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sodacansculptures · 6 months

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I started following you on Facebook some years ago, and then apparently forgot all about your stuff. It just popped into my head randomly and I wanted to see if you're still active and if you're still making soda can sculptures?

Hi, I apologize, I have no idea when you sent this since Tumblr (at least mobile) doesn't have time stamps, and for whatever reason, I don't get notifications about messages. You're the first person I've heard who has migrated from my Facebook page to my Tumblr, so thank you for joining the blog! Way more commentary here than there where my mom can see.

To answer your question succinctly: I am alive, and that's about the best I can say I've been since covid.

(I have donation links at the bottom, if you feel moved to want to help me.)

The extended director's cut answer:

After I made the Eevee sculpture, grad school ramped up and I figured I'd return to sculpting after I got my degree and settled into a job. However, I graduated in Spring of 2020, so the job I had lined up was withdrawn, and with all the budget cuts and layoffs in my field, I was competing for jobs with people who were trying to reenter the field and had decades more experience than me.

I did 100+ applications (I lost count at 120-something), dozens of interviews (including getting to the final round of all that had such a format--which is a stupid format. You don't need to meet me in a formal pretense 3 times, ask me riddles, have me take multiple hour-long aptitude tests, plus make me travel on my own dime just to tell me "no" and not even send like a "2nd Place Loser" gift basket or accept my LinkedIn request or anything). I got super stressed and super depressed.

I was so busy with trying to find a job and trying to deal with the breakdowns of not finding one. I tried applying in all the fields I was capable of at all levels: executive, mid, and gruntwork. I was turned down from entry level, no-talent-necessary jobs because I was overqualified. I was turned away from the others because of the lack of experience and unprecedented level and caliber of competition.

I was (still am) unable to pay my bills and, when not having breakdowns, I was calling, emailing, filling out applications, etc. for any and all financial aid. It was very arduous work and tedious with all the documentation they wanted from me, hold times on the phone, etc.

I had a non-profit (ADVOCAP) laugh at me when I asked for rent help because apparently they were overwhelmed and I wasn't going to get anything as I didn't have a job or kids and was considered a non-priority. Later when I was working with the ADRC, I asked if my case manager (I applied for disability, but I'll explain in a bit) if she knew of any rent help. She basically scolded me for asking and told me that it was unethical of me to seek that because "that's for people who actually have a chance." People who have jobs, she means. She explained that that money wasn't meant for me, and that was a whole unexpected slap in the face with a bag of dogshit. Didn't realize we had devolved into a utilitarian society quite that quickly.

I started working with FSET (my state's employment training and search help program. I was literally trying everything. Like I had also called my college and emailed all my professors asking for job help, and they had no answers other than like, "look online"). After months of no luck, FSET eventually convinced me to sign with a temp agency.

I worked 2 temp jobs that treated me like garbage (worsening my depression) and also paid me as such. I had lost all my savings to trying to stay afloat and my free time was non-existent, unless you count the hours I'd spend in the middle of the night just walking around my neighborhood listening to music--in an attempt to stop what seemed like endless crying--while I cried.

I tried selling plasma but they rejected me because I couldn't ever get my heart rate low enough, as my antidepressants increase heart rate. I tried going off of them, but I was on them for a reason, so I need to go back on.

When I graduated, I had bought myself a PS4 as a graduation gift to myself. I could afford it and thought I earned it. All the atmosphere of rejection and failure the pandemic created for me and my link to survival (employment should not be tied to survival. I was doing everything right and the system was failing me direly while virtually no one else who shared my experiences understood why I couldn't get a job when "everywhere is hiring" and "nobody wants to work anymore") and I started to hate myself for stuff like gifting myself the PS4. I felt undeserving, like a waste of resources, etc. because those were the messages I was constantly receiving directly and indirectly.

I eventually landed a job in my field and was hired on the spot. I felt like I had hit the jackpot and finally was going to be okay. Surprisingly to everyone in my life, the job made my life even worse.

I signed an NDA due to being horribly abused for the 10 months I was there, so I can't say much more than I just barely paid off my credit card, still had no free time as I was salary and worked nights and weekends in addition to my scheduled hours because the real reason they hired me instantly was not because I impressed them but rather because they were collapsing and desperate for anyone with some level of responsibility and capability. I hated that job, was bullied and abused extremely badly by coworkers and bosses and HR was no help, and when my performance review came back with negative impressions of me when I was sacrificing so much to keep the employment entity alive and functional, I completely broke.

I ended up hospitalized for months for suicide, and part of the NDA included resigning. I never fully recovered and don't think I ever will. I think I've seen and experienced too much to return to the idea that I could be the trailblazer my professors projected me to be (I now think professors don't actually provide an accurate representation of the field and encourage with no basis for their optimism).

The human mind is very easy to manipulate with propaganda, and I didn't catch myself being in a sort of “main character syndrome” and thinking that because I was Valedictorian of my graduating class and that I had so many national and international recognitions, awards, accolades, and qualifications that I was, for lack of a better term, pulling myself up by the bootstraps and going to be rewarded with a promising future where success is not just viable but imminent. I knew the world wasn't fair and that some people could do all the prescribed “right” steps and fail, but the operating paradigm (that had been ingrained in me since childhood from teachers who saw me as bright) I had held told me that I was far too talented and hard-working to fail. I had very little doubt that I wouldn't be successful. I was an ideal, hypothetical model of a pre-successful American worker.

So anyway, I didn't expect to have all the trouble that I faced finding a good job. At the end of the first summer of covid with nothing but rejections and employers affirming to me that there was nothing I could have improved on to get the job other than have prior experience, I was a discouraged worker who didn't even try anymore.

That's when FSET convinced me to do the temp agencies (who dropped me because one employer who was inhumanely abusive and ironically an HR department) gave a bullshit reason about me violating a protocol so they wouldn't have to make good on their promise to hire me after the temp period.

(I had allergies and it was literally the exact week in September when allergies were at their worst. A coworker, who hated me for some reason I never figured out and can only assume was jealousy, reported me for having a runny nose and I was immediately escorted out for bringing covid symptoms into the building. If I didn't go to work any day I had a runny nose, I wouldn't go any day. I take allergy meds literally every day of my life. My parents kept me too clean as a baby or something and didn't let me eat enough dirt, so an allergy panel showed I was allergic to every single common indoor and outdoor allergen).

Back to my suicidal hospitalization: I could say so much on the inpatient part. Suffice it to say I was never given my meds and there were no groups because they were understaffed and constantly wound up/pissed because of the uncooperative patients, so it was like prison where you had to argue with staff to get your basic needs met, and no soft surface existed and the water was always freezing, so it genuinely felt like being locked in a concrete box with no sunlight, no one on your side (they lied and said they called my psychiatrist and therapist. They never did. They also lied about ordering my meds), and no contact with the outside world. It was like a cruelly-designed Mr. Beast challenge with no reward in the end.

My friends said I was messed up for 2 weeks after and scary af because I was in survival-fight mode that would not turn off. I also was too overwhelmed by the outside world when I got out and could only eat pre-packaged snacks for a while because that was all I was used to/comfortable with.

Part of the agreement to let me leave inpatient was to do an intensive all-day outpatient program. I was actually dropped from that by insurance because I had undiagnosed ADHD among all my other issues and couldn't show up on time or sometimes at all. I still don't have my ADHD figured out because I had to convince my psychiatrist to refer me to a neuropsych who booked out for months to test me. I did it and got “Yes, much ADHD. All of the ADHD. Very wow.” So my psychiatrist finally believed me and agreed to start me on ADHD meds.

My psychiatrist and I are still working to find an ADHD med that would work for me. Vyvanse helped for a time, but my body metabolized it too quickly, leaving me with only around 6 functional hours in the day. I'm currently on extended-release Adderall, but so far not much help and there are too many other variables that could be fucking with it, like that my sleep-wake cycle is extremely unpredictable and I have a million appointments every day, so I am constantly sleep-deprived and am actually busier now than I was in grad school or any 8-hour job I worked.

The breakdown I had triggered me to develop fibromyalgia, so that has been a whole ordeal. I'm constantly in pain, it again took many months to see any doctor about it, and the meds take so long to start taking effect that we've been trying since June to find something that works.

The crucible that was my pandemic experience didn't refine me like fire refines gold or whatever the saying is but rather left me burnt, and not in the way that you can scrape the charred parts off of toast but like BURNT burnt (I can't think of an example. Maybe a popsicle. You're not getting that back once you take a flamethrower to it. Plus the stick would crumble into ash. RIP popsicle).

My life lately is a lot of appointments I often miss and have to reschedule, arguments with various agencies and even my doctors, breakdowns, and driving for Uber Eats because no one can fire me (but it pays beans and I get flack from restaurants and customers AND Uber because somehow the driver is the scapegoat for any issue that arises. I was so proud of my delivery aptitude and quality service until the tip-baiters and people being assholes for no reason started hitting me as common and daily occurrences).

A lot of people don't understand how UberEats works, but Uber doesn't even pay their driver enough to cover gas or depreciation on their vehicle for the mileage, much less the value of the driver's time and physical efforts. Tips are literally ⅔ of my income and my income does not cover my bills despite all the time I put in and algorithm I set up for myself that determines which trips to accept/reject for the most profit. It's a very toxic and unprotected form of employment. A lot of people lie that I didn't give them their food so that they can get a refund, but that comes back on me and risks my account being deactivated. It's virtually a fear-based system with some tricky artificial competition that Uber likes to throw in from time to time to convince us to drive for less and less pay.

I've looked into all the alternatives like GrubHub, Spark, DoorDash, etc. but I've been on their waiting lists for years, including GrubHub booting me off their list even though I was always quick to respond to their periodic question of if I still wanted to be on the list.

Between depression and ADHD, I can't work a normal job. I no longer have the capacity to keep a routine and can't show up to things with any level of reliability despite how badly I want to. I also don't have the spoons to deal with working with others or being accountable for tasks that feel--idk how to articulate it, but like--stupid to my autism. If something seems inefficient or not progressive (like not helpful to humanity) to me, I can't get my brain to do it. And with ADHD, if it's not interesting to me/something I am passionate about (I was extremely lucky that learning and receiving the praise from teachers I never got from my parents was my passion that got me so far and through multiple degrees), I can't get my brain to let me do it. Sometimes I just can't do anything, including things I want to do, and simply end up stuck. I wouldn't last in any job that wasn't self-directed and only happening when I have the spoons to be available. My options are very limited. And Uber can be slow. I've had times where I've waited 13 hours and not gotten a single request that wasn't going to cost me money to run.

Uber has some personal difficulties for me. In the summer, I found it a little bit fun, but now that it's cold, my Raynaud's is painful and I don't enjoy having to watch out for people who got their licenses from cereal boxes and don't know how to drive in the snow. It's an unpleasant sensory experience for me to work and honestly risky safety-wise. People don't turn on their porch lights for some reason (I have a headlamp now) and don't salt their walkways, and I'm uncoordinated because my dad didn't throw a ball at me enough as a kid probably, so there's ice, the treads on my boots are shot (and I can't afford to replace them), and I get banged up from falling on concrete.

I have a chiropractor and physical therapist, and they each said even before this that they could see me every day and still have something to work on with me. It's affirming, at least, to hear that professionals can physically feel how in pain my body is and that it's not just me being a baby. Part of it, I'm sure, is that I have PTSD (including from the traumas of my various pandemic experiences) and have horrible nightmares every night where I jerk around a lot in my sleep. I wake up every day feeling like I got hit by a bus, which is also partially why I don't get places on time.

On my own time, I'll spend 2 hours trying to get out of bed both overcoming the pain to move and convincing myself to get the willpower to. It's so much easier to just lie there and accept it, especially when I don't look forward to having to do another day. I don't feel rested because I spent the night working my body and brain, so I'm not sure I ever am rested. I need so much more sleep now, too, with fibromyalgia. This adds to my stress of outpacing my bills and just keeping up with the maintenance of myself and my apartment because that's less time I have to get things done.

I have 4 alarms (phone vibrating plus noise, an earthquake pillow one, my Fitbit vibrating on my wrist, and a Pavlok going all out screaming, vibrating, and shocking me with electricity), and it's still possible for me to sleep through all of them or somehow turn them off while half-asleep and go back to sleep. There are also times where I will be like, “Okay, getting up now,” and then I black out and it's 4 hours later and I missed 3 appointments that will take weeks to reschedule, if the clinic hasn't dropped me for the tardiness and absence. I'm running out of clinics to go to.

On a mental level, I am in a near-constant state of overwhelm that holds me inches from a full-blown, all-day breakdown at any given moment. Something about being so stressed with no relief for years on end has rewired my brain, I think, to make the adrenaline pathway so reinforced and the stress part of the brain overlit/overactive. I don't know how to relax. Doctors keep telling me I need to, especially with fibromyalgia, but I physically cannot seem to do it. I can't focus on anything like movies. Nothing is fun when I have always-present and terrorizing (by threatening my survival) pressure from all these stressors (mainly money. I'm in a constant race against my monthly bills, and each month, they creep closer and closer to outpacing me). I'm never happy to wake up and I'm always low-key scared. I'm desperate for security in any form.

I was so unable to do tasks after my suicidal breakdown that even though my psychiatrist, therapist, and general physician were begging me to apply for disability. I had hoped I just needed a few months of R&R and would be right back to being willing and able to work. That never happened, and it was extremely difficult for me to accept the fact that I was disabled. When I finally did, I begged for months for people to help me fill out all the forms (they were overwhelming me, which is, y'know, kind of a key feature of my disability) and no one did, so I lost months of time there. I eventually just had a moment of conviction or indignation or something that I was able to force myself to do them. I'm still kind of mad at everyone who didn't help.

My therapist actually did her best to help and, when the outpatient hospital ousted me because insurance refused to pay for it anymore, referred me to the county's CCS (Community Care Something-or-other) program. They gave me a worker who allegedly had some psychology- or human services-related degree who would help me function for 1 hour a week. I think the whole program is a farce and despite spending hours on this program, we accomplished absolutely nothing.

The first CCS worker I had was supposed to come over to my place (which had become a mess. I was a messy person before, as my apartment was a graveyard of unfinished projects due to my ADHD), but with my extended burnout, I wasn't cleaning and organizing on the level I used to. So I texted my CCS person a warning that my kitchen table was cluttered. I mean it to mean, “It will take me a minute to clear the table once you get here for your laptop for you to finish the unreasonably long entry paperwork on me, and I haven't gotten the energy to declutter it yet and won't until you get here because my ADHD needs a body double right now. She, for reasons I still don't understand, canceled the visit and never came. When I confronted her about what I meant, she was like…embarrassed to the point of not being willing to work with me anymore. There was a communication breakdown that I couldn't get her to communicate with me and she was somehow scared of how much and how articulated or something I communicated that she shut down.

I understand I “overcommunicate” from the perspective of allistics and neurotypicals [I had a bad childhood and was invalidated and wrongly blamed for things a lot, so I give as much explanation as possible to avoid any misunderstanding and articulate to the point that there won't be any ambiguities and thus can't be twisted into reason to punish me when I've done nothing to earn punishment. My caretakers as a child had their own mental issues that led them to being unreliable/unsafe to me and didn't offer me any feelings of security in relationships, perspective of reality (them taking their anger out on me and telling me everything, including their personal problems, was my fault), and ultimately everyone seems to say they want transparency and communication, but from my experiences and perspective, they don't want that. I have no idea what they really want. I give the level of communication I would want someone to give me and hope that they will just discard the parts they don't need/want, and apparently that's me being a burden or something and a “bad” quality.

Meanwhile, I WISH people would communicate and be transparent with me more. I think I am an understanding person who has done enough work on themselves to not repeat toxic patterns and be a healthy relationship to others. I don't listen to judge but to understand so I can work with the other person to fix any problems and work with what we got, not devalue them and distance myself or abandon them. Everyone on dating apps says they want this, but I've yet to meet someone who does. I think it's that people see this as an ideal but are unskilled at the time to play their role in the situation–both in offering and responding. I think I've put so many years of therapy and introspection into working on myself that others just haven't, so we're simply on different levels. I know I'm not alone in my experiences, but it's very isolating when you don't meet people who have done the same work.

Anyway, I got assigned a new CCS worker and she did not do all that work I described. When I was told I would be assigned to someone else, I specifically asked for one who has seen some shit and that nothing I do or say will move them. They did at least give me someone older with more experience, but she either over- or under-estimated me (I can't discern which). She, working in the same building as my therapist and being basically in at least a good bit of communication with her when I wasn't around, knew that I had a lot of crap going on that I needed more therapy/support/help unraveling and making sense of and peace with than the 45 min/week I got with my current therapist. So she offered to be like a second therapist and said I could tell her absolutely anything.

As the pattern of this narrative likely already cues, it turned out I could not tell her absolutely anything. I was a few months into my transition and no one prepares you for some of the changes. My endocrinologist had only told me, “You might go bald.” I thought my years of research and consulting with transmen in my life had encompassed all I needed to know. However, we sometimes do not know what we don't know and thus don't think to ask the questions we need to ask. As probably an autistic/abused person trait of mine, I speak very clinically and technically. At the time, I had recently been speaking with my therapist about anatomical changes that triggered emotions I was not prepared for. I attempted the same sort of conversation with my new CCS worker, but she yelled me for being inappropriate. Not just scolded but legit yelled, as if I wasn't a full grown adult capable of reason and discussion.

I was confused on what I did wrong, since I thought I was just taking her up on what she willingly offered. I am also a firm believer in the Mister Rogers quote about how anything that is mentionable is manageable (which goes back to why I don't listen to judge but rather to collaborate and also why I see disagreements as us vs. the problem rather than me vs. them. I do not feel the need to yell at someone unless it's like an emergency of some sort and there's a threat that yelling can somehow address and be beneficial to the situation).

From my perspective, I was being shut down and punished/shamed for asking for help with a problem that legit scared me and that I was willing to be vulnerable enough to share. I consider that sort of thing sacred and not something that can be trusted in everyone's hands. But the way she responded, to me, reinforced that I was a person unworthy of help: a message received from my childhood caretakers and all the people who were supposedly there to help me during my pandemic crises.

I couldn't bring myself to trust her anymore or even want to see her again. I'll admit that's a bit of my Emotional Dysregulation Disorder weighing in, but I didn't want her in any intimate spaces I'd need to let her into in order to serve me in her CCS capacity. I had had too many things go wrong lately in that time to not shut myself down to prevent more hurt by simply refusing any future opportunity for more hurt to occur. I was well beyond my limit and it took much convincing from my therapist for me to even give CCS a chance to help me.

Still, I asked to be reassigned to another CCS worker, this time knowing that I could not trust what they claim to offer and just keep the things we work on surface-level functioning--like cleaning my oven or going through the pile of mail I hadn't opened in weeks because their potential contents paralyzed me with fear.

I was denied my request and let go from the program as they felt I had burned through 2 workers and thus proven that I am not a good candidate for the program. I still don't agree with this and argued, but after weeks of (a reasonable number of) periodic emails and voicemails, I never got an email or call back. In hindsight, I maybe should have reported to the county what happened, but it's been like a year.

