#ppl can soft/block me if it suits them

[heartsdefine]

for the record: i, personally, do not care who reblogs from me on the reblogging website, especially since i struggle to remember who all expects me to reblog everything they post from the source myself. obviously no one should reblog roleplay/headcanon posts they're not involved in, and i do think it's generally polite to reblog a meme from the source if i don't send one in, but if y'all wanna reblog aesthetics or gifsets or whatever from me, idgaf. that's life.

[moa-broke-me]

Hey so... Literal YEARS after leaving the mlp fandom, as in, long before I even had tumblr, I've recently uh... Gotten back in, a little bit?

It's all @meepmoopmaap's fault, he made a FANTASTIC infection AU, it's on AO3. Actually no, it's also my alter's fault (don't @ me ok I get that most ppl use headmate but alter is just more natural for me) since he's a fictive from the show and has been VERY active recently, but I digress. Point is, I kind of wanted to... How do I say this?

I wanted to make them centaurs, thought it could be cool to add a human skin tone for the top half and then their old ones, also add some necessity for clothes.

I also just wanted to redesign them overall.

So, obviously, we HAD to do Flutters first, and I thought this was gonna suck but it didn't and I'm actually kind of proud of it?

This is just the head and hair, and a pretty rough draft too, but here.

So, I wanted to give her a big nose, because big noses are cute, so I did. The strands in her face are since she's, y'know. Shy. I worked VERY hard to ensure there were as few straight lines or sharp corners in the design as possible, because I wanted it to be gentle and soft-looking. I even gave her beaded lashes to help with this, and they kind of look like teardrops which is oddly appropriate?

About the eye color, I... I completely ditched the teal eyes in her original design, in favor of olive green ones. I was planning on giving her more pops of olive green, but since this was just a profile head shot, I couldn't do much.

The teal eyes always bothered me, even when I was a kid, since I felt that it shifted her color scheme too much in the 'pastel primaries' direction occupied by Pinkie Pie which, if y'all like, we can do next. Also just the fact that half the cast had blue eyes really bothered me for some reason?

anyway. The olive green seems to suit her more anyway, and I've shifted the hair more to purple... Which may have been a mistake?

Anyway. Suggestions welcome, just keep it friendly. I have a block button and I'm not afraid to use it!

[kachuuyaa]

BAY CITY ROMANCE 𖥻 003 𖥻 4REAL!

bcr masterlist ; prev ; next

synopsis. who knew an impromptu trip to familymart could be this cold?

warnings. CHUUYA AND RANPO RFIGHTING, gojo mention, horrible description of surroundings (nothing serious!)

notes. uhhh hehe hey...... heyyyy i know ppl wana throw tomatoes and stones but I'm back (I'm a senior now) LASO have u seen my bbgirls (choso mf kamo) debut in the shibuya arc trailerrrrr HEHEHEHE I LVOE CHOSOS SO MUCHH (follow me on twt! nikozaii if u want to hearmy insane shti) also i came back home from japan so uhhh hiiii the family,art here is loosely based on that one branch in tokyo near the hotel i stayed in

You set down your phone as your eyes flickered to the group. Ranpo, in particular, was staring out to Fyodor and Sigma, conversing about their rankings as you breathed out. You felt a gust of wind brush across your face, leaving a smile etched across your lips in tranquility. You looked towards Ranpo, that tranquility seeping into his veins as he met your gaze, making him open his eyes, letting his muscles rest as he blinked at you in recognition. “Hi,” You said, allowing Ranpo to revert to his usual expression. Crescent-shaped eyes paired with his signature mischievous smile, he adjusted his body towards you, sitting down on the soft grass as he pats the vacant space beside him. Of course, you took a step forward, the grass responding to your touch as you sat down. Grass tickled your back as you laid your palms on the soft floor. “What are we waiting for?” Ranpo mused, wrapping his arms around his knees, pulling them to his chest as he observed the duo before him. “For them to stop, I guess.” You shrugged, and Ranpo raised his hand. “Hey, guys! You both done talking?” He queried, extending the vowels of his last sentence to gain their attention, and, to his pleasure, two heads turned to the source as their conversations halted, and it was Sigma who spoke up. “Sorry! We were talking about earlier. It was such a hassle to get around the students.” He clasped his hands together, sending an awkward smile to the two of you.

“That’s okay, we were just about to ask you if you two were ready to go.” You reassured, Sigma sighing in relief at your words. Fyodor gazed at Sigma’s fidgeting hands, setting his hand on his shoulder, and observing the tiny squeak that left his mouth. “We can go now,” Fyodor said calmly, rubbing circles on Sigma’s shoulder as the latter nodded in agreement. Fyodor had a habit of tracing circles when he made contact with skin, an action of attempted comfort and for his entertainment. He knows that you don’t mind it, that you and the group were used to his peculiar habits. He huffed at this, returning his hand to its original position. Fyodor knew his habits were unusual actions that would be deemed atypical to other university students. Surely, he was a man of ambiguity shrouded in philosophies that you could never uncover, but with this enigmatic man came a plethora of tendencies that even he could not control.

The FamilyMart Fyodor talked about flickered with its signature white, green, and blue lights, highlighting the presence of the establishment, accompanied by banners outside the entrance, incorporating some of your favorite animes collaborating with the convenience store. To its right were a few potted plants, and a fluorescent street lamp illuminating the side of the road. To your left, you could spot the school’s covered court, blocked by cement walls that extend to the end of the street. The road was fairly empty, bikes only occasionally driving past the four of you as your group stared at the store. Waiting for Chuuya and Yosano left you bored, shoving your hands in your pockets, walking towards the establishment as the automatic doors slid open, making the bell ring as you were greeted by the cashier. You noticed Fyodor following suit, leaving Ranpo and Sigma outside to wait for the remaining two. As you turned back, you noticed Sigma examining the sunset, as Ranpo had his hands tucked completely in his jacket pockets, seemingly looking for his phone. Fyodor moved beside you, and your attention shifted towards him. “You looking for anything?” You asked, making Fyodor’s sharp eyes lock with yours then back to the food he was eyeing. “I wanted to try Onigiri,” He sighed, “been wanting to try it ever since I came here.”

You recalled the time Fyodor was introduced to Yokohama University. Assumptions of the new student quickly spread throughout the university, whispers and mutters about a foreign presence residing in the University you grew to find home. Of course, you weren’t an exception to the waves of utterances about the new student, who shares one class with you, and naturally, you felt drawn to listen to them. It was hard not to, as two particular friends of yours have brought you to hear their musings about the upcoming student. He carried himself with pride, his walk exuding confidence as his footsteps resounded around the hall. You remember meeting Fyodor once he stepped into the classroom as you stared at the door upon hearing its creak, followed by an apology from a foreign voice, making you perk up from your laptop. This action led you to meet the man who caught your eye, a wordless greeting formed by the color of your irises boring into his.

You never told him outright, but at that moment, it seemed a flurry of memories allowed itself to flood your mind, an endless stream of what ifs and countless possibilities presented itself to you, as if a layer of your consciousness knew he would remain with you.

That innate feeling you possessed suffocated you, that stem of anticipation twisting in your throat, a bud forming at every edge of your lungs, and at that moment, as two eyes locked, there, a blossoming flower could be found in your heart.

“[Name], look, I found Gojo’s donut,” He walked up to you, deciding to look around for a bit as you stood motionless. There were many more deserts to try, but it was the donut that really caught his eye. You snapped out of your reverie, which was, ironically, about him, only to be faced with Gojo’s smile plastered on the packet of the product he was holding. “That looks funny, is it supposed to be infinity-shaped?” You questioned, grabbing it from his hand, checking the back of it as you felt it around in your hand. “It’s cute, Fyo,” You hold it up to him, “You want it?” He nodded at your question as he took the donut back, and placed it in his basket (You wonder where he got it, but you suspected he quickly snagged one as you were reminiscing). You noticed Sigma and Ranpo from outside, conversing with each other as Sigma found himself to be the victim of Ranpo’s childish antics. “[Name], I got an iced coffee too. Do Sigma and Ranpo want anything?” Fyodor stepped out from the aisle, holding a carton of iced latte in his hand. You sighed, “Ranpo wants anything sweet. Maybe Dango would do, perhaps.” You weighed your options, while Fyodor grabbed shortbread cookies for Sigma to eat. He figured you didn’t want to walk outside as it would be a hassle, truth be told, he shared the same vision, so he opted to pick food for Sigma instead. Sigma made it clear that he was fond of cookies, the pastry always lingering in his mind whenever he was with the group. From cafes to grocery shopping, a pack of cookies always seemed to land itself in the cart, and you all knew that it was Sigma behind the action.

Your train of thought abruptly halted as the bell rang, signaling the entrance of another person. You had an inkling of who it may be, considering the road was void of any people as you entered. “Fyodor, [Name]!” The voice-- that awfully familiar voice, made your head perk up towards the door, seeing that familiar wave of black hair walk towards you. “[Name]!” She slung an arm over your shoulder, “Have you seen Fyodor? Chuuya wants a rice bowl-- you know, those prepared meals.” She lets go of you, nudging you in the process. “We all want those Blue Lock wafers, by the way.” She reminded you, as you rolled your eyes at her statement. “Mhm, yeah, right.” She laughs as she walks towards Fyodor, after grabbing a snack of her own. You picked an Onigiri out for you to eat, as well as one more for Fyodor. Juice… juice… You thought, skimming the rows of drinks, and picking one that caught your eye. You figured to get coffee for Yosano, if she hadn’t already, and one more for Chuuya, just in case.

Minutes pass as the group awaits your exit from the entrance. The moon decided to make itself known, accompanied by cold gusts of wind to all citizens of Japan. The wind was particularly comfortable, basking in the presence of passersby who felt its touch on their skin. You and your group were no exception to that. Sigma exhaled, crossing his arms, which helped alleviate the cold atmosphere surrounding him, even by just a little. They focus their eyes on the group paying for the group’s meal on the counter, then to the bickering duo to her right. “How does it feel being top 2, huh?” Ranpo provoked Chuuya, who was wearing a strained smile. “How does it feel being the next victim of my fist, huh?” He responded, gritting his teeth in an attempt to hold himself back from hitting the prodigious student. “Try it!” Ranpo giggled, running away comically as Chuuya spewed out curses towards him. Yosano sighed in faux annoyance, “These guys don’t know when to calm down, no?” She turned to Sigma, who chuckled under his breath. “Sometimes I wonder if they’ll ever stop.” He said.

“What are these two idiots doing?” You stepped out of the store with 2 plastic bags in your hand, clicking your tongue as you stared at Chuuya and Ranpo. The latter, as usual, purposefully spurs Chuuya on as he shouts at him, “You were the one who ate the last piece of my fucking milk bread?!” He looks over to you, “[Name]! Kill this idiot!” He points at you, grabbing the collar of Ranpo as he raises his hands up in surrender. “I said I was sorry!” He repeats, making Chuuya let go of him with a sigh. Ranpo brushed his sweater, sighing in relief, earning a glare from the hot-headed man. Chuuya walks up to you, shoving his hands in his pockets to warm his hands, “You got my food, [Name]?” He questioned, with a voice uncharacteristically soft compared to the tone he used on Ranpo. “Yeah, yours and Yosano’s are in this one over here.” You handed him a bag, which he took while muttering a ‘thank you’. “I’m getting tired, [Name], Fyodor.” Yosano quipped, “Sigma here is also a bit tired. We might go for the night.” She informed you, and you nodded in return.

The group decided to split ways, waving goodbye to each other, as well as throwing in heaps of congratulatory statements for everyone present. The atmosphere was chilly walking back, the flickering of the lights, with the melody of your footsteps, were the only sounds accompanying you back to your own dorm. It felt oddly calm, the noir of the night engulfing your shadow as the light of each lamp danced in your eyes, your footsteps blending in with the symphony of the dark, performing an orchestra of elements that welcomed itself in you. What you didn’t know, is that amidst the melody of nature and the song of the city that you were so used to, comes a whole different, unfamiliar tune that you were yet to experience.

trivia:

fyodor really wants his blue lock wafers

yosano's favorite character is chigiri who else cheered

fyodor likes yukimiya LOL reo is a close second

ranpo LOVESSSS BACHIRA (hes js like me… bachira 4life)

chuuya likes chigiri too… chigiri and kaiser he thinks his tattoo is cool

ranpo found a nearby gashapon and spent 1000 yen on it (he got what he wanted on his last try)

you found a stray cat meowing as you arrived at your dorm. he was a greyish-white cat, with a streak of green. an unusual color for a cat, but he was cute nonetheless.

ranpo followed yosano and chuuya home, wanting to spend the night with them

your roommate was nowhere to be seen when you arrived, but they bought a tub of ice cream for you as an apology. you texted them with the note and ice cream they left you and they laughed at it, responding with a quick no worries, and an apology for their absence.

chuuya actually wanted a carton of sake, but he refused at the last second.

tg: @iruc @celestair

2023 © kachuuyaa. do not steal or claim my work as your own.

[danepopfrippery]

I cant get over a reply to my take that Stede’s sweetness to Ed isnt patronizing, its meant to be besties sharing soft things with each other. The person said Stede treated Ed and his crew as an asshole colonizer specifically teaching Ed fine dining. Like brah if thats your take block me now cuz I cant even.

I can disagree w ppl on silly shit (steddyhands say) but when you weaponize a whole major set of plot points as whypipo when thats clearly not what it is, just go back to twitter. I think almost every script had at least one poc contributing to it. They never seem to know that. (And yes holy fuck would a colonizer be common irl and irl stede bonnet was an asshole and slave owner no argument).

As for the fine dining lessons: Ed ASKED for uppercrust lessons! Ed, mr ‘skin him with the snail fork’ sat there and genuinely wanted to learn. Ppl who think about skinning w snail forks dont generally stand for patronizing shit.

In fact Ed wanted to go to the French party cuz fine things and it was a chance to work on what Stede had taught him (and remember it wasnt one sided, Ed was teaching him shit too) and Stede didnt want to go!!! But he went! Cuz Ed wanted to! And when they insulted Ed be burned them to the ground.

As for the crew on face value id agree he was patronizing. But thats as lazy as the yummy soap take. It has been said by Rhys and others Stede saw this as a chance to play w friends he basically paid to spend time w him. They were all free to go.

And what stands out to me is several times we are shown Stede thinks of them as equals. When Lucius says only the two of them can read hes shocked by that. Never dawned on him most of them would be illiterate. Yes hes dumb (illiteracy was extremely common back then) but that says to me he never thought of these ppl are lower class than me.

He pays them, he feeds them, he added a bunch of rooms just to spoil them (u cant tell me the jam room was for his kids when the harpsichord is in his cabin). He plans little activities to keep them happy and doesnt MAKE them do anything (or punish them if they dont). He tried to talk Black Pete into sewing but never forced him. Instead of picking a fav flag he hung all of them cuz he cares about them (who else would do that cmon?!)

They only decide not to kill him cuz he can do the voices in the stories right. They love bedtime stories! Again its not forced or punished if not. Same for pickleball etc.

But the biggest one to me is what ppl grab onto just on the surface. We know racism, slavery and homophobia do all exist in this universe and we whiff it right away in ep 1. Yes the poc staff is relegated to playing servants but we werent shown who decided that (id bet frenchie cuz he knows rich assholes and u dont want to piss off the british navy).

Stede only went for that ship to make his crew like him, and only brought Badminton and co onboard to save everyone from the british navy. He immediately takes everyone into his room and dishes out outfits and fake names/backstories. This includes everyone poc and white.

How the fuck do u reckon that man had an outfit that fit not only Oluwande but Wee John?! Perfectly might i add. Its never shown what happens after only Olu still being in costume after they send the lone survivor back. Im making a leap ill agree but me thinks he had that shit custom made for his crew esp cuz a few of them had complimentary pieces. And there is no good reason that man would have something for someone as tall and large as Wee John.

The Brits dont start being shitty tip after Stede and the captain leave. At which point Jim, Black Pete and several others attack. They have no time for that shit and Stede never argues about it later. In fact he had a plan to send the beheaded bodies and lone survivor back.

And then theres the fact later Stede has a matching set of tailored suits for him, Lucius and his fuckin prisoner!!! I mean it was his idea to do that, and he had the clothes. When he meets Ed properly he doesnt even hesitate to show him his pretty clothes or share them. They stay in each others clothes all night.

In fact i looked this up and ur average wealthy man had 4 sets of clothes in this time period. Stede is obviously obsessed w clothing. Your average person was lucky to have two sets if even. Those outfits had to cost an insane amount of money even for a wealthy man.

If u were truly a classist, colonist asshole u wouldnt be doling out thousand dollar outfits like candy.

I could go on but i think what makes fake Stede endearing as a character is he is genuinely happy to make friends. And he never seems to view them lesser whether it be race or class. I just cant agree.

[muwur]

um!! i want to request a comfort hc/drabble(?) anything !! just 👉👈 can i get hinata n/or tsuki comforting and standing up for their s/o (or friend!) who is non-binary ??

standing up for a non-binary s/o

♡ scenarios ♡ for hinata and tsukishima

gn reader

turned out longer than i intended tHIS IS MY PROBLEM N Y I UPDATE SO SLOW FORGIVE ME FOEFHEFOEFRG but anyway,,,, 2.3k words

a/n: i use primarily they/them as reader’s preferred pronouns in these scenarios, but i wanted to acknowledge that ik some non-binary ppl use other pronouns,  they/he, they/she, or even all pronouns, etc :) reminder to pls be respectful to what people want and use their preferred pronouns!  and pls lmk if i ever offend you bc i don’t want to upset anyone <3

hinata

Just a week ago, you had finally mustered the courage to come out as non-binary to your boyfriend, Hinata. You recalled the rising panic you felt when you were met with silence and the slight widening of his chocolate eyes. However, his initial surprise was quickly replaced with a softness gracing his features. When he gently stroked your cheek and reassured you that nothing would change how he feels about you, you felt your heart melt with relief. You had nothing worry about, after all.

Unfortunately, not everyone could be as accepting as Hinata.

Picking at an array of noodles with a fork, you fixed your sights on the dinner plate before you, trying to ignore a certain gaze threatening to sear your skin. Next to you, Hinata grimaced. Munching on his stir fry and trying to be respectful in front of your family were the only things keeping him from wiping that leer off your aunt’s face. She was blatant in expressing her disapproval, the wrinkles in her face contorting with disgust whenever she so much as looked your way.

After your heart-to-heart with Hinata the other week, you were inspired to come out to your family as well. The news circulated, and though you weren’t expecting everyone to exactly be on board, the reality of disapproval hurt more than you imagined. It was great timing that today happened to be your cousin’s birthday, and you were forced to have dinner with one of your least favorite family members. Luckily, you were allowed to invite Hinata. You couldn’t fathom how your soon-to-be 5-year-old cousin was so kind and polite despite being reared by such a tyrannous mother.  Your earliest memory of your aunt was when she snatched your favorite toy from your toddler hands. You cried as she yelled at both you and your parents for letting you play with such a “gender-inappropriate” toy.

You knew she wouldn’t let you escape tonight without any offhand comments or dirty looks.

A throat cleared. You tensed in your seat. “Y/n? Dear, could you pass me the salt?”

You dared a glance up at the familiar voice. Your eyes locked with your aunt’s menacing ones briefly before you quietly obliged to her request.

“Thank you,” she said dully, taking the shaker. Sprinkling her meal, she continued to speak with nonchalance. “So, I heard you go by ‘they’ now? What’s wrong with he/she, hm? I mean, that is what you are, and that’s the only thing you should go by.”

Silence. Your parents looked at one another in discomfort, unsure how to respond. Your cousin looked back and forth between you and and your aunt curiously, unaware what was happening. A few more seconds passed by. With a shaky breath, you could only stutter out a timid “I-I--” before your mother cautiously piped up. “Aunt *name*, please, it’s your child’s birthday, let’s save this conversation for another ti--”

A scoff interrupted her. “Easy for you to say. You’ve always been so soft on y/n. Neither of you,” she glared accusingly at your parents, “raised her/him right. Now, look what’s happened. She/he’s gone delusional. How could any of you be okay with this and carry on like normal?”

You could feel yourself holding back tears. You wanted to say something against her, to show her you weren’t afraid of her and didn’t care what she thought. To prove that she didn’t know anything about you. That she had no right to be talking to you like this.

Yet you remained frozen in your seat, unable to speak. Inside, your mind went blank, leaving you defenseless against her hateful tirade.

