#the fact that a simple thing could just be answered in a NON-SHADY WAY | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sleepless-in-starbucks · 4 years

Text

Can’t Even Bleed Out Alone Anymore, SMH

AO3

Summary: Vigilantes and cops didn’t mix. But neither did Remy’s blood with the cement beneath him, so maybe desperate times called for desperate measures. ...Or no measures whatsoever. That worked too. Warnings: Non-detailed but fairly often mentions/descriptions of blood, talk of a major + physically violent fight, mentions/thoughts of death/dying, swearing Pairings: Platonic creativisleep Notes: Based off this post. Tagging @blinksinbewilderment because she’s the one who reblogded the post, and @rosesisupposes because vigilantes are superhero-esque + she picked the pairing so I think she deserves to know why I needed a random ship at 9pm

Vigilante business was, in general, a pretty lawless business. That was the whole thing, in fact- no rules! No laws! Creatures of justice and the night and miscellaneous bullshit!

There were, however, a few unspoken rules of thumb. But they were simple things, things that came with the whole territory of being a vigilante. Things like ‘don’t get caught’ and ‘don’t wear bright colours’ and ‘don’t rat on other vigilantes.’ There was also, of course, the most important not-rule rule:

You don’t go to the fucking cops.

Now, in Remy’s defense, he hadn’t meant to go to the cops. Really! He hadn’t! He had tried everything else!

...And in this case, everything else was ‘hope to miraculously gain the strength to move or die in this dirty, cold alleyway.’ Remy thought it was a wonderful idea, really, especially since he didn’t have any others.

He was also pretty sure he didn’t have enough blood in his body, but that was a secondary issue.

He also hadn’t technically gone to the cops!

They came to him, which really shouldn’t have surprised Remy as much as it did. It was a shady alleyway in one of the more crime-ridden parts of town. It, of all places, needed police patrols.

That didn’t stop Remy from startling when he heard footsteps at the end of the alley, slow, calculated steps clearly taken by someone who had done this walk many times before. He tried to move at first, to stand up and run, or even just move enough to hide himself, but all he succeeded in doing was sending a shockwave of pain through his entire body. He gritted out a grunt as he slumped back against the wall.

To his disappointment, the movement attracted the attention of the patrolling officer, their footsteps stopping. “Hello? Is someone down there?”

Remy bit his lip, hoping if he kept quiet the officer would pass by. It didn’t help that he recognized that voice; it belonged to one Roman Prince, a police officer Remy had come face to face with a couple of times in his work.

And by ‘couple of times’ he meant at least once a week for the last four months. Roman was a good guy, one who wanted to help as much as he could, and it lead to him taking a lot of night shifts in the worst parts of town. Which were, coincidentally, the places Remy, nighttime vigilante, ended up the most.

So they ended up talking a lot. Sometimes in battle, when Roman just had to play the part of a hero and Remy had to save his stupid courageous ass. Sometimes after battle, to talk about how much Roman disagreed with Remy’s methods while Remy just smirked and said his methods were the reason why Roman had anyone to handcuff. Sometimes there was no battle- they were just bored, both in need of a conversation partner, and both in the same area at the same time.

Tonight, right now, though? Remy did NOT want a conversation partner. Or any partner, in fact. He needed to be alone and not worried over and definitely not helped because he was a lone vigilante, which meant he worked alone, took care of himself alone, and dammit he was going to die alone too.

Not that he thought he was going to die!

Probably not.

Maybe.

It wasn’t entirely certain. He just needed to get some strength together, and go home, and patch up all his cuts, of which there were… more than three.

Alright so maybe the odds weren’t really stacked in his favor, but that was alright. He made the odds his bitch on the regular. If he had done it before, he could do it again!

“I’m coming down there, alright?”

Except today, apparently, since Roman was just too damn noble for his own good. Remy mentally ignored the fact that it was also just a standard part of his job.

He kept silent even as Roman came down the way, hoping that maybe if he stayed still and quiet Roman wouldn’t notice him. But despite his attempts, Roman’s flashlight still ended up in his face (blinding him and forcing his to tilt his head away), and the officer gasped as he recognized the now bloody and torn outfit. “Nightshade?”

“No, this is a hobo. Leave me alone.” Remy called back, well aware it wouldn’t work, but figured that he had nothing to lose to just try it. Given how rough his voice sounded, and the fact that halfway through his declaration he had to stop to half-cough, half-retch, however, Remy knew he was done for.

The steps, which had been a slow, measured pace, broke into a sprint, Roman quickly crossing the rest of the alley to reach Remy. The minute he got to the wounded vigilante, he fell into a crouch, placing his flashlight down so that it lit Remy up but let him use both his hands. Remy grimaced when he saw the concern in Roman’s expression. “Listen, hun, I know how this looks, but really, I’m gucci-”

“Shh.” Roman hushed gently, and Remy shut up immediately, not completely sure why. It was just something in Roman’s face, the stiff way his jaw was set as he looked Remy over more fully, taking in the extent of Remy’s injuries. Something cold and cruel that, while Remy doubted was directed at him, made Remy afraid of Roman.

Which was insane, right? Roman was a hard worker and a good fighter but, at heart, he was a goofball and a dramatic with an overactive imagination. He could be brave, and tough, and strong, but not scary.

But then Roman’s hand was under his chin, gently pushing it up so he could better look at the blood caked on Remy’s face, and Remy felt borderline terrified. Not because he was exposed, his mask having been lost in the fight that landed him there (Roman had had plenty of chances before to take Remy in if he wanted to and he hadn’t- what did it matter if he knew who Remy was?), but because there was something glinting in Roman’s normally soft amber eyes, something hard and angry.

Carefully, Roman wiped his thumb beside Remy’s mouth, coming away with a streak of blood from his cut lip. The motion was impossibly gentle, and Remy wouldn’t have believed it had even happened if the proof wasn’t smeared across the cop’s thumb.

Roman studied the blood for a moment, but then his gaze moved back over to Remy; not even his face or his injuries but him, Roman looking him dead in the eye. Remy sucked in a breath through his teeth as he did, because the gaze was intense and heated and furious and Remy found he didn’t very much like being on the receiving end of it.

“Who did this to you?” Roman asked, voice low and dangerous. Remy didn’t respond at first, because that tone caught him off-guard and was doing nothing to help his already racing heart.

“Who did this to you?” Roman repeated, voice quieter but filled with even more fury.

Remy reacted that time, mostly because he felt he had to, had to answer before Roman did something unreasonable (he wasn’t sure what Roman’d do, but he figured it was best to nip the flower in the bud before anything escalated). “No one,” He started, pausing to cough roughly into his elbow, “No one important.”

“No one important?” Roman repeated, incredulously. “I’d say anyone who beat you up this bad is pretty damn important!”

“Nothing I haven’t dealt with before.” Remy said, which wasn’t a complete lie. He had dealt with all of these injuries before. Just… normally he dealt with them separately. Like, one or two at a time. “And, besides, I’m not just going to tell you and watch you run out on some sort of suicide mission to avenge me or something-”

“Have you even seen yourself, Nightshade?!” Roman snapped, and Remy flinched at the tone. Roman clearly noticed, sighing before he continued, quieter, “You appear to have at least three severe external wounds alongside a multitude of bruising that seems to be covering your entire body, and that isn’t even getting into whether or not you have broken bones or internal bleeding. I don’t think you should even be alive right now.”

“I’m resilient.” Remy told him drily.

“You’re lucky, is what you are.” Roman corrected, frown deepening as his hand slipped from holding Remy’s chin to cupping his cheek. Remy hated it, hated how… sincere the gesture was, but that didn’t stop him from leaning into it, the cold of his environment finally beginning to seep in. Softly, Roman ran his thumb over Remy’s cheek, only inviting Remy to lean further into his hold. Were it not for the last few tendrils of his sense of will, Remy would have collapsed into it too.

“Someone hurt you with the intention to kill you.” Roman said, quietly. “And I intend to make them pay for it. But to do that, I need to know who hurt you.”

Remy looked at Roman carefully, squinting at the officer. His expression was set, fury still in his eyes but now accompanied by determination. “You’re just a civilian.”

“So are you.” Roman pointed out. “You just put on a suit.”

Remy didn’t respond to that, choosing to just keep watching Roman, not sure what exactly he was looking for. Finally, he sighed. “Uncanny.” He admitted, feeling as if he had just told his deepest secret. “I caught them on the roof of an apartment complex, trying to force their way in from the top. We fought, and… well. One of us went overboard, and for once it wasn’t me.”

Roman nodded to himself. “Uncanny.” He repeated, the fury once more flashing in his eyes, pushing out everything else. He leaned back, lost in his thoughts, his hand slipping from Remy’s cheek as he did so.

Later, Remy would be embarrassed by what he did next. But in the moment, with the adrenaline finally beginning to fade and the force of his injuries, the cold, and the loneliness hitting him, the thought of Roman leaving was completely unbearable.

So he pushed himself forward, ignoring the burning protest that immediately flared across his entire body at the sudden movement. He fell against a startled Roman and curled into him, his grip loose and weak and shaky but still enough to allow him to latch onto Roman.

“Please don’t.” Remy begged, feeling foolish but only being able to slightly care, because Roman was warm, unfairly so, and Remy had no clue what he would do if Roman left him, left him cold and hurting in this freezing empty alley. “Please don’t go, please, please don’t, don‘t leave me, I can’t, can’t-”

Arms, suddenly, warm and strong, wrapped around Remy’s back and helped to pull him up, more properly surrounding Remy in the warmth. Tenderly, Roman moved Remy’s head to his shoulder, tucking his face against his neck.

“Shhhh.” He shushed, gently, calmly, kindly, gathering up as much of Remy as close to him as he could get. “It’s alright. I’m not going to leave you, Nightshade. You have my word.”

Remy just nodded into Roman’s shoulder, because he trusted him, really, trusted his word and trusted that he wouldn’t leave Remy. As soon as he stopped nodding, however, black spots began to crowd into his vision, swarming in from the edges as his eyelids fluttered. He was still aching all over, but now he was warm, warm and safe, and trying to keep himself conscious seemed both a useless and unnecessary use of his effort.

“Ro, I- I’m gonna-” Remy tried, at the very least not wanting to frighten Roman, make him think he had fainted or something when, really, all Remy wanted right then and there was a good, long nap.

Roman just nodded a little bit, enough that Remy could feel the vibrations, running one of his hands over Remy’s back in a soothing manner. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.” He promised, and as Remy gave up his fight with his eyelids, letting them fall completely closed, he continued,

“I’m not going to let them hurt you again.”

And with that last promise echoing in his mind, Remy drifted off, feeling secure in the fact that, if no one else would, he knew Roman would keep his promise.

#the other thing I wrote during tumblr nerftiem #*nerf-time #spaced out from the bullet fic to not overcrowd my blog or anything #the cryptid speaks #fanfic #fanfiction #ts sides #sanders sides #ts roman #ts sleep #ts remy #creativisleep #platonic creativisleep

154 notes · View notes

elixir448 · 4 years

Text

Good Girls 3x04 and 3x05 Disorganised Monster Post

Apologies in advance for the absolute mess this is going to be. I’ll start with 3x04 and try to keep it organised but it just...won’t be. And yeah, I made all the Dean sections about Beth and Rio. Bite me.

Mick

I. Am. In. Love. With. This. Man. I’m sorry but when he rolled down his window and said “good morning”, my jaw hit the ground. His voice is unreal. Does everyone in Rio’s gang have an amazing voice? Is it a requirement for joining? What is this sorcery?

I also get a kick out of the fact that he is so polite and charming with people that he doesn’t really know, just like Rio. I can’t help but think that they must have grown up together to be so similar in that way. Also, Mrs Karpinski and Mick. I would like to see more of them.

Beth and Dean (Did I make this section all about Beth and Rio? I may have.)

I think @pynkhues has already mentioned this and I totally agree with it. That Dean just works as a character so much better in humourous scenes, like when he’s purchasing a gun. I think the last time I laughed so much at a scene with Dean in it was at the end of 2x07, when he’s interacting with the krav maga instructor.

The moose analogy was hilarious and, I’m not gonna lie, I hope Dean sticks around in the story just so we can get more outsider POV of Beth and Rio’s relationship, because it is genuinely one of my favourite things in the show and to read about in fanfic. And Dean, Rio does not “have his way” with ‘your wife’; she wouldn’t be such a pain in his ass if he did. He did this in 3x05 as well, where he referred to Beth as “something you love”. She’s not an object that people can love or have their way with.

I am convinced that Dean’s gun will be utilised within the story at some point, although whether it will be used by him is up for debate.

When he walks into the house with the gun and ignores Beth’s questions about about it, only answering when she becomes more insistent, I was struck by the childhishness of Dean’s character.

Let me articulate this for a second.

Let’s compare this scene to the way Dean acts in 2x07, when he refuses to watch the kids after Jane’s dance show and immaturely lashs out at Beth saying that he’s going to book club. It’s not even about putting her in her place. It’s simply petty and it’s childish because their is no goal aside from temporarily annoying her. Just like in this scene. He walks into the house with a huge gun on his shoulder, in a clear attempt to seek attention but then ignores her questions and it comes across as petty and childish; in both scenes, he is akin to a child who can feel that the attention of their parent is wandering and so seeks attention by being as loud and annoying as possible.

There is no back and forth in Beth and Dean’s relationship at all. When Beth dumps cash on Dean and tells him that he doesn’t know her in 1x06, when she ignores his questions at the beginning of 1x07 and tells him to take the kids to Disneyland, she was putting him in his place because, really, he deserved it. When she took away his power in the dealership and he became a house-husband, she was putting him in his place after finding out about his multiple affairs. When Dean takes her kids from her, he was trying to put Beth in her place, essentially saying See. I know you. You’re nothing without our children.

This is all very different from the back and forth in Beth and Rio’s relationship. Importantly, even though Beth and Rio are always trying to get a leg over each other (metaphorically and often physically haha) and even though they do try and sweep the rug out from one another, it’s less about wielding power over the other person than it is about wielding power over each other (I know what I mean in my own head lol). It’s that they enjoy it when the other person gets a leg over them, they enjoy the heated looks and even enjoy the gleefulness from the other person. It’s all a part of their process. Even when Beth and Rio seek attention from one another (Beth taking the pills from the cars and Rio mailing her body parts), it’s less about the end result of having the other person’s attention focused on them or having power over them; it’s more about imagining how they they will look, how they will feel, how they will react when they find out. All of it’s important. It’s all foreplay.

Also, it was one bullet Dean. Not a full clip.

Before Dean kisses Beth, he says “We were so good with him gone.” Honestly, that line felt like the 100th nail in the coffin haha. Dean just doesn’t get Beth and he doesn’t understand that there is a lack of emotional intimacy in their relationship. He hasn’t picked up on the fact that she’s actually experienced a regression on a personal level; she’s wrapped herself up in the comfort of her familiar life, with her kids, her house and her husband only after Rio’s death. The only reason he felt they were good was because they were having sex, even if it was for all the wrong reasons on Beth’s part. Even then, he classes it as good because it was sex with him.

The reality is that all this matters less than the simple truth, which is that Rio isn’t gone anymore. He’s back. And Dean knows, as stupid as he is, that it’s only a matter of time.

As for the scene where Dean kisses Beth. Here are all the ways it contrasts Beth and Rio’s kiss in 2x09 (all the ways I can think of anyway). Sorry. Not sorry.

I’d like to point out that Dean walks exactly 3 steps towards Beth, before stopping and taking her jacket from her. The same number of steps that Beth took towards Rio in her bedroom. The same number of steps that Rio took towards Beth. And notably, the same number of steps that Beth did not take towards Dean in this scene.

Yes, Beth kissed Dean back and participated in the kiss itself. But she did not participate at all in the lead-up which is, arguably, just as important. When Beth kissed Rio, the mutual nerves, tenderness and affection were a huge part of the scene. In other words, the lead-up was just as important as the kiss itself. That was very much lacking here. I suppose one could argue that this is not Beth and Dean’s first kiss but it certainly is their first on-screen kiss and presumably the first kiss they have shared in a long time. For all intents and purposes, it should be like a ‘first kiss’ because it’s their first kiss after all the betrayals, lies and disdain.

This scene, like Beth and Rio’s, takes place in daylight but, it’s different in basically every other way. Dean grabs Beth and sort of positions her head to directly face him. When Beth leaned in to kiss Rio in her bedroom, he angles his head just right and very slighly inches his head closer. For her. Beth doesn’t even do that for Dean. He leans in and kisses her and she doesn’t actually do anything to make that easier for him, nothing to indicate that she wants him to.

The music also sounds very...young, for lack of a better word. Almost high school. I think that was a very purposeful choice, given that this is the first on-screen kiss between Beth and Dean. In this scene, I definitely saw them more as they probably were when they were in high school, before they got married. There was a notable lack of any music in the scene where Beth and Rio kiss. Honestly, the scene just didn’t need any.

Christina was amazing here. After Dean releases her, her head kind of just disappointedly falls away and she opens her eyes and looks a little bit...defeated. Perhaps because she didn’t feel more or enjoy the kiss. Because it was Dean. And god, then the scene cuts to Rio coming into Paper Porcupine and the most sexually loaded, non-sex scene in the history of television....although every one of Beth and Rio’s scenes feels that way to be honest. The fact that the episode ended here, on a climactic note when Rio scrutinises the money Beth finishes making, says a lot.

The Hills (including 3x05)

I LOVED this storyline. It’s such a great way of exploring the way that Ruby’s guilt over committing crimes has gradually transitioned into a lack of guilt for the crimes that she has become ‘used to’, i.e: robberies, lying. It’s also such a great callback to a common theme in this show, “All this stuff you think you’re keeping from them. You’re not”. The fact that this was said by Ruby in season 1 and is once again coming full circle is peak writing. Also, this means that another one of my hiatus wishes has come true, that the kids would find out more or be suspicious of their parents. I wondered if it would be Kenny, Sadie or Sara who would catch on. Looks like it’s Sara. Lidya Jewett was the perfect one of the children to explore this through because she is such an amazing actress and Sara’s already had an introduction to this arc, due to Stan being arrested in the last season and her having to grapple with the fact that he did indeed commit a crime.

And look, I am the last person who wants to see Ruby and Stan fight. But I think it’s such an important arguement for them to have. Not the fact that Ruby’s committing crimes but the fact that she seems so comfortable with it now and that this is potentially becoming a model for learned behaviour for their children. The only people they love more than each other are their children.

Lidya Jewett did such a great job portraying the audaciousness and the brattiness of a teen when they are confronted by a parent calling out their behaviour. The tit for tat between Sara and Ruby was amazing. Like nuh uh, you may be right about the shady ass stuff I’ve been up to but I’m still the queen in this house. So now you owe me.

I also love the idea that Beth and Ruby have learnt so much from crime-ing. In 3x02, Beth taught Annie a lesson about how they had to deal with the mover ASAP or all the criminals in Detroit would know that they were pushovers. In this episode, Ruby teaches Sara that when you lie once, you need to know that you’ll be lying a dozen more times just to uphold your original story. It’s never over.

In 3x05, I was like why u do dis? I love this storyline and I don’t think that Stan will leave Ruby but god, the idea that Ruby is so terrified of it in Beth’s van, and for good reason, is actually scaring me. The stills from 3x07 and the hints Reno gave that we would find out how Stan feels about Beth have me shaking. I’m so excited but scared at the same time.

Annie

This is probably the first episode where I felt as though Annie’s therapy storyline really found its feet. I’m going to ignore the fact that retinoblastomas mainly only occur in children. Aside from that, it really found its feet haha.

I also just loved the humour of Annie’s scenes in this episode. Mae Whitman is amazing and her delivery is always fantastic. I genuinely think that her long-winded speech in the pawn shop about how she spent her night is one of my favourite comedic moments of the season so far. What a great callback to Annie’s gazelle run when she’s chasing down Mary Pat!

Oh god. When she was asking Dr Cohen about what was going on between them, I was physically cringing because I knew she was going to smash into a brick wall. It was painful to watch. Stop gal, stop.

It was also painful to see Dr Cohen ruthlessly lay out Annie’s psychological coping mechanisms in front of her, partly because it was coming from a place of genuine concern and care and she knew it.

Beth and Rio (Will I ever write a reasonable amount in this section? Nope.)

Gosh, the entire scene leading up to Beth and Rio in the bar and that scene in itself was peak television. Suspenseful, intense, a good back and forth between characters with unbelievable chemistry. I genuinely think that this is one of the scenes in the show that best depicts the ‘dark’ in dark comedy and the ‘drama’ in dramedy, which are usually the genres used to describe the show.

I don’t know what everyone else views as their favourite ‘dark’/’dramatic’ moments in the show? Their are many scenes which I feel really capture the themes above but some of them are:

1. 1x04 - When the girls hear a thump from the bedroom Eddie’s recovering in and they run upstairs only for him to confront them with a gun.

2. 1x06 - Boomer plants drugs in Annie’s locker, Beth dumps bags of cash on Dean.

3. 1x07 - Rio and his boys confront the girls in Beth’s house.

4. 1x09 - Beth and Rio’s first break-up scene in 1x09.

5. 1x10/2x01 - “If you wanna be the king, you gotta kill the king.”

6. 2x07 - Beth and Rio argue in the alley.

7. ....you get the point. Maybe I should write a separate post all about this?

Now this bar scene (3x04) and the entire sequence with Rio, Lucy, his boys and the girls at paper porcupine and outside the van (3x05) are included on my list of amazing ‘dark’/’dramatic’ scenes.

I’d also like to acknowledge the piano music in this scene, which is also present during the scene in Paper Porcupine in 3x05, while Rio waits patiently for Lucy to complete her counterfeit money design. It’s a stunning piece of music and it adds so much suspense to the scenes. I hope it’s released at some point!

First of all, we have Beth and Dean lying in bed. Everything about this screams that Dean is intruding, from his loud snores, to the way he’s leaning so far into her side of the bed, to the way that Beth is looking out of her French doors, away from him, and clearly thinking about what she’s going to do with regards to Rio. I spoke about this in my 3x02 thoughts post but ever since Beth and Rio began orbiting around one another, ever since their fascination with one another began (god, basically from the beginning), Dean has been consistently displayed as intruding on their relationship, despite the fact that he and Beth are still technically married and he’s always ranting about how Rio is wrecking and ‘intruding’ in on their lives. Beth and Rio have always had a tangible intimacy that’s unbelievably loud in their relationship, even before they slept together. It always feels like any voices aside from their own, any person besides them is an intrusion when they’re together or thinking about eachother.

Beth lies in bed, next to Dean, and thinks about Rio before running away from her husband and her house to see him under the cover of darkness. It feels intimate and loaded with implications. It’s absolutely driven by fear and her desire to survive but the set-up of the scene is inherently romantic. It’s akin to someone sneaking out to see their lover whom they’re having an affair with.

I could wax poetic about how much I love this scene in its entirety. When Good Girls is good, it’s fucking good. The way that Beth is frightened and then annoyed with Mick for saying something behind her when she’s the one running around at ridiculous o’clock, the imposing figure he cuts as he smokes, the way he considers her. Just. All. Of. This. I love all of Beth and Rio’s scenes, including the ones that take place during the day. But gosh, there’s just something about the scenes that take place in the dark that I find dangerous and addictive.

Rio walks into his bar, briefly nods at the bartender and greets Mick. But as soon as he sees Beth, he can’t look away from her. He doesn’t look at Mick as they clasp hands, his lips part and stay that way as he looks at her AND if you look closely, for a brief second, he stands taller and very slightly pushes his shoulders back before walking towards her.

While they are sitting at the bar together, Rio is depicted as exhausted and conflicted. This shot is stunning:

Their conversaion is so well done. Rio sceptically eyeing Beth’s finished drink and only suggesting that she slow down when she asks for a shot of tequila, his hand gently coming down on top of hers, the way he looks at her as he waits for an answer. It’s such a stark contrast to the way Dean treats her. Even now, after everything.

“One for my baby daddy here too.” SCREAMS. OMG BETH. I adore her.

