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aprilsrant · 4 years

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Liquid Luck and its wonders | Harry Potter x Ravenclaw!Fem!Reader.

SUMMARY: Harry meets a shy girl from Ravenclaw House. After taking a liking to her, he tries to catch her attention.

WORD COUNT: 1,693.

WARNINGS: none, I think.

REQUEST: Hi! Um I'd like to request a Harry Potter x Ravenclaw!reader where she's pretty shy and Harry has a major crush on her so he's always trying to catch her attention in any way he can? Thank you!

A/N: English is not my first language, there could be mistakes here! If you enjoyed this, like, comment or reblog, whatever you want!

This took a little longer than I expected, but I wrote something and didn’t like it so I had to do it all over again and here it is! I love Harry so I’m really happy someone requested a fic for him because he’s so underrated! Hope you enjoy it!

MASTERLIST. / WORK IN PROGRESS.

Gif below is not mine.

The fake Galleon felt heavier than usual in her hands, the date of their last meeting —the fact unknown to any of them— still engraved in it, gleaming from different angles depending on how the sunlight would shine through the large windows. Not a single day would pass without (Y/N) looking at it from time to time, expecting to see the numbers change, waiting for the return of Dumbledore’s Army.

Once more, reality didn’t reach her wishes.

A sigh left her mouth while she climbed down from the windowsill and abandoned her dorm, Rowena Ravenclaw’s statue watching her back as the sixth year girl started to walk towards the Great Hall, stomach rumbling and crying out desperately for breakfast.

She sat down next to Luna Lovegood, her closest friend, and listened to her comments on Nargles, —“mischievous they are”, she said in a dreamy voice whilst buttering her toast—. (Y/N) knew a lot about the creatures that only Luna and her father believed in after years of being by her side, only separating for lessons and to sleep because of her being a year older than the silver haired girl, although you could find (Y/N) in her friend’s dorm more times than you could encounter Hermione Granger in the Library, laying down on the bed and staring at the canopy filled with little stars that would shine whenever Luna touched them with her wand. (Y/N) had done something similar with hers, but with a glowing full moon instead.

The stars and the moon were never far from each other and neither were them.

Zoning out from her housemates chattering around her, her eyes diverted to the Gryffindor table, quickly finding the remarkable Golden Trio talking to each other. Hermione seemed frustrated, Ron had a delighted expression on his face while the last member had been discussing with the only girl in the group.

Her heart jumped at the thought of them arguing about whether or not Harry would teach the D.A again, just like last year. But why would Hermione be upset then when she was the one who initiated the whole thing? The realisation that they were discussing other matters saddened her. Unconsciously, her fingers reached for the golden coin inside her rob’s pocket.

Glancing back at the plate in front of her, (Y/N) missed Harry waving his hand at her, closing his mouth about to greet her when he noticed the Ravenclaw was no longer looking at them.

Although Harry and (Y/N) were both sixth years and shared many classes, they hadn’t seen each other as much as the first would have liked because of the never ending assignments and most of their free periods spent in the Library.

On the day of tryouts for the Gryffindor Quidditch Team, this changed. The girl and Luna had been relaxing near the Quidditch Pitch, resting on top of the grass while the first one read a book and her friend doodled faces on a notebook (Y/N) had gotten her as a birthday present alongside a new set of charcoal crayons, when a large group of people gather around the Pitch.

Leaving the book by her side, (Y/N) began to watch just as a first year crashed into one of the goalposts. Her right hand flew quickly to cover her mouth, a loud laugh trying to escape from her throat. But the laugh disappeared and a tight knot took its place upon seeing the amount of girls trying to catch Harry’s attention, and maybe more.

Luna giggled, her hand still moving around the paper but her bright, blue eyes were flashing with realisation and a funny tingle.

“You like him, don’t you?,” she asked without needing much of an answer.

(Y/N) shocked her head, eyes moving between Luna and the Quidditch Pitch. To her relief, Harry had, apparently, dismissed the girls and they were now sitting on the stands.

But nothing could escape Luna, and most certainly not something related directly to her best friend.

“He fancies you too,” the girl commented casually, like it wasn’t what (Y/N) had yearned to hear since their third year, “you should see how much he stares at you. I was concerned at first, maybe he’d noticed you’ve become infested with Nargles and I hadn’t, but… but then I realised he liked you because I remembered seeing the look on his face.”

“From where?,” (Y/N) questioned softly, still trying to process the fact that Harry Potter liked her. It’s not like she didn’t trust Luna’s judgement —even if people believed she was out of her mind, the girl was surprisingly good for this kind of thing—, but her own insecurities clouded her mind. Did he really fancy her? And if he did, what was so special about her that had captivated Harry’s interest when so many others were throwing themselves at him?

“My dad had the same expression whenever he looked at my mum.” A small smile grew on her face while (Y/N)’s hand travelled to grab one of Luna’s, the one resting on top of the notebook, and squeezed it lightly and reassuringly. “I can still see it whenever he mentions her.”

After the conversation she had with Luna, (Y/N) started to notice more of Harry’s efforts to talk to her while walking to class; after a particular rough lesson of Defense Against the Dark Arts with Snape; sharing hushed instructions (different to the ones in their book but incredibly helpful) every time he pretended to look for more ingredients and walked right behind her during Potions.

Their short exchanges turned quickly into long conversations and shared afternoons, both of the teenagers trying to forget, maybe even ignore for a little amount of time, how dark and obscure was the Wizarding World becoming.

Harry didn’t confess his feelings, —those increasing each time she smiled, or laughed, or gazed at him while rays of sunshine illuminated her skin, making her look even more endearing than usual—, until one particular afternoon.

After succeeding on his mission, —to retrieve an important memory concerning Voldemort from Professor Slughorn that he had altered—, something coming from the interior of his body, or mind, he didn’t know, screaming at him to go to the kitchens. Logically, if a potion that induces luck to the drinker tells you to walk towards a particular destination, then that’s exactly what you do.

The boy wasn’t sure about what could possibly be waiting for him in the kitchens, but after seeing her sitting in one of the large tables across the room, coincidentally the replica of the one she’s used to have breakfast and dinner, he knew the reason the potion had wanted him there.

He took a seat next to her before greeting the house-elves, who were already bringing him trays full of pastries, and struggled to shake the dizziness out of his head —Harry couldn’t figure out if it came from the potion running off, the excitement of finally achieving the memory that would take him one step further to understand Voldemort and his plan, or the nerves that’d always attacked him whenever (Y/N) was near—.

“Hi, Harry,” she murmured softly without looking him in the eyes and grabbing a cookie from the plate in front of her, “what brings you here?”

What brought him to the kitchens and face the girl he had a crush on? Felix Felicis, of course. For what had the potion made him go there? He didn’t want to admit it, Harry didn’t want to confess the urge he had to kiss her whenever she would laugh at one of his jokes, even when they were terrible; he didn’t want to talk about how much he cared for her and how that was the exact same reason why he had taken so long to, first, accept his feelings and to even think about telling her about them. (Y/N) didn’t deserve to be thrown into a war he wasn’t sure he could win. And he didn’t deserve her. She would have to find another person to tease, to laugh with, to confide her problems and desires.

However, the potion hadn’t left his system yet, not entirely at least and enough to make a difference in (Y/N) and Harry’s friendship.

“I-I think I have feelings for you,” the words escaping his mouth before he could stop them, “and they are kind of weird because every time you walk in, or you are close to me, like right now, I don’t know how to act around you.”

No reaction came out of her, not even a slap, which he was kind of preparing for. (Y/N) stood motionless beside him, with the half of her cookie still in her hand, rests of chocolate and crumbs around her mouth.

“I’m sorry if I ruined our friendship, but I just,” he said before releasing a shaky breath,” I needed to tell you that I fancy you and that you are absolutely amazing.”

Swallowing and licking her lips, missing for a few inches the bit of chocolate scattered on them, (Y/N) shifted her position. Her chest was now facing Harry completely, her left leg below her body, giving the impression that she was taller than him, while the other one supported her weight. One of the girl’s hands had barely touched Harry’s jaw when she kissed the corner of his mouth.

“What took you so long?”

Harry could no longer see the chocolate and the crumbs, instead, he was capable of tasting them the second their lips met, hesitant at first but more confident the second time they did.

Whispers coming from the house-elves, —who had stopped, for once, doing their work and were now staring at them, many with tears in their big eyes—, made (Y/N) and Harry to separate from each other, even if it was the last thing they wanted.

“Maybe we should leave,” the Ravenclaw suggested softly in his ear.

Nodding eagerly, Harry took her hand and they both walked out of the kitchens, a grin on each of their faces.

general taglist: @gcdric @lilac-wrists

If you want to be add to the general taglist or to the taglist for a specific character, let me know!

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makeste · 4 years

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I read the meta you reposted about anyone being able to become a hero, and I would just like to give some thoughts. I agree it is wrong to think in terms of good vs bad victims and measure everyone as the same. Just because Shoto never killed anyone in response to his abuse and Toya did doesn't mean that Toya was always an evil person looking for an excuse to break bad. Different people break from different things.

these are all good, well-reasoned points, anon, but I disagree with a few of them. let me try to explain.

so the thing about this whole atonement process is that it’s hugely complex, and there isn’t really any kind of roadmap for Endeavor to follow when it comes to trying to make things right. I actually appreciate that his arc is written in such a way that his epiphany doesn’t just happen all at once, and you can see how his approach gradually turns from one that’s still mostly selfish and centered on him, to one that’s actually focused on his kids and what they need. you can see the stages he progresses through as the series goes on.

1. I’d argue that it all starts when he first gets yelled at by Deku (“Todoroki isn’t you!”). he realizes that maybe this kid has got a point, and that treating his son as an extension of him rather than as his own person might just be sorta shitty. so he files that away, but we don’t really see much of a change in him yet.

2. then a few months later he gets thrust into the #1 hero role, which has the interesting psychological effect of forcing him to see past himself and his ego for perhaps the first time in his life. he suddenly finds himself in this position as the new Symbol, and starts to feel the responsibility of that, and it basically triggers the entire rest of his redemption arc. because once he starts looking outside himself, he starts to realize the impact his actions have on other people, including his family. for the first time, he starts looking at the situation with fresh eyes, and realizes how much he’s hurt them.

3. quick little detour here, I feel like it’s important to note that Endeavor -- like many abusers -- actually does love his family and never intentionally set out to hurt them. but the problem is that he is so self-centered for most of his life that he never stops to consider that his family and his kids don’t simply exist to serve his own purposes. he abuses Shouto during his training but I’ll bet you he himself never thought of it as actual abuse, just him being hard on him in order to toughen him up. he thinks he’s doing what’s best for Shouto by making him strong in the hopes that he’ll one day surpass All Might, because that’s always been his goal, and so he just unilaterally decides that should be Shouto’s goal too. he wants the best for him, but it never enters his mind to consider that his son is his own person who, gasp, might not actually want the same things that Endeavor wants. btw I should clarify that absolutely none of this excuses anything he does, holy shit. but I feel like it’s important to mention, because many people complain that the change in Endeavor happens too abruptly and is too unrealistic, but I don’t think that’s true at all. it’s just that people don’t like to acknowledge that abusers are still human (meaning that anyone can become one if they’re not careful to consider how they treat others). Endeavor’s actions are monstrous, but they stem from realistic places, and I think that it’s a very well-thought-out character arc.

4. and so basically, once that change finally starts happening, it’s not that he suddenly starts loving his kids all of a sudden out of nowhere. it’s that he finally starts loving them for their own sake, rather than his. for the first time, he starts loving them selflessly rather than selfishly. and it’s not a change that just happens overnight, because he is so used to everything revolving around him that even after he starts realizing what he’s doing wrong, it still takes him a while to break free from those patterns.

5. and so for example, he suddenly becomes wildly supportive of Shouto and his training and attempts to go full-blown helicopter parent. because clearly that’s what Shouto needs, right?? all those years he was trying to make him into his own personal mini-me rather than loving his son for who he was and supporting him as his own person. and so we see him hounding Shouto in texts to let him teach him his Ultimate Technique (but not because he wants him to surpass All Might, but because he just wants him to be the best hero he can be! it’s different now!), and attending his training sessions to cheer him on from the stands like an obnoxious soccer mom. and afterwards he tells him he’s proud of him, and that he wants to become someone Shouto can be proud of.

6. so you can see there’s some progress at this point, but at the same time he’s still making a lot of the same mistakes. his intentions by this point have genuinely changed! but he’s still looking at the situation from his own point of view, and not taking into consideration how his son feels about the forced attempts at reconciliation. he’s thinking ‘I was a shit father, I need to make it up to him by being supportive.’ but he doesn’t stop to consider that Shouto might not WANT his support by this stage in the game; that he might, in fact, not want anything to do with him at all.

7. and this doesn’t change until after his battle at Fukuoka, when he has dinner with his family and Natsuo blows up at him. he basically lays it all out on the table, but this is the most important part:

I am willing to bet that he did not, in fact, get it until pretty much that moment, actually. because up until this point, he’s been doing exactly as Natsuo said -- trying to make nice, trying to show that he’s changed, and to be a good father now. but he doesn’t stop to consider (a) just how much hurt he really has caused them, and (b) just how impossible it is to simply erase all of that. the pain Natsuo’s expressing here isn’t something people can simply get over. and I don’t think Enji realizes until this moment that he was still going about this in the wrong way.

8. and that, lastly, is what finally leads to this:

he finally realizes that it’s not about him. and apologizes, but makes it clear that Natsuo does not have to forgive him, and that he doesn’t want to burden him by making him feel otherwise. he acknowledges Natsuo’s feelings, acknowledges the pain he’s caused, and realizes that what he and the others need is space. and this is when he makes the decision to build the new home for them and Rei, so that they can finally start to move on -- without him, if that’s what it takes.

so this is basically the progression of Endeavor’s redemption arc up to this point. and I’m sorry it took so long to recap, I didn’t mean for it to lol, but there were a lot of parts I didn’t want to just gloss over. so now, here are a few last points I want to make about his arc.

1. first off, it’s important to consider the timeline here. when making your point earlier, you talked about Endeavor building the new home for his kids, but how “on the other hand” he kept trying to force his relationship with Shouto. however the order of these things is switched around. because Endeavor building the house is something that happens at the end of his arc. and in fact we have not seen him try to force anything with Shouto since then. this is important to acknowledge because it shows that he is learning and that it’s not just an insincere case of one step forward, two steps back. the progress he’s making here is genuine; he really is trying not to be selfish anymore.

2. I know I said “the end” of his arc just now, but in fact we have no reason to believe that this is the end of it. every time I see an argument about “well why hasn’t he done this yet, or why hasn’t he said this”, I wonder why people assume that just because he hasn’t done it yet, it means we’re never going to see it. for instance, he still hasn’t apologized to Shouto specifically for the way he abused him all those years. but just because we haven’t seen it yet doesn’t mean that it won’t happen.

3. fandom has this tendency, when it comes to characters they don’t like and don’t want to see redeemed, to continuously move the goalposts so that no matter what that character does and how much they change, they can continue to justify why it’s not enough. I’m going to take a quick break from Endeavor and use Bakugou as the example here instead, since I think it’s easier to summarize.

“Bakugou is such an asshole, all he cares about is himself, he’s definitely going to become a villain.”

[Bakugou refuses to join the villains] “well whatever, he’s still a jerk, just look at how he can’t even work together with others and refuses to help anyone.”

[Bakugou learns to Win and Save, and unlocks the Power of Teamwork] “well whatever, he still doesn’t care about anyone else. look at how he’s still an asshole to Deku even now.”

[Bakugou starts helping Deku train and learn how to control OFA] “whatever, that’s literally the bare minimum, there’s still no proof that he even cares about him.”

[Bakugou literally takes a life-threatening blow to save Deku] “whatever, it’s like he said, his body moved on its own so there’s still no proof he really cares.”

[Bakugou wakes up from a two-day coma, immediately asks about Deku’s health, and rushes to his bedside] “whatever, I don’t know why everyone is making such a fuss over it, he hasn’t even apologized to him yet.”

and so on and so forth. and I guarantee that once he finally does apologize, it will then shift to “well why couldn’t he just have done that in the first place.” but you get my point.

basically, there are certain characters whose redemption arcs fandom will actively continue to deny no matter what. Bakugou is one of those characters, and so is Endeavor. and I’m not saying that in order to call those people out, because everyone has their own boundaries of forgiveness, and I don’t have the right to dictate anyone else’s, just like they don’t have the right to dictate mine. everyone has their own line, and where it’s drawn is different for each person. like for me, the one particular character who can fuck off for all eternity as far as I’m concerned is Overhaul (although I admit I am still curious to see what Horikoshi has planned for him post-prison break in spite of all that). and there are a lot of other people for whom Endeavor crosses their own personal line. and you know what, that’s fine.

but here’s the thing -- if you actually want to debate his redemption arc with people, you should be willing to do so in good faith. meaning that if you really do think Endeavor is unforgiveable (and I’m speaking now in general terms, not addressing you specifically anon), just go ahead and say so! but don’t come up with an arbitrary list of criteria that he needs to meet in order to qualify for redemption, only to keep on adding more and more items to the list. and most importantly, don’t assume that your criteria are the only valid criteria and that you can speak for everyone else. and especially don’t act like you have a right to go around slapping people with labels like “abuse apologist” just because they don’t share the same opinions as you about a fictional character.

anyway! so as usual, a post that I originally meant to be only a few paragraphs long turned out to be a whole damn essay, I apologize. but anyways anon, basically I share the same opinion as you as far as the mindset that Endeavor needs to have for his atonement (i.e. that it’s not about him). however, I think he’s made more progress than this ask gives him credit for, and I don’t think any of it has been fake. that being said, it’s still a process, and his biggest tests are yet to come. whatever ends up happening, I hope the outcome ends up being one that the rest of his family can find peace with.