“If she/he were my daughter/son, I’d set things straight immediately. No more outside communication. Who knows what nonsense they’ve been feeding your child? She/he needs to see a specialist to undo whatever brainwashing has occurred and--”

SCREECH.

Hinata stood in front of his seat, which had slid noisily across the floor when he pushed it back. He was silent, his eyes pointed downward and his two palms pressed on the table. All eyes looked at him with shock, if not a tinge of curiosity.

“Stop saying those things as if you knew one thing about y/n and what they’ve had to go through,” he said in a low voice, teeth clenched.

A challenging arch of the brow replaced your aunt’s initial surprise. “Oh, please. What do you know? You’re just a naive kid like y/n. You don’t understand. You know nothing about the real world and you kids go about life as if you can just do anything. You’re selfish.”

“You’re being selfish for refusing to understand a point of view that you’re not used to. How could you live with yourself knowing that you’re making someone you should care about miserable for the rest of their lives? You have no right to speak as though you know y/n. All you care about is your opinion, regardless of whether or not it’s right, and how you look to other people. What’s wrong with letting y/n make their own decisions? Why invalidate them before even giving them the chance to explain and help you understand? You should think about how you’re acting before trying to teach someone else how they should live.”

The air cracked with silent tension. It was too much. Quickly, you got up and dashed to the front door, unlocking it and stepping outside to breathe in the cool evening air. Wrapping your arms around yourself, you stumbled off the front porch, increasing the distance between yourself and that dinner table.

Your body jolted with shock when you heard a familiar voice out and felt a pair of arms wrap from behind your frame. Hinata was breathing heavily, his rushed voice laced with worry. “I’m sorry for making a scene in front of your family, y/n, but I couldn’t just sit around and let her say whatever she wanted. You don’t deserve that treatment. I don’t regret anything I told her. And if she’s still bothering you, or anyone else for that matter, you bet I’m gonna be there to stick up for you, no matter what.”

Despite the tears that pricked at your eyes, a small smile formed on your lips. Ditching your family dinner, you spent the rest of the evening together seated in a booth at a nearby fast food restaurant, munching on goodies and sharing lighthearted jokes. That night, you were reminded that it didn’t matter what someone like your aunt thought. Those who did matter were the ones who accepted and cared for you--the real you. In the midst of darkness, you found yourself a radiant being who never failed to brighten your day. You didn’t know what you did to deserve Hinata, but you knew he would be by your side through it all. For that, you were grateful.

tsukishima

After a rough week of nonstop work, food delivery, and 1AM espressos, you were relieved Saturday had finally come. Tsukishima, who had come by your home a few times that week to check up on you(r sanity) and drop off some surprise dinners, nagged you to take better care of yourself and offered to treat you to lunch that weekend (after you promised to get a lot of rest when you were finished). When you beat your deadlines early Friday evening, you nearly cried tears of joy and immediately passed out on your bed to catch up on lost sleep.

Saturday reminded you of the beauty of the outside world, much needed after your long week of confinement. Both sun and clouds gathered in the pale blue sky overhead. Warm sunshine freckled your skin while a gentle breeze cooled your temple. Hand in hand, you walked down the block with Tsukishima towards the farmer’s market. Already you could hear the nearby murmurs of a crowd and smell the savory aroma of freshly cooked food. Your stomach grumbled with enthusiasm as you thought about all the delicious choices waiting to be ordered.

Numerous vendors lined up down the street. Smoke arose from hot grills, carrying the scent of various spices through the air. Workers called out to passing customers, offering them samples of their homemade nut butters or showing off their natural, handmade soaps. With a fascinated glint in your eye, you observed each stand you passed by. From Hawaiian poke, grilled paninis, and tacos, to Thai stir fry, barbecue, and shawarma, the options seemed endless. As much as you loved the variety, it made making a decision even more difficult.

“Tsukkiiii,” you said pleadingly, “I don’t know what I want.”

He sighed. “Well, what’s your appetite in the mood for?”

“No clue, that’s why I’m asking.”

When he shot you an annoyed look, you held your hands up. “Hey, I’ve been using my brain way too much this week. I’m tired of thinking. I’m pretty down for anything, to be honest.”

With a shrug, he suggested trying the ramen from a stand several feet away from you both. You happily agreed and dragged the both of you to stand in line. Looking down at your shirt, you pulled on it slightly and adjusted the pin attached close to your collar. It depicted a cartoon cat with a text bubble that said “they/them” to indicate your preferred pronouns (though, in the note above, ik you may have a different combination of preferred pronouns. feel free to just sub in whatever those are into the pin ^-^ ). You recalled how you heart rushed with excitement when you found it in your mailbox that morning.

“You know, you didn’t have to get this for me,” you told your blonde companion as you admired your gift. Hands in his pockets, he gave you another shrug. “I just thought it suited you. Plus, strangers won’t misgender you, anymore.”

“That’s really thoughtful of you, Kei... Thank you, again, really.”

His lips formed into a thin line and he looked off to the side. He muttered a low, “Don’t mention it.” before stepping forward to follow the shortening line. A huff of amusement escaped you in response. You were also taking a step forward when you felt a shove on your left side. Tsukishima caught you mid-stumble, helping you regain your balance and stand upright again. Narrowing his eyes, he looked over at the man who bumped into you. The stranger caught himself from stumbling as well, then scratched the back of his neck in embarrassment.

“Ah, I’m sorry about that young man/woman! I wasn’t looking clearly,” he apologized.

You shook your head in response, offering him a smile. “No worries. I’m glad we’re both okay.”

He was about to laugh in agreement when he noticed the pin attached to your top. His smile vanished and he looked at you quizzically. “Say, what’s that pin you got there?”

“Oh,” you pointed at it. “This? These are my gender pronouns. I go by ‘them/them,’” you announced proudly.

Raising an eyebrow, he asked, “What does that even mean? ‘They/them’ is plural, so doesn’t it make more sense to just go by he/she?” He paused for a few seconds of thought. Then, it clicked. “Is this that ‘gender identity’ bullshit I’ve been hearing about lately?”

Your enthusiasm quickly dissipated. ‘Oh gosh, please don’t tell me that this person’s--’

“Now missy/boy, I don’t know what’s gotten into all your heads, thinking you can just pick and choose whatever or whoever you want to be. What you were born with is who you are. Why can’t people accept that and have to complicate things? It’s biology. I swear, people are just doing this for attention or a trend or whatever--”

“Ahem,” Tsukishima cleared his throat, interrupting the man’s rant. He placed a gentle hand on your shoulder and drew you close against himself. “Perhaps the topic is too complex for your tiny mind to comprehend,” he challenged, his voice dripping with collected hostility. “You should stop going on about things you don’t understand; it makes you look even more ignorant. Now, please, stop bothering my partner before you piss me off more.”

The stranger glared up at Tsukishima, then back at you. Deciding it wasn’t worth a fight, the man scoffed and shoved past your boyfriend;s shoulder, then disappeared into the crowd. Behind you, a kid’s wide eyes looked at Tsukishima with awe. “Wow, that was really cool! You really showed him!”

“Tch, it was nothing,” he responded bashfully. “Can’t let assholes get away with whatever they want.”

15 minutes later and you were both settled in a shady area on a grassy field with ramen bowls in your lap. Your eyes were glued to the ground. Tsukishima waved a hand in front of your face with concern.

“Earth to y/n? You good? You’ve been quiet since we encountered that guy earlier.”

You risked looking up into his eyes, unable to control the stream of tears running down your eyes. Surprised, the blonde placed his hands on the sides of your face and started to wipe your tears off with his thumbs. “I-I’m just, r-really grateful that you,” you choked between sobs, “were here with m-me, today. I d-don’t know what I would’ve done if I was alone.”

You let him wrap his arms around you as you buried your face in his shoulder. He nestled his cheek onto the top of your head and ran a gentle hand up and down your spine. “It’s okay,” he murmured softly. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, anymore. I promise.”

Several minutes later, you pulled away, sniffling and rubbing the remaining tears from your eyes with your forearm. He gave your head a small pat.

gRhhrrhGRH.

“Someone sounds hungry.” You rolled your eyes and swatted his hand off your head.

2 minutes into eating, and you asked (suggestively), “Can we eat from the same bowl and see if we end up connecting noodles?”

“N-No, that’s dumb.” 

“Oh, c’monnnnn~ You know you want to, you’re blushing.”

“I’m not!”

a/n: sry about the weird stomach growl effect LMAO

if you coudlnt tell i was hungry writing this n i miss going out to eat foueherhggu

i hope u enjoyed <3 pls lmk if u would like any changes anon or smth different (liks regular hc’s, etc). have a lovely day n i hope you feel better <3 ill fite anyone who makes u feel bad >:(

[kakatenzo]

kkyam royalty au 1

okay I have two fic ideas that are centred around a royalty au and i wanted to post both on here and see which ones ppl preferred!

here’s royalty au 1 i’ll post the second one tomorrow

(ps this is un beta’d and it is 2:40am so i have not looked over it at all. just typed and hit send)

“You come here often?” Kakashi ask sleazily.

             It’s a cheap shot. He knows that, he’s sure he’s had better one liners at the tavern after one too many drinks but Kakashi can’t bring himself to care. The entire night has been occupied by stuck up nobility and empty conversations that carried across the ballroom. He’s just surprised he has managed to survive the entire night despite not coming from a royal lineage himself, it seems that all that condescending behaviour blocks all common sense and Kakashi tries not to be too smug about it. It’s a good thing he’s an excellent liar and charming if he really put his mind to it, and now he’s putting all his effort into trying to swoon this doe-eyed brunette. Kakashi hasn’t seen him before unlike the other parties of the monarchy who often were presented during ceremonies and announcements, so he assumes he is visiting from another kingdom. It’s perfect, Kakashi thinks, he’ll bag a noble for one night and never see them again.

             “Yes actually,” the brunette answers frowning and it catches Kakashi by surprise. “Konoha’s been my home since I was born. I suppose you are visiting?”

             Well, that’s one idea out the window so Kakashi replies dumbfoundedly, “Uh, yes.”

             It seems to jerk the brunette awake. “I apologise for I have misplaced my manners, good sir.” he says before straightening his shoulders and giving a bow. “I am Yamato, nobleman of Konoha.”

             Kakashi quickly dips into a bow. “Kakashi, crown prince of the Hatake kingdom.”

             Yamato raises a brow. “I don’t recall the Hatake family mentioning a visit to the kingdom.”

             The crown prince disguise had worked well the whole evening and if Kakashi is going to be honest with himself, it also gave his ego a small nudge but now his ego is deflating because it seems like he decided to try to court one of the only smart people in this ballroom.

             “It was all very last minute, so I apologise for the short notice.”

             The back of Kakashi’s neck prickles with heat and he resists the urge to ease the collar from his throat. The tavern is going to have a ball when they find out he got kicked out from the ball because he found a guy attractive.

             A small, almost bashful smile encompasses Yamato’s face instead and he amicably says. “I apologise I did not mean to doubt your presence. How are you finding the ball?”

             “Eh,” Kakashi says loosening up and his shoulders return to their usual hunched position. “Everyone here is on their high horse.”

             For a moment, Yamato looks horrified but then he laughs. Gentle and warm, and it invites Kakashi to relax further. “You’re very honest, do they allow the crown prince of your kingdom such brash honesty?”

             Kakashi returns a laugh because he is the opposite of honest. He is conning this poor man with his endless spindle of lies from the moment he had opened his mouth. “I’m only honest to people that I like,” he winks, “but I’m sure there are more honest people than me.”

             Yamato shakes his head. “I’ve been attending these royal balls since I was a child. Everybody treats you like you’re below them and make you feel small over the silliest things.”

             “Why do you keep attending them?” Kakashi asks and tries to ignore the sincerity that pools in his chest. “Can you not decline the invitation? It would save you from a lot of misery and hassle.”

             “I seldom do,” Yamato’s eyes slide to the side and breaks their eye contact. “My aunt she—she’s very high up and it’s pertinent I attend these events to create connections with other kingdoms.”

             Kakashi squashes the warmth of sincerity and replaces it with the hot rush of want. “Do you want to make a connection with me?” he offers haughtily and Yamato rewards him with a scandalised expression and a wonderful flush that disappears under his collar.

             His smile is timid but Yamato’s voice is firm when he says, “I’m not opposed to the idea of making connections with you.”

             “Let’s go make our connection somewhere less crowded.” Kakashi says and offers his arm.

             Yamato quietly latches onto the crook of Kakashi’s elbows and Kakashi escorts him out to the courtyard. They are greeted by the cool air of the evening and the luminescent glow of the moon who casts a soft spotlight on the shrubbery below her. The roses sleep gently under the calm glow of the moon, they rest because they are tired after dancing with the sun all morning. The rest of the greenery follows suit, all the branches hang low, the leaves don’t dance as they sleep to the orchestra of chirping crickets. The courtyard is large and paves a quarter of the unending garden, its stones are smooth and even unlike the rough cobbled pavements in the centre of town. The courtyard is fenced off by a low stone wall which Kakashi hops onto and pats the space next to him, offering Yamato to do the same.

             They’re both facing away from the large doors of the ballroom and Yamato tilts his head back as if he’s drinking in the light of the moon. “This is my favourite place in the palace.” He says quietly like a confession.

             “I can see why. It’s peaceful out here.” Kakashi says in agreement. “What do you like to do for fun, Yamato?”

             “What do you mean?” Yamato answers. His head snaps down to look at Kakashi and he almost looks baffled.

             Kakashi quirks a brow. “You know, when you’re not doing these parties or your duties? What do you do in your spare time?”

             Yamato bites his lip drawing Kakashi’s attention. “I like to tend this garden.” He decides after a moment.

             “Is that all?” Kakashi presses. He’s not a royal but he’s sure Yamato has at least some hobbies that don’t involve standing around and looking pretty all day.

             Even under the moonlight Kakashi can see the deep blush that spreads on Yamato’s face. “Well,” he starts. “I like sword fighting and I used to practice with the knights until they found—well, let’s just say nobody really liked to challenge me. The knights were all frightened they’d accidentally hurt me and then would get executed.”

             Kakashi can’t help the laugh that escapes his mouth. “Really?” he says gleefully. “I never expected you to be invested in combat.”

             Yamato looks away then. “I was interested in a lot of different things, but I had to whittle it down because it didn’t seem right, for someone like me to do them.”

             Someone like Yamato? “I thought noblemen could do whatever they wanted as long as it didn’t betray the kingdom.” Kakashi frowns. He’s sure he had seen the duke wandering around doing activities that Kakashi wouldn’t crown ‘duke-ly’.

             “I guess they just have high expectations,” Yamato shrugs. “Enough about me, you’re the crown prince! I’m sure you have much more exciting things to share than me.”

             “Where do I start?” Kakashi says coolly as he rapidly searches through all his memories. How the hell was he going to fabricate a royal story? He had many in the town and in the countryside, but they all consisted of him working or training and neither seemed princely. He then forces himself to remember all those conversations he had with those prudish Lords and Ladies in hopes of bringing up a hobby that was vaguely plausible.

             “If you don’t mind,” Yamato breaks his rapid-fire train of thought. “Can I ask how you received your scar?”

             Kakashi’s fingers find the line that staggers under his eye before it disappears into his mask. “It was from an attack,” he answers honestly for the first time that evening. “My friend and I were out where we weren’t meant to be, and we had been ambushed. This was from a knife.”

             He brushes his hair from his brow and slowly follows the ridge of his brow, over the curve of his eyelid and then over the soft fabric of the mask. Yamato’s eyes follow the path carefully, his eyes bright under the moonlight and his mouth slightly open in awe. “Is that why you wear the mask? For your safety?”

             Kakashi nods quickly in agreement.

             “You’re lucky to have survived, Prince Kakashi.” Yamato quips and hearing his name in Yamato’s mouth makes his heart jump.

             “It was a fair fight.” Kakashi says easily. “I won in the end anyway.”

             Yamato’s eyes widen and he sits up eagerly. “Do you get to train at your palace?”

             Kakashi thinks of the field. It is by no means a training room nor the mighty barracks that housed the knights. During winter, when the ground froze over, was when he would accumulate the most bruises after a spar and during summer, the soil would be so dry that it would kick up everywhere. It ended in his eyes, his hair, under his nails and he always came home dirty. He thinks of his makeshift targets and dummy, the way they’ve been branded with marks since he was a child and how they’re worn and yellowed with age. He wonders if Yamato had managed to brandish a shiny sword at all and practice his footing on even ground.

             “Yes, all the time.” Kakashi answers and he can’t look into Yamato’s eyes. “I begged my father so I could protect myself and it proved worthy.”

             Suddenly his hands are engulfed with Yamato’s own warm ones. “Could you teach me something?” he asks earnestly.

             Yamato is smiling so widely and Kakashi realises that Yamato may be the only genuine face he has encountered tonight. “Sure,” Kakashi says and leaps to his feet with Yamato following suit. “We have no swords, so we’ll focus on hand to hand combat.”

             Kakashi begins with stances, he notes the importance of the stance and how to make sure there are no openings that make Yamato vulnerable. He then moved onto basic attacks, how to disarm your opponent and the weakest points of the human body.

             “You’re a quick learner,” Kakashi comments nonchalantly and gently fixes Yamato’s arms by raising his elbow slightly.

             “Can I fight now?” Yamato asks with a glint in his eyes.

             Kakashi splutters. “I’m not going to fight you, Yamato.”

             The nobleman drops his stance. “How am I going to learn if I don’t fight someone?”

             “Your practice stances will kick in.” Kakashi lies. He had always made his students fight him.

             “Don’t lie to me. The knights spar all the time!” Yamato protests and Kakashi bites back on a grin.

             “I’ll go easy on you,” Kakashi offers. “I wouldn’t want to hurt your pretty face.”

             The deep flush invites itself again on Yamato’s face as he enters his first stance. They both move shift around in a circle, waiting for the other to make a move, arms and hands close to their face and chests, and their eyes locked onto each other intensely. Kakashi throws the first attack to which Yamato quickly parries and it leaves his neck exposed. Kakashi hooks his arm over the crook of Yamato’s neck but Yamato grabs his arm with both hands and throws Kakashi off. He stumbles back and Yamato follows with two quick punches, Kakashi ducks and before Yamato can throw a jab, he rises quickly, years of agility drilled into him and knocks Yamato back onto the grass.

             He lands with a soft ooft and leans back on his hands, he looks up at Kakashi with bright eyes, a ruddy face and a wide grin. His hair is ruffled but his shoulders are much more relaxed. “You’re very skilled, Kakashi.” Yamato compliments catching his breath.

             Kakashi stretches his arm out to offer a hand and pulls Yamato up. He jumps to his feet and ends up nearer to Kakashi than he had anticipated. “You’re a quick learner,” Kakashi parrots from earlier. He’s distracted by their vicinity. “You did well.”

             Their hands are still conjoined and Kakashi’s eyes drop to their clasped hands before dragging his eyes back up to Yamato’s dark gaze. Something snaps in the heavy silence between them, and Kakashi finds himself leaning in but Yamato stops him with a gentle press of his free hand to Kakashi’s chest.

             “Kakashi,” he says warily but his brows furrow with determination. “I have something to tell you.”

             Before either of them can get a word in the doors to the ballroom burst open and they both break apart from each other as if they’d been shocked. Queen Tsunade steps onto the courtyard and they both bow to greet her. Kakashi’s head swims as he straightens back up because Queen Tsunade is not a force to be reckoned with. He’s sure she’s caught him, she knows that he’s not a royal at all and has been parading around as a fraud all evening, and the mere thought of her punishment sends an awful bout of guttural anxiety.

             “Ah, there you are Tenzo!” Queen Tsunade bellows across the courtyard and approaches the duo. “I thought you had disappeared before the ceremony and I was getting worried. Come along now, you know we can’t start it without you and the people are waiting.”

             The relief that Queen Tsunade isn’t here for Kakashi doesn’t take the edge off his nerves. She’s even more powerful in person and this is the closest Kakashi has gotten to her. She’s shorter than he had expected, but her stoic glare and booming voice has commanded many rooms. Her blonde hair is loose over her shoulders, they fall gracefully frown the crown atop her head, and she places her hands on her hips, crinkling the jade green dress she’s often seen in. Kakashi is glad he no longer has Yamato’s hand in his grasp because he’s sure his hand would slip out with how much his palms are sweating.

             Yamato shoots him an apologetic look. “I’m sorry I’m afraid I have to go. Where can I find you later?”