That mostly brings us back to the present. I have been back in FSET since Spring but just focusing on staying afloat with Uber/working on whatever I can handle. I had a whole researched and designed pitch asking them to fund the several hundred dollars it would be for me to become a mobile notary, but they denied my request as they lack the funds. They also denied my request for new boots for the Uber hazards because they felt it was a fashion thing and not a need. Agencies, or honestly anyone with any power over me, not understanding me even with my articulate, crystal-clear explanations isn't surprising to me anymore. And counterintuitively, more explanation (even from different approaches) does not help and just makes me think I'm weird, which somehow is taken as more cause to not grant whatever request it is I am making in the first place.

So I Uber, I argue with doctors and agencies to try to get my needs met, and I have breakdowns despite my efforts to not. I have always had a massive list of more sculptures I want to make. I do want to get to a point where I can make them someday. I've been waiting on disability for an answer for nearly a year and done all I can to bolster my case with getting doctor testimonies, giving my testimony, noting clinic visits so the person assigned to my case can view the findings of them, getting an ADRC contact to guide me (though looking back, she didn't help at all and it was me searching out and discovering everything on my own while all she did was forward what documentation I had to the state for me)... All I can do is try to survive until they say “yes,” but they usually say “no” first (which is why an alarming number of people file bankruptcy and/or die waiting for a disability decision), especially since mental health reasons are the hardest ones to get approved, and my ADRC contact has been using language such as, “This will make it easier for next time,” and I'm not prepared to hear her tell me she thinks we'll have to file another claim and wait another year, so I don't ask

I feel terrible that I've not been sculpting or posting. I miss engaging the Tumblr community and sharing my art with people who appreciate it (and not tell me it's garbage. Wtf, Grandma).

The fact that I couldn't actually bring myself to commit suicide and still don't even though the extremely-difficult-to-survive--particularly with multiple debilitating ailments--and high cost I incur daily to myself trying to keep my head above water as long as I can, tells me that there is a life better than this that I want to live. I can't fathom for myself anything other than what is current, and I am putting all my chips into believing that I could be wrong and there's a chance all my striving will eventually meet stable ground to rest upon, where I can return to myself and make art again. I hate to think this wreck is who I really am and want to believe this is just who I am under a stupid-amount of pressure that no human should ever have to endure. A lot of people have been quick to point out all the resources, but I guarantee I've pursued all of them hard and received some help but not nearly enough. It's hard to wrestle with the feelings of not being enough to live or not being worthy of living because it's such a struggle for me to throw enough money at bills/expenses to allow me to live. It shouldn't cost someone all of themselves to try (and imminently fail) to earn the allowance to live.

Things like the ACP and student loan freeze (I owe $80,000+ because college is an overpromising, commercialized thing that is more gamble than guarantee) are ending soon (or maybe have ended and I just haven't opened my mail to know), and I'm deathly afraid. Uber isn't enough and on down-times with them and when my various ailments aren't being debilitating, I work on selling things to try to make enough for the month. Obviously I'm eventually going to run out of things to sell.

I'm also fearful that my estimated disability check, if I get one, is only going to be $900/month, because I didn't get enough work experience to be allowed more. I genuinely don't know that that's going to be enough, especially since the price of everything like rent is inflating. I don't know how long I can financially sustain my means of survival. But I'm still doing everything I can. It's jarring to go from decorated Valedictorian to…whatever exhausted mess this is.

My parents stopped asking me months ago how things are going because they know it's never good. They don't have the means to help me as my mom got laid off of work, my dad has dementia and doesn't work, and if I have to live with them again, I would essentially be signing off on my own death certificate because even spending a few hours in that home, with those people, is enough to completely drain me, trigger so much PTSD, grind my mental health down even more with whatever new dynamics and energies they decide to inject in our interactions. I wasn't free to fight the battles I needed to until I moved out into my own private space, and since it is the cheapest option in the entire city and so necessary of a component to my mental health, my therapist identified keeping my apartment as my number one priority. With my mental health, I wouldn't do well at all or be able to get back on my feet if I was homeless.

This turned into a lot more than I intended, but I'm really satisfied that it explains my situation and makes it known that you can do everything right and still lose. The system will cannibalize you if you don't have money to start with and don't have the means to keep it coming. Poverty charges interest and there are no days off, especially if you're disabled. There are no real safetynets and the ones that exist are overwhelmed, underfunded, underpowered, and essentially only serve to make the ones who don't need them feel satisfied (and aren't outraged and pushing for changes) being sold the lie that those who need help have it available to them. Having an inside view of what the experience is, I am apalled at how little systemic support or consideration there is for the disabled, especially since it is the largest minority group that anyone can join at any time.

Some days suck worse than others, like when the weather is so bad that I cannot Uber or when my pain or mental state has been aggravated and I haven't made enough time for self-care so it has decided for me when self-care must be attended to. I wish I could give myself the self-care my mind and body need so I can be healthier, more resilient to setbacks, and feel less pain, but honestly some nights I don't even go to bed because there isn't enough time/I can't afford to not be working or selling things. Society likes to frame self-care as a luxury and only recently (since covid attacked everyone's mental health) did self-care start to be widely accepted as a need. It's just too bad all that rhetoric amounted to is awareness without action. Capitalism still demands and glorifies the nonstop grind, even if it kills us.

Obviously some days are better than others and it feels incredible when I feel a genuine smile spread across my face. I wish it wasn't so foreign of a feeling, but the fact that it is makes it more impactful. I try to give my attention to hope, even if I have no practical basis to believe it exists.

Receiving this ask did ultimately bring a smile to my face because it means I'm still cared for in a world that kicks me to the ground daily and says I don't deserve care. It is so hard for me to even care about myself a lot of the time, with all the negative messages I've internalized from my dominatingly high ratio of experiences that are rejection or failure in some form. Ultimately, we all just want to be loved. Thank you so much for reminding me that pain isn't all there is for me (it's easy to get sucked into that mindset after years of nearly everything gutting me. I often fail to even notice myself falling into it and being consumed by it).

I know I don't owe anyone an explanation for my absence and that no one is mad at me or blaming me for it that I would need to provide some sort of justification. But I wanted to communicate with you all because I love you. I genuinely mean that.

I still think about this from time to time and I still want come back to making and sharing sculptures and just having fun hearing all the things you have to say about them and how delighting, inspiring, or entertaining you find them. I consider the ability to do that and this Tumblr page to be one of my greatest things I've made. I don't care about money and despise that money dictates virtually every aspect of my life in the worst way. Community, creativity, and self-improvement motivated by joy/love rather than profit/fear are of infinitely more value to me. I'm still pursuing that dynamic in the end through all of this.

By no means is anyone obligated to donate to me, but if you can afford to and want to, I'll post my payment platform things below (some may still have my birth name attached). Any amount helps and Lord knows I dove for a penny on the ground last week.

If you can't donate but still want to help, reblogging can help no matter how little reach you feel your blog has, and I also would appreciate words of encouragement or support. I also just want you to know that if you've been reading this far, I really appreciate that you care enough about me to do that.

All of my love,

Stan

(They/Them)

PayPal:

@Stanwagner09

Venmo:

@asclw7643

Zelle:

[email protected]

#Thank you everyone for your support #and thank you chronically-issy for checking in on me #chronically-issy

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permanentcrossfics · 3 years

Text

Twelve Hours in Miami // h.s. - Part 2

Read Part 1

“Did you really just ask the front desk for a condom?” you asked.

“Intimacy kit,” he corrected you, still pink. He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. “Comes with all sorts of things.”

“Ordered a few of them before?”

He looked at you, then, and stammered. “I just thought-- we don’t have to-- but I thought if we--”

Read NOW on Patreon // Tumblr // Wattpad

8:35am.

You’d fallen asleep just like that -- tangled up, skins stuck together with sweat. Two hours later, you had to peel yourselves apart with whispery snickers and pounding heads. It would’ve been gross -- it was gross, to be honest -- except it was him. You smelled like him, he smelled like you, and it poured satisfaction into a well of need for this specifically that you hadn’t known existed until it was full.

“Stay with me.” Deep, rumbled, and just a little slurred, the words made you smile, and you curled up, eyes closed, when he dragged his warm hands and mouth along your back, shoulder, arm, chest, and stomach. One of his legs was wedged between yours, and he was leaving spongy, scratchy kisses up and down the back of your neck that made you scrunch up. “C’mon, darling,” he sighed hotly against your skin, slipping his arm firmly around your midriff to squeeze you back into his chest. “Stay w’me,” he mumbled with honeyed persuasion that needlessly gilded the spider web of his you’d found yourself in.

“I have work, you know,” you drawled without any real conviction. Hang work -- hang it all. It was partially because of your work that you’d missed every attempt of his to connect like this over the past few days. You weren’t set to fly out that day, not just yet, but he was, and then he’d be gone and you didn’t know when you’d see him next. You’d been gifted with twelve whole hours, and almost three of them were already gone.

“Get sick,” he said, the demand muffled by your neck, and you laughed, turning into your pillow.

Were you really going to leave him there, in your bed, knowing he wouldn’t be there when you got back and that the hours you did have were wasted?

You’d gone to dinner last night, and something hadn’t sat well with you. That was the excuse you used when you made your calls, trying to sound as hoarse as possible, and when the last one was done, he rolled on top of you and you laughed and tried not to focus on how easy it was for him to settle his hips between your thighs as he peppered kisses up and down your jaw and neck, all but gloating in his gratitude.

He ordered breakfast at 8:50am and answered the door in your robe at 9:20am, giving a tip and a smile while you burrowed under the blanket and searched for the television remote somewhere in the sheets.

It was a lazy affair, with both of you reclined against the headboard, captive audiences of the bad local news station you’d turned on to catch up with the day. Every now and then, he’d chuckle or snort or offer his commentary with a sort of bemused delight similar to a wizard discovering a toaster for the first time. “Strange, innit?”

“What is?” you murmured, breaking off a piece of blueberry crumb muffin.

“This!” He waved his fork and the strawberry speared on the end of it at the talking alligator on screen. “Bizarre.” He pulled the fruit off the fork with his teeth and chewed, shaking his head.

“This is not the strangest thing you’ve ever seen.” You brought a piece of your muffin to his mouth and he opened it without breaking focus.

“Didn’t say that, but it doesn’t mean it’s not weird.”

“Weirder than LA? New York? Texas? London? Tokyo?”

“What’s your point?”

You snickered and took his fork from him to steal a grape from the bowl.

“What is this?” He all but wheezed, hand on his belly over the butterfly’s wings as he stared at the screen, eyes crinkled with incredulity.

“Open,” you said, and he did as you asked, tongue darting forward to meet your fingers. “Harry, you licked me!” you cried when you felt the wet slide over the side of your finger.

His jaw stopped midchew, focus broken, and heat burst through you when his puckered mouth twitched and then flattened with suppressed laughter.

“I--”

He swallowed and the bed shook with his silent chuckles. “Didn’t think about that one before y’said it, did you?”

You made a noise in your throat and rolled away from him as he laughed behind you. “Go away,” you said into the mattress. He was still laughing when you heard the clink of dishes being set aside and when he slid up behind you to get close.

“Have to wait a few hours for that,” he mumbled, kissing the back of your shoulder. “Couple more hours at least. Wouldn’t throw me out in the cold, would you?”

“It’s Miami,” you said, voice muffled. “You’ll be fine.”

He turned you on to your back and slunk his way under your arm and you held your breath when he came all but nose to nose with you. You could see everything, good and less good -- every pore, every hair, every slight scar, every mole, every beginning of a pimple, all of it. “Not gonna throw me out, are you?” he repeated, huskier and warmer in a delicious way you didn’t think you were supposed to know could be this good.

“No,” you whispered.

He hummed, mouth curved in triumph, and you could see his mind working very fast behind his clear, green eyes. Where you’d been howling your outrage seconds ago, you were pretty sure you were both painfully aware of how close you were right then. Wordlessly, he nuzzled the warm point of his nose against yours and your eyes closed as your breath hitched. Your lips parted just as his tongue touched you lower one, and you sighed, hands slipping up his warm, strong back when the kiss deepened. He tasted sweet -- a little like the strawberry, and a little more like the blueberry and sugar from the muffin. He lowered onto his elbows and you absorbed his weight and warmth without complaint and opened your mouth wider. His groan made you shiver and when you broke, you were both panting. Gulping, he licked his lips.

“M’gonna make a call,” he said. “Downstairs, t’get us some….” He trailed off. “Where’s the….” He grabbed the phone off the bedside table and dropped off to the side of you, jamming his thumb into a button before lifting it to his ear, and you kissed his chest and shoulder, nuzzling the warm skin.

“Hi, yes,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I’m calling for-- I’m wondering if there’s an intimacy kit on hand?”

You looked up at him but he kept his eyes on the ceiling, though his cheeks were flushed and he was breathing heavily.

“Right, yes, thank you, if we could-- have that sent up, that would be… but bill it to room 2201… thank you.” He hung up and tossed the phone onto the bed.

“Did you really just ask the front desk for a condom?” you asked.

“Intimacy kit,” he corrected you, still pink. He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. “Comes with all sorts of things.”

“Ordered a few of them before?”

He looked at you, then, and stammered. “I just thought-- we don’t have to-- but I thought if we--”

You kissed him, then, cutting him off, and his hands slid over your bare back as you clambered onto his lap over the sheet. Belatedly, his hands fell into the small of your back, and you were very aware of where you’d be if there was no sheet between you then. “I like this,” you confessed. Maybe you shouldn’t have, maybe it was too much to feel or vocalize, but you did, as quietly as possible so he could miss it if he wanted to.

“Yeah,” he rasped, hand slipping down to the curve of your ass. He swallowed and you kissed his throat, inhaling the smell of his shower and the sex he’d almost had since. He was warm, and where hair didn’t tickle your mouth, he was also shockingly soft. You had no reason to think he wouldn’t be, you’d just… never thought about it, you guessed. You’d thought mostly about how his muscles would feel -- his arms, his chest, his stomach, all of which were moving heavily as he gulped and breathed deeply. It must’ve been taking his every effort to stay perfectly still underneath you.

You tapped one of his nipples lightly with your index finger before circling it in a featherlight stroke. He huffed a laugh and you glanced up at him, smiling mischievously as his own lips quirked. Without looking at him, you kissed his nipple pertly and he tensed his stomach with a muted, “Oh, fuck.” Giggling in a whisper, you followed the kiss with a playful bite, and his hand slid down to your bare ass.

“I’ll be good,” you said, moving to kiss down his chest and down his stomach, each one slow and lingering, tongue touching his skin. “I’ll be good,” you promised again over his navel, chin once again on a thin line of dark, soft hair, and you pressed kisses to the leaves of the ferns fanning over his hips. Under the sheet, you could see -- feel -- his cock hardening again, and above you, he struggled to keep his eyes open and on you, with his hands curling into fists alternately at his sides and on his head. “Is this ok?” you whispered.

Harry nodded with a strangled sound in his throat. He inhaled sharply, nostrils flared and lips smashed together, but he kept his eyes on you as best he could as you eased the sheet down with shaking fingers. For a moment, your mind went blank, and your lip twitched with an almost laugh when you realized. No dick was that good that it should rob anyone of coherent thought, but his was, apparently, and all yours had gone out the window -- laughable in and of itself.

“I’m sorry,” you wheezed, pressing your forehead to his hip. “I just had a moment.”

“Think that’s a first,” he admitted in a strained drawl above you, but he was chuckling, too.

“I’m sorry,” you repeated. “You’re great, you’re--”

“Y’not helpin’, y’know,” he said, laughing more regularly. “Gonna make a man self-conscious.”

“No.” You kissed his abdomen. “No, I’m sorry, I’m fine now, I just… forgot for a minute.”

“Forgot what?”

Everything was too much to admit to, and instead you wrapped your hand around his cock and he groaned quietly, shifting. Hard, but getting harder still, you pumped with a touch that was much more confident than you felt. Every throb pulsed into your palm, and above you, his throat bobbed as he cleared it, jaw clenching and releasing as he shifted his legs. He was the perfect grip -- big enough to fill your whole hand, but not so much that you felt ineffectual. He was smooth, and he looked so--

His groan when you sucked his head gently echoed through the room, and you felt him twitch on your tongue as you ran it around and around his head. Slowly, your eyes rolled up and closed. He felt good even in your mouth -- smooth and silky -- and he tasted like…. You lowered down, thumb touching your lower lip as a guide down his shaft, and you moaned softly, bobbing your head slowly.

“That’s nice,” he said thickly. You heard his breath rattle in his chest and you cracked your eyes open. His own were in barely open slits, and his lips were parted, left arm thrown over his head, stretching his tattoos out ever so slightly as his muscles flexed every time he opened and closed his hand in a fist. “Shit, that’s so nice,” he intoned in disbelief, smiling with a breathless little laugh. “So soft… bein’ careful w’me, aren’t you?”

You blinked and pushed him into your cheek with your tongue, sucking a little more, and he groaned loudly, eyes closing completely for a moment. “Jesus, that’s it,” he praised, and a knot tightened in your stomach. You ran your tongue up and down in short sweeps along the vein you could feel and his whole face crumpled as his stomach rose and fell. He dropped his hand and linked it with his other one over his chest in a basketweave, and his knuckles went white as he took slow, deep breaths.

The rush from looking at him so powerless and vulnerable and open and trusting and absolutely in awe of every little thing you did? Intoxicating. You were shaking from it and you could feel how wet you were between your thighs -- you were dripping, like he hadn’t just licked up every bit of you he could as if his own life had depended on it.

For a moment, with your eyes on him, you allowed yourself to imagine what it would be like to just pull your mouth off him and straddle him to sink down on him. You let yourself think of the feeling -- the full stretch, judging by the way your jaw was just about popping -- and the look on his face. You let yourself revel in the groans he’d make as his face crumpled, and how his chest would heave, and what his skin would look like with the tracks of his fingers over it as you struggled to find your proverbial footing. You’d both be sweating, and grabbing the other, and the thought of his teeth finding your sensitive skin made your hair stand on end and you whimpered.

“Like it?” he whispered. “S’it good?”

You nodded, and pulled off him with a wet gasp before licking a stripe along the underside of his cock, from base to tip and back again.

“That’s good,” he said. “Get all over, s’ok… shit.” His throat bobbed and he unclasped his fingers to grip the bedsheets. “Get all over me, get everywhere, it’s ok, it’s f-fine--” He made an almost pained noise and lifted his hand, and brushed it over the back of your head before dropping it to the bed as he squirmed. “Get my balls,” he mumbled, head rolling against the headboard. “Oh, fuck, please….”

His breath stuttered and he gulped, eyes opening wide and unfocused on the ceiling. Cock wet from your tongue, you pumped your hand up and down while sucking one ball and then the other into your mouth, ears prickling from the soft, pathetic noises he was making. “Holy shit, s’incredible!” he gasped. “Shit, I’m….” Harry trailed off, choking on his words, and his hand came to rest on the back of your head when you wrapped your mouth around the tip of his cock again. You suckled, with alternating pressure, and bobbed up and down, eyes closed and head swimming from his guttural grunts.