God. The acting. Beth’s face when she looks at Rio after saying “I lost it”, a sort of confused and hesitant realisation that he looks affected by it, by her words. I still waver on whether or not Rio believed that Beth was indeed pregnant. To sum up what I think is going through Rio’s mind in this scene:

1. He has no reason at this point to doubt the words of Rhea’s OBGYN. In other words, it’s entirely possible that following the appointment, he grappled with the idea that Beth was pregnant with his child, conceived during an encounter fraught with emotions in her bedroom and before she shot him three times. It’s possible that he forced himself to be pragmatic, process it and accept it, only for Beth to suffer a miscarriage. There’s a feeling of mourning in the way that Rio regards Beth with his hand over his mouth, the quiet, sensitive way in which he asks when it happened, the way he looks at his palms on the bar counter, the way he tosses back the shot of tequila.

2. The loss of the pregnancy ultimately means that he’s lost the one reason, the single excuse he had to keep Beth alive. I don’t doubt that he could have killed her in the moments when he first saw her again, after the time he spent simmering, plotting and remembering. But now she’s under his skin again. God, she never even left but now she’s probably curled up somewhere inside of him all over again. It’s so obvious in the way that he says “nothing good” that he doesn’t want to kill her, that he’s tired and doesn’t want to even think about it anymore.

Following this, the writers did an amazing job with the back and forth between Beth and Rio in this scene. Beth is desperate and yet so audacious in suggesting that Rio needs money, that he should take another chance on her. I love her when she’s like this, when she’s clawing and doing her best to survive. And the way that Rio huffs an unamused laugh through pursed lips, almost as though he’s thinking, shit I’m doing this again aren’t I? I’m letting her talk? Except we all know she’s not talking him into anything. He’s just looking for an excuse. If anything, to me, he seems unamused with the traitorous part of himself that is listening to her for the sole reason of avoiding the necessity of killing her.

“You couldn’t afford it.” What a backhanded compliment. Rio can’t place a price on Beth’s head because even he struggles to deal with what her personal worth is to him, what she actually means to him, so I love that he ultimately just caves and throws out an arbitrary $100K which is much less than he has previously requested from her. I also love that Beth just focuces purely on the money and ignores the true implications of what he’s saying because it’s too much, it’s too loaded and neither of them have ever been able to contend with whatever’s between them, this thing that is indescribable.

As for the final scene of the episode. I don’t know if I can rationally articulate my thoughts on this but I’m going to do my best.

First of all, I love the idea of Beth and Rio watching each other when the other person isn’t aware of it. So when Rio enters paper porcupine and slowly walks towards her while Beth is rifling through items, unaware that he’s behind her, it just does something to me. I love it.

Also, I love the way they almost circle one another until Beth stops on the other side of the table in between them. They are so often depicted to be standing across from one another. Forever waiting for the day where they stand side by side against a common enemy.

When Rio alludes to Beth doing some custom-printing for him and she immediately catches on, she looks at him with her big, blue eyes and her voice is so feminine when she says “I don’t know what you’re talking about”. God, you can’t convince me Rio isn’t into that.

I’m not going to talk about the music too much just because this is getting too long and the fandom is already obsessed with the song anyway. The lyrics are a complete revelation and the song was, of course, purposefully chosen. I loved the entire song and the implications for Beth and Rio’s relationship but one part I particularly love:

“Though we sleep in different beds You still keep me up at night”

God, Beth lay awake next to Dean, thinking of what she was going to say to Rio, before running away to see him. There’s no way Rio doesn’t lie awake at night and think about Beth. I. Just. Can’t. This is already getting too long.

The youtube video that went up for this scene sums it up pretty well. Rio really does look pretty mesmerised by Beth in this scene. She looks at him apprehensively because she’s afraid of him and fearful for her operation but she keeps doing it because he makes her nervous, because she likes looking at him, because she likes it when he watches her, because she feels something for him and it’s all just too much because he’s watching her, just like he always has but she’s never gotten used to it. GAHHHH.

I also just love interpreting this scene after watching 3x05, when Dean says twice that Beth is “something you (Rio) love”. Beth refutes that at the end of the episode, saying Rio loves money. But here we have all three things, Beth, Rio and money in one scene. And yes, Rio’s watching Beth make money but he also can’t look away from her.

Just look at this shot. Beth and Rio facing each other, as they often do, at equal heights, with the money symbolically positoned between them. It’s not just something that separates them though. It’s something they share if that makes sense. It’s something they both care about but you can care about more than one thing.

And looks like Rio found another excuse to keep her alive. I mean, he had already found one, by demanding 100K but this is now something he can directly participate in and benefit from. Something long-term that keeps them tied together, rather than a one-off payment. He just can’t help himself, can he? They can’t let each other go.

I don’t know where else to put this. But seeing Beth wearing glasses was...life-changing.

Moving on to 3x05.

The Opening Scene and Mick

STOP SAYING GOOD MORNING AND STOP TALKING. DON’T SAY ANYTHING. I CAN’T DEAL WITH YOUR VOICE MICK.

Ahem. We also met more of Rio’s boys which means another one of my hiatus wishes came true. I’m really curious to meet Rio’s bosses, who Manny has said we will learn more about in this season, and what the debts he needs to repay are, which he alluded to in the sneak peek from 3x06 (THE ANGST). I’m guessing it has something to do with the fact that we was out of the game for so long or maybe because people have found out that he fed Turner names, or both?

I love smart Beth. Taking the plates used to make the counterfeit money as a precautionary measure was really important but also just...kind of tragic. I’m going to talk more about this later (see Paper Porcupine and the Shooting).

Also, how freaking loaded was that scene where Beth tries to pay Mick to buy more time? When she said “what if I made it up to you?”, my jaw dropped. Not even exaggerating. And when he said “it’d be a huge order”, I straight up scream-cackled. This 100% backs up the idea that Beth is legitimately the most oblivious person in the world and would totally get into a bunch of awkward situations just because she’s misunderstood somebody else or because she’s said something sexual without even realising it. I. Require. All. That. Fanfic.

I completely agree with @foxmagpie here. I just don’t think that Mick has or will betray Rio. 100K is a relatively small sum of money, given the context. We know that Rio only asked this of Beth because it was an excuse to avoid killing her. For Mick, this is nowhere near enough money to risk his life or his position as (presumably) Rio’s right hand man. And let’s be honest, in the crime world, who are you going to place your bet on? Beth or Rio? I know who I would choose.

Annie

I freaked when I saw Kevin again because I didn’t expect him to show up after 3x01 but there you go! I genuinely love this though because I didn’t think he was homeless and it just shows you that you really can’t know what’s going on in someone’s life until they tell you. It really hit me hard when he said “I’m experiencing homelessness” because it could happen to anyone. It really reminded me of a news article I read about, about individuals who are homeless but aren’t necessarily sleeping on the streets; instead, they are couch surfing or sleeping in their cars but they feel as though they have no stability, no place they can call their own and as though they have been forgotten about by society.

This show is so good at introducing tertiary characters!

Dean, The Fish and “Something you love” (Did I make this about Beth and Rio again? You’re goddamn right I did.)

So, I’m assuming the three dead fish are symbolic of Beth, Ruby and Annie. The fact that Dean was responsible for killing them is, I feel, more symbolically indicative of the consequences of him breaking the plate in this episode alone. I actually think that when Beth says “How much did you feed them?” and Dean replies “Too much”, this is more indicative of the over-arching plot for the season and really the whole show. The idea that greed, money, and for Beth, the rush, are going to be what ultimately hurts them and potentially lead them to their ruin.

Dean really pissed me off in this scene. I was clutching my head and cursing him. Every little thing pissed me off, from the way that he slammed the drawers shut, to the way he held the plate higher up, to his slighted masculinity when he said “he didn’t waste any time, did he?” Even though he knows that Beth has been willingly involved in crime, he continues to completely underestimate her. He just assumes that Rio offers up opportunities and Beth can’t resist. He cannot wrap his mind around the concept of Beth coming up with ideas and executing them; if anything, it’s Rio who can’t resist.

I gasped when Dean said “something you love”. I think this has been very controversial in the fandom. @foxmagpie answered an ask and wrote a brilliant analysis here, which I would highly recommend reading. Following the season 2 finale, I answered an ask here about Beth and Rio’s feelings for one another and I feel a little bit vindicated write now, not because I think I’m right (their feelings are so complex and completely up for interpretation at this stage) but because I agreed with my initial assessment.

I think some people might be tempted to write off what Dean said as inaccurate, simply because it’s Dean who said it. Dean is often an unreliable narrator when it comes to Beth and Rio’s relationship. His view is tainted by jealousy, misogyny and the need to take ownership over Beth as his wife again. However, he did manage to catch on to the fact that Rio treats Beth differently (Rio flaunting the relationship he has with Beth in front of Dean in 1x10/2x01), that Beth slept with Rio and was using him as a poor replacement (2x06), that Beth and Rio have a relationship that is more than just sex (before Beth brutally emasculated him by saying she just really likes having sex with Rio in 2x11). In season 2, he did eventually see that, fundamentally, Beth and Rio are addicted to one another. So, I don’t think we can write off what Dean is saying in 3x05.

As for whether or not I think Rio is in love with Beth.

I need to explain the way that I view love, in the capacity that we use it to describe the feelings that an individual can have for another person. I find myself consistently surprised by the number of people around me who talk about emotions as being incredibly complex but then act as though you either love something or you don’t or, when it comes to romantic relationships on screen, if it isn’t love then it can only be lust or desire or an obsession. Personally, I view love as a spectrum emotion and I actually think most people view it in the same way, that you can feel varying degrees and intensities of it. It sounds obvious and that’s because it totally is. As an example, I think it’s absolutely possible to be a little bit in love with someone.

So, there’s a diagram I remembered from one of my lectures and I think it’ll help me articulate the way I view Beth and Rio’s feelings for one another. The short answer is that I thought they were a little in love with one another in the second half of season 2 and I actually still agree with that but I think it’s been buried under an avalance of trauma and betrayal.

Of course, I’m not going to include the original image from my lecture (which depicts the spectrum and crossover of mood and psychotic disorders) but here’s a stock image that depicts a similar idea:

Now, I think the obvious way to look at this is to stick love on one side and hate on the other, as they are classically considered to be ‘opposing’ emotions, and then something neutral like indifference in the middle.

Personally, I agree with the idea that indifference is the opposite of love and so I’d like to place indifference on one end, hate in the middle and love on the other end, especially when it comes to considering Beth and Rio’s relationship. I’d justify placing hate in the middle because it is an intense emotion, whereas indifference is literally nothing and these two have never been indifferent towards one another, no matter how much time Rio spends on his phone when he’s with Beth. The way I see it, Beth and Rio rapidly slide up and down the part of the spectrum between love and hate and those emotions never have time to settle so that they can be acknowledged as one or the other.

(sorry this is so bad)

I guess what I’m trying to say is that, even at this point in their relationship, the majority of viewers cannot point to the middle of this spectrum and say that Rio definitively hates Beth or vice versa. Nor can we point at love and say the same. I don’t even think we could point vaguely in between. I’d personally be continuously sliding my finger up and down the spectrum between those two points.

I think Manny worded it perfectly in his interveiew, “They hate each other but want to be each other. They hate each other but want to be with each other.”

Lucy, Paper Porcupine and The Shooting

I’m going to just put this in here because this scene was so dark (and very well done in my opinion). But Rio is such a little shit! Look at his face after antagonising Beth:

God sake. Check yourself Rio. Your boys, Ruby and Annie are all watching and it’s so obvious that you’re like straight up thinking about your crush.

Even though I loved the fact that Beth thought ahead and took the plates, upon rewatching the episode it all felt so futile and painful. It really felt like so many of the Beth’s actions took Lucy to that moment. I know we’re all thinking the same thing, that Dean unknowingly triggered all of this when he broke the plate. But the reality is that even if Dean hadn’t broken the plate, it’s likely that Rio would have eventually gone straight to the source of the design. From the moment Beth chose to bring her into this, Lucy’s fate was sealed. It’s heartbreaking.

I absolutely agree with @sothischickshe when she said that Beth knew that something was going to go down. She looks at Lucy so much in this scene, with fear, with guilt but also with an almost intuitive grief. I don’t think she knew that Rio was going to kill her but I do think she had a feeling or a thought clawing at the back of her mind, that something terrible was going to happen to Lucy.

Rio orders Beth to go with Lucy, telling her to “be smart”. He still has Ruby and Annie with him and he knows that Beth would never abandon them. He makes her choose between Lucy and Ruby & Annie in this scene; when she chooses not to ask Mrs Harris for help, when she chooses to beg Lucy not to finish the plate rather than telling her to run out of the store, she is essentially choosing Ruby & Annie.

So much of this scene was about Rio punishing Beth for what she has done, by taking what she had built, ordering her to go with Lucy and forcing her to share in the responsibility of what was about to happen. Because he hasn’t been able to kill her and he knows he’ll never be able to. But I also think it was about proving a point to Beth and here’s why.

Beth shot Rio for many reasons but a lot of it was about the situation she had been placed in and the pressing need to just do something in the ‘heat of the moment’. She has never been able to kill any of her rotten eggs when she had time to plan how to do it. Even when she hit Boomer in the back of the head in 1x01, it is was in the ‘heat of the moment’. She is bound by the moral barrier that separates a murder (i.e: intent, sometimes premeditated) from voluntary manslaughter (i.e: when provoked, in the moment.) I know Beth shot Rio two more times after the initial thought and I may write another post all about that. But now is not the time. For all intents and purposes, Beth cannot kill someone after definitively making that decision in advance.

Something that I’m so struck by with the sequence in Paper Porcupine is how long it is. It’s obviously this long to build tension but it really highlights to me the length of time Rio had to consider his options and decide what he was going to do. Even the scene outside the van was long; he had time to back out of killing Lucy but, unlike Beth, he did not balk. And because of that, he proved to Beth that he can do it all.

He’s basically saying look, I can kill someone before they even have the chance to go rotten.

Obviously, we know that Beth is Rio’s rotten egg and Rio knows it too (that’s why he’s punishing Beth in this scene). But Beth has never allowed herself to believe it. She thinks it’s all about the money.

Oh god. Don’t even get me started on the implications of Rio grabbing Lucy’s hand to help her into the van and looking over at Beth as he says “ma girl”. Yes, we get it Rio. Beth’s your girl.

@pynkhues pointed out that Rio has a kind of honeytrap language that Beth is starting to recognise and you can just tell from the way that Beth closes her eyes that she knows the situation is escalating and that something is imminently going to happen.

This scene is so interesting when you stop and pause and just look at Beth and Rio’s faces. Because Beth is desperately trying to justify why Rio should keep them alive. She keeps looking at his face and then prompting Ruby and Annie to speak and answer her questions, so she can prove their worth. And then, at the very end, she sort of tacks Lucy on as an afterthought and it’s just tragic. It was over for Lucy already but, even so, Beth basically gave a speech about their value vs Lucy’s value.

And I totally agree with everyone else. Rio did not look like he was being convinced by what Beth was saying at all. I mean, he definitely had heart-eyes (haha, they’re both idiots) but he didn’t look like he was really considering what she was saying, rather he seemed more like he was impressed by what he was seeing, almost falling into the habit of staring at her as intensely as he always has. He was definitely just letting her talk so he could put a bullet in Lucy and deal with someone in front of his boys and the girls.

Rio

We already knew this but Manny and the writers have really doubled down on how charming, personable and downright sinister Rio can be as a character. His smiles come easily when he’s questioning the mover in 3x04 and interacting with Lucy, he jokes around with them and exerts an effortless control over both situations. Perhaps even more importantly, his smiles are real in these moments. It’s become very obvious that Rio enjoys it all. It’s fun for him. Just like Beth, he gets a kick out of crime and is pretty unhinged.

As for him shooting Lucy, a completely innocent woman whom he knew Beth had dragged into this. Well, I agree with what a lot of people have already said; I think it was in character. I mean, this is the man who sat and messed about on his phone while his boys waiting on the order to kill the girls in 1x02. This is the guy who killed Eddie, somebody he presumably knew well considering the fact that Eddie only called his mum aside from Rio. This is the guy who shot Dean, who we as an audience hate but who really had nothing to do with Beth’s plot to have Rio arrested. This is the guy who didn’t just have Agent Turner killed but a slew of other FBI agents. Interestingly, of all these characters, the only one aside from Lucy who was unwittingly brought into the crime world was Dean and Rio still shot him. I don’t think this was an attempt on the writers’ parts to make us hate Rio because let’s be honest, the vast majority of us will continue to love his character and they know it. This is who he is and none of us can lie to ourselves anymore. I think that’s good.

The Ending

I loved it! Annie seeking comfort from the people they love, the people who support them. And Beth not being able to do that. God, she looks exhausted and two seconds from falling to pieces in that last scene and Dean is such a narcissist that he can’t see it. All he cares about is Rio, not the effect all of this is having on Beth.

When Beth says that she also really hates being around Rio again and Dean questions her, “really?”, it’s the only thing he can focus on when it comes to her. Like once Rio stuck his dick inside Beth, she wasn’t just her anymore, she was only a person with relation to Rio. Ewwwww Dean. Go away.

Also, it’s so telling that Beth couldn’t repeat herself when Dean questioned her. God, even after Rio ordered Mick to shoot Lucy, she can’t lie about it. She’s such a good liar but, in this scene, she’s so exhausted that she can’t even put in the effort.

God, Christina was amazing. Her watery blue eyes, her forced smiles and pained expressions. I felt like I had been stabbed in the heart when Max said “except for you” and that Beth was Lucy’s only friend. I feel terrible for Max and completely agree with Lucy! He is totally awesome.

#nbc good girls #i'm sorry this is so long

77 notes · View notes

theregoesmylurkerstatus · 4 years

Text

Essek meta: the monster post

(Beware, long post incoming)

I’ve been sitting on my thoughts on Essek for days, and pretty much all my asks have been on the subject. I decided that instead of answering them all, I’d do my best to gather all my thoughts and reasoning into one post.

At this stage, there’s no solid evidence for or against Essek’s goals and morals being opposed to the Mighty Nein’s. Circumstantial evidence, yes. He’s been very accomodating, but not necessarily suspiciously so. There have been small hints that maybe he’d rather do things the Mighty Nein’s way, not the Bright Queen’s.

And I will say this: prior to this episode, even good insight checks apparently revealed nothing alarming about Essek or his motives. They didn’t entirely absolve him of suspicion, but neither did they create more.

In fact, the main cause for concern this episode was that Essek’s behaviour seems to have changed. Nott says he was acting “funky,” which implies she was using her previous experience with him as a basis for comparison. She goes on to equivocate with “we haven’t seen him in a while...”

However (and this is going to be a bit controversial), I think people are being a bit wilfully blind in regards to Essek. Many, many metas pointing out that Essek may just be at the end of his rope, tired, and wanting someone to rely on (while hoping that he can do so on the Mighty Nein).

They’re all good, solid theories, and I hope that they’re true! But but in the end there are factors I’ve notice that make me reluctant to buy into it wholesale.

Nott asked Caleb to scry on Adeen, not Essek. If she was concerned about Essek in general, wouldn’t she ask to check in on him? Sure, you can say “Essek is a powerful wizard, he’s probably protected,” but you could say the same of a max security prisoner who’s being actively watched over. Caleb literally only turned the idea down because of that. Hell, even Nott knew that! She starts with, “would it be a terrible idea...” when she pitches scrying on Adeen. And yet, she suggested it anyway.

Nott must have thought there would be something to gain by looking at Adeen, which means this isn’t just about Essek’s demeanor. It’s about his relationship to Adeen specifically. She says, “Something about the way that he was behaving when we were at that prison was funny to me.”

It’s not just Essek being overworked or tired in general. It’s Essek on this specific matter. And no matter how drunk or silly Nott can be, she’s not stupid. She’s fucking smart. She was the second smartest member of the party until Beau got the circlet. Nott rarely brings up genuine, serious concerns, and she treated this with nervous gravity.

Obviously the players can misinterpret what they get from whispers, but I don’t think Matt leaves it so open to interpretation that Nott could notice things that point to simple (if extreme) stress and misinterpret it as Essek being shady.

Consider this, too: in the conversation leading up to Fjord’s “interrogation” of Adeen, Essek insists multiple times that they used various means to force the truth from Adeen, and that while Adeen initially insisted he had no idea what was going on (as any traitor would), “we managed to excise the truth, and the Taskhand has, ah, given his hand, if you will.”

And yet as soon as Fjord goes in there, Adeen displays confusion, distress, and readily admits that he has no idea what’s going on while confessing he does think he did things (that he also insists he would never do). How the hell would Essek & Co have missed that?

I suppose you could say that Adeen may have been answering pointed questions during interrogation, and they would have ignored any “I don’t know” type answers, but still. It’s a pretty big fucking thing to miss.

Essek didn’t immediately go to the Bright Queen with the information on Adeen, but he clearly intended to speak with her soon, and only put it off to see the Mighty Nein first. When the Nein propose that all of them go to see the Bright Queen together, Essek is enthusiastic, and prompts for them to go immediately, only waiting when the Nein express an interest in Adeen. He is again the one to prompt a meeting with the Bright Queen after returning from checking Adeen for a mark.

So, in my eyes, his decision to go to meet the Nein briefly before seeing the Bright Queen was not a reflection of his hesitancy to implicate or even condemn Adeen to the Bright Queen, but rather came from the knowledge that the Nein would have important and relevant information. As he said, he didn’t want to give information to the Bright Queen “piecemeal.” He’d rather wait and give her a full report. Waiting to see what the Nein had to offer fits in perfectly with that attitude.

Essek is very, very good at being non-defensive, rational, reasonable, and even agreeable. He listens to the Nein when they start theorising about Adeen possibly being under magical influence. He agrees to the points they make. He readily entertains their notions... without pushing any of them any further, and without putting forward HIS thoughts on the matter.

I don’t believe he was reluctant to throw Adeen under the bus. He didn’t bring up the mind control theory to the Bright Queen at all. Jester literally says, “I thought Essek would...” before launching into her “Adeen may not be guilty” pitch.

Nott’s insight was instigated on Essek’s return from checking Adeen for a mark, though she clearly got insight as to his behaviour earlier in the prison as well. That may imply that Essek was not completely honest about his search of Adeen for evidence of mind control.

Clearly, the mind control theory isn’t one Essek was personally enthused about.

Possibly relevantly, an anon pointed out:

Rewatching the scene, anon is right. Yes, technically Adeen is banging his head against the wall, but he doesn't knock himself out. He “exhales” and starts snoring. And remember, Matt ruled that a creature willingly banging their own head against something wasn’t enough to fall unconscious. So... Adeen fell asleep? In the middle of a distressed, high emotion downward spiral? With Essek, a highly adept wizard, waiting and watching in the shadows? Hm. Could be innocent. It’s perfectly understandable that someone who’s been through as much mental, emotional, and physical duress as Adeen has would be exhausted. But in light of everything else I’m trying to unpack here, I though it was worth noting.

All of the suspicion of Essek is wrapped up with Adeen, and other relevant factors point to him not especially wanting Adeen to be absolved of guilt. This could mean many things: he’s the traitor, he has it out for Adeen specifically, he’s hiding some information he discovered relevant to Adeen, he just wants the search for the traitor to be over with. Who knows? But I certainly don’t believe Nott was simply observing high stress from his job.

In the end, the real evidence against Essek's guilt, to any degree, is his personality. Critters like him. The Nein like him. He’s been a helpful ally who everyone seems to fall head over heels for without Essek trying for that kind of reception (see Matt’s confusion at him being instantly labeled “hot boi”). People are eager to look to his personality, his current position, and give him sympathetic internal reasoning that is pure supposition.

Again, it’s good supposition! They’re good theories! But I don’t think you can discount or sweep under the rug the causes for concern so easily.

To be quite frank, we still have no solid evidence against Essek being the/a traitor, while we HAVE been given cause to doubt his complete innocence. The fandom bias towards him especially makes me a bit reluctant to accept the lenient answer straight off the bat.

I think that there’s something more going on with him. I’m also not convinced he’s a traitor, especially not long term. There’s simply not enough for me to go off of in making up my mind. But I felt it was necessary to point out that the concern about Essek in this instance has real merit, and I wasn’t really seeing that brought up and discussed.

So... here you go, I guess?