             “Let’s meet here.” Kakashi says with the intention to bid Yamato goodbye before he returns to his regular civilian life. He had told enough lies tonight to last a lifetime.

             “I look forward to it.” Yamato says sweetly before turning to follow Queen Tsunade back inside.

             Kakashi lets out a sigh of relief and steals one long glance around the garden that Yamato had tended himself. He cranes his head to the moon, she had been the only audience to their dance, if you could call it such and turns on his heel to return to the ballroom.

             Gai is easy to find in the crowded ballroom because he is impressing a small crowd with handstands. Kakashi joins the crowd in watching Gai perform and remembers when he had challenged Kakashi to see who could hold a handstand for the longest. Unfortunately, it had been winter and the ground was damp with rain that left their hands muddy, cold and unmoveable.

             Towards the centre of the room, a servant calls for the audience’s attention so Kakashi steps forward. “I’m so sorry to interrupt the entertainment, but I believe there is a royal announcement.”

             Gai fixes himself back onto his feet with unyielding control and the small crowd reward him with a short round of applause before they all usher each other to the centre of the room.

             “Kakashi!” Gai booms. “It has been the most wonderful evening!”

             “I’m glad you’ve been enjoying it,” Kakashi says while Gai swings an arm around his shoulders. “Would you like to watch the ceremony?”

             “Why, of course!” Gai exclaims. “It would be of our best interest to make the most of our stay.”

             Truth be told, Kakashi really could not care for the ceremony because all he can think of is Yamato’s ruddy grinning face under the moonlight. How his eyes glittered even in the dark shawl of the night sky. (How dark his gaze had been when they were all but pressed close to each other with the moon as their only witness.)

             Although they are on the outskirts of the crowd, Queen Tsunade’s voice doesn’t fail to reach them from across the room. “Foremost, I would like to thank those who have attended today. It is always a pleasant sight to see, the unity of the kingdoms and our people, especially for an occasion such as this.” She pauses and the room waits with bated breath. “I am here tonight to proudly announce my heir and who will be next in line to the throne.”

             Her speech sends the room to a stifled but frenzied whisper. Heir? Queen Tsunade had no children. Her husband passed away before she could bear any heirs. Who is this heir? Has she passed the lineage of Konoha to a neighbouring kingdom’s prince? How are we to trust this new heir to rule Konoha?

             Queen Tsunade continues resiliently. “I apologise for hiding him from his people, he was too young to be exposed to the masses but I assure you he has been in this kingdom the entire time and I am confident that he will serve you, our people, very well. That’s why he is here today, because he has come of age and has grown into a splendid young man.” She smiles softly, pride shines in her eyes and she steps aside. “I would like to introduce my dear nephew, Prince Tenzo Senju, as your next ruler.”

             The room bursts into a cacophony of applause as Tenzo emerges and joins his aunt, Queen Tsunade, at the front of the crowd. He gives an obligatory bow, back straight as if he’s rehearsed it a lifetime and just like the one he gave Kakashi earlier that night. Except it’s not exact because his hair is ruffled from their short spar. Gai is clapping wildly next to him but it seems as if Kakashi can’t move his arms. The noise is far too loud—no, it is far too quiet and Kakashi drowns in the rushing noise of his thoughts filling his head. Realisation sinks in, like the first chill of winter that sinks deep into your bones, but you’ve not prepared a coat and you’re left shivering in the early rays of the sun.

             Then Tenzo turns and catches his eyes. He spares Kakashi a tight lipped smile, empty of the mirth from earlier that evening. No wonder why the knights didn’t allow Yamato to train, because they would have been fighting the crown prince of Konoha. He had little hobbies to do because he’s spent his entire life preparing to be the next ruler. With each piece that clicks into place the sinking feeling in his stomach only tightens.

             “—Kakashi,” Gai says and it shakes Kakashi out of his trance. There is a firm but grounding grip on his shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

             “Nothing. I’m just looking forward to meeting someone in the courtyard later tonight.”

[newcresting]

Hi! I was asked to make a quick little tutorial for making eyeshadows, but since I can’t half-ass anything, here’s a whole-ass tutorial. Please note that I am in NO WAY an expert and that I’m still learning. My method is probably not the best but it works. There’s probably an easier way to do it! Sims4Studio has a lot of tutorials you can check out to find a method that works for you if this doesn’t.

You need Photoshop + an extension to read DDS files and S4Studio. It would probably work with something other than Photoshop, but it’s what I use and that’s what I’m gonna write about. 

Under the cut because it got suuuuper long!!!

Step 1: Open Sims 4 Studio.

Step 2: Choose “Create CAS Standalone”, then click on the big blue CAS button.

Step 3: S4S will show you the catalogue. I like to sort it so Part Type is set to the stuff that I want to make (in this case “Lidschatten” or “Eyeshadow”) then set Game Pack to “Base Game”, which ensures that the item we’ll make is base game compatible. Then just choose any eyeshadow. I usually just take the first one.

Step 4: A new window will open and ask you to name your new package! I usually go NEWCRESTINGwhateveritisNAME. Extra characters like -_.(){] slow your game down, and I feel like putting whatever it is (in this case an eyeshadow) makes sorting it easier. If you wanna name your shadow just eyeshadow1 that’s fine but it will kinda suck for ppl who download it.

Step 5: After you named your eyeshadow, you get to the main S4S screen. We don’t need to do much here for now, just export the texture. To do that, we click export. (I drew a lil arrow) S4S then tells you to save the texture. I usually make a folder per project and save it there under the name “tex” but it really doesn’t matter.

Step 6: Open Photoshop. Make sure you got your DDS plugin installed.

Step 7: Open your texture (in my case called “tex”) The DDS plugin asks you how to load it, click “load using default sizes.”

Step 8: Now you should have your texture in front of you. I like to zoom in to 300-500% depending on what I’m making.

Step 9: Now, on the left there should be a panel called “Channels” or something (my PS is in German so I’m just guessing here). There’s five channels: RBG, Red, Green, Blue, and Alpha. By default, all are selected except Alpha. We’re gonna reverse that so that it looks like this:

Step 10: By now your image should look mostly black with two little white thingies on it. The alpha channel basically tells the eyeshadow where to show up. Where there is pure white, it’s gonna show. Grey tones are a way to “lower” the opacity. Where there is pure black, there’s not gonna be any eyeshadow.

Now, get creative! Use the brush tool set to white to add and black to subtract from the alpha so that the form suits what you want. Make it softer, make it bolder. This is where you decide the shape! Experiment, get creative, use the brush and eraser tools until you find something you like.

Here’s before (a.k.a. EA’s alpha):

And here’s mine after some very quick editing because I wanted to get this done:

Step 11: Change the channels back so that the alpha is disabled and all the other ones are enabled, so that it looks like this:

Step 12: Now, we get to the fun part: The actual texture. I dislike EA’s textures as I find them too stark and harsh. I like them softer and subtler. But that’s just me, feel free to go wild! Paint your own texture or just color fill with a single block of color, it doesn’t matter! If you paint your texture, just make sure it lines up with your alpha layer. Also, make sure that you make the texture black and white for now so that we can easily recolor it later.

This is EA’s texture:

And this is mine! It’s ugly, but that doesn’t matter, ‘cause only the stuff that our alpha specifies is gonna show up, so it doesn’t matter that it’s just blurry circles.

Step 13: Now to get some colors into that! Go to the menu at the top, select Layer --> New Fill Layer --> Solid Color (or something. something with solid). Photoshop should then ask you to specify a color. Choose one, then go to the layer tab on the right and change the blend mode or whatever it’s called from “normal” to “overlay” or “soft light” or just experiment with the modes! It doesn’t matter! Get what looks best to you. I chose Overlay.

This is what my eyeshadow looks like now that it has color:

Click on File --> Save as ... A window will pop up with a save dialogue. Make sure to save your file as a .DDS file!!! This is super important. Then name it (I usually just number the swatches, so this one would be “1″) and save it where you can find it.

The DDS plugin will then ask you how to save it. From the drop-down menu, choose “DXTC 5 ARGB 8bpp | interpolated alpha”, then click save.

Step 14: Now you can choose to make more colors by clicking on the little colorful rectangle (purple in my case) on your fill layer in the layer tab. That will make PS ask you what color you want once more but eliminate the need to make a new layer.

Step 15: You’re basically done now! Open S4S if you closed it and click “import” on the side, just under where you exported the texture at the beginning. Your eyeshadow should show up on the model and you can preview if you like it!

For example, I realized my eyeshadow looks way too light, so I changed the blending mode from Overlay to Linear Burn and put the opacity at 75%. Experiment!

This is what my final shadow looks like in S4S:

As you can see, I have a whole bunch of swatches now. Click “add swatch” in the top right corner to add a new swatch. Under Swatch Thumbnail you can drop-pick the color that the swatch is supposed to have in your catalog, or you can import a color palette through tools. S4S has tutorials for that on their site.

Step 16: This is OPTIONAL! But I like to do it. The eyeshadow we used as a base is by default enabled only for females and allowed for random. I don’t like that, so I enable it for males by checking the box (circled) and then remove the checkmark from the box at the very bottom (you have to scroll a bit) so it’s no longer allowed for random. Don’t forget to click Apply to All Swatches!

Now click Save! And you’re done!!! Don’t forget to copy over your package to your cc folder, then go in game and find them, take a couple of screenshots for a thumbnail and preview and then it’s done!

This is my shadow in game:

Now go forth and make your own eyeshadows!

[horansqueen]

AM Conversations : chapter 31

A Niall Horan fanfiction ; rated MA

CHAPTER 1 || CHAPTER 2 || CHAPTER 3 || CHAPTER 4 || CHAPTER 5 || CHAPTER 6 || CHAPTER 7 || CHAPTER 8 || CHAPTER 9 || CHAPTER 10 || CHAPTER 11 || CHAPTER 12 || CHAPTER 13 || CHAPTER 14 || CHAPTER 15 || CHAPTER 16 || CHAPTER 17 || CHAPTER 18 || CHAPTER 19 || CHAPTER 20 || CHAPTER 21 || CHAPTER 22 || CHAPTER 23 || CHAPTER 24 || CHAPTER 25 || CHAPTER 26 || CHAPTER 27 || CHAPTER 28 || CHAPTER 29 || CHAPTER 30

NOTES:

-one chapter is her pov, the next is his. -4.5k -im sorry, i never proofread, i hate it. -there WILL be smut. but not only smut. -this is a romance, comedy, smut story. -for the summary, check my MASTERLIST.

- if you want to be notified when this is updated, please message me or leave a comment!

- you can send me questions and theories and comments. tbh they all make me SO SO SO SOOOO HAPPY! and make me want to write more! you can also tell me if there are things you WANT to happen. you never know, i may add it :P

- thanks for being patient btw! i work a lot these days and will work even more in the next few weeks (until halloween) so i may not update as often as i’d like. :(

- note for this chapter: i hope its not too bad. im scared ppl are gonna lose interest tbh. and i know, so many dialogues but it was needed!

-please, message me, give me feedbacks, it would mean sooo much to me!

Chapter 31 : Her chapter

OLIVIA

I woke up the next day a bit disoriented. I couldn't remember when exactly I fell asleep but as soon as my eyes opened, I felt my lips curl. Niall was laying next to me and we were both facing each other. He was still asleep and I brought my hand to his cheek, making him whimper very low. Slowly, I moved closer and pressed my lips on his gently, leaving a small and soft kiss on his mouth. His eyes fluttered half-open and when he saw me, his lips curled. It made my bite my bottom lip when I realized I hadn't seen him this happy in a while. Niall was someone who was always smiling but at this exact moment, it was even more than that. Or perhaps it was the reflection of my own happiness that I could see on his face.

He didn't say anything, he just moved closer to kiss my lips again, making them curl. I brought my hand over my mouth and smiled more.

"Hi."

He chuckled and also brought his hand in front of his mouth.

"Hi." he repeated. "Morning breath?"

"Would be bad if it was the first impression you had of me in the morning."

This time, he laughed and i felt my heart melt in my chest.

"I've smelled your morning breath and been a witness of more." he pointed out with what I guessed was a smirk from the way the corner of his eyes moved up. "Those little futile things won't change my love for you."

I could feel my heart flutter at the same time than my eyes when I heard his words.

"I woke up facing you like this so many times. I've wanted to kiss you so many times. This is the first time I actually do it. I never thought I would."

He stared at me and took his hand away. He was not smirking anymore, just smiling softly at me. I never thought Niall would ever look at me this way. I wouldn't have dared to wish for it.

"Fuck morning breath." he just said moving closer to me and getting half his body on top of mine before pushing my hand gently away and kissing me. It took me a few seconds to allow him to deepen the kiss but eventually I did. I closed my eyes, enjoying the way he kissed me and the warmth of his body over mine until he groaned in my mouth. "How did you sleep?"

I tried to think of an answer but all I could focus on was the way his lips ran down on my neck and how good they felt on my skin. I wanted to lock myself with him in his room for weeks like our own private and deserted island, leaving reality behind.

His phone started ringing and he groaned, his lips stopping on my collarbone. He simply sighed and I grimaced before he got up and searched for his phone through the pockets of the pants he wore the day before. It was not his type to leave dirty clothes on the floor but it seemed like both of us were distracting the other and I couldn't hide that I liked it.

"Hello?" he quickly answered without checking the caller ID... and with the way his face changed, I believed he shouldn't have had. "Oh hi."

I sat in bed and tilted my head, feeling suddenly a bit stressed, wondering who was on the phone but also annoyed, because whoever it was, they were clearly disturbing our alone time like some sort of ship running aground on the beach of my private island. I pushed on the covers and turned to face him, crossing ,my legs as I sat on the end of the bed.

"No, sorry, I'm busy tonight." Niall continued, turning to look at me before sending me a small smile. "I'm spending time with my girlfriend."

I held my breath and Niall stopped moving. After a few seconds, he raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes. "No, I don't mean my friend who is a girl, I really mean the girl i'm officially dating. My girlfriend." Silence. "Okay, bye."

He hung up and sighed, throwing his phone on the bed and looking through his drawers for a clean pair of boxers that he just took out.

"Who was it?" I didn't want to seem invasive but the question was burning my lips.

"Oh." he just said with a shrug, glancing at me. "It was Heidi."

The simple mention of her name made my heart jump in my throat, making me slightly nauseous. I was not sure if it was because I was jealous or scared but all I knew was that Niall had sex with her a few times and that it was probably why she was calling. I wanted to ask him to delete her number or even block it but I knew I couldn't. I was trying not to be that kind of girlfriend, the type who gets insecure about every little thing that happens, and every girl her boyfriend talks to, but it wasn't easy. Niall and I were clearly not in the same league and although I knew love is not about physical appearances, I couldn't help but be nervous about all of this.

I suddenly felt extremely self-conscious but also mad at myself for letting someone like Heidi ruin my mood.

"I need a shower." he let out, taking me out of my thoughts. "Wanna come with?"

My mind suddenly went blank and my lips parted slightly as I stared at him. Did I want to see Niall naked and wet in the shower? Fuck yes. Did I want to stand in front of him in my birthday suit? Hell no.

"You reek too, by the way." he added with a smirk, taking his shirt off and throwing it in the laundry basket before turning back to me again and raising his eyebrows.

"Uhm."

I couldn't talk and I couldn't move. I could feel my heart beat all over my body, not really knowing what to answer. He knelt in front of me with a worried expression and placed his hands on my thighs. I could feel how warm they were, even through the fabric of his sweatpants that I was wearing, and it made me swallow hard. I was so scared to do or say something that would make me lose him that I could barely think straight. I had to do something about it before it ruined the relationship I had with him. As lovers, but also as best friends.

"Tempting, but no, i'll just go after you."

I tried to look normal and sent him a smile but he frowned a bit before nodding and getting up again. He bent down to kiss my lips and it sent a rush to my brain. I already regretted saying no but I knew i'd regret a 'yes" even more when i'd be naked in front of him.

I realized I was holding my breath when I sighed as soon as I heard the shower start and I closed my eyes, feeling suddenly ridiculous. Niall was now my boyfriend, and he said he loved me... he wouldn't change his mind because of what I look like naked, would he?

I sighed loud and lied back down in bed, grabbing my phone and crossing my ankles together. I couldn't help it and searched Niall's name on google only to find recent articles about him. There were pictures of us kissing at the bar and although it was from afar and not very clear, I felt extremely ugly. 'It's official! Niall Horan finally dating lifelong friend!'

My heart jumped in my chest when I realized the article started with 'After years of friendship, it is without a surprise that Niall Horan is finally seen kissing his childhood friend...' My eyes roamed on the sentence twice, three times... ten. 'Without a surprise'?

I scrolled down to the comments section and started nibbling on my bottom lip. I knew that whatever I would read would end uip hurting me but it was stronger than me. I was not the type to really care about what people thought of me but despite what anyone may tell you, reading mean things about yourself sucks and hurts.

'Can't believe she dated both Harry and Niall! Talk about a dream life! 😍'

'I have no idea how that ugly girl got one of them let alone both. 🤔 It makes no sense'

'They are so adorable!!!!!'

'He fucking deserves better have you seen her? 🤮'

'He lost a bet 😂😂😂'

'OTP OTP OTP 🥰'

I shut my eyes tight again and threw my phone on the bed before groaning low. All I could see behind my eyelids was a parade of emojis and I did the best I could to hold my tears in. I knew Niall was out of my league but some people could be so cruel when hiding behind a computer screen. The shower stopped and when Niall came back in the room, he was followed by a cloud of steam. I looked at him quickly from head to toes, enjoying the view as he walked up to me with only a towel around his waist.

"My turn!" I just said, jumping out of bed. He stopped me as I walked by and pulled me closer, making me chuckle low.

"You're all wet!" I complained jokingly, making him laugh.

"Then just take your clothes off."

His fingers reached for the top of my shirt and he pulled gently on the collar to move it down as his eyes dropped in. I felt my heart jump in my chest and shook my head, taking a step back and making him groan low.

"Pervert!" I added with a chuckle, walking to the bathroom.

I turned around and before closing the door, I stuck my tongue out at him, making him laugh again but I still locked behind myself. I knew my fear and my hatred for my own body was stopping me from living some great things with Niall but I just didn't feel ready to show him all of me. I just wanted him to think I was beautiful. I wanted to turn him on, I wanted him to want me the way I wanted him.

I brushed my teeth first and quickly got undressed and started the waterI stayed a bit longer than I should have in the shower, letting the warm water fall on me and relaxing me as the memories of the night before played over and over in my mind. It was still incredible and unbelievable to me that Niall had finally realized he had feelings for me too but it was my reality now and It felt like I would never get down from my cloud.

I got out of the shower, drying my hair the best I could with a towel before wrapping it around my body and remembering that I left my clothes in the room. I raised my nose up and inhaled deeply before going back. I frowned when I saw him laying in bed in only a pair of boxers and my phone in hands. He looked at me and sighed, turning the phone my way to show me the article I had been reading while he was in the shower.

"I'm sorry I checked your phone it's just..." he sighed again and shook his head. "You shouldn't read shit like that. You know those mean comments aren't true, right?"

I held my towel to make sure it wouldn't fall and sent him a sad smile, walking to the bed. He sat on it and I shrugged as he looked up, wrapping his arms around me.

"Liv, please, listen to me." he let out in a low but worried tone. "I feel so lucky to be with you. You are beautiful and I love you." he paused but he kept staring at me. "Olivia, I love you."

"It's just..." I closed my eyes and sighed, feeling him hold me tighter against him. "I don't know."

"Talk to me, okay?"

I nibbled on my bottom lip and finally just nodded. He let go of me and lied back down in bed, leaving space for me. I lied down next to him, leaning my head on his shoulder as he wrapped his arm around me. I felt secure suddenly and the fact that we weren't looking at each other anymore made it slightly easier.

"You've never seen me naked." I just pointed out.

"That's... correct." he seemed a bit confused. "And i'd like to change that."

My lips curled in a fond smile.

"I mean, I don't know what you're expecting but you may be disappointed." I tried to explain, feeling his arm pull me closer. "I am not shaped like Maya or Heidi or those girls you normally end up with."

Silence. All I could hear was the sound of my heart beating against my chest. He started drawing shapes on the skin of my arm with his fingertip and It made a shiver cross my body as my heart skipped a beat. It reminded me of that time at the movies...

"I only had sex with Maya a few times." he confessed, making me frown.

"Like, how many times?"

"I don't know, four?"

I knew they had dated for a while and it was surprising that they hadn't had sex more often. Clearly, she wanted him and no one could not want her. I frowned more, a bit confused by it but also wondering why exactly he was telling me that.

