around the side of the island and scooping you up in his arms. His lips met yours and you let out a contented sigh before breaking away from him. “We should probably take this slow. I don’t want to feel like the rebound here.”

“Oh, yea, of course not.” He set you back down on the floor, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck as you giggled, closing the distance and relishing how nervous he looked. “Can I…can I ask you out to dinner sometime then?”

“I got no plans tonight.” You offered, watching him with amusement as he did a double take. “What? I said slow not no. I’m not going to let you get away again, Captain Rogers.”

“Tonight it is then.”His arms found his way around you again as he pulled you into a hug, chuckling softly into the side of your neck. “So last night….were you…were you singing about me?”

“I plead the fifth.”

“I deserve that I suppose.”

“Damn right you do.”

End

tagging @kaytizzle @cuffski @giggleberts @pies-wands-and-more

#mimi's one hit wonder challenge #steve rogers x y/n #steve rogers x reader #captain america fanfiction

193 notes · View notes

ollieofthebeholder · 4 years

Text

leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall): a TMA fanfic

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] Also on AO3

Chapter 14: Martin

Tim is an unexpectedly good cook. Whether because of that or because everyone is still mulling over the little bits and drabs they’ve got from the Primes, breakfast is a rather silent affair. Martin doesn’t think he’s hungry until the plate is under his nose, and he’s not sure why it’s so hard for him to eat until he chokes down enough that Tim declares it can count as “with food” and Jon hurries out to get Martin’s pills for him. It’s only after they’ve started to work and he’s mostly done with his plate that he realizes it’s pain making him nauseous. Jon Prime gives him a knowing, understanding look and he has to look away.

Sasha offers to help Tim clean up, but he does most of it while they’re still eating and insists the rest of it can wait until later, so once everyone has finished and the stuff that won’t last sitting out is put away, they all head back into the living room. Martin supposes they could have this conversation in the kitchen around the table, but he also acknowledges that the seating in the living room is more comfortable, and he, at least, won’t last long in Tim’s kitchen chairs.

He starts to sit in the recliner again—it’s definitely the least comfortable seat in the room, not that it’s uncomfortable, just that it’s not exactly the best seat in the house, so Martin automatically assumes it’s his—but Jon stops him with a touch to his arm and a shake of his head and steers him towards the sofa. Sasha and Jon are both thin; Tim is a bit broader than them but not so broad as Martin, but they all manage to squeeze together onto the sofa somehow, Jon on one end and Sasha on the other and Martin sandwiched between Tim and Jon. The Primes sit on the love seat opposite them. Jon Prime rests his hand on top of Martin Prime’s without seeming to realize he’s doing it.

“Well,” he says. He sits up a little straighter, leans forward slightly, and looks directly at Jon. “Before we begin, I have two questions for you, and I’m fairly certain I know the answer to at least one, but…well, no one ever actually asked me these questions.”

Jon tenses, but says evenly, “Go ahead.”

“First question. How much do you want to know?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I can tell you everything I—we—learned in the two years between this point and when the world ended, but the more knowledge you have, the more dangerous things will be for you. Or I can tell you nothing more than you already know, and leave you to figure out what you can on your own. Or I can tell you something in between the two, in which case you would be trusting me with the decision of how much to tell you now and how much to let you discover for yourself.”

Jon is silent for a moment. Finally, he says, “Tell me—tell me everything you wished you’d known at this point.”

Jon Prime nods, as if that’s the answer he was expecting. Martin guesses that was the one he was fairly sure of. “Second question, then. How much do you want them to know?”

“Hey,” Sasha says, sounding offended.

Jon Prime doesn’t take his eyes off of Jon. “As I said, the more knowledge you have, the more dangerous things will be for you. The more people who have that knowledge, the danger will grow as well. And I can’t promise that some of these things won’t change the way they look at you. The way they react to you. Knowledge once given cannot be taken back.”

Jon looks down the sofa at the three of them. Martin tries to keep his face neutral, but he’s worried, and he knows it shows. Not so much about what might happen to him if he knows, but about what might happen to Jon.

“What about them?” he asks softly. “You said that the more people know, the—the more dangerous it is for me, but what about for them? If they know…will it put them in more danger?”

Jon Prime hesitates. “No,” he says at last. “The opposite. The more they know, the better able they’ll be to keep themselves safe.”

Jon straightens and looks his counterpart square in the eye. “If you’d led off with that, it wouldn’t have even been a question you needed to finish asking. I want them to know whatever they need to know to be safe.”

Jon Prime turns his attention to the assistants. “How much do you three want to know?”

“We have a choice?” Martin asks, surprised.

“Yes,” Jon Prime says simply. “There’s…so much you never had a choice about in our timeline. I refuse to do that to you again. Any of you.”

Sasha crosses her arms over her chest. “Call me curious, but I don’t think I can walk away from this without knowing more.”

“Yeah, screw it,” Tim says. “I’ve had enough fumbling around in the dark, and I want to know what the hell’s going on here. I’m not walking into anything else I don’t understand without a damned good reason.”

Jon Prime shifts his gaze. “Martin?”

Martin hesitates. He’s genuinely torn. On the one hand, he’s with the others; he hates not knowing what’s going on, and he’s more than a little afraid of getting into another situation like finding Jane Prentiss in that basement because he doesn’t know enough to steer clear. But at the same time, if it keeps Jon safe for him to stay ignorant, it’s a risk he’ll gladly run.

But will it actually keep Jon safe?

He looks, not at Jon Prime, but at Martin Prime. Martin Prime keeps his sightless gaze trained steadily in Martin’s direction, and there’s a pinched look on his face, like he knows what’s tearing Martin apart. Well, he probably does. As if he feels Martin’s eyes on him, as if he can sense the question Martin wants to ask, he gives a small, subtle nod.

“Whatever you want to tell us, I’ll listen,” he says, looking back at Jon Prime.

“All right,” Jon Prime says, exhaling hard. He nods and repeats, “All right. Well. Now that we’ve settled that…honestly, I’m not sure where to start.”

Martin worries at his lower lip. He runs through the dozens of questions he’s accumulated in the last week, every time Martin Prime has said it’s a long story and promised to explain when—he now knows—Jon Prime arrives, and tries to pick which one is the most pressing, the most important. Which one will be the easiest to answer. From the way the others are sitting, they’re probably thinking something similar. But Martin’s the one with the most pieces, so he knows that unless he wants Tim to break the ice with a borderline wisecrack, it’s probably on him to ask the first question.

At last, he looks at Martin Prime. “You mentioned…beings. Things that thrive on fear?” He turns to Jon Prime. “He said you could explain it better than he could.”

“I suppose the beginning is a good place to start,” Jon Prime says on a heavy exhale. His eyes flick from one of them to the other. “Right. What do you all know about Robert Smirke?”

Both Jon and Sasha give small sighs as Tim sits up a bit straighter. “The architect? One of the foremost proponents of Gothic Revival in the early nineteenth century. He was one of the first to use concrete and cast iron. He retired in—1845, I think, but he kept his hand in a bit. A lot of his work, in London at least, got destroyed somehow, but what’s still standing is brilliant in its symmetry. A master of subtle stability. And it’s interesting that his buildings have a higher percentage of paranormal sightings than any other architect of that school or style, I think. Might be why he rarely got taken up on his bids to design churches. His name cropped up any time an especially weird cult or sect popped up for a couple decades after his retirement. There were all sorts of rumors about what he might be involved in.”

They’ve all heard this before, Martin thinks, at least in bits and pieces. Architecture is one of Tim’s particular areas of expertise, and Robert Smirke in particular is something of an obsession. There’s not a lot of information out there about Smirke, though. Martin should know; he usually got the thankless tasks when he worked in the library, and he’d been the one assigned to pull any books on Robert Smirke for the new research assistant who was vague on what, exactly, he was trying to research. It’s one of the things he and Tim bonded over when they were first assigned to the Archives, those books. Tim will go off about Smirke any opportunity he gets, and Martin’s pretty sure that even Sasha tunes him out these days.

“Most of them false,” Jon Prime agrees. “Smirke himself wasn’t actually involved in any of that sort of thing, but his ideas got used—or misused, as he would have it.” He takes a deep breath. “Smirke designed a taxonomy of fears, and—well, it’s inaccurate, really, far too simplistic, an attempt to understand something that he never could have understood, but—”

“But if you’re learning your colors, you start out with the primary colors and branch out into shades and blending later on, once you know what you’re looking at,” Martin completes.

“Exactly.” Jon Prime smiles, briefly. “Smirke’s theory was that there were fourteen…entities, creatures of fear. They don’t just thrive on it—they are fear.”

“There are more than fourteen things to be afraid of in the world,” Jon says, in a rough approximation of his skeptic voice. “Where do you draw the line?”

“God, you are me. I said the same thing when I first found out about all this.” Jon Prime worries at the cuff of his sleeve, then seems to consciously stop himself and press his palm into his leg instead. It’s only then that Martin realizes he’s wearing the blue sweater, the one Martin Prime wore yesterday and Martin himself has taken off because he’s comfortable enough in his shirtsleeves, and Martin Prime is wearing the dark green one Jon Prime was wearing when he came in. It fits him perfectly, which is how Martin realizes that Jon Prime was evidently wearing one of Martin Prime’s sweaters.

He has no idea what to do with that information, so he decides the safest thing to do is ignore it before he blurts out something and makes a complete tit of himself.

“As Martin says, they’re like colors,” Jon Prime continues. “You can look at something and call it ‘indigo’ or ‘lilac’, but it’s still purple. There may be infinite colors, but we tend to lump them into bigger categories. Sky blue and navy are both considered blue, but pink is an entirely separate color from red. Of course, with the fears, it’s not so much a spectrum as an amorphous blob of terror bleeding out in all directions. I think I summed it up at the time I learned all this as ‘like colors, but if colors hated me.’”

“You, specifically,” Tim says. His voice is as deadpan as it usually is when he’s making a joke, but like Jon’s, it’s shaky. Martin suspects that none of them want to believe any of this, but it all makes too much sense for them not to.

“Yes, well, I’d spent two years getting kicked around by them before I got all this information,” Jon Prime shoots back. “Forgive me if I took it a little personally.”

Martin Prime rubs his thumb over Jon Prime’s in a comforting gesture. “Where Smirke comes into the weird…cults and whatnot is that most of those sprung up around the worship of these beings. Like they’re gods of some kind. They’re not, and they’re certainly not benevolent in the slightest, even to the people most devoted to them. You really can’t—nobody comes away from them in one piece. The ones who make statements? They’re the lucky ones. The ones who walked away, at least for a while. Not always forever.”

Martin doesn’t have to ask if that includes them. “So—w-what are they? I mean, not ‘what are they if they’re not gods’, but what are they, specifically? You said—one of them has something to do with spiders?”

Jon flinches. Jon Prime exhales. “The Web. Spiders, yes, but also…loss of control. Being manipulated. The fear of being trapped in something you can’t see. Addiction falls under its auspices, too.”

“Other insects…” Tim’s voice trails off. “Jane Prentiss. She’s one of them?”

“She wasn’t an entity herself, but she’d definitely been claimed by the Corruption,” Jon Prime confirms. “Insects, disease, rot. Filth. That creeping feeling of things burrowing under your skin, filling you full of holes…”

“Stop,” Jon says through gritted teeth. He squeezes Martin’s hand. Martin’s almost positive he doesn’t know he’s doing it and bites the inside of his cheek to keep from yelping in pain as his thumb digs into one of the worm holes.

“What, you think I don’t know what that’s like?” Jon Prime holds up both hands, backs towards them, letting the sleeves slip down towards his elbows, and they can all see the scars dotting his forearms. So Martin has that to look forward to, at least. “It’s a damned lucky thing you—we—knew how to stop her.”

