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secret-diary-of-an-fa · 7 months

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The Very Belated 2023 Awards!

Ha! I bet you fuckers thought I’d forgotten about the End of Year Round-up from 2023. Nope! I was just lulling you into a false sense of security. As though I’d miss the opportunity to take a massive, steaming shit on an entire year’s worth of human culture. So, what can we say about 2023? It definitely fucking happened, we know that much. But was it good? Was it bad? Was it a little bit of both? We know from my previous blogs that it produced some real cinematic and televisual gems, but are these a sign of culture self-correcting after the wilderness years or just aberrations bobbing about in the usual sea of viscous dreck? Well, 2023 is dead now, so if we want to find out, the only way is to split open its bloated carcass and start rummaging around in a bleak parody of the autopsy process. As always, I’ll be handing out gongs to things, artefacts and events from 2023 itself, but also just to shit I discovered in the relevant year. Here we fucking goooooooo!

The Birthday Cake Full of Puppies Award for Loveliest Surprise… … Goes, jointly, to Wild Blue Yonder and The Giggle, the two Doctor Who specials that weren’t the fucking Star Beast. See, after The Star Beast, I was thoroughly disappointed. A virtue-signalling, nonsensical mess that, while briefly entertaining, failed miserably to reach the giddy heights of Russel T. Davies’ initial run on the show and desperately needed a strong editorial hand to stop characters repeating themselves or needlessly referencing the hot pile of garbage that was the Chibnall era. I wasn’t expecting great things from the two follow-ups and only really watched them because I thought RTD had earned himself more than one chance to impress me. And whaddaya know? We got two fucking perfect Who episodes- one a big, genuinely unsettling slice of cosmic horror and one a bombastic, energetic extravaganza that resurrected a lot of fan-favourite characters, introduced a new threat for the upcoming Gatwa-era and just generally fucking rocked. Yes, I know the Xmas Special that followed was a bit crap (nautical-punk Goblins in Doctor Who? Piss off.), but it’s not fair to judge any season of Who on its associated Xmas Special, so we’re just going to let that slide.

The Throwing Keanu Reeves Down a Lot of Stairs Award… … Goes to John Wick 4, which threw Keanu Reeves down a lot of stairs. And was also a very good movie. But mainly this award is about the stairs.

The Blind Archer Award for Missing the Cocking Point… … Goes to the whole bloody stupid debate around A.I., which is broadly divided into two equally slappable camps. In the Soulless Silicone Silver corner, we have a bunch of hooting tech bros who think that they’ve invented a tool that obviates the need for talent and spirit and artistic vision because it (technically) allows any yeehaw with an internet connection to vomit out ill-conceived content ordered up from a computer terminal like the intellectual equivalent of an underwhelming drive-thru burger. Meanwhile, in the drippy, wishy-washy grey no-colour corner, we have a swarm of whiny, for-profit ‘creatives’ (and I use that word with enough sarcasm to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool), terrified that their soulless, talentless content will be replaced by the equally soulless, talentless content of fucking Skynet, thereby doing them out of a revenue stream they don’t bloody deserve. Nobody seems to be talking about how the new technology can be leveraged to create actual, meaningful art, not just content. Case in point, I’ve always fancied creating a TV series or film, but I don’t know any actors and can’t afford to pay professionals, nor can I afford the filming equipment and green-screen studio rental I’d need to bring one of my sci-fi or fantasy concepts to life. AI allows for the creation of virtual environments and actors based on original ideas, sketches and descriptions plugged into machine-learning-guided rendering software. These can then be assembled using a human-provided script (mine, duh) to create footage which can be edited into something cogent and compelling. It’s a terrific amount of work involving a wildly steep learning curve, but it’s an example of how AI allows working class creators without the resources of our middle-class wanker peers a way into visual mediums that we simply haven’t been able to access or utilise. Incidentally, I hope to start uploading short films made using this method sometime in the next month or two. Pluuuuuuuug!

The Award for Special Services to Doom… … Goes to the impending collapse of AMOC (or Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation), which includes part of the Gulf Stream and several other important ocean currents. It’s due to cease functioning within the next 100 years due to man-made climate change, most probably by the year 2100, when many of us will still be alive (albeit old as balls). Once it goes, the northern hemisphere will become colder, making agriculture functionally impossible in parts of Europe; the ocean-level will rise up to a meter in some places, drowning many coastal cities; the wet and dry season of at least one rainforest will flip, with the result that said rainforest may die, unable to adapt quick enough, which would make climate change even more extreme. Basically, if you’re rooting for the collapse of civilisation in the not-too-distant future, you can start polishing your Mad Max cosplay outfits, because shit’s about to go doooooown, boi! I mean, unless governments actually listen to climate scientists for a change and somehow avert this looming catastrophe. Ha! Yeah. Dream on.

The Lex Luthor Award For Pure Fucking Evil... … Goes, once again, to the Tories, who are always evil, but seemed to make a special effort to ruin everything for everyone forever in 2023. Aside from engineering a decline in the NHS so severe that people with agonising mouth infections can’t access dentists at short notice, they also tried to pass a bill that would allow them to monitor the bank accounts of people on benefits as a matter of course and continued to allow the dumping of waste directly into the sea, turning the coast of Blackpool brown with human excrement (it was, of course, they who repealed the environmental protection laws that used to make this sort of thing illegal). You really couldn’t make these people up. It’s like someone drew the word ‘CUNT’ on a whiteboard and then got a whole room full of cunt-experts to make a mind-map around it. Then they loaded the results into ChatGPT and the result was the Tory Party of Great Britain.

The Confused Mountaineer Award for Picking the Wrong Hill to Die On… … Goes to Disney, which spent 2023 losing money hand over fist. Even when its films and telly shows technically made some money, they represented such a reduction in the value of the associated IP that the company might as well have time travelled into the future, stolen all its own shares, and flushed them down a giant toilet. Obviously, I hate Disney and I’ve always hated them- I didn’t just jump on the band-wagon when the Internet collectively realised they were a bunch of tossers. I’ve hated them steadily and continually for most of my life for the very simple reason that they use fucking slave-labour. Their merch is made in fucking sweat-shops! Which is why it’s particularly hilarious that their loss of relevance as a producer of culture owes so much to their flimsy pretence at wokeness (which manifested itself as a series of interchangeable, tedious girl-bosses photoshopped inexpertly into franchises like Star Wars and Marvel whose profitability largely came from grumpy nerds who were never going to fall for that shit). Shoulda stuck to making family films for people with very low expectations, Disno! It’s what you’re good at! And yes, this award does only exist so I can laugh at the slow death-by-a-thousand-cuts of some dipshits I dislike. It’s just so fucking dumb! Like, these are people who regard anyone from a developing nation as a disposable component in a big machine for making underwhelming crap- an interchangeable cog to be instrumentalised and dehumanised until death. And yet the hill they chose to fucking die on was pretending to give a shit about inclusivity. Yeah. Disney are real fucking inclusive… they want everyone to buy their ill-conceived swill, not just pasty, dick-owning Americans. Brilliantly, in their mad scrabble for new audiences, they seem to have lost the one they had… while utterly failing to convince anyone else to jump on board. Because, let’s be honest, if you want to watch a film about the black experience in the US or about smashing the patriarchy, you’re probably going to go to Jordan Peele or re-watch The Perfection (not just a great feminist film, by the way, but a fucking balls-to-the-wall brilliant film full stop). You’re probably not going to rely on a string of bland, cookie-cutter studios owned and operated by the arsewipes still desperately still trying to wring the last few pennies out of pissing Star Wars.

The Greatest Sentence I’ve Heard All Year Award… … Goes to my wife, who recently went to see that Barbie movie that people inexplicably decided to shove in the same bracket as Oppenheimer. I don’t really object to the existence of this flick in and of itself, because it’s not really taking anything away from me- it’s just not for me, and that’s fine. Obvs, I did think it was slightly icky that Matel were putting so much effort into re-framing their plastic Anorexia Generator as a feminist icon and it was super weird that the message it ultimately lands on is ‘sex-based oppression is fine if you gender-flip it’, but I don’t have to care so, for the most part, I don’t. I certainly didn’t have any problem with my missus taking her daughter from a previous relationship and her/our kinda-sorta adopted daughter to see it. Because I’m not a sack of shit who demands that other peoples tastes precisely match my own. However, I really didn’t like the hype around the movie. I don’t like brightly-coloured, disposable dreck that only exists to sell toys giving itself airs and graces, especially not when that means 1-for-1 comparisons to, say, a really important film about the invention of the nuclear bomb and the political scheming and manoeuvring that surrounded it. Which brings us to the Greatest Sentence I’ve Heard All Year. After returning home from her cinematic excursion, my wife had this to say about Barbie: “I don’t understand what all the fuss was about- it was a pile of shit, really.” Bonus points for the fact that she still quite enjoyed it and this wonderful piece of commentary was delivered, in musing tones, as an assessment of its objective merits rather than a statement of personal preference. I married the right woman.

The Circus Midget Genocide Award for Gratuitous Punching Down... … Goes to the song ‘What Have We Become’ by Paul Heaton, who I usually like. The Beautiful South are one of my favourite bands (despite the fact they no longer exist), but ‘What Have We Become’, one of Heaton’s subsequent solo efforts, makes me genuinely uncomfortable. In tackling the Americanisation of British culture (which I agree is a problem), Heaton seems to take aim as much at the ordinary folks on the receiving end of this neo-colonialism as at the phenomenon itself. I don’t think that whether or not something ‘punches down’ is a meaningful criticism relating to a cultural artefact’s artistic merit. Sometimes, it’s necessary to call out the bumbling normal on their slack-jawed bullshit. But this just feels mean-spirited and indiscriminate. Yeah, Heaton, people enjoy the convenience of US-style fast-food chains and, as a country, we’re probably a bit addicted to the cult of needless enthusiasm that started in the States, but I’ve never met anyone whose more of a miserable cunt for eating a takeout pizza while watching a happy-go-lucky comedy like My Name is Earl, so maybe get off your high horse for a minute. Your music’s great for the most part, but I think I can answer the question ‘What Have We Become?’ based purely on the song itself. A prick. You’ve become a prick.

The Pluggity McPlugface Aware for Most Exciting New Press… ... Goes to X Press, which is technically the new fiction imprint of Poetry Bus Press, I think. They’re still getting established and the name is subject to change, but I met the couple behind it at this year’s T.S. Elliot Prize and… er… okay, this is the bit where I have to admit I have a horse in this race. See, the reason I’m so excited by this new press getting off the ground is that I’m kinda the reason it exists. I pitched the publishers a sci-fi novel I had loaded and ready to fire off, not really expecting anything to come of it since they’ve only done poetry collections before. But hey, it’s not every day you meet someone in the publishing world while surrounded by gold-leafed rococo architecture and canapés, so I felt I had to go for it. Anyway, just a couple of months later, they’re putting together a whole new imprint and my novel, Warning: Infohazard is going to be first thing to roll out of it! So yeah… I’m chuffed about that. Stay tuned for further updates.

The Nick Clegg Award for Accomplishing the Square Root of Fuck All… … Goes to the AGA and WGA strikes that swept through Hollywood like a damp breeze this year. I’m usually on the side of striking workers, even when I’m being personally inconvenienced. Tell me the bus drivers are going on strike and, even if I need to catch a bus that day, I’ll pretty much root for them to win the battle- the poor fuckers are woefully underpaid for a tedious and demanding job. Teachers’ strike? Abso-fucking-lutely: these people work hard to ensure the next generation actually know things and deserve far more respect and accolades than they’re accorded (except the fuckers who worked at Marpool Primary during the 90s- those loathsome reptiles can choke on dick for all I care). NHS Doctors and nurses? Yup: they literally save lives and we, as a culture, still fail to give them their due. Dustbin men? Fuck yeah. Warehouse workers? Definitely (if anyone ever lets the poor fucks unionise). You get the idea. But I have my doubts about the Hollywood Writers and Actors Guilds mob. At the end of the day, even the working schlubs of Tinsel Town mostly deserve a thick ear more than a raise. We’re talking about people who drive past Skid Row (the most impoverished ghetto in the States, the lives of whose citizens they could actually improve) on their way to work, then get there and, as part of their social media management, tweet a load of shite about the Cause of the Week in order to look switched on and progressive. We’re talking about people who will do long-winded interviews about how important their casting or hiring is for the direction of our society while, two blocks away, a homeless dude overdoses on smack because it’s slightly quicker than starving to death.We’re talking about people who sold out their souls to a studio system that only wants and only seeks to produce derivative dreck when it was paying them well and only seem to have noticed it’s fucking them in the arse with a strap-on the size of the Empire State Building now that it’s no longer scattering coins in front of them. Of course, there are good, honest people working in La La Land who absolutely don’t deserve the fucking the studio system is giving them and who don’t walk around thinking they’re Zod’s Gift to the Enlightenment, and- for their sake- one slightly wants the strikes to succeed. The problem is that it’s very hard to spot them, obscured as they are by an ocean of absolute raging bell-ends. All of which is slightly by the by, because this award isn’t about whether the strikes deserve to succeed… it’s about the fact they made no appreciable difference to the media landscape of 2023 whatsoever. We still got Oppenheimer; we still got John Wick 4; we still got Luther: the Fallen Sun over on Netflix; we still got that unexpectedly fucking delightful Slumberland thing and a whole raft of really excellent, joyous family films; we still got some pretty ace telly. Basically, the only thing there seemed to be less of was absolute shit-swill, but it’d be a poor lookout for the strikers if that was their doing and not just a statistical anomaly. Imagine that on a placard: “We fucked off and culture improved by 150%!” So yeah: sorry WGA and AGA- as much as my socialist principles want any strike against a large, corrupt corporate system to succeed, you’re just not very sympathetic and you’ve done the square root of fuck all to help yourselves here.

The Special Award for Unbridled Excellence... … Goes to What We Do in the Shadows (the TV series- there was also a movie that was pretty good, but that came out ages ago). Technically, the telly series started in 2019, but it was still going in 2023 and that’s the year I finally got around to watching it, so I think I can justifiably slap it on this list. A mockumentary about three vampires, an energy vampire and a familiar flat-sharing on Staten Island, its one of the most hilarious, off-beat, filthy, brilliant things I’ve seen in years. It’s also surprisingly well-meaning and, mixed in with all the really, really funny jokes (which I’m not going to spoil), the violence and the gratuitous fucking, there are some genuinely sweet, heartfelt moments about found family, the bonds of love and friendship and the redemptive qualities that can sometimes surprise us in the darkest of people and places. I’m not saying it’s high art or anything like that- it’s as daft as a brush and any stab it takes at greater, more grandiose meaning is somewhat undercut by all the other shit that happens in it, but it is one of the most entertaining things on telly and deserves your attention. Just don’t tell the normals, they’ll only fucking ruin it like everything else. Let’s keep this one just for us freaks, okay?

The Smurf Viagra Award for Bluest Balls... … Goes to Dune: Part 2, which was supposed to come out in ‘23 and didn’t. Which is a shame because it the first part was a fucking banger. Maybe we could credit its delay to the writers’ and actors’ strike? I mean, that probably had nothing to do with it, but it’s important to boost the self-esteem of the simpler members of the international community. Great job, guys! You got one!

So that was 2023, then: a year of malice and incompetence just barely redeemed by a few shining cultural gems. Now we’re two months into 2024, and it’s time to look forward before we collide with a brick wall. Until next time, I’ve been Secret-Diary and you haven’t. Bye-bye.

#secret diary of a fat admirer #awards #movies #tv series #John Wick 4 #Other films too #I guess

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mypoisonedvine · 3 years

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𝖙𝖜𝖎𝖈𝖊 I || professor!helmut zemo x reader

𝖘𝖚𝖒𝖒𝖆𝖗𝖞 : history is so much more interesting when he’s teaching it. you’d better be careful before the two of you end up with a history of your own.

𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉 𝖈𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖙 : 6k

𝖜𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖘 : smut (incl. semi-public sex in an office and oral f receiving), significant age gap (reader is 20, zemo is 39; it isn’t actually mentioned though but it comes up in the next part), the slightest bit of angst?, nearly pwp at this point lol

You wouldn’t know it by the way you were enraptured with his lecture, but you weren’t even a history major.

Quite far from it, really, well outside of the college of liberal arts, and yet here you were in the front row, watching him gesture over a large map of Western Europe while he explained the sociocultural impacts of the Treaty of Versailles.

It was probably pretty obvious why you took such interest in all this, though. After all, you were the only one who dressed as well as he did, your blazers and skirts and loafers standing out amongst a sea of hoodies and sweats and flip-flops; and, you were the only one who paid close attention and yet never seemed to be taking any notes…

Why would you, after all? Looking away to write in your notebook would mean missing out on all the fun, and unfortunately you had found that when you copied down the words he spoke, his accent was not retained in writing.

Some kid in the back of the class had asked about his accent the first day; you thought it was kind of a rude question, if you were being honest, but he didn’t seem to mind too much (if perhaps a bit surprised that anyone cared). He explained he was from a small country called Sokovia, but that his accent was a bit unique since he spoke Russian, German, Spanish, and Italian as well.

Because of course he did. Like he was specifically designed to target all your weaknesses.