"Why?"

My question was not clear but I knew he'd understand.

"I couldn't." he explained, shrugging a shoulder. "I couldn't because I only wanted you."

I couldn't help but let out a chuckle. It was laughable to think someone had the chance to bang a girl like Maya but couldn't because they wanted me more.

"I guess my love for you made it impossible for me to lust after an other girl." he continued. "I don't know what you're scared of but I know I want you more than I've ever wanted anyone else. And I won't be disappointed because it'll be you. And that's all I want. You."

I let my eyes roam on his body and I couldn't deny that I wanted him, too. I had never wanted anyone the way I wanted him. Obviously, this relationship was based on more than sex but it seemed to be an issue and I understood that he wanted to solve it. I also wanted to share everything with him. We had never really talked about sex together, at least not about our personal sex life. It's not that it embarrassed me but I didn't want to hear about the girls he had sex with and what he did with them. it would have been too hard to hear because of my love for him and for that reason, I also kept my stories a secret to make sure he wouldn't tell me his. It was a precaution I took to avoid my heart being too broken and so far, it had worked.

"Remember when we were in my room and you were about to check in a drawer and I told you not to?" I started in a low voice, raising my eyebrows without looking at him. "It was not because of my underwear.. It's just that... it's the place I keep my vibrators."

His fingers stopped moving on my shoulder and I held my breath, a small smile playing on my lips. I hadn't expected to admit that to him and obviously, he hadn't expected to hear it either.

"Plural?"

"Yes."

We remained in silence for a while and he finally chuckled.

"That's so hot." he admitted, laughing a bit. "There's so many things I don't know about you when it comes to sex, Liv, and I'd love to talk about it with you."

My traits softened and I looked up at him, moving slightly to get my head on the pillow, my face turned his way. Talking about my body embarrassed me but talking about sex in general didn't and I was totally fine with that discussion.

"Okay, I go first!" I let out with a smirk. "Who's your favorite pornstar? And if you say Jenna Jameson I'm gonna be very disappointed in you."

He sent me an insulted frown, his lips slightly parted, and it made me laugh.

"Do you know me at all?" he just asked, making me laugh. "I don't think I have a favorite, but I guess I enjoy Shyla Jennings."

I raised my nose up and groaned a bit, still looking at him.

"I can't say I'm surprised, and I also can't blame you."

"Why not surprised?" he asked, raising his eyebrows curiously.

"She's your type." I laughed, moving my chin up to look at him better.

"Oh I have a type now?" he wondered as I nodded. "Alright then, who's your fave pornstar?"

My face changed and I shrugged with a small smile.

"Gina Valentina, no second thoughts."

I saw a bunch of emotions cross his face and it made me laugh as he shook his head.

"Wait, what?"

"Oh, you wanted a man?" I asked, amused by the conversation, as I sent him a smirk. "Tyler Nixon, then."

His eyes roamed on my face and I tried to guess what he was thinking about. He was discovering things about me that I never thought he'd know but I was totally fine with it: I had nothing to hide. His lips curled into a small but fond smile and I licked my lips, my eyes never leaving his. I felt his hand take mine and he placed his palm against mine before intertwining out fingers together.

"Tell me something that you did that I would never guess."

His voice was low and the atmosphere in the room had shifted completely. We looked at each other for a few seconds and I licked my lips. He brought his hand on my waist, now completely facing me, and my heart jumped in my chest at how good he looked.

"One time I had a threesome with two other girls."

His eyes opened slightly more and his eyebrows raised up, making me laugh. He held me tighter, his fingers sinking in the fabric of the towel I still had around me, and I knew he had many questions to ask.

"You did too, didn't you?" I kept talking, raising my eyebrows too as my eyes roamed on his face.

"Maybe." he sent me a smirk. "I mean, one time when I was very drunk... it happened. But the whole thing is a bit blurry."

I don't know why but it was a relief that he didn't remember it clearly and I licked my lips. It was ridiculous of me but I couldn't help it. I knew it was impossible but I wanted to be the only girl he'd lust... the one who would make him cum the hardest, the one he could never forget.

"Was it someone you were dating?"

"I was... seeing one of them." he admitted with a groan. "And it sort of killed whatever relationship we could have had."

I nodded slowly. "It was the same for me. We broke up only a few days later."

"When was that?" he asked with a frown, probably trying to remember something he wasn't even there for.

"During your third tour."

It made me realize how little I talked about myself when it came to relationship and how little I knew about him, too. I had met all his official girlfriend, although the number could be counted on the fingers of one hand (and not the whole hand), but I wasn't aware of all the 'maybe's' and 'almost's'.

"Are you scared of what could happen after we make love?" he finally asked after a long silence. "Or what I will think? Say?"

I sighed low and looked away. Every time the discussion switched back to my insecurities, I couldn't seem to look at him in the eyes. I knew he'd be able to read me and it scared me, but I also knew that at some point, i'd have to open up to him, or I would lose him.

I shook my head slightly, looking at our intertwined fingers and It suddenly hit me. If someone was going to be there no matter what, it would be Niall, the way he's always been there.

"I hate my body, I hate the way I look naked, and there's no way you will like it. These people online, your fans, or whatever, they're all right."

The words came out of my mouth and I didn't even think. Everything I said I meant so deep that it hurt. All of this I had thought and believed for so long that expressing them out loud gave me a shiver.

"You're beautiful." he just said in a whisper.

I looked up in his eyes and I could see that he was hurt. I licked my lips and swallowed hard as he let go of my hand to slide it back on the towel around me. He kept staring at me as his hand pulled gently on the fabric and an other shiver ran all over my body, not only because of the cold air hitting suddenly my damp skin but also because of the thought of being naked in front of him. He pushed the towel on the floor and I held my breath, biting my bottom lip and sucking my stomach in. I didn't know why I cared so much, I had no idea why I was so scared after everything he showed and said, but I couldn't help it.

His fingertips ran on my waist and to my hip, ending softly on my thigh and I swallowed hard as he sent me a small smile. Slowly, he moved over me, pushing me on my back, and I moved my chin up to keep eye contact with him. I loved the feeling of his over me, like the weight on my whole body was some sort of protection against everything else, even my own complexes. He bent closer and brushed his lips against mine so gently that I felt my heart twist in my chest.

"You're beautiful and I love you." he whispered, making my lips part lightly.

I couldn't move, I was paralyzed, but I forced myself to keep my eyes open when his lips brushed on my jaw and down my neck. They traveled to my breasts and when I felt his warm tongue on one of them, I whimpered, my body jerking very slightly at the feeling.

I wanted to tell him that I loved him too, that I had never been in love with anyone else and that I never would, but the words got stuck in my throat. His mouth moved to my other nipple and I tried to push away all the questions running in my mind without much success. What did he think? Was he disappointed? Was he still lusting me? Loving me?" Or did he just feel bad for me?

His hand reached for my stomach only a few seconds before his lips and he finally looked up at me, shaking his head from left to right and pressing his fingers gently on my skin.

"Don't do that." he asked in a breath.

It took me a few seconds but I finally exhaled and relaxed my body. His lips curled in a small but find smile and he mouthed a 'thank you', making me swallow hard. I didn't know if he realized the strength it took me and what it implied for me exactly, but he seemed to be grateful and that was enough for now.

Very slowly and softly, he pressed his lips on every inch of my skin as my heart seemed to flutter. I felt dizzy suddenly by the way he showed me love but I still couldn't move. I just focused on his mouth brushing everywhere it could and leaving a burning sensation on my skin. Nothing had ever felt like that before.

His hands glided on my thighs until my knees and he spread them slowly. His lips stopped on my lower stomach and the sight of him between my legs was incredible and way more exciting than anything I had imagined before.

"Is this okay?"

I stared at him a few seconds that seemed to last an hour and he waited, his eyes never leaving mine. I licked my bottom lip but nodded slowly but he kept looking at me as he brought his lips down. I held my breath when his lips left a kiss on my slit and I gripped the sheets with one of my hands.

I was completely naked, the curtains were open and I was with Niall. It was everything I had wished for yet it was also my biggest fear. I tried not to think about it when his fingers ran between my legs and his tongue pressed on my clit, making my body jerk again. It slid down and entered me and my eyes fluttered close as I restrained a curse word from escaping my lips.

"Oh my god." I breathed out, forcing myself to open my eyes if only to look at my boyfriend and burn the image of him eating me out on my retina forever.

His tongue and lips worked between my legs, making them twitch as I got closer and closer to an orgasm but it's only when he started sucking on my clit that my back arched and my eyes finally shut tight.

"F-" I stopped myself and started shaking but he held me down on the mattress with one of his arms as an orgasm crossed my whole body.

I couldn't stop squirming as the intense feeling invaded me from head to toes and it's only when it was gone that I whimpered, feeling both embarrassed and happy at the same time. I felt him crawl up my body and when I finally opened my eyes, he was hovering over me, holding himself with his elbows and smiling down fondly at me.

I felt my heart melt at the way he was looking at me and I smiled back, feeling my heartbeats accelerate. Out of fear, and out of love. I just didn't expect his next words but it brought me near tears.

"I didn't think it was possible, but I love you even more."

[minecraftoworymode]

picked a whole bouquet of whoopsie-daisies the other day reading some Very badfeel content so to cheer myself up here’s some super self-indulgent ramblings about romeo recovery post-s2

“YOU CAN DANCE IF YOU WANT TO YOU CAN LEAVE YOUR INTERNALIZED MISOGYNY BEHIND” or how romeo learned to stop worrying and indulge in the ““feminine”“ shit in life

when romeo transitioned he scrubbed everything that could be potentially viewed as feminine from his appearance and behaviour. while he did everything he could about the former (hairstyle, clothing, body language, voice), it didn’t feel like enough bc he couldn’t change some things that ppl used to be jerks- his frame (short and lithe), his family, his being trans- so he made up for it by trying to “act” like a “real man”. this unfortunately meant he was super vulnerable to manipulative alt-right indoctrination tactics (”we will validate you as a man as long as you endorse our assholery and share our shitty beliefs about what it means to be a man”) and he was on the verge of getting sucked into gamergate ideology when [THIS LORE IS ANOTHER POST] and hey, now the world is minecraft. u dont gotta perform gender roles for villagers they dont care. xara will not only actually eat ur liver for pulling The Bullshit but when you are kind she smiles, so bright and warm, and it is very very nice so maybe you should keep on doing that. n fred? fred is chill with their Everything in a way uve only ever Dreamed of. romeo marinates in this sauce for a couple centuries and comes the closest to being comfortable in his own skin he’s ever been.

however,

after the Incident he slam-dunked himself back into the hypermasculinity juice bc it was a mindset “safe” from feeling pain, whether his or others’. n since the worlds the admins created dont have the same ideas of gender as the world they came from, once he’s been dethroned romeo has a particularly hard time adjusting wrt That on top of all the other 2750347502730 issues he has to face

anyway flash forward a couple months of being incredibly volatile bc he now has to confront all the terrible things he did and how Dare u make him do that and maybe if hes nasty enough he can provoke someone into killing him and saving him from having to unpack All Of That- (note from @simple-mooshroom-herder​: Xara and Jesse at least grasp that Romeo will probably burn himself out on this bullshit eventually and the best thing to do is interact with him with a certain level of healthy detachment. Eventually he'll see that theres no "getting out of this" and he'll start to do the Work but until then its very frustrating to see that tactic take him nowhere.)

- one day petra notices how he’s constantly staring at all the ppl wearing cute dresses in beacontown and at first she thinks he's being creepy but then realizes that he's not being creepy and actually she knows exactly how he feels bc she also used to look at ppl wearing clothes super not suited for combat like that, like she wished she could wear them too, like if she just didnt have to keep up this image of the Warrior who is Not Soft Ever-

n ok. listen. these worlds have been specifically engineered to be better and kinder than the one the admins came from, and when people mess up- even REALLY mess up- people are generally not only willing to forgive you but support you as you try and get better. it’s instinctual for communities to respond to misdeeds with rehabilitation and reconciliation, rather than retaliation and renunciation (tho its not an overnight thing and it generally takes 1-3 people to spearhead the process, esp if the actions have affected a large group of people). like. ivor created something that almost destroyed the entire world, not just beacontown, yet by the end of season one he’s grown to be a part of the team- n its not just jesse & co being forgiving here, bc when ivor made his s1 build with 3 lava source blocks people objected to it, but by s2 he not only has lava in his build but a giant lake of it. (im assuming the fences around said lake are coming eventually, bc safety is still important, but the implications im choosing to take from this are a) despite almost ending the world people let him into their lives anyway and b) the community not only grew to accept but encourage his self-expression.)

BUT ANYWAY before i go off on that even more one day petra and romeo basically put on an impromptu fashion show in jesse’s house (bc their house is huge and, kind of perfect for a fashion show, and also right next to the order hall’s armory whence they stole a bunch of fancy swords to match the outfits) n theyre having a blast until the hero in residence , returns to their residence (and with COMPANY) n romeo is absolutely Mortified- caught red-handed showing feelings of an almost human nature, oh my god, this will NOT do- n this whole grand soliluquy of shame and excuses and apologies grabs the steering wheel of his tongue but he cant even spit a single syllable out bc jesse and lukas almost immediately dip leaving romeo panicking for a second before they come back with their inventories FULL of cute outfits, including a billion skirts and dresses, some of them are even enchanted so theyre like. super shiny or constantly flowing or things like that.

this actually ends up spiralling into a town-wide... not quite fashion show bc there's no runway or anything, everyone just shows up in their cutest/coolest outfits .. fashion convention?? Anyway several people come up to him and compliment him on his outfit casually before continuing along, not recognizing him not only bc of how hes done his hair and makeup n what hes wearing but he just seems... so happy (he might be wearing something on his head? like a headpiece or hat or something? but also maybe not hmm)- whoever this is, he's not hunched over like he's got several centuries' worth of sins crawling on his back he’s not trying to shrink and make small a human-shaped apology for the simple fact of his existence not dragging his feet like hes ready for, dreading, a hundred mile trek through the desert repenting hes just. hes literally just Vibing

anyway he's mostly been silent or just providing very quiet "thank you"s but when it turns out that some people showed up ready to play music and there's a song that he knows he literally cant help but start jamming out its the GOod Stim everyones a-dancing and a-jiving and some people start to sing and so of course he does too (the healing power of dancing and singing in cute outfits.... unfathomable) but. ppl recognize his voice

and after a few seconds he notices how quiet it's gotten all of a sudden n everyones looking at him like "oh shit thats the admin" and honestly his heart breaks. visibly

but

then someone starts singing, so quiet it takes a moment for him to hear over the sound of an encroaching panic attack (oh god he has airpods in), but when he looks over theyre smiling - theyre smiling at hiM???? AND IT DOESNT EVEN LOOK MEAN??- and doing this very simple step, that he catches onto just as easily as he matches their singing (its a fairly common little tune n dance)

theyre like standing like a good few meters away but as they take turns with lines in the song they slowly inch closer

and he thinks hes starting to recognize the dance that the steps theyre doing is from but at the part in the song thats coming up ur supposed to allemande left and even tho theyre like, less than a meter away now literally no one has really wanted to get close to him, let alone actually touch him, so hes totally expecting them to be like 'psych' and humiliate him in front of the entire crowd-

BUT THEN THEY ACTUALLY GO FOR IT???

he completes the step without even thinking about it n continues onto the next in this state of dull bewilderment where there is but one braincell active in his head and it is just going, in a very tiny voice, "danser?"

- when they linked arms the person briefly seemed surprised that he didn't like, chew their arm off or anything (he had. kind of snapped at people a few times during the past few weeks), but then their shock turned into a wide smile and they sort of- nodded? at someone over his shoulder like 'come and join us, it doesn't look like he's going to kill me after all you guys can put the eulogy writing on hold'

what rly makes his heart do the confused and hopeful conga is that this isnt even anyone romeo knows, its a total stranger. or- like- he saw them while he was pretending to be jesse he just didnt care to get to know them beyond ‘name and gimmick’- its not even someone who has any reason to think he'd be cool to befriend its literally jsut someone taking a chance on him (tkae a chance take a chance take a chance take a cha)

afterwards hes like "i should thank jesse for putting you up to that, it was fun" and theyre like "what? jesse didn't "put me up to" anything, dude, you just looked super choked. * something something surfer lingo who would i be if i just left someone to feel bad when they could be having fun dancing you know?*"

he H

[merryfortune]

this is kinda random but two things:

1. if you notice my n/s/f/w side blog interacting with you and you don’t want it to, let me know! I’m happy to keep a list of ppl who don’t want me rb’ing from them. if your a minor, you’re obviously already on that list but sometimes i’m a dummy and forget to check so don’t be afraid to ask me to not rb from you (hell, soft block me if its suits you). i’m an adult and I have responsibility in regards to curating my more risque online prescence

2. if you want my n/s/f/w blog’s url and are an adult, you can 100% ask though be warned, it’s not for the faint of heart

[hencethebravery]

TITLE: CS 0155 Data Witchcraft, 1/1 (Ao3)

SUMMARY: All the books and movies seem keen on operating under the assumption that magic is supposed to make your life easier. But apparently it was all lies, because being in one’s 20s seems to suck no matter what kind of spells you’re prone to casting. Emma Swan and Killian Jones, while “blessed” with the gift of magic, are certified emotional disasters—it’s a relief to know that at least they’ve found each other. A Contemporary CS Witches AU.

CONTENT WARNING (RATED M): Contains brief mentions of childhood sexual abuse; swearing; casual, non-depressing drug use; implicit and consensual sexual content between adults. The sexual abuse is mentioned in passing and not described in explicit detail. If you need further details before reading, feel free to send me a message!

AUTHOR’S NOTES: This was a story that I planned on finishing with about 9k. It ended up being completed about 41 words under the 15k limit, and imo it should probably be longer, but since that’s not an option, this is what we’re left with! I’d like to thank a few ppl that made this possible: @the-reason-to-sail-home, @pritkins-little-witch, @initiala, and @wellhellotragic for all of their time and helpful thoughts. This fic ended up being far more challenging than I had anticipated and I couldn’t have done it without y’all. Especially Tessa and Kat, you are both my shining stars. Thank you for never letting me give up on myself. Literally incredible freaking artwork that I cannot stop staring at provided by @clockadile and @princesse-swan, both found here and here (respectively). If you’re interested in listening to the soundtrack I made to suit the particular vibe of this story, you can listen on 8tracks, here. 

“Watch carefully that magic that occurs when you give a person enough comfort to just be themselves." — Atticus, Love Her Wild: Poems

i. ugly_duckling

Emma Swan learns about magic the same way that most children do—slipped in between the pages of a book. She is not granted the privilege of enjoying a conversation typical of most children; that of parents soothing the inevitable disappointment with the truth that magic is not real. The parents might, for the most part, keep the dream alive for a certain number of years. And so, for that certain number of years, the child will be allowed to live in a world where magic exists. That child will spend a few blissful years staring a little too hard at the creepy house at the end of their street; that child will throw a packet of salt over their shoulder, even at the risk of being yelled at by their parents after the fact. Most children will grow up feeling afraid, and not much can be done about it—but to be able to quell that fear, at least temporarily, with the suggestion that there’s a magical world at the heart of it all, waiting to be discovered? That kind of thinking might make the pain of all those unknown variables worth it, at least for most children.

Emma Swan was not most children. She was “most children,” in the sense that she wandered into a library and plucked a book off the shelf with a flying girl on the cover (she rode a broomstick and wore a black hat). She was “most children,” in the way she jumped off picnic tables and prayed that her feet would never touch the ground. But she was not “most children,” when she brought the book home and showed her new “mother” the particular book in question.

“Oh, you silly thing,” Mrs. Swan had so gleefully informed her, a sharp smirk on her stiff, something not quite right about it face. “Hasn’t anyone told you? There’s no such thing as magic.”

In the Swan household there was no such thing as magic. There was a roof over Emma’s head, and a hot meal three times a day, but in all other matters of importance, it may as well have been another orphanage. To make matters worse there was Betsy Swan’s husband, Mitchell Swan—a man who, on his very best days, could hardly summon the courage to lift his ass from the couch, and on his very worst, slip into Emma’s room every other night when his wife was asleep.

As a child, Emma would disappear into her own head, creating elaborate escape attempts from her supposed home. Sometimes she would don her own pointy black hat, put a spell on her own boring broomstick, and turn Mr. Swan into some small, nasty insect she could crush beneath her shoe.

