#they still got the dark light motif running around | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

keikikait · 4 months

Text

ᴛᴇʟᴇᴠᴀɴɢᴇʟɪꜱᴍ (ɢᴇᴛᴏ x ꜰ!ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ)

pairing: geto x f!reader (not au, geto and reader are both around 27)

word count: 1.8k

summary: as one of masamichi yaga’s former students, you got along well with geto, gojo, and riko back in your high school days. now things are different, but you’re still attached to one man, suguru geto. you obey his every command like a devoted follower does.

warnings: SMUT 18+, MDNI, DARK CONTENT AHEAD, dom!geto and sub!reader, oral (m receiving), face fucking, use of the words cock and cunt, slapping, spitting, degrading, nickname use (slut), clit slapping, choking, light violence, angst!!!!, brainwashed reader, talks of non-sorcerer death (not too graphic, just mentioned), talk of cults, hyena motif, emotionally manipulative geto

a note: will i ever get over this? no. no, i will not.

please reblog and like, it means a lot! let me know what you think!

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ*:･ﾟ✧

Ever since you laid eyes on him, you knew you loved him. From almost failing a test because you spent too long gazing at him in class, to following him around like a lost puppy on campus, you’ve always been in love with Suguru Geto. Even now.

You’re devoted. You trust him. You’re easy. And that’s why Suguru keeps you around. He likes to manipulate you, he likes to push your buttons and tease you, send you away crying knowing you’ll come crawling back for more. You had never defied him. If he said jump, you’d ask how high. If he told you to kill an innocent non-sorcerer, you would.

You’re not a part of his cult, no, no. You’ve heard about cults before and heard the tales of Jim Jones, Charles Manson, Heaven’s Gate, and, of course, the Star Religious Group. You’ve seen the televangelist proclamations of the second coming of Christ and heard all about the Rapture, but that isn’t what this is. He isn’t a cult leader, not at all. He’s your Suguru. Your leader, devoted to the cause of wiping out the weak, the non-sorcerers. The ones who killed Riko.

You’re not his follower, you’re his. His soulmate! The one who gets to stay in his cushy cabin while the others are stuck in frail tents that could be knocked over by a gentle breeze. You’re the one he makes love to every night. He wouldn’t do that for just any follower, you were special. You had to be. You don’t know who you would be without him. You’ve supported him for so long, let his poisonous ideals fill your lungs and you choked on them at first, like anyone would, but soon you began to breathe them in.

You hadn’t always been this way. Once, you had done the unthinkable, the thing that breaks his heart the most: you tried to escape. You didn’t make it far out of the compound before he found you, easily overpowering you and tackling you to the ground. He was calm, at first, telling you how disappointed he was in you. How you failed him. You were supposed to be special. How could you do this to him? He trusted you. He started to get angry at your tears and your pathetic apologies, and he decided to give you a beating, just for good measure, breaking your nose just for the fun of it before he dragged you back inside the compound by your hair, kicking and screaming.

Once he had you back in his teeth, locked away in his room, he made you realise how disrespectful you were. He gave you everything, and you thought you could just run away? He taught you so much. He taught you how to hone your technique, how to make it as powerful as his. Almost. He taught you his ideals, about how all non-sorcerers are worthless monkeys who cause curses to begin with. He taught you that your thoughts about defecting — about leaving him — were like hyenas, and without him and his guidance, they would laugh at you as they chased you through the desert before killing you and ripping you limb from limb. You didn’t want to leave him, did you? You couldn’t be without him, after all, you were nothing without him. He had you wrapped around his finger, and his cock, and he loved every second of it, although he had to admit you looked prettier on your knees, worshipping him.

And that’s exactly what you’re doing. On your knees, trying to ignore the tingling in your calves from kneeling on the hardwood, his cock down your throat. You bob your head, tears streaming down your cheeks from the burning sensation in the back of your throat, trying not to gag. Suguru didn’t like it when you gagged. He didn’t like it when you resisted.

You make your way down to the base, your nose buried in his pubes, and he reaches a hand around to push on your head. “Good girl. Stay there for a second.” You nod, as best as you can, blinking away the tears as you relax your throat. He strokes your hair for a second before his hips thrust.

You try to relax, squeezing your thumbs against your palms as you try not to gag.

And he thrusts again.

And again.

And you gag, your hands instinctively coming up to his thighs to push him away. He grips your hair into a tight fist and yanks you off, a trail of spit following your mouth. A symbol of your connection. You take a shaky deep breath, looking up at him with red, teary eyes. “Suguru-”

He slaps you, hard. Your head jolts to the right, a stinging sensation spreading over your cheek. You sniffle, tears welling in your eyes again. You could almost hear the hyena’s laugh.

He tugs your head up towards him, slapping you again, harder this time. “I told you not to gag.” You nod, babbling an apology. You deserve this punishment, after all. You had failed him. You were resisting, even though you didn’t mean to. You notice his cold, hateful glare and you apologise even more, apologising for your failure, apologising for letting him down.

You want his cock back in your mouth. You want to be useful to him. You look at it, thick and long and covered in your spit and tears. You feel your mouth watering and you stick your tongue out slightly. He notices this and laughs, jostling your head around. “You want my cock?”

You nod, panting a little. “Yes, Suguru.”

“Are you going to gag again?” He asks, tugging on your hair.

“No,” you say, your eyes wide and full of adoration as you stare up at him. “I won’t gag.”

He sighs, tugging on your hair again. “You know what happens when you disappoint me,” You nod again. “What happens when you disappoint me?”

“The hyenas come.” You answer softly.

“Yes, that’s right,” Suguru says, pushing your face against him. He rubs his cock against your cheek, smearing your spit and tears over your face. “The hyenas come, and they will kill you. And then you’ll be without me. And what are you without me?”

Your answer quickly. “Nothing.” He grins. He taught you so well, he taught you exactly how to please him. He rubs his cock against your cheek, the one he just slapped, before sliding his cock back into your mouth and down your throat. He thrusts and thrusts, and you finally listen to this time. You don’t gag, not even once. You take his abuse, loving every second of it.

After a few minutes, he pushes you off and you land harshly on the floor. “Get on the bed, slut.” You do, climbing up onto the bed and pressing your back against the pillows. He gets on top of you, caging your head in between his arms. He spits on your cunt before sliding in, gritting his teeth at the slight resistance. You weren’t being very good right now, were you? He slaps your clit and your cunt gushes, allowing him to slide in.

Suguru leans down on his elbows, one hand wrapped tight around your throat as he thrusts into you. He loves this feeling, the feeling of you spread open and dripping wet for him, wrapped around his cock. You take all of his hurt and abuse and you smile and ask for more. He’s never met anyone quite like you, so easy to manipulate and so easy to toss around like a toy. He could even throw you away once he was bored, knowing you would still be in the trash can once he needed you again. Suguru didn’t care about you. You could drop dead in front of him and he would step over your body, only hearing the hyena’s laugh as they tear out your intestines. He let you call him Suguru, but only because he knew you loved it, and if you loved it and you loved him, you would worship him. You would be his, and that’s all he needs, a devoted follower to support his goal.

“Open,” He says, squeezing your throat. Your mouth falls open and your tongue rolls out, and he spits directly on your tongue. “Don’t swallow it. Let me see.” You nod, your tongue hanging out as he fucks you, his spit dripping onto your chin. The sight makes his cock twitch, you look so pathetic and stupid, and he can’t wait to hit you later and make you cry for disobeying him and gagging on his cock. If you couldn’t follow a simple order, what could you do?

The combination of his big cock in your tight little cunt, his spit on your tongue, and his hand around your throat is too much and you cum, squeezing and clenching around him. He laughs triumphantly, squeezing your throat even tighter. He slaps you again, not because you did anything wrong, but because he loved the pathetic look in your eyes as the hit registered. His hand tightens to the point of strangulation as he cums inside you, burying himself deep at the hilt. He leans his forehead on your chest as the cum spurts out of his cock, painting your insides white. This is the closest you’ll ever get to being his.

He pulls out, climbs off of you, and leaves the room. You lay there for a second, catching your breath, basking in your post-orgasm haze. You shakily stand up and head into his bathroom, cleaning yourself up. You leave the dried spit and smeared mascara, knowing Suguru will like that more.

Once you return to his bed, he’s already lying down, a drink in hand. He isn’t even looking at you and all you can do is admire his beauty. He’s the most handsome man you’ve ever seen, and you don’t understand how you got this lucky. You lay next to him, your head on his bicep as he stares out the window, deep in thought.

After a long, comfortable pause, you speak. “Suguru?”

He looks down at you, a look of disinterest on his face. “Yes?”

You lick your lips, fiddling with your hands. You pick at the skin around your thumbs when you get nervous, and your eye twitches as you break the skin once again. Finally, you speak, “Do you think we’re soulmates in every universe?” His eyes narrow for a second before he smiles, leaning down towards you. You feel his hot breath on your face and you bite your lip, wondering if this will be the day he finally kisses you.

He chuckles, pushing some hair out of your face. “What makes you think we’re soulmates in this one?”

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ*:･ﾟ✧

am i okay? maybe

#keikiwrites #geto suguru #jjk geto #geto x reader #geto angst #tw: emotional manipulation #tw: violence #jjk angst #f!reader #jjk smut #geto smut #dom!geto #sub!reader

100 notes · View notes

darling-i-read-it · 9 months

Text

Window Cracked Open

Jeff the Killer x fem!reader

Word Count: 1.6k

Warnings: god where do i start, reader is clearly deranged in the sense that she finds love in fear (yes that was a jab at me), blood, a knife, jeff lighty threatening the reader, overall scary writing?, mentions of jeff being too skinny and unhuman, descriptions of jeffs scarring (let me know if i missed any!)

Author’s Note: i was trying to watch a romance show and it made me so deranged and sad that i wrote this because i feel more comfortable in fear than i do in love sometimes.

Summary: Literally no plot just Jeff showing up one night

I don’t own these characters. They belong to author/director/creator

(not my gif)

He always came in without warning. His limbs sprawled out, always gangly and white. Even in the dark, there was something illuminating about them. Monstrous. They moved too slow, with too much precision. Predatory. You never would have guessed he was once a human. Despite the two arms and two legs, he always seemed something otherworldly. You never knew when he would show. Sometimes it would be months without so much as a peep. Sometimes he would be gone mere days, mumbling something about the cold, pretending he felt normal feelings.

The air coming through the window was chilly. It was crisp and comforting. Summer had finally started to dissipate. The sun had started to set sooner. The leaves started to turn. They fell to the ground, being run over by cars with the heater blasting. When the darkness fell over the night you could feel your muscles start to relax. The tenseness in your body rested when you got under warm blankets, a candle lit by your bedside.

It had been weeks. The sticky sweat of the summer had Jeff on the run. You never knew where he went when he was gone for long periods of time. It just made you antsy. Even after plenty of time, you could never go to sleep at peace. You left the window cracked open, always prepared for someone to come climbing in, something that looked like a monster under your bed.

You could have shut it. Locked it. Bought double locks or something, gone to the local hardware store and asked for better protection or cameras or something. It would put you at ease. Jeff would get the message.

But God, where’s the fun in that?

You were in between consciousness. You could still hear everything around you, make note of the normal noises as they came and went. The fan blowing, causing your curtains to slightly move. The sound of your clock, ticking. The familiar fabric moving with the wind from the window.

A creak on the window.

At first, you didn’t even open your eyes. You dismissed it as something in your dreams, something you could almost touch. The comforting feeling of sleep was about to overtake you and honestly, you were ready to let it. You could ignore something that echoed far away, nothing more than a simple abnormality.

Then a longer creak. Weight shifting on the sill.

You opened your eyes. It was dark. You had a little night light in the corner of your room by the door. You could see the edges of it from where you were laying. Your body stayed still. Listening. Waiting. You could see your digital clock on the bedside table. Nearing the witching hour.

Finally, there was a footstep on your carpet. You could barely hear it. If it wasn’t so quiet otherwise, you would never have noticed it.

You put your palm against your mattress. You used it to shift your weight, sitting up.

Jeff was standing by the window. You could see him only by his silhouette. Your eyes weren’t used to the darkness yet but you the gentle night light illuminated against his striking figure. All sharp. The connection between his limbs seemed stagnant. Holding themselves together only by the sheer need to. You recognized him by his familiar motifs.

There was a long moment of complete stillness. Jeff stood at the window. You could imagine his eyes scanning the room, feverishly taking in his surroundings, understanding each and everything you had changed since he had been there last. You sat on the bed, watching him, breathing shallowly. You recognized that this was like a still from a horror movie. You knew that the fear in your chest was only narrowly alarming. There should have been a flight or fight guard behind it. Instead it was just a fear that was welcomed. A feeling you understood, one that you knew well. It paralyzed you from anything else. God, it was a nice feeling.

Jeff moved. He walked towards your bed, putting both his palms on the comforter and crawling towards you. You could see more of his face as he moved, the night light flashing off his features in different ways.

His permanent Glasgow smile was stained with dried blood. You lifted your hand towards him, putting it on his cheek. He sat criss cross applesauce in front of you. You had brought your legs towards your body to make room. You wanted to clean the wound, an innate instinct. You wondered how many times you had cleaned it. How many times he just returned it to its idle state.

His eyes were wide. They always were. It showed no inclination of surprise, just a natural gaze.

“Why the frown sweetface?” His voice broke the silence. It literally felt like it shattered, waking you from some sort of trance. You hadn’t realized you were frowning. How could he see your expression at all? You could hardly see his.

“You're bleeding.”

“Always.” Your hand dragged down from his cheek. It brushed over his neck, his Adam's apple bobbing. Then onto his hoodie. It looked like it had once been white but was now stained. Dirt. Blood. Guts. You left your hand against his chest. If he had a heart, it would be there.

“Where have you been?” You wouldn’t get an answer you wanted. You asked anyway.

“Here, there. No where.” His voice was raspy. Almost playful. “Didja miss me?” His voice remained just above a whisper. You swallowed hard.

“Yes,” you said, honestly. He smiled, as much as he could. “Do you wanna get some clean clothes?” You couldn’t even think twice about how long he had been wearing this set.

“Sounds like a lotta work.” You half snorted.

“Couldn’t be any more work than killing someone.”

“That has an end result.”

“So does changing.”

“You better watch your tongue,” he threatened, though it felt fake. He took his knife out from an unidentified face, flashing it in your face. It glistened in the night light. “You could be the next one on the other end of my knife.”

“Is that a promise?” His version of a smile returned. You climbed off the bed, going towards your dresser. You had kept some things that looked mildly like Jeff’s size. You grabbed a different hoodie, a shirt and some slacks. He was watching you. You could feel it.

You turned back to him. Large eyes watched your movements.

You threw the clothes at him. He caught it, quickly, easily.

“Get dressed.”

“So demanding,” he muttered. He slid off the bed. His movements were always too easy. Too graceful.

He had no qualms of getting dressed right there. He tossed his things to the side and you watched, climbing back into the bed and leaning against the wall. You watched him. His slender body, white as a sheet, moved like a ghost. He was impossibly skinny. Always cold to the touch, like a corpse.

Once he had changed, he turned back to you.

“Happy?” he snarled.

“Very.”

He crawled back onto the bed. Jeff sprawled onto the comforter. He pretended it was his, that the warmth and the safety was something he could live in. He knew it wasn’t what he wanted. But it was something he could enjoy, in small doses.