#endeavor #bakugou katsuki #'makeste why is the bakugou tag there this is supposed to be a meta about endeavor' yes; well; uh; you see; er...#anyways #bnha meta #endeavor meta #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #asks #anon asks

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peculiarmindset · 3 years

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Can you do a prompt where Draco accidentally farts infront of Harry for the first time

***Sorry for the long wait- I really liked this prompt and wanted to write it out properly. And this will probably be the last prompt I write for anybody for while (unless I REALLY like it). I have something planned and hopefully it’ll be ready by this weekend *crosses fingers* Hope you enjoy anon! 🤗

The Bunbuster Fart - Sounds like a Beefy One, except much more sudden and much much more powerful. Generally smells eggy or beefy. Leaves your asshole smarting. You really feel these babies.

“How about an after dinner game of Quidditch?”

“You’re on!”

Draco and Hermione exchanged an exasperated but fond look as they watched the Weasleys running out the door, with Ron pulling a laughing Harry along with him.

If someone told Draco a few years ago that he’d be at one of the Weasley’s Sunday Dinners as a welcomed guest and actually find himself enjoying the company of redheads, he would have laughed himself silly before hexing that poor sod for good measure.

But here he was.

And he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but the Burrow at that moment.

“Well, let’s go after them, shall we?” Hermione sighed, as she stood up from her seat.

Draco nodded as he also made his way up, looking behind to see the Weasley matriarch putting away the dishes with some help from Fleur. “Would you like some help, Mrs. Weasley?”

Molly looked up, one of the empty gravy boats in hand, as she grinned and made a shooing gesture at them. “Thank you dear, but you can leave it to me and Fleur here.” Molly gave him a wink. “And it’s Molly to you, remember? Now you all have fun!”

Draco chuckled. “Alright. We’ll see you after the game, Molly.”

“There’ll be some dessert waiting for you all when you return!” She called out to them as the two left.

Draco followed Hermione as they headed to the field, seeing Ginny and Ron already in some sort of argument.

“You ALWAYS get Harry!” Ginny yelled at her brother, throwing her arms up in the air.

“Mens before hens, little sister!” Ron crowed, shielding Harry behind him as if afraid she would physically drag his best friend to her team.

“That doesn’t even make sense!” She argued. She opened her mouth to add something before catching a glimpse at Draco and Hermione in a conversation as they made their way towards them. She paused and a sly grin grew on her face.

“Fine- you can keep the used goods.” Ignoring Harry’s offended “Hey!”, Ginny quickly made her way to the approaching pair and grabbed both their hands, startling the two.

“I get both your better halves on my team then!” She called out.

Ron snorted. “Sure. Malfoy has never once won against Harry and Mione’s never played at all.”

Ginny just smirked at her brother, as she pulled them away and formed a huddle with her team.

“Ok, so today is kind of like the grand championship of all games. Me and Ron are at a dead tie and today is the day we find out who is superior.” Ginny explained to Draco and Hermione. George already knew the rivalry his two youngest siblings had when it came to their family matches.

“I don’t think me playing is a good idea.” Hermione bit her lip, looking her ‘team’ that consisted of Draco, George, her and captained by Ginny. The other team had Harry, Bill, George’s girlfriend, Angelina and was captained by Ron. The referees were Percy and Arthur.

Ginny gave a dark laugh. “No, today will be utterly brilliant.” They came together as Ginny told them of her plan.

“My little sister has gone absolutely bonkers…let do it.” George grinned widely, grabbing his broom.

Even Hermione was smiling.

Draco looked at his boyfriend’s ex with an shocked and impressed look. “And how are you not in Slytherin?”

Ginny lips curved upward. “And break the Weasley tradition? Would’ve given my brothers a heart attack.” She gave a laugh and winked at the wide-eyed look Draco gave her. “What? Harry’s not the only one who can talk a hat into doing what they want.”

(=^w^=)**************************

This had to be one of the most bizarre but downright most fun quidditch games Draco ever played in.

Harry and he were of course the seekers, with Ginny and Angelina as chasers, George and Bill as beaters, and Ron and Hermione as the keepers.

At first, the game went alright, with Ron’s team gaining a lead in the first half.

Which was of course, all according to Ginny’s plan- to give her brother a false sense of security.

And then the second half is where everything went mad.

Draco trailed after his boyfriend and whenever he got too close, he would give accidental brushes here and there, a lingering touch and smile that darkened with barely concealed want that made his beau pause and shiver, completely distracting him from searching for the snitch.

Ron wasn’t faring any better neither. Although he and his girlfriend were on other sides of the field as they protected their respective goals, Hermione would flash him flirty looks and overly praise him with compliments whenever he stopped a goal, distracting her boyfriend and making his face as red as his hair.

Hermione and Draco had asked if their method would have been considered cheating, but Ginny assured them that after the Weasley Halloween match of 91’ where it ended with Percy’s arm twisted like a pretzel and Fred somehow turned into a gnome and lost in their garden for 3 days, everything was fair game during the Weasley Quidditch Matches.

George had also done the same game plan to Angelina, but his girlfriend had eventually caught on what he was up to.

But unfortunately, Ginny had predicted for that to happen and helped George make offensive attacks instead towards Angelina and Bill (who Ginny was originally targeting).

Draco flew his broom higher, trying to get a good view of the whole field and also for one other personal reason.

As he hovered above and watched Ginny hitting the quaffle through the hoop, barely missing Ron’s head, he felt a burst hot air slowly hiss out of his bottom.

Pssssssstttttt….

Draco hoped his blush wasn’t showing as his indiscreetly tried to shift his broom, fanning the stench away.

In actuality, the blonde’s stomach started to act up a few minutes after their game began.

Draco had eaten a lot during dinner, almost the same amount as Ron, which was quite an impressive feat.

Not only was this the first time he has tasted the Weasley matriarch’s cooking (whom he quickly agreed made the best Sunday dinner he ever ate) but he had also wanted to make a good impression on his boyfriend’s ‘adopted’ family as well.

Luckily, Molly had pretty much taken to Draco almost immediately anyway since anyone who made Harry happy as he was now, was pretty much welcomed as part of her family. But seeing the blonde enjoy her food as much as he had was like the cherry on the top.

Draco bit his lip, as another fart let him, the embarrassing sound audible to his ears making him grimace.

He should have never had that second helping of pot roast, let alone a third helping. Or any extra helpings he had of whatever was on that table.

Bbbbrrrrttttt….

Draco huffed as he ignored his lower half and tried to focus back on the game.

To everyone’s surprise, Hermione actually made a decent keeper. When she wasn’t distracting Ron, she was able to guard her goalpost and prevent any quaffle from entering.

Who knew that underneath that bushy haired bookworm lied a decent keeper?

Pffffffttttt….

Draco bit his lip as more air expelled from his bumcheeks. Thankfully, they were out in the open and he was far away from the others so no one would know about the symphony of farts his arsehole was playing right now.

Draco suddenly shot up, a loud fart boomed out of him when he did so, when he finally spotted the snitch.

Ignoring his rumbling belly, he zoomed right towards the snitch just at the same time that Harry had also caught sight of it.

They flew side by side, a few feet apart, both exchanging grins before focusing their sole attention on capturing the snitch.

The blonde wasn’t even aware of all the farts that was shooting out of his bum at that moment (they were too quiet for Harry to hear anyway and the speed of which they flew blew away the smells his farts may have had and cause it to dissipate in the wind).

After a few more twists and turns, both boys finally reached out their hands as they made to caught the snitch.

The snitch entered his hand.

And it was over.

Ginny’s team won.

“I got it!” Draco yelled triumphantly, holding up the snitch proudly in his hand.

“HELL YESSSSSS!” Ginny’s scream echoed throughout the field, loud enough to scare the flock of passing birds away.

Draco could hear his boyfriend laughing but his thoughts were too focused on the fact that he finally won against Harry Potter.

He, Draco Malfoy, finally caught the snitch.

The boys flew their brooms towards the ground, to a patch of high grass that was a little away from everyone and hidden the pair a bit, but they were too tired from their earlier chase to fly anymore.

As soon as they landed, Harry grinned at Draco and gave the blonde a loud smack on the lips. “Congratulations, love.”

Draco’s eyes were sparkling as he held up the snitch to the other. “Finally beat you, Potter.”

Harry chuckled as he nodded his head. “Right you did. I’m proud of you, although I kinda feel bad for Ron- Ginny will never let him live this down.” He tilted his head to the right and they both watched Ginny and George, arms crossed as they danced in circles and crowed loudly to their victory.

The boyfriends snorted when they saw Hermione trying to console her defeated boyfriend- although she wasn’t doing a very good job as she herself was laughing too much.

Harry shook his head as he gave the other a soft smile and pulled his boyfriend to him for a big hug and another kiss.

Right then, Draco’s gut reminded him of his earlier gas problems and before he could do anything, Harry gave his middle a tight saueeze, making Draco let out a huge and very loud fart right then.

BRRRRTTTTTT!

They both froze at Draco’s fart.

Mortified, Draco tried to push the other away, unable to believe that he had just farted in front of his boyfriend.

He wanted to die.

And that fart just now wasn’t only one of the loudest and smelliest one yet, but it exited his arsehole with a burn- he had to swallow the whimper at the sting it left.

Not knowing what to do, Draco became confused when he suddenly heard a snort that was quickly followed by loud laughter as he was once again gathered up in his lover’s arms.

“I guess your bum wanted to congratulate you as well, love.” Harry giggled, holding the other close to him, wanting to make sure the blonde knew he didn’t mind at all so his boyfriend wouldn’t feel bad.

Draco blushed, but stopped trying to escape as he let himself be held. “Oh, shut up Harry. I ate too much earlier.” He grumbled, relieved that his boyfriend wasn’t grossed out by Draco breaking wind.

Harry guffawed. “I’ll say, never thought you could put away all that food- I was impressed. Made Molly very happy.” Harry paused before giving a loud sniff, making a face. “But maybe next time, you might want to skip the extra helping of pot roast, love. It really stinks right now.” The air around them had a foul stench which was strangely meaty.

“Shut up.” Draco’s face reddened even more. “Unfortunately, my flatulence doesn’t come off as roses, oh mighty savior.”

Harry snorted. “Flatulence. So posh, you prat. Just say fart like the rest of us.” He then grinned. “But who knew this lovely thing would let out such a manly ‘burp’.” He patted his boyfriends bum before giving it a teasing squeeze.

Although Draco’s face was still red, he was glad that his boyfriend wasn’t disgusted or turned off by his emission of gas.

As he was still riding off the high from his first quidditch win against his lover, when he felt his boyfriend give his buttocks another squeeze, the blonde mustered up all the courage he had and shoved his bum hard against the other’s hand and forced out a very noisy and quite wet sounding fart right onto his unsuspecting lover.

BRRRRRRAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPP!

Draco burst out laughing as Harry gasped. “And that was my bum’s way of also saying I won and you lost, Potter.”

Harry opened his mouth to retort back but he ended up coughing as the powerful stench of rotten meat filled the air just then.

Eyes sparkling with mirth, Draco giggled as he quickly dodged his lover’s hands as the other made to grab him and he ran as fast as he could back to the others.

Draco couldn’t wait to come back again for next week’s Weasley Sunday Dinners and hopefully have another after-dinner game of Quidditch.

#Asks #Farting #Fart Drabble #HP #Draco #Harry

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lifeofkaze · 3 years

Text

An Art of Balance #31

Orion Amari x MC

A/N: Azariah Steele belongs to the fabulous @cursebreakerfarrier

Word Count: ~ 2.500

______________________________________

Chapter 31: A Matter of Nerves

The sun was already hanging low in the sky when Lizzie left the castle in search of her friend. She took a moment to enjoy the last warm rays that were painting the landscape around her in hues of orange before the cold of the night would creep up on them. The air was still pleasantly mellow, the heat of the day radiating off the stone walls of the school. If she listened closely, she could hear voices and music drifting over to her from the training grounds where the pre-match party had undoubtedly begun by now.

Ignoring the compelling beat of what sounded suspiciously like The Weird Sisters playing, Lizzie walked past the path leading around the castle to where the party was going down. She nodded to quite a few people walking into the direction she was coming from, all exchanging astounded looks; after all, Lizzie had become somewhat of a staple on every pre-match party, no matter who would be playing the next day.

But now wasn’t the time to enjoy herself in order to take her mind off tomorrow; she had to check whether Skye was alright and there was only one place where she would be hiding from the rest of the world.

Lizzie was glad when the seemingly endless flow of people lessened and the ground became emptier the further she walked away from the castle. It was a peaceful summer evening, one of those Lizzie liked best; she could hear the crickets chirping in the wide meadows stretching between the castle and the Forbidden Forest, which had already begun to sink into the coming darkness. A light breeze shifted Lizzie’s hair, smelling of warm grass and pine trees.

The Quidditch pitch lay very quiet and deserted in the golden light of the sunset. It was a strange thought that it would be flooded with people tomorrow, the sound of the crowd drowning everything else. It made the silence hanging over the stands and its wooden towers that much more poignant, as if the whole stadium was taking a last breath before the impending storm.

Lizzie had never understood why Skye took her refuge here of all places. She found nothing calming about the atmosphere; if anything, the knowledge that she would have to perform in this exact same spot, which was now lying so peacefully in the evening glow, made Lizzie feel even more anxious. But then again, despite all their similarities, Skye and Lizzie just weren’t alike in some ways.

But when she climbed the rickety stairs and emerged on top of the stands, her eyes swept over the scenery again. The sunlight reflecting off the banners hanging from the wooden towers made them look like they were set on fire, a mixture of golden hues and shades of red. The megaphone attached to Murphy’s commentary box was gleaming so brightly Lizzie had to look away after a moment.

Come to think of it, the place had its own kind of beauty after all.

Lizzie continued walking along the stands, trying to shut out the memory of the last time she’d been here outside of a match. She had spotted Skye as soon as she had entered the wooden construction; she was sitting in the first row a little bit ahead of her, her chin resting on her arms that were crossed on the railing in front of her. Lost in her thoughts, she was watching the goalposts quietly, holding a piece of parchment clutched in her fist.

Lizzie recalled the last time she had come to find Skye hiding from Penny up here. So much had happened since then; it felt more like a lifetime than only one school year ago.

Skye tore her gaze away from the glinting hoops for a moment when she heard her approach. Lizzie quietly sat down next to her and Skye smiled melancholically, nodding her head towards the pitch stretching out below them.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Lizzie replied noncommittally, testing the waters for Skye’s mood.

“Believe it or not, this is how I like it best; the pitch, I mean,” Skye continued as if she hadn’t heard Lizzie’s reply. “When you’re flying by the packed stands and the crowd’s going wild for you, that’s a smashing feeling and all, don’t get me wrong; but no one really appreciates the place itself.”

She pushed herself back from the railing and leaned against the wood making up the footrest of the second row behind her. “A Quidditch pitch is something steady, you know? No matter where you’re going, the pitch remains the same; same lawn, same goalposts, same open sky,” she explained. “I’ve seen more Quidditch pitches than I can remember but when you’re sitting up on the stands all on your own, there’s always something peaceful about it.”

“I guess everyone has their personal way of finding a place of peace,” Lizzie agreed. “Orion meditates, I go to the reserve and you come here.”

“It’s the only place I can have a proper think; it gives me exactly what I need. Before a match, there’s already this incredible energy, as if everything is holding its breath in anticipation; and when all is done, it’s calm again but still so full of life, as if you can still hear the cheers on the stands… ” Skye blinked incredulously as she trailed off. “Blimey, I’m starting to sound like Orion, ain’t I?”

Lizzie chuckled. “A little bit, yeah; but I don’t mind.”

“Of course you don’t,” Skye teased, making Lizzie shove her playfully.

“Low blow, Parkin.” A few days ago, Skye’s remark probably would have hurt her and left her feeling down, but now she was able to just let it pass; ever since talking to Orion back in the changing room, somehow, she felt different.

“Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?” Lizzie now got to the point of why they were actually here.

Skye raised her hand still clutching the parchment, which Lizzie assumed was the letter Penny had spoken about.

“It’s my dad,” Skye sighed, “he’s hurt again.”

Lizzie’s face twisted in sympathy. “Oh no, I’m sorry to hear that. Is it something major?”

“No, just a dislocated shoulder, they fixed him right back up. But he’ll be missing the final matches of the season.” She sighed again. “I’ve been knowing that for ages, though.”

Confused, Lizzie tilted her head to the side. “What’s the problem then? What did his letter say?”

“He told me he’s going to be here tomorrow,” Skye told her quietly. “He didn’t tell me earlier because he wanted it to be a surprise.” She opened the folded letter up and quoted, “He ‘wants to watch his little girl hoist up the cup’.”

Skye sighed deeply and gripped the railing in front of them tightly as she shook her head. “I don’t know if I can do this, Lizzie. What if we don’t win? Don’t want to sound like McNully, but our odds really aren’t the best.”

“Come on now, they’re not that bad. We have as good a shot as Gryffindor at winning.”

“Maybe, but a good shot’s not enough,” Skye replied. She was turning the letter around in her hands over and over again, tapping her foot against the wooden balustrade. “Quidditch is the only way I know to really get through to him. He’s expecting only the best from me; I can’t disappoint him.”

Her distress was palpable as she tugged on the hem of her jacket sleeves. “I just want to hear him tell me that he’s proud of me this one time,” she finished quietly.

Lizzie’s face softened at Skye’s confession. “Oh Skye, of course he’s proud of you! How couldn’t he be? You’re his daughter after all, he loves you. He has a weird way of showing it but he does. If he didn’t, he would never be so invested in how our team’s doing; it’s not because of Quidditch, it’s because of you. You could never disappoint him.”

Skye looked at her doubtfully, but also with a touch of hope; she wanted to believe Lizzie was right. “You think so?”

“I know so.”

Not entirely convinced, Skye sighed again. “But what if something goes wrong?”

“Well, with that attitude it certainly will,” Lizzie told her off jokingly. When she saw Skye hanging her head though, she leaned forward to catch her eye.

“Listen up, Parkin, remember what you drilled into me? ‘No heartache, no distractions’. It helped me get a grip again and the same now goes for you.”

“Can’t really call that heartache though,” Skye huffed.

“Maybe not in the traditional way, but it’s definitely distracting you and we don’t need that right now.” Lizzie leaned in and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Apparently, Azariah, the Gryffindor Keeper, has been joking that we won’t get one shot past him tomorrow. Do you think we can let that stand?”

“Absolutely not,” Skye answered immediately, a lopsided grin forming on her face. She was already looking a lot more like her old, fiery self again. “He’ll have no idea what’s coming at him.”

