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wroteclassicaly · 3 years

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May I Taste Your Sin

(Michael Langdon x Female Reader)

Pairings : Michael Langdon x Female Reader

Warnings : Language, smut, blood, vaginal sex, vaginal fingering, oral sex, blood play, & period sex.

A/N : This fic has been a loooong time coming! I’m sorry it’s taken me this long, but now that I have inspo I wanted get this out for y’all! The warnings are obviously self-explanatory, so skip this if you don’t like the contents it’s gonna contain! Michael Langdon eats human hearts, and he’s a demon, before anyone starts to fuss over this, lol. I’m sure menstrual cycles with his partner would be a dessert to him!

Enjoy! This one is pretty intense, so I’m nervous about it! I also have more installments with different characters coming in the next few days! :)

Check out where I first posted the teaser for this fic, and check out these period sex headcanons I wrote for Michael!

~*~

He keeps staring at you. You try to move about, do your tasks, even attempt conversation with people you’d tried so hard to avoid these past several years. Your abilities to function like the human being that you are, seemingly vanish whenever the tall honey blond is within your exhausted proximities. You aren’t sure if you’d like to let out the loudest echoing scream and see where it ends up in this place, or let your wildest carnal urges guide your hormones into a literal sticky situation. Or, at the very least, let yourself fantasize about seducing him in your own self-created version of reality.

You’ll have to settle on the latter, unfortunately. Pocketing the cream colored dish rag, you place the last row of finely printed novels on the book shelve. Your fingertips linger, attempting to find a portal through their leather cover tops. Your tongue slicks your parched lips, neck stretching to crack out the tension. You aren’t trying to do anything but stealing some relaxation, when a largely hot hand is pressing a knot-out in a knead on your shoulder - clasping, settling a risky purchase.

You don’t have to make an educated guess to know whose hand that belongs to. He practically spews out his control and ownership of this place every chance that he gets. Biting down a venomous sigh, you coerce yourself into a turn around - gathering an eyeful of Langdon’s fancy black vest. That’s not good enough for the King, apparently, as he fits his pointer finger underneath your chin in a tuck, thumb pressing against your jaw to tilt your gaze to his own.

“Did you forget your manners, Miss Y/L/N?”

The way his shining eyes are sizing your attention, captivating your unwillingness to comply to how Langdon makes you feel - it can’t be humanly possible, can it? There’s that possessive ache that begs you to launch ownership over him and his entire body. Why is everything so widely dramatic whenever he’s around? Is he just full of himself or is it something way more than you’re aware? A crackling parch winds its pathway around your throat, sealing your breath in.

Nothing comes from between your lips. You’re frozen solid, legs a weightless press. Each touch this... man brings upon your body is like a bass thump - pumping you towards his secretive rhythm. All you can do is sway with the beat. Langdon smirks coyly, his other hand resting behind his back in an idle grace.

Neither of you dare utter a word. However, Langdon is seemingly content in making you squirm and you try to focus on everything but his perfectly crafted jawline, and how eagerly you’d suck on it if asked. You swear you can hear your heartbeat galloping off, so strong that it can tear your heart right out of your chest along with it. His colorful eyes glance over you in a brief stamping sweep, lingering at your sore breasts and your waistline.

What is he even doing...?

“Excuse me, but Ms. Venable did not authorize any private conferences with the help.” A cold and steel - grasped voice chills your bones down, dusting your cheeks with a reddening humiliation.

You haven’t even so much as spoken to Langdon, yet it feels like you two have been clawing and scratching at each other all over this fucking outpost, riding one another until you can’t fathom walking upright. You still can’t speak, but Langdon takes care of that for you.

“Interesting, and did Ms. Venable give you permission to waltz in here when you weren’t requested or required, just to give a meaningless order?” Langdon is mildly amused in his question, his hand still paused on your chin, thumb now swiping in a tickling drop with his fingertip - along your jaw.

Ms. Mead looks comical in her brief attempt at forming a snappy comeback, only to go silent in defeat. You take this tension as your escape line - quickly edging from the sacred confines Langdon has built for you two, and you all but run out the door. You’re clutching your shirt collar, punching a two pounce path up the staircase and to the help’s quarters.

Chores now, panic later.

~*~

Five minutes. Five fucking minutes in this place that you’ve served without question, complaint, for nearly two years - is all you want. But as the heavy handed rasps of Mead’s knuckle bones beat on your bathroom door, you know that is a simple pipe dream. Her low voice is harsh with you, making your headache unfold into a full blown migraine. You shift uncomfortably, knees knocking together, thighs sore against the cool porcelain seat below you.

Langdon must’ve massively pissed her off... Good.

Your palms collect purchase to your cradle your face, your eyes glistening with tears, throat burning with frustration. It hurts too much to stand upright this time. Normally women would lose this in stressful situations. Add the apocalypse and barely eating, you’d peg it normal to receive nothing. However, your predicament is much worse, fucking you over once more.

Your body welcomes Mother Nature each month. Unpredictable, yet there. Heavy, excruciating. You could list on and on reasons that don’t amount to much. You’re stuck with a part of you that won’t ever come to fruition.

Not in your former life, especially not in this one. Another reminder that carries an award winning irony. Sighing, you peer down at the red dish rag you were given. Literally on the rag, what a joyous harmony. The elites of course, are given the tampons and pads.

You have to use scraps of fabric you’re forced to wash in the bathtub if you move too fast or sneeze. And on your heavy days when you haven’t the time to stop your duties to wash and air out the towels, things are much harder. At least before the apocalypse you had chocolate, feminine products, a warm shower to take your time in, movies to curl up with, and a place of your own to cry where no one could hear you. You sniffle, hormones locking down your heart.

Most recently the outpost had welcomed the cooperative leader Langdon. He had interviewed everyone but you, uninterested, only flustering you a few times. Him being here just makes your period a more unwelcome storm. This morning as you were passing him on the landing of the staircase, delivering the bath towels to elite rooms, he stared at you. Right into you, nostrils flaring, tongue rolling out to slick his plump lips, blue eyes darkening.

Then there was this afternoon. How could I forget...?

The encounters were over quicker than they took place. Still, his acknowledgment of you didn’t bring your interview, nor did it promise your application for the sanctuary he preaches about. Forcing your tears to bank, you stand with your dress skirt and apron held up, staring at the stained rag in your panties. You turn and flush the toilet, eating back around to the shock of your fucking life. There, just feet in the from the doorway, is Langdon in all his glory.

It makes you swallow harshly, stomach drawing off the butterflies that have grown claws. You feel winded. His ring covered fingers bring an object to your sights. A thinly wrapped stick. You don’t answer, you don’t move, you don’t protest him approaching until he’s directly in front of you.

“What do you think you’re doing?” You try, a mere whisper betraying your bravery.

“Helping you,” He answers simply, a heated slide crossing his mouth. You can practically taste him, damn near swaying forward.

You start to snap back into your senses, ready to cover your remembered modesty back up. He grasps your wrist, a hungry look soft in his features. “Will you let me?”

You’re shaking, body on fire at him touching you, you try to keep your legs from clenching, that want. You know what will occur if you let yourself. He is gentle with you, admiration clear. Why? You don’t understand this.

“You’re bleeding, I know.”

Jaw unhinged, you stand upright, his fingers still ghosting your skin. An unlucky movement on your part, the warmth spills from you and you look down between your thighs in horror at the red lines running down your legs, pattering against the floor. Langdon is breathing heavily, practically panting, stunning you once more. His other hand grips your cheek, thumb swiping your lip, eyes not breaking contact from yours.

“Do you know how good your cunt smells? Every pathetic person in this outpost is starving and you have the best meal between your fucking legs.”

When your silence stretches on, Michael nudges forward, careful with you. “May I feast?”

It’s all too much to handle. Having him talk to you, you speaking to him. And now this? How? You begin to grow dizzy, hands trembling as you try to pull your clothing back up. Langdon’s hands grip your wrists.

“Please don’t do that.”

You want to stun him incredulously, backhand him. None of that is happening, not even the urge. Instead, your want for him is magnifying beyond any feigned ignorance. Your tongue slides out across your lips, teeth biting down on your bottom lip in a brisk chew. Langdon hooks his middle finger between your teeth, releasing your lip and combing the blood across in a coppery gloss.

Your chest is startled, rising and falling in quivering quakes, ears hearing a static rush. Everything inside of you is alive and crying out in need to be sated. Langdon grips you around the waist, lowering his forehead to rest atop your own, his middle finger - still doused in your blood - slithers past his own lips, which close in a sticky suckle. A vibrating moan pummels his throat, causing a constricting swallow that showcases his Adam’s apple.

If I could only just lick that...

Langdon is sly and devilishly cunning to a fault - fast in his next movements. He presses a designer boot down over your skirts, successfully preventing them from being made up. “Leave them here for someone else.”

“I... I can’t. This is too much, Langdon —“ He chuckles at the formality.

“Since I can see your womanhood running from between your legs, I suppose it’s only fair that we skip some formalities, don’t you agree, Y/N?” Your eyes are probably wider than necessary - a cartoon like sight. He’s used your full name in an authoritative command, leaving no room for question. “And you may call me Michael.”

It’s all a little more frantic from this point. He gives the slightest of information, and you see your skirts and panties gliding across the floor in a winded push. Michael brings that wrapped item back into your eye-line. “We won’t be needing this for a while.”

“I didn’t say yes.” You try, swallowing a weak, whimpering stifle.

“But you didn’t say no, did you?” That shit eating grin. He has you and he is all too aware - elated to the brimming brimstone of hellfire you’re about to bestow upon yourself.

Your insides melt into the trenches of red hot, raw ravishment. Michael drops his left arm down, hand palming his hardening cock through black slacks, eyes encouraging you in a chained bind. “Let’s go and make a mess in my room.”

Now or never. No more of this, back to reality, maybe some place better. You’re spinning in a foiling encasement, precipice wide and open - hungry to pull you under. And you dive in, you let it all go. Michael looks satisfied, sharing something with himself that you don’t know... yet.

Taking Michael Langdon’s hand, you’re led into the unknown.

~*~

Langdon leads you down his own separate corridor, your free hand scolded for trying to hold yourself over your uniform.

“I want you to make a mess.” Michael says.

You hope that you’re not the one who will be paying the cost for your own said mess, or cleaning it up. If it’s up to Venable - you’ll be licking it, all the way to her high heeled boots.

Once inside the confines of Michael Langdon’s bedroom, you take the time to look around, enjoying the perks this situation is bringing. The room isn’t any different than what the purple elites get here, it is bordering on a more... lived in feel, which is ironic when you consider that Langdon hasn’t been here like everyone else has for the past three years.

Guess he’s just more comfortable? He does look like an English vampire half the time..

On that note, a particularly harsh cramp antagonizes your uterus, causing you to clench your abdomen, choking out a acidic slice. “Fucking demonic cramps.”

Michael - now clad in his all black ensemble, minus the overcoat - chortles, knotting his fingers together behind his back and strolls forward, wetting his lips as the firelight crackles a sparking soundtrack. “It’s ironic how you refer to it as “demonic”, when Satan really has nothing to do with this. I mean, it’s not on him that humanity failed their pitiful guidelines for sobering temptation. Wasn’t it your lord and savior that bestowed this curse upon you?” He finishes, giving a head tilt to your unhinged stun.

“Are you religious?” Is all you can come up with.

Michael sneers, looking slightly offended. It fades seconds later. “Depends on your definition of religious, and then there is what one believes in. But I guess you can say that I’m devoted to... a certain cause.”

“Were you this mysterious before the apocalypse, or is that why the cooperative gave you the job?” You try, a discomfort crackling at your inner thighs.

They’re probably smeared... And not just with blood.

“I bet you’re uncomfortable.” Michael teases, snapping his fingers at the fireplace. Did your eyes betray you, or did the flames flicker?

You want to give a snappy comeback, but it feels unwise. You nod like the sap that you are, nails biting your palms. Your heartbeat has begun to accelerate, a visible sight beneath your apron. Langdon guides himself to step in front of you, leather shoes drumming across the floor beneath. Every sound in this forsaken room is flowing through your eardrums - Michael’s scent on the tip of your tongue.

You need him. More than your body has to have the air that filters underneath this mausoleum. You’re so unsteady, eyes brimming with the smoking arousal, blocking common sense. Michael catches you as you collide with his chest, wrapping your fists into his vest. His blue irises are disappearing to a canyon of night sky - lavish black so sinful that it steals the breath from your lungs.

Drizzling off your tongue is a hesitation. “Won’t we get into trouble...? Venable -“ Those rough fingertips hold a softness that hushes your lips, denting.

“Can watch me with my face buried into your cunt. The humiliation will arouse her.” Michael answers in his own finish.

You aren’t sure why, but that grates your mouth into a sneaky grin, shared with Michael’s, sensing that slapping throb at his phrases. He pinches your chin, nuzzling your head to the side, his lips sloping a map across your neck. His towering physique backs you by knocking his knees into your thighs, delivering you to the edge of his bed. You drop like wild weights, looking towards the ceiling, trying to take a deep inhalation. Langdon crouches, pants rustling as they tighten around his temptingly thick thighs.

He tuts in a scold, chiding you furthermore. “You will watch what I’m getting ready to do to you! Is that clear, Y/N?”

You don’t answer fast enough, Michael’s hand wrapping around your throat, eyes burning hellfire through you - dusting your bones to ash. Your throat is wet with the clingy, unshed tears. Fuck, you have to be filled up until you’re hollowed out. Michael is languid in grace, hand toppling into your lap, joining his other.

“Take down your hair, Y/N.”

Like a puppet, you obey your new owner. Unwrapping the pointed bun, you shake your locks free, sighing in an eased tickle.

“What a good and obedient girl that you are. Those who obey, shall reap the riches.”

“Why are you doing this?” An ignorant question on your part.

“Because,” As if it’s the most simple answer in this broken world, Michael let’s his hands start to unbutton his vest, carelessly sending it, his attention not wavering off you in the slightest. “I’m hungry.”

A literal moan comes from you, making Langdon hiss through his through his milky white teeth. He resumes his former position, hovering.

“Spread.” Michael says, a quaint wonder adorning him, his palms sliding up and down your legs to feel you part them. The blood is mixing some fucked out potion with your creamy arousal for him, and he knows it, has it right into your tremble from the exposure.

Your skin is steaming in scrapes, responding so vulgarly to Michael, that he is hooking his wrists under your knees, bouncing the flesh into his awaiting hands, and claiming. He hoists your legs over his shoulders to arch you to his idea of perfection. You should be protesting, in a shambled shyness. That is gone, no place here. Michael let’s his nose rest in the crease of your thigh, crudely sniffing like some beast.

His sopping tongue finds a striking stroke along your ruby red, damp thigh.

Closer... He’s getting closer...

When you can’t feel that warm and snide air he possesses, you lock to load a question. Michael is shedding himself of his remaining clothing in a cocky crawl. His hair curtains his face as he sees you seek out his cock - thick and heavy, weighted and wet with pre-cum.

“Finish taking off your clothing.” You’ve never done something so fast in your years alive.

You have to admit, being so vulnerable like this - naked and bleeding, it has you buzzing.

Michael outstretches a veined forearm, the back of his rings swirling in desiring dances across your breasts. “Do these hurt?”

Your lashes are slicked in perspiring tears, the tired soreness harassing your chest. He has his truth. His trim form bows to you once more, placing your legs back where they belong. He knuckles a pressing push into your abdomen. “Bear down.”

It isn’t an accident this time, it’s not a discreet secrecy. Michael wants you this way. All of you. Finding a confidence, you give yourself a high and sink your fingers into his hair, toes tickling his shoulder blades in a forwarding nudge, doubling down on your muscles. That warmth spills out of you and Langdon takes you, tongue parting your swollen folds. He regulates his tongue in wet paints, licking and sucking everything you give him.

“Please—“ You’re already begging. It’s so fucking intense and intimate that you can’t formulate your own damned name.

“Are you really going to ask, or would you just like to feel good?” Michael vibrates, his mouth visible and shining crimson as he seeks you out between your slippery thighs.

It’s outright feral. His irises are coal black, blue lost in some combing canyon that’s crumbled around sin. His digits prod at your sensitive opening, being accepted moments later. His lips close over your clit, tongue slithering back and forth to assist his beckoning fingers. He gathers more from you - his purpose.

That quenched fold starts to seize you early on, your pattering breaths signaling the orgasm that is about to tear the screams from your fucking diaphragm. Michael’s hand smacks and rolls your swollen breast - permission granted. That’s all it takes and you’re falling back onto the mattress, back arching in a lined drag, pussy flattening against his mouth. He jerks you impossibly closer, your vision whiting out into dark spots. You tangle your fingers further into his luscious strands, holding, pulling.

In the midst of close recovery, Michael is plowing you with a short lived let down, his mouth leaving your pussy. You can’t complain, no time available, as his hips slot in a frazzled fit between your legs. His pelvis is tense, sheathed in sweat. His chest smashes your breasts, his hand reaching down to guide his cock inside you. You can’t speak, but cling tightly to his back. He growls a sound that you’ll never forget, the fire bursting behind him, flames licking the rocked cove that houses them.

His mouth is covered in your essence, your cunt bathing his dick with each violent thrust. It’s pouring in drenches, salty perspiration, pooling blood - both of you losing yourselves in the mess. Michael props himself up, digging into a dipping slam, meeting your mouth in an ending kiss. His hair tickles your shoulders, nose nudges your now blood caked mouth, and he gives the warning.

“Spill your fucking curse all over me!” And you come undone, glued to him in puzzled entrapment.

Your thighs are wrecked, his bedsheets useless, and then there’s Michael, who forces you to look at him and really see him. There’s only black in his eyes. You sputter a disbelief, bracing. His mouth parts, tongue flicks across to gather more, leveling off into his jagged movements. He swells inside your cunt, dousing your walls in his warm cum.

He doesn’t leave you, not even when it’s over. He simply takes you with him. You aren’t sure where you get the courage to speak - body shaking and shivering.

“What... Michael, who are you?”

He cups a hand over your cunt, rolling onto his side, keeping you held to him. He lightly blows away a pesky lock of your hair, then maneuvers another behind your ear.

“I’m the man who’s going to save your wretched existence.”

Tag list : @littledemondani @dark-mei-rose @fckinsupreme @angelicmichael @icylangdon @ritualmichael @sojournmichael @celestialrequiem @instinctsxbaby @infernwetrust @ferndolan @9layerdevilfoodcake @bloodcoatedeclipse @wormycircumstance @antichristsxbox @xavierplympton @xavierplymptons @ramona-thorns @lovelylangdonx @langdxn @codyarchives @dailylangdon @codyfernuk @langdonsjoyy @7-wonders @blakescoven @holylangdon @bitchchatter @suspiriva @taskmastter @kitty4860 @ladynuwanda @langdonsexual @sammythankyou

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hermadnessmacwrites · 3 years

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A Game of Puzzles (Making the Pieces Fit) Chapter 3

Summary: With the war over and Sasuke home again, Sakura is more hopeful for Team 7’s future than she has been in a long time. She’s quickly disappointed to find that nothing in the Village fits quite like it used to—not her old bedroom, not her clothes, and definitely not Team 7. Join Sakura as she scrambles to understand her place in this new team dynamic.

If she has a place there at all.

-OR-

It takes three dorks a painfully long time after moving in together to realize that they all belong together.

"Sakura-chaaaaaan!" a familiar voice echoes down the halls of the hospital.

The medics shadowing her do their best to stifle their giggles, or at least try to pass them off as a sudden bout of coughs, but their amusement is clear.

"That's all for now," Sakura declares, doing her best to ignore the knowing looks being passed back and forth like candy. The flush that rises to her cheeks is inescapable. "It looks like I'm needed in a last minute meeting."

No attempts are made to conceal their laughter now. Sakura graces them with a self-deprecating half-smile before departing from the group. Naruto's voice bounces off the walls again, and Sakura rolls her eyes fondly—heels clacking rapidly against tile floors as she picks up her pace. He's lucky she just wrapped up her examination.

"What kind of idiot yells in a hospital?" she shouts, fully aware of the hypocrisy of the statement. Answering Naruto any other way just feels lackluster. And anyway, this is her domain. Surely she can bend the rules on special occasions.

"Sakura!" He sounds even closer now. Sure enough, he rounds the corner a second later.

Any pretense of annoyance pops and fizzles out like a dispersed clone the moment Sakura lays eyes on him. A rosy tint covers all Naruto's exposed skin—a testament to the long hours spent away from them under the powerful summer sun. He's home. Excitement drives her forward, faster than she would normally condone for a place of healing.

Seeing her coming, Naruto stops his approach and braces himself instead. Open arms beckon and spur her forward, and Sakura doesn't try to resist their call. Hospital walls blur around her as she sprints the last twenty feet separating them, flinging herself into his waiting arms with approximately none of the decorum the Head of Hospital should possess.

Naruto grunts on impact but doesn't buckle. Instead he transfers her momentum into centripetal force, spinning her 'round and 'round in his arms like a couple of lovestruck teens. Sakura buries her face in his neck, allowing herself to breath him in and bask in the solid feel of him under her arms. Alive and unharmed. Maybe she deserves a free pass on this one.

All good things must eventually end, and this moment is no exception. Naruto slows them down, allowing Sakura's feet to float closer to the ground on every turn. Reality catches up to them when her heels click down onto the bleached tiles. Murmurs of the random nurse or medic in the hall reach her ears, and Sakura takes a moment to brush the imaginary lint off her lab coat. Now that she remembers people other than Naruto exist, Sakura's thankful they didn't knock anyone over with their antics.

The smug eyes following her promise not to let her forget this. Oh well.

Sakura clears her throat self-consciously and playfully slugs Naruto on the remaining portion of his arm. That's normal, right? "When did you get in? Konohamaru was supposed to let me know when you reached the gates."