“Well, I could talk about that for the rest of the evening but I’ll spare you all and let you out a bit early today, how does that sound?” Professor Zemo offered. The other students weakly cheered, a few claps here and there as you heard binders shutting and backpacks being zipped, but you were disappointed. You didn’t want to go back to your dorm, all you were going to do there was think about him anyways.

Damn, I’ve really got it bad, you thought to yourself, shaking your head as you stood up and gathering your things, slinging your bag over your shoulder. You glanced up at the podium where another student was chatting with Professor Zemo, and either he said something really funny or she was trying way too hard to flirt with him. You rolled your eyes, irritated by the display and yet envious of her audacity to just go up there and talk to him. Imagine having a crush and actually being able to look them in the eye and hold a conversation; you could barely do that with people you didn’t happen to find attractive.

Just as you were about to make it out the door, you heard your name and spun around. You were shocked to realize it was the Professor trying to get your attention. If only you’d thought to pretend you hadn’t heard him.

“Could I speak with you for a moment?” he requested, motioning you over with two curled fingers. With a swallow and a nod, you stepped out of the flow of students exiting into the hallway and approached the desk at the front of the room.

“What is it?” you asked.

“I just wanted to discuss your most recent paper, if you have some time,” he explained, and your heart sunk. Of course it was garbage, you’d written the whole thing last minute during a near-all-nighter. “I still have the copy you turned in here in my bag.”

“Right, of course— sure,” you nodded. By now the classroom was empty spare for the two of you, your words echoing slightly; presumably that was intentional, since these places were built for acoustics, but it made you worry you’d have to hear whatever criticism he had for you multiple times.

He pulled out the slightly-wrinkled paper and took his glasses off of his vest to wear (fuck, did he have to wear the glasses, just to personally attack you?) as he glanced over the top page before folding it over the staple.

“This essay,” he continued, “it’s—”

Ridiculous. Idiotic. A blight on humanity and a waste of printer ink.

“Fascinating,” he finished, surprising you. “After I read it, I searched your student profile on my office computer—”

You gulped, trying not to take that as a compliment.

“I’m looking at your information and I’m seeing you aren’t even a history major— is this a mistake, when it says your major is computer science?”

“No, that’s my major,” you nodded.

“Well, that’s a shame,” he decided, “because you have some really interesting ideas in here, clearly you must have studied history before.”

“I mean, not really,” you shrugged. “I didn’t even care that much about history until, you know, you...r class,” you finished quickly, realizing it sounded too odd otherwise.

And that smile, the way he looked down at the floor suddenly, was he blushing? “Thank you. I’m always… glad to inspire.”

If only you knew everything you’d inspired in me, Professor.

“If you didn’t care about history, what would motivate you to register for an honors history seminar?” he asked suddenly.

“Well…” you trailed off, reaching up to scratch the back of your neck as you dodged his gaze.

“It couldn’t possibly be because I’m teaching it,” he realized.

“I came to your talk last year, the one you did about the Sokovian civil war,” you finally admitted, letting out a lungful of air as you said it and looking up at him sheepishly.

“Ah,” he nodded, “yes, that might make a bit more sense. But we still haven’t found the real reason, have we?” His eyebrow raised slightly and you felt like he was toying with you— but you liked it, the shiver that ran up your spine made that obvious. “Because the question remains of what would possess a computer science student to take time out of her busy schedule on a Friday night— if I recall the night correctly— to listen to some stuffy visiting scholar talk about a bloody war in a country she may not have even heard of before.”

“My friend brought me,” you defended.

“Under what guise?” he pressed.

“She… may have mentioned something about… a cute professor with a sexy accent…” you stammered, cringing slightly as you spared a glance back up at him. He was staring back at you with the most bewildering expression. His eyes said ‘you thought I was cute?’, and yet his smile said ‘I knew it.’

“You must’ve been horribly disappointed when I took the stage,” he finally replied, voice a bit lower, softer, not echoing around the room anymore.

“Not at all,” you returned, almost below your breath now, and suddenly you became very aware that you were standing too close to him, but you couldn’t move away, you couldn’t even look away anymore. “I’m here, aren’t I? Taking your class?”

“And you make it nearly impossible to focus, did you know that? I swear your eyes never leave me, I can feel them on me. It’s quite unfair, because I can’t stare back at you no matter how much I want to.”

Just as you looked down at his lips and back up to his eyes, which seemed to be following a similar pattern on your own face, just when you thought this might be it and you were about to do something you really shouldn’t (but really wanted to), you heard the door open behind you and you spun around so fast you nearly hurt your neck.

“Oh,” the man in the doorway mumbled, apparently surprised to see you enough to nearly drop the papers tucked under his arm. “I’m teaching the next class in here— Honors History of Islam?”

“Professor Waters, yes, my apologies,” Zemo nodded, “we were just… our discussion ran a bit long, we’ll get out of your way.”

You and Zemo awkwardly gathered your things and made a dash for the door as the older professor took his place at the podium. Once the two of you were out in the hall, you let out a sigh and gave each other a glance, like you were each waiting for the other to either acknowledge or ignore what had just (almost) happened.

“I have my next class across campus in a half hour,” he remembered suddenly, lifting his arm and pulling back the brown sleeve of his coat to look at his watch.

“Right, you should… get to that,” you nodded.

“Walk with me?” he proposed, and you hoped your smile wasn’t as beaming as it felt.

“I’d love to.”

So maybe you ended up skipping your evening class to sit in the back of his History of England course. And, perhaps, he ended that one early, too, this time to buy you coffee at the student center; and your discussion ended up going on so long that the coffee shop closed and you had to go to his office to finish the conversation.

But, in a certain sense, it could be argued that you never really got a chance to finish that conversation after all… because a few moments after he shut the door to his office, you, for lack of a better term, jumped his bones.

“Fuck,” he mumbled against your lips as you pulled him closer by his jacket, “we can’t do this.”

You nodded, reaching up to wrap your arms around his neck. “Mhm, yeah, you’re right,” you agreed breathlessly.

His hands took their place at your waist as you both stepped back, the back of your legs bumping into his desk which you jumped up slightly to sit on.

“I mean, we really can’t do this,” he continued, kissing your neck instead now while your legs wrapped around his hips, your skirt riding up slightly, your fingers fumbling with the buttons on his collar. “I want to, overwhelmingly so, but we can’t.”

“I know,” you sighed; your head fell back when his teeth grazed over your pulse, and his hand was right there to catch it and hold it up, gripping the back of your neck.

“This absolutely cannot happen,” he groaned when your legs pulled him closer, something hard and hot pressing up against your thigh through his trousers and you were really hoping it wasn’t just his cell phone.

Then he rocked his hips, just barely, and you felt the outline of the ridge of his head and it was definitely not his phone unless he had the most suggestively-shaped phone case of all time. You gasped and grabbed his face to kiss him again, shamelessly desperate now, weaving your fingers into the hair just above the back of his neck.

By now you had managed to get a few of his buttons open so when you slid your fingers down from time to time, they ran over his chest and the patch of dark blonde hair there. Funny enough, you couldn’t remember having any strong opinions on chest hair before this afternoon, but now you felt your walls fluttering around nothing.

He helped you shed your blazer just before tossing his own coat aside, never breaking the kiss, holding your face gently while he pushed you down to lay on his desk— he reached behind you to clear a few stray papers out of the way first.

Your back hit the glossy wood and his weight pinned you down, rough hands sliding up your legs and under your skirt as you tried to push your hips up for more friction where you needed him most.

He pushed your hips back down, not too roughly but definitely enough to get your attention, before sliding his hands up your skirt again where he toyed with the hem of your panties.

You wanted to say something, more specifically you wanted to beg him to touch you, but you had this fear that if you spoke now it would all become real and he would stop because, as he had so poignantly noted, this can’t happen. And both of you knew that… so maybe it would be easier to let it happen if neither of you really acknowledged it.

Luckily, he didn’t tease you too long, reaching under the fabric and swiping the rough pads of his fingers over your slickened folds. You choked on your gasp, accidentally digging your nails into his shoulders when he drew delicate circles around your clit. All at once, he suddenly pushed those fingers right inside you and your back arched; you needed so much more than just his fingers but the way they twisted and curled against your walls was nearly perfect as well.

They didn’t stay long, quickly pulling back as you watched him quickly open his trousers just before you felt the head of him pushing up to your entrance.

His eyes met yours, dark with need, yet somehow clearly asking you for permission, making sure this was what you wanted: and fuck, you wanted it more than anything. The moment that you nodded, he began to push forward— slow and deliberate, but unyielding.

Perhaps as a perfect healthy college student in a male-dominated major, you had no real excuse for it to have been so long since you’d had sex. As you liked to put it: dating as a woman in computer science means the odds are good but the goods are odd. Truth be told, you weren’t sure at this point if having had sex any time in the past year would’ve prepared you for him anyway. It felt like he was forging a new path inside you— certainly a wider one than anyone else ever had since he was so thick.

With his hips fully seated against yours, the tip of his cock just reached the end of you, just barely brushed over those sensitive spots you didn’t even know you had before.

It stung a bit to be filled this thoroughly, so it was no wonder you were biting down on your lip hard enough to bruise it, your fingers clutching at his shirt tightly.

“Am I hurting you?” he whispered, finally breaking the silence, voice strained like he was struggling just as much as you were (though in an entirely different way).

“A little,” you admitted. “Please don’t stop.”

He groaned a few curses as he started to move back, and forth, and so slow you could hardly stand it.

“Fuck,” you breathed, “oh my god, harder, please…”

A little smile crossed his face, a sharp exhale almost like a laugh, and it made your cheeks burn even hotter than they already were. But, he obeyed, regardless, more aggressive in his movements yet not any faster as he held your hips to keep you from sliding across the desk’s glossy wood surface.

Your moans were starting to echo around the office’s beige walls at this point, and he snarled as he bit down on your neck. “You need to stay quiet,” he hissed in your ear. “Can you do that for me? Can you stay quiet even when I’m making you feel so good?”

“I-I’m trying,” you whimpered, “your cock is… so deep…”

“Oh, I know,” he cooed, voice heavy with faux pity, “poor thing, you can’t take it?”

“No!” you yelped. “I can take it! Please, please don’t stop.”

“I won’t have to if you stay quiet, darling, we can’t have somebody hearing you now can we?” he chuckled, licking and sucking at your pulse point as your eyes rolled back in your head. “We can’t have somebody hearing you cry for me, and coming in here, and seeing you laying on my desk getting fucked by your professor, right?”

What the hell was wrong with you that that idea actually turned you on? Why did it actually make you want to moan louder until everyone could hear you?

And when his cock speared right against that spongy spot inside you, you did exactly that and he had to suddenly clamp his hand down over your mouth.

“Fuck,” he growled, “you’re going to get us both in trouble.”

Your attempts at apologies were totally incomprehensible with his hand over your mouth, not that they were likely to have made much sense either way.

Blinking your eyes shut, your legs began to quiver slightly as he rutted into you, your toes curling inside your loafers. You felt so full you could hardly stand it, stretched so wide that you were forced to feel every detail of his cock as it filled you. Already your walls were bearing down on him; you couldn’t help it, it was like your body was just his instrument now and instinct had taken control of your movements.

His accent was definitely stronger now as he whispered in your ear, praising you gruffly. You knew from the beginning that you loved high marks and encouragement from your teachers, but this… this was different, and you hadn't known how much it would affect you.

"Good girl," he breathed, "you're taking me so well, draga, you feel so perfect around me."

You whined from behind his hand and he chuckled at your obvious neediness.

"You like making me feel good, darling?" he presumed, his smile pressing against your neck between nipping kisses to your pulse point. "You like knowing that I can barely take this tight cunt gripping me so well, that I'm already addicted to your precious body and want to fill it with my seed?"

With your eyes rolling back in your head you nodded feverishly, heavy in your state of total delirium as he pumped his cock deep into you over and over.

You reached up to try to pull his hand away from your mouth, and he met your gaze with fire in his eyes.

“If I take my hand away, will you be good?” he challenged, and you nodded feverishly. He was a bit hesitant but slowly moved his hand down, and though you did have to keep biting your lip, you managed to restrain yourself.

Every drag of the ridge of his head inside you was somehow more intense than the last, somehow hitting right at your spot and it was like each rough thrust knocked his name out of your mind and onto your lips until you were chanting it like a prayer, or a plea.

And each time you said it, he fucked you harder, snarling and whispering your name back to you a few times, in between little praises; "Beautiful," he mumbled, "such a sweet little girl… such a perfect cunt."

“I— fuck, I’m gonna—” you stammered your warning.

“Will you come for me?” he finished for you, and you nodded quickly.

“Fuck, I’m so close,” you hissed.

It was obvious just by the build-up that you were going to come hard, pleasure tightening in your core until you were sure that it would spill over but it just kept going, making you wonder if it would ever reach the breaking point.

And oh boy did it, it slammed into you in fact, and your legs quivered as you struggled for air. He growled in your ear, fucking you harder through it all, stroking every place that had only become even more sensitive. The moment you could form words again, you were wasting the ability on a string of swears and promises you couldn’t keep.

“Yours, fuck, it’s yours,” you sobbed. He chuckled a little, pulling back to examine your face which must have given away how fucked-out and cockdrunk you were already.

“Say it again,” he demanded darkly, holding you tighter, fucking you a bit more deliberately though not any less aggressively.

“Yours,” you gasped, cut off by a rough and dominating kiss. Your moans were lost to his tongue but he didn’t need them to know you were coming, the way your body gripped him tighter than ever was sign enough.

“So good,” he whispered against your lips, “you’re doing so good for me…”

His words washed over your skin and soothed you like a salve, bringing some relief from the overwhelming feelings his body was assaulting yours with.

All things considered, he was still moving rather slowly, each of his thrusts measured and patient, and never really changing speed even as you were coming around him. Weak little cries fell from your throat each time his hips met yours and the tip of his cock kissed the deepest parts of you.

Your body went limp in his arms and you hadn't noticed before how good it felt for him to hold you, for his strong hands to support you like it was nothing. His thumb gently stroked your back through your shirt and you mewled weakly into his shoulder.

"So good, draga, so fucking good," he mumbled, holding you closer.

"Please… faster," you whimpered, "I want you to come."

"Is that what you want?" he taunted, ignoring the way you nodded immediately. "You want to make me come, darling?"

"Yes, please, want it so much," you gasped.

He finally sped up, though it was still nothing like the lightning-speed jackhammering you were used to from guys your age: it was better, certainly, especially when he lifted your leg onto his shoulder and pushed so deep you saw stars.

The second one seemed to hit you all at once, almost out of nowhere, and you heard yourself mumble, “Professor, I’m coming.” It sounded a bit pitiful, the way you said it, but he apparently didn’t mind as you felt him nod encouragingly in the crook of your neck.

You felt totally drained by now, exhausted even though all you’d been doing was lying there and taking it, but you knew he wasn’t done with you yet. But, if the way his thrusts were becoming more desperate and erratic were anything to go by, he might be done with you soon.

"I'm going to come inside you," he groaned against your ear. You were, like, 99.9% sure that if you told him not to, he would pull out, but the way that he phrased it, like a demand, like you didn't have a choice and he would do it either way… it had an effect on you, one he noticed when your channel tightened around him instantly. "Oh, you like that idea, hm? You want to be full of my come? Your sweet little cunt is already trying to milk every drop from me."

"Yes," you breathed, "fuck, I want your come in me, please!"

He sped up quite a bit then, each slam of his hips into yours making you choke on a whine, your arms weakly clinging onto him for dear life.

You could feel his cock swelling, flexing, pushing your body to its limits as he moaned lowly through his teeth, streams of come making you feel warm and full.

He didn't stop until every drop was in you, thrusting in time with each pump of his release until he slowed to a stop.

Strands of hair fell into his face as he hung his head, panting hard and fast. You melted back onto the desk, realizing this might be the first time in a solid half hour your back wasn’t arched.

It was a bit of a struggle to keep your eyes open against the heavy fog of afterglow that filled your mind; you couldn’t remember the last time you felt so… satiated. As a college student, you were always thinking about the next assignment, mentally re-evaluating your calendar, or preparing for something— and usually all on less than six hours of sleep.

But now your mind was as close to a blank slate as it had been in at least a decade. Even though you probably should’ve been, you weren’t even thinking about the potential consequences of this, the implications, the risks. No, you were just staring up at him, thinking about kissing him again.

He would have to lean down for that, though; there was no way you were going to sit up now.

You hadn't even noticed that you had closed your eyes, almost falling asleep right there on his desk, until you felt his hand cradle your face softly, a calloused thumb rubbing over your cheek.

In unison, the both of you sighed deeply.

As much as it felt like a real effort, you blinked open your eyes and looked up at him, watching him comb his fingers through his hair. It only messed up the style even further yet he looked better than ever.

He slowly moved his hips back, leaving you annoyingly empty, and readjusted himself until he almost looked put together again… but his collar was still uneven and his lips still looked bitten and there was still that precious pinkish hue on his cheeks. If anyone else saw him in this state, they’d either know what happened between you two or think he’d just run across campus or something.

If anyone else saw him in this state, you’d be a little jealous, to be totally honest.