#critical role #cr spoilers #c2e90 #speculation #ramblings #essik #anon with the mind control theory screenshotted above: i have a separate answer for that theory don't worry #I'm prepared for this to be very unpopular (understandably) but i had to get my thoughts and doubts out there #also ill probably miss talks live but ill ALSO probably watch it later tonight or tomorrow

105 notes · View notes

panharmonium · 4 years

Text

stranger things 3, a visual summary:

more coherent thoughts under the cut, because wow.

......okay. that was a Trainwreck. an absolute mess.

i remember when my coworkers were watching S3 (and still urging me to start season 1) and they were saying how amazing the latest season was, and honestly i think there must just be a difference in people who watch tv just to be entertained and people who watch tv and automatically evaluate the story (aka fandom veterans and English majors, lol - cue Me twice), because WHO could watch this critically and praise it that way?

it's honestly hard to know where to even begin; i've been sending frustrated notes to @brambleberrycottage ever since episode three and now that i'm done with episode 8 there's just......so much more to say

first, good things:

erica is a great character. she's what max should have been (aka, uh.......interesting!) i liked the realization moment where dustin was like "you're a NERD!"

that entire sequence where will is so upset with lucas and mike for not being engaged with the dnd game was very well done, especially the conversation he has with mike out in the rain. i loved that moment where mike asked him "did you think we were just going to hang out in my basement playing games forever?" and will said, "yeah. yeah, i guess i did." i really felt that. [edit, now that i've finished: this was never resolved. will giving away his dnd books at the end was not an actual resolution to this conflict.]

steve is still a good dude, and robin was pretty cool. i'm down for them being super friends. but i'm still mourning the steve+nancy+jonathan trio that was a thing for like 5 seconds and then never returned.

i loved how genuinely excited steve was to see dustin when dustin came back from camp. that was adorable. "HENDERSON!!!!" "how many children are you friends with?"

and uh. yeah. i had more problems with this season than praise-bestowing moments, so. here goes that bit.

OVERARCHING PROBLEMS:

1. keep it simple, stupid

remember in the office when dwight quoted the above advice to ryan as michael's rule for making a sale? the same advice applies to storytelling.

season 1 of stranger things is so simple. there is One Monster. that is the danger. and somehow, that single monster manages to be a thousand times more terrifying than all of these new "bigger, scarier, more epic" threats crammed into the second two seasons.

how goofy is the stranger things season 3 plot, seriously? russians are blackmailing a small-town mayor so they can buy up land to steal power from the town while operating a secret lab under the mall to open a gate to the Upside Down (WHY?), while simultaneously a remnant of the malevolent force that was "defeated" last season has reanimated itself and is making people scarf chemicals (WHY?), and then it possesses one of them and uses that person to possess a bunch of other people in order to build itself a body made out of melted people, in order to kill el, whose only story this season is breaking up with her boyfriend, and we have to infiltrate this russian base in order to close the gate (same endgame as last season - BIG NO-NO) to kill the goo monster, except last time the "mindflayer” survived the gate being closed, so why would this even WORK, and -

the fact that there are so many "round-up/info dump" scenes where characters summarize what's going on and make implausibly accurate connections/guesses about what it all must mean is a red flag. the characters shouldn’t have to tell your story to the audience. if it's too complicated for us to keep straight on our own, it's too complicated.

the amount of energy that goes into trying to lash together a Chaos Plot with too many shaky legs leaves nothing left over for nuanced character development or mood establishment. you're constantly running to catch up to your own flimsy story before it collapses on top of itself.

2. the horror!

S1 of stranger things was the scariest thing i'd ever seen.

granted, i don't watch a lot of horror, because i don't like it. i get scared too easily and then i legitimately can't sleep. i watched a horror movie five years ago that i still think about every time the lights are off in my house. but still, ST1 was something i had never experienced before.

it wasn't creature horror, and it wasn't just suspense. it was the UNSETTLINGNESS of it all. it wasn't really about the monster. it was about the Upside Down.

the reason ST1 is so successful is because of how much we don’t know. it's the horror of not understanding what is happening, and the terror of knowing that nobody thinks it’s real. feeling like you're going crazy and being cut off from all assistance. the conspiracy and the cover-up. and the sheer unsettlingness of the whole parallel worlds things just tipped me over the edge - the idea that you can take one wrong step and then be suddenly and without warning completely off the map, simultaneously right next to the people you want to get to and also utterly beyond their reach. that was fucking scary!!!!

and they do it all with so little. i have literally never been more scared in my life than when i would see those christmas lights start flickering. and they're just LIGHTS! yes, we see the monster later, but it's the uncertainty that's most frightening. we don't understand how it arrives in our world, and we don’t know where it will show up next. it could be right next to you - on the other side. you could be standing on top of it. you just don't know. it’s like what jonathan says to nancy in her bedroom - “it can’t get us in here.” and she says, “we don’t know that.”

the later seasons of stranger things, by comparison, did not scare me at all. season two was like a zombie movie - hordes of weak enemies that you can just shoot with a gun. and season 3 was even less frightening - upping the ante and making things gorier, more explosive, and bigger just isn't the vibe they set in S1. i'm not scared of that giant goop monster. it's like godzilla. it's not horror; it's just a lot of noise.

the unsettling, "creep" factor that made season 1 so effective was gone. it just turned into a regular old monster movie, and i didn't find that particularly interesting.

3. illogical, captain

a while ago there was a wave of pushback against people complaining about plot holes, but you know what? there is, in fact, an appropriate place for us to talk about plausibility, as well as the point at which our suspension of disbelief collapses.

ST3 is a bona fide plausibility disaster. i did not believe half of the story, because it was not unfolding in a believable way.

half of the plot points in this season would not have happened if the characters had been behaving with any kind of sense. it is absolutely impossible for me to believe that none of these children IMMEDIATELY went to joyce or hopper the minute they knew something weird was going on. it makes no sense. after the shit they've seen? it makes sense in season 1, because the kids are still so young that they have that kind of magical thinking that makes all of this seem kind of like an adventure. but they're teenagers now, and developmentally, they’re past that stage. they know the evil creature is back and they're pretty sure it's possessing billy? for some unfathomable reason, they don't go to an adult, but try to trap billy in the sauna and just see what happens. the other group has actual proof that russian soldiers are up to something shady in the mall? they don't tell an adult; they send a TEN YEAR-OLD in through the AIR DUCTS to investigate the secret room guarded by MEN WITH GUNS.

this is ridiculous. none of this should have happened. none of this WOULD have happened. it breaks the boundaries of disbelief. it completely sabotages the audience’s engagement with the story - joyce and hopper's whole detour with alexei and murray is so dull, because its entire purpose is to bring hop and joyce up to speed on something that we, the audience, already know. the other characters already found out this stuff, but did not communicate it - the gate is being opened again in a russian lab underground. there's no suspense for us. nothing new is revealed. we're just waiting for them to hurry up and finish finding out so we can move on to the next thing.

moreover: there are so many other problems besides just "these characters would have talked to each other." why on earth would murray, whose sole characteristic is extreme paranoia, take alexei wandering around the festival for hot dogs and carnival games. why would hopper be so virulently against the possibility that weird shit might be happening again? does he remember the past year or what? how on earth would the kids be able to fight off that massive monster with an ax and a hunting rifle? it's made out of dead guts and bones; why does it care if they shoot it?! how in the WORLD is this russian facility so penetrable? i'm sorry, it's just - beyond believable. it doesn't have cameras? the russians guards really can't tell that murray isn't a native speaker? they don't check his id when they don't recognize him? joyce and hopper really just got that lucky, to be asked a question and have “smile and nod” be the right answer? nobody ever got shot? it's silly. it's just silly. so many things - erica uses the "Open" button to open the elevator door in order to let steve and robin and dustin inside, but once the elevator is at the bottom of the shaft, robin explains the door's inexplicable non-opening because......you apparently need a keycard to use the buttons???? THAT MAKES NO SENSE; ERICA JUST USED THE BUTTONS A SECOND AGO.

even the entire endgame of this season is a contradiction! if the mind-flayer survived el closing the gate last time, it doesn't make sense that closing the gate this time would kill it. literally the entire plot of last season was "we need to get this thing out of will, because the creature will die once the gate is closed, and we want to make sure will doesn't die with it." but apparently the creature didn't die upon closing the gate; it just got trapped in our dimension. but now apparently it WILL die upon closing the gate. for whatever fucking reason.

i'm sorry, but that’s a mess. that’s a bona fide mess.

4. watch your tone

i honestly think the tonal change is the thing that made me the most frustrated about this season. it's possible to have a terrible plot and still stay relatively true to your characters - you'll still have a bad season, but at least you didn't bastardize your characters in the process.

i had issues with S2 and i definitely was not as impressed with it as i was with S1, but at least in S2 joyce and hopper were recognizable. in S3, i felt like i was watching strangers. the tonal shift was bizarre and off-putting, more so with hopper than joyce, but it affected both of them.

even as early as the very beginning of this season, i was feeling weird about how often hopper was being used for comedy. and as the season progressed, this trend only became more pronounced. almost every scene we had of him felt silly - and not like there was just something funny in the scene for me to laugh at, but like the audience was almost being asked to laugh AT him. like he was constantly the butt of the joke.

this really bothered me. from that incredibly sincere and heart-wrenching portrayal of him in season 1, when they kept him rooted in the trauma of losing his daughter and the breakdown of his marriage, and then how that same trauma made him so driven to save will and protect the kids - what a change. even in season 2 i was frustrated how the throughline of his daughter wasn’t touched again until the very last episode, and now in season 3 we’ve left that part of him so far behind that he's just there for us to laugh at. we're supposed to laugh at scenes of him being drunk and a mess. every scene he's in is either him arguing with joyce for comedic relief or being way over the top with alexei or the mayor. he was like a caricature of himself, and i didn't recognize him.

joyce suffered from the same thing, just by virtue of proximity. she spent almost all of her time in this season with hopper, and virtually all of that time was taken up with silly shenanigans or comically overblown arguing. what a departure from the desperate mother of season 1, who was maligned by everyone in town and only taken seriously by the audience. now it’s the audience who are supposed to be chuckling at her.

i dunno. the tone shift was very dramatic, very obvious, and it impacted the entire season. are we supposed to be taking this seriously or is it supposed to be a joke? a little bit of humor to break tension can be a good thing, but when it's constant, it confuses the mood.

and i personally don't think it was appropriate or respectful to either of these characters, in this case.

SMALLER THINGS THAT BOTHERED ME:

this show has 100% hit maximum character saturation. by the end of this season there were 13 core characters onscreen at the same time, in the same scene! it’s too many people! they cannot reasonably develop that many people in the space allotted.

i still am not interested in max. i don't feel anything for her. she doesn't feel real. i don't hate her, but she's just an empty vessel, and i really do think she's superfluous to this show. i think you could remove her with very little reworking and the show would be stronger for it. (they TRIED to do something interesting with billy, and i might have cared if we had been given literally any reason to care about him previously, but there was no investment earned there. they didn't do the front-end work to make him somebody we were interested in.)

weird relationship sunderings from previous seasons. i felt very strange about jonathan barely even seeing will this entire season. i felt very strange about steve having almost zero contact with nancy. i felt very strange about joyce hardly ever interacting with her kids. all of these were core relationships - the characters were BUILT on those relationships, and they don't feel real outside of them. not seeing these characters devote time to these relationships makes it feel like i'm watching a slightly different show.

the VIOLENCE. apparently this is a beat-em-up now??? i really felt like every other scene somebody was getting beaten to a bloody pulp. there was SO much smashing and bashing and throwing people into walls and fistfights and head trauma like - first of all, i find that stuff pretty boring, and second of all, all of these people should be in the hospital.

the GORE. other people’s mileage may vary, obviously; i just didn't like that. i looked away at the scene with the rat, and all this...goopy dissolving human shit, and the stabbings, and just...general grossness level - season 1 managed to be bloodcurdlingly terrifying without any of this stuff.

i know this borders on nitpicky, but yet more medical malfeasance - another example of someone receiving an injection via the mysterious 90 degree angle neck route, plus - was anyone else losing it at the fact that steve and robin “puked up” a drug they received……..via injection?????? IT’S NOT IN THEIR STOMACHS, FOLKS! THEY CAN’T PUKE IT UP! IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT!

the complete lack of follow-up to last season. the whole S3 plotline (such as it is) feels like a weird side quest. last season seemed to be furthering the mythos and setting us up for "there are other children like el/brenner is alive" - but this season, that fact appears to have been forgotten by everyone (even el!!!) and has nothing to do with the story that we're given, which is a goofy and redundant story about russians opening a secret lab under the mall which requires us to solve the exact same problem as last season (closing the gate).

this show's inability to keep certain throughlines in its headlights/keep things visible on the periphery instead of dropping them completely and then bringing them back whenever they feel like they need it again. i already talked about hopper’s daughter as an example of this (done well in S1 and poorly in S2 and S3). another example is that scene with nancy and her mom - it’s such a good scene, and yet it misses out on so much resonance, because they completely dropped the plotline of karen feeling locked out of her kids’ lives and desperately wanting to connect with them. if they had continued to reference that throughout season 2, then this scene would have been so much more powerful. as a third example, season 3 starts with a clear context/premise, and it’s INTERESTING - the town landscape changing because of the mall, business slow to non-existent, small town discontent over big corporations moving in, hopper pressured to break up the protest against mayor kline when he should have let it proceed - and then the show just drops that entire context. you expect season 3 to stay rooted in the "our small town is being strangled by this mall" and then to eventually deal with the revitalization of hawkins, but nah. it's never mentioned again.

LASTLY:

i'm not really gonna get into hopper "dying," because he's, like...clearly not dead. but the whole situation was stupid and contrived (i was so sick of that arnold schwarzenegger lookalike by the last episode, god that whole thing was so dumb) and it's even cheaper knowing that he'll obviously be back.

what i AM gonna say is that i was livid that they brought back that peter gabriel cover of "heroes" to end this season. their use of that song in S1 blew my mind - it had me stunned with how GORGEOUS it was and just, the way it worked in that particular scene - absolutely incredible. floored me. gave me chills. to recycle it at the end of such a poorly constructed season made me so mad. yOU CAN'T MAKE ME FEEL THINGS JUST BY REUSING THIS SONG. I REFUSE TO HAVE EMOTIONS JUST BECAUSE YOU PULL OUT THIS BEAUTIFUL TRACK THAT YOU ONCE USED TO GREAT EFFECT; YOUR STORY WAS STILL TERRIBLE THIS TIME AROUND; DO NOT TRY TO TRICK FEELINGS OUT OF US THAT HAVEN’T BEEN EARNED.

and that's it. i’m sure later i’ll think of other things i neglected to mention here, but...yeah. i was not impressed.

#i finished yesterday #holy moly #interdimensional babysitters club

4 notes · View notes

sick-raven · 4 years

Text

Ghosts of the past - Chapter 1

Batman fanfiction

Characters: Jonathan Crane, OC - Miranda Bradbury, Bruce Wayne, John Constantine

About: Miranda Bradbury moved to Gotham for a few reasons - to enjoy her career as an assassin, and to face her fears. Who else should help her with hallucinations that follow her than the fear expert Jonathan Crane? However, the doctor-patient relationship is very unstable one as both of them have to fight with their past, their present, and Batman.

Author note: I was trying to figure out some fancy way to describe the story. It's just a porn with a plot about two sick freaks. Enjoy.

Fair warnings: Suicide attempt, rape mentions, nsfw, violence, light bdsm

Status: Finished, will post next chapters when in mood.

Can also read at AO3.

Chapter 1

It was a dark evening in Gotham. Now, every evening was dark, but in Gotham with its never-ending mist of smog, it was especially dull and uncomfortable. Street lights wouldn’t break the darkness, windows only shined TV light out and painted pictures of entertained families, or dining families, or, as most common in Gotham, arguing families.

Gotham was also loud and Terry Borrows hated that fact. They’ve never got used to constant car noises – revving of engines and horn honking that all coming back twofold in echoes bouncing from walls of thin streets. Annoying, headache causing. Terry would rather listen to their boss shouting all day.

They were hyper focused on the noise. On their check-up doctor said it’s nothing weird and then asked for payment in amount of Terry’s two-month salaries. Thief.

That’s when they heard it. Soft, almost silent ding. As if you try to get attention at the wedding table and you hit the crystal glass with a spoon. Once. Carefully. It sounded almost magical in this grey place.

Ding.

Terry stopped. At the end of the narrow street they saw a shadow. It was a person kneeling next to something on the ground. Terry didn’t see any details, but dread climbed on their back. This is Gotham. Terry should run. It doesn’t matter what were they witnessing, the logical thing is to…

Ding.

The person looked his way. Every little move was followed by that soft jingle.

And then Terry realized they can’t move anymore. The jingle dinged louder. And louder. The sound vibrated through the streets catching them right by the soul. Terry realized they can’t breathe. Their heart was racing like crazy and their head hurt from wave of sound around them.

The person… a woman… walked straight to Terry, bringing the sound with her. In the dark Terry recognized a scarf on her face and… oh god… bloody knife in her hand.

Run! They tried to move their legs. Nothing.

The sound. The fear. The knife.

Finally, Terry’s body gave in and they fainted. They didn’t see the woman touching their neck for pulse. Nor did they hear the sound stop as the woman left without hurting them.

In the street, there lay another body.

***

Miranda Bradbury really liked Gotham. She felt like a character in gothic romance. Darkness, never-ending mist and bad weather, creepy architecture and constant danger. She enjoyed Gotham since she’s moved here two weeks prior. This city was crazy. Mental even! During the time period she tried to adapt to her new environment, she’s already seen the clown terrorizing city, the Riddler enslaving a whole block and some maniac with knives kidnapping people trying to lure in the Bat.

Oh, yeah. Batman. Before she didn’t understand. How can the police just let mask vigilante on loose? She understood after two days. This city…

This city also ruined her business right away. She moved here, opened a toyshop and that was it. The empty place flourished under her care, filled with toys, decorations and joy. The shop was in pretty good part of town, and yet – no customers. Too late she found out this used to be a toyshop of some crazy guy – calling himself the Toymaker – who tried to kill the city with explosive teddy-bears and sentient Barbie dolls.

Yes. This city was mental.

And she loved it. She always tried to blend in, be the grey mouse in her warm turtleneck and messy brown hair. After witnessing crazy punk-rock fashion of this city she realized she stood up more like this. At least she can pass for naïve outsider. That’s always a plus in her line of work.

The fourth day and finally two guys entered her shop. They looked around with deep uninterest in their eyes. Walked through isles touching stuffed toy here and there or picking up a toy car and putting it back two seconds later. Miranda waited patiently at the counter, small smile on her lips.

They finally stopped in front of her. She suspected they are twins as their expression were the same – dull and bored. They were dressed like gangsters from twenties. Gotham was weirdly stuck in time.

“G’morning, lady,” said one of them despite it being deep afternoon. “We’ve come to talk.”

“How much?” Miranda asked.

“Excuse me?”

“How much?” she repeated not losing her patience. She adored the confused looks. “This isn’t my first rodeo, gentlemen. How much is the protection fee?”

“Straight lass, huh?”

“Partially,” Miranda joked. “I hate beating around the bush.”

“Don loves people like you. Right to bus’ ya know? It’s ten percent if you don’t want’cha place to burn.”

Miranda overlooked the empty store. Ten percent of nothing is… probably not suitable for Don Falcone, one of the mafia leaders of the city. Before setting the shop, Miranda made her research on the city’s bad guys. Always ready. Don Falcone won’t care, he will just want his cash. She started to think she underestimated the marketing. Be better PR, Miranda, it’s not that hard.

“Tell me, friends,” she started with a nice voice, “how does Don Falcone feel about illegal businesses?”

***

Miranda moved to Gotham for various reasons. One of them was the fact she was constantly on the move. She’s never spent anywhere more than two years. The last city she was in was Star City and that didn’t go well for her with all the supers around.

The second reason was that she’s always heard about Gotham as this sick place. The city corrupted by illness eating itself out like a wounded animal. That intrigued her and she felt as if this is the proper place to hide and never be found. And if she is, it will be probably in the dumpster behind some chemical plant. She could live with that future in mind.

The third reason… the main reason she wasn’t afraid to admit, she just didn’t want to deal with it… was him. Professor Jonathan Crane. Miranda took years of stupid, non-working, useless therapy to end up here. Her… could she even call them fears?... were crippling. And she needed the best. Jonathan Crane was the best. The fear specialist with shady background. But that’s Gotham for you. You might do inhumane experiments on your students and don’t get your licence revoked.

Miranda should probably be afraid of someone like that. Ridiculous idea. He was still running decent psychiatric office and all reviews threw him five stars. She will be careful. She just really needed help.

This was the part she hated. Explaining. She sat in front of the professor. He was fairly young for the title. Miranda’s looked through his files too, though he has been careful keeping most of the information hidden. Star student, at least he used to be. Those climb the leader fast. He wasn’t even forty yet, his ginger hair hid possible grey hair very well. He was watching her with his intense blue eyes and almost never blinked. He waited for her to get everything out. Miranda hated those stories. Repeating them again always made her feel crazy. She probably was.

“It’s complicated. I will try to make it short.” Now, Miranda, where is your hate for beating around the bush, huh? Just tell the nice doctor you are a fucking madwoman.

The professor was silent. Waiting. Even sitting he was very tall, and she noticed his fingers being thin and bony, just like his whole appearance.

“I have a problem. I’ve seen tons of shrinks about it already. Most of them gave up on me or drugged me to no avail. The thing is I have this weird… I don’t know… Phobia. Causing me panic attacks, crippling me.”

“That is not uncommon for deep fears,” said the professor. Miranda wondered how can shrinks be so calm. If someone told her they are crazy, she would probably joke about it right away.

“Yes, I know. I was told that hundred times already. There’s a catch.”

“Do tell.”

Miranda shuffled in her chair. No matter how many times she has talked about this it still made her uncomfortable and she felt like an idiot. But she had to fight this. Or she might…

“It’s ghosts. I panic around ghosts.”

The professor opened his mouth to say something, but Miranda quickly stopped him.

“No, I don’t believe in ghosts. That’s nonsense. I just call these things ghosts. It’s like… hallucination I keep having. They appear and it’s like someone caught my heart and pulled it out of my chest. I feel dead. I cannot move, I cannot act, think, anything. But according to all the doctors, I am sane.”

“When do these ghosts appear?” Professor didn’t even flinch. Nor blinked. He heard crazy talk daily why should she be any more interesting?

“They first appeared a little over a decade back. This is when the first attack happened. Then I got a charm, see?” She touched her necklace. Simple round silver ball that jingled softly when moved. “It keeps them away. When I take this off, I see them. I get attacked right away.”

“May I see?”

She held the pendant firmly. “Sorry, I don’t take it off on the first date.”

Her joke created tiny smile on his face. “Understandable.”

He asked more questions and she tried to answer as truthfully as her crime record allowed. By the end of the session she felt like dried out sponge.

“Don’t be afraid, miss Bradbury. We will figure this out,” professor said when she was leaving.

“Funny you say that. I can’t really feel the fear,” she smiled and that ended their first meeting.

***

Terry Borrows way lying in the hospital bed. They hit their head during the horrid night which caused a mild concussion. The doctors were also worried about their heart because it showed signs of arrythmia. It disappeared a day after the incident, but everyone was head over heels with this situation.

“They keep me here because they want to blame it on me,” wrote Terry to their friend. “Because they have nobody else for the murder.” Terry believed that. This wouldn’t be the first time Gotham has fucked them over. At least they survived. Witnessing murder first hand was like being sentenced to death.

So, they were bored on the hospital bed, half asleep, half awake, back hurting from cheap bedding. Eyes closing and opening again just to see how far the sun has moved or whether the food was ready.

Closing. Opening. The sun was setting.

Closing. Opening. Darkness.

Closing. Opening. Shadow.

Terry’s heart nearly stopped. They shouted by surprise. They are definitely going to die now!

“Terry Borrows,” said the shadow with a deep voice. “I have few questions for you.”

Terry was struck by fear. The rational part of their brain wanted to scream. They didn’t. They watched a man dressed as giant bat and their voice trembled.

“Y-yes?”

“What did you see at the crime scene?”

“I already told the police everything.” There was panic in their voice.

“Tell me.”

“There was a woman, she killed someone. She had some sort of mask. She… ah!”

The door opened. The nurse stepped between the doorframe, looked at Batman and then strategically left closing the door behind her. Terry swallowed a curse.