"Ahhh, I might have convinced him to 'forget' to do that." At her raised eyebrow, he ducks his head and scratches the back of his head. "Wanted to surprise you."

Cute.

"It was a nice surprise."

Naruto's smile widens. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Sakura confirms, "But I didn't have time to clear my schedule. I have one meeting I can't miss and a couple more patients to see before I can leave."

"You were going to cut out early for me?" he asks incredulously, "Usually it takes the act of a God to pry you out of here."

"Does not," she counters without heat. Sakura's willing to bet Naruto turns into just as much of a workaholic once he's wearing the hat. There's so much that needs to get done to keep Konoha moving forward. Knowing her work/life balance sucks and actually taking a step back are two entirely separate things. "Anyway, I'm still cutting out early. Just not as early as I wanted to." Speaking of—

Sakura's eyes dart to the clock close to the nurse's station before wincing. Six minutes is barely enough time to cross six floors before the meeting covering the funding for clinical trials the coming quarter starts. Normally this would be Administrative Sakura's domain, but her clone is swamped reviewing construction plans for the Hospital addition. Clinical trials for ninja products, like safer soldier pills, also happen to be something she's passionate about. If she can't design the experiments, she at least wants to ensure they're properly funded.

"Gotta run?" Naruto guesses when Sakura turns to him.

"Yep," she says, already backing away, "but I'll see you at home? Three hours tops."

"I'll hold you to that!" Naruto threatens with a smile.

By some miracle Sakura hasn't tripped over anything or anyone as she walks backwards, keeping a waving Naruto in her sights for as long as she can manage. It's so good to see him again. Still, Sakura knows she's pushing her luck. Waving goodbye to her teammate one last time, Sakura turns around to begin her race to the conference room in earnest.

It's not until Sakura's three floors down that she remembers Sasuke. Shit. He definitely deserves a heads up that Naruto is back in town. Now, how can she get the message to him without leaving the hospital...?

There's a nurses' station thirty feet up this hallway, but Sakura dismisses the idea as quickly as it occurs. Adding a personal chore to the nurses' already stacked plates would be incredibly rude—and unprofessional to boot.

The countdown in her head reminds her she has less than four minutes to solve this issue and get to her meeting before it starts. Times like this, Sakura wishes she had picked up a second summon. Lady Katsuya is the perfect compliment to her medical techniques, but slugs are pretty much incapable of delivering messages.

Three minutes. Crap.

Sakura makes for the emergency staircase, checking her chakra levels as she goes. About 40% left, and if she plans on leaving early—Sakura runs through calculations double time. She can spare 10% for a second clone.

She shucks her bright red heels and leans over the railing to make sure she's not about to land on anyone. The stairwell looks clear. Just in case, Sakura tosses a warning "heads up!" over the metal barrier before vaulting it herself. Cushioning her landing with chakra saves her joints, but the cement pays the price. Her hastily reapplied heel makes this discovery, catching in the newly formed crack and nearly sending her sprawling. Great. She'll have to put in a requisition to have that fixed.

It's a necessary sacrifice. Sakura wraps up the hand signs for her messenger clone just as the conference room door comes into view. Messenger Sakura pops into existence, throws up a lazy “victory” sign, and does an abrupt 360 towards their apartment. Hopefully no one tries to stop her on the way—her clone won't have the chakra to help with any emergency situations.

No time to worry about it.

Running a hand through her hair, Sakura squares her shoulders and strides into the conference room. Every head swivels towards her. The absolute attention she now commands still makes her uneasy, but she manages to keep her head high as she crosses the room.

Sakura slides into her seat as the synchronized hospital clocks chime to announce the top of the hour.

Just in time.

"Thank you for joining, everyone," she says, laying her arms on the table. "As you all know, our goal today is to allocate funding to the six applicants for the upcoming quarter. Natsuo has summarized the information for the proposed clinical trials on the handouts in front of you, so if you'll direct your attention to the first page…"

Read the rest of the chapter on ao3

#hermadnessmac writes #Team 7 ot3 #Team 7 moves in together #NaruSasuSaku #A Game of Puzzles (Making the Pieces Fit)

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deanstop13billyjoeltraxx · 4 years

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Superposition

a deancas college roommate AU

Chapter 10 is up on AO3! Chapter-by-chapter masterlist here.

Wanting is Enough

“You goin’ home for Christmas?” Dean asked.

They were walking back to the dorm after dinner. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, a holiday for which neither Cas nor Dean had bothered to travel home.

“No,” Cas said. “I don’t believe I’m welcome at my father’s house anymore.”

Dean glanced sideways at him as they entered the stairwell. “Why? ‘Cause you’re gay?’ He asked.

Cas shrugged. “If he knows now, from Bartholomew or Hannah, then that certainly doesn’t help my case.” He sighed. “No, when he found out I was attending college and not entering ministry, he told me I shouldn’t come home again.”

Dean held the exit door open as Cas walked onto their floor. “When did that happen?” He asked.

“I kept the entirety of my college application process a secret. Only Anna knew,” Cas said. “She’s the only other sane person in my family. I made the mistake of informing the rest of them about it at dinner sometime in July.” He gave Dean a wry smile as they entered their room. “None of them were particularly thrilled.”

“You told them about the full ride and everything?”

“Yes.”

“And your old man still kicked you out?”

“The same night.”

Dean snorted. “Dumbass.”

A smile tugged at Cas’s lips. “You could say that.”

“Where’d you go after that?” Dean asked.

“Well, Anna was already living alone, down in Norman. She was at the University of Oklahoma,” he added by way of explanation. “I just stayed with her until August.”

Dean nodded. “She sounds cool. What’s she doing now?”

Cas broke into a grin. “She lives in North Carolina, now. She’s a therapist.”

Dean smirked at him. “So your ass is constantly getting psychoanalyzed?”

“I suppose.”

Dean slumped into the beanbag with a sigh. Cas remained at the door, leaning his weight against it.

“What about you?” He asked after a beat. “Are you returning home for Christmas?”

“Yeah,” Dean said, smiling. “Well, it’s kinda complicated. I am going home, like, my actual home. Lawrence. We spend Christmas with some family friends.” Dean paused, looking thoughtful. “They’re really more family than friends. Bobby and Ellen and Ellen’s kid Jo. Bobby and Ellen were both friends with my dad.”

“Will your father and brother be there?”

Dean’s look darkened, if only slightly. “Dad’s not coming. The whole thing started ‘cause he got tired of trying to pretend to like the holidays after Mom died. Decided to pawn us off on his old friends. But yeah, Sammy’ll be there.”

Cas gave him a nod and pushed off from the door. While he was disappointed that Dean would be gone for winter break, he was relieved, too. That was three weeks sans-Dean, more than enough time for Cas to work through his little crush. The solitude would be good, he told himself. Cas figured he could fast-track the five stages of grief, and by the time Dean returned, Cas would be the best friend he deserved. Cas sighed to himself as he rifled through his closet for a towel and a change of clothes. He was grabbing bottles of shampoo and body wash when Dean cleared his throat.

“You know,” he said slowly, like the words were difficult to force out, “You could… I mean, I’m sure everyone wouldn’t mind if you came to Christmas.”

Cas whirled around to face Dean, who was picking at a loose thread on the beanbag.

“What?” He asked, a little too loudly.

“Since you’re not goin’ home,” Dean said. “You know, it sucks to spend Christmas alone. ‘Specially in this dump,” he added, gesturing generally to the small room.

“Are you inviting me to spend Christmas in Lawrence? With you?”

Dean gave a short laugh. “I guess it is kinda dumb. Yeah, nevermind.”

“No, I’d like that,” Cas rushed out. He blinked at his own words. He was supposed to be avoiding Dean as often as possible, not spending three uninterrupted weeks in his hometown. “It sounds nice,” Cas added weakly, despite the fact that it definitely did not.

Dean looked up at him. “Really?”

“Yes.”

Dean broke into the biggest grin Cas had ever seen. “Dude, it’s going to be awesome. I can’t wait for everyone to meet you.” Dean stood up with and pulled Cas in for a hug, clapping him on the back twice. Cas winced, letting out a feeble chuckle as he returned the hug reluctantly. He was trying not to notice the warmth of Dean pressed against him, or the absence of it when they parted.

“Are you pissed at me?”

It was the Wednesday before finals started. They were quietly eating dinner when Dean threw the question at Cas, who coughed into his water.

“What?” He sputtered.

Dean rubbed the back of his head. “I dunno, man, I just feel like I never see you anymore.”

Guilt crashed into Cas like a freight train. He had been absent, more absent even than before Thanksgiving. Part of it was out of necessity — finals were fast approaching, and he was intent upon an all-A’s first semester. But the hours at the library were stacked on top of the hours he spent in class and the hours he spent simply staying away from his room.

“I apologize,” Cas said, and he couldn’t keep the earnestness from his voice. “I’m just feeling overwhelmed. I have two final papers, three exams, and two final projects coming up before the break.”

“No, man, I get it,” Dean said with a shrug. “You’re busy. Sorry, that was kinda uncalled for. All in my head, you know.”

Cas wanted to tell him that it was completely called for, that what Dean was feeling was valid, that he was being selfish and rude and a whole number of terrible things for avoiding Dean. But he couldn’t, because that would mean promptly declaring soul-destroying love for his best friend, right there in the middle of the dining hall. “You have nothing to be sorry about,” he mumbled.

Cas had thought that it was getting easier, being around Dean. He’d basked in the feeling of being not just someone’s best friend, but Dean’s best friend, after Halloween, and that was enough. And while he was still avoiding spending long hours in their room, he felt like he was well on his way to making peace with the unrequited.

But then, they’d gotten drunk on the night of Thanksgiving. Cas didn’t remember much besides waking up in a tangled heap with Dean on the floor of their room. He’d been successful in extricating himself from the strange embrace before Dean regained consciousness, and thank god for that. But the situation lived rent-free in Cas’s mind. It made things considerably more difficult.

And then there was the prospect of travelling to Lawrence to spend Christmas with Dean and his family. Cas really hadn’t wanted to spend the holiday alone, and was, on the one hand, thankful for the invitation. On the other, his anxiety was mounting. That trip meant there was absolutely no avoiding Dean for at least three weeks; not to mention the fact that he was meeting the group of people most important to Dean.

So if Cas was making extra efforts to put space between himself and his roommate, it was not unwarranted.

They finished eating and made their way back to the dorms. Dean was complaining about his own finals, and while Cas tried his hardest to remain engaged, his heart wasn’t in it. He was angry at himself. Even when he felt like he was succeeding, he was failing.

“Cas,” Dean said. Cas had just let them into the room, but Dean was standing resolutely in the hallway.

“Yes?” Cas responded.

“Are you… I know I already asked, but man, something’s off,” Dean rushed out. “Is — Is this about Christmas? ‘Cause —”

Cas interrupted him. “No, Dean. I’m excited to spend Christmas with you and your family.”

Dean smiled weakly, but it was brief. “I just — you’re never around, man,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. “I feel like I fucked something up somehow.”

Cas knew Dean well enough by now to know there were things he was trying to say without saying them. His heart broke to know that I miss you was likely one of them.

“I promise, you’ve done nothing wrong,” Cas said. “I’m just concerned about my finals.” Lie.

Dean looked at him with skepticism. “Okay,” he said finally.

Another twinge of guilt soared through him, but he didn’t say anything more, just gathered his things for a shower. Dean still hadn’t come into the room when Cas pushed past him and made his way to the bathroom.

When he returned, Dean was gone, but Cas saw a notification on his phone.

DW (7:32 pm)

went out back later

Cas narrowed his eyes at the short message, but typed out a reply anyway.

CN (7:34 p.m.)

Okay. Be safe. Don’t forget, there’s class tomorrow.

He sat down at his desk and opened his computer. He tried studying for his accounting final, but the words and equations might have been hieroglyphics for all that he was absorbing them. Cas sighed and pulled up the final project description for his creative writing class instead.

It was his favorite class by far. In high school, Cas focused on writing short stories, mostly adapted from real life. His notebooks were his confidants, the product of never having a close friend. But now, he was challenged to write other things; poetry, scripts, memoirs. Cas lived for the challenge, finally able to stretch new creative muscles. And while his attempt at drama had received mixed reviews from his professor and peers alike, his other works were well-received. He’d never shared his writing with anyone, and to hear others enjoyed it was something Cas cherished.

But this final project, it was difficult. The professor had tasked them with writing a 1000-word story in prose and adapting it into both a drama and a poem. The goal was to tell the same story in each genre. Cas couldn’t even think of a scene he might want to write, let alone how he was going to move fluidly between genres.

He sighed, and began to list out possible ideas. When it became clear that he wasn’t getting anywhere, he closed his notebook and moved onto something less intense. He reviewed his econ notes for an hour, got started on his final paper for literature.

After hitting a solid halfway point on his first draft, he checked his phone again. It was already midnight. Cas frowned. Dean was known to stay out late on the weekends, but it was Wednesday. Cas knew Dean had a nine-a.m. history class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He also knew that Dean wouldn’t make it to said class if he was out much later. He sent him a text.

CN (12:03 a.m.)

Are you all right?

Cas hit the bathrooms to brush his teeth and get ready for bed before checking his phone. His worry only increased when he saw that Dean hadn’t replied. He sent another text, hoping he didn’t seem too overbearing.

CN (12:11 a.m.)

Just making sure you’re alive.

He decided that if Dean didn’t respond in the next ten minutes, he’d call, regardless of how ridiculous he might sound.

Cas paced around the room, picking up what little stray trash they had left lying out. He was about to take out his phone again to check the time when it started vibrating on his desk. He picked it up eagerly, but frowned at the unknown number. Cas considered letting it ring out, but he hit the “accept” button at the last second. He didn’t say anything as he held the phone up to his ear, expecting a wrong number.

His eyes went wide when Dean rasped, “Cas?”

“Dean?” Cas replied, trying to keep panic out of his voice. “What — Why are you calling me from this number?”

“Phone’s dead,” he said, sounding exhausted. “I hate to do this to you, man, but… Just — goddammit — can you come get me?”

“What?”

“I’m just — I’m at the corner of seventeenth and Gentry.”

“Don’t you have a DD?” Cas asked. Dean had never called him to pick him up from a party. He always made sure someone was sober, or he called an Uber.

“No,” Dean sighed.

“Seventeenth and Gentry?” He repeated, and he heard Dean murmur something in affirmation. Cas made a turn for his car and said, “I’ll be there in ten minutes.” He hung up.

Cas tried to drive at a normal speed, but it was difficult. Dean had left abruptly, and while Cas hadn’t thought to question it, it now seemed glaringly out-of-character. Dean had never partied in the middle of the week, and he certainly had never gone drinking by himself. Every red light kicked his anxiety up a notch.

After the interminable drive, Cas finally arrived at the corner Dean had directed him to, a small bar with WSU flags plastered everywhere. Cas drove past the front of the building slowly, but couldn’t find Dean there. Finally, he saw a phone booth just past the bar’s street parking, and he coaxed the car forward. Dean was leaning against its side, a cigarette in his mouth. He hadn’t brought a jacket, and it was barely thirty degrees out. Cas turned up the heat in the car as he unlocked the passenger door.

Dean put out the cigarette and slid in without a word. Cas hit the gas and started the drive back to the dorms.

Neither said a word in the ten minutes it took Cas to reach campus. The only sounds were the roar of hot air from the vents and the low groan of the engine. Cas kept his eyes in front of him, never once daring to glance at Dean.

When they reached the lot, Cas threw the gear shift into park and folded his hands in his lap. He stared at his own interlaced fingers, willing Dean to speak first, not wanting to ask the question.

Dean didn’t speak, though, just opened the car door and stepped out. Cas saw a light flicker through the passenger window, and suppressed a groan as he realized Dean had lit another cigarette. Typical, Cas thought, and he was suddenly annoyed. It occurred to him that if their places were switched, Dean would be hounding him, demanding that Cas tell him everything, because he always did. Anytime Cas seemed the slightest bit off, Dean was there, asking questions, being the good friend that he was. But now? Now, he expected Cas to leave it alone, to let him suffer with whatever was bothering him. Cas took a few steadying breaths, then turned the engine off and got out.

“Dean,” he said, trying to keep his voice neutral, “What the hell?”

Dean didn’t answer, just took a long drag, his gaze aimed resolutely ahead. Cas huffed and crossed his arms.

“You… You can’t just ask me to come pick you up from a bar and not offer an explanation,” Cas said.

“Sorry,” Dean muttered.

Cas let out a mirthless laugh. “Oh, well, that’s perfectly adequate,” he scoffed.

“What else am I supposed to say?” Dean demanded.

Cas stared at him, then shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, his jaw set. “I’m going to bed.

“What?” Dean asked, finally looking at Cas.

Cas shrugged. “I’m obviously wasting my time.”

Another drag. An exhale.

“My dad called while you were in the shower.”

The irritation shifted, almost immediately, to concern. “Your father called you?”

“Yeah.”

“What did he want?”

Dean tapped his cigarette against his leg. “Mostly to remind me what a piece of shit I am.”

Cas remained silent, allowing Dean the space to form whatever his next thought might be.

“I guess…” Dean rubbed his free hand over his forehead. “I guess Sam let it slip that I was bringing you to Bobby’s for Christmas.”

Cas cocked his head. “And that’s… Problematic?”

Dean exhaled another plume of smoke. “Yeah,” he said. He let out a mirthless laugh. “He said he didn’t get it, that if I was bringing anyone home, it should be a girlfriend, not…” Dean trailed off.

Cas felt the blood leave his face. “He thinks —”

“Yeah.”

“Dean, I don’t have to come,” Cas said. It would be better for both of us. “I’ll be perfectly fine here. I appreciate the offer, I do, but I don’t want to make life more difficult for you than necessary.”

Dean looked at him, finally, and he was all shadow and exhaustion. “No, he’s not gonna be there. You’re coming,” he said resolutely, and Cas tried not to let the disappointment show. “Plus, that wasn’t all of it. He’s pissed that I didn’t come home for Thanksgiving. Said something about how I was dishonoring my mom’s memory or something.”

Cas was silent for a moment. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“What do you mean?”

“At the bar,” Cas clarified. He couldn’t tell how drunk Dean really was, but based on that recent revelation, he could guess.

Dean furrowed his brow. “What?” He cleared his throat. “I mean, I had like three beers. I was planning on going full blackout, but then you reminded me about class.”

Cas almost smiled at that, because it was almost funny. “Why did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Decide to get blackout drunk just because your father incorrectly assumed you were bringing me — bringing a male partner to a Christmas he wouldn’t even attend?”

Dean frowned. “I don’t — I don’t know,” he said, and he sounded almost surprised at his own answer.

Cas was treading on thin ice, he knew that. But he kept up anyway. “I don’t want to overstep,” he said slowly, “But, Dean, your father… It doesn’t seem like he’s taken the time to get to know you. The real you, not the version he wants you to be, or the version he projects onto you.”

When Dean didn’t stop him, he continued. “And you don’t owe him anything, not anymore. You’re here, aren’t you? All on your own. He has no power over you. And, I’m only assuming, but I believe that might terrify him. Because not only do you no longer need him, but you may choose not to want him.”

Cas let out a small laugh. “Believe me, I know how difficult it is to stop putting stock in what your father thinks. It took me years to accept that I had done nothing wrong, that my father was, and always would be, a bigot. I… I’m still working on it, even now,” he admitted. Cas sighed. “But my life has been better, easier, since I stopped trying to please someone who hardly even knew me.”

Dean’s expression changed, and he blinked. He was still looking in Cas’s direction, but not at him. Past him, at some unknown subject. Cas took a step toward him.

“Dean?”

“I don’t need him,” Dean whispered.

“Are you all right?” Cas asked, placing a hand on Dean’s shoulder.

Dean let out a huff, overflowing with something like realization. “I never thought about that before. It’s not like he’s ever tried to talk to me.” Dean threw his cigarette on the asphalt and stomped it out. A breathy chuckle escaped his lips, and he wrapped his hands around his midsection. “You know, I used to try so hard to be like him.” Dean tilted his head toward the sky. “I listened to his music, I dressed like him. Hell, I even started talkin’ like him.

“It was never enough, you know? I always fucked up. Sam didn’t get to school on time, or I forgot milk at the grocery store. I just, I dunno. I know he loves me. But I always wanted him to like me, too, you know?”

“I do.”

“Oh man, you should’ve seen him when he found out I’d been hiding money away to go to college,” Dean said, laughing darkly. “I thought I was gonna go to school with a black eye for a week.”

“He hit you?” Cas asked, horrified.

“What? No, no,” Dean said quickly. “I just thought he might.”

Cas let out a breath. There was one crime John Winchester hadn’t committed. “What do you mean, hiding money?”

“Dad never really had a steady job, not after our mom died,” Dean explained. “That’s why we moved around a lot. When I was fourteen, I started working. Chickenshit stuff, mostly. Mowing lawns and detailing cars until I was old enough to start flippin’ burgers.” Dean furrowed his eyebrows. “The money was supposed to go to rent and food, but I started putting most of it aside, just in case, you know? I had enough for a year of college by the time I was a senior. I figured I could get loans and stuff for the rest.”

“And when you told him, he got angry?”

Dean only nodded, now staring intently at the ground. Cas didn’t say anything more, knowing Dean had probably just unloaded more trauma than he’d even known he had. Finally, though, Dean’s gaze met his.

“But I don’t need him,” he repeated.

“You don’t.”

“He’s nothing, unless I want him to be something,” Dean said slowly, and his eyes were growing triumphant. “Cas, you’re a genius.”

“If you say so.”

“You learn all that stuff from your sister? The one with a degree in ‘dealing with crazy fuckers’?”

Cas smiled. “Maybe,” he said. “And therapy isn’t just for ‘crazy fuckers.’”

Dean smirked at him. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say ‘fuck’.”

Cas rolled his eyes. “It’s cold out here,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “Yeah, okay.”