You got back to work trying to right your appearance as well, though you knew the best you could hope for was only mildly presentable; he looked at you like you’d never looked better, though.

“Well, this was fun,” you chuckled breathlessly, “but it’s getting pretty late and I have an eight a.m. tomorrow…”

“Yeah, so do I,” he nodded, glancing away.

You picked up your bag from where you’d dropped it by the door, lifting the strap over your shoulder and starting to turn to leave.

"I… I should walk you back to your dorm," he announced, making you smile.

"That's sweet, but save your chivalry. I can take care of myself just fine."

"But—"

"I think it's safer if we're not seen together walking together by my dorm," you interjected, "especially when I'm walking a little funny…"

"I hope I didn't hurt you," he winced sympathetically.

"No, trust me, that was… exactly what I needed," you breathed. He smiled a little, looking down at the floor.

"Then I'll see you in class," he nodded, watching you closely as you stepped back and picked up your bag, starting to leave his office with one last small wave goodbye. “Wait, wait!” he whispered harshly just before you could let go of his door, and you giggled as he leaned out into the hall and glanced around to make sure no one was nearby.

When he confirmed the coast was clear, he smiled and grabbed your face with one hand, pulling you into a sudden kiss. And you smiled too— you couldn’t help it— as you kissed him back, almost ready for him to drag you back into that office and start this all over again. He did let you go, though, with one more whispered ‘goodnight’ and a look that made your heart do little somersaults.

As you finally did make your way back to your dorm, you tried to figure out if that was a goodbye kiss or a ‘see you soon’ kiss. Or maybe a ‘thanks for the one-time office quickie’ kiss? But you didn’t know enough about this sort of thing to know if that was even an option.

All you did know was that you really hoped it wasn’t the last kiss you’d have with him.

Can I speak to you in my office today after class? Thank you.

-Z

You may ask yourself: can one simple email, in only thirteen words, strike fear into the hearts of those who read it? And the answer is yes, assuming that email is from Professor Helmut Zemo and read by the lovestruck student who slept with him two days ago and hasn't stopped thinking about it since.

Only one of a few things could happen in his office after class, and there was a massive gap between the best and worst case scenarios. You dressed for the best but prepared yourself psychologically for the worst.

You caught him staring as you walked past the teaching podium to your seat in the front; you just hoped nobody else caught him. And if you'd thought paying attention in class was tough before, boy oh boy was it a challenge now. The nerves of what he wanted to discuss with you were bad enough alone, but that combined with memories from two days earlier randomly assaulting your psyche was just overwhelming.

When he pointed at the map with two fingers, you could remember exactly how those fingers had felt inside you, twisting and curling and getting you ready for his cock.

When he spoke, you could hear the difference in his voice compared to how he groaned out his praises while he was fucking you within a damn inch of your life.

And every once in a while, when he couldn’t help but glance at you for a moment, his gaze burned right through you; you were helpless to those brown eyes, completely paralyzed by them, and it must’ve been hours of that before class finally ended.

For the first time, you were the first person out the door when he released the class. As much as it was going to be a little bit weird to beat him to his office, it was certainly better than any of your other options. There was a chair in the hall beside the door, and you took a seat and pretended to read a book just to look busy (there was no way you could actually turn symbols on a page into readable language right now, not when you knew he’d be here any minute to talk about… something).

Your peripheral caught him coming down the hall, but you pretended to be deeply immersed in your book until he was right beside you, unlocking his door and opening it for you and himself. Tucking your book away and following him inside, you found him already staring at you, expression completely unreadable. Your gut sank in anticipation of whatever conversation this was going to become, and a moment passed in heavy silence.

"Hi," you greeted plainly, letting out a quick breath.

"Hi," he returned. "Close the door behind you."

You nodded and did as you were told, quietly pushing the wood back until the door latched before approaching where he had come to stand beside his desk. Though you didn't originally intend to, you found yourself standing a bit too close.

"I'm not quite sure where to start," he admitted, chuckling breathlessly as he reached up to rub the back of his neck. He looked cute flustered, which was a shame because his tone seemed to imply you needed to not be thinking about how cute he was. “Listen, you should know that what happened before… it was a mistake,” he sighed. “It can’t happen again.”

“Do you regret it?” you asked point-blank.

“It can’t happen again,” he repeated in lieu of a real answer, and you looked closely at his face; you didn’t find as much confidence there as you were looking for, it wasn’t the face of a man who knew he was making the right choice. You certainly didn’t think he was making the right choice.

“Why did you want to have this conversation alone in your office, then?” you challenged.

He cleared his throat slightly. “So no one would hear us.”

“Hear us talk?” you pressed. “Is that all?”

“That’s… definitely the plan,” he nodded, swallowing dryly. "Like I said, it was a mistake— my fault, not yours. And I just hope we can put it behind us respectfully."

“All the best mistakes are made at least twice,” you whispered, reaching up to trail your finger down his lapel. “Don’t you think?”

“Don’t do that,” he requested tensely.

"Do what?"

"That," he hissed. "Stop being… irresistible," he clarified, eyes darting from your lips to your finger to your eyes and back again. "A man can only take so much. I'm trying to do right by you."

"You already did when you fucked me that good," you smirked. "Nothing else could be as right as that."

Your fingers were just barely brushing over his belt when he grabbed you by the wrist. Jaw tight and eyes solemn, he shook his head.

You wrenched out of his grasp with a nod. It was worth a shot, but you didn't want to be that person who couldn't take no for an answer— so, you gave him a little smile and readjusted the strap of your bag. “Well, if it was just the once, then you should know that I’m still glad it happened. Even if it shouldn’t have.”

He nodded, strategically not speaking— but you knew he would agree, if he could.

“And if it’s any consolation to you now, you were the best I ever had.”

You reached for the doorknob, just starting to turn it and open your way out when he suddenly slammed it shut with a hand right above your head, making you gasp and spin around to look up at his dark gaze.

“Professor…” you whispered.

“The best you ever had?” he repeated, grinning proudly when you nodded. “Oh, sweetheart, I wasn’t even trying.” He leaned down to brush his lips against your ear as he whispered to you: “You don’t even know yet how good I can make you feel.”

A shiver ran up your spine; your tongue darted out to lick your lips. “Are you going to get on with it and show me?”

He didn’t even let you step away from the door, dropping to his knees right there and pushing up your skirt to kiss and bite your thighs. “Only if you ask very nicely,” he taunted with a brow raised in challenge.

“Please,” you breathed, “fuck, please, want you to taste me.”

His hands slid up your legs, grabbing the hem of your panties before sliding back down.

It wasn’t like you’d never been eaten out before, but this still felt like a first considering your skirt was pushed up to your waist, your panties were pulled down to your ankles, and even just one slow lick over your folds made it obvious he knew exactly what he was doing.

“F-fuck,” you choked, reaching down to weave your fingers into his hair. He grinned against your skin and kept going, exploring you carefully before finally sucking on your swollen clit. Your knees threatened to buckle, your head fell back against the door so hard it almost hurt, but all you could really feel was his mouth on you, moving like he knew your body better than you did.

So it was no wonder, then, that you already began to spiral towards your release, legs shaking around his head as he devoured you mercilessly.

"Oh my god, I—" you tried to warn him, but he already knew, and he pulled back to wipe his mouth with his sleeve and stand up. He grabbed your jaw and kissed you roughly, stopping to whisper to you so close that his lips brushed against yours.

"I'm sorry, draga, but you've spoiled me… now that I've felt you come around my cock, I can't imagine making you come any other way. I need to feel your cunt grip me so fucking tight… it's all I've been thinking about since I last saw you," he admitted.

"I thought about it, too," you sighed. "I was up all night trying to make myself come as good as you did but I couldn't… your come was still leaking out of me."

He growled and leaned in to nip at your ear. "Oh, poor thing… I can imagine it so easily, you laying in your bed with your legs spread, fingers getting exhausted from playing with your little pussy too much, these perfect lips whining for me because you need me to take care of you."

"H-Helmut, please," you whimpered.

"Yeah, something like that," he smirked.

"I can't wait any more, just fuck me. Need you inside me," you breathed.

"Then bend over my desk."

{part 2}

#baron zemo x reader #helmut zemo x reader #helmut zemo smut

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bagelboys-withcreamcheese · 3 years

Text

Just the Modern!VDL Gang

John, holding up an empty package of cookies: How many cookies did you eat, roughly?

Jack: I ate them gentle.

—

Hosea, outside of Arthur’s room: Are you decent?

Arthur: Not morally, but I’m wearing clothes, if that’s what you’re asking.

—

John: You’re grounded!

Jack: Grounded!? For how long!?

John: For..til..for til college!

Jack: FOR TIL COLLEGE???

John: FOR TIL COLLEGE!!!

—

*At DisneyLand*

Tilly: What’s your favorite ride?

Dutch: Hosea.

Arthur: Charles.

Molly: Sadie.

John: Abigail.

Tilly: I MEANT RIDE AS IN ROLLERCOASTER!

—

Hosea: Can one of you boys take out the trash tonight? Tomorrow’s garbage day.

Arthur: Wow!

Arthur, to John: I can’t believe you get a whole day dedicated to you!

—

Arthur: Hey, ‘Sea! ...Why do you look so annoyed? Was the store that bad?

Hosea: We literally went to the store for one thing-

Javier, excited and proudly holding up a tiny turtle in a tank: I got a turtle!!!

Javier: I’m gonna name her Taquito!

—

*at a dive bar*

Sadie: Look, I know you’re disappointed, but could we at least have a drink?

John, in a scuba diving suit: I would like to leave, please.

—

Lenny: You shouldn't be using a straw.

Sean: I know, I know, it's bad for the environment and stuff.

Lenny: Yeah, but I mean... it's a weird way to eat spaghetti.

—

Micah: You look like you’d cheat on me.

Karen: Probably.

Karen: But only if your mom was really hot.

Micah: Well then, I’m in the clear cause she’s six feet under.

Karen: I can dig.

—

Sean: You are now one day closer to eating your next plate of nachos.

Javier: That's the most hopeful thing I've ever heard.

Lenny: But what if I die tomorrow and never eat any nachos?

Sean: Then tomorrow is nacho lucky day.

—

John: What the hell is almond milk??

Hosea:

Hosea: It’s milk-

John: SHOW ME THE TIT ON AN ALMOND!

—

Dutch: I was born for politics. I have great hair and I love lying.

—

Lenny: Damn, this house is huge!

Javier: Yeah! It’s almost as big as Sean’s ass!

Sean, whining: No it isn’t, you guys!!

—

Arthur & John: *making loud, surprisingly accurate gorilla sounds at each other*

Neighbor, who Hosea invited over for dinner:

Hosea, exasperatedly: We have a guest.

—

Bill: I'm not stupid!

Arthur: Williamson, you literally ate the wax from a babybel cheese.

Bill: JAVIER TOLD ME IT WAS EDIBLE!!

#this was a work in progress for so long #red dead redemption #red dead redemption 2 #arthur morgan #dutch van der linde #hosea matthews #sean macguire #lenny summers #tilly jackson #rdr2 #bill williamson #javier escuella #karen jones #micah bell #jack marston #abigail marston #sadie adler #molly oshea #charles smith

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sonofsallyjackson · 2 years

Text

“They couldn’t even make her blonde”

I remember walking out of the theaters with my friends after seeing the PJO movie when it came out. We had a million complaints since we were obsessed, but the loudest had to be“And she wasn’t even blonde.” It was such a major complaint when the PJO movies came out that Alexandra Daddario had to dye her hair for Sea of Monsters. But I feel like her hair wasn’t the problem even if that’s what everyone said. Daddario just didn’t embody the Annabeth we’d all grown to love. She was too old, too sure of herself, not witty or harsh in her remarks, and a million other things that fit the vision for the movies but weren’t book accurate. My friends and I were in middle school couldn’t articulate the many ways she felt foreign to us and instead simply said “Why couldn’t they have at least dyed her hair blond?” as if that would magically fix the more glaring problems we had with the movie. (Spoiler alert: despite being blonde, she felt even less Annabeth to me in SOM)

I’ve been happy that most of the response I’ve seen to Leah Sava Jeffries has been pure excitement about how she’s going to play the role and what this means for the little black girls meeting Annabeth for the first time. A short look at Instagram shows me that unfortunately the racists in our fandom are are still alive and well and also please dear god let Jeffries have a strong support system. But I also saw some complaints that haven’t been hostile or even that mad about casting but more just disappointed that Jeffries’s race is sign that once again the other aspects of Annabeth’s character they love so much just aren’t going to be there “because they couldn’t even make her blonde.” And after being burned so badly by the movie adaption, I can understand the wariness.

But the point of color blind casting is that the character’s appearance is the least important thing about them. Rick Riordan has been intimately involved this time in casting and the fact that Jeffries “quickly became my number one choice for Annabeth” makes me absolutely ecstatic to see what she’s planning on doing with the role. Also her reel on IMDB has her asking to be protected from the monsters and I just about lost it crying because I could see her hunched in a garbage can with her hammer asking Thalia and Luke for that protection. But then her REL stuff makes me laugh so she truly has the range.

And I get that people might need a second to grieve their visions of the character when they don’t match reality. (Saying goodbye to afro-latino!Percy even when I had all the proof in the world that Walker Scobell was going to match the vibe took a second. It was a moment of reflection for me. Heck realizing that I hadn’t actually absorbed Luna Lovegood’s description when reading and instead just put myself in the role was a trip). As long as they don’t mention it to the children cast (and I will throw hands if they do), I can respect that not everyone is going to be super excited from the get go. But I think it’s still important to unpack why Annabeth being blonde is so important and not other things like her sass or her height or any of the other million things that make up Annabeth. Why is being blond her most important identity trait when all Annabeth ever said was that she hated people underestimating her for her appearance, a trait almost all POC can relate to?

#anti PJO movies #pjo tv show #Leah Sava Jeffries #casting announcement #annabeth chase #anti Alexandra Daddario #I mean only sort of #just mentioning that I didn't think she was a book accurate Annabeth in the movies

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genshinlover101 · 3 years

Note

Hi, the one who asked about the Hydro Alchemist request. May I request my scenerio again. How would Beidou, Ningguang, and Hu Tao react to, while visiting their Hydro Alchemist S/O, their S/O was working on a special potion. However, something goes wrong, and the S/O ends up tripping and the potion lands on them. In a puff of smoke, they end up trapped in a giant floating bubble (that’s breathable by the way), that they can’t pop. Their S/O starts to panic, as they didn’t mean for this to happen, however they calm them down from inside their floating bubble. So their S/O calms down, and tries figure out a way to pop their bubble, while they remain inside the bubble. Eventually, their S/O finds a way to pop their bubble, and frees them.

Hydro Alchemist x Beidou, Ningguang, Hu tao (Separate)

Characters: Beidou, Ninguang, Hu Tao

Warnings: Slight spoilers to ending of Liyue Archon quest in Ningguang’s portion

A/n: All of these characters honestly have my heart so I hope this portrays them well.

You both had a different passion and loves, for Beidou it was the sea and for you it was your alchemy. So how did you two work out despite two very different professions? She forced you to move into the Crux.

Beidou knocks loudly on your private room provided to you. “Come in!” you shout. With you back turned against Beidou, you assume she couldn’t see the immense focus on your actions. Absentmindedly she runs up from behind and with her monster strength starts bear hugging and twirling you.

“You wouldn’t believe what the crew and I caught today,” She says excitedly only to be cut off by a quick splash as a bubble encases her entire being. Quickly letting you go before you both got trapped in the mystery that was surrounding her.

You turn around with a worried look and hand over your dropped jaw, in your opposite hand was the flask with barely any liquid left in it from the twirls that Beidou forced upon you. She put two and two together and realizes that she had just become your newest test subject.

“Oh my, Beidou are you okay? Can you breathe?” You ask worried, you could already tell by Beidou’s composure that she wasn’t taking this situation seriously.

“Yeah, I’m alright. I bet I look pretty from this angle huh?” She asks confidently.

You blush and look away in embarrassment. As much as you hate to admit she did look pretty damn good even if she was floating in a massive bubble meant to help the crew catch fish better. You notice her claymore on the floor and you grab hold of it, goddamn it was heavy.

Although your physical damage was no good, the bubble was only meant to trap things over protect them. With a couple of strained wacks, the weight of her claymore doing most of the work, the bubble eventually pops. and you got your girlfriend back. She uncharacteristically falls into your arm princess style like a feather.

“See, I knew adding you to my crew would’ve been entertaining. I love you ya know?” She says with a drunkenly hearty laugh as she wraps her arms around your neck.

Not only were you in a romantic relationship with Ningguang, but a business relationship as well. She provided financial aid for your lab to run, while you provided her prototypes to sell on the market for a fortune.

Ningguang headed out for a smoke and decided to visit you in your lab, she could afford to pay more visits now that the Jade Chamber was destroyed. She enters your lab silently, not even the sound of her heels clacking against the wooden tile.

“Damn, another scrapped experiment,” You tsk in frustration. You then throw the flask containing the liquid in the garbage nearby but miss causing it to splash on the floor. Just your luck, Ningguang happened to be right next to the splash zone. Suddenly she’s floating in the air in a shield like bubble. You stare in pure shock at what had just happened

“Uh sorry- bad timing eheh” You say with an awkward toothy smile. She just looks at you unimpressed and disappointed.