“Michael.” Sasha leans forward. “He’s one of them. The fear of—confusion?”

Martin Prime nods quickly. “Madness. The fear that your mind isn’t your own. The entity as a whole is the Spiral. Michael—he’s just one aspect of it, the Distortion.”

Jon eases his grip on Martin’s hand, and Martin tries not to sigh audibly with relief. “The Dark, of course.”

“Of course,” Jon Prime agrees. “Who isn’t at least a little afraid of the dark?”

“And fire is another?”

“An aspect of the Desolation. The fear of pain, of loss, of unthinking or cruel destruction.” Jon Prime snorts. “I started calling it the Church of the Lightless Flame at one point, but it’s the Desolation.”

“The Lightless Flame,” Jon repeats. “Christ, that was—which statement was that? Th-the nurse, Ms. Saraki, with the burn victims. The second time Gerard Keay came up.”

Martin remembers, and just like that, he realizes that they must have dealt with all the entities, over the course of the statements. They’ve done too many real statements for them not to have hit all fourteen by now. He racks his brain, trying to figure out the ones they haven’t come up with. They’ve got five now. The People’s Church of the Divine Host, they’ve had a couple statements dealing with that, that’s probably the Dark…and maybe the one about the woman whose sister got lost caving, but—hang on.

“Claustrophobia’s one, isn’t it?” he guesses. “Or…small spaces? Being enclosed or—or buried alive?” He tries not to let his voice shake when he says it, but like Jon and spiders, that’s one he’s never been able to handle.

From the look on Jon Prime’s face, he knows that—of course he does. “The Buried. Being crushed alive, not able to breathe—not having enough space.”

“A-and then there’s having too much space,” Martin says quickly, trying to push the mental image of being trapped in a coffin or a cave out of his head. “Heights and—and empty spaces, that sort of thing? Like—hang on, which one was it—that first statement we looked into where someone found a Leitner, Ex Altoria—”

“The Vast,” Martin Prime supplies. “Vertigo, agoraphobia, deep water, fear of your own insignificance in the universe. Any time you come across the name Fairchild, especially Simon Fairchild, that’s definitely a sign you’ve come across the Vast.”

Tim counts on his fingers. “We’re halfway there…I guess death is one of them, huh? I mean, a lot of people are afraid of that.”

“Terminus. The End. Simple, but always there.”

“War’s part of that, I guess?”

Jon Prime shakes his head. “War is the Slaughter. Not unstoppable like the End, or targeted or premeditated. Just pure, unpredictable violence.”

Sasha sits forward a little. “We keep—there have been a lot of statements about…meat. What’s with that?”

Martin’s wondered that himself. Jon Prime grimaces. “The Flesh. The fear of being eaten, or…twisted.”

“The Boneturner’s Tale,” Jon murmurs. Martin wishes it didn’t hurt so much to hold someone’s hand, because he wants to comfort Jon somehow. He knows how much he hates those Leitner books, which makes sense if he encountered one once. “Hang on, though—how is that so common that it’s one of the major fourteen? There can’t be that many people afraid of it.”

Jon Prime gives a soft huff of laughter. It doesn’t sound particularly amused, though. “You think only humans feel fear?”

Martin’s eyes widen as he thinks about the statement they spent the last week looking into, the man who worked at the abattoir and the man who disappeared. It’s almost enough to turn him vegetarian. Almost. “Is that why those statements are all so…weird?”

“More or less. You start mixing more primitive, animalistic fear with a complicated human brain, and things get twisted.”

“Hunting’s not part of that, though,” Sasha says.

“No,” Martin Prime says quietly, and something flashes across his face. “The Hunt is its own entity. It’s another one that started with animals, but it still touches plenty of humans.”

Tim scans Martin Prime’s face, eyes flicking back and forth. “You don’t like that one much, do you?”

“It’s definitely one of my least favorite, yes.”

“So…” Tim glances at Martin, and there’s genuine worry in his eyes before he looks back at Martin Prime. “You’ve encountered it? Did it…do something to you?”

“Yes,” Jon Prime says, at the same time that Martin Prime says, “Not to me.”

They look at each other, or at least in one another’s direction, since Martin Prime can’t see—at least Martin is assuming he’s really blind, he’s still wearing his glasses, although Martin’s worn glasses since he was two years old and at this point he probably feels naked without them—and then Martin Prime amends, “Not directly. Not before the world ended.”

Jon Prime rubs his throat absently, but doesn’t say anything. There’s a long silence before Jon speaks, a single word that drops into the middle of the room like a lead balloon. “Isolation.”

“The Lonely,” Jon Prime says softly. He turns to look at the others, and Martin flinches at the pain in his eyes. “The feeling that you’re…alone. Maybe because there’s no one there, maybe because you just can’t connect. Maybe because you aren’t worth that connection.”

Something twists deep in Martin’s chest. He knows that feeling all too well; it basically encapsulates his strange, unhappy childhood. Tim’s arm drops lightly onto Martin’s shoulders, his hand brushing Jon’s beyond it, and when Martin glances Tim’s way he sees that his other arm is behind Sasha—like he’s reminding all three of them that they’re not alone, that they’re all here together. “Why do you look like you hate that one so much? I mean…that one doesn’t sound too dangerous, compared to the others.”

“I’m not fond of anything that tries to take someone I care about away from me. And the Lonely very nearly succeeded.” Jon Prime’s eyes flick over to Martin Prime, just briefly. “In truth, the only one I can honestly say I hate more than the Lonely is the Stranger.”

Martin Prime nods, his lips pressed tightly together. Sasha looks back and forth between the two of them. “That’s…fear of the unknown?”

“The unknown, the uncanny, the creeping sense that something isn’t right,” Jon Prime confirms. “The fear of someone who might be following you. Masks, mannequins…clowns.”

A shudder runs through Tim’s body. Sasha exhales. “Well, that’s…that’s thirteen. Funny, you’d expect there to only be thirteen fears, right? I mean, that’s a bad luck number to a lot of people.”

“Yeah, but this is Robert Smirke we’re talking about,” Martin says absently. “His big thing was balance—” He stops as the words leave his mouth and straightens. Balance. Everything has an opposite, something that counters it. You can’t fear being buried alive if you don’t know there’s such a thing as open space. You can’t fear random, purposeless violence if you don’t know that there’s another way of dying violently. Which means…what’s the opposite of the Stranger?

“Knowledge,” he breathes. “That’s the fourteenth fear? The fear of—of being known, of being watched? Or of knowing too much?”

“The Beholding,” Jon Prime says. “The Ceaseless Watcher. It Knows You. It’s got a lot of names.”

“We usually just call it the Eye,” Martin Prime adds.

I should have realized that whatever hid you from the Eye would mean I couldn’t see you either. Martin recalls Jon Prime’s half-frantic spewing of words when he first arrived. He thinks about the sensation they all get in the Archives of being watched, the near-compulsive way they prod into things that…really ought to be left alone, the way Jon gets twitchy when he reads the statements aloud, the sick feeling in his stomach when he couldn’t find anything on Ex Altoria and the headache that hadn’t gone away until he’d gone back to Carlos Vittery’s old apartment. “That’s the one that runs the Institute, then.”

“What?” All three of the other members of the Archival team stare at Martin with varying degrees of incredulity. He blushes.

Jon Prime nods. “More accurate, I think, to say that the Institute was set up for its benefit, but yes. The Institute is the Eye’s pedestal. And you are all bound to its service. I’m sorry.”

“No. No, no, no, I did not sign up for this.” Tim looks seriously upset. “I’m here to stop this sort of thing, not to join it—”

“So quit,” Jon Prime says, a bit sharply, looking Tim square in the eye.

Tim freezes. “What?”

“Quit. Walk away. Lean around and give your notice, right now. Tell him you’re done.”

If anything, that just makes Tim even more upset. Martin has never seen him so agitated—he looks almost like he’s on the verge of literal tears. “What the hell happens to me?” he blurts out. “First you think I’d actually make tasteless jokes about Martin being blind, now you think I’d just—walk away? Abandon my friends—my family? What the fuck did I do to make you think I’d just leave the only people I have left in the world at the mercy of some gigantic spooky fear monster?”

Jon Prime jerks back as if Tim has slapped him. He looks genuinely taken aback. Now Martin is wondering what happened to Tim in their timeline. Why he didn’t come back with them, why they both seem to simultaneously miss him and expect him to just up stakes and vanish.

“Tim, no, it’s not like that,” Martin Prime intervenes, his voice gentle. “Trust me, if you did quit, the rest would be right behind you. The point is that you can’t.”

“Damn right,” Tim mutters.

“No, literally. You can’t quit. You’re bound to the Institute—well, to the Archives really. You can’t quit, you can’t get fired. You can’t even leave for too long or you’ll start to get sick. Physically, mentally, literally, you cannot quit.”

That, Martin thinks, might be the most surprising thing he’s learned in the last week. He thinks this rather distantly, since it’s hard to focus through the white noise seeming to fill his mind. He remembers the resignation letters he typed up but deleted without even saving, let alone printing. Remembers, too, Sasha muttering about looking for another job and then never bringing it up again. It’s not like there’s no evidence for what Martin Prime is saying, but it’s still out of the clear blue sky and he’s not sure what to do with the information.

This time, it’s Jon that breaks the silence, his voice choked and shaky. “Oh, God.”

“There’s no way out?” Sasha demands. “Truly? There has to be something—something other than dying, I mean. You can’t honestly be saying we’re inevitably stuck until we die.”

“There’s—well, for you all there are two ways out,” Martin Prime says slowly. “Neither one is particularly pleasant, and, well, one of them does involve death. If—if the Archivist dies, then the Assistants have the option of leaving.”

Nope. No, Martin is not going to consider that an option. Jon is not going to die just so the rest of them can be freed. “And the other way out? The one that doesn’t involve dying?”

Martin Prime tips his head to one side, as if he’s studying Martin. “You have to remove your connection to the Beholding.”

Martin snorts. “So, what…gouge your eyes out or something?”

Jon Prime and Martin Prime both simply look at him, or at least in his direction. Jon Prime still looks haunted; Martin Prime just looks serious. Ice water floods Martin’s veins. “Fuck off.”

“Yep, he’s me,” Martin Prime says to Jon Prime. He rubs his thumb over the back of Jon Prime’s again. “Jon, breathe. It’s all right.”

“It’s…” Jon Prime closes his eyes and shakes his head slowly. When he opens them again, they’re wet with unshed tears as they flick back and forth from Jon to Tim. “God, I thought this part would be easier. I don’t know why. It’s never easy. But I thought…I am sorry.”

“You didn’t do this,” Martin protests. He looks at Jon, their Jon, and back to Jon Prime. “Either of you. It’s not—I mean, you didn’t set this up to be like this. And, and you didn’t force us to do this—”

“I requested you,” Jon protests.

“You didn’t request me,” Martin says. Jon looks away, evidently uncomfortable with the reminder. “Anyway, I wouldn’t have said no even if Elias had actually given me a choice, so—”

“Hang on, what?” Jon Prime blinks, then turns to Martin Prime. “You—you didn’t get a choice?”

“No,” Martin Prime says. His eyes widen. “Christ, I never—how did that not ever occur to me? He called me into his office and told me he’d finally appointed a new Head Archivist and that he’d decided to send me along as one of your assistants, that I would be down there first thing on Monday. I don’t think I even had time to say thanks before he sent me off to pack up my desk in the library.”

“Oh, God.” Jon Prime turns to Tim and Sasha. “What about you? Were you asked or told?”

“I—” Sasha frowns at him. “I didn’t—”

“Answer the question, Sasha.”