As they walked, Cas felt latent anger curl in his stomach. Dean hadn’t told Castiel much about his home life, not until that night. He understood, now, why Dean could so easily take care of others, but needed three beers and a cigarette to show his own vulnerabilities. In his eighteen years, had Dean ever been told that he was enough? The possibility that he hadn’t awakened something in Cas, some righteous fury.

He chided himself internally. How much of his selfish avoidance scheme had contributed to those feelings of inadequacy? He’d rather burn with the pain of unrequited love forever than let Dean think he wasn’t enough.

When they reached the entrance to their dorm, Cas put a hand on Dean’s arm. “Are you okay, Dean?” He asked.

Dean let out a long breath. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “I’m okay. I really am.” He said it like it might have been the first time he’d ever meant it.

Cas woke up at two in the morning from a particularly vivid dream. His breathing was heavy with the shock of waking up so suddenly. Dean was breathing slow and even across the room, still entirely asleep.

Cas shook his head a little. The dream had felt so real that it had left a residual burning feeling in his hand. He stared at it, but it remained entirely human.

Abruptly, he remembered his creative writing project. A short story, something he could turn into a poem and a stage scene. A lightbulb went off in his brain.

Cas lowered himself from his bed and hurriedly opened his computer. He had to get this down as soon as possible. Cas replayed the dream in his mind as his computer booted up. He supposed it might be a little strange, to turn this story in as his final project, considering it was somewhat of a self-insert. But it had everything he needed.

Finally, he opened a blank document and began to write the first draft. Cas wrote down everything he could remember from the dream, sights and sounds and feelings. With each word, his excitement grew. He’d never felt this way about a writing project, like the story demanded to be told.

Cas hit word count and kept going, because the story was building itself larger and larger. He didn’t even notice how long he’d been working until Dean’s six-a.m. alarm went off.

Dean groaned and rolled over in his bunk. He said something, but Cas didn’t hear, too intent upon getting the words in his head onto the page.

“Hey,” Dean said, raising his voice. “Stephen King, what the hell?”

Cas didn’t turn from the computer screen. “Good morning,” he said. “How did you sleep?”

Dean groaned. “Like the dead,” he said sarcastically. “How long you been up?”

Cas checked the time. “Somewhere around four hours,” he said.

“Four — you’ve been up since two?”

“Yes.”

Dean blanched and swung himself down from his bed. “Dude, that means you got, max, an hour and a half of sleep.” He made his way to Cas’s desk and leaned over his shoulder. Upon seeing the word count on his screen, his eyes widened.

“You wrote all that last night? Or this morning?” He asked.

Cas shrugged, a little sheepishly. “I got inspired.”

Dean blinked at him. “I’m gonna make a pot of coffee,” he said.

Cas wrote a few hundred more words before finding a good stopping point. He scrolled to the top of his document and highlighted the scenes he wanted to use for his project. Dean brought him a cup of coffee, which Cas accepted eagerly, beginning to feel the first twinges of exhaustion through his inspiration-fueled mania.

“What’re you writing over there?” Dean asked after taking a sip from his mug.

“It’s one of my final projects,” Cas replied. He drank from his own mug.

Dean looked at him in horror. “A five-thousand word essay?”

Cas laughed. “No. A thousand-word short story,” he said.

“What, so you’re an over-achiever?”

“No,” Cas said. “I’m only using the first thousand words for my project. But I just couldn’t stop. There was more to tell.” His cheeks flamed. Talking about his creative projects always embarrassed him.

“What’s it about?” Dean asked.

Cas gave him a sideways grin. “You’ll find out when you read it.”

Dean scowled. “At least tell me what you’re calling it.”

Cas looked up thoughtfully. “I don’t know for sure yet,” he said. “That reminds me…” He turned back to his computer to save the document. When faced with the title option, he faltered. He typed in “The Righteous Man.” That would do for now.

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

taglist! @nguyenxtrang @castielsbeeslippers

#supernatural #destiel #deancas #destiel fic

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dragonrajafanfiction · 3 years

Text

Precious Friend

The beds were platforms attached to the walls that lifted up to an opening aptly called a coffin rack that served as under-bed storage. There were four beds in a room. Besides the coffin rack storage, there was one locker per occupant. That was all.

Aaron tried and failed to fit all his gear into a locker before giving it up and tossing it on top of his bed next to where his foot would be. “People live here for months? Jesus…” He muttered.

Brian held out his hands, “I have space in my locker, give it here.”

“Careful, my guns are in there.” Despite his words, he tossed his bag to him and hopped up to pull himself onto the top bunk.

“I know. That’s why I don’t want it getting tossed about if we hit rough seas.” He tucked the bag into the locker and shut it securely.

“I hope none of you get seasick. Masato peered down from his top bunk where he was surfing on his phone.

Rodney meanwhile stood in the doorway looking in despair and wondering if he was even short enough to fit into the flimsy blankets. This was a common issue. At six feet and four inches, he was too tall for a lot of things. He caught Masato’s smirk and inwardly grumbled that, for once, someone who could fit into a locker like him had the upper hand.

Masato turned back to his phone. “I’ve been doing some research into what the Lieutenant told us. Norma doesn’t really contradict anything that she said. She’s just… less conclusive about the actual existence of the dragons they spoke of. The lack of written record is a problem, but the rainbow serpent’s connection to alchemy is pretty solid.” He turned his phone to them. “The appearance of a serpent looped in a circle is common in Egyptian depictions of an afterlife, but it doesn’t have much context. Still, European alchemists adapted this symbol into their own writing.”

“So it had to mean something…” Aaron whispered, opening his phone as well.

“I’m going to bed.” Brian ducked into the small gap between the top and bottom beds and disappeared.

Aaron let out an awed sigh. “Wow… their definition of Speech Spirits is Voodoo… I wonder… I wonder if we’ll get to see something like that. Sounds spooky.”

He dipped his head down to peer at Brian. “You’re sure you’re okay with your lady out by herself with a bunch of a voodoo?”

Brian gave him an annoyed glare. “By their definition aren’t we also practicing voodoo when we use our soul skills?”

“Oh that’s true.”

Brian rolled over to face the wall.

“But you didn’t deny she’s your lady.”

“Shut up.”

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

Mr. Baldwin didn’t go with the rest of the students to the residential deck. He instead followed Dofi, the youngest of the quadruplets towards the Officer’s area on the ship. Dofi kept up the act, nodding dutifully at the sailors who had no idea he was masquerading as his brother.

“How long are you going to keep up this act?” He mumbled quietly.

“As long as I can!” Dofi flashed his brilliant teeth and chuckled. “After all, it’s not often I get to be captain.”

Mr. Baldwin raised his eyebrows. “Really? Somehow I doubt that. Switching identities would be an easy way to keep sailors on their toes at all times. I envy your ability to be in multiple places at once… so to speak.”

They came to an elevator. Dofi, scanned his ID and it opened and they stepped inside. Mr. Baldwin stifled a yawn. “Will you be joining us for our discussion?”

“Nah…” Dofi waved his hand. “Foli wanted to speak with you privately. And I have an assignment that just came up. We can have fun later!” He gave him a hard slap on the shoulder that nearly took his breath away.

The doors opened and there was Foli, grinning, bearing the Cassell College world tree logo on his chest. The two men both embraced each other rocking back and forth.

“It’s been too long. Too long, brother!” Foli growled happily. “Come in and sit down! We need to catch up!”

Foli ushered him into the room. It was centered by a large wood table and decorated with maps, globes, and had a view of the vast ocean. There was no wine or cigar, but a box of fine chocolate on the table.

Mr. Baldwin took a seat at the table and Foli joined him. “Wow, are these chocolates made by hand?”

“Of course, I’ve been saving them for this occasion.”

Together they reached in. The chocolate was velvet smooth, full of butter and had just the right bitterness, fruitiness and sweetness. Mr. Baldwin closed his eyes. “It’s just like what you brought with you to Cassell…”

“Yes…”

He looked at him. “How’s your father?”

Foli sighed. “Still unwell, we’re expecting his passing soon.”

Mr. Baldwin’s eyes filled with regret. “I’m sorry. I’ve dragged you away.”

Foli patted his hand to reassure him. “Our ancestors are never truly gone. His mind is resting in his body, waiting to be set free from its confines. He would never forgive me for missing out on this opportunity. You met with him before… yes? I was always curious. How did that go?”

“He didn’t tell you? Basically, he just wanted to congratulate me and give me some encouragement. Losing Professor Schneider was very difficult. Not just his death but the pressure of the expectations.” Unable to resist, Mr. Baldwin accepted another chocolate from the box.

“In the end, his choice was the correct one.” Foli spoke reassuringly to him. “Not only your training and education, but the power of your Soul Skill is undeniable.”

Mr. Baldwin grimaced. “I can barely control it. I’m no Anjou.”

“Such humility… it’s born of wisdom. It will keep you safe.”

“Keep me safe?” Mr. Baldwin chuckled with surprise. “I don’t recall safety being mentioned in this job description. But you do have a point… Time Zero, when it comes to applications on the battlefield…” He ducked his head and huffed. “It’s a bit unfair!”

“Just a bit!” Foli leaned against the table with one arm. “You’re not tired?”

“I am. But I can’t sleep.” He turned his eyes to the window. “The moon’s too bright tonight. And it’s nice to come here and chat.”

“How like you.” Foli said, delighted. “Then you’re fine with chatting with me?”

Mr. Baldwin gave him a small smile. “It would be an honor to chat with such a precious friend as you. The only thing lacking is some champagne.”

“I hope you don’t mind some tea instead? There’s a kettle.” Foli stood up and moved to a cabinet. Mr. Baldwin watched as he poured the tea and brought it back over to the table.

“What are we drinking tonight?”

“Just regular black.”

Mr. Baldwin began to chuckle.

“What’s so funny?”

He took a deep breath of the tea wafting into his nose and sat back in his chair. “When I visited the Italian branch to meet with Commissioner Gattuso they served me some tea called “Imperial Red” from China. It’s supposedly over a million dollars a pound.”

“Oh really?” Foli blew over his cup.

Mr. Baldwin gave him a fond smile. “I’ve gotta say. I like regular black better.”

Foli raised it in a small toast. “Only the best.”

They touched their cups together. Mr. Baldwin allowed himself to relax, letting the steam warm his face. “I don’t have many people in this business who understand me as much as you do. I miss the days in the dorm where we used to stay up and talk all night.”

“Yes… so do I. It’s been too long since we’ve had tea together.” Foli’s eyes fell to his cup. “But… you would do most of the talking!”

“I had a lot to say! Especially right before our graduation, remember? I had to go away to run the Executive Branch, and you were chosen by the elders to lead as well.”

“Is that the last time? I can’t quite remember.” Foli scratched his head.

“You wouldn’t. We drank a lot more than tea.” Mr. Baldwin lowered his voice. “You got piss drunk. No wonder you don’t remember.”

“Oh…” Foli looked bashful. “Well, you understand… alcohol has never passed my lips since.”

“It’s a cruel tradition. You can’t even spike a little brandy to help you relax without losing your job?”

“It’s just the way it is, my friend.”

Mr. Baldwin started to laugh again. “I was frantic trying to dry you out before you had to report to your family.”

Foli looked mournful. “You did?”

“Seems like you don’t remember that either.”

“Well your memory has always been better than mine!” Foli replied. “Always has been. After all, you didn’t even confuse me with my brother! To be frank… it was a relief that you still remember.”

Mr. Baldwin reached into his pocket and pulled out a small gold medallion. It was carved with a skull ringed by twining vines. “Which reminds me, I think this belongs to you.”

Foli gasped, inhaling the tea he had just sipped. He covered his mouth, choking. “Where did you get that?” He asked around the coughs.

“You don’t remember but you left it in my room all those years ago. I couldn’t give it back to you without revealing to your family that you got drunk. So I took the opportunity to return it today.”

Foli reverentially took the medallion, speechless. “These relics are priceless. I assumed it was stolen from me.” He muttered quietly. His heart slammed in his chest as he tilted the heavy metal in his hand, watching the light shimmer across it.

“No one’s seen it but you and I.” Mr. Baldwin watched his friend’s reaction feeling deeply satisfied. “I’m the head of the Executive Branch. You will soon be one of the spearheads of the West Africa Branch. With Anjou, the relationship was wary. I hope to change that. Starting tonight.”

Foli opened his mouth to speak, eyes still glued to the medallion. But no words came out. He finally looked up at him. “Were it just up to me, I would absolutely accept full cooperation with Cassell. But these heavy matters? They’re left up to the Elder Council. That said, I will strongly convey your trustworthiness.”

He placed the medallion in his pocket. “Grant. People said that you changed after you were appointed, but you’re still the same person.”

“I changed only on the outside. I had to. Or else the Executive Branch might have fractured.”

Foli nodded. “I remember when we first met. I was full of many different worries. I was… not prepared to make friends, but to maintain our secrets to maintain our superiority over the European Hybrids. At least, what I perceived to be superiority.”

Grant poured himself another cup. “I remember too. You were determined to show us up. Not that I blame you. The rest of our classmates wanted to teach you rather than the other way around.”

“I was shocked when all you asked were questions.”

Grant sipped. “That you didn’t want to answer.’

“And I asked, ‘why do you want to know?’ What did you say to me back then?”

“Isn’t that why you’re here? To teach us?” Grant replied.

“Yes that’s it. Your memory never fails!” He laughed. “Both Cassell and the West Africans have viewed each other with suspicion. Even now… it’s a bad habit.” Foli drummed his fingers on the table.

“One can’t be too careful.” Grant shrugged. “Trust is earned gradually.”

His expression turned grim. “You’re too kind. I just hope that trust gets its chance to grow and is not choked out by stubbornness and pride.”

Grant glanced at him. “Is there something wrong?”

Foli smiled again. “Ah… I believe it’s late. The moon is making me sentimental! But a cloud just covered it and broke the spell. We should get our rest.”

Together, they stood up. “Thanks for chatting with me. I hope we get this opportunity again… sooner this time.”

Together they walked out of the main meeting room, when they walked, it was hand in hand, leaving the cups steaming on the table.

#Class of 2032 #Dragon Raja #Fanfiction

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batwynn · 5 years

Text

Suicide Bones

Sterek drabble about being overwhelemed to the point of breaking, and the ‘Maybe We Can Make It Out.’

Trigger warnings: Suicidal thoughts/ actions, depression, anxiety, ADHD/ADD, death, body horror. His mother sometimes said he was a the wrong size skeleton inside his flesh suit, to which his father warned that ‘this is going to shape his sense of humor in weird ways.’ He was right, obviously, but so was she.

Stiles never fits in his skin.

He‘a too long, too weird, too wild. He jumps from too high, digs in the dirt, sings too loudly, and knows entirely too much about everything before he was ten years old. Sometimes, late at night when his brain refuses to shut up, he bends his knees as far as he can just to watch his skin stretch over his bones. Sometimes he wants it to rip open, so he could be free. To be fully himself, and not feel smothered all the time. But it doesn’t, and he goes back to listing the elements of the periodic table until he falls asleep.

It isn’t until his mom is buried deep in the dirt he used to play in that he realizes there is one sure-fire way he can escape the flesh. One absolute in life that could solve all his misfit problems. The only issue is that he has people that need him to stay. They need his bones encased in skin and muscle, tendons and fat. They need his bad singing voice, and his endless curiosity. It keeps his dad going, it keeps Scott safe, it keeps his teachers happy, it makes the barista smile, it keeps his neighbor’s garden watered.

So grit your teeth and stay, Stiles. Ignore the growing pains and all the wrong, wrong, wrong.

He throws himself into helping. He pushes his face right into the snarling, rabid face of death and smirks. Stiles fights his instincts every day, to force that stupid fight or flight to land firmly on fight every time. Every time. He can’t back down, he can’t stop. He has to help. That’s his purpose. That’s who he is: Ill-fitted bones and sarcastic remarks. But, god, he will fucking help you.

He will, and he does.

He thinks he does?

“I don’t need your help, Stiles!”

“I think you do, wolf-boy,” he sneers, flicking the map stretched across the table in front of them. Derek outright snarls, which means he’s either about to give in or throw Stiles out on his ass.

“I know you have some sort of issue with your self-worth,” Derek begins, voice not at all soft.

Stiles narrows his eyes, daring him to continue. “It’s funny how this didn’t come up when you needed me to use mountain ash.”

“Because that’s when you were useful!”

Stiles rolls his eyes back as well as his head. The ceiling is dark and stained with old factory grease. He wonders, for a brief second, why Derek resides in these kinds of places. They’re like prisons, where he’s guarding himself.

“I can help you find Erica and Boyd,” he says at last, drawing his attention back to Derek. “I know this town better than anyone.”

Derek‘s voice grows quiet, “my family founded this town.”

“And a lot has changed since then. I know it how it is now.”

Whatever fight was in him seems to fade to the usual rumbling discontent that’s always present as Derek looks over the map again. See, this is why Stiles volunteered to help him find them. He doesn’t even like Isaac, Erica went mean, Boyd barely acknowledged him, and he and Derek have a very low tolerance for one another. But right now, Derek’s stupidly pretty eyes are looking at buildings he doesn’t know and new streets, and showing how hopeless he’s really feeling. Derek doesn’t think they’ll find them.

“Okay,” Derek says at last. In his heart, Stiles believes they will. That’s why he’s here. That’s why he’s helping. His bones, though. They already ache with the loss.

Stiles scrunches up his nose, and points to a potential area on the map. He’s ignoring his bones, for now.

“Okay.”

It’s not when Scott hurts him—not the first time, no, but the worst time—that he realizes things have changed. It’s not when Derek-STUPID–Hale has another plan fall through that would have worked if he had just listened to Stiles. It’s not when some other creature is riding his bones and damaging him and everyone around him for fun. No, it’s not even when an awful lot of his friends die. It’s much later, when they save that stupid stump, save Scott, save the town, save everyone they can. It’s not until Derek leaves and comes back all soft-looking, and god his anger issues weren’t as hot as he thought because that fucking sweater—

It’s then that he realizes that everyone has grown up from needing him. Scott’s doing his own thing now, and hasn’t called for Stiles to go over his homework or love letter or help deal with a monster in months. His dad has been dating, actually dating, and isn’t home as often as he used to be. He doesn’t call up to check on Stiles twice a day, or demand Stiles give him an idea of his whereabouts as often as he used to. His teachers—well, they (mostly) know he’ll be fine in college. He went through hell and still got A’s. The neighbor moved during the first wave of wolfy-like problems. That barista, well, she was killed two years ago. One of the ones they couldn’t save.

And Derek? He’s so much better. Really, he’s better. He went out and healed, and now he’s building something for himself in the town his family founded and died in like it’s just fine and normal and—

Stiles stretches, feels his scars ache. His bones pop and protest inside him. Soon now. Soon, he promises them.

Because no one needs him anymore, and he’s built up a value based on that need. Now it’s all useless facts at one am and tired—so tired—promises to himself to find a vocation where all that he is will be applicable. Where he can weather the aches and misshapen bones because it will be worth it, again. But there’s nothing. College seems pointless, busy work and knowledge he’s already long since devoured. A job—where? He’s such a mess he doesn’t trust himself to cook at home anymore, never mind providing food or service to other people. Will he break down and cry at the first rude customer? Will he hallucinate his way through a shift at Home Depot? When will they notice? When will they see that he’s a skeleton of what he used to be?

When will they see he isn’t a person anymore?

Soon, he mutters to his bones. Soon.

“Have you talked to anyone?” Is the first thing he says when he finds Stiles sitting on the stump with a bottle of whiskey stolen from his dad’s dusty liquor cabinet.

Derek, looking settled and grounded in ways Stiles hasn’t seen since he was nine or ten years old. Those few times he ran into the younger Hales in town before most of them died. Derek, his eyes actually honest on the first try instead of the second, third, or fourth.

Honestly worried.

“Talk to who?” Stiles slurs, cracking an easy smile that sends pain all the way through him.

“Someone,” Derek replies as he sits down next to him. “Anyone.”

“Why should I? Why?”

Derek stares at him without answering. Stiles wants to push his face closer, jut his jaw out and fight.

“Why, Derek?” He challenges, not looking away.

“Because... it helped me,” he says, sounding sure and steady. “Because I was just pushing myself through whatever shitty thing happened next and never looking back unless I needed the anger to fuel me.”

Stiles lets out a shaky breath and looks away. He can’t say anything now, not like that.

“It’s not easy, either,” Derek continues, calmer than Stiles has ever heard him. “I clammed up a lot; lashed out even more. I hated everything and everyone more and more until I wanted to kill random strangers I saw on the street with no provocation.”

Stiles raises a brow to himself, because yeah, that’s a bit different than the Derek who kind of died to save everyone more than a few times. But maybe not so different than how he’s feeling right now. Derek lets out a huff of a laugh, and Stiles feels something hard and bitter inside him start to melt. Just a little.

“More than that, though, I just wanted to die. I wanted god or whoever to kill me already, and stop pushing me to do it myself. Put the blood on their hands for once, not mine.”

Stiles pulls his lower lip between his teeth and bites down. He’s not going to talk. He won’t.

“But it never happened. And stupid shit keeps happening, but...” Derek trails off for a moment, “But I can handle it a little better now. I can drop my mom’s favorite cup and it sucks—it still sucks—but it’s not the last straw anymore. It doesn’t make me want to claw my throat out, or scream until I lose my voice.”

Stiles hiccups quietly and tries to cover it up by taking a swig from the bottle. He refuses to look at the asshole opening up next to him. He can’t do this, he’s too tired. He can’t open up again and spend the time, and effort, and love it takes to matter to someone and be dropped like he’s nothing. Not again. Please, not again.

“I’m not telling you this because I think we’re exactly the same,” Derek continues, sounding less solid and more sad now. “I know we’ve lived different lives and lost in different ways. It’s going to be different no matter what, I’ve found out.”

“Why?” Stiles croaks out.