“What exactly is this? and why am I stuck in it?” She demands, shes trying to poke the bubble in attempt to leave not giving it much of an effort. She crossed her leg over her other while floating, even in the given situation she floats so esteemed and confidently.

“I was making it to mimic the Abyss Order’s technology and how the mages’ make their shields ma’am.” You stare down at your feet and give her a perfect 90 degree bow just to show how sorry you were. “Ill pop it quickly.” You begin to get to work, mentally reviewing your lab report about the potion. Because you’re vision granted you hydro elemental powers you were almost useless in this situation.

You grabbed an older experiment that included elemental power from multiple random ameno vision users. This flask was full of condensed ameno power, so hopefully it’ll work. With a quick toss, it shattered over the bubble, and a giant gust of wind knocked you off your feet, slamming you against the wall behind you.

You hear Ningguang’s heels clack against the floor boards, slowly approaching you. She picks you up forcing you to look at her by the collar of your shirt. The situation was so out-of-hand, but you couldn’t help but to think how hot she was placing her authority over you like this.

“Remember I’m the Tianquan of the Liyue Qixing, this is a clear violation of the law. You seem to forget your place. Next time you pull a stunt like that you’re dead.”

Hu Tao loves to visit you in your lab once she’s done with her work at the Funeral Parlor. She has nothing to gain from your relationship she just loves you.

“BOO!” You don’t know who told Hu Tao that it’d be a good idea to scare you with your prototype in hand but something must’ve possessed her to do so anyway. You flinch so hard that half of the solution from the flask splashes on her. What the f

You give a deep sigh as Hu Tao mischievously giggles within a giant bubble that now consumed her. Originally you’d be panicking, but this marks the 100th time this has happened, where you craft something up and Hu Tao mistakenly becomes your test subject one way or another.

“How is it in there Hu Tao?” You ask, “Can you try breaking out?”

“Pretty roomy,” she replies and gives a good knock at the edge of the bubble. All the damage done was a ripple unfortunately. Although this situation was out of pocket, you wanted to experiment further while you were at it. Since the solution basis was off of your own element, could you essentially absorb it back like energy?

You wrote up a small lab report with the hypothesis and everything, while Hu Tao tiredly sat in the bubble watching you. Using the vision given to you, you imagine energy recharge orbs and magically the bubble is sucked up into your vision as if it never existed. The few other ingredients that you incorporated separating along with Hu Tao.

As Hu Tao fell, you attempt to catch her in your arms not wanting her to get injured from the impact. However, much to your dismay your speed ended up causing you to slip on the rug on the floor and Hu Tao ends up falling on your back. You were 99% confident you heard your spine break from the collision. But of course just like how all your experiments end Hu Tao stoops to your level and gives you a quick kiss on your cheek. While laughing she says, “Thanks for being my hero again today.”

#beidou x reader #ningguang x reader #hu tao x reader #genshin impact #genshin impact x reader #fluff #beidou #ningguang #hu tao #genshin x reader

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tazatouille · 3 years

Text

this is how the story goes

word count: 4249

warnings: mentions of death, disassociation, alcoholism and small mention of toxic masculinity

ao3 link

summary: In which Fabian deals with the fact that he doesn't always have to be the hero.

“Let me read to you tonight, my darling.” Mama says to him, holding out her hand. Fabian, being the small boy he is, lets out a giggle and runs over to her, taking it excitedly. She smiles down at him and he sees his own dimples on her cheeks. Fabian can’t help but think that she must be the most beautiful lady to ever live, because of course that would be his Mama. Her silver hair falls like waves down her shoulders and he wonders if one day his hair will grow as long as hers.

She leads him to their library, hoisting him up briefly so he can pick out a book. He can’t quite read all the titles yet, so he picks the one he can reach, which is a small picture book. Mama brings him close to her chest, holding him with one arm. “Ah, that’s a fine choice, Fabian.”

“What’s it about, Mama?” He asks her, letting her flip the book over in his hands.

“Hmm… let’s see.” She says softly. “It looks like you’ve picked an Elven tale tonight, one about a handsome adventurer who sails the seas in search of a great sea monster.”

“That sounds like Papa!” This earns a laugh from his mother, who kisses him on the cheek.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Mama lets go of the book, letting Fabian press it to his chest. Then she carries him out of the library and towards the stairs. “It’s time to get you to bed now, Fabian.”

---

Fabian recalls that day as one of the last days that his Mama ever read to him before bed.

But that was alright, because he’s been fine with that for a while now. He knew even then when little boys grow up, their mamas don’t read them to bed anymore.

When Fabian gets up for school that morning, he sees her when he glances out his window. Cathilda is patiently watering the rose bushes as she always does in the mornings and Mama is sitting in one of her kimonos, beautiful as always, but carrying with her the heavy weight of time. Time that has caused bags to form under her eyes, her frame to grow thinner and dull her eyes each passing day. Time that has aged her, with every sip of wine she takes from the glass in her hand.

He turns away from the window.

Fabian’s morning routine is easy. It’s about a half hour of dancing, then he takes a cold shower to wake himself up. Usually, he would go straight to training afterwards, but his Mama has allowed him this single day without morning training. He takes another hour to do his hair and then his makeup. It’s nothing too fancy, just a bit of eyeliner and the tiniest amount of concealer. If it was too heavy, he would sweat it off during practice and Fabian Aramais Seacaster does not let his makeup run.

By the time Fabian heads downstairs, Cathilda is now cooking in the kitchen. She’s humming an old sea shanty, one that she’s sung for him time and time again as a child. When he walks by, he hums along with her, dancing around her to grab his green smoothie.

“Good morning, Master Fabian!” Cathilda greets him, shaking the frying pan. “Do you mind taking this plate to yer mother? She’s waitin' in the dining room.”

“Good morning, Cathilda!” Fabian says proudly, placing a kiss on her cheek. “Of course, I can.” He scoops the plate up off the counter, carrying it to the dining room. Mama sits at the head of the table, where Papa used to sit. To her right is none other than Gilear, thankfully not in his father's robes again. Fabian tries hard not to fling the dish right at his head and keeps his shoulders up.

"Oh Fabian, my baby boy, how are you this morning? Off to that little adventuring academy again are we?" Mama says, nurturing a glass in her hand.

"Morning Mama," Fabian greets, setting her plate in front of her. Mama puts down her drink to lovingly pinch his cheeks. He laughs, hoping she doesn't notice when he slides it further away. "I believe me and the boys are going to meet at Basrar's this morning before school, since we aren't training today."

"We stop training for one day and you're already eating ice cream for breakfast? Whatever will we do with you?" Mama teases with a wave of her hand. He takes the seat to her left, purposely not making eye contact with Gilear.

Here's the thing about Gilear. He may be the Chosen One, something that Fabian is willing to admit and even defend, however, Gilear is still Gilear, and Gilear is a sad, pathetic little man who did not deserve his Mama.

Fabian could admit that his Mama and Gilear did have some similarities, as they seem to be both inept at the simplest of tasks. That being said, Hallariel Seacaster was an accomplished and renowned fencer, who dashingly took his father's own eye. Gilear Faeth was an ex-diplomat who couldn't get the yogurt stains out of his shirt even with the highest levels of magic money could provide.

This isn’t how the story is supposed to go. After Fabian heroically killed his own father, his mother was supposed to find another adventurous and even in some ways, more deserving man. In the story, Mama does not end up with a man like Gilear, but with a man far better than maybe even his father ever was. Or perhaps, she remains a widow, vowing never to remarry because her love for her deceased husband is so strong.

And in the story, Fabian is supposed to feel proud for killing his father, laying the final blow that his Papa craved so adamantly. But all Fabian is left with is a vacancy, the same vacancy that still rests in his mother's heart.

At times, it almost feels hereditary.

He stares down at his smoothie and thinks he hears Gilear say something to him, but it goes unaddressed.

Fabian thought it would get easier after sophomore year. Seeing his Papa was a treat, surely. Knowing his father is having such a good time in Hell helps him sleep a little easier, but it’s not enough to snuff out the flames of guilt that still burn in his chest.

Ever since his Papa died, his mother used the sensory deprivation egg less and less. To Fabian’s surprise, it was his mother’s decision, with Cathilda helping her steadily ease out of it. Cathilda told him that if they were able to get her out of the egg, they might be able to move onto her sobriety. He still holds onto that hope, even on the harder days when his mother can only greet him after school and then retire to her room soon after.

“You know she loves you with all her heart, Master Fabian.” Cathilda said to him one night. “People are complicated, ya see… Just because she’s struggling doesn’t mean she loves you any less.”

Fabian comes back to reality when he hears his mother’s laughter. He downs the rest of his smoothie, a little too warm now, to distract himself. He pulls out his crystal to check the Boyz’ group chat. “Well Mama, I think I’ll be off!” Fabian says, getting up from his chair.

“Off already, darling?” Mama asks him, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear. She’s barely touched her food. “Come here.”

He leans down and lets her place a kiss on his cheek. “You have a good day, my boy.” She tells him.

“Of course, Mama.” Fabian smiles at her, then nods his head. “Gilear.”

Gilear nods back. “I wish you a good day, Fabian.”

He walks out of the dining room, giving Cathilda a wave before heading towards the front door.

“Hangman,” Fabian thinks. “Ready for the day?”

He hears the purr of the engine start up as soon as he closes his front door. “I am ready for anything, sire. Where shall we go?”

“Head to the Ball’s apartment. I’m picking him up this morning.”

“Hangman...” Fabian warns, watching him roll out of the garage in front of him. The Hangman revs in response. “We are picking up the Ball.”

“Master, I remind you that the Ball no longer needs a ride to school.”

Fabian is sure if the Hangman could, it would sigh in disappointment. “Of course, sire.” He leans slightly to let him climb on. Then, Fabian revs the engine himself and tears down the street towards Strongtower Luxury Apartments.

---

“Fabian, for the last time.” Riz starts, walking out of the apartment building. “I’m never gonna get enough driving hours if you keep giving me rides to school.”

Riz lost his hat after sophomore year, and thank goodness because Fabian didn’t have the heart to tell him it wasn’t going to work forever. He wouldn’t admit it to Riz, but he was quite fond of the way his hair fell. It seemed impossible to Fabian that Riz didn’t style it in any way, but one day while they were hanging out, Fabian spotted a bottle of all in one shampoo and conditioner and chucked it into the garbage can.

Fabian laughs, putting a hand on his chest. “As if you would prefer to drive your mother’s car over a ride on the Hangman?” The Hangman revs underneath him for emphasis. He can see the smile creeping on Riz’s lips, so he keeps going. “Besides, everyone lies about their driving hours anyway. Who has the time to drive a whole forty hours both night and day? I certainly don’t.”

Riz looks like he’s about to protest, but instead his face spreads into a big smile. Fabian pats the Hangman’s seat victoriously. “Come on, The Ball. To Basrar’s.”

With a roll of his eyes, Riz climbs onto the Hangman, situating his briefcase against his chest. Then, his arms wrap around Fabian’s torso tightly. “You aren’t always gonna be around to give me rides, you know. I should-- uh, probably learn how to drive at some point.” He says. It’s supposed to be casual, but in reality, Riz just dropped a whale sized weight on Fabian’s chest. It threatens to leave him breathless and not in a good way.

Fabian revs the engine instead, letting the purr drown out his thoughts. “Don’t say stuff like that, Riz.” He says under his breath, before taking off down the road. He isn’t going to start thinking about this right now.

They are almost to Basrar’s when Riz shouts over the wind, “Oh hey, Fabian! Do you want to come over to the office after practice?”

Fabian smiles. “Cracking another case, The Ball?”

“You know it!” Fabian can practically hear the smile in his voice. “I always need someone to hold my string.”

Fabian feels the laughter bubble from his chest. “Yes, one of my many talents. Fabian Aramais Seacaster, holder of string!”

“It’s extremely crucial to my casework!” Riz adds. “I couldn’t solve them without it!”

Fabian feels Riz’s arms tighten around him and he lets out another laugh, pulling into Basrar’s.

---

They walk into the cool air of the shop and see Gorgug sitting at a booth in the corner. He waves to them as they approach.

“Hey guys!” Gorgug greets, giving them a toothy grin. He’s hunching over, like always, with a pink milkshake in his hand. He always ordered strawberry with extra whipped cream.

“Hey Gorgug!” Riz greets, letting Fabian take the window seat. “Dude, I gotta tell you about this show I’ve been watching. It’s awesome.”

“Oh yeah?” Gorgug says, sipping his milkshake. “Zelda’s been looking for more shows to watch, cause you know, all her parents watch is like those crazy reality TV shows.”

Fabian watches as Basrar floats over to their table. “Boys! Good to see you, and so early in the morning too. What can I get you?”

Riz orders a weird concoction of chocolate mint, coffee, and pistachio ice cream topped with gummy bears and chocolate drizzle. Fabian never understood why the gummy bears had to be added to it, something that Riz no doubt picked up from Fig. The gummy bears become hard as rocks because the ice cream makes them too cold, but he’s been friends with Riz long enough to know he would eat almost anything. And so, Fabian orders a simple banana split with caramel sauce.

By the time their ice cream gets here, Riz is already waist deep in the intricate world building of the tv show he’s been watching. The thing about Riz is that whenever he got really excited about something, he’d explain it so fast he’d have to keep back tracking and then return to his previous thought. It could get a bit confusing at times, but the Bad Kidz, at least Fabian, didn’t mind. They just made sure to ask a lot of questions.

"Here's the real catch, though. It wasn't the butler, but it was actually--" Riz gets cut off by his crystal ringtone buzz loudly on the table. He grabs it immediately and presses it to his ear. A few moments pass before he says, "Mom? What's going on?"

Fabian immediately sits up straighter before Riz holds his hand out. "I'll be right back." He mouths to them, scooting out of the booth. Fabian watches as he walks out of Basrar's.

Gorgug plays with the straw of his milkshake for a moment."So… how are you and Aelwyn doing?" He asks innocently, because Gorgug would never ask a question he didn't want the answer to. Fabian suddenly feels a little sick, putting his spoon down.

"It-- uh, well--" Fabian is tripping over himself now. He hates when he gets like this. His thoughts race through his head and try to force themselves out his mouth all at once before he can even think of what to say.

"I--I get it, if that's like--" Gorgug stumbles a bit. "Too private or something, I just, you know, was wondering."

"No, no, it's fine, Gorgug. We just… broke up a few weeks ago."

"Oh." He says simply. "Why didn't you…"

"Say anything?" Fabian finishes for him. "I guess it was somewhat embarrassing."

"Embarrassing? Did she break up with you?"

Fabian shrugs. "No, it was more mutual, if anything." He starts playing with his ice cream now, getting spoonfuls of caramel sauce and pouring it back into the bowl over and over again.

"Then why would you be embarrassed?" Gorgug presses. "I mean, my parents would say that's pretty mature."

"It just wasn't what I-- We? Expected it to be." Fabian admits. It feels weird to say it out loud after it's been rattling in his head for weeks. "I guess, maybe I expected it to be like you and Zelda. Two matches made in nerd heaven."

"You know, not every relationship is gonna be perfect, Fabian." Gorgug reminds him. "Zelda and I get along great, sure, but that doesn't mean I don't fuck up every now and then or that I never get upset with her." He shrugs. "But that's a part of like, I don't know, loving someone. You guys kinda just get to figure stuff out together."

"I guess Aelwyn and I never really tried figuring anything out together."

"Maybe you just expected too much from each other." Gorgug shrugs again. "Cause, you can't only love the best version of someone, you know?"

Fabian opens his mouth to speak, but before he can, the front door jingles and Riz makes his way back to the booth.

"Sorry about that guys." Riz says, sitting back in the booth next to Fabian. "My mom needed to know where I put the law books I borrowed from her last weekend. Where was I?"

Gorgug responds, but not before casting a reassuring glance at Fabian. "Uh… I think you were about to tell us who the killer was, right?"

Fabian can't tell if Riz notices and adds, "Oh yes, something about how it wasn't the butler?"

"Right, right!" He says excitedly. "Okay, so…"

He continues telling them about the tv show, which Fabian doesn’t mean to tune out of, but he can’t stop himself from thinking about Aelwyn.

Their breakup had been mutual. They quickly realized that they simply weren’t compatible with one another. Fabian wishes he didn’t take it hard, but Aelwyn was technically the first girlfriend he ever had, and his first kiss.

Fabian was supposed to go straight to Fallinel, take on the Elven army and break Aelwyn out of imprisonment in a feat of gorgeous heroism. Which, if you left some parts out and moved a few things around, he did, technically. But then Aelwyn was supposed to be so impressed with his prowess that they would start dating, eventually get married out on the sea and then have beautiful children, born out of both Aelwyn and his exceptional talents.

At least, that’s what he told himself.

But when they actually got together, Fabian realized that he didn’t understand Aelwyn at all, and she didn’t understand him. They had both been through copious amounts of stress during sophomore year, with Aelwyn having to adjust to a new life without her parents, and Fabian having to grapple with the events of Leviathan and his own residual fears. It was just too much for them to sort out together, too many parts of themselves that they didn’t understand, so how could they ask the other to?

