#second of all. WHO THE FUCK IS DERAILING????? WE’RE ON YOUR SIDE WE’RE LITERALLY ASKING TO BE INCLUDED IN THE FIGHT

[mars-ipan]

y’know i think the most annoying thing about trying to discuss reproductive rights with cis people is the complete and utter refusal to include trans people in the discussion. like they will only ever say “women” and if you dare to point it out it’s “well this is all being done to control women” or “‘people with vaginas’/‘people assigned female at birth’ is way too wordy” it drives me fucking crazy

like first off do you seriously think that the people who seek to remove bodily autonomy from women have nothing against trans people. do you think they hold zero ill will towards us. also do you think they view trans afabs as anything other than women.

secondly. NOBODY IS ASKING YOU TO USE BIG WORDY PHRASES LITERALLY JUST SAY “PEOPLE” INSTEAD OF “WOMEN.” WE LITERALLY JUST DON’T WANT TO BE EXCLUDED FROM THIS BECAUSE WE ARE ALSO BEING HURT WE JUST WANT SOME GODDAMN SOLIDARITY IN THIS BITCH. LIKE ACTUALLY JUST FUCKING SAY “PEOPLE” IT SAVES EVERYONE FROM WEIRD LOOPHOLES AND ALSO ENFORCES THAT WOMEN ARE PEOPLE FOR FUCK’S SAKEEEEE

[shurisneakers]

harmless (v)

Summary: Bucky volunteers to go stop a small time villain, but nothing can prepare him for what exactly he has to deal with. (Bucky x villain!reader, drabble series)

Warnings: cursing, ghosts, frustrated bucky, dramatic reader, rats

Word count: 2.3k

A/N: why did i like this chapter sm someone explain. anyway!! y’all are so passionate about these two i love it mwah

if you have any ideas for future inventions/evil plans, lemme know! i might actually end up using them

here’s my ko-fi if you’d like to support my writing <333

Previous Part || Series Masterlist

He dislikes the subway. 

Other than his other valid reason to have disdain for trains, the subway is dark, it’s shady and he’s sure he’s seen rodents fight to the death here on several occasions.  

Still, he’s following you down the stairs of the station, watching as you whistle along to the song blasting through your headphones. There’s a backpack swung over your shoulders, hands stuffed into the pocket of your hoodie and converse doing a skip every now and then. There’s a bandana that’s tied across your face, acting as a mask to hide your identity. 

He realises that you’re dressed like a commuter. Were you going to dress the part every single time?

You walk along with the crowd. He follows, a few feet away.

Until you stop. He abruptly stops too, leading someone to walk right into him. 

“Watch it, dumbass,” they hiss with the courage of someone who has no idea who he is. He ignores them. 

He looks on as you dig around your backpack and pull out a roll of paper. A poster, he realises soon when you peel off a layer from the back and press it to the wall. 

Was it legal to put up posters in the subway? He wasn’t quite sure. 

He observes as you turn around and continue down the path. He waits a few seconds before trailing up to the poster.

Volunteers needed!

If you’re interested in being turned into a ghost for a couple of hours, this is your chance! Should be okay with being on camera so that we can make money off of taped paranormal sightings.

Paid opportunity. You get to pick your outfit. Randos don’t apply.

He yanks the poster of the wall before continuing down the same place you did.

He finds another poster along the way. He doesn’t hesitate in pulling it down. You were advocating to kill people. 

He knows he’s going in the right direction because more posters creep up along the wall.

The both of you are on the platform by now but to him, something changes about the placement of the posters. They were growing in frequency, the distance between them decreasing as they were situated close to each other.

He pauses in front of the next one, hand hovering over the paper.

All it reads is ‘STOP’.

He furrows his eyebrow, pulling it down before peering over at the next one.

‘TAKING’, is all that it says.

It doesn’t take him very long to make his way through all the posters in the hallway. 

‘THESE’

‘DOWN’

The train’s arrived by now but a quick scan over the crowd and he knows that you haven’t entered. That, and he knew that you were too dramatic to leave without a trace or a small conversation with him. 

‘DICKHEAD’

Tasteful, he thinks. 

“It took effort to make them, stop ruining it,” you whine from the end of the hallway. It’s empty, given that rush hour was over a while ago. 

Even though the mask covers half your face, it’s obvious that there is mischief etched under it. The twinkle in your eye is telling. 

“You’re literally killing people.” He holds up the poster. Not the ‘dickhead’ one. He pockets that for later. 

He knows there are a few minutes before the next train arrives and more people flood the station. The eccentricity of today lay in the lighting from the incandescent lamps and acoustics of the platform. It made his voice echo like a movie scene. 

“I very much am not,” you huff. 

“You’re turning them into ghosts. That’s what a murderer does,” he says pointedly. 

“Well, only if you keep saying it like that. You’re making me look bad.” You cross your arms across your chest. “What are you, Fox News?” 

A scurry next to him earns his attention. Two rats nibble at a piece of fallen food. He wonders when they’ll starting brawling. 

“Explain this.” He waves the poster around. He isn’t taking it too lightly he hopes. If it’s actual murder then it’s going to be an issue. 

You pull out a black cylinder, slightly bigger than a pen. He can’t really see any more details, but you hold onto it like a wand. 

“I’m turning them into ghosts. I’ll post videos of them doing stupid shit. I get famous and then boom, cash money.” You rub your index finger and thumb together. “I’ll give you a share if you volunteer.”

“You’re not explaining the death part.” 

He can feel it. You’re about to start derailing. 

“Winter Soldier, the ghost story. Literally.” You grin, yanking down the mask from your face to prove it. It pools around your neck. “That’s so funny, c’mon, it’d be amazing.”

It’s been years since he’s heard that. Never in this context. 

“No,” he says sternly, “and I’m going to have to bring you in if you’re going to kill people.”

The rats were ignoring everything that was going down like the hardened criminals that they were. They had probably seen worse. He can’t stop paying attention to them.

“I’m not killing them, bro.” You raise your hands in exclamation. “I’m just moving some molecules around, some frequency shit. They’re alive, just ghosts.”  

He’s always been one for science. Straight As throughout high school, attended science conventions as a hobby, alive even at 100 through some mad experimentation, definitely seen some weird shit during his lifetime. 

But this doesn’t make sense.

“No,” he repeats. “Give me the thing.”

“Fine, I’ll show you.” You roll your eyes. “Since you have absolutely no faith in me.”

He does a quick review of his surroundings. 

No one’s around, which is good. 

But that just leaves him in front of you, which is bad.

“Don’t you even thin-” he starts, muscles tensing as he shifts into a defensive stance.

You whip out the little pen thing from beside you but before he can react you turn around and duck. 

The click of a button releases a bright light, small but intensely stronger than the fluorescents in the station.

He reels back, feet carrying him away from where you’re crouched. His eyes quickly look down at his body. 

Nothing’s changed. 

He lifts his hand to check, runs it over his face. Still alive. He thinks.

“Behold,” you declare, “Ghost rat.”

He looks to where you’re pointing. The two rats from earlier were still nibbling on their food but something was off about them. 

He could see the faint outline of the tiles on the wall behind them, almost like they were... translucent.  

You aimed at the rats, not him. He doesn’t know whether to feel relieved or annoyed at the fake threat.

He watches as they move. They don’t look hurt or injured.

“Cool, huh?” you say smugly. 

He can’t stop staring at them. 

“Bring them back.”

“They’re fine, look how abstract it is.”

“Bring back the rats.” He can’t believe this is what his life has come to.

Bucky Barnes, Rodent Protector.

You aren’t fazed by his indifference, instead wonder filled eyes gaze at the animals. “Astral mice, sarge. Embrace the miracle of modern science.”

“You killed them.”

“They’re alive, they’re just ghosts.” You raise a finger to point. “Look, they’re still eating. Biological functions are still taking place.” 

 Which was true. But still. He doesn’t know what is going on.

“Bring them back to... non-ghost alive.” 

“You sure you don’t want one? That one kinda looks like you.” One hardened glare after you realise the answer. “Jeez, alright then.”

You dig through your bag before pulling out a matte black replica of your current invention. 

“Sexy colours, right?” You hold them up. “I modelled them after your arm.”

He looks down. Sure enough the gold and black matched his cybernetic limb. It was oddly flattering. 

“Say thank you, Y/N, for letting me be your muse-”

“Un-ghost the rats.” 

“Ungrateful,” you narrow your eyes at him. 

Still, you comply with his demands, ducking down to their level again.

A click of the button, a bright light and the rats are back to normal. Non-transparent normal.

“Okay, give me that.” He takes a step towards you. 

“Nuh uh.” You pull your arm back. His mouth twitches at your response; what are you, five?

The black one is stuffed back into your bag but you wave around the gold like a threat. 

He sighs, making a pass for it. In a second his arm is twisted and shoved against his back, forcing him to spin so that he’s facing away from you. His eyes widen.

What the fuck?

“Now we’re having a good time,” you whisper into this ear. 

He swiftly turns around, grabbing your wrist to rotate his own out of your grip. 

“Since when can you fight?” he asks.

“Are we getting to know each other now?” You raise your leg to give him a semi gentle kick in the side, using his momentary distraction in blocking it to give him a knock on the head with your free hand. “This is so romantic, sarge.”

There’s a low rumble in the distance and he knows the train would soon start pulling into the station. It was still a distance away, but his heightened senses warned him that it wouldn’t take much time. 

He groans. How much longer would he have to go at this?

He could easily win this fight and he knew it. But something in him itched, pulled him back from doing it.

He blocks another attempt at his head. “Stop that.”

You grin. “You know what’d be fun?”

He knows you’d reply even if he didn’t encourage it. The lights from the train light up the tunnel around the corner. 

“This.” You don’t give him a second to recover before you flick your wrist away from him.

The device flies out of your hand and right onto the track. The both of you watch, you in glee, he in horror, as the train runs right over it, unleashing the brightest light he had ever seen. His eyes shut instinctively before it blinds him.

He forces himself to pry open his eyelids, look at the damage caused. 

The train, sure enough, is translucent. He can see the posters on the other side of the platform through the carriage, through various people holding onto the poles for support or seated on the seats.

“Ghost train!” you cheer. He’s mortified.

“Fuck no,” he mumbles, yanking the backpack off your shoulder. He rummages through it, looking for the gold version.

“You lookin’ for this?” you ask nonchalantly, holding it up in your hand like it isn’t the solution to stopping a bunch of ghosts from wandering around New York. 

“Turn them back.” He gives you a chance. 

“Do it yourself, coward.” You grin, holding it above your head. The train is going to stop and he needs everyone to be alive and non-ghost before they leave.

He doesn’t wait this time, instead turning to you. The thing is still held in your grip above your head. He rolls his eyes, doing a quick assessment before grabbing your free hand, tugging you closer and plucking the device out of your hand before you have the opportunity to retract it.  

“Great, now figure out which button to press.” You’re dangerously close to him. He can feel your hoodie brush against his tactical jacket. “Also if you wanted to be all pressed up against me, you could have just asked.” 

He furrows his eyebrows, letting go of you as you give a loud laugh. He looks down at the device. It has several buttons, littering up and down the side. Each look the same. 

The train’s slowing down. 

“They’re both the same device; this version is not a magical solution to the other one. If you press the wrong button then both of us are going to be fucked.”

The last carriage is getting closer. 

“Say I win this round and I’ll fix it.” 

There’s a gleam in your eye. He knew this was exactly what you wanted. 

He wishes he was as stubborn as Steve, just run through each button until the right one worked.

“You win this one.” He hands it back. He wasn’t like Steve and judging by the number of items the idiot jumped out of planes without a parachute on a daily basis, Bucky was glad about it. At least Bucky did it sporadically.

“Yay, two each for the both of us, then,” you say, taking it from him and twisting, eyes running down the sides. “Close your eyes, old man, or else your cataract’s gonna get worse.”

Right as the train pulls to a stop, you press down on the button before throwing it and the blinding light that emanates from it. It lands on the top of the train right as the doors open. 

The passengers start stepping out. Some of them are looking at their hands and legs in a little disbelief, most just push through the crowd to leave.

He can’t see through them. It’s a good sign. 

He turns to look at you but you’re not there. Instead, the weight of the small device weighs down in his pocket.

The sound of a thud on glass draws his attention. 

He looks up at the train. The window of the carriage in front of him has a bit of fog on it. You trace a heart in the condensation and blow him a kiss before pulling your mask back on.

The train starts moving, leaving him alone in the platform again with your invention.

He lets out an exhale, wandering outside to grab a sandwich before waiting to catch the next train to go home. 

Later in the evening, he catches hold of a bit of tape and the ‘Dickhead’ poster finds a place on Sam’s door. 

He doesn’t appreciate it.

So now it’s tucked away in the shelf of Bucky’s bedside table along with a freeze ray, a ghost-inator, and some discount Pym Particles. 

Next part

[bigskydreaming]

Hi, I was reading your post about Jason punching Dick in the face when Dick revealed he fake his death was bullshit ( which it was) and it reminded me of an issue/question that has bothered me for sometime.

Why did people believe Dick was actually dead?

I’m not the most avid comic reader so maybe I missed something but it was always weird to me that everyone just accepted this especially given how Bruce was acting or should I say wasn’t acting.

This is a man when his child died another child had to come along and told him sir you are being too violent and emotional you need supervision. When his other child died he went all over the universe to bring him back to life because he knew it was possible ( which was happening at the same time), so why didn’t anyone think it was weird he wasn’t doing that for Dick. Can you imagine Dick really dying that soon after Damian it would be injustice Batman Version. You are telling me that Tim, Jason or Barbara didn’t think it was weird that Bruce didn’t also bring Dick’s corpse to the bring Damian back to life mission or mention it to themselves. Like what more likely Dick dead and Bruce is handling it well or that he fake his death to do something stupid and Dangerous after his partner/brother/ little bit my son the feelings are complicated died after he was knocked out and woke up to his corpse.

Oh man, this is like, the entire nature of my beef?

(Slight derail just to emphasize the fact real quick that Dick DID actually die, he was just revived quickly, but like, the trauma of his death was very real and its not like anyone was clued into Luthor having a resurrection backdoor built into his literal murder of Dick in the actual moment of it happening. So Dick’s death wasn’t fake, and additionally, he didn’t have anything to do with like, telling people about it, because he was literally comatose in the cave and recovering while Bruce was telling people....by the time Dick woke up in the cave, we already know that Alfred at least had already been convinced by Bruce that Dick was dead, so I have a kneejerk need to pushback against the Dick faked his death narrative by reminding people wherever possible that Dick had no agency in the spreading of that narrative. 

It happened without him being involved, and the only actual contribution he ever made to it was just not revealing he was alive before Grayson #12, after Bruce like.....emotionally, mentally and physically badgered him into accepting that doing so would be directly harmful to his family and he didn’t want to be the reason more people died when like, people had just died because he ‘let’ himself be captured and interrogated by Power Woman’s Lasso of Submission, did he?

SORRY TO BE PEDANTIC, just wanted to start this off on a clarification, even though I know the aim of your ask was very much in tune with the rest of my response. A lot of people don’t read the actual comics, so like, I’m never gonna skip over an opportunity to emphasize that the shorthand people use to refer to Dick’s death and the year he was with Spyral, is like, literally just shorthand for describing it. Its not actually an accurate description of how all that went down and who had the most hand in it).

BUT ANYWAY. BACK TO THE MEAT OF THE BEEF.

Okay so like, not only was the entire family and Bruce himself giving Dick shit for his death and Spyral, like, PAINFULLY egregious because it was literal victim blaming in every possible sense of the word....

None of it made a LICK of sense with ANY of their characterizations, and they ONLY all accepted it on face value because the Plot Demanded It, and when you're like, no, as a reader I say The Plot Demanded It is not a good enough reason for me to be like well sure, that makes sense......looking at the characters ACTUAL actions at face value pretty much just makes them all look like assholes?

Like, Tim has never gracefully accepted anyone's death. Ever. This is core characterization for him. He will go to the ends of the earth for his loved ones and to bring them back, prove they're not dead, refuse to let death be the final verdict for them. He was tempted to use the Lazarus Pit to bring his parents back to life. He refused to accept Bruce was dead long before he had any proof whatsoever of that theory. He tried to clone his BFF/future-husband Kon in his fucking basement like, dude was two whole inches away from going Full Dark Side in his quest to bring back a lost loved one no matter WHAT the cost.....and then you've got Dick unmasked onscreen, killed offscreen, and Bruce then reporting to the rest of them with zero inflection 'oh Dick's dead now. Its very sad' and Tim's just like, sure. Sounds legit.

I mean?!?!

And you're SO RIGHT ABOUT THE DAMIAN THING! Bruce LITERALLY LITERALLY LITERALLY went BEYOND the ends of the Earth, like, he full on chartered a fucking space ship to fly his whole family out to APOKOLIPS to bring Damian back from the dead by going to EXTREME lengths.....WHILE everyone else thought Dick was dead....

And not a single person looked at Bruce and was like, okay, not that we're not down to do this for Damian because we miss Stabby Smurf something fierce ourselves, but.....what the fuck is UP with you dude? Why aren't you displaying ANY hint of this same kind of energy in regards to your eldest son that you said you watched die right in front of you?

Like....I don't know that we were actually ever told that Dick's coffin was empty or had a fake in it, but like....this family of detectives who refuse to accept death, defy death, COME BACK FROM THE DEAD....not a single one of them said like, okay, if I'm gonna like, ACCEPT accept that Dick is dead and gone for good, I need to at least just see him one last time? That's literally all it would have taken for someone to realize hey something's a little wonky here. Where's the dead body, Pops?

Since when has Jason ever missed an opportunity to prove Bruce is a) full of shit, b) acting like an emotionless robot and all his kids deserve better especially when they've just like....died, c) just factually incorrect and wrong and jumped to a conclusion before it was conclusively proved, d) lying like a liar or e) all of the above?

Nobody even ASKED if Dick's body could be put in a Lazarus Pit? Yeah, Jason wouldn't necessarily recommend it himself, given what it put him through, but actually fuck that, I take that back, because I'm NOT actually of the opinion that Jason full on hates his life and actively spends every second of every day wishing he hadn't been resurrected, even if it had come with a huge buffet of additional trauma and pain.

And that's kinda what's implied when people just take it for granted that he would never be on board with any scenario involving using a Lazarus Pit to bring Dick back, because it suggests that based even just on his own experiences and feelings, he honestly believes Dick would prefer being dead and not have ANY further opportunities to be with his loved ones, his friends, help save the damn world again at some future point.....that Jason, projecting based just off himself, legit feels Dick would rather be dead than have another shot at life even WITH the downsides of Lazarus Pit usage? Nope. Sorry, I don't buy it.

Speaking of not buying it.....you know what was missing from all those soliloquies the others monologued at Dick about how they felt and were hurt and just devastated by his death, to such a point they can't seem to muster a single shred of happiness that he's NOT dead still -

(seriously, Damian was the ONLY person in ALL THE LANDS OF EMOTION-HAVING who expressed ANY kind of positive reaction to having Dick back. We were so fucking cheated of like.....ANY opportunity to have the characters show just how much they valued him by just being fucking HAPPY he was alive, no matter what else was involved....and then most of fandom compounded that by for years being like mmmm, no, Dick didn't get yelled at enough by his family for what HE put THEM through. Needs more yelling. More punching too. Bad Dick. Bad. This is the only way you'll learn not to die and get shipped off on a mission that you don't want but at least is to protect your family after being beaten into it by your dad whilst victim blaming you for dying in the first place. WHEN WILL YOU LEARN TO THINK ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE AND THEIR FEELINGS FOR A CHANGE, DICK?!?)

- But like, BUT I DIGRESS aside....you know what was missing from all those monologues about how hard DICK'S death and ensuing year of basically exile from his loved ones was for EVERYONE BUT HIM?

We never got a single line of explanation as to what everyone else officially thinks even happened to him in the first place?

Like, did Bruce straight up just say oh bad news kids, your brother umm. Expired. Spontaneously. There's no one to blame, he just keeled over, its all very sad.

Is that how that went down?

You're telling me that the explanation of Dick's death didn't come with a single pointed finger at someone for this family of blame-happy vigilantes to like, BLAME for the loss of this brother they all mourned oh so much, they just couldn't help but blame him for all the hurt it caused them?

The family that in every other fic is like OBSESSED with avenging and being avenged and all things vengeful and even tangentially vengeance-y....like didn't ask for a single detail on whomst the fuck deprived us of our brother-having?

Where were the attempts on Luthor's life by Jason (who I mean, yeah I know it was in a previous continuity, but erasing that timeline doesn't erase my awareness of the time Dick killed Jason's murderer so like.....mmm, just saying, woulda been nice)....where was the rage directed at the Crime Syndicate and references to how seriously and personally the Batfam took making sure that they were PUNISHED for all this and would never be free to wreak havoc on their world or their family again? What did they tell Damian when he came back to life, and how are you going to tell me that this fraternal little ball of fury didn't aim himself like a cannonball at whomever the fuck had DARED take HIS Batman from him when Damian wasn't around to have his back?

Not only does everyone else's desire to be avenged start falling really flat the second you factor in hey maybe Dick feels "mmm what about MY avenging" sometimes, and why doesn't anyone ever care about doing that for him.....but also, y'know what REALLY sucks about the ONLY person we actually SEE being blamed for Dick's death and ensuing absence being like....Dick himself?

Not only were his family all super keen on making all of this HIS fault and HIM the bad guy because of how it made them all feeeeeeel (and meanwhile fuck his feelings, am I right Batfam hfaklshfklahfkla).....

They somehow found a way to justify prioritizing this OVER ever even getting around to blaming some villain for his death in the FIRST place, in the entire year or so they thought he was still dead!

Like, you couldn't come up with a single target in all that time, but Dick's back two seconds, and you don't even give him a chance to EXPLAIN before you're punching him, shutting him down with 'I expected better from you' and turning away with 'I don't want to hear it, why am I surprised Dick Grayson disappointed me again'?

afshklfhalfhalfhla

Make it make sense!

And like, it won't, cuz it doesn't, and it never will, and like I said at the top, the ONLY reason it all played out this way is because DC doesn't give a fuck about character development and deemed it necessary to go down this way for the sake of the plot (which was totes worth it, I mean, glad we sacrificed characters for this A+ plot which was clearly the greatest plot of all time and definitely justified every story choice made or not made around it loooool).

BUT.

BUT BUT BUT.

The problem isn't JUST that DC is stupid, even though that is an eternal mood and quite the problem.

Its that the SECOND large parts of fandom decided to play along with DC and just accept the story at face value, only add to it and play into it exactly as it happened in canon with no significant deviations, and like, heaping on the LITERAL abuse from Dick's siblings while ignoring the LITERAL abuse from his father....

THAT....is when all of this becomes relevant.

Because the second people decided TO engage with the reasoning DC gave for what Bruce did and how and what Dick did and how and just not mess with any of that and have it all play out exactly like that...

The second people are like, okay we're FINE with not just dismissing this story as OOC writing that doesn't make any sense, and actually VALIDATING it to various degrees by engaging with it as is....

That's when 'OOC writing' stops being an excuse or explanation for alllll of the above gaps in character logic and actions.

Because its like, when you had abundant chance to REJECT this story and say nope, this was bullshit from start to finish and I'm not here for it, when you were just as capable of transforming literally ANY aspect of this story you didn't like into something that made more sense to you....

And you chose not to.

That's.....accepting it as valid writing. You were like, okay, I'm game to just treat this as a thing that happened, just like they said that happened.

For the chance to give Dick shit for it, see. For the angst, see.

And that's when I'm like okay cool, so when engaging with this story as is and accepting it on face value and just delving into the characters as they were SHOWN interacting with and around these events......for the angst or whatever....

You guys just all decided en masse to just hop, skip and jump over allllllllll the opportunities for angst inherent in examining even ANY SINGLE ONE of the above lapses in judgment or hypocrisy on the parts of the characters (who don't get to be excused by OOC writing if you're not going to call the story an example of OOC writing, whoops).

And its just like, uh, what's up with that?

[meepmorpperaltiago]

Slipping Through My Fingers All The Time

I started a marvel binge about a month ago and I’ve been hyperfixating on spideychelle for a while now – so I started this fic and then realised the last prompt of @mjweek fit perfectly! This is a crazy long fic by my standards but I hope you like it!

The first time May hears Michelle Jones’ name is after the Washington Incident. She doesn’t particularly register it, not with everything else happening in their lives at that point. She’s just another one of his classmates, only just edging into the category of “friend”, if something like that can even be categorised at all.

She doesn’t hear the girls’ nickname for a while either.

Until one day, when Peter casually asks: “Would you mind if MJ slept over along with Ned?”

“MJ?”, she questions, turning towards him with a puzzled look.

“Michelle Jones... you know, the new Academic Decathlon Captain? Her friends call her MJ and now I guess Ned and I allowed to call her that since we’re her friends”.

She seems to bond to their group increasingly after Homecoming and then after the Blip. She’s not rude by any means, but she doesn’t really say a lot in comparison to her friends, so May doesn’t ever particularly chat to her in any depth beyond polite greetings and queries about being picked up after late night study -sessions-turned-sleepovers.

But as a platonic trio, the three of them seem to be on good ground.

Looking back, she’s not sure she could pinpoint when exactly when the true shift happened.

Slowly but steadily, Peter mentions her more and more in a way he’s never talked about any other friend before, even more than he used to mention Liz. It reaches a point where she expects to hear about the latest “badass” thing that MJ did whenever she asks him how school was that day, right alongside tales of their gang’s usual exploits and the regular gossip of Midtown. It’s not to an unhealthy or obsessive extent, but it’s enough for her to realise that something must be going on between them, even if it’s just a spark.

Not wanting to put pressure on Peter to talk about it, she waits patiently for her suspicions to be confirmed, because she becomes more and more certain every day that there’s something there.

A few weeks before the big school trip to Europe and what they’re both hoping will be a much deserved break, she comes home to Peter furiously scribbling something onto a scrappy frayed bit of paper, his entire face scrunched into fierce concentration.

“Are you designing a new suit or something?”, she casually asks, that being the only thing she can think of in spite of her nephews’ lack of artistic talent.

“Oh no”, is his slightly shy response. “It’s just... a plan...”

That confuses her even more and she sits down beside him, finally looking at what he’s been writing down whilst asking him: “a plan for what? World domination? Have you decided to go all angsty hero turned supervillain on us?”

He laughs at that and then explains himself. “I really like MJ. I wanna tell her how I feel in Europe and I thought it would be better to just write it down rather than winging it. I tried to just be honest with her earlier today and after I said that I had something I wanted to tell her I kind of froze... and ran... very fast... and elephant like... a lot of people stared, it was very noisy and embarrassing.”

She sits with him for about an hour after that, helping him to develop his pretty loose plan into something more concrete. She also had the sad thought that if Tony was still around he would’ve been all over this situation, helping Peter. It’s yet another figure in his life who will never be there for the big moments, but all she can do is try her best for him, like she has done since he was 4 years old and they all realised his parents’ weren’t coming back from that damn plane crash.

In the end, the trip of course gets derailed by (what else?) more superhero stuff and even before what follows a few weeks later, she feels awful that he can’t take a pause from stress and danger for even two weeks, at the age of just 16. He’s still just a kid, but the weight of the world never seems to lift from his shoulders.

But the one positive is that it looks like he didn’t need the plan. When they’re driving home from the airport, the first thing he talks and talks and talks about is everything that happened with him and MJ. Apparently she loved the necklace even though it was broken, they kissed 3 times on Tower Bridge (and a few more times on the way home) and now they’re going on a date soon. She questions if swinging around New York might be a bit intense, but he shrugs her off, saying that it’ll be fine.

She finds out later that it wasn’t fine, but everything that follows after their date completely crashes into everything and makes that detail anecdotal.

Everything changes after Mysterio’s video – at first he runs for far too long and she’s so worried and it breaks her heart to read all the awful, untrue things that damn Daily Bugle keeps on pumping out. The physical copy would be better off used as toilet paper in her opinion (she can’t think of anything as witty for the more popular digital version, but she’s trying). They all meet with him undercover, sporadically, supporting him in whatever way they can.

After an adventure involving Dr Strange (she’s proud of the fact that learnt his name properly now) and weirdest of all several other Spider-Men, he finally comes home and even though everything is still completely uprooted and unstable, at least she has him back now.

For everything that still comes afterward, for every run in with photographers and crazed fans and every time the danger they’re all in now that the world knows becomes apparent, she’s there to pick him back up. And MJ and Ned are too.

She notices that he comes back from patrols even later and when she talks to him about it he admits with a shy blush that he’s been stopping by MJ’s room every night for weeks now. It all seems very Romeo and Juliet. She also chuckles when it’s brought up in conversation with MJ’s mother, because of course she knows he’s there when they think they’re being so sneaky and secretive. How he managed to keep his identity hidden for so long, she’ll never know.

Over time, she gets to know MJ pretty well too: she learns that she’s smart and fierce and sarcastic and cynical in a way that balances Peter’s eternal sunshine perfectly. They really do fit together like pieces of an extremely adorable puzzle.

Her usually mended heart breaks a little when she realises how well she would’ve gotten along with Ben. But eventually she puts that thought away in a precious mental box, carefully kept and full of now bittersweet memories. She simply allows herself to share in her nephews’ new found and long overdue joy.

She truly realises the depth of their feelings for each other in unfortunate to say the least circumstances. A hammering from the Green Goblin puts him in hospital unconscious for a week even with his advanced healing abilities and MJ won’t leave his side for a second, holding onto the broken black dahlia necklace like it’s the only thing anchoring her to reality even after Ned has finally been persuaded to go home to bed. They sleep in plasticky, slightly sticky and hard hospital chairs right next to each other and when Peter finally wakes up the next afternoon he looks so happy to see the 3 people he loves most in the world carefully watching him.

She’s never seen him more scared than the first time a bad guy kidnaps MJ. They were aware that something like this was likely, the girl even prepared herself with self defence classes and her boyfriend is a literal freakin’ superhero. But still, when he finds her, May can see through the security footage that her and Ned are nervously watching, that he holds her with such relief, like she’s the most precious thing in the world.

They of course go to senior prom together and take the classic photos before they go — it’s incredibly corny but their radiant smiles put a bright grin on her face too.

They go long distance for college and although they’re both worried about growing apart, they seem to just get closer, moving into a cramped apartment in their second year.

She comes over for dinner (Peter has always been a disaster in the kitchen, but MJ’s competent enough to keep them from completely living off take out) and the three of them chat and laugh together and they’re not even out of college yet but MJ already feels like family.

What she doesn’t expect is for him to call her at 2am, in floods of tears, barely able to explain to her what happened except “I’ve fucked everything up, oh my god, I’ve fucked everything up...”