“You know why.”

Stiles glares into the surrounding trees and hates himself a little bit more for rising to the bait. Of course he fucking knows why, but it doesn’t matter.

“It doesn’t matter,” he mutters out loud. “None of it does.”

“Why not?” Derek asks quietly.

Stiles gestures broadly to their surroundings, to the giant stump they’re sitting on, to himself. He can’t find the words, really, to sum up everything that’s led him here. There’s too much bad, and not enough good. Too much bad, too fast and too often. Too much everything.

“That’s not an answer,” Derek says, and Stiles finally turns to glare at him.

“Not everything is so fucking literal,” he snaps.

Derek shrugs it off. “Sometimes it is.”

“Then tell me what makes it worth it, okay? Tell me why dropping my mom’s favorite cup after most of her stuff got destroyed is shitty, but it’s fine,” he spits, his insides burning. “I should just be fine about all this shit and smile through it.”

Derek shakes his head, and says, “That’s not what I’m saying at all.”

“Then what?”

“You don’t have to smile, Stiles. You don’t have to be fine. You can be upset and hurting, or angry... I’m still angry, you know?” Derek smiles ruefully and looks away again. “but I needed to talk about it all to realize what was external and what was internal. I didn’t even think about what I could fix versus what I couldn’t. I didn’t know there even was stuff I could fix.”

Stiles keeps glaring, but that hard part of him is melting out his eyes and nose now. He hates that. He hates crying because it doesn’t do anything for him. It never did any good.

Derek doesn’t seem to mind that he’s dribbling all over himself now, or that he’s still not opening up. Stiles doesn’t know what that means, or what he’s supposed to do now.

“Find a therapist,” Derek says, turning back to him with a soft smile. “And remember not to feel guilty for unloading on them. They’re being paid for that.”

“I d-don’t know if I can afford that,” Stiles chokes out, half laughing, half crying. What a fucking mess.

“I could cover it?” Derek offers tentatively, almost as if he knows Stiles will refuse.

But.

But maybe he won’t. Not this time. Not when he’s this close to cutting his awkward, aching bones out to be free.

“O-okay,” he sniffles, wiping his nose on the end of his sleeve. “I’m t-tired, though.”

“Yeah,” Derek says, and reaches a hand out. Stiles takes it. He doesn’t know what else to do. “Yeah, I know. Put some of that weight on someone else for a little while. See if it helps.”

Stiles looks at their hands, linked there between them like that’s normal and fine. “What if it doesn’t?”

“Then we come back here and brainstorm some more.”

Stiles watches at Derek’s thumb brushes over his hand. It should probably be huge, but for now it’s just fine. “Y-yeah?”

“It’s what we’re good at,” Derek replies. He smiles at him. “Okay?”

Stiles hesitates. His bones say he won’t make it. They’ll end up here again, messier and more misshaped. But he’s tired and someone is finally noticing. Someone is looking and seeing that he’s being crushed under the weight of everything. His heart, though. His heart says maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.” *

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Call: 1-800-273-8255

Or Text HELLO to 741741 for the crisis text line.

#Sterek #Depression #Teen Wolf #stiles stilinski #Derek Hale #drabble #tw: body horror #Tw: Suicidal thoughts #tw: Depression

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kpopfanfictrash · 5 years

Text

Operation: Intelligence

Author: kpopfanfictrash

Pairing: Hoseok / Reader

Word Count: 2,819

AU: Spy

Dialogue Prompt: “Not the time for a costume change!” (slightly tweaked to fit with dialogue lol)

↳ part of my AU drabble game

“So.” Bored, you glanced between the two men before you. “This is a summer camp. For spies.”

One of the men winced. The other remained perfectly still, his mahogany hair perfect under the blunt, fluorescent lighting. You always noticed the lighting first. Lighting, then people, then scenery – in that order.

As though you’d said something funny, the first man smiled. “Ah, no. We prefer the term intelligence operative to spy. Has a nicer ring to it, you see?”

The other man didn’t move. He simply watched from behind his dark-colored glasses. There was no label to the lenses, no brand name in order to be instantly recognizable.

Of course, their kind would prefer the term intelligence operative. Stifling an eye roll, you chose not to respond. Spy, intelligence operative, hit man, criminal – whatever they chose to call themselves, it didn’t matter to you. Their trade wasn’t glamorous, no matter what modern movies and novels would have people believe. Growing up on the streets with parents who were grifters at best, thieves and con artists at worst, you knew the cops were never your friends.

You were only a few years into adulthood when you packed both your little sister and yourself into a hotwired car, sped from their driveway and began a new life. Your parents’ adventures had thrilled you when you were younger, but once you grew up, all the fun disappeared. There were only so many times you could come home from school to a threat by some thug named Benny insisting your parents owed him or his employer money.

As soon as you left their driveway, you vowed never to return and yet, here you were.

A liar, betraying the vow you’d once made.

Twisting both hands beneath the desk, you let no trace of emotion cloud your features. Slipping into the lessons you learned in childhood proved astonishingly easy.

Observe, but don’t react. Deduce what others do, then adjust your behavior. Don’t reveal your intentions, but only show others what they wish to see.

The second man at the table seemed to exude a similar philosophy. Admittedly, he did it in much better clothing than yours. His suit was impeccable; double-breasted with a handkerchief pressed to its pocket as though it had been born there. Maybe it had been; maybe it was sewn into his suit, as firm as the stick shoved up his ass.

Your lips twitched as you suppressed a smile. The mahogany-haired man seemed to notice this, inclining his head in a manner which dared you to smile again.

Meeting his gaze, you did. “I see,” you said, returning to the first man.

Already, you had the two of them pegged.

The first man was their marketer, a transition man designed to make you feel comfortable with the lifestyle change. The second was present to ensure you didn’t get too comfortable. This was a classic good cop, bad cop strategy.

Truthfully, you needed none of it. Their organization was your only option and if you failed, it was more than your worthless life on the line. The thought made your stomach twist unpleasantly.

Unbeknownst to them, you harbored a secret. This was the reason you couldn’t relax, couldn’t let your guard down for even a second. You were in an organization of spies, no matter what they chose to call themselves, and you were here to spy on them.

This wasn’t the first time you’d been approached by their kind. Before though, you had always rejected their offer.

Your parents’ lifestyle had never been of interest, no matter the price or the handsome men in suits sent to woo you. For yes, the second man was handsome, this was undeniable. The mahogany-haired man had a high forehead, sloped nose and soft-looking lips. On anyone else, these features might have been an eclectic combination but on him, they were beautiful.

Instead of looking his way though, you focused on the first. The marketer.

“What would my training entail?” you asked, as though this was what gave you pause.

The man nodded, like he truly cared about your worries. You could tell by the way he shifted, the way his feet pointed towards the door, the man was already thinking about being somewhere else. Talking to you was only one stop in his insurmountable day.

He needed to interrogate the recruit, eat his lunch, attack a mountain of paperwork, yell at a few subordinates, drink three Jameson and cokes at the bar and have sloppy sex with Sharon before passing out in his bed. Shower, rinse, repeat.

You hated to keep him from all he had to do.

“Well.” The marketer shuffled his paperwork and barely did you keep the smile from your face. You’d noticed upon entering the majority of it was blank. “The usual. You’ll be tested physically, mentally and in practical application. We’ll assess your current abilities, identify any gaps and then assign you a specialty.”

“Specialty?”

He nodded. “Technology, weapons, information gathering, etc. We’ll tailor your coursework to your specialty, according to whatever use we might have for you.”

Hearing this, your lips thinned.

“I mean,” the man hastily said. “What areas we have which might suit you best.”

He didn’t mean it. You knew the moment you joined this organization, you would belong to them in every sense of the word. They wouldn’t care about your interests or wants.

As though the man’s words were placating, you nodded. “And who is this?” you asked, looking at his silent partner.

The marketer tensed. “I – er, Hoseok,” he said.

No additional information was offered and you arched a brow. “Pleasure to meet you, Hoseok,” you said, scanning him quickly. “I see you fit the strong and silent stereotype.”

Much to your disappointment, he failed to take the bait. Instead, Hoseok lifted his chin. “Why are you here?”

“Hoseok!” The first man’s eyes widened. Some of the color drained from his cheeks; Hoseok had just made his job even harder. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Hoseok can be blunt. A field operative, you know how they can be –”

Cutting him off, you said, “Why am I here on Earth, or in this room?”

The marketer shut up.

Hoseok did not flinch. “I’ll take either answer, if you have them.”

“To survive as long as I can. As to why I’m in this room....” You trailed off, then waved a hand. “I assume you’re referring to the fact that I’ve declined your invitation to join this organization several times?”

“The way I see it, we’ve extended you offers before.” Leaning forward, his elbows slid forward on the table. “My superiors see you as an asset.” Hoseok paused, as though to emphasize how little he agreed. “Each time you’ve turned us down. Why would you accept now? What’s changed?”

His sunglasses hid his gaze, which you found annoying. Intention was difficult to hide in the eyes. Hoseok pushed himself to sit more casually, one arm draped over the back of his chair and ones leg crossed over the other. Despite his relaxed posture, his muscles were tense, as though ready to pounce.

“What’s changed,” you said, since this was a loaded question. “Nothing, I guess. The end of a life I once knew.”

Hoseok didn’t flinch. “You mean, the death of your parents.”

If he was trying to bait you, you didn’t take it.

“Yes, that.”

With a sigh, Hoseok removed his sunglasses. Without them, his face made your eyes widen. Truly, he was gorgeous – which made you wary. He wore his beauty like a knife, revealed only when needed to cut down those in his way. Hoseok’s gaze was lidded, searching as though he could carve the truth from your lies.

He could look all he wanted; you would not cave.

“Why would that change things?” Hoseok’s gaze across your face. “Based on our intelligence, you’ve had little to do with your parents for the past five years.”

Be like stone, you told yourself.

Stone could not break unless there were cracks in its foundation. You were solid, unyielding. Shifting on the uncomfortable leather seat, you lazily crossed one leg over the other.

It satisfied you when Hoseok’s gaze darted ever so briefly to your legs.

“That’s true,” you agreed. “I hadn’t spoken to my parents in years before last week.”

Shutting your mouth, you swallowed. It was partly untrue and partly real, which tended to be the best type of lies.

While you took a moment to gather yourself, you also examined the brass buttons Hoseok wore. They were brass, yet hung with a weight similar to gold. It meant they were not average fasteners. Surveillance equipment, most likely.

Emboldened, you slowly uncrossed and recrossed your legs. You’d worn a dress to this interview on purpose. Hoseok’s cheeks flushed as you attempted to hide your smile. It seemed the feed from his buttons went straight to his contact lenses.

“My parents’ death was unexpected,” you said, refocusing. “As you so astutely mentioned, I never cared for their lifestyle. Their death, though… it changes things.”

For a moment, you found yourself truly at a loss. You glanced down to collect yourself, and actually did. The marketer nodded, as though in sympathy but Hoseok remained silent, unconvinced. It made you trust him more than the first.

“How did their deaths change you?” he asked, blunt.

You inhaled, images flashing again through your mind. You hadn’t let yourself think much of the day. The memory of your mother collapsed in the hall, shot dead the second she opened the door. The sight of your father slumped in the kitchen, a look of pure astonishment and confusion on his face. The bloodied note taped to their fridge, scrawled for you to find after the killer texted from your father’s phone.

It shouldn’t have been that way. Your parents were mediocre criminals at best. They shouldn’t have been killed in such a thoughtful, uncompromising manner. The bullet wounds in their bodies had been precise, placed in such a way you couldn’t doubt their marksmanship.

No. Whoever ordered their deaths wasn’t the sort of person your parents usually dealt with – and yet, your family hadn’t seemed surprised by their attack. Your mother had opened the door for her assassin, for fuck’s sake.

Exhaling, you looked up from the table. “I’ve hidden who I am my entire life,” you said. “I’ve run from the law, from my parents, and everyone in between. Now, though...” You felt your hands clench. “I don’t want to run. I want to be useful in the only way I know how.”

Hoseok tilted his head and considered.

What you said was mostly true, but it also masked a lie. The final piece of the puzzle was your sister, whom you’d purposefully left out of the equation. The same madmen who’d murdered your parents had stolen one more thing. Your sister.

This was the final line of the note you had found. Short and specific instructions: do as the men said, or your sister would die.

The first task you’d been given was to infiltrate this organization and so, here you were. Ready to lie, cheat and borrow just to force your way in.

Fingernails digging into your palms, you fought to keep your expression neutral. You needed them to believe you, you needed to be let in because if they cast you out, your sister was dead.

Finally, Hoseok nodded. The gesture was curt, without sympathy to his gaze.

“Alright,” he said, glancing at his companion. “Feel free to draw up the paperwork. I approve.”

Hoseok stood and deftly removed his blazer. Shaking this out, he placed this on his chair and began to undo his buttons.

You stared. “This hardly seems the time for a costume change.”

Barely sparing a glance, Hoseok continued turning his shirt inside out. As he re-buttoned his collar, tucked the ends into his jeans and replaced his sunglasses with glasses, you could only stare. The transformation was instantaneous – international businessman to local IT worker.

Hoseok looked your way. “You’re not my only appointment today, Y/N.”

Before you could respond to this, the first man interrupted. “Right,” he said, fingers fumbling empty papers before him. “I’ll get you started, Y/N. You’ll go through a preliminary training assessment and then we’ll see, okay?”

He smiled brightly despite your clear lack of enthusiasm.

When you finally nodded, Hoseok reached for his phone and you took the time to examine him. The man was far too competent to be stuck in an office, like the marketer. It seemed Hoseok was the intelligence operative and yet, he didn’t act much like those in the field you were used to. He wasn’t crass, not at all overbearing and he seemed not to carry any visible weaponry.

Every move of his was smooth, polished and designed to blend in. This man was a professional and for the briefest of moments, you panicked. It was this type of man you needed to fool for your sister to live. You needed to be a better spy than the best of the best.

Fervently, you hoped the entire organization wasn’t as competent as Hoseok.

Standing, the marketer shoved reams of paper into his bag. As he moved towards the door, you made to follow, only for Hoseok to place a hand on your arm.

“A moment,” he said, as though he had all the time in the world.

Although your feet stopped, you kept your gaze on the door. “I thought you had another appointment.”

Hoseok chuckled. “Dominic, please leave us.”

You watched the other man, and to your surprise, he nodded and swiftly left the room. The door fell shut, leaving the two of you alone beneath fluorescent lights.

Warily, you turned to face Hoseok.

He stared back, his gaze shrewd and calculating. “I still don’t trust you,” he said, letting go of your arm.

“Bully for you,” you said. “I didn’t ask.”

“You did, though. The moment you walked through the door. Am I wrong?”

He wasn’t wrong. The fact you responded to their invitation after all these years meant you wanted him to accept. His ego seemed large enough for the both of you though, and so you stayed silent.

His eyes gleamed. “I’ll take that as a no.”

Unable to stop yourself, you snapped, “I agree. I agree you shouldn’t trust me. Trust goes both ways, though and I still have no idea why I should trust you. Why I should bring my skills to your organization over any other.”

“A valid point,” Hoseok allowed. “If somewhat juvenile. What do you wish to know about me?”

Thrown by his statement, you could only blink. “I – how long have you been a part of this organization?”

“Since I was six.” Hoseok spoke smoothly, as though the question no longer fazed him. “My turn. What are you hiding?”

“Many things. None pertinent to this conversation, though.”

“Spoken like a spy.” Hoseok glanced at his watch. “You’ll find, Y/N, that you are out of your league here. No matter what rudimentary skills your parents taught you, they won’t be enough, and eventually you’ll find yourself behind.”

You bristled, but Hoseok didn’t seem to notice.

Stepping closer, his lips hovered inches away from your ear. “I anticipate you’ll leave within the first month,” he murmured.

Glancing down, you realized why Hoseok had removed his blazer. Whomever had been listening to his mic wouldn’t be able to hear this.

“You’ll fail because either your anger will burn out and you’ll cease to remember why you came here in the first place, or because you’ll fail. Or,” he added, gaze meeting yours. “There is a third, even worse option.”

"Which is?”

Hoseok paused. “The option that whatever drove you to accept is far more sinister than my colleagues imagine.” His gaze became steely. “Trust me, Y/N, if this turns out to be the case, you’ll dearly wish you’d never set foot through those doors. I’ll draw up the paperwork to kill you myself.”

Something about the way he spoke made your blood boil.

“You do that,” you said , stepping closer. “You keep worrying about me and whatever my ass is doing, and I’ll just worry about proving you wrong. Yes? Until then, stay the hell out of my way.”

Hoseok smirked. Turning around, he bent and picked up his blazer. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” he said, folding it over his arm.

“And why not?” you demanded as he walked away.

He paused with one hand on the handle. “Didn’t they tell you?” Hoseok asked, glancing over his shoulder. “Didn’t they explain why I was part of your interview panel?”

Mutely, you shook your head no. A not unpleasant chill traveled down your spine.

Hoseok smiled and for the first time, it seemed real. “It’s because I’m your partner.” He pulled open the door, warmer light flooding in from the hall. “Good luck with your evaluation. I’ll see you soon, Y/N.”

With that, he stepped out and your stomach sank to the ground.

↳ part of my AU drabble game

#hoseok writing #bts writing #bts fanfic #hoseok fanfic #hoseok au #hoseok spy au #bts spy au #hoseok drabble #bts drabble

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s-trawberryv-eins · 5 years

Text

An Introduction

(NOT MY GIF)

AN INTRODUCTION TO CAROLINE STARK

A/N: Hi! Thanks for reading! So, after months of waffling about wanting to write, I finally sat down and did it. It’s pretty complicated, so it’s pretty important to read this one before you start with anything else. I’ve created an original character, who lives in a slightly alternative universe to the one we were left with after Endgame. I’d like to state that none of my personal changes are reflections of my opinions of what DID happen, but in order to build her as I wish, some things needed to be slightly different.

1) Steve didn’t go back to Peggy after he returned the stones

2) Hulk and Banner didn't become one, they’re still two separate beings

3) Natasha was brought back by Steve as he was able to return the soul stone in return for her life

4) The compound was rebuilt after the Battle of Earth. There is a memorial for Tony where he died.

A few other things to note:

1) My first piece of writing will be a background that is applicable to all of the fics. However, many of them will be stand alone, unless I state otherwise. I’ll be creating a masterlist which will lay everything out very clearly, but please feel free to ask if you need to 😊

Thanks for reading the boring stuff. Everything will be up soon!

Summary: An introduction to the secret Stark sister. Who is she? Why was she kept a secret? And what happens when everybody finds out?

Warnings: Abandonment, injury, PTSD, death, blood, but there's plenty of soft love too.

Word count: 1921

SUMMER 2004

MALIBU, CALIFORNIA

"Yes, yes, two seconds!" Tottering over to the front door of her bosses lavish Malibu home, Pepper Potts grumbled under her breath, annoyed by the fact that she was the one answering the incessant knocking. "I’m not your maid, Tony!” Sighing, she unlocked the door and prepared to shoo whichever reporter, play bunny, or cold caller had decided that 10 PM on a Tuesday evening was a good time to show up. However, she was greeted with something entirely unexpected.

“Oh! Hello! Are you lost? Where’s your Mom?" In front of Miss Potts stood a small girl, 7 years of age, a sparkly pink bag held tightly in her little hand. Pepper greeted the young girl with the cheeriest voice she could manage in her surprise. Sticking her head out of the door, she looked around, but with a furrowed brow she realised that they were alone. There wasn’t another figure or car in sight.

“Momma said I had to give you this." In her tiny outstretched hand was a thick envelope. "She said my Daddy lives here.” The look on her face told Pepper that she knew exactly what had happened. Even as young as she was, she had an obvious maturity that would break hearts. Her mother had abandoned her, and the girl understood that entirely.

With eyes so wide it hurt, Pepper took the envelope, peeking inside to find a passport, a letter, and a photograph of Mr Stark and a woman. The girls' mother, Pepper presumed. Shock was written into the PAs face, but she forced a smile all the same. After a quick look at the passport, she ushered the child inside.

"Come on in, Caroline. We’ll sort you out, okay?”

LATE 2008

NEW YORK

A series of loud bangs on her bedroom door pulled Caroline from her daydream. Not even having a chance to respond, the door burst open and three young girls practically fell into her room.

“Turn the TV on!"

“As if you weren’t famous enough!"

“Did you know? You must've known?!"

Wide eyed and clueless as to what her friends were talking about, Caroline blinked back gormlessly as Amelie grabbed the remote and turned the TV on.

“What channel?“

“Can somebody tell me what the hell is going on?" The 11-year-old spoke up, and all three heads turned to face her, humour in their eyes as they stated what was seemingly obvious.

“Your dad, Care.” Caroline knew her Father had been in some trouble. Happy had shown up outside the halls of residence, whisking her away immediately. The panic set in as her heart sped up violently. As the girls scrambled through the channels, they froze as a man in a suit appeared on the screen. Caroline's dad. Tony Stark. They watched in awe as he addressed his audience. As his daughter, she'd watched a few press conferences before. They were a bore, however, she couldn't lie.

The TV remote fell from Amelie’s hand as he spoke the four words that changed history.

“I am Iron Man.”

MAY 2012

MANHATTAN, NEW YORK

Footage of the Chitauri destroying the very ground she stood on flashed through Caroline’s mind. Gripping Happy’s arm as she sobbed, the 14-year-old girl cried out desperately for her Father. Their relationship had been very rocky for a while. He’d rejected his new responsibility at first, leaving Pepper to parent the girl. He’d even shipped her off to boarding school, where he further pushed away his long-lost child. It wasn’t until Pepper dragged him by the sleeve to the young girl’s dorm room and forced him inside that he’d actually spoken to his daughter. From there, they established a solid relationship. Caroline, of course, fell head over heels for her Father. He could do no wrong in her eyes. That never changed, even as she grew.