“You have this version of me built in your head, Fabian.” Aelwyn said to him. “Maybe, before all of this, I could have been that person for you. But, I’m not even sure who I am right now.”

And he agreed with her, and that was that.

Their crystals all buzz on their table, and Fabian reaches over to check the message.

figgy pudding: Hey losers, where you guys at?

He types back.

fabian: Basrar’s, be there soon.

“I guess that’s our cue, huh.” Gorgug says, gathering the dishes onto the table, like he always does. “Make sure to text me the name of that show, Riz, so I won't forget.”

“Will do.” Riz replies, already sending the text to Gorgug. He gets up from the booth to let Fabian out and turns to him. “You ready to go?”

From the way Riz is looking at him, he can’t help but feel like he’s asking a different question, but he brushes past it. “Yeah, of course.”

---

"Is something wrong?" Riz asks that night, because Riz is too perceptive for his own good and Fabian acknowledges that he hasn't said a word to him in over 10 minutes. “You were kinda acting weird today.”

"Hm? Oh it's nothing, The Ball. Don't worry about it. What were you saying?" Fabian replies, sitting up a little straighter.

They are sitting in Riz's office, with it's stale mugs of coffee and scattered evidence. If this was anyone else's office, Fabian would hate being here. Sometimes, Riz is so deep in a mystery it becomes cramped with case files and boxes, but it always feels good to be in a space that is truly lived in. It’s nothing like home, and maybe that’s why Fabian likes it.

"You can talk to me, you know." Riz says, taking the red string Fabian's been playing with out of his hands. He pins a photo up on his corkboard.

Fabian doesn't respond. He knows he should, but at this moment, talking to his best friend seems like one of the hardest things he can do.

Riz notices this, and looks at him. "I know how you get. We don't have to talk about it." He runs a hand through his hair. "You, uh-- wanna watch a movie, maybe?"

Fabian blinks at him for a moment before replying, "You want to take a break?"

Riz laughs at that. "Come on, Fabian. I'm not that bad."

Fabian scoffs. "Please, you almost missed homecoming because you were here piecing together your clues." He gestures to the corkboard.

"And then I closed that case the same weekend." Riz says proudly, puffing up his chest a bit.

Fabian smiles, then makes the mistake of looking down at the floor beneath them. He runs his fingers over the scratch marks carved into the wood.

He tried to call and Riz didn’t pick up. Riz never ever misses his calls and his ringer is always on, so why wasn’t he--

Riz’s eyes go from soft to panicked almost immediately. “Hey, don’t do that.” He tells Fabian, pushing his hands away from the floor. “I, uh-- still need to get someone to fix those.”

“I could get someone to do it.” Fabian says immediately. Riz shakes his head.

“You know I wouldn’t let you.”

“But I could.”

“Fabian, it wasn’t your fault.”

And when Riz says this, Fabian lets out a breath of air.

Because he knows, deep down, the situation with Riz last year wasn’t his fault. But maybe if he had been a better friend and called more, or came around the office more, or had just been there when it happened... then Riz wouldn’t have to pay someone to replace his floorboards. Maybe, he wouldn’t have such a hard time looking at himself in the mirror.

“You aren’t the only one who fails, Fabian.” Riz continues, seemingly reading his thoughts. He sighs. “Y--You do this thing where you think you are the only person in the world who can do anything. The only person who can save the princess in the tower, the only person who can kill your father’s rival, like you are trying to hold the whole world up on your shoulders because you are Fabian Aramais Seacaster. And I get it, you know? I’ve had some pretty big shoes to fill myself.” He lets out a short laugh. “But, you don’t have to… prove yourself to me. Or to-- uh, anyone, really.”

“Riz, I--” Fabian’s words fail him, because figuring things out was always Riz’s job. He knows he will pay to get Riz’s floors done, because maybe Fabian didn’t have to prove himself to anyone, but as well as being a Seacaster, he was also Riz Gukgak’s best friend, and that he needed people to know.

“It’s okay, Fabian, really it is.” Riz says, interrupting him. “I’m not gonna lie, you haven’t always been-- uh, a perfect friend. I know I haven’t either.” He shrugs. “But you always try to be, and that means more to me than you probably know.”

Fabian reaches over and pulls Riz into the tightest hug he’s given since he got out of the Forest of the Nightmare King. He feels Riz tense up at first, but then his arms wrap around his neck.

“You are my best friend.” Fabian says into Riz’s shirt, because if he doesn’t say this now the flames that stir inside his chest will burn the words to ash before they reach his mouth. It was easier to say when Riz wasn’t staring back at him, picking him apart. A habit that Riz could never shake, but sometimes, Fabian welcomed it. He didn’t have to say much, because Riz always just seemed to understand.

Fabian has never had a best friend before. His family sailed so often when he was younger that it was hard to make friends with any of the kids. He was constantly being pulled out of school and thrown into the next. Every time he did so he would play his little charade of being Fabian Aramais Seacaster, impressing the children in his class, and then his family set sail once again.

Near the end of freshman year, Riz pulled Fabian aside to thank him for the briefcase and the business cards. Fabian had brushed it off, saying it wasn’t that big of a deal, but it took him hours to hand write all those business cards. Something that, to this day, Fabian still hasn’t told Riz.

After that, Riz never stopped calling him his best friend, and Fabian quickly realized that Riz is one of the only people who had ever really tried to be his friend. He denied it at first, but eventually he came to accept it as a fact.

And maybe it was the same for Riz too. Like Fabian, he didn’t like talking about personal issues. It wasn’t until sophomore year when Riz was finally able to talk about his dad in front of everyone. And much like Fabian and his own charade, he much preferred his role as a detective versus a teenage boy trying to figure the world out.

But that was just it, wasn’t it? Because maybe, they could be two teenage boys trying to figure out the world together.

And so, Fabian may not write his name upon the world. Every living being in Spyre may not know the name Fabian Aramais Seacaster, but he is okay with this.

Because Fabian doesn’t always need to be the hero, the knight who saves the princess, or the son who kills his father’s rival. Because even when he’s not the hero, there are people who still love him. And to be a part of a story that continues to write itself, that is bigger than his own, with Riz and the rest of the Bad Kidz?

Fabian couldn’t think of anything else he would rather do.

#fabian aramais seacaster #dimension 20 #fantasy high #riz gukgak #gorgug thistlespring #this took a lot out of me #but i hope someone enjoys it #its a fabian character study!!#my writing #d20 #d20 fic

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csmeaner · 2 years

Note

Same block text Anon here

And I totally agree, writing is a skill that people don’t often hone. It’s incredibly disappointing to me to see what could’ve been cool and interesting information be just kinda, dumped there in the blandest most unenjoyable way possible. Add some mysticism into your fantasy world, I am begging.

The thing about worldbuilding is that, as cool as it is and as much as I enjoy it, it only matters in terms of how it affects the characters living in that world. I don’t fault anybody for being completely uninterested in some silly war of the gods that took place at the beginning of the universe and the intricacies/play by play of why and how that happened unless its consequences have lasting impact on the way people’s characters are living life today. And even then, for the love of god stop putting in random details to “fluff stuff up”. To some degree you can, but too much just overstuffs the information you need/want to know with useless garbage. Gimme all the flavor text you want but there better be some actual context you’re seasoning with that flavor because otherwise you’ve got 0 meat for me to chew on and care about.

I think a lot of people forget that when they worldbuild for species. Characters should always be center stage, but I’ve seen too many get too carried away with waxing poetic or telling tales about their needlessly complicated cosmology and just absolutely neglect stuff like how that history impacts the culture today. Y’know, tangible ways of how a species interacts with their history, instead of just word vomit. If my character wouldn’t care about it, why should I?

For a community hyperfocused on characters and designs they sure give little fucks about actually letting people develope them.

post related

the one decent ask in my inbox talking about a concrete problem in cs and it's being drowned out by censored images of fantasy animals boinking i hate this reality

i agree with all of those points and is definitely why a lot of more serious character enjoyers have gone elsewhere. even once you get past all that crap of spending 600usd per upgrade you're left with a character and a world that isn't really interesting. some of these even copy pasted from their pages

dainty's: space faring and highly adaptive without known origins.

mignyans: alien species from unknown source that sole goal is to infect other species.

coelunes: lunar kemonomimi that explore and populate the moons across the galaxy.

grems: creatures from an ancient species that have been thoroughly domesticated by humanity. Grems serve as human companionship and protection along with many other means of assistance.

dreadnauts: Supposedly sea creatures from the ocean that infect hosts

tomoyokis: made of magic and have container body parts

elnins: magical cats

pacapillars: mammalian things with magic

browbirds: space-faring and magical. apparently started a new life after the old one was destroyed

if you glanced at any of these from their premise would you even join them, especially if placed amongst the others that have the same basic premise of either being from space or made of magic. it all feels like a little polish on the windowpaint to sell adopts

#general

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whitesparrows97 · 4 years

Text

Heartstring Melodies – Part 1

Pairing: Min Yoongi x Reader

Genre: Soulmate AU, College AU, fuckboy!Yoongi

Summary: Min Yoongi, the fuckboy of the whole college and the guy all girls fall for, should be your soulmate? You don’t believe that, you don’t want to believe that. Therefore, you and your best friend make a pact: She pretends to be you and gets together with Yoongi. Nothing can go wrong with that, right?

Warnings: Light swearing

Word Count: 3.8K

Chapter One: «The course of true love never did run smooth.» – w.s.

Lost in thought, you pushed the strap of your backpack, which had slipped down, back onto your shoulder. You searched for the familiar bunch of black hair, but it wasn’t easy among the many groups of people standing in front of the library. A waving arm ended your search and with a little smile you headed in the direction of your best friend. No sooner had you reached her than you were pulled into a tight embrace. Your laughter was muffled by the body in front of you as you returned the hug.

“We last saw each other two days ago, Liv,” you laughed as she released her grip around your body and smiled at you.

She shrugged as you walked towards the entrance of the building. “I hardly have anyone else but you,” she said softly and you could only hear her because it was so quiet in the library. “Besides, I’ve missed you.”

“We really should have studied the same subject,” you muttered.

The three years of university would probably be a lot more fun and more exciting if the two of you sat next to each other in the lecture hall. But you knew that your passions and interests were in different areas. Liv would probably go insane if she had to listen to daily seminars about the salinity of the sea or hear the word ‛photosynthesis’ one more time. On the other hand, you would probably lose it if you had to hear the names Nietzsche, Sartre or Aristotle more than once a week.

You were aware that you shouldn’t make compromises when it came to your future. And it wasn’t as if you never saw Liv; on the contrary, you saw each other practically every day at lunchtime or after your lectures.

“Are you going to the lab later?” Liv asked as you sat down at an empty table.

You let yourself sink onto the chair, exhausted from the long day, and took your papers out of your backpack. “I don’t think so,” you replied and brushed a few strands of hair aside that had fallen into your face when you shook your head.

“Jin will be disappointed,” Liv teased but you ignored her ambiguous undertone.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you said and tried to concentrate on the text you were supposed to read. However, your concentration was immediately interrupted when a hand placed itself on yours. Surprised, you looked up.

“Honestly, Y/N,” Liv started and you had the feeling that you didn’t want to hear the next part of her question. “What is going on between you and Jin?”

You pulled your hand out of her grip and dropped both hands in your lap as you leaned back against the chair. “Nothing,” you said, but Liv raised her eyebrows. “Really, he’s a good friend, and he knows I want nothing more than that. A good friendship.”

“If you say so,” Liv said in conclusion, but not without giving you a quick examing look.

The silence around you tempted your thoughts to buzz all the louder in your head and from minute to minute it became more difficult to concentrate on the text in front of you. You knew that the relationship between you and Jin was purely platonic. But you were afraid that it wasn’t as clear to him. Even though you made it more than clear to him after he asked you out for coffee a few weeks ago.

You gave Liv a belated angry look and cursed her for even bringing the topic up. Your eyes fell again on the text in front of you and with a sigh you turned to the next page. You were just about to look at the different types of sponges when you heard Liv gasp.

You looked up in wonder, but her gaze was directed at something behind you. You suppressed the impulse to turn around and look to see what had made her lose her voice.

“What?” you asked and couldn’t prevent the annoyed undertone. You had come to the library because you wanted to be well prepared for your homework and the laboratory work that went with it.

“Oh my God,” Liv croaked out. She was still staring intently at something behind you. “He looks so good,” you heard her whisper and you knew exactly who it was about.

With an eye roll you grabbed the pencil you had dropped on the table and continued to underline important passages in the text. “You’d better concentrate on your studies, Liv,” you said and watched out of the corner of your eye as her head snapped towards you.

“How?” she said a bit too loud and got some angry glances from the students around you. “How can I concentrate if a man like Min Yoongi exists?” With a sigh she let her head fall into her hands and stared in the direction of the man she was talking about.

“If you keep staring like that, he will notice it,” you stated, but a little smile played around the corners of your mouth as you remembered a situation from a few weeks ago.

“Hopefully,” Liv said and the same situation seemed to have entered her head as well.

“How long has he looked at you last time?” you asked, thinking pretentiously. You knew the answer only too well, Liv had told you often enough. “One second? Or was it even two?”

“Make fun of me,” she replied and lowered her hands. “But the one second he looked at me was the best in my life.”

“Wow, then the rest of your life must be very sad,” you muttered and laughed when you had to dodge the pen that flew in your direction. “You’re not even sure if he was really looking at you.”

“So what? He looked in my direction, which is more than some girls on this campus can dream of.”

You shook your head in disbelief. You didn’t understand how you could be so attracted to someone you had never spoken to before. Especially to someone like Min Yoongi. Your thoughts spat out the name and you had to control yourself not to pull a face when the image of the man came into your head.

Objectively speaking, he was handsome. Even you could see that. But what was the point of all that good looks when the character was nothing but a big pile of junk? And in Min Yoongi’s case, his personality took on the dimensions of a whole garbage dump.

Unfortunately, most girls on campus had a different opinion than you and they made it all too clear should they ever cross paths with him in the hallways or the cafeteria. You imagined that this only confirmed Min Yoongi in his ego even more. And it was well known that Yoongi rarely ever said no to a beautiful girl; at least if you could believe the rumors. Actually, him and his small group of friends had made a name for themselves, to live up to those rumors.

Your thoughts were interrupted when you noticed how Liv held her breath. A second later you saw the reason for her behavior when none other than Min Yoongi himself walked past your table. You watched him for a moment as he, his hands buried in the pocket of his black torn jeans, disappeared behind one of the many shelves.

“Please don’t start to freak out,” you said, half joking, half serious.

“Why is he here?”, Liv asked instead, stretching her neck, to get another look at the man. “He never goes to the library.”

“You sound like a stalker,” was the only thing you replied and returned to your homework.

“Y/N,” Liv tried to whisper, but her voice was louder than she had planned so she was almost shouting your name. Again you felt the annoyed looks of the students around you. One boy even clicked his tongue in irritation and groaned before turning his gaze away from you to bury his nose back in his book. “He’s coming here,” she finished her sentence, and you were glad that she had the volume of her voice under control this time.

When you looked up, you knew that Liv was not exaggerating this time. Your gaze met that of Min Yoongi and for a moment it seemed as if the few noises of the quiet library around you were blurring into a loud humming. You felt your heartbeat pounding in your throat as you looked into the dark eyes of the man who wore an indefinable expression.

He had drawn his eyebrows together in confusion and turned his gaze towards the floor for a moment as he continued to walk towards your table. Your table was the last one in the row and was therefore closest to the aisle he had just come from. Before you could get your thoughts in order, or calm down Liv who was shifting nervously in her chair, Min Yoongi had stopped in front of you.

“Hi,” he greeted you and his deep voice was what made you avert your gaze from him and release you from your rigidity. He cleared his throat briefly and pointed with his thumb over his shoulder towards the aisle behind him. “I’m looking for a book on composers of the 20th century. Do you know where I can find the music section? I’m not here that often,” he added the last part, and if you didn’t know better, he seemed almost embarrassed as he rubbed his hand over his neck.

Your eyes fell on Liv for a moment and you realized immediately that she was beyond help. Her eyes were two big hearts and her mouth hung slightly open as she looked up at the man in front of her. You suppressed an eye roll and turned your gaze back to the man in front of you who looked at you.

With the pen in your hand you pointed to the other end of the library. “If you go down this corridor, almost to the end, you’ll find everything about music,” you explained to him and he looked in the direction you were pointing. “I think that what you’re looking for is in the aisle next to contemporary art. But I’m not entirely sure about that.”

Yoongi turned his gaze back to you and a grin spread across his face; he was back to his old, arrogant self. Too bad, he had been very nice until now. Almost too nice…

“Thank you,” he said and mustered you once from to head to toe. You had to supress the urge to make yourself smaller in your chair.

“If there’s nothing else,” you said as an invitation for him to leave and trying to get him to look away from you as quickly as possible. But he raised an eyebrow when he heard the tone of your voice and the distinct disinterest when you turned back to the papers in front of you.

“Sorry,” said Liv, and her voice was an octave too high when she spoke. “She doesn’t mean it like that,” she tried to explain and you flinched as her foot came into contact with your shin.