“Exactly,” Lizzie concurred, “And not only will we show Gryffindor how it’s done, but the whole school and your dad are going to see what we’re capable of. We’re going to show your dad something he’s never seen before.”

Skye raised her eyebrows. “What would that be, though? I’m a Parkin after all. Dad’s the one having trained us ever since we were in our nappies. He knows exactly what a Parkin can do on a broomstick.”

“But he won’t be seeing any old Parkin play,” Lizzie corrected her. “What he’ll be seeing is the one and only SkyeParkin; flying ace, Chaser prodigy, nuisance extraordinaire.”

She grinned as Skye started laughing at her over dramatic praises before she continued more seriously, “When you just do what you’re doing best, your dad won’t even know what hit him.”

Wanting to end her pep talk on a lighter note, Lizzie added, “And if that’s still not enough for you, look at it that way: if there ever was an opportunity to show off to Rath, this is it.”

Just like Lizzie had anticipated, Skye guffawed at her last words. “That’s true,” she snickered. “Bet she’s livid they beat us and we’re still playing for the Cup instead of Ravenclaw.”

“Probably,” Lizzie agreed. “I still can’t believe we turned the season around that way,” she contemplated after another moment. “The win against Slytherin was quite the team effort, wasn’t it?”

“That it was; our team’s a smashing bunch.” Skye smiled openly at her. “I know I’m not exactly the most popular one with our mates, but I still couldn’t imagine a life without you lot anymore. Orion has a point somewhere when he calls us his family.”

Lizzie smiled back at her, happy to see her friend’s mood being lifted. “I guess he has.”

Skye’s gaze swept over the stands and down to the pitch, where it lingered on the goalposts once again. With a happy sigh she leaned back and watched the last traces of red fade from the darkening evening sky.

“Remember the first time we’ve been up here, way back in our second year?”

Lizzie chuckled at the memory. “Of course I do; can’t believe how long ago that was. I tried helping you with Charms; I still can’t believe you maimed that poor book like you did. And made me ride a jinxed broomstick,” she couldn’t help but add wryly.

Skye started giggling as well. “And set some Bludgers on you,” she recalled cheerily.

“And set some Bludgers on me.” Lizzie didn’t quite share her amusement, though.

Still laughing, Skye nudged her with her elbow. “But look how far you’ve come since then. I don’t know that many who can hold a candle to you now.”

Blushing at the compliment, Lizzie twisted the ends of her ponytail between her fingers and smirked. “I’ll give you that, it worked. Although your teaching methods definitely weren’t what you’d call conventional.”

Skye only grinned at that. “Maybe, but neither one of us is conventional either.”

“True,” Lizzie laughed lightly. “I’m glad everything went how it did, though.”

“Me too; if anyone had told me back then we’d be mates I’d have called them bonkers, but here we are. You’re certainly one of the best mates I’ve ever had,” Skye continued in a more serious fashion, “cheers for putting up with me all of the time; I know I can be quite the handful.”

Lizzie shook her head. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

They were silent for a bit, listening to the wind that had picked up rustling through the House banners below them.

It was Skye who spoke up again after some time. “Can’t believe the year’s almost over now. I’m sorry it wasn’t the best one for you, though; this whole situation is sucking big time. I’m not saying that because of the team, but because of you.”

Her eyes flickered over to Lizzie momentarily before she continued. “Maybe you and Orion will find a way after all. If any of my mates deserve to be happy, it’s you guys.”

Lizzie sighed; she had hoped this topic wouldn’t come up. “I think I made my peace with it, in a way. It’s not like I can change the way things are now anyway. It’s my fault everything blew up in my face, so it’s only fair I have to deal with the consequences now.”

She shifted her weight and made a conscious effort not to fiddle with the birthstone pendant she knew was resting under her jersey. “But let’s not talk about this now, alright? All I want to focus onis the match and getting our hands on that God forsaken Cup. After that, we’ll see what happens; it’s one step after the other.”

Lizzie clapped her hands on her knees, the sharp sound echoing across the silent stands and rose to her feet. “Speaking about it, my personal next step is going to the pre-match party, they’re probably waiting for us by now. Are you coming?”

To her surprise, Skye shook her head. “No, go ahead without me, maybe I’ll catch you later. I want to stay here for a bit now.”

Once again, her green eyes followed the perimeter of the stands facing them. Darkness had begun to settle over the pitch, the commentary box was barely discernible anymore.

“Need to set my mind for tomorrow properly. You’re right, Jameson, it’s full focus on winning now, everything else has to wait until after that bloody Cup is ours; it’s one step after the other.”

#hphm #hogwarts mystery #quidditch #orion amari #skye parkin #lizzie jameson #aob #art of balance #the quidditch squad #not much longer to go #redoing this cause tumblr fucked the first attempt up #im mad

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uniquelyaro · 3 years

Text

Living a Lovely Loveless Life

I am a creature of contradictions.

I love swimming at the beach, but you couldn’t get me out in open water for love or money. If I can’t see land, if the ocean is so deep I can’t even imagine the bottom, I am terrified.

I admire the raw power of storms and adore the smell of rain, but I flinch when lightning flashes, because I’m petrified of the loud crack of thunder that always follows.

I love the cold, because it means I can wrap myself in the warmest clothes and take my showers boiling hot.

I am aromantic, and yet, I am in love.

I never expected to fall in love. I’ve never had anything against the concept, but I was fairly sure I wasn't capable of it. I'm still sure, actually. But, I'm also in love.

If that sounds confusing to you, don't worry, I'm confused too.

I’ve been confused for most of my life. I spent the first 21 years of my life confused about my feelings, and about why I never seemed to feel the way my friends did. I was confused why I never seemed to experience things the way the media and society told me I should. I stopped being as confused when I found the aromantic label and community. Finding a word to describe myself felt like coming home. For the first time I had people who understood me, who helped me understand myself.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for me to realise that in some ways I was still the odd one out. The aromantic community is simultaneously both very anti-romance and very pro-love. Contradictory and confusing as that as that sounds, it makes a certain kind of sense. We reject the expectations of romance that society forces on us, while simultaneously reminding people that love doesn’t have to mean romance. Aromantics aren’t heartless or cold. We can love just as intensely and deeply as anyone else.

Well, other aromantics can. Me? Kind of a different story.

I honestly believe that I have never felt an emotion I can comfortably point to and call love. Not romantic, not platonic, not even familial. It feels like such a terrible thing to say, that I don’t love even my family, but it’s true. I care for them, for people, and I often care deeply. But I'm not sure I love them. Most people seem to think that’s sad. Even other aromantics have told me how sorry they are for me, how difficult life must be without love, but I don’t know any different.

Instead, the difficult thing for me is seeing how much the aromantic community likes to focus on love. They reject romance, sure, but instead other forms of love, such as platonic and familial are placed on a (very high) pedestal. Queerplatonic relationships are a big thing in the aromantic community, and it's treated as the pinacle of aromantic relationships, the thing to strive for. It’s very common to see an aromantic say things like “love doesn’t mean romantic love/romance”, “aromantics still love their friends and family”, or even “saying aromantics can’t feel love is a harmful stereotype.”

These statements aren’t wrong. On their own, they are very important things to point out because the ‘heartless cold aromantic’ trope is a harmful stereotype, and should be combatted. However, all too often it comes at the expense of aromantics like myself, the aplatonics and ‘loveless’ aros. It feels much too similar to the old “asexuals can still feel romance” for me. As a stand alone statement, it’s not wrong. For some people it’s even an important argument to make. However, it’s usually coupled with the harmful implication of “see, we can feel X thing just like normal people do. There’s nothing wrong with us”. It just moves the goalposts of acceptable differences, at the cost of people like me. It's a different bus, but I’m still being thrown underneath it.

That isn’t the only way I feel like an outsider in my community however. While aromantics can be very focused on the idea of platonic, queerplatonic or familial love, they tend to push romance to the side. Even when they don’t outright hate it, romance isn’t usually seen in a positive light within the aromantic community. It’s understandable, because amatonormativity and the pedestal it places romance on is a problem. Society’s expectations and views of romance as the be all and end all of existence is damaging, and the main reason I thought I was broken for so long. But you can reject toxic romantic ideals without rejecting romance altogether, something it doesn’t alway seem like the aromantic community understands.

I don’t feel romance, but I don’t hate it. It’s the opposite actually, because I like romance. I enjoy dating people, as long as they are aware of and respect my identity. I like romantically coded actions, and I seek out emotional intimacy. I’m completely comfortable with people feeling romantically about me. Strangely, I had more romantic partners after coming out as aromantic than I did before, most lasting for at least a year or more. I was even engaged to be married last year, and I'm hoping to be engaged again in the near future.

In fact, my planned future follows some fairly traditional romantic goals. My partner and I plan on getting married, having some kids, and settling down to live our lives together, although not necessarily in that order. It’s the kind of life I thought I wouldn’t be able to have after I realised I was aromantic. I convinced myself it wasn’t what I wanted, both because I thought it wouldn’t be possible for me and because the aromantic community tends to be very focused on the rejection of traditional romantic scripts. I thought that because I was aromantic I should be smashing through amatonormative expectations, a shining beacon of why traditional romance was overrated and wrong, why it's expected goals are harmful.

My partner changed everything for me.

We met through our online Dungeons and Dragons game. A friend of mine invited me after I complained that I hadn’t played in years (also about my very poor social life). Turns out, it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

At the time most people in my life (myself included) thought it was a risky one, for a multitude of reasons. I had previously had bad experiences with long distance relationships and he lived halfway across the country. I was already engaged and although I was polyamourous he had no experience with those kinds of relationships. His name started with J, and I already had (at least) 7 evil exes all starting with the same letter, two of which even shared his name. I was skirting close to 30, he was barely 21, and my previous (traumatic) long distance relationship had also been with a much younger partner. Each of those reasons alone should have been enough to give me pause. Combined, it very much felt like the odds were stacked against us.

Yet, we’re still together over a year later. Our relationship survived him moving here just three months into it, the first time we met in person. It survived the fact that he arrived just before the state borders closed and lockdown started properly, so we spent a lot of time unable to leave the house, stuck in each other’s company. It survived the breakdown (and breakup) of my engagement to my fiance, and the rocky transition as we learned to live as exes and housemates rather than partners. It survived the late nights, larger workload and infinitely more stress when I got promoted to a higher position at work. It survived, and more than that, it grew. It grew into something different than anything I have ever felt before, because in the middle of it all, I fell in love with him.

It wasn’t a sudden thing. There wasn’t one particular moment when it hit me, because I couldn’t even make sense of what I felt at first. I just knew I felt very strongly, and that it was a different feeling then I had ever had before.

Oftentimes when I ask alloromantic people what love feels like, the answer I get the most is “you just know”. Not the most helpful answer, but I don’t really blame them for it. Love is difficult to describe in a singular way. The truth is I could ask five people to describe love and get twelve different answers. Everyone has a different view on love, and it changes with each person you love. How you love them, why you love them, it changes from day to day. How could you ever properly describe the shifting nature of something that never stands still? Something that grows and changes with each action, each word and look and touch.

I don’t feel love, but I think I understand it. I sit on a very unique intersection of aromanticism and love, an experience not often seen and very seldom shared. I don’t feel love, but I’m also not romance repulsed. I don’t hate romance, or reject it. I participate in it, seek it out, even crave it. Now, I get to experience it.

Does my love feel the same as the love an alloromantic person would feel? I don’t know, and quite honestly, I don’t care. Love isn’t something that can be compared between people, because no one else can feel love the way I do, just as I can’t feel love the way someone else does. My love is as unique as I am, as unique as the person I love is. The love I feel right now will never be replicated, whether I never love again or I love a hundred thousand times.

What I do know is falling in love let me make peace with myself, and all my contradictions. I don’t have to feel love to surround myself with it, to give and receive care and affection and intimacy. I can hate amatonormativity and fight against it while also wanting traditional romantic goals for myself, because this time I chose them. I can feel at home in a community while simultaneously being an outsider, because sharing a label doesn’t mean we share all the same views, opinions and experiences. I learned about myself because of what we shared, but I also learned because of what we didn’t.

I am aromantic and I don’t feel love. I am aromantic and I am in love. Both statements are true at the same time, because humans are messy and confusing and full of contradictions. I embrace mine as part of who I am, what makes me, well, me. And there’s no one I’d rather be, than me.

#aromantic #aro #loveless aromantic #personal thoughts #long post #some thoughts I've wanted to put into words for a long time #even in loveless aro spaces I don't always see this view #someone who is loveless but also participates in romance

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incarnateirony · 4 years

Note

If you still want an excuse to address the textuality of destiel, I will pretend to be a shit anon bc i'm honestly a sucker for your big destiel in canon posts :D cOUGHS i mean, (disguises my voice to sound especially wanky) supernatural isnt a destiel glory hole and i'll bet you have no way of proving otherwise!!!

I went searching for a Becky gif to make a comedic response to this but instead found reformed!Becky and between my two unfinished videos and my giant fic cowrite project thing I found a mood so first before I answer your question let me segue

Okay now to resume

The experience-its calculated mystery, its silliness-was fun, but the whole phenomenon begs the question: what for? The trend clearly owes some debt to Situationist ideas, guerrilla theater, and other tactics of creative civil disobedience, but where the Situationists were on some level attempting to extend a Marxist critique into a post-consumerist, leisure-class age-their spraypainted slogans on the sides of buildings in Paris in 1968 may have been elliptical and self-consciously vague, but they were at least identifiable as anticapitalist critique-these flash mobs seem designed to resist such interpretation. The mob I participated in did take place in a giant toy store, and the monster we ironically celebrated was one of the few objects in sight not for sale, but the event seemed intended primarily for the sake of public absurdity.

– “Bob Berens”, The Last Page, Dissent Magazine.

(#This Is A Berens Appreciation Blog)

How about I just masterpost a few topics of mine on the matter to start and see if there’s any you missed.

Social Codes: Literally How The World Works And I’m Not Sure Why Fandom Forgets -- Like why the squiggly shapes on your screen right now mean things and what does that mean reviewing text

Highlighting Fandom Absurdity: Square Peg in a Round Hole? - only marginally attached to text or queer argumentation as much as pointing out the blatant absurdities amplified in general fandom discussion.

The Problem With Dreamhunter (Is That There Is No Problem With Dreamhunter): WLW vs MLM bias or shipping culture effects - fandom’s had its pants down for almost two seasons and hasn’t even realized it yet.

Similar commentary, but het vs queer

Gay Rage Rant: The Magic Moving Checkbox

*Waves Epistemology of the closet loudly*

Representation, Authorial Diversity, and more - have you noticed a shift from the metanarrative hostility of early SPN towards the LGBT community to a more current dialogue, ships aside?

After reading the above, Knowing the Authors more than Fandom Holes

Random old rec list of blogs that discuss it from established angle

That alone is more solid of a start than any length of pointing out the current structure.

Like here, lemme pitch this guys. This is gonna be a weird segue to the ask but bear with.

If the father, mother, big brother, cursed child theme is there -- jack to sam, for example, cas echoing mary over jack, dean regressing without cas textually to grieving john, wouldn’t the true break in the chain being letting dean and castiel both move on like john and mary finally did, and sam getting his grown-man moment to go from being jack’s big brother in absence of his father and mother in S13-- into being his father then?

As John to Sam and Dean: I’m sorry/you’re a grown man/I’m proud of you; and back You loved us/fought for us -- like Dean to Sam in Swan Song, “You’re a grown man, and I can’t keep treating you like a kid anymore.” And in Jensen’s 15.04 the cold open to the invaded bunker with Benny using a line Dean has used twice in face of death: “See you on the other side.” -- how wild would that be to foreshadow an ending huh.

Cuz it’s seeming to move on from the Wife dying but not chasing revenge and more destruction, but ultimately being happy together in a restructured heaven -- say, idk, Cas echoing Rowena for the heaventhrone, much like John and Mary, even while Sam takes a few years to catch up because he has a godchild Jack to help raise right to make earth itself better or something in the vein while Eileen helps rebuild the AMOL legacy--huntercorp if you will.

Okay so, weird place to pitch that right?

Here’s the thing-- go back over. Read that premise. I have a question. Is that text or is that just the subtext? Think hard beyond just my shorthand summary, dig through those moments and how they’re constantly self referential in an almost limitless stream since S12.

Whether that thought, spec or concept is how it goes or not, the very ability to discuss this resolutely at the end and these identifiers have mapped their paths so well and so far, it’s... fairly self explanatory. At this point not only is it a thousand little textual things you can find me nailing down in just about anything tagged “my meta” on my blog, it’s about literal respect to the entire body of text and basic social codes. No amount of fandom noise is about to make me make my queer content or goalposts for it hop on command, that’s for fuckin’ sure.

So there, anon. Hope that scratched an itch???

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silenthillmutual · 4 years

Photo

I beg your pardon! It’s me who is going mad.

So, I know I did a Twitter thread about the ways Daniil is manipulated in Classic, and I thought I’d put it on here too.

I’m going to stop short of calling it gaslighting here though, because too many people are using that term who don’t really understand what it means. Gaslighting is specifically a form of abuse where the intention is to make the victim feel they are going insane. Not all manipulation or abuse is gaslighting - which doesn’t make it less bad, just...not gaslighting.

That being said: in Classic, there are quite a few times where Daniil can say that he thinks he’s losing his mind, and there are times when the game seems constructed to make you feel this way. Particularly I had in mind the ending of the game, and not just the part where you find out you’re a toy and always have been (that falls more under cosmic horror). What bugs me about the end and how that fits into things, is the fact that the Sand Pest and its outcomes have been chasing you - the clouds, the angels, the muggers, the firestarters, the rats, literally chasing you through houses and through town, only for all of it to completely vanish without a trace on the exact day you’re meant to give a solution to it all. I made a point on Twitter about how people attempting to gaslight you will submit you to a large amount of damage - physical, verbal, emotional, take your pick - and then remove the abuse and any signs of it just before they’re caught. it’s how they show to others that it’s you who’s the problem, not them.

Regardless of whether you think the intention is to make Daniil feel he’s losing is sanity or not, the question would be who is manipulating Daniil, and why? There are a couple answers.