Fear wracked her body at the thought of Tony not surviving the battle. Staring at the sky, she prayed and prayed that he return from that giant swirling hole of death that currently dominated New York. When she saw his body fall through the sky, her fear both vanished and increased ten-fold.

Later that evening, JARVIS informed her of her Fathers arrival at the beaten-up tower. Racing to find him, she threw her arms around his neck and cried. She cried and cried until she ran out, but she never let go of his hand.

MAY 2015

NOVI GRAD, SOKOVIA

“Daddy?” Her voice came out a whimper. She felt weak and small.

“Hey baby girl, I’m uh…I’m guessing you’ve seen, right? Yeah, it’s bad, Care.”

“Dad, what’s going on?”

“Listen, baby, I’ve gotta end this. Me and Thor, uh, we think we’ve got a way. A lot of people will die if we don’t do this. You're the best thing, you know?" His voice was soft, even as he continued to fight off robots and save the world. The line grew staticky and Caroline couldn’t stop the tears that spilled from her eyes. "I'm so glad you showed up on my doorstep all those years ago. I’m sorry for taking so long."

“Why does it sound like you're saying goodbye? Daddy you're scaring me!” Her voice was a desperate whimper, and a pain in her chest bloomed violently.

“I love you, Caroline. Remember th-" Horror erupted over her features as the line went dead. Not knowing whether she'd ever see him again, she made her way to New York, her heart dragging painfully behind her.

NEW YEARS EVE 2015

AVENGERS COMPOUND

UPSTATE NEW YORK

Caroline and her Father walked through one of the many laboratories of the new compound. On her 18th birthday the Stark girl was offered a position as a biomechanical engineer for the new era S.H.I.E.L.D. program, built following its collapse in 2014. Taking after her Dad, she had excelled in school, and to the amazement of her new bosses, had landed a glowing recommendation from Iron Man himself. The decision for her to live under a different last name to Tony was one he himself had requested in a bid to keep her safe for as long as he could. She had never really met the other Avengers, and only three other people knew of her existence; Pepper, Happy, and Natasha Romanoff. It was easy enough to hide her identity.

Caroline didn’t mind too much. She could still see her parents as much as she pleased, and it prevented any special treatment from schools and professors. Those around Caroline herself knew; her school friends knew, she didn't want to keep a secret from them, and besides, she didn't know any better when she told them at 8 years old.

“How’re you settling in? Are you sure this isn’t too soon? This is too soon. I’m taking you-“ midway through his rambling, Tony realised his daughter both lived and worked at the compound, rendering his threat useless. "I'll take you somewhere. Details, schmetails."

“Dad! Calm down! You’re spiralling. I’m fine, I’m settling in just fine! Now come on, I need to meet everyone.” A proud smile graced the young girls features as she tried to rid her rather of any worry. With a sigh, he took his daughters hand in his own and led her to the Avengers quarters. Separating just before they entered the room, Caroline took a shaky breath.

“Folks gather round. This is our new Doc. With Banner MIA," his brows drew together as he spoke, and his gaze fell to the floor for a second before finding Caroline "she’s our go to! This is Caroline. Caroline Lockwood.” A half smile appeared on his face, the bittersweet moment getting the best of him. After a few brief introductions, the girl bid them goodbye to get ready for one of Tony Starks famous New Year’s Eve parties.

JUNE 2018

AVENGERS COMPOUND

UPSTATE NEW YORK

Pepper sat with her daughter, a blanket around the two of them as they hid. They sat in silence, unable to find the words. Trying to maintain hope when everything around them told them to give up was the hardest battle they'd fought yet. “Momma? We’ll be fine, right? We always win.” Her voice nothing but a whisper in the darkness, she felt her adoptive mothers’ fingers tighten around her own.

“We'll be fine, baby. Your Dad will do what he always does. He'll save us. He'll save everybody.” The sad smile on Caroline's face couldn’t be seen in the dark, but Pepper could tell the moment that it fell. She felt the energy in the air shift. Did they lose? “Baby? Baby what’s wrong?" Placing her soft hands either side of her daughter’s face, she gasped sharply as the blanket fell around them, no longer supported by two bodies. Instead, a dark ash took the place of the youngest Stark.

“I’m sorry, Momma" she choked out before disintegrating completely "I'm sorry.”

Pepper was left alone, covered in heartbreak, grief, and the ashes her child left behind.

OCTOBER 2023

ATLANTA, GEORGIA

"Hey, sweetie. Do you want Mom?" Morgan shook her head and stepped closer to her sister.

“Can you help me? You’re my sister.” With sad, glazed over eyes, Caroline nodded. It's not difficult to sympathise with the two girls. Morgan knew all about her big sister. Stories were told, and pictures were framed in every inch of the house. Morgan idolised her before she’d ever met her. And when, by some miracle, they did meet, it was a few days before their fathers’ funeral. Two days before that, Caroline had been dead.

Dead.

It'd been one hell of a week.

To say the oldest Stark sister walked on eggshells around the younger one would be an understatement. Allowing their relationship to be on Morgan’s terms was the least she could do. The thought that Morgan may reject her completely never left her mind, despite Peppers constant reassurance. “I can braid your hair, if you’d like. Momma taught me when I was a little girl."

"Where's Morgan?" Pepper's voice barely registered in Caroline’s brain. She could feel herself drifting further and further away every day. But she didn't have the strength to fight it.

“Happy took her for cheeseburgers.” A hint of smile traced her mouth, but it didn't stick. It never stuck. The bags under her eyes were heavy and dark, and the once rich brown of her eyes seemed to have dulled miserably. After receiving her own private recording from Stark, she felt as if she'd broken completely. Turning to face Pepper, she struggled to continue, her voice hoarse from crying and screaming in the night. "They should be back an-"

“MOMMY SISSY UNCLE HAPPY BOUGHT EXTRA.” Watching the tiny girl stumble through the door, a brown paper bag clutched tightly to her chest, Caroline just stared in awe. Of course, Morgan was too young to really understand what happened. She missed her Daddy, and she knew he wasn’t coming home, but she managed to smile. Her eyes shined bright as ever. The world hadn't tainted her hope, it hadn’t torn away her faith.

It would be so, so easy to just let go. To just give up and fall into the oblivion that called her name. But in doing so, she'd miss even more time with her sister. Watching her eat with a pensive look on her face, clutching on to Pepper and watching all the strangers around her, Caroline made a choice. She could do it for Morgan. She could hold on and keep going.

So, she did.

TAGS:

@bucky-castiel

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alexanderlightweight · 5 years

Text

like real people do - pt1

ao3 link

Alicante may have been glorious to behold, with tall, cold steeples and looming grey arches, but it was a desolate place. It stood alone, uncaring of the world that had left it behind. A mighty fortress untouched by the destruction that had occurred outside it’s hallowed grounds and untainted by the blood spilled on the edge of it's wards.

Magnus took a moment just to look at it.

Many had come on this journey but few survived, and those that did live to pass on their warnings had never seen more than a glint of grey stone through thick mist. To be here, standing before it’s gates and able to laud it’s glory and might, well it was a humbling experience even for a Warlock of his power and age.

With that in mind he opened up his senses and let his magic guide him, knowing that it would take him safely through twists and turns that had ensnared and devoured others. Even with his magic and knowledge the path was still treacherous. It was a seemingly never-ending hike through waist deep snow and while his magic kept him warm and dry, it did nothing to buoy him or keep him from sinking into the deep drifts that sought to bury him.

Eventually he made it close enough to touch the rough hewn walls and the shiver that racked his body had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the ancient and powerful magic held within those walls.

It made him grateful that he had denied the children who had wanted to come with him.

Clary and Jace, for all that they were fierce warriors of their race, were little more than infants when faced with the larger reality of the world. They trained ever so diligently with their weapons but were currently lost in the euphoria of being the best in a very small pool of applicants. They’d never truly ventured into the world and if they’d joined him they would be no more, lost somewhere in the snowy wake behind him before they could ever fully come into themselves. No, it was better that he’d refused their aid.

Curiosity caused him to turn and look behind him and Magnus found himself unsurprised that the path he’d made was already gone. Whether by wind or by magic, the thick path he’d carved from the snow had been smoothed over, once again creating an untouched and crystalline wasteland for as far as the eye could see. There were shadows in the far off distance and while he knew them for the forest they were, they seemed little more than the night coming early to swallow up what little light peered through the thick, grey sky.

Around him, the storm continued to rage and Magnus wondered just when the last time Alicante had been seen was.

Near the main gate a garden of ice had grown, with delicate flowers protected by sharp decapitating thorns that could freeze a heart before the cold, moving vines had finished strangling an intruder. Yet through it all, Magnus passed unharmed, almost as though he belonged there.

When he finally them, he found that the main doors of Alicante itself were broad, gloriously sturdy openings but Magnus ignored them. There were smarter and safer ways to enter a fortress than the most obvious ones. Magnus had no desire to see just how Alicante greeted her visitors, no matter that his welcome had been much warmer than anticipated thus far.

Magic led him to an alcove, above eye level but not so high that he couldn’t have climbed to it even without magic. It was a smaller door, less ornate but no less sturdy than the main entrance.

Fire arched across the wood in decorative shards of amber and blood hued glass. The wood itself was deceptively warm to the touch, inviting and Magnus’ hand fit to the handle as though it had been made for him.

For a door that had assumedly, not been opened in centuries, it swung open easily. The hinges smooth as if they’d been freshly oiled in preparation for his arrival.

Magnus stepped inside and let out a quiet breath, for the halls of Alicante were warm compared to the frigid temperatures of the landscape. The wind tried to sneak in with him, brisk and hungry in it’s journey yet it reeled back as if struck, unable to descend down the hallway and into the fortress of knowledge.

It gave Magnus hope that the spells and ancient magic that kept Alicante intact, much less thriving, would mean that it’s hoard of knowledge was safe and unharmed from both war and the elements of the land.

Despite the ease of his journey thus far, this was no fairytale.

The torches that lit his way were fed by Magnus’ magic. His feet left no noise on the solid stone floor because he willed it so. The lack of dust and decay was not his doing, but he made sure to cloak himself in a cape of magic that would keep himself from adding any signs of his journey.

A wraith in the night, that was his mission.

An hour into his arrival at Alicante and Magnus was beginning to think that the true protective magic of the library was its ability to confound and confuse him. It hardly needed to use outside elements to kill intruders when it’s deceptively warm and inviting halls continually led them astray from their goal. Every turn he made simply offered a new path and a doorless corridor that seemed to go nowhere.

It wasn’t until he lashed out with his magic, its normally soothing blue turning a dark and impatient red, that Magnus was led from the outer battlements of the library to it’s inner sanctum. Beneath his magic and before his eyes, the grey and silver walls of Alicante melded to form a hidden, insignificant doorway and Magnus’ breath snared as he opened it.

Warm, rich tones of wood made up the floors and was so richly imbued with magic that he doubted it could be scratched, even from a diamond-tipped implement. The walls here were full of color, made from smooth and vibrant stones that crossed patterns naturally. All earthen colors and inviting in a way that he would never have imagined from this particular library.

The furniture he came across echoed the pattern. Large cushions and polished wood and then the books Alicante was known for started to appear.

At first they were sparsely placed across his path. The shelves that lined the halls held both trinkets and scrolls and tomes but never more than a few of each and none invited his magic.

Once, out of mere curiosity, he browsed through a shelf, flicking open a book to find an encyclopedia of all things. Rare and old to be true, but hardly an ancient magical tome of wisdom, nor half so priceless as the sapphire helm it lay beside or the scroll holding a long forgotten potion that healed the body of blight.

It was with a deep and tragic wistfulness that Magnus forced his fingers to do nothing more than trail gently along the edges of the scroll as he set it down and left it behind.

The amount of knowledge he could gain here, the temptation that wore on him to settle into these hallways and simply learn could easily consume someone and it was no wonder that none who made it to Alicante had returned. Or perhaps, this was more Magnus’ folly than anyone else's.

Magnus wasn’t sure how long he searched before the silence that had haunted his footsteps disappeared, interrupted by an eclectic staccato dance of crackling pops and arching snaps. He followed the noise around a corner and found himself at an open door. It was made of solid oak and so expertly designed that Magnus had to reach out and run his fingertips over the carvings on it.

The room itself was warm and already lit by a steady fire that roared in an ornate hearth. Magnus’ gaze skimmed over the shelves that lined the walls but his attention was pulled to the fire and a dark bundle there. At first, he thought it was merely a lump of blankets or cushions and it wasn’t until he drew closer that he realized it was someone and not something.

It was no wounded adventurer or antiquated skeleton, instead the sleeping figure embossed on a thick fur rug seemed hale and timeless in the warm glow of flame. His hair was dark and his features so stunning that Magnus had to first check himself for enchantments and when he found none, wondered at the sight before him.

In that moment, Magnus forgot about his goal and all the hope that rested upon his shoulders. Everything in him narrowed down to focus on the sleeping vision before him and his magic flared, automatically checking the room for traps as though it knew Magnus would suffer nothing that tried to distract or detain him.

“Who are you?” Magnus asked the silent room, awe that had no business being there sneaking into his voice. “Never-mind that,” he quickly murmured to himself, gathering his wits and magic as he knelt by the sleeper’s side. Blue flames flickered from his fingertips and kissed the man’s face as Magnus tried to heal any unseen injuries and check for curses. Magic was thick around him, like a heavily weighted blanket laid casually about the sleeper’s form, but it was not malicious.

In fact there was nothing overtly dangerous at all and Magnus’ magic was silent in return as he wondered just what Alicante had done to the sleeping figure for him to be so still, like a statue carved from flesh but never gifted life. Despite his worries, the man was definitely alive and Magnus could feel soft little puffs of breath tickle his hand and the delicate jump of a pulse as he pressed his fingers to the man’s throat. Unsure exactly what he was doing or if it was helping, he added more magic to his touch and finally rested his palm over the other’s heart, feeling it’s gentle but steady beat and echoing the tempo with his magic.

It took a moment for the foreign magic to respond, opening up just enough for his own magic to slip through and begin the delicate process of waking the man up.

“Here,” Magnus said when he caught the first twitch of lips and the flutter of an eyelash. “Don’t open your eyes too quickly,” he murmured, keeping his voice soft. A twist of his wrist and a gentle flare of his magic summoned a glass, “sip slowly now, I’m not sure how long the spells would have kept you asleep.”

“Spells?” The man murmured against the glass and Magnus pulled it away, unthinkingly reaching out and brushing away the lingering drops of water from the man’s lips before they could fall.

They were soft under his touch. Unparched by time and Magnus found a part of him grateful that at least whatever spells had bound this being here, wrapped in magic and entrapped by slumber, had been kind to his body.

Eyelashes fluttered again and a confused grimace pulled tightly on the corners of his eyes before wide, hazel orbs were revealed and Magnus nearly stumbled over in his delight to see them.

“Oh, hello.” Magnus said, breathless from the sudden punch of affection that had mistakenly torn into his heart. He’d expected some relief perhaps, it would be only natural to feel excitement at meeting someone else who had survived mostly intact from Alicante’s perils, but he found that his heart beat for quite a different reason instead.

“Hi.”

“How are you feeling?” Magnus asked and then mentally reoriented himself, “I’m Magnus by the way.”

“Alec, I’m Alec.” Alec’s voice was a surprisingly smooth rumble and the firelight flickered a warmth over his face that tinted his eyes and shadowed his lips. Magnus unconsciously reached out, hand hovering by Alec’s mouth.

“The magic on you was-” Magnus hesitated as he struggled to find the words to explain. “It wasn’t anything harmful, but it was a very deep magic. I’m not sure how long you were asleep for.”

“Don’t worry,” Alec, whose name was no doubt Alexander, told him. A strong hand caught his wrist, thumb soothing circles against his pulse, “it hasn’t been all that long.”

“How do you know?” Magnus asked, unable to not feel worry as he pressed his other hand to Alec’s brow. It was thankfully cool but that didn’t mean there weren’t hidden ailments in Alec’s body. “It could have been tens of years or even a few centuries that you were trapped here. Stasis magic like that often does a great deal of hidden damaged." He explained but this time he kept his hands to himself, however much he wanted to reassure himself with touch.

“It hasn’t even been a decade,” Alec said and his eyes softened. “I appreciate the concern, really. But I’m fine. I was just napping and slept a little deeper than I realized, that’s all. Honestly, I’m surprised I didn’t wake up when you made it through the wards.”

“Napping?” Magnus asked, wondering what element of the curse made it’s bearer think that such a long sleep was akin to a nap. Even immortals exhausted with life didn’t just take a nap that stretched out for years. “You don’t... forgive me, but you don’t seem surprised that you slept for so long.”

“Mmm, no. If you hadn’t come I would have slept for at least another decade.” Alec stretched as he spoke, arms up as rolled his muscles and spine. “I was tired and the storm had been giving me a headache with all that hail so I took a nap.”

“The storm was giving you a headache?”

“The wards send empathic feedback to me.” Alec said, as if he were commenting on the dreariness of the weather rather than the fact that he was intimately affected by it.

Whatever thoughts Magnus was having were snipped in the bud as Alexander’s knowledge of social niceties had clearly been left back in dreamland. Not that Magnus was in any opposed to suddenly having a gorgeous being try to climb into his lap, merely confused by it. He reached out and whether it was to stop Alec or help him he didn’t know. What he did know was that he found himself with his hands firm on Alec’s hips as he helped to steady a sleep-muddled and beautiful man who seemed very content with his new position.

“You’re really beautiful,” Alec said as he peered closely at Magnus’ face.

“Thank you Alexander.” Magnus managed through a dry mouth and he found himself staring somewhat bewildered into large, luminous eyes that blinked happily at him.

Alec’s shirt was vintage -of an outstanding quality that Magnus remembered from centuries ago- and unfastened which was suddenly much more obvious with how close he was. If Magnus were a lesser man he would probably have lowered his hand and petted at Alec’s exposed torso, to feel the warmth of his skin and see if he purred. Alec looked like he would and Magnus was more tempted by that possibility than he’d been by any of Alicante’s treasures.

In an effort to control his wandering thoughts and hands, Magnus cleared his throat and put his hand on Alec’s arm instead, “maybe we should try getting you up.”

After a moment Alec nodded and placed both of his hands on Magnus’ shoulders for balance before pushing himself up with fluid roll of his hips that Magnus felt was honestly, completely unnecessary and more than a little unfair. The motion made his breath catch in his throat and he coughed again, hoping that he’d gotten sick on his journey here and this was just a symptom of a cold.

Alec swayed for a moment, looking curiously down at his own feet as if surprised by the sight of them and then offering a hand to Magnus. Magnus felt weightless with the ease that Alec pulled him up and found himself looking around the softly lit room, trying to distract himself by looking for clues.

“Alexander, have you been here very long?” He supposed that it was entirely possible -though quite unlikely- that Alec had been a caretaker of the library. Kept alive and young by magic and sleep, either a remnant of the library when it had been first lost, or a traveler who’d found it by accident and since been trapped.

“All my life,” Alec told him, “I took my first breath here”

“This, well,” Magnus paused diplomatically, “it’s a very interesting place to be born.”

“Hatched.” Alec said, as though it were an important distinction and Magnus supposed in a way, it truly was. “My mother’s nest was deep below, where the frost lingers even in the summer and ice crystals form as perfectly as the crystals that are mined.”

“Oh, how lovely.” Magnus said, for lack of a better response and Alec smiled at him, a beautifully gorgeous turn of his lips that Magnus’ couldn’t quite appreciate when his brain was somersaulting frantically.

AN - this is my long awaited DRAGON AU AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HAPPY I AM TO START SHARING IT

#shadowhunters #malec #magnus bane #alec lightwood #malec fic #adventure #fluff #spells #magic #my fic #fanfic #fanfiction #my writing #dragon!au #like real people do #shadowhunters fic #sh fic

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they-handed-me-the-moon · 5 years

Text

Okay, so I went to see a screening of the first episode of Good Omens last night and Neil Gaiman was there to answer some questions, and it was. Very amazing to be there.

Unfortunately the interviewer wasn’t great, but there were still fantastic moments and lots of details I hadn’t heard before, so I’ve put the highlights of the conversation with Gaiman under the cut. Major disclaimer here, though: I didn’t record any of the conversation and didn’t take notes during the panel. I wrote down all the interesting bits I could remember immediately after, but none of this is Gaiman’s own phrasing unless I specify otherwise, and its entirely possible that I’ve accidentally fudged some of the details.

There’s here that I’d consider a spoiler, but in case anyone is being particularly careful I’ve separated anything that could be seen as sort of vaguely spoiler-y.

Anyhow, here goes:

Okay, my absolute favorite story that I hadn’t heard before was when Gaiman was talking about the audition process. Apparently when they started searching, all the audition tapes were horribly, horribly, horribly (I clearly remember his triple emphasis here) wrong, but he couldn’t pinpoint why. And then ... Nina Sosanya auditioned for the part of Mary Loquacious. Now, apparently Good Omens has been her absolute favorite book since she was quite young, and she rereads it every year. And according to Gaimen, she just *got it* in a way no one else had. Apparently everyone else, knowing that they were auditioning for a role in a comedic show, was pitching themselves as comic actors. What Nina got, with her understanding of the book, was that the humor doesn’t come from the characters being funny in a making-jokes-and-pulling-faces sort of way. The comedy comes from the circumstances, from the storytelling (whether that’s narration or editing, camera angles, etc), and from characters being completely ridiculous with utter sincerity. Nina, he said, played the role straight and trusted that the comedy would be constructed through and around that. And seeing her act made it click in his mind, to the point that he then told casting directors to look for applicants who played their roles like Nina played hers. So basically what I’m saying is that Nina Sosanya personally saved Good Omens with the power of good acting and being a fan. (I’m tagging @shaxpere just for this, because I feel like you’ll have the appropriate level of appreciation).