“No problem,” he replied and took a look at the text you tried to read. “Well, I’d better let you two get back to work. We don’t want Mommy and Daddy to be disappointed,” he added and you raised your eyes briefly to shoot him an angry look. Asshole…

He gave you another smug grin before he went in the direction you pointed. You already regretted having helped him at all. Although he had been so nice for the first few seconds. It was probably all part of his tactics to get girls into bed.

The next minutes you had to listen to the whispered, excited monologue of Liv, who told you over and over again what had just happened. As if you hadn’t been there yourself. Sighing, you stowed your folders in your backpack when you were sure you wouldn’t be able to do anything productive today. Especially not with your hyperactive best friend, who seemed to be vibrating with excitement in her chair. You, and probably all students around you, were happy when you both left the library and headed to the dorms.

Unlike you, Liv lived in her own apartment not far from campus. So you gave her credit for taking you to the building where you had your apartment, which you shared with two other girls. Then again, she had a lot to make up for after the last two hours. After you two said your good-byes and you climbed up the stairs to the fourth floor, your thoughts inevitably drifted to the incident a few minutes earlier.

You still saw the briefly confused look on his face as he had approached you. The black hair had fallen into his face, so you hardly noticed how he pulled his eyebrows together. Something had been strange at the moment your eyes met. You had never experienced anything like it; that feeling as if everything around you was disappearing and your focus was only on one person for a split second.

You snorted when you noticed how much this thought reminded you of romantic love stories. A woman met a man and it was like love at first sight. Everything except for the other person became meaningless. You would describe yourself as not a particularly romantic person. Sure, you wouldn’t mind if a man gave you flowers or some other small gift. But for that you would have to have a man who would find you interesting enough to go out with you in the first place.

Yet you were strictly against the romanticizing that took place in so many movies, books, music and real life. Your stomach almost turned when a term came into your mind which you tried to erase from your thoughts as soon as it entered your head.

Soulmates.

With a little more force than necessary, you yanked open the zipper of your backpack to look for the key card of your apartment. Soulmates were an invention of a cruel god or higher power who had grown bored and wanted to see people suffer. There was no other way you could explain what the whole thing was for. There was nothing worse for you than the thought that your future and your life partner were predetermined.

And even worse was that it could hit you every day. There was no particular age at which soulmates found each other. You could find them when you were two, playing with them in the playground. Or you could find them at 92, sitting in your rocking chair at the retirement home. Many people never found them either and died without ever having a name on their skin. What a disappointment so many people went through, just because they never found their soulmate.

Did that make other relationships less valuable? Did it make life less worth living? Not in your eyes. You couldn’t understand how many people cared that much about a tattoo that put more pressure on you than it helped. You hoped that you would never have that problem and that the spot on your skin right over your heart would remain empty forever.

This thought had just crossed your mind when you suddenly felt a hot sting in your chest. The key card to your apartment slipped out of your grasp as your hand shot up to the spot right under your left breast. “Fuck,” you mumbled and tried to apply some pressure on the spot, hoping to take away some of the pain. In vain.

It felt like the burning was working its way into your chest until it finally enveloped you completely and for a second you felt like you were on fire. As fast as it had come, as fast the feeling ebbed away and a moment later you stood breathless in the hallway in front of your door. You leaned against the wall next to it and tried to get your breath under control.

Was that a heart attack? Or a stroke?

With shaking fingers you picked up the key card from the floor. It took you three attempts until the door finally opened and you were able to enter the apartment. As you brushed off your shoes, you ran your hand over the spot under your breast. Your eyes widened and you froze completely in your movement when a thought occurred to you.

No. No, it could not be. What a coincidence it would be if at the very moment you were upset about soulmates…

You shook your head, you didn’t want to think for a second about what might be on your skin. A name that would turn your life upside down.

You ignored the warmth that seemed to radiate from your chest as you stepped into the kitchen of the small apartment. You had never been happier than now that your two roommates weren’t home yet. A few minutes alone was exactly what you needed. You didn’t feel ready to answer the questions of the two curious girls when they noticed that something was wrong with you. It wouldn’t take them five minutes to figure out what was wrong with you.

You had lost your appetite, so you left the kitchen and went straight to your room. While you were sitting at your desk, hoping to finally be able to get some homework done, your thoughts recalled the past day. You tried to remember all the faces that you had met for the first time today. There were probably hundreds of them, if you thought about the hustle and bustle that was happening on campus every day.

Was there anyone that you spoke to for the first time? One more thing that indicated for the cruelty of the gods or spirits that invented soulmates. It could happen that you were sitting next to your soulmate day in, day out on the way to work on the same train. You would see each other every day, maybe for years. The name on your chest, however, only appeared after you had exchanged your first words with the person. That was another reason why so many people never knew who their soulmate was.

Your eyes fell on your phone, which was lying next to you on the desk and your fingers twitched in that direction. For a moment you toyed with the idea of calling your father, but you knew better and let your hand fall back into your lap.

Instead, you tried again to remember the day and to recall the conversations that took place. In your chemistry class, you had a short conversation with another student who asked if he could borrow a pen from you. At the cash desk at the cafeteria there was a new temp, a young man, probably in his mid-twenties. He had handed you your food and asked you if that was all or if there was anything else you wanted to get. On the way to the library you had not met another person.

It took you a moment to stretch the time line further and your heart skipped a beat when you thought about the conversation at the library. For the third time today you froze and sat on your chair as if you were glued to the spot. You were sure that any color had disappeared from your face as your thumb subconsciously ran across the slight burning in your chest.

A moment later, you jumped up in anger. The chair slammed against the desk with a loud thud and out of the corner of your eye you saw some of the little collection figures you had placed on it fall over.

You ran to the mirror at the back of the door to your room and came to a halt in front of it, breathing loudly. It had only been a few steps, your room was not that big, and yet you were out of breath as if you had run a marathon.

That could not, no, that would not be true. You weren’t even sure if it wasn’t a heart attack you had had after all. You would lift up your shirt and see nothing but your skin underneath. Everything would be the same. With clammy fingers you grabbed the hem of your shirt and slowly pulled it up. You could see more and more of your skin in the mirror and you swallowed hard as you worked your way up inch by inch.

With a choked scream you let the material of the fabric fall down. Had you just seen something black? Or was it a shadow of the low, setting sun? You didn’t want to try again, but you knew that sooner or later you would have to look.

You took one more deep breath before closing your eyes, grabbing the hem and pulling the shirt over your head with a jerk. You held on to the thin fabric for a moment before it fell to the ground and landed by your feet. You heard your heartbeat rushing in your ears and were torn between opening your eyes or squeezing them even tighter.

Okay, it was gonna be okay. You probably didn’t even know the name, if there really was one. If those were the only conversations you had with strangers today, the chances were one in three that it would be him. That wasn’t too bad, was it?

You pulled yourself together and opened your eyes. Right away, you wish you hadn’t. You wished you could close your eyes forever to this name that would be engraved on your skin for the rest of your life. You stroked over it, at first lightly, then more firmly, until the skin around the black fine lines turned red, so vigorously you tried to wipe the name away.

The name you heard people whispering in the corridors. The name that belonged to the man who immediately attracted attention as soon as he entered a room. Any other name would be better than the one you were staring at in the mirror before you. And even though it was mirrored, it didn’t take you a millisecond to read it.

Min Yoongi.

Note: Hello! I really hope you enjoyed the first chapter of this little story! Any kind of feedback is appreciated a lot and helps me to stay motivated and get chapters out more quickly. So I’m happy about any kind of feedback if you enjoyed the chapter (or not and you want to give me tips on my writing, which is appreciated as well)!

I hope you’re all staying safe and see you soon! 💜

#yoongi x reader #bts soulmate au #fuckboy!yoongi #bts smut #bts angst #bts fic #bts fanfic #bts imagine #bts college au

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teacupfulofstarshine · 4 years

Text

LOVELY, DARK, AND DEEP: CHAPTER 9

cw: anxiety, swearing, panic attack, injuries/scars

chapter 1 // chapter 2 // chapter 3 // chapter 4 // chapter 5 // chapter 6 // chapter 7 // chapter 8 // read it on ao3!

wordcount: 8909

Thomas does not get paid enough to deal with this.

Realistically speaking, he’s the one in control of his own salary. He makes the budgets for the house, he decides what Virgil’s rate of pay is (at least for the work he does in the lab; his art commissions are something else), he decides how the grant money they receive is dispersed. He’s the only one he has to answer to in terms of payment.

Statement revised: Thomas does not pay himself enough to deal with this.

Roman stares expectantly at him, gesturing at the mound of smoking, sparking, stuttering metal Patton has just dropped at Thomas’s feet. Thomas nudges it hesitantly with his foot, and it throws up a shower of sparks that has him and Roman leaning back quickly.

“What is it?” Roman asks.

“It looks like a piece of trash.”

“It’s not a piece of trash!” Roman snaps indignantly. “Well - I mean, it’s trash now , but it‘s not actually trash! It’s some weird metal fish that was stalking us, so we killed it! So tell us what it is!”

“How the hell should I know?”

“It’s human technology! You’re a human!” “Not all humans can identify every single piece of technology on sight, Roman! Especially when it’s just been destroyed by a merman with a vengeance!” Roman frowns at him in apparent disappointment, but Thomas just rolls his eyes. “It’s essentially a piece of garbage right now.”

“It’s important garbage, though!” Roman’s tail spines poke out a little indignantly. “It almost attacked me and Dad!”

Patton’s voice echoes from the ocean and a curve of iridescent blue arches up alongside the boat. “Okay, okay, it didn’t outright attack us. But it was clearly planning to! Look at it!”

“It just looks like a mangled pile of scrap.”

“But it’s important!” Roman stresses again. Thomas resists the urge to facepalm and roll his eyes. Roman does have a point; finding something like this roaming around the open ocean is abnormal. It doesn’t look like any aquatic research drone Thomas has ever seen, but there’s nothing else it could be.

Is there?

“We have to go home now,” Thomas says. “We have to get this fish back to Logan so he can eat, and we have to analyze this whatever-it-is and figure out what it wanted from you. Are you riding home or swimming?”

“Swimming,” Roman says. He looks offended that Thomas would even consider him riding on the boat. Like an eel, he slithers over the railing and disappears into the ocean. Thomas sighs, kicking at the hunk of smoking metal on his deck, and then disappears into the cab. He pulls the radio off the wall and clicks it.

“Doctor Sanders paging Virgil. Come in, Virgil.”

The radio crackles, squeals out a harsh blip of static, and then Virgil’s voice comes in, worried. “Doc? What’s wrong, are you okay? Is everything okay with Roman and Patton?” Thomas can hear Logan making an assortment of strange noises in the background that he assumes is some sort of concern for his family.

“Roman and Patton are fine, don’t worry. We found something disturbing while they were hunting, so we’re on our way home. We have plenty of fish, it’s gonna be okay, but . . . but there’s going to be a lot of work to do when we come home.”

Virgil exhales heavily. Thomas can picture the way his hand is shaking, the way he’s gripping the hem of his shirt and twisting it around to try and calm his nerves. “I . . . okay, okay, Doc. I’ll get Logan situated and prep the tanks to move Roman and Patton into the lab.”

“Prep a large sample bag, too.”

“How large?”

Thomas squints at the smoking pile of wreckage on his deck. “I’d say . . . leatherback sea turtle or bigger.”

“What the fuck did you all find out there?!”

“Nothing good. We’re on our way back - meet me on the docks.”

Virgil disconnects from the radio, presumably to go and have a panic attack while ranting anxiously to Logan and pushing large carts around the lab, and Thomas makes his way over to the controls. A long, iridescent blue half-moon of tail curves up out of the water, followed by a few more as Patton circles around the boat before settling on the left side. Thomas revs the boat engine and makes his way home.

He stares out over the open water, watching as the fuzzy stretch of mainland on the horizon begins to gain clarity, letting his mind wander. If Roman and Patton hadn’t found that robot and destroyed it, would it have followed them home? Did it come from the same source as the net that trapped Logan on their beach? Would it have found its way into the lab and attacked Logan? Attacked Virgil?

Thomas’s fists clench tightly on the wheel of the boat. He takes a deep breath in, lets the stinging salty air filter in and out and take all the negativity roiling in his brain with it. There’s no point in speculating on what-ifs, as he’s so quick to remind Virgil. Roman and Patton did sense the danger of the robot, and they did dismantle it before it could attack. They’re safe, for now, and Thomas will do his damnedest to make sure they stay that way.

He still remembers what Virgil was like when he first came, all sharp edges and spite wrapped like a spiky cocoon around a curious, intelligent, artistic mind to protect it. Thomas had taken one look at him, hanging back after the rest of his class to ask questions and correct an error that no one else had spotted, and known that he would do anything to protect him. Seeing the way he’s grown now, matured into an intelligent scientist in his own right, Thomas couldn’t be prouder than if Virgil was his biological son.

He won’t let anything happen to Virgil, or to any of the mer. He refuses.

The rest of the journey passes in a blur of seawater and suspicion, until Thomas is pulling the boat up just shy of the rocks that guard the entrance of the grotto. Roman pulls up alongside the boat, poking his head out. “Dad wants to know what the plan is.”

“Head into the grotto with your dad. I’ll dock the boat and come down with Virgil to bring the two of you into the lab with Logan, okay?” Roman squints suspiciously at him but nods, disappearing back into the water. Thomas waits for the squiggles of Roman and Patton beneath the water to disappear into the distance before pulling towards the dock. A purple splotch waits on the docks, pacing anxiously back and forth along the edge. Thomas glides easily into port, killing the engine and throwing the mooring lines towards the dock.

Virgil ties the boat off anxiously, darting aboard before Thomas has even lowered the gangway properly. “What happened?” he demands. Before Thomas can answer, his gaze lands on the pile of metal wreckage Thomas had hoped to hide between the piles of fish. “What the fuck?!”

“It was following Roman and Patton around when they were hunting. Roman got suspicious and stabbed it, and then it started smoking. They asked me what it was, but I don’t know, not without further testing.”

“I don’t like this,” Virgil mutters, rocking back and forth on the heels of his feet. “I don’t like this at all. I don’t like this, Doc, this whole thing just reeks of someone looking for something they lost - I bet they’re looking for the net, since we deactivated the GPS, which means that they’re looking for Logan, too -”

Thomas reaches out and grasps Virgil’s shoulder. “Breathe,” he says. “Roman took the robot out quickly, so even if it was transmitting somewhere, they got very little evidence. The GPS was disabled when Roman took it out. The closest they got is a general location somewhere close to where the net they lost was originally deployed.”

“That’s still close to us, though,” Virgil says. “It’s close to our stretch of beach - they know we’re around these waters frequently, they have to, and this is just another nail in our coffin -”

“Virgil!” Thomas grabs both shoulders and wrenches him around to look at him. “You’re catastrophizing. You have to take a deep breath and count for me, okay? Come on. It’s okay. It’s okay, I’m right here. Nothing is going to happen as long as I’m around to prevent it, so take a deep breath. Come on, here we go . . .”

It takes longer than normal to get Virgil’s breathing back under control, but Thomas waits patiently until he’s breathing regularly. “There we go.”

“Sorry,” Virgil croaks.

“No need to apologize, or I’ll have to shove you into the sea. Come on, we gotta get this fish back to Logan so we can get Roman and Patton out of the grotto.”

They decide eventually that Virgil will go and fetch Roman and Patton while Thomas brings the fish and the robot remnants back into the lab. Virgil disappears down the docks, and Thomas begins loading as much fish as he can reasonably manage into a cart. The robot parts he loads into a separate bag, slinging it over his shoulder before leaning against the cart and grunting until it starts to move.

When it finally grinds to a halt inside the lab, Logan jerks his head up from where he’s apparently been falling asleep on the table. “Virgil?” he calls, squinting in confusion.

“Not quite,” Thomas laughs. “He’s gone to get your pod from the grotto. I did bring you food, though! I’ll be over there in just - nngh! - a sec -”

Thomas likes to think that he has a decent about of muscle on his frame. He’s not built, by any means, but he’s decently strong from hauling lab equipment around and working the boat machinery. He’s beginning to question his own strength as he struggles with the fish cart.

He drops the bag of machine parts on a nearby table as Logan sniffs at the air, leaning forward and snatching a fish off the cart. Thomas watches the flash of bone-white teeth as Logan leans forward and sinks his teeth into the fish’s flesh. He looks ravenous, tearing through one, two, three fish rapidly before finally slowing down around his fourth. Thomas opens the bag and starts laying out shards of metal and circuitry, inspecting them critically.

“What’s that?” Logan asks. “More fish?”

“No,” Thomas says, too distracted to pay much attention to Logan.

“Something’s wrong,” Logan says, setting down his half-eaten fish. “What is it?”

“Your pod,” Thomas says, turning away from the scraps. “While they were hunting -”

“What happened? Dad, Roman, are they okay? Where are they?” Logan bristles, and little lines of blue electricity begin to crackle along his arms.

“They’re fine,” Thomas says, raising his arms to calm Logan. “Virgil is bringing them in from the grotto right now. While they were out hunting, there was a fish that aroused Roman’s suspicions. He stabbed it with his spines, and it turned out to be a robot. Virgil and I have to analyze it more, but it’s suspicious, certainly. Especially given where and how we found you.”