“M’gonna cum,” he said, his mumble punctuated with a wordless shout when you twisted your hand around his wet cock and squeezed. He throbbed against your palm and you heard him take a sharp breath as his fingers tightened on the back of your head, but without pressure to push you down. “Don’t stop,” he breathed, heaving by then. “Don’t stop, m’gonna cum so… gonna cum so hard, I’m--”

You whimpered around him and your other hand pressed against his stomach. He clapped his free hand over it and held it there, wheezing, and you opened your eyes briefly, catching a glimpse of his face contorted in the most erotic agony -- cheeks and chest pink and sweaty, hair mussed, teeth bared with his shout, and the vein in his neck popping -- before you tasted the first salty, tangy string. You stilled, tightening your lips, absorbing every groan as his thighs tensed and released under you in his effort to not squirm and buck you off. He let go of your head to clutch your hand against his stomach with both of his, and your palm slipped against his slick skin. With some effort, you gulped, mouth still holding him, before you relaxed and pulled off him. You ran your tongue over his head and released him with a soft pop before sitting up slightly, neck and jaw both aching and throat just a little inexplicably sore.

He, beyond a shadow of a doubt, looked spent. His eyes were closed and there was a slump to his shoulders, and his chest rose quickly with each shallow breath he took, and he still hadn’t let go of your hand. “Think….” He cleared his throat and swallowed hard. “Think y’really did summat to me,” he rasped. When he looked at you at last, he was dazed, and a dumbfounded smile pulled at the corners of his mouth before his eyes slid shut again. “Fuck,” he sighed.

“Are you going to nap now?” you asked, voice thick and husky. He laughed.

“Don’t,” he said. You crawled up his body, unsteady knees guiding you on either side of him. “Don’t tease me, m’only… I’m trying my best, aren’t I?”

You grinned, and you’d just gotten to perch on his thighs when a knock at the door startled you both. Your head whipped around just after his eyes flew open and he gripped your hand tighter.

“That’ll be the kit,” he said, breathing heavily.

“Oh.” You’d almost forgotten he’d called down for it. “Right. I can….” You pulled your hand free from his. “I can get it.”

“If you--”

“I can,” you repeated, nearly toppling over as you swung your leg off him. “Stay.” You flung the sheet haphazardly over his waist and he chuckled as you stood and pulled your robe on, glancing at the clock on the bedside table as you did.

11:37am.

#harry smut #harry styles smut #harry x reader #reader insert fanfiction #harry styles fanfiction #harry fanfic #harry blurb #harry styles blurb #harry styles one shot #harry one shot #permanentcross #original writing #twelve hours in miami #twelve hours in miami 2

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symphonyofthewrite · 4 years

Text

If These Walls Could Talk

Freaking GORGEOUS cover art by Junki Sakuraba on Instagram and Deviantart!! Definitely go check him out!! His art is incredible, and from what I can tell he’s really nice dude. He absolutely went above and beyond with this prompt. 10/10 would commission again. (And probably will once I save up enough money XD)

The wonderful art later in the chaper is by niuan_ on instagram!!

It wasn’t made/commissioned for this fic--(though I’ve since commissioned her to make cover art for me, so stay tuned for those!)--but when I saw it I couldn’t believe it!! That’s one of my favorite images in this chapter, and I couldn’t believe another artist made a piece for the same idea independently!!

I'll put the links to their profiles either in the replies or a reblog (since tumblr is dumb about links)!!

Also, FYI, I'll be using this post as my "reblog post" meaning I'll reblog this post with the later chapters of this fic, so they're all in one place. So if you want to read more of this fic, check the reblogs on this post, chances are more chapters will be there!!

Comments and reblogs are MORE than appreciated!! If you have a spare minute you will really make my week, and motivate me to keep writing!!

Fandom: Castlevania Netflix

Summary: Vampires do not have reflections, and castles do not have hearts. But Dracula is no ordinary vampire, and Castlevania is no ordinary castle. If castles can fight, maybe they can think too.

The series, and Adrian’s childhood, told from the perspective of the castle.

Chapter Summary:

“My mother’s name was Lisa, and she was mortal…She actually showed up at his front door. She found the castle and banged the door with the pommel of her knife…She was remarkable. She beat on the door until my father let her in, and then demanded he teach her how to be a doctor.”

Chapter 1: "Lisa”

“Is this how the castle felt to you before my mother first arrived at your door?”

The castle doesn’t like children.

Well, maybe that’s too strong to say. It simply isn’t the place for them. Its existence is a signpost: leave me alone. It is not used to having company—much less a family—inside it, nor is it ready to welcome for a crying, puking, giggling thing into the world. It does not intend to be a cozy place to coddle him into adulthood.

The castle itself pierces the sky, its turrets and towers the dripping stain of the sun’s blood across the moon.

The bare walls hold no colorful tapestries for a child to enjoy, no paintings of its many inhabitants to tell of—for there was only ever one (and maybe that ought not change. It is safe to say the castle doesn’t like change). The royal red and gold carpets are more suited to kings; not designed for spit-up, mud, and scuffing. ‘Don’t play with that’ would be a motto around here; so many contraptions either easy to break, or which could break the child. The fireplaces, while almost always lit, only ever coughed warmth onto the floor before them—they provided no snug space to curl up on a winter’s day. Even the mirrors here are empty, holding nothing but a reflection of the bare walls they sit upon.

There are certain people who were seemingly born as they are; they never owned toys, never crawled on the floor, never walked with clumsy steps—their footfalls were always this calculated count—never burped on their mother’s nice shirts, and surely never had anything so dull as a childhood. They were always just…here, on the world. There was no innocence, and no losing it. So it was with Dracula.

The very thought of Dracula ever owning toys, even in some nice cottage far away from here, with a doting mother and an absent father, with a funny last name like Cronqvist, defied sense to the castle. So no, no toys here, nor any simple charts for learning; the books divulged their secrets to more mature minds. Just blood and books, gold and gears, forgotten magic means, mirrors that reflect nothing, and a pile of prayers to a good God they used to justify their ungood, and ungodly deeds.

All these things—or their absence—do not make for the picture of a baby-proof home.

The castle has grown accustomed to being cold and dark, and listening to one master alone. It’s not a quaint place lovers look on and think we’ll raise our kids here someday.

Its master isn’t the ideal father either—after all, the castle only reflected its king. Its master knows only of blood and nails, fangs and wails, words too big for a child’s mouth, and worlds too dark for a child’s heart.

Can he be soft? Can he be gentle? Can he keep those claws, which have ripped out better men’s hearts, from piercing a child’s—his child’s…how could one who killed so many have a child?—skin? He knows many spells, but is there one that can turn those screams into laughter?

He has been soft before. Once. And that is with this woman.

Many women have walked the castle’s halls: shivering, shrieking damsels at his feet; cold and calculating queens; fragile bodies on the floor, that he broke with the same regard a child does a vase that matters to someone else.

Those ordinary people who do come often have pitchforks in their mouths, and fiery words in their closed fists. Curses stacked on the end of stakes, banging like the castle is the church bell signifying their own funerals.

It is for this reason that the castle does not like outsiders, does not open its doors easily. But it cannot deny anyone entry. Unlike the humans’ doors, which find his master guilty until proven innocent.

They always came at night. At night, when the loudest sound is your own breathing. At night, when their fires echoed loudest, and their shouts burned brightest.

They came when the flowers were closed, when only the most eerie and vicious of animals played with the skins of their prey, and the moon waxed the world in cold, drunk shine. The sun could not watch them, could not show their blood-struck hands in their full glory.

She came at sunset. When the sun still glazed her deeds in sanguine auburn, but was just deciding to turn its gaze and let the kids have their fun. Not quite day, when the sun would kill things like Dracula, but not quite night, when the hours are named after witches, and lust is strongest—be it for the body, or the blood within it. Somewhere in between death and life, violence and peace.

This woman came with a knife in her hand, yes. But a knife, at least, was not a sword. It was not a pitchfork, a spear, a whip, or a stake; all weapons that signify, if the fight wasn’t there, you were bringing it with you. Not a war-starved weapon, pointing with mal-in—and -con—tent towards the castle doors and all the things inside it. Not a thirsty thing. Something that by default faced the other direction. Something that can start a fight if it wants to, but doesn’t crave it.

The golden woman came at sunset, with a knife in her hand, and looked upon this thing, this castle that others called ‘ugly’, and ‘monstrous,’ and ‘grotesque,’ looked upon it with awe, and gasped in wonder.

She knocked. She didn’t bang her fists upon the stone, didn’t ram pitchforks and assorted insults against the innocent doors, like how-dare-they protect their master.

She knocked, and the doors opened before she could raise her fist a second time. Maybe, just this once, not because they didn’t have any other choice.

The doors—foreboding, menacing, and all the other spooky -ings one can think of—opened to a world strewn in light; the demon’s castle looked brighter, more beautiful, more alive, than half the churches she’d been to.

Her footsteps were gentle against the castle’s floors. Not a slow, forced gentleness, but also not a piercing, purposeful march. There was no apprehension to her footsteps; her feet carried her as if anxious to take her to as many rooms as they could.

At first her steps were the only sound, enough to fool some into thinking they’re alone.

And it became clear both that she was not alone, and not a fool.

But when she saw the demon, she put the knife away, and used her words.

She used her words to repeat those she herself had heard: stories. But not the kind that make monstrous men run at the doors with naughts and crosses, the kind pious people buried along with all evidence that the world wasn’t made of black and white.

Not all the stories told that this place was cold and dark and full of death.

Amongst all the stories about death, there were others that said Vlad Tepes brought this castle to life with science, forbidden knowledge, and a little bit of lightning. Stories that say there is life here.

And, in exchange for proof that these life-stories true, Dracula asked for a trade, a trade that would prove the other stories true too. He gave up the killing a while ago—(the castle has been in one place a very long time)—but he was still not used to giving for free, and definitely not used to getting for free. Vampires trade in blood and names, not diamonds and declarations. Vampires trade in things they can swallow. This castle, too, had been a gaping hole set to swallow the world and everything that entered. Never once had it given.

And she dared to say, that this place, its master, should learn to give, when the humans have done nothing but take from them—or try their best to. He ought to be the one to invite her in, to ask what she would like, to dispense pleasant words and kind actions, when the humans forgot they invented hospitality, and showed no invitation for him to even enter their homes.

But she didn’t come with a mouth full of garlic, and hands full of superstition. Her feet did not drill holes in the floor with their sharp toll, they wandered the scenic route.

She was used to being cheated. Dracula and his castle were too. But that was not why she was there. She was not there for cheap tricks, or death. She wanted something real. A little bit of the life the castle has to offer.

Her defiance wasn’t that of a terrified citizen, or angry queen, either; rather the calm resolve of someone who is asking for something they know in their heart is good, and knows they will get it. The kind of person who believes there is good in everyone, and that this good will ultimately always win, and who won’t leave until they convince this good to show its face.

The castle has watched countless men and women cower at the foot of count Dracula. Some, do have a measure of god-sanctioned defiance; they come with whips and scourges to defeat him. The castle and the king are bound together in their resolve against them.

Except one. Except this woman. One human whom both master and castle found themselves reluctant to deny, cast away, or kill, maybe even…taken with.

She may be human, but she was not like the rest; she did not light the night on fire with her thirst for blood.

So maybe, just maybe, they could let one ray of sunlight slip through the cracks.

She was also not devoid of life, and maybe that was the key.

‘Devoid of life’ was an accurate portrayal of the castle. Bats flying out of blackness is a good description of a cave, and caves don’t usually come with the brochure ‘teeming with life’, or ‘great place to take your kids!’. The castle had a soul-sucking quality to it; those who entered often found themselves leaving less alive than they arrived. It took after its vampire master. Those who didn’t actually lose their lives within its walls, often remarked upon leaving that the flowers bloomed brighter, the birds sang louder, the grass was greener, and that they missed the sunlight.

Sunlight. Such a base thing; vampires don’t need the light or warmth to be happy.

Sunlight. Such a base way to die; wanting to get out of the cold and the dark.

“Is this how the castle felt to you before my mother first arrived at your door?”

Castlevania was alive once. Once Dracula set the pumps, and its heart began to beat. He turned the gears, and its lungs inhaled. He forged the lightning, and it began to think. Once the books, full of unknown knowledge, jumped off the shelves to get the vampire king’s attention. He filled the bottles and beakers, and they bubbled, as if laughing at a joke only they shared.

They were both alive, once.

That waned, with time. The gears got arthritis, the books caught pneumonia, the experiments atrophied. The castle ached before she came.

And Dracula, alone in the halls, picking up books and putting them down again without so much as a polite glance through them, because he read them all before. Dracula looking into fractured mirrors that could take him anywhere, but deciding there wasn’t anywhere he wanted to go. Dracula, looking into old mirrors that don’t reflect him—like there was never anything to reflect, nothing alive here to begin with, and there isn’t a master for this castle after all. Nothing but a grave. Dracula sitting alone in his study, staring into the fire. No one to talk to. No sound but flipping pages and crackling fires—nothing alive. Alive but dead. This castle. Its master. Undead is the proper term.

The other women who came through here reflected the castle, or else the castle took the life out of them the moment they entered. Queens with malice-stained past, and cracked, icy future in their eyes. Just as cold as the walls. Subjects, humans throwing gruesome insults, silky flattery, or fluttering pleas at his feet. Just as empty as the mirrors.

Only one refused the castle’s bite. Only one walked in looking for life, rather than death. Looking for a thing no one thought existed here. Already presumed dead. Put six feet beneath the ground. But maybe it was here all along; maybe the light hid in the castle’s corners while the dark came out to play, and she just had to coax it out of its hiding places. Maybe the bell was ringing all this time, she was the only one who came close enough to hear it; the only one who came to put flowers on the grave.

Maybe when she felt the machinery pumping she knew the rhythm was a heartbeat. Maybe when she heard the gears clanking she knew it was the sound of inhaling and exhaling. Maybe when she saw the lightning, she wondered what it was thinking. Maybe she looked at these books, these instruments, and saw what the vampire king saw once; something alive. They weren’t dead yet—un- or otherwise. Just sick, and in need of proper treatment. She was a doctor after all. Maybe her first subject was the very books she learned from.

Lisa, who looked at this blotch on the sky, with Death in its towers, and darkness splattered on its walls, and thought that’s where I’ll learn to heal people. Lisa, who gaped in amazement at the beast of a building. Lisa, who didn’t shudder upon entering. Lisa, who didn’t scream when its master touched her, but turned to him with calm resolve, and told him she’d teach him to be more human. Lisa, who’s life eclipsed the undeath in this place.

And there was a trade that occurred that day. For Dracula’s immortal knowledge, Lisa would teach him how to live a mortal life. To travel the world as a man, to walks as a man, to eat and drink, laugh and cry, as a man. Immortality for mortality. They gave each other the world, as so many lovers promise to do. Vlad would make her immortal, and Lisa would make him mortal, with no exchange blood.

(Except to create a thing with both their blood running through it.)

So maybe, after all this talk of life, it is fitting that she wants to create life inside this castle.

Fitting, maybe. Fitting for her. But the castle is not mortal yet, and wishes it could protest that it isn’t the right size, refuse to try on the idea.

Dracula is apprehensive as well, for the castle and he are used to each other, they take after each other, because the cold, and the dark, and the death, and the alone does something to you after a while; you start talking to the walls. After the cold queens and quaking colleens leave, or leave their bloodstains the floor. After the beasts and their silver-stained bullets turn back into righteous men in the sun. After he simply outlives everyone else. When all the living things hate, fear, or else betray you, when all the living things can die, and you, who are undead, cannot, it’s the lifeless things that stand firm by your side. When the day ends and the shadows come out to play, when you’re the only one left, in the end you still have the walls. And then…the walls are all you have. And if you talk to them long enough you make a sort of pact, spoken or silent, with those speechless stones: ‘you’re the only one I can trust.’

Dracula speaks to them one day, says he wonders if he can do this, be a father at all, not to mention a good one. The castle cannot reply. But something deep inside the walls wonders if it might be nice to hear Dracula laugh. It might be nice to put on some different clothes. It might be nice for someone new to listen to from time to time. It might be nice to live again.

The castle is concerned. Used to doing things one way, being one way, and only hearing one voice. But that doesn’t mean it is unwilling, that it intends to kill the child.

It never kills anything—Dracula does that. It cannot do anything on its own, and that includes change.

The castle doesn’t like change.

…But that doesn’t mean it won’t.

And if its going to change, its master must change first. They must change together.

Vampires do not have reflections. But Dracula has a castle, and that castle will be damned if it isn’t his mirror.

Reflections are simple to change; put on some makeup, some war paint, a new change of clothes, get a piercing somewhere. Simple, yes, but not easy, to change completely, because that doesn’t mean anything’s changed inside.

The castle did not come equipped for child-rearing; there are no rooms full of toys and cradles and school supplies.

So if this is to be, they must build their son’s world themselves.

Together they set aside a room for the child’s arrival. Just one, single room. And the castle too knows, from the start, this room will be different from all the rest. They will put paintings on the walls, and banners in the halls; things to interest him, to tell him of his parents, at least, even if there are few other relatives to spend Christmas with. The carpets will be darker, instead of the stringent red, and they will make their words smaller, the books easier to understand. The rest of the castle is warm in color, but cool in atmosphere. This room will be cool in color, but warm in atmosphere. The fire will always be set in its place, and they will try their best to make sure the warmth reaches him; if the fire fails, they will knit blankets; if the blankets fail they will make him tea, or warm milk with honey; and when everything else fails they will hold him. If there are tears here, scornful stares will not greet them, instead, kisses and lullabies will be behind door number three. If this room lives, it will be because of something much softer than pounding metal and lighting.

If a child is to live here, they must change that reflection. Everything Dracula’s castle appears to be, this room will be the reverse. Separate. Something… other than the castle.

This room will bottle all the laughter had in this castle. This room will be made of and for living, not the death the rest of the place is steeped in. So much so that this room will not stand for bloodshed.

Lisa brings in supplies from her town; color and cloth, boards and brushes, needle, and thread, and paper; all the things one needs to build a universe.

It is Dracula who takes the paint, who changes the color to something other than the blacks and reds of the rest of the Vampire’s world, cementing on the walls themselves You will not be dark here, my castle. You will be kind to him, Castlevania. The castle doesn’t know its master to work with his hands like a human, but Vlad is not the same within this room either—this room is part of the trade. He doesn’t use magic, or science, as if he is telling himself with every hammer that they are going to change together, the way one does when talking to the mirror.

Lisa sits in a chair and stiches together cloth and fur to make little creatures, toys for the boy to play with. Soft things, not sharp. They are reflections too, littler, simpler ones, of the creatures howling and prowling outside the castle’s walls, or scurrying within them.

But it is the ceiling that is the crowning jewel of the room. Something they paint together—splashing it onto each other’s clothes and noses.

His parents love the stars. They often walk outside the castle walls, fingers knit into each other’s, to gaze at them. They are scholars at soul, and have charted the constellations. They want their child to be able to do the same, to watch the stars, even if he’s not outside. At the end of every day they want him to be sung to sleep by the symphony of the night.