Eventually May gets a bigger picture through his tears (“it’s so stupid”, he hiccups down the phone). Essentially it all boils down to a lack of communication and small things boiling over into a blow out fight. Now she’s walking out in sheer anger and he’s frozen in panic. May feels panicked too, feeling the pressure of giving Peter the right advice when she’s honestly not sure how she would handle the situation. He might be all grown up, at college with a long term living together relationship, but sometimes she’s reminded of how young he still is.

She ends up telling him to run after MJ and apparently he does just that, rushing out into the pouring rain and kissing her through tearful apologies from both of them in what sounds like something straight out of a rom com. After that, they get better at sharing how they’re feeling and their relationship seems all the better for it.

She gives him her old engagement ring just after their two year anniversary of living together, after he comes to her apartment with an excited grin, telling her that he wants to propose. An everlasting symbol of her old love, of the love her and Ben shared, that their child can now share with the love of his life.

“So what’s your big plan?” she asks him excitedly over coffee in the mug he bought her a few birthdays back.

“Well, she hates public proposals, so I can’t do that – I was thinking of doing something at home, something cosy...”

That’s exactly what he does.

May helps him with his plan, just as she did 5 years ago – except this time she’s a little bit more directly involved.

Luckily, May and MJ already have a regular rom com night every few weeks, so MJ isn’t too surprised or suspicious when she invites her ‘round for an afternoon of Bridget Jones. Just as the perpetually single heroine is giving birth to Colin Firth’s baby, she gets a thumbs up text from Peter, letting her know that he’s ready to go.

MJ took the bus here, so May suggests they go back to the apartment together, because she couldn’t bear the idea of not being around for what awaits MJ at home. MJ gives her a strange look but just rolls with it.

When MJ opens the apartment door after saying goodbye to May, the lights are dimmed, except for a glowing structure in the corner, which Peter comes out of grinning.

“I made you a fort!” he declares happily with his arms in the air. As MJ grins and laughs and kisses him as she jumps into his arms, she takes that as a cue to fully leave them alone.

She stands and waits and wonders what’s happening inside. She could see that he’d filled the inside of the fort with fairy lights and she knows that he was planning on ordering MJ’s favourite food (pepperoni pizza) and putting on a murder documentary she’d been talking about for weeks.

After what must’ve been the time for them to eat their pizza and watch the documentary, plus about 7 minutes give or take, they open the door. They both have tears in their eyes as MJ holds up her left hand to show May the newly placed ring on her finger.

They have placeholder seats in the ceremony, for everyone who’s not there, who would’ve been there. Who should’ve been there. Everyone lost isn’t forgotten and it’s as heartwarming as it is sad.

He goes back to May’s the night before the wedding out of superstition and tradition. She wakes him up pretty early and he complains until he realises what day it is. He shares a soft phone call with MJ as soon as he’s awake enough to hold a conversation, but May has no idea what’s being said, as she goes to the kitchen, wanting to give them both privacy.

She makes sure to tell Peter how proud she is of him when she’s helping him tie his tie like he’s back in high school and getting ready for Homecoming.

When he sees MJ walk down the aisle, they both look at each other like they’re being given the entire world.

Peter speaks first, nervously taking cue cards out of his pocket and saying: “MJ, I know that you hate clichés and corny lines, so I’m not going to use any. Instead, I’m just going to make a bunch of promises. I promise to support you and stand by your side, to have your back in the way that you always have mine. I promise to always be there to make you smile when you’re sad. I promise to watch scary horror movies with you, even if they really scare me. I promise not to spoil endings of things. I promise to love you forever.”

An already tearful MJ follows him with: “Peter, a long time ago, I told you that I don’t have much luck when it comes to getting close to people. But that’s not been true for a long time, thanks to you. Sorry to use clichés my vows after you cut them out of yours, but I feel so damn lucky to be marrying my best friend. I promise to stand by you and fight for you even when you’re being really stupid, I promise to support all of your nerdy stuff and most of all, I promise to always love you, dork”

May thinks back on everything her boy has suffered through, everything that has been put upon him for so long. Seeing him brimming with joy, gazing lovingly at his wife, surrounded by everyone who loves and supports them both, she bursts into tears herself.

It’s one of the happiest days of her life .It’s only matched by her both of her wedding days and the days that Benjamin Anthony Parker-Jones and Taylor-May Parker-Jones are born.

[princessofgayskull]

somehow I’ll still love you more (kitra fic sneak peak)

so this is a scene from my upcoming fic somehow I’ll still love you more, which at is core is going to be a kitra/baby fic. However, there’s a lot I want to say about this (you know me, can’t keep that word count down) so this fic will be nothing if not a full course meal.

The fic is told in a nonlinear fashion. This particular scene I wanted to share with you guys because I believe it touches on a lot of what the fic is going to be about. It’s set between the episodes White Out and Light Spinner in Season 2. Enjoy! (this has not been beta’d yet)

“Scorpia,”

“Hmm- huh?”

“Stop doing that.”

“Stop doing what?”

Pulling up the hand brake, Catra stopped the speeder in its tracks before whirling around, her left eye twitching like the movement was the only thing keeping her eyeball in place. “That- that thing you’re doing with your mouth. That noise you’re making under your breath.”

“Singing?” Scorpia raised an eyebrow. 

“You call that singing?” Catra scoffed at her inferior. Look, Catra got that growing up in the Horde meant there weren’t any private music lessons (even if that was in Shadow Weaver’s job description she’d just relegate that responsibility off to some tone deaf Force Captain so she’d have more time to make Catra’s life a living hell and dote on Adora on the side) that all those half-witted princesses definitely got growing up, but it was like Scorpia was trying for the same sound her pincers made when she dragged them down slabs of concrete. 

Catra’s hand squeezed the brake handle until the pressure hurt the bones in her hand, her left eye still twitching. It was like Scorpia was trying to tank Catra’s recent promotion as Hordak’s second in command by being as annoying as she could on purpose. But who wasn’t trying to derail all of Catra’s hard earned progress these days?

“Oh um, I could stop. If you want.” Scorpia muttered, her face falling into an expression that gave Catra the urge to both scream, puke, cry, and beg for forgiveness at the same time. And lately, every action, every word, every little breath that any took in her direct vicinity set off a domino effect of violent emotions in Catra, every single one too enormous and too consuming for her body. 

Good thing Catra didn’t have time for any of that. 

“Just-” Catra’s breath faltered when Scorpia refused to look at her (what? Now she was the bad guy just because she needed focus or Hordak would have her sent to Beast Island? Or worse?!), “- just don’t do it right now, okay?”

This earned Catra an enthusiastic nod, and she was too fucking tired to do anything but figure that was going to have to do, given the time crunch, and not mention, the insane amount of pressure she was running under. Clicking the brake, Catra pushed the handle down, fucking ecstatic to be driving the speeder the rest of the way in peace and quiet. Finally. Scorpia didn’t say another word, didn’t make another noise, until Catra was pulling up to the edge of Dawn’s Pass and activating the brake again.

That was good enough for Catra.

Just as Catra moved up to the edge to take a watchful stance of the town, Scorpia opened her big mouth. “Uh, boss? Not that I don’t love these recon missions with you lately, but I gotta ask: why are we staking out this village again? The Horde’s occupied this place for the last twelve years, and this isn’t exactly what I pictured when you said we were going to start hanging out over work? I mean, unless Dawn’s Pass has a mean bowling alley. Does- does it?”

“No,” Catra’s tail twitched in irritation. 

“Oh.” 

A cadet, waving his baton in a steady motions, stood at the broad brick wall that blocked off the town as his shift replacement approached from the west, whistling a tune through their helmet so ear shattering it put Scorpia’s new little song to shame. Keeping her eyes trained on the two of them, Catra braced herself for the metallic scent of magic to hit her nose. There was the quick swish of her claws unsheathing, and then, a pregnant silence. 

If they’re going to strike, Sparkles and Rainbow and- and Adora, or any of the other dopey Princesses- are going to strike now.

But Catra watched unfold was a typical exchange between Horde Cadets: a simple salute, a complaint about standing for ten hours, and a wish for good luck during the dull, boring night shift. No Princesses. No magic. No threats anywhere in sight.

Nothing. Just like Dawn’s Pass went from being a primary target to just another boring occupied village and Catra’s paranoia had wasted another night. Grimacing, her claws digging into her forehead, Catra actually found herself hoping Hordak would be too busy wasting pleasantry on the Princess who sat at (or on it, literally, because Entrapta just thought she was the shit and that she could waltz into any room) his throne to speak with her tonight. Her lengthy string of failures was getting harder and harder to choke her way through excusing.

“So um,” Scorpia started up again, sending Catra’s ears laying flat up against her head. She exhaled a hot and irritated sigh, but the Horde’s hostage/princess stayed true to her inability to take a fucking hint, “when you said we were going to start hanging out after we came back with all that tech from the the Northern Reach, I just- I just didn’t picture us, you know patrolling.”

An angry pulse ran up Catra’s back at the mention of their tech victory- Entrapta’s tech victory- back in that shitty winter wasteland she almost froze her tail off in. “Scorpia,” her voice was thin, “I told you a thousand times, I don’t have time. Just take what you’re given and try not to complain.”

Wow, did she just sound like Shadow Weaver right then. Whatever, Catra turned her head away from Scorpia, in no mood to deal with the fallout of seeing her sort-of-friend’s expression, maybe the Old Crone was right about some things in the end.

“Can I ask why we’re here? Like here, here? What makes a place with no bowling alley so interesting?” The second Scorpia let up, Catra let her forehead hit the rim of the speeder and didn’t even blink at the ringing pain. Ugh, Scorpia just never gave up. How many times did Catra have to ask for some damn silence so she could think? 

Running her claws down her face- again- Catra grunted, “Dawn’s Pass can’t fall into the hands’ of the Rebellion. If we lose it, or if they’re conspiring with the Princesses, we’re going to lose the Horde’s longest occupied village and we’ll be giving up the tactical advantage it gives us against that flower Princess’s kingdom.” And I will have another failure under my badge. If I lose another town, I can basically kiss my Force Captain badge goodbye. And maybe my life.

“Ohhhh…” Scorpia trailed off. At this point Catra was going to end up with a bitch of headache just from rolling her eyes at the other Force Captain. “Yeah, that makes sense. This’ll be fun! Patrolling the occupied territories with my bestie!”

Catra made a noise of disgust, but it wasn’t enough to stop Scorpia from pushing herself onto the front seat and almost pushing Catra out of it. Leaning the exoskeleton covered parts of her elbows onto the rim, Scorpia let out a contented sigh, her ditzy gaze trained on the town as Catra struggled- yipping and yelping to no end and scratching up the dinged up leather of the seat- to get her tail out from under the other woman’s butt. 

Do the words “personal space” just mean absolutely jackshit to her? Catra, gripping her freed tail, growled under her breath and turned away from Scorpia. The seat was practically hers now! Looks like kneeling on the floor would have to do! It’s like I’m wearing a sign on my forehead that reads “what’s mine is yours, including the air I breathe!” Ugh, of course Hordak doesn’t listen to me, nobody does! Not even Scorpia! Everyone is too busy with their own heads up their asses to see what I’m trying to accomplish, or to give me enough space to let me do it! And she wonders why I don’t wanna “hang out after work,” or whatever.

Maybe bringing Scorpia as her backup belonged up there with some of Catra’s worst ideas; not like she didn’t have a pretty impressive tab of those wracked up already. Whatever, the universe wasn’t exactly open to responding to any of Catra’s actions with anything other than another round of punishment, so it wasn’t like acting on her impulsive or emotional notions were really going to be her undoing. Not with Hordak out for her neck, her badge no longer wielding the protective force that came with having real authority. 

Catra was an idiot to think that power would’ve actually lasted her longer than a week, that now that she’d taken out Shadow Weaver and left her to her rotting self in a cell that there wouldn’t be another player on the board that could take her shield of Second in Command away from her. Well, that’s what she got for letting Entrapta into their vents. Helping them win the war or not, Horde or not, their resident techwhiz was still a Princess.

And princesses weren’t good for anything other than being annoyances that stood in Catra’s way.

“Are you seriously humming again, Scorpia?!” Catra yelped out, the volume of her voice loud enough to scare several birds from off the town’s wall. Her split eyes had been trained on the town as she crouched at the bottom of the speeder, the only entertainment the angry spiral echoing in her brain, tailing the action of a family and their wagon of sparse supplies as they approached the gate when the grating sound smacked her upside the head. The resulting intensity of her fury was almost enough to give Catra the strength to put her fist through the wall of the speeder.

Scorpia retreated into herself. “Sorry.”

Holding back a response, Catra just scoffed again and turned back to the previous subject of her attention. Watching one of the men of the family reach the gate and request entrance into his town was better than directing a full on meltdown at her inferior, kicking her out of the speeder, and forcing her to walk her way back to the Fright Zone. Catra wasn’t so far drowning her rage to something that idiotic, yet.

It was big yet. Catra knew that as she tried to shift her position, rolling her head on her shoulders and squeezing her fists, breathing only through her nostrils despite understanding that there was no sitting with an anger this encompassing. The feeling pushed and pushed and pushed at her physical walls until it was practically promising that Catra’s building fury would end one mesmerizing explosion, one that would take her, Scorpia, the family, the Horde Cadet, the entire town, all of it, out with a bang. 

Now if only Scorpia had the brains to know that when she started her singing up again.

Catra peeled her blue eye open. The sun was beginning to set, and it had bathed the surrounding forest in shades of soft pink and orange, a scene so painfully ordinary it meant they couldn’t be anywhere else other than reality. Underneath the shadow cast by the stone wall, Catra took in a breath as she watched the first man continue to negotiate his family’s entrance into their own town.

Okay, so she’d hadn’t blown them all to fiery simtheriens- not the speeder, not the wall, not the little girl watched over by another man stumbling barefoot in the grass, letting out happy babbles as she pulled out clumps of grass and started sticking them in her cloth diaper until her father got down on his knees just to get her to stop. Guess Catra could count that as victory that her emotions hadn’t ended in an explosion that ended a child, a baby. Catra figured that given the fact that each step the little girl took on those chubby little legs of hers was a leap of faith that she probably wasn’t even a year and a half old.

The other man, the one that had chosen to forgo the customary negotiation in favor of watching the little girl experiment with walking near their wagon, moved from his kneeling position to pick her up. Something about the way the villager held her with a grip firm enough to keep his child from falling, yet not with so much strength that he hurt left a series of psychosomatic bruises up and down Catra’s ribs. She watched as the man ran a hand bigger than his daughter’s entire head through her soft and downy mauve hair, careful to avoid the tiny stumps in her head that would eventually become long enough and pronounced enough to match the horns of her father’s head. Catra let out a breath she was holding just to suck in another.

“Dada!” Even from the faraway vantage of the speeder Catra’s ears still picked up on the sound of the little girl recognizing her father. Because the universe was both impartial and cruel. Right as Catra realized she had stuck one set of claws in her mouth and she was chewing on them- who was she?! Adora?! Out her biting her freaking nails ‘cause something had the nerve to make her uncomfortable?- the baby stuck her tiny, chubby little hand into her father’s bright orange beard and yanked without mercy.

Now that guy’s screams scared the rest of the birds away.

As the family’s head negotiator rushed away from the Horde Cadet to tend to his husband’s facial hair, their daughter laughing up a riot at their combined reactions, Scorpia leaned over to where Catra sat on the floor, her tail twitching back and forth. “Uh boss?” she started but Catra didn’t turn away, her hand clutched into the fabric that rested above her sternum and not on her Force Captain badge for once. “Should we do something about these guys?”

“Why? They’re not Princesses.” They’re just a normal family trying to get into the place they live, so they can take their daughter home and have a dinner together that’s not mush, and then tuck their daughter in, tell her bedtime stories, be there in the night in case she has nightmares and needs them.

The fathers joined in on their daughter’s laughter.

“Well, that is true.”

A new feeling crept up Catra’s spine, but this time around the discomfort didn’t bring to her the edge of explosion. Implosion, actually. It was the same heaviness that settled in her lungs and crawled up to her throat, a slow and destructive effective infection of Catra’s self, when Hordak shut down her ideas to let Entrapta speak. When the Princesses left a trail of glitter behind running, tripping over themselves to follow She Ra’s lead. When Shadow Weaver cupped Adora’s face and showed her with praise for the simplest fucking task. 

Yeah, Catra knew it made her the world’s biggest idiot to keep her eyes on the seemingly indifferent family and the happiness that radiated off them. She was aware of the damage she brought on herself by not turning away, the risk she ran by letting her emotions run her. So why couldn’t she look somewhere else, anywhere else?

“I can’t wait to be a mom.” Scorpia said out of nowhere. Ears flying straight up, Catra blinked before turning to gawk at her. 

“Wait, really?” A mom mom, as in a  person who takes care of and looks after her children? 

“Yeah, I mean, it’s something I’ve always wanted.” Scorpia shrugged, somehow rubbing her neck with those big pincers of hers. “Why, do you think that’s a bad idea?”

“Scorpia, we’re in the middle of a war,” and that was putting it bluntly, “Besides, Hordak doesn’t even allow fraternization between his soldiers, much less-” her sputtering stops, Catra’s brain still tripping over the word fraternization, “having a family!”

“Well, we’re not going to be at war for the rest of our lives, Catra. Once we get the rebellion to surrender, I kinda wanted to set down roots, do something other than be a Force Captain, not that I don’t love doing that. I’m sure Hordak will loosen up about the whole fraternization thing as soon as we win! I mean, you’ve seen how he was with Entrapta!”

At her words, Catra came close to all out hurling over the speeder’s edge. It was crappy enough of Scorpia to bring up how Entrapta and Hordak were getting closer every day and shoving Catra out of the position she worked her ass off for, but then she had to go and frame it like that? 

Look, Catra got that Entrapta wasn’t the most socially aware princess, but yikes. That didn’t mean she didn’t have some sort of standard.

“What about you, Catra?” Scorpia continued, “What do you- um, what do you see yourself doing after the war?”

Catra met Scorpia’s eyes, only to regret it. “I- I-” she stuttered, looking away and forcing her eyes closed. Pfft, after the war? After the war? How the hell was Catra supposed to picture an after when her entire life, her entire purpose, every goal she’d ever had, was only because there was a war to begin with? 

The Horde conquers the rest of the planet, sends the Princesses running, puts She Ra in the ground, and what, Catra was just supposed to have a plan for after that? What… what was Catra supposed to do when they did win, when the Horde pulled off everything she worked for?

Even though she was expecting to find an emptiness, a blank space, a new start for the after the war when she tried imagining it, all Catra could picture was blonde hair tied up in a tight ponytail, melodic laughter accented by brief snorts ringing in her, the bluest eyes cutting through the longing. The same longing that plagued Catra when she forced her eyes open and saw the two fathers talking to their daughter in gentle yet bright voices, explaining to her that the soldiers had processed their papers and they could go home now.

“I don’t know.” was Catra’s quiet response. 

There wasn’t any promise Hordak would keep her alive that long anyway, or if there would be anything left to live for by the time Catra got Adora down her knees and ended it all- by giving into that implosion that lived deep down in her core, letting it rip right through her and seeing to it that her love for Adora severed the universe in two, creating black hole that would suck them all in eventually- right then and there. Like it always promised to.

A part of Catra tried to push beyond that implosion, tried to picture the future Scorpia envisioned in her mind of setting down roots and birthing legacies. Was there a part of her, beyond the pain and the brokenness, that wanted what Scorpia wanted, too?

Watching that family tonight had been the only part of her mission that hadn’t felt the same as downing a vat of acid down her throat. And as hell bent as Catra was on obliterating any princess that dared to mess with this town’s occupation, there was no animosity in her heart towards that little girl.

She was kinda cute, in the mischievous, funny kind of way. And almost fun- for a baby, that is.

But when Catra closed her eyes once more to picture that little girl and her happy, innocent smile, all that was waiting for her was the image of a shriveled shadow, locked and rotting away back in the Fright Zone.  

[itsybitsylemonsqueezy]

Hey, I’m here once again with the ranting (if you don’t mind)! I just finished playing Yakuza 5 and damn I have a lot of feels I want to share. When I was first introduced to the franchise, I thought that nothing could beat Zero for me, but here I am now, holding back my tears and thinking what a fine game 5 turned out to be! I really loved the bonds that characters formed along the way, it just felt so sincere and warm that my heart throbbed nearly at every dialogue Х) Like Saejima/Baba, Mirei/Haruka (and Akiyama too!), Shinada/Takasugi were absolutely delightful. And don’t get me started on the ending scene with Kiryu and his daughter. I fucking lost it there. So damn emotional and pure. And while I adore Zero for its majestic tragedy and fatalism, I also love the kind and inspiring atmosphere of 5. Of course, there were some flaws, like I didn’t find the main antagonist all that interesting (especially after Ryuji and Mine), but in the end I was ready to overlook it just because the heartwarming scenes between the characters were so well done. So yeah, for me it’s top tier along with Zero. What’s your personal opinion on the game (and your favorites in the series in general)?

Congrats! Oooooh, Game 5. I’ve got a lot of feels about Game 5 too ^^; It’s a real fav c: There’s an awful lot I love about it, but there’s one or two things that really stick in my craw. I’m not sure I could put it up with Zero, but it’s definitely a game I treasure c: 

I find it interesting that your interpret Zero as fatalistic and 5 as inspiring. Zero definitely has a lot of high-key tragedy, but I think the fact that we come through the other side, that Kiryu doesn’t go into the ground with Tachibana, that Majima decides that even though he could be happy with Makoto, it isn’t what he wants, I find that really powerful and even hopeful. Not inspiring perhaps, the choices we all make in that game are crushingly hard and frequently we’re punished for things that aren’t our fault. But seeing Kiryu confront his potential for the first time and, perhaps for the last time, deciding he’s not afraid of it, that this is a mantle he can carry and do good with, really does things for me. And I’ve gone on at length before about how we ought to read Majima’s choice at the end as not sacrificial, not denial, but rather a choice of identity. What stopped him from going with Makoto isn’t fear for what it would do to her (though certainly those protective instincts are still alive and well), but rather a... with nothing holding him back, he would still choose the life he started. He could leave it all right here but... there are things he wants to do, not has to do, wants to do. And he makes the choice to be yakuza, to be the Mad Dog, crucially, before he sees Kiryu. He could leave it all behind, but then he wouldn’t be himself. He wants to be yakuza. And he couldn’t do that if he was with her. I think that’s really cool and really life-affirming. 

Meanwhile 5... it’s hard for me to articulate what 5 is about because we have a bunch of different character arcs, some of which mesh quite nicely and some of which have nothing at all to do with each other. It’s probably best if I just break this down piece by piece ^^;

(spoilers follow for game 5 my little chili babies)

Kiryu’s arc, as I have articulated before, I fucking love in game 5. However, I do have my criticisms of it. In many ways, the conflict we’re facing in 5 is something that should have come up awhile back. But, even delayed, it is satisfying. It is satisfying to force Kiryu to confront his mistakes. It is satisfying to at least reach a turn on Kiryu, to have him decide that he wants to live and does feel worthy, even if it’s at the last possible second. Like, I interpret 5 as much more fatalistic because Kiryu’s dying in the snow in the middle of saying how he wants to come home to his daughter. Like... he may have finally gotten his revelation, but he was already in the middle of repeating the cycle. What would have been truly satisfying was to force him to live, to insist that he grow up and learn how to live with people because dying won’t fix it. This is a problem we’ve had since the beginning and have never really addressed. This was our chance to address it and it breaks my heart that game 5 comes so close and was going the right direction, but doesn’t quite give us that resolution that Kiryu’s going to continue his relationships and be okay now, that he isn’t going to back out this time. And if the creators had been brave they would have ended the fucking series here with that resolution. That’s SO OBVIOUSLY the main conflict in Kiryu’s plot and here, at last, we were finally fucking dealing with it and this SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE END. THIS WAS IT. THE ACTUAL FUCKING END, I- *breathes* Let me not derail this entire thing with game 6. Let’s just... never talk about game 6. 

That said... one of the things I ADORE about game 5 is this is the clearest sense of motivation we’ve had since Kiwami 1. For the first time in FUCKING FOREVER character choices made sense! HALLE-FUCKING-LUJAH. I CANNOT TELL YOU what it did to me that it was Majima that got Kiryu into the game. I cannot tell you the breath of life it gave me, after all this fucking BULLSHIT, that the game came FUCKING HOME on the most important person to Kiryu is Majima. Daigo needs help? Kiryu can’t help. Haruka needs her dad? Kiryu can’t help. These are both mistakes, don’t get me wrong! Absolutely terrible decisions, but they make sense out of Kiryu’s depression, out of his fears and doubts and feelings of unworthiness, his guilt. He’s so caught up in “better off without me” and so scared and so guilty, he can’t answer people even when they ask for help. But Majima. He can’t turn away from. He hears Majima’s dead and Kiryu loses his goddamn mind. Because it’s his fault. Because he wasn’t there. Because he left him out there and now Majima’s dead. Kiryu asked him to do something and, for all Kiryu knows, Majima’s dead because of him. And... as much as Kiryu hates himself in this moment, as much as Kiryu is sure that it’s all his fault, he’s SO upset, he has to go help, he HAS to go fix it. Majima’s dead and with his last breath, Kiryu will make this fuckign right. He’s gotta try. Because Majima being dead is... unacceptable. He can’t handle it. I fucking love that. At long last, it felt like the same story I’d been watching from 1. At long fucking last, we got some fucking proof of Kiryu’s feelings. And for that alone, I love game 5. I’ve got some issues with it, but that was... vindication. Spent 3 games waffling and pretending we didn’t know him unless we’re literally in the same scene, but even Kiryu’s denial isn’t that strong. Majima’s dead and Kiryu can’t anymore. He’s gonna go there and, god help him, he’ll go into the ground with him. You look at that and tell me it was un-fucking-requited. 

On that note, I just gotta gush for a second about that scene where the girl is naked in Kiryu’s apartment and Kiryu just ???? He’s not even “no thank you” he’s like PAINED. Like... she hugs him and Kiryu looks like he’s being fucking tortured! That is not the reaction of someone with even an iota of attraction to feminine bodies! This gay icon! Like, if you’d done that to Majima he would have been like “You’re pretty, babe, but I am Emotionally Unavailable” like the bi icon he is, like... you may not take her up on it, but you can still appreciate her or at least turn her down gracefully. But Kiryu out here doing his best to touch her as little as humanly fucking possible like’ he’s TERRIFIED. That’s not someone being overly polite, that was “cannot conceive of being attracted to this.” Just... this gay fucking dad. Holy christ. 

Related GOTTA love Kiryu’s boss being “Hey, there’s a rumor going around that you’re gay! Any thoughts?” and Kiryu just “That Is A Thing People Ask Me” which is the EXACT RESPONSE of a queer person who doesn’t want to out themselves but also doesn’t want to lie. Game 5 fucking iconic for those 2 scenes alone, god bless. 

Moving away from Kiryu for a second, although this game is VERY about Kiryu’s story, let’s talk about Saejima! Saejima FINALLY gets to come into his own as a character, we get to handle him properly as a character and not as a crux in Majima’s character development. I love the marked differences in how Kiryu and Saejima respond to Majima and handle him. I love that they fucking NAILED motivation here. That Kiryu and Majima mutually code romantic, that they both make batshit decisions because of each other, in that way that you do when you’re madly in love with someone. Meanwhile, Saejima loves his brother but isn’t in love with him. Saejima’s relationship with Majima is stable and trusting. He’s not losing his mind over Majima’s death because he trust him and knows him. If he’s dead, Saejima trusts that Majima did all he could and it was just his time. That’s why he’s not losing his mind, he’s resolved. He just wants to know what happened. And it’s this stability that really tells us who Saejima is and how he functions as a protag. His strength is his trust in others, which at times IS naive, but it’s also what turns Baba. It’s what keeps Saejima strong when Kiryu’s falling apart. It’s so cool to see a character who isn’t paranoid, who isn’t tore up with guilt, in this series with very complicated leads. Saejima is functional and necessary because he isn’t any of those things. He doesn’t get swept up in big emotional turmoil. He cuts through a lot of foibles that would have tripped up his brother or Kiryu and it’s just really refreshing to see and exciting to experience Saejima’s brand of problem solving. He’s not terribly clever and he’s not subtle, but he’s honest and sure that counts for A LOT in this series. Gotta love Saejima. 

And, as I have gushed about before and will again, Baba. Baba. Saejima turning Baba hand me fucking ascending. Baba Known Whore Shigecki turning on a time because Saejima screams “Because we’re kyoudai!” I am LIVING. I love their relationship. I love that Baba’s a little shit. I love that he’s inexplicably a supermodel. I love that his constant vibe is “would like to choke til he cries on Saejima’s dick.” I love that Saejima has a gorgeous prison boyfriend. Well deserved! I love the idea of Baba getting integrated into the group. I need WAY more fic about him coming back to live with Saejima in Kamurocho and Saejima just has an ex-assassin boyfriend now and we all get to live with that. Ugggghhhh, bless. So good. No notes, no criticisms, just good.

Haruka was LONG overdue to be a protag, I’m so glad this game did it. But... pop idol? The thing she explicitly said in Kiwami 2 she didn’t want to be? *siiiigh* Like, I get that she can change her mind as she grows up and that that’s the Thing You Do with Japanese teenage girls, but... Imagine Martial Artist Haruka! Raised by the yakuza, surrounded her whole life by people with incredible fighting skills, who would gladly teach her self-defense. Imagine! Or even training her to become a yakuza! My wife and I joke about Seventh Chairman Sawamura Haruka, but imagine how satisfying that would have been! A whole Tojo dynasty of Kiryu’s kids! She’s so ripe for it! And I know the yakuza is a male-only organization but... c’mon, this is fiction and sexism is boring. I guess I can understand the creators unwillingness to depict violence against women, even if it’s being perpetrated by other women but uh... *eye twitch* game 5 is maybe not the BEST example of their... respecting women... 

*screams into a pillow for several minutes* *breathes* *screams for another fifteen minutes* Okay... I uh... I um... can’t talk about Mirei Park without having an aneurysm. PLEASE skip this bullet point if you don’t want to read Mirei Hate. I just... I Hate Everything About Her And I Don’t Know Why She Fucking Exists. I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade and if you like Mirei, y’all welcome to feel how you feel but... she is the only thing I truly Hate about game 5. I just... leaving aside my personal feelings about the... Majima part of her story which we just... Won’t talk about... Leaving that aside... I don’t know why she’s here? She’s the person who convinces Kiryu to leave his children. She’s predatory, she took advantage of a vulnerable young girl to live out some personal dream? Like, sure, economic opportunity, independence, but we don’t get a lot of motive from Haruka that it IS her dream to be a pop idol. She has said in the past that’s not what she wants, she makes mention of doing this for the money to support her family, Mirei LITERALLY SAYS she wants Haruka to do the things she couldn’t, and ultimately Haruka asides not to do this anyway because she’d ratehr be home with her dad! So what was the FUCKING POINT of Mirei Park? Is she a villain? Is she sympathetic? What the fuck was I supposed to take from her? How the fuck am I supposed to read her? She tells this TRAUMATIC story off-hand to Haruka to... justify her decisions? Motivate Haruka? Dragging in another long-term character for no good reason and reframing how we have to think about said character. But then THIS NEVER COMES UP AGAIN. The information wasn’t even important! It’s just traumatic! If it was supposed to keep Haruka doing the pop idol thing, it didn’t work! Haruka still leaves! If this was meant to deepen our relationship to Mirei or complicate her or whatever, IT DOESN’T, SHE WAS LITERALLY DEAD THE NEXT SCENE. I just... WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED HERE?! What even the fuck was I supposed to do with any of this?! Leaving ASIDE my VERY intense feelings about what this did for Majima (for the sake of not going ogg Even More than I already am, I just won’t talk abotu it here), I just have no goddamn clue what the point of Mirei even was. She’s not useful to Haruka’s arc and she only serves in Kiryu’s arc to be a villain. We could have had Haruka leave home and decide in the end that Kiryu’s her dad and that’s where she wants to be a MILLION different ways, we could have done that MUCH more kindly and consistently with the rest of her character and values, but we don’t! We have this shitmess instead!