“Continue,” demanded Batman.

“The sound. It was the sound that made me faint.”

“What else can you remember?”

“The jingle. She was jingling like some fucking Christmas tree.”

“What about her movement?”

“What about it?” asked Terry. Batman just waited to let them figure out what he means. “I don’t know. I saw her just for a few seconds. She was hidden in the shadows.”

“Thank you, Terry.”

“You are welcome?” answered Terry unsurely. Then the door opened again, and doctor stormed in ready to shun the uninvited guest.

But he was already gone.

Chapter 2

#jonathan crane #batman #fanfic #writing #writeblr #ghosts of the past #sick raven writing

8 notes · View notes

smokedstorybara · 4 years

Text

everyone seems to describe writing fanfic, and their motives for doing so, as “fixing canon”

which is totally valid

it’s just not how it is for me

(I make a lot of long introspective posts like this on my main, like one every couple months, but since this one is about writing I figured I’d put it here instead; I’m gonna put a readmore here so y’all can skip over it all if you want)

for me writing fanfiction is almost like an experiment, an exploration of variables - circumstance, setting, choices - and how they affect the characters trajectories and the outcome of the story as a whole (though tbh I tend approach writing in general as an exploration of tropes and structure and psychology so I guess it’s just how I am)

(I’m gonna use some fanfics I’m working on, as well as the couple I’ve actually posted, as examples to help me explain what I mean, so if you don’t want spoilers maybe don’t read)

first: exploration of circumstance (then setting, choices, and ending with all three together)

my two examples for this are my published Dear Evan Hansen fic (Apprentice) Park Ranger Handsome and a role-reversal Arrowverse au I’m working on

(A)PRH started with the thought “what would’ve happened if Evan and Connor had first interacted over the summer, at the park Evan worked at?”

my first answer was a simple “their first meeting would likely have gone much smoother - the environment and circumstances of it being much more relaxed”

this led to “they both would’ve latched on to that; this conversation is going well lets try to keep it going as long as possible I’m starved for positive interaction turning into if I talk to him again maybe it’ll go as well as last time it hasn’t gone wrong yet keep coming back keep talking to him maybe this can be good”

which leads to them becoming friends (and likely developing crushes on each other) and then opening up to each other >> relying on each other >> supporting each other >> each realizing that if they want to support the other they need a more stable support themself >> Evan likely being the first to actively reach out for outside support since he already has a therapist and relatively better relationship with his mother >> Evan doesn’t fall from that tree and Connor doesn’t commit suicide >> the entire plot of the play no longer happens but the boys are happy and their families are at least on their ways to healing

the Coldflash role-reversal (which does not have a name yet) actually started with the question “what element would I need to change for Barry to still be a CSI for the CCPD but also use his superspeed to become a criminal?”

the element I went with was him not being allowed access to the file on his mother’s murder

the cause-effect diagram so far is as follows: Barry isn’t allowed access to the file and thus can’t investigate >> he’s upset about this fact >> in a better mental state to be aware of corruption and laziness in the police force (as well as other factors that lead to the wrong person getting arrested) >> becomes bitter and disillusioned but hides it because he still wants to do what he can to prevent innocent people from going to jail >> when he gets superpowers he decides to use it to bring light to the failings of the city’s law enforcement >> becomes a thief >> tries to steal the Khandaq Dynasty Diamond at the same time as Leonard Snart does >> Leonard Snart gets a hold of the cold gun >> they both try again at the same time but because Flash is faster the public see him as a thief and “Captain Cold” as a hero >> because Snart is a giant nerd and also because he’s frustrated with all the chaos in his city from the metas, he decides to go along with it and becomes a superhero

second: exploration of setting

my only example for this is a fantasy au I recently started for Pacific Rim

so the variable I changed was “instead of a war between humans and beings from another world, it’s a war between the two fae courts”

and where changing a circumstance leads to a cause and effect of characters choices, changing setting leads to a map of what that changes in the characters circumstances and identities

some examples from this au:

Hannibal Chau is a human who uses deals with what I’ve been calling “J Court” in my outline to boost his black market business - instead of just being a shady black market dealer with ties to the PPDC, he’s one of the few humans who even knows the fae exist

Stacker Pentecost is either the king of the J Court or the leader of it’s army, giving him much more power than he had in canon

Raleigh left the Court after Yancy’s death, separating himself from his people and instead immersing himself in humanity, but somehow Stacker convinced him to return

(on the flip side: Newt is still an expert on Kaiju biology and just as obsessed with studying them as he is in canon)

third: exploration of choices

this exploration is where I look at one choice made in canon and ask myself “how would everything change if a different choice was made here?”

two examples again; an Umbrella Academy fic (tentatively named “The One Where He Stayed” in my drive) and a Check Please fic currently titled Moving On

the choice in TOWHS is Klaus going back to 2019 after Dave dies - instead he stays, serves a full tour in Vietnam and then returns to the US with his surviving war buddies

this changes his circumstances, setting, and leads to a cause-effect chain of decisions

he’s now a veteran in early seventies USA, he has friends who respect him and care about him; he still decides to go sober to see Dave again but there’s more behind the decision; he makes himself a home and a family - even if a good portion of them are dead soldiers, some of them are the spouses of his brothers-in-arms, their children and siblings; he learns to control his powers, all of them; and when he finally ends up back in 2019 - either the long way or from accidentally opening the briefcase - he still has this family waiting for him to show back up, willing to help, he’s powerful and knows it, and there’s no way he’s going to let the apocalypse happen

Moving On is less changing a choice made in canon and more answering the question of “what would happen if this choice that wasn’t made was?”

or, more specifically, “what if Bitty and Jack broke up before the Stanley Cup win? how would that affect Bitty’s friendships, his life?”

because many of Bitty’s friends are also friends with Jack, or at least look up to him, and in fact several were friends with Jack first

this one is mostly about exploring the psychology of the comic’s characters and how they all would react

I was happy to realize there would likely not be too much side taking, but there would be awkwardness for most of them; Bitty would likely gravitate more towards spending time with Tango, Whiskey, and Ford who would be the three most likely to not make a big deal out of it or make things awkward; also Bitty would be unable to tell his mother, which would eat at him

then there was the question “if Kent found out would he sympathize? would they become friends?” (slightly harder to answer, since Kent is a tiny bit of an enigma, but I chose to be optimistic there)

and the most important question: “how would I want to end this story? would it be a more satisfying conclusion for Bitty to find a new boyfriend and be happy with him, or to decide he doesn’t need a man to be happy? should Jack end the story single, or in a new relationship?”

the answers I decided on were: while Bitty doesn’t need a man to be happy, he was closeted his entire teens and at this point has only had one relationship and he deserves to get another chance at romance; and on the other side, Jack’s personal story is more about his hockey and becoming comfortable being himself and really all he needs is to win the Stanley Cup or something

fourth: all three at once - or in other words: The Soulmate AU

soulmate AUs are the best way to cover all three at once because the very existence of soulmates changes the circumstances of the story and how the world works, and affects what choices the characters would make

once again, I have two examples: my published Moomins fic Perchance To Dream, and an Arrowverse one-shot series titled Dream A Little Dream

Perchance To Dream was started by the question “in what way could I make Moomin and Snufkin soulmates without them immediately knowing upon meeting? which soulmate trope would I have to use?”

my tentative answer was soul dreams

which was quickly followed by the acknowledgement that if young Snufkin had started having soul dreams he’d likely be unhappy >> if Moomin knew his soulmate was unhappy with their soul bond and he had a way to cut off the bond - say, an herb that you take every night to stop your soul dreams - he’d do that for them, even if it would make him very sad >> time passes and they meet how they do in canon and they’ve both grown enough that they don’t immediately recognize each other >> Snufkin would figure it out first, but exactly when and how would depend on Moomin >> Snufkin would keep it a secret, nervous about telling Moomin >> Moomin would find himself drawn (and attracted) to Snufkin and would have very conflicting feelings over it >> they’d both spend an awfully long time feeling conflicted and guilty before Moomin decides he wants to be with Snufkin, soulmate or not, and Snufkin decides to tell Moomin the truth - probably around the same time

Dream A Little Dream exists entirely as an exploration of the soulmate trope and the different possibilities within

instead of being a romance focusing on one or two ships, it’s a non-linear web showing both how the existence of soulmates affects all the characters and how the events of canon affect the relationships of all the soulmate pairs

(I tried to separate it into primary pairs, secondary pairs, and tertiary pairs to make it easier on myself but all the pairings were too important to the whole idea behind the story to limit their chapters(literally I have, like, nine endgame ships and two of those are polyam(as in I’m counting a four person polyam chain as one ship, even if it might technically count as three, and the other is three people: one relationship); and around fifteen soul pairs(yes there are more soul pairs than endgame ships, there’s a reason for that)))

because of the way I’m exploring the trope there’s fairly little, aside from romantic relationships, that changes from canon (at least up to season four of the Flash, cause that’s as far as I’ve seen)

mostly it’s things like Leonard Snart returning to life because him and Barry are one of the soul pairs I plan on having end up together - after a very long process of Len spending nine months thinking his soulmate died >> then several months of Barry knowing Len’s his soulmate but Len being in the dark >> a period of Len trying to win Barry over but failing a bit >> Len dying and Barry mourning him >> Barry marrying and then divorcing Iris >> Len coming back to life >> Barry and him finally getting together

which is a parallel(in that they both have the “good guy is soulmated to bad guy” dynamic) and contrast to Cisco and Hartley who don’t realize they’re soulmates when they first meet and totally hate each other >> when they can no longer deny it, they start to work together and accept each other >> end up together

Iris’s soulmate is Eddie, and she, Caitlin, and Ray are explorations of moving on after the loss of your soulmate and the different forms that takes - Iris and Caitlin ending up together(along with Shawna, who was left behind by her soulmate) and Ray trying to fill Anna’s spot with other romantic relationships before finally realizing that that isn’t actually helping and finally properly coming to terms with the loss

and I’m gonna stop here instead of going any further into this one, since it’s got so many moving parts and also it’s a little harder to separate from canon than the others

#writeblr #fanfic talk #storybarambles #sorry this doesn't have a proper conclusion #I'm very tired

4 notes · View notes

krreader · 6 years

Text

swim | chapter 1

pairing: min yoongi x reader fandom: bts warnings: non idol!au ; sex shop!au ; college!au ; language ; mentions of masturbation genre: smut ; angst ; crack ; fluff

summary: what he wanted was someone he could have casual sex with. what he got, was a co-worker that he wanted much more from.

a/n: listen, this idea deserves its’ own fic. this is fucking AMAZING and I knew as soon as I read the request that I would never be able to wrap it up in a one-shot. idk how many parts it’s going to have, but it’s going to be filled with smut and angst and probably a lot of crack too. but I do hope you all like it ♥ (also, I’ve been meaning to use that gif for ages, I’m so happy omfg) (also, title/this fic is inspired by yet another chase atlantic song with the same name that you should def listen to because it’S AMAZING)

ask box | masterlist | fandoms | faq | multifandom reader blog

You know what's fucking tragic?

Being surrounded by porn, sex toys and other things that would make most people go horny, while not having had sex in more than three months.

Yoongi was beginning to lose his mind if he wasn't going to get laid soon. But it seemed like every girl he met that he thought was hot and good for a one-night-stand, wanted more. And he just wanted to have sex. How hard could it be to find one person in this goddamn city who was on the same level as him? To just want to bang and then never see each other again?

The answer was: very.

His friends had tried to set him up with various girls, but then they either wanted to text for ages, or go on dates or told him right from the start that they wanted more than just a simple fuck.

He hadn't always been this way, of course.

But after his break-up with his girlfriend for over two years, he just felt like he wanted to enjoy himself some more.

But apparently the universe wouldn't grant him his wish, no matter how hard he wanted it.

Yoongi didn’t do the job at the sex shop because he wanted to, but because it paid a lot of money. And you know, being a uni student didn’t exactly pay well, so this was his best option. It actually wasn’t a bad job, most people that came in here were either elderly men who wanted to buy porn, or women that wanted to buy lingerie. Also some couples who were looking at sex toys and the likes..

He didn’t mind any of that. He was open to all of this and he wasn’t paid to judge people. So he didn’t.

He was currently going through the cash register before the shop would open, when his boss showed up with a huge grin.

A grin that made him awfully suspicious.

“Guess what!”

“What?” he didn't look up from the notes in his hand.

“I think I found you a new co-worker.”

“Huh?” at that, he did look up. He didn’t like working with new people. He’d rather work alone, “Why would you hire someone new? I'm fine on my own and with Hoseok working the weekends..”

“I know that you're fine on your own,” he leaned his hip against the cash desk, “But I feel like you could still use some help. You have never asked for a day off and if you did, I wouldn't have anyone else to work here, since I don't have the time to be in the front of the shop. I'm doing this for future purposes, because I need to think ahead, you know?”

“Why would I take a day off?” it's not like he had any reason to. You know.. it’s not like he had a girl he could see. To sleep with. Because he couldn’t find one for fuck’s sake.

God, he was so frustrated.

“What if you get sick, then? I'd have to find a replacement and Hoseok's schedule wouldn’t let him work week days. Anyways, you're going to like her.. she's..-”

“Her?!” he finally dropped the notes, his eyes widening, “You hired a chick?!”

“I'm a business person, Yoongi. And you know what this shop is missing? You know, a store where mostly men go into? A woman.”

“Oh, so you're using her because you think it's going to attract more customers? That's fucked up.”

“Maybe,” he shrugged and walked over to the porn DVD's and mindlessly starting ordering them, “But she's pretty and she's willing to do the job. And all the other people I met with were either old women or men in general. She was the only one in the age group I wanted, so she's getting the job. And I want you to teach her how it all works, since she's doing the shifts you're doing.”

This was bad. Really bad.

Usually, he really respected his boss and he had a good relationship with him, but using a young and pretty girl to attract creepy old man was a huge red flag and he knew he'd have to watch the girl like a hawk and had to make sure not to leave her alone with any customers that looked shady.

In addition to that, he had to make sure to control himself. He was horny most of the time at this point and his own hand didn't really do the trick anymore. If his boss was right and his new co-worker was as pretty as he made her out to be, he'd have a big fucking problem.

“When does she start, then?” he asked with a sigh.

“Tomorrow night,” he grinned from ear to ear, “She's really excited to meet you.”

The bad thing? He was excited too, as much as he pretended not to be.

“A girl?” Hoseok was literally bouncing up and down on the couch as soon as he heard the news, “What's her name? How old is she? Is she pretty? When is she going to work?”

“Hyung, calm down,” Namjoon laughed and tried stopping his flat mate from bursting from excitement.

“I don't know anything,” Yoongi took a sip from his drink, “He just said she'd start working tomorrow and that she's pretty.. and she's doing my shifts.”

“What?! So I won't get to work with her?” he pouted, “That’s not fair, how come you get to work with a pretty girl and I don’t?”

The fact that Hoseok was jealous made him grin, even though he hadn't even met you yet. Maybe you weren’t that pretty.. maybe you were a moron.. or maybe you were a creep? Who knew?

“Why would a pretty girl work in a sex shop, though?” Taehyung asked, furrowing his eyebrows.

“True,” Jimin laid back down on the floor, his head now in Jeongguk's lap, “Does she even know what kind of people go in there? Most of these guys go in there because they're horny.. what if something happens to her?”

“Nothing is going to happen to her, I just told you, she's working my shifts, so I'll be around her at all times.”

“Maybe you'll finally get laid then, hyung,” Taehyung clapped once, “Imagine.. you could have a friends with benefits relationship with your co-worker. That’s the dream for most guys, isn’t it?”

“OR,” Jin chimed in, “You two could become friends.”

“I don't know if hyung could do a friendship with a girl in the state he's in,” Jimin laughed, but stopped the second that Yoongi threw him a death glance, “Sorry.”

“Did you text the girl I gave you the number of, hyung?” JK cocked his head to the side, “She was so interested in you..”

“She has also just turned 18. I'm desperate, but I'm not that desperate..”

“Whatever,” Namjoon was the first to get up, picking up the two beer bottles he had drank, “I'm off to bed, I've got an exam tomorrow morning. Text us and let us know how it went, hyung.”

And then one after the other left to go to bed, Yoongi being the last to do so.

So many thoughts were rushing through his brain and all of them revolved around his new co-worker. He never really wanted or needed someone to work with him, especially because he liked the solitude the sex-shop offered. But the more he thought about having a female around, the more he liked the idea. And not just for sexual reasons, but because Jin might have had a point.

He hadn't had a female friend in ages, maybe this could be his first one.

Nevertheless, his body acted quicker than his brain could and the thought alone to have someone pretty around him at all times made him go dizzy and soon after he realized why, because all of his blood seemed to have rushed to his penis.

God, he needed to get laid, seriously.

Otherwise he'd have to see a doctor because he'd dislocate his wrist if he kept jerking off every night.

The shop was already open and the first customers were already browsing through, some at the porn sections, others at the toy section, while he was going through boxes with some of the new lingerie that his boss had ordered.

He hadn't even heard him come in.

It was only when he heard someone giggle, that he turned his head.

The feet were the first thing he saw, then, slowly but surely, he began letting his eyes trail up, until they landed on a pair of (Y/E/C) ones.

“Yoongi, this is your new co-worker,” his boss said in a cheerful voice.

“Hi,” you smiled kindly, “I'm (Y/N).”

Yeah, no, scratch that idea of him and you becoming friends, because you were way too attractive for him to keep his cool around you. And it was then that he realized that the next couple of weeks, maybe even months of you working with him would be absolute torture for him.

#bts imagine #bts x reader #min yoongi x reader #suga x reader #min yoongi imagine #yoongi x reader #yoongi imagine #suga imagine #bangtan boys #bts #bangtan sonyeondan #min yoongi #suga #yoongi #reader #mine

576 notes · View notes

swanandapirate · 5 years

Text

A Muted Hue of Grey (14/14) -- CSBB

Summary: Emma Swan liked being a PI in Boston. It was a fun job, she had an okay income and she was a good one at that, so there was no logical reason to try and leave. Except for the fact that she wanted to, so badly. And, when she received a job offer for what seemed to be the opportunity of a lifetime, she did exactly that. Leave. Run. All the way to London. The job was simple: trailing a man called Killian Jones. Easy enough.

Well, until things get complicated, that is.

Rating: M (previous mentions of alcohol abuse, violence, and sex)

Wordcount: 3415

Links: ao3 // ff.net // spotify chapter 1 // chapter 2 // chapter 3 // chapter 4 // chapter 5 // chapter 6 // chapter 7 // chapter 8 // chapter 9 // chapter 10 // chapter 11 // chapter 12 // chapter 13

A/N: Here we are, the last chapter. This is such a surreal moment because after more than a year this story is over and done. This @captainswanbigbang experience has been one of a lifetime and has taught me so much!

One last thank you to @ofshipsandswans and @acourtoftruelove. Honestly, I can't even properly express how important these two have been for this fic, its successful completion, and just in my life in general. I both love you loads.

Not to forget my amazing artist @shady-swan-jones who has made epic art for this fic, who is just such a lovely person and who, out of all the possible fics, picked mine, for which I am very thankful.

Without further ado, one last time, A Muted Hue of Grey

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

“Emma, no.”

“Killian.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Emma,” he repeated, his blue eyes serious as he kept eye contact and shook his head.

She rolled her eyes before returning the look.

“I have to go home,” she said.

“No, you don’t,” he disagreed.

His arm snaked around her waist, pulling her back to him. The bedcovers shifted, baring her legs as she attempted to wriggle out of his hold and get out of bed.

“I haven’t been home in three days,” she told him, reminding him of how one evening together had shifted into a night together which had then merged into another one and another.

Not that she had any qualms with it.

None whatsoever.

Especially with the way his lips were pressing feather-light kisses against her spine.

“Stay.”

Emma couldn’t bring herself to say no. Not to him, not to the way his hair was so playfully mussed, not when the crinkles near his eyes appeared again, not when they were in such a good place.

“Okay.”

-/-

They hadn’t been in this place for long. It had taken a lot of talking and arguing and reasoning to get there. A lot of hurting and painful introspective. But it had been for the best and so she’d endured it. He had too. Because they thought it was worth it.

And honestly, it was worth every tear that had been shed, every long silence that had taken place.

What she got in return was more than anything she could’ve hoped for.

-/-

“Doesn’t it bother you that he’s still free?”

Killian looked up from his book, his brow instantly furrowing. He didn’t need more to know who she was talking about; they hadn’t mentioned his name in weeks, hadn’t encountered him in the time of peace they’d received.

But it had been nagging Emma. He was still out there and as much as they could try and ignore his existence, he still roamed around London being his psychopath self.

Something she struggled with. Call it a savior complex but it felt unfair to have been such a big part of his malfeasance and not prevent others from his wrath and psychotic behavior.

Killian put his book aside and wrapped his arms around Emma’s ankles, pulling her closer to him on the couch.

“This again?”

She sat up and leveled her eyes with him.

“I know you don’t like to talk about it but it has to bother you as much as it bothers me. What happened to try and prove his guilt?”

“I found things that are more important.” His hand brushed over her cheek, the warmth of his hand conveying tenderness along Emma’s skin.

She leaned into his touch, the sudden emotion creeping up her throat. It wasn’t unusual for him to express affection, show how much he cared for her but it still affected her. She wasn’t used to being that adored. And then there was something else.

She hadn’t said I love you yet.

She wanted to say I love you almost every moment she spent with him. But it got stuck on the tip of her tongue every single time.

“I get that but what if he sends his minion to hurt you again? Or other people. What if he goes for Anna or Elsa? I just don’t like that he’s out there, Killian.”

He sighed while averting his eyes from her, placing his chin on her knees. He had to know she was right. She was also pretty certain he felt the same way. His good form was ingrained into him, a crucial part of who he was. He’d want to do the right thing.

Emma placed her hand on his cheek and gently turned his face to her again. In a sad way, her lips curled.

They had to do the right thing.

“What do you want to do?” he asked, the sadness reaching him too.

“Maybe try taking another route? A more legal one this time?” She cocked her head in suggestion.

“We would have to find someone to help us legally, but Gold has people everywhere. They cannot be one of Gold's puppets.”

“I might know someone.”

Might was a wrong word. She knew the perfect someone.

-/-

“Did you ever tell me he went to law school?”

An ambulance raced passed them as they walked on the street, synchronized steps sounding against the concrete. It wasn’t far, only two blocks, but Killian had still grabbed her hand to walk the way.

Emma swung their linked hands.

“I might’ve? I don’t remember.” She shrugged. She’d never thought Samir being a lawyer would be something she’d need but here they were: on their way to his shop.

“And he works in a shop?”

Emma checked the street for incoming cars before quickly crossing and pulling Killian along.

“It’s his dad’s,” she explained. “There’s a whole story behind it, I’m sure.”

“Well, I believe you.”

“Why thank you, Jones, for that assurance.”

He winked in response, eliciting a smile on Emma’s face.

The shop appeared from behind the corner and she smiled. It had been a while since she’d seen Samir, fewer midnight snacks and drinks that needed to be bought recently. Maybe his theory about being a not so happy single was correct.

This was also the first time Samir and Killian would meet and she was looking forward to it. Her favorite people in this city had to meet at some point, and even if this visit wasn’t just for pleasure, it still meant something.

The door opened, the bell rang and they were inside.

The store was empty but not for long as Samir emerged from the back, a pack of what looked like cereal in his hands and blocked his view.

“I’ll be right with you!”

“Take your time, Samir,” she reassured.

As he walked to the cereal rack, back facing them, Samir spoke again: “Is that my favorite customer I hear?”

She laughed.

“It might be.”

“I hope it’s her. My sales have been suffering since she decided to disappear more and more,” Samir replied, still not turned to them.

Emma and Killian looked at each other, both raising their eyebrows with a smile.

Finally, Samir finished putting the boxes away and approached them, a smile directed towards Emma and a curious glance towards Killian and their entwined hands.

“Hi,” she finally greeted her friend properly.

“Hello,” he replied.

Killian patiently waited in silence until Emma introduced the two of them to each other.

“Samir, this is Killian,” she began. “Killian, this is Samir.”

“Nice to meet you, mate.” Killian released her hand and reached for Samir’s outstretched one, the men sharing a quick but genuine shake. “Emma has told me a lot about you.”