“Do I get a space?”

“Sleep on the floor.” You scoffed. You shoved him aside, grabbing the top of the comforter and pulling it down. You climbed underneath it and he took the moment to also enjoy the warmth of the blankets. You faced him, cheek against your pillow. It was colder now that he had opened the window gap a little larger. You were going to get blood on your pillows. He likely wouldn’t be there when the sun rose. This would feel like nothing but a dream.

He grabbed your hip, pulling you closer. He was freezing. Cold blooded, you swore. After a gasp you stifled your emotion. His hair smudged over his face, the tips of it touching your skin. He had pulled you to his chest, his grip like iron.

Your eyes started to close. Sleep would come easily. You were still in the in-between of consciousness.

You could feel his lips (or lack thereof) against the top of your head. He buried his face into the pillow so that his nose would remain in your hair, breathing in your shampoo. You would wake up with blood on you more than likely, the feeling of his kisses leaving you before you could comprehend them. But you slept better with Jeff here then you did without him. All fear and anticipation dissipated. The knowing was far better than the unknown. You fell asleep in his arms, a crazy loopy reasoning in your head about the boy in your arms.

#jeff the killer x reader #jeff the killer x fem!reader #jeff the killer imagines #creepypasta fanfiction #jeff the killer fanfiction #black balloons tag

145 notes · View notes

blackoutspoetry · 3 months

Text

Cigarettes shared in the darkness 🚬

My take on what happened after the total failure to protect the airport from Makarov in the Flashpoint mission, featuring Ghost and Soap having a first bonding moment. This is a snippet for my fic "the anatomy of starved dogs", this is for chapter 4 and you can find the first chapters on ao3.

Ghost held out the half empty pack of Marlboro cigarettes in Soap’s direction, an olive branch. Soap isn’t sure he’ll take it.

“I don’t smoke. It's a filthy habit.”

Ghost rolled his eyes, sighing around his own cigarette as he plucked one from the pack, lit it and offered it again, now with a thin curl of silver smoke distending from its orange glow. It highlights the edges of the skeleton motif on his gloves and somehow, Soap knows he’ll carry a part of this day with him for days onwards, because the smell of that cigarette will burn into the fabric of his gloves.

“I don’t smoke,” Soap insists again with a frown, but all Ghost does is take his hand –not roughly, but not gently either– and puts the thin cigarette between his fingers.

“After a day like today, everybody smokes, Soap.”

Soap hesitates with it for a moment, watching the glow eat away at the unburnt part of the cigarette and inching closer away from the ashen end before he gives in and raises it to his mouth for a long, much needed draw.

He wishes he could wipe the smug look he just knows Ghost has under that mask off his face as he watches the action, knowing how easy it is to fall back into dormant muscle memory.

“You don’t smoke, huh?”

Soap pouts, not sure how much he wants to let the strange man in on his past, but he settles for something basic. “I don’t smoke anymore.”

Ghost nods, whether it was meant to be mocking or genuine is something Soap’s ego can’t discern. “Right.”

They stand there for a moment in the pseudo-silence, filled with the ambience of night sounds and distant sirens echoing through the ether and surrounding the two of them in a lamentous hum.

Ahead, somewhere from out of the darkness, the glow of the burning airport stood out, a beacon of hellish light that made Soap’s skin crawl. They’re far away and the attack was hours ago, but it lingers on his skin like an itch he can’t run away from.

He leans on the cigarette for comfort, and just a little, the presence of the taller man beside him helps to ease the loneliness of feeling like one tremendous failure.

“Don’t think too hard about it Soap, it’ll make your hair fall out and we certainly can’t have that with that illustrious haircut of yours.”

Soap jerked his head around so fast, he could’ve almost sworn Ghost startled just a little.

“Oh you’re one to talk about appearances with that halloween costume shite you’ve got going on.”

It takes two seconds for Soap to realise he’d chosen the wrong option. He’d overstepped one of the rules Price had very clearly set out for him. No questions about his appearance.

To his surprise, Ghost just gives him a bit of a laugh, albeit a bit of a snide one. “To each their own, but I’m serious, don’t beat yourself up about what happened today, there’s no use in dwelling on it.”

Soap frowns. “How am I not supposed to dwell on it? If we hadn’t responded to the attack on the stadium, if you and Shepherd hadn’t followed after us, we would have died there too,” he gestures vaguely out at the glow of the still smouldering heap of rubble.

“That’s just the way of the world, Soap. No one gets into this job thinking you’ll walk away with a bruise or a cut you can just slap a plaster over. People die, that’s how it works. We just happen to see more of it because of what we do. We are not entitled to living longer or dying later or easier because we’re supposed to be heroes. We could have died today, but what does it actually matter in the grand scheme of things.”

“You’re a real ray of sunshine, Lt,” Soap says dryly, bringing the cigarette to his mouth again. In the corner of his eye, he can see Ghost do the same.

“Maybe I’ve just been screwed over by the system that’s supposed to keep me alive more than I’ve been saved by it.”

Soap shrugged, but it didn’t sit right with him, the idea that death was just an inevitable fact of life. He’s too stubborn to believe it. For someone who’d spent more than half his waking life trying to change the hand he’d been dealt when he was born to broke college student parents and the expectation to be utterly average, he didn’t take kindly to the notion of just accepting things he can’t change, even if it drives him up the wall.

There’s a lot of other, more personal questions he wants to ask the man instead, but he settles for something safer.

“How do you deal with it? Stuff like today?”

“I’m not the person you should be asking for advice, Soap,” Ghost says with a hint of surprise. “That’s more Price’s thing.”

Soap turned to face him, trying to analyse what little he could see of his face where the mask was pulled up just high enough for him to smoke. He can just about see the curve of his lip around the cigarette and the edge of what seemed to be a jagged scar extending from the corner of his mouth.

Just as quickly as Soap had seen it, he lowered the cigarette, holding the smoke for a moment before he released it in a slow exhale.

“I’m not asking for advice, I’m asking how you cope.”

“I keep going. Sometimes the only way to cope is to endure.”

The silence that followed thereafter was more comfortable, more settled. Soap could begin to see why Price had told him Ghost was an acquired taste. For all his cold facade, he was really just a man with a grumpy disposition. Maybe even one with a personality outside of work, but Soap struggles to comprehend what that might be.

Reminded of work and everything they’d discussed in the wake of the attack, Soap frowned as he took another drag from the cigarette, now on its last breath.

“What do you think ended up happening to Price’s informant?”

Ghost scoffed, stubbing out his own cigarette against the rail and crushing the rest under his boot for good measure. “Fuck if I know.”

Soap shook his head, feeling himself getting riled up just at the thought of it. “Bet you the arse is sitting somewhere comfortable, getting piss drunk, laughing at the news.”

Ghost shrugs. “Reckon you may be right about that one, sergeant.”

“Wherever he is, I hope karma comes back to get him good.”

#soapghost #simon ghost riley #john soap mactavish #call of duty #cod #fanfiction #fanfic #ghostsoap #ghoap #call of duty modern warfare iii #my writing #johnny mactavish #simon riley #ghost call of duty #soap call of duty #call of duty fanfic #call of duty mwii #ao3 link #the anatomy of starved dogs

29 notes · View notes

mymarifae · 2 years

Text

you know what i'm thinking about today............ i'm thinking about how one of akito and toya's motifs is stray cats despite their original group name being BAD DOGS.

like. cats can symbolize so many things. independence. balance. freedom. white cats in particular are supposed to symbolize happiness, hope... healing. also like, luck and good fortune - which we can tie back to the way toya and akito met. it was a chance meeting; they were both lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. meeting akito set toya on that path of learning how to stand up against his father's expectations and to choose solely for himself. if they hadn't been so lucky as to meet the way they did, who knows how trapped and miserable toya would still be. how miserable they would BOTH be, actually.

and i don't believeeeee there's specific symbolism assigned to orange and white cats, BUT falling back to just basic color symbolism? orange is the color of warmth, change, determination, freedom once again, encouragement, and it's just like... a bold, happy color. which is funny considering how much of an absolute grouch akito is, but he's like his big sister in that regard. the shinonome siblings both have big hearts, and they love so, so much, but their love is fierce. it's protective. it's unapologetic and yeah. sometimes it's tough to endure. akito's character is very much about encouraging the people around him to keep reaching for the stars, to express themselves in more of a bold way, to be better than they were before. he is very much the rock of his friend group; you can always lean on him, and he'll always be there to pick you back up if you fall. and sometimes that means he is grabbing you by the scruff of your neck and forcing you back onto your feet. he is undeniably a warm person - he just runs a little hotter than you might expect.

(and i mean like if you wanted to take the color symbolism in another direction: white is like the moon [pretty neat how toya's gray and purple jacket literally says der Mond on the back, which is german for "the moon"] - orange is like the sun. you can be too distant and cold. you can be too fiery and burn yourself and everyone you love; irreparable damage. but in basically every piece of literature ever, the sun and moon are equal halves of the same part. light and dark; one cannot exist without the other. the moon is quiet in the way it loves, and the sun may be loud and bright, but it is no less tender and caring. they balance each other out. or some sappy shit like that idk :/)

and we can take all that and combine it with the general symbolism of cats, as well as tying in the bits about white cats in particular since the cat on akito's card is orange and white, and we've got two kids whose lives revolve around striving for freedom. toya is obviously like, caught in a battle of wills between his father and is struggling to be accepted for who he is and what he wants while his family sees this as a rebellious phase and expects him to return to classical music. and akito seems like the "free" one between them... but his own expectations and harsh criticisms of himself have trapped him and hold him back in a big, BIG way.

i have a whole tangent i could launch into right now about the way vivid BAD SQUAD is approaching their music and their whole thing about surpassing RAD WEEKEND and how ultimately unhealthy it is - but i'll spare you for the time being and i'll just say that if all you focus on is your shortcomings, you can't... grow. you'll always find something wrong with what you're doing, and you'll always hate part of it. at least 3/4s of being "good" at anything is just like. having faith in yourself. if you can't rely on your own abilities, then you'll always feel like you're falling short, you'll always feel self-conscious, and you'll always be subconsciously limiting yourself. and besides, pursuing anything with the sole goal of "get good at this thing and succeed" (thanks mr. shinonome for never teaching your kids how to just have fun and enjoy something for its own sake👍🏾 i bet his art is cold and unfeeling and stiff and sucks shit btw.) is a very easy way to kill your passion for it. we've already seen akito do this to himself with soccer.

but - it will be okay. it always is, at the end. they will both find their freedom. and they'll find it in each other. together they are running down the path to healing, two little kitties in the night, running side by side, free and wild, with no one to tell them what to do or who to be except themselves.

#project sekai #akito shinonome #toya aoyagi #akitoya #yeah sure akito is the sun to toya's moon but they're just friends -colorful palette

186 notes · View notes

likeadevils · 8 months

Note

Fave 1989 lyrics?

i had to be RUTHLESS about this like talk about killing your darlings jesus christ

“kaleidoscope of loud” kicks off my favorite lyrical motif in 1989, i’ve ranted about it so many times, the way she conflates and celebrates light and sound and then uses silence and quiet in moments of love is just. so good. i’m not gonna mention all of them in this post but just know everytime it comes up i’m screaming

“it’s been waiting for you” has made me cry many many times

“i can read you like a magazine” immediately established character in such a short amount of time

“keep you second guessing like “oh my god, who is she?” i get drunk on jealousy” is genius. i love how either the love interest or her could be saying “oh my god who is she”. it’s just. she’s so smart

“midnight, you come and pick me up, no headlights” just. works on so many levels. it sets the scene, it establishes character of a reckless couple who can’t see their future, it continues the metaphor of love existing in darkness and quiet, mwah mwah mwah perfect line

“i’ve got that good girl faith and a tight little skirt” WHEN THE ENTIRE SONG US DETAILING HER LACK IF FAITH? she has no faith in the future of the relationship, and she hasn’t been strictly faithful to the love interest— she’s been there too a few times, after all. like, it just so quietly encapsulates the theme of appearances vs reality

speaking of “i said i’ve been there too a few times” made my jaw DROP the first time i heard it

“two paper airplanes flying, flying, flying…” SHOULDN’T WORK ON SO MANY LEVELS. IT SHOULD JUST BE A CLEVER METAPHOR. AND YET!!!

“the monsters turned out to be just trees, when the sun came up, you were looking at me” IN A SONG NAMED OUT OF THE WOODS???

“let me remind you this is what you wanted (you ended it), you were all i wanted, but not like this” good line. absolute burn

“i miss you to much to be mad anymore” what if you just run me over with a car instead huh

“we’re a crooked love, in a straight line down” good metaphor

“his hands are in my hair, his clothes are in my room, and his voice is a familiar sound” is such a good way to express a relationship getting more serious. it’s like, the pinochle of show don’t tell

“you’ll see me in hindsight, tangled up with you all night, burning it down. someday when you leave me, i’ll bet these memories follow you around” she just. sings it like a curse it’s so good

“in silent screams, in wildest dreams” and “in losing grip on sinking ships” are just. i love it when lyrics reference other lyrics in different songs it makes the album feel so cohesive it’s so good

“when you’re young you just run, but you come back to what you need” was already one of my favorite lyrics on the album but i’m also pretty sure it’s referencing “while our bloods still young, so young it runs” WHICH COMES RIGHT BEFORE “won’t stop til it’s over” which is the treacherous secret message, and THATS right before “won’t stop to surrender” which is the line harry has incorrectly tattooed

just every lyric in clean. i can’t pick one they’re all good

“he keeps a picture of you in his office downtown, and you understand now why they lost their minds and fought the wars, and why i’ve spent my whole life trying to put it into words” is like. possibly my top five lyrics of her whole career. don’t ask me to do that it would be too hard but this would possibly make it

new romantics is another song that’s just like pick a line i can write an essay about why it’s so good i can’t believe this didn’t make the standard edition it’s a literal crime jail for ms swift

#asks*

3 notes · View notes

aspoonofsugar · 6 months

Note

hello design-wise can you elaborate on the eyes in Oshi no Ko? with the characters Akane, Kana, and Mem-cho? A review about it noted that Kana’s eyes resemble galaxies, Akane’s look like an evening sky and Mem-Cho’s resemble daytime, complete with light reflections forming clouds as shown below. can you write how the design of the eyes of the characters meant something for their characters and story like what it says about?

Hi!

I agree with @hamliet's answer to the same question here. In general, I don't think the twilight/dawn sky motif matters much tbh. It is an aesthetical choice, which mirrors the two characters' personalities:

Akane is linked to the shadow, so twilight

Mem-cho is one of the nicer characters, so dawn

In general, I don't think Akane and Mem-cho's foiling is that strong. Mostly because Mem-cho is not much important to the story (so far). Akane instead is an important character. That said, things might change in the future.

Something they have in common, though, is that they are both introduced in the same arc. They appear as participants to a reality show. Mem-cho is shown to be good at it, while Akane struggles. Mem-cho seems spontaneous and comfortable at showing her real self in front of the cameras. Akane instead needs a character to play, so that she can succeed. Still, it is soon revealed the two of them are actually pretty similar. Both wear personas as they struggle in the showbusiness world. Mem-cho constantly plays the part of a high school student, while Akane evolves as an actress, as she plays Ai.