The first answer is the Town. The first playthrough as the Bachelor of the game is probably the closest fitting to psychological horror as the game gets. Like Silent Hill, the Town is full of horrors that seem tailor-made to torture Daniil specifically: most of these people are uneducated (the Town doesn’t even have a school), their cultural beliefs (mostly appropriated from the steppe culture) actively prevent him from doing his job as a doctor, his word and name are constantly weaponized by people with ulterior motives, and men run around on the first two days beating women to death or burning them alive and intervening actively costs you reputation - which you need to do anything. He arrives with the hope of finding evidence to keep his lab opening and, as we later learn, keep himself from execution, only to find that both the man who would serve as this evidence and the colleague who informed you of his existence have been murdered just before your arrival. You have a lot of things riding on your success, and everything about where you are is actively working against you. The government wants you to find a cure single-handedly, but the Town has other plans for you.

And those plans are: errand boy, and scapegoat. People throughout the Town will inform you that they are scared of you when you’ve barely interacted with them, let alone in ways that should inspire fear. It doesn’t matter how good your reputation as Daniil is (and through the course of the game, there’s very little you’re made to do that lowers your reputation, and it never gets bad enough for you to be attacked on the street or refused sale from shops), what matters is the fact that everyone in Town, from the nameless NPCs to the rulers, are putting every bad thing they’ve done down as being your fault.

But the Town has another way it’s manipulating Daniil, by almost making him a member of it. I don’t think I got a screenshot, but I’m sure that somewhere along the line Daniil comments that he’s starting to talk like one of the townsfolk. You can see this happens to Andrey, too, later in the game; he talks in what Daniil calls “Griefisms”.

You have been sent here to fight an adversary that inherently cannot be beaten - in foolish hopes that a miracle would happen and your outstanding mind would stumble upon a once-in-a-million chance. And just so that you wouldn’t give up, they kept insisting that the adversary must be destroyed. Do you see how insidious the Powers That Be are? > But why? Their motives are becoming less and less comprehensible to me by the day.

The second answer is the Powers That Be.

Three people enter the Town that the Powers That Be want to get rid of: the Bachelor, the Inquisitor, and the Commander. It wants them all to fix or solve or demolish something in the town, and doesn’t really care what happens to any of them. Pathologic 2 spells it out clearer for you that Aglaya, Block, and Daniil will all be executed upon return to the Capital if their answers are not what the Powers That Be want to hear. And for the time that you are in the Town as Daniil Dankovsky, the Powers That Be - like the town itself - actively work against you. The trains that are meant to bring food and medication never, to my knowledge, arrive, and most days bring about a new letter from the Powers spelling out for you how disappointed in you and your progress they are. Some of the ways they attempt to manipulate Daniil through these letters are subtle, but most of them are unsubtle suggestions that what he’s been able to accomplish is not good enough, that he was meant to work alone.

Even one of your first letters from them is suspicious; early on in the game, they write to let you know that they are in no way responsible for the outbreak, which is an incredibly suspicious thing to say. What is the point of sending such a letter? Would the player have really thought that they were if they hadn’t suggested as much through denial? After all, what called you to Town was a letter from Isidor Burakh. But yet, the Powers That Be are the ones who leave you stranded in the Town with limited resources, no help, and constantly shifting goalposts. Aglaya makes this clear to you when she arrives: you were never supposed to be successful.

The letters from the Powers That Be do not serve any purpose other than to upset Daniil, and most if not all of them contain lies: that a train will be arriving, that they don’t mind if you have help in carrying out your plans, that Thanatica still exists, referencing conversations you’ve never had, signing drafts of letters you didn’t consult on with your name. One of the reasons i had put this down as gaslighting is because people who gaslight like to keep you off balance and emotionally fragile so that you’re easier to manipulate. You’ll do whatever they want to make the feeling stop, because you just can’t handle the stress anymore, and in the process you come across to others as unreasonable, unhinged, crazy, dangerous, so that no one will trust you. And that’s exactly how Daniil starts to come across to the townspeople: deranged, strung out, dangerous, untrustworthy.

You can contrast all that to a different letter they send you where they claim to be proud to call you one of your own. Combine the two, and you get honeymooning. They want to remind you of the good (or at least, not-as-bad) times you’ve had with them. This behavior serves two, sometimes three purposes: to keep you off balance from the violent back-and-forth, dizzying nature of what they’re doing to you, and so that you’ll defend them to people who can see what’s going on and want to get you out of it. You’ll even convince yourself that you’re not really being mistreated. If you were being abused, would they be so nice to you?

You are the last friend our family has. I hope our attachment to you doesn’t look obtrusive. > It requires too much from me. I’m not comfortable with it. > No, not at all.

The third answer is the Kains. Specifically, Georgiy and Maria repeatedly manipulate Daniil, though I’ve no doubt in the text above Victor stating their attachment to Daniil is also a manipulation, and one possibly planned by either or perhaps both of them. The text above probably looks normal, but think about the purpose it serves: to reinforce that Daniil is friendly with the Kains. Your only two options are to say that it doesn’t bother you, or to express that you feel your boundaries are being violated by their attention. But I even thinking about picking that option... Well, it feels mean.

Throughout the game, people will comment on Maria’s attachment to you and what they feel is your predestination to be romantically paired with her. All this, despite the fact that you don’t really interact with her that much. I’ve seen this be explained as forced heterosexuality, but I think it also is a way of the Kains manipulating Daniil into doing what they want. Daniil gets upset whenever people cry; when children cry, he tries to calm them and fix whatever’s upset them - there’s an entire sidequest after the army arrives in which Daniil kills a group of soldiers, spurred into action by upset children. Whenever he encounters Maria crying, he reacts with discomfort, and she uses these tears and upset to manipulate Daniil into thinking Aglaya has lied to him, effectively distancing him from one of the only people in the game with a rational mind to show him support and tell him the truth. I don’t think the two are in any way unconnected. Something abusers, manipulators, gaslighters love to do is isolate you so that you only have one source of information to go to. If they cut you off from other people, they can continue to feed off of you. You’ll never have a chance to question if what you’re being told about yourself or others is correct, you’ll just be a constant supply of drama for them.

DANIIL: Was there any particularly notable backstory? I’m deadly tired of all these people. They’re inhuman. They tell the future, believe in walking zombies, and die in all manners of painfully abnormal ways.

AGLAYA: Your line of thinking is obviously fallacious - and I was implying something rather mundane. I promise you no one can really tell the future around here and neither are deaths inspired by third parties uncommon. Mysterious phenomenons do occur here sometimes... but hardly more often than anywhere else.

You can see, first, the effect all this has had on Daniil, how dispiriting the past several days have been to him. But you can also see here exactly why a family that prides itself on multi-generational reincarnation and manipulation through “fortune-telling” wants to keep its blunt instrument in the dark.

That is, ultimately, why they are manipulating Daniil. Georgiy knows full well when he tells Daniil at the beginning that everyone, even himself, will lie to Daniil, that being that honest upfront is more likely to lead Daniil to trusting him. They want to sway him to their cause; this is why you are told that your success here depends on the wellbeing of the people Maria considers useful: herself, her father and uncle - who she gets out of the way later on to come into her power, the architects of the Polyhedron - which she will use to ascend to power, and the theatre director who has pledged himself to be her loyal servant. Eva’s on the list, too, but her inclusion was deliberately set up to make you depend on the Kains later in the game, considering that it’s Maria who convinced her to commit suicide:

DANIIL: Why did Eva die then? AGLAYA: I have a distinct suspicion she was made to die. DANIIL: By whom? AGLAYA: One of the Kains. I’d even go so far as to claim that they may have performed human sacrifice.

It’s a two-for-one deal: try in vain to make a Focus of the Cathedral, and remove from Daniil the last piece of influence who was not totally in love with Maria. Maria “cries” and is “upset” at you for thinking Eva’s death is her fault, but no one directly tells you Maria is responsible - all Aglaya does is tell you the Kains are at fault. The rest is just you remembering how nasty Maria was about Eva at the beginning of the game. I wouldn’t even say that Maria was removing a rival for Daniil’s affection. She really does only view Daniil as an object: if you speak to her on day 12, she assumes that you’re leaving, and doesn’t even ask you to stay (for kicks, contrast this with either ending of Pathologic 2 when you speak to Daniil as Artemy, where he’s supposed to be your rival. what was all that about Maria being in love with you...?); he’s not even present in his own ending cutscene. Even Mark Immortell says you’re leaving -

And actually, that’s a really fascinating conversation you can have with him on day 12. It’s where the game outright admits exactly what Aglaya told you: it’s all fake. Maria cannot really see the future, you’ve just been manipulated the entire game to achieve someone else’s goals, and unless you’ve gone around and saved Artemy’s or Clara’s bound, it’s too late for you to turn back and make a different decision. If you’ve picked Daniil’s ending, you just destroyed an entire town on the basis of outright lies.

#icarus.txt #pathologic meta #ok to rb #plato plays pathologic #nori writes #pathologic spoilers #stu don't look #long post #icarus.docx #mine

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rutilation · 5 years

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Listen, they’re not evil. They just lack empathy, and go into a dissociative state and commit atrocities.

As much as it pains me to do so, I’m going to start off by talking about the bastard himself. I must say, believing that rage and misery is the inevitable endpoint of a person’s life is an awfully convenient belief for Aechmea to hold when his plan would end all sentient life as collateral damage. If all your victims are better off dead anyway, then your actions don’t warrant any guilt!

There’s a little moment in chapter 67 that has always stuck out to me as being representative of Aechmea’s character, and I think it’s especially relevant to this chapter. It’s the part in which Cairngorm is trying to argue that it’s in Aechmea’s best interest to keep Phos as mentally stable as possible since they’re his staunchest ally amongst the gems. My reaction upon reading that line was that their appraisal of Aechmea’s intentions was very naïve. To the contrary, the more unstable Phos becomes, the easier it is for Aechmea to manipulate them. At this point in the narrative, Phos is no longer carefully treading through negotiations with Aechmea, as they were in volume eight and the beginning of volume nine; they’re now doing exactly what he wants, with gusto, and no thought to the long term consequences. This is entirely deliberate on Aechmea’s part, and indeed, in the very same chapter that Cairngorm brought this up, Aechmea pulled the same trick on them. He made Cairn feel cornered and desperate, presented himself as the sole solution to their problem, and thus Cairn went from being deeply suspicious of Aechmea to…still being deeply suspicious of Aechmea, tbh, but burying it under an ironclad sense of denial. This chapter even contains a callback to chapter 67: Both here and there, Phos/Cairn is broken and despondent, Aechmea is looming over them, and they reach out to weakly cling to his hand.

He asks Barbata to “handle” Phos’s memories of the past two hundred years. That’s an ambiguous line if I’ve ever heard one. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Phos shouldn’t have memories of the past two hundred years, right? I’m not sure if this is implying that he wants Barbata to implant false memories within Phos of the past two hundred twenty years, or—heaven forbid—if he’s implying that Phos actually has memories of the timeskip, and that he wants Barbata to make sure Phos doesn’t lose any of them. If it’s the latter, that would suggest that Phos has, somehow, been conscious this whole time (holy shit,) and that Aechmea doesn’t want Phos to be able to move past those memories. Regardless of what he’s referring to though, the sentiment behind his cryptic order is clear: now that he’s molded Phos into something he can easily control, he’s taking pains to ensure that they’re stuck in their current incarnation, so that they don’t evolve ever again. It brings to my mind this scene in chapter 54, in which Aechmea all but fetishizes Phos’s capacity for change. It was already pretty creepy, but knowing that this is what he intended for Phos to change into adds another layer of wrongness to that exchange.

It’s interesting that just a couple chapters ago, Phos was screaming at Kongou “If only you weren’t here!” But here, the sentiment has completely inverted, and Phos is weeping as they say that Kongou is the only one who still cares for them, and that it’s the gems who shouldn’t be here. In only a few short hours, they’ve gone from directing all their hatred at Kongou, to directing it at everyone except him. Their rage is unformed and all over the place. Good thing Aechmea’s here to refine it to his own ends!

Aechmea says that he’ll answer Cairngorm’s question “when this is all over.” That could imply a couple of different things, depending on what he means by that. If he means he’ll tell Cairn after he’s finished dealing with Phos for this chapter, then that’s one thing. But, if by ‘all over’ he means that he’s not going to say anything until Kongou successfully prays, and his victory is assured--as with the previous secret he was keeping from Cairngorm, then that implies that whatever he was alluding to when he said he had loved Cairngorm since before they came to the moon, it’s probably something awful.

If you’ve been following my essays for a while, you’ll know that I’ve long suspected that some sort of Cairn-related plot twist will rear its ugly head at some point in the near future, and that mind-control eyeballs were perhaps only the tip of the iceberg. Well, after nearly a year of deliberation, I’ve settled on my personal theory of what this plot twist could be, but it’s far outside the scope of an essay focused on a single chapter, so I’m going to post my thoughts on that in another essay sometime in the coming weeks. Keep an eye out for it if you want to see me go fully and embarrassingly tinfoil hat. (With my luck, chapter 83 is going to reveal what Aechmea meant by his cryptic statement before I get that essay done, and it’s going to be something banal, thus ruining my precious conspiracy theory.)

But enough about cornmeal and acne man, let’s talk about the trajectory Phos seems to be on, and also about Cinnabar.

For quite a while now, it’s been a pretty popular theory that Cinnabar will eventually kill Phos with their mercury, and it does feel like things could head in that direction. Phos is so far gone that they’re willing to kill anyone in their path, and in so much pain that their death could be construed as a mercy. And since they can best Bort in a fight, it would seem that Cinnabar’s mercury is the only thing that could actually stop them, especially since it could chemically bind to their alloy and poison Phos from the inside out. To be perfectly honest though, something about this potential course of events has always rubbed me the wrong way, but until this chapter, I hadn’t been able to pinpoint exactly what it was I didn’t like.

The whole story was started because Phos thought Cinnabar deserved better than their miserable lot in life. At no point did Phos, or the narrative for that matter, ever suggest that it would be for the best if Cinnabar were simply put out of their misery. Their plight warranted not just a release from pain, but a better life to replace it. And as they are now, Cinnabar probably doesn’t want to die anymore, and I imagine they’re glad they didn’t go through with their passive attempt at suicide. (Come to think of it, I think they’re the sole character who’s moved away from being suicidally depressed over the course of the story, instead of gradually succumbing to it.) So, now that the shoe is thoroughly on the other foot, and Phos is the one at rock bottom, it would leave a really bad taste in my mouth if Cinnabar’s response to Phos’s pain ends up being: “Yeah, you should die.”

So, although the plot is probably going maneuver Cinnabar into a situation in which they have to decide whether or not to kill Phos, I hope that it’s ultimately in service of that not coming to pass.

Speaking of Cinnabar, I really hope we finally get more insight into them in these coming chapters. Broadly speaking, more stuff has happened with them the past twenty or so chapters than most of the rest of the series. Their whole life was upended, they (seemingly) made a friend in Bort, and they’re finally making choices that affect the plot, which hasn’t really happened since volume two. But, despite all this, we don’t really know what they’re actually thinking, of what emotions they’ve been going through. You can make some inferences, but that’s not really as affecting as experiencing their perspective firsthand, and I think that’s why people get the impression that they’ve been made irrelevant to the story, despite the fact that they’ve been contributing to the plot lately. So, hopefully we’ll finally get some further elaboration on them in the near future; I think it would remedy the issue quite a bit.

I’ve been thinking lately that what Cinnabar did to Phos in this arc is kind of a grim mirror of how Phos’s desire to help Cinnabar became muddied over the course of the story. I don’t believe that Cinnabar was acting out of malice in chapter 78 when they suggested burying Phos in pieces. If they genuinely wanted Phos dead, they could have encouraged the earth gems to go along with Rutile’s murderous impulses, instead of coming up with a plan in which Phos might come back eventually—certainly no one else in that scene, sans Euclase, voiced any objection to Rutile’s idea, and if Cinnabar hadn’t spoken up, they all might have gone along with it. I think it’s quite possible that they were attempting to protect Phos by trying to appease the other gems’ enmity in a way that wouldn’t bring Phos permanent harm.

But, just like how Phos’s ever-shifting goalposts pushed Cinnabar to the back of their mind over the course of the story, it’s possible that their new life among the gems had the same effect on Cinnabar. Thus, in their mind, Phos was relegated to an important but altogether distant obligation that they’d deal with later, when the time was right. But since these are gems we’re talking about, the time is never right, and complicated problems like these never get dealt with. And just like how it was cruel and thoughtless when Phos put Cinnabar on the backburner, it’s cruel here too—especially if, as I speculated earlier, Phos was somehow awake this whole time.

Because I am a sentimental sap who still has a little bit of hope for a bittersweet ending instead of a complete tragedy, I think that Cinnabar might actually be a wild card in this situation, one who has the potential to save Phos from themselves. (I’m sorry. I can’t help myself. My mind is stuck in power-of-friendship mode, and it’ll probably stay there until Ichikawa beats the idealism out of me, just like she beat it out of Phos.) Keeping in mind what things Aechmea has been able to deduce either through direct observation through Phos’s eye, or what might have been reported to him from any Lunarians returning from an attack on earth, he doesn’t have enough information to figure out that Phos had a strong connection to Cinnabar. Although he’s confident now that Phos has no ties to anything they once loved, and is wholly dependent on him, the previous chapter shows that Cinnabar still means something to Phos, even in this state. Since all of this exists in a blind spot for Aechmea, I think it has the potential to muck up his plans—if Ichikawa deigns it to be so, of course.

Now let’s talk about symbolism, because there’s a lot of it. First off, I want to talk about a pattern I noticed regarding Phos’s changes, one which I discussed in the very first meta I wrote for the series. At the time, I speculated that the title of the art book, Pseudomorph of Love, was hinting at this pattern, but when the artbook was translated later courtesy of @red-dia, it turns out that said title was alluding to something totally different. Nevertheless, I think I may have inadvertently stumbled onto a method regarding Phos’s changes that seems too consistent to not be deliberate, and I’ll reiterate it here: With the very notable exception of the pearl eye, down to even the most minor of losses, every permanent loss and addition to Phos’s body has been tied to an attempted act of kindness. Specifically, Phos loses parts when trying to do something altruistic, and they are given new parts out of kindness on another characters part.