When Emma turns seven, the Swans buy their first computer. It’s a Power Macintosh G3, which matters little to Emma at the time. At first, when she overhears them talking about it, Betsy mentions something about a mouse, and she finds herself unnaturally excited at the prospect of there being an actual animal in the house. That is until she actually sees the thing, and becomes confused and disappointed at the sight of this small, oddly shaped piece of plastic attached to a length of cord. She stares curiously at the blackened screen for a few moments until Betsy returns, yelling at her to get her “behind” away from the most expensive thing in the house.

Like most major developments that might occur within the pages of any generic fantasy novel, Emma makes her first acquaintance with the digital universe in the dead of night. Closer to midnight, if we’re being specific. A clock chimes from the dining room, and the Swan house is blessedly silent as she sneaks down the hall, past the flickering light of the television, the soft sounds of Mitchell’s snores emitting from his armchair.

The machine sits quiet and imposing atop the desk in the office; the light from the moon casting an eerie glow about the room, the dark screen a seemingly infinite void staring back into her wide, curious eyes. She sneaks a glance back towards where she came, expecting to hear Mitchell’s heavy footsteps, or Betsy’s cruel laughter, but she’s only greeted with silence, the odd creak of an old house.

When she finally works up the nerve to power it on there’s a kind of yawning, high-pitched static that hits her ears in a not entirely unpleasant way. It’s just enough that she finds herself overcome with the urge to open and close her mouth comically wide, like when your ears pop inside the cabin of an airplane and you have to re-adjust all the loose air inside your head. There’s a sound afterwards, a low hum that would never really go away. In later years, she would come to understand that there’s always a vague humming associated with most electronics. What was different in Emma’s case was the sound beneath the hum, or rather, the sounds.

She would learn to ignore them after a time, picking and choosing the most relevant or useful voices. Sometimes they were people, other times they were… something else. The first night she boots up the Power Macintosh, it’s all white noise, and she assumes it’s a thing that everyone can hear. It’s a lot of excited whispers, so hushed and quickly spoken that she has a difficult time making out any one word or phrase.

“Hello?” she utters quietly, still silently praying for the Swans to remain asleep and unaware of her trespassing. “Is there anyone out there?”

The humming cacophony of distant voices and dissonant beeps are the only answer, as if her own voice has gotten lost in the din, and her eyes search the desktop until they land on an oddly familiar image of a piece of paper. It is unlike any other piece of paper she’s ever seen, this bold, flat image outlined in blocks of color—untouchable, and with no discernible smell or texture. She has stumbled upon a word processor, a blank document with a blinking, vertical line that waits and waits.

The moon grows a bit brighter in the wake of her excitement, but Emma is too eager to notice the way the darker corners of the room become less so; even the way in which the computer itself has begun to emit its own soft, illuminated ring of greenish light, as if the office has been submerged in water.

“Hello,” Emma writes slowly, one key at a time. With each selection of every letter beneath her fingertips sounds a satisfying clunk, and she grins as she continues, “My name is Emma Swan.”

The silence that follows in the wake of all those voices is nearly deafening, but there’s a clear answer that sounds from within the four walls of her newly christened safe haven; murky and quiet, getting comfortable from her place seated at the bottom of a pool, “Hello, Emma Swan. It is very nice to meet you.”

As it turns out, there is quite a lot about the Swans’ Power Macintosh G3 that they are not privy to. The Swans, in point of fact, seem to be ignorant of a great many things occurring out in the world and even in their own home about 99% of the time. They have never heard the hum of voices coming from the computer room, nor do they seem to receive the same kind of unsettling, predictive programming that Emma can suss out from within the apparent blankness of a darkened television screen. It’s a blessing and a curse. While it’s nice to know she’s not quite so alone as she used to be—while it seems as if she’s been able to lift a veil and spot the real world underneath, there’s still the reality of the Swans always hovering in another room, at her back, or in her bed.

Betsy catches Emma on the computer late one night about a month or so after her first midnight rendezvous, and the subsequent consequences are about as bad as she assumed they would be. There’s a harsh smack to the back of the head, even harsher words, and a rough tugging of her arm towards her bedroom door, tossing her inside and slamming it shut before Emma can say a word in her own defense. She cries and seethes, the tightness at the back of her throat a painful and vicious reminder of the fact that she is little more than a prisoner.

And while Emma stewed inside her room, her small feet pacing back and forth from door to window and back again, Betsy Swan had tried and failed to turn on her new computer after it had shut off quite unexpectedly. It’s screen remained stubbornly dark, and there was Betsy, angrily and futilely attempting to turn it back on, only to give up about 20 minutes later, returning to her own bedroom, mumbling to herself about how they would have to lug the fucking thing back to the store.

It’s all a bit of a different game after that. Emma has to be more careful about how and when she visits that place she’s found behind the curtain. She’s sure to cover her tracks online, deleting files or browsing data as if she had never been. She spends the next few years doing her best to become a ghost—in both of her lives. Within the walls of her “home,” in the hallways at school, and in the cold, impersonal well of the Internet. She studies everything as carefully as she can, but does her best to leave as little an impression as possible. She excels a little too well in her typing class at school, earning her some impressive marks from a teacher, so she fumbles a few weeks later and drops down a grade.

It goes on this way for two or three years, and it’s about when she starts yearning for more that she obtains a bus pass and starts regularly visiting the library. It is during these regular visitations that she meets Lily Page, and wonderfully, her life is never the same.

Emma is close to turning eleven when she gets a private message from a user called “spyro-huntr3ss” on a public message board. At first her instinct is to block the user—she’s been around long enough to know that people are scum wherever you go, even in this digital world where she had felt so safe at first, this place she had decided to call her own.

“I know what it is you’re trolling for,” her mysterious new contact, likely trying to get her age, number, or address had sent, followed by, “and I can help you find it.”

From what Emma has been able to discern thus far, most people using the Internet were just as oblivious as the Swans, which was disappointing. She had been hoping, in vain it would seem, that once she’d been able to locate more users that they might be able to help explain it. The humming, and the voices, and the stories in the static—the songs lost in the high-pitched chorus of a dial-up tone. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. Most people thought she was being metaphorical, or just plain paranoid. Message boards were a breeding ground for those folks made of cracks and dark places; lost people looking for patterns and meaning where there were none to be found.

The unsettling shiver that shrieked down the length of her spine had her head swiveling atop her thin, spindly neck as if she were some kind of anxious, wide-eyed owl; her mouth going dry at the sight of her own name staring back at her in bold, black text. To her profound relief, the library appeared to be just as empty as it had been when she walked in that morning. Not many people would brave the snow-filled streets a few days before Christmas to hang out in a public library, but then again, not many people had the Swans waiting for them at home.

Emma felt her heart beat anxiously in time with the blinking cursor inside her text box, a taunting slowness that seemed to be daring her to refuse the offer. She glimpsed at the library entrance and observed the snow falling heavily atop the empty city streets, tried to ignore the sickeningly sweet melodies of holiday cheer emanating from the head librarian’s office. The truth had been all she ever wanted, wasn’t it? From the very first moment she’d realized that she had come from nothing, that no one had wanted her, and could that be true? From the feeling of Mitchell’s hands and eyes where they shouldn’t be—wondering if all fathers were like this. From the first time she’d booted up the Power Mac, the ghostly chorus ringing in her ears, always ringing, ringing, ringing—

Lily’s “truth” is every bit as exciting as Emma’s painfully beating heart had hoped it would be. That yes, Emma Swan, there is a world behind the world and you have been invited to be a part of it. The people who are “in charge?” Those people that have hurt you, that have convinced you that you don’t matter, that what you might want for your life doesn’t matter—those people are powerless here. But not you, Emma Swan, not us. We’re the powerful ones now.

It takes her some time to truly trust her new informant, “spyro-huntr3ss,” who, while forthcoming about the realities of this world, the potential for what they could do, of what was waiting for them a few years down the line, was quite tight-lipped concerning personal details of her own life. Which was understandable, if not a bit frustrating, especially since she had known Emma’s name without having asked for it.

According to her new source (Emma’s not certain “spyro-huntr3ss” will ever be a friend), there are ways to pick apart the cacophony of sound constantly washing over her in dizzying regularity. There are also, blessedly, ways to tune out the noise. “Invest in a good pair of headphones,” had been one of the first things she’d advised, and after Emma, not yet a teenager, trapped between the freedom of the web and the reign of her parents, had quite logically argued that she had no money for such things, Lily had “laughed,” a peaky mechanical noise echoing in Emma’s ears.

Despite the fact that she was still technically a child and living under the Swans’ supervision, Emma had never in her life felt so independent. If not for her inconvenient need to eat and drink every once in awhile, the Swans might have forgotten she was there at all. There was of course the unfortunate recurrence of Mr. Swan; still coerced by some dark, unspoken perversions that it was his God-given right to appear by Emma’s bedside every few nights. Until Lily had learned of it, of course. It had been a secret Emma had always kept to herself, except for that first night she had run to Betsy, hoping for a savior and finding a stern hand instead. A disgusted voice of disbelief, calling Emma the sick one, the wrong one. “Mr. Swan would never do that you wicked little thing,” she had hissed into Emma’s small, red face. “You’re lucky I don’t send you right back to the orphanage for this disgusting stunt.”

And of course, Mitchell had found out, because the dutiful wife informs her stalwart husband of every single thing going on in their house, and he had made damn sure that Emma never said a word of their “visits” to anyone, especially not Mrs. Swan.

They had been messaging one another back and forth for about two years before Lily discovered her dirty little secret, and Emma was quite happy to finally be able to think of her as a friend. Even still, she had never been tempted to reveal the truth—she was embarrassed and ashamed, and she assumed that Lily would never speak to her again should she ever slip-up. Ultimately, it had been Emma’s penchant for frequently keeping extremely late hours, coupled with her recent cell phone acquisition, which she had been keeping underneath her pillow.

Emma had only recently started cursing, and found that it was one of the few things she genuinely enjoyed. It made her feel like she was older than she was, and the older she was, the closer she was to being free of this fucking place.

When she wasn’t getting lost within the dark, less than reputable corners of the Internet, Emma learned that she loved to read. Lately, she seems to have gotten into the habit of reading the same kind of story—the same kind of journey, over and over again. She’s read these stories so many times, in point of fact, that she’s begun to seek out these same patterns as they might appear in her own life. Is this beginning? She might ask herself, stepping off the bus and colliding with a polite stranger. Is this the end? She would nervously wonder, thinking she had heard footsteps outside the door to the computer room.

Staring at Lily’s direct yet subtle offer on the screen, she knew that this must be one of those moments; the moment where the story is about to take a turn, and no amount of deus ex machina, or praying, or wishing will ever bring back the life you had once lived.

Mitchell Swan is stunned to find an ungodly (and almost certainly illegal) amount of money in his bank accounts the next day, and he arrives home from work in an alcohol-fueled panic. Emma watches the two of them, quiet and unbothered from the darkened hallway as they titter and yell at one another like a pair of screeching birds. Her phone feels warm in her pocket, and she smiles at the thought of what’s in store—all those atrocious, sickening pictures hidden away on his work computer. What will the world think of you, Mr. Swan?

ii. jkillian@aol.com

Killian Jones often feels trapped by the city—little more than a lifeless, concrete prison; he despises nearly everything about the place. And to make matters worse, he has the misfortune to have been cursed with the burden of having too reliable a memory. It is far too easy to be able to slip back, back, back—all the way back until he’s suddenly standing in the middle of his mother’s garden. Until he can hear her voice in his head, laughing, singing, scolding. In these brief yet harrowing moments of nostalgia he can almost always hear her tears as well; her cries of pain that he had been helpless to alleviate. Logically, he knows he had been little else but a boy when she had first fallen ill, but it matters little. He feels responsible for her illness, even more so for her eventual death, alone and searching for a son that was no longer there.

Killian and Cordelia Jones owned a farm about five hours north of the city. Mr. Jones is long gone, and Killian, while in possession of an exceptionally good memory, remembers little of the man who his mother assures him was his father. She maintained his innocence for many years, wanting her son to know that he was loved, but as he approached a certain stubborn, righteous age, she had been forced to admit that no, he was not the man that Cordelia had hoped he would be.

“But it has not a thing to do with you, my love,” she said quietly, allowing him the benefit of thinking she hadn’t noticed his tears. It was truly astonishing that she never once raised her voice to the boy, especially given his behavior in later years. It was almost always at a level tempo, calm and direct, with just a hint of an Irish brogue that her own mother had possessed, although Killian had never actually met the woman.

“She wouldn’t have put up with your nonsense for a single moment.” Shaking her head at the sight of a broken lamp, or a carton of milk left to spoil on the counter. “You are one lucky lad.”

His mother insisted that the Jones’ were a lucky family. But as an adult he would come to believe that they had never been anything other than cursed. It would always be unclear to him exactly why that was, but he assumed it had something to do with the magic. That was always the case, wasn’t it? “All magic comes with a price,” says every single fantasy novel he had ever read, every magically-inclined film he had ever seen. Their downfall, in later years, seemed to him inevitable. If his mother were still alive, he would have asked her, “Did our family make a deal with the wrong demon?”

His bitterness, however, would still take a few more years to develop. As a child, he was enthralled with the sight of the vines and the flowers crawling their way inside the house. The way his mother would reach her hands deep within the soil and a few moments later, up would sprout the stubborn seeds. Cordelia made their living with her magic, often receiving visitors from the surrounding towns looking for quick-fix solutions to their various troubles. They would often come late at night, or when he was out in the fields, trying to make things grow or flourish, or wilt, as the case may be. But when he would see them walking nervously down the drive, quietly knocking on their aged blue door, he would drop whatever it was he was working on and try to sneak a peek at their meetings.

“What do they ask you for?” he wondered one night as she tucked him into bed, his eyes wide and curious, bright with all kinds of vivid imaginings. “Love,” she answered happily, bringing the blanket up to rest beneath his chin.

“Love?” he asked with a grimace, as if he were about to become infected with a terrible disease at the mere mention of the word. “And sickness,” she continued, chuckling at his obvious disapproval. “And loneliness. Or success in their businesses.”

“Can I help?” he asked sleepily, feeling the effect of the chamomile tea his mother had made him drink every evening before bed.

“One day,” she answered, kissing him on the forehead. “Soon.”

Ten years later and he’s not so sure how she would feel about the kind of man that he’s become. What he’s been using his “gifts” for. The harshest parts of him imagine telling her that heis helping them—helping them forget how terrible the world can be; the blissfulness of ignorance. And if he makes some extra money in the process? Well, then so bloody be it. He can almost imagine himself cruelly bragging of it even, taking pleasure in the heartbroken, disappointed look on her thin, pale face.

It hadn’t started this way, to be sure. Initially, the plan had been to go to the city temporarily, to make some extra money to afford the kind of medicine that would keep her alive for longer than just a few months. Of course she had been lying to his face when she had suggested it. Made him think that there was even the slightest chance that she would live another six months. Unbeknownst to him, she had apparently contracted an illness that even magic couldn’t cure (wasn’t supposed to cure, according to her).

“Then what good is it?” he had yelled despairingly, trying to ignore the pitying look on her face from where she was laid up in bed; small, weak, and complacent. No, not complacent.

“Accepting,” she had sternly tried to correct him. “Magic is not meant to prolong that which should end. You know this, Killian.”

But he had been too angry, too determined to seek out a cure, and Cordelia Jones, knowing her son, knowing his stubbornness, his inability to give up, to grapple with the helplessness of being human, had suggested that if he went to the city, used his abilities to make some extra money, perhaps they would be able to afford the medicine that could save her life.

“And take the cat, would you?” she had asked on his way out the door, shakily calling after him from where she dozed. “I want to make sure she’s well-looked after.”

Chammy was a calico with poor eyesight and an even poorer temperament. Most of the time. If you gave her some extra food or a good brushing she might deign to sit with you on the couch for a bit, but most of the time she was content to sit on a ratty armchair that he had pulled in off the street, her ears and tail flicking at the stray vines or weeds when they would grow too close.

The plan had always been to return. As soon as he had stepped foot off the bus, he had felt suffocated. By the polluted air, the distracting, flickering lights, the sounds and smells of too many human beings packed into one place like sardines in a tin. With Chammy’s crate in one hand and a packed duffle in another, he had wandered angrily through the streets until he’d found the shitty apartment he had managed to rent from a property owner who lived nearer to the farm.

“It’s not much,” he had warned Killian, clearly uncomfortable with the knowledge that Mrs. Jones was wasting away at the back of the house somewhere, “but it’ll do for a time.”

“I’m certain it will,” Killian had answered with a bitter grin, “Thanks for your help.”

Dealing in illicit substances hadn’t been the plan at first either. He had seen the kinds of services his mother provided; there wasn’t really a “modern” term for what she practiced other than “holistic medicine,” which wealthy business people in coastal cities seemed to love opening their wallets for. Unfortunately for Killian, he had never had much of a head for such things. The plants he had managed to cultivate back home, for himself and his friends, the kinds of things the local cops had busted him for on more than one occasion, those were the kinds of things he was good at. However, getting scolded by the cops back home was one thing, winding up in a city prison was quite another.

It had taken many frustrated evenings of trial and error, and even a few angry customers, before he was forced to admit to himself that the “healing” part of it was simply not where his true talents lay.

“This is good shit,” one of his recent acquaintances (the people you sell to should never really be considered anything more) had told him late one night from their perch on his fire escape, “You could make some good money with this.”

And that’s where it had all started; a steady stream of high quality product, and more than enough people willing to pay top dollar for it. He had been just about ready to afford the medicine, the whole reason he had moved to this awful city in the first place, to retrieve the cure and bring it back to his mother, when he had gotten a call from his landlord that Cordelia had passed in her sleep.

“I’m sorry for your loss, son,” he had said quietly in a grating tone of pitying condescension, “you should come back soon, collect her things. Figure out what to do with the place.”

“Yeah,” Killian had barked back, his vision going fuzzy and his throat tightening, “Thanks.”

And he had planned to return home for the burial. He knew that was what he was supposed to do. He had even gone so far as to get a babysitter for Chammy, had bought a bus ticket and packed a bag. Only he had smoked a little bit too much one morning (in preparation for the nightmarish journey home) and when he returned to himself a few hours later, found that he had missed his bus by several days. There were a few voicemail messages, mostly from people back home who had watched him grow up—some of them angry and scolding, others sympathetic and patient, reminding him that legally the farm was still his, that he could take as much time as he needed.

Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and suddenly it had felt too hard, and he was too much of a coward. So, ten years later and here he was—still trapped in his box like every other human-shaped sardine he would often glare at on the subway. He has managed to turn the apartment into something of a home, bringing in some potted plants that he had encouraged to grow a bit above their station. It’s something of an oasis in an otherwise barren hellscape, and while it is rare for him to not feel the occasional pang of regret and longing for what his life should have been, there’s still the nagging cowardice that has left him paralyzed in a life that feels unnervingly unfinished.

If he’s awake before sunrise, odds are whatever he thinks might be at his door at such an hour is more than likely a figment of his imagination. Especially if that figment is a grumpy, petite blonde who looks suspiciously like a Daria reject. Most of that blonde hair (imaginary as it is) would seem to be stuffed into an old, slouchy beanie in desperate need of stitching, but a few stray hairs have escaped to fall across her charmingly furrowed brow.

“Well, I must say this is a surprise,” managing to speak despite the dry mouth and still being half-asleep. “What do you say we continue this meeting at a more reasonable hour? Or preferably never? Never also works well for me.”

Normally he might not be so inclined to such rudeness, but a figment is a figment, and he needs his eight hours if he’s going to be remotely personable throughout the day. And drug dealers are famously nothing without their personalities.

One of the admittedly lovely, yet sadly fictional, woman’s eyebrows shoots quite delicately upwards, and he makes note of her especially twitchy fingers moving restlessly against her folded elbow. “Are you always this rude to potential customers?”

“Only when they interrupt my beauty sleep, darling, now if you’ll excuse me—”

He goes to close the door, only he’s found it blocked by a smallish, military-booted foot stuck between it and the frame, the ends of said boot all soft and scuffed; an experienced leather shoe on a tiny blonde female with impeccably groomed eyebrows. He should probably start laying off the more experimental strains. This was an unusually vivid hallucination.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re very pretty,” she says hurriedly, her own tired eyes trying desperately to meet his, “but I haven’t slept in about three days, so, could you maybe help me out?”

“I’m not in the habit of selling to imaginary wom—ow! Bloody hell, what on earth was that for?”