Speaking of Ai, as per usual, you can see the two characters as two sides of her (Ai is really the pivotal character of the story :P):

Mem-cho comes from a disadvantaged economical situation. She has to look after her mother and siblings, which makes her unable to follow her dreams. Similarly, Ai is a girl, who runs away from an abusive situation and her dream is cut short by her tragic end.

Akane is a genius actress like Ai. She is able to analyze characters and play perfect parts and is recognized as a prodigy by the people around her.

Mem-cho is idol AI linked to light. Akane is actress Ai linked to shadows. (That said, their foiling isn't as strong as Akane/Kane or Aqua/Ruby, so take it with a grain of salt). Maybe this is why they gain star eyes the moment their link with Ai gets highlighted.

Mem-cho's eyes shine brightly when she is offered by Aqua the chance to join B-Komachi.

Akane gains star eyes the moment she starts imitating Ai.

It is as if Ai's strong light mirrors in them. They haven't naturally inherited Ai's starry eyes like Ruby or Aqua. Still, they inderectly are inspired and rejoice of that same light.

As for starry eyes in general...

Ai is the perfect idol and has starry eyes because (1) she is a star and (2) she follows her dream to love and be loved

Hikaru has black starry eyes because (1) he is an actor with incredible talent and (2) he has fallen to darkness (in other words his hidden light got corrupted)

Aqua and Ruby have blue and red eyes (blue + red = purple) with one single star each because they have inherited different sides of Ai. Aqua is the actor, while Ruby is the actress. They have some of their mother's light, but they risk to turn it into darkness

Kana has galaxy eyes because she loves acting more than anyone else and she represents light. Interestingly, she is currently facing her own shadows, which she needs to integrate with if she wants to grow as an actress and as a person

Akane has star eyes because she is such a talented actress she can imitate Ai's light, which means she herself has a lot of talent within herself

So, star eyes are simply symbolic of one's talent as an entertainer + one's passion for the enterteinment world. This talent/passion can bring happiness and light. However, it can also be corrupted and lost to darkness.

Thank you for the ask!

#oshi no ko #mem cho #akane kurokawa #oshi no ko meta #asksfullofsugar #anonymous #onk #onk meta

4 notes · View notes

sugar-petals · 3 years

Text

♡ måneskin scenario: getting to know ethan

↳ NOTE. by popular demand and because i’m entirely enthralled by the phenomenon that is ethan torchio myself, here we go givin’ the gorgeous drummer some love.

word count. 5.5k

TAGS. no warnings all fluff, fem!oc, slice of life, photographer!reader, first date-ish, shy flirting, ot4 is part of the plot, ethan being sexy in heels

Jacob had enough of that twilight bullshit and joined a glam rock band. At least that’s what you thought seeing Ethan around for the first time. Setting up the kit, carrying his whiny band members around, fixing his ruffle shirt, chugging some water: Big gig tonight, extra long setlist. Five minutes later, complaining about his brocade shoes being hard to kick the bass drum with. Even later, silently nodding along to an impassioned Damiano speech crafted to boost the morale, and posing for your camera in his silver jumpsuit. Friendly to approach all the way, but without initiating stable eye contact even once.

One thing’s for sure. As your favorite professor said back at university: Someone may be photogenic and unearthly as hell in terms of looks, and even be intimidating — but also so damn shy, you won’t see their eyes a single time. „Gotta work with it and not against. Then it gets interesting“. In essence, the takeaway from that course. Which does come in handy now. Ethan seems like the kind of guy you really have to get into for a more intimate-feeling picture.

Sure, many people in front of your camera have all kinds of introverted personalities anyway, wearing sunglasses in particular. So much about eye contact in the first place. And the aesthetic is priority, not studying character. Although you really are a fan of that, it’s a huge part of photography if anything. Alas, you’re here to „capture nothing more but the spirit of italo-rock, the attitude, the hedonism!“ (the exact words of your boss) for a music magazine after all. Really, nothing more? You paid attention to how he worded it. Fair enough. Rock spirit, that’s all, the exciting parts.

Ethan surely has it. Drumming on everything he can find during rehearsal breaks („music is everywhere“) with his sticks, even Thomas’ amplifier. He’s actually dorkier than you thought, less composed when he’s in his element. First impressions do deceive. The hair’s hard to miss, too. It’s the central motif that attracts you. You may or may not have taken over 50 shots of it just because. Ethan is a bad bitch and he better know. You climb around the venue to get any salient angle of Måneskin you can think of. Even from all the way back, last row. You don’t want to annoy them being all up in their face constantly. You’re hired to get all the good shots, they’ve been a band for seven years already, professionals in the making. Doesn’t mean you have to stand below the edge of the stage and never change position.

Even from back there, the silver reflects beautifully at the back of the stage. The fashion’s all designer and it shows, but Ethan couldn’t look bad in any of the shots even if he tried or wore the plainest black suit (hell, that would be just as beautiful in fact). Just how long is that hair anyway. All the way down to the solar plexus, must be 24 inches or more. 25, even. Many rockers would wear it that way, but Ethan seems particularly interesting with how he touches it, how he behaves with it. There we go again with the character study, you can’t help wondering.

But really. It’s any photographer’s dream when someone moves their hair around so damn naturally. Gives a great variety to how it frames and shades the face. You like to play with light all the time. And hey, why ask for eye contact when he does even better posing in other ways. The body, too, Ethan’s posture is great. Victoria and Thomas often bend to really get into their power chords, Damiano frequently hunches forward for a belt. But Ethan’s throned at his kit like some royals taught him to be a good boy. Back straighter than a pole, how the hell.

No glance in your direction still, even if you return from your last row spot to move around on stage with the camera. Which gives the band a motivation boost and chances to try out gestures up close, too, so even better. Hey, maybe it doesn’t annoy them. You can actually get used to it, this way of photographing them is all dynamic. Nearing the end of the first rehearsal, you’re all busy maneuvering between Thomas and Damiano to get a nice semi-profile from Ethan’s left side. Gotta work with it not against, you chant to yourself as a mantra, and it seems easier to stick to than you thought.

How glossy all that hair is commands all the attention of your shutter release in and of itself. That he takes good care of it and has been growing it since forever shows a dedicated guy. It’s actually quite wavy. The band arrived in the pouring rain and Ethan’s curly strands at the crown and nape of the head were definitely showing — super cute. An army of stylists took on the resulting humidity frizz. They whipped out the straightening iron and protective spray, and even now before the big performance, Ethan brushes his hair out in front of you, and sweeps it around with his fingers anyway. You take pictures of the bits you find most candid, and decide to rather perfect single shots instead of making several in a row. The more you photograph him, the more you want to discover his essence in one picture. His sheer presence almost begs for it, it’s ridiculous.

Victoria on the other hand has no problems with rapid-fire releases and comes close to your lens to pull funny faces. She’s got some of the coolest poses you’ve ever seen with her bass, and hops around the stage like a bunny to the beat. Thomas is a virtuoso and pro who keeps on doing what he does when you make him pose, and Damiano can flirt with any camera ever. He even lowers his red leather jacket off his collar bones for you to have a great shot. He’s promising and most definitely a born divo, your boss will be happy with those pictures most definitely.

Then again. Behind that supposed hedonism is so much hard work and thought. Damiano even gives you ideas for angles during the second rehearsal. „Hm, maybe stand on the amplifier?“ Eagle perspective, not a bad idea at all. After trying out said suggestions with the help of triggered stage security making sure you don’t fall off the construction („eh, Damiano always suggests the most reckless things to staff, don’t mind him“), you find yourself concentrating on what goes on at the back of the stage all over again.

Ethan is busy practicing a new solo which has you curious about whether it’s for an upcoming album. Though again — the shoes cause trouble. Ethan complains again, the music stops. That could very well be the reason why he seems so preoccupied today, or is it? The manager tells the stylist, and the stylist hurries, voilà, Ethan has a new pair of shoes brought in. Ones with a thicker sole, bit of a chunky heel, and laced up rather than being slippers, a drummer’s worst nightmare as you have learned today.

You wait until he changed. Then snap some more pictures how he continues practicing calmly, and the sound did improve since he can kick the bass drum better now. Now you position yourself across the stage all over, in the empty audience ranks. Ethan is the most radiant and confident when you just take a step back. But well, he still sweeps his hair around a whole lot and looks even more tense-looking than Damiano who’s doing vocal warmups and jumping jacks, „Come on guys, come on, we’re starting in 30 minutes!“.

You can tell he does it more often when he’s nervous. And that means he does it very often. People would probably assume it’s vanity, or the fact that the hair gets in the way. You can see that for him it’s a place of distraction, maybe safety. A gesture like an anchor. He’s used to it being long just like his eye shadow being dark and smoky all day. He knows the drums by heart, if it falls in his face no need to shake it away. And besides. The strands reach below his shoulder blades, it stays down his back if he doesn’t move around too much. He could easily tie it up as well. All those things go through your mind without you even knowing why.

To switch things up a little, you photograph Thomas fooling around with Victoria at the snack bar, stuffing fries up their noses, and already see the lighting technicians do their final check. Some of them you know briefly, you made shots at this venue before, last year for a Shakespeare theatre play. You did some freelance work in the scene, but now you’re put to the test for more involved jobs. Hard to complain though, Måneskin are amazing in front of the camera. If Damiano is not the ideal Hamlet, you don’t know anymore.

Something new happens all the time, the expressions are priceless. Ethan’s in particular, when he does his wide-eyed surprise faces learning that there’s actually healthy food at the snack bar. „Vitamins, how nice.“ — Thomas, pokerfaced, reacts with eating a mayonnaise-dripping sandwich. Ethan, unfazed. Headed straight to the fruits. You’ve never seen a tall silver glitter tower like him walking around biting a bright red apple. Well, you can take Jacob out of twilight, but not the twilight out of Jacob. Snap, another picture. Clash of words, that’s a nice theme.

The concert of this evening seems particularly energetic and leaves your camera roll with some brilliant, tweet-worthy material. Damiano covered in confetti, eyeliner running. Victoria on the shoulders of Ethan while he’s playing her bass. Thomas, stagediving. Fans waving banners and chanting along to Seven Nation Army. Your ears are ringing when the light technicians close down the stage two hours later. Thomas really played his soul out with the solos, and your feet seem to vibrate. That’s your body thinking Victoria’s bass is still playing, but the magazine is very happy with how the pictures turned out after you send the whole batch to them as soon as you can.

Little to no retouching, zooming, or cropping necessary. Ethan is just perfect as he is, you feel like you captured him well. After swiping through the gallery on your tablet, you think Victoria has some great ant’s eye perspective shots as well. Those go right on your own blog, she’s just amazing. The magazine has an enthusiastic article typed out already. Damiano’s mid-air split on beat for the final song makes the cover story on Monday, and Måneskin’s manager comes back to you a week later. „What would you think about doing some behind the scenes stuff for us? We’re planning a music video!“

And that’s how you end up in a Sicilian restaurant with Måneskin and crew a week later, stuffed with Calzone and mind filled with Damiano’s inspiring words (and the occasional catchy freestyle rap). The MV is as good as finished. Thomas had shown you around the mansion they were shooting at, and you could convince a taciturn Ethan to walk between the marble statues and boxwood trees in the garden. With his black cape on, a rhinestone choker, and the low-cut lacey blouse that the MV director was obsessed with as well, asking you to focus on it. Your best shot even ends up in the thumbnail of the Youtube video without you even expecting it would.

All the garden pictures turned out mindblowing. If not iconic, the best project you had so far. Gets to show you the best things are often improvised. Ethan, stoic as always, sat at the base of armor-clad Emperor Augustus twisting into the blue sky in a large gesture. The marble was a perfect contrast. Ethan ate a ripe pear from a tree, even that was aesthetically pleasing, then leaned against a hunting Apollo, and you also framed him from the back next to Aphrodite and Cesar. He put on his sunglasses underneath Achilles, and knelt at the feet of a Pietà replica. Marvelous panorama shots, with him the shining center. Well, we know since Queen that the drummer is the unrealistically pretty one.

The whole picture series is blowing up on your blog for the whole afternoon. „Count Dracula on a stroll in Versailles — eugh, begone sunlight!“ is what a comment neatly sums it up as. People seem to especially like the shot where Ethan playfully put his cape over Pallas Athena’s spear with a blurry Thomas having a laughing fit in the background. Well, even Count Drac gets photobombed sometimes. Your phone buzzes with notifications every other minute, you do notice it against your thigh. But the insalata of the restaurant is good and the night is young. Victoria and the manager tell old stories of Thomas snapping a guitar string while he was trying to serenade a highschool crush. Ethan scolds them for making fun of it.

Damiano gets drunk and dances on the table, the MV director discusses new ideas, some walk-in fans take pictures. The temperature is still unbearable. You order a dessert to share with Victoria and Ethan. A large tiramisu that the waiter cuts in three pieces, and it’s truly delectable. The chocolate, so crunchy, melty. The cream, fluffy and cool, making for a funny white beard that makes Ethan look like an arctic scientist returning from an expedition.

Of course, you take pictures, all the food is documented. As are late night restaurant shots with Damiano’s heels peaking into the frame when you photograph the band’s friendship bracelets, hand-made by Victoria on a tour bus last year. Damiano’s back down on the table soon, singing, while Ethan creates a beat with two forks. Thomas also agrees to take your camera for a while so you’d be in the frame for a change, too.

You pose for a group picture, or rather a group hug, and being in the middle …Ethan’s arm wraps around your shoulder loosely, hair dangling into his face, but also brushing yours. He focuses on the camera, facing away from you. The schooled eye could catch you breaking a sweat in the resulting photo. Ironically, the tiramisu doesn’t cool you down the way you thought. Thomas is too busy trying to figure out your camera dials and yelling „hey eyebrow king, smile!“ at Ethan.

A round of even more gelato goes down in spoons and spoons. The band members eat like they ran a marathon. Ethan clinches a third round because he can, unhealthy be damned, he needs some sugar and refreshment. And it’s true the MV shooting was strenuous in the heat, and had lots of intense performing parts. Even an invisible rope suspension were Thomas would descend from a ceiling during the chorus with little cherub wings attached to his back because why not. If the manager agreed to recreate this on tour some day, the pictures would be amazing.

You can’t help but think what kind of special effect would suit Ethan the most, and you come to the conclusion that a bridge lift would be the coolest thing ever. A rising part of the stage letting him emerge like an elevator from the underground. Maybe using smoke machines, too. The idea twirls around in your mind so intensely, Damiano asks if you’re wasted. You’re always getting carried away with all kinds of fantasies like that for over a week now. A dreamy photographer? Not unusual, but it’s seriously distracting you from the present moment.

The crew slowly heads home, and the band decides (translation: Victoria’s mood is) to head to the movies. Just when the waiter arrives with the bill, Damiano spills panna cotta all over Ethan by accident. So bad he’s all sticky from the shoulders down, making Ethan opt for the hotel instead. Besides, he’s been drumming his soul out, sleep is so needed now. Since the group is already gone and there’s still a forgotten cymbal left to carry back to the equipment bus by the hotel, you help Ethan maneuver it around. The heat is making either of you sweat, even with the full dark of the night coming up.