I’m really really sorry to anyone reading this who likes Mirei. You don’t have to agree with me! And I’m not trying to make you feel bad! I’m not trying to tell people how they should feel or what they should get out of the story. If you got something out of her, you related to her, you found her part in the story meaningful, that’s great! I’m genuinely glad that you did. I... didn’t. I have a lot of negative opinions about what happened. Usually I try to just not talk about it because I don’t want to ruin someone’s good time. I’m not here trying to start shit. So I apologize for my tone and I did try to put a warning before it and recommend it be skipped if it’s the sort of thing that would offend you. My Mirei rant is over now, I won’t talk about it again.

I have absolutely no idea why Akiyama is in this story, tbh? He contributed very little, but I’m glad Haruka got to hang out with someone cool and that one of her uncles was here watching out for her, since Majima was “dead” and Kiryu was in the middle of a personal crisis ^^; I love Akiyama, always happy to see him, but he really had nothing to do here ^^; I was sad for no Hana though 8C Wherever there is Akiyama, there must also be Hana!

Shinada... is adorable and actively injured the plot. I’m sorry, I just... no one ever talks about the fact that including Shinada in the story actively hurt it. I love him too! He’s an incredible idiot and very sweet, but why the fuck is he here? What did an ancient baseball cover up have to do with anything? This was the only way you could think of to put Daigo in the game again? Really??? And Daigo doesn’t even do very much here! So like... not really worth it. You could have had a whole substory of Daigo finding out what happened to Majima, fuck DAIGO COULD HAVE BEEN ONE OF THE PROTAGS. THERE’S A THOUGHT. We could have utilized, y’know, characters we already have, but no, instead we introduce this dumb fuck to do... what exactly? Oh right, beat up Baba AFTER HE HAD ALREADY DECIDED NOT TO SHOOT HARUKA! Like, YOU DIDN’T EVEN NEED SHINADA FOR THE THING YOU NEEDED HIM FOR. Saejima and Kiryu were enough of an influence on Baba to stop him! And that makes sense out of Baba’s character arc, since it’s about personal redemption and learning to be a person and his faith and love of Saejima, y’know, the character he actually HAS a relationship with, is about that. The point of Baba was him learning it WAS his choice and him MAKING that choice. See, I can’t argue that Baba’s superfluous to the plot, but he WAS the threat! He was actively involved and he’s what makes Saejima involved. Shinada doesn’t occupy the same space, he has no horse in this race, he’s not yakuza, he’s only here because he and Daigo kinda like each other or whatever, and, again, HE WASN’T EVEN NEEDED! Baba’s arc was complete and the threat was terminated without this shit! Like, Akiyama has no reason to be here either, but at least he was a true neutral, neither helping nor harming the plot. We actively waste time to bring Shinada in and he hurts Baba’s arc by overly punishing him and potentially risking the decision he just made. Like if I was Baba, I might have gone “you know what, fuck you, I will shoot her just because your self-righteous ass decided to hit me for MAKING THE RIGHT CALL” Jesus... 

I hate to be nothing but a curmudgeon but just... no one brings that up and I just had to say it if no one else was gonna. 

As for villains, the game would have been a lot stronger without the “thwarted destiny, I should be on the throne” bullshit especially since the story has done a SHIT JOB with the legacy of Nishiki and in NO WAY utilized the fucking koi or the burden of Nishiki’s death properly for this to hit the way it should. It makes theoretical sense that Kriyu’s last villain should be the reincarnation of Nishiki, but the story did not build that up or support it so it falls really flat. That said, the main problem in Kiryu’s arc is that dying is not a resolution. Dying doesn’t fix a problem, it only delays it. THAT’S the thing we have to confront and we almost nearly do and... I’m just so excited that we finally articulated that, I’m willing to forgive A LOT. 

And finally we wrote Majima entirely out of the game only to confirm that his only reason for living is Kiryu and then, again, didn’t resolve it because, y’know, fuck ending things, I guess? But he did have that sweet fight with Saejima and can do shadow clones now I guess? Fucking ninja magic or whatever. Sure, Majima’s so OP he can do fucking shadow clones now. No, teleporting wasn’t enough, he can fucking shadow clone. That’s like a staisfying story arc right? ...right?

[risingsouls]

Conversations: 4

[Part 4! With a hint of shameful(less?) fanservice because the idea popped into my head and it was amusing because these two give zero fucks. A little less heavy than the last few so there’s that? I dunno we’re moving toward something here.]

Nabooru sank into the near scalding and fragrant bath she drew with an extended sigh, her tense muscles and bruises relenting in the pain they caused. Her body like jelly, she reclined back and rested her head on the lip, eyes closing and arms draped haphazardly over the side. 

She needed this last night when she dragged herself back home, but when her heavy eyes landed on her bed on the way, she failed to convince her legs to carry her further. Her head hit the pillow and she was out, exhaustion superseding the pain of her training session with Vegeta. She admired his willingness to push her, upping the difficulty level when he deemed her ready. But yesterday's spar felt more outright aggressive than a measured rise of difficulty. _She_ didn't particularly _mind_, exactly. He had offered her a proper challenge after all. But her sore body when she woke up cursed his name, and the more she thought about it, she wondered at the cause. It didn't help that she had to put this moment on hold to help Nappa out when a trainer didn't show up. Putting the fighters through their paces wasn't difficult. Painful at times due to her pre-established soreness. The trouble was keeping them focused on something other than her damn body and thinking of ways to ask her out for the millionth time.

She hadn't heard from Vegeta yet, and though that didn't mean much when he wasn't reliable with warning her when he planned to show up, she didn't sense him nearby or on the move. She took advantage of the moment of free time to relax before more training, with or without him. She smoothed the loose strands of hair she missed when she tossed it up into a messy bun on top of her head up to her scalp. She hoped she could enjoy this for a while. Maybe squeeze in a quick nap or some relaxing stretches before forcing herself into more strenuous training…

Gold eyes popped open, a groan leaving her lips as her senses picked up Vegeta’s ki signature barreling in her direction all too soon. She willed him to fly passed, head off into the wastes or further north for training on his own to give her that few hours of spoiling herself, but his power faded right at her doorstep. She winced at the bang of the front door slamming the wall and sank further into the tub, feet hanging over the end. 

“Nabooru!”

Nose scrunched, she shouted back, “I’m in the bathroom!” She muttered a few select Gerudo insults into the bubbles. She wasn’t about to abandon her bath; he could wait for her if he was so desperate as to bust into her house like a maniac to begin their training.

Silence relaxed her tensed muscles once more, content with the idea that he either left in a huff or was waiting as patiently as a man like Vegeta could manage. Just as her eyelids lowered, the crunch of footsteps on the carpet heading in her direction snapped them back open. She glanced to the cracked door after ensuring water and suds had her covered. Surely he wouldn’t just walk in would he?

He would.

Vegeta had never ventured past her living room, but following her voice and the self-explanatory layout of what he had come to expect of an Earth home, he traipsed straight through her bedroom to the master bathroom and kicked the door open none too gently. He returned her glare in kind, unbothered by her state of undress or the activity she wasted her time with. The cloyingly sweet, floral scent of whatever substances she threw into her soak only deepened his scowl.

“You know. Telling you I was in the bathroom wasn’t an invitation.”

He ignored her. “Get out. It’s time to train.”

“First of all, I’m not getting out of this tub with you standing there. You haven’t earned that view yet.” She shifted back to a comfortable position and closed her eyes to reinforce her next point. “Second, I’m finishing my bath, so you can either wait or get lost and I’ll come find you when I’m ready.”

Vegeta snarled, and considered grabbing her by the arm and yanking her out anyway. His patience had already thinned closer to nonexistence than usual with annoyance after annoyance derailing his morning routine. Finding Nabooru less than ready to fight him only further perturbed him, but she hadn’t outright refused. With a grunt, he perched himself on the toilet, arms folded and his face set in an impatient scowl.

Nabooru opened one eye. In her haste and concern with keeping herself covered with his unanticipated trespass of her bathroom, she only just noticed his still torn battle suit and cracked armor, a chunk missing from the right side of his chest. She stretched her legs. “Any reason you didn’t change your armor? Or are you going for a new look?”

“Why do you think?” he growled, leather crunching as his hands curled into fists. "Tch, nevermind. Don't answer that. It's because Bulma has refused to repair any of it since I refused to go to some stupid party with her. She also sabotaged the gravity chamber to try and prevent me from training."

The Gerudo couldn't help but snort, both eyes now open and trained on the perturbed Saiyan. Who knew a lover's spat would have him in such a tizzy. "Seems a little far for a grudge over a party, but I guess I can see why she's mad. She probably wants to spend time with her husband."

"I'm _not_ her husband." 

The vehemence of his insistence made her blink, eyebrows lifted in surprise. "Okay, lover, boyfriend, whatever. My point still stands."

Vegeta swept his fingers through his hair. Why the hell had he brought this up? "Look, she's not any of those things to me either, nor am I to her, got it?"

She understood, but his words conflicted with the information she had picked up from other sources. Turning on her side, she folded her arms on the lip of the tub and rested her chin on them. "Everyone else seems to think you two are married. I'm not dumb enough to assume that having a kid together makes you automatically married, so what's the deal, then? 

"That's exactly it: a deal." One he made without considering the consequences or all the implications and during one of the lowest points of his life. He hadn't really cared as long as he could continue going through the motions of his miserable existence in relatively the same pattern as he had been. But now it seemed Bulma had decided to raise his rent, so to speak, pressing fatherly and spousely expectations more insistently on him despite every outright refusal, typically at the cost of his sanity or one of the comforts he had grown used to. "I agreed to let her call me her husband for the sake of her reputation and to make things easier on Trunks while I got to live and train there. There is no formal marriage between us."

"Ah." While a silly concept of the culture, she knew that many women here were looked down upon for having children out of wedlock, just as those in Hyrule had been. And a woman of Bulma's status would face the scrutiny of far more than just her peers. It was a smart tactic and beneficial to both parties and the child they apparently mistakenly made. But, if what Vegeta said was true, she seemed as though she wanted more from their "marriage" than he was willing to give, hence the friction between them and the resulting refusal to supply him with the niceties she had previously. "What changed then? Do you know?"

The urge to snap again rose to the surface, her line of questioning as pointless as ever in his mind. He switched his crossed legs and, fists releasing, he tapped his fingers on his biceps. He didn't want to meet her gaze, but the only other viable option that didn't make that glaringly obvious was to stare straight forward in the long mirror that spanned most of the wall behind the sink and its counter. At his own disgruntled reflection. The view into the bathtub she wasn't _trying_ to offer him. He grunted and swept a hand over his face as heat filled his cheeks. Did he really think sitting here was going to make her finish up quicker?

"I don't know. How could I possibly know that? I barely talk to her if I can help it." He opted on twisting on the toilet seat a half turn, enough to keep his eyes from the mirror and more easily maintain eye contact should he choose as proper conversational decorum dictated. His fingers paused their tapping as he fully considered the question, his own response. Had it always been that way? Not long ago, he had made himself--quite literally forced himself--to be more available to her and Trunks. To awkwardly wedge himself into the role of father and husband with the convoluted idea that it would make him stronger like he surmised Kakarot's family had for him. A theory he didn't think was totally unfounded but he realized had not and could not work for him. His forcing the act aside, he had to find what worked for _him_ instead of focusing and obsessing over how Kakarot reached new and unfathomable heights of power while he remained in the dust.

"I don't know," he said again, tone gruff but softer this time. "Maybe I did...tch, forget it, you wouldn't understand."

"As you said to me a few weeks ago," Nabooru responded with a raised brow, "try me." She shifted back to her previous position, head reclined and eyes closed. "You've already said this much. Might as well get it out of your system."

Vegeta stared at the bottle with light pink liquid perched on the counter's edge, studying the cluster of flowers printed on the label. That explained the fragrance. "In my pursuit of surpassing Kakarot and his brat despite the clown’s death, I made the foolish assumption that throwing myself into the roles of father and husband and learning to care about the two of them would help me get stronger like I assumed his family helped him. _Perhaps_ that is how she has come to the assumption that I want to play the part she so desperately wants me to." His foot tapped the air again, dark brows lowering. “It’s asinine. I can’t go a single day without her nagging.”

“At least you halfway admitted you brought it upon yourself.” The corner of her lips tugged upward in a smirk in the face of his glare. As much as she wanted to berate him for faking a relationship and leading Bulma on, she knew that he didn’t respond well to lecturing and it would be a moot point. He admitted to understanding he made a mistake, even if the reasoning was more selfish than her concern over Bulma’s feelings, too. He had wasted her time, after all. If a true, fairy tale marriage was really what she wanted and he wasn’t willing to give it and didn’t want to, he should have cut ties so she could seek that out. At the same time, she wasn’t completely blameless; prince though he may be, he did not hide the fact that he didn’t fit the bill of the traditional ones the stories described. And if a deal is what it took to pretend they had it all together, she seemed to have missed a fair amount of red flags signaling he didn't want much more to do with her than benefitted him.

The task of “making it” was easier said than done, that she could contend from both her knowledge of his experience and her own. They both had nothing more than the clothes on their backs when they started their lives here, not a cent to their names to start any kind of life on a planet that relied heavily on currency and its technology for real comfort. She and the Gerudo lived in a cave for months, surviving off the land while they found ways to make enough zeni to start their lives or, as they decided, build their community and stick together. For a while they could only purchase a single capsule house at a time and shared the spaces. Their task was far easier as a group working toward the same goal and helping each other. Vegeta was utterly alone, and she could hardly blame him for taking Bulma up on her offer to house him. As far as their strange deal, she could only conjecture why he wouldn't straight up tell her he wanted nothing to do with it anymore outside of simply being unsure of where to go or how to move forward. Vegeta wasn't one to mince words, after all.

“I don’t know if you’re looking for my help here, but...do_ you care about her?” She trailed her fingers along the lip of the tub. “Or is there some other reason you haven’t told her that participating in things you don’t want to do wasn’t part of the deal necessarily?”

The easy answer was comfort. Complacency in the amenities he had become used to. The difficult answer was that he _had_ amounted an inkling of care for Bulma and Trunks. Not in a romantic capacity for the former as she would like. His interest in her was purely physical and, though she tried to fool herself, he knew the same followed for her, too. She showed no interest in him outside of the rare bedroom meetings, and he very typically showed next to no interest in her life either. They had so little in common from their histories to their interests he didn't see how anyone but him seemed to find the sham of a marriage comical.

She tried to act tough since the tournament in the face of the lives he so callously and selfishly took, looking past the countless murders he committed without an ounce of remorse on his part, likely due to their ability to revive them at the near snap of their fingers. Or perhaps she refused to believe he was in control when he had done it, that Babidi instead had of him fully under his spell and orchestrated the attacks through him. Whatever the case, he had seen fear in her eyes on more than one occasion, when he lashed out or his temper got the better of him. Still, her delusions of him and her desire for the perfect family life made her cling to him.

A part of him wanted to protect Bulma and Trunks, but that's as far as his emotional attachment went.

"Complacency. Ease. Comfort." He left it at that; his omission would serve as answer enough to the inquiry concerning his feelings about Bulma. "I...I just didn't care after the Cell Games. I vowed off fighting for nearly a year before I realized it was all that kept me feeling alive. Had I a fortune to give her, my throne, an empire, I would have handed it over without a second thought or any negotiation. I wanted what was easy, so I returned to the life I had become used to."

She stared at him, eyes once more wide with surprise. After another second, he glanced at her, mirroring her expression and apparently just as shocked at the words that tumbled from his lips. The way he stiffened, she expected him to bolt without little more than a "hurry up" and a slam of the bathroom door behind him. She waited, a minute, maybe two. Partially for his benefit in case he did decide to escape the suddenly heavy weight that settled between them and partly for her own benefit. Pain erupted in her chest like a thin blade dragged downward and her lungs felt squeezed and she struggled to find the words to follow that up. To feel that low and with such pride that normally flooded him...she didn't have to imagine it; she had lived it herself. A warrior like him swearing off fighting...

When he didn't move and he sat so still she thought he might have died sitting on top of her toilet, she swallowed and said, "And now you're thinking a little more clearly. Or as clearly as you can manage." Relief flooded her when his focus snapped back to reality from whatever dimension his soul had escaped to, his lip curling up and sharp canines bared in warning. The soft, too high breath of a laugh she released in response attested to her relief. "You realize now that you want...well, what do you want? To be on your own or something? Do things differently and your own way?"

He grunted. He hated to admit he was lost. Clueless of how to move forward and ambitionless. "I don't know what I want, but it's not what I've got."

Nabooru hummed, tapping her nails on porcelain. She studied him, mulling over the possibilities. Only one suggestion stuck.

"Again, I'm not sure you want my advice but hear me out. I think you need the space to figure that out, you know? Staying where you are, you're only going to feel pressured to continue as you have and push yourself into a box you don't want to be in. That perhaps you don't fit in." When he didn't object to her analysis, his sideways glance urging her to continue, she forged on. 

"That said...you can have the guest room here if you want it. I know it's not as roomy or luxurious as Capsule Corporation, but it's comfortable." A pause; she had to choose her words carefully. To ensure he understood she was not offering charity or trying something underhanded. "You don't even have to tell me if you want it or when you plan to stay. You don't even have to interact with me if you don't want. It's not permanent either. I _like_ my own space after being crammed in with the others until we could afford more housing, so I'd rather it stay temporary. I want to give you a comfortable space to help you figure things out away from what you think you don't want. A few months or so should be fine and then we can go from there."

She caught his grimace and added, "No, I'm not trying to trap you or use this to exploit you later. Outside of a sparring partner and decent company, you have nothing I want." Sinking further into the tub, she folded her arms beneath the bubbles. "Besides, you might decide after a couple months away you miss your old life and want to be a husband and father."

"Hmpt. Doubtful." While she spoke, he watched her closely, searching for deceit, a motive. Her neutral expression revealed little, and his natural inclination toward suspicion waned. Still, he couldn't stop himself from asking, "Why?"

"Why offer this? The short answer is you're going to be a whole lot more effective as a sparring partner if you're not chronically irritated about your home life, and it will probably help your own growth, too." Another impatient grunt was all the response she received and she shrugged a shoulder in return. "Otherwise, It's the same answer as last time: I understand what it's like to be where you were, wanting to give up everything you were and worked toward."

Vegeta opened his mouth to press her, but she cut him off. "I'll explain another time, promise. It's another long story, and I'm getting wrinkly." She lifted her hand from the water and swept it toward the door. "Go on so I can get dressed. I won't take long and we can go have our spar."

"You'd best not." The Saiyan stood and headed for the door. He slowed at the threshold and glanced back at her, hand on the knob. Gratitude hung from his lips but he kept the words lodged in his throat. Instead he offered a simple nod and left, closing the door behind him.

[lefaystrent]

Could you write a short story where Virgil is out at a store, Deceit and Remus spot him. Virgil is like F social interaction. Then is only rude because he really didn't feel like being noticed by people who recognize him. (Patton could be another costumer, Roman a cashier who is working there when not acting, Logan getting supplies for a science class at school)

A Storm Rolled into Town

Fandom: Thomas Sanders,Sanders Sides

Pairings: none

Summary: It’s not likeVirgil meant to become famous anyway. It just sorta happened. And now he’sshopping in some small-town mom-and-pop store on a weekday morning. Despitewearing the hood of his jacket up and perhaps looking the more conspicuous forit, he can sense that someone somewhere in this store is watching him.

Word Count: 2150

________________________________________________________________

Virgil Storm was born with eyes inthe back of his head.

Not literally. It was mostly justanxiety and paranoia working in tandem to create a 360° zone of caffeinated caution.A necessary skill when you became part of the famous crowd. All it took was onecrazy person with a knife screaming about how you’re meant to be together, andthen you’re fucking dead.

Not that Virgil had been assaultedby anyone.

Yet.

He has had experiences witha couple of stalkers before that were quickly handled. It’s amazing how whenmore than a handful of people know your name and can buy your merch, theirsense of entitlement turns you into a thing to be owned.

It’s not like Virgil meant tobecome famous anyway. It just sorta happened.

And now he’s shopping in some small-townmom-and-pop store on a weekday morning. He had to make a pit-stop on his longdrive back home to Florida. Sure, he could have gotten home faster if he’dridden in a plane. He could also set this store on fire or go jump in a lakewhile strapped to an anvil. Doesn’t mean he’s going to.

The point is, Virgil is very awareof how famous he is, and despite wearing the hood of his jacket up and perhapslooking the more conspicuous for it, he can sense that someone somewhere inthis store is watching him.

Virgil glances down the aislebehind him, but there’s nothing. Again.

He lets out a huff of air andcontinues to peruse the candy section. He’s got a craving for something sour,but he’s not looking to get accosted here.

He swipes up a packet of gummy wormsand goes around to the chip rack next. Virgil subtly peeks around the store,noting the two guys manning the register counter. They look young, maybe aroundtwenty. They’re more talking and laughing rather than working. Other than them,there’s this one nerdy looking guy in a tie and glasses over by the stationary.The store seems empty otherwise.

Virgil picks up a large bag of sourcream ‘n onion and nearly screams when there’s a mustached face poking out inthe space left behind.

“Boo!” the man says.

“Fuck off!” Virgil growls andthrows the chip bag right at the face.

A series of snickers come back fromthe candy aisle that Virgil had just vacated. Pissed off and heart racing, hewhips his head around to see some guy in a bowler hat.

“I do believe the phrase ‘got you’fits this scene well,” Bowler Hat says.

“You didn’t ‘get’ anything,” Virgilhisses.

“Oh? So you didn’t just jump likeyou’d seen a ghost?”

“He definitely jumped, Dee! He evenpeed his pants!” Mustached Man cackled, coming out from behind the chip rack.

“I didn’t—” Virgil went to defendhimself but found it pointless. These guys just seemed like assholes. “Justleave me alone.”

“Oh poo, have some fun would you?”

“Now Remus, let’s not annoy him toomuch. Wouldn’t want him to storm out.”

Storm.

He made it very clear that he knewVirgil’s last name. If the pointed pun didn’t say as much, the smarmy grin onBowler Hat’s face surely did.

Virgil tried not to show how muchthat got to him.

“So what? You know who I am. Bigdeal. Buzz off and let me shop in peace.” If these two kept harassing him orworse, Virgil could always threaten to call the cops. Then again, cops took afew minutes to respond, and it only took less than a second to die.

New plan. Virgil could throw downthe chip rack and then run for his life. And if that didn’t work, he carriedpepper spray on his person for a reason.

“What brings someone such asyourself to our neck of the woods?” Bowler Hat questioned, not leaving Virgilalone in the slightest.

Mustached Man jumped up beside hisfriend, leaning an arm against his shoulder to loudly whisper, “I bet he needsto hide a dead body!”

Virgil’s eye twitched. “Yeah,because that’s the only reasonable explanation, right?”

Mustached Man nodded in agreement. “Nothingelse to do around here.”

“It does get rather dull here,”Bowler Hat mused. He brushed his gloved fingers over his chin.

Seriously, who the hell were theseguys? And were they intentionally being low-key threatening? Perhaps not, butthat’s how they were coming across anyway.

“That’s nice.” Virgil smiled in away that showed his utter contempt. Better than showing his fear. “Now if you’redone bothering me, I’ve got things to buy.”

He would have liked something morethan just the gummy worms, but he no longer felt hungry enough to risk hislife.

Virgil walked away, his stepspicking up speed as he heard Mustached Man barking at him.

He was never stopping anywhere everagain.

________________________________________________________________

Roman sat at the register counter,bored out of his mind.

“Patton, my loyal companion. Remindme why we’re here again?”

“Because we get paid to be here.”

“Ah.” Roman nodded, eyes narrowedin deep understanding.

Then he slumped over with a whimperingwhine. His head banged against the countertop.

“Awww, cheer up Ro-Ro! We’ve only gota few more hours left of our shift!”

“My shackled soul is unmoved byyour comfort. They are but mere words in the face of unforgiving oppression.”

“…so what you’re saying is that youneed a pun, right? Or maybe a hug. A combination of the two? A pug. Oh!Doggy!”

Roman snorted as Patton’s train ofthought derailed. He sat up to stare at his coworker and long-time friend.

He snapped his fingers. “Focus,Puffball.”

“Oh, right,” Patton said,refocusing. His expression became determined. “Go on and get all the angst out,kiddo. I’m all ears.”

“Retail suuuuuucks,” Roman concluded.“My creative spirit yearns for a place I can spread my wings and thrive! I ammeant for bigger and better stages. You see this face? You hear this voice? Alltoo good to be squandered away in Backwoodsville, Tennessee.”

“We don’t live in Tennessee.”

“My point is that I am a work ofart, and yet I am left collecting dust in grandma’s attic. It is a crime! Theuniverse should give me a break already.”

From the stationary aisle, afamiliar voice contributed to the conversation, “Perhaps if you put nearly asmuch effort into publicizing yourself to the entertainment community instead ofwhining, you wouldn’t be stuck where you are now.”

Roman slammed a hand on thecounter. “No one asked you, Microsoft Nerd!”

Logan smirked and resumed hisshopping. They knew each other of course. It was hard not to recognize everyonewhen you worked in one of the only stores in town. Plus all three of them hadgone to high school together.

Patton patted Roman’s shoulder insympathy. “I think what Logan’s trying to say is that you’ve got loads of potentialand I’m sure someone’s going to notice one day.”

“That is not what I said at all,but go off I guess,” Logan stated.

Roman flipped him off. Somehow, despitehis back turned to him, Logan must have sensed it and returned the gesture rightback to him.

Patton swatted at Roman’s hands. “Don’tbe ugly!”

“That’s impossible for someone likeme.” Roman grinned.

Patton sighed. “What am I going todo with you?”

“Love me, of course.”

Patton giggled.

“Hi,” a clipped voice cut in. Romantore his attention away from the agony of his life to regard the customer athis counter.

Roman hopped up from his seat andshifted flawlessly into his customer service spiel. “Hello! Ready to check out?”

“Yeah,” the man nodded, his hoodfalling back a bit at the movement.

Roman smiled. He recognized thejacket brand and was about to compliment the customer’s taste.

Their eyes met briefly and Roman’sheart exploded.

Virgil Storm.

Virgil freaking Storm was standingat his register counter.

No. No it couldn’t—

HOLY SHIT!

“That’s it,” Virgil Storm said,tossing a pack of sour gummy worms onto the counter. He briefly glanced overhis shoulder as if to look for something. He wasn’t really paying attention toRoman, so he didn’t catch being ogled.

Oh god, Virgil Storm was standingat his register. No matter how many times Roman looked, Virgil Stormstood there, and all Roman could do was ogle him.

Roman suddenly found the candypacket very interesting.

If he kept his head down, nothingbad would happen, right?

“Uh . . . that’s it,” Virgil saidagain, and Roman realized that he’d been standing there frozen.

Willing his limbs to unthaw, Romanmechanically reached for the candy and ran it over the scanner. A beep sounded,and with a stiff arm, he punched for the total.

“Your total is . . . a number.”

“What?”

Roman couldn’t even look up farenough to check the screen. How could he? When one of his idols stood beforehim. He owned all of this man’s albums, for God’s sake!

“Yes,” Roman said, as if thatexplained everything.

“Okay . . .” Virgil said. Heshuffled, presumably getting his wallet out or something. Internally, Roman wasscreaming to Patton for help, but sadly his friend had never mastered telepathy.In fact, he had no idea what Patton was doing right now. He wasn’t sayinganything, that was for sure. Did he even recognize the celebrity in their storeright now?

“Here,” Virgil offered a five-dollarbill.

Roman blinked at it. Wasn’t VirgilStorm rich? Why was he using cash when he could use a card?

Carefully, lest he mess up andforever embarrass himself, Roman reached up and took the bill from him. Theirfingers weren’t even close to touching, but Roman still felt like he’d steppedon a live-wire, a shock racing through his system.

Roman had dreamed many a time ofcasually running into his idols. He imagined nearly daily of becoming likethem, of leaving his mark, of impressing those that he looked up to. He wouldbe suave and graceful and witty, a dazzling star in the making who would sweepthem off their feet.

Instead Roman hunched in on himselfand began to cry.

“Oh shit, are you okay?” VirgilStorm asked him, and that somehow made everything worse.

Roman covered his face with hishands and sniffled. “I’m just feeling a little emotional right now.”

How mortifying.

A hand rubbed at his back. “Sorry,he’s having a quarter-life crisis,” he heard Patton explain.

Roman threw up his arms,tear-streaked face be damned. “PATTON! That’s not why I’m crying.”

“It’s okay Ro, it happens to a lotof people. It’s nothing to be ashamed about.”

“I knew retail work was hell, butgeez,” Virgil commented.

Patton nodded in sympathy. “Hereally wants to be on Broadway someday.”

“Patton,” Roman gasped in admonishment.“You can’t just be telling V— telling people about my silly dreams.”

“Why’s it silly?” Patton asked. “You’reso talented! You’ll make it, I know you will. You’ve just gotta keep trying.”

This could not be happening rightnow. Roman wanted to curl up in the employee’s bathroom and die.

“Broadway, huh?” Virgil asked.

Screw going to the bathroom. Roman coulddie on the spot.

“Ridiculous, huh?” Roman tried tolaugh at himself. If he laughed at himself first, it’d hurt less when everyoneelse did.

Virgil shrugged. “Not really.Someone’s got to do it, right?”

Oh.

No rejection.

Just a practical sense of hope.

Someone’s got to do it, and thatcould be him.

Roman blushed and gazed down at hisfeet. “Thank you . . .”

“No problem. Just uh, feel better Iguess.”

It was clear Virgil found this situationawkward but was trying to be considerate. For that, Roman was extremely grateful.

“Dee! Remus! What are you doing inhere? You know you’re banned!” Patton hollered, moving around the counter. Hehad his stern face on and a broom in hand. The two troublemakers would do wellto run while they still could.