Static crackles in the air, and Sasha answers immediately. “Told. Elias said that he’d decided to go in a different direction than hiring me as Head Archivist, but he was sure I could still be useful to the Archives and that Jon would need me as an assistant. I told him if I wasn’t going to get the job I had applied for I’d be happier staying where I was, and he replied that wasn’t an option.” She presses a hand to her mouth, her eyes widening as she looks over at Jon. “Oh, God, I—Jon, I don’t—I’m sorry, I—”

“Jon,” Martin Prime says, exasperation and disapproval and maybe a bit of worry in his tone. It sounds like a five-minute lecture condensed into a single word.

“Sorry. I’m so sorry. I—I didn’t mean to do that, I wasn’t thinking…” Jon Prime inhales sharply and rubs at his face with the hand not now gripping Martin Prime’s so tightly his fingertips are going white. “I-it’s been so long since I’ve dealt with—it, it’s not the same, I’ve gotten so used to—I am sorry. I swear I won’t do that again.”

“What did you do?” Martin asks. He probably shouldn’t, but it sounds like it’s genuinely upsetting Jon Prime, and if they can stop Jon from having to do it as well, it’s probably not a bad thing.

“I—I compelled her. It’s one of the abilities I have from the Eye. I can—make people tell me things. Force statements out of them, that sort of thing.” Jon Prime uncovers his face, and he looks almost as upset as Tim did at being told to try and quit. “It’s invasive, and I try not to do it more than I have to and—I am so sorry, Sasha.”

“Wait, you can do that?” Tim leans around Martin to frown at Jon. His eyes are red-rimmed and his face is still pale, but he looks at least a little calmer.

“No,” Jon says, sounding genuinely distressed. “Of course not.”

“Not quite to that extent,” Martin Prime says. “It’s something that…develops, I guess?”

Jon Prime looks at Martin Prime in worry and confusion. “No, no, I—I didn’t start being able to do that until after—”

“Jon, I wasn’t going to tell you Gertrude Robinson had been shot until they confirmed that was what killed her,” Martin Prime said quietly. “Or at least until you’d slept some. You looked like hell and—last thing I wanted was you panicking that someone was running around gunning for you, literally. I didn’t realize it then, just assumed I was, I don’t know, trying to make you less agitated. That maybe if you knew for sure you wouldn’t be up all night torturing yourself or whatever. But…well, later on, I started learning what to listen for, and I realized what it was. I don’t know if it would have worked if I hadn’t been so tired, or if it was something I really didn’t want to tell you, but you did compel me to answer you. At least a little.”

“You never told me.”

“It never really came up?”

“God. All this time I thought—Martin, you—you know I’d never—I d-didn’t ever want to—I wouldn’t have—”

“Okay, you are starting to spiral.” Martin Prime turns his hand over and squeezes Jon Prime’s, then reaches forward like he’s going for the other one. “Maybe we should stop for a few minutes and—”

“No, I-I’m fine. I’m fine.” Jon Prime takes a deep breath and exhales slowly, then looks back up at Jon and the others sitting on Tim’s sofa. “We need to…there’s more we need to discuss.”

Martin thinks to himself that he’s never seen someone obviously less fine, and at first he assumes Jon Prime is only getting away with it because Martin Prime can’t actually see the look on his face. But a quick glance at Martin Prime shows otherwise. Martin Prime is absolutely aware of Jon Prime’s condition, maybe better than anyone else in the room, but he’s letting him get away with it for reasons of his own. He’s sure that won’t last long, though. They’ve got to speed this up, but the trouble is that the whole situation is taking on the aspect of a hydra. For every question answered, three more questions pop up, and Martin no longer knows where the thread is going. If he ever knew in the first place.

“Okay, so…wait. W-wait. Let me make sure I’ve got everything straight so far,” he says, more to give everyone else a bit of breathing room than anything else. He’s just as confused and off-balance, probably, but he’s not going to show it. “Fourteen fear beings, each with their own…followers and paths and all that. One of them is in charge of the Institute. We’re all trapped in its service as long as it can…use us. Jon—I’m guessing since he’s the Head Archivist, he’s…closer to it than the rest of us are, which is why he’s got some of its powers. Most of the statements, the real statements, the ones that won’t go on the computer, they’re somehow related to at least one of the entities. And it’s only going to get worse from here on out. Have I got all that right?”

“Basically, yes.” Jon Prime manages a smile. “Although hopefully we can keep it from getting too much worse.”

“Right, okay.” Martin tries to think of where to go next. “So, ah, so—Elias. How—how much does he know? I mean, he’s the head of the Institute, but…does he know about…all of this? The fears and the Archives and—everything?”

“He said he usually knows what’s going on in the Institute,” Tim says, his voice tight. He draws his arms from the back of the sofa and clenches his fists, resting them on his thighs. “And you sounded a lot like you hated him when we talked earlier. It’s because he knows all this crap, isn’t it? He knew all of it and he let us walk in blind. Ah, no offense.”

“That,” Martin Prime says, “is barely scratching the surface. And none taken. But yes. He knows all of it.”

“That’s…” Martin swallows hard, fighting down the resurgence of nausea. “That’s kind of messed up.”

Jon Prime lets out a bitter and brittle laugh. “Oh, you have no idea.”

“So tell us,” Sasha says. “You said you’d tell us what you wanted to know.”

“Yes. And Gertrude Robinson did attempt to leave a warning for me, it—she just wasn’t able to.” Jon Prime takes a deep breath. “Elias. He—was originally known as Jonah Magnus. Before he was Elias Bouchard, he was James Wright.”

“What?” Martin’s voice jumps to a pitch he hasn’t hit since he was sixteen.

“No. No, that doesn’t make any sense.” Sasha presses her fingertips to her temples. “Elias Bouchard was hired at the Magnus Institute by James Wright. He’d been here for five years when Wright died and Elias was promoted directly from filing clerk to head of the Institute. They were in the same place at the same time, they were both there. They can’t be the same person.”

“Unless Wright killed him and took his place,” Tim mutters.

Martin Prime winces. “That’s…kind of close to what happened, actually. Jonah Magnus has been body-hopping for generations, to keep himself alive. Finding a new vessel every time the old one starts getting…well, old. It’s the eyes. I mean, Elias’ eyes, they’re actually Jonah Magnus’ eyes. That’s how he takes over.”

Yeah, okay, Martin is definitely going to be sick now. He presses a hand to his mouth. Jon’s entire body goes rigid. “My God, how deep did he go into servitude to this…thing?”

“All the way,” Jon Prime says grimly. “In addition to whatever it is he does to transfer his…essence to his new bodies…and believe me, that is not something I have ever wanted to know in detail…he has some powers of clairvoyance. He can see out of any eye, real or symbolic. He can also read minds, to a limited extent, and implant images in the mind.”

“What, like…make you hallucinate?” Sasha sounds almost as curious as she does concerned.

Martin Prime shakes his head. “Not exactly. More like…he can make you picture things in your head. Events, memories…perceptions.”

Martin has to swallow twice before he can speak, in a voice much smaller than usual. “Is…is that what you meant? When you said…” He trails off, hoping Martin Prime remembers the conversation without him having to repeat it.

“Yes,” Martin Prime says quietly. “Mind you, I don’t know how much of what he showed me was based on reality and how much of it was based on…I mean, she’s not well. But yes.”

It doesn’t take a huge leap of logic for Martin to figure out what his counterpart means. Whatever Elias showed him, it’s something to do with his—their—mother. Tim’s the one who speaks up next. “Can he see us now, though? Like, if he can see through any eye, read minds…can he see us?”

“In theory, possibly. In practice, no,” Jon Prime answers. “I’ve…taken precautions. Besides, the Archivist is very closely tied to the Eye, so it’s possible that there being two of us here will create enough of a feedback loop that the room will function as a—a blind spot, so to speak. Too much interference for him to See properly in here.”

“But ordinarily?”

“If he tries…yes. I think the three of you are safe, more or less. You’re not his focus. And since he’s deliberately keeping your Archivist in the dark, obviously he doesn’t think any of you know anything.”

Sasha nods slowly. “So that feeling we get in the Archives, like we’re being watched—that’s Elias? Excuse me, Jonah?”

“No, that’s the Eye itself,” Martin Prime answers. “We’re…pretty sure Elias can only see out of one set of eyes at a time? And he has to be able to give it some attention. When he’s focused on something else, you’re safe. That feeling of being watched, though, that’s the Beholder. I mean, they don’t call it the Ceaseless Watcher for nothing.”

“Is it watching us now?” Sasha asks. “Or does it only watch us at the Institute?”

“I—” Jon Prime hesitates. His lips part and his eyes go slightly unfocused.

“Jon, no—” Martin Prime begins, his face going pale.

There’s another crackle of static, like when Jon Prime asked the question that Sasha had to answer, but it rapidly increases in pitch and volume until it’s more like a squeal of feedback. Martin screws up his eyes and tries to cover his ears, but the noise seems to be transmitted through his very teeth and bones—

And then, abruptly, it vanishes, leaving an almost ringing silence in its wake. Martin opens his eyes to see Jon Prime gasping heavily for air, his eyes closed, his whole body trembling.

“Oh, God, that hurt,” he pants.

“You know an eye can’t see inside itself, Jon,” Martin Prime says sternly. His expression immediately softens, though, as he reaches over tentatively and places his hand on Jon’s back, rubbing gently. Martin swallows down on no small amount of jealousy, which is a stupid and totally inappropriate reaction under the circumstances. “Okay. I’m putting my foot down. Now we have to do the statement.”

“Yes, I…I don’t think I can…last much longer if we…don’t.” Jon Prime’s voice is a mere thread, and he’s slurring his words.

“What are you talking about?” Jon frowns.

“I…” Jon Prime flounders for a moment, then looks up at Martin Prime in mute appeal. After a second, he seems to realize that won’t work and touches Martin Prime’s thigh.

It can’t be that much force, but Martin Prime evidently feels it. Something flickers over his face briefly, and Martin knows with utmost certainty that he wants to wrap Jon Prime in a hug and hold him until he stops shaking. Martin’s felt that desire with Jon more than once, but he also knows it’s a desire that isn’t going to lead anywhere any time soon; Jon seems to avoid physical contact like the plague. They’ve touched more in the last twelve hours than Martin thinks they’ve touched in the entire almost-year they’ve known each other and he’s sure it’s going to stop as soon as the shock of seeing the chaos at the Archives wears off. And despite the relieved way Jon Prime and Martin Prime clung to each other when Jon Prime first showed up, Martin’s pretty sure a protective cuddle is still out of the question.

“The statements feed the Ceaseless Watcher,” Martin Prime explains slowly. “He’s tied very closely to it, which means…well, to a certain extent, they feed him, too. At any rate, the longer he goes without a statement, the—the weaker he gets? And using his powers drains him faster. What he just did, in addition to being incredibly ill-advised to begin with, pushed him way too far. If he doesn’t get a statement, now, it might actually kill him.”

“I—I don’t actually—I mean, it’s not like we just keep those on hand,” Jon stammers. He looks shaken, which, well, Martin can understand that. It’s not easy staring down your own future, and this isn’t exactly something to look forward to.

“Too stale,” Jon Prime says hoarsely. He takes a deep breath and sort of manages to straighten up, but frankly, he looks like hell.

“He hasn’t had one since he got back, a week ago now,” Martin Prime elaborates. “And the old statements, they—don’t have the same power to them? It’s like trying to live off of granola bars. It’s possible, but it really sucks, and they don’t keep you going as well as a good meal. He needs a live statement.” He taps his temple lightly. “Fortunately, I have one on hand.”

“What, you’ve just been hoarding them?” Tim asks.

Martin Prime actually smiles a little, obviously not offended. “My journey back here wasn’t exactly straightforward, you might say.” The smile vanishes as he adds, “M-maybe we should…try to go into the other room, Jon. Or you all should leave. This might be a bit…much.”

“We’re staying,” Jon says firmly. “Tone it down if you have to, but—I can’t walk away from this, I don’t think.”