They had to have contaminated parts of their body scraped away after trying to save Cinnabar from falling.

They lost their legs while trying to help Ventricosus return home, and gained the new legs because of an act of kindness on her part.

Although the ice flows initially tried tempting Phos into giving up their arms by reflecting their self-loathing, it was only when they frightened Phos with the idea that Cinnabar might kill themselves if Phos doesn’t change quickly enough that they accidentally-on-purpose lost their arms. While Antarc initially dismissed the gold they ended up giving to Phos as useless, they changed their tune when they noticed Phos projecting their own low self-esteem onto the gold. To me, it seems like the act of giving Phos the gold was their way of telling Phos that they’re not worthless.

They lost a bunch of small pieces while trying to save Antarcticite

They lost their head while trying to save Cairn’s arm. And then Cairn... uh… Let’s put a pin in that for now, and come back to it when their character arc has progressed a bit further. The element of mind control eyeballs that may or may not even be real makes the situation a bit more fraught than I care to get into right this very second.

They lost Lapis’s hair while shielding Morga and Goshe from the Lunarians.

They gave away a piece of their leg so the Admirabilis would know they weren’t holding a grudge against Ventricosus

With that established, let’s talk about the pearl eye. The moment they received it was practically an inverse of the established pattern. It was a transformation motivated by spite on Phos’s part, and for Aechmea, it was an opportunity to exert control over them. Even the act of receiving the pearl eye made them sick, mysterious human particles notwithstanding. The ensuing chapters after they received the pearl eye are, as I’m sure you’re all aware, a whole lot darker and meaner than what the story had been up to that point. If I had to draw a dividing line between the part of hnk that is simply melancholy, and the part that makes the reader feel like a frog in boiling water, I’d use Phos’s first trip to the moon to demarcate these two tones—and the symbol that heralded this descent into hell was the introduction of an unkind addition to Phos’s body.

That brings us to the matter of their most recent loss. Since it’s now apparent that they won’t be getting their other parts back, we can look back on the moment they lost those parts for good and see if it fits the previous pattern, and in my opinion, it does. The reason Phos was in that situation was because they were making a last ditch effort to do right by everyone else, and take responsibility for their mistakes. It was at this point that they mustered up the last bit of kindness and courage they still had in their heart.

But the loss of a given part is only one half of the equation, which begs the question: with what sentiment will Barbata give Phos their replacements? Barbata has subtly given off the impression that he feels guilty about his role in the various atrocities the Lunarians have undertaken, and is disillusioned with Aechmea, but is as of yet unwilling to actually go against him. If there’s ever going to be a point in the story in which he decides to do the right thing instead of just following orders, it’s now or never. I’m counting on you, pasta man. Follow your conscience for once! Either way, whether Phos’s reconstruction ends up being an act of kindness on Barbata’s part, or simply another expression of Aechmea’s corruption is, in my opinion, a crucial distinction that will have ramifications for the future of Phos’s character arc. Speaking of which, it now seems like Red Diamond is the most likely candidate for a replacement, since Padparadscha is busy being asleep on earth.

I’ve talked about how a character’s eyeballs and where they got them from symbolizes their worldview, broadly speaking. This chapter seems to be a continuation of that. Kongou shaped the gems’ worldview, which is symbolized by him giving them their eyes, Cairngorm’s devotion to Aechmea is accompanied by them adopting eyes that Aechmea made for them, during the time that Phos was trying to balance the needs of both the gems and the Lunarians, they had an eye from both Kongou and Aechmea, and now that Phos only has the single pearl eye left, they’re thinking with a one-track mind from a distinctly Lunarian perspective: that everything that gets in the way of their salvation needs to die.

I also find it interesting that Phos’s original material is mostly intact, and what they’ve lost are chunks of their legs and head. It probably symbolizes something, but my brain is starting to leak out of my ears at this point, so I’m just going to remember it for later and see if the meaning becomes clearer in retrospect.

Regarding Phos’s alloy shaping itself into a lotus’s seedpod, my first reaction was that it was a rather ambivalent symbol to use in the context of Phos’s downfall. On one hand, the seedpod only appears when the highly symbolic flower dies, but on the other hand, while the flower is the part of the plant to which a number of cultures have ascribed auspicious meanings like purity and renewal, it is the humble, unsightly seedpod that goes about the actual business of rebirth.

But, as @rinboz pointed out in a post on the subject, it appears to be specifically evoking the image of an empty seedpod. If that’s what Ichikawa is going for, then the meaning is unambiguously ominous, to put it mildly.

Lastly, I brought up in my previous essay that it was highly convenient that Phos happened to trip off the table at the last possible second, and in a manner so noisy that it woke the other gems, no less. In this chapter, Phos lays the blame for their failure on the earth gems interfering… but that only happened because Phos made a racket. I speculated that they may have subconsciously sabotaged themselves—it certainly wouldn’t be the first time. I don’t know how likely that possibility is, but I think it’s one worth keeping in mind.

Well, that was heavy. But on a lighter note, I think it may be time for me to update the only good meta I’ve ever written, birdseki no kuni. What should Phos 4.0 be? I think this feral demigod of vengeance ought to be represented by a real apeshit bird, like an Australian magpie, or something. This will require further deliberation.

#houseki no kuni #finally got this done #i haven't checked if the leaks are out yet #but if they are i hope they don't invalidate half this post #land of the lustrous

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echodrops · 5 years

Note

Where do middling middles come from? I struggle with it myself, I know how I want to begin and end the story, but the middle somehow doesn’t seem „right“, and I feel like a lot of movies seem to struggle with meandering second acts as well. Where do you think that comes from?

Sorry my answer on this was delayed–this ask came during my grading period and then finals at the end of our semester. T_T

Anyway, middles…

To be honest, the core of the problem is probably thinking of the “middle” as a specific section of your story in the first place. We all know the montage: beginning, middle, end. But the truth is that while a story always requires a finite beginning and ending–it has to start somewhere and end eventually–what we think of as “the middle” is actually a vague, umbrella term encompassing everything from the moment your main plot starts rolling to the moment the story reaches its climax.

Rest under a read more:

Basically, this is the traditional plot diagram most of us learn in schools:

The problem with this is that it tends to create confusion about where the climax of a story is supposed to occur–looking at this, you might be tempted to think that the “middle” of the story should be an action-packed, important moment that really stuns the readers.

The truth of the matter is that the plots of most stories look a lot more like this:

The climax comes significantly later, typically only a chapter or two before the end of the book, and the “geographical” middle (i.e. page 100 of 200 total), instead falls somewhere in the area traditionally called the “rising action.”

So where do boring, poorly-paced middles come from? Why do people struggle to figure out what to put in their story’s “middle”?

Off the top of my head, I can think of two reasons people struggle with middles:

1. Misunderstanding what “rising action” means and how it should be constructed.

If I ask my students to define “rising action,” the answer I usually get is “A series of events that leads up to the story’s climax.” From a technical standpoint, this answer is correct–we have to get from the beginning to the story’s climax somehow, right?

But from a practical stand point, thinking of rising action as nothing more than “the events leading up to my story’s biggest moment” inevitably results in a stale, linear, and inorganic middle. If every action and moment from the beginning of the story to the climax all contributes to the same plot, the result is typically a robotic, uninteresting series of events where characters feel less like they’re acting for themselves, and more like they’re toy soldiers marching to the author’s orders–they’re being forced to jump through a predetermined set of hurdles to get to someone else’s goal, rather than being allowed to naturally change, develop, and exist outside of the story’s main conflict.

All too often, the writing thought process is: “I know where my story starts–Point A. And I know where I want it to end–Point B. Now I just need to get my characters from Point A to Point B!” And that’s… it. The sum total of thought put into the middle: just get from Point A to Point B.

But that’s not how human beings–and characters written by human beings–work. We’re not linear; we’re messy. We don’t take the right path every time. We backtrack. We get distracted. We’re often juggling more than one problem at once. We avoid conflict like the plague.

Reducing the middle of your story to a vehicle for getting characters from Point A to Point B denies them–and your readers–crucial opportunities for humanization, crucial opportunities to add depth and meaning to their plot, and in general limits realism and makes characters feel one-dimensional. If you’ve ever sat through a middle where you just didn’t emotionally engage with the characters at all, it’s probably because that middle was more focused on getting characters to the big climax than on allowing them to be “real” people or live for a second outside of the story’s single main conflict.

Okay, all well and good for me to say this, but how do you fix it?

Rethink your rising action. Even in the most basic and brief of plots (i.e. vignettes or short stories), rising action is never a single straight line from Point A to Point B. If you want your middle to feel realistic and engaging, let it reflect the behaviors and thought processes that real humans experience:

Mad MS Paint skills.

If you want your middle to be more than a stale Point A -> Point B, then fill it things that make your characters human: small, unexpected challenges. Chances to overcome lower-stakes conflict to learn new skills and enforce character growth. Fill in details of their life with flashbacks and side moments that help us readers better visualize and empathize with them. Let them make mistakes. Let them struggle to find the right way forward. Let them think about things other than the main plot absolutely 24/7.

It is true that events needs to ramp up as the story progress–the conflict needs to get more and more personal, more and more “threatening” or at least important to the main character (and therefore the readers)–but instead of throwing all your chips down on one massive climax, build in some smaller scale conflict moments throughout the “middle,” some tiny climaxes along the way, each one helping your character learn something new about themself, others, the world around them, yes, even the main plot…

Except when writing the shortest of short stories, just like real life, your plot should (usually) never present just ONE challenge to its protagonist. Every major event in our human lives is a complex, interconnected network of prior experiences and growth, trial and error, emotional baggage and interplay between people. That’s what good middles are full of. If you’re struggling to figure out what to put in your story’s middle, it’s probably because you’re so fixated on “Point A -> Point B” that you haven’t given enough thought to the complex journey in between. Don’t let your set-in-stone plans for the story’s “end” distract and limit you or your characters!

This is already really long, but I did say there were two possible problems with middles, so:

2. The climax happens prematurely. Don’t look at me, I didn’t pick the term.

Oftentimes a story seems to wander and lose focus before reaching its big climax, because of rising action that lacks depth and pizzazz. But the opposite problem can also occur: it’s possible for the rising action to be way too short, resulting in a climax that comes too early–closer to the geographical middle of the book–leaving a ton of space for falling action… But the author had nothing good to put there.

If you’ve ever seen a movie or read a book where there was an awesome, moving, incredible scene in the middle, and then it just seems to drag on and on before finally petering out with a whimper instead of bang, what’s going on is that the author jumped to the climax too early, with nothing solid or meaningful to fill in the gaps afterward. As a result, there are a bunch of included “here’s what happened after everyone went home” scenes, often with very little emotional pay-out, leaving readers wondering why the story is still… going… on… (And it’s usually still going on because the author had some epilogue idea in mind and realized they had to fill the gaps between the climax and the epilogue, see Problem #1 again.)

While it is possible to write stories where the main explosion of the conflict occurs in the dead-middle of the book/story (hell, you can even write stories where the major climax occurs FIRST), doing this requires you to shift the goalposts–it’s no longer a “character grows and, in time, overcomes main conflict and gets a happy ending;” instead, it’s “these characters experienced an intense conflict… now here’s how they handle and cope with what comes after.” When the climax happens earlier than “the end,” the focus of the story has to shift to really examining the aftermath, the implications and effects of the climax. Unless this shift occurs and the story becomes one of hurting, healing, and reflection after a massive conflict/upheaval, then we end up with a meandering second act that never packs the punch readers really want as the story winds down.

So like… don’t do this unless you really know what you’re doing, I guess? (Or you’re willing to fail until you figure it out, that works too…)

tl;dr: My tips for writing a good middle are:

1. Plan out several smaller scale moments of conflict, several “mini” climaxes/challenges for your main character to overcome as the story progresses. These smaller scale climaxes are excellent moments for your characters to learn new skills, gain more knowledge, or grow as people, which will then help build up to the major climax. Use these smaller scale “high points” to keep the middle feeling action-packed while also preventing the story from feeling like the characters are just robots marching from Point A to Point B.

2. When trying to plan out mini conflicts, think about A) what skills, traits, knowledge, etc. your character NEEDS to learn/develop in order to ultimately overcome the main conflict. What are some realistic and interesting ways for your character to gain these skills/knowledge/emotional growth, etc.? and B) In what ways can you involve other characters in this? These miniature moments of challenge and struggle are EXCELLENT places for clashes and connections between characters to grow and deepen.

3. Remember that characters are generally written by humans and should act like humans (seriously, even fantasy characters need to have a bit of humanization to them, or your readers won’t be able to care about their stories), so unless you REALLY have no spare space in your story, plan for mistakes, backtracking, misunderstandings, distractions, flashbacks, side plots, etc. Let your characters live and breathe in the middle–don’t mindlessly force them on a linear path towards your goal for them. LET THEM LIVE, GOD.

4. Unless you intentionally are writing a story about aftermath, recovery, or how people handle a traumatic experience, save the major climax for near the end of the story. Don’t put the moment of highest emotion and struggle and meaning in the dead middle of your book and leave yourself with five more chapters to fill and nothing but epilogue content to fill them with. Don’t be fooled by the pyramid–the climax in most stories comes in the last few chapters!

Phew, I think that about covers it. Hopefully this is what you were looking for.

#writing advice #writing #how to write middles #writing middles #plot structures #echo answers asks #eventually

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boreal-sea · 4 years

Text

A marathon, not a sprint

I see a lot of posts from people discussing how difficult and bewildering it is to be dealing with how bad our perception of time seems right now.

“WTF it’s almost August? Wasn’t it just April? But also, it feels like this year has been a million years long.”

As someone who’s been on a military deployment, I can explain:

This state of existence is a marathon, but you’re all sprinting.

Everyone is desperately looking for the end of quarantine, the end of social distancing, a vaccine, dwindling case numbers, a cure. It’s completely understandable: this fucking sucks. And unlike a deployment, no one signed up for this and no one had time to mentally prepare. A lot of folks never expected (and should never expect!) to be in a situation like this.

For a lot of people, their entire routine has been disrupted. This makes it difficult to track the passage of time. If the social activity you always participated in on Wednesday is gone now, your mind loses track of the week. All the events you planned for the month? Gone. Your mind has zero goalposts. Every day is the same as the last - Except there’s a constant influx of new facts, new things to worry about, new things to think about. We’ve had a year jam-packed full of enough changing information to fill four years.

Time suddenly wasn’t real, but simultaneously it was very full of more information than we could handle. This ends up making days feel like weeks, yet also makes it a shock when it’s suddenly a new month.

And understandably, this is not an ideal mental state to exist in. Understandably, everyone wants this to be over as quickly as possible. Our instinct is to hype up, to pump adrenaline, to do something, to run as fast as we can towards the solution and to pour all our energy into it as much as possible all the time, because if we just push hard it’ll be over soon.

Except it’s not. This has been going on now since January for some folks, February or March for others. Five to seven months of intense mental and physical strain that everyone has been trying to sprint through. The problem is the finish line is still out of sight, and a lot of people are breaking down. I personally know people who admitted themselves to mental facilities over the strain caused by this crisis.

The advice from the captain of my ship is the best advice I can give for dealing with this:

This is a marathon, not a sprint. Pace yourself. You’ve got to stop looking towards the finish line. We don’t know where it is, and we can’t see it from here. You need to focus on here and now so you can run the best race possible. Take care of yourself.

Stop sprinting.

So how do you do this, especially without training (or the mental advantage of sailors being able to tell themselves “you technically volunteered for this”)?

Grounding exercises. All those annoying things mental health professionals tell you to do? DO them. Take time out of your day to take deep breaths. Put the phone down and go for a walk. Give yourself sights and smells and things to feel and touch that are unique. If you like meditation, do it.

Here-and-now sucks in general, yes, but here-and-now is all we have. And there are good moments, too. A pretty bird you see on your walk. A perfect leaf you find in the back yard. The way your dog kisses your face when you come home. The soft purring of your cat. Your family, your friends.

Take care of yourself. Eat well, if you can. I know finances are... nonexistent for a lot of us. Do what you can. Try not to eat “depression meals” every single day. Make something. You’ll feel better.

Bathe. Sleep well. Eat well.

Find something to occupy your time that involves tiny finish lines: art, puzzles, video games with an ending. Give yourself something to look forward to and give yourself something to finish!

Grab a hobby. On deployment, a friend and I got really into watching awful movies after shift; that was how we coped. It was something to look forward to, it was social, it was mood-lifting, and it had an ending.

Create mini finish lines. On deployment, we didn’t live for the day deployment ended, we lived day to day and port to port. We didn’t get weekends; so once a month was the only break, so that was what you focused on. “Only 2 weeks left till port, I can do this”. Make goals: “Once a month, I’ll do X.” Make mini holidays out of them if you need to. Give yourself something to latch onto that makes the passage of time feel more real.

We can do this, guys. We just have to buckle down and really embrace the concept of living in the moment. Right now, that’s all we’ve got.

#covid #covid 19

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tysonrunningfox · 5 years

Text

Ripped: Part 19

Remember how much has happened in this AU? So much has happened. Things just keep happening.

Ao3

Eretson works like someone who knows the goalposts will be shifted by the time that he gets there, but he sees it as a challenge, rather than a guarantee of failure. Maybe his ceaseless, determined flipping through pages and pictures and notes in an untidy, almost childish scrawl would be reassuring if Astrid weren’t still half cuffed to an office chair.

She knows her rights. She hasn’t been arrested officially, just taken in for questioning under a strong and understandable suspicion, and she could demand that he uncuff her or actually arrest her, but then she’d have to decide what to do next.

Her eyes flick to the evidence bag in the middle of Eretson’s cluttered desk, a halo of medical records strewn around it, all of them read twice. The bullet looks harmless now, mushroomed and useless, a relic crusted streaked with long dried blood and scratched by the tools that removed it from the site of its discovery.

Stable.

When they left the hospital, Snotlout was stable, and Hiccup was anything but. Stable still isn’t an answer, it’s not the black and white yes or no that he wanted. She didn’t know what to do but tell him the truth, tethered to the chair, back cramping from twisting to keep her hand on his shoulder as he stared sheathed daggers at the wall.