They watched Patton chase Dee andRemus off.

“Does that happen a lot?” Virgilasked Roman.

“Only about every other day.”

Virgil didn’t say anything, soRoman went ahead and finished the transaction.

“Here’s your change,” Roman saidmeekly, handing the correct amount back to him.

“Thanks,” Virgil said, pocketingthe money. He picked up his gummy worms yet hesitated.

“Something else?” Roman wondered.

Virgil scratched the back of hishead. “To be honest, I wanted to get more stuff. But those guys were beingcreepy . . . But they’re gone now, so . . . would it be weird if I went to getmore stuff?”

Roman’s lips twitched up into asmile. “You didn’t judge me, so I’m not going to judge you.”

Virgil smirked. “Thanks.”

___________________________________________

General Tag List: @spectralheartt @a-pastel-pan @notalwaysthevillian @rose-gold-roman @ijustrealizedhowdumbmynamewas @katie-the-noble-fangirl @yourroyalydramaticanxiousness @aroundofapplesauce @merlybird500 @beach-fan @jemthebookworm @whats-going-on-kiddos @randomsandersides @gamerfreddie @unring-this-bell @analogicallythinking @lilygold23 @levy-the-b00kw0rm @tacohippy56900 @accio-hufflepuff-power1 @just-another-rainbowblog @georganabanana @grey-says-heck @crookedlyoptimisticdestiny @thesynysterunknown @idont-know-what-im-doing @idioticsky @fadingglowcloud @whizzie72 @theinvisiblespoon @greyyy523 @opaque-puppet @just-fic-me-up @wowimsogoddamnoriginal @sos-fandoms @loganeatsbooks @trust-is-overrated @theitalianalchemist @im-crunchie @mourning--star @4amanxiety @hogwarts-my-love @enby-phoenix @justanotherpurplebutterfly @internet-or-sleep @absolutesandersidestrash @seaspider10 @nonasficcollection @satanblessi @an-absolute-failure @analogical-mess @noisyeggpizzapatrol @hamilsandersfam @cefinitely-rolo @thgjclw @knight-shives @no-no-no-no-6 @savingshae @rabbitsartcorner @buddypallady @midnight-tragedyy @007ardra @fandomloverangel @dorkoverse @mirrorz-n-starz @idunnosong

[cmykayleena]

cf-sims is thinking about deleting her profiles because of you. How does that make you feel? What you and your clique did to her after you banned her unfairly from your server is absolutely terrible. What cause do you have to attack her so hard for? The ban wasn't enough for you? I've reported your twitter and tumblr, and I'm not going to stop until you realize how wrong you are and how much you hurt her. Fuck you!!!

This is getting quite ridiculous. First let me say that I have the right to ban anyone from my server as I see fit. Second I will say that I am a pretty fair person and only ban when I absolutely have to. THIRD - she wasn’t banned because we disagreed with her opinion; she was banned for bashing the server - which, might I add, is against the rules of the server. Let’s get deep into this, because I’m getting fucking sick of this shit and the hate messages I have received for my decision to ban her. (I apologize to everyone who follows me who doesn’t want to see drama on their dashboard. I’m not one for drama so it severely upsets me that I have to make this post. However, this will be the ONLY post I make on this subject.)

Read on if you want, and I ask anyone who does to make your own judgement on this, because I’m not here to sway anyone from one side to another but it’s clear that both sides of the story need to be brought to the surface.

Thursday afternoon is when CF-Sims was banned from S4MM. It started with a member asking for opinions on whether or not it was okay to share CC in a zip folder when uploading a sim for others to download. The consensus was no and afterwards CF added her opinion which was the opposite of the majority. Here are the screenshots:

So in the next screenshot CF derails the subject in what some believe to be an attempt to question my rules. They believe she was preparing to call me out for being a hypocrite when it comes to swearing. I swear on my Tumblr but I don’t allow excessive swearing in my server.

At this point I’m tired of the subject interrupting the main channel and people’s conversations so I shut it down (plus I’m at work during this time and can’t really pull myself away).

Some time passes and I’m shown a tweet that CF posted a few hours after I shut down the debate on creator TOUs vs EA’s TOUs on CC.

So, she calls me a hypocrite because I curse on my Tumblr all the time but don’t allow it in my server. But let me correct her perspective: I curse all the time on Tumblr (all the time outside of the computer) and don’t allow excessive cursing in my server. It’s a place for all ages, therefor cursing should be to a minimum if it’s used at all. So I banned her with this message:

Admittedly I let my frustration get the best of me, and so the ban reason resulted in me mimicking her post on Twitter. We’re all human, and none of us are perfect. After this I thought it would be done and over with, but my sassy ban caused her to go on a tirade of sorts. In the screenshot below you’ll see her next tweet and the responses from some of the mods.

So she gets a few more replies from some of my moderators telling her why she was truly banned and she proceeds with another tweet.

After a couple more responses she deletes her three tweets:

She continues on in her replies to her followers who commented on her tweets calling us rabid dogs, children, and hypocrites all while being a hypocrite herself. I’m being shown all these tweets at this point and just hoping it all blows over. Some people act out when they’re moderated, some don’t. It’s just what you have to expect when you run and/or moderate a Discord server, no matter the size.

I’m not Twitter savvy, so these next screenshots I share may be out of order, sorry for that. (I’m also not blacking out the names of other people - not to rope them in and get them involved - but because anyone can get on Twitter and see these replies. They’re all public.

Name calling and judgement I’m assuming is due to my ban message saying that other members are kind, respectful, and generally decent people. I mean, I’m not lying. 99% of the members in my server are great people! Of course there are going to be some bad eggs in the mix - it’s the internet, it’s inevitable. On to more screenshots.

Key points here: My mods are rabid dogs at this point. I apparently have a clique, and CF didn’t attack us for our views. Let’s pull up that original tweet.

And on we go.

In response to the reply at the top of the screenshot. Feel free to temporarily join my server and judge for yourself if it has a high school vibe. I basically have an open door policy. You don’t agree with something I do in my server, my mods, or how something is handled you can come to me and let me know and I will do everything I can to make sure we’re on equal ground. Now, in that last reply the controversial view is the thing she continues to ride out in this scenario. She thinks it’s fine to upload a zip file on all CC used on a sim or in a lot and share it while giving credit to the creator rather than just linking to all the CC. Kind of a shitty thing to do, but she’s got free speech and her actions and words speak for themselves.

She pretty much is petty at this point and going against the character I think SHE believes she has. At this point it’s pretty clear to me what her character is.

Yea.. she totally moved on. Here I am rolling my eyes very dramatically.

I don’t think I’ve ever given my true age - I’ve just said I’m an adult player. I’m 34, for the record. All my mods range from in their 20s to my age.

So she just goes on, responding to every person and repeating herself.

Are you looking at the timestamp of these tweets? Apparently she’s got plenty of time for this.

So Friday comes along and I decide to open Tumblr when I have some downtime at work.

At this point I’m getting pissed. Why? Because I let her have her little rant all over Twitter without getting involved. My moderators were amazing and stuck up for me without being asked - there really wasn’t a reason for me to get involved and continue this very petty and ridiculous drama. But here I am, with a hateful anon. So I turned off anon asks and deleted this one without replying.

So I take a look at CF’s Twitter and see this:

Now she’s truly spouting lies at this point because I literally told her that excessive cursing is not allowed while cursing isn’t prohibited. I mean, the proof is there in the screenshots! At this point she’s just… laying it on super thick and I’ve had it. I decide it’s time for me to get involved and set the record straight. If only it were that simple.

I don’t have many screenshots for this because I was focused on correcting her lies and even directly responding to people in her threads to make sure they see the truth and judge for themselves what’s right and what’s not. I retweet her deleted tweet first and respond with this. And from here I will leave you to do what the internet does best and dig as deep as you can and want to in these Twitter profiles.

Here’s mine, and here are my replies. A lot of my replies include screenshots of my rules to clarify the swearing and why she was banned without warning.Here are the replies to my ‘clique of rabid dogs’ that attacked her so aggressively before I finally started responding to her: 1, 2, 3, and 4.Here are CF-Sims’ replies.

Note that absolutely NONE of us harass her, none of us call her names, and none of us actually act like rabid dogs.Take this information and judge for yourself what you think is true and what’s not right. I’m not here to sway you one way or another, but to shed the PROPER light on the situation as a whole. 

This is my only post about this. Any anon hate will be deleted, any hate from alternate Tumblrs will be deleted. Yes I’m serious about a lawyer because I don’t put up with lies and slander. And yea… sorry I have to clog up your feeds with this bullshit drama.

[oculusius]

Desk Jockey

“I want that report on my desk at 6 AM tomorrow or your ass is on the street.”

I look up from my keyboard, from the sickeningly modern, blank desk to the even worse face of my branch manager. Picture what you’d expect the person saying this to look like, and you’re probably right. Tall, dark hair combed back, slicked back with just enough gel to not be disgusting. Attractive, but only conventionally, because it hides his fetid interior. The rotten, wriggling insides of the kind of guy who relishes other’s misery, especially when he’s snorting high grade blow on the weekends. Though he’d probably prefer orphan’s tears (But that’s a story for another time).

I’ll do my best, you fucking cretin.

I mumble out some garbled excuse. I won’t even tell you what I said because I forget, or rather, it was so insignificant that I never committed it to memory in the first place. “Sorry Eric,” (He’s one of the ‘hip’ bosses that makes us call him by his first name), “Won’t happen again”, Please don’t take my healthcare away I will literally suck your dick to keep it. He shakes his head and walks away. We’re the last ones in the office, one of the tallest buildings in our shitty, Midwestern town; all glass and steel like some gaudy San Francisco startup. The only lights still on are in the lobby; besides that the only other illumination is from the sickeningly crisp glow emanating from my monitor. As soon as the elevator doors close behind Eric, I grasp my hair in my hands; it’s drenched in sweat and I’m balding already, despite being in my late twenties. Flakes of dandruff are appearing on my scalp, but by the time I get home from work I’m too damn tired to remember to get that special shampoo. Stress related? Probably. Did I have time to fix it? Fuck no.

I swear to God you motherfucker I’ll name you when I eat a fucking bullet you shit fuck…

Stop. The more rational voice in my head. Finish this shit in the next—5 hours? Shit, it’s already 1 AM! I’ll smash bottles and get proper wasted when I’m finished. And when the following day is over, seeing as I’d probably be pulling an all-nighter. Fuck. I take two caffeine pills from the nondescript tin in my top drawer.

Alright. I need to get the excel sheet from that old email inbox the intern left when he quit (not that I blame him). To do that, I need to go through my inbox and find that time I CC’ed him about scheduling that conference call. But to get into my inbox, I need to reset my password because company policy is to change passwords every 3 weeks, and it can’t be a past password…

Alright. One step at a time.

 It’s two hours later. I found the file, finally. I feel like I crossed the fucking Rubicon with no limbs to get here. Now, to get the shit I need from it and send it to Eric. I hope he chokes on it. While bleeding. From every orifice, and then some. I open the file, and I’ve never been so goddamn happy to see the sickening green of excel. Document recovery—what’s that? Fuck it, I’ll deal with it later. I ctrl f the account name. Beads of sweat are dripping off my forehead. Outside, it’s still the vaguely pinkish black of night in any big city. I might actually get some sleep tonight…

WHY IS THERE A FUCKING HYPERLINK HERE?

Oh boy, this better not cost me my job. I get sent to a greyish webpage, the kind of soulless portal that screams ‘high finance’. A nondescript login page for “Kleene-Rosser Accounts Management LLC”. I roll my eyes. Management occasionally threw us these shitty platforms because their friends from way back developed them, and they wanted to help them out. Because God forbid we use Citibank.

There’s no login, but there’s a support number on the bottom of the page. Maybe if I call, they can help me? It’s worth a shot. I mean, I had nothing but time, and if it actually worked and saved my job, I would fly all the way to India or some shit to kiss that phone technician on the lips. Alright. God, when I was an undergrad did I ever imagine this would be my waking life (or lack thereof?) I should’ve joined the military. Better to be blown up overseas then mentally scarred over here.

4-887-612-393: 24/7 Live Support

I call from my office phone, in the hopes that it’ll lend credence to the claim that I fucking need this login. The phone rings for what seems like half an hour, but I can tell from the clock on the wall that it hasn’t been a single, godforsaken minute. Maybe I’d died and gone to purgatory? Seemed believable enough—although, I wasn’t sure what I’d done in a past life to deserve this. Maybe I was a Mongol slavedriver, and…

“Hello, this is ZenDesk, my name is Robert. How may I help you today?” My crisis of existential spiraling instantly, mercifully, shatters. I put on a cheery voice.

“Hi, I work at [company name]. I really need to find something for my boss, and in this accounts payable excel file, it says that I’m supposed to login to a ‘Kleene-Rosser Accounts Management?’ I have all my company info if you need it, I was just never told we used this firm before.”

A beat passes. I hope he heard the desperation in my voice, because if I had a guardian angel, it’d be on the other end of that phone line. Why did I tell him I never heard of this place? He doesn’t care! He isn’t paid to care!

“Of course, sir. Just a moment please. What’s your name sir?”

That thin veneer of politeness again.

“Uh, Keith Sanders. I also have my company email, if you can send the password there…”

“OK sir, what’s the address?”

I spell it out for him. My fingers are digging into the faux-leather of the chair. I’m starting to sweat. If this doesn’t work, I’m fucking hosed…

I tell him the address, and soon I have the URL to reset the Kleene-Rosser password. Surprisingly, my company email works for the username. Lucky guess I suppose? I thank him, truly from the bottom of my heart, and wait for the page to load.

According to the web page, the site was some kind of file storage service. Besides a few nondescript tabs on the top leading to “Home”, “Support”, etc. there’s nothing but a grey background set behind a very basic file directory.

[company_name]/Accounts/Accounts_Payable/2019/May/.

There it is! So deceptively close. 05.19.19.xcl

When I try to open it, I hear the most awful of noises: the Windows 10 error sound, impossibly loud. File corrupted. WHAT THE FUCK? HOW DO YOU CORRUPT A FUCKING EXCEL FILE? SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS SIDEWAYS?

I dig my fingertips into my temples. I can feel the faint outline of an engorged vein on the side of my head. I imagine it, an angry, vibrant purple, the shooting representation of my immense, earth-shattering frustration.

It was as if every cog in the infernal machine that was my work place was designed specifically to drive me fucking bananas. Like my life was some cosmic joke to see how much I would endure before going postal, or at least smashing my monitor. Jump out an office window, strapped with speakers blaring “FUCK THIS PLACE” over and over again, even when they’re scraping me off the pavement with a comically large spatula. Every little thing piled atop one another to form the worst shit tsunami eternally suspended above my head. Every wriggling, squealing fucking cell in my brain…

Alright, let’s think of solutions. Eric wanted the file, and if it was corrupted, I’d just tell him the truth: that it’s how I found it. Man, why did I drive myself up the wall earlier? So stupid… I log into my email. Actually, I don’t. As soon as I hit enter in the URL bar, I get that fucking google “no internet” error dinosaur. At this point, I try to keep rolling with the punches. Alright, network diagnostics, here we go. After what feels like centuries, after windows resets the router, etc. I finally get an answer. Sort of. An error code. I had two hours left before I was unemployed. I take another caffeine pill and keep going, determined to see this shit through to the end.

Hidden on the fifth page of the search results is my answer. It’s on an obscure, early 2000s web forum that had a grand total of 2 users online, probably bots. A post from a literal decade ago has my same issue, and one of the commenters mentions he had the same thing. Apparently, it’s a hardware issue with the router. Despite being woefully underqualified to deal with IT issues, I have no other choice. No fucking way Eric will believe that the internet cut out 2 hours before my deadline. I find the tech support number, and pray that the information is up to date and that they won’t have to send a technician out to fix it.

As the phone rings, I ponder my situation. I was unlucky enough to find what I needed right as the Wi-Fi died, and it was probably one of those issues that fixes itself in an hour anyway. There it is again; I can almost see the shadowy gears of the universe working against me, trying to crush my psyche beneath their teeth into bits of mental scrap. When I finally get a response, I’m caught off guard. This guy seems American. His voice is a bit hoarse, and I picture him as the fat comic book guy from the Simpsons, gut and all.

“----- tech support. How can I help you?”

I don’t like the way his voice trails off every word, leaving a breathy wisp behind like the tail of a comet. It makes me want to shudder.

“Yeah, uh—“

My mind blanks for a minute. I’ve been derailed, and it takes an agonizing few seconds for me to decide what I want to say.

“I was trying to email my boss, and—“again with the unnecessary details “I got this error code, and I saw online that it was an issue with the router.”

“Uh huh.” He sounds skeptical. And disapproving. I imagine he’s wrinkled that gob of cartilage clinging to his face he calls a nose. “What’s the model number?” He finally asks.

I read off the name, and he laughs. He fucking laughs. Is my suffering amusing him? Arousing him?

I have a clearer image of this guy now. Pervading my mind, filling the gaps in my brain, covering my synaptic gaps with fucking cement. He’s grossly overweight, in some dark room somewhere. He smells like BO and he is sweaty milky beads off his forehead that are landing into his keyboard and congealing. The scent is odious, like a corpse coated in mayonnaise and left in a tomb for five millennia, except it’s still wet.

“Sir?” That subtle tone of annoyance again. “Do you understand me, sir?”

“Uh, yeah, sorry. Would you mind repeating that? I was just—talking to someone.” Idiot he can tell you weren’t.

I write down his instructions, but first he pontificates about some issue with a chip in the router or some shit. Apparently I have to call the manufacturer? And they can help me dust it off or some such?

He’s fleshy and sickeningly soft, like a malformed, hairless puppy. That shirt’s been pasted to his damp stomach longer than you’ve been on Earth. It’s just a crude impersonation of the kind of people that run this industry. And you’re just his plaything, to be antagonized and fucked with until…

As soon as my attention is re-centered, I say “Alright thanks bye” without even knowing what he was rambling about before. He laughs. No, cackles. I can practically smell the stale coffee and tobacco on his breath. I slam the receiver down. It was starting to stick to my face with sweat and I really wanted to switch to my cell anyway. Peeling it away was orgasmic.

I examine the napkin I had scribbled on. I’d written it down in a haze, and it almost felt like I was reading someone else’s handwriting. Was that a 5, or a 6, or what? Doesn’t matter. I plug in the numbers, to some obscure fucking company I know nothing about. There’s like 12 digits, not like any number I’ve ever dialed. Unbeknownst to me, I was about to make the worst fucking mistake of my life, worse than taking on that debt to go to college or that time I puked on grandma’s casket at the funeral. Light years away, I imagine, some metaphysical blade was eagerly, sexually, preparing to scoop out my insides and flay them across time and space, flicking its imaginary tongue back and forth in anticipation.

I had expected that infuriating error code, but instead, I feel it. All of it. The other side is cold, and every hair on my body stands right on edge.

“Hello?”

The phone’s definitely connected.

“Hello?!”

This time it seems to echo. I’d opened a door, a beaming ray of light into a place that hasn’t been graced by it in eons.

“Is this Infolink appliances?” I gulp suddenly. My throat is impossibly dry. Everything that made me me, my identity, my memories, my interests… were spilling out into space, into an impossible void far blacker than even the darkest of nights. Please. Like my brain was a plastic bag full of air, but now it’s been punctured. It’s getting sucked out like a breached spaceship, and my body is curling around the now torturous void. I am a husk.

I drop the phone on the ground, and the screen cracks. But I’m far beyond caring about that screen now. The spiritual, inky black is billowing out of the phone like an endless wave going out in every direction. And there’s something else. A raucous laughter, and sneering, they’re laughing so hard somewhere backstage that their mouths, or whatever they call those fucking gullets, are overflowing with sickening white foam with streaks of yellow bile. Dark silhouettes that have been eagerly waiting this whole time for this horrible climax. I’d played my part. Everything else was out of my hands now.

[seokjins-shoulders]

DRINKING AND INKING

seokjins-shoulders

genre: fluff, tattooist!au, kind of crack? but it gets serious warnings: harsh language, sexual themes pairing: min yoongi x reader

DO NOT REPOST, DO NOT STEAL, DON’T DO SHIT

a/n: this is my first fic!! I got a request for this literally ages ago... and I put my heart and soul into, and I’m very proud of it. Constructive criticism is welcomed, but please be gentle I’m weak lol anyways, enjoy the fic!! lmk what you think, and have a wonderful day! love you~~~

“You fucking fell asleep on his lap right before you were going to suck his dick.”

~

When your roommate suggested a night out on the town, it seemed like a decent idea at the time. And with her help, you picked out an outfit and did your makeup.

What a fool you had been, for letting her talk you into wearing a pair of her stilettos.

Now, you were outside a bar, whining to yourself as you nursed your aching feet. It was nearly one in the morning, and you were dying to go home. You sent another text to your roommate, who was still inside, probably grinding against some poor person—she was definitely a wildcard.

And what a fool you had been yet again, when you neglected to bring a jacket. You’ve always been sensitive to the cold, but like the idiot you are, you thought you could brave the cold tonight.

“Chilly?” Someone asks to your left. Damn, his voice is deep.

“Like a pepper,” you replied instinctively. You laughed awkwardly, cursing yourself inwardly as you glance to your left. “Sorry, that was reflex—“

You choked mid-sentence. God, was this guy attractive. He was hotter than a freshly microwaved hot pocket. His features were soft, but sharp at the same time. His deep brown eyes were glinting with something you couldn’t pinpoint, both mysterious and enticing.

“You okay?” Hot pocket asks, biting his lip to repress a laugh.

“F-fine, yep!” You stutter, face flushed. “Choked on some... uh, air.” Why were you like this?

“Here.” You blink, surprised, when you’re suddenly handed his jacket.

“Oh, I can’t take your jacket,” you say, feeling your rising blush, “I don’t even know you.”

“You’ll get frostbite if you don’t,” He teases, leaning back against the bar’s wall, now wearing only a plain black shirt.

“Are you sure?” You ask him.

When Hot pocket nods, you finally slip on his jacket. You’re embarrassed, but the warmth of the jacket is too good to refuse. And it smells like Heaven, oh lord.

Then, you finally notice the array of tattoos coating his left arm. There are painted roses, songbirds, and symbols, as well as beautiful phrases written in impressive script. You feel yourself starting to stare, but you can’t find it within yourself to look away.

“Like tattoos?” His voice snaps you back to reality.

Face red yet again, you tear your gaze back to his eyes. “Yeah, always have. Where’d you get them done?”

“Local parlor.”

“They’re beautiful,” You say with a smile, inching towards him to get a better look.

He chuckles, extending his arm so you can get a better look. Every tattoo on this man was beautiful, but none compared to the initials written along his collarbone.

“What’s your name?” His question derails your train of thought before you think to ask him what the initials mean.

“Name?” You ask. “L/N Y/N... you?”

“I’m—“

“Y/NNNNNN!” Your roommate suddenly interrupts with her loud slur. She stumbles over to you, hiccups, and proceeds to rest her chin (and her entire body weight) on your shoulder.

“Jiyeon!” You exclaim, surprised to see her. She’s usually partying until three in the morning on average.

“Y/N!” She imitates you drunkenly, bursting into a fit of giggles.

“Your friend?” Hot pocket says with a devilish smirk, raising an eyebrow. Fuck, that’s attractive.

“Y-yeah, my roommate—“

“Who is he?” Jiyeon interjects. She looks him up and down, then turns to you and smiles. She nods approvingly.

You blink at her. “What are you nodding for?”

“Oh, so you aren’t going to hook up with him?” She hiccups, then coughs and seems to throw up in her mouth a little.

Hot pocket laughs gently. Fuck, husky. “She looks pretty wasted... I’d bring her home.”

“Yeah, good idea.” You mumble distractedly, as you try to make sure Jiyeon doesn’t hurl. “I’ll take her home... sorry about that!”

“No worries.” He says, waving as you lead your drunk roommate down the sidewalk.

“He was so hot!” Jiyeon yells, ignoring your pleas for her to be quiet. “I would’ve sucked his dick, for sure.”

“Ji, he can probably still hear you!”

“But Y/N, look at his face! Guys like him always have massive—!” You smacked your hand over her mouth, effectively silencing her.

You throw a nervous glance behind your back—and there he is, laughing. Terribly embarrassed, you rush even faster down the street and ignore your aching toes.

-

Hours later, a new beautiful morning. Everything is fine and dandy as Jiyeon nurses her hangover and you prepare some cereal for her.

Except for one thing.

You forgot to return his fucking jacket.

How do you do such a thing? A guy, an unbelievably attractive guy, you hardly know lends you his nice jacket, and you accidentally steal it? Wow.

“Hahhhhh,” Jiyeon mocks you, half groaning and half laughing. “I can’t believe you stole his jacket. And you don’t even know who he is!”

“Be quiet, Ji.” You hiss at her. She only laughs at you, greedily accepting the bowl of soggy cereal.

You sigh, flopping down onto the bed next to your roommate. You groan, but she gives you no acknowledgement. You groan a second time, obviously trying to get her attention.

“What?” She huffs sarcastically after swallowing. “You told me to be quiet.”

“Ji,” you complain, “help me.”

“What do you want me to do, Y/N?” She asks through a mouthful. “I don’t know who this guy is. I don’t even remember what he looks like.”

“But I have to return it!”

She rolls her eyes, setting the now empty bowl on the bedside table. “Look, think of it like this. If he really cared about the jacket, do you think he would’ve lent it to some random girl outside a bar in the middle of the night?”

“I guess not, but—“

“Ah,” Jiyeon cuts you off. “Think about it. He would’ve stopped you if he cared about it.”

You contemplated for a long moment, before finally conceding with a sigh. “I guess you’re right.”

“As usual.”

“Shut up, loser.” You groan, flicking her forehead playfully as you get up.

“Hey! I helped you!” Jiyeon laughs, sticking her tongue out. “Now go get my computer for me, won’t you? I want to watch Netflix.”

-

A week later, you find yourself in a similar predicament from the week prior. Except this time, there’s no Hot pocket, and it’s just you struggling to control a wildly drunk Jiyeon.

“Ji, please.” You groan. “Let’s go home?”

“No!” She all but roars. “I want to get a tattoo!”

She stumbles off towards the parlor that just so happens to be down the street. You have no choice but to follow her.

Jiyeon throws open the jingling door of the parlor, stepping in and announcing herself: “My name is Kim Jiyeon. Ink me up, bitches!”

The parlor is an aesthetically pleasing place. The floor’s were dark wood, the black walls were covered with different pieces of art and photographs. Along the left wall, there was a stairwell going up the second floor, and adjacent to the stairwell was a door. There was a classy front desk in the midst of the room, and on the opposite side, there were a couple chairs and a comfy looking couch.

The guy seated at the front desk whistles, swivels around in his chair and slips into the back room through the door. You hear him speaking to the other employees: “We got a couple of customers. One’s totally plastered.”

“Jiyeon, come on.” Your grab her wrist, trying to drag her out of the parlor. “You’re going to regret this. Please come home?”

“But I’ve always wanted a tattoo.” She whines. “And now I can, like, do it! I already know what I want to get.”

“And what’s that?”

“His name? Tattooed on my rib?” She suggests, all too innocently. “Isn’t that a nice idea?”

You sigh. “Please think this through. We can do this another day? When you’re not drunk?”

“But Y/NNNN.”

“Please, Ji?”

She huffs and bites her lip, finally giving in. “Fine, but when I do get it, you’re coming with me!”

“I hear someone wants to get inked up?”

Oh my god, that voice.

You spin around, meeting the ever so mysterious and enthralling gaze of Hot pocket.

“Oh!” He smirks, amusement lighting his eyes up. “Hello, Y/N.”

“H-hi!” You say, still dumbfounded. “How are you?”

“I’m good,” he says. Then turns to observe Jiyeon. “Is she drunk again?”

“She’s getting over a bad break up,” you supply, rubbing Jiyeon’s back as she absently picks at her manicured nails. “I’m so sorry about all of this... we bothered you last week, and now we’re invading your parlor...”

“It’s no trouble, really,” he says, never losing his smirk. “Honestly, you two are quite the duo. Very entertaining.”

“Yoongi, should I set up the chair?” The guy, the young and handsome fellow from before, steps out from the back.

Yoongi waves him off. “No need, Jungkook.”

“Yoongi? That’s your name?” You ask as Jungkook leaves yet again.

“Yep. Min Yoongi, yours truly.”

“Oh. I like it.”

“Thank you.”

You wink awkwardly, and he smiles in response. Your curse your awkwardness, but you find you quite prefer the gummy smile over the smirk.

“Y/N, are we going to leave, or...?” Jiyeon slurs from beside you.

“O-oh yeah! I should, uh, go.” You smile, shooting him a finger gun. What the actual fuck are you?

He chuckles. “It was fun. I’ll see you around, I suppose.”

“Hopefully.” You say, earning one more small smile from him. You wave as you slowly lead your drunk roommate from Yoongi’s parlor.

You listen silently as Jiyeon drunkenly rants to you about her ex for the billionth time as you walk home. You try to pay close attention, but your mind can’t help but wander back to Yoongi and his tattoo parlor, and his gummy smile.

And as Jiyeon begins to intoxicatedly curse her ex’s entire existence, you bite back a smile of your own.

-

You feel like a lovestruck teenage girl; you can’t seem to stop thinking about Yoongi. His smile, his style, his tattoos, all of which seem to constantly occupy your thoughts.

You want to see him again—obviously. But you don’t know how to go about visiting him in his tattoo parlor.

But then, your eye catches the familiar jacket hung over the back of your desk chair. It’s exactly what you need—a sensical and casual reason to pay the Hot Pocket a visit.

You snatch up the jacket, fix your hair and grab your shoes, and make your way out the door.

The walk is rather quick, only a couple blocks away from your and Jiyeon’s apartment.

The parlor’s door jingles when you push open the door.

“Oh, it’s you!” A familiar face greets you. You recognize the handsome boy as Jungkook. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“Hi... Jungkook, right?” You smile, walking up to the counter. “Nice to see you.”

“You too, Y/N—“

“Jungkook, can you go get me a few paper towels from the storage closet?” A voice yells from the back.

“One moment!” He yells back. “We have a visitor!”

“Not a customer?” They reply.

“She’s Yoongi’s friend!” Jungkook answers, sending you a quick wink.

“Oh!” The owner of the voice, a pristinely handsome young man, steps out from the back room. He’s wearing a plain white shirt, dusted with what looks like charcoal or graphite. “I’m Seokjin, but call me Jin. It’s nice to meet one of Yoongi’s friends.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t call us friends.” You smile awkwardly, ignoring the heat in your cheeks. “We’re just strangers who keep running into one another.”

“Well, all the same.” Jin replies.

“Who are you talking to?” Yoongi asks as he descends the nearby staircase. “Y/N?”

“H-Hey!” You turn to face him, hating how giddy you sound. But admittedly, he looks as delectable as ever.