“He’s right,” Jon Prime says. He turns his exhausted eyes onto Martin Prime. “They won’t…don’t make them try to imagine it.”

Martin swallows, but tries not to visibly react otherwise. Jon Prime is right. Knowing the little bit that he knows…he won’t be able to stop himself from coming up with dozens of possible scenarios, and all of them will probably be way worse than just knowing the truth.

Martin Prime sighs heavily, then nods. “All right. Let’s go.”

#ollie writes fanfic #leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall)#the magnus archives #tma #things are starting to get heavy just so you know

7 notes · View notes

miaswetnambcu · 4 years

Text

Brand Group Meeting 2

Our second brand meeting was based around finalising our original ideas as well as establishing a customer profile.

Our first point was to decide a name for our brand. Our first idea being the name ‘Sensuell’ which means voluptuous in Norwegian. As the word would be pronounced as the English word ‘sensual’, we thought it would work as a double meaning for the brand name. However, our brand does not hold any link to Norway and it would not make sense to use a Norwegian word for the name of our brand.

Our second idea was Curvé. The idea was derived from the word curve and as our products are aimed at curvy women, we though it would be fitting. We added the accent on the end of the ‘e’ so that it is pronounced as ‘curvay’, which makes it sound more luxurious. Also, the word curve on its own is not very interesting and wouldn’t draw people into our brand.

We decided to do a mood board surrounding the colours we are going to use for our products. Our initial idea was black with some nude shades as well. Both of these compliment each other and will work for many different skin tones for our customer. For a statement piece, we chose a lilac colour. We chose this colour as it is a soft colour that will flatter most body types and skin tones, as well as it being a very wearable colour.

Our design inspiration was found on plus-size models that showcase different styles of clothing. We decided our outfit ideas were going to consist of one dress, one skirt and top co-ord and one trousers, top and blazer set. The products from the sets would be able to buy separately, as well as being able to choose the sizes for each individual item if they were to be bought as the set. Figure-hugging silhouettes is the main idea, with some corset style elements into the garments.

Our social media is based around the same colour theme as our products, which is black, nudes and lilac. The Instagram posts will be centered around plus-size women with various body shapes. This is to ensure that all types of plus-size people are included in our brand and so that each customer is able to find someone showcasing the same body type as them on our page. This should make the customer feel more included and accepted into the brand to improve our customer engagement.

Once we had established these elements, we decided to create a customer profile. We chose to do this to ensure we are aware of what our customers likes and dislikes and can hopefully portray this through out brand outcomes.

The ideal customer we created was 22 year old woman, either a post-graduate or in her last year of uni. The customer would live in the main part of a city such as Manchester or Liverpool. She is a size 18 and is very active on her social media by constantly checking her timelines and liking other people’s posts. She would be likely to follow some sort of plus-sized model such as Ashley Graham, as well as other influencers such as Kylie Jenner or Molly-Mae. We decided she would most likely follow these possibly look for tips for make-up and hair. In contrast, she may follow these people as she would like to look or dress like them, but cannot find the right clothes to do so. This is where our brand is needed, as it would give people like her the opportunity to wear clothes like Kylie Jenner to make her feel just as beautiful.

To look further into customers and a current need for our brand, we decided to create a survey to look into these aspects.

The first question on the survey was for the person to state their age. The responses ranged from 17- 27 year olds, which is close of our age range of 20-30 year olds. This indicated the results would be in significant relation to our brand.

The second question was centered around people’s plans when we are out of lockdown. 27.7% said a restaurant or pub and 23.1% said they would go to a bar or club. This equates to just under 50% of people on the quiz saying they would go to the places where our clothing range is most likely to be seen. This idicates that there is a need for our brand in the near future. However, this question was slightly misleading as our brand is for when we are out of the current pandemic, not lockdown. This lead to there being such a high percentage saying they would stay home. If we were to do this quiz again, we would have to alter this question to be more specific.

Our next question posed as to whether the person would buy new clothes for this. It is split quite evenly on both sides. This may reflect the previous question as around 50% said they would go to a bar or a pub. Those 50% would most likely say yes to this question, with the other 50% saying no.

The next question was based around the brands that people tend to shop at. 23 people said ASOS and 8 said Zara. Pretty Little Thing was said 7 times, with House of CB and Missguided mentioned 3 times each. Most of these brands have a similar price range, which could help us to asses the market for price. ASOS has multiple brands on their platform so their price range varies between each one. House of CB sits slightly higher on the price range than other like Pretty Little Thing and Missguided.

The people or things that influence people’s fashion choices was asked in the next question. 27 people stated some form of social media, such as Instagram and Tik Tok. Friends was the second most popular with 5 people stating it, as well as catwalk fashion being said by 2 people. This gives us insight as to how to promote our brand, with social media being the obvious choice.

Our next question was based around the price range that people would pay for a dress. We decided to include this in the survey as it would give us a rough margin as to how much people will pay. 54% said £0-£30, with £28.6% saying £30-£50. This indicates that 82.6% of people in this survey would only pay up to £50. This is something we will have to take into consideration when planning our pricing for our products.

The last question on the survey asked what the person would wear on a ‘night-out’. 49.2% said jeans and a nice top, with 9.2% saying a dress and 7.7% saying a co-ord. This shows that there is a market for the products that we decided to make.

After the meeting, I decided to interview someone who was previously plus-size to see if our brand is needed in the market. Paige was a size 20 when she was age 20. She displayed her stress to me regarding her weight and the clothing that was available to her at that time.

I explained our brand identity to her, which is to make plus-size women feel beautiful and confident in their bodies. I added that our brand is a party/eveningwear brand for plus-size women with products such as dresses and co-ords. After I explained our brand to her, she said that she “needed a brand like that” when she was that size.

According to Paige, the clothing that was available to her was not made for her age and were made for people upwards of 40. With her only being age 20, the clothes were obviously not her style and would not have made her feel confident when wearing them. She showed me a picture of her at a party where she wore a blue leopard print dress. The dress was obviously not something that a 20 year old would usually wear to a party as the dress seemed to be made of a thick cotton and was not very flattering on her figure. Although she could not remember where she got the dress from, she stated that it was not from a standard high street store like New Look or H&M. She said it was more likely to be from a brand like Evans. Evans is a plus-size clothing brand in the UK that stocks sizes from 14-32. The standard customer for Evans would be women 50+, which Paige is not part of. The dress she wore to the party did not make her feel beautiful or confident and she even felt the need to wear two pairs of fat pants and a pair of shaping tights underneath the dress. She said that even though she wore these shaping garments underneath, she still did not feel confident in the dress and though that it did flatter her figure.

The way she described this is exactly why we wanted to create a plus-size partywear brand. She was unable to find any dress that she thought was flattering on her body, and even the dress she chose to wear did not make her feel beautiful and confident. Our brand is centered around making plus-size women feel empowered and confident enough in themselves to wear our garments. People like Paige are exactly the target market we are looking for and this interview reinforces the fact that a brand like ours is needed in the fashion industry.

Paige eventually lost a lot of weight and dropped from a size 20 to a size 10. She stated that even though she has lost a lot of weight, she still does not feel confident in her body. She said that this was because she was unable to build that confidence when she was younger as the clothes that were available to her did not make her feel good about herself. Paige could not build her confidence up when most people do as she did not have the resources to do so, and had to resort to feeling uncomfortable in any piece of clothing she wore. Although clothing brand make clothes in her size, they did not make clothes for her size, which led to them being unflattering on her body. The picture above shows this, as although the clothes do physically fit on her body, they were not made for the structure of her body, leading to the proportions seen on the top and the shorts not fitting as well on her body as it would on a smaller sized person. As our products will be made to fit a curvy body, this will not be a problem for our customers.

3 notes · View notes

adashofniallandasprinkleoflunacy · 5 years

Text

after-after party

word count: 4.7k

content: smug harry, banter, and softcore smut (a handjob but a pretty decent handjob hehee)

///

Y/N can tell he’s struggling to get back on his feet. After getting that shit-faced, it’s practically a miracle he made it up the stairs to his condo without getting intimate with the floor. “Thank you.”

or Harry’s a hungover mess post-Met Gala and Y/N’s his helping hand (in more than a metaphorical sense)

///

Harry didn’t think he was that drunk.

Despite only having been able to see somewhat clearly from one eye, not having any feeling on the left side of his face, the absence of sturdiness in his knees, and the dead weight of what he assumed to be his tongue choking him anytime he tried to talk, he still hadn’t thought he was that drunk.

Maybe fifty percent drunk, at most.

That percentage rose a few notches when he had arrived home, half-stumbling and half-waddling into his and Y/N’s bedroom to come upon her watching a rerun of one of the Avengers movies.

That number had then risen slowly, and then all at once.

It begun nudging upward after he greeted his girlfriend. The words that had sewn together in his syrupy mind had been something along the lines of, “Hi, darling. How’s the movie?”

What came out of his mouth was a slurred, garbled mess of syllables and noises that sounded like he was gargling nuts and bolts.

His self-recognized drunk percentage teetered higher when he tried to initiate a bit of a Met Gala after-after party.

As he remembers it, Harry begun by sitting on the edge of the bed and oh-so gracefully sliding himself up beside Y/N, draping an arm across her hip as he pressed a soft kiss to the back of her neck, right on the spot that is usually the kill-switch to making her cum.

But according to Y/N’s retelling of the situation, Harry had instead tripped over his shiny, jet-black heeled boots, landed like a punching bag right on top of her, and then proceeded to drool onto the side of her neck while trying to push himself up onto his elbows (“quite unsuccessfully,” she adds).

But the event that had skyrocketed his awareness of just how utterly, embarrassingly sloshed he had truly been was something both of them recalled rather explicitly.

Apparently, Y/N’s insistent badgering and deflections of his suggestive touches hadn’t been enough for Harry. She had been adamant on how hammered he was and he had kept dismissing her, saying that he wasn’t that bad off and that, “I’m sober enough to make you cum!”

But he was quickly shut down, betrayed by his own body. In a spur of movement in which he had stalked around the room trying to prove his sobriety to Y/N, his stomach had given an angry lurch at the abrupt disturbance and decided to put a stop to his antics with the reappearance of the two grilled cheese sandwiches he’d had an hour prior.

Then to finish off his ridiculous circus act, his knees agreed to fully give out, resulting in Harry crumpling to the ground like rag doll.

That is the last of what he remembers— keeling over and puking all over his new vintage Indonesian rug, and then face-planting the puddle.

Saying he’s disgusted with himself is an understatement. At this point, it’s edging more towards absolute self-loathing because he not only made a complete fool of himself, but had then condemned Y/N to clean up the mess. All at four in the fucking morning.

Not to mention the collateral damage— his outfit.

Unless he can convince the world that a giant milky patch of half-digested cheese and tequila is the newest fashion rave, Alessandro was going to kill him. And then Harry Lambert was going to dance on his grave.

The dry-cleaners will have to work a bloody miracle.

Now, eight hours later, he sits bare in his large marble bathtub, legs drawn up to his chest with his back hunched slightly forward as Y/N uses the detachable shower head to rinse out his hair.

He’s trying awfully hard to ignore the hollow thumping of his heartbeat slamming against the inside of his skull, closing his eyes tightly and taking in deep, penetrating breaths that taste faintly of lemon vodka and heavily of regret. He shouldn’t have gone so hard, so fast. It was borderline moronic.

After he knocked out onto the ground, Y/N— an angel in the flesh— had picked him up and settled him into the bed, striping him down to his briefs and wiping him clean with a wet towel as best as she could while he blabbed unconscious nonsense about what colors he’d picked for his nails and how the bow tie he’d worn made him look like Mickey Mouse.