Logan frowns. “But they’re alright?”

“Yes, Logan. Everyone is fine.”

“Logan!” Roman calls. Virgil staggers into the lab, Roman draped around him like the world’s heaviest, bitchiest scarf, and Logan relaxes instantly when he hears his brother’s voice. Virgil unceremoniously dumps Roman into the tank set up near Roman’s lab table and turns around to go and retrieve Patton. Roman reaches up and takes Logan’s hand, pressing his wet head against Logan’s upper arm.

“Thomas says that you encountered a strange and unusual creature in the water?”

“I killed it before it could hurt me or Dad, don’t worry.”

“You can’t kill something that isn’t alive,” Thomas says.

“What do you mean, isn’t alive?”

“I mean, this is a robot. It’s not a living thing. A human made it, using metal and computer circuits. They programmed it to do what they wanted. It’s not a real fish, it’s not really alive. I am glad you destroyed it when you did, though. From what I can tell, it has a transmitter on it, for audio and video feed.”

“None of those words mean anything to me,” Roman says, reaching for a fish of his own.

“It means,” Thomas says, “that there’s someone out there who could see what this thing saw and hear what this thing heard. And since it saw and heard you -”

“The other person did as well.” Horror dawns on Logan’s face.

“Don’t worry, Logan. Roman destroyed it well before anything significant or identifying could be transmitted. They got a glimpse of Roman, if anything, before he destroyed it.”

Logan and Roman don’t look particularly convinced, but luckily Virgil chooses that moment to begin complaining loudly about how he’s not strong enough for this as he wheels Patton’s cart into the lab. Thomas abandons the robot to help lift Patton up into the tank with Roman. The very tip of his long, light blue tail arcs up out of the water to gently stroke Logan’s back. Logan smiles weakly and leans into it.

While the pod eats their fill, Thomas and Virgil pull on gloves and goggles and set about examining the remains of the robot. Thomas is no expert in robotics or computers, but he knows enough to keep up with the advances being made in the fields of prosthetics and other such machinery useful for marine biology. He’s been doing more research, since Logan washed up on their beach, and what he finds makes his blood run cold.

“Luckily,” Thomas says quietly, “it seems that Roman managed to short out the GPS and transmissions systems when he took out the robot, which is good.” Virgil nods, frowning at something before sliding it under a microscope. “What is it?”

“There’s something engraved on this piece, but I can’t see what it is . . . I can feel it under my fingers . . .”

Virgil frowns into the microscope, and then he stands up abruptly, darting off to another corner of the lab. “What is it?” Thomas asks. The fact that Virgil is so flagrantly disregarding lab safety is ample cause for Thomas’s concern.

Virgil doesn’t answer him, scrambling frantically through a pile of something on one of the other tables before hurrying back to slide something else under the microscope. “I hate being right,” he mutters. “Fuck! Shit fuck god fucking damn it fuck -”

“What? What is it?”

“There’s an insignia engraved on this piece of shit machinery, and I thought it looked familiar. I was right. The same thing was engraved on one of the little barbs of the net that captured Logan. Which means -”

“They were made by the same person.” Thomas looks over at the small pod of mer assembled on his lab tables, sharing a meal, and feels ice cold fear strike through him like a knife in his heart.

He also hates being right - they are in danger, all of them.

*~*~*~*~*

“Is everything quite alright?”

Virgil isn’t looking at him. To be more precise, he isn’t looking at Logan’s face. His gaze flits from Logan’s knee to his shoulder to his chest to his neck to his hair, but never his eyes.

“Virgil,” Logan says. He reaches out to where Virgil is drumming his fingers nervously along the lab table, a rapid staccato taptaptaptap of anxiety, and takes his hand. “Are you alright?” Virgil’s hand shakes in his grasp, and Logan shifts to push his fingers between Virgil’s to help calm him. “You are shaking.”

Virgil doesn’t respond to him, but his entire face lights up pink. Logan squints at him, leaning in to try and gain more clarity regarding Virgil’s facial expressions, but it only increases the pinkness. “Roman and Dad found something, didn’t they? What was it? Did something happen?”

Virgil exhales shakily. His hand tightens around Logan’s, and Logan squeezes back to try and communicate that he cares about how Virgil is doing. “I . . . Roman found a robot in the water. It has a mark on it that’s the same as the mark we found on the net. We’re worried that it’s from the same person who tried to trap you, which means -”

“They are attempting to track me down,” Logan says.

“Yeah. Obviously, we’re not gonna let that happen, but it does mean that they know Roman’s here, at the very least, because they saw him on the video feed before he destroyed it. They won’t have gotten more than a glimpse of him, though.”

“Why are you distressed?” Logan asks. “Are you worried that they will attack you or Thomas to get to myself and my pod?”

“No! Well, yeah, kind of, but - I’m worried because I don’t want anything to happen to you. I l - I care about you, a lot, and I don’t want anything bad happening to you. Or to your pod, for that matter, but I - I just mean -”

The pinkness grows brighter and brighter still, and Logan squeezes his hand again. “Thank you,” he says softly. “I know it is an . . . imposition, caring for me and my pod the way that you do, but -”

“You’re not imposing,” Virgil says. “Taking care of wounded sea creatures is our job, and - and even if it wasn’t, I would be happy to do it for you. I would be happy to do just about anything for you.” Virgil slaps his free hand over his mouth, like he hadn’t meant for the last bit to come out, but Logan just smiles and squeezes his hand even tighter.

“Thank you, Virgil. I appreciate you, and everything that you have done for me and my pod.”

Virgil reaches up and gently tucks Logan’s hair behind his ear, sweeping his bangs away from his eyes. “Logan?” Logan feels his heart stutter and skip a beat, and he leans his head up, looking at Virgil’s face. Virgil is finally looking at him properly, and Logan can’t look away from his eyes. They’re like nothing he’s ever seen before, truly. How beautiful, Logan thinks, before nearly throwing himself backwards off the table because what in the seven seas is he thinking what is Virgil thinking -

“Yes?” Logan whispers. He can’t bring himself to speak any louder, worrying that whatever is happening between himself and Virgil right now will shatter like a fragile piece of sea glass if he speaks too loudly. He’s aware of Roman and Patton still eating next to him, aware of Thomas muttering to himself and making noises doing whatever he’s doing across the lab, but the only thing he can hold his focus on is Virgil.

“I - um - it’s time to change your bandages,” Virgil says, reaching out and tenderly touching one of the white patches on Logan’s neck. “Are you done eating yet?”

“Wh - I - yes,” Logan stammers. Virgil smiles at him, and Logan swears that the entire room spins and lightens.

“I’ll go get the bandages, okay? You good to wait here?”

“It is not as though there are many other places that I am capable of getting right now.” Logan means for it to be a serious remark, but Virgil snorts and smiles and laughs, eyes crinkling up and hair flopping into his face and Logan can barely stop himself from reaching for Virgil and demanding some form of affection.

He does, though, and Virgil heads off across the lab. Logan wonders what the primary expressions of human affection are, compared to his customs. He wonders how Virgil would respond if, when he gets his tail back, he curls it around Virgil’s legs and winds it in and around, different than the way he curls with his pod. He wonders how Virgil would respond if Logan spent hours, days even, combing the sea floor for a single perfect gift - an unmarred shell, a weathered stone, a piece of glass smoothed by the sea into an absolutely beautiful texture - and presented it to him as a token of affection, of his intentions. He wonders how Thomas would react if Logan brought him a heap of fish, proving his worth as a hunter and a mate, and asked for permission to - to -

To what? Is there any way, realistically, for Virgil and Logan to court? Logan may have legs now, but they are a temporary feature, and Virgil doesn’t have a tail at all. Even if Virgil is interested (which is still a pretty big if, in Logan’s opinion), is there any possibility of a serious courtship between them?

Logan decides that he isn’t going to worry about this right now and turns his attention back to Virgil, who’s returning with another roll of the white patches he uses to help bind Logan’s injury, as well as a few other things. “This is probably going to hurt,” Virgil says apologetically.

“You’re not doing anything that might hurt him!” Roman says. Logan wishes he still had his tail so that he could slap Roman across the face with it.

“It’s not a serious hurt,” Virgil says, rolling his eyes. Logan had been ashamed to hear that Roman threatened Virgil and Thomas, after all they’ve done for him, but Virgil seems to have taken Roman’s personality in stride recently, which Logan is eternally grateful for. “I have to pull off the old bandages, and since they’re sticky against the skin it can sting a little. Then I have to disinfect the wounds, and that stings a little too, and then I apply new bandages. It hurts a hell of a lot less than what caused these injuries in the first place, I can tell you that for certain.”

“It is not the first time I have had these changed,” Logan says softly. “I am used to the sting, Roman. It will not hurt me badly.” Roman snarls suspiciously, but he sinks back into the tank and lets Virgil get to work pulling off Logan’s shirt and rolling up the sleeves of his pants to reveal the injured areas.

Virgil’s fingers are long, although not as long as Logan’s, and his claws are blunted and short. He doesn’t seem to mind, though, carefully brushing the tips of his fingers over Logan’s skin as he peels off the old bandages. Logan winces and lets out a short, sharp puff of air, but does his best not to react too badly. Virgil won’t startle, but if Roman thinks Virgil was lying about the pain of the process he’ll lose his mind.

“What’s this from?” Virgil asks, drawing Logan’s attention from his wandering thoughts. Logan’s focus returns in time to notice Virgil’s fingers gently stroking over a silvery patch of skin on his arm. “It’s a scar, right? An old one, given by how well it’s healed.”

Logan takes a moment to find his voice. “I - yes,” he finally stammers out. “It’s - um - hunting incident. Back when I first joined the pod, while we were getting used to each other, Roman was practicing with his spines and he stabbed me.”

Virgil whirls around to glare sharply at Roman. “Some brother you are!”

“It was an accident!”

“It healed well, all things considered.”

Virgil’s fingers trace up Logan’s arm, lingering on another set of scars that swirl around his arms. “And these?”

“I fought off a squid.” Virgil’s eyes widen, and Logan senses an opportunity. “It was quite an adventure - I was separated from Roman and Dad, and before I knew what was happening, the squid was upon me. It wrapped itself around me, and -”

Generally speaking, Roman is the fanciful one, the one telling stories of grandeur and regaling others with his hunting exploits. Logan calls on every memory he has of Roman showing off as he speaks. Virgil sits on the lab table next to him, eyes wide and shiny, fingers always touching some part of Logan. They skate from injury to injury, peeling off the bandages and disinfecting the fresh wounds while tracing questions along the healed silvery scars. Logan tells story after story, and Virgil appears completely enraptured.

“Trying to impress the pretty human, are you, Sharkbait?” Roman snarks. Dad’s laughter echoes musically from the tank as well.

“Shut up, Roman!”

“Brotherly disputes?” Virgil teases, gently dabbing a damp cotton ball at Logan’s wounds. Logan hisses a little at the sting, but he keeps his body still to allow VIrgil to work. The rest of the wounds are treated and re-bandaged relatively quickly. “It’s interesting, you know.”

“What is?”

“Hearing your hunting stories. They’re really interesting. I love hearing about your way of life and how it differs from ours up on land. Any customs that you have, feel free to share them with me.” Virgil smiles broadly, and Logan smiles back. If he still had his tail, he would make a very rude gesture at Roman for snickering in the background.

“Are you finished, Virgil?”

“Yeah. Do you wanna practice walking for a little bit before I turn in for the night?”

“Turn into what?” Virgil laughs softly; Logan’s entire being melts, just a little.

“It’s a human expression, Lo. It means before I fall asleep.”

“Yes, I would like to practice walking, then.”

Logan is unashamed to admit that he has a very strong tail. He’s much faster than Roman is, and although Patton can travel more distance in a shorter amount of time due to his size, Logan is still faster relatively. He’d assumed that the strength of his tail would translate to his new legs.

That does not appear to be the case.

“You’ve got a whole new set of muscles in there,” Virgil tells him, wrapping his hands around Logan’s - what had he called them? Ankles , that was it - and sliding them off the table to the floor. “Swimming and walking are two completely different sets of motions, even for someone like me who uses their legs for both activities. You’ve got to strengthen yourself. It might take some time.”

“I’m sorry,” Logan says. “I should not need you to hold my hands like this.” I want you to hold my hands, he thinks. I want you to hold my hands and my arms and my all of me. I want you to hold me close and press your face into my hair and let me bring you courtship gifts.

“It’s okay, Lo. It’s no skin off my back. I like doing this, I like helping you.” Virgil carefully wraps one of Logan’s arms around his shoulders and takes Logan’s other hand, taking a few steps backwards and pulling Logan with him. Logan wobbles shakily as Virgil helps him onto his new feet, and Virgil smiles, and the entire world is okay again. There’s no mysterious force out there, trying to net him or his pod, there’s no fresh scars forming under the bandages all over his body. There is just Virgil, smiling at him like he arranged the Upper Oceans, and nothing else matters.

Virgil slides his hands down to grip Logan’s forearms, careful to avoid any areas with bandages on them. “One step back, one step forward, okay? We can do it. You can do it.” Logan nods. He’s determined not to let Virgil down. He can’t - he won’t.

Virgil pushes himself up onto the front part of his feet - his toes, Logan thinks he called them - and takes a step backward. Logan concentrates and lifts one foot, taking a single clunky step forward. It’s far more graceless than Virgil, who moves elegantly even when he’s in a frazzled rush, but Virgil still grins at him. “Fantastic! One more, okay? One step back, one step forward.” Virgil takes another step back with his other foot, and Logan shifts to follow him. They continue like this for quite a while, across the lab, and when they reach the far wall, Virgil slowly turns them around so they can go back across the lab. His hands slide down to take Logan’s, as opposed to gripping his arms.

“Less support for you, so you have to rely more on your own muscles,” Virgil says. “But I’ll still be here to catch you, no matter what. I believe in you. Two steps at a time now, alright?”

Logan nods, and when Virgil steps backwards, one-two, Logan attempts to step forward, one-two. Unfortunately, Virgil and Logan both overestimate Logan’s strength, and he pitches forward with a startled shriek.

“I gotcha!” Virgil says, surging forward and throwing his arms around Logan as he collapses into Virgil’s chest. Logan grunts as his face collides with Virgil, looking up to see the pinkness returning to his cheeks. It takes Logan a few moments to realize that he never put his shirt back on after Virgil changed his bandages, and now his bare chest is pressed against Virgil. Virgil’s face is open and pink, and Logan can feel his own face growing warm and pink as they stare at each other.

“Oh,” Logan says, softly.

“Oh,” Virgil agrees, equally soft.

“How long are you going to make penguin eyes at him before you give him a courtship gift?” Roman calls.

“I’m going to stab you with your own spines,” Logan snarls, struggling to try and right himself. Virgil’s hands quickly slide from his waist to his elbows, pulling him upright again. Logan slides his hands around to grab Virgil’s arms as well so that he won’t let go again.

“Everything okay with you and your brother?”

Logan sighs. “He is being abnormally stubborn and rude, at the moment.”

“Am not! You’re just useless and pining over the pretty human!”

“Ignore him,” Virgil says. “He’s just jealous because you get to spend time walking around staring at me and he doesn’t.” Judging by Virgil’s tone, he’s being sarcastic, but Logan knows that he’d be jealous if he were in Roman’s position. He’d be jealous of anyone who got to spend an extended amount of their time up close and personal with Virgil.

They walk a little more, and Logan only almost falls three or four more times. It’s not great, but it’s better than the last time he tried. Eventually, he grows tired, and his feet and legs begin to ache. Virgil helps him back to the table he’d been sitting on. “Hang on - I gotcha -”

Virgil bends at the knees and scoops Logan up, draping him across his arms and carefully arranging him on the table. “There you go, L. Sitting comfortably?” Logan is too stunned at his abrupt proximity to answer properly for a moment, but eventually he manages to answer.

“Yes, I - thank you, Virgil.”

Thomas and Virgil sit down to eat in the laboratory, at a cleared-off and cleaned table near Logan and his pod. They normally don’t eat in here, but apparently it doesn’t make sense to keep moving up and down and up and down repeatedly from the house proper to the laboratory. Logan lets his eyes slide closed as the conversation washes over him, soft like the gentle waves on a clear day. He tunes back in sharply when he hears his name.

“What are we going to do about Logan?” Thomas says. Virgil puts down his eat stick and frowns.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Patton said he won’t get his tail back until tomorrow, right? So there’s no way that he can sleep in the tank with Patton and Roman like he’s been doing. What are we gonna do about that?”

“He could always come and sleep in the house with us,” Virgil offers.

“No way, absolutely the hell not, there is no way I’m letting Logan spend the night alone with you humans -” Roman spits, spines puffing out like a sea urchin.

“It’s not your decision, Ro,” Patton says gently. “Logan, it’s your call. Thomas is right, you can’t sleep in the tank with us without working gills, you’ll drown.”

“What did Patton say?” Virgil asks.

“That Roman is overreacting, as usual -”

“Hey!”