Her fingernails are painted a formidable shade of black, which was an odd detail to have stuck in one’s mind when they’re in the midst of pinching your chest hair unexpectedly viciously. Her eyes were also a little less tired, a lot more manic, and a particularly vivid and enticing shade of green. It made him think of something—a specific memory, locked away somewhere at the back of his mind where it was supposed to stay .

“I can assure you, I am very real,” she says on a grin, her hand still twisted up in his flannel. “And like I said, I am also very tired. So, please?”

It was the sudden, gentle note of desperation in her voice, paired with the residual nipple pain at the very least, that had his circuits re-firing a little bit better than they had earlier. A familiar kind of exhaustion, an intriguing feeling of despair that he had often felt stirring painfully within his own heart. It was the fact that, while he had only known this woman to be real for a few seconds, he knew that the gentility of her voice, the sudden nervousness—that these were hard things for the slight girl with the pale hands and heavy boots.

“My apologies. Please,” smiling and opening the door wider to allow her entrance, he gestures a hand inwards as she walks into the living room. Staring at the stiff slowness of her movements, the way she filled the space around her—that was when he had suddenly remembered. The sight of the farm in the heat of late summer and the dramatic, end-of-day light that would cast the garden in a fiery glow. The smell of the dirt under his bare feet, the warm flesh of ripening tomatoes. And was that his mother’s voice, calling his name from the porch?

“What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t,” she answered, no doubt distracted by the unusually green and “lively” look of the place. Not to mention Chammy’s guttural chirps at her feet. “It’s Emma,” she said, extending a thin, still hand. “Emma Swan.”

“Emma Swan,” hoping his grin was a little less frenzied than it felt, “Killian Jones.”

iii. vwthi3f

From the outside looking in, most people would probably suspect that the soul-crushing heartbreak, betrayal, and subsequent imprisonment would have left Emma Swan yearning for the so-called “carefree days” of her youth—but those people would be wrong. It would be safe to assume that those same people had probably lived fairly standard, mediocre lives, and there’s nothing wrong with having lived such a life. Mundane lives such as these, they’re usually of the pain-free variety. Aside from the occasional missed birthday, disappointing grade, or sneaking liquor from the cabinet before they’re able, childhood tends to pass quickly and blissfully. It’s one of those things that adults often recall with fondness; they imagine that if they could go back in time to an age before bills, home ownership, and a number of regretful sexual encounters, that they might be truly happy again. Emma Swan had dreamed of the mundane life even before she had started living with the Swans, and certainly afterwards she had desired it moreso. She wished that her pain (and even now, the labeling of her past as “pain,” felt pitiful and tiresome) was the kind of story you didn’t mind sharing, instead of the harsh, ugly thing that she preferred most people not know. Even if they were your friends.

From her prison cell, she often tries to make a list in her head of all the good things that have happened since leaving the Swans. Those times when she’s feeling a bit lonelier than usual, or after she’s spent a little too much time thinking about his smile. As if breaking one’s heart was the worst thing that could happen to a person. And sure, prison is pretty miserable, but it’s not a foster home, and it’s not the Swans. Prison has designated computer time, and there’s no sneaking down darkened hallways at night. And the prison system, unsurprisingly, knows very little of magic, which is how she so easily bypasses the archaic security software, reaches out across the void, and finds the comforting, if not vaguely biting, words of an old friend.

At the very least, she is gracious enough to avoid coming right out and saying “I told you so.”

One of the first things she notices about Lily Page (and isn’t that just irony at its finest) is her hair. It’s long, dark, pin straight, and some of the thickest she’s ever seen. She always threatens to chop most of it off, but never does (and never will), despite Emma’s playful needling. Unsurprisingly pale, with deep red lips and black, wet eyes that always make it appear as if she’s on the verge of tears. “Ask me if I’m ‘okay,’ one more fucking time, Swan,” she would frequently threaten before fleeing the room. She would eventually, and begrudgingly, admit that being on the receiving end of someone else’s “concern” made her feel slightly nauseous, which Emma had found to be pleasantly relatable.

Lily had been living in a very small studio at the tip-top of a tall, post-war building in the financial district. It was a charming place to live, but not particularly well-suited to housing two people, so they found another. As Emma had already been led to believe, money wasn’t much of a concern when most of it was digital these days anyway, and while they couldn’t go for something especially lavish (so as not to draw too much attention to themselves), it was still a nicer home than Emma could have ever imagined as a child.

The feeling of safety and comfort in her own home is one of the good things on her list. If nothing else, one of the very best. Having the security of a door with a lock on it—a roommate who always knocks. The first night in their new place she has the best night of sleep she’s ever had, and when she woke up in the early afternoon the following day, her blankets unmoved from the night before, her door still blessedly shut, she had to muffle her relieved sobs with the absurdly soft pillow beneath her head, lest she force Lily into an awkward moment of interpersonal comfort she often found distasteful.

“I’m better online,” she had humbly conceded after an awkward, consolatory pat on the back. But it was okay. She was still the best friend that Emma had ever known, and besides, she wasn’t great with people either.

Their apartment was a veritable hive of high-end, up-to-date tech. The walls practically hummed with it all, the various cords trailing in and out between rooms, framing windows and doorways. Another thing to add to the list; the small touches that made it both a home and impenetrable fortress from which they might change the world if they had a mind to. She’s got the friend, never really had one of those before, but on top of that, she gets a teacher—she gets power. A lot of it. She also gets an iBook G4 with 1.5 GB of memory (that she manages, with some magical prowess, to enlarge to around 3 or 4). She loves that it fits in her lap, that she can feel the warmth of it against the tops of her thighs when she hasn’t powered it down for 48 hours. The sounds of the keys beneath her fingertips, loud and decisive, wary of her at first, but after a few weeks, craving her touch.

“We all have different strengths and weaknesses,” Lily had explained over coffee, twirling the length of headphone cord round and round her finger. “You seem to be especially adept at Research.”

Emma huffs. “Couldn’t anyone be good at that?”

“Not when it involves talking to corpses and seeing the future.”

“I don’t think they liked to be called that,” Emma had said uncomfortably, turning the sound down on the phone in her pocket. “Well,” Lily answered smartly, forcing down her cold coffee with a grimace, “that’s why I’m not so good at it, isn’t it?”

Emma eventually learns that when Lily says “Research,” it doesn’t necessarily mean traditional forms of information gathering. She could hop on Google and find an article, probably quicker than most, sure, but what Lily really means is communication and knowledge; she means dipping her fingers into the void and coming back with Truth. Apparently there’s a whole freaking dictionary of witch-related vocabulary that she’s missed out on, and funnily enough, it’s not online.

“Where anyone could find it?” Lily explained, dropping the aged, poorly bound manuscript onto Emma’s lap, “Analog has its uses.” Knowledge is good. Answers are good. The world is vast and old and it’s all in one place, just waiting for her to hit the power button.

It sounds stupid, but she could eat ice cream whenever she wanted. It’s one of the good things, and as Lily had informed her, it’s also one of those things that kind of made her just like everyone else. “Most people enjoy the privilege of being able to eat ice cream whenever they want,” she said, distracted with something or other on the screen in front of her, “congratulations, you’re finally normal.”

There was a note of sarcasm in her tone (surprise, surprise), but  Emma couldn’t suppress the grin that had appeared on her face at the thought of being just like everyone else. If one were to totally ignore the “tech-savvy witch,” thing, obviously. Eating ice cream, “just like everyone else,” while a good thing at first, would ultimately return to bite her quite firmly on the ass, but for a while it had been Rum Raisin and Moose Tracks whenever the hell she wanted. Mercifully, it was sold cheap at the corner bodega and sometimes she would wander out of the apartment mere hours before the sun was due to rise and buy herself one or two pints (even though there were several unfinished sitting in the freezer). She met Neal Cassidy during yet another trip to the store in order to indulge in one or two flavors she hasn’t had the pleasure of trying yet. Like Cherry Garcia or the one with the caramel-filled chocolates shaped like fish. Lily had referred to the fish-shaped chocolate as a “crime against nature,” but she could be a tad dramatic sometimes.

“Gotta cure those night-bites somehow, I guess, right?”

Emma Swan dislikes and distrusts men as a general rule. So when she heard a distinctly male voice at her back, had sensed the way he stood over her, she had felt uncomfortable almost immediately. Her phone started to buzz quite incessantly in her pocket, despite the fact that she had left Lily sleeping and no one else had her number—she had, mistakenly, ignored it.

Emma had never entertained the prospect of a romantic relationship before Neal. At that point in her life she’d been getting closer to 18, so she knew it was about “that time,” but it had never really been something she wanted to pursue. She had only just started getting used to the feeling of Lily sitting next to her on the couch; the non-threatening way she might bump their hips together when she moved past her in order to get to the fridge. And it’s not like he managed to get under her skin quickly (if anything she remembers noting that he had quite the punchable face), but there was something about him she had found charming, and unfortunately she was not quite as repulsed as she might have expected herself to feel.

“What?” she had asked with some confusion, hoping her facial expression was not quite so dumb as she imagined it to be.

“Late night cravings,” he clarified, nodding at the ice cream in her hand, “I know the feeling.”

She managed to surmise he was talking about being high, not that she would have really known. But she nodded anyway, finding herself in the familiar predicament of having to pretend she’s “in on the joke,” so to speak. She had never done any kind of drug at that point, but she had preferred he assume she knew what he was talking about and let her off the hook, rather than come off as some kind of dense pre-teen. Luckily for her it had worked, and he simply smiled and walked off, snagging a candy bar and shoving it into his pocket as he went. Despite the obviousness of the lift the clerk had failed to notice, and Emma rolled her eyes, finally pulling the buzzing phone out of her pocket.

Idiot, read a text from an unknown number, the less frenzied hum of a few dozen voices scrolling in the darkness of her closed eyes, infinite, vertical rows of ones and zeroes. That’s a walking prison sentence if we’ve ever seen one.

Emma stares up at the ceiling of her bleak, unremarkable prison cell and thinks about how she might yell at those numbers now, if she could. Thinking they’re so smart all the time just because they’re dead. Or, ya know, “untethered by their human forms,” or whatever the fuck. In yet another teachable moment, Lily had tried to explain that while most of the time she was in conversation with the dead, sometimes she was just reaching out to other Techies wandering around in the same playground as her.

“You shouldn’t trust everything they say,” Lily had warned, “I know it seems like they know everything because they’re ‘one with the machine,’” her eyes rolling, “but most of them are just as lost and fucked up as we are. There’s no power greater than your own instinct.”

It’s too bad Emma never really got around to the whole “trusting herself” thing. Especially when it came to Neal Cassidy—the first boy to make her feel special. The asshole who had given her a taste of what it meant to love and be loved only to rip the still beating heart out of her chest and squish the particularly sensitive parts between his toes. Not that she had known that at the time. At the time she had simply been relieved to know that she wasn’t completely broken. That someone could care for her, that she could care for them in return. That she could bear the feeling of his hand wrapped around hers (ignoring the fact that she was often bothered by the unusual sweatiness of his palms).

When she’s not walking in circles around the prison yard or in the computer lab, she’s replaying her memories of the last year as if they were disassociated segments of a silent film—a distorted, desaturated mess of key scenes that would ultimately lead her to this very moment, to this hard bed beneath her back. That’s usually when the bad begins, when she goes back to adding good things to the list.

The dead ones always want to know because they’ve forgotten, and they’re hoping that she’ll be able to help them remember what it was like, being alive. Please, Emma Swan, please bore us with the details.

It’s not quite so bad at first. They flirt a lot, which Emma finds fun despite never having really done it before, and then there’s her first kiss, and the first time having sex she actuallyenjoys, and running through the darkened city streets without a care in the world. There’s sharing her story with someone who seemed to care, a lover and not a friend; who upon learning of her abilities got a gleam in his eye that she would live to regret ignoring. There was getting high for the first time and trying not to feel hurt when he had laughed at her obvious inexperience, despite having promised that he wasn’t going to. It was stupid to ignore the hint of warning in Lily’s eyes when she started spending more nights at Neal’s place. Not to mention the dozens of ominous text messages from unknown numbers.

Emma had become defensive and snarky almost immediately. Taking offense at the suggestion that she couldn’t handle herself in her first grown-up relationship, as if she wasn’t a smart, experienced woman with a good head on her shoulders.

As it turned out, the “babysitter” probably would have been helpful. Maybe the babysitter would have been able to stop her from transferring all of those large, traceable funds into Neal’s accounts. When she has a difficult time conjuring up another good thing to add to the list, his smarmy voice pops into her head instead, reassuring her that “no one would ever find out.”

Three years and one prison sentence later she often finds herself haunted by her own words. Disgusted with herself for betraying the one person who had never been anything other than kind in a world full of monsters. “All’s well that ends well,” Lily had said in greeting upon picking her up from prison, her face hidden beneath the shadow of a baseball cap. “Breathe in that sweet, sweet freedom.”

The only useful thing that Neal had managed to leave in his wake, aside from a renewed sense of disgust with humanity as a whole, was the innocuous drug habit. She didn’t consider herself to be an addict by any means, not that an actual addict would admit to such a thing, but she certainly imbibed more frequently than she might have predicted a few years earlier. The problem (if you had to call it that) was using it for normal human things that most people were able to accomplish without the chemical assist—things like sleeping.

Emma has always had trouble sleeping. It was unsurprising given her history, but as it turns out, staring at screens almost 24 hours a day doesn’t really help the situation either. She had tried a handful of other remedies over the years: a hot cup of chamomile tea before bed (that always made her have to pee right on the edge of sleep); some user generated playlists comprised of soothing instrumentals (except for that one “experimental” song at the end that left her heart racing); charge and cast spells left waiting in her camera roll, various hand drawn sigils or long strings of emojis (while effective, often accompanied by odd dreams). For whatever reason, the weed had been the most helpful. She had felt ashamed at first; good little girls don’t use drugs after all (sounding suspiciously like Mrs. Swan in her head), but it was like Lily always said, “If it works, it works.”

4: urbanfarm3r@gmail.com

While their first meeting had undeniably fallen on the rougher end of the friendship spectrum, there’s something about her that insists upon a second. Especially after he’s had more sleep, and his charm is significantly more effective. He’s held her hand for an almost inappropriately long few moments before he comes to his senses and asks after her problem—what is it she’s in the market for? It’s as she’s said, “trouble sleeping,” and he reminds her that his product, while almost exclusively well-received is a bit, shall we say, “stronger” than the usual fare.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks, glancing suspiciously around his oddly lush studio despite it being midwinter.

“My methods can be a bit,” pausing for effect, a bit of vague handwaving for emphasis, “unusual.”

“‘Unusual,’ like laced, unusual?”

“Good heavens woman, no,” he says hurriedly at the angry look on her face, frustrated with his seeming inability to form sentences this morning. “Let me show you.”

Normally, he might not be so inclined to reveal his “gifts” to a new client, but as he surmised from their awkward yet brief conversation at his door, there was just… something about her. And for whatever reason, he got the sense that she wasn’t about to be shocked or frightened by his admission. He leads her over to a large, round window that looks out over a dismal alleyway. The tops of other apartment buildings with decrepit looking antenna rest precariously on their respective roofs. The glass of the window is warped, evidence of the building’s rather respectable age; dotted with air bubbles and flecked with dirt and pollen. The window itself, while framed by some aesthetically pleasing distressed brick, is also encircled by a rather impressive wreath of thick, green vines.

Beneath the window he’s setup his appropriately named “Alchemist’s Table,” complete with ceramic pots and glass test tubes, even an old microscope he had acquired at a middle school auction. “You some kind of mad scientist?” Her words sound a bit sharp, but they’re nowhere near harsh enough to hide the curiosity and wonder in her voice, and he plays along with a bit of a “mad” grin.

“After a fashion.”

He shows off a bit after that, there’s no denying it, sticking a finger into a pot of soil with a small sprout peeking out of the dirt. A young and fragile thing. Emma watches, entranced, as it begins to grow and stretch itself into being, and after a few seconds, a small, pale green strawberry appears. “It’ll be ripe enough to eat in a few hours,” he says casually, reining in his laughter at the look of shock on her face, “if you’d like to stay for a bit.”

While he’s used to women finding this particular trick alluring, he finds himself quite surprised at what she ends up saying instead. “You’re one of us.”

“Sorry, love, one of who?”

“Us!” she says happily, her hands clapping gently together, “I’ve never met a non-Techie before.”

“A non-what?”

“Do you not know?” she asks, suddenly sobering, her head tilted endearingly to one side. At the blank look on his face she smiles softly, her earlier fidgeting having evaporated at the prospect of revealing this apparent truth. She leans close enough that he can smell the sweetened coffee on her breath, and an oddly familiar floral scent that seems to stem from the blonde tips of her hair.

“You’re not the only one,” she divulges in an excited whisper, and he becomes abruptly alarmed at the likelihood of falling in love with this strange woman who ended up being undeniably  real. “There’s more.”

The smoke tastes sweet on his lips. She’s not sure if it’s magic or something else. Something unique to whoever or whatever he is. They kiss on the first day they meet and she’s not quite sure what that says about her. She’s fairly certain that it says more about him—that perhaps there is something a bit irresistible about a man who has briefly wondered whether or not you truly exist. Which is ironic, because for the first half of her life it was all she could do to make sure that people knew she was there, but that was mostly so someone would feed her or give her a place to sleep. It was only after she had stopped feeling so hungry that she had hoped she would disappear.

“I have a question,” she starts, taking a hit off of his “free sample” while trying not to marvel at the trail of pinkish smoke that escapes from in between her lips. “If you were so sure that I wasn’t real, why did you even talk to me?”

When he exhales the smoke is blue rather than pink, and when it meets the colorful cloud above their heads it blends together in shades of vibrant purple. She can’t help feeling like she has stumbled into a scene from Alice in Wonderland, having found herself in a strange land with an excitable man (who likes to leave empty mugs scattered about his home), as well as the literal toadstools and the rather odd sensation akin to falling down a rabbit hole.

“Rather pretty for a figment, I suppose. Wouldn’t do to ignore such a lovely, imaginary thing,” crushing the the last of the joint against a small, porcelain plate, “might hurt her feelings.”

Her phone buzzes in her pocket and she almost ignores it. But it was hard to forget about the nightmare that had ensued when she had ignored it the last time, and she pulls it from her pocket with a polite “give me a minute,” gesture.

She snorts at the sight of the word “airs,” her mind conjuring a 16th century French courtesan in a dramatically large dress, and silently warns her heart not to get it’s hopes up. Me too.When she looks up from her phone his head whips away too quickly for him to have been doing anything other than staring at her, and she wills the inevitable blush from her cheeks.

“We should exchange numbers,” she says suddenly, “for when I need more.”

Thankfully he ignores her rather abrupt request and pulls a most surprising device from his pocket that has her temporarily forgetting the way he had been so obviously observing her earlier. It’s a Motorola Razr V3 (launched in 2004), and the only thing funnier than the phone itself is the offended look on his face after she bursts into loud, obnoxious laughter at the sight of it.

“I’m doing my best not to feel quite so hurt right now, Swan.”

“I’m sorry,” she gasps in between her embarrassing bout of giggling, “I just didn’t think you could even get your hands on one of those things anymore.”

“It may not be your ‘high-tech’ nonsense,” he goes on proudly, “but she’ll do in a pinch.”

“Oh, Killian,” she says sweetly, “I’m sure she will.”

They start texting with a frequency far more reminiscent of an honest to goodness friendship rather than that of a business relationship, and Emma finds herself having to reassure the small, frightened girl inside of her that the whole thing won’t end in disaster. He’s not Neal, she thinks desperately, trying to trust in the hopeful parts of herself without succumbing to the bitter voice inside her head that struggles to forget the less admirable parts of humanity. What’s another potential stint in prison for such a pretty face, after all?

The first night she tries what he recommended, a strain he refers to as “Sailor’s Delight,” she dreams of the ocean. It’s an especially vivid dream, unlike anything she’s ever experienced—she can smell the sourness of low tide; taste the salt on her lips, and feel the warmth of the sun on her face. First thing in the morning she reaches for the phone beneath her pillow, her fingers flying across the screen.

She hesitates briefly before sending that last text. While it’s true her mind feels calm and her body re-energized, her heart hammers wildly inside her chest—the tiny fists of an anxious child warning her of the inevitable. While her own nervousness is enough to give her pause, she does try and take comfort in the fact that her “ghostlier” comrades would seem to have taken a backseat for the moment.