The gaffer lady you’re sharing a hotel room with is already fast asleep. Damn it. You want to cut a video and make screenshots with the laptop being decently bright. And with some volume if possible, you don’t find headphones in the darkness of the room. Ethan clears the desk in his own room for you after removing his make-up. He looks so young and beautiful and tired.

You type and drag and double click yourself through the video and do some last blog updates to deal with all the notifications. Ethan lends you some headphones, but you only keep them on one ear. The humming is too nice to ignore. Nor do you know what to even expect. The bathroom door is open, Ethan is topless washing the lace blouse by hand. Only wearing bellbottom pants and his lace choker — nothing else. He’s fully immersed in his task. He even adds some other shirts and silk scarves into the soap water along the way while he’s at it.

You’ve never seen someone do their own laundry so systematically. Ethan looks like Prince Caspian at the sink, wielding the almond soap bar like his weapon of choice against the enemies of Narnia (the devious panna cotta that’s still sticking to everything). He might be all mysterious, but he’s well able to curse all kinds of things. You tease Ethan for dropping his gentlemanly behavior for a stain of dessert. Ethan insists you sound like Thomas trying to test him with his slick comebacks, which makes you laugh. The blog has calmed down a little and your eyes hurt from editing, so you call it a day and send one last e-mail.

Ethan is drowning in bubbles at this point. The whole room smells like fabric softener. He thanks you for helping him carry around the equipment earlier. In return, you say grazie for him being your perfect muse in the garden today. Philosopher he is, Ethan remarks how Måneskin is usually the one searching for muses, now he ended up one himself — „Maybe not a bad thing, eh. Become the thing you want or something.“ That’s way too deep for a summer night in Sicily, and both of you need a huge portion of sleep. Tomorrow, lots of schedule. You do find yourself wanting to help lick that dessert off his chest. No way you’d tell him.

Ethan waddles off to shower after a crooked, reserved smile for a good night departure. When you close the door to your room and start brushing your teeth, the other members’ voices emerge in the hotel corridor — they’ve returned from the movies. Damiano is even more wasted than before and audibly sings. „You’ve looked at the photographer lady in a certain way earlier, huh. I saw, I saw!“ Victoria does a loud ‚shh‘ noise, and the stoic reply is a simple „Sleep, Damiano, you’ve had too much.“ Thomas giggles, and four doors click shut. Damiano’s singing is now muffled for two minutes until it’s silent. How the fuck can you even sleep after hearing that.

You assumed that Ethan would treat you differently the next morning, in whatever shape or form. But he doesn’t. The greeting is short as it would always be, and he informs you that he did manage to wash out the sugary clay from his clothes as he puts it. Damiano says nothing, adjusts his rings. Thomas randomly pulls zippers at his packed-up equipment. Victoria headed to the car already. Downtown to a studio it goes. The group gets styled to perfection, twenty minutes later they make a reaction video to the newly released MV teaser. Ethan talks about enjoying the sculptures in the garden.

Three hours down the line, you shoot some promotional pictures of them at a pool. Thomas has the time of his life perfecting his diving board skills, and Damiano creates the musical background, singing and prancing. The aerials would make literal perfect editorial-in-VOGUE material. In the meantime, Victoria dozes in the sun. Ethan dives. Sometimes just sitting at the bottom of the pool, othertimes swimming back and forth. The art director suggests you to go into the water, too. He’s right, the perspective works out well this way.

You’re basically standing in there with your flowy pantalon pants and camisole, using a waterproof camera. Your bikini is back at the hotel. It doesn’t matter, everything will dry quickly, the others went in the pool with clothes as well. And you’re all too wrapped up in your passion in the first place. You marvel at how fun the whole scenery looks through your lens. Their outfits are cropped and luminous, today’s color is bright red. You order the lighting assistant back and forth, get some more great Thomas frames where he tosses around a volleyball that the manager brought along. Less rock than usual, but it works. Måneskin at a pool in Sicily.

Damiano splashes water around like crazy. Victoria joins the fun as well, splashing right back. It’s infernal. Well, those are going to be dynamic pictures, you think, and the cameraman never dies, so. Ethan resurfaces every other minute, wiping the chlorine from his eyes. He slicks his hair back with both hands, looking down his body learning how his shirt has become completely transparent. He covers his chest with his hair, quickly, then submerges again. It’s strange. Being topless is usually no big deal in Måneskin.

Almost 12 o’clock. Thomas and Damiano wander off to work on some lyrics, probably the title that the drum solo is part of. All top secret. Victoria returns to her sun lounger, checking her phone. The crew heads for lunch, but you stay in the water, gladly you put sunscreen on earlier. You ask Ethan to try some seated or floating poses at the bottom of the pool that you saw him practice earlier. „No worries, keep your eyes closed.“

What unfolds before you is the most beautiful thing. Ethan’s shirt fans out like a red jellyfish underwater, playing around his body. His figure is just enviable. He gets the hang of it and knows quite how to move. Or rather, to remain stable when the pose is perfect. Hands above his head, horizontal, or seated, only one foot lightly sweeping over the pool floor, or on one knee, as if he proposed.

Raising his arms helps him sink down and settle, as if he immersed himself in deep meditation. Although the purpose of meditating is to be present, isn’t it. And that’s what he feels like. Ethan would normally switch on autopilot for most of his public interactions, now he’s alive and fully in the concentrated movements of the photoshoot. So much about improvising all over again. The hair creates the most incredible shapes like a black, wide brushstroke, clearly outlined. Thank god you have the waterproof camera. These are moments you’ll never forget.

Your blog notifications keep on bleeping throughout the afternoon. The promotional pictures are a hit. Måneskin’s manager is basically waving five new contracts in front of your face at dinner, but you’re kind of spaced out again. The cozy, rose-ranked atmosphere of the street café you went to is inspiring, and the members dressed up in the most fancy suitwear. Men in Black? Måneskin in Black. It’s almost as if fate read your mind. Ethan is looking at you very intently from across the table when the minestrone is served.

Pasta shells, parsley, vegetables and basil leaves. The scent surrounds the entire table. Damiano, in serious mode tonight, is too busy finding new rhymes and an alternative chorus with Thomas who wildly brainstorms. Victoria drinks, loudly chats with the gaffer lady that you share a room with, and they use a leaf of a palm tree pot plant to tickle Damiano. Thomas plays the acoustic guitar. Ethan and you end up smiling briefly at another. „Bon apetit,“ you say. It’s almost 34° celsius. That’s going to be an entire pile of cheesecake gelato tonight.

Five signed contracts later and halfway through a hefty caprese cake, the title song is finished. An ode to Marlena, fierce like the Mediterranean sea. The piece certainly sounds exactly like this place. Strangers listen to Damiano performing bits and pieces, but you decide to disperse when too many cellphones come out. Damiano wants to go to a bar, Thomas and Victoria carry home their guitars, or to the hotel to be exact, and bags of newly shopped vintage clothes. You ask Ethan if there are any cinemas around the area. „We missed out last time, remember.“

The Palazzo Theater is a small and hidden insider tip far from the main street with its busy beach tourists. Under bulbous metal balconies and peach-colored facades, a small entrance with lanterns on each side guides you inward. Ethan almost hits his head, it’s so low. He’s wearing glossy red bottoms under his suit pants, you’re out and about with a 6’2 giant after all — a statue by himself. A small man with a pipe sells you cheap tickets for a Mads Mikkelsen movie and lemonade, Ethan picks up an XXXL caramel popcorn bucket. You think he’s flexing, but you get a sudden heureka by looking at it twice.

Unlike the S, M, and L bags, it’s thick cardboard and drum-shaped. Oh my god, obviously. Which fine percussionist could ever resist such temptation striped in red and white, the sound deep and dull? It makes you smile how Ethan pursues his instrument even when he seemingly doesn’t, it really has to be a hobby at heart. That’s how a job becomes a profession, and a profession a vocation, your uni professor’s other favorite words all over again. The latter’s words have gotten you far so you again trust the insight that came to you through that quote.

Seeing Ethan standing there, you can almost see the childlike joy at imagining it being empty and ready to get turned around. A tuxedo Italian with Louboutin heels and a ginormous popcorn drum, half past eleven somewhere in Palermo: Ingenious combination, you snap a picture. Ethan makes a cute face, posing like a pinup of the 50s. Who knows how many vintage store posters he’s seen during tours, he must have picked it up there. And— Is he blushing? Must be the dim lights in here.

Off you go to the auditorium. Ethan, who balance the popcorn with all care in the world like it’s his baby, walks the aisle slower than you. The slim steps don’t have any floor lighting. Not very heel-friendly, but since it’s not a huge budget theater and few people dare spike heels on those cobblestones outside anyway, the stairs shall be forgiven. You take out your phone and offer your arm. For every gentleman it takes a gentlewoman, duh. Like rock’n’roll and the camera staff, chivalry (or shevalry as Damiano calls it when Vic holds the door open) never dies. He mumbles a thanks, you climb upward to the fourth-last row, Ethan holds on tight.

No ankles twisted and not one popcorn spilled, you get seated on red velvet. The chairs are dated, but nevertheless ultra comfortable. Nobody else is here. The adverts roll, Ethan cracks open the lemonade bottle caps with his chunky golden lighter because he can. You toast to Mads Mikkelsen’s bone structure and good minestrone, Måneskin’s finished title track, the promo pics, and the discovery of Ethan’s favorite new drum. A whopping five things to toast about? The night’s going to be great.

Damiano catwalking across the screen, wearing a Versace skirt in the middle of otherwise-boring commercials does shake you up. He was picked as a testimonial recently. Though, your pulse is high enough. Ethan’s hair is brushing against your shoulders, not to mention his goddamn massive arms. He can’t get out a single word either for the entirety of the ads, avoiding eye contact all over again. Just how much suspense can starting to eat the first popcorn have. Well, you pick two from the very top and start munching.

Mads does a great job opening the movie as one would expect, but you just can’t concentrate. Instead, you stress-eat popcorn. Which makes Ethan do the same thing, at least he’s somewhat fixated on the screen. After the first ten minutes, he shakes his head. „That makes no sense at all,“ he clears his throat. „Yeah, yeah it clearly doesn’t,“ you agree, basically on Torchio-autopilot yourself for the lack of a better reply. You were too busy figuring out the components of his aftershave rather than the thin plot. Shifting in your seat, chugging lemonade…

The air conditioning is scarce, but at least the screen is quite large and proper. You try to focus on the cinematography and do small talk about it. If there’s something you can comment on without having followed the string of action, it’s at least this. You might be nervous, but you’re still a photographer. „Um, isn’t this chainmail nice in the closeup?“ — „Hm, I guess it works. We should ask Damiano to request something like this from Versace.“ — „Medieval Måneskin Rockers?“ — „Something like that.“ — „Hilarious.“

By the twenty-minute mark, the popcorn drum is almost empty. Gladly, that stuff just shrinks to bits in the stomach. The lemonade just has to galvanize it. You might be able to distract yourself with the camera shots and the last caramel chunks, but that doesn’t change Ethan’s long legs and Acqua di Parma perfume next to you. Yep, you finally figured out what it was, it wasn’t the aftershave. And well. Ethan smells like hotel soap from Milano to Napoli and back.

That scent basically dominates all the others besides a hint of cigar and basil and citrus-y deodorant mixed with runny sweat. God fuck, you can barely stand it. And the almond scent. You take a chance to at least jokingly point it out to him. The random movie flashback sequence is boring — and just as nonsensical as before, no offense to Mads though, he’s just walking around in chain mail — enough to deviate from whatever choppy convo you had going on before.

„I actually washed it twice,“ Ethan pulls off the silky scarf that functions as his current tie, and you recognize it. „The strawberry sauce was hard, but the cranberries… God no, I’ll never go near pana cotta again. Nothing against cream desserts.“ You take the scarf, smell it. Did he literally just hand it to you? Figures, he’s sweating bullets, too. And oh shit, he hasn’t talked that much all evening.

You slowly shift from bodies turned to the screen to facing each other. So up close, so up front, only God can help you know. His eyes are dark and reflective of the film’s flickering lights and changing scenes. You wish you could photograph them on sight. It would be as glimmering as your view from the hotel room, overwatching the unobstructed stars of the Mediterranean bay down the boulevard.

But it’s like you’re stuck in your position this way, feverishly thinking about a reply. What to pick up on, what to pick up on. You think about today, the evening where you edited things in his room. „Uh well, drop your laundry in the pool next time,“ you laugh, more than tentative, with your fingers randomly curling around the scarf. „The chlorine stuff will do the job for you. It’s so aggressive, it bleached by pants one shade lighter.“

Saved. Smooth transaction. Phew. „Oh, the pool was horrible. Not the photos, I mean… I don’t know how you can poison water that way.“ — „I know right? It’s still in my nose. But yeah, was a good idea with the underwater thing. The photos turned out really well.“ — „I really haven’t done something like that before but I guess it turned out hm, nice?“ — „Come on! Nice is understated. Are you fishing for compliments?“ — „No no, by all means!“ — „The one kneeling. It’s my favorite. I don’t even know what to do with all these pictures.“

„I don’t know. Maybe keep them?“ — „Keep… for what?“ — „It’s a separate series, right. The art director didn’t request it. Maybe they can be used for something later on during promotions.“ — „Yeah. We’re always a little extracurricular,“ you laugh again, tense in your voice, and empty your lemonade completely. „This, too,“ Ethan points at the theatre in general. „You’re good to talk to. The better version of alone time.“ — „Thank you. You’re great to go out with. I… really like it.“ Beautiful nature scenes show on screen, but they’re nothing but a blur. You take Ethan’s hands in the dark and smile. „Maybe we should do it more often.“

masterlist | bookmark/read it on ao3

#maneskin #ethan torchio #ethan torchio x reader #maneskin fanfic #maneskin scenario #måneskin #maneskin fluff #maneskin x reader #maneskin fanfiction #ethan x reader #ethan torchio fluff #ethan torchio fanfic

293 notes · View notes

rumblelibrary · 3 years

Note

Headcanons for Laszlo plz,

Doctor!Reader was going a Institute to see Laszlo, prepare tea. Talks about how Laszlo adore these children’s in Institute. But then you felt your heartbeat that Laszlo was the sweetest and he was trying to kiss you on his office. We chuckles and hopefully get to know each other more

A Study on Feelings [Dr Laszlo Kreizler x Doctor!Reader]

Word count: 1.5k

Warnings: mention of murder and abused children

Author’s note: I hope I made a good job for your request 💕 thank you for allowing me to write it.

The case they refer to is made up and not related to the series.

You stepped out of the carriage thanking the driver, he bowed his head to you touching the tip of his hat respectfully.

The day was slowly dying, the sun was disappearing among the grey clouds of New York sky, the city trembling of life was going toward a well earned rest, but the joyful sounds coming from beyond the gates of the Kreizler’s institute were the real blessing of the day.

“Doctor Y/L/N” the familiar voice of Doctor Kreizler welcomed you as he walked outside the heavy gates “I am glad you made it to visit us” he said referring to himself and the whole Institute altogether.

You couldn’t help but smile back admitting how it was unmissable for you to do such a visit.

Words aside he caught your attention as he was without his jacket, a more easy look that, in such a time where people took hours to dress and undress, it was a proper sight.

As you got inside the sound became more clear, the children rushing one after the other while getting in their beds, the smiling faces, the happy chats.

It felt such a blessing to be able to witness such a pure joy.