For them, maybe, but to the castle, one of the most interesting things about this room, is the mirror. This is strange, as, while there are other mirrors in this house, they are nothing more than a silver decoration; they have no purpose here, unless they float in shards and possibility. This is an ordinary mirror. It does hold something now, however, and that’s Lisa—only giving more credence to the idea that she is the only living thing in this castle. The castle wonders if they think it will reflect the child, as if they are hoping he will take after his mother and the room.

The mirror, and the windows. In the rest of the castle, the windows are always closed, curtained, or too small to let any real light in. But here they are big, and inviting to all the wiles of the day. Dracula protested—fearing he would burn. Lisa insisted—hoping he would shine.

The mirror, the room, are empty now. The windows closed. The books and charts dormant as the rest. It is not dead, but it’s not alive either. Not even undead. Just a question. An almost.

The room lays on Frankenstein’s table; just one lightning strike—(or one child’s laugh)—away from breathing.

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monsoonblooms12 · 3 years

Text

Belamour (Ethan x f!MC)

Summary: Set after Book 3, Pooja finally gets Ethan to dance in the rain.

A/N: A silly something born out of my love for rains and my binge listening to 80s Bollywood classics (I have no idea what kinda mess this is tbh). Also, my first song based fic🤎

A/N 2: The song lyrics are indented (Translation in parenthesis)

Pairing: Ethan Ramsey X f!MC (Pooja Sharma)

Rating: General

Word Count: around 1.5K

Category: Total fluff

Warnings: None that I noticed

Song Inspiration: Aaj Kal Yaad Kuch by Mohammed Aziz

READ ON AO3

A pair of summery blue orbs insistently stare at the world beyond the glass windows.

A world that was now being washed by the consistent droplets that came down from the adobe of clouds to meet their origin.

Their drum was usually henotic, tranquil for him.

But at the moment, it only added to his irritation and deepened the void of disappointment that had formed in his chest.

In another room of the same house, a pair of amber orbs watched the magic of nature with a child-like wonder.

The pleasant, dewy petrichor spread around her, and the mellifluous tunes of Earth's own orchestra made her forget the fast turns her life went through in the past day.

In the faint light, she picked up her hand and let the jewel, the stone that was nothing less than a promise of forever, shine like the billion stars that dot the sky at nights that are devoid of clouds.

As the iridescent lights make her eyes sparkle, a vague idea forms in her brain.

Her thoughts float to reach the person who gifted her happiness, and a smile lit up on her face.

There was a mix of challenge and love in the quest she was about to partake and she was determined to succeed.

In slow, soundless steps, she made her way out of the room and out of the house.

A blur went past and his trained eyes were quick enough to catch the motion.

Shaking his head with realization, he followed behind.

As the steps took him down, and he stood under the shade of the multi-floored skyrise, she stayed yards away from it.

Her hair was wet, her skirt twirling, her face bright and beautiful.

He felt his heart race, whispering an urge to join with hers.

He restrained himself, but the scene in front of him was so spectacular that he doubted just how long his restraint would last.

After what felt like an eternity, she turned to him, half of her face golden under the street lights, the other half bearing the monotones of black and white.

She looked like the personification of their love.

Her life the golden, and his the black and white.

He could write sonnets to describe the picture-perfect scene that played before him like a film, but all he did was stand still, unable to tear his eyes away, unable to speak the words that hadn't already been spoken, his well-thumbed thesaurus gathering dust in the labyrinths of his mind.

She looked at him with a longing, a spoken call for him to join her as the rains continued to fall and purify the earth.

All he did was shake his head in silence.

She took it as a challenge, and he already knew how it was going to end.

For a minute he got lost in her memories, reminiscences from a time, from a moment that passed too quick, yet slow enough for him to remember every moment of it.

And suddenly, the faint tunes of a song brought him back to the present.

Every word of the foreign seeming language lucid clear, setting in a cascade of emotions and bringing pictures etched in past pages of the novel of life, making him go on a trip down the memory lane.

Aajkal Yad Kuch Aur Rehta Nahi

(Nowadays I don't seem to remember anything else)

Ek Bas Aapki Yad Aane Ke Bad

(Once your memories enchant me)

Yaad Aane Se Pehle Chale Aaiye

(Please come to me before the memories reach me)

Aur Phir Jaiye Jan Jane Ke Bad

(And then leave only after my breath leaves me)

The truth of the words came with an epiphany.

Every day of knowing her had been a way of painting the monotones of his life in colours he thought didn't belong to him.

Every moment she had ever spent away from him had made him yearn for her more than ever.

And yet he was foolish enough to think that miles of distance and hundreds of hours could make him forget her.

All the distress he felt could have been so easily ended if she had been with him then.

And now, as he dreams of an aeon with her, he promises to only let her go when his breath leaves him alone.

Apni Aankhon Me Mujhko Basa Lijiye

(Allow me to settle in the world of your eyes)

Apne Dil Me Mera Ghar Bana Dijiye

(Make a home for me in your heart)

Kya Karu Dil Kahi Aur Lagta Nahi

Pyar Me Aapse Dil Lagane Ke Bad

(What's the fault of mine if I can't concentrate on anything other than you, since our hearts connected by the string of love)

As the minutes pass by, melting into each other to form an hour, he loses all tracks of time.

And amidst the sweven he was living in right now, at a moment he could not pinpoint, she had taken his hand into hers and now he stood, lost in the amber of her eyes, forgetting all about the shower that now fell upon him.

As she continued to mutter the tunes in a harmony that went on in rhythm with the rain, he wished he could live in the world of her orbs.

To see the world as she saw it, to live the life from her perspective.

All he wanted was home in her heart, a tiny place on the lands of her soul.

Ishq Ke Maine Kitne Fasane Sune

(I have heard many tales of epic romances)

Husb Ke Kitne Kisse Purane Sune

(And stories about beautiful people from bygone eras)

Aisa Lagta Hai Phir Is Tarah Tut Kar

Pyar Hamne Kiya Ek Zamane Ke Bad

(But I feel I have been broken and got mended by love after centuries)

In muted harmonies, the two of them twirled, forgetting the world around them.

The way their eyes held onto each other, as if holding onto their lives, reminded him of the tales of love the folklores talk about.

The romances of princesses and maidens, and of beauties who earned their fairytale.

But as her palm stroked his cheek in a feather-light motion, he concluded that all those tales faint in front of the story of theirs.

There were no royals, no cruel witches setting up spells and no poisoned apples.

There were just two people, broken by the storms life made them navigate through, fitting perfectly as if parts of a whole.

He tried to remember if he had ever experienced anything as he did now, his lip tracing her ear as his hands wrapped around her waist.

It didn't even take him a second to know the answer.

He hadn't.

Aapka Naam Dil Se Nikalta Nahi

(Your name never leaves my heart)

Dillagi Me Koi Zor Chalta Nahi

(No force is strong enough to stop the meet of two hearts)

Aapko Bhul Jane Ki Koshish Bhi Ki

(I tried a hundred times to forget you)

Aur Tadpa Hun Main Bhool Jaane Ke Baad

(And suffered a suffering of pain and agony once I forgot you)

The rains accelerate and become a downpour. The mist envelops them but there was no care for the changing environment.

The distance between them ceases to exist as their hearts finally get the pleasure of beating in unison.

In the next moments, she whispers close to his ear, the last of the melody, and it's his story.

The story of how he couldn't get rid of the five-lettered name since the first time he ever came to know about it.

Of how no force in the world could stop two hearts from meeting if that's what destiny had in plan for them.

Who one loves and who loves them back determines so much in one life.

And for him, it was a chance, a risk he was scared to take, dreading the destruction it may cause.

After all when had anything ever-blossoming flowers in the city of his soul?

But this time not only did spring finally arrived with its flowery footsteps but also led to a discovery of himself, a part of him that was buried under layers of snow from the winter that reigned in his life for years.

She taps twice on his heart, indicating how he had tried to forget her, all those years ago. And how he broke himself in the process.

As she hummed the last lines, he bowed down in front of the forces that brought the two of them together.

He thanked the stars which aligned the way did to let him fall for her and agreed to hide, to let the rains fall, to let him have this night with her.

And looked in awe at the woman who brought about the sweetest catastrophe mankind has ever known.

And without uttering a word, he picks her and kisses her, saying all that was left unsaid with it.

PS: I actually have another version of the song, that I sung specifically to go with this, but Tumblr is giving me troubles to upload it. Do let me know if you would like to hear it someday.

Anyways, If you are reading this, I am very grateful for you. Thank you for reading and I hope you have a great day🤎

Tags🤎(Please let me know if you would like to be added or removed):

Perma: @gkittylove99 @neotericthemis @udishaman @aestheticartsx @twinkleallnight @schnitzelbutterfingers @sophxwithers @sweatyrysconnoisseur @nikki-2406 @choicesfanaf @trrfanaddict @starrystarrytrouble @gardeningourmet @parkbarks @mvalentine @lovablegranny @mercury84choices @izzyourresidentlawyer @phoenixrising308 @adiehardfan @quixoticdreamer16 @a-crepusculo @cordonianruby @gryffindordaughterofathena

Open Heart (All fics and edit): @lucy-268 @maurine07 @bellcat2010 @headoverheelsforramsey @estellaelysian @shanzay44

Ethan x Pooja: @aleynareads @choicesaddict5 @stygianflood @mysticaurathings @jamespotterthefirst @ilikemenbutonlyethanramsey @takemyopenheart @mm2305

@choicesficwriterscreations @openheartfanfics

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katyamorrigan · 3 years

Text

‘Hope is the thing with Feathers’ by KatyaMorrigan

For the Grishaverse Reverse Mini-Bang 2021, run by @grishaversebigbang, and with stunning art created by @wqemzz-blog - click here for her incredible illustration of Kaz and Inej!

Captain Inej Ghafa has returned to Ketterdam for the first time in three years. In all that time, The Wraith never docked at Berth 22 for more than an afternoon, and the crew never strayed further than the harbour front.

Could she have stopped by sooner? Absolutely. Did she choose not to for entirely business-related reasons? Absolutely not. She has no idea what her friends will make of seeing her again after so long, least of all Kaz. But there is hope - hope that in that time, he will have grown as much as she has. That he will be the kind of person that she can share a pot of tea with without a thought of how he might feel about her.

Because Inej isn't done with being a pirate yet. But it doesn't mean she wants to be at sea forever.

I had the best time getting to write this fic based on the idea proposed by Emma. So much of a good time, in fact, that I overwrote it by around 4k words in the end... This is the much more civilised 2k word version - the full iteration of the story is on my AO3 ), but this significantly neater version will remain on my Tumblr for good. I really hope that you like it, and check out @wqemzz-blog for all your beautiful art needs!

Link to the fic on AO3: ‘Hope is the thing with Feathers’

And available to read below the cut here:

‘Hope is the thing with Feathers’

It occurred to Inej as she entered Kaz’s office for the first time in three years, that in the past she might have second-guessed the meaning of his offer to have tea together. They had just spent a few hours talking during dinner – mostly talking over Jesper and Wylan, who had hosted the meal and were either polite or forgiving enough to allow them to dominate the conversation with reflections on Inej’s time beyond Ketterdam. Three years was a long time when you had last been teenagers breaking into the Ice Court together, when you were now the owner of a galleon that hunted slaver ships from Fjerda to the Wandering Isle. There was plenty to discuss between them, and it seemed that Kaz had changed enough to ask her to stay with no apprehension, so that they could be in each other’s company a little while longer.

The attic room was identical to her memories of it but her gaze was drawn to Kaz, with ungloved hands, stooping to open the cupboard and bring out two tins. With a tentative look at her, he placed them on the desk and opened them. Inej couldn’t help laughing.

“When did Dirtyhands start keeping cookies in his office?” she teased. “Two kinds, as well.”

He gave a permissive smile. “Nina may have had more influence over me than I would like to admit. She sends them to me from Ravka.”

Feeling a bittersweet rush of longing for her friend, Inej reached over and helped herself to an iced biscuit with a red star on the top as Kaz took the other tin and started to make them tea. The room filled with the smell, quiet clinking noises coming from the cupboard again as Kaz fetched cups and saucers, and Inej watched him from the corner of her eye as she nibbled. He had taken off his jacket, and Inej could see the strong line of his shoulders as he prepared their drinks. Yes, a younger version of herself would have been much more flustered than Captain Ghafa, as she was now. She might have told herself stories about how invested Kaz was, about his tactics and techniques for making her trust him – for making her want to stay. Now she had no such worries. She was in the bedroom of an old friend – an old partner, in many ways – and they were sharing a pot of tea.

Inej smiled as she turned away from sneaking glances at Kaz and looked out of the window instead, at the uncharacteristically beautiful light that was shining in. The fog of the early afternoon had lifted, and Ketterdam seemed to concentrate every scrap of colour on painting the evening sky in crimson and gold. It felt like a personal display from the city, like it was finally welcoming her in. She couldn’t believe that she had been away for so long.

“Can I open the window?” she asked. Kaz chuckled.

“You have never once asked my permission to open a window.” Kaz brought over their cups and placed them on the sill, where Inej was now sitting, and obligingly opened it for her.

A gentle breeze entered the room, tickling Inej’s cheek. She closed her eyes for a second and forgot that she had ever been away. The sensation of being here – in Kaz’s office, on the windowsill, letting the fading sunlight warm her skin – made her feel so young and so old at the same time. It was like slipping into an outfit she hadn’t worn in years, feeling the ways it had always fit her, and the ways that she had grown since. Inej was nothing like the girl that Kaz had once known, but she didn’t feel so different when she was back here, just a little taller and a little more forgiving.

Kaz brought over a plate with more cookies, taking a large one heavily studded with chocolate, and leaned against the wall. It had been three years, but still they were so comfortable existing in a space like this together, breathing in the warm air. She took a sip of her tea, and tasted honey. Just the way she had always liked it.

“You look well,” he said, not breaking the silence but disrupting it, like ripples on a pond. “The sea suits you.”

“Thank you. I rather like it too. Ketterdam has continued to suit you – is that a new scar on your jaw, or have I just never noticed it?”

“It’s new. About a year ago I was very nearly shot in the face by a Razorgull. Fortunately Jesper manipulated the bullet at the last second and I was only burnt.”

She inhaled sharply in sympathy, and Kaz shrugged. “It healed quickly, and that’s all I ask for.”

“Do you ever think you’ll end up more scar than skin?” she said, half in jest and half with sincerity. As the words left her mouth, she thought of how closely her question came to the kind of Suli proverb that she had goaded him with previously. That she had tested him with.

“Not anymore.”

His reply was unexpectedly thoughtful. Inej turned to him, and he gave a soft smile.

“The Dregs don’t get caught up in the same trouble that they used to. There’s less chance for me to get hurt.”

“I’m glad.”

She took a cookie, a chocolate one like Kaz’s, and bit into it. It crumbled instantly, scattering crumbs all down her chin and the front of her waistcoat. Kaz saw; there was a beat of silence and then laughter, Inej’s giggles muffled by the cookie.

“You pirates make our manners look sophisticated,” he commented. She swatted the air in front of him.

“My manners haven’t suffered at all, I’ll have you know!”

“My poor windowsill. I’ll have to clean it now.”

“It could probably do with a clean if you’re anything like you used to be,” she replied, and Kaz raised an eyebrow at her.

“I always cleaned the windows frequently.”

“Specifically the windows.”

He tilted his shoulder and looked out across the city. The gilded roofs stretched from the harbour all the way to the Barrel. Inej watched him as he absorbed it all, taking a sip of tea, adjusting the cup in his bare hands. He looked exactly the way she had hoped to find him – a little stronger, a little harsher, that new scar dimpling the line of his jaw like a tally on a gun barrel, but unmistakeably the same Kaz that she had left behind. He looked every bit the young man that he was – handsome, clever, mean.

“You loved to sit here and look out. I always made sure you’d be able to.”

“Oh.”

She was glad he kept looking at the view. To lock eyes with him then might have done something to her – made her feel another way. A way she had felt for a long time, that she had stifled. Inej focused her gaze on the broken pieces of cookie in her hand, crumbling it more. Everything felt quietly loud; gentle, but unrelenting.

The familiar click of claws on tiles came from a little further along the roof.

Kaz leaned towards the sound. “They must have recognised you,” he smiled, “The crows have come back.”

Inej made an elated noise and turned herself to look. There they were – a little murder of crows, with sharp eyes and sharp beaks, cawing as politely as crows could.

“I can’t believe it,” she murmured.

“They stopped visiting when you left. They knew you were here.”

“No,” she said, delighted but disbelieving. He nodded.

Inej watched them move, alert and intelligent, talking to her. She remembered Kaz’s decrial of them as mannerless and untrustworthy, but when she scooped up some cookie crumbs and held them out, they arranged themselves neatly to feed from her hand. Her hands were rough now from the years of sailor’s work, but she could still feel the smoothness of their beaks as they pecked and the trace of their feathers on her fingers.

“I missed them too.”

Kaz took another sip. “Were seagulls not friendly enough?”

She laughed. “They were friendly in their own way – they certainly ate up scraps quite well. But I couldn’t feed them like this. They didn’t wait for me like the crows always did.”

“They were always looking for you to come back.” His voice was as gravelly as ever, but Inej felt a hint of longing as he spoke. With the last of the crumbs gone, she brushed off her hands and turned back towards the room, to look at him. The expression he wore was the one that she remembered most vividly, and with the least joy; that inscrutable intensity that made her feel transparent. He was looking inside of her, and she struggled to translate what he had seen from the look he was giving her.

“Do you ever wish you had stayed here instead?” Kaz asked.

Ah. The question that she had expected to be met with – it had been avoided all evening while they were with Jesper and Wylan, but now it emerged while they were alone. It was a question that she knew the answer for. Whether it was the one he wanted or not, it was the one he would get.

“No. I love being on the sea. I love having a purpose that I can enact so clearly. Everything I told you over dinner was true – it has its challenges, but I wouldn’t have done anything differently.”

Kaz nodded, and she saw pride lock into his eyes.

“You’ve become somewhat of a legend to the sailors who come to Ketterdam now,” he said, a grin building. “Men who arrive shaken by what they saw at a distance – of a pirate queen in blue and gold invading slaver ships and leaving them to die. It has certainly damaged West Stave.”

She touched her earring. “It has?”

“Of course. The bulk of working girls in any of the brothels are stolen, and with so few slaver boats succeeding in bringing any ashore…”

Inej grinned back. Her only hope when she finally decided to leave Ketterdam had been to bring justice to those children like her, but to know that her efforts were ruining trafficking from the ground up… It was almost too much. Her face hurt from smiling, and Kaz turned away from her to look out of the window again.

“How long are you staying here for?” he asked.

Another question. So much easier.

“Two weeks. My crew have been given leave in that time, but I’m hoping that they will all want to sign on for the next stint.”

“And you?”

“I have given myself leave, yes, Kaz,” she chuckled. Kaz huffed self-consciously. “I’ll be around, is what I mean. If you wanted to have tea again some time.”

“Yes.”

Their eyes met, and she was a teenager again. Inej hadn’t thought about Kaz in that way for a long time. Hadn’t allowed herself to. She knew that the moment in which she let the thought of anything tender and vulnerable growing between them take root in her mind again was the moment in which she would have to rethink her answer to that tricky question. But Saints, it had always been hard not to.