“You too, mate.” He nodded. “What brings you to my humble shop?”

Emma took a step forwards.

“Remember when we first talked and I told you that if I ever needed a lawyer, I’d call you?” She gave him a second to recall the memory before she continued. “The moment has come.”

Samir did not seem surprised or taken aback at all. Instead, a fire lit up his dark brown eyes as something Emma couldn’t describe as anything other than determination appeared.

“You’re taking him down?” he asked, looking at the both of them for an answer.

She sought Killian’s eyes, wanted to be sure that they were both one hundred percent sure of the path they were going to go down. When she found them, Emma knew that this was what they were doing, even if it was the last thing they did.

“We are,” she replied, the same determination that could be found in Samir’s eyes now in her voice. “If you’re up for it.”

“Rocky Road.” Samir smiled. “I’d thought you’d never ask.”

-/-

They spent hours, days, weeks searching. Searching for the smallest lead or detail that was off. Soon they realized it was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

And it was fucking frustrating.

How could Gold never once have made a misstep? How was that even possible? All humans make a mistake at some point, so why didn’t he?

Samir couldn’t do a lot if they had nothing to go off. He couldn’t think of a charge without proof, couldn’t magically make an accusation appear out of thin air.

Killian tried using the things he’d gathered before but the tidbits of information were mostly outdated and incorrect.

Emma… well she got more frustrated by the minute and wasn’t as useful to the investigation as her companions.

It was so unfair. On paper, this man was a saint. Donations to nonprofits, he tipped fairly, he even recycled. You name it and The Honorable Mr. Gold had most likely done it.

Which, again, was fucking frustrating.

Emma grunted, throwing one of their folders on Killian’s coffee table. She let her head drop into her hands, momentarily sick of reading and reading, processing information without discovering anything valuable, anything useful for the case they were trying to build.

A case that was currently non-existent because of said shortage of information.

She sighed against her palms and closed her eyes. An empty nothing was better than going back to the file, with information being catapulted at her.

A headache was forming between her temples and so she stayed like that, hands half-buried in her hair and forehead leaning against her palms.

Suddenly, a hand grabbed her shoulder.

“Oh god!” She jumped and placed her hand over her heart as she saw who the culprit was. “You scared the shit out of me.”

Killian stood next to her with an apologetic grimace on his lips and a plastic bag in his hand.

“Apologies, love. I did announce I was home,” he defended himself, not to take the blame off of himself but to tell her it wasn’t on purpose.

“It’s fine. It’s my fault, I wasn’t paying attention.” She got up and quickly kissed his mouth in way of greeting.

A delicious smell wafted upwards and reached her nose, making her stomach growl. She’d forgotten to eat. Again.

“You bought Chinese?”

He’d told her that he wasn’t the biggest fan of Chinese food and that he ate it maybe once every three years (and that was a broad estimate) So every time he came home with takeout, she knew he did it for her. Because she loved it almost as much as he didn’t like it. Because he’d thought of her while walking past the Chinese restaurant and wanted to make her happy.

She should really tell him she loved him.

“I was in the mood for some spring rolls,” Killian shrugged.

Emma wasn’t falling for his act and stepped back into his personal space, lips searching his again, this time for more than just a peck.

They broke apart, their chests heaving ever so slightly as they both came up for air.

“I should best put this on the table,” he said, his hand lifting the bag of Chinese food again.

Tell him.

Emma, tell him.

“Killian?” she blurted out, her mouth acting before her mind could reconsider.

“Aye?” He turned to her with expectant eyes which definitely didn’t help with the stress that was tormenting her body right now.

Emma took a deep breath, thanks to their earlier tiny make out session, she could attribute her breathlessness to that and not to the source of her fast-beating heart and sweaty palms.

“I love you,” she said and she felt lighter instantaneously. “I thought you should know that.”

Killian left the Chinese food for what it was and strode towards her, only three big strides before he reached her, touched her, kissed her.

She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him back, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“I love you,” he echoed the words, whispered them against her slightly swollen lips. “I thought you should know that too.”

Laughter bubbled out of Emma with the complete happiness and tranquility she finally felt, and of that earlier frustration, there was nothing left.

-/-

“Honestly, I think it’s bollocks. He must’ve paid someone to clear his records. No one is this clean,” Samir mumbled through his full mouth of spaghetti.

Emma sipped from her glass of water and set it back down on the table before taking another bite of her own food.

Quite early on, they discovered that once the three of them—Emma, Killian, and Samir—got together to discuss their plans, it usually turned into just friends hanging out for a while as they all got along extremely well. Emma had honestly been afraid that her friend and her boyfriend wouldn’t get along at first but now, they sometimes got along too well. They had a serious bromance going on and she wouldn’t say she was jealous but she wouldn’t mind if they got along slightly less either. So they went from random meetings in the middle of the day to actual planned dinner evenings for a perfect mix of business and casual.

So that was why Samir was now stuffing his face with Killian’s divine spaghetti and commenting on how he thought the situation was bullshit.

Which Emma agreed with one hundred percent.

“I know, mate, but we have nothing else to go on,” Killian reacted.

“Have we covered all bases?” Samir asked again, but they had. “Youth? Career? Family? Anything we could’ve missed?”

Killian shook his dark locks in a negative answer.

“Milah told me he had no family to speak of so that’s a dead end.”

Emma froze, her eyes popping open as she dropped her fork on the table.

Gold’s brother.

“What did you say, Swan?” Killian frowned as Emma had apparently not only thought it but had actually spoken it out loud.

She cleared her throat before repeating what she had just come to realize. “Gold has a brother.”

“A brother?” Both Killian and Samir said in unison—there was that bromance she was speaking of.

She turned to Killian and grabbed a hold of his prosthetic.

“The guy that attacked the both of us, his name is Malcolm Gold.”

“How do you know that?” he asked.

She knew it because Malcolm’s ego got hurt and he wanted to boast about his powerful name to scare her even more.

"He told me. He might be lying but there is a similarity between the two that makes me think he was telling the truth and that they are brothers."

She got up, not waiting for any type of reaction from the both of them, not having the patience to wait for them to collect their thoughts on the information she’d just handed them.

Emma had already wasted enough time by not thinking of a lead she had had all along, from way before they had decided to try and take Gold down together. She didn’t have the time to be angry with herself right now, that would come later, now she needed to grab her computer as quickly possible.

Faster than ever before, she typed in her password and pulled up some of the online tools she’d often use while researching one of her cases. ‘Malcolm Gold’ she typed in and fervently asked Zeus, the universe, to give her this one thing, to give her something to work with.

“And?” Killian asked, still seated at the table, seemingly understanding what she was attempting to do.

She looked up from the bright computer screen and smirked at her team.

“It seems our dear Malcolm isn’t as good in hiding his tracks as his baby brother is.”

-/-

Malcolm Gold was, as Emma discovered, a man of many facets. One of them being an arsonist, another one of them being a notorious drug dealer who was the supplier of a variation of cocaine called Fairy Dust.

Not the most positive of reputations. And yet, somehow, he had spent a grand total of thirty-one hours in jail.

And there it was.

A lead.

After Emma’s discovery, it was all hands on deck; it was countless all-nighters with coffee as their only fuel. It was reading and more reading until their eyeballs went dry.

It took so much but they’d done it.

She was about ready to cry when Samir told her the news.

They had an airtight case. Gold was guilty of blackmail, extortion and the fabrication and distribution of narcotics.

And the son of a bitch was going to jail for it.

-/-

They stood in the parking lot of the courthouse, Emma and Killian leaning against Killian’s Toyota and talking in low voices in case someone overheard them. This was a big moment, something they’d worked towards for months, but Emma couldn’t stop shaking.

Months of work were depending on this. Innocent lives were depending on this. Her sanity in general was depending on this. So, it was safe to say that the stakes were pretty damn high.

From across the parking lot, she saw Samir appear, dressed in a dark suit that made him look way older than his young twenty-four years. She had total faith in him, however. He was relentless and thorough. And he was her friend.

“Hello,” he greeted them and they smiled in response.

“You’re sure you don’t want to come inside too?” Samir asked.

She looked at Killian and saw the exact same answer in his eyes. They didn’t want to face him again, not after all he had done and attempted to do. The man was a maniac and the less time they had to spend in his company, the better.

“No, Samir,” Killian said in her stead. Her hands weren’t the only thing that was shaking. “This is all you. We believe in you and we want to thank you for all that you’ve done for us. You’re a true friend.” He clasped his shoulder before going for a hug.

“What about you, Rocky Road?” Samir said as he turned to her. “Will you be alright?”

“Of course,” she finally spoke, managing the tiniest smile. “I trust you completely.” Emma looked him in the eye, reassured when she saw the embers burn in his eyes. “Go destroy him.”

Samir smiled at her and nodded sternly before giving her a hug as well. “For what he did to you,” he whispered as his arms were around her, “–gladly.”

Gold was not prepared for the fury he was about to meet.

“If it’s alright with you, mate, I’m taking Emma home,” Killian said and Emma looked at him in confusion. That wasn’t what they had planned.

Before she could question it, he silently grabbed her hand and squeezed and while she didn’t exactly fully understand what he was saying, she understood enough to not disagree. He really wanted to take her home, so she’d let him. There wasn’t a lot she could do on a courthouse parking lot, either way.

“Fine by me,” Samir replied, “I’ll call you with the verdict.”

Emma was curious about what Killian’s plans were once they got home but he simply took off his jacket as they entered the apartment, toed off his shoes, motioned her to take off her own and led her to the couch once she had. He settled into it and opened his arms to welcome her, an invitation she’d glady–always– accept.

For the time they lay on the couch, there was only Killian and nothing else. No sorrow or fear, only love and warmth. Her hands finally stopped trembling.

In the peace of the purest tranquility, she fell asleep surrounded by him. His heartbeat under her head, his scent in her nose, his legs tangled with hers.

It must’ve been hours later when she woke up, her body still glued to his but the light entering through the window completely different from when they had first gotten comfortable in the sofa. Cranking her eyes open, she looked up and found Killian looking at her with soft eyes, hand smoothing over some unruly blonde hair. He bowed his head and tenderly pressed his lips to her hair.

“We won.”

She sought his eyes and saw the honesty and contentment that lovely shade of blue emitted. Emma didn’t reply to his statement, not in words anyway. She just tightened her arms around him even more and kissed his collarbone before closing her eyes and feeling yet another kiss on her skin, this time on her forehead.

And at last, the mist of grey had lifted and left just the tiniest sparkle of brightness.

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

And that's it. Our bbis get a happy ending and all was well. I'd like to thank you all for coming onto this ride with me and staying loyal fans as the fic progressed. I'd like to thank everyone who left a comment, a like, fun tags, a kudos. While writing the chapters, I sometimes thought "but what if no one likes this fic I've been working on for months", but the response has been incredible so thank you, thank you, thank you! I hope you enjoyed the ride and I hope you have a lovely 2019. Bye!

#csbb #captain swan #cs ff #captain swan big bang #cs au #cs mc #AMHoG #my words and sentences

45 notes · View notes

wutbju · 5 years

Link

The Times They Showed Their Quality: My own experience with Liberty University’s treatment of faculty BRIAN MELTON·MONDAY, JUNE 24, 2019 Clarification: This note was written in direct response to comments from Liberty’s provost in a recent Christianity Today article claiming that the relationship between the LU administration and its faculty staff is “healthy”, and that the faculty is “completely comfortable with what [the administration] is doing,” and it should be read in that context. I offer this as a simple statement of my experience to serve as a corrective in honor of the many people whom I know wish they could speak out but can’t. Thanks in advance for taking this as nothing more or less than it claims to be. --Brian Anyone who is paying attention to criticisms of Liberty University these days is well familiar with the charge of “Fake News.” It is a common and mindless refrain, parroted back in obedience to The Donald’s talking points and it somehow resonates with otherwise intelligent people. It is also an easy charge to levy, as most of the time when people not connected to LU hear about nefarious happenings and underhanded actions, it is as “something that happened to this guy I heard about” or the like thanks to LU’s use of non-disclosure agreements. I never signed an NDA. So, I thought I might skip the rumor mill and share my own direct, first-hand experience with the administration’s behavior. What I can attest to is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg and not as bad as what has happened to others, but it marked the transition when, after fifteen years, I finally came to the definite conclusion that the upper administration at LU wasn’t simply self-serving or even inept, but fundamentally duplicitous. Worse, it demonstrated to me that they acted this way intentionally and with malice aforethought.

In 2014 my family and I moved back to the Lynchburg area, where I occupied a position as an Instructional Mentor, acting as a bridge between the College of General Studies and the College of Arts and Sciences. Previously, I had worked for LU full time residentially for over ten years. I served as a professor, chair of the curriculum committee, and moderator of the faculty senate during that time. I liked and respected (I still do) the people in those schools I worked with directly, and at the time we intended to spend the rest of our lives there. I figured whatever else happened, we would muddle through it and I would retire from LU when the time came. My point is that though I of course had my frustrations with the administration on some issues, but there was no ill will and I hoped to keep working for them for years to come.

One peculiarity of my position at the time was that it was “part-time full time.” Technically, I was a part time worker and I received none of the benefits that other faculty did, while at the same time I was counted as a “full time” faculty with a terminal degree for SACS purposes via a “limited benefit” contract (the sole “benefit” was that after filling out paperwork I could receive up to $400 a year to join professional associations). I knew there would be none of the standard health or life insurance, tuition assistance, etc. going into the position and was fine with it, as we were allowed to take extra classes and make a comfortable sum that allowed me to pay for all the extras out of pocket. I recall speaking with my associate dean as late as 2015 and telling him that I would be happy doing this job until I retired.

Of course, the lack of medical coverage in particular was a complaint that many had, but I did not see it as a significant obstacle. Yes, it was on the unfair side to be a second-class faculty member who did not get the coverage others did, even though I did as much work, and getting on the school insurance would be a significant boon to our family. Still, I worked from home, was paid well, and just accepted it as a known downside of the specific job I had agreed to do. There had been constant rumors that the administration appreciated us and was taking steps to give us coverage, but nothing ever came of it. Until the Fall of 2016, that is.

That fall I received an email on a Friday afternoon (when few people would be expected to look at it, of course) informing me that I had worked enough to qualify for medical coverage under the university. I had one week to respond. If I didn’t I would immediately and permanently forfeit any claim to coverage now or in the future. As you can imagine, I didn’t wait! I responded immediately that I was grateful for the opportunity and to put me down for it. I also contacted both of my bosses, who were happy to hear that I had received coverage. Both promised to do everything they could do to make sure I kept it by giving me the required amount of work.The next week I called Human Resources to find out more. I spoke with the benefits coordinator, and told him how much I appreciated the gesture. He replied that he was glad to hear it and that LU was always happy to help its people. As he explained the details of the coverage, he was careful to sneak in a comment that if I ever happened to fall below the required line, I would lose my coverage. “Well,” I thought, “that’s fair.” And so I asked what I thought would be the obvious question: “Where is the line? How much do I have to work in order to rate coverage?” His reply was shady, and you could tell by the uncomfortable tone of his voice that he knew it too. “That’s proprietary information,” he said, “I can’t release it.” “You can’t tell me at all?” I asked. “No” was the answer. My bosses, good people that they are, also both followed up with HR and they were both given the same answer.

From that moment, I knew that this was, in reality, nothing but an intentional set up. The reason they would tell no one where the line lay was because it was mobile--no one would ever cross it again. No matter how much we worked, it would always be “unfortunately” short of the goal. In fact, Liberty had obfuscated on Obamacare as long as they could, and now they were being forced to offer coverage to all full time workers. Rather than be frank about it, they were playing the situation off like this was a friendly and helpful boon to their employees, all the while laying plans to revoke the coverage at the first opportunity and blame it on said employees. It was as dishonest as it was obvious.

Sure enough, within a month, we began to get notifications of sudden “policy changes” that cut the financial rug out from under whole classes of faithful employees. My own turn at this came in December. In a move worthy of the counting house of Ebenezer Scrooge, four days before Christmas, I received an email informing me that I was to be locked out of any and all overload teaching effective January 1. For me, that amounted to an immediate pay cut of approximately a third of my yearly LU income. I was given approximately two weeks--including Christmas Eve and Day--to make adjustments. Never was an apology expressed, regrets offered, or even an acknowledgment made by anyone beyond my immediate superiors (who had no say in the matter) for the obvious effect this had on people’s lives or for the manner in which it was rolled out. Over the next quarter, chaos ensued as the administration waffled back and forth about what to do next and my hapless bosses could only report what the whim of the day happened to be. One day I was looking at a 50% pay cut. A week later, the rumor was that my position was being eliminated. A week after that, it was 20%. Then 30%. etc. etc. etc.The following Fall, things finally settled out--as much as they do at Liberty, where things are constantly in flux as the latest disposable “rock star” tries to leave his mark. I ended up losing about 25% of my previous income potential and we were limited to a theoretical 30 hours per week of work. I emphasize “theoretical” because in fact no effort was made to track anything outside of teaching hours, which represented the hours for which we were actually paid. At the same time, Liberty’s “Co-Provost” announced sweeping changes to our positions requiring substantially more administrative work. Since administrative hours were never counted or totaled nor paid individually, in fact our workload as a whole went up substantially while our overall pay potential dropped significantly. Perhaps worse, we were now charged with tracing faculty compliance via a tool called the “FAR” which tracked and logged every single time a faculty member was late doing anything. While that information had been available to chairs and deans for years, now it was forced down to even the adjunct level and I, as an Instructional Mentor, was required to contact the faculty under me and ask for an explanation any and every time I saw a “red flag.” Miss posting your Monday announcement by five minutes this week? I have to demand a justification that I would log with the university on your record. Are you a little late in grading the papers the university suddenly required you to return to the students two days earlier than before? I’ll be checking up on you for an excuse why you shouldn’t be fired. And with the “Co-Provost” (What the heck is that, anyway? The real provost pretending to not be? The actual provost’s personal assistant?) constantly haranguing us with threats that there were “hundreds of people lined up for your job”, threats so thinly veiled that they insulted your intelligence as much as they frightened you, there was plenty of angst to go around.And so I found myself in an interesting position: I was working full time hours at a part time job that had at least full time expectations, being told that I could get in trouble if I didn’t accomplish my full time work in my part time hours. I operated on a one year contract with no job security under implied threats of “non-renewal” delivered via smarmy video messages that tracked how much of each you watched. I was part of an increasingly Orwellian surveillance system that meant I was party to inflicting all of this onto others. (Let us not forget academic standards that had fallen dramatically over recent years and about which I could perhaps write another whole article.) And I was supposed to be happy about it--sacrificing my time and my family for the university, but not being able to expect a scrap of loyalty or genuine appreciation out of anyone above the deans’ level in return. The only safe words that could be used to express serious dissent were, “Thank you sir! May I have another?” All of this was happening in the name of Christ, and every complaint was expected to be excused for the sake of the mission, a mission that it was increasingly clear the school’s own president regarded as secondary to making money and winning football games (since confirmed directly in a recent tweet). It should come as no surprise, then, that in the summer of 2017, when I was approached about an opportunity to teach in Europe, I decided to leave. And the medical coverage? In September of 2017 I received the equivalent of a medical “Dear John” letter, regretfully informing me that since I simply hadn’t worked hard enough in the past year, the university had no choice but to end my medical coverage. At the time, my wife and I were actively being treated with expensive anti-biotics for Lyme Disease and a malarial-type infection she had picked up on a mission trip. My new chair in LUO (my previous one had quit in disgust) went on the line for me to try to reverse the decision, but was told to sit down and be quiet--the administration didn’t care and he was risking his own position by speaking up. In the final tally, I most likely could have made ends meet on the new salary they were offering, but money wasn’t the central problem. Neither was the still-absent medical coverage; we had lived without it before and could again. The most important issue for me was character. I had to be able to rely on Liberty University to treat me and others fairly and honestly if I were to bank my family’s welfare on working for them. My own personal narrative aside, I knew of many other people treated worse than I was--a whole list of persons I liked and respected. If the last few years had taught me anything, it was that while there are still many excellent people to be found there, Liberty University as a whole was as shifty, dishonorable, unprincipled, and hypocritical a work environment as could be offered. I could not trust my family to them, and I increasingly found it hard to have my reputation associated with an organization that had proved itself so often without honor. (Yes, I’m old fashioned that way.) It was a hard decision. We love our friends in the Lynchburg area very much and we love the Virginia mountains. We love our church, and, as I said, we planned to grow old and die there. We miss them all badly, even as we travel and experience Europe. Unfortunately, Liberty’s behavior and lack of honor made it virtually impossible to stay--for us at least.

Moving into 2018, I learned that more cuts were likely. (Despite what Provost Hicks asserts, it is a relatively recent thing for faculty to be completely surprised by their non-renewal. At one point there was a written agreement that faculty would be notified by January if it were a possibility, and even later people were unofficially informed.) I approached my bosses and let them know I would be leaving at the end of the year in the hopes that if they knew it, someone else’s job might be secure (I was told that it did save a position). In true LU style, I later received official notification in a boiler plate email that they had regretfully decided not to renew the contract I had already informed them I wasn’t seeking. I arrived at LU in the Fall of 2003 to find an earnest, if humanly fallible university making its very best effort to transform itself into the Notre Dame of Evangelicalism. I left a financially successful behemoth where real ministry and Christian charity is carried out by earnest believers in spite of the effort and example of its upper administration to the contrary. Increasingly, LU is becoming more the Harvard of Evangelicalism than the Notre Dame (academic standards definitely not withstanding). It is a university where the original mission has been sacrificed in favor of a political agenda and a secular system of situational morality, Liberty falling to the right wing in counterpoint to Harvard’s left. Though the campus may be bigger and more beautiful than ever before, sadly, thanks to the trajectory of its current administration, its reflection of Christ is not.

#Bob Jones University #Liberty University #Faculty

1 note · View note

night-filled-mountain · 6 years

Text

So the Labenda Swamp/Berleben episodes, while they had plenty of stand-out moments (KIRI! CALI! Shaving with a greatsword! Awkward hug!), weren’t exactly my favorites this campaign. Intra-party tension, lots of combat, lots of single-minded focus on their job (...their purely mercenary job for a crime boss, with no element of emotional investment or even a whiff of heroism). Basically, they had the generally grim atmosphere that you’d probably expect from a shitty swamp town. By the end of ep. 23, I was really craving some downtime for the group, some richer, softer interactions, juicy character development, and maybe an altruistic side quest that would help me really root for the Mighty Nein (much as I adore their shadiness).

...I cannot express how hard Hupperdook delivered on all of this. I loved this episode so much, you guys. SO MUCH.

Highlights:

There was so much goodness that I think I’m going to have to divide this up based on characters. Starting with...

CALEB

This episode was like the grand payoff for all of Caleb’s conflicts with the others about his inability to integrate with the group. Practically every little thing he did confirmed his affection for them and his determination to be kind and playful and fully present for them, to shed his sad-loner persona and become a team player:

-Magically lighting Beau’s firecracker for her with no hesitation, even though they’re both well aware of his issues with fire

-Encouraging Nott in her dance plans with Jester--i.e. encouraging her to enjoy herself with someone other than him, which feels incredibly healthy for both of them

-Hasting Jester to improve her piano-playing, and tossing gold in the “tipping hat” for her

-Having a civil (and hilarious) conversation with Fjord about the hazards of rooming with Molly in a party town--and actually inviting Fjord to share a room with him and Nott, which I kind of wish we got to see, although the way things actually turned out was equally satisfying

-Telling Yasha he was sorry she wouldn’t be going out with them because he counts on her as his social-anxiety buddy

-Gently checking up on Fjord re: his flirting anxiety (more on that later)

-Participating in the drinking contest--again, with no hesitation (and killing it!). This went against so many of Caleb’s usual scruples (not spending money frivolously, avoiding crowds and social interaction), not to mention making him extremely vulnerable, both physically and emotionally. He had to know that some of his closely guarded secrets might come out, and he had to extract a promise that they wouldn’t let him pass out in the gutter...but he went through with it anyway, trusting the group to take care of him. And they (specifically Jester) justified his trust.