“Please, pardon my attire, the kids and I were playing, right?” He asked to a child that nodded he looked down shyly, not able to cross eyes with you but clearly trusting the doctor. Laszlo noticed that reaction, but he opened his left arm in front of you to invite you to go further.

Tenderness and attention gravitated around this place, it was a calming space, but also rooted into the process of healing the kids were going through.

Something hard to explain, something that could only be felt in a place like the Kreizler Institute.

You followed Laszlo inside as he gallantly showed you the way around, room after room, hall after hall to his office.

“This place is magnificent” you murmured to him

“It is, indeed, but not just architectonically, the kids make it special” he assured as he thanked the lady at service for bringing hot water to him.

“You like brewing your own tea?” You asked him once alone.

“What does that say about me?” He joked and you shrugged lightly observing him in such a mundane situation, in his little ritual.

“That you’re very fond of control, you probably spend a lot of sleepless nights here, and you take pride of your tea selection”

He chuckled at your words replying quickly

“Sounds like somebody that I know, do you have a favourite tea?”

“I will try your favourite, if you allow me” you said pacing around the study during the whole conversation, your eyes going quietly from the chalkboard to the books open on the big table, the intense scente of wood covering the room joined with the gentle notes of the vanilla coming from the books.

The place felt relaxing and professional, serious but cozy.

“I admire your work, Doctor Kreizler” you confessed honestly as he let the tea brewing “now, I believe you called me for a very specific matter” you added as he pulled out those papers and books you were meant to see together.

You stared at him as he explained the case, word after word, his hand moving along every detail, apologising for every gruesome one, showing proofs, the ideas he had, the intuitions and troubles.

“May you go back to that last victim?” You asked as you proceeded to collect the tea and to pour it yourself as he was now more challenged to go through the topics, you saw something he didn’t and that intrigued him. He wasn’t completely blind to your presence there and, probably, he also tried this hard to impress you. He felt a bit silly, showing off like a peacock all his feathers about solving murder cases.

You smiled as the time flew by, your teas followed one after the other marking the edges of the pages and turning cold as you spoke and shared ideas. At some point you took off your jacket to be more comfortable while writing on the board adding those possible explanations to the motifs of the new killer he was investigating on.

“Doctor! Doctor!” A tiny voice called and you both turned around as a little girl rushed in, blonde hair blowing in the air already wearing her night dress as she handed the big black jacket of the doctor back to him “You forgot it”.

“Oh, thank you so much Margaret, you have been most precious, now go to bed or Mrs Morenko will get worried” he smiled at her lovingly and she nodded valiantly before rushing away.

You kept quiet as you observed her and smiled how she skipped around happily.

“She is the girl you told me about?” You asked him and he nodded closing the door after her and moving back to the table, standing beside it as he gently tapped on the wood with his fingers.

“You can’t prevent polarisation, it is harder with kids” you assured him moving by his side to interject his stare still settled on the wood under him.

“I should have seen it coming, she is getting into a place I never meant her to be. I wanted her to be freed by the need to please her family and now she substituted it with the need to please me”

“You substituted her parents in her mind, an evil man and an evil woman, you’re the sweetest of the mothers and the most protective of the fathers. You can’t blame yourself on this.”

He listened to you and you could almost see the little gears in his brain elaborate your words, his right hand abandoned on his side, hair slightly falling on his temple as he pressed his lips tightly together.

“I did her wrong being so soft on her”

He concluded closing his eyes for a moment before looking up at you realising how close you actually are.

“Do you expect me to punish you now?”

You asked back at him and that surely took him by surprise as he tried to babble what he meant and he wasn’t self pitying himself and how you probably didn’t want to listen to his children’s problems too, you were already helping too much.

“Doctor Kreizler” you interrupted that river of words “as professionals we need to understand how to treat our patients in the best way to bring them further in life and not backward. You know just as I do how if you utilised a strong and threatening attitude you would have just taught her that the way to deal with life is to submit to the more aggressive ones, which is way worse than a young ten year old having a crush on the man that taught her she can be strong, isn’t it?”

He looked at you and smiled moving his head on side with a small tilt letting your words sink in and probably glad you defined him in such a way.

“I just love these kids” he breathed out as his eyes drifted somewhere in the space “they are picked up so soon in life and set for failures and successes they never meant to have, somebody else reading through them seeing fault in desire and poverty in tenderness”

You felt you chest tighten as he spoke, his eyes now shining, his voice narrating slowly those lives and achievements. His passion and hard work showing as he guided some papers closer to play out that moment the embarrassment of having opened up to you like that.

“The truth is, Doctor Y/L/N, that we can do so little, and the best thing we can do is to teach them not to accept little from life”

You smiled at him softly “You’re right”.

He smiled back as his dark gaze dropped down on your lips and he leaned in carefully, his eyes up at you again searching for consent, you imperceptibly wet your lips as you realised he was closing the space between the two of you.

Then a familiar voice coming from outside the window calling his name.

He paused midway and you could see a soft pink take over on his cheeks and behind his ears, he murmured something moving away from you as he opened up the window letting in the cold breeze.

“Laszlo! There’s another victim! Come down! Now! She is still alive you have to speak to her!” John shouted from his carriage “Move your ass!” He added shouting again as Dr Kreizler clearly was upset by the interruption and rolled his eyes to that vulgar talk.

You chuckled slowly picking his jacket and moving behind him. He noticed you and gulped down letting you help him with it.

“I apologise, I have to go, but Dr Y/L/N, I pledge for your forgiveness”

You nodded slowly as you were thinking about it as you picked up your own jacket.

“That could be earned by giving me the permission to call you Laszlo myself”

He smiled with a light nod just admiring the way you didn’t let any embarrassment run through the two of you.

“I couldn’t in any way refuse a requests coming from you, Y/N”

You nodded to him placing your hat back on your head with a smirk

“Good, now don’t stand there, we have to go” you said as he froze halfway through the door.

“Pardon?”

“You don’t expect to introduce me to this case and make me forget about it, or about you” you said and he let out a breathy chuckle holding the door for you open before following you outside.

This was the beginning of something new.

Tags: @cazzyimagines @that-stupid-head-tilt-thing

#dr kreizler x reader #dr laszlo kreizler #dr laszlo kreizler x you #dr laszlo kreizler x reader #laszlo kreizler fanfic #laszlo kreizler fanfiction #laszlo kreizler x y/n #laszlo kreizler x you #laszlo kreizler x reader #the alienist x reader #the alienist fanfic #laszlo kreizler

141 notes · View notes

lepusrufus · 3 years

Text

To bargain for immortality pt.3

As it turns out, poison did not kill her. Not by a long shot. Not if the numerous tests with different kinds of poisons were to be believed.

Nicole was currently bent over the sink placed in the corner of Miranda's lab, her assistant hovering behind her with a timer in hand. What was it this time? Hemlock? Belladonna?

She stopped caring when a new wave of blood carrying the replaced tissue from internal damage came rising in her esophagus. With a disgusting gag, it came splashing onto the white porcelain, now stained and coated in crimson multiple times over. She coughed, trying not to let any of the burning mixture remain stagnant in her throat, and focused on the feeling of her body healing itself. It felt, for lack of a better word, like static coursing through her nerves and organs. After that too was gone, and the only thing that remained was the nauseating coppery taste in her mouth, she raised a shaky hand, too tired to speak up.

"Seven minutes, thirty four seconds," Emma announced.

Mother Miranda noted it down, fingers typing quickly over the keyboard.

It was a miracle that Nicole was still able to stand, although leaning a good part of her body weight on the sink thankfully secured to the wall did help. She took a few deep breaths, doing her best to not sound too croaky when she spoke.

"Can I see the results once we're done?"

She could keep track of everything herself of course, but it got difficult when her body was fighting toxins meant to shut it down. And she'd be lying if she said that she wasn't dying of curiosity.

"It's none of your concern," Miranda replied coldly.

That got a scowl to appear on thin blood stained lips, partially hidden by her hunched position. "I stood here quietly while you shoved pill after pill made from every poisonous plant you could get your hands on down my throat. At least grant me the grace of knowing my own body's limitations."

Her reply was little more than a tongue click. She couldn't help a scoff when Miranda simply ignored her request and told her assistant to continue with the next test on their list. Emma picked up one of the numerous pill bottles lined on her employer's desk and came over to Nicole, who unceremoniously grabbed one pill and swallowed it before looking at the label. Cyanide.

Oh for fuck's sake.

Her body's reaction was immediate, heart starting to beat painfully quick while her head started to spin. It was nauseating, the ache seeming to flood her chest and going up her spine in a searing migraine. Not to mention the deep breaths that didn't seem deep enough, as air itself seemed choking, the oxygen not quite reaching where it should. Mild panic started to settle in when black splotches began to cloud her vision and the tingling sensation seemed to battle with the pain for dominance. Before she knew it, her shaky legs gave out under her and the white ceiling of the lab blurred out of focus.

---

She woke up with a start, the bluish lights a painful glare to her eyes. The sound of ticking stopped and Nicole realized it was Emma's timer. She looked down at herself, haphazardly placed on a bed and then at Miranda, typing down a result the ringing in her ears hadn't allowed her to hear. With a few shakes of her head to try and chase the fog in her brain, Nicole finally croaked out: "What the hell happened?"

"The cyanide was damaging cells and keeping them from taking in any oxygen at a slightly faster rate than those cells were getting replaced. Which caused you to lose consciousness."

Miranda's tone was just as cold and clinical as ever, but a slight smirk tugged at her lips when she continued, the excited scientists buried under the mask of a goddess showing a crumb of itself.

"Although I'm quite certain we solved the mystery behind the accelerated heart rate. All previous tests show that it takes no longer than a few minutes to recover, while this took over twenty five."

Nicole was still fighting some mild dizziness, but she put all the focus on Miranda's words.

"We'll have to rerun the tests under anesthesia, but for now it's safe to assume the healing slows down while unconscious."

She acknowledged the theory with an oh. She wasn't really capable of much conversation at the moment, but she let the thought be metaphorically chewed in her brain. That made sense. If healing was slower after passing out, then her body had a damn good reason to keep her awake, hence the unnaturally high heart rate.

A slow shuddring sigh was let out when Miranda asked her assistant to prepare the anesthetic, laying back down. At least she wouldn't be awake for this one.

It took around double the normal dose to finally get her unconscious. She kept her eyes glued to the needle embedded in her arm until her vision was starting to fail her, the surrounding room becoming nothing more than dark blurs and vague beeping sounds.

People do not dream under anesthesia.

Nicole knew that of course. But as the lab blurred into odd shapes and more or less familiar places, there wasn't really a better word to describe it. Perhaps a result, she would later muse, of her overactive brain, fighting for consciousness at any given moment as it now had an instinctual need to stay awake.

That need manifested itself in the vague image of one of the castle's hallways. It was in an old wing, not frequently used by many other than the cleaning staff. She was walking along the wall, using it to compensate for her wobbly legs, and looked around for something. What exactly, was beyond her comprehension at the moment, but that didn't stop her from stumbling inside each room on her path, looking around the bright and beautifully decorated space, only to exit and continue down the hallway.

Something. Something ugh.

Nicole tried not to lean on the wall too much when she got to the golden frame of a painting, not wanting to risk damaging it. Slowly walking around, she threw a glance at the canvas when she was fully in front of it. She frowned.

It was the familiar portrait of all three sisters, dressed in period appropriate clothing and hair up into small curls. Their eyes, painted in such a way that they seemed to follow any onlookers around, greeted her with soft expressions. Some details seemed different though. They were small, and it took a bit of effort to notice how the brushstrokes seemed to have shifted ever so slightly in places. A familiar rose tattoo was present, albeit quite faint, on each of their foreheads, and their features seemed a little less soft and more akin to how Alcina would paint them. Nicole stopped to look at Cassandra's hand for a little longer, as if something was supposed to have changed there too. But before she had time to dwell on that, the realization that the painting should not be there dawned on her. Why would Alcina move it? And to a near abandoned wing of the castle no less. If she remembered correctly, that portrait had been at the main entrance for decades.

Nevermind that, she could just ask Alcina herself if they crossed paths. She kept walking down the hallway, trying to ignore the nagging feeling at the back of her mind that something was off. Off, like the slightly misplaced furniture, or the lack of certain decorations, or antique objects that she knew for a fact were on display on a completely different wing. No, Nicole kept looking through every room she came across, in search of something her foggy mind couldn't quite grasp the memory of.

She finally reached one of the more populated areas, and although still not fully able to grasp her surroundings and walk around without any support, a shiver still ran down her spine. The off-putting feeling turned to dread with the realization that she was completely alone. No maid or other staff member has crossed paths with her in what felt like an eternity. No sound could be heard aside from her own breathing and a faint beeping coming from outside. At that moment, Nicole longed for the sound of giggling or the shuffling of a broom, hell even the sound of lycans howling outside. Anything.

By that point, shuffling against the wall felt more of a psychological need than a physical one. There was a fear that accompanied anyone when you found yourself in a place that seemed so unlike its normal self, and Nicole tried to make herself smaller than she already was in the eventuality that something would pounce out from the silence and tear her to shreds.

She found herself traversing another corridor littered with numerous doors to guest bedrooms or simply storage rooms. Each was opened one by one, whatever laid behind it inspected, and then shut again. Rinse and repeat. Repeat until Nicole found herself in front of an oddly familiar door. It had nothing special, the crest and color exactly the same as the ones she had left behind, but its position seemed to tug at her memories.

The door was pushed open, a slight creak accompanying the movement, and Nicole found herself in a well lit office. It was obviously a rarely used one, the shelves only holding a small number of oddly organized files and boxes, while the chair was tucked under a large desk. The plush carpet underfoot caught her attention, beautiful black, white and golden motifs waved around each other in an intricate pattern. She walked across it, up to the desk and crouched down to run her fingers on the old worn wood of small drawers. The iron handles used to open them seemed to be gone from all but the topmost one, which she opened slowly.

Oh.

The drawer was empty save for two familiar objects, a pair of matching rings with minuscule branches in flower engraved on them. She picked them both up but almost dropped them back when a set of hurried footsteps sliced through the dead silence just outside the room.

There was no time to scramble for a hiding spot, especially not with how her head started to spin the moment she stood up again. All she could do was put the hand that wasn't holding the rings on the desk to support herself and watch as the door swung open.

A sigh of relief flew past cracked lips at the sight of confused golden eyes framed by dark locks of hair. Cassandra was standing at the entrance, head cocked slightly to the side.

"Did you lose it again?"

There was a hint of annoyance in her tone, but it was mostly drowned out by an amused chuckle as she walked up to her.

"No, I-..." Did I? "I'm sorry."

Cassandra simply took one of the bands and wordlessly slid it on Nicole's ring finger, gesture that was imitated in turn.

"Why are they here?" Nicole's question was barely a whisper, either due to the dizziness she felt or the cemetery-like silence that almost demanded not to be disturbed. "I know I instructed the staff to bring mine to my room if they find it."

"Oh it wasn't any of the staff members," Cassandra replied matter of factly, even waving a hand to dismiss the apparently absurd idea.

"Then who?"

"I don't know."

Nicole frowned. She pinched the bridge of her nose trying to chase away the eerie feeling that seemed to have made its roots deep inside her mind. Cassandra's voice seemed off, and that beeping from earlier seemed to close in ever so slightly.