When her uncle died, it wasn’t sudden. It was months and months of doctors and fighting and planning for the impossible, and she remembers feeling like something was wrong with her when relief hit quicker than grief did. Hiccup took no time at all to shift into the stunned limbo that precedes bad news, like it was a practiced position, a place he was comfortable living until he remembered its inherent timeline.

If she complained about the cuffs now, she could get back to the hospital and be there, if nothing else. Except she doesn’t know if Hiccup is still there or if there’s even a reason to still be there, since her phone is back on the kitchen counter at her apartment. The apartment she was so stubborn to leave until she had to, only to be discovered by Eretson, her sweatshirt a finger in a dam breach that was letting boats through.

If he uncuffed her, she’d have to go back there and face the consequences of clinging to her sunk cost.

Consequences exist even when you don’t face them, of course, but she’d like to think the three in the morning buffer against them exists for more than just a private tour that never should have led to all of this.

“Have you found anything?” She asks when the clock on the wall strikes three thirty, her voice coming out tired even though she doesn’t think she could sleep when she can’t blink without seeing Hiccup’s panicked face or the wall outside her building’s courtyard splattered with blood.

“Huh?” Eretson looks up with bleary eyes, startled like he forgot she was there.

“Have you found anything?” She can’t blame him for bringing her here, given the circumstances, but the brutal silence is absolutely his doing. “Any leads? Did the doctors give you anything?”

He looks at her for a long, exhausted moment, waffling over treating her as a suspect or something else.

“You know, I’d be a pretty shitty murderer if I paused my grand escape to try and stop the bleeding.” It’s the last thing she should say and the only thing she can. Her voice sounds metallic like it did in a hospital hallway, telling Hiccup that for a second, ‘Snotlout Jorgenson’ was a name that would be whispered late at night on the corner by someone in a vintage Tom Brady jersey to set the scene.

“It’s a nine millimeter,” Eretson picks up the evidence bag and stares at the bullet, “police standard issue, but that doesn’t mean anything because anyone could buy a box of the same at any Walmart in this bloody city.”

“So it doesn’t mean anything?” She sighs, slumping down in the uncomfortable chair and trying and failing to find a new part of her butt to sit on. “We spent two hours at the hospital waiting for them to dig it out of his shoulder and it doesn’t mean anything?”

“The doctor said the angle of the first shot, the one with the exit wound, indicated he was shot by someone taller than him.” Eretson looks levelly at her for a second and she waits for him to present his case again, linking the truth into a tangled web of a cage around her, but then he shrugs. “So it could have been anybody.”

Astrid snorts, too exhausted to stop herself, and Eretson relaxes ever so slightly, leaning forward in his chair to take his suit jacket off and pushing up his sleeves.

“I’ve spent the last twenty four hours sifting through every connection you have to this case,” he folds his hands on the desk and sighs. She doesn’t doubt it, from the circles under his eyes and the fact he’s only broken concentration to refill his coffee mug. “You’re halfway through your Masters in criminology at Berk University, I could use a second set of eyes.”

“I’m a suspect,” she says automatically, looking between the cuff on her wrist and the pile of papers on the desk that represent possibly the only way she could actually help Hiccup right now.

“My top suspect, in fact, until last night,” he stands up and stretches his arms over his head, “coffee?”

“What changed? I’m still connected to the other three m—events.” She barely stops herself from calling it a murder, but the damage is done anyway, and it feels like Hiccup must have heard her from across town, giving him the closure he wanted with the heaviest consequences attached.

“Like you said, you’d be a pretty shit murderer if you stopped to save your victim’s life.” He picks up his coffee mug and hints at another almost smile, “plus, anyone who disembowels indiscriminately in alleyways wouldn’t stop to help someone as annoying as Jorgenson. Do you not drink coffee?”

“Yes, I mean, I do,” she nods, shocked but grateful, and on the way to the door he pauses, flicking a finger against the chain on her handcuffs. The cuff around the arm of the chair falls open, like it wasn’t ever fully clicked into place and her eyes widen. “You were testing me.”

“Cream or sugar?”

“If I’d done it, I would have tried to get away,” she takes the key that he hands her and unlocks the cuff on her wrist, rubbing the sore line from where she stretched against it in the hospital.

“Black then.” He leaves the office and she scoots her chair forward, starting her sort at the outside of his piles and working in.

The coffee is burned, but it’s enough to keep her awake as she updates herself on the parts of the case she isn’t familiar with. There are witness accounts, most of them Grimborn enthusiasts from Hiccup’s doomed tour, drawing parallels that half make sense. There are notes on knives and how they cut and doodles of how victims were dragged to where they were found. There’s screenshots of the footage of her and Hiccup and a Google Maps estimate of how long it takes to walk between locations on various paths.

It’s the most complete file Astrid has ever encountered, the criminology story problem that doesn’t exist in which a case begs for a one variable solution.

“It’s a set up.” It’s seven thirty in the morning when she finally gets there, startled enough out of her study by the first few diligent officers settling at their desks to look up. “It’s too thorough.”

“Maybe I’m just good at my job, Miss Hofferson,” Eretson’s eyes don’t stray from his most recent print out, but the straight-faced tough-guy routine doesn’t work on her exhaustion frayed nerves.

“The witness accounts all agree, there’s not one Grimborn-ologist in here claiming a double event with a murder across the city or trying to call out a politician.”

“To be fair, one thought it was aliens,” he puts down what he’s reading.

“There’s always someone who says aliens,” she rolls her eyes, sliding that particular account towards him, “that was the body found behind the frozen yogurt shop. It probably has a rooftop refrigerator unit, the spaceship sound they claimed they heard could be someone walking on sheet metal.”

“Both you and Hiccup were there,” Eretson narrows his eyes and slowly slides a stack of papers towards her, “can you make any sense of this?”

It’s a sheet detailing health insurance payouts related to Snotlout’s benefits. Yearly physicals, the occasional mental health visit relating to occupational concerns, a couple of internal medicine visits pertaining to something gastro-intestinal. All in all typical, except for the prosthetics fittings.

Every visit is listed in chronological order and it appears that Eretson has some sort of provisional access to the system, because the patient in each line is only identified as ‘Male: 25’.

“Yeah,” she sets the stack down and waits for Eretson to reveal what he knows, Hiccup’s casual kindness to someone now fossilized in Berkian history on the front of her mind.

“I didn’t know I was risking a workplace sensitivity lecture every time I said Jorgenson didn’t have a leg to stand on,” Eretson jokes, still testing, still refusing to commit to anything in case he’s wrong and Astrid sees for a moment what she’s not allowed to see.

She sees that the well-documented case is still open and unsolved because Eretson refuses to ask for clarification, let alone help.

“It’s not him,” she sets the stack down, “it’s Hiccup. He has a prosthetic leg, he’s obviously on Snotlout’s insurance.”

“Do you know the second victim?” Eretson’s trust wavers briefly as he shoves a picture in front of Astrid. Dave, who Hiccup introduced her to when one murder seemed impossible, in an army uniform, younger and better groomed.

She’s said too much to Eretson already, but she’s also learned more than she ever trying to stay out of it, like that was ever possible.

“Hiccup introduced us once,” she makes her move, hoping it’s not a mistake, “he knew him from volunteering at Gobber’s shelter. At some point he gave Dave an old prosthetic that he wasn’t using.”

“He didn’t mention that.” He tucks the picture of Dave back into his folder, “neither did you when I interviewed you at the crime scene.”

“Well, it would have made him look pretty guilty.” She shrugs, “especially after he stumbled upon two bodies in a row with word of mouth as his only alibi.”

“It would have, wouldn’t it?” Eretson looks at the clock and rubs his red eyes before standing. “You’ve given me lots to think about. Can I give you a ride home?”

“Home?” She thinks of the stain on the pavement by the courtyard wall and shakes her head, “I can stay here and help more, at least until we hear back from the hospital.”

“Grisly will be in soon, I think it’s in the best interest of my job if he doesn’t know that I let my top suspect see the case file.” He looks sympathetic anyway, more human for the night spent together.

“Right,” she nods, “makes sense.”

“Probably best if we leave through the back,” he double checks the hallway before waving her forward and herding her a little too fast to a door that opens into an alley that makes her head spin. An alley that looks like tours with Hiccup and blood and old pictures that don’t capture how it feels to see someone splayed out and taken apart.

Eretson doesn’t say anything when she gets in the front seat of his unmarked car and her eyes burn with the morning sun even through the window. Hours of reading without blinking enough in a vain attempt at not seeing what’s etched on the inside of her eyelids left them dry and itchy, and they seem to dry out more as the car approaches her building.

Her building that’s felt more like a bivouac than a home, exposed and impermanent in blunt ways that she pushed back at out of habit more than decision.

When the car stops and she looks up at the sound-deadened window of Elizabeth Smith’s apartment, her hand freezes on the handle.

“Miss Hofferson?” Eretson is all manners again and it’s so normal that it throws everything into sharp relief.

Ten feet away, she saw Snotlout almost die the night before. She’s used to handcuffs and polite police voices and the wrong end of murder accusations and suddenly the level head she prides herself on feels like a lead helmet, holding her down and drowning her in this chaos. If she gets out of the car right now like everything is normal and walks up into her apartment like it’s home, it would be inhaling brackish ooze and accepting her fate.

“Can you drive me to Ruffnut’s?” She re-buckles her seatbelt and starts giving him directions before he can ask about her change of heart.

She hasn’t showed up at someone’s house without texting first since elementary school, but she doesn’t hesitate to knock, pivoting again on a fallback point. Ruffnut was the first person she called when all of this started and maybe if she’d listened then, things would be different now.

But she wouldn’t have gotten to know Hiccup, and she feels awful for thinking it so soon after hearing those echoed gunshots and seeing Snotlout under the streetlight.

“Astrid?” Ruffnut opens the door in her pajamas, frowning slightly, “did you text?”

“No,” her voice shakes, just barely, but it’s enough for her friend to notice, “Eretson just dropped me off—”

“Is he still here?” She asks, too interested, and Astrid scowls, shouldering past her into her place.

“Is Tuff here?”

“What’s wrong?” Ruff shuts the door and follows her as she knocks on Tuffnut’s bedroom door.

“I’m mad at you, I’m here to see Tuff.”

“You’re mad at me?”

“Yes,” Astrid smacks Tuffnut’s door a couple more times until she hears signs of life inside, “Snotlout is actually a pretty good guy, I think. Or close to it. And you couldn’t take a murder investigation seriously enough to keep you from hitting on Eretson in front of him, let alone a relationship.”

“Giving me whiplash,” Ruffnut is genuinely concerned as she leans on the wall, “are you ok? What’s going on?”

“I thought I heard Astrid’s distinctively brutal knock at my door,” Tuffnut opens the door and places his hands on her shoulders before inhaling deeply. “You look like shit, what happened?”

“You don’t know.” She sighs, the weight of telling the story almost as heavy as the idea of living in it. She gains a new appreciation for the fact that Hiccup tells Viggo Grimborn’s story nightly, because the last few weeks must have felt like penance for something he didn’t do. Something horrible he’s been tied to for no reason.

“I don’t know anything,” Tuffnut grabs her arm and steers her towards their couch before sitting next to her, “and Ruffnut knows even less.”

“Not true, I know I was hanging out with Hiccup yesterday and he got some call and freaked out mumbling something about the hospital, but I definitely didn’t grab his ass that hard so—”

“This is exactly what I’m talking about!” Astrid snaps, dry eyes suddenly wet as Tuffnut slings his arm over her shoulders.

“I was just kidding with him, Astrid, I know you like him, I wouldn’t—”

“You can’t take anything seriously, it’s all about how you can shock someone or—Snotlout was over at my place last night, I think he was worried I was scared or something,” her voice dips and she stares at her lap, “and I guess I should have been, because he got shot right outside.”

“Is he ok?” Ruffnut blanches and Astrid feels like she’s letting Hiccup down all over again when she shrugs.

“He wasn’t yesterday.”

Ruffnut starts texting, all traces of humor gone from her expression as Tuff gets the rest of the story, pausing Astrid at the crime scene to suggest that she take a shower. He listens through the bathroom doorway as she scrubs under her fingernails, trying to be as vague as possible about what happened with Eretson. Tuffnut would say things he shouldn’t, even if it does seem like Eretson is coming around.

To what, she’s not sure, but she can’t think about that anymore today, not without news.

Astrid’s just changing into the band tee-shirt Tuffnut insisted she borrow, as she’d earned it by telling Ruffnut off, when Ruff bursts into the room, phone outstretched.

“It’s Hiccup.”

“Hello?” Astrid mouths ‘thanks’ as Ruffnut sits on her brother’s bed, curled up and holding her knees.

“Hi, Astrid,” Hiccup sounds impossibly more tired than she feels and it makes her chest ache, worried and off center. “How’s it going?”

“That depends,” she sits down next to Ruffnut, “how’s it going over there?”

“He’s out of surgery, in the ICU, we’re just waiting for him to wake up now.”

“That’s great,” she nods, accepting Ruffnut’s head leaning on her shoulder, too relieved to stay mad.

“I tried to call you but—”

“Yeah, I don’t have my phone.”

“I thought you might have said that, but um, last night was…kind of a blur,” he leaves room for a laugh that doesn’t come, “did Eretson take it?”

“No, nothing like that.” It’s a new euphemism for ‘legally, it’s not any worse,’ and she hates coming up with those. “I can come down there and wait with you.”

“They’re only letting one visitor in the room right now, but I’ll keep you posted.” He sighs, “you sound tired.”

“So do you.” That gets a breathy, exhausted laugh she feels in her chest and Hiccup says something about a doctor heading his way before hanging up. “He said he’d keep us in the loop.”

“He told me Snotlout hasn’t woken up yet.” Ruffnut is unusually somber and Astrid nods. “Was he—I mean, did I piss him off?”

“You pissed me off,” she sighs, “did you know he got suspended because he wouldn’t speak up as a witness and complicate the case?”

“That’s stupid,” Ruff wipes her face but her guilty expression doesn’t budge, “he should have just lied.”

“Yeah, but he didn’t.”

Astrid doesn’t expect to be able to sleep, but the long night catches up to her almost as soon as she hits the twins’ couch. She sleeps past hospital visiting hours but is glad to wake up to a text that Snotlout woke up alright and the doctors think that the next day they should be able to move him to a more private room. She gets the feeling Hiccup isn’t going home, but doesn’t know what to say about it, especially from someone else’s phone. After all their dates but one became public domain on account of murder, it seems unnecessarily rude for this urge to comfort him to be between anyone but them.

So when he calls Ruffnut again the next morning, almost sheepishly asking if someone could bring him a phone charger and a toothbrush, Astrid gets a ride from Tuffnut. There’s a strange blast of déjà vu entering the hospital without handcuffs and seeing Hiccup in a corner chair in the waiting room, pale but livelier than he was sitting next to her and shaking two nights ago.

“Hey,” he stands up and the extra little hop on his right leg makes her think back to Eretson’s office and all the things she can’t say right now. “I walked down so that you wouldn’t have to sign in. Thanks, Sharon!” He waves at a nurse behind a nearby station and points with his shoulder down the hallway.

“Is she taking a shift?” The nurse raises a maternal eyebrow and Hiccup shakes his head.

“Just bringing me supplies, I told you I’m here for the long haul.”

“I don’t think he’d mind a break from you!” Nurse Sharon teases and Hiccup waves her off.

“How’s he doing?” Astrid asks, reaching for Hiccup’s hand and tugging lightly so that he’ll look at her.

He’s exhausted, face waxy and jawline dusted with more stubble than she’s seen him with. It makes him look younger instead of older, like he’s dealing with too much to remember to shave. His eyes are determined though, even if his expression is cautious, taut with hope he doesn’t want to have.

“He’s awake,” he shrugs, squeezing her fingers and pausing outside a door, “the stitches are holding, and his vitals look good. Mostly the doctors are worried about mental changes, since his heart stopped in the ambulance and he’d lost a lot of blood so they don’t know how long his brain went without oxygen. Memory loss or personality change or…”

“Hey,” she tilts his chin up with the toothbrush in the hand not holding his, “let’s just go in, ok?”

“Sure,” he nods, self-convincing, before opening the door.

Snotlout is propped halfway seated in the hospital bed, tubes from his arms connected to a beeping machine at his side. She remembers being twenty in her uncle’s hospital room, watching similar machines stop beeping, but when she glances back at Snotlout, the comparison is shattered. His shoulders are bandaged, and his face is bleary, but he’s flipping her off with a disconcertingly gloating grin.

“Hey Astrid, Pats are winning.”

Personality change seems an unlikely symptom.

“Put your arm down,” Hiccup snaps, rushing to Snotlout’s bedside and ignoring when the middle finger is turned on him, “someone just tried to shoot it off.”

“It’s not football season,” Astrid tries not to feel awkward about how comfortable it feels to sit on the small couch next to the bed and look up at the TV. The relief is like a drug, an internal release as strong as whatever’s obviously dripping into Snotlout’s arm through one of those tubes. “Is this a rerun? You’re watching a rerun football game, really?”

“My boys are bringing it home, again,” he laughs then glares at Hiccup, “stop reading the papers, the doctors read the papers.”

“This says your cholesterol is up from your last check up, I’m going to ask a nurse about it.”

“Dude, I just got shot.”

“With a butter bullet?” Hiccup snorts, shaking his head and hanging the chart reluctantly back on the foot of Snotlout’s bed.

“No, with an actual bullet from a fucking gun, so could you please sit down next to your hot girlfriend and shut up for a second?” He winks at Astrid with both eyes as he compliments her and she remembers the reason for her visit.

“I brought the charger,” she takes it out of her pocket, but Hiccup isn’t paying attention as he’s staring Snotlout down with his best stern nurse impression.

“The doctors said mental changes could be anger issues—”

“Fuck off.”

“I don’t think he’s having any issue being angry,” she tries to joke, but it falls flat with Hiccup’s falling expression.

“Or memory loss, and you don’t remember who shot you.”

“Yeah, I was pretty busy being shot, I didn’t have a chance to introduce myself.” Snotlout’s heart monitor beeps slightly faster and Hiccup panics, rushing over to pet his head.