She’d had to work fast with the rug and managed to get out the stain after a load of scrubbing and a whole bottle of Bissell carpet cleaner. By the time she extended the ornament out over the edge of the balcony to dry, it was ten minutes past five in the morning and her arms were limp as noodles.

Y/N was too exhausted to drag Harry out of bed and into the shower then, so she had just called it quits and would worry about the damage control in the morning. It’s not like he couldn’t afford new sheets.

Her voice fishes him out of his dazed thoughts, the alcohol trip corrupting her gentle words into dull gritting and popping sounds that cause him to instinctually wince. He turns his chin slightly more towards her, streams of the bathroom’s bright white lights forcing their way past the strings of dark hair covering his eyes and stinging his vision.

“What was that?” His own voice comes out as a low, jumbled rasp.

Y/N coasts her fingers into his sopping wet roots, gently massaging his scalp and the shell of his ears before carefully pulling back the curtain of wet hair hiding away his face. “I said, ‘pass me the shampoo, please.’”

“Oh...” Harry stretches out a rusty arm, his joints cracking in defiance. Opening his fingers feels like trying to pry open a set of metal doors, and carrying the small Bumble and Bumble shampoo bottle back towards his girlfriend’s awaiting grasp feels like taking on a hundred pound weight. “Here y’go.”

Harry nods robotically, tense shoulders drawing in again as he crosses his arms just below the curve of his kneecaps, back hunching forward a bit further than before. His forehead plops down against his forearms, temples pulsing in pain at the smallest motion. “God, I’m never drinking again.” Y/N scoffs in amusement, shaking her head lightly. “That’s what you said last time...and the time before that.” “Well, this time I mean it.” “You said that, too.” Harry cranes his stiff neck to face her, hair flopping over to the opposite side as he narrows his eyes pointedly. “You’re not helping here, love.” “You deserve some scolding.” She reasons with a dismissive shrug of her brows, popping open the cap of the plastic bottle and spilling a decent amount of transparent, sunflower-yellow goo into the palm of her hand. He sighs shakily and releases a boyish laugh. “I suppose I do.” Y/N starts working her digits through his matted locks, watching suds build up over the natural amber highlights strewn across the woodsy brown. The familiar scent of chamomile fills her lungs as well as his and they both take it in like a warm hug, laughing gently at the deep breaths they’d inhaled in unison. A honeyed, almost inaudible mumble catches her ears all of the sudden. “Thank you.” She glances down from where her gaze was focused on watching her fingers work around the little spiral from which his hair sprouts atop his head, catching her boyfriend’s stare. Harry’s looking at her over his naked broad shoulder, faintly-stubbled chin pressed against the cursive “g” tattoo he has for his sister. His forearms flex as he tightens them around his knees, shifting over just a smidge more towards her so he does not have to strain his neck as much.

His muted jade eyes hold a awed, tender demeanor— one that communicates how grateful he is to have her here helping him.

Y/N’s lips twitch with a small caring smile. “Of course, sweetheart. Anytime.”

She pauses her movements for a second, fingers staying perched on his scalp before she sways her head from side to side, mulling her statement over, and then scrunches up her nose in an afterthought. “Just not all the time, yeah?”

Harry snorts himself into a wave of bellyful laughter, lips spreading into a delighted grin against the skin of his shoulder. His eyes crinkle at the edges, the two little moles on the side of his chin twitching. “I promise I’ll keep myself in check.”

“You better.” Y/N states in a cautionary tone, yanking at his bubbly curls in a playful warning. A low hiss streams from his tinted lips as his head is snaps backwards, one eye winking shut at the faint pain. He slowly lulls his head forward again, letting it hang for a moment before looking back at her over his shoulder. “I actually quite liked that.” He murmurs in a sultry tone, shrugging his eyebrows suggestively and hiding a lascivious smirk by pressing it into his damp skin. “Might have to be more reckless just to get some more of that.” Y/N huffs, quirking one of her brows ominously while turning on the shower-head and clicking it into the pulse setting. “Won’t be that gentle.” “Oh, I’m praying for it, pet.” Her eyes give a quick flash upwards to lock with his as they sheen a bright juniper green to emphasize his cocky challenge, the glossiness of his irises dancing with the fluorescent lights of the washroom. “Just shut up and move over here so I can rinse you out.” “Yes, ma’am.” There’s an unmistakable arrogance to the snarky remark. The sounds of his skin rubbing against the surface of the elegant tub bounce off the walls of the room as Harry shifts onto his knees and rectifies his back, turning side to side from the waist up in order to work out the knot at the bottom of his spine. Y/N pretends to be fiddling with the temperature knob to avoid looking below the curve of his bare hip. He moves closer to the edge, pressing the palms of his hands down against the rim with the intention of showing off by flexing his arm muscles. He tilts his head to the side expectantly, eyes half-lidded with a type of self-assured smugness that grates her nerves in unexplainably tempting ways. Y/N scoots closer on the porcelain toilet cover, pushing his hair back as it limps over his forehead, wiping suds away before they get in his eyes. She lifts the hose and rids his chest of bubbles, well aware of her fingertips dragging over the slippery silkiness of his skin as they pass over the wings of his bird tattoos and tickle the antennas of the butterfly on his tummy. Harry’s voice comes out in the form of a melodic hum, with an undertone that hints at a moan. “I like it when you take care of me.” Y/N keeps herself focused as the water washes away the soap from his collarbones and neck. The puff of his velvet words is warm against her left temple. “I like it when you baby me like this. Love it, actually.” She washes down his shoulders and arms, palm following suit to make sure everything goes down the drain— the sweat, body wash, alcohol, and— just maybe— her inhibitions. “Get down.” The phrase is a simple command so she can rinse his hair without making a mess of the floor, but it’s strained with something else. She’s barely holding herself together, but wants to make him work for it. Harry teeters forward on his palms, warm nose bumping her’s and tracing down her sensitive jaw, resulting in her thighs clenching. He gazes up at her with owlish, innocent eyes clouded with lustful neediness and a dab of that post-drunken egoism which tends to adhere to him. “You want me to go all the way down?” His response holds anything but the literal meaning, and she knows it. He definitely knows it, seen in the way a simper ghosts over his puffy lips. Y/N dismantles his advance. “Just a little so I can wash your hair.” Harry’s shoulders droop, pout evident as he obeys. “You’re no fun.” Her throat thrums with an entertained laugh as she douses his curls thoroughly, finger-combing the shampoo out of them. “I’m plenty fun. Just not when you’re hungover.” “I’m not even that hungover!” Harry argues adamantly, rolling his slightly bloodshot eyes. “You literally almost dropped the shampoo bottle, H. You’re very hungover.”

“That’s in the past!”

“That was five minutes ago!”

“And now I’m a changed man.”

Y/N’s laughing freely now as she finishes up getting him nice and clean, turning off the faucet and hanging the shower-head on its designated metal hook. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Focus yourself a little more and I definitely believe you’ll find something hard.”

“God, you’re so crude.” Y/N exclaims, crossing her arms incredulously. “Why do you get so fucking horny when you’re hungover, huh? Normal people get grouchy and don’t leave the bed all day. You get a hard-on and three times your usual stamina. You’ve got to get that checked.”

“I just bounce back faster than everyone else. I tend not to question that gift.”

“Well, you marinate in that gift and finish washing up everything else while I go get you a warm towel from the dryer.” Y/N goes to stand up, but is halted by Harry phasing her out to it.

He’s upright on his knees in an instant, big hand wrapped around her wrist as his eyes crackle with stubborn persistence. “No, you’re going to strip off your pajama shorts and sit on my cock.”

She drags her sight down his wet body, taking in the way his tattoos glint under the lightning of the bathroom, the droplets of water rubbing down his muscles enticing her to feel them against her skin. A little further down, she follows his happy trail down from his belly button to the dip of his pelvic bones to the base of his cock, where it’s covered with neatly trimmed coarse dark hair. That’s all she can see before the side of the black glossy bathtub cuts off her view, but she can tell he’s hard by the way his abdomen tints red and tightens under her intense gaze.

Y/N lets out a quick sigh, turning back to face him fully and putting on her most authoritative voice. “Fine, we’ll make a deal. I give you a handie, you finish washing up and let me dry and dress you. Then we’ll get some food in your stomach and then...we’ll see. Sound like a bargain?”

Harry’s quick to agree, releasing her hand and scrambling to get some traction in the slippery shower. He’ll take anything to get rid of the raging boner pressing against the side of the cold tub. “Yes, deal. Deal, deal, deal.”

“Good. Alright, up then. Where’s the lube?”

“Bottom drawer on the right.”

In a few seconds, Y/N is pressed up against Harry’s body (trying to ignore the fact that he’s getting her pajamas wet) as he stands inside the tub, her hand jerking him off firm and steady whilst her lips seer dirty promises into the pounding pulse of his neck.

“Fuck, you’re hard.” Her astonished whisper is hot again his throat, mouth grazing his Adam’s Apple as she swipes her thumb over his leaking tip, massaging small circles all around the head, just how he likes it. He’s all shades of dark red, light violet, and faint blue, not to mention veiny. “T-Told you.” Harry’s voice is tight with pent up sexual desperation, one hand reaching above to grip the pole that holds the shower curtain as the other finds a spot on the glittery tiled wall. Y/N’s hand wanders down lower, scooping his balls and rolling them around her fingers, feeling out how swollen they are. “And you’re full, too.” She teases under her breath, trailing little kisses up the center of Harry’s throat and across his chin. “Heavy.” All Harry can do is nod his head feverishly and try to tame his bucking hips, eyelids melting shut as he attempts to reign in some form of composure. Y/N tuts in a jesting manner, nibbling on the spot just below his ear, making sure to avoid his fresh piercing. “You poor baby... How long have you been like this?” Harry swallows thickly, eyes flickering open only to be matched with her plump, mocking pout and taunting stare. His words are glue in his throat as he forces them out. “S’been bubbling in the pit of my stomach since I got home. Started to boil over when you kept scratching at my scalp and massaging my ears.” Y/N gives his thick cock a rough tug, drawing a broken yelp from his vocal chords, accompanied by a soft, shaky, “Fuck, s’good...” “You’re like a teenager— wanna bang all the time.” Y/N smirks in amused disbelief, marking a love bite onto the curve where his neck meets his shoulder. Harry tilts his chin down to lock eyes with her, blinking sluggishly as his lips tremble with desire. His voice is tender and sheepish as he speaks, almost as if he’s afraid of getting chastised. “Is it so bad that I need you that way?” Y/N watches as he ducks down and knits their mouths together, tasting burning longing spill over her tongue. Her face stings. “Is...” Harry’s slick locks dangle over his sparkling darkened eyes, tickling the tops of her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose as he suckles her bottom lip almost frantically. “Is it so bad that I like feeling you all snug around me while I whimper into your mouth?”

“Suppose s’not.” Y/N reaches up and winds a fistful of his damp hair around her fist, bringing him in for a kiss so deep, it leaves her gasping for air. He tastes like lemon vodka and intoxicating eagerness. Harry, being the little shit that he is, pulls back from the kiss until only his Cupid’s Bow is brushing over her’s, edges of his lips jolting intp an open-mouthed cheeky grin. She tries to go back in but he yanks himself just far enough that their skin barely touches. He wobbles his head in a shake, chuckling smugly. “S’what you get for slut-shaming me.” “You do realize I have your cock in my hand, right?” Y/N grits out, eyes zoned in on his plush, pink mouth, wanting it back on her’s immediately. “Yeah, but we had a deal, remember? You have to make me cum. Means I can have a little fun, if I want to.” “Also means I can edge you until you’re begging for it.” She counters swiftly. Harry takes his lower lip beneath his two front teeth, denying her point with a low, “mm-mm.” “What’s that?” Y/N twists her wrist and thrives at the way his breathing hitches. “You wouldn’t do that to me. I’m a poor, hungover baby, remember?” He’s pulling every string like it’s his job, batting his long lashes and daring her to be cruel. “Asshole.” “I prefer you play with my cock instead, but to each their own.” Y/N picks up her pace, focusing on long, quick strokes. Each time she reaches the base, she twists, and every time she reaches the head, she squeezes right below it. The new rhythm has the railing above their heads creaking under Harry’s strength. She trails her mouth across the 1957 tattoo imprinted into the dip of his right collarbone, staining the ink maroon with her teeth. His chest is heaving excessively, almost enough that she thinks the swallow tattoos might catch flight. He’s making tiny, cracked whines in the back of his throat, nostrils flaring and jaw clenching so tight she can see the bone structure shifting. Y/N sinks her teeth into the hard knot of muscle on his shoulder, basking in the labored little, “Fucking hell...” Harry squeezes out.