“I can tell stories about Captain Ghafa while you’re gone, if you’d like.” Kaz’s smile was sharp. “Make sure that everyone in Ketterdam knows the name and fears it.”

Her heart betrayed her so, so quietly.

“You don’t need to,” she said.

“Why’s that, Inej?”

Three years of never letting herself near him, just in case the possibility of a dual life came back into play. Three years in which she only regretted one thing.

“I’ll be back again before too long.”

#gvbb21 #gvbbminibang21 #grishaverse mini bang #six of crows #six of crows fanfic #kanej #kaz x inej #grishaverse #kanej fanfic #kaz brekker #inej ghafa

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on-stardust-wings · 2 years

Text

Okay, so I've been thinking about hyperfocus. (Probably warrants the disclaimer that I've never been diagnosed with anything, but at this point I'm pretty sure there's something non-neurotypical going on between my ears, and, among other things, people's descriptions of hyperfocus always really click with me as something I experience?)

Just in the last week, there have been several instances where it fit. I wrote 6k words of fic in one sitting (literally, I did not get up though it) last Sunday, and when I was done I realized I'm really fucking thirsty, I hadn't eaten since breakfast, I had no idea what time it was but apparently it was dark out, huh, my shoulders and neck were really stiff and sore, my foot was asleep because I'd been sitting on it again because I can't sit like a normal person and I should have probably been to the bathroom an hour ago. The other day, I spontaneously decided that I want my window screen thingies to be blue to fit with the rest of my bedroom, so I dug out some paint and drew on them, for several hours on a workday evening. At least since I was working on it in the kitchen, I managed to very distractedly eat something on the side, yay?

But that's not really the point I was meaning to make. Or, I was wondering why that's the main point everyone seems to be making about this kind of thing. "I got lost in The Project and forgot basic needs exist." That's the point you read in Tumblr posts about it, and, yeah, relatable, but that's like the least remarkable thing about it to me?

You read about enjoying a hyperfixation, yes. But enjoying hyperfocus? At least I've never seen the take.

But I do. Enjoy them, these weird moods. They're fucking awesome. Yes, I forget to eat and drink and stuff on a fairly regular basis when I get caught up in something, but that's so secondary to the experience to me? Like, it's so much fun to get completely lost in something? I love it. I love to exist just in the scene I'm writing, or the book I'm reading, or the weird, eccentric art project I've spontaneously had to start in my kitchen on a Thursday afternoon. But it's fun! It's fulfilling! 6k words of amazing fic I can't wait to share! (It's got very cool stuff about magical elements!) My very old white window dressings are now blue with green and blue dinosaurs on them! They look neat!

To be perfectly fair I've lost hours on cleaning my bathroom and resorting my cupboards, but, even that was, just, you know, deeply satisfying? There's so much pleasure to doing the thing I'm excited about, and then I look at what I did and it's a thing I made wow how cool is that. (I've done plenty of weird and silly projects, but I tend to enjoy the results almost as much as the process, so that's a win?)

Like, there are very few things as pleasurable and fun as a good Getting Lost in The Project thing. It's so cool to have everything else fall away. My brain is often like at least five different thoughts running away in different directions, but this? This in one thought, laser-sharp and with purpose that knows where it wants to go, and I pretty much always like where it goes. (That's where the essays come from, too. Thought zeroed in on something and now it has aim and cannot be deterred until it gets to its destination.)

And then there's the After. Yes, the sore muscles and thirsty and starving and exhausted thing. I like that, too? I've described it to a friend once, relating to writing but honestly it applies to other things, as a "writing afterglow". Tired, worn out, but deeply satisfied, like whatever mad energy was driving The Project has been burned out, but the emptiness is relieving? Feeling light and heavy at once? A (mostly) mental equivalent to that satisfying tiredness you'll get after a nice day out, the pleasant sort of tiredness? (Sometimes with writing or reading there's the "my soul has been pulled through a meat grinder" thing, but I think that's emotionally taxing subjects, not the activities themselves.)

Anyway, A++ feeling, love it, wouldn't want to miss it for the world. After the last mad writing session, I spent a substantial amount of time sitting on the floor of the shower, letting the water fall on my neck and shoulders to fix what I'd done to the poor things, but, it was so peaceful? Very nice.

I'm the opposite of "no thoughts, head empty". My brain is always full, often it feels too full, and it won't ever shut up. It's often fun, I like thinking thoughts about things, but it's also exhausting because it never ever stops.

It takes a break after one of those episodes. It'll let me sit in the shower, feeling the drops of water and the contentment of "I accomplished a thing that was a lot of fun" and that's all that's in my head. I've had troubles sleeping all my life, and I never fall asleep as well as on a night like this.

So. Hyperfocus. I like it. It's awesome. Please tell me I'm not alone on this.

#personal #I think this might be #adhd #or something like it?#I dunno #hyperfocus #brains are weird #writing #p+a

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cozy-the-overlord · 3 years

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For the Lobster of Loki

Summary: Exposure to terrigen mist during a mission-gone-wrong results in you developing some newfound aquatic abilities. Unfortunately, this opens the door for your Avengers teammates to make use of the bane of your existence: fish puns.

Word Count: 2,850

Pairing: Loki x Fem!Reader (first person)

A/N: I can’t believe I actually wrote this.

For those of you wondering what the hell this is: a few weeks ago, I had autocorrect change the word "love" to "lobster" while writing a fic. I found this hilarious and made a joke about it on Tumblr and it kind of turned into a meme on my blog. A couple of my friends told me I needed to turn this into a story and so now I present to you the stupidest thing I have ever spent precious time creating. Also, I usually don't like writing in first person at all, but my go-to third person limited just did not feel right with this nonsense, so I decided to experiment with a different style

Thanks for reading! :)

Tags: @lucywrites02 @gaitwae

If you want to be tagged, feel free to send an ask/message :)

Read it on Ao3!

I was going to murder Tony Stark. I was going to murder all of them, but I was going to murder him first because he was the one who started this nonsense and now it had been going on for two weeks and I was one fucking smirk away from scalping myself.

It all started when I woke up with gills. Waking up with gills is a strange experience. Don’t get me wrong—I realize all things considered, I had it pretty good. I’ve heard about some really horrific transformations since I experienced my own— people who came out of the midst having lost their eyes or their limbs or their minds. There have been people who came out of the mist looking, sounding, and feeling like completely different creatures than when they went in. And there have been people who don’t come out at all.

No, I know damn well I was lucky to come out of the experience with nothing more than a pair of gills stuck in my neck. Still, it was an odd feeling—there was a heightened awareness every time I breathed in, pinprick chills trickling across the newfound ridges as I exhaled. It didn’t feel right, but it didn’t feel wrong either—it was a stiff feeling, a bit like putting on a new pair of shoes for the first time, if that makes sense. I didn’t know what to make of it.

When I woke up, there was about a hundred doctors hovering around me, each with some new sterile terminology to throw my way about my condition, none of which made anything close to sense. I was losing my mind until Bruce showed up. He was able to put it simply: during the mission, I had been exposed to terrigen mist. Instead of killing me, it triggered a transformation in my DNA. I was inhuman.

My inhuman gift, it seemed was the magical blessing from the Black Lagoon. I had gills now—that was the most immediate realization—but there was also the fleshy webbing between my fingers and a weird film over my eyes that I didn’t notice until I tried to rub them with the heel of my palm. All of these wondrously fishy attributes added up to one glorious result: I could swim like a fish.

That was the first thing they tested. As soon as the doctors said I was good to go, SHIELD dumped me in a pool and told me to have fun. And I did. I had never been a fantastic swimmer or anything—the extent of my swimming knowledge came from the lessons my mother had forced me to take as a kindergartener because she was afraid I’d fall into the pond at the park down the street from our house and just die, which … fair. I still hated those classes. But now, now—oh, it was a completely different experience! I cut through that water like a knife, like Michael Phelps who? I was a bullet, shooting back and forth across the pool and just hanging water for as long as I liked.

Because I could breathe underwater now. That’s what gills are for, I guess, although it doesn’t really feel like breathing. Like, I’m not inhaling water while I swim. I’m just … I don’t know, my lungs are still filling with air, my chest is still going up and down, but it’s not through my nose. I don’t know how to explain it, it’s weird. But it’s really fucking awesome.

The team was very supportive of everything. I had only been living at the Tower for a little while, so I had still felt like something of an outsider—I didn’t have powers, and I certainly didn’t have the years long rapport that they had with each other. But they were really cool! Tony designed me a sleek new suit that was able to move well in water while still offering protection, and everyone had the time of their life trying to think up a pithy new code name for my newfound superhero status (we still haven’t quite decided, but I’m leaning towards Torpedo, because isn’t that the coolest thing you’ve ever heard?). Everything was great.

Well, almost everything. There was one thing that was kind of bothering me. Loki hadn’t talked to me since I got hit with the mist. That might sound like a weird thing to get hung up on—oh no, the psychotic extraterrestrial terrorist is ignoring me!— but Loki’s not really like that. He doesn’t really talk about the whole New York thing much, but he’s said enough to make it clear that it’s not something he did of his own volition. If you saw it you’d understand what I meant, the way he tenses up whenever someone brings up the Chitauri and his eyes go all glassy like he’s not really there behind them. You can just tell that whatever had been waiting for him on the other side of that portal, it wasn’t good.

We never talked about New York, but we talked about other things. I’m not really sure how that happened. He does this thing where he acts all annoyed with everyone, like he’s just so over everything, and it irritates everyone so much that they all avoid him like the plague, which of course is what he wants. I guess I just didn’t avoid him when I arrived—I was too busy avoiding all the other superheroes who made me nervous to bother trying with him—and he grew to tolerate my presence.

We started talking about stuff one day, random shit like the purpose of nutritional facts on the side of poptart boxes and the boiling point of water on Earth vs on Asgard because apparently that’s different. And then we’d do things like make fun of the way Steve talks because he’s just so easy to make fun of, and Steve would overhear and tell us to knock it off and that would just make the whole thing funnier and Loki would mimic his voice and say something stupid like “I can feel the righteousness surging!” and Steve would just shake his head and walk away while we laughed like idiots. So yeah. We were friends. Or at least, I thought of him as a friend.

But I was starting to think that maybe he didn’t see me in the same way. We had been partners on the mission where I got hit with the terrigen mist, but he didn’t even come to visit me while I was still in the hospital. And literally everyone came to visit me. Friggin’ Director Fury came to visit me, although I’m pretty sure that was more because he wanted to see what my transformation had entailed and not because he had any particular interest in my wellbeing, but still. And then when I got out, he never said a word to me and everyone else wanted to talk to me so I didn’t say anything to him, but I was worried about him just the same. He was avoiding me too—he wouldn’t ever look at me when I was looking at him, and a lot of times he’d get up and leave the room if I came in. And I didn’t know what was going on.

I probably should’ve asked, but I don’t know … I was afraid, I guess. Like, what if he was really mad at me for something, and just me trying to talk with him would make him upset? So I just didn’t say anything—went through my day pretending everything was normal and ignoring the ache in my chest constantly reminding me that it had been weeks since I got my powers and Loki still hadn’t asked me if I was okay.

But I kind of forgot about all that when Tony started this bullshit. Honestly, I’m surprised he didn’t start it sooner, because it was the type of low hanging fruit that had his name written all over it, but once he started it there was no going back.

He started it one day when we were in the kitchen. I had been making a sandwich (tuna fish, because I’m a cannibal) and Tony was leaning over the counter watching me, and we were just talking about my general fishiness.

“I’m jealous, really,” he was saying. “It’s definitely something that would come in handy. You need to get something underwater, you just dive down—no tanks, no masks, no suits. Very sophisticated.” His eyes lit up, which is never a good thing. “Sofishticated!”

I groaned. “Stop it.”

But Tony was cackling. “Sofishticated! That’s rather gilliant, if I do say so myself.”

“Tony …”

“It doesn’t get any betta than this!”

I waved the bread knife in his face. “I will throw this at you.”

“Alright, alright.” Even as he held his hands up in surrender, he was giggling like a child. “I’ll stop.”

He did not stop.

The next morning, it was fish puns. Everywhere you turned, it was fish puns.

“Can you get that report back to me soon, or do you need more time to mullet over?”

“Just let minnow when you’re ready to try on the new suit.”

“Don’t trout your abilities, we all know you’re fintastic.”

It was only breakfast and I was inches away from crushing my face against the china cabinet.

Natasha raised her eyebrows. “What the hell have I walked into?”

Tony grinned. “It’s fish puns!” he said. “Because, you know—” he gestured vaguely in my general direction. “It’s her brand.”

I moaned, face in my hands. “Just kill me now.”

Clint perked up. “Don’t you mean krill me now?”

Laughing, Tony gave him a high five over my head as I writhed in pain. “That’s the spirit.”

I don’t know how he did it, but in the matter of hours Tony had the whole damn tower on the pun train. Natasha was joking about how she was having a whale of a time with this new game. Clint was telling me to clam down and enjoy the fun. Steve asked me if I could get kraken on my o-fish-al business. Even Bruce—Bruce, who always made a point of staying out of Tony’s nonsense—even he was coming up to me with shit like “Cod you come help me with somefin in the lab?”

I glared at him. “Why would you ask me that?”

He hesitated for a moment. “Well …” Bruce inhaled. “Salmon had to.”

I stormed off as Tony roared with laughter from behind the corner.

It was inescapable. Wherever I went there was someone armed with some new fishy atrocity. You’d be surprised at how many fucking fish-related words exist in the English language. JARVIS was so overloaded with the amount of Internet searches for “fish puns” that he started bookmarking lists for easy access. It was an absolute nightmare.

“Don’t play koi, sweetheart,” Tony teased one night while we were waiting for Clint to choose a movie. “We know you lobster it.”

“Lobster?” I scoffed. “That doesn’t even make sense!”

“You just don’t appreciate my ingenui-sea.”

“OH MY—”

“Ignore them, my lady.” Thor smiled gallantly “They are only jesting. You should just relaks.” He grinned, stepping back as he waited for a reaction. We all just blinked at him. He frowned. “You understand, yes? Re-laks? Laks? That’s a fish!”

“Lak is not native to Midgard,” Loki interjected without looking up from the book he was reading. I jumped. He had been so quiet I had forgotten he was in here too. “Their oceans are too warm.”

Thor was surprised. “Truly? But I thought we’ve tasted lak since we’ve been here!”

Loki rolled his eyes, still without looking up. “That’s salmon. It tastes similar, but it’s much smaller.” He turned the page, muttering something that I didn’t quite catch. I was suddenly struck by the fact that it was the closest we had come to talking since before the mist, and that ache came back, gnawing at the edges of my heart. He didn’t look at me. I didn’t say anything.

About a week later, it was my birthday. I don’t really like birthdays in general, but I had really been bracing myself for this one all week because there was no way in hell these morons weren’t going to something infuriatingly stupid to mark the occasion. I guess I didn’t do enough bracing, because when I walked into my bathroom that morning to find a big fat lobster scuttling around in my sink I nearly had a fucking heart attack.

Across the mirror, someone had scrawled a message in red lipstick.

Sending you birthday fishes and lots of lobster!

And that was the moment I decided I was going to murder Tony Stark.

I stormed out into the hallway with no weapon, no plan of action, nothing except the pajamas on my back and the lobster in my hand. Additionally, this was the moment I decided that I hated lobsters more than any other creature on this earth. This thing looked like something from outer space, with its antenna and its bulging eyes and its spindly spider legs—that what it was, an overgrown spider in a slimy red shell. It was disgusting.

I was on my way to Tony’s floor, so engrossed with this half-baked notion of busting down his door and throwing this extraterrestrial arachnid on his face while he snored in bed, that I didn’t even see the Asgardian prince until I walked right into him.

Luckily, Loki grabbed me before I stumbled backwards, because I recoiled so quickly I probably would’ve gone flying. He raised his eyebrows as he took in the sight.

“I assume there’s a reason for the crustacean?” he asked.

There was something ever so slightly condescending about his tone, and I bristled. “They left this thing in my room! I swear, I’ve had it up to here with this fish bullshit—”

He hushed me, pulling the lobster from my grasp. With a wave of his hand, it was gone.

I inhaled. “You didn’t kill it, did you?”

“Oh no. I merely moved it to a more preferable location.” He frowned at the moisture left on his palm, conjuring a handkerchief to wipe it off with. “You know,” he said slowly. “The more visibly upset you allow yourself to become over this, the more encouraged they’ll feel to continue.”

“I know, I know. I just—” I sighed. “It’s so annoying. It’s been going nonstop, for two damn weeks! Puns are the absolute lowest form of humor, it’s just obnoxious.”

Loki only nodded as he turned to make his way down the hall. “I’ll take your word for it.”

And just like that, it was back to ignoring me. I watched his retreating form, the ache in my chest quickly bursting in to flames.

“Why are you avoiding me?” I snapped.

He froze, slowly turning around. “Pardon?”

“Why are you avoiding me?” I repeated. “You won’t talk to me anymore, you barely even look at me— did I do something wrong?” Maybe the fish jokes really had fried my brain, because I was dangerously close to tears. “I don’t get it Loki, I thought we were cool and now you just hate me!”

“I don’t hate you!” he said. “I just—”

“Just what? What is going on with you?”

“You could’ve died!” Loki yelled. I had never heard him speak that loudly before, and guess I was shocked into silence. “With the mist, on the mission. It was only pure chance that you didn’t.”

“I—I don’t understand.”

“I was supposed to cover you. I should’ve realized sooner that they were using terrigen crystals. Instead I miscalculated and you nearly died.” He let out a shaky breath. “I thought you were dead. When I found you, enveloped in that shell …” His voice trailed off and I realized with a start that his eyes were glistening with tears.

“Loki …” My gills tingled on my neck as I reached out for him. Is that what this was all about? Guilt? “Loki, you can’t blame yourself for that. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. And besides, I’m fine now. It all worked out in the end.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand. You didn’t see yourself. You were gone, I was certain you were gone—”

I griped his hand. “I’m here now though. I’m here and I’m fine. Stop beating yourself up about it. I want to be friends again. I—” For a moment, the words caught in my throat. “I missed you.”

He gulped. “Truly?”

“Of course! Besides, I need your help getting back at these idiots.”

He smirked. “Oh, I’ve already started on that.”

A high-pitched scream broke out across the floor. “How did the fucking lobster get in my shower?” Tony bellowed from his bedroom.

We exploded into laughter.

“Oh,” I wheezed. “That was fucking perfect!”

Loki grinned, squeezing my hand. “Only the best for you, my lobster.”

#loki (marvel)#loki fanfic #loki x reader #crack fic #for the lobster of loki #cozy writes

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babypandawrites · 3 years

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Allies, Pt. 9

The Northern Air Temple

Pairing: Sokka x F Reader Warnings: None Word Count: 3,813 Summary: You thought that the chance of there being Airbenders other than Aang was too good to be true, sadly you were right.