“Funny seeing you here.” He smirks. “But, what for?”

“I wanted to return your jacket.” You stick out the jacket from the night days ago.

“Oh!” He exclaims, accepting it. “Honestly, I completely forgot about it. Thank you.”

“Wait!” Jungkook cries out suddenly. “Is Y/N the hot girl you were trying to pick up that night?”

You choke on your own spit.

“Ok! Jungkook, you have an essay to work on for college, right?” Jin says all too loudly, dragging the younger boy away. “I’ll help you! Let’s go do that right, in the back room, and leave them alone.”

The look in Yoongi’s eyes can only be described as completely and utterly dying inside. As you try to come up with something to respond with, you hear Jin hollering at Jungkook: “JUNGLEBOOK, YOU THOUGHTLESS LITTLE—“

Yoongi pushes the door closed before anything else can be heard.

“Ahaha...” You laugh awkwardly, as Yoongi turns towards you.

“I’m sorry about him,” He huffs with an embarrassed smile. “Jungkook takes a lot of things out of context. And just, does whatever with them.”

“Oh, yeah, d-don’t worry about it,” You say, stumbling over your words. “I know you wouldn’t think of me like that—I mean, like in that context—you know what I mean, I hope...”

“No, no, it’s not that I think you’re unattractive,” he quickly states. “You definitely are! Wait, uh, this is... getting—“

“So! How long have you known Jungkook and Jin?” You interrupt him, swerving away from the awkward topic. Your cheeks felt like they were on fire–you prayed they were horribly red.

You pretend you don’t see the relief in his eyes as he answers you. “I’ve known Jin since college.. and he and Jungkook are practically brothers, so he introduced me to him.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” You smile. “Do you guys run this parlor together?”

“I own it with another friend of ours, Namjoon.” He supplies. “He’s a really talented artist—taught me a lot.”

“Oh, there are more friends,” You raise your eyebrows in interest.

“Seven of us total—well, Namjoon’s overseas right now.”

”Are you all tattoo artists?”

“Just me, Jimin and Namjoon. Jungkook’s still learning. If you come around again, you’ll get to meet the rest of them.”

You hate how your heart leaps at his suggestion of you visiting again. You nod eagerly, almost too eagerly. “Yeah, I’d love to meet them. I need more friends,” You laugh. “All I have is Jiyeon.”

“Oh? How long have you been in this area?”

“Jiyeon and I moved here together after we finished college. She’s pursuing music, and I had a job opportunity here.”

He raises one of his perfect eyebrows at you. “What do you do? For a living, I mean.”

“I’m a waitress, but I’m writing a book—well, trying to.”

“That’s amazing.” You’re surprised by the earnest interest in his voice. Your heart does a few excited backflips.

Your eye catches the elaborate piano tattoo on his left bicep. You can’t help but point it out. “I like this one a lot. Who did it?” You ask, gently grazing it with your fingertips. Neither of you had noticed how you’d subconsciously drifted closer to one another.

“Oh,” Yoongi’s eyes turn sad as he looks down at the tattoo. “A friend.”

Obviously, it’s a sensitive topic. You don’t know how to react, so awkward silence creeps in. Thankfully, before it becomes too unbearable, your phone bings with a notification.

“Jiyeon wants me to come home early. She says it’s going to storm tonight.”

You really want to stay. To make things less awkward—maybe even comfort him.

“Bummer.” Yoongi replies, stepping away from you as he finally seems to notice the proximity.

“It was nice to see you again.” You try to smile, zipping your jacket up.

“You too.” He sounds distant, waving half-heartedly.

His eyes still look sad. You don’t like the sight of him in such obvious pain.

“Bye, Yoongi.” You say, the door bell jingling as you push it open as rain begins to fall outside.

His goodbye is drowned out by the sudden storm.

-

“Jiyeon, you don’t understand! It was so fucking—auGHHHh!”

Jiyeon rolls her eyes, throwing her damp towel at you—she had just gotten out of the shower and had been drying her hair. “Calm down.”

You catch the towel before it can smack you in the face, instead throwing it behind you. “He got all personal and emotional and it was so rough, we were meshing so well and then—“

“What’s to say the meshing disappeared?” She asks, cutting you off. “I’m sure it’s fine. He probably wants to see you again, let’s be honest. How about we visit the parlor tomorrow?”

“I—… I don’t know about that.” You protest weakly.

“Why not?”

“We have to have a reason for dropping by.”

“Who says?” Jiyeon snorts.

“Society.”

“Shut up, Y/N. You’re being an idiot,” she says. “If you like him, just fucking talk to him.”

You give up, falling back on her bed as you groan gracelessly and loudly. Jiyeon snorts a second time, as she sits down in front of her vanity and begins to apply makeup. You perk up, eying her curiously. “What’re you dressing up for?”

“Oh, I, uh, have a date.”

Your jaw fell open. “What? A date?”

When she bit her lip and nodded, you couldn’t help but spring up in excitement. You were thrilled for her. Her last breakup with her last boyfriend, Jongin, had been nasty, and she had desperately needed to move on. It had been two months since their split, and Jiyeon had been either moping around or going wild ever since. You knew she still cared about Jongin, but you were proud of her for getting out there.

“That’s amazing, Ji! I’m so happy for you!” You fling yourself at her, sweeping her up in a hug. She scoffs and tries to push you off, despite the fond smile pulling at her lips.

“Yeah, well, gotta move on sometime.” Jiyeon said softly. Suddenly, she got an evil look in her eye, that you just barely caught. She smiled, slow and deliberately. “Y/N.”

You blinked, pausing. “What. Why do you look like that.”

She let out an ugly giggle before saying, “I’m not going to go on this date—“

“WHAT!? WHY NOT—“

“—unless you go talk to Hot Pocket.”

You stopped working for a moment. Jiyeon leaned back in her chair, a satisfied smile on her face. She knew damn well you were desperate for her to get back out there, and how much it meant to you for her to try to get past Jongin. It was a little wrong to manipulate you this way, but Jiyeon was Jiyeon.

“Jiyeon, there’s no way—“

“You’re doing it.” She had already decided.

“I can’t! How!? I’m a lump of cringe!”

Jiyeon snorted for the thousandth and swiveled around in her chair. “You’re not a lump, idiot. You got lumps.”

You groaned, lightly thwacking her head. As she cursed at you, you flopped onto her bed for the second time that night. You knew Jiyeon was serious about not going on the date unless you talked to Yoongi.

-

So here you were, a week later. You had procrastinated as long as you could, until Jiyeon put her foot down and made you go by yourself. She had gone on the date, and on a second date, with the mystery man named Chanyeol, and was now making you hold up your end of the “deal.”

But you just didn’t know how to go about this. So you stood across the street from the same tattoo parlor, contemplating how the Hell you should go inside and look casual as you try to start up a conversation with them. You were getting frustrated with yourself, so you decided to just go for it.

“Fuck it,” you murmured to yourself, “I’m a bad bitch.”

You crossed the street, and got to the front of the tattoo parlor. You hesitated for a split-second before pushing the door open and stepping inside of the warm building.

“Y/N?”

You look up, smiling giddily after meeting Yoongi’s eyes. He’s sitting behind the front desk, with a sketchbook and pencils spread out in front of him. You walk up to the front desk, trying to remain as chill as a bill as you say, “It’s me.”

“What’re you doing here?” He asks.

“Oh, I was, uh, walking home from work and I thought I’d pop in.” You weren’t lying—you had been walking home from the diner you worked at when you noticed the parlor was along your usual route home. Coincidentally, that same moment Jiyeon texted you, demanding when you were going to visit Yoongi and the parlor.

“I’m glad you popped in,” he finally smiles, and you feel stupidly relieved by the sight of it.

You leaned forward onto the desk, looking at the intricate drawing on the sketchbook’s paper. You can’t help but gape at its beauty. “Woah! That’s such an amazing drawing!”

He glanced down at his artwork, his cheeks immediately flushing a light pink. “Oh, this?”

It was a gorgeous drawing, skillfully sketched and beautiful drawn. It depicted a lone piano, sitting within what looked like an abandoned room—the floors were dusty and the windows boarding up. Flames could be seen licking through the cracks in the windows and around the room. It was mysterious, haunting and incredibly realistic.

“What do you mean, ‘Oh this?’ This is so beautiful, Yoongi!” You realize you’re gushing, so you bite your lip to stop from acting like a fangirl.

He laughs sheepishly. You can’t help but notice just how deep it sounds. “I’m glad you like it so much—I was kind of insecure about it.”

“You have no reason to be whatsoever,” you say, “I can’t get over how great it is. Are you always this amazing?”

“You should see my other drawings,” he scoffs, rolling his eyes.

You raise an eyebrow. “Is that self-deprecation I hear?”

“Whatever do you mean?” He snorts sarcastically. “I would never not self-deprecate.”

You laugh, loudly and genuinely. He smiles his adorable gummy smile, and soon, the two of you are talking easily and enthusiastically. The two of you drift from topic to topic, and you learn lots about him. He’s dyed his hair a lot in the past, and he used to play the piano. He was originally from Daegu, but moved to Seoul to pursue music and art. Somehow, you weren’t surprised to hear he dabbled in rapping and producing music. Maybe it was the way he talked, gracefully and smoothly, that subconsciously lulled you into the idea.

You wear surprised when you heard just how talented he was, when he shyly showed you a song called “So Far Away.”

“What the Hell?!” You yelled with a huge smile, making him blush as the song playing on his phone ends. “That was fucking amazing, Yoongi! Holy shit! Who was singing with you?”

“Jin and Jungkook,” he answers.

“Damn,” you drawl. “Boys got pipes.”

“Indeed,” he chuckles, tucking away his phone. “Well, I showed you my song. I vote you show me your book.”

You blank for a moment, before blinking slowly at him. “M-my book?”

He nods, and you hide your face in your hands as you groan. He’s right, you do owe him after he showed you his masterpiece of a song. “I’m guessing you don’t have your rough draft right this moment? Damn.”

“I didn’t expect for anyone to be reading it,” You confess. “Like ever.”

Yoongi snorts. “If you want to be a writer, you have to put yourself out there.”

“Well, same goes for you and that song!”

Immediately, he gushes and rubs the back of his neck, “It’s not even that good—“

“Are you kidding? You’re kidding. Yep. Funny joke, Yoongi!” You fake a laugh, sounding completely ridiculous.

Yoongi snorts, sputtering out a laugh. “You sound like a whale!”

“Rude!” You hit him playfully. “Are you calling me fat?”

He faked a gasp. “I would never.”

You roll your eyes, and the two of you are laughing together as everything falls into place until your phone bings with a notification. You pause, pulling out your phone to see a new message from Jiyeon, wondering where you were. It was then you realized you and Yoongi had been talking, alone, for nearly two hours.

“Who is it?” He asks, leaning back in the chair.

“Ah, it’s Jiyeon. She’s wondering when I’ll get back,” you answer.

“Yeah, what time is it? I’ve kept you hear for—holy shit, two hours?!”

You can’t help but laugh at his reaction. “I didn’t even notice. I should probably get going, I guess. It was great to see you.”

Yoongi nods, and you nearly miss the disappointed look in his eyes. You give him another smile, and wave as you turn around to leave, when he calls out to you. “Wait, Y/N, give me your number.”

You turn around, trying to hide your eager excitement. “My p-phone number?”

“What else?” He asks with a smirk, sending a shoot of excitement up your spine. The two of you quickly exchange numbers. “Great,” he says, leaning back. “I’ll text you sometime.”

“Cool beans,” you say, giving him finger guns. What the fuck are you? “Bye Yoongi.”

You don’t really want to go home, but you could tell Jiyeon was getting a little worried. It was dark outside, and undoubtedly cold. Zipping up your jacket and securing your hat, you pushed open the door just as Yoongi called out behind you.

“Y/N?” You turned to face him. “Make sure you visit again.”

You heart feels like it’s exploding with giddiness. “Will do.”

-

And you do. For the next couple weeks, you would visit the tattoo parlor almost everyday on your way home from work. Sometimes you’d spend ten minutes there, and sometimes you’d spend nearly three hours there. You felt comfortable saying you had become friends with Yoongi and the other boys.

“Y/N, what do you think of this?” Jimin asks you, showing you a sketch he was working on. You and the fluffy blond had met over three weeks ago, and you had become fast friends. He was incredibly genuine, sweet and funny—and an amazing tattoo artist and dancer.

“That’s fantastic,” you say, through a mouthful of the chips you were sharing with Taehyung and Hoseok. You got along just as well with the two of them just as well—both were sincere, caring and great people. Taehyung and you had a joke of constantly mocking one another’s fashion choices, and you and Hoseok had bonded quickly over a shared favorite book series.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, nasty,” Jungkook chided you, and you respectively swatted at him. He dodged you with a laugh, when Namjoon stepped out from the backroom.

“Where’s Jin?” He asked absentmindedly as he signed into the computer on the front desk. You had only recently met Namjoon some two weeks ago, but he was just as kind as the rest of the boys.

Jungkook shrugged. “Last I saw, he was going out to get coffee.”

“Ooh, I want coffee.” Hoseok mumbled to himself.

“Ooh,” Taehyung imitated him in a warbly voice, making you snort.

“Shut up,” Hoseok quips back, playfully shoving Taehyung off the couch you three were sitting on. You couldn’t help but cackle at the odd sound resembling a shriek that Taehyung made when he landed on his side.

“Children,” Jungkook says as he rolled his eyes.

“YOU’RE THE YOUNGEST,” You holler, throwing a chip at him—which he caught in his fucking mouth. “WOAH—WHAT THE FUCK?!”

“HAH!” Jungkook chokes on the chip. “I—I’m a GOD!”

“So fucking loud,” You’re the only one who catches Yoongi’s soft complaint when he comes thumping down the stairwell, wearing sweatpants and a plain tee. How he manages to be so delectable so easily, you have no idea.

You jump up off the couch to go greet him, and to tease him about how messy his bedhead is. “Were you sleeping?”

“Naps are my crack,” he says sleepily, resting his chin on your shoulder.

You laugh quietly, teasing him gently while wrapping your arms around him to give him a hug as he pretends to fall asleep again. The hug is perfectly innocent—but you can’t help but long for more. You want him to hold you and look deep into your eyes. You want him to stroke your hair and hold your hand. You want him to whisper words of love and kiss you.

But you’re just friends.

You break away from the hug to avoid it becoming too awkward, and you miss the red color of Yoongi’s flushed cheeks, and the way his eyes keep darting back to yours.

“Yoongi, come here,” Jimin calls, “Look at my sketch?”

“Yep.” Yoongi answers, flashing you a smile as he crossed over to look down at Jimin’s work.

You watch him intently as he talks to the blond, as he points out critiques and gives thoughts on Jimin’s beautiful artwork. You adore the look in Yoongi’s eyes whenever it comes to art. He lights up like a strand of Christmas lights whenever the two of you discuss anything artistic. It was obvious he loved what he did. It reminded you of your passion for the arts, particularly creative writing.

“Wow.”

You nearly jump out of your skin when you hear Jin’s voice beside you. “Jesus! You scared me,” You breath, hand over your chest.

“Sorry,” he apologizes lightheartedly. “But really, wow.”

“What?” You blink.

“How can the two of you be so physically affectionate towards each other and not be dating?”

You blank, heart suddenly pounding a million miles per hour. You laugh awkwardly at him, “Jin, don’t be silly. We’re not dating—we’re just friends.”

He snorts. “I don’t believe it for a second. Here,” he says, now switching the topic, “I got you a coffee.”

“Thanks, Jin. I should get going now though,” You say as you accept the coffee. “Bye guys!”

A chorus of goodbyes yell back to you. “Bring Jiyeon next time!” Jimin adds.

“Will do!” You smile, waving to them. You catch Yoongi’s eye before you leave, and he gives you a small smile. You feel fuzzy at the sight of his small, personal expression. You mouth a private goodbye to him, before turning to leave.

-

It’s cold outside, you realize, when you step out of diner. Usually, you’d be home with Jiyeon, cuddling under a blanket and watching whatever show she’s currently obsessed with. But your bitch of a boss made you work a double shift.

“You’re where?” You ask Jiyeon over the phone, as you start your usual route home. You can’t help but feel a little spooked by the darkness of the night.

“I’m on a date with Jimin!” She squeals, sounding like a teenager.

“W-what? What happened to Chanyeol?”

“Oh. Turns out he was gay for some guy named Bacon or something. He moaned his name when we were fucking.”

“And you only just told me now?!” You demanded, completely shocked. You’d be lying if you said you hadn’t noticed Jiyeon and Jimin getting closer whenever she would come to the parlor with you. What you hadn’t expected was Chanyeol to be gay and her and Jimin to start dating so quickly.

“You’ve been so busy with Yoongi, after all,” She says back. “Practically fucking each other.”

“What!? Jiyeon!”

“What? Don’t deny it, Y/N!” She practically shouts. “You’re, like, eye-fucking each other all the time! The whole ‘I-would-die-for-you’ looks and all that.”

You balk. You don’t know what to say. You can hear Jiyeon laugh on the other side of the line. “Oh, sweetie,” she cooes, “You didn’t even realize your own feelings, did you?”

“…Do we really look at each other like that?”

She howls with laughter, and you’re left shouting at her to shut up, your cheeks on fire.

“Oh, Y/N, I love you so much,” She says, still laughing, “Have fun now. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“Fuck you, Jiyeon. See you tomorrow morn—wait, morning?! Are you going to sleep—“

“—Bye Y/N.”

And with that she hangs up the phone, leaving you to yourself. You grumble absentmindedly as you slip your phone into your back pocket. As you walk along the sidewalk, you can’t but overthink what Jiyeon had said to you.

She’s right.

You do like Yoongi. You feel it whenever your heart would flutter whenever you would see him, how it would nearly explode whenever you two would hug, or have intense and amusing discussions with each other. But you don’t know how to go about it. You want more, but you don’t want to ruin what you had going. You two have managed to become so close despite how awkward and weird your initial meeting had been.

“This is so…” You mutter to yourself, shivering as you walked. Already, you’re stressing out about the potential relationship with Yoongi. You really want it, but you didn’t know how the hell to go about it. “Ah, fuck me…”

“I didn’t peg you for the casual type,”

You startle at the sound of Yoongi’s silky voice, nearly falling over. Next to you, from where he’s leaned against a storefront, he laughs at your reaction. You scowl at him as he extends a hand to help steady you.

“Jerk,” you snap playfully, rejecting his hand.

“C’mon, Y/N,” Yoongi says, chuckling under his breath, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Jesus, Yoongi,” You sigh, steadying yourself after finally accepting his help. “What are you even doing out here? ”

It’s one hell of a coincidence. You had just been grilling yourself over your feelings for him, and now here he is, with a sexy smirk and fluffy-looking hair. You try to ignore how hot your cheeks feel, and how much your heart’s racing.

“You didn’t visit, and you always come on Fridays,” he confesses, “And I got worried about you. So I thought I’d walk to the diner, see what’s up.”

“Oh, you didn’t have to do that,” You smile, “Bitch boy made me work another shift. Apparently I’m not working hard enough as it is.”

“Damn, waitressing sucks ass, doesn’t it? Was that what you were complaining about?”

You quirk an eyebrow. “Complaining? When?”

“When you said, ‘Ah, fuck me,’ that?”

“Oh!” You squeak, feeling your cheeks get even warmer. “Yeah, no, that was… something else,”

“Oh,” he says dumbly, your reaction confusing him. “Okay, then, can I walk you home?”

You hate how your much heart leaps in excitement. “Sure!”

The two of you fall into step next to each other easily. As you walk, you take the opportunity to complain about and bash your boss. Your boss really is an asshole. Not only did he overwork you and your other coworkers, he’s terribly sexist. He constantly comments on your feminine attributes, and mocks you whenever you’re in a bad mood, blaming it on either your menstrual cycle or your “delicate, womanly feelings.”

“I’ll fuck him up, if you want,” Yoongi says with a scowl, “The boys would help. He sounds like a pig.”

“He is!” You say. “Good men are so hard to find.”

“You say that like I don’t exist,” Yoongi says. Stupidly, your heart explodes. You know it was a casual remark, just a simple joke, but you can’t help but overthink the hidden connotations behind it.

“Y-Yeah, what a c-catch you are,” You say, praying your stutter isn’t painfully obvious.

“You good?” Of course it was noticeable.

“Just something in my throat,” You make up a lame excuse, and thankfully he seems to believe it. The two of you continue the walk home in casual, easier conversation.

When you finally reach your apartment building, you find yourself feeling sad. You want to keep spending time with the hot pocket, so you build up as much courage as you can muster.

“Feel like coming in for a drink?”

Yoongi raises an eyebrow at you. For a split-second, you think he’ll mock you for the offer, but the next second, a painfully sexy smirk is spreading across his face. “A drink?”

“You don’t have a shift tomorrow, right?” You say, “I don’t either. And we’ve never hung out at my place before.”

“Then I’ll take you up on that offer,” He says. You want to squeal with excitement as you quickly lead him to your apartment.

-

You laugh loudly, nearly snorting, as Yoongi enthusiastically describes a story to you.

“You can’t be serious!” You say, giggling as you sip your glass of beer. “That didn’t happen.”

“It sure did,” Yoongi protests, “I was a dumb kid with no sense. And when I saw those glasses, I had to have them.”

“Oh my god,” you say, words slurring just a bit, “You’re a legend.”

“A myth.”

“A miracle.”

“A god.”

“Mm, I like that one,” He hums stupidly, taking another swig of his beer. “This is some good yeast.”

“Isn’t it, I found it—wait, yeast?” You say drunkenly.

“Yeast.”

“No, beer.”

“Yes.”

“Yoongi, what the fuck?”

“Alcohol is yeast, right?”

The two of you stare at each other for a moment, before both of you burst into laughter. You lean towards him, playfully slapping him as you howled with laughter. You looked up into his eyes, taking in his gummy smile and happy expression. You found you were entranced by him. It could’ve been your drunken stupor, but in that moment, you thought you had fallen in love with him. Even after he stopped cackling, and was simply gazing back into your eyes, you were hypnotized. He was beautiful.

Then he leaned forward and pressed his lips against yours.

His lips are soft as he kisses you, tender and careful. Cautious and gentle, almost afraid you’ll reject him. You respond slowly, gently cupping his cheek as your lips danced with his. You feel breathless as Yoongi slowly deepens the kiss, his tongue exploring your mouth. You sigh into the kiss, fervently returning his growing passion.

“Y/N,” he breaks the kiss to breathe against your swollen lips. You whimper, pressing yourself closer to him, desperate for another taste. He chuckled as his hands slowly crept up your shirt, tracing shapes into your skin and sending shivers down your spine.

“Yoongi,” you whisper, pressing your lips against his. He responds eagerly, his hand drifting higher and higher. You slowly knotted your hand into his hair, pulling at the soft strands. You bit his lower lip teasingly, and he responded by gently digging his nails into your sides, rumbling. God, everything about him was sexy.

You let out a squeak, breaking the kiss when the beer you’d been holding slipping out of your hand, spilling across his lap. Yoongi blinks, sobering up a bit as he looked down at the wetness covering his lap.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” you say, blinking your eyes as you knelt in front of him. You leaned over his lap, weakly wiping at the mess with your sleeve. Only when your hand brushes over a specific spot, do you realize what you were doing.

“Y/N,”

You look up into his dark gaze. You feel heat rush to your core. He chuckled, a deep, husky sound, that sent a shiver down your spine. “Y-Yoongi…”

Before you know what was happening, he was kissing you again. You desperately unbutton his shirt as he pulls yours over your head. You moan at the feeling of his fiery lips across your chest, mumbling dirty words in your delirium. Your hand rests upon the growing bulge in his jeans.

You sigh dreamily, giggling at the sheer size of the bulge, “Excited?”

He presses a kiss against your neck, sitting back to watch you rub him through his jeans. His eyes are dark, hooded with desire. “Only if you want to,”

You practically purred, kissing him deeply before making your way down his neck, sucking and biting at his skin. He moan quietly as you left marks on his collar bone, on his bare chest, his abdomen, just above his belly button.

You kiss his jeans, fumbling with the button. You rest your cheek on his thigh for a split-second, relishing the warmth and sturdiness of it. He leans back, watching you as sighed in delight as you fumble with the button.

You feel your eyelids get heavy. You nuzzle against his warm thigh, using it as a pillow. And in your drunken stupor, you feel your attention waning.

And then you fell asleep.

-

You wake with a start the next morning. Instantly, your hangover smacks you across the face as a terrible headache sets in. Massaging your temples, you slowly sit up. But you’re not in your bed…? You’re on your couch, with a throw pillow under your head and Jiyeon’s throw blanket thrown over you. A few empty beer bottles stand abandoned on the coffee table just next to the couch.

“What… the fuck…?” You mutter to yourself, slowly standing up.

“Oh! You finally up?” Jiyeon’s voice yells from the kitchen. “C’mere, I made omelets.”

That’s odd. Jiyeon never cooked. Nonetheless, an omelet sounded really good right now. After adjusting your rumpled clothes, you shuffled into the kitchen. Jiyeon stood at the stove, finishing off the omelets and Jimin sat at the counter—wait, Jimin?

“What’re you doing here?” You ask Jimin, setting yourself down next to him.

“Jiyeon and I came here earlier this morning with coffee for you—which is over there by the way—but we, uh…”

“What?”

“Nothing, it’s fine,” Jiyeon interjects, placing a plated omelet in front of you, “I’ll tell you later.”

“Well, I’ll take that as my cue to leave then,” said Jimin, as he stood, “Jiyeon, I’ll call you, and I’ll see you later, Y/N.”

“O-oh, okay,” You say, “You don’t have to go—“

“Y/N, it’s fine, I got to talk to you about something anyway,” Jiyeon interrupted.

“Are you both sure?” You fret.

Jimin smiles. “Positive. See you two later!”

“Bye Jimin,” Jiyeon practically sings, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek as he pulled on his jacket. Jimin smiles at her, gives you a wave, and is out the door within the next minute.

As soon as he’s gone, you turn back around and set to work on the omelet Jiyeon made you. After the first bite, you realize why Jiyeon doesn’t cook often—but nonetheless, the omelet does taste good and it is helping your headache.

“So.”

You look up at Jiyeon, who’s standing at the opposite side of the counter. “What.”

“You got drunk last night,” Jiyeon says, “Still in your work clothes.”

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

Jiyeon gives you an incredulous look. “You don’t remember anything?”

“What should I be remember—oh, holy fucking shit.”

Jiyeon, being Jiyeon, laughs uproariously. “You remember, yeah?”

You remembered everything. Meeting Yoongi on your way home from work, him walking you home, and then you inviting him in for a goddamn drink. And then the two of you drank so much beer, you both got drunk. And in your drunken stupor, you two had made out so aggressively, you could still feel his teeth nipping at your lips. You undoubtedly had a few hickies dotting your neck and collarbones.

And last, but certainly not least, you fucking falling asleep on his lap right before you were going to suck his fucking dick.

What in the actual literal holy fuck.

“You okay?” Jiyeon’s question brings you back to Earth.

“NO!” You blurt, panicking, “Jiyeon, w-what—we were this close to having SEX! O-oh—oh my god, what do I do? What the Hell do I do?”

“Woah, calm down,” Jiyeon says, coming around the counter to rest her hands on your shoulders, “It’s okay, I promise.”

“Wait, do you know what happened? That Yoongi and I—that we almost—“

“You’re going to give yourself a heart attack, Y/N, calm down!” Jiyeon says, finally managing to quiet you down. “I’ll explain, okay?”

You nod, shoving another bite of omelet into your mouth.

“Okay. I told you I was out last night, right, I was out with Jimin. The date went stunning by the way, but that’s besides the point. What happened was I came home this morning, and you and Yoongi were both knocked out on the floor,” She explains, “cuddling each other. And I… I might’ve shrieked in surprise, which startled Yoongi so much he fucking launched himself into the air. Anyways, he was a little hungover, but he still lifted you onto the couch and made sure you were all comfortable before leaving. He also managed to avoid explaining whatever happened last night himself, but you seem to remember that just fine.”

Oh god. You let out a loud groan, and hid your face in your hands. “Oh god.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t really fuck,” Jiyeon says, “Cause you’re still wearing your clothes. Damn, those hickies though.”

“Fuck, really?!” You cry, your hand flying to cover your chest.

“Yoongi can work, damn!”

“Jiyeon,” you whine miserably, “Help me!”

“What do you want me to do, sister? You’re the one who got drunk and fucking attacked the man.”

“No, but—like, what the Hell do I do from here?” You wailed, smacking your head onto the counter.

“I don’t know, talk to him—“

“I CAN’T DO THAT!” You interrupted, wallowing in your own embarrassment.

“Y/N, I don’t know what to tell you—“

“Do I text him? Did he text me? Oh, holy shit, this is horrible. Our friendship is ruined. Now we can’t hang out around the boys because it’s just—“

“Y/N!” Jiyeon all but screams, effectively silencing you.

“Yes?” You squeak.

“You’re fine,” She grunts, “Trust me. He likes you too.”

Doubt creeps into you. “How do you know?”

She rolls her eyes. “Because no guy would’ve acted the way he did if he didn’t like you. Trust me, Hot Pocket’s just as crazy about you as you are about him.”

“Then what should I do?” You ask, twisting your hands together.

Jiyeon plants her hand on your head, playfully mussing up your already frazzled hair. “Just talk to him, Y/N.”

-

After talking to Jiyeon, you felt much better. You felt even more better after a shower and a short nap. It was late that night—just after dinner time—when you pulled on your jacket and shoes and set out for the tattoo parlor.

You stand across the street from the parlor, your anxiety eating away at you. If what Jiyeon had told you was the truth, you’d be fine—but there’s no way for you to know for sure. That is, unless you ask Yoongi. And that’s exactly why you’re goddamn here. Now it is only a matter of working up the confidence.

“I’m a badass bitch,” You whisper to yourself, just as you had that night all those days ago.

Steeling yourself, you cross the street and make your way to the tattoo parlor. Before you can overthink it and sprint back home, you pull open the door. The parlor is virtually empty, which made sense at this hour. The only person in the room is Jin, who sat behind the desk, scribbling something down. He’s wearing comfortable clothing, and has his glasses on. When the bell jingles, announcing your arrival, he glances up to meet your eyes.

“Oh, hey Y/N,” he says calmly, sitting back from his work.

“Hey.” You walk up to the desk. “How are you?”

“I’m good,” he supplies, “Just working on some stuff. What brings you here?” The way he said it gave you the impression that he knew every single minute detail of last night’s debacle.

“Is Yoongi around?” You ask, feeling sheepish. You tried to shake it off—Jin was your friend, you could trust him.

“Yeah, he’s upstairs in his room,” Jin answers. “Want me to get him?”

“Would you?”

“Of course,” Jin says, his smile knowing. As your heart begins to race, Jin collected his papers and went up the stairs. It was silent for just a moment before you heard familiar footsteps thumping down the stairs. You looked up, and there was Yoongi in all his tired glory.