-THE DRUNKEN SINGING. Counting and singing both seem to be compulsions for Caleb, especially in stressful situations (we’ve seen him sing a version of that “Mighty Nein” song on the battlefield, haven’t we?), but even after the heartbreak of the waltz scene, nothing can quite beat, “One of those things is true...aaand you are blue.”

-Speaking of which...

JESTER

-That waltz honestly might have been the saddest (and sweetest) scene of the entire campaign. In a situation that would normally be ripe for high comedy (the most awkward, inhibited member of the party gets super drunk and agrees to dance with Jester, trickery cleric and perpetual agent of chaos), we got a quiet slow dance and a line so poignant in context and delivery that I’m tearing up just thinking about it. The way Laura/Jester’s face instantly crumbled (even though Jester knows nothing of Caleb’s backstory). Her instantly softened tone, the complete lack of teasing. Caleb’s broken little “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m...I’m sorry.” His sudden reversion to Sad Loner Eternally Punishing Himself, as he walked away to seek out solitude in some filthy gutter. Jester’s determination to Not Let Him Do That, to keep her promise and get him into bed. “I’m sure Astrid loves you very much.”

...Yeah, I’m not sure how to do that scene justice other than crying about it.

Moving on to somewhat lighter tidbits...

-“I go over and give Caleb a kiss on the cheek.” 😊 (I need to make a whole separate post at some point about Caleb and touch.) (...About everyone and touch, for that matter.)

-Jester has never been drunk. I always kind of figured that her habit of ordering milk was just an in-joke about Laura’s pregnancy, like the pickles--but no, it’s a legitimate character detail stemming from her sheltered upbringing. I felt sorry for Jester and Laura when she was the odd tiefling out in the drinking contest, but in retrospect, it’s really good (for Caleb’s sake as well as their finances’) that they had a Sober Friend on deck.

-Her conversation with Caleb about “hidden skills” made me wonder, not for the first time, whether she’s actually had a lot of sexual experience as she often implies, or whether her childhood surrounded by courtesans (and her habit of spying on their clients) has simply made her feel qualified to speak on the subject. Passing the written exam but not the practicum, as it were.

-Her frantic (and mostly futile) attempts to get her teammates to say who they’re attracted to while under Zone of Truth were good fun, but her frantic attempts to get them to say whether they like her held a bit more weight, I think. Jester is, without a doubt, the best-liked member of the Mighty Nein--I don’t think there’s a single teammate who couldn’t have truthfully answered that question with a resounding “Yes”--but Jester, with her history of isolation, her social inexperience, her lingering fears of being left alone again, still feels insecure about whether her friendships are sincere. Give Jester hugs, is what I’m saying. Give her ALL the hugs.

-Jester’s concern for Kiri gets more adorable each episode. I especially like how emphatic she is about the fact that Kiri is a person, appearances notwithstanding (“She’s like you, she’s a little girl, not a pet”). Laura said in a Talks episode a while back that Jester thought of Kiri like a doll, but I definitely think her views have evolved. There was something especially touching about the music-box scene. Hupperdook seems to present several options for safe and wholesome environments in which they might leave Kiri, but I’m kind of rooting for Rissa and her father to take her in.

-Jester got to throw around her magic a lot in fun, non-combat ways this episode. Loved the Thaumaturgy cheers for Beau, and the Infernal whispers surrounding the blacksmith kids. But that Locate Object spell not only single-handedly saved their asses, financially speaking, but also changed the entire direction of their current adventure when it led them to that final scene, with the kids in the boarded-up shop.

-It was kind of amazing to see the different ways and specific moments in which each member of the Mighty Nein was affected by the kids’ story. For Jester, of course, it was when they said their parents were thrown in jail for “idol worship.” It is killing me (in a Very Good way) how we’re gradually finding the cracks in the Nein’s cynical, mercenary armor--the emotional buttons that can be pushed to lead them to propose (or support) an actual altruistic quest, despite their much-cherished self-identity as “a bunch of assholes.” Which, of course, leads me to...

FJORD

Holy cats, did this episode radically transform the way I see and feel about Fjord. I haven’t done such an intense 180 on a character since Beau’s one-on-one scene with Dairon back in the day. That was the scene that 100% hooked me on Beau. I went in feeling lukewarm and iffy about her, and came out finding her lovable, secretly vulnerable, and generally fascinating...and this episode had the exact same effect for me re: Fjord.

-His flustered reactions to flirtation have always seemed funny before, and they were funny in this episode too, up to a point...and then, as Travis played it up, it began to feel like something more. I love that it was Caleb, of all people, who sensed Fjord’s genuine discomfort and asked if he was okay. Whether that discomfort just stems from virginity/inexperience or from some kind of bad experience, it makes Fjord’s relationship with Jester--who defaults to flirting as a standard form of social interaction, because of her upbringing--a lot more interesting to me than it’s ever been before. Her offer of sex lessons would have felt like simple comedy in an earlier episode, but now it felt like a case of fundamental miscommunication, a clash between two people with very different backgrounds and worldviews when it comes to sex and romance...and I am All About It, I am so on board for that ride, it appeals to me so much more than Jester’s simple romance-novel-fantasy version of their relationship.

-In my notes on last week’s episode, I forgot to even mention Fjord confiding in Molly about the eyeball on his sword (and Molly’s poorly-timed and poorly-executed Charm Person spell), but Fjord and Molly’s relationship always intrigues me. In this week’s installment of their roommate shenanigans, we got Fjord’s rather jaw-dropping line “Half of me’s interested, the other half is terrified” (I could just hear the fics being written on the spot). My shipping compass is all over the place at this point. On the one hand, Fjord has low wisdom and an occasional tendency to jump on board with crazy scenarios just for the hell of it. On the other hand, I could swear sometimes, looking back over the whole campaign, that the only people in whom he’s shown anything like romantic interest are Caleb and Molly. (If you want to get all metaphorical-innuendo with this, they’re the only two teammates he’s almost allowed to hold/examine his sword...yet, in both cases, he decided to refuse/hold off.)

-Fjord coaching Beau on behavior and facial expressions never, ever gets old. And for once, instead of trying to help her be more courteous and less off-putting, he got to help her ramp up her intimidation to a whole new level (for a couple of teenage punks! 😂). Molly and Caleb doing good cop/bad cop last week was a delight, but Fjord and Beau pulled it off just as brilliantly. (Are we ever going to hear what became of those kids, as they spent a day frantically searching for the thieves the Mighty Nein had already found? ^_^)

-And finally...HOW ABOUT THAT BACKSTORY, THOUGH!?

No, it’s not the first backstory drop we’ve gotten for Fjord; in fact, it’s one of the briefest. We knew about the kids who made fun of him for his tusks and drove him to file them down. We knew about his sailor background, the shipwreck, his near-drowning experience, and that he presumably made a shady deal with his patron (whether he remembers it or not). We knew about his mentor, Vandren, whose fate is still up in the air. Yet somehow, none of that had anywhere near as much impact on me as that one little line, that achingly hesitant response to the question of whether he’d ever been in an orphanage: “Yes. I was. They’re terrible fucking places.”

I’ve actually thought a lot over the course of this campaign about why I’ve had more trouble connecting to Fjord than to the other characters, and I realized that a lot of it boiled down to the fact that he’s just never seemed to have the same vulnerability. Yes, his backstory was painful, even traumatic, but there was a certain macho romanticism to it--explosions, shipwrecks, a shady kraken-esque magical patron, even the fact that the loved one he lost was a surrogate father. It was all a little bit too “classic hero” for me to really feel it down to my bones...and honestly, that also applied to Fjord in general. He was always so smooth, so polished, so badass and confident and leader-like. I never heard the same raw desperation in his voice as I did in Caleb’s when he talked about his parents, or Nott’s when she talked about her goblin heritage, or Molly’s when he talked about rejecting his forgotten past, or Jester’s when she begged the Traveler to appear, or even Beau’s (downplayed as much as she could!) when she was seeking Dairon’s approval.

But with that one line about his childhood, regardless of the specifics, Fjord has joined the club for me. I’m all in. I’d die for him as soon as I would for any of the others. ...And this turned out waaay longer than I expected. 😳 Moving on!

-Everything about Fjord during that last scene (and actually, everything about that scene in general) was pure gold. Fjord was so soft toward those kids; he gave us the gentlest rendition of the line “I’m the one asking questions” that I’ve ever heard. His quiet, eloquent, persistent appeal to the others to join him in a dangerous, unpaid, purely altruistic rescue mission did such a number on my heart.

-Also? “I would really like the opportunity to leave this place better than we found it” was a direct quote from Molly when he talked about his circus days under Zone of Truth--and Molly definitely noticed. I love, love, love that the members of this chaotic-neutral trash group are learning to appeal directly to each other’s backgrounds, issues, and specific values, not just to get a rise out of each other, but to activate the compassion that every one of them has buried beneath a hundred layers of cynical self-interest.

-Of course, Fjord and Molly weren’t the only people having their buttons pushed in that discussion, and Fjord’s wasn’t the only big backstory drop this episode! Which brings me to...

BEAU

-Though I was initially disappointed that the gang didn’t set off a whole bunch of them in the streets of Hupperdook, I am now thrilled and terrified at the thought of all the firecrackers she still has in her possession.

-Everything about Beau and Jester’s friendship is pure as the driven snow, and Beau getting Jester a flower necklace was no exception.

-Beau: *tries to snatch Molly’s tip for a dancer out of midair; rolls a natural one* Dancer: *grabs the coin, kicks Beau in the face, and winks at her* Beau: “I wink back. You know, I kind of liked that. That was kinda hot.” Me: This is the most quintessentially Beau moment I have ever witnessed, and I love her more than air.

-Low-charisma Beau and Molly leaning on the bar, totally ignored, for 15 minutes, was beautiful...but Beau’s “Sorry to interrupt your incessant flirting, but can I please have a drink?” is everything I have ever wanted from Beau and Molly’s frenemyship. I feel so fulfilled.

-Beau’s brief involvement in Jester and Nott’s dance plans (“Yeah, I know, I’m your second choice” / Nott: “No, third” 😂). Beau gets a lot of flak for arrogance, but honestly, her self-deprecation game is almost as strong as Caleb’s, and it is both hilarious and kind of poignant every time.

-Her defense of Nott from the racist (species-ist?) firecracker salesman. “Hey, don’t ever apologize for who you are, man.” Also telling her that Caleb is “a good guy”--which, coming from the one person who (a.) knows Caleb’s full backstory and (b.) isn’t Nott, is kind of huge.

-BEAU BACKSTORY DROP. BEAU BACKSTORY DROP. I wanted it SO BADLY, and I got my wish!! There was nothing about it that I didn’t love, starting with the fact that she confided in Nott. Out of all the Mighty Nein members, they’re probably two of the people with the fewest interactions, but it makes sense that the weird Caleb/Beau/Nott bond formed during Caleb’s backstory drop continues to strengthen.

-“Are you evil? Are you a bad guy?” / “No. I don’t...I hope not. I think it differs from day to day, depending on what I’m doing. Do you think I’m a bad guy?” This said so much about Beau herself, and also Beau’s self-image--and how heavily it depends on how other people see her, despite how vehemently she’d like to claim otherwise.

-Beau’s story wasn’t shocking or even surprising--it basically just tied together a lot of the hints we’ve already gotten--but there were so many little touches that killed me:

Her painfully realistic reluctance to pronounce her father a bad person

The fact that he hired the monks to straight-up kidnap her like some kind of horrific “scared straight” stunt (which is a thing that real parents do to real children, and that’s all I’m going to say about that)

The pained sarcasm of her, “Sure. Great,” when Nott asked if she was okay...and the brief dropped eye contact when Nott asked, “Was it hard?”

The looong pause and deeep breath between, “He was hoping...” and, “...they were gonna beat my indiscretions out of me.”

“I think all of the things that my father saw in me that he hated, the monks saw as a potential advantage.” I’ve always known that Beau’s first scene with Dairon felt raw and emotional and Important, but this scene finally gave us the context to explain why.

And, more than anything, the way her voice broke and dissolved into pained laughter when she said, “In fact, he told me he never wanted to see me again.” ...If this guy is still alive, the Mighty Nein had damn well better hunt him down and give him the full Syldor Vessar or Howaardt Darrington treatment.

...I have to note that amid all those dark emotions, something about Beau’s deadpan delivery of “I worked at a library” sent me into hysterics. (Also, “That had to do with the job that I had before the job that I had--”)

In short: For her first big backstory drop, this was deeply satisfying, but there are still so many things we don’t know! Why was her childhood “meant for someone else”? What about “I came to hate the town I was in and the system my father was a part of”? That seems related to her previous confession to Caleb, that she watched her father give up everything for the Empire and get screwed over somehow. And what about her comment to Dairon ages ago about how her father’s money (for her upkeep) must not be coming in anymore? Is he dead? Missing? In prison? I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING.

Still not the end of the Beau moments, though:

-Beau getting Fjord out of awkward sexual propositions by pleading erectile dysfunction on his behalf. Best/worst anti-wingwoman ever. (Bonus: Fjord’s Very Southern, Very Offended, “She doesn’t know me like that.” 😂)

-She finally followed through with her long-ago threat to slap Caleb! (Caleb, luckily, was not in a state to care.)

-“I will fucking punch you if you try and kiss me.” Literally could not ask for more with Beau and Molly. Could. Not. Ask. For. More.

-Her anguished “NOOOO!” when Molly literally pulled the alcohol out of her body...and of course, ”Did you touch inside of me!?”

-Despite finally dropping backstory of her own, Beau is still #1 when it comes to digging out other people’s: “I mean, Nott’s over here trying to pull my heartstrings, but it seems like you should be the target. Do you have a thing with kids in orphanages?”

Speaking of heartstrings...

NOTT

-So happy to see more of her friendship with Jester (“Do we need choreography!?”), and an attempt to revive their Detective Duo dynamic.

-It’s been a while since we saw Nott deal with racism (species-ism?). Still as much of a gut punch as ever.

-I loved seeing her gratitude to Beau for taking care of Caleb, along with her determination to make sure Beau is doing it right. I’m still not sure how I feel about Nott’s whole “I am the parent” attitude, but she’s certainly a better ‘parent’ than most of the Mighty Nein have ever known.

-She did a fantastic job bringing out Beau’s backstory without overshadowing Beau, but she still got off some great lines in that scene: “So wait. Little townsgirl, her parents are wine-makers, now you’re a brutal assassin martial artist who can kill anything...what happened in between those two things?” and “You were bootlegging your old man’s hooch!?”

-“I never thought of you as an optimistic person, but that’s a very positive way of looking at it.” Okay...I may finally, finally be letting go of my cherished image of Scrappy Urchin Child Nott, and warming up to Maternal Nott. Watching her earnestly encourage her ever-growing collection of adopted children is kind of the best. (She was also great at “pulling Beau’s heartstrings” during the final scene, though I couldn’t help thinking that a lot of her “Don’t you think the children should be with their loving parents!?” rhetoric would’ve hit home for Caleb as well.)

-The drinking contest was a delight from start to finish, but Nott’s match was probably my second-favorite. (Nothing could beat “little Caleb” triumphing over his mild-mannered opponent.)

-It was a small moment, but it made me inordinately happy to see Nott and Molly profusely congratulating each other after the contest and then DANCING TOGETHER. They’ve barely exchanged a word since (1.) Molly wrenched deeply personal confessions out of Nott with Charm Person, (2.) They clashed in the aftermath of Scrollgate, and (3.) Nott offended Molly pretty seriously during his Zone of Truth backstory. Every single moment of Mighty Nein friendship/concern/camaraderie in this episode gave me so much life, but these two were a highlight.

And, speak of the devil...

MOLLY

It’s been quite some time since Molly got a big chance to shine. I’m mildly concerned about that, but that’s a matter for another post. (And it will probably get cleared up soon anyway--I think Tal just has a somewhat quieter play style, and takes a while to settle into his characters.) That said, the Molly moments we did get in this episode were absolute gems:

-Straight-up knight-in-shining-armoring Rissa with the punks who were harassing her. Nothing will ever be quite as gloriously creepy as blood maledicts.

-“Do I have masculine wiles!?” / “You have...pan wiles.” / “I’m into it.” (There’s this very specific voice Molly uses once in a while, this tone of pure childlike wonder, that sends my Molly love into overdrive. The lines that come to mind are, “Can I!?” back when Fjord joked that Molly could take the mirror from Pumat Sol’s shop, and “I won a strawberry!” back at the Harvest Close festival. I love that I can now add “Do I have masculine wiles!?” to the list.)

-Drawing alcohol out of Beau with his blood-hunter powers to ease her hangover

-“Whatever team you’re on, I don’t think I play for that one...It’s Team Fuck-Off, I’m well aware.”

-Throwing up on Fjord, and then tenderly bringing him to bed (...not that way)

-His “Say no more, I’m in” as soon as Fjord made it clear that the quest to break the kids’ parents out of jail was personal for him. In perfect accordance with his carnie past, Molly often walks this delicate line between “keep your head down, don’t make trouble” and “be the chaos you want to see in the world,” and I love that a friend’s Strong Feelings can single-handedly push him from one side to the other.

-I feel like there are probably more Molly moments I’m forgetting because I’m at the tail end of a post the size of Mt. Everest here, and I am most sincerely sorry.

BONUS

Yasha was barely there this episode, for obvious reasons, but I still desperately want art of her cuddling with Kiri!

IN CONCLUSION

This episode was amazing and I cannot wait for next week.

#critical role #c2e24 #caleb widogast #jester lavorre #fjord #beauregard #nott the brave #mollymauk tealeaf #yasha nydoorin #kiri #caleb #jester #beau #nott #mollymauk #molly #yasha #beau and caleb

315 notes · View notes

sopewriters · 7 years

Text

First and Last | 02

First and Last: 01

Pairing: Hoseok X Reader

Genre: Angst, fluff, smut; Business!AU

Word Count: 7.3K

Warning (s): Hints of emotional abuse, child neglect, self-worth issues; dirty talk, slight degradation, light D/s (praise kink returns), squirting (?) but overall pretty casual.

Note: This series is a trainwreck waiting to happen. On the bright side, there definitely is a part 3 coming out, tho I don’t know how long it’ll be :)

“Hoseok.” He straightens up to face the man at the desk with cool eyes, “You’ve disappointed me, once again.”

His neck prickles in discomfort as he tugs lightly at the collar of his shirt, but he offers nothing more than that. The dismissal stings, of course it does, but Hoseok has gotten to the point where he’s, in fact, used to not being good enough.

The stigma follows him wherever he goes; his own personal raincloud. It doesn’t help that he sees the very same things he struggles to do being exuberantly completed by his brothers. He loves them very much, even though they don’t have the same mother, and he knows that they, too, love him, but still. It hurts, aches inside of him, when he can’t reach their level, when his Father doesn’t find him to be worth it.

Jung Hoseok. The middle child. It’s not all that it’s cracked up to be, being one of the heirs to the biggest manufacturer in the country. Especially not when he’s plucked aside in favor of Yoongi and Jungkook; the formidable eldest, and the zealously talented youngest. He sometimes sees their point too; what’s to like about Jung Hoseok, boring middle child?

And when he found you, so eager and so willing to please, so soft and kind…even you were like the rest. And that has hurt him more than he could ever tell. He knows that Yoongi’s noticed it, his elder brother being unusually soft on him, but it hurts that he needs his pity now, among everything else. Useless.

“—Are you even listening to me?” His father’s voice cuts in through his thoughts, and Hoseok jolts slightly, before whispering a small ’yes, sir’ that the man probably doesn’t like anyway.

Sure enough, the man sighs, annoyance poking at his normally hard, masked features.

“You should learn from your brothers,” He spits out, walking to the door, before firing his parting shot, “Sometimes, I wonder if I chose the wrong woman.”

The door drifts shut, and only the silence remains.

Hoseok can feel the tears springing forth, the premature stinging at his eyes a dead giveaway, but he bites his lip, forcing himself to hold them back. He can’t prevent a small sob from escaping his throat, as what he said sinks in. He…really hates himself sometimes.

At the door, Jung Jungkook watches with sad eyes, a steely resolve beginning to form in him at the sight. He’s going to fix this…and who better to figure out the problem from, than Yoongi?

“I messed up, Jimin.” You say dully into the phone, a couple of days later, taking in a shuddering breath, “I…I messed up so bad.”

“Y/N, you’re not making any sense.” Jimin’s voice sounds strained over the line, “You’ve got to work with me…what happened? What did you mess up?”

“I met Jung Hoseok.” You whisper, and he makes a sound of confusion.

“Isn’t that a good thing? Did you get your interview?”

“Jimin, I,” You shake your head, “I can’t explain this over the phone.”

You’re sitting on the tattered couch in your tiny little apartment, clutching at your phone with shaking, trembling fingers. Jimin sighs through the phone, and the worry is evident in his voice, even as he says, “Alright, I’ll be there soon.”

“You…had sex with him.” Jimin deadpans, and you nod sadly, “And you decided to…not write the article, but Hoseok found out about your profession and cut things off even before they started.”

You’ve been holding back tears this entire time, but when Jimin says it like that, it sounds pitiful. You sniffle, as the waterworks begin, and Jimin freezes, before softening and holding out his arms. You burrow yourself into them, fingers grasping weakly at his knitted sweater as he rubs your back soothingly.

“I messed up.” You sob, not for the first time, “I should’ve told him in the first place!”

“You were only doing your job,” Jimin reminds you gently, “You know that. Besides, Boss accepted the write-up you gave him about the general event.”

That’s true. You spent the past few days writing and re-writing an article, pieced together entirely from your shady memory. The Boss, in one his kinder moments, assured you that your name won’t be on the by-line—it’ll be anonymous, instead—but it doesn’t do much to quell the guilt inside you.

“But that doesn’t matter!” You snap, before sighing at the surprised look in his eyes, “Sorry, it’s…it’s just…I miss him, so much.”

“But you literally just met him!” Jimin exclaims, shock aggravated on his usually docile features, “It’s not like you’ve even had a single date!”

“Which is why it makes no sense, I know.” You wipe some of the tears from your eyes, “And I’ve been crying non-stop for the past few days or so, because it feels like I’m missing something.”

You look at Jimin, placing a hand to your chest, “Something here.”

“Oh, Y/N.” He sighs, making you start crying all over again, and pulls you into a tighter embrace, “He’s just another guy, right? You need to pull yourself together, find someone else.”

You nod to him but, deep down inside, know that he’s not just another guy. That it might as well be impossible to find someone better in your entire lifetime.

But all of that goes unsaid.

Hoseok is at his desk.

The furnishings are simple, not elaborate how he knows Jungkook likes them, and not overtly modern like Yoongi’s. His appears more like a classic study, with the cherry wood desk, two chairs across it, and rows of files behind him. Being the Director of the HR department, he has access to the files of every employee, though most of them are protected in the computer system. It’s only the higher ups who have physical files to their names.

Even as he works, though, Hoseok’s mind drifts, as it has been wont to for the past few days. His chest still aches with phantom pangs of hurt, as he wonders why on earth he gets attached so quickly. It’s always been a weakness, and it seems it will never change. He wishes he never met you, then immediately backtracks. He doesn’t regret meeting you. He just…wishes things were different, Wishes that he were stronger. Better.

He looks up in surprise when Jungkook enters, eyebrows instinctively flying up. Jungkook hardly ever visits him at the office, nor does Yoongi. In fact, the three of them make it a point not to see each other at work because of how weird it would be.

“Jungkook, what’re you doing here?” He asks, frowning in concern, “Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s nothing like that, hyung.” Jungkook reassures, shutting the door behind him, leaving just the two of them privy to the conversation at hand, “It’s something more…personal.”

“Oh.” Hoseok eyes the way the youngest is flushing and fidgeting awkwardly, and feels something fond stir in his chest, “What is it Kookie? Is it a girl?”

He ignores the way it stings when he thinks of his own love life.

Jungkook immediately turns beet red, eyes widening as he stutters, “N-No! Don’t even get that idea into your head! I just…girls aren’t…I mean…”

He huffs at Hoseok’s laughter, but ends up smiling at him with soft eyes instead.

“When I said it’s personal, hyung,” He takes a deep breath, crossing the room in giant steps, before slamming his hands on Hoseok’s desk, “I was talking about you.”

“About me?” Hoseok frowns in surprise, “What about me?”