His texts often arrive in the form of mini paragraphs. Full sentences and words bundled together and sent to her as if they were handwritten letters. She can see his fingerprint on each and every one, a dirt-stained brand that conjures some unknown, vast greenery made of hills and fir trees, winding back roads and cloudless skies.

“He better not track any dirt in here,” Lily warns her the evening before he was supposed to be coming by to drop off another batch. It was to be his first visit to their apartment, and Emma could not be more nervous if she tried. She’s been back to his place a few times since that first visit, but allowing him to come here had been an unexpected offer on her part. Not that it matters, she thinks calmly, what do you care what he thinks?

“Don’t be such a snob, Lil.”

Lily’s mouth is full of frosted flakes as she leans against the refrigerator, glaring at the back of Emma’s head. “This shit’s expensive, and I don’t have time to fix anything he manages to break.” She suspects a note of jealousy in Lily’s ire, so she decides to cut her some slack, pressing a kiss to her cheek with a guaranteed dirt-free visit.

“It’ll be fine,” she says, heading towards her room to straighten up for no other reason than the fact that it has been a while. “Besides, aren’t you curious?”

A playful shout at her back, “Not nearly as curious as you, my little thief!”

The next morning he’s standing at her door holding a potted plant. “It’s a succulent,” he says happily, his hair sticking up in all directions. He smells like the city after it’s been sanitized by a particularly cold frost, and she wonders how he’s managed to keep warm in a half-buttoned flannel and a knitted scarf. “Notoriously hard to kill,” he assures her, shoving the thing into her hands, “I’m sure you’ll get along famously.”

The brief facade of confidence he had displayed while foisting the plant upon her departs rather suddenly at the sight of her apartment, and he looks all kinds of adorable and confused at the otherworldliness of it all. She supposed it would look rather intimidating to a person like him, surrounded by all those green things. Not that the wires and the screens were any less alive—they were just better at playing dead.

He does have some dirt on his fingertips and beneath his nails, but Emma finds herself quietly charmed by the sight of it; the deep impression of his prints highlighted by the dark soil permanently staining his skin. It’s been getting harder and harder to pass off their brief moment of intimacy as a one time thing. Especially when she can’t seem to stop thinking about it. Especially when she does stupid things like noticing his hands and trying not to recall the pleasant sensation of their roughness against her cheek.

“Don’t worry,” Emma says teasingly at the awed look on his face, “this is the most secure room in the city.” With a few magical fortifications no one and certainly no obscure, supernaturalthing was getting past the barriers they had implemented when they had first moved in, and it had only gotten stronger over the years.

Lily pops her head in from the kitchen, most likely with the intention of embarrassing her only friend. “Hey, Sprout,” she says, glaring at Killian from behind her thick curtain of hair, “don’t touch any of my stuff.”

“Don’t worry about her,” and Emma takes a moment to stick out her tongue in Lily’s direction. “She’s trapped in a state of perpetual grouchiness.”

“I heard that.”

There’s something incredibly momentous about the occasion of his entering her room. Lily had only hung out in there a few times, and Neal had never even been inside (she had spent all their nights together at his place). It’s her favorite time of day, which helps. Late afternoon, which often brings a light that seems warmer than at any other time—and with those big windows, the ones she suspects Lily had a hand in ensuring were a fixture of the apartment, the light falls and frames the room in a buttery yellow that makes winter feel that much further away.

In a probable attempt to diffuse the tension of Lily’s condescending nickname (and subsequent scolding), he laughs and runs a hand through his hair, making it bigger than it already was.

“Well, she’s charming.”

“She’s a good friend,” Emma says quickly, irritated with her sudden urge to leap to Lily’s defense as if he had said something wrong. Which he hadn’t.

“I’m sure she is, Swan,” he reassures softly, “it was only a joke.”

Then comes the urge to apologize, which she knows she has no reason to, and fuck, there is no reason why this should be so hard . He takes a seat in a large armchair she’s tucked away into a corner of the room, his eyes making quick work of all the unfamiliar equipment. The curious awe with which he observes her space gives her pause—takes her back to the day when she had first seen the Swans’ new computer in the room at the end of the hall. Forbidden, yet waiting for her all along.

“Make sure you keep her in the light.”

“Who?” Confused by the pronoun and wondering if he’s been seeing imaginary women again. “The plant,” he explains, gesturing towards the small, green twig in her hands, “make sure she gets a decent amount of sunlight.”

A part of her wants to remind him that she’s shut up in the dark most of the time. That was why she needed the drugs in the first place. Aside from the few short hours pre-sunset when she would, occasionally, open the curtains. But he looks so hopeful, she doesn’t really have the heart to deny him. “Sure. Sunlight.”

In the days following Killian’s visit to the apartment, all of the various cords and sundry start growing towards the sunlight as if they were starving for it. She even starts to notice some small weeds pushing their way through her keyboard. It doesn’t seem to be a problem at Lily’s end of the apartment; her equipment seems to have stayed blessedly put, but Emma’s room is another matter entirely. She even goes so far as to make a post on a message board where other witches have been known to frequent, despite the fact that they usually have terrible advice and she’s generally better off not having spoken to them in the first place.

She attaches a picture and hopes for the best, but unfortunately no one seems to have a clue. Someone does suggest watering them and seeing what happens, but that seems incredibly stupid, so she deletes the post and moves on. Or she tries to at any rate—pretends that there is nothing at all odd about her frequent compulsions to text him anytime a meaningless thought enters her head. The way she starts opening her curtains for a few more hours each day; the feeling of the sun on her skin becoming a welcome part of her routine, as opposed to a cruel reminder of the world that exists beyond the walls of her bedroom.

Their odd, somewhat unlikely friendship grows and flourishes like one of Killian’s plants. It is not without the occasional thorn or weed, like most relationships. The both of them are not without their mutual baggage that stings when you poke at it. Neither one of them can help messing with the other’s wounds, it would seem. Emma had always been under the impression that picking at the thing made it worse, but Killian insists on acting as an infuriating salve that alleviates the pain and leaves the injured place stronger than it had been before.

Beyond the niceties of being one’s drug dealer, getting to know another person can be quite difficult, which had been expected. From the very first, Emma had betrayed an innate desire to keep parts of herself hidden from others. Her passion for witchcraft—the excitement with which she had explained her kind to him that first meeting, it was a good trick, but it wasn’t long before he would come to realize that Emma Swan would rather place a curse upon herself than share the sordid details of her past with anyone.

It had been in the aftermath of his own unburdening—his sudden desire to finally reveal to her all of the messy details of his own life. About his mother, her passing, how maybe he was living a life she had not wanted for him. Emma had been nothing but understanding in the face of his admission, just as she suspected, their unexpected kinship made his pain an easy pill for her to swallow, but that didn’t mean she was necessarily ready to reciprocate.

“I barely tell Lily things about my past,” she had shouted angrily, her arms folded defensively in front of her chest, “why the fuck would I tell my drug dealer?”

“Oh, is that all?” Spoken into the sudden, sucking quiet of his apartment, forcing himself to ignore the painful look of regret on her face. She could wish away her words all she liked, he refuses to be anyone’s whipping boy, no matter how damaged they are. “Then you’ve gotten what you came for,” he said, patiently opening his front door for her convenient departure, “and you let me know should you require my services again.”

Her facial expression could not have been more pained—a fervent desire to take back what she had said, to offer an apology and admit to him the facts of the case. The fact that he had, quite unexpectedly, become one of the more important people in her life. The fact that she often daydreamed about the hour or so in which they had forgone the illusion of platonic friendship. The fact that she often considered the Killian-shaped hole in her future where he would almost undoubtedly be. But, alas, stubbornness won out, and she stormed away, so swiftly and in such a rage with herself that she left her jacket behind. A weathered, burgundy leather number, soft to the touch and smelling vaguely like an electrical fire. At least she’d have an excuse to see him again.

He waits a few days. Keeps his phone buried in a drawer beneath all of his socks and underwear, resisting the urge to send her a text, to wonder if she had sent him one. Eventually, he returns the jacket with a proposition. “Come with me,” he says, not quite begging, but with a breathlessness that he does find mildly humiliating. “Please.”

They take a bus upstate, far enough away from the farm that he doesn’t feel claustrophobic, but with enough distance between themselves and the city that he feels like he can finally breathe. They wander through small, sleepy towns full of charming coffee shops and bookstores, grabbing a cheap breakfast before venturing further into the countryside, stumbling through various trails and parks suggested to them by the locals. “There’s a particularly nice spot,” remarked the older woman who had served them coffee, “right here.” Marking up the paper map that Killian had insisted they buy.

It is a bit nippy further north, and despite the fresh smell of earth and rain, their noses still turn pink as they walk through the woods. The “nice spot” in question is a ledge of rock that overlooks a large, clear lake that sparkles in the sun. A light mist hovers over the top, and when he takes a quick peek to gauge Emma’s reaction, he is momentarily stunned at the way the sunlight has fallen across her face—how it has betrayed the sheen of wetness that seems to be gathering at the corners of her eyes.

“Swan?”

“It’s not a nice story,” she begins after a few moments of quiet. “I don’t like to tell people. Because it’s just not…” She huffs in frustration, turning away briefly to face the sun, staring out over the water as if it will be able to finish this conversation for her. “I don’t want people treating me differently.”

He hesitates before gently pulling some stray hairs from her chapped lips, and when she looks back at him it feels as if he’s been punched in the gut. Having never seen this particular look on her face before; perhaps moments away from arriving at this emotional plateau, only to shutter it away at the last moment. It is glassy eyed and fragile, her nose wrinkling and her hands fidgeting with the ends of her sleeves—it is a choked admission of all the horror she has known; of her adoptive family, her villainous “father,” the computer at the end of the hall, the young girl waiting at the other end who had stormed the tower and rescued her from a cruel fate.

When the tale is finally done, and he pulls her into his arms, the sun has moved higher into the sky. The fog has evaporated completely from the surface of the water, and now it merely shimmers. Their legs dangle over the rockface, and he presses a firm kiss against the side of her head. “I swear,” he whispers against the shell of her ear, “you are still the same person you were before. And if it seems as if I look at you differently—” He considers his words carefully, her fingers tapping nervously against his upturned palm, “It’s because I am more in awe of you then I was before.”

Her kiss is a salty, stinging thing against his tongue, and he can still feel the occasional soft hiccup resonating from the back of her throat. “I’m tired,” she admits quietly, her head rolling against his shoulder.

“Aye, love,” giving her another squeeze, a brief kiss to her cheek that reddens under his lips. “Let’s go home.”

It’s the fact that he never actually asks that makes her want to do it. That and the fact that he has bared his soul to her on multiple occasions and asked for so little in return. And quite honestly, there’s not much left he could do to her, given the fact that she’s spilled her damage all over him anyway.

Their feet hang over the fire escape out Emma’s window, the chilly spring air keeping it brisk yet refreshing. A hint of warmth that reminds the world of the impending season. “If you could,” she begins gently, taking a sip of their shared beer, “would you want to talk to her?”

He nibbles at his lower lip in response, an infuriating and distracting movement that has her discreetly pinching the top of her own hand. “I’m not sure,” he admits quietly, looking a bit like someone who feels ashamed by who they have become. Although, if she had the strength, she would have stopped him in that moment, reminded him that there was nothing to be ashamed of. That he was every bit the sweet, loving man his mother had suspected he would become. “Not sure she’d very much want to speak with me, if I’m being honest.”

Her heart breaks at the sound of his nervous, self-deprecating laughter, but she keeps her earlier, enamored thoughts to herself. While he’s lighting a cigarette she pops back into her room quickly, grabbing her laptop and returning to the ledge to face his sadness; the light and sound of a sleepless city, awaking slowly from a long, hard hibernation.

“I can’t guarantee anything,” resting the quiet machine on her lap, trying not to twiddle her thumbs, “but we can try.”

When she boots up the laptop, a soothing hum ignites in her fingertips and rushes through her veins. Now this, this she can do. She can feel his nervousness from over her shoulder, can see his fingers peeling the label away from the bottle out of the corner of her eye. “Relax,” she says softly, closing her eyes, her fingers flying across the keyboard. She’s not sure how much time passes, but at some point, in the midst of all the chatter, she hears it—a song that sounds familiar even though she is certain she’s never heard it before. “Do you hear it?”

He doesn’t seem to, not at first, not until she increases the volume on the laptop and slides it carefully onto his lap. “Take as long as you want,” pressing a kiss to his temple before standing and returning to her room, “I’ll be right here.”

It’s hard for her not to let her mind wander, to consider the particulars of a conversation that he’s been waiting to have for years , a voice and a face that he’s been tortured by everytime he closes his eyes. She had never even really considered looking for her own parents. What would she even say to them? Thanks for the childhood trauma, I have multiple lifetimes worth of debilitating baggage and it’s all thanks to you. And what would they do, anyway? Apologize? Fat lot of good that would do.

When he comes back inside she’s petting the soft edge of her succulent, somehow still flourishing regardless of her complete lack of knowledge as to how to properly care for the thing. His eyes are red and wet, and he tries to smile when he sees her obviously worried expression, only it crumbles as soon as she touches him, her hands coming up to frame his face with a gentleness she had not been sure she possessed. “Killian—”

“I’m quite alright, Emma. Thank you.”

It hurts to call the look in his eyes “love,” but she doesn’t know how else to describe the way he admires her with words of gratitude on his lips. It doesn’t matter what it is he’s thanking her for, whether it be the opportunity to speak with his mother one last time, her physical presence, or something else, it seems to encompass all of these things and more. The weight of this realization leaves her grasping for how to react, and in a moment of panic and a heavy, painfully beating heart, she presses her lips to his; aligns their bodies so firmly and precisely together that any suggestion of space between the two of them ceases to exist.

“Real enough for you?”

“Yes,” he rasps hotly against her lips, and the shiver she feels traveling down her spine and between her legs allows the terrifying rush of unwanted thoughts skittering elsewhere. “You are the realest thing I have ever known.”  

The sun shines bright and disarming the following morning. Having left her curtains open the night before, he is able to admire the sight of her eyelashes dusting atop her cheeks in the cleansing light of a new day. The world feels different. The only other time he can recall feeling this way was waking up the morning his mother had passed, sensing that something fundamental had changed, that his life would be forced to take a direction he had not expected. For the first time in years, he can picture the farmhouse in his head as if it were a photograph. Can smell the aged wood, the cooling stove, the chamomile tea brewing on the counter. Time to go home, he thinks suddenly, staring at Emma as she twitches mildly in her sleep.

The way the blankets have come to rest beneath her breasts, her hair splayed over the pillow, she looks not unlike some unnamed renaissance painting one might see hanging in a museum somewhere. Her skin smooth, soft, and warm, he can’t resist the temptation to run his fingers gently over her ribcage, observing the slight, sloping arcs of her.

“Hey,” she says quietly, stretching her arms above her head. “What are you thinking about?”

In the days, weeks, and months following this morning, he will freeze this moment in his head. The way she had looked at him, with a contented yet desirous look that had almost convinced him to put off the conversation for a few hours. Oh, how he wished he had. Perhaps, if he had waited just a bit longer, if he had considered how she might respond with greater care—if he hadn’t been quite so excited by the change in the wind.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said with a smile on his face, “that it might be time for me to return home.”

Hell, if he had even relayed the thought in a way that implied his wish for her to come with him. That he was by no means planning to abandon her , that in all of his visions of the future,of course she played a starring role. But in his haste to share the news, to embark upon this journey that he had awoken to find simmering beneath the surface, he had failed to consider the fragility of her heart. A vulnerability she often hid well, but to his eyes, not well enough.

“Oh,” responding with a deceptive pleasantness, leaving his side quicker than he would have liked. “That’s uh, that’s great, Killian.”

“I think you’ll like it,” he continued, oblivious to her discomfort, a point which he would absolutely kick himself for later. “Might take a bit to get the Internet hooked up, but—”

“Wait, did I miss something?”

For someone with so remarkable a memory, all of the words they throw back and forth seem to grow a bit fuzzy after that. Their voices grow louder and crueler than he can stand; they twist and turn inside the labyrinth of his mind with all the gentleness of a machete hacking through a jungle—sharp, incomprehensible things that end in one undeniable fact: he leaves, she stays.

A year passes. In the city, a year passes in rides on the subway. It passes in television shows and which bars you’ve decided to stop going to. Some new diet you’ve decided to try in lieu of really examining oneself as a person. On the farm, it passes in sunsets—in which vegetables take root at what time, and will they make it? Maybe, and he can hear his mother’s voice, if it’s their time. It passes in whether or not Chammy has decided if she’ll be sleeping at the end of his bed. Can he feel her small, humming warmth atop his feet? Winter. Has he lost track of her hungry chirps each morning? Spring.

The months without Emma Swan are dimmer than he can stand. Desaturated, cornerless days of trying not to think about the jagged edges of her hair. Or the way she smelled, or how she had curled around him in sleep with a fierce, desperate grip. Please, stay. Winter is hard, since winter was when it had all began. With beanies and boots, and pale hands reaching for his. He will wonder, occasionally, if she’s managed to keep the plant he had given her alive without his reminding her to water it. And then, inevitably, his mind will wander to the shape of her face, or the color of her eyes—and the months apart feel more like years. He writes a lot of e-mails that he never gets around to sending. Some of them biting and cruel; others quite obviously lovelorn. Pathetic.

Sometimes, when he stands in his cold kitchen waiting for the fire to take the early morning chill out of the place, he imagines his mother’s voice in the silence. Come now, Killian, she remarks playfully, it’s not all bad is it? And then the sun will shine through the bare trees, and Chammy will scratch at the door, and he’ll take a breath. No, not all bad. The only time he hears the honk of a car horn is when he drives into town for supplies. His lungs never feel as if they were in danger of collapsing (unless he’s thinking about Emma Swan, in which case, he finds himself yearning for the gritty, polluted haze of the city); and his feet feel rooted to the earth.

Life goes on—it grows.

Emma Swan returns to him in midsummer. All solid flesh and sinew, with striking green eyes that appear almost golden in the pre-evening sunlight. She walks towards him in the same boots she had worn the morning they met, only with more tape wrapped around the toes. She walks with a lightness that he had only managed to catch a glimpse of—that day at the lake, when her blessed history had come rushing through her lips like a waterfall after too much rain.

It feels like another year has passed when she comes to a stop in front of him, her bag falling heavily off of her shoulder. The both of them staring at the ground as if it will save them, her bag and his feet, toes wiggling in the dirt.

“Your hair,” he says finally, admiring the sight of the freckles that have begun to bloom across her cheeks. “I like it.”

Grown past her shoulders in the months following his departure in long, soft waves that he has often dreamed of running his fingers through. Only he’s not dreaming now, and has grown sick with waiting. “Thanks,” she begins to say, only he finds himself overcome with the sound of her voice, and before she can complete her thought he has snuck a hand against the back of her neck and pulled her mouth to his—all of those beautiful words waiting in the lovely depths of her soul, and he is ecstatic at the prospect of being able to hear each and every one.

Eventually, he leads her by the hand towards his front porch, newly sanded and finished, replete with antique rockers and potted plants lining the steps. He thinks it might be polite to offer her a drink, to ask her about her trip, but he’s finding it difficult to do anything other than stare at their joined hands—his browned with the sun and the dirt, her’s just as pale as he remembers, only her polish has turned a friendly blue as opposed to the chipped black he can recall with such fondness.

“Lily says ‘Hi,’” she says, her voice thick with emotion.

“I have a hard time believing that.” His heart thumps at the brief, shy smile she sends his way, her knee moving up and down with a familiar degree of anxiety that he knows he still loves—even still, he knows, and although there are few things he knows, this he can say with certainty, he loves her. He places a hand on her knee and she stills, her eyes roaming over his features with a gaze so hungry he finds himself struggling to breathe.

“I’ve missed you,” she says softly, and he can practically feel her nerves buzzing around them as if they were sitting beneath a hornet’s nest, “I thought that, maybe, everything would just go back to the way it was, like always, but—”

Her hair lifts in a warm breeze that seems to engulf them in an almost eerie, magical quiet, and while he wants nothing more than to ease her fears, to reassure her that no matter what she says, he will never let her go again, he lets her speak her piece, her eyes meeting his once more. “I didn’t want it to. I don’t want things to go back to the way they were before you.”

When their foreheads meet, he thinks he might catch a flash of their future. In the next few minutes, they might move inside to find a bright, well-ventilated kitchen that he has renovated with his own two hands. She might meet Chammy with a pleased hum, cradling his old companion in her strong, steady arms. Would she then relax in the garden with him? Snapping pictures of his bare, freckled back with her phone, laughing and sending them to Lily even though she held little affection for such things. Installing wires and cables and slipping them beneath the persian rugs in the living room in order to maintain the illusion that she has fully embraced the country life.