When she pulls back, the ring of teeth marks is already a deep purple-red, leaving behind a memory of the Met Gala that he’ll have on him for weeks. The fist Harry has against the wall had fallen numb from how hard he’s pressing into the smooth surface, knuckles white with exertion and wrist quivering under his vigor. His entire arm is flexing, veins chiseling in and out of view as Y/N phantoms her fingers down the center of his forearm, following the seems. The hand working his cock hasn’t lighted up one bit. “Are you gonna cum for me?” Her gaze flickers from his body to his eyes, lashes fluttering luringly. The pole holding the shower curtain groans. “Fuck, yes.” Her mouth sneaks its way into the curve behind his ear, blowing warm air across one of his soft spots and kissing it slow and sensually. “Gonna make a mess for me?” Harry’s head lulls back into the palm of her hand, throat straining with the weight. His eyes fall shut, jaw unhinging a bit as to let a low rumble loose. “Y-Yeah— wanna...wanna show you how good you make me feel.” The water streaming down from his hair—across his ears and down the back of his neck— feels like her caressing touch and it sends his nerves knee-deep into a frenzy. Y/N moves her exasperatingly sweet lips over the exposed center of his jugular, humming a gentle giggle as she sponges a trail of wet pecks down from the area just beneath his jaw to the dip of his chest. Every brush of her mouth is like a grenade going off, burying him further beneath a mound of pleasure that he knows will blow any second. Harry’s locked in place, legs stiff enough to keep him from collapsing on to the floor of the tub. All of his energy is concentrated at the pit of his tummy, radiating a type of boiling warmth that is becoming too much to bear. He can feel his eyes have rolled back into his head, composure too gone for him to even attempt to chain himself back down. His words feel detached from his mind, mouth moving on its own as he begs and pleads for her to finish him off. His keens and whimpers fill the echoey tiled room and there’s a certain tension in the air that simulates the pin to a bomb. All Harry’s body is waiting for— jittering with bottled up euphoria— is for Y/N to pull it. What she says next sets him off.

“The sooner you cum, the sooner you’ll get to feel me bounce on your cock.”

Just as the words finishing sliding down Y/N’s tongue, she feels his cock give a foreshadowing twitch in her cupped fingers, and then a sudden warmth erupts across the thigh she has propped between his knees. The ball at the bottom of his stomach bursts in a kaleidoscope of colors behind his eyes, dissolving into chords of lightning that bristle along every nerve ending under his skin, from the heels of his feet to the tips of his fingers to the curve of his ears. All sound around him goes warbley for a millisecond, and when his eardrums come to, the first noise caught is Y/N’s voice full of angry annoyance. “I meant make a mess of yourself, not me!” Harry splutters into a round of drunken, spaced-out laughter as he swings his head back forward, cheeks tinted a gentle rose, eyes scrunching with amusement. His tone is playfully defensive. “You said to cum and I did!” “You’re lucky I’m wearing shorts...” She grumbles, jerking her hand away from where her fingers are tangled into the locks behind his head. His hair is somewhat dry already, the definition of his natural curls surfacing, bouncing lightly as his shoulders shake with glee. Y/N folds out a neat wad of toilet paper and scrubs the milky substance from her thigh, chucking it into the trash bin and throwing him a glare. “Gross.” “Oh, shut up!” Harry uncurls his stiff fingers from the curtain pole above his head and dramatically sweeps his other hand from the wall, letting both arms fall crossed before his naked chest— which is still somewhat heaving. He cocks his head to the side, eyes reflecting slyness as he gives her an arrogant side-smirk. “I don’t see you complaining when you’re begging for it down your throat.” She ignores his sarcastic (although accurate) dig, socking him straight on the “a” tattoo on his left shoulder. “I fucking hate you.” “You fucking love me, babe. You’re just mad ‘cause I’m telling the truth about how much of a little cock-slut you can be.” Y/N turns on her heels, bracing the burning in her cheeks. “Just finish washing up.” Harry reaches forward and tugs her into his open arms, kissing down her neck and all over the side of her face, chuckling at how warm her skin is. “You know I’m just teasin’, pet!”

“You’re still an dick for it.” She refuses to give him the response he wants, fighting off his contagious smile. “I thought you liked being called a ‘cock-slut’?!” He exclaims in faux shock, smushing her further into his embrace and stretching his neck forward to catch her nose with his pecking lips, feeling her trying to hold back a grin. “What about ‘cum-whore’? Is that better?’ She breaks out into full laughter. “You’re so annoying.” Harry sugars his voice into a babyish drawl, running his fingers down her sides and giggling boyishly as she squirms. “S’only cause I love you so much.” Y/N manages to break free, holding her arms out in front of her as a protective barrier to block another possible tickle attack. “Okay, okay! That’s enough!“ Harry wiggles his fingers dangerously, shrugging his brows. “Or is ittttt?” “No!” Y/N points at him warningly as he goes to exit the tub. “Get back in and finish your shower before you get a soap rash.” He rolls his eyes grandly, arms dropping to his sides. “Fine, mum.” The command was more to save herself than for his well-being, but it seems to have worked out for both of them so she won’t question her motives. “Can’t believe you actually listened for once.” She mocks, pulling the curtain closed as Harry turns on the faucet. He sticks his head out, smiling at her fondly and batting his lashes innocently. “It’s cause I want pancakes, pleaseeee.” Y/N reaches out and shoves his head back in. “That can be arranged.” He pokes it out again with an even bigger, exaggerated expression. “With blueberries.” She pushes him back in. “Fine.” Harry yells over the sound of the water. “And an omelet!” “Okay, don’t get ahead of yourself.”

#smut #harry styles smut #harry styles #harry styles imagine #harry styles one shot #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles dirty one shot #harry styles dirty imagine #harry styles dirty fanfic #harry styles writing #harry styles x reader #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #harry styles met gala #harry styles solo

2K notes · View notes

whumphoarder · 5 years

Text

D is for Diploma

Summary: Between all of his commitments, Peter’s grades start slipping, putting him in danger of losing his academic scholarship to Midtown. Stressed and guilt-ridden about the effect this will have on May’s finances, he ends up worrying himself sick and having a breakdown in Tony’s lab.

Word count: 3,759

Genre: emotional hurt/comfort, angst, hurt/comfort

A/N: Thanks so much to @xxx-cat-xxx and @sallyidss for beta reading and encouragement <3

Link to read on Ao3

“But how are you getting a C in gym class?” Ned balks at his friend. He’s peering over Peter’s shoulder as he scrolls through his quarterly grades on the school library computer. “Everyone gets an A. I’m getting an A. All you gotta do is show up and at least look like you’re trying and boom, automatic A.”

Peter rubs a hand at the back of his neck sheepishly. “So, remember after the Rhino dude attacked me, how I had all those bruises that didn’t heal right away?”

“Yeah...” Ned recalls, frowning. “But you said they didn’t hurt.”

“They didn’t! Not really, anyway,” Peter says quickly. “But like, I didn’t really want everyone to see that, so I kinda didn’t change into my uniform. And apparently if you don’t change, Wilson just marks you as absent.”

“Ah.” Ned gives him a sympathetic wince. “Yeah, that’s lame.”

“What I don’t understand,” MJ pipes up, glancing up from the book she’s had her nose in all afternoon, “is the D in Spanish. Rodríguez isn’t even a hard teacher.”

Peter’s face flushes with embarrassment. “So… I might have forgotten to submit a couple assignments.”

She quirks an eyebrow. “You forgot? He reminds us what’s due, like, three times every class period.”

“I mean, it was just the take-home quiz...” he mumbles. “And some of the homework sheets. Oh, and that cultural essay thing about the ancient Mayans.”

“Peter.” She blinks at him. “That was like, twenty percent of our grade.”

“Well, to be fair, I did have a concussion,” he defends. “It was a little hard to remember stuff that week.”

Ned rolls his eyes. “Oh yeah, that makes it so much better.”

Peter huffs out a laugh. Honestly, between all the hours he’s been logging lately as Spider-Man, his frequent internship nights with Tony in the lab, the increasingly demanding decathlon practice schedule as their team moves toward regionals, and the weekend shifts he’s started picking up at Delmar’s (because, let’s face it, the vigilante life isn’t the most lucrative career path—the occasional free churro notwithstanding), Peter thinks he’s been doing quite well juggling everything. Sure, his grades aren’t quite the neat row of A’s and the occasional B he’s grown accustomed to throughout his school career, but it’s not like he’s failing anything.

“I’ve just got different priorities now,” Peter says with a shrug. “I still show up and I’m passing all my classes, so what does the grade matter?”

MJ returns the shrug, looking vaguely impressed with him. “It doesn’t really. I’ve always been morally opposed to using arbitrary numerical values as a measure of academic success.” She shifts her gaze back to her novel before adding, offhandedly, “But you gotta admit, the tuition break is nice.”

And in those nine little words, she might as well have punched him in the gut.

“Oh shit,” Peter breathes out. Hurriedly, he starts gathering books together and getting to his feet.

“What?” Ned asks, looking puzzled.

“Um, I gotta go,” he blurts. And then before anyone can say another word, he’s out of the library doors.

The Parkers aren’t poor, exactly.

May works full-time at her job as a neonatal nurse, besides picking up extra shifts one or two nights a month to give them a bit of cushion. Between her wages and the social security checks that come every month from Ben’s pension, the two of them get by. Sure, Peter might not have name-brand clothes or the coolest tech or even a pair of gym shoes without a bit of duct tape on the soles, but there’s always been food on the table and a roof over his head, so Peter’s never stressed that much about their financial situation.

Maybe that’s how he managed to completely forget about his academic scholarship.

He’s qualified for it ever since he passed Midtown’s entrance exams in the top tenth percentile back in eighth grade. The money is substantial—slightly over two-thirds of the tuition cost is paid for him—and the scholarship automatically renews every semester provided he maintains a grade point average of 3.3 or higher, which has never been a problem for him.

That is, up until now. Factoring in his B in history, the C’s in gym and trig, and his D in Spanish, his GPA is currently sitting at 2.9.

Peter is going to lose his scholarship.

With less than two weeks left before finals, Peter starts cramming in all the studying he can manage. He stays up late, pouring over his trigonometry notes, trying to work his way through all the practice problems he’s been slacking on. He makes a point of showing up three minutes early to gym class every day, even if he has to use a bit of his enhanced speed to get all the way there from the chem labs on the other side of the building. On the train, he quizzes himself on the names of historical figures and the dates of battles long-since fought. Some of his teachers are willing to work with him, letting him turn in late assignments for partial credit or giving him additional projects to complete.

And then there’s Spanish.

“Isn’t there some kind of extra credit project I can do?” Peter begs. “Anything?”

It’s his study hall period and he’s at Señor Rodríguez’s desk for the second day in a row, desperately hoping for anything that could give his grade the boost it needs.

“I’m sorry, Peter,” his teacher says, sounding genuinely regretful. “But you’ve had countless opportunities this semester to get your grade up via homework and test retakes, all of which you neglected to take advantage of. Coming to me with less than ten days left in the semester requesting make up work for assignments worth significant percentages of your grade is simply too little, too late.”