"Why here?" She repeated.

Her wife only shrugged and looked around the room, taking her time with the reply.

"Isn't this where we first saw each other?"

Right. That's why the office was so familiar. The memory of Lady Dimitrescu, so beyond intimidating at the time, sitting in the chair and interviewing her for a maid's position came flooding her foggy brain. Then the giggles and the rather dramatic entry and the small bickering.

"Are you waking up?"

If Cassandra wasn't so close to her, she would've thought a third person had spoken. Her wife's voice seemed off before, but now it didn't even sound like her own. Familiar, yes, but the regal icy tone belonged to someone else.

Nicole tried to instinctively put some space between them, only for Cassandra's expression to twist with concern, furrowed brows over soft golden, always so uncharacteristically soft when pointed at her. Cassandra opened her mouth to speak again, but the beeping came in louder, almost as if making its way from her throat with the sole purpose of attempting to bust her eardrums.

The room seemed to rapidly bleed out of focus, details replaced by black dots and blurry lines. Cassandra's shape slowly morphed, her beautiful black dress leaving way to a plain lab coat and golden eyes turning into icy green, ever calculating and scrutinizing. Incessant beeps from the cardiac monitor brought her back to consciousness more rudely than she would've liked.

Nicole shook her head slightly, trying to chase away the last effects of anesthesia. Her body seemed eager to oblige, quickly trying to wake up and be back on her feet. Not that she had any intention of actually getting up, but soon enough, she was looking around the space and all the pristine equipment held within. Emma was busy arranging vials and pill bottles inside a cabinet while Miranda was by the bed typing away, nails annoyingly loud on the keyboard. She shook her head once again, and looked to the opposite wall, where a clock was ticking. It was almost 11 p.m. and Nicole let out a soft groan thinking about how she'd been under anesthesia for about three hours and how her family was probably waiting for her to get back.

She laid her head on the uncomfortable pillow while waiting for the goddess wannabe to be done with her observations on her current lab rat, which meant Nicole, and finally dismiss her.

It took a moment to realize that Miranda had turned towards her and pushed her laptop close to the side of the desk, screen facing Nicole. After receiving a confused look, the woman rolled her eyes as if she were a teacher explaining basic maths for the hundredth time.

"You wanted to see the results."

Nicole's confused expression did not change, though now it was more directed towards the suspicious willingness to give what she asked for. Nonetheless she scooted to the side of the bed, letting her legs dangle over the edge, and she narrowed her eyes at the file on the screen.

---

Date: 23rd April 2012

Subject: Nicole [REDACTED] Dimitrescu

Mutation experiments - 2 (Regeneration - 2)

Resistance and healing time to various poisonous plants (in the form of highly concentrated pills or injectable) and other toxins. First number refers to the healing time while conscious and the second while unconscious.

Belladonna (Atropa belladonna) - 2'13" // 6'30"

Rosary pea (Abrus precatorius) - 2'20" // 7'02"

Crowbane (Cicuta virosa) - 2'40" // 7'12"

Wolfsbane (Aconitum lycoctonum) - 3'30" // 8'11"

Hemlock (Conium maculatum) - 3'18" // 8'28"

Oleander (Nerium oleander) - 3'55" // 10'17"

Ricin (Ricinus communis) - 5'58" // 16'19"

Arsenic, 100mg - 7'34" // 21'38"

Cyanide, 50mg - / // 26'53"

#unhinged maiden™ my beloved #cassandra dimitrescu x maiden #mother miranda #fanfic #to bargain for immortality #whacky dream be whacky #tw torture

81 notes · View notes

dashedwithromance · 3 years

Text

what am i supposed to do (when there’s no you?)

kotc comes out next week!! i can’t believe it’s nearly here, and we get to see wrath and emilia again!! i haven’t written anything other than star wars for a while, but i hope this is okay. love you all xx

---

Her reflection stared back at her, haunting eyes locked on with a frightened gaze. The mirror, her enemy. Strangely enough, not even the demon princes that stalked the wicked kingdom she found herself ruler of scared her quite as much as the mirror in her bathing chamber. Or the hand-held in the drawer of her bedside table. Or the impressive, gold-gilded monstrosity on her vanity.

She couldn’t bear to look at any of them.

Queen of Hell, and terrified of reflecting glass.

Her reflection haunted her more than any ghost, the flash of dark curls paired with a laugh she heard every day and would never hear again. The quirk of a smile that ached desperately, painted on her face like a mockery of the joy it once embodied.

Appearances were everything in the kingdom of the Wicked, but she couldn’t stand to see her own. It was a weakness she kept close to her heart, trapped inside with the abhorrent overflow of memories she treasured and banished with equal fervour.

Emilia stifled a groan and clenched her hands into fists. Her nails dug into her palms with a biting fury. She’d locked herself inside the first room she’d found, having sprinted from the main hall before she could realise how stupid her plan was. ‘Plan’ was a generous name, considering it consisted of one part panicked feeling, one part grief, and one very violent part of her that was growing scarily close to ‘accidentally’ committing mariticide.

It was the cherries that had set her off. They weren’t even real – fresh fruit was not a luxury one could indulge in Hell, nor would she have wanted to. She remembered stories of fallen maidens taking one bite of fruit from the hand of a prince and being confined to the underworld forever. Despite being queen, it was not a chance she was willing to take.

The cherries in question were metallic, made of gold and silver entwined around a candelabra. They seemed to glow in the low light, taunting her, reminding her of summers spent laughing with her twin, cherry-stained hands and salt-crusted hair. She’d taken one look at them, remembered what day it was, and burst from the room like a frightened bird. Not her best look, if she were truthful.

Memories weighed down on her chest like the pressing stones of witch trials past. More weight, she wanted to say. Take it off, let me breathe, she wanted to cry. Nothing helped.

Grief ebbed and flowed, but today it swelled like a rising tide. Suffocating her, pushing her under, dragging her down by the neck and laughing as she gasped and spluttered.

They’d never spent a birthday apart. It was unthinkable – it was always their birthday, their celebration, their matching celebration dresses. They’d grown out of matching outfits when they’d reached twelve, but the shared celebration never died.

Until Vittoria did.

Emilia closed her eyes, and the memories took firm hold.

Cherry stains dripped down their chins and fingers, sticky and sweet and full of the taste of home. Every summer they would eat themselves silly with the deep red stone fruit, egging each other on until the nearest adult intervened. For their seventh birthday, Emilia had dropped a bleeding cherry on Vittoria’s pretty dress, and her twin had mushed a handful against the fabric of her matching skirt. Emilia had shrieked, and Vittoria had laughed until her sister followed suit with a smile she couldn’t contain.

A shriek of laughter pierced the late summer calm, its twin following half a second later. Two girls ran towards the sea, one leading the other by the hand. The bolder twin threw herself into the water with a wild grin and gestured for her sister to follow. Another half-second wait and the dark-haired girl flung herself into the sea with a peal of laughter.

That was the way things always were with her and Vittoria. Never apart for too long, until the cruel hand of death swooped in and plucked her sister from her grasp.

Something twinged in her chest. As if a part of her was missing, had been since the day she’d found her sister’s ruined body. Her first reaction, to everything really, had been anger – wrath, she thought with a stain of painful irony – but when the anger ebbed away, she was left with ocean darkened with the taint of things that would never be. She would never see her sister again, never spend hours together in the kitchen, laughing and teasing each other over the boys in the village. No one would ever understand her the way Vittoria did, no matter if she lived forever.

The curse of her grief was that she could never forget her sister’s face. She would know exactly how her sister would age, would know exactly when grey would frame her face, when laugh lines would appear. Mirrors were a cruel taunt; a living eulogy.

Looking up from the floor, staring past the haze of panic, she locked eyes with her twin. Her own wretched gaze stared back at her, tears welling in Vittoria’s eyes.

She looked away. She could bear it no longer.

The room she found herself in was ornately decorated; black silk with gilded gold, a serpent motif around the bed frame. The room felt familiar, and she desperately hoped she was wrong.

Snatching the luxuriously soft blanket from a nearby chair, she covered the mirror that sat on the vanity. The room, somehow, felt colder. Emptier.

Then, like a curse on her name, footsteps echoed from the hallway outside and stopped right before the door.

Drawing herself up, forcing all mention of weakness to leave her frame, she glared at the figure who strode right in.

Prince Wrath stood in the doorway, the gold detailing of his suit winking in the dim light. Emilia eyed up the ornamental vase on the table beside her and strongly considered throwing it at his head. For a moment, the world was consumed by silence.

Then, the smug bastard opened his mouth and broke it.

“Running away from your own party?”

She was going to throw the fucking vase right over his stupid face. He could tell every violent thought that raced through her mind – she just knew he could, the way his perfect lips quirked up ever so infuriatingly to one side – until he stopped. Looked at her. Looked to the mirror on his vanity, covered up by a stolen blanket. Looked back.

The smug look disappeared.

The room became ice. She felt naked standing there, his gaze seeing into the very marrow of her bones. Just when the tension became unbearable, she spun around, unable to look at him any longer. She couldn’t look at him any more than she could look at her own wretched reflection. Hellfire licked at her eyelids, stinging and hot.

What did he see when he looked at her, in that moment? She hoped it was queen-like, the picture of savage grace and hellish composure. It wasn’t.

“Emilia...” For the first time in, well, ever, Wrath struggled for words.

“Emilia, I’m sorry.”

The shock of his apology had her whirling around. His golden eyes held more sympathy than any demon should ever have known. Of all the demons in Hell to realise what today meant, of course, it would be Wrath. Insufferable, infuriating, ineffable Wrath, possibly the only person in the underground kingdom who understood her. Not like Vittoria did – no one would ever come close – but like a river understood the rushing tide.

He was a mystery, but also the only thing she knew. Wrapped up in a cloud of perfumed falsities, but the only one who told her the truth.

Her heart pounded in her chest. Could he hear it?

“I have never lost a brother, not like that. Nor am I as close to mine as you were to your sister.” The words were stilted, heavy and awkward. Wrath was not a man of words, but his tone was gentle. But, she noted with no small portion of surprise, the speech was genuine. She thought perhaps she was going mad.

“I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a twin,” He paused, considering, “I’m sorry, for your loss.”

Another pause.

“And I’m sorry for the role my family – the role I – have played in your grief.”

Somewhere in his speech, she’d closed her eyes. She didn’t want him to see the tears, but he knew that. The heaviness of her chest was still present, but it was bearable, somehow.

She nodded, swallowing the cry that threatened to burst forward.

“Thank you,” She whispered, so quiet she wondered if he’d even heard.

The air between them was taut, stretched and thin. The strength she’d hid behind all day had fled long ago, and she felt so exhausted she might collapse. She didn’t think to consider the implications by sitting down on his stupidly large bed, only that her chest hurt and for just a moment, she wanted a friend.

Hesitantly – if a demon prince could hesitate – Wrath sat next to her on the bed. The sight is so comical she nearly laughed – Wrath, the brother of her husband, prince of the most dangerous sin, her friend, her enemy – perched on the side of his bed with an air of respectability she didn’t think he even possessed. Stranger things had happened, she supposed.

It was like a fable; demon and witch, sat side by side in silence. For hours, they barely spoke. The words didn’t matter – Wrath was terrible with them, and the ones she wanted got stuck in her throat. Neither of them noticed when midnight passed, and the worst day of the year was over.

Perhaps one day, she’d tell him stories of Vittoria. Tell him stories of cherries and salt air and limitless laughter, so he would know her as the bright, brilliant girl she was, and not the martyred corpse she’d become.

The next day, all the mirrors in her chambers were covered. There was no note, but there was a familiar vase full of orange blossom flowers on her bedside table.

---

let me know if you want to be added to my kotc tag list!!

tags: @shadowturtlesstuff @otome-azarada @chococannolii @beccalovesbooksstuff @duchess-of-nothing-and-nowhere @caseyannblog @constantwriter85 @fleawithadegree @athousandsilversuns @emiliadicarlos @silversublime @watch-the-pen @sleeping-and-books @demirunner @elephantinparis @lightningboytytonjesper @fangirlingdweeb @fuzzypineapples-blog @fatimafares123 @junipersuns @67impalagirl13 @booksandbeans @irishcreature @missnienna @canthandlechoices @booksandbeans

#kingdom of the wicked #kingdom of the cursed #prince wrath #vittoria di carlo #princewitch #my writing #yall i hope this is okay ive been consumed by space wizards for months #this is my personal headcanon and probably wrong but i think wrath is absolutely terrible with words #like he can fool people with a phrase if he wants and wrap them up in silver lies and half-truths #but when talking genuinely? without a film of disguise? trying to actually communicate his feelings??#boy is shit at it. every single time. terrible without fail #but! he tries

28 notes · View notes

jokertrap-ran · 3 years

Photo

(光与夜之恋 Light and Night) Main Story Chapter 3-16: 海水与火焰 Seawater & Flames Translation

“From now on, all you have to do is to answer my questions.”

*Light and Night Master-list *Spoiler free: Translations will remain under cut *Join the Light & Night Discord (＾▽＾)~ ♪ *Main story tag will be #For Light and Night

The air was heavily permeated with the acrid smell of food that had long since turned bad.

Hemp rope, capsules, and many pieces of orange-coloured origami paper littered the ground by my feet.

MC: This is…

Every piece of origami paper that laid scattered on the ground had fold marks, some of it was even complete, folded into the shape of a butterfly.

Origami butterflies, the security guard, racing… The image of a young woman entered my mind.

Osborn: The sound we heard earlier came from over there.

I looked towards a corner of the room. There was a row of tall shelves, blocking the view of the people who were hidden behind. Light shone forth from behind the shelves, casting shadows.

I heard the hiss of tape, along with the sound of heavy and ragged breathing. The person being restrained sounded like they were in great pain.

??: I don't have the time to be playing games with you!

Osborn exchanged a glance with me. Understanding passed between us as we both silently approached the other end.

Through the gaps between the shelves, I could see the same who'd assaulted me back then. He was using hemp rope to tie a woman down on a chair.

The woman cried out, struggling vehemently against her binds. So much, that it enraged the man who then kicked her chair, making it topple right over!

MC: !

I caught sight of a familiar face the moment the chair fell onto the ground.

Lin Yao's agent!?

I felt an iciness creep up my heart. I pulled at Osborn to nab his attention and lowered my voice into a whisper.

MC: I recognize the person who's being bound to the chair. She's the mother and agent of the star, Lin Yao.

The light in Osborn's eyes dimmed a tad before he made a shushing motion.

Man: You should have thought about your fate when you locked her up in the attic back then, abusing her every day.

Man: Hurry and sign that agreement contract! ...Do you hear me!? Otherwise… Otherwise, I will make you disappear; forever!

The bound agent could only vehemently nod in response, gripping onto the pen that had been shoved into her hand and signing the contract with much difficulty.

After a period of silence, the man laughed; a laugh so solemn and tragic.

Man: This is how it should be. Her contact has been dissolved; she's finally free…

Did he kidnap the agent just to dissolve Lin Yao's contract? To grant her freedom? But I didn't interact much with her… So, why would he have attacked me?

Before I could wrap my head around it, I suddenly saw the gleam of a sharp and deadly blade flash in his hand…

Not good!

The shelf we'd been hiding behind was knocked over by a well-timed kick as Osborn threw a couple of fallen debris his way with startling speed and accuracy.