Continuing the theme of comic acting not being right for Good Omens, he mentioned that he and Terry were approached through the years by multiple comedic duos who tried to pitch themselves as Aziraphale and Crowley, and they always turned them down without a thought.

I think he also said something about taking the characters seriously even as they and their circumstances are ridiculous, because they aren’t just trying to make the audience laugh, they want them to be invested in the characters. I may be getting things a bit mixed here; but he definitely said something along the lines of wanting the audience to be genuinely emotionally invested in these characters.

He then went on to say that instead of going the comedic duo route, they instead went and got the “premier Welsh actor” (that is one phrase I’m quite sure he used) of his generation and the “premier Scottish actor” of his generation.

From there he went into talking about Aziraphale and Crowley. Regarding their on-screen chemistry, he said: “the chemistry wasn’t instant. During the read-through it was a little awkward at first; they were tripping over each other a bit. But after only about twenty minutes in they started to find their characters and how they exist in relation to each other, and it was like watching them learn to dance.” (Again, I’m very much paraphrasing, but he definitely used the learning to dance phrase).

Next he talked about going out for a meal with some big deal writer fellow (I *think* it was Richard Curtis, the script writer of Love Actually) and Richard asked: “okay, so David and Michael have never acted together, but now that you’ve worked with them you can tell me: which one is actually the better actor?” And gosh of everything that was said that night I wish I could have an exact recording of Gaiman’s answer to that question, because it’s not exactly new, but I’ve heard it more from Tennant and Sheen than Gaiman directly, and the way he said it just made me very happy. But the gist of it was that he genuinely cannot answer that, because when it comes to this show you can’t separate them enough to pit them against one another. He compared them to a film or tv duo, I’ve forgotten who, but one of those pairs that are just impossible to think of apart from one another; it’s never just ‘x’ or just ‘y’, it’s always ‘x and y’. That’s what Tennant and Sheen are as Aziraphale and Crowley, he said. He said they make each other better when they’re acting together, and that, essentially, it’s less like they’re not doing two individual acting jobs but rather are creating a single thing together.

He talked a little more specifically about Sheen’s process of finding his character, and said that for Sheen his breakthrough with Aziraphale was approaching it from the perspective of Aziraphale being an angel and therefore a being of love. Sheen has said that before, but its worth adding than Gaimen then went on to say: “He loves Crowley, he loves books, he loves food, he loves wine, he just loves things”—and I may have misremembered that list a bit, but Crowley was %100 the first thing on it.

Oh, and fun fact: I’ve heard several people talk about how they love the radio adaptation of Good Omens but really feel that it’s missing something without the narrator. Turns out you’re not the only ones: apparently it was listening to the radio drama that convinced Gaiman that there had to be a the narrator in the show.

I imagine he’s said this before, but I haven’t heard it: apparently Good Omens was born in part from Gaimen reading some of Douglas Adams’s work, thinking, “I could write that sort of humor,” and then sitting down and writing that first portion of Good Omens that he sent to Terry Pratchett.

Speaking of Pratchett he mentioned how he really made this show for him several times, and that’s not new I just :,)

He talked about two deleted scenes I hadn’t heard about! They were initially supposed to be the scenes introducing Aziraphale and Crowley. I sort of missed the context of Crowley’s scene, but I think it was him messing with the phone lines? Which he apparently did by, um, recruiting a bunch of rats. Which implies that, a). He can talk with rats? Like there’s a bit of a conversation in the scene that they seem to understand. And b). he can either control rats or has some sort of business arrangement with them. Personally I lean towards the latter. So yeah. I don’t have any particular thoughts about this but it does raise Questions.

Aziraphales’s scene was him on the phone doing something book related (I believe he was negotiating a deal/trying to find a rare book, possibly Agnes Nutter’s prophecies) while doing helpful little miracles like keeping a pram from tipping over or something. Ultimately I don’t really miss either of those scenes, especially since the Crowley one had a bit of dialogue I’m happy to be without, but the Aziraphale scene in particular sounds solid, especially if he’s being snippy on the phone while absently doing pleasant little miracles.

Kinda-sorta-vaguely-spoilery-stuff:

The panel began with the interviewer saying something about how closely the first episode sticks to the book (that’s it that’s the whole spoiler; like I said these aren’t really spoilers) to which Gaiman said something like, “Well, I guess that’s what happens when the author writes the show and is also the showrunner who decides whether to approve the script.”

The first few minutes of the show are a tribute to Douglas Adams, and specifically to the film or tv adaptation (I forget which) of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I’m not going to explain what Gaiman meant by that because a). you can piece it together when you watch, and b). I’ve never seen either adaptation so I’m not actually sure what he meant.

#okay that's it!#there were some other things i really enjoyed #but this is already very long #and the rest was either general stuff about writing and stories #or things i've already heard elsewhere #that he didn't add anything new to #anyway i'm not gonna tag this #because i just remembered he's here on tumblr #and while i can't imagine he'd read this if he came across it #i really don't want to tempt fate with the chance #of him reading me extensively misquoting him

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mr-meekers · 5 years

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January Book Reviews

Hopefully, once a month, towards the end of the month, I’ll sit down to type out little reviews for all the books I’ve read this month. It’s my goal this year to read more, and, equally as important, finish more books (even if I don’t like them.)

So let’s get started!

1. Loveboat, Taipei by Wen

I initially started reading this book to participate in a book club coming up in February. I didn’t think I’d like it much as it lies pretty far out of my wheelhouse being not only contemporary fiction but also a teen romance. Now, I can definitely get into these things, but my problem with those genres is that they fall so so so easily into the usual tropes that are, honestly, just very annoying. Like, love triangles and love at first sight and “there was a misunderstanding that occurred that one small conversation could clear up but I’m gonna stew about it for the rest of the book” kinda tropes. I’m just tired of them and can’t stand them anymore and I know the genre can do better.

Loveboat does. It really does. I’m still surprised I liked it so much.

Basically, the story centers around Ever, who is the eldest daughter of Chinese immigrants. Typical story ensues- her parents want her to be a doctor, and basically guilt her into following their life plan for her while never really giving her a choice and making all her decisions for her. But Ever wants to dance and this is what sets up the main conflict in the story: what Ever wants vs. what her parents want for her, and all the hard choices and consequences that come from such a conflict. The majority of the story takes place at a summer school in Taipei where a bunch of fancy, high achieving Asian kids go to not only make connections, but make connections~~~ if you catch my drift. Ever is convinced she’ll hate it- her parents forced her to go, signed up for all her classes for her, and even snuck a bio textbook into her luggage with a not so subtle hint to study. So, our main conflict begins. Ever decided to break every ridiculous rule her parents ever set for her. And the plot unfold from there.

Yes, there are two love interests. I’ll hive ya that. But the relationships in this book aren’t based in convenience. They feel real and well thought out and genuine. A lot of great themes are explored, from the good ol’ “finding yourself” meme to the different kinds of burdens our families can put on us, and whether or not we decide to carry them forever. The characters felt deep and by the end, I was truly happy for them. Loveboat, Taipei gets a 4 out of 5 from. Definite recommendation.

2. The Guinevere Deception by White

A new take on the Arthurian legend has us following Guinevere instead of the Once and Future King. I’ m not a fan of Kiersten White’s other books and stopped reading them before I could finish them, I did thoroughly enjoy this one. I’m a sucker for a good fantasy with a strong female lead and this is just that. We all kinda know the legend of King Arthur already, and White does a good job of adding in elements from the original story but then twisting them to make them her own. Despite the lack of romance (something else I also thoroughly enjoy) for most of the book, I still found myself hooked on the plot and guessing and wondering what would happen next.

The plotline starts pretty simply, but with a major twist. We start with Guinevere being escorted to Camelot to wed Arthur. But, it is soon revealed that this is not the real Guinevere. The true princess is dead and buried (I forget the CoD) and this girl, the daughter of Merlin, has been disguised to take her place. No one can know who she is, for magic is banned in Camelot, and she is a witch herself. Merlin has sent her to Arthur’s side to protect him from a mysterious magical threat he sees coming. But that’s all he will tell her about it. Now, Guinevere must protect a king and his city and so much more. I can’t say much more without spoiling it, but even if it may seems a little bit dull at first, I did truly enjoy myself by the end. I’m excited for the second book.

Again, I give this a 4 out of 5. Certainly worth picking up.

3. The Rogue King by Owen

This is a fantasy romance I picked up for shits and giggles. I am of the opinion that most fantasy romances are cringey, tropey, and just downright awkward. I have a very, very difficult time finding ones with actual plots and characters that feel more like people that convenient transportable genitalia. But, I must say, Abigail Owen’s Rogue King was none of those things... for the most part.

The story centers around Kasia, a phoenix shape shifter, and Brand, a dragon shape shifter. Now, there’s a lot of shifter politics to unpack, but the basics are that dragons and phoenixes usually mate because they both revolve around fire. Phoenixes then bless their mate’s clan and make that dragon the king of all kings and clans. It’s, like, a big deal. So Brand is out for revenge against the reigning High King and if he delivers Kasia to the Blue Clan king, he can finally have his revenge. And we go from there.

The thing I liked about this book was that it did have an actual plot. There were things going on besides focusing on the two leads going at it and falling in love. I mean, they still do, but there’s stuff in between that matters this time. In fact, the love making was the thing I mostly had a problem with. Kasia and Brand’s relationship felt too forced. It’s played off as “they’re mates and it’s destiny” but it just feels rushed and awkward and at times, random.

The second book comes out later this year, but I’m not sure I’ll pick it up. Still, it gets a 3 from me. Not the worst thing I’ve ever read.

4. The Wallflower Wager by Dare

Too cute. It was too cute. Yes, it was your typical 1800s London high society “fall in love with this duke and pretend you know what the word “rake” means” kinda story but still! It was good!!

We follow Penny, a young woman who has taken to caring for stray animals that no one seems to want, including (but not limited to) a dog with no back legs, a goat that is definitely certainly entirely not pregnant she assures you, and a parrot from a whore house that says “Fancy a fuck, love?” all the time and is genuinely funny. Her new neighbor, the notorious Gabriel, is renovating his new house to sell for profit and having a menagerie next door is not helping his property value. The two must work together to find suitable homes for all of Penny’s beloved creatures before the month is up, or else she’ll be forced to move out.

Obviously, they fall madly in love in this month. And their romance does seem natural and heart warming and the sex is fantastic. The ending made me tear up it was too gosh darn sweet. I can’t spoil it for you, but know that it was wholesome AF. It gets a solid 4 from me. I desperately wish there was more.

5. The Merciful Crow by Owen

Just my cup of tea. A good fantasy story with a strong female lead and wonderful romantic interest. The not so subtle themes of classism, racism, and the way the privileged avoid holding themselves accountable are very topical for the day, but also timeless in their application. Other themes like the cost of selflessness, going after what you want, balancing your needs with those of others, and being the first to strike change are all heavily applied, as well, and beautiful done.

The story follows Fie, a Crow girl destined to be beaten down by her own countrymen for the simple act of existing. Crows are the only caste in the country of Sabor immune to the Sinner’s Plague and thus are the ones who deal with the bodies. For a price. When Fie and her clan collect two dead lordlings from the palace, she certainly didn’t expect them to still be alive. Turns out, the prince is on the run from a queen who wants him dead. If the Crows can deliver him to his allies, he swears a Covenant Oath to grant them protection from the Oldeanders, not-so-subtle references to the KKK in their white sheets and nightly raids on Crow camps, killing as many of them as they can before dawn. It’s a deal too good to pass up, so Fie’s Pa, their chief, agrees.

This story is just... so many things. Before I forget, though, I want to congratulate Margaret Owen for the fantastic LGBT representation. Within the first few chapters, we already have non-binary/gender non-conforming character in Madcap, who uses they/them pronouns. The prince is gay. Tavin, his bodyguard, is bisexual. The kingdom’s master general is not only pansexual but polygamous. Fie is the only character of importance who seems straight, but even then we don’t really know as there are no other women her age around (there are other women, but Crows mingle only with Crows, and their bands are small). The romance here, while some may say is too hasty, I say felt just right. It’d been building and building and building and then finally happened and it was like letting out a breath. But even more satisfying was Fie’s character arc, and the Prince’s too, maybe even more so. So much happens and there is so much growth that I really just need you all to read it for yourselves and see.

5 out of 5 for me.

Thanks for reading this far! Hopefully there will be more reviews up in another month!

#book reviews #ya fantasy #ya romance #romance #fantasy #loveboat taipei #the guinevere deception #the merciful crow #the rogue king #the wallflower wager #Tessa dare #Abigail owen #Margaret owen #books #teen books #meekers

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xaeneron · 5 years

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A Smol Nerd Talks about Backstory and Character Development

Hello frens,

I had someone ask about how I write character backstories, but since they included their discord information in the ask, I thought it might be better to answer that privately and put up this as a public post because the more I wrote, the more obnoxious it got. And because I thought it was interesting! I don’t claim to be an expert at any of this, especially since this is purely a hobby to me, but I do absolutely love character design and development and it makes me happy that the characters that I’ve put time and effort into are encouraging others to develop their own. So this is absolutely a post to skip if you’re not interested, but read on if you’re curious as to how my weird little brain works.

Essentially: Bits of insight into how I write character backstories, which blends a lot into character development and creation. Not really a step by step process, more word vomit.

...under a cut because holy fuck it got long. I’m sorry, I talk too much ><

Visualizing Characters

I’m not sure there’s really a starting place beyond “I would like this character to exist,” but I think it’s important to first stress how I view my characters in perspective to myself. No one method works for everyone, but it is kind of relevant to my own process.

My friends in undergrad made fun of me for this constantly, but for me, characters sort of...how do you put it, take up space in the mind. Even though they are functionally me since I created them, they’re...not? They exist as their own entities, telling me what they like and don’t like, what they’d like to do next, etc. Ive, who has dominated this space for years, has a tendency to claim any music that I listen to as his own (so I associate it with him), throws parties, and wants to play and write more stories when I want to sleep. I get that this is a really weird way of looking at characters because I’m essentially blaming myself for keeping myself awake, but I think it’s the best way to describe how I see the characters that I create. They’re friends that talk, and they develop their own opinions instead of me dictating what it is that they say (even though...well, I am. I’m sorry this is really fucking weird LOL).

Obviously I’m not saying that this can or would work for anyone, but it’s just how my brain works. It helps me visualize them, along with details like how their voices sound, the facial expressions they tend to make, the tone that they take when saying the same phrase as someone else, etc.

Assembling Personalities...

I know the original question was essentially just about backstories, but backstory writing and character creation bleed into each other a lot. Enough that I don’t really think you can do one without the other, and why as a result I’m kind of writing about both.

So that being said, when assembling those characters, I tend to go piece by piece and let things happen, instead of distilling in all the characteristics I want them to have. That’s a pretty surefire way to make a Mary Sue, and I have plenty of experience with making Mary Sues. A lot. It’s embarrassing. ;A;

Let’s take Ive, for example. His initial personality when I first made him was a happy-go-lucky, debonair, massive flirt without a care in the world. He waltzed through life, never getting attached to anyone or anything. A fairly simple and shallow character base. As I played, pieces just kind of came together - some from the Commander’s in-game characterization, and some from my own ideas. I let him pick up different facets of his personality over time, some good, some bad.

This works because Ive’s personality wasn’t set in stone from the get-go and changed drastically as time went on, but if you do have a personality you have your heart set on, then make sure your character responds to new challenges accordingly. Consistency is key, and the way they act in the present can also help you road map their past, figuring out how they got to where they are. And who knows, if you take another look, they might surprise you.

...Including the Weird Shit

Sometimes the tiniest quirks help make characters memorable to you, and help shape who they were and grow up to be. One of my OCs, Beck, is an obfuscating idiot who legitimately knows his way around a blade and is insanely clever when he wants to be. He also has a random deadly allergy to mangoes. Does he have a story that he (somewhat) fondly looks back on where his adopted daughter chases him around with a mango in retaliation for making fun of her? By golly yes he does. Is it important to the overall narrative? No. But does it establish more of his relationship with his daughter, even when she’s an adult? Yes. It also is the sort of anecdote that can snowball - what was he saying that was bad enough for her to chase him with tropical fruit? How did she even get a mango in the first place? Does she have a crush on someone? What sort of person is that? Is it someone new in town, or is it a stranger? What makes them different? Is Beck just assuming, and if so, is it because he’s dense or because he’s just trying to be a doting father? Even little things count, especially when sometimes it’s the anecdotes and sides stories that help make the world and characters you’re creating feel more real.

Write What You Know

This is pretty common advice, but it’s also pretty solid advice. It’s also something that I do often. None of my characters are straight self-inserts (arguably), but many of them have one or more facets of my personality, which makes it much easier for me to write them. Anyone who knows me personally will attest to this, particularly when you begin to note the amount of deadpan snarkers that my cast contains. My primary OCs (who don’t show up much here unfortunately) range from politely snarky to full on deadpan. Ive and Etiery are prime examples of this, while Richter also has his moments. Sharing traits with you helps writing their dialogue and motivations more organically, because again, it’s not what you want them to do, it’s how they would react as a living individual. If you’re not a naturally sarcastic person, it’s going to be harder to develop and accurately write a sarcastic character, etc. (Flashbacks to when I was a kid and my attempt at sarcasm and wit was “Go home old man, nobody needs you.”) Not impossible, of course, but something to keep in mind.

It’s not just personality, either. Rayne (one of my OCs) and Etiery are a chemist and engineer respectively because that is what I am. Part of the way their brains work stems from the fields that they choose to specialize in, and as someone in that field, I do have a certain amount of experience in thinking from that perspective. It’s okay to base characters on yourself or people you know, or take bits and pieces from people here or there. Again, it grounds you, and if you can write a realistic personality, you can write a more fleshed out backstory for said character, taking into account their motivations and decision-making.

Balancing Story vs. Personality

Part of storytelling is, well, getting across the story that you want to tell. In that, characters are instruments to help you move that plot forward. But if you’re fleshing out your characters, you also want the plot to be a vehicle to help them develop. Really, it depends on the story you want to tell and how you want to tell it, but if you’re like me and you focus first on characters, then my mindset is probably more applicable.

Essentially though, find a balance. You might need someone to do something for the sake of the plot, but think about if the one you’re picking is a good candidate for it, or if it’s better suited for someone else. If no one fits, maybe you need to take a look at the story step you’re making, or at the characters you’ve created. Remember also that although it’s easy to look at things objectively as an author and say things like “that’s so obvious, they shouldn’t go that way,” a character may still make that choice in the moment. Judgment - present, past, or future - can be questionable as it happens.

Pay Attention to the Timeline

This one’s pretty straightforward. One of the easiest things to mess up is to make your character too old or too young to be doing the things that they’re currently doing. Check and double-check. If you’re writing into an established timeline like GW2′s, make sure your character’s timeline fits with the established lore (unless you are very specifically breaking it for some reason). Ive, for example, is not one of the older generations of sylvari, but he is older than the sylvari protagonist in-game to account for his extra time spent training to compensate for his lack of eyesight. Keeping track of when events happen, often simultaneously, will help you decide how characters act and react - Etiery would not have been so kind (relatively speaking) to Ive had she met him before her fallout with her father, and as a result, they might never have become best friends, or friends at all.

Look at Things from All Angles

It’s important to look at a character and ask where they got certain characteristics from - are they naturally this kind/sarcastic/flirty/angsty/mean/etc., or did something happen that catalyzed that? If you’re writing backstory to explain that, take a look at the world you’re in or that you’re building - does the story you’re telling fit reasonably? Really challenge yourself to stay within your (universe’s) rules, instead of being tempted to bend them to make your character (and their story) exactly what you want. All universes have rules, and unless it is a specific plot point to break them, make sure you follow them! Making impossible loopholes to make sure your character has a degree by age 12 or can resurrect someone perfectly when the magic is explicitly stated to not exist can weaken your story and your character!

Richter is a good example of my personal thought process, being a glasses-wearing necromancer whose backstory is a street rat. He’s tall and awkward as an adult, so it’s not unreasonable that he was once a tall and gawky kid, the kind of kid whose arms are too long and everyone picks on. How does a kid like that survive on the streets? One of his major traits is the fact that he’s a bookworm: if he was orphaned, where did he learn to read? If he had parents long enough to teach him rudimentary reading skills (which he did), how much practical experience did he lose out on since he spent less time alone on the streets? As someone with a strong moral compass, Richter had to find a way to justify committing crimes to survive. A child like that would probably be too frightened to ask Grenth’s clergy or anyone at the schools in Divinity’s Reach (which he could not afford) to teach him in necromancy. How does he learn as a result? Is he afraid of his powers? Do people treat him differently because of them?

It’s kind of what I mean when I say pieces start falling into place. Start with a detail that you want for sure, and build up from that while maintaining its feasibility in the world that you’re working in.

And Don’t Ignore the Random

Seriously, I think this is my favorite part. Sometimes the things that you don’t expect sneak up on you and make it in. Fun fact for anyone fond of Ive: he originally wasn’t blind. OG Ive had nothing physically wrong with him. One day I was showing my friend my GW2 characters, including Ive in his full Rubicon set. I was nervous that she wouldn’t think it was as cool as I did, so I joked (although I would have anyway) that I didn’t know how he would see with the brim of the hat pulled so low. She replied, “Well, what if he has the hat pulled so low because he’s blind and it doesn’t matter to him?”

I chewed on that idea for the next day and a half, and suddenly a lot of things fell into place - why Ive and Eet get along as well as they do, more justification for Ive’s growing, below-the-surface jaded personality, an obstacle for him to overcome. I drowned in feels and texted her, and to this day it is still very much her fault that Ive can’t see.

His lack of vision is now one of the central pillars of his character, and it’s something I hadn’t even considered before my friend mentioned it in jest. So don’t ignore random inspiration!