He’d showered since last night, and wore a simple pair of sweatpants and a shirt for a band you didn’t quite know. He gave you a small smile when you gave him an awkward wave.

“Hey,” you greeted quietly, once he stood directly across from you, “How are you?”

“I’m good,” Yoongi nodded, “Still a little hungover, but feeling fine… You?”

“I’m okay. Jiyeon made me food, and that helped.”

“Oh, how is she? I heard she and Jimin are getting along.”

“Yeah,” you laugh, happy for your friend, “Their date went really well.” You tried to ignore the way your heart fluttered at speaking about the subject of dates and romance with him.

“That’s great. I’m glad they’re together.”

“Me too.”

Now you didn’t know what else to say, especially since he had only nodded and smiled in response. A silence enveloped the two of you, allowing the tension and awkwardness to fester in the air. After almost a minute, you couldn’t help but explode.

“Look, about the other night, I’m really sorry, it was really—“

He glanced at you. “Why are you apologizing?” His voice was so soft.

“—sudden, and I shouldn’t have overstepped like that—“

“Y/N,” he gently interrupts a second time, “Why are you apologizing?”

You look up into his warm eyes. You want nothing more than to wrap your arms around him and melt into his embrace.

“Because I think I messed up,”

He nods, still as sweet as ever. “Do you... regret what happened between us...?”

“No, no, just—just how it happened, since I—,” You break off, too scared to say the next words.

“If I overstepped, I’m really sorry… being drunk is not an excuse—“

“No, it’s just that I like you a lot and it happening that way is less than ideal!” You blurt out, cheeks aflame. “Ah fuck, I’m sorry, you probably—It’s fine, I’ll just go, I’m sorry about all of this—“

Before you can even blink, he’s pulled you into his arms and silenced you with a kiss. Immediately, you respond to the kiss, melting into his arms and letting your hands run through his hair. The kiss is slow, passionate—conveying everything inside of him. You wanted to kiss him forever.

The kiss breaks all too soon for your liking, and your left staring up into his eyes, rosy cheeked and swollen lipped.

“That was nice,” You murmur awkwardly.

“Was it?” He says, arching a brow.

“Yeah,” you say quietly.

Yoongi smiles at you, gently cupping your left cheek in his hand. “I like you too, idiot. A lot.” He blushed. “I have for a long time.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he admits, moving his hand to your waist. He avoids your gaze—embarrassed—and you almost scream from how adorable it is and how happy you are. “I think I started liking you the second I saw you screaming about your stilettos.”

“Jiyeon’s stilettos,” you correct playfully, “There’s a reason I could hardly walk in them.”

He snorts. “Of course she owns shoes like those.”

“And I wasn’t screaming that night! Just loudly… protesting,” You joke, wrapping your arms around his neck, “Imagine if you had never lent me your jacket, Hot Pocket—“

“Hot Pocket?”

You snort. “Oh! Yeah, yeah, forget about that—“

“No, tell me,” Yoongi pressed with an amused smile, “You have to tell me, Y/N.”

“I don’t have to do anything!” You protest playfully.

“Except go on a date with me?”

“You—Wait, woah. Yoongi, that was pretty smooth.”

He gave you a dramatic flourish of a bow. “Thank you. I practice.”

“I can tell,” You tease, “And yes. I will go on a date with you.”

“Well you didn’t have a choice either way.”

“You’re so dumb,” You laugh, terribly happy.

Yoongi gives you a goofy smile before pulling you to his chest, wrapping his arms around you. You lean into him, taking deep breaths of his comforting smell.

“I guess you’ll be coming by the parlor much more often now, huh?”

“Guess so,” You agree. “Maybe I’ll even get a tattoo.”

“I’ll be the one to do it, of course,”

“I want a tattoo of Jin’s face on my ass.”

“Sounds like a plan—wait, Jin? That gremlin?” He cries out dramatically. You let out a loud laugh, and soon he’s laughing with you. During your laughter, you press your forehead against his. You gaze deeply into his eyes, and feel happier than you’ve felt in a long, long time.

You kiss gently, and you feel a future and forever in his lips.

word count: 8,784

let me know if you guys want more!! thanks so much for giving it a read, and I hope you enjoyed it! (also feel free to let me know about any glaring grammar/spelling mistakes thank u I love u)

EA

[bigskydreaming]

Also if people instinctively reaching for their “its just my interpretation” arguments as a rebuttal to that post about issue #416 could just not, I’d super appreciate it, thaaaaaanks.

See, the problem I have with that is like....no its not. Its really really not. If your fic or your meta is otherwise DIRECTLY referencing specific story beats of that specific ISSUE, like Dick not having talked to Bruce in over a year, or Dick not knowing Jason even existed until he saw it on the news, or Dick leaving Jason his phone number, or anything of the like.....it is not at all unreasonable for me to expect you to acknowledge the story beats of that very same issue that all of those things are written IN RESPONSE TO. 

You can yell at me about how the firing is just a retcon til the cows come home, but y’know what? It was a retcon that was reiterated IN THAT VERY SAME ISSUE. In it, Dick reiterated what the firing looked like from his perspective, how he waited around for two weeks for Bruce to change his mind before packing up and leaving with opportunities for Bruce to say something every step of the way....THAT is the SPECIFIC sequence of events that Dick’s anger about all of this comes from.

So its extremely disingenuous to try and pair that anger with the pre-Crisis ‘better version’ of events where Dick gives up being Robin all on his own and becomes Nightwing while still on good terms with Bruce...because that version of events has its OWN corresponding aftermath that was written in direct response to THOSE character choices. Like the aftermath where right after becoming Nightwing, Dick turns around and offers Robin to Jason himself, as he of course is already well acquainted with Jason by then. See, that’s kinda part of why Dick and Bruce are on such better terms in that version of events. It has a lot to do with Bruce not adopting a whole other son without so much as a phone call to let Dick know his family had expanded.

Now you can mix and match to your heart’s content, that has NEVER been in question. Especially since as so often said, its a fandom past time to take a match to canon and watch it burn. You don’t have to adhere to aaaaaanything you don’t want to.

BUT.

If you want to talk about INTERPRETING the canon? That is subject to a different set of standards. Because you’re acknowledging that the source material exists as a point of RELEVANCE to you.....and the fact is....the source material is the SAME for everyone discussing it. Now, people can and do have different interpretations of that same material, this is obviously true. But ACTUAL. GENUINE. DISCUSSION of it.....requires that all parties at least discuss those interpretations in good faith, and make an honest attempt to address the material as it is.

And that is not what happens in this fandom. Because you damn well KNOW that for all your talk of the firing just being a retcon......its still the specific version of events the “Dick being mad about Bruce giving Robin to Jason” thing is directly meant to reference and BUILD off of. Retcon or not, it is indisputably the FOUNDATION upon which the other character choices of that very same issue are built atop of.

Because there is another version of events, yes. The pre-Crisis version where Dick gives up Robin. But as I said, that version DOES NOT HAVE Dick angry or resentful....because a key component of it is that all three of them, Bruce, Dick and Jason, are already a family in spirit. There’s a true succession of Robin from Dick passing it down to Jason.

And a lot of you guys know this too. Especially the ones most likely to reach for that “let us have our interpretation!” arguments. Because the Dick Grayson corner of fandom has posted about it a LOT. In fact, we kinda churn out a crap ton of content for this fandom. Headcanons, ficlets, informative posts, etc. And there’s a very curious phenomenon that exists.....

Literally anything I or certain other DG fans post that is inclusive of the whole family, or does not reference any specific event that’s infamous within fandom for pitting Dick against another Batfam member in a ‘who was right, discuss” kinda way.....that tends to circulate WIDELY in fandom. We’re talking upwards of a thousand notes, regularly.

In comparison.....the informative posts that are chock full of panels pointing out how canon actually goes in these specific instances.....tend to top out at a couple hundred max. Its pretty much just fellow DG stans who reblog them. Everyone else, despite them going through the same initial routes of circulation....are very good at pretending they don’t see them.

Because see, misinformation - and make no mistake, that is what we’re talking about here - RELIES on a lack of like.....actual information provided to the contrary to thrive. 

For instance, if it were as common knowledge that in the pre-Crisis version of Dick becoming Nightwing, he makes Jason Robin himself, as it is say.....that the firing Dick as Robin story is ‘just a shitty retcon’......people might start to ask in greater numbers, like, okay, so why DON’T more people write Dick making Jason into Robin after giving it up himself? Why have Dick so bitter at Bruce and/or Jason, if in the only version where Dick gives up Robin, Dick passes it on himself? If you’re gonna go with the one, why not the other?

Because we all know damn well that’s not a difference in interpretation. That’s a conscious CHOICE to TRANSFORM the source material by stitching together two different sides of a cause and effect chasm. The events transpiring after Dick finds out Bruce made Jason Robin himself ARE NOT MEANT to reference the inciting event of Dick giving up Robin himself. You can make that happen, sure. But you have to MAKE it happen. There is no point in the comics where you can honestly, genuinely point to the comics and say this right here shows Dick being mad about this, where ‘this’ is Bruce giving Robin to Jason SPECIFICALLY after Dick gave Robin up, rather than being fired.

A choice has to be made there, for that to happen, if one has the ACTUAL information about how that really played out in the comics rather than just misinformation. And not everyone in fandom trusts everyone else to make the choices they would like them to make with the source material, do they?

After all, isn’t that the REAL root of all this?

See.....its no secret to any of us that nobody’s been all that happy with the actual comics aka source material in years. Meaning most of fandom, myself included, is here for meta and fics based on previously written comics, or our own adaptations of the material.

And fandom, being interactive, unlike canon.....is something that CAN be influenced by other fans.

So why don’t we all just stop fucking pretending that we’re not all trying to influence what the overarching fandom narratives are, shall we?

Oh, you can say this is just me projecting, but I’ve got plenty of instances of hypocrisy to point to that say otherwise. And THAT is the true source of my hostility in so many posts in this fandom.

Because its the very same people who loudly cry “let people have their headcanons” and “let people have their interpretations” and “stop trying to tell people there’s only one true version of canon to go off of” who NEVER. EVER. fail to show up on posts like that last one, the SECOND they start to circulate ‘too widely’ throughout fandom. There is ALWAYS someone waiting in the wings the minute a post like that starts to top a couple hundred notes, ready and raring to shoot it down with some kind of derailment or condescending reminders to everyone who might see it that ‘that’s just a bad retcon for people obsessed with misery porn’ or something like that.

And what exactly should we be calling that? When people show up every single time I make a post about the importance of Robin as a name to Dick, in order to make a big stink about how it being his mother’s name for him is just a retcon? Even though....did I say it wasn’t? Does it being a retcon mean it doesn’t exist? Am I not allowed MY interpretation of a story that very much does exist in canon, am I not allowed to reference other stories where that specific retcon is specifically linked to?

Or how about if I say, post a headcanon about Alfred getting snippy with Bruce about not reaching out to Dick after he leaves home, where within the headcanon itself I specifically reference a clear version of the story where Dick is fired and its eighteen months before he and Bruce speak again? Does this story not exist in canon? Am I not allowed to base stuff of it? It would seem not, given the way people jumped to derail that one by adding in additions about Dick being upset with Bruce about college, which is an entirely different continuity that in no way intersects with the specific events I reference, where they’re estranged for a clear reason that is directly raised within the headcanon itself. People even acknowledge “OP is entitled to any version of continuity they want” in that one, but are like....this one is wrong though, and true fans prefer the one that isn’t just misery porn meant to validate Dick’s teenage angst. With people all too happy to reblog that one while gleefully pointing out the tags that completely derail the post about a clear point in canon by making it entirely about another unrelated point in a different continuity in order to invalidate the initial headcanon or whatever.

Don’t even get me started on when we dare reference stories where Bruce is actually physically abusive to Dick, or when we link Dick’s actions in stories that acknowledge the emotional abuse or neglect of certain key moments in his life TO those inciting moments directly and say “hey its kinda shitty to act like Dick was just being a standoffish brat here when Dick’s attitude is actually directly based on the last time he and Bruce interacted being when Bruce told him to get out and leave his keys.” LOLOL nooooo, that’s not allowed to stand, because see, the ONLY possible reason we could have for even CONSIDERING those stories in character or in continuity, is because of the aforementioned addiction to misery porn or else because we’re just trying to smear Bruce to make our own fave look better.

Never mind that another popular refrain for a lot of the people I’m talking about here is “you don’t know what people are thinking or why they like the things that they like” so, y’know. It is a tad irritating to see that double standard applied, like I mean. Just speaking personally, I’m a survivor of childhood physical and sexual abuse with a lifetime’s worth of C-PTSD and permanent estrangement from my abusive family, so like....those stories where Dick is abused by a figure he never thought would hurt him and now has to reconcile that with still loving and admiring that very same person and still wanting to be family.....like, hey guess what, those themes are part of why his character resonates for me in particular and so they’re kiiiiiinda key for me to explore for a lot of reasons. And given that this fandom looooooves to talk about some people writing dark shit to cope, I find it veeeeeery curious that people are so willing to shut the fuck up and say nothing about incest, rape and pedophilia fics even if they don’t like them themselves......but will still come out of the woodwork to condescend about there being absolutely no valid reason for anyone to ever engage with content where Bruce is abusive even just in one singular instance.....nah. Its literally just cuz of the misery porn addiction.

But see.....the thing at the heart of all this is the simple fact that this hypocrisy doesn’t exist just for the sake of hypocrisy. It exists because we actually all DO know how much power and influence fans can have in an interactive environment like fandom.

After all, the entire reason that Dick Grayson fans are so often posting informative panel-filled posts about what ACTUALLY happens in canon stories that are DIRECTLY cited in many meta, fanfics and headcanons, just.....in a totally backwards way that just so happens to fail to mention that its not intended to be an accurate depiction of the canon its definitely mentioning its in reference to....

The entire reason for this is because of how thoroughly fandom has crafted a specific narrative for Dick Grayson’s character that is based PURELY on their own characterization wants and needs and has very little to do with the actual canon of the character.

Its not a coincidence that so many fans just so happen to genuinely, truly believe that Dick was a grade A asshole to Jason while he was Robin, and there’s a wealth of canon out there somewhere to back it up. No, this happened because of fanFIC narratives where this is the case, and these catching on, and being encouraged by the initial writers of this trope and its fans and so on and so forth until it became the overarching fandom narrative and not only didn’t require any canon basis to be so....it barely ALLOWED for any talk of the contrary. Dick Grayson stans had to yell and churn out posts like that last one for YEARS to make a DENT in this fanon conviction, and do NOT even approach me about it being an issue of tone and ‘if we’d only asked politely’ because lol. No. We did. You can find the clear shift in the tone of my posts from when I first re-entered the fandom years ago to when I just got frustrated with the willful avoidance of WHY so many fans like myself are so annoyed by certain fandom convictions......and even then, it was about the hypocrisy. It was about how loudly other people crow about letting them have their headcanons while literally shouting down ANY post we made about wanting space to just have our CANON-canon.

Pro-tip: that thing where if you just ignore someone long enough on a certain point, they’ll inevitably start to get frustrated and then you can point to their tone as being the problem and claim that was the issue all along? Yeah. Its not slick. This fandom didn’t invent it. Its always very transparent, and very obnoxious. 

But the point is.....fandom absolutely has the ability to override canon narratives with their own version that’s then formative for new entrants to the fandom who never even BOTHER with the source material and just are here for the fic. And so its dishonest as FUCK for people to not only MAKE no distinction between what’s genuinely their interpretation of the canon and what’s their transformation of it, with INTENT......but to weaponize fandom’s aversion to content-criticism to shout down even ATTEMPTS to introduce discussion of the actual source material by claiming oh you’re just trying force your preferred narrative on everyone else. Aka that thing THEY’RE actually doing themselves by once attaining a fandom wide narrative they like, maintaining a stranglehold on it and doing their best to dissuade any narratives to the contrary staking a claim alongside that.

Because again, it all comes back to the fic. See, as a Dick Grayson fan, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I turn to fic for what I can’t get from canon...and its frustrating as hell to see writers that loudly talk of being BETTER than canon and “RIP to canon but my Batfam loves each other” in a lot of cases DELIBERATELY make Dick in particular look WORSE.....and then act like they have no idea what we’re talking about when we try and tell fans who take these narratives at face value that uh, they’re lacking some extremely relevant context and nuance. Or in some cases, outright facts.

And I will happily laugh loudly in the face of anyone who tries to claim that they don’t feel similarly about fics that characterize their own faves in ways they don’t like.

Yeah, try telling me that after years of some of you writing fics that specifically exclude all reference to the events of Nightwing #30 when talking about Dick’s death or Spyral.....while still including every in canon instance of people bagging on Dick for what he only did in canon because of Bruce’s abusive writing. There’s kinda a vested interest in keeping fandom relatively free of talk of Nightwing #30 then.....because weirdly, people who write about a DIFFERENT take that’s not hostile to Dick seem to end up putting the blame on Bruce for that situation. Bizarre, I know. People attributing blame to the character who was actually abusive in the canon and being cranky that the victim of said abuse is held up as the sacrificial lamb in everyone else’s fics? Whodathunkit.

(Also a point of irritation - it never had to be just one or the other. This is where the whole ‘maybe its YOU guys who were projecting all along when you said the only reason we could have for talking about Bruce’s abuse was an intent to smear the character’ bit is a thing. See, fun fact: if you were going to ignore an issue or two in order to completely flip the narrative of what really happened with Spyral and dominate the fandom landscape for a couple of years....it never had to be Nightwing #30 that was the ONLY issue you could leave out in order to not make Bruce look like an abusive asshat. Like, there was always another option right there in front of you. You could have instead chosen to also leave out Grayson #12, aka the one where Dick informs everyone else he’s alive.....then you could very easily just sliiiiiide in reference to Bruce and Dick quietly informing the whole family of his status and his mission while insisting on keeping it quiet for his safety. Voila. NOBODY has to be an asshole then, and the whole family gets to be in the know. But see, most people didn’t actually have a problem with someone being an asshole in that story. They just didn’t want it to be Bruce, and didn’t mind it being his actual victim. 

Even though, lol, just another FYI.....abuse victims having things flipped on them so it looks like they’re the true problem and their abusers are completely innocent is a HUGE thing that happens a lot in real life, so FYI about that FYI.....anyone who does say, gravitate towards Dick Grayson specifically because of how he’s impacted or might be impacted by abuse from his father, like.....is proooooobably not going to have a super fun time with diehard commitment to making this particular fictional character the true mastermind of his family’s misery and abusive instead of the abused. Weird huh.)

And round and round it goes. Where it ends, nobody knows.....because it doesn’t. fucking. stop. The number of ways in which fandom has willfully flipped the narrative so that Dick is the aggressor instead of the aggrieved is just absolutely ridiculous. This guy has been punched by every member of his family except Duke and Alfred, and somehow he’s the one characterized as uncomfy to be around because of how volatile he is. This guy is the only one who has actually been KICKED OUT of the manor, and somehow that gets glossed over and considered out of character while he apparently definitely did very much do this exact specific thing to Tim, I hear.

And like broken records, people squawk ‘let us have our interpretations/headcanons/etc’ any time we try and make a stink about how no, actually, that’s NOT HOW IT WENT....and at the EXACT SAME TIME....most of these exact same people show up on every post that uses ACTUAL information to make Bruce or Jason or Tim or whomever look like the actual problem in a story where they were actually problematic, like, the SECOND a post gets popular enough....to derail, to condescend, to shout it down with how its just a retcon or its out of character or its just a bad take or how fans with taste know better than to take it seriously.

And why do you care? Like, if we’re all supposed to just live and let live and everyone’s allowed their own interpretations, why this everpresent need to show up all the time with a superior, patronizing ‘oof, this is just not good’ the second one of YOUR faves is in the hotseat, while condescendingly boxing out any posts informing people of how no, actually, Dick and Kory’s breakup WAS linked to Mirage and Dick and Donna’s infamous fight WASN’T the way its commonly talked about and oh yeah there was brainwashing there too and etc, etc....see, when WE do that, we’re just overacting stans who can’t stand others not liking our fave. Instead of just....trying to correct misinformation so more fans can at least engage with the character from a starting point of zero instead of a negative integer. 

So why this hypocrisy? Oh yeah, because you don’t WANT the misinformation corrected. Because see, when the misinformation IS corrected, fic writers en masse....make different choices. And that’s why ever since more people started picking up the refrain of “well no actually Dick DIDN’T hate Jason, here’s the proof”.....there’s a lot more stories out there where...shockingly....Dick doesn’t hate Jason. Which bizarrely, does not really work well for the people who WANTED Dick to hate Jason and made a point to SHAPE the narrative to make him hate Jason.....because it wasn’t about that just being their interpretation, and it never was. Because the CHOICE to cut out Dick’s ‘justification for feeling slighted’ by being fired as Robin and pair that specifically WITH Dick resenting Jason for Bruce still making him Robin instead of Dick doing it....that has a narrative cause and effect within a lot of the fics that go with this. It gives Jason eternal underdog status that makes it easy to root for him while positioning someone specifically to blame for that underdog status and unfair playing field, and it also keeps focus off Bruce as the cause of any issues between his sons due to choices HE made, thus one singular figure is positioned as the obstacle to family unity....and that figure isn’t Bruce.

And no canon to the contrary will be acknowledged as legitimate.

Convenient huh?

Especially paired with the ‘thou shalt not con crit on another’s fic’ fandom commandment. Because when you can’t complain about any fanfic depictions whatsoever without immediately and inherently being cast as the rabble-rouser by default.....the ability to shape and dominate a specific fandom narrative becomes veeeeery key. After all, another popular fandom phrase is ‘we’re not the DC writers, complain to them about canon.’ But when there’s no canon complaint to be made to DC specifically, because its not canon we’re actually upset about, and we’re not ‘allowed’ to criticize fandom depictions because people are allowed to have their interpretations......all you have to do is stand your ground and insist that the fandom depictions of Dick are nothing BUT ‘interpretations’ and not acknowledge aaaaaaany of the places where you consciously make the decision to transform canon choices and behavior around him.....and voila. You’ve wrapped everything up in a neat little logic trap. Quite the fait accompli. There’s really no way for anyone to say or do anything ABOUT this little situation here without being ‘disruptive,’ ‘divisive’ and ‘having a negative impact on fandom harmony.’

Its just always gonna be a little weird to me, how much your positivity culture looks a lot like plausible deniability culture instead.

But whatever. That’s just a me problem I guess. Definitely not something anyone else in fandom has anything to do with. Just like they have nothing to do with derailments or condescension or counter arguments to so many of the canon-based Dick Grayson posts I make, and this is also all my doing...wait...hang on. I think I got mixed up again somewhere. Dang it.

[akitokihojo]

In Between: Chapter 5

Previous chapters can be found in my fic masterlist, as well as on AO3 and ff.net

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

Inuyasha ticked his claws along the wood of his desk, trying his damndest to focus solely on the contents of the folder in front of him and not what Sango and Hojo were trifling over at the other end of the department, their perplexity practically blasting through a megaphone. What the hell were they even looking at that had them so derailed? He knew they were exclusively working on his case, but what in Bruce Almighty was causing them to sound so pathetically flabbergasted? It was driving him insane.

Fed up, he slammed the manilla file shut, inhaling deeply to maintain whatever discipline he had, sitting up straight and noticing his partner seated at the desk directly across from him, staring at him bewilderingly. 

"You deserve an award." Koga spoke, his expression never changing. Inuyasha grimaced. What the fuck was up with everyone today? "In all the years we've worked together, I've never seen you demonstrate so much self control. I mean, even I want to tear into Thing One and Thing Two over there."

"How long until you think they'll bring it over?" Inuyasha could feel his irritation spiking. He wasn't allowed to butt in without invitation, he wasn't allowed to have any input, he wasn't even allowed to so much as glance at their work without getting the scolding of a lifetime from their ruthless A.D.A.- a person he was almost willing to admit he feared. He'd witnessed scenarios before where cops had a significant involvement with another person in an investigation, and therefore had to watch from the sidelines. They were allowed to actually watch, though. No matter how stressed or angry, they were never completely isolated from the damn thing until otherwise called upon, but of course that wasn't the case here. No. Kagura and Totosai were too damn concerned over Inuyasha's temper. They thought the second they got any sort of hint as to who was behind this, he would sprint off to square up. Which was, of course, a crazy notion all on its own.

Inuyasha was far from impulsive.

"Fifteen seconds. Act surprised." Koga smiled, pretending to be busy as Sango dropped a crinkled envelope in front of Inuyasha. 

The half demon looked up at the hovering detectives, noting the obvious aggravation wrinkling Sango's brow line. Hojo wasn't looking much better, clearly stumped and ready for some sort of answer. About fucking time.

"What's this?" Inuyasha asked, pretending like he hadn't heard the two detectives arguing just seconds ago.

"Remember how we told you Kagome stopped by?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, that guy didn't just pop into The Coffee Shop to chat. There was more to it. He brought pictures. Could you take a look and-"

"What?"

"Chill. We've been staring at them for days, Inuyasha. We've tried fitting them to your old cases going back about seven years now, and nothing. Totosai was no help, Miroku could only suggest this has something to do with his M.O., and Koga doesn't recognize a single person photographed."

Inuyasha shot Koga an incredulous glare, causing the wolf demon to jolt from his seat.

"Would ya look at that. I'm out of coffee. Be right back."

"Inuyasha, we had no choice but to lie to you. You know the pressure we're all under right now, so would you just look at the damn pictures and help us out?" Sango grabbed the envelope and tipped it over, dumping the polaroids in front of Inuyasha and spreading them out with her fingers. 

His response faded away, a woman's photo in the center immediately silencing his initial instinct to sass, half-surprised that he wasn't staring at a glossy photo of Kagome or himself, and riddled with a triggered memory. It was vague, fuzzy, almost nonexistent but still just enough to wrench at the half demon's core. As he studied each picture, each woman, each child, everything started becoming more and more familiar. Inuyasha noticed a polaroid sticking to the back of another and carefully peeled them apart, a spiked rush jerking through him and slamming his stomach to the bed of his pelvis as he stared at the little girl he'd seen before, her long, silver hair and empty eyes haunting him as they once had so many years ago.

"What? What is it?" Hojo asked, alerted by Inuyasha's clear change in body language. The half demon rose to stand, cursing incoherently under his breath, his voice growing louder and rougher with each profane word.

The kick from the back of Inuyasha's legs sent his chair tipping over as he jumped up, storming to the large display of monitors at the opposite end of the room. He jostled the mouse, making the three screens come to life as he clicked on the database, the bar on the screen slowly filling to show its loading progression.

"Inuyasha!" Sango followed, carrying the rest of the pictures over and spreading them along the glass table Inuyasha stood in front of.

"I know this girl, Sango. We never found her body."

"What case was this?"

"It was like nine years ago. I remember the face of the perp better than any other fucker I've been up against. His name's Naraku-something. Fuck!" He kept typing the information in wrong, his fingers more impatient than his brain. "I went through hell and back trying to get enough proof against this guy to convict him, and he got off with an insanity plead. He was sent to a mental health institute indefinitely."

"Indefinitely? Then wouldn't that mean he's in there for the long haul?"

"Unless he got out. Sango, this guy was a literal psychopath. He stalked women and children, took thousands of pictures of his victims, hung them up like art, and murdered at least a dozen people without a single sign of remorse. Look at this," Inuyasha redirected her line of sight to the screen, finally opening the caseload he'd been looking for, an image of a young boy popping up on the screen to the left, the middle screen filled with scanned images of the paperwork, and the right screen holding the image of his pale remains on the metal table in the morgue.

Sango looked back and forth from the images, noticing the strangulation marks along the neck of his lifeless body, his lips as purple as the bruises around his face. His skin was almost as white as his hair, washed clear of all blood and dirt. He was so young. The photo provided by who she could only assume were his parents showed him standing in front of a plastic, colorful basketball hoop, a black and orange ball held in his tiny hands, making it look so much larger than it would had an adult been holding it. He was smiling, enjoying himself, his light hair long and tangled from running around and being the kid he was only allowed to be for so long.

"His name's Hakudoshi. He was kidnapped and murdered by Naraku when he was eight. When we got the warrant to search through his shit, we found a picture of this little girl." Inuyasha brought up a photo of the same girl, replacing the image of Hakudoshi's corpse. Her hair was long, thick, and straight, a large flower clip decorating the side of her head. Her eyes were dark, holding about as much depth as the sea, light unable to penetrate and brighten what was held within.

"Who was she?" Hojo asked.

"A missing child's report told us her name was Kanna. She'd gone missing seven years prior and was never found."

-----

"So, what? He just... left?" Koga asked about an hour later, leaning back in his chair, balancing on the two back legs as he propped his feet up on his desk.

"We won't know that until we get down to the psychiatric facility and confirm." Sango said.

"We don't even know if it's him. It could be a copy cat.” Hojo stated, from the opposite end of the table the group sat around.

"No, this is him." Inuyasha insisted, his eyes glued to the photo of Naraku on the screen, the menacing smile plastered on his face during his mug shot bringing him back to their long, tedious interrogation. 

"You can't be so sure, Inuyasha. We have no proof."

"Don't you think it'd be a little too coincidental, brown-noser?"

"That nickname again?" Hojo rolled his eyes.

"Hah! I've missed that!" Koga laughed.

"Now, now." Totosai sighed, standing at the high end, looking unamused.

"I'm only saying, lets not have all our ducks in a row for something we aren't positive of. We need an I.D. of some sort."

"Yes. We do." Totosai agreed.

"You got a little something on your face, buddy." Koga murmured, dropping his feet to the floor and sitting up straight as Sango shot him a dangerous glare.

"Sango. Hojo. Stop by Kagome's apartment tonight. Show her a photoset of similarly looking men to our perp here and see if she can identify Naraku." Totosai ordered.

Kagome's Residence

"It'll be quick, Kagome. All they're gonna do is ask if you recognize anyone." Inuyasha gently explained.

"And if I do?"

"You tell them."

"And then what happens?"

"We take it from there."

"They take it from there." Kagome corrected, reminding Inuyasha that he wasn’t the lead investigator on the case anymore. As an officer on the victim side of things, he seemed to have some leeway, but it still wasn’t clear where his authorities drew the line.

"They take it from there, and I come over with dinner since I know you haven't eaten." He maintained the softness in his tone. 

"No, you don't have to do that."

"When was the last time you ate?"

"This... morning?" She asked more than stated.

"Then it sounds like I do."

“And why can't you be here when they show me the photos, again?"

"Because, Kagome, they don't want me influencing your answer."

"But you wouldn't."

"Yeah. I know that, and you know that, but they have to go by protocol. I'm not even supposed to be on the phone with you right now. I'll come up as soon as they're done, okay? I'll be waiting downstairs."

”Kay.” So, apparently, that was where the line was drawn.