“But… I had a concussion that week,” Peter argues. “Like, right when it was all due. And I would have done the work before, but…” He trails off, unable to finish his sentence without explaining his unorthodox extracurriculars. “I...I was busy,” he concludes weakly.

Rodríguez raises an eyebrow a little skeptically. “I didn’t receive any notes from the nurse’s office about this concussion.”

Peter glances down to his feet. “Well, that’s because she didn’t know, exactly…”

No one did—not even May. After getting all those bruises the week before, Peter didn’t want anyone to know he was hurt again so soon. Apparently Karen hadn’t deemed the blow to the head he took severe enough to override his wishes. He’d just dealt with the headaches and brain fog the best he could and sort of floated through that week on his own. In hindsight, maybe not his best plan.

“Well, I guess this is a good life lesson for you then, Peter,” Rodríguez says. His voice is firm, but not unkind. “Part of growing up is taking responsibility and learning to communicate with authority figures before you get into trouble.”

“Right, and I get that,” Peter babbles, “I just—”

His teacher holds up a finger, quieting him. “My job is to train my students for success in the real world, and sometimes that means reminding you that actions have consequences. ¿Lo entiendes?”

And Peter finds himself nodding. Because, despite the pool of dread growing in his gut, he does understand. He wants to be mad, wants to say it’s unfair and the universe gave him a raw deal and he doesn’t deserve this. But he can’t. Rodríguez is right.

And Peter’s still fucked.

By the time Friday rolls around, Peter’s barely functioning. Besides all the extra assignments and studying for finals, he’s had three days in a row of Decathlon practices, followed by some particularly eventful evening patrols that all went quite a bit later than his usual curfew of ten p.m.

He can’t get much of his lunch down today, which does nothing to appease his friends’ concerned looks. The food seems tasteless in his mouth and he’s so tired he nearly nods off into his cafeteria chicken nuggets.

When school finally lets out, he’s surprised and a little disheartened to see the sleek black car waiting for him in the bus circle. He’d totally forgotten it was an internship weekend.

Figures.

Peter groans as he disconnects the circuits he just switched out. He’s been trying to fix a bug in his suit’s heater upgrade for the last twenty minutes now, but nothing he attempts is working and his head is throbbing so much that his vision is hazy.

“Just try again, kid,” Tony encourages absently from across the workshop. He’s not looking up, fully engrossed as he is in his own project. “You got this.”

“Yeah...” Peter mutters under his breath. Blinking a few times, he rubs a hand at his eyes to try to clear his vision.

He connects a different wire. That one doesn’t yield any better results, so he unplugs it and tries again. Then again. Then again. He’s fairly sure he’s already tried the next combination, but he’s so tired he can’t remember so he does it again just to be sure. Nothing.

Peter is so frustrated now that his hands are actually shaking. He pauses and takes a deep breath before trying again.

This time, the wire sparks at him.

“I can’t do this!” Peter exclaims, shoving the suit away from him across the table. “I can’t do anything! Why am I so fucking stupid?!”

He’s breathing heavily now, tears clouding his vision even further. Within a few seconds he feels Tony’s hand rest heavily on his shoulder. It should be comforting, but it only makes Peter feel pathetic.

“C’mon, just take a deep breath and—”

“No!” Peter blurts, shaking away from Tony’s grip. “That’s not going to fix anything! I can’t fix this—don’t you see?!”

Stepping backwards, Tony holds his hands up in front of his chest, keeping his expression perfectly neutral. “Okay…” he says carefully. “I think you might need a break.”

Tears prick at Peter’s eyes and he instantly regrets snapping at his mentor. “No, no, I didn’t mean that! I’m s-sorry, ’m fine…” he says. It would probably sound a lot more convincing if his breath would stop hitching.

Tony lifts an eyebrow. “Yeah, no, I’m pulling rank here,” he declares. “It’s break time.”

“No!” Peter protests. His hands fumble back on the table for the wires. “I gotta finish it! It’s so close, it’s just—” He cuts himself off as the images of the suit swim before his eyes, his head throbbing. “I, I need to finish…” he concludes lamely.

“Peter, just stop,” Tony says with an exasperated sigh. “You’re no good like this.”

Somehow, those words are the catalyst. Peter feels every emotion he’s been bottling up for the past week erupt inside of him. His breath hitches and his head pulses. “I, I know I’m not,” he manages to say, “but that’s why I gotta… gotta finish, then maybe—”

“Jesus, kid,” Tony breathes out. “That’s not what I meant at all. I was just saying—”

Peter cuts him off. “No, I… I know…” Tears are sliding down Peter’s cheeks now. He runs a hand through his hair, shoulders shaking. “’M sorry.”

Tony’s eyes are a mixture of concern and confusion. “Whoa, hey, what’s going on here?” Tugging the edge of his sleeve over his thumb, Tony uses it to wipe a few of the tears off his cheeks. “Talk to me.”

Honestly, Peter doesn’t even know where to begin. The frustration of his current project, the lack of sleep, his grades, the scholarship…

“I just… I-I have a headache.”

Peter doesn’t know why he says it—the pressure in his skull doesn’t even rank very high on his list of concerns at the moment, yet the simple physicality of it somehow makes it the easiest thing to admit. He rubs the back of his hand at his eyes, but his vision is still so blurry. “Can’t really see straight…”

Tony’s brows knit together. “Is it a migraine?”

“N-No,” Peter says between choked sobs. “Or... I don’t know, I don’t th-think so?” Despite never having had a migraine, he’s pretty sure that’s not what this is. The pain isn’t anything exceptional—it’s just that he can’t seem to stop crying and he’s so fucking tired.

“Either way, I think you’ll feel better once you’ve got a couple painkillers in you,” Tony reasons. “C’mon, let’s get you sorted out.”

Peter shakes his head in weak protest. “No, ’s’okay... “

“Nope,” Tony says, his voice a little more firm. “Trust me on this, you don’t want to work in a lab right now. It’s bright, and loud, and honestly, you’re a bit of a safety hazard at the moment.”

To Peter’s horror, a fresh wave of emotion comes over him and he finds himself properly crying now, his frame wracking with each sob.

“Okay, okay, alright…” Tony murmurs, and Peter feels a hand awkwardly patting him on the back.

It’s all so idiotic, Peter decides, standing in Tony’s lab, crying over things that are completely his own fault and a headache that isn’t even that bad.

“You’re okay, kid,” Tony whispers. “Just breathe.”

As Peter struggles to pull himself together, he feels the hand switch to rubbing circles on his back. It moves up to the back of his neck, but halts as soon as Tony’s fingers touch Peter’s bare skin.

Tony frowns. “Do you have a fever?”

“Wh-What?” Peter’s throat is thick.

“You’re really warm,” Tony explains. He flips his hand around to press the back of his fingers to Peter’s skin, first on his neck, then on his cheek. “Yeah. FRIDAY, can we get a read on that?”

“100.7, boss,” she supplies.

Tony hums a bit. “Yeah, that’s about what I thought…”

Peter doesn’t get it. “B-But I’m not sick,” he protests. “Just—”

“Exhausted,” Tony finishes for him. “When’s the last time you had a full night’s sleep?”

Sniffling, Peter gives a non-committal shrug.

“Yeah, that’s not good, kid,” Tony huffs. “Take it from a guy who has a bit of experience in this area—not sleeping enough will seriously mess you up.”

With a hand on Peter’s back, Tony starts gently ushering the kid out of the lab. Peter doesn’t even bother protesting anymore as he shuffles along, his lip quivering. He figures he’s caused enough trouble today.

Tony deposits him onto the couch in the living room and Peter immediately curls up against the arm rest, squeezing his eyelids shut in an effort not to think about what a fool he’s making of himself in front of his mentor. It doesn’t help much.

“You just chill out for a minute here, okay?” Tony says quietly, draping a blanket over Peter. “I’m gonna get you some meds.”

Peter nods and Tony gives his shoulder a final squeeze before stepping out.

The second he’s alone, the tears start streaming down again, hot and silent and totally uncontrollable. If he’s not working in the lab, then he really should be studying for these stupid finals, but he can’t bring himself to pull out his flash cards. He doesn’t think he can rest—not with so much hanging over his head—but he can’t work either. Tony was right; he’s just no good right now.

When Tony reenters with painkillers and a glass of water, he doesn’t say anything about how Peter is hurriedly sitting up and scrubbing his face with his hands in a pointless attempt to pull himself together. He just presses two pills into Peter’s palm.

Looking down at the painkillers in his shaking hand, Peter’s stomach twists and he’s suddenly not so sure they’ll be able to stay down. “I can’t. I feel sick,” he admits in a whisper.

With a quiet sigh, Tony perches himself on the edge of the sofa, right beside Peter’s tucked knees. “I think you’re just tired, kiddo. Sometimes that makes you feel a little sick.”

Peter doesn’t say anything so Tony passes him the glass of water. “Here. Humor me,” he says. “If I’m wrong, I’ll pay for the dry cleaning.”

It’s a stupid joke, but the corners of Peter’s lips twitch anyway. “Okay,” he croaks.

Peter slips the pills into his mouth and swallows them down with a sip of water. He’s queasy, but it’s not too bad. He goes to set the cup back down on the coffee table, but his mentor shakes his head.

“Drink the whole thing,” Tony instructs.

Peter obeys. It takes him a couple of minutes, but he manages to get the entire cup down and feels just the smallest bit better for it.

Tony takes the empty glass from his hand and sets it on the table. “Think you can sleep now?”

Peter just shrugs. He wants to—god, he wants to—but he doesn’t deserve it. Not when this is all his own damn fault. His voice is barely a whisper when he speaks again:

“I think I really messed up, Mr. Stark.”

Over the next ten minutes, it all comes tumbling out: the job at Delmar’s, the decathlon requirements, the late patrols, his slipping grades, his scholarship, everything.

“I just… I don’t want to change schools,” Peter concludes softly. “I like Midtown. It was the first place I really felt like… well, like I fit in.”

Tony’s been quiet for the whole time Peter was speaking, but now his brow furrows. “Why would you need to quit Midtown?”

Peter blinks at him; isn’t it obvious? “Because the full tuition is eight thousand dollars a semester. Without the scholarship…” he trails off. “I just can’t do that to May.”

A look of relief spreads across Tony’s face. “Is that all? That’s the whole issue?” He huffs out an amused breath. “Done. Consider it paid. Problem solved.”

Peter feels his cheeks flush. He shakes his head frantically. “No, no, I didn’t mean that you should pay! Please don’t do that!”

Now it’s Tony’s turn to blink at him. “Peter. I am a multi-billionaire. Do you have any idea what eight thousand dollars is to me?”

“But you shouldn’t have t—”

“Peanuts,” Tony cuts him off. “I’ve spent more on peanuts than that.”

“But—”

“And by that I mean actual, honest-to-god peanuts,” Tony continues over the kid’s protests. “There’s this company in Peru that slow-roasts them for twenty-one days in a secret spice blend. Happy’s obsessed with ‘em—says they’re god’s gift to mankind. So, for Christmas one year—”

“You can’t pay my tuition!” Peter blurts out.

Tony stops his story abruptly. His eyes narrow at Peter. “And why exactly is that?”

“Because…” Running a hand through his hair, Peter draws in a shuddery breath. “Because… If anyone should pay, it’s me. I-I’m the one who fucked up and lost the stupid scholarship. I should be the one responsible for fixing this.”

“But you can’t fix it,” Tony says bluntly.

Peter’s caught off-guard. “Wh-What? N-No, I just need to get my grades up, and, and…”

Tony’s voice is gentler now. “You can’t, Peter. You can’t get a 2.9 up to a 3.3 by next week, no matter how well you do on your exams. You’ve gotta know that.”