Note: How I completely forgot about this until now I'm not sure but! Another piece of this series I’ve done for the fun of it is outfit designs- If that kind of things in fics isn’t your cup of tea then feel free to act like these don't exist! But for those who are interested or who might just wanna see; here you go. This is just what I personally envisioned while writing, again feel free to ignore it if you want, but I figured I might as well share :) I was also going to wait until tomorrow to post this bc Wednesdays is my upload day for it on Ao3 but I’m also a chapter ahead there and wanted to get my tumblr uploads caught up- so back to back post today and tomorrow :) Yay

-Navigation- | -Atla Masterlist- -Last Part- | -Allies Masterlist- | -Next Part-

Taglist: @boomeraangin | @brokennerdalert

“So, travelers, the next time you think you hear a strange large bird talking, take a closer look, it might not be a giant parrot, but a flying man! A member of a secret group of air walkers who laugh at gravity and laugh at those bound to the earth by it!” Aang smiled. “Aren’t airbender stories the best?” “Was it realistic? Was that how it was back then?” Katara questioned. “I laugh at gravity all the time. Haha! Gravity.” A pair of hands holding a hat suddenly appeared in the space inbetween Sokka and Y/n. The storyteller shook the hat, the jingling of coins being heard. “Jingle, jingle.” The two searched their pockets for any money. Y/n didn’t have anything, and the only thing Sokka pulled from his coat pocket was a small ball of lint and a bug. Y/n offered the storyteller a sheepish smile. “Sorry.” “Aww. Cheapskates!” The man left them, going to ask other audience members for donations. She turned to look at Sokka, a disgusted expression apparent on her face at the bug that wiggled around in his hand. “Why… was there a bug in your coat?” “Hey! Don’t question a man and his bug.” The bug rolled over, and started to crawl up his hand. Sokka yelped and shook it off. Her expression twisted into amusement. “A man and his bug, huh?” “It’s not my fault we can’t afford to keep him fed.”

The next morning, the group found themselves on the way to the Northern Air Temple. Apparently, the airbenders in the story they heard were seen the previous week. It seemed a little too good to be true, that there might be airbenders other than Aang still out there, but Y/n wasn’t going to be the one to crush the kids' hope. That was Sokka’s job, not hers. “Hey, we’re almost at the Northern Air Temple! This is where they had the championships for sky bison polo.” Y/n looked at Aang with a smile. “Sky bison polo? That sounds fun.” “It is fun! So much fun!” Katara moved to sit next to her brother. “Do you think we’ll really find airbenders?” “You want me to be like you, or totally honest?” Sokka asked, focusing on whittling a piece of wood. “Are you saying I’m a liar?” Katara crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m saying you’re an optimist. Same thing basically.” “They’re not the same thing at all.” Y/n commented. The boy just shrugged his shoulders. “Hey guys, look at this!” Appa was starting to approach the Northern Air Temple. It sat up on a sheer peak, several people flew around it, and smoke rose from a few pillars. “Huh! They really are airbenders!” Aang leaned, crossing his arms unhappily. “No, they’re not.” Sokka pointed up at the people flying around. “What do you mean they’re not? Those guys are flying!” “Gliding maybe, but not flying. You can tell by the way they move. They’re not airbending. Those people have no spirit.” Y/n tipped her head to the side, watching the gliders. “I mean, they look like they're flying to me, but you would know best.” As she finished speaking, a glider passed over the group's heads, nearly taking them off. The glider’s pilot laughed, turning to pass by Appa again. Getting a closer look at the kid, it could be noted that his glider was built out of the wheelchair he sat in. Katara pointed in the glider’s direction. “I don’t know, Aang. That kid seems pretty spirited!” The glider made another pass, and soon Aang was standing up glider in hand, before taking off. Another glider flew in front of Appa, startling him and causing Katara and Y/n to fall backwards into Sokka. The three grunted at the impact. “We better find some solid ground before it finds us!” Appa made a landing on one of the temple’s outer terraces, the trio getting off him and watching as Aang and the boy in the wheelchair glided through the sky. Aang eventually came down and landed next to them, the other boy also coming to a landing. A few kids came other and detached the glider from his wheelchair, before he wheeled over to the group. “Hey! You’re a real airbender! You must be the Avatar! That’s amazing! I- I- I’ve heard stories about you.” Aang rubbed at the back of his neck, embarrassed. “Thanks.” “Wow! This glider chair is incredible!” Sokka rushed over to the kids who had the glider setup, inspecting it. “If you think this is good, wait until you see the other stuff my Dad designed.” He began to wheel away, the group following. They were led through the huge main gate of the temple, into the main chamber. The room was dominated by steam-powered machinery with many wheels, gears and pipes. “Wow!” Sokka ran forward, looking around the room excitedly. “Yeah, my dad is the mastermind behind this whole place! Everything’s powered by hot air. It even pumps hot air currents outside to give us a lift when we’re gliding.” Aang took a look around. “This place is unbelievable.” The boy in the wheelchair smiled. “Yeah, it’s great isn’t it?” “No, just unbelievable.” Y/n tried to hold back a laugh, clearing her throat to force down her laughter. “Aang used to come here a long time ago. I think he’s a little shocked it’s so… different.” Katara said, before following after Aang when he walked off. “So better!” Rolling her eyes, Y/n elbowed Sokka in the shoulder. He gave her a look. “Come on, you don’t think this is cool at all?” “Not really.”

Soon they followed the boy, Teo, to another part of the temple. This time it was a courtyard of sorts, it was untouched, and there were statues of airbenders. Aang was much happier about this, than he had been about the other room. “It’s nice to see even one part of the temple that isn’t ruined.” He spoke, as him, Y/n and Katara looked at a huge statue of an airbender monk. “Look out!” A voice shouted out, shortly before a wrecking ball crashed through the statue. The three flew backwards with the debris, and everyone started to cough from the dust. As the dust settled, several people could be seen through the hole that’d been created. One of the people walked forward, a middle aged man with a mostly bald head who wore a monocle, a green tunic and an apron. “What the doodle! Don’t you know enough to stay away from construction sites? We have to make room for the bathhouse!” “Do you know what you just did? You just destroyed something sacred! For a stupid bathhouse!” Aang, clearly upset with the man, took on an airbending stance. The man waved a hand in front of his nose. “Well, people around here are starting to stink.” Aang pointed at him. “This whole place stinks!” He slammed his staff against the ground, sending a strong gust of wind through the hole in the wall, knocking the wrecking ball and it’s rig off the building's foundation. “This is a sacred temple! You can’t treat it this way. I’ve seen it when the monks were here. I know what it’s supposed to be like.” “The monks? But you’re twelve!” Teo wheeled over. “Dad, he’s the Avatar. He used to come here a hundred years ago.” Aang walked closer to the man. “What are you doing? Who said you could be here?” “Hmmm… doing here… A long time ago, but not a hundred years, my people became refugees after a terrible flood.” He gestured his arms for effect, before moving to stand behind his son. “My infant son, Teo, was badly hurt and lost his mother.” Sniffling, he held back tears. “I needed somewhere to rebuild and I stumbled across this place. Couldn’t believe it! Everywhere pictures of flying people. But empty! Nobody home! Then I came across these fan like contraptions!” He held his arms out as if they were wings, making flying motions with them as he walked about the courtyard for a short moment. He stopped in front of Aang, who was clearly still upset. “Our gliders.” “Yes, little light flying machines. They gave me an idea. Build a new life for my son, in the air! Then everyone would be on equal ground, so to speak! We’re just in the process of improving upon what’s already here and after all, isn’t that what nature does?” Aang was still upset, while Sokka and Katara stood behind him, teary eyed from the story. Y/n rolled her eyes at the siblings, before moving to stand next to Aang, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. Sure, the story was sad, but to her the boy’s feelings were more important. The Mechanist turned to look through the hole in the wall he’d created. “I suppose that’s true. Unfortunately, progress has a way of getting away from us.” He looked down in a bout of sadness, before his head snapped up to look at an odd candle device..? A bit aways from them. “Look at the time!” Three candles burned brightly on a stone pedestal, each separated into their own sections. Next to the pedestal, a large mallet rests, sitting head down. The Mechanist turned to one of the scribes behind him. “Come the pulley system must be oiled before dark.” Sokka approached the candles, observing them. “Wait, how can you tell the time from that thing? The notches all look the same.” “The candle will tell us. Watch.” The candle’s flame snapped four times in a row. “You put spark powder in the candle!” “Four flashes, so it’s exactly four hours past midday, or, as I call it, four o’candle!” Sokka let out a laugh, as The Mechanist looked at him, seemingly pleased he was interested. “If you like that, wait till you see my finger safe knife sharpener!” Y/n’s attention moved to the man at the mention of that, watching as he held up his left hand, where three of his fingers were made of wood. He detached them from his hand, before tossing them to Sokka. “Only took me three tries to get it right!” Sokka let out a scream, as he caught the wooden fingers. “Follow me!” The Mechanist turned to leave, the men who were with him and Sokka quickly followed. As the boy passed by Y/n, he grabbed onto her wrist and dragged her along with him. She offered a quick goodbye wave to Aang, Katara and Teo as she was dragged away.

Quiet steps echoed through the narrow hallway, as Y/n, Sokka and The Mechanist descending a narrow staircase. Each of them held a lantern, glowing with sparse blue light. “These lanterns are terrible! I can’t see.” Y/n ran into Sokka’s back, as he abruptly stopped to open the jar to his lantern. She flicked the back of his head, as he continued to speak. “Why would you want to use fireflies for light- Hey!” She snickered, watching the firefly that escaped from his lantern. The Mechanist turned to look at them. “Hey, close that up! They’ll get loose. Fireflies are a non-flammable light source.” “Are you meaning to say that something down here is flammable?” Y/n asked, as they all continued walking. “Well, why else would I need a non-flammable light source?” The Mechanist offered a chuckle, as they approached a door. The edges of it were blocked by some sort of sealant, which he felt around, probably to check for leaks. After checking he turned back to them. “Cover your nose and hold your breath.” Once they’d done so, The Mechanist slid open a panel in the door, which they all looked through. It just showed a dark and empty room. “Okay, so you brought us all the way down here to see an empty room.” Sokka spoke with a somewhat confused tone. “Wrong.” Eyebrows furrowing together, Y/n watched as the panel was slid shut again. “You brought us all the way down here to see a room full of flammable explosive gas?” “Correct! It’s filled to the brim with natural gas. Came across it my first time here. Unfortunately, I was carrying a torch at the time. Nearly blew myself and the whole place even more sky high. Thought my eyebrows would never grow back! Anyway, there’s a vital problem that needs solving. From time to time we have gas leaks and they’re nearly impossible to find.” Y/n took a few steps back, as Sokka helped check the door for leaks. “So this place is an explosion waiting to happen?” “Yes, until I figure out how to locate something I can’t see, hear, smell or touch.” “Right, is it safe for us to be around this gas? Should we be wearing masks or something, in case we come across a leak so we don’t, you know, inhale it?” “Oh don’t worry, we should be fine.” The Mechanist paused for a moment, straightening up after finishing checking for leaks. “Well, as long as you aren’t a firebender or something- hah!” He let out a laugh, which Sokka quickly shared. Sokka nudged her in the arm, as they started walking back. “Oh come on, that was funny. You know that was funny.” “Yeah, hilarious.” He threw an arm over her shoulders. “Come on, loosen up. We’re gonna be fine, even if we do come across a leak.” She put her hands up in defense. “Okay, okay.”

The Mechanist led the pair to his workshop, and very clearly told them not to touch anything, before going to look over some papers on his desk. Sokka, of course, did not listen to that and started poking through things the moment the man's attention wasn’t on them. “Sokka, he said not to touch anything.” Y/n whispered, smacking his hand away from something he was about to mess with. He gently pushed her away a bit, before going right back to poking around. “Calm down, it’s fine. It’s not like I’m going to break an-” Sokka cut himself off, as he knocked some stuff over. Grimacing, he tried to keep it from falling to the ground. “I said don’t touch anything!” When The Mechanist spoke up, Sokka dropped the things to the ground. Y/n crossed her arms over her chest. “Not gonna break anything, huh?” The Mechanist came over, to help Sokka pick the things up. “Oh, don’t worry, that experiment is old and that egg was just part of last week’s lunch.” Y/n kneeled down to help them too, as Sokka sniffed the air. “Ugh! Week old egg smell!” “Quick! Find that egg!” The three started to crawl around, looking for the egg, but none of them were having much luck. “How could something that’s so small you can’t even see it make such a big stink!?” Sokka complained as they looked. The Mechanist perked up at the comment. “That’s the solution to our problem!” “Yeah!” Y/n looked at the two, confused, as they faced each other with excitement. “What?” “If we put a whole mess of rotten eggs in the cellar where the gas seeps up..” Sokka started the thought, which The Mechanist continued. “The gas will mix with the smell of rotten eggs…” “Then, if there’s a leak…” “You smell rotten eggs! Then you just follow your nose to the place where the smell is coming from..” “And plug up the hole where the gas is escaping!” “You’re a genius!” The two spoke in unison. Still, Y/n looked between the two with a confused expression. “ What? ” Suddenly, a large bell started to ring, and The Mechanist was quick to get up and rush from the room. “Something’s wrong I’ve got to go.” “Wonder what that’s about.” Sokka said, getting up himself. He helped Y/n up, grinning. “We should follow him.” “Always a snoop, huh?” Laughing softly, she shook her head. “Alright.” Grasping onto her wrist, he dragged her out of the room to follow after The Mechanist. They’d followed him to another room, one that was filled to the brim with different war machines branded with the Fire Nation’s insignia.

“You make weapons for the Fire Nation!?” Sokka was clearly angry with his words, rightfully so. Y/n was pretty mad about this development as well. She pointed a finger at The Mechanist. “You! You're terrible. Horrible terrible!” The Mechanist looked at the ground in humiliation and shame. Teo looked at his father angrily. “Explain all this! Now!” “It was about a year after we moved here. Fire Nation soldiers found our settlement. You were too young to remember this tale. They were going to destroy everything, burn it to the ground. I pleaded with them, begged them to spare us. They asked what I had to offer. I offered… my services. You must understand, I did this for you!” Teo turned his wheelchair away, clearly upset. The Mechanist turned on his heel, and walked back down the hall, leaving the five kids in the room. Teo shook his head. “I can’t believe this…. This is terrible.” “I know..” Aang looked at the weapons with disdain. “There’s so much here.” Y/n crossed her arms over her chest. “The Fire Nation could be coming for this soon…” Aang breathed out a sigh. “Your right… I’m going to go figure it out.” “I’ll come with.” Teo said, as Aang started to leave the room, before following the boy. With Aang and Teo’s return, they found out that the Fire Nation was coming soon. And they were intending to burn this place to the ground. They were all outside on one of the walkways, trying to figure out a plan. “This is bad! Very bad!” Katara looked over to Aang. “Aang, what are we gonna do? How can we possibly keep them all away?” “I’ll tell you how.” He pointed to the sky. “We have something they don’t. Air power! We control the sky. That’s something the Fire Nation can’t do. We can win!” “I want to help.” The Mechanist approached the group, as he spoke up. Aang offered the man a smile. “Good, we’ll need it.”

“We finally got the war balloon working, thanks to Sokka. This boy’s a genius!” “Thank you. You’re a genius!” “Thank you!” Y/n rolled her eyes at the exchange. “Can we get on with this?” Sokka cleared his throat. “Right. See, the problem with the old war balloon was you could get it airborne, but once you did, it just kept going.” He demonstrated with a model that flew up and hit the ceiling. “You could put a hole in the top, but then all the hot air would escape. So the question became, how do you keep a lid on hot air?” “Ugh, if only we knew.” Katara commented. Y/n, Aang, Teo and Katara herself all laughed at the remark. Ignoring them, Sokka pulled the model down from the ceiling, now showing off the mechanism to open and close a lid on the top. “A lid is actually the answer. If you control the hot air, you control the war balloon.” He demonstrated again, but this time the model didn’t fly up to the ceiling, thanks to the lid that could be pulled open with a string. Katara crossed her arms. “Hmm. That’s actually pretty smart.” “Okay, we’ve got four kinds of bombs. Smoke, smile, fire and-” The Mechanist cut Sokka off. “Stink. Never underestimate the power of stink!”

“We’re going to have to modify this to the new design, and fast.” The Mechanist said, as him, Sokka and Y/n worked on bringing the War Balloon he’d already constructed outside. “With both of you helping we should be able to get it up and running pretty quickly though!” “Yeah! And I’m pretty sure Aang and Katara will be able to hold off the Fire Nation with everyone’s help.” Y/n furrowed her eyebrows. “They’ll be able to hold them off, but we can’t count on them too for too long, even if we have the skies. The Fire Nation’s army is huge, who knows how many soldiers will show up.” They got the balloon set up to do the necessary modifications. “Oh she’s right, time is not something we have on our side right now.” Sokka nodded in understanding. “Right. It’s only one modification though, so it can’t take terribly long, right?” “Let’s hope not.” Getting to work on the War Balloon, they probably could have gotten things done a little faster. But nonetheless, they got it done, and just in time too apparently. While Sokka and The Mechanist got ready to take off in the war balloon, Y/n went to find the others to see how they were holding up. “How are things going out here?” She asked, once she found Katara, Aang and Teo. The three looked at her with slight concern. “Not well.” Katara started. “Please tell us Sokka is coming with that war balloon soon.” Before she could give an answer, the war balloon rose up from behind them all, and started moving towards the battle field. From where they all stood, they could see Sokka and The Mechanist dropping giant slime bombs onto the Fire Nation soldiers. The bombs that they had didn’t stop the soldiers, however, and they were starting to advance closer to the Temple. Katara put a hand on Y/n’s shoulder, to get her attention. “What are they doing..?” She squinted in the direction of the war balloon, trying to see what was going on. “I’m not sur-” She cut herself off, watching as something fell from the basket of the war balloon. Was that the balloons fuel source? “Did they just push out their fuel source..?!” “What?!” A sudden explosion set off, a really really big one. The entire Temple got clouded in a ginormous wall of grey smoke. When the smoke dissipated, it was revealed that the Fire Nation was retreating. Aang pointed to where the army was leaving. “Look! They’re retreating!” Everyone started to cheer at the success, but the joy was cut short, as the war balloon started heading downwards quickly. Thankfully though, Aang was able to get Sokka and The Mechanist before the balloon crashed below. Currently, they all stood outside on the main terrace of the Air Temple. “You know what? I’m really glad you guys all live here now. It’s like the hermit crab.” Aang spoke, as he carefully picked up one of the hermit crabs near them all. “Maybe you weren’t born here, but you found this empty shell and made it your home. And now you protect each other.” Teo offered a smile to the boy. “That means a lot coming from you.” “Aang you were right about air power.” Sokka pointed to the sky. “As long as we’ve got the skies we’ll have the Fire Nation on the run!”

#avatar the last airbender #atla #avatar the last airbender x reader #atla x reader #reader insert #sokka x reader #sokka x y/n #sokka x you #team avatar #slowburn #book one allies

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yusuke96universe · 3 years

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Sky's Insecurities

I had this big Linked Universe prompt I spent the last 2-3 hours on, but then Tumblr erased it all because I moved some tabs around and now I am sad. Here the gist of what I remember.

This is a follow up from the Cal's Chain Dynamics prompt I made yesterday.