Holding one another tightly each night, perhaps recalling the loneliness, the anger they had once felt and marveling at the seeming improbability of finding each other in such a vast, concrete sea. But for now he makes her tea. He tucks some strands of that new, thick hair behind one ear as they listen to the final, evening chorus of the birds, the water boiling in the kettle. “I am so very happy to see you,” he admits with a smile, relishing in the sight of her flushed, joyful face, “Emma Swan.”

[leonbastralle]

Flameusplies!!!!!!!!

plus like 2 others but psh everything is abt them my blog will only be abt them from now on

pixeldemographics replied to your post “special noses (u rly vary ur shape) and fluffy lips, they always look...”

the lips mostly!! but theyre always in combo with the nose i cant describe it but yes these soft kids

;____________________________; i wANT TO HUG YOU LIKE NOT THAT THIS IS THE ONLY REASON BUT ITS ALSO ONE OF THEM

melien replied to your photoset “A: Flame? F: Hmmm? A: Happy birthday, baby.”

No Annie I'm blocking you this is too much

nOOOO COME BACK TO ME PLEASE YOU’RE MY PARTNER IN CRIME

melien replied to your photoset

YESSSSSSSS

I KNOW I’M CRYING I’M STILL CRYING AND THINKING TODAY

melien replied to your photoset “F: Hello to you too, Mr Future President. Any particular reason why...”

Mr President and his official representative

FUCK THIS FUCK YOU I CANNOT AMJSBFAKJSNFKASJFASD I wish he was a president all along so I could use that it’s so damn good but you bet I’m keeping this as a headcanon for Flame’s first time with the president

melien replied to your photoset “F: Okay, you were right…this place…it’s pretty spectacular. A: I’m...”

I cry

me 2

melien replied to your photoset “A: I must say…I’m pretty surprised that this was the restaurant of...”

I'm 100% Flame

I’m the pizza

pixeldemographics replied to your photoset “F: Hello to you too, Mr Future President. Any particular reason why...”

“Probably” thats not what i recall hearing 🤔

fuCC U WHY MUST U CALL ME OUT IN THIS MANNER HE DOESNT OFFICIALLY HAV A NAME YET I WAS TRYING TO THINK ABT THAT FIRST

pixeldemographics replied to your photoset “F: Okay, you were right…this place…it’s pretty spectacular. A: I’m...”

lay me down for i am dead :')

cATII NOOOO

pixeldemographics replied to your photoset “F: And you love it. A: I do…I do. More than ever. Especially tonight....”

im living for this banter my dude im dEAD

thAAAAAAAAAAANK YOU ;_________; im so ridiculously proud of it and im so glad it impressed someone asjhfbajsfnasd

pixeldemographics replied to your photoset “F: And you love it. A: I do…I do. More than ever. Especially tonight....”

i cant believe presidential candidate aureus brocade has a stiffie at dinner

me neither what is this blog coming to???? but it also makes me weirdly happy so...welp

pixeldemographics replied to your photoset “And what else could one Flame and Aureus do at a fancy restaurant? A:...”

?????? ive seen som napkin doodling but this is next level

thEYRE ARTISTES

pixeldemographics replied to your photoset “F: …and then I’ll take the Savory Bacon Love Petals. V: Coming...”

who is the owner of this restaurant w h o ive got som complaints

same man same, the entire place was crazy

pixeldemographics replied to your photoset “A: Wow, this place is a lot fancier than I remember. F: Well…I...”

dan aur u have a mighty back too 👀

he doooooooooooooo its probably a requirement for presidents which is...why some ppl arent suited

pixeldemographics replied to your photoset “A: Thank you so much for agreeing to watch the unicorns again, Glow. I...”

iM CRYING SO HARD I KNOW I SAW THIS EARLIER TODAY BUT GLOW IS STILL MURDERING ME WITH THE SASS

SAME THIS WHOLE FAM IS SO GOOD

amixofpixels replied to your post “white sheets and mocktails?”

I keep telling you, that you have to come up north for hugs, too!

well should I go back to London you’ll just have to meet me halfway ;)

pixeldemographics replied to your post “clouds & crossed fingers for that ask meme !”

ur hair is amazing bruh

amazing, soft and dead, its basically ficus

pixeldemographics replied to your post “clouds & crossed fingers for that ask meme !”

ok im gonna listen to all OF THOSE also it seems i dont need to feel sorry for infecting u with my hipster shit and re: mo hotta mo betta: SAME AF

u dONT I ASKED FOR IT OK also yes.

melien replied to your photoset “what do u mean today aint friday”

Ficus Monday... ficus week ficus month ficus year ficus lifetime

there we have my new tagline for 2018

pixeldemographics replied to your photoset “what do u mean today aint friday”

good luck reading that comment amirite bUT THEY ARE GOOD THEY ARE SO GOOD I KNOW I SAW THIS BEFORE BUT I CANT TIRE OF SEEING THEM

;_____________________; me neither fucc i hav a problem

pixeldemographics replied to your photoset “what do u mean today aint friday”

u a r e n o t a f a i l u r e

n e i t h e r a r e u

chaoticpxl replied to your photoset

<3 <3 This is not fair ok why are you allowed to do this you always just go and give us the purest and most amazing posts and i cry all the time bc of these and like how dare it's so good and good and gooooood and i love it i love you (i love you a whole lot) thanks bye

jasbfkajbfkajnfkajsfnkajsbfkajsfnakjsfnasd i wish that was a common opinion XD also i gotta fill up the cute meter for bad times, you know alSO I LOVE YOU TOO PLEASE DON’T GO

chaoticpxl replied to your photoset “I recreated their proposal kiss XD”

FUCK U

U TOO

chaoticpxl replied to your photoset “I recreated their proposal kiss XD”

DOES IT MAKE U FEEL BETTER

chaoticpxl replied to your photoset “I recreated their proposal kiss XD”

WHY WHY WHYYYY HWY WHY ANNIE U YELL ABOUT BEING SAD WHY DO U HAVE TO DO THIS

TELL ME ONE REASON WHY I SHOULDN’T DO THIS

smile-beautifuly replied to your photoset “I recreated their proposal kiss XD”

;_; ♥

limericksims replied to your photoset

they are SO adorable. ♥

i kNOW GUYS I KNOW WHAT DID I DO

tainoodles replied to your photoset “Remember how I said toddler Flame never made an appearance because he...”

I don't know what you were thinking either because he is precious af

i know, i know, i have nothing to say in my defense ;_;

pixeldemographics replied to your photoset “Remember how I said toddler Flame never made an appearance because he...”

wHAT A LOVELY BOY I GOT A 20/20 EYESIGHT I CAN TELL THIS IS ONE ADORABLE BBY

weLL U BETTER YES BECAUSE THAT EYESIGHT NEEDS SOM WORK AT TIMES

amixofpixels replied to your photoset “Remember how I said toddler Flame never made an appearance because he...”

Adorable af.

;_____;

[sunnysidewrites]

Enemies to Lovers!Subin

Requested by anon: enemies to lovers au with subin from victon??? thank u!!! 

here you go sunflower anon pt 2 LOL!!! YOUR REQUEST BLEW THROUGH THE ROOF SO MANY PPL WANTED THIS WOW STAN TALENT STAN KINGS AKA VICTON!!! WE NEED MORE WRITERS FOR VICTON AND I WILL DO IT MYSELF!!!!!! i also really love other victon writers you guys are the mvps i love u!!!! AND JUST LIKE I PROMISED THIS IS THE 2ND IMAGINE I’M DROPPING TODAY!!!!!! HAPPY READING MY CHILDREN!!!!!

warnings: cUTE BABY SUBIN V V CUTE SUBIN!!!!

wHAT A CONCEPT

THIS IS GONNA BE MY FIRST PUBLISHED VICTON IMAGINE AAAAAAAA

STAN ROOKIE KINGS YALL PLS STOP SLEEPING ON THEM

THIS GOT MORE VOTES THAN I THOUGHT TOO YOU GUYS ARE #WOKE

You’ve always been gr8 at school

You exceed in academics, sports, extracurriculars you are the Full Package

But you might have just met your match when a Jung Subin came into your life

He has literally only been at your school for 3 hours and everyone’s already fawning over him

“Omg did you meet the new kid?? He is sO CUTE AND NICE”

“That subin guy is really nice”

“I wanna keep him in my pocket” LMAO SAME

And he just sounds like a freaking angel

You’re like well i didn’t meet the guy yet so i can’t judge him based off of these

Turns out he’s in your writing class

Writing class is your fav bc it’s your strongest suit and you’re just super confident no one is gonna take your place as #1

Welp hahahah

Subin waltzes in and just kinda does that

likE GDI SUBIN FIRST YOU’RE AN ANGEL AND NOW YOU TAKE MY SPOT SMH

He seems to have a nice smile but,,, when he makes eye contact with you,,,, you  could feel the ice

And you’re like this boi doesn’t even know me??? What is his deal???

He knows you’re gonna be his competition bc he has already been informed about you

Well actually your friend was telling him about you but whatever

And he’s like wO WZERZ SHE IS PRETTY AND CUTE BUT MOVE ASIDE HONEY THERE’S A NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN

As class resumes after his introduction, you’re like ok whatevz i won’t let this weirdo get in the way of My Happiness™

When you get your assignments back a few classes later, your teacher is all gushing about someone’s work

And you’re like lmao!! I know thank you!!

“What a real piece of work!! Subin have you considered joining our school newspaper?”

aND YOU’RE FLIPPING OUT LIKE W HA T SU B I N????????????

And your classmates are like ooo shhiiiitttttt y/n has been replaced

And yoU’RE LIKE UM EXCUSE U i WILL NoT have my pride destroyed like this

And subin is just smirking like lmao ye that’s right boi i snatched it

And you’re like ??????????? get out u wish honey??????????

And from that point on you’re like this b is gonna go down i am gonna pull out all the sTOPS WA T C H ME

Your teacher and your classmates are just like pl s,,, chill,,,, it’s literally just creative writing,,,,,

You & subin: nO I WANNA BE THE VERY BEST gotta go

“tHIS AIN’T POKEMON IT’S AN ELECTIVE”

You guys are just at each other’s throats and you both try to one-up the other so hard but it always results in the both of you tied

Your teacher is like ok u kno wat

“Class, we’ll be mixing things up a little for this assignment. You’re gonna get into pairs or groups!! And don’t even pick your partners i already have them picked lmao”

You & subin: w HA T

The rest of the class: …….yikes

Your teacher and the rest of the class lowkey ship yall

And ofc,,,, you ended up with the one person you didn’t want,,,,,

“Ugh ok let’s just try to get this over with”

“Fine whatever”

the prompt involves writing a short story where person A and person B meet under the most unlikely circumstances and take a disliking at first sight but they grow closer and actually start falling love

And one partner writes person A’s perspective and the other writes person B’s

And you and subin are like jesus christ

So you’re like ok i’ll do person A then and subin is like sure whatevz

And you guys start brainstorming for the core of the plot

Class ends but you still haven’t gotten too far in brainstorming so you’re like sigh,,, ok well,,, we’re gonna have to meet up outside of school to work on this,,,,, we don’t have much time to work on this in class

And he’s like ugh,,,,, you’re right,,,,,

So you guys plan to meet a local cafe later that week to crank it out

As you’re getting dressed you’re like what should i wear

Would this be too casual

Is this dressing up too much

And you’re like wa i t lmao it’s just subin what am i doing!! :)))

But you’re also like im gonna wear that cute skirt

When you get there, subin has already picked out a table and spread out his things

“Sorry were you waiting that long?”

And he kINDA JUMPS LIKE O JESUS

You’re like why are you so jumpy??? It’s not like you weren’t expecting me to come????

And he’s like it’s no t h in g let’s just get started!!

You just shrug it off and start taking out your materials too

And you’re like ok wait i probably need to buy a drink so that we can stay here for longer do u want anything

And he’s like ya sure get me a mocha frappe or smth

And you’re like w h a t,,,,, i love that drink,,,,,,,

“With whipped cream?”

“yES O M G”

You’re literally bonding over a coffee drink i just???

And you can see his eyes forming into little crescents cause he’s smILING I’M SO SOFT OMG

And your heart is doing some somersaults and you’re like aahahhahsjdffljdljd i’ll be back bye

When you return with both of your drinks he’s like :)))!!!

“Thanks!! So for the part when they meet --”

And you guys spend literally hours and you’re just like ok,,, let’s,,, just take a breather,,,, and get some lunch or smth

And he’s like yea my brain is fried

You guys start packing your things and move to a little restaurant down the block 

You & subin: is this,, like,,, a date,,,, wth,,,,

And you guys spend your lunch laughing and making jokes while adding more ideas to your story

You finish your meal and you’re like ok well,,,, i think we practically laid out all the necessary details now we just gotta work on our own part

And he’s like yea,,,, i guess this is where we go,,,,

And you’re both reluctant to leave bc,,, hanging out with the other wasn’t the most horrible thing ever,,,,,

You’re unsure of whether to hug him goodbye or just leave so you hesitate for a second more and just decide to wave him goodbye

And he waVES BACK HOW CUTE SLDFJFJDF

You go home and you’re like ,,,,,,,,,,,,oh my god did that just happen

Subin at home: that really happened wow

You sit yourself down at your desk and you’re ready to go into Writing Mode this assignment is due in a day it’s time to go hAM

And you get so caught up in working that by the time you finish you’re like oMG I NEED TO GO TO BED

You sleep quite soundly that night bc you’re very satisfied with your product

Can’t relate lol :)))

The following day you and subin turn it into your teacher and your teacher is like i hope there were no complications!!!

And you and subin are like nope,,,, it went pretty smoothly actually,,,

Teacher + class: w HA T

“O-oh okay that’s good to hear! Anyways let’s take a quick break before launching into our work today. I’ll read some of these stories out loud!”

When she reaches your story, she pauses as she scans through it

And you and subin are lowkey holding your breath

Her mouth and eyes are a little wide open

She starts reading it and you can see your classmates being sh O OK

And your classmates can already tell who wrote it bc it’s just so obvious

She gets near the end of your short story and it talks about a cafe date

And when she reads person B’s perspective IT ALSO HAS A CAFE D A TE

*eyes emoji*

“His company wasn’t bad. Not bad at all.” -- the last sentence of yours

“She turned around and went on her way, and all I could think about was how many more times I would see that same back walking.” -- the last sentence of his

I AM SHOOK BY THIS FAKE SHORT STORY LMAO

Everyone is just like holy crap pls don’t read the rest of ours we are ashAMED

When class ends, you’re about to leave and go to the parking lot but subin stops you

“Hey,,, so,,,,,”

“So,,,,,”

“Would you,,, wanna have another cafe date,,,,,,,,,,,”

“,,,,,,,,if you want,,,,,,,”

And you’re both so shy and start blushing and giggling a little here and there OSJLFLJDSJL SO CUTE

“Well, your company really isn’t bad at all” you say with a wink

And just like that you turn around, leaving a starstruck Subin

[ariesmon]

bts as swimmers

idk if i’ll make this a series but shinee and bts were the two i was thinking abt so here we r

Jin

stroke : butterfly and back (have u seen this boys back good lord ppl were begging him to join the team)

events : 100 fly and 100 back

has okay stamina but works best in short bursts of power (which is also why he leads any relays he’s in)

ultimate Team Mom we all knew this was coming

hosts and organizes pasta parties, team bonding and fundraisers u name it he’s hosting it

also in charge of any emergency care (icing shoulders, stretches, massaging cramps etc)

fiercely defensive of his team and refuses to let ANY drama start “what happens outside the pool stays outside the pool”

always goes to morning practice but hates it

tells his lane buddies bad jokes 24/7 and they have become immune to them

takes carb loading to the extreme

Yoongi

stroke : diver and breast

event : diving and 100 breast and medley relay

hes really lazy during practice but during meets he gives 110% and scares the shit out of the other swimmers and divers bc hes here executing perfect half pikes without breakin a SWEAT

takes 20 min bathroom breaks to escape practice and eat a snack

but also stays up all night watching olympic diving and taking notes on how to improve his form

is always tired and smells like chlorine and his hair is dead

jimin had to buy him that fancy shampoo that prevents blond hair from turning green bc otherwise he could not bother to buy it

wears exclusively the team sweats not rly bc he has school pride but they’re cozy

never shows up to morning practice

likes to bully the freshman to show affection (and he hates doing lane lines)

Hoseok

stroke : free and I.M. (sprint)

event : 200 IM, 100 free, 200 free

amazing stamina and one of the star swimmers

takes ALL of the freshman under his wing 

the Underwater God (can hold his breath for insane amounts of time like jimin and kook)

amazing form esp with dives like the refs are just in awe

somehow manages to be ruthless and an angel at the same time

always so happy at every practice even the god awful 5 am dryland ones

surprises the team + coach with cookies on the last day of practice

loves hard sets

basically the team’s good luck charm and guardian angel

Namjoon

stroke : back and free (have u seen how tall this boy is)

event : 200 free, 400 free, anything involving back, does well with distance and sprint but only with these two strokes

does well with back and free but once damn near killed a freshman bc he kicked them in the head while doing breast so now he is not allowed to choose breast of fly for choice when the pool is crowded

team dad 

wears his parka outside of swimming sometimes bc its on trend rn

actually incredibly hard worker and stays after practices to talk to the coach abt how to improve his form and cut time and takes everything to heart

in charge of the team’s finances and also the suits for the next year

teaches freshman how to set up for meets (the stop boards, lane lines, flag etc)

also teaches rly scared newbies how to dive off the blocks and not belly flop bc he knows how scary it is

the biggest team supporter he loves his team so much and constantly gives the little pick me ups esp after a bad race

seems to survive off protein bars?? how

also always injures himself with lane lines and once broke his nose with a kickboard

Jimin

stroke : breast and IM (part of the IM trio)

events : anything breast and 200 IM 

has decent stamina for IM but not enough for 400 but can swim a 500 breast if he needs too

hobi and him have the best underwaters im talkin can go the length of the pool without coming up for air

also has amazing form??? like his fly is just so beautiful 

BEAUTIFUL STARTS AND PULLOUTS U DONT UNDERSTAND

makes sure the team is well fed and everyone has a lil bit of a crush on him lbr

the only one that actually eats healthy at pasta parties

has adorable charms on his swim bag n is constantly getting compliments on them

his skin is never dry??? how??

helps with warmup stretches and set up lane lines

the team insists on buying speedos bc have u seen those thighs???

has a soft spot for the freshman and always is encouraging them esp before big races

Taehyung

stroke : breast (sprint)

events : 100, 200 breast

decent stamina but his starts are always strongest so he’s often in the strongest relays

the Team Meme

always stuck on lane duty bc he is a freshman at heart

whips ppls butts with towels

but actually takes practice seriously like he’s putting in effort bc he wants to improve his technique and form

loves swimming with fins on bc he can go REAL fast and also likes to feel like a mermaid

his bangs are always falling out of his cap please help him

recruits all of the newbies bc who can say no to that face

somehow manages to get coach to laugh at his shitty jokes

always knows when someone is going thru tough times and gives them hugs and a snack bc sometimes u just need reassurance and a clif bar

has fallen asleep in his parka more than once

Jungkook

stroke : distance IM (just like Minho smh)

event : jack of all trades im not joking this kid is crazy everyone loves him and is highkey jealous

stamina up there with hoseok and jimin like he swims 1000 and its nothin for him

coach’s pet 

he was scouted by so many other sports but he chose swimming bc his hyungs were in it and he had to show that he could beat them at their own game (that and he actually rly likes swimming)

“c’mon guys this set isn’t that hard!!” “SHUT THE FUCK UP KOOK”

takes meets very seriously and even has a pre-meet playlist he listens to every time

his swim bag is a mess theres so many caps in there and granola bars and just dont even try okay

the one thing he cant do : cap himself and jimin and tae literally never let this go

he seems like he would eat healthy bc he drinks a ton of protein shakes but nah he’s stuffing oreos in his face on the downlow before every practice

shows up to morning practice ready to go all bright eyed and bushy tailed and even the coach is looking at him like he’s just sprouted a tail

always on lane duty bc he is still the Baby of the team and he hates it

has those cool hand paddles he never used them he just thinks they look cool

a seems like a natural but puts in a lot of extra practice and wants to make his team proud