The call ended. With the way Inuyasha was talking, she expected the detectives to be here any minute, and if he was giving her a courtesy call so she wouldn't be taken by surprise, which was appreciated because she was pretty done with surprises at this point, she wasn't about to throw him under the bus by tipping them off. Which meant, as much as she wanted to tidy up her apartment a bit, she was going to have to leave it as is for the time being. The smallest details made a difference, especially to police officers, even she knew that much.

It didn't take long for her to catch the echoing march of feet coming up her stairs, courtesy of the cavernous halls, the sound of their shoes outdoing the intro music to the show playing on Kagome's T.V.. She waited for the knock before she got up, peaking through the peephole just to be safe, and then set to undo the lock on the knob, deadbolt, and the newly-installed chain Inuyasha had graciously installed just the night before. The smile on Hojo's face was delightful and warm. Almost as if he were the one welcoming her in. Sango's smile was soft, her brown eyes holding a gentleness as she spoke.

"Hey, Kagome. How are you?"

"I'm... okay." She gave a wane shrug. "What's up?"

"May we come in?" Hojo asked, briefly looking around the hall, gesturing that he didn't want any prying eyes or ears. Kagome nodded, stepping aside so they could enter her apartment and closing the door behind her, not bothering to lock anything. Inuyasha said it wouldn't take long.

"Would you like something to drink?" She offered, feeling her heart begin to beat faster in her chest. She already knew what they were going to say, but yet she still couldn't help but feel anxious. She’s been a total basket case lately.

“No, thank you. Look, Kagome, we've made a little progress on your case," Sango said, presenting it as well as she could to come off as good news. Which it was. Kagome just felt like she wouldn't be able to see the bright side of things until this creep was arrested. "We have a few pictures with us, and we were wondering if you could take a look?"

Kagome crossed the room, joining the two detectives at the couch as Hojo pulled out a small board of eight mug shots aligned neatly in two rows, gently setting it on the coffee table in front of them. Almost every man looked menacing. Terrifying. A few seemed like they regretted their actions, their eyes large and swollen, holding up their placard with their identification number. The others seemed to completely lack empathy, staring straight through the camera lens like they were looking at their previous victims, almost seeming proud to be holding up their boards. There was one guy, though, that seemed to belong more than others, looking so frightening, so completely apathetic, the smile on his face saying he'd gotten away with what he'd done for too long. She knew him. She knew that smile. In fact, she'd seen that very same smile just this morning, only it was shined at her kindly. Could it have been a smile of manipulation all along? This couldn't be right. Maybe they just looked alike, but they weren't the same guy. That had to be it. The man in the mug shot had long, messy, unwashed, almost dreaded, black hair, and the one she knew wore a short, neat style. He was groomed and always dressed in a suit, ready for a day at the office. This man... he didn't look capable of speaking to someone without threatening their lives. That's right. She was mistaken. She had to be.

"What's wrong, Miss Higurashi?" Hojo asked, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. She'd been staring at the board for a few minutes, her brows pinched together in tribulation. They'd told her to take her time, but it almost seemed like she'd stopped breathing as the seconds passed. Kagome looked up at him, her lips parted as she worried the bottom with her teeth. 

“This man…” She pointed to the menacing shot of Naraku, tapping her fingernail against the tab.

“Is this who gave you that last envelope?” Sango asked.

“No, that’s not him.”

“But you know who this is?”

“I’m not really sure. I know someone that looks similar, but... this can’t be him.”

"What do you mean?"

"The guy I know seems more... well-put together and nice. He doesn't look like he could hurt a fly. This guy looks like he'd snap your neck if you looked at him wrong... but, the resemblance…”

"Do you know his name?" Hojo implored, giving her shoulder a supporting squeeze.

“Yeah, it's Onigumo. He mostly goes by Oni; says he hates his full name. Everyone at The Coffee Shop knows him."

"This man," Sango picked up the photo board, looking from the con to Kagome, making sure the girl’s eyes were fixed on their criminal. "His name is Naraku. We can't confirm anything just yet, but if he's our suspect, he's very dangerous."

"Miss Higurashi, do you have any other contact with Onigumo?"

"No." She shook her head. "I only ever see him when I go by the cafe. Do you think this is really the guy we're after?"

"We cant be certain yet, but just in case-"

"Tread lightly. Yeah." She was starting to feel sick. If things were actually looking as grim as they seemed, if Onigumo was really Naraku, she'd been in the same room as her stalker at least three times a week for months now and hadn’t even known it. It meant Onigumo had broken into her apartment multiple times, destroyed her home, and took pictures of her sleeping. It meant Onigumo didn't actually need to take the time to ask how she was doing, even though she always gave the cliche "I'm okay" answer, because he knew exactly what she was going through.

"You've done great, Kagome. You've really helped us out." Hojo stood, adjusting his coat as Sango joined him. Kagome rose to walk them to the door, almost feeling as if she was going to vomit. All she had to do was hold it together for sixty more seconds.

"That's all you need from me?" She asked, trying to appear as casual as possible.

"At the moment, yes. We'll be in touch, okay?" Sango smiled, giving her arm a reassuring rub. Kagome nodded, thanking them for stopping by and shutting the door as they exited, only bothering to lock the knob for the time being. She knew her stalker all along. Of course, she did.

Did Inuyasha?

"You can go up now." Sango hummed, pushing her hands as far as they would go into her pockets as they exited the small lobby and came out onto the sidewalk. Inuyasha was leaning against the wall, almost in the exact spot she pictured him standing in when they'd first arrived, a brown, paper bag held in one of his hands. His silver hair had taken on a slightly colorful contrast, shaded by the orange hues of the sunset, his tinted bangs falling over his ember eyes, helping them glow a little brighter. Sango held out her hand in front of a groaning Hojo, palm up, fingers wagging until he fished a ten dollar bill out of his pocket.

"You knew I'd be here?"

"You bet!" Sango winked, pun intended. "You're as predictable as ever, Inuyasha."

"Shut up." He rolled his eyes. "Did she know any of 'em?"

"Yeah. She recognized your guy but thinks it’s someone else.” Hojo stated. "But we can't be sure yet since we haven't confirmed if he's broken out."

"What do you mean? She identified him!"

“You know that’s not enough, and even so, he may be going by a different alias now. Onigumo. Koga and I will stop by the psychiatric facility first thing tomorrow morning to see what's going on with Naraku, because according to their system, he's still there. We'll get the visual."

"I'll stop by The Coffee Shop and ask the employees about this Onigumo; see how long he's been a customer and what, exactly, they know about him." Sango declared. "And you will be?"

"Get the fuck out of here." Inuyasha scoffed, pushing past his two coworkers and through the door, heading straight for the stairs without looking back at them. He knew perfectly well he needed to stay out of their way, and he was doing a pretty damn good job so fucking far, so what point did it serve to remind him? He wasn't willing to compromise this case. Not for anything. Not when Kagome's safety was on the line. Sure, if it were only him involved, it'd be a different story, but it's not. Naraku's set his sights on Kagome in order to get back at Inuyasha, and just the sight of her stressed, exhausted, concerned eyes was enough to tell him it was fucking working. Naraku was getting what he wanted.

"Kagome, open the door." Inuyasha said, gently rapping his knuckle against the wood. The sound of a bolt clicking at the end of the hall caught his attention and he glanced over, seeing Kagome's elderly neighbor step out into view, the handle of a black, metal bat grasped within her wrinkled fingers. He cocked his head, grimacing at the old lady.

"Oh, it's just you again. Well, you're alright." Kaede shrugged, turning back and closing the door behind her just as Kagome opened her own. Jesus Christ, what the hell was the old lady thinking?

"Hi." Kagome smiled as he stepped in, locking the chain so he wouldn't give her grief.

"Did you know Kaede had a fucking bat?"

"Oh, yeah. She's had it for years. I think she’s excited that she actually has a reason to use it now.” Kagome said, heading back over to the couch. Inuyasha pushed the thought of the crazy, old woman with a weapon aside, focusing on what was important once more.

"I brought you a sub."

“You didn’t have to do that, Inuyasha.” She said, pulling the small throw blanket over her legs and turning down the volume of the television with the remote.

"You need to eat, Kagome." He sat on the small loveseat, unloading the contents of the paper bag on the coffee table. "I know you're about to say you aren't hungry, but I don't care. You've hardly eaten lately."

"At this point, I might throw it up."

"Just a couple bites. Come on."

"Who's Naraku?" Kagome asked, pushing the dark strands of hair from her face as she settled against a throw pillow.

"No. Food first." He demanded. Knowing he wasn't going to let up, she gave in, grabbing the rectangular styrofoam container from the table and opening it. As she took a bite of the turkey sandwich, Inuyasha got up from his spot, fetching two water bottles from the refrigerator and handing one over as he sat back down.

"How do you know him?" She tried again after swallowing another bite, already feeling full.

Inuyasha sighed raggedly, leaning back against the couch cushions, allowing his weight to sink in. He knew she deserved the truth, but he wasn't even okay with the possibility that this man was what they were up against. Again. This wasn't your run-of-the-mill convict. He was a professionally diagnosed psychopathic serial killer that preferred torture over a quick death. 

"I had him prosecuted almost exactly nine years ago."

"So, this is all for revenge?"

"If it is him, then yes. Most likely. I was the lead investigator against him. He plead guilty by reason of insanity, and was sentenced to life in a psychiatric facility."

"What did he do?" Kagome scooted a little closer, pressing firmly against the pillow and the arm of the couch now, trying desperately to read Inuyasha's expression. She could tell he was apprehensive about telling her. Inuyasha was never one to open up about his work, what he’d seen, what he’d done. His job wasn’t glamorous or easy. It was a shit show most of the time. People got hurt. Men, women, and too often, children were violated, assaulted, and-or killed, and it was something Inuyasha knew he had to handle on his own. If someone wasn’t in his line of work, there was no reason they had to know the reason for the dullness behind any detectives’ eyes. Inuyasha had explained that to her before. To protect her.

"Kagome, maybe we shouldn't-"

"I want to know. I understand that nothing's clear at the moment, but don't you think I should get at least some understanding of what kind of criminal may be involved in this?"

"What did Sango and Hojo tell you?"

"Just that he's dangerous."

"Okay, look..." Inuyasha sighed again, leaning forward to brace his weight on his thighs, his elbows digging in slightly. “I’ll tell you, Kagome, but I want to know how you met him first."

Kagome shifted her gaze, her lips parting to say something before pressing them into a tight line, leaning back uncomfortably.

"You can tell me." He groaned, rolling his eyes. "I ran into Sango and Hojo downstairs, and they already mentioned who you identified and that coffee shop you go to too often. Just tell me the rest, already.”

"I don't want you getting in trouble."

"I won't. Now talk.” Inuyasha ordered.

“Well, I don't know that I've met Naraku, that's the thing. The guy I met is named Onigumo. He’s there almost every morning, and as far as I know, no one's ever had a problem with him. A part of me doesn’t want to believe they could be the same person. The guy Sango and Hojo showed me looked evil and like he was too busy being a criminal to even take care of himself. Oni seems like the exact opposite. I mean, he could just be a doppelganger, don’t you think?”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit too coincidental? Think about it, Kagome. Nothing about him has ever seemed off or remotely suspicious?” He asked skeptically.

“Not really.”

"Has he ever said or done anything that made you feel uncomfortable, or maybe asked any questions that were a little too personal?”

“Not to me. He talks to the baristas more than anyone. The most he’s ever said to me was your average small talk questions. There was a couple times that he bought me a coffee, and while it was surprising, it didn’t make me uncomfortable. Do you really think he’s a suspect, Inuyasha?”

“If you ask Hojo, he’ll tell you it doesn’t matter what I think. At this point in time, whether anyone likes it or not, we have to treat him like one. He could be just as innocent as you say, or he could be exactly who we’re looking for.”

Looks like she’d be making coffee at home more often from now on.

Kagome took a deep breath, pushing all discomforting thoughts to the back of her mind. He was right. Things were beginning to add up a little too well, but jumping to conclusions without proof would only make things worse. Until they could prove they were one and the same, Onigumo would stay his own person, and Kagome would keep her head on straight.

She could handle this.

“So,” She began, placing her hardly-eaten sandwich back on the coffee table. “Tell me about Naraku.”

Inuyasha’s jaw stiffened, ember eyes hardening, showing her the deep struggle he dealt with at just the mention of the name. His entire body seemed solid and tense, gaze aimed down at his hands. “His case was one of the toughest I’ve ever worked on. I interrogated him for eight hours straight before he gave us enough for a warrant to search his property, and then another six hours before he confessed and led us to the boy.”

“Boy?”

He hesitated. Not for her. For himself. He didn’t think that even nine years later he’d still be able to see Hakudoshi’s small, lifeless, battered body as clearly as he did the day they’d found him. They were too late. Several days too late. That boy went through hell, and there was nothing Inuyasha could have done to stop it.

“He’s a serial killer, Kagome. His final victim was an eight year old boy. At the end of that investigation, we uncovered twelve corpses of women and children. Polaroid pictures of these victims decorated his walls like fucking trophies. There was one picture, though… She was a little girl that had been missing for seven years. When I brought it up to question him, he fucking smiled and said "It’s about time."" Inuyasha paused, remembering the way Naraku’s repugnant stench burnt his nose, his horrifying smile, emotionless eyes, and careless shrugs. He’d had nightmares for months after the case was closed, his face burned into the backs of the half demon’s eyelids. “We… never recovered her body. Her parent’s had to relive losing their daughter with no closure all over again. And this bastard was able to get out of prison time because he was diagnosed a psychopath."

Kagome couldn't find the right words to say. Nothing seemed suitable for the emotion she could see vividly on Inuyasha's face right now. She couldn't fix it. Only making sure this man was still detained would put his mind to rest. Hopefully. She could see something more trying behind it all. Something that would probably never go away.

She reached out, resting her hand on top of his, his palm always shockingly warm, and without hesitation, he closed his fingers to keep her there. The look in his eyes was fierce. Warning. Protective.

"Kagome, when we say he's dangerous, we mean it. If he's out, if he's who we're up against, I need you to do everything I say, do you understand? I'm going to keep you safe, I swear, but I need your full cooperation.”

"You've got it," She gave his hand a squeeze. "I trust you."

His cellphone rang, a low vibration rumbling in his side pocket, the ringtone damn near close to silent, but loud enough for his ears to pick up perfectly.  He let go of Kagome, standing and walking behind the couches as he fished the device out.

"Yeah?" He answered, pinching the bridge of his nose as he listened to his partner give him the run down and the place to meet. "Again? Fine, I'll be there in ten."

He hung up the phone, shoving it back into his pocket as he went about his nightly routine, pushing the dark curtains and sheets aside to make sure every single window in Kagome's apartment was closed and locked. 

"I have to go. Call me if anything happens, alright?" Inuyasha said, coming out from her bedroom after giving the single window in there a thorough check.

"Is everything okay?" Kagome asked, standing to walk him out, meeting him at the edge of the couch by the entrance.

"Just a domestic call." He ran his fingers through her bangs before he could stop himself, tensing, retracting, and then opening up the door. "Keep it locked. I have my phone on me.”

She did as he said, standing in the entrance to gather whatever bearings she could. Her apartment was silent, minus the small hum from the T.V., the new arrangement of her furniture somehow making the place seem bigger. Emptier. She wanted it to seem like a new start when she’d finished, like no one had come in and touched everything, but it didn’t. Kagome couldn’t forget how her apartment looked that day, and she couldn’t stop thinking about what may have happened had she been home when he’d broken in. It still wasn’t disclosed how he'd done it in the first place. Did he have a key to her front door, or did he magically unlock it? No one could figure it out, and that was one of the main reasons Inuyasha had installed the chain. It would stall the culprit for a moment, hopefully long enough for Kagome to open a window and climb down the fire escape.

None of it was securing, though. As long as their stalker was out there, Kagome couldn’t even manage to feel comfortable in her own skin. She always felt watched. Followed. She never knew when more pictures would appear, if another bouquet of flowers would show up at her home, or if the incoming phone call would end up having his thick, deep, haunting voice on the other line. It was all in her head, but how could it not be? He’d been in her head.

Kagome went into her room, turning on the light on her way in, briefly stopping to look at her mattress. The comforter was pulled down at an angle, none of the ends tucked into the bed frame, the sheets wrinkled slightly, and her pillows were squished and crooked. Just as she’d planted them. She didn’t need questions. She just needed some sleep. Tearing her gaze away, Kagome opened her closet door, picking the balled-up bundle of blankets from the floor and taking them out into the living room, a tail of grey fleece dragging along the floor next to her feet, dropping them on the large couch before she stretched them out to cover the cushions. All lights were turned off in her apartment, the flickering hues from the television illuminating the area she’d been sleeping in since the night of the break in as she crawled underneath the blankets, resting her head on the small throw pillow and turning up the volume.

She was alone. She could see her surroundings if anything were to happen. She could hear constant talking to soothe her from thinking every creek was another attempt at him coming for her. This was the only way she’d been able to get any amount of sleep lately.

Psych Ward

Koga walked behind the guard, and Hojo behind him, their footsteps echoing in the long, narrow chamber they headed down, walls and floors an unnatural shade of white. The doctors, nurses, and guards all swore Naraku had been restrained for the past few weeks. For the first several years, he was a quiet patient. Didn’t ask questions. Took his medication without grief. Only ever talked to a couple other patients in the ward, and those occasions were few and far between. It wasn’t until a couple years ago that he started getting easily agitated. He often talked of getting revenge, bringing his doctor to up his dosage of medication. That didn’t stop Naraku, though. Soon, his eyes started to grow darker, more menacing. He wore a dangerous smile, even at meal time. He wasn’t able to talk to another person without screaming profanities and threatening their lives. A year ago, he almost slashed a guard’s throat with a makeshift, plastic shiv, bringing him to his first of many rounds of restrained isolation. He would be left in a room, his only contact coming to him in doses of medication and food- which he had to be hand fed because he couldn’t always be trusted. After a week, he’d calmed down. He seemed complacent and responsive. He communicated properly, moved slowly, and after months, hadn’t thrown a single tantrum.

Then, he killed a man. An unsuspecting patient. Even licked the blood from his fingers. From then on, he was restrained. Naraku would shout and scream, the leather restraints needing to be replaced several times over due to his consistent and powerful struggle. They’d up his meds, shoot him with sedatives, and enjoy the minimal peace it brought until he came to and started screaming all over again. It was inhumane to constantly keep him locked up, though, so the ward would let him occasionally roam with the necessary supervision. Sometimes he faired nicely. Other times, he ran amuck, kicked and swung, and bellowed that he didn’t belong there over and over until stuck with more sedatives.

“As crazy as this sounds, we have reason to think he may have escaped.” Hojo spoke, speaking loud enough to be heard from the back.

“You’re right, that does sound crazy. He’s watched like a hawk, detective. How the hell would he get out?” The guard said, turning down a hall, the corridor remaining just as narrow.

“Just show us and we’ll be on our way.” Koga ordered. As they turned down another corridor, two guards came into view, sitting in silence on a bench outside of a bulging, metal door. The guard that led them stopped, gripping the small knob to the sliding peephole and sliding the rectangular slab open.

“There.”

Koga looked in, noting the medium-length dark hair, and head that slowly, heavily rolled from one side to the other. He was strapped to a thin hospital bed, mouth parted while saliva dripped from the corners of his lips. The wolf demon looked back at the guard, eyeing him speculatively.

“Open the door, numb nuts. You know this isn’t a qualified visual.”

The guard did as he was told, shaking his head in a manner that said they didn’t know what they were in for. If his meds had worn off, screaming would ensue in a matter of seconds. Still, with the help of one of the other guards, the steel door was opened, and Koga and Hojo proceeded inward with caution.

Things were quiet. Naraku stilled, facing the ceiling with an empty stare. It was almost like his brain had dulled and his body was just hanging out, not quite noticing anything else happening around them. Koga moved closer, harsh scents radiating off of the man, two significantly standing out and, unfortunately, pulling him in. He didn’t know which one to concentrate on, both stenches burning his nostrils and causing his eyes to water. One was sulfuric and slightly musky, but the worst of the two smelled like something had rotted three times over. The baffling part was, it was painfully familiar. How could anything about this man be recognizable? He was restrained to a bed with minimal contact with other beings. It was a scent that was hard to forget, though, and it took him back to walking into Kagome’s ruined apartment.

But, how?

Koga analyzed the lifeless features of Naraku’s face, his deep blue eyes blinking so slowly you’d think time had lagged. He had a mole beneath his left eye, and his lips were chapped and pale. His hair was dark and unwashed, the oil causing it to lay in heavy clumps around his shoulders. Something wasn’t right here. Koga’s gut was screaming that something was so horribly and dangerously wrong.

“Hojo, hand me that picture of Naraku.” Koga said, holding his hand out behind him, not taking his eyes away from the motionless man. A ruffling sound was heard as Hojo revealed a eight-by-ten mugshot from the inner pocket of his coat, slipping the photo into Koga’s hand without a word of question. 

He placed the photo by Naraku’s head, comparing the two faces. The photographed Naraku had red, narrow eyes and no facial blemishes whatsoever. His hair was disgustingly long, matted, and pitch black. Koga dropped the picture to the floor, leaning a couple inches closer to take in the smell of the hospital gown the man was dressed in. It was the source of the pungent stench in Kagome’s home. The smell of his grease-slicked skin radiated the other vile scent.

They'd switched places.

"This isn't him." 

"What?"

Koga turned around, irate, launching at the guard, slamming and pinning him to the painted cinderblock wall, a look of fury blazing through his blue eyes. “This isn’t Naraku!”

“What!?” The guard choked, his neck pressed straight by the wolf demon’s forearm. Hojo stopped the other guards that tried to step in to help, blocking their way and hovering his hand over the gun strapped to his hip as a warning.

“How the hell did he escape while he’s under this vigilant watch you bragged about!?”

“I don’t… I don’t know!”

“You’re a fucking demon, aren’t you!?”

“Y-yes!”

Koga released the guard’s neck, grabbing him by the collar of his uniform and pushing him forcefully toward the restrained man. “Tell me what you smell!”

“He smells… rancid.” The guard was undeniably confused, not knowing what sort of answer the detective was looking for.

“He smells like two different people, you incompetent jackass! They swapped robes! Is that all it takes to get passed you lazy shits!?"

"I don't understand!"

"Well you should understand how much fucking trouble you’re all in!”

"No, this isn't possible!"

"They don't even look all that similar!" Hojo added, stepping inward to take his first thorough look at their unnamed patient. For even him, a human, to be able to tell the difference within a matter of moments, it spoke levels on how insanely blind everyone assigned to watch him must have been. There was no excuse for this level of audacity. 

“Look, I get it! He’s dangerous, but how the hell were we supposed to know!? Most of the time, it’s impossible to get close to the guy, he hides his face whenever someone comes near, our main objective when he's loose is to restrain him, and everyone smells disgusting here so our senses end up dulling for the sake of our own sanity!” One of the officers defended.

“Don’t give me that shit! None of that is a valid excuse for losing a criminal! You’ve had a stand-in taking his place for who knows how long and no one fucking noticed someone was missing? How the fuck does this even happen? Kiss your shields and the credentials of this hellhole goodbye!”

"How 'bout you stop yelling at us so we can call a code-"

“What for? We came because he was a pending suspect in our ongoing investigation. Naraku's been out for, at the very least, four months, so what purpose would it serve? What you need to do is get your captain down here. Now.” Hojo demanded.

Koga shouted some profanities off to the side as he pulled out his phone, dialing out and waiting impatiently until the call was answered.

"Inuyasha. You were right. He escaped."

[mlpdestinyverse]

“Rift”

Summer Rush of all ponies knows how hard it can be to keep a family together. This is especially the case when the one she wants to help feels so far away.

Feat:  Skychaser, Summer Rush

Story and Description Under The Cut!

Summer Rush: -swiftly flaps her wings and lands at the starting line of her backyard’s makeshift race track. Can feel her heart pounding in her chest after finishing eight laps, but focuses on wiping sweat off her forehead while evening out her breathing- Phew….(!) Whoa! -stumbles clumsily to catch a towel that had been thrown to her-

Lightning Dust: -lets out a light laugh, approaching her pre-teen daughter with her stopwatch- Easy, champ, don’t let a towel of all things get ya.

Summer: -giggles and uses it to wipe her forehead- How'd I do?

Lightning: You made your time! -grins and slaps Summer’s back with a wing, bringing an “oof” out of her- Great job, kiddo!

Summer: -frowns- Just my time…? -folds her towel and places it off to the side, her eyebrows knitting in disappointment- Dang...I really thought I did better that time…-blinks when she feels air being blown towards her, and realizes her mother is fanning her with a wing-

Lightning: Whoa now kid, what’s with that negativity? Making your time is better than nothin’! -pulls Summer in close to her side, as she tends to do- Make your time again and I’ll treat you after practice. And if you do better than your time, then we can go to any store you want, my treat. -her eyes crinkle and she begins playfully jabbing Summer’s cheek with a wing feather- Come oooon, what do you say?

Summer: -laughs heartily, feeling her spirits lifting- That sounds nice, mom, thanks. -deeply inhales and exhales, standing up straight and stretching out her wings- Okay…I got this…

-A loud muffled voice suddenly reaches her ears and Summer starts at it. She and Lightning both whip their heads towards their house, the source of the ruckus. To Summer’s concern, she realizes there are….two voices. Two familiar voices. Lightning’s demeanor immediately changes, a sour look crossing her face-

Summer: -glances at her mother tensely- Mom?

Lightning: (!) -quickly changes her expression, shooting a forced smile at Summer- Sunny dear, stay out here. I’ll handle this. -trots to the house-

-A few seconds after Lightning enters, Summer disregards her warning and quickly gallops over. She carefully steps close to the door, and realizes her mother had accidentally left it open a crack. Ducking as not to be seen from the door’s window, she peers into the crack. Just as she had feared, her parents are standing in the middle of the room, with Lightning’s back towards her.  They’re both facing a teenaged colt who’s scowling deeply at them- ‘Skychaser…’

Dumbbell: -appears to be answering a question Lightning had asked- Yeah...I caught him trying to sneak out again.

Lightning: -eye twitches- Ugh...once again wandering off to Celestia knows where, Sky.

Skychaser: -snorts- Your repetitive input is exciting, but I’ll be taking my leave-

Dumbbell: -blocks Sky’s way with his large brown wing, glaring- And just where are you going?

Skychaser: -laughs dryly -Are you serious? If I didn’t tell you the first six times, why the hell would I tell you now? -scoffs and glances back at Lightning. Summer shivers. The warm orange eyes she had once known were now sharp and cold- What, you think I’m scared of mom?That’s cute.

Dumbbell: -glowers- I know you’re up to no good, boy. -purposefully towers over him, in an attempt to intimidate him- Don’t think I don’t know about those bruises you’re hiding underneath that hoodie.

Summer: -suppresses a gasp, quickly examining Sky from her position. If she looks close enough, she can just faintly catch a glimpse of faint purple near his flank, peeking out from under the bottom trim of his hoodie-

Skychaser: -tenses, taking a step back. Hisses, in hopes of derailing- How would you ”know”? If that’s not creepy, I don’t know what is.

Lightning: -eyes burn into him- What are you doing out there?

Skychaser: “Doing”? Whatever I feel like doing. Like it matters-

Dumbbell: It matters if you’re out there getting into fights! Do you want to cause trouble for us that badly?!

Skychaser: Ah of course, family image. Why am I not surprised. Pft, if you’re so worried, then no. I’m NOT a scrapper. Now then- -Dumbbell, again, blocks his way the moment Sky tries to leave-

Lightning: -impatiently taps her hoof- Okay. We’re going to ask again. Where. Are you. Go-

Skychaser: -the pent up frustration and stress within him flares and he growls, whirling his head in Lightning’s direction and shouting- Why do you even fucking CARE where I go?! It’s not like it even MATTERS if I’m here or not! -his glare darts between his parents- It LITERALLY makes NO difference, so STOP pretending-

Summer: Stop!

-Sky freezes in place, his aggression quickly dissipating. Looking behind Lightning he now notices Summer shakily standing within the doorframe, fearfully staring at him-

Summer: -with a quiet voice- Sky...p-please. We don’t have to fight...

-Their gazes meet and for a moment, a flicker of the gentle brother she once knew was there. But just as quickly, mixed emotions flash across Sky's face, most of which she can not read. But before she even has the chance to, Skychaser pulls his hood over his head and quickly trots pass Dumbbell, who doesn’t stop him this time.-

Summer: (!!) SKY, wait!

-Before she can pass her mother, Lightning blocks her with her wing. With her blue eyes focused on Sky, Summer misses the pleased smile just ghosting Lightning’s muzzle as she watches Sky rush out the door-

Lightning: Summer-

Summer: -stares up at her with wide eyes- W-why didn’t you stop him?

Lightning: -frowns- He was going to find a way to leave the moment we left him alone anyway. -sighs deeply, as if to let out any stress- You know he wants nothing to do with us...he just won’t listen.

Summer: But...i-if I could just talk to him-

Lightning: Sunny. I know you’re worried. But I also keep you away from him because I don’t want you exposed to that kind of unhealthy behavior. You don’t need that kind of stress. And besides...there’s just no convincing him.

Summer: But I don’t want to convince him! -stares at her hooves, biting her lip- ...I just want him to know we’re here for him. -feels her eyes mist- ...why are things like this...?

Lightning: -something glitters in her eyes and she gently places her hooves on her daughter’s shoulders- Now now…. it’s not your fault. Sky’s the one being dramatic and ridiculous. Quitting his training, and then being bitter towards you for taking it up instead? -sighs dramatically, shaking her head- He��s become a rebellious teenager. He can’t accept his own shortcomings. That’s all there is to it. And he’s ready to bring anyone down with him to feel better. Some ponies are like that, Summer.

Summer: ...but this isn’t him. -glances back up at her mother, expression reflecting grief- This isn’t who he is. I know it isn’t…

Lightning: -gently envelops Summer with her wings, pulling her into an embrace. While Summer buries her face into her mother’s shoulder, Lightning keeps her calculating gaze on the front door- Jealousy and resentment can really change a pony, Summer...

All will come to light in the next story part (”Two Lies and a Truth”), which takes a step back in the past to see the full picture.

As you know, in his preteen years, Skychaser finally had enough of his emotionally abusive treatment. Not only did he drop his flight training, but he rebelled against his parents in any way he could. Talked back, grew his hair out, got his ears pierced, let his grades slip and snuck out to be by himself whenever he could. "Typical teenage rebellion". Unfortunately, by being out on the street, Sky garnered the attention of some not-so-friendly street-goers who...enjoyed using him as their punching bag from time to time.

His bitterness just grew and grew. Summer noticed the change, but Sky dismissed it as nothing and kept to himself, keeping the harsh truth away from his far-too-innocent little sister.

That is, until almost two years after he quit. Lightning gave up on getting Sky back and began to train Summer instead.

Sky did not respond well to this. But more importantly, Lightning did not respond well to him.