Calamity has been all over Sky ever since he discovered that he is the eventual first King of Hyrule and due to his upbringing as a knight in training since he was little, it is ingrained into his being to serve the royalty to the best of his abilities, but he is extremely oblivious when it comes to people's comfort levels.

So when Sky leaves the camp site with a lame excuse no one bats an eye, until Wind noticed he, of all people, forgot to take Master Sword with him. Wind offers to deliver it to him real quick, but Warriors says he'll go with him because he feels like Sky is going through more than he simple frustration with Cal and is a little worried.

They find Sky who was has been playing a beautiful melody on his harp, but Wind claims that this is the saddest song he's ever heard Sky play before and that something must really be eating away at him.

Warrior takes a step back, but the snapping of a twig gave away them away, so Sky jumps into action using his Gust Bellows to blow them out of their hiding places and already had his Scatter Shot ready to fire.

Both come out with their hands up, promptly. They comment on how they thought he'd have trouble without his beloved Master Sword at his side, but were proved wrong.

Sky takes a quick look, but has to look away from the sword. Which is unusual for him. And tries to feign a smile that neither hero buys for a second.

They offer to leave if he just needs a little more time alone to get his bearings or their help by lending Sky an ear if there is something he needs to get off of his chest because it's not a good idea to internalize problems allowing them to fester and eat away at you, or else you'll end up like Time or Legend.

Sky admits that they're right and that this is unusual behavior from himself as he hesitantly takes up the sword and gently sets it down away from him. (that's weird they note)

When questioned if this is about Cal annoying him or getting invasive, Sky denies these claims, and says while he appreciates his dedication to the crown, his presence, along with this blade's, as he gestures the Master Sword, are constant reminders of something he's been trying to ignore since they started this adventure together.

That he'll one day be the first King of Hyrule. Sky doesn't feel equipped to be a leader with people diligently serving him like Cal does, let alone being the Founder of a great Kingdom that will withstand through and overcome countless trials and tribulations. He doesn't even feel like his status as a knight measures up to the likes of Calamity or Warriors. Since his version was more like going to Knight Academy for training and being the security with routine patrols over the small floating island known as Skyloft. Which, even though they took pride in that status they worked hard to achieve, he feels it isn't nearly as impressive as going to wars with battle tactics at play or shouldering the responsibilities of commanding soldiers on and off the battle field with politics involved. When comparing the two, Sky believes he has only been playing knight with his friends like a child.

Sky looks at the sword and continues.

I am not fit to be a King. Even the title of Hero is too lofty for someone like me. I am merely a swordsman. One that got cursed by Demise and brought hardships and troubles to all of you and the people of Hyrule throughout time. It's my fault someone like Ganon even existed in the first place.

Warriors takes a deep breath. He tells him that as a commanding Knight, he has helped a lot of rural knights who have gone through similar feelings of inadequacy when compared to those of Castletown. What Sky's going through when he sees both Warriors and Calamity is actually very common, but it's also very easily fixed when changing their perspectives a little.

He would tell those knights that Hyrule needs every person, including mere swordsmen from the countryside to help. For they bring the people ease and peace of mind as knights are the ones to put in the effort to diligently train to protect them in times of danger. Knights are willing to give everything for all of Hyrule's protection, not just the Capital. And if they are able to keep the civilians out of harm's way and with a virtuous heart give them hope. Then those are deemed the highest of quality Knights, at least in Warrior's eyes that is. And Sky. You are one of the finest specimens of a gallant Knight exuding valor that he has ever come across in his countless battles.

This shocks Sky.

Now, Wind jumps in.

Yeah, besides. That curse got broken a while ago in my time. So it's not like it'll last forever! Even, if you did fail to prevent Demise's curse you can't blame yourself for his actions. You need to give the proper amount of blame to people's actions. Take you. You have the strength to admit your failings and are looking to the future by building Hyrule with your Zelda on a land you two found. That is an awesome start! I should know, I am currently doing the same thing with Tetra.

Listen, you don't need to be some perfect figure of power or wisdom to be king. You're allowed to fail and have those shortcomings. Just keep focusing on the future of Hyrule and it's people. You already know you can't bear those burdens alone since you said you turn to your Zelda and your friends when things get too hard. You're already in the process of becoming a great King. And it sounds like your Zelda would be doing most of the leading anyways so you can just focus on what only you can do along with everyone else. You're going to make an amazing Kingdom one day, so you have nothing to fear!

Sky takes a minute to process everything that they've said. His bright and cheerful smile returns.

You're both right. I've just had my head too high up in the clouds and been overthinking things again. Thanks for bringing me back down to Earth. I needed this wake up call. -Sky

Though, I still don't know how I will deal with Cal's enthusiasm. hahaha -Sky

They all have a good laugh and head back to camp. Sky now has the Master Sword on his side, proudly displayed again, and unbeknownst to them,it flashes a blue light.

That's it. I hate how I lost the first half, but I hope you guys can enjoy. I was surprised at how Calamity opened up a few doors for Sky's development. Tell me what you think of this?

#lu legend #lu wind #lu warriors #lu calamity #linkeduniverse #linked universe #skyward sword

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the-faces-and-voices-in-my-head · 3 years

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A word to fandom citizens

OK...This is needed and necessary

First of all, let me remind whoever reads this that I am a content creator myself on a way bigger, scarier, popular platform than tumblr which is YouTube so whatever I will say here is my personal experience and beliefs, don't take it personally.

Content creators and content fans.

A very complicated relationship where every content creator wants the satisfaction and appreciation of the fans who follow or like what they create and if any content creator says anything different then, Sorry, you are not being honest with yourself not to mention the fans of your work. Appreciation and praise make creators happy that's a fact that cannot be hidden or denied and proved by every creator's reaction and reply to the praise they get.

This praise the creators love can make them go to extremely far limits by dedicating a long time and sincere efforts for the final result that WILL BE SHARED IN PUBLIC.

This is a confirmed fact and cannot be denied so where is the problem?

Praise cannot come without his evil twin...criticizing.

Content creators put their work in public thinking, anticipating and waiting for praise which is normal and that's including me as well but the problem here is when the criticizing comes. Creators are almost not able to take it and not even prepared to accept that it exists which is surely the creators' fault since their work can be seen and comments are enabled so it is a silent invitation to hear opinions even if they don't welcome all of the opinions but again as long as it is open then you are game...it is as simple as that.

No one can satisfy everyone and every taste but to satisfy your fans, you will come across the not-happy ones, a normal result of putting your content in public and being seen by others. I have received many comments on my work on YouTube; many of them were pointless but it showed me that i am successful and whatever i dedicate my time for is seen but honestly some negative comments taught me things i find it useful about who watches what i make...you don't see me whine and cry about it because simply it is part of the deal, I do voice acting because i love it yes but I share it on YouTube because I want to share what i love with the ones who have similar interests otherwise i would keep it on my computer for myself or disabled comments for example.

The same for all the artists and writers here, you put your content here because you want it to be seen and you want feedback otherwise it would have remained on your computer or skitch book.

Now...the most important part...feedback.

Let's agree on the fact that none of us get paid for whatever we do for fandom so get the fact that I am not paid for this so you must be grateful out of your heads. The only currency that we can use here is time, you give time to your content and you receive time watching, reading, admiring your content. no one owes anyone anything but since creators create, fans respond.

Where is the problem then?

It is fans responses of course :D

Nothing is better than appreciation and praise as I said earlier but if you expect that this is all that you will get then again sorry, you are wrong. freedom has been always a double-edged weapon. we create what we like because we are free and people comment on our work however they see it because they are free too. The difference here is the curtsy actually.

Are the fans nice enough not to point out what they don't like about our work? or do they actually think it is the right thing to do it? or they just do it for the hell of it?

Let me help a little here: If a long-term fan didn't like your work then you need to ask and understand what changed, that in case if you care about the people who gave you the attention and time.

If a newcomer came and said some mean words and left then most probably he/she didn't like your work, take it and remember it is a side effect of the same privilege of being praised by another nameless stranger.

It is that simple, your action creates a reaction, different types according to people's natures and personalities. we are free to create but they are free to respond as long as you open the door. you start a wave so you must wait for the effect and be ready for it, the surprised Picacho face won't help here.

Now, there is another important point that must be brought up.

Once a creator is stuck with the feedback they don't like, they start throwing accusations like the fans have an unhealthy obsession with fictional characters which is a HUGE CONTRADICTION...why?

Between the creator who spends hours, days, and months creating content about a fictional character and the fan who finishes all that in a minute or a day max then forgets about and lives his/her life normally, who is the actual obsessed one here?

This is fandom, it is created to make the fictional characters real and to make them a bigger part of our day than how they already are. If you ridicule that then you made fun of yourself and your work before the one who criticized you...common sense right? The fictional characters, if brought up in any other place out of fandom then yes, it is weird and unsettling but here? this is the only valid place to act upon our love and admiration and never forget that these characters and emotions many people think it is wise to ridicule are the results of someone's efforts, hopes, and creation so when you shout: chill they are not real, remind yourself first with that and stop wasting your time in this fandom that was built on the existence of these nonreal characters. I am both a creator and a fan. As a creator, I took the deal a long time ago, I create, people respond and we both learn. I learn from what I get and they learn about what I do and whether to continue following me or not, that's it. As a fan, I never hold feedback because that's what sharing in public means. The only difference here is that I never forgot that I am a fan and whenever I see the feedback I try to think as one to understand why it was written before I go emotional and personal. So to the fellow sensitive creators: creators don't want feedback? keep your content private.

To the fellow fans: creators remind you that they are free to share? remind them that you are free to comment. Do you think fictional characters are not worthy of being invested in it? fandom is not the right place for you, the reality is right there open to everyone where everything is sooooo real that will fulfill you to the max, I am there all day and I speak from real experience longer than the ages of most of the people here. Rule number 1 in fandoms: it is built on love and emotions...extreme ones to be exact so acting all logical and wise here is just....ridiculous when the creator dedicates countless days of their lives to create and deny the fans their emotional responses.

It is the price of being creative and seen by others, nothing is roses and unicorns sadly, not even in fandoms.

#levihan fandom #levihan #content creation #fans #content creator #a fan creator thoughts

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alch3mic · 3 years

Text

in between. (drabble series)

chapter five (comfort.)

cheshire!sans x gender neutral reader. 3k+ word count.

please be advised for themes of addiction, drugs, alcohol, self deprecating thoughts and apathetic feelings.

* it’s time for our dear underlust sans, cheshire, to have his turn! if you’d like to check out more about our resident catboy, feel free to check out his tag here on my tumblr! thank you and i hope you enjoy!

Don't get attached.

That seems like a pretty simple motto to live by, huh?

Well that's because.... it was.

In a world that cared little for anything beyond their momentary value, it was easy to not get attached. Everything changed day by day in this fast paced life. There was always a new video to look at, or a new phone to buy. Always a new trend to jump on or a new topic to talk about. You didn't form attachments to those things, you just used them to pad out your day so you didn't have to think about your meaningless existence, and then you were done with it.

You got rid of it.

Threw it out.

Forgot about it.

It no longer mattered because it no longer entertained you.

There was always something newer and shinier to look at just around the corner anyways, so.. why would you think twice about it?

Things were just.. easier.. when you didn't get attached...

You.. couldn't feel the pain of being let go.. if there was nothing holding you there in the first place.

.....

A shame he had to learn that the hard way, but that was life.

This world treated it's people like a commodity, always being bought and sold for their looks, money or talents.

Anything else was just worthless.

Filler.

Like packing peanuts that belonged in the garbage after you stripped a box of its goods.

Nobody cared how you felt.

Your emotions didn't matter in the slightest.

All that really mattered is that you played your part.

You spoke your empty words.

You did your flashy dance.

..You sold your soul.

..And then.. you'd collect your earnings and leave so you could go and buy the newest phone model you had your eye on.

.....

Emotions were.. well..

...Worthless.

...Just like they always were..

Just like they had been.. back in his own Underground.

Which is why, on that day..

When that realization set into Sans' bones that the surface really was no different..

That it didn't matter what he did..

Or how he felt..

...He swore to himself...

That he'd never get attached.

......

..And that's exactly why...

He could never forgive you.

Because in a world that was ever changing..

Day by day...

And always moving forward...

..How dare you stay the same.

Ah.. dammit!

Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!

It just wasn't fair..!

Just what the hell was wrong with you anyways?

He went to all that stupid trouble to close all those damn doors!

He boarded up every stupid window and stuffed everything shut as tightly as he could!

He gathered up all those loose emotions, tied them with a lock and a chain, and then threw them into the basement to never see the damn light of day again!

He even threw away the damn key to it all and yet...!

..And yet...

Somehow.. someway.. you still..

Weaseled your way right into his soul.

....

It just wasn't fair.

...He hated it.

..Or.. rather.. himself.

Because despite the fact that you were the one who did this, even after his multiple attempts to shove you away.... he could never say he actually hated you.

....

Maybe jokingly but..

No.. he could never actually hate you..

Despite how hard he tried.

You were just so damn.. persistent.

Not even in the annoying way! You were just..! Always there!

Really..

How dare you.. become someone that meant something to him!

How dare become a pillar of support for him to lean on!

How dare you open your arms to him, offering your gentle words and affirmations to him like he deserved them or something, and letting yourself become such a comfort that he actually sought you out now to help mend these pieces of his broken soul.

....

H-how dare you..

...Always be there for him.

Time and time again you were.. just..!

There!

You were always there!

Why were you always there!?

Christ, it's like you really had nothing better to do!

What, was he just your entertainment!?

A cute little show!?

Did you just want a front row seat to how much of a mess he really was because you were that bored!? Is that why you were always there!? Is that why you always picked up the phone when he called, no matter the starsdamned hour of the day? Is that why you were always there... no matter how far it was..? ..Rain or shine.. snow, hail or even when the damn wind was blowing nearly everything off its feet you were..

You were.. always..

....

There.

And that was just so damn unforgivable.

.....

There were times when he wished to himself.. that you had always been there.

...Way before.. he became like this.

Maybe he wouldn't have been such a mess if he had you in the first place but..

Life just wasn't fair, now was it?

He wanted to be angry about it still.

To blame you.

But he couldn't.

Really all he had to blame was himself.

He.. betrayed his own promise.

He had sworn to himself on that day that he'd never get attached.. and yet here he was.. more dependent upon you than he had been for anyone else in his life.

..Even to his own brother.. who had really seen him at some real bad lows.

But you..

You saw him at rock bottom.. and yet..

...You were still here...

.....

Really, you were by all accounts, an anomaly.

An outlier.

Someone who shouldn't be counted with the rest, because unlike the usual scum of this city.. you were...

Well you certainly weren't a ray of sunshine, that's for sure.

A little stoic and kinda stone faced, which probably worked to your benefit because people seemed to shy away from asking things of you, but..

You were.. different.

Despite the fact that you grew up here in Ebott, a vile city filled to the brim with criminals and thieves who ate people up for breakfast and then spat them out before lunch.. you.. were.. still you.

Calm.

Insightful.

...Caring..

..And... dependable.

....

...And how...

How was he not supposed to get attached to you?

..When you were always there for him..

Like now, as you held him steadily in your arms while he so desperately clung on to you as if you'd run away if he let you go. Of course a part of him was always scared you would because.. why wouldn't you?

What could someone like you possibly see in someone like him..?

Someone.. shallow and.. terrible with a whole novel's worth of issues.

Not at all good at comforting people.

Fickle and who practically ran at the first signs of trouble.

If he were you..

Well.. he would've given up on himself a long time ago.

..So.. why did you.. stay..?

.....

He was too scared to ask that question.

Too scared of the answer that may come from your lips, even though those words might just save him...

..Because he was absolutely certain that they'd actually just be the final nail that turns him to dust..

So he pushed the thought far from his mind to the back to die with the rest of his unnecessary feelings. Not that it was hard really, Sans' mind was a bloody fucking mess, clouded by a horrid mixture of alcohol and drugs that had him feeling on top of the world just a measly few hours ago.

Stars.. it really was easy to get lost in that madness wasn't it?

..Into the pleasure and fun that came at the end of a bottle, or at the end of another hit.

In a way.... it was just like magic.

In an instant, all those troubles that clouded your mind would seem so far away...

For a while you'd be unburdened by responsibility or society.

You'd let go of the constraints holding you back, you'd let loose and finally just be free.

Your mind would let go of it's troubling thoughts..

Of things... and...

..People...

......

You'd have fun without stress.

You'd lose yourself to the motions

To movements.

To the descent.

..To the fall.

Down.

Down the rabbit hole you'd go.

....

But with every fall.

Came a landing.

....

Right to the very bottom... and you'd suffer the consequences of your descent.

Now that once hypnotic neon that drew him into this club seemed sickening to his eyesockets, and the smell of smoke mixed with sweat and grease made him want to hurl. He didn't want to hear anymore words spoken by anyone else, much less those so called 'friends' who invited him here in the first place. Their words had long faded away to numbing static in the background now that the intense music was gone. He was sick of their empty flattery and jealous praises anyways, all trying to catch his attention so they could use him as a footstool to higher society. The only reason they invited him here was to get some damn clout for themselves and he was lonely enough to accept the offer because...

For once, you weren't there.

.....

Well you were technically there, because you always told him to call if he ever needed you, you just weren't like... there there!

..And he was feeling sad and...!

You weren't.. well-!

It's just-! He.. just-!

....

He didn't want to...

.....

Ugh.

It didn't matter.

He was just tired of it now. Tired of those damn pieces of trash..

They deserved to sit in the dumpster where they belong, but he was too fucked up to put them there so instead he just let it become background noise.

He wanted nothing more than to stay right here, in the only place he really felt at ease.

..With you.

So he turned his head away from it all and breathed in deep, a familiar scent washing away the muck that clung to the edges of his mind. It was fresh and a bit misty, like the scent of rain just before it fell with just a small hint of earthiness, and it brought him such a sense of..

..Comfort.

Just... like it always did.

Just like you always did, whenever you were around.

It made him clutch on to you all the tighter as he buried his head further into your shoulder, wanting to be lost in the mellow scents of your coat and the steady rhythmic beating of your heart as you spoke softly to someone else.

He was just..

Tired.

Tired of this, and tired of that.

Really he was tired of everything and just wanted to.. go..

"...home," he slurred, clearly interrupting your conversation with someone but not having the slightest care in the world.

His skull could hardly make sense of what was being said anyways, still washed up in the dizzying effects of alcohol and.. whatever else he took, but he really didn't care.

He wanted to go home.

That's why he had messaged you in the first place.

So you could come pick him up, yet again, and take him back home.

At least.. he hoped that's why you were here.

Who knows, maybe you'd finally come to your senses and would just dunk him in the trash can where he belonged.

"We're heading out in just a second, alright?" you said gently, your words cutting clear through his own thoughts.

.....

He barely turned his head to peek at you, catching the vague shape of your face through the fluorescent neon.

Funny.. how just your tone settled his troubled mind, almost making him feel silly for thinking you'd abandon him. Even if he didn't understand why in the slightest, you clearly cared for him. It came through in the way you spoke, and in the way you held on to him, like he was something precious and worth keeping.

...He just really didn't get it..

So he didn't think about it, instead just squeezing his eyesockets and letting out.. a noise in response.