“You have to keep your blood pressure down—”

“Hiccup,” Astrid stands up and grabs his shoulder, attempting to pull him back towards the couch with her, but he shrugs her off.

“The stitches in your artery aren’t healed and it could burst—”

“Well it’ll burst all over your face because you won’t get out of mine!” He snaps, and the door cracks open enough for a nurse to peek her head in.

“Everything ok?”

“I don’t know, Hiccup, is everything ok?” Snotlout looks pointedly at the couch. Or he tries to and his bleary eyes drift sideways towards the floor.

“We’re fine,” Hiccup sits down, hands folded neatly on his lap, and Astrid sits next to him with a nod.

“Let me know if you need anything,” the nurse gives Hiccup a warning look as she shuts the door and Astrid lets her hand rest on his knee to keep him from jumping back up the second she’s gone.

“Just remember, the blood pressure,” Hiccup mumbles and Snotlout rolls his eyes.

“I know, which is why I’m relaxing,” he points at the TV, “by watching the Pats win, like they always do.”

“It sounds more like you’re gloating to me,” Astrid snorts and Hiccup relaxes in a disjointed, uneven way, like clothes falling halfway off a hanger.

“Maybe I can relax a tiny bit about the personality change.”

Snotlout’s hand curls into a triumphant fist on his lap when a play he had to be expecting goes right and Astrid shakes her head, relaxing back into the couch and dragging Hiccup with her. He’s more than stiff, he’s pulled taut, like invisible wires are attached to every point of him and yanking.

“Have you left since you got here?” She recognizes his jacket from the other night and maybe the shirt underneath it.

“Nah,” he shrugs with none of his usual bounce and Astrid wants to cut the cables holding him so rigid.

“Or slept?”

“Sleep?” He snorts, “who needs sleep?” There’s a frantic tinge to the edge of his smile, but it feels like the first time he’s actually looked at her today when he drops the joke, “just kidding, I got a couple of hours this morning when they moved him to the room with the couch. How about you?”

“More than that,” she shrugs, “not lots. Ruff’s couch isn’t the best.”

“Ruff’s couch?” He turns his shoulders to look at her more fully.

“I haven’t been back to my place either,” she shrugs, and even saying it sounds wrong. It’s Elizabeth Smith’s place and it has been for a hundred years.

“Astrid,” Snotlout says her name like he’s about to ask for too much and she narrows her eyes.

“Yeah?”

“Can you scratch my feet?”

“I’ve got it,” Hiccup jumps up, hopping again on his right foot and stumbling to the foot of the bed.

“No,” Snotlout shakes his head, “I want Astrid to do it.”

“Which foot itches?”

“It’s weird if you do it, dude,” Snotlout squirms, “it’s kind of a sex thing.”

“Then I’m definitely not doing it,” Astrid opens her mouth to add something addressing the fact that she didn’t try and save his life just so that he could be disgusting about it, but Hiccup speaks up first.

“I would say that I’ll call my mom right now, except you know you’re not supposed to raise your blood pressure!”

“Dude,” Snotlout adjusts his seat, eyes clearer than they have been since Astrid arrived, the shock of what Hiccup just said blazing through the painkillers in his system, “I was just teasing Astrid because it’s funny when she gets all red and huffy. You’ve got to calm down.”

“I’m calm,” Hiccup examines his shaking hands and laughs, “ok, maybe I’m not, but—”

“Come here,” Astrid doesn’t mean it like an order, but Hiccup takes it like one, deflating exhausted with the weight of momentary decision off his shoulders. When he sits down next to her, she tries to rub the back of his neck, but it’s so tense she makes about as much headway as she would on the wooden arm of the couch.

“Don’t do that,” he groans, head in his hands, elbows on his knees. “That feels too good, it’ll put me to sleep.”

“Maybe you should sleep,” she rubs a circle into his shoulder with her thumb and ignores the selfish, gratified twist in her stomach when he groans again. She’s felt helpless since the other day in Eretson’s office when the truth twisted circumstance and shoved her in the middle, but this is something she can fix. She can get Hiccup to sleep, she can take some of the stress literally off of his shoulders.

“What if the doctors—”

“I’ll talk to the doctors,” she insists, pushing on his far shoulder and guiding his head into her lap when his resistance runs out. It takes him a minute to accept the position and curl his legs up on the couch, shifting to get comfortable. She brushes his hair off of his forehead and he sighs, resting his hand on her knee and stroking Tuffnut’s borrowed jeans with a slow thumb. “Go to sleep.”

His head feels heavier as he drifts off, mumbling some kind of approval when she starts combing her fingers through his hair. It’s soft and a little overgrown, edges curling slightly above the collar of the jacket she should have suggested he take off before laying down. Boyish where his stubble isn’t, the contrast even more striking on his slack sleeping face.

“You’re like the Hiccup whisperer,” Snotlout says after a few minutes of silence, shifting in bed and wincing more than she’s seen.

“Are you ok?”

“No, I just got fucking shot,” he snorts, “it hurts even through the fun stuff they gave me, but if I so much as flinch, Hiccup has a fit about it.”

“He’s worried about you,” she traces the dark line of his eyebrow and it relaxes at the touch. Snotlout is watching his face, some drug-addled version of fond, and as irritating as the concept of the friend-group was the other night, she feels it now. “I was pretty worried about you too.”

It says something about her tenacity that it took this much for her to stop seeing being alone as a victory, but everyone has their limit.

“His mom’s really hot,” Snotlout sighs, relaxing back into his pillows.

“Huh?”

“Hiccup’s mom? Milf. It pisses him off when I point it out, kind of an inside joke.” He looks back at Hiccup, frowning like he just said something normal for this situation. “When I was moving in, she was trying to convince Hiccup to move back with her. It was like right after his dad died and the room I was moving into was this sad shrine he wouldn’t touch.”

“Oh, that’s…I’m sorry.”

“Our dads hated each other,” his eyes flick bitterly at the door, “which, considering who’s here right now and who’s not, I think we know who is actually a piece of shit. I was just trying to get out of the town I grew up in, because I knew I wanted to be a cop and if I did it there, I’d just be working for my dad and at my uncle’s funeral someone was asking Hiccup about getting a roommate.”

“You guys are so close, I assumed you had to have grown up together.”

“Like I saw him at Christmas and stuff, sometimes, he’s like my second cousin once across or some shit, but he was always doing something nerdy so we didn’t really talk.” He looks at her like he’s asking her to swear on something vital to him and she looks back at Hiccup’s head in her lap, his long eyelashes twitching in his sleep. “I just moved in because I needed a place I could afford, but I couldn’t take all his moping. He used to stare at the front door like he was waiting for his dad to come through it or something, depressing shit. If I didn’t do something, I was going to lose my mind.”

“So you made friends.”

“I tried, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he’s a weirdo.” He smiles affectionately, “I tried taking him to clubs, but he doesn’t even have one left foot, so dancing is a lost cause, just a warning. I made him a tinder account and got him a date with some girl who wanted to go on a geeky historical tour and you know how that ended up.”

“He started doing Grimborn tours.” As complicated as this whole mess is, she still can’t make herself regret it.

“And he started going to class again and generally acting human. Well, his weirdo version of human anyway.” Snotlout sighs, “I’m really glad I didn’t bang his mom, then this really would have been like his dad getting shot all over again.”

“I don’t think you saved him any grief, Snot.”

“Maybe I’ve still got a shot then,” he grins, raising an eyebrow, and Astrid sighs.

“You know when you love someone, and they do or say something so incomprehensibly stupid that you judge yourself for a second? Like there’s that second you think to yourself: ‘I had to choose that one’?”

“I live in that feeling,” Snotlout shakes his head at Hiccup. “Why?”

“Me too,” she looks at Snotlout and admits defeat, “but I think it’s about to get a lot worse with the whole friend-group to consider.”

#ripped #httyd fic #hiccstrid #modern au #serial killer tour guide au #hiccstrid fic #coplout is the love of my life #also eretson though #and tuffnut #and astrid borrowing tuffnut's clothes

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pjbehindthesun · 6 years

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chapter 26: principles, paint fumes, and pasta

Tuesday, November 6th, 1990

The first thing I’m aware of before I even open my eyes is that this isn’t my bed. Oh. Right.

The next piece of information I can register is that my shoulder’s killing me. With a big sigh, I try to shift to alleviate the pressure, but then it dawns on me that there’s a reason I can’t move my arm. A very good reason, a redheaded reason who’s curled up against me, facing away, whose bed it is, and who miraculously didn’t wake up when I did. What’s a little dislocated ball and socket joint between friends? ...or whatever we’re calling ourselves now... No, friends, definitely still friends. I need to remember that it’s important to just be Cora’s friend right now. And anyway, it wouldn’t be very friendly of me to wake her up, right? She puts on a brave show but she’s still pretty sick, and I ought to let her get as much rest as she needs. So I hold still and try to ignore my aching shoulder.

Purely selfless of me, of course. Has nothing to do with wanting to stay this close to her for as long as possible, or how good her hair smells in a pile right below my face, or the fact that her bed is way more comfortable than it has any right to be, or the fact that she’s not wearing pants… it’s all very innocent, of course, she just insisted after a while that she couldn’t handle her sweatpants for another second and tugged them off under the covers before falling asleep on me… I'd like to be able to say that I put up a valiant, principled struggle against her pantslessness, but really, who would believe that?

I really missed this. I’ve never exactly been a big fan of sleeping with someone, actually sleeping -- relationship or no relationship, I’ve always needed a healthy minimum amount of personal space -- but everything’s different with Cora, and I’ve really missed this. I know it was only a few nights ago that she came over, but it feels like I’ve been experiencing the passage of time in dog years, like it’s been less than a week for normal humans but somehow over a month for me. Trying to undo the damage of our last fight was hard enough, and now realistically I know that she’s gonna be reeling from this breakup for a long time and that I need to give her as much space as possible and just kinda let her handle it on her own, in her own way… but it’s difficult not to focus on the fact that she’s single now. Maybe there won’t be quite as much drama involved in being honest with her about my feelings now that Alex is gone. Maybe this is actually a good time to try and tell her how much I still want to be with her.

Or maybe I’m just being incredibly selfish, and the last thing she needs is another person she trusts moving the goalposts on her, and that's the exact opposite of the whole friend thing I'm trying to do here. A fresh wave of regret washes over me as I remember how dismissive I was of her guilt on Friday morning. I’m starting to understand where that guilt came from. God, I really need to get out of here.

What time is it, anyway? She’s sleeping on my watch arm, and the room’s dark enough that I couldn’t find a clock even if I knew where she kept one… but the fact that her window is pitch black is more than enough information. We were supposed to just take a short nap, but we obviously overslept. Lucy’s supposed to get back here after she’s done with work, and who knows what the hell her opinion of my situation with Cora is. I’d rather wear Mark’s spangly, silver, unwashed, fish-stained leggings for an entire calendar year than try and explain to Lucy why I spent the entire day here in Cora’s bed when I was supposed to be helping move Cletus out (and hey, for the record, I did an unimpeachable job).

And speaking of opinions of the situation, what about Cora’s? I know how I feel about her, and I think by now she does too, but who the hell knows what she thinks about us now? I wonder if she’s been having the same thoughts as me… I wonder if she’s still just as hung up as I am on what happened between us? Maybe she’s just as eager to give this thing a real try now that she’s finally free to do so? But until she says otherwise, we’re still technically still in this ceasefire, and I’m not about to be the one who violates it by bringing up such a radioactive subject. That would be just perfect, another one of our big stupid trademark fights. That’s pretty much what we’re best at, at this point. What’s my fucking problem? Why the hell am I waiting around here for another fight?

As if to answer my question, she sighs and wiggles a little closer. Jesus, I’m a weak-willed idiot for this woman. I know better, honestly I do, but I can’t help burying my nose deeper into her hair and the curve of her neck. Who knows when I’ll feel this close to her again. But in a feat of resolve, I manage to stop myself from kissing her. I’m not totally devoid of learning ability, after all. With one more deep breath, I slide my arm out from under her, my face screwed up partly with the effort of being stealthy and partly due to the pins and needles pricking my shoulder, and make my way out of her bed.

I’m sure I woke her up, but I’m not about to look back and confirm it. Nothing personal, I’ve just got to get going for both our sakes, that’s all. Scooping up my discarded shirt and hat, I head straight for the bathroom to pull myself together. I feel like such an asshole, though… I’m not ditching her, I’m just letting her stay in bed and rest, right? This isn’t a dick move, right? It’s just stealth. Sure. Right. Anxiety squeezes at my throat.

Except I realize the stealth plan is completely blown when I remember I have to head back to her room for my coat and boots. When I get there, the bed’s empty. Ohhhkay. So much for sneaking out. Time to try and find a creative way to get out of here before one of us does something stereotypically idiotic. I’ve stayed for way too long, and the last thing I want is for her to think I expect anything from her by hanging around. She’s so vulnerable right now. I don’t want her to feel like she owes me something for helping her out, or like I’m here because of any ulterior motives. I’ve got to leave with my principles intact, somehow.

After I’ve shuffled back into my boots, I head to the kitchen, where Cora’s got her back to me as she gets herself a fresh drink of water.

“Uh, so I gotta... get going,” I state the obvious, opening the front door with the hand that’s still draped in my coat, causing me to lose my grip on it and fumble to keep from dropping it entirely. Oh, excellent. Feeling extremely suave right about now.

“Yeah, I figured. I’ve kept you long enough, huh?” She refrains from laughing as I fight my way into my coat and just offers a tentative smile as she makes her way over to me. She’s wearing pants again. I’m not sure what I expected, but it’s still disappointing.

“No, it’s not… you didn’t… I could have… but, dog…”

One of her eyebrows skyrockets. “Again in English, please?”

“I gotta… go take care of the dog,” I finally stitch together a sentence with a cringe, “because, uh, my parents are still out of town. Poor old thing’s probably doing the bathroom dance by the back door.”

Fuck! That’s not even true! My parents’ flight landed earlier today, I’m sure the dog’s getting spoiled rotten as we speak. Why am I lying to her? The panicked feeling in my throat tightens.

“Aww, poor Penny,” she croons, setting the water glass down on top of the TV and taking me by the collar to give me a shake with both hands. “Why didn’t you tell me, Stoner? I woulda kicked you out hours ago!”

Jesus, she has the prettiest eyes. I’m never ready for the effect they have at close range like this. Shit. What are we talking about? Oh, right.

“I, uh… I probably should have gotten back to work already anyway, now that I’m no longer a sanitation threat to the general customer base of the bakery.”

She smooths out the fabric of my coat but doesn’t let go, gnawing on her bottom lip and frowning at her handiwork. “I should get back to school tomorrow too, probably.”

“Oh no way, Typhoid Mary, you’re under quarantine for at least another couple of days,” I cackle, putting my arm up in front of my face, making her drop her grip on my coat.

“I can’t miss that many classes! My professors will think I’m slacking off!”

“Oh, yeah, might as well just withdraw from school, no point even going back now that your credibility’s so irreparably damaged.”

She ignores me. “I should probably call them and explain, right?”

“It’s you, Red, I’m pretty sure after one missed lecture they’ve initiated a missing persons search. Come to think of it, I think I saw your face on a milk carton at the grocery store.”

“That’d be rich, considering I haven’t seen my own advisor since like September,” she allows a tiny smile, picking up the tattered novel I’d been reading earlier. “You wanna take this with you?”

“Oh, uh, sure,” I mumble, letting her push the book into my chest and taking it from her. “You sure you won’t miss it?”

“It’s a short book, Stone, I can spare it for a few weeks. Unless you’re planning to skip town or something.”

“No, why would I do that??” I gape at her in horror, feeling my heart start to race like a cornered animal. Is that what she thinks of me leaving like this? I’m not skipping town! I just don’t want to… I don’t even know what I want. Of course I want to stay and spend more time with her, but I can’t help feeling like I’ve overstayed my welcome and I need to give her some space… Jesus, calm down, idiot, look at her, she’s staring at you like you just sprouted extra ears. That’s obviously not what she meant.

“Okay, okay, unclench! It was just a joke, Stoner.” She gives me a shove to the shoulder before winding her arms around my middle and resting her head on the same spot she'd just assaulted. “Although I do kinda wish you could stay.”

“Yeah, uh, I mean, me too…” I stammer, yet again forgetting what we're even talking about because yet again all I can focus on is how good her hair smells. God, I’m a total disaster.

“Thank you. I mean it. For everything. For staying as long as you did…”

“It was nothing. I mean, I think I may have thrown my back out earlier, but that's what you get for hiring a slotted spoon for all your post-breakup moving man needs.”

A little laugh bubbles out of her and she starts to work out the muscles in my lower back in a slow, kneading motion.

“I was kidding, you don't have to do that…” I protest, my knees weakening. But she doesn’t stop, and I’m starting to feel awkward about not returning her hug, so I half-assedly reciprocate, which only prompts her to pull me closer and massage more of my back. Not good… or very good, very, very good... no, not good! I wish I could think of some other words, some way to explain why I’m in such a hurry to get away from her, but I can’t figure out what to say that won't be hurtful. That the longer I stay here, the more uncomfortable I am with the implications. That I’m not sure I can trust myself to make the right decisions around her, especially right now. That I really just need to go clear my head for a while, and she’s never been very helpful with that.

She nuzzles deeper into my shoulder before looking up at me, inches away and wearing a sheepish little smile, swaying us just slightly, like she’s not sure what else to do either. But we both know what we’d like to be doing. I want it to happen more than I can articulate, but I’m also not going to be the one to do it. I can’t seem to remember why not, though. Something about principles, I think. So I stand there like an absolute idiot and let her close the distance and kiss me. The closest thing I can manage to principled behavior is just to let her lead, to keep the kiss as light as I possibly can, to resist pulling her closer and taking over, to avoid walking her backwards into her bedroom and giving up on the whole stupid pretense that I have any sort of resolve whatsoever when it comes to her.

God, what are we doing? She's been single for less than 24 hours! This is a terrible idea, even by our standards… I pull away and drop my hands, hoping to give her a reassuring smile but probably looking more like the “before” guy in an antacid commercial before I slink into the hallway and away from her door.