#xae replies #anon ask response #character development #backstory #a lot of word vomit under the cut #i'm sorry in advance #I think about this shit a lot #lolol #I also love talking about my characters #so #ask away #conversation is welcome!#thanks if you bothered to read all of the vomit LOL

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mybeautifulchristianjourney · 5 years

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The Christian's Pilgrimage

by Charles Bradley

"He found him in a desert land and in the wasteland, a howling wilderness; He encircled him, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple of His eye. As an eagle stirs up its nest, hovers over its young, spreading out its wings, taking them up, carrying them on its wings, so Yahweh alone led him." - Deuteronomy 32:10-12

These words are a part of that sublime song which Moses addressed to the children of Israel a short time before his death. His beautiful description of the loving-kindness of Yahweh can with equal propriety be applied to His people in every age. Scripture itself warrants the application (2 Tim. 3:16). We may derive from them, therefore, two subjects of consideration: first, the state in which the Almighty finds his servants; and, second, the manner in which he acts toward them.

Scripture represents us in the past as being a great way off from our Father's house. Between him and us was a dreary wasteland impossible for us ever to pass. We were enemies of God by wicked works, transgressors of that unalterable law that declares "the soul that sins, it shall die." We were the willing slaves of Satan, tied and bound with the chain of a thousand lusts.

Equally dangerous is our condition in this present world. We are inhabitants of a territory where Satan goes about "seeking whom he may devour." We are surrounded by thousands who have formed a league with the prince of darkness to rob the Redeemer of his jewels and to drag to destruction the people whom He is anxious to save. It is indeed impossible to contemplate without wonder the escape of any sinner from the dangers that surround him in the world. The more we know of our own hearts -- of their earthly and sensual nature, the unconquerable hatred to vital godliness and its almost irresistible influence over our own minds -- the more shall we tremble at the greatness of the danger from which we have been rescued, and the more shall we dread the snares with which we are surrounded.

This is the wretched wilderness into which we and all mankind have wandered, and from which none but an almighty arm can deliver. We may suspect no danger, and yet our souls may be in a wilderness that borders upon hell.

Now let us inquire into what manner the Almighty acts toward his people in this wretched and dangerous condition.

God's conduct is illustrated by the conduct of the eagle in our text. This bird is said to bear a peculiarly strong affection to her offspring and to manifest it in a very extraordinary manner. When she considers the young birds sufficiently strong to leave the nest, she stirs them up in order to induce them to leave. At the same time, she flutters her wings over them that they may be encouraged to try their own. If these means do not succeed in their leaving the nest on their own, it is said that she spreads her wings and places her young on them and then soars into the air. Then gliding from underneath them, she thus compels them to attempt to fly. If, however, she perceives that they are unable to sustain themselves, she darts under them again to prevent their fall and places them once more in the nest.

This beautiful similitude strikingly illustrates the tenderness with which the Almighty led Israel from Egypt to Canaan, and the loving-kindness which he still manifests toward all who seek him in the wilderness of this world. It tells us, first, that he afflicts them. The Lord does not allow his children to remain at ease in the world, but renders them dissatisfied with it and thus leads them to seek a better country.

Is affliction then a blessing? It was so to Israel; their nest was stirred up in Egypt. And what was the consequence? They desired and obtained deliverance from the house of their bondage. Is not that a blessing which forces the wandering prodigal to think of the home he has forsaken and brings him back again to his father's arms? O brethren, if poverty and sorrow, if perplexity and trouble, if pain and sickness will but wean our hearts from this wretched earth and cause our souls to long for heaven, if they will but force the tear of penitence and love to flow, if they will but promote and sweeten our communion with God and make us more suitable for the enjoyment of him in his kingdom, then let us ever regard such afflictions as blessings. Let us welcome them as friends. Let us be thankful.

Second, there are, indeed, some seasons in the Christian's pilgrimage wherein he finds it difficult to believe that God has not forsaken him. Affliction heaped upon affliction presses on his head. The consolations which he once enjoyed are withdrawn. His way seems hedged up with thorns and all around is mystery and darkness. And yet at the very moment when he is well nigh borne down with the weight of his sorrows and perplexities, and can scarcely lift up a last and almost despairing cry for help, he feels the everlasting arms of Yahweh placed underneath him. He hears his voice saying, "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flame scorch you" (Isa. 43:1,2).

Third, the similitude in the text reminds us that the loving-kindness which God exercises toward his people he exercises with delight, with the same pleasurable feelings with which a tender-hearted parent watches over and provides for his child. The Bible tells us that the Lord "delights" in the mercy which he pours out on them that seek him. It warrants us to conclude that his chief delight is not in the angels who surround his throne with rapturous hallelujahs, but in that broken-hearted, contrite sinner who comes to him fearing his name, mourning over his rebellion against him, and thirsting for salvation.

All the above is calculated to remind us of the many grounds of consolation and thankfulness we have. It calls upon us to trust implicitly in God, and shows us a solid foundation on which to build our confidence. It assures us that the Lord will not allow his people, those whom he has formed for himself and on whom he has lavished so much grace, to be ruined by the calamities of this life. Neither will he allow them to be touched by the miseries of another, for he has already removed the sorrows of eternity far from them. And as for "the afflictions of this present time," the text declares that he has turned them into blessings! It tells us that the trials which seem so grievous to us are only a part of our purchased inheritance, that our heaviest sorrows are among our highest privileges.

Surely, then, it becomes us to receive every cup of affliction at least with patience and submission. It does not become the child of God to indulge a fearful, disconsolate, murmuring spirit while receiving blessings from his hand. And if there be any creature in the universe who has reason to trust in God and to hope in his mercy, it is he whom affliction has stopped in his thoughtless career of sin, whom sorrow has taught to pray, and whom adversity has led to seek refuge in Christ. Instead of drawing grounds for fear from frowning providences, painful trials, and perplexing difficulties, such a man has reason to rejoice exceedingly in his tribulation, to weep with gratitude and to burn with love for such a loving God. In every hour of suffering and sorrow, he has these words of his Savior to depend upon: "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom" (Luke 12:32).

#Charles Bradley #devotional reading #The Christian's Pilgrimage #Deuteronomy 32:10-12

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ruinfell · 5 years

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[DRABBLE] A Talk in the Woods

There was a cool breeze out that night – not too chill, or too bustly. A nice time for a walk, and it wasn't like the cold bothered skeletons much anyway. The woods were not wholly barren, and, with the spring air beginning to drift in, the woodlands' residents were awakening and returning.

Papyrus had taken to walking the woods more often lately, but he had asked his brother to accompany him this time. He didn't say as much, but he desired to talk with him, and he picked up on that well enough with his sibling intuition.

It had been a while since they'd really sat down and talked, and Papyrus was nervous. Sans picked up on that well enough, but didn't address it immediately. He remembered how poorly their last real heart to heart had gone, before they officially made the move to the surface-bound timeline. Sans still hadn't grown accustomed to their new home, and rarely spent time here, but he was trying.

"We can stop for a sec if you want," Papyrus suggested, halting and spinning on his heels to face Sans, who trailed behind him sluggishly. They'd kept a slow pace, but they had still gone quite far. "I got a couple thermoses. Thermii?? Of hot chocolate."

Sans was not tired, but… he appreciated the concern, and Papyrus actually addressing him. The silence had been awkward. It, faintly, distantly, reminded him of being led through the wartorn woods on a chain. He did not wish to be in that position again, of being led on a chain, wherever his brother went, with no say and no real agency.

"... yeah, sure." Sans took a seat on a nearby stump. His brother sat nearby on a log, and handed him a thermos, while pulling out his own, popping the cap and taking a decent swig of it.

Skeletons did not have to worry about burning their tongues or scalding their throats so much, seeing as they did not have throats, and did not always have tongues. But they could still indulge in the warmth that hot drinks invited, and the way it could cool nerves, though they lacked those too.

Papyrus spent a moment taking in that warmth, and holding it, before he dared let any of the cold back in by speaking.

"Bro? Can I ask you something?"

Sans knew something was coming, but chose to hold off on answering the question until he'd warmed his palms, and then his jaws and neck, with the welcome beverage. "it's about us staying here, yeah?" That was his guess. Why talk about it here, and now, of all times and places?

"... Yeah. Are you actually okay with this?"

Sans was a little taken aback, his jaw shifting in consideration, and his back straightening from its near ever-present hunch. "why wouldn't I be?"

"Humans, for a start." Papyrus was well aware that was a problem for both of them. "Not gonna pretend I don't get freaked out but uh. My symptoms are probably a lil' easier to manage."

Sans frowned. "i'm not gonna dog out in a mall and start killin' people, pap. i've been dog shoppin' before."

He assumed he would be fine, even if there was more than a little thread of doubt, and quite a hefty chunk of worry dangling at the end of it - he didn't know how well his emotions would be kept in check in such a situation for certain. He knew that war overwhelmed him at a near constant, to the point where it took years for him to regain any normalcy, by seemingly sheer chance.

Papyrus had a great many more concerns, and would come back to that one later. It wasn't the biggest concern, after all.

"I don't wanna keep leadin' you around like you ain't got a choice in it, Sans."

The elder brother very much did not enjoy when his younger sibling took words from his head like that, though he knew full well that at times they may as well be bound twins, and thus privy to reading each other so well. He fully blamed that on how they came to be, though he had no evidence of such.

He shifted a bit on his stump, legs dangling, and heels kicking into the bark in an uncomfortable rhythm. "but that's the thing. i don't. not if i wanna keep up with you."

"But you--"

Papyrus halted his exclamation suddenly. He stared at his brother, swallowing the words that hadn't made it past his teeth, and letting them reform in a moment.

"... You don't have to keep up with me, dude." The weight and gravity of his tone came from its sobriety now, and not its volume. "This isn't like, some thing like with Sunny and Sleepy. I'm not gonna disappear and be a different person one day. You're not gonna forget or lose me. Not as long as we actually talk."

Sans was fortunate for that gravity. Without it, had there been any inch of panic, he would have caught onto it and amplified it, it would have rattled between the walls of his rib cage and grown and grown until it burst from him a thousand fold too large for it. That was the true nature of his curse, and something he had yet to fully shake.

His gaze didn't lift from his thermos, but his legs slowly came to a stop. There was a bit of a sniff.

"If you wanted to shack up in the café timeline, I don't think Sunny would mind. If you feel more comfortable there. Or, hell-- I'm sure Dad would be okay with you staying there too. You don't gotta force yourself to be somewhere that makes you feel uncomfortable."

Sans' grip on his thermos tightened a little, though, fortunately, there was no threat of it being crushed. He simply needed that extra bit of grip, to stay his hands from shaking.

He was safe, for now at least. But he knew the anxiety was welling up in him. He didn't want to disturb this place. He didn't want to lose control of himself when—

"but you're forcin' yourself, pap. you're scared." He could tell, even having not seen the way his brother had worried over applications and spilled his anxieties to his adoptive guidance. "but you're bravin' through it. and i get it. but i'm just not brave like you are. i just deal."

The taller skeleton's face became yet more grave, and his teeth clicked together in a frown, wordless for a time. It was true, he was forcing himself, and he was scared. The fact that he was facing surface life with humans, despite being afraid, meant he could not refute being brave, much as he didn't think himself such. But he could refute that his brother was not also brave, and perhaps more so than he was.

After a good solid minute of thought, Papyrus stood, walked over to his brother's stump, and sat next to him atop it.

"I don't think you're givin' yourself much credit, Sans. Ya forget it's you who took that soul, instead of me?" He nudged the shorter skeleton with his elbow, against the red sweater, about where said soul would be resting. "Even before that. So what if you're not brave the exact same way I am? Don't mean you're not. We're not the same. Even if people like pointin' out how much we got in common with the bastard who made us, heh."

Papyrus took a long swig of his thermos, enough to drain it, and it gave Sans time to really think. His younger brother, he often considered, was the lesser of experience, at least in overall years, but maybe not of wisdom. Sans secluded himself a lot, mostly out of fear and distrust of others, but largely out of fear and distrust of himself. That removed him from a lot of opportunity for experience, and meant Papyrus could catch up — not just catch up, but overtake him.

"you're startin' to sound like one of those fuckin' cwote posts, bro. lay off the tumblr." There was a bit of a smirk from him.

"Oh my god… Anything but that." Papyrus snickered a bit, though that gravity lessened none. "Seriously though. No one minds you bein' around. People want you around. I want you around, and to fuckin’-- have a chance at the surface, y’know? But not if it's gonna fuckin' blow your soul out from anxiety."

It was weird. Sans had always been the one worrying about his brother. It was always his focus in life, his one real purpose. Things had gone astray since their colliding with the multiverse, granted, and a few others had gained his worry, but never to the same degree of his brother. It wasn't just a purpose that Gaster had granted him upon his brother's birth: it was a purpose he fully adopted within his own heart and mind.

He knew that other people had worried for him before. People did care about him. He'd barely heeded them. He'd never really felt like he mattered, not to himself, not if his brother was okay, so it was difficult to believe he mattered to anyone else.

It was weird, that Papyrus worried so much for him. But his heavy, heavy heart, felt lighter for it. The logic felt right; if he actually started taking himself into account, started to look out and after himself in some way… would that help his brother be more okay, too?

Would caring for his own self, be an act of caring for his brother?

It always went back to him. 'You don't have to keep up with me' came back to haunt him from moments before, and he sighed his hectic thoughts out slowly through his nasal cavity. His mind was moving a little too fast; maybe it was trying to stay ahead, rather than keep up.

Papyrus, intuitive as he was, could tell that something was amiss. He let go of his thermos with one hand and wrapped the arm around Sans' shoulders, pulling him into a half-hug.

"You don't gotta figure it all out right this second, dude. Just… figure yourself into the equations while ya do."

"... yeah. i guess." He didn't sound enthusiastic, but he had not stopped thinking just yet. It'd wind down slowly, it had to, because sudden change panicked him.

"And for my part, I'll try to stop runnin' into shit so much without tellin' ya. Like, I'll let you know when I get this job shit figured out, keep you up on my schedules when I do…" Papyrus' cup was stowed in his inventory, and he stood up from the stump. "Y'know, actually try to keep ya in the loop, heh. I know I suck at doin' that, and it don't really help."

Sans gave a small smile, and little disagreement-- but no teasing, this time. He appreciated the effort. He hadn't felt like they'd been able to talk this frankly in a very, very long time.

#{}{} V: MAIN #{}{} SERAFIN #{}{} JITTERS #(( have some bros ))

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cookiefonster666 · 5 years

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Thoughts on the Homestuck Epilogues (Tumblr Edition)

I predicted the future!

Might as well adapt this Blogspot post I made about a week ago into Tumblr form, why not. With a few minor changes. I don’t like using Tumblr but I figure it’s a good additional platform to share my surprisingly positive views on the Homestuck Epilogues.

The epilogues have a lot of controversial content, most of which I avoid talking about here.

BRIEF SUMMARY

4/20, read through Meat: epilogues pretty good

4/20, started Candy: what the fuck

4/21, stopped: aaaaaaaaughhhhh bluh i hate everything

4/24-ish, continued Candy: epilogues alright i guess also i am sad now

4/27-ish, finished: I LOVE HOMESTUCK

BRIEF-ISH SUMMARY

Meat was a wild ride that started as cool plot stuff and things that make you go "OH FUCK", continued as basically chapters 7-9 of Detective Pony (which I naturally enjoyed a lot), and ended as a mess of sheer chaos and destruction. My thought process ended as, "oh duh, this is the bad ending, candy must be the good ending". I was in for quite the nasty surprise.

I quit reading Candy just a few pages in. It didn't take long for it to suddenly become the weirdest fanfiction ever. Frustrated, I started skipping and searching through later parts and got rather salty when it turned out both sides were the "bad ending". I saw firsthand what vfromhomestuck meant by "clear your whole week": this is not something most people can just read in one sitting. Then I recovered a few days and read Candy in earnest, in a somewhat anachronous order and with many parts read multiple times. Slowly, I started to hope that the epilogues would be followed up with a true happy ending for real this time. I may or may not have written a snippet of some form of fanfiction paving the way for a happy ending.

Once I finally accomplished the equivalent of reading Candy as intended, I got hit HARD with feels. I accepted that the epilogues have many issues but as a whole (not just the sum of parts) are an absolute masterwork, sometimes because of those issues. It didn't take me long to realize the brilliant duality either. Meat is a side-splitting metafictional farce that (for me at least) is impossible to treat as anything resembling a story of people doing things. Candy is a tale of FEELS, and I don't use the word FEELS lightly. FEELS means I almost cried, like I did when I watched the Futurama episode Luck of the Fryrish.

DETECTIVE PONY AND METAFICTION

Before I move on and talk about the CHARACTERS, I'm going to discuss the meat epilogue's resemblance to sonnetstuck's Detective Pony. I love everything about Detective Pony, more than almost anything else in existence. My abnormal love for that godlike fanwork probably skewed my perception of Meat a bit. Starting from page 17, Dirk takes over the narration then fights over it with god tier Calliope; both do rather questionable deeds and Dirk was hit hard by fans as a result. Seeing other fans react towards that character with such hostility gave me a very distinct feeling of "what, am I missing something?" Dirk's takeover felt like a lengthy work of comedy to me; a story that never strips away from the fact that it's fiction, in a vein near identical to that of Detective Pony. I like to think I am in the right for perceiving that arc this way, because I think everyone who has read Homestuck should read Detective Pony. One of the epilogue authors read Detective Pony after writing the epilogues and was struck by it; I take this accidental mirroring of (post-)canon as proof that sonnetstuck understands Hussie's ways through and through. I like to think I have a solid understanding of Hussie's ways by now, but this guy is on a whole new level.

That said, the meat epilogue gets a bit carried away with metafiction to the point of making me think, "god when will things go back to normal". Towards the end of Detective Pony, Dirk goes through an existential crisis followed by a powerful revelation, and then resolves to do whatever it takes to erase his abominable creation. But the meat epilogue ends with (both figurative and literal) crashing and burning; no ultimate redemption for our poor Strider. Homestuck doesn't usually have much of a problem with getting carried away with stupid nonsense; maybe a few rare occasions in cases like Hussie's self-insert scenes. But getting carried away is a major criticism I have with cool and new web comic. I love that comic to death, but the parts that take a long time to dwell on the cool and new characters being creepy or weird are a chore to go through. o (the author of CaNWC) seems to have improved in that regard; the cool and new trolls' arc is much more to-the-point with such nonsense.

Meat getting carried away with metafiction is a major cause of my initial burnout shortly after starting Candy. I was sick of this mass dump of metafiction and expected Candy to be a refreshing change of pace. Haha, if only. My fault for reading Meat first. At night I sometimes ponder in envy of the parallel universe me that started with Candy. Actually I don't do that, I just thought it was a funny thing to say. Though I have on more than a few occasions sat in bed fantasizing about how awesome my life probably is in some parallel universe. What point was I making again? Oh whatever, it doesn't matter. I guess I should write a similar overview of Candy's narrative nature. Here goes:

LUCK OF THE FRYRISH AND SADSTUCK

Sad things are sad.

^ There, that's my candy overview. How hard was that?

With the two summaries out of the way, I figure the best way to dump out my residual thoughts on the epilogues is going character by character. I won't do every character, mostly just the ones who played large roles and were already characters in Homestuck proper. I'm sorting these characters in tiers of how well I think the epilogues handle them, mostly from worst to best.

N-TIER

N is not the lowest tier; it's the tier that cannot be ranked. N stands for two things here: "Not Applicable" and "Narrators". Naturally enough, two characters fit into that tier.

Dirk Strider: I've already talked about this guy quite a bit. I have a fondness for Dirk's character and I think his dialogue and narration in meat do a good job portraying some ascended, ultimate version of his character without straying from his voice, the tone that makes him Dirk. That said, I'm a bit peeved that "normal Dirk", the one iteration of Dirk Strider that isn't total bonkers and just wants his friends to be happy, doesn't exist in this story. In Candy, Rose suddenly loses the memories of her alternate selves, but for some reason Dirk keeps those memories and soon after commits suicide; he's left out of the picture until Candy's postscript, which I guess is a reasonable balance considering his indulgence throughout Meat. But why is only one of the succulently verbose Strilondes let off the hook? Some readers imagine Dave as the comic's protagonist and Dirk as the antagonist; I've toyed with that idea myself and can see it symbolized, but it just feels so wrong to me. Maybe the authors did too good a job writing Dirk for me to be complacent with such a shift in role. His conversations with Rose were just as delightful as I had hoped and they aren't weighed down too much in light of his shift in role, at least not for me.

Alt Calliope: The narrative rival to Dirk, as I mentioned previously. I'm not totally sure what to say about her, other than that one could see her as a counterpart to let's say Anna Harley; a necessary piece in the Detective Pony analogy. Alt Calliope's narrative arguments with Dirk were hilarious and that's all there is to say on the matter.

G-TIER

I'm lucky Gamzee's name starts with a G, because this means I can give him a tier of his own worse than F. As an individual arc that is; he'd get a much higher rating when taken as part of a whole.

Gamzee Makara: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I despised reading every word that came out of this guy's mouth as soon as his """redemption arc""" started. But I can clearly tell that was the point and that the suffering that is reading his words has a much greater purpose. Before you deem me a masochist or the kind that insists everything is "bad on purpose", know that I am neither of those things but really do mean what I say here. Gamzee's role in Candy draws tension between individuality and the whole. Reading this guy's hogwash is suffering in and of itself, but ultimately it serves a role of showing us how fucked up the world of Candy is and helps the reader experience John's existential crisis with him.

F-TIER

As before, these tiers are strictly about character arcs in isolation and not the big picture. This tier is home to none other than the legendary...