Clatter!

The small knife fell onto the ground.

The man angrily got up and turned around to see just who was behind him… Only to be surrounded and trapped by blue fire!

He wailed in pain, falling to the ground. However, his eyes remained fixated to where the contract had fluttered to a rest. He reached out to the piece of paper, grabbing ahold of it.

Was he laughing; or was he crying? I don't know. His shaky hand reached out, picking the contract up and carefully safekeeping it in his inner breast pocket.

The agent twisted, making muffled cries for help. Her once prideful and haughty face was now marred with a multitude of wounds.

I stepped up and tore the tape that sealed her mouth off.

Agent: H-Help me!

Agent: He's a madman!

Agent: You're police, right? Hurry and arrest him and get me out of here!

Agent: That madman caught me yesterday, insisting that I sign a contract to dissolve my contract with Yao'yao.

Agent: Quick! Get me the contract so that I can rip it apart!

Man: Give it a rest! Over my dead body! I won't let you control her again.

Agent: Stop daydreaming! I'm Lin Yao's mother. She WILL listen to whatever I say.

Man: You are not worthy.

Hearing the agent’s words, the man suddenly got even more agitated. His face was pinched in a pained look.

Man: Just what do you see her as? A money tree!? I should have stopped her from going with you at the orphanage back then!

Man: She was so elated when she went off with you back then, thinking that she'd finally have a family…

Agent: Back then? Are you from the orphanage too? You're a kid from that place!

Man: That's not all. I almost got adopted by you, mom.

The fragments finally pieced themselves together in my mind, forming the full picture.

Lin Yao was a child whom the agent had adopted from the orphanage, and she knew this man since childhood. Hence, Lin Yao’s friend who liked racing should be none other than him.

But for some reason or another, this was also the same man who’d vanished for a long time. After his return, he learnt that Lin Yao was being harshly treated and coerced against her will by the agent. So, he kidnapped her and coerced her to sign a termination agreement instead.

The agent instantly shot up from her spot, seemingly wanting to retort back about something. However, her body swayed twice before she fainted, collapsing onto the ground.

Osborn picked up the small discarded knife that had fallen onto the ground, holding it up and pressing it to the man’s neck.

❖☆———————————★❖

Osborn: From now on, all you have to do is to answer my questions.

Man: This has nothing to do with you, Osborn!

Osborn: Cut the crap.

Osborn: The attacks that have been happening recently. Were they all your doing?

Man: ...Yes.

After a moment of silence, Osborn took out a bracelet from his pocket…

It was the very same nameplate bracelet with the two-headed snake motif that I'd seen that day on the roof.

Osborn: This must be yours then, isn't it?

Man: My bracelet! Why do you have it!? You did THIS to me!!

Osborn: Don't move. Explain yourself.

Osborn: What purpose does this device serve?

Man: To stop us from going berserk.

Osborn turned the bracelet, angling it and pointing to the back.

Osborn: HCP18407. What is it?

Man: That's my name.

Osborn: You said "us" earlier. Who's "us"?

❖☆———————————★❖

The man seemed like he'd wanted to grin so wide that a smile split his face.

However, his skin was so bone-dry that it was clinging tightly to the bones with no give at all. It made moving a struggle for him, and the only thing that still retained its mobility was his eyes.

He laughed. Then, he shrugged his shoulders and started to whine pathetically.

Man: I don't know.

Man: We were kept captive; our names and existences erased. Everyone was given a number.

Man: Hearing, taste, touch… We were all slowly deprived of all senses

Man: In the end, we turned into beasts that had to rely on blood to survive.

He stared at the floor in a daze, his voice growing increasingly muffled.

Man: I witnessed my best bud turn into nothing but an empty shell with my own eyes. And the experiment failed on me, so I was discarded as if I was nothing but trash.

Man: I went through so much just to escape before I got annihilated. Ask just so that I could see Yao'yao!

Man: But without the daily supplement they gave, along with the bracelet's inhibition, I deteriorated by the day.

Man: When night falls, I can't stop myself from assaulting others…

Osborn: Night? But you assaulted her in broad daylight.

Osborn raised a finger and pointed back to me.

Man: I don't know. I suddenly smelt the strong scent of blood. Just like this smell now.

He raised his head to look at me with desire written all over his face. It looked as if he was positively ready to jump me the next second. Then, he struggled with himself, clutching at his neck and forcing himself to retreat a couple of steps.

Man: Her blood is potent and terribly enticing. It makes me lose my rationality. And I'd already attacked her by the time I came back to myself!

Man: I know that this is a crime, but I HAVE to survive.

Osborn fell silent for a long while before he spoke up once more.

Osborn: Who locked you guys up?

Man: I don't know… We're the basest of existence, so we're not allowed to know anything.

Man: I only know that those keeping us locked up were all people of the Blood Tribe.

Osborn: Did you see a man in his forties of medium build in that place? His glasses should have had the same motif that was on the nameplate bracelet.

The man instantly shook his head.

Man: There were only orphans there. All around the same age as me. I never saw anyone over the age of 30.

Knock… Knock…

A strange sound came from the glass windows.

Turning around, I saw a purplite bird knocking on the glass with its sharp beak.

Osborn froze, his expression instantly turned severe; something that I'd never seen on him. He released the man's collar, vehemently whipping around and tackling me.

Osborn: Get down!

CRASH!

The windows shattered, causing shards of glass to splinter in all directions!

A flock of purplite birds flew in front of the open window, swarming and attacking us all.

Osborn shielded me firmly beneath his body, unleashing his fire and making it form a barrier in front of us.

❖☆———————————★❖

The flapping of wings, the sound of impact being made; the shrill cries of the birds filled the dark room.

It was eerie enough to make one's hair stand on end.

The situation had taken a turn for the unexpected. There were sounds of footsteps coming from all directions. The shreds of orange origami paper fluttered in the air, like the broken wings of a butterfly, obscuring our vision.

After a good long while, the cacophony dissolved, and the man from earlier was nowhere to be seen. There wasn't even a single trace of him ever being there.

MC: Osborn, he…

Osborn: Let's get back out first.

I nodded and carried the agent, who'd lost consciousness, together with him, running out the door.

❖☆———————————★❖

I was momentarily blinded by the light when we got outside.

The abandoned building before me seemed so foreign and out of place, as if it were from a completely different world.

I couldn't help but look back at Osborn. He was holding tightly onto a watch, his gaze fixated on the two-headed snake motif on the centre of the clock face.

It was then that I finally understood; That the reason why he was looking for the bracelet up on the roof, and why he asked me what the meaning of this motif was outside the museum that day, had everything to do with that watch he held in his grasp.

And, he'd asked about someone earlier, as if he was trying to locate them.

I wanted to offer him words of comfort, but my attention was called away by the sudden shout. I turned towards the sound.

A plump man was waving his hand, running towards us.

??: Hey bro. I came here as soon as I got your message. What's up?

Osborn had already put away his watch. He glanced at me.

Osborn: He's Wen Wan. He'll send you home.

MC: What about you? Aren't you coming with us?

Osborn: There are still some things I have to clear up here.

MC: ...Are you going back to look for him?

Osborn: You've forgotten what I told you again.

Osborn: The more secrets you know, the more likely you are to-

His lips quirked up into an arc as he quietly averted his gaze elsewhere.

MC: Fine, be that way then… Stay safe.

Osborn: This is a walk in a park.

Osborn: You're that worried about me?

MC: I don't think things are as simple as it seems, and I'm worried that other dangers are lying in wait…

Osborn: Only because you have yet to realize just how dangerous I am.

He suddenly leaned down, opening my palm and depositing a handful of candy before he turned to leave, as free and easy as ever.

Osborn: She's all yours now.

I watched his gradually disappearing silhouette in the distance, tightening my hold on the bunch of lemon candy that he'd dropped off.

❖☆————— ⊹ For Light & Night⊹ —————★❖

Previous Part: (Chapter 3-14) | Next Part: (Chapter 3-19 Light) / (Chapter 3-19 Night)

#光与夜之恋 #Light and Night #Otome #Translations #Tencent #萧逸 #Osborn #齐司礼 #Sariel #陆沉 #Evan #查理苏 #Charlie #夏鸣星 #Jesse #For Light and Night

22 notes · View notes

novaiya · 3 years

Text

Birthday Girl - Micah x Reader

Summary: Under the moonlight, hidden from the prying eyes by the forest trees, Micah gives you your birthday gift. What is it?

Words: 933

Warnings: None.

Although today was your birthday, it felt like any other day; you drank the morning coffee among the ladies, did your daily chores, and hunted a deer for Pearson.

Being that today was your birthday, Miss Grimshaw let you take the rest of the day off. You couldn’t contain your happiness and leaped at the woman, engulfing her in a hug.

“Okay there, dear,” she said as she patted your back. “But tomorrow you’re right back to work, no slacking.”

You decided to spend the rest of the day doing the things that you haven’t had the time for in a while. You drew a little in your journal, took a nap in the shade by the trees and even practiced playing guitar, something you haven’t done in a while.

By the time the night rolled around, there was festivity in the air. Sean and Bill brought a few boxes of whiskey and beer, and Dutch announced that the night was to be spent in celebration of you. Javier brought out his guitar, and everyone fell into song after song, their voices echoing through the bushy woods. Drinks flew freely, and the spirits were high. Even Dutch and Molly joined for one of the songs.

After a while, you went for a walk through the woods. You loved the atmosphere, but you felt the need to recharge for a moment before going back. You could still faintly hear Uncle’s voice singing “Ring-Dang-Do” but it mostly gave away to the sound of birds singing on the trees, and the wind howling.

“Missing the party?”

You turned around trying to see who was talking. After looking around, you saw Micah, leaning against a tree, light from the moon the only thing illuminating his features.

“Could ask you the same thing.”

“Crowds are not really my thing,” he said from the brim of his hat.

“Likewise,” you said, coming closer and standing next to him, looking out into the distance. “I enjoy the festivities once in a while, just not for a prolonged period of time.”

Micah hummed at your answer, before silence fell over the two of you. If it was anyone else, the silence might’ve been awkward, but you didn’t feel so when it was with Micah. There was something about this man that didn’t make you feel like you needed to fill each and every silent moment. With him, you could be quiet, let the air between the two of you do the talking.

“I, uh, got something for you,” he said as he shuffled a bit, taking something out of his pocket.

You cocked your head at him, trying to see what he was doing.

“Here,” he said, as he handed you a knife.

You took the knife from his hand, examining it under the moonlight. The silver blade shined brightly in the darkness, so bright you could see your own reflection in it. Along the blade, you saw an engraving. It was a mix of patterns and spiral motifs, some resembling flowers and leaves and others simply winding around.

You couldn’t contain a huge smile on your face as you looked over the knife, studying it from every corner, as much as the moon light allowed.

“Don’t get mushy about it,” Micah said. “I just had it laying around and thought it might be of more use to you.”

You knew he was lying. Being that you handled everyone’s laundry and cleaned everyone’s weapons, Micah’s included, you knew what he did and didn’t have, and he didn’t have this knife before.

“Whatever you say, Micah,” you said, putting the knife away in one of your holsters. “Thank you, really.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get used to it.”

His breath caught in his throat when he felt your hand on his check, turning his face to you. You waited a second, giving him an opportunity to push you away. When he didn’t, you moved closer, pressing your lips against his. The kiss was slow, sensual, something that you never imagined you’d share with Micah, who was anything but slow and sensual. His hands found your hips, pushing you against the tree that he was leaning not a moment ago. You pushed his hat off of his head, waving your fingers through his hair and bringing him closer.

You could feel his facial hair tickling your skin. You didn’t mind, all your attention was on the kiss and nothing else. Everything faded into the background noise; the sound of the guitar, Sean and Uncle’s voices singing yet another song, the sound of bottles clacking. All of it disappeared as you melted into the kiss, your lips moving against his, your hands in his hair.

When the need for air became stronger than the need for Micah, you broke away, panting slightly. Micah’s face was flushed a little, and his lips were wet with your combined spit. You figured you were in the same state.

Gradually, your senses were returning, and you once again became aware of the party that was happening in your honor. You should probably go back before people went looking for you, you thought.

You slid your hand down from Micah’s hair and to his cheek, running soft circles with your thumb.

“Go back with me,” you said, motioning with your head toward the party in the distance.

Micah looked at where the celebration was happening. As he said previously, he wasn’t a fan of big gatherings, but if it meant so much to you, maybe he could stomach it for a few hours.

“Whatever you want, birthday girl.”

#micah bell #micah bell x reader #red dead redemption #red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 #rdr2 imagines #rdr2 fanfics #rdr2 fanfiction #red dead redemption fanfiction #red dead redemption 2 fanfiction #red dead redemption imagines #micah bell imagine