“You’re clearly distracted at work,” Jungkook recites, “Not to mention any time I see you around the house, you’re either moping or sulking or both. I…”

He shakes his head, “I can’t stand seeing you like that, Hobi hyung.”

“Kook-ah…” Hoseok stares at him, and he knows that Jungkook knows what he’s been so upset about lately, “Don’t do it, whatever it is that you’ve got in mind. Please.”

He sighs, closing his eyes to bite back tears, “You know Father won’t allow it.”

“Forget Father, for once!” Jungkook cries, “Think of yourself, damn it!”

“I can’t, Jungkook.” Hoseok smiles, but there’s a sadness to it that Jungkook has never seen before, “Even…even if he hates me, I’ll never be able to hate him. He’s our Father, after all.”

Jungkook stares at the brunette in shock, before pursing his lips, and turning tail.

“I’m going to set your life back on track, hyung, if it’s the last thing I do.” He vows, slamming the door shut behind him.

“I doubt there’s anything you can do about that.” Hoseok chuckles lowly, tears finally springing forth, as he looks outside his window, “My life went wrong a long time ago.”

It’s been a long day at work, for you. With your boss yelling and literally hammering away at you, it’s actually surprising that you haven’t returned home in a terrible mood except—wait, you have. The day, so far, has been going terribly, and it all gets worse when you see a stranger sitting on your couch by the time you walk in. He looks terribly polished, with a crisp black suit on, and dark hair slicked back neatly.

Of course, your first reaction is to panic and scream, before chucking the nearest thing at him—which happens to be a fat Charles Dickens collection that you’ve never actually read before—never pausing to even think.

Eventually though, you get tired of throwing things, though you’re sure that the stranger is tired of dodging them as well, and huff lightly, before clearing your throat to get his attention.

“Considering you haven’t already killed me,” You say as casually as you can, “I assume you’re not a serial killer. So, answer this: who are you, how did you get in, and why the actual fuck are you here?”

“Are you done throwing things at me?” He asks tiredly, and at your reluctant nod, slumps over on your now-ruined couch, “Thank you.”

He shifts uncomfortably, as you take a seat from across him.

“I’m not sure if you’ve heard of me, but,” He takes in a deep breath, “My name’s Jung Jungkook. I’m—”

“Hoseok’s brother!” You blurt out with wide eyes, heart hammering against your chest, “If you came here to sue me, I would first like to say—”

“Relax, I’m not even into law. I’m in charge of Marketing.” Jungkook rolls his eyes, before muttering to himself, “How does hyung even like her, ugh.”

“Excuse me?” Your face scrunches in annoyance, “Look here, you little worm—”

“Anyway,” Jungkook continues speaking, running a hand through his dark hair like you haven’t just spoken, “You did something to make Hobi hyung weird, so you need to fix him.”

You stare at him. Is this guy for real?

“You want me to…” Your eye twitches, “You want me to ‘fix’ Hoseok?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” He hums confidently, “Look, Hoseok hyung’s been sad ever since I heard he met you, so obviously it’s something serious he’s got going with you.”

“Wait, since you heard?” You ask, before narrowing your eyes, “Does Hoseok even know you’re here?”

Jungkook’s guilty flush gives him away, and you sigh in exasperation.

“Look man, it’s nice of you to care for your brother so much, but Hoseok probably doesn’t even want to look at me right now.” You mutter to yourself, “Not that I can blame him.”

“Hoseok doesn’t know what he wants.” Jungkook states plainly, “He used to hold our Father in high regard, and did anything he asked, but we finally got him out of it. I don’t know what you’ve done to make him revert back to that, so fix it.”

“He’s not a fucking toy, Jungkook!” You yell, startling him, “He can’t be fixed! He needs to make his own decisions!”

“Please,” Jungkook speaks softly, making your eyes widen at how sad he sounds, “Please, just…meet him?”

You eye him skeptically, “Does your brother know about this?”

“And I’m not talking about Hoseok.” You add, when Jungkook opens his mouth, “Does Yoongi know you’re here?”

“…No.” Jungkook admits, making you sigh in frustration, “Yoongi hyung cares about Hoseok hyung a lot, but he doesn’t…he doesn’t understand hyung’s feelings very well.”

“Well, if Yoongi isn’t okay with this, I don’t see how it could work.” You sigh, before something strikes you, “And how did you find me, anyway?”

“I…did some things.” Jungkook’s mouth twitches upwards, and you decide it’s best if you don’t know.

You think about what he’s saying, before slumping over in defeat. You do miss Hoseok, and…and you need to apologize properly, at the very least.

“What do you want me to do?” You ask tiredly, “I want to help, but…I don’t know how.”

“Just leave it to me.” Jungkook smiles wickedly, and your gut sinks, along with any shred of hope you might’ve had.

“Jungkook, this is a bad idea.” You whisper to him, as he pushes you into a café he has designated to be an acceptable meeting point, “This is…this is a really, really bad idea.”

“Shut up and get in, Y/N,” He hisses, shoving you harder, “It’s almost time for Hobi hyung to come, so you’d best be inside before then.”

You let him push you in defeat, and sadly walk to the counter, where an entirely-too-cheerful barista greets you with a beam. You order your default drink, before making your way to a free seat, near one of the windows.

Jungkook’s plan…isn’t even a plan, really. What he told you over the phone yesterday, was that he would send you to a café, and ask Hobi to meet him there. Except, Jungkook wouldn’t be there at all, it’d be you instead.

Which is why it’s a terrible idea, of course, and you can’t help but wonder how this guy is in charge of marketing.

You take a sip of your drink awkwardly, before glancing over at your watch. It’s a quarter to five. Hoseok should be here, by now.

Almost on cue, the door chimes gently, signaling the arrival of another customer. There aren’t that many people in the café, so avoiding him is going to be near impossible anyway. You chance a glance over your shoulder, seeing, in a mix of happiness and anxiety, the brunette that you’ve been dying to meet. He doesn’t look over at you, though, instead craning his head to look for Jungkook, undoubtedly.

When he turns towards you, though, he freezes, eyes wide and disbelieving. You smile sadly at him, holding up his coffee in a greeting. When he reaches you, he takes the cup with trembling hands.

“We need to talk.” You say simply, and he looks at you inscrutably.

“Not here.” He says finally, “I’ve got a place in mind.”

You nod.

The ‘place in mind’ ends up being a penthouse suit.

“Holy shit.” You breathe, as you travel upward in a glass elevator, “Holy shit, you’re loaded.”

“Yes, well,” He says tightly, uncomfortably, and there’s something so wrong about the way he’s cutting himself off, “You would know, wouldn’t you?”

You recoil at the sharp jab, before sighing.

“Look, Hoseok, I wanted to apologize—”

“Not here.” He cuts in, looking straight ahead, but not at you, never at you, “Not now.”

You stay silent the entire way there, and only speak up when you’re inside his room.

“I know I owe you an explanation for what happened at the party.” You say, biting your lip anxiously, as Hoseok takes a seat, rushing to do so when he gestures at you.

“Yes, you do.” He stares hard at you, and you can’t help but wonder what happened to the softer lines of his face, the gentleness in his eyes that had made you get attracted to him so quickly.

But you take a deep breath, and begin telling him everything.

By the end of it, Hoseok is staring at you, teary eyes matching your own.

“So this entire time,” He starts, in a cracked whisper, “This entire time I could have been with you, but wasn’t because of a misunderstanding?”

He shakes his head, whimpering, “I’m sorry.”

“No.” You refute firmly, unable to believe he’s actually blaming himself, “Hoseok, it’s not your fault. It was still wrong of me to have done that.”

“Even after I pushed you away, though,” He looks at you sadly, “Even after I hurt you, you left my privacy intact. Even after…”

His voice breaks, and you’re by his side in an instant, wiping the tear trails from his cool cheeks.

“Can I…” You whisper, just as he wonders, “Can I kiss you, Y/N?”

You look at each other for a moment, before giggling slightly, even through your tears, and leaning forward, lips meeting halfway.

You originally were going to keep it safe, to a bare minimum, but with the softness of Hoseok’s lips on your own again, surge forward, nipping at his lips. He coaxes your own open, and you willingly part them for him, sighing as he explores as much of your mouth as he can, and do the same in return.

“I missed you.” Hoseok confesses, once you’ve separated for air, “So, so, much. Could I…?”

He pauses, looking you in the eye, “Could I show you just how much?”

And you’re no idiot, you weren’t born yesterday; you know what he means. You nod lightly, body still trembling from your tears, and squeak lightly when he picks you up bridal style, carrying you to his bedroom with gusto.

“Hoseok!” You whine, as he sets you down on the bed gently, “Warn a girl next time, would you?”

“Next time?” He grins at you and your breath freezes in your lungs because, even with his red-rimmed eyes, he looks beautiful, “I’ll take you up on that, princess.”

“We’ll see.” You huff, cheeks coloring, “But I thought you were supposed to be showing me something…?”

His eyes darken, and he pins your unsuspecting body down onto the bed, caging you with his body. You gasp in surprise when he lowers his mouth to suck harshly at the juncture between your neck and shoulders, body tensing up and arching under his careful bites.

“I didn’t get to fuck you last time, since you were so drunk.” He whispers to you, in the dim light, “But since you’re sober now, I think it’d be okay.”

Looking into his eyes you realize, with a jolt, that he’s silently asking for permission. Is this okay?

You grin at him with whatever confidence you’ve got left, and teasingly stretch your neck.

“I guess I’ll have to wait and see if you can make it worth my while.” You wink obnoxiously, making him flick you lightly, “Ow!”

“Stop ruining the mood.” He grumps, before losing the façade and smiling, “Okay, that was cute.”

You sit up, tired of how much he’s delaying the process. You quickly shimmy out of your pants, and slip off your shirt, leaving you only in your mismatched panties and bra. You would feel more embarrassed, though, if Hoseok weren’t staring at you with open-mouthed awe.

Your cheeks flush. He’s staring at you, with that love-struck expression. You.

“Well?” You ask playfully, raising an eyebrow at the brunette, “Are you going to fuck me, or am I going to have to come over there and do it myself?”

“You’re so beautiful.” He blurts out, making you freeze, blush covering your cheeks.

“Uh, thanks.” You mumble awkwardly, making him smile in amusement.

“Aw, are you shy now?” He teases you, grasping your chin with his fingers, and angling your face towards him, “What happened to fucking me?”

“Shut up.” You mutter embarrassedly, “I don’t like you.”

“Aw, princess, don’t be like that.” Hoseok hums, tugging you onto his lap, so that you can feel the bulge hidden under his trousers against the curve of your ass, “You said you were sorry, weren’t you?”

“Then,” His voice lowers, as he slips the strap of your bra off one shoulder, leaving the other one still on, “Why don’t you show me just how much?”

It’s hard to think with his cock pressing into you like that, his slender fingers pinching and rubbing at your stiffened nub. You can’t keep your head up, as he teases your nipple with his practiced digits, slumping against his shoulder.

“W-What would you have me do?” You ask submissively, panties growing steadily damp.

“For starters,” He hums, sucking a hard mark into your collar bone, “Why don’t you admit how much of a slut you are for my cock? I can feel you leaking here, princess.”

He presses his fingers against the damp spot on your underwear, making your cheeks flush brighter.

“H-Hoseok, I—”

“Yes?” He prompts you patiently, fingers never moving an inch, “You want me to fuck you, don’t you?”

“Yes, I…” You tilt your head to meet his eyes, “I want you to f-fuck me Hoseok.”

The words make your cheeks burn, but Hoseok is unmoved, raising an eyebrow at you.

“And?”

“And,” You swallow heavily, eyes stinging, “I-I’m a slut for your cock.”

“You’re going to have to do better than that.” Hoseok tuts, “I’m disappointed. And you know you’re not going to get what you want until I’m satisfied.”

You sigh in annoyance, giving up.

“Okay, Hoseok.” You say aggravatedly, “I want your big, fucking cock inside me now, or else I’ll actually go crazy from it! I’m your fucking slut, so just fuck me already!”

He stares at you for a beat, frozen in surprise, before he grins and slips his hand into your underwear, brushing against your dripping core gently.

“Why don’t we get this out of the way, hm?” He doesn’t say it in askance, and tugs at it until it’s slipped off your legs, “There you go.”

He makes you lie down, head on a pillow, and spreads your leg as his eyes your slit hungrily.

“I want to be able to see your slutty little pussy,” He informs you coolly, dragging a finger along your folds and holding it up, so that you can see it glisten in the light, “Look how wet you are.”

“I’ll bet you’ve been waiting for this ever since we saw each other.” He smirks, before latching onto your core with his mouth and oh, god, the wet heat feels so good.

“H-Hobi!” You moan, hands fisting the sheets as you struggle to stay coherent; Hoseok’s tongue is delving inside you, getting deeper and deeper, and please, please, please.

You gasp, and arch your back when a finger slips in alongside his tongue, and shiver as he continues to eat you out and pleasure you at once.

When you finally, finally, feel like you’re going to cum, Hoseok stops, making you whine in loss.

“Hobi, please!” You cry in dismay, as he lies on top of you, the rough fabric of his clothes dragging against your sensitive skin, “I was going to cum!”

“Not just yet, princess.” He chuckles, making something stir inside you, “Spread your legs for me, babe. I want you to cum on my cock, like the slutty little bitch you are.”

Your mouth dries, but you do as he asks, spreading your legs as far as they’ll go. Your cheeks burn at how lewd you might look, with your hair a mess, bra half undone, and dripping pussy entirely exposed.

“Stay like that for me, sweetheart.” He tells you, and you want to protest, want to say hell no, but something in you makes you stay silent, makes you want to please him.

He shrugs off his suit jacket, undoing his belt and trousers; his shirt is soon unbuttoned and thrown away carelessly, and his boxers are shucked off. You were too drunk to see it last time, but holy hell is he hung.

Your mouth waters for reasons unknown, and your face heats up in shame.

“You look like you have something to say.” Hoseok observes, climbing onto the bed, “What is it?”

You debate internally over whether you should tell him or not but, eventually, the stupid side of you wins out.

“H-Hoseok…” You stutter out, “C-Can I…can I suck you, please?”

His hazel brown eyes widen in shock, before he smirks at you, patting his thigh in invitation.

“You really are a cockslut, aren’t you?” He says affectionately, making you kneel on the soft carpet, facing his throbbing member, “So eager.”

You cast your eyes away in embarrassment, only to cry out in shock when he tugs at your hair.

“Well?” He asks, pulling you forward, so that you’re at eye-level with his shaft, “Get to it, then.”

You quickly engulf his cock in your mouth, making him groan in pleasure. Hollowing your cheeks around it, you begin to bob your head up and down, only to gag when he loses his patience and thrusts in deeply. Tears spring into your eyes at the rough treatment, though you make no move to stop him; there’s something about how he manhandles you, moves you around at his own will, that makes your heat positively ache.

It’s as though Hoseok knows exactly what you’re thinking, because he bends forward, cock curling deliciously in your mouth.

“The best part about this,” He whispers to you, and the words send a jolt down your spine, “Is how you won’t even deny it.”

He cums down your throat then, your only warning being a slightly harsher tug to your hair that leaves you unprepared; and you choke uselessly around his length, trying to swallow it down. Some of it drips out your mouth, off your cheek, and when you look at Hoseok with wide teary eyes, he swears, pulling your mouth off his cock.

“Jesus, you’re beautiful.” He repeats for the billionth time, though you don’t have the strength in you to blush, at this point, “Beautiful, and all mine.”

He wipes the cum off your chin with a careful finger, and your mouth parts obediently for him when he presses it against your lips. You quietly suck at the digit, eyes drooping and throat scratchy; but you can’t fall asleep, not when your core still throbs with want.

“And you’re all mine?” You don’t mean to phrase it like a question, but it comes out that way; Hoseok’s hazel eyes connect with yours, before they soften.

“And I’m all yours.” He confirms, before lying you down on the pillow, hitching a leg on his shoulder as he kneels before your parted thighs, “I’ll remind you of that every day. But first, I have a promise to keep.”

You feel twice as exposed now, as Hoseok carefully peels apart your outer lips with his fingers, blowing out a puff of hot air against your clenching hole. There’s only silence, save for the sound of your heavy breathing, until something so warm and so wet latches to your exposed hole.

You cry out in pleasure, as Hoseok nibbles at your clit, before it turns into a shuddering moan at the swipe of his tongue against your entrance.

“H-Hoseok,” You manage to rasp out shakily, “N-Need it deeper—”

You don’t even need to complete the sentence, as his tongue suddenly delves inside you, searching deep. You breathe shakily, chest heaving, as Hoseok slowly takes you apart, layer by crumbling layer. And then comes the torrent of the rush; something euphoric just biding its time by the edge.

“I’m…” You find yourself choking out, hands finding their way to Hoseok’s hair, “Gonna come…!”

Of course, he decides to move away right then, right when you’re about to cum, but he only smiles teasingly at your frown.

“I’ll give you what you want soon,” He promises, hand coming to stroke at his length, “But I want you to cum on my cock.”

When he pats his lap, eyebrow raised, you understand what he wants. And, damn it, you want to come—no, need to—so you do what he wants, crawling over to him and settling on his lap. The tip of his length presses against your eagerly awaiting hole, but goes no further.

“Are you on the pill?” The question totally ruins the mood, but you understand why he’s asked.

“Yeah.” You roll your eyes in impatience, even through your understanding, “Now please just fuck me already.”

“Your wish is my command.” He grins charmingly, and you want to scoff, but can only gasp as the head of his cock finally slips inside, as he buries himself, inch by inch, into your hole.

“This pussy can’t get enough of me.” He murmurs observationally, making you flush, “See how it’s twitching around my cock?”

He looks up at you then, eyes dark, “It means it needs more, doesn’t it?”

You can only nod breathlessly, as he guides your hips up, and lets you slam back down. You throw your head back in pleasure, as white spots dance behind your shut eyelids. Hoseok manages to find the right spot, again and again and again, thrusting deep into you, while controlling the movement of your hips against his.

He whispers how much he’s missed you, how much he’s missed this pussy, how much he loves it. Loves you.

Tears trail from your eyes as he rubs at your clit with a thumb, and you’re unable to stop yourself from slumping forward, semi-nude chest brushing against his. He notices too, finger lifting from your twitching button to completely undo your bra, flinging it off to the side.

“Close to cumming?” He asks you huskily, and you give a shaky nod, too scared to speak, “It’s alright if you moan, sweetheart; no one can hear you here.”

His voice drops, as he continues, “I can fuck you anywhere I want. In the kitchen, on the couch, over the table, against the wall…and you’ll take it all gladly, won’t you; be a good little slut, ready for me?”

“Y-Yes!” You cry out, as he tugs your hair in warning, eyes watering, “Yes, I’ll let you fuck me wherever you want! I’m yours!”

And that’s when the relief courses through you, pleasure crashing through you in a massive wave; your back arches, body only kept in place by Hoseok’s grip, and you slump against him as a liquid drips tantalizingly down your thighs, staining Hoseok’s. Your cheeks turn red, as you realize you’ve done something weird; oh gosh, did you pee on him?

“Wow.” He breathes, though his thrusts don’t cease, don’t even stutter, as you flush in shame, “I didn’t think you’d be a squirter.”

“A…A…” You know what he means, but you never thought you could do it; you can’t focus on that though, not when Hoseok’s melding your lips together, coaxing little mewls out of your puffy lips.

“It’s perfect.” He stares at you, as he pushes you onto the bed, sending you sprawling, before he corrects himself, “You’re perfect.”

Tears spring into your eyes, as you pull Hoseok closer to you, legs trembling and twitching from the overstimulation. He looks at you, with his soft eyes and soft mouth and soft smile, as he nips gently at your ear; it’s a soft moment, with soft messages and soft assurances.

But when Hoseok’s eyes grow wide, and his breath catches in his throat, you know he’s going to cum.

“Cum i-inside me,” You tell him softly, smiling weakly at his surprised features, “It’s okay.”

So he nods, lets himself go as he unravels before your awed eyes, shoulder slumping forward and hips quivering against yours. You can’t help the soft sigh that escapes you at the rush of hot cum that shoots inside you, coating your velvety walls a stark white.

You’re surprised though, when Hoseok doesn’t pull out from you and instead rolls you over, so that you’re settled against his chest, soft cock probing deeper into you. He doesn’t move again, though, just cards his hand through your damp hair, as he breathes in deeply.

You end up breaking the silence.

“I hope you know,” You rasp out quietly, eyes meeting Hoseok’s, “That we still need to talk.”

You end up talking after a short nap. And, by short nap, you mean, of course, 2 hours later.

“So…where does…all this leave us?” You ask, gesticulating helplessly. Your stomach is churning, either from nervousness or hunger. Maybe even both.

“I…” Hoseok pauses, before tapping his thumbs anxiously against the armrest of his couch, “This isn’t exactly how I expected anything to go, but… I’d like to get to know you better.”

He raises his head to look you in the eye, and as you scan his open face for any kind of deceit, you find none: only honesty and earnest.

“You…want to know me better?” You raise an eyebrow, awkwardly, and at his nod, do the one thing you’ve always done in situations like this, “You mean fucking me wasn’t enough?”

The look on his face when you say that is priceless. Brilliant, even. You mentally pat yourself on the back as he splutters and chokes, face beet-red, wondering if you should possibly help him, but ultimately deciding this is too funny to pass up.

“What’s wrong?” You ask innocently, “We’ve done it twice, Hoseok; surely, you should be used to this?”

“It’s…” He makes some vague motions in the air that you pretend to understand, before he huffs resignedly, “I want to know you. Like, your personality.”

He glares slightly at your smirk, “Apart from the fact that you enjoy making me choke.”

The connotation registers in both of your heads at the same time, and you share equally troubled looks.

“Uh…” He says, floundering for words, but is saved by the timely arrival of a loud grumble.

From your stomach.

It’s your turn to flush in embarrassment as he cracks a sympathetic smile.

“Rough day?” He asks in fake compassion, dimples showing, “I totally get it.”

“I hate you.” Your voice is small, but the words hold no venom, “So, so much.”

“C’mon.” He gets up, laughing quietly to himself, “Let’s get something to eat.”

“Alright.” You say all of a sudden, no doubt confusing the brunette across you, “Let’s do it.”

If there were any doubt in your mind that Hoseok’s now very befuddled, it’s confirmed at the sight of his blank face.

“Do…what, exactly?” He takes another lick from his ice cream cone—coffee, ugh—as he stares at you curiously.

You roll your eyes at the need to explain it to him.

“We can try this…’getting to know each other thing.’” You emphasize, using air quotes and everything, “Is that better?”

“Really?” Even your slight irritation dissolves at the sight of Hoseok’s gleeful expression, as he grasps your free hands, “Oh my god, thank you for giving this a chance.”

“Of course.” Your eyes glint mischievously, though Hoseok misses that, “I’ll need to ask you for a favor though.”

“Yes, of course!” He agrees quickly, eyes wide and concerned, “Anything!”

“Anything?” You smirk at his paling face, before pointing to your right, at the counter, “Buy me some more ice cream.”

He stares at you, before his eyes crinkle and he bursts out laughing. It’s a chain reaction, like the two of you are linked, because you start to giggle to yourself too.

Eventually though, Hoseok does get you another scoop of your favorite ice cream. And it wouldn’t be the last time, either.

“I think you’re the first person I’ve ever dated.” Hoseok confesses to you one evening, as the two of you sit atop a grassy hill overlooking the suburbs.

“You think?” Your eyebrows furrow in confusion, “What do you mean?”

“W-Well,” He stutters, not expecting that, before shrugging, “I only ever technically dated one person before…but it was because my Dad asked, for business and stuff.”

“Wow.” You breathe out. You want to ask him more questions about it, but the uncomfortable line of his mouth, and the tenseness of his shoulders, tells you enough for you to know that you shouldn’t probe. He doesn’t need to tell you, not yet.

“Well.” You add quickly, seeing his disheartened look, and catch his hands with yours, giving him a brilliant smile, “I’m honored to be your first, my prince.”

His expression immediately clears up, brightening perceptibly, “Why, thank you, my princess.”

He pulls you into his lap so that you can enjoy the steady thump of his heart under your ear, and feel his warmth. He also does that, to convince himself you’re real, the only unknown variable in his life of constants.

But it’s also to make sure he never forgets you.