I don't look back until I'm two flights of stairs away. What the hell was that? Why couldn’t I just tell her what was wrong? I should go back up, I should explain, she's probably still standing there stunned… I take a few steps back up before wheeling around again, ready to bolt out of her building until I regain enough composure and sense to come back and have a real talk with her about our situation, but instead I plow into someone heading upstairs.

“OW! Stone, what the FUCK?”

Some mumbled word that hopefully sounds like “sorry” comes out of me as I put a hand out to make sure Lucy doesn’t topple backwards. I was going to try to edge my way past her and continue down the stairs, but for the second time today, someone’s got me by the coat collar, and I stumble backwards up a couple stairs to get my balance.

She fixes me with a beady, searching squint. “What are you still doing here?”

“Nothing. I was just leaving.”

“Yeah, Captain Obvious, I know… wasn’t Alex supposed to come by around noon?”

“Yeah, he did.” With some effort, I shift until she releases her clawlike grip on me, but it’s clear she’s still not planning to let me past her just yet.

“It’s like 6:30… why are you still here? Is she okay?”

“She’s fine!” Her eyebrows shoot up, and frankly I'm surprised by my own volume as well. Shouting’s definitely not helping my case. I lower my voice several decibels and try again. “She’s fine, don’t worry. They didn’t see each other at all, she was asleep the whole time, I took care of it, and then, uh… we just fell asleep together. For a little while.”

“You what?” She’s a little shorter than me and two steps below me, but that doesn’t stop me from cowering back from the menacing look I just got. Still, she’s pissing me the fuck off and I’m in no mood for this.

“Did I stutter?” God, I really don’t need to pick a fight with Lucy too, but I’m running out of patience for this shit. I’m not thrilled about everyone always assuming the worst about me. Then again, I’ve just been occupied doing the same thing.

“Cut the shit, Stone! She’s been single for five fucking minutes, can’t you keep it in your pants long enough to let her --”

“Jesus! Nothing happened, okay?”

“This time, maybe.”

“Oh, fuck off. She didn’t want to be alone, I stuck around for a while, that’s it! I did what you fucking asked.”

Lucy’s mouth opens furiously, but I’ve pushed past her before she can get a word out. She’s made her point. And I’d never admit it to her, but I know she’s right.

***

What the fuck is his problem? Ugh, you sarcastic little shit! Yeah, you’d better run!

With a huff, I stomp up the rest of the stairs. I can’t believe him! I’ve stuck up for him, I’ve defended him to Cora, I’ve tried to help her recognize how much she loves his stupid ass, and he bites my head off? Me, of all people? I’m not the enemy! I just want to make sure he’s giving her a little space, that’s all! No wonder he’s storming off, they probably got into another one of their textbook fights because he tried to move things forward too fast. I know he’s a complete shithead when it comes to Cora, but I figured he’d have enough sense not to try and make a move today, at the very least. Last time I give too much credit to Stone, that’s for damn sure.

I slow my pace down when I hit her floor and brace myself for whatever kind of apocalyptic, tearful mess he probably left behind. The door is still wide open, which can’t be a good sign… I edge into the apartment and knock lightly anyway, even though I can see her in the kitchen from the hallway.

“Hey Luce,” she smiles over her shoulder before returning to the cabinet she’s rooting through. She’s not exactly the picture of health, but for someone with the flu, she looks pretty normal. And chipper. Which is precisely zero help as I try to piece together why Stone was rushing out of here in such a bitchy hurry.

“Hey… how are you feeling?”

“I’m okay. Slept most of the day, which probably didn’t hurt. Stone just left.” She’s got her back to me as she grabs a sheet pan and fills it with frozen tater tots, so I can’t gauge her face, but her voice still sounds pretty upbeat.

“Yeah? He wasn’t too much of a pest?”

“No, why would he be?” she says, keeping a neutral tone as she puts the pan in the oven and turns around.

“You sure you’re okay? Stone spent the whole day here and you’re not annoyed? If you’re hallucinating, we definitely need to get you to the hospital…” I reach up to put a hand on her forehead but she bats it away with a weak smile.

“Seriously, it’s fine. He did all the packing, he made me take some cold meds, and I spent most of the day completely crashed out. When I woke up, he’d handled the whole Alex thing, I didn’t even have to come to the door. Really decent of him, actually.”

“Yeah,” I peer at her. “I guess. So you’re really okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I mean… just wondering.”

She hunches her shoulders defensively, but she’s still smiling, so it’s clear that pressing the issue isn’t going to get me any new information. But it still kinda freaks me out that she’s this calm and robotic about it all. I mean, we’re not even a day out from Cindygate, and she’s acting so… normal? I know this is her first breakup, but doesn’t she know the rules? Doesn’t she know she’s entitled to a sobbing, ice-cream binging, voodoo doll-making phase? How the hell can she be so calm about this? And what the hell happened with Stone, and why isn’t she more spun up about that? I want to grab her by the shoulders and shake the story out of her, but that’s more for my benefit than for hers. I need a different approach.

“So what do you want to get up to tonight?”

Without a word, she points at the oven and then at her own open mouth, which inadvertently becomes a full-body yawn. “Tots. Then sleep.”

“Didn’t you sleep all day?”

“Yeah, it was fucking exhausting. Seriously, I kinda just want to be alone so I can crash.”

“Sure, okay… you sure?”

“I’m sure! I don’t need supervision, Lucy, I just need more sleep.”

“Yeah, of course,” I nod reassuringly, but I’m still not sure what to make of this totally calm, emotionless robot. Is she really okay? Is she just spaced out on cold meds? Is she waiting for me to leave so she can fall apart?

“Go say hi to the guys for me, okay?” she chirps with her back toward me as she peeks into the oven to check on her tater tots, waving without looking.

“Uh huh. Uhm, you can come over if you want company…”

“Nah. I’ll call you tomorrow!”

Okay, as I make my way out into the hallway and close the door behind me, I can maybe start to see why Stone was so shaken up. Acting this calm the day after what she just went through? That’s just fucking freaky. No good will come of this.

When I key into Jeff’s apartment, he and Eddie glance up from where they’re both sitting on the couch, guitars in hand, noses buried in one of Ed’s little notebooks. Basketball’s on the TV, and a bag of Chips Ahoy sits half-devoured between them on the cushion. A much more normal and reassuring sight. I didn’t realize I’d been holding my shoulders tight around my ears all day, but it’s a massive relief to leave Cora’s drama behind for a little while and come home. I mean, not that Jeff’s place is my home! I guess technically I spend enough time here that I’ve started to think of it that way, but the idea of making things more official hasn’t really come up. Not since the whole “I love you” thing happened in the bathroom the other day. And I’m not even sure it came up then. I might have been imagining it in the midst of all those paint fumes. To be honest, I’m kind of glad it hasn’t come up again because I’m still not sure how to handle a relationship that’s going this well. In some ways, Jeff being in my life feels like a practical joke. Like at any moment, some horrible game show host is going to pop out from behind a ficus plant and say, ‘just kidding, you didn’t really think a guy this great could actually be in love with YOU, did you? Look, everybody, can you believe she fell for it...’

“In or out?” Jeff grins, setting his bass down propped up against the couch to stand up and take an irresistible kitten-like stretch.

“In.”

“Hi, Lucy,” Eddie mumbles as I close the door behind me, scratching his eyebrow and smiling shyly.

I try to say hi back, but it’s a muffled yelp from inside Jeff’s sudden bear hug, and Eddie quickly averts his eyes back to the notebook.

“Work good?” Jeff says from somewhere in my hair, totally oblivious to Eddie’s discomfort.

“Yeah, just long. Have you talked to Stone?”

His snort right into my ear tells me that’s a no. “So you didn’t hear anything about how today went?”

“How what went?” Jeff lets me go just enough to get a look at my face. Shit, that’s right, I’ve been so wrapped up in all this drama I haven’t even told him what happened last night! Oh, this is not going to be pretty.

“Sooo,” I stall, filling my lungs with air and focusing on my feet planted on their scuffed floor, trying to ground myself before the inevitable explosion, “the thing is, Cora kicked Alex out last night after finding him in their apartment with another girl…”

Jeff takes a big step back from me and laces his fingers behind his head like he’s trying to restrain them from wringing the nearest neck. “Whhh…” he struggles to talk through clenched teeth. When I glance over at Eddie, he hasn’t moved a muscle except to draw his eyebrows as far down into a knot as humanly possible as he glares at his pages.

“Yeah, it was pretty terrible, or it sounds that way. She didn’t tell me until this morning, but I guess she threw him out right then and spent the night by herself. That’s all I know. She won’t really talk to me about it. Anyway, I called him this morning and talked him into coming by to get his stuff today, just to rip the bandage off as soon as possible. I think he was feeling guilty enough that he went for it. And Stone was the only one around to help out and make sure Alex didn’t hassle Cora when he came by.”

“You should have called me, I woulda left work!” Jeff shouts, letting his arms flail. “God, I wait all year for a chance to punch that guy in the jaw, and Stone gets to do it, of all people? I don’t think he even knows how to throw a punch, he’d probably miss and end up hitting himself!”

“Stone had a pretty good grip on things, nobody got punched,” Eddie says absently in that uniquely low but resonant way he has, so that even the quietest words reach every ear in the room.

“Wait, you were there too? Fuck, I miss everything!”

“Well, no, I just sorta… I was in the right place at the right time, I helped Stone get some of the boxes into the guy’s truck.” His eyes are boring holes into the floor, refusing to look at either Jeff or me, so we settle for looking equally confused at one another. How come Stone didn’t mention Eddie helping out? I wonder if Cora has any idea. She certainly didn’t let on if she did. Shit, let’s hope not. She’d probably be completely mortified.

“Wait, so this thing with this girl, do you know if it was a one-off or what?” Jeff presses me for more details.

“It was his best friend’s girlfriend, I think. Apparently it had been going on for like a year.”

Just as Jeff interpretively dances through another fit of apoplectic rage, Eddie excuses himself and starts to slouch off toward his bedroom, which is really more like a large closet with a futon. Poor guy, he probably feels really uncomfortable with me here all the time, especially with so little space of his own to escape to.

“Eddie, you don’t have to go! Did you guys eat dinner yet? I could make something!”

“Hmm? Nah, thanks, I’m good, I’ve gotta… I'll figure something out a little later, you go ahead,” he mumbles cryptically, disappearing down the hall.

“Guy’s a fast learner, he already knows not to let you cook,” Jeff grumbles, visibly winding down just a tiny bit.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. She didn't even tell me until this morning. It all happened so quickly before work.”

“Nah, don’t apologize, it’s not like I’m mad at you. I just really hate that fucking guy.”

“Join the club.”

With a chuckle, he pulls me into another embrace. “Pizza?”

We order dinner, I ditch my work clothes for the sweats I’ve started keeping in his dresser, and before long, it’s starting to feel like any other normal Tuesday evening. Until, after settling into a pizza coma with my legs stretched out over his lap on the couch, half-asleep, he speaks up out of nowhere.

“So, have you thought anymore about it?”

“About what?” I ask through a stifled yawn.

“Moving in with me.”

Instantly wide awake, I gape at him and rack my brain. When the fuck did we talk about moving in together? When did we talk about it in enough detail that he thought I’d have an answer? What the hell am I supposed to do with this? Has absolutely everyone in this building lost their damn mind? What was in those paint fumes, anyway?

***

Wednesday, November 7th, 1990

Not your typical sick day, I guess. Most people would probably just stay in bed, but I’m having a hard time with the whole bed concept. It felt a little less like “our” bed when Stone was here with me, distracting me from the fact that it used to be a shared bed by definition, but it still doesn’t feel like “mine.” Who knows how long it’s going to take me to occupy the whole bed when I sleep by myself. It feels rude to take up Alex's space. I hate that I’m still calling it his space. It’s not like he’s coming back for it. Not like I’d even want him to. But it still feels like there’s a big “reserved” sign hanging over that side of the bed. So much of my apartment doesn’t feel like mine. Looking around and seeing massive, conspicuous holes where Alex’s things used to be makes it so much worse. They look like wounds.

So I’ve spent the day covering up those holes. Shuffling books and records around so that the bookcases don’t look so gap-toothed. Reorganizing my sweaters to use all the drawers in the dresser. But that only wasted so much time. I still had a whole day to myself. It’s weird, I spent a lot of time by myself when we were together, too -- I guess that was part of the problem -- but the solitary time never felt this bottomless. Now, I’ll do anything I can think of to fill it up, use it up, burn it, in the hope that if I kill enough of it, it’ll develop an end. One of those light things at the end of the tunnel that stupid optimistic people are always talking about.

The first thing I thought of was calling the clinic. I’m on their schedule for tomorrow for a check-up. I’ve never gone to one of these places before, but it seems the obvious thing to do. Not even out of fear, really, just out of due diligence. It doesn’t even seem like my own health I’m checking up on, it’s just something right out of the Handbook for the Recently Cheated On.

Then, once the thought of cleanliness had occurred to me, it seemed only natural that purging the apartment was the next step. Maybe if every last corner of this place is spotless, it’ll feel more like it belongs to me, more like a fresh start of some kind. And mindless tasks are the perfect way to burn out any thoughts about Alex, like checking the clock and wondering if he’s ever going to call. He probably has no reason to call someone he’s been over for so long, and I’m not sure I want to hear from him, but there’s this weird void where he used to be, made all the more prominent by how suddenly it appeared. Shouldn’t we have some kind of closure? Wouldn’t calling me to talk about it be the right thing to do, even if it was just a postmortem? I thought we respected each other at least enough for that. Maybe he will call eventually, but not enough time has passed. See? This is why I need to clean the fucking house, I can’t stop dwelling on stupid shit like this. Or other stupid shit, like how confusing everything’s gotten with Stone. I haven’t heard anything from him since he sprinted out of my place yesterday. God, what was I thinking, kissing him? He was obviously trying to get out of here as fast as he could, I just… I didn’t want him to leave, and I didn’t know how to explain it to him, so I said it the only way I could think to say it… he couldn’t have been less into it, the poor guy. I’m sure he just stayed the whole day out of pity, and I took advantage of his kindness by kissing him. Fucking great. Running them off in droves. Who can blame them?

So I’ve vacuumed, I’ve mopped, I’ve dusted. I’ve disinfected the light switches. I’ve run vinegar solutions through the dishwasher, the coffee pot. I’ve scrubbed all the baseboards. I’ve cleaned under the refrigerator. I’ve oiled the creaky bathroom door hinges. I’ve used Alex’s toothbrush to clean the bathroom floor tile grout. And I’m running out of ideas. God, I really need to get healthy soon so I can go the fuck back to the lab, this is pathetic. Oh! I don’t think I’ve ever deep-cleaned the radiator!

A cloth, a bucket of soapy water, and a grimy cast-iron project. Perfect. There are so many impossible angles, so many unreachable corners, so many attention-stealing details I can fixate on until my hands go numb. I could do this for hours. I already feel like I have been doing this for hours. This is exactly what I needed. The perfect antidote to overthinking.

I have no idea what time it is when I hear a tentative knock on my door. Probably Lucy checking on me after work again. It’s sweet of her, but really, I need to get rid of her as soon as I can. The less I have to explain about my mental state to concerned third parties, the better.

“Come in, it’s open,” I call, not lifting my head from the floor where I’m crouched on my hands and knees to check whether the underside of the radiator is uniformly glistening.

“Did you lose something under there?”

At the sound of a much deeper than expected voice, I jolt upright, regretting the decision instantly when my neck complains. “Eddie! What are you doing here?” Fuck, why does he always catch me off guard like this? I always run into him at the worst moments.

“Oh, sorry, is this a bad time?”

If it were anyone but Eddie, I would probably say yes, because my life lately is an endless continuum of bad times, but he looks so small and forlorn standing in my doorway clutching a baking pan covered in foil that I can’t bring myself to make him feel any more out of place.

“No, not at all.”

“Uhm, not to, like… question your methods or anything, but… what were you doing just now?”

“Cleaning the radiator.”

“Huh. Do you have to do that?”

I shrug, dropping the rag into the bucket of scummy water. “I have to do something.”

“Sure, sure, yeah.” He nods with a scowl. This seems to be one of his approving scowls. I like a person who has different varieties of scowls. “Well, uhm,” his gaze travels down to the pan in his hands, and the scowl becomes almost one of surprise, as if he didn’t remember bringing it with him, “I heard you were feeling under the weather, so I figured someone should drop off some sustenance.”

Only when he mentions food does my stomach loudly remind me that I’ve forgotten to eat all day. “Oh, thanks,” I start to say, but he keeps mumbling down at the dish.

“It’s not like it’s gourmet or anything, it’s just baked ziti, there was a coupon for spaghetti sauce. I don’t really have my own pans and stuff, though, so you’re gonna have to give this one back eventually, it’s Jeff’s…”

“I think I can handle that.” His sincerity is so touching that I want to hug him, except I’m all covered in sweat and grime, and he looks like he might shatter if I tried. I settle for taking the pan from him with a simple “thank you” and giving him a chance to find someplace in my apartment where he feels a little more at ease. True to form, he settles on standing in the doorway, one foot still in the hall, with his hands shoved deep in his pockets and his eyes digging into the floor.

I was about to put the pan away, figuring I’d heat it up by myself later, but the black marker design sketched on the aluminum foil cover stops me in my tracks in front of my recently polished fridge. Setting the pan down on the counter to study it, I find a series of angular, progressing ocean waves crashing on a shore. A few seabirds seem to be circling way out over the water. As my eyes travel in from the ocean, there’s a spit of beach encircled by a spiky ring of vegetation, some roughly sketched palm trees, and a hammock underneath. And even though no one’s speaking, I can hear his voice reaffirming our stupid little daydream outside the Off Ramp that night.

The island’s still there if we need it, right?

“Eddie?”

“Yeah?” He turns around from his solitary post in my door frame.

“You got dinner plans?”

“No,” his scowl gives way to a tight-lipped and dimpled smile, “you?”

“Now I do. Thanks for this.”

“Ahh,” he rumbles, shaking his head uncomfortably at the floor and making his way inside, closing the door behind him.

#okay you guys here is what my idiots have been up to #it's pretty bad as usual #chapter 26 #behind the sun #fanfiction #fanfic #stone gossard #jeff ament #eddie vedder

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