135 notes · View notes

bananaofswifts · 3 years

Link

Taylor Swift appears to be waging war over the serial resale of her old master recordings on two fronts. She recently confirmed that she is already underway in the process of re-recording the six albums she made for the Big Machine label, in order to steer her fans (and sync licensing execs) toward the coming alternate versions she’ll control. But now that she’s followed the surprise release of “Folklore” with the very, very surprise release of “Evermore” less than five months later, the thought may occur: If she keeps up this pace, she may have more new albums out on the Republic label than she ever did on Big Machine in a quarter of the time. Flooding the zone to further crowd out the oldies is unlikely to be Swift’s real motivation for giving the world a full-blown “Folklore” sequel this instantaneously: As motivations for prolific activity go, relieving and sublimating quarantine pressure is probably even better than revenge. Anyway, this is not a gift horse to be looked in the mouth. “Evermore,” like its mid-pandemic predecessor, feels like something that’s been labored over — in the best possible way — for years, not something that was written and recorded beginning in August, with the bow said to be put on it only about a week ago. Albums don’t get graded on a curve for how hastily they came together, or shouldn’t be, but this one doesn’t need the handicap. It’d be a jewel even if it’d been in progress forevermore and a day.The closest analog for the relation the new album bears to its predecessor might be one that’d seem ancient to much of Swift’s audience: U2 following “Achtung Baby” with “Zooropa” while still touring behind the previous album. It’s hard to remember now that a whole year and a half separated those two related projects; In that very different era, it seemed like a ridiculously fast follow-up. But the real comparison lies in how U2, having been rewarded for making a pretty gutsy change of pace with “Achtung,” seemed to say: You’re okay with a little experimentation? Let’s see how you like it when we really boil things down to our least commercial impulses, then — while we’ve still got you in the mood.Swift isn’t going avant-garde with “Evermore.” If anything, she’s just stripping things down to even more of an acoustic core, so that the new album often sounds like the folk record that the title of the previous one promised — albeit with nearly subliminal layers of Mellotrons, flutes, French horns and cellos that are so well embedded beneath the profuse finger-picking, you probably won’t notice them till you scour the credits. But it’s taking the risk of “Folklore” one step further by not even offering such an obvious banger (irony intended) as “Cardigan.” Aaron Dessner of the National produced or co-produced about two-thirds of the last record, but he’s on 14 out of 15 tracks here (Jack Antonoff gets the remaining spot), and so the new album is even more all of a piece with his arpeggiated chamber-pop impulses, Warmth amid iciness is a recurring lyrical motif here, and kind of a musical one, too, as Swift’s still increasingly agile vocal acting breathes heat into arrangements that might otherwise seem pretty controlled. At one point Swift sings, “Hey, December, I’m feeling unmoored,” like a woman who might even know she’s going to put her album out a couple of weeks before Christmas. It’s a wintry record — suitable for double-cardigan wearing! — and if you’re among the 99% who have been feeling unmoored, too, then perhaps you are Ready For It. Swift said in announcing the album that she was moving further into fiction songwriting after finding out it was a good fit on much of “Folklore,” a probably inevitable move for someone who’s turning 31 in a few days and appears to have a fairly settled personal life. Which is not to say that there aren’t scores to settle, and a few intriguing tracks whose real-life associations will be speculated upon. But just as the “Betty”/”August” love triangle of mid-year established that modern pop’s most celebrated confessional writer can just make shit up, too, so, here, do we get the narrator of “Dorothea,” a honey in Tupelo who is telling a childhood friend who moved away and became famous that she’s always welcome back in her hometown. (Swift may be doing a bit of empathic wondering in a couple of tracks here how it feels to be at the other end of the telescope.) One time the album takes a turn away from rumination into a pure spirit of fun — while getting dark anyway — is “No Body, No Crime,” a spirited double-murder ballad that may have more than a little inspiration in “Goodbye, Earl.” Since Swift already used the Dixie Chicks for background vocals two albums ago, for this one she brings in two of the sisters from Haim, Danielle and Este, and even uses the latter’s name for one of the characters. Yes, the rock band Haim’s featured appearance is on the only really country-sounding song on the record… there’s one you didn’t see coming, in the 16 hours you had to wonder about it. Yet there are also a handful of songs that clearly represent a Swiftian state of mind. At least, it’s easy to suppose that the love songs that opens the album, “Willow,” is a cousin to the previous record’s “Invisible String” and “Peace,” even if it doesn’t offer quite as many clearly corroborating details about her current relationship as those did. On the sadder side, Swift is apparently determined to run through her entire family tree for heartrending material. On “Lover,” she sang for her stricken mother; on “Folklore,” for her grandfather in wartime. In that tradition the new album offers “Marjorie,” about the beloved grandmother she lost in 2003, when she was 13. (The lyric videos that are being offered online mostly offer static visual loops, but the one for “Marjorie” is an exception, reviving a wealth of stills and home-movie footage of Grandma, who was quite a looker in a miniskirt in her day.) Rue is not something Swift is afraid of here anymore than anywhere else, as she sings, “I should’ve asked you questions / I should’ve asked you how to be / Asked you to write it down for me / Should’ve kept every grocery store receipt / ‘Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me,” lines that will leave a dry eye only in houses that have never known death. The piece de resistance in its poignance is Swift actually resurrecting faint audio clips of Marjorie, who was an opera singer back in the day. It’s almost like ELO’s “Rockaria,” played for weeping instead of a laugh. Swift has not given up, thank God, on the medium that brought her to the dance — the breakup song — but most of them here have more to do with dimming memories and the search for forgiveness, however slowly and incompletely achieved, than feist. But doesn’t Swift know that we like her when she’s angry? She does, and so she delves deep into something like venom just once, but it’s a good one. The ire in “Closure,” a pulsating song about an unwelcome “we can still be friends, right?” letter from an ex, seems so fresh and close to the surface that it would be reasonable to speculate that it is not about a romantic relationship at all, but a professional one she has no intention of ever recalling in a sweet light. Or maybe she does harbor that a disdain for an actual former love with that machinelike a level of intensity. What “Evermore” is full of is narratives that, like the music that accompanies them, really come into focus on second or third listen, usually because of a detail or two that turns her sometimes impressionistic modes completely vivid. “Champagne Problems” is a superb example of her abilities as a storyteller who doesn’t always tell all: She’s playing the role of a woman who quickly ruins a relationship by balking at a marriage proposal the guy had assumed was an easy enough yes that he’d tipped off his nearby family. “Sometimes you just don’t know the answer ‘ Til someone’s on their knees and asks you / ‘She would’ve made such a lovely bride / What a shame she’s fucked in the head’ / They said / But you’ll find the real thing instead / She’ll patch up your tapestry that I shred.” (Swift has doubled the F-bomb quotient this time around, among other expletives, for anyone who may be wondering whether there’s rough wordplay amid Dessner’s delicacy — that would an effing yes.) “‘Tis the Damn Season,” representing a gentler expletive, gives us a character who is willing to settle, or at least share a Christmas-time bed with an ex back in the hometown, till something better comes along. The pleasures here are shared, though not many more fellow artists have broken into her quarantine bubble this time around. Besides Haim’s cameo, Marcus Mumford offers a lovely harmony vocal on “Cowboy Like Me,” which might count as the other country song on the album, and even throws in something Swift never much favored in her Nashville days, a bit of lap steel. Its tale of male and female grifters meeting and maybe — maybe — falling in love is really more determinedly Western than C&W, per se, though. The National itself, as a group, finally gets featured billing on “Coney Island,” with Matt Berninger taking a duet vocal on a track that recalls the previous album’s celebrated Bon Iver collaboration “Exile,” with ex-lovers taking quiet turns deciding who was to blame. (Swift saves the rare laugh line for herself: “We were like the mall before the internet / It was the one place to be.) Don’t worry, legions of new Bon Iver fans: Dessner has not kicked Justin Vernon out of his inner circle just to make room for Berninger. The Bon Iver frontman whose appearance on “Folklore” came as a bit of a shock to some of his fan base actually makes several appearances on this album, and the one that gets him elevated to featured status again, as a duet, the closing “Evermore,” is different from “Exile” in two key ways. Vernon gets to sing in his high register… and he gets the girl. As it turned out, the year 2020 did not involve any such waiting for Swift fans; it’s an embarrassment of stunning albums-ending-in-“ore” that she’s mined out of a locked-down muse.

#taylor swift #evermore #review

130 notes · View notes

lunarianillusion · 3 years

Text

a change in fate

a maribat fanfic

Chapter 03

Timothy really wanted to know who thought it was a good idea to put Guy Gardner on monitor duty, because this was clearly not a prank.

Let’s backtrack a bit, the young alpha had gone out after having put all his stuff at his new loft, to go and gather information. He had done some research beforehand on the internet but the blog that had started out decently had turned into nothing but a gossip site. He had not been as thorough as he normally was since he was still a bit skeptical of the situation. He also needed to get a coffee machine.

He had just walked through a few blocks when a loud explosion penetrated the air and made his ears ring like a train conductor was whistling directly into his ears. It took a minute to stop but that did not stop him from scouting the surroundings for the source of the explosion.

He found it in the form of a horrendously colour coordinated person with a large neon orange helmet on top of a circle form glider a few streets away. An akuma. It was real.

He pulled up his hood before slipping into the shadows, like he was trained to and pulled out his hidden utility belt. The Bat pack ways will not be leaving him anytime soon. He then quickly took to the rooftops, applying a scent blocker and ear plugs along the way, towards the danger zone.

Upon arriving on the danger zone another explosion rung loudly through the air making Tim very grateful for the special function earplugs he put in. He took to perch on one of the higher rooftops to observe the situation. By the looks of it the two Parisian heroes had already arrived, but he was not impressed by what he saw. Rather disappointed if not disgusted.

First the akuma; The male threw golden balls, that he got from a metal backpack, that exploded upon impact. Though the explosions them self were small and would only leave any physical damage if they exploded a foot away from you. They had already destroyed some parts of the surrounding buildings though. The explosions were however very loud, as he found out himself and it would be a miracle if the bystanders weren’t deaf by the end of it.

Then came the heroes, if you could even call them that.

Chat Noir was acting like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum over not getting his favourite toy. He kept on trying to trip the new ladybug up while screaming and whining at her to tell were the real ladybug was. Or he was taunting the akuma, who in turn threw more bombs that the mangy cat dodged but then those bombs got dangerously close to the civilians that were still in the area. Did he not realize that his actions could get people killed like that? Was this a game to him and did not like the rules of?

Then there was the new ladybug at first, she had his sympathies for chat trying to trip her up on every possible occasion. That changed when he saw how she subtly led the akuma to the bystanders, bringing them into danger, only to ‘save’ them at the last moment. Oh, how that made Timothy’s blood boil.

He made these observations within a few seconds and he quickly sprang from his perch and into the action. He was not going to let the innocent bystanders become unnecessarily injured by their ‘heroes’ reckless actions, if he could help it.

The moment he safely hit the ground he bolted to a small group of civilians, that were desperately clutching their ears. He placed his hand on the back of the smallest of the group and gaining the attention of the surrounding people. They looked at him with utterly confused and scared looks. Likely they were tourists given by their attire. He motioned for them to follow him, since they would not be able to hear him over the explosions and ringing, and swiftly guided them away from the danger.

Once he got them far enough from the danger zone, picking some more bystanders along the way, he motioned for them to book it out of dodge. Then went to get any left behind stragglers out. There was only one left and the child had gone to hide behind some of the rubble. Looking around frantically and calling out for help as tears run down their cheeks.

He began to run towards the young pup, only to watch in horror as one of the bombs exploded at the base of the rubble. The bomb having been intended for Chat noir who had dodged to the side without a care and allowed the rubble to crush the scared pup underneath. The terrified look would be haunting Tim’s nightmares to come, as blood pooled from underneath the rock. A small hand was sticking out as if desperately reaching out for safety.

Chat noir should be eternally grateful that hawkmoth is only capable of akumatizing one person at a time without aid. Otherwise they would have a super-powered ex-robin on his tail.

It was time to stop this madness. His secrecy might become compromised but so be it. Taking out his grappling gun he took to get a better vantage and knock the immediate danger of his glider. Then he had to destroy the backpack to keep the Akuma from getting or making any more bombs. Grabbing several explosive birdarangs he took aim.

“IN COMING!!!”

A blue blur of a person slammed feet first into the akuma’s back. Knocking the akuma off their glider and crashing onto the ground, creating a spiderweb patterning on the ground. A loud crack rang through the air as the metal backpack shattered.

The person clad in blue rolled upon impact over the akuma and then flipped backward creating some distance between the two of them, then taking on a battle stance and giving Tim the chance to examine them.

The female was clad in a dark blue tunic and matching leggings with thigh high boots. Around her waist she wore a silver cloth belt and light blue faded skirt that was open in the front and had a peacock motif, given by the fuchsia eyes at the tips of the skirt. Her blue tipped hair was pulled into a messy braided ponytail with two feathers sticking out. Her weapon, a fan, was poised and ready to attack.

The akuma stands back up and lets out a fierce snarl but the unknown female was unfazed by it. She only narrowed her rose coloured eyes into an ice-cold glare, that sent shivers down the spines of all who were watching. The akuma sent their glider to attack the blue clad female, but she easily jumped over it and used their fan too slice through the glider itself. Then she sprinted to her target with great speed. He tried to defend themselves but with their atrocious combat abilities, blue easily throws them over her shoulder before slamming the bud of her fan onto the helmet splitting it in two. Final someone competent has shown up.

A sickly looking black butterfly flew out of the helmet and the peacock themed person turned to the new L.B. “Ladybug! Purify it!” she commanded shocking said ‘hero’ into action. The spotted girl stumbled a bit and had to throw her yoyo out for a second time before being able to catch the butterfly and then letting it go, now as a healthy-looking white butterfly. She only then then summoned her lucky charm, a bow, and threw it into the air calling out to her power. The bow transformed into a large swarm of ladybugs that went around restoring the wreckage back to its original state and brought back those that lost their life. Like in the videos from the tabloid blog.

Seeing the young child, that had just been crushed, alive and look around absolutely confused brought the Gothamite a certain feeling of wonder and overwhelming dread. Because if these heroes could reverse death how many had already died.

A strange black and purple goop surrounded the akuma bringing the hidden alpha’s attention back to him and the blue clad female. Once the goop receded in the place of the akuma now sat a teenage boy with mousy hair and a pair of round glasses on their face and was looking around completely confused. The peacock theme hero sat infront of the boy and began to talk to him. She seemed to be comforting the boy, but Timothy was too far away to hear what she was saying.

As he saw Chat and LB advance on the two however, he decided it to be best to listen in and gain some first-hand information. He also had a prominent theory running through his head upon having observed unknown hero’s combative skills and actions and needed to see if he was correct.

As the akuma victim was taking away to a therapist, hopefully, the blue clad hero turned to the so-called heroes of Paris. Before she could get a word out however Chat Noir lunged at her with a yell to call out his own power. Luckily though the peafowl easily grabbed the cat boy’s wrist and redirected him into destroying a nearby café chair. Before hurling him to the ground and knocking the wind out of him, but not letting go of his wrist.

“Are you going to attack every person that is not ‘your’ ladybug and is trying to help,” she spoke in a voice that sounded so done with the world. Chat let out a hiss. “I am not going to fall for your lies Mayura,” the blond snapped.

“Do not ever align me with the likes of Mayura,” the bluenette hissed in return, voice filled with a cold malice that made the boy feel a shiver. “I do not expect you to trust me right now, but at least give me a chance to prove myself,” She spoke more calmly now as she helped Chat noir back on his feet, before taking a few steps back.

“How did you even acquire the peacock miraculous?” Ladybug asked skeptically, her eyes glaring into the other girl. Who did not seem to care.

“It was intrusted to me and I was told to use it for the good of Paris. Which I intend to do, no matter what. Paris is my home and Hawkmoth has been tormenting it for too long,” She spoke with conviction her own rose-coloured eyes alight with fire. “Now I belief I should introduce myself. You may call me Blue Royal” She said while placing here fan over her heart and bow her head ever so slightly.

The other heroes wanted to interrogate her more, but a beeping sound stopped them. A timer. “A month trial period, for both of you, at the end we will meet on Saturday at midnight on the top of the Eifel tower. We will decide how to proceed afterwards,” Chat Noir stated. Gaining an affronted gasp from ladybug.

“Why am I being put on a trial period!” She exclaimed.

“Because you refuse to tell us any information about what happened and where the real Ladybug is! If she were here, we would have no need for you or this hero wannabe,” Chat Noir yelled back in frustration. Tim’s eye twitched in annoyance. ‘You did not do much to help the situation either.’ Timothy thought bitterly and the sentiment seemed to resonate with Royal, given by the way she glared at the two when they weren’t looking.

The two children wanted to argue some more but the beeping sound interrupted them once more. Good they might have turned into an akuma themselves if they continued. Just as the news crew, along with miss tabloid, entered the area the ladybug and cat ‘heroes’ left the scene. They immediately tried to swarm to Blue Royal, but to everyone slight surprise her skirt unfurled from her waist into two large wings. The wings beet down as she jumped into the air leaving gobsmacked reporters and curious Gothamite in her wake.

Though Timothy could have gone in pursue, he decided it best to lay contact at a later time. He got some information to process and work on.

He also really needed coffee.

taglist:

@moonlightstar64, @iloontjeboontje, @mickylikesstuff, @scribblinggraveyard, @faunrasthewinterelf, @myazael, @incredulous-reader

Authors note: special thank you to @moonlightstar64 for helping me with how to tag people. I hope you enjoyed the chapter and happy holidays.

#maribat #timari #timinette #marinette dupain cheng #miraculous ladybug #peacock miraculous #chat noir salt #miraculous tales of ladybug and chat noir #timothy drake #kwami swap

107 notes · View notes