Jane Crocker: Boy did I predict the future on that one. A bit like Dirk, I would've liked it more if in only one epilogue did sweet innocent little Jane become such a monster. No way in hell am I going to run through the asshole things she does; it's a load of sensitive topics I'm not comfortable discussing in any capacity. Instead, I'll say that if I had to choose only one epilogue where Jane ran through her crazy presidential campaign it would be Candy; as with Gamzee's arc, this campaign serves well as a part of John's existential crisis. What's weird here is that in Candy she originally cancelled all this, but later ended up basically doing it anyway with Dirk gone. I can imagine Jane going back to normal in Meat, maybe? Or in the hypothetical "true ending" I discussed prior.

D-TIER

Better known as "meh" tier. Mostly the characters that don't do much and I wished did more.

Meenah Peixes: Needed more screen time, god damn it. She survives the Furthest Ring apocalypse, nabs the Ring of Life, then makes her way to Candy Earth and joins Karkat in the rebellion. Maybe it makes sense that her and Karkat teaming up in war is relegated to the background, to show how far the shouty guy has come in comparison to everyone else. I'll come back to this point when I talked about Karkat.

Roxy Lalonde: Doesn't do too much in either side, but does go through some touchy topics I'm not sure what to think about; I'm most certainly not ready to talk about those topics now. And regardless, Roxy's role in the epilogues is better discussed when I talk about John and Terezi a few tiers up.

Calliope: Doesn't do all that much either, full circle to being the exposition alien with mysterious morality. I'm actually pretty OK with that. Certainly beats out the slog of endless "ur pretty" conversations. Calliope pretty much fades into the background on both sides, which is sad but fitting.

(About pronouns: I'll keep referring to Roxy and Calliope as "she" unless I find reason to talk about the little those two do in Meat. I just avoided using pronouns in those paragraphs above.)

C-TIER

Better known as "meh" tier, but with a more positive "meh" than before. It's the "meh" that indicates lukewarm satisfaction rather than annoyance at mediocrity.

Jade Harley: Really should be on a lower tier, because she did dick squat other than being horny and painfully oblivious to all the nonsense going on. But I'm a sucker for Jade being "Jade" and was happy to see even a trace of that early in Meat. As before, I'll avoid the controversial topics surrounding Jade in the epilogues, aside from pointing out that this post reads very different now.

Karkat Vantas: This guy's a bit of an odd spot. His leadership role is addressed in the absolute last way I expected. Could've gotten more attention from the story I suppose, but damn if his character arc didn't get the most triumphant return imaginable.

Kanaya Maryam: I touched upon Rose and Kanaya's relationship when I discussed the "buddy system" in my first epilogues post and I still stand by what I said there. Her strong attachment to Rose is integrated well into Meat without seeming like fluff or defining her entire character, because she actually does other things there too. In Candy they remain a stable happy relationship and I guess I'm cool with that.

Aradia Megido: Role is the same as ever and I'm fine with that. Death fangirl who works for predestination and has ambiguous morality. Her arc with alt Calliope ends with a cliffhanger that is easily the biggest reason to hope for a follow-up to the epilogues; if such a follow-up were to happen, I really look forward to hearing more from Aradia.

Sollux Captor: Sollux is by nature the other guy, that's an immutable fact of life. He doesn't do much other than snarking at whoever's nearby and I can't imagine it any other way.

Jake English: If not for a scene near the end of Candy, I'd put Jake at D-tier. Through all of Meat and most of Candy, Jake's role is one of the oddest spots of all and it's pretty hard to pinpoint what the authors were going for, lest I dabble in controversial topics some more. But Jake's scene with John near the end of Candy is uniquely touching and makes the most out of his role as a second John. He moves in with John, bringing his son Tavros with him, and encourages John to reconcile with his former wife and make amends of sorts, ultimately giving a small portion of the cast a pseudo-happy ending. That whole part of Candy made me tear up.

Talking about the really GOOD parts is a perfect point for me to move on to...

B-TIER

Stuff that didn't make it into A-Tier, which I've reserved for what struck me HARD.

Dave Strider: In both epilogues, Dave's behavior generally seems based on how he acted in Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5, which is actually a LOT better than it sounds and hell if I know why that is. Dave's rants about politics and sexuality now have a charm I can't quite describe. His absurd fixation specifically on the economy matches shockingly well with the nature of Homestuck. The three-way romance between him, Karkat, and Jade goes in very different directions on either side, which I'll discuss a bit later. The epilogues even made Dave x Karkat an actually decent ship, how crazy is that??? The writers deserve a big badge of honor for doing that. Not sure what to say about specific things, but Dave was really well-written in an unexpected way.

Rose Lalonde: Again not sure what to say about anything in specific. Just really enjoyed reading Rose on both sides of the story. Shoutout to the heartwarming moment with John near the end.

A-TIER

Oh boy. Oh boy. Time for the big guns.

Vriska Serket: My mind hurts to process just how good Vriska's appearance in Candy was, after leaving the Furthest Ring and landing on Earth. First she talks with John rather aggravated, then she brutally murders Gamzee, then she sits down and has an honest talk with her ectobiological clone raised by Rose and Kanaya, and in the end gets in touch with Terezi which leads to a cliffhanger. The story somehow created the PERFECT balance of sincere reflections and typical Vriska flavor, which was deeply lacking in A6A6I5 with its horrific polar opposite versions of Vriska. Two Vriskas converse once again late in Candy and this time it's incredibly endearing and almost feels like an apology for the controversial Vriska/Vriska encounter back then. I accept the apology with open arms. Why is everything always so wonderful?

John Egbert: <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3. WHY IS EVERYTHING ALWAYS SO WONDERFUL? John gets a deep meaningful existential crisis arc in both epilogues; both cases I easily latched onto and found a bit of myself in. I absolutely loved seeing him and Terezi interact as a duo of people with some perception of canonicity; I'll get back to that point soon enough. John's marriage to Roxy not working out is a testament to both his issues with canon and Roxy's issues dealing with harsh situations. Roxy latches onto John and their son as a huge carefree pushover and he doesn't like that at all. And that's actually cool with me because John x Terezi is better in every way, as the epilogues made me realize. If that wasn't enough, the end of Candy spoils our little hearts by having John reconcile with Roxy anyway and give hope for a better future. Though a part of me does want to see a true happy ending where John and Roxy date with their delightful dynamic from their first interactions, I'm beyond pleased with the epilogues' handling of John either way. Swaying deep into some rather sad territory while remaining 100% faithful to his character that I've always loved so much.

Terezi Pyrope: FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES. Every scene with Terezi in the epilogues was so goddamn awesome. Her interactions with John were such a blast to read, with exactly the mix of humor and touching aspects that make both of the big John/girl ships what they are. How did the authors pull it off, making deeply emotional scenes without ever sacrificing that goofy Terezi flavor???

S-TIER

S in rating systems these days is way misused in my eyes. Normally A is meant to be the highest rating and S is used for the very rare absolutely exceptional case A doesn't do justice. But now you see shit like SS, SSS, SSSS everywhere like one S isn't the ultimate badge of honor? S is a rating I'd gladly give Detective Pony and may or may not give cool and new web comic. Same goes for my very favorite Futurama episodes. I'd give a few of Neil Cicierega's works that rating if I'm feeling up to it. In this post, I've reserved the S rating for:

Barack Obama: THE BEST PART OF THE EPILOGUES, HANDS DOWN. His conversation with Dave near the end of Candy is perfect in every way, it really transcends words. Humor, emotional touching, plot revelations, and straight up "Homestuck feel" are blended into the most delicious melting pot imaginable. When Dave confesses that he might be gay and explains troubles in his three-way romance, Obama responds with a truly inspiring speech about identity that raises an excellent point about the differences between the epilogues involving aspects of people that may seem immutable to some. I think Obama's speech leaves a powerful message I never expected Homestuck of all things to convey so well. I hope readers take that speech's message into account, though I know many will probably be a bit naive about it.

If you refuse to read the epilogues at all costs, then I implore you to read Dave and Obama's conversation anyway. You won't be disappointed.

CONCLUSION

epilogues good

that’s all there is to say on the matter

though if you don’t like them that’s also fine

#homestuck #homestuck epilogues #epilogues #epilogues spoilers #homestuck epilogues spoilers #i predicted the future #i love john egbert #i love terezi pyrope #i maybe love vriska serket???#obama obama obama #johnrezi #yes good

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diveronarpg · 5 years

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Congratulations, GREY! You’ve been accepted for the role of BENVOLIO with an FC change to FRANCISCO LACHOWSKI. Admin Rosey: Benvolio is a multi-faceted character who, in my opinion, is one of the most difficult to capture in a single application. There are so many different ways to pull him and he will cry out against all of them. Whether you wish to bloody his hands, have him save a Capulet, or send him away from the city again; all of them end in tragedy, all of them are never quite right. But Grey, in your application you managed to get to the very quick of his character. You gave him a distinct voice and an even more distinct heart. I can’t wait to have you ruin us all with him. Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

Out of Character

Alias | Grey

Age | 31

Preferred Pronouns | She/Her

Activity Level | Currently I’m off work on extended medical leave (unknown end date), so mostly don’t have any major claims on my time and should be able to be around most days. With that said, medical issues and meds will crop up from time to time. Once I return to work, I work 3-4 days a week, so will still have multiple days a week free.

Timezone | Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST/GMT +10)

How did you find the rp? | Rogue seduced me over, so blame her for everything please

Current/Past RP Accounts | Bellavie (from a very short-lived rp) - I’ve also played with Rogue in several places over the years.

In Character

Character | Benvolio / Bellamy Santa-Domingo. Preferred FC of Francisco Lachowski.

✧ Bellamy ⟶ What’s in a name? For Bellamy, a wealth of self-discovery, definitions laid out ahead of him at birth, a path his feet have never wavered from. Fine Friend his mother called him, and perhaps bought upon them all their disappointment in his gentility with a name bereft of the thorns they so coveted. Fine Friend he was named, and so he lives, a shoulder for everyone’s burden while he struggles solitary with his own.

✧ Santa-Domingo ⟶ Saint of the Lord, he is labelled; baptised in the blood of his family, the holy mandate by which his father demands respect. What is a saint, after all but someone to venerate, to esteem, graced by God? But Bellamy knows that that is but the least of what a saint is, for saints are pained and fragile things burned in holy fire, martyrs all; sacrificial lambs to the glory of God — and the truest god his family bends knee to is that known as Montague.

✧ Benvolio ⟶ Thrice he is named and the third feels like a lie, ashes on his brow. Well-wisher they call him, Benevolence — yet they would ask him to be anything but. He feels the hollowness of the name as Damiano settles it on his shoulders, the calculated sop to his reluctance and he wonders how long he will be allowed to keep the illusion of truth before he must sacrifice it on Damiano’s altar, how long before the name is nothing but mocking contempt of the perceived weakness of his dream ( he knows too well how often in war softness becomes synonymous with weakness ).

What drew you to this character? | Benvolio was the first of the open characters I read, and I think that reading is probably what tipped me from considering the rp for the future to immediately applying. Even as I read through the rest of the open characters, I kept returning to the tab with his bio in it. While I did briefly consider Halcyon instead, I think my choice was pre-determined from the start.

Bellamy touches a lot tropes that I love to play with; Rogue once summed up one of my main types as ‘Damaged boys with daddy issues’ and on that Bellamy is almost a solid bullseye, the tragic figure of Atlas carrying everyone else’s burdens. There are conflicts within him, conflicts and contradictions that pull him in different directions, forcing him to play a delicate, and exhausting, balancing act in order to keep himself whole. Criminal yet cop, loyal yet selfish, duty yet refusal, peaceful yet fighter, ideals yet realistic — the inability to reconcile the disparate portions of himself leaves him feeling hollow with self-loathing as he counts his sins ten times over and values his virtues at half their rate. Bellamy has ever been thus, a duality at war with himself; as play-Mercutio says: “Nay, an there were two [of you], we should have none shortly, for one would kill the other!”

APatroclus saddled with two Achilles to save from their own divinity, Bellamy is irredeemably entangled with his closest friends, unfailingly loyal and dependable. Roman and Marcello are his heart and soul, his very being — and yet he left. Oh, he came back, and the texts and emails flew thick and fast in his absence, yet still, he left, leaving them bereft in the middle of war. An abandonment — necessary, yes, but ultimately selfish, running to save himself without those who he would gladly lay down his life for.

Yet Benvolio’s biggest contradictions, deepest complexities lie in the very area that most would dismiss as his simplest aspect: his kindness, his softness, his gentility. So often, these traits are those that people write off, dismiss as naïveté or innocence, chalk up to an ignorance or blindness of the darkness of the world. Bellamy is none of those things, was never given the luxury of being unaware. Even as a child, the war shaped his life; even as a youth he knew too much of blood and cruelness and the rotted heart of Verona.

No, Bellamy is not kind out of some innate inability to see otherwise, some childlike artlessness that means he could never be aught else — he chooses to be kind, he chooses to trust; and he does it in the full and grim understanding that doing so is the emotional equivalent of sticking your hand in the fire and asking it not to burn you. He chooses it because it allows him to live with himself, wears it as an armour that keeps him from breaking, because whatever cost he pays in scars for that gentility, however much he kicks himself for an idiot when it blows up in his face… if he chose otherwise would he ever be able to find his way back?

Likewise many dismiss his voice when he raises it for peace — idealist they call him, young they scoff at him, yet sometimes Benvolio feels like he’s the only one at all who sees. They celebrate victory while he counts bodies, count winnings while he watches the city crumble. He wonders when they all stopped seeing people and started seeing gold instead, when costs stopped being about finance and were first paid in blood. Could they not see that this tragedy was leading nowhere, that this tit-for-tat, blood-for-blood would only end with all of them blind? Could they not see that they were past the point where a victory could be anything more than Pyrrhic?

A warrior for peace; an absurd idea really, almost hypocritical, almost oxymoronic in nature, and yet, and yet — Benvolio learned, as the war poets learned ( battered paperbacks of Owen and Sassoon accompany him around the world, the margins slowly filled with all manner of scrawled notes in different colours of ink ) that people will dismiss the words of a non-combatant as cowardly, that only by engaging in the very thing they wished to end could they earn the right to speak out against it, that only by speaking from alongside them would the war-torn hear his voice. And so he takes his place in the trenches, stands shoulder to shoulder with his comrades and tries not to think too much about what they do, so that, one day, he will be able to end it for all. If the cost for the whole of Verona is his own blood spilled, his own soul crushed, how can he refuse to pay it? And yet how can he survive its paying?

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

✘ dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori⟶ ( price of duty )

Sitting in that airport, staring down at his phone as it rang, Mama picked out on the screen, his thumb hovered over the red end call button as he fought with despair. He could go, he knew, could let the message go to voice mail and answer the boarding call for his flight instead, jump another flight at the other end and head to the Andes, the Sahara, the Australian Outback. Say he hadn’t gotten the message, had been out of signal range. It would be easy, simple.

He’d plead conscientious objector to get out four years ago, but now the piper has come due. He answers the phone ( had it always been this heavy? ) halfway through the final ring and allows himself to be conscripted.

Bellamy has always been dutiful, responsible, loyal. Innately, intrinsically, he puts his duties and friends ahead of himself time and again, often at the cost of his own self, his own soul. A soldier in a war he despises, fighting a battle he despairs of no matter the outcome, Bellamy is quickly approaching the point where duty and ideals will clash more and more heavily, where he will no longer be able to wiggle through loopholes or forge a middle path. One day, war and duty and loyalty will push him, without mercy or respite, to the moment he dreads most, will require him to do something he doesn’t know if he’s capable of living with.

His hands are going to get dirty, and he fears he’s too brittle to survive it ( he fears he may not have as much issue with it as he should ).

✘ i would know him in death, at the end of the world ⟶ ( friends )

They are many and yet one, together and undivided since a time of vague memories and impressions. Bellamy doesn’t remember meeting Roman or Marcello, can’t recall a time when they weren’t sashaying into trouble together. Their bond is inviolate, one of the surest things in Bellamy’s life and by far the most precious.

They have always been inseparable — and yet they separated.

Bellamy parted them, and when he came back there was a harshness to the light inside his friends, as though the warm light of the sun had turned to nuclear glow; the fires of war. ( He wonders if that will be him in a couple of years. ) There are cracks in all of them now, cracks in their souls and their bond, even as they pass the whiskey bottle between themselves and try to pretend that nothing has changed.

Bellamy blames himself. He left, he thinks, and that laid the first crack between them. Now, he struggles to deal with that betrayal as he sees it, trying to amend for it by taking more and more for his friends, his brothers, while squashing all his own needs ( pretends he is naught but the balm and bandage as he bleeds out himself ) — how could he ask them for aught, now?

Cracks can be fixed, but Bellamy needs to learn again to take as well as offer, before he subsumes himself under everyone else’s needs and is killed by his own gone unmet.

✘ forgive me father, for i am only fucking human ⟶ ( loyalty challenged )

Mark Twain once said “But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner who needed it most?” and those words have always resonated for Bellamy, printed large on his heart. Odin has done appalling things, he knows, things that should maybe be unforgivable, but if he is trying to make amends then can Bellamy do aught but help him? Sinners need forgiveness far more than good men ( sinners are who forgiveness was made for ) and so he listens, and absolves him in his heart as they sit in a patrol car on a dark street sucking spilled take-out sauce off their fingers.

And yet in this day, when the merest of mercies to the other side raises cries of fraternisation and both sides lay pressure upon pressure on their soldiers to prove their loyalty he wonders if perhaps this will be the thing that causes them both to burn. They have no choice in who they share a car with but he wonders if that will matter before paranoia has run its course and they have done more than that, haven’t they? Drowned their sorrows together, doused themselves in the whiskey that may yet fuel their funeral pyre — and yet if Odin asks for help, can Bellamy do aught but hold a hand out to him? A lifeline, a hangman’s noose, rolled into one.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Yes - but not until I’m so attached that it will break my heart. GRRM says that you should mourn when a character dies, that you should care and that sort of attachment I feel is one that takes time to develop. But oh yes, I’m definitely okay with charactercide - just with an initial cooldown period please!

In Depth

What is your favourite place —

His favourite place? His mind swirls, an agitated snowstorm of images: the hot sun on his back as he sits on the ancient stairs in front of the Parthenon; the bright, airy, treasure-filled rooms of the British Museum; the serene weightlessness of floating in the Dead Sea; the sky shaded a brilliant sunset on a beach in Brazil, cocktail in hand…

— in Verona?

The rider on the question brings his thoughts to a sudden halt, leaves an echoing quiet in his brain. His favourite place in Verona? The city he’d run from as soon as he was able and had never wished to revisit?

As a child, Bellamy had fallen in love with Verona’s Library: the arching ceilings, the ornate decoration, the heavy books bound in rich and sometimes flaking leather, the dry and musty smell of ancient pages holding the words of worlds and centuries. It felt… reverent, almost Holy.

And then he’d learned of what lay upstairs, that above the rooms devoted to knowledge, to history, to making sure humans never forgot the mistakes of the past, Damiano and his court engaged in the deliberate repetition of humanity’s greatest fuck up. And then all it felt was tainted, sacrilegious.

As a teen, he’d come to love Castelveccio Bridge for the fragile peace that surrounded it. He’d perch on the edge with a book, back up against one of the buttresses, and let the river wind rustle his hair as he read or skimmed stones, or, later, passed around a bottle of jack with his friends.

But that too was marred now, stained in so much blood and death, and he wonders if there is anywhere in the city that has not been spoiled by this abominable feud.

“ To Tame A Soup, ” he says, eventually “ I guess. At least some good comes of it. But really, this whole city, it’s…” he shakes his head with a sigh, gesturing at the woman to continue.

What does your typical day look like?

He’s sprawled across the couch in the police therapist’s office; one leg dangles half-off, just enough for the toe of his boot to brush the floor, the other ankle resting on the armrest, one arm over the back of the couch. His sister always wondered why he was so neat and tidy in his living, books alphabetised, everything in its place, yet just threw himself in a pile where ever he landed ( he doesn’t tell her its because his books are actually worth taking care with ).

( He wonders what would happen if he deliberately failed this review, what Damiano would do if he got himself sent home on mental health leave — but then, he’s probably already bought out the shrink. )

“ Much the same as anyone else’s, probably. ” He tips his head back over the armrest to look at her, upside down. “ Work, food, sleep, a book here and there… I adopted a cat last week, so there’s that. ”

What has been your biggest mistake?

“ Coming back. ” The worlds fall out before he can stop them, almost tripping over the end of the question in their hurry to break free. For a moment he wonders if he should take it back, prevaricate, maybe say that leaving had been worse ( though nothing in his life had ever felt so right as that moment the plane had lifted from the ground ). But — no, there is no need. If she was in the Montague pocket then well… Damiano, the rest… they already knew how he felt about being back. And if she wasn’t reporting, what did it matter?

She watches him for a moment, as though expecting him to elaborate, but when he doesn’t she moves onto the next question with a faint sigh.

What has been the most difficult task asked of you thus far?

“ The same, ” he says, mussing up his hair with one hand. Uneasiness pricks him; it’s far too difficult to ignore the foreboding in the words thus far. He’s well aware that so far, he hasn’t been asked for anything completely outside his comfort zone, that, for whatever reason, the hardest of his boundaries have been respected. He thinks he might have Roman’s influence to thank for that, but he doubts it will last. No, more than that, he knows it won’t. And, as much as he wants to reassure himself that when it comes to it he will do what is right… some part of him, buried deep, knows that he’ll answer the call.

What are your thoughts on the war between the Capulets and the Montagues?

There is a freedom in this answer, for as neither Bellamy nor Benvolio has he ever hidden his opinion on this front. “ It’s bloody fucking stupid, isn’t it. ” He snorts, then sighs and waves a hand. “ No one even remembers what started the whole thing off, and it’s well past the point where anyone can actually win anything… even if one side cleared up tomorrow, more has been lost than they’d ever get back so what’s the bloody point? At this point it’s just mutually assured destruction.” He sighs, and wilts a bit. “ Not that either side will ever admit that. ”

Extras: Pinterest board

#accepted #accepted: benvolio

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