(Peter does know. He’s known for days. He’s always been good at math, after all.)

“So you can’t keep going on like this, trying to make up for what happened,” Tony concludes.

Tears prick at the corners of Peter’s eyes once more. He’s determined not to let them fall this time. “But I deserve it…” he whispers.

Tony shrugs. “If we always got what we deserved, I never would have made it through the 90s.” He huffs out a short laugh. “At least nobody has to bail you out of prison. Same can’t be said for all of us.”

In spite of Peter’s earlier resolve, the traitorous tears slip out anyway. He wonders how he has any left.

Tony sobers a bit. “You’re a good kid, Pete,” he says quietly. “But you’re trying to carry the whole world on your shoulders and that’s enough to break anyone. It’s okay to ask for help sometimes. Even if you fucked up.”

Peter swallows hard. “Okay.”

“So let’s try this again,” Tony says. He makes eye contact with Peter. “What do you need, kid?”

“Right now?” Peter exhales deeply. “I dunno. A nap?”

Tony smirks slightly. “I think we can manage that.”

Peter makes it through finals.

All his extra effort and studying does yield some results. His gym grade increases to a B after Coach Wilson grades his two-page extra credit report on the rules of badminton. The trig final is rough, but he pulls in another couple points there, and the art teacher accepts a few late sketches from the unit on perspectivism. With the help of the final exam, he even manages to eek out a C- in Spanish.

When it’s all said and done, Peter’s GPA sits at 3.1.

“That wasn’t easy to do. I’m proud of you, Peter,” May says sincerely. “You know that, right?”

Peter shrugs. “I guess so.”

They’re sitting together at the apartment’s small kitchen table, May’s open laptop in front of them with all of Peter’s end of semester grades displayed. Peter’s eyes drift down from the screen to the table where a check for eight thousand dollars signed by Tony Stark himself is staring back at him. He sighs.

May plants a quick kiss on the top of her nephew’s head. “Well, I know so. So for now, I’ll just know it for the both of us.”

Peter strokes his fingers over the crisp paper of the check. Besides covering tuition, Tony has now upgraded Peter’s unofficial SI internship to a paid position—something he says he should have done long ago, given how much time Peter spends working in the lab—and that will allow him to give Mr. Delmar his two-week notice.

He knows he should be grateful, but honestly, it’s going to take him some time to wrap his head around the concept of being taken care of like this.

Getting up from the table, May moves over to retrieve a small paper bag from the counter. “That reminds me—Mr. Stark told me to give you this.” She tosses the bag to Peter, who catches it easily.

Curiously, he opens it. He’s immediately hit with the aroma of exotic spices and roasted legumes. Peter can’t help but grin.

A note inside the bag reads: Enjoy your peanuts, kid.

A/N: If you enjoyed this story, you might also like:

Viral Wisdom

Go Down Swinging

A Pressing Emergency

Fic Masterlist

#irondad fic #irondad & spiderson #sick peter parker #hurt/comfort #crying #emotional breakdown #angst #soft angst #Emotional Hurt/Comfort #headache #fever #stress #school stress #gpa

387 notes · View notes

fanficshiddles · 5 years

Text

Caught in his web, Chapter 6

Chloe barely slept that night, she was sore and scared. She’d spent part of it in the shower again, crying.

She was also sure she went a bit delusional, as in the middle of the night she could’ve sworn that Loki entered her room and sat on her bedside, speaking softly to her while stroking her hair in a soothing manner.

‘No need to be scared, pet. I will take care of you.’ Were words that kept ringing her mind, in his voice. But she had been so tired, she couldn’t be sure if that had actually happened or not. And where did he come from? As she was almost certain it hadn’t been from the door, she’d been facing it while she lay in bed but never saw it opening when he suddenly appeared next to her.

In the morning, she was still in bed trying to get some sort of sleep when there was a knock and then the door swung open. To her horror, it was Ethan. She instantly scrambled back on the bed, dragging the blanket up with her.

Ethan smiled at her and closed the door with his foot, because he was carrying a tray.

‘Loki had the maid cook this for you for breakfast. And he wants you to take this, too.’ Ethan said, motioning to a pill that was in a small shots cup next to the plate of food.

‘What is it?’ She asked, her voice sounded small and more vulnerable than yesterday, Ethan noticed.

‘It’s the morning after pill. Loki said you must take it, one way or another. So I suggest you take it yourself, or I will have to force it down you like a dog.’ He said in warning.

Chloe didn’t feel like she had the energy to fight. And she certainly didn’t want that big brute forcing a pill down her throat.

She didn’t look at Ethan as she grabbed the pill and swallowed it quickly. It wasn’t like she wanted to get pregnant anyway. But she certainly hoped that Loki wasn’t going to take her without protection regularly, surely taking the morning after pill often wasn’t a good thing? Hell, she didn’t even want him to take her with protection.

‘Eat up.’ Ethan said and left her to it, with the tray on the bed beside her.

Chloe looked at the tray and part of her wanted to throw it at Ethan. But then, it was more Loki she was angry with. And the food did look delicious. Various fruits with a few different flavours of yogurt and fresh apple juice.

So she decided to tuck in instead of wasting it.

‘Did she take it?’ Loki asked Ethan when he entered his room. Loki was just putting on his suit jacket and sorting his tie, the same one he had used to restrain her wrists last night.

‘She did, without any arguments.’ Ethan nodded, waiting by the door.

‘Good. Maybe she will start to see sense today.’ Loki grinned, looking at himself in the mirror.

‘Do you want me to stay here by her door and make sure she doesn’t leave?’ Ethan offered.

‘No need. She’s not a prisoner, she can leave her room and go wherever she wants in the house. Once she has earned my trust, she will be allowed to come and go as she pleases with an escort.

Hopefully by the time her College starts in a few months she will be at that stage.’ Loki put on his leather gloves then followed Ethan out.

Nelson was waiting outside for them, he opened the car door for Loki and Ethan to pile into. Samuel was already in the car, waiting for them.

‘Is he there?’ Loki asked.

‘Yep. He has no clue why you’ve called him in for a chat.’ Samuel confirmed.

‘Excellent. The element of surprise is always the best.’ Loki grinned wickedly.

When they pulled up outside Loki’s building, he felt the usual surge of pride shoot through him. This was all his, as was a lot of the big company buildings in London. But this one, was all his and everyone knew it.

They walked in and it was bustling with energy as always. Workers going about, getting ready to start work for the day. The receptionist greeted him with the usual smile and good morning, Sir and he reciprocated with a wink, making her blush.

He continued on with Ethan and Samuel into the lift, then waited patiently while they headed up to the top floor where his office was. Of course, all the lower floors were a façade for the building. A company that dealt in selling and renting houses and other buildings. Loki quite literally owned a very high percentage of the property market in the city.

When they got into Loki’s office, there was a man waiting there for him.

‘Mr Laufeyson.’ He said nervously, putting his hand out.

‘Good to see you, Mike.’ Loki smiled, shaking his hand firmly after taking off his gloves.

Mike was shaking and Loki could feel that in his hand shake. It happened quite regularly that Loki dealt with people who were scared of him. It always gave him a bit of a rush, actually.

‘You… wanted to see me, Sir?’ Mike said as Loki went around to his side of the desk and took off his jacket, draping it over the back of his chair.

‘I did indeed. I wanted to ask why your company is behind on paying its bills?’ Loki asked firmly, sitting down on his leather chair.

Mike looked slightly shocked. ‘I… well, we haven’t been doing as well this year. Money has been a bit tight.’

‘And that is your problem. You are due money for rent, you’re in a contract that stipulates you pay monthly.’

‘I… I thought it was Mr Walsh’s company that rented out the company to me.’ Mike said, he looked over his shoulder and swallowed hard when he noticed that Ethan and Samuel were standing by the door, guarding it.

‘It is. But do you know who has recently bought his company and is now chasing up late payments?’ Loki raised an eyebrow at Mike. Whose face had dropped completely.

‘Yo… Yo… You?’

‘Correct. Now, are you able to pay me my fifteen grand by the end of today?’ Loki tapped his fingers on the desk.

‘Fifteen grand? It’s only ten grand I’m due!’ Mike said in a panic.

‘You’ve been overdue for a long time. And it will keep going up until you either pay me, or I lose my patience with you.’ Loki said calmly, staring him down.

‘There’s no way I will be able to pay that much.’

‘Is that so?’ Loki folded his arms over his chest. ‘Well, you either pay me what I am due or I will need to take something else from you.’

‘I don’t have anything else…’

‘Oh you do.’ Loki stood up and walked around his desk towards him. ‘You own Langfield college.’

Mike’s eyes widened in horror. ‘No. It… it isn’t for sale.’ He tried to sound brave, but it wasn’t working.

‘Well, if you don’t give it to me, then I will have no other option but to take it by force. And believe me, I will get what I want.’ He snarled.

Mike had bought Langfield college over ten years ago. But Loki had his eye on it for a while, for… certain reasons… and now the perfect opportunity had arisen to gain said college.

‘But… what would you want with a college? It’s not like you can earn much money from it. It’s just where people go to learn.’ Mike didn’t understand what someone like Loki would want it for.

‘I know what a college is, Mike.’ He hissed. ‘I have my reasons for wanting it. So are you going to give it to me? And all your debt will be wiped away, just like that. And, because I am a reasonable man, you can have free rent with your company for the next ten years. So as you say, you don’t earn much money from the college so why not concentrate on your company instead? I’d say that’s fair, no?’ Loki leaned back on his desk, awaiting his answer.

Mike sighed and looked down, realising he had no other option. ‘Alright. I’ll give you Langfield college. But I beg you, please don’t take away the fundings for the college.’ Mike thought Loki wanted it just to steal from the students and take all their funding.

Loki raised an eyebrow at him. ‘Oh I won’t. On the contrary, I intend to put more money into the college. The amount you’ve been putting in of late is abysmal.’

‘It’s not easy trying to pay the teachers a good sum, for all the work they do. Then there’s materials and not to mention grounds work and the living accommodations.’ Mike said in defence, but Loki didn’t believe him. He had seen the figures, he knew that Mike or someone else was fiddling with them. He was going to find out who it was, and he would make sure whoever it was, was properly seen to.

It was no secret that the college had been struggling the last few years, meaning that parents and students themselves were having to pay more for their loans. Loan repayments were way higher than they used to be, a way for the college to get more money in. But it was working because it was a really good college.

‘Well, I will soon find out just how difficult it is to own one.’ Loki said smugly, shutting him up. ‘I will have my solicitor draw up a contract, I will be in touch when it’s ready for you to come and sign over.’

Loki put his hand out towards him again and Mike hesitated before shaking hands. Sealing the deal.

Chloe had spent the morning moping around in the bedroom. She didn’t even try the door to see if it was unlocked, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do.

She spent some time sitting by the window, looking outside. To her surprise, it didn’t look like she had expected. He lived down a dead-end street that had a mini roundabout, with other fancy but normal houses around. Her window looked out to the house next door, there was a bit of gravel and a garage on the side of Loki’s house, then a huge fence and the next house.

She’d watched two kids playing football in their front garden for a while. Then she saw a girl about her age heading out on her own. It made her wonder if she would ever feel that kind of freedom again or not. Heck, Chloe didn’t even think she would be allowed out of this room alone.

Then her mind wandered to college, that she was supposed to start in just over two months’ time... Langfield college. When she’d went to visit, it was perfect. She had planned to live on site, her parents had been able to pay for most of it then she was going to take out a loan. But now, she had no idea what was going to happen.

She could see part of the road out her window and recognised the fancy ass car coming down the road to the house, she knew that was Loki and his goons returning…

#Loki #Tom Hiddleston #fan fiction #au!Loki #caught in his web

132 notes · View notes