“Y/N.” Hoseok asks, eyes wide and hopeful, as the two of you are cuddled close at night, watching movies together, “I’ve got this movie premier to attend, and I’m allowed to bring a plus-one…”

He trails off, letting you fit in the missing pieces yourself, and when you finally wrap your head around it, a smile threatens to split your face in two.

“No way!” You gasp to yourself, lips stretched wide, “Are you asking me to be your plus-one, my prince?”

“Well, I’d always like you to be mine.” Hoseok laughs. Slips his fingers through yours. “But yes, my princess, I am.”

“Then, how could I ever say no?” You beam sweetly at him, catching his lips to yours in happiness. But the kiss soon turns heated, and he pushes you down and takes you right there, on the couch, as Bad Moms plays in the background. Makes sure you never forget the taste of his lips against yours, the imprint of his fingers burning through your skin in a pleasant haze.

Needless to say, Jimin is horrified when he comes home to find you two spooning on your couch together. Naked.

“Please.” Jimin pleads the two of you, when you finally get dressed and sit a suitable distance apart with matching faces of shame, “Please don’t ever come to my house again.”

“Uh,” You croak hesitantly, drawing into yourself when you see his crazed eyes turn to you, “Th-this is m-my house, though?”

“I’m pretty sure,” Jimin interrupts, deadly calm, “That I adopted you because you can’t look after yourself like a normal human being—” He voices over your protest, “So, this is very much my house too, thanks.”

You shut your mouth, knowing when you’re dealing with a lost case, and instead look at Hoseok with apologetic eyes. He, luckily, seems to understand, because he grimaces back at you in a failed attempt at assurance.

“And please, for the love of god!” Jimin snaps, making the two of you snap your attentions back to him, “Stop making those ridiculous faces at each other! Hoseok, I’m sorry, but you need to leave.”

And so, Park Jimin kicked out the Director of HR of Jung & Co. from your apartment.

Of course, it can’t always be sunshine and daisies. There has to be a raincloud in there somewhere, lurking and waiting for an opportune moment. A partner of Fate. Works with it, hand in hand, to get back at you with a vengeance.

And it all starts on one of your dates.

“So, what are we gonna do here?” You crack out a yawn, eyes drooping as Hoseok leads you into his apartment; a different one from last time, his actual staying quarters, “Movies, again?”

“I was going to order for you, and stuff.” Hoseok nods in agreement, settling on the couch, and holding out his arms for you to cuddle into, “But it looks like you’re tired?”

“Take out sounds great.” You mumble tiredly into his chest, relaxing as he wraps his arms around you, “Just a bit too sleepy for your romance flicks.”

“Hey!” Hoseok’s chest rumbles as he speaks in mock affront, “Excuse you, I don’t watch romance! I…don’t really like horror, or action, or suspense, but…”

He pouts sadly as you giggle up at him, and you can hardly resist pecking his perfect lips sweetly.

“Alright, my prince.” You roll your eyes, even as you let loose a tiny grin, “Whatever you say.”

“I resent that.” He says, honestly, before asking, “So, what would you like? French? Turkish? Greek?”

You can’t help the tiny twitch of your eyebrow at the growing list of unacceptable options, and you finally snap.

“Jung Hoseok.” He immediately stops speaking at the sound of your menacing voice, “I want. Takeout.”

“Yes, but—”

“Jesus, just get me Chinese! No exotic cuisine!”

“But I want it to taste—”

“Jung Hoseok, don’t you dare complete that sentence, Chinese tastes brilliant—”

The two of you don’t notice the slight creak of the door, till a new voice breaks in.

“…Am I interrupting something?”

The both of you freeze in horror, the voice ringing in your ears awfully familiar. You see Hoseok pale, even in the dim lighting, and you can completely understand why.

“Yoongi.” He murmurs shakily, and you quickly gather your wits about yourself, sliding quickly off his lap to face the eldest of the brothers, “You’re here?”

You’re sure Hoseok doesn’t mean it as a question, but it might have slipped out like that anyway. You cautiously eye Yoongi, expecting to see a hard rage in his eyes, or an extreme chilliness, like the last few times you’ve met him.

What you don’t expect is a soft, yet sad smile.

“Yeah.” He answers Hoseok’s question-statement, flicking on the light switches, “And chill, Y/N, I know you two are dating.”

He rolls his eyes, muttering something to himself that sounds suspiciously like, “Not that this could show me otherwise.”

Your cheeks flush at the fact that Yoongi just saw you straddling his brother’s lap. In the middle of an argument. About what food to order. Christ, like it isn’t getting any more domestic.

“You knew?” You can’t help but blurt out anyway and, at your side, Hoseok looks near hysterical in his agreement, “How?”

Yoongi pulls at the sleeves of his shirt, under his blazer, as he gives the two of you a private grin, one that neither of you are expecting. But Hoseok seems to understand.

“Jungkook told you, didn’t he?” His voice is flat and disbelieving.

Yoongi chuckles (chuckles!!) at his deadpan, and shakes his head.

“He didn’t need to.” He elaborates in a drawl, at your confused faces, “He asked me why you were so upset, after the Gala.”

“Oh.” Hoseok sounds quiet, and you hate it, taking his hand and squeezing it lightly. The two of you have had to work so hard for this relationship, and you’ll be damned if you let a smirking millionare take everything away from you.

“So?” You ask defiantly, facing him head on even as you inwardly quake in terror, “Are you going to tell us to break up or what?”

That sends alarm bells ringing in Hoseok’s head, and he nearly leaps up, eyes wide.

“Hyung—!” His voice cracks.

“Don’t worry.” Yoongi shakes his head with a long-suffering sigh, “Even though I don’t approve of her, I guess…I’ll approve of this relationship. She makes you happy Hobi, I’d have to be an idiot not to see that.”

Your heart stops at the slight grin he sports on his lips, the warmth of his eyes when he looks at the brunette sitting next to you.

“Even if I don’t always show it,” Yoongi murmurs, “I only want what’s best for you. And if that’s what she is, then so be it. But…”

“But…?” The look on Hoseok’s face screams of anxiety, and a little bit of fear, “But what?”

“I’m not the only one who knows.”

At Yoongi’s next words, you’re sure your expression must match Hoseok’s, and your heart hammers against your chest.

“Father knows too, and…he wants to meet Y/N.”

Written By: Midnight^^

Next Part: 03

219 notes · View notes

old1ddude · 7 years

Note

As a person who can be consider as GP (I liked Harry's album and I did a bit of research, but I am not and I never was part of the fandom) I can tell you how the Larry thing looks for me. I don't think "antis" are blind or "Larries" are crazy. I think all this was a hoax their management did, when they saw in the early years of 1D that "Larry Stylinson" was something a lot of fans liked, in order to keep fans talking about 1D and "obsessed" with the band. And, yes, I think H&L were into it. (1)

It's very simple: all that we saw (flirts, singing to each other, DENIALS, girlfriends that really looked as beards, people being shady, M!M fails...) was something we were supposed to see. Everything was part of the game. And because fans, in general, are never gonna tend to think that their idols are lying like this, or laughing of them, then you'll get 2 opinions in base of what the person prefers to believe, "antis" think Larries're conspirators, and "Larries" believe antis're blind. (2).

The tattoos could mean any other thing, or even H&L were paid or obligated by contract to get them (I haven't seen more "couple" tattoos since long long time ago, Harry's bee is the Gucci bee). My opinion is based in: a. The actual situation: even if they didn't want to come out because personal reasons, all the situation with the "fake baby" makes no sense. No sense that there isn't a single fan picture of them hanging out together in 18 months. b. The bears, I know you all love them, (3)

It's impossible that a management who is really trying to hide gay rumors, allows to have these bears in all the shows they were, and no way if you're having troubles with the closet you're gonna do this, which looks as a joke. I think the boys and their management put the bears there, in order to go on with the hoax/ My opinion doesn't mean I believe that things like Haylor were real, or that El is Louis gf. Even H&L could have a thing in the early years and they just finished it in good terms.

Thank you for your polite, reasoned points anon.

In regard to parts 1 and 2: It’s not the really big things that convince us Harry and Louis are romantically involved, but very subtle looks and touches - things the camera barely caught and can very easily go unnoticed, if your’e not paying close attention. Harry’s acting in Dunkirk was impressive, but it’s hard to imagine the whole band being in character, every moment they were on camera, with subtle gestures, expressions, slips of the tongue, always pointing out the couple. While we don’t really know the lads, we have observed them so much that we do know them in a way. We recognize when they’re uncomfortable, sarcastic, playing to the camera, truly happy, putting on a fake smile, angry, sad, etc.. I have no doubt that 1DHQ played into Larry to some extent, at different times. The Larry fandom spent a LOT of money on the band. Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of push-pull. Sometimes Harry and Louis seemed to be on the cusp of coming out - at other times their interactions were almost non-existent. Yet, still we would observe how they were always subtly watching and very aware of each other. 1DHQ capitalizing, to some extent, on Larry has no bearing on whether they were, or are an actual couple. With Larry being quite popular in the fandom, as you noted, why not encourage lot’s of interaction between H and L? HQ could have had their cake and eaten it too by encouraging Larry interaction, but playing it off as “best friends” in interviews. The separation of Harry and Louis always seemed unnatural. What little interaction we got was often very subtle, but laced with a fondness unmistakable to careful observers.

I think there are many reasonable people who don’t think Harry and Louis are together. As for the anti’s, however, they have an obsession with proving they are not a couple and we are deluded. Maybe we’re obsessed with our favorite band and the idea of two members being in love, but at least we don’t spend our energy on other fans who disagree with us!

As for the bears: The only people who believe (or believed) they had anything to do with Harry and Louis is the Larry fandom. One could argue that HQ wouldn’t care about elaborate stuffed animal tableaus when it was only those “crazy larries” who paid them any mind.

Touring benefits album sales and an act’s brand, but the spoils are largely for the band - not the label. It’s difficult to know how much control the lads had over staging, etc. We do know that Louis led the boys in rebellion against the sugary pop (I enjoy some of those early songs, by the way) from their first two albums. Against all odds, they were able to gain creative control over their music - who is to say they didn’t gain some control over their concerts as well? Of course, image clauses, which exist in virtually all entertainment contracts, are enforceable everywhere. (Louis and Harry had to be careful how far their behavior challenged the official narrative. The bears are just stuffed animals.) There is also a plausible theory that Louis has paid a price for the bears as his reflection was captured in those bear sunglasses and we saw a photo of them in a room that looked exactly like Louis’ game room. All of the lads have been very good directing subtle shade at official narratives at times. Nothing in their observed behavior would suggest the bears were queer-baiting, or that they would be okay with that.

Each set of tattoos, on their own, can be very easily explained away. When you look at all of them together, platonic explanations become implausible. No one has ever provided and example of an entertainment contract (to my knowledge) witch would require a person to get a tattoo, or otherwise, permanently alter their body. Harry and Louis have repeatedly proven they are aware of what goes on in this fandom. You can not tell me that Harry didn’t know the implications of the bee tattoo, or wearing bee shirts, etc..

I don’t believe that gay men get drunk and impregnate random women. However, if Louis were a father there would not be so many inconsistencies and striking evidence the “mother” was never in fact pregnant. Most often, celebrity “love children” are kept hidden from the public until many years after their birth. Nothing about the story adds up. I could go on, and on. I was reluctant to believe Liam fathered a child with Cheryl, but now it does seem to add up and I do believe it.

I can easily see why a casual observer would see thing the way you do. Harry is an incredible artist and performer - I hope you continue to enjoy his work. I don’t think it matters whether you believe in “Larry” or not in the lease. Especially, now where Harry, in particular, is maintaining very strict privacy over his personal life. I hope that my answer demonstrates to you, in part, why I see things as I do.

Cheers!

#HandL #Anonymous

11 notes · View notes

krreader · 6 years

Text

like a butterfly | chapter 11

pairing: min yoongi x reader fandom: bts warnings: non idol!au ; single dad!yoongi ; language genre: fluff ; angst ; smut previous: 1 ; 2 ; 3 ; 4 ; 5 ; 6 ; 7 ; 8 ; 9 ; 10

summary: you never planned on becoming the babysitter of min yoongi’s daughter, one of the richest and most famous producers of south korea. you also didn’t plan on becoming so attached to the little girl, as well as her father. (Or: hot, successful and single dad hires broke babysitter.)

a/n: a bit earlier than usual, but I was super inspired to continue today!!! hope you’ll all forgive me (:

ask box | masterlist | fandoms | faq | multifandom reader blog

It would have been one simple question. Just one question to confirm whether or not Mei's mother was even still around: ‘Did she die?’.

Sure, it probably would have been direct and it may have hit a nerve if she had in fact been dead, but clearly, she wasn't. Because she was currently sitting in the living room in her expensive dress and heels that you never could afford, if Yoongi didn't buy them for you. She looked exactly like Mei, you know, the girl that you had become a mother figure to, only to find out that her real mother apparently wanted to get back into her life.

Your head hung low as you waited for the coffee to brew. You had taken it as an excuse to take a couple of deep breaths and to calm down.

Why did this upset you so much? It shouldn't right? Shouldn't you be happy for Mei, who would surely be over the moon once she found out her mother had returned? Shouldn't you be happy for Yoongi, who had clearly missed this woman in his life?

You should.

But you weren't.

Because you knew that if they accepted her back into their lives, you wouldn't matter anymore.

You could tell how Yoongi was still attached to her. Every time the topic had come up in the past, he became distant all of a sudden, like he was thinking about her and missing her instantly. He was probably still in love with her, she was the mother of his kid and his first love, after all. You wouldn’t blame him if he did. But you had thought you were competing with a ghost, a memory, someone that wouldn’t come back, when the woman was actually quite alive.

And then what about Mei? You were only her nanny, but you seemed to have completely forgotten about that. You were a substitute for the real thing. And that suddenly clicked.

The beeping of the coffee machine ripped you out of your thoughts and you quickly poured the coffee into two cups, before returning into the living room and handing her one.

“Thank you so much, my dear,” she smiled kindly. Despite of her behavior, every part of your body wanted to punch her. And why was she calling you ‘my dear’? Sure, she was older than you, but not by that much, right?

“Yoongi never really talked about you,” you began, “To be quite honest, I had thought you had died.”

Was that too forward? Maybe. Did you care? No.

She didn't seem to mind anyways, just put down the cup on the coffee table and turned her beautiful and toned body (you really needed to stop, you were already beginning to compare yourself to her) to face you.

“We didn't exactly part on good terms. I can understand why he never talked about me.. I probably wouldn't have either.”

“So you just left him and your baby behind?”

She licked her lips and you could see she was struggling not to retort anything rude, but still kept that smile on her face. But you could tell that she was beginning to fake it, “It was all very unfortunate. I never meant to leave Mei..”

‘ Liar’, you thought

“And what exactly is it that you want from him? You see, him and I were planning on going to this award show tonight and..-”

“The award show. Best producer, right?” she let out a breath, beginning to grin again, but this time, it was genuine, “He really did it. See, when him and I were still in college, he was working so hard to become a producer. He put in so many hours and he always told me that he would make it someday.. seems like he finally did.”

“How fortunate of you to show up exactly when Yoongi is to receive such an award, isn't it?” you matched her own sweet, but fake smile.

Listen, women were manipulative as fuck and while men might fall for this act, you didn't. This woman right here was shady and you were sure there was something bigger going on. You couldn’t tell what it was, not yet anyways, but you’d find out.

But just when she wanted to answer, the front door got opened.

And the second you heard his voice, so cheerful and excited, you wanted to throw up.

There goes your relationship with a man you actually thought you had a future with. You know.. the one.

“Sorry it took so long. Mei kept asking me so many questions about tonight, I couldn't..-”

Minseo immediately stood up, her hands folded in front of her body and a soft smile on her face, while Yoongi just froze and stared at her in disbelief. And you, the third wheel that you were, didn't even get up. You also didn't look up. You didn't want to see this.

“Minsie..,” he whispered and you wanted to throw up at the nickname.

How come you didn’t get a nickname?

“Hi,” she said happily, even though her voice was just as weak as his.

“Wh..- I don't..- What are you doing here?”

He didn't even sound upset. He sounded surprised and maybe even a bit happy that she was standing in front of him. But you wanted him to be upset. You wanted him to throw her out, as selfish as that might have sounded. You wanted him to walk around her, pull you into his arms and introduce you as his girlfriend. But he didn’t do any of these things..

“It was all very short-term, to be honest. I was in the city and heard about the award show.. I wanted to congratulate you.. see how you were doing and.. you know.. how Mei was doing.”

There was this hint of emotion in her voice, but even that sounded fake. Not that Yoongi seemed to realize it. He was too shocked to properly form a rational thought.

“I mean.. she's good. Very good, actually,” his mouth was still agape and his blinking rapid.

“Really? Is she.. happy? Healthy?”

“Yes,” he slowly began smiling at the thought of his daughter.

“I'm so glad to hear that,” she actually dared to walk closer to him and hug him. Right in front of your eyes. Like sure, she didn't know you and him were a thing, but he did. And he still hugged her back, right in front of you, “I'm so sorry, Yoongi. About everything.”

Deep down, he knew he should be furious with her. But she had been the first woman he ever fell in love with. His big love, as others had often said. She was the mother of his daughter and he had missed her so much. It had broken him when she disappeared and the fact that this piece of him that he had left in the past was suddenly back. It was as if his arms just magically wrapped themself around her body, without him actually wanting to do it.

“Am I invisible?” you got up and crossed your arms in front of your chest, pushing out your lower lip, “Do you want me to leave? Maybe get you guys some condoms first?”

Yoongi was so busy with Minseo, that he completely forgot about you and quickly, but carefully pushed her away.

“Excuse me?” she asked in a high-pitched voice that only made her more annoying. God, and you thought Sarah was bad. Sarah was nothing compared to this one.

“Listen, lady. I don't know what your game is, but..-”

“My game?” she laughed, “I don't have 'a game'. I wanted to see my ex-fiance and my daughter again.”

“Oh, is it ex-fiance now, huh?” you raised your eyebrows and looked at Yoongi. But he was too busy with staring at his shoes, “Not only do you keep it a secret that she's alive, but you also don't tell me that you've been engaged before?”

“Why would he tell you? You're my child's nanny.”

My child. My child. God, she has the audacity to call Mei her child, even though she hadn't been in her life.. ever?

“Yes, Yoongi. Why would you tell me, your daughter's nanny, any of that?” you asked with a challenging glint in your eyes.

He made his way over to the other end of the room where you were standing and dropped his voice, so that only you could hear it, “Can we not do this right now, please?”

“Fine,” you grabbed your bag and nodded, “I'll just leave then. You don’t seem to need me right now.”

“Wait, but what about the award show?”

“Go with her. After all,” you said, when you stopped right next to her, “That's why you're here, isn't it?”

She didn’t even blink. God, this woman was good at what she was doing.

Let's sum this up.

Mei's mother, a woman called Minseo that Yoongi had met during college. She was his first and big love and they accidentally had a child. During his college years, Yoongi tried his damned hardest to become a good producer, but as far as you knew, he only became famous two years ago, so that meant that when these two had Mei, he was a struggling guy in his twenties, who probably had just enough money to feed his daughter.

And the first thing, the absolute first thing, you noticed when looking at Minseo? She wore designer clothes that any other human being couldn't afford. She looked like she regularly went to beauty appointments, her nails and teeth were on point. In general, she just looked like she was made out of money. Now what would a woman like that want with a guy like Yoongi, when he couldn't give her the rich lifestyle that she desired? The one that he promised her in his twenties, but seemingly didn’t deliver?

Maybe she had thought that Yoongi would become a big fish in the music industry much sooner, but when she realized that it might never work out, she left. Maybe she accidentally had a daughter that she never wanted and was then left with a little girl and a boyfriend (or ex-fiance, if you want) who couldn't give her what she wanted.

Solution?

Leave both behind and look for the next best guy.

Kim Minseo was a fucking gold digger.

And you were so sure of that.

Jimin had been the first person you thought of when you wandered the streets of Seoul. You hadn't seen him in a while anyways and knew that you could always talk to him about everything and anything. The one you could always fall back on if things got too bad.

So hence, an hour later, you were ringing his doorbell in the hopes that he was home.

“(Y/N),” it wasn't Jimin's smile that greeted you, but that of his roommate, Hoseok, “I thought you had an award show to go to?”

“Yeah. Me too,” you sighed, a sad smile on your face, “Is Jimin home?”

“Yeah, yeah! Come in,” he could see that there was something on your mind, something, that you needed to talk about with your best friend, so as soon as the door was closed, he ran into Jimin's bedroom and grabbed him for you, before hiding in his own to give you two some alone time.

You took off your shoes in the meantime and plopped down on the couch in the living room. That same couch that you used to sleep on for so many nights when you had desperately been searching for a new apartment.

It didn't take more than five seconds before he stood in front of you, only wearing a black t-shirt and some gray sweatpants. Maybe you should have settled for Jimin.. at least his life didn’t seem to be as complicated as that of Yoongi.

“What are you doing here?”

“What.. can't I come visit my best friend?”

“Stop playing dumb with me, young lady,” he sat down next to you, his forehead creased with worry, “What happened?”

“Oh you know.. just the usual. His ex-fiance and the mother of his kid that I thought was dead showed up and decided now was the best time to enter his life again,” you shrugged, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

“What?! Is this a joke? Because it’s not very funny, if it is.”

“Nope,” you decided that laughing would be better. Because how much more of a fucking joke can your life become? Just when you and him were beginning to develop a romantic relationship, this had to happen, “Pretty sure she's just back because of his money, but I doubt he's going to see it that way. The way he always looks when he thinks about her.. he's going to take her back in an instant.”

“What? No, he won't! He's with you, (Y/N).”

“But I'm not her, Jimin. He'll replace me the second she tells him to. It’s always the same bullshit.. your first love is always going to be your only love.”

“Why would you say stuff like that?” he gently hit your arm, “You're the most beautiful, amazing and kindest person I've ever met in my life! He surely has to see that too, especially because of the way you treat him and Mei! And so what if she was the first one he fell in love with? That doesn’t matter when she left and you didn’t. That’s what matters.”

“It was hard enough to compete with a dead person. But she's out of my league.. there's nothing I can do anymore, except for sit back and wait for him to tell me to get out.”

“I'm sure you're just overreacting! Maybe he's currently throwing her out of the apartment! Maybe he has already called you! Check your phone!”

But that was the exact moment that Hoseok walked into the living room with a frown on his face.

“Uhh, (Y/N)?”

“Yeah,” you let out a tired sigh, looking up at him.

“Question. Since you're not with Yoongi tonight,” he turned on the TV and pointed at the screen, “Then who's that woman he’s with?”

And there it was.

The second your heart slowly began to break into a million pieces. While you were sitting here, wallowing over him, he had grabbed her and went to that stupid award show with her, holding her in his arms and smiling brightly at the cameras. He was holding her like he should have been holding you. He was smiling at her like he should have been smiling at her. And the worst thing of it all? She was so much better at this whole ordeal than you ever could have been. She was the definition of a celebritiy, even though she wasn’t one. She gave the cameras what they wanted.. if you had gone with him, it would have been ten times more awkward..

The fact that Yoongi probably wasn’t even thinking about you.. that he hadn’t even cared enough to tell you he’d take her.

And what would Mei be thinking? You knew that she was going to watch the show tonight. Fuck, she had been so excited to see you and Yoongi on the red carpet..

And from the way Ciri and Taehyung had seemed to know about Minseo and Yoongi, you weren't sure if they could keep the identity of the woman a secret. Maybe they were telling Mei about her mother right now.. maybe it was in that exact moment that she was beginning to get excited because her mother had finally returned. And maybe she was already beginning to push you into the depths of her memories, where she wouldn’t remember or care abotu you anymore.

Unfortunately for you, you didn’t know how it actually went.

“Who's that? Where's (Y/N)?” Mei pouted and turned around to look at Tae and Ciri, who both stared at the screen in disbelief. Mei was confused, because even though she was young and didn’t understand half of what the adults around her were saying, she knew that something was up. When they didn't answer her, she turned back around to the screen and eyed the woman for a couple of seconds, before saying in a deep and angry voice, “Daddy is in so much trouble when I get home. (Y/N) is way prettier than that one.”

875 notes · View notes