..Really it was more like a painful, almost guttural groan, but he didn't want to acknowledge how unattractive it sounded, so a noise it was.

Thankfully it was enough.

"Just hang tight."

And then you spoke again, but not to him, so he let your voice fall to the side too, the gentle rumblings steadying him as he buried his face back to his usual spot.

For right here, in the small space between your neck and your shoulder was his own personal Wonderland. It was the same place his skull always went, whenever you two were close. The place he buried his face when he cried, or where he turned his head away to escape from it all. He loved to feel the pleasant heat of your skin against his cheek, and let those soft and subtle scents wash over him once more.

He really could just.. get lost in it.

He'd stay there forever, if you'd let him.

And that's exactly why he could never forgive you.

Because.. you did.

Time and time again you gave him that place all to himself, without question or complaint.

You let him come undone in so many ways in that small space, that house he had built for himself and boarded up.. no longer felt like home.

..And the feelings that he had locked away tight..

They were always so close to just.. coming out.

They threatened to spill from his mouth and dirty your jacket with their sullied words.

His admiration.

His respect.

His... love... for you..

..And all that you've done.

They danced tantalizingly on the end of his tongue, sometimes escaping in the friendly ‘I love you’s you both shared, or passed through his fingertips when your hands gently brushed, sending shocks to his soul. They seeped into almost every action and he..

Well..

A part of him felt like he was going to just go crazy over it..!

Or maybe.. he always had...

But for every moment he stayed in your presence it lingered..

And it swished and swirled... bubbling at the surface and just threatening to...

Break.. loose..!

"You doing okay?"

No.

No, he really wasn't doing okay.

Really he wasn't.

The words.. they were...

Slipping...

No...

He was...!

..Going to..!

"....i think i'm going to throw up."

"...Ah."

......

He probably would've been angrier if that wasn't the truth.

The excess magic bubbling in his soul was threatening to rush out thanks to the alcohol, and he certainly didn't want that spilling out of his ribcage so the only other option was out from where it came.

"Can you hold it?"

Ya know, normally that kind of question might've been seen as insensitive given the circumstance, but you very well knew Sans hated throwing up in public areas because it was... well kinda gross.

"..yeah.."

"Then let's go home."

And that was it.

You looked back to whomever you were speaking to and said your goodbyes before turning and heading out of the club with him in your arms while he tried to cling to you like a koala.

The awful neon was fading away along with the horrid smells, leaving him in just the gentle presence of you..

At least until you opened the door to the outside world the city lights and smells hit him like a fucking truck. He cringed, for even in the late hour the lights were in full shine and cars honked aggressively at each other in the streets. It was overwhelming and only made him retreat farther into arms, trying to escape from it.

Oh great, here comes the nausea again.

He groaned and you thankfully put a bit more pep in your step as you headed into the musky night air, finally reaching your car after what felt like a small eternity.

He had felt the keys already in your hand when you picked him up, and now you carefully tried to unlock the car door while maintaining your hold. It was surely a fairly easy task, considering the two of you had been in this exact position so many times before, and it wasn't long before you opened the door and tried to place him into the passenger seat.

"...You know you gotta let go so we can go home."

".....no."

He could feel your breathy laugh brush past his skull and neck, nearly making him tremble, but he still held on tight.

Sans just didn't want to let you go.

"..Please?"

.........

He.. reluctantly released his grasp, slowly sliding into the seat as he already began missing your warmth. His eyes automatically slipped shut, feeling more relaxed in the familiar space of your car. The passenger side seat was still just how he left it, tilted back just enough so he could nap comfortably.

"Just a sec."

"...mmmhh."

At least it was a more attractive sound this time.

Then he waited.. for what felt like another small eternity, almost tempted to brave the bright world to look at you before he was joined by a pleasant warmth, and the soft scents of rain and earth.

You laid your jacket on him, and he quickly hugged on to it while you busied yourself with buckling him in. Another easy task, as he heard the click of the seatbelt in place, and felt your presence leave him once more. He barely cracking his eyesockets open to catch your gaze, and for the briefest of moments he was greeted by your smile

"Was it fun?"

"...no.."

You let out a snort, shaking your head at his bluntness before standing up closing the door.

One last small eternity later and you opened up the driver side door, seating yourself before buckling yourself in.

"If I remember correctly you didn't have fun the last time you went out with her either, so why go?" you asked, turning the key and starting your car.

There was no judgement in your tone, more like a genuine curiosity. Surely it must've seemed dumb to keep torturing yourself in the presence of people you didn't like.. but..

"i'unno..." he muttered.

He was lonely.

"..jus didn' have anythin' else...since you were gone.."

There was a small pause as he watched your brows furrow, but you kept your gaze ahead as you pulled out of the parking lot and into the busy streets of Ebott.

"Well I did invite you," you reminded him and he let a small huff.

"i didn' wanna... intrude.. on your.. family... whatever."

"You know my mom wouldn't mind."

"...i know.."

Urgh.

Darn that woman for being almost as equally likeable as you were.

Really.. at first he could hardly believe the two of you were related with how bright and cheerful your mother was compared to your rather indifferent demeanor, but you both had that same tenderness that shone through in the way you cared for people.

...She always made him feel so welcome anytime he came around.

Like family..

....

And yet...

He didn't want to sully such a happy image with someone like himself.

So instead of joining you for an evening of board games and home cooked meals with your mom, he filled his meaningless life with people who were just as meaningless. He stuffed that empty skull of his with hollow praises, and anything that'd take these vile feelings away.

He didn't deserve this.

He didn't deserve.. you.

He deserved to be used up.

Thrown out.

And forgotten.

..Just like the rest of the people like him..

So... why did you refuse to let him go?

....

Once again he was too scared to ask.

Too scared of the answer he might receive, even if there was a possibility that it could save him. He just wanted to keep holding onto this. On to you, in hopes that you'd still just always be there for him.

Just like.. you always were.

....

He let out another huff, feeling those words threatening to spill forth again as he clutched on to your jacket. His hand wandered over to the same place it always did when he felt like shit but couldn't say it, to the middle console where it waited patiently.

His patience was rewarded, one small eternity later, when he felt your hand gently settle over his.

There was nothing more he could do to keep the words from spilling forth.

"i love you..."

And he meant it, with every fiber of his soul.

"I love you too Sans."

..Not in the same way, he knew, but...

This was still just enough.

Enough to keep him here.

Enough to keep him going, with the hope that maybe some day.. you would really love him too, in the same ways that he loved you.

#it's real sad boi hours #luckily he always has you #cheshire!sans #sans #undertale #underlust #lust sans #undertale fic #long post #fic #fanfic #alchohol tw #drugs tw #drabble #alch!writes #inbetween!fic #one left!

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dahbeez · 4 years

Text

MIRROR CONFESSION

Paring: peter parker x reader

Summary: You’re in love with your best friend, and with the help of his awkward rehearsing, you find out the truth.

Warnings: fluff, language

Word Count: 2.6K

Author Note: English isn’t my first language and this is my first fic here on tumblr! Reader is female unless specified otherwise.

Lately, your friendship with Peter Parker has been the most confusing thing in the world. Well, Peter alone was a mystery most of the time. Sneaking out in the middle of sleepovers, skipping classes and then coming back with bruises that took only a few hours to heal; that was all Spider-Man’s signature, you knew that. Plus, Peter constantly looked around him like he could hear every single conversation in the hallway, every sound and whispers. But you got used to all of it, and you had put two and two together quickly after finding out that he was the infamous web-slinger.

Recently, the way he acted around you had your eyebrows knot together in a frown most of the time, especially since you couldn’t attached his weird behaviour to his alter ego. He would be his normal, nerdy self, rambling about the next Star Wars movie, a Lego puzzle he had yet to build or, the most frequent topic of discussion, the 'Stark Internship'. You would smile up at him, beaming at the constant happiness that seemed to radiate from Peter. Then, as his eyes would meet yours, he would immediately blush and stutter. Of course, Peter was a shy person, which actually made him look even cuter than he already was. But every time he would caught you smiling at him, it’s like he forgot to breathe. And in the next seconds, he would find a reason to escape his feelings and run towards the next class, or whatever else excuse he had in mind in those moments. It left you eyes wide and jaw dropping every times, you being completely obvious to the real meaning behind Peter’s actions.

It didn’t help that you had fallen head over heels in love with your best friend. You were a living cliche teenage girl who was infatuated with her closest friend, and you couldn’t help but feel sad that Peter was avoiding you. Part of it was because you missed your best friend, but the other part was because you couldn’t bare to lose this unique connection you had with your first crush.

Any third party, let’s say Ned, would hit their head against a wall repeatedly at the sight of you two. You were obviously in love with each other’s but also completely obvious to one another’s feelings. Ned had given up long ago on the two of you confessing their feelings, and he simply resumed on looking desperately at his two clueless best friends suppressing their feelings like it was some kind of disease.

"Y/N," Ned’s muffled voice brought you out of your thoughts, his mouth half-full with whatever was on the cafeteria menu today. "You with us?"

"Yeah," you nodded, brushing away a strand of hair that fell from your ponytail, "sorry, I was just thinking."

You then noticed how Peter seemed to have been stuck in a daze just like you, letting his fork mix the food on his plate without taking a bite, and furrowing his eyebrows in deep thought. It also often happened around you, but not when he was just with Ned. It made you rethink about the previous events of the week, trying to find out what you could have possibly done to either make him so flustered or lost in his mind. Had he found one of your tampons at his place? Your cheeks flushed at the possibility, thinking that most guys would be uncomfortable at the discovery of a bloody pad in their bathroom’s trash can.

"I can’t make it tonight, for movie night," Ned continued, not letting Peter’s lack of words and attention affect him. "My mom wants to spend some 'family quality time' or whatever that means."

He groaned and you chuckled, not registering quite yet that Ned’s absence meant that your sleepover at Peter’s would be awkward if the boy kept acting like a stammering mess in front of you.

"That’s a bummer," you sighed, actually a bit disappointed that Ned couldn’t make it. "Guess it’s just you and me, Peter. Peter?"

Ned waved a hand in front of his friend’s face, breaking whatever trance Peter was stuck in. He flinched, eyes peeking up to meet yours and immediately his cheeks flushed pink.

"Earth to Peter, Peter do you copy?," Ned joked, and a hint of a smile ghosted on Peter’s lips before he suddenly grabbed his barely touched tray of food and stood up. You frowned.

"Uh, yeah, sorry. I’m gonna go, I- I have homework to do, uh," he looked around a bit, which gave away his lie as he seemed to pounder what he should say next, "at the library! Yeah, studies you know, big exams coming. Okay, bye."

Both you and Ned were left mouth agape, eyeing the escaping form of your best friend exiting the cafeteria.

"That was weird," you murmured, eyes squinting in the direction Peter had taken after getting rid of his plate. "The library’s literally the opposite way."

Ned shrugged. "Peter’s just weird."

But you couldn’t possibly compare Peter’s usual weird antics to the scene that had just unfolded in front of your eyes. Holding back a huff, you brought your attention back on your other friend, and resumed your lunch break.

***

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

That seemed to be the only word swirling around Peter’s mind, which would’ve probably made Aunt May and Captain America scold at him if they could hear his thoughts right now.

He groaned internally, gripping the pole tightly as he waited for the subway to bring him closer to his apartment. The rest of the day after lunch break had been filled with his not so subtle attempts to avoid you. And the look of hurt that you sent towards him every time your eyes met in the hallway had his heart beating faster than ever and guilt eating away at his soul.

He had undeniably, harshly, strongly, irrevocably, fallen in love with you.

And he realized quickly that loving you platonically, was not the same as being in love with you. You were gorgeous, one of the smartest person he had met (and his mentor was Tony Stark), kind and generous, and gosh your smile.

His grip tightened on his backpack strap as he exited the subway, walking the few blocks that kept him from his apartment.

Ever since he had realized the true feelings he arbored for you, he had tried to hide them. Which, when you were Peter Parker the open book, wasn’t easy. At all.

He just couldn’t act normal around you anymore, knowing that all he wanted to do was confess his feelings. He wanted to hug you, hold your hands, kiss your cheeks, your nose, your temple, your lips, your jaw, your neck, the valley between your—

Peter’s eyes widened at the filthy thoughts, and he bit his lower lip. All day, and all week, he had been trying to figure out how to confess his feelings for you. Unknowingly, he had shut you out, too deep in thoughts or too embarrassed to keep up the best friend act.

The boy sighed as he walked in his apartment, barely acknowledging May who was making cookies. He was ready to jump on his bed and fall asleep for the rest of his miserable existence. But first, he needed to figure out what to do. And with the nerve wracking idea of finally telling you how he truly felt, Peter looked at his disheveled hair and pink tinted cheeks in the mirror. With a deep breath, he started rehearsing.

***

Unbeknownst to him, you were not so far from his place. You had dropped your schoolbag at your house and gathered your things, determined to go at Peter’s place and find some answers. Plus, he hadn’t called or texted to tell you that your night at his apartment was canceled, which gave you a little bit of hope.

You kept replaying every second spent in his presence in the last few weeks and you couldn’t find a clue on what could have gone wrong between you two. The tampon theory was actually the best explanation at the moment.

Your mom dropped you at his place, noticing how you had filled your backpack to the brim with numerous movies, snacks and clothes for the night and the next day. Grateful, you kissed her cheek before escaping the comfort of the car. For the first time in forever, you were nervous at the perspective of spending the night at Peter’s. Part of it was because of his behaviour, and the other main reason was because of the butterflies and fireworks that erupted in your stomach whenever you got lost in his doe eyes.

"I’ll pick you up tomorrow, honey. Just call me if you need anything!"

Your replied a simple 'see ya' and made your way inside the building.

Knocking at the Parker’s door, you were greeted by one of your favourite human being and the smell of burnt cookies.

"Hey, Y/N," May opened the door and smiled, bringing you into a small hug which you returned immediately.

"Hey, May," you smiled. She led you inside, and you got rid of your shoes, leaving them next to the front door.

"I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever," she deplored, going back to the kitchen and grimacing. You held back a laugh, noticing how the smell of ruined cookies lingered in the air.

"Yeah, uh," you went and grabbed a cookie on the counter, eyeing the black burning snack with doubt, "I missed your cooking."

She raised an eyebrow, amused at your words. You smiled sheepishly and put the cookie back in its plate, knowing that it will probably end up in the trash anyway.

"You don’t know how to lie, honey," she chuckled and grabbed the nearest bowl to clean. "Peter’s in his room."

You gulped and nodded, remembering what you came here for in the first place.

You walked down the small hallway towards your best friend’s room, fist raising in order to knock on its door and announce your presence.

It was already cracked open, you noticed, and you heard your friend’s mumbling through the tin walls. Ned probably made it after all, you thought, pushing the door softly as to not startle them.

The sight in front of you could’ve been either amusing, extremely weird or embarrassing.

Because in the middle of the room, facing the small mirror not so far from his bed, stood your best friend and first ever crush. Fidgeting with his fingers and slightly swaying on his feet, he was talking to himself. No, rehearsing.

"... that doesn’t work," he let out a deep breath, and you stood there, witnessing his nervous rambling. He surprisingly didn’t noticed you despite having his sharp spidey senses. He cleared his throat.

"Okay, uh. Right. So, Y/N," your eyes widened at the mention of your name, but the boy still hadn’t picked on your presence yet, "you are the prettiest— no no, that’s not enough. Uh, you’re gorgeous and funny and super kind, and uh, yeah!— your smile is like, so fucking bright. Erm, you— you’re my favourite person and I love how you ramble about your favourite books and how you always look out for others and put them first, even before yourself. And uh, you’ve always been there for me, always accepted and understood what Spider-Man means to me, and, well, what I’m trying to say is that— that I’m in love with you—"

"What!?"

"AHH!" Peter spun on his heals, turning towards you and tripping over a forgotten pile of clothes on the floor. With another yelp, he fell to the ground, eyes wide with shock and cheeks reddened by surprise and embarrassment. His blush reached his ears, and he sat there, looking in horror at your beet coloured face.

"I, uh, was rehearsing for the— the thing with... well it’s more of a— a presentation kinda thing, you know?"

"You’re in love with me?" you whispered, finally walking past the doorstep and closing the door behind you, trying to keep this conversation private.

Peter couldn’t believe what had just happened. He’d never felt so embarrassed in his life, and fear was eating away at him. What if you rejected him? What if your friendship was ruined because of this? Oh gosh, this was a mistake...

"I, uh, well no?— I mean, yeah," he kept stuttering, pushing himself from the floor and looking around his room, trying to avoid your stare, "but wait, what are you doing here?"

"Sleepover," you answered simply. You let your backpack fall next to his things and started fiddling with your fingers.

"Oh... OH! Fuck, I completely forgot."

You smiled faintly at the teenager who had just unintentionally confessed his feelings for you. You took a few steps towards him, noticing how he let out a shaky breath. Peter gulped. He didn’t know what else to tell you, so he stood frozen, eyes widening some more as you approached him and stopped only when you were a step away from him. You looked up at him, eyes soft and confused. You brushed away the giddy fireworks that danced in your belly with a shuddering sigh.

"Do you really feel that way about me, Peter?" you asked, your voice low and gentle. Both of your hearts were beating fast, and Peter could actually hear yours due to your close proximity and his super powers.

"Yes," he whispered, his warm chocolatey eyes still avoiding your surprised ones. "But, uh, I know you probably don’t feel the same way... fuck, forget I said anything. Gosh, I’m so sorry, I ruined—"

The thought of how cliche the situation may looked like from a third point of vue crossed your mind, but you didn’t care. You leaned forward, stopping Peter’s rambling with your lips on his own soft ones. He let out a gasp, his sentence dying in his throat as he fluttered his eyelids shut. Without a doubt, he started kissing you back, head tilting so your noses would stop bumping against each other’s.

You hummed appreciatively as his lips glided over yours, moving in sync. You raised your hands and intertwined them at the back of his neck, fiddling with the small curls of hair that rested there. He let out a moan at the feeling, blushing at the sound that escaped his lips and hit yours. You smiled, and in that moment, Peter decided that kissing you, feeling you smile against him and tasting your apple flavoured chapstick was the best thing in the world. His hands rested on your hips, and the distance between you was inexistant, yet still filled with the innocence of a couple’s first kiss.

"You love me back," he mumbled against your lips in bewilderment, pulling back slightly to take a few gulps of air. You did the same, eyes gazing into his as he finally got the courage to look into yours.

"I do," you answered breathlessly, eyes sparkling at the sight of your best friend, well, hopefully not a friend anymore. Peter blushed at the meaning behind those two words, and you giggled. "Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?"

He looked sheepishly at the ground, removing his hands from your hips so he could wash the nervous sweat away by brushing his palms over his jeans.

"Yeah... I— I didn’t know how to tell you."

You raised an eyebrow, smirking at the shy boy that you hoped you could call yours.

"So, you decided to confess to your mirror?" you teased him, and he winced at the cringe situation he put himself into.

"It’s— it’s not like that, I was rehearsing..." he tried to explain, a cute pout showing on his lips. You let out another giggle.

"Well," you brought a hand back up to his hair, going through the wild curls gently. Peter could feel himself melt under your touch, "I’m glad you did, because I’m in love with you too, Peter Parker."

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