“- and that I cannot sleep with them without my gills, which I will not regain until tomorrow at the earliest.” Logan looks at Virgil and Thomas, watching the way Virgil watches him - cautious, hesitant, but hopeful as well. “What do you suggest, Virgil?”

Virgil exhales shakily. “I have a room in the house, where I sleep. It’s big enough that you could sleep there as well, if you want. We can come back down to the lab first thing in the morning after breakfast, let Patton and Roman see that I haven’t done anything untoward to you in the middle of the night.”

“I would greatly enjoy sleeping with you,” Logan says, just a touch too eagerly. Virgil chokes on his food. Thomas makes a very strange face at him over the table; it reminds Logan of the way Roman and Patton have been teasing him recently. Logan decides to ignore it; he’s got plenty to think about in regards to his own entanglements with Virgil.

Patton and Roman are both teasing him about the anticipation in his voice. Logan decides to ignore them as well.

*~*~*~*~*

Virgil is not particularly looking forward to trying to maneuver Roman back into his tank. Roman is a bit snappish with him at the best of times, and while Virgil understands his disdain for humans after all he’s been through, he likes to think that he’s earned enough goodwill for Roman to drop some of his suspicions.

Still, Thomas has already wound the majority of Patton’s long, flexible tail around himself and braced his arms under his torso, shuffling his way up the stairs around the tank. Patton had reared up out of the tank to press his forehead against Logan’s, letting out a strident chirp of mer before pulling back into the water and forming his customary travel bubble.

“Can you please stop looking at me like that?” Virgil sighs.

“Like what, human?”

“Like you’re contemplating how many spines it would take for you to murder me.”

“Maybe I am contemplating how many spines it would take to murder you.”

“I have a name, Roman. You know my name. You’ve used my name before.”

“That was before I realized you had designs on my brother.”

“Yes, designs to keep him from drowning in the middle of the night since he can’t breathe water right now,” Virgil says dryly. Logan suppresses a soft, wheezing laugh, and Virgil feels his chest grow lighter. “Come on, Pincushion, into the tank with you.”

“Who are you calling a pincushion?” Roman demands. He furrows his brow in confusion. “Also, what is a pincushion?”

“It’s a soft little thing that you stick sharp pins into when you’re not using them so that you don’t stab yourself by accident, and as you’re full of sharp spines, you look and act very much like a pincushion.”

“I think I’m supposed to be offended by that.”

“Well, I’m offended that you keep trying to murder me for being nice to you and your brother and your dad. Life goes on. Put your spines down so I can put you into the god damned tank.” Roman hisses at him, puffing his spines up even more in protest. Virgil hisses right back, startling both Roman and Logan. “What? Did you think you were the only one who could hiss when they’re upset or threatened? Think again, Princey.”

Roman’s spines all flatten at once. It’s probably more out of shock than anything else, but Virgil’s not complaining. Roman reaches out and squeezes Logan’s hand before turning back to Virgil and lifting his arms up dramatically. Virgil rolls his eyes and drapes Roman’s tail around himself before hoisting the merman up into his arms. “If you prick me, I will throw you down all of the stairs in this lab, so help me God.”

“What is a god?” Roman asks crossly. Virgil huffs with the effort of going up the stairs and doesn’t respond. By the time he makes it to the top of the tank, Thomas has just finished lowering Patton down into the water. A curl of blue tail rises from the water and delicately curls around Thomas’s arm like a thank you before sinking back into the tank. Virgil drops Roman into the water with a good deal less delicacy. He gets splashed for his troubles, but he doesn’t care that much what Roman thinks of him.

“I apologize again for Roman’s behavior,” Logan says. He reaches for Virgil’s hand, and Virgil lets him take it. Logan’s hands are surprisingly smooth, as though they, too have been weathered and worn by the ocean; they’re a little cooler than the average human skin, but Virgil runs a little cold himself, so he finds it comforting. “He has always been quite . . . protective of me. I suspect that my being taken has only amplified those feelings.”

“I don’t have an older brother, but I understand where he’s coming from. As long as he doesn’t actually stab me, I’m not that upset about it.” Logan smiles, soft like the breaking dawn, and Virgil feels a tidal wave well up and drown him in overwhelming affection. It takes all his energy not to lean in and kiss Logan right then and there, to press his free palm up against Logan’s cheek and slide his fingers into Logan’s hair.

“I am glad,” Logan says softly, “that my brother’s . . . concerns have not destroyed what we have with each other. We are . . . friends, are we not?”

Virgil’s exuberance dims, just a little, but he nods. “Yeah, Logan. We’re friends.” Logan smiles again, squeezing Virgil’s hand. Virgil squeezes back. “Come on, we’ve gotta get you upstairs. Do you think you can walk over there if I help you?”

“Is walking backwards dangerous?” Logan asks.

“If you do it a lot and you’re not careful, it can be. You can’t see where you’re going when you do it, not unless you twist your head all the way around, and even then you have a limited field of vision.”

“I don’t want you doing that if it’s dangerous for you,” Logan says, brow creasing in stress and worry. “I don’t want you getting hurt because of me.”

“Aw, why not? Do you care about me?” Virgil teases.

“Yes,” Logan says, so earnest and serious that Virgil’s breath catches in his throat a little. “I do care about you, very much. You - you are the first friend that I ever made, outside of my father and my brother. You are . . . important to me, and I do not wish to see you injured.”

“There’s other ways to walk,” Virgil says, once he regains his voice. “We can go side-by-side, if you like.”

“If there’s less chance of you injuring yourself, then that’s the option that I prefer.” Virgil carefully picks up Logan’s shirt and helps him tug it on, to prevent any repeats of the capital-i Incident from earlier. Logan shuffles around until his feet hang over the side of the table, and Virgil bends down to help him up. He carefully wraps an arm around Logan’s waist and Logan drapes his arm around Virgil’s shoulders.

“Will you be okay putting the lab equipment away by yourself, Doc?”

Thomas smirks. “You seem to have your hands full, Virge.”

“We can wait to go upstairs if you need my help here,” Virgil says, pointedly ignoring Thomas’s insinuations. “Logan, you don’t mind waiting a few more minutes, do you?”

“I do not have any opinions of the sort.”

“See? We’ll be fine to wait.”

Thomas rolls his eyes, smiling. “Don’t worry about it, Virgil. I cleaned up the lab by myself for years before I took you on as my live-in doctoral student, I can handle one night.” Virgil resists the urge to flip him off and sticks his tongue out instead.

“What does that mean?” Logan asks as they slowly shuffle towards the door.

“What, doctoral student? It means . . . well, essentially it means that I’m studying with the doc so that I can write a really really long, really really specific paper that’ll get analyzed and hopefully approved by a bunch of people with a fancy title so that I can also have a fancy title.”

“Oh! Is that hard?”

“It’s pretty difficult, yeah. Most people don’t do it. I’m a bit of a rare exception.” Virgil tries not to puff out his chest in pride. He’s pretty sure he fails.

“That isn’t what I meant, though. What does . . . this mean?” Logan pokes his tongue out curiously. Instead of looking like a retort, like Virgil had meant it when he stuck his tongue out earlier, Logan looks adorable and confused. Every single cat video Virgil has ever seen involving a cat sticking its tongue out in a blep runs through his mind at once, and he nearly collapses from the sheer adorableness of the situation.

“It’s . . . just a human thing,” Virgil says quickly. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it. I - oh. This might be an issue.” He hadn’t considered it before, given how often he traverses this path every day without any issue, but he’s never traversed it with an unstable merman with the footing of a newborn deer before.

He has no idea how he’s going to get Logan up the stairs.

Virgil’s initial thought is that he’ll just show Logan how to climb the stairs and help him up, the same way he’s been helping him walk across the floor. This plan is quickly derailed when Logan nearly faceplants across the very first low step. “Will it be alright if i just carry you?” Virgil says. “Like I do when you have a tail, or like I do for your brother.”

“I hope you’re a bit gentler with me than you are with Roman,” Logan says. It takes Virgil a few moments to realize that Logan is actually joking, and then he snorts and laughs.

“Don’t worry, Logan. I like you much better than Roman, I won’t drop you.” Logan laughs.

“If Roman hears you say that, he very well might stab you.”

“I’d like to see him try.”

Logan loops his arms around Virgil’s neck as he’s hoisted up into his arms. Virgil fights very hard not to think about the fact that he has an arm very closely braced underneath Logan’s ass, or the way that Logan leans his face into Virgil’s shoulder with a soft, satisfied sigh, as though he trusts Virgil to protect him from any and all dangers in the world; he fights not to think about the way Logan’s lips look, still slightly wet from when he’d had his tongue poking out mere moments before, or the way his lower lip sticks out slightly, round and kissable; he fights not to think about the way Logan’s hair flops in his face and his eyes, or the way he wants to run his fingers through it and memorize the texture, memorize the way every curl, every lock, every individual strand feels slipping across his fingertips, along his palm, tangled up in his fingers and soft against his bare chest and tickling his nose if they fall asleep snuggled together and -

Virgil hurries up the stairs before he becomes so distracted that he drops Logan.

They get waylaid in the kitchen so Virgil can get a drink before he goes to bed. Logan is fascinated by the house, asking questions about everything he sees. “What’s that?”

“It’s called an oven. You put food in it, and it gets really really hot inside and it makes the food hot, too.”

“What’s that?”

“The stove. You put food on top of it to heat it up, kind of like the oven, but a little quicker.”

“What’s that?”

“The refrigerator; you put food in it to cool it down and keep it cold, to keep it from spoiling.”

“Humans are very obsessed with controlling the temperature of their foods, aren’t they?” Logan muses.

“I guess we are. I never really thought about it before . . .”

Finally, Virgil manages to get them up into his bedroom. It looks the way it normally does, but Virgil finds himself fixating on the mess - a few scattered piles of clothes, textbooks and other books strewn haphazardly around the room, random papers everywhere, pinned on the walls in patterns that wouldn’t make sense to a madman, most of them marked with thick streaks of marker and hastily scrawled three-am revelations.

“Sorry it’s such a disaster, Lo.” Virgil carefully sets him down in the desk chair and throws open the curtains covering the glass door onto the balcony. The sun has set over the ocean, but some of the colors still linger in the sky, vibrant like strokes of paint on an Impressionist canvas.

“I do not see a disaster here, Virgil. I see evidence of life. It is quite . . . fascinating. And I assure you, our regular sleeping grottos are just as messy.” Virgil still hurries to try and tidy up his room, kicking piles of clothes under the bed and throwing them into his often-neglected hamper. He stacks the books as best he can, assembles the papers into one large pile and pins them down with a loose seashell.

“Still, the floor is gonna have to be cleared off if I’m gonna sleep on it.”

“Why would you sleep on the floor?” Logan asks. “Is that not the point of that thing?” He points to Virgil’s bed. “Is that not a place for sleeping?”

“It’s called a bed,” Virgil says, “and you’re going to be sleeping there. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“Why would you sleep on the floor?”

“Because the bed’s really only big enough for one person, Logan. You can sleep on it, since you’re the guest, and I’ll sleep on the floor. Or I can go downstairs and sleep on the couch, it’ll be alright, but I thought I’d stay on the floor in case you needed something.”

Logan frowns, looking almost heartbroken. “I . . . you will not be sleeping with me? You said you would . . .”

“Well yeah, I meant you were sleeping up here in my room, I didn’t necessarily mean - I didn’t know if you would be comfortable sleeping that close to me. I mean - I -”

“I always sleep with my pod,” Logan says. His voice is small and shaky, heartbroken. “I have not slept by myself - prior to the incident with the net, of course - for so long . . . please, do not make me sleep alone again.”

Logan is going to kill him, Virgil is absolutely sure of it. “I . . . okay, L. I’ll sleep with you. Just let me get changed, okay? Let me get into my pajamas.”

“What are pajamas?”

“Clothes you sleep in.”

“Do I need a pajamas?”

“No, that’ll work just fine. You’re comfortable, right?”

“Yes?”

“Then you’ll be okay. Wait right there, okay? I’m gonna get ready for bed. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Virgil quickly ducks into the adjoining bathroom. He splashes cold water on his face and tries to regain his composure. He never thought that inviting Logan to share his bedroom would entail sharing his bed, but he supposes he should have known better. In for a penny, in for a pound, et cetera, et cetera. Logan won’t read anything into it if he doesn’t act like there’s something to be read into it, so as long as he keeps himself together it’ll be alright.

The rest of his bedtime routine is relatively swift - washing his face properly, brushing his teeth, changing into loose sweatpants and an oversized tank top, dragging a brush through his tangled messy hair, making sure he remembers to take his anti-anxiety medication, using the bathroom. He’s in and out in less than five minutes, plugging his phone in to charge on the desk and making sure that he sets his alarm for the morning.

“It’ll just be a second while I make sure the bed’s ready, if you don’t mind waiting a little.”

Logan yawns, waving a hand at Virgil. “Take your time.”

Virgil piles all the clothes littering his bed into a corner, somewhat ashamed of the fact that he hadn’t been bothered to put them away properly, before digging out his nicest, softest blankets and pillows and piling up the bed to make it nice and comfortable.

As he turns back to Logan, a thought occurs. “Do you brush your hair, underwater? Or your teeth?”

“What is brush?” Logan asks. Virgil fetches his hairbrush from the bathroom and demonstrates how he drags it through his hair to make it smooth and neat.

“There’s a different one of these, as well, smaller, that we use to clean our teeth because otherwise they can get diseases and fall out.”

“We don’t have brush or whatever you call it, but there are small fish that swim around and eat the scraps that get stuck in our teeth. Dad likes to sit there with his mouth open for hours and let them swim in and out of his mouth.”

“You guys use cleaner fish?” Virgil asks.

“Is that what humans call them?”

“Yeah.”

“Then yes, we do. But we have no such thing for our hair.”

“I bet your hair is awfully tangled, after being in the ocean for so long. Do you want me to brush it?”

“Will it hurt?” Logan sounds small and scared, reaching up to hesitantly touch his hair.

“It may pull a little, especially if you have big knots or tangles, but I promise I’ll be as gentle as I possibly can.” Logan nods, hesitantly, and Virgil carefully lifts the brush to his hair. He expects it to be coarse and rough, since seawater dries out human hair, but it’s strangely slick. It sort of reminds Virgil of the way a duck’s feather repel water, but it’s smoother than that. It feels just as nice as he’d imagined beneath his fingers. Logan wince a little when Virgil pulls on a few particularly rough knots, but all in all he sits through it with a brave face.

“All done,” he says ten minutes later. “Does that feel better?”

“I do not know if I would say it feels better, per se, but my hair certainly feels nice and smooth.” Logan runs his fingers through his own hair, smiling. “I have never been able to do that before. It is quite wonderful.”

“I’m glad I could make you happy,” Virgil says. Logan smiles, and Virgil would sacrifice the world, the universe, and everything in it if he could keep making Logan smile like that.

Virgil puts Logan up against the wall so that he doesn’t accidentally fall out of the bed. It’s not really meant for two people, but Virgil thinks that as long as they’re careful he’ll be alright. He draws the curtains again, turns off the lights, and shuts the door. “Would you like a light o - oh.”

When he turns around, Logan is glowing softly - his eyes are bright blue, and every single freckle on his face and arms gleams like a little star. “Apologies,” Logan says, sounding embarrassed. “My scales and eyes glow in dark water - Dad’s and Roman’s are the same way. I didn’t think I would have the same effects while in this human guise, but . . . will this affect your ability to sleep?”

“It - I - um - it shouldn’t, I mean - there’s usually some light or another coming in, it’s never pitch black here.” Virgil shuffles across the room, finding it much easier to navigate now that he’s cleared the piles of clothes and books and other flotsam and jetsam from the floor. He carefully climbs into bed, settling under the covers and arranging them over Logan as well. He settles on his side, facing Logan, who blinks back at him with his eerily bioluminescent eyes. Virgil makes a note to test the bioluminescence of all three mer tomorrow.

Logan lets his eyes slip closed, exhaling a soft puff of air across Virgil’s face. “Good night, Virgil.”

“Night, Logan.”

Logan drifts off fairly quickly, chest rising and falling evenly, and Virgil, for all his gay pining, isn’t far behind. He wakes up sharply in the middle of the night, gasping when he realizes that he’s not alone. Blue light filters into his sleep-fogged vision, and then he realizes exactly what position he’s in.

Logan is slotted up against him, legs all tangled up together with his the way Virgil has seen his tail coiled in with his pod’s. His face is pressed up into Virgil’s chest, pillowed neatly on his shoulder, and his arms are tucked between them, hands curled in a delicate half-open shape. Virgil has one arm curled up around Logan’s head and the other thrown over his waist. He wants to move, to pull away before he wakes Logan up and makes him uncomfortable, but before he can do anything Logan stirs in his sleep. He shuffles, shifts closer to Virgil, and nuzzles into him, letting out a soft sigh and a soft trill of foreign language that sounds much more musical than any mer he’s heard before.

Virgil can’t bring himself to pull away after that. He leans forward, shamelessly nuzzling into Logan’s hair, and Logan presses into the touch with another gentle trill. Virgil has no trouble falling back asleep with Logan securely in his arms.

#starshinewrites #lovely dark and deep #logan sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #thomas sanders #patton sanders #analogical

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