[hellyeahomeland]

“Lies, Amplifiers, Fucking Twitter” | Directed by Tucker Gates

After checking in on Carrie and Franny (poor Franny…), we move to the White House. What stands out here is the muted color scheme and lighting. Despite the light streaming in from behind her, the scene overall is dimly lit. In contrast to everyone’s dark suits, the American flag stands out sharply, the battle for power of the country unfolding in front of it. Keane is seated and leaning back casually, while the committee members stand before her, defiant, almost like soldiers.

The choreography of this scene is reminiscent of what we saw in “Species Jump” between Ivan in Yevgeny. Keane stays seated throughout their pitch for her to resign and she only stands later to demonstrate her authority. In close-up here, she’s stoic, almost regal, the American flag (again) in the background. Did Keane become backdoor heroic without us even realizing it?

As Carrie walks into Saul’s growing ops room, it’s hard to miss his own conspiracy-driven bulletin board. As she takes in the information, the camera frames her in the center. We can feel the weight of her realization. She’s not just involved this year, she’s actually in it--the center--as an “active measure.” 

There is lots to parse here, but this is a nicely assembled board by the art department! We love the irony of Saul co-opting Carrie’s bulletin board tactics while placing her at the center of his, especially after he found her hidden room last year and beamed, knowing she was still whom he always believed she was. (Do you think he assembled this knowing she’d eventually come into his op and this would help her piece the information together better? He even used the same color post-it notes as she did last year!)

These are just incredible shots. Again, Carrie is in the center things, both physically in this shot and thematically. As the focus shifts to the board, her body becomes blurred, and we instead see the array of information, its lines connecting out from her image like a web.

Sara is obsessed with this shot of Wellington and Keane in light of the revealed romantic feelings between them (or at least from Wellington). The placement of the two characters, Keane staring out the window, blurred behind him, is like something out of a period romance. Obsessed. 

And while at first glance it might seem as if she’s turned her back on Wellington, we actually think her body language here reveals just how much she trusts him. When you turn your back on someone like this, in such close proximity to you, you’re indicating a deep, implicit level of trust. It’s a rare moment of vulnerability from her, at one of the most vulnerable moments in her presidency.

The “Q&A” parallels in this episode are pretty blatant, but we’re gonna talk about 'em anyway! First, we have Saul surveying Carrie and Dante, just as he did with Carrie and Brody in season two.

Or what about this shot? That’s the same arrangement as in “Q&A” -- Carrie to the right of the door, Dante to the left, and the barrier behind him. (Sorry guys, but they were making a point.)

On the podcast we talked about Carrie’s failure to crack Dante, and how she assumed the role of both Bad Cop and Good Cop in this episode. Here, she’s playing Bad Cop, and the direction of this scene captures that adversarial nature. Whether it’s positioning them on opposite ends of the table, or above in close-up shot/reverse shot, to heighten the distance and differences between them.

And here is lil’ ol’ David Wellington, on his journey to Fuck Up Everything. A quick note about the set decoration: we think the set decoration is meant not to resemble the Red Room (though of course that is apt for a meeting with the Russian ambassador) but the Roosevelt Room (and, yep, we have another Roosevelt reference. Remember Saul has a portrait in his office too). This was Teddy Roosevelt’s first West Wing office. According to tradition, a portrait of Franklin Roosevelt is meant to hang on the wall during the administration of a Democratic president, and a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt is meant to hang on the wall during a Republican administration. Bill Clinton (whose portrait we also saw… wonder if that possibly foreshadows an impeachment?) was the first President to buck that tradition when he kept Teddy Roosevelt on the wall. Obviously, Keane has opted to do the same.

Back in Mathison land, it’s Good Cop time. Note that they’re not seated anymore and she walks over to him in an attempt to show that they’re on the same side.

Carrie does her best “You’re a good man, Brody” routine with Dante, and for a moment it seems like it might work.

He’s literally backed against a wall when he says he’ll be honest.

After Carrie loses control, Dante walks away and sits back down, and the space between them is again restored. Note that when he sits back down, he’s seated in her former seat. He literally turns the tables on her. (They were being super literal this episode, y’all.) 

This is the first of four aerial shots of Carrie in this episode and it comes right after her moment of vulnerability in the interrogation room with Dante. There, she admits, “I know how it happens, how things derail. You think, ‘No, I can manage this.’ But, step by step, somehow, you end up very far from where you ever wanted to be.” This aerial shot, then, coming on the heels of that admission, renders Carrie a small figure in a sea of black. Thematically, like most birds eye views, it asks us to look at the big picture. Where is Carrie now? And where does she want to be?

We just love this scene because Paley is literally stoking the flames. Like we said. Literal af. 

OK OK OK Sara has to talk about this moment very quickly. As Carrie enters Maggie’s house, she shuts the door a little too loudly, and this is her wincing at the loud sound (we’ve all been there). I don’t know if this was scripted or improvised but can Claire Danes get an Emmy ASAP? Thanks in advance.

Here’s another shot from above. So we have one of Carrie exiting Saul’s op room (work), and now one in Maggie’s house (home), so we can observe the person (or people?) she is in these two environments. One of the biggest themes of this season--and for the last few actually--for Carrie is her struggle to reconcile these two halves of herself: her work self and her mother self. Are they even compatible? Again, where is Carrie now? And where does she want to be? 

The way Carrie’s denial of the situation Maggie lays out before her manifests as her actually shutting her eyes is devastating. If she can’t see it, is it really happening?

And now we’ve got another aerial shot, this time of Carrie leaving Maggie’s house (where her mother self resides). This crane shot is actually pretty great, especially since it leads to this…

The unmitigated rage on display as she exits the world that self inhabits is a thing to behold. We’ve all been there, Carrie.

This shot reminds us of the end of “Long Time Coming,” as Carrie drives away from Dar’s house after learning of Saul’s betrayal. The major difference of course being that she’s not leaving her work self behind now--she is driving toward it, her choice clear.

WJLTP

WJLPT, part II. Yevgeny really does have a thing about casual posture, doesn’t he? He must be ~one cool guy.

The choreography here is very similar in style to what happened to McClendon, which is ironic of course because that’s kinda what started all this. We’re also going to invoke “Q&A” again and note that both Dante and Brody had stuff happen to their hands. (Sara cannot believe that Carrie’s Bad Cop is “let’s poison him!” Gail thinks it’s funny that Carrie’s vagina is a death trap. Sara would like to point out that Dante has not died yet.)

This is the last aerial shot of Carrie this episode, this time showing her work self. 

In case you haven’t been keeping track, we got four aerial shots of Carrie after she admits she’s far from where she ever wanted to be:

Departing work, on the way to home

At home

Departing home, on the way to work

At work

Each reveals something unique about these two halves, these two selves Carrie is harboring inside of her, and how she transitions from one to the other. Whether it’s sneaking meds to appear less manic in front of her family; getting in an actual physical altercation with her sister; yelling without reservation after leaving home; or tending to a man she poisoned but pretended she hadn’t, in her relentless search for the truth, it’s clear the toll this split is having on her. Eventually she’ll either have to pick a side, or she’ll have to reconcile these parts of herself into something whole. 

This is such a great shot, and it reminds us of Saul’s scenes in “The Choice,” calling Carrie and Mira, after the Langley bomb had gone off. It’s only a metaphorical bomb here, but the result is the same. He’s shown smaller in frame, and his tone is soft, more resigned.

The episode’s final moments are extremely interesting. As Carrie is pushed out of the ER, she turns around and observes the destruction in her wake.

It wasn’t even a year ago she was in almost this same position with Quinn, and we think her expression above is one of the worst kind of deja vu. This episode is all about Carrie taking stock of where she is, who she is, and what she’s doing. It’s about her both accepting she went down a much different, much darker path than she’d ever envisioned, and how that’s all wrapped up in her personal and professional failings, on bright display for us throughout the entire episode (leaving a distraught Franny at school, being at the center of a conspiracy she didn’t detect sooner, failing to crack Dante, leaving her daughter behind, and having her last-ditch effort to crack Dante backfire spectacularly).

For a second, she’s in sharp, brilliant focus. Yes, this is where Carrie is now. And this is who she is.

Then she turns, her face obscured, and she’s blurred again.

[shinsousbedroom]

Replay

It’s a particular kind of agony that leaves Kazuya tied up naked to a chair in the middle of his living room, staring at himself playing baseball on TV while he’s sitting on a vibrator.

The agonizing part isn’t the rope or the vibes. It’s seeing his own face.

Or; Kazuya and Eijun stumble into a brand new kink in the middle of trying out another.

On AO3.

Kazuya doesn’t know how long it’s been when Eijun slips into the living room, pausing behind him with a considering hum. Eijun rakes his nails lightly across his bare shoulders, letting his fingers twine into the top of Kazuya’s hair, then jerks it back with a yearning grip.

“How’s it going, captain?” Eijun asks with a sarcasm he’s borrowed from Kazuya, eyes meeting his upside down.

The space around them is pristine and well-decorated—family photos on display, the tables and floors all dusted and clean, an outrageously nice TV mounted to the wall. There’s even a color scheme to the room, nothing like the mishmash Eijun originally wanted based on their teams’ colors. Soft, homey, and contemporary; the kind of classic place that gets featured in magazines about the lofty tastes of the rich and famous.

And then there’s Kazuya, sitting in the middle of it all, naked and tied up in pretty purple ropes to an office chair. Anomalous decor waiting patiently for Eijun’s ruin.

Kazuya can’t quite remember how they tripped into toys, then restraint, then BDSM. Something to do with him stumbling into Eijun’s poorly hidden box of dildos in university, back before they started dating. A near decade before they got married.

The neglect bit of it is relatively new, though. Kazuya has been trying very, very hard not to read into how much he likes the odd taste of an Eijun who putters around the house ignoring him, as if he could ever have zero desire to chase after Kazuya. Just the thought of it makes him desperate for Eijun’s attention and hands and dick, goddammit.

Kazuya knows he shouldn’t psychoanalyze it, some things in life don’t have reasons, but does it anyway.

But because Eijun knows he thinks like that, Eijun can’t help but undermine the actual neglect part out of concern. The minute he’s meant to check in on Kazuya’s isolation to tease him more, his earnest concern in making sure Kazuya is still enjoying himself blares out like a foghorn cutting through Kazuya’s goal of reaching his perfect, spacey sex haze.

Eijun tugs again, a mild reprimand for a wandering mind. There’s a smear of some sort of grease at the edge of Eijun’s eyebrow, but the rope catches Kazuya’s wrist when he tries to lift a hand to rub it off with his thumb. Somehow, he’s forgotten his hands are tied together at the small of his back, both too present in his own body and a world away from it. From the impish grin on his face, Eijun catches the failure.

“Is it time for you to fuck me yet?” Kazuya asks, trying to press his head further into the grip Eijun still has in his hair.

Instead of answering, Eijun lets go and kneels behind the chair, running a gentle finger over the area where the rope digs into his wrists, then kissing each fingertip. He catches a scratch of stubble on Eijun’s chin as he pulls away, crawling around the chair to sit in front of him cross-legged.

“No,” Eijun responds point blank, massaging Kazuya’s calves and checking the rope around his ankles. “And you call me impatient. Don’t I always have to wait on you to catch for me?”

“In case it’s escaped your attention, we’re not exactly playing baseball right now.”

Eijun rests his cheek against the inside of Kazuya’s thigh. His blinks are slow and lazy as he looks up with a disappointed frown, molten irises shining bright. As if he really could spend forever winding Kazuya up and dragging him back down from a high.

“That is not what I meant, Miyuki Kazuya. You’re being unreasonable.” Eijun nips at the thin skin of his knee. Kazuya barely keeps his knee from bashing into Eijun’s nose from a shock of desire. His entire body feels hypersensitive, attuned to every change in temperature and airflow while he has nothing else to do but feel. With every movement, his skin drags a stutter against the leather of the chair, sweat and lube mixed unevenly across his thighs and back, so as to catch and glide in turn.

“You’re unreasonable. You haven’t used the vibrator once, so far. It’s there, in my ass, ready for you,” Kazuya says, voice hoarse.

“So demanding,” Eijun grumbles into his skin, then picks himself up with a heave. “I know because I put it there, so I’ll use it exactly when I want to and not a second sooner.”

Eijun’s sudden distance is cold despite the heat in their house cranked up to keep them warm and drowsy. Whatever he’s been up to to keep from checking in on Kazuya too soon is working. Their last few attempts at denial had been wrecked by someone’s enthusiasm. But in front of Kazuya, it’s still too easy to see the sheen across Eijun’s brow, the way he can’t stop biting and licking his own lips. One of his heels is bouncing on the floor, the only way he can release all the energy keyed up inside of him right now.

“But you do want to.” Kazuya feels so powerful right now, pitching forward in the chair as much as the rope will let him. It’s not just the blood pounding rabbit-quick through his body that’s making him hot, but the way Eijun is struggling to maintain his cool against Kazuya’s own bratty, undermining hand. From the tempting flush of Kazuya’s cheeks to his cock filling out against his stomach, legs spread wide in invitation, getting to see his unrestrained want even as he’s tied tight just for Eijun—Kazuya must be a beautiful sight.

…So maybe Kazuya’s grasp on willpower is also nonexistent in the face of Sawamura Eijun. He literally asked for Eijun to make him wait. They are both really bad at sticking to a theme.

Eijun crosses his arms over his chest, and Kazuya loses a moment to admiring his biceps, out and armed in his casual tank top and grey sweats. “You are being way too snarky. You’re supposed to be unthinking mush for me now. Mush! If your brain is stuck running 24/7, at least set it on showing your husband gratitude. Completely unacceptable!”

He steps over to a little side table where the vibrator’s remote sits next to the TV’s. He stares at the two for a second before grabbing the latter, much to Kazuya’s relieved disappointment.

"Eijun.”

“Nope! If the silence is keying you up instead of blissing you out, you can empty your head with whatever’s on TV. Call me when you’ve learned your lesson and you’re ready to behave.” He flicks on a random channel, safe in the knowledge Kazuya hates watching TV and will only fidget more from the stimulation, then leaves before Kazuya gathers his thoughts enough to protest.

It does its job, for a while. Kazuya’s eyes go glassy at the colors and sounds, but he’s already overwhelmed by his own body when he closes his eyes to shut it out.

The commercials clear past a blur of cars, snacks, and local lawyers. And the programming starts back up again. Cutting through the silence of the room is a rowdy crowd and a set of announcers saying his name.

It’s baseball. Of course it would be goddamn baseball, in this household.

And then, with the sinking horror of watching a disaster unfold, there Kazuya is, front and center on the TV in his last game of the season.

He hates watching himself on the diamond. He can easily do it to analyze his baseball, but when he’s not focused on his form or a call or whatever the hell that throw was to third, it’s agonizing to see how obsessive the cameras are about following him between each play. He cringes at all the speculation about his future. And he sure as hell hates every time the cameras pan out to his fans holding signs asking him to marry them or—heaven forbid—something raunchier that gets blurred out when it airs.

Kazuya huffs, falling slowly out of the headspace he was just reaching, the heavy weight returning to his limbs the more his mind latches onto his own face splashed across the screen.

“And he’s out! Miyuki tags the runner in the nick of time—”

“Eijun!” he calls out, resigned at derailing the very nice night they’ve been having so far.

After a mildly concerning metallic crash, Eijun comes skidding around the corner from the kitchen. “That was fast. What’s wrong?”

Kazuya turns towards the TV with a pout.

Eijun takes a moment to parse out the fact that Kazuya’s old game is running despite it being postseason and there are plenty of other games to air with more relevancy right now, and laughs at the putout expression on Kazuya’s face. “Is that all?”

“It’s annoying.” He’s fidgety now, self-conscious in a way that’s turned his blush more towards embarrassment than lust. He can suddenly feel the rope, the bite of it distracting instead of just a soothing pressure, his chair creaking as he shifts.

Eijun leans over the back, arms smoothing down Kazuya’s chest to link together on his stomach, and presses a kiss to his hairline. The pressure of his body settles him. Eijun settles him. “You call me annoying twice a day. Get over yourself, you giant baby.” Tinny cheering hollers from the TV as someone steals a base. Above him, an impish grin lights up Eijun’s face. “What if I tell you what I see?”

Kazuya closes his eyes, relaxing into Eijun’s presence. “What do you mean?”

Eijun breaks away abruptly, Kazuya’s head dipping for a moment before he catches himself. By then, Eijun’s swung around to his front, looming over him larger than life as ever with a knee placed between Kazuya’s thighs, leaning in to cage in Kazuya’s chest and face. The chair is literally shaking from Eijun’s anticipation.

“I wanna tell you exactly what I see on screen when I see you.” Eijun’s voice dips low, mouth brushing Kazuya’s without a real kiss and building a fire back in his gut. “I’ll take you out of the rope—but I want you to stay in this chair like a good husband while I describe every detail to you and make that vibrator earn its worth. Think you can do that? Be patient a little longer? It’s always rewarding when I am for you. Let me show you now.”

Kazuya knows he could say no and Eijun wouldn’t be disappointed. If anything, he’d be ecstatic about healthy communication, it’s very important, Miyuki Kazuya! I love that you trust me like that, always, you make me so proud!

But that’s not the trust he wants to indulge in tonight. His dick is still hard and his husband’s really hot, okay? Just seeing him in all his lean muscle and eagerness is an argument that wins over Kazuya’s libido 90% of the time. It’s not a drive he wants to fight against, most days.

“Go on,” Kazuya says, surging up to steal a quick kiss.

The breaking joy on Eijun’s face already makes his impending agony worth it as he shoots off behind him to untie the rope, massaging out his arms again as he places each one onto the rests. “Stay,” he tells each hand as he carefully curls every finger around the handles.

He kneels down and flicks a glance back to the screen to catch a close up of Kazuya crouched behind home plate.

“Your thighs are so beautiful,” he says kneeling down between them, tugging the rope free. Eijun looks up, raking his nails up Kazuya’s thighs until his arms are laying down twin heavy lines of heat, pressing gingerly into the tender flesh of his waist. He leans forward so he can bat his eyelashes while his mouth is right there next to his dick, the fucker. “The way your uniform stretches across them when you’re crouched behind the plate—I don’t know how anyone can focus on the pitch when you’re right there.” Kazuya’s eyes flutter as Eijun presses a gentle kiss to the head of his cock, refusing to give him anything more than a tease. “I should tell you that more, how obsessed I am with your thighs.”

“If you love them so much, why don’t you marry them?” Kazuya bites out. It’s not the most inspired. Kazuya is distracted.

Eijun takes the question seriously, because of course he does. “I’ll marry you as many times as you’ll let me.”

“You’ll get a divorce instead if you don’t do something with that vibrator soon.”

Eijin narrows his eyes, then stomps over to the remote, swipes it off the table, and turns the vibrator on high , sending a shockwave through his body. When Kazuya’s vision clears from the flood, it’s settled down to a low, comfortable rumble, keeping him from relaxing while also making him boneless.

“You asked for mean Eijun, and mean Eijun has arrived!”

His dick is beginning to leak, especially at seeing how Eijun’s pants are tenting, too. “I’m noticing,” Kazuya says dryly.

Eijun looks down at the little remote in his hand and without a second thought, changes the pattern.

The switch drags a whine out of Kazuya, limbs spasming in response to the unexpected buzz inside of him. It’s a rhythm that steadily builds to a high intensity before dropping off abruptly, just when satisfaction might have been found. Eijun knows the way this particularly winds him up, which either bodes very, very well for Kazuya, or very, very poorly.

“It’s hard to focus on baseball, sometimes, when you radiate that stupid smug aura from striking out a batter. You make that same face in bed, y’know. In the sex chair, too,” he says, stepping forward enough to poke a divot into the chair’s leather padding by Kazuya’s shoulder. It spins lightly. Eijun swings him back around, jolting the vibrator inside of him. “But back to your thighs. They’re just right there. Constantly.”

“What do you expect, I can’t just take them off,” Kazuya says through reedy breaths.

Eijun mercilessly notches the dial up a few levels stronger.

He yelps at the wave of pressure that sweeps through his bones, only to recede with no final push towards a break. When his vision clears and he can feel the vibrator settle back onto a low hum, he glares up at Eijun’s shit-eating grin.

“Wait your turn, Miyuki Kazuya. This is still my night to monologue.” He pulls back and casually rests his arm against the back of the chair. The remote is dangling in his hand, right next to Kazuya’s face. “You could stand to be more patient, y’know.”

“That’s rich, coming from—“

Eijun grabs a fistful of hair at the back of his head and yanks hard. “What did I just tell you?”

“Tell me again,” he gasps.

“What is with this bratty behavior!” Eijun releases his grip and runs a soothing hand over Kazuya’s hair, then cups Kazuya’s jawline, moving aside to direct their attentions back to the screen.

Kazuya cringes at the camera lingering on him in the dugout, face burning. He’s just drinking an Aquarius. There are so many other people they could be showing, players actually on the field.

Eijun presses a hand to the base of Kazuya’s neck. When he swallows, Kazuya feels the hint of a promise in the pressure of each fingertip. “It’s stupid, the way you think the camera should be focused on the game. You think they’d waste time focusing on you if that wasn’t exactly what everyone watching on TV wanted to see? You’re the draw, Kazuya.

“No one else gets to think about you the way I do, though. They can look at you chugging your water or unbuckling your chest plate and fantasize, but I can watch and make a promise. Next time I see you with a water bottle, it’ll take everything I’ve got not to rip it out of your hands and feed my fingers into your mouth instead. If you think you get dirty sliding home, wait until I shove you onto the floor of the dugout. I’m gonna drag that annoying sly look off your face until you can’t even think of back talking, just stuck with overwhelming pleasure because of me.”

Eijun’s voice is raspy, crackling with fire as his nose brushes Kazuya’s ear, nibbling tiny bites to the shell between his words. “And shit, all the baseball gear? It drives me mad, how it’s your own kind of wall against anyone getting to you. You look so distant swamped in it all during a game. I wanna strip it off piece by piece and lavish each part of you below it like you deserve. I’ll start with that helmet. It’s a shame how it blocks your pretty face, but everytime it comes off, god, I wanna grab your hair and wipe every bead of sweat off your face and replace it all with come—

“That’s why I love watching your games, over and over again. Every time you show up on screen, it’s a reminder of what we get to do later.”

Eijun’s eyes flip between the screen and Kazuya, who is very, very still. And very, very quiet.

“And that’s a home run, right there! What a season for his RBI already—”

“You like me watching you like this,” Eijun says, wonder in his voice. He walks up to the TV, crossing his arms, letting a leg kick out as he tilts his head at the screen.

Kazuya drinks in the pose. The flickering lights of the screen make a hazy glow around his silhouette, the wild hair and comfy sweats, arms bare for him. He wants Eijun to turn around, to see the calculation in his head as he parses through the puzzle in front of him until he can take on the entire challenge of it with ease.

There’s something special about his observations to Kazuya, the way he pulls apart tape. Knowing the analysis doesn’t come naturally and that he learned it for the game—learned it from him. That skill was earned. And then it kickstarted a surprisingly adept analytic side of Eijun that’s opened up a world of possibility.

Like now.

Eijun spins on his heels, pacing towards Kazuya, pinching at his own lips. Eijun could stand to let Kazuya have a taste. He doesn’t care if it's of his fingers or his mouth, Kazuya is parched for anything and everything. His hisses out from between his teeth, the sweep of his eyes following Eijun’s hands, a desperate plea for Eijun to bend down just to touch.

Eijun hovers above Kazuya, refusing just that, not saying a word. His shallow breaths match Kazuya’s own, drinking his husband in. Kazuya does not reach out. It is the hardest thing he’s ever done, he swears, but he just clutches the armrests harder until his knuckles are white.

“Hey, Kazuya,” he finally says, low and gravelly. On any other night, Kazuya would shove Eijun down to his knees and feed him his cock the minute he heard that tone, balanced on the edge of breaking. He would ruin Eijun’s throat, fucking it until his voice was gone and every spoken word after served as a reminder of Eijun sucking so prettily on Kazuya’s cock.

But that’s for later. Kazuya’s being good for his husband right now.

Well, sort of.

Eijun trails a single finger down and around Kazuya’s brow, pulling down past his neck and chest, flicking his nipple on the way to his stomach. “Kazuya, if you like me watching you play baseball on TV, what do you think you’d do if I recorded you like this for me?” he says, golden eyes meeting Kazuya’s squarely. He turns off the vibrator, and the feeling of silence hollows Kazuya into a creature of pure need.

Oh, fuck.

Eijun’s pupils are blown, a maniacal grin settling onto his face at Kazuya’s frozen form. Eijun pokes Kazuya’s side and he takes a sharp breath in, having momentarily forgotten how. “I’ll sit you in front of the TV and let it play, so you can see how desperate you get for me. You can see the way your face goes soft just for me, so pliant when I touch you. You don’t believe you can be like this, can you? Always have a retort for everything, such a needling terror. But you’re so good to me, Kazuya. You open up just for me.”

And finally, finally Eijun perches a knee again on the seat between his legs, sinking his fingers into the base of Kazuya’s abs, a single brush against his cock lightning through his bones. He kneads the soft skin there, covered in wiry hair, not bothering to avoid the random touches against his cock as precome dribbles from the tip.

“I think I’d like to see you like this, too, on the screen,” he says, excitement bubbling free. “I love watching you no matter what, but I could break you down in a completely new way like this. The calls you make with your whimpers. Your form, head thrown back and gagging for me. God, and your thighs, spread out for me and not just teasing from behind the plate.” His hand moves lower, scraping a line down the inside of Kazuya’s thigh as he speaks.

“Think you'd wanna review that tape with me sometime?” He clicks a button on the remote Kazuya had forgotten about. Kazuya keels forward.

His head hits Eijun’s chest. His hands are wrapped in his tank top with a grip he can’t release. He can’t tell what the pattern or the pulse is, but whatever it is is good. There’s a clatter to the ground as Eijun drops the remote to steady his husband and maneuver him out of the chair.

Eijun reverses their places, Kazuya sitting on his lap in the chair, legs folded around Eijun’s thighs, eyes squeezing tight as he presses as much of his body into Eijun as he can. He basks in the soft cotton of his husband’s sweatpants, the ribbed lines of his tank scratching against his wired skin.

“Do you want the video to show our whole bodies in frame so you can see how you jerk with pleasure while I’m huddled between your legs and desperate to make you come?” Eijun skims a hand back to the vibrator and presses against it, then pries it out slowly, but not completely. The slide of it is agonizing. Eijun brushes it in circles, each pass knocking him higher and higher. Eijun wraps his other arm around Kazuya’s back, a firm hold keeping them close, their damp skin sliding against each other.

“Or maybe you want a closer shot, to remember the details. How slick your skin gets from the sweat and the spit. See my swollen mouth running up and down your bruising thighs, leaving my marks across your body. My fingers sinking into you, my cock splitting you wide.”

Eijun picks them both up just enough to draw down his sweats and free his dick. He slathers on a lube from the pump they keep duct taped to the back of the chair, and wraps a hand around them both. Even slicked up, his calluses scrape a fever deeper into Kazuya. “Or maybe it’s the recording more than the watching that’ll get you. You wanna put on a show for me?”

Distantly, Kazuya can hear himself keen into Eijun’s neck and spill over them, covering Eijun’s hand.

“Keep going, keep going,” Kazuya chants when Eijun falters, about to take back his hand. His voice is so weak, but it’s right in Eijun’s ear. His husband shudders—Kazuya has taken advantage of how sensitive those ears are more than a time or two—and double downs on his dirty talk and his twisting wrist.

“It would wind me up seeing you on tape when you're gone for your away games and I’m not. I could cry just thinking about how frustrated I’d feel watching you stroke yourself on camera for me where I can’t help.” Kazuya is shaking from overstimulation, world narrowed down to his dick and Eijun’s voice and hand wrapping around him. “Sinking down on a dildo when I’m not around to satisfy you, don’t even have you on the phone to help you through it. Jealous of myself holding you, a different me running my hands all over you and driving my cock into you—”

Eijun squeezes hard, coming with a groan. He lets go and grabs at Kazuya’s waist as they pant into each other. Kazuya’s fingers claw into Eijun’s shoulder and he urgently begs, “Eijun, Eijun.”

“Shit,” Eijun mutters, scrambling to pull out the vibrator, still buzzing a madness into Kazuya. Eijun’s hand is coated with come, lube and sweat still smeared thick across Kazuya’s ass. His fingers keep slipping against the vibrator, driving it back in until Kazuya’s whole body feels like static and his limbs lose their strength. It’s all he can do to keep his mind working at all, honeyed thoughts oozing through a numb haze.

Kazuya blinks and they’re on the couch. He’s laying facedown into Eijun’s chest, half on him, half under the back cushion. The vibrator is out of him, and Kazuya toys with the idea of making Eijun get him some sort of plug instead to soothe the weird emptiness.

Eh. He’d rather Eijun hold him like this, right now.

The TV is still on.

“What a comeback for the Giants,” the two announcers say, lively in their recap, “knocking the Swallows off their perch there at the end. After spending most of that game firmly in the lead, not even the catching and hitting talents of Miyuki Kazuya kept the Swallows ahead of the flock—”

The screen blinks off, and suddenly the only sound in the room is their heavy breathing.

Eijun shoves one arm beneath Kazuya and wraps the other over him, leaning him forward into his chest, “That was a surprise.”

“We might need to revisit that character sheet you made. Make a new one,” Kazuya mumbled into Eijun’s shoulder.

“Gonna have to make a new one anyway. Kuramochi ripped it up, remember?”

Kazuya snorts, recalling the horrified face Kuramochi had made when he accidentally found Eijun’s notes and research on trying to figure out how to pretend to sexually ignore his husband. For the things Eijun tries just for Kazuya, he always makes a character in his head and on an honest to god sheet of paper to play out, though half of them get tossed out pretty quickly. Honestly, it’s a miracle Eijun gets asked to do as many commercial sponsorships as he does. He’s a riot trying to act, even if he’s just acting as himself.

“I’m not the only one completely failing to play their role, here, Kazuya.”

Kazuya snorts. Somewhere between the immediate stench of sex, and whatever it is about Eijun that signals home to his animal brain, he finally realizes the house smells good. Like something’s baking.

He sniffs the air twice, trying to place it.

Eijun looks on, bashful and arrogant at once. “I made dessert.”

“That’s what kept you occupied earlier. What kind?” he asks suspiciously.

“Lemon bars. Extra sour. No sugar on top,” he said, nose wrinkling in judgement.

Kazuya lets his head slap back down into Eijun with a smirk. “I don’t think those will smear as easily across my nipples as the dark chocolate pudding did.”

Eijun pinches his waist. “That is not why I made them. These are meant to go in our mouths.”

“Technically so was the pudding. And it did. Eventually.”

Eijun sputtered and ducked his head to press his own face into the crook of Kazuya’s neck. “It’s annoying how much I love you.”

Kazuya can feel the smile pressed into his skin. “I love you, too, Eijun.”